FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134  
135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   >>  
gy. It was not long before these ultimate remainders vanished under the alluvial overflow of the middle classes, swollen by the big economic gains of the first century. In this respect, the first and second centuries of the Christian era resemble our own time. In the whole Empire, alike in Rome, in Gaul, in Asia, there were old aristocratic families, rich and illustrious, but they were not the class of greatest power. Under them stood a middle class of merchants, land-owners, orators, jurists, professors, and other intellectual men, and this was so numerous, comfortable, and so potent as to cause all the great social forces, from government to industry, to abandon the old aristocracy and court it like a new mistress. Art, industry, literature, were vulgarised in those two centuries, as to-day in Europe and America, because they had to work mainly for this middle class which was much more numerous, and yet cruder than the ancient _elites_. It was the first era of the _cheap_, of vulgarisations, I was about to say of the _made in Germany_, that enters into history. There was invented the art of silver-plating, to give the _bourgeoisie_ at moderate prices the sweet illusion of possessing objects of silver; great thinkers disappeared; instead were multiplied manuals, treatises, encyclopaedias, professors that summarised and vulgarised. Philosophy gradually gave out, like all the higher forms of literature, and there began the reign of the declaimers and the sophists; that is, the lecture-givers, the lawyers, the journalists. In painting and sculpture, original schools were no more to be found, nor great names, but the number of statues and bas-reliefs increased infinitely. The paintings of Pompeii and many statues and marbles that are now admired in European museums are examples of this industrialised art, inexpensive, creating nothing original, but furnishing to families in comfortable circumstances passable copies of works of art--once a privilege only of kings. The imperial bureaucracy that was formed mainly in the second century was another effect of this enlargement of the middle classes. In the second century there came into vogue many humanitarian ideas, which have a certain resemblance to modern ones. There increased solicitude for the general well-being, for order, for justice, and this augmented the number of functionaries charged with insuring universal felicity by administrative means. The movement was support
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   110   111   112   113   114   115   116   117   118   119   120   121   122   123   124   125   126   127   128   129   130   131   132   133   134  
135   136   137   138   139   140   141   142   >>  



Top keywords:
middle
 

century

 

numerous

 

statues

 

number

 
families
 
original
 

professors

 
centuries
 

vulgarised


literature

 

industry

 
comfortable
 

classes

 
increased
 

silver

 
Pompeii
 
reliefs
 

infinitely

 

paintings


journalists

 

higher

 

gradually

 

Philosophy

 

manuals

 

multiplied

 

treatises

 

encyclopaedias

 

summarised

 

declaimers


schools

 
sculpture
 

painting

 

lawyers

 

sophists

 
lecture
 

givers

 
solicitude
 

general

 
modern

resemblance
 

humanitarian

 
justice
 
administrative
 

felicity

 

movement

 
support
 

universal

 
insuring
 

augmented