Basilica Aemilia or the office of the Pontifex in the
Forum, or the exquisite chiselling of trailing ivy upon a cup from
Herculaneum (FIG. 56), or the dainty pattern wrought on no more
important a thing than a bucket (FIG. 58), or the graceful shape
imparted to a household lamp (FIG. 54). Water could hardly be
permitted to spout in a peristyle or garden without doing so from some
charming statuette, animal figure, or decorative mask or head. When
fine art is sought in things like these, we may guess how
uncompromisingly it was sought in things more avowedly "on show."

The age with which we have been dealing fell within the most
flourishing period of Roman, or rather Graeco-Roman, taste and
craftsmanship. A hundred years later both taste and execution were
declining, and by the age of Constantine--two centuries and a half
after Nero--not one artist could pretend to achieve such work as had
belonged to a multitude between the reigns of Augustus and Hadrian.

It is not indeed probable that, even at our date, the large and noble
simplicity of the older Greek masters could be rivalled. It is not
probable that most of the former creations of art still preserved
could have been wrought as originals by any Greek or Roman artist
living in the time of Nero. Nevertheless technical craftsmanship was
still superb, and while the contemporary artist could not create a
splendid original, he was at least able to create an almost perfect
copy. The Roman public buildings and private houses were enriched with
a host of such copies, or, when not exact copies, with modifications
which, though not improvements, were at least such as could not offend
by displaying a lack of technical mastery. Let us grant that it was
for the most part Greeks who were the artists; nevertheless the Greek
is an active member of the Roman world and of its metropolitan life,
and he executes his work to the order of the Roman state or the Roman
patron; and therefore the art of the time deserves to be called Roman
in that sense. There is little doubt that the Romans, if left to
themselves, would have developed only the solid, or the gorgeous, or
the baroque. But influences which penetrate a society are part of that
society, and the Greek influence accepted by the Roman becomes a Roman
principle.

Perhaps it is also true that many a Roman who possessed fine works of
art, and even exquisite ones, was not in reality a true connoisseur;
that, even if he were, he lack