n important public
building erected without the chiseller, the stucco-worker, the carver,
the founder, the painter, and mosaic-maker being called in. Statues,
single or in groups, filled gables, roofs, niches, interstices of
columns, staircases in the temples, theatres, amphitheatres,
basilicas, public baths, bridges, arches, portals, and viaducts. . . .
Triumphal arches generally had at their summits equestrian figures,
trophies, chariots of four or six horses, driven by figures of
victory. Reliefs and medallions bedecked the frieze, and reliefs or
paintings the walls; ceilings were gay with stucco or coloured work,
and the floors with glittering mosaics. All the architectural
framework, supports, thresholds, lintels, mouldings, windows, and even
gutters were overloaded with decorative figures."

It was above all in plastic art that the contemporary world was
enormously rich. Not only could no public building dispense with such
decorations as those above mentioned; no private house of the least
pretensions was without its statues, busts, statuettes, carved
reliefs, and stucco-work. Never was statuary in marble or bronze so
plentiful in every part of the empire, in public squares, or in the
houses of representative people--in reception-hall, peristyle court,
garden, or colonnade. Portrait statues in the largest towns were to be
counted by hundreds, and sometimes by thousands. Men distinguished in
war, in letters, in public life, and in local benefactions were as
regularly commemorated by statues or busts as they are in modern times
by painted portraits. Sometimes--unlike the modern portraits of
course--these were paid for by the recipient of the compliment. In the
comparatively unimportant Forum of Pompeii there stood five colossal
statues, between seventy and eighty life-size equestrian statues, and
as many standing figures, while the public buildings surrounding this
open space contained their dozen or twenty each. As has been said
already, most of the best work in sculpture--apart from these bronze
and marble portraits of contemporaries--was reproduction of Grecian
masterpieces dating from the time of Pheidias onward. Particularly did
the Roman affect the more elaborate work of the period of the later
"Macedonian" kings. Where the actual work was not exactly copied it at
least supplied the main conception or motive. It followed naturally
that there would be in existence many copies of the same piece, and,
in procuri