red, robe, with their lictors and the other insignia of
office--all in chariots gave the final escort to the dead. On the
bier overspread with massive purple and gold-embroidered coverlets and
fine linen cloths lay the deceased himself, likewise in the full
costume of the highest office which he had filled, and surrounded by
the armour of the enemies whom he had slain and by the chaplets which
in jest or earnest he had won. Behind the bier came the mourners, all
dressed in black and without ornament, the sons of the deceased with
their heads veiled, the daughters without veil, the relatives and
clansmen, the friends, the clients and freedmen. Thus the procession
passed on to the Forum. There the corpse was placed in an erect
position; the ancestors descended from their chariots and seated
themselves in the curule chairs; and the son or nearest gentile
kinsman of the deceased ascended the rostra, in order to announce to
the assembled multitude in simple recital the names and deeds of each
of the men sitting in a circle around him and, last of all, those of
him who had recently died.

This may be called a barbarous custom, and a nation of artistic
feelings would certainly not have tolerated the continuance of this
odd resurrection of the dead down to an epoch of fully-developed
civilization; but even Greeks who were very dispassionate and but
little disposed to reverence, such as Polybius, were greatly impressed
by the naive pomp of this funeral ceremony. It was a conception
essentially in keeping with the grave solemnity, the uniform movement,
and the proud dignity of Roman life, that departed generations should
continue to walk, as it were, corporeally among the living, and that,
when a burgess weary of labours and of honours was gathered to his
fathers, these fathers themselves should appear in the Forum to
receive him among their number.

The New Hellenism

But the Romans had now reached a crisis of transition. Now that the
power of Rome was no longer confined to Italy but had spread far and
wide to the east and to the west, the days of the old home life of
Italy were over, and a Hellenizing civilization came in its room. It
is true that Italy had been subject to the influence of Greece, ever
since it had a history at all. We have formerly shown how the
youthful Greece and the youthful Italy--both of them with a certain
measure of simplicity and originality--gave and received intellectual
impulses; and how