exercising an influence prejudicial to the arts, by destroying the monuments of paganism.*

It is to other causes, unconnected with religion, that we are to attribute the popular decline. Art, transplanted to the Tiber, had lost by the migration a number of those stimulants which aided its early advancement. The alteration and final abolition of the national games had removed from the sculptor one of his most efficient opportunities of perpetually contemplating the purest models of manly proportion and athletic vigour. The artist, taught to feel himself degraded by his profession, lost every spur to ambition or anxiety for distinction. The rude genius of the successors of Augustus was devoted to debauchery rather than refinement; and that servile adulation of the throne, which forms the leading characteristic of every national aristocracy, taught the wealthier portion of the empire, in whose hands were patronage and power, to manifest the same disregard for the intellectual embellishments of society. Besides, the intercourse of the Romans with their distant and unenlightened provinces, and their association with

* "La religion Chrêtienne, d'humble qu'elle étoit, devint arrogante à son tour: poussés par un zèle indiscret, des furieux pillèrent les temples des payens."--Winkelmann, 1. vi. c. 8.

the barbarians who, through choice or the chance of war, had settled in their dominions, tended imperceptibly but inevitably to vitiate the taste of the empire. And finally, as the Northern nations began to congregate around the confines of Rome, and to quarter themselves on its subjugated districts, their perpetual dissensions and revolts served to destroy that tranquillity so essential to the prosperity of the arts. From such a combination of causes we might naturally anticipate the most unfavourable effects; and the result was, that at the period when the empire of the East was established, the purity of sculpture and the other branches of design was virtually extinct.

During the entire extent of the fourth century, the fury of the Christians was remorselessly turned against the idols and statues of the discarded mythology. The temples of paganism, as convertible to the purposes of the Church, were visited with greater clemency, but still the injuries they sustained were irreparable; and amongst other instances, posterity has to regret the total demolition of the gorgeous temple of Serapis, at Alexandria, and the destruction of the innumerable works of sculpture which embellished it. So extensive were the ravages of superstition during this fanatical era, that when the Emperor Honorius deemed it necessary to

renew for the fourth time the edict against the proscribed images, he deemed it requisite to add a clause expressive of his doubt whether any had escaped destruction.* This pious outrage, however, was directed, not against the existence of the art, but what were considered to be the productions of its prostitution; the pedestals of the overthrown gods were quickly replenished with the statues of their more popular successors, the saints; and the walls and altars of the Christian churches were rapidly adorned with paintings and sculpture, which, in brilliancy at least, eclipsed those of the suppressed temples. The busts and portraits of the emperors, likewise, still served to perpetuate the practice of sculpture; but after the age of Constantine, scarcely any mention is made of its productions by the historians of Byzantium.† Almost the only subsequent records which we possess are those which refer to their destruction by the Goths, and the madness of

* "Si qua etiam nunc in templis fanisque consistunt." + Winkelmann, 1. vi. c. 8.

I have in a previous chapter (vol. i. p. 43.) ventured a conjecture as to the exaggerated accounts which have reached us of the ravages of the Goths in Greece and at Athens. On considering the extensive ruin entailed upon the treasures of the nation by the fanaticism of the early Christians, we are forced to conclude, that, on the advance of Alaric, but little was left for him to destroy. In this opinion I am glad to be

the ikonoclastic reformers; and the only specimens which remain are in a style which leaves us little regret in the loss of what have perished.

Towards the commencement of the seventh century, the corruptions of the Church, which led to the ikonoclastic controversy, had gained their height of enormity. The influence of superstition had overlaid every act and feeling

supported by an authority so great as that of M. EmericDavid: "On a beaucoup exageré," says he, " les ravages d'Alaric, et en général ceux qui accompagnèrent l'irruption des barbares." (Discours, &c. p. 35.) A stronger testimony still is that of Sidonius Apollinaris, the Bishop of Auvergne, who about the close of the fifth century enumerates a variety of the treasures of art then extant at Athens. In one of his epistles, addressed to the Roman pontiff Faustus, whilst cautioning him with regard to a proper observance of becoming dress, warning him to avoid pride in its fashion, profusion in its splendour, or affectation in its meanness, he adds, "Neque te satis hoc æmulari, quod per gymnasia pingantur Areopagitica, vel Prytaneum, curva cervice Zeusippus, Aratus panda, Zenon fronte contracta, Epicurus cute distenta, Diogenes barba comante, Socrates coma candente, Aristoteles brachio exerto, Xenocrates crure collecto, Heraclitus fletu oculis clausis, Democritus risu labris apertis, Chrysippus digitis propter numerorum indicia constrictis, Euclides propter mensurarum spatia laxatis, Cleanthes propter utrumque corrosis. Quin potius experietur quisque conflixerit, Stoicos, Cynicos, peripateticos, heresiarchas, propriis armis, propriis quoque concuti machinamentis," &c.-Ep. 1. ix. ep. 9. p. 252. Par. 1614.

of the Greeks; it had passed from the throne to the field; and whilst "Ave Maria" was the watchword of the camp, the soldier was taught to place more reliance on the protection of a palladiac image, than in his prowess or his sword. The portraits and statues of the saints were asserted to be the direct workmanship of the Almighty, and were believed by the besotted populace to have uttered oracles, wept warm tears, and even bled beneath the knives of the incredulous.†

At last, the day of retribution came, and that vengeance, which the early enthusiasts had wreaked on the monuments of the heathen mythology, was in turn directed against the objects of their own idolatry. In the eighth century, Leo the Isaurian commenced his strenuous exertions for the outcasting of the national

Such was the celebrated image of Edessa, to which the inhabitants were indebted for their preservation from the arms of Chosroes Nushirvan.-See Gibbon, c. xlix. The belief in the protection of these divine effigies was by no means exterminated by the vigorous measures of Leo and his successors. It spread with the faith of the Eastern church throughout the wilds of Russia; and so late as the thirteenth century, the warlike descendants of Ruric fell a prey to their Mogul invaders from an over-reliance in their sacred guardianship.

+ Reiskius de Imaginibus Christi Exercitationes, Ex. vi. c. i. p. 136.