It is true that the Roman Empire did not long remain at peace. But Italy, at any rate, did not experience the horrors of war for some centuries. The years of struggle had aroused a strong sense of national feeling. The imperial system organized by Augustus set men free to cultivate the arts of peace. Patrons with national instincts and artists with the gift of expressing national feelings and thoughts arose. In a few years, the tendencies shadowed forth in such sculptures as “The Julius Cæsar” and “The Augustus,” became fixed, and a national school of Roman portraiture sprang up. The characteristics of the national style became more and more strongly marked. THE HEIGHT OF ROMAN IMPERIALISM (96 A.D. TO 117 A.D.) The distinctively Roman portrait, untainted with any Hellenic or Hellenistic admixture, is seen in the famous statue of the Emperor Nerva in the Vatican collection. Here the artist has left the idealistic methods of the Hellenic sculptors entirely behind. He has depended upon the cunning use of realistic detail for his effect, emphasizing the impression of life-like portraiture beyond anything attempted in the Augustan age. Even the grace of a statue like “The Augustus” has been sacrificed in the search for vigorous actuality. The English equivalent of the new ideal is “Cromwell, warts and all.” But one cannot but admire the magnificent judgment with which the realistic detail is managed. There is nothing set down which does not add to the vivid sense of a living portrait. As Wickhoff says in his fine study of Roman art, “They gave an exact reproduction of nature, but with a terseness which produced the desired impression of cold distinction.” In the “Nerva” we have the Roman ideal in its most concrete form. Not a word too much, but sufficient to ensure the impression of intense and living reality. Exactly the same tendency can be observed when the languages of the two races are compared. The Roman—practical man—preferred a narrow and concrete vocabulary. He willingly sacrificed flexibility of expression to a businesslike conciseness. Hence arose his system of inflectional speech, which is to be contrasted with the analytical speech of the Hellenes with its particles and definite article. Just as the inflectional language of Rome would not have expressed a quarter of what the agile-minded Greek desired to say, so the methods of the Roman portrait sculptor would have been valueless to the Greek to whom philosophical _aperçus_ into the whole of human experience alone seemed worthy of incarnation in marble and bronze. The Roman sculptor, however, was quite satisfied with a narrow and concrete mode of expression. He was content with an intensely concise method entirely unsuited to the abstract thought and emotion in which the Greek had revelled.