[Illustration: MARCUS AURELIUS Rome] POST-HADRIAN SCULPTURE The last Roman sculpture to which reference need be made is the well-known equestrian statue of Marcus Aurelius in Rome. The highest praise that can be accorded to it, is, that it can bear comparison with the finest equestrian statue the world possesses—that of Colleoni at Venice, the joint work of Verocchio and Leopardi. A melancholy interest attaches to the “Marcus Aurelius” for the reason that it signalizes the close of an artistic movement that had run its course for more than eight hundred years. The transition from Greek to Roman sculpture had been uninterrupted. Now, the art of sculpture was to pass into the shades for almost the same period. Even in the days of Marcus Aurelius himself, the world had dim forebodings of the Dark Ages which were approaching. The effort with which Aurelius arrested the flow of Germanic invasion was far from reassuring. To an Emperor such as Trajan it would have spelt disaster. Every Roman capable of bearing arms was enrolled in the forces defending Italy itself. The outposts of the Empire—the Danubian provinces, for instance—were only saved by the efforts of the barbarians. A Roman Elijah might have warned the Empire of what Alaric’s boastful cry would be when asked what ransom Rome should pay. “All your gold, all your silver, the choicest of your treasures.” “What then will you leave us?” “Your lives!” As the third century of our era advanced, the system upon which the Roman Empire had been founded showed even clearer signs of breaking down. The supply of capable administrators proved insufficient. Roman citizens no longer took the keen interest in political affairs they had of old. The men who had furnished the brains of the state in earlier times abandoned themselves to lives of luxury and idleness. The concentration of power in the hands of the few governors of real ability and vigour led to a state of perpetual insurrection. On the contrary, the counter-check of subdivision of provinces and powers, devised by Diocletian and Constantine, led to the rise of a bureaucracy which got entirely out of hand. The ideals of Roman imperialism passed away. With them went the art of portraiture which they had fostered. An effete empire led to an effete art. As we have said many centuries were to pass before the Catholic Church, which fathered the next great school of national sculpture—the Gothic—realized the possibility of embodying its thoughts and feelings in marble and bronze. The early Christians could never disassociate sculpture from the religious beliefs of the Romans. The art was too closely allied with a pagan faith to be acceptable to the new church. This more or less accounts for the absence of a vigorous school of sculpture in Italy between the fourth and the thirteenth centuries A.D.