During the latter period of the commonwealth, attempts were successively made by Sylla, Pompey, and Cæsar, to domiciliate the arts in Rome. Their efforts, however, reached no farther than collecting in that capital the sculptors of Greece,--thus doubly unfortunate, as the place whence were torn the plundered ornaments of temples and palaces, and as the nurse of that science which, in busts and statues, was to immortalize the lineaments of her enslavers. The patronage of Augustus, who could wield for his purposes the energies of the whole enlightened world, necessarily proved highly advantageous to art, which he affected to cultivate from patriotic and intellectual, but really from those still stronger political motives. But of all the sculptors of the Augustan age whose names have reached us, every one is Greek, and chiefly Athenian. Pasiteles, Arcesilaus, Zopirus, and Evander, were the most eminent. The arts, indeed, were revived; but the creative spirit which infuses life and soul into their productions, which stamps them with originality and thought, could not be recalled. The character of design and of execution is evidently the same as that by which the last era of sculpture in Greece is distinguished, or rather it is superior; for settled government, ample reward, and certain honor, not only drew to Rome every man of talent, but also awakened new powers. But in the finest specimens, there is no evidence of new energies, added by the union of two separate modifications of talent; nor in the inferior, any exhibition of the more original, though it might be ruder, efforts of an aspiring and distinct national taste. Either or both of these effects would have been apparent, had there been native, prior to this importation of Greek artists. On the contrary, everything in the sculpture of this era discovers a descent from a state of higher excellence; every touch exhibits rather what has been, than presages the eminence for which we are to draw upon futurity. From Augustus to Trajan, during a period of 140 years, the principles and practice of the Greeks continue to be observed, with such difference only as political causes can easily reconcile, but with a progressive decay. The most favorable periods during this space were the reigns of Vespasian, Titus, and Trajan; for the reign of Nero, whose taste, like his morals, was corrupt, which Pliny has assumed as an epoch in the Roman school, was propitious to practice, not to improvement.