What I believe to be the true statement of the case is this: Greek art did not come to an end with the death of Praxiteles or the Roman conquest. Its central impulse passed over from the impoverished mainland to the still flourishing communities of the East, to Antioch on the Mæander where the Aphrodite of Melos was produced, to Rhodes where the Laocoön was carved, to Ephesus, and farther east still, even into Parthia and possibly India. It was by no means stereotyped but still producing new forms to meet fresh demands, as for sarcophagi in Sidon, or for paintings and mosaics in Egypt. In the course of this period the art of the Greeks was much influenced by the East. The Romans at first were content to take Greek art as they found it. In the days of Mummius they were merely like rich transatlantic collectors in search of beautiful, still more of precious and unique, commodities. They had no doubt some slaves of their own working in Rome at the arts and crafts. Some of these would be Greeks of inferior birth and capacity reproducing old Greek work for the Roman market. But some of them may well have been Italians, some Etruscans preserving the old artistic traditions of their race. This “collecting” era lasted down to the time of Augustus. We have seen it as late as Cicero and Atticus. There was little demand for new creations in those days. Few temples were being built. The artists were still scattered about the Levant. There was little to attract them to Rome. But when Augustus decided to build a new Rome of marble, founding or restoring his eighty temples, with arches and theatres innumerable all over the Empire, there must have been a great influx of artists from Greece and Asia Minor. Now begins an art to which we may fairly apply the term Græco-Roman in the sense that it was the work of Greek artists under oriental influences supplying Roman demands. The new demands entailed still further artistic developments; some of them, but not all, to be regarded by those who view the history of art as a whole, as improvements. One main effect of Roman conditions was that art largely ceased its service of religion and became devoted to secular purposes. Thus the limitations of the best Greek art, self-imposed as they were, now broke down. The effect is seen especially in portraiture, where the Romans had a tradition of realism resulting from the use of the death-mask in making wax images of the illustrious deceased. Hence in the decoration of the great Altar of Peace at Rome, the Greek artists, who would naturally have produced a frieze of gods or idealised worshippers, were asked for portraits of the men of the day. I think it is clear that enormous skill was devoted to the likenesses of men and very little care to the gods. The composition of the whole was of little account. A little later the demand for historical reliefs on arches and columns was met by the development of quite new features in