What the age of the Revolution demanded of art was at all events not a "noble style," as Vien had required of it, but rather in the first place a Spartan virtue. Various philosophical writers had drawn a parallel between the organisation of the old and the modern state; they had exerted themselves to show that the old Republics were models of an almost absolute perfection, which the modern should, in so far as it was possible, imitate. They had contrasted the moral conditions of Sparta and the Roman Republic with the moral constitution of contemporary, monarchical France. They had quoted on every opportunity the acts of virtue, renunciation, courage, and patriotic sacrifice of the great men of antiquity; they had used these deeds as a means of proving their thesis, and their ideas aroused deep echoes in men's hearts. [Illustration: ELISABETH VIGÉE-LEBRUN. PORTRAIT OF THE PAINTER WITH HER DAUGHTER.] The sentiment of Rome had entered into the people as a thing of flesh and blood even before the catastrophe had ensued. "We were more prepared," wrote Nodier, "for the particular tone of the language of the Revolution than people would have believed, and it cost us little pains to pass from the studies of our _gymnases_ to the strife of the forum. In the schools we had prize compositions set of this kind: Who stands higher, the elder Brutus who judged his children, or the younger Brutus who judged his father? And so Livy and Tacitus have done more to overthrow the monarchical system than Voltaire and Rousseau." It was evident then that France, so soon as she had freed herself from her kings, so soon as she had spoken the word "Republic," must take the _Roman_ Republic as her pattern. People lived in an atmosphere of antiquity; the great citizens of Rome and Athens were ranged with the French National Convention; Scævola, Scipio, Cato, Cincinnatus, were the idols of the populace. The speakers in the council cited the ancients in preference; Madame Vigée-Lebrun gave _soupers à la Grecque_. "Everything was ordered according to the _Voyage d'Anacharsis_--garments, viands, amusements, and the table, all were Athenian. Madame Lebrun herself was Aspasia; M. l'Abbé Barthélémy, in a Greek dress with a laurel wreath on his head, recited a poem; M. de Cabierès played the golden lyre as Memnon, and young boys waited at table as slaves. The table itself was set entirely with Greek utensils, and all the viands were actually those of ancient Greece." Children were given Greek and Roman names. People called themselves "Romans." "_Mais, je l'aimais, Romains!_" cried Coulon at the death of Mirabeau. Paris is Rome. In the theatre the bust of Brutus is set opposite that of Voltaire, and the actor says: "_O buste réveré de Brutus, d'un grand homme, transporté dans Paris tu n'as point quitté Rome_." And as with the bust of Brutus in the theatre, that of Mucius Scævola appears in the cafés, which Parisian journalists, still