The History of Rome, Book II: From the Abolition of the Monarchy in Rome to the Union of ItalyMommsen, Theodor
History
The History of Rome, Book II: From the Abolition of the Monarchy in Rome to the Union of Italy
Mommsen, Theodor
Rome -- History
wherever more accurate specifications were required, they accustomed
themselves to reckon by terms of ten months of a solar year of 365
days or by the so-called ten-month year of 304 days. Over and above
this, there came early into use in Italy, especially for agricultural
purposes, the farmers' calendar based on the Egyptian solar year of
365 1/4 days by Eudoxus (who flourished 386).
Structural and Plastic Art
A higher idea of what the Italians were able to do in these
departments is furnished by their works of structural and plastic art,
which are closely associated with the mechanical sciences. Here too we
do not find phenomena of real originality; but if the impress of
borrowing, which the plastic art of Italy bears throughout, diminishes
its artistic interest, there gathers around it a historical interest
all the more lively, because on the one hand it preserves the most
remarkable evidences of an international intercourse of which other
traces have disappeared, and on the other hand, amidst the well-nigh
total loss of the history of the non-Roman Italians, art is almost
the sole surviving index of the living activity which the different
peoples of the peninsula displayed. No novelty is to be reported in
this period; but what we have already shown(31) may be illustrated
in this period with greater precision and on a broader basis, namely,
that the stimulus derived from Greece powerfully affected the
Etruscans and Italians on different sides, and called forth among
the former a richer and more luxurious, among the latter--where it
had any influence at all--a more intelligent and more genuine, art.
Architecture--
Etruscan
We have already shown how wholly the architecture of all the Italian
lands was, even in its earliest period, pervaded by Hellenic elements.
Its city walls, its aqueducts, its tombs with pyramidal roofs, and its
Tuscanic temple, are not at all, or not materially, different from the
oldest Hellenic structures. No trace has been preserved of any advance
in architecture among the Etruscans during this period; we find among
them neither any really new reception, nor any original creation,
unless we ought to reckon as such the magnificent tombs, e. g. the
so-called tomb of Porsena at Chiusi described by Varro, which vividly
recalls the strange and meaningless grandeur of the Egyptian pyramids.
Latin--
The Arch
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