. The grandeur that was Rome; a survey of Roman culture and civilisation:. adornment. It was much the same with the other arts. Take the coins,for example. The clumsy copper As, with the head of Januson the obverse and the prow of a ship on the reverse,! hadof old weighed 12 ounces. All through republican history itwas gradually shrinking; in 217 it was fixed at one ounce,in 89 at half an ounce. Long before that, however, silverhad taken its place. As we have remarked, silver was notcoined, though no doubt it circulated, at Rome before 268 217 onwards silver became the real
. The grandeur that was Rome; a survey of Roman culture and civilisation:. adornment. It was much the same with the other arts. Take the coins,for example. The clumsy copper As, with the head of Januson the obverse and the prow of a ship on the reverse,! hadof old weighed 12 ounces. All through republican history itwas gradually shrinking; in 217 it was fixed at one ounce,in 89 at half an ounce. Long before that, however, silverhad taken its place. As we have remarked, silver was notcoined, though no doubt it circulated, at Rome before 268 217 onwards silver became the real standard of value, andabout 80 the copper coinage ceased altogether for a only were the original designs of the heavy copperborrowed from Greece, but there is not the least sign in theRoman coinage of any artistic development as time , as Head remarks, the degree of excellence attained inany particular district depended upon the closeness of its rela-tions, direct or indirect, with some Greek city, or at least with* Plate 16. t See page 18. Plate 27. M. VIPSANIUS AGRIPPA (See pp.!i29, i65) LAST CENTURY OF THE REPUBLIC a population imbued with the spirit of Greek art There areJins of Sulla, both silver and gold, d-btless of Greek wo kmanship, which display fairly artistic designs.* But the cornsof Antony and Cleopatra, interesting as they are historically,and designed, of course, in the Hellenised East, are muchinferior * We notice an attempt at portraiture, but the strikmgresemblance between the Roman triumvir and the Egyptianqueen suggests the question which of the pair was the ^iTsculpture, too, the most ardent supporters of Romanoriginality can find little to comfort them in the closing cen-turv of the Republic. We have seen how the victories ofMummius and his successors had created a taste and a marketfor Greek works of art. With those of Sulla and LucuUusimmense quantities of loot had crossed the Adriatic, and Romebegan to be what New York is
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