only regarded with indifference, but esteemed disgraceful.
While the fine arts in Greece became more and more
the common property of the Hellenes individually and
collectively and thereby became the means of developing
a universal culture, they gradually disappeared in
Latium from the thoughts and feelings of the people;
and, as they degenerated into utterly insignificant
handicrafts, the idea of a general national culture
to be communicated to youth never suggested itself
at all. The education of youth remained entirely
confined within the limits of the narrowest domesticity.
The boy never left his father’s side, and accompanied
him not only to the field with the plough and the
sickle, but also to the house of a friend or to the
council-hall, when his father was invited as a guest
or summoned to the senate. This domestic education
was well adapted to preserve man wholly for the household
and wholly for the state. The permanent intercommunion
of life between father and son, and the mutual reverence
felt by adolescence for ripened manhood and by the
mature man for the innocence of youth, lay at the
root of the steadfastness of the domestic and political
traditions, of the closeness of the family bond, and
in general of the grave earnestness (-gravitas-) and
character of moral worth in Roman life. This
mode of educating youth was in truth one of those institutions
of homely and almost unconscious wisdom, which are
as simple as they are profound. But amidst the
admiration which it awakens we may not overlook the
fact that it could only be carried out, and was only
carried out, by the sacrifice of true individual culture
and by a complete renunciation of the equally charming
and perilous gifts of the Muses.
Dance, Music, and Song among the Sabellians and Etruscans
Regarding the development of the fine arts among the
Etruscans and Sabellians our knowledge is little better
than none.(16) We can only notice the fact that in
Etruria the dancers (-histri-, -histriones-) and the
pipe-players (-subulones-) early made a trade of their
art, probably earlier even than in Rome, and exhibited
themselves in public not only at home, but also in
Rome for small remuneration and less honour.
It is a circumstance more remarkable that at the
Etruscan national festival, in the exhibition of which
the whole twelve cities were represented by a federal
priest, games were given like those of the Roman city-festival;
we are, however, no longer in a position to answer
the question which it suggests, how far the Etruscans
were more successful than the Latins in attaining
a national form of fine art beyond that of the individual
communities. On the other hand a foundation probably
was laid in Etruria, even in early times, for that
insipid accumulation of learned lumber, particularly
of a theological and astrological nature, by virtue
of which afterwards, when amidst the general decay
antiquarian dilettantism began to flourish, the Tuscans