Yet the fact of this universal recognition of art is scarcely made so impressive by these collected specimens of perfect taste and perfect execution, as it is incidentally by observing the delicate and graceful finish of some moulding on a chance fragment from a building, such as the Basilica Aemilia or the office of the Pontifex in the Forum, or the exquisite chiselling of trailing ivy upon a cup from Herculaneum (FIG. 56), or the dainty pattern wrought on no more important a thing than a bucket (FIG. 58), or the graceful shape imparted to a household lamp (FIG. 54).  Water could hardly be permitted to spout in a peristyle or garden without doing so from some charming statuette, animal figure, or decorative mask or head.  When fine art is sought in things like these, we may guess how uncompromisingly it was sought in things more avowedly “on show.”

The age with which we have been dealing fell within the most flourishing period of Roman, or rather Graeco-Roman, taste and craftsmanship.  A hundred years later both taste and execution were declining, and by the age of Constantine—­two centuries and a half after Nero—­not one artist could pretend to achieve such work as had belonged to a multitude between the reigns of Augustus and Hadrian.

It is not indeed probable that, even at our date, the large and noble simplicity of the older Greek masters could be rivalled.  It is not probable that most of the former creations of art still preserved could have been wrought as originals by any Greek or Roman artist living in the time of Nero.  Nevertheless technical craftsmanship was still superb, and while the contemporary artist could not create a splendid original, he was at least able to create an almost perfect copy.  The Roman public buildings and private houses were enriched with a host of such copies, or, when not exact copies, with modifications which, though not improvements, were at least such as could not offend by displaying a lack of technical mastery.  Let us grant that it was for the most part Greeks who were the artists; nevertheless the Greek is an active member of the Roman world and of its metropolitan life, and he executes his work to the order of the Roman state or the Roman patron; and therefore the art of the time deserves to be called Roman in that sense.  There is little doubt that the Romans, if left to themselves, would have developed only the solid, or the gorgeous, or the baroque.  But influences which penetrate a society are part of that society, and the Greek influence accepted by the Roman becomes a Roman principle.

Perhaps it is also true that many a Roman who possessed fine works of art, and even exquisite ones, was not in reality a true connoisseur; that, even if he were, he lacked instructive and ardent appreciation of art for its own sake; and that, like his cultivation of intellectual society or learning, his cultivation of art was rather that of a man determined to be on a level with the culture of his times.  Nevertheless the fact is palpable, that the cultivation was there, and was displayed in public architecture and in household embellishment in a way which puts the modern world to shame.  With us art is a luxury for the few, and a keen enjoyment for still fewer; in the age of Nero it penetrated the life of every class.