United States or Bouvet Island ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
However, everything that the soothsayers commanded to appease the anger of the gods and to expiate prodigies was carried out. Fabius Pictor, a relative of the great Fabius, was sent to Delphi, and of two of the Vestal virgins who were found to have been seduced, one was buried alive, as is the usual custom, while the other died by her own hand.
The first great historian was Sallust, the contemporary of Cicero, born B.C. 86, the year that Marius died. Q. Fabius Pictor, M. Portius Cato, L. Cal. Piso had already written works which are mentioned with respect by the Latin authors, but they were mere annalists or antiquarians, like the chroniclers of the Middle Ages, and had no claim as artists.
It is with this feeling of impotence in my attempt to follow the thoughts of an illiterate artist of the Renaissance, that I prefer to conclude this strange story of the quest after antique beauty and antique gods by quoting a page from one of the barbarous chroniclers of mediæval Rome. The entry in the continuation of Infessura's diary is headed "Pictor Sacrilegus":
This is Browning's interest in art, the interest in a living thing, the interest in a growing thing, the insatiable interest in how things are done. Every one who knows his admirable poems on painting "Fra Lippo Lippi" and "Andrea del Sarto" and "Pictor Ignotus" will remember how fully they deal with technicalities, how they are concerned with canvas, with oil, with a mess of colours.
The greater part of the above story is told by Fabius Pictor and Diokles of Peparethos, who seem to have been the first historians of the foundation of Rome.
The new work would thus be indifferently quoted as Fabius Pictor or Fabius Maximus. That his conception of historical writing did not surpass that of his predecessors the annalists, is probable from the title of his work; that he brought to bear on it a very different spirit seems certain from the quotations in Livy and Dionysius.
Dramatic art grew up during this period. We have seen that dramatic exhibitions were introduced in the year 363, from Etruria, at a time of pestilence, but they were mere pantomimes. Now plays began to be written. Trustworthy history begins at the time of the Punic wars, and the annals of Fabius Pictor commence with the year 216, after the battle of Cannæ.
She passed through passages lighted by hanging-lamps of gold and silver and bronze; past walls rich with frescoes in black and yellow and red; panels and pictures such as Caius Fabius Pictor could never have dreamed when he ornamented the Temple of Safety; frescoes that so far surpassed the work of Damophilus and Gorgasus upon the walls of Ceres, as these had surpassed the art of Pictor himself.
A younger contemporary of Pictor, Lucius Cincius Alimentus, who commanded a Roman army in the war against Hannibal, also used the Greek language in his annals of his own life and times, and the same appears to be the case with the memoirs of other soldiers and statesmen of the period. It is only half a century later that we know certainly of historians who wrote in Latin.
Chronicle certainly nowhere presents truth without fiction, and it would be very foolish to quarrel with Naevius and Pictor because they have not acted otherwise than Hecataeus and Saxo Grammaticus; but the later attempts to build houses out of such castles in the air put even the most tried patience to a severe test No blank in tradition presents so wide a chasm, but that this system of smooth and downright invention will fill it up with playful facility.
Word Of The Day