Sufficient stress has never been laid by historians on national characteristics. The peculiar psychonomy of nations is an element which is never taken into account, when the historical critic endeavours to elucidate the causes and consequences of events. He judges of all nations by the standard of his own, regardless of age, climate, physiognomy, and psychonomy. This is as absurd as the fashion the Greeks had of deducing foreign names and titles from the Greek, a practice which Cicero wittily ridicules. In this ridicule we willingly join; yet we are equally open to it, when we interpret the actions of foreign nations by our own national standard.
It was the psychonomic difference between the Romans and the Greeks, which prevented the former from benefiting so efficiently from the lessons in art and philosophy of the latter, as they would have done had their minds been congenial.
The refinement which Rome received from Greece, was converted in the transfer into a refinement of coarse sensual luxury. Rome, after the conquest of Greece, filled its forums and halls with Greek workmanship, and its schools with Greek learning; nevertheless Roman mind advanced not one step beyond its original coarseness.
At the period when Rome possessed itself by conquest of the principal works of Grecian art, her citizens only regarded them as household furniture of but little value. Polybius narrates that, after the siege of Corinth, he saw some Roman soldiers playing at dice upon a picture of Bacchus, by Aristides; a picture esteemed one of the finest in the world. When King Attalus offered 600,000 sesterces (£4,845 15_s._) for this picture, Mummius, the Roman Consul, thinking there must be some magic property in it, to make it worth such an enormous sum, refused to sell it, and hung it up in the Temple of Ceres at Rome. So little were the Romans conscious of the real value of the treasures of Greek art, that Mummius covenanted with the masters of the ships, hired to convey the spoils of Corinth to Rome, that if any of the exquisite paintings and statuary should be lost, _they should replace them with new ones_![8]
It is not surprising, therefore, that Rome, although possessed of infinitely greater wealth, a larger population, and the splendid examples of Greece, not only produced no artist of merit, but receded far from the high standard which Greece, notwithstanding its internal divisions, its comparative poverty, small extent, and unassisted genius, had established. There is no way of accounting for these facts, but by the difference in their psychonomy. The genius of Rome was of a very different nature from that of Greece, and was incompetent to advance the great work which the latter had commenced.