Far different was it in the days of our ancestors. Then there were to be seen in their halls not statues made by foreign artists, or works in bronze or marble, but family portraits modelled in wax, each in its separate niche, always in readiness to accompany the funeral processions of the family; occasions on which every member of the family was always present. And the pedigree of the individual was traced in lines upon each of these colored portraits. Their libraries, too, were filled with archives and memoirs, stating what each had done when holding the magistracy. On the outside, again, of their houses, and around the thresholds of their doors, were placed other statues of those mighty spirits, in the spoils of the enemy there affixed, memorials which a purchaser even was not allowed to displace; so that the very house continued to triumph even after it had changed its master. A powerful stimulus to emulation this, when the walls each day reproached an unwarlike owner for having thus intruded upon the triumphs of another! There is still extant an address by the orator Messala, full of indignation, in which he forbids that there should be inserted among the images of his family any of those of the stranger race of the Lævini. It was the same feeling, too, that extorted from old Messala those compilations of his “On the Families of Rome;” when, upon passing through the hall of Scipio Pomponianus, he observed that, in consequence of a testamentary adoption, the Salvittos—for that had been their surname—to the disgrace of the Africani, had surreptitiously contrived to assume the name of the Scipios. But the Messalas must pardon me if I remark, that to lay a claim, though an untruthful one, to the statues of illustrious men, shows some love for their virtues, and is much more honorable than to have such a character that no one should wish to claim them.
There is a new invention, too, which we must not omit to notice. Not only do we consecrate in our libraries, in gold or silver, or at all events, in bronze, those whose immortal spirits hold converse with us in those places, but we even go so far as to reproduce the ideal of features all remembrance of which has ceased to exist; and our regrets give existence to likenesses that have not been transmitted to us, as in the case of Homer. Nothing can be a greater proof of having achieved success in life, than a lasting desire on the part of one’s fellow-men, to know what one’s features were. This practice of grouping portraits was first introduced at Rome by Asinius Pollio, who was also the first to establish a public library, and so make the works of genius the property of the public. Whether the kings of Alexandria and of Pergamus, who had so energetically rivalled each other in forming libraries, had previously introduced this practice, I cannot so easily say.