military advantages, or to the levying of pecuniary contributions.

The valuable spoil exhibited by T. Quinctius Flamininus, on his triumphal entry into Rome, after his long and successful command of the Roman armies in Greece, consisted chiefly of uncoined gold and silver, with a great number of the celebrated gold coins of Macedonia, called Philippi'. When a few years after the departure of Flamininus, Q. Fulvius Nobilior plundered the temples of the gods at Ambracia, he was obliged by the Roman senate to restore the statues. Impressed with veneration for a common religion, and wishing to conciliate a half-subdued people, who commanded respect by their superior civilization, the Romans were at first unwilling to violate the temples where the choicest works of Grecian art were generally deposited as offerings.

It was not long, however, before their victories over the Carthaginians, and their increasing influence in Greece and Asia, rendered some of them less scrupulous. The conquest of Syracuse by Marcellus was soon followed by the triumphs of P. Æmilius Paullus, and Q. Cæcilius Metellus, over Macedonia, and of Mummius for the conquest of Achaia3. To

1 Plutarch. Flamin. 14.

2 Liv. 38, 44. From Pliny, however, H. N. 35, 10 (36), and from Eumenius Rhetor (pro restaur. Scholis, 7), it appears that the nine Muses of Ambracia were retained at Rome in a temple of Hercules.

3

The numerous statues brought from Macedonia by Æmilius Paullus are mentioned by Plutarch. Two of them were by Phidias (Plin. H. N. 34, 8). Metellus Macedonicus carried to Rome from Dium the equestrian statues by Lysippus of the Macedonians, who fell in the battle of the Granicus. (Arrian. de

these events, and to the great number of books, statues, and pictures, which they introduced into Rome, is to be ascribed the rise and the establishment of that taste for the arts and literature of Greece, which soon essentially altered the Roman character.

After the entire conquest of Asia, this taste quickly degenerated into luxury, and was often gratified at the expense of the Grecian cities. It sufficiently appears from the orations of Cicero against Verres, that provincial governors, by violence, solicitation, or more frequently by forced purchase, deprived the public edifices of the Greeks of many pictures and statues; but it is not less evident from the expressions of the orator, that such practices were held in the greatest disrepute among the Romans in general, and that the Greeks indulged in a manifestation of resentment at such spoliations, which equally prove that they were not very common.

Pausanias, in mentioning a single example by Sylla', expressly remarks, that such things were contrary to the usual conduct of the Romans (ἤθους ἀλλότρια του 'Popalov,) and he adds, that it was for this sacrilege of Sylla, and for his treatment of the cities of Thebes, Athens, and Orchomenus, that the gods afflicted him with the disgusting disease of which he died.

During the ages which elapsed between the first Exp. Alex. 1, 16. Vell. Paterc. 1, 11. Plin. H. N. 34, 8 (19). Mummius and Lucullus filled Rome with brazen statues, brought by the former from Achaia, and by the latter from Asia (Plin. ibid.). Polybius, though an admirer of the Romans, blames them for filling their city with the pictures and statues of the countries which they had conquered.

' He carried off an ivory statue of Minerva from her temple at Alalcomenæ. Boot. 33, 4.

entrance of the Romans into Greece, and the complete establishment of their power over that country, Attica appears to have suffered less than any of the countries which the arts of Greece had adorned. Once only in the course of this time was the city exposed to the pillage of a victorious army. After the assault by Sylla, it is not to be supposed that his soldiers, who even carried away the votive shields from the Stoa Eleutherius, left in the Cerameicus, or adjacent parts of the city, many valuable works of art of easy transportation. But Sylla himself abstained from this kind of plunder; and there is reason to believe that he never exercised his privileges of a conqueror by the removal of any of the more celebrated Athenian works of art. The description by Pausanias of the state of Athens, 250 years afterwards, compared with the enumeration, given by Pliny, of the Grecian statues at Rome, furnish a strong presumption in favour of this opinion; nor do we find in the account which Plutarch has left us of the triumph of Sylla, any of that display of Grecian statuary works, and other similar plunder, which distinguished the triumphal entries of Æmilius Paullus, Metellus Macedonicus, Mummius, Lucullus, and Pompey. It is true that Sylla removed to Rome some columns which had been prepared for the temple of Jupiter Olympius, for the purpose of adapting them to the temple of Jupiter Capitolinus 2; and he seized

1

For the conduct of Sylla at Athens, see Strabo, p. 398. Appian. de B. Mithrid. 38-39. Plutarch. Syll. 12-14. Pausan. Attic. 20, 3. Phocic. 21, 3.

2

* Columnis demum utebantur in templis, non lautitiæ causa (nondum enim ista intelligebantur), sed quia firmiores aliter

upon the library of Apellicon of Teus, which had been first collected by Aristotle, and augmented by Theophrastus'. But money for the support of his army was his great object. He pillaged the sacred treasuries of Delphi, Olympia, and Epidaurus; and when the Acropolis of Athens capitulated, he took forty pounds of gold, and six hundred of silver, from the Opisthodomus 3.

The good fortune of Athens, during the Roman wars in Greece, was partly the effect of her early alliance with Rome, and arose in part from the veneration in which she was held as the mother of learning and the arts. This respect increased with the advancement of the Romans in Grecian civilization; and it was fostered by the opinion, which soon prevailed among the opulent at Rome, that their education was incomplete without the study of Greek literature, and a residence at Athens. In the advantages derived from these sentiments, all the surrounding provinces of Greece, full of places illustrious by their sanctity and ancient celebrity, would naturally in some degree participate.

statui non poterant. Sic est inchoatum Athenis templum Jovis Olympii, ex quo Sylla Capitolinis ædibus advexerat columnas. (Plin. H. N. 36, 6 (5). Such columns could hardly have been of so late a date as those of the temple undertaken by Antiochus Epiphanes; Sylla, therefore, seems to have carried off the old columns of the building begun by Peisistratus.

1 Plutarch. Syll. 26. Strabo, p. 609.

2 Appian. Mithridat. 54. Pausan. Boot. 7, 4.

3

Appian. Mithr. 39. The gold of the statue of Minerva in the Parthenon had been carried off 210 years before, by Lachares; yet Pausanias describes the statue as still made of ivory and gold in his time.

The opportunities of collecting plunder of every kind, which occurred to the Romans in authority in the conquered countries, ceased in great measure with the establishment under Augustus, of a new system of government throughout the Roman world. From this time no extensive spoliation of Grecian works of art could be undertaken but by the emperors themselves; and such was still the influence of a common religion, that to remove sacred offerings from temples, could only be inflicted as a punishment upon an offending city, or undertaken by those emperors who were totally indifferent to public opinion.

Augustus removed some dedications from the temple of Minerva Alea, at Tegea, because Tegea had led the whole confederacy of Arcadia, except Mantineia, to take part against him in his war with Antony'. Pausanias justifies this action by the right of conquest; but as he mentions several occasions upon which statues had been removed from Grecian temples by conquerors, beginning from the war of Troy, without alluding to another instance in which the Romans had exercised a similar privilege, he furnishes a strong argument that such examples were not very frequent.

The celebrated Cupid in bronze by Lysippus, which was removed from Thespiæ to Rome by Cali

1 Pausan. Arcad. 46, 2. The objects which Augustus removed from Tegea to Rome were more curious than beautiful; namely, an ivory statue of early date by Endous, and the teeth of the Calydonian boar. The former was placed in the entrance of the forum of Augustus, and one of the tusks was seen by Pausanias in the temple of Bacchus in the gardens of Cæsar.