19.2. The Barbarisation of Post-Imperial Culture
It is not however to be supposed that Latin was imposed even in its vulgarised forms on the entire population of the Empire. It is needless to remind the reader of the fact that in the whole eastern half Greek was the language of the educated classes. But both in the East and in the West there were many backward regions in which vernacular speech held its own stubbornly against Greek and Latin. The Copts, Arabs, Syrians, and Armenians never gave up their native languages, and the oriental undercurrents continued to play an important part in the social life of Asia and Egypt.
There are many vestiges of a similar persistency of barbarian custom and speech in the West. Roman law admitted expressly that valid deeds could be executed in Punic and, judging from the story about a sister of Septimius Severus, Punic must have been very prevalent among well-to-do families of knightly rank in Africa: when the lady in question came to visit her brother in Rome, the Emperor had often to blush on account of her imperfect knowledge of Latin. The letters and sermons of St Augustine shew that this state of things had by no means disappeared in romanised Africa in the fifth century: the great African bishop repeatedly urged the necessity for dignitaries of the Church to be acquainted with Punic, and he had recourse himself to illustrations drawn from this language In Spain and Gascony one living remnant of pre-Roman civilisation has survived to our days in the "Escaldunac" speech of the Basques, the offspring of the Iberian race, while Brittany exhibits another block of pre-Roman custom in the speech and manners of its Breton population.
St Jerome testifies to the fact that in the neighbourhood of Treves, one of the mightiest centres of Roman civilisation, a Keltic dialect was spoken by the peasants in the fourth century, so that a person reared there possessed a c lue to the speech of the Galatians, the Keltic tribe of Asia Minor. In the Latinised north-west of the Balkan peninsula the vernacular Illyrian was never driven out or destroyed, and the present speech of the Albanians is directly derived from it in spite of a sprinkling of Latin words and expressions. In the west of England Keltic speech and custom runs on uninterruptedly through the ages of Roman, Saxon, and Norman conquest. Not to speak of Welsh, which has borrowed many Latin words, especially technical terms, but remains a purely Keltic language, Cornish was spoken in Cornwall up to the eighteenth century, while in Cumberland and Westmorland the custom of shepherds to count their sheep in Keltic numerals was the last vestige of the separate existence of a Welsh population.
These traces of stubborn national life forming a kind of barbarian subsoil to Roman culture are important in many ways: they help us not only to understand the history of dialects and of folklore, but they account for a good many spontaneous outbursts of barbarism in the seemingly pacified and romanised provinces of the Empire at a time when the iron hand of the rulers began to relax its grip over the conquered populations. Berber, Punic, Iberian, Illyrian, and Keltic tribes come forward again in the calamitous years of the fourth and fifth centuries. Usurpers, riotous soldiers, and brigands gather strength from national aspirations, and in the end the disruption of the Empire becomes inevitable on account of internal strife as well as of foreign invasions.
Nowhere perhaps has this subliminal life of the province to account for so much as in England, where the arts and crafts of Rome were introduced in the course of three centuries and a half of gradual occupation, and Latin itself was widely spoken by the upper classes, but where nevertheless the entire fabric of Roman rule crumbled down so rapidly during the fifth century, and Kelts were left to fight with the Teutons for the remnants of what had been one of the fair provinces of Rome.
A transformation similar to that expressed in language is clearly perceivable in the history of Art. Christianity introduced into the world a powerful new factor, the strength of which may be gauged in the paintings of the Catacombs and in the rise of new styles of architecture — the Byzantine and the Romanesque. Thus we have to deal not with mere deterioration and decay, but also with the lowering of the level of culture and the barbarisation of art which make themselves felt in various ways. When Rome had to raise a triumphal arch to the conqueror of Maxentius, a great part of the reliefs for its adornment were carried over from the Arch of Trajan, while some sculptures were added by contemporary artists. And the latter perpetuate the decay of art and of aesthetic taste. The figures are distorted, the faces deformed.
On the so-called discus of Theodosius the symbolical figures of the lower part were copied from ancient originals and are handsome. The upper half was filled with representations of living people, and it is evident that the gross, flat, ugly faces, the heavy embroidered uniforms, were reproduced with fidelity, while the handling of the figures strikes the observer by its clumsiness and faulty designs. The chief thing in the pictorial and plastic arts of the third and fourth centuries is not beauty or expression, but size and costly material. Gallienus, whose unfortunate reign was nicknamed the "period of the thirty tyrants," ordered a statue of himself 200 feet in height: it was planned on such a scale that a child was able to ascend by a winding staircase to the top of the Emperor's lance. Instead of marble, precious porphyry, a stone exceedingly difficult to cut, was used for plastic purposes; the contractor and polisher were more important persons than the sculptor for the purpose of making statues of this material.
To obtain a deluxe leatherbound edition of COMMENTARII DE BELLO GALLICO by Julius Caesar, subscribe to Castalia History.
For questions about subscription status and billings: subs@castalialibrary.com
For questions about shipping and missing books: shipping@castaliahouse.com
