HKB
But we will now pass over these matters which are too vague on account of their antiquity and we will proceed to deal with clearer questions, namely, the rise of the arts to perfection, their decline and their restoration or rather renaissance, and here we stand on much firmer ground. The practice of the arts began late in Rome, if the first figures were, as reported, the image of Ceres made of the money of Spurius Caasius, who was condemned to death without remorse by his own father, because he was plotting to make himself king. But although the arts of painting and sculpture continued to flourish until the death of the last of the twelve Caesars, yet they did not maintain that perfection and excellence which had characterised them before, as is seen as seen in the buildings of the time. The arts declined steadily from day to day, until at length by a gradual process they entirety lost all perfection of design. Clear testimony to this is afforded by the works in sculpture and architecture produced in Rome in the time of Constantine, notably in the triumphal arch made for him by the Roman people at the Colosseum, where we see, that for lack of good masters not only did they make use of marble works carved in the time of Trajan, but also of spoils brought to Rome from various places. These bas-reliefs, statues, the columns, the cornices and other ornaments which belong to another epoch only serve to expose the defects in those parts of the work which are entirely due to the sculptors of the day and which are most rude. Very rude also are some scenes of small figures in marble under the circles and the pediment, representing victories, while between the side arches there are some rivers also very crude and so poor that they leave one firmly under the impression that the art of sculpture had been in a state of decadence for a long while. Yet the Goths and the other barbarous and foreign nations who combined to destroy all the superior arts in Italy had not then appeared. It is true that architecture suffered less than the other arts of design. The bath erected by Constantine at the entrance of the principal portico of the Lateran contains, in addition to its porphyry columns, capitals carved in marble and beautifully carved double bases taken from elsewhere, the whole composition of the building being very well ordered. On the other hand, the stucco, the mosaic and some incrustations of the walls made by the masters of the time are not equal to those which had been taken away for the most part from the temples of the gods of the heathen, and which Constantine caused to be placed in the same building. Constantine observed the same methods, according to report, with the garden of AEquitius in building the temple which he afterwards endowed and gave to Christian priests. In like manner the magnificent church of S.