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MRAP Directory 17
Page 10
United at home, the Romans were now prepared to carry on their foreign wars with more vigor; and their conquests of the Samnites and Latins made them the virtual masters of Italy. But the years which immediately followed the Licinian laws were times of great suffering. A pestilence raged in Rome, which carried off many of the most distinguished men, and among others the aged Camillus (B.C. 362). The Tiber overflowed its banks, the city was shaken by earthquakes, and a yawning chasm opened in the forum. The soothsayers declared that the gulf could never be filled up except by throwing into it that which Rome held most valuable. The tale runs that, when every one was doubting what the gods could mean, a noble youth named M. Curtius came forward, and, declaring that Rome possessed nothing so valuable as her brave citizens, mounted his steed and leaped into the abyss in full armor, whereupon the earth closed over him. This event is assigned to the year 362 B.C.
The internal history of Rome during this period is one of great interest. The Patricians and Plebeians formed two distinct orders in the state. After the banishment of the kings the Patricians retained exclusive possession of political power. The Plebeians, it is true, could vote in the Comitia Centuriata, but, as they were mostly poor, they were outvoted by the Patricians and their clients. The Consuls and other magistrates were taken entirely from the Patricians, who also possessed the exclusive knowledge and administration of the law. In one word, the Patricians were a ruling and the Plebeians a subject class. But this was not all. The Patricians formed not only a separate _class_, but a separate _caste_, not marrying with the Plebeians, and worshiping the gods with different religious rites. If a Patrician man married a Plebeian wife, or a Patrician woman a Plebeian husband, the state refused to recognize the marriage, and the offspring was treated as illegitimate.
At Augsburg there was still another school, which came into prominence in the sixteenth century with Burkmair and the Holbeins. It was only a part of the Swabian school, a concentration of artistic force about Augsburg, which, toward the close of the fifteenth century, had come into competition with Nuremberg, and rather outranked it in splendor. It was at Augsburg that the Renaissance art in Germany showed in more restful composition, less angularity, better modelling and painting, and more sense of the _ensemble_ of a picture. Hans Burkmair (1473-1531) was the founder of the school, a pupil of Schoengauer, later influenced by Duerer, and finally showing the influence of Italian art. He was not, like Duerer, a religious painter, though doing religious subjects. He was more concerned with worldly appearance, of which he had a large knowledge, as may be seen from his illustrations for engraving. As a painter he was a rather fine colorist, indulging in the fantastic of architecture but with good taste, crude in drawing but forceful, and at times giving excellent effects of motion. He was rounder, fuller, calmer in composition than Duerer, but never so strong an artist.
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