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THE ROMAN EMPERORS IN MARBLE. g
consolation—there will always be many to salute a banner
of Messiah in the flag of every ship that carries a Caesar
and his fortune. The Romans idolized their Caius
Julius, and qualified themselves for that happiness which
the author has promised the people who follow the beck
of a " hero of Providence." During the long death-
struggle the Caesarian epoch of their community shows,
they were sated with bread and diverted with plays.
In the beginning of this century, Fagan, the English
consul undertook excavations in Ostia, the ancient sea-
port of Rome, and found among other things a bust in
Parian marble, uninjured and glistening as freshly as if
it had newly left the master’s studio. The bust, which
represents a youth with—if I may so speak—features of
a select fineness, can now be seen in the Museo Chiara-
monti, in the Vatican ; and copies in shining Carrara are
to be met with everywhere in the windows of Roman
dealers in art ; for this head works like a magnet upon
the gaze of passers-by. Will you, with your imagination
try the same experiment that Wagner the alchemist did,
with his crucibles and retorts ? Take, then, the dust of
Hellenic culture and feeling for humanity ; take also a
full measure of Hellenic craft, and mix these materials
with Roman sobriety and strength of will, and if your soul
have any creative power, you will have formed for your-
self a likeness of the young Octavius, afterwards called
Caesar Octavianus Augustus.
Forehead, eyes and mouth, here form a singular psy-
chological whole. The eyes have nothing of the sharp
and searching look that betrays the wish and purpose to
force a way into the hiding-places of another soul ; but
they open with a clear gaze that seizes the object per-
1*
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