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Fantasimus Directory 06
Page 01
Twelve years elapsed between the subjugation of Latium and the commencement of the Second Samnite War. During this time the Roman arms continued to make steady progress. One of their most important conquests was that of the Volscian town of Privernum in B.C. 329, from which time the Volscians, so long the formidable enemies of Rome, disappear as an independent nation. The extension of the Roman power naturally awakened the jealousy of the Samnites; and the assistance rendered by them to the Greek cities of Palaeopolis and Neapolis was the immediate occasion of the Second Samnite War. These two cities were colonies of the neighboring Cumae, and were situated only five miles from each other. The position of Palaeopolis, or the "Old City," is uncertain; but Neapolis, or the "New City," stands on the site of a part of the modern Naples. The Romans declared war against the two cities in B.C. 327, and sent the Consul Q. Publilius Philo to reduce them to subjection. The Greek colonists had previously formed an alliance with the Samnites, and now received powerful Samnite garrisons. Publilius encamped between the cities; and as he did not succeed in taking them before his year of office expired, he was continued in the command with the title of _Proconsul_, the first time that this office was created. At the beginning of the following year Palaeopolis was taken; and Neapolis only escaped the same fate by concluding an alliance with the Romans. Meanwhile the Romans had declared war against the Samnites.
Once more I must caution the reader against expecting to find highly-finished gems of art in the chapels I have been describing. A wooden figure not more than two feet high clogged with many coats of paint can hardly claim to be taken very seriously, and even those few that were cut by Tabachetti himself were not meant to have attention concentrated on themselves alone. As mere wood-carving the Saas-Fee chapels will not stand comparison, for example, with the triptych of unknown authorship in the Church of St. Anne at Gliss, close to Brieg. But, in the first place, the work at Gliss is worthy of Holbein himself: I know no wood-carving that can so rivet the attention; moreover it is coloured with water-colour and not oil, so that it is tinted, not painted; and, in the second place, the Gliss triptych belongs to a date (1519) when artists held neither time nor impressionism as objects, and hence, though greatly better than the Saas-Fee chapels as regards a certain Japanese curiousness of finish and naivete of literal transcription, it cannot even enter the lists with the Saas work as regards elan and dramatic effectiveness. The difference between the two classes of work is much that between, say, John Van Eyck or Memling and Rubens or Rembrandt, or, again, between Giovanni Bellini and Tintoretto; the aims of the one class of work are incompatible with those of the other. Moreover, in the Gliss triptych the intention of the designer is carried out (whether by himself or no) with admirable skill; whereas at Saas the wisdom of the workman is rather of OberAmmergau than of the Egyptians, and the voice of the poet is not a little drowned in that of his mouthpiece. If, however, the reader will bear in mind these somewhat obvious considerations, and will also remember the pathetic circumstances under which the chapels were designed--for Tabachetti when he reached Saas was no doubt shattered in body and mind by his four years' imprisonment--he will probably be not less attracted to them than I observed were many of the visitors both at Saas-Grund and Saas-Fee with whom I had the pleasure of examining them.
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