: ST. PETER AND ST. PAUL. From a medallion of the Second ROMAN HOUSES AS SHOWN ON THE CAPITOLINE PLAN. (From TYPICAL PLAN OF A ROMAN HOUSE PAGE 178 183 184 CHAPEL AT THE OSTRIAN Cemetery PLAN OF THE BASILICA JULIA, on the Palatine at Rome THE CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF CANTERBURY. Conjectural plan by Mr. G. G. Scott. This shows the church as it was before the fire of A.D. 1067 190 192 194 207 211 INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER. ON THE STUDY OF ARCHEOLOGY. ARCHEOLOGY has for its domain the study of ancient monuments in the light of history and with the object of assisting historical knowledge. There cannot be, therefore, any real and essential distinction between the two sciences. It makes no difference whether our knowledge of the past is drawn from parchments or papyri covered with characters written by the hand of some ancient scribe, or from stones or medals engraved with monumental inscriptions and bearing pictorial representations of historical events. Both alike, the written manuscript and the pictured stone, are sources of history, while the stone has the added advantage that it is not liable to alteration or even falsification at the hands of an ignorant or a fraudulent copyist. The function of the archæologist is, then, to prepare the material for the historian. He has a vast field before him, to a great extent even now left unexplored, which it is his duty to investigate and to survey. There are thousands upon thousands of objects ready for him, the rich heritage which the past has handed down, and it is his duty to sort these out into their due divisions, to compare one with another, and so to make them tell their stories, and add each its little piece to the great work of the reconstruction of the past. For the historian cannot do without this assistance if he is to give a true picture of the period with which he is dealing. Manuscripts and written material are often quite inadequate to establish facts which are yet of the first importance for any real understanding of the politics and thought of the past. Let us take a concrete instance. History, to use the word in the sense of written records, is able to give us only the most inadequate information on the subject of the political economies of the Roman Empire. It is from the study of numismatics that we are made aware of the perilous state to which the finances of the Empire were reduced through almost the whole of the third century, when a debased coinage of scarcely any intrinsic value, put forth in immense quantities, took the place for commercial purposes of the sound money of silver and gold which had hitherto been in use. The position, in fact, was identical with that which we have seen in more modern times, when some state whose financial position has been insecure has tried to bolster up its falling credit by the forced issue of a paper currency which is not convertible to real value. The usual inevitable consequences immediately followed. We can at once explain the enormous taxation and the constant vexatious acts of legislation which were the means of involving the municipal governments in hopeless debt, and in the end were no small factor in bringing about the dissolution of the imperial power. The barbarians indeed gave the final blow which brought down the tottering Empire to its knees, but the Empire would never have been in danger from the attacks of such a foe, were it not that it was already weakened by the loss of power which followed as a disastrous but inevitable consequence from a policy. financially and commercially rotten.1 Other similar instances in which history, unassisted by archæology, would be unable to give a true picture of past events, will readily occur to the mind of every 1 I owe this illustration, as well as others in this chapter, to the late Commendatore Stevenson. INSCRIPTION AT AQUILEIA, SHOWING THE BAPTISM OF A YOUNG GIRL From Marucchi's "Eléments d'Archéologie" (Desclée, De Brouwer et Cie) |