Most of the writers on Greek art agree in calling the Hellenistic period an age of decadence. The period is a long one, lasting from the death of Alexander to the Roman absorption of the Hellenistic kingdoms, i.e. from about 320 to later than 100 B.C. The lowest limit is marked by the Laocoon group, and the fact that some critics have seen in that wonderful monument the climax of Greek art may make us pause in a hasty generalization. The decadence of the Hellenistic age is due simply to its exaggeration of certain tendencies already present in the fourth century, tendencies which accompany the inevitable development of all art gradually away from the ideal and gradually closer to realistic imitation of nature. As long as the technical skill of the Hellenistic artist shows no sign of abating, it is unfair and untrue to call his work decadent. The term is only justly applicable when loss of idealism or growth of frivolity in subject is accompanied by a decline in execution, by a want of thoroughness, and by a desire to shirk difficulties.

It is true to say that Greek art on the mainland enters on a period of decadence in the third century, for its execution and expression grow steadily worse after 250 B.C., but it is interesting to note that it reverts to a greater idealism. The last great artist of the mainland, Damophon of Messene, might have been a member of the school of Pheidias save for an inadequate mastery of the chisel.

On the other hand, the schools of Pergamon, Alexandria, and Rhodes show no falling off in technical skill as long as they remain independent of Rome. Even their idealism does not wholly decline, for the Gallic victories of Attalos and Eumenes brought about an idealist revival in Pergamene art associated with the decoration of the great altar. Rhodes remained ever wedded to the athletic ideal. Alexandria delighted most in scenes of genre and realistic imitations of nature. But all turned out work of marvellous quality, and it is mainly a vagary of fashion in criticism that now induces so many authorities to label as decadent wonderful masterpieces of sculpture like the Victory of Samothrace, the kneeling boy of Subiaco, or the Silenos with the young Dionysos. Works so full of human nature and so rich in sympathy may well claim to replace by their romantic appeal the classical feeling of the fifth century. It is only when romance becomes sentimentality that it meets with just condemnation.

The outstanding feature of the history of Greek sculpture during the Hellenistic period is the transference of its vital centres from the mainland to the new kingdoms of the Diadochi on the east and south and to the great new free state of Rhodes. The chief cause was an economic one. Alexander’s campaigns brought about a revival of prosperity and wealth in the Greek world, but among his friends and not among his enemies. Athens was always his enemy and the enemy of his Macedonian successors. Consequently during the whole period from the death of Alexander to the Roman conquest Athens was either under Macedonian rule or in danger of Macedonian attack. It was Macedonian policy to keep her weak and isolated, and her trading supremacy began to be transferred to the island of Delos. The great days of Attic art passed with the death of Praxiteles and the coming of Alexander. In the Peloponnese the pupils of Lysippos carried on into the third century the traditions of the Sikyonian school, but we can see from such knowledge as we possess of their activities that the wealth and fame of the new kingdoms were already calling the artists to abandon the impoverished towns of the mainland. The Peloponnese also opposed Alexander and his successors, and Macedonian garrisons held the chief fortresses of the country. We find Eutychides of Sikyon working for Antioch, and Chares working at Lindos in Rhodes. After the date given for the pupils of Lysippos in 296 B.C., Pliny makes the following significant statement: ‘cessavit deinde ars, ac rursus Olympiade CLVI (156 B.C.) revixit.’1 For 150 years the history of artistic development must be studied on the eastern side of the Aegean.

After the preliminary conflicts between the successors of Alexander for the partition of the empire a number of new states arose, which are known to us usually as the kingdoms of the Diadochi or Successors. Of these the three most important were Macedonia, Syria, and Egypt, under the rule of Antigonids, Seleucids, and Ptolemies respectively. Of smaller importance, but quite independent and self-sustaining, were Bithynia, Pergamon, and the island republic of Rhodes, the latter being the only one which maintained its Hellenic democratic institutions. The attitude of these states towards art differs remarkably. Macedonia remained always a military monarchy in a condition of almost constant frontier war, and was wholly uninterested in artistic developments. Syria seems from the first to have fallen under Semitic and oriental influences, which destroyed its appreciation of the purer forms of Greek art. Bithynia, Pontos, and Cappadocia were barbarian rather than Greek. As a result, we find that the old artistic traditions are maintained prominently in three only of the new states: Pergamon, the home of the very Hellenic race of the Attalids; Rhodes, whose pure Hellenic descent was untouched; and Alexandria, which became practically a Greek town in the midst of an older Egyptian civilization.

The kingdom of Pergamon included the area of the old Ionian cities, and inherited, therefore, an artistic tradition as old as its own existence. It is no matter for surprise that its art-loving monarchs should have founded a great library and a great school of sculpture in open rivalry with the richer resources of Ptolemaic Alexandria. The art of Pergamon is well known to us from the magnificent groups and figures of the Gallic dedications of Attalos I after his victories about 240 B.C., and from the marvellous frieze of the altar excavated in situ by the Germans, which belongs to the period of Eumenes II and the early second century. But before we come to these later developments of Pergamene art, it is important that we should discover the earliest tendencies and predilections of the Pergamene court in the first half of the third century. We are told2 that the most remarkable work of Kephisodotos, the son of Praxiteles, was his ‘symplegma’ at Pergamon—probably an erotic group—which was noteworthy for its extraordinarily naturalistic rendering of the pressure of the fingers into the flesh. Such erotic groups of nymphs and satyrs or hermaphrodites exist in our museums, and are ultimately derived from this type of statue. Actual discoveries at Pergamon support this conception of early third-century Pergamene art. The well-known Hermaphrodite in Constantinople (Fig.1) and a beautiful girl’s head in Berlin3 show the extreme delicacy in the rendering of flesh and the fondness for a sensual body treatment which we might expect from an Ionian version of the schools of Scopas and Praxiteles. The existence of such a school in Ionia in the late fourth century is highly probable. The Pergamene school of the early third century would seem to be the later natural development of the creators of the Ephesos columns and the Niobids. Scopaic expression and Praxitelean flesh treatment are the hall-marks of the school. Another work of importance for the early Pergamene period is the Crouching Aphrodite type, so popular in Roman times. Of this statue Pliny tells us: ‘Venerem lavantem se Daedalus fecit.’4 This Daedalus was a Bithynian artist of the early third century, who must have fallen under the general influence of the prevalent Pergamene school. His Aphrodite5 shows exactly the artistic tendencies of the early Pergamene school. The motive is unimportant and frivolous—a genre motive of a girl washing herself—but it is used for the purpose of demonstrating the technical skill of the artist in displaying the nude female form. The artist does not use all his skill in the effort to produce a noble or even a romantic ideal. The subject is immaterial, provided it affords a chance of showing his technical skill. The crouching attitude is a new one in art, and one well adapted for exhibiting the human body in all its variety. It appears again in the Attalid dedications, and was evidently a favourite at Pergamon. Another example is in the well-known Knife-Grinder of the Uffizi,6 part of a great group of Marsyas, Apollo, and the Scythian slave, which we can certainly connect with this period of Pergamene art. The Knife-Grinder himself is a copy and not an original. That is made clear by his late plinth, in spite of his magnificent workmanship. But the finer copies of the hanging Marsyas, which belongs to the group, are in a Phrygian marble, betraying their Pergamene origin. These copies of the Marsyas are divided into two types: a so-called ‘red’ type (Fig.2), made of the Phrygian marble, in which the expression of agony is more marked, and a white type7 in which the face is less distorted. A theory has been put forward that the white type represents an early third-century prototype, while the red type is a Pergamene variation of rather later date.8 We may, however, hesitate to see sufficient difference in the two types to make so wide a distinction. The white type may be merely a less masterly adaptation of the red. An Apollo torso9 in Berlin from Pergamon with the right hand resting on the head agrees with a marble disc in Dresden10 showing a similar figure confronted by the hanging Marsyas. We may therefore associate this figure as the third member of the group with Marsyas and the Knife-Grinder.11 The Apollo is a seated figure of distinctly Praxitelean influence. The keen expression of the Knife-Grinder and the agonized face of the Marsyas may equally well be attributed to Scopaic teaching. We have a good example of this mixed tradition in early Pergamene art. Technically we are at once compelled to notice the immense advance in realism and anatomical study. The hanging Marsyas shows a correct appreciation of the effects of such a posture on swollen veins and strained abdomen. The corner of the mouth is drawn up in agony; the forehead is corrugated with rows of wrinkles; the hair, even on the chest, is matted with perspiration. One would say that so remarkable a statue could only be studied from nature, and one recalls the stories of Parrhasios, who is said to have used an actual model for his Prometheus Bound.12 We are long past the time when sculptors worked from memory. Even Praxiteles was said to have made his Cnidian goddess with Phryne as a model. In the Knife-Grinder we may perhaps detect some of the earliest traces of that exaggeration of the muscles which will so soon affect athletic art.

One of the most important of the Pergamon finds was the little bronze satyr,13 which has enabled us to associate with Pergamon a whole host of satyr types of more or less similar style. The Dancing Satyr of Pompeii (Fig.3) and Athens, the Satyr of the Uffizi clashing cymbals,14 with its replica in Dresden, and the Satyr turning round to examine his tail15 are all variants of the new artistic cult of the satyr, a cult which seems to have had a Pergamene origin.16 The satyr gave to the Pergamene artist just that opportunity for the display of wild and somewhat sensual enthusiasm which he wanted, for new and original poses, and for combination with his nymphs and bacchanals. In Phrygia especially orgiastic manifestations of religion were the regular practice, and dancing was both wild and universal. The new artistic conceptions show the clear influence of this spirit on the more restrained art of the fourth-century schools. The Dancing Maenad of Berlin,17 the Aphrodite Kallipygos of Naples,18 and the famous Sleeping Hermaphrodite19 are further examples of the marvellous flesh treatment and the wild frenzy of movement which we learn to associate with third-century Pergamene art.

Apart from the general spirit of Pergamene work there are several definite technical peculiarities which enable us to postulate a Pergamene origin for many unclassed works of the Hellenistic age. These can be gathered from the definitely Pergamene Gallic statues, which we have yet to discuss, and from the satyr types already mentioned. One is the hair tossed up off the forehead and falling in lank matted locks of wild disordered type. The eyebrows are usually straight and shaggy, with a heavy bulge of the frontal sinus over the nose. The cheekbones are prominent, and the lips thick and parted. In the body the most marked feature is the desire to get away from the old-fashioned straight plane for the front of the torso. The lower part of the chest usually projects strongly, while the waist is drawn in, so that the profile of the torso is shaped like a very obtuse z. In the female body there is a general affection for rather heavy forms with a good envelope of flesh. The artist’s skill is here devoted mainly to the delineation of surface. The heads of such female figures as we can attribute to Pergamene art show very little expression. The hair is done on the Praxitelean model, but the locks tend to become more rope-like and twisted as time goes on. We cannot point to any great peculiarities in the Pergamene treatment of women. Neither Lysippos nor Scopas seems to have had much effect on the feminine types of Greek sculpture. The whole Hellenistic age is in servitude to Praxitelean ideals of women whether in Alexandria, Rhodes, or Pergamon. The differences are only in the details of execution, the Pergamenes tending always towards clear cutting of hair and features, while the Alexandrines preferred an impressionist smoothing away of all sharp edges.

We come now to the two great dedications of Attalos for his victories over the Gauls.20 These were made at some time later than 241 B.C., and consist of two series of statues. One is life-size or larger, and is represented by some of the best-known examples of Hellenistic sculpture, such as the Dying Gaul21 and the Ludovisi group of a Gaul slaying his wife and himself (Fig.4). The other consisted of a number of small figures about three feet high, and was dedicated by Attalos in Athens, where they stood on the parapet of the south wall of the Acropolis. Four battle-groups were included—a gigantomachy, an Amazonomachy, a battle of Greeks and Persians, and a battle of Greeks and Gauls. Several copies from this smaller group are in existence, the best known being in Naples.22 The originals of both groups were probably in bronze, and we have the names of some of the artists of the larger group, Phyromachos, Antigonos, and Epigonos or Isigonos. Stratonicos and Niceratos of Athens may also have taken part.23

These works all deserve careful study, as they differ in many ways from the rather sensual and ecstatic art which we know to have preceded them, and the very baroque and exaggerated art which followed them in the next century on the great altar. Eumenes and Attalos had to fight for their lives against the Gauls, and a temporary return to an austerer and less luxurious art would be a not unnatural result of the great war. We certainly find in the treatment of the Amazons or of the wife of the Ludovisi Gaul no such insistence on sexual detail as marks the earlier studies of the feminine form, and the expression of the male figures is distinguished by more ideal emotions of courage or resignation than the frenzy of the satyrs and the passions of the later gods and giants. The Attalid dedications show some bravura of pose; the Ludovisi Gaul is a little histrionic in his attitude; but as a whole they are sober and restrained sculpture, when compared with the satyrs on the one hand and the altar frieze on the other. In that sense they represent the high-water mark of Pergamene art, inspired with an equal skill, but with a nobler ideal than the earlier work, and not subject to the somewhat grotesque exaggerations of its later activities. Greek art has few nobler figures to show than the Dying Gaul of the Capitol, itself an admirable and closely contemporary copy, perhaps made in Ephesos, of the bronze original at Pergamon. The sober restraint of the torso modelling is remarkable, and contrasts most forcibly with the altar frieze. The pathos of the expression and attitude is not forced or exaggerated in any way, and if the curious hair gives a touch of strangeness to the head, we must account for it as a naturalistic detail of the Gallic fashion of greasing and oiling the hair. The Ludovisi Gaul is a superb work, rather more exaggerated, both in expression and in detail, than the Capitol figure. The right arm is perhaps wrongly restored, as it hides the face from the front, but it is more likely that the group should be looked at from a position farther to the left, where the face, the fine stride, and the technical tour de force of the cloak can all be appreciated more fully. The woman’s face is not well finished, and her whole pose is more effective from the other point of view. The Pergamene peculiarities in the treatment of chest and waist are clearly visible in this figure.

The little figures in Naples, the Louvre, Venice, and elsewhere are partly recumbent dead figures of Persians, giants, and Amazons, and partly crouching figures defending themselves. None of the victorious Greeks seems to have survived, except possibly the torso of a horseman in the Terme Museum. They are dry, rather hard figures, much inferior in skill to the larger group and much closer to the bronze originals which they represent. The head of a dead Persian in the Terme Museum (Fig.5) is probably a more worthy copy (on a larger scale) of one of the figures of this series. Its type of features and its moustache resemble the Ludovisi Gaul. Another fine Gallic head is in the Gizeh Museum at Cairo (Fig.6). This has been often called an original, an Alexandrian variant of the Gallic dedications. There is, however, no need to separate it from the others. If it shows more emotion, that only brings it rather closer to what we know of earlier Pergamene art. The provenance of the Gizeh head is disputed, and it may be only a recent importation into Egypt.24

We now come to the frieze of the great altar at Pergamon (Fig.7), the contribution of Eumenes II to the series of monuments commemorating the defeats of the barbarians. Here again we have several inscriptions of artists,25 which are especially interesting as showing that four foreign artists of Attic, Ephesian, and Rhodian origin all contributed to the great monument. It is, however, quite uniform and unique in character, and shows a baroque exaggeration of expression and of muscular detail, which in the end becomes monotonous and overpowering. The slight tendency towards a histrionic attitude, which we noticed in the Ludovisi Gaul, has now become much more pronounced. Most of the figures are in stage attitudes of fright, ferocity, attack, or defence. Their bodies are covered either with drapery in wild disorder, or, if naked, with massive rolls and lumps of muscle, which are almost comical in their exaggeration. Their hair is in unrestrained twisted snaky locks; their faces are distorted in fierce expressions of anger or alarm; they are in every conceivable attitude of attack or defence. When we add to this the colossal size of the monument and its figures, we can well understand how its remains became known to early Christian writers as the throne of Satan.26

The subject of the frieze is the battle of the gods and the giants, and the members of the Olympic Pantheon are represented in attitudes of triumph over the serpent-footed denizens of Tartarus. This is probably the first appearance in sculpture of the serpent feet of the giant. Every earlier artist had realized how such a ridiculous detail would detract from the strength and probability of his figures, but the Pergamene artists are so glad of the chance of displaying extra technical skill that they pass over the artistic difficulty without hesitation. The great frieze of the altar is like the work of a megalomaniac. The restraint and good taste which have accompanied all Hellenic art hitherto are quite forgotten, and we are reminded rather of some Assyrian scene of carnage and destruction. This is the more curious, because the smaller frieze of the altar, the Telephos frieze, which is contemporary with the larger one, shows altogether a different character. It has therefore been plausibly argued, with the support of some of the artists’ signatures, that the main style of the work is Rhodian rather than Pergamene.27 The view would only involve us in further difficulties when we come to consider Rhodian art. There is Rhodian influence in the frieze, but the technical details of hair, faces, and bodies as a whole correspond closely to Pergamene art. Moreover, on a priori grounds, Pergamene art is much more likely to be affected by exotic oriental influences than the purer Rhodian. It is easier to assume a special development of Pergamene art in this exaggerated direction for a monument which was itself a special and exceptional memorial. The whole character of the work is a reversion to an earlier idealistic phase of art, though carried out on very different artistic lines. This is no romantic or frivolous treatment of mythological detail. It is a great conception of the victory of right over might, of Hellas over the barbarian, and as such the great altar of Pergamon stands quite apart from most of the work of the Hellenistic age, and serves rather as a connecting link between the Parthenon on the one hand and the Imperial trophies of Augustus, like the Ara Pacis, on the other. It demonstrates the lack of judgement and balance in Hellenistic art, but it is a good proof that the Hellenistic school was not wholly absorbed in questions of bravura and technique, but could rise, even if in rather clumsy fashion, to the level of a great occasion.

The smaller frieze of Pergamon, giving incidents in the myth of Telephos, is of a very different type (Fig.8). Firstly, the subject is not a unity in time and place, but a continuous narration of mythological episodes. It thus resembles the setting in a continuous frieze of a number of metope-subjects. Telephos appears in different situations in a scene which apparently is uniform. This is a decidedly new departure in artistic theory, and it had the profoundest effect on all subsequent art. We need not, of course, see in the Telephos frieze the first appearance of this custom, but it happens to be the earliest surviving monument in which the principle is easily remarked. Moreover, the information as to change of scene is conveyed by means of changes in the background, so that we see in it another new departure: the use of a significant pictorial background instead of the blank wall against which earlier reliefs had been set. Here again the Hellenistic artist revives rather than originates. The pictorial background occurs as early as the ‘Erechtheum’ poros pediment of the Acropolis, but during the fifth and fourth centuries the idea was dropped only to reappear at a later date.

We have already seen that relief sculpture at all stages of its history is closely affected by the kindred art of painting. During the fourth century painting underwent changes in the direction of naturalism as marked as, if not more marked than, the corresponding changes in sculpture. The late fourth century and the third century form the great period of Greek painting, in which the names of Parrhasios, Protogenes, and Apelles stand supreme. A true and correct feeling for perspective and a naturalistic scheme of colouring were the main discoveries of the period, discoveries which we are only able to appreciate in very roundabout methods through Pompeian wall-paintings and mummy-cases from the Fayum. All Hellenistic sculpture is profoundly influenced by painting, as we shall see; but naturally the art of relief is nearest akin and shows most clearly the effects of graphic ideas. The Hellenistic reliefs are almost all adaptations of pictures, and the Telephos frieze earns its main interest and reputation because it is one of the first monuments to show this influence very clearly. We find a true use of perspective in part of this frieze, and a deliberate intention to create the impression of depth.

One of the first results of these innovations was to free relief from its subordination to architecture. It begins now to take its place as a self-sufficing artistic object like a picture. Greek pictures were mainly of the fresco type, and therefore immovably fixed to walls, though easel pictures now begin to be more frequent. There was nothing dissimilar in the position of a relief decorating a wall-panel without architectural significance. This idea found its earliest manifestation in Ionia with friezes of the Assos type on an architrave block, and therefore at variance with architectural principles. Friezes as wall decorations appear commonly in the Ionian buildings of the fifth and fourth centuries, like the Nereid and Trysa monuments and the Mausoleum. We find in the Hellenistic age the use of panels as wall decorations quite frequent all over Asia Minor. Thus at Cyzicus we have some curious mythological reliefs called Stylopinakia, which appear to have been panels fixed between the columns of a peristyle. We have the Apotheosis of Homer by Archelaos of Priene, a clear instance of the decorative panel with a pictorial background; we have smaller pieces like the Menander relief in the Lateran; the visit of Dionysos to a dramatic poet; and all the series of so-called Hellenistic reliefs ascribed by Schreiber28 to an Alexandrian origin, by Wickhoff29 to the Augustan age and Italian art. The reliefs, like other sculpture of the Hellenistic age, cannot be judged as a whole.30 Some are Augustan, like the reliefs in the Palazzo Spada, and some are undoubtedly Alexandrian, like the Grimani reliefs in Vienna. Others, again, show a strong Lysippic influence, which at once connects them with Rhodes. The Telephos frieze, however, is Pergamene, and the Cyzicus reliefs must have fallen mainly in the Pergamene sphere of art. We are, therefore, entitled to demand a separation of the reliefs into just as many classes as the sculpture. A fine piece of very high relief from Pergamon is the group of Prometheus on the Caucasus freed by Herakles.31 Besides the influence of pictures on relief there is also the influence of earlier sculpture. One of the figures in the Telephos relief reproduces the Weary Herakles of Lysippos.32 It would not be difficult to point out other examples of the adaptation of older types. The Marsyas group is itself a case in point. The indifference of the Hellenistic artist to his subject made him the readier to adapt earlier types, provided he had a free hand for his details of execution and expression.

The figures of Pergamene art as a whole are short and stocky with squarish deep heads. They correspond to the Scopaic, pre-Lysippic, and Peloponnesian type, but the Lysippic improvements in pose and swing of the body are thoroughly appreciated and adopted. From Praxiteles are derived the female type and the interest in the satyr as a vehicle of sculptural expression. The athletic art of Lysippos and the school of Sikyon is practically unrepresented at Pergamon or in those regions of Ionia and Bithynia which are connected with it and at which we must now glance.

From Priene we have remains of a gigantomachy and some other sculpture.33 The influence of Praxiteles is marked, and the work as a whole is clearly under Pergamene guidance. From Magnesia we have remains of a great Amazonomachy belonging to the frieze of the temple of Artemis Leucophryene and dating from the end of the third century. The work is dull and careless but strongly under the influence of Pergamon. We shall in fact find no more architectural reliefs of even tolerable quality. The new landscape or pictorial reliefs occupied the attention of the sculptors, and temple decoration was left entirely to workmen.

One of the great Hellenistic art centres is Tralles, whose treasures are mainly to be seen in the Constantinople museum. The colossal Apollo or Dionysos (Fig.9) is closely connected in pose and treatment with the Apollo of the Marsyas group, and shows even more clearly than the torso in the Uffizi the influence of Praxiteles. The cloaked ephebe of Tralles (Fig.10) is a good example of the eclecticism of the age. The leaning attitude with the crossed legs reminds us of the satyrs of Praxiteles and his school, but the head is quite different and is strongly reminiscent of Myron. Boethos of Chalcedon belongs by birth to the northern or Pergamene sphere of influence, but he worked in Rhodes and will be more suitably considered in connexion with Rhodian art. Pergamene influence was also strong in the islands and on the mainland. We shall see that the school of Melos and both Attic and Peloponnesian art during the late third and second centuries were obviously affected by it.