The school of Rhodes stands on a different footing from that of Pergamon or Alexandria. The latter were new foundations, or at least new societies, in which the Greek element was associated with much that was alien and exotic. The orgiastic wildness of Phrygia went far to influence the art of Pergamon, whether in its earlier sensuality or its later pageantry of exaggerated triumph. In Alexandria and in Antioch non-Greek races imported into Hellenic art the cynicism and the world-weariness of older and exhausted civilizations. But Rhodes was pure Greek and a living, growing, prosperous community without recollections of humiliation and defeat. Rhodes as a city had been born of the union of Lindos, Kameiros, and Ialysos at the end of the fifth century. The fourth century brought slow growth, but the successful defence against Demetrios Poliorcetes in its last decade opened a new chapter in Rhodian history. Henceforward Rhodes was mistress of an empire. She acquired possessions on the mainland; her fleet rode and controlled her neighbouring seas; her trade stretched out tentacles in all directions; and among the semi-barbarous Hellenistic kingdoms she alone carried proudly the torch of undefiled Hellenic tradition. Chares of Lindos, a pupil of Lysippos, headed the long roll of her sculptors; her painter, Protogenes, had but one rival in the Sikyonian Apelles. Thus from the first she boasted great artists, closely connected too with the school of Sikyon. Her Dorian sympathies naturally isolated her from the Attic school and from the mixed Praxitelean-Scopaic school of the Ionian mainland. Her Peloponnesian and Sikyonian connexions identified her at once with athletic art and with the school of Lysippos. Thus while Alexandria and Pergamon patronized marble sculpture, Rhodes now becomes the home of bronze casting. Her vast Colossus was matched by at least one hundred more statues of remarkable size, and the roll of her artists as recorded in inscriptions is noteworthy for its length. The great siege gave that impulse of idealism which is necessary for the growth of any artistic development, and the traditional friendship with the rising power of Rome helped her to preserve her prosperity and independence later than any of her neighbours. The last great work of Rhodian art, the Laocoon, is almost as late as the Empire, and the whole period of two hundred and fifty years between it and the Colossus is marked by an immense output of sculpture.

We have already suggested that the Hellenistic art of Rhodes began under the dominant influence of the athletic school of Lysippos. We must first examine the character and achievements of this school. Daippos, Boedas, and Euthykrates are said to have been sons and pupils of the great Sikyonian. Of these Euthykrates was the best known, and Pliny tells us that he followed his father’s carefulness rather than his elegance, and that his style was more severe than genial (‘constantiam potius imitatus patris quam elegantiam austero maluit genere quam iucundo placere’).64 His works were mainly athletic or equestrian, with a few female subjects, and his pupil Tisicrates was a faithful copyist of the style of Lysippos, so much so, in fact, that his works could hardly be distinguished from the master’s. Daippos made a perixyomenos or athlete scraping himself,65 and Boedas made an adorans or praying figure.66

Pliny’s description is important, because it assures us of the faithfulness with which the pupils of Lysippos kept to their master’s style. This is the basis for the argument of those who see in the Apoxyomenos of the Vatican a work of the pupil Daippos rather than the master; but the argument is two-edged, if Lysippos’ own style is to be found in the Agias, since the two statues have little in common. The mention of the adorans enables us to connect two well-known bronzes with this school—the Praying Boy of Berlin (Fig.27) and the Resting Hermes of Naples (Fig.28). The Praying Boy is a subject unparalleled elsewhere, and belongs to the early Hellenistic age. He can hardly be other than a copy of the statue of Boedas. The slender proportions and small head follow the Lysippic canon, and the easy swing of the body proves its chronological position. This figure and the others, which we shall subsequently notice, show a new growth of naturalism by less insistence on the outlines of the torso muscles. The average body in repose does not show the massive muscles of Pheidian or even of Lysippic art, and the post-Lysippic sculptors of the third century tend to soften and naturalize the torso to a considerable extent. The Pergamene Dying Gaul is a good example of this fine restraint, which was utterly abandoned by the later Pergamene school and even by the late Rhodians, but which in all third-century art of Rhodes is noteworthy. The Resting Hermes is a fine copy of a post-Lysippic original, which stood in close connexion with the Praying Boy. The torso, slender, restrained, and full of vitality, shows the same treatment, and must belong to the Lysippic school.

Eutychides of Sikyon, another pupil of Lysippos, is known to us only from his Antioch.67 This figure, even in its poor copy, is of great importance, since it is almost the only certified draped female figure of the Lysippic school. Our whole theory of Lysippic and early Rhodian drapery must, therefore, rest upon it. A comparison with the Herculaneum figure68 in Dresden will show at once a considerable resemblance in treatment, so much so, in fact, that it has caused the attribution of the Dresden figure to the Lysippic school. This cannot be allowed because of the greater resemblance to Attic grave-reliefs and the Mantinean basis, which demonstrates the origin of the type in the school of Praxiteles.69 But it is sufficient to show that the new scheme of the school of Praxiteles was adopted in the main by the pupils of Lysippos; their faithfulness to their teacher will incline us to the belief that Lysippos used it also. This type of drapery shows a tendency to an artificially effective or artistic arrangement rather than to complete simplicity of naturalism like the drapery of Praxiteles himself, but it is important to notice that it does not become purely artificial or stereotyped till much later, and that all the early examples preserve a considerable share of freer naturalism. The characteristic of the drapery is an opposition of folds in many differing directions, so as to counteract the uniformity of the older Pheidian type. The folds themselves are quite natural; it is only in their arrangement that we find the element of art.

The Antioch permits us to assume the tall figure swathed in a long thin cloak as the female type of the Lysippic school, and therefore of the early Rhodian school, while the Praying Boy and the Resting Hermes give us the male type. The close connexion postulated rests on the fact that Chares of Lindos, the author of Rhodes’ most famous statue, the great Colossus, was himself a member of the Sikyonian school and a pupil of the master. But the Colossus itself is unknown to us in any certain copy, and therefore we cannot speak with full knowledge of his art. Some statuettes in bronze in marked Lysippic style may well reproduce the statue, but we cannot feel the necessary certainty in their identification.

There is a group of athletic statues of the third century which carry out the Lysippic tradition to its logical conclusion, and which consequently we are practically bound to attribute to Rhodian artists. But until we have a definite copy of Chares’ work we must argue backwards to the first Rhodian school, of which we have no direct information, from the later Rhodian school, of which we know a great deal. The Laocoon70 and the Farnese Bull71 are certified works of Rhodian art of the first century B.C., and they show us a type of male figure which is quite distinct from the types of Pergamene and Alexandrian art. We are, therefore, entitled to argue back to the Rhodian school of the third century, and to attribute to it such athletic sculpture as is clearly of the earlier date while offering distinct technical and stylistic resemblances to the later groups. The male figures of this later period differ from the Pergamene works, with which they are most easily compared, in certain well-defined points. The heads are smaller and rounder and the hair is rougher and less carefully arranged. The eyebrows have a tendency to form sharp angles with the nose instead of the broad straight curves of the Pergamene brows. This makes the bridge of the nose thinner and usually substitutes vertical forehead wrinkles for the swelling frontal sinus of Pergamene work. Except in cases of great strain the torso muscles are treated with more restraint, but the veins receive more careful attention, especially on the abdomen. In the back a more broken-up system of muscles replaces the great upright rolls on either side of the backbone, which mark Pergamene work. Finally, the proportions are slighter and more Lysippic.

These considerations apply most powerfully to two great statues of the Louvre, whose third-century date is almost certain: the Borghese Warrior72 and the Jason (Fig.30). The former statue is by Agasias of Ephesos, an artist whom we can date with some degree of certainty in the middle of the third century. The Jason comes so close to the Lysippic type of Poseidon on the one hand and to the Fighter of Agasias on the other, that the Lysippic-Rhodian origin of the two is fairly well established. The analogies of the Borghese Warrior with the Apoxyomenos have been often pointed out, but his resemblances to the Laocoon and the Farnese groups require an equal recognition. Both the Louvre statues show the influence of a later generation on the Lysippic type. While reproducing the general proportions, each develops Lysippic innovations to a further degree. Lysippos made a distinct advance in anatomical skill, but both these statues show a more exact scientific knowledge. While their torso muscles are less prominent, they reveal new details in abdomen, groin, and the inner side of the thighs, unknown to the earlier sculptor. They also develop much further the Lysippic substitution of an all-round figure for a merely frontal one. Each of them can be regarded effectively from any point of view, and neither has any real front. They, therefore, represent a distinct technical advance. But at the same time they show a decline in artistic feeling, for there is perhaps too much science about them. They belong to a school immensely interested in detail, and tending, therefore, to lose its grasp on the general treatment. The anatomical structure of the male form cannot be rendered more perfectly than in the statue of Agasias, so well known to all art students, but the statue affects us with a feeling of strain and discomfort from its want of unity and repose. All the athletic statues of the Rhodian school seem to be restless and unsatisfied. There is none of the calm repose about them that marked earlier Greek art. The desire to display newly acquired scientific knowledge invariably demands a strained and therefore disquieting motive. As we shall see when we come to examine the Laocoon later, the influence of the stage appears to be affecting sculpture. Poses are histrionic, and expression begins to depend upon grimaces and action rather than upon more subtle indications of feeling.

With the Borghese Fighter and the Jason we may class, perhaps, a work like the Actaeon torso in the Louvre,73 and also that much discussed and very beautiful work, the Subiaco Youth.74 This shows the same restraint in torso modelling which distinguished the Praying Boy and the Resting Hermes, but in the strain of its attitude it resembles rather the Fighter of Agasias, especially in the twist of the body above the waist, which Lysippos had originated and which his pupils tend to exaggerate. One of the disquieting features of the Borghese Fighter is that he implies the presence of another figure which is not there. He is a fighter without an opponent. The Subiaco Boy is in the same plight. His attitude can hardly be other than that of a suppliant touching chin and knee of his enemy in Greek fashion. His artistic defect is that he again is a suppliant without an enemy, part of a group without his counterpart. In their anxiety to study the human figure in all positions the Rhodian artists were apt to overlook the question of artistic unity.

Two fine bronzes in the Terme Museum may be attributed with some certainty to Rhodian artists, in view of the Rhodian monopoly of Hellenistic bronze casting. Both are Greek originals—the seated boxer75 and the hero resting on a lance (Fig.29). The latter is commonly called a portrait of some Hellenistic prince, but the absence of the royal tiara or any personal indications is significant rather of a heroic type. The face is strongly individual, but so is that of the Boxer, the Fighter of Agasias, and even the Jason. We have no reason to see a portrait in any of them, but personality is beginning to affect even ideal statues in the Hellenistic age. The hero with the lance is a fine, if rather histrionic, figure more or less following the Lysippic type of Alexander with the lance76 and showing a somewhat massive and emphatic rendering of a Lysippic type. He belongs to the later Rhodian school, into which exaggeration has crept, rather than to the more restrained art of the third century. The Boxer, on the other hand, brutal and coarse as his expression is, has no trace of muscular exaggeration, and is an earlier work. His broken nose, swollen ears, scarred face, and blood-bespattered hair show the unsparing realism of the artist. He is another instance of the all-round statue of the late Lysippic school, a masterpiece of technique, if a somewhat disagreeable work of art.

We can connect the names and the works of few of the earlier Rhodian artists, but Boethos of Chalcedon is now established as a worker in Rhodes,77 where he received the honour of p???e??a. Pliny mentions his Boy Strangling a Goose,78 and the many copies of this statue in existence give us a good idea of its popularity. Boethos was apparently a silversmith and also a sculptor of boys. He was famous as a maker of elaborate couches, and we are possibly the possessors of such a couch in the fine bronze litter of the Conservatori Museum,79 on which are little boys’ heads strikingly similar to the Boy with the Goose. This group is often quoted as an example of the new feeling for genre or homely domestic detail in sculpture. It is, in fact, of great importance for its new recognition of the comic in art, and for the appearance of the fat chubby boy like the Erotes of Ephesos or the little statuettes of Alexandria. The small boy or girl now becomes a favourite subject of the sculptor, and we may compare closely with the Boy of Boethos the Eros and Psyche of the Capitol (Fig.32), who are really a little boy and girl engaged in a children’s game.

We must now turn to another very important side of Rhodian art—the delineation of female drapery. The followers of Lysippos favoured an austere style, and the nude female figure has no place in Rhodian art. But while the other sculptors of the Hellenistic world were modifying and to some extent vulgarizing the beautiful conceptions of Scopas and Praxiteles, the Rhodians were attacking the draped female figure as they inherited it from Praxiteles and Lysippos, and producing modifications just as interesting and important as those connected with the athletic statue.

We know that Philiskos of Rhodes was the author of a group of Muses which was much admired in Rome. It has been suggested that the new type of female drapery which appears on an altar from Halicarnassos and on the relief of the Apotheosis of Homer by Archelaos of Priene, certainly a member of the Rhodian school, was his work.80 This new type of drapery is to be seen also in a number of statues of Muses, of which we have a collection from Miletos in the museum of Constantinople.81 It may be described most simply as an aggravation and exaggeration of the style of drapery introduced by the school of Praxiteles. The desire to get a series of folds at sharply contrasting angles leads to a very artificial arrangement of the dress, which produces an inharmonious effect. But there is a new development which deserves our attention. Transparent drapery had been elaborated by Alkamenes and the pupils of Pheidias, but always with the intention of displaying the body beneath it. The new drapery of the Muses is transparent with the desire to display other drapery beneath it. The earlier Greeks had used a thick mantle over a transparent chiton, but the Rhodian author of the new drapery used a transparent mantle over a clinging chiton. He thus doubles the subtlety of his technique, and provides himself with a series of new and intricate problems, just as the athletic sculptor does with his anatomical discoveries.

This transparent mantle immediately obtained an immense vogue, and it comes down into Roman art as a strong rival of the late Praxitelean drapery, which, however, still prevails by the side of the other. The greater number of Roman female draped statues use one or the other type of garments. The Milesian Muses are not in themselves great works of art. The real technical possibilities of the new drapery are better displayed by a wonderful figure from Magnesia in Constantinople (Fig.31), in which the new fashion is rendered with consummate skill. It is of considerable importance that we should date this change in drapery as accurately as possible. The date hitherto proposed for its supposed author Philiskos has been put about 220 B.C. The Apotheosis of Homer is taken to be about 210 judging from a portrait of Ptolemy IV appearing in it, and the Halicarnassos base is put about the same time. But the portrait is by no means certainly that of Ptolemy IV. It is more like Ptolemy II, and might belong to any period. Philiskos himself has nothing to do with it. A female figure by him with a signed base has been discovered in Thasos (Fig.33). The drapery of this female figure follows the type of the Mantinean basis,82 and the earlier Muses group of the Vatican. The inscription is not earlier than the first century B.C. Philiskos, then, was a late artist who used the Praxitelean drapery. As for the transparent drapery, it is highly improbable that it was invented before the frieze of the great altar at Pergamon. We know that Rhodian artists worked on this altar, and Rhodian style is visible in some of the figures, but transparent drapery of the Rhodian type appears nowhere on the frieze. There seems to be no reason to date any figure wearing this drapery earlier than 190 B.C., and we should therefore attribute it to the second century. We have seen in the Antioch of Eutychides the Praxitelean type taken over by the earlier Rhodian artists in the third century. Have we any link by which we can connect the transparent mantle with the earlier form?

The answer to this question is provided by one of the greatest statues of antiquity, the Victory of Samothrace (Fig.34). The date and school of this masterpiece are still warmly disputed, and the current view tends to connect it with the victory of Demetrios Poliorcetes in 306, by which he won the command of the sea. Coins of Demetrios show a trumpet-blowing Victory on the prow of a ship in an attitude closely resembling the Louvre statue. But the statue has no connexion with the coin, for a detailed study of the neck and fragments of the right shoulder reveals the impossibility of the trumpet-blowing attitude. The right hand and arm are raised high and backwards probably with a victor’s wreath. Moreover, the coin has a low girdle and no cloak, the statue the high third-century girdle and a great flapping mantle. The type is not so rare as might be expected. We have it in small bronzes, and we have it also in situ on a votive statue in Rhodes. The Victory of Samothrace is a later version of the statue possibly erected by Demetrios. Its Rhodian origin depends partly on the extraordinary finesse and delicate naturalism of its drapery, a study never popular in Pergamon, and partly on the strong probability, not yet decisively proved, that the marble of its base is Rhodian. The latter point may provide definite proof, but the former is the one on which we must at present rely. The Rhodian origin or at least the Lysippic connexions of the statue are further supported by the twist above the waist so universal among the followers of that artist and the strong vital momentary pose, which is wrongly rendered in the present attitude of the statue. It is not a standing figure, but a Victory who is just alighting after flight, and it should therefore be tilted farther forward. The only statue now existing which presents a real parallel to the intricate folds of the Victory’s drapery is the Magnesian statue already mentioned,83 which belongs to the new Rhodian drapery school. But the mantle of the Victory is older in type. Thus the Victory’s drapery stands midway between the Antioch figure and the new Rhodian fashion. It shows just that scientific naturalism which we have noticed in the anatomy of the athletic figures, and just that tendency to miss the perfect whole by an over-anxious care for detail. The date for such work is 250 and not 300 B.C. The Chiaramonti Niobid84 is a work of similar tendency though of a different school, and must fall about the same date.

We now possess some evidence for the continuous study and development of female drapery at Rhodes parallel to the study and development of the male form. The Rhodian school is in fact the most industrious and the most scientific of all the Hellenistic art centres. In mastery of detail they are unapproachable, but they have ceased to care much for motive or idealism in their subjects. To such art both impressionism and romantic feeling are foreign. Rhodian art is very versatile and very straightforward, but its constant aspiration after the unusual renders it in the end monotonous.

The earlier and later periods of Rhodian art are separated by the quarrel with Rome and consequent loss of the land-empire in 167 B.C. This ended the real independence of Rhodes, and with it disappeared the inventive genius of her artists. She continued for another century to be the great and almost the sole centre of art production, for both Pergamon and Alexandria now lost all artistic importance, but she ceased to develop and originate. The works of her second period are brilliant in the extreme, but they are no longer vital and progressive.

It is significant that the best-known works of this period are great groups rather than single statues. We may notice the Laocoon group, the Farnese Bull, the ‘Pasquino’ of Ajax and Patroclos, the Scylla group, and the group of Odysseus with the Cyclops. Of these the earliest is perhaps the Farnese Bull,85 which we possess in an Antonine copy at Naples from the Baths of Caracalla. It represents the punishment of Dirce by Zethos and Amphion for her cruelty to their mother Antiope. The two heroes hold the bull, to whose horns they are about to tie the unfortunate Dirce. It was made by Apollonios and Tauriskos of Tralles, and brought from Rhodes to Rome by Asinius Pollio. The date can be fixed by a comparison of inscriptions to about the year 130 B.C. Tauriskos’ son has signed a base at Magnesia about 100 B.C. Both Tauriskos and Apollonios were adopted by Menecrates, son of Menecrates, one of the artists of the Pergamon frieze. But in examining the group we must beware of the Roman additions and restorations, which include nearly all the landscape details together with the figure of Antiope and the mountain god. The head of Zethos is a portrait of Caracalla. The group has been adapted to act as a centre-piece for the great hall of the Baths of Caracalla, and consequently has been made square. Even in its original form, however, it must have been a good example of all-round sculpture. The figures are Lysippic, and the lower part of Dirce, which is the only antique part of her, shows more archaic drapery than usual. This is only what we might expect from an art which has passed its prime. Novelty of treatment is no longer a first essential. Tauriskos also made figures called Hermerotes. These must have been herm figures with an Eros head similar to a statue in the courtyard of the Conservatori Museum, and comparable with the Hermathena, which belonged to Cicero. Herms of all kinds became very popular in Greco-Roman art, and we see here in Rhodes perhaps the first development of the old archaistic Dionysos herms into more modern studies.

Another dramatic group similar to that of the Farnese Bull and the Laocoon was the lost group by Aristonides of Rhodes, showing Athamas in remorse for the murder of his son, Learchos. Pliny tells a foolish tale that the sculptor mixed iron with the copper in order to portray the blush of shame, a story told also about the Jocasta of Silanion.

A little figure of Odysseus (Fig.35) in the Chiaramonti gallery of the Vatican holding out a bowl of wine to the Cyclops must be part of another mythological group of this period. The movement and action of the hero are typically Rhodian, and his face corresponds to the Rhodian type. The rest of the group is lost. The group of Scylla and the sailors of Odysseus is represented only by a much mutilated and fragmentary copy in Oxford, which gives us little information.

We have more copies of the well-known Pasquino group of Menelaos or Ajax and Patroclos. There are fragments in the Vatican, and a well-preserved replica in the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence (Fig.36). Here again the extraordinary interest in anatomical forms is shown not only in the strain and twist of the living hero—the invariable twist of all these Rhodian figures—but in the admirable contrast between the vivid living body and the relaxed corpse. This contrasting of physical and mental conditions is a part of the dramatic feeling in later Rhodian art, which has quite abandoned its earlier simplicity and has followed on the lines of baroque extravagance laid down by the second Pergamene school.

Of all the groups the best known and the most instructive is the latest of all, the Laocoon.86 In this marvellous group we see the full development of the effect of strained agony on the human form, and we see the mature form contrasted both with an active youth’s body and with the semi-inanimate body of the younger boy. When we have removed the restorations and lowered the right arm of Laocoon nearer to his head, we get a perfect group-design unified by the terrible serpent-coils and by the central theme of agony. The torso muscles of Laocoon are fully developed and even exaggerated, though not to the same extent as those of the Pergamene frieze, but the boys’ forms are simpler, and all reflect the basic principles of Rhodian art already enumerated. Pain is shown by the downward sloping eyebrows with sharp interior angles, by the half-closed eyes, wrinkled forehead, and parted lips. The hair is wild, and all the veins of the body stand out sharply. The twist above the waist occurs in all three bodies. It is interesting to notice that even in the Laocoon, the latest work of the most scientific school of Greek sculpture, anatomical accuracy is still lacking. The lower curve of the ribs above the abdomen follows a line impossible in nature, and the left thumb of the elder son is provided with three joints instead of the normal two. Neither the Laocoon nor any one of the other Rhodian groups is perfectly satisfactory to modern taste. There is too much strain, too much agony, too little relief or repose. Every inch of the group is illustrative of pain and passion. Our sense of sympathy is deadened by excessive emphasis and repetition. But in technical skill the group has never been surpassed.

A close parallel to the head of the Laocoon is found in the bearded centaur of the pair made by Aristeas and Papias of Aphrodisias (Fig.38). Copies of this statue existing in the Capitol and in the Louvre show the despair of the elderly victim of love in the guise of a centaur tormented by a little Eros on his back. The companion figure (Fig.37) is young and delights in the persuasions of his rider. This group of rather obvious allegory belongs to the Antonine age, but the resemblance to the Laocoon proves a first-century original, which is interesting because it is one of the earliest examples of a corresponding pair of statues clearly designed for house decoration. The growth of ‘cabinet pieces’, as opposed to temple or national dedications, now develops into the whole mass of furniture sculpture in the shape of candelabra, table-legs, consoles, decorative herms, &c., which mark the imperial age.

The school of Rhodes ends in extraordinary brilliance. There is nothing decadent in its technique, nothing paltry in its conceptions. We have seen the very pure and slightly finicky naturalism of the early third century give way to a rather more baroque extravagance in detail, but in neither its earlier nor its later stage did the purest of the Hellenistic schools affect the exaggerations of Alexandria or Pergamon. In Rhodes, at any rate, the steady development of Greek sculpture reached its perfect and logical conclusion. We have seen it start with a great idealism and no technique at all. In the fifth century technique and idealism are almost equally balanced. In the Laocoon the last word of technical perfection is spoken, but there is no idealism at all, only a man and two boys writhing in the grasp of serpents. It is not photographic naturalism, but it is histrionic, artificial, and dead. We cannot believe in the Laocoon as we believe in the Hermes of Praxiteles.