While the full tide of artistic development was running in the new societies of Pergamon, Rhodes, and Alexandria, the Greek mainland became a backwater. The rise of the kingdoms meant the decline of the old autonomous city states. Athens in particular fell into the background on account of her uncompromising hostility to the power of Macedonia. In spite of some brief periods of revival, her destiny was for the future rarely in her own hands, and her political subordination seems to have reacted with great rapidity upon her artistic output. She remained for another century after the death of Alexander the home of philosophy, but her art began to revive only after the Roman conquest, in a new form, which will require later consideration. Here at least the Hellenistic age is a period of rapid decadence and decline.

The Peloponnese is in much the same position. The pupils of Lysippos found their best clients abroad, and left no successors of importance at home. The political loss of power was here intensified by a growing poverty. The new wealth which began to pour into Europe as the result of the conquest of Asia went either to Macedonia or to those states which had sent mercenaries to Alexander’s army. The future prosperity of Greece was in the hands of Arcadia, Achaia, and Aetolia rather than Argos, Sparta, and Sikyon. The new states had few artistic traditions, and the old states had no means of gratifying theirs. The inevitable result was a great decline in artistic output as well as in artistic skill. Almost the only sphere left for sculpture was the erection of formal honorary statues to distinguished or wealthy individuals, a type of work which does not beget great art.

The first half of the third century was a period of very good work in portraiture, which is, however, a subject by itself. The Demosthenes of Polyeuctes is dated about 280 B.C., and the statues of Aeschines, Aristotle, and others show the existence of an admirable school of portrait sculptors at this time in Athens. But ideal sculpture shows a sad falling-off. The Themis of Chairestratos (Fig.40) belongs approximately to this period, and it is marked by a great formality, not only in pose but in the treatment of hair and drapery. The classical period of sculpture in Athens was followed by what we must call an academic period. The foreign schools were developing on lines of naturalism, but at home sculptors tended merely to formalize the work of the fourth-century masters, and to produce statues of mechanical correctness without any vitality at all. We have seen the beginning of this tendency in the drapery system of the followers of Praxiteles. It now affects the whole of Attic sculpture. Old types are adopted again and again, until they become purely mechanical. Drapery styles are similarly used up, and the increasing formality of every department stifles entirely the possibilities of originality. The Hermes of Andros (Fig.39) is a good example of this kind of crystallization of types. The statue was found in connexion with a tomb, and it is clearly a memorial statue. Its companion was a female figure reproducing exactly the pose and drapery of the draped female figure from Herculaneum at Dresden. The date would seem to be late third century. The Hermes itself is a replica of a type known in the Antinous of the Belvedere and other statues, and is a product of the Praxitelean school, like the Dresden figure. But the influence of Praxiteles is not alone in it. We have a clear use of Lysippic proportions and some Lysippic influence in the head. This eclecticism is an invariable mark of archaistic art. The sculptor, who has no new message of his own to deliver, looks back to antiquity for his types, but does not imitate one statue directly. The only form of originality which he is able to use is originality of combination and selection. Consequently he absorbs details from several artists and produces work which we label Lysippo-Scopaic, or Lysippo-Praxitelean, &c. We have seen how the late fourth-century artists in Asia Minor combined characteristics of Scopas and Praxiteles. The late fourth-century and third-century Attic artists made use of all their predecessors, and produced statues in which we can detect the disiecta membra of half a dozen styles. At the same time we may recognize the general predominance of Praxitelean tradition over that of the other artists and a universal predilection for marble instead of bronze.

One of the most interesting Hellenistic works of the Attic school is the bronze figure from Anticythera,87 which is still the subject of much dispute. It is a typical piece of eclecticism. The pose and twist of the shoulder and upper part of the torso are Lysippic, while the head is a mixture of Praxiteles and Scopas. The result, as might be expected, is somewhat inharmonious. In shape and profile the head is mainly Praxitelean, and therefore on its discovery it was acclaimed as a Praxitelean original. But looking from the front we at once see the resemblance to the Scopaic Meleager type,88 with its broad head, slight chin, and fringe of short upright locks like little flames. The head, and indeed the whole statue, is not unlike the bronze athlete of Ephesos,89 which has the same hair and facial type, together with a similar rather heavy Lysippic body. This heaviness of the torso in both statues shows that the Lysippic ideal is not followed directly, but rather the Attic version of it as used in the Agias of Delphi.90

Another Attico-Lysippic figure is preserved for us in a number of replicas, of which the two best known are the Hermes from Atalanta in Athens (Fig.41) and the Hermes Richelieu in the Louvre. Here again Lysippic proportions are combined with a rather heavier Attic torso in a whole which lacks something of harmony and repose. The work has been referred back to a Lysippic original, but it seems more likely that it is an Attic adaptation of the eclectic school now springing into existence. The Attic grave reliefs give us good information about Attic art down to the end of the fourth century, but Demetrios of Phaleron prohibited them for sumptuary reasons in 309 B.C., and in future we have no such good guide to Attic art. Eclecticism is, however, pretty clear in the later examples which we do possess. The votive reliefs from the Asklepieion throw some light on the third century, but they are not on a sufficiently large scale to be very instructive.

In Greece at all times professions tended to run in one family, and we have already seen examples of families of sculptors, such as that of Praxiteles, in which the craft was handed down from father to son for generations. The Hellenistic age is full of evidence for this phenomenon in Athens and elsewhere. Rhodes in particular gives us detailed families of sculptors, since we are better provided with inscriptions in Rhodes than in other centres. In Hellenistic Athens two such families are worthy of notice. Polykles, whom we may call Polykles I, had two sons, Timokles and Timarchides I; the latter had two sons, Polykles II and Dionysios; and Polykles II had a son, Timarchides II. These are known to us from literature or from inscriptions, and they cover more or less the second century B.C. It is a question to which member of the house we are to ascribe the very famous bronze Hermaphrodite mentioned by Pliny,91 or whether it should be referred to an earlier artist of the same name in the fourth century.92 A further question is involved in the identification of the Hermaphrodite, since it is commonly assumed that the Sleeping Hermaphrodite (Fig.42), far the most famous type now extant in numerous copies, must have had a marble and not a bronze original. The statue of Polykles is identified with the Berlin Hermaphrodite93 by those who would give him a fourth-century date; with a bronze in Epinal94 by those who associate him with Hellenistic art. The Berlin Hermaphrodite is of Praxitelean type; the Epinal bronze resembles rather what we have called the Pergamene type of the Turning Satyr and the Aphrodite Kallipygos. The question is a difficult one, but we may safely exclude Polykles II. Timarchides I, his father, and Dionysios, his brother, worked on statues of a marked academic tendency. The C. Ofellius of Delos was the work of his brother, a statue of purely mechanical taste. This Polykles is not likely to have originated a great and famous statue. Polykles I worked as early as 200, a much better period for original work. He is a more likely candidate for the authorship of the type, if we suppose it to have resembled either the Epinal bronze or the Sleeping Hermaphrodite. On a priori grounds of its great popularity one would distinctly prefer to connect the latter with the statue mentioned by Pliny. It is true that it looks like a marble statue and not a bronze one, but a marble replica which served as the prototype for marble copies is by no means an impossible suggestion. But this Sleeping Hermaphrodite is a work of distinctly Pergamene tendency, intended to bring out the artist’s skill in the rendering of soft sensual forms. It would seem to belong to an earlier date than 200 or even 250. The Epinal bronze implies a similar date, and therefore we are left with a double difficulty. The best Polykles for our purpose seems to be fifty years too late for either of the types we require. We are, therefore, driven to suppose an intermediate Polykles about 270 B.C. In any case we must infer a reaction of Pergamene influence on the academic art of third-century Athens, but it was a solitary example which seems to have left no heritage to later artists.

The sculptor family best known to us from inscriptions is that of Eucheir and Euboulides. We know of at least two representatives of each name, Eucheir I about 220, Euboulides I about 190, Eucheir II about 160, and Euboulides II thirty years later. The first Euboulides made a statue of Chrysophis, the second Eucheir athletes and warriors, and a marble Hermes at Pheneos. The second Euboulides is more important, for he was the author of a great monument outside the Dipylon Gate, considerable fragments of which have been recovered.

These fragments are our main evidence for the art of Athens in the second half of the second century B.C., and they show us that the academic art of the second half of the third century has followed out its natural development. The figures of Victory (Fig.43) and Athena (Fig.44), which have partially survived, are grandiose without being noble or effective. There is a distinct attempt to absorb some of the exaggerated idealism of the second Pergamene school; there is also an effort to recover some of the simplicity and grandeur of Pheidias; but the result is a staid and rather mechanical classicism, which is made only a little more obvious by the larger size of the figures. The Athena head, with its straightforward gaze, archaistic hair, large, wide-open eyes, and round, heavy chin is distinctly Pheidian; the Victory in rapid movement with head turned to the side is more affected by Pergamene art. Her drapery shows a curious combination of naturalism and formalism in the folds at the girdle; each individual set of folds is well studied from nature; but the repetition of a similar set right round the body is purely mechanical. The group is a good example of the limitations of the Attic artist at the end of his development. The next century sees a totally different activity.

In the Peloponnese we have a great gap after the pupils of Lysippos, a gap devoid of any evidence either literary or monumental. During the whole of the third century it would be difficult to point to any Peloponnesian art on a scale deserving of attention. But the second century opens with a name of some importance, Damophon of Messene. We are in the rare and fortunate position of possessing undoubted originals from his hand in the great group of Lycosura. These are practically our sole monumental evidence for the Hellenistic art of the Peloponnese.95 The date of Damophon is now established by inscriptions for the first half of the second century B.C., and a number of his works are more or less attested by coin-types. He had a considerable vogue in the last generation before the Roman conquest, and his leading position is evidenced by the commission he received to restore the Olympian Zeus. It may have been his hand which touched up and restored the corner figures of the west pediment of the temple.

The great group of Lycosura represented Demeter and Kore enthroned between standing figures of Artemis and a Titan Anytos. It survives in three heads and numerous fragments of limbs and drapery, and its conjectural restoration has been recently undertaken (Fig.45). The discovery of a coin representing the group on its reverse goes far to justify the proposed design.96

The group is interesting from many points of view, but mainly from the flood of light which it throws on the methods of Peloponnesian sculpture at the very close of its development. It thus forms a complementary picture to the remains of the monument of Euboulides in Athens. Damophon, like Euboulides, underwent the influence of Pergamon. The colossal scale of his group and the wild hair of his giant Anytos (Fig.46) demonstrate the influence of the altar frieze. Damophon also went back to Pheidias for inspiration. He must have absorbed many lessons from his work at Olympia. The seated group of his goddesses is reminiscent of the two figures next to ‘Theseus’ in the west pediment of the Parthenon. The simple wide-eyed grave expression of his Demeter head goes back to the fifth-century ideal, while his Artemis (Fig.47) wears the melon-coiffure associated with the school of Praxiteles. The attitudes of Artemis and Anytos are Lysippic. Here we have every evidence of academic eclecticism. The same feature is borne out by three coins which reproduce the statues of Damophon. His Asklepios at Aigion gives us a fourth-century type. He copied the Laphria of Patras for Messene. His Herakles in the guise of an Idaean Dactyl at Megalopolis seems to have been a variant of the now fashionable herm figures and to copy a Hermerakles type known by numerous extant examples.

Damophon’s style then was academic and eclectic, borrowing from all sources of inspiration and in general using up over again well-known groups and poses. His execution is even more interesting for its extraordinary inequality. His heads are on the whole very good. The Demeter is a dull piece of work, but both the Anytos and the Artemis show some fancy and some power of original expression. The girl is demure and cheerful, the giant benevolent and rather sly. But when we come to examine the execution of the fragments of the bodies and limbs which survive at Lycosura, we find a very hasty and poor technical ability. The arms and legs are nearly shapeless. They are colossal, but practically formal in design, and details of muscles and sinews are almost entirely omitted. The drapery makes some effort to follow Pheidian designs, but it is poorly carved and without effect. Only in one direction does the artist show any skill, and that is in the great embroidered veil (Fig.48) worn by Despoina. This is an extraordinary tour de force, not for its sculptural effect, which is purely formal, but for the reproduction of a complicated embroidered design in very low relief. A border of tassels with bands of design about it and large embroidered figures of Victory above the bands is rendered with consummate art. We have a frieze of sea-monsters, nymphs, and Erotes according to a common Hellenistic design, a curious local dance of beast figures in human dress, a dance paralleled by some small terra-cotta figures found in the same shrine, and the larger figures of Victory above carrying candelabra.

It is interesting to see the total want of proportion in the artist’s mind, who could devote so much time and originality to a comparatively unimportant piece of decoration, while treating the main lines of his drapery with carelessness and monotony. It is probable that we have here a procedure to be noticed in the Demeter of Cnidos—a head done with great care and placed on a torso of inferior execution. While Damophon worked the heads of all the figures and the drapery of Despoina, he must have left the rest of his group to a band of journeymen assistants. We know from inscriptions that Damophon had two sons, Xenophilos and another whose name is lost. It is, therefore, possible that Xenophilos and Straton, the Argive sculptors, were his sons. Their subjects were similar, and their Asklepios, as shown on a coin, is identical with Damophon’s.

Thus Greek sculpture on the mainland came to a somewhat inglorious and academic conclusion with the Roman conquest in 146 B.C. We may examine one more centre of artistic work before leaving it, since it forms a link between Greece and Ionia, between the declining schools of the mainland and the vigorous art of Pergamon and Rhodes.

Melos has left us several Hellenistic statues of interest. The Aphrodite of the Louvre and the Poseidon in Athens are their most important representatives. The Poseidon (Fig.49) is a typical work of histrionic bravura under the influence of the second Pergamene school. He stands in a defiant and dramatic attitude as if summoning his adversaries to combat, and his burly hair and beard recall the giants of the altar. But an eclectic taste is visible here also. His pose is Lysippic, and his restrained torso owes more to Rhodes than Pergamon. Melos is a meeting-point of trade-routes, in which many artistic currents must have come together.

The Aphrodite of Melos97 has attained a somewhat undeserved position as one of the world’s masterpieces of sculpture. Splendid piece of work as it is, it has most of the faults of its period. Much controversy has raged even over the actual facts of the discovery of this statue, but there appears to be no reason to doubt that the inscribed base, which was found with it and brought perhaps later to Paris, is part of it, and contains the true record of its author ...sandros from Antioch on the Maeander.98 This base has been lost, but drawings and statements exist to show that it fitted the actual base. The missing fragment had a rectangular hole on the upper surface, in which some additional attribute was fitted. The restoration of this missing piece of the base with its hole disposes of the theories occasionally ventilated that the statue was one of a pair. The hole is not the socket for fastening a statue, nor will it hold one of the small herms which were found with the Aphrodite. Its true significance has been pointed out by FurtwÄngler by analogy with several other statues and designs, including one from Melos and one actual copy of the Aphrodite herself. It served for the fastening of a slender column or stele on which the goddess rested her left elbow. A beautiful little fourth-century bronze in Dresden shows a similar motive. The restoration of the figure is now easy. With her right hand the goddess held or was about to hold her drapery to prevent it from slipping; her left elbow rested on the pillar, and her left hand, palm upwards, held an apple. This hand holding the apple was actually found with the statue, and undoubtedly belongs to it, as well as a piece of the upper left arm. The other hand found at the same time is alien and on a larger scale. The position of the hand, palm upwards, is certified by the unworked back, which would be invisible. The apple of course is a frequent symbol of Aphrodite, and particularly appropriate in the island to which it gave its name.

The Aphrodite was found in a niche or exedra, which was dedicated by one Bacchios with a second-century inscription. The base inscription of ...sandros, whose name we may guess to have been Agesandros, is also second century, and therefore we cannot hesitate to accept a date about 180–160 B.C. for the Aphrodite, especially as its style and technique are indubitably of that period. The pose may be described as reminiscent of Lysippos with its opposing lines of shoulders and hips and twist of the body above the waist. The head-type is Scopaic, but only Scopaic at second-hand, since the influence of Pergamon is much clearer. If we compare the head with the head of the girl in Berlin from Pergamon,99 or with the Pergamon Hermaphrodite in Constantinople,100 we see an identical treatment of hair, identical head-shape, and the same type of features in almost every detail. The drapery is interesting for yet another source of inspiration. Its division into flattish panels separated by groups of deeply-cut waving folds is in the manner of Pheidias and the late fifth century, while the naturalistic little detail on the right hip, where the lower folds are caught up and radiate from a single point, is thoroughly Hellenistic.

The style of the statue as well as its technique is clear proof of its date. The attitude of the goddess has no discernible motive. There is no reason why she should be half naked, or why she should twist her body round so violently from the hips. There is no explanation why her drapery should stay up at all in so insecure a position, or why her left foot should be raised higher than her right. But if we compare for a moment the Melian Aphrodite with the Capuan Venus in Naples (Fig.50), a statue in a nearly identical position, all these points are explained. The Capuan Venus is half naked, because she is admiring her beauty in the mirror of the shield of Ares. She is twisted so as to look at herself in the shield and yet display her body to the spectator—in itself a Hellenistic device. Her drapery is held up, because the shield-edge holds it against her left hip; her foot is raised, because it rests on Ares’ helmet and thereby gives better support to the shield. The attitude of the Melian goddess is clumsy and stiff, because it has no motive; that of the Capuan is graceful and effective, because its motive is clear.

Now it is noteworthy that the many examples of this type in our possession are all copies of the Capuan and not of the Melian figure. This is clear from the direction of the drapery folds, which differs in the Melian from all the other figures. The history of the type is thereby made clear. It was an early Hellenistic or late fourth-century statue of the Armed Aphrodite, possibly the cult statue, which appears in identical pose on coins of Corinth. Itself a typical genre adaptation of a very early myth, it at once gained favour and was much copied, especially in Roman times. The Melian goddess was a second-century Hellenistic copy, but not a mere copy, rather an adaptation of the earlier prototype to a figure more suitable for Melos itself. Unfortunately the artist was unable to make the pose suit his new scheme properly. We get another adaptation in the Augustan age in the shape of the Victory of Brescia inscribing a roll of the dead on the shield,101 and finally, in the second century and later, we get a crowd of copies much closer to the original, of which the Capuan Venus is the best.

The history of the Melian Aphrodite throws much light on the Hellenistic art of the mainland and its neighbouring islands. We see its artists bankrupt of new ideas, and able only to adapt older conceptions to new requirements with a series of eclectic modifications. The Aphrodite is a close parallel to the monuments of Damophon and Euboulides, although its artist is admittedly a better sculptor. All three show a poverty of new ideas, but a strong reaction against the excesses of the later Pergamene school. They are, therefore, forced to look backward and make up new conceptions out of a medley of older details. It is of the utmost importance that we should remember this state of mind when we come to deal with Greco-Roman art.