THE Mediterranean Sea was the heart of the Old World; the important lands of the early history of civilization were grouped about its richly indented shores, generally decreasing in respect of culture as they receded from it. The northeastern part of the Mediterranean, because of its many islands, having an even greater proportionate coast-line, was the centre of the countries ennobled by Hellenic civilization. Separating and uniting at once, like all the waters of the earth, the Ægean Sea formed the boundary between the two chief races of Greek intellectual life—the Dorians and the Ionians; while it was, at the same time, the favoring medium of exchange for the productions of their genius. European Greece, with its predominating Doric population, and the almost exclusively Ionic coasts of Asia Minor, equally looked upon this sea as their own, traversing it with thousands of ships, and gaining more from the trackless waters before them than from the interior lands of the immense continents whose seaboard alone they were content to occupy. In Asia the Greeks were restricted to the countries upon its uttermost western border; in European Greece the development was chiefly directed towards the eastern coast, paying even less attention to their own shores on the Adriatic than to the early colonized ports of Magna-GrÆcia and Sicily. The Archipelago itself provided convenient strongholds and outposts in every direction. The numerous harbors and anchoring-places of its many islands offered protection against the notorious treachery of the Ægean main—a protection imperatively necessary for the primitive seafarers of antiquity. But, as in the history of all civilization, the currents of Greek intellectual and artistic progress moved distinctly from east to west. The European (Doric) culture was in itself less calculated to influence Asia than the Asiatic (Ionic) to affect the younger continent. It was, as decided by nature, upon European soil, upon Attica—the most advanced promontory of European Greece—that the two branches of the Greek race united, and bore in Athens that double fruit at which we marvel. The Dorians, displaced, in some measure, by the rapid growth of Ionic Asia and Europe, turned still farther westward, and settled upon the shores of Sicily and the Gulf of Tarention, where imposing monuments still attest the extent of their power.

The legends of the wanderings of Hellenic tribes, and especially of the so-called Doric migration, were based upon the busy currents of intercourse between Asia and Europe, over seas and straits, and between the European continent and the Morea, the Island of Pelops. The relations and the quarrels of Hellenic and semi-barbaric peoples upon each side of the Ægean are illustrated by the tales of the Argonauts and their voyage, and of the Trojan War, both of which bear the stamp of a certain piratical rivalry. The fatal lack of unity, resulting from the separate development of neighboring districts, could not be more distinctly characterized than by the fact that the Greek races, although they felt themselves divided from other nations—from barbarians—by an impassable gulf, and were aware of their own absolute intellectual superiority, yet lacked any comprehensive designation for themselves: the name Greeks, or Hellenes, is of comparatively recent origin.

The Homeric epics prove that the intellectual development of the people to whom the immortal poet belonged stood, at least as early as the ninth century B.C., at a height to which nations of such primitive civilization as the Egyptians and ChaldÆans had never attained. Phenomenal as the appearance of those poems may have been, they still could not have stood so high above their time—which they evidently represent with a certain transfiguration—that contemporaries were not able to comprehend and enjoy them. The creative arts stood, at this epoch, in strange contrast to so great an intellectual height; they were far surpassed by the advance of poetry. Though certain textile and ceramic manufactures (the making of wooden and bronze utensils, woven stuffs, and pottery) must have been practised to some extent in Greece proper, the better artistic productions are continually referred to as imported from the civilized countries of Asia. Larger objects, and notably buildings, were either exceedingly primitive, or, in the lack of trained native ability, were erected and ornamented in foreign styles. The Homeric epics know nothing of a columnar temple, nothing of artistic images of the gods, nothing even of dwellings corresponding to the importance of their princely heroes. Even at a much later time a Spartan, accustomed to erect his own house with saw and axe alone, might be astonished at the squarely hewn beams of a ceiling, which he previously had seen formed only of round trunks, like those imitated upon the Lycian block-house tombs.

It is of this exceeding simplicity that we must picture to ourselves the palaces of the kings, one of which is so attractively described by the singer of the Odyssey, in the account of the royal dwelling at Ithaca. The entire establishment must have been similar to a grange—a wall enclosing a number of buildings with the court before them. The rustic parallel is clearly brought to mind by the description of this farm-yard, where the compost-heap, surrounded by swine and geese, was the bed of the old watch-dog, who, in Homer’s truly idyllic account, alone recognizes his master, and, dying, wags his tail in greeting. From this yard a gate led to an inner court, comparable to the peristyle of later buildings, but without the ornament of columns, and in all respects extremely primitive. Goats and beeves were driven in here without further ado to be slaughtered. This adjoined upon one side the chambers of the men, upon the other those of the women, so separated that the tumultuous massacre of the suitors in the principal hall did not disturb the slumber of Penelope, and only reached the ears of the maids like distant moaning. Upon the third side, probably opposite the entrance, was the hall of the men, a ceiled space, which must have been of considerable extent, as the hundred and eight unwelcome guests could here unite in the banquet and other amusements. Its ceiling, like that of the armory and that of the royal sleeping-chamber, was supported by upright beams of wood. We may imagine these similar to the shafts in the Palace of Oinomaos at Elis, one of which, bound together with iron hoops, was preserved as a relic in the time of Pausanias. The ceiling beams of the hall were smoked and blackened by open fires and torch-lights as in rustic dwellings. Of the walls there is no mention, though the supposition is not improbable that the bright metal sheathing of the palaces of Menelaos and AlkinoÖs existed here also. It would be explained by the Phoenician overlaying of wood-work with beaten bronze, or, to speak more correctly, with copper. The space could not have been without openings for light and air. These are not directly mentioned by the poet, but may be assumed, from the analogies offered by other civilized nations of early antiquity, to have existed in the wall, immediately under the ceiling. Here the interstices between the immense horizontal beams, which rested upon the walls, were left open, and the motive of the subsequent Doric metope resulted of itself. That the timbers overhead were not sheathed with boards is evident from a Homeric simile: Athene rose to the ceiling, and there sat, “like unto the resting swallow;” that is to say, upon the cross-beams of the open triangle formed by the roof-framing. Further evidence is offered by the account of the hanging of Epicaste upon a ceiling beam, which must have been exposed from all sides.

The tholos of the palace at Ithaca was an isolated circular structure, before the court, and may perhaps be identified with the high thalamos to which Telemachos descended. In this also lay gold and metal in heaps; while shrines containing garments, and amphoras filled with oil and wine, etc., stood around. Its double door, of careful workmanship, agrees with the character of a treasury. If this identification of the tholos and thalamos be accepted, no doubt can remain that we have here to deal with a space similar to many yet remaining in Greece, generally known under the name of treasure-houses. Examples exist at Orchomenos, near Pharsalos, AmyclÆ, Menidi, and in MykenÆ.

Fig. 121.—Plan and Section of the Tholos of Atreus.
Fig. 121.—Plan and Section of the Tholos of Atreus.

Fig. 122.—Restoration of the Tholos of Atreus. Portal. (Clarke.)
Fig. 122.—Restoration of the Tholos of Atreus. Portal. (Clarke.)

One of the five in MykenÆ, known as the Treasury, or the Tholos, of Atreus, remains in an admirable state of preservation, especially as regards the interior. This consists of a space of circular plan, 15 m. in diameter, and of the same height, formed like a pointed vault. (Fig. 121.) Its walls begin to curve from the floor, which is of stamped clay pisÉ. Upon this the first circular course of masonry immediately reposes. The walls then rise, in parabolic outline, to a pointed apex. They are not constructed upon the principle of a vault—that is to say, with wedge-shaped stones, and with the direction of joints to a common centre—but are laid in horizontal beds, each course so projecting over the one beneath it that, by this diminution of the concentric circles, they finally unite at the summit. They were smoothly cut upon the jointing surfaces, while the face was not chiselled until after the completion of the masonry. The blocks were rectangular, and the joints, which consequently increased radially in plan, were filled with the same pisÉ used for the floor; the interstice between the wall door and the rock-cut inner chamber upon one side being also cemented with this substance. An entrance-passage, the dromos, led from the valley to the tholos in a gently inclined ascent. It was bordered by walls of cut stone, but nowhere ceiled. Its floor, 6.20 m. broad and 36 m. long, was paved with pisÉ. Thisentrance-passage was terminated without by a terraced retaining-wall, and within by an elaborate portal faÇade. The recent investigations of Stamatakis and Thiersch have given sufficient information concerning the composition and details of this front to permit a restoration of its chief masses. (Fig. 122.) The lower part was constructed of long stones, carefully cut and jointed. The stepped jambs of the opening, peculiar to all antique doors, were probably cut after the blocks were in position. Upon either side were decorative engaged columns, which are so entirely similar to the one represented upon the Gate of the Lions at MykenÆ that it is possible completely to understand their nature by that general guide; by the help of fragments which still exist, and others drawn in former publications, though now lost; by traces upon the wall, and especially by the sockets cut for the swallowtail clampings of the bases and capitals. The shaft, instead of being diminished, increases as it ascends, as does also the column upon the relief over the Gate of the Lions. Its base, from this analogy, and from the narrow space left for it by the clampings, seems to have consisted of a simple tore. The abacus and parts of the mouldings beneath it still exist; the coronation was formed by two roundlets, separated by a scotia, the lower being considerably smaller in height and diameter than the upper. (Fig. 123.) Without the lower member, there is a certain similarity of the capital to a Doric echinos, which is increased by the proportions of the boldly projecting abacus; but the whole is so similar to an Asiatic (Ionic) base that it was not natural to believe it a capital, and the fragment published by Donaldson has hitherto been believed to be the foot of the shaft. The columns were entirely covered with an ornamentation in relief of zigzag lines alternating with the well-known spiral wave; they stood upon rectangular pedestals, of which the triply stepped plinths have been preserved. The existence of bronze ornaments upon the lintel of the door is evident from the traces of nails; five lion-heads can be distinctly recognized. An epistyle extended from capital to capital across the entire front of the portal; it projected far beyond the lintel, upon which it partly reposed. Above this entablature was a surface, like an attica, which masked the triangle formed by the relieving blocks over the lintel. The upper walls were not originally visible, having been reveted by thin slabs of stone, secured in position by dowels. Fragments from MykenÆ deposited in the British Museum, in the Munich Antiquarium, and in Athens appertained to this upper faÇade; they all show spiral ornaments between horizontal grooves, and are similar to many other decorations of the same age. The borders of the casing over the relieving triangle and its extreme upper corner were patterned in like manner, as is plain from the mitre-joint of some of the slabs, and from a small fragment exactly fitting the upper angle of the opening. The entire triangle was probably closed by some light stone carving, since it could have had no function as a passage for light. The door, as may be seen from traces of pivots upon the sill and lintel, had two wings, which, from their bolt-holes, appear to have been so large that, when closed, they considerably overlapped. Upon the exterior jambs a broad strip of metal was affixed, still to be traced by two vertical rows of nail-holes, in which fragments of bronze occasionally remain. This work leads to the supposition that the wings of the door were themselves overlayed with metal, and, with the characteristic forms of the decoration upon the monument, points to the peculiarities of Asiatic art. It is natural to attribute this to the influence of Phoenicia; indeed, the effect of the civilization of that country upon early Greece can hardly be overestimated. A broad, horizontal strip of metal sheathing existed also upon the exterior, and small fragments of it are repeatedly met with in the rubbish filling the tholos; similar vestiges are found in a second monument of the kind near by. This overlaying of walls with sheet copper was by no means uncommon in ancient Greece. The subterranean bronze chamber of Danae may be explained as a tomb sheathed with metal. In mythical ages, in the sanctuary at Delphi, as well as in later times, in the Chalkioicos of Athene at Sparta, this wall-treatment appears employed for temples, even as Homer described it in palaces at Sparta and the Island of the PhÆacians. The Tholos of Atreus was itself subterranean; the exterior of the conical mass of masonry was covered with a hill of earth. In consideration of the almost perfect preservation of the interior, it is evident that some remains of a strictly architectural exterior would have been recognizable, had it existed. A tumulus covered and protected the structure; though its earth is now, for the greater part, washed away, to it must still be ascribed the good condition in which the kernel has remained.

The recently discovered grave at Menidi, in Attica (Lolling), is a parallel construction. As regards beauty of execution and richness of ornament, it is far inferior to the Tholos of Atreus; it is also much smaller, having an average diameter of 8.35 m. and 9 m. original height. Its only peculiarity is that the relieving blocks over the lintel, instead of projecting one over the other so as to form a triangle, are so placed as to leave four voids between as many horizontal beams, in a manner similar to the arrangement for relieving the ceiling of the principal chamber of the great pyramid of Gizeh.

The Tholos of Atreus offers a welcome commentary upon the thesauros of the royal palace at Ithaca, but only in respect to its construction. The purpose of the circular buildings still existing in Greece seems to have been entirely different from that of the treasure-house described in the Odyssey. It is true that eminent authorities deny this difference—and the analogies of the round Homeric building, of the treasure-vaults at MykenÆ mentioned by Pausanias, and of the treasury of Minyas in Orchomenos, lend their arguments some weight, and, at least, a greater probability than the suppositions that the structures of tholos form were intended for spring-houses (Forchhammer) or places of worship (Pyl). But there are reasons against all these assumptions. The treasure-houses of the PelopidÆ must have been upon the acropolis, inside the fortification walls, not at various distances outside their limits, as is the case with those of MykenÆ. Still less could such vaults for hoarded valuables have been as distant from the city as was the Tholos of Baphio from the ancient AmyclÆ, which stood entirely isolated in the midst of an open plain, without the possibility of communication with any royal residence. The tumuli of earth above the crypts would have but ill suited them to form a part of the palace building; while for a cell which was only to receive precious goods—for a magazine of deposit—the rich overlaying of the interior walls with sheet metal, and especially the elaborate carving of the portal front, seem out of place. These peculiarities, not to mention some of less importance, point to another purpose, for which they are, one and all, fitted—namely, the destination of the structures as tombs. Their position, before the acropolis and without the city walls; the covering of the chamber with earth in a tumulus form; the impossibility of their having had any communication with other buildings; the elaborate decoration of the entrance, and the princely wealth of metals in the interior—all support, with the striking analogies beyond the Ægean, this conception of the tholos buildings advocated by Welcker and Mure. It is possible that it is to these structures that Pausanias refers as the treasure-houses of the AtridÆ; but Pausanias, like us, knew MykenÆ only by its ruins. That patron of all ciceroni upon classic ground was not exacting for proofs of their legends. The hypothesis of Pyl may in so far be correct that the tholos itself did not serve as the place of sepulchre, which was provided by the small side chamber, but was a chapel for the funeral worship naturally to be assumed in connection with an heroic dynasty.

It is not possible to assign these tombs to individuals, like those of the early Persian monarchs, or even to dynasties: the questionable identification of the graves discovered in the agora of the acropolis, ventured by Schliemann, would here be inadmissible. It is reasonably certain, however, that the best-preserved tholos, that known by the name of Atreus, is about contemporaneous with the Gate of the Lions, and dates from the most flourishing period of the heroic age—before the downfall of the AtridÆ upon the return of Agamemnon.

A small chamber, only of sufficient size to receive the cinerary urn, in the centre of an upheaval of earth, was sufficient for the graves of the heroes who fell before Troy. Several of these tumuli exist. The larger of them, those of Hector and of Achilles, had a considerable elevation, and, standing upon a low promontory, were visible far at sea. They were without architectural features or decoration, mere cones of earth and stones; terminated, as Homer relates concerning those of Ilos, Sarpedon, and Elpenor, by a monument like a column, which must have resembled the piers upon Lydian tumuli. It is questionable whether the trees which grew in later times upon the mounds of Protesilaos before Troy, and of AlcmÆon in Arcadia, were originally and intentionally there placed, and are to be deemed characteristic of such works. Those planted upon the tumulus of Augustus in Rome may certainly be referred to his individual desire. From the account given by Pausanias of the tumulus of Æpytos at Pheneos, in Arcadia; from foundations remaining upon the island of Syme, and from later ruins at Kyrene—not to mention a well-preserved tumulus of very considerable dimensions, reveted with stone, which, from its situation in Algerian territory, might perhaps be ascribed to the Carthaginians, or even to the Romans—from all these examples, it is evident that such mounds, like the tumuli of Lydia and Etruria, were, for the greater part, elevated upon cylindrical foundations. But whether the interior were chambered or solid, whether the cone of earth rose directly from the earth or from a drum substructure, the tumulus appears to have been, in primitive times, the most customary form of monumental tomb for persons of high rank.

The common man was probably buried in pits, as at the present day, the grave being marked by an upright stone, with or without some slight ornament. Schliemann’s discoveries in the agora of MykenÆ show that, under certain circumstances, this procedure was adopted even for princes. The kingly importance of these sepulchres is assured by their position, and by the immense quantity of gold and valuables found within them. The decorative style of these objects dates them conclusively to the heroic age; but the assignment of the different graves to Agamemnon and his associates is a mere hypothesis.

Fig. 124.—Pyramid of KenchreÆ.
Fig. 124.—Pyramid of KenchreÆ.

A pyramidal form was only in isolated instances substituted for the tumulus. Of a pyramid, described by Pausanias as existing between Argos and Epidauros, there now remains a mass of masonry measuring 12 m. in the line of the diagonal. A second, near KenchreÆ, between Argos and Tegea, is better preserved. (Fig. 124.) Its plan is oblong, 14.5 m. long and nearly 12 m. broad; the two chambers of the interior are at present unroofed. The structure appears to have served as a common place of sepulchre for the fallen, and, at the same time, as a memorial of victory. This destination is also evident in two further pyramidal remains, in Laconia and near Lessa, which are described by Curtius and by Ross. The Greeks adopted both Asiatic and Egyptian forms for their funeral monuments; but in the construction of both tumulus and pyramid they introduced comparatively large chambers, early striving for ends foreign to those despotic lands:—a wise economy of material and labor and a gain of space.

Mausoleums and sepulchres are always among the first traces of civilization, and the most ancient examples of architectural art. In Greece, however, there are contemporaneous remains significant of other purposes. Chief among these are the fortifications of towns, although in general these works enclosed only the acropolis, which contained the residences of the rulers and the sanctuaries of the people. The true age of these defences can by no means be surely determined. Not all Cyclopean masonry is to be attributed to the earliest ages of Hellenic antiquity, for this manner of polygonal jointing remained in use long after a time when cut and squared stones were generally employed. On the other hand, immense rectangular blocks, laid in horizontal courses, frequently occur in city walls which are known to be of the greatest antiquity and even to have been totally ruined in the historical period, such monoliths being regularly used upon corners, the jambs of gates, etc., where especial strength and independent firmness were called for. When the surface of Cyclopean walls is perfectly smooth and exactly jointed, these may confidently be regarded as not of primitive antiquity; the erection of such masonry is a subtlety of greater difficulty than that of square blocks and horizontal beds. But walls built of enormous boulders, unhewn, and roughly piled up without calculation, the larger interstices being filled with smaller stones, are of extreme age. Such masonry appeared to later generations to be the work of giants, of Cyclops, and hence a name which might more fittingly be changed to Pelasgic than to Poseidonic, as suggested by Gladstone. The walls of Tiryns (Fig. 125) are of such gigantic blocks—bulwarks mentioned by Homer and Hesiod, and admired in their ruins by Pausanias. They are built upon a ridge of rock, which is over 190 m. long, only 70 m. broad, and elevated 10 m. above the surrounding plain. The masonry is from 7 to 15 m. thick; of its original height, estimated as 18 m., there remains from 10 to 12 m. The enormous stones vary from 2 to 3 m. in length and 0.9 to 12. m. in thickness. In its greatest breadth the wall is provided with galleries, roofed by projecting stones laid in horizontal beds and cut to the outline of a pointed arch. Such spaces are provided with loopholes upon the exterior, and, without doubt, served as magazines and casemates. Within these fortifications must have stood the royal residence, famed in the legends of Heracles and Eurystheus; of it no recognizable traces remain.

Fig. 125.—Plan of the Acropolis of Tiryns.
Fig. 125.—Plan of the Acropolis of Tiryns.

The walls of MykenÆ are not of equally gigantic masonry, but are fully as old, and are especially interesting because of the city having been a complete ruin in the earliest historical times. Besides casemate galleries in the walls, there are in MykenÆ a number of highly important gateways and portals; those of the fortifications at Tiryns were entirely destroyed, an inclined plane leading to the eastern side of the acropolis is there alone to be recognized as an approach.

Fig. 126.—Gate of the Lions at MykenÆ.
Fig. 126.—Gate of the Lions at MykenÆ. Fig. 127.—Smaller Gate of MykenÆ.

The doors were naturally of greater technical perfection than the long line of bulwarks; having been created for both admittance and defence, they required a certain constructive calculation, and permitted the employment of more exterior ornament. The simplest possible form of a gateway is the combination of three stones—the two jambs and the lintel—observable in two examples at MykenÆ. (Figs. 126 and 127.) Such a construction had the disadvantage that the upright blocks could not be joined to the wall, and that the lintel, which necessarily lay clear for a considerable length, could not immediately receive the massive continuation of the masonry above it. Notwithstanding the convergence of the jambs upon the great gate of MykenÆ, the beam has a length of 4.6 m., with a span of 3.05 m.; the bottom of the door being 3.2 m. wide, and its height 3.25 m. A relieving gable was consequently constructed, similar to that common in Egypt during the age of the Pyramids, and to that described in the consideration of the Tholos of Atreus. A triangular opening remained above the lintel, by which the efficacy of the wall as a fortification was considerably impaired. The orifice was closed by one or two slabs, which did not press heavily upon the lintel; but they could not have been sufficient to escape fracture by heavy missiles, or to resist the blows of a battering-ram. The attack was therefore diverted from this vulnerable point by moral means. The panel received a certain consecration by some protecting sacred symbol being carved upon it—such, for instance, as a Gorgon’s head—a recourse which was effective in times when the slightest desecration of a divine emblem was deemed more impious than the bloodiest deed of human violence. Such a carving has been preserved over the gateway of MykenÆ, which has received its name from the lions represented upon it. As a work of sculpture, it will be considered below. The column between the animals has, however, a bearing upon the architectural forms of the epoch. It is the same shaft, diminishing from summit to base, which has been noticed upon the portal front of the Tholos of Atreus. A second gate of MykenÆ resembled the Gate of ºthe Lions, but was smaller and simpler. (Fig. 127.)

Fig. 128.—Portal upon Samos.
Fig. 128.—Portal upon Samos. Fig. 129.—Gate of Phigalia.

The form of three blocks appears to have been soon changed, the wall itself serving in place of an especial jamb. The span of the lintel was decreased by two or four boldly projecting blocks as brackets. Examples of this development are offered by portals of Samos and Phigalia. (Figs. 128 and 129.) But in the same measure as the danger from the great span of the lintel was diminished, that of the brackets being pressed downward and disjointed was increased. A third manner of covering the opening, by stones leaned against each other at an angle, was a still further advance. (Fig. 130.) When the side thrust could be well borne—and for this the walls were always sufficient—such a gable could support any pressure that could possibly be imposed, while allowing a great breadth of passage. Finally, a triangular construction could be obtained by a gradual projection of horizontal stones, laid as they had been in so many instances for the relief of a lintel beneath them. This construction occurs in two varieties, differing in appearance, though not in principle: the projection of the horizontal courses of stone either began directly from the ground (Fig. 130), as has been noticed in the Tholos of Atreus (Fig. 122), or commenced at some height, the jambs being carried up vertically. (Fig. 132.) In both these varieties the line of the gable frequently appears concavely curved, as in the parabolic walls of the tholos, and the outline of a pointed arch was thus obtained. (Figs. 133 and 134.) In spite of their early familiarity with the abstract principle of the arch, as shown in Fig. 130, the Greeks refused to adopt the true arch, with its wedge-shaped stones, even in late historical ages, when they assuredly were acquainted with its construction. An illustration of their feeling in this respect is given by the aqueduct adjoining the Tower of the Winds in Athens, where the semicircles are cut from monoliths.

The influence of the gateways upon the masonry is evident from the more frequent adoption of the rectangular blocks, which had at first only been employed to give the portals an independent strength, both for the ramparts and for the out-works and protecting towers which these openings necessitated. Such a fortification, erected for the defence of a gate, still stands in Tiryns—the city to which succeeding ages ascribed the invention of tower-building (Pliny, Hist. Nat. vii. 56); it reaches a height of 13 m. Thetower which defended the gate of MykenÆ was even larger. Homer mentions such structures at Troy, Thebes, and Calydon, and is also familiar with casemates and battlements. The latter are shown by paintings upon archaic vases to have been of the normal rectangular shape.

Schliemann’s excavations in MykenÆ have proved that in this city the agora was situated just within the principal gate. Some of the stone benches encircling the agora were found in almost perfect preservation; they were constructed of slabs standing erect in concentric rows to receive the horizontal seats. They lend a new confirmation of Homer’s truthful characterization of locality, illustrating a passage which occurs in the description of the shield of Achilles, which describes the judgment scene upon the marketplace:

Fig. 131.—Gate of Missolonghi.
Fig. 131.—Gate of Missolonghi. Fig. 132.—Gate of Messene.

Though the remains of these prehistoric ages show in some degree the form of an ancient Greek acropolis, with its royal dwelling of courts and halls, and the sepulchral monuments before its gates, they are yet insufficient to complete even the main outlines of the picture by giving any understanding of the temple—that structure destined to become the ideal of Hellenic architecture. While the life and customs contemporary with the Homeric poems are, in other respects, represented with incomparable truth and distinctness, the epics are entirely silent upon this subject. It appears that the temples were neither of great size nor of artistic importance; among the ruins of Tiryns and MykenÆ there are no vestiges of columns or entablatures. The symbolical images of the deities were placed upon cliffs, in caverns, among the branches of sacred trees, or in the hollows of their trunks, and simple altars were erected before them. Frequently the worship of a deity was merely connected with a grove, or with some other locality fitted by nature for this purpose, and was there performed without an image or other dead symbol. It was thus with the most primitive god of Greek mythology, Zeus of Dodona. When a building was provided at all, it was, in the heroic ages, restricted to the cella, a ceiled chapel of oblong plan, which stood in the centre of a consecrated area, the temenos. This original form—the whole of the primitive shrine—is recognizable even in the developed peripteros, as the kernel within the outstanding columns. It does not appear strange that we should be acquainted with so few of these chapels when it is considered that hardly greater traces remain of the entire architecture of the Teutonic races during the first seven Christian centuries. It is natural, in the development of civilization, that sanctuaries exemplifying different phases of advancement should seldom stand next to each other; after the destruction of the old, the new arises in its place, upon its consecrated site. Examples of such original cellas are not, however, entirely wanting. Several remains published by Dodwell and Stackelberg are to be explained as chapels. A structure upon Delos, designated by Thiersch as a tomb, is quite comparable to a columnless temple cella. There is less probability that the ruins upon Mount Ocha and near the village Stoura, upon Euboea, were temples. They are chambers sheltered from above by slabs of stone, inclined like a gable. (Fig. 135.)

Fig. 133.—Gate of Thoricos.
Fig. 133.—Gate of Thoricos. Fig. 134.—Gate of Ephesos.

This method of roofing could not have been generally practised in early times, when simple and natural constructions utilized the materials at hand best adapted to the purpose. The builders, among the bald mountains of Euboea, were forced to such a manner of covering their chamber by lack of wood. The south of the island produces no trees which could provide the timber for roof-beams; while, on the other hand, open quarries in the neighborhood furnished a kind of slate-stone which is easily split into large slabs like joists and boards. So clumsy a ceiling construction as that upon Mount Ocha was not natural in countries of dense forests, such as was the original home of the Dorians. In other parts of Hellas than the rocky and sterile islands of the Ægean, the chapels must have been roofed with wood. The most obvious considerations make it evident that ceiling and roof of the primitive cella were originally of wood. In the later marble architecture of Greece this assumption is confirmed by numerous reminiscences of timbered construction, sufficient even to explain the methods and form of the original carpentry.

A pitched and gabled roof seems to have been generally employed for these early structures. The horizontal ceiling might be sufficient for the changeless blue sky of Egypt, but could not suffice in Greece, where, in certain seasons, heavy rains were frequent, and even hail-storms not unknown. Still no land upon the Mediterranean was familiar with the great steepness of roof made necessary by the enduring snow and ice of the North. In colder climates the pitch of the covering was not only greatly increased, but all horizontal projections were avoided, and the upper surfaces of smaller members and mouldings inclined. The rafters required ceiling beams beneath them; because of the necessary support and jointing, they could not be placed directly upon the stone walls, and it was further desirable to support the summit of the triangle by a king-post. The ceiling thus provided stood in such relation to the roof that a beam tied together each pair of rafters, and was, consequently, so laid across the oblong enclosure that the ends reposed upon the side walls. Upon these horizontal timbers planks were placed which concealed the inclined roof. By this an independent ceiling was created; and, as the boarding was laid upon the beams and not fastened to their lower side, this gave rise to the formation of lacunÆ or long coffers. The ends both of the horizontal ceiling beams and of the roof rafters were visible upon the exterior: the latter, forming the eaves, projected beyond the wall, to further the shedding of water and to protect the sides of the building. As the upper surface of the roof had been so closed as to be water-tight, it is natural that this sheathing should have been carried around upon all sides of the projecting rafter ends. It was otherwise with the spaces between the beams, which, being protected by the eaves, were not covered and masked by boards. The artistic instinct of the Greek would not permit him thus to conceal constructive forms when this was not rendered necessary by practical considerations. They received, on the contrary, an especial emphasis, that they might express their peculiar function with full force. Moreover, the closing of the aperture between the ends of the beams would have required the provision of other openings for light, as there were no windows in the walls of masonry.

This manner of roof and ceiling construction was generally employed in European Greece, being customary for palaces and dwellings as well as for the primitive temples. Open interstices between the horizontal beams existed in the hall of the royal dwelling at Ithaca. There can be no further doubt as to the development and original function of the metopes of the Doric entablature when it is considered that the Greeks, as late as the time of Euripides (Iphig. in Taur. 113), were familiar with the idea that it was possible to enter a primitive structure through these openings between the ends of the beams. The masking of the metopes would thus have been not only purposeless, but even detrimental; it was reasonable, however, to sheathe the ends of the beams themselves by small boards, which should at once protect and ornament them. The hewn extremities of such great timbers were rough and ugly; without covering, they would have been exposed to rapid decay. The simple decoration of three narrow strips of wood affixed to the ends of the beams was so customary in primitive carpentry that it became a typical motive in the later architecture of Greece. The chamfering of sharp edges of boards has been practised by the wood-workers of all nations. When two corners thus treated are placed together, there results a prismatic groove, which distinctly marks the edges of the separate pieces. Thus originated the primitive form of the triglyph, as the most natural and practical decoration of the rough-hewn ends of the ceiling beams by sheathing. The upper edges of the three strips were hidden against a plate beneath the rafters; the lower were covered by a continuous board, which united the various members of the frieze, and concealed any inexact jointing between the beams and the top of the wall. By placing the chamfered boards upright, an Æsthetic advantage was obtained: a vertical line was repeated just before the conclusion of the entablature by the cornice, being thus emphasized in the midst of horizontal members. Other ornamental details were added, based, likewise, upon motives of the original wooden construction. The continuous strip affixed to the lower edges of the triglyphs was securely and visibly fastened. This was effected by several thick trunnels, so driven in from below that the heads were left protruding. Under the end of each beam the strip was doubled, to give additional strength where the wood was most weakened by perforation. The ends of the rafters were also sheathed, and brought into harmony with the frieze. The inclined eaves were covered with boards, and as these did not stand erect, like those before the ceiling beams, but hung from the lower sides of the rafters, there was particular need for an increased and distinctly secure attachment. The sheathing was consequently pinned by more numerous trunnels; and as every triglyph had been provided with a second strip, here a second board was placed under the end of each rafter. The projecting heads of these nails were called guttÆ by the later Romans, but this cannot convince us that the peculiar form was intended as an ornamental petrifaction of hanging rain-drops: such a glorification of bad weather would have been foreign to the Greeks, accustomed to the clearest skies; and, for so primitive a construction, this explanation appears far-fetched. The imitation of rain-drops could nowhere have been more out of place than upon the inclined lower side of the eaves; drops might, perhaps, hang from the front edge of the cornice, but never upon its under slope, which rain could not even wet. The construction of an original work of carpentry thus provided the motives of the Doric entablature—naÏvely expressing the advance from the roughest practical necessity to high architectural perfection. In the apertures between the beam-ends, or metopes, and in the open triangle of the gable, were placed votive offerings, which there found a secure and sheltered stand, heightening the exterior importance of the work. In small chapels this interference with the openings for light could have been of no disadvantage. The gable was closed by a boarding, which hid from view the rough inner construction of the roof. This veil, the tympanon, was placed behind the triangle formed by the outer cross-beam and rafters, as the ceiling had been laid above the other horizontal timbers. The low gable thus naturally developed upon the front; and in later times, when the votive offerings had been exchanged for sculptured figures, formed a most characteristic and imposing feature.

The effect was heightened by the partly protective, partly decorative, painting of all the wooden surfaces. Red and blue appear originally to have been the chief colors; the former, in a dark shade, being used for the sheathing of the tympanon, the latter for the triglyphs and other members. Upon the bands were figured ornaments, most of which had developed from Asiatic prototypes; they consisted of the meander, anthemions, and the woven ribbons, etc., observable upon Assyrian sculptures and upon the archaic bronzes and vases of Greece and Central Italy. The extended polychromatic treatment of the marble temple is doubtless a reminiscence of this painted wood. Without such traditions, it would have developed differently: upon a structure of stone it would have been less restricted to the frieze and cornice.

The entablature had thus far advanced without connection with that most noble work of architecture—the Doric column. The shaft and entablature of the style were not created in connection or simultaneously; the forms of triglyph and mutule are not a growth from the columnar root, but rather prove the Doric frieze and cornice to have been the primitive Hellenic expression of roof and ceiling, which preceded the column, even as the plainest constructive necessities precede ornament. The peculiar wooden character of the entablature could exercise no important influence upon the shaft. If the existence, in heroic times, of the peripteros, the temple with outstanding columns, be denied—and of such structures there is not a vestige—it cannot be supposed that columns existed at all. Interior supports of wood are, indeed, mentioned by Homer, and engaged shafts formed part of the faÇade of the Tholos of Atreus, and were represented upon the relief over the Gate of the Lions in MykenÆ; but between these and the Doric column there is a distance only to be explained by the assumption that Asiatic influence was paramount, if not exclusive, in the architecture of the heroic ages of Greece. Though it is possible that rudiments of the Doric echinos may be recognized in the upper tore and scotia of the engaged columns of MykenÆ, it is yet evident that the turned-work of these members resulted from a wooden prototype, and that the overladen decoration of the shaft, in its style, is due to familiarity with a sheeting of beaten metal—i.e., to Phoenician artistic traditions. That the forms of the entablature were not created for the peripteros appears from the circumstance that the metopes lose their value as windows by the change of plan, and leave the cella without openings for light and air when surrounded by columns. With the appearance of the peripteral temple, the Doric entablature, which upon the oblong chapel had been the natural expression upon the exterior of roof and ceiling construction, became a functionless ornament, needing, as will be seen, many changes to bring it into harmony with the outstanding colonnade.

The development of the Doric column is not perfectly clear; it is more than probable that it was not wholly autochthonic and primitive Greek, like the entablature of the style. Its principal part, the shaft, was certainly imported. No prominent architectural feature can be deemed newly invented that has been in common usage in a neighboring and accessible country for centuries. The Doric shaft, with its characteristic diminution and channellings, was known in Egypt more than a thousand years before its introduction into Greece, as proved by the monuments of Beni-Hassan. Commercial intercourse had existed between the two countries for centuries, and it cannot be assumed that the Greeks had not seen Egyptian works of architecture; they could not have arrived at precisely the same results by independent invention. It would rather be difficult to conceive how the receptive Greeks could have refused all instruction from the neighboring people, so far in advance of them for centuries after the Trojan war. Eight-sided drums have been found at Bolymnos, and an octangular shaft at Troezen; but these isolated instances offer no proof that the development of the channelled shaft from the square pier was effected in Greece in the same manner as had been done fifteen centuries or more previously in Egypt.

The genius of the Greeks, however, always showed its independence when the artistic perception of the neighboring nations had been at fault or defective. It was impossible for them to rest content with the termination of the so-called Proto-Doric columns of Beni-Hassan. A simple plinth upon the upper end of the shaft was insufficient; it left without mediation the contrast between the forcible upright line of the channels and the long level of the epistyle. Some interposition was necessary between the vertical and the horizontal members, and a moulding of inclined outline was best fitted to fulfil this natural requirement, which almost appears to be an Æsthetic law. The abacus plinth was retained as the transition from the circular drums of the shaft to the broader oblong of the lintel. The oblique and projecting member between the two, the echinos, was a link connecting the plans, as well as the directions, of column and entablature. The perfectly straight outline of an inverted cone was rarely employed in Greece for the echinos; a stele of Artemis Brauronia upon the Athenian acropolis, shown by inscriptions to be of great age, is an isolated instance. This rigid line was early exchanged for a curve, which, in its advancing stages of refinement, became one of the most characteristic features of Doric architecture. The moulding seems, at times, to have been ornamented with painted leaves, which, in the Ionic echinos beneath the roll, was changed, in the manner peculiar to that order, from the colored indication to carving. It is not certain whether this floral decoration was generally adopted, or existed only in the isolated instance by which it is known—the so-called Temple of Theseus. Upon the translation of the wooden construction to a stone entablature, which resulted in a narrow intercolumniation, the base was given up, and the upper step of the stylobate was regarded as a common plinth.

It appears that the employment of columns connected with temples commenced, in Greece, in the manner observed upon the rock-cut tomb faÇades of Egypt and Lycia, and the chapels of Mesopotamia and Phoenicia: two columns were placed within the open front, between the projecting side walls; that is to say, the temple was in antis.

The next step was the removal of these side walls, or parastadÆ, columns taking their place in the corners before them, and the prostyle temple was thus obtained. These changes rendered several important alterations necessary. They caused a new wall to be erected before the interior of the cella, the naos, the colonnade of the front thus acquiring the nature of a portico, the pronaos. The jambs of the door in this wall were so inclined as to diminish the span of the lintel, the frame receiving upon its upper corners the stepped ears, or parotides, customary in Western Asia. A new member of the entablature was needed to replace the omitted wall and provide a bearing for the ceiling cross-beams—namely, the epistyle. It is possible that this member, distinctly separated, existed before the change, but it certainly was not necessary. The division of the cella into naos and pronaos finally altered the position of the front ceiling-beams; in the naos they lay, as before, resting upon the side walls, but in the pronaos they were placed lengthwise—from the columns to the newly erected division wall. Besides improving the construction of the portico ceiling, this greatly added to the beauty of the front entablature: epistyle and ceiling-beams would otherwise have lain upon each other, in the same direction, but from this change resulted the frieze of triglyphs and metopes upon the front, as upon the sides. The gain was not effected without a difficulty arising in the frieze above the end of the side wall and the corner column, the outer ceiling-beam of the pronaos thus lying in its length upon the epistyle without the formation of a metope. And here the constructive truth was first sacrificed in favor of the exterior appearance: a cube, standing above the corner column, took the place of the outer beam, and the continuous alternation of triglyphs and metopes was carried out.

Having so far deviated from logical construction, the desire for an harmonious treatment of the exterior led to other and greater changes. The dead-wall of the rear had had no part in the development of the frieze, and appeared intolerably bare. This deficiency could hardly be overcome otherwise than by a repetition of a portico upon the back, creating the epinaos, and carrying the entablature of triglyphs and metopes around the entire building, thus perfecting the amphiprostyle temple.

The more these alterations were made in favor of the exterior appearance, the more was the original structure dismembered. The extreme boundary of possible concessions was attained, and, at the next step, the entablature, translated into stone, separated itself entirely from the construction and became an applied ornament. In one stride the ultimate type of the Hellenic temple was determined, by carrying outstanding columns entirely around the cella,—the building became a peripteros.

It is probable that these extensive alterations took place almost simultaneously, and were adopted at once for the most prominent shrines, while the preceding varieties—the temple in antis and the prostyle and amphiprostyle temples—though their entablatures were also executed in stone, were only employed in subordinate positions. With the heightened importance of the decorative exterior the monumental significance of the temple rose above the mere necessities of a chamber for the sacred image. The structure acquired equal solidity in every part exposed to view. It was built of a homogeneous material. The timbering of roof and ceiling was hidden by the stone symbols placed before the ends of the rafters and beams; the entablature was allowed an independent freedom of development and proportion. The heaviness of the material made it necessary to diminish the voids and increase the solids of the supports as much as was feasible. The stone shafts were allowed a greater diameter and placed more nearly together than when, as was the case in Etruria at a much later period, their burden had been of timber. The stone cornice, which was not as high as the epistyle, could not span the same clear width, and called for a second support over the intercolumniations,—a further triglyph. This was the more acceptable, as the appearance of the frieze was improved by its adoption; the breadth of triglyph and metope became nearly equal and better proportioned, their alternating rhythm more pleasing. The metopes, having upon the peripteros no importance as windows, were closed by thin slabs, which added to the unity and imposing force of the edifice. It is surprising how faithfully the traditional forms were still retained, even to the smallest details, while they yet received a truly artistic conventionalization and those proportions which make the Doric temple the grandest and most perfect monument of architectural history. It is probable that the completed peripteros existed as early as the seventh century B.C. The first steps of advance were rapidly made, and may, perhaps, be referred to the ages immediately preceding. It would indeed be interesting to know when, where, and by whom the incomparable design was perfected which gave to the world its proudest edifice; but it must suffice to understand the intentions of which the Doric temple was the final result.

Semper has suggested that a canopy-like roof, supported by columns, was placed above and around the small temple cella to increase its extent, and, at the same time, to express its power and sacredness by that oldest symbol of terrestrial and celestial authority. This attractive assumption does not interfere with the theory of the previous development of the temple in antis and the prostylos, or with the historical considerations based upon the appearance of an imperfect peripteros centuries before in Egypt. The cella and outstanding columns rose from a stepped foundation, the crepidoma, the kernel of which, the stereobate, was formed of massive walls, or, when possible, of the native rock. The blocks were too high for human steps, and are not to be conceived as stairs. Such an ascent entirely surrounding the temple would have been purposeless, and contrary to the isolating character of the crepidoma. They formed a base, such as is displayed in an exaggerated manner by the Mesopotamian sanctuaries, where, however, the chapels elevated upon the gigantic terraces were small in proportion to the substructure. In buildings of greater dimensions, the few and massive steps serving as the base of the Greek temple were increased, not in number, but in size. They were thus always proportional and fitted to their function as a foundation. Accessible stairs from all sides would have given a pyramidal effect to the lower part of the composition; while, at the foot of the upright supports, the horizontal line should rather be emphatically pronounced. Smaller intermediate blocks were provided for the ascent to the temple, thus made possible only upon the front. The upper step, the stylobate, was, as has been said, the common plinth, the columns being without base-moulding, and, consequently, without individual functions or isolated independence. The comparatively narrow intercolumniations were the better passages from this absence of projections at the foot of the columns. The powerful shafts were doubly modified by the diminution and by the entasis. The first refinement found its model in the natural contraction of all ascending bodies; a greater strength is needed below because of the increasing weight. To this must be added an optical motive: every diminution modifies the perspective effect, increasing the apparent height or distance of bodies thus bordered by lines slightly converging, though apparently parallel. The entasis was entirely decided by such optical considerations. It overcame a deception, resulting from the diminution, which makes a straight-lined cone of very steep sides appear of slightly concave outline. The shafts usually had twenty, in a few instances sixteen, channels, of nearly elliptical profile, separated by sharp arrises. As may be seen in unfinished temples, these grooves were not executed until the last stone of the building was in place, that the chipping of the delicate edges by the imposition of the drums or blocks next to them, and by other accidents during the process of building, might be avoided. It was only upon the capital that the channels were cut in advance, as a guide. To avoid the chipping of this stone, it was necessary to prevent its sharp lower edges from resting directly upon the top of the drum beneath it. To this end a diminutive step, a scamillus of smaller diameter, was turned upon the bottom of the capital block, or the same effect was attained by slightly slanting off and increasing the right angle of its lower edge. It was contrary to the artistic feeling of the Greek architect for constructive truth to mask even this slight necessity by priming and painting. It was, rather, made more distinct by increased size and a characteristic profile, in some instances even by a repetition of the incision. The upper end of the shaft was thus distinctly separated, notwithstanding the continuous channellings, and was related to the capital as the mediating neck of the column, the hypotrachelion. The echinos began its projection with several annulets, which still more definitely marked the junction of the capital with the shaft. It would be difficult to decide whether these mouldings were reminiscences of the binding-ribbons upon the necking of Egyptian floral columns. They were not placed beneath the echinos, but upon it, and consequently follow the curved profile, enlarging concentrically with its projection. The Doric capital, among all capitals that we know, attains the highest Æsthetic perfection by its fulfilment of the requirements of a transitional member: by the proportion of its projection, and especially by its expressive and characteristic curve, which rises from a firm and almost straight line to the decided turn beneath the abacus. The outline is more elastic than a simple oblique angle, more vigorous and capable of resistance than the concave curve. The echinos provides the requisite projection; the abacus upon it forms the second transition from the circular plan of the shaft to the rectangle of the entablature. In the Doric style this upper half is about the same height as the echinos beneath it, while in the capitals of other orders the curved members of circular plan have been developed at the expense of this plinth, which is dwarfed to a thin plate.

It was first noticed by Cockerell in 1829 that the axes of the columns surrounding the cella are not vertical, but lean inward. This peculiarity was chiefly adopted to counteract an optical deception, resulting, like the deviation which led to the entasis, from the diminution of the shafts, making these, when perfectly upright, appear inclined away from the neighboring wall and from each other. The deception is particularly felt upon the corner shafts; these were corrected to lean in the direction of the diagonal, and decided the inclination of the columns of the front and side. The absolute deviation from the vertical is very slight, about 1-150th of the height, and by no means makes the inner sides of the diminished columns parallel to the wall. The inclination was effected by the irregular cutting of the first block, which was lower within than without, being so formed that the surface of its base was not circular, but slightly elliptical. All the succeeding drums had perfectly round beds, and consequently slanted in the manner decided by the first. The contact of these stones of the shaft was restricted to a narrow rim upon the exterior of their plan. In their centre they were steadied by an encased dowel of wood, the form of which is known from the remains of the Parthenon; this served as a pivot for the grinding of one block upon the other.

The stone beams of the epistyle lay from axis to axis of the columns. In buildings of great dimensions several slabs were laid side by side as lintels, each having the entire height of this member, which, as forming the conjunction of the columns, may be conceived as a representative of the wall. The outer surface of the epistyle block was carved upon its upper edge with the tainia and trunnels, described as securing the triglyphs of the original timbered entablature. The forms of these details show the great reverence with which the primitive wooden prototypes were imitated, while, at the same time, they were fitted to be cut in stone in a far more artistic manner than were the direct copies of carpentry observed in Lycia. The slits of the triglyph terminated at first in elliptical lines, which became, in the decline of the style, straight and horizontal. The triglyphs themselves were so distributed that one was placed over each column and one over the centre of each intercolumniation. An exception was made at the corner, where the triglyph could not be placed in the axis of the shaft, being needed for the support of the angle. It would be contrary to the open and non-sustaining character of the metope for this to be assigned to a position so constructively important. Vitruvius, regardless of this consideration, recommends that the corner triglyph be placed in the axis of the column beneath it, like all the others; but only one debased instance is known where this occurs—the so-called Temple of Demeter at Poestum. The disturbance of symmetry which resulted to the frieze by the removal of the corner triglyph from the axis was counterbalanced by the metopes being made slightly larger, and especially by the outer intercolumniations being greatly diminished in width. This last step was also desirable from other considerations, notably because the dark background of the cella caused the openings between the inner shafts to appear narrower than the free and light space between those of the exterior.

All these changes were primarily caused by the Doric entablature not having been created for the peripteros; it was necessary thus to fit it for decorative employment.

The metopes were originally open interstices between the beams; intertrabies, as they might be called, with reference to the intercolumniations; having, upon the peripteros, been closed within and without by light slabs, the votive offerings, formerly placed in the apertures, were now superseded by sculptures in relief upon these stones, which gave to the entire entablature—or, when the carving was restricted, to that of the fronts—an imposing decoration. A continuous band, like that beneath the triglyphs, terminated the frieze; but the individuality of triglyph and metope was even here maintained, the superposed member being broken around them, as a separate coronation for each.

Fig. 139.—Plan and Elevation of the so-called Temple of Theseus, Athens.
Fig. 139.—Plan and Elevation of the so-called Temple of Theseus, Athens.

Fig. 140.—Painting upon the Pteroma of the Temple of Theseus.
Fig. 140.—Painting upon the Pteroma of the Temple of Theseus.

The cornice showed reminiscences of the projecting eaves by its corona being cut with a downward slant, such as would never have been invented for the treatment of stone. That this inclination was not precisely the same as the pitch of the roof rafters cannot be adduced as an argument against its fundamental idea; in the marble structure there was nothing to call for so exact a resemblance. The decoration of the lower surface of the corona shows the original motive of its wooden construction as distinctly expressed as was the formation of the triglyph in the frieze. The position of the ends of the rafters, beneath the sheathing, is marked by boards, each being pinned upon it with eighteen wooden pegs. From the duplication of the triglyphs in the stone building there resulted an equal number of mutules, and these were still further multiplied by being placed over each metope—this latter increase having been at first attempted with members of half the normal width, as at Fig. 136. The whole composition was thus the more richly divided the higher the building ascended; upon one column rested two triglyphs and four mutules. It is further remarkable that, to make the decoration harmonious upon all sides of the edifice, these mutules were also introduced upon the front and rear entablatures; this repetition, with the inclination of the corona upon the fronts, naturally without a gutter, must be regarded as a further concession, made, contrary to the genetic signification of members, in favor of the monumental appearance of the entire exterior. The corona is bordered by the so-called Doric cyma, or beak-moulding, distantly resembling the scotia of Egypt and Mesopotamia. The concluding gutter is of a beautifully curved outline. When it occurs upon the sides of the building, where it is frequently restricted to the corners, it is provided with lions’ heads, which, arranged over the columns as gargoyles, throw from their open jaws the rain-water of the roof beyond the steps of the crepidoma. An isolated instance—the Heraion of Olympia, which seems never to have been provided with a stone entablature—shows that the timbered roof and ceiling were placed at times with a wooden epistyle directly upon the stone columns of a peripteros. The covering of the roof was formed, in the best period, by flat marble tiles, the joints of which were covered by smaller curved blocks, running from ridge to eaves, and terminated over the cornice by antefixes. The apex and corners of the gable were provided with acroteria, standing upon special bases. They are reminiscences of an ancient usage of Western Asia: those of the corners found their origin in the ornaments of primitive altars and sarcophagi, known in Biblical accounts as horns. They were sometimes supplanted by votive offerings suited to the position, such as tripods, or by griffins and other symbolical figures. The pointed acroterium of the apex was usually the whole of the two half-anthemions represented upon those of the corners; in larger monuments it was often replaced by statues, just as extended compositions of figures were created for the tympanon beneath, as a substitute for the dedicated objects which appear to have originally filled the gable.

The polychromy of the Doric temple was one of the most important features of its external appearance. It is probable that the greater part of its marble surface, possibly the whole, was colored. Our Northern conceptions can with difficulty comprehend the full value of this treatment in the general composition; in our gray landscape, a building thus painted might appear harsh and variegated. The color of the lower supporting members was restricted to a light tint, the so-called baphe, which had first been applied to the stucco priming necessary for the coarse and porous stone of older temples, and was afterwards transferred from this to the marble of later monuments. It stained the surface with a light golden-brown tint, moderating the harsh chalky white of lime stucco, or of marble, and investing the newly erected building with the patina by which age always modulates the color of stone. This baphe was employed for the marble temple on account of the traditional painting of the stucco priming, because of the too dazzling white natural to the freshly hewn material, and, finally, in order to harmonize the columns and stylobate with the intensely rich colors of the entablature. Dark and positive pigments were restricted to the frieze and cornice, having, without doubt, been first employed to preserve the original wooden material. The beams and slat-work, like the triglyphs with their regulas and the mutules, were designated by blue; the trunnels were red or gilded. That which had at first been open was treated as a dark-red background; the metopes and tympanon thus clearly outlining the reliefs and groups of statues which ornamented them. The continuous members were treated with particular richness; the narrower strips were painted with the meander and other woven forms; the gutter with anthemions; while the Doric cyma was decorated with leaves of various colors, so artistically conventionalized as but little to resemble nature. The inner side of the entablature was still more richly colored. (Fig. 140.)

One of the most wonderful refinements of Greek architecture was the attention paid to optical deceptions, and the correction of these by the curvature of all straight and horizontal lines. It has been mentioned that the peripteral columns did not stand mathematically upright, all the axes being inclined inwards; the discovery of this fact was followed by a publication, made by the architect Hoffer in 1838, which maintained that no perfectly level line existed upon the entire temple, the horizontals being curved slightly upwards. Hoffer’s assertions were verified by the micrometrical studies made by Penrose, in 1846, upon the Parthenon, the so-called Theseion, the PropylÆa, Erechtheion, and the Temple of Olympian Zeus in Athens, and afterwards upon the temples of Nemea and Segesta. His measurements make evident a curvature of 0.069 m. in 30.876 m. upon the front of the Parthenon, and of 0.108 m. in 69.525 m. upon its sides. Though so very slight a deviation is not readily apparent, there are no mathematically rectangular forms upon the entire building; the corner metopes are, for instance, trapezoidal. Whether these curves, the existence of which is not to be denied, were really intentional, was questioned by Boetticher, but it has been proved beyond a doubt by the further investigations of Ziller. The motive for the adoption of refinements, so extraordinarily delicate and difficult of execution, was the same desire to correct displeasing optical deceptions which prompted the entasis of the columns and the inclination of their axes from the vertical. The apparent deviation of the lines, sagging from the horizontal, was most disagreeably apparent upon the front entablature—the base of the gable triangle, which, when straight, invariably appears concave, while a corona, in reality curved upwards, presents itself to the eye as perfectly level. By a deviation from the absolutely horizontal, the appearance of greater correctness was attained.

Fig. 142.—Fragments of Coffered Ceilings from the Parthenon. A. From the Side Pteroma. B. From the Epinaos.
Fig. 142.—Fragments of Coffered Ceilings from the Parthenon. A. From the Side Pteroma. B. From the Epinaos.

The peripteral columns of the Doric style worthily express the peculiar character of the Dorians by their simple dignity. By them a passage was formed around the cella, the pteroma, the ceiling of which was most richly decorated with cofferings. (Fig. 141.) So short a span was here required of the horizontal beams that it was possible to translate them into stone simultaneously with the outer entablature; this seems to have been universal in the larger peripteral temples, that of Zeus in Olympia possibly being an exception. The ceiling did not remain in its original position, resting upon the epistyle, but, with the increased dimensions of the stone frieze, was considerably elevated. The spaces between the lintels were closed by slabs of stone which retained the form of the original wooden cofferings, being hollowed by stepped lacunÆ, diminishing in size. A transitional moulding was placed in each angle formed by a vertical and horizontal surface. Upon the coffered ceilings of Attic monuments (Fig. 142) this member is the Lesbian cyma, supplemented by an astragal, these signs of an Ionic influence being further noticeable in other parts of these buildings. The wall of the cella, though surrounded by the pteroma, still bears traces of the entablature, which, as shown above, preceded the outstanding columns; the triglyphs and metopes are repeated, or in their place is a frieze of sculptured reliefs, in which the isolated carvings of the metope become continuous and connected. At times there remain beneath the latter the tÆnia, regulas, and trunnels—only to be explained and justified as the reminiscences of portions of an originally well-founded decoration which had, in part, been gradually supplanted.

Fig. 143.—Plan of the Middle Temple upon the Acropolis of Selinous.
Fig. 143.—Plan of the Middle Temple upon the Acropolis of Selinous.

The cella itself, within the pteroma, appears in plan either without columns, as a temple in antis, as a prostylos, or as an amphiprostylos, thus supporting the assumption that these were the original forms of its development. The cella was often greatly increased in length; this made its transverse division desirable, and there resulted the front portico, or pronaos, the principal hall of the temple, or naos, and the space partitioned off at the rear, called, analogically, the epinaos. An especial chamber of the building was at times isolated to serve as a treasury; this was known as the opisthodomos. (Fig. 143.) The pronaos, whether with or without columns, was closed, if at all, only by a light bronze grating; from it a wide portal, occupying almost the entire division wall, opened into the naos. Its upper part was fixed, but entrance was afforded through its lower part by folding wings. The grooves worn by the doors are still visible upon the Parthenon floor. The interior was disproportionately narrow, a result of the peripteral enclosure and of the limitations imposed by the gable, which would have become too high and heavy if the front had been greatly widened in favor of the interior breadth; moreover, the horizontal ceiling was unfavorable to width, which was limited to the natural span of the beams.

The possibility of admitting much light had been given up with the change in the position of the entablature and metopes. Notwithstanding the size of the door, sufficient daylight could not enter through this; it was itself in the shadow of the pteroma, and generally, also, of a pronaos. But little illumination was required for the small chapel when this served solely as a receptacle for the sacred image. A dim and mystical twilight was easily obtained by the use of one or more perpetually burning lamps, which could only have been favorable to the artistically unpretentious interior. It was otherwise with the larger and more important temples, opened for festive assemblages. Their interiors were divided by architectural members, and contained manifold works of art and objects of value—a varied richness, which called for an increased splendor of light, possible only by artificial illumination.[G]

In the desire to increase the available space of the temple interior, the enclosing walls were advanced more closely to the columns of the peripteros, thus decreasing the width of the pteroma; while the hall was divided by two rows of inner shafts into three aisles, the outer two of which, considerably narrower than the middle, were partitioned into two stories by the introduction of galleries, accessible by staircases at either side of the chief portal.

We now turn from this general consideration of the Doric style to a review of the principal monuments remaining, dividing them, as well as possible, into groups representative of certain ages and periods of development. The oldest peripteral temples known are not situated in Greece proper, but in the early colonies upon the coasts of Magna GrÆcia and Sicily. They are distinguishable from later buildings by a naÏve freedom of form and the lack of any strictly systematical development—any canonical type. The carving of details is as careful as the coarse and porous limestone permits. The columns stand so far apart that the low and heavy proportion of the whole is not altered by the comparatively high stylobate. The great distance of the shafts from the wall reduces the naos to a corridor-like narrowness, the more noticeable as the whole temple plan is very long. (Fig. 143.) The columns themselves are low, never having a height greater than five lower diameters. The monolithic shaft is much diminished, and has an excessive entasis; it is provided with twenty, or in rare instances sixteen, channels of segmental outline. The incisions beneath the capital block, bordering the hypotrachelion, are generally multiplied, often being three in number. The necking upon the columns of Sicilian temples is not merely the straight commencement of the channellings, but often forms, under the rings, a slight scotia—the apophyge—which weakly detaches the echinos from the shaft by interrupting its organic connection. The echinos has too great a projection; its outline is soft, and the small rings are placed too high. The entire capital appears powerless and flat: on this account the thickness of the entablature has not been increased; the outer and inner surfaces of the epistyle do not project beyond the upper diameter of the shaft. The members of the entablature are exceedingly high and heavy, as are the details, down to the trunnels and cyma. The frieze alone is low, and the metopes consequently small, being framed by massive triglyphs, the chamferings of which have circular or lanceolate endings. The mutules above the triglyphs have the same great breadth; in one instance there remains above the metope only space for half a mutule. (Fig. 136.) The polychromy is, in general, sombre—yellow-brown and black, with little red, being the colors chiefly employed; the patterns of the ornaments are distinctly of Oriental origin.

Fig. 144.—Northern Temple upon the Acropolis of Selinous.
Fig. 144.—Northern Temple upon the Acropolis of Selinous.
Fig. 145.—Middle Temple upon the Acropolis of Selinous.
Fig. 146.—Temple of Assos.

The most prominent monuments of this class are at Selinous, upon the western extremity of Sicily. That city was founded in 628 B.C.: its acropolis appears to have been early occupied by temples; at least the northernmost of these buildings, with the widest intercolumniations, of two and two thirds lower diameter, and the most spacious pteroma, dates from the commencement of the sixth century B.C. The middle temple of the acropolis appears scarcely fifty years younger; it is celebrated for the primitive reliefs of its metopes, which will be considered in the section upon Greek sculpture. A corner of the building is given above, Fig. 136; its capital is Fig. 145. A third example of this earliest period of development—which is designated by Semper as the laxly archaic style—is known under the name Tavola dei Palladini, and stands among the ruins of the Elian colony, Metapontion, a city founded as early as 768 B.C., but entirely rebuilt in 586 B.C., after its destruction by the original inhabitants of Lower Italy. The fifteen columns at present upright probably date from the sixth century B.C. The intercolumniations are wide, the shafts excessively diminished, and the curve of the echinos too pronounced. It is difficult to decide whether to this class may belong the remains of the temple at Cadacchio upon Corfu (Corkyra), and of that built of lava at Assos, in the Troad. (Fig. 146.) The former has been greatly disfigured by a late restoration, and it is not at present possible to determine the date of the latter, known only by insufficient publications.

The next advances of temple architecture consist in placing the higher columns more nearly together and in heightening and narrowing the triglyphs. The elegance of proportion and detail was thus considerably increased. Ionic elements were first introduced in this period, greatly to the advantage of the style, which is designated as the archaic. An example is the middle temple upon the eastern plateau of Selinous, where the columns are cut with Ionic flutes. It is also important in the history of sculpture from the remains of metopes carved with scenes of the gigantomachia. (Fig. 147.) Of similar character is the great uncompleted Temple of Zeus upon the same plateau, 110 m. long and 50 m. broad, with three aisles and galleries in the interior (Fig. 148); and also the so-called Chiesa di Sansone at Metapontion, of which small temple there are only few and scattered remains. A third Doric temple of this site, discovered during the last few months, is as yet inedited. It is uncertain whether the Temple of Artemis upon the island of Syracuse (Ortygia) should be reckoned with this group.

Fig. 147.—Middle Temple upon the Eastern Plateau of Selinous.
Fig. 147.—Middle Temple upon the Eastern Plateau of Selinous.
Fig. 148.—Temple of Zeus upon the Eastern Plateau of Selinous.
Fig. 149.—So-called Temple of Heracles, Acragas.

One example of the epoch exists in Greece proper—the Temple of Corinth. Its columns were once heavily primed with stucco, and are now so weathered that it is impossible to draw any definite conclusions from them. The outline of the capital is primitive, though not in the degree formerly supposed, when this ruin was thought to be the oldest monument of the Doric style. The two last-mentioned remains and the Temple of Athene upon the island Ortygia have the heaviest and lowest proportions, the lower diameter of the columns comparing to the height as 1 to 4.27 (Athene), 1 to 4.29 (Artemis), and 1 to 4.32 (Corinth).

Fig. 150.—So-called Temple of Theseus, Athens.
Fig. 150.—So-called Temple of Theseus, Athens.
Fig. 151.—Porticus of Philip, Delos.
Fig. 152.—So-called Temple of Demeter, PÆstum.

Fig. 153.—Plan of the Great Temple of Poestum.
Fig. 153.—Plan of the Great Temple of Poestum.

Fig. 154.—Plan, Section, and Elevation of the Temple of Olympian Zeus at Acragas.
Fig. 154.—Plan, Section, and Elevation of the Temple of Olympian Zeus at Acragas.

The Temple of Zeus at Selinous was the first of a number of colossal structures, in which the architectural ability of the Greeks, by that time thoroughly schooled, sought also to develop itself in enormous size. The hexastyle front was increased to the octastyle, thus permitting wider dimensions of the cella, which still, however, did not attain the greatest possible extent, the architect being unwilling to reduce the breadth of the pteroma. The columns became even shorter and thicker; they were less diminished and had a more delicately adjusted entasis; the intercolumniations were increased. The separation of the capital from the shaft by an apophyge was abandoned; the entasis was made steeper and of a more vigorous outline. The disproportionately high and weak triglyphs are especially characteristic of this stage of development; with the exception of these, the entablature still remained low and heavy. Marble came more and more into use as a building-stone; the execution of details in stucco was rarer. The new material did not limit the use of color, which, in place of the former tones, became brighter—red, blue, and yellow prevailing. The most imposing, because the best-preserved, of these colossal works is the magnificent Temple of Poestum, with its two stories of inner columns partly intact. (Fig. 153.) The triglyphs have not as yet disappeared from the walls of the cella, but otherwise the construction shows no primitive traits, being fully fitted for its execution in stone. Resembling this in many points is the Temple of Acragas, or Agrigentum, termed that of Heracles. (Fig. 149.) The great Temple of Zeus of the same city was of the most gigantic dimensions ever attempted in the sacred architecture of the Greeks. It was also, unfortunately, even greater than was really practicable for a trabeated construction in such a building-material, and consequently became a monstrosity. The temple was heptastyle, that is, had seven columns upon the front, which rendered impossible the normal entrance in the middle. It differed still more decidedly from other Greek temples in that the cella was not surrounded by an open pteroma, the outstanding columns being supplanted by a wall decorated with engaged shafts. It would be difficult to decide whether this peculiar pseudo-peripteros owed its conformation to the building-stone at disposal, only to be quarried in blocks too short for the lintels of the pteroma, or whether other considerations led to this abnormal negation of the fundamental principles of columnar architecture, which here has no relation to the better-founded practices of Roman builders in the application of engaged shafts. The transformation of the pteroma made an entire change in the general disposition of plan; but too little of the building now remains above ground to render its arrangement certain. If door-openings be assumed at both sides of the middle column, as in the illustration, this would have been possible only upon the west, the middle column of the east—the customary entrance-front—being proved by the remains to have been engaged. It is not probable that windows existed in the wall between the columns; the supposition is more natural that some of the side metopes were unclosed, and provided the pteroma with sufficient daylight. This would have been no innovation, but rather, in this case, where it was impossible to execute the open peripteros, a return to the original method of illumination through the interstices between the beams upon the top of the cella wall. The before-mentioned Temple of Athene upon the island of Ortygia is another Sicilian example belonging to this archaic period of gigantic dimensions.

The two colossal monuments of Athens, built during the second half of the sixth century, are more important, although the older Parthenon upon the acropolis, if, indeed, ever completed, could not have stood longer than half a century, and the Doric temple of Olympian Zeus was discontinued before its construction had far advanced. A comparison of a fragment of the earlier building with the entablature of the present Parthenon shows how disproportionately high were the triglyphs and how heavy and broad the tÆnia and regulas of the archaic period. (Fig. 155.)

Fig. 155.—Entablatures of the Older and Present Parthenon.
Fig. 155.—Entablatures of the Older and Present Parthenon.

Fig. 156.—Plan of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia.
Fig. 156.—Plan of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia.

The exercise of the designer’s individual ability in these works, and the hieratic retention of every constructive and Æsthetic gain thus obtained, prepared for the fullest perfection of the Doric style. The advance was effected by a slight attenuation of the too massive columns, a further reduction of the height of the entablature, and an increase in the projection of the smaller decorative members. The temples built during, or shortly after, the time of the Persian wars show the gradual introduction of these changes. Among the Sicilian remains of this period are the uncompleted Temple of Segesta, the so-called Temple of Concordia at Acragas, and the six peripteral temples upon the acropolis and eastern plateau of Selinous not previously mentioned. Among those of Greece proper, the Temple of Athene upon Ægina and the Temple of Zeus at Olympia (Fig. 156) are most prominent. The frieze of triglyphs was omitted from the cella walls of the Temple of Ægina, but the regulas and trunnels were retained with curious effect: it is as though the designer were only slowly and with difficulty led to give up, one by one, the traditions of a primitive wooden construction. The date of the building of the Olympian temple is uncertain, but the name of its architect, Libon, of Elis, has been handed down, with one exception the earliest connected with Greek architecture. The recent excavations have entirely exposed the overthrown ruins. They show that the forms of the edifice are more primitive than would have been expected from the age in which Pheidias completed the celebrated chryselephantine statue of the temple deity. It is possible that the advance of the building was slow, or that there were long interruptions of the work before its final completion. An especially important result of the investigations is the evidence that an enclosed Ædicula for the statue of Zeus, hitherto advocated by restorers because of the supposed opening in the roof and ceiling for light, did not exist, the interior having been divided into three aisles like the great Temple of PÆstum. The proportions of the peripteros were of great vigor and beauty. It was built of poros, with the exception of the metope reliefs upon the fronts of the cella, and the carved gutter and roof tiles, which were of marble. This so-called poros, a stone almost exclusively employed for the earlier buildings of the Greeks, is a rough shell conglomerate, usually brought to a surface by a heavy priming of stucco. The floor of the pteroma of the great temple at Olympia was of a pebble cement, the small inner staircases of wood.

While the architecture of the Peloponnesos still retained traces of the archaic style, the highest perfection of Doric forms was attained in Attica, reaching its fulfilment at a time, after the Persian wars, when the political supremacy of Athens was far greater than that ever enjoyed by any state of the world so restricted in territory. The deserved sovereignty of Athens over Greece, its naval power, imposing even to the Orientals of Western Asia and Egypt, and, finally, the necessity and opportunity of rebuilding the Attic capital after its destruction by the Persians, before the decisive battle of Salamis, caused a monumental rebirth of the noble city, which not only became the classic model in those ages throughout the extent of Greece and its colonies upon distant shores, but the highest ideal of architecture to the present day and for the entire future of the human race. Attica was fitted to cultivate equally the artistic peculiarities of the two branches of the Hellenic stock, its Ionic population being intermingled, in a marked degree, with Doric elements. It had attained the highest development of civilization, and was the home of the most famed artists. By the taxes levied upon the eastern mainland and the islands of the Archipelago, Athens had almost unlimited means at its disposal. To this nature added the incomparable marble building-material, quarried almost before the gates of the city, which indeed possessed all the conditions requisite for the first monumental capital of Greece and of the civilized world. Familiarity with the Ionic style did not permit that heaviness and clumsiness of architectural members observable upon the contemporaneous temples of the Peloponnesos. The columns of the Temple of Ægina had been allowed a height as great as 5.3 times their lower diameter. In the Doric buildings of Athens this was still further increased, the so-called Temple of Theseus having the proportion of 5.62 to 1, the Parthenon as 5.47 to 1. The diminution and entasis of the shaft were reduced to just relations; the delicate curve of the latter, as demanded by the optical deception it was to correct, was greatest below the half height of the column. The channellings no longer remained segmental arcs, but received an independently designed, elliptical profile. The echinos became steeper, rising in an almost straight line to the firm and sharp turn beneath the abacus. The triglyphs, returning slightly to former proportions, became broader than those of the preceding period; smaller members were diminished in height, but were made more projecting. The colors of the entablature became still more intense; blue and red predominated; green was also employed, and gilding appeared upon the trunnels and in the beautifully composed surface patterns. Ionic elements, almost entirely disused during the latter ages, reappeared in very general employment, especially in the deep cofferings of the pteroma ceiling and upon the capitals of the pilasters.

The typical monuments of this Attic Doric style are the so-called Theseion, and the Parthenon and PropylÆa of the Athenian acropolis. The first of these buildings (Fig. 139) was certainly not sacred to Theseus; its dedication is not surely known. It preceded the highest perfection, still betraying some slight archaic influences. The triglyphs are too high, the smaller members, notably the regulas and trunnels, too heavy. Ionic elements are freely introduced. Besides the coffering of the pteroma ceiling and the before-mentioned pilaster capitals, there was an Ionic zophoros, or continuous frieze of figures, bordered above and below by leaved cyma-mouldings and astragals, in place of the Doric entablature usually employed, at least in part, upon the walls of the cella. The ornamental painting was extended to the capitals of the pteroma columns (Fig. 150), which bore a series of leaves, and to the walls, the interior of the naos having been prepared for the reception of pigments. The perfect preservation of the building is owing to its early transformation into a Christian church.

Fig. 157.—Plan of the Parthenon.
Fig. 157.—Plan of the Parthenon.

The Parthenon far surpassed the Theseion in artistic perfection; it was, indeed, worthy the superintendence of a Pheidias. Its architect, Ictinos, conceived his work to stand so high above contemporary buildings that he celebrated it in an especial monograph, mentioned by Vitruvius, though, unfortunately, not consulted by him. The dimensions of the octastyle temple were imposing; the edge of the stylobate measured about 30 by 68 m.; elevated upon the steep acropolis, it could be seen from a great distance. Though its site was not limited, the economy of space was carried to an extreme. The intercolumniations are narrow, especially those of the front; the pteroma was thus reduced in breadth to less than one and one half times the lower diameter of the columns. (Fig. 157.) The pronaos and epinaos had no side walls, the cella being amphiprostyle, enclosed by high grilles. The depth of these vestibules was less than one quarter of their breadth. The remaining interior was partitioned into two chambers of unequal size: the naos and the opisthodomos, the latter of which served as a treasury. The naos was divided by ranges of columns into three chief aisles, and the gallery over the sides was carried across the nave, next to the rear wall. The world-renowned chryselephantine statue of Athene, 12 m. high, stood before the transverse columns, between which and the partition there was allowed a passage, nearly equal in breadth to the side aisles. The stairs to the gallery may, from the analogies of the great temples of Olympia and PÆstum, be assumed to have existed at either side of the entrance.

Fig. 158.—Plan and View of the PropylÆa, Athens.
Fig. 158.—Plan and View of the PropylÆa, Athens.

The PropylÆa of the Athenian acropolis, by which the architect Mnesicles made his name immortal, were not less perfect than the Parthenon. Work upon them was begun shortly before the completion of the latter building, in 438 B.C., and occupied five years. Ionic members had frequently been employed upon Doric structures, but the PropylÆa offer the first instance of a combination of the styles in almost equal proportions: the interior of these gates was entirely Ionic, the exterior entirely Doric. (Figs. 120 and 158.) Six Ionic columns bore the famed marble ceiling of great span, while two Doric porticos formed the fronts. The stone-cutting of all the monuments upon the Athenian acropolis was incomparably exact and beautiful, as was the harmony of their proportions and forms.

The Temple of Phigalia, or BassÆ, in Arcadia, though stated to have been built by the architect of the Parthenon, shows that the perfection of the monuments last considered was possible only upon Attic ground. The sanctuary of Arcadia was dedicated to Apollo Epicourios in gratitude for the deliverance of the district from the plague of 431 B.C. Its plan (Fig. 159) was excessively long, having fifteen side columns, with a hexastyle front. The elevation offers a remarkable combination of archaic traditional forms and of exaggerated novelties. Though the three incisions of the capital necking are peculiarly primitive, the echinos has become even steeper than it was upon the Parthenon. Ionic sculptured ornaments begin to appear upon the entablature. The inward inclination of the axes of the columns and the curvature of the horizontals have been neglected in BassÆ, as if the architect had not considered it worth while to display such refinements to the uncultivated Arcadians. In the interior of the temple Ionic columns are engaged upon short transverse walls, which project from the sides. These are so remarkably archaic in form (Fig. 165) that it is difficult to explain how Athenian architects, who must have been familiar with the interior columns of the PropylÆa and those of the Erechtheion, then in course of construction, could have prepared the designs. An extremely ancient and undeveloped Corinthian capital (Fig. 176) has been found among the ruins of BassÆ; it will be referred to below. Many of the anomalies of the temple would be explained by the assumption that the building occupied the site of a former chapel, the entrance to which had naturally been upon the east, and that the lack of available ground prevented the retention of the original and usual orientation, making the peripteros, as the enlargement of a former fane, open the inner chamber of the naos upon one of the long sides.

Fig. 160.—Plan of the Temenos of Eleusis.
Fig. 160.—Plan of the Temenos of Eleusis.

Other Attic remains, some of which date from the end of the fifth century, also show traces of the deterioration of the art. Chief among these are the PropylÆa of Eleusis and the house of assemblage for those initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries, known as the Telesterion, a square hypostyle hall, fronted by a portico of twelve columns, apparently without a gable. (Fig. 160.) It is not known how soon after the Persian wars the temples of Rhamnous and Sunion were rebuilt; they may have slightly preceded the age of decline. The increasing love of magnificence and luxury felt among the Greeks was not satisfied with the simple majesty of the Doric style; the Ionic was more and more frequently substituted in preference. The latter had been employed for the PropylÆa of the Athenian acropolis, and had appeared independently in smaller temples, and, finally, in the national shrine of Attica, the Erechtheion. The Doric became restricted to porticos and peristyles, and, in double-storied interiors, to the lower order, for which important constructional functions it was fitted by the great solidity of the column. But the desire to simplify the execution of Doric members, and reduce the expense which must have been attendant upon the delicate refinements of curvatures, introduced dry and hard geometrical forms, and the Æsthetic value of the style was, for the greater part, lost. An example of this debasement is offered by the portico of Philip upon Delos, where the echinos projects in an absolutely straight line. (Fig. 151.) In the colonies, upon the other hand, even as late as the Roman period, the style was archaistically treated, with a provincial lack of good taste, illustrated by the weak echinos and apophyge of the capital of the so-called Temple of Demeter at PÆstum. (Fig. 152.)

An entirely different manner of building had early appeared by the side of the Doric style, which cannot be accounted of quite equal birth with that eldest male offspring of Hellenic civilization, but, to carry out the simile, should rather be considered as a step-sister. The development of the peripteral plan, the echinos coronation of the channelled shafts, and the entablature of triglyphs, metopes, and mutules, appear autochthonic and purely Greek; while the Ionic style, though adopting the plan and general disposition of the former, was, in its most characteristic details, an importation from Asia. It is not meant by this that the perfected style was not characteristically Hellenic. The Greeks accepted none of the products of their neighbors without a change—a transformation of disposition and detail by their peculiar genius. But the fundamental motives, the elements of the style, in as far as these are not identified with the Doric, had been taken from neighboring Eastern lands of primitive civilization: from the coasts of Asia Minor and Syria.

The Ionic column betrays this relationship in both base and capital. The former consists fundamentally of a tore elevated upon a drum, usually hollowed by a scotia. This tore was employed as a footing for the columns of Nineveh, and is familiar through one example and through representations upon reliefs. From thence it was transplanted to Persia, where, in the middle of the sixth century B.C., it appears with the horizontal channelling found upon the more primitive Ionic monuments. (Fig. 79.) The concave profile of the under plinth is new and Hellenic. The delicate perception of the Greek designer recognized the advantage of this scotia over the clumsy heaviness which had resulted from the tore being placed immediately upon the ground or upon a rectangular slab, and the lower member was made to harmonize with the channelled moulding above it by the emphasis of horizontal lines. It is uncertain whether the slender proportions of the Ionic shaft, so marked in comparison with the strength of the Doric style, is to be attributed to Oriental influences. It agreed as well with the light Ionic entablature and ceiling as did the powerful Doric column with the great weight imposed upon it; and it may be regarded as one of the principles of architectural construction that the strength of the support has ever been originally determined by the weight of the ceiling and superstructure: the column has been adapted to the entablature, not the height of epistyle, frieze and cornice to the diameter of the shaft. With this consideration agreed the desire to attain great elegance and lightness of proportion, peculiar to the Ionic race. The Ionic column, thus made of greater proportional height, had diminution and entasis like the Doric. It differed remarkably in the fluting. A vertical grooving cannot be traced upon the columns of Assyria; upon those of Persia it is similar to the Doric channels, with sharp arrises. The development of the flute itself may perhaps be deemed peculiarly Greek. As painted ornaments were gradually given up, they were replaced by architectural carvings; such sculptured decorations were harmoniously introduced upon the shaft, and the channels were deepened to a semicircular profile. This rendered a change of the arrises necessary, for if the ends of the arcs were to have abutted, as upon the Doric column, the deep flute, with its extremely sharp edge, could only have been executed upon a plane. Upon a convexly curved surface, like that of the cylindrical drums, it would have been impossible to cut semicircular grooves immediately adjoining, as their outlines would have intersected. The sharp arrises were therefore relinquished, and a broad vertical band, the surface of the original cylinder, was left in its place, the play of light and shade which enlivened the body of the shaft being increased by these flutings, but the evidence of the derivation of the channelled column from the polygonal pier was entirely sacrificed, the cylindrical form being characterized as original by the remaining fillets. The carving of the shaft was rendered more difficult from the slight projections left at the top and bottom as transitional members to the base and to the capital. This horizontal fillet was a further gain to the outline of the column, concave and convex surfaces thus alternating from floor to ceiling. The flutings were terminated above and below, before reaching this transverse member, by a semicircle, which agreed with their sectional outline.

Fig. 161.—Ionic Order from the Peripteros of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassos.
Fig. 161.—Ionic Order from the Peripteros of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassos.

Fig. 162.—Plan of the Normal Ionic Capital.
Fig. 162.—Plan of the Normal Ionic Capital.
Fig. 163.—Plan of the Corner Ionic Capital.

The capital consisted, in part, of an echinos, similar to that of the Doric style, the leaves, which, at least in one instance, had been painted upon it, being here carved, and an astragal taking the place of the necking rings. This echinos is almost entirely covered by a spiral roll, which gives to the style its most striking characteristic. With the discovery of the helix upon the capitals of Assyrian reliefs, all the labored explanations of the significance and derivation of this member have fallen to the ground. It is impossible to believe, with Vitruvius, that the Ionic column was considered as the representative of the fair sex: that the locks of hair were indicated by the spiral line of the capital, the folds of the wide garments and draperies by the flutes and fillets, and the sandals by the base. Nor are the theories more satisfactory which seek for such natural motives as spiral shells or twisted ram’s horns, assumed to have been primitive ornaments of the sanctuaries. And it is still worse to regard the peculiar form of the capital as decided by the conception of an elastic cushion, which, displaced by the weight of the entablature, curls again at either side of the echinos. The Ionic helix was a form of capital imported from the East, where it had been used by barbaric designers as a mere ornament upon upright legs of furniture (Fig. 81), or upon Persian columns (Fig. 80)—a form developed by the Greeks into an architectural member of the first importance. The Assyrians, by doubling the volutes, had formed with this motive a capital not particularly well adapted to the functions of a transitional member between vertical support and horizontal burden. The Hellenic architect perceived that a more decided projection was necessary, and therefore placed an echinos beneath the volute, leaving the roll as the medium between the circular shaft and oblong entablature, which, in the Doric style, had been formed by the abacus. The horizontal lines of the abacus, thus supplanted, were represented upon the Ionic column only by a narrow moulding, curved to the profile of a cyma and sculptured with a leaved ornament. In the Greek capital the spirals became an elegantly curved roll, of greater length than breadth, with tightly curled ends, which were bound together, upon either side of the echinos, by a band. The capital thus shows its true profile, the helices upon front and back, and upon the subordinate sides rolls of their thickness. (Fig. 161.) This difference between face and side resulted in one great difficulty upon the corners, which, like the irregularity of the division of the Doric frieze of triglyphs and metopes in the same place, proves that the Ionic style also did not originate upon the peripteral plan, but was adapted to it from a temple in antis. It was natural that the more ornamental side of the column should face the entrance front, and thus the capitals upon the longer sides of the building were forced to show their rolls, the partie honteuse, unless the corner capital assumed an unnatural deformation to present the helices upon two adjoining, instead of two opposite, faces. (Figs. 162 and 163.) The corner capital thus became a miserable hybrid, which, because of the impossibility of its execution in a natural manner, from the intersection of the outer volutes when these proceeded in a straight line parallel to the epistyle, lost not only all constructive significance and harmony with those next to it, but also its individual beauty. There was no other expedient than to bend the faces of the corner volutes outward in the line of the diagonal—a malformation visible at every standpoint. A further difficulty was presented by the corners of the spirals over the echinos, which required to be masked by floral decorations. Upon the narrow abacus moulding rested the entablature, remarkable for the Oriental character of the details, and notably for reminiscences of primitive wooden construction, which are almost as evident in the Ionic as in the Doric style. The epistyle, formed in the latter by a single plane block, was here triply stepped to agree with the multiplied beams required by the nature of Oriental timber—generally provided by the various species of palms. According to the description of Vitruvius, the motive was also employed for the wooden epistyle beams of Etruscan temples. Each face projected slightly beyond the one beneath it, as previously customary in Asia, and shown by the ruins of the palace of Darius (Fig. 84) and the rock-cut faÇade of that monarch’s tomb (Fig. 83). The epistyle is terminated by a Lesbian cyma and an astragal, the latter being, in some instances, repeated upon every light step from beam to beam beneath. The frieze, known in this style as the zophoros, the bearer of figures, is an original Hellenic creation, the Oriental entablature consisting of only two members as representative of only two constructive features: the epistyle that connected the columns, and the ceiling and roof, which, in the rainless countries of the East, appear as one and the same member. In Greece the inclined roof was separated fundamentally from the horizontal ceiling, and the entablature consequently expressed a triple character. The naÏve and truthful manner of this expression, peculiar to the Doric style, was not followed by the Ionic. The second member of the entablature, the frieze, should represent the ceiling, but the symbols of that constructive feature, the dentils, were crowded up among the details of the cornice, while the zophoros itself, perhaps as a result of the relief sculpture employed upon the Doric metopes, became a continuous decoration of carving. The dentils, as significant of the ends of the small ceiling-beams, were in their proper place, touching the epistyle, upon the monuments of Persia (Fig. 83), and also upon the tombs of Lycia (Figs. 110 and 111), so closely allied to the Mesopotamian tradition; they were there of far greater size than in the Greek Ionic, where their position and diminutive dimensions reduced them to a mere ornament. The members of the cornice stand in no such relation to the interior construction of beams and rafters as did the mutules and trunnels of the Doric temples. The curved gutter, however, is ornamented with lion’s-heads and anthemions, which seem in both styles to have been derived from western Asia. The stone beams of the pteroma ceiling rest directly upon the epistyle, and are consequently as far below their exterior representatives, the cornice dentils, as, in the Doric, they were above the triglyphs. Between them are the rich cofferings, not with small lacunÆ, calculated to produce an effect mainly by color, but in broad surfaces, frequently stepped, with carved cyma-mouldings in the angles. (Fig. 164.) The plan of the cella differed but slightly from that of Doric temples. The doors are usually provided with parotides, the doubly-spiral brackets which have remained a popular ornament beneath the coronations of door and window openings until the present day.

The historical development of the Ionic temple is not illustrated by as many examples as was that of the Doric style, and, indeed, there was no such marked and regular advance as that observable in the temples of Selinous, Olympia, and Athens. A great number of Ionic monuments stand in a district not as yet thoroughly examined: the southern coasts of Asia Minor. Towards the border of Lycia traces of an archaic or proto-Ionic style have been observed, more closely allied to Eastern motives than were the developed temples of Greece. The capitals of Lycian tombs (Fig. 110) have no echinos, by the addition of which so great an advance was subsequently made; the formation of the rolls upon the sides was also primitive, they being at times perfectly straight, at times disproportionately curved. The difficult transition from the end of the shaft to the volutes was evaded, and masked by anthemions or other ornaments. The only example of such an imperfect formation in European Greece existed in the interior of the Temple of Apollo at BassÆ (Fig. 159); the date of its erection, however, shows this example not to have been archaic, but rather archaistic,—that is to say, intentionally and affectedly imitated from primitive peculiarities of form. (Fig. 165.) The columns, engaged to transverse walls, have bases of excessive projection, the thin and feeble tore being out of proportion to the high member beneath it. The lower end of the shaft itself forms a second projection, which greatly exceeds the usual congÉ and fillet of the bottom drum. The shallow flutings are continued up to the very top of the shaft, there being concluded by an almost straight line. The capital itself is most strikingly archaistic, presenting the helices upon each of its three exposed faces; it is an applied decoration which has given up all semblance of constructive unity or function, leaving the prismatic kernel, without an abacus moulding, to project above the curves and support the imposed entablature. The narrow space remaining between the two large spirals of each side is almost entirely filled by a decoration of anthemions, and the introduction of an echinos is thus rendered unnecessary. The sculptured zophoros of the interior entablature, now one of the chief treasures of the British Museum, betrays in its figures the greatest freedom from convention, in marked contrast to the affectedly antique character of the architectural forms.

Fig. 166.—From the Heraion upon Samos.
Fig. 166.—From the Heraion upon Samos.
Fig. 167.—From the Temple of Apollo DidymÆos, Miletos.

Fig. 168.—From the Temple of Athene at Priene.
Fig. 169.—From the PropylÆa of Cnidos.
Fig. 170.—From the Temple of Wingless Victory, Athens.

Fig. 171.—Temple Ruin at Aphrodisias.
Fig. 171.—Temple Ruin at Aphrodisias.

The northern coast of Asia Minor, as far as it is at present known, offers few Ionic remains of the archaic period. The original Temple of Artemis, at Ephesos, according to Pliny the most ancient peripteros of the style, has been totally obliterated by frequent reconstructions and the famed conflagration of Herostratos. A second fane of national importance, the Temple of Hera, at Samos, is at present known only by one unfluted column, 1.6 m. in lower diameter, and by horizontally fluted tores and plinths. These two buildings were of such interest that their architects saw fit to celebrate their constructive peculiarities in monographs, as had been done for the Doric Parthenon. The writings of Chersiphron and of the Cretan Metagenes upon the Artemision at Ephesos, and of Theodoros, the son of the Samian Illecles, upon the Heraion of that island, are mentioned as late as the time of the Roman emperors. These peripteral temples, built about the middle of the sixth century B.C., were of very considerable dimensions, but were far surpassed in size by a third national shrine of the Ionians, the Temple of Apollo DidymÆos, rebuilt by Paionios of Ephesos and Daphnis of Miletos almost a century later than the former monuments, 470 B.C., upon the site of an ancient structure destroyed by the Persians. The temple was a dipteros decastylos, that is, had a double row of outstanding columns around the cella, with ten upon the front; it measured 91 m. in length and 49 m. in breadth. The columns were proportionately tall, 19 m. in height, which equals nine and a half lower diameters, and were placed closely together, the intercolumniations being only one and a half diameters wide. The scotia of the base was divided by a projecting moulding and elevated upon a square plinth; the tore had no horizontal flutings. (Fig. 167.) The capital had a straight connection between the spirals, and the epistyle was stepped but twice. The interior of the temple was provided with pilasters, the capitals of which are of an Oriental character, richly decorated with floral motives. A Corinthian capital also occurs upon the building (Fig. 177), which will be referred to below. The enormous temple of which there are fragmentary remains at Sardis, supposed to be that of Cybele, appears to have been erected during this period, and resembles the shrine of Apollo DidymÆos at Miletos. The Temple of Athene Polias at Priene, the work of the architect Pythios, who celebrated its completion in a monograph, dates from the middle of the fourth century B.C., as it was dedicated by Alexander the Great. It was a hexastyle peripteros, of normal dimensions, 35 m. long and 19 m. broad. The plans of Ionic temples differed in proportion from those of the Doric style, their length being less than twice their width. The base of the temple at Priene (Fig. 168) is peculiar, in that the horizontal flutings of the tore, entirely lacking in the Didymaion, were restricted to its lower half; this can hardly be taken to prove that the building was never completed, but is rather explained by the consideration that no escape was possible for the rain-water which dripped into the upper grooves. The connection between the spirals of the capital face is curved downward; the ornaments of the entablature are more florid, and the gutter is almost overladen with floral motives. The tetrastyle Ionic PropylÆa of the same place appear to be of more recent date; the capitals of the inner pilasters are decorated similarly to those within the Didymaion. Another structure of this kind at Cnidos is of more beautiful detail, the base (Fig. 169) being particularly graceful in outline and proportions; the increased curve of its tore obviated the trouble of water standing in the horizontal flutings. There are but few remains of the temples of Artemis Leucophryne at Magnesia, and of Dionysos at Teos, built towards the end of the fourth century B.C., and celebrated in monographs by the architect Hermogenes. The first of these was, according to Strabo, the third largest fane of Asia Minor, measuring 64 m. in length and 29 m. in breadth. The influence of Attic architecture is evident in the bases and in the rich decoration of the capital rolls. The building is thought to be the first example of a pseudodipteros, that is, of a peripteros having a pteroma equal to the breadth of that upon a temple with two ranges of outstanding columns, a dipteros. Resembling this, though smaller, was the hexastyle peripteros of Teos, at first intended to have been of the Doric style, the plan being altered to Ionic after all the material had been provided. Traces of decline in the art prove the octastyle peripteros of Apollo at Claros, near Colophon, and the temple at Pessinus, in Galatia, to have been more recent. The Temple of Panhellenic Zeus and the Sanctuary of Aphrodite at Aphrodisias (Fig. 171) are referred to the beginning of the Christian era. The excessive attenuation of the columns of the latter, which have a height equal to ten lower diameters, the extension of the floral ornaments even to the channels of the shaft and the connection of the capital spirals, the so-called egg-and-dart moulding in the cyma, the diminutive dentils and the introduction of consoles above them, all betray the tasteless magnificence of the Roman imperial period.

Fig. 172.—Temple upon the Ilissos.
Fig. 172.—Temple upon the Ilissos.

Fig. 173.—Plan of the Erechtheion. (Boetticher.)
Fig. 173.—Plan of the Erechtheion. (Boetticher.)

Fig. 174.—Northwestern View of the Erechtheion.
Fig. 174.—Northwestern View of the Erechtheion.

The Ionic style in Attica developed in a peculiar manner, being there superior, both as regards breadth of form and beauty of detail, to the works of Asia Minor. The Doric had been perfected in Athens, and the most noble Ionic monument, the Erechtheion, stood beside the Parthenon; the Athenian acropolis presented the noblest examples in both methods of building, standing unrivalled at the head of the Hellenic world in architectural, as in political and intellectual respects. Characteristic of the Attic Ionic are the so-called Attic base and the entablature without dentils. The former consists of a second tore beneath the concave plinth of the usual base; by this addition its symmetry was increased, and a rhythmical profile of great beauty was gained: two convex and two concave members of harmonious proportion alternating from the upper slip to the commencement of the fluting. The Attic architect evidently did not accept the significance of the dentils as representatives of the ceiling-joists, and preferred to cut a decided drip upon the lower surface of the corona, which had so marked a slant in the more familiar Doric cornice. In the place of the dentils, a transition was provided by a cyma and astragal, which mouldings received in Athens their typical perfection. The few Ionic ruins of European Greece do not illustrate the historical development of the Attic Ionic style. The interior columns of the Temple of Apollo at BassÆ (Figs. 159 and 165) cannot be considered in this connection; their archaistic details by no means express the influence of Athens, notwithstanding that the work is attributed to the architect Ictinos. The peculiarities of Attic Ionic architecture are well exemplified by the small amphiprostyle temple upon the Ilissos, near Athens, which, though now entirely destroyed, was in existence up to the end of the last century, and was measured and drawn by Stuart and Revett. (Fig. 172.) The lower tore of the base is here small and weak, as if a hesitating attempt to improve the usual outline. The shaft was short, perhaps from the influence of the Doric examples; the epistyle, from the same consideration, was without the characteristic steps. Similar to this is another tetrastyle amphiprostylos, the Temple of Wingless Victory before the PropylÆa of the acropolis, which, as if to compensate for the loss of the temple upon the Ilissos, was rebuilt in 1835, with overthrown fragments rescued from a Turkish bastion, and has become one of the chief ornaments of the ascent. (Fig. 158.) The entire crepidoma is so small—8 m. long and 5.5 broad—that the cella, after the deduction of the front and rear porticos, is even broader than it is deep. The architectural details are of exceeding delicacy and perfection (Fig. 170); the sculptures of the zophoros and of the balustrade will be considered in the following section. The inner columns of the Athenian PropylÆa show the lower tore fully developed, and the base-mouldings isolated by a plinth of slightly concave profile, elsewhere adopted only at Eleusis, in imitation of this building. The highest perfection of the Ionic style was, as before said, attained in the second national sanctuary of the Athenians—the world-renowned Temple of Athene Polias upon the acropolis, the Erechtheion. The construction of the edifice seems to have been undertaken immediately after the burning of the ancient building by the Persians, in 480 B.C., but, in consequence of the miseries of the Peloponnesian war, its completion was delayed until eighty years after that date. It was a combination of several shrines which, necessarily constructed upon different levels, rendered a perfect symmetry of plan impossible. Other double temples, like those of Leto and Asclepios, and of Aphrodite and Ares at Mantinea, or of Apollo Carneios and of Hypnos at Sikyon, were not, upon the exterior, distinguishable from the common type, as, with an equal division of the cella, entrances could be allowed upon either front. In the Erechtheion this simple arrangement was not practicable, because of the complicated nature of the combined sanctuaries and the irregularity of the ground; yet this did not prove a disadvantage: to the architectural perfection of the monument was thus added a charm of picturesque composition usually foreign to the temple buildings of Greek antiquity. The plan given (Fig. 173) is according to Boetticher’s restoration, but the mooted question of the interior division of the building is still far from being decided. Upon the principal eastern front was a hexastyle portico, a, through which entrance was given to the naos of Athene Polias, b, occupying nearly one half of the cella. Access to the other division was obtained through the tetrastyle hall, c, upon the northwestern corner, opening directly into the narrow sanctuary of Pandrosos, d, from which four portals led to as many chambers: the first, g, to the Chapel of Boutes; the second, h, by means of a short staircase, to the Crypt of Poseidon, e; from the third, i, was a descent to a corridor leading to a space under the Naos of Athene Polias; while the last, opposite the hall, led to the Porch of the Caryatides, f. This complicated disposition was, as has been said, dependent upon the peculiar natural position of the ancient national shrines: the tomb of Cecrops and the memorials of the contest between Poseidon and Athene for the possession of Athens,—the impression of the trident with which Poseidon smote the cliff, leaving a spring of salt water, and the olive-tree which, at the command of Athene, sprang from the same rock. Of the interior of the building there are almost no vestiges; but the form of the exterior is, in the main, clear. (Fig. 174.) The capitals upon the columns of the eastern portico (Fig. 175), and upon the pilasters of the western wall, which was pierced by windows, are of almost excessive magnificence. The outlines of the spirals are doubled, the side-rolls are grooved, and ornamented with astragals; there is a band carved with a woven ornament above the egg-and-dart moulding of the echinos, and an entirely new feature has been added to the capital—a broad and rich necking of carved anthemions. The effect of this band was particularly favorable because the decoration upon it could be repeated beneath the capitals of the pilasters, and a greater harmony of the corresponding members thus secured. The columns of the northwestern porch are larger and even richer in detail, especially the bases, the upper tore being ornamented with a woven motive in place of the customary horizontal grooving. The entablature, from which the dentils are missing, is of the utmost elegance of proportion, the carving of its cyma-mouldings being the most delicate work of architectural carving known. The reliefs upon the zophoros were not cut from its substance, but were merely attached to its plane surface; few fragments have, consequently, been preserved. One of the most beautiful features of the building is the Porch of the Caryatides in the southwestern corner (F). In place of columns, the figures of virgins support the horizontal marble ceiling, which is of no great weight. The model for these was doubtless taken from the basket-bearing maidens of the Panathenaic procession, the CanephorÆ. The origin of the term caryatides is not known. Both geographical and historical proofs are wanting to make probable the account given by Vitruvius,—that the motive for these figures was derived from the women of the Peloponnesian town Carya, who were condemned to slavery for treachery during the Persian war. From the baskets of the CanephorÆ has been developed a capital member, like an echinos, decorated with the egg-and-dart moulding and an astragal, and provided with an abacus. The frieze is lacking from the entablature, in recognition of the fact that roof and ceiling are here one and the same member. The dentils appear in the cornice, it being possible for them to take their true position upon the epistyle. The faultless beauty of the decorative carving is particularly evident upon the casings of the portals.

Monuments of the Ionic style, not numerous in Attica, are rare in the Peloponnesos, and exceptional farther west, where the Doric element of the population predominated. When Ionic ruins are found in the latter districts, they generally betray the influence of the Attic school, which is perceptible even in the Ionic order of Rome. It is not strange that, after the acquaintance of the Romans with Hellenic lands, this method of building should, in their universal eclecticism, have been frequently adopted. It will be seen in the following section how Italy, the heir of the decaying civilization of the East, reduced the forms of Ionic architecture to a facile and commonplace scheme.

Fig. 176.—From BassÆ.
Fig. 176.—From BassÆ.

Fig. 177.—From the Temple of Apollo, near Miletos.
Fig. 177.—From the Temple of Apollo, near Miletos.
Fig. 178.—From the Tower of the Winds, Athens.

During the age of Pericles a foreign growth, the Corinthian capital, had been engrafted upon the Ionic style, which changed the character of the whole, the more decidedly because introduced upon the most prominent feature. This “Corinthian” innovation affected the capital alone, and cannot be considered as an order, still less as a style, when compared to the Doric and Ionic. It was a mere variety of the latter, which, in all other respects than the capital, remained unaltered. The new form is mentioned as an innovation of Callimachos, a sculptor celebrated for the magnificent golden lamp and funnel made by him for the Erechtheion. The name of that artificer may have given authority to the first introduction of the Corinthian capital into Greek lands; but the detailed account of Vitruvius in regard to its origin can hardly be deemed more than a fable. He relates that a loving nurse had placed a basket of toys, covered with a tile, upon the grave of a Corinthian girl, and that in the spring-time an acanthos-plant, upon which it stood, sent forth shoots covering the basket and curling beneath the tile, thus providing a model directly imitated by Callimachos. The calyx capitals of Egypt had long been known to the Greeks. In transferring this floral motive across the Mediterranean, the decorative foliage of papyrus and lotus had been given up, those unknown plants not being adapted to Hellenic conventionalization. National art ever seeks the subjects for floral ornament from the growths of its native soil. It was on this account that oak-leaves, thistles, grape-leaves, and ivy were employed in Gothic architecture; and, in a similar manner, the Greek could make no more fortunate choice than the Hellenic thistle, the acanthos, the forms of which even surpass in beauty the serrated outline of the grape-leaf. The Corinthian capital suited well the prevalent tendency to attenuate the shaft, and, at the same time, it furthered an harmonious agreement between the capitals of columns and of pilasters. Its forms presented a better solution of the problem of the capital, and were more perfect in an abstract, if not in an artistic, point of view than any of the preceding varieties. The two functions of the transitional member—the projection, the oblique line between the vertical and the horizontal, and the change from a circular to a rectangular plan—had, in the Doric and Ionic capitals, been effected by two separate bodies; in the Corinthian they were accomplished by one alone. The kernel gave the projection, considerably steeper, according to its height, than the Doric or Ionic echinos. The oblique line, convex in the former style, is here slightly concave, although still sufficiently vigorous in character to bear the light entablature. The surrounding floral decoration effects the transition from the circle to the rectangle; the upper leaves project towards the corners of the thin abacus, under which they curl, giving to the capital, at some little distance below its plinth, a section nearly square. A canonical form of the Corinthian capital did not exist in progressive Hellenic art. This does not appear until the order was reduced to a system by the thought-saving and practical Romans. The completed type, so familiar in the monuments of Italy, and used for centuries since in all parts of the world, does not occur in Greece, the creation of the Corinthian order, as such, being emphatically a work of the Romans. The Corinthian capital was, in Hellenic architecture, merely a fanciful and ever-varied decoration of foliage around a concave calyx. The before-mentioned example from the Temple of Apollo in BassÆ shows how imperfect the arrangement was at first. (Fig. 176.) The single row of leaves at its base does not sufficiently ornament the kernel; the spirals upon the four corners and the anthemions between them leave too much of its surface uncovered. The thin abacus is neither provided with a profile moulding, nor at all carved; upon its edge is painted a Doric meander; its sides are curved in plan, advancing above the corner spirals so that these might project farther from the calyx. A decided advance is shown by the capital of an engaged column employed within the Temple of Apollo Didymaios at Miletos (Fig. 177), which appears to be of more recent date. A double wreath of acanthos-leaves surrounds the calyx, those upon the corners being made sufficiently tall to support the spirals; between them are anthemions. Fragments brought from the ruins of Knidos to the British Museum are of similar form. These remains all resemble, in a more or less marked degree, the ultimate typical development of the Corinthian capital. Others, and among them some of a later period, lack important constituent parts. A second variety, discovered in the Didymaion, had only one wreath of leaves, and no connection with the square abacus by corner spirals. The capitals of the so-called Tower of the Winds in Athens (Fig. 178) resemble them. Behind the acanthos-leaves rises a simple row of lanceolate reeds, which follows the outline of the calyx. The Choragic Monument of Lysicrates, built more than a century previous, in 334 B.C., presents a beautiful instance of a fanciful Corinthian capital. Between the shaft and the calyx there is a preparatory necking of small leaves, similar to those which existed upon the example within the temple at BassÆ. Above the low acanthos wreath rises a rich garland of foliage and flowers, with a central anthemion rising to the top of the abacus. The heavy corner volutes cannot compensate for the excessive contraction of the calyx, which takes away from the unity and force of the main transitional curve.

The Corinthian capital appears to have attained the form under which it is now known in the middle of the second century B.C. The Temple of Olympian Zeus in Athens received its peripteros of Corinthian columns under Antiochos Epiphanes, 176-164 B.C.; though its crepidoma, probably intended for an edifice of the Doric style, had been prepared as early as the time of Peisistratos. The architectural direction of the building had been intrusted to a Roman, Cossutius, and it was, in fact, destined to provide material for Rome itself, as, soon after its completion, the columns were carried away by Sulla and employed in the restoration of the temple upon the Roman Capitol, shortly before destroyed by fire. The capitals thus removed appear to have been regarded as models, and to have exercised a great influence upon the development of the Corinthian order, as cultivated, almost exclusively, by the Romans. The calyx decorated with acanthos foliage corresponded to the taste of the imperial epoch for architectural magnificence, and its employment was not embarrassed by the difficulties upon the corners of peripteral temples which have been discussed in the consideration of the Doric frieze and the Ionic capital. The floral decoration soon extended to the entablature, increasing the number and dimensions of its minor members. The most striking result was the transformation of the dentils into the richly carved consoles of doubly spiral profile, which were imitated from the parotides of the Ionic portal coronation, but were placed horizontally instead of vertically. The use of both dentils and consoles is a barbaric duplication, characteristic of the tasteless architectural magnificence of the Roman decline. The so-called Corinthian base is no real characteristic of the order, being only a combination of Ionic and Attic forms, with a double scotia between the two tores.

Hellenic architecture has thus far been considered exclusively in its relations to sacred edifices, because the art of building, among nations whose civilization has been influenced by religious conceptions, is always best exemplified by temples. But it was natural that Doric and Ionic forms should be employed, though in a less conventional manner, for all the buildings of Greece, being richly elaborated in monumental works, and more or less simplified and adapted in structures intended for private or public usefulness, as economy and civic destination alike forced restrictions upon the disposition and decoration of the design.

The sacred nature of monumental tombs allied them most nearly to the temples. The conical tumulus had preceded the Hellenic peripteros, and when that helpless form was entirely given up, after the perfection of the columnar temple, the cinerary urn remained as a leading motive, which excluded the lengthened plan of the peripteral temple and rather tended to increase the height of the monument—otherwise a subordinate dimension. Graves of less importance were marked by columns, upright blocks of stone with an ornamental cap, or by steles, the angular termination of which often betrayed the influence of the temple gable, while the shaft retained the nature of the pier. More prominent sepulchres consisted of ranges of columns upon a cube, which, containing a sarcophagus, took the place of the cylinder beneath the conical tumulus. As the columns had, in general, only a decorative importance, it was not necessary to construct a cella in connection with them. This was only added when a chapel was required for funeral worship, or when, as in mausoleums of great dimensions, inner walls were needed to provide a bearing for the ceiling beams. The termination of these structures was characteristic. The sacred gable was generally avoided, in just appreciation of its significance, and the form of the tumulus was retained, so far as the rectangular plan would permit, a pyramidal superstructure taking the place of the cone.

Fig. 179.—Tomb at Mylassa.
Fig. 179.—Tomb at Mylassa.

That this pyramid was constructed in steps is evident from a small tomb without a cella at Mylassa (Fig. 179), and from that magnificent monument, the Mausoleum of Halicarnassos, one of the wonders of the antique world. (Fig. 180.) The latter was erected by Artemisia, the widow and successor of King Mausolos, who called to her assistance the most celebrated architects of the time, Satyros and Pythios; as well as the greatest sculptors, Scopas, Bryaxis, Leochares, and Timotheos. It is known by the extensive English excavations of 1856 and 1857. Although the opinions of prominent authorities differ greatly as to its design, it is yet certain that upon the massive oblong foundation, 30 m. long, 24 m. broad, and over 15 m. high, which contained the small sepulchral chamber, there stood a cella surrounded by thirty-six Ionic columns, and terminated by a stepped pyramid, the truncated apex of which bore a colossal marble quadriga, with the statues of the queen and of a female charioteer, the whole attaining a height of 42 m. The works of sculpture—the figures which stood in the intercolumniations and the reliefs upon the wall of the cella, and perhaps also upon the substructure—will be considered in the next section. It is possible that the destination of the edifice was not that usually attributed to it, Urlichs having argued that it was a heroÖn, and a memorial of victory.

Fig. 180.—Mausoleum of Halicarnassos.
Fig. 180.—Mausoleum of Halicarnassos.

The Monument of the Nereides at Xanthos (Fig. 181) resembled the Mausoleum in many respects. It was a peristyle of sixteen Ionic columns elevated upon a massive foundation. Statues stood in its intercolumniations, while the zophoros and substructure were carved with reliefs. A gabled roof seems, however, to have indicated the sacred character of the edifice. The cella and the surrounding columns of this class of buildings were united in various manners, a remarkable example of a pseudo-peripteros being offered by the so-called Tomb of Theron in Acragas in Sicily. In other instances three stories resulted from a duplication of the foundations beneath the peripteros, as in the alleged Tomb of Mikipsas at Constantina, the ancient Cirta in Numidia. This multiplication was particularly frequent in the Roman period. The tomb of this nature at Saint-Remi, in Southern France, the ancient Glanum, built during the reign of Augustus, is one of the most beautiful ruins known.

Fig. 181.—Monument of the Nereides at Xanthos.
Fig. 181.—Monument of the Nereides at Xanthos.

Among the choragic monuments of Greece, the most interesting is that erected by Lysicrates in commemoration of the victory gained by a chorus of boys of the Phyle Acamantis led by him. It served as a pedestal for the prize bestowed, a tripod, and was a pseudo-monopteros of small dimensions and beautiful details. Engaged columns with Corinthian capitals supported a monolithic ceiling, the floral termination of which originally served as a base for the tripod. The so-called Tower of the Winds was a clepsydra, built by Andronicos Kyrrhestes, and was also furnished outside with dials and a weathercock. It is especially interesting on account of the peculiar forms of its Corinthian capitals. (Fig. 178.)

Fig. 182.—Stoa Diple at Thoricos.
Fig. 182.—Stoa Diple at Thoricos.

The most extensive employment of columns in civic architecture was in the porticos, the stoas, which surrounded the market-places and extended through many streets, being connected with baths, gymnasions, palaestras, stadia, and hippodromes, and even appearing as independent buildings. The market-place, the agora, was, in ancient cities, commonly of an irregular form; when possible it was surrounded by colonnades. In more recent settlements care was taken to provide a rectangular space for the purpose, in which double porticos of considerable extent were built for shelter in bad weather. In view of the effeminacy of the Ionians, it is easy to credit the account that this race first provided the chief places in towns with the protection of stoas, introducing this custom in Greece, where it soon became general. Extended colonnades were frequently connected with them, traversing the principal streets. The independent stoas, which were arranged in the greatest variety of combinations, are of particular interest. The Stoa Poikile (the many-colored), upon the market-place of Athens, was built by Peisianax, the brother-in-law of Cimon, this latter causing the walls to be decorated by Polygnotos and his assistants—upon one wing with scenes from the battle of Marathon, upon the other from that of Oinoe, while the long background of the principal hall was similarly treated. Upon the market-places the porticos were often increased in width by a second row of columns, and in later times a dividing-wall was frequently placed between these ranges as a spina. According to Pausanias, this was the case with the so-called Kerkyraion Hall of Elis. The form of a stoa diple, or double colonnade, was more customary; in it the central wall was replaced by a third range of columns, as the case appears to have been at Thoricos (Fig. 182), where the entrance was provided in the middle of the longer sides by wider intercolumniations. The enlargement was carried still farther by making the colonnade of three aisles, with two inner ranges of columns, as in the Stoa of the HellanodikÆ: covered spaces of great breadth, open upon all sides, and admirably adapted to their purpose, were thus provided. It is natural to assume that the great grain market of the Piraios was such an extended stoa, as was likewise the so-called Basilica of PÆstum, a structure of three aisles, lacking exterior enclosure. The latter building is assuredly misnamed, the nature of a basilica being dependent upon outer walls. The prototype of the Roman and Christian basilicas is rather to be sought in the law courts of the Archon Basileus in Athens, a combination of enclosed halls and chambers, which, by their future development, received an historical and practical importance exceeding that of any other work of Hellenic architecture, not excepting the temples, which became useless with the extinction of Hellenic religious conceptions. The columns of stoas were multiplied above, as well as beside, one another, analogous to the galleries over the side aisles of the larger temples. This appears to have been the case upon the so-called Persian Hall at Sparta, where, instead of upper shafts, there were piers decorated with the statues of Persians, comparable to the corresponding architectural members of the Incantada at Thessalonica, though the figures of gods and heroes were, in the latter instance, attached to the supports in three-quarter relief, while the statues at Sparta appear to have been in the full round. It is evident from the Roman basilicas, to be considered in another section, that the employment of galleries was general in the enclosed stoas of Greece.

Fig. 183.—Stadion at Messene.
Fig. 183.—Stadion at Messene.

Fig. 184.—Hippodrome at Olympia.
Fig. 184.—Hippodrome at Olympia.

Chief among the public buildings of Hellas, after the agoras and stoas, were the arrangements for the festive games. These were divided into two classes: bodily exercises and scenic representations. The former were the more important, forming a prominent part in the education of every Greek citizen. Palaistras and gymnasia were provided for the manoeuvres, stadia and hippodromes for the public contests and races. In primitive times the palaistras had no architectural character; a meadow and a sandy reach, generally upon the bank of a brook and shaded by trees, sufficed as a training-ground. The private palaistras seem never to have exceeded this simplicity; but the great importance of drill for the military power of the State early demanded the erection of suitable structures, and there resulted the gymnasion, a combination of covered chambers and halls with open courts, which provided separate and fitting spaces for the different gymnastic exercises and for the baths, as well as for the higher intellectual entertainments of the philosophers, rhetoricians, and poets. These structures were probably varied in character until the most suitable arrangement was decided by experience. It seems early to have become customary to surround a rectangular space by colonnades, to which were added extensive wings, semicircular exedras, and the like, for scientific and Æsthetic instruction. Upon one side were grouped a number of chambers known as the Ephebeion, Apodyterion, Elaiothesion, Conisterion, Corykeion, Laconicon, Lutron, etc., serving the youths as places of assemblage, rooms for dressing and anointing, hot and cold baths, etc. Opposite to them extended the stadion, while, within the enclosure, promenades between groups of trees and beds of flowers alternated with grounds for shorter races, quoit-throwing, wrestling, and other contests. Some examples, like those of Ephesos, Hierapolis, and Alexandria, still display in their ruins the chief features of this arrangement, though more or less influenced by the customs of imperial Rome, where the baths had been in great measure separated from the gymnasia. The spirit of emulation was excited by the publicity of these institutions, and increased by the periodical festive competitions to a height far exceeding our modern conceptions. A wreath of laurel or olive leaves, a small quantity of oil, a tripod, or other similar rewards of victory, such as were given as prizes in the games of Olympia, Delphi, Nemea, Corinth, and Athens, conferred almost divine honor, even the years being known by the name of the temporary hero of Olympia. The five chief divisions of the gymnastic exercises, the pentathlon—running, jumping, wrestling, boxing, and the throwing of the discos—were practised in the stadion, a space from 180 m. to 300 m. long, usually chosen close to the side of a hill, which, more or less prepared by terracing and grading, provided seats for spectators. If a narrow valley were near at hand, as in the case of the Athenian stadion of the suburb Agrae, the opposite slopes were thus occupied. The seats near the goal were naturally the more desirable, and it was here that the architectural features were concentrated, terraces being carried in a semicircle around this centre. Examples are not wanting, as in Aphrodisias in Asia Minor, where both ends were thus terminated, and the space for spectators carried around the entire race-course, thus pointing the way to a building of this form, the amphitheatre, which was to become the delight of the Roman world. The stadion of Messene (Fig. 183) shows how natural inclinations were followed and utilized, though at the expense of a symmetrical disposition; yet this example dates from the later extravagant period of Greek history, and is far removed from the patriarchal simplicity of primitive times. The stadion did not suffice for the races of horses and chariots which had been favorites with the Greeks since the Trojan war. In such early ages, any goal chosen in the plain was sufficient, like the oak-trunk mentioned by Homer; but it could not have been long before the need was manifest of a sloping stand for the spectators and an enclosure for the contestants, and thus the hippodrome, the race-course, was developed similarly to the smaller stadion. The most celebrated, and perhaps the oldest, hippodrome of Greece, that of Olympia, is described by Pausanias. The right side, the longer, consisted of an artificial embankment of earth, while the slope of a hill was employed for the left; at the entrance was a colonnade devoted to the preparations of the charioteers. The starting-point, the aphesis, had, according to the expression of Pausanias, a form like the prow of a vessel—that is, advanced in a pointed form—to facilitate the start. The plan here given, Fig. 184, is altered from Visconti’s restoration by these gates being opened towards the first turning-point, the taraxippos, or terror of the horses.

Fig. 185.—Scheme of the Greek Theatre, according to Vitruvius.
Fig. 185.—Scheme of the Greek Theatre, according to Vitruvius.

Fig. 186.—Restored View of the Theatre of Segesta.
Fig. 186.—Restored View of the Theatre of Segesta.

The theatres, as enclosures for musical and scenic representations, offered greater scope for architectural development. When possible, the auditorium was in a situation where a natural semicircular inclination served instead of the immense foundations which would otherwise have been necessary for the elevated seats; the stage and surrounding buildings were, however, free-standing works of architecture. The arrangement of the Greek theatre is described by Vitruvius: three squares were inscribed in a circle, thus forming a twelve-pointed star (Fig. 185); one of the sides, a b, served as the line of the front foundation of the stage. This platform, the logeion, was closed at the rear by a wall, treated like a faÇade, and forming a background, the skene; its position being decided by the tangent c d, parallel to the front side. The remainder of the circle, the orchestra, was reserved for the evolutions of the chorus and for the stand of the musicians, the thymele; it was not until the development of the Roman theatre that spectators were admitted to this enclosure. Its extent was slightly increased by drawing the outline from the diameter, e f, to the stage with a doubled radius. Around seven twelfths of the original circle was constructed the concentrical auditorium of ascending seats, divided by a platform at half-height, the diazoma, into two parts, and accessible by radial passages. The statement of Vitruvius, who, as usual, substitutes a thought-saving canon for the living individuality of Hellenic art, is not borne out by the numerous remains of Greek theatres. The orchestra and auditorium exceed the semicircle in every instance where local conformations have not rendered this impossible; but they either do this by elongating the arc with tangents, as in the theatres of Segesta (Fig. 186), Syracuse, Tyndaris, and Tauromenion, or by continuing the circumference of the original circle without deviation, as in those of Athens, Epidauros, Megalopolis, Delos, Melos, Cnidos, Laodikeia, Side, Myra, Telmissos, Patara, Aizanis, etc. Among all known Greek theatres only two, those at Mantinea and Alabanda, are situated in the plain and entirely built of masonry; the others, contrary to Roman custom, utilize natural inclinations, as before explained. The seats were either cut in the native rock, or were walled and reveted with slabs of marble; when the slope was of earth, important foundations were undertaken.

The arrangements of odeions, or partially covered theatres for festive musical representations, appear to have preceded, and in some degree influenced, the architecture of the theatres. The oldest known example of these structures is the Skias in Sparta, a circular building provided with a pitched roof, which was probably built in accordance with forms customary in Asia Minor, as a Samian architect (Theodoros, the son of Telecles) was called from Samos to superintend its erection. The odeion upon the Ilissos near Athens appears to have been of similar disposition, and, like the former, constructed chiefly of wood.

The private dwellings of Greece stood in no relation to the monumental public buildings. That we are acquainted with no Greek house is a proof that these were of the same subordinate importance as was the family in the Hellenic state. The house was nothing more than the scene of the family labors, and turned modestly inward, confined and simple chambers being grouped around a central court. The life of the Greeks was, for the most part, spent away from home, upon the market-places and in the gymnasia and stoas; it was only at meal-times and for repose that he sought the retirement of his house. This was completely separated from the outer world, the dwelling-chambers having no windows upon the street and the faÇade being unimportant. The rooms, with the exception, perhaps, of the dining-hall, were but little developed, being generally lighted through the door alone. Their windowless walls presented no opportunity for architectural treatment, this being restricted to the court, a space of considerable size, surrounded by a colonnade. For centuries there was nothing to lead to any increase of this simple dwelling, or to the development of a palace architecture; in the ages of the heroes and tyrants the constructive ability was insufficient, and later republican equality was inimical to all individual ostentation. It was not until royal power had, in the Macedonian epoch, taken the place of democracy that private architecture made a decided advance,—less, however, in monumental importance than in luxury and display. The chambers were multiplied by a repetition of the courts, the rooms still remaining small; while a refined extravagance, borrowing its decoration from the sister arts, took the place of architectural invention. Notwithstanding the Greek terms applied to various forms of rooms by Vitruvius, they appear to have been comparatively restricted in size. The so-called Corinthian hall, covered with a barrel-vault, is specifically a Roman creation; the Egyptian hall, with a clerestory over the central aisle, may have been built in remembrance of Alexandrian models, while that of Kyzicos is illustrative of methods customary in Asia Minor, and especially in Pergamon. The three chief cities of the Diadochi must have presented imposing monuments of private and palatial architecture: Alexandria, the Egyptian residence of the Ptolemies, had been founded by Alexander himself, and in great part designed by his architect, Deinocrates; Antioch, upon the Orontes in Syria, was built by Seleucos Nicator, with the aid of the architect Xenaios, and rapid increase soon quadrupled its original extent; Pergamon had been restored and enlarged by Eumenes. The wonderful works of that time show architecture to have lost all earnestness and truthfulness through the extravagant demands created by the luxurious courts of the Ptolemies, SeleucidÆ, and AttalidÆ; their sham theatrical pomp was surpassed only by the Oriental costliness and splendor of the materials. The monuments were expressive of the weakness and superficiality into which the Eastern Hellenic world had fallen, and for which the forms of Greek art were employed only as a transparent varnish. Alexander the Great had himself led the way to this profusion of monumental and private buildings. It was he, for instance, who had caused Deinocrates to erect a pyramidal pyre for the burning of the body of his favorite Hephaisteion, which was a marvel of tastelessness and extravagance: the square substructure of brick masonry, with sides one stadion long, each ornamented with two hundred and forty golden prows of vessels and nine hundred and sixty statues, bore a second terrace decorated with golden wreathed torches; the third and fourth stages were reveted with reliefs of gold representing hunting scenes and the battles of the centaurs; the fifth with golden lions and bulls, upon which followed Macedonian arms and trophies taken from the barbarians. The whole was terminated by golden figures of sirens, the hollow bodies of which accommodated the singers of the funeral chant. A similar piece of display was the magnificent wagon for the funeral procession of Alexander. Other works were the gigantic tent for the Dionysian procession of Ptolemy II., Philadelphos, with its supports formed like palms and thyrses, with its cupola-shaped roof, secret grottoes, etc.; and the Thalamegos, or colossal Nile bark, a floating palace built by Ptolemy IV., Philopator, with its Temple of Aphrodite and many halls, one of which had chryselephantine Corinthian columns, and was decorated by a frieze of reliefs executed in ivory and affixed to a golden ground. A dining-saloon was built in the Egyptian manner, as a hypostyle, and the hall of Dionysos was provided with an apse formed like a grotto. At the same time, wonders of technical and mechanical skill divided attention with these works of barbarous luxury. As early as the time of Hiero II. of Syracuse, Archimedes and Archias built a monstrous ship, intended for the transportation of grain, which is said to have comprised an entire city, with a gymnasion, a public park, towers, reception-rooms, dining-halls, etc. It had three decks, and was propelled by twenty rows of oarsmen. Even this was surpassed by Ptolemy IV., who built a vessel with forty rows of oars. In short, gigantic dimensions and tasteless magnificence, favored by the insane competition among the followers of Alexander, extinguished true art, the more rapidly as works of these later ages were not executed with the solidity which preserved Roman architecture from similar decline, even though it accepted many unsound artistic influences from these Hellenic and barbarian despots.

The sculpture deserves even more unlimited admiration than the architecture of Greece. Hellenic building shows monumental ideals such as the creative power of no other people has attained; yet the problems which presented themselves for solution were of a limited nature. In sculpture, on the other hand, a height was reached which the artists of all later times have scarcely been able to comprehend, far less to equal. For centuries cultivated nations have drawn from this inexhaustible fountain, in unconditional admiration,—learning from Greek statues, and acknowledging their matchless perfection. Although it may justly be concluded that a direct reconstruction of the architectural remains, as a whole, were it possible, is not to be recommended, still no one can hesitate to regard the best examples of Hellenic sculpture as a model worthy of direct emulation, the controlling influence of which upon the present age is only to be desired. And though the Gothic cathedral may appear to some a higher artistic conception than the Doric peripteros, no one would give preference to the sculptures of the ancient Orientals, of the MediÆval Christians, or even of the great masters of the Renaissance, over the marble treasures gathered in any of the larger collections of antiques.

As, among all the works of antiquity, it is to Hellenic sculpture that the undisputed palm of precedence is given, it is befitting that particular attention should be devoted to it—that it should be treated as the central point, the focus, of the history of ancient art. This is made possible by the accounts of classic authors handed down concerning it, and by the multitudinous remains preserved and accessible in the museums of all great cities; it is rendered easy by the circumstance that the attention and industry of the archÆological explorer and of the student of art have been directed to no other field of antique life with equal zeal and with equally important results. The history of the development of Hellenic sculpture thus lies, in its main features, more clearly before us than does that of any other ancient art. Although different views still exist in regard to many particulars, the arguments advanced in their support only serve for greater general enlightenment. The lively discussion which the question of the beginnings of Greek sculpture has called forth may be considered as terminated, since the Egyptian origin, advocated by Thiersch, Ross, Feurbach, Julius Braun, Stahr, and others, has been refuted, or at least reduced to the secondary and later influence assumed by Friedrichs. Indeed, the oldest Grecian sculptures, when compared with those of Egypt, display a complete contrast, and prove that such a connection, if it existed at all, was by no means intimate. Egyptian art worked upon purely mechanical principles, according to a typical network of lines. Sculpture was drawn into the province of architecture, and slavishly subordinated to it; carved figures became little else than architectural members through uniformity, symmetrical regularity, and multiplicity of repetition. Piers masked by the form of Osiris were thus substituted for columns, and long rows of sphinxes or colossal statues were set, like the obelisks, to decorate the avenues leading to the temples. The fixed standard after which the heads of such figures were patterned—more like the capitals of columns than imitations of life—and the members, without action, and constructed according to an established height or breadth, like the shafts of pillars, and similarly regulated in proportions by their diameter—took away all independence as works of sculpture, and caused the statues rather to appear as parts of an architectural composition. The ordinary Egyptian stone-cutter knew of only two positions, well established by custom; he renounced fundamentally the countless different appearances of life, and, with this, all representation of action and of individuality. Primitive Greek sculpture, on the contrary, arose from a sound naturalism, which directed the eye of the artist to real and peculiar appearances from the outset, often neglecting the proportions of the whole in the desire characteristically to express important details. The first Hellenic figures are wanting in that which was so prominent in the Egyptian: a correct, or at least a schooled, outline and modelling; while the pleasing imitation of life in detail, utterly foreign to Egyptian sculptures, is most forcibly presented. This naturalistic tendency prevented Hellenic sculpture from degenerating into an Egyptian formalism; the Greek artist did not blindly attach himself to a hieratic model, but studied organic life, thus keeping his works free from that ossified conventionalism common to all Eastern civilization. The very first carvings of Greece had a power of development which was wanting in all the other nations of that period.

To these differences of artistic principle must be added differences in characteristic forms, dependent partly upon race and partly upon the different conceptions of the two nations—differences so marked as to enable us to distinguish their works without hesitation. The Egyptian head differs decidedly from the Greek head in the high position of the ear, the long, narrow, and somewhat obliquely placed eyes, the wide flat nose, and the thick lips. (Fig. 28.) The Egyptian figure is slim, the primitive Greek almost stunted; in the former the shoulders are high and broad, in the latter sloping and narrow; there the hips are small, here large. The garments of Egyptian works are either elastic, without natural folds, clinging so closely to the body as often to be recognizable only at the borders, or are heavily pressed together in broad and angular masses. The scanty clothing introduced into ancient Hellenic sculptures shows throughout a close observation of nature; and the drapery is pleasing even in unsuccessful imitations, because it betrays the loving care of the artist. In the oldest productions of Greece we perceive a slumbering genius and capacity for development which were wholly lacking in the trained handiwork of Egyptian art,—as the faulty free-hand drawing of an intelligent boy, who tries to show what he has seen, awakens greater interest and hope than do the labored copies and tracings of an illiterate mechanic.

When compared with these weighty reasons against the dependence of primitive Grecian sculpture upon that of Egypt, the arguments adduced in favor of the supposition seem insufficient. Chief among these is the opinion of several ancient writers who vaguely imply that the oldest sculpture of the Greeks was related to that of the Egyptians, and derived from it as a later production. But it is well known that Pausanias and Diodoros were not exacting as to proofs of their opinions in regard to the history of art. In this instance, they were deluded by the same outward resemblance which has been so deceptive in modern times,—a similarity dependent upon that stiffness of archaic statues common to every primitive art, and to the attenuation and union of the extremities, which resulted from the economy of material and labor natural to both countries. But though, in the beginning of Greek sculpture, certain difficulties of execution were avoided in the same manner as in Egypt, and the material of the carved figures, whether wood or stone, was meted out as scantily as possible, it does not follow that they were directly dependent upon the Egyptian works which were influenced by like considerations.

It is otherwise with the relations between Western Asiatic art and the early sculpture of Greece. The preceding section has made it evident that the most prominent characteristics of the Ionic style were developed from this root, and the influence of Asiatic motives was as marked in regard to the sculpture as to the architecture of Hellas. The fully perfected flower, however, but little betrays an Oriental derivation in either province. The art of Asia Minor and of Syria had taken an essentially different starting-point from that of Egypt—one more nearly allied to the Greek point of view. Instead of formulating the human figure by a fixed canon after the manner of the Egyptians, it looked to nature itself, with a decided realistic tendency. But in its later development, as already shown, Mesopotamian art went as much too far beyond reality as that of Egypt had remained behind it; and the self-sufficiency of the Eastern despotisms resulted in that utter standstill which checked the life of art in Assyria, Persia, and Phoenicia. The acquired forms, as upon the Nile, stiffened into conventional types, with the difference that those of Egypt took more the character of a written chronicle, those of Mesopotamia and its dependencies more that of ornament. Hellenic genius could only remain upon such a low level during its immaturity; there are, therefore, almost no traces of direct Asiatic influence evident in the sculptures of Greece after the most primitive period, although in this it is unmistakable. We may call this period of development the heroic age, and understand by it the epoch from the earliest times to the first Olympiad, 776 B.C. Even the native legends concerning the beginning of Greek art point towards the East. The mythical founders of monumental buildings, the Cyclops, to whom were ascribed the oldest stone sculptures, like those upon the Lions’ Gate of MykenÆ, came from Lycia. The DactylÆ appear in groups upon the mountains of Phrygia and Crete often bearing names characteristic of their significance as cunning artisans—Kelmis, Damnameneus, and Acmon (hammer, tongs, and anvil); while the TelchinÆ—Chryson, Argyron, and Chalkon (workers in gold, silver, and copper)—inhabited Rhodes. The personification of various metal-workers in these mythical guilds is unequivocal, and the attributed locality of their dwellings has a corresponding meaning, pointing to the coasts of Western Asia, where the process of overlaying wooden carvings with beaten metal was predominant, as in Phoenicia and the intermediate island of Cyprus. This empaistic work, of plates shaped upon a model by hammer and punch, presupposes the carving of the model itself, without which the creation of the sphyrelaton was obviously impossible. The gold overlaying of Solomon’s Temple was formed upon reliefs carved in cedar-wood, and was, perhaps, beaten over them: before the discovery of bronze-casting, we may conclude this also to have been the case with works of statuary in the round. The art of sculpture in wood seems to have been native among the early Greeks; carved idols, xoana, soon appearing as substitutes for those stones and trunks of trees (Paus. vii. 22), which, provided at times with the attributes of trident, caduceus, lance, or sceptre, were at first worshipped as divine symbols. These were frequently so old that no account could be given of their origin, and they were consequently said to have fallen from the skies. It is difficult adequately to conceive the rudeness of these most ancient xoana. The arms were not at all separated from the body, and were indicated only in as far as was necessary to attach to them characteristic attributes, like the garment and spindle in one hand, and the lance in the other, of the Trojan Athene described by Homer. The sacred figure was frequently quite covered with real doll-like clothing, as is the Virgin or the Bambino in many modern places of pilgrimage provided by the Roman Catholic Church. The difficulty of representing the hair of these puppets appears, from the later treatment of the heads in marble, as seen in the Apollo of Tenea, to have been evaded by the use of a woolly covering like a wig. The want of definition in the faces is evident from the statement that some xoana had closed eyes. This is not to be explained by the pious legends of antiquity that the image had refused to look upon some deed of sacrilege,—such, for instance, as the rape of Cassandra,—but by the fact that the eye was indicated only by a horizontal painted line. It was from such rude figures that Daidalos advanced. It was not only said that he was the inventor of various instruments for wood-working, such as the axe, saw, auger, and plummet; but certain improvements in the shaping of the statues were also ascribed to him, such as the opening—that is to say, the formation—of the eye, and the separating of feet, as if in the act of stepping. The progress cannot, in fact, have been great. The traditional account that the images had to be bound after the freeing of their legs, to prevent their running away, must not lead us to imagine an ideal perfection, or, indeed, any striking resemblance to life. The classical authorities who knew the works attributed to Daidalos say, indeed, that they were “wonderful to look upon,” and that “the master would have made himself ridiculous by such works in our day.” The personality of Daidalos is hardly better assured than that of the mythical workers in metal, the DactylÆ and TelchinÆ; the name itself, signifying the cunning workman, is nothing else than a personification of artistic skill, a collective term for all primitive skill and activity in wood-carving. As this had developed from handiwork, the legend calls the father of Daidalos, Palamaon, the contriver, or Eupalamos, the skilful artisan. The travels which Daidalos is said to have made from Athens to Crete, Sicily, Thebes, Pisa, Egypt, etc., merely result from the appearance of so-called Daidalian works in those places. In the time of Homer, the ninth century B.C., these images were already regarded as of great age; so that the period of the beginning of Greek sculpture must be at least as remote as the tenth century B.C. The one statue directly mentioned in the Iliad, the sitting Athene at Troy, upon whose knees the Trojan women laid a garment, appeared to the author of the Homeric epics to be a work in the manner of Daidalos. If another passage (Iliad, i. 14) may be understood as referring to an image of Apollo, this must, like the Athene, have been at least partially covered with real clothing. Such figures were also overlaid with metal; it is not to be doubted that the gold and silver dogs, and the youthful torch-bearers of gold, in the Palace of Alkinoos were carved models of wood covered with beaten plate. The empaistic process, native to Phoenician countries, was early imitated in heroic Greece. Though the island of the PhÆacians was idealized by the fancy of the poet, he yet cannot be supposed to have invented new technical processes in an account which was to be generally intelligible. It seems, however, that sculptural art had no great range during the heroic ages; perhaps the works overlaid with beaten metal, which were known to Homer, may have been the results of an accidental and superficial knowledge gained by intercourse with the Oriental peoples inhabiting the coasts of Western Asia.

Fig. 187.—Cover of Dodwell’s Vase, in Munich. Full size.
Fig. 187.—Cover of Dodwell’s Vase, in Munich. Full size.

The manufacture of furniture and smaller decorative objects was probably more important. Homer was acquainted with the use of the lathe; while relief-carving in wood, and inlaying of metal, ivory, and amber, were early practised. The latter process can also be referred to Phoenician influence, in consideration both of the materials employed and of historical analogy. Even kings busied themselves with such handiwork, as the building of his nuptial couch by Odysseus proves; and royal ladies, such as Penelope, Andromache, and Helen, embroidered and wove elaborate textures. Professional workmen are also mentioned: Icmalios was the maker of Penelope’s seat; and some productions of this nature, like the chest of Kypselos, were as late as the beginning of the historical ages of Greece. Sculptured utensils of metal, vessels, tripods, and weapons, are particularly and distinctly described in the Homeric epics. The jars and vases described as “embossed with flowers” may be imagined as decorated with wreaths, like those found in Assyria and on Cyprus, and as similar to the early Italian bronzes. Cups with knobs (Iliad, xi. 633) were discovered in the excavations at Nineveh; conventionalized animals, serpents and birds (Iliad, xi. 17 and 634; Odyssey, xi. 610, and xix. 227), are to be found upon many primitive vases, and may be supposed to have existed as handles to vessels as well as upon clasps, sword-belts, and armor. References to the Asiatic derivation of the bronze-works known in prehistoric Greece are given by Homer, who mentions craters from Sidon and a Cyprian coat of mail. The shields were especially rich, being formed by several thin plates of metal secured one over the other; every disk was of greater circumference than that above it, only a narrow concentric rim of each thus remaining visible. The inner circle alone upon the comparatively simple shield of Agamemnon (Iliad, xi. 32) was ornamented with sculpture, in this case a Gorgoneion, the outer edges being provided with ten knobs of tin; upon the handle was a three-headed dragon. The shield of Achilles (Iliad, xviii. 468) was wonderfully elaborate, and, as the work of Hephaistos, probably exceeded by far the ordinary ornamentation of heroic arms; but it does not, on this account, give less reliable information concerning the general form and nature of prehistoric armor. Five layers of metal were superimposed,—two of bronze, two of tin, perhaps alternating, that in the centre being of gold; four rings were thus formed around the inner circle, each covered with rich sculptural decoration. Symbols of earth, sea, and sky, with the sun, moon, and stars, were within the golden disk. Upon one side of the first concentric band was shown a city in time of peace, with a wedding procession and a court of justice; upon the other a besieged city, with a sally of the defenders and a general engagement. Upon the second ring were the four seasons, indicated by ploughing, harvesting, the vintage, and by a herd of peacefully grazing cattle attacked by lions. A harvest dance of youths and maidens, before whom was a singer with a harp, decorated the third ring; while the fourth and outermost, probably narrower than the others, was ornamented by waves representing the sea, which, according to the conception of the ancients, surrounded the circular land of the earth. The figures were cut from thin sheets of different metals, and were riveted to the ground; it is uncertain whether these were first beaten to a relief, or were left flat, giving the effect of a silhouette. The metals were naturally chosen of colors different from that of the band to which they were affixed, and the treatment, in principle, thus somewhat approached the art of painting. The ground and the vineyards, in the pictures of the seasons, were of gold, yet “the grapes shone blackish;” the poles appear to have been of silver, the trenches of iron, and the hedges of tin, while upon the dancers “hung golden daggers upon silver straps.” Such empaistic work must have been more closely related to surfaces of inlaid metal upon wooden forms than to the statuesque Phoenician sphyrelaton. Homer’s account of the shield of Achilles should be considered not from a technical, but from an artistic, point of view. The vivid description is, of course, due altogether to poetical license; but we may well believe that subjects like the harvest dances, festive processions, warlike scenes, symbols of the seasons, etc., may have been attempted upon utensils and weapons, though in a more simple and decorative manner, their object not being an artistic setting-forth of details, but an intelligible indication of the whole. With what limited means this is possible is proved by Egyptian coilanaglyphics, Assyrian reliefs, and the paintings upon Greek vases of the most primitive style. (Fig. 187.) The artist of the heroic age cut his figures from thin sheets of metal, just as children snip paper, and set them together upon the background, filling up the intervening spaces as best he might with ornaments and names. Direct Oriental models were hardly needed for this; but it is probable that, as in the sphyrelaton, the influence of Asia Minor was felt: the conventional character of the types painted upon the oldest Greek vases bears distinct evidence of a Phoenician impulse. There was little that was artistic in the details of such early decorations, but all the more in the conception as a whole: the manner of expression was weak, but the thought was admirable. Figures appear upon Assyrian sculptures, so similar to those described by the poet that by their help one might almost reconstruct the Homeric shield; in Mesopotamia, however, the representations lacked unity in the fundamental conception, they were not well grouped in the given space, and appear, as Brunn says, like a chronicle written in figures when compared with such a poem as the artistic compositions, made up, perhaps, of the same elements, described by Homer. The pseudo-Hesiodic shield of Heracles resembled that of Achilles, the chief difference in outward form being that the three inner of the five circular layers were bordered upon the outer edges by narrow rings of steel. The middle plate was decorated with the head of Phoibos, encircled by twelve serpents like a Gorgon. The next band displayed a warlike scene and one of peace: the combat of the LapithÆ and Centaurs in one half, and Apollo among the Muses in the other. The third had a like contrast between a besieged and a peaceful city, similar in composition to those upon the shield of Achilles; while the fourth was also a representation of the seasons, chiefly distinguished from those of Homer by the substitution of a hare-hunt as the symbol of winter. The reliefs upon the four narrow steel rings must have differed in action from the larger groups; in the latter the radial lines of the upright figures prevailed, in the former a contrary movement was predominant. On the innermost steel ring boars and lions moved concentrically around the shield; upon the next following was an arm of the sea, over which flew Perseus, pursued by the Gorgons. The third was a chariot-race at full speed; and upon the outer rim were conventionalized waves, with fishes and swans, forming an ornamental band similar to the border of the Homeric shield.

Fig. 188.—Relief from the Gate of the Lions at MykenÆ.
Fig. 188.—Relief from the Gate of the Lions at MykenÆ.

Our knowledge of the sculptural activity of Greece in the heroic ages has, up to the most recent times, been derived almost entirely from the poets, whose idealized descriptions are supported, in regard to form, only by the analogy of Assyrian reliefs and the paintings upon archaic vases. Works of a primitive period have, indeed, not been entirely wanting; but it being impossible to date them, they lend no aid to an historical consideration. The derivation and age of only two are assured, and the characteristic forms of one of these—the Niobe upon Mt. Sipylos, near Magnesia, mentioned in the Iliad, xxiv. 613—are entirely obliterated. It is so rudely executed, or so weather-beaten, that even in antiquity it appeared to Pausanias, even when seen from the immediate vicinity, as but a shapeless rock, in which the human figure was scarcely to be recognized, while, at a distance, it resembled a woman bowed down with grief and weeping. The account has been verified in recent times by the discovery of a rock-cut relief of three times the size of life, so disintegrated that satisfactory drawings of its human forms could not be made. This renders the other pre-Homeric monument, the most ancient known sculpture of Greece and of Europe, all the more important—namely, the relief over the gate of MykenÆ, called by the poet that of the Lions—the chief portal of the fortress of the AtridÆ, the witness of the departure of Agamemnon for the Trojan war, and of the downfall of his house on his return. (Figs. 188 and 126.) The structure has been already described from an architectural point of view. The relief upon the slab which closes the triangle above the lintel represents two lions standing upright upon either side of a column; their heads, turned outward, were separate pieces, fastened with dowels to the background, and have disappeared. The designation of these animals need not be deemed erroneous because they have no manes. Pausanias speaks of them as lions (though this in itself may not be of great weight), and in the Phoenician examples of beaten metal-work, as in the archaic paintings upon Greek vases, the indication of hair is always wanting. The Asiatic influence which, in architectural respects, had made itself felt upon the Tholos of Atreus, must be acknowledged here also; thus alone is it possible to account for a peculiar modelling of the forms, entirely foreign to sculpture in stone. The resemblance of these lions to the animal figures of Assyria is readily recognizable; it is the same resemblance as that which the art industry of the Syrian coasts showed to that of Mesopotamia. The Phoenician tradespeople, themselves skilled in many novel technical processes, formed the medium between the cultured countries upon the Tigris and the Ægean Sea. The Lycian Cyclops had also borrowed from these neighbors, and to them was traditionally attributed this wonderful stone carving at MykenÆ, a work which, from all appearance, was an isolated attempt. Such sculptures could not become national and native so long as the requirements of the heroic Greeks were satisfied with the mere decoration of useful objects. The impulse towards monumental art seems first to have been awakened with the introduction of the columnar temple. Schliemann’s excavations upon the Acropolis of MykenÆ in 1876 have brought to light some few works of sculpture which deserve to be considered. Prominent among them are the memorial stones, two of which are shown in Fig. 189. They are remarkable for a naÏve primitiveness of conception and the desire to display the subject chosen as distinctly as possible. A vigorous action and a certain observation of nature are not lacking, though the forms are incorrect, both in general effect and in detail. The similarity of these works to Asiatic sculptures is marked; but no trace of Egyptian influence is to be recognized in the attenuated figures. The same derivation is evident in the spiral ornaments, which closely resemble those upon the faÇade of the Tholos of Atreus, and upon Phoenician and Cyprian remains. All the reliefs imply models of beaten metal, and lend further support to the hypothesis which connects the heroic age of Greece with the civilization of Western Asia, through the medium of Phoenician traders.

Fig. 189.—Steles from the Acropolis of MykenÆ.
Fig. 189.—Steles from the Acropolis of MykenÆ.

The golden masks found in the graves are not less interesting, whether the assignment of these to the Homeric worthies—Agamemnon, Eurymedon, etc.—be accepted or not. (Fig. 190.) It is at least certain that they are memorials of the heroic age, and the great quantities of gold found in the sepulchres make it probable that they appertained to a royal race, and were buried at a time when the prosperity of MykenÆ was great and its power extensive. The masks, like the grave-stones, are formed with the helpless realism peculiar to the art of Western Asia, and entirely foreign to that of Egypt. It is easy to believe that they were imported directly from Phoenicia. This must certainly have been the case with the beautifully executed ornaments of gold—disks, diadems, stars, etc.—the beaten workmanship of which is of a perfection only possible to trained and practised manufacturers. The spirals and other linear designs are executed with exceeding accuracy, by peculiar instruments. Their motives are taken from the animal and vegetable world, from cuttle-fishes, butterflies, and various forms of leaves and flowers. It is certain that the perforated cylinders, cut, like gems, in intaglio, with scenes of war and hunting, were introduced directly from Asia; they are strikingly similar to the rolling seals of carnelian and agate found in Mesopotamia. A small model of a temple is peculiarly Phoenician, like that repeated upon Paphian coins.

Fig. 191.—From the Vase of Clitias and Ergotimos.
Fig. 191.—From the Vase of Clitias and Ergotimos.

During the first two historical centuries, after the commencement of reckoning time by Olympiads, the direction of activity in art appears to have changed but little. Sculpture, represented by guilds, or families, of handicraftsmen in Athens, Argos, and Sikyon, remained little else than decoration, though, at least in the selection of subjects, it opened for itself new fields. In the heroic ages the scenes were limited to the most immediate realities; but, after the Homeric epics had become the property of the nation, the picturesque treasures of many legends became available. Arctinos of Miletos, in the middle of the eighth century, and, somewhat later, Lesches of Lesbos, continuing the Iliad, sang of the downfall of Troy. Stasimos of Cyprus chose preceding events as his theme; while the myths of the Seven against Thebes, of the Titanomachia, and of the exploits of Heracles and Theseus found similar epic illustration. These poems not only provided the subjects for sculpture, but described them with plastic vividness. This is shown by the two chief works of this period,—the Chest of Kypselos and the Throne of Apollo at AmyclÆ. The first was an oblong shrine of cedar-wood, which Kypselos, tyrant of Corinth, consecrated in the Heraion of Olympia, in memory of his preservation as a child, when, hidden in a fruit-box, he had escaped from the persecution of the BacchiadÆ. This chest, either upon three sides—the fourth standing against the wall—or upon the long front side alone, was ornamented with carvings, in five bands, one over the other, probably of unequal height. The reliefs, partly inlaid with ivory and gold, must have been of a workmanship similar to that customary in the heroic ages. The uncommonly rich and varied representations, almost exclusively mythological and heroic, were taken from the before-mentioned cyclic poems (Pausanias, v. 17 to 19). The figures appear to have somewhat resembled in style those upon the Vase of Clitias and Ergotimos in Florence (Fig. 191), which, on account of its banded arrangement and the similarity of its mythical subject, deserves, rather than the cover of Dodwell’s vase given above (Fig. 187), to be compared to the Chest of Kypselos. The Throne of Apollo at AmyclÆ, near Sparta, has been connected with the name of one of the oldest artists known, Bathycles of Magnesia, who lived half a century later than the maker of the Chest of Kypselos. This throne also has been minutely described by Pausanias (iii. 18 to 19). In regard to its sculptured decoration, his account of its construction is unintelligible; it is only clear that the framework was colossal, and that the ancient doll-like image stood within it, without any seat. Not less than forty-one scenes, besides the larger compositions upon the pedestal of the statue, covered the outer and inner sides of the throne with carvings in low-relief, similar in style to those of the Chest of Kypselos. Upon the legs in full, or at least in three-quarter, relief were figures of the Graces, the Hours, Tritons, etc.; upon the back were portraits of the master and of his Magnesian assistants, besides sphinxes, panthers, and lions.

These works were still chiefly of a decorative character. Monumental sculpture had not yet freed itself from the trammels of inadequately developed technical processes. So long as the artisan had no choice other than the sphyrelaton and the xoanon, a material foundation was wanting for the development of an independently artistic sculpture. Even when isolated works of a higher order were attempted, as in the colossal Zeus, of beaten gold-plate over a wooden form, dedicated in Olympia by Kypselos or his son Periander, they can be considered, like the other sphyrelata of this and of the heroic age, only as figures of great material value but of little artistic importance. Want of skill in execution favored that clinging to old honored types of devotional figures inherent in the nature of all religions. These influences stood in such close, interchangeable relations that it is impossible to say whether, in the province of sculptured images, the slowness of progress should be placed more to the account of religious prejudices and the difficulties thrown in the way of all change by hieratic institutions, or of the technical limitations of doll-like xoana and sphyrelata.

New mechanical acquirements were needed for the furtherance of the art. Three great discoveries, or, to speak more correctly, the extended application of known processes, date from the beginning of the sixth century B.C.: the casting of bronze, the sculpture of marble, and chryselephantine work (the inlaying of gold and ivory upon a wooden kernel). Each of these had its gradual development, at least the first and the last being furthered by auxiliary inventions. It was indispensable for the casting of bronze that modelling in clay should have attained a certain perfection. The name of the Sikyonian potter Boutades is connected with the introduction of this branch of art; it appears to have been in the middle of the seventh century B.C. that he ornamented the acroteria and antefixes of the temple roof, first with low-relief (prostypon) and then with high-relief (ectypon). He also left a portrait panel in terra-cotta, shown in the Nymphaion of Corinth until the destruction of that city as the first work of its kind. In connection with it was told the pleasing anecdote that the daughter of Boutades, in taking leave of her lover, sketched his shadow upon the wall with charcoal, the father afterwards filling out the outline with clay and burning the relief thus produced. Neither of these accounts are of great direct value, but that a potter could achieve a lasting reputation as an artist may perhaps show that modelling in clay had already made essential progress, and thus prepared the way for brass-founding, which requires an original and mould of this more plastic material. The discovery of soldering was also not without significance; it formed, in metal work, a connecting link between the riveting of the sphyrelaton and casting, even indispensable to larger statues of the latter process, which, at least in the beginning, were executed in pieces. Soldering seems first to have been employed upon iron. Glaucos of Chios attained great results by this means, and attracted general attention to it in the seventh century B.C. His iron crater-stand, dedicated at Delphi by Alyattes, was an elaborate work, ornamented upon the legs and clasps with sculptured animals and plants.

The way was thus prepared for monumental bronze-founding, which was not, indeed, discovered by the Samians Rhoicos and Theodoros, the sons of Phileas and Telecles, to whom it was attributed by antiquity,—for, as has been seen, it was practised by the Phoenicians,—but was by them first introduced into Greek art. The dates assigned to their epoch vary from the beginning of the seventh to the middle of the sixth century B.C.; but it is the more reasonable to place them, with Brunn, at the close of this period, without supposing that there were two masters by the name of Theodoros, a father and a son. The innovation probably began with the solid casting of smaller works, but whether Rhoicos and Theodoros were limited to this is at least doubtful. Economy of material and the lessening of weight in figures of great dimensions must soon have led to hollow casting upon a fire-proof kernel; it is possible that it was this very progress that made the two artists celebrated as discoverers. The development of their technical improvements seems at first to have impaired the artistic aspects of the works; Pausanias says of a female statue by Rhoicos, probably in the Temple of Artemis at Ephesos, that it was even more archaic and rude than a figure of Athene in Amphissa which was there held to be Trojan. That the two Samians also practised in beaten metal work is clear from the colossal silver mixing-vessel, containing six hundred amphoras (about 200,000 litres), executed by Theodoros and dedicated at Delphi by Croesus, from a golden vine with grapes of mounted jewels, and a golden plane-tree in the possession of the Persian kings; the latter works remind us of examples of similar workmanship in the Assyrian palaces, the existence of which has been proved by the fragments of palms in gold-plate, lately found by Place upon a portal in the palace of Sargon, at Corsabad. If Theodoros worked thus extensively in the precious metals, it is not surprising that he produced such small toreutic objects as those indicated by the legend of the ring of Polycrates, ascribed to him, and the fabulous portrait statue of a man, with a quadriga in his hand which a fly might have covered with its wings.

A still more brilliant future was open to the second innovation, that of sculpture in marble. Chios was the birthplace of Hellenic marble statuary, as Samos had been of bronze-casting. Coarse stone had been employed from the earliest times, in isolated instances like the relief over the Gate of the Lions at MykenÆ, for figures and for small images; and the introduction of marble statuary was older than bronze-founding, for Melas, ancestor of a long race of sculptors in Chios, lived about the middle of the seventh century B.C. Of Melas himself and his son Mickiades little except the names are known; an artist of the third generation, Achermos, could venture to represent a winged Victory, yet even he was surpassed by his sons Boupalos and Athenis. It is evident, from several notices, that marble sculpture flourished greatly under these latter, who, living about 540 B.C., had become very particular in the choice of material—using only the fine-grained and translucent Parian lychnites. No one venturing to dispute their precedence, they could place upon their sculptures, exhibited in Delos, the self-conscious inscription: “Chios is celebrated, not alone for its vineyards, but for the works of the sons of Achermos.” Numerous works by them are mentioned by ancient visitors, being collected in later times by princely dilettanti. Augustus employed such sculptures upon the exterior of many of his buildings, notably in the gable of the Palatine temple of Apollo; he had an especial and, as it appears, a not ill-founded liking for them, and these works could not have been a disfigurement, even to the universal magnificence of imperial Rome. An explanation of this marked advance at so early a date is given by this very fancy of Augustus: the works thus architecturally utilized could not have been devotional images of the deities; they must have been decorative sculptures. The former class, from reasons already touched upon, were hindered in artistic progress; the latter being beyond the jurisdiction of hieratic institutions, developed untrammelled. It was only in ornamental figures that the assiduous and talented sculptors of early times found free scope, and it was fortunate that the demand for these architectural and decorative works must naturally have been greater than for the more rare devotional images, which were piously transferred from the older sanctuaries to the new buildings which took their place. The gable groups of Ægina show how unequally art advanced in these different and distinct fields.

During the time of Boupalos and Athenis, art began to flourish in other places than Chios. First in Sikyon, with the two Cretans Dipoinos and Skyllis, who may have been even older than the last Chian masters. They were called, it seems, to Sikyon, and there chiefly employed their energies in founding a school, changing at times the site of their labors to Argos, CleonÆ, and Ambrakia. Like the masters of Chios, they chiefly employed the marble of Paros, and it appears, from the accounts of a group representing Apollo, Artemis, Athene, and Heracles, that they too sought their fame less in devotional images for the interior of temples than in monumental compositions for architectural ornament. Although these Cretan sculptors, according to the testimony of Pliny, acquired great celebrity in marble working, they are more important as the founders of the third among the statuesque arts above mentioned—that process of gold and ivory overlaying which culminated in the greatest masterpieces of Pheidias. It seems to have originated from the native xoana of early times, by transferring the inlaid decoration observed upon the furniture of the heroic ages to sculpture in the round. It developed in plainly distinguishable stages. Dipoinos and Skyllis still only in part covered the carved core of wood, and restricted this overlaying to ivory. This is illustrated by the accounts of a group of the mounted Dioscuri, with their mistresses Hilasia and Phoebe, and their sons Anaxis and Mnasinos, in the Temple of the Isius at Argos, which was cut out of common wood and ebony, the former being covered with ivory. Statues were made by Hegylos and his son Theocles, scholars of Dipoinos and Skyllis, for the treasure-house of the Epidamnians in Olympia, which represented Heracles with the Nymphs of the Hesperides, and Atlas bearing the heavenly globe; Pausanias describes this work as cut from cedar-wood, and the serpent and the tree with the golden apples of the Hesperides must certainly have required the inlaying of gold, if not of ivory. The author particularly mentions the employment of gold upon another group: the struggle of Heracles with Acheloos for Deianeira, the work of Donycleidas and Dontas of LacedÆmonia, also scholars of the Cretan masters. The perfection of the chryselephantine process seems early to have been obtained, the wood, before in great part visible, was by the latter artists used only as a kernel, being completely covered with ivory and gold. This was, at least, the case with the Themis of Donycleidas in the Temple of Hera at Olympia. That Pausanias considers these statues extremely archaic must be understood as a relative judgment; it is to be borne in mind that works by which a new process is introduced are always of a primitive and imperfect appearance, if not artistically backward. A sphyrelaton of beaten copper-plates riveted together was still possible to this school, for a figure of Athene Chalkioicos at Sparta was the work of Clearchos of Rhegion, a member of this guild. The sphyrelaton was, indeed, nearly related to chryselephantine work which was virtually a combination of the sphyrelaton with the ancient xoanon. The Æginetan Smilis, of this group of scholars, was celebrated as the first great artist of his island. His connection with the Cretans is more certain than with the later sculptors of Ægina; if he should prove to be older than the native Sikyonian masters, as has recently been asserted, this would add another site to the primitive schools of Greek art.

Fig. 192.—Metope Relief from the Middle Temple of the Acropolis of Selinous.
Fig. 192.—Metope Relief from the Middle Temple of the Acropolis of Selinous.

The history of sculpture, drawn from the remarks of ancient writers, would bear only upon the development of these technical processes, and would give but little information concerning the style of this period, if it were not possible to compare their accounts with several ancient monuments which by great good-fortune have been preserved to our own time. But it is necessary here not to overlook one point which is frequently lost sight of altogether—namely, the local differences betrayed by works of one or the same epoch. Examples of archaic stone sculpture are presented by European Greece, by the Hellenic colonies of the East in Asia Minor, and by those of the West in Sicily, which show the two latter provinces to have followed a somewhat different course of artistic development, and even the works of the Peloponnesos early to have betrayed considerable variations, in conception and in principle, from those of the more northern tracts of the Continent. Among the provincial monuments, the first to be noted, because the oldest known, are the metope reliefs upon the middle temple of the Acropolis of Selinous in Sicily. The city was founded about 628 B.C., and, though this temple may not have been the first built in the new colony, it must be considered as dating at least from the first half of the sixth century. Among numerous fragments of the metope sculptures two tablets have been preserved almost uninjured which are of the greatest value from the plainness with which they express both the artistic advance and the imperfections of this early age. It would be a mistake, however, to see in them representatives of the sculptural style of Greece proper, for they betray in many respects the peculiar influences of Sicilian Doric. In as far as the artistic understanding of the works permitted, they evince a fresh and sound naturalism, and a careful observation of the living model. But this did not extend beyond the more independent members; while arms and legs, hands and feet, are relatively excellent, the body and head are disagreeably heavy, rude, and ill-proportioned. This contrast is particularly noticeable in that of the two reliefs which represent Heracles carrying upon his bow the two Kercopes. The more successful modelling of the details of the limbs shows it to have been the work of an abler artist than the other (Fig. 192), where Perseus, in the presence of Athene, cuts off the head of Medusa. The deity, with naÏve helplessness, turns her right foot sideways, though otherwise facing entirely towards the front; the insufficient depth rendered it impossible otherwise to give the foot its full length, and the artist was perhaps withheld from a more correct form by an unconscious dependence upon the more familiar style of low relief. The left leg of the Medusa appears, on account of the confining frame, too short by half, and the little Pegasos stands upon long, kangaroo-like hinder legs, in order that the body may come within reach of the arm of Medusa. Yet the weakness of the transition from the front view of the upper body to the profile of the legs is less striking than in the Egyptian and Assyrian sculptures, and both Perseus and Heracles are wholly free from that typical petrifaction which characterized the art of the Nile and of the Tigris. In spite of the first impression made by the monstrous and disproportioned figures, these works have, with all their imperfections, the peculiar charm of earnest effort, which is the guarantee of ultimate success.

Fig. 193.—Statues from Miletos. British Museum.
Fig. 193.—Statues from Miletos. British Museum.

The most ancient Hellenic sculptures of Asia Minor do not show the same self-reliance and direct study of nature. There the influence of Mesopotamia, Phoenicia, Cyprus, and even of Egypt was so strongly felt that art could not remain wholly free from canonical tendencies, and did not develop simply and directly from natural models. The sitting colossal statues which flanked the sacred way from the port of Panormos to the Temple of Apollo Didymaios near Miletos, and, according to the characters of the inscriptions, date from about 540 B.C., show the naturalistic elements of Greek work in the treatment of the bodies, and especially in the garments, with their scanty but correct folds; though it is not to be denied that the arrangement in rows like the avenues of sphinxes, and the enthroned, Memnon-like position of the priests and priestesses betray reminiscences of Egyptian conceptions,—while the fulness of the bodies and the technical details of the seats are more similar to the traditional forms of Assyria and Phoenicia. The Asiatic influence is still more evident in the epistyle and metope reliefs of the remarkable Doric temple at Assos, now in the Louvre; though the rudeness of their forms may be in part owing to the loss of the stucco coating with which the coarse and excessively hard stone was doubtless overlayed and in which many of the finer details may have been executed. A similarity to the beaten work of metal plate peculiar to Phoenicia is easily recognizable, and reliefs analogous in style, and even in subject, to the sculptures of Assos are offered by the Etruscan bronze-work of a chariot found in Perugia, now in the Munich Glyptothek.

A number of sculptures found in various parts of European Greece are wholly different from these provincial works. Chief among them are entirely nude youthful figures standing in a stiff position, the arms hanging close to the body, and the legs separated—the left being generally a little advanced; the head, with receding brow, is slightly inclined, and looks directly forward; the eyes are large and protruding; the smiling mouth drawn outward at the corners; while the wig-like hair falls low over the shoulders. They are commonly designated as statues of Apollo, although the want of all attributes, such as were so universally employed by primitive art for the figures of deities, and which were so necessary for their characterization, makes this more than uncertain. Moreover, according to Plutarch, a Delian statue of Apollo, the work of Tectaios and Angelion, teachers of the Æginetan Callon, and consequently of this period, showed the god with outstretched hands; a position which was typical in early antiquity, and seems long to have been retained, as in the Milesian Apollo of Canachos, and the small bronze figure in the Louvre. The supposition appears plausible that these figures are those of victors in the national games of Greece; such votive offerings are known to have been carved of wood in the earliest times, but, after 560 B.C., they appear to have been of stone, like that of Arrhachion in Phigalia, described by Pausanias (viii. 40). The Apollo of Thera, now in Athens (Fig. 194), is one of the more ancient of these works; the soft and yet not voluptuous forms of the body, the beauty of outline, united with an evident uncertainty, do not denote a later phase of artistic development than the hard sharpness and strict conventionalism of the greater number of archaic statues. The beginning of this discipline is shown by the Apollo of Tenea, now at Munich, in which there is but little grace and artistic beauty, but all the more an earnest striving after close correctness of modelling, which is more successfully attained in the limbs than in the trunk. Of this epoch, and similar in style, though approaching more nearly to the Apollo of Thera, are the marble statues of Orchomenos, preserved only to the knees, and the torsos of Megara and Naxos, now in Athens. The more ancient sculptures found in Greece proper are less antique in style than the sculptures and reliefs already mentioned, with the exception of some marble steles from Sparta, the most important of which represents upon the one side the meeting of Orestes and Iphigenia, upon the other the murder of Clytaimnestra (Fig. 195). The rude, short figures are somewhat similar to those in the metopes of the middle temple upon the Acropolis of Selinous. This excessive heaviness and awkwardness appears almost entirely overcome in the stele of Aristion, found in northern Attica, and now in Athens. The low relief (Fig. 196), designated as the work of Aristocles, represents a man armed as a hoplite, and is similar, in many important respects, to the Apollo of Tenea, though a decided advance beyond that work. The Attic relief of a woman mounting a chariot, notwithstanding a primitive harshness of form, shows, in the graceful drapery, the inclination of the head and the position of the arms, as well as in the greater certainty of the drawing, qualities which cannot be ascribed exclusively to the superior perception of the inhabitants of Attica, but must be due, at least in part, to a later and more advanced stage of development. With these works may be compared the so-called Leucothea relief in the Villa Albani, which does not, indeed, equal them in composition, but is superior in grace of bearing and beauty of detail. Another sculpture represents the bringing of a child to a female figure seated upon a throne, perhaps the dead mother, and is similar in subject to the celebrated reliefs of the Monument of the Harpies at Xanthos, now in the British Museum, where the Harpies bear children or souls to the deities of the lower world. The former, by greater fulness and softness, as also by less clearness and understanding in the general treatment, seems to precede the latter in point of time, dating from the period between the Milesian colossal figures and the Attic reliefs described, that is to say, from 520 to 500 B.C.

The older metopes of Selinous, the statues of Miletos, the reliefs of Assos, and even the so-called figures of Apollo from Thera, Naxos, Orchomenos, and Tenea, betray great looseness and uncertainty of form; like the productions of every period of experiment, they give no evidence of systematical and accepted principles—the canonical establishment of a certain degree of perfection. In the subsequent period there was, in various cities, an earnest endeavor to make an end to this want of training by thorough and academic discipline. These efforts could not, in Greece, result in that typical lifelessness, that faulty execution and mannerism, universal in Egypt and the despotic lands of the East, which operated against all direct study of nature; but, by the combination of individual observations and improvements, they increased and purified the artistic appreciation, no longer restricting it to details, to the partial, but directing it to the complete. Athens was most active in this advance, as is evident from several ancient works closely related to that of the woman mounting the chariot. The progress is illustrated by the statue of Athene found upon the northern side of the Athenian Acropolis. A strict treatment of details, like the aigis, the folds of the garments, the hair, etc., is united to a considerable understanding of the forms of the body and the functions of the limbs, which are sharply and perhaps a little hardly modelled; while the work has in great measure freed itself from the exactions of conventional symmetry, so markedly exemplified by the sitting statues of Miletos and the Apollo of Tenea. The figure of Hermes bearing a calf, found in Athens, is a somewhat similar work; its head and hair are hard even to ugliness, but decided ability is shown in the formation of the back and hams, and in the truth to nature of the calf, held by the legs and pressed close to the neck. The progress is not less plain in the bronze statuette of Apollo in the Louvre, nearly one meter high, with the Greek inscription “to Athene from the tithes;” provided, indeed, that the period of its origin is certain, and the work does not belong to the extensive group of archaistic imitations.

The reliefs from the beginning of the fifth century are similar in character. That upon a marble fountain-drum from Corinth represents the meeting of Heracles and Hebe; it still preserves the silhouette-like outline, the small parallel folds and general ornamental style of the drapery, and the stepping of both feet flatly upon the soles; while the unschooled endeavor and evident embarrassment of the artist does not give an unpleasing expression of awkwardness to the figures, which have a certain dignity and grace, especially remarkable in the garments and in the action of the extremities. Here is attained at last that strict and completed style which has cast off all loose uncertainty, and has adopted a conventional form for accessories in order to secure the harmonious execution of the whole. This is also noticeable upon a relief discovered in Thasos, now in the Louvre, which, when compared with the before-mentioned Corinthian relief, and with the monument of the Harpies, displays the influence of the neighboring coasts of northern Asia Minor, together with a certain picturesqueness of conception peculiar to northern Greece. A beautiful stele, found in Orchomenos, the work of Alxenor, an artist from Naxos, instead of giving to the portrait figure the stiff position of parade, formerly universal, represents it with crossed legs, lazily leaning upon a gnarled stick. The archaic meagreness is, however, still to be seen in the form of the hand, and in the folds of the cloak (Fig. 197). The stele from the Borgia collection, at present in Naples, resembles it in general style. All the merits and defects of the period are to be seen also in a number of terra-cotta reliefs from Melos, not to mention some small figures in clay and bronze, for the most part superficially executed, the clumsiness of which may be ascribed to the maker’s individual want of ability.

The growth of art in Asia Minor, Sicily, and Lower Italy, in so far as these lands were Hellenic, does not appear to have kept equal pace with that of Greece proper; yet the intercourse, during the last decades of the sixth century, was so active that they could not remain far behind. The most remarkable examples of the sculptures of this class, perhaps of a little later date than the Attic works described, are the metope reliefs from the Middle Temple of the Eastern Plateau at Selinous, representing the gigantomachia, as preserved in scanty fragments. Although the crudeness of outline and modelling in the bodies of the fallen giants in many respects recalls the older metopes of the corresponding temple of the acropolis, the draperies of the goddesses, on the other hand, show a skill exceeding in truth and beauty many of the archaic works of Greece itself. The one remaining head of a giant, wounded and outstretched in death (Fig. 198), shows, in spite of the antique hardness in the form of the face and treatment of the hair, an expression which could have resulted only from the intelligent study of nature. A relief from Aricia, now in Palma, upon the island of Mallorca, representing the murder of Ægisthos by Orestes, is known only through insufficient representations; it shows weakness in composition and inequality in rendering, the garments being sensibly inferior to the treatment of the nude.

Before mentioning by name those artists who carried art beyond this stage of development, another class of monuments, numerically very important, should be considered. It is well known that in all ages antiquity has had a certain charm, either as appearing strange and interesting in comparison with existing circumstances, or from religious associations. When a devotional figure, with which many legends have become associated, as is the case to-day with the altar-pieces of our churches, was particularly reverenced on account of its antiquity, there was a desire to preserve its primitive type, even from recognized improvements. Hence arose an imitation of the original work, called archaistic in contradistinction from the archaic, or really old. This imitative style became fashionable in later times; while an amateur with the means of the Emperor Augustus was able to acquire an original Boupalos or Athenis, other lovers of the antique were obliged to content themselves with copies, or with works conventionalized after the manner of the early masters. These products are not always to be distinguished from the truly archaic, as is also the case with some modern imitations; but usually some conventional, technical, or circumstantial oversight or anachronism furnishes an easy criterion. There can be no doubt, for example, concerning the age of a work of sculpture in which a Roman Corinthian temple stands in the background, as upon a well-known relief representing Victory filling a cup for Apollo Kitharoidos, who is followed by Artemis and Leto. In other cases the head, hands, or feet,—the expression or gesture,—or the step, which in ancient works characteristically rests upon both soles,—betray a much later period than the hard or regular folds of the drapery, as is the case with the Artemis at Naples. (Fig. 199.) Sometimes the accessories are of a later style, as in the ten scenes from the Gigantomachia upon the border of the garment of Athene in Dresden; or, finally, the drapery upon one figure of a group is strictly antique, while that of the others is free, as upon a tripod of the same museum,—not to mention other less important inconsistencies.

Fig. 200.—Central Figures of the Western Gable, Temple of Athene upon Ægina.
Fig. 200.—Central Figures of the Western Gable, Temple of Athene upon Ægina.

Fig. 201.—Harmodios and Aristogeiton. (Copies in Naples.)
Fig. 201.—Harmodios and Aristogeiton. (Copies in Naples.)

An established conventionalism,—that contentment with the mere handiwork of acquired forms which existed for centuries in the lands of the Nile and Tigris,—was not possible in the early art of progressive Greece. Upon the foundation of the artistic ability already attained at this period, various local schools and individual sculptors rose to a higher level, and effected an advance, partly by opening new channels for the artistic industry of all Hellas, partly by pursuing paths which remained peculiar to themselves. Athens and Ægina are especially prominent in this activity; but, notwithstanding many scholarly researches, the history of art is not able to distinguish with certainty between the works of the two cities, an Attic example analogous to the chief work of the island being wanting for instructive comparison. The chief difference between the two may have been that the former school had a less strict and trained execution than the latter, with more grace of form and nobility of bearing. Callon and Onatas were prominent artists of Ægina, the latter seeming to have been the more celebrated. On account of the hardness of their work, both were considered inferior to Calamis. Onatas is particularly interesting from our knowledge of two of his chief sculptures—extensive dedicatory offerings to Olympia and Delphi, one of which represented the Greeks before Troy, casting lots to determine upon an opponent for Hector, and the other the combat over the fallen King of the Tapygians, Opis. The subjects of these works, especially the latter, and the peculiarity emphasized by Pausanias that the heroes before Troy were represented armed only with helmet, spear, and shield, probably to give scope for the display of the artist’s skill in the treatment of the nude, remind us of the two well-preserved groups from the gables of the Temple of Athene at Ægina, which, in point of style, must have been closely allied to those of Onatas. These priceless marbles were discovered in 1811, and the next year, by a chain of fortunate circumstances, came into the possession of Louis I., then Crown-prince of Bavaria. Ten of the remaining statues belong to the western gable, and five to the eastern; the greater part of the former group is thus preserved, and, as the scenes in both gables are almost entirely alike, their general arrangement may be restored with reasonable certainty. That over the chief front represents the struggle for a fallen hero, probably Oicles in the contest of Heracles and the Æginetan Telamon with Laomedon of Troy. In the rear tympanon the scene is the recovery of the body of Achilles or of Patroclos. Subjects so closely allied could lead to no great difference of composition, at most to such slight variations as the characterization of Heracles in the first group or of Paris in the second, if this latter be considered an episode in which that hero took part. In both gables the fallen warrior lay at the feet of the protecting Athene (Fig. 200), while on each side, symmetrically disposed, a combatant of either party endeavors to seize the body and drag it forth from the fray. Above these stooping figures warriors threaten each other with lances; but it is not certain whether there were two or four of these actively engaged. The latter number has been recently assumed from numerous fragmentary remains, which, if appertaining to the group at all, it is impossible otherwise to locate; the refutation of this theory of Lange, which has been attempted by Julius, does not terminate the vexed question. These warriors were followed, according to Brunn’s arrangement, by two kneeling lance-bearers, perhaps protecting the two archers in similar position with their shields. One of the archers is shown by a leathern cuirass and the so-called Phrygian cap to be an Oriental, perhaps Paris. With the exception of Heracles in the eastern gable, who is characterized by his lion’s skin, none of the other combatants are personally distinguishable. The corners of the triangle are filled by two fallen warriors. The whole group is thus composed with strict reference to symmetrical correspondence, and to the conditions imposed by the gable; all attempt to attain relative action and realism is abandoned, and the impression of a pantomime is inevitable. The outlines of the bodies, their position and action, are correct even to the minutest details, and show a certainty of form and a technical perfection, which, in the absence of all support for the bodies, or for the extreme thinness of the shields, is truly astonishing. The figures of the eastern gable appear particularly perfect, and are apparently the works of later sculptors, less limited, in point of style and artistic ability, than the master, or masters, of the western group. If in the latter, as before remarked, it is natural to think of Onatas, the former is correspondingly attributable to Calliteles, the son, scholar, and assistant of Onatas, who worked in great measure like his father, but also under the progressive influence of a younger generation. In remarkable contrast to the excellent and, in formal characterization, almost faultless, anatomical treatment of the bodies, two things appear particularly important as indicating the limits of the artistic ability of the time—namely, all the heads and the two statues of the deity Athene. The former are without ideal beauty or expression, for which the sculptor evidently felt himself incapable. He therefore carved the features according to a certain formula, and the apparent smile, resulting from the mouth being drawn outward and the corners of the eyelids extended, is to be regarded as a meaningless reminiscence of the older style. The eyes are too protruding and the chin too pointed and small, defects of the earlier practice, not as yet entirely overcome. The Athene shows how obstinately the devotional images were denied the advances made in other sculptures, so that the traditional and hallowed type might be preserved, as much as possible, from change. While for the other statues the artist had before his eyes the living combatants of the palaistra, his model for this was the sacred image standing within the temple. The evident contrast between the stiff bearing and archaic garments of the Athene and the rest of the group is thus more naturally explained than by the view that, in the artist’s conception, the goddess did not need any real action, that a slight lifting of the shield, as a divine “thus far and no farther,” was sufficient to show her supernatural power and to protect the fallen. The awkward turn of the feet, which was owing less to the limitations of space than to the reminiscence of an antique devotional image, might the more safely be ventured, because it could not be seen at all from below. That the sculptor, however, in his loving devotion to his work, took small advantage of this last consideration, is clear from the fact that the bodies are as carefully finished upon the back as upon the front, although one half of this labor could never have been appreciated from the first installation of the figures until their discovery among the overthrown ruins and their reception in the Munich Glyptothek. The effect of the whole was essentially heightened by the bronze accessories, such as lances, belts with swords, bows, arrows, a Gorgoneion and serpents upon the aigis of Athene, etc.; and even more by the intense red, blue, and other colors upon the helmets and waving crests, shields, and borders of the garments, sandals, and leather-work, as well as by the tinting of the hair, eyes, and lips—all which painting was probably in strict harmony with the neighboring architectural members, which were doubtless treated with similar pigments. Of other statues of archaic stamp only one has proved to be contemporaneous with, and of the same school as, the gable sculptures of Ægina—namely, the so-called Strangford youth in the British Museum. The work is more closely allied to the statues of the western than to those of the later eastern gable of the temple; but, notwithstanding a marked similarity in the treatment of the torso, the formation of the features differs so distinctly that the figure can hardly be ascribed to the same master. When Pausanias says of Onatas that, although belonging to Ægina, he still does not rank him below any contemporaneous sculptor of Attica, this summary praise speaks less directly for the individuality of Onatas than for the decided relative position of the two schools. It shows that in general the style of Ægina was esteemed inferior. It may be concluded that there were at least three Athenian sculptors of this time who surpassed the artists of the gable groups of the temple upon Ægina, namely, Hegias (Hegesias), Critios, and Nesiotes, not to mention the somewhat older Endoios, Antenor, and Amphicrates. Literary notices of their works do not convey any valuable information; but Friedrichs has discovered in the sculptures of the Museum of Naples which hitherto had passed under the name of the Gladiators, copies from one of the best works of Critios and Nesiotes. (Fig. 201.) They represent Harmodios and Aristogeiton, the assassins of the tyrant Hipparchos,—a group recognized by an Attic tetradrachm, by the relief ornamenting a marble seat at Athens, and by a weaker reproduction now in the Giardino Boboli at Florence. As copies of this kind do not allow definite conclusions concerning the style of celebrated monuments, we must regard in them only the general composition. They suffice, however, to show that the figures, which are of a free and bold action, cannot be referred to the Monument of Antenor, built as early as 509 B.C. Besides the schools of Ægina and Athens, there were at this period sculptural workshops of good repute in Sikyon, Argos, Corinth, and Thebes. As early as the time of the Cretan DaidalidÆ Dipoinos and Skyllis, Sikyon was one of the chief cities of artistic industry; and at the beginning of the fifth century two celebrated brothers, Canachos and Aristocles, stood at the head of a local school which lasted for seven generations. The chief work of Canachos, the colossal Apollo of the BranchidÆ sanctuary in Miletos, holding a movable, probably automatic, stag in the outstretched right hand, is known only by representations upon coins, and by a bronze statuette in the British Museum (Fig. 202); the latter shows that the master was but little removed from the archaic hardness of earlier times, though endeavoring to attain greater power and nobility of form, particularly in the head and features. Another colossal Apollo by Canachos in Thebes differed from the figure in Miletos in being made of wood. The chryselephantine Aphrodite in Sikyon, represented with the polos upon the head and with poppy flower and apples in the hands, must have been particularly archaic in conception. Two other works, more removed from hieratic influences and limitations, were probably of a less restricted style; namely, the Muse with the Syrinx, executed with two others by the master’s brother, Aristocles, and the Young Racers.

The school of Argos is celebrated by one great name, immediately connected with the highest development of art, Ageladas, the contemporary of the masters of Ægina, Athens, and Sikyon previously mentioned. From the silence of ancient authors in regard to this master’s style, little information can be given concerning it; it is only known that the Muse with the Barbiton, his many figures of Zeus and Heracles, various statues of victors, quadrigas, and groups of votive offerings in Delphi, were of bronze. Ageladas was the teacher of three of the greatest sculptors of Greece—Myron, Polycleitos, and Pheidias; and he must, if on this account alone, be ranked above his contemporaries. The history of art would receive but little furtherance by a detailed consideration of the other Argive sculptors, Aristomedon, Glaucos, and Dionysios; of the Corinthians, Diyllos, Amyclaios, and Chionis; of the Thebans, Aristomedos, Socrates, and others; of Callon of Elis; or of the Spartan Gitiades. Prominent as these must have been, they appear rather to have demonstrated the vigor of their schools, and the influence of those of Ægina and Athens, than by individual gifts to have raised themselves above the academic art of their time. As masters of personal importance, in whom the progress made by their own genius far exceeded their early training, may be mentioned three younger sculptors: Calamis, probably of Athens; Pythagoras of Rhegion, in Magna GrÆcia; and Myron of EleutherÆ, on the borders of Boeotia. Calamis worked chiefly in devotional figures, and in these could not entirely throw off the hieratic limitations in regard to position and treatment of details. He was accounted somewhat less hard in style than Canachos or Callon, but inferior to Myron in truthfulness to nature. This master seems to have made little advance in the modelling of the body as a whole, though Lucian praises the rhythmical position of the feet and the beauty of the joints of his Sosandra; but in the representation of the head he succeeded in making decided progress when compared with the artists of the gable groups of Ægina. In this respect his Alcmene must have been highly important; but chief among the works of Calamis was the Sosandra, probably an Aphrodite, which became proverbial on account of its grace and beauty. Lucian, when comparing the most distinguished examples among all the works of art to illustrate perfect beauty, did this with the significant words, “Calamis may ornament our ideal with chaste modesty, and its smile may be honorable and unconscious as that of Sosandra.” In view of this judgment, it is plain that the stiff, ugly heads of the Æginetan marbles are not to be imputed to the works of Calamis; that the graceful and beautiful formation of the features was one of the chief improvements effected by him. The limitations of his art are indicated by another notice. Pliny relates that Calamis was unsurpassed in his representations of horses; but Praxiteles removed a charioteer from one of the older quadrigas, and created another in its place, “that the men of Calamis might not appear inferior to his animals.” His charioteer must consequently have contrasted unfavorably with the horses and disturbed the harmony of the whole; this need by no means be considered as contradictory to the accounts of the beauty of his devotional images, for the charming grace which distinguished the quiet figures of deities and heroes was to be exchanged in the charioteer for an athletic life, corresponding, in position and action, to the exciting situation, and such representations evidently were beyond the powers of the otherwise able master. Examples authentically referable to Calamis do not exist, though the statue of Apollo upon the Omphalos, found in Athens, shows at once the archaic limitations and the advancing mastery which may be ascribed to this period of Greek sculpture; while the so-called Vesta, now in the possession of Torlonia, may have preserved reminiscences of the Sosandra. Both these works are evidently the products of artists who did not conceive the gods as merely graceful and pleasing, but as strict and serious beings. Statues of Apollo by Calamis are known to have been brought from the Kerameicos in Athens, and from a city upon the shores of the Pontos, to the Roman capitol; but this can hardly be adduced as an argument in favor of the authenticity of the figure upon the Omphalos.

To those very points in which Calamis failed, the two other artists named devoted themselves with signal success. The works of Pythagoras of Rhegion, who limited himself to bronze as a material, while Calamis worked in marble, gold, and ivory, betray no connection with those of the latter in regard to subjects, for the greater number were statues of victors and representations of heroes in somewhat genre-like conception. Of the former, Pausanias and Pliny praise the Enthymos as one of the most excellent among the forest of images dedicated at Olympia; of the latter, the limping Philoctetes was celebrated by many epigrams, as causing the observer to himself feel the pain of the wounded foot. To attain such an expression, it is not sufficient to characterize the suffering in the affected limb alone, but the pain must be evident in the entire body, in bearing as well as in step; in the continued tension of all the muscles, and in the one-sided strain upon the sound leg. The Philoctetes illustrates an otherwise incomprehensible account of the master’s ability. Diogenes of Laerte says that Pythagoras, of all sculptors, first regarded rhythm and symmetry. This unity of motion or rhythm, with the equipoise or symmetry which alone lends a feeling of security and harmonious perfection to the different members of figures under excitement, is that which made the work so effective. The same principles must have distinguished the statues of victors, which were apparently intended rather as examples of the various modes of combat, or the preparations therefor, than as individual portraits. The chief merit of this master appears, according to this, to have consisted in the organic truthfulness to nature of his figures, and this is by no means contradicted by the rather trivial judgment of Pliny that Pythagoras was the first to indicate sinews and veins, and to more carefully model the hair; for increased anatomical correctness came naturally with the organic action and realism of these works.

In this expression of the movement by every part of the body exercised, Pythagoras was still surpassed by Myron. A founder of metal, like the former, he acquired his fame chiefly as a maker of the statues of victors, although, with acknowledged versatility, he executed numerous images of deities and heroes. Two of the first were highly celebrated—the Runner Ladas and the Discos-thrower; both of them belonging to that class of works which illustrated the nature of the game itself. For Ladas was shown at the moment when, after overstrained effort, he had reached the goal, and there, as victor, had fallen dead: according to the expression of an epigram upon the work, it was as if the last breath from the empty lungs were passing his lips. For such a creation even the most perfect position of running, and indication of relative action in trunk and arms, were not sufficient; the great point lay in the panting breast and the open mouth and nostrils: the last effort of the lungs must have been wonderfully shown. Another epigram speaks of the “breather,” not of the runner, Ladas. That this marvellous representation of concentrated action was not to the disadvantage of the outer members is shown by the other victor before mentioned, the discos-thrower, the fame of which is demonstrated not only by the praise of Lucian, but by the numerous copies made during antiquity. Many of the latter have been preserved, marbles of the size of the original, and bronze statuettes, giving evidence of the fascinating action in the swing of the discos; the athletic body of the youth bending forward to gain greater impetus; the toes of one foot clinging to the ground, those of the other slid along its surface; and everything prepared for the fling which is instantly to follow. And yet the best-preserved copy, that in the Palazzo Massimi (Fig. 203), must certainly be in every respect inferior to the original. A mythological genre-group by Myron appears from existing copies to have been equally effective: it illustrated the legend of the flute, invented and cast away with a curse by Athene, and found by the unfortunate Marsyas. Statues in the Lateran and British Museum show the Satyr starting back in surprise, the momentary action of desire and fear being seized and expressed with as consummate mastery as were the athletic movements of the runner and the discos-thrower. It was this same spirit of life that caused Myron’s cow to be so celebrated in antiquity that no less than thirty-six epigrams have been handed down concerning it. Petronius, in praising this master, says that, in representing animals, Myron seemed to enclose the very breath of life in the bronze; and when Pliny says that he multiplied nature, he can have no other meaning than that the artist attained so life-like an effect that his works appeared rather to have grown than to have been an artistic creation.

Head of Pheidias.
Fig. 205.—Fragment in the British Museum, imitated from the Shield of the Athene Parthenos.

The schools of Ægina, Athens, Sikyon, Argos, Rhegion, and the other cities where art had chiefly centred, flourished during the Persian wars—that greatest period of Greece, from 490 to 450 B.C., when Myron, the scholar of Ageladas, was still young. The unequalled grandeur of this age, which resulted in the splendid culmination of all Hellenic life, must have furthered art, all the more as the devastation of the war, and the subsequent enrichment of the victors, offered full opportunity and means for monumental activity. What influence this had upon architectural industry has been described in a foregoing section, and it may be easily understood that sculpture went hand-in-hand with this; the larger temples needed their images of the gods, their gable groups, metope reliefs, and friezes, as also their complement of sculptural votive offerings, prompted by the gratitude of the victors. Athens, more than any other place in Greece, found occasion and means for these works, having been laid waste in 480 and 479 B.C. by Xerxes and Mardonios as no other large city of Greece had been. By means of the taxes levied upon the confederated states after the siege of Mycale, its possessions were greater than those of all the other Hellenic republics together. Athens therefore saw the most perfect flower of Grecian architecture come forth from the ashes of the Persian catastrophe, and by its side appeared the grandest creations of sculpture. Yet neither of these arose like magic from the wasted ground; it was necessary that the nation should first take breath, should recover from the almost supernatural exertions made during the war, and provide for defence and shelter by the building of fortifications and dwellings. It was not until after this that they could devote themselves to great monumental undertakings, the perfect completion of which required more than one generation, and sculptured ornamentation was thus still further postponed. The older masters hitherto considered had little or no part in the chief works of this period. The mind of Themistocles was so practical, and so much directed towards fortifications, that he could have little thought for occupying the artists with monumental sculpture. His successor, Kimon, son of Miltiades, began to build anew the places of worship, but did not go so far as to institute sculptural ornament, at least in its chief constituent, statuary. This first ripened to perfection in the reign of Pericles, and a favorable fate ordained that, just at this time, when it was needed as never before, a genius appeared under whose guidance the most complete development was attained. This greatest of sculptors was Pheidias, the son of Charmides, an Athenian by birth. When a boy of ten years, he had seen his countrymen, under Miltiades, go forth to Marathon, and, as a youth, had shared in the rejoicing over the glorious victory of Salamis. At that time, having probably left the school of Hegias, his first teacher, he turned towards Ageladas the Argive, who may have come to Athens in order that, in the rebuilding of the city, he might employ his art in works which have remained unknown to us. When Pericles entered upon his much celebrated presidency (444 B.C.), Pheidias, already advanced in years, enjoyed a fame so great throughout all Greece that, as soon as Pericles had installed him at the head of the entire monumental work of Athens, artists of distinguished rank placed themselves, without envy, under his lead. With only the scanty and scattered literary notices that we possess, it is impossible, from the works of this master, to illustrate his life before the time of Pericles, these being not only imperfectly known, but connected with but few chronological facts. Chief among his productions is to be mentioned a group in bronze consecrated at Delphi by the Athenians under Kimon, from a tithe of the booty taken at Marathon. It represented Miltiades between Athene and Apollo, surrounded by the ancestral heroes of the ten Attic PhylÆ. In artistic respects nothing more is known of this than of the statue of a youth crowning himself with the victor’s band in Olympia; of a wounded Amazon, a work prepared for a competition in which Pheidias was surpassed by Polycleitos; of a marble Hermes in Thebes; or of three draped statues of Aphrodite, one of which, that in Elis, was chryselephantine, the other two having been of marble. The artist employed his powers mostly in a higher province—in figures of Athene and of Zeus. Six of the former are more or less known; the most celebrated was the bronze Athene of Lemnos upon the Acropolis of Athens, so called because dedicated by Attic colonists from that place, and distinguished by the name of “the beautiful;” a second was the colossal statue, likewise of bronze, standing between the Erechtheion and the PropylÆa, whose helmet-crest and lance-point gleamed above the roof of the Parthenon, twenty metres high, and was visible at sea as far as the promontory of Sunion. The shield standing upon the ground—and perhaps a later creation—was ornamented by Mys, after a design by Parrhasios, with an embossed centauromachia. Not to speak of the Athene Areia at PlatÆa, a colossal wooden figure with garments of gold, the nude parts being of marble, we come finally to the incomparable chryselephantine figure in the Parthenon at Athens, in which the type of Athene was forever firmly established. Some few accounts—a marble statuette lately found in Athens (Fig. 204), a miserably careless imitation; and also a poor copy in marble of the shield, discovered soon after, in the British Museum (Fig. 205)—render it possible to understand the composition in its chief outlines. Standing erect, the head slightly inclined forward, clothed with the sleeveless chiton and the Ægis, the helmet decorated with the sphinx, she supported her left arm upon the shield, at the same time holding the lance, which leaned against her shoulder and bore the serpent of Erichthonios, coiling upward; the right arm, outstretched, carried a figure of Victory, two metres in height, which, turned towards the goddess, offered her a wreath of gold. The base of the statue, and even the rims of the thick-soled sandals, were ornamented with reliefs. The golden shield showed, within, the gigantomachia, and, without, the battle of the Amazons, concerning which we have further information from the discovery above mentioned. The fatal portrait of the artist himself may be plainly recognized in the strongly individualized features of a bald-headed man with the battle-axe in his uplifted hands, prominent because of his almost entire nakedness among the completely equipped youths. This portrait caused the merciless persecution of the sculptor and his patrons; after the charge of embezzling the gold upon the garments of the Athene had been proved groundless by the removal and weighing of the metal, this figure gave opportunity for complaint of sacrilege, and the artist was forced to pass the remainder of his life in a prison. The Athene Parthenos was surpassed by the colossal statue of the Panhellenic Zeus in Olympia, likewise chryselephantine, which exhibited the highest triumph of Pheidias. The god, with a green enamelled olive-wreath crowning his golden locks, and in garments brightly bordered with gold, was seated upon a magnificent throne, the legs of which were ornamented with figures of Victory in two rows, and the arms with sphinxes, while the back was terminated with groups of HorÆ and Charites, the steps, cross-bars, sheathing-boards, etc., of the support being decorated with many other sculptures in the round and in relief. In his right hand, turning towards him, was a Victory, and in his left a sceptre, tipped with the eagle, formed from a combination of many metals. This figure was majestic, with an expression mild, yet so powerful that a gesture would seem sufficient to make earth and heaven tremble. The artist had made this double expression his aim, guided in his creation by the lines of Homer where he portrays the God of gods nodding in assent to Thetis, who begs for the glorification of her son Achilles:

Fig. 206.—Coins of Elis. One third enlarged.
Fig. 206.—Coins of Elis. One third enlarged.

Fig. 207.—From the Eastern Gable of the Parthenon. Demeter and Persephone.
Fig. 207.—From the Eastern Gable of the Parthenon. Demeter and Persephone.

Fig. 208.—From the Eastern Gable of the Parthenon. Aphrodite and Peitho.
Fig. 208.—From the Eastern Gable of the Parthenon. Aphrodite and Peitho.

That Pheidias attained his ideal was unanimously attested by his own time, and by the later world so long as it had opportunity to see this wonderful production. Even divinity itself must have approved, since, according to the beautiful legend, as the master, at the perfecting of his work, prayed for a sign of favor from heaven, a stroke of lightning entered the temple and fell upon the floor in a spot which was marked in later times as sacred. A feeling pervaded all antiquity that the Olympian Zeus of Pheidias was the grandest and most divine of all works of art, which not to have seen was a misfortune to be lamented, and the sight of which lifted from the soul its cares and sorrows. Instead, therefore, of dwelling upon the praises given by the ancients to the details, we should seek rather to understand the principal traits which justified this opinion, and which were characteristic of the master. The archaic constraint prevalent in works of Ageladas and Calamis had been overcome; but the combination of all previous results, and a nearly absolute correctness of form, united to an ideal beauty quite beyond any real experience, could not have been the chief causes of this admiration. These were, indeed, important, especially in view of the enormous difficulties presented by the chryselephantine process—in the working of gold-plate; in the preparation, shaving, and uniting of the ivory, so unpliant to the chisel, and, finally, in securing it to the wooden form. But the essential and characteristic merit lay in the bodily incarnation of a grand and truly godlike ideal, employing the human form only as a word through which the elevated thought found expression. The artist had set before himself the most exalted aim—namely, to present to the eyes of the world the highest conception of divinity as seen in Athene, the goddess of the mind, and in Zeus, the king of gods. Hence the large number of Athenes executed by Pheidias, and the Aphrodite Urania, the great “heavenly” goddess, the feminine principle of the universe; hence, also, the fewer representations of masculine or heroic forms, or of subordinate deities, in which this master might be excelled—as by Polycleitos in his Amazon—because they did not accord with his nature, or contain within themselves that ideal greatness which he wished to unfold. Although the two chryselephantine colossal statues, notwithstanding the perishable nature of their construction, were comparatively long preserved—being in existence at the end of the fourth century A.D.—still, there are no copies which show more than their general composition. The marble statuette of Athene (Fig. 204) has already been mentioned; in regard to the Olympian Zeus, a copy upon a coin of Hadrian, which shows the usual carelessness and weakness (Fig. 206), has in later times been justly preferred to the mask of Zeus from Otricoli, formerly considered a copy after Pheidias. Though the classical notices frequently give the only information concerning the masterpieces of Pheidias, numerous original remains from his workshop still exist. We cannot adduce as examples the glorious metopes and frieze of the so-called Theseion in Athens, perfect as appear these representations of the deeds of Heracles and Theseus upon the former, and of the battle of the Centaurs and Titans upon the latter; for as it is not known when this temple was dedicated, it cannot be shown that its ornaments were executed in the period which came under the artistic direction of Pheidias. Nor can we attribute to this school the sculptures of the Erechtheion, which were not completed until 408—the beautiful caryatides of the portico, or the remnants of relief from the frieze, preserved, unfortunately, only in scanty fragments. These figures, indeed, instead of being carved from the blocks of the frieze itself, were formed piecewise of Pentilic marble, and fastened upon a dark ground of Eleusinian stone, probably for the effect of color. As little may we cite the better-preserved reliefs upon the frieze and balustrade of the small temple of Wingless Victory before the PropylÆa, which, from their great likeness to the sculptures upon the mausoleum of Halicarnassus, seem rather to belong to the following period. Overbeck thinks it probable that the frieze has reference to the battle at PlatÆa; and the balustrade, according to Kekule, may have something to do with the return of Alkibiades. In judging the Pheidian school, the Parthenon offers, however, abundant material in the three kinds of sculpture—round statues, high and low relief; although the unhappy bombardment of Athens by the Venetians in 1687, when the bursting of a bomb in the beautiful temple, then used as a powder-magazine, and the succeeding explosion, destroyed more than half the work. The last two centuries also have not passed without leaving their mark; so that Lord Elgin’s robbery may, after all, have proved an advantage, the greater part of the sculptures having been protected and rendered accessible, since the beginning of this century, in the halls of the British Museum. It is particularly unfortunate that the gable groups have suffered most; for the perfection of these chief works must have appeared of the greatest importance to the artist, and these colossal statues would have given the best exposition of his ability. Before the catastrophe above mentioned, however, these were badly injured in consequence of the Temple of Athene Parthenos having been transformed into the Church of Maria Parthenos, and later into a mosque, the destruction appearing also to have been aided by the wilful malice of Christian and Moslem fanatics. They were still further reduced after the explosion by the unsuccessful attempt of the Venetians to carry off as trophy a marble chariot and horses. The few notes of Pausanias upon the subjects of the gable groups, the drawings of a French artist, Carrey (taken not long before the bombardment), and the remains preserved in the British Museum are sufficient to convey a conception of the general composition. The eastern gable represented the birth of Athene; not the unfortunate, artificial scene where the goddess springs, ready equipped, from the head of Zeus, as frequently shown in pictures upon vases and bronze mirrors, but the moment after, when she appears before the deities of Olympos. The entire central part of the group including the highest deities, the chief feature of the composition, is lost; the rest is in greater part preserved. As the scene was in Olympos, Helios and Selene, with their quadrigas, were fittingly chosen as the limits of the composition; the former rising from the sea, in the left angle of the gable, the latter sinking in the right; night disappearing before the dawn. The adjoining statues, though much mutilated, have been preserved. Next to Helios was Dionysos, resting upon his tiger’s skin; with two sitting female figures, Demeter and Persephone (Fig. 207), to whom hastens Iris, announcing the birth of Athene. Upon the other side, next to Selene, lay Aphrodite in the lap of Peitho (Fig. 208); and then Hestia, to whom Hermes, as the other messenger, brings the glad tidings: these latter sculptures were almost entirely destroyed in the time of Carrey. Nike—Victory—remaining only as a torso, appears to have followed with Ares, advancing towards the middle of the gable bringing greetings to the newly born goddess. All the rest was destroyed before 1680 A.D., and the principal figures of the composition are consequently unknown; but it is probable that between the Victory and Athene stood Hephaistos, recoiling after having delivered the blow upon the head of Zeus. Athene stood beside her father, but it is not certain whether the latter was exactly in the centre of the gable, or whether the two figures were equally removed from it. If this last were the case, which is perhaps probable, the division of the space would require still another deity upon the right side. The remaining gods of Olympos, Poseidon, Artemis, and Apollo, were probably arranged in this order between Zeus and Iris. The group of the western gable represented the contest of Athene and Poseidon for the Attic land. The composition is reasonably certain, though the middle figures have here also disappeared. The two chief deities, standing at either side of the olive-tree in the centre, turn towards their chariots, that of Athene being driven by Victory, that of Poseidon by Amphitrite; horses were harnessed to both, that of Poseidon not having been drawn by dolphins or hippocamps, as formerly supposed. The consciousness of victory was expressed by the bearing of Athene and of her steeds, while the bowed head of Poseidon acknowledged his defeat: the exclusion of the salt waves of the sea from the blooming meadows and groves watered by the Kephissos. The angles of the gable beyond the chariots were occupied by the retinue of the contestants, and by local deities; the accurate determination of these is impossible, though upon the side of Athene may have been grouped the representatives of the Athenian continent, and upon that of Poseidon those of the sea and the islands; while the figure of Kephissos is supposed to have filled the extreme corner at the left, and Ilissos with Callirrhoe that of the right. The scene was laid in Attica; and, as the earthly locality was to be clearly characterized and populated, it was advisable not to introduce again all the Olympian deities of the eastern gable. It is probable that during antiquity the landscape seen from this chief front of the Acropolis was famous for many local myths no longer familiar to the scholar, in ignorance of which an adequate explanation is impossible. The compositions alone give evidence of the grandeur and elevation of the master who produced and arranged them, in a truthfulness to nature at once ornamental and unconstrained. The remains, with great simplicity and breadth of detail, show a force and majesty which raise them above all known works of sculpture. In their loving and perfect modelling of the nude and of the drapery, in their freedom from affectation of motive or of rendering, and in their utter lack of any striving after meretricious effects, they appear rather the creations of magic than the labored carvings of men.

Fig. 209.—Fragment from the Frieze of the Parthenon Cella.
Fig. 209.—Fragment from the Frieze of the Parthenon Cella.

The glorious and celebrated frieze, or, to speak more correctly, zophoros, surrounded the entire cella. It is preserved in nearly four fifths of its entire length, the chief part of the remains being in the British Museum. It is evident that but little, if any, of this extensive decorative work could have been executed by the hand of Pheidias himself; but the grand design may be assumed to have been his, and the carving was certainly done under his supervision. The scene represented is the festive Pan-Athenaic processions, an imposing consecration of elaborate gifts to the guardian deity, and probably also a division of prizes to the victors in the various hippic, gymnastic, and musical games. The movement of the train commences upon the southwestern corner of the cella, and advances thence to the east, the entrance side of the temple. It is thus naturally divided into two parts, one of which occupies the western and northern, the other the southern side of the cella; these are united above the pronaos, where the double procession is shown as having arrived at the temenos before the temple; a priest and priestess, with the persons directly employed in the sacrifice, are preparing themselves for the sacred act—the former by laying aside his upper garment, which he gives to the youth standing beside him, the latter by taking a folding-seat from a female servant. (Fig. 209.) Between this central group and the remainder of the divided procession several deities, turned from the former figures, are watching the approach of the train. At the left sits Zeus, enthroned, beside the veiled Hera; these are followed by the Winged Victory, Ares clasping his right knee with both hands, Demeter with the torch, and Dionysos, who rests his right arm carelessly upon the shoulder of Hermes. Upon the right, next to the high priest, was naturally the place of Athene, and upon her left hand are still traces of the fallen Ægis; beside her was Hephaistos, leaning upon his knotted stick; then, looking towards him, Apollo, and further Peitho, Aphrodite, and Eros, the latter carrying a shade for the sun. The gods sit comfortably as spectators who feel themselves to be invisible. The first figures of the train, the leaders, have already attained their destination, and stand quietly conversing, supported upon their wands. In the succeeding women and virgins, who bear vases, cups, cooling-vessels, braziers for incense, and baskets—a wonderful train of perfectly beautiful forms—the advance decreases in movement as they approach the centre. Upon the two long sides follow herds of animals for sacrifice; the cows, proceeding quietly, scarcely need guidance, while the bulls are more or less restless, reminding one, in their forcible and momentary action, of the life-like works of Myron. After them follows the music of the procession—players upon the flute and lyre and the festive chorus; then begins the long line of chariots and of horses with their riders, which fill the greater part of the zophoros upon the longer sides and all of that over the epinaos. The beauty and truth in the action of these figures are unsurpassed; the most manifold variation of position is combined with perfect adaptation to the peculiar style of low-relief, and the wisest reference to the fitting of the composition within the space defined by the architectural lines. While upon the eastern front the procession had arrived at its destination, on the western the scene was still at the place of assemblage and marshalling. Here the horses are bridled and arranged in ranks; but the groups of men and youths stand in disorder, some hastily arming themselves, others binding their sandals or adjusting their mantles. Every action and gesture is simple and full of meaning; they never mar the unity of the whole nor interfere with the neighboring figures. The nude forms and the drapery are most carefully and equally executed throughout; the accessories are forcibly, though less elaborately, indicated. When the ceremonial reliefs of Assyria or Persia are compared with the frieze of the Parthenon, it becomes strikingly evident that the magnificence of personal accoutrements and inanimate objects which was so painfully and minutely detailed by the Asiatic sculptor, and elevated even above his schematic representations of deities and human beings, was as nothing to the Greek artist in comparison with the intellectual and physical beauty to which the great Hellenic race gave their chief interest.

The third group of Parthenon sculptures, the ornaments of the metopes, must least have harmonized with the nature of Pheidias. The architectural framework must have become a hindrance and a fetter, and the problem how to fill ninety-two square tablets of exactly the same size with similar representations must indeed have appeared a thankless task. These reliefs are in greater part lost, or so mutilated as to be unintelligible; but as far as can be judged by the scanty remains, the subject of the metopes upon the eastern side was the gigantomachia, that of both long sides principally the Centauromachia, while that of the western side was either the battle of the Amazons or of the Persians. In contrast to the low-relief of the frieze, these, originally colored, were—on account of the conditions of light—worked in such high-relief as even, in some parts, to be freed from the ground. The variation of subjects bearing so strong a resemblance is wonderful, especially in the struggling Centaurs and Greeks, where but little scope in the victory of one or the other combatant was possible: these are interrupted by the rape of virgins and other scenes not surely to be determined. Naturally, this desperate task would not have been completed without some few artistic inequalities, repetitions, and far-fetched modifications, especially as much of the execution must necessarily have been submitted to inferior sculptors; but some of the metope reliefs appear, in point of composition within the given space, and in grand, characteristic drawing, scarcely less admirable than the frieze of the cella. From all these works the spirit of the school of Pheidias is manifest in its imposing majesty and ideal simplicity; at times, also, traces of the forcible action of Myron may be observed.

These extensive productions of the school and workshop of Pheidias cannot be directly attributed to any of the known scholars and assistants of the master, many of whom attained individual celebrity. In the first rank of these should be mentioned Agoracritos of Paros, the favorite pupil of Pheidias, whose works were so perfect that the ancients were frequently in doubt to which of these sculptors they should be ascribed; it is possible, however, that this doubt may have arisen from the predominant impression left upon some of the statues by the guidance and assistance of the master. The chief creations of Agoracritos were two Athenes, a Zeus, and notably the colossal figure of Nemesis at Rhamnous, supposed to have developed from the unsuccessful Aphrodite prepared for the competition with Alcamenes. Another scholar and assistant of Pheidias was Colotes of Paros, a sculptor who appears to have restricted himself to the chryselephantine process, and who is especially noted for the part taken by him in the execution of the great Olympian Zeus. Other works in gold and ivory by Colotes were the Athene upon the Acropolis of Elis, an Asclepios erected in the vicinity, and the sacred table in the great Temple of Zeus, for the division of prizes after the Olympic games, the sides of which were ornamented with reliefs.

Alcamenes of Athens, or Lemnos, and Paionios of Mende have hitherto been considered as chief among the scholars of Pheidias; but the recent excavations at Olympia have done much to refute this opinion, unless, as is very possible, Pausanias makes a mistake (v. 10) in assigning to Alcamenes the sculptures in the front gable of the Temple of Zeus, instead of the acroteria above them, which alone is mentioned in an inscription as his work. No one can detect in the discovered fragments of these gable sculptures, more numerous than those of the Parthenon, the slightest dependence upon the art of Pheidias, which they appear to precede in point of development. The group of the eastern front, ascribed by Pausanias to Paionios, represented the instant before the chariot race of Oinomaos and Pelops (Fig. 210); that of the western the struggle of the LapithÆ and Centaurs at the wedding of Peirithoos. (Figs. 211 and 212.) The character of these works seems rather to connect them with the school of Calamis than with that of Pheidias, this being especially the case with the metopes. (Fig. 213.) The question will hardly be decided until authenticated sculptures by Calamis, or remains of the gable groups of the temple at Delphi, which were the production of his scholars Praxias and Androsthenes of Athens, have become known to science. In the meantime, it is impossible to disprove the hypothesis of Brunn, who sees in those of Olympia examples of an art peculiar to Northern Greece, remarkable for its picturesque realism and lack of artistic and ideal conventionalization. It is only certain that these groups are far inferior to those of the Parthenon, and, indeed, to those produced by any workshop of Athens after the time of Pheidias. Even if the questionable account of Pausanias prove to be true, it is certain that a judgment of the artistic style of Alcamenes and Paionios cannot be formed upon these decorative sculptures alone. Works of the stage of development shown by the western gable of Olympia could not have ranked with the bronze Pentathlos of the former artist, which was known in antiquity by the predicate “exemplary;” nor could an Aphrodite of Alcamenes have been preferred to a statue by Agoracritos, which had been retouched by Pheidias himself. The extensive employment of Alcamenes in Athens among the greatest successors of Pheidias and Myron would have been impossible had not his works been far higher in every respect than those attributed to him among the recent discoveries in Olympia, in view of which it is inconceivable how Pausanias could speak of Alcamenes and Pheidias almost as equals. The same argument applies to Paionios, of whose works a fortunate illustration has been provided by one of the most important discoveries made in the Altis, the Victory (Fig. 214), authenticated by an inscription upon the high triangular pedestal. This figure does indeed recall the spirit and methods of the Pheidian sculpture, and differs greatly from the remains of the eastern gable, as may readily be seen by comparison of Figs. 210 and 214. This contrast is only to be explained by a gigantic and almost inconceivable progress, or by the assumption that they were the works of different artists and periods.

Fig. 213.—Metope from the Cella of the Great Temple of Olympia. Atlas, Heracles, and the Nymph of the Hesperides.
Fig. 213.—Metope from the Cella of the Great Temple of Olympia. Atlas, Heracles, and the Nymph of the Hesperides.

Fig. 215.—From the Frieze of the Temple of Phigalia.
Fig. 215.—From the Frieze of the Temple of Phigalia.

If the Attic artists of this age be likened to planets revolving about the Pheidian sun, there were not wanting stars of the second magnitude, belonging to other systems and moving in other circles. Especially prominent among these latter was the direct and indirect school of Myron, an artist so pronounced in his wonderful naturalism that his style could not be extinguished even by the dominating idealism of Pheidias. Lykios, son of Myron, appears, from two celebrated works, to have followed closely in the footsteps of his father. These were the statues upon the Acropolis of Athens representing two boys, one of whom bore a basin for holy-water, while the other blew the coals in a censer into a lively glow. The latter reminds one of Myron’s Breathing Ladas; in this, as in the Runner, the quickened breath was the essential thing, and was not confined alone to the swollen cheeks, but must have been evident in the breast and body. The figure bearing the font was a zealous choir-boy, panting under a too heavy burden; and this also recalls the Ladas. Still another statue, the Pancratiast Autolicos, claimed by Urlich for Lykios, seems to have resembled the Discos-thrower of Myron. That Lykios did not confine himself to such genre-like specialties is shown by groups like the Argonauts, and by the votive offering of the citizens of Apollonia at Olympia, a truly grand composition representing Zeus deciding the result of the strife between Memnon and Achilles, according to the Æthiopis of Arctinos. In connection with Lykios may be mentioned Styppax of Cyprus, whose masterpiece, the Splanchnoptes—the entrail-roaster, a man fanning a fire—recalls in turn the choir-boy blowing the coals. Similar to the Dying Ladas, though less directly connected than these last examples, was the mortally wounded warrior of Cresilas, in which, according to classical accounts, the last moments of life could be measured; his wounded Amazon also appears to have been more in the style of Myron and Pythagoras than of Pheidias. No works by the immediate followers of Myron now remain, nor any attested copy; still there can be little hesitation in ascribing to this school an important achievement, not perhaps belonging to it so fully as do the architectural sculptures of the Parthenon to the workshop of Pheidias, yet having more in common with the school of Myron than with that of any previous master. This is the frieze of the Temple of Apollo at Phigalia—now in the British Museum—the architectural position of which has already been defined. The temple is said to have been built under the direction of an Athenian architect; it is probable, therefore, that Attic sculptors were employed for its ornamentation, especially as the sculptures betray no trace of the Argive influence which prevailed elsewhere in the Peloponnesos, and which will be further treated below. Though the subjects were Attic, as battles of Amazons and Centaurs, they cannot be likened to the school of Pheidias, for, instead of the passionless grandeur and ideal simplicity which characterized the sculptures of the Parthenon, there is in them a vehemence and excitement known at this period only in the works influenced by Myron. It is not strange that this excessively passionate action should sometimes be wanting in beauty; the power of execution at command in the remote city among the Arcadian mountains was not of the first rank, and the guidance of a master, like him who directed the sculptural work of the Parthenon, was wanting.

Two artists of this period were entirely independent, proceeding in degenerate directions; first, Callimachos, noted as an artisan in metal-work, who executed the rich and elegant lamp of the Erechtheion, and was said to have originated the Corinthian capital; but who, as a sculptor, carried a refined delicacy and formal perfection even to an extreme. This won for him the cognomen of Catatexitechnos—the unreasonably careful. Callimachos did not, like Apelles, know when to withdraw his hand from his work, which agrees with Pliny’s judgment concerning him, that, by over-exactness in execution, all grace was lost. A still more questionable tendency is shown by Demetrios of Alopeke, in Attica, the first realist. Pre-eminently a sculptor of portraits, he affected striking characteristics at the expense of beauty, and made it his specialty to represent the likenesses of decrepit men and women. A priestess sixty-four years old, and an aged Corinthian field-officer, Pelichos—“a bald-head with a pot-belly, tangled and flying beard, and veins projecting roundly under the withered skin,” according to the description of Lucian—must have been so far from ideal and refreshing beauty that it would seem rather to have been the aim of the artist to illustrate age as its destroyer. Thus, in comparison with Pheidias and Myron, Demetrios resembled Thersites among the heroes of Troy.

Fig. 216.—Copy of the Doryphoros in the Museum of Naples.
Fig. 216.—Copy of the Doryphoros in the Museum of Naples.

Argos deserves the second place as the site of the artistic industry of this period, which had then been greatly advanced by Polycleitos of Sikyon, a fourth scholar of Ageladas, and somewhat younger contemporary of Pheidias, but in a direction different from that of the Attic school. Myron had characterized intense and momentary animal life, Pheidias that of absolutely ideal and divine being. Polycleitos chose as his aim the artistic representation of the highest human beauty—a positive type of bodily perfection. The Doryphoros, known in antiquity as the masterpiece of the latter, and celebrated as a canon, was a youth in a quiet position, bearing a lance; it was considered the embodiment of perfect form, the master himself having written a treatise upon the proportions of the human figure in illustration of this statue. It is not improbable that Polycleitos, in this work, desired to set a pattern before his numerous scholars; that he was himself too dependent upon this academical tendency may be judged from the slightly disparaging words of Pliny that “his works were almost as if taken from one model.” According to the intention of the artist and to the general conviction of his time, the Doryphoros represented absolute perfection of the human body; and this left the master but little scope for the varying of his model, if he would not prove untrue to that beauty which Cicero has praised so highly in all his works. The so-called Apoxyomenos—an athlete scraping himself with a strigil—similar in subject to the statue of Lysippos (Fig. 229), was also a figure placed in the quiet attitude of parade, if not, like the Doryphoros, with an academic purpose. A third work, the so-called Diadoumenos, a boy binding his head with a fillet—sometimes considered as a companion piece to the Doryphoros—appears to have shown a more youthful and less athletic development of form. It is not strange that archaeologists have taken great pains to identify, among the numberless works of Roman sculptors, imitations of these two canonical figures, the existence of which was naturally assumed from the great celebrity of the Greek originals. The scholars Friederichs, Schwabe, Michaelis, Helbig, Kekule, and Benndorf have accordingly discovered six repetitions of the Doryphoros, preserved in Cassel, Naples, Florence, the Vatican, and the Villa Medici; while several other statues in Dresden, the Louvre, the Vatican, and the Villa Albani have been recognized as variations differing more or less from this type (Fig. 216). In like manner, copies of the Diadoumenos have been found in Madrid, in two marbles of the British Museum, in a bronze statuette of the National Library of Paris, and in a relief of the Vatican: all of which are allied in point of conception and artistic character. Still it is inexplicable how these thick-set and muscular forms could be spoken of by Pliny as viriliter puer and as molliter juvenis, or by Lucian as graceful dancers; though it is possible that, in these academical studies, the canonical perfection of form decided by Polycleitos was not so well embodied as in the bronze Idolino of the Florentine Museum. The question is far from settled, and it should not be forgotten that eminent authorities doubt this origin, Conze imputing them rather to the school of Cresilas, while Petersen even maintains the type to have been a Roman invention.

An Amazon in a quiet pose gave Polycleitos an opportunity for portraying a female form of muscular development, yet of typical beauty. It is not difficult to believe that this statue was adjudged even superior to the similar productions of Pheidias, Cresilas, and Phradmon, which could hardly have been the case if the subject treated had been a deity or a figure of momentary action. (Fig. 217.) The artist could even better follow his academic aim in the two CanephorÆ—basket-bearers—whose quiet pose and want of inner expression were so well suited to display an outward, formal beauty and correctness of modelling. But the Astragalizontes—the boy throwing dice of knuckle-bones—which, according to Pliny, was the most perfect work of art in Greece, should not be imagined in an excited, striking situation, or as a street scene conceived with a truthfulness to nature characteristic of Murillo, but as representing the consummation of boyish beauty.

When Quintilian says that Polycleitos elevated the human figure above what is seen in nature, and yet, contrary to Pheidias in his statues of the deities, had not attained to the majesty of the gods, this signifies that he had not so fully represented the divine nature. His devotional images are few and without especial fame, with exception of the colossal chryselephantine Hera in the temple between Argos and MykenÆ. The goddess, seated upon a throne, was draped in garments of gold, with only the head and arms bare; the sceptre in her right hand was crowned with the cuckoo, symbol of conjugal fidelity, and in her left was a pomegranate; at her side stood Hebe, the work of Naukydes, the master’s best assistant. As the Pheidian head of Zeus has been recognized in the mask of Otricoli, so the splendid colossal mask of the Ludovisi Juno (Fig. 219) has been referred to an original by Polycleitos. But it is probable that the head of Hera, in the museum at Naples (Fig. 218) came nearer to this original (Brunn). Though it be asserted that all the heads of Zeus may be referred to the complete and established type of Pheidias, the ideal of Polycleitos, by no means divine, renders it doubtful whether his Hera acquired a similar position among the succeeding representations of that goddess.

Fig. 218.—Head of Hera, in Naples.
Fig. 218.—Head of Hera, in Naples.
Fig. 219.—So-called Juno Ludovisi, in Rome.

The effort after perfection of form sufficed to make the master of Argos a pre-eminent teacher; yet none of his many direct scholars, with the exception perhaps of the before-mentioned Naukydes, acquired such fame as the associates of Pheidias, perhaps on account of this very schooling and discipline, the rigid constraint of a canon fettering the wings of artistic individuality. We are not able to judge how far this tendency was furthered during the short period of Theban ascendency by the somewhat later branch of the Theban school, although, among many others, the Theban artists Hypatodoros and Aristogeiton were of considerable importance. The groups consecrated at Delphi about 380 B.C. were of particular interest; they represented the advance of the Seven against Thebes, and the successful repetition of the invasion by the sons of those warriors. It was not until Lysippos, an indirect scholar of Polycleitos, in his desire to represent men as they should be, had raised himself entirely above the canon of his master, who aimed to show them as they are, that another artist of the first rank appeared. Examples from the workshop of Polycleitos still exist, though unfortunately scarcely recognizable in the mutilated fragments of sculpture from the Temple of Hera, discovered by Rangabe and Bursian in 1854—works which were doubtless executed under the direct guidance of the Argive master, as those of the Parthenon were under that of Pheidias.

Fig. 220.—Metope of the Southern Temple upon the Eastern Plateau of Selinous.
Fig. 220.—Metope of the Southern Temple upon the Eastern Plateau of Selinous.

The influence of Attica and Argos not only prevailed in Greece proper, but made itself felt even in the most remote colonies. The Zeus upon one of the metopes of the southern temple on the eastern plateau of Selinous (Fig. 220) may have been developed from the figures of Zeus by Ageladas, and suggests the sculptures of the Olympian temple which was completed about the same time. This metope represents Zeus fascinated by Hera upon Mount Ida (Il. xiv. 300), and the artist, in his figure of the god, has surpassed his former efforts, but the Hera is harder and more antique. The other well-preserved metopes of this temple—one of which shows a Heracles in strife with Amazons, and the other Actaion lacerated by dogs—though not without provincial weakness, have an unmistakable affinity to those of the Theseion. These were nearly contemporaneous, but an entire generation later there appeared at Messene, in the most remote part of the Peloponnesos, the sculptor Damophon, an artist decidedly of the Pheidian style, on account of which he was called to restore the Olympian statue, already warped and disjointed. Although a sculptor of ability, it would seem that he did not entirely withstand the current of a new direction in art; besides the statues in the Pheidian circle of divinities, others were ascribed to him, of a nature similar to those cultivated by preference during the succeeding period of Attic sculpture. The progressive force inherent in the people and in the art of Greece did not rest until the highest point had everywhere been reached. This impulse afterwards led to excess and decadence, permitting no lasting enjoyment of the previous gains. The art of Polycleitos prevailed somewhat longer in the Peloponnesos, the Dorians being by nature conservative, but in Attica the new elements early obtained a sway which could not but essentially change the character of all Hellenic sculpture. The frieze upon the Temple of the Wingless Victory in Athens, and the somewhat coarser one within the naos of Phigalea, began already to give evidence of an inclination towards the pathetic and passionate; the sculptures also upon the balustrade of the Athenian temple, executed probably about 390 to 380 B.C., appear to be the unmistakable forerunners of a new style. The Athenian Kephisodotos the elder stood, so to speak, upon the threshold of this transformation. His position in the history of art is assured by the fortunate discovery of a copy of his Eirene with Ploutos, now in the Glyptothek at Munich (Fig. 221). This work combined the tendencies of the new Attic style with those of Pheidias. Though the noble simplicity and grandeur, the earnestness and strictness, of the earlier period still remained, there had already dawned an expression of deeper feeling, and of a more spiritual life.

The representation, as Friederichs says, of the deep interchange of affection between mother and child, as shown in the Eirene of Kephisodotos, united with much of the hardness of the older works, culminated in two masters—the Parian Scopas and the Athenian Praxiteles, the latter possibly the son of Kephisodotos. Their productions were so nearly related that, even in antiquity, it was doubtful whether a work of celebrity should be ascribed to one or to the other. The chief creations of both were statues of the deities, both worked in marble, choosing this material not by chance, but from the nature of their subjects. With the exception of such colossal figures, of a highly monumental character, as the chryselephantine statues of Zeus and Athene Parthenos by Pheidias, and the Hera by Polycleitos, the delicate beauty of soft and transparent stone was best fitted for the images of deities enshrined within the temple; bronze, on the contrary, is peculiarly suited to statues of victors and athletes intended for outdoor exposure. It was on this account that it had been so largely employed by Myron and Polycleitos.

The Raging Bacchante, designated by epigrams and descriptions as the most celebrated work of Scopas, was one of the first masterpieces of antiquity. The head was thrown back in an ecstasy of passion, the hair loosened, and the long garment fluttering in the wind; thus did the Mainad appear rushing to the heights of Kithairon, holding in her hands the kid rent in her fury. If the rhetor Kallistratos was, as he says, speechless at sight of the countenance, admiring particularly the expression of a soul stung into madness, we can well believe that passion itself was embodied in this work. The excitement was more moderate in the Apollo of the Temple of Nemesis at Rhamnous, brought by Augustus to the Palatine, playing the lyre and singing with lyric inspiration. It is not improbable that the motive of the Apollo in the Vatican, with the long flowing garments (Fig. 222), may be referred to this original. The entire bearing more closely resembles that of the figures of the children of Niobe. We can hardly think without enthusiasm of the Bithynian Achilles group, placed in later times in the Temple of Neptune, near the Circus Flaminius in Rome, which, according to Pliny, would have made the master celebrated even though he had created nothing else during his lifetime. It represented Achilles upon the island of Leuke after his death, and his reception among the deities, and displayed, besides Thetis and Poseidon, numerous fantastic creatures of the sea. Some idea of these last may be gained from a magnificent frieze found in the vicinity of the Temple of Neptune, and now in the Glyptothek at Munich. But it cannot belong to this group, and, in its main features, has no close relations with it.

Delicate beauty and warmth of feeling must be ascribed to the works of Scopas, otherwise Pliny could not have placed the Aphrodite found in the Temple of Mars, near the Circus Flaminius, above that of Praxiteles. Nor can we imagine the groups at Megara—Eros, Himeros, and Pothos (Love, Yearning, and Desire)—described by Pausanias; or Aphrodite, with her priestly lover Phaethon; or Pothos, in Samothrace, to have been without these traits. The group of Leto with the nurse Ortygia carrying the children, Apollo and Artemis, as the personification of a mother’s joy and pride, must have been full of deep meaning. It is evident, from the long list of his works, that his power was many-sided: his peculiar style is best exemplified in a grand composition, the group of the Niobids, though Pliny is in doubt whether it should be ascribed to Scopas or to Praxiteles. The original of this no longer exists, and even the very unequally executed pieces—to be found chiefly in the Uffizi at Florence, and in various repetitions in different museums—are not complete; still even thus they betray the greatness and individuality of this wonderful work. Niobe, wife of King Amphion of Thebes, and mother of fourteen children, in a boastful spirit, inherited from her father Tantalos, compared herself with Leto, who had only two, and ordered sacrifices to be made to herself rather than to that goddess. For this she was terribly chastised by Apollo and Artemis, her children being all slain before her eyes by the avenging arrows of the two deities. She herself, trying in vain to protect her youngest daughter, pressing against her, makes an attempt to draw her mantle over her head to hide the expression of despairing woe which, according to the legend, in a few moments turned her to stone. The figure, in its royal nobility and motherly despair, yet so free from contortion, has wonderful effect. (Figs. 223 and 224.) The children, already wounded and hurrying towards her, show pain, fear, and need of help in different degrees, but with that dignity and fine control which render it a tragedy in the highest sense. The various struggles of feeling in the beautiful young faces; the excited wrestling with an invisible, unconquerable, relentless power, in every gesture, and in every motion of the swaying garments; the plaintive character of the lines throughout the whole composition, entirely opposed to the vertical tendency of the statuesque, and especially of the architectural art; the wavy flow which distinguishes it from the group at Ægina, and even from the quiet action of the figures in the gables of the Parthenon—are all so peculiar to this pathetic school, and so characteristic of its productions, that the Niobe will ever be considered the greatest example of its style.

In a study of the artistic character of Scopas, we must content ourselves, for the most part, with a few copies, and some not very full accounts. Still, original remains from his hand are not altogether wanting. We have seen that he was engaged in the sculptural ornamentation upon the eastern side of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassos; while upon the south and north sides his younger associates were employed—Timotheos, Bryaxis, and Leochares, the latter known to us by a copy in the Vatican of his Ganymede Carried Away by the Eagle of Zeus. But the greater part of the recognizable reliefs upon the frieze, the most important group of which represents the so often recurring battle of the Amazons, notwithstanding the wonderful beauty and pathos of the action, peculiar to the sculptured art of this period, is the work of artisans, and certainly not by the hand of a master of the first rank. (Fig. 225.) Among the numerous fragments of the statues found in the English excavations of 1856, which, from analogy with the mausoleums of the Roman emperors, may have stood between the columns, one at least, a well-preserved torso, probably of Zeus, found upon the eastern side, has been ascribed to Scopas. The others are, unfortunately, too much mutilated to allow of any reliable judgment, as the varying views of different authorities testify. At all events, these decorative works cannot be ranked with the more celebrated examples of this master.

Fig. 225.—Fragment of the Frieze from the Mausoleum of Halicarnassos.
Fig. 225.—Fragment of the Frieze from the Mausoleum of Halicarnassos.

An acquaintance with the art of Scopas is extended by the study of his younger and still more important contemporary Praxiteles. The masterpieces of this artist are similar in character, and betray all the preference of the former for the ideal beauty of youth. Not less than five statues of Aphrodite by Praxiteles are known to have existed, among which the famous statue at Cnidos was regarded as one of the wonders of the world, and was ranked with the Olympian Zeus. It was so highly prized among lovers of art that King Nicomedes of Bithynia, for instance, in vain offered to the people of Cnidos the entire amount of their State debt in exchange for it. The brow, the moist glowing eyes, and soft smile of the slightly parted lips are described as wonderful; the whole figure being so executed as to cause the marble to be forgotten and the goddess of love to appear a reality. Coins of Cnidos show the figure to have been entirely nude, the left hand holding her drapery, partly lying upon a vase, and the right shielding herself in modesty. The best in this style among the numerous remaining statues were the Braschi Aphrodite, now in the Glyptothek at Munich, and that of the Vatican, which is, however, inferior in execution, and is, unfortunately, disfigured in the lower part by hard, modern drapery. Next to that of Cnidos in nobility and beauty must have been a draped Aphrodite from Cos, provided the people of that place had any understanding of art; for, when the choice between the two was offered them by the artist, they gave the preference to this. Of the three others, less known, the Thespian was placed next to the statue of Phryne, as contrasting divine with human beauty. To Praxiteles were ascribed, also, at least two representations of Eros—blooming, youthful figures, of which the most celebrated seems to have been the Thespian or Boeotian one, which was installed between the Phryne and the Aphrodite. Epigrams and accounts describing the god as wounding not with the arrow, but the eye, appear to relate to this figure; for the second statue from Parion, in Mysia, according to the coins, showed the god unarmed, and with head uplifted.

A tender and almost effeminate character was exhibited in these beautiful figures of youth, similar to which were the Sauroctonos—the lizard-killer—the best copy of which is in the Louvre; the dreamily reposing Satyr, of which there are copies in various museums; and the smiling, sentimental Dionysos with the doeskin, leaning upon the thyrsos. Great depth of suffering and sorrow is the fundamental feature of two groups, one representing the rape of Proserpine, the other her delivery by Demeter to the lower world, to which she returned after every harvest, as a symbol of the following fruitless season.

This last was as pathetic an illustration of a sorely tested mother as could be found in any other work of Praxiteles. The mild Demeter was not less frequently presented by this master than was Aphrodite.

That greatest of all modern discoveries, the Hermes with the infant Dionysos, found in the Heraion at Olympia (Figs. 227 and 228), has proved the error of imputing to all the works of Praxiteles a delicate gracefulness verging upon weakness, which had arisen from the study of the only examples hitherto known—the copies of the Sauroctonos, the Satyr, and the Aphrodite. The manly force of this statue, in character midway between the conceptions of Pheidias and Lysippos, is, indeed, so surprising that some scholars have even been inclined to assume a second sculptor by the name of Praxiteles, there being no reason to doubt the direct testimony of Pausanias as to the authorship of this work. The beauty of this torso exceeds that of all other antique statues known; the expression of the head conveys that intense sympathy between the loving protector and the child which must have characterized the work of Kephisodotos referred to above. It is possible that the Hermes was the product of an earlier period of the sculptor’s development, more closely related to the tendency and ideals of Pheidian art. When it is considered that this torso is the only surely authenticated original production of any great master of Greek sculpture—for it is by no means certain that the gable groups of the Parthenon are by the hand of Pheidias himself—there is no need for further discussion of the fundamental importance of this most fortunate discovery.

Notwithstanding the astonishing many-sided genius and productivity of Praxiteles, nearly all the Olympian deities appearing in the half hundred of his works, it must still be acknowledged that, besides his pathetic tendency, he particularly affected that province in which the figures of maidens or youths gave opportunity for the development of the greatest charms. His works portray a sensual loveliness distinguished alike from that hard and abstract beauty, that outward perfection of form sought and attained by Polycleitos, and from that elevated, godlike being ideally embodied by Pheidias in his Zeus and his Athene. Neither entirely human, as with Polycleitos, nor divine, as with Pheidias, this emotional loveliness seemed created for the world of gods, but little raised above the sight and experience of men; and this type appears to have been as well established by Praxiteles as that of the higher deities by Pheidias. Its examples are the Aphrodite and Eros, the youthful Dionysos with his train, the Demeter, and the Eleusinian circle.

Fig. 228.—Head of the Hermes of Praxiteles.
Fig. 228.—Head of the Hermes of Praxiteles.

However important the school of these two masters of pathos may have been, but few among the numerous names that have been preserved became prominent. The chief exceptions are the above-mentioned assistants of Scopas upon the mausoleum, and the two sons of Praxiteles, Kephisodotos the younger, and Timarchos. Two of the greatest works of statuary, however, may be ascribed to their most vigorous scholars—the Venus of Melos in the Louvre (Fig. 229) and the so-called Ilioneus in the Glyptothek at Munich. If the doubtful inscription of the artist upon the former be credited, which, in characters of the first century B.C., designated it as the production of "Ale"xandros, son of Menides of Antioch upon the Meander, but which, together with the corresponding part of the plinth, has disappeared, we should possess in this work an inexplicable anachronism, a creation of the highest rank in art produced during a period of decided decadence. As, however, through this loss, this assumption cannot be verified, science must proceed to judge it by its style alone. Its grandeur and dignity, in contrast to the immodest coquetry of later works; the fulness of the flesh in this body of ever-blooming youth, in comparison with their attenuated grace; the mild softness of the surface beside the cold polish of the other figures of Aphrodite—would place this statue between the period of highest perfection at the time of Praxiteles, and that of the Roman reproductions. The reference of the Venus of Melos to the school of Praxiteles has found a justification not to be undervalued in the discovery of the Hermes at Olympia, this figure of manly youth forming as complete a pendant to the maidenly Venus as could be imagined. In artistic character this is far more nearly related to the Hermes than is any other statue of Aphrodite, not excepting the undoubted Roman reproduction of that of Cnidos. At any rate, it is clearly an Hellenic original, not belonging to the period of later Hellenistic art.

Unfortunately, no explanation of this statue hitherto advanced has been entirely satisfactory. The two arms are wanting, and the fallen drapery covering the lower limbs has hidden from us the only accessory evidence—namely, the object upon which the lifted left leg is supported; so that even the name of Venus is not to be applied with the usual certainty. The Roman types of Victory, also half nude, with the same garments and position, and with the shield upon which the conquest is inscribed, suggest an Aphrodite-Victory analogous to the Attic Athene-Victory. The restorations all present points of difficulty; among them may be mentioned that commonly received, where the goddess contemplates herself in the shield of Ares, supported by the analogy of a statue mentioned by Pausanias (ii. 5), an interpretation equally applicable to the Venus of Capua, now in Naples; that also of Wiesler, with the lance in the uplifted left hand; and the combination of the goddess in a group with Ares by QuatremÈre de Quincy.

It is even less easy to find a reliable explanation of the beautiful torso in the Glyptothek at Munich, formerly held, falsely, to be Ilioneus among the Niobids, and even believed to be an original. As the Venus of Melos is an illustration of ripened womanly beauty, the entirely nude, cowering figure, without head or arms, represents the perfection of youth; and the position suggests a subject equal in pathetic import to that of the children of Niobe.

As the works of Scopas and Praxiteles frequently found their way to the islands of the Ægean Sea, and as the former, at least, had certainly dwelt for some time in Asia Minor, the influence of these two masters appears to have extended eastward, and their style to have had decided sway even longer there than in Greece proper. The farthest outlying examples are presented by the fragmentary statues of the Nereids from the Monument of Xanthos, to which they have given the name.

At that period, even in Athens, some highly esteemed artists not only partially followed their own ways, but in these surpassed the former masters, and pursued aims which did not become generally prevalent until the middle of the fourth century, and then in quite other localities. These were Silanion of Athens and Euphranor of the Isthmos. The first devoted himself chiefly to portraits and representations of victors, and was so especially successful in the former as to make them a real embodiment of personal character; as, for instance, the portrait of the passionate sculptor Apollodoros was made to appear a personification of sudden rage. Silanion distinguished himself from Praxiteles in the subjects of his art, in which he had much in common with Lysippos. Euphranor was also, perhaps in a still greater degree, a painter, and, in the coarser power of his creations, was opposed to the delicate style of Praxiteles, showing more affinity with Lysippos, so far, at least, as we can judge of his sculptures by the accounts of his paintings.

Similar to the transitional position between Pheidias and Scopas, held by the elder Kephisodotos, was the position taken by these two sculptors between the art of Scopas and Praxiteles and that of Lysippos, for whom the studies and innovations in the canons of human proportions prepared the way. Though self-taught, for as a youth he had been a hand-worker in brass, and from this had raised himself to the position of an artist, he was still not without connection with the schools, since he took as his model the Doryphoros of Polycleitos, the academic pattern mentioned above, and also worked in bronze, the material most favored by Polycleitos and the artists of the Peloponnesos. He cannot, however, be called a direct scholar of Polycleitos, whose canon he corrected and even replaced by a new one, better adapted to the artistic aims of the younger masters. The model of Polycleitos was the human body, but Lysippos felt that he must set his ideal of humanity higher than in the average of real examples, because he considered these, in comparison with the perfect figure, to be degenerate and dwarfed. Although he worked with reference to this view, still he developed his types from the real appearances of nature; and when asked by the painter Eupompos of Sikyon for advice as to the best teacher, he pointed to an assemblage of people. He wished to represent man, however, not as he is, but as he should be, and employed only those features which did not fall below the average determined by Polycleitos. His ideal type of the human body became more slender and larger, the size being especially apparent because the head and extremities, which take their proportions from the whole, were made smaller.

Lysippos, however, followed the footsteps of Polycleitos in considering the establishment of a canon as the greatest essential in art, and exercised his powers chiefly in the province of humanity. His Apoxyomenos—the athlete scraping himself with the strigil, a marble copy of which is in the Vatican—is the most celebrated among his statues of athletes and victors. (Fig. 230.) In this he seems to have set forth his new confession of faith, in opposition to that of Polycleitos. This aim must have had the most important influence upon portrait-sculpture, the chief field of his activity. It is clear from the accounts of some likenesses of persons long dead, or even legendary, that he fully expressed the character in the features, as in the Apollodoros of Silanion, and did not aim at that over-scrupulous reproduction of details and attention to circumstantial matters which endeavor to attain a likeness by sharp observation of external things, unessential to the whole. This inferior style of portraiture was pursued by Lysistratos, the brother of Lysippos, who formed his figures after plaster casts from nature. Although earlier portraits might have informed the sculptor in regard to the true features of some historical personages, certainly this could not have been the case with Æsop, or the Seven Wise Men, for whose individuality and intellectual tendencies he was obliged to create a characteristic type. In the portrait which he most frequently executed, that of Alexander the Great, it was of especial importance to illuminate the ugly and faulty formation of the monarch’s face by the expression of his powerful character, and to execute it so appropriately that even the likeness was increased by such depth of appreciation. The artist thus produced portraits of the conqueror which differed as much, and as favorably, from the realistic and chance appearance of the king as the historic illustration of a great personage does from the knowledge of that individual in every-day life. Alexander, accordingly, would be represented in sculpture by no one except Lysippos, as he would be painted by none but Apelles. Even that best-preserved portrait of Alexander, the bust in the Capitol, does not suffice to make clear the whole conception of Lysippos. How grand such monumental portraitures really were may be gathered from the account of the group at Dium—afterwards transferred to the Portico of Octavia in Rome—illustrating a scene from the battle upon the Granicos, where twenty-five warriors on horseback and nine on foot were grouped about the king, to which many of the enemy may doubtless be added.

The work next in importance after this was the representation of Heracles by this master. Not in the elevation of the ideal above the human, but rather in the emphasizing of this latter quality, did the Heracles of Lysippos stand in distinct opposition alike to the merely human model of Polycleitos, to the superhuman and godlike beings of Pheidias, and especially to the divinely charming beauty of the Aphrodite and the Eros, as seen in the best creations of Scopas and Praxiteles. The Heracles of Lysippos, the embodiment of strength developed beyond human possibility, appeared colossal, whether the absolute dimensions were really great—like the statue from Tarention which represented him resting upon a basket after the labor of cleansing the Augean stables—or whether in miniature, suitable for a table ornament—like the celebrated Epitrapezios, showing the hero as a drinker. Copies, in part, still remain of the Labors of Heracles, executed in twelve groups for Alyzia, in Acarnania. They show the same type that is reproduced in the affected, overstrained statue of the later Athenian artist Glycon—the so-called Farnese Hercules in Naples. (Fig. 231.)

Besides these prominent groups by Lysippos, evidences of his creative energy, the figures of the deities appear to have been few in number. That examples from the circle of young and beautiful divinities, which formed the principal field for the art of Praxiteles, should be almost entirely wanting, was to be expected, he who had perfected the type of Heracles naturally preferring a powerful figure. Four statues of Zeus are mentioned. Though the colossal size of these seems to have been a prominent feature—the Zeus of Tarention measuring eighteen metres in height—still they should not be considered as executed after a conventional pattern, and consequently offering nothing worthy of remark. In view of all that is known of Lysippos, it seems not improbable that the Zeus of Otricoli (Fig. 232), formerly referred to the Pheidian type, may be more nearly related to its modification by Lysippos. The Helios upon the quadriga in Rhodes, besides its human beauty, may possibly have been of great importance in type and conception; but this is not assured by the fact that Nero prized it highly, and ordered it to be gilded. If it be added that Lysippos worked more industriously and rapidly than any other known sculptor—provided the account be true that the number of his productions amounted to fifteen hundred—it cannot be supposed that the time required for new conception and careful execution would be given to them all.

The school of Lysippos was not wanting in names of renown. His most gifted son, Euthycrates, appears to have equalled his father in groups of portrait statues, like the Gathering of Riders and a Hunt of Alexander in Thespia; while another son, Boidas, awakens our interest from the circumstance that the celebrated Praying Boy, in the museum at Berlin, may possibly be referred to him. Chares of Lindos produced the greatest known work of Greek sculpture in regard to size—namely, the colossal statue of the sun at Rhodes, over thirty metres high. Pliny describes it as already fallen and in ruins, therefore his words give us no information as to the conception and style; and the current account of its having stood so high above the entrance to the harbor that vessels sailed between the legs is a fabulous reminiscence of the figure projected at Mount Athos by Deinocrates. Among the scholars of Lysippos, Eutychides seems to have been the most independent; the goddess Anticheia, a copy of which is in the Vatican, was distinguished by excellence in the motive, ease of position, and effective drapery; but, in its genre-like treatment, it excluded all thought of religious art, to which a certain strictness and dignity should pertain. This goddess was seated with dignity, like a city itself, while another personification—the river-god—appeared “more flowing than water.” This marked significance in both cannot be ascribed to a happy chance, but must be regarded as evidence of that highly developed characterization by which the great Sikyonian master endeavored to conceive the whole being and to embody it in his portraits and representative figures. Among the nameless works from the school of Lysippos, creations are to be found of the highest merit. The originator of the Barberini Faun, now in the Glyptothek at Munich, whoever he may have been, should be ranked among the greatest masters of all times.

With Lysippos the development of art in its principal directions was terminated. As Overbeck says, “the summit lies behind us; we descend, and our way downwards may still lead through charming landscapes; but the pure, clear ether soon ceases to surround us, and, before the far-reaching glance, rises from the mist of centuries the flat and endless desert, in the sands of which the stream of Grecian art is quenched.” Alexander himself was the patron of the last of the seven great masters of sculpture; with him ended the fresh directness of Hellenic creations, as well as the greatness of Greece itself. He and his successors built temples afterwards to be furnished, as before, with statues of the deities and outwardly ornamented with sculptures; but they took their models from those earlier works which, elevated to a typical and canonical importance, were not to be surpassed, and employed themselves simply in reproducing. They followed more willingly the easy path open to them because, in the Alexandrian period, scepticism, empty formalism, and chilling indifference had already laid the ravaging axe to the Hellenic religion. With the spread of Hellenic power into the heart of Asia, its art, like its polity, lost its individuality, becoming expansive instead of intense, in decorative subjection to the requirements of elegance and use. Losing its former independent nobility, sculpture soon fell from the height which it had occupied for a century and a half. Athens, Sikyon, and Argos, hitherto central points of development, where art had brought forth its richest fruits as a model for the entire Hellenic world, now became provincial cities of the Macedonian kingdom, and lost their glory—some for a long period, and others forever. Following the example of Lysippos, artists preferred wandering from court to court of Alexander’s successors; and in Alexandria, Antioch, Seleucia, in Nicomedia, Pergamon, Ambrakia, mostly new and elegant cities of royal residence, occupation could not have been wanting, though the quantity of work may have tended to hasten the decline. How extensive and extravagant were the artistic requirements of the Diadochi, how excessive the incense of flattery offered them, is shown in the description of the luxurious works of the Ptolemies and of the SeleucidÆ, and by the three hundred statues erected to Demetrius Phalereus in Athens alone. These last may have been somewhat better than the representation of the winds upon the clepsydra and vane of Andronicos Kyrrhestios (Figs. 233 and 234), but even they must be classed as mere artisan-work. Much was done in portrait-statuary after the time of Alexander, who turned art in this direction; and the successive dynasties also encouraged it, as may easily be imagined. This is evident from the statues still preserved, from the Ptolemaic cameos, and especially the coins of the Diadochi. The heads of these kings have never been equalled, for fine and lifelike characterization and modelling, in all the portrait coins and medallions which have been struck down to the present time. (Fig. 235.)

Though a great deal was produced in the period of the Diadochi, and, in the line of portraiture, much that was good, still there must have been truth in the saying of Pliny that “after the 121st Olympiad (290 B.C.) art ceased, and revived again only in the 156th (150 B.C.).” It ceased, namely, in so far as it was made subservient to courts and decoration; but upon the soil of Greece itself, and among the people, it grew, and strove after higher aims. The production continued, but its artisan-like elaboration did not make good the lost artistic originality. Men of vigorous talent followed in the paths of Praxiteles and Lysippos, producing works which are the ornaments of our antique collections; but the character of reproductions, clinging to their creations, robs them of the name of artist in the full sense of the word. The scanty notices of Pliny are, in general, correct; but he omits to mention some exceptions which represent a further development of sculpture, not quite unimportant, though questionable in principle.

Antiochos I. of Syria. 281 to 262. Philip V. of Macedon. 220 to 178. Perseus of Macedon. 178 to 168. Fig. 235.—Coins of the Diadochi.
Antiochos I. of Syria. 281 to 262. Philip V. of Macedon. 220 to 178. Perseus of Macedon. 178 to 168. Fig. 235.—Coins of the Diadochi.

Fig. 236.—The So-called Dying Gladiator. School of Pergamon.
Fig. 236.—The So-called Dying Gladiator. School of Pergamon.

In two places, at the royal court of Pergamon and in the republic of Rhodes, productive art rose again to a certain independence and originality. Pliny himself, in another place, says that “several artists illustrated the battles of Attalos and Eumenes against the Gauls; namely, Isigonos, Phycomachos, Stratonicos, and Antigonos.” The great victory over these barbarians was fought in 229 B.C. by Attalos, with which Eumenes, by a misunderstanding easily to be explained, appears to have been connected. Attalos erected in his capital a grand monument to his victory, and, not contenting himself with this, consecrated another upon the Acropolis at Athens, perhaps in part a copy of that in Pergamon. Remnants of both monuments still exist which give a comparatively good knowledge of the artistic peculiarities of this school. The investigations upon this site, now approaching completion, have unearthed hundreds of fragments in high-relief, part of a gigantomachia originally forming the decoration of an altar. The altar was surrounded by Ionic colonnades, the high stereobate of which was ornamented with sculptures in high-relief, the whole being elevated upon a gigantic terrace, 38 m. long, and 34 m. broad. The frieze, representing the gigantomachia, stands midway between the works of Lysippos and the Laocoon, and forms the most extensive and important monument of sculpture remaining from the time of the Diadochi; it is in many respects a parallel to that of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassos which represents the decorative work of the school of Scopas and Praxiteles. These works have now found their way to Berlin, but a critical account of them will be possible only when they shall have been made generally accessible by an official publication. The statue of the so-called Dying Gladiator of the Capitol belonged to the group in Pergamon already known (Fig. 236); as did the two figures in the Villa Ludovisi, representing a Gaul who, to escape the shame of slavery, has stabbed his wife, who sinks beside him, and is about to thrust the sword into his own neck. In the so-called Dying Gladiator, the rough hair growing low upon the neck, the strongly marked indentation between the brow and the projecting Northern nose, the beard shorn to the upper lip, the heavy cheek-bones, the fleshy and somewhat clumsily formed body, the hard and calloused skin upon the hands and feet, the twisted neckband, and the curved battle-horn have long since shown the meaning of this statue. In the group in the Ludovisi Villa, the same marble, a like and peculiar treatment of the forms, with the same type of head, leave no doubt that this also belonged to a large group representing a victory over the Gauls. From its style, it cannot be considered as a Roman monument, particularly as some notices of the Athenian Votive Offering of Attalos clearly identify it.

The most striking novelty in these monuments, and also in the school of art at Pergamon, is the characteristic following-out of ethnographical differences. Previously, when artists would distinguish barbarians, they were content to make the nationality clear by costume and accessories; but this could not suffice for Lysippos, who had carried individual characterization to such a height in his portrait-statues, and who probably, in his group of the battle upon the Granicos, illustrated the peculiarities of the Persian race. In groups of portrait-statues it was necessary to treat the action with absolute truthfulness, thus leading the way to historic art. This is perfected in the monument in question, the ideal battle scene being based upon real details; it was not merely a strife among men, but Greeks and Celts stood opposed, each nation with its marked features and peculiarities, the barbarians distinguished not outwardly alone, but by their natural wildness.

This is evident from a number of figures of the Athenian votive offering of Attalos, still preserved; our knowledge of their connection with the Dying Gladiator and the school of Pergamon is due to Brunn. According to Pausanias, this votive offering consisted of figures half the size of life, in four groups, showing the gigantomachia, the combat of the Amazons, the battle of Marathon, and the victory of Attalos. Figures exist from them all; from the first, a giant, dead and outstretched, is in the museum at Naples, as also one of the second, a fallen Amazon; from the third, a dead body clad in breeches, and two nude Persians kneeling, are in Naples, the Vatican, and in the possession of Signor Castellani. From the fourth, a kneeling figure, at Paris, and one kneeling and one falling backward, at Venice, are unmistakable Gauls; while a sitting figure, wounded, also at Venice, and a youthful one, dead, at Naples, are probably also of that race. Judging from these remains, the composition must have included numerous figures, as the five existing Gauls—perhaps also several more—bespeak a corresponding number at Pergamon, and forty is the lowest that can be reckoned for the whole. Their position was probably upon the steps of the monument, which possibly bore the statue of the founder. It must have stood near the wall of the Acropolis, since it has been said that a figure from the gigantomachia was thrown by a storm into the theatre which stood at the foot of this fortress. That only the conquered are found among the pieces preserved seems to be an evidence that these remnants are from the original rather than from any copy, because, aside from the improbability that so extensive a work would have been copied in later times, the effect of the storm suggests the thought that the erect statues of the victors would have been less likely to last through so many centuries than the lying and cowering figures, not so easily injured on account of their closer connection with the base. Notwithstanding their relation in style to the Capitoline statue and to the group in the Ludovisi Villa, these are distinctly inferior and harder. Brunn is probably right in his supposition that they are the work of scholars, and a contemporaneous reproduction from the studio of that master, who himself executed the monument at Pergamon, the figures of which ranked in merit with the Dying Gladiator. Many deficiencies may be accounted for by its reduction to half life-size; its repetition at this scale, for the Athenian votive offering, appearing to have satisfied the king.

The work most nearly related to this, also in marble, and perfectly similar in conception, is a figure of the Marsyas group, the celebrated Knife-sharpener in the Uffizi at Florence. This is also a representative of barbarism, probably a Scythian, the others having been Gauls; but, artistically, this makes no difference. No originals remain of the other figures in the group, of which the barbarian, cowering upon the ground and sharpening the knife for the flaying of Marsyas, probably formed no very important part. Another aim, the careful anatomical treatment of the body, is ostentatiously displayed in the copies of this work now in Berlin and Florence. The group suggests another locality, and forms a connecting medium between those two most important centres of art in that period, Pergamon and Rhodes.

Among the few republics of the time, the island of Rhodes was able to rival the brilliant courts of kings, in regard to artistic treasures, by its wealth of commerce and its political neutrality—the latter being rendered possible, as nowhere else, by its situation and importance. That the influence of Lysippos prevailed there is clear from the fact that, after this master had sent thither his Phoibos upon the quadriga, the Rhodian Chares went to learn of him, and afterwards executed for his native city the above-mentioned colossus. This was followed in the same place by a hundred other colossal figures, which were probably related, in point of style, to the works of Lysippos. The statement of Pliny that each, singly, would have sufficed to make the place of its exposition famous is hardly intelligible. Numerous names of artists, mostly of Rhodes, found partly in inscriptions upon the bases, and partly mentioned by Pliny, might here be mentioned.

The multiplied productions of colossal works, however, would not suffice to give a very favorable idea of the state of art in Rhodes, were it not for the preservation of two examples, prominent among many, which were famous even in antiquity. These were the group of the Laocoon, in the Vatican, and the so-called Farnese Bull, in Naples. The first (Fig. 237), which Pliny, with extravagant praise, calls the work of three Rhodians, Agesandros, Athanodoros, and Polydoros, was found in 1506—not in one piece, as he describes it, but in six—among the ruins of the house of Titus, in whose palace Pliny says it was placed. It represents the priest Laocoon, who sinned at the altar through love, and whom Apollo chastised by means of two serpents. This expiation became tragic, from its having taken place at the moment when Laocoon had resolved to save his native city, Troy; and also from the suffering of the children, innocent, though born in sin. The serpents have encircled the three figures; the youngest is falling from the deadly sting; the father, sinking upon the altar after a desperate defence, is no longer able to protect himself; while the elder son, not yet threatened with instant death, but hopelessly entangled in the coils of the serpent, turns upon his father a look of despairing horror.

Fig. 237.—Group of Laocoon and his Sons, by Agesandros, Athanodoros, and Polydoros. (Vatican.)
Fig. 237.—Group of Laocoon and his Sons, by Agesandros, Athanodoros, and Polydoros.
(Vatican.)This grand work, though from Pliny down to later times esteemed beyond its real merit, still makes evident to us peculiarities in the art of Rhodes which, in many respects, render it of independent value. We find in it a choice of subject new in sculpture, the technical and artistic difficulties of which appear almost insurmountable, so that it could only be treated by ability well trained and long experienced. It gave opportunity to surpass all existing productions in its display of artistic technical superiority. When the body of the Laocoon is compared with the type of Heracles, it cannot be doubted that the canon of Lysippos was followed; but the forms, which with him were developed from the living model, in this, as in the Marsyas of Pergamon, are taken from anatomical studies, and are wanting in fulness of life: the overdetailed muscles are too studied, distinct, and separated; they are marble, and not flesh. The composition would, in real life, be impracticable; the action is visibly so ordered that it never could be possible, and is throughout developed with an aim towards the greatest effect. But this effect is by no means merely formal, limited to the restless and disquieting play of the lines of the limbs and trunks, and of the coils of the serpents. It is in the highest degree pathetic. Thus this element of the school of Praxiteles existed in this work, both the leading characteristics of that master being here displayed with an excessive ostentation. The pathos confronts us too exclusively, not modified by any ethic principle. The work does not, therefore, have the tragic power which lies in the descriptions of Sophocles, because, in the group, only the effect is to be seen; we have no hint as to the cause. The pathetic blends far more with the pathological event than with the ethical. The mastery of rendering, the composition, the effect—everything is wonderful; but it all lies in the realm of display: our admiration is given to the artist rather than to the work. It cannot be denied that this effective treatment was the dominant feature in the art of Rhodes; but it set technical mastery in the foreground, to the neglect of absolute and intrinsic merit.

Fig. 238.—The Farnese Bull of Apollonios and Tauriscos. (In Naples.)
Fig. 238.—The Farnese Bull of Apollonios and Tauriscos. (In Naples.)

This applies equally to the second great work, the so-called Farnese Bull (Fig. 238), the creation of two artists from Tralles, Apollonios and Tauriscos, who may have worked in Rhodes, as, according to Pliny, the group was to be seen there before it was brought to Rome under Augustus. This large group was found in the Baths of Caracalla soon after the discovery of the Laocoon, and was transported to Naples, where it now stands in the Museo Nazionale. The scene is probably taken from the Antiope, a tragedy of Euripides, and an understanding of the story is necessary to its comprehension. Antiope was the daughter of King Nycteus of Thebes; he being angry with her because of the love of Zeus, and incredulous as to the cause of her pregnancy, she fled to Mount Kithairon, where she bore the twins Zethos and Amphion. Having given these to the care of a shepherd, she was received by King Epopeus of Sikyon; but Lycos, the brother and successor of Nycteus, carried on the hateful persecution, even to the extent of making war against her protector. Sikyon was destroyed, and Antiope returned as a slave to Thebes, where the ill-treatment of Dirke, wife of Lycos, obliged her to fly once more to the mountains. There, at a festival of Bacchus, she was found again by her persecutor, and, for her flight, was given the terrible punishment of being dragged to death by a bull. Zethos and Amphion were ready to execute the command when a recognition took place, and a just vengeance brought the fate intended for Antiope upon the head of Dirke. This moment forms the imposing scene of the group. The raging bull is only with difficulty held by the avenging sons; Dirke, a most beautiful woman, praying in vain for grace, clasps the knee of one while the other is ready to throw around her the noose by which she is to be dragged over the rough ground of Kithairon. The passion of the avenging sons, and the fear of Dirke, make the work highly pathetic and impressive; but it is not so really tragic as the Laocoon, because the motive of the evidently brutal deed, though not entirely neglected, as in the former, is still not entirely comprehensible. Antiope, the heroine of the tragedy, is indeed present. But she is not brought into the action, and stands, in fact, behind the principal characters. She is therefore hardly more than a lay figure, expressing nothing. It might perhaps have been better to omit Antiope altogether, and to leave the action without any motive at all. The figure has, however, an interest of its own, being in an excellent state of preservation, while the others have suffered by restoration and by retouching. The composition, with its numerous figures, admirably executed, has a picturesque effect which is somewhat new in the history of Greek sculpture. This is enhanced by the accessories of the story, the rocky ground, and many local details symbolical of the occasion. Besides a fine large dog, really belonging to the group, there are a chaplet and a basket, a disproportionately small boy ornamented with a wreath, and, still more inferior in size, two lions seizing a bull and a horse. There are also two boars coming out from a grotto, a lioness, a stag, a hind, a ram, an eagle with a snake, and a falcon over a dead bird; even turtles, snakes, and snails are represented. The mastery over the technical and artistic difficulties in this work is scarcely less admirable than in the Laocoon, and it gives the same impression of a successful piece of bravura, astonishing and quite fascinating for its novelty, boldness, and versatile power. The age, indeed, satiated with the best products of various schools, demanded the stimulus of an excessive appeal to superficial sources of interest. The group of the Marsyas is attributed to artists of Pergamon, and the Wrestlers in the Uffizi at Florence (Fig. 239) may, with greater certainty, be ascribed to those of Rhodes.

Fig. 239.—The Wrestlers. (In the Uffizi, Florence.)
Fig. 239.—The Wrestlers. (In the Uffizi, Florence.)

Before we pass to the last active period of Hellenic art, one other work, preserved from this age, the Apollo Belvedere of the Vatican (Fig. 240), still claims our consideration. Though without the name of the artist, or of the place of its origin, and not, perhaps, to be classed directly with the greatest productions of Pergamon and Rhodes, it is yet not unworthy to rank by their side. It is, like the Laocoon, one of the best-known statues among the existing treasures of antiquity, and scarcely needs a minute description. The splendid triumphant head looking into the distance, the slender figure, as fine in modelling as it is noble, the pleasing grace of the light step, assure for it an admiration, the more universal as these beauties—the combined result of the schools of Lysippos and of Praxiteles—are just those which are the most generally recognized. It is not an original work, in the full sense of the word, but an early Roman copy from the bronze, and seems to bear a closer relation to it than does the lately discovered head which is now in the museum at Basle. This latter has lost the characteristic features of the bronze style, and from the greater freedom of its treatment may be called a translation into marble, in distinction from the copy in the Vatican. Another reproduction of this work recently made known by Stephani, a bronze statuette in the Strogonoff collection, at St. Petersburg, has given an additional explanation of the action in which the god was represented. In the marble the left hand was wanting, and in the restoration this was supplied with a bow; but in the Strogonoff Apollo remains are still to be seen of the Ægis, held in the hand, with which the deity drove back the Greeks, as described by Homer, Il. xv. 306. If the far-shooter be thus changed into the Ægis-bearer, the shaking of the Ægis symbolizing the storm, a plain reference may be found to the original motive of the work. When the Gauls threatened Delphi in 279 B.C., the defence of the Greeks was effectively assisted by a terrible storm, which threw the barbarians into a fearful panic, and which was regarded by the Greeks as caused by the personal intervention of Apollo, Athene, and Artemis. This might well have had an effect upon art similar to that of the victory of Attalos over the Gauls in Asia Minor. The Ætolians, indeed, proposed to erect at Delphi a votive offering, with figures of field-officers and of the three gods, while a statue of Apollo was erected in Patrae from a similar reason. In view of this, Overbeck has ventured to combine the Apollo Belvedere, the Artemis of Versailles (Fig. 241), and the striding Athene of the Capitoline Museum into one group, to which ideal union the unsimilarity of the workmanship, and even of the scale of the three statues, is not so much opposed—since these are all copies that have come down to us from different times—as is the movement of the Apollo, the middle figure, towards the right. This difficulty might be met by changing the positions, so that Athene should stand at the right and Artemis at the left, whereby the action of the figures might be from, rather than towards, each other, Artemis being turned decidedly more towards the front. If, however, this work originated in consequence of the victory in 279 B.C., it shows that a generation before the time of Attalos, at least in Greece proper, although attention had already been devoted to momentary action, art nevertheless still stood upon an ideal height, and could still delineate gods worthy of admiration.

Fig. 241.—Artemis of Versailles.
Fig. 241.—Artemis of Versailles.

These artistic efforts do not, on the whole, refute the opinion of Pliny that art ceased from the 121st to the 156th Olympiad—that is, from 300 to 150 B.C. The chief localities of its activity, Pergamon and Rhodes, may be considered only as asylums found by the higher sculpture after it had lost all foothold in its native home. But when he says it took a new flight at the close of that period, we must acknowledge that the result was not of that kind which could charm us as it did the Roman narrator. As Brunn remarks, the date of Pliny agrees with that period when Hellenic art attained a decided mastery in Rome. Scarcely any evidences of the monumental art of Greece were to be recognized in Rome before the conquest of Syracuse in 212 B.C. After this time the Roman triumphs brought forth, one after another, an almost oppressive number of productions, so that the art of the Greek colonies, and of Greece itself, overflowed Rome in a broad stream. Not to mention the plundering of Capua, Tarention, and numerous Grecian cities in Lower Italy, we have an example in the triumphs of Quintius Flaminius, the conqueror of KynoskephalÆ, 197 B.C., when the transportation of the statues lasted an entire day. The booty taken from Western Greece by M. Fulvius Nobilior, in 189 B.C., also contained not less than five hundred and fifteen statues. These extensive plunderings were at least equalled by the triumphs of L. Cornelius Scipio, the victor over Antiochos; of Æmilius Paulus, conqueror of Perseus; of Metellus Macedonicus, and of the destroyer of Corinth, Mummius, who has become proverbial for his barbarous robberies. It was not strange that at last a living art followed the triumphal chariot of Roman victories. Metellus employed many Grecian artists in the erection and ornamentation of his new buildings in Rome.

The scene of artistic industry thus became changed, and Rome, a foreign city, became the central point—first of possession, and afterwards of artistic activity. It might therefore be questioned whether what follows were not better suited to the chapter upon Rome; but it must be considered that the Romans were, from our present point of view, only wealthy collectors and patrons of art, and that the artists employed were still Grecian, and of the Hellenic school. This was not altered by their working in Rome, or even by their learning from the numberless productions accumulated there.

Roman grandeur was long contented with artistic booty for the ornamenting of its forums, temples, and public buildings; the immense wealth of the empire and proconsulate giving opportunity for procuring celebrated works by force, by purchase, or as honorary gifts. This brought forth dilettanteism, which led to the study of art, and to a zeal for collecting which made every new acquisition an additional incentive to covetousness. Study choked that impulse which, in a degenerate way, had endeavored to outdo what had been done by masters of the best period, and, accounting their method to be exclusively good, turned art back by a sort of reaction upon those earlier paths. The passion for collecting was not limited to the works ready at hand, but would have restorations and imitations by contemporary artists, made in the spirit of the originals. It could not have been otherwise than that art, after having exhausted the originals, and attained its aims in all directions, should react upon itself; but doubtless the circumstances of Rome had an essential influence upon the manner in which this took place, and greatly furthered this renaissance—to use a somewhat unsuitable term which, in its restricted sense, has been adopted for the far more original awakening of art at the close of the Middle Ages.

Fig. 242.—Borghese Gladiator of Agasias. (In the Louvre.)
Fig. 242.—Borghese Gladiator of Agasias. (In the Louvre.)

In the desire to enliven the different phases of artistic development, it was natural not to return to first principles, but rather to take those creations which lay near at hand, and try to find in them the way to improvement. The period under consideration, up to the commencement of the empire, offers examples of every stage of development, the dates of which can only here and there be given; but it seems that the way for an Hellenic renaissance was, during this period, partially opened.

Agasias of Ephesos appears as successor to the master of the Laocoon and of the Farnese Bull. The celebrated Borghese Gladiator in the Louvre, which represents a warrior in fictitious battle with a horseman, may be referred to the school of Rhodes. (Fig. 242.) As the statue did not belong to a group, but was independent, we see in it nothing but a show figure, in which the artist only sought for a position where he might outdo all that had gone before, and give opportunity to parade his technical mastery and his anatomical knowledge. That the work should be placed in this time, and not in the best period of the Rhodian school, is plain from the later character of the writing in the artist’s inscription, from the inferior understanding of the mutual relations of the muscles, and particularly from the insignificance of the idea, and the entire lack of the pathetic, all which elements lent to the works of Rhodes an especial value.

As examples from Rhodes and Pergamon not only lay near at hand for the artists of Asia Minor, but were germane to their civilization, so the numerous Attic masters of this period looked to the time of perfection in Attica and Sikyon. The tenets of the school of Lysippos still held sway there, and what splendid fruit it bore, even at this time, notwithstanding the retrogression from its earlier overvalued merit, is shown by the much admired torso, now in the Vatican Belvedere, by Apollonios, son of Nestor of Athens. (Fig. 243.) This must certainly have been a sitting Heracles, a motive repeatedly treated by Lysippos, though no restoration of it has yet been decidedly successful. The most probable is the latest by Petersen, which represents him as playing the kithara. The somewhat later statue by Glycon of Athens, the Heracles, who stands leaning upon his club (Fig. 231), though approaching somewhat in conception to a work of Lysippos, is far inferior. With this may be mentioned a still poorer repetition, the Heracles of the Pitti Palace in Florence, through a false inscription ascribed to Lysippos.

Besides Apollonios, who was distinguished also by his youthful satyr and an Apollo, which are too little known for a more minute description, the school of Scopas and Praxiteles was followed by the son of Apollodoros of Athens, Cleomenes, the sculptor of the Venus de’ Medici. When compared with the divine figure of the Venus of Melos, though pleasing, it appears degenerate. The godlike beauty which we impute to the Cnidian Aphrodite, and find in the Venus of Melos, is lost by the continual emphasis of sensuous effects, notwithstanding all the mastery and delicate feeling for beauty. With the exception of the Braschi Venus at Munich and the Venus of the Capitol, which are more nearly related to that of Cnidos, nearly all the nude figures of Venus in the various museums belong to the same circle and stage of development, even when they betray later work. The masters by no means appear to have been mere copyists; but the works of Praxiteles were altered, to suit the taste of the times, by artists in whom individuality was not quite extinct.

The school of Pheidias, with its high ideal, of which the age in question had little understanding, could never have become popular in the same degree. Rome possessed but few works of this master which could have served as examples, and those not the most important. Still, reminiscences of the best Attic style were not wanting, especially in those figures of the gods the type of which had been established by Pheidias, as in the statues of Zeus and Athene. The chryselephantine Zeus, by Polycles and Dionysios, in Metellus’s Temple of Jupiter, as also the Capitoline of the same material by Apollonios, may justly be referred to the Olympian original; the former at least with the more certainty, when it is considered that the sons of Polycles—Timocles and Timarchides—copied the sculptures upon a shield of the Parthenos for an Athene, designed for Elateia in Phokis. It is possible—and this may, perhaps, be still further established by Brunn, who has pointed out this connection—that the Pallas in the Villa Ludovisi, by Antiochos of Athens, which has been estimated below its worth, may be a reproduction of the Parthenos, modified and perhaps formed from memory. The treatment of the garments, and the whole position of this otherwise ill-executed figure, remind us of the chryselephantine works, and possess something of the dignity and nobility of the better period.

At a time when Cicero could say that in his opinion “the works of Polycleitos were perfectly beautiful” the master from Argos must have come into fashion. The artistic representative of this stage of appreciative development was Pasiteles, who worked in the time of Pompey, and whose important school has left traces of this influence in examples that have been preserved. The pathetic tendency was not entirely to be avoided, and, though not so evident in the academic male figure of the Villa Albani, which bears the name of Stephanos, the scholar of Pasiteles, is yet undeniable in the groups of Orestes and Electra in Naples, and of Orestes and Pylades in the Louvre. This trait is still more marked in a work of Menelaos, the scholar of Stephanos, the beautiful and celebrated group in the Villa Ludovisi (Fig. 244), designated by Winckelmann and Welcker as Electra and Orestes; by Jahn, as Merope and Cresphontes; by KekulÉ, as Deianeira and Hyllos; and by Schulze and Burckhardt, as Penelope and Telemachos. Though the artist has here made concessions to more recent influences, they did not give the work an eclectic character, as asserted by KekulÉ, but rather displayed a somewhat archaistic conception, and the short proportions of Polycleitos, long since abandoned for the canon of Lysippos. On the other hand, the remark of KekulÉ appears just, that the characters do not seem conceived and modelled after nature, but rather as seen through the medium of the tragedy of Euripides.

When the reproductions had run through the entire circle of styles from the best period of art, the archaic was at last brought forward. It is known that Augustus ornamented his buildings, particularly the gable of the Palatine Temple of Apollo, with sculptures of the masters from Chios, Boupalos and Athenis, and that he also carried away from Tegea the Athene of the old Attic Endoios. Archaic art, always possessing a charm for devotional images which was doubled in a time of such satiety, came thus into fashion. A large number of archaistic works appeared, imitated after the antique, as has already been mentioned. They not seldom betray the influence of single figures from larger compositions in relief, as in the instance of the Amphora of the Athenian Sosibios in the Louvre.

The more or less free reproductiveness of this period, which we have to thank for a large proportion of the contents of our museums, naturally came to a conclusion in that unbridled mixture of style which combined in the same relief not only the various aims of different schools, but their well-known motives, as is the case with the relief of the Salpion upon the font of Gaeta. There was very little originality, and that was limited to genre, particularly to the idyllic, as in the play of Cupids, the best of which might be referred to old models. It is not known whether this was the case with the lioness of Arkesilaos, in the possession of Varro, which, according to Pliny’s description, bound by Cupids, was drinking from a horn, with mittens upon the paws to render them harmless. Models for this may be sought in the paintings of Alexandria. It is certain that the centaurs, bound and worried by Cupids, the best examples of which are preserved in the Louvre, the Vatican, the Doria Palace, and the Capitoline Museum, with that of Aristeas and Papias from Aphrodisias, are imitations of bronze originals. (Fig. 245.)

Hellenic architecture and sculpture, from their unsurpassed perfection, require a more comprehensive treatment than that accorded to those arts in any other ancient nation. This is especially the case with sculpture, because, in Greece, the demands of its nature were more completely fulfilled by the Greeks than has ever happened, at any time, with any other people; while Grecian architecture, notwithstanding its wonderful monumental perfection, did not deal with all the possibilities of the art. Both, however, demand our attention in a greater degree than does Hellenic painting. Architecture has left great masses of ruins, and sculpture numerous collections of antique treasures; but of Grecian painting there are no remains; its history is accordingly a history rather of artists than of art. If this necessitates for painting a more limited treatment, we must not therefore conclude that its development was, in reality, inferior to that of its sister arts, since, in fact, it fully equalled that of architecture and sculpture. This has often been unjustly doubted, but it would be fully evident were nothing more known than the almost measureless fame of the first masters.

The course of development of Grecian painting is by no means so obvious as that of sculpture: we have no sure date of its beginning, but it is at least equally remote. Conze shows painting to have been even the most primitive, it having existed among the aborigines in the decoration of pottery and terra-cotta. The notes of Pliny upon the matter (xxxv. 15) appear to be hardly more than a supplementary reconstruction of a conjectured state of development, garnished vaguely with the names of ancient artists. The first stages, the employment of a simple tone in the filling of outline figures with a color of brick-dust, called monochromatic painting, had long since been mastered by the neighboring peoples—the Mesopotamians, Phoenicians, and Egyptians, who were acquainted also with the use of bright colors. This work must early have been known to the Greeks through imported articles—Homer mentioning vessels and fabrics—even though they could not apply it to the productions of their own land. Monochromatic painting upon pottery, familiar to the primitive Ionians, seems to have originated upon the Syro-Phoenician coasts. A faint reminiscence of the ancient, widely extended employment of color may be found in Pliny, who designates an Egyptian, bearing the Greek name of Philocles, as the discoverer of linear painting. Works of this kind, however, were purely decorative, like the older Greek vase-paintings (Figs. 187 and 191), and of great similarity; it seems unnecessary to offer conjectures as to the source whence this impulse came. Of still less significance are the names of artists which have been fabulously attached to the various inventions, such as Cleanthes, Aridikes, and Ecphantos, of Corinth; Telephanes and Craton, of Sikyon; and Saurias, of Samos. Unless, from the fact that several are mentioned as dwelling in Corinth and Sikyon, it may be concluded that decorative painting probably flourished in those cities before the sixtieth Olympiad (530 B.C.). What Pliny says of Eumaros of Athens does not justify the supposition of any considerable progress, although, in figures, he distinguished between male and female, expressed in some slight degree age and characteristic peculiarities, and, at least, made an end to that crudeness which found satisfaction in writing names over forms otherwise precisely alike. Greater progress was made by his successor, Kimon of CleonÆ—500 to 480 B.C.—who improved the former sack-like garments (Fig. 191) by folds, and gave a more detailed drawing to the nude, placing the eye in a profile head also in profile, instead of making it look towards the front, as in the figure mentioned above. With him began truthfulness to nature, and correctness of drawing, at a time when sculpture in Ægina, Athens, Sikyon, and Argos was preparing for that highest perfection attained afterwards by Pheidias.

After the Persian war, through two generations, the progress of painting was proportionate to its former backwardness, until it attained a height little short of that reached by sculpture. The first master worthy of mention—and likewise one of the greatest artists we know—demands particular attention, from having been the founder of painting as an art. Polygnotos of Thasos (475 to 455 B.C.), the son of Aglaophon, who also is mentioned as a painter, executed the greater number of his works in Athens, where he was much respected by Kimon. Of the pictures in the Stoa Poikile, painted under his direction, at least the Conquest of Troy, and the Council of Princes sitting in judgment upon the sacrilege committed by Ajax against Cassandra, were by his hand. The Battle of the Amazons was by Micon, the Battle of Marathon by Panainos and Micon; the fourth, perhaps the latest, was the Battle between the Athenians and LacedÆmonians near Oinoe: the artist is not known. Polygnotos worked, together with Micon, upon other Athenian frescos, scenes from the lives of heroes in the Temple of Theseus. In the Temple of the Dioscuri he painted the Rape of the Daughters of Leukippos, next to which was the Return of the Argonauts, by Micon. In the Pinacotheca of the PropylÆa was a series of representations, among which Brunn has recognized as companion pieces Diomedes Robbing Philoctetes of his Bow, and Odysseus Seizing the Palladion; the Murder of Ægisthos by Orestes, and the Sacrifice of Polyxena; Odysseus Appearing before Nausicaa and her Companions, and Achilles among the Daughters of Lycomedes. Of the other works by this master may be mentioned those at Thespeia and Plataia; that in the Temple of Athene at the latter place represented Odysseus attacking the suitors. The best of all the creations of Polygnotos, the paintings in the Lesche of the Cnidians at Delphi, illustrating the conquest of Ilion and the nether world, are so minutely described by Pausanias (x. 25-31) that they furnish the most important material for an understanding of his art.

We should hardly be able justly to estimate this master were it not for the descriptions of Pausanias; for the other classic authors, with some exceptions in Aristotle, deal only with secondary matters. In regard to his coloring, Cicero, in his “Four Colors,” says nothing, speaking only of his drawing, while Quintilian merely wonders how, in his time, there could still be admirers of such primitive painting. It was merely a coloring without light and shade, a simple treatment by local tones of surfaces within outlines. That these tones were not unbroken, as upon the Nile and Tigris, but finely graded and everywhere characteristic, we learn from the special mention of the doves, of the shaded coloring of the fish in the Acheron, of the blackish-blue color of the corpse-devouring Eurynomos, and of the gray of the shipwrecked Ajax. The red cheeks of Cassandra, admired by Lucian, give evidence of several colors within the same outline. But though Cicero praises the drawing, the little which is intelligible in Pliny’s account of the master tends the other way. Still, it must be acknowledged that more is implied by the motive of the Olympian Jupiter, by the encomium upon Cassandra’s eyebrows by Lucian, and by the exaggerated expression of an epigram—“in the lids of Polyxena lay the whole Trojan war”—than the petty peculiarities with which Pliny invests the painter would lead us to expect. Ælian praises the strict carefulness and fineness of the outline drawing, the expression, and the garments. But the most remarkable testimony concerning this master is that of Aristotle, who describes his figures as surpassing nature; while artists like Dionysios contented themselves with equalling it, and others, like Pauson, were content to remain below it. Elsewhere he calls him the painter of ethics—that is, of character—in a grand style which the works of Zeuxis failed to attain. Combining this judgment with that of Ælian, who ascribes grandeur to Polygnotos, we may conclude that this artist drew in a broad and ideal style. That to this were united an epic clearness and liveliness of treatment, not only in the single figures and groups, but in the entire composition, is fully evident from the description which Pausanias gives of the paintings in the Lesche. In short, correctness, richness, and grandeur of composition must be accounted the chief merits of Polygnotos—merits to which none of his successors attained, though they may have far surpassed him in execution, as painters in a more restricted sense. Less painter than artist, he pursued, in his wall decorations, a thoroughly monumental direction, which after his time, through change of aim, was neglected.

The most celebrated companions of Polygnotos, but, as Ælian remarks, not equalling him in greatness, were Micon of Athens, whose name has already been mentioned, and Panainos, a cousin of Pheidias, who, besides the battle of Marathon in the Poikile, executed the paintings upon the throne of the Pheidian Zeus in Olympia. Dionysios of Colophon and Pauson have already been spoken of. The first seems to have carried out the strict carefulness of his model, Polygnotos, to a degree which was naturally unfavorable alike to grace and to greatness of style. Pauson, though accounted an artist by Aristotle, may be compared to Buffalmacco, scorned and derided, among the companions of Giotto; not fitted for productions of a grand style, he did not attempt them, and his nude paintings, without ethical significance, were harmful to young observers.

Among the other distinguished masters of this time, Calliphon appears most nearly to have followed in the footsteps of Polygnotos; but his brother Aristophon, who brought painting upon panels into general use, pursued technical methods opposed to this school. The style of Polygnotos was also abandoned by the Samian Agatharchos, a self-instructed decorator and scene-painter who, in an essay upon scenographic painting, established principles upon which, after his time, this art was further developed. In scene-painting the indispensable aim after illusory appearances must have led to the observation and imitation of the effect of more or less light—that is to say, of paler or deeper shades in the local color—and thus have brought painting to a point of development not hitherto attained by any nation of antiquity.

The important advance indicated by Agatharchos in scenography was made in the painting of figures by Apollodoros of Athens. The accounts of him are few, and in part incomprehensible; but Plutarch says plainly that he discovered the mixing of colors and the variation of shade upon them, and Pliny calls him the first master of illusion. Strictly speaking, he was not the sole author of the innovation, since Agatharchos went before him; and if he received the cognomen of skiagraphos—painter in light and shade—it must be understood that the word skiagraphia was used to signify scenography. But he was, at all events, the first to apply these principles to figure-painting, developing a treatment quite different from that employed in the architectural painting so extensively in use for the stage. The important result of this innovation may well be imagined, and it is not strange that the ground thus gained should have been promptly occupied by other masters of the art, who rapidly brought painting to a perfection almost equal to that of sculpture.

These were Zeuxis of Heraclea, in Lower Italy, and Parrhasios of Ephesos. The teachers of the former are not of importance; the impulse through which Zeuxis became one of the most brilliant geniuses of Greece not having been given by these, but rather by Apollodoros, who is not mentioned among them. His fame was at its height during the Peloponnesian war, and in the following ten years; so that we can easily understand why Zeuxis did not establish himself in Athens, where Polygnotos and Apollodoros had raised painting to an art, but, after many wanderings, found an asylum in Ephesos. His works, in contrast to the wall-paintings of Polygnotos, were chiefly upon panels, as, according to Pliny, we may suppose those of Apollodoros to have been. Among those of Zeuxis, the Olympos was exceptional in regard to subject; of the deities, Zeus is particularly celebrated. The only other representations of the deities we find are the Rose-crowned Eros, and Apollo Chastising Marsyas. Neither Pan, nor Heracles Strangling the Serpents in his Infancy, can be reckoned in this category. The Trojan legends appear in three of his more celebrated pictures—Helen in Crotona, the Weeping Menelaos Bringing his Brother the Offering for the Dead, and Penelope, “in whom propriety itself is embodied.” If we may connect with the Odyssey, the Storm at Sea, in which Boreas and Triton are mentioned, it will form a fourth. In his athletes he seems to have intended to establish a canon for painting, as Polycleitos had done for sculpture. Two others, the Family of Centaurs, and the Boy bearing Grapes, are genre pictures.

It is not by chance that we have the fullest accounts of Zeuxis; his aim not being so high as that of Polygnotos, he took his motives from other fields more favorable to the new methods. Historic painting, the foundation of that higher kind of monumental art which gives grand representations of character, was forsaken; as Aristotle expresses it, the works of Zeuxis were wanting in ethic significance. Excessive striving after illusion, after the semblance of reality, brings forward outward and momentary appearances, supplanting the inwardly essential and lasting. Penelope seems to speak, and yet we know not in what situation she is delineated; the weeping of Menelaos certainly does not give his character; and as little does the merry play of the Centaurs with their young, go charmingly described by Lucian, represent the mythological nature of these monsters. Still less can we rank the Helen of Zeuxis, in conception, upon a level with the female figures in the Conquest of Troy by Polygnotos, since we know that Zeuxis chose as models the loveliest virgins of Crotona; that is to say, sought after perfect outward female beauty in truthfulness to nature, but not after that breadth and grandeur expressed in the brow of Cassandra, or which spoke in the glance of Polyxena.

If, at times, Zeuxis took a higher flight, he still differed from the epic character of Polygnotos in his tendency to dramatic effect, which, according to its nature, is transient. This is shown, for example, by the celebrated play of countenance in the Family of Centaurs, the weeping of Menelaos, the horror of Alcmene and Amphitryon at sight of the serpents encircling the young Heracles, and by the actors as well as spectators in the chastisement of Marsyas: these are all scenes which, with slight modification, might be shown in dramatic action upon the stage. With Zeuxis, contrary to Polygnotos, the subject was of less importance than the manner of presenting it, the what less than the how; in short, the composition, in which the picturesque sufficed, was subordinate to the painting. The master himself was displeased when the novelty of the subject, in his family of Centaurs, caused the technical finish to be overlooked. The expression of Pliny was therefore a just one, that Zeuxis had given great glory to the brush. The judgment of Quintilian that Zeuxis originated the correct application of light and shade is not to be disputed, in so far as this refers to the consequent achievement of expression. The degree of perfection he attained in illusive effects, by chiaroscuro, reflections, and the like, is illustrated by the anecdote of the boy with grapes, so deceptive that the birds flew towards them; at the same time, the limitation is shown, as the artist himself acknowledged, in that the illusion had not succeeded in making the boy capable of frightening the birds. It was because of the painter’s power in this realism that his contemporaries regarded him with almost boundless admiration. His fame was exceeded only by his vanity. In later years he presented his pictures as gifts, because it was impossible to recompense them with money; he appeared at Olympia clothed with a garment upon which his name was embroidered in golden letters. The history of Greek sculpture has no parallel to such conceits.

Zeuxis himself, notwithstanding his pride, was forced to acknowledge that he was excelled by his contemporary Parrhasios of Ephesos, who, in regard to style, was akin to him in many respects. In subject the works of Parrhasios may be divided like those of Zeuxis. The deities were seldom chosen; his Dionysios with Arete was not one of his most celebrated productions, and his Hermes was really a portrait of the artist himself. Among the heroes represented were Prometheus, Heracles, Meleager, Perseus, and Theseus. The greater part of his productions refer to the Trojan epics, as the Assumed Madness of Odysseus, the Healing of Telephos, the Strife of Ajax with Odysseus for the Armor of Achilles, Philoctetes upon Lemnos, and Æneas. The others are the Demos of Athens, and portraits like the comedian Philiscos, the Archigallos, a ship-captain, a Thracian nurse with a child; and, finally, pictures like the priest with a temple-boy, two boys, two heavily armed warriors, and lewd genre paintings, closing with the celebrated “curtain” of the master. In many respects these betray a relationship to Zeuxis, and yet much that is independent. There are numerous characteristic heads illustrative of temperament, and other psychological subjects, among the fore-most of which should be named the Demos, who, according to Pliny, was shown as changeable, angry, unjust, inconstant; also as exorable, kind, compassionate, boastful, sublime, low, undisciplined, and fickle. This would be so impossible in a single head, without making it a chaotic, incomprehensible caricature, that the author has no hesitation in describing the painting as a group, in each figure of which one of the characteristics named was expressed. That representing the assumed madness of Odysseus must have had great psychological meaning, as also the Prometheus, Philoctetes upon Lemnos, and the Telephos. Parrhasios had by these works placed himself above Zeuxis through more correct and careful drawing, and a marked technical progress in the art. Pliny says that, according to the judgment of artists, Parrhasios had reached the highest perfection in the representation of figures; that previously painters had succeeded in giving only to the outlines of the figure a truthful appearance and action, but that the edges of color should be so rounded that one might be led to imagine the continuation of the body upon the other side, suggesting what could not be seen. This may be conceived to mean that, by attention to chiaroscuro and reflections, the illusive effect was increased from that of a relief to that of a figure in the round, whereby figures first appeared to free themselves from the background; that, for instance, he made clear to the observer the distinction between a globe, only one side of which is seen, and a hemisphere affixed to a plane. The illusion consequently became more perfect, the capacity for motion being thus brought into the “outstepping” figures. The grapes of Zeuxis did not need this power of action to tempt the birds as did the boy in order to frighten them. The curtain of Parrhasios possessed this capacity for movement, with the freeing of the objects from the background, and could therefore deceive even Zeuxis himself, who thought it possible really to withdraw it from the panel.

If his proud rival Zeuxis bowed before this skill, it cannot be thought strange that such a result should have moved Parrhasios to outdo his competitor in arrogance also. Among other follies, he proclaimed himself a descendant of Apollo; as King of Art he was crowned with a diadem and golden wreath, and donned the purple mantle of royalty. By adopting the cognomen of Habrodiaitos, or high-liver, he brought upon himself the nickname of Rhabdodiaitos, or brush-man. Parrhasios also was surpassed by a younger contemporary, though, as it appears, only in a single instance. Timanthes of Kythnos won the victory in a competition—the Strife of Ajax and Odysseus for the Armor of Achilles. Pliny gives preference to the latter, because his compositions were so arranged that more might be perceived in them than at first sight appeared. There was withal a deeper motive than Zeuxis and Parrhasios had shown; this was evident in the sacrifice of Iphigeneia, in which every degree of suffering was presented: Calchas being sad, Odysseus painfully moved, Ajax crying aloud, Menelaos in an ecstasy of grief; but, as the expression of anguish could not be carried beyond that of the latter, the father, Agamemnon, was shown hiding his face. The murder of Palamedes, perhaps, gave scope for the same depth of motive. A small genre picture was conceived in a more jesting tone, representing a sleeping Cyclops, and a satyr measuring the length of the giant’s thumb with a thyrsos, thus adding a living scale of comparative dimensions. The hero of Timanthes and the athlete of Zeuxis were equally celebrated among Grecian paintings as ideals of manly form.

It would seem that Timanthes passed the latter part of his life in Sikyon. The art of painting found a home in Ephesos during the Peloponnesian war, but did not connect itself with any school, and returned to Greece after the close of that disastrous conflict. Athens could not at once recover the commanding position it had held under Polygnotos and Apollodoros; but artistic activity, with its increasing requirements, was concentrated in Sikyon and Thebes, where flourishing academies were established with different aims.

Eupompos appeared about this time in the former city, as the founder of an important school, but, with the exception of a few superficial notices, we know nothing of him. His pupil, Pamphilos of Amphipolis or Nicopolis, flourishing from 390 to 360 B.C., was at the head of this school. His works are little known, having been described only by Pliny, so scantily and unintelligibly that one may be taken for a family picture, another as the appearance of Leucothea to Odysseus after the shipwreck near the island of the PhÆacians, and a third possibly as the victory of the Athenians at Phlious. Pliny is more to the point when he relates that Pamphilos considered education in science, particularly in mathematics and geometry, indispensable to artistic work. As he thought drawing an essential part of cultivation, he exerted himself, with good result, to have it taught in the higher schools. He believed that from this alone could proceed a rational conception of art grounded upon science, in which the mutual relations of teacher and scholar should be considered; and that Sikyon was the place best adapted to this purpose. At a somewhat earlier period Polycleitos had established a canon for sculpture by his system of proportions. Pamphilos, following in the footsteps of Eupompos, now took the same position in respect to Greek painting, with, perhaps, even greater success. He was pre-eminently a teacher, and, as such, appears to have striven after correctness in composition, drawing, and painting, to the disadvantage, it may be, of freedom in artistic development. But this aim, which won for the school of Sikyon the name of Chrestographia (correct drawing), operating upon the pupil from the beginning to the close of his scholarship, must have been serviceable both in laying a foundation and in purifying and restraining. It certainly was for the advantage of Apelles to have finished his studies in this school, which must indeed have had a salutary influence upon the general development of Grecian painting. The element of degeneracy in the tone of Zeuxis and Parrhasios was long held in restraint among their followers by the academic authority of Sikyon. Pamphilos turned his attention chiefly towards correctness of execution in details, and, following Polycleitos, towards the human figure. His pupil Melanthios was a master of composition; this, however, in accordance with the whole character of the school, seems to have consisted less in the choice of scenic situation and action than in a formal distribution and balance of the grouping.

Pausias, a fellow-pupil of Melanthios, distinguished himself from this somewhat doctrinal art by greater freedom of creation. The subjects of his works show this by their individuality, as, for instance, the Boy, painted in a day, the Girl Binding a Wreath, Methe Drinking from a Glass, and a flower piece, which, from the descriptions, appears to have resembled our still-life pictures. His Sacrifice of a Bull displayed a new mastery; the animal, foreshortened from the front, as Pliny remarks, showed his entire length. Pausias was the first to win fame in encaustic painting, although its technical processes had for some time been known. Of this it is only certain that the colors, mixed with wax, were melted by a rod of metal, and thus affixed to the ground. This process, because of the more brilliant, transparent, and deeper hue given by the wax, was as far superior to the former distemper as our own more convenient oil-painting is to every other method. That such peculiarities of subject and treatment did not lead the master to renounce the artistic earnestness of the school of Sikyon is shown in the direction imparted to his pupils. The works of the most celebrated among these, Nicophanes, were extremely labored; but, from the predominant brown, hard in color. Aristolaos, the son of Pausias, was rigid and academical.

During this period a second school of painting, not less prominent, flourished in Thebes, and, after the hastily acquired importance of this city had as rapidly declined, was transferred to Athens. At its head was Nicomachos—360 B.C.—son and pupil of the otherwise unknown artist, AristiÆos. Eight of his pictures are mentioned; but, though he was accounted one of the greatest masters, we have little information in regard to the painter himself. As contrasted with the quiet, stately works of the Sikyonians, we may conclude, from the subjects, that there was greater excitement and action in those of Nicomachos, among which are mentioned the Rape of Proserpine, Victory Ascending with a Quadriga, and Bacchantins Surprised by Satyrs. His unsurpassed rapidity in painting was praiseworthy only because united to great talents, with an unusual and masterly sureness of hand. The character of his pupil Aristides is more intelligible, and more important. If ever there was a painter whose subjects alone sufficed to give an idea of his chief aim, it was Aristides. One of his most celebrated works was the Conquest of a City: a wounded mother, lying upon the ground, sees her infant creeping towards her breast, and visibly betrays the fear that, when the milk fails, the child will take the blood. Another, a woman who, “for love of her brother, gives herself up to death.” A third, according to Pliny most highly prized, represented a sick man. In these, and in one more, perhaps also to be ascribed to Aristides, the Heracles Suffering from the Poisoned Garment of Deianeira, a fundamental tone of great pathos is unmistakable. In the praying man, whose voice one almost seemed to hear, and in the old man teaching a boy to play upon the harp, the predominant expression of feeling was unmistakable. The latter reminds us of that beautiful Pompeian wall-painting of the Centaur Cheiron instructing the boy Achilles. Pliny distinctly says that Aristides aimed at the pathetic, by which is meant the expression of tender as well as painful and passionate emotions. In this master, therefore, may be recognized one whose aims were similar to those of Scopas and Praxiteles.

Euphranor, a pupil of Aristides—360 to 330 B.C.—was a remarkable phenomenon in the domain of art. Few, either in sculpture or in painting, have been so many-sided, and yet, though standing in the first rank, the insufficient accounts of his pictures that have come down to us prevent our forming any positive judgment about them. A certain indication, however, lies in the remark of the artist himself, that the Theseus of Parrhasios looked as if fed upon roses; his own, on the contrary, as though nourished by the flesh of oxen. This comparison must have included two points, color and drawing; the likeness to roses would have been inapt if Parrhasios had not failed in depth of flesh-tint; on the other hand, besides the healthy color, the strong nourishment suggested by the Theseus of Euphranor proved an energetic development of muscles. It was probably a somewhat massive figure, characteristic of Euphranor, and, with certain limitations, reminding us of the Heracles of Lysippos. It may be understood, from the noble expression of the Theseus, how Euphranor brought his heroes to a typical perfection. In a similar sense he had raised his Poseidon to such power that there remained no further means at his command for surpassing it in his conception of Zeus. The remark of Euphranor expressed not only the difference, and his own superiority to Parrhasios, but suggested a certain relationship in subject and aim, both masters having painted the Theseus, and the Assumed Madness of Odysseus.

The Isthmian Euphranor had changed the scene of his labors, and, at the same time, the centre of the entire school, to Athens, which continued to be the artistic metropolis for his scholars and successors. Among the latter, Nikias is especially celebrated—340 to 300 B.C. He devoted his attention chiefly to feminine beauty, somewhat influenced, perhaps, by his older contemporary Praxiteles, in connection with whom he is mentioned. His taste was for extensive compositions, surprising for their novelty of conception, and, like Parrhasios, he endeavored to give roundness to his figures. The lack in the Theban-Attic school of that individuality which existed in the Sikyonian was completely overcome by Euphranor, and gave place to a more universal aim. He and Nikias were artists whose tone came less from their school than from their own personal convictions. They early learned to understand technical and artistic acquisitions of all kinds, and to carry them forward independently. We may conceive them as holding the same loose relations towards their teachers which existed between the Sikyonian master Pamphilos and their contemporary Apelles.

Apelles was destined to bear away the palm from all his predecessors and successors. Although three cities—Colophon, Ephesos, and Cos—claimed the honor of calling him their own, it is reasonably certain that the first was the place of his birth, the second that where his labors commenced, and the third may not improbably have been that of his death. The Ephesian Euphoros is named as his first teacher, but his fame dates from the time when he left the academy of Pamphilos for that of Sikyon. Perhaps the fact that Pamphilos was a Macedonian by birth may have paved the way for Apelles to the royal court at Pella, whence he appears to have returned to Ephesos among the followers of Alexander the Great. He seems never to have founded a permanent school; at least, we gather from classical notices that he worked transiently at Athens, Corinth, Rhodes, and even in Alexandria. We learn also that he outlived, by a considerable time, his great patron Alexander. His works are to be divided into three groups—paintings of gods and heroes, allegories, and portraits; these were also sometimes combined. At the head of the first group stands the Aphrodite Anadyomene, one of the most celebrated pictures of antiquity. It was transferred to Augustus for the remission of one hundred talents of taxes; by him carried to Rome and placed in CÆsar’s Temple of Venus, where it became so much injured—thus obtaining the sobriquet Monocmenon, one-legged—that Nero had it taken away and replaced by a copy. She was represented as the “sea-born,” nude, and pressing with her hands her dripping hair. Far from being an ideal figure, it was rather patterned after the celebrated courtesans of the time, two of whom are named—Pancaste, or Pancaspe, the paramour of Alexander, who afterwards presented her to the artist himself; and Cratine, or Phryne, mistress of Apelles, who may have been the more direct model for the Venus, as, at the festival of Poseidon at Eleusis, she bathed, naked, in the sea before the eyes of the assemblage. A second Aphrodite, in which Apelles hoped to surpass the first, remained unfinished at his death. Of these representations the first was certainly without any devotional or even ethic character; but the Artemis, in the Sacrifice of the Virgins, was something more than a genre piece with a mythological motive; and his heroes, who, according to Pliny, challenged nature itself, were more than mere stately portraits.

The Heracles may be regarded as a study. Charis and Tyche were allegories, the latter having been represented sitting “because happiness does not stand fast.” The most celebrated of them all, Calumny, is minutely described by Lucian. It portrayed a man, whose inclination to credit evil reports was characterized by large ears, sitting between two women, Ignorance and Mistrust, and receiving Calumny, a magnificent woman excited with passion, preceded by Envy; she drags in a youth by the hair, who vainly, with hands uplifted, calls the gods to witness. Behind the train advances Repentance, a mourning female figure in black, looking back with pain and shame upon the tardy appearance of Truth. Similar in character is the picture of the chained war demon, belonging partly to the group of portraits. A third allegory, of little intrinsic worth, is set forth with great artistic ability—Bronte, Astrape, and Keraunobolia—thunder, with the flash and stroke of lightning.

Among the portraits, allegorical in nature, was the famous picture in which Alexander, with lightning in his right hand, was represented as Jupiter. The monarch himself was so well pleased with this that he said there were two Alexanders—one the unconquered son of Philip, the other the inimitable creation of Apelles. But little is known of the king’s portraits, whether equestrian, in triumphal chariots, or surrounded by deities and allegorical figures; nor of those of Philip and his generals, of the tragic actor Gorgosthenes of Habron, nor of that of the artist himself.

If Apelles be scrutinized more closely in order to make clear the chief characteristics by which he won such brilliant renown, it will be found that it was not in composition. In this, as in treatment of perspective, he gave precedence to his fellow-pupils Melanthios and Asclepiodoros. That he was aware of this weakness, and avoided occasion for manifesting it, is shown by the fact that most of his paintings contained few figures. When more appeared, instead of being picturesquely grouped and treated, they were ranged in rows, almost like reliefs, better suited to the allegorical subjects so prevalent with Apelles, and so common in his time, than to mythological and historical representations. Though allegory may, in great measure, be unfavorable to true art, because, as Winckelmann says, it forces the painter “to tint his brush with reason,” still that of Apelles has lately been too much depreciated. The Calumny has been pronounced an error of fancy, rough symbolism, and an inharmonious assemblage of persons and personifications. But these were the legitimate materials of the artist, and he succeeded, at least, in the representation of character and in truthfulness of drawing. The lightning group was something more than a piece of technical bravura. Who would prize the picture less because thunder and lightning were represented instead of Zeus, a deity who would have been attempted by no painter of antiquity, or, indeed, of later times? Though his motive may have been purely intellectual, the painter remained the same, whether he portrayed a Cassandra or a Diabole—whether he more or less displayed his astounding mastery. Apelles will be more rightly judged if he be treated as a painter rather than an artist; as such we recognize in him a technical and many-sided perfection. Different accounts speak of him as rapid and sure in drawing, his lines being not only correct, but in the highest degree characteristic. The maxim of Apelles “No day without a line”—that is, without exercise in drawing—has become a proverb, if not quite in its original sense. Through this incessant practice his hand acquired such sureness that it followed the will implicitly, and made possible even the hair-splitting execution related in an anecdote which has been unjustly discredited by critics. Apelles entered one day the workshop of Protogenes, in the absence of the latter, and made known his visit by drawing a line upon a tablet at hand with such swing and surety, such purity and smoothness, that the Rhodian master, upon his return, recognized the hand of Apelles. In order to show himself equal, Protogenes split the line by a second one in a different color, but acknowledged himself defeated when Apelles divided this through its entire length by a third. An evidence of the sharpness and certainty of his characterization with simple lines is given in the story of a servant who had injured him, and whom Apelles, though he had seen him only once, so sketched with charcoal upon the wall that the likeness was recognized by King Ptolemy after the first strokes. It will readily be understood that such capacity must have fitted the artist especially for portraiture; and his portraits attained such striking likeness and truthfulness that a physiognomist assumed to be able, by them, to discern not only the exact age of the subject, but even the time of his future death. No further testimony is needed than the Anadyomene to prove that his works were perfect in correctness and expression as well as in beauty.

The employment of color had fully kept pace with this matchless drawing, though Apelles seems to have been limited to painting in distemper, without the use of encaustic. The softened glazings are particularly mentioned, which made the unbroken light all the more brilliant. In the portrait of Alexander, the hand, outstretched with the lightning, appeared to stand quite out from the panel, a result perhaps equally owing to masterly foreshortening in the drawing. The beauty of his color was noted, and especially its vigor; the fame of the Aphrodite cannot be understood without the former, nor that of the Alexander and the Lightning without the latter. This many-sided, technical perfectness, unattained before Apelles, and in which Pliny says that he excelled all other painters together, may have had its germ in the school of Pamphilos, as the Sikyonians devoted especial attention to artistic execution. To these eminent qualities, however, were added the intrinsic merits of the master himself, upon which he laid the greatest stress, and which he ascribed to that charm understood by the Greeks in the word charis. That this was chiefly to be found in the just measure of completeness was explained by Apelles when he declared himself to have been surpassed by Protogenes in all but the knowledge of the right moment to lay aside the brush, without which this charm, through overmuch care, is lost.

By this technical mastery, clearness of characterization and grace, Apelles so delighted all who saw his works that, according to the numerous anecdotes that illustrate his position, he was the most popular artist of all antiquity. In face of such authority, it would be unjust to see in him, as some have done, the beginnings of the decline of art. Though his artistic efforts may not have equalled those of Polygnotos, because he could more easily satisfy the ethical demands of his time, still it must be acknowledged that, as a painter, he surpassed him as far as, in sculpture, Praxiteles surpassed Calamis and the other predecessors of Pheidias. But in Pheidias a high ideal was united to an absolute perfection of execution which, in painting, Polygnotos was far from having attained. “In the history of painting,” says Brunn, “each of these two fields has its separate point of greatest elevation; the fame, therefore, which, in sculpture, undoubtedly raised Pheidias above all others, appeared, in painting, divided between Polygnotos and Apelles.”

Protogenes of Caunos, or rather, with reference to his work, of Rhodes, was a rival of Apelles. He seems to have been self-taught, or, at least, to have been the pupil of an entirely obscure master. The admiration of Apelles for Protogenes was so great that he expressed a desire to buy up his works and publish them as his own; but numerous anecdotes show that Apelles was in the way of bestowing his flattery upon every great and celebrated man. Protogenes is said to have painted over his Ialysos four times, the better to secure it from destruction, so that, on the peeling of the outer layer of pigment, the surface below might present the same color. But this can only be a foolish legend, invented to illustrate his extreme care. Similar tales of a later time reported him to have worked upon the Ialysos seven or eleven years, and to have fed upon nothing but lupines, for fear that luxury might blunt the acuteness of his senses. Perhaps this means that the painter’s genius was not recognized until late in life, up to which time he had lived in great poverty. Of his picture in the PropylÆa at Athens, representing Paralos and Hammonias—personifications of Athenian ships—there is an equally idle story that he did not paint the ships themselves because, until his fifteenth year, he had earned his bread as a ship-painter.

In Protogenes we may conceive a perfection such as only the most unwearied care could attain. This perfection was neither in the ideas nor in the composition; for the subjects of his pictures, known to us as heroic or historical portraits, or, at most, as groups of few persons without action, were in themselves far less important than those of Apelles. But the illusive effect must have been complete if, as Petronius says, one could not look even at the sketches without a feeling of awe on account of their truthfulness to nature. This carefulness extended even to the smallest accessories, like the wonder of the partridge at the reclining satyr, and the foam on the mouth of the dog in the Ialysos; an effect which, it is said, was at last accomplished by the pressure—not the throwing—of a sponge. Yet the wearisomeness of this perfection was not to be denied, and here, in the eyes of Apelles, lay the weakness of this master.

The relations of Apelles with another rival, the Egyptian Antiphilos, were not so friendly. The great celebrity of this painter rested upon a peculiarity directly contrary to that of Protogenes, designated by Quintilian as facility; that is, a freshness and genial security of conception and treatment in everything which his brush touched. His range of subjects exceeded that of Protogenes, or even of Apelles; for he painted with equal excellence pictures of the deities, mythological scenes, portraits, genre pieces, such as the Wool-comber and the Boy Blowing the Fire; and even caricatures, such as that of Gryllos, with a face reminding one of the significance of his own name—the Porker; whence it comes that all caricatures were, in antiquity, called Grylli. That he was fond of startling effects of light is evident from the Boy Blowing the Fire, the glow of which was reflected upon his face; also from his renowned satyr Aposcopeuon—the Gazer—whose glance the shielding hand seemed at once to intensify and to conceal.

Aetion, according to Brunn, also belongs to the group of artists contemporary with Apelles. His importance can be measured only by the esteem of antiquity, and by the minute descriptions of one of his pictures. This represented the marriage of Alexander and Roxana; the latter, sitting modestly upon a couch, is served by Cupids, who take the veil from her head and loosen her sandals. The king, accompanied by Hephaistion as attendant, with torches, is led towards the bride by an Eros; two more, panting under the weight of the shaft, bear the lance of the conqueror, while others carry by the handles a shield; and one Cupid, who has crept into a coat of mail, seems, from his hiding-place, to lie in wait for those about to pass. It is not strange that this composition, so charming in the description of Lucian, should have led modern painters to attempt to reproduce it; as in the frescos of Raphael in the Borghese Gallery, and those of Razzi in the Farnesina.

Among other masters of the time of Alexander were the Athenian Asclepiodoros, of whom we know little more than that Apelles gave him the preference in composition; and Theon of Samos, whose works degenerated into an attempt to secure a theatrical rather than a natural effect. Besides tragic scenes, like the murder of his mother by Orestes, and the blinding of the singer Thamyris, this is shown in the heavily armed warrior called by Quintilian his masterpiece—a man in the violence of attack with a drawn sword. To increase the theatrical effect, this picture was exhibited by the artist accompanied with the flourish of trumpets. If we here bear in mind the so-called Borghese warrior of Agasias—that sculptural cousin of the Hoplite—we cannot mistake the spirit of a time which, after the inner significance had perished, clung entirely to the external, and, renouncing truthfulness in composition, which here would have demanded a group, was satisfied with a theatrical sham. The farthest remove from the conceptions of Polygnotos had now been reached.

Hellenism, by which is meant the civilization of the period after Alexander, when the Grecian kingdom had become cosmopolitan, satisfied its artistic requirements by a repetition of what the previous centuries had produced. The attempt was made, in sculpture and in painting, to combine results already won, generally in a shallow eclecticism. Of the numerous painters in that decorative period few names have been handed down. The most was accomplished by the masters of Sikyon where the tradition of the energetic school of Pamphilos was not yet lost. Protogenes in Rhodes, and Antiphilos in Egypt, also had some followers who were not quite without fame. Timomachos of Byzantion, at least, was equal to his great predecessors of the time of Alexander. His Medea was purchased by CÆsar for eighty talents, and his other works are not less praised; among them one, perhaps historical, showing two men in conversation, and the Gorgo, may be connected with an event related by Herodotos (v. 51). If, as we are told, there was a Medea represented before the murder of her children, in a struggle between hatred of her husband and motherly love—a subject treated in a Pompeian wall-painting in the museum at Naples; an Ajax, after his fury, meditating suicide; and an Iphigeneia in Tauris, perhaps recognizing her brother, we may conclude that Timomachos had returned to the pathetic element, and that he united with it, so far as possible, the technical perfection of the Alexandrian period. It is possible that the painter stood in the same artistic relation to the sculptors Pasiteles, Stephanos, and Menelaos as did Theon to Agasias.

After Parrhasios, side by side with the grander style had developed a species of cabinet-painting which seems to have been devoted especially to obscene subjects (Pornographia). Already in the time of Alexander, pictures of a small size were much in favor; besides the Egyptian Antiphilos already mentioned as celebrated in this direction, Callicles and Calates worked in it exclusively, and PeirÆicos had great fame as a painter of this kind. His subjects were not of a lewd nature, but were taken from the lower ranks of life, such as booths of barbers and cobblers, donkeys, eatables, etc.; by which one is reminded of the genre pieces and still-life paintings of the Netherlands. Pornographia was thus changed to Rhopographia, painting of small wares. In later times the term employed for obscene painting seems to have been Rhyparographia.

This trivial painting naturally continued to be prevalent in the periods of the Diadochi and the Romans, since art, when reduced to mere decoration, cultivated by preference graceful and lively subjects. It was extended even to the floors, for which mosaic had been used as early as the time of the royal court of Pergamon. If the decoration of walls is based upon tapestry, as Semper has made evident, this is especially the case with colored floors. The effect of mosaic, in which form painting now took possession of the pavement, differed little from that of weaving and embroidery. Sosos was considered as the oldest and most celebrated master of this process, perhaps because he first carried it beyond simple patterns. He represented, in the so-called “unswept hall” at Pergamon, remnants of food, fruit-rinds, etc., as if scattered upon the floor; also a dove drinking from a shell. The celebrity of these works makes it natural that several repetitions of the dove should have been found. It seems, however, that the practice of this art was not in extensive use before the time of the Roman empire, when it spread over all the floors, as painting did over all the walls. The mosaics in the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, which are composed of rough pebbles, may, however, be even more ancient than the works of Sosos in Pergamon.

Fig. 246.—The Campana Tomb at Veii.
Fig. 246.—The Campana Tomb at Veii.