CHAPTER VIII.

GREEK ART.

Art has appeared to us till now under peculiar circumstances. We have seen it in Asia and Africa, and in both parts of the world it represented the uninterrupted struggle of humanity for self-consciousness. Humanity was too much under the influence of the marvellous and incomprehensible, and neither the marvellous nor the incomprehensible can be brought into shape. The Indians tried to give forms to the metaphysical phenomena of nature; the Persians were bent on the glorification of the power of one visible earthly despot; the Egyptians tried to copy the realistic phenomena of nature, and inscribed them with mystic signs, uniting Indian abstractions with the real phenomena of nature. When a thought was fixed into a form; the thought, being at the same time a religious conception, could no more be changed; it became in art what a technical name for a natural phenomenon is in science. Oxygen is oxygen, and designates only that element; so when once a form was settled, as that of Vishnu or Amn, S’iva or Osiris--or the serpent fixed as a symbol of eternity, or the hawk as a symbol of light--the inner or spiritual life of the artist was fettered down to outward forms with special inward meanings. Thus the constraining sway of misunderstood nature on one side, and the stationary precepts of an omnipotent hierarchy on the other, entangled the artist’s imagination and paralysed every effort of his subjective power of production. The different nations began to be wrapped up in their different artistic forms, which became by degrees hard and impenetrable _national_ and religious incrustations; the masses, held in abeyance, led by theocratical art, had only to glorify one visible or invisible tyrant, with whom the universe was blessed. Eastern art was to a certain degree plastic, only too plastic as in India; but it was too penetrated with an incomprehensible spiritualism to find the right objects for its plastic tendencies. Even where geometrical figures, flowers, or trees were used, the effect of their simple combination was marred by a want of harmony between thought and form, or idea and body. This harmony between outward form and inner spirit, wherein real beauty consists, this balance between the dynamic and static cosmogonical elements, was wanting in Eastern art. The East rent nature asunder, and looked upon _matter_ as _evil_; and yet matter was to be used, to bring spirit into form. The element of S’iva, Ahriman, or Typhon was to give visible form to the conceptions of Brahmă, Ormuzd, or Osiris, and could not do this, because the connecting link to blend the apparently-opposed powers into one, was wanting. A uniting force for this mysterious antagonism, a mediator between heaven and earth, divinity and humanity, was sought for, but not found. The Persian unconsciously set Meshiah (man, _mensch_) down as that element, but Meshiah was not yet allowed to come to any free development, and he sank into the pitiful and degraded position of a slave to despotic oligarchs, or still more intolerant spiritual hierarchs. Meshiah (humanity) was first freed by the _Greeks_ in _form_ and by _Christ_ in _spirit_.

There can be no doubt that the Greeks were, for a short time at least, the ancient representatives of the well-balanced static and dynamic forces in humanity. Of all the geographical districts of the world, whether in the Eastern or Western hemisphere, none are so admirably adapted for the cultivation of social intercourse as the Grecian isles, and the Grecian peninsula, the classical region of the Ægean Sea. Nowhere is so large a coast-line found, surrounding so small a territorial surface; nowhere such a variety of creeks, capes, promontories, inlets, and harbours as round the Peloponnesus, and the islands uniting Asia Minor with Greece and Italy. No streams like the Ganges, or the Hoang-ho; no mountains like the Belur Tag or Himâlâya. Gorgeous uniformity is the characteristic of China and India; variety and change the very element of the Greek world. Mountains, plains, valleys, streams, are all of a limited size; there rules a sweet, eternal harmony between spirit and form; nothing is exaggerated, nothing overawes man; he feels at home; the dark-blue sky over-arches his verdant, hilly, amiable earth, adorned with brooks and hills, boskets and flowers. Valley chases valley; rivulet pursues rivulet; clouds follow clouds; the morning dawn flies before the bright noon, and the noon dies away, in the cool sighs of the evening breezes, into the embrace of dark night. The self-conscious spirit of _youthful_ humanity came into life for the first time in Greece. Everything with the Greeks was _feeling_, but a feeling, conscious of a real purpose in religion, the State, the family, and in art. We shall see that intuitive feeling grow by degrees into _critical reflection_, but in the first instance everything with the Greeks was ingenuous, or, as the French call it, ‘naïve.’ This classical ‘naïveté,’ this unconscious, unaffected simplicity, enabled them to become masters of intuitive productions, and to look upon this world with an unbiassed eye, prone only to see what was harmonious and beautiful. The whole life of the Greeks was thus one long _ideal_ dream of poetical and artistic _reality_. They took an interest, however, in objective individuality only; the beauties of nature as one great total did not yet affect their subjective comprehension. They could not grasp the pantheistic notion of the Indians, who saw in every detailed phenomenon of the universe the working of ONE indivisible and incomprehensible first cause. They shuddered at the Egyptian monsters, which were to serve as symbols of that sublime conception which lost on the Nile all its primitive grandeur. They found the Persian absorption of the universe into a conflict between light and darkness too dreary, and ascribed to it the loss of all individual freedom. They worked out a system of their own, based on Indian grandeur, Egyptian symbolism, and Persian abstractions. To be thoroughly acquainted with this combination of influences is the very first step towards an understanding of Greek art.

The Greeks were Aryans in language, and in mode of thinking; Aryans who had detached themselves very early from their Cis-Himâlâyan brethren, and peopled Asia Minor and the surrounding islands. They were strengthened by Egyptian and Phœnician immigrations, and invigorated by Thracia’s warlike spirit.

Like a plant that only lives and grows by means of the antithetic activity of air, light, and water, the Greek State-body had air supplied by Orpheus from Thracia, light by Kekrops from Egypt, and water by Kadmus from Phœnicia. Independent freedom and love of the arts were the gifts of the North; the South furnished them with deep knowledge, and Phœnicia gave them the vivifying spirit of commerce. Their language is an offshoot of the Sanskrit, but stands in a more distant relation to it than the Zend--to which it is closely allied. They are principally distinguished from the Asiatic nations by their decided hatred of everything arbitrary and chaotic. From their love for individuality and diversity of customs, manners and modes of thinking, sprang the national unity of the Greeks in the fairy realms of Poetry and Art. When they began to feel themselves a people, they assumed the name of Hellenes; and their first historical deed was the admirable completion of a language which, for simplicity, power, and beauty, has remained up to our own days a model for all other languages, for it alike possesses eurythmy and power of expression. The overwhelming metaphysical subtleties of the Sanskrit are simplified; the variety of consonants and vowels reduced, and the mode of writing corrected; everything proving a deep sense for order, clearness, and moderation.

They had three dialects: the Doric, distinguished by a broader pronunciation; the Ionic, possessed of softness and a melodious richness; and the Æolic, a kind of mixture without a special character. The Dorians came southwards from the hoary mountains of Thessaly, and gained step by step an influence and dominion over the other tribes of Greece. The Ionians occupied the east, and were considered the connecting link between Hellas and Asia; but whatever the Hellenes took from Byblos, Sidon, Tyros or the Libanon, assumed a really Hellenic form, after it had passed through the purifying element of Doric correctness. The south gave _ideas_, and the north brought them into _form_.

Whatever the Hellenes touched they beautified. The powerful giant Bhîma of the Mahâbhârata is the prototype of Herakles; but in the myths concerning Herakles we recognise the mere personification of commercial daring and enterprise. Accompanied by his dog, he finds the cochineal; the goblet in which he sails to Erytheia is but the Phœnician merchantman; the Phœnicians are referred to, when it is recorded of him that he had broken the devastating horn of the mountain-streams. Moloch, to whom Assyrians, Indians and Hebrews sacrificed, without ever being capable of investing the fire-spitting monster with anything like poetry, was destroyed by Herakles. The gods of Asia became with the Hellenes demons, from whom they learned some useful trades. Poseidon, the god of the sea, is, like the element over which he rules and in which he dwells, of a sinister, implacable character; he requires human sacrifices, annihilates horses (meaning ships), in fact does, as incarnate divinity, what the sea does in our own times. The Titans are acquainted with astronomy, and are personifications of a certain knowledge in maritime matters. Proteus, the Egyptian Pharaoh, is with them the keeper of the seas, and Atlas the father of nautical astronomy, and both were companions of the Tyrean Herkules. In all the myths and legends of the Greeks we can trace some facts. The divinity they could only comprehend in the well-proportioned form of a human being, and a hero or benefactor of humanity became with them a divinity. This blending into one of the divine and human is the most important feature in Greek thought. Vishnu and Osiris also became incarnate--but their deeds were supernatural; the principal feature of their ‘man-godhead,’ or ‘divine manhood,’ is an incomprehensible mysticism. Their anthropomorphism had in it something gloomy. When the divine Apollo uttered the memorable words: ‘_Man, know thyself_,’ the Greeks became suddenly conscious of the inborn spark of the divine intellect in man; the gods were intelligible to them, and the Asiatic world of abstractions emerged in a thousand different human forms of divine conceptions.

_Uranos_ (_Varuna_ in Sanskrit) is heaven, or rather space--_Kronos_, time, and _Gæa_, earth. _Uranos_ as well as _Kronos_ and _Pontos_ were offsprings of the Earth. So far we have to deal with the same mystical elements which engendered all the Asiatic cosmogonies. But Uranos and Gæa are set down as male and female, and are endowed with powerful children--the Titans and Titanides, the Hekatoncheires (or Kentimanos, hundred-handed, powerful giants with fifty heads), and the Kyklopes, who were very clever, and invented many useful arts.

The most important gods were Okeanos, Japetós, and Kronos. The human character of Greek mythology begins even before the birth of Zeus. Uranos was afraid of his own children, and had them confined in eternal darkness in Tartaros; their mother, Gæa, had pity on them, and armed the youngest, Kronos, with a sickle, with which he attacked Uranos, and deprived him of his creative power. From that moment Uranos was idle, could produce no new forms, and was neither worshipped by gods nor men. The fact which underlies this dramatic scene, in which gods are the actors, is a cosmical phenomenon. In time all things were created, and in time the creative force, as far as our earth was concerned, ceased with the creation of man, to be productive of new forms. Kronos had five children--Hestia, Demeter, Here, Pluton, and Poseidon, and these he devoured. In this cruel image we see represented the revolving movements of time, in which the present is everlastingly the prey of the past, engendering the future. The sixth son of Kronos, Zeus (creative ether), was saved by his mother’s cunning, for she gave the inhuman god a stone instead of her child; Metis, however (Maya, Matter), afterwards the wife of Zeus; rescues the children that Kronos had swallowed, and he is obliged to give them back again in an eternal circle. These children of Kronos are years, months, weeks, days and hours. We have here an instance of the manner in which phenomena were turned by the Hellenes into living beings. Kronos was an old man with a long flowing beard, and held a sickle or scythe in his hands, with which he cut down everything. And as symbol of eternity a serpent lay by his side.

Zeus serves us even more as a specimen of the anthropomorphic tendency of the Greeks. He was the _father_ of the gods, and had to _fight_ with the Titans. He led the immortal gods, who assembled on Mount Olympus against these terrible Titans, who mustered in great strength on Mount Othrys. For ten years the battle raged without result; heaven, earth, and sea resounded with the frightful struggle. Gæa advised the gods to call in the Kyklopes and Hekatoncheires. These presented Poseidon with the trident, Pluton with the helmet that had the power to make the wearer invisible, and Zeus received from the depths of the earth the flaming thunderbolts. Then only the Titans had to yield to storms and lightnings, and were chained down at last in Tartaros. We read a chapter of geology when we peruse Hesiod’s description of this struggle. In the Titans, Kyklopes, and the hundred-handed giants we recognise the antediluvian monsters--the mastodons, megatheriums, and saurians, petrified for ever in the strata of the earth’s crust. Zeus, after his conquest, began to rule the Olympian gods and mankind. He himself was full of passion and wrath, of human failings and shortcomings; but, after all, he was kind, dignified--even in his weakness, just and grand. He smiled, and love and joy pervaded the universe; he frowned, and the universe shook to its very foundations. He indulged in freaks, and still was afraid of his haughty and jealous wife, who acted in many instances as a well-bred lady would, who had the misfortune to be wedded to an amorous husband. Zeus was frequently so troubled by his riotous gods and goddesses, that he had a bad headache, and was once obliged to call in Hephaistos to cure him with a heavy blow, and on this occasion Minerva (wisdom) sprang forth armed with spear, helmet, and shield. The truth that intellect and reason are of divine origin was proclaimed in this myth. In the Greek legends the poet’s imagination has turned the forces of nature into beautiful men, women, or children. How much the gods, with them, were the creatures of man’s fancy, may be seen in the fear of the opinions of their earth-born children with which the gods were endowed. The Almighty Thunderer, when his heavenly subjects made too much noise, often cried: ‘What will my earthly sons say?’ and for fear that they might find fault with him he yielded, and made concessions, and heaven and earth, sun, moon and stars were again at peace.

It is true that in Indian lore the same characters are drawn, but, like their supernatural gods, they are gigantic and monstrous. Men and women in the Indian fables, behave like unwieldy spectres, that frighten us during an uneasy dream; we must first divest them of their inhuman forms in order to comprehend them. The conceptions are too marvellous to impress us with moral lessons; we are lost in allegories, metaphors, symbols and double meanings. This occurs less in Greek mythology. _Atlas_ was the representative of patience; he had for ever to carry the world on his shoulders, and was turned at last into a rocky mountain range. _Epimetheus_ was the prototype of senseless carelessness, and was destroyed by his own folly. _Prometheus_ at last was the embodiment of considerate prudence; he was devoured by the _vulture_ of ‘care and sorrow for the morrow.’ Prometheus may be said to be the best, most intelligible emblem of classic humanity, as Faust may be considered as the incarnation of romantic mankind. Prometheus wanted to bring matter into form; Faust to _know_ what held spirit and matter together. Prometheus stole fire from heaven, made man of clay, and vivified him. Faust knew that this heavenly fire was a force over which he had no control, and he called in a spirit to teach him ‘how all one whole harmonious weaves, each in the other works and lives.’ The ‘_formal_’ is the longing of the Greek Faust, and the ‘_spiritual_’ the aspiration of the Teuton Prometheus. All the Greek eîdola embodied some power of nature. Philomela was a pining woman. The Laurel was formed out of the lovely Daphne (from the Sanskrit Dahanah, our word ‘dawn’). In every tree a Dryad dwelt, in every wave a Naiad sported. Demeter’s tears for her lost daughter Persephone nourished rivulets. On the bright heights of Mount Olympus, on Helikon, or Parnassus, or Pindus, above the petty cares of every-day life, sat the earnest _Klio_ with an open scroll and a stylum, recording with lovely patience the events of the past. _Euterpe_, with her two flutes, brought harmony into the discordant sounds of the earthly spheres, and filled the world with songs and tunes; _Melpomene_, armed with gloomy mask and dagger, presided over the fictitious sufferings of humanity struggling with the inexorable fates, reflecting in an artificial mirror--reality. _Thalia_, with a shepherd’s staff and a Silenus’ mask, endowed with an eternal smile, comforted man with more cheerful views. _Terpsichore_, with a lyre of seven chords, taught him to express joy, happiness, and pious veneration by the rhythmical movements of his body. _Erato_, on her Kythera with nine chords, warbled love-songs, and inspired and aided young poets to pour out in measured language the immeasurable feelings of their souls. _Polyhymnia_, or Polymnia, protected orators, philosophers, and stage-players, and enabled them to keep within the boundaries of moderation, for she placed the first finger of her right hand on her lips, impressing them with the necessity for caution. _Urania_, with her eyes lifted to the starry heavens, tried to draw man’s attention to the well-regulated courses of the heavenly bodies, proclaiming in eternal silence with fiery tongues the glories of the universe. _Kalliope_ finally taught man to record heroic deeds in epic poetry. These _nine_ muses, presided over by the manly and wise, valorous and glorious Apollo, nursed, taught, and accompanied the Hellenes through life; they met them as lovely charmers in a thousand different forms, in temples, on friezes, metopes, goblets, pateras, amphoræ, and urns; nothing possessed a meaning for them that had not a poetical, artistic, and scientific aim.

Life with the Greeks was one continual festivity. They worshipped their gods in singing joyous songs, in running, playing, and wrestling. They thought it a duty to develop both body and intellect, the gifts of the immortal gods. They deeply loved poetry, wrote it if they could, or recited it, or listened to it and imbibed it with their whole souls. They rejoiced in athletic sports; influenced by Terpsichore, they showed the wondrous beauty of their harmoniously-constructed bodies. Joy and delight swelled their muscles when they wrestled, and throbbed through all their veins when they moved in rhythmical simplicity, like the stars in heaven. They prayed when they composed epic poems; they worshipped when they wrote tragedies or comedies; they honoured the gods when they built temples; they humbly beseeched their blessing when they sculptured. The whole life of the Greeks was one grateful act of artistic devotion. Their temples were so many hymns in stone and marble; their ornamentations in reliefs, sculptures, winding frets and meanders, are epic poems, dramatic representations, and lyric effusions of the very highest intellectual refinement. Art with the Greeks was cherished, cultivated, and loved for its own divine sake. Rich and poor, old and young, men and women, boys and girls, used art and poetry, science and philosophy, as the plastic language of their ever-praying lips, hands and minds. Whenever the life of a nation is thus inspired; when the comprehensive culture of intellect, the harmonious development of the body, and the mysterious feelings of existence are guided by the mighty and productive energy of an awakened and excited imagination, and regulated by a consciousness of order; art must attain that expansive, noble, and beautiful form which we admire in the Greeks.

Greek poetry and philosophy had the same basis of reality as their mythology. That which was asserted by the Asiatic and African law-givers to have been directly dictated by the gods, was gradually acquired by the Greeks through deductive and inductive reasoning. Soon the mythological conceptions of the poets were turned into eîdola. Aphrodite was set down as the representative of matter, out of which all things were formed. Pallas-Athene lost her individuality, and became intellect pervading humanity. Apollo was no more the ‘god-man’ or the living sun, but cosmical heat. The forms of fearful monsters that originated in Asia, with ferocious jaws, with three heads, spreading fear and awe, looking as if nothing but human flesh could satisfy their voracity, also terrified the Greeks during the mythic period of their national existence, and human flesh was accordingly sacrificed. Such sacrifices were prevalent wherever monster-gods, without human shape, without legs or arms, with fishes’ tails, dog’s or cat’s heads, with round and glaring eyes, and many arms, inspired the masses with fear and trembling. This was the case in Greece when monsters and pirates peopled the sea-coasts; when _Geryon_, the giant with three bodies, three heads, six hands, six legs, and two wings; _Echidna_, the wife of Typhon; the _Lernean_ serpent, with nine or with fifty heads; the _Chimera_, with a lion’s or goat’s head; the _Sphinx_, with a woman’s head and bust, the body of a lion, and the wings and tail of a dragon; and the fearfully howling _Skylla_, with six heads and six long necks, formed part of their pantheon. As soon, however, as poetry threw a glittering veil of beauty over the forces and phenomena of nature, no one thought of sacrificing human flesh to the gods. Who could have slaughtered a human being in the sight of the Olympian Zeus or the Pallas-Athene of Pheidias, the Venus of Alkemenes, or the Apollo of Praxiteles?

The Greek mind, once on the road to progress through a correct appreciation of beauty, developed with incredible rapidity.

The elements of art as well as of science are threefold. We have:--

α. The reign of _imagination_ through the emotional element, more or less regulated;

β. That of _intellect_, the reflective element, more or less influenced by imagination; and

γ. That of _reason_, the speculative element, discerning between imagination and intellect, and binding the two into one.

The first element is the province of the unconscious artist. He trusts his own subjective imagination, and sees things only from his individual point of view.

The second tries to compare the different products of art, to draw analogies between them, and to assign causes for certain forms. This is the province of the chronicler, the antiquary, and the art-historian.

The third reaches the sphere of philosophical consciousness. In it the esthetical writer combines a correct appreciation of art as a grand total, with all its essential details. He sees distinctly its inner element based on immutable general laws, and comprehends the necessary organism, without which an artistic work cannot exist.

Poetry and philosophy, like art, passed through these developments in Greece. First we have the epic and lyric poets: Homer, Hesiod, Sappho, Alkæus, and Pindar; next the dramatic poets: Æschylus, Sophokles, and Euripides. At last the philosophers and historians: Plato, Aristotle, Herodotus, Thukydides, and Xenophon.

In analogy with these purely mental phases we have in art: the architect, who constructs a small world of organic coherence out of inorganic matter by means of his imagination; the sculptor, who reproduces with discernment the organic world around him in inorganic matter, but endows it with individual expression and feeling; the painter at last, who creates with his colours a union of spirit and matter, of idea and form.

Beauty was in all Greek products the vital element. ‘True beauty, the companion of the gods, must be sought for,’ says Pausanias, and makes no advances; it is too elevated to communicate itself,’ And Plato propounds: ‘The Supreme has no image; he converses only with the wise; with the vulgar he shows himself proud and forbidding; always equal, he expresses the emotion of the souls, he wraps himself in the delicious calm of that divine nature of which the great masters in the arts, according to ancient writers, endeavoured to seize the type.’ This delicious calm may be traced everywhere in Greek art, and forms its essential element.

The temples of the Greeks were national and public buildings. They were not mere shrines destined as exclusive dwelling-places for some visible or invisible, concrete or abstract, theocratic monster. They were the central spots for their national assemblies, their gatherings, and for the celebration of their public festivities.

The Olympian, Pythian, Nemæan, and Isthmian games attracted visitors to these temples. These games did not consist of mere exhibitions of athletic prowess; but poets like Pindar--tragedians like Æschylus and Sophokles--historians like Herodotus--read to enraptured audiences the masterly products of their intellectual powers. Wrestlers and runners, sculptors and poets, and tragic and comic writers vied with one another to be crowned with a laurel wreath, or to receive a palm-twig, some a crown, or a tripod. No sordid feeling of gain mingled with their yet unalloyed pleasure in being distinguished for mere distinction’s sake; the commercial question was unregarded. The prizes, given away in the sight of the delighted masses, were for everything--for bodily as well as for intellectual excellence--even for proficiency in the art of kissing. At the festival of the Philesian Apollo a prize for the most exquisite kiss was conferred upon a young lady. At Sparta and at Lesbos, in the temple of Here, and also among the citizens of Parrhasia, women contended for the prizes with men. How much we try to imitate Greek customs may be judged from the fact, that we also give prizes for exquisite dogs, cats out of proportion, and fat babies; but we are sorry to say, that this is done with a keen eye to business--to advertise a baby-food or a dog-or cat-fancier. That art is not altogether Greek with us need astonish no one. We are trained for practical purposes, but the Greeks were trained to appreciate beauty, symmetry, and harmony, not in verses only, but also in the human frame and in every product of art. Architecture with them was thoroughly plastic; it was never subservient to some metaphysical subtlety; it was finished in itself; a total of which every part formed, as in the human body, a completing element--without which the whole conception of a temple would be as incomplete as a man without arms, legs, or toes. The Greek temple entirely differed from the gloomy buildings of Egypt or India, which were constructed as symbols of hell, earth, and heaven; hell was for the sinners, the outcasts and the poor; earth for the respectable middle-classes; and heaven for the priests, the kings and their high officials. The constructions never made any attempt at symmetrical beauty, but aimed only at gorgeous pomp, in order to overawe the credulous mob--mystery was their essence. Sudden turnings placed the terrified worshipper, unawares, face to face with some colossal idol, looking to the excited and surprised imagination twice as large as it was, and ascending and descending staircases visibly divided the temple into abodes of splendour and horror. With the ancient Greeks in constructing a temple, the first question was the aim of the building; to whom was it to be dedicated--to Zeus, Apollo, Poseidon, Minerva or Venus? This question once decided, the most convenient spot, in accordance with the character of the god to whose worship the temple was to be dedicated, was chosen. The building to be erected was always to be in harmony with the surrounding scenery.

The temple with the Greeks generally stood on a terrace-like base of several steps.

The Doric, Ionic, and Korinthian orders, as architectural subdivisions, are most usual. So far as the different styles are concerned, a fourth must be added, which modern art-historians call the Attic. The Greeks were undoubtedly the first people who succeeded in producing architectural works of art; they were also the first:--

(_a_) To distinguish the material;

(_b_) To bring about symmetry and proportion; and

(_c_) To construct with a clear consciousness of purpose.

Marble was most profusely made use of; wood also, but the latter by degrees disappeared altogether. The Athenians completed even the roofs of their temples in stone.

The Greeks availed themselves of soft materials, such as clay, chalk, gypsum, and marble dust, for stucco (κονίασις {koniasis}), in which they excelled all other nations.

Metal too formed an important element in their decorations. It is asserted by many authorities that the Korinthian capital was not the latest development of Greek architecture; but that on the contrary it was older than the simplified and more correct Doric capital, which, showing no traces of wood-construction, is altogether of a pure ‘stone-feeling,’ whilst the forms of the Korinthian capital bear undoubted traces of wood-carving and metallotechnic.

We see that the Greeks employed pliable, plastic, elastic and solid materials; the great secret of their success lay in the fact that they made use of these elements appropriately.

The vertical and horizontal were the principal lines used by the Greeks. The curved line was not altogether excluded. The uprising straight lines in columns were cylindrical or conical. The relation of the lines to one another, and to the whole of the building, was regulated by a strict observation of the laws of proportion.

The diameter or half-diameter of the column (the module) served as the unit for the whole building. As in the human body the general law of proportion does not exclude an infinite diversity of forms, so in the Greek temples regulation did not preclude variety. In man the height is limited, and, to a certain extent, determined by his bones. This was the case in the Greek temple. The height was limited by the diameter of the column. Taking two columns of the same height, the one thin and the other thick, the thin column will appear high and the other short, but both will have a certain proportion, taken from their own body; the one will be, say, nine times the diameter of its body, and the other only seven times. Proportion in no way fetters the artist; it allows him perfect freedom, but _freedom in order_, without which no good building is possible. All architectural elements are of geometrical origin. These elements are to be divided into those that support, and those that are supported. The column is the most perfect supporting body; surrounding a vertical axis in a slightly conical form. Through the ‘_contractura_,’ the swelling or tapering, it assumes the most perfect expression of the dynamic force in the striving upwards. Through the square plinth (Abacus) a harmonious union is effected between column, as supporter, and architrave, as the supported, or static, element of the building.

The Greek temple was pre-eminently the house of the man-like god. The god in the most exquisite idealised human form was visibly present. A forecourt (pronaos) led to the cella (naos); there was a rear-court (posticum), and occasionally a special court (the opisthodome) was added. Architecture and sculpture were closely allied in Greece; and still so clear and rational a separation between these two art-sisters, as existed there, has nowhere been observed. Through this apparent contradiction, architecture gained an independent soul, full of emotion and life, whilst sculpture obtained a well-proportioned body, the closely united artistic product being thus endowed with solidity and firmness.

The general architectural arrangement of a Greek temple was invariably the same. The cella, the abode of the divinity, was of smaller or larger dimensions. Two rows of columns adorned the interior, supporting an upper gallery. If the central space was left roofless, to supply the temple with light, it was called _hypæthral_. A temple, surrounded by one row of columns, was designated a _Peripteros_; if two rows of columns ornamented it, a _Dipteros_. With a front portico it was _Prostyle_; provided with a court, both front and back, _Amphiprostyle_. The pillars projecting on the side walls were _antæ_; and a temple having this decorative element was styled an _Antætemple_. The colonnade surrounding the temple at smaller or greater distances, represented a combined power of support. The base marked the independent existence of the separate columns. The shaft was covered with channelled flutings, and rose vertically with a convex extension of its circumference (called _entasis_). It then strongly contracted, thus expressing in the most perfect manner not merely passive sustaining, but an active and lively support. Above the capitals the mighty beams of the architrave (epistyle) were held together by a broad band, on which rested the frieze, sometimes adorned with triglyphs and metopes, or with reliefs; above it projected the overhanging plinth of the principal cornice. On the narrow sides of the oblong building, bordered by a cornice (the corona, geison) and the roof-gutter, rose the pediment with its groups and statues. On the front edge of the roof, both at the corners and in the middle, there stood smaller sculptures or marble palm-trees; whilst at the sides the rain-water was ejected through lions’ heads; the finishing horizontal lines were eurythmically crowned with palm-shaped tiles (antifixæ). The roof and the rest of the building, in the noblest works, were of marble, the architectural product being thus transformed into an elegant chiselled work of sculpture.

The Greeks had in their mythology:

1. Powerful gods and goddesses, as Zeus, Pallas, Poseidon, and Mars.

2. Charming and lovely divinities, as Aphrodite, Eros, and Persephone.

3. Mixtures of sublime power and beauty, of manly dignity and womanly grace, as Here, Diana, Bacchus, and Apollo. In studying the characteristics of these three groups of divinities we become acquainted with the principal features of the three orders of their architecture.

I. The _Doric_ order is full of power and monumental dignity. Force is its most prominent characteristic.

II. The _Ionic_ order mingles southern imagination with northern severity; this order, with its voluted capital instead of the simple abacus, is of a more complicated character and livelier expression.

III. The _Korinthian_ order exhibits, instead of the tapering Doric, a slender column--ending in a richly-decorated, upward-striving capital. There is something of the Doric style in the Ionic, and something of the Ionic in the Korinthian. The Doric was, however, the basis of Greek architecture.

_A._ The _Doric_ order had six distinct developments of style.

_a._ The _proto-Doric_, compressed and heavy.

_b._ The _lax Archaic-Doric_, slender, with more distinctly-tapering columns.

_c._ The _stern Archaic-Doric_, more finished and graceful in its proportions.

_d._ The _pure Doric_, most correct in all its details.

_e._ The _Attic-Doric_, during the rule of Perikles, combining utmost severity with the very highest refinement in execution.

_f._ The _Makedonian-Doric_ style; not correctly proportioned, the columns becoming elongated, and the distances narrowed. Gorgeousness and vanity predominate.

_B._ The _Ionic_ order had three distinct phases of development in style.

_a._ The first _simple_ in form, with the strongly-pronounced volute.

_b._ The _richly ornamented_ style, as in the temple of Minerva Polias.

_c._ The _compound_ style; half Doric and half Ionic.

_C._ The _Korinthian_ order passed through four phases of style:

_a._ The _undecided_ style; half Ionic and half Korinthian.

_b._ The _finished_ style; graceful and rich.

_c._ The _over-decorated_ style, with strong Ionic forms.

_d._ The _variegated_ style, with decorative additions of trophies, winged-horses, dolphins, and eagles; half northern and half southern--combining Asiatic with Greek forms.

_D._ The Doric intermingled with Ionic forms produced in Attica a peculiar order, or rather mere style, neither Doric, nor Ionic, nor Korinthian--a kind of eclectic style which we may very properly call the _Attic_ style. The Erechtheium of Athens was in this style. There are six principal distinctions in this style, which justify us in treating it as totally distinct from those mentioned under _A_, _B_ and _C_:--

1. A particular plinth is wanting in the base.

2. Instead of this, a double contraction is transformed into one, united to the common support by means of a strong circular ovolo. The contractura is expressed on a small scale in the base.

3. The shaft is more slender in proportion.

4. The volutes are more projecting.

5. The frieze is considerably higher than it is generally in any of the other orders.

6. The corona is without the dentated ornament; but the projecting plinth is strongly undercut, and powerfully overhangs the finishing member of the frieze.

In all classifications of this kind a narrow-minded pedantry is to be avoided; canons, of whatever sort, hinder the natural growth of art. Still worse than strict canons is ignorance. Without a correct and thorough knowledge of Greek literature, no man can aspire to an exalted position in poetry and science; and without a correct and thorough study of Greek art, no man can become an artist. We do not recommend a slavish imitation of the Greeks, but a thorough understanding of their slow development, through the phases of unconscious reproduction and systematically conscious creation, to the philosophical appreciation of beauty, which enabled them to reflect in their works of art the eternal types of Nature in an idealised form.

The same gradual development which we remarked in their architecture also took place in Greek keramic art. The oldest pottery was coarse, the material generally taken from the most recent formation of the soil, the Cainozoic period. These older specimens are very much alike amongst all the Aryan nations. The forms are undecided, and made by the hand; the ornaments, as in pre-historic times, consisted of points, zigzags, spirals and knobs. At a very early period, however, the Greeks as Pelasgians, Achaians, Danaians and Argeians, possessed more defined outlines, and a more perfect symmetry, even in their very coarsest pottery.

In the oldest, so-called Tyrrhenian, vases we have already a decided plastic improvement. The ornamentation takes its patterns from metallotechnic, and we recognise Asiatic influences in the winged horses and lions, stamped in the clay as flat ornaments. The Greek taste improved; leaves and flowers were treated with a delicate, idealising conventionalism; the vine, ivy, anthimion, and masks and festoons, were used for decorative purposes, and gave to the well-shaped vessel a high artistic value. This was the most successful period of pottery for Greece. Samos appears to have been the principal place for its manufacture. The use of the wheel was long dispensed with; the Greeks trusting more to the delicacy of their touch than to the technical accuracy of a machine. In Asia the wheel had long been known, and it had exercised rather a detrimental than an improving influence on pottery, as the forms, settled by religious prejudices, or venerable custom, did not change, but remained stationary. As soon as the Greeks adopted the wheel--it must have been in use before Homer, for he speaks of it--their better-trained minds brought a new spirit into the handicraft of the potter, which was then turned into real art.

Korœbos, of Athens, a mythic person, is said to have elevated keramic art to high perfection. Dibutades is said to have been the first modeller in clay, and Talos, his nephew, is mentioned as the inventor of the potter’s wheel in Hellas.

With reference to the process of colouring we have two distinct classes of Greek pottery:--

1. The _oligochromatic_, from ὀλίγος {oligos} (small), and χρῶμα {chrôma} (colour).

2. The _polychromatic_, from πολύς {polus} (many), and χρῶμα {chrôma} (colour).

I. The _oligochromatic_ class of Greek pottery may be divided into two distinct styles: _a._ The Archaic; _b._ The Hellenic.

_A._ As soon as the wheel became generally used, a finer paste was required, fit for exposure to a greater heat, and for the production of a greater variety of vessels. In the beginning the paste was coarse-grained and of a yellowish-grey; later it was fine, and the colour homogeneous. The glazing was without lustre, brownish-black, and spotted, proving a want of experience in baking. We have violet, brownish-red, and white tints badly fixed on the black glaze. With the exception of Pithoi (wine jars) found at Thera, the vessels belonging to the Archaic style are generally of moderate size, broad and compressed, with sudden and bold interruptions of the curves, and abrupt unions of the extremities. The ornament is not yet an integral part of the vessel. The general forms are cups, pots, flasks, &c., all being entirely black. Some are ornamented with yellowish or white points, or with simple lines drawn all over the vessel. By degrees a clearer understanding of the laws of ornamentation is perceptible; the ornamentation becomes restricted to the bulge, whilst rings, meanders, and floral ornamentations mark the upper and lower parts of the vessel. A further progress may be seen in the treatment of ornamentation in the animals which surround the vessels in parallel circles. Highly interesting are the flowers, balls, and _crosses_ on these oligochromatic vases. With the progress of civilisation we find the human figure introduced, surrounded, however, by monstrous combinations of Asiatic origin. Genii, with and without wings, make their appearance; then divinities amongst lions, panthers, ostriches, and a profusion of symbolic representations. Swans are either tamed, chased, or killed. The spirit of Persepolis and Nineveh, of Phœnicia and Egypt, animates these pre-Homeric compositions; they are entirely incomprehensible. This pottery of the Greeks is of the very highest interest; we may advantageously study in it the progress of civilisation amongst them.

We have a period in which monster chases monster; then a period in which men kill monsters; then, when men begin to settle down, and to pass from the barbarous state of mere hunters into a more settled mode of living, freed from obnoxious wild animals, they fight against men. The conquerors have decidedly Aryan features, whilst the conquered have unmistakably Turanian faces. (See the work of Lord Hamilton.) At length we suddenly surprise them before the walls of Troy; the incidents of the Iliad are known, and furnish the potters with heroic subjects. Achilles and Hektor, Penelope and Ulysses, may be recognised; the first two in deadly combat, the two latter meeting after a long separation. The subject, in these Archaic vases and vessels, is not yet thoroughly purified, for amongst the heroes we see Gorgons with spread wings and lolling tongues. Other monsters, destroying animals, surround the principal actors of the drama as mere unconcerned ‘dummies.’ We accompany the development a step further, and observe that the monsters have a share in the action; they seem to take part _pro_ and _con_, like the gods in the Iliad, and, later, they appear in yet more purified forms as protecting divinities. It is as if the Iliad had first been drawn in clay by potters and improved upon, till at last it was shaped in its divine form, and edited under the name of Homer.

_B._ The Hellenic, or classic, style of Greek pottery, based on the Archaic, shows great improvements in every direction. The paste is harder, finer, and well glazed, and the colours are less discordant. The red is of a fiery brightness, and the black without any spots--sometimes with a greenish hue. In the decoration great delicacy of shape and feeling is prominent. The figures are laid on with anatomical accuracy. The limiting frame is dispensed with, giving ampler scope to a freer and still more connected ornamentation. The curves are less protruding, and the transition from concave to convex lines is gentler. The canon of this period, that the vessel had to form in all its parts one continuous line, rendered these products sometimes stiff and over-regulated. The influence of the progress in the Attic style, however, soon corrected this evil, and the potters of Greece vied with the very best sculptors and painters in beautiful works. The Asiatic types of winged or unwinged monsters were merely used as grotesque or comical friezes, and soon began to disappear altogether, to make room for some useful animal, and, finally, to give place to frets or garlands of the most beautiful combinations. For the monstrous creations of an overheated imagination, heroes, gods, and goddesses were substituted. Perseus destroying Medusa; the Forge of Hephaistos; a triclinium with Herakles and Alkmene, Hermes and Athene; diskoboli and their teachers; Aphrodite at her toilette; Ares, Herakles, Athene, and Zeus driven in their quadrigas by Nikê; Elektra at the tomb of Agamemnon; Aphrodite crossing the sea on a swan; the blind Chiron healed by Apollo; the weighing of Cupids--‘young loves for sale;’ and rows of well-sketched warriors, representing the victories of valour, beauty, and honesty over barbaric roughness, dishonesty, and despotism, form the subjects of pictorial ornamentation. What an immense field for the student of art to peruse, to fill his imagination with lively classical scenes!

II. The _polychromatic_ style took its origin in the very first attempts in pottery, when white pipe-clay was painted over. The colours used were red, violet, and yellow oxides of iron. At the period when marble was introduced in architecture, and ivory in sculpture, during the middle of the fifth century B.C., we find these highly-coloured and richly-decorated vases. The paste was very fine, originally white, and the colouring encaustic. Not only mineral pigments and metallic oxides, but also vegetable colours, requiring only a very slow fire, were known and used. The encaustic consisted of a polychromatic paste more or less opaque, containing, in addition to wax, also flint, whether as principal or secondary element it is difficult to decide. This polychromatic treatment is to be observed on some smaller vessels, and vases known under the name of Lekythus (with a narrow mouth), and on saucers of large dimensions, the outsides having reddish figures on black grounds, and the insides, coloured figures on white grounds. Pottery led to fashioning in clay, and this to modelling in bronze and sculpture.

Architecture took its origin in religion, as also did sculpture. Opposed to the inorganic, objective productions of human intellect, as embodied in architecture, is spirit aspiring to a subjective existence in sculpture. The inorganic sternness of architecture is far surpassed by plastic art, which embodies spirit in a less fixed form. Spirit is not yet absolutely free, for it requires a tangible body to show its existence. Unlike music and painting, which by a mere movement of the air, or a mixture of tints, produce bodies, plastic art has to fill the three dimensions of space, and does this by means of coarse matter--with clay, wood, bronze, or stone.

Sculpture stands higher in the scale of art than architecture, for it is not obliged to transform inorganic matter for a utilitarian purpose.

At a certain period the Greeks were contented with shapeless divinities; a pointed stone, a square piece of wood, the deformed root of a tree, a pillar with a circular finish, or a cone, sufficed for their piety. Even Plato indulged in the untenable proposition that art was mere mimicry, and therefore a falsehood, and detrimental to virtue; as truth ought to be the only aim of humanity. The Beautiful with Plato was a mere abstraction, applicable exclusively to the absolute ‘good’; artistic beauty was looked down upon by him as something bad and altogether objectionable. The Kynic and Kyrenæic schools held to a certain degree the opinions of Plato. The Kynics said that anything good was beautiful--anything bad ugly; whilst the Kyrenæics propounded that everything beautiful must be good--anything ugly must be bad; and in this way the notions, good and bad, beautiful and ugly, changed places. This dialectic difference led at last to Aristotle’s deeper appreciation of art.

Aristotle, who rarely started from pre-conceived, _à priori_ ideas, but attached his deep reasonings and admirable inductions to something tangible and really existent, pronounced, in opposition to the idealistic Plato, more correct thoughts on art. Imitation, mimicry (μίμησις {mimêsis}), is with him the subjective formation or creation of an idea, and therefore a process far superior to that of imperfect reality; in fact it is a sublimated, idealised representation and reproduction of reality. Next to the ‘mimesis’ he required purification from all passion (κάθαρσις {katharsis}) to be the aim and purpose of art. Genius and imagination were the means by which alone a work of art could be produced. The principal element in every work of art was with him ἦθος {êthos}, and wherever Ethos, the ethic or moral principle, was wanting, the product failed to be artistic in the highest sense of the word.

The development of Greek sculpture has borne out the sublime views of Aristotle on art. As soon as the merely naturalistic and sensational began to rule supreme, the Katharsis was neglected, the Ethic no longer swayed works of art, and the Antique died out.

The priests at Delphos, at a time when Greece abounded with the most exquisite Apollo-statues, still held to a pointed pillar as the emblem of the god of wisdom and the leader of the muses. Anthropomorphism was long opposed by the hierarchy of Delphi, but they encouraged the artists to produce beautiful vessels, tripods, lamps, sacrificial basins, &c., which had to be made according to certain prescribed forms. By degrees the Asiatic idea ‘that God created man in his own image’ was inverted by the Greeks, ‘and man began to create the gods in his own image.’ This one sentence embodies the cause of the progressive development of Greek sculpture on the one hand, and the ever-stationary forms of the East on the other. The Greeks had also idols that dropped from heaven, puppet-like forms or symbolic carvings, like the Artemis of Ephesus or the _four-armed_ Apollo of the Lakedemonians, reminding us of Vishnu.

The discoveries at Athens, Kyprus, and most recently at Hassarlik by Dr. Schliemann, prove the gradual and slow progress of Greek sculpture in all its different phases. The first Parthenon, destroyed by the Persians, was adorned with divinities entirely different in shape from those which surrounded it after it had been rebuilt 444 B.C. The dresses, ornamentations, jewels, and pearls are of Assyro-Egyptian and Indo-Persian patterns. The faces of the divinities show far more of the Turanian than of the Aryan type. The eyes are protruding, the cheek-bones high, the drapery is extremely stiff, the anatomy doll-like, and the features bear a kind of repulsive grin. In the gigantic, rock-hewn bull, near Smyrna, we have a proof that the Indian Nundi and the Egyptian Apis must have had their worshippers in Greece.

Of Daidalos it is reported that he was the first who improved upon these symbolic carvings. He made winking gods and walking images by means of mechanical contrivances. He is said to have been a contemporary of Theseus; both belong therefore to the mythical period. Though a statue of Herakles, holding in his right arm a club, whilst his left extended bears a lion’s skin as a shield, is attributed to him; and though Homer mentions Daidalos, of Krete, as having wrought a dance in metal for Ariadne, which formed the model for that wrought by Hephaistos on the shield of Achilles; the fact that the very word to ‘embellish’ is taken from his name, points less to a distinct person than to the period in which Greek art began to free itself from Asiatic bondage.

The historical periods into which we may group Greek sculpture correspond to those of their architecture.

First period, from the 8th century B.C. to the Persian wars, 470 B.C.

Second period, from Kimon to the end of the Peloponnesian war, 470 B.C.-400 B.C.

Third period, from the delivery of Athens to the conquest of Greece by the Romans, 400 B.C.-146 B.C. This third period comprises Greek sculpture in its decline.

Struggle into existence, growth and development, acme and decline, follow in rapid succession. Wood-carvers and potters begin; then we have a transition to bronze-works under _Glaukos_, who was the first to solder the separate parts of the statues, which prior to him had been always beaten into union. Following up this improvement, the artists of Samos succeeded in making a clay-model, and then in covering it with the fluid metal. As if by a supernatural charm the bright metal statue grew out of the gloomy clay, and formed an everlasting monument to adorn temples, squares, and streets. _Rhœkos_ and _Theodorus_ of Samos, with _Smilis_, built the Labyrinth at Lemnos, which they adorned with 150 columns, which were turned out by an ingenious mechanism, an improvement on the art of casting in bronze. Pliny describes a bronze figure by _Theodorus_, which held in its right hand a file, and in its left a quadriga with a charioteer, which was so small that the car, with the four horses and the driver, could be covered by the wing of a fly. The celebrated ring of Polykrates, admirably wrought gold and silver sacrificial vessels, and a vine with golden leaves and grapes of precious stones, were also attributed to this artist. At Chios, the birth-place of Glaukos, the family of _Mêlas_ worked for the first time in Parian marble; whilst _Byzes_ of Naxos cut marble into thin slabs for architectural purposes, giving a more exquisite finish to the houses of the gods. On every side a marked improvement took place. The head-dress of Apollo was still that of the Egyptian sphinx. The faces of the statues were placid, mask-like, as if modelled separately and then fixed on; the eyes looked as if first cut out, and then placed into their sockets; but the anatomy of the body was treated with greater care and a more refined feeling. The legs were close together and the arms hung down perpendicularly, with a prescribed stiffness, but there were details in the treatment of the stone surface, which promised well for the future of Greek art, and the promise was most faithfully kept.

The struggling art freed itself from the fetters of stern canons. Custom, struck by the lightning of genius, had to vanish, and life, truth, and beauty as essential elements ruled the Greek mind. To blend the isolated perfections of the two sexes into one became the aim of Greek art. Women were sculptured with the colder lines of manly firmness, and men received gentler forms through a less angular treatment. The artists conscientiously purified their works from all passions and second thoughts, expressing nothing that could divert the mind from the simple admiration of idealised nature. At this period they only succeeded in animating the limbs of their statues: action was expressed with great power in strained muscles and swelling veins. The faces were still without life, and without a comprehension of those emotions which vibrate electrically in the countenances of excited humanity. They could not yet petrify the thinking soul, but they undoubtedly already succeeded in sculpturing the animated body to perfection.

The _second_ period was ushered in by the versatile and productive talents of Onatas, Ageladas, Kalamis, Iphikrates, Pythagoras of Regium, and Myron. Greece had attained her independence, the Persian hordes of despotism were vanquished, and Athens enjoyed her hegemony. Freedom and national exultation produced Sokrates, Plato, and Anaxagoras in philosophy; Kimon, Perikles, and Themistokles in politics; Æschylus, Sophokles, and Euripides in dramatic poetry; and Pheidias, Praxiteles, and Skopas in sculpture. If we add to this fourfold triad Herodotus, Thukydides, and Xenophon, we have given an array of names each of which singly would have filled the world with its fame, and become a landmark in the progressive development of humanity. Athens was at this period the most brilliant centre of intellectual and artistic life. Men were inspired by the general animation; they began to modify old thoughts, to transform eîdola, and to give birth to numberless productions which in beauty and striving for truth surpassed anything attempted before. Schools of arts vied with the schools of wrestlers, poets, and thinkers, and all excited the dramatists to their grand conceptions, which again reacted on plastic art. Under these influences the imaginary theogony yielded to a more scientific inquiry into the origin of all things, which led to the recognition of the first incomprehensible, immutable, eternal cause, no longer based on mere belief, but on the immovable rock of scientific conviction. No wonder that art was also inspired by this spiritual movement. The conceptions of the priests and philosophers were to be loudly proclaimed in visible forms, and the sculptor, from a deep feeling of veneration for the Supreme Artist of the Universe, became the expounder of the divinity, and the exclusive high priest of beauty and truth. Instead of singing Vedantic hymns or Egyptian psalms and litanies to the glory of God, the Greek sculptors hewed the gods in majestic forms, and every touch of their chisels on the lifeless marble, every blow of their hammers, became an eternally resounding prayer in honour of God.

Wood, metal, clay, precious stones, and marble had by degrees yielded to the creative power of the Greek masters; and matter could no longer resist in any way their ruling intellectual force. At this moment, under these circumstances, Pheidias, the son of Charmides of Athens, the pupil of Hegias and Ageladas, stepped forward, and was raised by the superiority of his genius to the dignity of king of Greek plastic art. The Zeus of Olympia and the Athene of the Parthenon qualified Pheidias as _the_ sculptor of the concrete _form_ of the divinity; for if the father of the gods had had a visible form, and his wisdom and intellect had been incarnate in Athene, both must have looked as they were sculptured by Pheidias. In symbolic emblems he poetically expressed the powers of the two divinities; and used the mineral, the vegetable, and animal kingdoms to glorify their power.

Nothing is left us of these two master-pieces but the glowing descriptions of those who saw and admired them. That which a combination of thousands of our artists, with all our technical advancement, can scarcely accomplish; the drawing of thousands and thousands of _intellectual_ human beings together to admire their works of art; was done by Pheidias. Men flocked from all parts of the world to see and admire his statues, and to offer fervent thanks to the Father of all for having endowed one of his creatures with the power to give a correct form to Homer’s lines:

He (Zeus) spoke, and awful bends his sable brows; Shakes his ambrosial curls and gives the nod, The stamp of fate, and sanction of the god; High heaven with trembling the dread signal took, And all Olympus to the centre shook.

We possess in the Vatican a copy of the original head of the Jupiter, and what a master-piece even this _bad_ copy is! What a power in the bold, arched brows; the large eyes with their benevolent, forgiving, and yet commanding glance; the full, parted lips ready to bless and to forgive; the luxuriant beard, the mighty locks inspiring veneration, and the beautifully-rounded cheeks, expressive of creative force and eternal manly beauty! The independent works of Pheidias were very numerous. Besides the two colossal divinities of bronze (Athene Promachos, 50 feet high, and Athene ἡ Λημνία {hê Lêmnia}), we find twelve others mentioned: of these, six were statues of Athene; one colossal Apollo of bronze, 70 feet high; one marble Hermes; three of Aphrodite (two of marble, and one of ivory and gold); a mother of the gods, material unknown; and an Asklepios (Æsculapius) of gold and ivory. Of sacrificial statues, a group of thirteen bronze figures, in commemoration of the victory of Marathon, is mentioned as having been executed by him. In this work twelve mythical characters surrounded _one_ historical figure--that of Miltiades; a proof that the Greeks attributed their victory far more to the help of the gods than to the exertions of their leaders. They were much more inclined to adorn the courts of their temples and their public places with the statues of orators, wrestlers, poets, artists, and philosophers, than with those of men who, in defending their country against invading hordes of barbarians, did their duty and nothing more. What a scope for our artists if we were to adorn our town-halls, courts of justice, our museums, universities, academies, public places, and churches with the statues of those who had devoted their energies to religion, oratory, science, art, politics, and the general welfare of their country! If gratitude were to prompt us to do this, and not childish vanity or egotistical pride, we should shortly have many Pantheons with excellent sculptures.

In no town in Europe can the artist study the sculptural splendour of ancient Greece with greater ease than in London. Of the ninety-two metopes which adorned the Parthenon on the Akropolis at Athens we possess seventeen; of the frieze of the cella 3-1/5 feet high and 524 feet long, representing the Panathenaic procession, we possess fifty-three plates and casts of the whole western side. In all these sculptures what a clear power of grouping, what a variety of characters, what handsome men and women! The flower of Athens is seen assembled to do homage in joyous excitement to the supreme divinity of the State, the embodiment of wisdom and intellect. Some are crowned with wreaths; others carry sun-shades, chairs, splendid pitchers, ornamented vases, or decorated pateras; some are ready to start; others, preparing in animated haste to take their places, are in the act of mounting their prancing horses, or, already mounted, eagerly await the arrival of their friends. On the eastern side, under the entrance to the temple, there was an admirable group of gods and goddesses, in whose presence _peplus_, or sacred veil, is delivered to the authorities of the temple; animals are led to be sacrificed--flute and kythara-players follow. Amongst the hundreds and hundreds of figures not one is like the other; the exquisite variety in the folds of the dresses of the sitting, standing, walking, riding, driving groups is in general unsurpassed for beauty of design, and perfection of execution. None of the figures are raised more than _three_ inches from the background, and yet the most correct perspective is observed. There is such a softness and truthfulness, such a firmness and ideal vitality in this frieze, that we may at least attribute the composition to Pheidias himself. Some plates of the western side are less excellent in execution; the forms are marked with roughness and dryness, and some faults in the outlines are also apparent to the critic. Some of the horses have legs too long, and bodies too thin; in one of the horses, which is bending its neck to rub its head against one of its fore feet, the curves are much too stiff. The execution of these reliefs must have been left to some inferior artist. What we must admire is, that there are so few faults. The correct study of this frieze ought to serve us as an example in grouping, and would teach us how to arrange a marble strip round some monument for the sake of decoration. Little of this influence, however, is to be observed in our sculptors. We intend to evolve sculpture from our own inner consciousness, and neglect these ancient books with their glorious poems in Pentelic marble; we prefer ‘_going to nature_’ as the popular phrase runs, and ignore or despise the study of the antique. Now the Greeks had an opportunity of going to real nature--not with the darkened eye of Asiatic prejudice, despising matter and exalting _spirit_--but with a prejudice in the very opposite direction, cultivating spirit only so far as it served to embellish and to reproduce form. In this they attained perfection, and to surpass them in sculpture is after all impossible; we can only try to equal them, and to learn from what they have left us, to produce other combinations. In this spirit we ought to study the nine figures from the eastern pediment of the Parthenon, in the British Museum. What forms, what exquisite drapery! The finest tissue of pliable stuff is reproduced in hard Pentelic marble. The drapery disguises, and at the same time reveals, the beautiful forms of the human frame. Softness and sensationalism were equally avoided by Pheidias and his school. The study of anatomy was not yet degraded to coarse realism. It was not yet the aim of Greek sculptors to distort the human body so as to exhibit expanded muscles, over-strained sinews, and swelling veins, as expressions of pain, grief, distress, or contortions of the death-agony. Anatomy served Pheidias as a mould, into which he poured his beautiful conceptions--the spiritualised forms of gods and men. Katharsis was the principle of his school. The very heights of perfection were reached by Pheidias, Polykletus, and Alkemenes. Gods and goddesses were the subjects of their chisels. They were not only the high-priests of art--but inspired prophets, to whom divine beauty was revealed in all its brightness and splendour.

The existence of the Greek State was suddenly shaken to its very foundation. Internal dissensions weakened the safety of the citizens; sophistry destroyed philosophy, and mannerism grasped Greek art, dragged it down from its heights of idealised beauty and hurled it into the abyss of sensational realism. The best specimen of this school is the frieze from the temple of Apollo at Bassæ, near Phigalia in Arkadia. (Found 1812, now in the British Museum.) It represents Kentaurs fighting with Amazons. The old Indian Ghandarvas, the moist and heavy clouds that hinder the sun from breaking forth in all his glory, and are conquered by his fiery shafts, became in time monsters, half-men, half-horses, fighting against loveliness and civilisation. The Amazons in this instance represent fair Greece rushing into civil strife. Passion is predominant in action and expression. Amazons are dragged by the hair and by the legs from their horses; a Kentaur is seen biting a warrior in the shoulder. Bold naturalism and vulgar realism go hand-in-hand in these sculptures. How sensitive art is--how faithfully it reflects the social condition of a nation! and the feelings by which the artists were pervaded may be studied in this frieze. The nude is treated with exquisite truthfulness, but there is heaviness in the sudden, too violent movements. Action and expression lose the balance of the symmetrical. The women are common; their drapery floating and yet stiff, deranged for the sake of effect. The artists worked no more with love and security. The political party spirit troubled their imagination. The chisel trembled with rage or fear, with hatred or passion, in their hands; they saw prophetically the national downfall of their country, and with it science, art, poetry, and philosophy were to be rendered for thousands of years houseless and homeless.

Once more art revived under Skopas, Praxiteles, and Lysippus, but in a totally different shape. Greece had lost through her civil war the proper balance between her moral and intellectual forces. Simplicity and refinement of thought had vanished. In literature metaphors prevailed; in politics Aristides had to yield to the double-tongued Alkibiades; in tragedy Sophokles was superseded by Euripides; in sculpture the immortal Pheidias was followed by Praxiteles. The national spirit of the Greeks, inspired by common interests, swayed by the very highest aspirations in arts and sciences, suddenly collapsed into a narrow-minded, particularising egotism. Tribes cared only for tribes, parties for parties. The public buildings began to be neglected, whilst the private dwellings gained in ornamentation and comfort, what was denied to the grand national enterprises. The public places were no longer adorned with the statues of those who had gained the general approbation of the masses. The artist, doubtful whom to please, tried to please everyone, or to satisfy the individual fancy of a paying patron. Art was no more the chaste virgin sacrificing to beauty, but became a courtesan seeking general and special favour at all hazards. The divinities were no more the representations of a spiritual eîdolon, but a glowing sentiment of sensual love was poured over their frames; they were no longer ideal conceptions in marble, but beautiful flesh forms in stone or bronze. They lost all generalisation, they were more correct in the anatomical outlines, but a passionate sentiment of sensuality thrilled through every point. Kephisodotus (the elder), probably the father of Praxiteles, embodied the change in Greek thought in a beautiful group. Eirene (peace) fondles the child Pluton (riches)--a splendid allegorical representation of the political condition of Greece at this time. ‘Let us put an end to our quarrels; let us have peace, and enjoy life once more.’

Skopas, born on the island of Paros, expressed the modern flow of ideas in Greece with greater clearness. Violent scenes of deadly struggle filled the pediments of the temple of Athene Alea at Tegea. In front, the hunt of the Kalydonian boar by Herakles, at the back Achilles fighting with Telephos was represented. An under-current of thought, a kind of allegory, may be traced in this composition, for the boar to be hunted was the opposition. Art was no longer to exalt the mind unconditionally, but to fulfil another purpose--to irritate, to excite to hatred, and to arouse passion; thus placed, art must lose its civilising influence, and it did this step by step. Even the divinities sculptured by Skopas were not to inspire veneration, but to please by little allegorical additions; his Apollo (Smintheus) stood on a mouse; Apollo, the leader of the muses, the representative of vivifying light in art, science, and the universe, degraded to a beautiful ‘_mouse-killer_.’ Aphrodite, the mother of humanity, was sculptured sitting on a goat--the vilest emblem of passion in union with the purest eîdolon of tender love. Another Apollo was represented in the long waving robes of an elegant Grecian lady playing the lyre; this was still more objectionable. Though the drapery excites our admiration by its exquisite softness and finish, the statue appears to have been chiselled to show the artist’s skill in carving a heap of waving drapery. Whenever art condescends to such tricks it is on the high-road to degradation. Skopas composed a splendid group for a pediment, representing Achilles receiving from his mother the arms forged by Hephaistos. The principal figures are Thetis, the queen of the bright green waves, Poseidon, and Achilles; they are surrounded by a crowd of Nereids and Tritons, all in harmonious arrangement. Richer in grouping are some marble reliefs (now in the Glyptothek at Münich), representing the wedding of Poseidon and Amphitrite. The mother of the bride, Doris, is seated on a Hippokamp (sea-horse), holding two torches towards the couple; Tritons play on shells and lyres a merry wedding tune. Nereids surround them. One rides on a sea-bull, led by a mischievous-looking Eros, standing on its left fore-foot; another, mounted on a fantastic sea-monster, is accompanied by another, borne by a Triton; other Nereids follow, pointing towards the principal group, one sitting on a Hippokamp, with an Eros on its curled tail; a dragon carrying a Nereid is led with self-conscious pride by another Eros, whilst a Triton carries another sea-nymph on his winding body with placid and contented looks. The composition in general, and in all its details, is perfect. Without over-crowding the allotted space, it could not be better filled up. There is a striking freedom in the lines, and lively contrast of forms. We may consider this relief the prototype of all those fantastic compositions of the pure renaissance style, in which we see dragons and monsters, bulls and horses, entwined with plants and flowers, nymphs and gods, everything real and imaginary, beautiful and graceful, united into one great dissonant harmony. Skopas was the first (so far as we know) who sculptured Venus in the full beauty of her nude body. Pheidias would have considered such a treatment of the mother of mankind blasphemy. In a group of Eros, Himeros, and Pothos (Love, Longing, and Desire), we find a classification of a general feeling into three distinct subdivisions, executed with conscious discernment in order to produce a sensational effect. A raving Bacchante appears to rush away with dishevelled hair, in flowing robes; the head is thrown backwards in delirious delight; the marble lives and breathes maddening joy, but is vivified with sensual feelings, and not inspired with the elevating spirit of artistic simplicity and purity.

Of this period we may study another master-piece in the British Museum; the frieze of the tomb of Mausolos at Halikarnassus. The greater part is in London and the remainder at Genoa. The subject is a battle between Greeks and Amazons. The composition is nearly as good as that on the Parthenon. There is a continuous symmetrical stream of action and reaction, as in the dashing waves of a stormy sea. _Skopas_ worked the eastern, _Bryaxis_ the northern, _Timeotheos_ the southern, and _Leochares_ the western side. Many mistakes may be found in the details, but the whole is a master-piece of manly thought;--it may be said to have been the _last manly_ product of the period.

_Praxiteles_ altogether turned the scale; Aphrodite, Demeter, Persephone, Flora, Eros, Dionysius, and Apollo, are the divinities mostly sculptured by him. Everything is smooth, young, and effeminate. All harshness of line is avoided, all loftier ideas discarded. The flesh become stone is placed before us in charming and full roundness. Aphrodite was no longer draped--but with the concealing drapery the higher conception of the divinity fled. Venus, conscious of her charms, with a smile on her lips, and a coquettish movement of her hand, sinks to the level of an every-day woman. Venus had eaten of the tree of knowledge; with the consciousness of her particular womanly charms the ideal of divine universality was gone.

We possess of Praxiteles, an Eros in the Vatican, and his celebrated Apollo with the lizard (Saurokthonos) in the Louvre. Both these statues are more women than men. The lines are too soft; the bodies as though without muscles or bones, composed only of flesh and fat. It is true that the older artists also softened down the too marked lines of the sexes, and in blending them together created ideal forms of beauty; but now the mere surface of the woman’s body was used for both sexes, to affect the senses exclusively.

Three groups (the one probably for the pediment of a temple, the other two forming independent works of art) deserve special mention.

The group of Niobe and her dying children, attributed to Skopas or Praxiteles. Greece was fast sinking. _Niobe-Greece_ sees her children struck down one after the other by the inexorable decree of the gods, who are bent on punishing the _proud mother_ who only cared for the _outward_ beauty of her children, and neglected their moral _inner_ grandeur. Niobe, amidst a harmonious confusion of misery and endless woe, stands erect, and presses the youngest child to herself, turning her proud looks upwards, her eyes filled with tears of heroic resignation--for she knows the gods have willed her downfall, and their will is unalterable. This moment of agony, of mental rather than bodily suffering, makes the group a master-piece of antique beauty and grandeur.

This cannot be said of the sensational Laokoön, the joint work of Agesander, Athenodorus, and Polydoros (of which there is a copy in the Vatican), and the so-called ‘Farnese Bull,’ the joint work of Apollonios and Tauriskos (a copy of which exists in the museum at Naples). Bodily anguish is the dominating element in these two groups. If it were the province of art to depress the soul, and to fill us with pain and horror, nothing could surpass the technical skill with which these two are arranged.

In the first we have:--

1. In the father a stifled _death scream_.

2. In the younger son, to the right, the last _convulsions_ of a dying boy.

3. In the elder son, to the left, an unbounded _horror_ at witnessing the frightful death of father and brother.

There is no psychological necessity in this group to indemnify us for the pathological and anatomical truthfulness of so great an amount of horrible suffering. Art has never to serve as a hospital ward, and to force us to witness the contortions of a poor family dying poisoned by strychnine or arsenic. Not less objectionable is the revenge of a mother and her two sons on a defenceless woman. In this group we have:--

1. The horror-stricken, half-dying, half-imploring look of poor Dirkê.

2. The merciless glance of the jealous Antiope, wrapt in placid satisfaction to see herself revenged on her rival.

3. The ferocious anger of the two passionate sons; and, lastly,

4. The wild look of the furious bull, ready to dash the beautiful frame of a frail woman to pieces. Dramatic justice is here meted out by the artist in a most revolting way. A bull is called in to help to punish; it is the vulgarity of the cruel revenge that degrades the technically masterly work of art. The free grouping of marble statues is one of the most difficult tasks, and was never attempted during the classic period of ancient art. A mixture of men and animals is even more to be avoided.

As soon as the gods of Egypt changed their architectural and monumental position, they lost their sway over the superstitious masses; as soon as the Greeks lost that balance of morality, which, in the form of the beautiful, regulated their life, science, and art, they lost at the same time their productive power. Form and idea as in Asia came into conflict; the _formal_ had attained the extreme of perfection, and the new _ideas_ had not yet ripened.

Art was either to touch the feelings or to speak to reason--it was to be based on a mere imitation of nature, or to be the expression of some thought in some form. This ‘either,’--‘or,’--or this ‘neither,’--‘nor,’ which divided art-critics during this period, made an end of art altogether. The Asiatics rent the universe asunder with conflicting abstractions based on the phenomena of nature; the Greeks lost their power, when they once recognised that there was something higher than the mere _form_. A new sphere was felt to open new spiritual beauties--but this sphere was to be attained through totally different means. The formal was however so highly developed by the Greeks that we shall see the new spirit, after more than a thousand years, become incarnate in those forms.

We see then clearly that art, the product of the creative force of men, requires a certain moral and intellectual condition, under which alone it can actively live. Change the moral temperature through the superstitions of a terrified populace, the aspect of nature, the despotic organisation of government, or the rule of a wild, uneducated mob, and the artistic force will also change or die out altogether. The artist acts only to a certain degree on the public; the public reacts with a greater combined _vis inertiæ_ on the artist, who is merely the reflection of certain ideas floating in the intellectual atmosphere around him. Is a man who sees nothing but emaciated, beggarly, or sanctimonious faces, thin limbs, hungry looks, dwellings bare of all domestic comfort, decayed brick-houses and crumbling walls, to paint convivial scenes of happiness and joy? Or let him change this atmosphere and live in a sphere of so-called respectability; having always the same bland smile before him, the same trimmed whiskers, the same business-like self-contentment, the same stiff collars and cuffs; hearing the same stereotyped, insignificant phrases about the weather or the funds, the price of coals or meat--will he, influenced by such an atmosphere, not draw or paint only caricatures, and never grand and heart-stirring historical paintings, recording in glowing colours scenes full of life, excitement, passion, and dramatic action? In such surroundings it is necessary for an artist to create for himself a world of his own--an intellectual world--by turning to the glorious records of the past, and devoting every spare hour to the study of the ancients and the reading of history. His imagination, deadened by reality, must be fed and nourished by the poets, poetry, works of art, and historical facts of the past. Our meagreness and poverty in artistic productions take their origin in our unpardonable neglect of the study of history; through this neglect we have deprived art altogether of its firmest basis.

The very moment that the Greek artists lost their historical and poetical ground, they took to and excelled in painting barbers’ and shoemakers’ shops; oyster shells, vases, little combinations of chairs and musical instruments, and small things, with great accuracy. In fact the same causes produced the same pictorial effects; the mind of the Greek nation had dwindled, and their works of art embraced decorations of household furniture and pottery. In these ornamentations the reminiscences of a by-gone age may be traced; they are still symmetrical to the highest degree, plants are still treated with great conventional freedom, but the Greeks only worked as skilful workmen--artists they produced no more.