Part 3

At Susa, the winter seat of the Persian kings from the time of Cyrus, Mr Loftus and Sir W. F. Williams have found noble marble structures raised by Darius, the son of Hystaspes (424—405 B.C.), whose great palace was here: commenced by himself and completed by Artaxerxes II. or Mnemon (405—359 B.C.). Both here and at Persepolis, the richest city after Susa (destroyed, as we all remember from Dryden’s ode, by Alexander), are ruins of magnificent columns of the most elaborate ornamentation, and many cuneiform inscriptions, deciphered by Lassen and Rawlinson. Mr Loftus remarks on the great similarity of the buildings of Persepolis and Susa, which form a distinct style of architecture. This is the salient feature of Persian archæology, and to him I refer you upon it[11]. I cannot dwell upon other ruins in these regions, or on the minor objects, coins, cylinders, and vases of the ancient Persian empire; and still less on the very numerous coins of the Arsacidæ, and Sassanidæ, who afterwards succeeded to it.

Footnote 11:

See his _Travels and Researches in Chaldæa and Susiana_, ch. xxviii. London, 1857; also Smith’s _Dict. of Greek and Roman Geography_, s. v. Pasargadæ, Persepolis, Susa; and Vaux’s _Nineveh and Persepolis_, London, 1850.

Of ancient Judæa we possess as yet very scanty archæological monuments indeed before the fall of the monarchy. The so-called Tombs of the Kings are now, I believe, generally considered to belong to the Herodian period. Of the Temple of Jerusalem, the holy place of the Tabernacle of the Most Highest, not one stone is left upon another. And we may well conceive that nothing less than its destruction would effectually convince the world of the great truth that an hour had arrived in which neither that holy mountain on which it was built, nor any other in the whole world, was to be the scene of the exclusive worship of the Father. The sites of the Holy Places, however, have naturally excited much attention, and have been well illustrated by several distinguished resident members of our University, and also by a foreign gentleman who for some time resided among us. Dr Pierotti had the singular good fortune to discover the subterranean drains by which the blood of the victims, slaughtered in the Temple, was carried off; and this discovery afforded valuable aid in determining various previously disputed matters in connexion with the Temple. He likewise came upon some masonry in the form of bevelled stones below the surface, which was not unreasonably supposed to belong to Solomon’s Temple; but it now appears that this opinion is doubtful. Besides these, we have the sepulchres of the patriarchs at Hebron, guarded with scrupulous jealousy; and tanks at the same place, which may be as old as the time of David, and perhaps one or two things more of a similar kind. We may well hope that the explorations which are now being set on foot for bringing to light the antiquities of Palestine may add to their number.

In the relation of Jewish archæology to Jewish history we have a case quite different to all those that have gone before it: there the native archæology was more or less extensive, the independent native literature scanty or non-existent; here, where the archæology is almost blotted out, is it precisely the reverse. We have in the sacred books of the Old Testament an ample literary history: we have scarcely any monumental remains of regal Judæa at all. With regard to the New Testament the matter is otherwise; archæological illustrations, as well as literary, exist in abundance, and some very striking proofs from archæology have been adduced of the veracity and trustworthiness of its authors. My predecessor bestowed great attention on the numismatic and other monumental illustrations of Scripture, and herein set a good example to all that should come after him. Archæology is worthily employed in illustrating every kind of ancient literature; most worthily of all does she occupy herself in the illustration and explanation and confirmation of the sacred writings, of the Book of books.

The antiquities of Phœnicia need not detain us long. Opposite to Aradus is an open quadrangular enclosure, excavated in rock, with a throne in the centre for the worship of Astarte and Melkarth; this is the only Phœnician temple discovered in Phœnicia, except a small monolithal temple at Ornithopolis, about nine miles from Tyre, of high antiquity, dedicated apparently to Astarte. I wish however to direct your attention to the characteristic feature of Phœnician architecture, its enormous blocks of stone bevelled at the joints. You have them in the walls of Aradus and in other places in Phœnicia. They are also found in the temple of the Sun at Baalbec, and may with great probability, I conceive, be regarded as Phœnician; though the rest of the beautiful architectural remains there are Greco-Roman of the Imperial period, and perhaps the best specimens of their kind in existence. Among other Phœnician antiquities we have sarcophagi, and sepulchral chambers for receiving them, also very beautiful variegated glass found over a good part of Europe and Asia, commonly called Greek, but perhaps more reasonably presumed to be Phœnician. Most of the remains found on the sites of the Phœnician settlements are either so late Phœnician, or so little Phœnician at all, as at Carthage, that I shall make no apology for passing over both them, and the few exceptions also, just alluding however to the existence of a remarkable hypæthral temple in Malta, which I myself saw nearly twenty years ago, not long, I believe, after it was uncovered. With regard to the strange vaulted towers of Sardinia, called Nuraggis, they may be Phœnician or Carthaginian, but their origin is uncertain. “All Phœnician monuments,” says Mr Kenrick, “in countries unquestionably occupied by the Phœnicians are recent[12].” He makes the remark in reference to the Lycian archæology. Whether the Lycians were of Phœnician origin or not, their rock-temples and rock-tombs, abounding in sculptures (illustrative both of their mythology and military history), shew that they were not much behind the Greeks in the arts. With the general appearance of their Gothic-like architecture, and of their strange bilingual inscriptions, Greek and Lycian, we are of course familiarised by the Lycian Room in the British Museum. With regard to the relation of Phœnician and Lycian archæology to the history of the peoples themselves, it must be sufficient to say, that their history, both literary and monumental, is quite fragmentary; in the case of Phœnicia the literary notices perhaps preserve more to us than the monumental; in regard to Lycia the remark must rather be reversed.

Footnote 12:

_Phœnicia_, p. 88. London, 1855. See also Smith’s _Dict. of Greek and Roman Geography_, s. v. Phœnicia and Lycia.

From Phœnicia, which first carried letters to Greece, let us also pass to Greece. But Greece, in the sense in which I shall use it, includes not only Greece Proper, but many parts of Asia Minor, as well as Sicily and the Great Greece of Italy. And here I must unwillingly be brief, and make the splendid extract from Canon Marsden, quoted before, in some degree do duty for me. But think for a minute first on its architecture, I do not mean its earliest remains, such as the Cyclopian walls and the lion-gate at Mycenæ, and the so-called treasury of Atreus, which ascend to the heroic ages or farther back, but its temple architecture. Before I can name them, images of the Parthenon, the Erectheum, the temple of Jupiter Panhellenius at Ægina, the temple of Apollo Epicurius at Phigalia or Bassæ, that of Concord (so-called) at Agrigentum, the most perfect in Sicily, the three glorious Doric temples of Pæstum, the Ionic ruins of Branchidæ, will, I am confident, have arisen before your eyes. Many of us perhaps have seen some of them; if not, we all feel as though we had. Think of its sepulchral monuments, which are in the form of temples; and first of Queen Artemisia’s Mausoleum, the most splendid architectural expression of conjugal affection that has ever existed, the wonder of the world, with its colossal statue of her husband and its bas-reliefs by Bryaxis and Scopas and other principal sculptors; and remember that we have these in our national museum. Various fine rock-tombs, likewise in the form of temples, occur in Asia Minor, _e.g._ that of Midas at Nacoleia, the Lion-tomb at Cnidus, the necropolis at Telmessus.

The transition from temples and tombs to statuary is easy, as these were more or less decorated with its aid. Although we still possess the great compositions of some of the first sculptors and brass-casters, for example, the Quoit-thrower of Myron, the Diadumenos of Polycleitus, (_i.e._ a youth binding his head with a fillet in token of an athletic victory,) and perhaps several of the Venuses of Praxiteles; yet it is needless for me to remind you that these with few exceptions are considered to be copies, not originals. But yet there are exceptions. “The extant relics of Greek sculpture,” says Mr Bunbury, “few and fragmentary as they undoubtedly are, are yet in some degree sufficient to enable us to judge of the works of the ancient masters in this branch of art. The metopes of Selinus, the Æginetan, the Elgin, and the Phigaleian marbles, to which we now add the noble fragments recently brought to this country from Halicarnassus, not only serve to give us a clear and definite idea of the progress of the art of sculpture, but enable us to estimate for ourselves the mighty works which were so celebrated in antiquity[13].” Of bronzes of the genuine Greek period, which we may call their metal statuary, the most beautiful that occur to my remembrance are those of Siris, now in the British Museum. They are considered by Brönsted to agree in the most remarkable and striking manner with the distinctive character of the school of Lysippus. But most of the extant bronzes are, I believe, of the Roman period, executed however, like their other best works, by Greco-Roman artists.

Footnote 13:

_Edinburgh Review_ for 1858, Vol. CVIII. p. 382. I follow common fame in assigning this article to Mr Bunbury; few others indeed were capable of writing it. Besides the sculptures named by him we have in the British Museum a bas-relief by Scopas, as it is thought, who may also be the author of the Niobid group at Florence; likewise the Ceres (so-called) from Eleusis, and the statue of Pan from Athens, now in our Fitzwilliam Museum. For other antique statues and bronzes and for the later copies see Müller’s _Ancient Art_, passim.

With the Greek schools of painting, Attic, Asiatic, and Sicyonian, no less celebrated than their sculpture, it has fared far worse. There is not one of their works surviving; no, not one. Of these schools and their paintings I need not here say anything, as I am concerned only with the archæological monuments which are now in existence. But the loss is compensated in some degree by the paintings on vases, in which we may one day recognise the compositions of the various great masters of the different schools, just as in the majolica and other wares of the 16th and following centuries we have the compositions of Raffaelle, Giulio Romano, and other painters. “The glorious art of the Greek painters,” says K. O. Müller, the greatest authority for ancient art generally, “as far as regards light, tone, and local colours, is wholly lost to us; and we know nothing of it except from obscure notices and later imitations;” (referring, I suppose, to the frescoes of Herculaneum and of Pompeii more especially;) “on the contrary, the pictures on vases with thinly scattered bright figures give us the most exalted idea of the progress and achievements of the art of design, if we venture, from the workmanship of common handicraftsmen, to draw conclusions as to the works of the first artists[14].” But of this matter and of the vases themselves, which rank among the most graceful remains of Greek antiquity, and are found over the whole Greek world, I shall say no more now, as they will form the subject of my following lectures. We have also many terra cottas of delicate Greek workmanship, mostly plain, but some gilded, others painted, from Athens, as well as from a great variety of other places, of which the finest are now at Munich. Relief ornaments, sometimes of great beauty, in the same material, were impressed with moulds, and Cicero, in a letter to Atticus, wishes for such _typi_ from Athens, in order to fix them on the plaster of an atrium. Most of those which now remain seem to be of Greco-Roman times.

Footnote 14:

_Ancient Art and its Remains_, p. 119. Translated (with additions from Welcker) by Leitch. London, 1852. This invaluable work is a perfect thesaurus for the student, and will conduct him to the most trustworthy authorities on every branch of the subject.

Of the art of coinage invented by the Greeks and carried by them to the highest perfection which it has ever attained, a few words must now be said. The history of a nation, said the first Napoleon, is its coinage: and the art which the Greeks invented became soon afterwards, and now is, the history of the world. Numismatics are the epitome of all archæological knowledge, and any one who is versed in this study must by necessity be more or less acquainted with many others also. Architecture, sculpture, iconography, topography, palæography, the public and private life of the ancients and their mythology, are all illustrated by numismatics, and reciprocally illustrate them.

Numismatics give us also the succession of kings and tyrants over the whole Greek world. In the case of Bactria or Bactriana, whose capital Bactra is the modern Balk, this value of numismatics is perhaps most conspicuous. From coins, and from coins almost alone, we obtain the succession of kings, beginning with the Greek series in the third century B.C., and going on with various dynasties of Indian language and religion, till we come down to the Mohammedan conquest. “Extending through a period of more than fifteen centuries,” says Professor H. H. Wilson, “they furnish a distinct outline of the great political and religious vicissitudes of an important division of India, respecting which written records are imperfect or deficient[15].”

Footnote 15:

_Ariana Antiqua_, p. 439. London, 1841. For the more recent views of English and German numismatists on these coins, see Mr Thomas’s _Catalogue of Bactrian Coins_ in the Numismatic Chronicle for 1857, Vol. XIX. p. 13 sqq.

Coins are so much more durable than most other monuments, that they frequently survive, when the rest have perished. This is well put by Pope in his Epistle to Addison, on his Discourse on Medals:

Ambition sighed, she saw it vain to trust The faithless column and the crumbling bust, Huge moles whose shadows stretched from shore to shore, Their ruins perished and their place no more. Convinced she now contracts her vast design, And all her triumphs shrink into a coin. A narrow orb each crowded conquest keeps, Beneath her palm here sad Judæa weeps; Now scantier limits the proud arch confine; And scarce are seen the prostrate Nile or Rhine; A small Euphrates thro’ the piece is rolled, And little eagles wave their wings in gold. The Medal, faithful to its charge of fame, Through climes and ages bears each form and name; In one short view subjected to our eye, Gods, emperors, heroes, sages, beauties, lie.

Regarded simply as works of art the coins of Magna Græcia and Sicily, more especially those of Syracuse and its tyrants, as well as those of Thasos, Opus, and Elis, also the regal coins of Philip, Alexander, Mithridates, and some of the Seleucidæ, are amongst the most exquisite productions of antiquity. Not even in gem-engraving, an art derived by Greece from Egypt and Assyria, but carried by her to the highest conceivable perfection, do we find anything superior to these. I must, before quitting the subject of numismatics, congratulate the University on the acquisition of one of the largest and most carefully selected private collections of Greek coins ever formed, viz. the cabinet of the late Col. Leake, which is now one of the principal treasures of the Fitzwilliam Museum.

Inferior as gems are to coins in most archæological respects, especially in respect of their connection with literary history, and though not superior to the best of them artistically, gems have nevertheless one advantage over coins, that they are commonly quite uninjured by time. Occasionally (it is true) this is the case with coins; but with gems it is the rule. Of course, to speak generally, the art of gems, whose material is always more or less precious, is superior to that of coins, which were often carelessly executed, as being merely designed for a medium of commercial exchange. High art would not usually spend itself upon small copper money, but be reserved for the more valuable pieces, especially those of gold and silver[16]. The subjects of gems are mostly mythological, or are connected with the heroic cycle; a smaller, but more interesting number, presents us with portraits, which however are in general uninscribed. At the same time, by comparing these with portrait-statues and coins we are able to identify Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Demosthenes, Alexander the Great, several of the Ptolemies, and a few others; most of which may have been engraved by Greco-Roman artists. But the catalogue of authentic portraits preserved to us, both Greek and Roman, is, as K. O. Müller observes, now very much to be thinned.

Footnote 16:

This remark however must not be pressed too closely. Certain small Greek copper coins of Italy, Sicily, &c., are exceedingly beautiful.

With regard to ancient iconography in general, coins, without doubt, afford the greatest aid; but no certain coin-portraits are, I believe, earlier than Alexander[17]. The oldest Greek portrait-statue known to me is that of Mausolus, now in the British Museum; but the majority of the statues of Greek philosophers and others are probably to be referred to the Roman times, when the formation of portrait-galleries became a favourite pursuit. With the Greeks it was otherwise; the ideal was ever uppermost in their mind: they executed busts of Homer indeed and placed his head on many of their coins; but of course these were no more portraits than the statues of Jupiter and Pallas are portraits. With regard to the relation of Greek archæology to the history of Greece, both the monuments and the literature are abundant, and they mutually illustrate one another; and the same remark is more or less true for the histories of the nations afterwards to be mentioned, upon which I shall therefore not comment in this respect.

Footnote 17:

I am aware that there are reasons for believing that a Persian coin preserves a portrait of Artaxerxes Mnemon, who reigned a little earlier.

From Greece, who taught Rome most or all that she ever knew of the arts, we pass to the contemplation of the mistress of the world herself. She found indeed in her own vicinity an earlier civilisation, the Etruscan, whose archæological remains and history generally are amongst the most obscure and perplexing matters in all the world of fore-time. The sepulchral and other monuments of Etruria are often inscribed, but no ingenuity has yet interpreted them. The words of the Etruscan and other Italian languages have been recently collected by Fabretti. There is some story about a learned antiquary after many years’ research coming to the conclusion that two Etruscan words were equivalent to _vixit annos_, but which was _vixit_, and which _annos_, he was as yet uncertain. We have also Etruscan wall-paintings, and various miscellaneous antiquities in bronze, and among them the most salient peculiarity of Etruscan archæology not easily to be conjectured, its elegantly-formed bronze mirrors. These, which are incised with mythological subjects, and often inscribed, have attracted the especial attention of modern scholars and antiquaries, who have gazed upon them indeed almost as wistfully as the Tuscan ladies themselves.

But Greece had far more influence over Roman life and art than Etruria.

Græcia capta ferum victorem cepit, et artes Intulit agresti Latio.

Accordingly, Greek architecture (mostly of the later Corinthian style, which was badly elaborated into the Composite) was imported into Rome itself, and continued to flourish in the Greek provinces of the empire. Temples and theatres continued much as before; but the triumphal arch and column, the amphitheatre, the bath and the basilica, are peculiarly Roman.