Part 1

Transcriber’s Note

Superscripts are shown as ^{es}; italics are enclosed in _underscores_.

HELLENISTIC SCULPTURE

HELLENISTIC SCULPTURE

BY GUY DICKINS, M.A.

SOMETIME FELLOW AND LECTURER OF ST. JOHN’S COLLEGE, OXFORD AND LECTURER IN CLASSICAL ARCHAEOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

WITH A PREFACE BY PERCY GARDNER, LITT.D., F.B.A.

LINCOLN AND MERTON PROFESSOR OF CLASSICAL ARCHAEOLOGY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD

OXFORD AT THE CLARENDON PRESS 1920

INTRODUCTORY NOTE

Guy Dickins wrote these chapters on Hellenistic Sculpture as a brief sketch of the period to which he hoped to devote years of study. They foreshadow some of the theories which he intended to work out, and for that reason we believe that they will be useful to the student. There are obvious omissions, but no attempt has been made to fill up gaps in the manuscript, such as paragraphs on the Barberini Faun or the Attic Gaul, which were left blank in 1914.

The illustrations, which naturally must be limited in number, have been selected by me mainly on the principle of reproducing the less accessible pieces of sculpture while giving references to standard works for the others.

In preparing my husband’s manuscript for publication I have to acknowledge with gratitude the help of many friends. To Professor Percy Gardner I am particularly indebted for valuable advice and for his kindness in writing a preface to the volume; to Miss C. A. Hutton for her counsel throughout; and to Mr. Alan Wace for sending me photographs from Athens. I have also to thank the Hellenic Society, the Committee of the British School at Athens, and Dr. Caskey of the Boston Museum for permission to reproduce certain photographs.

MARY DICKINS.

OXFORD, March, 1920.

PREFACE

Among the losses which Oxford has suffered from the war, none is more to be regretted than that of the author of this volume. As an undergraduate, twenty years ago, Guy Dickins gave up his intention of entering the Indian Civil Service in order to devote himself to the study of Classical Archaeology, an allegiance from which he never swerved. In 1904 he went as Craven Fellow to the British School of Athens, and for five years lived mostly in Greece, studying and exploring. In 1909 he returned to Oxford as a Fellow of St. John’s College, and Lecturer in Ancient History. In 1914 he was appointed University Lecturer in Classical Archaeology; but before he could take up the duties of the post the great call came, and he obeyed it at once. A most efficient and able company commander, he served in the King’s Royal Rifle Corps. In July 1916 he died of wounds received in the battle of the Somme.

Before the war Dickins had been occupied in tasks of research, and in preparation for a teaching career. He had published several papers, and a volume of the catalogue of the Acropolis Museum. He had visited most of the museums of Europe, and brought back a large collection of photographs, which his widow has presented to the Ashmolean Museum. He was especially interested in Greek sculpture, and had intended to collect materials for a history of art in the Hellenistic Age, a subject which has been neglected, but which is of the greatest importance. Several of his papers, such as those on the followers of Praxiteles and on Damophon of Messene, show in what direction his mind was working, though at the same time he was ready to take part in all the projects and the excavations of the School of Athens.

The present volume, alas, is the only fruit which the study of antiquity is likely to reap from such continued and thorough preparation. Every reader will regret that it was not written on a far larger scale. But it was planned as part of a complete history of ancient sculpture. No doubt, had he lived, Dickins would have rewritten it in a more complete form. But as it stands it is far too valuable to lose, full of suggestion, and pointing the way to important lines of discovery. In my opinion it contains the best that has been written on the subject; and one rises from the reading of it with a keen regret that the author could not bring his harvest to completion.

Dickins possessed in a high degree two qualities necessary for the best work in archaeology. He was distinctly original, always preferring to look at things in a light not borrowed from books or teachers but his own. And he was at the same time of cool judgement and strong in common sense. One of his fellow officers told me that whenever he was in doubt as to the course to be followed in attack or defence he consulted Dickins, and accepted his advice. He did not, like many young archaeologists, delight in starting brilliant hypotheses; but was ever content in coming nearer to the truth, and setting it forth in orderly and sober fashion. Such qualities would have made him an invaluable factor in the teaching of archaeology in England. I am told that the undergraduates of his college always felt that he set before them a high standard, and had no sympathy with anything which was pretentious or meretricious. The same qualities appeared in two or three courses of lectures on recent excavation, which he gave at the Ashmolean Museum.

I add as an appendix a list of Dickins’s published works, with a summary of their purpose and contents. They are not great in extent; he was not a rapid worker; but every one of them is worthy of careful reading, and does something to advance our knowledge of Greek art and ancient life.

PERCY GARDNER.

CONTENTS

PAGE PREFACE vii

I. THE SCHOOL OF PERGAMON 1

II. THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA 19

III. THE RHODIAN SCHOOL 35

IV. THE MAINLAND SCHOOLS DURING THE HELLENISTIC AGE 53

V. GRECO-ROMAN SCULPTURE 68

APPENDIX. A LIST OF THE PUBLISHED WORKS OF THE AUTHOR 89

INDEX 95

ILLUSTRATIONS

1. Hermaphrodite. Constantinople _Frontispiece_

2. Marsyas. Constantinople _Frontispiece_

_Facing page_ 3. Dancing Satyr of Pompeii. Naples 8

4. Ludovisi Gaul. Rome, Museo Nazionale 8

5. Head of a Dead Persian. Rome, Museo Nazionale 12

6. Gaul’s Head. Cairo 12

7. Group from the Great Frieze of the Altar at Pergamon: Giant and Dog. Berlin 12

8. Group from the Telephos Frieze at Pergamon: Telephos and Herakles. Berlin 12

9. Apollo of Tralles. Constantinople 16

10. Ephebe of Tralles. Constantinople 16

11. Venus Anadyomene from Cyrenaica. Rome, Museo Nazionale 20

12. Sarapis of Bryaxis. British Museum 20

13. Girl’s Head from Chios. Boston, Fine Arts Museum 20

14. Bearded Head. Rome, Museo Capitolino 22

15. Zeus of Otricoli. Rome, Vatican 22

16. Isis. Louvre 22

17. Priest of Isis. Rome, Museo Capitolino 24

18. Capitol Venus. Rome, Museo Capitolino 24

19. Ariadne. Rome, Museo Capitolino 26

20. Inopos from Delos. Louvre 26

21. Dwarf from the Mahdia Ship 30

22. Old Woman. Dresden 30

23. Grimani Relief. Vienna 30

24. Nile. Rome, Vatican 30

25. Aphrodite and Triton. Dresden 34

26. Bronze Athlete from Ephesos. Vienna 34

27. Praying Boy. Berlin 38

28. Resting Hermes. Naples 38

29. Hero Resting on his Lance. Rome, Museo Nazionale 42

30. Jason. Louvre 42

31. Draped Figure from Magnesia. Constantinople 44

32. Eros and Psyche. Rome, Museo Capitolino 44

33. Draped Figure by Philiskos from Thasos. Constantinople 44

34. Victory of Samothrace. Louvre 46

35. Chiaramonti Odysseus. Rome, Vatican 50

36. Menelaos and Patroclos. Florence, Loggia dei Lanzi 50

37. Youthful Centaur. Rome, Museo Capitolino 52

38. Bearded Centaur. Rome, Museo Capitolino 52

39. Hermes of Andros. Athens, National Museum 54

40. Themis of Chairestratos. Athens, National Museum 54

41. Hermes from Atalanta. Athens, National Museum 54

42. Sleeping Hermaphrodite. Rome, Museo Nazionale 56

43. Victory of Euboulides. Athens, National Museum 58

44. Athena of Euboulides. Athens, National Museum 58

45. Group by Damophon (restored) 60

46. Anytos. Athens, National Museum 62

47. Artemis. Athens, National Museum 62

48. Veil of Despoina. Athens, National Museum 62

49. Poseidon of Melos. Athens, National Museum 64

50. Venus of Capua. Naples 64

51. Appiades of Stephanos. Louvre 72

52. Torso Belvedere. Rome, Vatican 72

53. Athlete of Stephanos. Rome, Villa Albani 72

Figs. 3, 7, 8, 15, 27, 28, and 53 are taken from casts in the Ashmolean Museum; figs. 4, 5, 11, 16, and 42 are from photographs by Alinari; figs. 12 and 21 are from photographs by the Hellenic Society; figs. 20, 30, 34, and 51 are from photographs by Giraudon; figs. 23 and 26 are from photographs by Frankenstein; fig. 29 is from a photograph by Anderson; figs. 36 and 50 are from photographs by Brogi; fig. 45 is reproduced by permission from the _Annual of the British School at Athens_, vol. xiii, Pl. XII.

I

THE SCHOOL OF PERGAMON

Most of the writers on Greek art agree in calling the Hellenistic period an age of decadence. The period is a long one, lasting from the death of Alexander to the Roman absorption of the Hellenistic kingdoms, i.e. from about 320 to later than 100 B.C. The lowest limit is marked by the Laocoon group, and the fact that some critics have seen in that wonderful monument the climax of Greek art may make us pause in a hasty generalization. The decadence of the Hellenistic age is due simply to its exaggeration of certain tendencies already present in the fourth century, tendencies which accompany the inevitable development of all art gradually away from the ideal and gradually closer to realistic imitation of nature. As long as the technical skill of the Hellenistic artist shows no sign of abating, it is unfair and untrue to call his work decadent. The term is only justly applicable when loss of idealism or growth of frivolity in subject is accompanied by a decline in execution, by a want of thoroughness, and by a desire to shirk difficulties.

It is true to say that Greek art on the mainland enters on a period of decadence in the third century, for its execution and expression grow steadily worse after 250 B.C., but it is interesting to note that it reverts to a greater idealism. The last great artist of the mainland, Damophon of Messene, might have been a member of the school of Pheidias save for an inadequate mastery of the chisel.

On the other hand, the schools of Pergamon, Alexandria, and Rhodes show no falling off in technical skill as long as they remain independent of Rome. Even their idealism does not wholly decline, for the Gallic victories of Attalos and Eumenes brought about an idealist revival in Pergamene art associated with the decoration of the great altar. Rhodes remained ever wedded to the athletic ideal. Alexandria delighted most in scenes of _genre_ and realistic imitations of nature. But all turned out work of marvellous quality, and it is mainly a vagary of fashion in criticism that now induces so many authorities to label as decadent wonderful masterpieces of sculpture like the Victory of Samothrace, the kneeling boy of Subiaco, or the Silenos with the young Dionysos. Works so full of human nature and so rich in sympathy may well claim to replace by their romantic appeal the classical feeling of the fifth century. It is only when romance becomes sentimentality that it meets with just condemnation.

The outstanding feature of the history of Greek sculpture during the Hellenistic period is the transference of its vital centres from the mainland to the new kingdoms of the Diadochi on the east and south and to the great new free state of Rhodes. The chief cause was an economic one. Alexander’s campaigns brought about a revival of prosperity and wealth in the Greek world, but among his friends and not among his enemies. Athens was always his enemy and the enemy of his Macedonian successors. Consequently during the whole period from the death of Alexander to the Roman conquest Athens was either under Macedonian rule or in danger of Macedonian attack. It was Macedonian policy to keep her weak and isolated, and her trading supremacy began to be transferred to the island of Delos. The great days of Attic art passed with the death of Praxiteles and the coming of Alexander. In the Peloponnese the pupils of Lysippos carried on into the third century the traditions of the Sikyonian school, but we can see from such knowledge as we possess of their activities that the wealth and fame of the new kingdoms were already calling the artists to abandon the impoverished towns of the mainland. The Peloponnese also opposed Alexander and his successors, and Macedonian garrisons held the chief fortresses of the country. We find Eutychides of Sikyon working for Antioch, and Chares working at Lindos in Rhodes. After the date given for the pupils of Lysippos in 296 B.C., Pliny makes the following significant statement: ‘cessavit deinde ars, ac rursus Olympiade CLVI (156 B.C.) revixit.’[1] For 150 years the history of artistic development must be studied on the eastern side of the Aegean.

After the preliminary conflicts between the successors of Alexander for the partition of the empire a number of new states arose, which are known to us usually as the kingdoms of the Diadochi or Successors. Of these the three most important were Macedonia, Syria, and Egypt, under the rule of Antigonids, Seleucids, and Ptolemies respectively. Of smaller importance, but quite independent and self-sustaining, were Bithynia, Pergamon, and the island republic of Rhodes, the latter being the only one which maintained its Hellenic democratic institutions. The attitude of these states towards art differs remarkably. Macedonia remained always a military monarchy in a condition of almost constant frontier war, and was wholly uninterested in artistic developments. Syria seems from the first to have fallen under Semitic and oriental influences, which destroyed its appreciation of the purer forms of Greek art. Bithynia, Pontos, and Cappadocia were barbarian rather than Greek. As a result, we find that the old artistic traditions are maintained prominently in three only of the new states: Pergamon, the home of the very Hellenic race of the Attalids; Rhodes, whose pure Hellenic descent was untouched; and Alexandria, which became practically a Greek town in the midst of an older Egyptian civilization.

The kingdom of Pergamon included the area of the old Ionian cities, and inherited, therefore, an artistic tradition as old as its own existence. It is no matter for surprise that its art-loving monarchs should have founded a great library and a great school of sculpture in open rivalry with the richer resources of Ptolemaic Alexandria. The art of Pergamon is well known to us from the magnificent groups and figures of the Gallic dedications of Attalos I after his victories about 240 B.C., and from the marvellous frieze of the altar excavated _in situ_ by the Germans, which belongs to the period of Eumenes II and the early second century. But before we come to these later developments of Pergamene art, it is important that we should discover the earliest tendencies and predilections of the Pergamene court in the first half of the third century. We are told[2] that the most remarkable work of Kephisodotos, the son of Praxiteles, was his ‘symplegma’ at Pergamon--probably an erotic group--which was noteworthy for its extraordinarily naturalistic rendering of the pressure of the fingers into the flesh. Such erotic groups of nymphs and satyrs or hermaphrodites exist in our museums, and are ultimately derived from this type of statue. Actual discoveries at Pergamon support this conception of early third-century Pergamene art. The well-known Hermaphrodite in Constantinople (Fig. 1) and a beautiful girl’s head in Berlin[3] show the extreme delicacy in the rendering of flesh and the fondness for a sensual body treatment which we might expect from an Ionian version of the schools of Scopas and Praxiteles. The existence of such a school in Ionia in the late fourth century is highly probable. The Pergamene school of the early third century would seem to be the later natural development of the creators of the Ephesos columns and the Niobids. Scopaic expression and Praxitelean flesh treatment are the hall-marks of the school. Another work of importance for the early Pergamene period is the Crouching Aphrodite type, so popular in Roman times. Of this statue Pliny tells us: ‘Venerem lavantem se Daedalus fecit.’[4] This Daedalus was a Bithynian artist of the early third century, who must have fallen under the general influence of the prevalent Pergamene school. His Aphrodite[5] shows exactly the artistic tendencies of the early Pergamene school. The motive is unimportant and frivolous--a _genre_ motive of a girl washing herself--but it is used for the purpose of demonstrating the technical skill of the artist in displaying the nude female form. The artist does not use all his skill in the effort to produce a noble or even a romantic ideal. The subject is immaterial, provided it affords a chance of showing his technical skill. The crouching attitude is a new one in art, and one well adapted for exhibiting the human body in all its variety. It appears again in the Attalid dedications, and was evidently a favourite at Pergamon. Another example is in the well-known Knife-Grinder of the Uffizi,[6] part of a great group of Marsyas, Apollo, and the Scythian slave, which we can certainly connect with this period of Pergamene art. The Knife-Grinder himself is a copy and not an original. That is made clear by his late plinth, in spite of his magnificent workmanship. But the finer copies of the hanging Marsyas, which belongs to the group, are in a Phrygian marble, betraying their Pergamene origin. These copies of the Marsyas are divided into two types: a so-called ‘red’ type (Fig. 2), made of the Phrygian marble, in which the expression of agony is more marked, and a white type[7] in which the face is less distorted. A theory has been put forward that the white type represents an early third-century prototype, while the red type is a Pergamene variation of rather later date.[8] We may, however, hesitate to see sufficient difference in the two types to make so wide a distinction. The white type may be merely a less masterly adaptation of the red. An Apollo torso[9] in Berlin from Pergamon with the right hand resting on the head agrees with a marble disc in Dresden[10] showing a similar figure confronted by the hanging Marsyas. We may therefore associate this figure as the third member of the group with Marsyas and the Knife-Grinder.[11] The Apollo is a seated figure of distinctly Praxitelean influence. The keen expression of the Knife-Grinder and the agonized face of the Marsyas may equally well be attributed to Scopaic teaching. We have a good example of this mixed tradition in early Pergamene art. Technically we are at once compelled to notice the immense advance in realism and anatomical study. The hanging Marsyas shows a correct appreciation of the effects of such a posture on swollen veins and strained abdomen. The corner of the mouth is drawn up in agony; the forehead is corrugated with rows of wrinkles; the hair, even on the chest, is matted with perspiration. One would say that so remarkable a statue could only be studied from nature, and one recalls the stories of Parrhasios, who is said to have used an actual model for his Prometheus Bound.[12] We are long past the time when sculptors worked from memory. Even Praxiteles was said to have made his Cnidian goddess with Phryne as a model. In the Knife-Grinder we may perhaps detect some of the earliest traces of that exaggeration of the muscles which will so soon affect athletic art.

One of the most important of the Pergamon finds was the little bronze satyr,[13] which has enabled us to associate with Pergamon a whole host of satyr types of more or less similar style. The Dancing Satyr of Pompeii (Fig. 3) and Athens, the Satyr of the Uffizi clashing cymbals,[14] with its replica in Dresden, and the Satyr turning round to examine his tail[15] are all variants of the new artistic cult of the satyr, a cult which seems to have had a Pergamene origin.[16] The satyr gave to the Pergamene artist just that opportunity for the display of wild and somewhat sensual enthusiasm which he wanted, for new and original poses, and for combination with his nymphs and bacchanals. In Phrygia especially orgiastic manifestations of religion were the regular practice, and dancing was both wild and universal. The new artistic conceptions show the clear influence of this spirit on the more restrained art of the fourth-century schools. The Dancing Maenad of Berlin,[17] the Aphrodite Kallipygos of Naples,[18] and the famous Sleeping Hermaphrodite[19] are further examples of the marvellous flesh treatment and the wild frenzy of movement which we learn to associate with third-century Pergamene art.