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A HANDBOOK
OF
GREEK SCULPTURE
A HANDBOOK
OF
GREEK SCULPTURE
BY
ERNEST AETHUR GARDNER, M.A.
LATE FELLOW OF GONVILLE AND CAIUS COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, AND FORMERLY
DIRECTOR OF THE BRITISH SCHOOL OF ARCHAEOLOGY AT ATHENS ;
YATES PROFESSOR OF ARCHAEOLOGY IN UNIVERSITY
COLLEGE, LONDON
London
MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED
NEW YORK : THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1897
All rights reserved
*• „
V.SL
\
PREFACE
IN addition to the authorities quoted in the preface issued with the first part of this handbook, one other calls for especial notice here. This/ it need hardly be said, is Professor Furt- wangler's Meisterwerke der griechischen Plastik, or, in its English version by Miss Eugenie Sellers, Masterpieces of Greek Sculpture. I had occasion to quote this work more than once in Part L; but, from the nature of the subject) it has been far more fre- quently in my hands while I was writing Part II., and I have to acknowledge my indebtedness to Professor Furtwangler's wonderful knowledge and observation in many instances where I have not felt able to embody his conclusions in the text of a handbook for students.
In dealing with the later portion of the history of sculpture, I have endeavoured to follow the same principles as in the earlier portion, and consequently I am again precluded from the discussion of many interesting problems as to which I do not feel justified in expressing a dogmatic opinion, while I have not space to give, even in summary, the arguments on each side.
I regret that I am unable to fulfil my conditional promise of an appendix on the discoveries of the French excavators at Delphi, no official publication having as yet been issued.
It is only fair both to M. Collignon and to myself to state
vi A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE
that I had not the advantage of seeing the second volume his Histoire de la Sculpture Grecque before the proof-sheets of t volume were out of my hands.
Arrangements have been made by the Teachers' Guild placing at the disposal of its members a series of lantern-sli< to illustrate the history of sculpture ; these slides have b( prepared from the material that has been used for the illust tions of this handbook, and they are numbered to correspoi They may be seen at the Educational Museum of the Gui 74 Gower Street, London, W.C., where inquiries may addressed to the Hon. Curators.
The present volume contains a full index, compiled Mrs. Ernest Gardner, to both parts of the handbook.
My brother, Professor Percy Gardner of Oxford, has agi read the proof-sheets, and I have to thank him for many va able corrections and suggestions.
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON,
November 1896.
CONTENTS
PAGE
SELECT BIBLIOGRAPHY . xi
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS . . . xv
XOTE • xviii
CHAPTER III— (continued) THE FIFTH CENTURY (480-400 B.C.) — (continued]
35. SCULPTURE OF THE PARTHENON . . . 267
36. OTHER ATHENIAN SCULPTURES — THESEUM, ERECHTHEUM,
TEMPLE OF WINGLESS VICTORY, ETC. . . . 294
37. SCHOLARS OF PHIDIAS — AGORACRITUS, COLOTES, THEOCOSMUS,
ALCAMENES ....... 304
38. SCHOLARS OF CALAMIS AND MYRON, AND OTHER ATTIC SCULP-
TORS ..... 313
39. ATTIC INFLUENCE OUTSIDE ATHENS ; PHIGALIA . . 321
40. POLYCLITUS .... 324
41. SCHOLARS OF POLYCLITUS ..... 337
42. OTHER SCULPTORS AND WORKS OF THIS PERIOD . .341
43. SUMMARY . 347
viii A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE
CHAPTER IV
THE FOURTH CENTURY (400-320 B.C.)
§ 44. CHARACTER OF THE PERIOD 45. CEPHISODOTUS (46) PRAXITELES
47. SlLANION AND ElJPHRANOR
48. TIMOTHEUS, BRYAXIS, LEOCHARES
49. SCOPAS .... . .
f§y THE MAUSOLEUM .
51. ATTIC TOMBSTONES .....
52. THRASYMEDES AND DAMOPHON ....
53. LYSIPPUS ... ...
54. PUPILS OF LYSIPPUS .....
55. OTHER SCULPTURES OF THE PERIOD
56. SUMMARY . ....
CHAPTER Y
THE HELLENISTIC AGE (320-100 B.C.)
§ 57. THE INFLUENCE OF ALEXANDER
(58.)CHiEF CENTRES OF SCULPTURE IN THE HELLENISTIC AGE /"5&-THE PASTORAL TENDENCY — HELLENISTIC RELIEFS
60T BOETHUS, AND CHILDREN IN SCULPTURE
61. CHARES, AND THE COLOSSUS OF RHODES
62. EUTYCHIDES AND THE IMPERSONATION OF ClTIES
63. PORTRAITURE ......
64. HISTORY OF THE DEDICATIONS OF THE ATTALIDS
65. THE DEDICATIONS OF ATTALUS I.
CONTENTS ix
PAGE
§ 66. THE DEDICATIONS OF EUMENES II. . . . 459
67. THE RHODIAX SCHOOL — THE LAOCOON .... 468 .68. TRALLES — THE FARNESE BULL . . . . .472
69. THE EPHESIAN SCHOOL — AGASIAS .... 475
70. LATER IDEALS OF THE GODS ; APOLLO BELVEDERE, APHRODITE
OF MELOS, ETC. ...... 477
71. OTHER WORKS OF THE HELLENISTIC AGE . . . 485
72. SUMMARY ........ 490
CHAPTER VI
GRAECO-ROMAN AND ROMAN SCULPTURE
§ 73. HISTORICAL AND SOCIAL CHANGES .... 493
74. THE CARRYING OFF OF MASTERPIECES .... 495
75. CENTRES OF ART AND MIGRATION OF ARTISTS . . 496
76. STATUES OF THE GODS ...... 497
77. WORKS OF THE NEO-ATTIC SCHOOL . . . 501
78. ARCESILAUS ....... 505
79. PASITELES AND HIS SCHOOL ..... 508
80. PORTRAITURE ....... 512
81. HISTORICAL MONUMENTS ..... 516
82. ANTINOUS AND THE HADRIANIC REVIVAL . . . 517
83. SARCOPHAGI ....... 519
84. SUMMARY ... .... 521
INDEX ......... 523
INDEX OF SCULPTORS (for Part II.) 551
SELECT BIBLIOGKAPHY
General Histories
BRUNN, HEINRICH. Geschichte der griechischen Kiinstler. Vol. I., Bild- hauer, 1852. (Eeprinted Stuttgart, 1889.)
Griechische Kunstgeschichte. Part I. (all issued). Munich, 1893. COLLIGNON, MAXIME. Histoire de la Sculpture grecque. Vol. I. Paris, 1892.
Vol. II. 1896.
MITCHELL, LUCY. History of Ancient Sculpture. London, 1883. MURRAY, A. S. History of Greek Sculpture. London, 1880-1883. 2nd
edition, London, 1890. OVERBECK, J. Geschichte der griechischen Plastik. 3rd edition, Leipzig,
1881-82 ; 4th edition, Leipzig, 1895. PERROT and CHIPIEZ. Histoire de 1'Art dans FAntiquite'. Paris, 1891 — .
Vol. I. L'Egypte ; Vol. II. Chalde'e et Assyrie ; Vol. III. Phenicie,
Cypre ; Vol. IV. Sardaigne, Judee, Asie Mineure ; Vol. V. Perse, etc. :
Vol. VI. Grece primitive. (English translation also issued.) PERRY. Greek and Roman Sculpture. London, 1882. TARBELL. A History of Greek Art. Meadville, 1896. L. E. UPCOTT. Introduction to Greek Sculpture. Oxford, 1887.
Inscriptions relating to Sculptors LO'WY. Inschriften griechischer Bildhauer. Leipzig, 1885.
Ancient Authorities
OVERBECK, J. Die antiken Schriftquellen zur Geschichte der bildenden
Kiinste bei den Griechen. Leipzig, 1868. JONES, H. STUART. Select passages from ancient authors illustrative of the
history of Greek Sculpture. London, 1895.
xii A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE
PAUSANIAS. Descriptio Graeciae. Ed. Hitzig and Bliimner. Part I. Berlin,
1896.
PAUSANIAS. Descriptio Graeciae. Ed. Frazer. PLINY. Bks. xxxiv. and xxxvi. Ed. K. Jex Blake and E. Sellers. London,
1896. LUCIAN. Imagines, Jupiter Tragoedus, etc.
Coins reproducing Statues
F. IMHOOF-BLUMER and P. GARDNER. Numismatic Commentary on Pau- sanias. (Reprinted from the Journal of Hellenic Studies, 1885, 1886, 1887.) P. GARDNER. Types of Greek Coins. Cambridge, 1883.
Books dealing with portions of the subject
FURTW ANGLER, A. Meisterwcrke der griechisclien Plastik. Leipzig-Berlin, 1893.
Masterpieces of Greek Sculpture, transl. E. Sellers. London, 1895. NEWTON, Sir C. T. Essays on Art and Archaeology. London, 1880. BAUMEISTER. Denkmaler des klassischen Altertums ; Articles on Sculpture
and Sculptors. Munich and Leipzig, 1884-88. OVERBECK. Kunstmythologie. Leipzig, 1871-1889. ROSCHER. Lexikon der griechisclien und romischen Mythologie ; Articles on
Artistic Types of Gods. Leipzig, 1884. BRUNN. Griechische Gb'tterideale. Munich, 1893. SCHUCHHARDT. Schliemann's Ausgrabungen. Leipzig, 1890. Schliemann's
Excavations, transl. E. Sellers. London, 1891.
MILCHHOFER, A. Anfange der Kunst in Griechenland. Leipzig, 1883. CURTIUS and ADLER. Olympia (official publication). Berlin, 1890 — . Vol.
III. Die Bildwerke in Stein und Marmor (Treu). Vol. IV. Die Bronzen
(Furtwangler).
WALDSTEIN, C. Essays on the Art of Pheidias. Cambridge, 1885. PETERSEN. Kunst des Phidias. Berlin, 1873. COLLIGNON. Phidias. Paris, 1886. MICHAELIS. Der Parthenon. Leipzig, 1871. BENNDORF. Das Herob'n von Gjolbaschi-Trysa. Vienna, 1889. PARIS, P. Polyclete. Paris, 1895. URLIOHS. Skopas. Greifswald, 1863. STARK. Niobe und die Niobiden. Leipzig, 1863. HAMDY-BEY and TH. REINACH. Necropole royale a Sidon. Paris, 1896.
BIBLIOGRAPHY xin
SCHREIBER, TII. Die hellenistischen Eelietbilder. Leipzig, 1889. FURTWANGLER, A. Der Dornauszieher und der Knabe mit der Gans. Berlin,
1876.
Der Satyr aus Pergamon. Berlin, 1880. HAUSER. Die neu-Attischen Reliefs. Stuttgart, 1889. ROBERT C. Die antiken Sarcophagreliefs. Berlin, 1890 — .
Technical
BLUMNER, H. Technologic und Terminologie der Gewerbe und Kiinste.
Leipzig, 1875. LEPSIUS, R. Griechische Marmorstudien. Berlin 1890.
Illustrations, apart from publications of particular Collections or Museums
BRUNN-BRUCKMANN. Denkmaler der griechischen und rtimischen Plastik.
Munich, 1888—.
RAYET, 0. Monuments de 1'Art antique. Paris, 1884. Monuments grecs. Publies par la Socie'te pour 1'encouragement des Etudes
grecs. Paris, 1872—.
These are all photographic — the following, having only outlines, are useful for types only, but not for style.
MtJLLER-WiESELER. Denkmaler der alten Kunst. Gottingen, 1854-77. CLARAC. Muse'e de Sculpture. Paris, 1841.
Catalogue
In addition to the official catalogues of the various Museums of antiquities and casts,
FRIEDERICHS-WOLTERS. Bausteine zur Geschichte der griechisch-romischen Plastik ; die Gipsabgiisse antiker Bildwerke. Berlin, 1885.
Periodicals
Journal of Hellenic Studies. London, 1880 — .
American Journal of Archaeology. Boston and Baltimore, 1885 — .
Bulletin de Correspondence Hellenique. Athens, 1877 — .
Gazette Archeologique. Paris, 1875 — .
Revue Archeologique. Paris, 1844 — .
Gazette des Beaux-Arts. Paris, 1859—.
xiv A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE
/•Annali e Monument! del Institute di Corrispondenza Archeologica. Rome
1829-1885. lArchaologische Zeitung. Berlin, 1843-1885.
After 1885 continued by
Jahrbuch des k. deutschen archaologischen Instituts. Berlin, 1886 — . Antike Denkmaler des k. deutschen archaologischen Instituts. Berlin,
1886—.
Mittheilungeu des k. deutschen archaologischen Instituts. Rome, 1886 — . „ ,, ,, :, ,, Athens, 1875 — .
'E(f>T)[j,epis 'ApxaioXoyiKr/. Athens, 1883—.
LIST OF ILLUSTEATIONS
FIG. PAGE
56. Metope of Parthenon (British Museum) . . . .271
57. Metope of Parthenon (British Museum) .... 272
58. Carrey's drawing of E. pediment of Parthenon (after Berlin Antike
Denkmaler, I. 6 and 6a) . . . . 275
59. Carrey's drawing of W. pediment of Parthenon (after Berlin Antike
Denkmaler I. 6a) . . . . .275
60. De Laborde Head, from a cast (Paris, private collection) . . 283
61. "Theseus," from E. pediment of Parthenon (British Museum) . 284
62. Cephisus (Ilissus), from W. pediment of Parthenon (British Museum) 285
63. "The Fates," from E. pediment of Parthenon (British Museum) . 286
64. Slab from N. frieze of Parthenon (Athens, Acropolis Museum) . 290
65. Group of Gods (Poseidon, Dionysus, Demeter (?)), from E. frieze
of Parthenon (Athens, Acropolis Museum) . . 291
66. Metope of Theseum ; Theseus and Cercyon (after Mon. List. , X.
xliv. 2) . . . . . .296
67. Metope of Theseum ; Theseus and Bull (after Mon. Inst. , X. xliii. 2 297
68. Victory binding sandal, from Balustrade of temple of Wingless
Victory (Athens, Acropolis Museum) . . . 299
69. Caryatid, from Erechtheum (British Museum) . . .301
70. "Mourning Athena" (Athens, Acropolis Museum) . . 302
71. Relief from Eleusis (Athens, National Museum) . . . 303
72. Portrait of Pericles, probably after Cresilas (British Museum) . 317
73. Slab from Phigalian frieze ; Heracles (British Museum) . . 322
74. Doryphorus, after Polyclitus (Naples) .... 328
75. Diadumenus from Vaison, after Polyclitus (British Museum) . 330
76. Amazon, after Polyclitus (Rome, Vatican) .... 333
77. Amazon, Capitoline type (Rome, Vatican) . : . 334
t
xvi A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE
FIG. PAGE
78. Amazon Mattel (Rome, Vatican) ..... 335
79. Head from Heraeum, near Argos (Athens, National Museum) . 340
80. Victory by Paeonius (Olympia) . . . . 342
81. Irene and Plutus, after Cephisodotus (Munich) . . . 353
82. Hermes and infant Dionysus, by Praxiteles (Olympia) . . 357
83. Head of Hermes, by Praxiteles (Olympia) .... 358
84. Aphrodite of Cnidus, after Praxiteles (Rome, Vatican). From
J. H. S., PI. Ixxx. . . . . . . 361
85. Satyr, after Praxiteles (Rome, Capitol) . . . .365
86. Relief from Mantinean basis ; Apollo and Marsyas (Athens,
National Museum) ...... 367
87. Amazon from pediment at Epidaurus (Athens, National Museum) 373
88. Ganymede, after Leochares (Rome, Vatican) . . . 375
89. Heads from pediment at Tegea by Scopas (Athens, National
Museum). After Berlin Antike Denkmaler, I. 35 (from
cast) ........ 379
90. Portrait of Mausolus (British Museum) .... 388
91. Slab from large frieze of Mausoleum, with Amazons (British
Museum) ....... 390
92. Charioteer from small frieze of Mausoleum (British Museum) . 391
93. Tombstone of Hegeso (Athens, Ceramicus) .... 395
94. Tombstone of Dexileos (Athens, Ceramicus) . . . 396
95. Asclepius, from Epidaurus, probably after statue by Thrasymedes
(Athens, National Museum) .... 398
96. Heads of Anytus and Artemis, from group by Damophon at Lyco-
sura (Athens, National Museum) .... 401
97. Drapery from group by Damophon at Lycosura (Athens, National
Museum) ....... 402
ft§. Apoxyomenus, after Lysippus (Rome, Vatican) . . . 407
99. Demeter, from Cnidus (British Museum) .... 415
100. Head of Asclepius, from Melos (British Museum) . . 417
101. Head from S. of Acropolis (Athens, National Museum) . . 418
102. Drum of column from Ephesus (British Museum) . . 420
103. Niobe and her youngest daughter (Florence, Uffizi) . . 422
104. Niobid Chiaramonti (Rome, Vatican) .... 424
105. Son of Niobe (Florence, Uffizi) . . . . .425
106. N. side of Alexander Sarcophagus (Constantinople). After
Hamdy-Bey and Reinach, Necropole de Sidon, PI. xxix. . 429
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xvii
FIG. PAGE
107. Head of Alexander (British Museum) . . . .436
108. Hellenistic relief ; Dionysus visiting a dramatic poet (British
Museum) ..... .439
.*409. Boy and goose, after Boethus (Louvre) .... 443
1W? Antioch, after Euty chides (Rome, Vatican) . . . 447
ti-1. Dying Gaul (Rome, Capitol) . . . . .455
14Q-. Dead Amazon and Giant, after Pergamene group on Acropolis at
Athens (Naples) ...... 459
•tl£r Fighting Persian, after Pergamene group on Acropolis at Athens
(Rome, Vatican) ...... 460
114. Group from Pergamene Altar ; Zeus and Giants (Berlin) . . 463
. 115. Group from Pergamene Altar ; Athena, Giants, Earth (Berlin) . 465 -«6. Laocoon (Rome, Vatican) . . . . . .471
117. Farnese Bull (Naples) ...... 474
118. Borghese Warrior, by Agasias (Louvre) . . . 476
119. Apollo Belvedere (Rome, Vatican) . . . .479 420. Artemis of Versailles (Louvre) . . . . .481 -421. Aphrodite from Melos (Louvre) . . .483 -132. Victory from Samothrace (Louvre) .... 486 123. Head from Eleusis, known as "Eubuleus" (Athens, National
Museum) ..... .488
424. Venus dei Medici (Florence, Uffizi) . . . .500
125. Farnese Heracles, by Glycon (Naples) .... 503
126. Marble Vase with relief, by Sosibius (Louvre). After Bouillon III.
Vases et Urnes, PL 8 . . . . , 504
127. Venus Genetrix, probably after Arcesilaus (Louvre) . , 506
128. Orestes and Electra, Pasitelean group (Naples) . . ,511
129. Portrait of Julius Caesar (British Museum) . . . 514
130. Relief ; portrait of Antinous (Rome, Villa Albani) . , 518
NOTE
Since I have not accepted, as conclusively proved, Professor Furtwangler's identification of the Lemnian Athena by Phidias, I regret the more that I have, in my desire for brevity, made a slightly incorrect statement of the evidence on which the identification is based. On page 265 I stated that the head of the Athena at Dresden " is made in a separate piece, and the Bologna head exactly fits the socket." The Bologna head fits the socket not of the complete Atnena at Dresden, but of a headless duplicate of the same statue, also at Dresden. My scepticism as to the identification of the statue as the Lemnian Athena of Phidias has met with some criticism both here and in Germany ; but if it leads my readers to weigh the evidence more carefully for themselves, my purpose will be attained, even though they may differ from me in their conclusion.
CHAPTER III— (continued) THE FIFTH CENTURY — 480-400 B.C. — (continued)
§ 35. Sculpture of the Parthenon. — It probably would not have occurred to any Greek to quote the sculptures of the Parthenon among the finest examples of the art of his country, still less to point to them as preserving the worthiest record of the genius of Phidias. While such works as the Athena Parthenos and the Olympian Zeus were still extant, mere architectural sculp- tures, however perfect their execution, and however eminent the master to whom they owed their design, could only occupy a secondary position. But now that the great statues from the master's own hand, of which every Greek thought when he mentioned the name of Phidias, are either entirely lost to us, or only preserved in copies that can convey but a poor and inadequate notion of the originals, sculptures like those of the Parthenon have acquired for us a value which they did not possess in classical times. Mutilated and fragmentary as they are, they yet preserve for us the direct impress of the master's genius, if not the touch of his hand. They are no late copies, contaminating the character of the highest period of Greek sculpture with many features belonging to later times, but were made under the direct supervision of the designer, although their execution may in some cases show the sign of other handi- work ; and we may be confident that any peculiarities which we may notice in them are due, if not to the master himself, at least to the group of pupils and craftsmen who lived under his influence and formed his immediate surrounding.
It may be questioned how far we are justified in claiming for the sculpture of the Parthenon so direct a relation to Phidias himself. We shall see that there are, in different parts of this
T
268 A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE CHAP.
sculpture, especially the metopes and some portions of the frieze, not only inequalities of execution, but actual differences of style and design, such as imply a considerable amount of freedom in the work of the various individual sculptors em- ployed. But, on the other hand, there is a character about the whole sculpture, and especially about the more conspicuous parts of it — such as the pediments — which has impressed all artists and critics as differing essentially from everything else which we possess, and as worthy of attribution to the greatest of all sculptors. We are informed that Phidias was entrusted with the general supervision of the wonderful artistic activity which marked the supremacy of Pericles in the Athenian state. The crowning work of all was the Parthenon. There can be no doubt that it was intended not only as the worthy shrine of Athena in the midst of her chosen city, but also as the monu- ment that summed up and contained in itself all the glory of Athens, and all the beauty, moderation, and wisdom of life of her people. The gold and ivory statue within the temple was made by. Phidias himself. It is hardly conceivable that he should have left entirely to others the design of the sculptures which decorated the building, for they were clearly part of one harmonious whole, intended to prepare the mind of the spec- tator, and to lead up to the final contemplation of the perfect embodiment of the goddess herself.1 Doubtless the great size and number of the sculptural figures which decorated every available space upon the temple precluded the possibility of their execution by a single hand, especially when we remember that the whole building was ready for dedication within eight years from its commencement. Some portions of the work, especially the separate metopes, may have been left to the sculptors who undertook them, after some general conditions as to subject and treatment had been laid down by the designer of the whole. But the great and harmonious designs of the eastern and western pediments, and the continuous composition of the frieze, must have been, in all essential features, the crea- tion of a single artist ; and we can hardly imagine this artist to have been any other than Phidias himself.
1 We need not be shaken in this opinion by the analogy of Olympia. Phidias did not go there until the sculptural decoration of the temple was completed ; and although he and his associates designed all accessories within the cella of the temple, he had to leave the external sculptures as he found them.
in THE FIFTH CENTURY— 480-400 B.C. 269
Even after the removal or destruction of the great statue, and the conversion of the Parthenon into a Christian church, most of its external sculpture appears to have remained intact, with the exception of the central group of the east pediment, which was destroyed in building the apse of the church. It was not until the disastrous explosion of the Turkish powder magazine within the cella, in 1687, that a completer destruction began ; and the explosion was followed by the even more disastrous attempt of the victorious Veneto-German army to carry off as booty some portions of the sculpture that their cannon had already damaged. Thus the chariot and horses of Athena in the west pediment appear to have perished in a clumsy attempt to lower them from their place. What was left remained exposed to weather, vandalism, or neglect, until Lord Elgin, in 1801-1802, obtained leave to carry it off to England. Though it is possible that his agents may not in every case have shown all the care and discretion of which their task was worthy, there is no doubt that the work on the whole was very well done, that we owe to it, in a great measure, the degree of preservation in which the sculptures still remain, and that Lord Elgin's action deserves the gratitude, rather than the censure, of all who have learnt to appreciate the " Elgin Marbles." 1 It must be remembered that at the time when he carried them off they were not only neglected by those who had charge of them, but were in constant danger of being carried off piecemeal by less scrupulous travellers, and that soon afterwards, in the war of Greek independence, the Acropolis was repeatedly be- sieged and bombarded, and its buildings suffered severely. He removed for the most part only such portions of the sculpture as, from their position in the building, were exposed to the weather or to other risks. Indeed, his discretion in this matter was perhaps carried even too far, as we may easily realise by comparing what is still left in situ in its present state with the
1 The absurd misrepresentations and the abuse showered on Lord Elgin by Byron and others have had undue influence. They are now discredited by all authorities — French, German, and Italian, as well as English — who have investi- gated the matter. In view of the suggestion that these marbles ought to be given back to Greece, now that the Greeks appreciate their value and are capable of taking care of them, it must be remembered that they are now safely housed in a place where they are easily accessible. If they were returned, they could not be replaced in the building from which they were taken unless it were entirely restored ; and it is hard to see what would be gained by placing them in a museum in Athens.
270 A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE CHAP.
casts which he had made at the time of all that he left behind. Owing to his action, the bulk of this sculpture is now in the British Museum ; a few pieces are in the Louvre, and a few others have been taken elsewhere by earlier marauders. A good deal, especially at the two ends, still remains on the build- ing itself.
The various fields to which the sculptured decoration of the temple was assigned have already been described in the section of the Introduction concerning architectural sculpture (c). It will be best to describe them in the order which is probably also the order of their execution — (1) the metopes, (2) the pedi- ments, and (3) the frieze.
(1) The Metopes. — These were sculptured all round the building, 32 on each of the sides, and 14 on each of the fronts. Those of the south side alone are preserved sufficiently to offer any material for our study ; the rest have suffered so severely from the weather and from the vicissitudes which the building has undergone, that we can only conjecture their subjects, and can form hardly any opinion as to their style. It appears that the eastern front contained scenes from the battle between gods and giants, and the western, combats between Greeks and Amazons ; on the northern side even the subject is doubtful. On the southern side the twelve l metopes at either end represent the assault of the Centaurs upon the Lapith women at the bridal of Pirithous, and the consequent battle between Centaurs and Lapiths. This subject is naturally broken up into scenes of single combat. The relief is very high ; the figures are almost detached from the ground, and are practically in the round, a fact which may account for the completeness with which so many of the metopes have been destroyed. The best preserved metopes are nearly all in the British Museum ; the most western metope of the south side is still in situ on the Parthenon, and affords an opportunity for appreciating the effect of the high relief and vigorous design of the metopes, as seen in the massive architectural frame for which they were designed. The metopes vary in style more than any other part of the sculptural decoration of the Parthenon. In some cases we see a comparatively tame and lifeless design, or, if the combat is more vigorous in conception, yet the pose of the combatants is
1 Only eleven at the east end have Centaurs ; but the twelfth may well belong to the same scene.
in THE FIFTH CENTURY— 480-400 B.C. 271
awkward or strained ; some of the metopes, on the other hand, are unsurpassed in all art for the admirable balance of their composition, the perfect adaptation of design to field, and, above all, for the wonderful life and beauty of the figures, whether still engaged in the conflict (Fig. 56), or exulting in triumph over a fallen foe (Fig. 57). Nor is there less variety in the execution. The drapery is sometimes stiff and archaic in
FIG. 56. — Metope of Parthenon (British Museum).
character, sometimes it approaches that unrivalled treatment which we see in the pediments and frieze ; sometimes it is entirely absent, or is treated merely as a subordinate accessory ; in other cases we can see already that tendency to use it to fill vacant spaces in the field with the rich decorative effect char- acteristic of later Attic relief. The modelling of the figures varies also, from a hard and dry treatment like that of the earlier Attic sculptors of athletic subjects, to a perfect mastery, free alike from softness and from exaggeration. The
272 A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE CHAP.
type of the heads is light and Attic, and usually shows an archaic character in the eyes and the hair. The bestial faces of the Centaurs are not really more advanced in style, though their deep and distorted wrinkles and their grimaces of pain make them appear less conventional — a contrast which we have
FIG. 57. — Metope of Parthenon (British Museum).
noticed also at Olympia. The treatment of the semi-bestial nature of the Centaur reaches its acme in these metopes. The human body joined at the waist to the horse's neck is, in itself, one of the worst of the mixed forms devised by fancy, since it implies a duplication of so many of the essential organs. How unnatural and unconvincing such a combination appears may be seen by a glance at its unskilful rendering, for example
in THE FIFTH CENTURY— 480-400 B.C. 273
on the relief at Assos. Success in so difficult an attempt was not attained at one leap ; we see elsewhere, particularly at Olympia, the various advances towards a more harmonious effect ; but it is in the Parthenon that one principle is first fully grasped and consistently carried out ; this is the adoption of a familiar device of archaic art, by which the breast is seen facing, the lower part of the body in profile. So in these metopes the human upper part of the Centaurs is always seen either from the front or three-quarter face ; while the equine body is seen in profile ; the breadth thus gained for the upper part, and the subtle curves of the transition from the one form to the other, seen only in front, and implied at the back, help to justify and almost to make credible the monstrous combination.
We have already seen reason to believe that Phidias, while doubtless supervising the whole design, was obliged to leave many details to his assistants, and it need not surprise us to find that these assistants worked more independently in the case of the metopes. From structural necessity, the metopes had to be in their place before the cornice was put over the outer colonnade, and therefore before the erection of the pediments. At so early a stage of the work, it may well be supposed that Phidias had not yet a trained body of assistants, and that he was more dependent on the Attic artists of earlier schools for help in the execution of his designs. The hard and dry work of some of the metopes recalls the style of Critius and Nesiotes, and it is to be remembered that Critius founded a school of athletic sculpture which went on for many generations.1 Myron too had scholars ; and some of these groups, with their even poise of combat and their choice of a momentary pause in the midst of violent motion, are worthy of Myron himself. Others again, in their violent contortions, their tricks of the wrestling school, their ungainly and unstable position, seem to betray the hand of pupils or imitators who, in their admiration for the apparently reckless originality and variety of the sculp- tor of the Discobolus, failed to catch his fine sense of appropri- ateness and restraint. There is, in the details of the metopes, more originality and less perfection of finish than elsewhere in the sculpture of the Parthenon. In them we may see more of the exuberance of Attic art of the period, and less of the con- trolling genius of Phidias himself.
1 See p. 190.
274 A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE CHAP, in
(2) The pediments of the Parthenon are described by Pau- sanias only in the most summary manner : " What one sees on the pediment as one enters the temple," he says, "is entirely concerned with the birth of Athena ; while at the back is the strife of Poseidon against Athena for the land." If we were left only to this meagre description, and to the scanty, though precious remains that still survive, we should have considerable difficulty in getting any satisfactory notion of the composition as a whole. For the eastern or front pediment, this is un- happily the case. Though the French artist, Carrey, who visited the Parthenon in 1674, shortly before the explosion which destroyed the middle of the building, made a drawing of the eastern pediment as he then saw it, he could record even less than may still be seen in the galleries of the British Museum. With the western pediment it is otherwise. Carrey's drawing, in spite of some minor errors in the intervals and in the position of the figures, which may well have been shifted slightly from their original place,1 is evidently an accurate and intelligent record of what he saw ; and it shows us the composition of the western pediment almost complete. It is best, therefore, to deal first with this pediment, though its actual remains, in the British Museum and at Athens, are even more scanty than those of the eastern.
The story of the contest of Athena and Poseidon for the land of Attica has a mythological significance which cannot be discussed here ; the two were reconciled in the Erechtheum, which was really the centre of the old state religion of Athens, though even there Poseidon had to take a subordinate position. But in the Parthenon Athena was supreme, and her victory over Poseidon, as recorded in the western pediment, was symbolical of the unrivalled glory of her worship in her chosen city. The form of the story varied in details ; that which appears to be adopted by the designer of the pediment is as follows. Posei- don and Athena both laid claim to the land of Attica, and Poseidon produced a salt-spring (OdXaa-a-a) as the symbol or pledge of his occupation, Athena the olive tree ; both these symbols were preserved and revered within the precincts of
1 For the sake of ascertaining the exact position of the figures, Dr. Sauer has made a detailed sketch of all indications of clamps, sockets, weathering, etc., re- maining on the base and field of the pediments ; see Mitth. Ath., 1891, p. 59, Taf. iii., and Ant. Denkmiiler (Berlin), I. 58.
276 A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE CHAP.
the Erechtheum. Zeus referred the quarrel to the decision of Cecrops and other heroes of the Attic land, or, according to another version, to the twelve gods ; they decided in favour of Athena, and Poseidon retired in wrath. The central group of the pediment, which is divided from the subordinate groups at the sides by the chariot and horses of Athena on the left, and probably by those of Poseidon on the right, consists of two figures only, Athena and Poseidon. Each moves with the whole impulse of body and limbs away from the central point, which each slightly overlaps ; but each has the head turned back towards the centre. Their paths seem to cross, and there is an opposing balance of momentum in the midst of impetuous action which is peculiarly happy in this position, and at once gives the combination of symmetry and variety, so essential to archi- tectural sculpture, which may be traced also through all the subordinate parts of the composition. The exact motive of the two figures that compose this central group has given rise to many discussions. It seems clear from Carrey's drawing, which is confirmed by the extant fragments of the two figures, that Poseidon has been advancing, and is suddenly starting back, .
cos 6're n's re dpdKovra Id&v waXlvopcros a.iriaT't],
as Mr. Watkiss Lloyd has aptly quoted. His resemblance in position to Myron's Marsyas is obvious at first glance, and we can hardly be wrong in assigning a similar motive : indeed, we may perhaps acknowledge that this central group in its character and subject may have been influenced by Myron's Athena and Marsyas. However that may be, we must suppose that Posei- don is starting back not only before Athena's advance, but also from some object at which he is startled. What that object was we may infer from the legend, but there is other evidence also to take into account. The contest of Athena and Poseidon is a frequent subject in minor art ; and in some cases we may recognise either this central group, or a part of it, directly imitated from the Parthenon pediment. On some Athenian coins l we may probably recognise a figure of Athena derived from this pediment; though turned the other way, as is natural enough in the die-sinker's art, she resembles very
1 See Imhoof and Gardner, Numismatic Commentary on Paiisanias, pi. Z. Some confusion is caused by the fact that other coins represent a quite different treatment of the theme.
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THE FIFTH CENTURY— 480-400 B.C. 277
strongly the goddess as represented in Carrey's sketch. In almost all cases we see beside Athena, in a position which would correspond to the centre of the pediment, an olive tree, usually with a snake twined round ; when Poseidon is present, this snake seems to attack him. Another valuable piece of evidence is a vase found at Kertch, representing this same contest of Athena and Poseidon.1 Here the figure of Athena resembles that in the pediment, but in Poseidon there is no sign of the sudden retreat so clearly indicated in Carrey's sketch ; between the two is an olive tree ; a snake coiled round its trunk rises against Poseidon, and amidst its branches floats a Victory, bringing her garland to crown Athena. Several subordinate figures are present, but they have little in common with the subordinate figures on the pediment. It may be doubted how far we are justified in using either coins or vase as material for the restoration of the Parthenon pedi- ment. The direct relation between them and their supposed original can in no case be proved decisively ; and we must re- member that there was on the Acropolis another group repre- senting the same subject as the pediment. It seems likely, however, that, as the sea-creatures (perhaps dolphins) visible on Carrey's drawing of the pediment behind Poseidon represent his symbol, the salt-spring, so too the olive, the rival symbol of Athena, in right of which she claimed possession of the land, must have been represented; and this symbol finds its fitting place in the middle of the pediment ; its sudden appear- ance may well be the portent from which Poseidon starts back, and Athena's triumphant advance suffices to indicate her victory.
The two central figures stand, as it were, in a space by them- selves; behind Athena was her chariot, driven probably by Victory, her constant attendant ; the chariot of Poseidon is also held in by a female charioteer, who may well be identified as his consort Amphi- trite. His chariot and its team were destroyed before Carrey's sketch was made. Another figure stands just in front of the charioteer on either side, a nude male on Athena's side, a draped female on that of Poseidon ; it has been suggested that these may be Hermes and Iris, sent to declare the result of the contest ; but this appears superfluous, when its decision is already so obvious. The subordinate figures behind the charioteers on 1 Oompte Rendu, St. Petersburg, 1872 ; /. H. S. 1882, p. 245.
278 A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE CHAP.
either side have met with as many identifications as there have been writers to discuss them, if we reckon all the combinations and permutations which have been devised by the ingenuity of interpreters. The fact is that Carrey's sketches afford just enough material for conjecture, but not enough to lead us to any certain conclusion. It has, for example, been much disputed whether the nude figure seated on the knees of a draped woman in the middle of the right side is male or female, and varying conjectures have been made on either hypothesis.1 The only clue that could guide us safely under such circumstances would be the recognition of some of the figures or groups of figures as a definite type, reproduced on other monuments, with a meaning that can be identified ; but this has not hitherto been done. The woman seated with two children behind Amphitrite, or the child between the standing woman and the seated one behind Athena's chariot, seems at first sight to offer a clue ; but a glance at the long list of varying identifications given in Michaelis' Parthenon suffices to show how inadequate it is. Apart from isolated guesses about individual figures, we may say that three different systems of explanation are possible. Either the sculptor intended to represent those, either gods or heroes, who were actually present at the contest ; or he represented those special heroes and local divinities of Attica who, by their presence, symbolised the interest of the Attic people in the triumph of their goddess ; or else he added in the subordinate positions a series of purely local personifications, intended to indicate the scene of the action in which the principal figures are involved. Against the first theory it may be urged that gods or heroes, if present, were, according to the legend, present as judges. And there is nothing of the character of judges about the assistant figures; they certainly are not the twelve gods, nor can we regard them as a representative body of Attic heroes, who would, from all analogy, be a set of dignified and aged men ; it has been suggested that they were present as partisans on either side, but this again does not seem borne out by the character of the figures. In a combination of the second and third hypotheses we may probably find the truth ; probably the sculptor had in his mind some definite mythological or topo- graphical signification for each figure ; but, whatever it was, it
1 Dr. Saner claims to have settled this question by finding a male knee and breast which must have belonged to this figure. Mittheil. Ath. 1891, p. 80.
in THE FIFTH CENTURY— 480-400 B.C. 279
is now lost, and we cannot recover it unless some new evidence should be found to show his meaning. As to one or two figures perhaps a more definite conclusion is possible ; it has been generally agreed to recognise a river-god (Fig. 62) and a nymph — probably Cephisus and Callirhoe — in the recumbent figures at the ends, who thus give the topographical boundaries of the scene, an interpretation in close analogy with that of the similar figures on the east pediment at Olympia, which were traditionally ex- plained as river-gods in the time of Pausanias ; and the identi- fication is confirmed by the wonderfully soft and flowing model- ling of the body and limbs of the Cephisus (often called Ilissus) ; similarly in a statue of the Eurotas, made more than a century later by Eutychides,1 the texture of the body was praised as "more liquid than water." The position of the figures on the building also coincides, as at Olympia, with the actual local conditions. Cephisus, probably accompanied by an attendant nymph,2 is on the side of his own river, and Callirhoe, beside whom is Ilissus, is towards her spring. The seated bearded man, near the left end, round whose neck the girl beside him puts her arm, has a coil of a large snake behind him. This has been quoted to prove the figures are either Cecrops and one of his daughters, or Asclepius and Hygieia ; neither theory is as yet convincingly proved.
The central group of the eastern pediment is irretrievably lost ; a discussion as to how it may have been rendered belongs rather to the province of mythography than of sculpture. The birth of Athena from the head of Zeus, with the help of a blow with an axe given by Prometheus or Hephaestus, is a common subject on early Attic vases, where the goddess is seen like a little armed doll, actually emerging from the crown of her father's head. It is difficult to imagine how such a treatment of the subject can have been modified even by Phidias into a theme fit for monumental sculpture ; it is more likely that he discarded this conventional type altogether, and represented Athena as standing beside her father, already, as in the legend, full-grown and armed, while the attendant figures, such as Prometheus with his axe, and the Ilithyiae who had assisted in the safe
1 See p. 448, § 62.
2 This figure is not present on Carrey's drawing, but there is a space for her ; Sauer, I.e., suggests that she must have fallen when the block on which she rested was carried away by a falling piece of the cornice.
280 A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE CHAP.
delivery, sufficed to indicate that her birth had just taken place. Such is the rendering of the subject on a marble puteal (or border of a well) in Madrid, where Victory also floats to crown the new-born goddess ; l and this puteal may reproduce the theme of this eastern pediment. It must be acknowledged that the figures of Athena and Victory on the puteal bear a remarkable resemblance to those of the same two figures, perhaps from the western pediment, on the Kertch vase ; and while this resem- blance is in favour of the view that both vase and puteal are derived from a common source in the Parthenon, we may well hesitate to admit the probability of so strong a resemblance between the central groups of the two pediments. However this may be, the indications on the ground of the pediment and the supports provided seem to show that there was no figure in the centre of the pediment, but that here, as in the west pedi- ment, two figures only formed the central group, Athena on the right, and Zeus, seated on his throne and facing her, on the left.
The subordinate figures of the eastern pediment are still in great measure preserved, and are, perhaps, the most perfect works of sculpture that exist. Just as, in the west pediment, a local setting is provided for the scene of contest, which took place in Attica, so here the birth of Athena is framed with appropriate circumstance ; the scene is in heaven, the time sunrise, and so, while Selene, the Moon, descends with her chariot 2 at the right corner of the pediment, Helios rises with his team from the sea at its left corner. Facing the rising horses of the Sun is the noble reclining figure familiarly known as Theseus, a name that has little beyond its familiarity to commend it. Here too the true identification has been much disputed ; the suggestion of Brunn that the figure represents Mount Olympus, illuminated by the rays of the rising sun, and serving to indicate more definitely the locality, has much in its favour. Such reclining figures are not uncommon as personi- fications of mountains ; and the suggestion is thoroughly in harmony with the conventions of Greek art. The identification of the remaining figures in this pediment is as problematic
1 Baumeister, Fig. 172.
2 One horse is in the British Museum, and the remains of three others are still on the pediment ; the sxiggestions that Selene was riding on one horse, or driving a pair, must therefore be set aside.
ni THE FIFTH CENTURY— 480-400 B.C. 281
as in the western ; though we can still study the originals, their distinctive attributes are gone ; but here also two systems are possible ; we may either regard them as strictly mythological personages, present at the event, or as more or less fanciful personifications to give it, as it were, a cosmic setting, since no local surroundings would suffice. Here, how- ever, the two systems are not mutually exclusive as in the west pediment ; thus Brunn's suggestion that the two seated figures next his Olympus are the Horae, to whom the gate of Olympus is entrusted, and past whom Iris is hastening out to bear the message to the world, may find their place in either. Corresponding to Iris, on the other side, most authorities restore another figure in rapid motion, sent to tell abroad the news of the birth of Athena ; this figure, which may be Victory (NiKr)), does not however hasten to the right as Iris to the left, but seems rather to be advancing straight forward.1 Next to her is a seated figure, who, as Carrey's sketch shows, turned her head toward the middle of the pediment. She may or may not form part of a single group with the two that are between her and Selene. One of these sits on the end of a couch, along which the other is reclined leaning on her com- panion's lap. The three have been called the Fates,2 or the three Attic Horae ; in the absence of attributes, no such identification can be proved : others have suggested a more fanciful meaning, drawn from the marvellous delicacy and richness of the. drapery, especially of the reclining figure,3 and interpret them as personifications, not indeed of places or rivers, but of nature in a more general aspect (Fig. 63).
But it is time to turn from the meaning of the artist to the composition of the groups, and the execution by which their splendid conception has found a worthy expression. We have already noticed the subtlety in the balance of composition shown by the central group of the western pediment ; as to the eastern, unfortunately, we can say but little. Here we can
1 Sauer's investigations have proved that this figure cannot, as had been suggested, be Victory crowning Athena in the middle of the pediment.
2 It is true the Fates are present in the Madrid puteal ; but they have no resemblance to these figures, and such subordinate additions were often made in decorative work from other sources than that from which the main subject was drawn.
3 Thus Brunn calls them clouds ; Professor Waldstein suggests Thalassa (Sea) in the lap of Gaia (Earth).
282 A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE CHAP.
best realise the great attainment of the designer of the Parthenon sculptures by a comparison with his predecessors in the same field. In the east pediment at Olympia there is also a balance, but of simple and even monotonous rest ; in the western Olympian pediment there is motion enough, and motion symmetrically balanced ; but it is motion either directly towards or directly away from the centre, where a single colossal figure offers a fixed mass amidst the struggling figures, puynae nodumque moramque. The abolition of this central figure in the Parthenon pediments makes the balance more delicate and more subtly felt. And in the subordinate figures too there is more variety and elasticity in the symmetry which, in an architectural composition, can never be lost sight of. The two sides still correspond, figure to figure; but their grouping varies in detail. Thus the three " Fates " of the eastern pediment correspond to three figures in very similar attitudes on the left side of the same pediment ; but while the reclining figure and the companion in whose lap she rests form a closely -united group, from which the other seated figure is slightly separated, the two. seated figures on the other side are closely united, and the reclining male figure is separated from them. This is a simple and obvious instance of a refinement of composition that may be traced throughout. Again, though the attendant figures are all present as spectators of the central action, on which their interest is fixed, they do not all turn towards it with a monotonous iteration. It may almost seem at first as if the artist, in his desire to avoid this iteration, had gone too far in turning some figures away from the scene they are present to witness. But it is the moment just after the culminating event that is rendered in each case ; and a consciousness of it seems to pervade the whole without the need for further concentration of attention. Thus the perception of the spectator, in travelling from either extremity towards the centre, is not led on by a continually -increasing strain, but is, as it were, borne on a succession of waves. So much we can guess from the scanty remains that are left ; but, when so much is lost, it must always be difficult to realise adequately what must have been the effect of the whole.
To study the •execution of the Parthenon pediments is the liberal education of artists, to imitate it the despair of sculptors. It is impossible to speak of it here except, in the briefest way ;
Ill
THE FIFTH CENTURY— 480-400 B.C.
all we can do is to notice a few of the characteristics that seem to distinguish it from that of other masterpieces of Greek sculpture. No heads are left on the figures, excepting that of the so-called Theseus ; and its surface is so damaged that we
FIG. 60.— De Laborde Head, from a cast (Paris, private collection).
can judge of little but its proportions. In the treatment of hair and of eyelids there is still a trace of archaic convention. A female head (Fig. 60), now in Paris,1 was brought to Venice
1 Called the Weber head, from a former possessor, who suggested its belonging to the Parthenon ; it is now in the De Laborde collection.
U
284 A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE CHAP
by Morosini's secretary, and so there is every external probability in favour of its belonging to some figure from the Parthenor pediments, to which its style seems appropriate. In spite of iti restored nose and chin, we can recognise in this head a nobl< and intellectual type, a breadth and simplicity of modelling coupled with the most delicate play of surface, and perfec skill in the treatment of marble, which can only be matched bj the similar qualities that we may recognise in the drape( figures, to one of which it must probably belong.
FIG. 61.— "Theseus," from E. pediment of Parthenon (British Museum).
For the modelling of the nude male form we have again thi Theseus and the Cephisus. The wonderfully soft and flowing surface of the latter has already been referred to. The Theseu (Fig. 61) on the other hand presents, as it were, the sum of al that Greek sculpture had hitherto attained in the rendering of thi male figure. There is nothing about him of the dry and somewha meagre forms that characterise the athletic art of early masters nor of that unduly square and massive build that was chosen bj the sculptors of the Peloponnese. It -is an absolute freedon
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THE FIFTH CENTURY— 480-400 B.C.
285
from exaggeration of any sort that marks in him the perfection of sculptural technique. His muscles are correctly felt and closely indicated, yet not in such a way as to suggest that there is no interposing layer of flesh between them and the skin ; his figure shows in every detail, as well as in its general character, the most powerful build and the height of physical condition • yet it is that of a perfectly-developed man rather than that of a successful athlete. Above all, in his pose, with its combination of grace and dignity, we see that Attic art has lost none of its feeling for beauty of composition and pleasantness of effect, while acquiring the more vigorous and severe excellence of other schools. But it is in the treatment of the draped female figure (Fig. 63) that the art of Athens reaches the most marvellous
FIG. 62.— Cephisus (Ilissus), from W. pediment of Parthenon (British Museum).
attainments of its prime, as it had devoted to the same subject the most quaint and careful devotion of its youth. Here the mastery over the material is so perfect as to make us forget the slow and laborious process by which it has been attained. The marvellous rendering of the texture of the drapery and the almost infinite multiplicity of its folds does not obscure or even modify the dignity and breadth of the whole conception, but only adds to it a new delicacy and grace. And this seems to be mainly due to two causes — the perfect harmony of the drapery with the forms which it covers, and the studied and elaborate system of the drapery itself, in which every fold, however apparently accidental or even realistic in itself, has a relation to the effect of the whole. We can see those characteristics most clearly in the group of the "three Fates," especially in the
286 A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE CHAP.
reclining figure, which, perhaps more than any other, even among these Parthenon sculptures, shows the most marvellous transla- tion into marble of flesh and of drapery. The nobility and breadth are of course in great measure due to the proportions of the figure, which are very different from those of later Greek art ; to realise this one has only to contrast them with those of the Aphrodite of Praxiteles,1 in which we see the most perfect expression of the more usual, perhaps more human, ideal of the female form. There is nothing hard or unwomanly about these Parthenon figures; only in their combination of grace with majesty they seem to imply a higher ideal of womanhood than
FIG. 63. — "The Fates," from E. pediment of Parthenon (British Museum).
we find elsewhere in Greek art. The drapery reveals, by its modelling and by the flow of its folds, the limbs which it seems to hide ; yet it never clings to them so as to lose its own essential character. And its folds, however minute in themselves, are always divided into clear and definite masses, which save it from the crumpled confusion one often sees in an attempt to paint or carve so delicate a texture. Compare the drapery of the Aphrodite of Melos, where these broad masses only are given, the sculptor, in his desire to escape from his own time and to recover the style of the fifth century, not daring to add the multitudinous detail which here, and here alone, does not mar the simplicity and breadth of the impression produced. For a 1 See p. 361.
in THE FIFTH CENTURY— 480-400 B.C. 287
different effect, a study of the bold curves of wind-swept drapery, we may turn to the Iris of the east pediment. Here the drapery, stretched by the rapid motion of the goddess, does not fall into such minute folds as in the figures at rest ; the contrast is such that some have seen in it the work of a different artist. But the explanation is rather to be sought in the thicker material of the simpler Doric chiton worn by Iris, while the drapery of "the Fates" is Ionic in its richness of folds and fineness of tex- ture. With the Iris we may compare the Chiaramonti Niobid,1 a figure unsurpassed for realism in floating drapery. There is again more system, more subordination of detail to the effect of the whole, than in the later work. Of course we cannot fail to recognise that the sculptor, in works like these, transcends his surroundings ; yet the conventions and restraint of his prede- cessors and their elaborate study of systems of drapery which we see in the earlier works of Attic art, are not without their influence even on the artists of the Parthenon, and afford, as it were, a solid framework without which all this spontaneous exuberance of beauty might well have exceeded the strict limits of sculptural perfection.
Many other things call for notice which must be briefly mentioned ; for example the spirited modelling of the horses of Helios and Selene, and their contrast; — his horses inhale with distended nostrils the air of the morning as they spring from the sea, and hers, tired with their nightly course, still show their mettle as they near the goal. This need not surprise us when we remember that Myron and Calamis were even more famous for their sculpture of animals than of men, and that a series of horses from the Acropolis show the studies of earlier Attic artists in this line, in contrast to the comparatively tame horses of Olympia.
It has often been remarked that these pedimental sculptures are finished almost as carefully behind as in front, and this has been quoted to show the love of the Greek artist for his work in itself, and his wish to make it beautiful even where it could never be seen. Perhaps another explanation may be found, more reasonable and more in accordance with what we know of Greek art, which was never given to spending labour for no purpose. We know that a Greek vase-painter — like a modern
1 See p. 424. Of course allowance imist be made for this Niobid being a copy, though a good copy.
288 A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE CHAP.
artist — was in the habit of drawing the whole of a figure of which the greater part was concealed behind another, in order to make sure that the relations of the visible parts were correctly drawn, and afterwards of erasing or omitting the parts concealed. May we not imagine that the artists who made these pedimental figures had their sculptural instinct so strongly developed that to them a figure in the round sculptured only in front was like a figure drawn of which only some portions showed, and that in order to assure themselves of the correctness of the visible parts, they felt it necessary to complete the whole figures, at least in the rough ? The labour thus expended offers no less strong a testimony to the devotion of the sculptors and their determina- tion to leave nothing undone that might add to the perfection of their work, and it seems to proceed from a less sentimental and more rational motive.
In speaking of these sculptures of the Parthenon pediments, it has been assumed so far that they are a product of Attic art ; and the evidence in favour of this view is so strong that it can hardly be contested. How far we may consider them to be the work of Phidias himself it is a difficult matter to decide. In the case of the metopes we saw reason to believe that a con- siderable amount of latitude in matters of detail and execution must have been left to his assistants, even if he superintended the distribution of the scenes and their general design. But in the pediments, which were doubtless regarded as the culmination of the sculptural decoration, we cannot imagine him to have left the design to any other hand. It would indeed have been impossible for Phidias to have carved with his own hand so many large figures in marble during the short time in which the Parthenon was completed, — a time too during which he had to make the colossal gold and ivory statue of Athena, as well as to superintend the whole artistic administration of Pericles. But we may well suppose that he supervised the execution of the pediments in person, that he even gave a finishing touch to some portions, and that he had as his assistants in this work a band of sculptors whom he had trained so completely in his methods that their hand could hardly be distinguished from his own. We may thus best understand the wonderfully even excellence in execution which we recognise, in spite of some varieties in style, in the pediments, as contrasted with the very uneven quality of work which we see in the metopes, and some-
in THE FIFTH CENTURY— 480-400 B.C. 289
times also in the frieze. And, without the direct personal influence and supervision of Phidias, it is almost impossible to understand the marvellous excellence of the pediments in execution as well as in design, and the vast interval which we see between them and other almost contemporary examples of architectural sculpture.
(3) The frieze of the Parthenon1 consists of a band of low relief, going all round the outside of the cella, within the peristyle ; it is about 3 ft. 4 in. high, and the depth of the relief averages only about an inch and a half. The greater part of the frieze is now in the British Museum ; that on the west end is still in situ on the building, and a few other slabs are in Athens ; there are also some fragments in the Louvre and elsewhere.
The subject of the frieze is the Panathenaic procession, the most brilliant ceremony of the great Panathenaic games, which were held every fourth year in honour of Athena. This pro- cession, which led beasts for sacrifice to the Acropolis, and also carried the Peplos or sacred robe of the goddess, woven for her by chosen Athenian matrons and maids, was representative of all that was best and noblest in the Athenian state and society ; the magistrates of the city, bands of men and youths chosen for their dignity and beauty, maidens of the noblest families, the representatives of allied and tributary states, the resident aliens in the city, all had their place in the festal procession, which was escorted by chariots and by the Athenian knights in military pomp. Such a subject was fittingly chosen to adorn the temple, as the most brilliant and characteristic act of worship in which Athena was honoured by her chosen city. On the western end of the cella, over the columns of the opistho- domus, are represented the knights equipping themselves and their horses for the festal parade. On either side, north and south, we see the procession advancing towards the eastern front. At the back are the knights, riding in a throng (Fig. 64), in front of them come the chariots, each accompanied by a marshal and an armed warrior (apobates) as well as the charioteer. In front of them again come bands of men, and, on the north side attend- ants and musicians ; nearest in approaching the east front are the beasts for sacrifice, cows only on the south side, cows and sheep on the north. On the east side we see the head of the 1 For its position in the building, see p. 41.
290 A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE CHAP.
procession turning the corner at either extremity ; here are the maidens with sacrificial vessels and implements, advancing to meet a group of men, who are probably the nine archons and other high functionaries. Then, in the centre of the eastern side, over the main door of entrance of the temple, we see the gods, seated in assembly as guests of Athena at her high festival. They are divided into two groups. Nearest the
FIG. 64. — Slab from N. frieze of Parthenon (Athens, Acropolis Museum).
centre, in the right group is Athena ; next her come Hephaestus, Poseidon, Dionysus, Demeter (Fig. 65), and Aphrodite,1 with Eros leaning against her knee. On the other side the place of honour is held by Zeus, and beyond him are Hera, attended by Iris, Ares, Artemis, Apollo, and Hermes. Zeus and Athena are separated by a space in which is represented what one would expect to be, in meaning as in position, the central point
1 This list of gods is not beyond dispute as to some of the identifications ; but the possible differences cannot be profitably discussed in the space that can here be afforded.
in THE FIFTH CENTURY— 480-400 B.C. 291
of the whole ceremony. In the midst stand a priest, probably the Archon Basileus, and the priestess of Athena, back to back ; he is occupied, with the assistance of a boy, in folding a large piece of cloth or drapery, while she is taking from two attendant maidens the stools which they carry. Since the offering of the Peplos, or sacred robe of Athena, was the essential feature of the Panathenaic procession, and the Pep- los, if not represented here, is not to be found anywhere
FIG. 65.— Group of Gods (Poseidon, Dionysus, Demeter (?)), from E. frieze of Parthenon (Athens, Acropolis Museum).
else in the frieze, it is generally agreed that we must recognise it in the piece of drapery which the priest holds ; but his action certainly does not seem to suggest that he is taking charge of the new peplos brought to Athena by the procession, from which, moreover, he is separated by the whole group of the gods.1 Both he and the priestess appear to be employed in pre-
1 This has been so strongly felt by some that they maintain the priest is only taking off his own himation in preparation for the sacrifice ; he is dressed only in a long chiton. For such a prominence given to vestments we have no authority in Greek ritual. The stools taken by the priestess are also a puzzle ; it is hard to find a motive for them adequate to the position they occupy.
292 A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE CHAP.
paration for the great ceremony rather than in its performance ; and we may perhaps find a more probable explanation of this central group if we suppose the priest to be folding up and putting away the old peplos of Athena to make place for the new one which was to be brought her. Thus the offering of the new peplos is implied by the folding up of the old one, and an ade- quate motive is provided for the group over the east door ; though it is still hard to explain why the new peplos is not represented anywhere on the frieze.1 The group of gods on either side turn their backs on the priest and priestess, and fix their attention on the procession, which advances towards them from either side.
The frieze is distinguished at once by its unity and its variety of design. Each element in the procession occupies a long enough portion of the field to attract and to satisfy the attention of a spectator who sees it between the columns as he walks along the building ; yet no two figures are alike ; and a principle of contrasts marks the different parts — the majestic repose of the gods and their subtle characterisation in pose and feature, the slow and stately advance of the maidens and of the men, and the impetuous rush of the cavalry, again moderated by the graceful seat and perfect ease of the riders. In adaptation of technical treatment to the circumstances and position probably no work of sculpture shows so careful calculation as this frieze — again a proof of its unity of design, under the control of one supervising master, amidst all varia- tions of the excellence and style of the execution in details. So little is this sometimes understood, that it has been stated that the frieze of the Parthenon was placed where it could not be seen. Set in the outer wall of the cella, in the narrow space between it and the entablature over the peristyle, high relief would have been difficult to see, and its deep shadows would have prevented a satisfactory lighting. For the lighting came entirely from below, reflected from the white marbk pavement. This is the explanation of the fact that the relief is higher — that is to say is cut in deeper — in the upper part oi the slabs than in the lower.2 The light coming from below,
1 The peplos was carried as the sail of a ship in late times ; but this has nothing to do with the custom of the time of Phidias.
2 Their depth is given in the Brit. Mus. Catalogue as 1| in. at the bottom, 2^ at the top, with an average of 1^ in.
in THE FIFTH CENTURY— 480-400 B.C. 293
made it necessary to avoid deep cutting, and consequently deep shadows, in the lower part ; and, on the other hand, the lower contours of the figures are often cut more clearly, and even surrounded with a groove cut into the ground, to make them show, while the upper contours are weaker — so weak in some cases as to be almost invisible when lit from above, and to cause confusion in some of the finest blocks of the frieze when now seen in a museum. All these details in execution must proceed from a consideration of the lighting. The point of view of the spectator below would not explain all of them ; and of course the frieze was not meant to be seen from the narrower passage of the peristyle, but from outside it, where the advance of the moving procession, as seen between the columns, would give a peculiarly lifelike appearance as its scenes opened themselves, one after another, to the view. Another characteristic of the frieze is the wonderfully skilful manipulation of the low relief, so as to give an impression of roundness to the. figures, and even to show them, apparently one behind another, in masses of considerable depth ; this is especially the case with the troops of cavalry. The result is obtained partly by extraordinary skill and delicacy in the modelling of the surface of marble, a peculiarly Attic virtue of which we saw some anticipation in a work like the stela of Aristocles, partly by another device, also known in other Attic reliefs. Where one figure overlaps another at one side, and is in its turn overlapped by another, apparently in front of it, the surface of this intermediate figure is not, as it appears to be, a plane parallel to the normal surface of the relief, but is slightly inclined to it. This inclination is so slight as not to be visible, and consequently the three figures, though all perhaps cut an equal depth into the marble, appear to be one behind another in three different planes. In style the frieze is the most perfect example of Attic grace and refine- ment— more human and less exalted in conception than the pedi- ments, as befits its subject — it embodies the ideal representation of the people of Athens, uniting in the honour of the goddess whose birth and exploits were celebrated in those more con- spicuous groups. In design it is not unworthy of the same master, and the unity of decorative effect as well as of religious conception which distinguishes all the sculpture of the Parthe- non seems to claim as its author Phidias, whom we know to have been in control of the whole artistic activity of Athens at
294 A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE CHAP.
the time. And the assistants that helped him in the execution, though not all equally skilful, were such a band as Phidias alone could have trained and influenced. So complete and so successful was their co-operation that the sculpture of the Parthenon stands in a connected series as the most perfect example of the art of Greece.
§ 36. Other Athenian Sculptures — Theseum, Erechtheum, Temple of Wingless Victory, etc. — If the sculptures of the Parthenon are of supreme importance to us, as showing the work done in Athens under the direct supervision of Phidias himself, those which ornamented other Athenian temples are hardly less in- structive. Though some of them probably belong to a time considerably removed from that of his artistic activity, they must all of them be regarded as the products of the school oi which he was the acknowledged head ; some of them may show us the character of that school before his genius had become predominant ; in others we can still trace his influence after his disappearance from the scene ; and we can also distinguish here arid there the characteristics which we have reason tc associate with other leading Attic sculptors and their pupils, In the Parthenon we may indeed see the highest attainment ol the Attic school; but we must supplement our study of its sculpture by an observation of the remains of other Attic build- ings, if we would form a complete notion of the varied artistic activity which marked the Athens of the fifth century.
Second only to the Parthenon in the style and preservation of its sculpture — though a long way removed from it — comes the Theseum. It is impossible to discuss here the question whether the Theseum is actually the temple built to hold the bones of Theseus, which Cimon brought back from Scyros in 469 B.C. Some valid arguments have been adduced against this identification ; the strongest are those which point to the forms both of architecture and sculpture as impossible at such a date. But on the other hand no other identification can be regarded as attaining a high degree of probability, much less certainty. Under these circumstances nothing is gained by giving up the accepted tradition ; but in retaining it, though we have advantage of a name which readily associates itseli with the sculpture, we must not draw any inference as to the actual date of the architecture and sculpture of the temple, but must rather acknowledge that, if it is the Theseum, it cannot
in THE FIFTH CENTURY— 480-400 B.C. 295
have been completed until some time after Cimon's bringing the bones of Theseus from Scyros. It appears to be nearly contemporary with the Parthenon ; and the sculpture of the Theseum shows most affinity with the metopes of that building, which were, as we have seen, among its earlier portions.
The external sculpture of the Theseum is confined to the ten metopes on the east front of the temple, and the four adjoining metopes on the north and south sides — eighteen in all. The rest of the metopes were never sculptured ; it is impossible to tell whether they were decorated with painting. There are also said to be indications that the pediments once contained sculpture ; but this has now completely disappeared. The metopes are in Parian marble, not Pentelic — an indication that they belong to a time before the completion of the Parthenon had indicated the native material as worthy of the highest use in sculpture as well as architecture. They have unfortunately suffered so severely from the weather that in many cases it is barely possible to make out the subject and composition : Stuart's drawings, made towards the end of the last century before the damage had gone so far, are a great help in this. The ten metopes of the east front are devoted to nine of the labours of Heracles, that against Geryon being divided between two metopes in a single composition — a probably unique and not very successful experiment ; those omitted are the Stymphalian birds, the stables of Augeas, and the bull — the first two doubtless because of the difficulty of their adequate representation, the third because its subject is practically repeated among the eight labours of Theseus, which are repre- sented on the metopes of the north and south sides. Of these Stuart's drawings give us a fair notion, though they also have suffered much since his day. The contests between Theseus and the various robbers or monsters against whom he fought showed him as a skilled athlete, making use of all the devices of the palaestra in his struggles with the brute force of his adver- saries (Fig. 66). It is most instructive, for example, to compare the skilful way in which Theseus here masters the Marathonian bull (Fig. 67) with the treatment of the similar subject in the Olympian metope, where Heracles simply throws his weight against the bull's and overpowers it. The execution seems to have the dry and somewhat hard technique that we have learnt to associate with the schools of Critius and of Myron, and
296 A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE CHAP
which we recognised in some of the Parthenon metopes also and the Theseum metopes resemble the less advanced among th( metopes of the Parthenon in their extraordinary boldness oi composition, sometimes almost transgressing the bounds o: sculptural fitness in the pursuit of life and vigour.
The continuous friezes of the Theseum are over the pro domus and opisthodomus, within the peristyle, in the positior occupied by the corresponding portions of the continuous friez< of the Parthenon ; but, unlike that frieze, they are in higl relief. The western, which stretches only across the breadtl:
FIG. 66.— Metope of Theseum ; Theseus and Cercyon (after Man. Inst., X. xliv. 2).
of the temple, not that of the peristyle also, represents i combat of Greeks and centaurs. The composition of thi frieze is obviously due to an artist who is used to the designing of metopes, and who repeats the concentrated groups of tw< combatants adapted to the metope form, only connecting then loosely by the aid of additional figures who often seem super fluous to the action. Here again the resemblance to th< Parthenon metopes is obvious ; it is not, however, necessary t< infer, as some have done, that the Theseum frieze was made ir imitation of those metopes ; it seems a sufficient explanation, i we suppose the sculptor to have drawn on a conventional stor<
in THE FIFTH CENTURY— 480-400 B.C. 297
of subjects adapted to treatment in the metope form. In some cases, however, he introduces a type unsuited to so limited a field ; for instance, the invulnerable Caeneus, half buried by the huge stones which a centaur on either side piles over him, while other Lapiths, advancing to his relief, extend the scene in a manner more adapted to continuous treatment.
The eastern frieze stretches across the breadth of peristyle as well as cella, and we have already noticed l how the archi- tectural conditions thus produced have influenced the composi-
FIG. 67.— Metope of Theseum ; Theseus and Bull (after Mon. Inst., X. xliii. 2).
tion of the frieze, a seated group of divinities being placed over each of the antae, as if to continue upwards the supporting member by a solid and restful effect. Outside these groups, over the peristyle, is a group in comparatively gentle action, such as the binding of a prisoner ; while in the middle portion of the frieze is a wild scene of combat, Greek warriors fighting opponents who hurl huge stones against them. The combat cannot be identified with certainty ; a probable suggestion identifies it as the fight between the Athenians and the wild inhabitants of Pallene. If so, both the friezes, as well as the metopes, would represent combats in which the Attic hero
1 P. 41.
298 A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE CHAP.
Theseus was distinguished. Here again we see the same vigorous, almost exaggerated and distorted, action that char- acterises all the sculpture of the Theseum, and marks it as the product of that school of Attic artists which was especially devoted to athletic subjects ; but in this eastern frieze we also see bold foreshortenings, especially in the fallen figures, which are avoided in the Parthenon, but recur on the frieze of the temple of the Wingless Victory.
The frieze of this little temple has some resemblance in subject also to the west frieze of the Theseum. It is less than eighteen inches in height ; some blocks of it are in situ in the rebuilt temple ; others were brought by Lord Elgin to England. On the east front is an assembly of gods, on the other three sides battle scenes, Greeks against Persians on the north and south sides, and Greeks against Greeks on the west ; in this last scene most authorities see a reference to the battle of Plataea, in which the Athenians were engaged mostly with the Thebans and other Greek allies of Persia. The age of the temple is not exactly known, but it is probably not far removed in date from the Parthenon; the style of the sculptures seems rather later, with its effective use of floating drapery to fill the vacant spaces of the field.
The temple stands on a little platform, around which was placed a balustrade, probably, to judge from the style of the sculptures which ornament it, not long before the end of the fifth century. On each of the three principal sides of this balustrade was a seated figure of Athena, and the. rest of the field is occupied with winged Victories, who are mostly employed in erecting and decking trophies, leading cows to sacrifice, or performing other tasks in honour of their mistress. Those figures are wonderfully graceful in proportions and in attitude ; but it is above all in the marvellous study of the texture and folds of almost transparent drapery, now clinging to the beautiful figures of the Victories, now floating in rich folds across the field of the relief, that the character of the work is seen (Fig. 68). We have already seen the perfect skill and delicacy with which such drapery was rendered in the Parthenon pediments : here the sculptor has gone even beyond that perfection, and however much we may wonder at his skill and at the beauty of the figures he has made, we can perhaps recognise in his work the germs of that over -elaboration and even affectation in the
Ill
THE FIFTH CENTURY— 480-400 B.C.
299
treatment of drapery to which Attic work had always a tend- ency unless it was checked by severer influence. We shall see a further development of this tendency in the often graceful,
FIG. 68.— Victory binding sandal, from Balustrade (Athens, Acropolis Museum).
but conventional and imitative character of the Neo- Attic reliefs.1
The Erechtheum was, next to the Parthenon, the most con- spicuous temple of Athens, and was even more than the Par- thenon the centre of Athenian worship. With the delicate
1 See § 77.
300 A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE CHAP.
refinement of its architectural ornament we are not here con- cerned. Two kinds of sculptural decoration were employed on it, in the Ionic frieze over the north and east porticoes, and in the Caryatids which carried the Pandroseum in its south- western corner. The frieze is mainly interesting as a curious experiment in the technique of relief. The figures, which are carved in moderate relief in Pentelic marble, were affixed to a background of black Eleusinian stone, which thus served as a substitute for the coloured ground often used in reliefs. As a natural result, though many of the figures are preserved, their order and arrangement are lost, and even the subject that they represented can no longer be identified. We do not know their exact date ; all we know is that the Erechtheum was begun, and was left in an unfinished state for many years ; and that in the year 409 B.C. it was again taken in hand and completed. The Caryatids (Fig. 69), or, as they are called in the official terminology of the Erechtheum inscriptions, the Maidens, are the best-known example in Greek architecture of the substitution of the human figure, for a column as the support of an entablature, which, howeA^er, is here specially lightened by the omission of the frieze, so that the burden may not appear too heavy for its bearers. The neck, too, which is in appearance the weakest portion of the human figure, is strengthened by closely-fitting bands of hair, and a light, basket-like capital is placed upon the heads of the figures. These maidens are really like Canephori, basket-bearers, who had a place in the sacrificial procession, and delighted in the task that did honour alike to themselves and to the goddess. Their rich festal drapery and the simple severity with which it is treated fit them peculiarly for the place they occupy ; and the elasticity of their pose obviates the impression that their burden is heavy, and gives an apparent stability to the whole composition, as each has the knee nearest to the middle of the structure bent, and thus there is an appa- rent inward thrust throughout. One can at once realise the value of this arrangement if one imagines any one of the Cary- atids on the right side to change places with the corresponding figure on the left. One of these Caryatids is now in the British Museum ; the rest — some of them in a fragmentary state — are in situ in the restored Pandroseum.1 The question whether it
1 The Erechtheum was greatly damaged during the siege of 1827. The Paudroseum was restored to its present state in 1845.
THE FIFTH CENTURY— 480-400 B.C.
301
is fitting to substitute a human figure for an architectural support is open to difference of opinion ; but there is no doubt that, if it is done, the effect depends on the artistic skill and feeling with which the figure is treated, and the modifica- tion of the architectural surroundings to harmonise with the new conditions. In this respect the Caryatids of the Erechtheum com- pare most favourably with other examples, ancient and modern, of the same bold experiment.
The great public build- ings executed under the administration of Pericles and the artistic direction of Phidias must have gathered together a great body of artists and crafts- men in Athens ; and we find their work not only in great public monuments like those we have so far considered, but in state documents and inscriptions, which at this period are often furnished with a sym- bolical relief at their head, and even on minor dedica- tions and memorials set up by private individuals. Of these last the largest and most interesting class
Consists of the funeral FIG. 69.— Caryatid, from Erechtheum
, . , M1 , (British Museum).
monuments, which will be
considered later, since they mostly belong to the fourth
302
A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE
CHAP. Ill
century.1 But all combine to show how wide -spread was the artistic influence which found its highest expression in the sculpture decorating the public buildings of Athens. Thus, if the inscription recorded a treaty between Samos
FIG. 70.— "Mourning Athena" (Athens, Acropolis Museum).
and Athens, the tutelary deities of the two states, Hera and Athena, were represented greeting one another in the relief at the top. Numerous examples of such symbolism could be quoted. Among the most interesting of these minor reliefs is one (Fig. 70) recently found built into a wall on the Acropolis, which represents Athena standing with her head bent down, and lean-
1 See § 51.
Fio. 71.— Relief from Elensis (Athens, National Museum).
304 A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE CHAP.
ing on her spear, as if in mourning, while in front of her is a plain slab like a stela, on which a decree or a list of names might be inscribed. It has been suggested with much plausi- bility that the goddess is represented as mourning over a list of some of her chosen warriors who have fallen in battle. The period of this relief is probably about the beginning of the Peloponnesian war. Its severe style and the stiffness of the folds of the lower part of the drapery may seem earlier. But we must always expect such productions of minor art to be behind the attainments of the greater masters of the same age. There is a simplicity and directness about this figure and its apparent significance which rarely fail to impress and to delight all who see it. Another (Fig. 71), perhaps the most noble of all dedicatory tablets, is a great relief from Eleusis, representing the great goddesses Demeter and Persephone, with a boy, probably Triptolemus. The simple and severe style of this relief perhaps implies that it is as early as the middle of the fifth century, but it may well be somewhat later. So much restraint and simplicity, especially in the treatment of drapery, show us how completely the graceful and ornate tendency, which we saw in early Attic art, and which we recognised again in a work like the balustrade of the Victories, was sometimes overpowered by a reaction towards a severer and nobler style. A study of these two extremes leads us to a better appreciation of that golden mean which we see realised, above all, in the sculpture of the Parthenon.
§ 37. Scholars of Phidias — Agoracritus, Colotes, Theocosmus, Alcamenes. — We have already seen something of the architectu- ral sculptures which were executed under the supervision of Phidias, and which now serve better than anything else to give us some notion of his style. The works which are attributed to his associates or pupils by ancient writers are for the most part of a different nature, and resemble the great statues from Phidias' own hand, of which we could only infer the character from inadequate copies or descriptions. The resemblance in some cases appears to have been so close that the attribution was actually disputed, and we more than once find a statue re- corded by some authorities as the work of one of the pupils of Phidias, by others assigned to the hand, of the master himself.
Agoracritus of Paros is said to have been the favourite pupil of Phidias. His fame depended chiefly on his reputed
in THE FIFTH CENTURY— 480-400 B.C. 305
authorship of the great marble Nemesis at Rhamnus, one of the best-known statues in the ancient world. Many strange and incredible stories are told about this work, some of which need only be mentioned, while others require careful criticism. It was said that the Persians brought with them a block of Parian marble to Marathon, in order to make from it a trophy for their victory over the Athenians ; and that after the battle the Athenians made from this block a statue of Nemesis, as a warning against the "pride that goeth before a fall." The proximity of Marathon to Rhamnus, and the obvious appropri- ateness of this story, are probably responsible for its invention by some seeker after a subject for an epigram. An even more absurd story is that the statue was originally sent in by Agora- critus in a competition with Alcamenes for the statue of Aphro- dite in the Gardens at Athens, and that after his defeat he disposed of it to Rhamnus as Nemesis. We must give more weight to the statement, quoted from Antigonus of Carystus, that the inscription J 'Ayo/xxK/nros ttdptos eTroi'r/o-e was inscribed on a tablet attached to the statue, though Pausanias, who gives a detailed description of the Nemesis, knows nothing of this, and simply attributes the statue to Phidias himself. Nor can we ignore the tradition, repeated on many sides, that Phidias really made the statue, but conceded to his favourite pupil Agoracritus the credit of its design. The simplest in- ference is that Agoracritus adhered so closely to the manner of his master, and copied his style with so great success, that ancient critics had great difficulty in distinguishing his work from that of Phidias himself. It is, indeed, probable enough that Phidias may have assisted his pupil in the design of so great a work ; but the inscription recorded by Antigonus can hardly be apocryphal, and would certainly imply that the statue was really made by Agoracritus. The officials at Rhamnus may well have destroyed or concealed such a record, in their wish to claim a more distinguished authorship for the statue that was the chief pride of their town.
Although this statue, from the less precious nature of its material, had more chance of preservation than most of the other great works of Phidias and his associates, it has been destroyed, with the exception of some insignificant fragments now in the British Museum,1 and the remains of the relief which
l. Ath. 1890, p. 64,
306 A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE CHAP.
decorated its pedestal, now in the National Museum at Athens.1 We are therefore again mainly dependent on the description of Pausanias. The goddess was represented as standing, of colossal size, about 1 5 feet high ; on her head was a crown decorated with what Pausanias describes as small Victories and stags — evidently representations of the oriental winged Artemis, holding stags in her hands as irorvia 07?/>c3v,2 who was prob- ably identified by the Greeks with the goddess of Rhamnus. In her left hand she holds a branch of apple, in her right a bowl wrought with figures of Ethiopians. On the pedestal was represented a subject from the myth of Helen, who was said to be the daughter of Nemesis, Leda being only her foster- mother ; the principal figures were these three, surrounded by Tyndareus and various heroes of the Trojan war. The style of the portions of this relief which have been found shows a grace of design and delicacy of execution not unworthy of the highest period of Attic art ; but they seem to lack the breadth and simplic.ity which distinguish the sculpture of the Parthenon. Another work attributed to Agoracritus by some authorities, the statue of the Mother of the Gods at Athens, was by others assigned to Phidias. This statue apparently established the type under which the goddess was worshipped, at least at Athens ; she was seated, with a cymbal in her hand, and lions beneath her throne ; but late reliefs,3 which repeat this type, cannot give much notion of the statue. Another work of Agoracritus, in bronze, was the statue of Athena Itonia set up in the common meeting-place of the Boeotians at Coronea ; be- side this was also a statue described by Pausanias as Zeus, but identified as Hades by Strabo, who is apparently better in- formed, and knows of some mystical reason for the association. Colotes was another of the most intimate associates of Phidias ; he was apparently not an Athenian, though the country of his origin was disputed. He is said to have assisted Phidias in making the great statue of the Olympian Zeus. He also made a table of gold and ivory at Olympia, on which the wreaths for the victors used to be laid ; this table was decorated with reliefs
1 Jahrb. 1894, PI. i.-vii. (Pallat).
2 According to the ingenious explanation of Diimmler in Studniczka, Kyrene, p. 106, n. 102.
8 See Harrison and Verrall, Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens, pp. 45-48.
in THE FIFTH CENTURY— 480-400 B.C. 307
like those that ornamented the pedestals of Phidias' great statues ; on the front was an assembly of gods, extending round to the two sides, on which were minor deities ; at the back was represented the ordering of the festival. The same precious materials were used in a statue of Athena at Elis, attributed by Pliny to Colotes, by Pausanias to Phidias ; the inside of the shield was painted by Panaenus, the brother of Phidias, who also contributed the paintings to the throne of the Olympian Zeus; and in Cyllene, a port of Elis, was an Asclepius by Colotes, again of gold and ivory.1 Colotes also appears in Pliny's miscellaneous list at the end of the bronze-workers as one of those who made " philosophers," probably a cant term for portrait statues in civil garb.
Theocosmus of Megara does not appear to have been so closely associated with Phidias as the two sculptors we have just con- sidered. He was employed to make the statue of Zeus in the Olympieum at Megara, which has already been quoted in the Introduction (b, 1) as giving us useful information about the tech- nique of gold and ivory statues. The statue was left unfinished, owing to the straits into which the city fell at the outbreak of the Peloponnesian war (432 B.C.) ; the head only was completed in gold and ivory ; the rest was in clay and plaster ; and behind the temple lay the half-finished wooden framework intended to be covered with gold and ivory for the completion of the statue. No doubt the artist made first his full-sized model in clay and plaster, and when the work had to be abandoned after the head only was finished, this model itself was substituted for the precious materials which it was found impossible to provide. Phidias was said to have assisted Theocosmus in the design of this statue ; whether this be true or not, it certainly appears from its character to have belonged to the series of great temple statues made under the direct influence of Phidias, if not by his pupils. Above the head of Zeus, presumably on the back of his throne, were the Hours and the Fates ; the same position was occupied by the Hours and the Graces on the Olympian throne. If Theocosmus, when a young man, fell under the influence of Phidias, we find him in a very different connection thirty years later, when he was one of the sculptors employed
1 Sti'abo, viii. p. 344, says, " dXe^dvTivov " only ; but this is his usual descrip- tion of chryselephantine works ; e.g. of the Athena Parthenos, ix. p. 396, and the Zeus at Olympia, viii. p. 353.
308 A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE CHAP.
to make the great dedication offered by the Spartans and their allies at Delphi after the crushing defeat of Athens at Aegos- potami in 405 B.C. His colleagues in this work belonged to the school of Polyclitus, and his share was the statue of Hermon, a naturalised Megarian, who was the steersman of Lysander's ship. The inveterate enmity of Athens to Megara, which had compelled him to abandon the completion of his chief work, may well have led to his later association with the rival school
A of sculpture in the Peloponnese.
^S, Alcamenes, who occupies the first place among the reputed pupils of Phidias, has been reserved to the end, partly because he appears to have been amongst the youngest of them, partly because his relation to Phidias is not quite so clear and direct as that of some others. And in any case, his artistic eminence and independent fame entitle him to a separate treatment. It must, however, be admitted that, with the possible exception of the sculptures of the West Pediment of the temple of Zeus at Olympia, we cannot say with certainty that we possess, either in the original or in a copy, any of the statues that are assigned to him by ancient writers,1 so that we are reduced in his case also, as in those of Calamis and Pythagoras, to inferences from the literary evidence, in any attempt to esti- mate his artistic character and his position in the history of sculpture. We have already seen, in discussing the Olympian pediments, that there are difficulties in the way of accepting the statement of Pausanias that they were made by Paeonius and Alcamenes respectively ; and even if we do not regard these difficulties as insuperable, they are so serious that it is wiser to keep the pediments separate, and not to make them the starting point in our study of the works of the two artists to whom they are assigned. Alcamenes was, according to some accounts, a Lernnian, but he worked mostly in Athens, and in a contest with the Parian Agoracritus, he is actually said to have been preferred to a foreigner by his fellow-Athenians. His most famous work was the Aphrodite in the Gardens, which was said by some to have received its finishing touches from Phidias himself, and was reckoned by many as one of the most beautiful statues in the world ; in the passage of Lucian, quoted in full
1 It was only to be expected that an attempt woirlcl be made to assign certain extant works to Alcamenes ; bnt no identification can be regarded as certain. See note at end of this section on the Aphrodite in the Gardens.
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under Calamis,1 this Aphrodite supplies to the ideal statue imagined by the critic "the round of the cheeks and front view of the face," " and the hands too and the beautiful flow of the wrist, and the delicately -shaped and tapering fingers shall be after the same model." When we remember that the other statues which were laid under contribution were the masterpieces of Calamis, Phidias, and Praxiteles, we realise that, at least for these features, Alcamenes must have been unsur- passed. Unfortunately we have no more detailed description of the posture or attributes of this statue to help us in identify- ing copies of it among extant works, though it is likely enough that copies may exist of so famous a statue.2
Alcamenes is said to have originated the type of Hecate known to us from so many reproductions, in which the goddess is represented by three figures set back to back, typifying her threefold aspect. It is probable that we may recognise in such figures not a modified and softened survival from primitive idols, but rather one of those mythological refinements in the subtle distinction of personalities such as we shall meet with in the next century : Alcamenes, in this way, seems to be the fore- runner of Scopas. The statue of Hecate was set up on the bastion beside the temple of the Wingless Victory. Alcamenes also made several other well-known statues in Athens. One was the Dionysus, in gold and ivory, that was in the temple close by the great theatre. The foundations both of the temple and of the basis of the statue are still extant ; and reproductions of the figure upon coins show that the god was represented as seated on a throne, holding a cup in one hand and a sceptre or thyrsus in the other.3 Of a statue of Ares made by Alcamenes we know nothing but that it stood in a temple of the god. His Hephaestus, also in Athens, is selected for praise by Cicero ; the god was represented as "standing on both feet, and, with the help of the drapery, his lameness was slightly indicated, yet not so as to give the impression of deformity." It is natural to compare this statue with the limping Philoctetes of Pytha- goras, whose pain seemed to make itself felt by those that saw him. The contrast gives us the essential difference between the moderation and reserve that mark the associates of Phidias,
1 P. 233.
2 See note at end of this section on the Aphrodite in the Gardens. 3 Num. Com. on Pans., CO. 1-4.
310 A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE CHAP.
and the powerful and even painful vigour of the earlier sculptors, who, in the first exuberance of freedom from archaic trammels, sometimes transgress the limits of artistic reticence and sobriety.
Another statue of a god by Alcamenes was an Asclepius, in a temple at Mantinea ; he also made a colossal Athena and Heracles of Pentelic marble,1 set up by Thrasybulus at Thebes, as a memorial of his starting from that city on the expedition which terminated successfully in the expulsion of the thirty tyrants in 403 B.C. This last commission gives us the latest date in the career of Alcamenes, and shows us that he was still in full artistic vigour at the end of the fifth century.2 If he was also a pupil and even a rival of Phidias, according to a widely-spread tradition, his career must have been a long one, for even if we exclude the Olympian pediments from our con- sideration, we must still allow that he had already attained an eminent position before the beginning of the Peloponnesian war.
Two statues of goddesses by Alcamenes are mentioned in connection with stories of an artistic competition. He is said to have made an Aphrodite which was preferred to that sent in by his rival Agoracritus, rather from the partiality of his fellow- Athenians than from the superiority of his work. We have already seen, in considering Agoracritus, the sequel of this same story, which tells how the defeated competitor disposed of his statue as Nemesis. Whether the Aphrodite in question the goddess " of the Gardens " or not there is no evidence ; but the identification seems probable, when we consider that this was the one work of Alcamenes said to have been made with the help of Phidias, and that the Nemesis also had the credit of the same assistance. Thus the story, whatever be its worth, seems to record a contest between two pupils of Phidias, each of them helped by their common master. There is yet another story of a competition between Alcamenes and Phidias himself, recorded
1 Perhaps a relief, if we accept the simple emendation, tirl TTUTTOV \idov TOV HevT&yffii' ; but the reading is doubtful.
2 It has been maintained that this fact precludes the possibility of the employ- ment of Alcamenes on the Olympian pediments. But he must in any case have been an old man when he worked for Thrasybulus ; if he were as old as Sophocles when that poet produced the Philocletes, it would, still be possible, though of course improbable, that he might have been employed sixty years before at Olympia.
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by Tzetzes, on what authority we cannot tell. In this case the commission was for two statues of Athena, to be set up upon lofty columns ;x and it is said that the work of Alcamenes, being graceful and delicate, pleased best before the two were mounted and in position, but Phidias had calculated all his effects and proportions for the height at which they were to be seen, and therefore, though his statue, with its parted lips and distended nostrils, did not look well close, it testified the skill of the artist by its fine effect when it was set up at a height. Though it is unlikely that there is any historical foundation for this story, it embodies a valuable piece of criticism, probably due originally to some one who was familiar with the works of both artists. It is well in accordance with what we know of Phidias, in whose colossal statues the application of principles of geometry and optics was indispensable ; while Alcamenes is praised elsewhere for the delicacy of his work in detail.
Besides these statues of divinities, only one athlete is ascribed to Alcamenes, a bronze " pentathlus," who was called the encrinomenos, a word of which the exact meaning is hard to catch.2 It should mean "entering a contest," or "being examined for qualification " ; and so may have represented an athlete, presumably not in action, but standing so as to display himself to the best advantage. Being a competitor in the " pentathlum," he would be an "all-round" athlete, evenly developed in all parts of his body ; and such a subject might well offer an opportunity for an ideal rendering of the athletic figure in its finest proportions and development. If we possessed this figure3 it would be interesting to compare it with the Doryphorus of Polyclitus, a statue of similar intent, with which it is probably about contemporary. We can hardly
1 Statues set up " on columns " were not usual until Roman times, and it is most tempting to translate "above the columns," i.e. in the pediments of a temple, and even to refer this story to the two Athenas in the east and west pediments of the Parthenon. But this is best set aside as a possible, but not profitable speculation. Even if the story did refer to these two, it would have but little weight as to their real authorship, being clearly rhetorical in character.
2 It is commonly rendered in German muster gultig, which seems to imply a translation "chosen as a model," ignoring the present tense. In other cases, such as apoxyomenos, anadyomene, etc., such present participles seem always to refer to some process the subject is undergoing in the representation, and this analogy should if possible be followed here.
3 It has been suggested that we may recognise it in a figure of a pentathlus, standing with the discus in his left hand. But he is evidently preparing for the throw, not merely standing before judges (see Overbeck, 3rd edition, I. p. 276).
312 A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE CHAP.
doubt that the athletic type chosen by Alcamenes would be much lighter and more graceful, as opposed to the massive and powerful form preferred by Polyclitus. Nor is this contrast inconsistent with another drawn between the same two sculp- tors by Quintilian, who here couples Phidias with Alcamenes in his criticism. He praises Polyclitus for the beauty and labori- ous finish of his work, yet says it lacks that nobility of con- ception l which we find in Phidias and Alcamenes. All we learn from other criticisms is that Alcamenes was placed in the very highest rank among sculptors ; by some second only to Phidias. He seems to have been the most original and the most versatile among his fellow-pupils. Being the youngest of them, and surviving his master by many years, he probably escaped to a great degree from the overshadowing influence which, in their case, led to their fame being practically absorbed in that of Phidias. He worked in gold and ivory, in marble, and in bronze ; but, with the exception of the athlete just mentioned, his works represent gods, and a large proportion of them seem to have been temple statues. This fact seems to justify us in following the tradition of ancient writers, and classing Alcamenes among the pupils of Phidias.
In the fifth century the old images of the gods, which had hitherto been the chief objects of worship, came to be considered more and more inadequate, partly because the old mythological conceptions failed to satisfy any longer the more enlightened aspirations of the people, partly because the primitive idols contrasted too crudely with the wealth of sculptural offerings that surrounded them. In this crisis the art of sculpture came to the assistance of religion. We have already seen the incal- culable influence of works like the Zeus and Athena of Phidias, in raising and ennobling the religious conceptions of the many, and in reconciling the few to the old forms which they might else have been inclined to reject. The numerous temples and various divinities of Greece demanded many such embodiments of the religious conception belonging to a particular shrine, and the pupils of Phidias seem to have set themselves especially to meet the need. In doing this they often followed their master so closely that their separate existence was almost forgotten ;
1 It may seem strange to translate pondus in this way, but the contrast shows that this must be the meaning, which is in accordance with the Latin use of gravitas, etc.
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but it was no small achievement for them to have produced a series of great statues which were deemed worthy of attribu- tion to the greatest of Greek sculptors. If Phidias founded no definite school which extended beyond the lifetime of those who had actually worked with him, this was chiefly because his influence was more personal in character, and imparted lofty ideals and noble conceptions of the gods, rather than any systems of style and proportion, or skill in particular kinds of technique. But here and there in later times we shall come across other artists who seem to draw their inspiration directly from Phidias; and though we cannot class them also as his pupils, they serve to show that the power of his example remained, and that his great statues retained their position in the reverence and affection of Greece, even after the art of sculpture had turned aside to follow new methods and different aims.
*~Note on the Aphrodite in the Gardens. — A statue of Aphrodite, of very delicate and refined style, clothed in a transparent, clinging drapery, exists in several copies ; the best known is that in the Louvre. It is generally called Venus Genetrix, because it appears on coins which have been brought into relation with the statue made by Arcesilaus for the Julian family (see § 78). But the type occurs earlier — for example in terra-cottas from Asia Minor,— and thus it appears that Arcesilaus, like his contemporary Pasiteles, adopted types from earlier artists, which he reproduced in their general . character, while adding to them the impress of his own manner and execu- tion. It is therefore legitimate, without refusing to assign this work to Arcesilaus, to look for the famous earlier statue which he reproduced. Furtwangler and others identify it as the Aphrodite in the Gardens of Alcamenes. The identification is a tempting one, but lacks definite evidence. The statue is just what one would imagine the work of Alcamenes to be like, yet it may perfectly well be something else. In fact this identification stands on much the same ground as the attribution of the "Apollo on the Omphalos" to Pythagoras ; it is worth recording as a conjecture, and as an indication of the impression produced by the literary evidence, but cannot be inserted as a piece of verified information. ' More detailed consideration is therefore reserved here, as in the case of the works of Pasiteles, for the section concerning the sculptor from whom the extant copies are derived.
§ 38. Scholars of Calamis and Myron, and other Attic Sculptors. —Praxias the Athenian, a pupil of Calamis, began the sculpture in the pediments of the temple of Apollo at Delphi, which were completed after his death by Androsthenes. We know nothing of this sculpture except its subject — Apollo, Artemis, and Leto, with the Muses, in the eastern pediment, and Dionysus and the Thyiades in the western. Here we see again the principle of contrast, which we have already noticed elsewhere, between the
314 A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE CHAP.
quiet and stately subject on the front of the temple, and the rout of bacchantes at the back. And the setting sun on one pediment, presumably balanced by the rising chariot of the moon at the opposite corner, recalls the rising sun and setting moon in the eastern pediment of the Parthenon, and may even have suggested that splendid device for filling the extremities of the triangular field, and at the same time giving appropriate surroundings to the central subject. Unfortunately the French excavations have not led to the recovery of any remains of these pediments, which must have been entirely destroyed or removed. It seems natural to connect the employment of Attic artists upon the temple at Delphi with its rebuilding by the Attic family of the Alcmaeonidae, who supplied a front of marble when they only contracted for stone ; they may have added also the sculpture that adorned the pediments and metopes. In any case it hardly seems likely that a pupil of Calamis would have been employed to decorate a temple like that of Delphi, after the pre-eminence of Phidias and those that worked under him at Athens had been acknowledged; and so we must probably assign these pediments to the first half of the fifth century. Both the pediments and the metopes, which con- tained scenes from a gigantomachy and exploits of Heracles and Perseus, are referred to in the Ion of Euripides. But this does not necessarily imply that they had been recently erected when the play was brought out; though the credit Athens gained by their presentation to the temple may have induced an Attic poet to dwell upon them.
Lycius, the son and pupil of Myron, seems to have followed in his father's steps. His date is established by an inscription on the basis crowning one of the two buttresses that form the extremities of the wings of the Propylaea at Athens. Pausanias saw the equestrian statues that stood on these buttresses, but, by a strange misunderstanding, connected them with the sons of Xenophon. His mistake was explained by the discovery of the inscription, which records a dedication made by the Athenian knights from the spoil of their enemy in a victory gained under the leadership of Xenophon (of course not the historian 1) and others ; the name had evidently caught the eye of Pausanias, and he had made a note of it without reading the
1 It is tempting to suggest that it was his grandfather ; if so, the talent of Xenophon as a cavalry general would be hereditary.
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whole inscription. Below comes the artist's signature, €7rotifcr€v 'EA.€i;#e/>ei>s Mvpwos. If the statues were first set up on these buttresses, they would necessarily be either contem- porary with the building of the Propylaea (437-432 B.C.), or else later. But the inscription on the basis is re-cut, on the other side and the other way up, in slightly later characters ; and this seems to prove that the statues were originally dedicated a few years earlier, probably about the middle of the century, and were later transferred to these buttresses. The date thus gained is of especial interest as deciding beyond dispute the period of Myron himself ; but we cannot well place that period much further back, and therefore we must class these statues among Lycius' earlier works.
A great group by Lycius, dedicated at Olympia, represented the combat between Achilles and Memnon.1 It stood on a semicircular base, on either extremity of which stood the opposing champions. In the middle was Zeus, supplicated by Thetis and Eos, each on behalf of her own son. In the inter- mediate space were other famous heroes on the Greek and Trojan sides, opposed in pairs. This group reminds us irresistibly of the similar compositions made by Onatas of Aegina, one of them representing the heroes of the Trojan war, and even standing on a similar semicircular base. It seems a fair inference to trace Aeginetan influence in the more athletic side of Attic sculpture, as represented by Myron and his associates, and to suppose that, when Aegina lost its political independence, the tradition of its art survived in works like this of Lycius. The commission was given by the city of Apollonia in Epirus, as a dedication for a victory over the Abantes of Thronium.
Besides statues of Argonauts, of which we know nothing further, and a portrait of the athlete Autolycus, whose beauty is celebrated in Xenophon's Symposium, Lycius made two statues of boys which have led to much discussion ; one held a sprinkler for holy water, and was set up on the Acropolis, before the temenos of Artemis Brauronia ; the other was Mowing up with his breath a smouldering fire. It is impossible to separate this last from a similar work by Styppax of Cyprus,
1 The subject is a favourite one with vase-painters, who mostly follow the version of Ictinus, and represent Zeus weighing the souls of the heroes in a I ••.•dunce, and deciding accordingly. We do not know whether Lycius adopted this form of the story.
Y
316 A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE CHAP.
which represented a slave roasting entrails, and at the same time blowing up the fire with his breath. This last slave is further identified as a favourite of Pericles, one of the skilled workmen employed on the buildings at Athens, who fell from a height and was injured so seriously that his life was despaired of, until Athena appeared in a dream to Pericles, and told him to make use of the herb Parthenium1 as a remedy. As a thank- offering there was set up not only the bronze statue of Athena Hygieia by Pyrrhus, of which the basis may still be seen in situ in front of one of the columns of the Propylaea, but also a portrait of the slave himself, in the attitude already described. It seems likely that two examples of so curious a subject, made by Lycius and Styppax respectively at about the same time, must have had some relation to one another ; but it would be futile to conjecture exactly what that relation was. It is more instructive to note the characteristics of this little group of bronze statues, which belong to a class which has been quaintly but not inappropriately termed "religious genre." The subjects were -evidently intended to interest, not only for their own sake, but also for the opportunity which they gave for the display of the artist's skill, yet they are dedicated to religious purposes, and one is actually a thank-offering for a deliverance. Perhaps, in this case, the nature of the subject was a device to justify the setting up of a statue to a slave within the sacred precinct, somewhat as, at the end of the previous century, a similar difficulty had been met in the case of Leaena, the com- panion of Harmodius and Aristogiton. When her fortitude vindicated for her a statue on the Acropolis, which seemed to be precluded by her profession, Amphicrates had symbolically recorded her heroism, by representing her in the guise of a lioness, the beast whose name she bore. So too Styppax may have rendered this slave, under the guise of a minister attending the sacred fire on the altar.2
1 Not what we call Parthenium, but a plant common on the Acropolis, and still used for healing purposes in the Levant ; it is called ave/moxopTo or erba di vento (so Heldreich).
2 The suggestion that this slave was represented as actually crouching before the feet of the Athena of Pyrrhus, and blowing up the fire on her altar, is un- tenable. The altar of Athena Hygieia is a large one at some distance in front of the statue ; and the statue of the goddess is a dedication, not an object of worship. The long basis, on which it is suggested that the slave may have stood, is obviously an addition of much later date. These facts are incorrectly stated in almost all books on the subject.
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Cresilas of Cydonia was a Cretan, but his association with Pericles, and the presence of some of his most famous works in Athens, make it natural to class him among the Attic artists.
Fio. 72.— For trait -of Pericles, probably after Cresilas (British Museum).
The basis of his portrait of Pericles has been found during the recent excavations on the Acropolis at Athens, and the work is doubtless the original from which are derived several extant copies, one of them in the British Museum (Fig. 72). This portrait, by its simple and severe treatment, especially in the modelling
318 A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE CHAP.
of eyes and beard, shows the character of the fifth century ; and at the same time the nobility and ideal treatment of the face make one understand the words of Pliny applied to this work, " mirumque in hac arte est quod nobiles viros nobiliores fecit." l It is not so much an accurate presentment of the features of Pericles that we have before us, as an embodiment and ex- pression of the personality of the man who summed up in himself the glory and artistic activity of Athens in the fifth century ; there is no attempt to catch the minor details and more accidental traits of the individual, as in later portraits. The statue is dated by the inscription to about 440-430 B.C. ;2 yet it shows no sign of advancing age in the face of Pericles, who is represented as in the full perfection of manhood.
Another statue by Cresilas, which has given rise to much discussion, is one described by Pliny as " a man wounded and fainting, in whom one can feel how little 3 life is left." This work is by general consent identified with a bronze statue on the Acropolis at Athens, described by Pausanias, representing the .Athenian general, Diitrephes,4 wounded with arrows; a basis found on the Acropolis, recording Hermolycus the son of Diitrephes as the dedicator, and Cresilas as the artist, must almost certainly belong to this statue, and dates from about the middle of the 5th century. The basis is square, and has two square holes in it, lying in one of its diagonals, for fixing the statue, which must therefore have been represented in some unusual position. A figure of a warrior pierced with arrows, and staggering, with his feet some distance apart, is found on an Attic lecythus of about this period ; and it has been con- jectured 5 that it may represent the death of this same Diitre- phes, which evidently caused a good deal of sensation at Athens from its peculiar circumstances. Of course considerable caution is necessary in recognising a copy of a contemporary statue on
1 Perhaps translated from an epigram, d\\' ij T^xvrt xal TOVTO 6av/j.d^fiv t?xei' TOI>S evyeveis ZTCV&V cvyeveartpovs, i.e. "the marvel of this art is, that it has added to the nobility of noble men " ; but, as H. Stuart Jones remarks, nobilis in Pliny usually means only " famous " ; so it may mean the skill of the artist "has added to the fame of famous men," by making their portraits.
2 AeXr.'Apx- 1889, p. 36.
3 See H. S. Jones, No. 148, note.
4 Not as Pausanias supposed, the Diitrephes who is mentioned by Thucydides vii. 29 (413 B.C.), but an earlier man of the same name, perhaps the father of Nicostratus (iii. 75, etc.). So Furtwangler, Masterpieces, p. 123.
5 See Furtwangler, loc. cit., p. 124.
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a vase of this period ; such a thing is very unusual, but the coincidences are strange if we do not suppose these various pieces of evidence to be connected. If we imagine the statue to have been in much the position we see in the figure on the vase — as is probable from the indications on the basis — it was certainly a tour-de-force in bronze technique ; and in its curiously distorted attitude, and its representation of a man fighting to the verge of death, it reminds us of Myron's Discobolus and Ladas, and seems to show that Cresilas fell strongly under Myron's influence. Of other works of Cresilas we know nothing but the names ; two more bases have been found with his name, one at Athens, belonging to a statue of Athena, another at Hermione, from a statue of Demeter Chthonia ; he is also said to have made a Doryphorus 1 and a wounded Amazon — one of those in the famous Ephesian competition. These suffice to mark him as an artist of considerable variety as well as of high ideals and technical skill.
Strongylion is another artist of considerable fame and variety, of whose works we know but little. One of them which is often referred to represented, in bronze, a colossal figure of the wooden horse of Troy, with some of the Greek heroes looking out of it. The basis of this horse has been found on the Acro- polis at Athens, and. appears to date from a year not long before 414 B.C., when it is referred to in the Birds of Aristophanes : Strongylion is said to have been famous for his sculpture of horses and bulls ; whence it has been conjectured that a bronze bull, dedicated near the horse on the Acropolis, was also by him. As to another work of his we have more satisfactory information. He made a statue of Artemis Soteira at Megara, of which a replica was set up at Pagae. The coins of these two towns show an identical figure of Artemis, at Pagae actually in a temple and <»n ;i basis; this must certainly be the statue made by Strongy- lion.- It was of bronze, and the coins show us that the goddess uas represented as holding two torches, and in rapid motion. She wears a short chiton, girt round the waist and barely reaching to the knee, and high hunting boots — the regular dress of the huntress Artemis in late Greek art; indeed, it seems likely enough that we must attribute to Strongylion the creation of
1 So only by a probable emendation ; Pliny's MSS. ascribe the work to a Ctesilaus otherwise unknown.
- Inihoof and Gardner, Num. Com. on Pans., PI. A. 1.
320 A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE CHAP.
this type, one of the most familiar in Greek mythology. If so, though we may not be able to identify any copy of his Artemis at Megara, we may see her more or less remote reflection in many well-known statues. Other works by Strongylion were a boy on a small scale, famous for the admiration felt for it by Brutus, an Amazon, who was called Eucnemus, or "of the beautiful shin"1 (not one of those in the Ephesian competition), and three statues of Muses on Helicon. From these few facts we can infer neither the origin nor the school of Strongylion ; he lived about the time of the Peloponnesian war, and as he worked for both Athens and Megara, we cannot assign him with certainty to any influence. He seems to have worked almost exclusively in bronze, and created a type which was of wide influence in later art; excessive admiration of his work was among the affectations of Roman amateurs.
Callimachus is an artist whom we have already seen coupled with Calamis, as an example of the graceful subtlety of Attic sculpture, in contrast to the grandeur and breadth of Phidias and Polyclitus. He, indeed, represents more than any other the direct succession of purely Attic art, which we traced to its culmination in Calamis before the reaction to a stronger and severer style under Doric influence. Callimachus is said even to have carried this refinement and delicacy so far as to be a fault ; he is called catatexitechnus, the man who frittered away his art on details, and is said to have been so difficult to satisfy with his own work that the excessive and laborious finish which he gave it destroyed its beauty. In him some have seen, not without reason, the originator of those over-refined and affected works which later, as the Neo-Attic reliefs, occupied a prominent place in decorative art. Besides a statue of Hera at Plataea, we learn of only one work of sculpture by Callimachus, some dancing Laconian maidens, probably those who danced at the festival of Artemis at Caryae, and were called Caryatids ; these must not be confused with the figures later called Carya- tids in architecture.2 Such dancing figures are not uncommon in later reliefs, and may be ultimately derived from the statues by Callimachus. We hear of him not only as a sculptor, but also
1 She was presumably also on a small scale, since Nero had her carried about with him ; but perhaps the eccentricities of that 'Emperor are beyond calculation. There is no sufficient ground for identifying any extant Amazon with this statue.
2 These architectural figures were simply called Kopat in the fifth century.
in THE FIFTH CENTURY— 480-400 B.C. 321
as skilled in other branches of decorative and mechanical art ; thus he made the lamp in the Erechtheum, which burned all the year round, and had a golden palm-tree to serve as chimney; and he is credited with the invention of the Corinthian capital — perhaps in error, as it is already found in the temple at Bassae ; but Ictinus may have used there the invention of his fellow- Athenian. He is also said to have first used the drill in marble — that is to say, probably, the running drill for cutting the folds of drapery and other deep lines of modelling. In fact, his influence on later art and his mechanical and technical inventions distinguish him beyond his actual attainment in sculpture.
§ 39. Attic influence outside Athens ; Phigalia. — The temple of Apollo Epicurius at Bassae, near Phigalia, was one of the most famous in the Peloponnese,1 alike for the magnificence of its position, and the beauty of its architectural forms and its sculptural decoration. It was built by the people of Phigalia in thanks to Apollo, to whom they attributed their immunity from a plague that ravaged the surrounding country during the Peloponnesian war. It has been disputed whether this was the great plague of 430 B.C., described by Thucydides, but said by him to have spared the Peloponnese, or another plague ten years later. Architectural and sculptural forms combine to confirm the attribution of the temple to this period.
The temple is of peculiar design, and shows us the freedom with which a great architect like Ictinus, who was employed on this temple as well as the Parthenon at Athens and the Hall of the Mysteries at Eleusis, dealt with the conventional plan of a Greek temple. At first glance the temple appears to be of the usual form, with pronaos and opisthodomus and surrounded with a peristyle, except that it-faces north and south instead of east and west. But the interior of the building deviates strangely from the normal arrangement; it consists of a small cella at the south end, opening toward the east by a door in the long eastern side of the temple; here doubtless was the statue, facing east as usual. To the north of this cella is an open court, taking up all the rest of the building, and surrounded by attached Ionic columns, varied by one Corinthian, the earliest known, in the middle of the space between the cella and the court. Over
1 Paiisanias says it was second only to the temple of Athena Alea at Tegea, which was built by Scopas (see § 49).
322 A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE CHAP.
these columns ran the continuous frieze of the temple, round the interior of the oblong court. Hence, unlike the friezes that usually surround the outside of a building, it was all visible from one point. Over the pronaos, at the north end, in a position similar to that occupied by the metopes at Olympia, were metopes, sculptured in high relief. Of these only comparatively insignificant fragments have been recovered. These, as well as the frieze, which is in a fine-grained Peloponnesian marble,1 are now in the British Museum. The Phigalian sculptures were excavated in 1811, by a party of explorers, including the architect Cockerell ; and were purchased by the British Govern- ment in 1814. Being added to the Elgin marbles, they make our national collection unrivalled for the study of archi- tectural sculptures of the fifth century.
FIG. 73.— Slab from Phigalian frieze ; Heracles (British Museum).
The subject of the frieze was divided into two parts, a battle of Greeks and Amazons and a battle of Lapiths and Centaurs, the former occupying two sides of the court, and one slab over, the latter filling the rest of the other two sides. As to the exact order of the slabs there is a good deal of uncertainty, but it seems clear that each of the short sides, north and south, had a group of especial interest, to afford a centre to the com- position.
The battle with the Centaurs probably began at the south- west corner. To this subject belongs the group of Apollo and Artemis in a chariot ; she drives, while he bends his bow
1 From the quarries of Doliaua, near Tegea.
m
THE FIFTH CENTURY— 480-400 B.C. 323
against the monsters. Perhaps the goddess is hastening to the help of those who, on the next slab, have taken refuge at her image. The Centauromachy continues all along this side, and turns the corner to the north, where it ends in the great group of which the invulnerable Caeneus is the central figure. We have already seen, in the case of the Theseum, how this theme lends itself to effective composition in a frieze. After the Caeneus group comes the beginning of the battle against the Amazons, which encroaches by one slab on the north side, while it fills the east and south sides entirely. In the middle of the south short side was Heracles, distinguished by his club and lion-skin ; his opponent is presum- ably the queen of the Amazons (Fig. 73). The two combatants cross each other's paths and strike back at one another, thus making a balance in the composition, peculiarly suitable for figures that form the centre of a larger group. The effect is similar to that of Athena and Poseidon in the western pediment of the Parthenon.1 The rest of the frieze is rich and varied in motion, full of imagination and originality of design, with here and there a group which is almost startling in its unconventionality ; that, for instance, of a Centaur who bites one adversary in the neck, while he lashes out with his heels against another who holds his shield against this savage attack ; or that of a Greek who tilts an Amazon off her horse by seizing her shoulder and her foot. The treatment of the nude is mostly vigorous and correct, especially in the male figures, and the athletic frames of the Amazons; but it is uneven in quality, and is particularly weak in the nude female form when exposed, as in the Lapith women. The drapery is remarkable ; it is designed, though not always executed, with great skill and freedom, and floating masses of it. are often used to fill vacant spaces in the field — a feature which we have already seen in Attic work of this period. But the extremely low relief of some portions shows a greater dependence on the help of colour, and a greater subjection to influence of pictorial method, than we often find in Athens itself; and there are some mannerisms peculiar to this Phigalian frieze — for example, the way in which the drapery of the short chiton is stretched across in horizontal folds between the knees.
All these characteristics of design and of execution, taken
1 So A. H. Smith, British Museum Catalogue.
324 A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE CHAP.
together, seem to show that the design is due to an Attic artist, as we should expect from the employment of Ictinus, the architect of the Parthenon. But the frieze does not appear to be the work of the same hands as the decorative sculp- tures which we see on the various buildings of Athens itself. Some of their excellences and defects, their superi- ority in rendering the male form, the mannerisms in the treatment of drapery, make it likely that local artists of Pelo- ponnesian training were employed in the execution, under the general direction of an Attic master. In this way we can best explain the obvious affinities in design to works of the Attic school ; while the pictorial and decorative elements, especially in the treatment of drapery, were naturally either exaggerated or inadequately mastered by the local artisans to whom they were unfamiliar. Here the internal evidence offered by the style is confirmed by literary authority ; and so the Phigalian sculptures offer a clue to guide us when we meet with a somewhat similar character in other sculptures both in the Peloponnese1 and in Asia Minor.2
§ 40. Polyclitus.2' — Two names stand out beyond all others as representative of the sculpture of the fifth century — those of Phidias and Polyclitus. So far we have considered either works in which the influence of Phidias is predominant, or artists whom it is natural to associate with the school of which he was the most distinguished figure, if not the acknowledged head. But Athens in the fifth century shows no artistic exclusiveness ; she seems rather, in claiming for herself a pre-eminence among the Greeks in the arts of peace, to have become to a certain extent representative, and to have absorbed into herself much of what was best in the work of her neighbours in addition to continuing her own earlier traditions. We have seen, in par- ticular, how the monuments testify to a strong accession of Peloponnesian influence in the Attic art of the earlier part of the fifth century, and how tradition assigns Ageladas of Argos as a master to two of the greatest of Attic artists at this time. The third pupil accorded to Ageladas by tradition is Polyclitus, who succeeded him as the recognised head of the Argive school
1 See p. 339. 2 See p. 345.
3 The Greek IIoAikXaTos is transliterated Polycletus by Cicero and Quintilian, hence the French Polyclete, the German Polyklet, and the form sometimes used by English scholars. But Polyclitus, the form used by Pliny, is probably more familiar to English readers. Cf. Clitus = KXelros in Shakespeare.
Ill
THE FIFTH CENTURY— 480-400 B.C. 325
of athletic sculpture. The relation has in all three cases been disputed. Although we might have expected it to pass un- challenged in the case of Polyclitus, whose Argive origin and artistic connections seem to vouch for its historical truth, the difficulties due to the respective dates of the two sculptors are here so serious that they have led many to reject it as impos- sible. If, however, we admit that Ageladas accepted a com- mission as late as 455 B.C.,1 there is no difficulty in supposing that Polyclitus — whose artistic activity falls entirely, so far as we know, -within the last forty years of the fifth century — may have worked as a boy under his veteran predecessor. However this may be, he certainly accepted the tradition of the Argive school as it had been handed down by earlier sculptors and consolidated during the long life of Ageladas ; and though he was regarded by later time as the first to introduce a system of athletic sculpture, and to establish a canon of proportions, it is difficult to tell how much of this he owed to his predecessors. But his great creative imagination, which enabled him to make a temple statue second only to those of Phidias, and his wonder- ful technical skill — in which he was considered by many to stand first among all the sculptors of antiquity, — gave him a position above all previous masters of the Argive school. What, however, was generally regarded as the most characteristic work of Polyclitus was the statue in which he embodied the ideal of bodily perfection, as conceived by the athletic schools of the Peloponnese in their earlier period — a statue which served, as it was intended; for a model to all later artists, and exercised as much influence on the bodily type of Greek sculpture as the Zeus of Phidias exercised on its religious ideals.
So far, it has been assumed without discussion that Poly- clitus was an Argive. This statement, which rests on the highest authorities, would require no comment but for Pliny's assertion that he was a Sicyonian. The schools of Argos and Sicyon seem always to have been closely united ; and the fact that their common centre was transferred to Sicyon in the fourth century suffices to account for the confusion. If, as we have seen reason to suppose, Polyclitus was employed on sculp- ture as early as the middle of the fifth century, we know nothing of the work of his earlier years. Presumably he devoted himself during this time to acquiring that knowledge
1 See p. 192.
326 A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE CHAP.
of the athletic human form which was the chief tradition of the Argive school, and to making the statues of athletes that formed its commonest product. His earliest recorded work is a statue of the Olympian victor Cyniscus, who won in the boys' boxing match ; this may be assigned to about 440 B.C.1 Other bases of athletic statues bearing the name of Polyclitus have been found at Olympia ; but there were two artists of this name, and the younger and less famous is probably the one to whom these inscriptions must be assigned.2 The two greatest works of the athletic type — both of which are preserved to us in various copies — were not intended as statues of any individual athletes, but rather as ideal embodiments of what an athlete should be. The one is known as the Diadumenus, because he is represented as a victor in the games, binding about his brow the fillet over which the wreath is to be placed ; the other as the Doryphorus, because he holds in his left hand a spear sloped over his shoulder. This Doryphorus was also known as the Canon, because Polyclitus had embodied in it not only his conception of the male form in its most perfect development, but also the system of proportions which he adopted as normal. Indeed, he actually wrote a treatise which went by the same name as the statue, and the two were mutually illustrative of each other. Unfortunately, this statue, like all others that can be attributed to Polyclitus, is only preserved to us in copies of Roman period, which not only fail to enable us to realise the beauty of their original, but do not even preserve accurately the system of proportion embodied in the Doryphorus. The copies we possess vary to some extent among themselves, so that it is difficult for us to gather from them more than a general notion of the proportions adopted by the sculptor ; while, on the other hand, they exaggerate some of the charac- teristics, especially the massive and heavy build, so as to pro- duce an appearance of clumsiness which we cannot readily accept as belonging to the work of Polyclitus himself. We must, however, make the best of the evidence we possess, while making due allowance for its inadequacy. It must especially be remembered how much is lost in the translation from bronze into marble of the work of an artist who, in the art of finishing a bronze statue, is said to have surpassed all others, not except- ing Phidias himself.
1 Loewy, 50. 2 See § 41.
in THE FIFTH CENTURY— 480-400 B.C. 327
The Doryphorus, or Canon, is preserved to us in several copies ; the completest is that from Pompeii, now in the Naples museum (Fig. 74). It is, however, a heavy and mechanical copy, and can give us but little notion of the finish of Polyclitus' style, in which his chief excellence lay. A bronze copy of the head by the Attic artist Apollonius l at least reproduces the material of the original, and so may be expected to follow its technique ; but it is a conventional work of the Augustan age, and is hardly more to be trusted. But all the copies, whatever their defects, agree so far that we can safely infer from them the physical type chosen by the artist, both for body and for face, and also the pose and general character of the statue. It represents a young man in the very prime of athletic condition, but remarkable rather for massive strength than for agility. All his muscles are strongly developed, though we must allow some- thing here for the exaggeration of the late copyist ; his head is large in proportion, about one-seventh of the total height, and its squareness of skull and rather heavy jaw imply that his athletic prowess is due rather to obstinate power of endurance than to quickness or versatility. Not that the Polyclitan Doryphorus shows any of that brutality which sometimes marks the professional athlete of later Greece ; he represents a thoroughly healthy and evenly-developed type ; and the de- formed and swollen " boxer's ear," so conspicuous in Apollonius' head, does not appear in other copies, and is probably a modifi- cation introduced by the later artist.
Some faint reflection of the inimitable bronze technique of Polyclitus may be traced in extant copies of his best-known work. Perhaps the most accurate in this respect is the torso in the Pourtales collection at Berlin, which shows a remark- able treatment of the muscles of the body, unintelligible in marble, but easier to understand if we imagine it transferred to bronze.2 Here, though the relief of the various muscles is less accentuated than in other copies, the lines of demarcation between them are more clearly and definitely indicated ; there is less of that play of light and shade over the whole on which marble work depends for its effect ; more of the evenly-curved surfaces, intersecting in definite lines, which in a metal statue reflect the light and bring out all the delicacies of the model-
1 Collignon, I. Fig. 252. 2 Rayet, Mon. de V Art, I. PL 29, p. 2.
FIG. 74. — Doryphorus, after Polyclitus (Naples).
CHAP, m THE FIFTH CENTURY— 480-400 B.C. 329
ling. As to the treatment of the hair, all copies are pretty well in agreement ; it lies close to the scalp, coming down low over the forehead, and is divided all over its surface into short waving tresses, which seem as if drawn on it, but never stand out separately in relief ; it contrasts alike with the bronze hair of later art, standing out freely from the head, and that in the best copy of Myron's Discobolus,1 in which the hair, rather than the separate tresses, is outlined in a harder line over the forehead, and is subdivided into more minute curls, clinging close but not waving, all over the head.
The other of Polyclitus' two famous athletic statues, the Diadumenus, is also preserved to us only in inadequate copies. Until recently, the most trustworthy of these were a statue from Vaison in France, now in the British Museum (Fig. 75), and a bronze statuette in the Louvre.2 To these may now be added a head recently acquired by the British Museum, and placed beside the Vaison statue, and a statue discovered on Delos, which is perhaps the finest of all. The Diadumenus is repre- sented as a victor in the games, binding about his head the sacred fillet over which the judge was to place the wreath. The position of the arms is much the same as in many statues and statuettes in which later sculptors delighted to represent Aphrodite binding her hair ; and the motive of the artist is the same in both cases ; it affords an excellent opportunity for displaying the symmetry and proportion of the arms and chest. Unlike the Doryphorus, who is slowly advancing, the Diadu- menus is standing still ; and thus, though the weight of the body here also is borne mainly by the advanced right leg, the poise of the figure is different ; the centre of gravity is behind the right foot, instead of above it arid on the point of advanc- ing beyond it. It is evidently in subtle distinctions like this, and in the consequent modification of all the muscles and the whole pose of the statue, that the art of Polyclitus excelled ; a comparison of the two works is the best possible comment on the monotony complained of by some ancient critics. Even in
1 See p. 237.
2 The Farnese Diaclumeuus in the British Museum is clearly so far modified as to be useless for style, though ultimately derived from Polyclitus' statue ; the same remark applies to the terra-cotta statuette published in J. If. £, PI. Ixi., also in the British Museum : the modification in this case is Praxitelean, though it may be doubted whether the copy is the work of an ancient or of a modern artist.
FIG. 75. -Diadumenus from Vaison, after Polyclitus (British Museum).
CHAP, in THE FIFTH CENTURY— 480-400 B.C. 331
copies it is possible to appreciate to some extent the refine- ment and delicacy of their differentiation ; if we possessed the originals, it would doubtless be far more admirable. Of other athletic statues by Polyclitus we have nothing but the name recorded; one is described by Pliny as an athlete using the strigil, destringentem se, and is interesting for the identity of its subject with the " Apoxyomenus " of Lysippus, which was intended as a rival to Polyclitus' Canon.1
It was, however, not only in athletic sculpture that Poly- clitus excelled. His great gold and ivory statue of Hera in the Heraeum near Argos was recognised as the visible embodiment of the goddess, and is mentioned as a worthy counterpart to the Olympian Zeus of Phidias. Indeed, Strabo goes even further, and says that the Argive statue excelled all others in its art, though the works of Phidias were more costly and on a larger scale. Such a criticism is probably based on the work of some writer unduly partial to the Argive school, and would hardly be endorsed by modern opinion, if we possessed the statues to which it refers. We can, however, safely infer that Polyclitus excelled in the ideal representation of divine power and beauty ; but the type of Hera, in Greek mythology, is a less sublime and intellectual conception than that of Zeus or Athena, and for this reason more adapted to the limitations of the Argive school. Hera in the Argive ceremonies was especi- ally worshipped as the bride who yearly renewed her virginity ; and it was thus, probably, that Polyclitus represented her. She was enthroned, with a pomegranate in one hand, in the other a sceptre surmounted by a cuckoo, the bird in likeness of which Zeus was said to have shown himself to Hera. On her head was a crown, decorated with figures of the Graces and the Hours. In short, she was represented as the bride and consort of Zeus — the perfect type of youthful womanhood — a concep- tion that gave full scope to the study of perfection in physical form and dignity of type which belonged especially to the Argive tradition. We may obtain some notion of what this type was like from the contemporary coins of Argos and of Elis, which, however, must not, like Roman coins, be taken as copies of the work of Polyclitus, but rather as the die-cutter's concep- tion of the type of Hera which found its most perfect ex- pression in the work of Polyclitus. The statue was made
1 See p. 407. z
A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE CHAP.
immediately after the fire which consumed the Heraeum in 422 B.C.
As to other statues of gods by Polyclitus, we know nothing for certain beyond the names ; they were a Zeus Meilichius — the god of atonement — at Argos, set up after a massacre in 418 B.C., and made of white marble;1 a Hermes in Lysimachia, which must have been moved from elsewhere ; a Heracles, moved to Rome, and an Aphrodite at Amyclae, supporting a tripod set up after the battle of Aegospotami (405 B.C.). In most of these cases, as in some others, there is the possibility of doubt whether the work should be attributed to the elder or the younger Polyclitus ; a similar doubt exists in the case of a group of marble, representing Apollo, Artemis, and Leto, on Mount Lycone near Argos.2 The two artists were evidently not clearly distinguished from one another in antiquity ; and, if we had not the evidence of inscriptions to help us, we should find it very difficult to keep them apart.
As to another work of Polyclitus, his Amazon, we have more 'evidence ; and it will be well to include here a brief notice of the set of statues of Amazons to which it belongs ; they are best treated together, and Polyclitus is the only artist to whom one of them is attributed by a general consensus of opinion. Pliny says that there were certain Amazons dedi- cated in the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, a town said to have been founded by Amazons. These were by sculptors of differ- ent periods ; but, in a competition of merit, decided by the artists themselves, Polyclitus was placed first, Phidias second, Cresilas third, and Phradmon, an Argive, of whom little else is known, fourth.3 Among statues of Amazons, of which many are preserved in our museums, there are some which clearly show the style of the fifth century. To omit minor variations or later modifications, there are three main types :- — 4
1. An Amazon, leaning with her left elbow on a pillar, her right hand resting on her head (Fig. 76); her chiton is fastened only on the right shoulder, leaving her left breast bare; on
1 The material is strange for either the elder or the younger Polyclitus ; the massacre may be wrongly identified. That the younger Polyclitus used marble is a mere assumption.
2 Also attributed to the younger Polyclitus because of material. See last note ; this is merely arguing in a circle.
3 Pliny says fifth, making Cresilas Cydon (the Cydonian) into two sculptors.
4 I follow here Michaelis, Jahrbuch, 1886, p. 14.
in THE FIFTH CENTURY— 480-400 B.C. 333
her right breast, just outside the edge of the drapery, is a wound.
FIG. 76. — Amazon, after Polyclitus (Rome, Vatican).
2. The Capitoline type. — An Amazon, with her right arm raised, leaning, probably on a spear (Fig. 77) ; her head is bent
334 A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE CHAP.
down, her chiton is fastened on the left shoulder, it has been
Fio. 77.— Amazon, Capitoline type (Rome, Vatican).
unfastened from her right by her left hand, which still holds t drapery at her waist, so as to keep it clear of a wound below t
'
in THE FIFTH CENTURY— 480-400 B.C. 335
right breast ; there is another wound above it ; she wears also a chlamys.
FIG. 78.— Amazon Mattel (Rome, Vatican).
3. The so-called Mattei type (Fig. 78), representing not a irounded Amazon, but one using her spear as a jumping-pole to
336 A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE CHAP.
mount her horse ; it is on her left side, and she grasps it with both hands, her right passing across over her head. Her chiton is fastened on the right shoulder, leaving the left breast bare, and it is curiously drawn up below so as to expose the left thigh.
These types very probably go back to the statues of Amazons in the temple at Ephesus, which gave rise also to Pliny's story. Pliny probably gives correctly the names of the artists to whom these statues were attributed ; beyond this his story is of little value, though it probably records, in a rhetorical form, the opinion of some ancient critic. We may, then, make use of the names he gives to help us in considering the extant statues of Amazons.
It is generally agreed that the original from which the extant statues of type (1) are derived must have been made by Polyclitus. Its excellences and its defects alike claim him as their author. The attitude recalling that of the Diadumenus, the squarely-made and vigorous form, the athletic type of the Amazon, who though female in sex, is male in modelling and in proportion, the resemblance of the head to that of the Doryphorus, with the squarely -shaped skull and heavy jaw, the absence of any expression of emotion or pathos, except of mere weariness of battle; the absence of any adequate consideration of the modification necessitated by the wound in the position of the figure or its expression — all these are characteristics which we should expect to find in the work of the Argive master. With type (2) the case is not nearly so easy to decide. The whole character and type of the figure is softer and more womanly, and the wound and its effect upon the Amazon are never, even in details, lost sight of as the central motive of the whole figure. It might seem, as has been well said by Michaelis, that type (2) was consciously made as a protest against the inconsistencies of type (1). The type of the head is not dissimilar, but is entirely transformed by the pathos of the expression, as she looks at her wounds.
It is best to be cautious about the attribution of this second type.1 Some attribute it to Phidias, others, as confidently,2 to Cresilas, appealing to the designation of his work as the wounded
1 The Capitoline Amazon has the name of Sosicles inscribed on it. But he is only the copyist ; the same type is repeated elsewhere, e.g. in the statue in the Vatican (Fig. 77).
2 So Furtwangler, Meisterwerke, p. 286.
m THE FIFTH CENTURY— 480-400 B.C. 337
Amazon ; the wound is certainly the leading motive in his statue, and is not mentioned in other cases. Yet it is certainly present,1 though not allowed to form the leading motive, in the Amazon of Polyclitus. All that seems certain is that we see here a fifth-century type, by an artist who prefers womanly grace to athletic and almost virile character and proportion, even in an Amazon ; and who, when he introduces a wound into the statue, does not treat it as an accessory, but modifies the whole conception to suit it. As a result, the spectator may indeed be said " almost to feel her pain," as was said of the Philoctetes of Pythagoras ; but, without more certain standards of compari- son, it would be rash to say definitely who was the author of this Amazon.
As to the third type (Mattei), even more doubt is possible ; indeed, it is by no means certain that it belongs to the same period as the other two ; the way in which the drapery is drawn up to show the modelling of the left thigh reminds one of a similar device in the Artemis of Versailles, and is not adequately explained by the position, any more than the drapery of the Aphrodite of Melos ; the slim and graceful proportions of the figure also suggest a later period. We cannot, however, assign her with confidence to any later artist, though her extreme grace is in favour of a Hellenistic origin.2 Perhaps, however, so late an attribution must be given up, especially in view of the simpler character of the example at Petworth,3 which, however, seems to belong to the fourth rather than the fifth century.
§41. Scholars of Polyclitus. — As the artistic activity of Polyclitus falls in the latter part of the fifth century, his scholars, as was to be expected,' mostly fall into the next period ; but we have such scanty information about most of them, apart from their relation to their master, that it seems best to include most of them here, especially as the great
1 Michaelis (loc. cit.) refutes Overbeck's suggestion that the wound was in- troduced here from the Capitoline type.
2 Winckelmann identified the Mattei Amazon as Strongylion's ewcj^/uos ; but it should rather be etf/ATjpos.
Furtw angler suggests that this third type is that of Phidias, a theory which will hardly gain in acceptance by his additional conjecture that the Herculanean bronze head belongs to this type. That head has been generally recognised as Polyclitan in origin ; the head of the Mattei Amazon does not belong to it, but to a copy of the Capitoliue type.
3 Jahrb. 1886, PL 1.
338 A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE CHAP.
common work on which many of them were engaged was the group set up by the Spartans in commemoration of the victory at Aegospotami in 405 B.C. Of many of them we know little more than the name ; the most interesting group is the family of Patrocles, who was perhaps the brother of Polyclitus. Two of his sons were Naucydes and Daedalus.1 To these must be added the younger Polyclitus, who is described by Pausanias as the brother of Naucydes. He was also the pupil of Naucydes, and worked in the first half of the fourth century. Another pupil of Naucydes was Alypus. Of most of these sculptors we know little beyond the fact that they made statues of athletic victors — the stock subject of the Argive and Sicyonian schools. Naucydes also made a Discobolus, a Hermes, and a man sacrificing a ram, commonly, but without much reason, identified with a statue of Phrixus on the Acropolis at Athens ; a basis with his name has been found there. He also made a portrait of the Lesbian poetess, Erinna — probably one of those ideal portraits of famous men and women of old time that later became common. His brother Daedalus too produced what we may call athletic genre as well as athletic portraits — boys scrap- ing themselves with the strigil. Naucydes worked with Polyclitus the elder in the Heraeum, and made a Hebe of gold and ivory as a pendant to the great statue of Hera ; other statues of gods are attributed to him, as well as to his pupil and younger brother, the younger Polyclitus, who worked in the first half of the fourth century.
The great group dedicated by the Spartans after Aegospotami reminds us of some of the earlier dedications from the spoils of the Persians, notably that made by Phidias after Marathon, which was also erected at Delphi, and was also of bronze. The subject was an assembly of gods, with Poseidon crowning the victorious admiral Lysander, in the presence of the leaders of the Spartan allies. Another somewhat similar but smaller group was dedicated by the Tegeans, after a victory over the Spartans in 369 B.C. ; it represented the Tegean heroes, and was made by Daedalus of Sicyon, with Aristophanes and others. These bare enumerations suffice to show how numerous and
1 This rests on the authority of inscriptions, Loewy, 86, 88. Daedalus and Naucydes called themselves Sicyonians, the younger Polyclitus an Argive. The artistic relations of Argos and Sicyon were then close ; and the centre of the school varied between the two.
m THE FIFTH CENTURY— 480-400 B.C. 339
influential was the school which owned Polyclitus as its master. Though statues of athletic victors are its most frequent theme, it produced many statues of the gods, and also great groups of historical and mythological figures, which seem to continue the tradition of earlier times and worthier occasions.
We might naturally expect to find that the sculptures of the Heraeum near Argos would bear the same relation to Polyclitus that we felt justified in claiming for Phidias in the case of the sculptors of the Parthenon. But it must be remembered that it was in single statues rather than in great decorative com- positions that the Argive school excelled, and that we have no reason to suppose that Polyclitus was entrusted with the main direction of the works at Argos as Phidias was at Athens. Some of the sculptures of this temple have been known for some time; others were recovered in the recent American excavations.1 Pausanias tells us that the metopes represented subjects partly from the myth of the birth of Zeus, partly from the battle of Gods and Giants, and the Trojan war and capture of Ilium. The fragments that have been recovered do not suffice to give us any general notion as to how these subjects were treated, but their style is remarkable, and different from what we should have expected. There is a good deal of variety in them, but few, if any, show the heavy forms of the Argive type. The nude male figure is treated with firmness and precision, but at the same time shows a lightness of proportions and variety of pose which is more like Attic work ; the drapery, with its sometimes clinging, sometimes floating folds, again recalls the Attic sculptures of the same period; and of the types of face, though some are distinctly Argive, others resemble those on Attic monuments. When it is added that the material is Pentelic marble, the conclusion seems irresistible that the wonderful successes in decorative sculpture of Athens under Pericles had caused the influence of Attic art to spread even to Argos ; and that, just as we recognised in the restraint and severity of many Attic works the influence of Peloponnesian art, so too this influence was later repaid by a reaction of Attic grace and lightness upon the dignified but somewhat heavy and monotonous style of the Argive sculptors. Another head (Fig. 79), in Parian marble, which probably does not belong to the
1 See Waldstein, Excavations at the Heraeum,
340 A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE CHAP.
architectural sculptures but to a free statue,1 bears out the same conclusion. This head, which is one of the freshest and best
FIG. 79. — Head from Heraeum, near Argos (Athens, National Museum).
preserved examples of the sculpture of the fifth century, strikes us at first sight with its resemblance to the heads of the
1 It is about two-thirds life size, and so too big for the metopes. It may be from the pediments, of which, however, no other traces have been found. It would rather seem from the words of Pausanias, who describes the metopes only, that the pediments had no sculpture.
in THE FIFTH CENTURY— 480-400 B.C. 341
Parthenon frieze, and has little resemblance in character or proportion to the head of the Doryphorus, or of the Amazon which we saw good reason for attributing to Polyclitus. Yet when we examine it more carefully we see a simplicity and severity of treatment, and absence of softness in modelling, which contrast with Attic work. It is rather what one would expect of an Argive sculptor who had fallen under Attic influence, and appreciated the grace and beauty of the sculpture of the Par- thenon, without losing his strong sense of artistic moderation and clear-cut form. Doubtless sculptors from Argos as well as elsewhere were attracted to Athens by the great artistic activity under Pericles and Phidias ; and it is in the later employment of such sculptors at Argos that both this head and the architectural sculptures of the Heraeum find their natural explanation.
§ 42. Other sculptors and works of this period. — Paeonius of Mende, in Thrace, has already come under our notice as the sculptor to whom Pausanias assigns the eastern pediment of the temple of Zeus at Olympia. We also possess a work from his hand which is attested not only by the statement of Pausanias, but also by the inscribed basis on which it was erected. This is a statue of Victory, set up on a lofty triangular pedestal narrowing block by block up to the top, over which the goddess appears to be floating (Fig. 80). The inscription records that this Victory, made by Paeonius, was dedicated by the Messenians and Naupac- tians from the spoil of their enemy — that is to say, of the Spartans who fell or were captured at Sphacteria in 424 B.C. ; such at least was the Messenian tradition.1 On the inscription Paeonius states that he was also the victor in a competition to crown the gables of the temple with acroteria ; which were probably similar floating figures of Victory.2 The goddess is represented as floating with outstretched wings through the air. She is not alighting, for on the pedestal just beneath her feet is a flying eagle, as if to show she is still in the air ; the rough block on which she is supported may well have been painted blue, so as to keep up the illusion, and be barely distinguishable from the sky. Her
1 Pausanias without sufficient reason doubts it, and quotes an expedition against Oeniadae in 452 B.C. He was probably influenced by his belief that Paeonius made the pediment ; but it is incredible that the same man could have made this Victory almost at the same time ; thirty years later it is conceivable.
2 It has been suggested that a confusion between acroteria and pediments may be the origin of Pausanias' statement about the latter.
Fid. 80.— Victory by Paeonius (Olympia).
CHAP, in THE FIFTH CENTURY— 480-400 B.C. 343
face is lost : l the drapery is a very beautiful and careful study of the effect of wind and rapid motion, as it clings to the graceful and girlish form, or floats in wide tempestuous folds, while a loose mantle, held in one hand, sweeps out in a full curve behind the figure ; but at the same time it gives the impression of a study or an experiment, rather than of that mastery which we see in the best Attic work. It is interesting to compare this statue with the Victory of Samothrace,2 when, in spite of the vigour of the later work, the simplicity and directness of observation in Paeonius' figure and its graceful poise in the air stand out in contrast. It is difficult to assign so original a work to an old artist, who had followed a very different style in his younger days, and had late in life fallen under the all-pervading Attic influence ; but such is the only possibility, if we wish to adhere to the statement of Pausanias about the pediments. When we consider the grave difficulties that met us in the case of Alcamenes also, we must acknowledge that the hesitation which so many have felt in attributing the Olympian pediments to these two artists is certainly justified.
Various series of sculptures, mostly architectural, have been found in widely-separated districts of the ancient world, which may be ranked either as examples of Greek sculpture of the fifth century, or as falling directly under its influence. We have already had to turn to the sepulchral sculpture of Lycia as illustrating the contemporary tendencies of Greek art, and in the " Harpy tomb " we saw an example of the lax archaic style derived from Ionia. We must return to Lycia again in the fifth century, to see once more an art entirely subservient to that of Greece ; but the predominance of Athens has already asserted itself, and we shall see in Lycia the reflection of many types and many artistic devices which we have noticed either in Athens or in works made outside Athens under Attic influences.
The most extensive of these Lycian monuments is the sculp- ture on the precinct wall surrounding a tomb at Trysa (the modern Gjolbaschi) ;3 it has now been removed bodily to
1 On Griittner's restoration, which is widely known, her face is restored from the pediments ; this begs the question of Paeonius' authorship of the latter, and u-inls to prejudice our judgment on the question.
2 See p. 486.
3 Without illustrations it is impossible to speak except in a general way of these reliefs ; and illustrations of details would not suffice ; to gain a general
344 A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE CHAP.
Vienna. The material in which it is carved is unfortunately a soft and porous stone, which has suffered much from exposure to the weather, and can never have been adapted to refinements of modelling. The artist probably trusted for his effect in great measure to colour, and indeed his compositions on the whole are pictorial rather than sculpturesque in character. It is difficult to decide how far we are entitled to quote this monument as a work of Greek sculpture at all. It consists of whole series of friezes, often set one above another on a wall in defiance of all Greek architectural principles, and recalling the sculptured chronicles which adorned the palace walls of oriental monarchs. Some of its scenes are historical records of actual combat; others are decorative or conventional ; but the majority form a varied gallery of mythological subjects. The battles of Greeks and Amazons and of Lapiths and Centaurs, the exploits of Theseus, the slaying of the suitors by Odysseus, these and many more find their place here ; and while some of them repeat the types with which we are already familiar from Attic decorative sculpture, others show representations which can be more easily paralleled upon vases. When we consider the strong influence which Ionic art exercised at an earlier period in Lycia, and also the character and treatment of the composition, which, wherever it is not mere chronicle, is governed by the principles of paint- ing rather than those of sculpture, it is impossible to seek the origin of the art they represent anywhere else than in the paintings of the great Ionic artist Polygnotus.1 The affinity of his great historical and mythological compositions with the reliefs of Trysa is obvious ; the repetition of some of the same scenes upon Attic vases is undoubtedly due to his influence. And it is an interesting question how far we may trace that same influence in the Attic reliefs which we have hitherto considered. It is probable that these Lycian sculptures de- rived the influence of Polygnotus in part directly from the painter ; but we can also see many features which betray an acquaintance with the Attic reliefs of the age of Pericles, from which the Heroum of Trysa cannot be far removed in actual date.
Another Lycian monument of later date, but still, in all
notion of the whole composition it is necessary to turn over the plates of Benndorf's great publication, Das fleroon von GjGlbaschi-Trysa. 1 See p. 348, below.
in THE FIFTH CENTURY— 480-400 B.C. 345
probability, falling within the limits of the fifth century,1 is now in the British Museum. This is the Nereid monument, so called from the figures in floating and clinging drapery which once stood between its columns, and which appear, from the marine attributes with which some of them are provided, to represent Nereids. There is considerable resemblance between some of these Nereids and the Victory of Paeon ius, especially in the drapery, and the reason for this resemblance is probably not to be sought in any influence of the one upon the other, but rather in some common influence which affects both. It is possible that this influence should be recognised as that of Attic art, and that in both cases alike we see the experimental, sometimes even exaggerated, attempt of a foreign hand to imitate the con- summate skill and grace in the treatment of drapery which mark the Attic art of the latter part of the fifth century. But perhaps an explanation at once simple and more probable may be found in the pictorial character of Ionic art, of which we have already seen so striking an example in the Heroum of Trysa, though some relation to contemporary Attic art cannot be denied. The position of the Nereids, set as figures in rapid motion between the rigid lines of the colonnade, shows a device familiar to architectural sculpture. The other decorations of the building consist of four friezes ; of these two were prob- ably placed one round the cella and another over the columns of the small Ionic temple that forms the body of the monument, and two others surrounded the lofty basis on which it is erected. This system of decoration is a great advance on that of the Heroum at Trysa, where the friezes are simply carved on the wall in no architectural relation either to it or to one another ; in this respect the distribution of the sculpture of the Nereid monument resembles the decora- tion which we shall meet later on the greatest of all Asiatic monuments, the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. In subjects the resemblance to the Trysa monument is again conspicuous. We have the record of battles and the capture of a town, partly in a style and composition which recalls the frieze of the temple of
1 The old view is that it was the monument of the Lycian prince Pericles, and
'1 to his capture of Telmessus in about 370 B.C. But Furtwangler, Arch. Z.
$82, p. 359, and Benndorf, Das Heroon von Qjolb. -Trysa, p. 243, give good
reasons for assigning the tomb to the fifth century, though its association with
the Lycian Pericles is still possible.
346 A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE CHAP.
the Wingless Victory at Athens, partly in pictorial treatment, great spaces of wall and town being introduced in the manner of some of the scenes of the Heroum of Trysa — a device more familiar on the mural chronicles of Asiatic sculpture than in the art of Greece. The sculptors of the Nereid monument have the advantage over those of Trysa in their material, Parian marble, which has not only led to the better preservation of their work, but also gave more opportunity for surface model- ling. It may be doubted to whom the design and execution of such a work should be attributed. The local characteristics, alike in style and accessories, seem to exclude the possibility of the employment of Attic artists. It seems more reasonable to suppose the monument to be the work of local sculptors, brought up under the Ionic influence which prevailed in Lycia, and not unacquainted with the great series of architectural sculptures with which the age of Pericles had enriched Athens.
We have already noticed the Sicilian sculptures, which occupy a prominent position in the earlier history of Greek art ; another of the temples at Selinus has a set of metopes which, from their style, must be attributed to about the middle of the fifth century. These, like the earlier ones, are now in Palermo. It is a peculiarity of these metopes that they have the faces, hands, and feet of the female figures inserted in white marble, the rest of the sculpture being in coarse local stone. This in- laying makes us realise how much the effect of colour as well as of form was relied upon in such architectural sculptures, especially when they were made of inferior material. The sub- jects of the metopes preserved are the wedding of Zeus and Hera — he is seated on a rock, and she stands before him, holding her veil up with one hand — the punishment of Actaeon, who is attacked by his own dogs while Artemis stands looking on at the side, and the combats of Heracles and Hippolyta, and of Athena and a Giant.1 Selinus was a Dorian colony, and we can see, especially in the female figures, some resemblance to the corresponding figures in the Olympian metopes ; but there is less vigour and more mannerism about the Selinus sculptures. They represent a further development of the tendency which we noticed in some of the earlier metopes from the same site — notably that of Europa on the bull. Together with their refinement and delicacy of sentiment they betray the weak- 1 Baumeister, Figs. 367, 368.
in THE FIFTH CENTURY— 480-400 B.C. 347
ness which too great prosperity had brought to the Sicilian Greeks.
A very different series, though of about the same date, are the colossal figures l which served as pilasters in the upper part of the interior of the huge temple of Zeus at Acragas. These however are treated architecturally rather than sculpturally ; there is a stiffness and archaic character about them which is evidently intended to adapt them to their position as supports. They contrast alike with the easy and graceful service of the maidens who carry the light entablature of the portico of the Erechtheum at Athens, and with the constrained, sometimes almost painful sense of oppression beneath a heavy load which we sometimes find in later and less conventional supporters.
§ 43. Summary. — We saw in the last chapter how the various schools of sculpture in Greece were all advancing towards a common goal in the evolution of artistic types, and in the attainment of mastery over technique ; we also saw how these various schools influenced one another even during the earlier years of the rise of sculpture. But, with the feeling of national unity and combination against the Persian enemy, and the common dedications in thanksgiving for the victory, the relations of the various states of Greece became yet closer, and it was the mutual influence of their local schools that gave rise, not merely to the art of Athens or of Argos or of Aegina, but to that Greek art of the fifth century which has never been rivalled in the loftiness of its ideals or the perfection of its execution. The last steps towards technical mastery were very rapid ; but men like Calamis and Myron and Pythagoras were themselves but the last of a long series of predecessors who had each added his contribution of thought, of study, or of observation to a progress which seems swift in its culmination.
In the first exuberance of conscious power and mastery over the material, we meet with some examples in which the skill of the sculptor impresses us more than the subject, which he perhaps seems to have chosen rather for the sake of its difficulty than for its adaptation to sculptural treatment. But these are the exception ; and it is not the least remarkable thing in the history of Greek art that just at the moment when it attained
1 They are commonly stated to be Giants ; why, I do not know, except from their size ; they have none of the characteristics of Giants in Greek art. They are also known as Atlantes or Telamones. See Baumeister, Fig. 270.
2 A
$48 A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE CHAP.
perfect technical skill, this skill was not regarded by the greatest artist as an end in itself, but as a means for the expression of the ideals which sculpture had hitherto been unable to approach worthily. And in the nobility of conception and design which distinguishes the art of the fifth century it is not sculpture alone that can claim pre-eminence. The same character is attributed to the great compositions of the painter Polygnotus, who worked in Greece during the period immediately following the Persian wars, and covered with his paintings the walls of buildings at Athens and at Delphi. He was a Thasian by birth, and we have already noticed the pictorial character which the sculpture of northern Greece and of Ionia possessed before his time, and which, owing mainly to his influence, was still more widely spread in later times. Polygnotus occupies much the same position among Greek painters that Phidias holds among Greek sculptors • and although we cannot attribute to him the same technical perfection in his branch which we must attribute to his greater contemporary, it would be difficult to overrate his influence. We can only judge of his work from more or less remote reflections of it in sculpture or on vases ; but all ancient writers agree to praise the nobility of his aims and the breadth and simplicity of his style. It may even be that these same qualities, which we noticed as modifying in the fifth century the tendency towards excess of grace and refinement in Attic art, are due in part to the influence of Polygnotus, as well as to the severity and accuracy in execution which Athens learnt from her Peloponnesian rivals.
The leading feature of this period, in art as in literature, is the sudden advance of Athens to a position of unrivalled eminence among the Greek states. The city of Aeschylus was also the city of Phidias; and although other centres of art continued to pursue their local traditions, we can trace Attic influence even amidst the sculptures produced by the rival school of Argos, and in the remote uplands of Lycia. Yet, in spite of this pre-eminence of Athens, other schools by no means gave up their traditions, and Argos in particular continued that study of athletic forms which reached its highest attainment in the work of Polyclitus, and was passed on by him to his successors. It is probable also that other minor schools, of which our literary records are scanty, also persisted in their own tradition, modified indeed by the greater influences of the period, and offering each
in THE FIFTH CENTURY — 480-400 B.C. 349
its own contribution to the resources of Greek sculpture. While athletic art was carried to its highest pitch not only in the study of the figure in detail, but also in that of pose and of symmetry, and the numerous works of architectural and decora- tive sculpture offered unlimited scope to the imagination of the artist and his skill in composition, it was above all in the great statues of the gods that the fifth century showed its highest and most characteristic attainments. These attainments are so much bound up with the work of Phidias and his associates that there is no need to add anything here to what has already been said. Although, as a natural consequence of the value of the materials generally used, we neither have nor can hope to have any of the masterpieces of this sculpture in our museums, we can trace their reflection in innumerable minor works, and recognise in literature the ideas to which they gave the most perfect expression. It is only by a sympathy with the Greek character, to be attained by a careful study of the history of their life, their thought, and their art, that we can realise what we have lost, and attain, by a constructive imagination, to some notion of its character.
CHAPTER IV
THE FOURTH CENTURY; 400-320 B.C.
§ 44. Character of the period. — If there is one characteristic which, more than any other, marks the distinction of Greek art of the fourth century from that of the fifth, it is the greater prominence of the individual and personal element, alike in employer, in artist, and in subject. With the exception of the statues of victorious athletes, which continue to be made under much the same conditions from the earliest to the latest times, almost all the chief works with which we had to deal in the last chapter were public dedications, made at the expense of the state, and recording the triumphs of the people, or giving expression to its religious aspirations. In the fourth century the private dedication takes a more prominent place, partly because the impoverished exchequers of the states could no longer afford such magnificent expenditure, partly because of the tendency, in the decline of political health and vigour, for men to live for them- selves rather than for the State. In the case of the sculptors too the individuality of the various masters seems to assert itself more strongly than before. However great the names with which we have hitherto met, they mostly appear to repre- sent for us the culmination and impersonation of the tradi- tions of a school, or perhaps, of all Greek art, rather than the character and attainments of an individual. This impres- sion may be enhanced by the fact that we are forced to infer the nature of the chief works of this period either from very inferior copies or from the work of assistants and associates ; but in part it is due to the very greatness of the sculptors them- selves. When once the artistic and technical skill indispensable for the greatest statues is acquired, the master appears to apply
CHAP, iv THE FOURTH CENTURY— 400-320 B.C. 351
it once for all to the highest religious and artistic aspirations of the people, and to give to the Greek ideals an embodiment so perfect that both his contemporaries and his successors must recognise the impossibility of further progress. Indeed, those who came after Phidias must have felt what Wagner said of Beethoven ; he had exhausted the possibility of attainment in the art which he had made his own; for others, unless they were content to be merely the imitators of what could not be sur- passed, the only chance was to strike out a new line, and to follow new artistic methods. ' This leads us to the third element in the artistic conditions of the fourth century — individuality in subject. We may see this, in its simplest form, in the case of .portraiture. We have already noticed1 how Cresilas, in his portrait of Pericles, does not bring before our eyes the personal character of the subject, with his idiosyncrasies of character and manner — much less the minor physical traits and peculiarities of his appearance — but rather that noble type of statesman, general, and patron of all literary, intellectual, and artistic excellence, which found in Pericles its most perfect expression. We may contrast this, to take an extreme case, with the portrait of the bald little Corinthian general, Pellichus, made by Demetrius,2 in which all the personal characteristics of the man, his corpulence, his swollen veins, even the arrangement of his hair and his garments, are reproduced with realistic exactness ; and in a statue like that of Demosthenes, of which we possess copies that must be derived from a fourth-century original, we may see the same tendency, though followed with more moderation. To statues of the gods it may seem at first sight that this distinction between the fifth and the fourth centuries cannot apply, and of course it does not apply in the same degree. But when we contrast the work of Phidias with that of Scopas or Praxiteles, the essential difference is of much the same nature. Phidias embodied in his great statues a noble conception of the per- manent and immutable character of the deity, his power and his benignity. Scopas and Praxiteles seem rather to realise the gods as individuals of like passions with ourselves, to express their varying moods and phases of character or emotion, or to draw subtle distinctions of personality. And another point of difference between the fourth and fifth centuries follows as an almost inevitable consequence from this. While it might 1 P. 317. 2 P. 450.
352 A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE CHAP.
suffice for Phidias to be absorbed in the contemplation of his ideal, and to devote all his energy to its adequate artistic ex- pression, a sculptor who depended so much on subtle distinctions and rendering of passing moods or excited emotions could hardly fail to consider also the effect of his work on the spectator, and the means by which he could bring home to those who saw his statue the particular impression which he intended to convey. He would thus devote his attention to its appearance and the effect it produced, rather than to the perfection and correctness of its actual form ; he felt a tendency at once towards realism and towards impressionism. But of course this tendency was only allowed scope in the fourth century within certain limits, and never, at least in the case of the greater artists, exceeded the bounds of moderation. The influence of the severe and lofty ideals and the exact and conscientious execution of the earlier period long continued to be felt, and, in addition to this, the strong natural instinct of the Greeks for sculpture still prevented them from attempting anything beyond the legitimate province of the art. And, even in execution, there was still a possibility for advance. If we did not possess the Hermes of Praxiteles, even the Elgin marbles would not suffice to show us how the Greek sculptor could carve marble to render the texture and elasticity of flesh or the folds and material of drapery.
§ 45. Cephisodotus. — An account of the sculptors of the fourth century naturally begins with the name of Cephisodotus, partly because of his close relationship to Praxiteles 1 and his artistic connection with him, partly because in his works we may already trace characteristic examples of many of the tendencies of the time. One of his works — fortunately that which is the most inter- esting for its subject — has been recognised by Brunn in a statue now preserved at Munich (Fig. 81). It is a study in impersona- tion of abstract ideas which is thoroughly in accordance with the spirit of the age — the goddess Peace nursing the infant Wealth.
1 He is usually stated by modern writers to be the father of Praxiteles. But the date of such of his works as are recorded is not much earlier than that of Praxiteles himself ; hence he has been suggested (by Furtwangler, Masterpieces, p. 295) to be his elder brother ; a similarity in subjects suggests that he in- fluenced or taught Praxiteles. Furtwangler, who believes in an elder Praxiteles also, for whose existence there is but scanty evidence, suggests that this man was the grandfather of Cephisodotus and the great Praxiteles. The younger Cephiso- dotus was the son of Praxiteles. Such a recurrence of names in a family is of course extremely common.
iv THE FOURTH CENTURY— 400-320 B.C. 353
This group may most probably be recognised on certain coins of Athens,1 which show a statue certainly identical with that from which the copy at Munich is derived. Although we cannot imagine an allegorical representation like this to have com-
FTO. 81.— Irene and Plutus, after Cephisodotus (Munich).
manded the worship of the people and influenced its religious conceptions in the same manner as the great statues by Phidias, there seems to be no doubt that its fancy hit the popular taste, and that it gave more reality to a cult of which there are some
1 Num. Comm. on Pans., PI. DD. ix. x.
354 A HANDBOOK OF GREEK SCULPTURE CHAP.
earlier traces. Just as the altar of Pity was one of the most popular of all at Athens in later times, so too there are varying traditions of the foundation of an altar of peace at Athens, which however, need have no direct connection with the statue. Aristo- phanes' play, the Peace, suffices to show how natural was the imper- sonation of the goddess. The statue itself was in bronze;1 Peace (Irene) is represented standing, her right hand resting on a sceptre, supporting on her left arm the child Wealth (Plutus). Her drapery is dignified in treatment, but severe and almost archaic in stiffness ; it recalls the work of the fifth century rather than the fourth ; her proportions also are massive arid stately. As to the child, little can be said ; it is obvious that in extant copies it has been modified to suit the taste of a later age, which rendered the forms of children with more truth to nature than was usual in the fourth century. The group — or rather the figure with the child — is especially interesting for comparison with the Hermes and infant Dionysus of Praxiteles, a subject in which Cephisodotus had also anticipated his greater successor. His group of Peace and Wealth was similar in subject to another group set up at Thebes, representing Fortune (Tyche) and the child Wealth, a group of which the more important parts, and presumably the design also, were due to the Attic sculptor Xenophon. This Xenophon was evidently an associate of Cephisodotus ; he worked with him in a group dedicated in the temple of Zeus Soter at Megalopolis,2 representing Zeus enthroned, with Megalopolis standing by him on one side, Artemis on the other — yet another example of personification. As to other statues by Cephisodotus, an Athena and possibly a Zeus at the Peiraeus and a group of the Muses on Mount Helicon, we know no details, and their identification can only be conjectural. But what we know of his work suffices to show us that he was a sculptor who in type and in execution kept to the severer style of the preceding century, while his predilection for allegorical subjects and impersonations betrays
1 This is an inference from the style of the Munich statue ; it is nowhere expressly stated.
2 It is true that the architectural evidence in this temenos points to a later date than the foundation of the city in 371 B.C., which offers the most probable occasion for the dedication. But the architectural remains, beyond foundations, are very scanty, and may well be due to later repairs. The association of Cephisodotus and Xenophon, and the similarity of their subjects, outweigh anything but clear and positive evidence to tne contrary. To substitute the younger Cephisodotus in this connection appears an improbable theory.
iv THE FOURTH CENTURY— 400-320 B.C. 355
•that study of fine distinctions of character, even in divinities, which marks the fourth century. At the same time we do not yet find any study of emotion or passion in his work ; he shows only the beginning of those tendencies which other sculptors, some of them of his own family, were to follow in their art.
§ 46. Praxiteles.1 — The work of Praxiteles was regarded by the later Greeks and the Romans with an admiration more unqualified and more enthusiastic than was accorded to any other artist of antiquity ; and there is no name so familiar to modern ears as representing the sculpture of Greece. Yet those very facts have probably led to an unjust and one-sided, if not erroneous, estimate of his artistic excellence. The word Praxitelean suggests a rich and voluptuous beauty, sometimes almost an effeminate and luxurious character, which is too easily contrasted with the noble and severe ideals of an earlier and higher art. But in this matter Praxiteles has been wronged by his very popularity. The innumerable copyists and imitators of later Greek and Roman times could appreciate, even if they could not reproduce, the softness and delicacy of his modelling, the grace of pose and beauty of physical form which they saw in his works. But the stronger and nobler side of his art was ignored by them, as beyond their appreciation or comprehension, and consequently omitted in what they doubtless intended for faithful copies of his statues; and, were we dependent only on such copies, we should be forced either to acquiesce in their versions of the master's character, or to believe, without a possibility of proof, that there was something more in his work beyond what they have reproduced. Fortunately, however, this is not the case. We possess at least one undisputed original from the hand of Praxiteles himself; and it seems best to make this the starting-point of our study, before pro- ceeding to consider other works mentioned by literary tradition, and preserved to us in more or less inadequate copies.
Among the statues set up in the Heraeum at Olympia, Pausanias mentions a Hermes of marble, carrying the infant Dionysus, the work of Praxiteles. The statue in Parian marble, answering exactly to this description, was found in the Heraeum by the German excavators, so that the identifica-
1 There is no trustworthy evidence as to any exact date in the career of Praxiteles, but all indications join to prove that his artistic activity must fall about the middle of the fourth century.
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tion, even on external evidence, is placed beyond all possibility of doubt. This is the only case in which we possess an un- disputed original, straight from the hand of one of the greatest masters of antiquity ; and the preservation of the surface is admirable. Hermes was represented as standing in an easy and graceful position, leaning his left elbow, which supports the child, on a tree-trunk, partly disguised by the folds of his chlamys, which hangs from the same elbow. His weight rests mainly on his right hip, his left leg being bent at the knee, and the distribution of support thus produced gives rise to a peculiarly delicate and restful curve in the central line of the figure, while the tree-trunk prevents the weight of the child from affecting or stiffening the pose. The right arm of Hermes is raised ; but there is no clear evidence as to the object which it held. Some have maintained that it was some object like a bunch of grapes, towards which the child is reaching out his hand ; others that it was the caducous, in the form of a long sceptre, like that held by the Irene of Cephisodotus.1 Either view' can be supported by the evidence of minor works of art reproducing the motive of the statue, which vary considerably in detail. In any case, Hermes cannot be regarded as taking any active interest in the matter ; his gaze is fixed, not on the child, but on a point beyond him, and his expression has nothing of the concentration of playfulness. The child is treated with none of the realism which we find devoted to the forms of children in later art. His proportions are those of a much older boy, and his face is but slightly sketched ; he is in every way treated as an attribute rather than as a separate figure forming part of a group. We have not to do with a genre scene, in which the interest lies in the action, or in the relation of the figures, but with an ideal representation of Hermes as the protector of youth ; this function is exemplified by his care of his younger brother Dionysus.2 It is then as a statue of Hermes that we have to consider the work of Praxiteles.
To appreciate the unrivalled excellence of Praxiteles, alike in the selection of type and proportions, and in the details of
1 So A. H. Smith, J. H. S. iii. p. 81, who summarises the evidence. Treu suggested a thyrsus.
2 To try to see any political meaning, such as an alliance of Arcadia and Elis, in the Hermes and Dionysus is clearly superfluous, just as much so as to find an occasion for the making of the Irene and Plutus.
FIQ. 82. — Hermes and infant Dionysus by Praxiteles (Olympia).
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srmes other
execution, one can hardly do better than compare the Herm with later copies, derived either from this statue or from othe works of Praxiteles. Some of these, though they may pass muster among the ordinary contents of a museum, at once
FIG. 83.— Head of Hermes, by Praxiteles (Olympia).
offend us, when placed beside an original, by the coarseness and heaviness of their modelling ; others by their too soft and effeminate forms. It seems impossible for later artists to steer a middle course between these two extremes, not to speak of approaching the marvellous combination of strength and
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virility of type with softness and delicacy of modelling, and with that subtle play of surface in marble, which had already distinguished the Attic school, but awaited the hand of Praxi- teles to bring it to a perfection that has never been attained before or since. The figure of the Hermes, though more slender and graceful than that of a Polyclitan athlete, is that of a man of the highest physical development, and if not in hard training, at least in such perfect condition as to render training super- fluous. Yet the vigorous and muscular form is covered with an envelope of flesh so elastic and flowing in its surface, and full of such delicate play of light and shade in the modelling, that its strength is almost concealed by its grace — an impression enhanced by the restful attitude. The treatment of the drapery is different alike from the drapery of the Parthenon pediments, beautiful from studied system rather than spontaneity, and from the work of later times, which errs either in elaboration or in over -simplicity. It is said that when the photograph of the Hermes was first shown to a great German critic, he said, " Why did they leave that cloth hanging there when they photographed the statue ? " And the wonderful realism in treatment of folds and of surface could not receive a more emphatic tribute ; yet we may well doubt whether any artistic skill could have devised, in cloth, an appearance and composition so simple and graceful in itself, and so perfectly adapted to its purpose. In the foot, too, we can see the most skilful indica- tion of the difference of texture between the leather sandal and the skin. But it is above all in the head of the Hermes that the original work of Praxiteles shows the greatest difference from imitations or copies ; and, in fact, we know that the critic Lucian selected the head, and in particular the hair, brow, and eyes, as that in which Praxiteles excelled all other artists. Although he had in his mind the Cnidian Aphrodite, his criticism will apply almost equally well to the Hermes. The hair, which is cut short all over the scalp, stands out in small, roughly-finished blocks ; the apparently slight and sketchy treatment is most successful in the feeling of texture which it gives, and particularly in its contrast with the finished and polished surface of the skin. The form of the brow is dis- tinguished by the strongly-marked bar of flesh over the brow,1 separated by a depression from the upper part of the fore- 1 Sometimes called in modern times "the bar of Michael Angelo."
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head — a characteristic which, before but slightly indicated, in the fourth century, and, especially in the works of Praxitel< and Scopas, distinguishes the male forehead from the female. It helps to give a finish at once softer and broader to the brow, and also to throw the eyes and their sockets more into shadow. The line of the nose, in profile, practically continues the lin< of the upper part of the forehead, this bar projecting beyom it. The opening of the eyes is narrow, only about one-third of their length ; the upper eyelid projects strongly ; the under bu1 very slightly, and at the outer edge it passes by an almost ii perceptible transition into the adjoining surface ; the profile oi the eyeball is but slightly curved, and inclined considerably downwards. The expression which results from this treatmenl is of a gaze directed slightly downwards, and not concentrat on any point near or far, but resting vaguely on a moderate!;; distant object — a gaze that implies passive contemplation rathei than close attention or strong emotion. The lower part of the face narrows greatly towards the chin, and in the finish of the lips we see the same delicate and almost imperceptible transitioi at the sides into the surface of the cheek which we noticed ii the end of the eyelids. The whole character and type of the head is in complete harmony with the treatment of the body. It is refined and intellectual, yet free from all trace of excessive concentration. The whole statue suggests a nature of perfe< physical and intellectual development, free from all taint oi special training. In the Hermes, Praxiteles has embodied his ideal of Greek youth, in its normal and healthy condition, am he has added that expression of mood which is inseparable from the individuality of his conception — here a half -thoughtful half-unconscious feeling of pleasure in the harmony of the g( with himself and with his surroundings, and in a momentary rest from a task itself made light by an abundance of intellects and physical power.
The Hermes was only one of the minor works of Praxitel< though, to us, its preservation has placed it first among his works. With the help of the knowledge of his style which we can gather from an original work, we must now proceed to con- sider what were counted by antiquity as his masterpieces, thougl we have to be content to see them only in inferior copies.
First of these comes the Aphrodite of Cnidus, considered bj many ancient writers to be the most beautiful of all statues. The
FIG. 84. -Aphrodite of Cnidus, after Praxiteles (Rome, Vatican). From J. H. S. PI. Ixxx.
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type of this Aphrodite is known to us alike from descriptions and from its reproduction upon the coins of Cnidus; and with the help of them copies of it have been identified in the Vatican1 (Fig. 84) and at Munich. The goddess is represented as preparing for the bath, which thus supplies a motive for her nudity. The feeling of the Greeks in this matter is illustrated by an anecdote which told how the Coans, being offered by Praxiteles the choice between this statue and a draped one, chose the latter, as more consistent with the dignity of the goddess. She stands in a position closely resembling that of the Hermes; we see the same graceful curve of the whole figure, produced by the weight being carried on the projecting right hip, the left knee being bent ; but, unlike the Hermes, the Aphrodite does not rest her left elbow on a support, but holds in her left hand the drapery which she allows to glide down upon a large marble vase. She is not naked and unashamed; rather her nudity is conscious. And here again we see the personal individuality of the conception of Praxiteles. He is not content merely to embody in his work his .ideal of the goddess as she is, her beauty unveiled ; but he realises the feeling with which she shrinks from its exposure even for the bath — a feeling expressed in every line of face and figure — while she is conscious of her own beauty, and delights in it. There is, of course, no trace of that later and less refined motive, in which the goddess is conscious, so to speak, of human spectators, and assumes a posture of mock modesty. That is the degradation due to the imitators of Praxiteles ; yet his con- ception contains the germ which was capable of such develop- ment.
In execution, the Vatican statue, with the help of the Hermes, m&y give us some notion of the delicacy of Praxiteles' style. The type of the body, though less broad and majestic than the female figures of the Parthenon, is still far removed from the narrow-chested, too-rounded figures of later art. With all the softness of modelling and even voluptuousness of outline, there is still a finely-developed physical form. Hair and drapery are again treated with a skill in the rendering of texture which contrasts them with the smooth surface of the skin. In the
1 The Vatican example is incomparably the finer, and is followed in the de- scription. Her legs are covered with tin drapery ; fortunately a cast of the whole statue was obtained in 1887 ; from it. our illustration is taken. The original has never been photographed entire.
iv THE FOURTH CENTURY— 400-320 B.C. 363
expression, we can to some extent realise what Lucian meant when he spoke of "the beautiful line of her forehead and brow, and her melting eye, full of joy and of pleasure." In the eyes we see the same narrow opening as in the Hermes, but here even more marked ; it is indeed " the sleepy eye that speaks the melting soul," which the sculptor has chosen for the dreamy mood which he portrays as characteristic of the goddess of love. The Aphrodite of Praxiteles had as great an influence on later art, and represents as essential a part of Greek religion, as the Zeus or Athena of Phidias. But alike the choice of the subject and the manner in which it is treated belong not only