CHAPTER VIII.

GREEK ART.

Art has appeared to us till now under peculiar circumstances.

We have seen it in Asia and Africa, and in both parts of the

world it represented the uninterrupted struggle of humanity for

self-consciousness. Humanity was too much under the influence of the

marvellous and incomprehensible, and neither the marvellous nor the

incomprehensible can be brought into shape. The Indians tried to give

forms to the metaphysical phenomena of nature; the Persians were bent

on the glorification of the power of one visible earthly despot;

the Egyptians tried to copy the realistic phenomena of nature, and

inscribed them with mystic signs, uniting Indian abstractions with

the real phenomena of nature. When a thought was fixed into a form;

the thought, being at the same time a religious conception, could no

more be changed; it became in art what a technical name for a natural

phenomenon is in science. Oxygen is oxygen, and designates only that

element; so when once a form was settled, as that of Vishnu or Amn,

S’iva or Osiris--or the serpent fixed as a symbol of eternity, or the

hawk as a symbol of light--the inner or spiritual life of the artist

was fettered down to outward forms with special inward meanings. Thus

the constraining sway of misunderstood nature on one side, and the

stationary precepts of an omnipotent hierarchy on the other, entangled

the artist’s imagination and paralysed every effort of his subjective

power of production. The different nations began to be wrapped up

in their different artistic forms, which became by degrees hard and

impenetrable _national_ and religious incrustations; the masses, held

in abeyance, led by theocratical art, had only to glorify one visible

or invisible tyrant, with whom the universe was blessed. Eastern art

was to a certain degree plastic, only too plastic as in India; but

it was too penetrated with an incomprehensible spiritualism to find

the right objects for its plastic tendencies. Even where geometrical

figures, flowers, or trees were used, the effect of their simple

combination was marred by a want of harmony between thought and form,

or idea and body. This harmony between outward form and inner spirit,

wherein real beauty consists, this balance between the dynamic and

static cosmogonical elements, was wanting in Eastern art. The East rent

nature asunder, and looked upon _matter_ as _evil_; and yet matter was

to be used, to bring spirit into form. The element of S’iva, Ahriman,

or Typhon was to give visible form to the conceptions of Brahmă,

Ormuzd, or Osiris, and could not do this, because the connecting

link to blend the apparently-opposed powers into one, was wanting. A

uniting force for this mysterious antagonism, a mediator between heaven

and earth, divinity and humanity, was sought for, but not found. The

Persian unconsciously set Meshiah (man, _mensch_) down as that element,

but Meshiah was not yet allowed to come to any free development, and

he sank into the pitiful and degraded position of a slave to despotic

oligarchs, or still more intolerant spiritual hierarchs. Meshiah

(humanity) was first freed by the _Greeks_ in _form_ and by _Christ_ in

_spirit_.

There can be no doubt that the Greeks were, for a short time at least,

the ancient representatives of the well-balanced static and dynamic

forces in humanity. Of all the geographical districts of the world,

whether in the Eastern or Western hemisphere, none are so admirably

adapted for the cultivation of social intercourse as the Grecian

isles, and the Grecian peninsula, the classical region of the Ægean

Sea. Nowhere is so large a coast-line found, surrounding so small

a territorial surface; nowhere such a variety of creeks, capes,

promontories, inlets, and harbours as round the Peloponnesus, and the

islands uniting Asia Minor with Greece and Italy. No streams like the

Ganges, or the Hoang-ho; no mountains like the Belur Tag or Himâlâya.

Gorgeous uniformity is the characteristic of China and India; variety

and change the very element of the Greek world. Mountains, plains,

valleys, streams, are all of a limited size; there rules a sweet,

eternal harmony between spirit and form; nothing is exaggerated,

nothing overawes man; he feels at home; the dark-blue sky over-arches

his verdant, hilly, amiable earth, adorned with brooks and hills,

boskets and flowers. Valley chases valley; rivulet pursues rivulet;

clouds follow clouds; the morning dawn flies before the bright noon,

and the noon dies away, in the cool sighs of the evening breezes, into

the embrace of dark night. The self-conscious spirit of _youthful_

humanity came into life for the first time in Greece. Everything with

the Greeks was _feeling_, but a feeling, conscious of a real purpose

in religion, the State, the family, and in art. We shall see that

intuitive feeling grow by degrees into _critical reflection_, but in

the first instance everything with the Greeks was ingenuous, or, as the

French call it, ‘naïve.’ This classical ‘naïveté,’ this unconscious,

unaffected simplicity, enabled them to become masters of intuitive

productions, and to look upon this world with an unbiassed eye, prone

only to see what was harmonious and beautiful. The whole life of

the Greeks was thus one long _ideal_ dream of poetical and artistic

_reality_. They took an interest, however, in objective individuality

only; the beauties of nature as one great total did not yet affect

their subjective comprehension. They could not grasp the pantheistic

notion of the Indians, who saw in every detailed phenomenon of the

universe the working of ONE indivisible and incomprehensible first

cause. They shuddered at the Egyptian monsters, which were to serve

as symbols of that sublime conception which lost on the Nile all its

primitive grandeur. They found the Persian absorption of the universe

into a conflict between light and darkness too dreary, and ascribed

to it the loss of all individual freedom. They worked out a system of

their own, based on Indian grandeur, Egyptian symbolism, and Persian

abstractions. To be thoroughly acquainted with this combination of

influences is the very first step towards an understanding of Greek art.

The Greeks were Aryans in language, and in mode of thinking; Aryans

who had detached themselves very early from their Cis-Himâlâyan

brethren, and peopled Asia Minor and the surrounding islands. They were

strengthened by Egyptian and Phœnician immigrations, and invigorated by

Thracia’s warlike spirit.

Like a plant that only lives and grows by means of the antithetic

activity of air, light, and water, the Greek State-body had air

supplied by Orpheus from Thracia, light by Kekrops from Egypt, and

water by Kadmus from Phœnicia. Independent freedom and love of the

arts were the gifts of the North; the South furnished them with deep

knowledge, and Phœnicia gave them the vivifying spirit of commerce.

Their language is an offshoot of the Sanskrit, but stands in a more

distant relation to it than the Zend--to which it is closely allied.

They are principally distinguished from the Asiatic nations by their

decided hatred of everything arbitrary and chaotic. From their love for

individuality and diversity of customs, manners and modes of thinking,

sprang the national unity of the Greeks in the fairy realms of Poetry

and Art. When they began to feel themselves a people, they assumed the

name of Hellenes; and their first historical deed was the admirable

completion of a language which, for simplicity, power, and beauty,

has remained up to our own days a model for all other languages, for

it alike possesses eurythmy and power of expression. The overwhelming

metaphysical subtleties of the Sanskrit are simplified; the variety

of consonants and vowels reduced, and the mode of writing corrected;

everything proving a deep sense for order, clearness, and moderation.

They had three dialects: the Doric, distinguished by a broader

pronunciation; the Ionic, possessed of softness and a melodious

richness; and the Æolic, a kind of mixture without a special character.

The Dorians came southwards from the hoary mountains of Thessaly, and

gained step by step an influence and dominion over the other tribes

of Greece. The Ionians occupied the east, and were considered the

connecting link between Hellas and Asia; but whatever the Hellenes took

from Byblos, Sidon, Tyros or the Libanon, assumed a really Hellenic

form, after it had passed through the purifying element of Doric

correctness. The south gave _ideas_, and the north brought them into

_form_.

Whatever the Hellenes touched they beautified. The powerful giant Bhîma

of the Mahâbhârata is the prototype of Herakles; but in the myths

concerning Herakles we recognise the mere personification of commercial

daring and enterprise. Accompanied by his dog, he finds the cochineal;

the goblet in which he sails to Erytheia is but the Phœnician

merchantman; the Phœnicians are referred to, when it is recorded of

him that he had broken the devastating horn of the mountain-streams.

Moloch, to whom Assyrians, Indians and Hebrews sacrificed, without ever

being capable of investing the fire-spitting monster with anything like

poetry, was destroyed by Herakles. The gods of Asia became with the

Hellenes demons, from whom they learned some useful trades. Poseidon,

the god of the sea, is, like the element over which he rules and in

which he dwells, of a sinister, implacable character; he requires

human sacrifices, annihilates horses (meaning ships), in fact does,

as incarnate divinity, what the sea does in our own times. The Titans

are acquainted with astronomy, and are personifications of a certain

knowledge in maritime matters. Proteus, the Egyptian Pharaoh, is

with them the keeper of the seas, and Atlas the father of nautical

astronomy, and both were companions of the Tyrean Herkules. In all

the myths and legends of the Greeks we can trace some facts. The

divinity they could only comprehend in the well-proportioned form of a

human being, and a hero or benefactor of humanity became with them a

divinity. This blending into one of the divine and human is the most

important feature in Greek thought. Vishnu and Osiris also became

incarnate--but their deeds were supernatural; the principal feature

of their ‘man-godhead,’ or ‘divine manhood,’ is an incomprehensible

mysticism. Their anthropomorphism had in it something gloomy. When the

divine Apollo uttered the memorable words: ‘_Man, know thyself_,’ the

Greeks became suddenly conscious of the inborn spark of the divine

intellect in man; the gods were intelligible to them, and the Asiatic

world of abstractions emerged in a thousand different human forms of

divine conceptions.

_Uranos_ (_Varuna_ in Sanskrit) is heaven, or rather space--_Kronos_,

time, and _Gæa_, earth. _Uranos_ as well as _Kronos_ and _Pontos_ were

offsprings of the Earth. So far we have to deal with the same mystical

elements which engendered all the Asiatic cosmogonies. But Uranos and

Gæa are set down as male and female, and are endowed with powerful

children--the Titans and Titanides, the Hekatoncheires (or Kentimanos,

hundred-handed, powerful giants with fifty heads), and the Kyklopes,

who were very clever, and invented many useful arts.

The most important gods were Okeanos, Japetós, and Kronos. The human

character of Greek mythology begins even before the birth of Zeus.

Uranos was afraid of his own children, and had them confined in eternal

darkness in Tartaros; their mother, Gæa, had pity on them, and armed

the youngest, Kronos, with a sickle, with which he attacked Uranos,

and deprived him of his creative power. From that moment Uranos was

idle, could produce no new forms, and was neither worshipped by gods

nor men. The fact which underlies this dramatic scene, in which gods

are the actors, is a cosmical phenomenon. In time all things were

created, and in time the creative force, as far as our earth was

concerned, ceased with the creation of man, to be productive of new

forms. Kronos had five children--Hestia, Demeter, Here, Pluton, and

Poseidon, and these he devoured. In this cruel image we see represented

the revolving movements of time, in which the present is everlastingly

the prey of the past, engendering the future. The sixth son of Kronos,

Zeus (creative ether), was saved by his mother’s cunning, for she gave

the inhuman god a stone instead of her child; Metis, however (Maya,

Matter), afterwards the wife of Zeus; rescues the children that Kronos

had swallowed, and he is obliged to give them back again in an eternal

circle. These children of Kronos are years, months, weeks, days and

hours. We have here an instance of the manner in which phenomena were

turned by the Hellenes into living beings. Kronos was an old man with

a long flowing beard, and held a sickle or scythe in his hands, with

which he cut down everything. And as symbol of eternity a serpent lay

by his side.

Zeus serves us even more as a specimen of the anthropomorphic tendency

of the Greeks. He was the _father_ of the gods, and had to _fight_

with the Titans. He led the immortal gods, who assembled on Mount

Olympus against these terrible Titans, who mustered in great strength

on Mount Othrys. For ten years the battle raged without result; heaven,

earth, and sea resounded with the frightful struggle. Gæa advised

the gods to call in the Kyklopes and Hekatoncheires. These presented

Poseidon with the trident, Pluton with the helmet that had the power

to make the wearer invisible, and Zeus received from the depths of

the earth the flaming thunderbolts. Then only the Titans had to yield

to storms and lightnings, and were chained down at last in Tartaros.

We read a chapter of geology when we peruse Hesiod’s description of

this struggle. In the Titans, Kyklopes, and the hundred-handed giants

we recognise the antediluvian monsters--the mastodons, megatheriums,

and saurians, petrified for ever in the strata of the earth’s crust.

Zeus, after his conquest, began to rule the Olympian gods and mankind.

He himself was full of passion and wrath, of human failings and

shortcomings; but, after all, he was kind, dignified--even in his

weakness, just and grand. He smiled, and love and joy pervaded the

universe; he frowned, and the universe shook to its very foundations.

He indulged in freaks, and still was afraid of his haughty and jealous

wife, who acted in many instances as a well-bred lady would, who had

the misfortune to be wedded to an amorous husband. Zeus was frequently

so troubled by his riotous gods and goddesses, that he had a bad

headache, and was once obliged to call in Hephaistos to cure him with

a heavy blow, and on this occasion Minerva (wisdom) sprang forth armed

with spear, helmet, and shield. The truth that intellect and reason are

of divine origin was proclaimed in this myth. In the Greek legends the

poet’s imagination has turned the forces of nature into beautiful men,

women, or children. How much the gods, with them, were the creatures

of man’s fancy, may be seen in the fear of the opinions of their

earth-born children with which the gods were endowed. The Almighty

Thunderer, when his heavenly subjects made too much noise, often cried:

‘What will my earthly sons say?’ and for fear that they might find

fault with him he yielded, and made concessions, and heaven and earth,

sun, moon and stars were again at peace.

It is true that in Indian lore the same characters are drawn, but,

like their supernatural gods, they are gigantic and monstrous. Men

and women in the Indian fables, behave like unwieldy spectres, that

frighten us during an uneasy dream; we must first divest them of their

inhuman forms in order to comprehend them. The conceptions are too

marvellous to impress us with moral lessons; we are lost in allegories,

metaphors, symbols and double meanings. This occurs less in Greek

mythology. _Atlas_ was the representative of patience; he had for

ever to carry the world on his shoulders, and was turned at last into

a rocky mountain range. _Epimetheus_ was the prototype of senseless

carelessness, and was destroyed by his own folly. _Prometheus_ at last

was the embodiment of considerate prudence; he was devoured by the

_vulture_ of ‘care and sorrow for the morrow.’ Prometheus may be said

to be the best, most intelligible emblem of classic humanity, as Faust

may be considered as the incarnation of romantic mankind. Prometheus

wanted to bring matter into form; Faust to _know_ what held spirit and

matter together. Prometheus stole fire from heaven, made man of clay,

and vivified him. Faust knew that this heavenly fire was a force over

which he had no control, and he called in a spirit to teach him ‘how

all one whole harmonious weaves, each in the other works and lives.’

The ‘_formal_’ is the longing of the Greek Faust, and the ‘_spiritual_’

the aspiration of the Teuton Prometheus. All the Greek eîdola embodied

some power of nature. Philomela was a pining woman. The Laurel was

formed out of the lovely Daphne (from the Sanskrit Dahanah, our word

‘dawn’). In every tree a Dryad dwelt, in every wave a Naiad sported.

Demeter’s tears for her lost daughter Persephone nourished rivulets.

On the bright heights of Mount Olympus, on Helikon, or Parnassus, or

Pindus, above the petty cares of every-day life, sat the earnest _Klio_

with an open scroll and a stylum, recording with lovely patience the

events of the past. _Euterpe_, with her two flutes, brought harmony

into the discordant sounds of the earthly spheres, and filled the world

with songs and tunes; _Melpomene_, armed with gloomy mask and dagger,

presided over the fictitious sufferings of humanity struggling with

the inexorable fates, reflecting in an artificial mirror--reality.

_Thalia_, with a shepherd’s staff and a Silenus’ mask, endowed with an

eternal smile, comforted man with more cheerful views. _Terpsichore_,

with a lyre of seven chords, taught him to express joy, happiness, and

pious veneration by the rhythmical movements of his body. _Erato_, on

her Kythera with nine chords, warbled love-songs, and inspired and

aided young poets to pour out in measured language the immeasurable

feelings of their souls. _Polyhymnia_, or Polymnia, protected orators,

philosophers, and stage-players, and enabled them to keep within the

boundaries of moderation, for she placed the first finger of her right

hand on her lips, impressing them with the necessity for caution.

_Urania_, with her eyes lifted to the starry heavens, tried to draw

man’s attention to the well-regulated courses of the heavenly bodies,

proclaiming in eternal silence with fiery tongues the glories of the

universe. _Kalliope_ finally taught man to record heroic deeds in

epic poetry. These _nine_ muses, presided over by the manly and wise,

valorous and glorious Apollo, nursed, taught, and accompanied the

Hellenes through life; they met them as lovely charmers in a thousand

different forms, in temples, on friezes, metopes, goblets, pateras,

amphoræ, and urns; nothing possessed a meaning for them that had not a

poetical, artistic, and scientific aim.

Life with the Greeks was one continual festivity. They worshipped their

gods in singing joyous songs, in running, playing, and wrestling. They

thought it a duty to develop both body and intellect, the gifts of the

immortal gods. They deeply loved poetry, wrote it if they could, or

recited it, or listened to it and imbibed it with their whole souls.

They rejoiced in athletic sports; influenced by Terpsichore, they

showed the wondrous beauty of their harmoniously-constructed bodies.

Joy and delight swelled their muscles when they wrestled, and throbbed

through all their veins when they moved in rhythmical simplicity, like

the stars in heaven. They prayed when they composed epic poems; they

worshipped when they wrote tragedies or comedies; they honoured the

gods when they built temples; they humbly beseeched their blessing

when they sculptured. The whole life of the Greeks was one grateful

act of artistic devotion. Their temples were so many hymns in stone

and marble; their ornamentations in reliefs, sculptures, winding

frets and meanders, are epic poems, dramatic representations, and

lyric effusions of the very highest intellectual refinement. Art with

the Greeks was cherished, cultivated, and loved for its own divine

sake. Rich and poor, old and young, men and women, boys and girls,

used art and poetry, science and philosophy, as the plastic language

of their ever-praying lips, hands and minds. Whenever the life of a

nation is thus inspired; when the comprehensive culture of intellect,

the harmonious development of the body, and the mysterious feelings of

existence are guided by the mighty and productive energy of an awakened

and excited imagination, and regulated by a consciousness of order; art

must attain that expansive, noble, and beautiful form which we admire

in the Greeks.

Greek poetry and philosophy had the same basis of reality as their

mythology. That which was asserted by the Asiatic and African

law-givers to have been directly dictated by the gods, was gradually

acquired by the Greeks through deductive and inductive reasoning. Soon

the mythological conceptions of the poets were turned into eîdola.

Aphrodite was set down as the representative of matter, out of which

all things were formed. Pallas-Athene lost her individuality, and

became intellect pervading humanity. Apollo was no more the ‘god-man’

or the living sun, but cosmical heat. The forms of fearful monsters

that originated in Asia, with ferocious jaws, with three heads,

spreading fear and awe, looking as if nothing but human flesh could

satisfy their voracity, also terrified the Greeks during the mythic

period of their national existence, and human flesh was accordingly

sacrificed. Such sacrifices were prevalent wherever monster-gods,

without human shape, without legs or arms, with fishes’ tails, dog’s

or cat’s heads, with round and glaring eyes, and many arms, inspired

the masses with fear and trembling. This was the case in Greece when

monsters and pirates peopled the sea-coasts; when _Geryon_, the giant

with three bodies, three heads, six hands, six legs, and two wings;

_Echidna_, the wife of Typhon; the _Lernean_ serpent, with nine or with

fifty heads; the _Chimera_, with a lion’s or goat’s head; the _Sphinx_,

with a woman’s head and bust, the body of a lion, and the wings and

tail of a dragon; and the fearfully howling _Skylla_, with six heads

and six long necks, formed part of their pantheon. As soon, however, as

poetry threw a glittering veil of beauty over the forces and phenomena

of nature, no one thought of sacrificing human flesh to the gods. Who

could have slaughtered a human being in the sight of the Olympian Zeus

or the Pallas-Athene of Pheidias, the Venus of Alkemenes, or the Apollo

of Praxiteles?

The Greek mind, once on the road to progress through a correct

appreciation of beauty, developed with incredible rapidity.

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

α. The reign of _imagination_ through the emotional element,

more or less regulated;

β. That of _intellect_, the reflective element, more or less

influenced by imagination; and

γ. That of _reason_, the speculative element, discerning

between imagination and intellect, and binding the two into one.

The first element is the province of the unconscious artist. He

trusts his own subjective imagination, and sees things only from his

individual point of view.

The second tries to compare the different products of art, to draw

analogies between them, and to assign causes for certain forms. This is

the province of the chronicler, the antiquary, and the art-historian.

The third reaches the sphere of philosophical consciousness. In it the

esthetical writer combines a correct appreciation of art as a grand

total, with all its essential details. He sees distinctly its inner

element based on immutable general laws, and comprehends the necessary

organism, without which an artistic work cannot exist.

Poetry and philosophy, like art, passed through these developments in

Greece. First we have the epic and lyric poets: Homer, Hesiod, Sappho,

Alkæus, and Pindar; next the dramatic poets: Æschylus, Sophokles, and

Euripides. At last the philosophers and historians: Plato, Aristotle,

Herodotus, Thukydides, and Xenophon.

In analogy with these purely mental phases we have in art: the

architect, who constructs a small world of organic coherence out

of inorganic matter by means of his imagination; the sculptor, who

reproduces with discernment the organic world around him in inorganic

matter, but endows it with individual expression and feeling; the

painter at last, who creates with his colours a union of spirit and

matter, of idea and form.

Beauty was in all Greek products the vital element. ‘True beauty, the

companion of the gods, must be sought for,’ says Pausanias, and makes

no advances; it is too elevated to communicate itself,’ And Plato

propounds: ‘The Supreme has no image; he converses only with the wise;

with the vulgar he shows himself proud and forbidding; always equal, he

expresses the emotion of the souls, he wraps himself in the delicious

calm of that divine nature of which the great masters in the arts,

according to ancient writers, endeavoured to seize the type.’ This

delicious calm may be traced everywhere in Greek art, and forms its

essential element.

The temples of the Greeks were national and public buildings. They were

not mere shrines destined as exclusive dwelling-places for some visible

or invisible, concrete or abstract, theocratic monster. They were the

central spots for their national assemblies, their gatherings, and for

the celebration of their public festivities.

The Olympian, Pythian, Nemæan, and Isthmian games attracted visitors

to these temples. These games did not consist of mere exhibitions of

athletic prowess; but poets like Pindar--tragedians like Æschylus and

Sophokles--historians like Herodotus--read to enraptured audiences the

masterly products of their intellectual powers. Wrestlers and runners,

sculptors and poets, and tragic and comic writers vied with one another

to be crowned with a laurel wreath, or to receive a palm-twig, some

a crown, or a tripod. No sordid feeling of gain mingled with their

yet unalloyed pleasure in being distinguished for mere distinction’s

sake; the commercial question was unregarded. The prizes, given away

in the sight of the delighted masses, were for everything--for bodily

as well as for intellectual excellence--even for proficiency in the

art of kissing. At the festival of the Philesian Apollo a prize for

the most exquisite kiss was conferred upon a young lady. At Sparta

and at Lesbos, in the temple of Here, and also among the citizens

of Parrhasia, women contended for the prizes with men. How much we

try to imitate Greek customs may be judged from the fact, that we

also give prizes for exquisite dogs, cats out of proportion, and fat

babies; but we are sorry to say, that this is done with a keen eye to

business--to advertise a baby-food or a dog-or cat-fancier. That art is

not altogether Greek with us need astonish no one. We are trained for

practical purposes, but the Greeks were trained to appreciate beauty,

symmetry, and harmony, not in verses only, but also in the human frame

and in every product of art. Architecture with them was thoroughly

plastic; it was never subservient to some metaphysical subtlety; it

was finished in itself; a total of which every part formed, as in the

human body, a completing element--without which the whole conception

of a temple would be as incomplete as a man without arms, legs, or

toes. The Greek temple entirely differed from the gloomy buildings of

Egypt or India, which were constructed as symbols of hell, earth, and

heaven; hell was for the sinners, the outcasts and the poor; earth for

the respectable middle-classes; and heaven for the priests, the kings

and their high officials. The constructions never made any attempt

at symmetrical beauty, but aimed only at gorgeous pomp, in order to

overawe the credulous mob--mystery was their essence. Sudden turnings

placed the terrified worshipper, unawares, face to face with some

colossal idol, looking to the excited and surprised imagination twice

as large as it was, and ascending and descending staircases visibly

divided the temple into abodes of splendour and horror. With the

ancient Greeks in constructing a temple, the first question was the

aim of the building; to whom was it to be dedicated--to Zeus, Apollo,

Poseidon, Minerva or Venus? This question once decided, the most

convenient spot, in accordance with the character of the god to whose

worship the temple was to be dedicated, was chosen. The building to be

erected was always to be in harmony with the surrounding scenery.

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

several steps.

The Doric, Ionic, and Korinthian orders, as architectural subdivisions,

are most usual. So far as the different styles are concerned, a

fourth must be added, which modern art-historians call the Attic. The

Greeks were undoubtedly the first people who succeeded in producing

architectural works of art; they were also the first:--

(_a_) To distinguish the material;

(_b_) To bring about symmetry and proportion; and

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

Marble was most profusely made use of; wood also, but the latter by

degrees disappeared altogether. The Athenians completed even the roofs

of their temples in stone.

The Greeks availed themselves of soft materials, such as clay, chalk,

gypsum, and marble dust, for stucco (κονίασις {koniasis}), in which

they excelled all other nations.

Metal too formed an important element in their decorations. It is

asserted by many authorities that the Korinthian capital was not the

latest development of Greek architecture; but that on the contrary

it was older than the simplified and more correct Doric capital,

which, showing no traces of wood-construction, is altogether of a

pure ‘stone-feeling,’ whilst the forms of the Korinthian capital bear

undoubted traces of wood-carving and metallotechnic.

We see that the Greeks employed pliable, plastic, elastic and solid

materials; the great secret of their success lay in the fact that they

made use of these elements appropriately.

The vertical and horizontal were the principal lines used by the

Greeks. The curved line was not altogether excluded. The uprising

straight lines in columns were cylindrical or conical. The relation

of the lines to one another, and to the whole of the building, was

regulated by a strict observation of the laws of proportion.

The diameter or half-diameter of the column (the module) served as the

unit for the whole building. As in the human body the general law of

proportion does not exclude an infinite diversity of forms, so in the

Greek temples regulation did not preclude variety. In man the height is

limited, and, to a certain extent, determined by his bones. This was

the case in the Greek temple. The height was limited by the diameter of

the column. Taking two columns of the same height, the one thin and the

other thick, the thin column will appear high and the other short, but

both will have a certain proportion, taken from their own body; the one

will be, say, nine times the diameter of its body, and the other only

seven times. Proportion in no way fetters the artist; it allows him

perfect freedom, but _freedom in order_, without which no good building

is possible. All architectural elements are of geometrical origin.

These elements are to be divided into those that support, and those

that are supported. The column is the most perfect supporting body;

surrounding a vertical axis in a slightly conical form. Through the

‘_contractura_,’ the swelling or tapering, it assumes the most perfect

expression of the dynamic force in the striving upwards. Through the

square plinth (Abacus) a harmonious union is effected between column,

as supporter, and architrave, as the supported, or static, element of

the building.

The Greek temple was pre-eminently the house of the man-like god. The

god in the most exquisite idealised human form was visibly present. A

forecourt (pronaos) led to the cella (naos); there was a rear-court

(posticum), and occasionally a special court (the opisthodome) was

added. Architecture and sculpture were closely allied in Greece; and

still so clear and rational a separation between these two art-sisters,

as existed there, has nowhere been observed. Through this apparent

contradiction, architecture gained an independent soul, full of emotion

and life, whilst sculpture obtained a well-proportioned body, the

closely united artistic product being thus endowed with solidity and

firmness.

The general architectural arrangement of a Greek temple was invariably

the same. The cella, the abode of the divinity, was of smaller

or larger dimensions. Two rows of columns adorned the interior,

supporting an upper gallery. If the central space was left roofless,

to supply the temple with light, it was called _hypæthral_. A temple,

surrounded by one row of columns, was designated a _Peripteros_;

if two rows of columns ornamented it, a _Dipteros_. With a front

portico it was _Prostyle_; provided with a court, both front and back,

_Amphiprostyle_. The pillars projecting on the side walls were _antæ_;

and a temple having this decorative element was styled an _Antætemple_.

The colonnade surrounding the temple at smaller or greater distances,

represented a combined power of support. The base marked the

independent existence of the separate columns. The shaft was covered

with channelled flutings, and rose vertically with a convex extension

of its circumference (called _entasis_). It then strongly contracted,

thus expressing in the most perfect manner not merely passive

sustaining, but an active and lively support. Above the capitals the

mighty beams of the architrave (epistyle) were held together by a broad

band, on which rested the frieze, sometimes adorned with triglyphs and

metopes, or with reliefs; above it projected the overhanging plinth

of the principal cornice. On the narrow sides of the oblong building,

bordered by a cornice (the corona, geison) and the roof-gutter,

rose the pediment with its groups and statues. On the front edge of

the roof, both at the corners and in the middle, there stood smaller

sculptures or marble palm-trees; whilst at the sides the rain-water

was ejected through lions’ heads; the finishing horizontal lines were

eurythmically crowned with palm-shaped tiles (antifixæ). The roof and

the rest of the building, in the noblest works, were of marble, the

architectural product being thus transformed into an elegant chiselled

work of sculpture.

The Greeks had in their mythology:

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

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

3. Mixtures of sublime power and beauty, of manly dignity and

womanly grace, as Here, Diana, Bacchus, and Apollo. In studying

the characteristics of these three groups of divinities we become

acquainted with the principal features of the three orders of their

architecture.

I. The _Doric_ order is full of power and monumental dignity. Force is

its most prominent characteristic.

II. The _Ionic_ order mingles southern imagination with northern

severity; this order, with its voluted capital instead of the simple

abacus, is of a more complicated character and livelier expression.

III. The _Korinthian_ order exhibits, instead of the tapering Doric, a

slender column--ending in a richly-decorated, upward-striving capital.

There is something of the Doric style in the Ionic, and something of

the Ionic in the Korinthian. The Doric was, however, the basis of Greek

architecture.

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

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

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

columns.

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

proportions.

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

_e._ The _Attic-Doric_, during the rule of Perikles, combining utmost

severity with the very highest refinement in execution.

_f._ The _Makedonian-Doric_ style; not correctly proportioned, the

columns becoming elongated, and the distances narrowed. Gorgeousness

and vanity predominate.

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

style.

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

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

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

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

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

_b._ The _finished_ style; graceful and rich.

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

_d._ The _variegated_ style, with decorative additions of trophies,

winged-horses, dolphins, and eagles; half northern and half

southern--combining Asiatic with Greek forms.

_D._ The Doric intermingled with Ionic forms produced in Attica a

peculiar order, or rather mere style, neither Doric, nor Ionic, nor

Korinthian--a kind of eclectic style which we may very properly call

the _Attic_ style. The Erechtheium of Athens was in this style. There

are six principal distinctions in this style, which justify us in

treating it as totally distinct from those mentioned under _A_, _B_ and

_C_:--

1. A particular plinth is wanting in the base.

2. Instead of this, a double contraction is transformed into one,

united to the common support by means of a strong circular ovolo. The

contractura is expressed on a small scale in the base.

3. The shaft is more slender in proportion.

4. The volutes are more projecting.

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

other orders.

6. The corona is without the dentated ornament; but the projecting

plinth is strongly undercut, and powerfully overhangs the finishing

member of the frieze.

In all classifications of this kind a narrow-minded pedantry is to be

avoided; canons, of whatever sort, hinder the natural growth of art.

Still worse than strict canons is ignorance. Without a correct and

thorough knowledge of Greek literature, no man can aspire to an exalted

position in poetry and science; and without a correct and thorough

study of Greek art, no man can become an artist. We do not recommend a

slavish imitation of the Greeks, but a thorough understanding of their

slow development, through the phases of unconscious reproduction and

systematically conscious creation, to the philosophical appreciation of

beauty, which enabled them to reflect in their works of art the eternal

types of Nature in an idealised form.

The same gradual development which we remarked in their architecture

also took place in Greek keramic art. The oldest pottery was coarse,

the material generally taken from the most recent formation of the

soil, the Cainozoic period. These older specimens are very much alike

amongst all the Aryan nations. The forms are undecided, and made by the

hand; the ornaments, as in pre-historic times, consisted of points,

zigzags, spirals and knobs. At a very early period, however, the Greeks

as Pelasgians, Achaians, Danaians and Argeians, possessed more defined

outlines, and a more perfect symmetry, even in their very coarsest

pottery.

In the oldest, so-called Tyrrhenian, vases we have already a decided

plastic improvement. The ornamentation takes its patterns from

metallotechnic, and we recognise Asiatic influences in the winged

horses and lions, stamped in the clay as flat ornaments. The Greek

taste improved; leaves and flowers were treated with a delicate,

idealising conventionalism; the vine, ivy, anthimion, and masks

and festoons, were used for decorative purposes, and gave to the

well-shaped vessel a high artistic value. This was the most successful

period of pottery for Greece. Samos appears to have been the principal

place for its manufacture. The use of the wheel was long dispensed

with; the Greeks trusting more to the delicacy of their touch than to

the technical accuracy of a machine. In Asia the wheel had long been

known, and it had exercised rather a detrimental than an improving

influence on pottery, as the forms, settled by religious prejudices, or

venerable custom, did not change, but remained stationary. As soon as

the Greeks adopted the wheel--it must have been in use before Homer,

for he speaks of it--their better-trained minds brought a new spirit

into the handicraft of the potter, which was then turned into real art.

Korœbos, of Athens, a mythic person, is said to have elevated keramic

art to high perfection. Dibutades is said to have been the first

modeller in clay, and Talos, his nephew, is mentioned as the inventor

of the potter’s wheel in Hellas.

With reference to the process of colouring we have two distinct classes

of Greek pottery:--

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

{chrôma} (colour).

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

(colour).

I. The _oligochromatic_ class of Greek pottery may be divided into two

distinct styles: _a._ The Archaic; _b._ The Hellenic.

_A._ As soon as the wheel became generally used, a finer paste was

required, fit for exposure to a greater heat, and for the production

of a greater variety of vessels. In the beginning the paste was

coarse-grained and of a yellowish-grey; later it was fine, and the

colour homogeneous. The glazing was without lustre, brownish-black,

and spotted, proving a want of experience in baking. We have violet,

brownish-red, and white tints badly fixed on the black glaze. With

the exception of Pithoi (wine jars) found at Thera, the vessels

belonging to the Archaic style are generally of moderate size, broad

and compressed, with sudden and bold interruptions of the curves, and

abrupt unions of the extremities. The ornament is not yet an integral

part of the vessel. The general forms are cups, pots, flasks, &c.,

all being entirely black. Some are ornamented with yellowish or white

points, or with simple lines drawn all over the vessel. By degrees a

clearer understanding of the laws of ornamentation is perceptible;

the ornamentation becomes restricted to the bulge, whilst rings,

meanders, and floral ornamentations mark the upper and lower parts

of the vessel. A further progress may be seen in the treatment of

ornamentation in the animals which surround the vessels in parallel

circles. Highly interesting are the flowers, balls, and _crosses_

on these oligochromatic vases. With the progress of civilisation we

find the human figure introduced, surrounded, however, by monstrous

combinations of Asiatic origin. Genii, with and without wings, make

their appearance; then divinities amongst lions, panthers, ostriches,

and a profusion of symbolic representations. Swans are either

tamed, chased, or killed. The spirit of Persepolis and Nineveh, of

Phœnicia and Egypt, animates these pre-Homeric compositions; they are

entirely incomprehensible. This pottery of the Greeks is of the very

highest interest; we may advantageously study in it the progress of

civilisation amongst them.

We have a period in which monster chases monster; then a period in

which men kill monsters; then, when men begin to settle down, and to

pass from the barbarous state of mere hunters into a more settled mode

of living, freed from obnoxious wild animals, they fight against men.

The conquerors have decidedly Aryan features, whilst the conquered

have unmistakably Turanian faces. (See the work of Lord Hamilton.)

At length we suddenly surprise them before the walls of Troy; the

incidents of the Iliad are known, and furnish the potters with heroic

subjects. Achilles and Hektor, Penelope and Ulysses, may be recognised;

the first two in deadly combat, the two latter meeting after a long

separation. The subject, in these Archaic vases and vessels, is not yet

thoroughly purified, for amongst the heroes we see Gorgons with spread

wings and lolling tongues. Other monsters, destroying animals, surround

the principal actors of the drama as mere unconcerned ‘dummies.’

We accompany the development a step further, and observe that the

monsters have a share in the action; they seem to take part _pro_ and

_con_, like the gods in the Iliad, and, later, they appear in yet more

purified forms as protecting divinities. It is as if the Iliad had

first been drawn in clay by potters and improved upon, till at last it

was shaped in its divine form, and edited under the name of Homer.

_B._ The Hellenic, or classic, style of Greek pottery, based on

the Archaic, shows great improvements in every direction. The

paste is harder, finer, and well glazed, and the colours are less

discordant. The red is of a fiery brightness, and the black without

any spots--sometimes with a greenish hue. In the decoration great

delicacy of shape and feeling is prominent. The figures are laid on

with anatomical accuracy. The limiting frame is dispensed with, giving

ampler scope to a freer and still more connected ornamentation. The

curves are less protruding, and the transition from concave to convex

lines is gentler. The canon of this period, that the vessel had to form

in all its parts one continuous line, rendered these products sometimes

stiff and over-regulated. The influence of the progress in the Attic

style, however, soon corrected this evil, and the potters of Greece

vied with the very best sculptors and painters in beautiful works.

The Asiatic types of winged or unwinged monsters were merely used as

grotesque or comical friezes, and soon began to disappear altogether,

to make room for some useful animal, and, finally, to give place to

frets or garlands of the most beautiful combinations. For the monstrous

creations of an overheated imagination, heroes, gods, and goddesses

were substituted. Perseus destroying Medusa; the Forge of Hephaistos;

a triclinium with Herakles and Alkmene, Hermes and Athene; diskoboli

and their teachers; Aphrodite at her toilette; Ares, Herakles, Athene,

and Zeus driven in their quadrigas by Nikê; Elektra at the tomb of

Agamemnon; Aphrodite crossing the sea on a swan; the blind Chiron

healed by Apollo; the weighing of Cupids--‘young loves for sale;’ and

rows of well-sketched warriors, representing the victories of valour,

beauty, and honesty over barbaric roughness, dishonesty, and despotism,

form the subjects of pictorial ornamentation. What an immense field

for the student of art to peruse, to fill his imagination with lively

classical scenes!

II. The _polychromatic_ style took its origin in the very first

attempts in pottery, when white pipe-clay was painted over. The colours

used were red, violet, and yellow oxides of iron. At the period when

marble was introduced in architecture, and ivory in sculpture, during

the middle of the fifth century B.C., we find these highly-coloured

and richly-decorated vases. The paste was very fine, originally white,

and the colouring encaustic. Not only mineral pigments and metallic

oxides, but also vegetable colours, requiring only a very slow fire,

were known and used. The encaustic consisted of a polychromatic paste

more or less opaque, containing, in addition to wax, also flint,

whether as principal or secondary element it is difficult to decide.

This polychromatic treatment is to be observed on some smaller vessels,

and vases known under the name of Lekythus (with a narrow mouth), and

on saucers of large dimensions, the outsides having reddish figures

on black grounds, and the insides, coloured figures on white grounds.

Pottery led to fashioning in clay, and this to modelling in bronze and

sculpture.

Architecture took its origin in religion, as also did sculpture.

Opposed to the inorganic, objective productions of human intellect, as

embodied in architecture, is spirit aspiring to a subjective existence

in sculpture. The inorganic sternness of architecture is far surpassed

by plastic art, which embodies spirit in a less fixed form. Spirit

is not yet absolutely free, for it requires a tangible body to show

its existence. Unlike music and painting, which by a mere movement

of the air, or a mixture of tints, produce bodies, plastic art has to

fill the three dimensions of space, and does this by means of coarse

matter--with clay, wood, bronze, or stone.

Sculpture stands higher in the scale of art than architecture, for it

is not obliged to transform inorganic matter for a utilitarian purpose.

At a certain period the Greeks were contented with shapeless

divinities; a pointed stone, a square piece of wood, the deformed root

of a tree, a pillar with a circular finish, or a cone, sufficed for

their piety. Even Plato indulged in the untenable proposition that art

was mere mimicry, and therefore a falsehood, and detrimental to virtue;

as truth ought to be the only aim of humanity. The Beautiful with

Plato was a mere abstraction, applicable exclusively to the absolute

‘good’; artistic beauty was looked down upon by him as something bad

and altogether objectionable. The Kynic and Kyrenæic schools held to

a certain degree the opinions of Plato. The Kynics said that anything

good was beautiful--anything bad ugly; whilst the Kyrenæics propounded

that everything beautiful must be good--anything ugly must be bad; and

in this way the notions, good and bad, beautiful and ugly, changed

places. This dialectic difference led at last to Aristotle’s deeper

appreciation of art.

Aristotle, who rarely started from pre-conceived, _à priori_ ideas,

but attached his deep reasonings and admirable inductions to something

tangible and really existent, pronounced, in opposition to the

idealistic Plato, more correct thoughts on art. Imitation, mimicry

(μίμησις {mimêsis}), is with him the subjective formation or creation

of an idea, and therefore a process far superior to that of imperfect

reality; in fact it is a sublimated, idealised representation and

reproduction of reality. Next to the ‘mimesis’ he required purification

from all passion (κάθαρσις {katharsis}) to be the aim and purpose of

art. Genius and imagination were the means by which alone a work of art

could be produced. The principal element in every work of art was with

him ἦθος {êthos}, and wherever Ethos, the ethic or moral principle, was

wanting, the product failed to be artistic in the highest sense of the

word.

The development of Greek sculpture has borne out the sublime views of

Aristotle on art. As soon as the merely naturalistic and sensational

began to rule supreme, the Katharsis was neglected, the Ethic no longer

swayed works of art, and the Antique died out.

The priests at Delphos, at a time when Greece abounded with the most

exquisite Apollo-statues, still held to a pointed pillar as the emblem

of the god of wisdom and the leader of the muses. Anthropomorphism

was long opposed by the hierarchy of Delphi, but they encouraged the

artists to produce beautiful vessels, tripods, lamps, sacrificial

basins, &c., which had to be made according to certain prescribed

forms. By degrees the Asiatic idea ‘that God created man in his own

image’ was inverted by the Greeks, ‘and man began to create the gods in

his own image.’ This one sentence embodies the cause of the progressive

development of Greek sculpture on the one hand, and the ever-stationary

forms of the East on the other. The Greeks had also idols that dropped

from heaven, puppet-like forms or symbolic carvings, like the Artemis

of Ephesus or the _four-armed_ Apollo of the Lakedemonians, reminding

us of Vishnu.

The discoveries at Athens, Kyprus, and most recently at Hassarlik by

Dr. Schliemann, prove the gradual and slow progress of Greek sculpture

in all its different phases. The first Parthenon, destroyed by the

Persians, was adorned with divinities entirely different in shape

from those which surrounded it after it had been rebuilt 444 B.C. The

dresses, ornamentations, jewels, and pearls are of Assyro-Egyptian

and Indo-Persian patterns. The faces of the divinities show far more

of the Turanian than of the Aryan type. The eyes are protruding,

the cheek-bones high, the drapery is extremely stiff, the anatomy

doll-like, and the features bear a kind of repulsive grin. In the

gigantic, rock-hewn bull, near Smyrna, we have a proof that the Indian

Nundi and the Egyptian Apis must have had their worshippers in Greece.

Of Daidalos it is reported that he was the first who improved upon

these symbolic carvings. He made winking gods and walking images

by means of mechanical contrivances. He is said to have been a

contemporary of Theseus; both belong therefore to the mythical period.

Though a statue of Herakles, holding in his right arm a club, whilst

his left extended bears a lion’s skin as a shield, is attributed to

him; and though Homer mentions Daidalos, of Krete, as having wrought a

dance in metal for Ariadne, which formed the model for that wrought by

Hephaistos on the shield of Achilles; the fact that the very word to

‘embellish’ is taken from his name, points less to a distinct person

than to the period in which Greek art began to free itself from Asiatic

bondage.

The historical periods into which we may group Greek sculpture

correspond to those of their architecture.

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

Second period, from Kimon to the end of the Peloponnesian war, 470

B.C.-400 B.C.

Third period, from the delivery of Athens to the conquest of Greece

by the Romans, 400 B.C.-146 B.C. This third period comprises Greek

sculpture in its decline.

Struggle into existence, growth and development, acme and decline,

follow in rapid succession. Wood-carvers and potters begin; then we

have a transition to bronze-works under _Glaukos_, who was the first to

solder the separate parts of the statues, which prior to him had been

always beaten into union. Following up this improvement, the artists

of Samos succeeded in making a clay-model, and then in covering it

with the fluid metal. As if by a supernatural charm the bright metal

statue grew out of the gloomy clay, and formed an everlasting monument

to adorn temples, squares, and streets. _Rhœkos_ and _Theodorus_ of

Samos, with _Smilis_, built the Labyrinth at Lemnos, which they adorned

with 150 columns, which were turned out by an ingenious mechanism, an

improvement on the art of casting in bronze. Pliny describes a bronze

figure by _Theodorus_, which held in its right hand a file, and in its

left a quadriga with a charioteer, which was so small that the car,

with the four horses and the driver, could be covered by the wing of

a fly. The celebrated ring of Polykrates, admirably wrought gold and

silver sacrificial vessels, and a vine with golden leaves and grapes

of precious stones, were also attributed to this artist. At Chios, the

birth-place of Glaukos, the family of _Mêlas_ worked for the first

time in Parian marble; whilst _Byzes_ of Naxos cut marble into thin

slabs for architectural purposes, giving a more exquisite finish to the

houses of the gods. On every side a marked improvement took place. The

head-dress of Apollo was still that of the Egyptian sphinx. The faces

of the statues were placid, mask-like, as if modelled separately and

then fixed on; the eyes looked as if first cut out, and then placed

into their sockets; but the anatomy of the body was treated with

greater care and a more refined feeling. The legs were close together

and the arms hung down perpendicularly, with a prescribed stiffness,

but there were details in the treatment of the stone surface, which

promised well for the future of Greek art, and the promise was most

faithfully kept.

The struggling art freed itself from the fetters of stern canons.

Custom, struck by the lightning of genius, had to vanish, and life,

truth, and beauty as essential elements ruled the Greek mind. To

blend the isolated perfections of the two sexes into one became the

aim of Greek art. Women were sculptured with the colder lines of

manly firmness, and men received gentler forms through a less angular

treatment. The artists conscientiously purified their works from all

passions and second thoughts, expressing nothing that could divert

the mind from the simple admiration of idealised nature. At this

period they only succeeded in animating the limbs of their statues:

action was expressed with great power in strained muscles and swelling

veins. The faces were still without life, and without a comprehension

of those emotions which vibrate electrically in the countenances of

excited humanity. They could not yet petrify the thinking soul, but

they undoubtedly already succeeded in sculpturing the animated body to

perfection.

The _second_ period was ushered in by the versatile and productive

talents of Onatas, Ageladas, Kalamis, Iphikrates, Pythagoras of Regium,

and Myron. Greece had attained her independence, the Persian hordes of

despotism were vanquished, and Athens enjoyed her hegemony. Freedom

and national exultation produced Sokrates, Plato, and Anaxagoras in

philosophy; Kimon, Perikles, and Themistokles in politics; Æschylus,

Sophokles, and Euripides in dramatic poetry; and Pheidias, Praxiteles,

and Skopas in sculpture. If we add to this fourfold triad Herodotus,

Thukydides, and Xenophon, we have given an array of names each of

which singly would have filled the world with its fame, and become a

landmark in the progressive development of humanity. Athens was at

this period the most brilliant centre of intellectual and artistic

life. Men were inspired by the general animation; they began to modify

old thoughts, to transform eîdola, and to give birth to numberless

productions which in beauty and striving for truth surpassed anything

attempted before. Schools of arts vied with the schools of wrestlers,

poets, and thinkers, and all excited the dramatists to their grand

conceptions, which again reacted on plastic art. Under these influences

the imaginary theogony yielded to a more scientific inquiry into

the origin of all things, which led to the recognition of the first

incomprehensible, immutable, eternal cause, no longer based on mere

belief, but on the immovable rock of scientific conviction. No wonder

that art was also inspired by this spiritual movement. The conceptions

of the priests and philosophers were to be loudly proclaimed in visible

forms, and the sculptor, from a deep feeling of veneration for the

Supreme Artist of the Universe, became the expounder of the divinity,

and the exclusive high priest of beauty and truth. Instead of singing

Vedantic hymns or Egyptian psalms and litanies to the glory of God,

the Greek sculptors hewed the gods in majestic forms, and every touch

of their chisels on the lifeless marble, every blow of their hammers,

became an eternally resounding prayer in honour of God.

Wood, metal, clay, precious stones, and marble had by degrees yielded

to the creative power of the Greek masters; and matter could no longer

resist in any way their ruling intellectual force. At this moment,

under these circumstances, Pheidias, the son of Charmides of Athens,

the pupil of Hegias and Ageladas, stepped forward, and was raised by

the superiority of his genius to the dignity of king of Greek plastic

art. The Zeus of Olympia and the Athene of the Parthenon qualified

Pheidias as _the_ sculptor of the concrete _form_ of the divinity;

for if the father of the gods had had a visible form, and his wisdom

and intellect had been incarnate in Athene, both must have looked as

they were sculptured by Pheidias. In symbolic emblems he poetically

expressed the powers of the two divinities; and used the mineral, the

vegetable, and animal kingdoms to glorify their power.

Nothing is left us of these two master-pieces but the glowing

descriptions of those who saw and admired them. That which a

combination of thousands of our artists, with all our technical

advancement, can scarcely accomplish; the drawing of thousands and

thousands of _intellectual_ human beings together to admire their works

of art; was done by Pheidias. Men flocked from all parts of the world

to see and admire his statues, and to offer fervent thanks to the

Father of all for having endowed one of his creatures with the power to

give a correct form to Homer’s lines:

He (Zeus) spoke, and awful bends his sable brows;

Shakes his ambrosial curls and gives the nod,

The stamp of fate, and sanction of the god;

High heaven with trembling the dread signal took,

And all Olympus to the centre shook.

We possess in the Vatican a copy of the original head of the Jupiter,

and what a master-piece even this _bad_ copy is! What a power in the

bold, arched brows; the large eyes with their benevolent, forgiving,

and yet commanding glance; the full, parted lips ready to bless and to

forgive; the luxuriant beard, the mighty locks inspiring veneration,

and the beautifully-rounded cheeks, expressive of creative force

and eternal manly beauty! The independent works of Pheidias were

very numerous. Besides the two colossal divinities of bronze (Athene

Promachos, 50 feet high, and Athene ἡ Λημνία {hê Lêmnia}), we find

twelve others mentioned: of these, six were statues of Athene; one

colossal Apollo of bronze, 70 feet high; one marble Hermes; three of

Aphrodite (two of marble, and one of ivory and gold); a mother of the

gods, material unknown; and an Asklepios (Æsculapius) of gold and

ivory. Of sacrificial statues, a group of thirteen bronze figures, in

commemoration of the victory of Marathon, is mentioned as having been

executed by him. In this work twelve mythical characters surrounded

_one_ historical figure--that of Miltiades; a proof that the Greeks

attributed their victory far more to the help of the gods than to the

exertions of their leaders. They were much more inclined to adorn

the courts of their temples and their public places with the statues

of orators, wrestlers, poets, artists, and philosophers, than with

those of men who, in defending their country against invading hordes

of barbarians, did their duty and nothing more. What a scope for our

artists if we were to adorn our town-halls, courts of justice, our

museums, universities, academies, public places, and churches with the

statues of those who had devoted their energies to religion, oratory,

science, art, politics, and the general welfare of their country! If

gratitude were to prompt us to do this, and not childish vanity or

egotistical pride, we should shortly have many Pantheons with excellent

sculptures.

In no town in Europe can the artist study the sculptural splendour

of ancient Greece with greater ease than in London. Of the ninety-two

metopes which adorned the Parthenon on the Akropolis at Athens we

possess seventeen; of the frieze of the cella 3-1/5 feet high and

524 feet long, representing the Panathenaic procession, we possess

fifty-three plates and casts of the whole western side. In all

these sculptures what a clear power of grouping, what a variety of

characters, what handsome men and women! The flower of Athens is seen

assembled to do homage in joyous excitement to the supreme divinity of

the State, the embodiment of wisdom and intellect. Some are crowned

with wreaths; others carry sun-shades, chairs, splendid pitchers,

ornamented vases, or decorated pateras; some are ready to start;

others, preparing in animated haste to take their places, are in the

act of mounting their prancing horses, or, already mounted, eagerly

await the arrival of their friends. On the eastern side, under the

entrance to the temple, there was an admirable group of gods and

goddesses, in whose presence _peplus_, or sacred veil, is delivered to

the authorities of the temple; animals are led to be sacrificed--flute

and kythara-players follow. Amongst the hundreds and hundreds of

figures not one is like the other; the exquisite variety in the folds

of the dresses of the sitting, standing, walking, riding, driving

groups is in general unsurpassed for beauty of design, and perfection

of execution. None of the figures are raised more than _three_ inches

from the background, and yet the most correct perspective is observed.

There is such a softness and truthfulness, such a firmness and ideal

vitality in this frieze, that we may at least attribute the composition

to Pheidias himself. Some plates of the western side are less excellent

in execution; the forms are marked with roughness and dryness, and some

faults in the outlines are also apparent to the critic. Some of the

horses have legs too long, and bodies too thin; in one of the horses,

which is bending its neck to rub its head against one of its fore feet,

the curves are much too stiff. The execution of these reliefs must have

been left to some inferior artist. What we must admire is, that there

are so few faults. The correct study of this frieze ought to serve us

as an example in grouping, and would teach us how to arrange a marble

strip round some monument for the sake of decoration. Little of this

influence, however, is to be observed in our sculptors. We intend

to evolve sculpture from our own inner consciousness, and neglect

these ancient books with their glorious poems in Pentelic marble; we

prefer ‘_going to nature_’ as the popular phrase runs, and ignore or

despise the study of the antique. Now the Greeks had an opportunity of

going to real nature--not with the darkened eye of Asiatic prejudice,

despising matter and exalting _spirit_--but with a prejudice in the

very opposite direction, cultivating spirit only so far as it served

to embellish and to reproduce form. In this they attained perfection,

and to surpass them in sculpture is after all impossible; we can only

try to equal them, and to learn from what they have left us, to produce

other combinations. In this spirit we ought to study the nine figures

from the eastern pediment of the Parthenon, in the British Museum.

What forms, what exquisite drapery! The finest tissue of pliable

stuff is reproduced in hard Pentelic marble. The drapery disguises,

and at the same time reveals, the beautiful forms of the human frame.

Softness and sensationalism were equally avoided by Pheidias and his

school. The study of anatomy was not yet degraded to coarse realism.

It was not yet the aim of Greek sculptors to distort the human body

so as to exhibit expanded muscles, over-strained sinews, and swelling

veins, as expressions of pain, grief, distress, or contortions of

the death-agony. Anatomy served Pheidias as a mould, into which he

poured his beautiful conceptions--the spiritualised forms of gods and

men. Katharsis was the principle of his school. The very heights of

perfection were reached by Pheidias, Polykletus, and Alkemenes. Gods

and goddesses were the subjects of their chisels. They were not only

the high-priests of art--but inspired prophets, to whom divine beauty

was revealed in all its brightness and splendour.

The existence of the Greek State was suddenly shaken to its very

foundation. Internal dissensions weakened the safety of the citizens;

sophistry destroyed philosophy, and mannerism grasped Greek art,

dragged it down from its heights of idealised beauty and hurled it

into the abyss of sensational realism. The best specimen of this

school is the frieze from the temple of Apollo at Bassæ, near Phigalia

in Arkadia. (Found 1812, now in the British Museum.) It represents

Kentaurs fighting with Amazons. The old Indian Ghandarvas, the moist

and heavy clouds that hinder the sun from breaking forth in all his

glory, and are conquered by his fiery shafts, became in time monsters,

half-men, half-horses, fighting against loveliness and civilisation.

The Amazons in this instance represent fair Greece rushing into civil

strife. Passion is predominant in action and expression. Amazons are

dragged by the hair and by the legs from their horses; a Kentaur is

seen biting a warrior in the shoulder. Bold naturalism and vulgar

realism go hand-in-hand in these sculptures. How sensitive art is--how

faithfully it reflects the social condition of a nation! and the

feelings by which the artists were pervaded may be studied in this

frieze. The nude is treated with exquisite truthfulness, but there is

heaviness in the sudden, too violent movements. Action and expression

lose the balance of the symmetrical. The women are common; their

drapery floating and yet stiff, deranged for the sake of effect. The

artists worked no more with love and security. The political party

spirit troubled their imagination. The chisel trembled with rage or

fear, with hatred or passion, in their hands; they saw prophetically

the national downfall of their country, and with it science, art,

poetry, and philosophy were to be rendered for thousands of years

houseless and homeless.

Once more art revived under Skopas, Praxiteles, and Lysippus, but in

a totally different shape. Greece had lost through her civil war the

proper balance between her moral and intellectual forces. Simplicity

and refinement of thought had vanished. In literature metaphors

prevailed; in politics Aristides had to yield to the double-tongued

Alkibiades; in tragedy Sophokles was superseded by Euripides; in

sculpture the immortal Pheidias was followed by Praxiteles. The

national spirit of the Greeks, inspired by common interests, swayed by

the very highest aspirations in arts and sciences, suddenly collapsed

into a narrow-minded, particularising egotism. Tribes cared only

for tribes, parties for parties. The public buildings began to be

neglected, whilst the private dwellings gained in ornamentation and

comfort, what was denied to the grand national enterprises. The public

places were no longer adorned with the statues of those who had gained

the general approbation of the masses. The artist, doubtful whom to

please, tried to please everyone, or to satisfy the individual fancy

of a paying patron. Art was no more the chaste virgin sacrificing to

beauty, but became a courtesan seeking general and special favour

at all hazards. The divinities were no more the representations of a

spiritual eîdolon, but a glowing sentiment of sensual love was poured

over their frames; they were no longer ideal conceptions in marble, but

beautiful flesh forms in stone or bronze. They lost all generalisation,

they were more correct in the anatomical outlines, but a passionate

sentiment of sensuality thrilled through every point. Kephisodotus

(the elder), probably the father of Praxiteles, embodied the change in

Greek thought in a beautiful group. Eirene (peace) fondles the child

Pluton (riches)--a splendid allegorical representation of the political

condition of Greece at this time. ‘Let us put an end to our quarrels;

let us have peace, and enjoy life once more.’

Skopas, born on the island of Paros, expressed the modern flow of ideas

in Greece with greater clearness. Violent scenes of deadly struggle

filled the pediments of the temple of Athene Alea at Tegea. In front,

the hunt of the Kalydonian boar by Herakles, at the back Achilles

fighting with Telephos was represented. An under-current of thought,

a kind of allegory, may be traced in this composition, for the boar

to be hunted was the opposition. Art was no longer to exalt the mind

unconditionally, but to fulfil another purpose--to irritate, to excite

to hatred, and to arouse passion; thus placed, art must lose its

civilising influence, and it did this step by step. Even the divinities

sculptured by Skopas were not to inspire veneration, but to please

by little allegorical additions; his Apollo (Smintheus) stood on a

mouse; Apollo, the leader of the muses, the representative of vivifying

light in art, science, and the universe, degraded to a beautiful

‘_mouse-killer_.’ Aphrodite, the mother of humanity, was sculptured

sitting on a goat--the vilest emblem of passion in union with the

purest eîdolon of tender love. Another Apollo was represented in the

long waving robes of an elegant Grecian lady playing the lyre; this was

still more objectionable. Though the drapery excites our admiration

by its exquisite softness and finish, the statue appears to have been

chiselled to show the artist’s skill in carving a heap of waving

drapery. Whenever art condescends to such tricks it is on the high-road

to degradation. Skopas composed a splendid group for a pediment,

representing Achilles receiving from his mother the arms forged by

Hephaistos. The principal figures are Thetis, the queen of the bright

green waves, Poseidon, and Achilles; they are surrounded by a crowd of

Nereids and Tritons, all in harmonious arrangement. Richer in grouping

are some marble reliefs (now in the Glyptothek at Münich), representing

the wedding of Poseidon and Amphitrite. The mother of the bride, Doris,

is seated on a Hippokamp (sea-horse), holding two torches towards the

couple; Tritons play on shells and lyres a merry wedding tune. Nereids

surround them. One rides on a sea-bull, led by a mischievous-looking

Eros, standing on its left fore-foot; another, mounted on a fantastic

sea-monster, is accompanied by another, borne by a Triton; other

Nereids follow, pointing towards the principal group, one sitting

on a Hippokamp, with an Eros on its curled tail; a dragon carrying

a Nereid is led with self-conscious pride by another Eros, whilst a

Triton carries another sea-nymph on his winding body with placid and

contented looks. The composition in general, and in all its details,

is perfect. Without over-crowding the allotted space, it could not be

better filled up. There is a striking freedom in the lines, and lively

contrast of forms. We may consider this relief the prototype of all

those fantastic compositions of the pure renaissance style, in which we

see dragons and monsters, bulls and horses, entwined with plants and

flowers, nymphs and gods, everything real and imaginary, beautiful and

graceful, united into one great dissonant harmony. Skopas was the first

(so far as we know) who sculptured Venus in the full beauty of her nude

body. Pheidias would have considered such a treatment of the mother

of mankind blasphemy. In a group of Eros, Himeros, and Pothos (Love,

Longing, and Desire), we find a classification of a general feeling

into three distinct subdivisions, executed with conscious discernment

in order to produce a sensational effect. A raving Bacchante appears to

rush away with dishevelled hair, in flowing robes; the head is thrown

backwards in delirious delight; the marble lives and breathes maddening

joy, but is vivified with sensual feelings, and not inspired with the

elevating spirit of artistic simplicity and purity.

Of this period we may study another master-piece in the British Museum;

the frieze of the tomb of Mausolos at Halikarnassus. The greater part

is in London and the remainder at Genoa. The subject is a battle

between Greeks and Amazons. The composition is nearly as good as

that on the Parthenon. There is a continuous symmetrical stream of

action and reaction, as in the dashing waves of a stormy sea. _Skopas_

worked the eastern, _Bryaxis_ the northern, _Timeotheos_ the southern,

and _Leochares_ the western side. Many mistakes may be found in the

details, but the whole is a master-piece of manly thought;--it may be

said to have been the _last manly_ product of the period.

_Praxiteles_ altogether turned the scale; Aphrodite, Demeter,

Persephone, Flora, Eros, Dionysius, and Apollo, are the divinities

mostly sculptured by him. Everything is smooth, young, and effeminate.

All harshness of line is avoided, all loftier ideas discarded. The

flesh become stone is placed before us in charming and full roundness.

Aphrodite was no longer draped--but with the concealing drapery the

higher conception of the divinity fled. Venus, conscious of her charms,

with a smile on her lips, and a coquettish movement of her hand, sinks

to the level of an every-day woman. Venus had eaten of the tree of

knowledge; with the consciousness of her particular womanly charms the

ideal of divine universality was gone.

We possess of Praxiteles, an Eros in the Vatican, and his celebrated

Apollo with the lizard (Saurokthonos) in the Louvre. Both these statues

are more women than men. The lines are too soft; the bodies as though

without muscles or bones, composed only of flesh and fat. It is true

that the older artists also softened down the too marked lines of the

sexes, and in blending them together created ideal forms of beauty; but

now the mere surface of the woman’s body was used for both sexes, to

affect the senses exclusively.

Three groups (the one probably for the pediment of a temple, the other

two forming independent works of art) deserve special mention.

The group of Niobe and her dying children, attributed to Skopas or

Praxiteles. Greece was fast sinking. _Niobe-Greece_ sees her children

struck down one after the other by the inexorable decree of the

gods, who are bent on punishing the _proud mother_ who only cared

for the _outward_ beauty of her children, and neglected their moral

_inner_ grandeur. Niobe, amidst a harmonious confusion of misery and

endless woe, stands erect, and presses the youngest child to herself,

turning her proud looks upwards, her eyes filled with tears of heroic

resignation--for she knows the gods have willed her downfall, and

their will is unalterable. This moment of agony, of mental rather than

bodily suffering, makes the group a master-piece of antique beauty and

grandeur.

This cannot be said of the sensational Laokoön, the joint work of

Agesander, Athenodorus, and Polydoros (of which there is a copy in

the Vatican), and the so-called ‘Farnese Bull,’ the joint work of

Apollonios and Tauriskos (a copy of which exists in the museum at

Naples). Bodily anguish is the dominating element in these two groups.

If it were the province of art to depress the soul, and to fill us with

pain and horror, nothing could surpass the technical skill with which

these two are arranged.

In the first we have:--

1. In the father a stifled _death scream_.

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

boy.

3. In the elder son, to the left, an unbounded _horror_ at witnessing

the frightful death of father and brother.

There is no psychological necessity in this group to indemnify us for

the pathological and anatomical truthfulness of so great an amount of

horrible suffering. Art has never to serve as a hospital ward, and to

force us to witness the contortions of a poor family dying poisoned

by strychnine or arsenic. Not less objectionable is the revenge of

a mother and her two sons on a defenceless woman. In this group we

have:--

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

2. The merciless glance of the jealous Antiope, wrapt in placid

satisfaction to see herself revenged on her rival.

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

4. The wild look of the furious bull, ready to dash the beautiful frame

of a frail woman to pieces. Dramatic justice is here meted out by the

artist in a most revolting way. A bull is called in to help to punish;

it is the vulgarity of the cruel revenge that degrades the technically

masterly work of art. The free grouping of marble statues is one of the

most difficult tasks, and was never attempted during the classic period

of ancient art. A mixture of men and animals is even more to be avoided.

As soon as the gods of Egypt changed their architectural and monumental

position, they lost their sway over the superstitious masses; as soon

as the Greeks lost that balance of morality, which, in the form of the

beautiful, regulated their life, science, and art, they lost at the

same time their productive power. Form and idea as in Asia came into

conflict; the _formal_ had attained the extreme of perfection, and the

new _ideas_ had not yet ripened.

Art was either to touch the feelings or to speak to reason--it was

to be based on a mere imitation of nature, or to be the expression

of some thought in some form. This ‘either,’--‘or,’--or this

‘neither,’--‘nor,’ which divided art-critics during this period, made

an end of art altogether. The Asiatics rent the universe asunder

with conflicting abstractions based on the phenomena of nature; the

Greeks lost their power, when they once recognised that there was

something higher than the mere _form_. A new sphere was felt to open

new spiritual beauties--but this sphere was to be attained through

totally different means. The formal was however so highly developed by

the Greeks that we shall see the new spirit, after more than a thousand

years, become incarnate in those forms.

We see then clearly that art, the product of the creative force of

men, requires a certain moral and intellectual condition, under which

alone it can actively live. Change the moral temperature through the

superstitions of a terrified populace, the aspect of nature, the

despotic organisation of government, or the rule of a wild, uneducated

mob, and the artistic force will also change or die out altogether. The

artist acts only to a certain degree on the public; the public reacts

with a greater combined _vis inertiæ_ on the artist, who is merely the

reflection of certain ideas floating in the intellectual atmosphere

around him. Is a man who sees nothing but emaciated, beggarly, or

sanctimonious faces, thin limbs, hungry looks, dwellings bare of

all domestic comfort, decayed brick-houses and crumbling walls, to

paint convivial scenes of happiness and joy? Or let him change this

atmosphere and live in a sphere of so-called respectability; having

always the same bland smile before him, the same trimmed whiskers, the

same business-like self-contentment, the same stiff collars and cuffs;

hearing the same stereotyped, insignificant phrases about the weather

or the funds, the price of coals or meat--will he, influenced by such

an atmosphere, not draw or paint only caricatures, and never grand

and heart-stirring historical paintings, recording in glowing colours

scenes full of life, excitement, passion, and dramatic action? In such

surroundings it is necessary for an artist to create for himself a

world of his own--an intellectual world--by turning to the glorious

records of the past, and devoting every spare hour to the study of

the ancients and the reading of history. His imagination, deadened

by reality, must be fed and nourished by the poets, poetry, works of

art, and historical facts of the past. Our meagreness and poverty in

artistic productions take their origin in our unpardonable neglect

of the study of history; through this neglect we have deprived art

altogether of its firmest basis.

The very moment that the Greek artists lost their historical and

poetical ground, they took to and excelled in painting barbers’ and

shoemakers’ shops; oyster shells, vases, little combinations of chairs

and musical instruments, and small things, with great accuracy. In

fact the same causes produced the same pictorial effects; the mind

of the Greek nation had dwindled, and their works of art embraced

decorations of household furniture and pottery. In these ornamentations

the reminiscences of a by-gone age may be traced; they are still

symmetrical to the highest degree, plants are still treated with

great conventional freedom, but the Greeks only worked as skilful

workmen--artists they produced no more.