time, and by the later world so long as it had opportunity to see this
wonderful production. Even divinity itself must have approved, since,
according to the beautiful legend, as the master, at the perfecting of
his work, prayed for a sign of favor from heaven, a stroke of lightning
entered the temple and fell upon the floor in a spot which was marked
in later times as sacred. A feeling pervaded all antiquity that the
Olympian Zeus of Pheidias was the grandest and most divine of all works
of art, which not to have seen was a misfortune to be lamented, and the
sight of which lifted from the soul its cares and sorrows. Instead,
therefore, of dwelling upon the praises given by the ancients to the
details, we should seek rather to understand the principal traits which
justified this opinion, and which were characteristic of the master. The
archaic constraint prevalent in works of Ageladas and Calamis had been
overcome; but the combination of all previous results, and a nearly
absolute correctness of form, united to an ideal beauty quite beyond any
real experience, could not have been the chief causes of this
admiration. These were, indeed, important, especially in view of the
enormous difficulties presented by the chryselephantine process--in the
working of gold-plate; in the preparation, shaving, and uniting of the
ivory, so unpliant to the chisel, and, finally, in securing it to the
wooden form. But the essential and characteristic merit lay in the
bodily incarnation of a grand and truly godlike ideal, employing the
human form only as a word through which the elevated thought found
expression. The artist had set before himself the most exalted
aim--namely, to present to the eyes of the world the highest conception
of divinity as seen in Athene, the goddess of the mind, and in Zeus, the
king of gods. Hence the large number of Athenes executed by Pheidias,
and the Aphrodite Urania, the great “heavenly” goddess, the feminine
principle of the universe; hence, also, the fewer representations of
masculine or heroic forms, or of subordinate deities, in which this
master might be excelled--as by Polycleitos in his Amazon--because they
did not accord with his nature, or contain within themselves that ideal
greatness which he wished to unfold. Although the two chryselephantine
colossal statues, notwithstanding the perishable nature of their
construction, were comparatively long preserved--being in existence at
the end of the fourth century A.D.--still, there are no copies which
show more than their general composition. The marble statuette of Athene
(_Fig._ 204) has already been mentioned; in regard to the Olympian Zeus,
a copy upon a coin of Hadrian, which shows the usual carelessness and
weakness (_Fig._ 206), has in later times been justly preferred to the
mask of Zeus from Otricoli, formerly considered a copy after Pheidias.
Though the classical notices frequently give the only information
concerning the masterpieces of Pheidias, numerous original remains from
his workshop still exist. We cannot adduce as examples the glorious
metopes and frieze of the so-called Theseion in Athens, perfect as
appear these representations of the deeds of Heracles and Theseus upon
the former, and of the battle of the Centaurs and Titans upon the
latter; for as it is not known when this temple was dedicated, it cannot
be shown that its ornaments were executed in the period which came under
the artistic direction of Pheidias. Nor can we attribute to this school
the sculptures of the Erechtheion, which were not completed until
408--the beautiful caryatides of the portico, or the remnants of relief
from the frieze, preserved, unfortunately, only in scanty fragments.
These figures, indeed, instead of being carved from the blocks of the
frieze itself, were formed piecewise of Pentilic marble, and fastened
upon a dark ground of Eleusinian stone, probably for the effect of
color. As little may we cite the better-preserved reliefs upon the
frieze and balustrade of the small temple of Wingless Victory before the
Propylæa, which, from their great likeness to the sculptures upon the
mausoleum of Halicarnassus, seem rather to belong to the following
period. Overbeck thinks it probable that the frieze has reference to the
battle at Platæa; and the balustrade, according to Kekule, may have
something to do with the return of Alkibiades. In judging the Pheidian
school, the Parthenon offers, however, abundant material in the three
kinds of sculpture--round statues, high and low relief; although the
unhappy bombardment of Athens by the Venetians in 1687, when the
bursting of a bomb in the beautiful temple, then used as a
powder-magazine, and the succeeding explosion, destroyed more than half
the work. The last two centuries also have not passed without leaving
their mark; so that Lord Elgin’s robbery may, after all, have proved an
advantage, the greater part of the sculptures having been protected and
rendered accessible, since the beginning of this century, in the halls
of the British Museum. It is particularly unfortunate that the gable
groups have suffered most; for the perfection of these chief works must
have appeared of the greatest importance to the artist, and these
colossal statues would have given the best exposition of his ability.
Before the catastrophe above mentioned, however, these were badly
injured in consequence of the Temple of Athene Parthenos having been
transformed into the Church of Maria Parthenos, and later into a mosque,
the destruction appearing also to have been aided by the wilful malice
of Christian and Moslem fanatics. They were still further reduced after
the explosion by the unsuccessful attempt of the Venetians to carry off
as trophy a marble chariot and horses. The few notes of Pausanias upon
the subjects of the gable groups, the drawings of a French artist,
Carrey (taken not long before the bombardment), and the remains
preserved in the British Museum are sufficient to convey a conception of
the general composition. The eastern gable represented the birth of
Athene; not the unfortunate, artificial scene where the goddess springs,
ready equipped, from the head of Zeus, as frequently shown in pictures
upon vases and bronze mirrors, but the moment after, when she appears
before the deities of Olympos. The entire central part of the group
including the highest deities, the chief feature of the composition, is
lost; the rest is in greater part preserved. As the scene was in
Olympos, Helios and Selene, with their quadrigas, were fittingly chosen
as the limits of the composition; the former rising from the sea, in the
left angle of the gable, the latter sinking in the right; night
disappearing before the dawn. The adjoining statues, though much
mutilated, have been preserved. Next to Helios was Dionysos, resting
upon his tiger’s skin; with two sitting female figures, Demeter and
Persephone (_Fig._ 207), to whom hastens Iris, announcing the birth of
Athene. Upon the other side, next to Selene, lay Aphrodite in the lap of
Peitho (_Fig._ 208); and then Hestia, to whom Hermes, as the other
messenger, brings the glad tidings: these latter sculptures were almost
entirely destroyed in the time of Carrey. Nike--Victory--remaining only
as a torso, appears to have followed with Ares, advancing towards the
middle of the gable bringing greetings to the newly born goddess. All
the rest was destroyed before 1680 A.D., and the principal figures of
the composition are consequently unknown; but it is probable that
between the Victory and Athene stood Hephaistos, recoiling after having
delivered the blow upon the head of Zeus. Athene stood beside her
father, but it is not certain whether the latter was exactly in the
centre of the gable, or whether the two figures were equally removed
from it. If this last were the case, which is perhaps probable, the
division of the space would require still another deity upon the right
side. The remaining gods of Olympos, Poseidon, Artemis, and Apollo, were
probably arranged in this order between Zeus and Iris. The group of the
western gable represented the contest of Athene and Poseidon for the
Attic land. The composition is reasonably certain, though the middle
figures have here also disappeared. The two chief deities, standing at
either side of the olive-tree in the centre, turn towards their
chariots, that of Athene being driven by Victory, that of Poseidon by
Amphitrite; horses were harnessed to both, that of Poseidon not having
been drawn by dolphins or hippocamps, as formerly supposed. The
consciousness of victory was expressed by the bearing of Athene and of
her steeds, while the bowed head of Poseidon acknowledged his defeat:
the exclusion of the salt waves of the sea from the blooming meadows and
groves watered by the Kephissos. The angles of the gable beyond the
chariots were occupied by the retinue of the contestants, and by local
deities; the accurate determination of these is impossible, though upon
the side of Athene may have been grouped the representatives of the
Athenian continent, and upon that of Poseidon those of the sea and the
islands; while the figure of Kephissos is supposed to have filled the
extreme corner at the left, and Ilissos with Callirrhoe that of the
right. The scene was laid in Attica; and, as the earthly locality was to
be clearly characterized and populated, it was advisable not to
introduce again all the Olympian deities of the eastern gable. It is
probable that during antiquity the landscape seen from this chief front
of the Acropolis was famous for many local myths no longer familiar to
the scholar, in ignorance of which an adequate explanation is
impossible. The compositions alone give evidence of the grandeur and
elevation of the master who produced and arranged them, in a
truthfulness to nature at once ornamental and unconstrained. The
remains, with great simplicity and breadth of detail, show a force and
majesty which raise them above all known works of sculpture. In their
loving and perfect modelling of the nude and of the drapery, in their
freedom from affectation of motive or of rendering, and in their utter
lack of any striving after meretricious effects, they appear rather the
creations of magic than the labored carvings of men.
[Illustration: Fig. 209.--Fragment from the Frieze of the Parthenon
Cella.]
The glorious and celebrated frieze, or, to speak more correctly,
zophoros, surrounded the entire cella. It is preserved in nearly four
fifths of its entire length, the chief part of the remains being in the
British Museum. It is evident that but little, if any, of this extensive
decorative work could have been executed by the hand of Pheidias
himself; but the grand design may be assumed to have been his, and the
carving was certainly done under his supervision. The scene represented
is the festive Pan-Athenaic processions, an imposing consecration of
elaborate gifts to the guardian deity, and probably also a division of
prizes to the victors in the various hippic, gymnastic, and musical
games. The movement of the train commences upon the southwestern corner
of the cella, and advances thence to the east, the entrance side of the
temple. It is thus naturally divided into two parts, one of which
occupies the western and northern, the other the southern side of the
cella; these are united above the pronaos, where the double procession
is shown as having arrived at the temenos before the temple; a priest
and priestess, with the persons directly employed in the sacrifice, are
preparing themselves for the sacred act--the former by laying aside his
upper garment, which he gives to the youth standing beside him, the
latter by taking a folding-seat from a female servant. (_Fig._ 209.)
Between this central group and the remainder of the divided procession
several deities, turned from the former figures, are watching the
approach of the train. At the left sits Zeus, enthroned, beside the
veiled Hera; these are followed by the Winged Victory, Ares clasping his
right knee with both hands, Demeter with the torch, and Dionysos, who
rests his right arm carelessly upon the shoulder of Hermes. Upon the
right, next to the high priest, was naturally the place of Athene, and
upon her left hand are still traces of the fallen Ægis; beside her was
Hephaistos, leaning upon his knotted stick; then, looking towards him,
Apollo, and further Peitho, Aphrodite, and Eros, the latter carrying a
shade for the sun. The gods sit comfortably as spectators who feel
themselves to be invisible. The first figures of the train, the leaders,
have already attained their destination, and stand quietly conversing,
supported upon their wands. In the succeeding women and virgins, who
bear vases, cups, cooling-vessels, braziers for incense, and baskets--a
wonderful train of perfectly beautiful forms--the advance decreases in
movement as they approach the centre. Upon the two long sides follow
herds of animals for sacrifice; the cows, proceeding quietly, scarcely
need guidance, while the bulls are more or less restless, reminding one,
in their forcible and momentary action, of the life-like works of Myron.
After them follows the music of the procession--players upon the flute
and lyre and the festive chorus; then begins the long line of chariots
and of horses with their riders, which fill the greater part of the
zophoros upon the longer sides and all of that over the epinaos. The
beauty and truth in the action of these figures are unsurpassed; the
most manifold variation of position is combined with perfect adaptation
to the peculiar style of low-relief, and the wisest reference to the
fitting of the composition within the space defined by the architectural
lines. While upon the eastern front the procession had arrived at its
destination, on the western the scene was still at the place of
assemblage and marshalling. Here the horses are bridled and arranged in
ranks; but the groups of men and youths stand in disorder, some hastily
arming themselves, others binding their sandals or adjusting their
mantles. Every action and gesture is simple and full of meaning; they
never mar the unity of the whole nor interfere with the neighboring
figures. The nude forms and the drapery are most carefully and equally
executed throughout; the accessories are forcibly, though less
elaborately, indicated. When the ceremonial reliefs of Assyria or Persia
are compared with the frieze of the Parthenon, it becomes strikingly
evident that the magnificence of personal accoutrements and inanimate
objects which was so painfully and minutely detailed by the Asiatic
sculptor, and elevated even above his schematic representations of
deities and human beings, was as nothing to the Greek artist in
comparison with the intellectual and physical beauty to which the great
Hellenic race gave their chief interest.
The third group of Parthenon sculptures, the ornaments of the metopes,
must least have harmonized with the nature of Pheidias. The
architectural framework must have become a hindrance and a fetter, and
the problem how to fill ninety-two square tablets of exactly the same
size with similar representations must indeed have appeared a thankless
task. These reliefs are in greater part lost, or so mutilated as to be
unintelligible; but as far as can be judged by the scanty remains, the
subject of the metopes upon the eastern side was the gigantomachia, that
of both long sides principally the Centauromachia, while that of the
western side was either the battle of the Amazons or of the Persians. In
contrast to the low-relief of the frieze, these, originally colored,
were--on account of the conditions of light--worked in such high-relief
as even, in some parts, to be freed from the ground. The variation of
subjects bearing so strong a resemblance is wonderful, especially in the
struggling Centaurs and Greeks, where but little scope in the victory of
one or the other combatant was possible: these are interrupted by the
rape of virgins and other scenes not surely to be determined. Naturally,
this desperate task would not have been completed without some few
artistic inequalities, repetitions, and far-fetched modifications,
especially as much of the execution must necessarily have been submitted
to inferior sculptors; but some of the metope reliefs appear, in point
of composition within the given space, and in grand, characteristic
drawing, scarcely less admirable than the frieze of the cella. From all
these works the spirit of the school of Pheidias is manifest in its
imposing majesty and ideal simplicity; at times, also, traces of the
forcible action of Myron may be observed.
[Illustration: Fig. 210.--From the Eastern Gable of the Great Temple of
Zeus, Olympia.]
These extensive productions of the school and workshop of Pheidias
cannot be directly attributed to any of the known scholars and
assistants of the master, many of whom attained individual celebrity. In
the first rank of these should be mentioned Agoracritos of Paros, the
favorite pupil of Pheidias, whose works were so perfect that the
ancients were frequently in doubt to which of these sculptors they
should be ascribed; it is possible, however, that this doubt may have
arisen from the predominant impression left upon some of the statues by
the guidance and assistance of the master. The chief creations of
Agoracritos were two Athenes, a Zeus, and notably the colossal figure of
Nemesis at Rhamnous, supposed to have developed from the unsuccessful
Aphrodite prepared for the competition with Alcamenes. Another scholar
and assistant of Pheidias was Colotes of Paros, a sculptor who appears
to have restricted himself to the chryselephantine process, and who is
especially noted for the part taken by him in the execution of the great
Olympian Zeus. Other works in gold and ivory by Colotes were the Athene
upon the Acropolis of Elis, an Asclepios erected in the vicinity, and
the sacred table in the great Temple of Zeus, for the division of prizes
after the Olympic games, the sides of which were ornamented with
reliefs.
[Illustration: Fig. 211.--From the Western Gable of the Great Temple of
Zeus, Olympia.]
[Illustration: Fig. 212.--Head of Apollo, from the Western Gable of the
Great Temple of Zeus, Olympia.]
Alcamenes of Athens, or Lemnos, and Paionios of Mende have hitherto been
considered as chief among the scholars of Pheidias; but the recent
excavations at Olympia have done much to refute this opinion, unless, as
is very possible, Pausanias makes a mistake (v. 10) in assigning to
Alcamenes the sculptures in the front gable of the Temple of Zeus,
instead of the acroteria above them, which alone is mentioned in an
inscription as his work. No one can detect in the discovered fragments
of these gable sculptures, more numerous than those of the Parthenon,
the slightest dependence upon the art of Pheidias, which they appear to
precede in point of development. The group of the eastern front,
ascribed by Pausanias to Paionios, represented the instant before the
chariot race of Oinomaos and Pelops (_Fig._ 210); that of the western
the struggle of the Lapithæ and Centaurs at the wedding of Peirithoos.
(_Figs._ 211 and 212.) The character of these works seems rather to
connect them with the school of Calamis than with that of Pheidias, this
being especially the case with the metopes. (_Fig._ 213.) The question
will hardly be decided until authenticated sculptures by Calamis, or
remains of the gable groups of the temple at Delphi, which were the
production of his scholars Praxias and Androsthenes of Athens, have
become known to science. In the meantime, it is impossible to disprove
the hypothesis of Brunn, who sees in those of Olympia examples of an art
peculiar to Northern Greece, remarkable for its picturesque realism and
lack of artistic and ideal conventionalization. It is only certain that
these groups are far inferior to those of the Parthenon, and, indeed, to
those produced by any workshop of Athens after the time of Pheidias.
Even if the questionable account of Pausanias prove to be true, it is
certain that a judgment of the artistic style of Alcamenes and Paionios
cannot be formed upon these decorative sculptures alone. Works of the
stage of development shown by the western gable of Olympia could not
have ranked with the bronze Pentathlos of the former artist, which was
known in antiquity by the predicate “exemplary;” nor could an Aphrodite
of Alcamenes have been preferred to a statue by Agoracritos, which had
been retouched by Pheidias himself. The extensive employment of
Alcamenes in Athens among the greatest successors of Pheidias and Myron
would have been impossible had not his works been far higher in every
respect than those attributed to him among the recent discoveries in
Olympia, in view of which it is inconceivable how Pausanias could speak
of Alcamenes and Pheidias almost as equals. The same argument applies to
Paionios, of whose works a fortunate illustration has been provided by
one of the most important discoveries made in the Altis, the Victory
(_Fig._ 214), authenticated by an inscription upon the high triangular
pedestal. This figure does indeed recall the spirit and methods of the
Pheidian sculpture, and differs greatly from the remains of the eastern
gable, as may readily be seen by comparison of _Figs._ 210 and 214. This
contrast is only to be explained by a gigantic and almost inconceivable
progress, or by the assumption that they were the works of different
artists and periods.
[Illustration: Fig. 213.--Metope from the Cella of the Great Temple of
Olympia. Atlas, Heracles, and the Nymph of the Hesperides.]
[Illustration: Fig. 214.--Victory of Paionios, from Olympia.]
[Illustration: Fig. 215.--From the Frieze of the Temple of Phigalia.]