the Pheidian sun, there were not wanting stars of the second magnitude,
belonging to other systems and moving in other circles. Especially
prominent among these latter was the direct and indirect school of
Myron, an artist so pronounced in his wonderful naturalism that his
style could not be extinguished even by the dominating idealism of
Pheidias. Lykios, son of Myron, appears, from two celebrated works, to
have followed closely in the footsteps of his father. These were the
statues upon the Acropolis of Athens representing two boys, one of whom
bore a basin for holy-water, while the other blew the coals in a censer
into a lively glow. The latter reminds one of Myron’s Breathing Ladas;
in this, as in the Runner, the quickened breath was the essential thing,
and was not confined alone to the swollen cheeks, but must have been
evident in the breast and body. The figure bearing the font was a
zealous choir-boy, panting under a too heavy burden; and this also
recalls the Ladas. Still another statue, the Pancratiast Autolicos,
claimed by Urlich for Lykios, seems to have resembled the Discos-thrower
of Myron. That Lykios did not confine himself to such genre-like
specialties is shown by groups like the Argonauts, and by the votive
offering of the citizens of Apollonia at Olympia, a truly grand
composition representing Zeus deciding the result of the strife between
Memnon and Achilles, according to the Æthiopis of Arctinos. In
connection with Lykios may be mentioned Styppax of Cyprus, whose
masterpiece, the Splanchnoptes--the entrail-roaster, a man fanning a
fire--recalls in turn the choir-boy blowing the coals. Similar to the
Dying Ladas, though less directly connected than these last examples,
was the mortally wounded warrior of Cresilas, in which, according to
classical accounts, the last moments of life could be measured; his
wounded Amazon also appears to have been more in the style of Myron and
Pythagoras than of Pheidias. No works by the immediate followers of
Myron now remain, nor any attested copy; still there can be little
hesitation in ascribing to this school an important achievement, not
perhaps belonging to it so fully as do the architectural sculptures of
the Parthenon to the workshop of Pheidias, yet having more in common
with the school of Myron than with that of any previous master. This is
the frieze of the Temple of Apollo at Phigalia--now in the British
Museum--the architectural position of which has already been defined.
The temple is said to have been built under the direction of an Athenian
architect; it is probable, therefore, that Attic sculptors were employed
for its ornamentation, especially as the sculptures betray no trace of
the Argive influence which prevailed elsewhere in the Peloponnesos, and
which will be further treated below. Though the subjects were Attic, as
battles of Amazons and Centaurs, they cannot be likened to the school of
Pheidias, for, instead of the passionless grandeur and ideal simplicity
which characterized the sculptures of the Parthenon, there is in them a
vehemence and excitement known at this period only in the works
influenced by Myron. It is not strange that this excessively passionate
action should sometimes be wanting in beauty; the power of execution at
command in the remote city among the Arcadian mountains was not of the
first rank, and the guidance of a master, like him who directed the
sculptural work of the Parthenon, was wanting.
Two artists of this period were entirely independent, proceeding in
degenerate directions; first, Callimachos, noted as an artisan in
metal-work, who executed the rich and elegant lamp of the Erechtheion,
and was said to have originated the Corinthian capital; but who, as a
sculptor, carried a refined delicacy and formal perfection even to an
extreme. This won for him the cognomen of Catatexitechnos--the
unreasonably careful. Callimachos did not, like Apelles, know when to
withdraw his hand from his work, which agrees with Pliny’s judgment
concerning him, that, by over-exactness in execution, all grace was
lost. A still more questionable tendency is shown by Demetrios of
Alopeke, in Attica, the first realist. Pre-eminently a sculptor of
portraits, he affected striking characteristics at the expense of
beauty, and made it his specialty to represent the likenesses of
decrepit men and women. A priestess sixty-four years old, and an aged
Corinthian field-officer, Pelichos--“a bald-head with a pot-belly,
tangled and flying beard, and veins projecting roundly under the
withered skin,” according to the description of Lucian--must have been
so far from ideal and refreshing beauty that it would seem rather to
have been the aim of the artist to illustrate age as its destroyer.
Thus, in comparison with Pheidias and Myron, Demetrios resembled
Thersites among the heroes of Troy.
[Illustration: Fig. 216.--Copy of the Doryphoros in the Museum of
Naples.]
Argos deserves the second place as the site of the artistic industry of
this period, which had then been greatly advanced by Polycleitos of
Sikyon, a fourth scholar of Ageladas, and somewhat younger contemporary
of Pheidias, but in a direction different from that of the Attic school.
Myron had characterized intense and momentary animal life, Pheidias
that of absolutely ideal and divine being. Polycleitos chose as his aim
the artistic representation of the highest human beauty--a positive type
of bodily perfection. The Doryphoros, known in antiquity as the
masterpiece of the latter, and celebrated as a canon, was a youth in a
quiet position, bearing a lance; it was considered the embodiment of
perfect form, the master himself having written a treatise upon the
proportions of the human figure in illustration of this statue. It is
not improbable that Polycleitos, in this work, desired to set a pattern
before his numerous scholars; that he was himself too dependent upon
this academical tendency may be judged from the slightly disparaging
words of Pliny that “his works were almost as if taken from one model.”
According to the intention of the artist and to the general conviction
of his time, the Doryphoros represented absolute perfection of the human
body; and this left the master but little scope for the varying of his
model, if he would not prove untrue to that beauty which Cicero has
praised so highly in all his works. The so-called Apoxyomenos--an
athlete scraping himself with a strigil--similar in subject to the
statue of Lysippos (_Fig._ 229), was also a figure placed in the quiet
attitude of parade, if not, like the Doryphoros, with an academic
purpose. A third work, the so-called Diadoumenos, a boy binding his head
with a fillet--sometimes considered as a companion piece to the
Doryphoros--appears to have shown a more youthful and less athletic
development of form. It is not strange that archaeologists have taken
great pains to identify, among the numberless works of Roman sculptors,
imitations of these two canonical figures, the existence of which was
naturally assumed from the great celebrity of the Greek originals. The
scholars Friederichs, Schwabe, Michaelis, Helbig, Kekule, and Benndorf
have accordingly discovered six repetitions of the Doryphoros, preserved
in Cassel, Naples, Florence, the Vatican, and the Villa Medici; while
several other statues in Dresden, the Louvre, the Vatican, and the Villa
Albani have been recognized as variations differing more or less from
this type (_Fig._ 216). In like manner, copies of the Diadoumenos have
been found in Madrid, in two marbles of the British Museum, in a bronze
statuette of the National Library of Paris, and in a relief of the
Vatican: all of which are allied in point of conception and artistic
character. Still it is inexplicable how these thick-set and muscular
forms could be spoken of by Pliny as _viriliter puer_ and as _molliter
juvenis_, or by Lucian as graceful dancers; though it is possible that,
in these academical studies, the canonical perfection of form decided by
Polycleitos was not so well embodied as in the bronze Idolino of the
Florentine Museum. The question is far from settled, and it should not
be forgotten that eminent authorities doubt this origin, Conze imputing
them rather to the school of Cresilas, while Petersen even maintains the
type to have been a Roman invention.
An Amazon in a quiet pose gave Polycleitos an opportunity for portraying
a female form of muscular development, yet of typical beauty. It is not
difficult to believe that this statue was adjudged even superior to the
similar productions of Pheidias, Cresilas, and Phradmon, which could
hardly have been the case if the subject treated had been a deity or a
figure of momentary action. (_Fig._ 217.) The artist could even better
follow his academic aim in the two Canephoræ--basket-bearers--whose
quiet pose and want of inner expression were so well suited to display
an outward, formal beauty and correctness of modelling. But the
Astragalizontes--the boy throwing dice of knuckle-bones--which,
according to Pliny, was the most perfect work of art in Greece, should
not be imagined in an excited, striking situation, or as a street scene
conceived with a truthfulness to nature characteristic of Murillo, but
as representing the consummation of boyish beauty.
[Illustration: Fig. 217.--Amazon, after Polycleitos.]
When Quintilian says that Polycleitos elevated the human figure above
what is seen in nature, and yet, contrary to Pheidias in his statues of
the deities, had not attained to the majesty of the gods, this signifies
that he had not so fully represented the divine nature. His devotional
images are few and without especial fame, with exception of the colossal
chryselephantine Hera in the temple between Argos and Mykenæ. The
goddess, seated upon a throne, was draped in garments of gold, with
only the head and arms bare; the sceptre in her right hand was crowned
with the cuckoo, symbol of conjugal fidelity, and in her left was a
pomegranate; at her side stood Hebe, the work of Naukydes, the master’s
best assistant. As the Pheidian head of Zeus has been recognized in the
mask of Otricoli, so the splendid colossal mask of the Ludovisi Juno
(_Fig._ 219) has been referred to an original by Polycleitos. But it is
probable that the head of Hera, in the museum at Naples (_Fig._ 218)
came nearer to this original (Brunn). Though it be asserted that all the
heads of Zeus may be referred to the complete and established type of
Pheidias, the ideal of Polycleitos, by no means divine, renders it
doubtful whether his Hera acquired a similar position among the
succeeding representations of that goddess.
[Illustration: Fig. 218.--Head of Hera, in Naples.]
[Illustration: Fig. 219.--So-called Juno Ludovisi, in Rome.]
The effort after perfection of form sufficed to make the master of Argos
a pre-eminent teacher; yet none of his many direct scholars, with the
exception perhaps of the before-mentioned Naukydes, acquired such fame
as the associates of Pheidias, perhaps on account of this very schooling
and discipline, the rigid constraint of a canon fettering the wings of
artistic individuality. We are not able to judge how far this tendency
was furthered during the short period of Theban ascendency by the
somewhat later branch of the Theban school, although, among many others,
the Theban artists Hypatodoros and Aristogeiton were of considerable
importance. The groups consecrated at Delphi about 380 B.C. were of
particular interest; they represented the advance of the Seven against
Thebes, and the successful repetition of the invasion by the sons of
those warriors. It was not until Lysippos, an indirect scholar of
Polycleitos, in his desire to represent men as they should be, had
raised himself entirely above the canon of his master, who aimed to show
them as they are, that another artist of the first rank appeared.
Examples from the workshop of Polycleitos still exist, though
unfortunately scarcely recognizable in the mutilated fragments of
sculpture from the Temple of Hera, discovered by Rangabe and Bursian in
1854--works which were doubtless executed under the direct guidance of
the Argive master, as those of the Parthenon were under that of
Pheidias.
[Illustration: Fig. 220.--Metope of the Southern Temple upon the Eastern
Plateau of Selinous.]
The influence of Attica and Argos not only prevailed in Greece proper,
but made itself felt even in the most remote colonies. The Zeus upon one
of the metopes of the southern temple on the eastern plateau of Selinous
(_Fig._ 220) may have been developed from the figures of Zeus by
Ageladas, and suggests the sculptures of the Olympian temple which was
completed about the same time. This metope represents Zeus fascinated by
Hera upon Mount Ida (Il. xiv. 300), and the artist, in his figure of the
god, has surpassed his former efforts, but the Hera is harder and more
antique. The other well-preserved metopes of this temple--one of which
shows a Heracles in strife with Amazons, and the other Actaion lacerated
by dogs--though not without provincial weakness, have an unmistakable
affinity to those of the Theseion. These were nearly contemporaneous,
but an entire generation later there appeared at Messene, in the most
remote part of the Peloponnesos, the sculptor Damophon, an artist
decidedly of the Pheidian style, on account of which he was called to
restore the Olympian statue, already warped and disjointed. Although a
sculptor of ability, it would seem that he did not entirely withstand
the current of a new direction in art; besides the statues in the
Pheidian circle of divinities, others were ascribed to him, of a nature
similar to those cultivated by preference during the succeeding period
of Attic sculpture. The progressive force inherent in the people and in
the art of Greece did not rest until the highest point had everywhere
been reached. This impulse afterwards led to excess and decadence,
permitting no lasting enjoyment of the previous gains. The art of
Polycleitos prevailed somewhat longer in the Peloponnesos, the Dorians
being by nature conservative, but in Attica the new elements early
obtained a sway which could not but essentially change the character of
all Hellenic sculpture. The frieze upon the Temple of the Wingless
Victory in Athens, and the somewhat coarser one within the naos of
Phigalea, began already to give evidence of an inclination towards the
pathetic and passionate; the sculptures also upon the balustrade of the
Athenian temple, executed probably about 390 to 380 B.C., appear to be
the unmistakable forerunners of a new style. The Athenian Kephisodotos
the elder stood, so to speak, upon the threshold of this transformation.
His position in the history of art is assured by the fortunate discovery
of a copy of his Eirene with Ploutos, now in the Glyptothek at Munich
(_Fig._ 221). This work combined the tendencies of the new Attic style
with those of Pheidias. Though the noble simplicity and grandeur, the
earnestness and strictness, of the earlier period still remained, there
had already dawned an expression of deeper feeling, and of a more
spiritual life.
[Illustration: Fig. 221.--Eirene and Ploutos, after Kephisodotos.]
The representation, as Friederichs says, of the deep interchange of
affection between mother and child, as shown in the Eirene of
Kephisodotos, united with much of the hardness of the older works,
culminated in two masters--the Parian Scopas and the Athenian
Praxiteles, the latter possibly the son of Kephisodotos. Their
productions were so nearly related that, even in antiquity, it was
doubtful whether a work of celebrity should be ascribed to one or to the
other. The chief creations of both were statues of the deities, both
worked in marble, choosing this material not by chance, but from the
nature of their subjects. With the exception of such colossal figures,
of a highly monumental character, as the chryselephantine statues of
Zeus and Athene Parthenos by Pheidias, and the Hera by Polycleitos, the
delicate beauty of soft and transparent stone was best fitted for the
images of deities enshrined within the temple; bronze, on the contrary,
is peculiarly suited to statues of victors and athletes intended for
outdoor exposure. It was on this account that it had been so largely
employed by Myron and Polycleitos.
[Illustration: Fig. 222.--Apollo Kitharoidos. (Vatican.)]
The Raging Bacchante, designated by epigrams and descriptions as the
most celebrated work of Scopas, was one of the first masterpieces of
antiquity. The head was thrown back in an ecstasy of passion, the hair
loosened, and the long garment fluttering in the wind; thus did the
Mainad appear rushing to the heights of Kithairon, holding in her hands
the kid rent in her fury. If the rhetor Kallistratos was, as he says,
speechless at sight of the countenance, admiring particularly the
expression of a soul stung into madness, we can well believe that
passion itself was embodied in this work. The excitement was more
moderate in the Apollo of the Temple of Nemesis at Rhamnous, brought by
Augustus to the Palatine, playing the lyre and singing with lyric
inspiration. It is not improbable that the motive of the Apollo in the
Vatican, with the long flowing garments (_Fig._ 222), may be referred to
this original. The entire bearing more closely resembles that of the
figures of the children of Niobe. We can hardly think without enthusiasm
of the Bithynian Achilles group, placed in later times in the Temple of
Neptune, near the Circus Flaminius in Rome, which, according to Pliny,
would have made the master celebrated even though he had created nothing
else during his lifetime. It represented Achilles upon the island of
Leuke after his death, and his reception among the deities, and
displayed, besides Thetis and Poseidon, numerous fantastic creatures of
the sea. Some idea of these last may be gained from a magnificent frieze
found in the vicinity of the Temple of Neptune, and now in the
Glyptothek at Munich. But it cannot belong to this group, and, in its
main features, has no close relations with it.
[Illustration: Fig. 223.--Central Figure of the Niobids. (Florence.)]
[Illustration: Fig. 224.--Head of Niobe.]
Delicate beauty and warmth of feeling must be ascribed to the works of
Scopas, otherwise Pliny could not have placed the Aphrodite found in the
Temple of Mars, near the Circus Flaminius, above that of Praxiteles. Nor
can we imagine the groups at Megara--Eros, Himeros, and Pothos (Love,
Yearning, and Desire)--described by Pausanias; or Aphrodite, with her
priestly lover Phaethon; or Pothos, in Samothrace, to have been without
these traits. The group of Leto with the nurse Ortygia carrying the
children, Apollo and Artemis, as the personification of a mother’s joy
and pride, must have been full of deep meaning. It is evident, from the
long list of his works, that his power was many-sided: his peculiar
style is best exemplified in a grand composition, the group of the
Niobids, though Pliny is in doubt whether it should be ascribed to
Scopas or to Praxiteles. The original of this no longer exists, and even
the very unequally executed pieces--to be found chiefly in the Uffizi at
Florence, and in various repetitions in different museums--are not
complete; still even thus they betray the greatness and individuality of
this wonderful work. Niobe, wife of King Amphion of Thebes, and mother
of fourteen children, in a boastful spirit, inherited from her father
Tantalos, compared herself with Leto, who had only two, and ordered
sacrifices to be made to herself rather than to that goddess. For this
she was terribly chastised by Apollo and Artemis, her children being all
slain before her eyes by the avenging arrows of the two deities. She
herself, trying in vain to protect her youngest daughter, pressing
against her, makes an attempt to draw her mantle over her head to hide
the expression of despairing woe which, according to the legend, in a
few moments turned her to stone. The figure, in its royal nobility and
motherly despair, yet so free from contortion, has wonderful effect.
(_Figs._ 223 and 224.) The children, already wounded and hurrying
towards her, show pain, fear, and need of help in different degrees, but
with that dignity and fine control which render it a tragedy in the
highest sense. The various struggles of feeling in the beautiful young
faces; the excited wrestling with an invisible, unconquerable,
relentless power, in every gesture, and in every motion of the swaying
garments; the plaintive character of the lines throughout the whole
composition, entirely opposed to the vertical tendency of the
statuesque, and especially of the architectural art; the wavy flow which
distinguishes it from the group at Ægina, and even from the quiet action
of the figures in the gables of the Parthenon--are all so peculiar to
this pathetic school, and so characteristic of its productions, that the
Niobe will ever be considered the greatest example of its style.
In a study of the artistic character of Scopas, we must content
ourselves, for the most part, with a few copies, and some not very full
accounts. Still, original remains from his hand are not altogether
wanting. We have seen that he was engaged in the sculptural
ornamentation upon the eastern side of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassos;
while upon the south and north sides his younger associates were
employed--Timotheos, Bryaxis, and Leochares, the latter known to us by a
copy in the Vatican of his Ganymede Carried Away by the Eagle of Zeus.
But the greater part of the recognizable reliefs upon the frieze, the
most important group of which represents the so often recurring battle
of the Amazons, notwithstanding the wonderful beauty and pathos of the
action, peculiar to the sculptured art of this period, is the work of
artisans, and certainly not by the hand of a master of the first rank.
(_Fig._ 225.) Among the numerous fragments of the statues found in the
English excavations of 1856, which, from analogy with the mausoleums of
the Roman emperors, may have stood between the columns, one at least, a
well-preserved torso, probably of Zeus, found upon the eastern side, has
been ascribed to Scopas. The others are, unfortunately, too much
mutilated to allow of any reliable judgment, as the varying views of
different authorities testify. At all events, these decorative works
cannot be ranked with the more celebrated examples of this master.
[Illustration: Fig. 225.--Fragment of the Frieze from the Mausoleum of
Halicarnassos.]
An acquaintance with the art of Scopas is extended by the study of his
younger and still more important contemporary Praxiteles. The
masterpieces of this artist are similar in character, and betray all the
preference of the former for the ideal beauty of youth. Not less than
five statues of Aphrodite by Praxiteles are known to have existed,
among which the famous statue at Cnidos was regarded as one of the
wonders of the world, and was ranked with the Olympian Zeus. It was so
highly prized among lovers of art that King Nicomedes of Bithynia, for
instance, in vain offered to the people of Cnidos the entire amount of
their State debt in exchange for it. The brow, the moist glowing eyes,
and soft smile of the slightly parted lips are described as wonderful;
the whole figure being so executed as to cause the marble to be
forgotten and the goddess of love to appear a reality. Coins of Cnidos
show the figure to have been entirely nude, the left hand holding her
drapery, partly lying upon a vase, and the right shielding herself in
modesty. The best in this style among the numerous remaining statues
were the Braschi Aphrodite, now in the Glyptothek at Munich, and that of
the Vatican, which is, however, inferior in execution, and is,
unfortunately, disfigured in the lower part by hard, modern drapery.
Next to that of Cnidos in nobility and beauty must have been a draped
Aphrodite from Cos, provided the people of that place had any
understanding of art; for, when the choice between the two was offered
them by the artist, they gave the preference to this. Of the three
others, less known, the Thespian was placed next to the statue of
Phryne, as contrasting divine with human beauty. To Praxiteles were
ascribed, also, at least two representations of Eros--blooming,
youthful figures, of which the most celebrated seems to have been the
Thespian or Bœotian one, which was installed between the Phryne and
the Aphrodite. Epigrams and accounts describing the god as wounding not
with the arrow, but the eye, appear to relate to this figure; for the
second statue from Parion, in Mysia, according to the coins, showed the
god unarmed, and with head uplifted.
[Illustration: Fig. 226.--Head of Eros. (Vatican.)]
A tender and almost effeminate character was exhibited in these
beautiful figures of youth, similar to which were the Sauroctonos--the
lizard-killer--the best copy of which is in the Louvre; the dreamily
reposing Satyr, of which there are copies in various museums; and the
smiling, sentimental Dionysos with the doeskin, leaning upon the
thyrsos. Great depth of suffering and sorrow is the fundamental feature
of two groups, one representing the rape of Proserpine, the other her
delivery by Demeter to the lower world, to which she returned after
every harvest, as a symbol of the following fruitless season.
This last was as pathetic an illustration of a sorely tested mother as
could be found in any other work of Praxiteles. The mild Demeter was not
less frequently presented by this master than was Aphrodite.