was one of the most memorable events of the pagan world, whose greatest
light was extinguished,--no, not extinguished, since it has been shining
ever since in the "Memorabilia" of Xenophon and the "Dialogues" of
Plato. Too late the Athenians repented of their injustice and cruelty.
They erected to his memory a brazen statue, executed by Lysippus. His
character and his ideas are alike immortal. The schools of Athens
properly date from his death, about the year 400 B.C., and these schools
redeemed the shame of her loss of political power. The Socratic
philosophy, as expounded by Plato, survived the wrecks of material
greatness. It entered even into the Christian schools, especially at
Alexandria; it has ever assisted and animated the earnest searchers
after the certitudes of life; it has permeated the intellectual world,
and found admirers and expounders in all the universities of Europe and
America. "No man has ever been found," says Grote, "strong enough to
bend the bow of Socrates, the father of philosophy, the most original
thinker of antiquity." His teachings gave an immense impulse to
civilization, but they could not reform or save the world; it was too
deeply sunk in the infamies and immoralities of an Epicurean life. Nor
was his philosophy ever popular in any age of our world. It never will
be popular until the light which men hate shall expel the darkness which
they love. But it has been the comfort and the joy of an esoteric
few,--the witnesses of truth whom God chooses, to keep alive the virtues
and the ideas which shall ultimately triumph over all the forces
of evil.
* * * * *
AUTHORITIES.
The direct sources are chiefly Plato (Jowett's translation) and
Xenophon. Indirect sources: chiefly Aristotle, Metaphysics; Diogenes
Laertius's Lives of Philosophers; Grote's History of Greece; Brandis's
Plato, in Smith's Dictionary; Ralph Waldo Emerson's Representative Men;
Cicero on Immortality; J. Martineau, Essay on Plato; Thirlwall's History
of Greece. See also the late work of Curtius; Ritter's History of
Philosophy; F.D. Maurice's History of Moral Philosophy; G. H. Lewes'
Biographical History of Philosophy; Hampden's Fathers of Greek
Philosophy; J.S. Blackie's Wise Men of Greece; Starr King's Lecture on
Socrates; Smith's Biographical Dictionary; Ueberweg's History of
Philosophy; W.A. Butler's History of Ancient Philosophy; Grote's
Aristotle.
PHIDIAS
500-430 B.C.
GREEK ART.
I suppose there is no subject, at this time, which interests cultivated
people in favored circumstances more than Art. They travel in Europe,
they visit galleries, they survey cathedrals, they buy pictures, they
collect old china, they learn to draw and paint, they go into ecstasies
over statues and bronzes, they fill their houses with bric-á-brac, they
assume a cynical criticism, or gossip pedantically, whether they know
what they are talking about or not. In short, the contemplation of Art
is a fashion, concerning which it is not well to be ignorant, and about
which there is an amazing amount of cant, pretension, and borrowed
opinions. Artists themselves differ in their judgments, and many who
patronize them have no severity of discrimination. We see bad pictures
on the walls of private palaces, as well as in public galleries, for
which fabulous prices are paid because they are, or are supposed to be,
the creation of great masters, or because they are rare like old books
in an antiquarian library, or because fashion has given them a
fictitious value, even when these pictures fail to create pleasure or
emotion in those who view them. And yet there is great enjoyment, to
some people, in the contemplation of a beautiful building or statue or
painting,--as of a beautiful landscape or of a glorious sky. The ideas
of beauty, of grace, of grandeur, which are eternal, are suggested to
the mind and soul; and these cultivate and refine in proportion as the
mind and soul are enlarged, especially among the rich, the learned, and
the favored classes. So, in high civilizations, especially material, Art
is not only a fashion but a great enjoyment, a lofty study, and a theme
of general criticism and constant conversation.
It is my object, of course, to present the subject historically, rather
than critically. My criticisms would be mere opinions, worth no more
than those of thousands of other people. As a public teacher to those
who may derive some instruction from my labors and studies, I presume to
offer only reflections on Art as it existed among the Greeks, and to
show its developments in an historical point of view.
The reader may be surprised that I should venture to present Phidias as
one of the benefactors of the world, when so little is known about him,
or can be known about him. So far as the man is concerned, I might as
well lecture on Melchizedek, or Pharaoh, or one of the dukes of Edom.
There are no materials to construct a personal history which would be
interesting, such as abound in reference to Michael Angelo or Raphael.
Thus he must be made the mere text of a great subject. The development
of Art is an important part of the history of civilization. The
influence of Art on human culture and happiness is prodigious. Ancient
Grecian art marks one of the stepping-stones of the race. Any man who
largely contributed to its development was a world-benefactor.
Now, history says this much of Phidias: that he lived in the time of
Pericles,--in the culminating period of Grecian glory,--and ornamented
the Parthenon with his unrivalled statues; which Parthenon was to Athens
what Solomon's Temple was to Jerusalem,--a wonder, a pride, and a glory.
His great contribution to that matchless edifice was the statue of
Minerva, made of gold and ivory, forty feet in height, the gold of which
alone was worth forty-four talents,--about fifty-thousand dollars,--an
immense sum when gold was probably worth more than twenty times its
present value. All antiquity was unanimous in its praise of this statue,
and the exactness and finish of its details were as remarkable as the
grandeur and majesty of its proportions. Another of the famous works of
Phidias was the bronze statue of Minerva, which was the glory of the
Acropolis, This was sixty feet in height. But even this yielded to the
colossal statue of Zeus or Jupiter in his great temple at Olympia,
representing the figure in a sitting posture, forty feet high, on a
throne made of gold, ebony, ivory, and precious stones. In this statue
the immortal artist sought to represent power in repose, as Michael
Angelo did in his statue of Moses. So famous was this majestic statue,
that it was considered a calamity to die without seeing it; and it
served as a model for all subsequent representations of majesty and
repose among the ancients. This statue, removed to Constantinople by
Theodosius the Great, remained undestroyed until the year 475 A.D.
Phidias also executed various other works,--all famous in his
day,--which have, however, perished; but many executed under his
superintendence still remain, and are universally admired for their
grace and majesty of form. The great master himself was probably vastly
superior to any of his disciples, and impressed his genius on the age,
having, so far as we know, no rival among his contemporaries, as he has
had no successor among the moderns of equal originality and power,
unless it be Michael Angelo. His distinguished excellence was simplicity
and grandeur; and he was to sculpture what Aeschylus was to tragic
poetry,--sublime and grand, representing ideal excellence, Though his
works have perished, the ideas he represented still live. His fame is
immortal, though we know so little about him. It is based on the
admiration of antiquity, on the universal praise which his creations
extorted even from the severest critics in an age of Art, when the best
energies of an ingenious people were directed to it with the absorbing
devotion now given to mechanical inventions and those pursuits which
make men rich and comfortable. It would be interesting to know the
private life of this great artist, his ardent loves and fierce
resentments, his social habits, his public honors and triumphs,--but
this is mere speculation. We may presume that he was rich, flattered,
and admired,--the companion of great statesmen, rulers, and generals;
not a persecuted man like Dante, but honored like Raphael; one of the
fortunate of earth, since he was a master of what was most valued in
his day.
But it is the work which he represents--and still more comprehensively
Art itself in the ancient world--to which I would call your attention,
especially the expression of Art in buildings, in statues, and
in pictures.
"Art" is itself a very great word, and means many things; it is applied
to style in writing, to musical compositions, and even to effective
eloquence, as well as to architecture, sculpture, and painting. We
speak of music as artistic,--and not foolishly; of an artistic poet, or
an artistic writer like Voltaire or Macaulay; of an artistic
preacher,--by which we mean that each and all move the sensibilities and
souls and minds of men by adherence to certain harmonies which accord
with fixed ideas of grace, beauty, and dignity. Eternal ideas which the
mind conceives are the foundation of Art, as they are of Philosophy. Art
claims to be creative, and is in a certain sense inspired, like the
genius of a poet. However material the creation, the spirit which gives
beauty to it is of the mind and soul. Imagination is tasked to its
utmost stretch to portray sentiments and passions in the way that makes
the deepest impression. The marble bust becomes animated, and even the
temple consecrated to the deity becomes religious, in proportion as
these suggest the ideas and sentiments which kindle the soul to
admiration and awe. These feelings belong to every one by nature, and
are most powerful when most felicitously called out by the magic of the
master, who requires time and labor to perfect his skill. Art is
therefore popular, and appeals to every one, but to those most who live
in the great ideas on which it is based. The peasant stands awe-struck
before the majestic magnitude of a cathedral; the man of culture is
roused to enthusiasm by the contemplation of its grand proportions, or
graceful outlines, or bewitching details, because he sees in them the
realization of his ideas of beauty, grace, and majesty, which shine
forever in unutterable glory,--indestructible ideas which survive all
thrones and empires, and even civilizations. They are as imperishable as
stars and suns and rainbows and landscapes, since these unfold new
beauties as the mind and soul rest upon them. Whenever, then, man
creates an image or a picture which reveals these eternal but
indescribable beauties, and calls forth wonder or enthusiasm, and
excites refined pleasures, he is an artist. He impresses, to a greater
or less degree, every order and class of men. He becomes a benefactor,
since he stimulates exalted sentiments, which, after all, are the real
glory and pride of life, and the cause of all happiness and virtue,--in
cottage or in palace, amid hard toils as well as in luxurious leisure.
He is a self-sustained man, since he revels in ideas rather than in
praises and honors. Like the man of virtue, he finds in the adoration of
the deity he worships his highest reward. Michael Angelo worked
preoccupied and rapt, without even the stimulus of praise, to advanced
old age, even as Dante lived in the visions to which his imagination
gave form and reality. Art is therefore not only self-sustained, but
lofty and unselfish. It is indeed the exalted soul going forth
triumphant over external difficulties, jubilant and melodious even in
poverty and neglect, rising above all the evils of life, revelling in
the glories which are impenetrable, and living--for the time--in the
realm of deities and angels. The accidents-of earth are no more to the
true artist striving to reach and impersonate his ideal of beauty and
grace, than furniture and tapestries are to a true woman seeking the
beatitudes of love. And it is only when there is this soul longing to
reach the excellence conceived, for itself alone, that great works have
been produced. When Art has been prostituted to pander to perverted
tastes, or has been stimulated by thirst for gain, then inferior works
only have been created. Fra Angelico lived secluded in a convent when he
painted his exquisite Madonnas. It was the exhaustion of the nervous
energies consequent on superhuman toils, rather than the luxuries and
pleasures which his position and means afforded, which killed Raphael at
thirty-seven.
The artists of Greece did not live for utilities any more than did the
Ionian philosophers, but in those glorious thoughts and creations which
were their chosen joy. Whatever can be reached by the unaided powers of
man was attained by them. They represented all that the mind can
conceive of the beauty of the human form, and the harmony of
architectural proportions, In the realm of beauty and grace modern
civilization has no prouder triumphs than those achieved by the artists
of Pagan antiquity. Grecian artists have been the teachers of all
nations and all ages in architecture, sculpture, and painting. How far
they were themselves original we cannot tell. We do not know how much
they were indebted to Egyptians, Phoenicians, and Assyrians, but in real
excellence they have never been surpassed. In some respects, their works
still remain objects of hopeless imitation: in the realization of ideas
of beauty and form, they reached absolute perfection. Hence we have a
right to infer that Art can flourish under Pagan as well as Christian
influences. It was a comparatively Pagan age in Italy when the great
artists arose who succeeded Da Vinci, especially under the patronage of
the Medici and the Medicean popes. Christianity has only modified Art by
purifying it from sensual attractions. Christianity added very little to
Art, until cathedrals arose in their grand proportions and infinite
details, and until artists sought to portray in the faces of their
Saints and Madonnas the seraphic sentiments of Christian love and
angelic purity. Art even declined in the Roman world from the second
century after Christ, in spite of all the efforts of Christian emperors.
In fact neither Christianity nor Paganism creates it; it seems to be
independent of both, and arises from the peculiar genius and
circumstances of an age. Make Art a fashion, honor and reward it, crown
its great masters with Olympic leaves, direct the energies of an age or
race upon it, and we probably shall have great creations, whether the
people are Christian or Pagan. So that Art seems to be a human creation,
rather than a divine inspiration. It is the result of genius, stimulated
by circumstances and directed to the contemplation of ideal excellence.
Much has been written on those principles upon which Art is supposed to
be founded, but not very satisfactorily, although great learning and
ingenuity have been displayed. It is difficult to conceive of beauty or
grace by definitions,---as difficult as it is to define love or any
other ultimate sentiment of the soul. "Metaphysics, mathematics, music,
and philosophy," says Cleghorn, "have been called in to analyze, define,
demonstrate, or generalize," Great critics, like Burke, Alison, and
Stewart, have written interesting treatises on beauty and taste. "Plato
represents beauty as the contemplation of the mind. Leibnitz maintained
that it consists in perfection. Diderot referred beauty to the idea of
relation. Blondel asserted that it was in harmonic proportions. Leigh
speaks of it as the music of the age." These definitions do not much
assist us. We fall back on our own conceptions or intuitions, as
probably did Phidias, although Art in Greece could hardly have attained
such perfection without the aid which poetry and history and philosophy
alike afforded. Art can flourish only as the taste of the people
becomes cultivated, and by the assistance of many kinds of knowledge.
The mere contemplation of Nature is not enough. Savages have no art at
all, even when they live amid grand mountains and beside the
ever-changing sea. When Phidias was asked how he conceived his Olympian
Jove, he referred to Homer's poems. Michael Angelo was enabled to paint
the saints and sibyls of the Sistine Chapel from familiarity with the
writings of the Jewish prophets. Isaiah inspired him as truly as Homer
inspired Phidias. The artists of the age of Phidias were encouraged and
assisted by the great poets, historians, and philosophers who basked in
the sunshine of Pericles, even as the great men in the Court of
Elizabeth derived no small share of their renown from her glorious
appreciation. Great artists appear in clusters, and amid the other
constellations that illuminate the intellectual heavens. They all
mutually assist each other. When Rome lost her great men, Art declined.
When the egotism of Louis XIV. extinguished genius, the great lights in
all departments disappeared. So Art is indebted not merely to the
contemplation of ideal beauty, but to the influence of great ideas
permeating society,--such as when the age of Phidias was kindled with
the great thoughts of Socrates, Democritus, Thucydides, Euripides,
Aristophanes, and others, whether contemporaries or not; a sort of
Augustan or Elizabethan age, never to appear but once among the
same people.
Now, in reference to the history or development of ancient Art, until it
culminated in the age of Pericles, we observe that its first expression
was in architecture, and was probably the result of religious
sentiments, when nations were governed by priests, and not distinguished
for intellectual life. Then arose the temples of Egypt, of Assyria, of
India. They are grand, massive, imposing, but not graceful or beautiful.
They arose from blended superstition and piety, and were probably
erected before the palaces of kings, and in Egypt by the dynasty that
builded the older pyramids. Even those ambitious and prodigious
monuments, which have survived every thing contemporaneous, indicate the
reign of sacerdotal monarchs and artists who had no idea of beauty, but
only of permanence. They do not indicate civilization, but
despotism,--unless it be that they were erected for astronomical
purposes, as some maintain, rather than as sepulchres for kings. But
this supposition involves great mathematical attainments. It is
difficult to conceive of such a waste of labor by enlightened princes,
acquainted with astronomical and mathematical knowledge and mechanical
forces, for Herodotus tells us that one hundred thousand men toiled on
the Great Pyramid during forty years. What for? Surely it is hard to
suppose that such a pile was necessary for the observation of the polar
star; and still less probably was it built as a sepulchre for a king,
since no covered sarcophagus has ever been found in it, nor have even
any hieroglyphics. The mystery seems impenetrable.
But the temples are not mysteries. They were built also by sacerdotal
monarchs, in honor of the deity. They must have been enormous, perhaps
the most imposing ever built by man: witness the ruins of Karnac--a
temple designated by the Greeks as that of Jupiter Ammon---with its
large blocks of stone seventy feet in length, on a platform one thousand
feet long and three hundred wide, its alleys over a mile in length lined
with colossal sphinxes, and all adorned with obelisks and columns, and
surrounded with courts and colonnades, like Solomon's temple, to
accommodate the crowds of worshippers as well as priests. But these
enormous structures were not marked by beauty of proportion or fitness
of ornament; they show the power of kings, not the genius of a nation.
They may have compelled awe; they did not kindle admiration. The emotion
they called out was such as is produced now by great engineering
exploits, involving labor and mechanical skill, not suggestive of grace
or harmony, which require both taste and genius. The same is probably
true of Solomon's temple, built at a much later period, when Art had
been advanced somewhat by the Phoenicians, to whose assistance it seems
he was much indebted. We cannot conceive how that famous structure
should have employed one hundred and fifty thousand men for eleven
years, and have cost what would now be equal to $200,000,000, from any
description which has come down to us, or any ruins which remain, unless
it were surrounded by vast courts and colonnades, and ornamented by a
profuse expenditure of golden plates,--which also evince both power and
money rather than architectural genius.
After the erection of temples came the building of palaces for kings,
equally distinguished for vast magnitude and mechanical skill, but
deficient in taste and beauty, showing the infancy of Art. Yet even
these were in imitation of the temples. And as kings became proud and
secular, probably their palaces became grander and larger,--like the
palaces of Nebuchadnezzar and Rameses the Great and the Persian monarchs
at Susa, combining labor, skill, expenditure, dazzling the eye by the
number of columns and statues and vast apartments, yet still deficient
in beauty and grace.
It was not until the Greeks applied their wonderful genius to
architecture that it became the expression of a higher civilization.
And, as among Egyptians, Art in Greece is first seen in temples; for the
earlier Greeks were religious, although they worshipped the deity under
various names, and in the forms which their own hands did make.