Produced by Ron Swanson
RELIGION AND ART
IN
ANCIENT GREECE
BY
ERNEST A. GARDNER
YATES PROFESSOR OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND PUBLIC ORATOR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF
LONDON; LATE DIRECTOR OF THE BRITISH SCHOOL AT ATHENS
LONDON AND NEW YORK
HARPER & BROTHERS
45 ALBEMARLE STREET, W.
1910
PREFACE
Greek religion may be studied under various aspects; and many recent
contributions to this study have been mainly concerned either with the
remote origin of many of its ceremonies in primitive ritual, or with the
manner in which some of its obscurer manifestations met the deeper
spiritual needs which did not find satisfaction in the official cults.
Such discussions are of the highest interest to the anthropologist and
to the psychologist; but they have the disadvantage of fixing our
attention too exclusively on what, to the ordinary Greek, appeared
accidental or even morbid, and of making us regard the Olympian
pantheon, with its clearly realised figures of the gods, as a mere
system imposed more or less from outside upon the old rites and beliefs
of the people. In the province of art, at least, the Olympian gods are
paramount; and thus we are led to appreciate and to understand their
worship as it affected the religious ideals of the people and the
services of the State. For we must remember that in the case of religion
even more than in that of art, its essential character and its influence
upon life and thought lie rather in its full perfection than in its
origin.
In a short sketch of so wide a subject it has seemed inadvisable to make
any attempt to describe the types of the various gods. Without full
illustration and a considerable expenditure of space, such a description
would be impracticable, and the reader must be referred to the ordinary
handbooks of the subject. A fuller account will be found in Dr.
Farnell's _Cults of the Greek States_, and some selected types are
discussed with the greatest subtlety and understanding in Brunn's
_Griechische Gotterideale_. In the present volume only a few examples
are mentioned as characteristic of the various periods. It may thus, I
trust, serve as an introduction to a more complete study of the subject;
and may, at the same time, offer to those who have not the leisure or
inclination for such further study, at least a summary of what we may
learn from Greece as to the relations of religion and art under the most
favourable conditions. It is easy, as Aristotle says, to fill in the
details if only the outlines are rightly drawn--[Greek: doxeie d' an
pantos einai proagagein kai diorthosai ta kalos echonta te perigraphe.]
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. IDOLATRY AND IMAGINATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
II. ASPECTS OF RELIGION--POPULAR, OFFICIAL, POETICAL,
PHILOSOPHICAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
III. THE CONDITIONS OF RELIGIOUS ART IN GREECE . . . . . . . . . 48
IV. ANTHROPOMORPHISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
V. IDEALISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
VI. INDIVIDUALISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
VII. PERSONIFICATION, CONVENTION, AND SYMBOLISM . . . . . . . . . 108
RELIGION AND ART IN ANCIENT GREECE
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION--IDOLATRY AND IMAGINATION
The relation of religion to art has varied greatly among different
peoples and at different periods. At the one extreme is the
uncompromising puritan spirit, which refuses to admit any devices of
human skill into the direct relations between God and man, whether it be
in the beauty of church or temple, in the ritual of their service, or in
the images which they enshrine. Other religions, such as those of the
Jews or of Islam, relegate art to a subordinate position; and while they
accept its services to decorate the buildings and apparatus connected
with divine worship, forbid any attempt to make a visible representation
of the deity. Modern Christianity, while it does not, as a rule, repeat
this prohibition, has varied greatly from time to time and from country
to country as to the extent to which it allows such representations.
Probably the better educated or more thoughtful individuals would in
every case regard them merely as symbolic aids to induce the
concentration and intensity of religious ideas and aspirations; but
there is no doubt that among the common people they tend to become
actually objects of worship in themselves. It is instructive to turn to
a system in which idolatry, the worship of images, was an essential part
of orthodox religious observance. It is easy and customary with a
certain class of minds to dismiss all such examples of idolatry with a
superficial generalisation such as "the heathen in his blindness bows
down to stock and stone." But it seems worth while to devote a short
study to an attempt to understand how such a system worked in the case
of a people like the ancient Greeks, who possessed to a degree that has
never been surpassed both clearness of intellectual perception and a
power to embody their ideals in artistic form. Whether it tended to
exalt or to debase religion may be a doubtful question; but there can be
no doubt that it gave an inspiration to art which contributed to the
unrivalled attainments of the Greeks in many branches of artistic
creation. We shall be mainly concerned here with the religion of Greece
as it affected the art of sculpture; but before attempting a historical
summary it is necessary for us to understand exactly what we mean by the
worship of representations of the gods, and to consider the nature of
the influence which such representation must have upon artistic
activity.
Idolatry--the worship of images--is almost always used by us in a bad
sense, owing, no doubt, chiefly to the usage of the word in the Jewish
scriptures. Mr. Ruskin, in his chapter on the subject in his _Aratra
Pentelici_, points out that it may also be used in a good sense, though
he prefers to use the word imagination in this meaning. There is
doubtless a frequent tendency to failure to
"Look through the sign to the thing signified,"
but there is no essential reason why the contemplation of a beautiful
statue, embodying a worthy conception of the deity, should not be as
conducive to a state of worship and communion as is an impressive ritual
or ceremony, or any other aid to devotion. This view of the matter is
expressed by some later Greek writers; in earlier times it was probably
unconsciously present, though it is hardly to be found in contemporary
literature. But it was only by slow stages that art came to do so direct
a service to religious ideas; in more primitive times its relation was
more subordinate. The worship or service of images, even in the highest
ages of Greek civilisation, was much more associated with primitive and
comparatively inartistic figures than with the masterpieces of
sculpture; and even where these masterpieces were actually objects of
worship it was often from the inheritance of a sanctity transferred to
them from an earlier image rather than for their own artistic qualities.
It does not, indeed, follow that the influence of the great sculptors
upon the religious ideals of the people was a negligible quality; we
have abundant evidence, both direct and indirect, that it was very
great. But it was exercised chiefly by following and ennobling
traditional notions rather than by daring innovation, and therefore can
only be understood in relation to the general development both of
religious conceptions and of artistic facility.
Here we shall be mainly concerned with art as an expression of the
religious ideals and aspirations of the people, and as an influence upon
popular and educated opinions and conceptions of the gods. But we must
not forget that it is also valuable to us as a record of myths and
beliefs, and of ritual and customs associated with the worship of the
gods. This is the case, above all, with reliefs and vase-paintings. In
them we often find representations which do not merely illustrate
ancient literature, but supplement and modify the information we derive
from classical writers. The point of view of the artist is often not the
same as that of the poet or historian, and it is frequently nearer to
that of the people, and therefore a help in any attempt to understand
popular beliefs. The representations of the gods which we find in such
works do not often embody any lofty ideals or subtle characterisation;
but they show us the traditional and easily recognisable figures in
which the gods usually occurred to the imagination of the Greek people.
The association of acts of worship with certain specially sacred objects
or places lies at the basis of much religious art, though very often art
has little or nothing to do with such objects in a primitive stage of
religious development. Stocks and stones--the latter often reputed to
have fallen from heaven, the former sometimes in the shape of a growing
tree, sometimes of a mere unwrought log--were to be found as the centres
of religious cult in many of the shrines of Greece. These sacred objects
are sometimes called fetishes; and although it is perhaps wiser to avoid
terms belonging properly to the religion of modern savages in speaking
of ancient Greece, there seems to be an analogy between the beliefs and
customs that are implied. Such sacred stocks or stones were not regarded
merely as symbols of certain deities, but were looked upon as having
certain occult or magic qualities inherent in them, and as being in
themselves potent for good or evil. The ceremonies used in their cult
partook of the nature of magic rather than religion, so far as these
consisted of anointing them with oil or with drink offerings; such
ceremonies might, indeed, be regarded as gratifying to the deity
worshipped under their form, when they were definitely affiliated to the
service of an anthropomorphic god; but in a more primitive stage of
belief the indwelling power probably was not associated with any such
generalisation as is implied in the change from "animism" or
"polydaemonism" to polytheism. We are here concerned not with this
growth of religious feeling, but rather with its influence upon the
sacred things that were objects of worship and with the question how far
their sanctity encouraged their artistic decoration.
It is perhaps easier to realise the feeling of a primitive people about
this matter in the case of a sacred building than in that of the actual
image of a god. A temple does not, indeed--in Greece, at least--belong
to the earliest phase of cult; for it is the dwelling of the god, and
its form, based on that of a human dwelling-house, implies an
anthropomorphic imagination. We find, however, in Homer that the gods
are actually thought of as inhabiting their temples and preferring one
to another, Athena going to Athens and Aphrodite to Paphos as her chosen
abode. It was clearly desirable for every city to gain this special
favour; and an obvious way to do this was to make the dwelling-place
attractive in itself to the deity. This might be done not merely by the
abundance of sacrifices, but also by the architectural beauty of the
building itself, and by the richness of the offerings it contained. Here
was, therefore, a very practical reason for making the dwelling of the
god as sumptuous and beautiful as possible, in order that he might be
attracted to live in it and to give his favour and protection to those
that dwelt around it. Doubtless, as religious ideas advanced and the
conception of the nature of the gods became higher, there came the
notion that they did not dwell in houses made with hands; yet a Greek
temple, just like a mediaeval cathedral, might be made beautiful as a
pleasing service and an honour to the deity to whom it was dedicated;
and there was a continuous tradition in practice from the lower
conception to the higher, nor is it easy to draw the line at any
particular stage between the two.
If we turn now to the sacred image of the deity we find the same process
going on. The rude stock or stone was sometimes itself the actual
recipient of material offerings; or it might be painted with some bright
and pleasing colour, or wrapped in costly draperies. In most of these
customs an assumption is implied that the object of worship is pleased
by the same things as please its worshippers; and here we find the germ
of the anthropomorphic idea. It was probably the desire to make the
offerings and prayers of the worshippers perceptible to the power within
that first led to the addition of human features to the shapeless block.
Just as the early Greeks painted eyes upon the prows of their ships, to
enable them to find their way through the water, so they carved a head,
with eyes and ears, out of the sacred stone or stock, or perhaps added a
head to the original shapeless mass. We find many primitive idols in
this form--a cone or column with a head and perhaps arms and feet added
to it; and the tradition survives in the herm, or in the mask of
Dionysus attached to a post, round which we still see the Maenads
dancing on fifth-century vases. The notion that such carved eyes or ears
actually served to transmit impressions to the god is well illustrated
by Professor Petrie's discovery at Memphis of a number of votive ears of
the god, intended to facilitate or to symbolise his reception of the
prayers of his votaries. In fact, the taunt of the psalmist against the
images of the heathen--"Eyes have they, but they see not; they have
ears, and yet they hear not"--is not a merely rhetorical one, as it
seems to us, but real and practical, if spoken to men who gave their
gods ears and eyes that they might hear and see.
An imagination so entirely materialistic may belong to a more primitive
stage than any we can find among the Greeks. As soon as religion has
reached the polytheistic stage the gods are regarded as travelling from
image to image, just as they travel from temple to temple. Even in
AEschylus' _Eumenides_ it will be remembered that when Orestes, by the
advice of Apollo, clasps as a suppliant the ancient image of Athena at
Athens, the goddess comes flying from far away in the Troad when she
hears the sound of his calling. The exact relation of the goddess to the
image is not, in all probability, very clearly realised; but, so far as
one can trace it from the ritual procedure, what appears to be implied
is that a suppliant will have a better chance of reaching the deity he
addresses if he approaches one of the images preferred by that deity as
the abode of his power; often there is one such image preferred to all
others, as this early one of Athena at Athens. The deity was not,
therefore, regarded as immanent in any image--at least, in classical
times; the gods lived in Olympus, or possibly visited from time to time
the people whom they favoured, or went to the great festivals that were
held in their honour. But the various images of them, especially the
most ancient ones, that were set up in their temples in the various
cities of Greece were regarded as a means of communication between gods
and men. The prayer of a worshipper addressing such an image will be
transmitted to the deity whom he addresses, and the deity may even come
in person to hear him, if special aid is required. A close parallel may
be found even in modern days. I have known of a child, brought up in the
Roman Catholic religion, who had a particular veneration or affection
for a certain statue of the Virgin, and used often to address it or, as
she said, converse with it. And she said she had an impression that, if
only she could slip in unawares, she might see the Virgin Mary herself
approaching or leaving the statue, whether to be transformed into it or
merely to dwell in it for a time. On Greek vases we see the same notion
expressed as in the _Eumenides_, when a god or goddess is represented as
actually present beside the statue to which a sacrifice or prayer is
being offered.
In such a stage of religious belief or imagination it is clearly of high
importance that the image of any deity should be pleasing to that deity,
and thereby attract his presence and serve as a ready channel of
communication with him. From the point of view of art, it would seem at
first sight that the result would be a desire to make the image as
beautiful as possible, and as worthy an embodiment of the deity as the
sculptor could devise. This doubtless was the result in the finest
period of art in Greece, and it involved, as we shall see, a great deal
of reciprocal influence on the part of religion and art. But in earlier
times the case is not so simple; and even in statues of the fifth
century it is not easy to understand the conditions under which the
sculptor worked without some reference to the historical development
that lay behind him.
Before the rise of sculpture in Greece, images of the gods, some of them
only rudely anthropomorphic, had long been objects of worship; and it
was by no means safe in religious matters to depart too rashly from the
forms consecrated by tradition. This was partly owing to the feeling
that when a certain form had been accepted, and a certain means of
communication had worked for a long time satisfactorily, it was a
dangerous thing to make a change which might not be agreeable to the
powers concerned, and which might, so to speak, break the established
connection. But while hieratic conservatism tended to preserve forms and
formulae almost for what we may call magic reasons, there was also a
sentiment about the matter which gave popular support to the tendency.
Thus Pausanias probably expresses a common feeling when he says that the
images made by Daedalus, "though somewhat strange in aspect, yet seem to
be distinguished by something in them of the divine."
It is true that these early images attributed to Daedalus showed already
a considerable advance on the shapeless or roughly shaped stocks or
stones that had served as the most primitive objects of worship; but it
was their resemblance to these rather than their difference from them
that impressed the imagination of Pausanias. He appreciated them not so
much as examples of an art that promised much for the future, but rather
as linked with the past by the tradition of an immemorial sanctity. We
find, in fact, that the rude early images remained the centres of state
cult and official worship, as well as of popular veneration, long after
the art of sculpture had become capable of providing their worshippers
with more adequate embodiments of the gods they represented. It was the
early image of Athena, not the Athena Parthenos by Phidias, that was
annually washed in the sea, and for which the peplos was woven by the
chosen women of Athens. The connection between art and religion is, in
such a case, reduced to narrow limits; but, on the other hand, we hear
of many instances where new statues of the gods were made as temple
statues, to be the chief objects of worship and centres of cult. And
this was sometimes done with the official sanction of the gods
themselves, as expressed through the oracle of Delphi.
The sanctity of the old image was sometimes transferred to the new one;
a striking example of this is seen in the case of Artemis Brauronia on
the Athenian Acropolis. It had been the custom for the garments
presented to the goddess by her worshippers to be placed upon her
primitive statue; and when a new and worthier representation of the
goddess was placed in the temple in the fourth century, we are informed
by inscriptions that dedicated garments were sometimes hung upon it,
even though it was a statue from the hand of Praxiteles. It sometimes
happened that the old and the new statues stood side by side in the same
temple, or in adjacent temples, and they seem then to exemplify the two
kinds of idolatry--the literal and the imaginative--the one being the
actual subject of the rites ceremonially observed, and the other being
the visible presentment of the deity, and helping the worshipper to
concentrate his prayers and aspirations. Here the art of the sculptor
had the fullest scope, and it is in such cases that he could, as
Quintilian said of Phidias, "make some addition to the received
religion."
This duality was, however, the result of accident rather than the normal
arrangement, and, so long as the primitive image remained the official
object of worship, it was difficult, if not impossible, for the new and
more artistic statue to have its full religious effect. In many cases,
probably in most cases, it was actually substituted, sooner or later,
for the earlier embodiment of the deity. Sometimes the early image,
which was often of wood, may have decayed or been worn away by the
attentions lavished upon it; we hear of a statue of which the hand had
perished under the kisses of the devout. We hear also of cases in which
it had been entirely lost--for instance, the Black Demete of Phigalia,
an uncouth image with a horse's head; here, when a plague had warned the
people to replace it, the AEginetan sculptor Onatas undertook the task;
and he is said to have been vouchsafed a vision in sleep which enabled
him to reproduce exactly this unsightly idol. It would not seem that
such a commission gave much scope to his artistic powers; but it is
noteworthy that the Phigalians employed one of the most famous sculptors
of the day. Elsewhere the conditions were more favourable, and it was
possible for the artist, while conforming to the accepted type, to give
it a more correct form and more pleasing features.
Daedalus, we are told--and in this story Daedalus is an impersonation of
the art of the early sculptors in Greece--made statues of the gods so
life-like that they had to be chained to their pedestals for fear they
should run away. It is likely that this tale goes back to a genuine
tradition; for Pausanias actually saw statues with fetters attached to
them in several early shrines in Greece. The device is natural enough.
Daedalus was a magician as well as a sculptor; and if he could give his
statues eyes that they might see, and ears that they might hear, it was
an obvious inference that if he gave them legs they might run away and
desert their shrines and their worshippers.
We may very likely find also in a similar notion the explanation of a
peculiarity often found in early statues of the gods--the well-known
archaic smile. Many explanations, technical and otherwise, have been
given of this device; but none of them can get over the fact that it was
just as easy, or even easier, for a primitive sculptor to make the mouth
straight as to make it curve up at the ends, and that he often did make
it straight. When he does not do so, it is probably done with intention;
and it is quite in accordance with the conditions of early religious art
that he should make the image of a deity smile in order that the deity
himself might smile upon his worshippers; and a pleasant expression
might also, by a natural transfer of ideas, be supposed to be pleasing
to the god, and so attract him to his statue. We are told that at Chios
there was a head of Artemis set high up, which appeared morose to those
entering the temple, but when they left it seemed to have become
cheerful. This may have been originally due to some accident of placing
or lighting, but it seems to have acquired a religious significance; and
we can hardly deny a similar significance to the smile which we find on
so many early statues. In some cases, especially in statues of men, it
may have been intended merely as a device to give expression and life to
the face; but it cannot have been a matter of indifference to a
primitive worshipper that his deity should smile on him through the face
of its visible image. This point of view being given, it is evidently
only a question of how far it is within the power of art to express the
benignity of the god, and later on his character and personality, in an
adequate manner; and this power depends on the gradual acquisition of
mastery over form and material, of knowledge and observation of the
human body and face, and of the technical skill requisite to express
this knowledge in marble or bronze, or more precious materials such as
gold and ivory. All this development belongs to the history of art, not
to that of religion. But before we can pursue the investigation any
further, it is necessary to consider the different sources and channels
of religious influence on art with which we have to deal.