IDEALISM
The age which followed the great Persian Wars was the time of the
highest political, literary, and intellectual development in Greece. Nor
was it unfavourable to strength and depth of religious feeling among the
people. If the more thoughtful among them were inclined to doubt whether
some of the stories told about the gods were either probable or
edifying, these were the very men who, on the other hand, were most
capable of appreciating the higher and nobler conceptions of the gods
which we find in contemporary poets. And the great delivery from the
Persians not only gave the Greeks a confidence in themselves which
justly increased their national pride and thereby strengthened their
national ideals, but it also gave occasion to a confidence in the gods
and a gratitude to them which found expression in numerous buildings and
offerings. All this religious activity could not fail to have
considerable influence upon the common people; and in some cases, as at
Athens, there was the necessity of replacing the temples and statues
that had been destroyed or carried off by the Persian invader. At the
time when a demand occurred for new statues of the gods, the rapid
progress of the art of sculpture made it inevitable that these new
statues should not be mere reproductions or reminiscences of the ones
they replaced, but fresh and original conceptions, worthy of the
increased skill of the artist and of the nobler ideals of the people.
And by one of those coincidences which we meet so often both in the
history of art and in that of literature, just at the time when the
material conditions, the spirit of the people, and the rapid advance of
art gave the utmost scope for artistic creation, there arose the man of
transcendent genius to give full expression to the religious and
artistic aspirations of the time. The age of Pericles was also the age
of Phidias. It is true that there was an interval between the defeat of
the Persians and the period of highest attainment in Greece; and during
this interval many temples were built or rebuilt, and many statues were
set up as objects of worship or as dedications to the gods. Some of
these may have anticipated to a certain extent the work of Phidias;
several of them were of colossal size, like his chief masterpieces, and
thus, even from the technical point of view, may have prepared the way
before him; one, the Apollo by Calamis at Apollonia, was about
forty-five feet high, and so actually rivalled the Zeus and Athena of
Phidias in size. But of these statues we know little or nothing. As to
the two most famous works of Phidias himself, the Athena Parthenos
within the Parthenon at Athens and the Zeus at Olympia, we are better
informed, so far as elaborate descriptions and the somewhat rhetorical
appreciations of later writers are concerned; and we possess some extant
copies which tell us something of their pose and attributes. But any
notion we may form as to their true artistic and religious character
must be mainly dependent upon our imagination; and even for their
relation to the religious ideals of the people we are dependent for the
most part upon indirect evidence. Though the art of sculpture was so
closely bound up with the life of the people in Greece, we find very few
references to its greatest works; it is evident that the Athenians, for
example, took the greatest pride in the buildings that adorned their
Acropolis and in the sculptures they contained; yet when Pericles, as
reported by Thucydides, speaks of the statue of the Athena Parthenos, it
is only to reckon the gold of her drapery as part of the possible
resources of the state. We know that in the eyes of Pericles and of his
hearers the preciousness of the material was only an incident in the
artistic character of the work; but what is felt most deeply is often
the least spoken about. Later descriptions, such as that of Pausanias,
lay emphasis on the details and accessories of the statue, the
ornamentation of helmet and shield and sandals; they lay themselves open
to the stricture of Lucian on "such as can neither see nor praise the
whole beauty of the Olympian Zeus, great and noble as it is, nor
describe it to others that do not know it, but admire the accurate work
and fine polish of his footstool and the good proportions of the basis,
enumerating all such details with the utmost care." At the same time
even such information as they give us is welcome, since it aids our
imagination to reconstruct the appearance of the whole. These great
chryselephantine statues were placed within the cella of a temple,
lighted only through the door and by some infiltration through the
marble roof, and their effect was calculated for these conditions. The
rich tone and subtle reflections of the ivory and the gold, mingled with
coloured inlays of enamel or precious stones, and tempered and
harmonised by a "dim religious light," must have been most impressive;
and the grandeur of the figures was enhanced by their colossal size. But
in all this we are still dealing only with conditions and accessories,
not with the art itself and the religious ideals which it expressed.
These are perhaps easier for us to appreciate in the case of the Zeus
than of the Athena, though we are better provided with copies of the
latter. We are accustomed in our own religious art to the attempt to
express divinity in the form of a mature man of unspeakable majesty and
benignity. To the Greeks, indeed, the human figure of Zeus was not
merely an incarnation, but the actual form of the god himself; the god
was not thought of as having taken upon himself the sorrows and the
weaknesses of our mortal nature, but as sharing only its ideal
perfection. Yet that the effect was not altogether dissimilar is shown
by such a passage as that we find in Dion Chrysostom: "A man whose soul
is utterly immersed in toil, who has suffered many disasters and
sorrows, and cannot even enjoy sweet sleep, even such an one, I think,
if he stood face to face with this statue, would forget all the dangers
and difficulties of this mortal life: such the vision you, Phidias, have
invented and devised, a sight 'to lull all pain and anger, and bring
forgetfulness of every sorrow.'"
The same writer elsewhere puts into the mouth of Phidias an explanation
of how he had attempted to embody in his statue the current conception
of the god, and even the epithets that belonged to his worship. "My
Zeus," says the sculptor, "is peaceful and altogether gentle, as the
guardian of a Hellas free from factions and of one mind with itself.
Him, taking counsel with my art, and with the wise and noble Elean
state, I set up in his temple, mild and majestic in a form free from all
sorrow, as the giver of life and livelihood and all good things, the
common father of men, their saviour and their guardian, so far as it is
possible for a mortal man to conceive and to copy his divine and
inexpressible nature. And consider whether you will not find the image
according with all the epithets of the god; Zeus alone is called the
father of gods and their only king, and also god of the city and of
friendship and society, and of suppliants too and strangers, the giver
of harvest, and by innumerable other titles. And for one whose aim it
was to display all these qualities without speaking, is not my art
successful? The strength of the form and its imposing proportions show
the power to rule and the king; the gentle and amiable character shows
the father and his care; the majesty and severity show the god of the
city and of law; and of the kinship of men and gods the similarity of
their shape serves as a symbol. His protective friendship of suppliants
and strangers and fugitives and such like is seen in his kindliness and
his evident gentleness and goodness. And an image of the giver of
possessions and harvest is seen in the simplicity and magnanimity
displayed in his form; he seems just like one who would give and be
generous of good things. All this, in short, I imitated as far as
possible, being unable to express it in speech." This description is, of
course, the work of a late and rhetorical author, but it is the work of
a man who was familiar with these great statues that are now lost to us,
and was capable of appreciating them. His criticism may not be so
thorough and subtle as the analysis of the Greek type of Zeus made by
Brunn in his _Gotteridealen_; but it is based on similar principles, the
observation of the physical type and the spiritual expression which
serves best to embody the majesty and benignity of the god. After all,
we come back perhaps to the saying of Phidias himself, and his quotation
from Homer; here, too, it is the brow of the god that is emphasised, and
the nod that shook Olympus while it granted a prayer. It is in such
effects rather than in any detailed description that it is possible to
realise the nature of a great work of art.
What success in the attainment of its aim was here reached by the art of
the sculptor may perhaps best be estimated from the often quoted
sentence of Quintilian, perhaps the noblest praise ever accorded to an
artist by a critic: "The beauty of the statue even made some addition to
the received religion; the majesty of the work was equal to the god." We
might indeed, without irreverence, impute to Phidias the words uttered
in a very different sense by one who later gave a new and higher
interpretation to a formula of "the received religion" in Greece: "Whom
therefore ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you."
The other great Phidian ideal, that of Athena, was represented by
several statues, both in Athens and in other cities. As to these we have
a certain amount of information, and even a certain number of copies,
which show us the pose and the accessories of the various statues; some
of the better ones even suffice to give us some notion of the beauty of
their original. We have also descriptions by ancient writers, which tell
us, as in the case of the Olympian Zeus, much about the decoration of
the statue; but we have not in this case any appreciations of the effect
upon those who saw it. The ideal of Athena is in some ways more
difficult for us to comprehend than that of Zeus, partly because it is
less universally human, and more peculiarly characteristic of Greece and
even of Athens. The notion of the mother goddess is common to most
religions; that of the "queen and huntress, chaste and fair" is at least
familiar to us in literature, and readily commends itself to the
imagination. But Athena, though she has something of both these
characters, has a nature different from both. It is impossible to derive
her varied mythological functions from any one origin; but here it is
not the origin of her worship that concerns us, rather its meaning and
influence as these affected the people of her chosen city. Just as Zeus
was the ideal of all that was best in the Hellenic conception of manhood
and the god of a united Hellas, so Athena is especially the goddess of
Athens, the giver and fosterer of all those qualities that made the
Athenians what they were, the creatress of that ideal city sketched in
the wonderful speeches of Pericles. Her gifts are the arts of war and
peace, and all artistic and intellectual activity, as well as the olive
and other characteristic products of Attic soil, and the clear and
luminous air and stimulating climate which Attic writers are never tired
of extolling, and of associating with the peculiar genius of the
Athenian race. One can imagine how Dion Chrysostom might have recognised
the expression of these various qualities in the broad and majestic, yet
keenly intellectual brow, in the wide and clear eyes, and in other
features; but the extant copies of the Athena Parthenos cannot do more
than assist our imagination in realising how the sculptor represented
the goddess of Athens. Here, too, as in the case of the Zeus, it is
difficult for us to avoid the error of regarding the statue as a mere
philosophical abstraction, an impersonation of the qualities it
represents. Athena in later art, as set up in libraries and museums, was
doubtless such an impersonation, just as she is in modern art unreal and
comparatively uninteresting. But the Athenian believed intensely in the
existence of his goddess. He believed that the ceremonies connected with
her ancient image were necessary to the continuance of her favour to her
city and people, and that the new temples and statues set up in her
honour would still further delight her and ensure her protection and her
abode among her grateful worshippers. The statue by Phidias within the
Parthenon offered not merely that form in which she would choose to
appear if she showed herself to mortal eyes, but actually showed her
form as she had revealed it to the sculptor. To look upon such an image
helped the worshipper as much as--perhaps more than--any service or
ritual to bring himself into communion with the goddess, and to fit
himself, as a citizen of her chosen city, to carry out her will in
contributing his best efforts to its supremacy in politics, in
literature, and in art. If a work of art could have this actual
influence upon religious emotion, and through it upon practical life, it
may be said to have attained the utmost that any human effort can
achieve in the service of God.
The religious influence of art in the fifth century is, as we have seen,
closely associated with the state; the Athena Parthenos and the Olympian
Zeus appealed to their worshippers as citizens of Athens and as members
of the privileged Hellenic race. It would be easy to trace a similar
character in almost all the great statues of gods that are recorded as
belonging to this period. Thus the Dionysus of Alcamenes is not the
dreamy god of wine and pleasure that we find at a later age, but an
august figure, bearded and enthroned, the giver of the riches of the
earth and the wine, the god in whose honour all the great Dionysian
festivals were held; the same sculptor's Hermes is the guardian of ways
and gates, the giver of increase to flocks, not the youthful and
athletic messenger of the gods. Hephaestus, too, especially when
associated with Athena, is the patron and teacher of all handicrafts,
himself the ideal artisan, practical and genial, but with none of his
godhead lost in a too human individuality; even his
lameness--characteristic of the smith in all folk-lore--is lightly
indicated, not dwelt on as an interesting motive. Various statues of
particular gods may, of course, emphasise one side or another of their
functions. Athena may be worshipped and represented as goddess of
Victory or of Health; but here, too, it is usually some recognised state
cult that underlies the representation. Outside Athens we find the same
conditions. To take only one instance, the colossal gold and ivory Hera
of Argos, made by the chief Argive master Polyclitus, is the great
goddess of the city, just as Athena is of Athens. She was represented as
the bride of Zeus, who annually renewed her maidenhood at the great
Argive festival of the divine marriage; and we cannot doubt that
Polyclitus expressed in this statue, which was hardly less famous than
the masterpieces of Phidias, all the essential features of the great
religious ideals that underlay this primitive rite. His Hera had neither
the warlike nor the intellectual and spiritual characteristics of the
Attic Athena; but she was the goddess of womanly grace and beauty in the
bride, and embodied that perfection of physical form which Argive art
sought also in its athletic figures, and which was in a sense a part of
the religion that found expression in the great athletic games. Some
gods--Apollo, for example--seem in fifth-century statues to have a more
individual character. Just as in earlier times the name Apollo serves to
cover a multitude of statues of which some may be meant to represent
individual men, so even in the age of Phidias we sometimes meet with a
figure of athletic type or of youthful beauty as to which it is possible
to doubt whether it is an Apollo; this may be partly the result of the
great popularity of the type in all ages of Greek sculpture which led to
its more rapid development and earlier individualisation. But the Apollo
of this period is never the mere dreamy youth of later time; it has been
well said that he is the god who, in the mythical athletic contest,
could surpass Hermes in the foot-race and Ares in boxing; the embodiment
of all-round physical and intellectual excellence, the combination of
music and gymnastic, which again brings us back to a national Hellenic
ideal. Throughout the representations of the gods in the art of the
fifth century we find the same essential character. They embody in
themselves the expression, by means of the most perfect physical forms,
of the qualities attributed to the god himself, or given by him to his
worshippers. They are no impersonal abstraction of these qualities, but
are real and living beings, in whom these qualities exist to a degree
impossible for a mere mortal. But, on the other hand, they have nothing
of the passions and emotions, the weaknesses and imperfections of mortal
nature. In this they are inconsistent, perhaps, with that Homeric
presentment of the gods which the greatest artists consciously set
before themselves. But we cannot wonder that an age of such clear and
lofty intellectual and moral perceptions should have rejected what it
felt to be unworthy in the current notions of the gods, and should have
selected only what it felt to be truly divine. Art did not, however,
remain very long upon its highest level of religious feeling; but in
Greece, by a fortunate coincidence, the age of the greatest religious
ideals was also that of the highest perfection of physical type in art
as well as of technical skill in execution. We do not therefore find in
this age that the sculptor lacks the power to express his ideas, or that
his ideas are too strong for the forms in which they are expressed;
there is rather that perfect harmony between the two that, here as
elsewhere, is characteristic of Hellenic art.