THE ARCHITECTURAL EPOCH OF PERICLES.
The age of Pericles was so distinctively an era in the advancement of
the arts, especially architecture, not alone in the city where Athene
shed her divine intelligence and tutelary influence with generous
favor, but throughout all the Hellenic states, and has left so many
models and criterions for the architects of all time to follow, that a
few words in reference to Pericles himself and the sculptor Phidias,
into whose hands he entrusted the direction of his public buildings
and the adornment of Athens, may be admissible, before we consider
the architectural geniuses who sprung forward to meet the great
requirements of the time.
Pericles was a descendant of that noble and refined, if sometimes
unfortunate, house of Alcmæonidæ, which did so much for the Delphic
temple of Apollo, and a son of Xanthippus, the victor of Mycale,
and Agariste, niece of Cleisthenes, founder of the later Athenian
constitution. The date of his birth is not known, but that he early
evinced a leaning toward the fine arts and philosophy is recorded.
Under Pythocleides he studied music, under Damon political science,
under Zeno philosophy; but it remained for the erudite Anaxagoras to
give the final burnish to his character and thought. He was therefore,
both by birth and disposition, as well as cultivation, possessed of
a mind singularly comprehensive in its grasp of the advantages which
the arts of peace could contribute to the progress of his people, and
naturally turned his attention to their exploitation and development,
when he became dominant in the year 444 B.C. His rule of peace lasted
but thirteen years, or until the breaking out of the Peloponnesian war,
but was crowded with numerous artistic and architectural triumphs.
That he may have gone a step too far in the encouragement of pleasure
and the peaceful virtues among a people of warlike antecedents and a
future before them of foreordained defence and conquest, if not final
defeat, may be a subject for speculation; but that he gave an impetus
to literature and art, and by the fervent warmth of his patronage
fostered the growth of genius in a way that had not been equalled
before his time, and which has never been excelled since, is the
principal reason, doubtless, for his immortality.
His head was abnormally long, a defect which the artists of his
time invariably corrected with a helmet when painting or sculpturing
his portrait, and the contemporaneous comic poets and satirists as
continually ridiculed in verse and jest. Speaking of his eloquence
and powers of persuasion, Thucydides relates a pleasant story in
respect to his dexterity in this regard. When Archidamus, king of the
Lacedæmonians, asked Thucydides whether he or Pericles was the better
wrestler, he replied: “When I have thrown him and given him a fair
fall, he, by persisting that he had no fall, gets the better of me, and
makes the bystanders, in spite of their own eyes, believe him.” But in
other respects his physique was well proportioned and his bearing noble
and commanding. His manner was dignified and reserved, his eloquence
strong, fearless and convincing, and his general appearance such as to
inspire the people to compliment him with the name “Olympian Zeus,”
a character in which his portrait was also painted by his favorite,
Phidias.
An English writer well says that the age of Pericles was “the milky
way of great men,” for it was certainly clouded to whiteness with
intellectual stars. The names associated with this era are not only
among the most celebrated in all Grecian history, but among the most
renowned that have sprung forward in the history of all the world.
Poets, philosophers, dramatists, musicians, sculptors, painters,
architects, not only arose in great numbers under his fostering
encouragement, but to the highest eminence in their respective
avocations. In fact, it seems as though the human plant that had
long been growing, strengthening and broadening upon Hellenic soil
had suddenly sprung into the fullest flower and enveloped itself in
intellectual beauty.
The Athens which we so frequently see pictured in all her restored
architectural grace and grandeur, the Athens which from her Acropolis
of chiselled white so proudly surveys the Ægean sea and surrounding
plains, is the Athens of Pericles, noblest of all cities in the
pursuits of virtue, of beauty and contentment, and in the pure
realization of that happiness which the practice of the arts alone can
afford.
The budding of Athenian architectural magnificence may be said to have
begun under Themistocles and Cimon, the immediate predecessors of
Pericles, but not to have ripened and flowered in its perfection until
his advent into power. Then it was that the task of building a city in
every way worthy of the people who had proved their prowess before the
Persian hosts in war, and who in peace could delight in the musical
poems of Homer, was pushed to a speedy realization with enthusiasm.
Nothing in all the biography of Pericles has contributed so greatly
to the perpetuity of his fame as this attention which he gave to the
development of the architectural magnificence of Athens. “That which
gave most pleasure and ornament to the city of Athens,” says Plutarch,
“and the greatest admiration and even astonishment to all strangers,
and that which now is Greece’s only evidence that the power she
boasts of and her ancient wealth are no romance or idle story, was
his construction of the public and sacred buildings. The materials
were stone, brass, ivory, gold, ebony and cypress-wood; the artisans
that wrought and fashioned them were smiths and carpenters, moulders,
founders and braziers, stone-cutters, dyers, goldsmiths, ivory-workers,
painters, embroiderers, turners; those again that conveyed them to
the town for use, merchants and mariners and ship-masters by sea;
and by land, cartwrights, cattle breeders, wagoners, rope-makers,
flax-workers, shoemakers and leather-dressers, road-makers, miners.
And every trade in the same nature, as a captain in an army has his
particular company of soldiers under him, had its own hired company of
journeymen and laborers belonging to it banded together as in array,
to be, as it were, the instrument and body for the performance of the
service. Thus, to say all in a word, the occasions and services of
these public works distributed plenty through every age and condition.”
“Architecture,” says Robert Adam, “in a particular manner depends upon
the patronage of the great, as they alone are able to execute what
the architect plans.” This being so, the architects of his time had
in Pericles a patron in every way worthy their best efforts. Indeed,
so ambitious was he to grace the city of his nativity with all the
beauties of architecture that his enemies found here a pretext for
censure, and complained that he spent too much of the public treasure
for such a purpose. He met the criticism, however, with the argument
that those who pursued the arts of war should not be the only ones
to receive support at the expense of the state, but that those who
possessed the skill and industry of true artists and artisans were
quite as much entitled to public encouragement and support as the
soldier.
This answer for a time appeased the clamor of the opposition, which
had been set up against what they would lead the people to believe was
extravagance and wastefulness on the part of Pericles. But it soon
broke out again. When finally it became no longer bearable, Pericles
addressed his accusers and said: “If you think that I have expended
too much let the money be charged to my account, not yours, _only let
the new edifices be inscribed with my name and not that of the people
of Athens_.” It is to the credit of the Athenians that their pride was
touched by the words of their ruler and their cupidity restrained.
They at once replied that Pericles might spend as much of their money
as he pleased, and they even went further, and insisted that he should
not spare the public treasury in the least. Like all great men,
Pericles was assailed in a variety of ways. When his enemies did not
accomplish their purpose in bringing him to public disgrace by one
method of assault, they tried another. We have seen how they failed in
one instance; another was similar in accusing him, in complicity with
Phidias, of appropriating to his own use the public treasure, donated
to pay for the golden plates on the chryselephantine statues of the
latter’s creation. But this charge also not proving successful, they
attacked his religious character, strange as it may appear, when it is
remembered how deeply he was interested in erecting temples of pagan
worship. But he survived the slanders of his time and continued his
aims and purposes in life, content, doubtless, that posterity should
judge him aright, as did the majority of the people of his own time.
His last words are perhaps the best epitome of his life’s work: “No
Athenian ever put on black through me.”
Teleclides has put into verse the great surrender which the Athenian
people appeared finally to make to Pericles of their rights in peace
and war:
“The tribute of the cities, and, with them, the cities too,
To do with them as he pleases, and undo;
To build up, if he likes, stone walls around a town;
And, again, if so he likes, to pull them down;
Their treaties and alliances, power, empire, peace and war,
Their wealth and their success forevermore.”
As already stated, in no branch of the arts did the age of Pericles
make a deeper and more lasting impression than in that of architecture.
Although the Doric order was employed many hundred years before his
time, and the Ionic scarcely less many, yet the finest types of each
and the examples of these orders which stand for their most perfect and
artistic development are to be found in the Acropolis at Athens in the
time of Pericles, the Parthenon serving as the criterion of one and the
Erechtheum as the model of the other. That these orders should have
been brought to such perfection and endowed with their crowning dignity
and grace, must alone prove without further argument, if need be, that
the architectural talent and artistic sense of the age was incomparable.
The part which the great sculptor Phidias played in the art drama of
his time has been already alluded to, but not sufficiently, perhaps, to
exclude a further reference to him.
The comparison has often been made between Phidias and the talented
revivalist of the fifteenth century, Michael Angelo, and a casual
consideration of the two eminent artists would indicate that it was a
proper one. They were both sculptors, both painters, both engravers
(Phidias of gems), but they were not both architects, as is erroneously
assumed. As to the respective degrees of talent which each manifested
toward the branches of art which he professed, they also differed
widely. In sculpture the school of Michael Angelo will not outlive that
of Phidias, but in painting, especially in its application to mural
decoration, the Greek must bow to the Italian. In architecture also
Phidias possessed none of the technical knowledge and skill which in
Michael Angelo enabled him to suspend the great dome of St. Peter’s
“as if in the air,” and which was so important a factor in his long
artistic career, manifested in other ways as well, and gaining for him
perpetual applause. However, the two artists may be well compared,
inasmuch that they both created epochs of their own; and both excelled
in exhibiting a noble understanding as to the high and exalted
possibilities of art that has never been equalled.
Phidias’s comprehensive grasp of broad artistic effects had as much
to do, probably, with gaining for him the favor of Pericles as his
technical skill. Quintilian calls him the “Sculptor of the gods.”
He realized the greatness of large things and could calculate their
power in influencing the imagination and understanding. He was once
invited, together with his contemporary artist, Alcamenes, to design a
statue of Minerva, destined to be placed upon a high column. When both
statues were finished and exhibited, that made by Alcamenes was at once
preferred on account of its elegance of finish, while that by Phidias
was rejected as being rough and crude. Phidias, however, insisted
that each should be shown from the high pinnacle upon which it might
ultimately be placed. When this was done all the elegant graces of
the statue of Alcamenes were lost to sight, as well also the apparent
roughness of that by Phidias, which now took on the perfect proportions
he had foreseen. This story will serve to illustrate the breadth of his
artistic discernment.
Of all the artists of his time, Phidias was by far the best gifted to
have placed in his hands, by Pericles, the supervision of the public
buildings of Athens, and to have entrusted to his discretion and
judgment the planning, posing and arranging of the grand architectural
_mise en scène_, which his patron had determined should be set there.
If Phidias did not draw the actual plans of a building or other
structure, his judgment could indicate its order, its location and such
other characteristics it should possess to harmonize with the features
with which it was to be associated. He could group the majestic masonry
of his time in grand display, could beautify it with his own chisel,
and could form and mould the complete architectural picture. If he was
not the architect of the Parthenon, he at least enhanced its effect
with the magnificence of his sculpturings and designs in the metopes
of the frieze and the tympanums of the pediments, some of which are
still to be seen among the “Elgin marbles” in the British Museum,
of which Canova remarked they would alone compensate for a visit to
England. It is not improbable, also, that he may have suggested the
Caryatides of the Erechtheum, and proved to the Egyptians, from whom
the architectural idea was borrowed, how far more beautifully and
gracefully such figures could be carved in Athens than on the banks of
the Nile.
There can be no doubt as to the value of statuary, which was the
special province of Phidias, in enhancing the _ensemble_ of Grecian
architectural grouping, and particularly valuable was the colossal
figure of Minerva Promachus in contributing to the grandiose effect of
the Athenian Acropolis. This noble work of Phidias was seventy feet
high and made entirely of bronze, said to have been taken from the
Medes, who disembarked at Marathon. The colossal goddess stood exposed,
and in a position where, in looking far away over the Ægean sea, she
might be an inspiration to the returning Athenian mariner, and where,
in glancing from her lofty eminence, “she seemed, by her attitude and
her accoutrements, to promise protection to the city beneath her, and
to bid defiance to her enemies.”
Another architectural statue, if it may be called such, was that of
the same goddess, in gold and ivory, which dominated the interior of
the Parthenon. This work of Phidias, second only in beauty and size
to the chryselephantine statue of Jupiter at Olympia, is said to
have cost $465,000. The figure of Minerva was forty feet in height,
and was presented standing in a tunic which reached to her feet. A
casque covered her head, her right hand held a spear, and her left a
figure of Victory. The exquisite workmanship of the carving on the
buckler resting at the feet of the deity came near involving Pericles
and Phidias in another web of trouble, for it was asserted that the
sculptor had introduced his own portrait and that of his patron among
the combatants of a battle between the Athenians and Amazons, there
portrayed. The captious objection was set up that such a liberty was
insulting to Athene. Phidias, as related by some writers, was cast
into prison for this act of impiety, and died there. Others claim,
however, that this was not so, but that Phidias, before sentence could
be passed, fled to Elis, where he at once entered upon the work of
modelling the great statue of the Olympian Jupiter.
In respect to both statues, he was implicated with Pericles, as accused
by his enemies, with pilfering the gold donated for their construction.
These various accusations have led to considerable confusion in respect
to much of his personal history and final end, and although it was
proved by removing the gold plates and weighing them, that he was not
guilty of the alleged crime, it is very probable that his death was as
much due to disappointed hopes and mortification consequent upon the
false charge as it was to any public executioner of the time.