AMONG THE GREEKS.
Greece was the native home of all that we now call art. Upon looking
over the two hundred pages of art gossip in the writings of the elder
Pliny, most of which relates to Greece, we are ready to ask, Is there
one thing in painting or drawing, one school, device, style, or method,
known to us which was not familiar to the Greeks? They had their
Landseers--men great in dogs and all animals; they had artists renowned
in the "Dutch style" ages before the Dutch ceased to be
amphibious--artists who painted barber-shop interiors to a hair, and
donkeys eating cabbages correct to a fibre; they had cattle pieces as
famous throughout the classic world as Rosa Bonheur's "Horse Fair" is
now in ours; they had Rosa Bonheurs of their own--famous women, a list
of whose names Pliny gives; they had portrait-painters too good to be
fashionable, and portrait-painters too fashionable to be good; they had
artists who excelled in flesh, others great in form, others excellent in
composition; they took plaster casts of dead faces; they had varnishers
and picture-cleaners. Noted pictures were spoken of as having lost their
charm through an unskillful cleaner. They had their "life school," and
used it as artists now do, borrowing from each model her special beauty.
Zeuxis, as Pliny records, was so scrupulously careful in the execution
of a religious painting that "he had the young maidens of the place
stripped for examination, and selected five of them, in order to adopt
in his picture the most commendable points in the form of each." And we
may be sure that every maiden of them felt it to be an honor thus to
contribute perfection to a Juno, executed by the first artist of the
world, which was to adorn the temple of her native city.
They _played_ with art as men are apt to play with the implements of
which they are masters. Sosus, the great artist in mosaics, executed at
Pergamus the pavement of a banqueting-room which presented the
appearance of a floor strewed with crumbs, fragments and scraps of a
feast, not yet swept away. It was renowned as the "Unswept Hall of
Pergamus." And what a pleasing story is that of the contest between
Zeuxis and his rival, Parrhasius! On the day of trial Zeuxis hung in the
place of exhibition a painting of grapes, and Parrhasius a picture of a
curtain. Some birds flew to the grapes of Zeuxis, and began to pick at
them. The artist, overjoyed at so striking a proof of his success,
turned haughtily to his rival, and demanded that the curtain should be
drawn aside and the picture revealed. But the curtain _was_ the
picture. He owned himself surpassed, since he had only deceived birds,
but Parrhasius had deceived Zeuxis.
[Illustration: Burlesque of Jupiter's Wooing of the Princess Alcmena.]
Could comic artists and caricaturists be wanting in Athens? Strange to
say, it was the gods and goddesses whom the caricaturists of Greece as
well as the comic writers chiefly selected for ridicule. All their works
have perished except a few specimens preserved upon pottery. We show one
from a Greek vase, a rude burlesque of one of Jupiter's love adventures,
the father of gods and men being accompanied by a Mercury ludicrously
unlike the light and agile messenger of the gods. The story goes that
the Princess Alcmena, though betrothed to a lover, vowed her hand to the
man who should avenge her slaughtered brothers. Jupiter assumed the form
and face of the lover, and, pretending to have avenged her brothers'
death, gained admittance. Pliny describes a celebrated burlesque
painting of the birth of Bacchus from Jupiter's thigh, in which the god
of the gods was represented wearing a woman's cap, in a highly
ridiculous posture, crying out, and surrounded by goddesses in the
character of midwives. The best specimen of Greek caricature that has
come down to us burlesques no less serious a theme than the great oracle
of Apollo at Delphos, given on page 30.
This remarkable work owes its preservation to the imperishable nature of
the material on which it was executed. It was copied from a large vessel
used by the Greeks and Romans for holding vinegar, a conspicuous object
upon their tables, and therefore inviting ornament. What audacity to
burlesque an oracle to which kings and conquerors humbly repaired for
direction, and which all Greece held in awe! Croesus propitiated this
oracle by the gift of a solid golden lion as large as life, and the
Phocians found in its coffers, and carried off, a sum equal to nearly
eleven millions of dollars in gold. Such was the general belief in its
divine inspiration! But in this picture we see the oracle, the god, and
those who consult them, all exhibited in the broadest burlesque: Apollo
as a quack doctor on his platform, with bag, bow, and cap; Chiron, old
and blind, struggling up the steps to consult him, aided by Apollo at
his head and a friend pushing behind; the nymphs surveying the scene
from the heights of Parnassus; and the manager of the spectacle, who
looks on from below. How strange is this!
But the Greek literature is also full of this wild license. Lucian
depicts the gods in council ludicrously discussing the danger they were
in from the philosophers. Jupiter says, "If men are once persuaded that
there are no gods, or, if there are gods, that we take no care of human
affairs, we shall have no more gifts or victims from them, but may sit
and starve on Olympus without festivals, holidays, sacrifices, or any
pomp or ceremonies whatever." The whole debate is in this manner, and is
at the same time a burlesque of the political discussions at the
Athenian mass-meetings. What can be more ludicrous than the story of
Mercury visiting Athens in disguise in order to discover the estimation
in which he was held among mortals? He enters the shop of a dealer in
images, where he inquires the price first of a Jupiter, then of an
Apollo, and, lastly, with a blush, of a Mercury. "Oh," says the dealer,
"if you take the Jupiter and the Apollo, I will throw the Mercury in."
[Illustration: Greek Caricature of the Oracle of Apollo at Delphos.]
Nor did the witty, rollicking Greeks confine their satire to the
immortals. Of the famous mirth-provokers of the world, such as
Cervantes, Ariosto, Moliere, Rabelais, Sterne, Voltaire, Thackeray,
Dickens, the one that had most power to produce mere physical laughter,
power to shake the sides and cause people to roll helpless upon the
floor, was the Greek dramatist Aristophanes. The force of the comic can
no farther go than he has carried it in some of the scenes of his best
comedies. Even to us, far removed as we are, in taste as well as in
time, from that wonderful Athens of his, they are still irresistibly
diverting. This master of mirth is never so effective as when he is
turning into ridicule the philosophers and poets for whose sake Greece
is still a dear, venerable name to all the civilized world. In his
comedy of "The Frogs" he sends Bacchus down into Hades with every
circumstance of riotous burlesque, and there he exhibits the two great
tragic poets, AEschylus and Euripides, standing opposite each other, and
competing for the tragic throne by reciting verses in which the
mannerism of each, as well as familiar passages of their plays, is
broadly burlesqued. Nothing in literature can be found more ludicrous or
less becoming, unless we look for it in Aristophanes himself. In his
play of "The Clouds" occurs his caricature of Socrates, of infinite
absurdity, but not ludicrous to us, because we read it as part of the
story of a sublime and affecting martyrdom. It fills our minds with
wonder to think that a people among whom a Socrates could have been
formed could have borne to see him thus profaned. A rogue of a father,
plagued by an extravagant son, repairs to the school of Socrates to
learn the arts by which creditors are argued out of their just claims in
courts of justice. Upon reaching the place, the door of the "Thinking
Shop" opens, and behold! a caricature all ready for the artist's pencil.
The pupils are discovered with their heads fixed to the floor, their
backs uppermost, and Socrates hanging from the ceiling in a basket. The
visitor, transfixed with wonder, questions his companion. He asks why
they present that portion of their bodies to heaven. "It is getting
taught astronomy alone by itself." "And who is this man in the basket?"
"HIMSELF." "Who's Himself?" "Socrates!" The visitor at length addresses
the master by a diminutive, as though he had said, "Socrates, dear
little Socrates." The philosopher speaks: "Why callest thou me, thou
creature of a day?" "Tell me, first, I beg, what you are doing up
there." "I am walking in the air, and speculating about the sun; for I
should never have rightly learned celestial things if I had not
suspended the intellect, and subtly mingled Thought with its kindred
Air." All this is in the very spirit of caricature. Half of Aristophanes
is caricature. In characterizing the light literature of Greece we are
reminded of Juvenal's remark upon the Greek people, "All Greece is a
comedian."