THE ACROPOLIS OF ATHENS.
I suppose there can be no doubt whatever that the ruins on the Acropolis
of Athens are the most remarkable in the world. There are ruins far
larger, such as the pyramids, and the remains of Karnak. There are ruins
far more perfectly preserved, such as the great Temple at Pæstum. There
are ruins more picturesque, such as the ivy-clad walls of mediæval abbeys
beside the rivers in the rich valleys of England. But there is no ruin,
all the world over, which combines so much striking beauty, so distinct a
type, so vast a volume of history, so great a pageant of immortal
memories. There is, in fact, no building on earth which can sustain the
burden of such greatness, and so the first visit to the Acropolis is and
must be disappointing. When the traveller reflects how all the Old World’s
culture culminated in Greece—all Greece in Athens—all Athens in its
Acropolis—all the Acropolis in the Parthenon—so much crowds upon the mind
confusedly that we look for some enduring monument whereupon we can fasten
our thoughts, and from which we can pass as from a visible starting-point
into all this history and all this greatness. And at first we look in
vain. The shattered pillars and the torn pediments will not bear so great
a strain: and the traveller feels forced to admit a sense of
disappointment, sore against his will. He has come a long journey into the
remoter parts of Europe; he has reached at last what his soul had longed
for many years in vain: and as is wont to be the case with all great human
longings, the truth does not fulfil his desire. The pang of disappointment
is all the greater when he sees that the tooth of time and the shock of
earthquake have done but little harm. It is the hand of man—of reckless
foe and ruthless lover—which has robbed him of his hope. This is the
feeling, I am sure, of more than have confessed it, when they first wound
their way through the fields of great blue aloes, and passed up through
the Propylæa into the presence of the Parthenon. But to those who have not
given way to these feelings—who have gone again and again and sat upon the
rock, and watched the ruins at every hour of the day, and in the
brightness of a moonlight night—to those who have dwelt among them, and
meditated upon them with love and awe—there first come back the remembered
glories of Athens’s greatness, when Olympian Pericles stood upon this rock
with careworn Phidias, and reckless Alcibiades with Pious Nicias and
fervent Demosthenes with caustic Phocion—when such men peopled the temples
in their worship, and all the fluted pillars and sculptured friezes were
bright with scarlet, and blue, and gold. And then the glory of remembered
history casts its hue over the war-stained remnants. Every touch of human
hand, every fluting, and drop, and triglyph, and cornice recalls the
master minds which produced this splendor; and so at last we tear
ourselves from it as from a thing of beauty, which even now we can never
know, and love, and meditate upon to our hearts’ content.
Nothing is more vexatious than the reflection, how lately these splendid
remains have been reduced to their present state. The Parthenon, being
used as a Greek church, remained untouched and perfect all through the
Middle Ages. Then it became a mosque, and the Erechtheum a seraglio, and
in this way survived with little damage till 1687, when, in the
bombardment by the Venetians under Morosini, a shell dropped into the
Parthenon, where the Turks had their powder stored, and blew out the whole
centre of the building. Eight or nine pillars at each side have been
thrown down, and have left a large gap, which so severs the front and rear
of the temple, that from the city below they look like the remains of two
different buildings. The great drums of these pillars are yet lying there,
in their order, just as they fell, and some money and care might set them
all up again in their places; yet there is not in Greece the patriotism or
even the common sense to enrich the country by this restoration, matchless
in its certainty as well as in its splendor.
But the Venetians were not content with their exploit. They were, about
this time, when they held possession of most of Greece, emulating the
Pisan taste for Greek sculptures; and the four fine lions standing at the
gate of the arsenal at Venice still testify to their zeal in carrying home
Greek trophies to adorn their capital. Morosini wished to take down the
sculptures of Phidias from the eastern pediment, but his workmen attempted
it so clumsily that the figures fell from their place, and were dashed to
pieces on the ground. The Italians also left their lasting mark on the
place by building a high square tower of wretched patched masonry at the
right side of the entrance gate, which had of late years become such an
eyesore to the better educated public, that when I was first at Athens
there was a subscription on foot to have it taken down—not only in order
to remove an obtrusive reminiscence of the invaders, but in the hope of
bringing to light some pillars of the Propylæa built into it, as well as
many inscribed stones, broken off and carried away from their places as
building material. This expectation has not been verified by the results.
The tower was taken down by the liberality of M. Schliemann, and there
were hardly any inscriptions or sculptures discovered.
A writer in the _Saturday Review_ (No. 1134) attacks this removal of the
Venetian tower, and my approval of it, as a piece of ignorant and
barbarous pedantry, which from love of the old Greek work, and its
sanctity, desires to destroy the later history of the place, and efface
the monuments of its fortunes in after ages.(36) This writer, whose
personality is unmistakable, thinks that even the Turkish additions to the
Parthenon should have been left untouched, so that the student of to-day
could meditate upon all these incongruities, and draw from them historical
lessons. And, assuredly, of all lessons conveyed, that of a victory over
the Turks would be to this writer the most important and the most
delightful.
If this great man will not silence us with his authority, but let us argue
with him, we might suggest that there are, no doubt, cases where the
interests of art and of history are conflicting, and where a restoration
of pristine beauty must take away from the evidences of later history. The
real question is then, whether the gain in art is greater than the loss in
history. In the case of the Parthenon I think it is, now especially, when
records and drawings of the inferior additions can be secured. It may be
historically important to note the special work and character of every
generation of men; but surely for the education of the human race in the
laws of beauty, and in general culture, some ages are worth nothing, and
others worth everything; and I will not admit that this sort of education
is one whit less important than education in the facts of history.
Of course, artistic restorations are often carried too far; a certain age
may be arbitrarily assumed as the canon of perfection, and everything else
destroyed to make way for it. There are few ages which can lay claim to
such pre-eminence as the age of Pericles; yet even in this case, were the
mediæval additions really beautiful, we should, of course, hesitate to
disturb them. But the Venetian tower, though a picturesque addition to the
rock when seen from a distance, so much so, that I felt its loss when I
saw the Acropolis again, had no claim to architectural beauty; it was set
up in a place sacred to greater associations, and besides there was every
reasonable prospect that its removal would subserve historical ends of far
more importance than the Venetian occupation of the Acropolis. A few
inscriptions of the date of Pericles, containing treaties or other such
public matter, would, in my opinion, have perfectly justified its removal,
even though it did signify a victory of Christians over Turks.
In any case, it seems to me unfair that if every generation is to express
its knowledge by material results, we should not be permitted to record
our conviction that old Greek art or old Greek history is far greater and
nobler than either Turkish or Venetian history, and to testify this
opinion by making their monuments give way to it. This is the mark of
_our_ generation on the earth. Thus the eighteenth century was, no doubt,
a most important time in the history even of art, but where noble
thirteenth century churches have been dressed up and loaded with
eighteenth century additions, I cannot think the historical value of these
additions, as evidence of the taste or the history of their age,
counterbalances their artistic mischievousness, and I sympathize with the
nations who take them away. Of course, this principle may be overdriven,
and has been often abused. Against such abuses the remarks of the great
critic to whom I refer are a very salutary protest. But that any barbarous
or unsightly deforming of great artistic monuments is to be protected on
historical grounds—this is a principle of which neither his genius nor his
sneers will convince me. As for the charge of pedantry, no charge is more
easily made, but no charge is more easily retorted.
Strangely enough, his theory of the absolute sanctity of old brick and
mortar nearly agrees in results with the absolute carelessness about such
things, which is the peculiarity of his special enemies, the Turks. The
Turks, according to Dodwell, who is a most trustworthy witness, never
destroyed the old buildings unless they wanted them for masonry. He tells
us not to believe that the figures of the remaining pediment were used as
targets by the Turkish soldiers—a statement often made in his day. However
that may be, I have little doubt, from what I saw myself, that Greek
soldiers in the present day might so use them. But the Turks did take down
some pillars of the Propylæa while Dodwell was there, for building
purposes, an occurrence which gave that excellent observer the opportunity
of noting the old Greek way of fitting the drums of the pillars together.
He even got into his possession one of the pieces of cypress wood used as
plugs between the stone masses, and has given a drawing of it, and
explained the method of its use, in his admirable book.(37)
But the same traveller was also present when a far more determined and
systematic attack was made upon the remaining ruins of the Parthenon.
While he was travelling in the interior, Lord Elgin had obtained his
famous firman from the Sultan to take down and remove any antiquities or
sculptured stones he might require, and the infuriated Dodwell saw a set
of ignorant workmen, under equally ignorant overseers, let loose upon the
splendid ruins of the age of Pericles. He speaks with much good sense and
feeling of this proceeding. He is fully aware that the world would derive
inestimable benefit from the transplanting of these splendid fragments to
a more accessible place, but he cannot find language strong enough to
express his disgust at the way in which the thing was done. Incredible as
it may appear, Lord Elgin himself seems not to have superintended the
work, but to have left it to paid contractors, who undertook the job for a
fixed sum. Little as either Turks or Greeks cared for the ruins, Dodwell
says that a pang of grief was felt through all Athens at the desecration,
and that the contractors were obliged to bribe workmen with additional
wages to undertake the ungrateful task. He will not even mention Lord
Elgin by name, but speaks of him with disgust as “the person” who defaced
the Parthenon. He believes that had this person been at Athens himself,
his underlings could hardly have behaved in the reckless way they did,
pulling down more than they wanted, and taking no care to prop up and save
the work from which they had taken the supports.
He especially notices their scandalous proceeding upon taking up one of
the great white marble blocks which form the floor or stylobate of the
temple. They wanted to see what was underneath, and Dodwell, who was
there, saw the foundation—a substructure of Peiræic sandstone. But when
they had finished their inspection they actually left the block they had
removed, without putting it back into its place. So this beautiful
pavement, made merely of closely-fitting blocks, without any artificial or
foreign joinings, was ripped up, and the work of its destruction begun. I
am happy to add that, though a considerable rent was then made, most of it
is still intact, and the traveller of to-day may still walk on the very
stones which bore the tread of every great Athenian.
The question has often been discussed, whether Lord Elgin was justified in
carrying off this pediment, the metopes, and the friezes, from their
place; and the Greeks of to-day hope confidently that the day will come
when England will restore these treasures to their place. This is, of
course, absurd, and it may fairly be argued that people who would bombard
their antiquities in a revolution are not fit custodians of them in the
intervals of domestic quiet. This was my reply to an old Greek gentleman
who assailed the memory of Lord Elgin with reproaches. I told him that I
was credibly informed the Greeks had themselves bombarded the Turks in the
Acropolis during the war of liberation, as several great pieces knocked
out and starred on the western front testify. He confessed, to my
amusement, that he had himself been one of the assailants, and excused the
act by the necessities of war. I replied that, as the country seemed then
(1875) on the verge of a revolution, the sculptures might at least remain
in the British Museum until a secure government was established. And this
is the general verdict of learned men on the matter. They are agreed that
it was on the whole a gain to science to remove the figures, but all
stigmatize as barbarous and shameful the reckless way in which the work
was carried out.
I confess I approved of this removal until I came home from Greece, and
went again to see the spoil in its place in our great Museum. Though there
treated with every care—though shown to the best advantage, and explained
by excellent models of the whole building, and clear descriptions of their
place on it—notwithstanding all this, the loss that these wonderful
fragments had sustained by being separated from their place was so
terribly manifest—they looked so unmeaning in an English room, away from
their temple, their country, and their lovely atmosphere,—that one
earnestly wished they had never been taken from their place, even at the
risk of being made a target by the Greeks or the Turks. I am convinced,
too, that the few who would have seen them, as intelligent travellers, on
their famous rock, would have gained in quality the advantage now diffused
among many, but weakened and almost destroyed by the wrench in
associations, when the ornament is severed from its surface, and the
decoration of a temple exhibited apart from the temple itself. We may
admit, then, that it had been better if Lord Elgin had never taken away
these marbles. Nevertheless, it would be absurd to send them back, as has
recently been advocated (in 1890) by some ignorant English
sentimentalists. But I do think that the museum on the Acropolis should be
provided with a better set of casts of the figures than those which are
now to be seen there. They look very wretched, and carelessly prepared.
There are, indeed, preserved in the little museum on the Acropolis the
broken remains of the figures of the eastern pediment, which Morosini and
his Venetians endeavored to take down, as I have already told. They are
little more than pieces of drapery, of some use in reconstructing the
composition, but of none in judging the effect of that famous group.
But we must not yet enter into this little museum, which is most properly
put out of sight, at the lowest or east corner of the rock, and which we
do not reach till we have passed through all the ruins. As the traveller
stands at the inner gate of the Propylæa, he notices at once all the
perfect features of the buildings. Over his head are the enormous
architrave-stones of the Propylæa—blocks of white marble over twenty-two
feet long, which span the gateway from pillar to pillar. Opposite, above
him and a little to the right, is the mighty Parthenon, not identical in
orientation, as the architects have observed, with the gateway, but
varying from it slightly, so that sun and shade would play upon it at
moments differing from the rest, and thus produce a perpetual variety of
lights. This principle is observed in the setting of the Erechtheum also.
To the left, and directly over the town, stands that beautifully decorated
little Ionic temple, or combination of temples, with the stately Caryatids
looking inwards and towards the Parthenon. These two buildings are the
most perfect examples we have of their respective styles. We see at first
sight the object of the artists who built them. The one is the embodiment
of majesty, the other of grace. The very ornaments of the Parthenon are
large and massive; those of the Erechtheum for the most part intricate and
delicate. Accordingly, the Parthenon is in the Doric style, or rather in
the Doric style so refined and adorned as to be properly called the Attic
style.
For the more we study old Athenian art—nay, even old Athenian character
generally—the more are we convinced that its greatness consists in the
combination of Doric sternness and Ionic grace. It is hardly a mediation
between them; it is the adoption of the finer elements of both, and the
union of them into a higher harmony. The most obvious illustration of this
is the drama, where the Ionic element of recitation and the Doric choral
hymn were combined—and let me observe that the Ionic element was more
modified than the Doric. In the same way Attic architecture used the
strength and majesty of the older style which we see at Corinth and
Pæstum; but relieved it, partly by lighter proportions, partly by rich
decorations, which gave the nearer observer an additional and different
delight, while from afar the large features were of the old Doric majesty.
Even in the separate decorations, such as the metopes and friezes, the
graceful women and the long-flowing draperies of the Ionic school were
combined with the muscular nakedness of the Doric athlete, as represented
by Doric masters. Individual Attic masters worked out these contrasted
types completely, as we may see by the _Discobolus_ of Myron, a
contemporary of Phidias, and the _Apollo Musagetes_ of Scopas, who lived
somewhat later.(38)
In fact, all Athenian character, in its best days, combined the
versatility, and luxury, and fondness of pleasure, which marked the
Ionian, with the energy, the public spirit, and the simplicity which was
said to mark the better Doric states. The Parthenon and Erechtheum express
all this in visible clearness. The Athenians felt that the Ionic elegance
and luxury of style was best suited to a small building; and so they
lavished ornament and color upon this beautiful little house, but made the
Doric temple the main object of all the sacred height.
It is worth while to consult the professional architects, like Revett,(39)
who have examined these buildings with a critical eye. Not only were the
old Athenian architects perfect masters of their materials, of accurate
measurement, of precise correspondence, of all calculations as to strain
and pressure—they even for artistic, as well as for practical purposes,
deviated systematically from accuracy, in order that the harmony of the
building might profit by this imperceptible discord. They gave and took,
like a tuner tempering the chords of a musical instrument. The stylobate
is not exactly level, but curved so as to rise four inches in the centre;
the pillars, which themselves swell slightly in the middle, are not set
perpendicularly, but with a slight incline inwards: and this effect is
given in the Caryatids by making them rest their weight on the outer foot
at each corner, as Viollet-le-duc has admirably explained. Again, the
separation of the pillars is less at the corners, and gradually increases
as you approach the centre of the building. The base of the pediment is
not a right line, but is curved downward. It is not my province to go into
minute details on such points, which can only be adequately discussed by
architects. What I have here to note is, that the old Greek builders had
gone beyond mere mathematical accuracy and regularity. They knew a higher
law than the slavish repetition of accurate distances or intervals; they
had learned to calculate effects, to allow for optical illusions; they
knew how to sacrifice real for ideal symmetry.
The sculptures of the Parthenon have given rise to a very considerable
literature—so considerable that the books and treatises upon them now
amount to a respectable library. The example was set by the architect of
the building itself, Ictinus, who wrote a special treatise on his
masterpiece. As is well known, it was sketched in chalk by the French
painter, Jacques Carrey, a few years before the explosion of 1687; and
though he had but very imperfect notions of Greek art, and introduced a
good deal of seventeenth century style into the chaste designs of Phidias,
still these drawings, of which there are copies in the British Museum, are
of great value in helping us to put together the broken and imperfect
fragments which remain.(40)
The sculptured decorations of the building are of three kinds, or applied
in three distinct places. In the first place, the two triangular
_pediments_ over the east and west front were each filled with a group of
statues more than life-size—the one representing the birth of Athene, and
the other her contest with Poseidon for the patronage of Athens. Some of
the figures from one of these are the great draped headless women in the
centre of the Parthenon room of the British Museum: other fragments of
those broken by the Venetians are preserved at Athens. There are,
secondly, the _metopes_, or plaques of stone inserted into the frieze
between the triglyphs, and carved in relief with a single small group on
each. The height of these surfaces does not exceed four feet. There was,
thirdly, a band of reliefs running all around the external wall at the top
of the cella, inside the surrounding pillars, and opposite to them, and
this is known as the _frieze of the cella_. It consists of a great
Panathenaic procession, starting from the western front, and proceeding in
two divisions along the parallel north and south walls, till they meet on
the eastern front, which was the proper front of the temple. Among the
Elgin marbles there are a good many of the metopes, and also of the pieces
of the cella frieze preserved. Several other pieces of the frieze are
preserved at Athens, and altogether we can reconstruct fully three-fourths
of this magnificent composition.
There seems to me the greatest possible difference in merit between the
metopes and the other two parts of the ornament. The majority of the
metopes which I have seen represent either a Greek and an Amazon or a
Centaur and Lapith, in violent conflict. It appeared plainly to me that
the main object of these contorted groups was to break in upon the
squareness and straightness of all the other members of the Doric frieze
and architrave. This is admirably done, as there is no conceivable design
which more completely breaks the stiff rectangles of the entablature than
the various and violent curves of wrestling figures. But, otherwise, these
groups do not appear to me very interesting, except so far as everything
in such a place, and the work of such hands, must be interesting.
It is very different with the others. Of these the pediment
sculptures—which were, of course, the most important, and which were
probably the finest groups ever designed—are so much destroyed or
mutilated that the effect of the composition is entirely lost, and we can
only admire the matchless power and grace of the torsos which remain. The
grouping of the figures was limited, and indicated by the triangular shape
of the surface to be decorated—standing figures occupying the centre,
while recumbent or stooping figures occupied the ends. But, as in poetry,
where the shackles of rhyme and metre, which encumber the thoughts of
ordinary writers, are the very source which produces in the true poet the
highest and most precious beauties of expression; so in sculpture and
painting, fixed conditions seem not to injure, but to enhance and perfect,
the beauty and symmetry attainable in the highest art. We have apparently
in the famous Niobe group, preserved in Florence, the elements of a
similar composition, perhaps intended to fill the triangular tympanum of a
temple; and even in these weak Roman copies of a Greek masterpiece we can
see how beautifully the limited space given to the sculpture determined
the beauty and variety of the figures, and their attitudes. It was in this
genius of grouping that I fancy Phidias chiefly excelled all his
contemporaries: single statues of Polycletus are said to have been
preferred in competitions. To us the art of the _Discobolus_ of Myron
seems fully as great as that of any of the figures of the Parthenon; but
no other artist seems to have possessed the same architectonic power of
adapting large subjects and processions of figures to their places as
Phidias.(41) How far he was helped or advised by Ictinus, or even by
Pericles, it is not easy to say. But I do not fancy that Greek statesmen
in those days studied everything else in the world besides statecraft, and
were known as antiquaries, and linguists, and _connoisseurs_ of china and
paintings, and theologians, and novelists—in fact, everything under the
sun. This many-sidedness, as they now call it, which the Greeks called
_πολυπραγμοσύνη_ and thought to be meddlesomeness, was not likely to
infect Pericles. He was very intimate with Phidias, and is said to have
constantly watched his work—hardly, I fancy, as an adviser, but rather as
an humble and enthusiastic admirer of an art which did realize its ideal,
while he himself was striving in vain with rebel forces to attain his
object in politics.
The extraordinary power of grouping in the designs of Phidias is, however,
very completely shown us in the better preserved band of the cella frieze,
along which the splendid Panathenaic procession winds its triumphal way.
Over the eastern doorway were twelve noble sitting figures on either side
of the officiating priest, presenting the state robe, or _peplos_, for the
vestment of Athene. These figures are explained as gods by the critics;
but they do not in either beauty or dignity, excel those of many of the
Athenians forming the procession. A very fine slab, containing three of
these figures, is now to be seen in the little museum in the Acropolis.
This group over the main entrance is the end and summary of all the
procession, and corresponds with the yearly ceremony in this way, that, as
the state entrance, or Propylæa, led into the Acropolis at the west end,
or rear of the Parthenon, the procession in all probability separated into
two, which went along both sides of the colonnade, and met again at the
eastern door. Accordingly, over the western end, or rear, the first
preparations of the procession are being made, which then starts along the
north and south walls; the southern being chiefly occupied with the
cavalcade of the Athenian knights, the northern with the carrying of
sacred vessels and leading of victims for the sacrifice. The frieze over
the western door is still in its place; but, having lost its bright
coloring, and being in any case at a great height, and only visible from
close underneath, on account of the pillars and architrave in front, it
produces no effect, and is hardly discernible. Indeed it evidently was
never more than an architectural ornament, in spite of all its artistic
beauty.
The greater number of the pieces carried away by Lord Elgin seem taken
from the equestrian portion, in which groups of cantering and curveting
horses, and men in the act of mounting, and striving to curb restive
steeds, are brought together with extraordinary effect. We can see plainly
how important a part of Athenian splendor depended upon their knights, and
how true are the hints of Aristophanes about their social standing and
aristocratic tone. The reins and armor, or at least portions of it, were
laid on in metal, and have accordingly been long since plundered; nor has
any obvious trace remained of the rich colors with which the whole was
painted. There appears no systematic uniform, some of the riders being
dressed in helmets and cuirasses, some in felt wide-awakes, and short
flying cloaks. It must remain uncertain whether the artist did not seek to
obtain variety by this deviation from a fixed dress. There can be no doubt
that Greek art was very bold and free in such matters. On the other hand,
the type of the faces does not exhibit much variety. At the elevation
above the spectator which this frieze occupied, individual expression
would have been thrown away on figures of three feet in height: the
general dress, and the attitudes, may have been, when colored, easily
discernible.
But I confess that this equestrian procession does not appear to me so
beautiful as the rows of figures on foot (carrying pitchers and other
implements, leading victims, and playing pipes), which seem to come from
the north wall, and of which the most beautiful slabs are preserved at
Athens. Here we can see best of all that peculiar stamp which shows the
age of Phidias to have been the most perfect in the whole of Greek
sculpture. This statement will not be accepted readily by the general
public. The Apollo Belvedere, the Capitoline Venus, the Dying
Gladiator—these are what we have been usually taught to regard as the
greatest wonders of Greek plastic art; and those who have accustomed
themselves to this realistic and sensuous beauty will not easily see the
greatness and the perfection of the solemn and chaste art of Phidias.
[Illustration: Part of the West Frieze of the Parthenon, Athens]
Nevertheless, it will always be held by men who have thought long enough
on the subject, that the epoch when Myron and Phidias, Polycletus and
Polygnotus, broke loose from archaic stiffness into flowing grace was,
indeed, the climax of the arts. There seems a sort of natural law—of slow
and painful origin—of growing development—of sudden bloom into
perfection—of luxury and effeminacy—of gradual debasement and decay—which
affects almost all the arts as well as most of the growths of nature. In
Greek art particularly this phenomenon perpetually reappears. There can be
little doubt that the Iliad of Homer was the first and earliest long
creation in poetry, the first attempt, possibly with the aid of writing,
to rise from short disconnected lays to the greatness of a formal epic.
And despite all its defects of plan, its want of firm consistency, and its
obvious incongruities, this greatest of all poems has held its place
against the more finished and interesting Odyssey, the more elaborated
Cyclic poems, the more learned Alexandrian epics—in fact, the first full
bloom of the art was by far the most perfect. It is the same thing with
Greek tragedy. No sooner had the art escaped from the rude wagon, or
stage, or whatever it was, of Thespis, than we find Æschylus, with
imperfect appliances, with want of experience, with many crudenesses and
defects, a tragic poet never equalled again in Greek history. Of course
the modern critics of his own country preferred, first Sophocles, and then
Euripides—great poets, as Praxiteles and Lysippus were great sculptors,
and like them, perhaps, greater masters of human passion and of
soul-stirring pathos. But for all that, Æschylus is _the_ tragic poet of
the Greeks—the poet who has reached beyond his age and nation, and
fascinated the greatest men even of our century, who seek not to turn back
upon his great but not equal rivals. Shelley and Mr. Swinburne have both
made Æschylus their master, and to his inspiration owe the most splendid
of their works.
I will not prosecute these considerations further, though there may be
other examples in the history of art. But I will say this much concerning
the psychological reasons of so strange a phenomenon. It may, of course,
be assumed that the man who breaks through the old, stiff conventional
style which has bound his predecessors with its shackles is necessarily a
man of strong and original genius. Thus, when we are distinctly told of
Polygnotus that he first began to vary the features of the human face from
their archaic stiffness, we have before us a man of bold originality, who
quarrelled with the tradition of centuries, and probably set against him
all the prejudices and the consciences of the graver public. But to us,
far different features seem prominent. For in spite of all his boldness,
when we compare him with his forerunners, we are struck with his modesty
and devoutness, as compared with his successors. There is in him, first, a
devoutness toward his work, an old-fashioned piety, which they had not;
and as art in this shape is almost always a handmaid of religion, this
devoutness is a prominent feature. Next, there is a certain reticence and
modesty in such a man, which arises partly from the former feeling, but
still more from a conservative fear of violent change, and a healthy
desire to make his work not merely a contrast to, but a development of,
the older traditions. Then the old draped goddess of religious days, such
as the _Venus Genitrix_ in Florence, made way for the splendid but yet
more human handling which we may see in the Venus of Melos, now in the
Louvre. This half-draped but yet thoroughly new and chaste conception
leads naturally to the type said to have been first dared by Praxiteles,
who did not disguise the use of very unworthy human models to produce his
famous, or perhaps infamous ideal, which is best known in the _Venus de
Medici_, but perhaps more perfectly represented in the Venus of the
Capitol. There is, too, in the earlier artist that limited mastery over
materials, which, like the laws of the poet’s language, only condenses and
intensifies the beauty of his work.
Such reserve, as compared with the later phases of the art, is nowhere so
strongly shown as in the matter of _expression_. This is, indeed, the rock
on which most arts have ultimately made shipwreck. When the power over
materials and effects becomes complete, so that the artist can as it were
perform feats of conquest; when at the same time the feeling has died out
that he is treading upon holy ground, we have splendid achievements in the
way of intense expression, whether physical or mental, of force, of
momentary action, of grief or joy, which are good and great, but which
lead imitators into a false track, and so ruin the art which they were
thought to perfect. Thus over-reaching itself, art becomes an anxious
striving after display, and, like an affected and meretricious woman,
repels the sounder natures which had else been attracted by her beauty. In
Greek art especially, as I have already noticed in discussing the Attic
tomb reliefs, this excess of expression was long and well avoided, and
there is no stronger and more marked feature in its good epochs than the
reserve of which I have spoken. It is the chief quality which makes the
school of Phidias matchless. There is in it beauty of form, there is a
good deal of action, there is in the frieze an almost endless variety; but
withal there is the strictest symmetry, the closest adherence to fixed
types, the absence of all attempt at expressing passing emotion. There is
still the flavor of the old stiff simplicity about the faces, about the
folds of the robes, about the type of the horses; but the feeling of the
artist shines through the archaic simplicity with much clearer light than
it does in the more ambitious attempts of the later school. The greatest
works of Phidias—his statue of Zeus at Elis, and his Athene in the
Parthenon—are lost to us; but the ancients are unanimous that for simple
and sustained majesty no succeeding sculptor, however brilliant, had
approached his ideal.(42)
We may say almost the same of the great temple which he adorned with his
genius. It is just that perfection of the Doric temple which has escaped
from the somewhat ponderous massiveness and simplicity of the older
architecture, while it sacrificed no element of majesty to that grace and
delicacy which marks, later and more developed Greek architecture. On this
Acropolis the Athenians determined to show what architecture could reach
in majesty and what in delicacy. So they set up the Parthenon in that
absolute perfection where strength and solidity come out enhanced, but in
no way overlaid, with ornament. They also built the Erechtheum, where they
adopted the Ionic Order, and covered their entablature with bands of small
and delicate tracing, which, with its gilding and coloring, was a thing to
be studied minutely and from the nearest distance. Though the inner
columns of the Propylæa were Ionic (and they were very large), it appears
that large temples in that Order were not known in Attica. But for small
and graceful buildings it was commonly used, and of these the Erechtheum
was the most perfect.
In its great days, and even as Pausanias saw it, the Acropolis was covered
with statues, as well as with shrines. It was not merely an Holy of Holies
in religion; it was also a palace and museum of art. At every step and
turn the traveller met new objects of interest. There were archaic
specimens, chiefly interesting to the antiquarian and the devotee; there
were the great masterpieces which were the joint admiration of the artist
and the vulgar. Even all the sides and slopes of the great rock were
honeycombed into sacred grottos, with their altars and their gods, or
studded with votive monuments. All these lesser things are fallen away and
gone; the sacred caves are filled with rubbish and desecrated with worse
than neglect. The grotto of Pan and Apollo is difficult of access, and
was, when I first saw it, an object of disgust rather than of interest.
There are left but the remnants of the surrounding wall, and the ruins of
the three principal buildings, which were the envy and wonder of all the
civilized world.
The walls are particularly well worth studying, as there are to be found
in them specimens of all kinds of building, beginning from prehistoric
times. There is even plain evidence that the builders of the age of
Pericles were not by any means the best wall builders; for the masonry of
the wall called the Wall of Themistocles, which is well preserved in the
lowest part of the course along the north slope, is by far the most
beautifully finished work of the kind which can anywhere be seen: and it
seems to correspond accurately to the lower strata of the foundations on
which the Parthenon was built. The builders of Pericles’s time added a
couple of layers of stone to raise the site of the temple, and their work
contrasts curiously in its roughness with the older platform. Any one who
will note the evident admiration of Thucydides for the walls built round
the Peiræus by the men of an earlier generation will see good reason for
this feeling when they examine these details.
The beautiful little temple of Athena Nike, though outside the
Propylæa—thrust out as it were on a sort of great bastion high on the
right as you enter—must still be called a part, and a very striking part,
of the Acropolis. It is only of late years that the site has been cleared
of rubbish and modern stonework, and the temple rebuilt from the original
materials, thus destroying, no doubt, some precious traces of Turkish
occupation which the fastidious historian may regret, but realizing to us
a beautiful Greek temple of the Ionic Order in some completeness. The
peculiarity of this building, which is perched upon a platform of stone
and commands a splendid prospect, is, that its tiny peribolus, or sacred
enclosure, was surrounded by a parapet of stone slabs covered with
exquisite reliefs of winged Victories, in various attitudes. Some of these
slabs are now in the Museum of the Acropolis, and are of great
interest—apparently less severe than the school of Phidias, and therefore
later in date, but still of the best epoch and of marvellous grace. The
position of this temple also is not parallel with the Propylæa, but turned
slightly outward, so that the light strikes it at moments when the other
building is not illuminated. At the opposite side is a very well preserved
chamber, and a fine colonnade at right angles with the gate, which looks
like a guard-room. This is the chamber commonly called the Pinacotheca,
where Pausanias saw pictures of frescoes by Polygnotus.
Of the two museums on the Acropolis, the principal one requires little
comment and is very easily seen and appreciated. In an ante-room are the
archaic figures of which I have already spoken, with the remains taken
from about the Parthenon, together with casts of the Elgin marbles, and
many small and beautiful reliefs, apparently belonging to votive
monuments. There are also two figures of young men, with the heads and
feet lost, which are of peculiarly beautiful Parian marble, and of very
fine workmanship. But the visitor is very likely to pass by the little
Turkish house, which is well worth a visit, for here are the cypress plugs
from the pillars of the Parthenon or Propylæa; here are also splendid
specimens of archaic vases, such as are very hard indeed to find in any
other collection. The large jars from Melos which are here to be seen have
the most striking resemblance in their decoration to the fragment of a
similar vessel, with a row of armed figures round it, which was found at
Mycenæ, and is now in the Ministry of Public Instruction. Lastly, there
stands in the window a very delicately worked little Satyr, as the pointed
ears and tail show, but of voluptuous form—rather of the hermaphrodite
type: there is hardly a better preserved statuette than this anywhere at
Athens. It seemed a pity that such a gem should be hidden away in so
obscure a place; and I hope that by this time it has been brought into the
larger and official museum.
I will venture to conclude this chapter with a curious comparison. It was
my good fortune, a few months after I had seen the Acropolis, to visit a
rock in Ireland, which, to my great surprise, bore many curious analogies
to it—I mean the rock of Cashel. Both were strongholds of religion—honored
and hallowed above all other places in their respective countries—both
were covered with buildings of various dates, each representing peculiar
ages and styles in art. And as the Greeks, I suppose for effect’s sake,
have varied the posture of their temples, so that the sun illumines them
at different moments, the old Irish have varied the orientation of their
churches that the sun might rise directly over against the east window on
the anniversary of the patron saint. There is at Cashel the great
Cathedral—in loftiness and grandeur the Parthenon of the place; there is
the smaller and more beautiful Cormac’s Chapel, the holiest of all, like
the Erechtheum at Athens. Again, the great sanctuary upon the Rock of
Cashel was surrounded by a cluster of abbeys about its base, which were
founded there by pious men on account of the greatness and holiness of the
archiepiscopal seat. Of these, one remains, like the Theseum at Athens,
eclipsed by the splendor of the Acropolis.
The prospect from the Irish sanctuary has, indeed, endless contrasts to
that from the pagan stronghold, but they are suggestive contrasts, and
such as are not without a certain harmony. The plains around both are
framed by mountains, of which the Irish are probably the more picturesque;
and if the light upon the Greek hills is the fairest, the native color of
the Irish is infinitely more rich. So, again, the soil of Attica is light
and dusty, whereas the Golden Vale of Tipperary is among the richest and
greenest in the world. Still, both places were the noblest homes, each in
their own country, of religions which civilized, humanized, and exalted
the human race; and if the Irish Acropolis is left in dim obscurity by the
historical splendor of the Parthenon, on the other hand, the gods of the
Athenian stronghold have faded out before the moral greatness of the faith
preached from the Rock of Cashel.