of naturalistic floral designs. Etruscan and Roman art was always
realistic, and never tolerated conventions when they could be
eliminated. Roman architecture and art both abandoned at once the
Greek use of formal conventional mouldings. The Ara Pacis and other
monuments of the Augustan age first give us the beautiful rendering of
purely realistic wreaths of flowers and fruit, which are the hall-marks
of Roman altars and friezes. The Imperial art of Rome as it begins
under Augustus is profoundly indebted to Greek art for almost all its
types and its technical procedure. Doubtless the greater number of his
artists and architects were Greeks. But they were working in the midst
of a new culture and a new environment, and thus they unconsciously
absorbed new traditions and new ideas, just as their predecessors had
done in Pergamon and Alexandria. In Greece itself no further advance
was possible. Artistic production was purely commercial, and all the
sources of inspiration were closed. In Rome, where alone could be found
a career for a creative artist, he had gradually to submit to the
_genius loci_. The artificers of the empire must have long remained
Greeks, and all Roman art bears the stamp of Hellenic origin, but
at the same time Greek art is changed along the lines of pictorial
illusion and pure realism in portraiture. It loses all touch with Greek
idealism and serves to express Roman narrative history. Its gods, its
myths, and its outlook are changed. It becomes Roman, just as Gothic
art became national in each country which it invaded.
We are left then with only one further question to discuss. What are
the permanent elements of Hellenism in Roman art, and, after Roman
art, in the art of the Renaissance and of modern times? What is the
true character of Greek sculpture, and what has it bequeathed to all
civilizations which have followed it?
The question is a large one which cannot be easily solved in a few
phrases. Greek sculpture is not to be hastily identified with what we
call classicism in art and contrasted with romanticism and realism.
Greek art is classic, if we mean by that term academic, only for a
brief period of its decadence. During the fourth century and the
Hellenistic age it displays all the phenomena of romantic and realistic
art. In fact Greek art as a whole comprises every form of artistic
expression, and exhibits wellnigh the whole of the possibilities
that lie between the caveman and the aesthete. We do not, however,
confuse the work of Donatello or of Rodin or of modern impressionists
with Greek sculpture, and this clarity of distinction demands some
examination. How can we distinguish Greek work from that of every other
civilization?
The answer is not to be found in style or in technique. It lies in
the more hidden depths of psychology. If we take the history of Greek
sculpture as a whole, the attitude of the artist to his work and of the
public to art in general and of art itself to life is different from
that prevalent in any other society. Neither under the Roman Empire
nor during the Renaissance nor in the modern world is art regarded
as an essential form of self-expression as natural as conversation
or amusement or religion. It is fair to assume that the average
modern man regards statues with indifference slightly flavoured with
amusement. Nobody would notice the difference if he were living in a
town full of statues or in one without any. They satisfy no need in
modern existence, and they are mere excrescences on our civilization.
Even pictures, which we understand better, are mainly regarded from
the point of view of decorative furniture. Art is an embellishment of
modern life, not an essential part of it. It is considered a means of
pleasure or a means of amusement, not as part of the serious business
of life. Even in the Renaissance, where art played a much more
important rôle in the life of the community than it now does, it was
still a by-product of man’s activity. Popes and rulers found leisure to
patronize Cellini or Michael Angelo, but their main business in life
was rather to poison each other or to increase their landed property.
The Romans looked on art much as we do, and with the same tolerant air
of showing our superiority by a correct taste.
The attitude of the Greeks was wholly different. To them art was bound
up with religion, for their religion found its natural expression
in art rather than in any emotional ceremonies such as Christianity
introduced. The religion of the city in particular, a stronger
feeling than our modern patriotism, could only be expressed by art.
The disappearance of the city-state was, therefore, a great blow to
the idealism of Greek art, but even after this time a man’s private
feelings could better be expressed in terms of art than in terms of
religion. The Cnidian goddess of Praxiteles was more than a statue; it
was an idea. The Victory of Samothrace was Triumph itself, not a mere
masterpiece. To a Greek the statues he loved represented what religion
means to most Christians; not that his feelings were equally intense or
equally pure, but they expressed the same side of his nature.
In a psychological state like this both the artist and the public
are bound to regard art with very different eyes. The Greeks could
have tolerated experimental frivolity or chicanery in art as little
as we should tolerate the travesty of a religious service. Therefore
they admitted dogma in art, as we admit dogma in religion. We lightly
overthrow all established artistic principles to introduce a new
temporary fad. To the Greek such an idea was equivalent to sacrilege.
This accounts very largely for the slow development of Greek art and
its great reluctance to admit new principles. It could never become
purely experimental or adventurous. Until the end of the fifth century
this driving-force of the religious connexion is paramount in all Greek
art. In the fourth century and the Hellenistic age the connexion of art
and religion is shaken, but if religion passes away, the passionate
devotion to art takes its place, and art itself becomes almost a
religion. The stories of the great painters and of the intense love of
whole communities for their works of art can be parallelled perhaps
in some of the states of the Renaissance, but they have assuredly no
parallel in Roman or in modern times. Our whole attitude towards art as
an ‘extra’ and an unessential prevents us from appreciating its vital
importance to the Greek. A community, whose ideas of art are Hellenic,
knows no abrupt distinctions between the useful and the beautiful,
because all the objects of its daily life are beautiful of necessity;
it knows nothing of good taste, because there is no bad taste to
contrast, and we may even find, as in the case of Greece herself, that
its words for ‘good’ and ‘evil’ are simply ‘beautiful’ and ‘ugly’
(καλός and αἰσχρός).
The whole fabric of Greek art goes to pieces when it is brought into
contact with a purely utilitarian nation like Rome. It succeeded in
humanizing and educating the upper classes, but it had little effect
on the mob. Art, therefore, in Rome became a means of decorating
palaces and not a national treasure. The contact with Christianity was
even more destructive, for if the Romans had been merely indifferent,
the Christians were actively hostile. The new religion was Semitic in
origin, and cared nothing for beauty or ugliness. If anything, it found
in ugliness a means of atonement for sin. The Greek love of beauty was
the worst enemy Christianity encountered, and the Fathers direct long
pamphlets and arguments against the pagan deities and their statues.
Nor were they content with arguments, when they could wield a hammer or
throw a stone. Early Christianity, like Mohammedanism or the Spartan
system, depended on a strict subordination of the individual, and
consequently attacked most bitterly the artistic spirit which must be
free if it is to live at all. Of all the nations who have existed since
the fall of Greece the Chinese and Japanese have come nearest to the
Greek spirit in art owing to the lack of a religion of self-denial. The
earlier period of the Renaissance was also Hellenic, but when artists
were captured by the Church and turned to painting saints and madonnas,
their Greek freedom left them. Parrhasios might have claimed kinship
with Botticelli’s Birth of Venus or his Pallas; he would have seen no
beauty in his Madonnas.
Another consequence of the vital importance of art in Greek life was
that artistic expression was almost wholly confined to the human form.
Just as we exclude animals and plants from our religion, the Greek
excluded them from his art as long as its religious connexion was
intact. Between the sixth century and the Hellenistic age no Greek
artist paid any attention to any animal save the horse, whose human
associations exempted him, and even the horse had to be content with a
more or less conventional treatment. Greek art, like Greek religion, is
essentially anthropomorphic.
When we ask what is the debt of modern art to Greek art, there is no
reply. We cannot point to this idea or that, and say this is Hellenic
and that is non-Hellenic. We can say this is Pheidian, that Scopaic,
or this is Pergamene and that Rhodian, but to say art is Greek is
simply to say it is good. For Greek art comprises every genuine effort
of the artist; every statue which is made with sincere love of beauty
and unmixed desire for its attainment is Greek in spirit; every
statue, however cunning and ingenious, which is merely frivolous or
hypocritical or untrue, is a crime against Hellenism and a sin against
the light. The Greek bequest to later artists is nothing tangible; it
is the soul and spirit of the artist. True art cannot be attained by
rule; it demands a condition of receptivity of inspiration, in other
words, of faith, in the artist; only thus can the elements of technique
be so combined as to make something far greater than their mere sum
total. Great art must reflect something intangible that strikes a chord
of sympathy in the spectator, and the chord, as _Abt Vogler_ expresses
it, is something far greater than the sum of its notes:
But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can,
Existent beyond all laws, that made them and, lo, they are!
And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man,
That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star.
APPENDIX
PUBLISHED WORKS OF THE AUTHOR
The published papers of Guy Dickins may best be ranged under three
heads: (1) historic work, (2) results of travel and excavation, (3)
studies in Greek sculpture.
I. Under the first head come ‘Some points with regard to the Homeric
House’ (_J.H.S._, 1903).
This is Dickins’s earliest paper. The subject has attracted several of
our younger archaeologists. Dickins takes up in particular the internal
arrangement of the Megaron, and the nature and position of the ὀρσοθύρη
and the ῥῶγες. He proceeds very carefully, trying to combine the
testimony of the Palace of Tiryns with that of Cnossus and Phylakopi.
‘The true cause of the Peloponnesian War’ (_Class. Quarterly_, 1911).
‘The growth of Spartan Policy’ (_J.H.S._, 1912, 1913).
These are detailed attempts to explain the policy of Sparta in regard
to the neighbouring states and Athens down to the time of Archidamus
and Agis. In consequence of the paucity of existing historic records,
the sketch is necessarily of a somewhat speculative character, the
more so as a chief object of inquiry is unavoidably the motives which
dominated the statesmen and the parties at Sparta. There is good ground
for the contention that down to 550 B.C. Sparta underwent a political
development, and even an artistic growth, parallel to that in other
Greek cities; but that after that time the city developed on lines
of its own, as a purely military state. This is, as we shall see,
the most interesting result established by the recent excavations on
the site. Looking for a personality to associate with the change,
Dickins finds one in Chilon, a name not prominent in history, but
suggestively mentioned by Herodotus and Diogenes Laertius. He seems to
have succeeded in raising the Ephors to equal power with the Kings,
and thenceforward, according to Dickins, the clue to Spartan policy is
to be found in the clashings of the two powers. Until 468 the struggle
was acute; and it was not until the end of the fifth century that the
supremacy of the Ephors was established. The question of dominance over
the helots, which has by some writers been regarded as the mainspring
of Spartan policy, was less important in the fifth century than it
became in the fourth.
In the paper in the _Classical Quarterly_ it is maintained, in
opposition to some recent historians of Greece, that Thucydides is
right in saying that it was jealousy of the rising power of Athens
which brought on the Peloponnesian War.
Dickins is well versed in both ancient and modern historians, and he
writes with clearness and force; but the motives of statesmen and the
underlying causes of events are so intricate that the discussion of
them seldom leads to a really objective addition to our knowledge of
ancient history.
II. Under the second head, accounts of exploration and excavation,
come Dickins’s Reports of his work in the exploration of Laconia and
Sparta. In the years 1904–8 the British School of Athens was engaged
in the interesting task, assigned to it by the Greek Government, of
making a careful survey of Laconia, and trying by excavation what could
be recovered of the monuments and history of ancient Sparta. Mr. R. M.
Dawkins, the Director of the School, was in charge of the excavations,
and various parts of the work were assigned to students of the school,
A. J. B. Wace, J. P. Droop, A. M. Woodward, Dickins, and others. In
the _Annual_ of the school, vols. xi to xiv, there are several papers
written by Dickins, one on excavation at Thalamae in Laconia, others
on the excavation of the shrine of Athena Chalkioikos at Sparta, and
the works of art found on the site. It is this temple and that of
Artemis Orthia which have yielded the most important results of the
undertaking. But as the work was one executed in common by a group of
students who worked into one another’s hands, it is not desirable or
possible to separate the threads in Dickins’s hands from the others.
III. Men of strong originality usually produce more satisfactory
work on subjects as to which they have gradually acquired first-hand
knowledge than on subjects which they have merely taken up as a task.
This was notably the case with Dickins. His best papers by far are
those dealing with Sparta and Lycosura, places where he worked on
definite lines, and where he reached important results.
His paper on the art of Sparta[127] is extremely valuable; and as it is
hidden in a place little visited by classical scholars, it is desirable
to speak of it in some detail. There will before long appear a work
on the results of the excavations of the British School of Athens at
Sparta, a work which will contain some contributions by Dickins: and
of course it is possible that the excavators will modify the views
set forth ten years ago. But meantime the paper in question is the
best summary existing of the results of the excavation in relation to
Spartan art.
The current notion that from the first settlement of the Dorians in
Sparta they formed a state organized for war only has to be greatly
modified. The warlike Sparta familiar to us from Plutarch and other
writers came into existence only in the course of the sixth century.
The earlier history of Sparta had been parallel to that of other
Greek cities; and we are able now to mark out successive periods of
development in the local artistic remains. In these remains Dickins
discerns four periods. First, there is the age of geometric art, the
ninth and early eighth centuries, when art products show the dominance
of the early Dorian civilization which the Spartans brought with them
from the north. Next comes a period in which we find oriental art
invading, owing to trade with Egypt and Ionia. In the third period
we find a fusion of native Greek art with the oriental style of
importation. The fourth period, the sixth and fifth centuries, should
show us at Sparta, as in other Greek cities, a bloom of local art; but
it never had a fair chance of development, as the rise of the military
spirit and asceticism in manners blighted it in the midst of its
spring. Thenceforward Sparta is cut off from the stream which leads to
such wonderful results in the architecture and sculpture of Argos and
Athens. It is a lesson for all times. Many of the early Spartan works
of art are represented in the article. Their character is striking:
Dickins compares them with the works found by Dr. Hogarth in the
earliest strata of Ephesus; and the Ionian influence in them confirms
the tales told by the historians of the frequent relations between
Sparta and Asia Minor.
The sculptural group of Damophon of Messene at Lycosura in Arcadia has
long been an object of interest to archaeologists. We knew that it
consisted of four colossal figures, Demeter, Despoina, Artemis, and
the Titan Anytus. But there was no agreement as to the date of the
group: Damophon had been assigned by various writers to periods as far
apart as the fourth century before, and the second century after, our
era. When the site at Lycosura was excavated in 1889–90 by the Greek
archaeologists Leonardos and Kavvadias, fragments of the statues were
found, and the style proved somewhat disappointing. The closer study of
these fragments was resumed in 1906 by Dr. Kourouniotis, who partially
restored two of the figures. But it was reserved for Dickins, in a
series of closely reasoned and masterly papers,[128] to complete the
restoration of the group, and to fix definitely the date and style of
Damophon.
The first paper deals with the date of Damophon, which is fixed on
the definite evidence of inscriptions to the first half of the second
century B.C., and deals so thoroughly with his historic connexion
that little is left for any future archaeologist to say in regard
to it. The architectural evidence at Lycosura confirms the date
assigned. In the second paper Dickins carries out a most detailed and
convincing restoration of the group, adding a discussion of the style
of Damophon. In the third paper he is able to confirm the accuracy of
his restoration by comparing with it a copy of the group on a bronze
coin of Julia Domna struck at Megalopolis. When the restoration was
published nothing was known of this coin; it may therefore be regarded
as independent evidence of the most satisfying character; and its
agreement in all but a few details with Dickins’s restoration shows
that his work survives that most severe of all tests, the discovery of
fresh evidence. Few conjectural restorations of archaeologists stand on
so firm a basis.
Damophon had interested Dickins even before he became his special
subject of study, for as early as 1905 he had published two bearded
heads, one in the Vatican, one in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek, which
resemble the head of Anytus.[129]
In 1906 he published a new replica of the Choiseul Gouffier type.[130]
His keen eye had discerned in the Terme Museum at Rome a detached leg
of the same form and style as the left leg of the Choiseul Gouffier
figure of the British Museum. To the support to which this leg is
attached there is also attached a quiver, and this led Dickins to
conclude that the Choiseul Gouffier figure is not, as many have
thought, an athlete, but an Apollo, as Mr. Murray always maintained.
In 1911 he published an account[131] of a colossal marble sandal in
the Palazzo dei Conservatori at Rome, adorned with reliefs on the side
of the sole. Struck with the likeness of the style of these reliefs to
that of the figures on the garment at Lycosura, he boldly suggests that
it is an original work of Damophon.
In 1914 he discussed the question[132] whether the noteworthy female
head at Holkham Hall can be given, as Sir Charles Walston has
suggested, to the east pediment of the Parthenon; and answered the
question with a decided negative. Another paper in the same year
suggests the identification of several sculptured heads in various
museums as portraits of kings of the Hellenistic Age, Egyptian, Syrian,
and Pergamene. The paper also discusses the portraits of Thucydides
and Aristotle. There is no more treacherous ground in archaeology than
the assignment of portraits which are uninscribed; but the keenness of
sight and the cautious method of Dickins had made him eminently fit for
such inquiries.
In 1912 appeared a work on which Dickins had expended great labour, the
first volume of the _Catalogue of the Acropolis Museum at Athens_,[133]
comprising the sculpture down to the time of the Persian wars. The
archaic Korae and male figures which stood in lines on the Acropolis
and the pediments of the temples and shrines which adorned it when
the Persians broke in in 480 constitute one of the most wonderful
revelations of early Greek art. They have been frequently photographed;
but their scientific study had not advanced with their popularity,
and a number of difficult questions, as to date, artistic school, and
manner of drapery awaited the cataloguer. With great care and excellent
method Dickins approached these questions; and laid down a platform of
knowledge on which all future discussions must be based. The work is in
several ways a model.
A posthumous paper on ‘The Followers of Praxiteles’, published in the
_Annual of the British School_,[134] had been given as a lecture at
Oxford. It covers some of the ground occupied by the present volume.
This with some manuscript to be printed in the forthcoming account
of excavations at Sparta and in the forthcoming second volume of
the _Catalogue of the Municipal Collections of Sculpture at Rome_,
completes the list of published works. My claim is that they should
rather be weighed than measured.
P. GARDNER.
FOOTNOTES
[1] _N. H._ xxxiv. 52.
[2] Pliny, _N. H._ xxxvi. 24.
[3] Collignon, _Pergame_, figure on p. 204; Brunn-Bruckmann,
_Denkmäler_, Pl. 159.
[4] _N. H._ xxxvi. 35.
[5] Collignon, _Sculpture grecque_, ii, Fig. 302.
[6] Collignon, _Sculpture grecque_, ii, Fig. 282.
[7] Amelung, _Antiken in Florenz_, Pl. 14.
[8] _Ibid._, p. 62.
[9] _Ibid._, Pl. 17.
[10] _Annali dell’ Instituto_, 1851, Pl. E.
[11] Collignon, _Sculpture grecque_, ii. 546.
[12] Seneca, _Controv._ x. 5.
[13] Collignon, _Pergame_, figure on p. 206.
[14] Amelung, _Antiken in Florenz_, p. 43.
[15] Klein, _Praxiteles_, Fig. 35.
[16] Furtwängler, _Der Satyr aus Pergamon, 40^{es} Programm zum
Winckelmannsfeste, 1880_.
[17] Collignon, _Sculpture grecque_, ii, Fig. 318.
[18] Bulle, _Der schöne Mensch_, Pl. 162.
[19] Fig. 42.
[20] Klein, _Geschichte_, iii. 57 ff.; Bienkowski, _Darstellungen der
Gallier_.
[21] E. Gardner, _Handbook of Greek Sculpture_, Fig. 129.
[22] _Ibid._, Fig. 130.
[23] Pliny, _N. H._ xxxiv. 84.
[24] _Catalogue du Musée du Caire_, no. 27475.
[25] Fraenkel, _Inschriften von Pergamon_, pp. 70–84.
[26] _Revelation_ ii. 13.
[27] Klein, _Geschichte_, iii. 122 ff.
[28] _Die hell. Reliefbilder._
[29] _Roman Art._
[30] _Vid. inf._, p. 29.
[31] Collignon, _Pergame_, figure on p. 222.
[32] Fig. 8.
[33] Wiegand und Schrader, _Priene_, p. 366.
[34] Cf. Wace, _Annual of the British School at Athens_, ix. 225, for
summary of views; _Röm. Mittheil._ xix, Pfuhl, _Zur alexand. Kunst_,
pp. 1 ff.
[35] Fig. 6.
[36] Fig. 25.
[37] Amelung, _Bull. Arch. Comm._ xxv. 110.
[38] _Ausonia_, iii. 117 (Amelung).
[39] Wallis, _Catalogue of Nemi Antiquities_, no. 832.
[40] Dieterich, _Kleine Schriften_, 1911, p. 440; Stuart Jones,
_Catalogue of the Museo Capitolino_, p. 345.
[41] Bulle, _Der schöne Mensch_, Pl. 187.
[42] Stuart Jones, _Catalogue of the Museo Capitolino_, p. 344.
[43] E. Gardner, _op. cit._, Fig. 144.
[44] Lucian, _Philops._ 18.
[45] Schrader, _Marmorkopf eines Negers_, plates, _Winckelmannsfeste,
1900_.
[46] Brunn-Bruckmann, _Denkmäler_, Pl. 393.
[47] Hekler, _Greek and Roman Portraits_, p. 113.
[48] Reinach, _Répertoire_, i. 165.
[49] Schreiber, _Hell. Reliefbilder_; Wickhoff, _Roman Art_.
[50] Schreiber, _op. cit._, Pl. III.
[51] _Ibid._, Pl. XII.
[52] _Ibid._, Pl. 84.
[53] Collignon, _Sculpture grecque_, ii, Fig. 354.
[54] Stark, _Niobe_, p. 165.
[55] E. Gardner, _op. cit._, Fig. 126.
[56] Schreiber, _op. cit._, Pl. III.
[57] _Ibid._, Pl. XI.
[58] Brunn-Bruckmann, _Denkmäler_, Pl. 627 b.
[59] E. Gardner, _op. cit._, Fig. 128; see below, p. 38.
[60] Cedren, _Hist. Comp._ 306 B.
[61] _Ausstellung von Fundstücken aus Ephesos_, figures on pp. 14 and
15.
[62] _Ibid._, figure on p. 5.
[63] E. Gardner, _op. cit._, Fig. 136.
[64] _N. H._ xxxiv. 66.
[65] _N. H._ xxxiv. 87.
[66] _Ibid._ xxxiv. 73.
[67] E. Gardner, _op. cit._, Fig. 128.
[68] _Annual of the British School at Athens_, vol. xxi, Pl. I.
[69] _Ibid._, Dickins, _Followers of Praxiteles_, p. 1.
[70] E. Gardner, _op. cit._, Fig. 134.
[71] _Ibid._, Fig. 135.
[72] E. Gardner, _op. cit._, Fig. 136.
[73] Reinach, _Répertoire_, ii. 555.
[74] Brunn-Bruckmann, _Denkmäler_, Pl. 249.
[75] E. Gardner, _op. cit._, Fig. 146.
[76] Schreiber, _Das Bildniss Alexanders_, pp. 100 ff.
[77] _Archäol. Anzeiger_, 1904, p. 212.
[78] E. Gardner, _op. cit._, Fig. 127.
[79] Helbig, _Führer_, no. 550.
[80] Watzinger, _Relief des Archelaos, 60^{tes} Prog. zum
Winckelmannsfeste_.
[81] Mendel, _Catalogue des Musées Ottomans_, pp. 320–8.