successfully delineated than the head. Perhaps the best examples of
fifth-century sculpture before Pheidias are the pedimental figures from
Ægina. These figures from the temple of Aphaia at Ægina were discovered
by the English architect Cockerell in 1811; they were acquired by the
King of Bavaria, restored by Thorwaldsen, and are now at the Glyptothek
in Munich. Our illustration[48] will depict their style in all its
archaic vigour. All but the face is highly successful; the naked
muscular forms of the warriors follow even the poses of athletics,
especially the figure in the attitude of a wrestler making his hold
stooping forward to drag away the body of Patroclus. The reader should
also notice how cleverly the pose is designed to fit that very difficult
angle of the pediment where the roof slopes down. It taxed the ingenuity
of artists to compose scenes to fit these triangular spaces. The
ordinary rule is that the east pediments should depict a scene of divine
peace and grandeur, that being the end at which the worshippers entered
the temple. The west pediments, on the contrary, generally display a
struggle. In this early Æginetan temple both ends are filled with scenes
of warfare from the epic glories of Ægina, one of Ajax, and one of his
father, Telamon. These Æginetan sculptures are assigned to the period
between Marathon (490) and Salamis (480). The Harmodius group of which I
have already spoken belongs clearly to the same phase.
If we turn from this to the Parthenon sculptures, we shall see the
amazing swiftness of the blossoming of Greek art. With Pheidias, and
largely no doubt owing to his genius, the plastic art has conquered its
stubborn material, but it has not yet attained that fatal fluency which
induces carelessness or conscious elaboration and extravagant striving
for effect. This is the stage at which the arts and crafts produce their
masterpieces. In our days, thanks to mechanical appliances, stone is as
easy to work as clay. The sculptor produces his model, foreign
underlings do the heavy chiselling, and the artist finishes it off. This
is perhaps why Rodin produces such an effect of strength by leaving much
of his work in the rough. We may be sure that Pheidias executed the
whole process with loving care and diligence from first to last.
[Illustration: Head of Zeus, on Coin of Elis]
[Illustration: Head of Zeus, on Coin of Philip II. of Macedon]
Here, alas! it must be confessed that we have not a single work which we
can ascribe with certainty to the hand of the master himself. His great
masterpieces, the Zeus of Olympia and the Parthenos of the Parthenon,
were of ivory and gold. Of course they have perished utterly. We have to
content ourselves with descriptions--and the ancient art critic was
singularly inept even for an art critic--and casual attempts at copying
on coins or statuettes. The coins of Elis do indeed give us a Zeus of
considerable dignity which may impart some faint notion of the glorious
original, but of the Athena Parthenos we have not even this relic. I
decline to follow the text-books on Greek architecture by presenting the
woolly-headed “Jove of Otricoli” or the well-groomed but fatuous old
senator known as the “Dresden Zeus” for the work of Pheidias. Nor will I
insult him by depicting the Parthenos by means of the stumpy
“Varvakeion” or the inchoate “Lenormant” statuettes. Such
[Illustration: PLATE XLI. PORTIONS OF THE EAST FRIEZE OF THE PARTHENON
_Mansell & Co._]
caricatures only disturb our judgment. For these statues we had better
trust our imaginations, working upon what Pliny tells us: “The beauty of
the Olympian Zeus seems to have added something to the received
religion, so thoroughly does the majesty of the work suit the deity.”
But can you, after all, imagine the splendour of these two statues made
by the greatest sculptor who has ever lived? The flesh parts were of
ivory, the clothing of solid gold on a core of wood or stone. Zeus was
of colossal size, forty feet high. On his head was a green garland of
branched olive; in his right hand he bore a Victory of ivory and gold,
in his left a sceptre inlaid with every kind of metal. On the golden
robe figures and lilies were chased. The throne was adorned with gold
and precious stones and ebony and ivory, with figures painted and
sculptured upon it. Even the legs and bars of the throne were adorned
with reliefs. Round it were low screens, blue enamel in front, and
paintings by the sculptor’s brother, Panainos, at the back and sides.
The stool on which the god’s feet were resting was adorned with figures
in gold; the base, on which the throne rested, likewise. We must not
picture ancient Greek art as cold and colourless like the marble statues
by which it is represented in our museums. The Greeks loved colour, and
used it everywhere. We have grown so accustomed to plain white statues
that some of us are offended by the idea of colour in statuary and
architecture. In this matter we may safely trust the good taste of the
artists who could design and carve so wonderfully. The two favourite
Greek marbles, the Parian and the Pentelic, are both of themselves very
beautiful fabrics, far more lovely, with their glistening coarse grain
and the intermixture of iron which gives them a warm yellowish glow,
than the favourite modern marble of Carrara, which is so coldly white
and so fine of texture as to dazzle and fatigue the eye and to blur all
the delicate outlines. But the Greeks of that day looked upon even their
lovely marbles as we do upon brick, good enough for building temples,
but not worthy of the high gods. Ivory and gold for the gods, if the
worshippers could afford it, otherwise bronze.
Regretfully, therefore, we must seek the genius of Pheidias in works
which were probably constructed according to his designs, minor works,
mere decorative reliefs applied to architecture, much defaced by
accident and time, but still bearing the stamp of grandeur and dignity.
It seems from the latest evidence that the execution of the Parthenon
sculptures did not begin until after the banishment of Pheidias. But we
may well believe that they had been designed by the master. In any case
they are originals of the great period, and thus far better guides than
any copies, however skilfully executed. Plutarch tells us that as the
buildings of Periclean Athens rose “majestic in size and inimitable in
symmetry and grace, the workmen rivalled one another in the artistic
beauty of their workmanship. Especially wonderful was their speed.
Pheidias was the overseer.” The surviving relics of the Parthenon
sculptures fall into three groups, according to their place on the
temple--the Pediments, the Metopes, and the Frieze.
Of these the Pediments are the most important for their size and
prominence in the building. For example, they are the only external
sculptures noticed by the traveller Pausanias. Moreover, each figure is
a separate statue carved in the round, and perfectly finished back and
front alike, though by no possibility could they be visible except from
the front. Ruskin would inform us that this is evidence of the moral
excellence of the artist. But the Greeks were a practical people who
disliked waste in any form, and Professor Ernest Gardner is probably
right in suggesting that the sculptor finished his statues in order that
he might be sure they were rightly made. Such fidelity to his religious
duty is evidence, after all, of moral excellence. Time has wrought cruel
havoc with the sculptures. The central figures had gone even before
Carrey made his drawings for the Marquis de Nointel in 1674. In 1687 a
great explosion occurred, when a Venetian gunner (with the good old
Venetian name of Schwartz) dropped a bomb into the
[Illustration: PLATE XLII. PORTIONS OF THE WEST FRIEZE OF THE PARTHENON
_Mansell & Co._]
Turkish powder magazine stored in the temple, and wrought further havoc.
Then the victorious General Morosini tried to remove some of the
figures, and broke them in the effort. In 1801 Lord Elgin, armed with a
firman authorising him to remove a few blocks of stone, carried off the
greater part of the surviving sculptures. From him they were purchased
by the British Government for the British Museum. Whatever the morality
of this capture, it was a blessing in effect, for the Parthenon suffered
further damage during the War of Liberation, and those stones which
remain _in situ_ have deteriorated far more than those which were
removed. Besides, the Greeks have still plenty of ancient marble to
write their names on. Forlorn as they stand in the Elgin Room, battered
and bruised as they are, all headless but one, and he much defaced, they
still convey an impression of unsurpassed beauty and perfection of art.
The subject of the front or eastern pediment[49] was the birth of
Athena. The central scene had gone when Carrey sketched it. It is
probable that the armed figure of the goddess rising from the head of
Zeus would fill the apex. Close by would stand the goddess of childbirth
(Eilithuia), and Hephæstus, who set Athena free with a blow of his
hammer, would be near the centre. In the angles the figures have been
better preserved, and are mostly among the Elgin Marbles. Various
interpretations of their motive have been suggested, but the only one
that deserves consideration is Brunn’s theory that they are scenic
impersonations rather than mythological characters. It is difficult, as
Furtwängler has argued, to find any other example of this sort of
personification in the art or literature of the fifth century. But some
of the attributions are too plausible to be avoided. At one angle the
Sun is just rising in his chariot, of which the horses’ heads are
visible above the cornice; at the other the Moon is just sinking in
hers. That depicts the time of the great event. Next to these are
figures to indicate locality. Facing Helios, with his back to the
central scene, is that glorious reclining youth who used to be called
“Theseus” in our Museum. According to Brunn he is really Mount Olympus.
A mountain he may well be, but would not Pheidias have meant him for the
Athenian Mount Hymettus? At the other side artists have sighed over the
perfection of those three seated female figures, headless, alas! but
wonderful in the perfection of craft which renders the elaborate folds
of the soft Ionic draperies without impairing the massive grandeur of
the bodies beneath. We used to call them “The Three Fates.” But it is
probable that they are not a group of three; one reclines in the lap of
her sister, the third sits alone. If the geographical interpretation is
to hold good, we cannot improve Professor Waldstein’s suggestion that
the sisterly pair is Thalassa (Sea) in the lap of Gaia (Earth). That,
however, leaves us without a clue to the third. Would not the moon set
beyond land and sea over the island of _Salamis_? Of the remaining
figures the swiftly moving goddess with the windswept draperies can be
none other than Iris, the messenger of the gods.
The back or west pediment denotes a contest always, but here, as befits
Athena, a contest moral rather than physical, the strife between Athena
and Poseidon for the tutelage of Athens. The high angle in the centre
would be filled with the olive-tree, and the two contestant deities may
be seen in Carrey’s drawing. Poseidon is starting back in affright at
the sight of Athena’s gift, and she is advancing triumphantly; a winged
Victory would be at hand to place the crown upon her head. The only
considerable relic of this gable is another nude male form in the
British Museum, reclining like the “Theseus,” but headless and armless,
the “Ilissus.”
Not only the execution of the figures, but the composition of the two
scenes, with their subtle correspondences and distinctions, their
intricate rhythm (notice in detail the arrangement of the drapery folds
on “The Three Fates”), and yet their simple, broad dignity, is typical
of what the fifth century was
[Illustration: FIG. 1. THE “STRANGFORD” SHIELD
FIG. 2. THE RECONSTRUCTION OF THE ACROPOLIS
_Mansell & Co._
PLATE XLIII]
striving for. We might at first glance take the almost severe simplicity
of fifth-century art, as we see it, for example, in the dramas of
Sophocles or the history of Thucydides or the lines of Doric
architecture, for the result of immaturity. But the more we study these
things the more we find to study. The apparent simplicity has been
produced with infinite labour and loving care.
The metopes of the Parthenon, originally ninety-two in number, consist
of separate panels, almost square, adorned with figures in the highest
possible relief, often quite free from the back wall. Each one
represents a single combat, Gods against Giants, Lapithæ against
Centaurs, Greeks against Amazons, Greeks against Trojans, on the various
sides. These subjects, with the contests of Theseus and the labours of
Heracles, are the regular themes of sculpture on Greek temples. They all
represented to the Greek mind the everlasting moral contest between
Hellenism and Barbarism, or between culture and savagery. Heracles
destroying monsters like the Hydra snake, Theseus slaying robbers and
oppressors of mankind, are symbolical of the conflict between light and
darkness. They also, no doubt, bear historical reference to the Persian
wars. The best of these metope sculptures are high upon the walls of the
Elgin Room. They were the work of subordinate artists, and they vary
greatly in excellence. In some we can see the handiwork of old sculptors
trained in the archaic school of athletic sculpture, still making their
drapery stiff and mechanical. In the best there is great vigour and fine
drawing. All are remarkable for the ingenuity of the composition. It was
no easy matter to fill ninety-two square panels with struggling figures
without monotony or iteration. Nevertheless, I do not think that the
Greek artists ever took much pleasure in their metope work.
Lastly, we come to the frieze. To judge it rightly, the spectator must
remember its position on the temple, for its character is entirely
changed when it is seen at the level of the eyes on the walls of our
Museum. It ran round the top of the cella wall, 39 feet above the
floor, inside the colonnade of the Parthenon. It could be examined by
mounting the stylobate and craning your neck uncomfortably, but in an
ordinary case you would merely catch glimpses of it between the columns
as you passed along outside. Moreover, it was in the shadow of the roof,
lighted, as Professor Gardner reminds us, from below by reflection from
the white marble pavement. This the artist has foreseen and provided for
by making the relief of the upper part deeper than below, so that the
heads lean forward from the panels. Where deep shadows are required
below they are often secured by cutting into the background. Here is
another proof of the advantage Art gains when her ministers are
practical craftsmen rather than luxurious gentlemen who spend their time
between the studio and the drawing-room. The designer of this
frieze--and surely the _designer_ was no less than the master
himself--had a free hand here, with no laws of tradition to bind him,
for such a frieze is without previous example. He had to cover an
uninterrupted space of 524 feet with ornament. He chose for his subject
the great procession representing the people of Athens which went up
every year at the Panathenaic festival to offer a new saffron robe to
the goddess. Observe how he has conceived it. Over the front[50] he
placed the immortal gods and goddesses, not in the awful majesty of
Olympus, but down on earth in their beloved city of Athens. He depicted
them at ease; only their added dignity of countenance and their greater
stature (their heads reach the cornice, though they are seated)
indicates their divinity. They are not overladen with attributive
emblems. They are at home in Athens. They sit, they almost lounge, in
comfortable attitudes. Dionysus leans on the shoulder of young Hermes.
Ares, the dreadful Thracian warrior, has left his armour at home; he
rests pleasantly with his right knee clasped in his hands. Hera unveils
her head, turning to say a word to her royal husband, who sits a little
apart in his simple dignity. Athena, the heroine of the hour, is marked
by no pomp; she is
[Illustration: Plate 44.--The Lemnian Athena.
_Tamme._]
conversing in friendly fashion with Hephæstus. Apollo turns his
beautiful head to say a word to the grave Poseidon. Eros is a naked
human boy leaning at the knee of Aphrodite; she is fully draped, and
even veiled, as becomes the deity of Heavenly Love. It is a warm,
peaceful day: the gods have flung back their tunics from their
shoulders, the goddesses are clad in soft Ionic robes. The sculptor has
not chosen to represent the ceremony at its crisis. The procession is on
its way, the music can be heard in the streets below. Close by Athena,
separated by no extra space, a priest is handing a folded garment, the
old peplos, no doubt, to a lad. It cannot be the offering of the new
one, for Athena has her back to the scene. Groups of grave elders
converse together, leaning on their staves. Attendant maidens stand near
with baskets on their heads. This eastern end shows us the peace and
happiness of a heaven not far removed from earth at its best.
Turning the corners, we have on each side the approaching procession,
advancing towards the front at a slow pace. As the passing visitor
glances up between the columns the procession actually moves. First come
the young men leading the sacrificial beasts, oxen and sheep, with
attendants bearing the trays and water-jars. The flute-players and
harpers follow at the head of the warriors, the war-chariots, men with
branches of victory, and the hoplites with shield and spear. And then,
most brilliant of all, the young knights,[51] scions of the best
families of Athens, sitting their fiery horses barebacked with charming
ease and grace, some wearing the broad hat and short chlamys, some in
chitons, some with mantles flying in the wind, some in armour. Here and
there you see the marshals ordering the procession. Farther back it is
just forming; the young knights are mounting their horses and attendants
are holding them ready. We must supply to the frieze a coloured
background and bronze fittings such as spears and bridles.
But why in the world has he left out the sacred robe itself? Well, he
might have chosen to put Athena on her throne in full panoply, and to
have made the whole scene far more devotional and impressive to the
religious sense. Instead, he has slackened the tension everywhere. The
soldiers might have marched in disciplined ranks of Doric precision. The
animals might have walked in two by two, as well-behaved beasts going to
sacrifice should. The whole thing might have been formal and grand.
Pheidias preferred to make it charm by its simplicity and grace. His
procession glows with youth and beauty, modest but unembarrassed. The
young knight lacing up his military boot is quite unconscious that you
and I are looking at him. It would not have done for the solemn
pediments, it would have been out of place on the violent metopes, but
here, just to glance at between the pillars, as a piece of light,
supererogatory ornament, the artist felt at liberty to express the joy
of living.
If you needed to look upon divinity in its awful grandeur, you had only
to enter the shrine and worship before the temple statue. This was the
chryselephantine Athena Parthenos, 39 feet high, with £150,000 worth of
refined gold upon her raiment, with her triple-crested helmet, her
shield and Victory, her ægis and her serpent. Like the Olympian Zeus,
she was to be as splendid as art could make her; there was colour and
ornament everywhere. I do not suppose that even here she was very
terribly militant. Loose tresses of her hair escaped to mitigate the
ferocity of the helmet, with its fierce sphinx and monsters. Her pet owl
was perched somewhere on her helmet. The “Strangford Shield” in the
British Museum[52] is of great interest, because it seems to copy the
design of the original shield with some fidelity, and it belongs to an
interesting anecdote told about the sculptor. In 432, when Pericles was
being attacked through his friends, they charged Pheidias with
embezzling some of the gold entrusted to him for this statue, and with
blasphemous impropriety in putting his own portrait, together with the
portrait of Pericles, on the goddess’s
[Illustration: Plate 45.--Head of the Lemnian Athena.
_Alinari._]
shield. The first charge he could answer, because Pericles had warned
him to make all the gold detachable so that it could be weighed. The
latter bears a family resemblance to the whole class of sacristan’s
tales which attach to every artistic monument in Europe. There was, and
there is, on the shield an old man’s head which looks so realistic that
it might be a portrait. Near him there is a warrior with his arm across
his face, and that is said to have been the artist’s device for
concealing from common view a speaking likeness of Pericles.
Nevertheless Pheidias was condemned by the angry people, as
Aristophanes, his contemporary, tells us:
“Pheidias began the mischief, he was first to come to grief.”
Few other details of the sculptor’s life are worth repeating. Many are
given, but their contradictions involve us in hopeless difficulties.
Neither portraits nor biographies belong to the fifth century, so wholly
was the individual merged in the community. Later centuries had to
provide them, and invent them.
The number of works credibly assigned to Pheidias amounts to
twenty-four. He was specially famed for his divine statues. He was able
to practise for his chryselephantine work on what is termed an
acrolithic image--that is, of gilt wood and marble--for little Platæa.
He worked also in bronze. At Olympia he made a statue of the boy victor
Pantarkes, whom he loved. For the Athenian Acropolis he made two other
statues of Athena, one the colossal bronze figure which faced the
visitor as he passed through the Propylæa on to the sacred citadel. Her
spear was visible above the roofs to the sailors at sea, and it is so
represented on the coins of the city. It was a work of his early years,
executed for Kimon. It was removed to Constantinople, and the historian
Nicetas tells us of its destruction by a drunken mob in A.D. 1203. There
was also the Lemnian Athena,[53] dedicated by the colonists of that
island about 450 B.C. Here she was represented in a peaceful aspect
without her helmet, “with a blush upon her cheek instead of a helmet to
veil her beauty.” The beautiful statue which Furtwängler has compiled by
setting a head from Bologna[54] upon a body at Dresden forms a brilliant
and to my mind triumphant reproduction of this statue. Of course it is
only a copy. If it be true that Pheidias made dedicatory offerings for
the Athenians at Delphi immediately after the Persian wars he must have
had an artistic career of fifty years. In that time he had brought the
art of sculpture from infancy to the prime of manhood.
ICTINUS AND THE TEMPLE-BUILDERS
One of the characteristics of Greek art is the subordination of the
artist to his work, as of the art itself to its purpose. This is but a
part of the general subordination of the individual to society in Greek
life. Hence it follows that we seldom have to think of isolated genius,
and never of the genius of Greek artists as of some fitful and
inexplicable freak of nature. For this reason it is not as incredible
that there should have been several different Homers _all_ men of genius
as that two Vergils should have arisen at Rome, or two Shakespeares in
England. Sappho is one among a group of superlative lyric poets.
Sophocles is one of four. Demosthenes is the greatest of a group of
great orators. This remains a remarkable fact, in view of the natural
tendency of time to sharpen the outline of peaks in the ranges of
culture, and the national tendency of the Greeks to personify all
processes and movements.
Great as Pheidias is, he is nevertheless surrounded by a circle of
sculptors and architects, engravers and painters, who are all great. In
execution they may be ranked in grades of ability, and their
individualities are clearly discernible, but they are all inspired by
the same nobility of artistic character, so that the spirit of
fifth-century art is a thing that the eye can easily perceive. Reserve
and dignity are its most prominent characteristics. It shares with all
Greek art the
[Illustration: PLATE XLVI. STATUE OF MARSYAS. AFTER MYRON
_Mansell & Co._]
qualities of grace and directness, by which we mean a vivid and logical
intelligence which knows its aim and pursues it unswervingly.