already spoken. He was as original as it was possible to be in the fifth
century. As he was chiefly engaged in minor works of a private and
occasional nature, he has naturally caught the attention of the
epigrammatists. We hear much of the animal statues he carved and of
their extraordinary realism, for that was the thing that appealed to the
ancient art critic. He seems to have been a master of bronze technique
and a skilful goldsmith. The marble copy of his Marsyas in the Lateran
and the bronze in the British Museum[55] show the satyr advancing in
amazement to pick up the flute which Apollo has just discarded. As in
the “Discobolus,” we see the love of distorted poses which enabled Myron
to exhibit his fine draughtsmanship and anatomy. Herein, indeed, he is
_peu cinquième siècle_; but we must remember that this figure is one of
a dramatic group. I have spoken of Polycleitus too as an athletic
sculptor. It is rather remarkable that this youthful art should already
in the fifth century be producing its “Canon” and its technical
treatises. Though the “Doryphorus” is the most famous of his works, the
head of his “Diadumenus” from Rome is probably the most faithful
rendering of a Polycleitan original. Other names are mentioned by
ancient writers as being worthy to be classed with Pheidias; Calamis,
for example; but they are mere names to us, and the ingenious attempts
of modern archæology to fit them with appropriate works on the score of
qualities attributed to them by ancient critics are hazardous, and for
the most part unsatisfactory. Considering the few facts so recorded and
the multitude of difficulties they raise, we cannot put much faith in
the ancient art critic. Alcamenes and Pæonius, for example, are said to
have been the sculptors of the two pediments at Olympia, and yet
Alcamenes is described as a pupil of Pheidias, which to any one
comparing the Apollo of the west pediment with the pedimental sculptures
of the Parthenon is absurd. The other name is also doubtful, for Pæonius
was the author of the famous Victory at Olympia,[56] with its superb
study of flying drapery. The inscription testifies that it was set up by
the Messenians of Naupactus from the spoil of the enemy--presumably the
Spartan garrison captured by Cleon at Sphacteria. If, therefore,
Pausanias is right in his account of the authorship of the Olympian
pediments, both these sculptors must have made extraordinarily rapid
progress in their art or have adopted a consciously archaic style for
the pediments.
So much for the named sculptors of the period. We have several other
works which obviously belong to the same date. The fine portrait bust of
Pericles[57] is, no doubt, a copy from the statue by Cresilas. I have
said above that portraiture is rare in the fifth century. The
extraordinary significance of Pericles in the art of the period is one
reason for this exception. Moreover, it is, after all, scarcely a
portrait in the Cromwellian sense, but rather an idealised type of the
soldier statesman: so far from breaking, it notably illustrates the rule
of idealism in the fifth century. It was said that all the portraits of
Pericles represented him in a helmet to _conceal_ his inordinately long
head, which is a frequent subject of wit to Aristophanes. Typical of the
period too are the Eleusinian relief,[58] the Ludovisi reliefs,[59] and
the Mourning Athena.[60] The glorious bronze bust of a Boy Victor
depicted in our photogravure is one of the rare original bronzes of the
great period. It is part of a full-length statue, the bust being a
modern restoration, and it is of great value to students of ancient
bronze workmanship. The eyeballs, when the statue was first found at
Naples in 1730, were inlaid with silver and the pupils with granite. The
lips are gilded, and there was silver and gold on the diadem. The boy
pulling a thorn out of his foot (the “Spinario”) belongs to a slightly
earlier period and is closely akin to the Running Girl in style. It is
a charmingly graceful and boyish figure, quite free from
self-consciousness. We notice that though the body is skilfully wrought,
the head is obviously wrong, for the long hair of the bent head would
hang about his face.[61] Natural and pleasant as the pose is, it is no
mere genre study, done to please the artist’s fancy because his eye had
caught the pretty attitude of the child in the gymnasium. That was not
how artists worked at this early period. The “Spinario” must, I think,
have a story behind him: some one had won the boys’ foot-race in spite
of a thorn in his foot, and this is the record of his pluck.
From sculpture we pass to the sister art of architecture. Here we can
safely affirm that Periclean Athens reached perfection within the limits
it had set for itself--namely, the Doric style. For temple architecture
the religious feeling of the day had prescribed a definite programme
which it would have been almost blasphemy to outstep. That is to say,
the outline of the temple was bound to correspond to the norm of Doric
architecture, laid down more than a century before. The artist’s
originality was therefore confined to the task of improving its details
in a manner which would pass unnoticed by the general public, who would
but vaguely feel a heightened sense of rhythm and harmony. Here we find
proof that Greek simplicity is the outcome of extreme subtlety. Until
Penrose every one had imagined the lines of the Parthenon to be
straight. On the contrary, the apparently flat stylobate or floor rises
1 in 450 towards the centre over a length of 228 and a breadth of 101
feet. The columns do not only taper, as they seem to do, but they swell
in the middle in order to counteract the diminishing effect of light
behind them, although in pure Greek work the diameter of the shaft is
never greater than that of the base. The axis of the outside columns
slopes inwards 1 in 106; the inner columns have a slightly smaller
inclination, 1 in 150. Even the fluting is studied; the fine shadow
effect is produced by diminishing the width but not the depth of the
grooves as they approach the echinus. Nor are the columns all exactly
the same thickness, for the corner pillars are made a little higher and
thicker than their neighbours, because a fiercer light beats on them.
Like the stylobate, the entablature also curves upward in the centre,
but still more slightly--2 inches in 100 feet. The planes of the
moulding are sometimes inclined forwards to prevent foreshortening. Thus
to secure the effect of straightness Ictinus cut every stone of this
great building on a slant measured to a hair’s breadth. To my lay mind
these facts throw a revealing light upon the nature of Greek art and the
true meaning of Greek simplicity. Judge of the self-restraint shown by
Ictinus (and of course entasis is not confined to the Parthenon) in
expending this infinite trouble in a matter which would escape the eye
of nine out of ten spectators. Nine out of ten? Yes, but the tenth might
be a brother architect--or it might be Pallas Athena. Now that the
measuring-tape has proved how subtle is Greek simplicity in one art, we
must be prepared for it in other arts where we cannot measure so
accurately--in literature, for example, when Euripides seems commonplace
or Socrates illogical.
While the white marble columns and the white marble roof presented this
appearance of simple strength and purity, the decorative mouldings
between were enriched not only with the sculpture we have described, but
with brilliant colour. The background behind the sculpture of the
pediment was red, the ground of the metopes probably red, and that of
the frieze probably blue. The simple echinus and abacus mouldings of the
capitals were enriched with leaf patterns in red, blue, and gold. The
architrave, has holes which once held bronze pegs for a row of gilt
shields and wreaths. The grooves of the triglyphs were painted blue. A
bright key-pattern ran along the upper edge of the triglyph. The guttæ,
or “drops,” were probably gilt. On each corner of the roof-angle stood a
golden oil-jar, and at the apex of the gable an acroterion carved and
coloured.
[Illustration: FIG. 1. THE VICTORY OF PÆONIUS
FIG. 2. THE “SPINARIO”
PLATE XLVII]
Inside the colonnade is the cella, 194 feet long, with six columns of
its own within the peristyle at each end. The interior was divided into
two main parts--the Hekatompedos, exactly 100 Attic feet in length,
where the great gold and ivory statue stood in solitary grandeur, with a
couch near at hand for the goddess to recline on when she was tired; and
the Opisthodomos, to the west of it, strictly called the Parthenon,
which was a sort of museum or bank for handsome offerings. The interior
seems to have been lighted only from the doors. Ionic columns were used
to carry the ceiling of the Parthenon proper. The wooden ceiling itself
was adorned with sunken panels brightly painted. Battered and decayed as
this marble building is to-day after its centuries of use as a temple,
as a church, as a mosque, as a powder magazine, and as an archæological
bear-garden, it is still most wonderful in its majesty.[62] We can
hardly imagine the impression it produced when it glowed with life and
colour on the day of the Panathenaic festival in 438 B.C., when it was
opened to the public after fifteen years of building. The sculpture
seems to have been applied after the opening of the temple.
Let us glance at the principal buildings beside the Parthenon which
crowned the flat-topped citadel. I suspect that most modern spectators
feel a secret sense of discontent when they see a reconstruction of the
Acropolis.[63] The unregenerate Goth in our bosoms cries out for spires
and pinnacles upon such a splendid site, for domes and towers and
battlements to fret the sky above it. Would any relics of them have
stood for twenty-three centuries in that land of earthquakes?
When the Long Walls of Athens were completed there was no longer any
need of fortifications to the Acropolis, though the architectural
conception of the whole mass remained that of a shrine and citadel
combined. The prehistoric Pelasgians had levelled the top, fortified it
on the west, its only accessible end, and surrounded it with a wall. The
whole plateau rises to a height of 200 feet. Approaching it from the
agora to the west, the pilgrim passes up a flight of low steps to the
porch, or propylæa. This was completed in 432 by Mnesicles on the site
of an older and much humbler gateway of Kimon’s day. Modern
investigators have shown that it was planned on a far more extensive
scale than the actual execution, and that room was left for subsequent
completion. It is believed that the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War
was the cause of this limitation of the original scheme. Even so it was
celebrated in antiquity, and is far the most impressive building erected
by the Greeks for secular purposes. It consists of a gateway formed by a
wall with five openings and fronted by a Doric colonnade, with gable
roof and pediment, flanked on each side in the original plan by two
colonnaded halls, a smaller one in front and a larger behind. This plan
is clearly a development of the gateways of prehistoric citadels like
Tiryns and Troy II. One of the wing chambers was used as a picture
gallery, the walls being frescoed by Polygnotus and other celebrated
painters. This hall is still in excellent preservation, due to its use
by the Franks as a council chamber and by the Turks as the palace of
their pashas. Some of the stone beams are as long as 20 feet.
The front chamber of each wing rested on an artificial stone bastion,
and as that on the south was never completed the platform remained free
for the erection of a lovely miniature shrine, the temple of the
Wingless Victory.[64] This, though its stones were totally scattered and
built into a Turkish bastion, was reconstructed in 1835 by European
architects with such success that it is one of the most charming things
in Athens. It must have been built soon after the abandonment of the
original plan for the propylæa. It has four columns of the Ionic order
at each end, surmounted with a sculptured frieze, of which four panels
are in the Elgin collection. The whole shrine, which is only 18 feet by
27 feet, was surrounded by a railing supported on a marble balustrade
carved with Victories in low relief. Though they are mostly headless,
[Illustration: PLATE XLVIII. THE PARTHENON. MODERN VIEW FROM NORTH-WEST
_English Photo Co., Athens_]
the outlines are in a good state and reveal very fine workmanship,
especially in the treatment of drapery. They clearly belong to the next
period after the Parthenon frieze. From the platform in front of the
shrine there is a lovely view over the Attic plain towards Eleusis.
Beyond it, over Salamis and the blue Saronic gulf you can see the
citadel of Corinth and the distant mountains of the Argolid and the
Peloponnese. It was here that old Ægeus stood watching for the sails of
his dear son from Crete.
Pass through the wide portals of the propylæa. On your right was the
marble terrace where the little girls of Athens dressed up as bears to
dance in honour of Brauronian Artemis. Here was the group of Athena and
Marsyas, and here Praxiteles was to make his statue of Brauronian
Artemis. Beyond the Brauronian precinct was one of Athena the
Craftswoman. At this point the colossal bronze Athena “Promachos” of
Pheidias towered above you, 36 feet high. We have visited the Parthenon
already; to the left of it, just behind the foundations of the old
temple of Athena Polias, is the wonderful Erechtheum. This building,
though begun soon after the Persians had burnt the old “house of
Erechtheus,” and the adjoining temple of Athena built by Peisistratus,
was delayed by the Peloponnesian War, and not completed till the end of
the century. Here the task set to the architects was a peculiar one. To
begin with, the building was not a temple, but a house--the house of an
old Pelasgian hero; obviously it must not be of the Doric order. Also it
had to include a number of immovable sacred objects, such as the salt
spring which gushed up when Poseidon struck the rock with his trident
and the sacred olive-tree with which Athena defeated him. This patriotic
tree had sprung up into new life after the Persians destroyed it, and
had to be treated kindly. The illustration will show how the architect
overcame these problems with an unconventional building of extraordinary
grace and charm. The main building has a colonnade of six Ionic columns
in front, and a north porch of six Ionic columns projecting from one
side; at the west end a precinct of Pandrosos (daughter of Cecrops),
enclosing the sacred olive-tree, adjoined it, and on the south side the
lovely little portico of the Maidens.[65] This is its most celebrated
feature, from the figures of the six Athenian girls who carry the
graceful Ionic entablature. One of the Caryatids was taken to London by
Lord Elgin, and has been replaced by a terra-cotta copy. The capitals on
their heads are designed like baskets. I have already spoken of this use
of sculpture for columns in connection with the Telamones of Acragas.
The name Caryatids given to these figures in later times was derived
from the town of Karuæ, in Arcadia.
[Illustration: The Erechtheum: Modern Reconstruction]
Besides the objects already mentioned, the Erechtheum contained a number
of very ancient relics. There you were shown the marks of Poseidon’s
trident on the rock; there were spoils taken from the Persians; an old
wooden Hermes dedicated by Cecrops, a chariot by Dædalus, a lamp by
Callimachus kept perpetually burning, and above all the ancient wooden
image of Athena Polias.
Dörpfeld maintains that the old temple of Athena Polias was left
standing even after the Erechtheum was completed. If that were true we
should have to believe that the architect deliberately projected his
unnecessary Caryatid porch right into
[Illustration: FIG. 1. THE TEMPLE OF NIKÉ APTEROS [THE WINGLESS VICTORY]
FIG. 2. THE CARYATID PORCH OF THE ERECHTHEUM
_English Photo Co., Athens_
PLATE XLIX]
the blank wall of the older temple, where it could not be seen and could
scarcely be passed, for it encroaches right over the stylobate of the
old colonnade.
I have only mentioned some of the wonderful objects on the sacred rock.
When Pausanias saw it, it was crowded from end to end with works of art,
sacred or commemorative. No profane person inhabited it.
It was to the Acropolis that the attention of Pericles and his artists
was first directed when the time came to beautify Athens. In the city
below you would be struck with the plainness of the private houses,
presenting no decorative aspect whatever to the narrow and tortuous
streets. They were all of one story, with a roof sloping inwards to an
open colonnade, round which the rooms were grouped. The agora was the
centre of commercial and social life. Close by were some famous
porticoes or cloisters, shady and cool to lounge in. In the Royal
Portico the “king archon” sat to do his business, mostly connected with
religion. Here the Council of the Areopagus met in later days. Here
Socrates conversed, and here he was tried for impiety. Ancient laws were
inscribed upon the walls of it. The Portico of Freedom contained statues
and celebrated frescoes painted by Euphranor in the fourth century. The
Decorated Portico (Stoa Poikilē) in the agora was even more famous for
its historical and mythological pictures, including one of the battle of
Marathon by Panainos, and one by the master Polygnotus of the taking of
Troy. It was in this Stoa that Zeno developed in later times his Stoic
philosophy. All these pictures have perished utterly, but we can still
see reflections of them in the vase-paintings of the day.
Close by upon a low hill stands a Doric temple of the fifth century in
almost perfect preservation. This is commonly called the Theseum, but it
is undoubtedly the temple of Hephæstus mentioned by Pausanias.[66] The
temple is of Pentelic marble, surrounded on all sides by columns, with
six at each end. It is of a slightly earlier date than the Parthenon,
and it has very little of the subtle system of optical corrections
employed there. It was not a very important building in ancient Athens;
in fact, it is scarcely mentioned in antiquity; but as the
best-preserved building in all Greece it is of great architectural
interest to us. The metopes were not all carved; the rest were probably
painted. There is also a sculptured frieze. The subject of the metopes
was the Labours of Heracles and Theseus. They are rather badly
weathered, and in their present condition not very attractive. Not far
away is the Dipylon Gate, with its ancient burial-ground, of which we
shall see more in a later section. At the opposite end of the city the
visitor in the fifth century B.C. would have been struck by the immense
columns of the temple of Olympian Zeus begun by Peisistratus, but never
finished. Close under the Acropolis rock was the Theatre of Dionysus,
where the tragedies and comedies were performed, and a music hall, or
Odeion, erected by Pericles. There was a Cave of Pan on the precipitous
slope of the rock. The public meetings of the Athenian Assembly were
held on the hill of Pnyx, to the west of the Acropolis. Here there was a
sort of open-air theatre. We can still see the platform where Pericles
addressed the people, and the seats for the presiding committee behind
it.
So entirely does Athens focus upon herself the culture of the fifth
century, we are apt to forget that Athens was not Greece. The Temple of
Zeus at Olympia was the most celebrated temple in all Greece, but
chiefly for the wealth of the dedications there and the number of
athletic statues. Delphi too was enriched with countless artistic
offerings sent, in spite of the Pythian’s faint-hearted counsels, from
the spoil of the war. There was a famous tripod with a stand of twisted
serpents, on whose coils were inscribed the names of those cities which
had taken part in the battle of Platæa. A forlorn remnant of it still
exists at Constantinople. Both Olympia and Delphi have been recently
excavated, the former by the Germans and the latter by the French. But
neither site has quite realised expectations. The greatest finds at
Olympia
[Illustration: PLATE L. THE “THESEUM,” ATHENS
_English Photo Co., Athens_]
were the Hermes of Praxiteles, which belongs to the next epoch, and the
temple pediments which I have already mentioned. At Delphi the
long-robed charioteer, one of the noblest fifth-century bronzes, was the
most conspicuous treasure, but one very fine athletic statue is worthy
of mention. This is the Agias, an athletic portrait in marble, executed
by Lysippus, fourth of the great masters of Greek sculpture.[67] Traces
were found of a great number of small shrines which acted as the
treasuries of the various states and were grouped round the great temple
of Apollo, and some of these, notably the Cnidian, Siphnian, and
Athenian treasuries, have yielded important relics of sculpture. The
holy precinct was crowded with treasuries, shrines, votive groups, and
colonnades. It included a theatre, a circular dancing-floor, and a
colossal statue of Apollo. The Altis at Olympia was similarly filled
with treasuries; round it just outside were the stadium, the hippodrome,
the palæstra, and the gymnasium.
Hidden away in a remote mountain glen of Arcadia there was a masterpiece
of Ictinus, which is now a lovely ruin amid the most solitary and
romantic scenery. This is the temple of Phigaleia, the modern Bassæ.[68]
It was dedicated by the Phigaleians to Apollo the Helper in consequence
of an epidemic. They sent for the most famous architect in Greece soon
after the completion of the Parthenon. Ictinus used, since his clients
were poor mountaineers, the local limestone for the building, but the
roof and sculptures were of imported marble. He had also to modify the
normal Doric plan in accordance with local religious conventions of
sun-worship. In the cella of the temple the interior Ionic columns are
joined to the wall by short stone partitions, thus forming a row of five
chapels on each side. A door was made in the east side to shed the light
of the rising sun full on the statue of the sun-god; for the main
building is unique among Greek temples in running north and south. The
narrow frieze which ran round the interior of the cella represented, as
usual, contests of Greeks and Amazons, Centaurs and Lapithæ.[69] It is
now in the British Museum. It is of the very finest workmanship, and
here we see a system of design hardly less subtle than that of the
Parthenon frieze applied to scenes of vigour and violence. The frieze
was removed bodily by Baron von Stackelberg and bought at auction by the
British Government for £15,000.
We find another example of the versatile genius of Ictinus at Eleusis.
Eleusis was the most important town of Attica except Athens, and had
long been independent. It formed an agricultural centre for the plain
around it. Its famous mysteries were of agricultural significance to
start with, and were chiefly concerned with the worship of Demeter and
Persephone in their characters as grain-givers. It was no doubt a later
development when the Greeks began to graft the deepest religious and
metaphysical doctrines relating to immortality upon them. We can easily
see how rustic rites celebrating the death and rebirth of the cornfields
should come to bear this exalted meaning for reflective people. Every
year on the fifth night of the Greater Eleusinian festival in spring the
Athenian people trooped out along the Sacred Way in a torchlight
procession. Only the initiated, the Mystæ, were allowed to witness the
secret ceremony, which seems to have consisted of a ritual marriage. For
most illuminating suggestions as to its real nature I would refer the
reader to Mr. J. C. Lawson’s recent book on “Modern Greek Folklore and
Ancient Greek Religion.”