Sparta. They now made common cause to avenge it, and at the battle of
Leuctra (371) Sparta suffered defeat in a pitched land battle on a great
scale for the first time in her history. The victory of Thebes was
wholly due to the new tactics of Epaminondas. He had formed a Theban
_corps d’élite_, composed, in a fashion strikingly characteristic of the
Greek mind, of 150 pairs of lovers sworn to conquer or die together.
Thus he pressed into his service the only romantic feeling which the
Greeks understood, the relation between David and Jonathan or between
Achilles and Patroclus. This Sacred Band formed the front of the left
wing. Further, whereas the whole Spartan line was drawn up as usual with
a uniform depth of twelve spears, Epaminondas made his left fifty deep
and flung it forward in the attack. The extra weight of this deep wing
broke the Spartan right. King Cleombrotus and a thousand Spartans were
slain. The loss of men was serious for a little state like Sparta, but
the loss in prestige was even worse. This, in Xenophon’s story, is how
the news came to Sparta: “It chanced to be the last day of the Boys’
Gymnastic Festival, and the choir of men were therefore at home. When
the Ephors heard of the disaster they were sorely grieved, as in my
opinion was bound to be the case, but they did not send the men’s choir
out or stop the games. They communicated the names of the fallen to
their relatives, but they warned the women to bear their loss in silence
and not to make lamentation. So next day you could see the families of
the slain going about in public with cheerful, smiling faces, but as for
those whose menfolk had been announced as living, they went about in
gloom and shame.” So Lacedæmon set itself with dogged resolution to
endure what the gods might send.
Epaminondas with true insight determined to raise up a counterbalancing
power in the Peloponnesus to hang upon the flank of Sparta if she should
ever again try to tyrannise over Greece. His plan was to form
city-states among the Arcadians and Messenians, those backward children
of Nature who had always preferred a village life among their hills.
Mantinea was restored to the rank of a state, Messenia was given a new
capital, and a new and splendid city was specially constructed to unite
several scattered Arcadian villages in one interesting federal
constitution. But the Great City, as she was proudly named, was not a
great success. Perhaps the Arcadians were too arcadian in their habits
to fulfil the scheme of Epaminondas. It is very characteristic of the
Greek mind that the news of Theban triumph was very ill received in the
city of her ally Athens. Athens might cherish a respectable hereditary
feud with Sparta, but Thebes she had always detested. Thebes was her
next-door neighbour. Though you might have to fight a Spartan, you
couldn’t help liking him. Once again the orators drew upon that
inexhaustible precedent of the Persian wars, when Sparta and Athens had
stood together against Thebes and Persia. So Athens was persuaded to
draw away from
[Illustration: PLATE LXVI. THE HERMES OF PRAXITELES: HEAD
_English Photo Co., Athens_]
Thebes and form an alliance upon equal terms with Sparta. But her action
was not very vigorous.
The nine years between the battles of Leuctra and Mantinea are commonly
described by historians as a period of Theban hegemony. It is true that
Thebes was probably on land the most powerful state in Greece, and that
Epaminondas played the foremost part in the diplomacy of that period,
but she had no great following of states, and as Athens, Sparta, and
Corinth were among those who declined to follow she can hardly be said
to have led Greece. Also it is interesting to notice that the
liberal-minded Epaminondas found it just as impossible as Athens and
Sparta had done to hold a Greek alliance together without the use of
garrisons. He sent harmosts into Achaia and Sicyon. Thebes also was as
ready as Sparta to interfere with constitutions. We can understand
Sparta, with her aristocratic habits, showing a prejudice for oligarchy,
or Athens, the city of liberty and free speech, encouraging democracy,
but that Thebes, herself oligarchically constituted, should now enforce
democracy upon her allies can only be a piece of cold-blooded diplomacy
due to the knowledge that oligarchies were generally committed to the
Spartan side. Nor can Thebes be acquitted of trafficking with the enemy.
For Pelopidas was sent to Susa to plead the ancient alliance of Thebes
and Persia at the battle of Platæa! In these three respects all the
hegemonies of Greece are alike, all tarred with the same brush.
Thebes tried to kill the snake she had scotched at Leuctra. Several
times she started to smoke out the Spartan nest. Twice she penetrated
the inviolable precincts of Sparta, but each time when she looked into
the streets of the unwalled city and saw the Spartan warriors standing
at arms before their temples and hearths, she only looked--and found
more pressing business elsewhere. Let one chronicler at least decline to
quit that sinking ship. The foolish Arcadians might brag of their
ancient descent as children of the soil; but the Spartans, under their
old lion Agesilaus, could still scatter Arcadians with the wind of
their spears in a “Tearless Battle,” wherein not a single Spartan
perished.
So we come to the last great fight of this epoch--that of Mantinea. Here
Spartans and Athenians fought on the same side against Thebes. The
Theban tactics were the same precisely as at Leuctra, and the Spartans
had learnt nothing by the experience. They saw the line advancing _en
échelon_, they saw the deepened left wing, and they took no steps to
counteract it. As before, they were broken and routed. But in the hour
of defeat a chance spear found its billet in the body of Epaminondas,
and, like Wolfe on the Heights of Abraham, that hero fell in the hour of
victory. When he heard that the two men he had hoped for as his
successors had also fallen he cried to his followers to make peace with
Sparta, and so expired. The star of Thebes waned with his death; and,
indeed, all the fires of the Greek firmament soon paled before the
rising sun of Macedonia--and Philip had learnt warfare from Epaminondas.
FOURTH-CENTURY CULTURE
In the fourth century--or rather in that earlier half of it which forms
the theme of the present chapter--Greek art pursues its inevitable
course of development. Perhaps the wasting influence of the
Peloponnesian War, that most wasteful and unsatisfactory contest, had
brought a touch of disillusionment upon the high ideals and youthful
hopes with which the Grand Century had set forth. Perhaps there may be
something in the racial theory, which holds that the vigorous Northern
strain was beginning to succumb to the influence of a Southern climate,
while the artistic temperament native to the South was reasserting
itself and disturbing the equilibrium between clever and brave. But it
may have been simply the working of some law of Nature that all arts
pass from the phase of earnest endeavour to that sense of triumphant
mastery which so fatally entices into luxuriance. In sculpture I think
we shall see that it was thus with Greece. There is unquestionably in
[Illustration: PLATE LXVII. APOLLO AND MARSYAS
_English Photo Co., Athens_]
the fourth century some slackening of purpose, some loss of ideals, some
tendency in the direction of prettiness and languor.
But we must not yet begin to speak of degeneration. The Hermes of
Praxiteles and the “Republic” of Plato are not works of decadence. Some
modern historians are rather vulture-like in their scent for decay. They
show an unseemly gusto in tracing the causes of decline and fall of
states, so that they begin the post-mortem long before the breath is out
of their patient. Greece of the fourth century is still very active and
vigorous, still improving the old arts and inventing new ones.
Fourth-century Athens is far too like twentieth-century England for an
Englishman to feel quite comfortable in using the term “degeneration” of
her.
In politics, for example, she was beginning to make things much less
comfortable for the rich. With taxes upon unearned increment she was
beginning to drive capital out of the country, so that millionaires
could no longer be found to undertake single-handed the “liturgy” of
equipping a battleship, but had to be grouped in companies for the
purpose. Statesmen, too, were throwing off the dignified reticence of
the old regime, to parade the most sordid financial considerations, and
to set class against class, by reminding the poor how much nicer it
would be if they were rich. Even more was done for the poor now than
formerly; they were taught to look to the State for cheap food, and even
free education. The principle of payment of members was introduced.
Conservatives were alarmed by the growing numbers of state functionaries
openly drawing salaries from the Treasury for the duties which they
performed, instead of leaving those duties to be neglected, or expecting
the rich to perform them in their spare time and recoup themselves in
less odiously public fashions. In international relations there was some
abatement of nationalist frenzy; in colonial systems there was a marked
advance in the direction of federalism, accompanied by a devolutionary
process towards local government. In the theatre there was a movement
towards lighter entertainments and highly elaborate musical comedies,
with lavish display in the matter of dress and scenery. Favourite
chorus-girls made large incomes, and sometimes married very respectably
indeed. In sport, too, there was a growing tendency to professionalism,
much deplored by old-fashioned people. Boxers and wrestlers no longer
considered the grace of their movements, because they found that victory
was apt to follow more consistently upon hard training and an animal
diet. In literature, as we shall presently see more fully, poetry was
beginning to yield to prose, and prose was becoming more businesslike
and scientific. In social life thinkers were beginning to raise the
problem of sex, and even women themselves may have joined in the
agitation for some measure of justice for their sex. Euripides, indeed,
who is rather apt to go further than modern delicacy permits in his
treatment of social problems, had actually made his Medea utter these
audacious words: “I would rather stand thrice in the line of battle than
bear a child once.”
If we had to sum up the new characteristic of the fourth century under a
single phrase, we should perhaps be justified in saying that the
professional spirit was making itself felt in all directions. We see it
in the military art, where the citizen hoplites, with their extremely
simple tactics and strategy, are yielding to trained bands under
professional captains. The statesmen are now no longer the famous
generals of the day, nor men marked out by birth and wealth for high
position, but trained speakers, and often professional pleaders.
Literature is no longer in the hands of men like Æschylus and Sophocles,
who were soldiers or generals as well, though Xenophon is of course a
notable example of the writer who takes literature among his other
activities. But now there are professional sophists teaching oratory and
various literary arts. Books circulate freely, schools of professional
philosophers arise, as in Plato’s garden of the Academy. This
specialisation naturally involves an increased attention to technical
processes, a more scientific and less human outlook, and a growth of
self-consciousness. For example, it is now that constitutional histories
begin to be written. While people are young and
[Illustration: PLATE LXVIII. MELEAGER: HEAD AFTER SCOPAS
_Anderson_]
strong they are apt to take their constitutions for granted. Greece is
now grown to full stature, and beginning to grow introspective and
emotional.
The public taste has changed somewhat in matters of art. The
impoverished States of the fourth century no longer lavish their wealth
upon glorious temples, and sumptuous statues in ivory and gold. Private
dedications occupy more of the artist’s time, and though the subjects
are still of a religious and ideal character, yet the gods have become a
great deal more human. Herein we may probably see the influence of
Euripides. The heroes of the epic cycle no longer possessed much
interest for their own sake. Jason and Medea only raised for Euripides
an absorbing problem in matrimonial relations. So the Apollos and
Aphrodites of the fourth century are as human as the Madonnas and St.
Sebastians of the sixteenth. Psychology intrudes upon art. Allegorical
impersonations begin to be popular among the subjects of statuary. Human
portraiture also begins, though slowly, to be practised with some
realism. Nudity in sculpture, which had hitherto been mainly confined to
athletic works, where it is obviously appropriate and necessary, is now
extended even to images of deities, and under the chisel of Praxiteles
Aphrodite uncovers her loveliness and modesty. Eros, too, her son and
tormentor, becomes a popular type, not yet as the chubby babe of
Græco-Roman times, but as an “ephebus,” almost full-grown, with long
wings upon his shoulders. Hermes, as we have already remarked, begins to
replace the more vigorous Apollo as the youthful type of celestial
beauty. Nevertheless this growing worship of human grace has not yet
suffered any visible taint of sensuality. Whether or not it leads that
way is a question for the future to decide, but Greek art has not yet
lost its reticence and dignity.
SCULPTURE
Meanwhile the artist has improved enormously in the technical details of
craftsmanship. It was now only a foreign potentate who could give
commissions for statues in such splendid materials as were at the
disposal of Pheidias. Bronze was still the ordinary material for
important works, but marble, which had formerly been chiefly used for
ornament in architecture, was now commonly employed for statues even by
the great masters. With more serviceable tools for drilling, sawing, and
pointing (where that rather mechanical process was employed), the great
artists of the fourth century could play upon marble as if it were wax
or clay. They could represent textures and surfaces by the degree of
their finish, so that the leather of the shoe is of a surface distinct
from the skin of the foot in the Hermes of Praxiteles. There is an
extremely subtle contrast between the leopard-skin and the flesh of the
young Satyr by the same artist in the admirable torso copy which is in
the Louvre. Whereas earlier artists had tried to represent hair by
grooves gouged out upon the surface of the head or by rendering each
tress as a separate thread, Praxiteles discovered the marvellous
impression of curls that could be produced by roughly blocking out
several masses and leaving the play of light and deep shadow to indicate
a surface movable and alive. New secrets of sculptural anatomy were now
at command. Praxiteles discovered the value of that groove which runs
vertically down the front of the body between the pectoral and abdominal
muscles on each side. He discovered also the anatomical distinction
between the male and female brow in that ridge of flesh, known to
artists as the bar of Michelangelo, which overhangs the eyebrows. By
setting the eyeballs deeper under the brow, and emphasising the long
drooping curve of the upper eyelid, the fourth-century artists greatly
enhanced their command of expression and emotion, transient qualities
after which the fifth century had not greatly cared to strive. Scopas,
indeed, carried this discovery to the verge of the legitimate, for the
few incomplete fragments of his work which survive are almost theatrical
in the intensity of their gaze. Marble, of course, demands methods of
its own distinct from those of metal. It is due to the material, in a
large measure, that various
[Illustration: PLATE LXIX. THE DEMETER OF CNIDOS
_Mansell & Co._]
supports, such as tree-trunks, pillars, and urns, have to be introduced
into marble statues in the round. Thus it became inevitable to make the
figure lean frankly upon his support, and thus we get those graceful
reclining attitudes which are often cast in the teeth of Praxiteles as
symptomatic of decadence.
Pheidias and Praxiteles are as pre-eminent among the names of ancient
sculptors as are Polygnotus, Zeuxis, and Apelles among the painters. Of
the two, Praxiteles was the most praised, and his works had the highest
value in the Roman market. This being so, it is remarkable how little we
know of his personality--practically nothing except that he was an
Athenian, and was the son or brother of another famous sculptor called
Cephisodotus. Plausible stories are told of his relations with Phryne,
who is said to have been his model for the Cnidian Aphrodite. She is
said further to have cajoled him into giving her the Eros dedicated at
Thespiæ, by first making him promise her the best of all his statues,
and then discovering which he thought the best by raising a false report
of fire at his studio. His period of activity seems to have extended
from about 370 to 330 B.C.
His three masterpieces were the Cnidian Aphrodite, the young Satyr, and
the Eros of Thespiæ, but we have a long list of his other works. Of the
first, Pliny tells us that it was the finest statue not only of
Praxiteles, but of the whole world, and that many had made the voyage to
Cnidos expressly to see it. He adds a story that Praxiteles had made two
figures of Venus and offered them to the people of Cos at the same
price. One was draped, the other nude, and the Coans preferred the
former, “thinking it austere and modest.” We must remember that naked
goddesses were novelties. The other was purchased by Cnidos, and there
were bitter regrets at Cos when they found how much more celebrated was
the naked Aphrodite. King Nicomedes of Bithynia subsequently offered to
liquidate the entire national debt of Cnidos, “which was immense,” if
they would only sell him the statue, but one is glad to learn that the
little island preferred to keep both its debts and its goddess.
Apparently it was in her capacity as a marine goddess, a “Notre Dame de
Bon Secours” (Euploia), that these islanders chose Aphrodite, the
foam-born, for their patroness.
Coins of Cnidos indicate the pose of the statue with sufficient
clearness for us to identify a Venus in the Vatican as a copy of the
Cnidian Aphrodite.[79] Papal decency has seen fit to encase her legs,
beginning just below the hips, with drapery constructed of tin. This
would, if anything could, impair the aspect of perfect modesty which
shows in every line of her pose and expression. She is not aware of
human spectators; there is no self-conscious prudery, as in the
abominable Medici Venus, which was an attempt by a later and baser
generation to imitate the same type. She has left her robe to hang over
the tall water-jar, and is stepping from or towards the bath, not
without shrinking, and not in ignorance of her beauty. Even in this
imperfect copy we recognise the qualities which made Lucian admire the
statue--“the design of the scalp and forehead, the finely pencilled
eyebrows, and the look of the eyes, so tender, yet so bright and
joyful.” He adds elsewhere that “a proud smile plays over her lips.” A
lovely girl’s head in Parian marble, now in the Glyptothek at Munich,
appears to me so clearly to resemble a younger sister of the same
goddess that it must bear some relation to an original by
Praxiteles.[80]
The Capitoline Gallery also possesses a copy of the “Young Satyr” of
Praxiteles, “called by the Greeks περιβοητός”--that is, world-famed.[81]
Readers of Hawthorne will remember his eloquent description of the
“Marble Faun,” and though we, better supplied with ancient originals,
can recognise that this is only _after_ (and not very near) Praxiteles,
yet even as it stands the statue has a peculiar charm and fascination.
The sculptor has conveyed the impression of a young creature of the
woods, only half human, shy and wild as an animal, and as
[Illustration: PLATE LXX. SCULPTURED COLUMN FROM THE TEMPLE OF ARTEMIS
AT EPHESUS
_Mansell & Co._]
careless and happy. His smile is as lazy as his attitude. Yet we notice
the reserve with which his animal characteristics are indicated merely
in the shape of his pointed ear and the “unclassical” profile of his
face. Not only is his weight thrown upon one leg, as in all the statues
by Praxiteles, but the other foot is gracefully curled round it. This is
the only complete ancient copy of the Satyr, but there is a mutilated
torso in the Louvre, so fine in its finish and texture that some critics
suppose it to be original.
Of the Eros which Phryne dedicated at Thespiæ we have no certain copies.
But it is evident that many of the Erotes in our galleries were inspired
by that masterpiece, and the prettiest is the Eros of Centocelle, a
three-quarters figure of admirable design, though of rather slack
execution.[82] I believe also that the bronze head of a youth at Naples
might well trace its parentage to an Eros by Praxiteles, though the
languishing craft of the eyes and the sensuous fullness of the lips are
certainly exaggerated.[83]
But of course if we want to know the real Praxiteles we have only to
take our ticket to Olympia and worship there at the shrine of Hermes.
Here for the first time we have an unquestionable original work by the
hand of a great master. This Hermes was found more than thirty years ago
by the German excavators in the very temple of Hera where Pausanias had
seen him. No copy or cast or photograph can do more than faintly shadow
the incomparable beauty of the marble. From the photograph we may
appreciate the delicacy of the whole design, in which dignity so
marvellously blends with grace and strength with charm.[84] It is Hermes
the young Arcadian shepherd’s patron deity, Hermes the musician of the
tortoise-lyre, the weaver of guile, the bringer of luck, and the kindly
escort of souls on their last ferrying. He is playing in careless
indulgence with a baby boy, the infant god of wine, but his eyes and his
gentle smile are for some one farther off--not the human spectator. It
may be noted, as proving that the technical triumphs of Greek art were
gained, not by inspiration, but by hard work at established types, that
the child is not very successfully rendered. Greek sculptors could not
even yet sufficiently detach themselves from convention to copy the
round contours of a baby’s face. Critics are divided in their attempts
to reconstruct the motive of the raised right shoulder. Evidently the
right hand held some object charming to the infant Dionysus, a bunch of
grapes, perhaps, or the serpent-wreathed wand proper to Hermes. As it
stands in the photograph we can recognise the loveliest statue in
existence, but we cannot see the craft with which the surfaces and
textures are rendered. We do not know for certain whether Greek
sculptors of the fourth century habitually worked their own statues from
start to finish with their own hands. We do know that the surface-finish
was regarded as a very important part of the work, and that there were
various devices, such as wax-polishing, employed to get the fullest
value out of the grain of the marble for flesh parts. Praxiteles is
especially named as employing a colourist to tint his marble.
In addition to the Hermes, we have direct literary evidence as to a
great group of Artemis and Apollo, the work of Praxiteles, at Mantinea.
We are told also the subject of certain reliefs on the architectural
base of it, and reliefs of very fine workmanship corresponding in
subject have been excavated at Mantinea. There is thus a very fair
presumption that these panels were designed, if not executed, by the
master who made the group. One slab, here illustrated,[85] shows the
contest between Apollo the harper and Marsyas the semi-bestial player of
that barbarous instrument the flute. Marsyas had challenged Apollo to a
contest, and being quite inevitably defeated was flayed alive as a
punishment for his presumption. The penalty is delicately indicated by
the Phrygian slave who holds the knife in the centre. The fourth-century
artists seldom missed a psychological point, and Praxiteles has
emphasised the contrast between the dignified god in his majestic
harper’s robes
[Illustration: PLATE LXXI. FIGURE OF A YOUTH: FROM CERIGO
_English Photo Co., Athens_]
and the naked, violent Satyr distending his cheeks as flute-playing
barbarians were not ashamed to do. It is evident that the Marsyas is a
quotation by Praxiteles of the celebrated figure by Myron. We note, as a
technical point in the history of relief sculpture, the effect produced
by the wide spacing of the figures. On the other slabs are beautiful
though mutilated figures of the Muses, who acted as umpires in the
contest.