Chapter II: THE BYZANTINE PERIOD.--In the 7th century the Greek language made (4)

The series of known Lycian tombs has been in recent years enriched through the acquisition by the museum of Vienna of the sculptured friezes which adorned a heroon near Geul Bashi. In the midst of the enclosure was a tomb, and the walls of the enclosure itself were adorned within and without with a great series of reliefs, mostly of mythologic purport. Many subjects which but rarely occur in early Greek art, the siege of Troy, the adventure of the Seven against Thebes, the carrying off of the daughters of Leucippus, Ulysses shooting down the Suitors, are here represented in detail. Professor Benndorf, who has published these sculptures in an admirable volume, is disposed to see in them the influence of the Thasian painter Polygnotus. Any one can see their kinship to painting, and their subjects recur in some of the great frescoes painted by Polygnotus, Micon and others for the Athenians. Like other Lycian sculptures, they contain non-Hellenic elements; in fact Lycia forms a link of the chain which extends from the wall-paintings of Assyria to works like the columns of Trajan and of Antoninus, but is not embodied in the more purely idealistic works of the highest Greek art. The date of the Vienna tomb is not much later than the middle of the 5th century. A small part of the frieze of this monument is shown in fig. 41. It will be seen that in this fragment there are two scenes, one directly above the other. In the upper line Ulysses, accompanied by his son Telemachus, is in the act of shooting the suitors, who are reclining at table in the midst of a feast; a cup-bearer, possibly Melanthius, is escaping by a door behind Ulysses. In the lower line is the central group of a frieze which represents the hunting of the Calydonian boar, which is represented, as is usual in the best time of Greek art, as an ordinary animal and no monster.

Portraits.

Archaeologists have recently begun to pay more attention to an interesting branch of Greek art which had until recently been neglected, that of sculptured portraits. The known portraits of the 5th century now include Pericles, Herodotus, Thucydides, Anacreon, Sophocles, Euripides, Socrates and others. As might be expected in a time when style in sculpture was so strongly pronounced, these portraits, when not later unfaithful copies, are notably ideal. They represent the great men whom they portray not in the spirit of realism. Details are neglected, expression is not elaborated; the sculptor tries to represent what is permanent in his subject rather than what is temporary. Hence these portraits do not seem to belong to a particular time of life; they only represent a man in the perfection of physical force and mental energy. And the race or type is clearly shown through individual traits. In some cases it is still disputed whether statues of this age represent deities or mortals, so notable are the repose and dignity which even human figures acquire under the hands of 5th-century masters. The Pericles after Cresilas in the British Museum, and the athlete-portraits of Polyclitus, are good examples.

_Period III. 400-300 B.C._--The high ideal level attained by Greek art at the end of the 5th century is maintained in the 4th. There cannot be any question of decay in it save at Athens, where undoubtedly the loss of religion and the decrease of national prosperity acted prejudicially. But in Peloponnesus the time was one of expansion; several new and important cities, such as Messene, Megalopolis and Mantinea, arose under the protection of Epaminondas. And in Asia the Greek cities were still prosperous and artistic, as were the cities of Italy and Sicily which kept their independence. On the whole we find during this age some diminution of the freshness and simplicity of art; it works less in the service of the gods and more in that of private patrons; it becomes less ethical and more sentimental and emotional. On the other hand, there can be no doubt that technique both in painting and sculpture advanced with rapid strides; artists had a greater mastery of their materials, and ventured on a wider range of subject.

FIG. 41.--Odysseus and Suitors; Hunting of Boar.]

In the 4th century no new temples of importance rose at Athens; the Acropolis had taken its final form; but at Messene, Tegea, Epidaurus and elsewhere, very admirable buildings arose. The remains of the temple at Tegea are of wonderful beauty and finish; as are those of the theatre and the so-called _Tholus_ of Epidaurus. In Asia Minor vast temples of the Ionic order arose, especially at Miletus and Ephesus. The colossal pillars of Miletus astonish the visitors to the Louvre; while the sculptured columns of Ephesus in the British Museum (Plate II. fig. 59) show a high level of artistic skill. The Mausoleum erected about 350 B.C. at Halicarnassus in memory of Mausolus, king of Caria, and adorned with sculpture by the most noted artists of the day, was reckoned one of the wonders of the world. It has been in part restored in the British Museum. Mr Oldfield's conjectural restoration, published in _Archaeologia_ for 1895, though it has many rivals, surpasses them all in the lightness of the effect, and in close correspondence to the description by Pliny. We show a small part of the sculptural decoration, representing a battle between Greeks and Amazons (Plate IV. fig. 70), wherein the energy of the action and the careful balance of figure against figure are remarkable. We possess also the fine portraits of Mausolus himself and his wife Artemisia, which stood in or on the building, as well as part of a gigantic chariot with four horses which surmounted it.

Another architectural work of the 4th century, in its way a gem, is the structure set up at Athens by Lysicrates, in memory of a choragic victory. This still survives, though the reliefs with which it is adorned have suffered severely from the weather.

FIG. 42.--Greek Drawing of Women Playing at Knucklebones.]

The 4th century is the brilliant period of ancient painting. It opens with the painters of the Asiatic School, Zeuxis and Parrhasius and Protogenes, with their contemporaries Nicias and Apollodorus of Athens, Timanthes of Sicyon or Cythnus, and Euphranor of Corinth. It witnesses the rise of a great school at Sicyon, under Eupompus and Pamphilus, which was noted for its scientific character and the fineness of its drawing, and which culminated in Apelles, the painter of Alexander the Great, and probably the greatest master of the art in antiquity. To each of these painters a separate article is given, fixing their place in the history of the art. Of their paintings unfortunately we can form but a very inadequate notion. Vase-paintings, which in the 5th century give us some notion at least of contemporary drawing, are less careful in the 4th century. Now and then we find on them figures admirably designed, or successfully foreshortened; but these are rare occurrences. The art of the vase decorator has ceased to follow the methods and improvements of contemporary fresco painters, and is pursued as a mere branch of commerce.

But very few actual paintings of the age survive, and even these fragmentary remains have with time lost the freshness of their colouring; nor are they in any case the work of a noteworthy hand. We reproduce two examples. The first is from a stone of the vault of a Crimean grave (Plate IV. fig. 67). The date of the grave is fixed to the 4th century by ornaments found in it, among which was a gold coin of Alexander the Great. The representation is probably of Demeter or her priestess, her hair bound with poppies and other flowers. The original is of large size. The other illustration (fig. 42) represents the remains of a drawing on marble, representing a group of women playing knucklebones. It was found at Herculaneum. Though signed by one Alexander of Athens, who was probably a worker of the Roman age, Professor Robert is right in maintaining that Alexander only copied a design of the age of Zeuxis and Parrhasius. In fact the drawing and grouping is so closely like that of reliefs of about 400 B.C. that the drawing is of great historic value, though there be no colouring. Several other drawings of the same class have been found at Herculaneum, and on the walls of the Transtiberine Villa at Rome (now in the Terme Museum).

FIG. 43.--Hermes of Praxiteles; restored.]

Praxiteles.

Until about the year 1880, our knowledge of the great Greek sculptors of the 4th century was derived mostly from the statements of ancient writers and from Roman copies, or what were supposed to be copies, of their works. We are now in a far more satisfactory position. We now possess an original work of Praxiteles, and sculptures executed under the immediate direction of, if not from the hand of, other great sculptors of that age--Scopas, Timotheus and others. Among all the discoveries made at Olympia, none has become so familiar to the artistic world as that of the Hermes of Praxiteles. It is the first time that we have become possessed of a first-rate Greek original by one of the greatest of sculptors. Hitherto almost all the statues in our museums have been either late copies of Greek works of art, or else the mere decorative sculpture of temples and tombs, which was by the ancients themselves but little regarded. But we can venture without misgiving to submit the new Hermes to the strictest examination, sure that in every line and touch we have the work of a great artist. This is more than we can say of any of the literary remains of antiquity--poem, play or oration. Hermes is represented by the sculptor (fig. 43 and Plate VI. fig. 82) in the act of carrying the young child Dionysus to the nymphs who were charged with his rearing. On the journey he pauses and amuses himself by holding out to the child-god a bunch of grapes, and watching his eagerness to grasp them. To the modern eye the child is not a success; only the latest art of Greece is at home in dealing with children. But the Hermes, strong without excessive muscular development, and graceful without leanness, is a model of physical formation, and his face expresses the perfection of health, natural endowment and sweet nature. The statue can scarcely be called a work of religious art in the modern or Christian sense of the word religious, but from the Greek point of view it is religious, as embodying the result of the harmonious development of all human faculties and life in accordance with nature.

The Hermes not only adds to our knowledge of Praxiteles, but also confirms the received views in regard to him. Already many works in galleries of sculpture had been identified as copies of statues of his school. Noteworthy among these are, the group at Munich representing Peace nursing the infant Wealth, from an original by Cephisodotus, father of Praxiteles; copies of the Cnidian Aphrodite of Praxiteles, especially one in the Vatican which is here illustrated (Plate V. fig. 71); copies of the Apollo slaying a lizard (Sauroctonus), of a Satyr (in the Capitol Museum), and others. These works, which are noted for their softness and charm, make us understand the saying of ancient critics that Praxiteles and Scopas were noted for the pathos of their works, as Pheidias and Polyclitus for the ethical quality of those they produced. But the pathos of Praxiteles is of a soft and dreamy character; there is no action, or next to none; and the emotions which he rouses are sentimental rather than passionate. Scopas, as we shall see, was of another mood. The discovery of the Hermes has naturally set archaeologists searching in the museums of Europe for other works which may from their likeness to it in various respects be set down as Praxitelean in character. In the case of many of the great sculptors of Greece--Strongylion, Silanion, Calamis and others--it is of little use to search for copies of their works, since we have little really trustworthy evidence on which to base our inquiries. But in the case of Praxiteles we really stand on a safe level. Naturally it is impossible in these pages to give any sketch of the results, some almost certain, some very doubtful, of the researches of archaeologists in quest of Praxitelean works. But we may mention a few works which have been claimed by good judges as coming from the master himself. Professor Brunn claimed as work of Praxiteles a torso of a satyr in the Louvre, in scheme identical with the well-known satyr of the Capitol. Professor Furtwangler puts in the same category a delicately beautiful head of Aphrodite at Petworth. And his translator, Mrs Strong, regards the Aberdeen head of a young man in the British Museum as the actual work of Praxiteles. Certainly this last head does not suffer when placed beside the Olympian head of Hermes. At Mantinea has been found a basis whereon stood a group of Latona and her two children, Apollo and Artemis, made by Praxiteles. This base bears reliefs representing the musical contest of Apollo and Marsyas, with the Muses as spectators, reliefs very pleasing in style, and quite in the manner of Attic artists of the 4th century. But of course we must not ascribe them to the hand of Praxiteles himself; great sculptors did not themselves execute the reliefs which adorned temples and other monuments, but reserved them for their pupils. Yet the graceful figures of the Muses of Mantinea suggest how much was due to Praxiteles in determining the tone and character of Athenian art in relief in the 4th century. Exactly the same style which marks them belongs also to a mass of sepulchral monuments at Athens, and such works as the Sidonian sarcophagus of the Mourning Women, to be presently mentioned.

Scopas.

Excavation on the site of the temple of Athena Alea at Tegea has resulted in the recovery of works of the school of Scopas. Pausanias tells us that Scopas was the architect of the temple, and so important in the case of a Greek temple is the sculptural decoration, that we can scarcely doubt that the sculpture also of the temple at Tegea was under the supervision of Scopas, especially as he was more noted as a sculptor than as an architect. In the pediments of the temple were represented two scenes from mythology, the hunting of the Calydonian boar and the combat between Achilles and Telephus. To one or other of these scenes belong several heads of local marble discovered on the spot, which are very striking from their extraordinary life and animation. Unfortunately they are so much injured that they can scarcely be made intelligible except by the help of restoration; we therefore engrave one of them, the helmeted head, as restored by a German sculptor (Plate III. fig. 63). The strong bony frame of this head, and its depth from front to back, are not less noteworthy than the parted lips and deeply set and strongly shaded eye; the latter features impart to the head a vividness of expression such as we have found in no previous work of Greek art, but which sets the key to the developments of art which take place in the Hellenistic age. A draped torso of Atalanta from the same pediment has been fitted to one of these heads. Hitherto Scopas was known to us, setting aside literary records, only as one of the sculptors who had worked at the Mausoleum. Ancient critics and travellers, however, bear ample testimony to his fame, and the wide range of his activity, which extended to northern Greece, Peloponnese and Asia Minor. His Maenads and his Tritons and other beings of the sea were much copied in antiquity. But perhaps he reached his highest level in statues such as that of Apollo as leader of the Muses, clad in long drapery.

Timotheus, Bryaxis, Leochares.

The interesting precinct of Aesculapius at Epidaurus has furnished us with specimens of the style of an Athenian contemporary of Scopas, who worked with him on the Mausoleum. An inscription which records the sums spent on the temple of the Physician-god, informs us that the models for the sculptures of the pediments, and one set of acroteria or roof adornments, were the work of Timotheus. Of the pedimental figures and the acroteria considerable fragments have been recovered, and we may with confidence assume that at all events the models for these were by Timotheus. It is strange that the unsatisfactory arrangement whereby a noted sculptor makes models and some local workman the figures enlarged from those models, should have been tolerated by so artistic a people as the Greeks. The subjects of the pediments appear to have been the common ones of battles between Greek and Amazon and between Lapith and Centaur. We possess fragments of some of the Amazon figures, one of which, striking downwards at the enemy, is here shown (fig. 44). Their attitudes are vigorous and alert; but the work shows no delicacy of detail. Figures of Nereids riding on horses, which were found on the same site, may very probably be roof ornaments (acroteria) of the temple. We have also several figures of Victory, which probably were acroteria on some smaller temple, perhaps that of Artemis. A base found at Athens, sculptured with figures of horsemen in relief, bears the name of Bryaxis, and was probably made by a pupil of his. Probable conjecture assigns to Leochares the originals copied in the Ganymede of the Vatican, borne aloft by an eagle (Plate I. fig. 53) and the noble statue of Alexander the Great at Munich (see LEOCHARES). Thus we may fairly say that we are now acquainted with the work of all the great sculptors who worked on the Mausoleum--Scopas, Bryaxis, Leochares and Timotheus; and are in a far more advantageous position than were the archaeologists of 1880 for determining the artistic problems connected with that noblest of ancient tombs.

Contemporary with the Athenian school of Praxiteles and Scopas was the great school of Argos and Sicyon, of which Lysippus was the most distinguished member. Lysippus continued the academic traditions of Polyclitus, but he was far bolder in his choice of subjects and more innovating in style. Gods, heroes and mortals alike found in him a sculptor who knew how to combine fine ideality with a vigorous actuality. He was at the height of his fame during Alexander's life, and the grandiose ambition of the great Macedonian found him ample employment, especially in the frequent representation of himself and his marshals.

We have none of the actual works of Lysippus; but our best evidence for his style will be found in the statue of Agias an athlete (Plate V. fig. 74) found at Delphi, and shown by an inscription to be a marble copy of a bronze original by Lysippus. The Apoxyomenus of the Vatican (man scraping himself with a strigil) (Plate VI. fig. 79) has hitherto been regarded as a copy from Lysippus; but of this there is no evidence, and the style of that statue belongs rather to the 3rd century than the 4th. The Agias, on the other hand, is in style contemporary with the works of 4th-century sculptors.

Of the elaborate groups of combatants with which Lysippus enriched such centres as Olympia and Delphi, or of the huge bronze statues which he erected in temples and shrines, we can form no adequate notion. Perhaps among the extant heads of Alexander the one which is most likely to preserve the style of Lysippus is the head from Alexandria in the British Museum (Plate II. fig. 56), though this was executed at a later time.

Many noted extant statues may be attributed with probability to the latter part of the 4th or the earlier part of the 3rd century. We will mention a few only. The celebrated group at Florence representing Niobe and her children falling before the arrows of Apollo and Artemis is certainly a work of the pathetic school, and may be by a pupil of Praxiteles. Niobe, in an agony of grief, which is in the marble tempered and idealized, tries to protect her youngest daughter from destruction (Plate VI. fig. 78). Whether the group can have originally been fitted into the gable of a temple is a matter of dispute.

Two great works preserved in the Louvre are so noted that it is but necessary to mention them, the Aphrodite of Melos (Plate VI. fig. 77), in which archaeologists are now disposed to see the influence of Scopas, and the Victory of Samothrace (Plate III. figs. 61 and 62), an original set up by Demetrius Poliorcetes after a naval victory won at Salamis in Cyprus in 306 B.C. over the fleet of Ptolemy, king of Egypt.

Nor can we pass over without notice two works so celebrated as the Apollo of the Belvidere in the Vatican (Plate II. fig. 55), and the Artemis of Versailles. The Apollo is now by most archaeologists regarded as probably a copy of a work of Leochares, to whose Ganymede it bears a superficial resemblance. The Artemis is regarded as possibly due to some artist of the same age. But it is by no means clear that we have the right to remove either of these figures from among the statues of the Hellenistic age. The old theory of Preller, which saw in them copies from a trophy set up to commemorate the repulse of the Gauls at Delphi in 278 B.C., has not lost its plausibility.

FIG. 45.--Tomb of Mourning Women: Sidon.]

Sarcophagi of Sidon.

This may be the most appropriate place for mentioning the remarkable find made at Sidon in 1886 of a number of sarcophagi, which once doubtless contained the remains of kings of Sidon. They are now in the museum of Constantinople, and are admirably published by Hamdy Bey and T. Reinach (_Une Necropole royale a Sidon_, 1892-1896). The sarcophagi in date cover a considerable period. The earlier are made on Egyptian models, the covers shaped roughly in the form of a human body or mummy. The later, however, are Greek in form, and are clearly the work of skilled Greek sculptors, who seem to have been employed by the grandees of Phoenicia in the adornment of their last resting-places. Four of these sarcophagi in particular claim attention, and in fact present us with examples of Greek art of the 5th and 4th centuries in several of its aspects. To the 5th century belong the tomb of the Satrap, the reliefs of which bring before us the activities and glories of some unknown king, and the Lycian sarcophagus, so called from its form, which resembles that of tombs found in Lycia, and which is also adorned with reliefs which have reference to the past deeds of the hero buried in the tomb, though these deeds are represented, not in the Oriental manner directly, but in the Greek manner, clad in mythological forms. To the 4th century belong two other sarcophagi. One of these is called the Tomb of Mourning Women. On all sides of it alike are ranged a series of beautiful female figures, separated by Ionic pillars, each in a somewhat different attitude, though all attitudes denoting grief (fig. 45). The pediments at the ends of the cover are also closely connected with the mourning for the loss of a friend and protector, which is the theme of the whole decoration of the sarcophagus. We see depicted in them the telling of the news of the death, with the results in the mournful attitude of the two seated figures. The mourning women must be taken, not as the representation of any persons in particular, but generally as the expression of the feeling of a city. Such figures are familiar to us in the art of the second Attic school; we could easily find parallels to the sarcophagus among the 4th-century sepulchral reliefs of Athens. We can scarcely be mistaken in attributing the workmanship of this beautiful sarcophagus to some sculptor trained in the school of Praxiteles. And it is a conjecture full of probability that it once contained the body of Strato, king of Sidon, who ruled about 380 B.C., and who was _proxenos_ or public friend of the Athenians.

More celebrated is the astonishing tomb called that of Alexander, though there can be no doubt that, although it commemorates the victories and exploits of Alexander, it was made not to hold his remains, but those of some ruler of Sidon who was high in his favour. Among all the monuments of antiquity which have come down to us, none is more admirable than this, and none more characteristic of the Greek genius. We give, in two lines, the composition which adorned one of the sides of this sarcophagus. It represents a victory of Alexander, probably that of the Granicus (fig. 46). On the left we see the Macedonian king charging the Persian horse, on the right his general Parmenio, and in the midst a younger officer, perhaps Cleitus. Mingled with the chiefs are foot-soldiers, Greek and Macedonian, with whom the Persians are mingled in unequal fray. What most strikes the modern eye is the remarkable freshness and force of the action and the attitudes. Those, however, who have seen the originals have been specially impressed with the colouring, whereof, of course, our engraving gives no hint, but which is applied to the whole surface of the relief with equal skill and delicacy. There are other features in the relief on which a Greek eye would have dwelt with special pleasure--the exceedingly careful symmetry of the whole, the balancing of figure against figure, the skill with which the result of the battle is hinted rather than depicted. The composition is one in which the most careful planning and the most precise calculation are mingled with freedom of hand and expressiveness in detail. The faces in particular show more expression than would be tolerated in art of the previous century. We are unable as yet to assign an author or even a school to the sculptor of this sarcophagus; he comes to us as a new and striking phenomenon in the history of ancient art. The reliefs which adorn the other sides of the sarcophagus are almost equally interesting. On one side we see Alexander again, in the company of a Persian noble, hunting a lion. The short sides also show us scenes of fighting and hunting. In fact it can scarcely be doubted that if we had but a clue to the interpretation of the reliefs, they would be found to embody historic events of the end of the 4th century. There are but a few other works of art, such as the Bayeux tapestry and the Column of Trajan, which bring contemporary history so vividly before our eyes. The battles with the Persians represented in some of the sculpture of the Parthenon and the temple of Nike at Athens are treated conventionally and with no attempt at realism; but here the ideal and the actual are blended into a work of consummate art, which is at the same time, to those who can read the language of Greek art, a historic record. The portraits of Alexander the Great which appear on this sarcophagus are almost contemporary, and the most authentic likenesses of him which we possess. The great Macedonian exercised so strong an influence on contemporary art that a multitude of heads of the age, both of gods and men, and even the portraits of his successors, show traces of his type.

We have yet to mention what are among the most charming and the most characteristic products of the Greek chisel, the beautiful tombs, adorned with seated or standing portraits or with reliefs, which were erected in great numbers on all the main roads of Greece. A great number of these from the Dipylon cemetery are preserved in the Central Museum at Athens, and impress all visitors by the gentle sentiment and the charm of grouping which they display (Gardner, _Sculptured Tombs of Hellas_).

FIG. 46.--Battle of The Granicus: Sarcophagus from Sidon.]

_Period IV., 300-50 B.C._--There can be no question but that the period which followed the death of Alexander, commonly called the age of Hellenism, was one of great activity and expansion in architecture. The number of cities founded by himself and his immediate successors in Asia and Egypt was enormous. The remains of these cities have in a few cases (Ephesus, Pergamum, Assus, Priene, Alexandria) been partially excavated. But the adaptation of Greek architecture to the needs of the semi-Greek peoples included in the dominions of the kings of Egypt, Syria and Pergamum is too vast a subject for us to enter upon here (see ARCHITECTURE).

Painting during this age ceased to be religious. It was no longer for temples and public stoae that artists worked, but for private persons; especially they made frescoes for the decoration of the walls of houses, and panel pictures for galleries set up by rich patrons. The names of very few painters of the Hellenistic age have come down to us. There can be no doubt that the character of the art declined, and there were no longer produced great works to be the pride of cities, or to form an embodiment for all future time of the qualities of a deity or the circumstances of scenes mythical or historic. But at the same time the mural paintings of Pompeii and other works of the Roman age, which are usually more or less nearly derived from Hellenistic models, prove that in technical matters painting continued to progress. Colouring became more varied, groups more elaborate, perspective was worked out with greater accuracy, and imagination shook itself free from many of the conventions of early art. Pompeian painting, however, must be treated of under Roman, not under Greek art. We figure a single example, to show the elaboration of painting at Alexandria and elsewhere, the wonderful Pompeian mosaic (fig. 47), which represents the victory of Alexander at Issus. This work being in stone has preserved its colouring; and it stands at a far higher level of art than ordinary Pompeian paintings, which are the work of mere house-decorators. This on the contrary is certainly copied from the work of a great master. It is instructive to compare it with the sarcophagus illustrated in Fig. 46, which it excels in perspective and in the freedom of individual figures, though the composition is much less careful and precise. Alexander charges from the left (his portrait being the least successful part of the picture), and bears down a young Persian; Darius in his chariot flees towards the right; in the foreground a young knight is trying to manage a restive horse. It will be observed how very simple is the indication of locality: a few stones and a broken tree stand for rocks and woods.

Among the original sculptural creations of the early Hellenistic age, a prominent place is claimed by the statue of Fortune, typifying the city of Antioch (Plate VI. fig. 81), a work of Eutychides, a pupil of Lysippus. Of this we possess a small copy, which is sufficient to show how worthy of admiration was the original. We have a beautiful embodiment of the personality of the city, seated on a rock, holding ears of corn, while the river Orontes, embodied in a young male figure, springs forth at her feet.

FIG. 47.--Mosaic of the Battle of Issus (Naples).]

This is, so far as we know, almost the only work of the early part of the 3rd century which shows imagination. Sculptors often worked on a colossal scale, producing such monsters as the colossal Apollo at Rhodes, the work of Chares of Lindus, which was more than 100 ft. in height. But they did not show freshness or invention; and for the most part content themselves with varying the types produced in the great schools of the 4th century. The wealthy kings of Syria, Egypt and Asia Minor formed art galleries, and were lavish in their payments; but it has often been proved in the history of art that originality cannot be produced by mere expenditure.

A great artist, whose date has been disputed, but who is now assigned to the Hellenistic age, Damophon of Messene, is known to us from his actual works. He set up in the shrine of the _Mistress_ (Despoena) at Lycosura in Arcadia a great group of figures consisting of Despoena, Demeter, Artemis and the Titan Anytus. Three colossal heads found on the spot probably belong to the three last-mentioned deities. We illustrate the head of Anytus, with wild disordered hair and turbulent expression (fig. 48). Dr Dorpfeld has argued, on architectural grounds, that shrine and images alike must be given to a later time than the 4th century; and this judgment is now confirmed by inscriptional and other evidence.

In one important direction sculpture certainly made progress. Hitherto Greek sculptors had contented themselves with studying the human body whether in rest or motion, from outside. The dissection of the human body, with a consequent increase in knowledge of anatomy, became usual at Alexandria in the medical school which flourished under the Ptolemies. This improved anatomical knowledge soon reacted upon the art of sculpture. Works such as the Fighter of Agasias in the Louvre (Plate IV. fig. 69), and in a less degree the Apoxyomenus (Plate VI. fig. 79), display a remarkable internal knowledge of the human frame, such as could only come from the habit of dissection. Whether this was really productive of improvement in sculpture may be doubted. But it is impossible to withhold one's admiration from works which show an astonishing knowledge of the body of man down to its bony framework, and a power and mastery of execution which have never since been surpassed.

With accuracy in the portrayal of men's bodies goes of necessity a more naturalistic tendency in portraiture. As we have seen, the art of portraiture was at a high ideal level in the Pheidian age; and even in the age of Alexander the Great, notable men were rendered rather according to the idea than the fact. To a base and mechanical naturalism Greek art never at any time descended. But from 300 B.C. onwards we have a marvellous series of portraits which may be termed rather characteristic than ideal, which are very minute in their execution, and delight in laying emphasis on the havoc wrought by time and life on the faces of noteworthy men. Such are the portraits of Demosthenes, of Antisthenes, of Zeno and others, which exist in our galleries. And it was no long step from these actual portraits to the invention of characteristic types to represent the great men of a past generation, such as Homer and Lycurgus, or to form generic images to represent weatherbeaten fishermen or toothless old women.

Altar of Pergamum.

Our knowledge of the art of the later Hellenistic age has received a great accession since 1875 through the systematic labours directed by the German Archaeological Institute, which have resulted in recovering the remains of Pergamum, the fortress-city which was the capital of the dynasty of the Philetaeri. Among the ancient buildings of Pergamum none was more ambitious in scale and striking in execution than the great altar used for sacrifices to Zeus, a monument supposed to be referred to in the phrase of the Apocalypse "where Satan's throne is." This altar, like many great sacrificial altars of later Greece, was a vast erection to which one mounted by many steps, and its outside was adorned with a frieze which represented on a gigantic scale, in the style of the 2nd century B.C., the battle between the gods and the giants. This enormous frieze (see PERGAMUM) is now one of the treasures of the Royal Museums of Berlin, and it cannot fail to impress visitors by the size of the figures, the energy of the action, and the strong vein of sentiment which pervades the whole, giving it a certain air of modernity, though the subject is strange to the Christian world. In early Greek art the giants where they oppose the gods are represented as men armed in full panoply, "in shining armour, holding long spears in their hands," to use the phrase in which Hesiod describes them. But in the Pergamene frieze the giants are strange compounds, having the heads and bodies of wild and fierce barbarians, sometimes also human legs, but sometimes in the place of legs two long serpents, the heads of which take with the giants themselves a share in the battle. Sometimes also they are winged. The gods appear in the forms which had been gradually made for them in the course of Greek history, but they are usually accompanied by the animals sacred to them in cultus, between which and the serpent-feet of the giants a weird combat goes on. We can conjecture the source whence the Pergamene artist derived the shaggy hair, the fierce expression, the huge muscles of his giants (fig. 49); probably these features came originally from the Galatians, who at the time had settled in Asia Minor, and were spreading the terror of their name and the report of their savage devastations through all Asia Minor. The victory over the giants clearly stands for the victory of Greek civilization over Gallic barbarism; and this meaning is made more emphatic because the gods are obviously inferior in physical force to their opponents, indeed, a large proportion of the divine combatants are goddesses. Yet everywhere the giants are overthrown, writhing in pain on the ground, or transfixed by the weapons of their opponents; everywhere the gods are victorious, yet in the victory retain much of their divine calm. The piecing together of the frieze at Berlin has been a labour of many years; it is now complete, and there is a special museum devoted to it. Some of the groups have become familiar to students from photographs, especially the group which represents Zeus slaying his enemies with thunderbolts, and the group wherein Athena seizes by the hair an overthrown opponent, who is winged, while Victory runs to crown her, and beneath is seen Gaia, the earth-goddess who is the mother of the giants, rising out of the ground, and mourning over her vanquished and tortured children. Another and smaller frieze which also decorated the altar-place gives us scenes from the history of Telephus, who opposed the landing of the army of Agamemnon in Asia Minor and was overthrown by Achilles. This frieze, which is quite fragmentary, is put together by Dr Schneider in the _Jahrbuch_ of the German Archaeological Institute for 1900.

Since the Renaissance Rome has continually produced a crop of works of Greek art of all periods, partly originals brought from Greece by conquering generals, partly copies, such as the group at Rome formerly known as Paetus and Arria, and the overthrown giants and barbarians which came from the elaborate trophy set up by Attalus at Athens, of which copies exist in many museums. A noted work of kindred school is the group of Laocoon and his sons (Plate I. fig. 52), signed by Rhodian sculptors of the 1st century B.C., which has been perhaps more discussed than any work of the Greek chisel, and served as a peg for the aesthetic theories of Lessing and Goethe. In our days the histrionic and strained character of the group is regarded as greatly diminishing its interest, in spite of the astounding skill and knowledge of the human body shown by the artists. To the same school belong the late representations of Marsyas being flayed by the victorious Apollo (Plate II. fig. 54), a somewhat repulsive subject, chosen by the artists of this age as a means for displaying their accurate knowledge of anatomy.

On what a scale some of the artists of Asia Minor would work is shown us by the enormous group, by Apollonius and Tauriscus of Tralles, which is called the Farnese Bull (Plate I. fig. 51), and which represents how Dirce was tied to a wild bull by her stepsons Zethus and Amphion.

Rome.

The extensive excavations and alterations which have taken place at Rome in recent years have been very fruitful; the results may be found partly in the palace of the Conservatori on the Capitol, partly in the new museum of the Terme. Among recently found statues none excel in interest some bronzes of large size dating from the Hellenistic age. In the figure of a seated boxer (Plate V. fig. 72), in scale somewhat exceeding life, attitude and gesture are expressive. Evidently the boxer has fought already, and is awaiting a further conflict. His face is cut and swollen; on his hands are the terrible caestus, here made of leather, and not loaded with iron, like the caestus described by Virgil. The figure is of astounding force; but though the face is brutal and the expression savage, in the sweep of the limbs there is nobility, even ideal beauty. To the last the Greek artist could not set aside his admiration for physical perfection. Another bronze figure of more than life-size is that of a king of the Hellenistic age standing leaning on a spear. He is absolutely nude, like the athletes of Polyclitus. Another large bronze presents us with a Hellenistic type of Dionysus.

Besides the bronzes found in Rome we may set those recently found in the sea on the coast of Cythera, the contents of a ship sailing from Greece to Rome, and lost on the way. The date of these bronze statues has been disputed. In any case, even if executed in the Roman age, they go back to originals of the 5th and 4th centuries. The most noteworthy among them is a beautiful athlete (Plate V. fig. 73) standing with hand upraised, which reflects the style of the Attic school of the 4th century.

After 146 B.C. when Corinth was destroyed and Greece became a Roman province, Greek art, though by no means extinct, worked mainly in the employ of the Roman conquerors (see ROMAN ART).