Chapter III: Appendix: A List of the Published Works of the Author 89 (2)

The Hellenistic reliefs may be divided into three classes: the pastoral reliefs such as the scenes showing sheep and a lioness and cubs, called the Grimani reliefs, in Vienna; mythological reliefs like the Bellerophon and Pegasus of the Palazzo Spada,[50] or Perseus and Andromeda of the Capitol[51] in Rome; and more complicated little scenes or groups like the Menander relief of the Lateran,[52] the Apotheosis of Homer,[53] the slaying of the Niobids,[54] or the visit of Dionysos to a dramatic poet.[55] They are all closely related to painting--how closely a reference to Pompeian wall-paintings or mosaics like the famous Praenestine pavement will show--but there are some differences between the groups which are worthy of mention. The pastoral scenes are straightforward and naturalistic. The little group of a countryman driving a cow past a ruined temple in Munich is a good example of straightforward naturalism. The mythological reliefs are usually distinctly affected in style. The gesture with which Perseus receives Andromeda is like that of an exquisite handing a lady from her carriage. Bellerophon waters his horse with a nonchalant air.[56] Daedalos and Icaros[57] present a curious mixture of affectation and realism. But it may now be regarded as certain that the Spada reliefs are Augustan in date at the earliest, and the affectation may well be imported. This is, indeed, partially demonstrated by a comparison of the two copies of the Daedalos-Icaros group in the Villa Albani, of which one is Roman, the other probably late Hellenistic. At the same time it is remarkable that the figures of the mythological reliefs all show the long slender proportions of Lysippos. This at once suggests a Rhodian connexion. Mythological groups are favourites in Rhodes, and it is the one place where the Lysippic tradition certainly lasted. It is not a wholly hazardous suggestion to propose a Rhodian origin for the mythological, and an Alexandrian origin for the pastoral, reliefs. One might be tempted, therefore, to ascribe the most intimate and domestic scenes to Pergamon, but there is insufficient evidence for proof at present, though the reliefs deserve careful study with these possible divisions in mind.

In general we can only point out their fine naturalism and perfect execution. Their artists seem to have mastered all the problems of perspective and to deal with the third dimension as easily as with the other two. It is natural to notice some advance in freedom of style. The earlier reliefs, like the Telephos frieze, or the Dolon relief,[58] are in less pronounced relief and with less carefully conceived perspective. Later reliefs like the so-called Menander relief show some of the figures in part detached from the background, while the perspective of a group is most subtly graded. We may compare the finest of them with the bronze doors of the Florentine Baptistery and their marvellous panels.

We are still left with one important monument of Alexandrian art which perhaps can be treated most fitly in connexion with the pastoral reliefs--the great statue of the Nile in the Braccio Nuovo of the Vatican (Fig. 24). The god lies out at length supported on his elbow, and little boys, representing the cubits of his annual rise, play about over him. The work is a Roman copy, and tells us little of technique, but the _putti_ are interesting as a typical Hellenistic development. This is the period in which Eros, who has been growing steadily younger from the youth of Praxiteles to the boy of Lysippos, turns finally into the chubby Roman Cupid or Amorino of Renaissance art. As such he helps Aphrodite in her toilet or performs all manner of tasks in the fine frieze of Erotes at Ephesos. It is the logical ending of the transformation of mythology into _genre_. Alexandrian art is essentially mundane and frivolous, sceptical and humorous. Her artists would have appreciated the earlier Pergamene developments, but they would have laughed at the clumsy idealism of the great altar frieze. Nor would they have felt much sympathy with the athletic art of Rhodes.

We may perhaps consider here the little we know of the art of Antioch, since it has certain points in common with that of Alexandria. The chief monument used in all discussion of Antiochene art is the statue of Antioch[59] on the Orontes, made by Eutychides, a pupil of Lysippos. A small copy of this in the Vatican shows us a fine seated figure crowned with the turreted crown, who rests her foot on a little male figure with outstretched arms representing the stream of the Orontes. Unfortunately the copy is too small to give us much information about the artist, though he seems to have used the same idea for another statue of the Eurotas. We have, however, a figure of Aphrodite from Egypt (Fig. 25), which shows a supporting Triton in an attitude indubitably connected with the figure of the Orontes. This is an Egyptian work, but it argues some artistic connexion between Alexandria and the Seleucid capital. Another link is given us by the statement[60] that the Apollo at Daphne near Antioch was made by Bryaxis, the author of the Alexandrian Sarapis.

Antioch, though like Alexandria in many respects--in her turbulent population, her cosmopolitanism, her irreverence for all authority--seems never to have developed the cultured love of literature and the arts which we find at Pergamon and on the Nile. She remained in all probability a collector and not an originator of art. The glimpses which we can get of her statues indicate a catholic taste. The Apollo seated on the Omphalos, which decorates the Seleucid coins, resembles the Lysippic type, and a Herakles type, also found on Syrian coins and reproduced in the bronze colossus of the Conservatori, has some connexion with the later Sikyonian school. By the side of these we must place the Apollo of Bryaxis.

Ephesos, a strong place more or less at the meeting-point of three empires, has left us considerable remains of Hellenistic art. Her bronze athlete at Vienna (Fig. 26) belongs to a later development of the Scopaic school; her frieze of Erotes[61] is more in the Alexandrian manner. Some beautiful bronzes, in particular a Herakles attacking a centaur,[62] are in the mixed Lysippo-Scopaic manner. There are also traces of Praxitelean influence in her art.

These cosmopolitan collecting centres cannot tell us much of the methods of Hellenistic art. Our best resource is to examine more closely the works of certified origin. Ephesos is, however, important for its school of copyists. The marble copies of the Attalid dedications were perhaps made here, and Agasias, the author of the Borghese Fighter,[63] was an Ephesian by birth, although a Rhodian by education.

III

THE RHODIAN SCHOOL

The school of Rhodes stands on a different footing from that of Pergamon or Alexandria. The latter were new foundations, or at least new societies, in which the Greek element was associated with much that was alien and exotic. The orgiastic wildness of Phrygia went far to influence the art of Pergamon, whether in its earlier sensuality or its later pageantry of exaggerated triumph. In Alexandria and in Antioch non-Greek races imported into Hellenic art the cynicism and the world-weariness of older and exhausted civilizations. But Rhodes was pure Greek and a living, growing, prosperous community without recollections of humiliation and defeat. Rhodes as a city had been born of the union of Lindos, Kameiros, and Ialysos at the end of the fifth century. The fourth century brought slow growth, but the successful defence against Demetrios Poliorcetes in its last decade opened a new chapter in Rhodian history. Henceforward Rhodes was mistress of an empire. She acquired possessions on the mainland; her fleet rode and controlled her neighbouring seas; her trade stretched out tentacles in all directions; and among the semi-barbarous Hellenistic kingdoms she alone carried proudly the torch of undefiled Hellenic tradition. Chares of Lindos, a pupil of Lysippos, headed the long roll of her sculptors; her painter, Protogenes, had but one rival in the Sikyonian Apelles. Thus from the first she boasted great artists, closely connected too with the school of Sikyon. Her Dorian sympathies naturally isolated her from the Attic school and from the mixed Praxitelean-Scopaic school of the Ionian mainland. Her Peloponnesian and Sikyonian connexions identified her at once with athletic art and with the school of Lysippos. Thus while Alexandria and Pergamon patronized marble sculpture, Rhodes now becomes the home of bronze casting. Her vast Colossus was matched by at least one hundred more statues of remarkable size, and the roll of her artists as recorded in inscriptions is noteworthy for its length. The great siege gave that impulse of idealism which is necessary for the growth of any artistic development, and the traditional friendship with the rising power of Rome helped her to preserve her prosperity and independence later than any of her neighbours. The last great work of Rhodian art, the Laocoon, is almost as late as the Empire, and the whole period of two hundred and fifty years between it and the Colossus is marked by an immense output of sculpture.

We have already suggested that the Hellenistic art of Rhodes began under the dominant influence of the athletic school of Lysippos. We must first examine the character and achievements of this school. Daippos, Boedas, and Euthykrates are said to have been sons and pupils of the great Sikyonian. Of these Euthykrates was the best known, and Pliny tells us that he followed his father’s carefulness rather than his elegance, and that his style was more severe than genial (‘constantiam potius imitatus patris quam elegantiam austero maluit genere quam iucundo placere’).[64] His works were mainly athletic or equestrian, with a few female subjects, and his pupil Tisicrates was a faithful copyist of the style of Lysippos, so much so, in fact, that his works could hardly be distinguished from the master’s. Daippos made a _perixyomenos_ or athlete scraping himself,[65] and Boedas made an _adorans_ or praying figure.[66]

Pliny’s description is important, because it assures us of the faithfulness with which the pupils of Lysippos kept to their master’s style. This is the basis for the argument of those who see in the Apoxyomenos of the Vatican a work of the pupil Daippos rather than the master; but the argument is two-edged, if Lysippos’ own style is to be found in the Agias, since the two statues have little in common. The mention of the _adorans_ enables us to connect two well-known bronzes with this school--the Praying Boy of Berlin (Fig. 27) and the Resting Hermes of Naples (Fig. 28). The Praying Boy is a subject unparalleled elsewhere, and belongs to the early Hellenistic age. He can hardly be other than a copy of the statue of Boedas. The slender proportions and small head follow the Lysippic canon, and the easy swing of the body proves its chronological position. This figure and the others, which we shall subsequently notice, show a new growth of naturalism by less insistence on the outlines of the torso muscles. The average body in repose does not show the massive muscles of Pheidian or even of Lysippic art, and the post-Lysippic sculptors of the third century tend to soften and naturalize the torso to a considerable extent. The Pergamene Dying Gaul is a good example of this fine restraint, which was utterly abandoned by the later Pergamene school and even by the late Rhodians, but which in all third-century art of Rhodes is noteworthy. The Resting Hermes is a fine copy of a post-Lysippic original, which stood in close connexion with the Praying Boy. The torso, slender, restrained, and full of vitality, shows the same treatment, and must belong to the Lysippic school.

Eutychides of Sikyon, another pupil of Lysippos, is known to us only from his Antioch.[67] This figure, even in its poor copy, is of great importance, since it is almost the only certified draped female figure of the Lysippic school. Our whole theory of Lysippic and early Rhodian drapery must, therefore, rest upon it. A comparison with the Herculaneum figure[68] in Dresden will show at once a considerable resemblance in treatment, so much so, in fact, that it has caused the attribution of the Dresden figure to the Lysippic school. This cannot be allowed because of the greater resemblance to Attic grave-reliefs and the Mantinean basis, which demonstrates the origin of the type in the school of Praxiteles.[69] But it is sufficient to show that the new scheme of the school of Praxiteles was adopted in the main by the pupils of Lysippos; their faithfulness to their teacher will incline us to the belief that Lysippos used it also. This type of drapery shows a tendency to an artificially effective or artistic arrangement rather than to complete simplicity of naturalism like the drapery of Praxiteles himself, but it is important to notice that it does not become purely artificial or stereotyped till much later, and that all the early examples preserve a considerable share of freer naturalism. The characteristic of the drapery is an opposition of folds in many differing directions, so as to counteract the uniformity of the older Pheidian type. The folds themselves are quite natural; it is only in their arrangement that we find the element of art.

The Antioch permits us to assume the tall figure swathed in a long thin cloak as the female type of the Lysippic school, and therefore of the early Rhodian school, while the Praying Boy and the Resting Hermes give us the male type. The close connexion postulated rests on the fact that Chares of Lindos, the author of Rhodes’ most famous statue, the great Colossus, was himself a member of the Sikyonian school and a pupil of the master. But the Colossus itself is unknown to us in any certain copy, and therefore we cannot speak with full knowledge of his art. Some statuettes in bronze in marked Lysippic style may well reproduce the statue, but we cannot feel the necessary certainty in their identification.

There is a group of athletic statues of the third century which carry out the Lysippic tradition to its logical conclusion, and which consequently we are practically bound to attribute to Rhodian artists. But until we have a definite copy of Chares’ work we must argue backwards to the first Rhodian school, of which we have no direct information, from the later Rhodian school, of which we know a great deal. The Laocoon[70] and the Farnese Bull[71] are certified works of Rhodian art of the first century B.C., and they show us a type of male figure which is quite distinct from the types of Pergamene and Alexandrian art. We are, therefore, entitled to argue back to the Rhodian school of the third century, and to attribute to it such athletic sculpture as is clearly of the earlier date while offering distinct technical and stylistic resemblances to the later groups. The male figures of this later period differ from the Pergamene works, with which they are most easily compared, in certain well-defined points. The heads are smaller and rounder and the hair is rougher and less carefully arranged. The eyebrows have a tendency to form sharp angles with the nose instead of the broad straight curves of the Pergamene brows. This makes the bridge of the nose thinner and usually substitutes vertical forehead wrinkles for the swelling frontal sinus of Pergamene work. Except in cases of great strain the torso muscles are treated with more restraint, but the veins receive more careful attention, especially on the abdomen. In the back a more broken-up system of muscles replaces the great upright rolls on either side of the backbone, which mark Pergamene work. Finally, the proportions are slighter and more Lysippic.

These considerations apply most powerfully to two great statues of the Louvre, whose third-century date is almost certain: the Borghese Warrior[72] and the Jason (Fig. 30). The former statue is by Agasias of Ephesos, an artist whom we can date with some degree of certainty in the middle of the third century. The Jason comes so close to the Lysippic type of Poseidon on the one hand and to the Fighter of Agasias on the other, that the Lysippic-Rhodian origin of the two is fairly well established. The analogies of the Borghese Warrior with the Apoxyomenos have been often pointed out, but his resemblances to the Laocoon and the Farnese groups require an equal recognition. Both the Louvre statues show the influence of a later generation on the Lysippic type. While reproducing the general proportions, each develops Lysippic innovations to a further degree. Lysippos made a distinct advance in anatomical skill, but both these statues show a more exact scientific knowledge. While their torso muscles are less prominent, they reveal new details in abdomen, groin, and the inner side of the thighs, unknown to the earlier sculptor. They also develop much further the Lysippic substitution of an all-round figure for a merely frontal one. Each of them can be regarded effectively from any point of view, and neither has any real front. They, therefore, represent a distinct technical advance. But at the same time they show a decline in artistic feeling, for there is perhaps too much science about them. They belong to a school immensely interested in detail, and tending, therefore, to lose its grasp on the general treatment. The anatomical structure of the male form cannot be rendered more perfectly than in the statue of Agasias, so well known to all art students, but the statue affects us with a feeling of strain and discomfort from its want of unity and repose. All the athletic statues of the Rhodian school seem to be restless and unsatisfied. There is none of the calm repose about them that marked earlier Greek art. The desire to display newly acquired scientific knowledge invariably demands a strained and therefore disquieting motive. As we shall see when we come to examine the Laocoon later, the influence of the stage appears to be affecting sculpture. Poses are histrionic, and expression begins to depend upon grimaces and action rather than upon more subtle indications of feeling.

With the Borghese Fighter and the Jason we may class, perhaps, a work like the Actaeon torso in the Louvre,[73] and also that much discussed and very beautiful work, the Subiaco Youth.[74] This shows the same restraint in torso modelling which distinguished the Praying Boy and the Resting Hermes, but in the strain of its attitude it resembles rather the Fighter of Agasias, especially in the twist of the body above the waist, which Lysippos had originated and which his pupils tend to exaggerate. One of the disquieting features of the Borghese Fighter is that he implies the presence of another figure which is not there. He is a fighter without an opponent. The Subiaco Boy is in the same plight. His attitude can hardly be other than that of a suppliant touching chin and knee of his enemy in Greek fashion. His artistic defect is that he again is a suppliant without an enemy, part of a group without his counterpart. In their anxiety to study the human figure in all positions the Rhodian artists were apt to overlook the question of artistic unity.

Two fine bronzes in the Terme Museum may be attributed with some certainty to Rhodian artists, in view of the Rhodian monopoly of Hellenistic bronze casting. Both are Greek originals--the seated boxer[75] and the hero resting on a lance (Fig. 29). The latter is commonly called a portrait of some Hellenistic prince, but the absence of the royal tiara or any personal indications is significant rather of a heroic type. The face is strongly individual, but so is that of the Boxer, the Fighter of Agasias, and even the Jason. We have no reason to see a portrait in any of them, but personality is beginning to affect even ideal statues in the Hellenistic age. The hero with the lance is a fine, if rather histrionic, figure more or less following the Lysippic type of Alexander with the lance[76] and showing a somewhat massive and emphatic rendering of a Lysippic type. He belongs to the later Rhodian school, into which exaggeration has crept, rather than to the more restrained art of the third century. The Boxer, on the other hand, brutal and coarse as his expression is, has no trace of muscular exaggeration, and is an earlier work. His broken nose, swollen ears, scarred face, and blood-bespattered hair show the unsparing realism of the artist. He is another instance of the all-round statue of the late Lysippic school, a masterpiece of technique, if a somewhat disagreeable work of art.

We can connect the names and the works of few of the earlier Rhodian artists, but Boethos of Chalcedon is now established as a worker in Rhodes,[77] where he received the honour of προξενία. Pliny mentions his Boy Strangling a Goose,[78] and the many copies of this statue in existence give us a good idea of its popularity. Boethos was apparently a silversmith and also a sculptor of boys. He was famous as a maker of elaborate couches, and we are possibly the possessors of such a couch in the fine bronze litter of the Conservatori Museum,[79] on which are little boys’ heads strikingly similar to the Boy with the Goose. This group is often quoted as an example of the new feeling for _genre_ or homely domestic detail in sculpture. It is, in fact, of great importance for its new recognition of the comic in art, and for the appearance of the fat chubby boy like the Erotes of Ephesos or the little statuettes of Alexandria. The small boy or girl now becomes a favourite subject of the sculptor, and we may compare closely with the Boy of Boethos the Eros and Psyche of the Capitol (Fig. 32), who are really a little boy and girl engaged in a children’s game.

We must now turn to another very important side of Rhodian art--the delineation of female drapery. The followers of Lysippos favoured an austere style, and the nude female figure has no place in Rhodian art. But while the other sculptors of the Hellenistic world were modifying and to some extent vulgarizing the beautiful conceptions of Scopas and Praxiteles, the Rhodians were attacking the draped female figure as they inherited it from Praxiteles and Lysippos, and producing modifications just as interesting and important as those connected with the athletic statue.

We know that Philiskos of Rhodes was the author of a group of Muses which was much admired in Rome. It has been suggested that the new type of female drapery which appears on an altar from Halicarnassos and on the relief of the Apotheosis of Homer by Archelaos of Priene, certainly a member of the Rhodian school, was his work.[80] This new type of drapery is to be seen also in a number of statues of Muses, of which we have a collection from Miletos in the museum of Constantinople.[81] It may be described most simply as an aggravation and exaggeration of the style of drapery introduced by the school of Praxiteles. The desire to get a series of folds at sharply contrasting angles leads to a very artificial arrangement of the dress, which produces an inharmonious effect. But there is a new development which deserves our attention. Transparent drapery had been elaborated by Alkamenes and the pupils of Pheidias, but always with the intention of displaying the body beneath it. The new drapery of the Muses is transparent with the desire to display other drapery beneath it. The earlier Greeks had used a thick mantle over a transparent chiton, but the Rhodian author of the new drapery used a transparent mantle over a clinging chiton. He thus doubles the subtlety of his technique, and provides himself with a series of new and intricate problems, just as the athletic sculptor does with his anatomical discoveries.

This transparent mantle immediately obtained an immense vogue, and it comes down into Roman art as a strong rival of the late Praxitelean drapery, which, however, still prevails by the side of the other. The greater number of Roman female draped statues use one or the other type of garments. The Milesian Muses are not in themselves great works of art. The real technical possibilities of the new drapery are better displayed by a wonderful figure from Magnesia in Constantinople (Fig. 31), in which the new fashion is rendered with consummate skill. It is of considerable importance that we should date this change in drapery as accurately as possible. The date hitherto proposed for its supposed author Philiskos has been put about 220 B.C. The Apotheosis of Homer is taken to be about 210 judging from a portrait of Ptolemy IV appearing in it, and the Halicarnassos base is put about the same time. But the portrait is by no means certainly that of Ptolemy IV. It is more like Ptolemy II, and might belong to any period. Philiskos himself has nothing to do with it. A female figure by him with a signed base has been discovered in Thasos (Fig. 33). The drapery of this female figure follows the type of the Mantinean basis,[82] and the earlier Muses group of the Vatican. The inscription is not earlier than the first century B.C. Philiskos, then, was a late artist who used the Praxitelean drapery. As for the transparent drapery, it is highly improbable that it was invented before the frieze of the great altar at Pergamon. We know that Rhodian artists worked on this altar, and Rhodian style is visible in some of the figures, but transparent drapery of the Rhodian type appears nowhere on the frieze. There seems to be no reason to date any figure wearing this drapery earlier than 190 B.C., and we should therefore attribute it to the second century. We have seen in the Antioch of Eutychides the Praxitelean type taken over by the earlier Rhodian artists in the third century. Have we any link by which we can connect the transparent mantle with the earlier form?

The answer to this question is provided by one of the greatest statues of antiquity, the Victory of Samothrace (Fig. 34). The date and school of this masterpiece are still warmly disputed, and the current view tends to connect it with the victory of Demetrios Poliorcetes in 306, by which he won the command of the sea. Coins of Demetrios show a trumpet-blowing Victory on the prow of a ship in an attitude closely resembling the Louvre statue. But the statue has no connexion with the coin, for a detailed study of the neck and fragments of the right shoulder reveals the impossibility of the trumpet-blowing attitude. The right hand and arm are raised high and backwards probably with a victor’s wreath. Moreover, the coin has a low girdle and no cloak, the statue the high third-century girdle and a great flapping mantle. The type is not so rare as might be expected. We have it in small bronzes, and we have it also _in situ_ on a votive statue in Rhodes. The Victory of Samothrace is a later version of the statue possibly erected by Demetrios. Its Rhodian origin depends partly on the extraordinary _finesse_ and delicate naturalism of its drapery, a study never popular in Pergamon, and partly on the strong probability, not yet decisively proved, that the marble of its base is Rhodian. The latter point may provide definite proof, but the former is the one on which we must at present rely. The Rhodian origin or at least the Lysippic connexions of the statue are further supported by the twist above the waist so universal among the followers of that artist and the strong vital momentary pose, which is wrongly rendered in the present attitude of the statue. It is not a standing figure, but a Victory who is just alighting after flight, and it should therefore be tilted farther forward. The only statue now existing which presents a real parallel to the intricate folds of the Victory’s drapery is the Magnesian statue already mentioned,[83] which belongs to the new Rhodian drapery school. But the mantle of the Victory is older in type. Thus the Victory’s drapery stands midway between the Antioch figure and the new Rhodian fashion. It shows just that scientific naturalism which we have noticed in the anatomy of the athletic figures, and just that tendency to miss the perfect whole by an over-anxious care for detail. The date for such work is 250 and not 300 B.C. The Chiaramonti Niobid[84] is a work of similar tendency though of a different school, and must fall about the same date.

We now possess some evidence for the continuous study and development of female drapery at Rhodes parallel to the study and development of the male form. The Rhodian school is in fact the most industrious and the most scientific of all the Hellenistic art centres. In mastery of detail they are unapproachable, but they have ceased to care much for motive or idealism in their subjects. To such art both impressionism and romantic feeling are foreign. Rhodian art is very versatile and very straightforward, but its constant aspiration after the unusual renders it in the end monotonous.

The earlier and later periods of Rhodian art are separated by the quarrel with Rome and consequent loss of the land-empire in 167 B.C. This ended the real independence of Rhodes, and with it disappeared the inventive genius of her artists. She continued for another century to be the great and almost the sole centre of art production, for both Pergamon and Alexandria now lost all artistic importance, but she ceased to develop and originate. The works of her second period are brilliant in the extreme, but they are no longer vital and progressive.

It is significant that the best-known works of this period are great groups rather than single statues. We may notice the Laocoon group, the Farnese Bull, the ‘Pasquino’ of Ajax and Patroclos, the Scylla group, and the group of Odysseus with the Cyclops. Of these the earliest is perhaps the Farnese Bull,[85] which we possess in an Antonine copy at Naples from the Baths of Caracalla. It represents the punishment of Dirce by Zethos and Amphion for her cruelty to their mother Antiope. The two heroes hold the bull, to whose horns they are about to tie the unfortunate Dirce. It was made by Apollonios and Tauriskos of Tralles, and brought from Rhodes to Rome by Asinius Pollio. The date can be fixed by a comparison of inscriptions to about the year 130 B.C. Tauriskos’ son has signed a base at Magnesia about 100 B.C. Both Tauriskos and Apollonios were adopted by Menecrates, son of Menecrates, one of the artists of the Pergamon frieze. But in examining the group we must beware of the Roman additions and restorations, which include nearly all the landscape details together with the figure of Antiope and the mountain god. The head of Zethos is a portrait of Caracalla. The group has been adapted to act as a centre-piece for the great hall of the Baths of Caracalla, and consequently has been made square. Even in its original form, however, it must have been a good example of all-round sculpture. The figures are Lysippic, and the lower part of Dirce, which is the only antique part of her, shows more archaic drapery than usual. This is only what we might expect from an art which has passed its prime. Novelty of treatment is no longer a first essential. Tauriskos also made figures called Hermerotes. These must have been herm figures with an Eros head similar to a statue in the courtyard of the Conservatori Museum, and comparable with the Hermathena, which belonged to Cicero. Herms of all kinds became very popular in Greco-Roman art, and we see here in Rhodes perhaps the first development of the old archaistic Dionysos herms into more modern studies.

Another dramatic group similar to that of the Farnese Bull and the Laocoon was the lost group by Aristonides of Rhodes, showing Athamas in remorse for the murder of his son, Learchos. Pliny tells a foolish tale that the sculptor mixed iron with the copper in order to portray the blush of shame, a story told also about the Jocasta of Silanion.

A little figure of Odysseus (Fig. 35) in the Chiaramonti gallery of the Vatican holding out a bowl of wine to the Cyclops must be part of another mythological group of this period. The movement and action of the hero are typically Rhodian, and his face corresponds to the Rhodian type. The rest of the group is lost. The group of Scylla and the sailors of Odysseus is represented only by a much mutilated and fragmentary copy in Oxford, which gives us little information.

We have more copies of the well-known Pasquino group of Menelaos or Ajax and Patroclos. There are fragments in the Vatican, and a well-preserved replica in the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence (Fig. 36). Here again the extraordinary interest in anatomical forms is shown not only in the strain and twist of the living hero--the invariable twist of all these Rhodian figures--but in the admirable contrast between the vivid living body and the relaxed corpse. This contrasting of physical and mental conditions is a part of the dramatic feeling in later Rhodian art, which has quite abandoned its earlier simplicity and has followed on the lines of _baroque_ extravagance laid down by the second Pergamene school.

Of all the groups the best known and the most instructive is the latest of all, the Laocoon.[86] In this marvellous group we see the full development of the effect of strained agony on the human form, and we see the mature form contrasted both with an active youth’s body and with the semi-inanimate body of the younger boy. When we have removed the restorations and lowered the right arm of Laocoon nearer to his head, we get a perfect group-design unified by the terrible serpent-coils and by the central theme of agony. The torso muscles of Laocoon are fully developed and even exaggerated, though not to the same extent as those of the Pergamene frieze, but the boys’ forms are simpler, and all reflect the basic principles of Rhodian art already enumerated. Pain is shown by the downward sloping eyebrows with sharp interior angles, by the half-closed eyes, wrinkled forehead, and parted lips. The hair is wild, and all the veins of the body stand out sharply. The twist above the waist occurs in all three bodies. It is interesting to notice that even in the Laocoon, the latest work of the most scientific school of Greek sculpture, anatomical accuracy is still lacking. The lower curve of the ribs above the abdomen follows a line impossible in nature, and the left thumb of the elder son is provided with three joints instead of the normal two. Neither the Laocoon nor any one of the other Rhodian groups is perfectly satisfactory to modern taste. There is too much strain, too much agony, too little relief or repose. Every inch of the group is illustrative of pain and passion. Our sense of sympathy is deadened by excessive emphasis and repetition. But in technical skill the group has never been surpassed.

A close parallel to the head of the Laocoon is found in the bearded centaur of the pair made by Aristeas and Papias of Aphrodisias (Fig. 38). Copies of this statue existing in the Capitol and in the Louvre show the despair of the elderly victim of love in the guise of a centaur tormented by a little Eros on his back. The companion figure (Fig. 37) is young and delights in the persuasions of his rider. This group of rather obvious allegory belongs to the Antonine age, but the resemblance to the Laocoon proves a first-century original, which is interesting because it is one of the earliest examples of a corresponding pair of statues clearly designed for house decoration. The growth of ‘cabinet pieces’, as opposed to temple or national dedications, now develops into the whole mass of furniture sculpture in the shape of candelabra, table-legs, consoles, decorative herms, &c., which mark the imperial age.

The school of Rhodes ends in extraordinary brilliance. There is nothing decadent in its technique, nothing paltry in its conceptions. We have seen the very pure and slightly finicky naturalism of the early third century give way to a rather more _baroque_ extravagance in detail, but in neither its earlier nor its later stage did the purest of the Hellenistic schools affect the exaggerations of Alexandria or Pergamon. In Rhodes, at any rate, the steady development of Greek sculpture reached its perfect and logical conclusion. We have seen it start with a great idealism and no technique at all. In the fifth century technique and idealism are almost equally balanced. In the Laocoon the last word of technical perfection is spoken, but there is no idealism at all, only a man and two boys writhing in the grasp of serpents. It is not photographic naturalism, but it is histrionic, artificial, and dead. We cannot believe in the Laocoon as we believe in the Hermes of Praxiteles.

IV

THE MAINLAND SCHOOLS DURING THE HELLENISTIC AGE

While the full tide of artistic development was running in the new societies of Pergamon, Rhodes, and Alexandria, the Greek mainland became a backwater. The rise of the kingdoms meant the decline of the old autonomous city states. Athens in particular fell into the background on account of her uncompromising hostility to the power of Macedonia. In spite of some brief periods of revival, her destiny was for the future rarely in her own hands, and her political subordination seems to have reacted with great rapidity upon her artistic output. She remained for another century after the death of Alexander the home of philosophy, but her art began to revive only after the Roman conquest, in a new form, which will require later consideration. Here at least the Hellenistic age is a period of rapid decadence and decline.

The Peloponnese is in much the same position. The pupils of Lysippos found their best clients abroad, and left no successors of importance at home. The political loss of power was here intensified by a growing poverty. The new wealth which began to pour into Europe as the result of the conquest of Asia went either to Macedonia or to those states which had sent mercenaries to Alexander’s army. The future prosperity of Greece was in the hands of Arcadia, Achaia, and Aetolia rather than Argos, Sparta, and Sikyon. The new states had few artistic traditions, and the old states had no means of gratifying theirs. The inevitable result was a great decline in artistic output as well as in artistic skill. Almost the only sphere left for sculpture was the erection of formal honorary statues to distinguished or wealthy individuals, a type of work which does not beget great art.

The first half of the third century was a period of very good work in portraiture, which is, however, a subject by itself. The Demosthenes of Polyeuctes is dated about 280 B.C., and the statues of Aeschines, Aristotle, and others show the existence of an admirable school of portrait sculptors at this time in Athens. But ideal sculpture shows a sad falling-off. The Themis of Chairestratos (Fig. 40) belongs approximately to this period, and it is marked by a great formality, not only in pose but in the treatment of hair and drapery. The classical period of sculpture in Athens was followed by what we must call an academic period. The foreign schools were developing on lines of naturalism, but at home sculptors tended merely to formalize the work of the fourth-century masters, and to produce statues of mechanical correctness without any vitality at all. We have seen the beginning of this tendency in the drapery system of the followers of Praxiteles. It now affects the whole of Attic sculpture. Old types are adopted again and again, until they become purely mechanical. Drapery styles are similarly used up, and the increasing formality of every department stifles entirely the possibilities of originality. The Hermes of Andros (Fig. 39) is a good example of this kind of crystallization of types. The statue was found in connexion with a tomb, and it is clearly a memorial statue. Its companion was a female figure reproducing exactly the pose and drapery of the draped female figure from Herculaneum at Dresden. The date would seem to be late third century. The Hermes itself is a replica of a type known in the Antinous of the Belvedere and other statues, and is a product of the Praxitelean school, like the Dresden figure. But the influence of Praxiteles is not alone in it. We have a clear use of Lysippic proportions and some Lysippic influence in the head. This eclecticism is an invariable mark of archaistic art. The sculptor, who has no new message of his own to deliver, looks back to antiquity for his types, but does not imitate one statue directly. The only form of originality which he is able to use is originality of combination and selection. Consequently he absorbs details from several artists and produces work which we label Lysippo-Scopaic, or Lysippo-Praxitelean, &c. We have seen how the late fourth-century artists in Asia Minor combined characteristics of Scopas and Praxiteles. The late fourth-century and third-century Attic artists made use of all their predecessors, and produced statues in which we can detect the _disiecta membra_ of half a dozen styles. At the same time we may recognize the general predominance of Praxitelean tradition over that of the other artists and a universal predilection for marble instead of bronze.

One of the most interesting Hellenistic works of the Attic school is the bronze figure from Anticythera,[87] which is still the subject of much dispute. It is a typical piece of eclecticism. The pose and twist of the shoulder and upper part of the torso are Lysippic, while the head is a mixture of Praxiteles and Scopas. The result, as might be expected, is somewhat inharmonious. In shape and profile the head is mainly Praxitelean, and therefore on its discovery it was acclaimed as a Praxitelean original. But looking from the front we at once see the resemblance to the Scopaic Meleager type,[88] with its broad head, slight chin, and fringe of short upright locks like little flames. The head, and indeed the whole statue, is not unlike the bronze athlete of Ephesos,[89] which has the same hair and facial type, together with a similar rather heavy Lysippic body. This heaviness of the torso in both statues shows that the Lysippic ideal is not followed directly, but rather the Attic version of it as used in the Agias of Delphi.[90]

Another Attico-Lysippic figure is preserved for us in a number of replicas, of which the two best known are the Hermes from Atalanta in Athens (Fig. 41) and the Hermes Richelieu in the Louvre. Here again Lysippic proportions are combined with a rather heavier Attic torso in a whole which lacks something of harmony and repose. The work has been referred back to a Lysippic original, but it seems more likely that it is an Attic adaptation of the eclectic school now springing into existence. The Attic grave reliefs give us good information about Attic art down to the end of the fourth century, but Demetrios of Phaleron prohibited them for sumptuary reasons in 309 B.C., and in future we have no such good guide to Attic art. Eclecticism is, however, pretty clear in the later examples which we do possess. The votive reliefs from the Asklepieion throw some light on the third century, but they are not on a sufficiently large scale to be very instructive.

In Greece at all times professions tended to run in one family, and we have already seen examples of families of sculptors, such as that of Praxiteles, in which the craft was handed down from father to son for generations. The Hellenistic age is full of evidence for this phenomenon in Athens and elsewhere. Rhodes in particular gives us detailed families of sculptors, since we are better provided with inscriptions in Rhodes than in other centres. In Hellenistic Athens two such families are worthy of notice. Polykles, whom we may call Polykles I, had two sons, Timokles and Timarchides I; the latter had two sons, Polykles II and Dionysios; and Polykles II had a son, Timarchides II. These are known to us from literature or from inscriptions, and they cover more or less the second century B.C. It is a question to which member of the house we are to ascribe the very famous bronze Hermaphrodite mentioned by Pliny,[91] or whether it should be referred to an earlier artist of the same name in the fourth century.[92] A further question is involved in the identification of the Hermaphrodite, since it is commonly assumed that the Sleeping Hermaphrodite (Fig. 42), far the most famous type now extant in numerous copies, must have had a marble and not a bronze original. The statue of Polykles is identified with the Berlin Hermaphrodite[93] by those who would give him a fourth-century date; with a bronze in Epinal[94] by those who associate him with Hellenistic art. The Berlin Hermaphrodite is of Praxitelean type; the Epinal bronze resembles rather what we have called the Pergamene type of the Turning Satyr and the Aphrodite Kallipygos. The question is a difficult one, but we may safely exclude Polykles II. Timarchides I, his father, and Dionysios, his brother, worked on statues of a marked academic tendency. The C. Ofellius of Delos was the work of his brother, a statue of purely mechanical taste. This Polykles is not likely to have originated a great and famous statue. Polykles I worked as early as 200, a much better period for original work. He is a more likely candidate for the authorship of the type, if we suppose it to have resembled either the Epinal bronze or the Sleeping Hermaphrodite. On _a priori_ grounds of its great popularity one would distinctly prefer to connect the latter with the statue mentioned by Pliny. It is true that it looks like a marble statue and not a bronze one, but a marble replica which served as the prototype for marble copies is by no means an impossible suggestion. But this Sleeping Hermaphrodite is a work of distinctly Pergamene tendency, intended to bring out the artist’s skill in the rendering of soft sensual forms. It would seem to belong to an earlier date than 200 or even 250. The Epinal bronze implies a similar date, and therefore we are left with a double difficulty. The best Polykles for our purpose seems to be fifty years too late for either of the types we require. We are, therefore, driven to suppose an intermediate Polykles about 270 B.C. In any case we must infer a reaction of Pergamene influence on the academic art of third-century Athens, but it was a solitary example which seems to have left no heritage to later artists.

The sculptor family best known to us from inscriptions is that of Eucheir and Euboulides. We know of at least two representatives of each name, Eucheir I about 220, Euboulides I about 190, Eucheir II about 160, and Euboulides II thirty years later. The first Euboulides made a statue of Chrysophis, the second Eucheir athletes and warriors, and a marble Hermes at Pheneos. The second Euboulides is more important, for he was the author of a great monument outside the Dipylon Gate, considerable fragments of which have been recovered.

These fragments are our main evidence for the art of Athens in the second half of the second century B.C., and they show us that the academic art of the second half of the third century has followed out its natural development. The figures of Victory (Fig. 43) and Athena (Fig. 44), which have partially survived, are grandiose without being noble or effective. There is a distinct attempt to absorb some of the exaggerated idealism of the second Pergamene school; there is also an effort to recover some of the simplicity and grandeur of Pheidias; but the result is a staid and rather mechanical classicism, which is made only a little more obvious by the larger size of the figures. The Athena head, with its straightforward gaze, archaistic hair, large, wide-open eyes, and round, heavy chin is distinctly Pheidian; the Victory in rapid movement with head turned to the side is more affected by Pergamene art. Her drapery shows a curious combination of naturalism and formalism in the folds at the girdle; each individual set of folds is well studied from nature; but the repetition of a similar set right round the body is purely mechanical. The group is a good example of the limitations of the Attic artist at the end of his development. The next century sees a totally different activity.

In the Peloponnese we have a great gap after the pupils of Lysippos, a gap devoid of any evidence either literary or monumental. During the whole of the third century it would be difficult to point to any Peloponnesian art on a scale deserving of attention. But the second century opens with a name of some importance, Damophon of Messene. We are in the rare and fortunate position of possessing undoubted originals from his hand in the great group of Lycosura. These are practically our sole monumental evidence for the Hellenistic art of the Peloponnese.[95] The date of Damophon is now established by inscriptions for the first half of the second century B.C., and a number of his works are more or less attested by coin-types. He had a considerable vogue in the last generation before the Roman conquest, and his leading position is evidenced by the commission he received to restore the Olympian Zeus. It may have been his hand which touched up and restored the corner figures of the west pediment of the temple.

The great group of Lycosura represented Demeter and Kore enthroned between standing figures of Artemis and a Titan Anytos. It survives in three heads and numerous fragments of limbs and drapery, and its conjectural restoration has been recently undertaken (Fig. 45). The discovery of a coin representing the group on its reverse goes far to justify the proposed design.[96]

The group is interesting from many points of view, but mainly from the flood of light which it throws on the methods of Peloponnesian sculpture at the very close of its development. It thus forms a complementary picture to the remains of the monument of Euboulides in Athens. Damophon, like Euboulides, underwent the influence of Pergamon. The colossal scale of his group and the wild hair of his giant Anytos (Fig. 46) demonstrate the influence of the altar frieze. Damophon also went back to Pheidias for inspiration. He must have absorbed many lessons from his work at Olympia. The seated group of his goddesses is reminiscent of the two figures next to ‘Theseus’ in the west pediment of the Parthenon. The simple wide-eyed grave expression of his Demeter head goes back to the fifth-century ideal, while his Artemis (Fig. 47) wears the melon-coiffure associated with the school of Praxiteles. The attitudes of Artemis and Anytos are Lysippic. Here we have every evidence of academic eclecticism. The same feature is borne out by three coins which reproduce the statues of Damophon. His Asklepios at Aigion gives us a fourth-century type. He copied the Laphria of Patras for Messene. His Herakles in the guise of an Idaean Dactyl at Megalopolis seems to have been a variant of the now fashionable herm figures and to copy a Hermerakles type known by numerous extant examples.

Damophon’s style then was academic and eclectic, borrowing from all sources of inspiration and in general using up over again well-known groups and poses. His execution is even more interesting for its extraordinary inequality. His heads are on the whole very good. The Demeter is a dull piece of work, but both the Anytos and the Artemis show some fancy and some power of original expression. The girl is demure and cheerful, the giant benevolent and rather sly. But when we come to examine the execution of the fragments of the bodies and limbs which survive at Lycosura, we find a very hasty and poor technical ability. The arms and legs are nearly shapeless. They are colossal, but practically formal in design, and details of muscles and sinews are almost entirely omitted. The drapery makes some effort to follow Pheidian designs, but it is poorly carved and without effect. Only in one direction does the artist show any skill, and that is in the great embroidered veil (Fig. 48) worn by Despoina. This is an extraordinary _tour de force_, not for its sculptural effect, which is purely formal, but for the reproduction of a complicated embroidered design in very low relief. A border of tassels with bands of design about it and large embroidered figures of Victory above the bands is rendered with consummate art. We have a frieze of sea-monsters, nymphs, and Erotes according to a common Hellenistic design, a curious local dance of beast figures in human dress, a dance paralleled by some small terra-cotta figures found in the same shrine, and the larger figures of Victory above carrying candelabra.