The procession of the peplos was formed at daybreak in the Potters' Quarter of the city, and passed to the Dromos, then to the market-place, onward to the temple of Demeter, round the Acropolis along the Pelasgic wall, through the Propylæa to the temple of Athena Polias. The procession was as splendid as all the wealth, nobility, youth and beauty of Athens could make it. Of the vast multitude which joined it some were in chariots, others on horses and almost countless numbers on foot. After the most important officers of the government come the envoys of the Attic colonies with the noble Athenian maidens, the basket-bearers, the aliens who resided in Athens dressed in red instead of white, and a chosen company of aged men bearing branches of the sacred olive.

The peplos was not borne by hands, but was suspended from the mast of a ship, upon wheels, which some writers say was moved by machinery placed underground. When the temple was reached the splendid garment was placed upon the sacred statue, which was believed to have fallen from heaven. During the festival of the Panathenæa prisoners were permitted to enjoy their freedom, men whose services to the public merited recognition received gifts of gold crowns, and their names were announced by heralds in public places, and many interesting ceremonies filled up the time. We do not know the exact order in which all these things happened; but it is believed that the procession of the peplos was the crowning glory of it all, and was celebrated on the final day.

The plan of the Parthenon frieze which represented this great procession was as follows: On the eastern side above the main entrance to the temple there were two groups of the most important and powerful of the many gods of the Greek religion. Each of these groups had six gods and an attendant, so that there were seven figures in each of these groups, as you will see by the illustration (Fig. 27).

There has been much study of these sculptures, and many scholars have written about them. There is still a difference of opinion as to which gods are here represented, but I shall give you the most generally accepted opinion, which calls a, Hermes, or Mercury, the messenger of the gods; b, Apollo; c, Artemis, or Diana; d, Ares, or Mars; e, Iris, who is attending upon f, Hera, or Juno; g, Zeus, or Jupiter; h, Athena, Minerva, or Pallas; i, Hephæstus, or Vulcan; j, Poseidon, or Neptune; k, Dionysus, or Bacchus; l, m, n are more doubtful, but are probably Aphrodite, or Venus, Demeter, or Ceres, and Triptolemus, the boy who was a favorite with Ceres, who invented the plough and first sowed corn.

Now, these two groups of divinities were divided by a very singular group containing five figures (Fig. 28).

There has been much controversy as to these figures and what they are doing. They seem to be unconscious of the great gods who are near to them on either side. The greater number of critics consider that the two maidens, e and d, are of the number who have embroidered the peplos; the central figure, c, a priestess of Athena; a, the Archon Basileus; and b, a consecrated servant-boy, who is delivering up the peplos. Other critics believe, however, that these figures are all preparing for the sacred ceremonies about to begin, and that the priest is giving the boy-servant a garment which he has taken off. Other theories may arise, and we can only listen to them all, and yet not know the truth; but the more we study the more we shall admire these exquisite figures.

Just here I will call your attention to one feature of these antique bas-reliefs which is called Isocephalism, and means that all the heads are at an equal height. You will see that all figures, whether standing or sitting, walking, in chariots, or on horseback, have the heads on the same level.

These three groups, the five central figures and the two groups of gods, are approached on each side by long, continuous processions, and these processions each start out from the south-west corner of the Parthenon, so that one branch goes along the south and a part of the east side, and the other and longer division marches on the whole of the west and north, and a portion of the east side. I shall give here a series of pictures which are all explained by their titles, and will give you an excellent idea of this magnificent frieze, and doubtless many of my readers have studied or will study and admire it in the British Museum (Figs. 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35).

Though all this frieze was the conception of the great Phidias, it must have been the work of many hands, and close examination shows that some portions of it are done much better than others. These sculptures have a double value; for while they are so priceless as treasures of art, they tell us much of that prosperous, glorious Athens of which we love to read and hear stories. These figures show us how the people dressed and moved, and we see in them the "stately" magistrates and venerable seers of Athens, the sacred envoys of dependent states, the victors in their chariots drawn by the steeds which had won for them the cheap but priceless garland, the full-armed warriors, the splendid cavalry, and the noble youths of 'horse-loving' Athens on their favorite steeds, in the flush and pride of their young life; and last, not least, the train of high-born Athenian maidens, marching with bowed heads and quiet gait, for they are engaged in holy work, with modest mien, and gentle dignity and grace. All that was sacred, powerful, and grand—all that was beautiful, graceful, and joyous in Athenian life, is represented there, in ideal form, of course, but in strict conformity with the realities of life.... It is by the study of such works as these that we get the clearest insight into the essence and spirit of classical antiquity; and they help us better to understand all that we may read in history or poetry concerning the ancient, classic Greeks.

We must now leave Phidias and speak of other sculptors who were his contemporaries and pupils. Among the last Alcamenes was the most celebrated. He was born in Lemnos, but was a citizen of Athens; so he is sometimes called an Athenian, and again a Lemnian. His statues were numerous, and most of them represented the gods. One of Hephæstus, or Vulcan, was remarkable for the way in which his lameness was concealed so skilfully that no deformity appeared.

His most famous statue was a Venus, or Aphrodite, concerning which it is related that Agoracritus, another celebrated pupil of Phidias, contended with Alcamenes in making a statue of that goddess. The preference was given to Alcamenes, and Agoracritus believed this to have been done on account of his being an Athenian citizen, and not solely for the merit of the statue. The Venus of Alcamenes stood in a temple of that goddess in a garden beyond the eastern wall of Athens. This statue was very much praised for its beauty by ancient writers, who all mention with especial pride the eurythmy of the action of the wrist. This is a term frequently used in regard to sculpture, and is somewhat difficult to explain. It means a harmony and proportion of action which corresponds to rhythm in music. When a statue has the effect it should have it appears as if the motion of the figure was arrested for a moment, and would be resumed immediately. That is what we mean when we say a statue has life; and, as in life, the motion of a statue may be awkward or it may be graceful; it may be harmonious to the eye, just as music is harmonious to the ear, or it may seem out of tune and time, just as inharmonious sounds are to a correct ear for the rhythm of sound; so when we speak of the eurythmy of sculpture we mean that its apparent motion is in accord with the laws of proportion, and is harmonious and graceful to the eye.

While Alcamenes had this power of imparting grace to his statues, he also approached Phidias in majesty and a divine sweetness, which was the sweetness of great strength. In truth, he is recognized as the sculptor who most nearly approached the great Phidias. He represented also for the first time the god Asclepius, or Æsculapius, who was very important to the Greeks, who placed great value upon physical health. Alcamenes represented him as a sort of humanized Zeus or Jupiter. Of the Asclepius heads found at Melos we may regard this one given here as a free copy of the type of god which this great sculptor represented the god of medicine and health to be (Fig. 36).

Alcamenes was also the principal assistant of Phidias in his decoration of the temple of Jupiter at Olympia, and is said to have himself executed the relief upon the western pediment, in which the battle of the Centaurs and Lapithæ was represented with great spirit.

Agoracritus of Paros, who has been mentioned as the rival of Alcamenes, is called the favorite pupil of Phidias, and it is said that the master even gave Agoracritus some of his works, and allowed the pupil to inscribe his name upon them. For this reason the ancient writers were often in doubt as to the authorship of the statues called by the names of these sculptors. It is said that when the Venus of Alcamenes was preferred before that of Agoracritus the latter changed his mark, and made it to represent a Nemesis, or the goddess who sent suffering to those who were blessed with too many gifts. It is said that this statue was cut from a block of marble which the Persians brought with them to Marathon for the purpose of making a trophy of it which they could set up to commemorate the victory they felt so sure of gaining; in their flight and adversity it was left, and at last served a Greek sculptor in making a statue of an avenging goddess. This seems to be a striking illustration of "poetic justice."

Agoracritus sold the Nemesis to the people of Rhamnus, who had a temple dedicated to that goddess, and made a condition that it should never be set up in Athens. In the museum of the Lateran at Rome there is a small but very beautiful antique statue of Nemesis, which is thought to be a copy of this famous work. As Nemesis was the goddess who meted out fortune according to her idea of right, a measure was her symbol, and the Greek measure of a cubit was generally placed in her hand. The word cubit means the length of the forearm from the elbow to the wrist, and in this statue of which we speak this part of the arm is made very prominent, and the measure itself is omitted.

The sculptor Myron also had pupils and followers who executed many works, and of this school was Cresilas of Cydonia, in Crete. We are interested in him because two copies from his works exist, of which I give pictures here. Pliny, in speaking of the portrait statue of Pericles, said it was a marvel of the art "which makes illustrious men still more illustrious." The cut given here is from a bust in the British Museum. There is reason to believe that Cresilas excelled Myron in the expression of his faces (Figs. 37, 38).

Callimachus is an artist of whom we know little, but that little is interesting. We do not know where he was born, but as he was employed to make a candelabra for the eternal lamp which burned before the sacred statue of Athena Polias, we may suppose that he was an Athenian. Some writers say that he invented a lamp which would burn a year without going out, and that such an one made of gold was the work he did for the temple of Minerva. Callimachus lived between B.C. 550 and 396, and is credited with having invented the Corinthian capital in this wise: A young girl of Corinth died, and her nurse, according to custom, placed a basket upon her grave containing the food she had loved best in life. It chanced that the basket was put down upon a young acanthus plant, and the leaves grew up about the basket in such a way that when Callimachus saw it the design for the capital which we know as Corinthian was suggested to him, and was thus named from the city in which all this had occurred.

While the plastic art of Athens, or the Attic school of sculpture, reached its greatest excellence in Phidias, there was in the Peloponnesus another school of much importance. Argos was the chief city of this school, and its best master was Polycleitus of Sicyon, who was born about B.C. 482. He was thus about twelve years younger than Phidias. Polycleitus was held in such esteem that many of the ancient writers couple his name with that of Phidias. He was employed in the decoration of the Heraion, or temple of Hera, at Argos. But his greatest work was a statue of Hera, or Juno, for a temple on Mount Eubœa, between Argos and Mycenæ. This statue was chryselephantine, and as Juno was the majestic, white-armed, ox-eyed goddess consort of Jupiter, it is a striking coincidence that Phidias at Olympia and Polycleitus on Mount Eubœa should have made from ivory and gold two famous statues of this renowned pair, who reigned over the mythical world of the Greek religion. There are several copies of heads of Juno in various museums, and some of them have been ascribed to Polycleitus; but the proof of the truth of this is far from being satisfactory. This master made other statues of divinities, but he excelled in representing athletes; and however fine his other works may have been, it was in the reproduction of strong, youthful, manly beauty that he surpassed other sculptors. Some of his statues of this sort, especially a Doryphorus, or spear-bearer, were considered as models from which all other artists could work.

Polycleitus is said to have written a treatise in which he gave exact rules for the proportions of the different parts of the body. This was called "the canon" of Polycleitus, and there is good reason to believe that the Doryphorus was called by the same name, "the canon," because it was fashioned according to the rules laid down by Polycleitus in his treatise. His pupils and followers are mentioned with honor by the Greek authors of his time, but I need not mention them here.

The art of Phidias and Polycleitus was the art of Greece at its best period. After the close of the Persian wars the people of Greece were a religious and patriotic people. The Persian wars developed the best quality of character, for these wars were waged against a foreign foe, and the Greeks were defending their freedom and their civilization, and at the end of the struggle Pericles, who guided them to their greatest prosperity, was a statesman and a man of high aims; he was a gentleman as well as a strong ruler. The Peloponnesian war, on the contrary, was a civil war, and it divided the Greeks among themselves and roused the evil passions of friend against friend all over their country. It was the cause of selfishness, treachery, and immorality, and one of its worst effects was seen in the loss of religious tone among the people: their old contented simplicity of life and thought was gone; every man thought only of himself, and the nation began to sink into the condition which at last made it an easy prey to the Macedonians. We have studied all these wars in our histories, but perhaps we have not thought how much they affected sculpture and the other arts, and brought them down from the lofty heights of the Periclean age.

But there were still men who strove to be great and grand in morals and in intellect, and perhaps strove all the more earnestly for this on account of the decline they saw about them. Few countries in any age have had more splendid men than Socrates, Plato, Euripides, Aristophanes, Pelopidas, Epaminondas, Demosthenes, Dion, and Timoleon, and these all lived between the Peloponnesian and the Macedonian wars. And while the arts were less grand than before, they did not fall into decline for some years, though they took on new features. The gods who had been mostly represented were less often the subjects of the sculptor, and when they were so they were softened and made less awful in their effect. Other gods were more freely taken for models, such as came nearer to human life and thought, because less sublime in their attributes and characters. Among these were Venus as a lovely woman rather than as the great mother of all living creatures, and Eros, or Love; while Plutus, or Wealth, and satyrs, nymphs, and tritons were multiplied in great numbers.

When the gods who were represented were more like human beings in their character, it followed that the statues of them more nearly resembled men and women, and gradually the old grandeur and sublimity were changed to grace, beauty, and mirth. Many people would prefer these works because they come nearer to the every-day life of the world; but earnest, thoughtful minds look for something more noble in art—something that will not come down to us as we are, but will help us to rise above ourselves and to strive after better things.

Cephisodotus was a sculptor who lived until about B.C. 385, or a little later, and stood between the old and the new schools of Greek art. The cut given here is from a group at Munich, which is believed to be a copy of a work by him, and it is a combination of the simple dignity of the art of Phidias (which is seen in the flowing drapery and the wavy edge of its folds) and the later Attic style (which is seen in the dreamy, gentle air of the face of the nurse of the little god). (Fig. 39.) We know very little of the life of Cephisodotus, and as little is said of his works by ancient writers.

Scopas of Paros was one of the greatest sculptors of the later Attic school. The island of Paros, where he was born, was the place where the finest Greek marble was found; but he worked so much at Athens that he is spoken of as an Athenian. He was an architect as well as a sculptor, and he superintended the erection of some splendid structures, which he also ornamented with his sculptures. I shall speak especially of the tomb of Mausolus, the King of Caria. Scopas executed the sculptures of the east side, and as he was the best artist of the sculptors employed there, it is probable that he had much to do with the design for all the work. This mausoleum was reckoned as one of the "seven wonders of the world," and has given a name to fine tombs the world over.

The most interesting of the sculptures from this tomb which are now in the British Museum seems to me to be the statue of Mausolus himself. It is plainly intended to be an exact portrait of the king, and it is so designed and executed that we feel sure it must show him to us just as he was when alive, more than twenty-two hundred years ago (Fig. 40).

A part of the frieze upon the mausoleum showed the battle of the Greeks and the Amazons, and this illustration from it gives an idea of the boldness of action and the correctness of the design (Fig. 41). This picture is from a slab in the possession of the Serra family in Genoa. On the right a warrior holds down an Amazon whom he has forced to her knees and is about to kill, while she stretches out her right hand in supplication. The figures to the left are full of spirit, and absolutely seem to be in motion. We do not know that any of these figures were executed by the hand of Scopas, but it is probable that they were, and they give us an idea of the art of his time.

Scopas also carved one of the splendid pillars of the temple of Diana at Ephesus, and did much architectural decoration, as well as to execute many statues and groups of figures. The ancient writers say very little of the art of Scopas, but when all that we can learn is brought together, it shows that he had great fertility in expressing his own ideas, that his genius was creative and his works original. He represented the gods which the earlier sculptors had shown in their works in quite a new manner, and he was the first to show the goddess Venus in all the beauty which imagination could attribute to her. His representations of nymphs of wood and sea, of monsters, and all sorts of strange, imaginary beings were numberless, and he made his sculptured figures to express every emotion that can be fancied or felt, from the tenderest and sweetest affection to the wildest passions of the soul.

His works were always representations of gods or of sentiments as shown by some superhuman beings; he never portrayed a hero, with the exception of Hercules, and was ever busy with the ideal rather than with realities about him. He worked in marble only, which is far more suited to the elegant beauty of his style than are bronze and gold or ivory.

We are accustomed to call Praxiteles the greatest sculptor of the second school of Greek art, just as we give that place to Phidias in the first. We have no fixed dates concerning Praxiteles. We know that he was the son of a Cephisodotus, who was a bronze worker, and was thought to be a son of Alcamenes, thus making Praxiteles a grandson of the latter. Praxiteles was first instructed by his father. Later he came under the influence of Scopas, who was much older than he; and by Scopas he was persuaded to give up working in bronze and confine himself to marble. Perhaps the most authentic date we have concerning him is that given by Pliny, who says that he was in his prime from B.C. 364-360.

It is impossible to praise a sculptor more than Praxiteles was praised by the Greek authors; and, although Athens was the place where he lived and labored most, yet he was known to all Greece, and even to other countries, and the number of his works was marvellous. There are trustworthy accounts of forty-seven groups, reliefs, and statues by his hand, and it is not probable that these are all that he executed.

Praxiteles represented youth and beauty and such subjects as are most pleasing to popular taste. Thus it happened that his male figures were the young Apollo, Eros, and youthful satyrs, while a large proportion of his statues represented lovely women. Venus was frequently repeated by him, and there is a story that he made two statues of her, one being draped and the other nude. The people of Cos bought the first, and the last was purchased by the Cnidians, who placed it in the midst of an open temple, where it could be seen from all sides. It became so famous that many people went to Cnidos solely for the purpose of seeing it, and the "Cnidian Venus" acquired a reputation wherever art was known. When the oppressor of the Cnidians, King Nicodemus of Bithynia, offered to release them from a debt of one hundred talents (about $100,000) if they would give him the Venus, they refused, and declared that it was the chief glory of their State.

Another story relates that Phryne, a friend of Praxiteles, had been told by him that she could have any work which she might choose from his workshop. She wished to have the one which the artist himself considered the best. In order to find out which he so esteemed she sent a servant to tell him that his workshop was on fire. He exclaimed, "All is lost if my Satyr and Cupid are not saved!" Then Phryne told him of her trick, and chose the Cupid, or Eros, for her gift. Phryne then offered the statue to the temple of Thespiæ, in Bœotia, where it was placed between a statue of Venus and one of Phryne herself. This Cupid was almost as celebrated as the Cnidian Venus, and was visited by many people. The head given here (Fig. 42), which was found in Centocelle by Gavin Hamilton, and is now in the Vatican, is thought by many to be a copy of a Cupid by Praxiteles, and even of the Thespian statue; but we have no proof of this. The Cupid, or Eros, of the art of Scopas and Praxiteles is not the merry little creature who bears that name in later art; he is a youth just coming into manhood, with a dreamy, melancholy face, the tender beauty of which makes him one of the most attractive subjects in sculpture. Caligula carried the Thespian Cupid to Rome; Claudius restored it to its original place, but Nero again bore it to Rome, where it was burned in a conflagration in the time of Titus.

I shall say no more of Praxiteles personally, because I wish to describe to you the largest and grandest group of Greek statues which exists, or, as I should say, of which we have any copies. We do not know whether Scopas or Praxiteles made these famous figures, since they are attributed to both these sculptors; perhaps we can never positively know to whom to ascribe the fame of this marvellous work. The historian Pliny tells us that they stood in the temple of Apollo Sosianus at Rome. Sosius was the legate of Antony in Syria and Cilicia; he erected this temple in his own honor, and brought many beautiful works from the East for its decoration. It is believed that he brought the Niobe group from Cilicia, and displayed it when celebrating his victory over Judea, B.C. 35.

In A.D. 1583 a large number of statues representing this subject were found in Rome, and were purchased by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, who placed them in the Villa Medici. In 1775 they were removed to the Palace of the Uffizi, in Florence, where an apartment was assigned to them. The figures were restored, and each one placed on its own pedestal, which work was not completed until 1794.

The group must have had originally seventeen figures—Niobe and fourteen children, a pedagogue and a female nurse. Now there are but twelve—Niobe, six sons, four daughters, and the pedagogue. At first it was supposed that these figures ornamented the temple pediment, but it is now thought that they stood on an undulating rocky base, with a background at a little distance. Niobe is the central figure, in any case, and the children were fleeing toward her from either side; she is the only one represented in such a way as to present the full face to the beholder (Fig. 43). But we shall better understand our subject if I recount as concisely as possible the story of Niobe, which, as you know, is a Grecian myth. Niobe was the daughter of Tantalus, and was born on Mount Sipylus. When a child Niobe played with Lato, or Latona, who afterward married the great god Jupiter, or Zeus. Niobe became the wife of Amphion, and had a very happy life; she was the mother of seven sons and seven daughters, and all this prosperity made her forget that she was mortal, and she dared to be insolent even to the gods themselves. Lato had but two children, the beautiful Apollo and the archer-queen of heaven, called Diana, or Artemis.

Amphion and Niobe were the King and Queen of Thebes, and when the worship of Lato was established in that city Niobe was very angry. She thought of Lato as her playmate and not a goddess, and was so imprudent as to drive in her chariot to the temple and command the Theban women not to join in this worship. Niobe also asserted that she was superior to this Lato, who had but two children, while she had fourteen lovely sons and daughters, any one of which was worthy of honor. All this so enraged Lato that she begged Apollo, who was the god of the silver bow, and Diana, her huntress daughter, to take revenge on Niobe. Obedient to her commands, Apollo and Artemis descended to earth, and in one day slew all the children of Niobe. Then this proud mother, left alone, could do nothing but weep, and this she did continually until Jupiter took pity on her and turned her into stone, and whirled her away from Thebes to Mount Sipylus, the scene of her happy childhood. In this picture of Niobe she clasps her youngest child, who has fled to her for protection.

I cannot give pictures of all the figures, but one of the most interesting is this brother and sister. She is wounded, and he endeavors to raise his garment so as to shield her and himself from the deadly arrows which pursue them (Fig. 44).

This figure of the eldest daughter is very beautiful. An arrow has pierced her neck, and the right hand is bent back to the wound. The face is noble and simple, and has been a favorite model to Guido Reni and other Italian masters (Fig. 45).

Fig. 46 shows one of the older sons, who, though wounded and fallen on one knee, still looks toward his slayer with an air of defiance. There is a world of interest connected with these statues, and they move us with a variety of emotions. The poor mother, so prosperous a moment before, and now seeing her children dying around her, slain by the sure arrows of the unseen gods—how can we pity her enough! and then the brave son who tries to shield his sister while he is dazed by the suddenness of the misfortunes which he cannot account for; the old pedagogue, to whom the youngest boy has run for protection—and, indeed, all demand our sympathy for their grief and our admiration for their beauty, which is still theirs in spite of their woe.

One of the young sculptors who was employed with Scopas in the work on the mausoleum was Leochares. We read of several statues of Zeus and Apollo by this master, but his most celebrated work was the group of Ganymede borne upward by the eagle of Zeus. There are several copies of this sculpture, but that given here, from the Vatican figure, is the best of all, and is very beautiful. We know very few facts concerning Leochares, and cannot even say whether he was an Athenian or not (Fig. 47).

There is still standing at Athens, in its original place, the Choragic monument of Lysicrates; and though we do not know the names of the architects and sculptors who made it, there are traces upon it which indicate that it belonged to the school of Scopas (Fig. 48).

This monument was erected B.C. 334, when Lysicrates was choragus—that is, when it was his office to provide the chorus for the plays represented at Athens. This was an expensive office, and one that demanded much labor and care. He had first to find the choristers, and then bring them together to be instructed, and provide them with proper food while they studied. The choragus who gave the best musical entertainment received a tripod as his reward, and it was the custom to build a monument upon which to place the tripod, so that it should be a lasting honor to the choragus and his family. The street in which these monuments were erected was called "the street of the Tripods."

It was also the custom to dedicate each tripod to some special divinity, and this of Lysicrates was dedicated to Bacchus, and had a frieze with sculptures telling the story of that god and the Tyrrhenian robbers who bore him off to their ship. In order to revenge himself he changed the oars and masts into serpents and himself into a lion; music was heard, and ivy grew all over the vessel; the robbers went mad and leaped into the sea, and changed into dolphins.

In the frieze, however, it is represented that the god is on shore quietly amusing himself with the lion (Fig. 49), while satyrs and sileni punish the robbers by beating them with sticks and chasing them with fury, while they are turning gradually into dolphins and rushing into the sea. The design is so fine that it might easily be attributed to one of the best sculptors; but the execution is careless, and this is not strange when we remember that it was all done at the expense of one man, and he a private citizen.

We will return now to the Peloponnesian school, of which Polycleitus was the head in its earliest period. After his time the sculptors of his school continued to prefer the subjects in which he excelled, and represented youthful heroes and victors with as much industry as the artists of Athens bestowed upon their statues of womanly grace and beauty. The subjects of the Peloponnesian school were especially suited to the use of bronze, and the chief sculptor of his time, Lysippus, whose works are said to have numbered fifteen hundred, worked entirely in bronze. In order to keep a record of the number of his works, he adopted the plan of putting aside one gold coin from the price of every statue, and at his death his heirs are said to have found the above number of these coins thus laid away. His home was at Sicyon, and his time of work is given as B.C. 372-316. This seems a long period for active employment as a sculptor; but the number of his works accords well with this estimate of his working years.

Lysippus cannot be said to have followed any school; he was original, and this trait made him prominent, for he was not bound by old customs, but was able to adapt himself to the new spirit of the age, which came to Greece with the reign of Alexander. This sculptor made a great number of statues of Hercules; and as Alexander loved to regard himself as a modern Hercules, Lysippus also represented the monarch in many different ways, and with much the same spirit as that he put into the statues of the hero-god. For example, he made a statue of "Alexander with his Spear," "Alexander at a Lion Hunt," "Alexander as the Sun-God," and so on through many changes of expression and attributes, but all being likenesses of the great king. There is in the Capitol at Rome a head of Alexander called Helios, which is thought by many critics to be the best bust of him in existence. There are metal rays fastened to the head; it has a wild, Bacchus-like air, and the hair is thrown back, as if he had shaken his head furiously; and the defect of a wry neck, which the monarch had, is cleverly concealed by this motion. Alexander was a very handsome man, his faults being this twist in his neck and a peculiar shape of the eye.

We cannot here give the long list of works by Lysippus, but will speak of that which interests us most, because we have a beautiful copy of it. I mean the Apoxyomenos, which is in the Vatican. It represents a youth scraping himself (as the name denotes) with the strigil after a contest in the arena (Fig. 50). The Vatican copy was found in the Trastevere at Rome in 1849, and is well preserved. Without doubt it is a faithful reproduction of the original, which was probably brought from Greece to Rome by Agrippa, who set it up in front of his public baths. Here it became such a favorite with the people that when Tiberius removed it to his own house there was a demonstration in the theatre, and so violent a demand was made for its restoration that the cunning emperor dared not refuse. This statue may be called an example of a grand genre style. It represents a scene from common life in Greece, but it is so simply natural, so graceful and free from restraint, that one could not weary of it. The expression of the face is that of quiet content—his task has been faithfully done, and the remembrance of it is pleasant. The hair is finely executed; this was a point in which Lysippus excelled; but the great charm of the whole is in the pose of the figure. In his occupation of scraping one portion of the body after another he must constantly change his position, and this one, in which he can rest but a moment, seems to have the motion in it which he must almost instantly make, while it is full of easy grace in itself. The art of Lysippus was not as elevated as that of Phidias, who tried to represent the highest ideal which a mortal may form of a god; but there was nothing mean or vulgar in the works of the former; on the contrary, it was with a pure and noble spirit that he endeavored to represent the perfections of youthful, manly beauty, and his naturalism was of a healthy and dignified sort.

The most important pupil of Lysippus was Chares Of Lindos, who was prominent not only on account of his own works, but also because he introduced the art of Sicyon into his native island of Rhodes. This island is but forty-five miles long and twenty miles wide at its broadest part, and yet its art became second only to that of Athens.

At the city of Rhodes alone there were three thousand statues, besides many paintings and other rare and beautiful objects. Chares is best known for the sun-god which he erected here; it was called the "Colossus of Rhodes," and was reckoned as one of the seven wonders of the world. One hundred statues of the sun were erected at Rhodes, and Pliny says that any one of them was beautiful enough to have been famous; but that of Chares was so remarkable that it overshadowed all the rest.

It stood quite near the entrance to the harbor of Rhodes, but we have no reason to believe that its legs spanned the mouth of the port so that ships sailed between them, as has often been said, although its size was almost beyond our imagination. The statue was one hundred and five feet high, and few men could reach around one of its thumbs with their arms, while each finger was as large as most statues. Twelve years were occupied in its erection, from B.C. 292 to 280, and it cost three hundred talents, or about $300,000 of our money, according to its usual estimate, though there are those who name its cost as more than four times that amount. The men of Rhodes obtained this great sum by selling the engines of war which Demetrius Poliorcetes left behind him when he abandoned the siege of Rhodes in B.C. 303. We have no copy of this statue, but there are coins of Rhodes which bear a face that is believed with good reason to be that of the Colossus.

Fifty-six years after its completion, in B.C. 224, the Colossus was overthrown by an earthquake, and an oracle forbade the restoration of it by the Rhodians. In A.D. 672, nearly a thousand years after its fall, its fragments were sold to a Jew of Emesa by the command of the Caliph Othman IV. It is said that they weighed seven hundred thousand pounds, and nine hundred camels were required to bear them away. When we consider what care must have been needful to cast this huge figure in bronze, and so adjust the separate parts that the whole would satisfy the standard of art at Rhodes, we are not surprised that it should have been reckoned among the seven wonders, and that Chares should have become a famous master.

Chares also founded a school of art which became very important, and, indeed, it seems to have been the continuance of the school of the Peloponnesus; for after the time of Lysippus the sculpture of Argos and Sicyon came to an end, and we may add that with Lysippus and his school the growth of art in Greece ceased; it had reached the highest point to which it ever attained, and all its later works were of its decline, and foreshadowed its death.

The reign of Alexander the Great was so brilliant that it is difficult to realize that it was a time of decline to the Greeks; and during the life of Alexander perhaps this does not appear with clearness; but at the close of his reign there arose such contentions and troubles among his generals that everything in Greece suffered, and with the rest Greek art was degraded. In the time of Pericles it was thought to be a crime in him that he permitted his portrait to be put upon the shield of the Parthenon, and he was prosecuted for thus exalting himself to a privilege which belonged to the gods alone. Alexander, on the contrary, claimed to be a god, and was represented by painters and sculptors until his portraits and statues were almost numberless.

Soon after the death of Alexander the humiliation of Athens and its old Periclean spirit was complete. If you read the history of Demetrius Poliorcetes, who was even allowed to hold his revels in the most sacred part of the Parthenon—the temple of Minerva—you will see that Athens was enslaved and her people no longer worthy to lead the world in the arts of peace, as they were no longer the brave men who could stand first in war. In their degraded state the Athenians suffered three hundred and sixty statues to be erected to Demetrius Phalereus, and these were destroyed to make way for the golden images of the conquering freebooter Poliorcetes. This last was hailed by the debased people as a god and a saviour. His name and that of his father, Antigonus, were woven into the sacred peplos.

At length, under the Diadochi, or successors of Alexander, order was restored, and Antigonus, Ptolemy, Seleucus, and Lysimachus divided the kingdom of Alexander into four Græco-Oriental monarchies. The dynasty of the Ptolemies in Egypt was the most reputable of these, and gave much encouragement to art and letters. But the sacred fire seems to have died out, or did not burn clearly when transplanted from Athens to Alexandria. The Alexandrines seem to have been mere imitators of what had gone before, and there is nothing to be said of them that is of importance enough for us to linger over it. Very few works remain from this Diadochean period. The Metope of Ilium, which Dr. Schliemann has in his garden in Athens, the Barberini Faun, in the Glyptothek at Munich, and the Nile of the Vatican are the most important remnants of Alexandrine sculpture.

Amid all the confusion and strife which followed the death of Alexander the island of Rhodes remained undisturbed, and when the division of the monarchies was made the Rhodians still retained their independence. They were neutral, and so had a commerce with all the monarchies, and thus gained great wealth; and theirs was the only independent State of the old Hellenic world which was able to found and maintain a school of art. Among the great works of the Rhodian artists none is more familiar to us than the group of the Laocoon.

In the time of Pliny this work stood in the palace of Titus, and the historian called it "preferable to all other works of pictorial or plastic art." There is a difference of opinion as to the period when it was made, and many date it in the time of Titus, who lived A.D. 40 to 81. But the weight of argument seems to me to rest with those who believe that it was made at Rhodes in the time of the Diadochi.

The group in the Vatican is probably a copy, because Pliny says that the original was made of one block, and that of the Vatican is composed of six pieces. Pliny also tells us that the Laocoon was the work of three sculptors, Agesander, Polydorus, and Athenodorus. The Vatican group was found in 1506 in the excavation of the Baths of Titus, in Rome, and was placed in its present position by Pope Julius II. (Fig. 51). The right arm of Laocoon was missing, and Michael Angelo attempted to restore it, but left it incomplete; Montorsoli made an unsatisfactory attempt for its restoration, and the arm as it now is was made by Cornacini, and more straight than it should be.

The story which these statues illustrate is told in the second book of the Æneid, and says that Laocoon was a priest of Apollo at Troy, who, when the Greeks left the wooden horse outside the city and pretended to sail away, warned the Trojans against taking the horse inside the walls; he also struck his spear into the side of the monster. But Sinon, who had been left behind by the Greeks, persuaded the Trojans that the horse would prove a blessing to them, and they drew it into the city, and ordered feasts and sacrifices to be celebrated to do honor to the occasion. Laocoon had much offended Pallas Athene by his words and acts, and when he went to prepare a sacrifice to Neptune that goddess sent two huge serpents up out of the sea to destroy him and his two sons, who were with him by the altar. When the three victims were dead the fearful creatures went to the Acropolis and disappeared.