The older metopes of Selinous, the statues of Miletos, the reliefs of Assos, and even the so-called figures of Apollo from Thera, Naxos, Orchomenos, and Tenea, betray great looseness and uncertainty of form; like the productions of every period of experiment, they give no evidence of systematical and accepted principles—the canonical establishment of a certain degree of perfection. In the subsequent period there was, in various cities, an earnest endeavor to make an end to this want of training by thorough and academic discipline. These efforts could not, in Greece, result in that typical lifelessness, that faulty execution and mannerism, universal in Egypt and the despotic lands of the East, which operated against all direct study of nature; but, by the combination of individual observations and improvements, they increased and purified the artistic appreciation, no longer restricting it to details, to the partial, but directing it to the complete. Athens was most active in this advance, as is evident from several ancient works closely related to that of the woman mounting the chariot. The progress is illustrated by the statue of Athene found upon the northern side of the Athenian Acropolis. A strict treatment of details, like the aigis, the folds of the garments, the hair, etc., is united to a considerable understanding of the forms of the body and the functions of the limbs, which are sharply and perhaps a little hardly modelled; while the work has in great measure freed itself from the exactions of conventional symmetry, so markedly exemplified by the sitting statues of Miletos and the Apollo of Tenea. The figure of Hermes bearing a calf, found in Athens, is a somewhat similar work; its head and hair are hard even to ugliness, but decided ability is shown in the formation of the back and hams, and in the truth to nature of the calf, held by the legs and pressed close to the neck. The progress is not less plain in the bronze statuette of Apollo in the Louvre, nearly one meter high, with the Greek inscription “to Athene from the tithes;” provided, indeed, that the period of its origin is certain, and the work does not belong to the extensive group of archaistic imitations.

The reliefs from the beginning of the fifth century are similar in character. That upon a marble fountain-drum from Corinth represents the meeting of Heracles and Hebe; it still preserves the silhouette-like outline, the small parallel folds and general ornamental style of the drapery, and the stepping of both feet flatly upon the soles; while the unschooled endeavor and evident embarrassment of the artist does not give an unpleasing expression of awkwardness to the figures, which have a certain dignity and grace, especially remarkable in the garments and in the action of the extremities. Here is attained at last that strict and completed style which has cast off all loose uncertainty, and has adopted a conventional form for accessories in order to secure the harmonious execution of the whole. This is also noticeable upon a relief discovered in Thasos, now in the Louvre, which, when compared with the before-mentioned Corinthian relief, and with the monument of the Harpies, displays the influence of the neighboring coasts of northern Asia Minor, together with a certain picturesqueness of conception peculiar to northern Greece. A beautiful stele, found in Orchomenos, the work of Alxenor, an artist from Naxos, instead of giving to the portrait figure the stiff position of parade, formerly universal, represents it with crossed legs, lazily leaning upon a gnarled stick. The archaic meagreness is, however, still to be seen in the form of the hand, and in the folds of the cloak (Fig. 197). The stele from the Borgia collection, at present in Naples, resembles it in general style. All the merits and defects of the period are to be seen also in a number of terra-cotta reliefs from Melos, not to mention some small figures in clay and bronze, for the most part superficially executed, the clumsiness of which may be ascribed to the maker’s individual want of ability.

The growth of art in Asia Minor, Sicily, and Lower Italy, in so far as these lands were Hellenic, does not appear to have kept equal pace with that of Greece proper; yet the intercourse, during the last decades of the sixth century, was so active that they could not remain far behind. The most remarkable examples of the sculptures of this class, perhaps of a little later date than the Attic works described, are the metope reliefs from the Middle Temple of the Eastern Plateau at Selinous, representing the gigantomachia, as preserved in scanty fragments. Although the crudeness of outline and modelling in the bodies of the fallen giants in many respects recalls the older metopes of the corresponding temple of the acropolis, the draperies of the goddesses, on the other hand, show a skill exceeding in truth and beauty many of the archaic works of Greece itself. The one remaining head of a giant, wounded and outstretched in death (Fig. 198), shows, in spite of the antique hardness in the form of the face and treatment of the hair, an expression which could have resulted only from the intelligent study of nature. A relief from Aricia, now in Palma, upon the island of Mallorca, representing the murder of Ægisthos by Orestes, is known only through insufficient representations; it shows weakness in composition and inequality in rendering, the garments being sensibly inferior to the treatment of the nude.

Before mentioning by name those artists who carried art beyond this stage of development, another class of monuments, numerically very important, should be considered. It is well known that in all ages antiquity has had a certain charm, either as appearing strange and interesting in comparison with existing circumstances, or from religious associations. When a devotional figure, with which many legends have become associated, as is the case to-day with the altar-pieces of our churches, was particularly reverenced on account of its antiquity, there was a desire to preserve its primitive type, even from recognized improvements. Hence arose an imitation of the original work, called archaistic in contradistinction from the archaic, or really old. This imitative style became fashionable in later times; while an amateur with the means of the Emperor Augustus was able to acquire an original Boupalos or Athenis, other lovers of the antique were obliged to content themselves with copies, or with works conventionalized after the manner of the early masters. These products are not always to be distinguished from the truly archaic, as is also the case with some modern imitations; but usually some conventional, technical, or circumstantial oversight or anachronism furnishes an easy criterion. There can be no doubt, for example, concerning the age of a work of sculpture in which a Roman Corinthian temple stands in the background, as upon a well-known relief representing Victory filling a cup for Apollo Kitharoidos, who is followed by Artemis and Leto. In other cases the head, hands, or feet,—the expression or gesture,—or the step, which in ancient works characteristically rests upon both soles,—betray a much later period than the hard or regular folds of the drapery, as is the case with the Artemis at Naples. (Fig. 199.) Sometimes the accessories are of a later style, as in the ten scenes from the Gigantomachia upon the border of the garment of Athene in Dresden; or, finally, the drapery upon one figure of a group is strictly antique, while that of the others is free, as upon a tripod of the same museum,—not to mention other less important inconsistencies.

Fig. 200.—Central Figures of the Western Gable, Temple of Athene upon Ægina.
Fig. 200.—Central Figures of the Western Gable, Temple of Athene upon Ægina.

Fig. 201.—Harmodios and Aristogeiton. (Copies in Naples.)
Fig. 201.—Harmodios and Aristogeiton. (Copies in Naples.)

An established conventionalism,—that contentment with the mere handiwork of acquired forms which existed for centuries in the lands of the Nile and Tigris,—was not possible in the early art of progressive Greece. Upon the foundation of the artistic ability already attained at this period, various local schools and individual sculptors rose to a higher level, and effected an advance, partly by opening new channels for the artistic industry of all Hellas, partly by pursuing paths which remained peculiar to themselves. Athens and Ægina are especially prominent in this activity; but, notwithstanding many scholarly researches, the history of art is not able to distinguish with certainty between the works of the two cities, an Attic example analogous to the chief work of the island being wanting for instructive comparison. The chief difference between the two may have been that the former school had a less strict and trained execution than the latter, with more grace of form and nobility of bearing. Callon and Onatas were prominent artists of Ægina, the latter seeming to have been the more celebrated. On account of the hardness of their work, both were considered inferior to Calamis. Onatas is particularly interesting from our knowledge of two of his chief sculptures—extensive dedicatory offerings to Olympia and Delphi, one of which represented the Greeks before Troy, casting lots to determine upon an opponent for Hector, and the other the combat over the fallen King of the Tapygians, Opis. The subjects of these works, especially the latter, and the peculiarity emphasized by Pausanias that the heroes before Troy were represented armed only with helmet, spear, and shield, probably to give scope for the display of the artist’s skill in the treatment of the nude, remind us of the two well-preserved groups from the gables of the Temple of Athene at Ægina, which, in point of style, must have been closely allied to those of Onatas. These priceless marbles were discovered in 1811, and the next year, by a chain of fortunate circumstances, came into the possession of Louis I., then Crown-prince of Bavaria. Ten of the remaining statues belong to the western gable, and five to the eastern; the greater part of the former group is thus preserved, and, as the scenes in both gables are almost entirely alike, their general arrangement may be restored with reasonable certainty. That over the chief front represents the struggle for a fallen hero, probably Oicles in the contest of Heracles and the Æginetan Telamon with Laomedon of Troy. In the rear tympanon the scene is the recovery of the body of Achilles or of Patroclos. Subjects so closely allied could lead to no great difference of composition, at most to such slight variations as the characterization of Heracles in the first group or of Paris in the second, if this latter be considered an episode in which that hero took part. In both gables the fallen warrior lay at the feet of the protecting Athene (Fig. 200), while on each side, symmetrically disposed, a combatant of either party endeavors to seize the body and drag it forth from the fray. Above these stooping figures warriors threaten each other with lances; but it is not certain whether there were two or four of these actively engaged. The latter number has been recently assumed from numerous fragmentary remains, which, if appertaining to the group at all, it is impossible otherwise to locate; the refutation of this theory of Lange, which has been attempted by Julius, does not terminate the vexed question. These warriors were followed, according to Brunn’s arrangement, by two kneeling lance-bearers, perhaps protecting the two archers in similar position with their shields. One of the archers is shown by a leathern cuirass and the so-called Phrygian cap to be an Oriental, perhaps Paris. With the exception of Heracles in the eastern gable, who is characterized by his lion’s skin, none of the other combatants are personally distinguishable. The corners of the triangle are filled by two fallen warriors. The whole group is thus composed with strict reference to symmetrical correspondence, and to the conditions imposed by the gable; all attempt to attain relative action and realism is abandoned, and the impression of a pantomime is inevitable. The outlines of the bodies, their position and action, are correct even to the minutest details, and show a certainty of form and a technical perfection, which, in the absence of all support for the bodies, or for the extreme thinness of the shields, is truly astonishing. The figures of the eastern gable appear particularly perfect, and are apparently the works of later sculptors, less limited, in point of style and artistic ability, than the master, or masters, of the western group. If in the latter, as before remarked, it is natural to think of Onatas, the former is correspondingly attributable to Calliteles, the son, scholar, and assistant of Onatas, who worked in great measure like his father, but also under the progressive influence of a younger generation. In remarkable contrast to the excellent and, in formal characterization, almost faultless, anatomical treatment of the bodies, two things appear particularly important as indicating the limits of the artistic ability of the time—namely, all the heads and the two statues of the deity Athene. The former are without ideal beauty or expression, for which the sculptor evidently felt himself incapable. He therefore carved the features according to a certain formula, and the apparent smile, resulting from the mouth being drawn outward and the corners of the eyelids extended, is to be regarded as a meaningless reminiscence of the older style. The eyes are too protruding and the chin too pointed and small, defects of the earlier practice, not as yet entirely overcome. The Athene shows how obstinately the devotional images were denied the advances made in other sculptures, so that the traditional and hallowed type might be preserved, as much as possible, from change. While for the other statues the artist had before his eyes the living combatants of the palaistra, his model for this was the sacred image standing within the temple. The evident contrast between the stiff bearing and archaic garments of the Athene and the rest of the group is thus more naturally explained than by the view that, in the artist’s conception, the goddess did not need any real action, that a slight lifting of the shield, as a divine “thus far and no farther,” was sufficient to show her supernatural power and to protect the fallen. The awkward turn of the feet, which was owing less to the limitations of space than to the reminiscence of an antique devotional image, might the more safely be ventured, because it could not be seen at all from below. That the sculptor, however, in his loving devotion to his work, took small advantage of this last consideration, is clear from the fact that the bodies are as carefully finished upon the back as upon the front, although one half of this labor could never have been appreciated from the first installation of the figures until their discovery among the overthrown ruins and their reception in the Munich Glyptothek. The effect of the whole was essentially heightened by the bronze accessories, such as lances, belts with swords, bows, arrows, a Gorgoneion and serpents upon the aigis of Athene, etc.; and even more by the intense red, blue, and other colors upon the helmets and waving crests, shields, and borders of the garments, sandals, and leather-work, as well as by the tinting of the hair, eyes, and lips—all which painting was probably in strict harmony with the neighboring architectural members, which were doubtless treated with similar pigments. Of other statues of archaic stamp only one has proved to be contemporaneous with, and of the same school as, the gable sculptures of Ægina—namely, the so-called Strangford youth in the British Museum. The work is more closely allied to the statues of the western than to those of the later eastern gable of the temple; but, notwithstanding a marked similarity in the treatment of the torso, the formation of the features differs so distinctly that the figure can hardly be ascribed to the same master. When Pausanias says of Onatas that, although belonging to Ægina, he still does not rank him below any contemporaneous sculptor of Attica, this summary praise speaks less directly for the individuality of Onatas than for the decided relative position of the two schools. It shows that in general the style of Ægina was esteemed inferior. It may be concluded that there were at least three Athenian sculptors of this time who surpassed the artists of the gable groups of the temple upon Ægina, namely, Hegias (Hegesias), Critios, and Nesiotes, not to mention the somewhat older Endoios, Antenor, and Amphicrates. Literary notices of their works do not convey any valuable information; but Friedrichs has discovered in the sculptures of the Museum of Naples which hitherto had passed under the name of the Gladiators, copies from one of the best works of Critios and Nesiotes. (Fig. 201.) They represent Harmodios and Aristogeiton, the assassins of the tyrant Hipparchos,—a group recognized by an Attic tetradrachm, by the relief ornamenting a marble seat at Athens, and by a weaker reproduction now in the Giardino Boboli at Florence. As copies of this kind do not allow definite conclusions concerning the style of celebrated monuments, we must regard in them only the general composition. They suffice, however, to show that the figures, which are of a free and bold action, cannot be referred to the Monument of Antenor, built as early as 509 B.C. Besides the schools of Ægina and Athens, there were at this period sculptural workshops of good repute in Sikyon, Argos, Corinth, and Thebes. As early as the time of the Cretan Daidalidæ Dipoinos and Skyllis, Sikyon was one of the chief cities of artistic industry; and at the beginning of the fifth century two celebrated brothers, Canachos and Aristocles, stood at the head of a local school which lasted for seven generations. The chief work of Canachos, the colossal Apollo of the Branchidæ sanctuary in Miletos, holding a movable, probably automatic, stag in the outstretched right hand, is known only by representations upon coins, and by a bronze statuette in the British Museum (Fig. 202); the latter shows that the master was but little removed from the archaic hardness of earlier times, though endeavoring to attain greater power and nobility of form, particularly in the head and features. Another colossal Apollo by Canachos in Thebes differed from the figure in Miletos in being made of wood. The chryselephantine Aphrodite in Sikyon, represented with the polos upon the head and with poppy flower and apples in the hands, must have been particularly archaic in conception. Two other works, more removed from hieratic influences and limitations, were probably of a less restricted style; namely, the Muse with the Syrinx, executed with two others by the master’s brother, Aristocles, and the Young Racers.

The school of Argos is celebrated by one great name, immediately connected with the highest development of art, Ageladas, the contemporary of the masters of Ægina, Athens, and Sikyon previously mentioned. From the silence of ancient authors in regard to this master’s style, little information can be given concerning it; it is only known that the Muse with the Barbiton, his many figures of Zeus and Heracles, various statues of victors, quadrigas, and groups of votive offerings in Delphi, were of bronze. Ageladas was the teacher of three of the greatest sculptors of Greece—Myron, Polycleitos, and Pheidias; and he must, if on this account alone, be ranked above his contemporaries. The history of art would receive but little furtherance by a detailed consideration of the other Argive sculptors, Aristomedon, Glaucos, and Dionysios; of the Corinthians, Diyllos, Amyclaios, and Chionis; of the Thebans, Aristomedos, Socrates, and others; of Callon of Elis; or of the Spartan Gitiades. Prominent as these must have been, they appear rather to have demonstrated the vigor of their schools, and the influence of those of Ægina and Athens, than by individual gifts to have raised themselves above the academic art of their time. As masters of personal importance, in whom the progress made by their own genius far exceeded their early training, may be mentioned three younger sculptors: Calamis, probably of Athens; Pythagoras of Rhegion, in Magna Græcia; and Myron of Eleutheræ, on the borders of Bœotia. Calamis worked chiefly in devotional figures, and in these could not entirely throw off the hieratic limitations in regard to position and treatment of details. He was accounted somewhat less hard in style than Canachos or Callon, but inferior to Myron in truthfulness to nature. This master seems to have made little advance in the modelling of the body as a whole, though Lucian praises the rhythmical position of the feet and the beauty of the joints of his Sosandra; but in the representation of the head he succeeded in making decided progress when compared with the artists of the gable groups of Ægina. In this respect his Alcmene must have been highly important; but chief among the works of Calamis was the Sosandra, probably an Aphrodite, which became proverbial on account of its grace and beauty. Lucian, when comparing the most distinguished examples among all the works of art to illustrate perfect beauty, did this with the significant words, “Calamis may ornament our ideal with chaste modesty, and its smile may be honorable and unconscious as that of Sosandra.” In view of this judgment, it is plain that the stiff, ugly heads of the Æginetan marbles are not to be imputed to the works of Calamis; that the graceful and beautiful formation of the features was one of the chief improvements effected by him. The limitations of his art are indicated by another notice. Pliny relates that Calamis was unsurpassed in his representations of horses; but Praxiteles removed a charioteer from one of the older quadrigas, and created another in its place, “that the men of Calamis might not appear inferior to his animals.” His charioteer must consequently have contrasted unfavorably with the horses and disturbed the harmony of the whole; this need by no means be considered as contradictory to the accounts of the beauty of his devotional images, for the charming grace which distinguished the quiet figures of deities and heroes was to be exchanged in the charioteer for an athletic life, corresponding, in position and action, to the exciting situation, and such representations evidently were beyond the powers of the otherwise able master. Examples authentically referable to Calamis do not exist, though the statue of Apollo upon the Omphalos, found in Athens, shows at once the archaic limitations and the advancing mastery which may be ascribed to this period of Greek sculpture; while the so-called Vesta, now in the possession of Torlonia, may have preserved reminiscences of the Sosandra. Both these works are evidently the products of artists who did not conceive the gods as merely graceful and pleasing, but as strict and serious beings. Statues of Apollo by Calamis are known to have been brought from the Kerameicos in Athens, and from a city upon the shores of the Pontos, to the Roman capitol; but this can hardly be adduced as an argument in favor of the authenticity of the figure upon the Omphalos.

To those very points in which Calamis failed, the two other artists named devoted themselves with signal success. The works of Pythagoras of Rhegion, who limited himself to bronze as a material, while Calamis worked in marble, gold, and ivory, betray no connection with those of the latter in regard to subjects, for the greater number were statues of victors and representations of heroes in somewhat genre-like conception. Of the former, Pausanias and Pliny praise the Enthymos as one of the most excellent among the forest of images dedicated at Olympia; of the latter, the limping Philoctetes was celebrated by many epigrams, as causing the observer to himself feel the pain of the wounded foot. To attain such an expression, it is not sufficient to characterize the suffering in the affected limb alone, but the pain must be evident in the entire body, in bearing as well as in step; in the continued tension of all the muscles, and in the one-sided strain upon the sound leg. The Philoctetes illustrates an otherwise incomprehensible account of the master’s ability. Diogenes of Laerte says that Pythagoras, of all sculptors, first regarded rhythm and symmetry. This unity of motion or rhythm, with the equipoise or symmetry which alone lends a feeling of security and harmonious perfection to the different members of figures under excitement, is that which made the work so effective. The same principles must have distinguished the statues of victors, which were apparently intended rather as examples of the various modes of combat, or the preparations therefor, than as individual portraits. The chief merit of this master appears, according to this, to have consisted in the organic truthfulness to nature of his figures, and this is by no means contradicted by the rather trivial judgment of Pliny that Pythagoras was the first to indicate sinews and veins, and to more carefully model the hair; for increased anatomical correctness came naturally with the organic action and realism of these works.

In this expression of the movement by every part of the body exercised, Pythagoras was still surpassed by Myron. A founder of metal, like the former, he acquired his fame chiefly as a maker of the statues of victors, although, with acknowledged versatility, he executed numerous images of deities and heroes. Two of the first were highly celebrated—the Runner Ladas and the Discos-thrower; both of them belonging to that class of works which illustrated the nature of the game itself. For Ladas was shown at the moment when, after overstrained effort, he had reached the goal, and there, as victor, had fallen dead: according to the expression of an epigram upon the work, it was as if the last breath from the empty lungs were passing his lips. For such a creation even the most perfect position of running, and indication of relative action in trunk and arms, were not sufficient; the great point lay in the panting breast and the open mouth and nostrils: the last effort of the lungs must have been wonderfully shown. Another epigram speaks of the “breather,” not of the runner, Ladas. That this marvellous representation of concentrated action was not to the disadvantage of the outer members is shown by the other victor before mentioned, the discos-thrower, the fame of which is demonstrated not only by the praise of Lucian, but by the numerous copies made during antiquity. Many of the latter have been preserved, marbles of the size of the original, and bronze statuettes, giving evidence of the fascinating action in the swing of the discos; the athletic body of the youth bending forward to gain greater impetus; the toes of one foot clinging to the ground, those of the other slid along its surface; and everything prepared for the fling which is instantly to follow. And yet the best-preserved copy, that in the Palazzo Massimi (Fig. 203), must certainly be in every respect inferior to the original. A mythological genre-group by Myron appears from existing copies to have been equally effective: it illustrated the legend of the flute, invented and cast away with a curse by Athene, and found by the unfortunate Marsyas. Statues in the Lateran and British Museum show the Satyr starting back in surprise, the momentary action of desire and fear being seized and expressed with as consummate mastery as were the athletic movements of the runner and the discos-thrower. It was this same spirit of life that caused Myron’s cow to be so celebrated in antiquity that no less than thirty-six epigrams have been handed down concerning it. Petronius, in praising this master, says that, in representing animals, Myron seemed to enclose the very breath of life in the bronze; and when Pliny says that he multiplied nature, he can have no other meaning than that the artist attained so life-like an effect that his works appeared rather to have grown than to have been an artistic creation.

Head of Pheidias.
Fig. 205.—Fragment in the British Museum, imitated from the Shield of the Athene Parthenos.

The schools of Ægina, Athens, Sikyon, Argos, Rhegion, and the other cities where art had chiefly centred, flourished during the Persian wars—that greatest period of Greece, from 490 to 450 B.C., when Myron, the scholar of Ageladas, was still young. The unequalled grandeur of this age, which resulted in the splendid culmination of all Hellenic life, must have furthered art, all the more as the devastation of the war, and the subsequent enrichment of the victors, offered full opportunity and means for monumental activity. What influence this had upon architectural industry has been described in a foregoing section, and it may be easily understood that sculpture went hand-in-hand with this; the larger temples needed their images of the gods, their gable groups, metope reliefs, and friezes, as also their complement of sculptural votive offerings, prompted by the gratitude of the victors. Athens, more than any other place in Greece, found occasion and means for these works, having been laid waste in 480 and 479 B.C. by Xerxes and Mardonios as no other large city of Greece had been. By means of the taxes levied upon the confederated states after the siege of Mycale, its possessions were greater than those of all the other Hellenic republics together. Athens therefore saw the most perfect flower of Grecian architecture come forth from the ashes of the Persian catastrophe, and by its side appeared the grandest creations of sculpture. Yet neither of these arose like magic from the wasted ground; it was necessary that the nation should first take breath, should recover from the almost supernatural exertions made during the war, and provide for defence and shelter by the building of fortifications and dwellings. It was not until after this that they could devote themselves to great monumental undertakings, the perfect completion of which required more than one generation, and sculptured ornamentation was thus still further postponed. The older masters hitherto considered had little or no part in the chief works of this period. The mind of Themistocles was so practical, and so much directed towards fortifications, that he could have little thought for occupying the artists with monumental sculpture. His successor, Kimon, son of Miltiades, began to build anew the places of worship, but did not go so far as to institute sculptural ornament, at least in its chief constituent, statuary. This first ripened to perfection in the reign of Pericles, and a favorable fate ordained that, just at this time, when it was needed as never before, a genius appeared under whose guidance the most complete development was attained. This greatest of sculptors was Pheidias, the son of Charmides, an Athenian by birth. When a boy of ten years, he had seen his countrymen, under Miltiades, go forth to Marathon, and, as a youth, had shared in the rejoicing over the glorious victory of Salamis. At that time, having probably left the school of Hegias, his first teacher, he turned towards Ageladas the Argive, who may have come to Athens in order that, in the rebuilding of the city, he might employ his art in works which have remained unknown to us. When Pericles entered upon his much celebrated presidency (444 B.C.), Pheidias, already advanced in years, enjoyed a fame so great throughout all Greece that, as soon as Pericles had installed him at the head of the entire monumental work of Athens, artists of distinguished rank placed themselves, without envy, under his lead. With only the scanty and scattered literary notices that we possess, it is impossible, from the works of this master, to illustrate his life before the time of Pericles, these being not only imperfectly known, but connected with but few chronological facts. Chief among his productions is to be mentioned a group in bronze consecrated at Delphi by the Athenians under Kimon, from a tithe of the booty taken at Marathon. It represented Miltiades between Athene and Apollo, surrounded by the ancestral heroes of the ten Attic Phylæ. In artistic respects nothing more is known of this than of the statue of a youth crowning himself with the victor’s band in Olympia; of a wounded Amazon, a work prepared for a competition in which Pheidias was surpassed by Polycleitos; of a marble Hermes in Thebes; or of three draped statues of Aphrodite, one of which, that in Elis, was chryselephantine, the other two having been of marble. The artist employed his powers mostly in a higher province—in figures of Athene and of Zeus. Six of the former are more or less known; the most celebrated was the bronze Athene of Lemnos upon the Acropolis of Athens, so called because dedicated by Attic colonists from that place, and distinguished by the name of “the beautiful;” a second was the colossal statue, likewise of bronze, standing between the Erechtheion and the Propylæa, whose helmet-crest and lance-point gleamed above the roof of the Parthenon, twenty metres high, and was visible at sea as far as the promontory of Sunion. The shield standing upon the ground—and perhaps a later creation—was ornamented by Mys, after a design by Parrhasios, with an embossed centauromachia. Not to speak of the Athene Areia at Platæa, a colossal wooden figure with garments of gold, the nude parts being of marble, we come finally to the incomparable chryselephantine figure in the Parthenon at Athens, in which the type of Athene was forever firmly established. Some few accounts—a marble statuette lately found in Athens (Fig. 204), a miserably careless imitation; and also a poor copy in marble of the shield, discovered soon after, in the British Museum (Fig. 205)—render it possible to understand the composition in its chief outlines. Standing erect, the head slightly inclined forward, clothed with the sleeveless chiton and the ægis, the helmet decorated with the sphinx, she supported her left arm upon the shield, at the same time holding the lance, which leaned against her shoulder and bore the serpent of Erichthonios, coiling upward; the right arm, outstretched, carried a figure of Victory, two metres in height, which, turned towards the goddess, offered her a wreath of gold. The base of the statue, and even the rims of the thick-soled sandals, were ornamented with reliefs. The golden shield showed, within, the gigantomachia, and, without, the battle of the Amazons, concerning which we have further information from the discovery above mentioned. The fatal portrait of the artist himself may be plainly recognized in the strongly individualized features of a bald-headed man with the battle-axe in his uplifted hands, prominent because of his almost entire nakedness among the completely equipped youths. This portrait caused the merciless persecution of the sculptor and his patrons; after the charge of embezzling the gold upon the garments of the Athene had been proved groundless by the removal and weighing of the metal, this figure gave opportunity for complaint of sacrilege, and the artist was forced to pass the remainder of his life in a prison. The Athene Parthenos was surpassed by the colossal statue of the Panhellenic Zeus in Olympia, likewise chryselephantine, which exhibited the highest triumph of Pheidias. The god, with a green enamelled olive-wreath crowning his golden locks, and in garments brightly bordered with gold, was seated upon a magnificent throne, the legs of which were ornamented with figures of Victory in two rows, and the arms with sphinxes, while the back was terminated with groups of Horæ and Charites, the steps, cross-bars, sheathing-boards, etc., of the support being decorated with many other sculptures in the round and in relief. In his right hand, turning towards him, was a Victory, and in his left a sceptre, tipped with the eagle, formed from a combination of many metals. This figure was majestic, with an expression mild, yet so powerful that a gesture would seem sufficient to make earth and heaven tremble. The artist had made this double expression his aim, guided in his creation by the lines of Homer where he portrays the God of gods nodding in assent to Thetis, who begs for the glorification of her son Achilles:

Fig. 206.—Coins of Elis. One third enlarged.
Fig. 206.—Coins of Elis. One third enlarged.

Fig. 207.—From the Eastern Gable of the Parthenon. Demeter and Persephone.
Fig. 207.—From the Eastern Gable of the Parthenon. Demeter and Persephone.

Fig. 208.—From the Eastern Gable of the Parthenon. Aphrodite and Peitho.
Fig. 208.—From the Eastern Gable of the Parthenon. Aphrodite and Peitho.

That Pheidias attained his ideal was unanimously attested by his own time, and by the later world so long as it had opportunity to see this wonderful production. Even divinity itself must have approved, since, according to the beautiful legend, as the master, at the perfecting of his work, prayed for a sign of favor from heaven, a stroke of lightning entered the temple and fell upon the floor in a spot which was marked in later times as sacred. A feeling pervaded all antiquity that the Olympian Zeus of Pheidias was the grandest and most divine of all works of art, which not to have seen was a misfortune to be lamented, and the sight of which lifted from the soul its cares and sorrows. Instead, therefore, of dwelling upon the praises given by the ancients to the details, we should seek rather to understand the principal traits which justified this opinion, and which were characteristic of the master. The archaic constraint prevalent in works of Ageladas and Calamis had been overcome; but the combination of all previous results, and a nearly absolute correctness of form, united to an ideal beauty quite beyond any real experience, could not have been the chief causes of this admiration. These were, indeed, important, especially in view of the enormous difficulties presented by the chryselephantine process—in the working of gold-plate; in the preparation, shaving, and uniting of the ivory, so unpliant to the chisel, and, finally, in securing it to the wooden form. But the essential and characteristic merit lay in the bodily incarnation of a grand and truly godlike ideal, employing the human form only as a word through which the elevated thought found expression. The artist had set before himself the most exalted aim—namely, to present to the eyes of the world the highest conception of divinity as seen in Athene, the goddess of the mind, and in Zeus, the king of gods. Hence the large number of Athenes executed by Pheidias, and the Aphrodite Urania, the great “heavenly” goddess, the feminine principle of the universe; hence, also, the fewer representations of masculine or heroic forms, or of subordinate deities, in which this master might be excelled—as by Polycleitos in his Amazon—because they did not accord with his nature, or contain within themselves that ideal greatness which he wished to unfold. Although the two chryselephantine colossal statues, notwithstanding the perishable nature of their construction, were comparatively long preserved—being in existence at the end of the fourth century A.D.—still, there are no copies which show more than their general composition. The marble statuette of Athene (Fig. 204) has already been mentioned; in regard to the Olympian Zeus, a copy upon a coin of Hadrian, which shows the usual carelessness and weakness (Fig. 206), has in later times been justly preferred to the mask of Zeus from Otricoli, formerly considered a copy after Pheidias. Though the classical notices frequently give the only information concerning the masterpieces of Pheidias, numerous original remains from his workshop still exist. We cannot adduce as examples the glorious metopes and frieze of the so-called Theseion in Athens, perfect as appear these representations of the deeds of Heracles and Theseus upon the former, and of the battle of the Centaurs and Titans upon the latter; for as it is not known when this temple was dedicated, it cannot be shown that its ornaments were executed in the period which came under the artistic direction of Pheidias. Nor can we attribute to this school the sculptures of the Erechtheion, which were not completed until 408—the beautiful caryatides of the portico, or the remnants of relief from the frieze, preserved, unfortunately, only in scanty fragments. These figures, indeed, instead of being carved from the blocks of the frieze itself, were formed piecewise of Pentilic marble, and fastened upon a dark ground of Eleusinian stone, probably for the effect of color. As little may we cite the better-preserved reliefs upon the frieze and balustrade of the small temple of Wingless Victory before the Propylæa, which, from their great likeness to the sculptures upon the mausoleum of Halicarnassus, seem rather to belong to the following period. Overbeck thinks it probable that the frieze has reference to the battle at Platæa; and the balustrade, according to Kekule, may have something to do with the return of Alkibiades. In judging the Pheidian school, the Parthenon offers, however, abundant material in the three kinds of sculpture—round statues, high and low relief; although the unhappy bombardment of Athens by the Venetians in 1687, when the bursting of a bomb in the beautiful temple, then used as a powder-magazine, and the succeeding explosion, destroyed more than half the work. The last two centuries also have not passed without leaving their mark; so that Lord Elgin’s robbery may, after all, have proved an advantage, the greater part of the sculptures having been protected and rendered accessible, since the beginning of this century, in the halls of the British Museum. It is particularly unfortunate that the gable groups have suffered most; for the perfection of these chief works must have appeared of the greatest importance to the artist, and these colossal statues would have given the best exposition of his ability. Before the catastrophe above mentioned, however, these were badly injured in consequence of the Temple of Athene Parthenos having been transformed into the Church of Maria Parthenos, and later into a mosque, the destruction appearing also to have been aided by the wilful malice of Christian and Moslem fanatics. They were still further reduced after the explosion by the unsuccessful attempt of the Venetians to carry off as trophy a marble chariot and horses. The few notes of Pausanias upon the subjects of the gable groups, the drawings of a French artist, Carrey (taken not long before the bombardment), and the remains preserved in the British Museum are sufficient to convey a conception of the general composition. The eastern gable represented the birth of Athene; not the unfortunate, artificial scene where the goddess springs, ready equipped, from the head of Zeus, as frequently shown in pictures upon vases and bronze mirrors, but the moment after, when she appears before the deities of Olympos. The entire central part of the group including the highest deities, the chief feature of the composition, is lost; the rest is in greater part preserved. As the scene was in Olympos, Helios and Selene, with their quadrigas, were fittingly chosen as the limits of the composition; the former rising from the sea, in the left angle of the gable, the latter sinking in the right; night disappearing before the dawn. The adjoining statues, though much mutilated, have been preserved. Next to Helios was Dionysos, resting upon his tiger’s skin; with two sitting female figures, Demeter and Persephone (Fig. 207), to whom hastens Iris, announcing the birth of Athene. Upon the other side, next to Selene, lay Aphrodite in the lap of Peitho (Fig. 208); and then Hestia, to whom Hermes, as the other messenger, brings the glad tidings: these latter sculptures were almost entirely destroyed in the time of Carrey. Nike—Victory—remaining only as a torso, appears to have followed with Ares, advancing towards the middle of the gable bringing greetings to the newly born goddess. All the rest was destroyed before 1680 A.D., and the principal figures of the composition are consequently unknown; but it is probable that between the Victory and Athene stood Hephaistos, recoiling after having delivered the blow upon the head of Zeus. Athene stood beside her father, but it is not certain whether the latter was exactly in the centre of the gable, or whether the two figures were equally removed from it. If this last were the case, which is perhaps probable, the division of the space would require still another deity upon the right side. The remaining gods of Olympos, Poseidon, Artemis, and Apollo, were probably arranged in this order between Zeus and Iris. The group of the western gable represented the contest of Athene and Poseidon for the Attic land. The composition is reasonably certain, though the middle figures have here also disappeared. The two chief deities, standing at either side of the olive-tree in the centre, turn towards their chariots, that of Athene being driven by Victory, that of Poseidon by Amphitrite; horses were harnessed to both, that of Poseidon not having been drawn by dolphins or hippocamps, as formerly supposed. The consciousness of victory was expressed by the bearing of Athene and of her steeds, while the bowed head of Poseidon acknowledged his defeat: the exclusion of the salt waves of the sea from the blooming meadows and groves watered by the Kephissos. The angles of the gable beyond the chariots were occupied by the retinue of the contestants, and by local deities; the accurate determination of these is impossible, though upon the side of Athene may have been grouped the representatives of the Athenian continent, and upon that of Poseidon those of the sea and the islands; while the figure of Kephissos is supposed to have filled the extreme corner at the left, and Ilissos with Callirrhoe that of the right. The scene was laid in Attica; and, as the earthly locality was to be clearly characterized and populated, it was advisable not to introduce again all the Olympian deities of the eastern gable. It is probable that during antiquity the landscape seen from this chief front of the Acropolis was famous for many local myths no longer familiar to the scholar, in ignorance of which an adequate explanation is impossible. The compositions alone give evidence of the grandeur and elevation of the master who produced and arranged them, in a truthfulness to nature at once ornamental and unconstrained. The remains, with great simplicity and breadth of detail, show a force and majesty which raise them above all known works of sculpture. In their loving and perfect modelling of the nude and of the drapery, in their freedom from affectation of motive or of rendering, and in their utter lack of any striving after meretricious effects, they appear rather the creations of magic than the labored carvings of men.

Fig. 209.—Fragment from the Frieze of the Parthenon Cella.
Fig. 209.—Fragment from the Frieze of the Parthenon Cella.

The glorious and celebrated frieze, or, to speak more correctly, zophoros, surrounded the entire cella. It is preserved in nearly four fifths of its entire length, the chief part of the remains being in the British Museum. It is evident that but little, if any, of this extensive decorative work could have been executed by the hand of Pheidias himself; but the grand design may be assumed to have been his, and the carving was certainly done under his supervision. The scene represented is the festive Pan-Athenaic processions, an imposing consecration of elaborate gifts to the guardian deity, and probably also a division of prizes to the victors in the various hippic, gymnastic, and musical games. The movement of the train commences upon the southwestern corner of the cella, and advances thence to the east, the entrance side of the temple. It is thus naturally divided into two parts, one of which occupies the western and northern, the other the southern side of the cella; these are united above the pronaos, where the double procession is shown as having arrived at the temenos before the temple; a priest and priestess, with the persons directly employed in the sacrifice, are preparing themselves for the sacred act—the former by laying aside his upper garment, which he gives to the youth standing beside him, the latter by taking a folding-seat from a female servant. (Fig. 209.) Between this central group and the remainder of the divided procession several deities, turned from the former figures, are watching the approach of the train. At the left sits Zeus, enthroned, beside the veiled Hera; these are followed by the Winged Victory, Ares clasping his right knee with both hands, Demeter with the torch, and Dionysos, who rests his right arm carelessly upon the shoulder of Hermes. Upon the right, next to the high priest, was naturally the place of Athene, and upon her left hand are still traces of the fallen Ægis; beside her was Hephaistos, leaning upon his knotted stick; then, looking towards him, Apollo, and further Peitho, Aphrodite, and Eros, the latter carrying a shade for the sun. The gods sit comfortably as spectators who feel themselves to be invisible. The first figures of the train, the leaders, have already attained their destination, and stand quietly conversing, supported upon their wands. In the succeeding women and virgins, who bear vases, cups, cooling-vessels, braziers for incense, and baskets—a wonderful train of perfectly beautiful forms—the advance decreases in movement as they approach the centre. Upon the two long sides follow herds of animals for sacrifice; the cows, proceeding quietly, scarcely need guidance, while the bulls are more or less restless, reminding one, in their forcible and momentary action, of the life-like works of Myron. After them follows the music of the procession—players upon the flute and lyre and the festive chorus; then begins the long line of chariots and of horses with their riders, which fill the greater part of the zophoros upon the longer sides and all of that over the epinaos. The beauty and truth in the action of these figures are unsurpassed; the most manifold variation of position is combined with perfect adaptation to the peculiar style of low-relief, and the wisest reference to the fitting of the composition within the space defined by the architectural lines. While upon the eastern front the procession had arrived at its destination, on the western the scene was still at the place of assemblage and marshalling. Here the horses are bridled and arranged in ranks; but the groups of men and youths stand in disorder, some hastily arming themselves, others binding their sandals or adjusting their mantles. Every action and gesture is simple and full of meaning; they never mar the unity of the whole nor interfere with the neighboring figures. The nude forms and the drapery are most carefully and equally executed throughout; the accessories are forcibly, though less elaborately, indicated. When the ceremonial reliefs of Assyria or Persia are compared with the frieze of the Parthenon, it becomes strikingly evident that the magnificence of personal accoutrements and inanimate objects which was so painfully and minutely detailed by the Asiatic sculptor, and elevated even above his schematic representations of deities and human beings, was as nothing to the Greek artist in comparison with the intellectual and physical beauty to which the great Hellenic race gave their chief interest.

The third group of Parthenon sculptures, the ornaments of the metopes, must least have harmonized with the nature of Pheidias. The architectural framework must have become a hindrance and a fetter, and the problem how to fill ninety-two square tablets of exactly the same size with similar representations must indeed have appeared a thankless task. These reliefs are in greater part lost, or so mutilated as to be unintelligible; but as far as can be judged by the scanty remains, the subject of the metopes upon the eastern side was the gigantomachia, that of both long sides principally the Centauromachia, while that of the western side was either the battle of the Amazons or of the Persians. In contrast to the low-relief of the frieze, these, originally colored, were—on account of the conditions of light—worked in such high-relief as even, in some parts, to be freed from the ground. The variation of subjects bearing so strong a resemblance is wonderful, especially in the struggling Centaurs and Greeks, where but little scope in the victory of one or the other combatant was possible: these are interrupted by the rape of virgins and other scenes not surely to be determined. Naturally, this desperate task would not have been completed without some few artistic inequalities, repetitions, and far-fetched modifications, especially as much of the execution must necessarily have been submitted to inferior sculptors; but some of the metope reliefs appear, in point of composition within the given space, and in grand, characteristic drawing, scarcely less admirable than the frieze of the cella. From all these works the spirit of the school of Pheidias is manifest in its imposing majesty and ideal simplicity; at times, also, traces of the forcible action of Myron may be observed.