These extensive productions of the school and workshop of Pheidias cannot be directly attributed to any of the known scholars and assistants of the master, many of whom attained individual celebrity. In the first rank of these should be mentioned Agoracritos of Paros, the favorite pupil of Pheidias, whose works were so perfect that the ancients were frequently in doubt to which of these sculptors they should be ascribed; it is possible, however, that this doubt may have arisen from the predominant impression left upon some of the statues by the guidance and assistance of the master. The chief creations of Agoracritos were two Athenes, a Zeus, and notably the colossal figure of Nemesis at Rhamnous, supposed to have developed from the unsuccessful Aphrodite prepared for the competition with Alcamenes. Another scholar and assistant of Pheidias was Colotes of Paros, a sculptor who appears to have restricted himself to the chryselephantine process, and who is especially noted for the part taken by him in the execution of the great Olympian Zeus. Other works in gold and ivory by Colotes were the Athene upon the Acropolis of Elis, an Asclepios erected in the vicinity, and the sacred table in the great Temple of Zeus, for the division of prizes after the Olympic games, the sides of which were ornamented with reliefs.

Alcamenes of Athens, or Lemnos, and Paionios of Mende have hitherto been considered as chief among the scholars of Pheidias; but the recent excavations at Olympia have done much to refute this opinion, unless, as is very possible, Pausanias makes a mistake (v. 10) in assigning to Alcamenes the sculptures in the front gable of the Temple of Zeus, instead of the acroteria above them, which alone is mentioned in an inscription as his work. No one can detect in the discovered fragments of these gable sculptures, more numerous than those of the Parthenon, the slightest dependence upon the art of Pheidias, which they appear to precede in point of development. The group of the eastern front, ascribed by Pausanias to Paionios, represented the instant before the chariot race of Oinomaos and Pelops (Fig. 210); that of the western the struggle of the Lapithæ and Centaurs at the wedding of Peirithoos. (Figs. 211 and 212.) The character of these works seems rather to connect them with the school of Calamis than with that of Pheidias, this being especially the case with the metopes. (Fig. 213.) The question will hardly be decided until authenticated sculptures by Calamis, or remains of the gable groups of the temple at Delphi, which were the production of his scholars Praxias and Androsthenes of Athens, have become known to science. In the meantime, it is impossible to disprove the hypothesis of Brunn, who sees in those of Olympia examples of an art peculiar to Northern Greece, remarkable for its picturesque realism and lack of artistic and ideal conventionalization. It is only certain that these groups are far inferior to those of the Parthenon, and, indeed, to those produced by any workshop of Athens after the time of Pheidias. Even if the questionable account of Pausanias prove to be true, it is certain that a judgment of the artistic style of Alcamenes and Paionios cannot be formed upon these decorative sculptures alone. Works of the stage of development shown by the western gable of Olympia could not have ranked with the bronze Pentathlos of the former artist, which was known in antiquity by the predicate “exemplary;” nor could an Aphrodite of Alcamenes have been preferred to a statue by Agoracritos, which had been retouched by Pheidias himself. The extensive employment of Alcamenes in Athens among the greatest successors of Pheidias and Myron would have been impossible had not his works been far higher in every respect than those attributed to him among the recent discoveries in Olympia, in view of which it is inconceivable how Pausanias could speak of Alcamenes and Pheidias almost as equals. The same argument applies to Paionios, of whose works a fortunate illustration has been provided by one of the most important discoveries made in the Altis, the Victory (Fig. 214), authenticated by an inscription upon the high triangular pedestal. This figure does indeed recall the spirit and methods of the Pheidian sculpture, and differs greatly from the remains of the eastern gable, as may readily be seen by comparison of Figs. 210 and 214. This contrast is only to be explained by a gigantic and almost inconceivable progress, or by the assumption that they were the works of different artists and periods.

Fig. 213.—Metope from the Cella of the Great Temple of Olympia. Atlas, Heracles, and the Nymph of the Hesperides.
Fig. 213.—Metope from the Cella of the Great Temple of Olympia. Atlas, Heracles, and the Nymph of the Hesperides.

Fig. 215.—From the Frieze of the Temple of Phigalia.
Fig. 215.—From the Frieze of the Temple of Phigalia.

If the Attic artists of this age be likened to planets revolving about the Pheidian sun, there were not wanting stars of the second magnitude, belonging to other systems and moving in other circles. Especially prominent among these latter was the direct and indirect school of Myron, an artist so pronounced in his wonderful naturalism that his style could not be extinguished even by the dominating idealism of Pheidias. Lykios, son of Myron, appears, from two celebrated works, to have followed closely in the footsteps of his father. These were the statues upon the Acropolis of Athens representing two boys, one of whom bore a basin for holy-water, while the other blew the coals in a censer into a lively glow. The latter reminds one of Myron’s Breathing Ladas; in this, as in the Runner, the quickened breath was the essential thing, and was not confined alone to the swollen cheeks, but must have been evident in the breast and body. The figure bearing the font was a zealous choir-boy, panting under a too heavy burden; and this also recalls the Ladas. Still another statue, the Pancratiast Autolicos, claimed by Urlich for Lykios, seems to have resembled the Discos-thrower of Myron. That Lykios did not confine himself to such genre-like specialties is shown by groups like the Argonauts, and by the votive offering of the citizens of Apollonia at Olympia, a truly grand composition representing Zeus deciding the result of the strife between Memnon and Achilles, according to the Æthiopis of Arctinos. In connection with Lykios may be mentioned Styppax of Cyprus, whose masterpiece, the Splanchnoptes—the entrail-roaster, a man fanning a fire—recalls in turn the choir-boy blowing the coals. Similar to the Dying Ladas, though less directly connected than these last examples, was the mortally wounded warrior of Cresilas, in which, according to classical accounts, the last moments of life could be measured; his wounded Amazon also appears to have been more in the style of Myron and Pythagoras than of Pheidias. No works by the immediate followers of Myron now remain, nor any attested copy; still there can be little hesitation in ascribing to this school an important achievement, not perhaps belonging to it so fully as do the architectural sculptures of the Parthenon to the workshop of Pheidias, yet having more in common with the school of Myron than with that of any previous master. This is the frieze of the Temple of Apollo at Phigalia—now in the British Museum—the architectural position of which has already been defined. The temple is said to have been built under the direction of an Athenian architect; it is probable, therefore, that Attic sculptors were employed for its ornamentation, especially as the sculptures betray no trace of the Argive influence which prevailed elsewhere in the Peloponnesos, and which will be further treated below. Though the subjects were Attic, as battles of Amazons and Centaurs, they cannot be likened to the school of Pheidias, for, instead of the passionless grandeur and ideal simplicity which characterized the sculptures of the Parthenon, there is in them a vehemence and excitement known at this period only in the works influenced by Myron. It is not strange that this excessively passionate action should sometimes be wanting in beauty; the power of execution at command in the remote city among the Arcadian mountains was not of the first rank, and the guidance of a master, like him who directed the sculptural work of the Parthenon, was wanting.

Two artists of this period were entirely independent, proceeding in degenerate directions; first, Callimachos, noted as an artisan in metal-work, who executed the rich and elegant lamp of the Erechtheion, and was said to have originated the Corinthian capital; but who, as a sculptor, carried a refined delicacy and formal perfection even to an extreme. This won for him the cognomen of Catatexitechnos—the unreasonably careful. Callimachos did not, like Apelles, know when to withdraw his hand from his work, which agrees with Pliny’s judgment concerning him, that, by over-exactness in execution, all grace was lost. A still more questionable tendency is shown by Demetrios of Alopeke, in Attica, the first realist. Pre-eminently a sculptor of portraits, he affected striking characteristics at the expense of beauty, and made it his specialty to represent the likenesses of decrepit men and women. A priestess sixty-four years old, and an aged Corinthian field-officer, Pelichos—“a bald-head with a pot-belly, tangled and flying beard, and veins projecting roundly under the withered skin,” according to the description of Lucian—must have been so far from ideal and refreshing beauty that it would seem rather to have been the aim of the artist to illustrate age as its destroyer. Thus, in comparison with Pheidias and Myron, Demetrios resembled Thersites among the heroes of Troy.

Fig. 216.—Copy of the Doryphoros in the Museum of Naples.
Fig. 216.—Copy of the Doryphoros in the Museum of Naples.

Argos deserves the second place as the site of the artistic industry of this period, which had then been greatly advanced by Polycleitos of Sikyon, a fourth scholar of Ageladas, and somewhat younger contemporary of Pheidias, but in a direction different from that of the Attic school. Myron had characterized intense and momentary animal life, Pheidias that of absolutely ideal and divine being. Polycleitos chose as his aim the artistic representation of the highest human beauty—a positive type of bodily perfection. The Doryphoros, known in antiquity as the masterpiece of the latter, and celebrated as a canon, was a youth in a quiet position, bearing a lance; it was considered the embodiment of perfect form, the master himself having written a treatise upon the proportions of the human figure in illustration of this statue. It is not improbable that Polycleitos, in this work, desired to set a pattern before his numerous scholars; that he was himself too dependent upon this academical tendency may be judged from the slightly disparaging words of Pliny that “his works were almost as if taken from one model.” According to the intention of the artist and to the general conviction of his time, the Doryphoros represented absolute perfection of the human body; and this left the master but little scope for the varying of his model, if he would not prove untrue to that beauty which Cicero has praised so highly in all his works. The so-called Apoxyomenos—an athlete scraping himself with a strigil—similar in subject to the statue of Lysippos (Fig. 229), was also a figure placed in the quiet attitude of parade, if not, like the Doryphoros, with an academic purpose. A third work, the so-called Diadoumenos, a boy binding his head with a fillet—sometimes considered as a companion piece to the Doryphoros—appears to have shown a more youthful and less athletic development of form. It is not strange that archaeologists have taken great pains to identify, among the numberless works of Roman sculptors, imitations of these two canonical figures, the existence of which was naturally assumed from the great celebrity of the Greek originals. The scholars Friederichs, Schwabe, Michaelis, Helbig, Kekule, and Benndorf have accordingly discovered six repetitions of the Doryphoros, preserved in Cassel, Naples, Florence, the Vatican, and the Villa Medici; while several other statues in Dresden, the Louvre, the Vatican, and the Villa Albani have been recognized as variations differing more or less from this type (Fig. 216). In like manner, copies of the Diadoumenos have been found in Madrid, in two marbles of the British Museum, in a bronze statuette of the National Library of Paris, and in a relief of the Vatican: all of which are allied in point of conception and artistic character. Still it is inexplicable how these thick-set and muscular forms could be spoken of by Pliny as viriliter puer and as molliter juvenis, or by Lucian as graceful dancers; though it is possible that, in these academical studies, the canonical perfection of form decided by Polycleitos was not so well embodied as in the bronze Idolino of the Florentine Museum. The question is far from settled, and it should not be forgotten that eminent authorities doubt this origin, Conze imputing them rather to the school of Cresilas, while Petersen even maintains the type to have been a Roman invention.

An Amazon in a quiet pose gave Polycleitos an opportunity for portraying a female form of muscular development, yet of typical beauty. It is not difficult to believe that this statue was adjudged even superior to the similar productions of Pheidias, Cresilas, and Phradmon, which could hardly have been the case if the subject treated had been a deity or a figure of momentary action. (Fig. 217.) The artist could even better follow his academic aim in the two Canephoræ—basket-bearers—whose quiet pose and want of inner expression were so well suited to display an outward, formal beauty and correctness of modelling. But the Astragalizontes—the boy throwing dice of knuckle-bones—which, according to Pliny, was the most perfect work of art in Greece, should not be imagined in an excited, striking situation, or as a street scene conceived with a truthfulness to nature characteristic of Murillo, but as representing the consummation of boyish beauty.

When Quintilian says that Polycleitos elevated the human figure above what is seen in nature, and yet, contrary to Pheidias in his statues of the deities, had not attained to the majesty of the gods, this signifies that he had not so fully represented the divine nature. His devotional images are few and without especial fame, with exception of the colossal chryselephantine Hera in the temple between Argos and Mykenæ. The goddess, seated upon a throne, was draped in garments of gold, with only the head and arms bare; the sceptre in her right hand was crowned with the cuckoo, symbol of conjugal fidelity, and in her left was a pomegranate; at her side stood Hebe, the work of Naukydes, the master’s best assistant. As the Pheidian head of Zeus has been recognized in the mask of Otricoli, so the splendid colossal mask of the Ludovisi Juno (Fig. 219) has been referred to an original by Polycleitos. But it is probable that the head of Hera, in the museum at Naples (Fig. 218) came nearer to this original (Brunn). Though it be asserted that all the heads of Zeus may be referred to the complete and established type of Pheidias, the ideal of Polycleitos, by no means divine, renders it doubtful whether his Hera acquired a similar position among the succeeding representations of that goddess.

Fig. 218.—Head of Hera, in Naples.
Fig. 218.—Head of Hera, in Naples.
Fig. 219.—So-called Juno Ludovisi, in Rome.

The effort after perfection of form sufficed to make the master of Argos a pre-eminent teacher; yet none of his many direct scholars, with the exception perhaps of the before-mentioned Naukydes, acquired such fame as the associates of Pheidias, perhaps on account of this very schooling and discipline, the rigid constraint of a canon fettering the wings of artistic individuality. We are not able to judge how far this tendency was furthered during the short period of Theban ascendency by the somewhat later branch of the Theban school, although, among many others, the Theban artists Hypatodoros and Aristogeiton were of considerable importance. The groups consecrated at Delphi about 380 B.C. were of particular interest; they represented the advance of the Seven against Thebes, and the successful repetition of the invasion by the sons of those warriors. It was not until Lysippos, an indirect scholar of Polycleitos, in his desire to represent men as they should be, had raised himself entirely above the canon of his master, who aimed to show them as they are, that another artist of the first rank appeared. Examples from the workshop of Polycleitos still exist, though unfortunately scarcely recognizable in the mutilated fragments of sculpture from the Temple of Hera, discovered by Rangabe and Bursian in 1854—works which were doubtless executed under the direct guidance of the Argive master, as those of the Parthenon were under that of Pheidias.

Fig. 220.—Metope of the Southern Temple upon the Eastern Plateau of Selinous.
Fig. 220.—Metope of the Southern Temple upon the Eastern Plateau of Selinous.

The influence of Attica and Argos not only prevailed in Greece proper, but made itself felt even in the most remote colonies. The Zeus upon one of the metopes of the southern temple on the eastern plateau of Selinous (Fig. 220) may have been developed from the figures of Zeus by Ageladas, and suggests the sculptures of the Olympian temple which was completed about the same time. This metope represents Zeus fascinated by Hera upon Mount Ida (Il. xiv. 300), and the artist, in his figure of the god, has surpassed his former efforts, but the Hera is harder and more antique. The other well-preserved metopes of this temple—one of which shows a Heracles in strife with Amazons, and the other Actaion lacerated by dogs—though not without provincial weakness, have an unmistakable affinity to those of the Theseion. These were nearly contemporaneous, but an entire generation later there appeared at Messene, in the most remote part of the Peloponnesos, the sculptor Damophon, an artist decidedly of the Pheidian style, on account of which he was called to restore the Olympian statue, already warped and disjointed. Although a sculptor of ability, it would seem that he did not entirely withstand the current of a new direction in art; besides the statues in the Pheidian circle of divinities, others were ascribed to him, of a nature similar to those cultivated by preference during the succeeding period of Attic sculpture. The progressive force inherent in the people and in the art of Greece did not rest until the highest point had everywhere been reached. This impulse afterwards led to excess and decadence, permitting no lasting enjoyment of the previous gains. The art of Polycleitos prevailed somewhat longer in the Peloponnesos, the Dorians being by nature conservative, but in Attica the new elements early obtained a sway which could not but essentially change the character of all Hellenic sculpture. The frieze upon the Temple of the Wingless Victory in Athens, and the somewhat coarser one within the naos of Phigalea, began already to give evidence of an inclination towards the pathetic and passionate; the sculptures also upon the balustrade of the Athenian temple, executed probably about 390 to 380 B.C., appear to be the unmistakable forerunners of a new style. The Athenian Kephisodotos the elder stood, so to speak, upon the threshold of this transformation. His position in the history of art is assured by the fortunate discovery of a copy of his Eirene with Ploutos, now in the Glyptothek at Munich (Fig. 221). This work combined the tendencies of the new Attic style with those of Pheidias. Though the noble simplicity and grandeur, the earnestness and strictness, of the earlier period still remained, there had already dawned an expression of deeper feeling, and of a more spiritual life.

The representation, as Friederichs says, of the deep interchange of affection between mother and child, as shown in the Eirene of Kephisodotos, united with much of the hardness of the older works, culminated in two masters—the Parian Scopas and the Athenian Praxiteles, the latter possibly the son of Kephisodotos. Their productions were so nearly related that, even in antiquity, it was doubtful whether a work of celebrity should be ascribed to one or to the other. The chief creations of both were statues of the deities, both worked in marble, choosing this material not by chance, but from the nature of their subjects. With the exception of such colossal figures, of a highly monumental character, as the chryselephantine statues of Zeus and Athene Parthenos by Pheidias, and the Hera by Polycleitos, the delicate beauty of soft and transparent stone was best fitted for the images of deities enshrined within the temple; bronze, on the contrary, is peculiarly suited to statues of victors and athletes intended for outdoor exposure. It was on this account that it had been so largely employed by Myron and Polycleitos.

The Raging Bacchante, designated by epigrams and descriptions as the most celebrated work of Scopas, was one of the first masterpieces of antiquity. The head was thrown back in an ecstasy of passion, the hair loosened, and the long garment fluttering in the wind; thus did the Mainad appear rushing to the heights of Kithairon, holding in her hands the kid rent in her fury. If the rhetor Kallistratos was, as he says, speechless at sight of the countenance, admiring particularly the expression of a soul stung into madness, we can well believe that passion itself was embodied in this work. The excitement was more moderate in the Apollo of the Temple of Nemesis at Rhamnous, brought by Augustus to the Palatine, playing the lyre and singing with lyric inspiration. It is not improbable that the motive of the Apollo in the Vatican, with the long flowing garments (Fig. 222), may be referred to this original. The entire bearing more closely resembles that of the figures of the children of Niobe. We can hardly think without enthusiasm of the Bithynian Achilles group, placed in later times in the Temple of Neptune, near the Circus Flaminius in Rome, which, according to Pliny, would have made the master celebrated even though he had created nothing else during his lifetime. It represented Achilles upon the island of Leuke after his death, and his reception among the deities, and displayed, besides Thetis and Poseidon, numerous fantastic creatures of the sea. Some idea of these last may be gained from a magnificent frieze found in the vicinity of the Temple of Neptune, and now in the Glyptothek at Munich. But it cannot belong to this group, and, in its main features, has no close relations with it.

Delicate beauty and warmth of feeling must be ascribed to the works of Scopas, otherwise Pliny could not have placed the Aphrodite found in the Temple of Mars, near the Circus Flaminius, above that of Praxiteles. Nor can we imagine the groups at Megara—Eros, Himeros, and Pothos (Love, Yearning, and Desire)—described by Pausanias; or Aphrodite, with her priestly lover Phaethon; or Pothos, in Samothrace, to have been without these traits. The group of Leto with the nurse Ortygia carrying the children, Apollo and Artemis, as the personification of a mother’s joy and pride, must have been full of deep meaning. It is evident, from the long list of his works, that his power was many-sided: his peculiar style is best exemplified in a grand composition, the group of the Niobids, though Pliny is in doubt whether it should be ascribed to Scopas or to Praxiteles. The original of this no longer exists, and even the very unequally executed pieces—to be found chiefly in the Uffizi at Florence, and in various repetitions in different museums—are not complete; still even thus they betray the greatness and individuality of this wonderful work. Niobe, wife of King Amphion of Thebes, and mother of fourteen children, in a boastful spirit, inherited from her father Tantalos, compared herself with Leto, who had only two, and ordered sacrifices to be made to herself rather than to that goddess. For this she was terribly chastised by Apollo and Artemis, her children being all slain before her eyes by the avenging arrows of the two deities. She herself, trying in vain to protect her youngest daughter, pressing against her, makes an attempt to draw her mantle over her head to hide the expression of despairing woe which, according to the legend, in a few moments turned her to stone. The figure, in its royal nobility and motherly despair, yet so free from contortion, has wonderful effect. (Figs. 223 and 224.) The children, already wounded and hurrying towards her, show pain, fear, and need of help in different degrees, but with that dignity and fine control which render it a tragedy in the highest sense. The various struggles of feeling in the beautiful young faces; the excited wrestling with an invisible, unconquerable, relentless power, in every gesture, and in every motion of the swaying garments; the plaintive character of the lines throughout the whole composition, entirely opposed to the vertical tendency of the statuesque, and especially of the architectural art; the wavy flow which distinguishes it from the group at Ægina, and even from the quiet action of the figures in the gables of the Parthenon—are all so peculiar to this pathetic school, and so characteristic of its productions, that the Niobe will ever be considered the greatest example of its style.

In a study of the artistic character of Scopas, we must content ourselves, for the most part, with a few copies, and some not very full accounts. Still, original remains from his hand are not altogether wanting. We have seen that he was engaged in the sculptural ornamentation upon the eastern side of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassos; while upon the south and north sides his younger associates were employed—Timotheos, Bryaxis, and Leochares, the latter known to us by a copy in the Vatican of his Ganymede Carried Away by the Eagle of Zeus. But the greater part of the recognizable reliefs upon the frieze, the most important group of which represents the so often recurring battle of the Amazons, notwithstanding the wonderful beauty and pathos of the action, peculiar to the sculptured art of this period, is the work of artisans, and certainly not by the hand of a master of the first rank. (Fig. 225.) Among the numerous fragments of the statues found in the English excavations of 1856, which, from analogy with the mausoleums of the Roman emperors, may have stood between the columns, one at least, a well-preserved torso, probably of Zeus, found upon the eastern side, has been ascribed to Scopas. The others are, unfortunately, too much mutilated to allow of any reliable judgment, as the varying views of different authorities testify. At all events, these decorative works cannot be ranked with the more celebrated examples of this master.

Fig. 225.—Fragment of the Frieze from the Mausoleum of Halicarnassos.
Fig. 225.—Fragment of the Frieze from the Mausoleum of Halicarnassos.

An acquaintance with the art of Scopas is extended by the study of his younger and still more important contemporary Praxiteles. The masterpieces of this artist are similar in character, and betray all the preference of the former for the ideal beauty of youth. Not less than five statues of Aphrodite by Praxiteles are known to have existed, among which the famous statue at Cnidos was regarded as one of the wonders of the world, and was ranked with the Olympian Zeus. It was so highly prized among lovers of art that King Nicomedes of Bithynia, for instance, in vain offered to the people of Cnidos the entire amount of their State debt in exchange for it. The brow, the moist glowing eyes, and soft smile of the slightly parted lips are described as wonderful; the whole figure being so executed as to cause the marble to be forgotten and the goddess of love to appear a reality. Coins of Cnidos show the figure to have been entirely nude, the left hand holding her drapery, partly lying upon a vase, and the right shielding herself in modesty. The best in this style among the numerous remaining statues were the Braschi Aphrodite, now in the Glyptothek at Munich, and that of the Vatican, which is, however, inferior in execution, and is, unfortunately, disfigured in the lower part by hard, modern drapery. Next to that of Cnidos in nobility and beauty must have been a draped Aphrodite from Cos, provided the people of that place had any understanding of art; for, when the choice between the two was offered them by the artist, they gave the preference to this. Of the three others, less known, the Thespian was placed next to the statue of Phryne, as contrasting divine with human beauty. To Praxiteles were ascribed, also, at least two representations of Eros—blooming, youthful figures, of which the most celebrated seems to have been the Thespian or Bœotian one, which was installed between the Phryne and the Aphrodite. Epigrams and accounts describing the god as wounding not with the arrow, but the eye, appear to relate to this figure; for the second statue from Parion, in Mysia, according to the coins, showed the god unarmed, and with head uplifted.

A tender and almost effeminate character was exhibited in these beautiful figures of youth, similar to which were the Sauroctonos—the lizard-killer—the best copy of which is in the Louvre; the dreamily reposing Satyr, of which there are copies in various museums; and the smiling, sentimental Dionysos with the doeskin, leaning upon the thyrsos. Great depth of suffering and sorrow is the fundamental feature of two groups, one representing the rape of Proserpine, the other her delivery by Demeter to the lower world, to which she returned after every harvest, as a symbol of the following fruitless season.

This last was as pathetic an illustration of a sorely tested mother as could be found in any other work of Praxiteles. The mild Demeter was not less frequently presented by this master than was Aphrodite.

That greatest of all modern discoveries, the Hermes with the infant Dionysos, found in the Heraion at Olympia (Figs. 227 and 228), has proved the error of imputing to all the works of Praxiteles a delicate gracefulness verging upon weakness, which had arisen from the study of the only examples hitherto known—the copies of the Sauroctonos, the Satyr, and the Aphrodite. The manly force of this statue, in character midway between the conceptions of Pheidias and Lysippos, is, indeed, so surprising that some scholars have even been inclined to assume a second sculptor by the name of Praxiteles, there being no reason to doubt the direct testimony of Pausanias as to the authorship of this work. The beauty of this torso exceeds that of all other antique statues known; the expression of the head conveys that intense sympathy between the loving protector and the child which must have characterized the work of Kephisodotos referred to above. It is possible that the Hermes was the product of an earlier period of the sculptor’s development, more closely related to the tendency and ideals of Pheidian art. When it is considered that this torso is the only surely authenticated original production of any great master of Greek sculpture—for it is by no means certain that the gable groups of the Parthenon are by the hand of Pheidias himself—there is no need for further discussion of the fundamental importance of this most fortunate discovery.

Notwithstanding the astonishing many-sided genius and productivity of Praxiteles, nearly all the Olympian deities appearing in the half hundred of his works, it must still be acknowledged that, besides his pathetic tendency, he particularly affected that province in which the figures of maidens or youths gave opportunity for the development of the greatest charms. His works portray a sensual loveliness distinguished alike from that hard and abstract beauty, that outward perfection of form sought and attained by Polycleitos, and from that elevated, godlike being ideally embodied by Pheidias in his Zeus and his Athene. Neither entirely human, as with Polycleitos, nor divine, as with Pheidias, this emotional loveliness seemed created for the world of gods, but little raised above the sight and experience of men; and this type appears to have been as well established by Praxiteles as that of the higher deities by Pheidias. Its examples are the Aphrodite and Eros, the youthful Dionysos with his train, the Demeter, and the Eleusinian circle.

Fig. 228.—Head of the Hermes of Praxiteles.
Fig. 228.—Head of the Hermes of Praxiteles.

However important the school of these two masters of pathos may have been, but few among the numerous names that have been preserved became prominent. The chief exceptions are the above-mentioned assistants of Scopas upon the mausoleum, and the two sons of Praxiteles, Kephisodotos the younger, and Timarchos. Two of the greatest works of statuary, however, may be ascribed to their most vigorous scholars—the Venus of Melos in the Louvre (Fig. 229) and the so-called Ilioneus in the Glyptothek at Munich. If the doubtful inscription of the artist upon the former be credited, which, in characters of the first century B.C., designated it as the production of |Ale|xandros, son of Menides of Antioch upon the Meander, but which, together with the corresponding part of the plinth, has disappeared, we should possess in this work an inexplicable anachronism, a creation of the highest rank in art produced during a period of decided decadence. As, however, through this loss, this assumption cannot be verified, science must proceed to judge it by its style alone. Its grandeur and dignity, in contrast to the immodest coquetry of later works; the fulness of the flesh in this body of ever-blooming youth, in comparison with their attenuated grace; the mild softness of the surface beside the cold polish of the other figures of Aphrodite—would place this statue between the period of highest perfection at the time of Praxiteles, and that of the Roman reproductions. The reference of the Venus of Melos to the school of Praxiteles has found a justification not to be undervalued in the discovery of the Hermes at Olympia, this figure of manly youth forming as complete a pendant to the maidenly Venus as could be imagined. In artistic character this is far more nearly related to the Hermes than is any other statue of Aphrodite, not excepting the undoubted Roman reproduction of that of Cnidos. At any rate, it is clearly an Hellenic original, not belonging to the period of later Hellenistic art.

Unfortunately, no explanation of this statue hitherto advanced has been entirely satisfactory. The two arms are wanting, and the fallen drapery covering the lower limbs has hidden from us the only accessory evidence—namely, the object upon which the lifted left leg is supported; so that even the name of Venus is not to be applied with the usual certainty. The Roman types of Victory, also half nude, with the same garments and position, and with the shield upon which the conquest is inscribed, suggest an Aphrodite-Victory analogous to the Attic Athene-Victory. The restorations all present points of difficulty; among them may be mentioned that commonly received, where the goddess contemplates herself in the shield of Ares, supported by the analogy of a statue mentioned by Pausanias (ii. 5), an interpretation equally applicable to the Venus of Capua, now in Naples; that also of Wiesler, with the lance in the uplifted left hand; and the combination of the goddess in a group with Ares by Quatremère de Quincy.

It is even less easy to find a reliable explanation of the beautiful torso in the Glyptothek at Munich, formerly held, falsely, to be Ilioneus among the Niobids, and even believed to be an original. As the Venus of Melos is an illustration of ripened womanly beauty, the entirely nude, cowering figure, without head or arms, represents the perfection of youth; and the position suggests a subject equal in pathetic import to that of the children of Niobe.

As the works of Scopas and Praxiteles frequently found their way to the islands of the Ægean Sea, and as the former, at least, had certainly dwelt for some time in Asia Minor, the influence of these two masters appears to have extended eastward, and their style to have had decided sway even longer there than in Greece proper. The farthest outlying examples are presented by the fragmentary statues of the Nereids from the Monument of Xanthos, to which they have given the name.

At that period, even in Athens, some highly esteemed artists not only partially followed their own ways, but in these surpassed the former masters, and pursued aims which did not become generally prevalent until the middle of the fourth century, and then in quite other localities. These were Silanion of Athens and Euphranor of the Isthmos. The first devoted himself chiefly to portraits and representations of victors, and was so especially successful in the former as to make them a real embodiment of personal character; as, for instance, the portrait of the passionate sculptor Apollodoros was made to appear a personification of sudden rage. Silanion distinguished himself from Praxiteles in the subjects of his art, in which he had much in common with Lysippos. Euphranor was also, perhaps in a still greater degree, a painter, and, in the coarser power of his creations, was opposed to the delicate style of Praxiteles, showing more affinity with Lysippos, so far, at least, as we can judge of his sculptures by the accounts of his paintings.

Similar to the transitional position between Pheidias and Scopas, held by the elder Kephisodotos, was the position taken by these two sculptors between the art of Scopas and Praxiteles and that of Lysippos, for whom the studies and innovations in the canons of human proportions prepared the way. Though self-taught, for as a youth he had been a hand-worker in brass, and from this had raised himself to the position of an artist, he was still not without connection with the schools, since he took as his model the Doryphoros of Polycleitos, the academic pattern mentioned above, and also worked in bronze, the material most favored by Polycleitos and the artists of the Peloponnesos. He cannot, however, be called a direct scholar of Polycleitos, whose canon he corrected and even replaced by a new one, better adapted to the artistic aims of the younger masters. The model of Polycleitos was the human body, but Lysippos felt that he must set his ideal of humanity higher than in the average of real examples, because he considered these, in comparison with the perfect figure, to be degenerate and dwarfed. Although he worked with reference to this view, still he developed his types from the real appearances of nature; and when asked by the painter Eupompos of Sikyon for advice as to the best teacher, he pointed to an assemblage of people. He wished to represent man, however, not as he is, but as he should be, and employed only those features which did not fall below the average determined by Polycleitos. His ideal type of the human body became more slender and larger, the size being especially apparent because the head and extremities, which take their proportions from the whole, were made smaller.

Lysippos, however, followed the footsteps of Polycleitos in considering the establishment of a canon as the greatest essential in art, and exercised his powers chiefly in the province of humanity. His Apoxyomenos—the athlete scraping himself with the strigil, a marble copy of which is in the Vatican—is the most celebrated among his statues of athletes and victors. (Fig. 230.) In this he seems to have set forth his new confession of faith, in opposition to that of Polycleitos. This aim must have had the most important influence upon portrait-sculpture, the chief field of his activity. It is clear from the accounts of some likenesses of persons long dead, or even legendary, that he fully expressed the character in the features, as in the Apollodoros of Silanion, and did not aim at that over-scrupulous reproduction of details and attention to circumstantial matters which endeavor to attain a likeness by sharp observation of external things, unessential to the whole. This inferior style of portraiture was pursued by Lysistratos, the brother of Lysippos, who formed his figures after plaster casts from nature. Although earlier portraits might have informed the sculptor in regard to the true features of some historical personages, certainly this could not have been the case with Æsop, or the Seven Wise Men, for whose individuality and intellectual tendencies he was obliged to create a characteristic type. In the portrait which he most frequently executed, that of Alexander the Great, it was of especial importance to illuminate the ugly and faulty formation of the monarch’s face by the expression of his powerful character, and to execute it so appropriately that even the likeness was increased by such depth of appreciation. The artist thus produced portraits of the conqueror which differed as much, and as favorably, from the realistic and chance appearance of the king as the historic illustration of a great personage does from the knowledge of that individual in every-day life. Alexander, accordingly, would be represented in sculpture by no one except Lysippos, as he would be painted by none but Apelles. Even that best-preserved portrait of Alexander, the bust in the Capitol, does not suffice to make clear the whole conception of Lysippos. How grand such monumental portraitures really were may be gathered from the account of the group at Dium—afterwards transferred to the Portico of Octavia in Rome—illustrating a scene from the battle upon the Granicos, where twenty-five warriors on horseback and nine on foot were grouped about the king, to which many of the enemy may doubtless be added.

The work next in importance after this was the representation of Heracles by this master. Not in the elevation of the ideal above the human, but rather in the emphasizing of this latter quality, did the Heracles of Lysippos stand in distinct opposition alike to the merely human model of Polycleitos, to the superhuman and godlike beings of Pheidias, and especially to the divinely charming beauty of the Aphrodite and the Eros, as seen in the best creations of Scopas and Praxiteles. The Heracles of Lysippos, the embodiment of strength developed beyond human possibility, appeared colossal, whether the absolute dimensions were really great—like the statue from Tarention which represented him resting upon a basket after the labor of cleansing the Augean stables—or whether in miniature, suitable for a table ornament—like the celebrated Epitrapezios, showing the hero as a drinker. Copies, in part, still remain of the Labors of Heracles, executed in twelve groups for Alyzia, in Acarnania. They show the same type that is reproduced in the affected, overstrained statue of the later Athenian artist Glycon—the so-called Farnese Hercules in Naples. (Fig. 231.)