582
ARCHAEOLOGY
kinship to painting, and their subjects recur in some of the great frescoes painted by Polygnotus, Micon, and others for the Athenians. Like other Lycian sculptures, they contain non-Hellenic elements ; in fact Lycia forms a link of the chain which extends from the wall-paintings of Assyria to works like the columns of Trajan and of Antoninus, but is not embodied in the more purely idealistic works of the highest Greek art. The date of the Vienna tomb is not much later than the middle of the 5th century. We engrave a small part of the frieze of this monument (Fig. 33). It will be seen that in this fragment
Pig. 33.—Odysseus and suitors;Trysa, hunting Pi. 7.of boar. Heroon of Gyeul Bashi there are two scenes, one directly above the other. In the upper line Ulysses, accompanied by his son Tcleniachus, is in the act of shooting the suitors, who are reclining at table in the midst of a feast; a cup-bearer, possibly Melanthius, is escaping by a door behind Ulysses. In the lower line is the central group of a frieze which represents the hunting of the Calydonian boar, which is represented, as is usual in the best time of Greek art, as an ordinary animal and no monster. Perhaps earlier than 400 B.c. are certain groups found at Delos, which represent respectively the carrying away of the Athenian girl Oreithyia by the wind-god Boreas, and the carrying off of the hunter Cephalus by the Goddess of the Dawn. These fine groups, full of energy, but unfortunately fragmentary, are supposed to have once adorned the roof of the great temple of Apollo at Delos. They are now preserved at Athens, and are the best examples we possess of the groups which frequently stood on the tops of the pediments of Greek temples. Archaeologists are now beginning to pay more attention to an interesting branch of Greek art which had until been neglected, that of sculptured porPortraits. recently tra|ts> Tlie pnown portraits of the 5th century now include Pericles, Herodotus, Thucydides, Anacreon, Sophocles, Euripides, Socrates, and others. As might be expected in a time when style in sculpture was so strongly pronounced, these portraits, unless later unfaithful copies, are notably ideal. They represent the great men whom they portray not in the spirit of realism. Details are neglected, expression is not elaborated; the sculptor tries to represent what is permanent in his subject rather than what is temporary. Hence these portraits do not seem to belong to a particular time of life; they only represent a man in the perfection of physical force and mental energy. And the race or type is clearly shown through individual traits. In some cases it is still disputed whether statues of this age represent deities or mortals, so notable are the repose and dignity which even human figures acquire under the hands of
(CLASSICAL) 5th-century masters. The Pericles after Cresilas in the British Museum, and the athlete-portraits of Polycleitus are good examples. It is now generally held, in consequence of evidence furnished by tombs, that the 5th century saw the end of the making of vases on a great scale at Athens . for export to Italy and Sicily. And in fact few vas^an things in the history of art are more remarkable than the rapidity with which vase-painting at Athens reached its highest point and passed it on the downward road. At the beginning of the century black-figured ware was scarcely out of fashion, and the masters of the severe red-figured style, Pamphaeus, Epictetus, and their contemporaries, were in vogue. The schools of Euphronius, Hiero, and Duris belong to the age of the Persian wars. With the middle of the century the works of these makers are succeeded by unsigned vases of most beautiful design, some of them showing the influence of the great Thasian painter Polygnotus. In the later years of the century, when the empire of Athens was approaching its fall, drawing becomes laxer and more careless, and in the treatment of drapery we frequently note the over-elaboration of folds, the want of simplicity, which begins to mark contemporary sculpture. Unfortunately we cannot here illustrate these changes of style, which can only be satisfactorily followed in the vase rooms of the British Museum, or other treasuries of Greek art. Period IV. 400-320 b.c. Until about the year 1880, our knowledge of the great Greek sculptors of the 4th century was derived mostly from the statements of ancient writers and from Homan copies, or what were supposed to be copies, of their works. We are now in a far more satisfactory position. We now possess an original work of Praxiteles, and sculptures executed under the immediate direction of, if not from the hand of, other great sculptors of that age— Scopas, Timotheus, Damophon, and others. Among all the discoveries made at Olympia, none has become so familiar to the artistic world as that of the praxjtejes Hermes of Praxiteles. It is the first time that we have become possessed of a first-rate Greek original by one of the greatest of sculptors. Hitherto almost all the statues in our museums have been either late copies of Greek works of art, or else the mere decorative sculpture of temples and tombs, which was by the ancients themselves but little regarded. But we can venture without misgiving to submit the new Hermes to the strictest examination, sure that in every line and touch we have the work of a great artist. This is more than we can say of any of the literary remains of antiquity — poem, play, or oration. Hermes is represented by the sculptor (Fig. 34) in the act of carrying the young child Dionysus Fig. 34.—Hermes of Praxiteles, to the nymphs who were restored. -Olympia, iii. 53. charged with his rearing. On the journey he pauses and amuses himself by holding out to the child-god a bunch of grapes, and watching his eagerness to grasp them. To the modern eye the child is
