during the rest of the life of Greek art. The century and a half of the local schools is significantly the great age of this art.
In the study of each school we have first to determine its character, and then to look in its successive phases for the influence of the great masters of style. Two dangers must be avoided. We must not too sharply divide the sculptors and the painters as if they always were true to the special functions of their arts. It is well to bear in mind that the earliest great painter, Polygnotus, was a portrayer of character, καλὸς ἠθογράφος, ἠθικός, as Aristotle calls him, whereas the latest great sculptors represented expression (τὰ πάθη). Thus since ἦθος is the special province of sculpture, and τὰ πάθη of painting, sculpture first weighed down the balance, afterwards painting; but it must be remembered that relief can be truer to painting than sculpture in the round, which is more limited by the conditions of the material and mechanical necessities. Our second danger is due to the ease with which local qualities may be ascribed to the influence of a leading style. It is also to be borne in mind that the movement of art in coins was during one period slower than in sculpture—hence an influence more general than particular. Pheidias and Myron do not make their mark so much as Polyclitus. In all cases the direct influence of great masters is to be looked for later than their age.
The school of central Greece in its southern group, comprehending Attica, is remarkable for its widespread extent. It has its colonies in Magna Graecia at Thurium, an Athenian foundation, probably at Terina, and in Macedonia at Amphipolis and Chalcidice under Athenian rule. It alone shows instances comparable to the works of Pheidias, though Central Greece. its most numerous fine works are of the age of Polyclitus and that of Praxiteles and Scopas. Its qualities may be seen by comparison of the same subjects as treated by the other schools and groups. The earliest works are marked more than any others by the qualities of high promise which characterized the Aeginetan marbles—the same dignified self-restraint and calm simplicity. Next we perceive a series strong in style, and showing that lofty dignity, that reposeful embodiment of character, which are the stamp of the works of Pheidias and his contemporaries. The subjects are more remarkable for fidelity, breadth and boldness than for delicacy of execution or elaboration of ornament. Every subject is ideal, even the portrayal of animal form. Thus the character shows us what divinity is intended and the ideality what is intended by the representation of beast or bird. From these works we pass to those which reflect the style of the time of Praxiteles and Scopas, when the influence of painting began to be felt, and art inclined towards feeling and descended to sentiment. Still, to the last, character rules these coins, and the chief difference we see is in the increased love of beauty for its own sake and the fondness for representing movement, not to the exclusion of repose, but by its side. In other respects there is little change except in the finer execution and more ornamental quality of the work. Even when the greatest achievement of the Sicilian school, the female head on the decadrachms of Syracuse, is copied by the Locrians and the Messenians, the larger quality of the school of Greece asserts itself, and the copy is better than the original: there is less artifice and more breadth. The northern group is at first ruder, in the age of Pheidias severer, and afterwards it merges into the greater softness of its southern rival. If it copies, as Larissa may copy Syracuse and Neapolis in Campania, it again asserts its superior simplicity, and we prefer the copy to the original.
The Ionian school lacks the sequence which the rest of the Greek world affords. It is broken by the baneful influence of the Persian dominion, and consequently the best works belong to the earliest and latest part of the period. The earliest coins, of the Aeginetan age, present nothing special; the later, of the time of Praxiteles and Scopas, comprise works Ionia. not inferior to those of central Greece, and remarkable, like the Western and the Cretan, as the sole records of a school otherwise unknown. They are markedly characterized by the qualities of the style of feeling, that of Praxiteles and Scopas; but more than this, they are the expression of that style in pictorial form. They represent expression, and they treat it as it could not be treated in sculpture in the round, portraying locks streaming in the air and flowing draperies. It must be remembered that, while Hellas produced the great sculptors, western Asia Minor bred the great painters after Polygnotus, himself a sculptor in painting rather than a painter. In the native land of Zeuxis, Parrhasius and Apelles we see the evidence of the rule of painting. The technical skill is inferior to that of the West, yet the skill in modelling is far greater, and has no parallel in the medallic work of any other time or country.
The school of the West, if we except such outlying examples of the art of Hellas as those of Thurium and Terina, has its highest expression in Italy, its most characteristic in Sicily. It has distinctive qualities throughout the age. Even in the earlier period we trace a striving after beauty and a delicacy of finish, with a weakness of purpose, that mark The West. the school with an influence increasing to a time long after the extinction of its rivals. At the same time there is a knowledge of the capacity of the materials and the form of the coin and a masterly power of finish, on the whole a completeness of technical skill which is unequalled. The result in the lower subjects is splendid, if wanting in variety, but in the higher we miss the noble achievements of the greater schools. So far there is a general agreement in the northern and southern groups. Yet the Italian shows a nobler and simpler style, with some affinity to that of central Greece, which we look for in vain in Sicily, though we are dazzled by the rich beauty of the magnificent series of coins which marks her wealthiest age. Sicilian art has this apparent advantage, that the, great cities, save Syracuse, perished in the Carthaginian invasion, or under the tyranny of the elder Dionysius. Thus we have no important works save of Syracuse during the second half of our period, and cannot judge fully to what this school would have fallen. The key to this exceptional development of Greek art is found in the absence of sculptors or painters in the West, except only Pythagoras of Rhegium at the very beginning of the age, whose influence is thought to be traceable on the money of his native town. On the other hand, there can be no doubt that many of the Sicilian die-engravers, as Phrygillos (to mention one whose signature is actually found on an intaglio) were gem-engravers. The Western art is that of engravers accustomed to minute and decorative work, uninfluenced by sculpture or painting. Their designs will not bear enlargement, which only enhances the charm of those of the other leading schools. Those of the great Syracusan decadrachms are small; those of the minute hectae of Cyzicus are large.
The most important of the lesser schools is the Cretan. Crete, retaining the primitive life of older Hellas, was never truly civilized, but to the last enjoyed the privileges and exhibited the faults of an undeveloped condition. Producing in the age of high art neither sculptor nor painter of renown, the Cretans, to judge from their coins, were copyists of Crete. nature or art. At first rude, their work acquires excellence in design, but never in execution. While we see their poor reproductions of the designs of the Peloponnesus, we are amazed by their skill in portraying nature. Their gods are seated in trees with a background of foliage. Their bulls are sketched as they wandered in the meadows. All fitness for the mode of relief, as well as for the material and the shape of the coin, is entirely ignored. Hence a delight in foreshortening, and a free choice of subject with no reference to the circle in which it must be figured. In spite, however, of their skill, the Cretans never attempted the three-quarter face, which is at once the best suited to the surface of a coin and the most trying to the skill of the artist. Yet their work is delightfully fresh, as if done in the open air. There is no idealism, but much life and movement. In a word, the school is naturalistic and picturesque. Its works are of the highest value in the study of Greek art, but as examples of the application of that art to coins they are to be used with caution. Nowhere else do we see the artist so freely copying nature and art, nowhere so unshackled by academic rules, nowhere so little aware of the limitation of his province.
