CHAPTER V
THE POST-ALEXANDRIAN ART OF THE EMPIRE OF SELEUCUS,
THE KINGDOM OF PERGAMUS, RHODES, AND ALEXANDRIA
The life story of an idea—the flower of the spiritual world—presents many analogies to the vital phenomena of the natural world. It is born, it lives and, maybe, it suffers the “sea-change” we call death. There are the weeks, months, or years which correspond to the time when the flowers are in their tiring rooms,
“Fast busy, weaving, in those still retreats,
The robes of rainbow dyes, which they must wear.”
Then, with the idea as with the flower, comes the day when Spring,
“Fast running o’er the drowsy earth,
Taps at the closed portals of their homes,
And calls them forth, fresh perfumed and new clad,
To the festival of Nature.”
And after the flower comes the seed and the scattering of the seed.
The blossoming time of the idea which we saw in bud three centuries earlier—Hellenism—was the age during which Hellas consisted of a cluster of self-dependent cities in Greece, with their free colonies in Sicily, Italy, Asia Minor and elsewhere around the Mediterranean basin. Phidias, Praxiteles, and Lysippus were the sculptors of the age when Athens was still the centre of Greek intellectual thought and artistic action. The seedtime of Hellenism—its second phase—is that in which the Hellenic ideal is given to mankind. Magna Græcia is no longer self-centred and self-contained. The Greek takes upon himself the task of showing the barbarian world the value of that clarity of thought and expression which is at once peculiarly Hellenic and peculiarly sculpturesque.
This second phase is the Hellenistic period. It roughly dates from 323 b.c., when Alexander died, until the Roman occupation of Syria in the first century before our era. During this period independent schools of sculpture arose beyond the Ægean Peninsula. These were animated in the main by the Hellenic spirit, but the resulting works show abundant traces of the alien influences among which the seed was planted and grew up.
Previously, countries within reach of Greek influence turned to such a centre as Athens when they required artists of the first rank to design or decorate a temple or to adorn a public building. Moreover, Greek ideals had never penetrated into the vast countries ruled by Persia. But the union of the country between the Adriatic and the Indus into one Hellenic-Oriental empire, and the foundation of Greek cities throughout the length and breadth of the vast territory, changed all this. Workers in marble and bronze of the first rank arose at centres as remote from Greece as Pergamus and Alexandria. In Greece itself, the peculiar conditions which had produced Hellenism passed away. But a measure of the old artistic force remained, and though the Hellenistic sculptures possess definite characteristics of their own, evidence of connection with the original stock can still be traced.
The first task—the purpose of the present chapter—is to realise the circumstances under which the experience of the Hellenic sculptor was given to the non-Greeks.
The prime essential was, of course, an immense widening of the borders of the Greek world. In view of our sketch of fourth-century Greece, it is not surprising that the necessary energy came from a non-Hellenic power. The rude force of a people, who a generation earlier had been ploughmen and shepherds, was naturally enough more potent in the task of carving the greater part of the then civilized world into a vast empire, than the artistic instincts of Greece.
Nor is it wonderful that when the mere physical work of conquest was accomplished, the non-Hellenic Macedonians were found to lack the organising powers required to complete the task. They wanted that experience which only comes after centuries of commercial and political struggle. It was at once found that Macedonia was entirely unequal to the work of administering Alexander’s vast empire. Thousands of Athenian younger sons flocked into Asia in search of careers. Twenty years after Alexander’s death, the language and art of Greece predominated in every country from the Mediterranean to India.
In the more eastern portions of Alexander’s empire, the Greek predominance was short-lived. But in the western countries, a sure source of Hellenic influence was present in the cities founded by the conqueror and the generals who followed him. Alexander’s policy had been to bind the conquered provinces together by a stout chain of cities. In each a garrison was left, and with it a body of merchants to organize the civic life of the new town.
THE EMPIRE OF SELEUCUS
(301 b.c. TO 65 b.c.)
No one centre is entirely typical, but a fair idea of the influences which favoured the spread of Hellenic experience eastwards can be gained from the history of the Empire of Seleucus, and, particularly, from the circumstances under which the city of Antioch, on the Orontes, was founded. Seleucus Nicator was a Macedonian noble, and being only thirty-three on the death of Alexander had his life’s work before him. After two years as commander of the household cavalry he became Satrap in Babylon. It will be remembered that the general political situation was unstable in the extreme. Macedonia and Greece had fallen to the lot of Antipater; Antigonus had taken Phrygia; Ptolemy, Egypt; and Lysimachus, Thrace. A series of encounters ended in the defeat of Antigonus by Ptolemy, Lysimachus and Seleucus at Ipsus in 301 b.c. As the price of his aid, Seleucus claimed firm establishment in a kingdom bounded on the one side by the Taxartes and the other by the Euphrates. But the star of Seleucus continued in the ascendant for many years. The crowning-point in his career of conquest was reached after the defeat of Lysimachus at Corupedion in 281 b.c. Seleucus at this time held practically the entire Empire of Alexander, except Egypt.
THE TYCHE OF ANTIOCH
Vatican, Rome
How then did Seleucus seek to administer this vast agglomeration of peoples? Briefly he adopted the practice of Alexander. His schemes of military aggrandizement were shot through and through with efforts for the encouragement of commercial, scientific and artistic enterprises. He created centres of Greek influence all over his Empire. The foundation of Antioch, on the Orontes, furnishes a typical instance of the method of the Seleucidæ.
Syria, the stretch of fertile country which bridges Europe and Asia as well as Africa and Asia, was clearly the keystone of the empire which Seleucus sought to establish. How could Syria be converted into an Asian Macedonia? As a first step Seleucus planned three cities in the Orontes Valley, through which the regular land-routes to Babylonia and Persia passed. Seleucia, in Pieria, guarded the mouth of the Orontes. Farther east was Apamea. At the spot where the Orontes ceased to be navigable, Antioch arose. Seleucus peopled the new city with a mixed population drawn largely from Macedonia and partly from Crete and Cyprus. It became the first city in the western world at the time.
How close the contact with Greek ideas was in such a town as Antioch can be judged from the famous Vatican marble known as the “[Tyche of Antioch].” The figure with the mural crown represents the tutelar goddess of the city. Holding the symbols of fertility in her hand, she sits upon the rocks above the Orontes. The sculptor, Eutychides of Sicyon, has carried out his task with the reserve and appreciation of formal effect which we should expect from a pupil or follower of Lysippus. But the whole conception lacks the emotional force of a really great Hellenic work. Comparing it with, say, the “[Zeus Otricoli]” or the “[Hera Ludovisi],” we feel that centuries of time separate the two works. The “[Tyche of Antioch]” is a sound piece of work; it can hardly be said to be profound. It has the graces of a blossom reared in an alien soil. The sculptor is not working under the impulse of an overpowering emotion. Indeed it is easy to see that the old civic pride which had found vent in the Parthenon marbles was impossible in the Seleucidean Empire. A vigorous political life was out of the question in the semi-oriental kingdom. As rulers, the Seleucid princes have been likened to Albanian chiefs. Their position certainly had the smallest resemblance to the democratic tyrants of earlier Greece. The coins of the Seleucid rulers prove that even the facial type soon lost its Hellenic purity. The self-respect and self-control which had kept the actions of an Athenian within bounds were lost. We read of Antiochus IV. being carried by mummers into his own banqueting-hall as “a swaddled figure,” until, “at the first note of the symphonia, the figure started from its wrappings and there stood the king naked.” Seeing that
“Nothing other than a noble aim Up from its depths can stir humanity,”
it seems unnecessary to search further for an explanation of the absence of a vigorous impulse seeking expression in sculpture in any country controlled by the Seleucidæ.
THE DYING GAUL
Capitoline Museum, Rome
THE KINGDOM OF PERGAMUS
(283 b.c. TO 133 b.c.)
But it was otherwise in the second great centre of Greek influence in Asia Minor—the kingdom of Pergamus. The course of Pergamene history led to one of those emotional outbursts which always find an outlet in national action and often in art. In consequence, evidence remains of a far greater body of sculptural achievement in Pergamus than we find in the Empire of the Seleucidæ. Indeed, the force and originality of Pergamene sculpture raises it far above any artistic effort of its age. This will be granted directly we recall that “[The Dying Gaul],” of the Vatican, is a work in the finest Pergamene style. When Byron wrote the two cantos in “Childe Harold” the statue was known as the “Dying Gladiator.”
“I see before me the gladiator lie: He leans upon his hand—his manly brow Consents to death, but conquers agony, And his droop’d head sinks gradually low— And through his side the last drops, ebbing slow.
He reck’d not of the life he lost nor prize, But where his rude hut by the Danube lay, There were his young barbarians all at play, There was their Dacian mother—he, their sire, Butchered to make a Roman holiday.”
We now know that the Pergamene sculptor sought to show one of his country’s Gaulish enemies in the agony of death. The barbarian sinks back on to the narrow shield of his race. At his side is his battle-horn. Round his neck the Gallic torques. The shaggy eyebrows and the matted hair all identify the figure with one of the rude savages whom the Latin and Greek historians describe as fighting naked and ignorant of the elements of military science.
Another work that undoubtedly belongs to the school of Pergamus is the well-known group in the Villa Ludovisi, often called “Paetus and Arria.” A more correct title is “The Gaul killing his Wife.” The warrior realizes his defeat and has just plunged his sword into his breast. He still supports the woman who sinks in death at his side. The matted hair of the wife and the dress edged with fur are sufficient proof of her race. But there is other evidence that “[The Dying Gaul]” and the “Gaul killing his Wife” have a similar origin. Both appear together in an inventory of Cardinal Ludovisi, dated 1633. Both are made from a marble found on the island of Furni near Samos. It is evident that the two sculptures are copies of Pergamene bronzes which stood in the open square surrounding the temple of Athena Polias on the Acropolis of Pergamus.
The two works represent a large number of similar marbles after Pergamene originals scattered through the galleries of Europe. They lead us at once to inquire into the historical events they clearly incarnate.
The story of the foundation of Pergamus is full of interest. During the years following Alexander’s death, Lysimachus had accumulated a vast treasure in the impregnable Acropolis of Pergamus. He placed his lieutenant Philetairus in charge, occupying himself with schemes of conquest. But Lysimachus was human and late in life took to himself a young wife. To humour her he assented to the murder of a son by a former marriage. The atrocity finally alienated Philetairus. He headed a rebellion, seized the treasure under his charge and founded the kingdom of Pergamus in 283 b.c.
The dynasty founded in this dramatic fashion was destined to a stormy history. As early as 280 b.c. fresh danger threatened from the hordes of Gauls, who began to pour across the passes of the Balkans. Some of these barbarians marched upon Greece. Others crossed the Bosphorus at Byzantium, and eventually founded the Gallo-Greek kingdom of Galatia in the heart of Phrygia. But the king of Pergamus felt that his safety depended upon checking the victorious career of the Gauls. Allying himself with the ruling Seleucus, Attalus I. of Pergamus inflicted a signal defeat. This was about 241 b.c. The victory was not the only one gained by the kingdom of Pergamus. Early in the second century, Eumenes II. (197 b.c.-159 b.c.) gained fresh laurels for his countrymen.
The effect of these brilliant victories upon the imagination of the people of Pergamus can only be realized by comparing it with that of Marathon and Salamis upon the fifth-century Athenians. All around them the Pergamenes saw civilized communities acknowledging defeat at the hands of the Gauls. As the Athenians stemmed the tide of Persian invasion at Marathon, so the Princes of Pergamus saved the Greeks in Asia Minor from the barbarian Gauls who seemed destined to sweep away the newly planted Hellenic civilization. The victories made Pergamus the rival of Alexandria and Antioch. As had been the case after Salamis, a long series of public buildings and temples were erected, until the Acropolis at Pergamus threatened to outshine even that at Athens. Among the statues, as we have said, was the bronze original of “[The Dying Gaul].”
It was the second defeat of the Gauls, at the hands of Eumenes II., which led to the building of the great altar of Zeus on the Acropolis of Pergamus. It is worth while to reconstruct a picture of the huge edifice with the aid of our memory of the sister Acropolis at Athens. The Altar stood a little below the Temple of Athena, on the south-west terrace, and was surmounted by an Ionic colonnade, which enclosed the actual place of sacrifice. The worshippers approached by a broad staircase cut from the west side of the great pile. Around the whole structure ran the frieze, with its multitude of figures in the highest relief—the carvings, of course, being interrupted by the staircase. The whole work serves to carry the history of Pergamene sculpture beyond the stage when such a statue as “[The Dying Gaul]” was produced.
The great frieze was discovered by a young German engineer named Carl Humann. During a business visit to Pergamus, Humann noticed the native workmen breaking up large fragments of sculptured marble, burning them in lime kilns and building them into walls. The exhibition of specimens in Berlin led to systematic excavations in 1879. All that remains of the great work is now exhibited in a specially designed gallery in Berlin, where the frieze can be seen in something approaching its original setting.
No single slab can convey an impression of the bewildering power of the carvings as a whole. The best known is that called “The Triumph of Athena.” The colossal figures (the frieze is almost nine feet high) show the goddess seizing a young giant by the hair, while the serpent of Athena bites at her enemy’s breast. Nike bears a laurel crown in token of Athena’s victory. In the lower part of the slab, the Earth Mother of the giants is seen in anguish. “[The Triumph of Athena]” was the central group on the Eastern side, and, therefore, faced the square in which the people of Pergamus met. It was balanced by another mighty group, representing Zeus in conflict with three giants. Either affords a fine example of the theatrical style into which the later Pergamene sculpture degenerated. The artist is clearly more interested in the attempt to express excited action than in the more subtle phases of emotion. Nevertheless, mutilated as it is, a fragment like “The Triumph of Athena” testifies to an extraordinary level of technical skill and a magnificent vigour of imagination, even if it also proves an absence of the earlier emotional balance which gave “[The Dying Gaul]” a deeper beauty.
TRIUMPH OF ATHENA
From the Altar of Zeus,
Pergamus (Berlin)
THE SCULPTURE OF RHODES AND ALEXANDRIA
(300 b.c. TO 50 b.c.)
If the fame of the school of sculpture at Pergamus is inextricably connected with “[The Dying Gaul],” the sister school at Rhodes can claim the even more famous “[Laocoon Group].”
Throughout the second and third centuries before Christ, Rhodes was the meeting-place of commerce passing between Asia and Europe. The Rhodians were the finest seamen in the world at the time and to them fell the task of clearing the seas of pirates which had given Athens so strong a position a century or two earlier. Indeed, the commercial mantle of Athens had fallen upon Rhodes. Unlike the kingdoms of Pergamus and of the Seleucidæ, the middle-class was paramount here. Rhodes, like Venice in later years, was practically ruled by an aristocracy of merchants. The vigorous schools of art and rhetoric depended in no small measure upon this. Such a social system provides that prime essential of vital literature and art—large numbers of citizens with the experience that comes from rubbing wit against wit and passion against passion in the market square and the forum.
Rhodes was eminently the centre in Hellenistic times which most closely approached the standard set in the days of the Greek city-states. This fact, together with the traditions of Hellenic sculptors which Rhodes had received, made “[The Laocoon Group]” possible.
The statue was the work of three Rhodian artists, Agesander, Polydorus, and Athenodorus, who lived about 125 b.c. The group was found in the Baths of Titus in 1506. A recent discovery suggests that the present restoration of the right arm of Laocoon is incorrect. The serpent’s coil should come up to the neck of Laocoon, and his right hand should clasp a coil close to his head.
Ancient tradition held that the statue had been hewn from a single block of stone. In reality, it is constructed from six pieces, though the joints are so cunningly concealed that even Michael Angelo could only detect three. The sculptors display an extraordinary mastery over the problems of human anatomy which they have set themselves to solve, while their treatment of the combination of physical tension and emotional stress is unsurpassed. Indeed the technical beauty of “[The Laocoon]” has never been questioned.
But “[The Laocoon Group]” may be regarded from another point of view, displaying yet a new facet of the genius of its authors. Consider the immense difficulty of visualizing such a scene so that the various parts form a complete design capable of translation into marble. The version of the story in the Æneid is known to all.
The priest Laocoon has violated the shrine of Tritonia and unheedful of his doom is sacrificing a bullock at the altar of Neptune. Suddenly, as Virgil pictures the scene, the two great serpents rise from the sea. Their glaring eyes shot with blood and their jaws darting fire, they make for the shore and move steadily upon Laocoon. His two small boys are taken first. Then the serpents gather the father himself in their mighty folds. One coil grasps Laocoon’s body. Another part of the scaly chain winds twice round his neck. In vain the priest tries to tear asunder the dreadful coil, crying to Heaven, to use the Virgilian simile, like a bull who, having escaped the sacrificial axe, flies wounded from the altar.
THE LAOCOON GROUP
Vatican, Rome
The designers of the group have clearly followed an earlier version of the legend in which the younger son escapes. But the difficulty of visualization and expression is the same. It is comparatively easy to find words to convey the general impression. But the three sculptors had to find the momentary action which would suggest the whole story. Yet the design of “[The Laocoon Group]” tells everything. We see
“The father’s double pangs, both for himself And sons convulsed; to Heaven his rueful look, Imploring aid, and half accusing, cast; His fell despair, with indignation mixed, As the strong curling monsters from his side His full-extended fury cannot tear.”
None of the tragic horror of the scene is lost. It can be said with absolute candour,
“Such passion here, Such agonies, such bitterness of pain, Seem so to tremble through the tortured stone That the touched heart engrosses all the view.”
None of us at once realize the reason we are so moved by a mere echo of an old myth. When the truth dawns upon us, we see that the awful admiration with which “[The Laocoon]” has always been regarded, finds its source deep down in the human heart. The emotions we experience do not depend upon the sufferings of the priest of Neptune. Laocoon is mankind himself. His fight with death is an emblem of the far more general struggle which every human being must share—the struggle which is the price we pay for life. “[The Laocoon]” is not unique in this respect. On the contrary, a similar dominating idea is enshrined in all the greatest examples of Hellenic sculpture. The “[Aphrodite of Cnidus]” is more than a woman. The statue is the incarnation of the idea of womanly love.
It is the presence of a dominating idea of this kind which distinguishes “[The Laocoon]” of Rhodes from “[The Tyche of Antioch].” Admitting its presence places the sculpture beyond and above both criticism and praise. A sentence, however, of Walter Pater suggests a point of critical vantage which the student of the history of sculpture cannot disregard. He says: “‘[The Laocoon],’ with all that patient science through which it has triumphed over an almost unmanageable subject, marks a period in which sculpture has begun to aim at effects, legitimate, because delightful, only in painting.”
No man had a truer appreciation of Greek art than Walter Pater, and no opinion is more entitled to thoughtful consideration. But in view of the fact that the extreme classical school of criticism has always tended to depreciate the value of all Hellenistic art, we may regret that Pater’s argument was not illustrated by a lesser work of the Rhodian school. The suggestion that the Laocoon myth borders upon the illegitimate as far as sculptural treatment is concerned, seems to demand the qualification that supreme success justifies the disregard of any canon of art.
THE NILE
Vatican, Rome
Pater’s judgment, however, applies with real force to other works by sculptors of Rhodes. It might, for instance, be used of “The Farnese Bull,” now in the National Museum at Naples. The group was found in the baths of Caracalla at Rome during the sixteenth century, and has been so largely restored that criticism is, perhaps, unjust. If the present work can be regarded as embodying the ideas of its authors, we see a passion which has degenerated from the dramatic to the theatrical.
The subject of the statue is the punishment of Dirce at the hands of Amphion and Zethus. Below, the sculptors show the rocky ledges of Mount Cithæron—the death-place of the unfortunate woman who is being bound to the horns of the bull. This suggests nothing that can be called ennobling. It is all merely horrible. Comparing “The Farnese Bull” with “[The Laocoon]” or the figure of the “[Niobe]” mother, we realize that the loss of reposeful beauty entailed in the treatment of such a subject is not compensated for in any other direction. The great end of art has been forgotten:
“That it should be a friend To soothe the cares and lift the thoughts of man.”
The last great division of the post-Alexandrian Greek world was the kingdom of the Ptolemies which included Egypt and Phœnicia. The Macedonian rulers of Egypt soon made Alexandria, their capital, a flourishing centre both for the arts and sciences. But the genius of the place seemed to favour literature rather than sculpture.
The statue of “[The Nile],” excavated in Rome during the pontificacy of Leo X. and placed in the Vatican, is a fine instance of Hellenistic art produced under the influence of Alexandrian civilization. The statue is always associated with its companion work, “The Tiber.” Apparently both formed part of the decoration of a temple of Isis in Rome. While “[The Nile]” was reproduced from a fine Alexandrian original, “The Tiber,” an inferior work, was specially designed by a Greek sculptor working in Rome. The Alexandrian work proves, however, that statues of great beauty could be produced in essentially un-Hellenic surroundings. The figure of the sea god is surrounded by a host of putti, the number—sixteen—symbolizing the cubits which the river rises during a maximum inundation. The delightful way in which the little figures are disposed in the design so that they shall not interfere with the lines of the central figure is worthy of all praise. Nevertheless, the judgment we arrived at with regard to the sculpture of the Seleucidæ applies to that of Egypt. The foreign bureaucracy which Ptolemy organized, and the tendency towards an imperial rule of the Eastern pattern, militated against the rise of a strongly differentiated style. Egypt was not favoured as either Pergamus or Rhodes had been.
These are the chief examples of Hellenistic sculpture produced beyond the direct influence of the home of the Hellenic idea. We have next to consider the Hellenistic sculpture of Greece itself.