Ictinus and the Temple-builders
One of the characteristics of Greek art is the subordination of the artist to his work, as of the art itself to its purpose. This is but a part of the general subordination of the individual to society in Greek life. Hence it follows that we seldom have to think of isolated genius, and never of the genius of Greek artists as of some fitful and inexplicable freak of nature. For this reason it is not as incredible that there should have been several different Homers all men of genius as that two Vergils should have arisen at Rome, or two Shakespeares in England. Sappho is one among a group of superlative lyric poets. Sophocles is one of four. Demosthenes is the greatest of a group of great orators. This remains a remarkable fact, in view of the natural tendency of time to sharpen the outline of peaks in the ranges of culture, and the national tendency of the Greeks to personify all processes and movements.
Great as Pheidias is, he is nevertheless surrounded by a circle of sculptors and architects, engravers and painters, who are all great. In execution they may be ranked in grades of ability, and their individualities are clearly discernible, but they are all inspired by the same nobility of artistic character, so that the spirit of fifth-century art is a thing that the eye can easily perceive. Reserve and dignity are its most prominent characteristics. It shares with all Greek art the
Plate XLVI. STATUE OF MARSYAS. AFTER MYRON
Mansell & Co.
qualities of grace and directness, by which we mean a vivid and logical intelligence which knows its aim and pursues it unswervingly.
Pheidias had Myron for a fellow-student. Of Myron’s athletic work I have already spoken. He was as original as it was possible to be in the fifth century. As he was chiefly engaged in minor works of a private and occasional nature, he has naturally caught the attention of the epigrammatists. We hear much of the animal statues he carved and of their extraordinary realism, for that was the thing that appealed to the ancient art critic. He seems to have been a master of bronze technique and a skilful goldsmith. The marble copy of his Marsyas in the Lateran and the bronze in the British Museum[55] show the satyr advancing in amazement to pick up the flute which Apollo has just discarded. As in the “Discobolus,” we see the love of distorted poses which enabled Myron to exhibit his fine draughtsmanship and anatomy. Herein, indeed, he is peu cinquième siècle; but we must remember that this figure is one of a dramatic group. I have spoken of Polycleitus too as an athletic sculptor. It is rather remarkable that this youthful art should already in the fifth century be producing its “Canon” and its technical treatises. Though the “Doryphorus” is the most famous of his works, the head of his “Diadumenus” from Rome is probably the most faithful rendering of a Polycleitan original. Other names are mentioned by ancient writers as being worthy to be classed with Pheidias; Calamis, for example; but they are mere names to us, and the ingenious attempts of modern archæology to fit them with appropriate works on the score of qualities attributed to them by ancient critics are hazardous, and for the most part unsatisfactory. Considering the few facts so recorded and the multitude of difficulties they raise, we cannot put much faith in the ancient art critic. Alcamenes and Pæonius, for example, are said to have been the sculptors of the two pediments at Olympia, and yet Alcamenes is described as a pupil of Pheidias, which to any one comparing the Apollo of the west pediment with the pedimental sculptures of the Parthenon is absurd. The other name is also doubtful, for Pæonius was the author of the famous Victory at Olympia,[56] with its superb study of flying drapery. The inscription testifies that it was set up by the Messenians of Naupactus from the spoil of the enemy—presumably the Spartan garrison captured by Cleon at Sphacteria. If, therefore, Pausanias is right in his account of the authorship of the Olympian pediments, both these sculptors must have made extraordinarily rapid progress in their art or have adopted a consciously archaic style for the pediments.
Plate 46A. BOY VICTOR
BRONZE, FIFTH CENTURY B.C.
So much for the named sculptors of the period. We have several other works which obviously belong to the same date. The fine portrait bust of Pericles[57] is, no doubt, a copy from the statue by Cresilas. I have said above that portraiture is rare in the fifth century. The extraordinary significance of Pericles in the art of the period is one reason for this exception. Moreover, it is, after all, scarcely a portrait in the Cromwellian sense, but rather an idealised type of the soldier statesman: so far from breaking, it notably illustrates the rule of idealism in the fifth century. It was said that all the portraits of Pericles represented him in a helmet to conceal his inordinately long head, which is a frequent subject of wit to Aristophanes. Typical of the period too are the Eleusinian relief,[58] the Ludovisi reliefs,[59] and the Mourning Athena.[60] The glorious bronze bust of a Boy Victor depicted in our photogravure is one of the rare original bronzes of the great period. It is part of a full-length statue, the bust being a modern restoration, and it is of great value to students of ancient bronze workmanship. The eyeballs, when the statue was first found at Naples in 1730, were inlaid with silver and the pupils with granite. The lips are gilded, and there was silver and gold on the diadem. The boy pulling a thorn out of his foot (the “Spinario”) belongs to a slightly earlier period and is closely akin to the Running Girl in style. It is a charmingly graceful and boyish figure, quite free from self-consciousness. We notice that though the body is skilfully wrought, the head is obviously wrong, for the long hair of the bent head would hang about his face.[61] Natural and pleasant as the pose is, it is no mere genre study, done to please the artist’s fancy because his eye had caught the pretty attitude of the child in the gymnasium. That was not how artists worked at this early period. The “Spinario” must, I think, have a story behind him: some one had won the boys’ foot-race in spite of a thorn in his foot, and this is the record of his pluck.
From sculpture we pass to the sister art of architecture. Here we can safely affirm that Periclean Athens reached perfection within the limits it had set for itself—namely, the Doric style. For temple architecture the religious feeling of the day had prescribed a definite programme which it would have been almost blasphemy to outstep. That is to say, the outline of the temple was bound to correspond to the norm of Doric architecture, laid down more than a century before. The artist’s originality was therefore confined to the task of improving its details in a manner which would pass unnoticed by the general public, who would but vaguely feel a heightened sense of rhythm and harmony. Here we find proof that Greek simplicity is the outcome of extreme subtlety. Until Penrose every one had imagined the lines of the Parthenon to be straight. On the contrary, the apparently flat stylobate or floor rises 1 in 450 towards the centre over a length of 228 and a breadth of 101 feet. The columns do not only taper, as they seem to do, but they swell in the middle in order to counteract the diminishing effect of light behind them, although in pure Greek work the diameter of the shaft is never greater than that of the base. The axis of the outside columns slopes inwards 1 in 106; the inner columns have a slightly smaller inclination, 1 in 150. Even the fluting is studied; the fine shadow effect is produced by diminishing the width but not the depth of the grooves as they approach the echinus. Nor are the columns all exactly the same thickness, for the corner pillars are made a little higher and thicker than their neighbours, because a fiercer light beats on them. Like the stylobate, the entablature also curves upward in the centre, but still more slightly—2 inches in 100 feet. The planes of the moulding are sometimes inclined forwards to prevent foreshortening. Thus to secure the effect of straightness Ictinus cut every stone of this great building on a slant measured to a hair’s breadth. To my lay mind these facts throw a revealing light upon the nature of Greek art and the true meaning of Greek simplicity. Judge of the self-restraint shown by Ictinus (and of course entasis is not confined to the Parthenon) in expending this infinite trouble in a matter which would escape the eye of nine out of ten spectators. Nine out of ten? Yes, but the tenth might be a brother architect—or it might be Pallas Athena. Now that the measuring-tape has proved how subtle is Greek simplicity in one art, we must be prepared for it in other arts where we cannot measure so accurately—in literature, for example, when Euripides seems commonplace or Socrates illogical.
While the white marble columns and the white marble roof presented this appearance of simple strength and purity, the decorative mouldings between were enriched not only with the sculpture we have described, but with brilliant colour. The background behind the sculpture of the pediment was red, the ground of the metopes probably red, and that of the frieze probably blue. The simple echinus and abacus mouldings of the capitals were enriched with leaf patterns in red, blue, and gold. The architrave, has holes which once held bronze pegs for a row of gilt shields and wreaths. The grooves of the triglyphs were painted blue. A bright key-pattern ran along the upper edge of the triglyph. The guttæ, or “drops,” were probably gilt. On each corner of the roof-angle stood a golden oil-jar, and at the apex of the gable an acroterion carved and coloured.
FIG. 1. THE VICTORY OF PÆONIUS
FIG. 2. THE “SPINARIO”
Plate XLVII
Inside the colonnade is the cella, 194 feet long, with six columns of its own within the peristyle at each end. The interior was divided into two main parts—the Hekatompedos, exactly 100 Attic feet in length, where the great gold and ivory statue stood in solitary grandeur, with a couch near at hand for the goddess to recline on when she was tired; and the Opisthodomos, to the west of it, strictly called the Parthenon, which was a sort of museum or bank for handsome offerings. The interior seems to have been lighted only from the doors. Ionic columns were used to carry the ceiling of the Parthenon proper. The wooden ceiling itself was adorned with sunken panels brightly painted. Battered and decayed as this marble building is to-day after its centuries of use as a temple, as a church, as a mosque, as a powder magazine, and as an archæological bear-garden, it is still most wonderful in its majesty.[62] We can hardly imagine the impression it produced when it glowed with life and colour on the day of the Panathenaic festival in 438 B.C., when it was opened to the public after fifteen years of building. The sculpture seems to have been applied after the opening of the temple.
Let us glance at the principal buildings beside the Parthenon which crowned the flat-topped citadel. I suspect that most modern spectators feel a secret sense of discontent when they see a reconstruction of the Acropolis.[63] The unregenerate Goth in our bosoms cries out for spires and pinnacles upon such a splendid site, for domes and towers and battlements to fret the sky above it. Would any relics of them have stood for twenty-three centuries in that land of earthquakes?
When the Long Walls of Athens were completed there was no longer any need of fortifications to the Acropolis, though the architectural conception of the whole mass remained that of a shrine and citadel combined. The prehistoric Pelasgians had levelled the top, fortified it on the west, its only accessible end, and surrounded it with a wall. The whole plateau rises to a height of 200 feet. Approaching it from the agora to the west, the pilgrim passes up a flight of low steps to the porch, or propylæa. This was completed in 432 by Mnesicles on the site of an older and much humbler gateway of Kimon’s day. Modern investigators have shown that it was planned on a far more extensive scale than the actual execution, and that room was left for subsequent completion. It is believed that the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War was the cause of this limitation of the original scheme. Even so it was celebrated in antiquity, and is far the most impressive building erected by the Greeks for secular purposes. It consists of a gateway formed by a wall with five openings and fronted by a Doric colonnade, with gable roof and pediment, flanked on each side in the original plan by two colonnaded halls, a smaller one in front and a larger behind. This plan is clearly a development of the gateways of prehistoric citadels like Tiryns and Troy II. One of the wing chambers was used as a picture gallery, the walls being frescoed by Polygnotus and other celebrated painters. This hall is still in excellent preservation, due to its use by the Franks as a council chamber and by the Turks as the palace of their pashas. Some of the stone beams are as long as 20 feet.
The front chamber of each wing rested on an artificial stone bastion, and as that on the south was never completed the platform remained free for the erection of a lovely miniature shrine, the temple of the Wingless Victory.[64] This, though its stones were totally scattered and built into a Turkish bastion, was reconstructed in 1835 by European architects with such success that it is one of the most charming things in Athens. It must have been built soon after the abandonment of the original plan for the propylæa. It has four columns of the Ionic order at each end, surmounted with a sculptured frieze, of which four panels are in the Elgin collection. The whole shrine, which is only 18 feet by 27 feet, was surrounded by a railing supported on a marble balustrade carved with Victories in low relief. Though they are mostly headless,
Plate XLVIII. THE PARTHENON. MODERN VIEW FROM NORTH-WEST
English Photo Co., Athens
the outlines are in a good state and reveal very fine workmanship, especially in the treatment of drapery. They clearly belong to the next period after the Parthenon frieze. From the platform in front of the shrine there is a lovely view over the Attic plain towards Eleusis. Beyond it, over Salamis and the blue Saronic gulf you can see the citadel of Corinth and the distant mountains of the Argolid and the Peloponnese. It was here that old Ægeus stood watching for the sails of his dear son from Crete.
Pass through the wide portals of the propylæa. On your right was the marble terrace where the little girls of Athens dressed up as bears to dance in honour of Brauronian Artemis. Here was the group of Athena and Marsyas, and here Praxiteles was to make his statue of Brauronian Artemis. Beyond the Brauronian precinct was one of Athena the Craftswoman. At this point the colossal bronze Athena “Promachos” of Pheidias towered above you, 36 feet high. We have visited the Parthenon already; to the left of it, just behind the foundations of the old temple of Athena Polias, is the wonderful Erechtheum. This building, though begun soon after the Persians had burnt the old “house of Erechtheus,” and the adjoining temple of Athena built by Peisistratus, was delayed by the Peloponnesian War, and not completed till the end of the century. Here the task set to the architects was a peculiar one. To begin with, the building was not a temple, but a house—the house of an old Pelasgian hero; obviously it must not be of the Doric order. Also it had to include a number of immovable sacred objects, such as the salt spring which gushed up when Poseidon struck the rock with his trident and the sacred olive-tree with which Athena defeated him. This patriotic tree had sprung up into new life after the Persians destroyed it, and had to be treated kindly. The illustration will show how the architect overcame these problems with an unconventional building of extraordinary grace and charm. The main building has a colonnade of six Ionic columns in front, and a north porch of six Ionic columns projecting from one side; at the west end a precinct of Pandrosos (daughter of Cecrops), enclosing the sacred olive-tree, adjoined it, and on the south side the lovely little portico of the Maidens.[65] This is its most celebrated feature, from the figures of the six Athenian girls who carry the graceful Ionic entablature. One of the Caryatids was taken to London by Lord Elgin, and has been replaced by a terra-cotta copy. The capitals on their heads are designed like baskets. I have already spoken of this use of sculpture for columns in connection with the Telamones of Acragas. The name Caryatids given to these figures in later times was derived from the town of Karuæ, in Arcadia.
The Erechtheum: Modern Reconstruction
Besides the objects already mentioned, the Erechtheum contained a number of very ancient relics. There you were shown the marks of Poseidon’s trident on the rock; there were spoils taken from the Persians; an old wooden Hermes dedicated by Cecrops, a chariot by Dædalus, a lamp by Callimachus kept perpetually burning, and above all the ancient wooden image of Athena Polias.
Dörpfeld maintains that the old temple of Athena Polias was left standing even after the Erechtheum was completed. If that were true we should have to believe that the architect deliberately projected his unnecessary Caryatid porch right into
FIG. 1. THE TEMPLE OF NIKÉ APTEROS [THE WINGLESS VICTORY
FIG. 2. THE CARYATID PORCH OF THE ERECHTHEUM
English Photo Co., Athens
Plate XLIX
the blank wall of the older temple, where it could not be seen and could scarcely be passed, for it encroaches right over the stylobate of the old colonnade.
I have only mentioned some of the wonderful objects on the sacred rock. When Pausanias saw it, it was crowded from end to end with works of art, sacred or commemorative. No profane person inhabited it.
It was to the Acropolis that the attention of Pericles and his artists was first directed when the time came to beautify Athens. In the city below you would be struck with the plainness of the private houses, presenting no decorative aspect whatever to the narrow and tortuous streets. They were all of one story, with a roof sloping inwards to an open colonnade, round which the rooms were grouped. The agora was the centre of commercial and social life. Close by were some famous porticoes or cloisters, shady and cool to lounge in. In the Royal Portico the “king archon” sat to do his business, mostly connected with religion. Here the Council of the Areopagus met in later days. Here Socrates conversed, and here he was tried for impiety. Ancient laws were inscribed upon the walls of it. The Portico of Freedom contained statues and celebrated frescoes painted by Euphranor in the fourth century. The Decorated Portico (Stoa Poikilē) in the agora was even more famous for its historical and mythological pictures, including one of the battle of Marathon by Panainos, and one by the master Polygnotus of the taking of Troy. It was in this Stoa that Zeno developed in later times his Stoic philosophy. All these pictures have perished utterly, but we can still see reflections of them in the vase-paintings of the day.
Close by upon a low hill stands a Doric temple of the fifth century in almost perfect preservation. This is commonly called the Theseum, but it is undoubtedly the temple of Hephæstus mentioned by Pausanias.[66] The temple is of Pentelic marble, surrounded on all sides by columns, with six at each end. It is of a slightly earlier date than the Parthenon, and it has very little of the subtle system of optical corrections employed there. It was not a very important building in ancient Athens; in fact, it is scarcely mentioned in antiquity; but as the best-preserved building in all Greece it is of great architectural interest to us. The metopes were not all carved; the rest were probably painted. There is also a sculptured frieze. The subject of the metopes was the Labours of Heracles and Theseus. They are rather badly weathered, and in their present condition not very attractive. Not far away is the Dipylon Gate, with its ancient burial-ground, of which we shall see more in a later section. At the opposite end of the city the visitor in the fifth century B.C. would have been struck by the immense columns of the temple of Olympian Zeus begun by Peisistratus, but never finished. Close under the Acropolis rock was the Theatre of Dionysus, where the tragedies and comedies were performed, and a music hall, or Odeion, erected by Pericles. There was a Cave of Pan on the precipitous slope of the rock. The public meetings of the Athenian Assembly were held on the hill of Pnyx, to the west of the Acropolis. Here there was a sort of open-air theatre. We can still see the platform where Pericles addressed the people, and the seats for the presiding committee behind it.
So entirely does Athens focus upon herself the culture of the fifth century, we are apt to forget that Athens was not Greece. The Temple of Zeus at Olympia was the most celebrated temple in all Greece, but chiefly for the wealth of the dedications there and the number of athletic statues. Delphi too was enriched with countless artistic offerings sent, in spite of the Pythian’s faint-hearted counsels, from the spoil of the war. There was a famous tripod with a stand of twisted serpents, on whose coils were inscribed the names of those cities which had taken part in the battle of Platæa. A forlorn remnant of it still exists at Constantinople. Both Olympia and Delphi have been recently excavated, the former by the Germans and the latter by the French. But neither site has quite realised expectations. The greatest finds at Olympia
Plate L. THE “THESEUM,” ATHENS
English Photo Co., Athens
were the Hermes of Praxiteles, which belongs to the next epoch, and the temple pediments which I have already mentioned. At Delphi the long-robed charioteer, one of the noblest fifth-century bronzes, was the most conspicuous treasure, but one very fine athletic statue is worthy of mention. This is the Agias, an athletic portrait in marble, executed by Lysippus, fourth of the great masters of Greek sculpture.[67] Traces were found of a great number of small shrines which acted as the treasuries of the various states and were grouped round the great temple of Apollo, and some of these, notably the Cnidian, Siphnian, and Athenian treasuries, have yielded important relics of sculpture. The holy precinct was crowded with treasuries, shrines, votive groups, and colonnades. It included a theatre, a circular dancing-floor, and a colossal statue of Apollo. The Altis at Olympia was similarly filled with treasuries; round it just outside were the stadium, the hippodrome, the palæstra, and the gymnasium.
Hidden away in a remote mountain glen of Arcadia there was a masterpiece of Ictinus, which is now a lovely ruin amid the most solitary and romantic scenery. This is the temple of Phigaleia, the modern Bassæ.[68] It was dedicated by the Phigaleians to Apollo the Helper in consequence of an epidemic. They sent for the most famous architect in Greece soon after the completion of the Parthenon. Ictinus used, since his clients were poor mountaineers, the local limestone for the building, but the roof and sculptures were of imported marble. He had also to modify the normal Doric plan in accordance with local religious conventions of sun-worship. In the cella of the temple the interior Ionic columns are joined to the wall by short stone partitions, thus forming a row of five chapels on each side. A door was made in the east side to shed the light of the rising sun full on the statue of the sun-god; for the main building is unique among Greek temples in running north and south. The narrow frieze which ran round the interior of the cella represented, as usual, contests of Greeks and Amazons, Centaurs and Lapithæ.[69] It is now in the British Museum. It is of the very finest workmanship, and here we see a system of design hardly less subtle than that of the Parthenon frieze applied to scenes of vigour and violence. The frieze was removed bodily by Baron von Stackelberg and bought at auction by the British Government for £15,000.
We find another example of the versatile genius of Ictinus at Eleusis. Eleusis was the most important town of Attica except Athens, and had long been independent. It formed an agricultural centre for the plain around it. Its famous mysteries were of agricultural significance to start with, and were chiefly concerned with the worship of Demeter and Persephone in their characters as grain-givers. It was no doubt a later development when the Greeks began to graft the deepest religious and metaphysical doctrines relating to immortality upon them. We can easily see how rustic rites celebrating the death and rebirth of the cornfields should come to bear this exalted meaning for reflective people. Every year on the fifth night of the Greater Eleusinian festival in spring the Athenian people trooped out along the Sacred Way in a torchlight procession. Only the initiated, the Mystæ, were allowed to witness the secret ceremony, which seems to have consisted of a ritual marriage. For most illuminating suggestions as to its real nature I would refer the reader to Mr. J. C. Lawson’s recent book on “Modern Greek Folklore and Ancient Greek Religion.”
The Great Temple of the Mysteries was designed, but not completed, by Ictinus, for the Peloponnesian War put a stop to the Eleusinian worshippers from Athens—not the least of their deprivations. But they were resumed when Alcibiades came home, and continued until Alaric the Goth destroyed the temple. The peculiarity of this building is that it cuts into the living rock. The interior somewhat resembled a theatre, with eight stone tiers all round it, and an upper story supported on columns. The building itself was square, with a portico in
Plate LI. THE “AGIAS” OF LYSIPPUS
English Photo Co., Athens
front only. The upper story was reached by a rock-terrace cut out of the hill-side at the back. The whole temple, with out-buildings, was enclosed by a wall.
Summing up the architectural character of the period, we should say that it was severely limited by the conservatism of religion to the austerest outlines and the simplest plans. Such laws it loyally obeyed, and yet found scope for exquisite workmanship and subtle varieties within them. Ictinus and Mnesicles were quite capable of adapting themselves to any local peculiarities, but the strict Doric style still reigned supreme. Finally we note that fine architecture is almost entirely confined to the service of religion and patriotism, while private and secular buildings are still on the most unpretentious scale. The only architectural work of a strictly utilitarian character that we can mention is the planning of the Peiræus, which was as orderly, as regular and as dull as “town-planned” towns generally are.