ART.
I. ARCHITECTURE AND SCULPTURE.
After the close of the Peloponnesian war the perfection and application of the several orders of Grecian architecture were displayed in the laying out of cities on a grander scale, and by an increase of splendor in private residences, rather than by any marked change in the style of public buildings and temples. Alexandria in Egypt, and Antioch in Syria, were the finest examples of Grecian genius in this direction, both in the regularity and size of their public and private buildings, and in their external and internal adornment. This period was also distinguished for its splendid sepulchral and other monuments. Of these, probably the most exquisite gem of architectural taste is the circular building at Athens, the Cho-rag'ic Monument, or "Lantern of Demosthenes," erected in honor of a victory gained by the chorus of Lysic'rates in 334 B.C. "It is the purest specimen of the Corinthian order," says a writer on architecture, "that has reached our time, whose minuteness and unobtrusive beauty have preserved it almost entire among the ruins of the mightiest piles of Athenian art." Other celebrated monuments of this period were the one erected at Halicarnas'sus by the Ca'rian queen Artemi'sia to the memory of her husband Mauso'lus, adorned with sculptural decorations by Sco'pas and others, and considered one of the seven wonders of the world; and the octagonal edifice, the Horolo'gium of Androni'cus Cyrrhes'tes, at Athens.
In sculpture, Athens still asserted its pre-eminence, but the style and character of its later school were materially different from those of the preceding one of Phid'ias. "Toward the close of the Peloponnesian war," says a recent writer, "a change took place in the habits and feelings of the Athenian people, under the influence of which a new school of statuary was developed. The people, spoiled by luxury, and craving the pleasures and excitements which the prosperity of the age of Pericles had opened to them, regarded the severe forms of the older masters with even less patience than the austere virtues of the generation which had driven the Persians out of Greece. The sculptors, giving a reflex of the times in their productions, instead of the grand and sublime cultivated the soft, the graceful, and the flowing, and aimed at an expression of stronger passion and more dramatic action. Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, the favorite subjects of the Phidian era, gave place to such deities as Venus, Bacchus, and Amor; and with the departure of the older gods departed also the serene and composed majesty which had marked the representations of them." [Footnote: C. S. Weyman.]
The first great artist of this school was Scopas, born at Paros, and who flourished in the first half of the fourth century B.C. Although famous in architectural sculpture, he excelled in single figures and groups, "combining strength of expression with grace." The celebrated group of Ni'o-be and her children slain by Ar'temis and Apollo, a copy of which is preserved in the museum of Florence, and the statue of the victorious Venus in the Louvre at Paris, are attributed to Scopas. The most esteemed of his works, according to Pliny, was a group representing Achilles conducted to the Island of Leu'ce by sea deities. The only other artist of this school that we will refer to is Praxit'eles, a contemporary of Scopas. He excelled in representing the female figure, his masterpiece being the Cnid'ian Aphrodi'te, a naked statue, in Parian marble, modeled from life, representing Venus just leaving the bath. This statue was afterward taken to Constantinople, where it was burned during the reign of Justinian.
This Athenian school of sculpture was followed, in the time of Alexander the Great, by what was called the Si-çy-o'ni-an school, of which Euphra'nor, of Corinth, and Lysip'pus, of Si'çy-on, were the leading representatives. The former was a painter as well as sculptor. His statues were executed in bronze and marble, and were admired for their dignity. Lysippus worked only in bronze, and was the only sculptor that Alexander the Great permitted to represent him in statues. His works were very numerous, including the colossal statue of Jupiter at Tarentum, sixty feet high, several of Hercules, and many others. The succeeding and later Greek sculptors made no attempt to open a new path of design, but they steadily maintained the reputation of the art. Many works of great excellence were produced in Rhodes, Alexandria, Ephesus, and elsewhere in the East. Among these was the famous Colossus, a statue of the sun, designed and executed by Cha'res of Rhodes, that reared its huge form one hundred and five feet in height at the entrance to Rhodes harbor; the Farnese Bull, at Naples, found in the Baths of Caracalla at Rome, also the work of a Rhodian artist; and the Apollo Belvedere, in the Vatican.
Two works of this late age deserve special mention. One is the statue of the Dying Gladiator, in the Capitoline Museum at Rome, supposed to have come from Pergamus. Says LÜBKE, "It undoubtedly represents a Gaul who, in battle, seeing the foe approach in overwhelming force, has fallen upon his own sword to escape a shameful slavery. Overcome by the faintness of approaching death, he has fallen upon his shield; his right arm with difficulty prevents his sinking to the ground; his life ebbs rapidly away with the blood streaming from the deep wound beneath his breast; his broad head droops heavily forward; the mists of death already cloud his eyes; his brows are knit with pain; and his lips are parted in a last sigh. There is, perhaps, no other statue in which the bitter necessity of death is expressed with such terrible truth—all the more terrible because the hardy body is so full of strength."
Supported on his shortened arm he leans,
Prone agonizing; with incumbent fate
Heavy declines his head, yet dark beneath
The suffering feature sullen vengeance lowers,
Shame, indignation, unaccomplished rage;
And still the cheated eye expects his fall.
—THOMSON.
The other statue is that masterpiece of art, the group of the La-oc'o-on, now in the Vatican at Rome, the work of the three Rhodian sculptors, Agesan'dros, Polydo'rus, and Athenodo'rus. It represents a scene, in connection with the fall of Troy, that Virgil describes in the Second Book of the Æneid. A Trojan priest, named Laocoon, endeavored to propitiate Neptune by sacrifice, and to dissuade the Trojans from admitting within the walls the fatal wooden horse, whereupon the goddess Minerva, ever favorable to the Greeks, punished him by sending two enormous serpents from the sea to destroy him and his two sons. The poet THOMSON well describes the agony and despair that the statue portrays:
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.
Almost unmarked the best proportions pass
That ever Greece beheld; and, seen alone,
On the rapt eye the imperious passions seize:
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.
More tender touched, with varied art, his sons
All the soft rage of younger passions show:
In a boy's helpless fate one sinks oppressed,
While, yet unpierced, the frighted other tries
His foot to steal out of the horrid twine.
An American writer thus apostrophizes this grand representation:
Laocoon! thou great embodiment
Of human life and human history!
Thou record of the past, thou prophecy
Of the sad future! thou majestic voice,
Pealing along the ages from old time!
Thou wail of agonized humanity!
There lives no thought in marble like to thee!
Thou hast no kindred in the Vatican,
But standest separate among the dreams
Of old mythologies-alone-alone!
—J. G. HOLLAND.