II. PAINTING.
In painting, the Asiatic school of Zeuxis and Parrhasius was also followed by a "Si-çy-o'ni-an school"—the third and last phase of Greek painting, founded by Eupom'pus, of Si'çy-on. The characteristics of this school were great ease, accuracy, and refinement. Among its chief masters were Pam'philus, Apel'les, Protog'enes, Ni'cias, and Aristides. Of these the most famous was Apelles, a native of Col'ophon, in Ionia, who flourished in the time of Alexander the Great, with whom he was a great favorite. Of his many fine productions the finest was his painting of Venus rising from the Sea, and concerning which ANTIPATER, the poet of Sidon, wrote the following epigram:
Graceful as from her native sea she springs,
Venus, the labor of Apelles, view:
With pressing hands her humid locks she wrings,
While from her tresses drips the frothy dew:
Ev'n Juno and Minerva now declare,
No longer we contend whose form's most fair.
APELLES AND PROTOGENES.
A very pleasing story is told, by Pliny, of Apelles and his brother-artist, Protogenes, which DR. ANTHON relates as follows:
"Apelles, having come to Rhodes, where Protogenes was then residing, paid a visit to the artist, but, not finding him at home, obtained permission from a domestic in waiting to enter his studio. Finding here a piece of canvas ready on the frame for the artist's pencil, Apelles drew upon it a line (according to some, a figure in outline) with wonderful precision, and then retired without disclosing his name. Protogenes, on returning home, and discovering what had been done, exclaimed that Apelles alone could have executed such a sketch. However, he drew another himself—a line more nearly perfect than that of Apelles—and left directions with his domestic that, when the stranger should call again, he should be shown what had been done by him. Apelles came, accordingly, and, perceiving that his line had been excelled by Protogenes, drew a third one, much better than the other two, and cutting both. Protogenes now confessed himself vanquished; he ran to the harbor, sought for Apelles, and the two artists became the warmest friends. The canvas containing this famous trial of skill became highly prized, and at a later day was placed in the palace of the Cæsars at Rome. Here it was burned in a conflagration that destroyed the palace itself."
Protogenes was noted for his minute and scrupulous care in the preparation of his works. He carried this peculiarity to such excess that Apelles was moved to make the following comparison: "Protogenes equals or surpasses me in all things but one—the knowing when to remove his hand from a painting." Protogenes survived Apelles, and became a very eminent painter. It is stated that when Demetrius besieged Rhodes, and could have reduced it by setting fire to a quarter of the city that contained one of the finest productions of Protogenes, he refused to do so lest he should destroy the masterpiece of art. It is to this incident that the poet THOMSON undoubtedly refers when he says,
E'en such enchantment then thy pencil poured,
That cruel-thoughted War the impatient torch
Dashed to the ground; and, rather than destroy
The patriot picture, let the city 'scape.
From the time of Alexander the art of painting rapidly deteriorated, and at the period of the Roman conquest it had scarcely an existence. Grecian art, like Grecian liberty, had lost its spirit and vitality, and the spoliation of public buildings and galleries, to adorn the porticos and temples of Rome, hastened its extinction.
We have now reached the close of the history of ancient Greece. But Hellas still lives in her thousand hallowed associations of historic interest, and in the numerous ruins of ancient art and splendor which cover her soil—recalling a glorious Past, upon which we love to dwell as upon the memory of departed friends or the scenes of a happy childhood—"sweet, but mournful to the soul." And although the ashes of her generals, her poets, her scholars, and her artists are scattered from their urns, and her statuary and her temples are mutilated and discolored ruins, ancient Greece lives also in the song, the art, and the research of modern times. In contemplating the influence of her genius, the mind is naturally fixed upon the chief repository of her taste and talent—Athens, "the eye of Greece"—from which have sprung "all the strength, the wisdom, the freedom, and the glory of the western world."
Within the surface of Time's fleeting river
Its wrinkled image lies, as then it lay,
Immovably unquiet, and forever
It trembles, but it cannot pass away!
The voices of thy bards and sages thunder
With an earth-awaking blast
Through the caverns of the past;
Religion veils her eyes; Oppression shrinks aghast;
A wingèd sound of joy, and love, and wonder,
Which soars where Expectation never flew,
Rending the veil of space and time asunder!
One ocean feeds the clouds, and streams, and dew;
One sun illumines heaven; one spirit vast
With life and love makes chaos ever new,
As Athens doth the world with her delight renew.
—SHELLEY.
Of the splendid literature of Athens LORD MACAULAY says, "It is a subject in which I love to forget the accuracy of a judge in the veneration of a worshipper and the gratitude of a child." To Hellenic thought, as embodied and exemplified in the great works of Athenian genius, he rightly ascribes the establishment of an intellectual empire that is imperishable; and from one of his valuable historical "Essays" we quote the following graphic delineation of what may be termed
The Immortal Influence of Athens.
"If we consider merely the subtlety of disquisition, the force of imagination, the perfect energy and elegance of expression, which characterize the great works of Athenian genius, we must pronounce them intrinsically most valuable; but what shall we say when we reflect that from hence have sprung, directly or indirectly, all the noblest creations of the human intellect? That from hence were the vast accomplishments and the brilliant fancy of Cicero, the withering fire of Juvenal, the plastic imagination of Dante, the humor of Cervantes, the comprehension of Bacon, the wit of Butler, the supreme and universal excellence of Shakspeare? All the triumphs of truth and genius over prejudice and power, in every country and in every age, have been the triumphs of Athens. Whatever a few great minds have made a stand against violence and fraud, in the cause of liberty and reason, there has been her spirit in the midst of them, inspiring, encouraging, consoling—the lonely lamp of Erasmus; by the restless bed of Pascal; in the tribune of Mirabeau; in the cell of Galileo, and on the scaffold of Sidney. But who shall estimate her influence on private happiness? Who shall say how many thousands have been made wiser, happier, and better, by those pursuits in which she has taught mankind to engage? to how many the studies which took their rise from her have been wealth in poverty, liberty in bondage, health in sickness, society in solitude? Her power is indeed manifested at the bar, in the senate, on the field of battle, in the schools of philosophy. But these are not her glory. Wherever literature consoles sorrow or assuages pain—wherever it brings gladness to eyes which fail with wakefulness and tears, and ache for the dark house and the long sleep—there is exhibited, in its noblest form, the immortal influence of Athens.
"The dervis, in the Arabian tale, did not hesitate to abandon to his comrade the camels with their load of jewels and gold, while he retained the casket of that mysterious juice which enabled him to behold at one glance all the hidden riches of the universe. Surely it is no exaggeration to say that no external advantage is to be compared with that purification of the intellectual eye which gives us to contemplate the infinite wealth of the mental world; all the hoarded treasures of the primeval dynasties, and all the shapeless ore of its yet unexplored mines. This is the gift of Athens to man. Her freedom and her power have been annihilated for more than twenty centuries; her people have degenerated into timid slaves; [Footnote: But this is not the character of the Athenians of the present day.] her language into a barbarous jargon; her temples have been given up to the successive depredations of Romans, Turks, and Scotchmen; but her intellectual empire is imperishable. And, when those who have rivaled her greatness shall have shared her fate; when civilization and knowledge shall have fixed their abode in distant continents; when the sceptre shall have passed away from England; when, perhaps, travelers from distant regions shall in vain labor to decipher on some mouldering pedestal the name of our proudest chief—shall hear savage hymns chanted to some misshapen idol over the ruined dome of our proudest temple, and shall see a single naked fisherman wash his nets in the river of the ten thousand masts—the influence and glory of Athens will still survive, fresh in eternal youth, exempt from mutability and decay, immortal as the intellectual principle from which they derived their origin, and over which they exercise their control."
Genius of Greece! thou livest; though thy domes
Are fallen; here, in this thy loved abode,
Thine Athens, as I breathe the clear pure air
Which thou hast breathed, climb the dark mountain's side
Which thou hast trod, or in the temple's porch
Pause on the sculptured beauties which thine eye
Has often viewed delighted, I confess
Thy nearer influence; I feel thy power
Exalting every wish to virtuous hope;
I hear thy solemn voice amid the crash
Of fanes hurled prostrate by barbarian hands,
Calling me forth to tread with thee the paths
Of wisdom, or to listen to thy harp
Hymning immortal strains.
Greece! though deserted are thy ports, and all
Thy pomp and thy magnificence are shrunk
Into a narrow circuit; though thy gates
Pour forth no more thy crested sons to war;
Though thy capacious theatres resound
No longer with the replicated shouts
Of multitudes; although Philosophy
Is silent 'mid thy porticos and groves;
Though Commerce heaves no more the pond'rous load,
Or, thund'ring with her thousand cars, imprints
Her footsteps on thy rocks; though near thy fanes
And marble monuments the peasant's hut
Rears its low roof in bitter mockery
Of faded splendor—yet shalt thou survive,
Nor yield till time yields to eternity.
—HAYGARTH.
CHAPTER XVIII.
GREECE SUBSEQUENT TO THE ROMAN CONQUEST.