PART II.
THE ELGIN MARBLES.
“Abode of gods whose shrines no longer burn.”
I have now to complete my account of the sculptures of the Parthenon, that wonderfully beautiful temple to Athéné (or Minerva), at Athens, which has never ceased to be the centre of attraction for all visitors to Greece from the time it was first built—namely, about 435 years B.C.—even till the present moment, when it stands a shattered wreck on its rocky height.
My first article dealt chiefly with the long, sculptured frieze that ran continuously the whole length of the walls of the building (protected by the outer colonnade), and the ceremonials which that frieze represented. The present article will be devoted chiefly to the fragments of the external frieze, and to the figures of the eastern and western pediments, which represented the chief legends connected with the goddess.
I will, before proceeding, here pause a moment to account for the shattered condition in which those fragments now are.
In 630 A.D. the Parthenon was consecrated for use as a Christian church. Like the famous church at Constantinople, it was dedicated to Santa Sophia, the Divine Wisdom. The older temple, that stood near the Parthenon, called the Erecthium, which had been far more venerated by the early Athenians than the Parthenon itself, was about the same time also consecrated. This latter was dedicated to the Virgin Mary.
Long before this date, Christianity had happily become the religion of the Roman Empire by law established—that is to say, of the whole civilised world. It is evident that in adapting the Pagan temple for Christian worship it was impossible to allow the fables of Paganism to remain depicted over the chief entrance, however splendid as works of art. Accordingly, we find that the entire centre group in the pediment facing the east was completely done away with, a plain surface of blank wall filling the space whereon, in all probability, the inscription of the Christian dedication was placed. The subordinate figures at the two extremities were left, as, without the central group to explain their object, they could have had no intelligible meaning.
Our business for the moment is to show what means exist for restoring the lost central group, which was the key of the subject. The evidence is two-fold. There is, first, the Homeric hymn which gives the legend of the birth of Athéné; and, secondly, there is the description given of the Parthenon by the ancient author, Pausanias.
Pausanias was a Greek gentleman, native of Lydia, in Asia Minor, a geographer and traveller, who visited noted sites in Greece with the express purpose of seeing and describing all that was most beautiful and interesting in Greek art. He lived about one hundred and fifty years after the Christian era. His travels or “Itinerary” has come down to us, and a most curious and interesting work it is. He saw and described the Parthenon with much enthusiasm, with all its beautiful statues and works of art, as “still perfect,” though they were, even in his day, already considered as ancient art. He refers to the Homeric hymn as suggesting the subject of the group on the eastern pediment over the principal entrance to the temple.
This Homeric hymn to Athéné gives the account of her fabled birth, full grown and fully armed, from the head of her father, Zeus (or Jupiter). It describes her, first as the goddess of war, and afterwards, when she has thrown off her arms, as the goddess of the peaceful arts. I give the hymn in full.
Homeric Hymn to Athéné.
“I sing the glorious power with azure eyes;
Athenian Pallas! tameless, chaste, and wise.
Trito-genia,[1] town preserving maid,
Revered and mighty, from his awful head
Whom Jove brought forth, in warlike armour dressed,
Golden, all radiant! Wonder strange possessed
The everlasting gods that shape to see,
Shaking a javelin keen, impetuously
Rush from the crest of Ægis-bearing Jove.
Fearfully Heaven was shaken, and did move
Beneath the might of the cerulean-eyed;
Earth dreadfully resounded far and wide;
And lifted from its depths, the sea swelled high
In purple billows; the tide suddenly
Stood still, and great Hyperion’s son long time
Checked his swift steeds, till, where she stood sublime,
Pallas from her immortal shoulders threw
The arms divine; wise Jove rejoiced to view.
Child of the Ægis-bearer, hail to thee!
Nor thine, nor others’ praise shall unremembered be.”
Such is the famous hymn. And from Pausanias we learn that it afforded to the sculptor, Pheidias, the subject for his chief group on the eastern pediment. But, exactly how he treated it we have no precise or definite knowledge.
The Eastern Pediment.—“Doubtless, in this composition, Jupiter (Zeus) occupied the centre, and was represented in all his majesty, wielding the thunderbolt in one hand, holding his sceptre in the other; seated on his throne, and as if in the centre of the universe, between day and night, the beginning and the end, as denoted by the rising and the setting sun.
“It is probable that the figures on his right hand represented those deities who were connected with the progress of facts and rising life—the deities who preside over birth, over the produce of the earth, over love—the rising sun; whilst those on the left of Zeus related to the consummation or decline of things—the god of war, the goddess of the family hearth, the Fates, and lastly the setting sun, or night. Whilst the divine Athéné rose from behind the central figure in all the effulgence of the most brilliant armour, the golden crest of her helmet filling the apex of the pediment.”
I quote this glowing description from Sir Richard Westmacott’s “Lectures on Sculpture.”
This, however, is all conjecture, for the space is a mere blank. As some little aid to the imagination to help to fill the blank, I give a sketch of the same subject, viz., the birth of Athéné, copied from a painting on a vase now in the British Museum. The artist may have probably seen the Parthenon, and may have taken a free version of the subject, from memory, to decorate his vase. We find the same subject repeated, with variations, on other vases. Zeus (Jupiter) occupies the centre, a small Athéné springs forth from his head, Hephaestos (Vulcan) stands by with his axe (with which he has split open the thunderer’s head to let forth the infant deity), Poseidon (Neptune), with his trident, behind him; and Artemis (Diana), with her bow, and a nymph, on the other side, look on. The figures on the vases are so extremely stiff and formal as compared to the grand, life-like statues of the pediments, that I hesitate to give my illustration. But it shows the probable arrangement of the group. The figures on the vase are red on a black ground, treated perfectly flat, without the slightest modelling.
To return to the pediment of the Parthenon itself, the space immediately surrounding the blank, on each hand, is filled with different gods, who appear to look with wonder and admiration towards the central group. At the extreme end on the left the rising sun, Phœbus-Apollo, drives the car of day out of the ocean; while Seléné, goddess of night, plunges downward with her team of steeds, into the waves, at the end on the right.
Of the figures referred to, we may identify the following fragments:—First, we note a fragment of the sun-god, his powerful throat and extended arms emerging from the waves, as he shakes the reins to urge on his prancing steeds; before him, a splendid head of one of the horses of his car, the head flung back, as if he tossed his mane in eager movement to rush up into the daylight. Next comes a recumbent figure, of heroic manly proportions, the most perfect of the Elgin collection. A lion’s skin on which he reposes, leaves little doubt but that it was intended to represent the youthful Hercules, the god of strength. It is popularly, but erroneously, known as Theseus. Then come two grand, matronly, seated personages. The attitude and beauty of proportion in these two stately figures is considered no less admirable than the subtle arrangement of their flowing draperies. They probably represent Demeter and her daughter, Persephone (the Ceres and Proserpine of the Roman mythology). The younger one leans her arm lovingly on the shoulder of her mother. The mother, Demeter, raises her arm, as if in astonishment at the news communicated by the next figure, who comes rushing towards them, her drapery flying far out behind her, from the rapidity of her movements. This is doubtless Iris, the messenger of the gods, sent to announce the wonderful events transacting in the central group. Three fine dignified female figures, on the further side of the pediment, equally distant from the centre, appear to have balanced this last group of Iris, Ceres, and Proserpine. These were the three Fates, who spun the thread of human life, named by the Greeks, Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropus. Two are seated, a little apart; the third reclines, half leaning on the lap of the second. These three figures are equally well preserved, and equally noble and beautiful with the group to which they correspond on the further side.
The subject of this eastern pediment is evidently supposed to have taken place on Mount Olympus, the highest mountain in Greece, the fabled home of the gods, and the figures were intended to represent a conclave of the gods.
The Western Pediment.—The subject of the west end, on the contrary, may be supposed to have taken place in Athens itself, on the Acropolis. The subject here was the contest between Athéné and Poseidon (or Neptune) for supremacy in Athens. Here we find local personages, such as the river deities (the rivers personified), and the legendary kings and heroes of Athens. These statues, with the exception of Athéné and Poseidon, are a size smaller than those on the eastern pediment, being not at all more than life size. The object for which this assembly has met is to see which of the two deities could present the best gift to the Athenians. Poseidon struck the earth; the horse appeared, so the story runs. Athéné did the same; the olive tree grew before them. Both were most useful gifts; but the olive tree, on account of its fruit and the oil which it yields, was considered to have the higher claim.
Athéné was proclaimed the victor. The gods bestowed the city upon the goddess, after whom it was named Athens; and Poseidon was so enraged, continues the legend, that he let loose the waters of the angry sea (which, as monarch of the waves, of course obeyed his behests), and straightway it overflowed its banks and deluged the plain round Athens.
Such is the story, and in the times of Pausanias were shown the three great dents on the rock, the marks of the trident of Poseidon, where he had struck the earth, as well as a small pool of salt water. The Greek traveller mentions having seen these things.
Strangely enough, these two same old-world curiosities were re-discovered not many years ago when excavations were being made on the Acropolis, in the very centre of the older temple, near to the Parthenon, where Athéné and Poseidon were once jointly worshipped. Athéné and Poseidon were the two central figures in the midst of their assembled votaries, the legendary kings and heroes of Athens, and the local nymphs and river gods.
This group is terminated at each end by recumbent figures, supposed to represent the two streams that water the plain round Athens—the Illissus and the Cephissus. The figure of Illissus is scarcely second to the so-called Theseus for beauty of manly proportions; it is perhaps more graceful and less vigorous. “Half reclined, he seems, by a sudden movement, to raise himself with impetuosity, being overcome with joy at the agreeable news of the victory of Athéné. The momentary attitude which this movement occasions is one of the boldest and most difficult to be expressed that can possibly be imagined. The undulating flow given to every part of the drapery which accompanies the figure is happily suggestive of flowing water.” Next to the Illissus is a broken fragment of the nymph Callirrhoë, who represents the only spring of fresh water in Athens; while next to the Cephissus, on the other side, sits King Cecrops, the mythical first king of Attica, with his wife, Agranlos (her name means a “dweller in the fields”), and his daughter Pandrosus (whose name means “the dew”).
Of the two heroic figures in the centre, Athéné and Poseidon, whose contest is the subject of this western pediment, the only fragment now existing is the muscular, finely-developed back and chest of the sea-god; and of Athéné, the upper half of the face (the sockets of the eyes intentionally hollow, that they might be filled in with precious stones), also one of her feet, and the stem of the famous olive tree.
A careful model of the Parthenon in its present condition is placed in the Elgin Room, and by reference to that we can identify the fragments on the pediments, and can also see the position of the various sculptures. The sculptured figures on it are copied from drawings made from the Parthenon itself at Athens in 1674, by a French artist, Jacques Carey by name, before Lord Elgin had removed those which we now possess, and when many of the figures were far less damaged than they now are. The Parthenon had been used as a powder magazine by the Turks when they conquered the city in 1687. It was during the siege that a bomb from the enemy fell into the edifice, igniting the stored gunpowder, and the whole centre part of the ancient temple, with a part of its lovely frieze, was blown into the air. Again, a similar misfortune occurred in the Greek struggle for independence and freedom in 1827. Yet, in spite of the terrible gap, enough of the building is still left for us to admire the wonderful beauty of proportion, and simple, yet grand, lines of the outline; and more than enough to recognise the general plan and places of most of the sculptures that adorned its walls.
The Metopes.—These are panels in alto, or high-relief, in the frieze which ran above the colonnade of the Parthenon. They pourtray the struggle between the youth of Athens and the centaurs—monstrous creatures, half horse, half man. This struggle is supposed to have been intended to typify the contest between intelligence and moral order on the one hand, against the power of lawlessness and brute force, as represented by the monsters, on the other—a contest, the result of which was in that day acutely realised.
There were originally ninety-two of these Metopes, fourteen on each end, and thirty-two along each side wall. We possess seventeen out of the ninety-two. So many having been destroyed, it is impossible to judge with any greater certainty of the subject.
The Statue.—My account would be incomplete did I not add a few words descriptive of the beautiful statue of Athéné that originally stood within the temple, facing the east. For, although all trace of the statue itself has long vanished, we know its form by copies in marble in several of the museums and galleries in Europe. The one at Naples is considered the best. We have also, in the Elgin Room, two small rough copies of it.
The grand original, which Pausanias saw and describes as “perfect,” “a thing to wonder at,” was of gold and ivory. Its robes were of gold, its flesh was of delicately cream-coloured ivory, its eyes flashed with precious stones.
“Lovely, serene, and grand,” its gigantic form filled the centre of the temple, and the golden griffins on its helmet reared themselves against the very roof.
This statue, with that of the Olympian Jove, was undoubtedly the exclusive work of the master, Pheidias, who, though he may have allowed his pupils to assist him in some of the labours of the other figures of the Parthenon, assuredly hoped that his fame would be secured by these works. Their fame now, alas! rests solely upon copies and description. I give a sketch of the best of the two small rough copies in the Elgin Room. Like the grand original, she holds the figure of Victory in her extended right hand, and grasps the spear in the left, while her shield, together with the snake (type of the native soil of Athens) lie at her feet.
The art of presenting figures in gold and ivory, for which Pheidias is peculiarly famous, is a lost art. A special name was given to these statues. They were called Chrys-elephantine.[2] The combined richness of the gold with the soft hue of the ivory must have produced a wonderfully fine and mysterious effect when seen in the recesses of a dimly-illumined temple. The golden robes of the goddess were considered as part of the State treasury, and were between the times of the great festivals unfixed from the statue, and stored in the treasure house at the back part of the temple. They were from time to time carefully weighed, and were looked upon in the light of national wealth, which might, in time of need, be drawn upon for the country’s requirement. The gold of the robes was said to have been worth as much as £100,000. It is supposed that this part of the goddess was melted down, and finally reduced to Byzantine coin about the time of the Roman Emperor Julian—viz., about A.D. 360.
As Athens sunk from her high position among the Greek States, her processions and ceremonies fell into decay; but while she flourished, none were more brilliant.
Other festivals there were in Greece besides the one at Athens in honour of Athéné, where similar athletic games and feats of skill were performed before the altars of other tutelary gods. There were the far-famed Olympic games in honour of Zeus (Jupiter), in which all the Greek States competed. The Odes of Pindar have immortalised the Olympic chariot races. There were also the Delphic games in honour of Apollo, the sun god, the god of poetry. The practice of these games lasted in Greece, and were in use in Rome, till long after Christian times. How popular they were in those times we may infer from the many references to them in the Epistles and Acts of the Apostles.
Professor Jebb observes, in one of the admirable series of Shilling Primers now publishing, the one on “Greek Literature:” “The Greeks were not the first people who found out how to till the earth well, or to fashion metals, or to build splendid houses and temples. But they were the first people who tried to make reason the guide of their social life. Greek literature has an interest such as belongs to no other literature. It shows us how men first set about systematic thinking.” And, he proceeds, “neither the history of Christian doctrine, nor the outer history of the Christian Church, can be fully understood without reference to the character and work of the Greek mind. Under the influence of Christianity, two principal elements have entered into the spiritual life of the modern world. One of these has been Hebrew; the other has been Greek.”
Of all the many beautiful things which the Greeks produced, the Greek language itself is considered to have been the first and most wonderful; and “no one,” continues the professor, “who is a stranger to Greek literature, has seen how perfect an instrument it is possible for human speech to be.”
We may remember that the whole of the New Testament was given to the world in this beautiful and expressive language; that St. Paul was well versed in Greek philosophy, and that many of his Epistles were to Greek cities, and many of his first disciples among the Gentiles were Greeks.
We can also be sure that he must often have been present at Greek games such as we have been describing. The frequent references and metaphors referring to them prove this. In the first Epistle to the Corinthians the references to the foot-races run in the Isthmean games, celebrated at Corinth, occur again and again. “Know ye not that they which run in a race run all, but one receiveth the prize? So run that ye may obtain” (ch. ix. 24); and in the following verse, “They strive for a corruptible” (or perishable) “crown, but we an incorruptible”—referring to the fragile crowns or garlands of fresh leaves awarded to the victors in the games we have been describing.
And again, in the Epistle to the Philippians, iii. 14, “I press towards the mark” (or goal) “for the prize.” In the first Epistle to Timothy, vi. 12, “Fight the good fight before many witnesses.”
The first preaching to the Gentiles was to Greek-speaking peoples, either noted Greek cities, as Athens itself and Corinth, or Greek colonies in Asia Minor. We find (Acts xii.) how St. Paul actually visited this same beautiful City of Athens, whose early legends, like quaint fairy stories, we have been describing; how he stood on the Areopagus (the Hill of Mars) facing the Parthenon, and must have seen all its lovely statues and grand monuments still perfect; and how he “thought it good to be left at Athens alone,” when he there preached to her wise men and philosophers, and found followers and disciples from among them, whose hearts were opened to a higher wisdom than any that the worshippers of the famed Athenian goddess knew.
THE INTERIOR OF THE PARTHENON.
(The Giving of the Prizes. Conjectural Arrangement.)