The design we have given to illustrate in some degree the “Fine Style” is the “Departure of Achilles” ([Fig. 32]), taken from a vase in the Louvre.
In our modern time it has come to pass that men worship strength, power, words, gold, brass—everything but beauty. They care little to have beautiful things about them, less to be beautiful themselves, to create beautiful children, or to do beautiful work. And what is the result? Often they are as unlovely in their souls as in their persons; and so, while we boast of great cities, and long railways, and amazing cotton-mills, we boast not of beautiful men who make beautiful work. Perfection tends to perfection, and ugliness to ugliness. Therefore, let the perfect man and the perfect woman marry, that thus we may have the perfect race once more. To bring this to pass we must insist upon perfect form and perfect decoration in all things about us; we must know beauty and value it. One step to this great end is to study the Greek vase. The next step is to make every home a temple of art.
What can we not believe of such a house as that of Aspasia in Athens, when she was virtually the wife of Pericles in the best period of Greece? That it was graced surely by works of divinest beauty; that these exquisite vases which we are praising stood upon her shelves, graced her pedestals, and adorned the corners specially made for their reception. We may believe that the potters themselves presented their beautiful work to the most distinguished woman of all Greece; that the victor in the Panathenaic games should ask a place for his prize in the atmosphere of light and learning which surrounded this remarkable woman.
The shapes and uses of the Greek vases, cups, jugs, etc., etc., are many. We mention here those most known as follows: for holding oil, wine, etc., etc., amphora, pelice, stamnos; for carrying water, etc., hydria, kalpis, or calpis; for mixing wine and water, etc., krater, oxybaphon, kelebe; for pouring water, wine, etc., œnochoe, cruche, or kruche, olpe, prochoos; for cups and drinking-vessels, cylix, or kylix, kantharos, kyathos, rhyton, skyphos, phiale, etc., etc.; for perfumes, ointments, etc., lekythos, or lecythos, alabastron, cotyle, or kotyle, aryballos, etc.
Fig. 41.—Hydria.