Fig. 59.—The Farnesian Hercules.
The moment in which the god is represented is that which immediately followed his securing the apples of the Hesperides, the wedding present of Ge to Juno. Of all the labors of Hercules, perhaps this was the most arduous. Juno had left these apples with the Hesperides for safekeeping. These goddesses lived on Mount Atlas, and the serpent Ladon helped them to guard their precious trust. Hercules did not know just where the apples were kept, and this made his task all the more difficult. When, therefore, he arrived at Mount Atlas he offered to hold up the world for Atlas if he would go and fetch the apples. This Atlas did, but refused to take the weight from Hercules again. However, Hercules took the apples and hastened to his master, Eurystheus, with them. While performing this labor he had a terrible struggle with Ladon, and some accounts say that he killed the monster.
Now, the statue represents the god with the apples in his right hand, the world held on his back, while he leans heavily on his club covered with a lion's skin. All the muscles of his body are swollen from his struggle; his head droops, his whole expression of face and form is that of sadness and weariness. The youthfulness and strength with which the older sculptors invested him is not here. It is a splendid work, but it is not of the best; it belongs to an age when there was too much straining after effect, when the moderation of the best Greek masters did not satisfy the spirit of the time; and no sculptor lived whose power equalled that of Phidias or Lysippus.
Fig. 60.—The Apollo Belvedere.
There are some reliefs and vases of this Roman period that are very interesting. I shall speak of but one relief—the Sacrifice of Iphigenia, which is in Florence. It is called the work of Cleomenes, and his name is inscribed upon it; but there is some doubt as to the genuineness of the inscription. This relief is very beautiful. It represents a priest cutting off the hair of the lovely maiden as a preparation for her sacrifice.
The story runs that Iphigenia was the daughter of Agamemnon, who killed a hart sacred to Diana. To revenge this act the goddess becalmed the Greek fleet on its way to Aulis. The seer Calchas advised Agamemnon to sacrifice his daughter to appease Diana; this he consented to do, but Diana put a hart in the place of the maiden, whom she bore to Tauris and made a priestess. In this relief the maiden has an air of resigned grief; her father stands by himself with his head covered. The sculptor of this relief was not the first who had represented Agamemnon thus, for a painter, Timanthes, had made a picture of this subject about B.C. 400, and in describing it Quintilian said that "when he had painted Calchas sad, Ulysses sadder, and had represented in the face of Menelaus the most poignant grief that art can express, having exhausted the deepest feelings and finding no means of worthily portraying the countenance of the father, he covered his head and left it to every man's own heart to estimate his sufferings."
Fig. 61.—Head of Apollo Belvedere