Westward empire

by Elias Lyman Magoon

Architecture is the metaphysics of the fine arts, and should be made the basis of all researches in this department, since it is the oldest and bears the most comprehensive type. It teems with the oracular inscriptions of entombed empires, and either affords information where other testimonies are silent, or confirms the facts which more dubious history asserts. Within its ruined temples yet linger the echoes of cycles long since departed, and which symbolized on their track the mightiest impulses of emulative nations in those monuments which inventive genius, coalescing with constructive skill, stamped with the attractions of beauty and strength.

Egyptian civilization was thoroughly exclusive, and possessed no disposition to diffuse itself. On the contrary, the Indo-Germanic race rapidly assimilated surrounding nations to itself, and with that energetic spirit of propagandism which was its primary element, made the reservoir of its accumulated worth the fountain of all subsequent culture. The great Surya people of northern India are supposed to be the original Cyclopœans who reared the gloomy grandeur of Egyptian Thebes, and the magnificence of Solomon's temple, who constructed the Catabothra of Bœotia, drained the valleys of Thessaly, constructed the canals of Ceylon, and left the venerable walls of Mycenæ on their westward course.

The monuments of the East attest the unreasoning submission of thousands to despotic power, and teem with the reminiscences of gloomy superstition, but both in outline and execution, the spirit of the beautiful is wanting. Vestiges of Assyria, like an earlier Pompeii, have lately been disinterred, and we are permitted to look upon, perhaps, the identical figures on which the prophets gazed, and which so moved Aholibah, when "she saw men portrayed upon the wall, the images of the Chaldeans portrayed with vermilion, girdled with girdles upon their loins, exceeding in dyed attire upon their heads, all of them princes to look to, after the manner of the Babylonians of Chaldea, the land of their nativity." Ezek. xxiii. 14, 15. Persian art, judging from what has recently been brought to light, combined much of Egypt and Assyria in its manner. The types of wisdom and power, and even the Persian alphabet, were of Assyrian character.

The temple which the monarch of Israel dedicated, and his devotion enriched, owed its artistic attractions to Tyrian skill. The descriptions of these preserved in the archives of Judea, clearly vindicate the justness of Homer's representations respecting the precious metals of the East, and the progress there made in ornamental art. Even females could divide the prey: "To Sisera, a prey of colors of needle work on both sides, meet for the necks of them that take the spoil." Judg. v. 30. Of such, the treasury of Priam was replenished, and Sidonian artists were not less expert. Helen embroiders a picture of a battle between the Greeks and Trojans; Andromache transfers flowers to a transparent vail; and Penelope weaves a web of pensive beauty, honorable to the hand of filial piety, to grace the funeral of Laertes. Many evidences demonstrate that the whole of Greece, from the era of the supposed godships of Poseidon and Zeus, down to the close of the Trojan war, was Indian not only in language and religion, but in all the arts of war and peace.

The discovery and use of metals hold the first place in the history of human progress, and in the momentous origin of the murderous sword, we have the first of inventions. The fratricide Cain fled to central Asia, the cradle of ambitious conquest, and there hereditary classes, trades, and arts arose. Thence descended eastward, the nomadic tribes who still wander amid the vast remains of the primitive mining operations of the oriental world. From the more amiable Seth, the patriarchs of peace emigrated in another direction to people cities, foster science, promote writing, and transmit sacred traditions on durable monuments of stone. The struggle of contrasted races is the leading subject of all history, and its primary development lies between the passion shown by one for war, and by the other for more peaceful arts. Moab, Ammon, and Bashan, the giants of barbarism, have ever moved westward in advance of the vanguard of civilization, and been vanquished thereby.

The infancy of Greek art was the infancy of a Hercules, who strangled serpents in his cradle. However superior as to intrinsic worth, it must be acknowledged to be an offspring of Egypt. As we have seen in western literature, a kind of hereditary lineage connects it with the East, and this is attested by evidence too palpable to be denied. Native elements appear to have combined with foreign art in Assyria; but Nimroud and Karsabad prove that the style of that intermediate region, at a certain period of its development, was directly derived from the valley of the Nile. The Assyrian types of art furnished Lydia and Caria, probably, with improved elements, from whom the Asiatic Greeks obtained the means of advancing toward that high excellence which the most refined race was destined to achieve. The earliest proofs of their skill come to us on coins, and that the Lydians were the first on earth to excel in that kind of work, Homer distinctly asserts. But while an Asiatic origin must be assigned to all the arts of Greece, it should not be forgotten that the Hellenic organization alone perfected each and every department with that exquisite refinement which no other people has ever been able to attain. Their wonderful originality is indicated by the fact, that their very earliest coins, possess in their embryo state, the germs of that beauty and sublimity which afterward were realized by the greatest artists in their grandest works. In the smallest seal, as in the most colossal form, the charming simplicity and repose prevail, which forever mark the leading traits of the Attic mind. Coins made of gold in Asia, preceded the silver coinage of Athens, but even in this earliest imprint of archaic skill, we see rudely executed all that which subsequently characterized those groups of Centaurs and Amazons that enriched the metopes and pediments of the Parthenon.

When compared with Indian and Egyptian remains, the Persian column must be considered as presenting an approximation to the perfect form, and yet it lacks that purity of taste, that refined and chastened intellect, which distinguishes the works of Greece. The lotus and palm, were indeed imitated at Carnak and Persepolis, but Athens saw the acanthus and honeysuckle surmount shafts of manly strength with amarynths of beauty such as the East never knew. India excavated the cell, and Egypt quarried the column; then came Greece to perfect the entablature system, and add that crowning glory, the triangular pediment. The three orders in their succession, exhausted every realm of invention, and perfected structural types unsurpassed by human powers; and while the mechanical principles remained identified with the most unadorned Cyclopean gateway, or rudest cromlech, an exquisite system of ornament embraced every feature, and refined all into consummate dignity and elegance.

All the institutions of Greece bore the impressive signet of national character. In government, dialect, and invention, despite minor differences, there was a general uniformity which rendered them distinct, not only from Phœnicians or Egyptians, but also from the kindred inhabitants of Lydia, Italy, and Macedonia. Though at the beginning germs were derived from the East, it is not less true that at the time of ripest maturity not the least tinge of foreign influence was discernible in their literature, politics, religion or art. Grecian architecture, especially, like their poetry, was the natural expression of the national mind. It was influenced by the peculiarity of the land in which it originated, and was more than national; it was local, born under the sky of Hellas only, and in no colony did it ever attain the comprehensive beauty which signalized the city of its birth. Sparta might boast of the hard bones and muscles of well-trained athletes, but grace and beauty never entered her walls. The Athenians borrowed materials and suggestions from diverse sources, but their skill was entirely their own. They invented all the component parts of classic architecture, the proportions, characters, and distinctions, with a corresponding nomenclature by which each order and every ornament is still designated. Symmetry, proportion, and decoration; the solidity and gracefulness of nature, relieved by historical sculpture, and illuminated by chromatic splendor, with the perfection of reason interpenetrating and presiding over all, constituted that perfect model of noble simplicity which always attracts and never offends.

The Dorians produced the first pure architectural style, and carried it to the highest perfection, without any assistance from the fallen palaces of the Atreidæ. The Æschylean majesty was the highest conception of even that extraordinary people. The Parthenon was the noblest production of the noblest masters, and should be accepted as the highest exemplification of the national skill.

The order of columns at Persepolis seems to be the proto-Ionic, as certain pillars have been supposed to be proto-Dorics, but neither, in fact, deserve, in the slightest degree, that admiration which belongs legitimately to those honored names. The temple of the Ilissus was the most ancient monument of the true middle order, and was a significant prelude to those more glorious works destined to immortalize the administration of Pericles when freed from the rivalry of Cimon, the restraints of the Areopagus, and the opposing aristocrats. Within twenty years all the grandest works were executed, and then the point of culmination in that lovely land was forever passed.