Westward empire

by Elias Lyman Magoon

But the glory of Athens, as a single figure, and marking the highest culmination, was Minerva, of the Parthenon. Above all others she bore the charms of celestial youth, under the expression of severest virtue. Doubtless no more glorious contrast could be found to the stiff and conventional uncouthness of the Memnonian statues, than was produced in that fine realization of cultivated intellect invested with invincible power. The spirit of the beautiful was embodied in her whose masculine wisdom was tempered with feminine grace, the severity of dominion softened into elegance, and the sedateness of philosophy dissolved in the fervor of patriotic enthusiasm. Her majestic form of ivory rose forty feet in the dazzled air, draped in robes and ornaments of gold. At her feet lay a shield, covered with exquisite sculpture, representing, on the convex side, the Amazonian war, the Athenian leader being the portrait of Pericles, and on the concave side were giants warring against heaven. On her golden sandals were depicted the battle of the Centaurs. By special decree the Athenians forbade Phidias from inscribing his name on this, the divinest Pallas of his creation, in order that they might share equally among themselves the honor of an undertaking which the people in common had conceived and sustained.

The grandest inspiration came from Marathon, and was exemplified in that glorious art which best expressed the manliness of the Grecian race, and rose highest in the republic in its freest hour. From the battle of Salamis to Pericles, scarcely fifty years elapsed, in which brief period art had advanced from eastern archaism to the most refined western excellence, from the rude carving of Selinus to the consummate sculptures of the Parthenon. The finest group of antiquity is preserved to us from the western front of that magnificent temple. Notwithstanding the variety of the figures, there is not one which is inert, or which represents a perpendicular line. In the centre are Neptune, with the trident in his left hand, and Minerva, with the spear in her right, with their chariots and attendants. The goddess of wisdom wields the strongest hand, and the sculptor has so adroitly managed the composition, as to place Neptune in the way of his own horses, while Minerva is allowed free passage in her nobler career. This pediment, looking down upon the mighty metropolis, and the Ægean bathing its western brim, bore a record and prophecy of high significance to him who approached by land or sea.

Cimon ornamented the public squares of Athens from his private fortune; and Pericles added markets, halls, gymnasia, and temples, all of which he caused to be adorned with innumerable statues by superior masters. The crowded wonders of the Acropolis, in particular, seemed to the astonished visitor, one great offering, the aggregate of national enthusiasms expressed in transcendant art. Toward this subordinate Olympus, a gigantic flight of steps conducted through the Propylæa, which opened its fivefold gates of bronze to a world of men and gods in precious forms, peopling marble halls, and adorning brilliant shrines. Here, for the temple of Polias, Phidias erected that statue of Minerva whose brazen helmet gleamed far off to greet the mariner as he doubled the Sunian promontory; and that other Pallas, named the Lemnian beauty; and a third, the "immortal maid," and protectress of the Parthenon, to whose colossal fascinations of ivory and gold allusion has already been made. So much were that democratic people animated with the passion of Pericles, which themselves had mainly inspired, that when Phidias recommended marble as being a cheaper material than ivory for the gigantic figure required, it was for that very reason that ivory was unanimously preferred. Miracles indeed abounded on every hand, and as the great patron and perfecter of them all, stood there the incarnation of his age, each masterpiece attested the culmination of that glorious star which blazed in tranquil beauty while he lived, and paled in tempest when he died. The outward decline of Greece was strangely sudden, and left a blank which has never been filled; but the empire of her inner spirit can never perish, so long as heroism may arouse, poetry enrapture, art embellish, or wisdom instruct the nations in their predestined progress. The epitaph—Here is the heart; the spirit is everywhere—most appropriately belongs to the capital of Attica. From her gates went forth colonies of beautiful intellect throughout the civilized world; and the light of her genius, lingering around the ruins of her skill, still serves to model all the masterly productions of earth. Like the venerable Nestor's cap of sculptured gold, the material may have perished, but the power which conceived and executed it has proved itself immortal.

Proficiency in sculpture was at one time widely diffused; it rose rapidly to the highest excellence, and as rapidly descended to a corresponding depth. The great Socrates was himself a statuary. Pausanias saw, at the entrance of the Athenian Acropolis, a group of Graces draped, which was executed by the philosopher. Praxiteles, at a later period, was distinguished for delicate grace and most careful finish. When Nicomedes, of Bythinia, wished to purchase of the Cnidians the Aphrodite by this artist, with the condition of discharging the city of its oppressive debt, they preferred to endure any hardship rather than suffer such a loss. This tender solicitude for the preservation of the beautiful was utterly unlike a mere mania for museum collections, and was not limited to plastic art; it grew up in common with all Grecian culture, and is to be found in all the phenomena of exalted Hellenic life. Art was indigenous to that prolific soil, and graced the maturest fruit, as well as nourished the deepest roots, of existence. While the auspices of freedom remained, she constantly derived fresh vigor, as Antæus gained strength from contact with mother earth, borrowing radiance from Olympus, and growing in conscious companionship with heroes and gods.

Critias, Nestœlis, and Hegias succeeded each other with some distinction, but not much was added to plastic art until Polycletus was born to raise alto-relievo to perfection, and won the proud renown of being the Sophocles of sculpture. He excelled in exquisite symmetry and superlative polish. The statue he made of a Persian life-guard was so exact in its proportions, and careful in its finish, that it was called the Rule. But the highest excellence in art had passed, and Myron, and Scopas, in their works which commemorated war, the chase, or the terrors of a violent death, foretokened the tempestuous age about to break in desolation all over earth.

Having thus briefly sketched the progress and character of both architecture and sculpture, let us now glance at the painting of the Periclean age.

As we have before said, architecture was the first of the fine arts, and the pursuit of the beautiful in this paved the way for all the rest. Color, as an artistic element, was first used to define hieroglyphics, and afterward was largely employed in mural decorations. The most characteristic production of Egypt was its obelisks, and these have made the world best acquainted with the spirit of the East by being transported without mutilation to the great cities of the West. Artificial tints on these are not common, but masses of wall are still seen, with pictorial representations of great variety, almost as vivid as they were three thousand years ago. But the type and form of her mummies was all that ever belonged to the land of the Pharaohs in the history of art. Every thing which contained life, growth, and power, from the simplest wayside Herma to Jupiter Olympus on his resplendent throne, sprang exclusively from the inventive and executive genius of Greece.

There is no proof that the art of Mosaics was indigenous in Africa. That it existed in Persia as early as the age of Ahasuerus is recorded in the first chapter of Esther, where it is mentioned that in the royal palace of Shushan "the beds were of gold and silver, upon a pavement of red and blue and white marble." In this and many other respects, the spoils of war taken from the Persian invaders, conveyed to their victors important lessons in the arts of peace. The excellence which this kind of art eventually attained, and the profusion of its use, is quaintly indicated by the incident referred to by Claudius Galenus as follows: "Diogenes, the cynic, having entered a mansion in which all the Olympian deities were figured in chaste Mosaics, spat in the face of the host, saying it was the least noble spot he saw." Athenæus also mentions a work, formed of many colored stones, in small fragments, which represented the whole story of the Iliad.

The Graces rocked the cradle of Greek art, Admiration taught her to speak, and painting was her most phonetic idiom. A legend not unworthy of belief tells us that a Corinthian maid, by means of a secret lamp, traced the shadow of her departing lover, and thus outlined portrait was formed. As Love made the first essay in this department of art, so he never ceased to guide the hands which beautified the age of Pericles. A wise law prohibited the choice of an ugly subject, and the popular sentiment so generally limited pictorial representation to the realm of elegance, that Pyricus, who ventured to depict apes and kitchen herbs, was surnamed Rhypographer, or "Dirt Painter."

The etymology of the word used by the Greeks to express painting was the same which they employed for writing, and this renders the affinity of method and materials certain. Their first efforts were striagrams, simple outlines of a shade; thence they advanced to the monogram, or form without light or shade; from this they arose to the monochrom, or design with a single pigment, on a waxed tablet; and in the end, by means of the pencil, then first used, they invented the polychrom, and thus raised the stained drawing to a legitimate picture, glowing through all the magic scale of rainbow tints. The progressive steps in the attainment of excellence in this art are distinctly marked by the terms employed by Quinctilian, when he says that Zeuxis discovered light and shade; Pamphilus was exquisite for subtlety of line; Protogenes, for finish; Apelles, for grace; Theon, for poetical conceptions; Polygnotus, for simplicity of color and form; Aristides, for expression; and Amphion, for composition.