Religion and Art in Ancient Greece

by Ernest Arthur Gardner

Perhaps the earliest class of statues in which we find any attempt to give artistic expression to superhuman power is that in which we see the god in vigorous action, often striking with his characteristic weapon: Zeus with his thunderbolt in his raised right hand, Posidon with his trident, or Athena advancing rapidly with brandished spear and shield advanced. But even these figures, apart from their divine attributes, show no essential distinction from human combatants. It is a significant fact that it is still a matter of dispute6 whether one of the most famous statues of the early fifth century, "the Choiseul-Gouffier Apollo," represents a god or an athlete. This is neither because the Greeks at this time idealised their athletes nor because they humanised their gods, but because they typified them both; that is to say, they represented them by a type which was the most perfect rendering within their power either of man or of an anthropomorphic deity. Here we have the material form provided by means of which the ideals of the succeeding period were to find their artistic expression—such a typical or normal human form is, in fact, the logical expression of anthropomorphism in its most literal sense—the making of gods after man's image. But those who believed rather that man was made after God's image would look to find in the prototype something more and higher than can be seen in its earthly copy. This notion, even if not formulated by philosophy until a later age, certainly underlies the idealistic art of the fifth century.

6 Even if this dispute be regarded as now settled by weight of evidence, the fact that such a dispute is possible retains its significance.

CHAPTER V

IDEALISM

The age which followed the great Persian Wars was the time of the highest political, literary, and intellectual development in Greece. Nor was it unfavourable to strength and depth of religious feeling among the people. If the more thoughtful among them were inclined to doubt whether some of the stories told about the gods were either probable or edifying, these were the very men who, on the other hand, were most capable of appreciating the higher and nobler conceptions of the gods which we find in contemporary poets. And the great delivery from the Persians not only gave the Greeks a confidence in themselves which justly increased their national pride and thereby strengthened their national ideals, but it also gave occasion to a confidence in the gods and a gratitude to them which found expression in numerous buildings and offerings. All this religious activity could not fail to have considerable influence upon the common people; and in some cases, as at Athens, there was the necessity of replacing the temples and statues that had been destroyed or carried off by the Persian invader. At the time when a demand occurred for new statues of the gods, the rapid progress of the art of sculpture made it inevitable that these new statues should not be mere reproductions or reminiscences of the ones they replaced, but fresh and original conceptions, worthy of the increased skill of the artist and of the nobler ideals of the people. And by one of those coincidences which we meet so often both in the history of art and in that of literature, just at the time when the material conditions, the spirit of the people, and the rapid advance of art gave the utmost scope for artistic creation, there arose the man of transcendent genius to give full expression to the religious and artistic aspirations of the time. The age of Pericles was also the age of Phidias. It is true that there was an interval between the defeat of the Persians and the period of highest attainment in Greece; and during this interval many temples were built or rebuilt, and many statues were set up as objects of worship or as dedications to the gods. Some of these may have anticipated to a certain extent the work of Phidias; several of them were of colossal size, like his chief masterpieces, and thus, even from the technical point of view, may have prepared the way before him; one, the Apollo by Calamis at Apollonia, was about forty-five feet high, and so actually rivalled the Zeus and Athena of Phidias in size. But of these statues we know little or nothing. As to the two most famous works of Phidias himself, the Athena Parthenos within the Parthenon at Athens and the Zeus at Olympia, we are better informed, so far as elaborate descriptions and the somewhat rhetorical appreciations of later writers are concerned; and we possess some extant copies which tell us something of their pose and attributes. But any notion we may form as to their true artistic and religious character must be mainly dependent upon our imagination; and even for their relation to the religious ideals of the people we are dependent for the most part upon indirect evidence. Though the art of sculpture was so closely bound up with the life of the people in Greece, we find very few references to its greatest works; it is evident that the Athenians, for example, took the greatest pride in the buildings that adorned their Acropolis and in the sculptures they contained; yet when Pericles, as reported by Thucydides, speaks of the statue of the Athena Parthenos, it is only to reckon the gold of her drapery as part of the possible resources of the state. We know that in the eyes of Pericles and of his hearers the preciousness of the material was only an incident in the artistic character of the work; but what is felt most deeply is often the least spoken about. Later descriptions, such as that of Pausanias, lay emphasis on the details and accessories of the statue, the ornamentation of helmet and shield and sandals; they lay themselves open to the stricture of Lucian on "such as can neither see nor praise the whole beauty of the Olympian Zeus, great and noble as it is, nor describe it to others that do not know it, but admire the accurate work and fine polish of his footstool and the good proportions of the basis, enumerating all such details with the utmost care." At the same time even such information as they give us is welcome, since it aids our imagination to reconstruct the appearance of the whole. These great chryselephantine statues were placed within the cella of a temple, lighted only through the door and by some infiltration through the marble roof, and their effect was calculated for these conditions. The rich tone and subtle reflections of the ivory and the gold, mingled with coloured inlays of enamel or precious stones, and tempered and harmonised by a "dim religious light," must have been most impressive; and the grandeur of the figures was enhanced by their colossal size. But in all this we are still dealing only with conditions and accessories, not with the art itself and the religious ideals which it expressed. These are perhaps easier for us to appreciate in the case of the Zeus than of the Athena, though we are better provided with copies of the latter. We are accustomed in our own religious art to the attempt to express divinity in the form of a mature man of unspeakable majesty and benignity. To the Greeks, indeed, the human figure of Zeus was not merely an incarnation, but the actual form of the god himself; the god was not thought of as having taken upon himself the sorrows and the weaknesses of our mortal nature, but as sharing only its ideal perfection. Yet that the effect was not altogether dissimilar is shown by such a passage as that we find in Dion Chrysostom: "A man whose soul is utterly immersed in toil, who has suffered many disasters and sorrows, and cannot even enjoy sweet sleep, even such an one, I think, if he stood face to face with this statue, would forget all the dangers and difficulties of this mortal life: such the vision you, Phidias, have invented and devised, a sight 'to lull all pain and anger, and bring forgetfulness of every sorrow.'"

The same writer elsewhere puts into the mouth of Phidias an explanation of how he had attempted to embody in his statue the current conception of the god, and even the epithets that belonged to his worship. "My Zeus," says the sculptor, "is peaceful and altogether gentle, as the guardian of a Hellas free from factions and of one mind with itself. Him, taking counsel with my art, and with the wise and noble Elean state, I set up in his temple, mild and majestic in a form free from all sorrow, as the giver of life and livelihood and all good things, the common father of men, their saviour and their guardian, so far as it is possible for a mortal man to conceive and to copy his divine and inexpressible nature. And consider whether you will not find the image according with all the epithets of the god; Zeus alone is called the father of gods and their only king, and also god of the city and of friendship and society, and of suppliants too and strangers, the giver of harvest, and by innumerable other titles. And for one whose aim it was to display all these qualities without speaking, is not my art successful? The strength of the form and its imposing proportions show the power to rule and the king; the gentle and amiable character shows the father and his care; the majesty and severity show the god of the city and of law; and of the kinship of men and gods the similarity of their shape serves as a symbol. His protective friendship of suppliants and strangers and fugitives and such like is seen in his kindliness and his evident gentleness and goodness. And an image of the giver of possessions and harvest is seen in the simplicity and magnanimity displayed in his form; he seems just like one who would give and be generous of good things. All this, in short, I imitated as far as possible, being unable to express it in speech." This description is, of course, the work of a late and rhetorical author, but it is the work of a man who was familiar with these great statues that are now lost to us, and was capable of appreciating them. His criticism may not be so thorough and subtle as the analysis of the Greek type of Zeus made by Brunn in his Götteridealen; but it is based on similar principles, the observation of the physical type and the spiritual expression which serves best to embody the majesty and benignity of the god. After all, we come back perhaps to the saying of Phidias himself, and his quotation from Homer; here, too, it is the brow of the god that is emphasised, and the nod that shook Olympus while it granted a prayer. It is in such effects rather than in any detailed description that it is possible to realise the nature of a great work of art.

What success in the attainment of its aim was here reached by the art of the sculptor may perhaps best be estimated from the often quoted sentence of Quintilian, perhaps the noblest praise ever accorded to an artist by a critic: "The beauty of the statue even made some addition to the received religion; the majesty of the work was equal to the god." We might indeed, without irreverence, impute to Phidias the words uttered in a very different sense by one who later gave a new and higher interpretation to a formula of "the received religion" in Greece: "Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, Him declare I unto you."

The other great Phidian ideal, that of Athena, was represented by several statues, both in Athens and in other cities. As to these we have a certain amount of information, and even a certain number of copies, which show us the pose and the accessories of the various statues; some of the better ones even suffice to give us some notion of the beauty of their original. We have also descriptions by ancient writers, which tell us, as in the case of the Olympian Zeus, much about the decoration of the statue; but we have not in this case any appreciations of the effect upon those who saw it. The ideal of Athena is in some ways more difficult for us to comprehend than that of Zeus, partly because it is less universally human, and more peculiarly characteristic of Greece and even of Athens. The notion of the mother goddess is common to most religions; that of the "queen and huntress, chaste and fair" is at least familiar to us in literature, and readily commends itself to the imagination. But Athena, though she has something of both these characters, has a nature different from both. It is impossible to derive her varied mythological functions from any one origin; but here it is not the origin of her worship that concerns us, rather its meaning and influence as these affected the people of her chosen city. Just as Zeus was the ideal of all that was best in the Hellenic conception of manhood and the god of a united Hellas, so Athena is especially the goddess of Athens, the giver and fosterer of all those qualities that made the Athenians what they were, the creatress of that ideal city sketched in the wonderful speeches of Pericles. Her gifts are the arts of war and peace, and all artistic and intellectual activity, as well as the olive and other characteristic products of Attic soil, and the clear and luminous air and stimulating climate which Attic writers are never tired of extolling, and of associating with the peculiar genius of the Athenian race. One can imagine how Dion Chrysostom might have recognised the expression of these various qualities in the broad and majestic, yet keenly intellectual brow, in the wide and clear eyes, and in other features; but the extant copies of the Athena Parthenos cannot do more than assist our imagination in realising how the sculptor represented the goddess of Athens. Here, too, as in the case of the Zeus, it is difficult for us to avoid the error of regarding the statue as a mere philosophical abstraction, an impersonation of the qualities it represents. Athena in later art, as set up in libraries and museums, was doubtless such an impersonation, just as she is in modern art unreal and comparatively uninteresting. But the Athenian believed intensely in the existence of his goddess. He believed that the ceremonies connected with her ancient image were necessary to the continuance of her favour to her city and people, and that the new temples and statues set up in her honour would still further delight her and ensure her protection and her abode among her grateful worshippers. The statue by Phidias within the Parthenon offered not merely that form in which she would choose to appear if she showed herself to mortal eyes, but actually showed her form as she had revealed it to the sculptor. To look upon such an image helped the worshipper as much as—perhaps more than—any service or ritual to bring himself into communion with the goddess, and to fit himself, as a citizen of her chosen city, to carry out her will in contributing his best efforts to its supremacy in politics, in literature, and in art. If a work of art could have this actual influence upon religious emotion, and through it upon practical life, it may be said to have attained the utmost that any human effort can achieve in the service of God.

The religious influence of art in the fifth century is, as we have seen, closely associated with the state; the Athena Parthenos and the Olympian Zeus appealed to their worshippers as citizens of Athens and as members of the privileged Hellenic race. It would be easy to trace a similar character in almost all the great statues of gods that are recorded as belonging to this period. Thus the Dionysus of Alcamenes is not the dreamy god of wine and pleasure that we find at a later age, but an august figure, bearded and enthroned, the giver of the riches of the earth and the wine, the god in whose honour all the great Dionysian festivals were held; the same sculptor's Hermes is the guardian of ways and gates, the giver of increase to flocks, not the youthful and athletic messenger of the gods. Hephæstus, too, especially when associated with Athena, is the patron and teacher of all handicrafts, himself the ideal artisan, practical and genial, but with none of his godhead lost in a too human individuality; even his lameness—characteristic of the smith in all folk-lore—is lightly indicated, not dwelt on as an interesting motive. Various statues of particular gods may, of course, emphasise one side or another of their functions. Athena may be worshipped and represented as goddess of Victory or of Health; but here, too, it is usually some recognised state cult that underlies the representation. Outside Athens we find the same conditions. To take only one instance, the colossal gold and ivory Hera of Argos, made by the chief Argive master Polyclitus, is the great goddess of the city, just as Athena is of Athens. She was represented as the bride of Zeus, who annually renewed her maidenhood at the great Argive festival of the divine marriage; and we cannot doubt that Polyclitus expressed in this statue, which was hardly less famous than the masterpieces of Phidias, all the essential features of the great religious ideals that underlay this primitive rite. His Hera had neither the warlike nor the intellectual and spiritual characteristics of the Attic Athena; but she was the goddess of womanly grace and beauty in the bride, and embodied that perfection of physical form which Argive art sought also in its athletic figures, and which was in a sense a part of the religion that found expression in the great athletic games. Some gods—Apollo, for example—seem in fifth-century statues to have a more individual character. Just as in earlier times the name Apollo serves to cover a multitude of statues of which some may be meant to represent individual men, so even in the age of Phidias we sometimes meet with a figure of athletic type or of youthful beauty as to which it is possible to doubt whether it is an Apollo; this may be partly the result of the great popularity of the type in all ages of Greek sculpture which led to its more rapid development and earlier individualisation. But the Apollo of this period is never the mere dreamy youth of later time; it has been well said that he is the god who, in the mythical athletic contest, could surpass Hermes in the foot-race and Ares in boxing; the embodiment of all-round physical and intellectual excellence, the combination of music and gymnastic, which again brings us back to a national Hellenic ideal. Throughout the representations of the gods in the art of the fifth century we find the same essential character. They embody in themselves the expression, by means of the most perfect physical forms, of the qualities attributed to the god himself, or given by him to his worshippers. They are no impersonal abstraction of these qualities, but are real and living beings, in whom these qualities exist to a degree impossible for a mere mortal. But, on the other hand, they have nothing of the passions and emotions, the weaknesses and imperfections of mortal nature. In this they are inconsistent, perhaps, with that Homeric presentment of the gods which the greatest artists consciously set before themselves. But we cannot wonder that an age of such clear and lofty intellectual and moral perceptions should have rejected what it felt to be unworthy in the current notions of the gods, and should have selected only what it felt to be truly divine. Art did not, however, remain very long upon its highest level of religious feeling; but in Greece, by a fortunate coincidence, the age of the greatest religious ideals was also that of the highest perfection of physical type in art as well as of technical skill in execution. We do not therefore find in this age that the sculptor lacks the power to express his ideas, or that his ideas are too strong for the forms in which they are expressed; there is rather that perfect harmony between the two that, here as elsewhere, is characteristic of Hellenic art.