The subject of the statue is the punishment of Dirce at the hands of Amphion and Zethus. Below, the sculptors show the rocky ledges of Mount Cithæron—the death-place of the unfortunate woman who is being bound to the horns of the bull. This suggests nothing that can be called ennobling. It is all merely horrible. Comparing “The Farnese Bull” with “[The Laocoon]” or the figure of the “[Niobe]” mother, we realize that the loss of reposeful beauty entailed in the treatment of such a subject is not compensated for in any other direction. The great end of art has been forgotten:
“That it should be a friend To soothe the cares and lift the thoughts of man.”
The last great division of the post-Alexandrian Greek world was the kingdom of the Ptolemies which included Egypt and Phœnicia. The Macedonian rulers of Egypt soon made Alexandria, their capital, a flourishing centre both for the arts and sciences. But the genius of the place seemed to favour literature rather than sculpture.
The statue of “[The Nile],” excavated in Rome during the pontificacy of Leo X. and placed in the Vatican, is a fine instance of Hellenistic art produced under the influence of Alexandrian civilization. The statue is always associated with its companion work, “The Tiber.” Apparently both formed part of the decoration of a temple of Isis in Rome. While “[The Nile]” was reproduced from a fine Alexandrian original, “The Tiber,” an inferior work, was specially designed by a Greek sculptor working in Rome. The Alexandrian work proves, however, that statues of great beauty could be produced in essentially un-Hellenic surroundings. The figure of the sea god is surrounded by a host of putti, the number—sixteen—symbolizing the cubits which the river rises during a maximum inundation. The delightful way in which the little figures are disposed in the design so that they shall not interfere with the lines of the central figure is worthy of all praise. Nevertheless, the judgment we arrived at with regard to the sculpture of the Seleucidæ applies to that of Egypt. The foreign bureaucracy which Ptolemy organized, and the tendency towards an imperial rule of the Eastern pattern, militated against the rise of a strongly differentiated style. Egypt was not favoured as either Pergamus or Rhodes had been.
These are the chief examples of Hellenistic sculpture produced beyond the direct influence of the home of the Hellenic idea. We have next to consider the Hellenistic sculpture of Greece itself.
CHAPTER VI
THE HELLENISTIC SCULPTURE OF GREECE
(300 b.c. TO 50 b.c.)
“The wren can soar as high as the eagle—once lodged upon the shoulders of the king of the skies.” So men say. But the high gods only smile. They know that emotions must arise and thoughts be nourished in hearts and minds great enough to contain them, if they are to live in ethereal depths. The sculptor or the painter, with the wings of the wren, must be content to flutter nearer to the flowers.