History of Ancient Art

by Franz von Reber

The glorious and celebrated frieze, or, to speak more correctly, zophoros, surrounded the entire cella. It is preserved in nearly four fifths of its entire length, the chief part of the remains being in the British Museum. It is evident that but little, if any, of this extensive decorative work could have been executed by the hand of Pheidias himself; but the grand design may be assumed to have been his, and the carving was certainly done under his supervision. The scene represented is the festive Pan-Athenaic processions, an imposing consecration of elaborate gifts to the guardian deity, and probably also a division of prizes to the victors in the various hippic, gymnastic, and musical games. The movement of the train commences upon the southwestern corner of the cella, and advances thence to the east, the entrance side of the temple. It is thus naturally divided into two parts, one of which occupies the western and northern, the other the southern side of the cella; these are united above the pronaos, where the double procession is shown as having arrived at the temenos before the temple; a priest and priestess, with the persons directly employed in the sacrifice, are preparing themselves for the sacred act—the former by laying aside his upper garment, which he gives to the youth standing beside him, the latter by taking a folding-seat from a female servant. (Fig. 209.) Between this central group and the remainder of the divided procession several deities, turned from the former figures, are watching the approach of the train. At the left sits Zeus, enthroned, beside the veiled Hera; these are followed by the Winged Victory, Ares clasping his right knee with both hands, Demeter with the torch, and Dionysos, who rests his right arm carelessly upon the shoulder of Hermes. Upon the right, next to the high priest, was naturally the place of Athene, and upon her left hand are still traces of the fallen Ægis; beside her was Hephaistos, leaning upon his knotted stick; then, looking towards him, Apollo, and further Peitho, Aphrodite, and Eros, the latter carrying a shade for the sun. The gods sit comfortably as spectators who feel themselves to be invisible. The first figures of the train, the leaders, have already attained their destination, and stand quietly conversing, supported upon their wands. In the succeeding women and virgins, who bear vases, cups, cooling-vessels, braziers for incense, and baskets—a wonderful train of perfectly beautiful forms—the advance decreases in movement as they approach the centre. Upon the two long sides follow herds of animals for sacrifice; the cows, proceeding quietly, scarcely need guidance, while the bulls are more or less restless, reminding one, in their forcible and momentary action, of the life-like works of Myron. After them follows the music of the procession—players upon the flute and lyre and the festive chorus; then begins the long line of chariots and of horses with their riders, which fill the greater part of the zophoros upon the longer sides and all of that over the epinaos. The beauty and truth in the action of these figures are unsurpassed; the most manifold variation of position is combined with perfect adaptation to the peculiar style of low-relief, and the wisest reference to the fitting of the composition within the space defined by the architectural lines. While upon the eastern front the procession had arrived at its destination, on the western the scene was still at the place of assemblage and marshalling. Here the horses are bridled and arranged in ranks; but the groups of men and youths stand in disorder, some hastily arming themselves, others binding their sandals or adjusting their mantles. Every action and gesture is simple and full of meaning; they never mar the unity of the whole nor interfere with the neighboring figures. The nude forms and the drapery are most carefully and equally executed throughout; the accessories are forcibly, though less elaborately, indicated. When the ceremonial reliefs of Assyria or Persia are compared with the frieze of the Parthenon, it becomes strikingly evident that the magnificence of personal accoutrements and inanimate objects which was so painfully and minutely detailed by the Asiatic sculptor, and elevated even above his schematic representations of deities and human beings, was as nothing to the Greek artist in comparison with the intellectual and physical beauty to which the great Hellenic race gave their chief interest.

The third group of Parthenon sculptures, the ornaments of the metopes, must least have harmonized with the nature of Pheidias. The architectural framework must have become a hindrance and a fetter, and the problem how to fill ninety-two square tablets of exactly the same size with similar representations must indeed have appeared a thankless task. These reliefs are in greater part lost, or so mutilated as to be unintelligible; but as far as can be judged by the scanty remains, the subject of the metopes upon the eastern side was the gigantomachia, that of both long sides principally the Centauromachia, while that of the western side was either the battle of the Amazons or of the Persians. In contrast to the low-relief of the frieze, these, originally colored, were—on account of the conditions of light—worked in such high-relief as even, in some parts, to be freed from the ground. The variation of subjects bearing so strong a resemblance is wonderful, especially in the struggling Centaurs and Greeks, where but little scope in the victory of one or the other combatant was possible: these are interrupted by the rape of virgins and other scenes not surely to be determined. Naturally, this desperate task would not have been completed without some few artistic inequalities, repetitions, and far-fetched modifications, especially as much of the execution must necessarily have been submitted to inferior sculptors; but some of the metope reliefs appear, in point of composition within the given space, and in grand, characteristic drawing, scarcely less admirable than the frieze of the cella. From all these works the spirit of the school of Pheidias is manifest in its imposing majesty and ideal simplicity; at times, also, traces of the forcible action of Myron may be observed.

These extensive productions of the school and workshop of Pheidias cannot be directly attributed to any of the known scholars and assistants of the master, many of whom attained individual celebrity. In the first rank of these should be mentioned Agoracritos of Paros, the favorite pupil of Pheidias, whose works were so perfect that the ancients were frequently in doubt to which of these sculptors they should be ascribed; it is possible, however, that this doubt may have arisen from the predominant impression left upon some of the statues by the guidance and assistance of the master. The chief creations of Agoracritos were two Athenes, a Zeus, and notably the colossal figure of Nemesis at Rhamnous, supposed to have developed from the unsuccessful Aphrodite prepared for the competition with Alcamenes. Another scholar and assistant of Pheidias was Colotes of Paros, a sculptor who appears to have restricted himself to the chryselephantine process, and who is especially noted for the part taken by him in the execution of the great Olympian Zeus. Other works in gold and ivory by Colotes were the Athene upon the Acropolis of Elis, an Asclepios erected in the vicinity, and the sacred table in the great Temple of Zeus, for the division of prizes after the Olympic games, the sides of which were ornamented with reliefs.

Alcamenes of Athens, or Lemnos, and Paionios of Mende have hitherto been considered as chief among the scholars of Pheidias; but the recent excavations at Olympia have done much to refute this opinion, unless, as is very possible, Pausanias makes a mistake (v. 10) in assigning to Alcamenes the sculptures in the front gable of the Temple of Zeus, instead of the acroteria above them, which alone is mentioned in an inscription as his work. No one can detect in the discovered fragments of these gable sculptures, more numerous than those of the Parthenon, the slightest dependence upon the art of Pheidias, which they appear to precede in point of development. The group of the eastern front, ascribed by Pausanias to Paionios, represented the instant before the chariot race of Oinomaos and Pelops (Fig. 210); that of the western the struggle of the Lapithæ and Centaurs at the wedding of Peirithoos. (Figs. 211 and 212.) The character of these works seems rather to connect them with the school of Calamis than with that of Pheidias, this being especially the case with the metopes. (Fig. 213.) The question will hardly be decided until authenticated sculptures by Calamis, or remains of the gable groups of the temple at Delphi, which were the production of his scholars Praxias and Androsthenes of Athens, have become known to science. In the meantime, it is impossible to disprove the hypothesis of Brunn, who sees in those of Olympia examples of an art peculiar to Northern Greece, remarkable for its picturesque realism and lack of artistic and ideal conventionalization. It is only certain that these groups are far inferior to those of the Parthenon, and, indeed, to those produced by any workshop of Athens after the time of Pheidias. Even if the questionable account of Pausanias prove to be true, it is certain that a judgment of the artistic style of Alcamenes and Paionios cannot be formed upon these decorative sculptures alone. Works of the stage of development shown by the western gable of Olympia could not have ranked with the bronze Pentathlos of the former artist, which was known in antiquity by the predicate “exemplary;” nor could an Aphrodite of Alcamenes have been preferred to a statue by Agoracritos, which had been retouched by Pheidias himself. The extensive employment of Alcamenes in Athens among the greatest successors of Pheidias and Myron would have been impossible had not his works been far higher in every respect than those attributed to him among the recent discoveries in Olympia, in view of which it is inconceivable how Pausanias could speak of Alcamenes and Pheidias almost as equals. The same argument applies to Paionios, of whose works a fortunate illustration has been provided by one of the most important discoveries made in the Altis, the Victory (Fig. 214), authenticated by an inscription upon the high triangular pedestal. This figure does indeed recall the spirit and methods of the Pheidian sculpture, and differs greatly from the remains of the eastern gable, as may readily be seen by comparison of Figs. 210 and 214. This contrast is only to be explained by a gigantic and almost inconceivable progress, or by the assumption that they were the works of different artists and periods.