Dickins is well versed in both ancient and modern historians, and he writes with clearness and force; but the motives of statesmen and the underlying causes of events are so intricate that the discussion of them seldom leads to a really objective addition to our knowledge of ancient history.
II. Under the second head, accounts of exploration and excavation, come Dickins’s Reports of his work in the exploration of Laconia and Sparta. In the years 1904–8 the British School of Athens was engaged in the interesting task, assigned to it by the Greek Government, of making a careful survey of Laconia, and trying by excavation what could be recovered of the monuments and history of ancient Sparta. Mr. R. M. Dawkins, the Director of the School, was in charge of the excavations, and various parts of the work were assigned to students of the school, A. J. B. Wace, J. P. Droop, A. M. Woodward, Dickins, and others. In the Annual of the school, vols. xi to xiv, there are several papers written by Dickins, one on excavation at Thalamae in Laconia, others on the excavation of the shrine of Athena Chalkioikos at Sparta, and the works of art found on the site. It is this temple and that of Artemis Orthia which have yielded the most important results of the undertaking. But as the work was one executed in common by a group of students who worked into one another’s hands, it is not desirable or possible to separate the threads in Dickins’s hands from the others.
III. Men of strong originality usually produce more satisfactory work on subjects as to which they have gradually acquired first-hand knowledge than on subjects which they have merely taken up as a task. This was notably the case with Dickins. His best papers by far are those dealing with Sparta and Lycosura, places where he worked on definite lines, and where he reached important results.
His paper on the art of Sparta[127] is extremely valuable; and as it is hidden in a place little visited by classical scholars, it is desirable to speak of it in some detail. There will before long appear a work on the results of the excavations of the British School of Athens at Sparta, a work which will contain some contributions by Dickins: and of course it is possible that the excavators will modify the views set forth ten years ago. But meantime the paper in question is the best summary existing of the results of the excavation in relation to Spartan art.
The current notion that from the first settlement of the Dorians in Sparta they formed a state organized for war only has to be greatly modified. The warlike Sparta familiar to us from Plutarch and other writers came into existence only in the course of the sixth century. The earlier history of Sparta had been parallel to that of other Greek cities; and we are able now to mark out successive periods of development in the local artistic remains. In these remains Dickins discerns four periods. First, there is the age of geometric art, the ninth and early eighth centuries, when art products show the dominance of the early Dorian civilization which the Spartans brought with them from the north. Next comes a period in which we find oriental art invading, owing to trade with Egypt and Ionia. In the third period we find a fusion of native Greek art with the oriental style of importation. The fourth period, the sixth and fifth centuries, should show us at Sparta, as in other Greek cities, a bloom of local art; but it never had a fair chance of development, as the rise of the military spirit and asceticism in manners blighted it in the midst of its spring. Thenceforward Sparta is cut off from the stream which leads to such wonderful results in the architecture and sculpture of Argos and Athens. It is a lesson for all times. Many of the early Spartan works of art are represented in the article. Their character is striking: Dickins compares them with the works found by Dr. Hogarth in the earliest strata of Ephesus; and the Ionian influence in them confirms the tales told by the historians of the frequent relations between Sparta and Asia Minor.
The sculptural group of Damophon of Messene at Lycosura in Arcadia has long been an object of interest to archaeologists. We knew that it consisted of four colossal figures, Demeter, Despoina, Artemis, and the Titan Anytus. But there was no agreement as to the date of the group: Damophon had been assigned by various writers to periods as far apart as the fourth century before, and the second century after, our era. When the site at Lycosura was excavated in 1889–90 by the Greek archaeologists Leonardos and Kavvadias, fragments of the statues were found, and the style proved somewhat disappointing. The closer study of these fragments was resumed in 1906 by Dr. Kourouniotis, who partially restored two of the figures. But it was reserved for Dickins, in a series of closely reasoned and masterly papers,[128] to complete the restoration of the group, and to fix definitely the date and style of Damophon.
The first paper deals with the date of Damophon, which is fixed on the definite evidence of inscriptions to the first half of the second century B.C., and deals so thoroughly with his historic connexion that little is left for any future archaeologist to say in regard to it. The architectural evidence at Lycosura confirms the date assigned. In the second paper Dickins carries out a most detailed and convincing restoration of the group, adding a discussion of the style of Damophon. In the third paper he is able to confirm the accuracy of his restoration by comparing with it a copy of the group on a bronze coin of Julia Domna struck at Megalopolis. When the restoration was published nothing was known of this coin; it may therefore be regarded as independent evidence of the most satisfying character; and its agreement in all but a few details with Dickins’s restoration shows that his work survives that most severe of all tests, the discovery of fresh evidence. Few conjectural restorations of archaeologists stand on so firm a basis.
Damophon had interested Dickins even before he became his special subject of study, for as early as 1905 he had published two bearded heads, one in the Vatican, one in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek, which resemble the head of Anytus.[129]
In 1906 he published a new replica of the Choiseul Gouffier type.[130] His keen eye had discerned in the Terme Museum at Rome a detached leg of the same form and style as the left leg of the Choiseul Gouffier figure of the British Museum. To the support to which this leg is attached there is also attached a quiver, and this led Dickins to conclude that the Choiseul Gouffier figure is not, as many have thought, an athlete, but an Apollo, as Mr. Murray always maintained.
In 1911 he published an account[131] of a colossal marble sandal in the Palazzo dei Conservatori at Rome, adorned with reliefs on the side of the sole. Struck with the likeness of the style of these reliefs to that of the figures on the garment at Lycosura, he boldly suggests that it is an original work of Damophon.