Coins and gems[103] exhibit increased technical mastery. It must not be forgotten that coin types, being generally of religious significance, are apt to be very slow in responding to the artistic fashions of the day. This is especially the case with Athenian coinage. The Athena type with owl and olive-branch on the reverse is always of a conventional and somewhat archaic character. Elsewhere the coins and gems of the fourth century reach their highest point of perfection, and that is a point which has never been surpassed. As usual, Syracuse is in the forefront for beauty of design, and her new series of tyrants, Dionysius I. and II., revive the glorious types of Gelo and Hiero and improve them. The decadrachms of this period representing the head of the nymph Arethusa surrounded with dolphins and bearing on the reverse a four-horse chariot at full gallop are regarded by numismatists as the most beautiful coins in existence. The best of these bear the signature of their engraver, Euænetus. A gold coinage began here about the time of the repulse of the Athenian Armada. Corinthian coins with the flying Pegasus on the obverse and a head of Athena in a Corinthian helmet on the reverse also attain the summit of their beauty in this century. But even out-of-the-way places like Panticapæum, the corn depot of Southern Russia, and the little island of Tenedos, which to the historian est in conspectu and little more, employed engravers of consummate art. Just before the beginning of the century three cities of the island of Rhodes united to form one republic, which rapidly rose to wealth by way of commerce and good government. It produced a gold coinage of great excellence, the figure of the sun-god Helios on the obverse and a rose (Rhodes) as a punning emblem on the reverse. It is only with Alexander the Great and his successors that the portraiture of mortal rulers begins to appear on Greek coinage. It is then rapidly developed, and some of the barbarian monarchs of the East are portrayed by Greek artists with great vigour and realism.
Lastly, architecture exhibits similar tendencies towards technical facility and a less austere spirit in the use of ornament. To this period belong the new temple at Ephesus and the Mausoleum already mentioned, and the kindred sepulchral monument from Lycia known as the Nereid Monument, from the graceful figures of sea-nymphs set between the columns on the tall basis of the shrine. In Athens we have the new stone theatre of Dionysus, the new stadium for athletic contests, the little choragic monument of Lysicrates, and the new walls to the Peiræus constructed by Conon with Persian help. The luxurious Corinthian order is now more popular than the staid Doric. The invention of this beautiful type, with its curling acanthus leaves embowering the original volutes of the Ionic capital, is attributed to the Athenian sculptor Callimachus, a versatile artist of Periclean days.[104] It was the discovery of a new drill for stone-cutting which made it possible. A legendary explanation of its origin was naturally provided. Callimachus had been struck with the beauty of a column on which a woman had placed a basket of flowers in memory of the maiden whose tomb it marked, and a live acanthus had sprung from the cracked stone below the basket. The earliest appearance of the Corinthian capital is, so far as we know, to be found in the
Plate LXXVI. ATHLETES BOXING. FROM A PANATHENAIC AMPHORA
temple at Bassæ. It became increasingly popular, especially in Roman times. Owing to its slenderer shaft, Vitruvius compares the Corinthian order to a young girl, while he likens the Ionic to a matron and the Doric to a man.
In the terra-cotta statuettes which have been found in such large numbers at Tanagra and elsewhere we have some of the most delightful as well as the most characteristic examples of fourth-century art.[105] They are generally found in tombs, and seem to have been made for the purpose. They seldom represent deities, though we have several examples of Eros, and perhaps Aphrodite. Far the commonest subject is a young girl draped in a mantle. Indeed, the maker of such ware is called in Greek Koroplastes—“Girl-modeller.” Domestic scenes are common, girls talking, dancers, animals, and so forth. Some are jointed, and many of them were obviously designed as toys. Sometimes they were glazed, but far more often the colours were applied directly to the clay after it came from the mould. The colours have therefore in many cases entirely disappeared. Apart from their singular grace and charm, they give us extremely interesting examples of Greek costume. The British Museum has a very fine collection, which well deserves study. A few of them appear to be modelled from famous statues of the period.
Literature and Philosophy
This is, as we have noticed, an age of Prose. Poetry is for the time being almost extinct, partly, perhaps, because the Athenian theatre was already so well supplied with material by the great masters of the previous generation, and partly because public recitation was no longer the sole means of publication for literature. It is true that Agathon, a member of the literary circle which included Socrates and Plato, was esteemed almost on a level with the three great tragedians, but all his work has been allowed to perish. The fourth century is the era of the “Middle Comedy,” a stage of transition in which political references were being abandoned and the delineation of manners and social life was taking its place. But no great names attach to this stage, and no relics survive. The New Comedy of manners, in which the great master was Menander, begins towards the end of the fourth century and fills the first half of the third.