Rambles and Studies in Greece

by J. P. Mahaffy

I will go further, and say we can point out cases where coloring greatly heightens the effect and beauty of sculpture. The first is from the bronzes found at Herculaneum, now in the museum at Naples. Though they are not marble, they are suitable for our purpose, being naturally of a single [pg 45]dark brown hue, which is indeed even more unfavorable (we should think) for such treatment. In some of the finest of these bronzes—especially in the two young men starting for a race—the eyeballs are inserted in white, with iris and pupil colored. Nothing can be conceived more striking and lifelike than the effect produced. There is in the Varvakion at Athens a marble mask, found in the Temple of Æsculapius under the south side of the Acropolis, probably an ex voto offered for a recovery from some disease of the eyes. This marble face also has its eyes colored in the most striking and lifelike way, and is one of the most curious objects found in the late excavations.

I will add one remarkable modern example—the monument at Florence to a young Indian prince, who visited England and this country some years ago, and died of fever during his homeward voyage. They have set up to him a richly colored and gilded baldachin, in the open air, and in a quiet, wooded park. Under this covering is a life-sized bust of the prince, in his richest state dress. The whole bust—the turban, the face, the drapery—all is colored to the life, and the dress, of course, of the most gorgeous variety. The turban is chiefly white, striped with gold, in strong contrast to the mahogany complexion and raven hair of the actual head; the robe is gold and green, and covered with ornament. The general effect is, from the very first [pg 46]moment, striking and beautiful. The longer it is studied, the better it appears; and there is hardly a reasonable spectator who will not confess that, were we to replace the present bust with a copy of it in white marble, the beauty and harmony of the monument would be utterly marred. To those who have the opportunity of visiting Greece or Italy, I strongly commend these specimens of colored buildings and sculpture. When they have seen them, they will hesitate to condemn what we still hear called the curiously bad taste of the old Greeks in their use of color in the plastic arts.

But these archæological discussions are truly ἐκβολαὶ λόγου, digressions—in themselves necessary, yet only tolerable if they are not too long. I revert to the general state of the antiquities at Athens, always reserving the Acropolis for a special chapter. As I said, the isolated pillars of Hadrian’s Temple of Zeus, and the so-called Temple of Theseus, are the only very striking objects.[14] There are, of [pg 47]course, many other buildings, or remains of buildings. There is the monument of Lysicrates—a small and very graceful round chamber, adorned with Corinthian engaged pillars, and with friezes of the school of Scopas, and intended to carry on its summit the tripod Lysicrates had gained in a musical and dramatic contest (334 B. C.) at Athens. There is the later Temple of the Winds, as it is called—a sort of public clock, with sundials and fine reliefs of the Wind-gods on its outward surfaces, and arrangements for a water-clock within. There are two portals, or gateways—one leading into the old agora, or market-place, the other leading from old Athens into the Athens of Hadrian.

But all these buildings are either miserably defaced, or of such late date and decayed taste as to make them unworthy specimens of pure Greek art. A single century ago there was much to be seen and admired which has since disappeared; and even to-day the majority of the population are careless as to the treatment of ancient monuments, and sometimes even mischievous in wantonly defacing them. Thus, I saw the marble tombs of Ottfried Müller and Charles Lenormant—tombs which, though modern, were yet erected at the cost of the nation to men who were eminent lovers and students of Greek art—I saw these tombs used as common targets by [pg 48]the neighborhood, and all peppered with marks of shot and of bullets. I saw them, too, all but blown up by workmen blasting for building-stones close beside them.[15] I saw, also, from the Acropolis, a young gentleman practising with a pistol at a piece of old carved marble work in the Theatre of Dionysus. His object seemed to be to chip off a piece from the edge at every shot. Happily, on this occasion, our vantage ground enabled us to take the law into our own hands; and after in vain appealing to a custodian to interfere, we adopted the tactics of Apollo at Delphi, and by detaching stones from the top of our precipice, we put to flight the wretched barbarian who had come to ravage the treasures of that most sacred place.

These unhappy examples of the defacing of architectural monuments,[16] which can hardly be removed, naturally suggest to the traveller in Greece the kindred question how all the smaller and movable antiquities that are found should be distributed so as best to promote the love and knowledge of art.

On this point it seems to me that we have gone to one extreme, and the Greeks to the other, and [pg 49]that neither of us have done our best to make known what we acknowledge ought to be known as widely as possible. The tendency in England, at least of later years, has been to swallow up all lesser and all private collections in the great national Museum in London, which has accordingly become so enormous and so bewildering that no one can profit by it except the trained specialist, who goes in with his eyes shut, and will not open them till he has arrived at the special class of objects he intends to examine. But to the ordinary public, and even the generally enlightened public (if such an expression be not a contradiction in terms), there is nothing so utterly bewildering, and therefore so unprofitable, as a visit to the myriad treasures of that great world of curiosities.

In the last century many private persons—many noblemen of wealth and culture—possessed remarkable collections of antiquities. These have mostly been swallowed up by what is called “the nation,” and new private collections are very rare indeed.

In Greece the very opposite course is being now pursued. By a special law it is forbidden to sell out of the country, or even to remove from a district, any antiquities whatever; and in consequence little museums have been established in every village in Greece—nay, sometimes even in places where there is no village, in order that every district may pos[pg 50]sess its own riches, and become worth a visit from the traveller and the antiquary. I have seen such museums at Eleusis, some fifteen miles from Athens, at Thebes, now an unimportant town, at Livadia, at Chæronea, at Argos, at Olympia, and even in the wild plains of Orchomenus, in a little chapel, with no town within miles.[17] If I add to this that most of these museums were mere dark outhouses, only lighted through the door, the reader will have some notion what a task it would be to visit and criticise, with any attempt at completeness, the ever-increasing remnants of classical Greece.

The traveller is at first disposed to complain that even the portable antiquities found in various parts of Greece are not brought to Athens, and gathered into one vast national museum. Further reflection shows such a proceeding to be not only impossible, but highly inexpedient. I will not speak of the great waste of objects of interest when they are brought together in such vast masses that the visitor is rather oppressed than enlightened. Any one who has gone to the British Museum will know what I mean. Nor will I give the smallest weight to the selfish local argument, that compelling visitors to [pg 51]wander from place to place brings traffic and money into the country. Until proper roads and clean inns are established, such an argument is both unfair and unlikely to produce results worth considering. But fortunately most of the famous things in Greece are sites, ruined buildings, forts which cannot be removed from their place, if at all, without destruction, and of which the very details cannot be understood without seeing the place for which they were intended. Even the Parthenon sculptures in London would have lost most of their interest, if the building itself at Athens did not show us their application, and glorify them with its splendor. He who sees the gold of Mycenæ at Athens, knows little of its meaning, if he has not visited the giant forts where its owners once dwelt and exercised their sway; and if, as has been done at Olympia, some patriotic Greek had built a safe museum at Mycenæ to contain them, they would be more deeply interesting and instructive than they now are.

In such a town as Athens, on the contrary, it seems to me that the true solution of the problem has been attained, though it will probably be shortly abandoned for a central museum. There are (or were) at Athens at least six separate museums of antiquities—one at the University, one called the Varvakion, one in the Theseum, one, or rather two, on the Acropolis, one in the Ministry of Public Instruction, and lastly, the new National Museum, [pg 52]as it is called, in Patissia Street—devoted to its special treasures. If these several storehouses were thoroughly kept,—if the objects were carefully numbered and catalogued,—I can conceive no better arrangement for studying separately and in detail the various monuments, which must always bewilder and fatigue when crowded together in one vast exhibition. If the British Museum were in this way severed into many branches, and the different classes of objects it contains were placed in separate buildings, and in different parts of London, I believe most of us would acquire a far greater knowledge of what it contains, and hence it would attain a greater usefulness in educating the nation. To visit any one of the Athenian museums is a comparatively short and easy task, where a man can see the end of his labor before him, and hence will not hesitate to delay long over such things as are worth a careful study.