Rambles and Studies in Greece

by J. P. Mahaffy

It is plain, from this evidence, that the Greeks must have looked upon the death of those they loved with unmixed sorrow. It was the final parting, when all the good and pleasant things are remembered; when men seek, as it were, to increase the pang, by clothing the dead in all his sweetest and dearest presence. But this was not done by pompous inscriptions, or by a vain enumeration of all the deceased had performed—inscriptions which, among us, tell more of the vanity than of the grief of the survivors. The commonest epitaph was a simple χαῖρε, or farewell; and it is this single word, so full and deep in its meaning to those who love, which is pictured in the tomb reliefs. They are simple parting scenes, expressing the grief of the survivors, and the great sadness of the sufferer, who is going to his long home.

Nevertheless, what strikes us forcibly in these remarkable monuments is the chastened modest expression of sorrow which they display. There is no violence, no despair, no extravagance—all is simple and noble; thus combining purity of art with a far deeper pathos—a far nobler grief—than that of the [pg 79]exaggerated paintings and sculptures which seek to express mourning in later and less cultivated ages.[32] We may defy any art to produce truer or more poignant pictures of real sorrow—a sorrow, as I have explained, far deeper and more hopeless than any Christian sorrow; and yet there is no wringing of hands, no swooning, no defacing with sackcloth and ashes.[33] Sometimes, indeed, as in the celebrated tomb of Dexileos, a mere portrait of the dead in active life was put upon his tomb, and private grief would not assert itself in presence of the record of his public services.

A Tomb from the Via Sacra, Athens

I know not that any other remnants of Greek art bring home to us more plainly one of its eternal and divine features—or shall I rather say, one of its eternal and human features?—the greatest, if not the main feature, which has made it the ever new and ever lasting lawgiver to men in their efforts to represent the ideal.

If I am to permit myself any digression whatever, we cannot do better than conclude this chapter with some reflections on this subject, and we may there[pg 80]fore turn, by suggestion of the Athenian tombs, to a few general remarks on the reserve of Greek art—I mean the reserve in the displaying emotion, in the portraying of the fierce outbursts of joy or grief; and again, more generally, the reserve in the exhibiting of peculiar or personal features, passing interests, or momentary emotions.

In a philosophy now rather forgotten than extinct, and which once commanded no small attention, Adam Smith was led to analyze the indirect effects of sympathy, from which, as a single principle, he desired to deduce all the rules of ethics. While straining many points unduly, he must be confessed to have explained with great justice the origin of good taste or tact in ordinary life, which he saw to be the careful watching of the interest of others in our own affairs, and the feeling that we must not force upon them what concerns ourselves, except we are sure to carry with us their active sympathy. Good breeding, he says, consists in a delicate perception how far this will go, and in suppressing those of our feelings which, though they affect us strongly, cannot be expected to affect in like manner our neighbor, whose sympathy should be the measure and limit of our outspokenness. There can be no doubt that whatever other elements come in, this analysis is true, so far as it goes, and recommends itself at once to the convictions of any educated man. The very same principle applies still more [pg 81]strongly and universally in art. As tragedy is bound to treat ideal griefs and joys of so large and broad a kind that every spectator may merge in them his petty troubles, so ideal sculpture and painting are only ideal so far as they represent those large and eternal features in human nature which must always command the sympathy of every pure human heart.

Let us dispose at once of an apparent exception—the mediæval pictures of the Passion of Christ, and the sorrows of the Virgin Mary. Here the artist allowed himself the most extreme treatment, because the objects were necessarily the centre of the very highest sympathy. No expression of the grief of Christ could be thought exaggerated in the Middle Ages, because in this very exaggeration lay the centre point of men’s religion. But when no such object of universal and all-absorbing sympathy can be found (and there was none such in pagan life), then the Greek artist must attain by his treatment of the object what the Christian artist obtained by the object itself. Assuming, then, a mastery over his material, and sufficient power of execution, the next feature to be looked for in Greek art, and especially in Greek sculpture, is a certain modesty and reserve in expression, which will not portray slight defects in picturing a man, but represent that eternal or ideal character in him which remains in our memory when he is gone. Such, for example, is the famous portrait-statue of Sophocles.

Such are also all that great series of ideal figures which meet us in the galleries of ancient art. They seldom show us any violent emotion; they are seldom even in so special an attitude that critics cannot interpret it in several different ways, or as suitable to several myths. It is not passing states of feeling, but the eternal and ideal beauty of human nature, which Greek sculpture seeks to represent; and for this reason it has held its sway through all the centuries which have since gone by. This was the calm art of Phidias, and Polycletus, and Polygnotus, in sentiment not differing from the rigid awkwardness of their predecessors, but in mastery of proportions and of difficulties attaining the grace in which the others had failed. To this general law there are, no doubt, exceptions, and perhaps very brilliant ones; yet they are exceptions, and even in them, if we consider them attentively, we can see the universal features and the points of sympathy for all mankind. But if the appeal for sympathy is indeed overstrained, then, however successful in its own society and its own social atmosphere, the work of art loses power when offered to another generation. Thus Euripides, though justly considered in his own society the most tragic of poets, has for this very reason ceased to appeal to us as Æschylus still appeals. For Æschylus kept within the proper bounds dictated by the reserve of art; Euripides often did [pg 83]not, and his work, though great and full of genius, suffered accordingly.

It seems to me that the tombs before us are remarkable as exemplifying, with the tact of genius, this true and perfect reserve. They are simple pictures of the grief of parting—of the recollection of pleasant days of love and friendship—of the gloom of the unknown future. But there is no exaggeration, nor speciality—no individuality, I had almost said—in the picture. I feel no curiosity to inquire who these people are—what were their names—even what was the relationship of the deceased.[34] For I am perfectly satisfied with an ideal portrait of the grief of parting—a grief that comes to us all, and lays bitter hold of us at some season of life; and it is this universal sorrow—this great common flaw in our lives—which the Greek artist has brought before us, and which calls forth our deepest sympathy. There will be future occasion to come back upon this all-important feature in connection with the action in Greek sculpture, and even with the draping of their statues—in all of which the calm and chaste reserve of the better Greek art contrasts strangely with the Michael Angelos, and Berninis, [pg 84]and Canovas, of other days; nay, even with the Greek sculpture of a no less brilliant but less refined age.