Rambles and Studies in Greece

by J. P. Mahaffy

The extraordinary power of grouping in the designs of Phidias is, however, very completely shown us in the better preserved band of the cella frieze, along which the splendid Panathenaic procession winds its triumphal way. Over the eastern doorway were twelve noble sitting figures on either side of the officiating priest, presenting the state robe, or peplos, for the vestment of Athene. These figures are explained as gods by the critics; but they do not in either beauty or dignity, excel those [pg 109]of many of the Athenians forming the procession. A very fine slab, containing three of these figures, is now to be seen in the little museum in the Acropolis. This group over the main entrance is the end and summary of all the procession, and corresponds with the yearly ceremony in this way, that, as the state entrance, or Propylæa, led into the Acropolis at the west end, or rear of the Parthenon, the procession in all probability separated into two, which went along both sides of the colonnade, and met again at the eastern door. Accordingly, over the western end, or rear, the first preparations of the procession are being made, which then starts along the north and south walls; the southern being chiefly occupied with the cavalcade of the Athenian knights, the northern with the carrying of sacred vessels and leading of victims for the sacrifice. The frieze over the western door is still in its place; but, having lost its bright coloring, and being in any case at a great height, and only visible from close underneath, on account of the pillars and architrave in front, it produces no effect, and is hardly discernible. Indeed it evidently was never more than an architectural ornament, in spite of all its artistic beauty.

The greater number of the pieces carried away by Lord Elgin seem taken from the equestrian portion, in which groups of cantering and curveting horses, and men in the act of mounting, and striving to curb restive steeds, are brought together with extra[pg 110]ordinary effect. We can see plainly how important a part of Athenian splendor depended upon their knights, and how true are the hints of Aristophanes about their social standing and aristocratic tone. The reins and armor, or at least portions of it, were laid on in metal, and have accordingly been long since plundered; nor has any obvious trace remained of the rich colors with which the whole was painted. There appears no systematic uniform, some of the riders being dressed in helmets and cuirasses, some in felt wide-awakes, and short flying cloaks. It must remain uncertain whether the artist did not seek to obtain variety by this deviation from a fixed dress. There can be no doubt that Greek art was very bold and free in such matters. On the other hand, the type of the faces does not exhibit much variety. At the elevation above the spectator which this frieze occupied, individual expression would have been thrown away on figures of three feet in height: the general dress, and the attitudes, may have been, when colored, easily discernible.

But I confess that this equestrian procession does not appear to me so beautiful as the rows of figures on foot (carrying pitchers and other implements, leading victims, and playing pipes), which seem to come from the north wall, and of which the most beautiful slabs are preserved at Athens. Here we can see best of all that peculiar stamp which shows the age of Phidias to have been the most perfect in the whole [pg 111]of Greek sculpture. This statement will not be accepted readily by the general public. The Apollo Belvedere, the Capitoline Venus, the Dying Gladiator—these are what we have been usually taught to regard as the greatest wonders of Greek plastic art; and those who have accustomed themselves to this realistic and sensuous beauty will not easily see the greatness and the perfection of the solemn and chaste art of Phidias.

Part of the West Frieze of the Parthenon, Athens

Nevertheless, it will always be held by men who have thought long enough on the subject, that the epoch when Myron and Phidias, Polycletus and Polygnotus, broke loose from archaic stiffness into flowing grace was, indeed, the climax of the arts. There seems a sort of natural law—of slow and painful origin—of growing development—of sudden bloom into perfection—of luxury and effeminacy—of gradual debasement and decay—which affects almost all the arts as well as most of the growths of nature. In Greek art particularly this phenomenon perpetually reappears. There can be little doubt that the Iliad of Homer was the first and earliest long creation in poetry, the first attempt, possibly with the aid of writing, to rise from short disconnected lays to the greatness of a formal epic. And despite all its defects of plan, its want of firm consistency, and its obvious incongruities, this greatest of all poems has held its place against the more finished and interesting Odyssey, the more elaborated [pg 112]Cyclic poems, the more learned Alexandrian epics—in fact, the first full bloom of the art was by far the most perfect. It is the same thing with Greek tragedy. No sooner had the art escaped from the rude wagon, or stage, or whatever it was, of Thespis, than we find Æschylus, with imperfect appliances, with want of experience, with many crudenesses and defects, a tragic poet never equalled again in Greek history. Of course the modern critics of his own country preferred, first Sophocles, and then Euripides—great poets, as Praxiteles and Lysippus were great sculptors, and like them, perhaps, greater masters of human passion and of soul-stirring pathos. But for all that, Æschylus is the tragic poet of the Greeks—the poet who has reached beyond his age and nation, and fascinated the greatest men even of our century, who seek not to turn back upon his great but not equal rivals. Shelley and Mr. Swinburne have both made Æschylus their master, and to his inspiration owe the most splendid of their works.

I will not prosecute these considerations further, though there may be other examples in the history of art. But I will say this much concerning the psychological reasons of so strange a phenomenon. It may, of course, be assumed that the man who breaks through the old, stiff conventional style which has bound his predecessors with its shackles is necessarily a man of strong and original genius. Thus, when we are distinctly told of Polygnotus that [pg 113]he first began to vary the features of the human face from their archaic stiffness, we have before us a man of bold originality, who quarrelled with the tradition of centuries, and probably set against him all the prejudices and the consciences of the graver public. But to us, far different features seem prominent. For in spite of all his boldness, when we compare him with his forerunners, we are struck with his modesty and devoutness, as compared with his successors. There is in him, first, a devoutness toward his work, an old-fashioned piety, which they had not; and as art in this shape is almost always a handmaid of religion, this devoutness is a prominent feature. Next, there is a certain reticence and modesty in such a man, which arises partly from the former feeling, but still more from a conservative fear of violent change, and a healthy desire to make his work not merely a contrast to, but a development of, the older traditions. Then the old draped goddess of religious days, such as the Venus Genitrix in Florence, made way for the splendid but yet more human handling which we may see in the Venus of Melos, now in the Louvre. This half-draped but yet thoroughly new and chaste conception leads naturally to the type said to have been first dared by Praxiteles, who did not disguise the use of very unworthy human models to produce his famous, or perhaps infamous ideal, which is best known in the Venus de Medici, but perhaps more perfectly repre[pg 114]sented in the Venus of the Capitol. There is, too, in the earlier artist that limited mastery over materials, which, like the laws of the poet’s language, only condenses and intensifies the beauty of his work.

Such reserve, as compared with the later phases of the art, is nowhere so strongly shown as in the matter of expression. This is, indeed, the rock on which most arts have ultimately made shipwreck. When the power over materials and effects becomes complete, so that the artist can as it were perform feats of conquest; when at the same time the feeling has died out that he is treading upon holy ground, we have splendid achievements in the way of intense expression, whether physical or mental, of force, of momentary action, of grief or joy, which are good and great, but which lead imitators into a false track, and so ruin the art which they were thought to perfect. Thus over-reaching itself, art becomes an anxious striving after display, and, like an affected and meretricious woman, repels the sounder natures which had else been attracted by her beauty. In Greek art especially, as I have already noticed in discussing the Attic tomb reliefs, this excess of expression was long and well avoided, and there is no stronger and more marked feature in its good epochs than the reserve of which I have spoken. It is the chief quality which makes the school of Phidias matchless. There is in it beauty of form, there is a good deal of action, there is in the frieze [pg 115]an almost endless variety; but withal there is the strictest symmetry, the closest adherence to fixed types, the absence of all attempt at expressing passing emotion. There is still the flavor of the old stiff simplicity about the faces, about the folds of the robes, about the type of the horses; but the feeling of the artist shines through the archaic simplicity with much clearer light than it does in the more ambitious attempts of the later school. The greatest works of Phidias—his statue of Zeus at Elis, and his Athene in the Parthenon—are lost to us; but the ancients are unanimous that for simple and sustained majesty no succeeding sculptor, however brilliant, had approached his ideal.[42]

We may say almost the same of the great temple which he adorned with his genius. It is just that perfection of the Doric temple which has escaped from the somewhat ponderous massiveness and simplicity of the older architecture, while it sacrificed no element of majesty to that grace and delicacy which marks, later and more developed Greek architecture. On this Acropolis the Athenians determined to show what architecture could reach in majesty and what in delicacy. So they set up the [pg 116]Parthenon in that absolute perfection where strength and solidity come out enhanced, but in no way overlaid, with ornament. They also built the Erechtheum, where they adopted the Ionic Order, and covered their entablature with bands of small and delicate tracing, which, with its gilding and coloring, was a thing to be studied minutely and from the nearest distance. Though the inner columns of the Propylæa were Ionic (and they were very large), it appears that large temples in that Order were not known in Attica. But for small and graceful buildings it was commonly used, and of these the Erechtheum was the most perfect.

In its great days, and even as Pausanias saw it, the Acropolis was covered with statues, as well as with shrines. It was not merely an Holy of Holies in religion; it was also a palace and museum of art. At every step and turn the traveller met new objects of interest. There were archaic specimens, chiefly interesting to the antiquarian and the devotee; there were the great masterpieces which were the joint admiration of the artist and the vulgar. Even all the sides and slopes of the great rock were honeycombed into sacred grottos, with their altars and their gods, or studded with votive monuments. All these lesser things are fallen away and gone; the sacred caves are filled with rubbish and desecrated with worse than neglect. The grotto of Pan and Apollo is difficult of access, and was, when I first [pg 117]saw it, an object of disgust rather than of interest. There are left but the remnants of the surrounding wall, and the ruins of the three principal buildings, which were the envy and wonder of all the civilized world.