A similar practice prevailed in the islands of Tenedos and Lesbos, where likewise the ebullitions of vanity were concealed beneath the veil of religion. The exhibition took place in the temple of Hera, to whom, as the goddess of marriage, beauty should be dear. Priapos, however, was in some places supposed to be the deity who awarded the prize of loveliness in the Callisteia, on which account Niconoë, a Bacchante perhaps, dedicated to him her fawn-skin and golden ewer.[[941]] But the ladies were not singular in these displays. For among the Eleians, who had as favourable an opinion of themselves as Oliver Goldsmith, a similar show took place, and the pretensions of the male candidates were as carefully sifted as if they had been to take academical honours on their figures. And honours in fact they did take. They were presented with a complete suit of armour, which the winner consecrated with extraordinary pomp and rejoicing in the temple of Athena, whither he was led garlanded with fillets by his triumphant friends. According to Myrsilos, he was likewise decorated with a myrtle crown.[[942]]
In some places, not named by historians, a contest was instituted which, though unconnected with the arts, we will intreat the reader’s permission to introduce here, for its extraordinary nature. This was a contest in prudence and good housewifery, in which certain barbarian nations followed the example. And, to show that character and mental qualifications were properly esteemed by the Greeks, it is added by Theophrastos[[943]] that it is these that render beauty beautiful, and that without them it is apt to degenerate into wantonness. Winkelmann, who has noticed several of these facts, is betrayed into some errors. He speaks of an Apollo of Philesia[[944]] at whose festival a prize was bestowed on the youth who excelled in kissing. The contest took place under the inspection of a judge, he supposes, at Megara. Meursius, though under the name of Diocleia he notices the Megarean festival, overlooks the writer who gives the fullest account of it;—I mean the scholiast on Theocritus, who observes that Diocles was an Athenian exile who took refuge at Megara. In a battle in which he was engaged, he fought side by side with a friend, whose life he saved at the expense of his own. He was interred by the Megareans, who instituted an annual festival in his honour, where the youth who excelled his companions was crowned and led in triumph to the arms of his mother.[[945]]
The exercises, discipline, and moral notions of the Greeks had doubtless much effect on their form; for in the decline of their states, when despotism had succeeded to freedom, and vice to virtue, beauty became exceedingly rare. Cotta, in the De Naturâ Deorum, observes that he found few handsome youths at Athens, where in the age of Demosthenes the most beautiful in Greece flourished;[[946]] and Dion Chrysostom observes that in his time there were scarcely any that could be so considered.[[947]]
If we come now to the other causes which account for the progress of the arts in Greece, we shall find the principal of these to have been the high consideration and esteem[[948]] in which artists were held. Riches, no doubt, obtained credit there as elsewhere, but not to the exclusion of other recommendations as in modern Europe, or at least in England. Winkelmann scarcely comprehends the irony of Socrates, however, when he supposes him seriously to mean that artists alone were wise; though, since the sage had himself been a sculptor, he had some reason to think well of them. It is, nevertheless, perfectly true that men of this profession might become legislators or generals, or even behold a statue erected to them beside those of Miltiades and Themistocles, or among the gods themselves.[[949]] The historian of art observes with pride that Xenophilos and Straton were permitted at Argos to place their own statues, even in a sitting posture, near those of Asclepios and Hygeia.[[950]] Cheirisophos, who sculptured the Apollo at Tegea, dedicated in the same fane a statue of himself in marble, which was erected close to his great work.[[951]] The figure of Alcamenes occupied a place among the bassi-rilievi on the temple of Demeter at Eleusis. Parrhasios and Silanion shared the reverence paid to their picture of Theseus; and Pheidias affixed his name to his Olympian Zeus, the nearest approach perhaps which the arts have ever made to perfection.[[952]]
If the satisfaction of beholding a whole nation, I might say a whole world, smitten with delight and wonder at his performance, would repay an artist for years of toil and study, Pheidias had his reward. And not to the narrow circle of his life was this admiration confined; for six hundred years after his death pilgrims from all parts of the civilised world flocked to Olympia[[953]] to behold his matchless performance; for to die without having partaken of this enjoyment was considered a misfortune. But neither praise, nor encouragement, nor honour, nor gain will suffice to bring the arts to perfection. To ensure this, the nation to which the arts address themselves must comprehend their language. For, if the people be incapable of deciding when an artist has succeeded and when he has failed, it is very certain that he will seldom succeed at all. Men soon find the uselessness of producing what no one around them can appreciate. Even in the matter of virtue and vice, few will soar very high in countries where a low standard of morals prevails generally; and, in the arts, no one will devote himself to the creation of forms which he knows will be dumb to the public eye.
In Greece every condition required to ripen the genius of an artist existed. He knew that his reputation and fortune would depend on the caprice of no particular individual or class of individuals. He perceived among his countrymen at large the knowledge, the taste, and the enthusiasm which just decisions in art demand, and laboured fearlessly for them, not doubting that he should obtain the reward his genius merited. There were public exhibitions, as among us, both at Corinth and at Delphi;[[954]] but, instead of converting them into a sordid traffic, the whole world was invited to behold their performances, and judges were appointed to decide upon the merits of the exhibitors. Instances no doubt there were of artists showing their performances for money: at least the memory of one example has come down to us. Zeuxis of Heraclea, having finished his picture of Helen, opened an exhibition and fixed a certain admission price, by which he cleared a large sum of money; but to mark their disapprobation of such conduct, his contemporaries bestowed on his picture the name of the courtesan.[[955]]
In the public exhibitions they appear to have looked solely to merit, and not to have allowed themselves to be dazzled by great names; for when Panænos, brother of Pheidias, entered the lists, neither his own reputation, nor that of the illustrious sculptor, could obtain for him the preference over Timagoras, who was allowed to have excelled. A like spirit prevailed among the judges of Olympia, whither artists sometimes brought their pictures during the games to delight assembled nations, and reap a harvest of joy and glory in a day. Thus when Ætion appeared with his “Marriage of Alexander and Roxana,” before the Hellanodicos Proxenides,[[956]] he not only obtained the credit due to his genius, but that magistrate, more emphatically to express his admiration, bestowed on him the hand of his daughter. And Lucian, who had seen the picture in Italy, has left a description of it which justifies the enthusiasm of Proxenides.
I have already in a former chapter accounted in some measure for the diffusion of a correct taste among the great body of the people. It formed with them an indispensable branch of study. The arts of design were cultivated by the philosopher, the politician, in short, by every one who claimed to be considered a gentleman.[[957]] Nay, gentlewomen also enjoyed these advantages, and instances are recorded of their arriving at professional excellence and celebrity; for example, Timarete,[[958]] daughter of the younger Micon, an Athenian, and Helen an Alexandrian Greek, who painted the “Battle of the Issos,” afterwards consecrated in the temple of Peace.[[959]] It was in the nature of things, that artists moving in such a moral atmosphere should partake largely of the national grandeur of sentiment, and look rather to the perpetuation of their name than to any sordid considerations of gain, above which they were elevated by the form which the national gratitude assumed. For we may be sure that what is related of the great historian of Halicarnassos was, to a certain extent, true of great artists. Men pointed at him, we are told, as he moved through the public assemblies, exclaiming, “That is he! That is the man who has celebrated our victories over the Barbarians!”
Winkelmann, who understood human nature no less than the arts, enumerates similar facts among the causes why art flourished in Greece;[[960]] and though sometimes mistaken, as in so large a work was to be expected, his reasoning generally, and his illustrations, deserve that every lover of art should be familiar with his writings.
This distinguished historian, however, is not sufficiently guarded in his expressions, when he contends that the productions of art were consecrated solely to the deity or to public utility; for, though they were principally directed to these ends, many individuals possessed collections in their houses,[[961]] which were by no means the humble dwellings he supposes. However the public constituted the great patron of art, and uniting in itself natural aptitude, acquired knowledge, and an inherent leaning towards grandeur, communicated to those who laboured to gratify it corresponding taste and elevation. In many cases the whole population of a city identified its own glory with that of some celebrated picture or statue within its walls. Olympia, though peopled by works of art of surpassing excellence, still looked upon the Pheidian Zeus[[962]] as the apex of its glory; and even Athens, where probably more objects of art were crowded together than in any other city of the world, the colossal statue of Athena stood preëminently the ornament of the Acropolis. In one respect we have begun to imitate the Greeks, who often erected by general subscription the statue of a divinity, or of some Athletæ victorious in the sacred games. Some minor cities are solely remembered for the works of art they contained: for example, that of Aliphera which owed its celebrity entirely to its statue of Athena in bronze, the work of Hecatodoros and Sostratos.[[963]]