Thus Phryne, idealised by art, became Aphrodite, Anadyomene in the hands of Apelles, or Aphrodite of Cnidos in those of Praxiteles.
Childhood obtained its representative in Eros the god of love. Thus, from infancy upwards, even to old age, the human form in all its phases became the object of study to the Greek artist, not to be servilely copied, but to be idealised, to be clothed with poetry, to be divested of everything mean, gross, unspiritual, and embalmed in eternal beauty. And their success is proved by this, that, even with their works before them, modern artists have never been able satisfactorily to imitate their excellences. Of this Winkelmann[[968]] mentions some examples which have not come under my own notice. “Although the best modern artists,” he says, “have striven to imitate exactly the celebrated Medusa of the Strozzi cabinet at Rome, which, nevertheless, is not a countenance of the highest beauty, an experienced antiquary will always be able to distinguish the original from the copy.” The same thing is true, he says, with respect to the Pallas of Aspasios, engraved by Natter and others. But this is perfectly intelligible. The original artist, working after his own ideas and comprehending thoroughly his own object, would impart to his creations a flexibility, a grace, a freedom, not to be reached by one whose type existed out of his own mind. For even in literature it is thus—language, malleable, expansive, obedient to control in the hands of the original writer, who breathes into it his own ideas and requires it only to drape them, becomes a stiff unmanageable mass with the imitator like a corpse put in motion by galvanism.
To be conversant with the arts of Greece, is to move among a race of gods endued with eternal youth. In the goddesses the small neck, the undeveloped bosom convey the idea of virgin innocence. The nipple shrinking inward retreats from the eye. Over the visage a radiance indescribable appears to play; the form, whether draped or undraped, suggests the idea of divine unfleeting existence—of the poetry of life and love—such as youth dreams of in its purest aspirations. For the gods our feelings are in a slight degree different. Zeus, invested with the majesty of Olympos, in the fulness of manhood, powerful, beautiful, sublime, awakens in us a mingling of reverence and love, as towards a father. Apollo towers like an elder brother above our heads. Hades, Poseidon, Ares are powers whom we do not love. Mighty they were, but strangers whom our sympathies do not cling to. But Dionysos, with his vine garland and beautiful face of friendship, with Eros and Heracles and the heroic twins and Hephæstos and Seilenos, and the Fauns, with every haunter of grove, or spring, or mountain seem familiar all and formed to inspire and repay affection. They are spirits of joy every one of them. They have lived from boyhood in our dreams, they have constituted one principal link in binding us to the past, one principal argument in favour of Grecian genius: and who can do otherwise than love them? Nay, in some measure, when we consider their manifold escapes from time and barbarism, they appear to us as Othello to Desdemona—we “love them for the dangers they have passed,”—and it asks no faith in miracles to persuade us that they “love us that we do pity them.”
Winkelmann, who on so many questions connected with art has put forward opinions highly just and philosophical, appears to have fallen short of his wonted acumen in the theory he had formed of the beauty of the goddesses. His language in fact descends to puerility where he says:—"Since on the subject of female beauty there are few observations to be made, it may be concluded that the study of it is less complicated and far easier for the artist. Nature itself appears to experience less difficulty in the formation of women than of men, if it be true that there are born fewer boys than girls."[[969]] Since the direct contrary is true, this imaginary difficulty of Nature (not to hazard a more sacred word) may be dismissed with contempt; but the remark by which it is ushered in requires to be confuted. Artists are well aware, and Winkelmann himself admits, that the beau ideal of heroic beauty (that for example of Achilles or of Theseus) is merely the blending of feminine loveliness with masculine power, so as to leave it undetermined, from the countenance, to which sex it belongs. And still the beauty of the Grecian youth, where they are beautiful, consists in a near approach to that of the female, so near indeed that they might be easily mistaken for women. If, therefore, the beauty of men when highest and most perfect, consists chiefly in what it borrows from that of woman, the latter necessarily constitutes the apex of human beauty; and the artist whom this conviction guides in his creations, will be the first to rival the great masters of antiquity. Another observation which it is strange to find in the Historian of Art, is that artists draped their female figures because of the little difficulty there is in imitating the naked form. But was it the extreme facility of representing paternal grief that led Timanthes to veil the face of his Agamemnon? In draping their goddesses and heroines, artists were guided by other reasons, of which the principal was their desire to conform to the ideas of the poets and to popular belief.
[852]. See Müll. Dor. ii. 313, sqq. Cf. Pfeiff. Ant. ii. 57. p. 370.
[853]. To destroy the power of Sparta the Achæans could imagine no better means than to change their system of education.—Plut. Vit. Philop. § 16. Paus. vii. 8. 5. The Mityleneans, too, desirous of breaking the military spirit of certain of their allies, forbade them to give the least instruction to their children.—Ælian, V. H. vii. 15. With the same view the Emperor Julian closed the public schools against the Christians.—Gibbon, iv. 111. Among our ancestors, too, when a blow was meditated against Dissenters, no measure more severe could be devised than to deprive them of education.—Lord John Russell, Hist. of Eur. i. 273.
[854]. Rep. Lac. ii. 1. Cf. Pfeiff. Ant. p. 370.
[855]. Lycurg. 28. Müll. Dor. ii. 39. Commonly, also, the nurses of the kings were Helots.—Plut. Ages. § 3.
[856]. Plut. Inst. Lac. § 29.