201. Now this grace of high birth, the grace of his or her Most Gracious Majesty, has her name at Chartres written beside her, in Latin. Had it been in Greek, it would have been {Greek: *elevtheria*}. Being in Latin, what do you think it must be necessarily?—Of course, Libertas. Now M. Didron is quite the best writer on art that I know,—full of sense and intelligence; but of course, as a modern Frenchman,—one of a nation for whom the Latin and Gothic ideas of libertas have entirely vanished,—he is not on his guard against the trap here laid for him. He looks at the word libertas through his spectacles;—can't understand, being a thoroughly good antiquary, {1} how such a virtue, or privilege, could honestly be carved with approval in the twelfth century;—rubs his spectacles; rubs the inscription, to make sure of its every letter; stamps it, to make surer still;—and at last, though in a greatly bewildered state of mind, remains convinced that here is a sculpture of 'La Liberte' in the twelfth century. "C'est bien la liberte!" "On lit parfaitement libertas."
{Footnote 1: Historical antiquary; not art-antiquary I must limitedly say, however. He has made a grotesque mess of his account of the Ducal Palace of Venice, through his ignorance of the technical characters of sculpture.}
202. Not so, my good M. Didron!—a very different personage, this; of whom more, presently, though the letters of her name are indeed so plainly, 'Libertas, at non liberalitas,' liberalitas being the Latin for largesse, not for franchise.
This, then, is the opposition between the Greek and Gothic dynasties, in their passionate or vital nature; in the animal and inbred part of them;—Classic and romantic, Static and exstatic. But now, what opposition is there between their divine natures? Between Theseus and Edward III., as warriors, we now know the difference; but between Theseus and Edward III, as theologians; as dreaming and discerning creatures, as didactic kings,—engraving letters with the point of the sword, instead of thrusting men through with it,—changing the club into the ferula, and becoming schoolmasters as well as kings; what is, thus, the difference between them?
Theologians I called them. Philologians would be a better word,—lovers of the {Greek: *Logos*}, or Word, by which the heavens and earth were made. What logos, about this Logos, have they learned, or can they teach?
203. I showed you, in my first lecture, the Byzantine Greek lion, as descended by true unblemished line from the Nemean Greek; but with this difference: Heracles kills the beast, and makes a helmet and cloak of his skin; the Greek St. Mark converts the beast, and makes an evangelist of him.
Is not that a greater difference, think you, than one of mere decadence?
This 'maniera goffa e sproporzionata' of Vasari is not, then, merely the wasting away of former leonine strength into thin rigidities of death? There is another change going on at the same time,—body perhaps subjecting itself to spirit.
I will not teaze you with farther questions. The facts are simple enough. Theseus and Heracles have their religion, sincere and sufficient,—a religion of lion-killers, minotaur-killers, very curious and rude; Eleusinian mystery mingled in it, inscrutable to us now,—partly always so, even to them.
204. Well; the Greek nation, in process of time, loses its manliness,—becomes Graeculus instead of Greek. But though effeminate and feeble, it inherits all the subtlety of its art, all the cunning of its mystery; and it is converted to a more spiritual religion. Nor is it altogether degraded, even by the diminution of its animal energy. Certain spiritual phenomena are possible to the weak, which are hidden from the strong;—nay, the monk may, in his order of being, possess strength denied to the warrior. Is it altogether, think you, by blundering, or by disproportion in intellect or in body, that Theseus becomes St. Athanase? For that is the kind of change which takes place, from the days of the great King of Athens, to those of the great Bishop of Alexandria, in the thought and theology, or, summarily, in the spirit of the Greek.