Mosaics of Grecian History

by Marcius Willson; Robert Pierpont Wilson

POLYB'IUS.

Of the prominent Greek historians, Polybius was the last. Born about 204 B.C., he lived and wrote in the closing period of Grecian history. Having been carried a prisoner to Rome with the one thousand prominent citizens of Achaia, his accomplishments secured for him the friendship of Scip'io Africa'nus Mi'nor, and of his father, Æmil'ius Pau'lus, at whose house he resided. He spent his time in collecting materials for his works, and in giving instruction to Scipio. In the year 150 B.C. he returned to his native country with the surviving exiles, and actively exerted himself to induce the Greeks to keep peace with the Romans, but, as we know, without success. After the Roman conquest the Greeks seem to have awakened to the wisdom of his advice, for on a statue erected to his memory was the inscription, "Hellas would have been saved had the advice of Polybius been followed." Polybius wrote a history in forty books, embracing the time between the commencement of the Second Punic War, in 218 B.C., and the destruction of Carthage and Corinth by the Romans, in 146 B.C. It is the most trustworthy history we possess of this period, and has been closely copied by subsequent writers. A correct estimate of its character and worth will be found in the following summary:

"The greater part of the valuable and laborious work of Polybius has perished. We have only the first five books entire, and fragments and extracts of the rest. As it is, however, it is one of the most valuable historical works that has come down to us. His style, indeed, will not bear a comparison with the great masters of Greek literature: he is not eloquent, like Thucydides; nor practical, like Herodotus; nor perspicuous and elegant, like Xenophon. He lived at a time when the Greek language had lost much of its purity by an intermixture of foreign elements, and he did not attempt to imitate the language of the Attic writers. He wrote as he spoke: he gives us the first rough draft of his thoughts, and seldom imposes on himself the trouble to arrange or methodize them; hence, they are often meager and desultory, and not infrequently deviate entirely from the subject.

"But in the highest quality of an historian—the love of truth—Polybius has no superior. This always predominates in his writings. He has judgment to trace effects to their causes, a full knowledge of his subjects, and an impartiality that forbids him to conceal it to favor any party or cause. In his geographical descriptions he is not always clear, but his descriptions of battles have never been surpassed. 'His writings have been admired by the warrior, copied by the politician, and imitated by the historian. Brutus had him ever in his hands, Tully transcribed him, and many of the finest passages of Livy are the property of the Greek historian.'"

ART.

I. ARCHITECTURE AND SCULPTURE.

After the close of the Peloponnesian war the perfection and application of the several orders of Grecian architecture were displayed in the laying out of cities on a grander scale, and by an increase of splendor in private residences, rather than by any marked change in the style of public buildings and temples. Alexandria in Egypt, and Antioch in Syria, were the finest examples of Grecian genius in this direction, both in the regularity and size of their public and private buildings, and in their external and internal adornment. This period was also distinguished for its splendid sepulchral and other monuments. Of these, probably the most exquisite gem of architectural taste is the circular building at Athens, the Cho-rag'ic Monument, or "Lantern of Demosthenes," erected in honor of a victory gained by the chorus of Lysic'rates in 334 B.C. "It is the purest specimen of the Corinthian order," says a writer on architecture, "that has reached our time, whose minuteness and unobtrusive beauty have preserved it almost entire among the ruins of the mightiest piles of Athenian art." Other celebrated monuments of this period were the one erected at Halicarnas'sus by the Ca'rian queen Artemi'sia to the memory of her husband Mauso'lus, adorned with sculptural decorations by Sco'pas and others, and considered one of the seven wonders of the world; and the octagonal edifice, the Horolo'gium of Androni'cus Cyrrhes'tes, at Athens.

In sculpture, Athens still asserted its pre-eminence, but the style and character of its later school were materially different from those of the preceding one of Phid'ias. "Toward the close of the Peloponnesian war," says a recent writer, "a change took place in the habits and feelings of the Athenian people, under the influence of which a new school of statuary was developed. The people, spoiled by luxury, and craving the pleasures and excitements which the prosperity of the age of Pericles had opened to them, regarded the severe forms of the older masters with even less patience than the austere virtues of the generation which had driven the Persians out of Greece. The sculptors, giving a reflex of the times in their productions, instead of the grand and sublime cultivated the soft, the graceful, and the flowing, and aimed at an expression of stronger passion and more dramatic action. Jupiter, Juno, and Minerva, the favorite subjects of the Phidian era, gave place to such deities as Venus, Bacchus, and Amor; and with the departure of the older gods departed also the serene and composed majesty which had marked the representations of them." [Footnote: C. S. Weyman.]

The first great artist of this school was Scopas, born at Paros, and who flourished in the first half of the fourth century B.C. Although famous in architectural sculpture, he excelled in single figures and groups, "combining strength of expression with grace." The celebrated group of Ni'o-be and her children slain by Ar'temis and Apollo, a copy of which is preserved in the museum of Florence, and the statue of the victorious Venus in the Louvre at Paris, are attributed to Scopas. The most esteemed of his works, according to Pliny, was a group representing Achilles conducted to the Island of Leu'ce by sea deities. The only other artist of this school that we will refer to is Praxit'eles, a contemporary of Scopas. He excelled in representing the female figure, his masterpiece being the Cnid'ian Aphrodi'te, a naked statue, in Parian marble, modeled from life, representing Venus just leaving the bath. This statue was afterward taken to Constantinople, where it was burned during the reign of Justinian.

This Athenian school of sculpture was followed, in the time of Alexander the Great, by what was called the Si-çy-o'ni-an school, of which Euphra'nor, of Corinth, and Lysip'pus, of Si'çy-on, were the leading representatives. The former was a painter as well as sculptor. His statues were executed in bronze and marble, and were admired for their dignity. Lysippus worked only in bronze, and was the only sculptor that Alexander the Great permitted to represent him in statues. His works were very numerous, including the colossal statue of Jupiter at Tarentum, sixty feet high, several of Hercules, and many others. The succeeding and later Greek sculptors made no attempt to open a new path of design, but they steadily maintained the reputation of the art. Many works of great excellence were produced in Rhodes, Alexandria, Ephesus, and elsewhere in the East. Among these was the famous Colossus, a statue of the sun, designed and executed by Cha'res of Rhodes, that reared its huge form one hundred and five feet in height at the entrance to Rhodes harbor; the Farnese Bull, at Naples, found in the Baths of Caracalla at Rome, also the work of a Rhodian artist; and the Apollo Belvedere, in the Vatican.