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The group is interesting from many points of view, but mainly from the flood of light which it throws on the methods of Peloponnesian sculpture at the very close of its development. It thus forms a complementary picture to the remains of the monument of Euboulides in Athens. Damophon, like Euboulides, underwent the influence of Pergamon. The colossal scale of his group and the wild hair of his giant Anytos demonstrate the influence of the altar frieze. Damophon also went back to Pheidias for inspiration. He must have absorbed many lessons from his work at Olympia. The seated group of his goddesses is reminiscent of the two figures next to 'Theseus' in the west pediment of the Parthenon. The simple wide-eyed grave expression of his Demeter head goes back to the fifth-century ideal, while his Artemis wears the melon-coiffure associated with the school of Praxiteles. The attitudes of Artemis and Anytos are Lysippic. Here we have every evidence of academic eclecticism. The same feature is borne out by three coins which reproduce the statues of Damophon. His Asklepios at Aigion gives us a fourth-century type. He copied the Laphria of Patras for Messene. His Herakles in the guise of an Idaean Dactyl at Megalopolis seems to have been a variant of the now fashionable herm figures and to copy a Hermerakles type known by numerous extant examples.

It is interesting to see the total want of proportion in the artist's mind, who could devote so much time and originality to a comparatively unimportant piece of decoration, while treating the main lines of his drapery with carelessness and monotony. It is probable that we have here a procedure to be noticed in the Demeter of Cnidos--a head done with great care and placed on a torso of inferior execution. While Damophon worked the heads of all the figures and the drapery of Despoina, he must have left the rest of his group to a band of journeymen assistants. We know from inscriptions that Damophon had two sons, Xenophilos and another whose name is lost. It is, therefore, possible that Xenophilos and Straton, the Argive sculptors, were his sons. Their subjects were similar, and their Asklepios, as shown on a coin, is identical with Damophon's.

Thus Greek sculpture on the mainland came to a somewhat inglorious and academic conclusion with the Roman conquest in 146 B.C. We may examine one more centre of artistic work before leaving it, since it forms a link between Greece and Ionia, between the declining schools of the mainland and the vigorous art of Pergamon and Rhodes.

The Aphrodite of Melos has attained a somewhat undeserved position as one of the world's masterpieces of sculpture. Splendid piece of work as it is, it has most of the faults of its period. Much controversy has raged even over the actual facts of the discovery of this statue, but there appears to be no reason to doubt that the inscribed base, which was found with it and brought perhaps later to Paris, is part of it, and contains the true record of its author ...sandros from Antioch on the Maeander. This base has been lost, but drawings and statements exist to show that it fitted the actual base. The missing fragment had a rectangular hole on the upper surface, in which some additional attribute was fitted. The restoration of this missing piece of the base with its hole disposes of the theories occasionally ventilated that the statue was one of a pair. The hole is not the socket for fastening a statue, nor will it hold one of the small herms which were found with the Aphrodite. Its true significance has been pointed out by Furtw?ngler by analogy with several other statues and designs, including one from Melos and one actual copy of the Aphrodite herself. It served for the fastening of a slender column or stele on which the goddess rested her left elbow. A beautiful little fourth-century bronze in Dresden shows a similar motive. The restoration of the figure is now easy. With her right hand the goddess held or was about to hold her drapery to prevent it from slipping; her left elbow rested on the pillar, and her left hand, palm upwards, held an apple. This hand holding the apple was actually found with the statue, and undoubtedly belongs to it, as well as a piece of the upper left arm. The other hand found at the same time is alien and on a larger scale. The position of the hand, palm upwards, is certified by the unworked back, which would be invisible. The apple of course is a frequent symbol of Aphrodite, and particularly appropriate in the island to which it gave its name.

The Aphrodite was found in a niche or exedra, which was dedicated by one Bacchios with a second-century inscription. The base inscription of ...sandros, whose name we may guess to have been Agesandros, is also second century, and therefore we cannot hesitate to accept a date about 180-160 B.C. for the Aphrodite, especially as its style and technique are indubitably of that period. The pose may be described as reminiscent of Lysippos with its opposing lines of shoulders and hips and twist of the body above the waist. The head-type is Scopaic, but only Scopaic at second-hand, since the influence of Pergamon is much clearer. If we compare the head with the head of the girl in Berlin from Pergamon, or with the Pergamon Hermaphrodite in Constantinople, we see an identical treatment of hair, identical head-shape, and the same type of features in almost every detail. The drapery is interesting for yet another source of inspiration. Its division into flattish panels separated by groups of deeply-cut waving folds is in the manner of Pheidias and the late fifth century, while the naturalistic little detail on the right hip, where the lower folds are caught up and radiate from a single point, is thoroughly Hellenistic.

The style of the statue as well as its technique is clear proof of its date. The attitude of the goddess has no discernible motive. There is no reason why she should be half naked, or why she should twist her body round so violently from the hips. There is no explanation why her drapery should stay up at all in so insecure a position, or why her left foot should be raised higher than her right. But if we compare for a moment the Melian Aphrodite with the Capuan Venus in Naples , a statue in a nearly identical position, all these points are explained. The Capuan Venus is half naked, because she is admiring her beauty in the mirror of the shield of Ares. She is twisted so as to look at herself in the shield and yet display her body to the spectator--in itself a Hellenistic device. Her drapery is held up, because the shield-edge holds it against her left hip; her foot is raised, because it rests on Ares' helmet and thereby gives better support to the shield. The attitude of the Melian goddess is clumsy and stiff, because it has no motive; that of the Capuan is graceful and effective, because its motive is clear.

The history of the Melian Aphrodite throws much light on the Hellenistic art of the mainland and its neighbouring islands. We see its artists bankrupt of new ideas, and able only to adapt older conceptions to new requirements with a series of eclectic modifications. The Aphrodite is a close parallel to the monuments of Damophon and Euboulides, although its artist is admittedly a better sculptor. All three show a poverty of new ideas, but a strong reaction against the excesses of the later Pergamene school. They are, therefore, forced to look backward and make up new conceptions out of a medley of older details. It is of the utmost importance that we should remember this state of mind when we come to deal with Greco-Roman art.

GRECO-ROMAN SCULPTURE

We have now completed our survey of Greek sculpture on the mainland, and in connexion with the eastern kingdoms which Greece absorbed as conqueror. We have yet one other aspect to consider: Greek sculpture in connexion with the Roman world of the west, by which Greece was conquered. 'Conquered Greece led her conqueror captive,' and while Greek civilization as a whole strongly modified the Italic civilization by which it was overthrown, Greek art in particular established its mastery over the inartistic nation which supplanted it. We have many accounts of how Roman connoisseurs filled their galleries with Greek statues. Mummius, Aemilius Paulus, Verres, Cicero, Sulla, Asinius Pollio, were all robbers or purchasers of Greek sculpture, and by the time of Pompey and Caesar the great market for Greek sculpture was in Rome. The demand exceeded the supply of antique marbles, enormous as the supply must have been, for the systematic plundering of the great shrines belongs to a later date. And as the Roman noble could not be accommodated with originals, he had to content himself with copies. Doubtless few of the collectors could tell the difference. Rhodes continued to turn out original sculpture until the time of Augustus, but Pergamon and Alexandria had long sunk into decay. It was, therefore, the opportunity for a new school of artists to arise in Athens, an opportunity which was promptly taken. Athens and Delos, Ephesos, and later Aphrodisias, became great centres of the new industry, which was primarily commercial. There was no longer any talk of idealism or of votive offerings to deities. The necessity was to turn out quantities of work suitable to the Roman taste.

Greco-Roman sculpture falls into three clear divisions. There are copies pure and simple like the Delian Diadumenos, a straightforward replica of the masterpiece of Polykleitos; there are adaptations of earlier work like those turned out by the school of Pasiteles and Arcesilaos; and there are, finally, new works, mostly in relief, which have been termed Neo-Attic, and which represent a new artistic development based on an elegant and artificial archaism. Athens is the centre of all this art, and she thus recovers in the first century B.C. the position which she had lost for so long.

The direct copies of this age need not be considered here. Direct copying from the antique as distinguished from adaptation is a new feature very eloquent of the poverty of original ideas both in the buyer and seller of statues. But it is important to realize that the Roman market made sculpture for the first time a really paying business, and therefore saved it from the possibility of extinction. Had it not been for the new Attic school of sculptors, who sprang up in the two preceding generations, it is hard to see how Augustus could have secured the workmen for his great Roman buildings, which formed the basis of a fresh artistic development in Roman imperial sculpture. The copies of this period are the best and most faithful which we possess. They have still some vitality of their own, and are not the dead and soulless caricatures produced by a later age.

But in addition to their copying work the latest generation of Attic artists busied themselves with free adaptations from the antique on lines laid down by contemporary art. These productions are to be distinguished both from purely archaistic works, which copy the style as well as the poses of ancient sculpture, and from works like the Aphrodite of Melos, which make a wide selection from ancient styles and poses. Statues such as the Farnese Herakles of Glycon, the Apollo Belvedere, or the Artemis of Versailles, are not eclectic at all; they are older types taken over and translated into modern style. They show less originality than the Melian goddess, because there is no real change of pose or of meaning. An old statue is simply worked out with a new technique. Thus the Farnese Herakles gives a Hellenistic rendering of a statue by Lysippos, while the Apollo Belvedere is perhaps a new version of a work by Leochares. The former attempts to render the massive strength of the hero by immense exaggeration of muscular development in a style worse than anything perpetrated at Pergamon. The latter attempts to outdo the elegance of its original by an ultra-refinement of surface in every direction, and by an affected stage-pose and gesture. In both cases we see the effect of commercialism on art, for the artist no longer works on his own high standard of achievement. He is bound by the tastes of the patrons for whom he caters, and the uneducated Roman buyer liked to see strength shown by mighty muscles and refinement by daintiness of gesture. Both the Herakles of Glycon and the Apollo Belvedere are fine pieces of sculpture, but as works of art they are little short of abominable. We have no evidence about the original of the Artemis of Versailles, a statue of somewhat similar type to the Apollo. We may notice how the little fold of drapery above the left knee is turned up without any justification simply for the purpose of displaying the outline of the leg. The Medici Venus in Florence is an adaptation of the later version of the Praxitelean nude Aphrodite, the Capitoline rather than the Cnidian type. It is also an Attic work of this period, finely executed, but adding a yet further degradation to the Capitoline version by the additional elegance of its gestures.

The Torso Belvedere is another Attic work of great technical ability. Its prototype is unknown, and considerable controversy exists about its meaning and correct restoration. It is a seated figure with head and upper torso turned sharply towards its left, a position which suggests a Lysippic original. The massive musculature of the torso recalls Glycon's Herakles, but the influence here is more Rhodian than Pergamene. One of the most popular suggestions for its restoration makes it a Polyphemos shading his eyes with one hand, as he looks out for Galatea, and holding a club in the other. A similar type is known from wall paintings. No agreement on this point has, however, been reached.

Works of this quality of technique, even if uninspired by high artistic feeling, show how greatly the Attic school has improved since the days of Euboulides. In sculpture the skill of the workman depends largely on the popularity of, and demand for, his work. The new vogue of sculpture soon produced a high standard of technical efficiency. But if Greco-Roman art remained wholly and unalterably Greek, Greece itself was not allowed the monopoly of its production. During the early years of the first century two Greek artists transferred their business to Rome itself, and initiated thereby a new school of Hellenistic sculpture. These were Pasiteles and Arcesilaos, names of high importance for Greek art.

But most of our remains of the school of Pasiteles belong to a different class of statue, best illustrated by the athlete of Stephanos, Pasiteles' pupil, in the Villa Albani . All periods of art which are bankrupt in new ideas tend to be archaistic; the Greco-Roman school looked backwards for all its inspiration; but while Neo-Attics found their models in Ionian art of the sixth century, the pupils of Pasiteles studied their larger sculpture mainly in the light of the early fifth-century Argive school. The athlete of Stephanos shows the proportions, the stiff pose, and the surface treatment of the pre-Polykleitan types of Ageladas. He is comparable with the Ligourio bronze or the Acropolis ephebe of Kritios for all his Lysippic slenderness and later expression. The type was immensely popular and may have originated with Pasiteles himself. We have it in single examples and combined in groups, as in the Orestes and Electra of Naples, where the companion figure is female, or in the Ildefonso group where it is combined with another male statue. All these figures are copied from early fifth-century art, though the signs of eclectic archaism are sufficiently clear. If we examine the so-called Electra of Naples, we see an archaic early fifth-century head together with a pose approaching the Praxitelean, transparent drapery of the style of Alkamenes, and a low girdle and uncovered shoulder reminiscent of Pergamon. The group of Menelaos, a pupil of Stephanos, in the Terme Museum, is a less archaic-looking and a more satisfactory work. Fifth century in detail, in style it reminds us rather of the fourth-century grave reliefs. To the same period, or perhaps a later one, belongs the idea of grouping well-known statues originally separate. Thus we have in the Capitol a group of the Melian Venus with the Ares Borghese. This actual group, however, belongs to a much later time.

Arcesilaos was another well-known sculptor of the age, a friend of Pompey and Caesar. The Venus Genetrix of the Louvre was made for the House of the Julii. It bears its fifth-century origin clearly stamped on its style. Arcesilaos also was a great provider of clay models, which he sold outright to workshops for manufacturing purposes, so that a finished statue might have never been seen by the artist responsible for its design. A series of herms in the Terme Museum show a strong archaistic tendency towards fifth-century models, but bear also in details of pose and drapery the clear stamp of the Greco-Roman age. Statues of this type were intended for the decoration of Roman palaces. They are no longer self-sufficing works of art, but are subject to the general demands of artistic decoration.

This brings us to the third division of Greco-Roman sculpture, in reality its most original contribution to the history of Greek art: the Neo-Attic reliefs, all of which are primarily decorative in their purpose. The works with which we have hitherto dealt--the Apollo Belvedere, the Torso Belvedere, or the Venus Genetrix--have all been eclectic in style, and consequently have lacked the sense of harmony or uniformity, which is one of the conditions of great sculpture. The same criticism applies to all the sculpture of the mainland in the Hellenistic age. On the other hand the schools of Pergamon, Rhodes, and Alexandria attained a uniformity of style, and consequently were enabled to produce masterpieces of art. Their works can be attributed to a school, because they contain common elements of style and technique based on a common theory of art. This community of purpose has been wholly lacking in the works of Euboulides, Damophon, and the Melian artists, and only partially felt in the works of Pasiteles and Arcesilaos. All these artists were individualists selecting and combining at their own will and pleasure. The Neo-Attic artists are quite different. Their names are immaterial, because their works all bear the impress of precisely the same style. There is no chance of mistaking a Neo-Attic work; its origin is clear in every line. These reliefs represent the last true school of Greek sculpture, the last monuments in which a common line of development can be studied unaffected by individual idiosyncrasies. They are strongly archaistic, but in spite of this they are essentially modern. They neither copy the antique exactly, nor adapt it to existing modes as the followers of Pasiteles did. They rather invent a new mode and a new style in art, but they make use of archaic technical details for its expression. Their art is essentially artificial and symbolic, so that they represent a reaction against the academic classicism of the period; but it is also meticulous in detail, so that it can merit no reproach of a loose impressionism. The Neo-Attic artists of the first century B.C. are really the pre-Raphaelites of Greek art, and Rossetti and Burne-Jones are the nearest parallel to them in later art history.

Their reliefs are all decorative in purpose, for the adornment of altars, candelabra, fountains, well-heads, or wall-panels; and therefore they are not unnaturally attracted by the most decorative of all the archaic schools, the late Ionian or Attic-Ionian art of the end of the sixth century. They make use also of later models, of the Victories of the Balustrade, of Scopaic Maenads, of Praxitelean satyrs, but all the models which they adopt are treated in a uniform style, a new style of exaggerated daintiness of pose and gesture accompanied by an archaistic formality of drapery and modelling. In this detail they contrast strongly with the realism of the pre-Raphaelites. Their daintiness and formality are derived from Ionian models, but reproduced in a wholly different setting.

The vase of Sosibios in the Louvre reproduces some of their favourite types, which occur over and over again in the decorative art of the early empire. The flute-playing satyr, the dancing maenad, the armed dancer, and all the other types are reproduced in every variety of combination, but in identical form. The Neo-Attic sculptors were content with the elaboration of a few types which they combined at pleasure. They never attempted more intricate groups than their variant of the two Victories with a bull from the Acropolis Balustrade. Usually they merely group single figures in long rows without any connexion in thought. Nothing could bring out more clearly their essential poverty of ideas and the purely commercial character of their art. The designs are like so many stencil patterns which can be applied to any form of monument.

When we examine the figures more closely, we can see the elements which make up their characteristic style. The figures invariably march on tiptoe. Their fingers are extended and the little finger is usually bent back in an affected manner. This detail is derived from the archaic pose of the hand holding out a flower, so common in late Ionian art. The tiptoe pose is also found on ancient reliefs. The drapery is based mainly on that of the late fifth-century Attic school, but with various additions and refinements. The fluttering ends of cloaks and mantles recall fourth-century reliefs, while the curving swallow-tail ends of flying drapery are imitated directly from the sixth century. The drapery on the figure itself usually hangs in straight archaic lines as in the Artemis of Pompeii, where the zigzag shape of ancient folds is reproduced with great formality; or it follows an almost equally artificial system of wavy folds, based on the school of the Balustrade, as in the fine relief of a dancing Maenad in the Conservatori Museum. The elegant lounging poses with bent head, which remind us somewhat of Burne-Jones figures, are based no doubt on Praxiteles. The delineation of the surface muscles of the nude body also follows a uniform rule derived rather from the middle fifth-century Attic art than from that of Ionia. The muscles of the male figures tend to be over-emphasized, so far as that is conformable with the elegant slenderness of their figures. But a description of the figure-types of Neo-Attic art is incomplete without some notice of the intricate decorative designs of plants and animals which always frame and enshrine the reliefs on altar or candelabrum. Archaic Greek decoration was always formal and conventional in character. The exquisite mouldings of the Erechtheum or of the later Corinthian capital are not naturalistic but highly stylized. Naturalistic floral or animal decoration begins with the Hellenistic age, and is especially prominent in the Neo-Attic monuments. The trailing vine, grape-clusters, wreaths of flowers, new heraldic sphinxes, lions' heads, &c., are carefully worked out from nature and combined with the remnants of the old decoration of palmettes, volutes, and tongue and dart mouldings. The vase of Sosibios shows a combination of the two principles, which is truly symbolic of the Greco-Roman combined school, for naturalistic decorative designs are just as representative of Roman art as formal ones are of Hellenic. From the combined system of the Neo-Attic reliefs we pass directly to the purely naturalistic floral designs of Augustan architectural sculpture.

But Augustus was not the man to submit to a complete extinction of Italian artistic principles. His system was closely identified with a revival of ancient Italy in all directions, and he was not likely to abandon Italic art. It therefore came to pass that in the greatest sculptured monument of his period--the Ara Pacis erected on the Campus Martius, which is now being gradually and laboriously pieced together again--we have a combination of Greek and Italian principles of first-rate importance for the subsequent development of Roman art. One side of the altar contained a relief of Tellus or the Earth, which is hardly distinguishable from the pastoral Hellenistic reliefs, but the procession which fills the greater part of the other sides is treated in a very different manner. The general scheme is Greek, and must have been influenced by the Parthenon frieze, but the treatment in detail is Italian. Thus we have the Roman toga with its voluminous soft folds, and the Roman principle of direct realistic portraiture in all the heads. But more important than the portraiture is the appearance of a new development of perspective in relief which is destined to have a great career in the future of art, and which has been regarded by some authorities as purely Italian.

Greek reliefs had always been represented as if against a tangible background, at first practically in two planes only, and then in Hellenistic times in truer perspective, but invariably against a background of some kind. Roman art, on the other hand, in its more developed reliefs like those on the Arch of Titus, eliminates the idea of background and regards the wall on which the reliefs are placed as nonexistent. The reliefs are intended to give the illusion of free sculpture, as if they were standing in the round against a background of the sky. A much greater depth must, therefore, enter into the principle of perspective. Just as in the bronze reliefs of the Florentine Baptistery Ghiberti used the principle of no background and attempted to show a whole countryside behind his figures as if the relief were a picture, so the artist of the reliefs of the Arch of Titus uses a strongly diminishing perspective and a pronounced foreshortening of his figures to produce this same effect of free sculpture.

In Greek sculpture of the Hellenistic age it is true to say that the depth of the background has been greatly increased. This is visible even as early as the Telephos frieze. But it would be hard to point to a Greek relief in which the effect was wholly pictorial and the idea of the background was entirely abolished. This principle, however, does appear in the reliefs of the Ara Pacis, and therefore they mark a new era in art. The perspective and the foreshortening are stronger and more illusional. In the background we get flat heads just incised in the marble to give the effect of the depth of the crowd. The scene is in fact not a procession in Indian file but a true crowd many ranks deep. The principle is not altogether adequately carried out in the Ara Pacis, but soon it is more completely mastered. The stucco decorations of the Villa Farnesina, though in the lowest possible relief, express a depth greater than any Hellenistic landscape relief. They are purely pictorial in character.

The subordination of sculpture to pictorial ideas is Italian not Greek. Italy through Etruria, her real artistic pioneer, was always a patron of painting rather than sculpture, and therefore under the Empire sculpture becomes either wholly decorative or merely devoted to portraiture. During the reign of Augustus Greek influence still persists, and under Hadrian we have a Greek revival, but from Tiberius to the Renaissance sculpture descends from a primary to a secondary art.

We are left then with only one further question to discuss. What are the permanent elements of Hellenism in Roman art, and, after Roman art, in the art of the Renaissance and of modern times? What is the true character of Greek sculpture, and what has it bequeathed to all civilizations which have followed it?

The question is a large one which cannot be easily solved in a few phrases. Greek sculpture is not to be hastily identified with what we call classicism in art and contrasted with romanticism and realism. Greek art is classic, if we mean by that term academic, only for a brief period of its decadence. During the fourth century and the Hellenistic age it displays all the phenomena of romantic and realistic art. In fact Greek art as a whole comprises every form of artistic expression, and exhibits wellnigh the whole of the possibilities that lie between the caveman and the aesthete. We do not, however, confuse the work of Donatello or of Rodin or of modern impressionists with Greek sculpture, and this clarity of distinction demands some examination. How can we distinguish Greek work from that of every other civilization?

The answer is not to be found in style or in technique. It lies in the more hidden depths of psychology. If we take the history of Greek sculpture as a whole, the attitude of the artist to his work and of the public to art in general and of art itself to life is different from that prevalent in any other society. Neither under the Roman Empire nor during the Renaissance nor in the modern world is art regarded as an essential form of self-expression as natural as conversation or amusement or religion. It is fair to assume that the average modern man regards statues with indifference slightly flavoured with amusement. Nobody would notice the difference if he were living in a town full of statues or in one without any. They satisfy no need in modern existence, and they are mere excrescences on our civilization. Even pictures, which we understand better, are mainly regarded from the point of view of decorative furniture. Art is an embellishment of modern life, not an essential part of it. It is considered a means of pleasure or a means of amusement, not as part of the serious business of life. Even in the Renaissance, where art played a much more important r?le in the life of the community than it now does, it was still a by-product of man's activity. Popes and rulers found leisure to patronize Cellini or Michael Angelo, but their main business in life was rather to poison each other or to increase their landed property. The Romans looked on art much as we do, and with the same tolerant air of showing our superiority by a correct taste.

The attitude of the Greeks was wholly different. To them art was bound up with religion, for their religion found its natural expression in art rather than in any emotional ceremonies such as Christianity introduced. The religion of the city in particular, a stronger feeling than our modern patriotism, could only be expressed by art. The disappearance of the city-state was, therefore, a great blow to the idealism of Greek art, but even after this time a man's private feelings could better be expressed in terms of art than in terms of religion. The Cnidian goddess of Praxiteles was more than a statue; it was an idea. The Victory of Samothrace was Triumph itself, not a mere masterpiece. To a Greek the statues he loved represented what religion means to most Christians; not that his feelings were equally intense or equally pure, but they expressed the same side of his nature.

In a psychological state like this both the artist and the public are bound to regard art with very different eyes. The Greeks could have tolerated experimental frivolity or chicanery in art as little as we should tolerate the travesty of a religious service. Therefore they admitted dogma in art, as we admit dogma in religion. We lightly overthrow all established artistic principles to introduce a new temporary fad. To the Greek such an idea was equivalent to sacrilege. This accounts very largely for the slow development of Greek art and its great reluctance to admit new principles. It could never become purely experimental or adventurous. Until the end of the fifth century this driving-force of the religious connexion is paramount in all Greek art. In the fourth century and the Hellenistic age the connexion of art and religion is shaken, but if religion passes away, the passionate devotion to art takes its place, and art itself becomes almost a religion. The stories of the great painters and of the intense love of whole communities for their works of art can be parallelled perhaps in some of the states of the Renaissance, but they have assuredly no parallel in Roman or in modern times. Our whole attitude towards art as an 'extra' and an unessential prevents us from appreciating its vital importance to the Greek. A community, whose ideas of art are Hellenic, knows no abrupt distinctions between the useful and the beautiful, because all the objects of its daily life are beautiful of necessity; it knows nothing of good taste, because there is no bad taste to contrast, and we may even find, as in the case of Greece herself, that its words for 'good' and 'evil' are simply 'beautiful' and 'ugly' .

The whole fabric of Greek art goes to pieces when it is brought into contact with a purely utilitarian nation like Rome. It succeeded in humanizing and educating the upper classes, but it had little effect on the mob. Art, therefore, in Rome became a means of decorating palaces and not a national treasure. The contact with Christianity was even more destructive, for if the Romans had been merely indifferent, the Christians were actively hostile. The new religion was Semitic in origin, and cared nothing for beauty or ugliness. If anything, it found in ugliness a means of atonement for sin. The Greek love of beauty was the worst enemy Christianity encountered, and the Fathers direct long pamphlets and arguments against the pagan deities and their statues. Nor were they content with arguments, when they could wield a hammer or throw a stone. Early Christianity, like Mohammedanism or the Spartan system, depended on a strict subordination of the individual, and consequently attacked most bitterly the artistic spirit which must be free if it is to live at all. Of all the nations who have existed since the fall of Greece the Chinese and Japanese have come nearest to the Greek spirit in art owing to the lack of a religion of self-denial. The earlier period of the Renaissance was also Hellenic, but when artists were captured by the Church and turned to painting saints and madonnas, their Greek freedom left them. Parrhasios might have claimed kinship with Botticelli's Birth of Venus or his Pallas; he would have seen no beauty in his Madonnas.

Another consequence of the vital importance of art in Greek life was that artistic expression was almost wholly confined to the human form. Just as we exclude animals and plants from our religion, the Greek excluded them from his art as long as its religious connexion was intact. Between the sixth century and the Hellenistic age no Greek artist paid any attention to any animal save the horse, whose human associations exempted him, and even the horse had to be content with a more or less conventional treatment. Greek art, like Greek religion, is essentially anthropomorphic.

But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can, Existent beyond all laws, that made them and, lo, they are! And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man, That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star.

The published papers of Guy Dickins may best be ranged under three heads: historic work, results of travel and excavation, studies in Greek sculpture.

This is Dickins's earliest paper. The subject has attracted several of our younger archaeologists. Dickins takes up in particular the internal arrangement of the Megaron, and the nature and position of the ???????? and the ?????. He proceeds very carefully, trying to combine the testimony of the Palace of Tiryns with that of Cnossus and Phylakopi.

'The true cause of the Peloponnesian War' .

'The growth of Spartan Policy' .

These are detailed attempts to explain the policy of Sparta in regard to the neighbouring states and Athens down to the time of Archidamus and Agis. In consequence of the paucity of existing historic records, the sketch is necessarily of a somewhat speculative character, the more so as a chief object of inquiry is unavoidably the motives which dominated the statesmen and the parties at Sparta. There is good ground for the contention that down to 550 B.C. Sparta underwent a political development, and even an artistic growth, parallel to that in other Greek cities; but that after that time the city developed on lines of its own, as a purely military state. This is, as we shall see, the most interesting result established by the recent excavations on the site. Looking for a personality to associate with the change, Dickins finds one in Chilon, a name not prominent in history, but suggestively mentioned by Herodotus and Diogenes Laertius. He seems to have succeeded in raising the Ephors to equal power with the Kings, and thenceforward, according to Dickins, the clue to Spartan policy is to be found in the clashings of the two powers. Until 468 the struggle was acute; and it was not until the end of the fifth century that the supremacy of the Ephors was established. The question of dominance over the helots, which has by some writers been regarded as the mainspring of Spartan policy, was less important in the fifth century than it became in the fourth.

Dickins is well versed in both ancient and modern historians, and he writes with clearness and force; but the motives of statesmen and the underlying causes of events are so intricate that the discussion of them seldom leads to a really objective addition to our knowledge of ancient history.

His paper on the art of Sparta is extremely valuable; and as it is hidden in a place little visited by classical scholars, it is desirable to speak of it in some detail. There will before long appear a work on the results of the excavations of the British School of Athens at Sparta, a work which will contain some contributions by Dickins: and of course it is possible that the excavators will modify the views set forth ten years ago. But meantime the paper in question is the best summary existing of the results of the excavation in relation to Spartan art.

The current notion that from the first settlement of the Dorians in Sparta they formed a state organized for war only has to be greatly modified. The warlike Sparta familiar to us from Plutarch and other writers came into existence only in the course of the sixth century. The earlier history of Sparta had been parallel to that of other Greek cities; and we are able now to mark out successive periods of development in the local artistic remains. In these remains Dickins discerns four periods. First, there is the age of geometric art, the ninth and early eighth centuries, when art products show the dominance of the early Dorian civilization which the Spartans brought with them from the north. Next comes a period in which we find oriental art invading, owing to trade with Egypt and Ionia. In the third period we find a fusion of native Greek art with the oriental style of importation. The fourth period, the sixth and fifth centuries, should show us at Sparta, as in other Greek cities, a bloom of local art; but it never had a fair chance of development, as the rise of the military spirit and asceticism in manners blighted it in the midst of its spring. Thenceforward Sparta is cut off from the stream which leads to such wonderful results in the architecture and sculpture of Argos and Athens. It is a lesson for all times. Many of the early Spartan works of art are represented in the article. Their character is striking: Dickins compares them with the works found by Dr. Hogarth in the earliest strata of Ephesus; and the Ionian influence in them confirms the tales told by the historians of the frequent relations between Sparta and Asia Minor.

The sculptural group of Damophon of Messene at Lycosura in Arcadia has long been an object of interest to archaeologists. We knew that it consisted of four colossal figures, Demeter, Despoina, Artemis, and the Titan Anytus. But there was no agreement as to the date of the group: Damophon had been assigned by various writers to periods as far apart as the fourth century before, and the second century after, our era. When the site at Lycosura was excavated in 1889-90 by the Greek archaeologists Leonardos and Kavvadias, fragments of the statues were found, and the style proved somewhat disappointing. The closer study of these fragments was resumed in 1906 by Dr. Kourouniotis, who partially restored two of the figures. But it was reserved for Dickins, in a series of closely reasoned and masterly papers, to complete the restoration of the group, and to fix definitely the date and style of Damophon.

The first paper deals with the date of Damophon, which is fixed on the definite evidence of inscriptions to the first half of the second century B.C., and deals so thoroughly with his historic connexion that little is left for any future archaeologist to say in regard to it. The architectural evidence at Lycosura confirms the date assigned. In the second paper Dickins carries out a most detailed and convincing restoration of the group, adding a discussion of the style of Damophon. In the third paper he is able to confirm the accuracy of his restoration by comparing with it a copy of the group on a bronze coin of Julia Domna struck at Megalopolis. When the restoration was published nothing was known of this coin; it may therefore be regarded as independent evidence of the most satisfying character; and its agreement in all but a few details with Dickins's restoration shows that his work survives that most severe of all tests, the discovery of fresh evidence. Few conjectural restorations of archaeologists stand on so firm a basis.

Damophon had interested Dickins even before he became his special subject of study, for as early as 1905 he had published two bearded heads, one in the Vatican, one in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek, which resemble the head of Anytus.

In 1906 he published a new replica of the Choiseul Gouffier type. His keen eye had discerned in the Terme Museum at Rome a detached leg of the same form and style as the left leg of the Choiseul Gouffier figure of the British Museum. To the support to which this leg is attached there is also attached a quiver, and this led Dickins to conclude that the Choiseul Gouffier figure is not, as many have thought, an athlete, but an Apollo, as Mr. Murray always maintained.

In 1911 he published an account of a colossal marble sandal in the Palazzo dei Conservatori at Rome, adorned with reliefs on the side of the sole. Struck with the likeness of the style of these reliefs to that of the figures on the garment at Lycosura, he boldly suggests that it is an original work of Damophon.

In 1914 he discussed the question whether the noteworthy female head at Holkham Hall can be given, as Sir Charles Walston has suggested, to the east pediment of the Parthenon; and answered the question with a decided negative. Another paper in the same year suggests the identification of several sculptured heads in various museums as portraits of kings of the Hellenistic Age, Egyptian, Syrian, and Pergamene. The paper also discusses the portraits of Thucydides and Aristotle. There is no more treacherous ground in archaeology than the assignment of portraits which are uninscribed; but the keenness of sight and the cautious method of Dickins had made him eminently fit for such inquiries.

P. GARDNER.

FOOTNOTES

Fig. 42.

Fig. 8.

Fig. 6.

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