country like bee-swarms, not in order to extend its power, but to
grow up themselves, and to prosper freely and independently.
Within the same period, Macedonia, Epirus, and the inner countries
of Asia Minor, up to the confines of the Shemites, were pervaded
by Greek influences in art and manners; and when at last exhausted
by their unhappy divisions, the Greeks lost their independence, the
hellenic spirit still maintained itself in art and science; and, carried
by Macedonian arms all over the Persian empire and Egypt, continued
to live and to thrive among nations of a high indigenous
civilization. Greece, conquered by Rome, as Horace says, subdued
the savage conqueror, and imported art and culture into the rude
Latin world. Absorbed ethnically by amalgamation with Roman
elements, Hellenism survived even the political wreck of Rome, and
rose to a second though feeble development among the mongrel
Byzantines, who, well aware that they were not Greeks, although
speaking the Greek language, never ceased to call themselves
Romans. Even now. their country is called Roum-ili, by the Turk,
and they call their own language Romaic. Down to our own days.
Greek genius exerts its humanizing influences over the most highly
cultivated part of the world, constituting the foundation of all the
most comprehensive and properly human education.
The national character of the Greeks, as expressed in their history,
is fully- developed in their art, which from its very beginning is
characterized by freedom and movement, restricted by the most
delicate feeling for measure, and refined by a tendency towards the
ideal, without losing sight of nature. Progressive in its character,
Greek art often change its forms of expression,—we may say from
generation to generation,—with a fertility of genius, easier to he
admired than explained. In Egyptian, Assyrian, and Persian sculpture,
we noticed successive changes in the details, but scarcely any
real and substantial progress. Among all those nations, the rudiments
of art were not materially different from their highest development
; whilst in Greece we are able to trace the history of sculpture
from comparative rudeness to the highest degree of eminence —
human perfectibility, under the rule of freedom, has never befen
more gloriously personified than in the Greek nation.
The question of the origin of Greek art has often been raised in
antiquity as well as in modem times, but the answers are altogether
contradictory.
The celebrated Roman admiral Pliny, a “ dilettante” who compiled
his Hatural History indiscriminately from all the sources accessible
to him, preserved the charming story of the Corinthian girl, who
drew the outline of the shadow of her departing lover’s face on the
wall, and mentions it as the first artistical attempt. Her father he
continues, filled the outline up with clay, and baking it, produced
the. first relief. ¥ e can scarcely doubt that this pretty tale is
°m somo Cfreek epigram, which was popular in the times
of Pliny, for connecting art with love; but it cannot satisfy criticism.
Winckelman, the father of scientific archaeology, deduced the Greek
statue ä priori from the Henna or bust; forgetting that Hermas and
busts, where the head has to represent the whole figure, belong to
the later, reflecting epoch of sculpture. No little boy ever tries to
draw a head alone, nor can he enjoy its representation; he looks
immediately for its complement, the body, without which he thinks
it deficient. Indeed, busts and Hermas remained unknown to the
national art of Egypt and Assyria; moreover, the earliest sculptural
works mentioned by Greek authors are statues, not busts. So are
all the Palladia and Dsedalean works, the outlines and general features
of which are known from, their copies on vases, coins and
gems.164 The types of the earliest coins are figures, though soon
succeeded by heads. Steinbüchel, with apparent plausibility, derives
Greek art from Egypt. Still, it is rather going too far when
he connects its rudiments with the mythical Egyptian immigration
of Cecrops to Attica, and of Danäus to Argos, hypothetically placed
about 1500 b. c., when Egyptian art was highly developed. Whatever
be the truth about the nationality of Cecrops and Danaus, so
much is certain, that imitative art was unknown in Greece for at
least seven centuries after the pretended date of their immigration;
sinee the earliest records of works of art carry us scarcely beyond
the end of the seventh century, b.c., and the earliest works extant
do not* ascend beyond the first half of the sixth century. Indeed,
Greece and Grecians existed a long time before they possessed statuaries.
165 (Plutarch, in Numa, says that images were by the learned
considered symbolical, and deplored. luma, the great Roman lawgiver,
forbade his people to represent Gods in the form of m a n or
beasts; and this injunction was followed for the first 470 years of the
republic.166) Another opinion, that Greek art is a daughter of the
Assyrian, is likewise often hinted at; but, as already mentioned, the
earliest works of Greek sculpture are anterior, by a score of years, to
the bloom of the Lydian empire, by which alone Greece could have
become acquainted with the art of inner Asia. But though we cannot
connect the rudiments of Greek sculpture either with Egypt or Assyria
164 P r o f . E dw a rd G e rh a rd published many of them in his 1 Centurien." .
166 P ausanias, lib. VIII., and XXTT.; and lib. IX.
166 Varro, apud August, de Civit Dei, lib. IV., o, 6:—R. P ayne Knight, Symbolical
language of Ancient A rt and Mythology, London, 1818 p 71
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