The sense of beauty was not yet sufficiently developed among
Greek artists ; but it is remarkable that even in its rudiments Greek
art, unlike the Egyptian,17? had nothing to do with portraits; it was
not the king, but the hero and the god who became the objects of
the artist’s creation, blot less striking is the complete absence of
the landscape in Grecian art. The human form and: animated nature
are for the Greek the exclusive object of representation; accordingly,
he personifies day and night, the sun and the moon, time and the
seasons, the earth-and the sea, the mountains and the rivers; he gives
them the features of men; but the human figure he draws is always
a type of the race, not the effigy of an individual.
The peculiar archaic type, characterized by the elongated form of
the nose, and the prominent and somewhat pointed chin, maintained
itself up to the time of Phidias, preserving the characteristic features
of the early Hellenes. We find the same profile on the coins of Dorian
and of Ionian States, in Sicily, in Attica, and in Asia Minor.
The following heads will sufficiently explain our statement. Fig.
Fig. 43. Fig. 44.
A t h e n ia n M in e r v a . (Pulszky Coll.)
43 is the type of the Athenian tetradrachms. Fig. 44 is the enlarged
copy of a Corinthian silver coin. The following wood-cut is taken
from the coins of Phocsea, in Ionia [45]; whilst Fig. 46 is copied
from one of the statues on the pediment pf the temple of kEgina,
dedicated to Jupiter Panhellenius—the god of all the Greeks—-soon
after the battle of Salamis (Olymp. 75).
173 [The art of each represents the instinctive genius of the two people, as diverse in
intellect as in blood.
“ -ffigyptiaca numinum fana plena plangoribus,
Grseca plerumque choreis ”—
says Apuleitts [De Genio. Socral. ) ; which is just the difference between Old and New England
puritanism and South European catholicity.—G. R. G.]
Fis- 45' Fig. 46.
_ The mythical victory of the united states of Hellas over the Trojans,
supported by all their Asiatic kin, represented on the pediment
of this temple, was intended to symbolize the recent victory of the
Greeks over the Asiatic host of Xerxes.
One generation more carries us at once to the glorious time of
Pericles and Phidias, to the highest development of ideal grandeur,
as seen on the sculptures of the Parthenon, never surpassed by
human art,—the beauty, pride and triumph of youthful Greece lives
m them. We might have taken one of the Parthenon fragments
m the British Museum, which, although the nose is mutilated, would
give an idea of the genius of Phidias. But artistic eminence was
not confined to Attica alone; in Argos and Sicyon, in Sicily and in
Grsecia Magna, m Ionia and Cyrene, sculptors and painters grew up
second to none but to Phidias. For more than one century, down to
the time of Alexander of Macedon, all the intestine wars, revolutions
and temporary oppressions, could not arrest the majestic flow of
Greek art, characterized by freedom and ideal beauty. The head
of a child [48] from a Lycian relief,174 and of a warrior, [49] from a
monument of Iconium175 (Koniah) in Lycaonia, show that Hellenic art
flourished even in those countries where the bulk of the nation was
not Greek, though we ought not to forget that all those monuments
were evidently the work of Hellenic artists; for, as Cicero justly
remarks, all the lands of the “barbarians” had a fringe of Greek
countries where they reached the sea.175 The sculptures of Lydia,
1M Texier, Asie Mineure, III, pi. 226.
175 Texier, Armenief II, pi. 84. — 1.
H H P f l 1V> - omniarum vero, qua est, deducta a Graji* . . . . quam unda non
* Ita barbarorum agris gxiasi adtexta videtur ora esse Grcecice.