added to the head to designate Demetrius as the son of Neptune;
whilst in order to combine the horn with the human features, the hair
was carved stiff, reminding one of the rigidity of a hull’s hair.
Equally grand is the portrait of Perseus [53], the last king of Macedonia,
on a cornelian cameo in the imperial library at Paris.181 It so
much resembles some ancient hero, that
for a considerable time it was taken for
an ideal head of Ulysses. Indeed, if we
wish to get real Hellenic portraits, we
must leave the territory of Greece, and
seek for them among the more realistic
nations pervaded by Hellenism, amid
whom Greek art descended from the
loftier heights of imaginative beauty, to
tread the humbler paths of reality.
Hitherto no actual portrait has been discovered
belonging to the times of republican
Greece. The following beautiful
head [54] on an Asiatic silver coin, in the
British Museum, which bears the simple
inscription BA 2 lA E fi2 , (the coin) “ of the
■king,” is with the greatest plausibility
attributed to the younger Cyrus : the die
being sunk by some Ionian, Greek at the
time when this Satrap of Asia Minor rose
in rebellion against his brother Arta-
xerxes, and assumed the title of the king.
Still, the features can scarcely be fairly
taken for a portrait; they are altogether
ideal, in fact the embellished representation
of the purest Arian type.
Fig. 53.
Fig. 54.
The’ aboriginal barbarism of the remoter provinces of the Macedonian
empire,—which was strongly modified, but never entirely
overcome by the civilization of the conquerors,—renders the history
of Hellenism in Asia, after the death of Alexander, most instructive.
It is recorded on the relies of its art, especially on. the coins of those
Greek dynasties which were not surrounded by Greek populations.
From the shores of the Euxine to the confines of India, they proclaim
the supremacy of Greek genius. Still, Hellenism maintains
its glory only there where a continuous, uninterrupted, finflux of
Greek elements keeps up the original blood and spirit of the con-
181 M i l l i n , Monuments Inédits., 1, XIX; and Frontispiece to the Bulletin archéol. de VAthenaeum
Français of June, 1855.
querors, as for instance at the court of the Seleucid® at Antioch, and
of the Ptolemies at Alexandria. But here the degeneration of the
royal houses could not destroy the fertility of Hellenic art; though in
all the countries which were locally separated from Greece, Hellenism
declined, and went over into barbarism so soon as the original Greek
blood of the conquerors was amalgamated with, and absorbed by
native intermixture.
The coins of the kingdom of Bactria give the most striking illustration
of this general rule. During the wars between the Seleucidee
and the Ptolemies, Theodotus, the governor of Bactria about the
middle:of the third century, B.C., declared himself independent of
Syria, and founded the Greek dynasty of the Bactrian kingdom.
About the same time the Parthians rose likewise in revolt against
Antiochus Theos, and their success cut the Bactrians off from
Greece proper, and even from the Grecians of Syria. Still, for about
a century, Greek art beyond the Ilindqo Kush did not decline.
The portrait of king Eucratides, king of Bactria, b . c. 170 [55], is,
on the coins, a most creditable specimen of the taste and workmanship
of his. artists.182 The isolation of the royal fanfily, however, and
its remoteness from Greece and from Hellenic influences, unavoidably
brought about a relapse into barbarism. King Hermseus, lord
of Bactria, b . c. 98 [56], on a coin in the British Museum; is, aecord-
Fis- 55 Fig. 56. Fig<57t
mg to' his features, apparently a descendant of Heliocles; but the
workmanship of the coin is heavy and coarse, and after seeing it we
can scarcely be surprised at learning that his dynasty was soon
superseded by rude Turanian invaders, who, having no alphabet of
eir own, maintained at' first the Greek,, and then adopted the
Indian letters and language. In the execution of the types of their
coins, they exhibit the rudest barbarism. King Kadphyses [57],
182 For these and other examples, o f. W i l s o n , Ariana Anliqua, London, 1841.