Religion and Art in Ancient Greece Part 2

And the sculptors themselves, in the fourth century, show more individuality of style. In the latter part of the fifth century the genius of Phidias had so dominated religious art that the works of his successors, men like Alcamenes and Agoracritus, could hardly be distinguished from his. But the great sculptors of the fourth century, Scopas and Praxiteles and Lysippus, not to mention others of less note, devoted themselves not so much to the expression through perfect physical form of great religious ideals, but to a realisation of the character and, so to speak, the personality of the G.o.ds whom they portrayed. And they did this by the same means by which they expressed in their art the characters and pa.s.sions of heroes or of men, thereby removing the G.o.ds from the sphere of pa.s.sionless benignity and power which is a.s.signed to them by the art of the fifth century. Such a treatment evidently gave more scope for variety in the styles of the sculptors; and although we can sometimes trace the influence of one upon another, yet each clearly shows his own characteristics. We are expressly told of Praxiteles that he showed the most admirable skill in infusing into his marble works the pa.s.sions and emotions of the soul; and the extant remains of the statues made by Scopas and Lysippus show that they also, each in his own way, attained the same results.

If the sculpture of the fifth century was ethical, expressing n.o.ble ideals of character whether in G.o.ds or men, that of the fourth century may be called psychological. It is not content with character; it expresses also mood and even pa.s.sion, and thereby gives more prominence to individuality. At first sight it is not easy to realise how this change came to affect the representations of the G.o.ds. The G.o.ds of Homer are, indeed, full of individual character; but we have seen how in the fifth century, though the greatest sculptors declared it was the G.o.ds of Homer that they represented, these representations were idealised and raised above those human touches in which the individuality is most conspicuous. There was, in the Homeric hymns and in the lyric poets, a delight in details of incident and in personal peculiarities and even in romantic tales about the G.o.ds; and in the fourth century, when the high idealisation of the preceding age is no longer so strong in its influence, we find a similar tendency in art as well. While the great statues of the G.o.ds in the fifth century are almost all represented as either enthroned or standing, not employed in any particular action or function, the most characteristic examples of the statues of G.o.ds made in the fourth century have almost all some definite motive. We may take as an example what was perhaps the most famous statue of antiquity, the Aphrodite by Praxiteles at Cnidus. The G.o.ddess is represented as nude; and it is often said that G.o.ddesses would not have been so represented in the fifth century. It is true that full drapery seems more consistent with the dignified and august figures of Phidian art. But if the religious type had required that Phidias should make a nude G.o.ddess, we may be sure he would have made her naked and unashamed, with no more self-consciousness than a nude Apollo; above all, he would not have thought it necessary to provide a motive for her nudity. With Praxiteles it is otherwise. He represents the G.o.ddess as preparing for the bath, and just letting her last garment slip from her hand on to a vase that stands beside her; and, in addition to this provision of a motive--an excuse, one might almost say--for representing her without her clothes, he hints, from the instinctive gesture of her other hand which she holds before her body, at a half-conscious shrinking from exposure, a feeling of modesty which, however suitable to a woman, is by no means consistent with a high ideal of the G.o.ddess. The face and figure are of extraordinary physical beauty of type, of a breadth and n.o.bility which contrast with the smaller, prettier, and less dignified forms of later art; the gesture, too, has not the conscious coquetry which we see in such a work as the Venus de' Medici. But, on the other hand, we must recognise that the statue represents the G.o.ddess under a human rather than a divine aspect, that even her mood and feeling of timidity are portrayed in a manner which, however charming in itself, is totally inconsistent with her wors.h.i.+p as a great G.o.ddess. We are not surprised to hear that this statue inspired a personal pa.s.sion; she is the G.o.ddess of love, and is represented as not beyond the reach of human attraction; but she is brought down to the level of mortals, rather than capable of raising mortals to a higher sphere by her contemplation. It is the same, though perhaps to a less degree, with other statues of the G.o.ds made in the fourth century. The motives with which the later Greeks went to visit the great statues of the Phidian age were, as we have seen, to a great extent religious, and their contemplation was regarded to some extent as a service; here we have "idolatry" in its highest form. But those who went to see the Aphrodite of Cnidus went chiefly to enjoy the beauty of the statue; and although this may be the best thing from the artistic point of view, it certainly has not the same religious import.

There is another element in the individuality of fourth-century statues which may appeal to modern artists, and which certainly did appeal--in an inverted manner--to early Christian writers of invectives against pagan idolatry. It was said that Phryne had posed as a model for the Cnidian Aphrodite of Praxiteles; and the character of the G.o.ddess was inferred from that of her votary. It is clear that a Greek artist could not have, in the case of a nude female statue, the same choice of types constantly present to his observation and his memory as he had in the case of male statues; and the individuality of the model, however beautiful, would thus tend to a.s.sert itself against the type. Thus personality and individual character, "the ultimate condition of beauty," to use Mr. Ruskin's words, in modern as in Tuscan art, comes much nearer to expression in the fourth century than in the fifth. But a study of such a statue as the Cnidian Aphrodite shows us nevertheless that in the beauty of the type and the avoidance of the accidental, the art of Praxiteles was as far removed from realism as it was from the vague generalisation of Graeco-Roman and modern pseudo-cla.s.sical art. It is full of life and individuality, but it is the individuality of a character realised within his mind by the artist, not merely copied from the human model he set before him.

Another method by which the motive becomes prominent in the art of the fourth century is to be seen in the interpretation of mythological conceptions. These are realised and embodied in statues; but the statues offer a new, sometimes, it seems, almost an accidental and trifling version of a solemn religious conception; it appears as if the artist were playing with a mythological subject. Thus in the statue made by Praxiteles of Apollo Sauroktonos, "the lizard-slayer," the G.o.d stands with an arrow in his hand, as if trying to catch with it a lizard who runs up a tree; it suggests a boyish game rather than the epithet of a G.o.d. Again, the wors.h.i.+p of Artemis Brauronia at Athens was one of the oldest and most sacred cults in the city, and women at marriage and at other critical times of their life used to offer her their garments, thereby bringing themselves into close contact with the G.o.ddess and claiming her special protection, the garments being actually placed on the old image. If, as is probable, the Artemis of Gabii is a copy of the statue subst.i.tuted by Praxiteles for this old image, we see there the G.o.ddess, as a graceful girlish figure, fastening a cloak upon her shoulder. This may be taken as symbolical of the earlier custom of placing the garments on the statue; but we have evidence that the wors.h.i.+ppers were not content with such a symbolic contact, but had the actual garments placed on the new statue as they had been on the old.

Here we have probably a case of unsuccessful subst.i.tution; the artistic representation did not suffice to replace the actual rite. But the representation itself is doubtless intended in a way which, however graceful, does not represent any deep religious feeling; one feels that the artist found the subject a convenient one as an artistic motive, rather than that he had any deep religious idea to express.

We must not, however, go too far in denying religious ideals to the fourth century altogether. Some of the G.o.ds, who came very near to the life of man, but who were nevertheless wors.h.i.+pped with a real belief in their power and benevolence, found at this time their fullest expression in art. An example may be seen in the Demeter of Cnidus, the mother sorrowing for her daughter, whose suffering brings her into close sympathy with human weakness, and whose mysteries, perhaps more than any other h.e.l.lenic service, brought men and women into personal communion with the G.o.ds. We may take as another instance the head of Asclepius from Melos in the British Museum. Here, as Brunn has pointed out in his admirable a.n.a.lysis of its forms, we may recognise not so much the G.o.d as the half-human, half-divine physician, a genial and friendly spirit who persuades rather than commands. The expression is not only intellectual, but has also an infinite gentleness, as of one not himself unacquainted with mortal pain and sorrow; and such a conception, as we know from Christian art, often appeals to those who find the majesty of Zeus too distant, the idea of his G.o.dhead too abstract. In such almost human ideals the individuality of the fourth century finds its full scope, as in other half-human creations of the artist's imagination. Apollo as the inspired musician or--if we accept the derivation of the Apollo Belvedere from a fourth-century original--as the disdainful archer, Hermes, the protector and playmate of his little brother Dionysus, and many other such representations of the G.o.ds in their personal moods and characteristic actions, seem in many ways less divine, less full of religious feeling than such an Asclepius; if the great G.o.ds are brought too near to human pa.s.sions and weaknesses, they cannot but lose much of their divinity.

One might easily multiply examples of similar motives in the statues of the G.o.ds made in the fourth century; but we should find the same underlying principles in all cases. The G.o.ds are indeed more clearly realised as having personal character and individuality, and for this reason they may sometimes inspire keener personal feelings of wors.h.i.+p or even of romantic devotion. But the older and higher conceptions of the G.o.ds, as an essential part of the State religion, and as embodying the ideals of the race or of the city, are no longer to be found, except in a somewhat lifeless continuance of the fifth-century tradition. The intensity of expression which we find in human heroes is, indeed, expressed also in such types as that of Apollo the musician or of Dionysus the G.o.d of inspired enthusiasm. But this tendency is not fully developed until a later age. The subtle distinctions of character between the different G.o.ds are, on the other hand, now most keenly observed and most skilfully rendered. But in spite of this, one does not feel that the artist has the same belief in the G.o.ds and in their power as we can see in the Phidian age. If his artistic attainment is possibly more skilful, the religious import of his work is certainly less.

CHAPTER VII

PERSONIFICATION, CONVENTION, AND SYMBOLISM

In the h.e.l.lenistic age we find the Greek types of the G.o.ds adapting themselves to new conditions and new meanings. With the conquests of Alexander, Greek language and civilisation spread over the Eastern world; and with them went the artistic forms of the Greek pantheon, though often to be modified by local beliefs or influences. Similarly, when at a later time the Roman conquest of Greece spread h.e.l.lenic influence to the West, there also the types of the Greek deities came to be adopted or adapted to new mythological meanings. Greek art practically became cosmopolitan; its influence was broadened; but at the same time its essential nature, in its harmony with the imagination of the h.e.l.lenic race, was lost or obscured. It becomes more intelligible to us for this very reason, but at the same time less instructive in its relation to religious conceptions.

In the art of the h.e.l.lenistic and Graeco-Roman age we find two main tendencies, the one towards academic generalisation, and the other towards excessive realism, often coupled with a theatrical or sensational treatment. This latter is the more interesting to us, partly because it is in itself more original, partly because it is more in accordance with modern artistic practice. The two tendencies are by no means rigidly distinguished; for example, we often find a theatrical treatment combined with academic work; and throughout are to be seen traces of eclecticism--that is to say, of the habit of imitating or reproducing, often in an unintelligent manner, the devices and even the style of earlier art. It does not follow that no great works of art were made in the h.e.l.lenistic age; the fine traditions of the fifth and fourth centuries were not easily lost. But the inspiration of the subject, so far as it still exists, comes from new and different sources.

If we consider first the statues of the older G.o.ds of Greece, we often find in them the individualistic tendencies of the fourth century carried to a further pitch--sometimes to an extreme--in the sentimental or pa.s.sionate works of the h.e.l.lenistic age; there is often something affected or dramatic about them, as if they were not merely realised as expressing their individual character in their mood or action, but acting their part as the representative of such a character; in fact, they tend to embody impersonations rather than to express personalities.

One might almost repeat here much that has been said about the G.o.ds in the fourth century, but that there is often, in this case, a touch of exaggeration which is avoided by the finer artistic instinct and appreciation of harmony that mark the work of earlier sculptors; and joined with this we often find a love of display and a seeking after effect which imply that the artist thinks more of his skill than of the idea he is striving to express.

We can trace in the h.e.l.lenistic age not only the traditions of earlier art, but the direct influence of the masters of the fourth century, the Praxitelean cult of beauty for its own sake, the pa.s.sion and dramatic force of Scopas, and the preference for allegorical subjects and for statues of colossal size which we may see, as well as many higher qualities, in the art of Lysippus. We have already noticed how in the Apollo Belvedere there is an impression of theatrical posing which was probably either introduced by the copyist or at any rate much exaggerated by him in imitating an earlier type; and how in the Venus de' Medici we find a crude insistence on a gesture of mock modesty which is a mere travesty of the hint at half-conscious shrinking from exposure which we see in the Cnidian Aphrodite. Even in a statue which, like the Aphrodite of Melos, shows an endeavour to return to the n.o.bler ideals and more dignified and simple forms of an earlier age, there is something artificial and conventional about both figure and drapery; and one feels that the sculptor, though both his aims and his attainments are of the highest, is trying rather to reflect the best influences of his predecessors than to embody a present religious conception.

The influence upon art of religious personifications is perhaps stronger than any other during this period. There had, indeed, been such personifications at an earlier time, such as the statue by Cephisodotus of Peace nursing the infant Wealth. The most interesting example of such personification may be seen in the figures of cities, or, to speak more accurately, of the Fortunes of cities, such as the Antioch of Eutychides. The influence of the city or state upon religious art was conspicuous in the fifth century; but here we find the city itself or its presiding genius represented in a statue which seems at first sight a mere allegory of its situation. The way in which the figure is seated, half turned on herself, and with her feet resting upon the shoulder of the river that swims below her, seems to suggest an artificially invented symbolism; yet we are expressly told that this statue received great veneration from the natives of the district. In the decay of the belief in the G.o.ds, there seems to have been a craving for nearer and more real objects of wors.h.i.+p.

We can see the same tendency in a more extreme form in the deification of human beings. Though some examples of this occur earlier, especially in the case of the heroes or founders of cities, these are not placed on a level with the G.o.ds; but the wors.h.i.+p of Alexander, and in imitation of him, of his successors, placed him in a distinctly divine rank. It is difficult to say how far this was due to non-h.e.l.lenic influences. In the case of Alexander, with his marvellous, almost superhuman achievements, and his final solution of the great drama of the contest of East and West, such idealisation is easy to understand; and we find not only that Alexander is himself represented as a G.o.d, but that his expression and cast of features come to affect the sculpture of his age, even in the representations of the G.o.ds themselves. On coins, too, his head occurs; an honour that before his time was not given to mere mortals. In other cases this wors.h.i.+p of men reached a pitch which was a matter of shame to the later Greeks; thus Demetrius Poliorcetes, when he gave Athens back her freedom, was welcomed at the city with divine honours. Even hymns were composed in his honour, of which we find specimens preserved.[7]

After welcoming his advent at the same time as that of Demeter, the poet addresses him thus:--"Other G.o.ds are either far away, or they have no ears, or they exist not, or have no care for us. But we see thee, a present deity, not of wood or stone, but real; therefore we pray to thee." It is true that such materialistic and atheistic expressions were probably reprobated by many at the time, as well as by later writers; but the mere possibility of their public enunciation shows how far the Athenians had gone from their old religious beliefs.

[Footnote 7: Athen., VI, 63.]

Allegorical impersonations, such as that of Antioch, are religious conceptions of a high order compared to this. Nevertheless, one feels that such impersonations can have no separate divine existence apart from the city or the people whom they represent. They are on a different plane of religious belief from Athena, for example, as the G.o.ddess of the city. The G.o.ddess was, indeed, in some ways representative of what was best in her chosen people; but she was not a mere symbol of its character and its greatness. She existed before it, and would continue though it should disappear from the earth, unlike the Fortune of Antioch, whose very existence was bound up with that of the city she represented.

Another example of personification may be seen in the rec.u.mbent figures of river-G.o.ds--notably that of the Nile, with his sixteen cubits, as babies, playing around him. River-G.o.ds were indeed an object of wors.h.i.+p from early times in Greece, and so appear on coins and elsewhere; but this figure of the Nile, a product of Alexandrian art, is not like the earlier G.o.ds, who were looked upon as the givers of increase and fertility; it is a mere allegorical impersonation of the river, such as might be made by a modern artist who made no pretence to believe in the existence of such an anthropomorphic river-G.o.d. It cannot be counted as religious art at all. And the attributes and accessories of such a figure, the crocodile and hippopotamus, the sphinx and corn and horn of plenty, are all of them symbolic allusions such as are suitable to such a frigid personification. The art of Alexandria is full of such devices; that of Pergamon is more vigorous and dramatic; but in both alike we find the influence of a learned study of mythology, full of quaint and far-fetched allusions and symbols. The culmination of this learned mythology is to be seen in the great altar of Pergamon, on which the G.o.ds who are in combat with the giants include not only all figures, appropriate and inappropriate, from the h.e.l.lenic pantheon, but many other deities whose right of admission to that pantheon is more than doubtful. The figures of the G.o.ds no longer correspond to the belief in any real divinities, but are either mere artistic types, repeated again and again in accordance with convention, or else they are regarded as symbols representing different aspects of divine power.

Symbolism of this kind is a common symptom of the decay of religious faith. The more thoughtful or educated cla.s.ses, who follow the speculations of philosophers as to the nature of the deity, find it possible to reconcile these speculations with the forms of popular religion by accepting the forms in a symbolic sense. The common people, on the other hand, finding the old forms inadequate to satisfy their religious aspirations, import new and strange divinities, whose cult is often mixed with magic or mystic rites. Here, too, the symbols have a meaning other than what appears to the uninitiated eye, and the province of art, which approaches the mind through the senses, is closely circ.u.mscribed. A statue or other work of art which needs explanation of its allusions, which does not express an ideal that appeals directly to the imagination of the people, has lost touch with religion, and cannot to any appreciable extent influence it or be influenced by it. The age of idolatry in the higher sense, of a religious imagination that enables the artist to bring the people nearer to their G.o.ds, or even the G.o.ds nearer to the heart of the people, has pa.s.sed away, and in its place we find either a superst.i.tious clinging to the magic power of the early objects of wors.h.i.+p, or a mere acceptance, as conventional symbols, of forms that bear no direct relation to anything that is believed in as real.

Our brief historical survey has shown us how the Greeks, starting from a belief, such as is common to many primitive religions, in the superhuman powers or sanct.i.ty of certain objects, were enabled by their vivid anthropomorphic imagination first to think of the G.o.ds as in like form to themselves, and then to make their images in human shape. And as their art progressed towards the power of making a physical type of perfect beauty to serve as the means of expression of this "human form divine," and also to skill in expressing character by means of human features and figures, it became possible for them to embody in their great statues the various ideals of divinity which belonged to their chief G.o.ds. Here the skill of the artist would have availed little or nothing if he had not shared with the people for whom he worked a belief in the reality of these ideals, not merely as philosophic aspects of the divine nature, but as real beings who were able to help and to inspire, and to manifest themselves to their wors.h.i.+ppers in this human form. The next step is towards an even more vivid realisation of the personality of the G.o.ds; but by bringing them nearer to human level it made the wors.h.i.+p of their images less easy to accept in a literal sense to the more thoughtful, while such wors.h.i.+p tended, with the common people, to enter upon a more material and less exalted phase. The result was a tendency towards symbolism in which the symbol itself was regarded as a mere convention, and the inspiration and actual communion with men, vouchsafed by the G.o.ds through their ideal images, was no longer sought after. When any means of communion between G.o.d and man, whether by means of a solemn service or by means of an image which the G.o.d himself accepts as his earthly representative, ceases to be felt as anything more than a human device, its religious power must fail. When, on the other hand, we find a union of religion and art to provide a means for this divine intercourse, we may recognise idolatry in its highest form, the use of images not merely as accessories of religious service, but as providing in themselves a channel of wors.h.i.+p and inspiration.

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CRETE, THE FORERUNNER OF GREECE BY C. H. Hawes, M.A. & Harriet B. Hawes, M.A.

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Algernon Charles Swinburne THREE PLAYS OF SHAKESPEARE

Leo Tolstoy THE TEACHING OF JESUS

W. M. Flinders Petrie PERSONAL RELIGION IN EGYPT BEFORE CHRISTIANITY

Sir Oliver Lodge, F.R.S.

THE ETHER OF s.p.a.cE. _Ill.u.s.trated_

Prof. William Wrede (University of Breslau) THE ORIGIN OF THE NEW TESTAMENT

Prof. C. H. Becker (Colonial Inst.i.tute, Hamburg) CHRISTIANITY AND ISLAM

Prof. Svante Arrhenius (n.o.bel Inst.i.tute, Stockholm) THE LIFE OF THE UNIVERSE. 2 vols. _Ill.u.s.trated_

Prof. Arnold Meyer (University of Zurich) JESUS OR PAUL?

Prof. D. A. Bertholet (University of Basle) THE TRANSMIGRATION OF SOULS

Prof. Reinhold Seeberg (University of Berlin) REVELATION AND INSPIRATION

Prof. Johannes Weiss (University of Heidelberg) PAUL AND JESUS

Prof. Rudolf Eucken (University of Jena) CHRISTIANITY AND THE NEW IDEALISM

Prof. P. Vinogradoff (Oxford University) ROMAN LAW IN MEDIAEVAL EUROPE

Sir William Crookes, LL.D., F.R.S.

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C. H. Hawes, M.A., and Harriet Boyd Hawes, M.A.

CRETE, THE FORERUNNER OF GREECE

Sir William A. Tilden. F.R.S.

THE ELEMENTS: SPECULATIONS AS TO THEIR NATURE AND ORIGIN