{"collection":"myth-cosmogony","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_4035/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_4035","id":"gutenberg_4035","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/4035","summary":null,"tags":["Art, Greek","Category: Architecture","Category: Art","Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Mythology, Legends & Folklore","Greece","Greek drama -- History and criticism","Mythology, Greek"],"text":"Ver.07/27/01*END*\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nProduced by Alfred J. Drake, Ph.D.\n\n\n\n\n\nGREEK STUDIES: A SERIES OF ESSAYS\n\nBy WALTER HORATIO PATER\n\nE-text Editor: Alfred J. Drake, Ph.D.\nElectronic Version 1.0 / Date 10-17-01\n\n\nDISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES\n\n[1] I DISCLAIM ALL LIABILITY TO YOU FOR DAMAGES, COSTS AND\nEXPENSES, INCLUDING LEGAL FEES, AND\n\n[2] YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE OR UNDER STRICT LIABILITY, OR\nFOR BREACH OF WARRANTY OR CONTRACT, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO\nINDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR INCIDENTAL DAMAGES, EVEN IF YOU\nGIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES.\n\nTHE E-TEXTS ON THIS SITE ARE PROVIDED TO YOU \"AS-IS\".  NO WARRANTIES\nOF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, ARE MADE TO YOU AS TO THE E-TEXTS OR\nANY MEDIUM THEY MAY BE ON, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF\nMERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.\n\nSome states do not allow disclaimers of implied warranties or the\nexclusion or limitation of consequential damages, so the above\ndisclaimers and exclusions may not apply to you, and you may have\nother legal rights.\n\n\n\nGREEK STUDIES: A SERIES OF ESSAYS\nWALTER HORATIO PATER\n\nNOTES BY THE E-TEXT EDITOR:\n\nReliability: Although I have done my best to ensure that the text you\nread is error-free in comparison with an exact reprint of the\nstandard edition--Macmillan's 1910 Library Edition--please exercise\nscholarly caution in using it.  It is not intended as a substitute\nfor the printed original but rather as a searchable supplement.  My\ne-texts may prove convenient substitutes for hard-to-get works in a\ncourse where both instructor and students accept the possibility of\nsome imperfections in the text, but if you are writing a scholarly\narticle, dissertation, or book, you should use the standard hard-copy\neditions of any works you cite.\n\nPagination and Paragraphing: To avoid an unwieldy electronic copy, I\nhave transferred original pagination to brackets.  A bracketed\nnumeral such as [22] indicates that the material immediately\nfollowing the number marks the beginning of the relevant page.  I\nhave preserved paragraph structure except for first-line indentation.\n\nHyphenation: I have not preserved original hyphenation since an e-\ntext does not require line-end or page-end hyphenation.\n\nGreek typeface: For this full-text edition, I have transliterated\nPater's Greek quotations.  If there is a need for the original Greek,\nit can be viewed at my site, http://www.ajdrake.com/etexts, a\nVictorianist archive that contains the complete works of Walter Pater\nand many other nineteenth-century texts, mostly in first editions.\n\n\n\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\n\n\n\nGREEK STUDIES: A SERIES OF ESSAYS\n\nWALTER PATER\n\nLondon: Macmillan, 1910. (The Library Edition.)\n\nE-text Editor: Alfred J. Drake, Ph.D.\n\nElectronic Version 1.0 / Date 10-12-01\n\nDisclaimer of Damages for All Texts on This Web\n\nE-text Editor's Note\n\nPreface by Charles Shadwell\n\nA Study of Dionysus: The Spiritual Form of Fire and Dew: 9-52\n\nThe Bacchanals of Euripides: 53-80\n\nThe Myth of Demeter and Persephone I. 81-112\n\nThe Myth of Demeter and Persephone II. 113-151\n\nHippolytus Veiled: A Study from Euripides: 152-186\n\nThe Beginnings of Greek Sculpture--I. The Heroic Age of Greek Art:\n187-223\n\nThe Beginnings of Greek Sculpture--II. The Age of Graven Images: 224-\n250\n\nThe Marbles of Aegina: 251-268\n\nThe Age of Athletic Prizemen: A Chapter in Greek Art: 269-end\n\n\n\n\n\nPREFACE BY CHARLES L. SHADWELL\n\n[1] THE present volume consists of a collection of essays by the\nlate Mr. Pater, all of which have already been given to the public in\nvarious Magazines; and it is owing to the kindness of the several\nproprietors of those Magazines that they can now be brought together\nin a collected shape.  It will, it is believed, be felt, that their\nvalue is considerably enhanced by their appearance in a single\nvolume, where they can throw light upon one another, and exhibit by\ntheir connexion a more complete view of the scope and purpose of Mr.\nPater in dealing with the art and literature of the ancient world.\n\nThe essays fall into two distinct groups, one dealing with the\nsubjects of Greek mythology and Greek poetry, the other with the\nhistory of Greek sculpture and Greek architecture.  But these two\ngroups are not wholly distinct; they mutually illustrate one another,\nand serve to enforce Mr. Pater's conception of the essential [2]\nunity, in all its many-sidedness, of the Greek character.  The god\nunderstood as the \"spiritual form\" of the things of nature is not\nonly the key-note of the \"Study of Dionysus\"* and \"The Myth of\nDemeter and Persephone,\"* but reappears as contributing to the\ninterpretation of the growth of Greek sculpture.*  Thus, though in\nthe bibliography of his writings, the two groups are separated by a\nconsiderable interval, there is no change of view; he had already\nreached the centre of the problem, and, the secret once gained, his\nmode of treatment of the different aspects of Greek life and thought\nis permanent and consistent.\n\nThe essay on \"The Myth of Demeter and Persephone\" was originally\nprepared as two lectures, for delivery, in 1875, at the Birmingham\nand Midland Institute.  These lectures were published in the\nFortnightly Review, in Jan. and Feb. 1876.  The \"Study of Dionysus\"\nappeared in the same Review in Dec. 1876.  \"The Bacchanals of\nEuripides\" must have been written about the same time, as a sequel to\nthe \"Study of Dionysus\"; for, in 1878, Mr. Pater revised the four\nessays, with the intention, apparently, of publishing them\ncollectively in a volume, an intention afterwards abandoned. [3] The\ntext now printed has, except that of \"The Bacchanals,\" been taken\nfrom proofs then set up, further corrected in manuscript.  \"The\nBacchanals,\" written long before, was not published until 1889, when\nit appeared in Macmillan's Magazine for May.  It was reprinted,\nwithout alteration, prefixed to Dr. Tyrrell's edition of the Bacchae.\n\"Hippolytus Veiled\" first appeared in August 1889, in Macmillan's\nMagazine.  It was afterwards rewritten, but with only a few\nsubstantial alterations, in Mr. Pater's own hand, with a view,\nprobably, of republishing it with other essays.  This last revise has\nbeen followed in the text now printed.\n\nThe papers on Greek sculpture* are all that remain of a series which,\nif Mr. Pater had lived, would, probably, have grown into a still more\nimportant work.  Such a work would have included one or more essays\non Phidias and the Parthenon, of which only a fragment, though an\nimportant fragment, can be found amongst his papers; and it was to\nhave been prefaced by an Introduction to Greek Studies, only a page\nor two of which was ever written.\n\n[4] This is not the place to speak of Mr. Pater's private virtues,\nthe personal charm of his character, the brightness of his talk, the\nwarmth of his friendship, the devotion of his family life.  But a few\nwords may be permitted on the value of the work by which he will be\nknown to those who never saw him.\n\nPersons only superficially acquainted, or by hearsay, with his\nwritings, are apt to sum up his merits as a writer by saying that he\nwas a master, or a consummate master of style; but those who have\nreally studied what he wrote do not need to be told that his\ndistinction does not lie in his literary grace alone, his fastidious\nchoice of language, his power of word-painting, but in the depth and\nseriousness of his studies.  That the amount he has produced, in a\nliterary life of thirty years, is not greater, is one proof among\nmany of the spirit in which he worked.  His genius was \"an infinite\ncapacity for taking pains.\"  That delicacy of insight, that gift of\npenetrating into the heart of things, that subtleness of\ninterpretation, which with him seems an instinct, is the outcome of\nhard, patient, conscientious study.  If he had chosen, he might,\nwithout difficulty, have produced a far greater body of work of less\nvalue; and from a worldly point of view, he would have been wise.\nSuch was not his understanding [5] of the use of his talents.  Cui\nmultum datum est, multum quaeretur ab eo.  Those who wish to\nunderstand the spirit in which he worked, will find it in this\nvolume.  C.L.S.\n\nOct. 1894.\n\nNOTES\n\n2. *See p. 34.\n\n2. *See p. 100.\n\n2. *See pp. 220, 254.\n\n3. *\"The Beginnings of Greek Sculpture\" was published in the\nFortnightly Review, Feb. and March 1880; \"The Marbles of Aegina\" in\nthe same Review in April.  \"The Age of Athletic Prizemen\" was\npublished in the Contemporary Review in February of the present year.\n\n\n\n\n\nA STUDY OF DIONYSUS:\nTHE SPIRITUAL FORM OF FIRE AND DEW\n\n[9] WRITERS on mythology speak habitually of the religion of the\nGreeks.  In thus speaking, they are really using a misleading\nexpression, and should speak rather of religions; each race and class\nof Greeks--the Dorians, the people of the coast, the fishers--having\nhad a religion of its own, conceived of the objects that came nearest\nto it and were most in its thoughts, and the resulting usages and\nideas never having come to have a precisely harmonised system, after\nthe analogy of some other religions.  The religion of Dionysus is the\nreligion of people who pass their lives among the vines.  As the\nreligion of Demeter carries us back to the cornfields and farmsteads\nof Greece, and places us, in fancy, among a primitive race, in the\nfurrow and beside the granary; so the religion of Dionysus carries us\nback to its vineyards, and is a monument of the ways and thoughts of\npeople whose days go by beside the winepress, and [10] under the\ngreen and purple shadows, and whose material happiness depends on the\ncrop of grapes.  For them the thought of Dionysus and his circle, a\nlittle Olympus outside the greater, covered the whole of life, and\nwas a complete religion, a sacred representation or interpretation of\nthe whole human experience, modified by the special limitations, the\nspecial privileges of insight or suggestion, incident to their\npeculiar mode of existence.\n\nNow, if the reader wishes to understand what the scope of the\nreligion of Dionysus was to the Greeks who lived in it, all it\nrepresented to them by way of one clearly conceived yet complex\nsymbol, let him reflect what the loss would be if all the effect and\nexpression drawn from the imagery of the vine and the cup fell out of\nthe whole body of existing poetry; how many fascinating trains of\nreflexion, what colour and substance would therewith have been\ndeducted from it, filled as it is, apart from the more aweful\nassociations of the Christian ritual, apart from Galahad's cup, with\nall the various symbolism of the fruit of the vine.  That supposed\nloss is but an imperfect measure of all that the name of Dionysus\nrecalled to the Greek mind, under a single imaginable form, an\noutward body of flesh presented to the senses, and comprehending, as\nits animating soul, a whole world of thoughts, surmises, greater and\nless experiences.\n\n[11] The student of the comparative science of religions finds in the\nreligion of Dionysus one of many modes of that primitive tree-worship\nwhich, growing out of some universal instinctive belief that trees\nand flowers are indeed habitations of living spirits, is found almost\neverywhere in the earlier stages of civilisation, enshrined in legend\nor custom, often graceful enough, as if the delicate beauty of the\nobject of worship had effectually taken hold on the fancy of the\nworshipper.  Shelley's Sensitive Plant shows in what mists of\npoetical reverie such feeling may still float about a mind full of\nmodern lights, the feeling we too have of a life in the green world,\nalways ready to assert its claim over our sympathetic fancies.  Who\nhas not at moments felt the scruple, which is with us always\nregarding animal life, following the signs of animation further\nstill, till one almost hesitates to pluck out the little soul of\nflower or leaf?\n\nAnd in so graceful a faith the Greeks had their share; what was crude\nand inane in it becoming, in the atmosphere of their energetic,\nimaginative intelligence, refined and humanised.  The oak-grove of\nDodona, the seat of their most venerable oracle, did but perpetuate\nthe fancy that the sounds of the wind in the trees may be, for\ncertain prepared and chosen ears, intelligible voices; they could\nbelieve in the transmigration of souls into mulberry and laurel, mint\nand hyacinth; and the dainty Metamorphoses of Ovid [12] are but a\nfossilised form of one morsel here and there, from a whole world of\ntransformation, with which their nimble fancy was perpetually\nplaying.  \"Together with them,\" says the Homeric hymn to Aphrodite,\nof the Hamadryads, the nymphs which animate the forest trees, \"with\nthem, at the moment of their birth, grew up out of the soil, oak-tree\nor pine, fair, flourishing among the mountains.  And when at last the\nappointed hour of their death has come, first of all, those fair\ntrees are dried up; the bark perishes from around them, and the\nbranches fall away; and therewith the soul of them deserts the light\nof the sun.\"+\n\nThese then are the nurses of the vine, bracing it with interchange of\nsun and shade.  They bathe, they dance, they sing songs of\nenchantment, so that those who seem oddly in love with nature, and\nstrange among their fellows, are still said to be nympholepti; above\nall, they are weavers or spinsters, spinning or weaving with airiest\nfingers, and subtlest, many-coloured threads, the foliage of the\ntrees, the petals of flowers, the skins of the fruit, the long thin\nstalks on which the poplar leaves are set so lightly that Homer\ncompares to them, in their constant motion, the maids who sit\nspinning in the house of Alcinous.  The nymphs of Naxos, where the\ngrape-skin is darkest, weave for him a purple robe.  Only, the ivy is\nnever transformed, is visible as natural ivy to the last, pressing\nthe [13] dark outline of its leaves close upon the firm, white, quite\nhuman flesh of the god's forehead.\n\nIn its earliest form, then, the religion of Dionysus presents us with\nthe most graceful phase of this graceful worship, occupying a place\nbetween the ruder fancies of half-civilised people concerning life in\nflower or tree, and the dreamy after-fancies of the poet of the\nSensitive Plant.  He is the soul of the individual vine, first; the\nyoung vine at the house-door of the newly married, for instance, as\nthe vine-grower stoops over it, coaxing and nursing it, like a pet\nanimal or a little child; afterwards, the soul of the whole species,\nthe spirit of fire and dew, alive and leaping in a thousand vines, as\nthe higher intelligence, brooding more deeply over things, pursues,\nin thought, the generation of sweetness and strength in the veins of\nthe tree, the transformation of water into wine, little by little;\nnoting all the influences upon it of the heaven above and the earth\nbeneath; and shadowing forth, in each pause of the process, an\nintervening person--what is to us but the secret chemistry of nature\nbeing to them the mediation of living spirits.  So they passed on to\nthink of Dionysus (naming him at last from the brightness of the sky\nand the moisture of the earth) not merely as the soul of the vine,\nbut of all that life in flowing things of which the vine is the\nsymbol, because its most emphatic example.  At Delos he bears a son,\nfrom whom [14] in turn spring the three mysterious sisters Oeno,\nSpermo, and Elais, who, dwelling in the island, exercise respectively\nthe gifts of turning all things at will into oil, and corn, and wine.\nIn the Bacchae of Euripides, he gives his followers, by miracle,\nhoney and milk, and the water gushes for them from the smitten rock.\nHe comes at last to have a scope equal to that of Demeter, a realm as\nwide and mysterious as hers; the whole productive power of the earth\nis in him, and the explanation of its annual change.  As some embody\ntheir intuitions of that power in corn, so others in wine.  He is the\ndispenser of the earth's hidden wealth, giver of riches through the\nvine, as Demeter through the grain.  And as Demeter sends the airy,\ndainty-wheeled and dainty-winged spirit of Triptolemus to bear her\ngifts abroad on all winds, so Dionysus goes on his eastern journey,\nwith its many intricate adventures, on which he carries his gifts to\nevery people.\n\nA little Olympus outside the greater, I said, of Dionysus and his\ncompanions; he is the centre of a cycle, the hierarchy of the\ncreatures of water and sunlight in many degrees; and that fantastic\nsystem of tree-worship places round him, not the fondly whispering\nspirits of the more graceful inhabitants of woodland only, the nymphs\nof the poplar and the pine, but the whole satyr circle, intervening\nbetween the headship of the vine and the mere earth, the grosser,\nless human [15] spirits, incorporate and made visible, of the more\ncoarse and sluggish sorts of vegetable strength, the fig, the reed,\nthe ineradicable weed-things which will attach themselves, climbing\nabout the vine-poles, or seeking the sun between the hot stones.  For\nas Dionysus, the spiritual form of the vine, is of the highest human\ntype, so the fig-tree and the reed have animal souls, mistakeable in\nthe thoughts of a later, imperfectly remembering age, for mere\nabstractions of animal nature; Snubnose, and Sweetwine, and Silenus,\nthe oldest of them all, so old that he has come to have the gift of\nprophecy.\n\nQuite different from them in origin and intent, but confused with\nthem in form, are those other companions of Dionysus, Pan and his\nchildren.  Home-spun dream of simple people, and like them in the\nuneventful tenour of his existence, he has almost no story; he is but\na presence; the spiritual form of Arcadia, and the ways of human life\nthere; the reflexion, in sacred image or ideal, of its flocks, and\norchards, and wild honey; the dangers of its hunters; its weariness\nin noonday heat; its children, agile as the goats they tend, who run,\nin their picturesque rags, across the solitary wanderer's path, to\nstartle him, in the unfamiliar upper places; its one adornment and\nsolace being the dance to the homely shepherd's pipe, cut by Pan\nfirst from the sedges of the brook Molpeia.\n\nBreathing of remote nature, the sense of which [16] is so profound in\nthe Homeric hymn to Pan, the pines, the foldings of the hills, the\nleaping streams, the strange echoings and dying of sound on the\nheights, \"the bird, which among the petals of many-flowered spring,\npouring out a dirge, sends forth her honey-voiced song,\" \"the crocus\nand the hyacinth disorderly mixed in the deep grass\"+--things which\nthe religion of Dionysus loves--Pan joins the company of the Satyrs.\nAmongst them, they give their names to insolence and mockery, and the\nfiner sorts of malice, to unmeaning and ridiculous fear.  But the\nbest spirits have found in them also a certain human pathos, as in\ndisplaced beings, coming even nearer to most men, in their very\nroughness, than the noble and delicate person of the vine; dubious\ncreatures, half-way between the animal and human kinds, speculating\nwistfully on their being, because not wholly understanding themselves\nand their place in nature; as the animals seem always to have this\nexpression to some noticeable degree in the presence of man.  In the\nlater school of Attic sculpture they are treated with more and more\nof refinement, till in some happy moment Praxiteles conceived a\nmodel, often repeated, which concentrates this sentiment of true\nhumour concerning them; a model of dainty natural ease in posture,\nbut with the legs slightly crossed, as only lowly-bred gods are used\nto carry them, and with some puzzled trouble of youth, you might wish\nfor a moment [17] to smoothe away, puckering the forehead a little,\nbetween the pointed ears, on which the goodly hair of his animal\nstrength grows low.  Little by little, the signs of brute nature are\nsubordinated, or disappear; and at last, Robetta, a humble Italian\nengraver of the fifteenth century, entering into the Greek fancy\nbecause it belongs to all ages, has expressed it in its most\nexquisite form, in a design of Ceres and her children, of whom their\nmother is no longer afraid, as in the Homeric hymn to Pan.  The puck-\nnoses have grown delicate, so that, with Plato's infatuated lover,\nyou may call them winsome, if you please; and no one would wish those\nhairy little shanks away, with which one of the small Pans walks at\nher side, grasping her skirt stoutly; while the other, the sick or\nweary one, rides in the arms of Ceres herself, who in graceful\nItalian dress, and decked airily with fruit and corn, steps across a\ncountry of cut sheaves, pressing it closely to her, with a child's\npeevish trouble in its face, and its small goat-legs and tiny hoofs\nfolded over together, precisely after the manner of a little child.\n\nThere is one element in the conception of Dionysus, which his\nconnexion with the satyrs, Marsyas being one of them, and with Pan,\nfrom whom the flute passed to all the shepherds of Theocritus, alike\nillustrates, his interest, namely, in one of the great species of\nmusic.  One form of that wilder vegetation, of which the Satyr race\nis the soul made visible, is the reed, which [18] the creature plucks\nand trims into musical pipes.  And as Apollo inspires and rules over\nall the music of strings, so Dionysus inspires and rules over all the\nmusic of the reed, the water-plant, in which the ideas of water and\nof vegetable life are brought close together, natural property,\ntherefore, of the spirit of life in the green sap.  I said that the\nreligion of Dionysus was, for those who lived in it, a complete\nreligion, a complete sacred representation and interpretation of the\nwhole of life; and as, in his relation to the vine, he fills for them\nthe place of Demeter, is the life of the earth through the grape as\nshe through the grain, so, in this other phase of his being, in his\nrelation to the reed, he fills for them the place of Apollo; he is\nthe inherent cause of music and poetry; he inspires; he explains the\nphenomena of enthusiasm, as distinguished by Plato in the Phaedrus,\nthe secrets of possession by a higher and more energetic spirit than\none's own, the gift of self-revelation, of passing out of oneself\nthrough words, tones, gestures.  A winged Dionysus, venerated at\nAmyclae, was perhaps meant to represent him thus, as the god of\nenthusiasm, of the rising up on those spiritual wings, of which also\nwe hear something in the Phaedrus of Plato.\n\nThe artists of the Renaissance occupied themselves much with the\nperson and the story of Dionysus; and Michelangelo, in a work still\nremaining in Florence, in which he essayed [19] with success to\nproduce a thing which should pass with the critics for a piece of\nancient sculpture, has represented him in the fulness, as it seems,\nof this enthusiasm, an image of delighted, entire surrender to\ntransporting dreams.  And this is no subtle after-thought of a later\nage, but true to certain finer movements of old Greek sentiment,\nthough it may seem to have waited for the hand of Michelangelo before\nit attained complete realisation.  The head of Ion leans, as they\nrecline at the banquet, on the shoulder of Charmides; he mutters in\nhis sleep of things seen therein, but awakes as the flute-players\nenter, whom Charmides has hired for his birthday supper.  The soul of\nCallias, who sits on the other side of Charmides, flashes out; he\ncounterfeits, with life-like gesture, the personal tricks of friend\nor foe; or the things he could never utter before, he finds words for\nnow; the secrets of life are on his lips.  It is in this loosening of\nthe lips and heart, strictly, that Dionysus is the Deliverer,\nEleutherios; and of such enthusiasm, or ecstasy, is, in a certain\nsense, an older patron than Apollo himself.  Even at Delphi, the\ncentre of Greek inspiration and of the religion of Apollo, his claim\nalways maintained itself; and signs are not wanting that Apollo was\nbut a later comer there.  There, under his later reign, hard by the\ngolden image of Apollo himself, near the sacred tripod on which the\nPythia sat to prophesy, was to be seen a strange object--a sort [20]\nof coffin or cinerary urn with the inscription, \"Here lieth the body\nof Dionysus, the son of Semele.\"  The pediment of the great temple\nwas divided between them--Apollo with the nine Muses on that side,\nDionysus, with perhaps three times three Graces, on this.  A third of\nthe whole year was held sacred to him; the four winter months were\nthe months of Dionysus; and in the shrine of Apollo itself he was\nworshipped with almost equal devotion.\n\nThe religion of Dionysus takes us back, then, into that old Greek\nlife of the vineyards, as we see it on many painted vases, with much\nthere as we should find it now, as we see it in Bennozzo Gozzoli's\nmediaeval fresco of the Invention of Wine in the Campo Santo at Pisa-\n-the family of Noah presented among all the circumstances of a Tuscan\nvineyard, around the press from which the first wine is flowing, a\npainted idyll, with its vintage colours still opulent in decay, and\nnot without its solemn touch of biblical symbolism.  For differences,\nwe detect in that primitive life, and under that Greek sky, a nimbler\nplay of fancy, lightly and unsuspiciously investing all things with\npersonal aspect and incident, and a certain mystical apprehension,\nnow almost departed, of unseen powers beyond the material veil of\nthings, corresponding to the exceptional vigour and variety of the\nGreek organisation.  This peasant life lies, in unhistoric time,\nbehind the definite forms with which poetry and a refined [21]\npriesthood afterwards clothed the religion of Dionysus; and the mere\nscenery and circumstances of the vineyard have determined many things\nin its development.  The noise of the vineyard still sounds in some\nof his epithets, perhaps in his best-known name--Iacchus, Bacchus.\nThe masks suspended on base or cornice, so familiar an ornament in\nlater Greek architecture, are the little faces hanging from the\nvines, and moving in the wind, to scare the birds.  That garland of\nivy, the aesthetic value of which is so great in the later imagery of\nDionysus and his descendants, the leaves of which, floating from his\nhair, become so noble in the hands of Titian and Tintoret, was\nactually worn on the head for coolness; his earliest and most sacred\nimages were wrought in the wood of the vine.  The people of the\nvineyard had their feast, the little or country Dionysia, which still\nlived on, side by side with the greater ceremonies of a later time,\ncelebrated in December, the time of the storing of the new wine.  It\nwas then that the potters' fair came, calpis and amphora, together\nwith lamps against the winter, laid out in order for the choice of\nbuyers; for Keramus, the Greek Vase, is a son of Dionysus, of wine\nand of Athene, who teaches men all serviceable and decorative art.\nThen the goat was killed, and its blood poured out at the root of the\nvines; and Dionysus literally drank the blood of goats; and, being\nGreeks, with quick and mobile sympathies, [22] deisidaimones,+\n\"superstitious,\" or rather \"susceptible of religious impressions,\"\nsome among them, remembering those departed since last year, add yet\na little more, and a little wine and water for the dead also;\nbrooding how the sense of these things might pass below the roots, to\nspirits hungry and thirsty, perhaps, in their shadowy homes.  But the\ngaiety, that gaiety which Aristophanes in the Acharnians has depicted\nwith so many vivid touches, as a thing of which civil war had\ndeprived the villages of Attica, preponderates over the grave.  The\ntravelling country show comes round with its puppets; even the slaves\nhave their holiday;* the mirth becomes excessive; they hide their\nfaces under grotesque masks of bark, or stain them with wine-lees, or\npotters' crimson even, like the old rude idols painted red; and carry\nin midnight procession such rough symbols of the productive force of\nnature as the women and children had best not look upon; which will\nbe frowned upon, and refine themselves, or disappear, in the feasts\nof cultivated Athens.\n\nOf the whole story of Dionysus, it was the episode of his marriage\nwith Ariadne about which ancient art concerned itself oftenest, and\nwith most effect.  Here, although the antiquarian [23] may still\ndetect circumstances which link the persons and incidents of the\nlegend with the mystical life of the earth, as symbols of its annual\nchange, yet the merely human interest of the story has prevailed over\nits earlier significance; the spiritual form of fire and dew has\nbecome a romantic lover.  And as a story of romantic love, fullest\nperhaps of all the motives of classic legend of the pride of life, it\nsurvived with undiminished interest to a later world, two of the\ngreatest masters of Italian painting having poured their whole power\ninto it; Titian with greater space of ingathered shore and mountain,\nand solemn foliage, and fiery animal life; Tintoret with profounder\nluxury of delight in the nearness to each other, and imminent\nembrace, of glorious bodily presences; and both alike with consummate\nbeauty of physical form.  Hardly less humanised is the Theban legend\nof Dionysus, the legend of his birth from Semele, which, out of the\nentire body of tradition concerning him, was accepted as central by\nthe Athenian imagination.  For the people of Attica, he comes from\nBoeotia, a country of northern marsh and mist, but from whose sombre,\nblack marble towns came also the vine, the musical reed cut from its\nsedges, and the worship of the Graces, always so closely connected\nwith the religion of Dionysus.  \"At Thebes alone,\" says Sophocles,\n\"mortal women bear immortal gods.\"  His mother is the daughter of\nCadmus, himself marked out by [24] many curious circumstances as the\nclose kinsman of the earth, to which he all but returns at last, as\nthe serpent, in his old age, attesting some closer sense lingering\nthere of the affinity of man with the dust from whence he came.\nSemele, an old Greek word, as it seems, for the surface of the earth,\nthe daughter of Cadmus, beloved by Zeus, desires to see her lover in\nthe glory with which he is seen by the immortal Hera.  He appears to\nher in lightning.  But the mortal may not behold him and live.\nSemele gives premature birth to the child Dionysus; whom, to preserve\nit from the jealousy of Hera, Zeus hides in a part of his thigh, the\nchild returning into the loins of its father, whence in due time it\nis born again.  Yet in this fantastic story, hardly less than in the\nlegend of Ariadne, the story of Dionysus has become a story of human\npersons, with human fortunes, and even more intimately human appeal\nto sympathy; so that Euripides, pre-eminent as a poet of pathos,\nfinds in it a subject altogether to his mind.  All the interest now\nturns on the development of its points of moral or sentimental\nsignificance; the love of the immortal for the mortal, the\npresumption of the daughter of man who desires to see the divine form\nas it is; on the fact that not without loss of sight, or life itself,\ncan man look upon it.  The travail of nature has been transformed\ninto the pangs of the human mother; and the poet dwells much on the\npathetic incident of death in childbirth, making [25] Dionysus, as\nCallimachus calls him, a seven months' child, cast out among its\nenemies, motherless.  And as a consequence of this human interest,\nthe legend attaches itself, as in an actual history, to definite\nsacred objects and places, the venerable relic of the wooden image\nwhich fell into the chamber of Semele with the lightning-flash, and\nwhich the piety of a later age covered with plates of brass; the Ivy-\nFountain near Thebes, the water of which was so wonderfully bright\nand sweet to drink, where the nymphs bathed the new-born child; the\ngrave of Semele, in a sacred enclosure grown with ancient vines,\nwhere some volcanic heat or flame was perhaps actually traceable,\nnear the lightning-struck ruins of her supposed abode.\n\nYet, though the mystical body of the earth is forgotten in the human\nanguish of the mother of Dionysus, the sense of his essence of fire\nand dew still lingers in his most sacred name, as the son of Semele,\nDithyrambus.  We speak of a certain wild music in words or rhythm as\ndithyrambic, like the dithyrambus, that is, the wild choral-singing\nof the worshippers of Dionysus.  But Dithyrambus seems to have been,\nin the first instance, the name, not of the hymn, but of the god to\nwhom the hymn is sung; and, through a tangle of curious etymological\nspeculations as to the precise derivation of this name, one thing\nseems clearly visible, that it commemorates, namely, the double birth\nof the vine-god; that [26] he is born once and again; his birth,\nfirst of fire, and afterwards of dew; the two dangers that beset him;\nhis victory over two enemies, the capricious, excessive heats and\ncolds of spring.\n\nHe is pyrigen\u00eas,+ then, fire-born, the son of lightning; lightning\nbeing to light, as regards concentration, what wine is to the other\nstrengths of the earth.  And who that has rested a hand on the\nglittering silex of a vineyard slope in August, where the pale globes\nof sweetness are lying, does not feel this?  It is out of the bitter\nsalts of a smitten, volcanic soil that it comes up with the most\ncurious virtues.  The mother faints and is parched up by the heat\nwhich brings the child to the birth; and it pierces through, a wonder\nof freshness, drawing its everlasting green and typical coolness out\nof the midst of the ashes; its own stem becoming at last like a\ntangled mass of tortured metal.  In thinking of Dionysus, then, as\nfire-born, the Greeks apprehend and embody the sentiment, the poetry,\nof all tender things which grow out of a hard soil, or in any sense\nblossom before the leaf, like the little mezereon-plant of English\ngardens, with its pale-purple, wine-scented flowers upon the leafless\ntwigs in February, or like the almond-trees of Tuscany, or Aaron's\nrod that budded, or the staff in the hand of the Pope when\nTannh\u00e4user's repentance is accepted.\n\nAnd his second birth is of the dew.  The fire of which he was born\nwould destroy him in [27] his turn, as it withered up his mother; a\nsecond danger comes; from this the plant is protected by the\ninfluence of the cooling cloud, the lower part of his father the sky,\nin which it is wrapped and hidden, and of which it is born again, its\nsecond mother being, in some versions of the legend, Hy\u00e9--the Dew.\nThe nursery, where Zeus places it to be brought up, is a cave in\nMount Nysa, sought by a misdirected ingenuity in many lands, but\nreally, like the place of the carrying away of Persephone, a place of\nfantasy, the oozy place of springs in the hollow of the hillside,\nnowhere and everywhere, where the vine was \"invented.\"  The nymphs of\nthe trees overshadow it from above; the nymphs of the springs sustain\nit from below--the Hyades, those first leaping maenads, who, as the\nsprings become rain-clouds, go up to heaven among the stars, and\ndescend again, as dew or shower, upon it; so that the religion of\nDionysus connects itself, not with tree-worship only, but also with\nancient water-worship, the worship of the spiritual forms of springs\nand streams.  To escape from his enemies Dionysus leaps into the sea,\nthe original of all rain and springs, whence, in early summer, the\nwomen of Elis and Argos were wont to call him, with the singing of a\nhymn.  And again, in thus commemorating Dionysus as born of the dew,\nthe Greeks apprehend and embody the sentiment, the poetry, of water.\nFor not the heat only, but its solace--the freshness of the [28] cup-\n-this too was felt by those people of the vineyard, whom the prophet\nMelampus had taught to mix always their wine with water, and with\nwhom the watering of the vines became a religious ceremony; the very\ndead, as they thought, drinking of and refreshed by the stream.  And\nwho that has ever felt the heat of a southern country does not know\nthis poetry, the motive of the loveliest of all the works attributed\nto Giorgione, the F\u00eate Champ\u00eatre in the Louvre; the intense\nsensations, the subtle and far-reaching symbolisms, which, in these\nplaces, cling about the touch and sound and sight of it?  Think of\nthe darkness of the well in the breathless court, with the delicate\nring of ferns kept alive just within the opening; of the sound of the\nfresh water flowing through the wooden pipes into the houses of\nVenice, on summer mornings; of the cry Acqua fr\u00e9sca! at Padua or\nVerona, when the people run to buy what they prize, in its rare\npurity, more than wine, bringing pleasures so full of exquisite\nappeal to the imagination, that, in these streets, the very beggars,\none thinks, might exhaust all the philosophy of the epicurean.\n\nOut of all these fancies comes the vine-growers' god, the spiritual\nform of fire and dew.  Beyond the famous representations of Dionysus\nin later art and poetry--the Bacchanals of Euripides, the statuary of\nthe school of Praxiteles--a multitude of literary allusions and local\n[29] customs carry us back to this world of vision unchecked by\npositive knowledge, in which the myth is begotten among a primitive\npeople, as they wondered over the life of the thing their hands\nhelped forward, till it became for them a kind of spirit, and their\nculture of it a kind of worship.  Dionysus, as we see him in art and\npoetry, is the projected expression of the ways and dreams of this\nprimitive people, brooded over and harmonised by the energetic Greek\nimagination; the religious imagination of the Greeks being,\nprecisely, a unifying or identifying power, bringing together things\nnaturally asunder, making, as it were, for the human body a soul of\nwaters, for the human soul a body of flowers; welding into something\nlike the identity of a human personality the whole range of man's\nexperiences of a given object, or series of objects--all their\noutward qualities, and the visible facts regarding them--all the\nhidden ordinances by which those facts and qualities hold of unseen\nforces, and have their roots in purely visionary places.\n\nDionysus came later than the other gods to the centres of Greek life;\nand, as a consequence of this, he is presented to us in an earlier\nstage of development than they; that element of natural fact which is\nthe original essence of all mythology being more unmistakeably\nimpressed upon us here than in other myths.  Not the least\ninteresting point in the study of him is, that he illustrates very\nclearly, not only the [30] earlier, but also a certain later\ninfluence of this element of natural fact, in the development of the\ngods of Greece.  For the physical sense, latent in it, is the clue,\nnot merely to the original signification of the incidents of the\ndivine story, but also to the source of the peculiar imaginative\nexpression which its persons subsequently retain, in the forms of the\nhigher Greek sculpture.  And this leads me to some general thoughts\non the relation of Greek sculpture to mythology, which may help to\nexplain what the function of the imagination in Greek sculpture\nreally was, in its handling of divine persons.\n\nThat Zeus is, in earliest, original, primitive intention, the open\nsky, across which the thunder sometimes sounds, and from which the\nrain descends--is a fact which not only explains the various stories\nrelated concerning him, but determines also the expression which he\nretained in the work of Pheidias, so far as it is possible to recall\nit, long after the growth of those later stories had obscured, for\nthe minds of his worshippers, his primary signification.  If men\nfelt, as Arrian tells us, that it was a calamity to die without\nhaving seen the Zeus of Olympia; that was because they experienced\nthe impress there of that which the eye and the whole being of man\nlove to find above him; and the genius of Pheidias had availed to\nshed, upon the gold and ivory of the physical form, the blandness,\nthe breadth, the smile of the open sky; the mild [31] heat of it\nstill coming and going, in the face of the father of all the children\nof sunshine and shower; as if one of the great white clouds had\ncomposed itself into it, and looked down upon them thus, out of the\nmidsummer noonday: so that those things might be felt as warm, and\nfresh, and blue, by the young and the old, the weak and the strong,\nwho came to sun themselves in the god's presence, as procession and\nhymn rolled on, in the fragrant and tranquil courts of the great\nOlympian temple; while all the time those people consciously\napprehended in the carved image of Zeus none but the personal, and\nreally human, characteristics.\n\nOr think, again, of the Zeus of Dodona.  The oracle of Dodona, with\nits dim grove of oaks, and sounding instruments of brass to husband\nthe faintest whisper in the leaves, was but a great consecration of\nthat sense of a mysterious will, of which people still feel, or seem\nto feel, the expression, in the motions of the wind, as it comes and\ngoes, and which makes it, indeed, seem almost more than a mere symbol\nof the spirit within us.  For Zeus was, indeed, the god of the winds\nalso; Aeolus, their so-called god, being only his mortal minister, as\nhaving come, by long study of them, through signs in the fire and the\nlike, to have a certain communicable skill regarding them, in\nrelation to practical uses.  Now, suppose a Greek sculptor to have\nproposed to himself to present [32] to his worshippers the image of\nthis Zeus of Dodona, who is in the trees and on the currents of the\nair.  Then, if he had been a really imaginative sculptor, working as\nPheidias worked, the very soul of those moving, sonorous creatures\nwould have passed through his hand, into the eyes and hair of the\nimage; as they can actually pass into the visible expression of those\nwho have drunk deeply of them; as we may notice, sometimes, in our\nwalks on mountain or shore.\n\nVictory again--Nik\u00e9--associated so often with Zeus--on the top of his\nstaff, on the foot of his throne, on the palm of his extended hand--\nmeant originally, mythologic science tells us, only the great victory\nof the sky, the triumph of morning over darkness.  But that physical\nmorning of her origin has its ministry to the later aesthetic sense\nalso.  For if Nik\u00e9, when she appears in company with the mortal, and\nwholly fleshly hero, in whose chariot she stands to guide the horses,\nor whom she crowns with her garland of parsley or bay, or whose names\nshe writes on a shield, is imaginatively conceived, it is because the\nold skyey influences are still not quite suppressed in her clear-set\neyes, and the dew of the morning still clings to her wings and her\nfloating hair.\n\nThe office of the imagination, then, in Greek sculpture, in its\nhandling of divine persons, is thus to condense the impressions of\nnatural things into human form; to retain that early mystical sense\nof water, or wind, or light, in the [33] moulding of eye and brow; to\narrest it, or rather, perhaps, to set it free, there, as human\nexpression.  The body of man, indeed, was for the Greeks, still the\ngenuine work of Prometheus; its connexion with earth and air asserted\nin many a legend, not shaded down, as with us, through innumerable\nstages of descent, but direct and immediate; in precise contrast to\nour physical theory of our life, which never seems to fade, dream\nover it as we will, out of the light of common day.  The oracles with\ntheir messages to human intelligence from birds and springs of water,\nor vapours of the earth, were a witness to that connexion.  Their\nstory went back, as they believed, with unbroken continuity, and in\nthe very places where their later life was lived, to a past,\nstretching beyond, yet continuous with, actual memory, in which\nheaven and earth mingled; to those who were sons and daughters of\nstars, and streams, and dew; to an ancestry of grander men and women,\nactually clothed in, or incorporate with, the qualities and\ninfluences of those objects; and we can hardly over-estimate the\ninfluence on the Greek imagination of this mythical connexion with\nthe natural world, at not so remote a date, and of the solemnising\npower exercised thereby over their thoughts.  In this intensely\npoetical situation, the historical Greeks, the Athenians of the age\nof Pericles, found themselves; it was as if the actual roads on which\nmen daily walk, went up and on, into a visible wonderland.\n\n[34] With such habitual impressions concerning the body, the physical\nnature of man, the Greek sculptor, in his later day, still free in\nimagination, through the lingering influence of those early dreams,\nmay have more easily infused into human form the sense of sun, or\nlightning, or cloud, to which it was so closely akin, the spiritual\nflesh allying itself happily to mystical meanings, and readily\nexpressing seemingly unspeakable qualities.  But the human form is a\nlimiting influence also; and in proportion as art impressed human\nform, in sculpture or in the drama, on the vaguer conceptions of the\nGreek mind, there was danger of an escape from them of the free\nspirit of air, and light, and sky.  Hence, all through the history of\nGreek art, there is a struggle, a Streben, as the Germans say,\nbetween the palpable and limited human form, and the floating essence\nit is to contain.  On the one hand, was the teeming, still fluid\nworld, of old beliefs, as we see it reflected in the somewhat\nformless theogony of Hesiod; a world, the Titanic vastness of which\nis congruous with a certain sublimity of speech, when he has to\nspeak, for instance, of motion or space; as the Greek language itself\nhas a primitive copiousness and energy of words, for wind, fire,\nwater, cold, sound--attesting a deep susceptibility to the\nimpressions of those things--yet with edges, most often, melting into\neach other.  On the other hand, there was that limiting, controlling\ntendency, [35] identified with the Dorian influence in the history of\nthe Greek mind, the spirit of a severe and wholly self-conscious\nintelligence; bent on impressing everywhere, in the products of the\nimagination, the definite, perfectly conceivable human form, as the\nonly worthy subject of art; less in sympathy with the mystical\ngenealogies of Hesiod, than with the heroes of Homer, ending in the\nentirely humanised religion of Apollo, the clearly understood\nhumanity of the old Greek warriors in the marbles of Aegina.  The\nrepresentation of man, as he is or might be, became the aim of\nsculpture, and the achievement of this the subject of its whole\nhistory; one early carver had opened the eyes, another the lips, a\nthird had given motion to the feet; in various ways, in spite of the\nretention of archaic idols, the genuine human expression had come,\nwith the truthfulness of life itself.\n\nThese two tendencies, then, met and struggled and were harmonised in\nthe supreme imagination, of Pheidias, in sculpture--of Aeschylus, in\nthe drama.  Hence, a series of wondrous personalities, of which the\nGreek imagination became the dwelling-place; beautiful, perfectly\nunderstood human outlines, embodying a strange, delightful, lingering\nsense of clouds and water and sun.  Such a world, the world of really\nimaginative Greek sculpture, we still see, reflected in many a humble\nvase or battered coin, in Bacchante, and Centaur, and Amazon; [36]\nevolved out of that \"vasty deep\"; with most command, in the\nconsummate fragments of the Parthenon; not, indeed, so that he who\nruns may read, the gifts of Greek sculpture being always delicate,\nand asking much of the receiver; but yet visible, and a pledge to us,\nof creative power, as, to the worshipper, of the presence, which,\nwithout that material pledge, had but vaguely haunted the fields and\ngroves.\n\nThis, then, was what the Greek imagination did for men's sense and\nexperience of natural forces, in Athene, in Zeus, in Poseidon; for\nmen's sense and experience of their own bodily qualities--swiftness,\nenergy, power of concentrating sight and hand and foot on a momentary\nphysical act--in the close hair, the chastened muscle, the perfectly\npoised attention of the quoit-player; for men's sense, again, of\nethical qualities--restless idealism, inward vision, power of\npresence through that vision in scenes behind the experience of\nordinary men--in the idealised Alexander.\n\nTo illustrate this function of the imagination, as especially\ndeveloped in Greek art, we may reflect on what happens with us in the\nuse of certain names, as expressing summarily, this name for you and\nthat for me--Helen, Gretchen, Mary--a hundred associations, trains of\nsound, forms, impressions, remembered in all sorts of degrees, which,\nthrough a very wide and full experience, they have the power of\nbringing with [37] them; in which respect, such names are but\nrevealing instances of the whole significance, power, and use of\nlanguage in general.  Well,--the mythical conception, projected at\nlast, in drama or sculpture, is the name, the instrument of the\nidentification, of the given matter,--of its unity in variety, its\noutline or definition in mystery; its spiritual form, to use again\nthe expression I have borrowed from William Blake--form, with hands,\nand lips, and opened eyelids--spiritual, as conveying to us, in that,\nthe soul of rain, or of a Greek river, or of swiftness, or purity.\n\nTo illustrate this, think what the effect would be, if you could\nassociate, by some trick of memory, a certain group of natural\nobjects, in all their varied perspective, their changes of colour and\ntone in varying light and shade, with the being and image of an\nactual person.  You travelled through a country of clear rivers and\nwide meadows, or of high windy places, or of lowly grass and willows,\nor of the Lady of the Lake; and all the complex impressions of these\nobjects wound themselves, as a second animated body, new and more\nsubtle, around the person of some one left there, so that they no\nlonger come to recollection apart from each other.  Now try to\nconceive the image of an actual person, in whom, somehow, all those\nimpressions of the vine and its fruit, as the highest type of the\nlife of the green sap, had become incorporate;--all the scents and\ncolours of its flower and fruit, and [38] something of its curling\nfoliage; the chances of its growth; the enthusiasm, the easy flow of\nmore choice expression, as its juices mount within one; for the image\nis eloquent, too, in word, gesture, and glancing of the eyes, which\nseem to be informed by some soul of the vine within it: as Wordsworth\nsays,\n\nBeauty born of murmuring sound\nShall pass into her face--\n\nso conceive an image into which the beauty, \"born\" of the vine, has\npassed; and you have the idea of Dionysus, as he appears, entirely\nfashioned at last by central Greek poetry and art, and is consecrated\nin the Oinophoria and the Anthest\u00earia,+ the great festivals of the\nWinepress and the Flowers.\n\nThe word wine, and with it the germ of the myth of Dionysus, is older\nthan the separation of the Indo-Germanic race.  Yet, with the people\nof Athens, Dionysus counted as the youngest of the gods; he was also\nthe son of a mortal, dead in childbirth, and seems always to have\nexercised the charm of the latest born, in a sort of allowable\nfondness.  Through the fine-spun speculations of modern ethnologists\nand grammarians, noting the changes in the letters of his name, and\ncatching at the slightest historical records of his worship, we may\ntrace his coming from Phrygia, the birthplace of the more mystical\nelements of [39] Greek religion, over the mountains of Thrace.  On\nthe heights of Pangaeus he leaves an oracle, with a perpetually\nburning fire, famous down to the time of Augustus, who reverently\nvisited it.  Southwards still, over the hills of Parnassus, which\nremained for the inspired women of Boeotia the centre of his\npresence, he comes to Thebes, and the family of Cadmus.  From Boeotia\nhe passes to Attica; to the villages first; at last to Athens; at an\nassignable date, under Peisistratus; out of the country, into the\ntown.\n\nTo this stage of his town-life, that Dionysus of \"enthusiasm\" already\nbelonged; it was to the Athenians of the town, to urbane young men,\nsitting together at the banquet, that those expressions of a sudden\neloquence came, of the loosened utterance and finer speech, its\ncolour and imagery.  Dionysus, then, has entered Athens, to become\nurbane like them; to walk along the marble streets in frequent\nprocession, in the persons of noble youths, like those who at the\nOschophoria bore the branches of the vine from his temple, to the\ntemple of Athene of the Parasol, or of beautiful slaves; to\ncontribute through the arts to the adornment of life, yet perhaps\nalso in part to weaken it, relaxing ancient austerity.  Gradually,\nhis rough country feasts will be outdone by the feasts of the town;\nand as comedy arose out of those, so these will give rise to tragedy.\nFor his entrance upon this new stage of his career, his coming into\nthe town, is from the [40] first tinged with melancholy, as if in\nentering the town he had put off his country peace.  The other\nOlympians are above sorrow.  Dionysus, like a strenuous mortal hero,\nlike Hercules or Perseus, has his alternations of joy and sorrow, of\nstruggle and hard-won triumph.  It is out of the sorrows of Dionysus,\nthen,--of Dionysus in winter--that all Greek tragedy grows; out of\nthe song of the sorrows of Dionysus, sung at his winter feast by the\nchorus of satyrs, singers clad in goat-skins, in memory of his rural\nlife, one and another of whom, from time to time, steps out of the\ncompany to emphasise and develope this or that circumstance of the\nstory; and so the song becomes dramatic.  He will soon forget that\nearly country life, or remember it but as the dreamy background of\nhis later existence.  He will become, as always in later art and\npoetry, of dazzling whiteness; no longer dark with the air and sun,\nbut like one eskiatrof\u00eak\u00f4s+--brought up under the shade of Eastern\nporticoes or pavilions, or in the light that has only reached him\nsoftened through the texture of green leaves; honey-pale, like the\ndelicate people of the city, like the flesh of women, as those old\nvase-painters conceive of it, who leave their hands and faces\nuntouched with the pencil on the white clay.  The ruddy god of the\nvineyard, stained with wine-lees, or coarser colour, will hardly\nrecognise his double, in the white, graceful, mournful figure,\nweeping, chastened, lifting up his arms in yearning+ [41] affection\ntowards his late-found mother, as we see him on a famous Etruscan\nmirror.  Only, in thinking of this early tragedy, of these town-\nfeasts, and of the entrance of Dionysus into Athens, you must\nsuppose, not the later Athens which is oftenest in our thoughts, the\nAthens of Pericles and Pheidias; but that little earlier Athens of\nPeisistratus, which the Persians destroyed, which some of us perhaps\nwould rather have seen, in its early simplicity, than the greater\none; when the old image of the god, carved probably out of the stock\nof an enormous vine, had just come from the village of Eleutherae to\nhis first temple in the Lenaeum--the quarter of the winepresses, near\nthe Limnae--the marshy place, which in Athens represents the cave of\nNysa; its little buildings on the hill-top, still with steep rocky\nways, crowding round the ancient temple of Erechtheus and the grave\nof Cecrops, with the old miraculous olive-tree still growing there,\nand the old snake of Athene Polias still alive somewhere in the\ntemple court.\n\nThe artists of the Italian Renaissance have treated Dionysus many\ntimes, and with great effect, but always in his joy, as an embodiment\nof that glory of nature to which the Renaissance was a return.  But\nin an early engraving of Mocetto there is for once a Dionysus treated\ndifferently.  The cold light of the background displays a barren\nhill, the bridge and towers of [42] an Italian town, and quiet water.\nIn the foreground, at the root of a vine, Dionysus is sitting, in a\nposture of statuesque weariness; the leaves of the vine are grandly\ndrawn, and wreathing heavily round the head of the god, suggest the\nnotion of his incorporation into it.  The right hand, holding a great\nvessel languidly and indifferently, lets the stream of wine flow\nalong the earth; while the left supports the forehead, shadowing\nheavily a face, comely, but full of an expression of painful\nbrooding.  One knows not how far one may really be from the mind of\nthe old Italian engraver, in gathering from his design this\nimpression of a melancholy and sorrowing Dionysus.  But modern\nmotives are clearer; and in a Bacchus by a young Hebrew painter, in\nthe exhibition of the Royal Academy of 1868, there was a complete and\nvery fascinating realisation of such a motive; the god of the\nbitterness of wine, \"of things too sweet\"; the sea-water of the\nLesbian grape become somewhat brackish in the cup.  Touched by the\nsentiment of this subtler, melancholy Dionysus, we may ask whether\nanything similar in feeling is to be actually found in the range of\nGreek ideas;--had some antitype of this fascinating figure any place\nin Greek religion?  Yes; in a certain darker side of the double god\nof nature, obscured behind the brighter episodes of Thebes and Naxos,\nbut never quite forgotten, something corresponding to this deeper,\nmore refined idea, [43] really existed--the conception of Dionysus\nZagreus; an image, which has left, indeed, but little effect in Greek\nart and poetry, which criticism has to put patiently together, out of\nlate, scattered hints in various writers; but which is yet\ndiscernible, clearly enough to show that it really visited certain\nGreek minds here and there; and discernible, not as a late after-\nthought, but as a tradition really primitive, and harmonious with the\noriginal motive of the idea of Dionysus.  In its potential, though\nunrealised scope, it is perhaps the subtlest dream in Greek religious\npoetry, and is, at least, part of the complete physiognomy of\nDionysus, as it actually reveals itself to the modern student, after\na complete survey.\n\nThe whole compass of the idea of Dionysus, a dual god of both summer\nand winter, became ultimately, as we saw, almost identical with that\nof Demeter.  The Phrygians believed that the god slept in winter and\nawoke in summer, and celebrated his waking and sleeping; or that he\nwas bound and imprisoned in winter, and unbound in spring.  We saw\nhow, in Elis and at Argos, the women called him out of the sea, with\nthe singing of hymns, in early spring; and a beautiful ceremony in\nthe temple at Delphi, which, as we know, he shares with Apollo,\ndescribed by Plutarch, represents his mystical resurrection.  Yearly,\nabout the time of the shortest day, just as the light begins to\nincrease, [44] and while hope is still tremulously strung, the\npriestesses of Dionysus were wont to assemble with many lights at his\nshrine, and there, with songs and dances, awoke the new-born child\nafter his wintry sleep, waving in a sacred cradle, like the great\nbasket used for winnowing corn, a symbolical image, or perhaps a real\ninfant.  He is twofold then--a D\u00f6ppelganger; like Persephone, he\nbelongs to two worlds, and has much in common with her, and a full\nshare of those dark possibilities which, even apart from the story of\nthe rape, belong to her.  He is a Chthonian god, and, like all the\nchildren of the earth, has an element of sadness; like Hades himself,\nhe is hollow and devouring, an eater of man's flesh--sarcophagus--the\ngrave which consumed unaware the ivory-white shoulder of Pelops.\n\nAnd you have no sooner caught a glimpse of this image, than a certain\nperceptible shadow comes creeping over the whole story; for, in\neffect, we have seen glimpses of the sorrowing Dionysus, all along.\nPart of the interest of the Theban legend of his birth is that he\ncomes of the marriage of a god with a mortal woman; and from the\nfirst, like merely mortal heroes, he falls within the sphere of human\nchances.  At first, indeed, the melancholy settles round the person\nof his mother, dead in childbirth, and ignorant of the glory of her\nson; in shame, according to Euripides; punished, as her own sisters\nallege, for impiety.  The death of Semele [45] is a sort of ideal or\ntype of this peculiar claim on human pity, as the descent of\nPersephone into Hades, of all human pity over the early death of\nwomen.  Accordingly, his triumph being now consummated, he descends\ninto Hades, through the unfathomable Alcyonian lake, according to the\nmost central version of the legend, to bring her up from thence; and\nthat Hermes, the shadowy conductor of souls, is constantly associated\nwith Dionysus, in the story of his early life, is not without\nsignificance in this connexion.  As in Delphi the winter months were\nsacred to him, so in Athens his feasts all fall within the four\nmonths on this and the other side of the shortest day; as Persephone\nspends those four months--a third part of the year--in Hades.  Son or\nbrother of Persephone he actually becomes at last, in confused, half-\ndeveloped tradition; and even has his place, with his dark sister, in\nthe Eleusinian mysteries, as Iacchus; where, on the sixth day of the\nfeast, in the great procession from Athens to Eleusis, we may still\nrealise his image, moving up and down above the heads of the vast\nmultitude, as he goes, beside \"the two,\" to the temple of Demeter,\namid the light of torches at noonday.\n\nBut it was among the mountains of Thrace that this gloomier element\nin the being of Dionysus had taken the strongest hold.  As in the\nsunny villages of Attica the cheerful elements of his religion had\nbeen developed, so, in those [46] wilder northern regions, people\ncontinued to brood over its darker side, and hence a current of\ngloomy legend descended into Greece.  The subject of the Bacchanals\nof Euripides is the infatuated opposition of Pentheus, king of\nThebes, to Dionysus and his religion; his cruelty to the god, whom he\nshuts up in prison, and who appears on the stage with his delicate\nlimbs cruelly bound, but who is finally triumphant; Pentheus, the man\nof grief, being torn to pieces by his own mother, in the judicial\nmadness sent upon her by the god.  In this play, Euripides has only\ntaken one of many versions of the same story, in all of which\nDionysus is victorious, his enemy being torn to pieces by the sacred\nwomen, or by wild horses, or dogs, or the fangs of cold; or the\nmaenad Ambrosia, whom he is supposed to pursue for purposes of lust,\nsuddenly becomes a vine, and binds him down to the earth\ninextricably, in her serpentine coils.\n\nIn all these instances, then, Dionysus punishes his enemies by\nrepaying them in kind.  But a deeper vein of poetry pauses at the\nsorrow, and in the conflict does not too soon anticipate the final\ntriumph.  It is Dionysus himself who exhausts these sufferings.\nHence, in many forms--reflexes of all the various phases of his\nwintry existence--the image of Dionysus Zagreus, the Hunter--of\nDionysus in winter--storming wildly on the dark Thracian hills, from\nwhich, like Ares and Boreas, he originally descends into [47] Greece;\nthe thought of the hunter concentrating into itself all men's\nforebodings over the departure of the year at its richest, and the\ndeath of all sweet things in the long-continued cold, when the sick\nand the old and little children, gazing out morning after morning on\nthe dun sky, can hardly believe in the return any more of a bright\nday.  Or he is connected with the fears, the dangers and hardships of\nthe hunter himself, lost or slain sometimes, far from home, in the\ndense woods of the mountains, as he seeks his meat so ardently;\nbecoming, in his chase, almost akin to the wild beasts--to the wolf,\nwho comes before us in the name of Lycurgus, one of his bitterest\nenemies--and a phase, therefore, of his own personality, in the true\nintention of the myth.  This transformation, this image of the\nbeautiful soft creature become an enemy of human kind, putting off\nhimself in his madness, wronged by his own fierce hunger and thirst,\nand haunting, with terrible sounds, the high Thracian farms, is the\nmost tragic note of the whole picture, and links him on to one of the\ngloomiest creations of later romance, the werewolf, the belief in\nwhich still lingers in Greece, as in France, where it seems to become\nincorporate in the darkest of all romantic histories, that of Gilles\nde Retz.\n\nAnd now we see why the tradition of human sacrifice lingered on in\nGreece, in connexion with Dionysus, as a thing of actual detail, and\n[48] not remote, so that Dionysius of Halicarnassus counts it among\nthe horrors of Greek religion.  That the sacred women of Dionysus\nate, in mystical ceremony, raw flesh, and drank blood, is a fact\noften mentioned, and commemorates, as it seems, the actual sacrifice\nof a fair boy deliberately torn to pieces, fading at last into a\nsymbolical offering.  At Delphi, the wolf was preserved for him, on\nthe principle by which Venus loves the dove, and Hera peacocks; and\nthere were places in which, after the sacrifice of a kid to him, a\ncurious mimic pursuit of the priest who had offered it represented\nthe still surviving horror of one who had thrown a child to the\nwolves.  The three daughters of Minyas devote themselves to his\nworship; they cast lots, and one of them offers her own tender infant\nto be torn by the three, like a roe; then the other women pursue\nthem, and they are turned into bats, or moths, or other creatures of\nthe night.  And fable is endorsed by history; Plutarch telling us\nhow, before the battle of Salamis, with the assent of Themistocles,\nthree Persian captive youths were offered to Dionysus the Devourer.\n\nAs, then, some embodied their fears of winter in Persephone, others\nembodied them in Dionysus, a devouring god, whose sinister side (as\nthe best wine itself has its treacheries) is illustrated in the dark\nand shameful secret society described by Livy, in which his worship\nended at Rome, afterwards abolished by solemn act of the senate. [49]\nHe becomes a new Aidoneus, a hunter of men's souls; like him, to be\nappeased only by costly sacrifices.\n\nAnd then, Dionysus recovering from his mid-winter madness, how\nintensely these people conceive the spring!  It is that triumphant\nDionysus, cured of his great malady, and sane in the clear light of\nthe longer days, whom Euripides in the Bacchanals sets before us, as\nstill, essentially, the Hunter, Zagreus; though he keeps the red\nstreams and torn flesh away from the delicate body of the god, in his\nlong vesture of white and gold, and fragrant with Eastern odours.  Of\nthis I hope to speak in another paper; let me conclude this by one\nphase more of religious custom.\n\nIf Dionysus, like Persephone, has his gloomy side, like her he has\nalso a peculiar message for a certain number of refined minds,\nseeking, in the later days of Greek religion, such modifications of\nthe old legend as may minister to ethical culture, to the perfecting\nof the moral nature.  A type of second birth, from first to last, he\nopens, in his series of annual changes, for minds on the look-out for\nit, the hope of a possible analogy, between the resurrection of\nnature, and something else, as yet unrealised, reserved for human\nsouls; and the beautiful, weeping creature, vexed by the wind,\nsuffering, torn to pieces, and rejuvenescent again at last, like a\ntender shoot of living green out of the hardness and stony darkness+\n[50] of the earth, becomes an emblem or ideal of chastening and\npurification, and of final victory through suffering.  It is the\nfiner, mystical sentiment of the few, detached from the coarser and\nmore material religion of the many, and accompanying it, through the\ncourse of its history, as its ethereal, less palpable, life-giving\nsoul, and, as always happens, seeking the quiet, and not too anxious\nto make itself felt by others.  With some unfixed, though real, place\nin the general scheme of Greek religion, this phase of the worship of\nDionysus had its special development in the Orphic literature and\nmysteries.  Obscure as are those followers of the mystical Orpheus,\nwe yet certainly see them, moving, and playing their part, in the\nlater ages of Greek religion.  Old friends with new faces, though\nthey had, as Plato witnesses, their less worthy aspect, in certain\nappeals to vulgar, superstitious fears, they seem to have been not\nwithout the charm of a real and inward religious beauty, with their\nneologies, their new readings of old legends, their sense of mystical\nsecond meanings, as they refined upon themes grown too familiar, and\nlinked, in a sophisticated age, the new to the old.  In this respect,\nwe may perhaps liken them to the mendicant orders in the Middle Ages,\nwith their florid, romantic theology, beyond the bounds of orthodox\ntradition, giving so much new matter to art and poetry.  They are a\npicturesque addition, also, to the exterior of Greek life, with [51]\ntheir white dresses, their dirges, their fastings and ecstasies,\ntheir outward asceticism and material purifications.  And the central\nobject of their worship comes before us as a tortured, persecuted,\nslain god--the suffering Dionysus--of whose legend they have their\nown special and esoteric version.  That version, embodied in a\nsupposed Orphic poem, The Occultation of Dionysus, is represented\nonly by the details that have passed from it into the almost endless\nDionysiaca of Nonnus, a writer of the fourth century; and the imagery\nhas to be put back into the shrine, bit by bit, and finally\nincomplete.  Its central point is the picture of the rending to\npieces of a divine child, of whom a tradition, scanty indeed, but\nharmonious in its variations, had long maintained itself.  It was in\nmemory of it, that those who were initiated into the Orphic mysteries\ntasted of the raw flesh of the sacrifice, and thereafter ate flesh no\nmore; and it connected itself with that strange object in the Delphic\nshrine, the grave of Dionysus.\n\nSon, first, of Zeus, and of Persephone whom Zeus woos, in the form of\na serpent--the white, golden-haired child, the best-beloved of his\nfather, and destined by him to be the ruler of the world, grows up in\nsecret.  But one day, Zeus, departing on a journey in his great\nfondness for the child, delivered to him his crown and staff, and so\nleft him--shut in a strong tower.  Then it came to pass that the\njealous Here sent [52] out the Titans against him.  They approached\nthe crowned child, and with many sorts of playthings enticed him\naway, to have him in their power, and then miserably slew him--\nhacking his body to pieces, as the wind tears the vine, with the axe\nPelekus, which, like the swords of Roland and Arthur, has its proper\nname.  The fragments of the body they boiled in a great cauldron, and\nmade an impious banquet upon them, afterwards carrying the bones to\nApollo, whose rival the young child should have been, thinking to do\nhim service.  But Apollo, in great pity for this his youngest\nbrother, laid the bones in a grave, within his own holy place.\nMeanwhile, Here, full of her vengeance, brings to Zeus the heart of\nthe child, which she had snatched, still beating, from the hands of\nthe Titans.  But Zeus delivered the heart to Semele; and the soul of\nthe child remaining awhile in Hades, where Demeter made for it new\nflesh, was thereafter born of Semele--a second Zagreus--the younger,\nor Theban Dionysus.\n\nNOTES\n\n12. +\"Hymn to Aphrodite,\" lines 264-72 (Greek text).  The Homeric\nHymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-\nWhite.  Homeric Hymns. Cambridge, MA., Harvard University Press;\nLondon, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914.\n\n16. +\"Hymn to Pan,\" lines 16ff.  The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with\nan English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White.  Homeric Hymns.\nCambridge, MA., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann\nLtd. 1914.\n\n22. +Transliteration: deisidaimones.  Liddell and Scott definition:\n\"fearing the gods,\" in both a good and bad sense--i.e. either pious\nor superstitious.\n\n22. *There were some who suspected Dionysus of a secret democratic\ninterest; though indeed he was liberator only of men's hearts, and\neleuthereus only because he never forgot Eleutherae, the little\nplace which, in Attica, first received him.\n\n26. +E-text editor's transliteration: pyrigen\u00eas.  Liddell and Scott\ndefinition: \"born of fire.\"\n\n38. +Transliteration: Oinophoria  . . . Anthest\u00earia.  Liddell and\nScott definition of Anthest\u00earia: \"The Feast of Flowers, the three\ndays' festival of Bacchus at Athens, in the month Anthesterion.\"\n\n40. +Transliteration: eskiatrof\u00eak\u00f4s.  Liddell and Scott definition:\nparticiple of skiatropheo, \"to rear in the shade.\"\n\n\n\nTHE BACCHANALS OF EURIPIDES\n\n[53] So far, I have endeavoured to present, with something of the\nconcrete character of a picture, Dionysus, the old Greek god, as we\nmay discern him through a multitude of stray hints in art and poetry\nand religious custom, through modern speculation on the tendencies of\nearly thought, through traits and touches in our own actual states of\nmind, which may seem sympathetic with those tendencies.  In such a\npicture there must necessarily be a certain artificiality; things\nnear and far, matter of varying degrees of certainty, fact and\nsurmise, being reflected and concentrated, for its production, as if\non the surface of a mirror.  Such concrete character, however, Greek\npoet or sculptor, from time to time, impressed on the vague world of\npopular belief and usage around him; and in the Bacchanals of\nEuripides we have an example of the figurative or imaginative power\nof poetry, selecting and combining, at will, from that mixed and\nfloating mass, weaving the many-coloured threads together, blending\nthe various phases of legend--all the light and shade of the [54]\nsubject--into a shape, substantial and firmly set, through which a\nmere fluctuating tradition might retain a permanent place in men's\nimaginations.  Here, in what Euripides really says, in what we\nactually see on the stage, as we read his play, we are dealing with a\nsingle real object, not with uncertain effects of many half-fancied\nobjects.  Let me leave you for a time almost wholly in his hands,\nwhile you look very closely at his work, so as to discriminate its\noutlines clearly.\n\nThis tragedy of the Bacchanals--a sort of masque or morality, as we\nsay--a monument as central for the legend of Dionysus as the Homeric\nhymn for that of Demeter, is unique in Greek literature, and has also\na singular interest in the life of Euripides himself.  He is writing\nin old age (the piece was not played till after his death) not at\nAthens, nor for a polished Attic audience, but for a wilder and less\ntemperately cultivated sort of people, at the court of Archelaus, in\nMacedonia.  Writing in old age, he is in that subdued mood, a mood\nnot necessarily sordid, in which (the shudder at the nearer approach\nof the unknown world coming over him more frequently than of old)\naccustomed ideas, conformable to a sort of common sense regarding the\nunseen, oftentimes regain what they may have lost, in a man's\nallegiance.  It is a sort of madness, he begins to think, to differ\nfrom the received opinions thereon.  Not that he is insincere or\nironical, but that he tends, in the [55] sum of probabilities, to\ndwell on their more peaceful side; to sit quiet, for the short\nremaining time, in the reflexion of the more cheerfully lighted side\nof things; and what is accustomed--what holds of familiar usage--\ncomes to seem the whole essence of wisdom, on all subjects; and the\nwell-known delineation of the vague country, in Homer or Hesiod,\none's best attainable mental outfit, for the journey thither.  With\nthis sort of quiet wisdom the whole play is penetrated.  Euripides\nhas said, or seemed to say, many things concerning Greek religion, at\nvariance with received opinion; and now, in the end of life, he\ndesires to make his peace--what shall at any rate be peace with men.\nHe is in the mood for acquiescence, or even for a palinode; and this\ntakes the direction, partly of mere submission to, partly of a\nrefining upon, the authorised religious tradition: he calmly\nsophisticates this or that element of it which had seemed grotesque;\nand has, like any modern writer, a theory how myths were made, and\nhow in lapse of time their first signification gets to be obscured\namong mortals; and what he submits to, that he will also adorn\nfondly, by his genius for words.\n\nAnd that very neighbourhood afforded him his opportunity.  It was in\nthe neighbourhood of Pella, the Macedonian capital, that the worship\nof Dionysus, the newest of the gods, prevailed in its most\nextravagant form--the [56] Thiasus, or wild, nocturnal procession of\nBacchic women, retired to the woods and hills for that purpose, with\nits accompaniments of music, and lights, and dancing.  Rational and\nmoderate Athenians, as we may gather from some admissions of\nEuripides himself, somewhat despised all that; while those who were\nmore fanatical forsook the home celebrations, and went on pilgrimage\nfrom Attica to Cithaeron or Delphi.  But at Pella persons of high\nbirth took part in the exercise, and at a later period we read in\nPlutarch how Olympias, the mother of Alexander the Great, was devoted\nto this enthusiastic worship.  Although in one of Botticelli's\npictures the angels dance very sweetly, and may represent many\ncircumstances actually recorded in the Hebrew scriptures, yet we\nhardly understand the dance as a religious ceremony; the bare mention\nof it sets us thinking on some fundamental differences between the\npagan religions and our own.  It is to such ecstasies, however, that\nall nature-worship seems to tend; that giddy, intoxicating sense of\nspring--that tingling in the veins, sympathetic with the yearning\nlife of the earth, having, apparently, in all times and places,\nprompted some mode of wild dancing.  Coleridge, in one of his\nfantastic speculations, refining on the German word for enthusiasm--\nSchw\u00e4rmerei, swarming, as he says, \"like the swarming of bees\ntogether\"--has explained how the sympathies of mere numbers, as such,\nthe random catching on [57] fire of one here and another there, when\npeople are collected together, generates as if by mere contact, some\nnew and rapturous spirit, not traceable in the individual units of a\nmultitude.  Such swarming was the essence of that strange dance of\nthe Bacchic women: literally like winged things, they follow, with\nmotives, we may suppose, never quite made clear even to themselves,\ntheir new, strange, romantic god.  Himself a woman-like god,--it was\non women and feminine souls that his power mainly fell.  At Elis, it\nwas the women who had their own little song with which at spring-time\nthey professed to call him from the sea: at Brasiae they had their\nown temple where none but women might enter; and so the Thiasus,\nalso, is almost exclusively formed of women--of those who experience\nmost directly the influence of things which touch thought through the\nsenses--the presence of night, the expectation of morning, the\nnearness of wild, unsophisticated, natural things--the echoes, the\ncoolness, the noise of frightened creatures as they climbed through\nthe darkness, the sunrise seen from the hill-tops, the disillusion,\nthe bitterness of satiety, the deep slumber which comes with the\nmorning.  Athenians visiting the Macedonian capital would hear, and\nfrom time to time actually see, something of a religious custom, in\nwhich the habit of an earlier world might seem to survive.  As they\nsaw the lights flitting over the mountains, [58] and heard the wild,\nsharp cries of the women, there was presented, as a singular fact in\nthe more prosaic actual life of a later time, an enthusiasm otherwise\nrelegated to the wonderland of a distant past, in which a supposed\nprimitive harmony and understanding between man and nature renewed\nitself.  Later sisters of Centaur and Amazon, the Maenads, as they\nbeat the earth in strange sympathy with its waking up from sleep, or\nas, in the description of the Messenger, in the play of Euripides,\nthey lie sleeping in the glen, revealed among the morning mists, were\nthemselves indeed as remnants--flecks left here and there and not yet\nquite evaporated under the hard light of a later and commoner day--of\na certain cloud-world which had once covered all things with a veil\nof mystery.  Whether or not, in what was often probably coarse as\nwell as extravagant, there may have lurked some finer vein of ethical\nsymbolism, such as Euripides hints at--the soberer influence, in the\nThiasus, of keen air and animal expansion, certainly, for art, and a\npoetry delighting in colour and form, it was a custom rich in\nsuggestion.  The imitative arts would draw from it altogether new\nmotives of freedom and energy, of freshness in old forms.  It is from\nthis fantastic scene that the beautiful wind-touched draperies, the\nrhythm, the heads suddenly thrown back, of many a Pompeian wall-\npainting and sarcophagus-frieze are originally derived; and that\nmelting languor, that perfectly [59] composed lassitude of the fallen\nMaenad, became a fixed type in the school of grace, the school of\nPraxiteles.\n\nThe circumstances of the place thus combining with his peculiar\nmotive, Euripides writes the Bacchanals.  It is this extravagant\nphase of religion, and the latest-born of the gods, which as an\namende honorable to the once slighted traditions of Greek belief, he\nundertakes to interpret to an audience composed of people who, like\nScyles, the Hellenising king of Scythia, feel the attraction of Greek\nreligion and Greek usage, but on their quainter side, and partly\nrelish that extravagance.  Subject and audience alike stimulate the\nromantic temper, and the tragedy of the Bacchanals, with its\ninnovations in metre and diction, expressly noted as foreign or\nbarbarous--all the charm and grace of the clear-pitched singing of\nthe chorus, notwithstanding--with its subtleties and sophistications,\nits grotesques, mingled with and heightening a real shudder at the\nhorror of the theme, and a peculiarly fine and human pathos, is\nalmost wholly without the reassuring calm, generally characteristic\nof the endings of Greek tragedy: is itself excited, troubled,\ndisturbing--a spotted or dappled thing, like the oddly dappled fawn-\nskins of its own masquerade, so aptly expressive of the shifty,\ntwofold, rapidly-doubling genius of the divine, wild creature\nhimself.  Let us listen and watch the strange masks coming and going,\nfor a while, [60] as far as may be as we should do with a modern\nplay.  What are its charms?  What is still alive, impressive, and\nreally poetical for us, in the dim old Greek play?\n\nThe scene is laid at Thebes, where the memory of Semele, the mother\nof Dionysus, is still under a cloud.  Her own sisters, sinning\nagainst natural affection, pitiless over her pathetic death and\nfinding in it only a judgment upon the impiety with which, having\nshamed herself with some mortal lover, she had thrown the blame of\nher sin upon Zeus, have, so far, triumphed over her.  The true and\nglorious version of her story lives only in the subdued memory of the\ntwo aged men, Teiresias the prophet, and her father Cadmus, apt now\nto let things go loosely by, who has delegated his royal power to\nPentheus, the son of one of those sisters--a hot-headed and impious\nyouth.  So things had passed at Thebes; and now a strange\ncircumstance has happened.  An odd sickness has fallen upon the\nwomen: Dionysus has sent the sting of his enthusiasm upon them, and\nhas pushed it to a sort of madness, a madness which imitates the true\nThiasus.  Forced to have the form without the profit of his worship,\nthe whole female population, leaving distaff and spindle, and headed\nby the three princesses, have deserted the town, and are lying\nencamped on the bare rocks, or under the pines, among the solitudes\nof Cithaeron.  And it is just at this point that the divine child,\n[61] supposed to have perished at his mother's side in the flames,\nreturns to his birthplace, grown to manhood.\n\nDionysus himself speaks the prologue.  He is on a journey through the\nworld to found a new religion; and the first motive of this new\nreligion is the vindication of the memory of his mother.  In\nexplaining this design, Euripides, who seeks always for pathetic\neffect, tells in few words, touching because simple, the story of\nSemele--here, and again still more intensely in the chorus which\nfollows--the merely human sentiment of maternity being not forgotten,\neven amid the thought of the divine embraces of her fiery bed-fellow.\nIt is out of tenderness for her that the son's divinity is to be\nrevealed.  A yearning affection, the affection with which we see him\nlifting up his arms about her, satisfied at last, on an old Etruscan\nmetal mirror, has led him from place to place: everywhere he has had\nhis dances and established his worship; and everywhere his presence\nhas been her justification.  First of all the towns in Greece he\ncomes to Thebes, the scene of her sorrows: he is standing beside the\nsacred waters of Dirce and Ismenus: the holy place is in sight: he\nhears the Greek speech, and sees at last the ruins of the place of\nher lying-in, at once his own birth-chamber and his mother's tomb.\nHis image, as it detaches itself little by little from the episodes\nof the play, and is further characterised by the [62] songs of the\nchorus, has a singular completeness of symbolical effect.  The\nincidents of a fully developed human personality are superinduced on\nthe mystical and abstract essence of that fiery spirit in the flowing\nveins of the earth--the aroma of the green world is retained in the\nfair human body, set forth in all sorts of finer ethical lights and\nshades--with a wonderful kind of subtlety.  In the course of his long\nprogress from land to land, the gold, the flowers, the incense of the\nEast, have attached themselves deeply to him: their effect and\nexpression rest now upon his flesh like the gleaming of that old\nambrosial ointment of which Homer speaks as resting ever on the\npersons of the gods, and cling to his clothing--the mitre binding his\nperfumed yellow hair--the long tunic down to the white feet, somewhat\nwomanly, and the fawn-skin, with its rich spots, wrapped about the\nshoulders.  As the door opens to admit him, the scented air of the\nvineyards (for the vine-blossom has an exquisite perfume) blows\nthrough; while the convolvulus on his mystic rod represents all\nwreathing flowery things whatever, with or without fruit, as in\nAmerica all such plants are still called vines.  \"Sweet upon the\nmountains,\" the excitement of which he loves so deeply and to which\nhe constantly invites his followers--\"sweet upon the mountains,\" and\nprofoundly amorous, his presence embodies all the voluptuous\nabundance of Asia, its beating [63] sun, its \"fair-towered cities,\nfull of inhabitants,\" which the chorus describe in their luscious\nvocabulary, with the rich Eastern names--Lydia, Persia, Arabia Felix:\nhe is a sorcerer or an enchanter, the tyrant Pentheus thinks: the\nsprings of water, the flowing of honey and milk and wine, are his\nmiracles, wrought in person.\n\nWe shall see presently how, writing for that northern audience,\nEuripides crosses the Theban with the gloomier Thracian legend, and\nlets the darker stain show through.  Yet, from the first, amid all\nthis floweriness, a touch or trace of that gloom is discernible.  The\nfawn-skin, composed now so daintily over the shoulders, may be worn\nwith the whole coat of the animal made up, the hoofs gilded and tied\ntogether over the right shoulder, to leave the right arm disengaged\nto strike, its head clothing the human head within, as Alexander, on\nsome of his coins, looks out from the elephant's scalp, and Hercules\nout of the jaws of a lion, on the coins of Camarina.  Those\ndiminutive golden horns attached to the forehead, represent not\nfecundity merely, nor merely the crisp tossing of the waves of\nstreams, but horns of offence.  And our fingers must beware of the\nthyrsus, tossed about so wantonly by himself and his chorus.  The\npine-cone at its top does but cover a spear-point; and the thing is a\nweapon--the sharp spear of the hunter Zagreus--though hidden now by\nthe fresh leaves, and that button of pine-cone (useful also to dip in\n[64] wine, to check the sweetness) which he has plucked down, coming\nthrough the forest, at peace for a while this spring morning.\n\nAnd the chorus emphasise this character, their songs weaving for the\nwhole piece, in words more effective than any painted scenery, a\ncertain congruous background which heightens all; the intimate sense\nof mountains and mountain things being in this way maintained\nthroughout, and concentrated on the central figure.  \"He is sweet\namong the mountains,\" they say, \"when he drops down upon the plain,\nout of his mystic musings\"--and we may think we see the green\nfestoons of the vine dropping quickly, from foot-place to foot-place,\ndown the broken hill-side in spring, when like the Bacchanals, all\nwho can, wander out of the town to enjoy the earliest heats.  \"Let us\ngo out into the fields,\" we say; a strange madness seems to lurk\namong the flowers, ready to lay hold on us also; autika ga pasa\nchoreusei+--soon the whole earth will dance and sing.\n\nDionysus is especially a woman's deity, and he comes from the east\nconducted by a chorus of gracious Lydian women, his true sisters--\nBassarids, clad like himself in the long tunic, or bassara.  They\nmove and speak to the music of clangorous metallic instruments,\ncymbals and tambourines, relieved by the clearer notes of the pipe;\nand there is a strange variety of almost imitative sounds for such\nmusic, in their very [65] words.  The Homeric hymn to Demeter\nprecedes the art of sculpture, but is rich in suggestions for it;\nhere, on the contrary, in the first chorus of the Bacchanals, as\nelsewhere in the play, we feel that the poetry of Euripides is\nprobably borrowing something from art; that in these choruses, with\ntheir repetitions and refrains, he is reproducing perhaps the spirit\nof some sculptured relief which, like Luca della Robbia's celebrated\nwork for the organ-loft of the cathedral of Florence, worked by\nvarious subtleties of line, not in the lips and eyes only, but in the\ndrapery and hands also, to a strange reality of impression of musical\neffect on visible things.\n\nThey beat their drums before the palace; and then a humourous little\nscene, a reflex of the old Dionysiac comedy--of that laughter which\nwas an essential element of the earliest worship of Dionysus--follows\nthe first chorus.  The old blind prophet Teiresias, and the aged king\nCadmus, always secretly true to him, have agreed to celebrate the\nThiasus, and accept his divinity openly.  The youthful god has\nnowhere said decisively that he will have none but young men in his\nsacred dance.  But for that purpose they must put on the long tunic,\nand that spotted skin which only rustics wear, and assume the thyrsus\nand ivy-crown.  Teiresias arrives and is seen knocking at the doors.\nAnd then, just as in the medieval mystery, comes the [66] inevitable\ngrotesque, not unwelcome to our poet, who is wont in his plays,\nperhaps not altogether consciously, to intensify by its relief both\nthe pity and the terror of his conceptions.  At the summons of\nTeiresias, Cadmus appears, already arrayed like him in the appointed\nornaments, in all their odd contrast with the infirmity and staidness\nof old age.  Even in old men's veins the spring leaps again, and they\nare more than ready to begin dancing.  But they are shy of the\nuntried dress, and one of them is blind--poi dei choreuein; poi\nkathistanai poda; kai krata seisai polion;+ and then the difficulty\nof the way! the long, steep journey to the glens! may pilgrims boil\ntheir peas? might they proceed to the place in carriages?  At last,\nwhile the audience laugh more or less delicately at their aged\nfumblings, in some co-operative manner, the eyes of the one combining\nwith the hands of the other, the pair are about to set forth.\n\nHere Pentheus is seen approaching the palace in extreme haste.  He\nhas been absent from home, and returning, has just heard of the state\nof things at Thebes--the strange malady of the women, the dancings,\nthe arrival of the mysterious stranger: he finds all the women\ndeparted from the town, and sees Cadmus and Teiresias in masque.\nLike the exaggerated diabolical figures in some of the religious\nplays and imageries of the Middle Age, he is an impersonation of\nstupid impiety, one of those whom the gods willing to [67] destroy\nfirst infatuate.  Alternating between glib unwisdom and coarse\nmockery, between violence and a pretence of moral austerity, he\nunderstands only the sorriest motives; thinks the whole thing\nfeigned, and fancies the stranger, so effeminate, so attractive of\nwomen with whom he remains day and night, but a poor sensual\ncreature, and the real motive of the Bacchic women the indulgence of\ntheir lust; his ridiculous old grandfather he is ready to renounce,\nand accuses Teiresias of having in view only some fresh source of\nprofessional profit to himself in connexion with some new-fangled\noracle; his petty spite avenges itself on the prophet by an order to\nroot up the sacred chair, where he sits to watch the birds for\ndivination, and disturb the order of his sacred place; and even from\nthe moment of his entrance the mark of his doom seems already set\nupon him, in an impotent trembling which others notice in him.  Those\nof the women who still loitered, he has already caused to be shut up\nin the common prison; the others, with Ino, Autonoe, and his own\nmother, Agave, he will hunt out of the glens; while the stranger is\nthreatened with various cruel forms of death.  But Teiresias and\nCadmus stay to reason with him, and induce him to abide wisely with\nthem; the prophet fittingly becomes the interpreter of Dionysus, and\nexplains the true nature of the visitor; his divinity, the completion\nor counterpart of that of Demeter; his gift of prophecy; [68] all the\nsoothing influences he brings with him; above all, his gift of the\nmedicine of sleep to weary mortals.  But the reason of Pentheus is\nalready sickening, and the judicial madness gathering over it.\nTeiresias and Cadmus can but \"go pray.\"  So again, not without the\nlaughter of the audience, supporting each other a little grotesquely\nagainst a fall, they get away at last.\n\nAnd then, again, as in those quaintly carved and coloured imageries\nof the Middle Age--the martyrdom of the youthful Saint Firmin, for\ninstance, round the choir at Amiens--comes the full contrast, with a\nquite medieval simplicity and directness, between the insolence of\nthe tyrant, now at last in sight of his prey, and the outraged beauty\nof the youthful god, meek, surrounded by his enemies, like some fair\nwild creature in the snare of the hunter.  Dionysus has been taken\nprisoner; he is led on to the stage, with his hands bound, but still\nholding the thyrsus.  Unresisting he had submitted himself to his\ncaptors; his colour had not changed; with a smile he had bidden them\ndo their will, so that even they are touched with awe, and are almost\nready to admit his divinity.  Marvellously white and red, he stands\nthere; and now, unwilling to be revealed to the unworthy, and\nrequiring a fitness in the receiver, he represents himself, in answer\nto the inquiries of Pentheus, not as Dionysus, but simply as the\ngod's prophet, [69] in full trust in whom he desires to hear his\nsentence.  Then the long hair falls to the ground under the shears;\nthe mystic wand is torn from his hand, and he is led away to be tied\nup, like some dangerous wild animal, in a dark place near the king's\nstables.\n\nUp to this point in the play, there has been a noticeable ambiguity\nas to the person of Dionysus, the main figure of the piece; he is in\npart Dionysus, indeed; but in part, only his messenger, or minister\npreparing his way; a certain harshness of effect in the actual\nappearance of a god upon the stage being in this way relieved, or\nmade easy, as by a gradual revelation in two steps.  To Pentheus, in\nhis invincible ignorance, his essence remains to the last unrevealed,\nand even the women of the chorus seem to understand in him, so far,\nonly the forerunner of their real leader.  As he goes away bound,\ntherefore, they too, threatened also in their turn with slavery,\ninvoke his greater original to appear and deliver them.  In pathetic\ncries they reproach Thebes for rejecting them--ti m' anainei, ti me\npheugeis;+ yet they foretell his future greatness; a new Orpheus, he\nwill more than renew that old miraculous reign over animals and\nplants.  Their song is full of suggestions of wood and river.  It is\nas if, for a moment, Dionysus became the suffering vine again; and\nthe rustle of the leaves and water come through their words to\nrefresh it.  The [70] fountain of Dirce still haunted by the virgins\nof Thebes, where the infant god was cooled and washed from the flecks\nof his fiery birth, becomes typical of the coolness of all springs,\nand is made, by a really poetic licence, the daughter of the distant\nAchelous--the earliest born, the father in myth, of all Greek rivers.\n\nA giddy sonorous scene of portents and surprises follows--a distant,\nexaggerated, dramatic reflex of that old thundering tumult of the\nfestival in the vineyard--in which Dionysus reappears, miraculously\nset free from his bonds.  First, in answer to the deep-toned\ninvocation of the chorus, a great voice is heard from within,\nproclaiming him to be the son of Semele and Zeus.  Then, amid the\nshort, broken, rapturous cries of the women of the chorus,\nproclaiming him master, the noise of an earthquake passes slowly; the\npillars of the palace are seen waving to and fro; while the strange,\nmemorial fire from the tomb of Semele blazes up and envelopes the\nwhole building.  The terrified women fling themselves on the ground;\nand then, at last, as the place is shaken open, Dionysus is seen\nstepping out from among the tottering masses of the mimic palace,\nbidding them arise and fear not.  But just here comes a long pause in\nthe action of the play, in which we must listen to a messenger newly\narrived from the glens, to tell us what he has seen there, among the\nMaenads.  The singular, somewhat sinister beauty of this speech, and\na [71] similar one subsequent--a fair description of morning on the\nmountain-tops, with the Bacchic women sleeping, which turns suddenly\nto a hard, coarse picture of animals cruelly rent--is one of the\nspecial curiosities which distinguish this play; and, as it is wholly\nnarrative, I shall give it in English prose, abbreviating, here and\nthere, some details which seem to have but a metrical value:--\n\n\"I was driving my herd of cattle to the summit of the scaur to feed,\nwhat time the sun sent forth his earliest beams to warm the earth.\nAnd lo! three companies of women, and at the head of one of them\nAutonoe, thy mother Agave at the head of the second, and Ino at the\nhead of the third.  And they all slept, with limbs relaxed, leaned\nagainst the low boughs of the pines, or with head thrown heedlessly\namong the oak-leaves strewn upon the ground--all in the sleep of\ntemperance, not, as thou saidst, pursuing Cypris through the\nsolitudes of the forest, drunken with wine, amid the low rustling of\nthe lotus-pipe.\n\n\"And thy mother, when she heard the lowing of the kine, stood up in\nthe midst of them, and cried to them to shake off sleep.  And they,\ncasting slumber from their eyes, started upright, a marvel of beauty\nand order, young and old and maidens yet unmarried.  And first, they\nlet fall their hair upon their shoulders; and those [72] whose\ncinctures were unbound re-composed the spotted fawn-skins, knotting\nthem about with snakes, which rose and licked them on the chin.\nSome, lately mothers, who with breasts still swelling had left their\nbabes behind, nursed in their arms antelopes, or wild whelps of\nwolves, and yielded them their milk to drink; and upon their heads\nthey placed crowns of ivy or of oak, or of flowering convolvulus.\nThen one, taking a thyrsus-wand, struck with it upon a rock, and\nthereupon leapt out a fine rain of water; another let down a reed\nupon the earth, and a fount of wine was sent forth there; and those\nwhose thirst was for a white stream, skimming the surface with their\nfinger-tips, gathered from it abundance of milk; and from the ivy of\nthe mystic wands streams of honey distilled.  Verily! hadst thou seen\nthese things, thou wouldst have worshipped whom now thou revilest.\n\n\"And we shepherds and herdsmen came together to question with each\nother over this matter--what strange and terrible things they do.\nAnd a certain wayfarer from the city, subtle in speech, spake to us--\n'O! dwellers upon these solemn ledges of the hills, will ye that we\nhunt down, and take, amid her revelries, Agave, the mother of\nPentheus, according to the king's pleasure?'  And he seemed to us to\nspeak wisely; and we lay in wait among the bushes; and they, at the\ntime appointed, began moving their wands for the Bacchic dance, [73]\ncalling with one voice upon Bromius!--Iacchus!--the son of Zeus! and\nthe whole mountain was moved with ecstasy together, and the wild\ncreatures; nothing but was moved in their running.  And it chanced\nthat Agave, in her leaping, lighted near me, and I sprang from my\nhiding-place, willing to lay hold on her; and she groaned out, 'O!\ndogs of hunting, these fellows are upon our traces; but follow me!\nfollow! with the mystic wands for weapons in your hands.'  And we, by\nflight, hardly escaped tearing to pieces at their hands, who\nthereupon advanced with knifeless fingers upon the young of the kine,\nas they nipped the green; and then hadst thou seen one holding a\nbleating calf in her hands, with udder distent, straining it asunder;\nothers tore the heifers to shreds amongst them; tossed up and down\nthe morsels lay in sight--flank or hoof--or hung from the fir-trees,\ndropping churned blood.  The fierce, horned bulls stumbled forward,\ntheir breasts upon the ground, dragged on by myriad hands of young\nwomen, and in a moment the inner parts were rent to morsels.  So,\nlike a flock of birds aloft in flight, they retreat upon the level\nlands outstretched below, which by the waters of Asopus put forth the\nfair-flowering crop of Theban people--Hysiae and Erythrae--below the\nprecipice of Cithaeron.\"--\n\nA grotesque scene follows, in which the [74] humour we noted, on\nseeing those two old men diffidently set forth in chaplet and fawn-\nskin, deepens into a profound tragic irony.  Pentheus is determined\nto go out in arms against the Bacchanals and put them to death, when\na sudden desire seizes him to witness them in their encampment upon\nthe mountains.  Dionysus, whom he still supposes to be but a prophet\nor messenger of the god, engages to conduct him thither; and, for\ngreater security among the dangerous women, proposes that he shall\ndisguise himself in female attire.  As Pentheus goes within for that\npurpose, he lingers for a moment behind him, and in prophetic speech\ndeclares the approaching end;--the victim has fallen into the net;\nand he goes in to assist at the toilet, to array him in the ornaments\nwhich he will carry to Hades, destroyed by his own mother's hands.\nIt is characteristic of Euripides--part of his fine tact and\nsubtlety--to relieve and justify what seems tedious, or constrained,\nor merely terrible and grotesque, by a suddenly suggested trait of\nhomely pathos, or a glimpse of natural beauty, or a morsel of form or\ncolour seemingly taken directly from picture or sculpture.  So here,\nin this fantastic scene our thoughts are changed in a moment by\nthe singing of the chorus, and divert for a while to the dark-haired\ntresses of the wood; the breath of the river-side is upon us; beside\nit, a fawn escaped from the hunter's net is flying swiftly in [75]\nits joy; like it, the Maenad rushes along; and we see the little head\nthrown back upon the neck, in deep aspiration, to drink in the dew.\n\nMeantime, Pentheus has assumed his disguise, and comes forth tricked\nup with false hair and the dress of a Bacchanal; but still with some\nmisgivings at the thought of going thus attired through the streets\nof Thebes, and with many laughable readjustments of the unwonted\narticles of clothing.  And with the woman's dress, his madness is\nclosing faster round him; just before, in the palace, terrified at\nthe noise of the earthquake, he had drawn sword upon a mere fantastic\nappearance, and pierced only the empty air.  Now he begins to see the\nsun double, and Thebes with all its towers repeated, while his\nconductor seems to him transformed into a wild beast; and now and\nthen, we come upon some touches of a curious psychology, so that we\nmight almost seem to be reading a modern poet.  As if Euripides had\nbeen aware of a not unknown symptom of incipient madness (it is said)\nin which the patient, losing the sense of resistance, while lifting\nsmall objects imagines himself to be raising enormous weights,\nPentheus, as he lifts the thyrsus, fancies he could lift Cithaeron\nwith all the Bacchanals upon it.  At all this the laughter of course\nwill pass round the theatre; while those who really pierce into the\npurpose of the poet, shudder, as they see the victim thus grotesquely\nclad going to his doom, [76] already foreseen in the ominous chant of\nthe chorus--and as it were his grave-clothes, in the dress which\nmakes him ridiculous.\n\nPresently a messenger arrives to announce that Pentheus is dead, and\nthen another curious narrative sets forth the manner of his death.\nFull of wild, coarse, revolting details, of course not without\npathetic touches, and with the loveliness of the serving Maenads, and\nof their mountain solitudes--their trees and water--never quite\nforgotten, it describes how, venturing as a spy too near the sacred\ncircle, Pentheus was fallen upon, like a wild beast, by the mystic\nhuntresses and torn to pieces, his mother being the first to begin\n\"the sacred rites of slaughter.\"\n\nAnd at last Agave herself comes upon the stage, holding aloft the\nhead of her son, fixed upon the sharp end of the thyrsus, calling\nupon the women of the chorus to welcome the revel of the Evian god;\nwho, accordingly, admit her into the company, professing themselves\nher fellow-revellers, the Bacchanals being thus absorbed into the\nchorus for the rest of the play.  For, indeed, all through it, the\ntrue, though partly suppressed relation of the chorus to the\nBacchanals is this, that the women of the chorus, staid and temperate\nfor the moment, following Dionysus in his alternations, are but the\npaler sisters of his more wild and gloomy votaries--the true\nfollowers of the mystical Dionysus--the real chorus of Zagreus; the\nidea that their [77] violent proceedings are the result of madness\nonly, sent on them as a punishment for their original rejection of\nthe god, being, as I said, when seen from the deeper motives of the\nmyth, only a \"sophism\" of Euripides--a piece of rationalism of which\nhe avails himself for the purpose of softening down the tradition of\nwhich he has undertaken to be the poet.  Agave comes on the stage,\nthen, blood-stained, exulting in her \"victory of tears,\" still quite\nvisibly mad indeed, and with the outward signs of madness, and as her\nmind wanders, musing still on the fancy that the dead head in her\nhands is that of a lion she has slain among the mountains--a young\nlion, she avers, as she notices the down on the young man's chin, and\nhis abundant hair--a fancy in which the chorus humour her, willing to\ndeal gently with the poor distraught creature.  Supported by them,\nshe rejoices \"exceedingly, exceedingly,\" declaring herself\n\"fortunate\" in such goodly spoil; priding herself that the victim has\nbeen slain, not with iron weapons, but with her own white fingers,\nshe summons all Thebes to come and behold.  She calls for her aged\nfather to draw near and see; and for Pentheus himself, at last, that\nhe may mount and rivet her trophy, appropriately decorative there,\nbetween the triglyphs of the cornice below the roof, visible to all.\n\nAnd now, from this point onwards, Dionysus himself becomes more and\nmore clearly discernible [78] as the hunter, a wily hunter, and man\nthe prey he hunts for; \"Our king is a hunter,\" cry the chorus, as\nthey unite in Agave's triumph and give their sanction to her deed.\nAnd as the Bacchanals supplement the chorus, and must be added to it\nto make the conception of it complete; so in the conception of\nDionysus also a certain transference, or substitution, must be made--\nmuch of the horror and sorrow of Agave, of Pentheus, of the whole\ntragic situation, must be transferred to him, if we wish to realise\nin the older, profounder, and more complete sense of his nature, that\nmystical being of Greek tradition to whom all these experiences--his\nmadness, the chase, his imprisonment and death, his peace again--\nreally belong; and to discern which, through Euripides' peculiar\ntreatment of his subject, is part of the curious interest of this\nplay.\n\nThrough the sophism of Euripides!  For that, again, is the really\ndescriptive word, with which Euripides, a lover of sophisms, as\nAristophanes knows, himself supplies us.  Well;--this softened\nversion of the Bacchic madness is a sophism of Euripides; and\nDionysus Omophagus--the eater of raw flesh, must be added to the\ngolden image of Dionysus Meilichius--the honey-sweet, if the old\ntradition in its completeness is to be, in spite of that sophism, our\nclosing impression; if we are to catch, in its fulness, that deep\nundercurrent of horror which runs below, all through [79] this masque\nof spring, and realise the spectacle of that wild chase, in which\nDionysus is ultimately both the hunter and the spoil.\n\nBut meantime another person appears on the stage; Cadmus enters,\nfollowed by attendants bearing on a bier the torn limbs of Pentheus,\nwhich lying wildly scattered through the tangled wood, have been with\ndifficulty collected and now decently put together and covered over.\nIn the little that still remains before the end of the play, destiny\nnow hurrying things rapidly forward, and strong emotions, hopes and\nforebodings being now closely packed, Euripides has before him an\nartistic problem of enormous difficulty.  Perhaps this very haste and\nclose-packing of the matter, which keeps the mind from dwelling\novermuch on detail, relieves its real extravagance, and those who\nread it carefully will think that the pathos of Euripides has been\nequal to the occasion.  In a few profoundly designed touches he\ndepicts the perplexity of Cadmus, in whose house a god had become an\ninmate, only to destroy it--the regret of the old man for the one\nmale child to whom that house had looked up as the pillar whereby\naged people might feel secure; the piteous craziness of Agave; the\nunconscious irony with which she caresses the florid, youthful head\nof her son; the delicate breaking of the thing to her reviving\nintelligence, as Cadmus, though he can but wish that she might live\non for ever in her visionary enjoyment, [80] prepares the way, by\nplaying on that other horrible legend of the Theban house, the\ntearing of Actaeon to death--he too destroyed by a god.  He gives us\nthe sense of Agave's gradual return to reason through many glimmering\ndoubts, till she wakes up at last to find the real face turned up\ntowards the mother and murderess; the quite naturally spontaneous\nsorrow of the mother, ending with her confession, down to her last\nsigh, and the final breaking up of the house of Cadmus; with a result\nso genuine, heartfelt, and dignified withal in its expression of a\nstrange ineffable woe, that a fragment of it, the lamentation of\nAgave over her son, in which the long-pent agony at last finds vent,\nwere, it is supposed, adopted into his paler work by an early\nChristian poet, and have figured since, as touches of real fire, in\nthe Christus Patiens of Gregory Nazianzen.\n\nNOTES\n\n64. +Transliteration: autika ga pasa choreusei.  E-text editor's\ntranslation: \"Straightway all the earth shall dance.\"  Euripides,\nBacchae 114.  Euripidis Fabulae, ed. Gilbert Murray, vol. 3.\nOxford: Clarendon Press, 1913.\n\n66. +Transliteration: poi dei choreuein; poi kathistanai poda; kai\nkrata seisai polion.  Translation: \"Where must I dance?  Where must\nI stand and shake my white locks?\"  Euripides, Bacchae 184-85.\nEuripidis Fabulae, ed. Gilbert Murray, vol. 3.  Oxford: Clarendon\nPress, 1913.\n\n69. +Transliteration: ti m' anainei, ti me pheugeis.  Translation:\n\"Why do you reject me, why do you run from me?\" Bacchae 519. Euripidis\nFabulae, ed. Gilbert Murray, vol. 3.  Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1913.\n\n\n\nTHE MYTH OF DEMETER AND PERSEPHONE: I\n\n[81] No chapter in the history of human imagination is more curious\nthan the myth of Demeter, and Kore or Persephone.  Alien in some\nrespects from the genuine traditions of Greek mythology, a relic of\nthe earlier inhabitants of Greece, and having but a subordinate place\nin the religion of Homer, it yet asserted its interest, little by\nlittle, and took a complex hold on the minds of the Greeks, becoming\nfinally the central and most popular subject of their national\nworship.  Following its changes, we come across various phases of\nGreek culture, which are not without their likenesses in the modern\nmind.  We trace it in the dim first period of instinctive popular\nconception; we see it connecting itself with many impressive elements\nof art, and poetry, and religious custom, with the picturesque\nsuperstitions of the many, and with the finer intuitions of the few;\nand besides this, it is in itself full of [82] interest and\nsuggestion, to all for whom the ideas of the Greek religion have any\nreal meaning in the modern world.  And the fortune of the myth has\nnot deserted it in later times.  In the year 1780, the long-lost text\nof the Homeric Hymn to Demeter was discovered among the manuscripts\nof the imperial library at Moscow; and, in our own generation, the\ntact of an eminent student of Greek art, Sir Charles Newton, has\nrestored to the world the buried treasures of the little temple and\nprecinct of Demeter, at Cnidus, which have many claims to rank in the\ncentral order of Greek sculpture.  The present essay is an attempt to\nselect and weave together, for those who are now approaching the\ndeeper study of Greek thought, whatever details in the development of\nthis myth, arranged with a view rather to a total impression than to\nthe debate of particular points, may seem likely to increase their\nstock of poetical impressions, and to add to this some criticisms on\nthe expression which it has left of itself in extant art and poetry.\n\nThe central expression, then, of the story of Demeter and Persephone\nis the Homeric hymn, to which Grote has assigned a date at least as\nearly as six hundred years before Christ. The one survivor of a whole\nfamily of hymns on this subject, it was written, perhaps, for one of\nthose contests which took place on the seventh day of the Eleusinian\nfestival, and in which a bunch of [83] ears of corn was the prize;\nperhaps, for actual use in the mysteries themselves, by the\nHierophantes, or Interpreter, who showed to the worshippers at\nEleusis those sacred places to which the poem contains so many\nreferences.  About the composition itself there are many difficult\nquestions, with various surmises as to why it has remained only in\nthis unique manuscript of the end of the fourteenth century.\nPortions of the text are missing, and there are probably some\nadditions by later hands; yet most scholars have admitted that it\npossesses some of the true characteristics of the Homeric style, some\ngenuine echoes of the age immediately succeeding that which produced\nthe Iliad and the Odyssey.  Listen now to a somewhat abbreviated\nversion of it.\n\n\"I begin the song of Demeter\"--says the prize-poet, or the\nInterpreter, the Sacristan of the holy places--\"the song of Demeter\nand her daughter Persephone, whom Aidoneus carried away by the\nconsent of Zeus, as she played, apart from her mother, with the deep-\nbosomed daughters of the Ocean, gathering flowers in a meadow of soft\ngrass--roses and the crocus and fair violets and flags, and\nhyacinths, and, above all, the strange flower of the narcissus, which\nthe Earth, favouring the desire of Aidoneus, brought forth for the\nfirst time, to snare the footsteps of the flower-like girl.  A\nhundred [84] heads of blossom grew up from the roots of it, and the\nsky and the earth and the salt wave of the sea were glad at the scent\nthereof.  She stretched forth her hands to take the flower; thereupon\nthe earth opened, and the king of the great nation of the dead sprang\nout with his immortal horses.  He seized the unwilling girl, and bore\nher away weeping, on his golden chariot.  She uttered a shrill cry,\ncalling upon her father Zeus; but neither man nor god heard her\nvoice, nor even the nymphs of the meadow where she played; except\nHecate only, the daughter of Persaeus, sitting, as ever, in her cave,\nhalf veiled with a shining veil, thinking delicate thoughts; she, and\nthe Sun also, heard her.\n\n\"So long as she could still see the earth, and the sky, and the sea\nwith the great waves moving, and the beams of the sun, and still\nthought to see again her mother, and the race of the ever-living\ngods, so long hope soothed her, in the midst of her grief.  The peaks\nof the hills and the depths of the sea echoed her cry.  And the\nmother heard it.  A sharp pain seized her at the heart; she plucked\nthe veil from her hair, and cast down the blue hood from her\nshoulders, and fled forth like a bird, seeking Persephone over dry\nland and sea.  But neither man nor god would tell her the truth; nor\ndid any bird come to her as a sure messenger.\n\n\"Nine days she wandered up and down upon the earth, having blazing\ntorches in her hands; [85] and, in her great sorrow, she refused to\ntaste of ambrosia, or of the cup of the sweet nectar, nor washed her\nface.  But when the tenth morning came, Hecate met her, having a\nlight in her hands.  But Hecate had heard the voice only, and had\nseen no one, and could not tell Demeter who had borne the girl away.\nAnd Demeter said not a word, but fled away swiftly with her, having\nthe blazing torches in her hands, till they came to the Sun, the\nwatchman both of gods and men; and the goddess questioned him, and\nthe Sun told her the whole story.\n\n\"Then a more terrible grief took possession of Demeter, and, in her\nanger against Zeus, she forsook the assembly of the gods and abode\namong men, for a long time veiling her beauty under a worn\ncountenance, so that none who looked upon her knew her, until she\ncame to the house of Celeus, who was then king of Eleusis.  In her\nsorrow, she sat down at the wayside by the virgin's well, where the\npeople of Eleusis come to draw water, under the shadow of an olive-\ntree.  She seemed as an aged woman whose time of child-bearing is\ngone by, and from whom the gifts of Aphrodite have been withdrawn,\nlike one of the hired servants, who nurse the children or keep house,\nin kings' palaces.  And the daughters of Celeus, four of them, like\ngoddesses, possessing the flower of their youth, Callidice,\nCleisidice, Demo, and Callithoe the eldest of them, coming to draw\nwater that they [86] might bear it in their brazen pitchers to their\nfather's house, saw Demeter and knew her not.  The gods are hard for\nmen to recognise.\n\n\"They asked her kindly what she did there, alone; and Demeter\nanswered, dissemblingly, that she was escaped from certain pirates,\nwho had carried her from her home and meant to sell her as a slave.\nThen they prayed her to abide there while they returned to the\npalace, to ask their mother's permission to bring her home.\n\n\"Demeter bowed her head in assent; and they, having filled their\nshining vessels with water, bore them away, rejoicing in their\nbeauty. They came quickly to their father's house, and told their\nmother what they had seen and heard.  Their mother bade them return,\nand hire the woman for a great price; and they, like the hinds or\nyoung heifers leaping in the fields in spring, fulfilled with the\npasture, holding up the folds of their raiment, sped along the hollow\nroad-way, their hair, in colour like the crocus, floating about their\nshoulders as they went.  They found the glorious goddess still\nsitting by the wayside, unmoved.  Then they led her to their father's\nhouse; and she, veiled from head to foot, in her deep grief, followed\nthem on the way, and her blue robe gathered itself as she walked, in\nmany folds about her feet.  They came to the house, and passed\nthrough the sunny porch, where their mother, Metaneira, was [87]\nsitting against one of the pillars of the roof, having a young child\nin her bosom.  They ran up to her; but Demeter crossed the threshold,\nand, as she passed through, her head rose and touched the roof, and\nher presence filled the doorway with a divine brightness.\n\n\"Still they did not wholly recognise her.  After a time she was made\nto smile.  She refused to drink wine, but tasted of a cup mingled of\nwater and barley, flavoured with mint.  It happened that Metaneira\nhad lately borne a child.  It had come beyond hope, long after its\nelder brethren, and was the object of a peculiar tenderness and of\nmany prayers with all.  Demeter consented to remain, and become the\nnurse of this child.  She took the child in her immortal hands, and\nplaced it in her fragrant bosom; and the heart of the mother\nrejoiced.  Thus Demeter nursed Demophoon.  And the child grew like a\ngod, neither sucking the breast, nor eating bread; but Demeter daily\nanointed it with ambrosia, as if it had indeed been the child of a\ngod, breathing sweetly over it and holding it in her bosom; and at\nnights, when she lay alone with the child, she would hide it secretly\nin the red strength of the fire, like a brand; for her heart yearned\ntowards it, and she would fain have given to it immortal youth.\n\n\"But the foolishness of his mother prevented it.  For a suspicion\ngrowing up within her, she awaited her time, and one night peeped in\nupon [88] them, and thereupon cried out in terror at what she saw.\nAnd the goddess heard her; and a sudden anger seizing her, she\nplucked the child from the fire and cast it on the ground,--the child\nshe would fain have made immortal, but who must now share the common\ndestiny of all men, though some inscrutable grace should still be\nhis, because he had lain for awhile on the knees and in the bosom of\nthe goddess.\n\n\"Then Demeter manifested herself openly.  She put away the mask of\nold age, and changed her form, and the spirit of beauty breathed\nabout her.  A fragrant odour fell from her raiment, and her flesh\nshone from afar; the long yellow hair descended waving over her\nshoulders, and the great house was filled as with the brightness of\nlightning.  She passed out through the halls; and Metaneira fell to\nthe earth, and was speechless for a long time, and remembered not to\nlift the child from the ground.  But the sisters, hearing its piteous\ncries, leapt from their beds and ran to it.  Then one of them lifted\nthe child from the earth, and wrapped it in her bosom, and another\nhastened to her mother's chamber to awake her: they came round the\nchild, and washed away the flecks of the fire from its panting body,\nand kissed it tenderly all about: but the anguish of the child ceased\nnot; the arms of other and different nurses were about to enfold it.\n\n\"So, all night, trembling with fear, they [89] sought to propitiate\nthe glorious goddess; and in the morning they told all to their\nfather, Celeus.  And he, according to the commands of the goddess,\nbuilt a fair temple; and all the people assisted; and when it was\nfinished every man departed to his own home.  Then Demeter returned,\nand sat down within the temple-walls, and remained still apart from\nthe company of the gods, alone in her wasting regret for her daughter\nPersephone.\n\n\"And, in her anger, she sent upon the earth a year of grievous\nfamine.  The dry seed remained hidden in the soil; in vain the oxen\ndrew the ploughshare through the furrows; much white seed-corn fell\nfruitless on the earth, and the whole human race had like to have\nperished, and the gods had no more service of men, unless Zeus had\ninterfered.  First he sent Iris, afterwards all the gods, one by one,\nto turn Demeter from her anger; but none was able to persuade her;\nshe heard their words with a hard countenance, and vowed by no means\nto return to Olympus, nor to yield the fruit of the earth, until her\neyes had seen her lost daughter again.  Then, last of all, Zeus sent\nHermes into the kingdom of the dead, to persuade Aidoneus to suffer\nhis bride to return to the light of day.  And Hermes found the king\nat home in his palace, sitting on a couch, beside the shrinking\nPersephone, consumed within herself by desire for her mother.  A\ndoubtful smile passed over [90] the face of Aidoneus; yet he obeyed\nthe message, and bade Persephone return; yet praying her a little to\nhave gentle thoughts of him, nor judge him too hardly, who was also\nan immortal god.  And Persephone arose up quickly in great joy; only,\nere she departed, he caused her to eat a morsel of sweet pomegranate,\ndesigning secretly thereby, that she should not remain always upon\nearth, but might some time return to him.  And Aidoneus yoked the\nhorses to his chariot; and Persephone ascended into it; and Hermes\ntook the reins in his hands and drove out through the infernal halls;\nand the horses ran willingly; and they two quickly passed over the\nways of that long journey, neither the waters of the sea, nor of the\nrivers, nor the deep ravines of the hills, nor the cliffs of the\nshore, resisting them; till at last Hermes placed Persephone before\nthe door of the temple where her mother was; who, seeing her, ran out\nquickly to meet her, like a Maenad coming down a mountain-side, dusky\nwith woods.\n\n\"So they spent all that day together in intimate communion, having\nmany things to hear and tell.  Then Zeus sent to them Rhea, his\nvenerable mother, the oldest of divine persons, to bring them back\nreconciled, to the company of the gods; and he ordained that\nPersephone should remain two parts of the year with her mother, and\none third part only with her husband, in the kingdom of the dead.  So\nDemeter suffered [91] the earth to yield its fruits once more, and\nthe land was suddenly laden with leaves and flowers and waving corn.\nAlso she visited Triptolemus and the other princes of Eleusis, and\ninstructed them in the performance of her sacred rites,--those\nmysteries of which no tongue may speak.  Only, blessed is he whose\neyes have seen them; his lot after death is not as the lot of other\nmen!\"\n\nIn the story of Demeter, as in all Greek myths, we may trace the\naction of three different influences, which have moulded it with\nvarying effects, in three successive phases of its development.\nThere is first its half-conscious, instinctive, or mystical, phase,\nin which, under the form of an unwritten legend, living from mouth to\nmouth, and with details changing as it passes from place to place,\nthere lie certain primitive impressions of the phenomena of the\nnatural world.  We may trace it next in its conscious, poetical or\nliterary, phase, in which the poets become the depositaries of the\nvague instinctive product of the popular imagination, and handle it\nwith a purely literary interest, fixing its outlines, and simplifying\nor developing its situations.  Thirdly, the myth passes into the\nethical phase, in which the persons and the incidents of the poetical\nnarrative are realised as abstract symbols, because intensely\ncharacteristic examples, of moral or spiritual conditions. [92]\nBehind the adventures of the stealing of Persephone and the\nwanderings of Demeter in search of her, as we find them in the\nHomeric hymn, we may discern the confused conception, under which\nthat early age, in which the myths were first created, represented to\nitself those changes in physical things, that order of summer and\nwinter, of which it had no scientific, or systematic explanation, but\nin which, nevertheless, it divined a multitude of living agencies,\ncorresponding to those ascertained forces, of which our colder modern\nscience tells the number and the names.  Demeter--Demeter and\nPersephone, at first, in a sort of confused union--is the earth, in\nthe fixed order of its annual changes, but also in all the accident\nand detail of the growth and decay of its children.  Of this\nconception, floating loosely in the air, the poets of a later age\ntake possession; they create Demeter and Persephone as we know them\nin art and poetry.  From the vague and fluctuating union, in which\ntogether they had represented the earth and its changes, the mother\nand the daughter define themselves with special functions, and with\nfixed, well-understood relationships, the incidents and emotions of\nwhich soon weave themselves into a pathetic story.  Lastly, in\nproportion as the literary or aesthetic activity completes the\npicture or the poem, the ethical interest makes itself felt.  These\nstrange persons--Demeter and Persephone--these marvellous incidents--\nthe translation into Hades, the seeking [93] of Demeter, the return\nof Persephone to her,--lend themselves to the elevation and\ncorrection of the sentiments of sorrow and awe, by the presentment to\nthe senses and the imagination of an ideal expression of them.\nDemeter cannot but seem the type of divine grief.  Persephone is the\ngoddess of death, yet with a promise of life to come.  Those three\nphases, then, which are more or less discernible in all mythical\ndevelopment, and constitute a natural order in it, based on the\nnecessary conditions of human apprehension, are fixed more plainly,\nperhaps, than in any other passage of Greek mythology in the story of\nDemeter.  And as the Homeric hymn is the central expression of its\nliterary or poetical phase, so the marble remains, of which I shall\nhave to speak by and bye, are the central extant illustration of what\nI have called its ethical phase.\n\nHomer, in the Iliad, knows Demeter, but only as the goddess of the\nfields, the originator and patroness of the labours of the\ncountryman, in their yearly order.  She stands, with her hair yellow\nlike the ripe corn, at the threshing-floor, and takes her share in\nthe toil, the heap of grain whitening, as the flails, moving in the\nwind, disperse the chaff.  Out in the fresh fields, she yields to the\nembraces of Iasion, to the extreme jealousy of Zeus, who slays her\nmortal lover with lightning.  The flowery town of Pyrasus--the wheat-\ntown,--an ancient place in Thessaly, is her sacred precinct.  But\nwhen [94] Homer gives a list of the orthodox gods, her name is not\nmentioned.\n\nHomer, in the Odyssey, knows Persephone also, but not as Kore; only\nas the queen of the dead--epain\u00ea Persephon\u00ea+--dreadful Persephone, the\ngoddess of destruction and death, according to the apparent import of\nher name.+  She accomplishes men's evil prayers; she is the mistress\nand manager of men's shades, to which she can dispense a little more\nor less of life, dwelling in her mouldering palace on the steep shore\nof the Oceanus, with its groves of barren willows and tall poplars.\nBut that Homer knew her as the daughter of Demeter there are no\nsigns; and of his knowledge of the rape of Persephone there is only\nthe faintest sign,--he names Hades by the golden reins of his\nchariot, and his beautiful horses.\n\nThe main theme, then, the most characteristic peculiarities, of the\nstory, as subsequently developed, are not to be found, expressly, in\nthe true Homer.  We have in him, on the one hand, Demeter, as the\nperfectly fresh and blithe goddess of the fields, whose children, if\nshe has them, must be as the perfectly discreet and peaceful,\nunravished Kore; on the other hand, we have Persephone, as the wholly\nterrible goddess of death, who brings to Ulysses the querulous\nshadows of the dead, and has the head of the gorgon Medusa in her\nkeeping.  And it is only when these two contrasted images have been\n[95] brought into intimate relationship, only when Kore and\nPersephone have been identified, that the deeper mythology of Demeter\nbegins.\n\nThis combination has taken place in Hesiod; and in three lines of the\nTheogony we find the stealing of Persephone by Aidoneus,*--one of\nthose things in Hesiod, perhaps, which are really older than Homer.\nHesiod has been called the poet of helots, and is thought to have\npreserved some of the traditions of those earlier inhabitants of\nGreece who had become a kind of serfs; and in a certain shadowiness\nin his conceptions of the gods, contrasting with the concrete and\nheroic forms of the gods of Homer, we may perhaps trace something of\nthe quiet unspoken brooding of a subdued people--of that silently\ndreaming temper to which the story of Persephone properly belongs.\nHowever this may be, it is in Hesiod that the two images,\nunassociated in Homer--the goddess of summer and the goddess of\ndeath, Kore and Persephone--are identified with much significance;\nand that strange, dual being makes her first appearance, whose latent\ncapabilities the poets afterwards developed; among the rest, a\npeculiar blending of those two contrasted aspects, full of purpose\nfor the duly chastened intelligence; death, resurrection,\nrejuvenescence.--Awake, and sing, ye that dwell in the dust!\n\n[96] Modern science explains the changes of the natural world by the\nhypothesis of certain unconscious forces; and the sum of these\nforces, in their combined action, constitutes the scientific\nconception of nature.  But, side by side with the growth of this more\nmechanical conception, an older and more spiritual, Platonic,\nphilosophy has always maintained itself, a philosophy more of\ninstinct than of the understanding, the mental starting-point of\nwhich is not an observed sequence of outward phenomena, but some such\nfeeling as most of us have on the first warmer days in spring, when\nwe seem to feel the genial processes of nature actually at work; as\nif just below the mould, and in the hard wood of the trees, there\nwere really circulating some spirit of life, akin to that which makes\nits energies felt within ourselves.  Starting with a hundred\ninstincts such as this, that older unmechanical, spiritual, or\nPlatonic, philosophy envisages nature rather as the unity of a living\nspirit or person, revealing itself in various degrees to the kindred\nspirit of the observer, than as a system of mechanical forces.  Such\na philosophy is a systematised form of that sort of poetry (we may\nstudy it, for instance, either in Shelley or in Wordsworth), which\nalso has its fancies of a spirit of the earth, or of the sky,--a\npersonal intelligence abiding in them, the existence of which is\nassumed in every suggestion such poetry makes to us of a sympathy\nbetween the ways [97] and aspects of outward nature and the moods of\nmen.  And what stood to the primitive intelligence in place of such\nmetaphysical conceptions were those cosmical stories or myths, such\nas this of Demeter and Persephone, which springing up spontaneously\nin many minds, came at last to represent to them, in a certain number\nof sensibly realised images, all they knew, felt, or fancied, of the\nnatural world about them.  The sky in its unity and its variety,--the\nsea in its unity and its variety,--mirrored themselves respectively\nin these simple, but profoundly impressible spirits, as Zeus, as\nGlaucus or Poseidon.  And a large part of their experience--all, that\nis, that related to the earth in its changes, the growth and decay of\nall things born of it--was covered by the story of Demeter, the myth\nof the earth as a mother.  They thought of Demeter as the old Germans\nthought of Hertha, or the later Greeks of Pan, as the Egyptians\nthought of Isis, the land of the Nile, made green by the streams of\nOsiris, for whose coming Isis longs, as Demeter for Persephone; thus\nnaming together in her all their fluctuating thoughts, impressions,\nsuspicions, of the earth and its appearances, their whole complex\ndivination of a mysterious life, a perpetual working, a continuous\nact of conception there.  Or they thought of the many-coloured earth\nas the garment of Demeter, as the great modern pantheist poet speaks\nof it as the \"garment of God.\"  Its [98] brooding fertility; the\nspring flowers breaking from its surface, the thinly disguised\nunhealthfulness of their heavy perfume, and of their chosen places of\ngrowth; the delicate, feminine, Prosperina-like motion of all growing\nthings; its fruit, full of drowsy and poisonous, or fresh, reviving\njuices; its sinister caprices also, its droughts and sudden volcanic\nheats; the long delays of spring; its dumb sleep, so suddenly flung\naway; the sadness which insinuates itself into its languid\nluxuriance; all this grouped itself round the persons of Demeter and\nher circle.  They could turn always to her, from the actual earth\nitself, in aweful yet hopeful prayer, and a devout personal\ngratitude, and explain it through her, in its sorrow and its promise,\nits darkness and its helpfulness to man.\n\nThe personification of abstract ideas by modern painters or\nsculptors, of wealth, of commerce, of health, for instance, shocks,\nin most cases, the aesthetic sense, as something conventional or\nrhetorical, as a mere transparent allegory, or figure of speech,\nwhich could please almost no one.  On the other hand, such symbolical\nrepresentations, under the form of human persons, as Giotto's Virtues\nand Vices at Padua, or his Saint Poverty at Assisi, or the series of\nthe planets in certain early Italian engravings, are profoundly\npoetical and impressive.  They seem to be something more than mere\nsymbolism, [99] and to be connected with some peculiarly sympathetic\npenetration, on the part of the artist, into the subjects he intended\nto depict.  Symbolism intense as this, is the creation of a special\ntemper, in which a certain simplicity, taking all things literally,\nau pied de la lettre, is united to a vivid pre-occupation with the\naesthetic beauty of the image itself, the figured side of figurative\nexpression, the form of the metaphor.  When it is said, \"Out of his\nmouth goeth a sharp sword,\" that temper is ready to deal directly and\nboldly with that difficult image, like that old designer of the\nfourteenth century, who has depicted this, and other images of the\nApocalypse, in a coloured window at Bourges.  Such symbolism cares a\ngreat deal for the hair of Temperance, discreetly bound, for some\nsubtler likeness to the colour of the sky in the girdle of Hope, for\nthe inwoven flames in the red garment of Charity.  And what was\nspecially peculiar to the temper of the old Florentine painter,\nGiotto, to the temper of his age in general, doubtless, more than to\nthat of ours, was the persistent and universal mood of the age in\nwhich the story of Demeter and Persephone was first created.  If some\npainter of our own time has conceived the image of The Day so\nintensely, that we hardly think of distinguishing between the image,\nwith its girdle of dissolving morning mist, and the meaning of the\nimage; if William Blake, to our so great delight, makes the morning\nstars [100] literally \"sing together,\"--these fruits of individual\ngenius are in part also a \"survival\" from a different age, with the\nwhole mood of which this mode of expression was more congruous than\nit is with ours.  But there are traces of the old temper in the man\nof to-day also; and through these we can understand that earlier\ntime--a very poetical time, with the more highly gifted peoples--in\nwhich every impression men received of the action of powers without\nor within them suggested to them the presence of a soul or will, like\ntheir own--a person, with a living spirit, and senses, and hands, and\nfeet; which, when it talked of the return of Kore to Demeter, or the\nmarriage of Zeus and Here, was not using rhetorical language, but\nyielding to a real illusion; to which the voice of man \"was really a\nstream, beauty an effluence, death a mist.\"\n\nThe gods of Greek mythology overlap each other; they are confused or\nconnected with each other, lightly or deeply, as the case may be, and\nsometimes have their doubles, at first sight as in a troubled dream,\nyet never, when we examine each detail more closely, without a\ncertain truth to human reason.  It is only in a limited sense that it\nis possible to lift, and examine by itself, one thread of the network\nof story and imagery, which, in a certain age of civilisation, wove\nitself over every detail of life and thought, over every name in the\npast, and almost every place in [101] Greece.  The story of Demeter,\nthen, was the work of no single author or place or time; the poet of\nits first phase was no single person, but the whole consciousness of\nan age, though an age doubtless with its differences of more or less\nimaginative individual minds--with one, here or there, eminent,\nthough but by a little, above a merely receptive majority, the\nspokesman of a universal, though faintly-felt prepossession,\nattaching the errant fancies of the people around him to definite\nnames and images.  The myth grew up gradually, and at many distant\nplaces, in many minds, independent of each other, but dealing in a\ncommon temper with certain elements and aspects of the natural world,\nas one here, and another there, seemed to catch in that incident or\ndetail which flashed more incisively than others on the inward eye,\nsome influence, or feature, or characteristic of the great mother.\nThe various epithets of Demeter, the local variations of her story,\nits incompatible incidents, bear witness to the manner of its\ngeneration.  They illustrate that indefiniteness which is\ncharacteristic of Greek mythology, a theology with no central\nauthority, no link on historic time, liable from the first to an\nunobserved transformation.  They indicate the various, far-distant\nspots from which the visible body of the goddess slowly collected its\nconstituents, and came at last to have a well-defined existence in\nthe popular mind.  In this sense, Demeter appears to one in [102] her\nanger, sullenly withholding the fruits of the earth, to another in\nher pride of Persephone, to another in her grateful gift of the arts\nof agriculture to man; at last only, is there a general recognition\nof a clearly-arrested outline, a tangible embodiment, which has\nsolidified itself in the imagination of the people, they know not\nhow.\n\nThe worship of Demeter belongs to that older religion, nearer to the\nearth, which some have thought they could discern, behind the more\ndefinitely national mythology of Homer.  She is the goddess of dark\ncaves, and is not wholly free from monstrous form.  She gave men the\nfirst fig in one place, the first poppy in another; in another, she\nfirst taught the old Titans to mow.  She is the mother of the vine\nalso; and the assumed name by which she called herself in her\nwanderings, is D\u00f4s--a gift; the crane, as the harbinger of rain, is\nher messenger among the birds.  She knows the magic powers of certain\nplants, cut from her bosom, to bane or bless; and, under one of her\nepithets, herself presides over the springs, as also coming from the\nsecret places of the earth.  She is the goddess, then, at first, of\nthe fertility of the earth in its wildness; and so far, her\nattributes are to some degree confused with those of the Thessalian\nGaia and the Phrygian Cybele.  Afterwards, and it is now that her\nmost characteristic attributes begin to concentrate themselves, [103]\nshe separates herself from these confused relationships, as specially\nthe goddess of agriculture, of the fertility of the earth when\nfurthered by human skill.  She is the preserver of the seed sown in\nhope, under many epithets derived from the incidents of vegetation,\nas the simple countryman names her, out of a mind full of the various\nexperiences of his little garden or farm.  She is the most definite\nembodiment of all those fluctuating mystical instincts, of which\nGaia,* the mother of the earth's gloomier offspring, is a vaguer and\nmistier one.  There is nothing of the confused outline, the mere\nshadowiness of mystical dreaming, in this most concrete human figure.\nNo nation, less aesthetically gifted than the Greeks, could have thus\nlightly thrown its mystical surmise and divination into images so\nclear and idyllic as those of the solemn goddess of the country, in\nwhom the characteristics of the mother are expressed with so much\ntenderness, and the \"beauteous head\" of Kore, then so fresh and\npeaceful.\n\nIn this phase, then, the story of Demeter appears as the peculiar\ncreation of country-people of a high impressibility, dreaming over\ntheir work in spring or autumn, half consciously touched by a sense\nof its sacredness, and a sort of [104] mystery about it.  For there\nis much in the life of the farm everywhere which gives to persons of\nany seriousness of disposition, special opportunity for grave and\ngentle thoughts.  The temper of people engaged in the occupations of\ncountry life, so permanent, so \"near to nature,\" is at all times\nalike; and the habitual solemnity of thought and expression which\nWordsworth found in the peasants of Cumberland, and the painter\nFran\u00e7ois Millet in the peasants of Brittany, may well have had its\nprototype in early Greece.  And so, even before the development, by\nthe poets, of their aweful and passionate story, Demeter and\nPersephone seem to have been pre-eminently the venerable, or aweful,\ngoddesses.  Demeter haunts the fields in spring, when the young lambs\nare dropped; she visits the barns in autumn; she takes part in mowing\nand binding up the corn, and is the goddess of sheaves.  She presides\nover all the pleasant, significant details of the farm, the\nthreshing-floor and the full granary, and stands beside the woman\nbaking bread at the oven.  With these fancies are connected certain\nsimple rites; the half-understood local observance, and the half-\nbelieved local legend, reacting capriciously on each other.  They\nleave her a fragment of bread and a morsel of meat, at the cross-\nroads, to take on her journey; and perhaps some real Demeter carries\nthem away, as she wanders through the country.  The incidents of\ntheir yearly labour become to [105] them acts of worship; they seek\nher blessing through many expressive names, and almost catch sight of\nher, at dawn or evening, in the nooks of the fragrant fields.  She\nlays a finger on the grass at the road-side, and some new flower\ncomes up.  All the picturesque implements of country life are hers;\nthe poppy also, emblem of an inexhaustible fertility, and full of\nmysterious juices for the alleviation of pain.  The countrywoman who\nputs her child to sleep in the great, cradle-like, basket, for\nwinnowing the corn, remembers Demeter Courotrophos, the mother of\ncorn and children alike, and makes it a little coat out of the dress\nworn by its father at his initiation into her mysteries.  Yet she is\nan angry goddess too, sometimes--Demeter Erinnys, the goblin of the\nneighbourhood, haunting its shadowy places.  She lies on the ground\nout of doors on summer nights, and becomes wet with the dew.  She\ngrows young again every spring, yet is of great age, the wrinkled\nwoman of the Homeric hymn, who becomes the nurse of Demophoon.  Other\nlighter, errant stories nest themselves, as time goes on, within the\ngreater.  The water-newt, which repels the lips of the traveller who\nstoops to drink, is a certain urchin, Abas, who spoiled by his\nmockery the pleasure of the thirsting goddess, as she drank once of a\nwayside spring in her wanderings.  The night-owl is the transformed\nAscalabus, who alone had seen Persephone eat that morsel [106] of\npomegranate, in the garden of Aidoneus.  The bitter wild mint was\nonce a girl, who for a moment had made her jealous, in Hades.\n\nThe episode of Triptolemus, to whom Demeter imparts the mysteries of\nthe plough, like the details of some sacred rite, that he may bear\nthem abroad to all people, embodies, in connexion with her, another\ngroup of the circumstances of country life.  As with all the other\nepisodes of the story, there are here also local variations,\ntraditions of various favourites of the goddess at different places,\nof whom grammarians can tell us, finally obscured behind the greater\nfame of Triptolemus of Eleusis.  One might fancy, at first, that\nTriptolemus was a quite Boeotian divinity, of the ploughshare.  Yet\nwe know that the thoughts of the Greeks concerning the culture of the\nearth from which they came, were most often noble ones; and if we\nexamine carefully the works of ancient art which represent him, the\nsecond thought will suggest itself, that there was nothing clumsy or\ncoarse about this patron of the plough--something, rather, of the\nmovement of delicate wind or fire, about him and his chariot.  And\nthis finer character is explained, if, as we are justified in doing,\nwe bring him into closest connexion with that episode, so full of a\nstrange mysticism, of the Nursing of Demophoon, in the Homeric hymn.\nFor, according to some traditions, none other [107] than Triptolemus\nhimself was the subject of that mysterious experiment, in which\nDemeter laid the child nightly, in the red heat of the fire; and he\nlives afterwards, not immortal indeed, not wholly divine, yet, as\nShakspere says, a \"nimble spirit,\" feeling little of the weight of\nthe material world about him--the element of winged fire in the clay.\nThe delicate, fresh, farm-lad we may still actually see sometimes,\nlike a graceful field-flower among the corn, becomes, in the sacred\nlegend of agriculture, a king's son; and then, the fire having\nsearched out from him the grosser elements on that famous night, all\ncompact now of spirit, a priest also, administering the gifts of\nDemeter to all the earth.  Certainly, the extant works of art which\nrepresent him, gems or vase-paintings, conform truly enough to this\nideal of a \"nimble spirit,\" though he wears the broad country hat,\nwhich Hermes also wears, going swiftly, half on the airy, mercurial\nwheels of his farm instrument, harrow or plough--half on wings of\nserpents--the worm, symbolical of the soil, but winged, as sending up\nthe dust committed to it, after subtle firing, in colours and odours\nof fruit and flowers.  It is an altogether sacred character, again,\nthat he assumes in another precious work, of the severer period of\nGreek art, lately discovered at Eleusis, and now preserved in the\nmuseum of Athens, a singularly refined bas-relief, in which he\nstands, a firm and serious youth, between Demeter and [108]\nPersephone, who places her hand as with some sacred influence, and\nconsecrating gesture, upon him.\n\nBut the house of the prudent countryman will be, of course, a place\nof honest manners; and Demeter Thesmophoros is the guardian of\nmarried life, the deity of the discretion of wives.  She is therefore\nthe founder of civilised order.  The peaceful homes of men, scattered\nabout the land, in their security--Demeter represents these fruits of\nthe earth also, not without a suggestion of the white cities, which\nshine upon the hills above the waving fields of corn, seats of\njustice and of true kingship.  She is also in a certain sense the\npatron of travellers, having, in her long wanderings after\nPersephone, recorded and handed down those omens, caught from little\nthings--the birds which crossed her path, the persons who met her on\nthe way, the words they said, the things they carried in their hands,\neinodia symbola+--by noting which, men bring their journeys to a\nsuccessful end; so that the simple countryman may pass securely on\nhis way; and is led by signs from the goddess herself, when he\ntravels far to visit her, at Hermione or Eleusis.\n\nSo far the attributes of Demeter and Kore are similar.  In the\nmythical conception, as in the religious acts connected with it, the\nmother and the daughter are almost interchangeable; [109] they are\nthe two goddesses, the twin-named.  Gradually, the office of\nPersephone is developed, defines itself; functions distinct from\nthose of Demeter are attributed to her.  Hitherto, always at the side\nof Demeter and sharing her worship, she now appears detached from\nher, going and coming, on her mysterious business.  A third part of\nthe year she abides in darkness; she comes up in the spring; and\nevery autumn, when the countryman sows his seed in the earth, she\ndescends thither again, and the world of the dead lies open, spring\nand autumn, to let her in and out.  Persephone, then, is the summer-\ntime, and, in this sense, a daughter of the earth; but the summer as\nbringing winter; the flowery splendour and consummated glory of the\nyear, as thereafter immediately beginning to draw near to its end, as\nthe first yellow leaf crosses it, in the first severer wind.  She is\nthe last day of spring, or the first day of autumn, in the threefold\ndivision of the Greek year.  Her story is, indeed, but the story, in\nan intenser form, of Adonis, of Hyacinth, of Adrastus--the king's\nblooming son, fated, in the story of Herodotus, to be wounded to\ndeath with an iron spear--of Linus, a fair child who is torn to\npieces by hounds every spring-time--of the English Sleeping Beauty.\nFrom being the goddess of summer and the flowers, she becomes the\ngoddess of night and sleep and death, confuseable with Hecate, the\ngoddess of midnight [110] terrors--Kor\u00ea arr\u00eatos,+ the mother of the\nErinnyes, who appeared to Pindar, to warn him of his approaching\ndeath, upbraiding him because he had made no hymn in her praise,\nwhich swan's song he thereupon began, but finished with her.  She is\na twofold goddess, therefore, according as one or the other of these\ntwo contrasted aspects of her nature is seized, respectively.  A\nduality, an inherent opposition in the very conception of Persephone,\nruns all through her story, and is part of her ghostly power.  There\nis ever something in her of a divided or ambiguous identity: hence\nthe many euphemisms of later language concerning her.\n\nThe \"worship of sorrow,\" as Goethe called it, is sometimes supposed\nto have had almost no place in the religion of the Greeks.  Their\nreligion has been represented as a religion of mere cheerfulness, the\nworship by an untroubled, unreflecting humanity, conscious of no\ndeeper needs, of the embodiments of its own joyous activity.  It\nhelped to hide out of their sight those traces of decay and\nweariness, of which the Greeks were constitutionally shy, to keep\nthem from peeping too curiously into certain shadowy places,\nappropriate enough to the gloomy imagination of the middle age; and\nit hardly proposed to itself to give consolation to people who, in\ntruth, were never \"sick or sorry.\"  But this familiar view of Greek\nreligion is based on a consideration of a part only of what is known\n[111] concerning it, and really involves a misconception, akin to\nthat which underestimates the influence of the romantic spirit\ngenerally, in Greek poetry and art; as if Greek art had dealt\nexclusively with human nature in its sanity, suppressing all motives\nof strangeness, all the beauty which is born of difficulty,\npermitting nothing but an Olympian, though perhaps somewhat wearisome\ncalm.  In effect, such a conception of Greek art and poetry leaves in\nthe central expressions of Greek culture none but negative qualities;\nand the legend of Demeter and Persephone, perhaps the most popular of\nall Greek legends, is sufficient to show that the \"worship of sorrow\"\nwas not without its function in Greek religion; their legend is a\nlegend made by and for sorrowful, wistful, anxious people; while the\nmost important artistic monuments of that legend sufficiently prove\nthat the Romantic spirit was really at work in the minds of Greek\nartists, extracting by a kind of subtle alchemy, a beauty, not\nwithout the elements of tranquillity, of dignity and order, out of a\nmatter, at first sight painful and strange.\n\nThe student of origins, as French critics say, of the earliest stages\nof art and poetry, must be content to follow faint traces; and in\nwhat has been here said, much may seem to have been made of little,\nwith too much completion, by a general framework or setting, of what\nafter [112] all are but doubtful or fragmentary indications.  Yet\nthere is a certain cynicism too, in that over-positive temper, which\nis so jealous of our catching any resemblance in the earlier world to\nthe thoughts that really occupy our own minds, and which, in its\nestimate of the actual fragments of antiquity, is content to find no\nseal of human intelligence upon them.  Slight indeed in themselves,\nthese fragmentary indications become suggestive of much, when viewed\nin the light of such general evidence about the human imagination as\nis afforded by the theory of \"comparative mythology,\" or what is\ncalled the theory of \"animism.\"  Only, in the application of these\ntheories, the student of Greek religion must never forget that, after\nall, it is with poetry, not with systematic theological belief or\ndogma, that he has to do.  As regards this story of Demeter and\nPersephone, what we actually possess is some actual fragments of\npoetry, some actual fragments of sculpture; and with a curiosity,\njustified by the direct aesthetic beauty of these fragments, we feel\nour way backwards to that engaging picture of the poet-people, with\nwhich the ingenuity of modern theory has filled the void in our\nknowledge.  The abstract poet of that first period of mythology,\ncreating in this wholly impersonal, intensely spiritual way,--the\nabstract spirit of poetry itself, rises before the mind; and, in\nspeaking of this poetical age, we must take heed, before all things,\nin no sense to misconstrue the poets.\n\nNOTES\n\n94. +Transliteration: epain\u00ea Persephon\u00ea.  Translation: \"dread\nPersephone.\"  See, for example, Odyssey, Book 10.490 and 563.\n\n94. +\"According to the apparent import of her name\"; Pater likely\nrefers to the etymology of \"Persophone\"--\"bringer of destruction.\"\n\n95. *Theogony, 912-14:\n\n+Transliteration:\n\nAutar ho D\u00eam\u00eatros polyphorb\u00eas es lechos \u00ealthen\n\u00ea teke Persephon\u00ean leuk\u00f4lenon, h\u00ean Aid\u00f4neus\nh\u00earpasen h\u00eas para m\u00eatros, ed\u00f4ke de m\u00eatieta Zeus.\n\n+Translation: \"And he came to bountiful Demeter\u2019s bed, / and she\ngave birth to white-armed Persephone, whom Aidoneus / took from her\nmother\u2019s side; but Zeus, wise counsellor, gave her to him.\"  Hesiod.\nThe Homeric Hymns and Homerica.  Theogony.  Cambridge, MA., Harvard\nUniversity Press.  London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1914.\n\n103. *In the Homeric hymn, pre-eminently, of the flower which grew up\nfor the first time, to snare the footsteps of Kore, the fair but\ndeadly Narcissus, the flower of nark\u00ea, the numbness of death.\n\n108. +Transliteration: einodia symbola.  Translation: \"signs along\nthe roadside.\"\n\n110. +Transliteration: Kor\u00ea arr\u00eatos.  Translation: \"Kor\u00ea the\nmysterious, the horrible .\"\n\n\n\nTHE MYTH OF DEMETER AND PERSEPHONE: II\n\n[113] THE stories of the Greek mythology, like other things which\nbelong to no man, and for which no one in particular is responsible,\nhad their fortunes.  In that world of floating fancies there was a\nstruggle for life; there were myths which never emerged from that\nfirst stage of popular conception, or were absorbed by stronger\ncompetitors, because, as some true heroes have done, they lacked the\nsacred poet or prophet, and were never remodelled by literature;\nwhile, out of the myth of Demeter, under the careful conduct of\npoetry and art, came the little pictures, the idylls, of the Homeric\nhymn, and the gracious imagery of Praxiteles.  The myth has now\nentered its second or poetical phase, then, in which more definite\nfancies are grouped about the primitive stock, in a conscious\nliterary temper, and the whole interest settles round the images of\nthe beautiful girl going down into the darkness, and the weary woman\nwho seeks her lost daughter--divine persons, then sincerely believed\nin by the majority of the Greeks.  The Homeric hymn [114] is the\ncentral monument of this second phase.  In it, the changes of the\nnatural year have become a personal history, a story of human\naffection and sorrow, yet with a far-reaching religious significance\nalso, of which the mere earthly spring and autumn are but an analogy;\nand in the development of this human element, the writer of the hymn\nsometimes displays a genuine power of pathetic expression.  The whole\nepisode of the fostering of Demophoon, in which over the body of the\ndying child human longing and regret are blent so subtly with the\nmysterious design of the goddess to make the child immortal, is an\nexcellent example of the sentiment of pity in literature.  Yet though\nit has reached the stage of conscious literary interpretation, much\nof its early mystical or cosmical character still lingers about the\nstory, as it is here told.  Later mythologists simply define the\npersonal history; but in this hymn we may, again and again, trace\ncurious links of connexion with the original purpose of the myth.\nIts subject is the weary woman, indeed, our Lady of Sorrows, the\nmater dolorosa of the ancient world, but with a certain latent\nreference, all through, to the mystical person of the earth.  Her\nrobe of dark blue is the raiment of her mourning, but also the blue\nrobe of the earth in shadow, as we see it in Titian's landscapes; her\ngreat age is the age of the immemorial earth; she becomes a nurse,\ntherefore, holding Demophoon in her bosom; [115] the folds of her\ngarment are fragrant, not merely with the incense of Eleusis, but\nwith the natural perfume of flowers and fruit.  The sweet breath with\nwhich she nourishes the child Demophoon, is the warm west wind,\nfeeding all germs of vegetable life; her bosom, where he lies, is the\nbosom of the earth, with its strengthening heat, reserved and shy,\noffended if human eyes scrutinise too closely its secret chemistry;\nit is with the earth's natural surface of varied colour that she has,\n\"in time past, given pleasure to the sun\"; the yellow hair which\nfalls suddenly over her shoulders, at her transformation in the house\nof Celeus, is still partly the golden corn;--in art and poetry she is\never the blond goddess; tarrying in her temple, of which an actual\nhollow in the earth is the prototype, among the spicy odours of the\nEleusinian ritual, she is the spirit of the earth, lying hidden in\nits dark folds until the return of spring, among the flower-seeds and\nfragrant roots, like the seeds and aromatic woods hidden in the\nwrappings of the dead.  Throughout the poem, we have a sense of a\ncertain nearness to nature, surviving from an earlier world; the sea\nis understood as a person, yet is still the real sea, with the waves\nmoving.  When it is said that no bird gave Demeter tidings of\nPersephone, we feel that to that earlier world, ways of communication\nbetween all creatures may have seemed open, which are closed to us.\nIt is Iris who brings to Demeter the message of Zeus; [116] that is,\nthe rainbow signifies to the earth the good-will of the rainy sky\ntowards it.  Persephone springing up with great joy from the couch of\nAidoneus, to return to her mother, is the sudden outburst of the\nyear.  The heavy and narcotic aroma of spring flowers hangs about\nher, as about the actual spring.  And this mingling of the primitive\ncosmical import of the myth with the later, personal interests of the\nstory, is curiously illustrated by the place which the poem assigns\nto Hecate.  This strange Titaness is, first, a nymph only;\nafterwards, as if changed incurably by the passionate cry of\nPersephone, she becomes her constant attendant, and is even\nidentified with her.  But in the Homeric hymn her lunar character is\nclear; she is really the moon only, who hears the cry of Persephone,\nas the sun saw her, when Aidoneus carried her away.  One morning, as\nthe mother wandered, the moon appeared, as it does in its last\nquarter, rising very bright, just before dawn; that is, in the words\nof the Homeric hymn--\"on the tenth morning Hecate met her, having a\nlight in her hands.\"  The fascinating, but enigmatical figure,\n\"sitting ever in her cave, half-veiled with a shining veil, thinking\ndelicate thoughts,\" in which we seem to see the subject of some\npicture of the Italian Renaissance, is but the lover of Endymion--\nlike Persephone, withdrawn, in her season, from the eyes of men.  The\nsun saw her; the moon saw her not, but heard her cry, and is [117]\never after the half-veiled attendant of the queen of dreams and of\nthe dead.\n\nBut the story of Demeter and Persephone lends itself naturally to\ndescription, and it is in descriptive beauties that the Homeric hymn\nexcels; its episodes are finished designs, and directly stimulate the\npainter and the sculptor to a rivalry with them.  Weaving the names\nof the flowers into his verse, names familiar to us in English,\nthough their Greek originals are uncertain, the writer sets\nPersephone before us, herself like one of them--kalyk\u00f4pis+--like the\nbudding calyx of a flower,--in a picture, which, in its mingling of a\nquaint freshness and simplicity with a certain earnestness, reads\nlike a description of some early Florentine design, such as Sandro\nBotticelli's Allegory of the Seasons.  By an exquisite chance also, a\ncommon metrical expression connects the perfume of the newly-created\nnarcissus with the salt odour of the sea.  Like one of those early\ndesigns also, but with a deeper infusion of religious earnestness, is\nthe picture of Demeter sitting at the wayside, in shadow as always,\nwith the well of water and the olive-tree.  She has been journeying\nall night, and now it is morning, and the daughters of Celeus bring\ntheir vessels to draw water.  That image of the seated Demeter,\nresting after her long flight \"through the dark continent,\" or in the\nhouse of Celeus, when she refuses the red wine, or again, solitary,\nin her newly-finished [118] temple of Eleusis, enthroned in her\ngrief, fixed itself deeply on the Greek imagination, and became a\nfavourite subject of Greek artists.  When the daughters of Celeus\ncome to conduct her to Eleusis, they come as in a Greek frieze, full\nof energy and motion and waving lines, but with gold and colours upon\nit.  Eleusis--coming--the coming of Demeter thither, as thus told in\nthe Homeric hymn, is the central instance in Greek mythology of such\ndivine appearances.  \"She leaves for a season the company of the gods\nand abides among men;\" and men's merit is to receive her in spite of\nappearances.  Metaneira and others, in the Homeric hymn, partly\ndetect her divine character; they find charis+;--a certain gracious\nair--about her, which makes them think her, perhaps, a royal person\nin disguise.  She becomes in her long wanderings almost wholly\nhumanised, and in return, she and Persephone, alone of the Greek\ngods, seem to have been the objects of a sort of personal love and\nloyalty.  Yet they are ever the solemn goddesses,--theai semnai,+\nthe word expressing religious awe, the Greek sense of the divine\npresence.\n\nPlato, in laying down the rules by which the poets are to be guided\nin speaking about divine things to the citizens of the ideal\nrepublic, forbids all those episodes of mythology which represent the\ngods as assuming various forms, and visiting the earth in disguise.\nBelow the [119] express reasons which he assigns for this rule, we\nmay perhaps detect that instinctive antagonism to the old Heraclitean\nphilosophy of perpetual change, which forces him, in his theory of\nmorals and the state, of poetry and music, of dress and manners even,\nand of style in the very vessels and furniture of daily life, on an\naustere simplicity, the older Dorian or Egyptian type of a rigid,\neternal immobility.  The disintegrating, centrifugal influence, which\nhad penetrated, as he thought, political and social existence, making\nmen too myriad-minded, had laid hold on the life of the gods also,\nand, even in their calm sphere, one could hardly identify a single\ndivine person as himself, and not another.  There must, then, be no\ndoubling, no disguises, no stories of transformation.  The modern\nreader, however, will hardly acquiesce in this \"improvement\" of Greek\nmythology.  He finds in these stories, like that, for instance, of\nthe appearance of Athene to Telemachus, in the first book of the\nOdyssey, which has a quite biblical mysticity and solemnity,--stories\nin which, the hard material outline breaking up, the gods lay aside\ntheir visible form like a garment, yet remain essentially\nthemselves,--not the least spiritual element of Greek religion, an\nevidence of the sense therein of unseen presences, which might at any\nmoment cross a man's path, to be recognised, in half disguise, by the\nmore delicately trained eye, here or there, by one and not by [120]\nanother.  Whatever religious elements they lacked, they had at least\nthis sense of subtler and more remote ways of personal presence.\n\nAnd as there are traces in the Homeric hymn of the primitive cosmical\nmyth, relics of the first stage of the development of the story, so\nalso many of its incidents are probably suggested by the\ncircumstances and details of the Eleusinian ritual.  There were\nreligious usages before there were distinct religious conceptions,\nand these antecedent religious usages shape and determine, at many\npoints, the ultimate religious conception, as the details of the myth\ninterpret or explain the religious custom.  The hymn relates the\nlegend of certain holy places, to which various impressive religious\nrites had attached themselves--the holy well, the old fountain, the\nstone of sorrow, which it was the office of the \"interpreter\" of the\nholy places to show to the people.  The sacred way which led from\nAthens to Eleusis was rich in such memorials.  The nine days of the\nwanderings of Demeter in the Homeric hymn are the nine days of the\nduration of the greater or autumnal mysteries; the jesting of the old\nwoman Iambe, who endeavours to make Demeter smile, are the customary\nmockeries with which the worshippers, as they rested on the bridge,\non the seventh day of the feast, assailed those who passed by.  The\ntorches in the hands of Demeter are borrowed from the same source;\nand the shadow in which she is [121] constantly represented, and\nwhich is the peculiar sign of her grief, is partly ritual, and a\nrelic of the caves of the old Chthonian worship, partly poetical--\nexpressive, half of the dark earth to which she escapes from Olympus,\nhalf of her mourning.  She appears consistently, in the hymn, as a\nteacher of rites, transforming daily life, and the processes of life,\ninto a religious solemnity.  With no misgiving as to the proprieties\nof a mere narration, the hymn-writer mingles these symbolical\nimitations with the outlines of the original story; and, in his\nDemeter, the dramatic person of the mysteries mixes itself with the\nprimitive mythical figure.  And the worshipper, far from being\noffended by these interpolations, may have found a special\nimpressiveness in them, as they linked continuously its inner sense\nwith the outward imagery of the ritual.\n\nAnd, as Demeter and her story embodied themselves gradually in the\nGreek imagination, so these mysteries in which her worship found its\nchief expression, grew up little by little, growing always in close\nconnexion with the modifications of the story, sometimes prompting\nthem, at other times suggested by them.  That they had a single\nspecial author is improbable, and a mere invention of the Greeks,\nignorant of their real history and the general analogy of such\nmatters.  Here again, as in the story itself, the idea of\ndevelopment, of degrees, of a slow [122] and natural growth, impeded\nhere, diverted there, is the illuminating thought which earlier\ncritics lacked.  \"No tongue may speak of them,\" says the Homeric\nhymn; and the secret has certainly been kept.  The antiquarian,\ndealing, letter by letter, with what is recorded of them, has left\nfew certain data for the reflexion of the modern student of the Greek\nreligion; and of this, its central solemnity, only a fragmentary\npicture can be made.  It is probable that these mysteries developed\nthe symbolical significance of the story of the descent into Hades,\nthe coming of Demeter to Eleusis, the invention of Persephone.  They\nmay or may not have been the vehicle of a secret doctrine, but were\ncertainly an artistic spectacle, giving, like the mysteries of the\nmiddle age, a dramatic representation of the sacred story,--perhaps a\ndetailed performance, perhaps only such a conventional\nrepresentation, as was afforded for instance by the medieval\nceremonies of Palm Sunday; the whole, probably, centering in an image\nof Demeter--the work of Praxiteles or his school, in ivory and gold.\nThere is no reason to suppose any specific difference between the\nobservances of the Eleusinian festival and the accustomed usages of\nthe Greek religion; nocturns, libations, quaint purifications,\nprocessions--are common incidents of all Greek worship; in all\nreligious ceremonies there is an element of dramatic symbolism; and\nwhat we really do see, through those scattered notices, [123] are\nthings which have their parallels in a later age, the whole being not\naltogether unlike a modern pilgrimage.  The exposition of the sacred\nplaces--the threshing-floor of Triptolemus, the rocky seat on which\nDemeter had rested in her sorrow, the well of Callichorus--is not so\nstrange, as it would seem, had it no modern illustration.  The\nlibations, at once a watering of the vines and a drink-offering to\nthe dead--still needing men's services, waiting for purification\nperhaps, or thirsting, like Dante's Adam of Brescia, in their close\nhomes--must, to almost all minds, have had a certain natural\nimpressiveness; and a parallel has sometimes been drawn between this\nfestival and All Souls' Day.\n\nAnd who, everywhere, has not felt the mystical influence of that\nprolonged silence, the mystic silence, from which the very word\n\"mystery\" has its origin?  Something also there undoubtedly was,\nwhich coarser minds might misunderstand.  On one day, the initiated\nwent in procession to the sea-coast, where they underwent a\npurification by bathing in the sea.  On the fifth night there was the\ntorchlight procession; and, by a touch of real life in him, we gather\nfrom the first page of Plato's Republic that such processions were\npopular spectacles, having a social interest, so that people made\nmuch of attending them.  There was the procession of the sacred\nbasket filled with poppy-seeds and pomegranates.  There was the day\nof rest, after [124] the stress and excitement of the \"great night.\"\nOn the sixth day, the image of Iacchus, son of Demeter, crowned with\nmyrtle and having a torch in its hand, was carried in procession,\nthrough thousands of spectators, along the sacred way, amid joyous\nshouts and songs.  We have seen such processions; we understand how\nmany different senses, and how lightly, various spectators may put on\nthem; how little definite meaning they may have even for those who\nofficiate in them.  Here, at least, there was the image itself, in\nthat age, with its close connexion between religion and art,\npresumably fair.  Susceptibility to the impressions of religious\nceremonial must always have varied with the peculiarities of\nindividual temperament, as it varies in our own day; and Eleusis,\nwith its incense and sweet singing, may have been as little\ninteresting to the outward senses of some worshippers there, as the\nstately and affecting ceremonies of the medieval church to many of\nits own members.  In a simpler yet profounder sense than has\nsometimes been supposed, these things were really addressed to the\ninitiated only.*\n\nWe have to travel a long way from the Homeric hymn to the hymn of\nCallimachus, who writes in the end of Greek literature, in the third\ncentury before Christ, in celebration of the procession of the sacred\nbasket of Demeter, not [125] at the Attic, but at the Alexandrian\nEleusinia.  He developes, in something of the prosaic spirit of a\nmedieval writer of \"mysteries,\" one of the burlesque incidents of the\nstory, the insatiable hunger which seized on Erysichthon because he\ncut down a grove sacred to the goddess.  Yet he finds his\nopportunities for skilful touches of poetry;--\"As the four white\nhorses draw her sacred basket,\" he says, \"so will the great goddess\nbring us a white spring, a white summer.\"  He describes the grove\nitself, with its hedge of trees, so thick that an arrow could hardly\npass through, its pines and fruit-trees and tall poplars within, and\nthe water, like pale gold, running from the conduits.  It is one of\nthose famous poplars that receives the first stroke; it sounds\nheavily to its companion trees, and Demeter perceives that her sacred\ngrove is suffering.  Then comes one of those transformations which\nPlato will not allow.  Vainly anxious to save the lad from his ruin,\nshe appears in the form of a priestess, but with the long hood of the\ngoddess, and the poppy in her hand; and there is something of a real\nshudder, some still surviving sense of a haunting presence in the\ngroves, in the verses which describe her sudden revelation, when the\nworkmen flee away, leaving their axes in the cleft trees.\n\nOf the same age as the hymn of Callimachus, but with very different\nqualities, is the idyll of Theocritus on the Shepherds' Journey.\nAlthough it is possible to define an epoch in mythological [126]\ndevelopment in which literary and artificial influences began to\nremodel the primitive, popular legend, yet still, among children, and\nunchanging childlike people, we may suppose that that primitive stage\nalways survived, and the old, instinctive influences were still at\nwork.  As the subject of popular religious celebrations also, the\nmyth was still the property of the people, and surrendered to its\ncapricious action.  The shepherds in Theocritus, on their way to\ncelebrate one of the more homely feasts of Demeter, about the time of\nharvest, are examples of these childlike people; the age of the poets\nhas long since come, but they are of the older and simpler order,\nlingering on in the midst of a more self-conscious world.  In an\nidyll, itself full of the delightful gifts of Demeter, Theocritus\nsets them before us; through the blazing summer day's journey, the\nsmiling image of the goddess is always before them; and now they have\nreached the end of their journey:--\n\n\"So I, and Eucritus, and the fair Amyntichus, turned aside into the\nhouse of Phrasidamus, and lay down with delight in beds of sweet\ntamarisk and fresh cuttings from the vines, strewn on the ground.\nMany poplars and elm-trees were waving over our heads, and not far\noff the running of the sacred water from the cave of the nymphs\nwarbled to us; in the shimmering branches the sun-burnt grasshoppers\nwere busy with their talk, and from afar the little owl cried softly,\nout of [127] the tangled thorns of the blackberry; the larks were\nsinging and the hedge-birds, and the turtle-dove moaned; the bees\nflew round and round the fountains, murmuring softly; the scent of\nlate summer and of the fall of the year was everywhere; the pears\nfell from the trees at our feet, and apples in number rolled down at\nour sides, and the young plum-trees were bent to the earth with the\nweight of their fruit.  The wax, four years old, was loosed from the\nheads of the wine-jars.  O! nymphs of Castalia, who dwell on the\nsteeps of Parnassus, tell me, I pray you, was it a draught like this\nthat the aged Chiron placed before Hercules, in the stony cave of\nPholus?  Was it nectar like this that made the mighty shepherd on\nAnapus' shore, Polyphemus, who flung the rocks upon Ulysses' ships,\ndance among his sheepfolds?--A cup like this ye poured out now upon\nthe altar of Demeter, who presides over the threshing-floor.  May it\nbe mine, once more, to dig my big winnowing-fan through her heaps of\ncorn; and may I see her smile upon me, holding poppies and handfuls\nof corn in her two hands!\"\n\nSome of the modifications of the story of Demeter, as we find it in\nlater poetry, have been supposed to be due, not to the genuine action\nof the Greek mind, but to the influence of that so-called Orphic\nliterature, which, in the generation succeeding Hesiod, brought, from\nThessaly and Phrygia, a tide of mystical ideas into the Greek [128]\nreligion, sometimes, doubtless, confusing the clearness and\nnaturalness of its original outlines, but also sometimes imparting to\nthem a new and peculiar grace.  Under the influence of this Orphic\npoetry, Demeter was blended, or identified, with Rhea Cybele, the\nmother of the gods, the wilder earth-goddess of Phrygia; and the\nromantic figure of Dionysus Zagreus, Dionysus the Hunter, that most\ninteresting, though somewhat melancholy variation on the better known\nDionysus, was brought, as son or brother of Persephone, into her\ncircle, the mystical vine, who, as Persephone descends and ascends\nfrom the earth, is rent to pieces by the Titans every year and\nremains long in Hades, but every spring-time comes out of it again,\nrenewing his youth.  This identification of Demeter with Rhea Cybele\nis the motive which has inspired a beautiful chorus in the Helena--\nthe new Helena--of Euripides, that great lover of all subtle\nrefinements and modernisms, who, in this play, has worked on a\nstrange version of the older story, which relates that Helen had\nnever really gone to Troy at all, but sent her soul only there, apart\nfrom her sweet body, which abode all that time in Egypt, at the court\nof King Proteus, where she is found at last by her husband Menelaus,\nso that the Trojan war was about a phantom, after all.  The chorus\nhas even less than usual to do with the action of the play, being\nlinked to it only by a sort of parallel, which may be understood,\n[129] between Menelaus seeking Helen, and Demeter seeking Persephone.\nEuripides, then, takes the matter of the Homeric hymn into the region\nof a higher and swifter poetry, and connects it with the more\nstimulating imagery of the Idaean mother.  The Orphic mysticism or\nenthusiasm has been admitted into the story, which is now full of\nexcitement, the motion of rivers, the sounds of the Bacchic cymbals\nheard over the mountains, as Demeter wanders among the woody valleys\nseeking her lost daughter, all directly expressed in the vivid Greek\nwords.  Demeter is no longer the subdued goddess of the quietly-\nordered fields, but the mother of the gods, who has her abode in the\nheights of Mount Ida, who presides over the dews and waters of the\nwhite springs, whose flocks feed, not on grain, but on the curling\ntendrils of the vine, both of which she withholds in her anger, and\nwhose chariot is drawn by wild beasts, fruit and emblem of the earth\nin its fiery strength.  Not Hecate, but Pallas and Artemis, in full\narmour, swift-footed, vindicators of chastity, accompany her in her\nsearch for Persephone, who is already expressly, kor\u00ea arr\u00eatos+--\"the\nmaiden whom none may name.\"  When she rests from her long wanderings,\nit is into the stony thickets of Mount Ida, deep with snow, that she\nthrows herself, in her profound grief.  When Zeus desires to end her\npain, the Muses and the \"solemn\" Graces are sent to dance and sing\nbefore her.  It is then [130] that Cypris, the goddess of beauty, and\nthe original cause, therefore, of her distress, takes into her hands\nthe brazen tambourines of the Dionysiac worship with their Chthonian\nor deep-noted sound; and it is she, not the old Iambe, who with this\nwild music, heard thus for the first time, makes Demeter smile at\nlast.  \"Great,\" so the chorus ends with a picture, \"great is the\npower of the stoles of spotted fawn-skins, and the green leaves of\nivy twisted about the sacred wands, and the wheeling motion of the\ntambourine whirled round in the air, and the long hair floating\nunbound in honour of Bromius, and the nocturns of the goddess, when\nthe moon looks full upon them.\"\n\nThe poem of Claudian on the Rape of Proserpine, the longest extant\nwork connected with the story of Demeter, yet itself unfinished,\ncloses the world of classical poetry.  Writing in the fourth century\nof the Christian era, Claudian has his subject before him in the\nwhole extent of its various development, and also profits by those\nmany pictorial representations of it, which, from the famous picture\nof Polygnotus downwards, delighted the ancient world.  His poem,\nthen, besides having an intrinsic charm, is valuable for some\nreflexion in it of those lost works, being itself pre-eminently a\nwork in colour, and excelling in a kind of painting in words, which\nbrings its subject very pleasantly almost to the eye of the reader.\nThe mind of this late votary [131] of the old gods, in a world\nrapidly changing, is crowded with all the beautiful forms generated\nby mythology, and now about to be forgotten.  In this after-glow of\nLatin literature, lighted up long after their fortune had set, and\njust before their long night began, they pass before us, in his\nverses, with the utmost clearness, like the figures in an actual\nprocession.  The nursing of the infant Sun and Moon by Tethys;\nProserpine and her companions gathering flowers at early dawn, when\nthe violets are drinking in the dew, still lying white upon the\ngrass; the image of Pallas winding the peaceful blossoms about the\nsteel crest of her helmet; the realm of Proserpine, softened somewhat\nby her coming, and filled with a quiet joy; the matrons of Elysium\ncrowding to her marriage toilet, with the bridal veil of yellow in\ntheir hands; the Manes, crowned with ghostly flowers yet warmed a\nlittle, at the marriage feast; the ominous dreams of the mother; the\ndesolation of the home, like an empty bird's-nest or an empty fold,\nwhen she returns and finds Proserpine gone, and the spider at work\nover her unfinished embroidery; the strangely-figured raiment, the\nflowers in the grass, which were once blooming youths, having both\ntheir natural colour and the colour of their poetry in them, and the\nclear little fountain there, which was once the maiden Cyane;--all\nthis is shown in a series of descriptions, like the designs in some\nunwinding tapestry, like Proserpine's own [132] embroidery, the\ndescription of which is the most brilliant of these pictures, and, in\nits quaint confusion of the images of philosophy with those of\nmythology, anticipates something of the fancy of the Italian\nRenaissance.\n\n\"Proserpina, filling the house soothingly with her low song, was\nworking a gift against the return of her mother, with labour all to\nbe in vain.  In it, she marked out with her needle the houses of the\ngods and the series of the elements, showing by what law, nature, the\nparent of all, settled the strife of ancient times, and the seeds of\nthings disparted into their places; the lighter elements are borne\naloft, the heavier fall to the centre; the air grows bright with\nheat, a blazing light whirls round the firmament; the sea flows; the\nearth hangs suspended in its place.  And there were divers colours in\nit; she illuminated the stars with gold, infused a purple shade into\nthe water, and heightened the shore with gems of flowers; and, under\nher skilful hand, the threads, with their inwrought lustre, swell up,\nin momentary counterfeit of the waves; you might think that the sea-\nwind flapped against the rocks, and that a hollow murmur came\ncreeping over the thirsty sands.  She puts in the five zones, marking\nwith a red ground the midmost zone, possessed by burning heat; its\noutline was parched and stiff; the threads seemed thirsty with the\nconstant sunshine; on either side lay the two zones proper for human\nlife, [133] where a gentle temperance reigns; and at the extremes she\ndrew the twin zones of numbing cold, making her work dun and sad with\nthe hues of perpetual frost. She paints in, too, the sacred places of\nDis, her father's brother, and the Manes, so fatal to her; and an\nomen of her doom was not wanting; for, as she worked, as if with\nforeknowledge of the future, her face became wet with a sudden burst\nof tears.  And now, in the utmost border of the tissue, she had begun\nto wind in the wavy line of the river Oceanus, with its glassy\nshallows; but the door sounds on its hinges, and she perceives the\ngoddesses coming; the unfinished work drops from her hands, and a\nruddy blush lights up in her clear and snow-white face.\"\n\nI have reserved to the last what is perhaps the daintiest treatment\nof this subject in classical literature, the account of it which Ovid\ngives in the Fasti--a kind of Roman Calendar--for the seventh of\nApril, the day of the games of Ceres.  He tells over again the old\nstory, with much of which, he says, the reader will be already\nfamiliar; but he has something also of his own to add to it, which\nthe reader will hear for the first time; and, like one of those old\npainters who, in depicting a scene of Christian history, drew from\ntheir own fancy or experience its special setting and accessories, he\ntranslates the story into something very different from the Homeric\nhymn.  The writer of the Homeric [134] hymn had made Celeus a king,\nand represented the scene at Eleusis in a fair palace, like the\nVenetian painters who depict the persons of the Holy Family with\nroyal ornaments.  Ovid, on the other hand, is more like certain\npainters of the early Florentine school, who represent the holy\npersons amid the more touching circumstances of humble life; and the\nspecial something of his own which he adds, is a pathos caught from\nhomely things, not without a delightful, just perceptible, shade of\nhumour even, so rare in such work.  All the mysticism has\ndisappeared; but, instead, we trace something of that \"worship of\nsorrow,\" which has been sometimes supposed to have had no place in\nclassical religious sentiment.  In Ovid's well-finished elegiacs,\nPersephone's flower-gathering, the Anthology, reaches its utmost\ndelicacy; but I give the following episode for the sake of its\npathetic expression.\n\n\"After many wanderings Ceres was come to Attica.  There, in the\nutmost dejection, for the first time, she sat down to rest on a bare\nstone, which the people of Attica still call the stone of sorrow.\nFor many days she remained there motionless, under the open sky,\nheedless of the rain and of the frosty moonlight.  Places have their\nfortunes; and what is now the illustrious town of Eleusis was then\nthe field of an old man named Celeus.  He was carrying home a load of\nacorns, and wild berries shaken down from the [135] brambles, and dry\nwood for burning on the hearth; his little daughter was leading two\ngoats home from the hills; and at home there was a little boy lying\nsick in his cradle.  'Mother,' said the little girl--and the goddess\nwas moved at the name of mother--'what do you, all alone, in this\nsolitary place?'  The old man stopped too, in spite of his heavy\nburden, and bade her take shelter in his cottage, though it was but a\nlittle one.  But at first she refused to come; she looked like an\nold woman, and an old woman's coif confined her hair; and as the man\nstill urged her, she said to him, 'Heaven bless you; and may children\nalways be yours!  My daughter has been stolen from me.  Alas! how\nmuch happier is your lot than mine'; and, though weeping is\nimpossible for the gods, as she spoke, a bright drop, like a tear,\nfell into her bosom.  Soft-hearted, the little girl and the old man\nweep together.  And after that the good man said, 'Arise! despise not\nthe shelter of my little home; so may the daughter whom you seek be\nrestored to you.'  'Lead me,' answered the goddess; 'you have found\nout the secret of moving me;' and she arose from the stone, and\nfollowed the old man; and as they went he told her of the sick child\nat home--how he is restless with pain, and cannot sleep.  And she,\nbefore entering the little cottage, gathered from the untended earth\nthe soothing and sleep-giving poppy; and as she gathered it, it is\nsaid that she [136] forgot her vow, and tasted of the seeds, and\nbroke her long fast, unaware.  As she came through the door, she saw\nthe house full of trouble, for now there was no more hope of life for\nthe sick boy.  She saluted the mother, whose name was Metaneira, and\nhumbly kissed the lips of the child, with her own lips; then the\npaleness left its face, and suddenly the parents see the strength\nreturning to its body; so great is the force that comes from the\ndivine mouth.  And the whole family was full of joy--the mother and\nthe father and the little girl; they were the whole household.*\n\nThree profound ethical conceptions, three impressive sacred figures,\nhave now defined themselves for the Greek imagination, condensed from\nall the traditions which have now been traced, from the hymns of the\npoets, from the instinctive and unformulated mysticism of primitive\nminds.  Demeter is become the divine sorrowing mother.  Kore, the\ngoddess of summer, is become Persephone, the goddess of death, still\nassociated with the forms and odours of flowers and fruit, yet as one\nrisen from the dead also, presenting one side of her ambiguous nature\nto men's gloomier fancies.  Thirdly, there is the image of Demeter\nenthroned, chastened by sorrow, and somewhat advanced in age,\nblessing the earth, in her joy at the return of Kore.  The myth has\n[137] now entered on the third phase of its life, in which it becomes\nthe property of those more elevated spirits, who, in the decline of\nthe Greek religion, pick and choose and modify, with perfect freedom\nof mind, whatever in it may seem adapted to minister to their\nculture.  In this way, the myths of the Greek religion become parts\nof an ideal, visible embodiments of the susceptibilities and\nintuitions of the nobler kind of souls; and it is to this latest\nphase of mythological development that the highest Greek sculpture\nallies itself.  Its function is to give visible aesthetic expression\nto the constituent parts of that ideal.  As poetry dealt chiefly with\nthe incidents of the story, so it is with the personages of the\nstory--with Demeter and Kore themselves--that sculpture has to do.\n\nFor the myth of Demeter, like the Greek religion in general, had its\nunlovelier side, grotesque, unhellenic, unglorified by art,\nillustrated well enough by the description Pausanias gives us of his\nvisit to the cave of the Black Demeter at Phigalia.  In his time the\nimage itself had vanished; but he tells us enough about it to enable\nus to realise its general characteristics, monstrous as the special\nlegend with which it was connected, the black draperies, the horse's\nhead united to the woman's body, with the carved reptiles creeping\nabout it.  If, with the thought of this gloomy image of our mother\nthe earth, in our minds, we take up one of those coins [138] which\nbear the image of Kore or Demeter,* we shall better understand what\nthe function of sculpture really was, in elevating and refining the\nreligious conceptions of the Greeks.  Looking on the profile, for\ninstance, on one of those coins of Messene, which almost certainly\nrepresent Demeter, and noting the crisp, chaste opening of the lips,\nthe minutely wrought earrings, and the delicately touched ears of\ncorn,--this trifling object being justly regarded as, in its\naesthetic qualities, an epitome of art on a larger scale,--we shall\nsee how far the imagination of the Greeks had travelled from what\ntheir Black Demeter shows us had once been possible for them, and in\nmaking the gods of their worship the objects of a worthy\ncompanionship in their thoughts.  Certainly, the mind of the old\nworkman who struck that coin was, if we may trust the testimony of\nhis work, unclouded by impure or gloomy shadows.  The thought of\nDemeter is impressed here, with all the purity and proportion, the\npurged and dainty intelligence of the human countenance.  The mystery\nof it is indeed absent, perhaps could hardly have been looked for in\nso slight a thing, intended for no sacred purpose, and tossed lightly\nfrom hand to hand.  But in his firm hold on the harmonies of the\nhuman face, the designer of this tranquil head of [139] Demeter is on\nthe one road to a command over the secrets of all imaginative pathos\nand mystery; though, in the perfect fairness and blitheness of his\nwork, he might seem almost not to have known the incidents of her\nterrible story.\n\nIt is probable that, at a later period than in other equally\nimportant temples of Greece, the earlier archaic representation of\nDemeter in the sanctuary of Eleusis, was replaced by a more beautiful\nimage in the new style, with face and hands of ivory, having\ntherefore, in tone and texture, some subtler likeness to women's\nflesh, and the closely enveloping drapery being constructed in\ndaintily beaten plates of gold.  Praxiteles seems to have been the\nfirst to bring into the region of a freer artistic handling these shy\ndeities of the earth, shrinking still within the narrow restraints of\na hieratic, conventional treatment, long after the more genuine\nOlympians had broken out of them.  The school of Praxiteles, as\ndistinguished from that of Pheidias, is especially the school of\ngrace, relaxing a little the severe ethical tension of the latter, in\nfavour of a slightly Asiatic sinuosity and tenderness.  Pausanias\ntells us that he carved the two goddesses for the temple of Demeter\nat Athens; and Pliny speaks of two groups of his in brass, the one\nrepresenting the stealing of Persephone, the other her later, annual\ndescent into Hades, conducted thither by the now pacified mother.\nAll alike have perished; though perhaps some [140] more or less faint\nreflexion of the most important of these designs may still be traced\non many painted vases which depict the stealing of Persephone,--a\nhelpless, plucked flower in the arms of Aidoneus.  And in this almost\ntraditional form, the subject was often represented, in low relief,\non tombs, some of which still remain; in one or two instances, built\nup, oddly enough, in the walls of Christian churches.  On the tombs\nof women who had died in early life, this was a favourite subject,\nsome likeness of the actual lineaments of the deceased being\nsometimes transferred to the features of Persephone.\n\nYet so far, it might seem, when we consider the interest of this\nstory in itself, and its importance in the Greek religion, that no\nadequate expression of it had remained to us in works of art.  But in\nthe year 1857, the discovery of the marbles, in the sacred precinct\nof Demeter at Cnidus, restored to us an illustration of the myth in\nits artistic phase, hardly less central than the Homeric hymn in its\npoetical phase.  With the help of the descriptions and plans of Mr.\nNewton's book,* we can form, as one always wishes to do in such\ncases, a clear idea of the place where these marbles--three statues\nof the best style of Greek sculpture, now in the British Museum--were\nfound.  Occupying a ledge of rock, looking towards the sea, at the\nbase of a [141] cliff of upheaved limestone, of singular steepness\nand regularity of surface, the spot presents indications of volcanic\ndisturbance, as if a chasm in the earth had opened here.  It was this\ncharacter, suggesting the belief in an actual connexion with the\ninterior of the earth (local tradition claiming it as the scene of\nthe stealing of Persephone), which probably gave rise, as in other\ncases where the landscape presented some peculiar feature in harmony\nwith the story, to the dedication upon it of a house and an image of\nDemeter, with whom were associated Kore and \"the gods with Demeter\"--\nhoi theoi para Damatri+--Aidoneus, and the mystical or Chthonian\nDionysus.  The house seems to have been a small chapel only, of\nsimple construction, and designed for private use, the site itself\nhaving been private property, consecrated by a particular family, for\ntheir own religious uses, although other persons, servants or\ndependents of the founders, may also have frequented it.  The\narchitecture seems to have been insignificant, but the sculpture\ncostly and exquisite, belonging, if contemporary with the erection of\nthe building, to a great period of Greek art, of which also it is\njudged to possess intrinsic marks--about the year 350 before Christ,\nthe probable date of the dedication of the little temple.  The\nartists by whom these works were produced were, therefore, either the\ncontemporaries of Praxiteles, whose Venus was for many centuries the\nglory of [142] Cnidus, or belonged to the generation immediately\nsucceeding him.  The temple itself was probably thrown down by a\nrenewal of the volcanic disturbances; the statues however remaining,\nand the ministers and worshippers still continuing to make shift for\ntheir sacred business in the place, now doubly venerable, but with\nits temple unrestored, down to the second or third century of the\nChristian era, its frequenters being now perhaps mere chance comers,\nthe family of the original donors having become extinct, or having\ndeserted it.  Into this later arrangement, clearly divined by Mr.\nNewton, through those faint indications which mean much for true\nexperts, the extant remains, as they were found upon the spot, permit\nus to enter.  It is one of the graves of that old religion, but with\nmuch still fresh in it.  We see it with its provincial superstitions,\nand its curious magic rites, but also with its means of really solemn\nimpressions, in the culminating forms of Greek art; the two faces of\nthe Greek religion confronting each other here, and the whole having\nthat rare peculiarity of a kind of personal stamp upon it, the place\nhaving been designed to meet the fancies of one particular soul, or\nat least of one family.  It is always difficult to bring the every-\nday aspect of Greek religion home to us; but even the slighter\ndetails of this little sanctuary help us to do this; and knowing so\nlittle, as we do, of the greater mysteries of [143] Demeter, this\nglance into an actual religious place dedicated to her, and with the\nair of her worship still about it, is doubly interesting.  The little\nvotive figures of the goddesses, in baked earth, were still lying\nstored in the small treasury intended for such objects, or scattered\nabout the feet of the images, together with lamps in great number, a\nlighted lamp being a favourite offering, in memory of the torches\nwith which Demeter sought Persephone, or from some sense of inherent\ndarkness in these gods of the earth; those torches in the hands of\nDemeter being indeed originally the artificial warmth and brightness\nof lamp and fire, on winter nights.  The dirae or spells,--katadesmoi+-\n-binding or devoting certain persons to the infernal gods, inscribed\non thin rolls of lead, with holes, sometimes, for hanging them up\nabout those quiet statues, still lay, just as they were left,\nanywhere within the sacred precinct, illustrating at once the\ngloomier side of the Greek religion in general, and of Demeter and\nPersephone especially, in their character of avenging deities, and as\nrelics of ancient magic, reproduced so strangely at other times and\nplaces, reminding us of the permanence of certain odd ways of human\nthought.  A woman binds with her spell the person who seduces her\nhusband away from her and her children; another, the person who has\naccused her of preparing poison for her husband; another devotes one\nwho has not restored a borrowed [144] garment, or has stolen a\nbracelet, or certain drinking-horns; and, from some instances, we\nmight infer that this was a favourite place of worship for the poor\nand ignorant.  In this living picture, we find still lingering on, at\nthe foot of the beautiful Greek marbles, that phase of religious\ntemper which a cynical mind might think a truer link of its unity and\npermanence than any higher aesthetic instincts--a phase of it, which\nthe art of sculpture, humanising and refining man's conceptions of\nthe unseen, tended constantly to do away.  For the higher side of the\nGreek religion, thus humanised and refined by art, and elevated by it\nto the sense of beauty, is here also.\n\nThere were three ideal forms, as we saw, gradually shaping themselves\nin the development of the story of Demeter, waiting only for complete\nrealisation at the hands of the sculptor; and now, with these forms\nin our minds, let us place ourselves in thought before the three\nimages which once probably occupied the three niches or ambries in\nthe face of that singular cliff at Cnidus, one of them being then\nwrought on a larger scale.  Of the three figures, one probably\nrepresents Persephone, as the goddess of the dead; the second,\nDemeter enthroned; the third is probably a portrait-statue of a\npriestess of Demeter, but may perhaps, even so, represent Demeter\nherself, Demeter Achaea, Ceres Deserta, the mater dolorosa of the\nGreeks, a type not as yet [145] recognised in any other work of\nancient art.  Certainly, it seems hard not to believe that this work\nis in some way connected with the legend of the place to which it\nbelonged, and the main subject of which it realises so completely;\nand, at least, it shows how the higher Greek sculpture would have\nworked out this motive.  If Demeter at all, it is Demeter the\nseeker,--D\u00ea\u00f4+--as she was called in the mysteries, in some pause of\nher restless wandering over the world in search of the lost child,\nand become at last an abstract type of the wanderer.  The Homeric\nhymn, as we saw, had its sculptural motives, the great gestures of\nDemeter, who was ever the stately goddess, as she followed the\ndaughters of Celeus, or sat by the well-side, or went out and in,\nthrough the halls of the palace, expressed in monumental words.  With\nthe sentiment of that monumental Homeric presence this statue is\npenetrated, uniting a certain solemnity of attitude and bearing, to a\nprofound piteousness, an unrivalled pathos of expression.  There is\nsomething of the pity of Michelangelo's mater dolorosa, in the wasted\nform and marred countenance, yet with the light breaking faintly over\nit from the eyes, which, contrary to the usual practice in ancient\nsculpture, are represented as looking upwards.  It is the aged woman\nwho has escaped from pirates, who has but just escaped being sold as\na slave, calling on the young for pity.  The sorrows of her long\nwanderings seem to have passed into the marble; [146] and in this\ntoo, it meets the demands which the reader of the Homeric hymn, with\nits command over the resources of human pathos, makes upon the\nsculptor.  The tall figure, in proportion above the ordinary height,\nis veiled, and clad to the feet in the longer tunic, its numerous\nfolds hanging in heavy parallel lines, opposing the lines of the\npeplus, or cloak, which cross it diagonally over the breast,\nenwrapping the upper portion of the body somewhat closely.  It is the\nvery type of the wandering woman, going grandly, indeed, as Homer\ndescribes her, yet so human in her anguish, that we seem to recognise\nsome far descended shadow of her, in the homely figure of the roughly\nclad French peasant woman, who, in one of Corot's pictures, is\nhasting along under a sad light, as the day goes out behind the\nlittle hill.  We have watched the growth of the merely personal\nsentiment in the story; and we may notice that, if this figure be\nindeed Demeter, then the conception of her has become wholly\nhumanised; no trace of the primitive cosmical import of the myth, no\ncolour or scent of the mystical earth, remains about it.\n\nThe seated figure, much mutilated, and worn by long exposure, yet\npossessing, according to the best critics, marks of the school of\nPraxiteles, is almost undoubtedly the image of Demeter enthroned.\nThree times in the Homeric hymn she is represented as sitting, once\nby the fountain at the wayside, again in the house of Celeus, and\n[147] again in the newly finished temple of Eleusis; but always in\nsorrow; seated on the petra agelastos,+ which, as Ovid told us, the\npeople of Attica still called the stone of sorrow.  Here she is\nrepresented in her later state of reconciliation, enthroned as the\nglorified mother of all things.  The delicate plaiting of the tunic\nabout the throat, the formal curling of the hair, and a certain\nweight of over-thoughtfulness in the brows, recall the manner of\nLeonardo da Vinci, a master, one of whose characteristics is a very\nsensitive expression of the sentiment of maternity.  It reminds one\nespecially of a work by one of his scholars, the Virgin of the\nBalances, in the Louvre, a picture which has been thought to\nrepresent, under a veil, the blessing of universal nature, and in\nwhich the sleepy-looking heads, with a peculiar grace and refinement\nof somewhat advanced life in them, have just this half-weary posture.\nWe see here, then, the Here of the world below, the Stygian Juno, the\nchief of those Elysian matrons who come crowding, in the poem of\nClaudian, to the marriage toilet of Proserpine, the goddess of the\nfertility of the earth and of all creatures, but still of fertility\nas arisen out of death;* and therefore she is not without a certain\npensiveness, having seen the seed fall into the ground and die, many\ntimes.  Persephone is returned to her, and the hair [148] spreads,\nlike a rich harvest, over her shoulders; but she is still veiled, and\nknows that the seed must fall into the ground again, and Persephone\ndescend again from her.\n\nThe statues of the supposed priestess, and of the enthroned Demeter,\nare of more than the size of life; the figure of Persephone is but\nseventeen inches high, a daintily handled toy of Parian marble, the\nminiature copy perhaps of a much larger work, which might well be\nreproduced on a magnified scale.  The conception of Demeter is\nthroughout chiefly human, and even domestic, though never without a\nhieratic interest, because she is not a goddess only, but also a\npriestess.  In contrast, Persephone is wholly unearthly, the close\ncompanion, and even the confused double, of Hecate, the goddess of\nmidnight terrors,--Despoena,--the final mistress of all that lives;\nand as sorrow is the characteristic sentiment of Demeter, so awe of\nPersephone.  She is compact of sleep, and death, and flowers, but of\nnarcotic flowers especially,--a revenant, who in the garden of\nAidoneus has eaten of the pomegranate, and bears always the secret of\ndecay in her, of return to the grave, in the mystery of those\nswallowed seeds; sometimes, in later work, holding in her hand the\nkey of the great prison-house, but which unlocks all secrets also;\n(there, finally, or through oracles revealed in dreams;) sometimes,\nlike Demeter, the poppy, emblem of sleep and death by its [149]\nnarcotic juices, of life and resurrection by its innumerable seeds,\nof the dreams, therefore, that may intervene between falling asleep\nand waking.  Treated as it is in the Homeric hymn, and still more in\nthis statue, the image of Persephone may be regarded as the result of\nmany efforts to lift the old Chthonian gloom, still lingering on in\nheavier souls, concerning the grave, to connect it with impressions\nof dignity and beauty, and a certain sweetness even; it is meant to\nmake men in love, or at least at peace, with death.  The Persephone\nof Praxiteles' school, then, is Aphrodite-Persephone, Venus-Libitina.\nHer shadowy eyes have gazed upon the fainter colouring of the under-\nworld, and the tranquillity, born of it, has \"passed into her face\";\nfor the Greek Hades is, after all, but a quiet, twilight place, not\nvery different from that House of Fame where Dante places the great\nsouls of the classical world; Aidoneus himself being conceived, in\nthe highest Greek sculpture, as but a gentler Zeus, the great\ninnkeeper; so that when a certain Greek sculptor had failed in his\nportraiture of Zeus, because it had too little hilarity, too little,\nin the eyes and brow, of the open and cheerful sky, he only changed\nits title, and the thing passed excellently, with its heavy locks and\nshadowy eyebrows, for the god of the dead.  The image of Persephone,\nthen, as it is here composed, with the tall, tower-like head-dress,\nfrom which the veil depends--the corn-basket, [150] originally\ncarried thus by the Greek women, balanced on the head--giving the\nfigure unusual length, has the air of a body bound about with grave-\nclothes; while the archaic hands and feet, and a certain stiffness in\nthe folds of the drapery, give it something of a hieratic character,\nand to the modern observer may suggest a sort of kinship with the\nmore chastened kind of Gothic work.  But quite of the school of\nPraxiteles is the general character of the composition; the graceful\nwaving of the hair, the fine shadows of the little face, of the eyes\nand lips especially, like the shadows of a flower--a flower risen\nnoiselessly from its dwelling in the dust--though still with that\nfulness or heaviness in the brow, as of sleepy people, which, in the\ndelicate gradations of Greek sculpture, distinguish the infernal\ndeities from their Olympian kindred.  The object placed in the hand\nmay be, perhaps, a stiff, archaic flower, but is probably the partly\nconsumed pomegranate--one morsel gone; the most usual emblem of\nPersephone being this mystical fruit, which, because of the multitude\nof its seeds, was to the Romans a symbol of fecundity, and was sold\nat the doors of the temple of Ceres, that the women might offer it\nthere, and bear numerous children; and so, to the middle age, became\na symbol of the fruitful earth itself; and then of that other seed\nsown in the dark under-world; and at last of that whole hidden\nregion, so thickly sown, which Dante visited, Michelino painting him,\n[151] in the Duomo of Florence, with this fruit in his hand, and\nBotticelli putting it into the childish hands of Him, who, if men \"go\ndown into hell, is there also.\"\n\nThere is an attractiveness in these goddesses of the earth, akin to\nthe influence of cool places, quiet houses, subdued light,\ntranquillising voices.  What is there in this phase of ancient\nreligion for us, at the present day?  The myth of Demeter and\nPersephone, then, illustrates the power of the Greek religion as a\nreligion of pure ideas--of conceptions, which having no link on\nhistorical fact, yet, because they arose naturally out of the spirit\nof man, and embodied, in adequate symbols, his deepest thoughts\nconcerning the conditions of his physical and spiritual life,\nmaintained their hold through many changes, and are still not without\na solemnising power even for the modern mind, which has once admitted\nthem as recognised and habitual inhabitants; and, abiding thus for\nthe elevation and purifying of our sentiments, long after the earlier\nand simpler races of their worshippers have passed away, they may be\na pledge to us of the place in our culture, at once legitimate and\npossible, of the associations, the conceptions, the imagery, of Greek\nreligious poetry in general, of the poetry of all religions.\n\nNOTES\n\n117. +Transliteration: kalyk\u00f4pis.  Liddell and Scott definition:\n\"Like a flower-bud, blushing, roseate.\"\n\n118. +Transliteration: charis.  Liddell and Scott definition:\n\"favour, grace ... loveliness.\"\n\n118. +Transliteration: theai semnai.  Translation: \"august\ngoddesses.\"\n\n124. *The great Greek myths are, in truth, like abstract forces,\nwhich ally themselves to various conditions.\n\n129. +Transliteration: kor\u00ea arr\u00eatos.  Translation: \"Kor\u00ea the\nmysterious, the horrible.\"  Another meaning of arr\u00eatos, as Pater\npoints out, is \"unsaid, not to be spoken.\"\n\n136. *With this may be connected another passage of Ovid--\nMetamorphoses, v. 391-408.\n\n138. *On these small objects the mother and daughter are hard to\ndistinguish, the latter being recognisable only by a greater delicacy\nin the features and the more evident stamp of youth.\n\n140. *A History of Discoveries at Halicarnassus, Cnidus, and\nBranchidae.\n\n141. +Transliteration: hoi theoi para Damatri.  Pater's translation:\n\"the gods with Demeter.\"\n\n143. +Transliteration: katadesmoi.  Liddell and Scott definition: \"a\ntie or band: a magic knot, love-knot.\"\n\n145. +Transliteration: D\u00ea\u00f4.  Liddell and Scott definition: the verb\nd\u00ea\u00f4 means \"I shall find,\" while the proper noun refers to Demeter.\n\n147. +Transliteration: petra agelastos.  Translation: \"sullen rock.\"\n\n147. *Pallere ligustra, / Exspirare rosas, decrescere lilia vidi.\n\n\n\nHIPPOLYTUS VEILED: A STUDY FROM EURIPIDES\n\n[152] CENTURIES of zealous archaeology notwithstanding, many phases\nof the so varied Greek genius are recorded for the modern student in\na kind of shorthand only, or not at all.  Even for Pausanias,\nvisiting Greece before its direct part in affairs was quite played\nout, much had perished or grown dim--of its art, of the truth of its\noutward history, above all of its religion as a credible or\npracticable thing.  And yet Pausanias visits Greece under\nconditions as favourable for observation as those under which later\ntravellers, Addison or Eustace, proceed to Italy.  For him the\nimpress of life in those old Greek cities is not less vivid and\nentire than that of medieval Italy to ourselves; at Siena, for\ninstance, with its ancient palaces still in occupation, its public\nedifices as serviceable as if the old republic had but just now\nvacated them, the tradition of their primitive worship still unbroken\nin its churches.  Had the opportunities in which Pausanias was [153]\nfortunate been ours, how many haunts of the antique Greek life\nunnoticed by him we should have peeped into, minutely systematic in\nour painstaking! how many a view would broaden out where he notes\nhardly anything at all on his map of Greece!\n\nOne of the most curious phases of Greek civilisation which has thus\nperished for us, and regarding which, as we may fancy, we should have\nmade better use of that old traveller's facilities, is the early\nAttic deme-life--its picturesque, intensely localised variety, in the\nhollow or on the spur of mountain or sea-shore; and with it many a\nrelic of primitive religion, many an early growth of art parallel to\nwhat Vasari records of artistic beginnings in the smaller cities of\nItaly.  Colonus and Acharnae, surviving still so vividly by the magic\nof Sophocles, of Aristophanes, are but isolated examples of a\nwidespread manner of life, in which, amid many provincial\npeculiarities, the first, yet perhaps the most costly and telling\nsteps were made in all the various departments of Greek culture.\nEven in the days of Pausanias, Piraeus was still traceable as a\ndistinct township, once the possible rival of Athens, with its little\nold covered market by the seaside, and the symbolical picture of the\nplace, its Genius, visible on the wall.  And that is but the type of\nwhat there had been to know of threescore and more village\ncommunities, each having its own altars, its special worship and\n[154] place of civic assembly, its trade and crafts, its name drawn\nfrom physical peculiarity or famous incident, its body of heroic\ntradition.  Lingering on while Athens, the great deme, gradually\nabsorbed into itself more and more of their achievements, and passing\naway almost completely as political factors in the Peloponnesian war,\nthey were still felt, we can hardly doubt, in the actual physiognomy\nof Greece.  That variety in unity, which its singular geographical\nformation secured to Greece as a whole, was at its utmost in these\nminute reflexions of the national character, with all the relish\nof local difference--new art, new poetry, fresh ventures in political\ncombination, in the conception of life, springing as if straight from\nthe soil, like the thorn-blossom of early spring in magic lines over\nall that rocky land.  On the other hand, it was just here that\nancient habits clung most tenaciously--that old-fashioned, homely,\ndelightful existence, to which the refugee, pent up in Athens in the\nyears of the Peloponnesian war, looked back so fondly.  If the\nimpression of Greece generally is but enhanced by the littleness of\nthe physical scene of events intellectually so great--such a system\nof grand lines, restrained within so narrow a compass, as in one of\nits fine coins--still more would this be true of those centres of\ncountry life.  Here, certainly, was that assertion of seemingly small\ninterests, which brings into free play, and gives his utmost value\n[155] to, the individual; making his warfare, equally with his more\npeaceful rivalries, deme against deme, the mountain against the\nplain, the sea-shore, (as in our own old Border life, but played out\nhere by wonderfully gifted people) tangible as a personal history, to\nthe doubling of its fascination for those whose business is with the\nsurvey of the dramatic side of life.\n\nAs with civil matters, so it was also, we may fairly suppose, with\nreligion; the deme-life was a manifestation of religious custom and\nsentiment, in all their primitive local variety.  As Athens,\ngradually drawing into itself the various elements of provincial\nculture, developed, with authority, the central religious position,\nthe demes-men did but add the worship of Athene Polias, the goddess\nof the capital, to their own pre-existent ritual uses.  Of local and\ncentral religion alike, time and circumstance had obliterated much\nwhen Pausanias came.  A devout spirit, with religion for his chief\ninterest, eager for the trace of a divine footstep, anxious even in\nthe days of Lucian to deal seriously with what had counted for so\nmuch to serious men, he has, indeed, to lament that \"Pan is dead\":--\n\"They come no longer!\"--\"These things happen no longer!\"  But the\nGreek--his very name also, Hellen, was the title of a priesthood--had\nbeen religious abundantly, sanctifying every detail of his actual\nlife with the religious idea; and as Pausanias goes on his way he\nfinds many a remnant of that [156] earlier estate of religion, when,\nas he fancied, it had been nearer the gods, as it was certainly\nnearer the earth. It is marked, even in decay, with varieties of\nplace; and is not only continuous but in situ.  At Phigaleia he\nmakes his offerings to Demeter, agreeably to the paternal rites of\nthe inhabitants, wax, fruit, undressed wool \"still full of the sordes\nof the sheep.\" A dream from heaven cuts short his notice of the\nmysteries of Eleusis. He sees the stone, \"big enough for a little\nman,\" on which Silenus was used to sit and rest; at Athens, the\ntombs of the Amazons, of the purple-haired Nisus, of Deucalion;--\"it\nis a manifest token that he had dwelt there.\"  The worshippers of\nPoseidon, even at his temple among the hills, might still feel the\nearth fluctuating beneath their feet. And in care for divine things,\nhe tells us, the Athenians outdid all other Greeks. Even in the days\nof Nero it revealed itself oddly; and it is natural to suppose that\nof this temper the demes, as the proper home of conservatism, were\nexceptionally expressive. Scattered in those remote, romantic\nvillages, among their olives or sea-weeds, lay the heroic graves, the\nrelics, the sacred images, often rude enough amid the delicate\ntribute of later art; this too oftentimes finding in such retirement\nits best inspirations, as in some Attic Fiesole. Like a network over\nthe land of gracious poetic tradition, as also of undisturbed\nceremonial usage surviving late for those who cared to seek it, the\n[157] local religions had been never wholly superseded by the worship\nof the great national temples. They were, in truth, the most\ncharacteristic developments of a faith essentially earth-born or\nindigenous.\n\nAnd how often must the student of fine art, again, wish he had the\nsame sort of knowledge about its earlier growth in Greece, that he\nactually possesses in the case of Italian art!  Given any development\nat all in this matter, there must have been phases of art, which, if\nimmature, were also veritable expressions of power to come,\nintermediate discoveries of beauty, such as are by no means a mere\nanticipation, and of service only as explaining historically larger\nsubsequent achievements, but of permanent attractiveness in\nthemselves, being often, indeed, the true maturity of certain amiable\nartistic qualities. And in regard to Greek art at its best--the\nParthenon--no less than to the art of the Renaissance at its best--\nthe Sistine Chapel--the more instructive light would be derived\nrather from what precedes than what follows such central success,\nfrom the determination to apprehend the fulfilment of past effort\nrather than the eve of decline, in the critical, central moment which\npartakes of both. Of such early promise, early achievement, we have\nin the case of Greek art little to compare with what is extant of the\nyouth of the arts in Italy. Overbeck's careful gleanings of its\nhistory form indeed [158] a sorry relic as contrasted with Vasari's\nintimations of the beginnings of the Renaissance.  Fired by certain\nfragments of its earlier days, of a beauty, in truth, absolute, and\nvainly longing for more, the student of Greek sculpture indulges the\nthought of an ideal of youthful energy therein, yet withal of\nyouthful self-restraint; and again, as with survivals of old\nreligion, the privileged home, he fancies, of that ideal must have\nbeen in those venerable Attic townships, as to a large extent it\npassed away with them.\n\nThe budding of new art, the survival of old religion, at isolated\ncentres of provincial life, where varieties of human character also\nwere keen, abundant, asserted in correspondingly effective incident--\nthis is what irresistible fancy superinduces on historic details,\nthemselves meagre enough.  The sentiment of antiquity is indeed a\ncharacteristic of all cultivated people, even in what may seem the\nfreshest ages, and not exclusively a humour of our later world.  In\nthe earliest notices about them, as we know, the people of Attica\nappear already impressed by the immense antiquity of their occupation\nof its soil, of which they claim to be the very first flower.  Some\nat least of those old demes-men we may well fancy sentimentally\nreluctant to change their habits, fearful of losing too much of\nthemselves in the larger stream of life, clinging to what is\nantiquated as the work of centralisation goes on, needful as that\nwork was, [159] with the great \"Eastern difficulty\" already ever in\nthe distance.  The fear of Asia, barbaric, splendid, hardly known,\nyet haunting the curious imagination of those who had borrowed thence\nthe art in which they were rapidly excelling it, developing, as we\nnow see, in the interest of Greek humanity, crafts begotten of\ntyrannic and illiberal luxury, was finally to suppress the rivalries\nof those primitive centres of activity, when the \"invincible armada\"\nof the common foe came into sight.\n\nAt a later period civil strife was to destroy their last traces.  The\nold hoplite, from Rhamnus or Acharnae, pent up in beleaguered Athens\nduring that first summer of the Peloponnesian war, occupying with his\nhousehold a turret of the wall, as Thucydides describes--one of many\npicturesque touches in that severe historian--could well remember the\nancient provincial life which this conflict with Sparta was bringing\nto an end.  He could recall his boyish, half-scared curiosity\nconcerning those Persian ships, coming first as merchantmen, or with\npirates on occasion, in the half-savage, wicked splendours of their\ndecoration, the monstrous figure-heads, their glittering freightage.\nMen would hardly have trusted their women or children with that\nsuspicious crew, hovering through the dusk.  There were soothsayers,\nindeed, who had long foretold what happened soon after, giving shape\nto vague, supernatural terrors.  And then he had crept [160] from his\nhiding-place with other lads to go view the enemies' slain at\nMarathon, beside those belated Spartans, this new war with whom\nseemed to be reviving the fierce local feuds of his younger days.\nParaloi and Diacrioi had ever been rivals.  Very distant it all\nseemed now, with all the stories he could tell; for in those\ncrumbling little towns, as heroic life had lingered on into the\nactual, so, at an earlier date, the supernatural into the heroic.\nLike mist at dawn, the last traces of its divine visitors had then\nvanished from the land, where, however, they had already begotten\n\"our best and oldest families.\"\n\nIt was Theseus, uncompromising young master of the situation, in\nfearless application of \"the modern spirit\" of his day to every phase\nof life where it was applicable, who, at the expense of Attica, had\ngiven Athens a people, reluctant enough, in truth, as Plutarch\nsuggests, to desert \"their homes and religious usages and many good\nand gracious kings of their own\" for this elect youth, who thus\nfigures, passably, as a kind of mythic shorthand for civilisation,\nmaking roads and the like, facilitating travel, suppressing various\nforms of violence, but many innocent things as well.  So it must\nneeds be in a world where, even hand in hand with a god-assisted\nhero, Justice goes blindfold.  He slays the bull of Marathon and many\nanother local tyrant, but also exterminates that delightful creature,\nthe Centaur.  The Amazon, whom Plato will [161] reinstate as the type\nof improved womanhood, has no better luck than Phaea, the sow-pig of\nCrommyon, foul old landed-proprietress.  They exerted, however, the\nprerogative of poetic protest, and survive thereby.  Centaur and\nAmazon, as we see them in the fine art of Greece, represent the\nregret of Athenians themselves for something that could never be\nbrought to life again, and have their pathos.  Those young heroes\ncontending with Amazons on the frieze of the Mausoleum had best make\nhaste with their bloody work, if young people's eyes can tell a true\nstory.  A type still of progress triumphant through injustice, set on\nimproving things off the face of the earth, Theseus took occasion to\nattack the Amazons in their mountain home, not long after their\nruinous conflict with Hercules, and hit them when they were down.\nThat greater bully had laboured off on the world's highway, carrying\nwith him the official girdle of Antiope, their queen, gift of Ares,\nand therewith, it would seem, the mystic secret of their strength.\nAt sight of this new foe, at any rate, she came to a strange\nsubmission.  The savage virgin had turned to very woman, and was\npresently a willing slave, returning on the gaily appointed ship in\nall haste to Athens, where in supposed wedlock she bore King Theseus\na son.\n\nWith their annual visit--visit to the Gargareans!--for the purpose of\nmaintaining their [162] species, parting with their boys early, these\nhusbandless women could hardly be supposed a very happy, certainly\nnot a very joyous people.  They figure rather as a sorry measure of\nthe luck of the female sex in taking a hard natural law into their\nown hands, and by abnegation of all tender companionship making shift\nwith bare independence, as a kind of second-best--the best\npracticable by them in the imperfect actual condition of things.  But\nthe heart-strings would ache still where the breast had been cut\naway.  The sisters of Antiope had come, not immediately, but in\ncareful array of battle, to bring back the captive.  All along the\nweary roads from the Caucasus to Attica, their traces had remained in\nthe great graves of those who died by the way.  Against the little\nremnant, carrying on the fight to the very midst of Athens, Antiope\nherself had turned, all other thoughts transformed now into wild\nidolatry of her hero.  Superstitious, or in real regret, the\nAthenians never forgot their tombs.  As for Antiope, the conscience\nof her perfidy remained with her, adding the pang of remorse to her\nown desertion, when King Theseus, with his accustomed bad faith to\nwomen, set her, too, aside in turn.  Phaedra, the true wife, was\nthere, peeping suspiciously at her arrival; and even as Antiope\nyielded to her lord's embraces the thought had come that a male child\nmight be the instrument of her anger, and one day judge her cause.\n\n[163] In one of these doomed, decaying villages, then, King Theseus\nplaced the woman and her babe, hidden, yet secure, within the Attic\nborder, as men veil their mistakes or crimes.  They might pass away,\nthey and their story, together with the memory of other antiquated\ncreatures of such places, who had had connubial dealings with the\nstars.  The white, paved waggon-track, a by-path of the sacred way to\nEleusis, zigzagged through sloping olive-yards, from the plain of\nsilvered blue, with Athens building in the distance, and passed the\ndoor of the rude stone house, furnished scantily, which no one had\nventured to inhabit of late years till they came there.  On the\nledges of the grey cliffs above, the laurel groves, stem and foliage\nof motionless bronze, had spread their tents.  Travellers bound\nnorthwards were glad to repose themselves there, and take directions,\nor provision for their journey onwards, from the highland people, who\ncame down hither to sell their honey, their cheese, and woollen\nstuff, in the tiny market-place.  At dawn the great stars seemed to\nhalt a while, burning as if for sacrifice to some pure deity, on\nthose distant, obscurely named heights, like broken swords, the rim\nof the world.  A little later you could just see the newly opened\nquarries, like streaks of snow on their russet-brown bosoms.  Thither\nin spring-time all eyes turned from Athens devoutly, intent till the\nfirst shaft of lightning gave signal for the departure of the [164]\nsacred ship to Delos.  Racing over those rocky surfaces, the virgin\nair descended hither with the secret of profound sleep, as the child\nlay in its cubicle hewn in the stone, the white fleeces heaped warmly\nround him.  In the wild Amazon's soul, to her surprise, and at first\nagainst her will, the maternal sense had quickened from the moment of\nhis conception, and (that burst of angry tears with which she had\nreceived him into the world once dried up), kindling more eagerly at\nevery token of manly growth, had at length driven out every other\nfeeling.  And this animal sentiment, educating the human hand and\nheart in her, had become a moral one, when, King Theseus leaving her\nin anger, visibly unkind, the child had crept to her side, and\ntracing with small fingers the wrinkled lines of her woebegone brow,\ncarved there as if by a thousand years of sorrow, had sown between\nhimself and her the seed of an undying sympathy.\n\nShe was thus already on the watch for a host of minute recognitions\non his part, of the self-sacrifice involved in her devotion to a\ncareer of which she must needs drain out the sorrow, careful that he\nmight taste only the joy.  So far, amid their spare living, the\nchild, as if looking up to the warm broad wing of her love above him,\nseemed replete with comfort.  Yet in his moments of childish\nsickness, the first passing shadows upon the deep joy of her\nmotherhood, she teaches him betimes to soothe [165] or cheat pain--\nlittle bodily pains only, hitherto.  She ventures sadly to assure him\nof the harsh necessities of life: \"Courage, child!  Every one must\ntake his share of suffering.  Shift not thy body so vehemently.\nPain, taken quietly, is easier to bear.\"\n\nCarefully inverting the habits of her own rude childhood, she learned\nto spin the wools, white and grey, to clothe and cover him\npleasantly.  The spectacle of his unsuspicious happiness, though at\npresent a matter of purely physical conditions, awoke a strange sense\nof poetry, a kind of artistic sense in her, watching, as her own\nlong-deferred recreation in life, his delight in the little\ndelicacies she prepared to his liking--broiled kids' flesh, the red\nwine, the mushrooms sought through the early dew--his hunger and\nthirst so daintily satisfied, as he sat at table, like the first-born\nof King Theseus, with two wax-lights and a fire at dawn or nightfall\ndancing to the prattle and laughter, a bright child, never stupidly\nweary.  At times his very happiness would seem to her like a menace\nof misfortune to come.  Was there not with herself the curse of that\nunsisterly action? and not far from him, the terrible danger of the\nfather's, the step-mother's jealousy, the mockery of those half-\nbrothers to come?  Ah! how perilous for happiness the sensibilities\nwhich make him so exquisitely happy now!  Before they started on\ntheir dreadful visit to the Minotaur, says Plutarch, the women told\ntheir [166] sons many tales and other things to encourage them; and,\neven as she had furnished the child betimes with rules for the solace\nof bodily pain, so now she would have brought her own sad experience\ninto service in precepts for the ejection of its festering power out\nof any other trouble that might visit him.  Already those little\ndisappointments which are as the shadow beside all conscious\nenjoyment, were no petty things to her, but had for her their pathos,\nas children's troubles will have, in spite of the longer chance\nbefore them.  They were as the first steps in a long story of\ndeferred hopes, or anticipations of death itself and the end of them.\n\nThe gift of Ares gone, the mystic girdle she would fain have\ntransferred to the child, that bloody god of storm and battle,\nhereditary patron of her house, faded from her thoughts together with\nthe memory of her past life--the more completely, because another\nfamiliar though somewhat forbidding deity, accepting certainly a\ncruel and forbidding worship, was already in possession, and reigning\nin the new home when she came thither.  Only, thanks to some kindly\nlocal influence (by grace, say, of its delicate air), Artemis, this\nother god she had known in the Scythian wilds, had put aside her\nfierce ways, as she paused awhile on her heavenly course among these\nancient abodes of men, gliding softly, mainly through their dreams,\nwith abundance of salutary touches.  Full, in truth, of [167]\ngrateful memory of some timely service at human hands!  In these\nhighland villages the tradition of celestial visitants clung fondly,\nof god or hero, belated or misled on long journeys, yet pleased to be\namong the sons of men, as their way led them up the steep, narrow,\ncrooked street, condescending to rest a little, as one, under some\nsudden stress not clearly ascertained, had done here, in this very\nhouse, thereafter for ever sacred.  The place and its inhabitants, of\ncourse, had been something bigger in the days of those old mythic\nhospitalities, unless, indeed, divine persons took kindly the will\nfor the deed--very different, surely, from the present condition of\nthings, for there was little here to detain a delicate traveller,\neven in the abode of Antiope and her son, though it had been the\nresidence of a king.\n\nHard by stood the chapel of the goddess, who had thus adorned the\nplace with her memories.  The priests, indeed, were already departed\nto Athens, carrying with them the ancient image, the vehicle of her\nactual presence, as the surest means of enriching the capital at the\nexpense of the country, where she must now make poor shift of the\noccasional worshipper on his way through these mountain passes.  But\nsafely roofed beneath the sturdy tiles of grey Hymettus marble, upon\nthe walls of the little square recess enclosing the deserted\npedestal, a series of crowded imageries, in the devout spirit [168]\nof earlier days, were eloquent concerning her.  Here from scene to\nscene, touched with silver among the wild and human creatures in dun\nbronze, with the moon's disk around her head, shrouded closely, the\ngoddess of the chase still glided mystically through all the varied\nincidents of her story, in all the detail of a written book.\n\nA book for the delighted reading of a scholar, willing to ponder at\nleisure, to make his way surely, and understand.  Very different,\ncertainly, from the cruel-featured little idol his mother had brought\nin her bundle--the old Scythian Artemis, hanging there on the wall,\nside by side with the forgotten Ares, blood-red,--the goddess reveals\nherself to the lad, poring through the dusk by taper-light, as at\nonce a virgin, necessarily therefore the creature of solitude, yet\nalso as the assiduous nurse of children, and patroness of the young.\nHer friendly intervention at the act of birth everywhere, her claim\nupon the nursling, among tame and wild creatures equally, among men\nas among gods, nay! among the stars (upon the very star of dawn),\ngave her a breadth of influence seemingly coextensive with the sum of\nthings.  Yes! his great mother was in touch with everything.  Yet\nthroughout he can but note her perpetual chastity, with pleasurable\nthough half-suspicious wonder at the mystery, he knows not what,\ninvolved therein, as though he awoke suddenly in some distant,\nunexplored region of her person and activity. [169] Why the lighted\ntorch always, and that long straight vesture rolled round so\nformally?  Was it only against the cold of these northern heights?\n\nTo her, nevertheless, her maternity, her solitude, to this virgin\nmother, who, with no husband, no lover, no fruit of her own, is so\ntender to the children of others, in a full heart he devotes himself-\n-his immaculate body and soul.  Dedicating himself thus, he has the\nsense also that he becomes more entirely than ever the chevalier of\nhis mortal mother, of her sad cause.  The devout, diligent hands\nclear away carefully the dust, the faded relics of her former\nworship; a worship renewed once more as the sacred spring, set free\nfrom encumbrance, in answer to his willing ministries murmurs again\nunder the dim vault in its marble basin, work of primitive Titanic\nfingers--flows out through its rocky channel, filling the whole\ntownship with chaste thoughts of her.\n\nThrough much labour at length he comes to the veritable story of her\nbirth, like a gift direct from the goddess herself to this loyal\nsoul.  There were those in later times who, like Aeschylus, knew\nArtemis as the daughter not of Leto but of Demeter, according to the\nversion of her history now conveyed to the young Hippolytus, together\nwith some deepened insight into her character.  The goddess of\nEleusis, on a journey, in the old days when, as Plato says, [170] men\nlived nearer the gods, finding herself with child by some starry\ninmate of those high places, had lain down in the rock-hewn cubicle\nof the inner chamber, and, certainly in sorrow, brought forth a\ndaughter.  Here was the secret at once of the genial, all-embracing\nmaternity of this new strange Artemis, and of those more dubious\ntokens, the lighted torch, the winding-sheet, the arrow of death on\nthe string--of sudden death, truly, which may be thought after all\nthe kindest, as prevenient of all disgraceful sickness or waste in\nthe unsullied limbs.  For the late birth into the world of this so\nshadowy daughter was somehow identified with the sudden passing into\nHades of her first-born, Persephone.  As he scans those scenes anew,\nan awful surmise comes to him; his divine patroness moves there as\ndeath, surely.  Still, however, gratefully putting away suspicion, he\nseized even in these ambiguous imageries their happier suggestions,\nsatisfied in thinking of his new mother as but the giver of sound\nsleep, of the benign night, whence--mystery of mysteries!--good\nthings are born softly, from which he awakes betimes for his\nhealthful service to her.  Either way, sister of Apollo or sister of\nPersephone, to him she should be a power of sanity, sweet as the\nflowers he offered her gathered at dawn, setting daily their purple\nand white frost against her ancient marbles.  There was more\ncertainly than the first breath of day in them.  Was there [171] here\nsomething of her person, her sensible presence, by way of direct\nresponse to him in his early devotion, astir for her sake before the\nvery birds, nesting here so freely, the quail above all, in some\nprivileged connexion with her story still unfathomed by the learned\nyouth?  Amid them he too found a voice, and sang articulately the\npraises of the great goddess.\n\nThose more dubious traits, nevertheless, so lightly disposed of by\nHippolytus (Hecate thus counting for him as Artemis goddess of\nhealth), became to his mother, in the light of her sad experience,\nthe sum of the whole matter.  While he drew only peaceful inducements\nto sleep from that two-sided figure, she reads there a volume of\nsinister intentions, and liked little this seemingly dead goddess,\nwho could but move among the living banefully, stealing with her\nnight-shade into the day where she had no proper right.  The gods had\never had much to do with the shaping of her fortunes and the fortunes\nof her kindred; and the mortal mother felt nothing less than jealousy\nfrom the hour when the lad had first delightedly called her to share\nhis discoveries, and learn the true story (if it were not rather the\nmalicious counterfeit) of the new divine mother to whom he has thus\nabsolutely entrusted himself.  Was not this absolute chastity itself\na kind of death?  She, too, in secret makes her gruesome midnight\noffering with averted eyes.  She dreams one night he is in danger;\ncreeps to his cubicle [172] to see; the face is covered, as he lies,\nagainst the cold.  She traces the motionless outline, raises the\ncoverlet; with the nice black head deep in the fleecy pillow he is\nsleeping quietly, he dreams of that other mother gliding in upon the\nmoonbeam, and awaking turns sympathetically upon the living woman, is\nsubdued in a moment to the expression of her troubled spirit, and\nunderstands.\n\nAnd when the child departed from her for the first time, springing\nfrom his white bed before the dawn, to accompany the elders on their\nannual visit to the Eleusinian goddess, the after-sense of his\nwonderful happiness, tranquillising her in spite of herself by its\ngenial power over the actual moment, stirred nevertheless a new sort\nof anxiety for the future.  Her work in life henceforward was defined\nas a ministry to so precious a gift, in full consciousness of its\nrisk; it became her religion, the centre of her pieties.  She missed\npainfully his continual singing hovering about the place, like the\nearth itself made audible in all its humanities.  Half-selfish for a\nmoment, she prays that he may remain for ever a child, to her solace;\nwelcomes now the promise of his chastity (though chastity were itself\na kind of death) as the pledge of his abiding always with her.  And\nthese thoughts were but infixed more deeply by the sudden stroke of\njoy at his return home in ceremonial trim and grown more manly, with\nmuch increase of self-confidence in that brief absence among his\nfellows.\n\n[173] For, from the first, the unwelcome child, the outcast, had been\nsuccessful, with that special good fortune which sometimes attends\nthe outcast.  His happiness, his invincible happiness, had been found\nengaging, perhaps by the gods, certainly by men; and when King\nTheseus came to take note how things went in that rough life he had\nassigned them, he felt a half liking for the boy, and bade him come\ndown to Athens and see the sights, partly by way of proof to his\nalready somewhat exacting wife of the difference between the old love\nand the new as measured by the present condition of their respective\noffspring.  The fine nature, fastidious by instinct, but bred with\nfrugality enough to find the charm of continual surprise in that\ndelicate new Athens, draws, as he goes, the full savour of its\nnovelties; the marbles, the space and finish, the busy gaiety of its\nstreets, the elegance of life there, contrasting with while it adds\nsome mysterious endearment to the thought of his own rude home.\nWithout envy, in hope only one day to share, to win them by kindness,\nhe gazes on the motley garden-plots, the soft bedding, the showy\ntoys, the delicate keep of the children of Phaedra, who turn\ncuriously to their half-brother, venture to touch his long strange\ngown of homespun grey, like the soft coat of some wild creature who\nmight let one stroke it.  Close to their dainty existence for a\nwhile, he regards it as from afar; looks forward all day to the\nlights, the prattle, the laughter, the white [174] bread, like sweet\ncake to him, of their ordinary evening meal; returns again and again,\nin spite of himself, to watch, to admire, feeling a power within him\nto merit the like; finds his way back at last, still light of heart,\nto his own poor fare, able to do without what he would enjoy so much.\nAs, grateful for his scanty part in things--for the make-believe of a\nfeast in the little white loaves she too has managed to come by,\nsipping the thin white wine, he touches her dearly, the mother is\nshocked with a sense of something unearthly in his contentment, while\nhe comes and goes, singing now more abundantly than ever a new\ncanticle to her divine rival.  Were things, after all, to go\ngrudgingly with him?  Sensible of that curse on herself, with her\nsuspicions of his kinsfolk, of this dubious goddess to whom he has\ndevoted himself, she anticipates with more foreboding than ever his\npath to be, with or without a wife--her own solitude, or his--the\npainful heats and cold.  She fears even these late successes; it were\nbest to veil their heads.  The strong as such had ever been against\nher and hers.  The father came again; noted the boy's growth.\nManliest of men, like Hercules in his cloak of lion's skin, he has\nafter all but scant liking, feels, through a certain meanness of\nsoul, scorn for the finer likeness of himself.  Might this creature\nof an already vanishing world, who for all his hard rearing had a\nmanifest distinction of character, one day become his rival, full of\n[175] loyalty as he was already to the deserted mother?\n\nTo charming Athens, nevertheless, he crept back, as occasion served,\nto gaze peacefully on the delightful good fortune of others, waiting\nfor the opportunity to take his own turn with the rest, driving down\nthither at last in a chariot gallantly, when all the town was\nassembled to celebrate the king's birthday.  For the goddess, herself\nturning ever kinder, and figuring more and more exclusively as the\ntender nurse of all things, had transformed her young votary from a\nhunter into a charioteer, a rearer and driver of horses, after the\nfashion of his Amazon mothers before him.  Thereupon, all the lad's\nwholesome vanity had centered on the fancy of the world-famous games\nthen lately established, as, smiling down his mother's terrors, and\ngrateful to his celestial mother for many a hair-breadth escape, he\npractised day by day, fed the animals, drove them out, amused though\ncompanionless, visited them affectionately in the deserted stone\nstables of the ancient king.  A chariot and horses, as being the\nshowiest outward thing the world afforded, was like the pawn he moved\nto represent the big demand he meant to make, honestly, generously,\non the ample fortunes of life.  There was something of his old\nmiraculous kindred, alien from this busy new world he came to, about\nthe boyish driver with the fame of a scholar, in his grey fleecy\ncloak and hood of soft [175] white woollen stuff, as he drove in that\nmorning.  Men seemed to have seen a star flashing, and crowded round\nto examine the little mountain-bred beasts, in loud, friendly\nintercourse with the hero of the hour--even those usually somewhat\nunsympathetic half-brothers now full of enthusiasm for the outcast\nand his good fight for prosperity.  Instinctively people admired his\nwonderful placidity, and would fain have shared its secret, as it\nwere the carelessness of some fair flower upon his face.  A victor in\nthe day's race, he carried home as his prize a glittering new harness\nin place of the very old one he had come with.  \"My chariot and\nhorses!\" he says now, with his single touch of pride.  Yet at home,\nsavouring to the full his old solitary happiness, veiled again from\ntime to time in that ancient life, he is still the student, still\nponders the old writings which tell of his divine patroness.  At\nAthens strange stories are told in turn of him, his nights upon the\nmountains, his dreamy sin, with that hypocritical virgin goddess,\nstories which set the jealous suspicions of Theseus at rest once\nmore.  For so \"dream\" not those who have the tangible, appraisable\nworld in view.  Even Queen Phaedra looks with pleasure, as he comes,\non the once despised illegitimate creature, at home now here too,\nsinging always audaciously, so visibly happy, occupied, popular.\n\nEncompassed by the luxuries of Athens, far from those peaceful\nmountain places, among people [177] further still in spirit from\ntheir peaceful light and shade, he did not forget the kindly goddess,\nstill sharing with his earthly mother the prizes, or what they would\nbuy, for the adornment of their spare abode.  The tombs of the fallen\nAmazons, the spot where they had breathed their last, he piously\nvisited, informed himself of every circumstance of the event with\ndevout care, and, thinking on them amid the dainties of the royal\ntable, boldly brought them too their share of the offerings to the\nheroic dead.  Aphrodite, indeed--Aphrodite, of whom he had scarcely\nso much as heard--was just then the best-served deity in Athens, with\nall its new wealth of colour and form, its gold and ivory, the\nacting, the music, the fantastic women, beneath the shadow of the\ngreat walls still rising steadily.  Hippolytus would have no part in\nher worship; instead did what was in him to revive the neglected\nservice of his own goddess, stirring an old jealousy.  For Aphrodite\ntoo had looked with delight upon the youth, already the centre of a\nhundred less dangerous human rivalries among the maidens of Greece,\nand was by no means indifferent to his indifference, his instinctive\ndistaste; while the sterner, almost forgotten Artemis found once more\nher great moon-shaped cake, set about with starry tapers, at the\nappointed seasons.\n\nThey know him now from afar, by his emphatic, shooting, arrowy\nmovements; and on [178] the day of the great chariot races \"he goes\nin and wins.\"  To the surprise of all he compounded his handsome\nprize for the old wooden image taken from the chapel at home, lurking\nnow in an obscure shrine in the meanest quarter of the town.  Sober\namid the noisy feasting which followed, unashamed, but travelling by\nnight to hide it from their mockery, warm at his bosom, he reached\nthe passes at twilight, and through the deep peace of the glens bore\nit to the old resting-place, now more worthy than ever of the\npresence of its mistress, his mother and all the people of the\nvillage coming forth to salute her, all doors set mystically open, as\nshe advances.\n\nPhaedra too, his step-mother, a fiery soul with wild strange blood in\nher veins, forgetting her fears of this illegitimate rival of her\nchildren, seemed now to have seen him for the first time, loved at\nlast the very touch of his fleecy cloak, and would fain have had him\nof her own religion.  As though the once neglected child had been\nanother, she tries to win him as a stranger in his manly perfection,\ngrowing more than an affectionate mother to her husband's son.  But\nwhy thus intimate and congenial, she asks, always in the wrong\nquarter?  Why not compass two ends at once?  Why so squeamishly\nneglect the powerful, any power at all, in a city so full of\nreligion?  He might find the image of her sprightly goddess\neverywhere, to his [179] liking, gold, silver, native or stranger,\nnew or old, graceful, or indeed, if he preferred it so, in iron or\nstone.  By the way, she explains the delights of love, of marriage,\nthe husband once out of the way; finds in him, with misgiving, a sort\nof forwardness, as she thinks, on this one matter, as if he\nunderstood her craft and despised it.  He met her questions in truth\nwith scarce so much as contempt, with laughing counter-queries, why\npeople needed wedding at all?  They might have found the children in\nthe temples, or bought them, as you could buy flowers in Athens.\n\nMeantime Phaedra's young children draw from the seemingly unconscious\nfinger the marriage-ring, set it spinning on the floor at his feet,\nand the staid youth places it for a moment on his own finger for\nsafety.  As it settles there, his step-mother, aware all the while,\nsuddenly presses his hand over it.  He found the ring there that\nnight as he lay; left his bed in the darkness, and again, for safety,\nput it on the finger of the image, wedding once for all that so\nkindly mystical mother.  And still, even amid his earthly mother's\nterrible misgivings, he seems to foresee a charming career marked out\nbefore him in friendly Athens, to the height of his desire.  Grateful\nthat he is here at all, sharing at last so freely life's banquet, he\nputs himself for a moment in his old place, recalling his old\nenjoyment of the pleasure of others; [180] feels, just then, no\ndifferent.  Yet never had life seemed so sufficing as at this moment-\n-the meat, the drink, the drives, the popularity as he comes and\ngoes, even his step-mother's false, selfish, ostentatious gifts.  But\nshe, too, begins to feel something of the jealousy of that other\ndivine, would-be mistress, and by way of a last effort to bring him\nto a better mind in regard to them both, conducts him (immeasurable\nprivilege!) to her own private chapel.\n\nYou could hardly tell where the apartments of the adulteress ended\nand that of the divine courtesan began.  Haunts of her long,\nindolent, self-pleasing nights and days, they presented everywhere\nthe impress of Phaedra's luxurious humour.  A peculiar glow, such as\nhe had never before seen, like heady lamplight, or sunshine to some\nsleeper in a delirious dream, hung upon, clung to, the bold, naked,\nshameful imageries, as his step-mother trimmed the lamps, drew forth\nher sickly perfumes, clad afresh in piquant change of raiment the\nalmost formless goddess crouching there in her unclean shrine or\nstye, set at last her foolish wheel in motion to a low chant, holding\nhim by the wrist, keeping close all the while, as if to catch some\ngerm of consent in his indifferent words.\n\nAnd little by little he perceives that all this is for him--the\nincense, the dizzy wheel, the shreds of stuff cut secretly from his\nsleeve, the sweetened cup he drank at her offer, unavailingly;+\n[181]  and yes! his own features surely, in pallid wax.  With a gasp\nof flighty laughter she ventures to point the thing out to him, full\nas he is at last of visible, irrepressible dislike.  Ah! it was that\nvery reluctance that chiefly stirred her.  Healthily white and red,\nhe had a marvellous air of discretion about him, as of one never to\nbe caught unaware, as if he never could be anything but like water\nfrom the rock, or the wild flowers of the morning, or the beams of\nthe morning star turned to human flesh.  It was the self-possession\nof this happy mind, the purity of this virgin body, she would fain\nhave perturbed, as a pledge to herself of her own gaudy claim to\nsupremacy.  King Theseus, as she knew, had had at least two earlier\nloves; for once she would be a first love; felt at moments that with\nthis one passion once indulged, it might be happiness thereafter to\nremain chaste for ever.  And then, by accident, yet surely reading\nindifference in his manner of accepting her gifts, she is ready again\nfor contemptuous, open battle.  Is he indeed but a child still, this\nnursling of the forbidding Amazon, of that Amazonian goddess--to be a\nchild always? or a wily priest rather, skilfully circumventing her\nsorceries, with mystic precautions of his own?  In truth, there is\nsomething of the priestly character in this impassible discretion,\nreminding her of his alleged intimacy with the rival goddess, and\nredoubling her curiosity, her fondness.+ [182] Phaedra, love-sick,\nfeverish, in bodily sickness at last, raves of the cool woods, the\nchase, the steeds of Hippolytus, her thoughts running madly on what\nshe fancies to be his secret business; with a storm of abject tears,\nforeseeing in one moment of recoil the weary tale of years to come,\nstar-stricken as she declares, she dared at last to confess her\nlonging to already half-suspicious attendants; and, awake one morning\nto find Hippolytus there kindly at her bidding, drove him openly\nforth in a tempest of insulting speech.  There was a mordant there,\nlike the menace of misfortune to come, in which the injured goddess\nalso was invited to concur.  What words! what terrible words!\nfollowing, clinging to him, like acrid fire upon his bare flesh, as\nhe hasted from Phaedra's house, thrust out at last, his vesture\nremaining in her hands.  The husband returning suddenly, she tells\nhim a false story of violence to her bed, and is believed.\n\nKing Theseus, all his accumulated store of suspicion and dislike\nturning now to active hatred, flung away readily upon him,\nbewildered, unheard, one of three precious curses (some mystery of\nwasting sickness therein) with which Poseidon had indulged him.  It\nseemed sad that one so young must call for justice, precariously,\nupon the gods, the dead, the very walls!  Admiring youth dared hardly\nbid farewell to their late comrade; are generous, at most, in [183]\nstolen, sympathetic glances towards the fallen star.  At home, veiled\nonce again in that ancient twilight world, his mother, fearing solely\nfor what he may suffer by the departure of that so brief prosperity,\nenlarged as it had been, even so, by his grateful taking of it, is\nreassured, delighted, happy once more at the visible proof of his\nhappiness, his invincible happiness.  Duly he returned to Athens,\nearly astir, for the last time, to restore the forfeited gifts, drove\nback his gaily painted chariot to leave there behind him, actually\nenjoying the drive, going home on foot poorer than ever.  He takes\nagain to his former modes of life, a little less to the horses, a\nlittle more to the old studies, the strange, secret history of his\nfavourite goddess,--wronged surely! somehow, she too, as powerless to\nhelp him; till he lay sick at last, battling one morning, unaware of\nhis mother's presence, with the feverish creations of the brain; the\ngiddy, foolish wheel, the foolish song, of Phaedra's chapel, spinning\nthere with his heart bound thereto.  \"The curses of my progenitors\nare come upon me!\" he cries.  \"And yet, why so? guiltless as I am of\nevil.\"  His wholesome religion seeming to turn against him now, the\ntrees, the streams, the very rocks, swoon into living creatures,\nswarming around the goddess who has lost her grave quietness.  He\nfinds solicitation, and recoils, in the wind, in the sounds of the\nrain; till at length delirium [184] itself finds a note of returning\nhealth.  The feverish wood-ways of his fancy open unexpectedly upon\nwide currents of air, lulling him to sleep; and the conflict ending\nsuddenly altogether at its sharpest, he lay in the early light\nmotionless among the pillows, his mother standing by, as she thought,\nto see him die.  As if for the last time, she presses on him the\nthings he had liked best in that eating and drinking she had found so\nbeautiful.  The eyes, the eyelids are big with sorrow; and, as he\nunderstands again, making an effort for her sake, the healthy light\nreturns into his; a hand seizes hers gratefully, and a slow\nconvalescence begins, the happiest period in the wild mother's life.\nWhen he longed for flowers for the goddess, she went a toilsome\njourney to seek them, growing close, after long neglect, wholesome\nand firm on their tall stalks.  The singing she had longed for so\ndespairingly hovers gaily once more within the chapel and around the\nhouse.\n\nAt the crisis of that strange illness she had supposed her long\nforebodings about to be realised at last; but upon his recovery\nfeared no more, assured herself that the curses of the father, the\nstep-mother, the concurrent ill-will of that angry goddess, have done\ntheir utmost; he will outlive her; a few years hence put her to a\nrest surely welcome.  Her misgivings, arising always out of the\nactual spectacle of his profound happiness, seemed at an end in this\nmeek bliss, the more as [185] she observed that it was a shade less\nunconscious than of old.  And almost suddenly he found the strength,\nthe heart, in him, to try his fortune again with the old chariot; and\nthose still unsatisfied curses, in truth, going on either side of him\nlike living creatures unseen, legend tells briefly how, a competitor\nfor pity with Adonis, and Icarus, and Hyacinth, and other doomed\ncreatures of immature radiance in all story to come, he set forth\njoyously for the chariot-races, not of Athens, but of Troezen, her\nrival.  Once more he wins the prize; he says good-bye to admiring\nfriends anxious to entertain him, and by night starts off homewards,\nas of old, like a child, returning quickly through the solitude in\nwhich he had never lacked company, and was now to die.  Through all\nthe perils of darkness he had guided the chariot safely along the\ncurved shore; the dawn was come, and a little breeze astir, as the\ngrey level spaces parted delicately into white and blue, when in a\nmoment an earthquake, or Poseidon the earth-shaker himself, or angry\nAphrodite awake from the deep betimes, rent the tranquil surface; a\ngreat wave leapt suddenly into the placid distance of the Attic\nshore, and was surging here to the very necks of the plunging horses,\na moment since enjoying so pleasantly with him the caress of the\nmorning air, but now, wholly forgetful of their old affectionate\nhabit of obedience, dragging their leader headlong over the rough\npavements. [186] Evening and the dawn might seem to have met on that\nhapless day through which they drew him home entangled in the\ntrappings of the chariot that had been his ruin, till he lay at\nlength, grey and haggard, at the rest he had longed for dimly amid\nthe buffeting of those murderous stones, his mother watching\nimpassibly, sunk at once into the condition she had so long\nanticipated.\n\nLater legend breaks a supernatural light over that great desolation,\nand would fain relieve the reader by introducing the kindly\nAsclepius, who presently restores the youth to life, not, however, in\nthe old form or under familiar conditions.  To her, surely, counting\nthe wounds, the disfigurements, telling over the pains which had shot\nthrough that dear head now insensible to her touch among the pillows\nunder the harsh broad daylight, that would have been no more of a\nsolace than if, according to the fancy of Ovid, he flourished still,\na little deity, but under a new name and veiled now in old age, in\nthe haunted grove of Aricia, far from his old Attic home, in a land\nwhich had never seen him as he was.\n\n\n\nTHE BEGINNINGS OF GREEK SCULPTURE\nI: THE HEROIC AGE OF GREEK ART\n\n[187] THE extant remains of Greek sculpture, though but a fragment of\nwhat the Greek sculptors produced, are, both in number and in\nexcellence, in their fitness, therefore, to represent the whole of\nwhich they were a part, quite out of proportion to what has come down\nto us of Greek painting, and all those minor crafts which, in the\nGreek workshop, as at all periods when the arts have been really\nvigorous, were closely connected with the highest imaginative work.\nGreek painting is represented to us only by its distant reflexion on\nthe walls of the buried houses of Pompeii, and the designs of\nsubordinate though exquisite craftsmen on the vases.  Of wrought\nmetal, partly through the inherent usefulness of its material,\ntempting ignorant persons into whose hands it may fall to re-fashion\nit, we have comparatively little; while, in consequence of the\nperishableness of their material, nothing [188] remains of the\ncurious wood-work, the carved ivory, the embroidery and coloured\nstuffs, on which the Greeks set much store--of that whole system of\nrefined artisanship, diffused, like a general atmosphere of beauty\nand richness, around the more exalted creations of Greek sculpture.\nWhat we possess, then, of that highest Greek sculpture is presented\nto us in a sort of threefold isolation; isolation, first of all, from\nthe concomitant arts--the frieze of the Parthenon without the metal\nbridles on the horses, for which the holes in the marble remain;\nisolation, secondly, from the architectural group of which, with most\ncareful estimate of distance and point of observation, that frieze,\nfor instance, was designed to be a part; isolation, thirdly, from the\nclear Greek skies, the poetical Greek life, in our modern galleries.\nAnd if one here or there, in looking at these things, bethinks\nhimself of the required substitution; if he endeavours mentally to\nthrow them back into that proper atmosphere, through which alone they\ncan exercise over us all the magic by which they charmed their\noriginal spectators, the effort is not always a successful one,\nwithin the grey walls of the Louvre or the British Museum.\n\nAnd the circumstance that Greek sculpture is presented to us in such\nfalsifying isolation from the work of the weaver, the carpenter, and\nthe goldsmith, has encouraged a manner of regarding it too little\nsensuous.  Approaching it with full [189] information concerning what\nmay be called the inner life of the Greeks, their modes of thought\nand sentiment amply recorded in the writings of the Greek poets and\nphilosophers, but with no lively impressions of that mere craftsman's\nworld of which so little has remained, students of antiquity have for\nthe most part interpreted the creations of Greek sculpture, rather as\nelements in a sequence of abstract ideas, as embodiments, in a sort\nof petrified language, of pure thoughts, and as interesting mainly in\nconnexion with the development of Greek intellect, than as elements\nof a sequence in the material order, as results of a designed and\nskilful dealing of accomplished fingers with precious forms of matter\nfor the delight of the eyes.  Greek sculpture has come to be regarded\nas the product of a peculiarly limited art, dealing with a specially\nabstracted range of subjects; and the Greek sculptor as a workman\nalmost exclusively intellectual, having only a sort of accidental\nconnexion with the material in which his thought was expressed.  He\nis fancied to have been disdainful of such matters as the mere tone,\nthe fibre or texture, of his marble or cedar-wood, of that just\nperceptible yellowness, for instance, in the ivory-like surface of\nthe Venus of Melos; as being occupied only with forms as abstract\nalmost as the conceptions of philosophy, and translateable it might\nbe supposed into any material--a habit of regarding him still further\nencouraged by the modern [190] sculptor's usage of employing merely\nmechanical labour in the actual working of the stone.\n\nThe works of the highest Greek sculpture are indeed intellectualised,\nif we may say so, to the utmost degree; the human figures which they\npresent to us seem actually to conceive thoughts; in them, that\nprofoundly reasonable spirit of design which is traceable in Greek\nart, continuously and increasingly, upwards from its simplest\nproducts, the oil-vessel or the urn, reaches its perfection.  Yet,\nthough the most abstract and intellectualised of sensuous objects,\nthey are still sensuous and material, addressing themselves, in the\nfirst instance, not to the purely reflective faculty, but to the eye;\nand a complete criticism must have approached them from both sides--\nfrom the side of the intelligence indeed, towards which they rank as\ngreat thoughts come down into the stone; but from the sensuous side\nalso, towards which they rank as the most perfect results of that\npure skill of hand, of which the Venus of Melos, we may say, is the\nhighest example, and the little polished pitcher or lamp, also\nperfect in its way, perhaps the lowest.\n\nTo pass by the purely visible side of these things, then, is not only\nto miss a refining pleasure, but to mistake altogether the medium in\nwhich the most intellectual of the creations of Greek art, the\nAeginetan or the Elgin marbles, for instance, were actually produced;\neven these having, in their origin, depended for much of [191] their\ncharm on the mere material in which they were executed; and the whole\nblack and grey world of extant antique sculpture needing to be\ntranslated back into ivory and gold, if we would feel the excitement\nwhich the Greek seems to have felt in the presence of these objects.\nTo have this really Greek sense of Greek sculpture, it is necessary\nto connect it, indeed, with the inner life of the Greek world, its\nthought and sentiment, on the one hand; but on the other hand to\nconnect it, also, with the minor works of price, intaglios, coins,\nvases; with that whole system of material refinement and beauty in\nthe outer Greek life, which these minor works represent to us; and it\nis with these, as far as possible, that we must seek to relieve the\nair of our galleries and museums of their too intellectual greyness.\nGreek sculpture could not have been precisely a cold thing; and,\nwhatever a colour-blind school may say, pure thoughts have their\ncoldness, a coldness which has sometimes repelled from Greek\nsculpture, with its unsuspected fund of passion and energy in\nmaterial form, those who cared much, and with much insight, for a\nsimilar passion and energy in the coloured world of Italian painting.\n\nTheoretically, then, we need that world of the minor arts as a\ncomplementary background for the higher and more austere Greek\nsculpture; and, as matter of fact, it is just with such a world--with\na period of refined and exquisite [192] tectonics+ (as the Greeks\ncalled all crafts strictly subordinate to architecture), that Greek\nart actually begins, in what is called the Heroic Age, that earliest,\nundefined period of Greek civilisation, the beginning of which cannot\nbe dated, and which reaches down to the first Olympiad, about the\nyear 776 B.C.  Of this period we possess, indeed, no direct history,\nand but few actual monuments, great or small; but as to its whole\ncharacter and outward local colouring, for its art, as for its\npolitics and religion, Homer may be regarded as an authority.  The\nIliad and the Odyssey, the earliest pictures of that heroic life,\nrepresent it as already delighting itself in the application of\nprecious material and skilful handiwork to personal and domestic\nadornment, to the refining and beautifying of the entire outward\naspect of life; above all, in the lavish application of very graceful\nmetal-work to such purposes.  And this representation is borne out by\nwhat little we possess of its actual remains, and by all we can\ninfer.  Mixed, of course, with mere fable, as a description of the\nheroic age, the picture which Homer presents to us, deprived of its\nsupernatural adjuncts, becomes continuously more and more realisable\nas the actual condition of early art, when we emerge gradually into\nhistorical time, and find ourselves at last among dateable works and\nreal schools or masters.\n\nThe history of Greek art, then, begins, as some have fancied general\nhistory to begin, in a [193] golden age, but in an age, so to speak,\nof real gold, the period of those first twisters and hammerers of the\nprecious metals--men who had already discovered the flexibility of\nsilver and the ductility of gold, the capacity of both for infinite\ndelicacy of handling, and who enjoyed, with complete freshness, a\nsense of beauty and fitness in their work--a period of which that\nflower of gold on a silver stalk, picked up lately in one of the\ngraves at Mycenae, or the legendary golden honeycomb of Daedalus,\nmight serve as the symbol.  The heroic age of Greek art is the age of\nthe hero as smith.\n\nThere are in Homer two famous descriptive passages in which this\ndelight in curious metal-work is very prominent; the description in\nthe Iliad of the shield of Achilles* and the description of the house\nof Alcinous in the Odyssey.*  The shield of Achilles is part of the\nsuit of armour which Hephaestus makes for him at the request of\nThetis; and it is wrought of variously Coloured metals, woven into a\ngreat circular composition in relief, representing the world and the\nlife in it.  The various activities of man are recorded in this\ndescription in a series of idyllic incidents with such complete\nfreshness, liveliness, and variety, that the reader from time to time\nmay well forget himself, and fancy he is reading a mere description\nof the incidents of actual life. [194] We peep into a little Greek\ntown, and see in dainty miniature the bride coming from her chamber\nwith torch-bearers and dancers, the people gazing from their doors, a\nquarrel between two persons in the market-place, the assembly of the\nelders to decide upon it.  In another quartering is the spectacle of\na city besieged, the walls defended by the old men, while the\nsoldiers have stolen out and are lying in ambush.  There is a fight\non the river-bank; Ares and Athene, conspicuous in gold, and marked\nas divine persons by a scale larger than that of their followers,\nlead the host. The strange, mythical images of K\u00ear, Eris, and\nKudoimos mingle in the crowd.  A third space upon the shield depicts\nthe incidents of peaceful labour--the ploughshare passing through the\nfield, of enameled black metal behind it, and golden before; the cup\nof mead held out to the ploughman when he reaches the end of the\nfurrow; the reapers with their sheaves; the king standing in silent\npleasure among them, intent upon his staff.  There are the labourers\nin the vineyard in minutest detail; stakes of silver on which the\nvines hang; the dark trench about it, and one pathway through the\nmidst; the whole complete and distinct, in variously coloured metal.\nAll things and living creatures are in their places--the cattle\ncoming to water to the sound of the herdsman's pipe, various music,\nthe rushes by the water-side, a lion-hunt with dogs, [195] the\npastures among the hills, a dance, the fair dresses of the male and\nfemale dancers, the former adorned with swords, the latter with\ncrowns.  It is an image of ancient life, its pleasure and business.\nFor the centre, as in some quaint chart of the heavens, are the earth\nand the sun, the moon and constellations; and to close in all, right\nround, like a frame to the picture, the great river Oceanus, forming\nthe rim of the shield, in some metal of dark blue.\n\nStill more fascinating, perhaps, because more completely realisable\nby the fancy as an actual thing--realisable as a delightful place to\npass time in--is the description of the palace of Alcinous in the\nlittle island town of the Phaeacians, to which we are introduced in\nall the liveliness and sparkle of the morning, as real as something\nseen last summer on the sea-coast; although, appropriately, Ulysses\nmeets a goddess, like a young girl carrying a pitcher, on his way up\nfrom the sea.  Below the steep walls of the town, two projecting\njetties allow a narrow passage into a haven of stone for the ships,\ninto which the passer-by may look down, as they lie moored below the\nroadway.  In the midst is the king's house, all glittering, again,\nwith curiously wrought metal; its brightness is \"as the brightness of\nthe sun or of the moon.\"  The heart of Ulysses beats quickly when he\nsees it standing amid plantations ingeniously watered, its floor and\nwalls of brass throughout, with continuous [196] cornice of dark\niron; the doors are of gold, the door-posts and lintels of silver,\nthe handles, again, of gold--\n\nThe walls were massy brass; the cornice high\nBlue metals crowned in colours of the sky;\nRich plates of gold the folding-doors incase;\nThe pillars silver on a brazen base;\nSilver the lintels deep-projecting o'er;\nAnd gold the ringlets that command the door.\n\nDogs of the same precious metals keep watch on either side, like the\nlions over the old gate-way of Mycenae, or the gigantic, human-headed\nbulls at the entrance of an Assyrian palace.  Within doors the\nburning lights at supper-time are supported in the hands of golden\nimages of boys, while the guests recline on a couch running all along\nthe wall, covered with peculiarly sumptuous women's work.\n\nFrom these two glittering descriptions manifestly something must be\ndeducted; we are in wonder-land, and among supernatural or magical\nconditions.  But the forging of the shield and the wonderful house of\nAlcinous are no merely incongruous episodes in Homer, but the\nconsummation of what is always characteristic of him, a constant\npreoccupation, namely, with every form of lovely craftsmanship,\nresting on all things, as he says, like the shining of the sun.  We\nseem to pass, in reading him, through the treasures of some royal\ncollection; in him the presentation of almost every aspect of life is\n[197] beautified by the work of cunning hands.  The thrones, coffers,\ncouches of curious carpentry, are studded with bossy ornaments of\nprecious metal effectively disposed, or inlaid with stained ivory, or\nblue cyanus, or amber, or pale amber-like gold; the surfaces of the\nstone conduits, the sea-walls, the public washing-troughs, the\nramparts on which the weary soldiers rest themselves when returned to\nTroy, are fair and smooth; all the fine qualities, in colour and\ntexture, of woven stuff are carefully noted--the fineness, closeness,\nsoftness, pliancy, gloss, the whiteness or nectar-like tints in which\nthe weaver delights to work; to weave the sea-purple threads is the\nappropriate function of queens and noble women.  All the Homeric\nshields are more or less ornamented with variously coloured metal,\nterrible sometimes, like Leonardo's, with some monster or grotesque.\nThe numerous sorts of cups are bossed with golden studs, or have\nhandles wrought with figures, of doves, for instance.  The great\nbrazen cauldrons bear an epithet which means flowery.  The trappings\nof the horses, the various parts of the chariots, are formed of\nvarious metals.  The women's ornaments and the instruments of their\ntoilet are described--\n\nporpas te gnamptas th' helikas, kalukas te kai hormous+\n\n--the golden vials for unguents.  Use and beauty are still undivided;\nall that men's hands are set to make has still a fascination alike\nfor workmen [198] and spectators.  For such dainty splendour Troy,\nindeed, is especially conspicuous.  But then Homer's Trojans are\nessentially Greeks--Greeks of Asia; and Troy, though more advanced in\nall elements of civilisation, is no real contrast to the western\nshore of the Aegean.  It is no barbaric world that we see, but the\nsort of world, we may think, that would have charmed also our\ncomparatively jaded sensibilities, with just that quaint simplicity\nwhich we too enjoy in its productions; above all, in its wrought\nmetal, which loses perhaps more than any other sort of work by\nbecoming mechanical.  The metal-work which Homer describes in such\nvariety is all hammer-work, all the joinings being effected by pins\nor riveting.  That is just the sort of metal-work which, in a certain\nna\u00efvet\u00e9 and vigour, is still of all work the most expressive of\nactual contact with dexterous fingers; one seems to trace in it, on\nevery particle of the partially resisting material, the touch and\nplay of the shaping instruments, in highly trained hands, under the\nguidance of exquisitely disciplined senses--that cachet, or seal of\nnearness to the workman's hand, which is the special charm of all\ngood metal-work, of early metal-work in particular.\n\nSuch descriptions, however, it may be said, are mere poetical\nornament, of no value in helping us to define the character of an\nage.  But what is peculiar in these Homeric descriptions, [199] what\ndistinguishes them from others at first sight similar, is a sort of\ninternal evidence they present of a certain degree of reality, signs\nin them of an imagination stirred by surprise at the spectacle of\nreal works of art.  Such minute, delighted, loving description of\ndetails of ornament, such following out of the ways in which brass,\ngold, silver, or paler gold, go into the chariots and armour and\nwomen's dress, or cling to the walls--the enthusiasm of the manner--\nis the warrant of a certain amount of truth in all that.  The Greek\npoet describes these things with the same vividness and freshness,\nthe same kind of fondness, with which other poets speak of flowers;\nspeaking of them poetically, indeed, but with that higher sort of\npoetry which seems full of the lively impression of delightful things\nrecently seen.  Genuine poetry, it is true, is always naturally\nsympathetic with all beautiful sensible things and qualities.  But\nwith how many poets would not this constant intrusion of material\nornament have produced a tawdry effect!  The metal would all be\ntarnished and the edges blurred.  And this is because it is not\nalways that the products of even exquisite tectonics can excite or\nrefine the aesthetic sense.  Now it is probable that the objects of\noriental art, the imitations of it at home, in which for Homer this\nactual world of art must have consisted, reached him in a quantity,\nand with a novelty, just sufficient to warm and stimulate without\n[200] surfeiting the imagination; it is an exotic thing of which he\nsees just enough and not too much.  The shield of Achilles, the house\nof Alcinous, are like dreams indeed, but this sort of dreaming winds\ncontinuously through the entire Iliad and Odyssey--a child's dream\nafter a day of real, fresh impressions from things themselves, in\nwhich all those floating impressions re-set themselves.  He is as\npleased in touching and looking at those objects as his own heroes;\ntheir gleaming aspect brightens all he says, and has taken hold, one\nmight think, of his language, his very vocabulary becoming\nchryselephantine.  Homer's artistic descriptions, though enlarged by\nfancy, are not wholly imaginary, and the extant remains of monuments\nof the earliest historical age are like lingering relics of that\ndream in a tamer but real world.\n\nThe art of the heroic age, then, as represented in Homer, connects\nitself, on the one side, with those fabulous jewels so prominent in\nmythological story, and entwined sometimes so oddly in its\nrepresentation of human fortunes--the necklace of Eriphyle, the\nnecklace of Helen, which Menelaus, it was said, offered at Delphi to\nAthene Pronoea, on the eve of his expedition against Troy--mythical\nobjects, indeed, but which yet bear witness even thus early to the\naesthetic susceptibility of the Greek temper.  But, on the other\nhand, the art of the heroic age connects itself also with the actual\nearly beginnings [201] of artistic production.  There are touches of\nreality, for instance, in Homer's incidental notices of its\ninstruments and processes; especially as regards the working of\nmetal.  He goes already to the potter's wheel for familiar, life-like\nillustration.  In describing artistic wood-work he distinguishes\nvarious stages of work; we see clearly the instruments for turning\nand boring, such as the old-fashioned drill-borer, whirled round with\na string; he mentions the names of two artists, the one of an actual\nworkman, the other of a craft turned into a proper name--stray\nrelics, accidentally preserved, of a world, as we may believe, of\nsuch wide and varied activity.  The forge of Hephaestus is a true\nforge; the magic tripods on which he is at work are really put\ntogether by conceivable processes, known in early times.\nCompositions in relief similar to those which he describes were\nactually made out of thin metal plates cut into a convenient shape,\nand then beaten into the designed form by the hammer over a wooden\nmodel.  These reliefs were then fastened to a differently coloured\nmetal background or base, with nails or rivets, for there is no\nsoldering of metals as yet.  To this process the ancients gave the\nname of empaestik,+ such embossing being still, in our own time, a\nbeautiful form of metal-work.\n\nEven in the marvellous shield there are other and indirect notes of\nreality.  In speaking of the shield of Achilles, I departed\nintentionally from [202] the order in which the subjects of the\nrelief are actually introduced in the Iliad, because, just then, I\nwished the reader to receive the full effect of the variety and\nelaborateness of the composition, as a representation or picture of\nthe whole of ancient life embraced within the circumference of a\nshield.  But in the order in which Homer actually describes those\nepisodes he is following the method of a very practicable form of\ncomposition, and is throughout much closer than we might at first\nsight suppose to the ancient armourer's proceedings.  The shield is\nformed of five superimposed plates of different metals, each plate of\nsmaller diameter than the one immediately below it, their flat\nmargins showing thus as four concentric stripes or rings of metal,\naround a sort of boss in the centre, five metals thick, and the\noutermost circle or ring being the thinnest. To this arrangement the\norder of Homer's description corresponds.  The earth and the heavenly\nbodies are upon this boss in the centre, like a little distant heaven\nhung above the broad world, and from this Homer works out, round and\nround, to the river Oceanus, which forms the border of the whole; the\nsubjects answering to, or supporting each other, in a sort of\nheraldic order--the city at peace set over against the city besieged-\n-spring, summer, and autumn balancing each other--quite congruously\nwith a certain heraldic turn common in contemporary Assyrian art,\nwhich delights in [203] this sort of conventional spacing out of its\nvarious subjects, and especially with some extant metal chargers of\nAssyrian work, which, like some of the earliest Greek vases with\ntheir painted plants and flowers conventionally arranged, illustrate\nin their humble measure such heraldic grouping.\n\nThe description of the shield of Hercules, attributed to Hesiod, is\nprobably an imitation of Homer, and, notwithstanding some fine\nmythological impersonations which it contains, an imitation less\nadmirable than the original.  Of painting there are in Homer no\ncertain indications, and it is consistent with the later date of the\nimitator that we may perhaps discern in his composition a sign that\nwhat he had actually seen was a painted shield, in the pre-dominance\nin it, as compared with the Homeric description, of effects of colour\nover effects of form; Homer delighting in ingenious devices for\nfastening the metal, and the supposed Hesiod rather in what seem like\ntriumphs of heraldic colouring; though the latter also delights in\neffects of mingled metals, of mingled gold and silver especially--\nsilver figures with dresses of gold, silver centaurs with pine-trees\nof gold for staves in their hands.  Still, like the shield of\nAchilles, this too we must conceive as formed of concentric plates of\nmetal; and here again that spacing is still more elaborately carried\nout, narrower intermediate rings being apparently [204] introduced\nbetween the broader ones, with figures in rapid, horizontal, unbroken\nmotion, carrying the eye right round the shield, in contrast with the\nrepose of the downward or inward movement of the subjects which\ndivide the larger spaces; here too with certain analogies in the rows\nof animals to the designs on the earliest vases.\n\nIn Hesiod then, as in Homer, there are undesigned notes of\ncorrespondence between the partly mythical ornaments imaginatively\nenlarged of the heroic age, and a world of actual handicrafts.  In\nthe shield of Hercules another marvellous detail is added in the\nimage of Perseus, very daintily described as hovering in some\nwonderful way, as if really borne up by wings, above the surface.\nAnd that curious, haunting sense of magic in art, which comes out\nover and over again in Homer--in the golden maids, for instance, who\nassist Hephaestus in his work, and similar details which seem at\nfirst sight to destroy the credibility of the whole picture, and make\nof it a mere wonder-land--is itself also, rightly understood, a\ntestimony to a real excellence in the art of Homer's time.  It is\nsometimes said that works of art held to be miraculous are always of\nan inferior kind; but at least it was not among those who thought\nthem inferior that the belief in their miraculous power began.  If\nthe golden images move like living creatures, and the armour of\nAchilles, so [205] wonderfully made, lifts him like wings, this again\nis because the imagination of Homer is really under the stimulus of\ndelightful artistic objects actually seen.  Only those to whom such\nartistic objects manifest themselves through real and powerful\nimpressions of their wonderful qualities, can invest them with\nproperties magical or miraculous.\n\nI said that the inherent usefulness of the material of metal-work\nmakes the destruction of its acquired form almost certain, if it\ncomes into the possession of people either barbarous or careless of\nthe work of a past time.  Greek art is for us, in all its stages, a\nfragment only; in each of them it is necessary, in a somewhat\nvisionary manner, to fill up empty spaces, and more or less make\nsubstitution; and of the finer work of the heroic age, thus dimly\ndiscerned as an actual thing, we had at least till recently almost\nnothing.  Two plates of bronze, a few rusty nails, and certain rows\nof holes in the inner surface of the walls of the \"treasury\" of\nMycenae, were the sole representatives of that favourite device of\nprimitive Greek art, the lining of stone walls with burnished metal,\nof which the house of Alcinous in the Odyssey is the ideal picture,\nand the temple of Pallas of the Brazen House at Sparta, adorned in\nthe interior with a coating of reliefs in metal, a later, historical\nexample.  Of the heroic or so-called Cyclopean architecture, that\n\"treasury,\" [206] a building so imposing that Pausanias thought it\nworthy to rank with the Pyramids, is a sufficient illustration.\nTreasury, or tomb, or both (the selfish dead, perhaps, being supposed\nstill to find enjoyment in the costly armour, goblets, and mirrors\nlaid up there), this dome-shaped building, formed of concentric rings\nof stones gradually diminishing to a coping-stone at the top, may\nstand as the representative of some similar buildings in other parts\nof Greece, and of many others in a similar kind of architecture\nelsewhere, constructed of large many-sided blocks of stone, fitted\ncarefully together without the aid of cement, and remaining in their\nplaces by reciprocal resistance.  Characteristic of it is the general\ntendency to use vast blocks of stone for the jambs and lintels of\ndoors, for instance, and in the construction of gable-shaped\npassages; two rows of such stones being made to rest against each\nother at an acute angle, within the thickness of the walls.\n\nSo vast and rude, fretted by the action of nearly three thousand\nyears, the fragments of this architecture may often seem, at first\nsight, like works of nature.  At Argos, Tiryns, Mycenae, the skeleton\nof the old architecture is more complete.  At Mycenae the gateway of\nthe acropolis is still standing with its two well-known sculptured\nlions--immemorial and almost unique monument of primitive Greek\nsculpture--supporting, herald-wise, a symbolical pillar on the [207]\nvast, triangular, pedimental stone above.  The heads are gone, having\nbeen fashioned possibly in metal by workmen from the East.  On what\nmay be called the fa\u00e7ade, remains are still discernible of inlaid\nwork in coloured stone, and within the gateway, on the smooth slabs\nof the pavement, the wheel-ruts are still visible.  Connect them with\nthose metal war-chariots in Homer, and you may see in fancy the whole\ngrandiose character of the place, as it may really have been.  Shut\nwithin the narrow enclosure of these shadowy citadels were the\npalaces of the kings, with all that intimacy which we may sometimes\nsuppose to have been alien from the open-air Greek life, admitting,\ndoubtless, below the cover of their rough walls, many of those\nrefinements of princely life which the Middle Age found possible in\nsuch places, and of which the impression is so fascinating in Homer's\ndescription, for instance, of the house of Ulysses, or of Menelaus at\nSparta.  Rough and frowning without, these old ch\u00e2teaux of the Argive\nkings were delicate within with a decoration almost as dainty and\nfine as the network of weed and flower that now covers their ruins,\nand of the delicacy of which, as I said, that golden flower on its\nsilver stalk or the golden honeycomb of Daedalus, might be taken as\nrepresentative.  In these metal-like structures of self-supporting\npolygons, locked so firmly and impenetrably together, with the whole\nmystery of the reasonableness [208] of the arch implicitly within\nthem, there is evidence of a complete artistic command over weight in\nstone, and an understanding of the \"law of weight.\"  But over weight\nonly; the ornament still seems to be not strictly architectural, but,\naccording to the notices of  Homer, tectonic, borrowed from the\nsister arts, above all from the art of the metal-workers, to whom\nthose spaces of the building are left which a later age fills with\npainting, or relief in stone.  The skill of the Asiatic comes to\nadorn this rough native building; and it is a late, elaborate,\nsomewhat voluptuous skill, we may understand, illustrated by the\nluxury of that Asiatic chamber of Paris, less like that of a warrior\nthan of one going to the dance.  Coupled with the vastness of the\narchitectural works which actually remain, such descriptions as that\nin Homer of the chamber of Paris and the house of Alcinous furnish\nforth a picture of that early period--the tyrants' age, the age of\nthe acropoleis, the period of great dynasties with claims to \"divine\nright\"' and in many instances at least with all the culture of their\ntime.  The vast buildings make us sigh at the thought of wasted human\nlabour, though there is a public usefulness too in some of these\ndesigns, such as the draining of the Copaic lake, to which the backs\nof the people are bent whether they will or not.  For the princes\nthere is much of that selfish personal luxury which is a constant\ntrait of feudalism in [209] all ages.  For the people, scattered over\nthe country, at their agricultural labour, or gathered in small\nhamlets, there is some enjoyment, perhaps, of the aspect of that\nsplendour, of the bright warriors on the heights--a certain share of\nthe nobler pride of the tyrants themselves in those tombs and\ndwellings.  Some surmise, also, there seems to have been, of the\n\"curse\" of gold, with a dim, lurking suspicion of curious facilities\nfor cruelty in the command over those skilful artificers in metal--\nsome ingenious rack or bull \"to pinch and peel\"--the tradition of\nwhich, not unlike the modern Jacques Bonhomme's shudder at the old\nruined French donjon or bastille, haunts, generations afterwards, the\nruins of those \"labyrinths\" of stone, where the old tyrants had their\npleasures.  For it is a mistake to suppose that that wistful sense of\neeriness in ruined buildings, to which most of us are susceptible, is\nan exclusively modern feeling.  The name Cyclopean, attached to those\ndesolate remains of buildings which were older than Greek history\nitself, attests their romantic influence over the fancy of the people\nwho thus attributed them to a superhuman strength and skill.  And the\nCyclopes, like all the early mythical names of artists, have this\nnote of reality, that they are names not of individuals but of\nclasses, the guilds or companies of workmen in which a certain craft\nwas imparted and transmitted.  The Dactyli, the Fingers, are the\n[210] first workers in iron; the savage Chalybes in Scythia the first\nsmelters; actual names are given to the old, fabled Telchines--\nChalkon, Argyron, Chryson--workers in brass, silver, and gold,\nrespectively.+  The tradition of their activity haunts the several\nregions where those metals were found.  They make the trident of\nPoseidon; but then Poseidon's trident is a real fisherman's\ninstrument, the tunny-fork.  They are credited, notwithstanding, with\nan evil sorcery, unfriendly to men, as poor humanity remembered the\nmakers of chains, locks, Procrustean beds; and, as becomes this dark\nrecondite mine and metal work, the traditions about them are gloomy\nand grotesque, confusing mortal workmen with demon guilds.\n\nTo this view of the heroic age of Greek art as being, so to speak, an\nage of real gold, an age delighting itself in precious material and\nexquisite handiwork in all tectonic crafts, the recent extraordinary\ndiscoveries at Troy and Mycenae are, on any plausible theory of their\ndate and origin, a witness.  The aesthetic critic needs always to be\non his guard against the confusion of mere curiosity or antiquity\nwith beauty in art.  Among the objects discovered at Troy--mere\ncuriosities, some of them, however interesting and instructive--the\nso-called royal cup of Priam, in solid gold, two-handled and double-\nlipped, (the smaller lip designed for the host and his libation, the\nlarger for the guest,) has, in the [211] very simplicity of its\ndesign, the grace of the economy with which it exactly fulfils its\npurpose, a positive beauty, an absolute value for the aesthetic\nsense, while strange and new enough, if it really settles at last a\nmuch-debated expression of Homer; while the \"diadem,\" with its\ntwisted chains and flowers of pale gold, shows that those profuse\ngolden fringes, waving so comely as he moved, which Hephaestus\nwrought for the helmet of Achilles, were really within the compass of\nearly Greek art.\n\nAnd the story of the excavations at Mycenae reads more like some\nwell-devised chapter of fiction than a record of sober facts.  Here,\nthose sanguine, half-childish dreams of buried treasure discovered in\ndead men's graves, which seem to have a charm for every one, are more\nthan fulfilled in the spectacle of those antique kings, lying in the\nsplendour of their crowns and breastplates of embossed plate of gold;\ntheir swords, studded with golden imagery, at their sides, as in some\nfeudal monument; their very faces covered up most strangely in golden\nmasks.  The very floor of one tomb, we read, was thick with gold-\ndust--the heavy gilding fallen from some perished kingly vestment; in\nanother was a downfall of golden leaves and flowers; and, amid this\nprofusion of thin fine fragments, were rings, bracelets, smaller\ncrowns as if for children, dainty butterflies for ornaments of\ndresses, and that golden flower on a silver stalk--all of pure, [212]\nsoft gold, unhardened by alloy, the delicate films of which one must\ntouch but lightly, yet twisted and beaten, by hand and hammer, into\nwavy, spiral relief, the cuttle-fish with its long undulating arms\nappearing frequently.\n\nIt is the very image of the old luxurious life of the princes of the\nheroic age, as Homer describes it, with the arts in service to its\nkingly pride.  Among the other costly objects was one representing\nthe head of a cow, grandly designed in gold with horns of silver,\nlike the horns of the moon, supposed to be symbolical of Here, the\ngreat object of worship at Argos.  One of the interests of the study\nof mythology is that it reflects the ways of life and thought of the\npeople who conceived it; and this religion of Here, the special\nreligion of Argos, is congruous with what has been here said as to\nthe place of art in the civilisation of the Argives; it is a\nreflexion of that splendid and wanton old feudal life.  For Here is,\nin her original essence and meaning, equivalent to Demeter--the one\nliving spirit of the earth, divined behind the veil of all its\nmanifold visible energies.  But in the development of a common\nmythological motive the various peoples are subject to the general\nlimitations of their life and thought; they can but work outward what\nis within them; and the religious conceptions and usages, ultimately\nderivable from one and the same rudimentary instinct, are sometimes\nmost diverse.  Out of [213] the visible, physical energies of the\nearth and its system of annual change, the old Pelasgian mind\ndeveloped the person of Demeter, mystical and profoundly aweful, yet\nprofoundly pathetic, also, in her appeal to human sympathies.  Out of\nthe same original elements, the civilisation of Argos, on the other\nhand, developes the religion of Queen Here, a mere Demeter, at best,\nof gaudy flower-beds, whose toilet Homer describes with all its\ndelicate fineries; though, characteristically, he may still allow us\nto detect, perhaps, some traces of the mystical person of the earth,\nin the all-pervading scent of the ambrosial unguent with which she\nanoints herself, in the abundant tresses of her hair, and in the\ncurious variegation of her ornaments.  She has become, though with\nsome reminiscence of the mystical earth, a very limited human person,\nwicked, angry, jealous--the lady of Zeus in her castle-sanctuary at\nMycenae, in wanton dalliance with the king, coaxing him for cruel\npurposes in sweet sleep, adding artificial charms to her beauty.\n\nSuch are some of the characteristics with which Greek art is\ndiscernible in that earliest age.  Of themselves, they almost answer\nthe question which next arises--Whence did art come to Greece? or was\nit a thing of absolutely native growth there?  So some have decidedly\nmaintained.  Others, who lived in an age possessing little or no\nknowledge of Greek monuments anterior to the full development of art\nunder [214] Pheidias, and who, in regard to the Greek sculpture of\nthe age of Pheidias, were like people criticising Michelangelo,\nwithout knowledge of the earlier Tuscan school--of the works of\nDonatello and Mino da Fiesole--easily satisfied themselves with\ntheories of its importation ready-made from other countries.  Critics\nin the last century, especially, noticing some characteristics which\nearly Greek work has in common, indeed, with Egyptian art, but which\nare common also to all such early work everywhere, supposed, as a\nmatter of course, that it came, as the Greek religion also, from\nEgypt--that old, immemorial half-known birthplace of all wonderful\nthings.  There are, it is true, authorities for this derivation among\nthe Greeks themselves, dazzled as they were by the marvels of the\nancient civilisation of Egypt, a civilisation so different from their\nown, on the first opening of Egypt to Greek visitors.  But, in fact,\nthat opening did not take place till the reign of Psammetichus, about\nthe middle of the seventh century B.C., a relatively late date.\nPsammetichus introduced and settled Greek mercenaries in Egypt, and,\nfor a time, the Greeks came very close to Egyptian life.  They can\nhardly fail to have been stimulated by that display of every kind of\nartistic workmanship gleaming over the whole of life; they may in\nturn have freshened it with new motives.  And we may remark, that but\nfor the peculiar usage of Egypt concerning the tombs of the dead, but\n[215] for their habit of investing the last abodes of the dead with\nall the appurtenances of active life, out of that whole world of art,\nso various and elaborate, nothing but the great, monumental works in\nstone would have remained to ourselves.  We should have experienced\nin regard to it, what we actually experience too much in our\nknowledge of Greek art--the lack of a fitting background, in the\nsmaller tectonic work, for its great works in architecture, and the\nbolder sort of sculpture.\n\nBut, one by one, at last, as in the medieval parallel, monuments\nillustrative of the earlier growth of Greek art before the time of\nPheidias have come to light, and to a just appreciation.  They show\nthat the development of Greek art had already proceeded some way\nbefore the opening of Egypt to the Greeks, and point, if to a foreign\nsource at all, to oriental rather than Egyptian influences; and the\ntheory which derived Greek art, with many other Greek things, from\nEgypt, now hardly finds supporters.  In Greece all things are at once\nold and new.  As, in physical organisms, the actual particles of\nmatter have existed long before in other combinations; and what is\nreally new in a new organism is the new cohering force--the mode of\nlife,--so, in the products of Greek civilisation, the actual elements\nare traceable elsewhere by antiquarians who care to trace them; the\nelements, for instance, of its peculiar national [216] architecture.\nYet all is also emphatically autochthonous, as the Greeks said,\nnew-born at home, by right of a new, informing, combining spirit\nplaying over those mere elements, and touching them, above all,\nwith a wonderful sense of the nature and destiny of man--the dignity\nof his soul and of his body--so that in all things the Greeks are\nas discoverers.  Still, the original and primary motive seems,\nin matters of art, to have come from without; and the view to which\nactual discovery and all true analogies more and more point is that\nof a connexion of the origin of Greek art, ultimately with Assyria,\nproximately with Phoenicia, partly through Asia Minor, and chiefly\nthrough Cyprus--an original connexion again and again re-asserted,\nlike a surviving trick of inheritance, as in later times it came\nin contact with the civilisation of Caria and Lycia, old affinities\nbeing here linked anew; and with a certain Asiatic tradition, of\nwhich one representative is the Ionic style of architecture,\ntraceable all through Greek art--an Asiatic curiousness, or poikilia,+\nstrongest in that heroic age of which I have been speaking, and\ndistinguishing some schools and masters in Greece more than others;\nand always in appreciable distinction from the more clearly defined\nand self-asserted Hellenic influence.  Homer himself witnesses to the\nintercourse, through early, adventurous commerce, as in the bright\nand animated picture with which [217] the history of Herodotus\nbegins, between the Greeks and Eastern countries.  We may, perhaps,\nforget sometimes, thinking over the greatness of its place in the\nhistory of civilisation, how small a country Greece really was; how\nshort the distances upwards, from island to island, to the coast of\nAsia, so that we can hardly make a sharp separation between Asia and\nGreece, nor deny, besides great and palpable acts of importation, all\nsorts of impalpable Asiatic influences, by way alike of attraction\nand repulsion, upon Greek manners and taste.  Homer, as we saw, was\nright in making Troy essentially a Greek city, with inhabitants\nsuperior in all culture to their kinsmen on the Western shore, and\nperhaps proportionally weaker on the practical or moral side, and\nwith an element of languid Ionian voluptuousness in them, typified by\nthe cedar and gold of the chamber of Paris--an element which the\naustere, more strictly European influence of the Dorian Apollo will\none day correct in all genuine Greeks.  The Aegean, with its islands,\nis, then, a bond of union, not a barrier; and we must think of\nGreece, as has been rightly said, as its whole continuous shore.\n\nThe characteristics of Greek art, indeed, in the heroic age, so far\nas we can discern them, are those also of Phoenician art, its delight\nin metal among the rest, of metal especially as an element in\narchitecture, the covering of everything with plates of metal.  It\nwas from [218] Phoenicia that the costly material in which early\nGreek art delighted actually came--ivory, amber, much of the precious\nmetals.  These the adventurous Phoenician traders brought in return\nfor the mussel which contained the famous purple, in quest of which\nthey penetrated far into all the Greek havens.  Recent discoveries\npresent the island of Cyprus, the great source of copper and copper-\nwork in ancient times, as the special mediator between the art of\nPhoenicia and Greece; and in some archaic figures of Aphrodite with\nher dove, brought from Cyprus and now in the British Museum--objects\nyou might think, at first sight, taken from the niches of a French\nGothic cathedral--are some of the beginnings, at least, of Greek\nsculpture manifestly under the influence of Phoenician masters.  And,\nagain, mythology is the reflex of characteristic facts.  It is\nthrough Cyprus that the religion of Aphrodite comes from Phoenicia to\nGreece.  Here, in Cyprus, she is connected with some other kindred\nelements of mythological tradition, above all with the beautiful old\nstory of Pygmalion, in which the thoughts of art and love are\nconnected so closely together.  First of all, on the prows of the\nPhoenician ships, the tutelary image of Aphrodite Euploea, the\nprotectress of sailors, comes to Cyprus--to Cythera; it is in this\nsimplest sense that she is, primarily, Anadyomene.+  And her\nconnexion [219] with the arts is always an intimate one.  In Cyprus\nher worship is connected with an architecture, not colossal, but full\nof dainty splendour--the art of the shrine-maker, the maker of\nreliquaries; the art of the toilet, the toilet of Aphrodite; the\nHomeric hymn to Aphrodite is full of all that; delight in which we\nhave seen to be characteristic of the true Homer.\n\nAnd now we see why Hephaestus, that crook-backed and uncomely god, is\nthe husband of Aphrodite.  Hephaestus is the god of fire, indeed; as\nfire he is flung from heaven by Zeus; and in the marvellous contest\nbetween Achilles and the river Xanthus in the twenty-first book of\nthe Iliad, he intervenes in favour of the hero, as mere fire against\nwater.  But he soon ceases to be thus generally representative of the\nfunctions of fire, and becomes almost exclusively representative of\none only of its aspects, its function, namely, in regard to early\nart; he becomes the patron of smiths, bent with his labour at the\nforge, as people had seen such real workers; he is the most perfectly\ndeveloped of all the Daedali, Mulcibers, or Cabeiri.  That the god of\nfire becomes the god of all art, architecture included, so that he\nmakes the houses of the gods, and is also the husband of Aphrodite,\nmarks a threefold group of facts; the prominence, first, of a\npeculiar kind of art in early Greece, that beautiful metal-work, with\n[220] which he is bound and bent; secondly, the connexion of this,\nthrough Aphrodite, with an almost wanton personal splendour; the\nconnexion, thirdly, of all this with Cyprus and Phoenicia, whence,\nliterally, Aphrodite comes.  Hephaestus is the \"spiritual form\" of\nthe Asiatic element in Greek art.\n\nThis, then, is the situation which the first period of Greek art\ncomprehends; a people whose civilisation is still young, delighting,\nas the young do, in ornament, in the sensuous beauty of ivory and\ngold, in all the lovely productions of skilled fingers.  They receive\nall this, together with the worship of Aphrodite, by way of Cyprus,\nfrom Phoenicia, from the older, decrepit Eastern civilisation, itself\nlong since surfeited with that splendour; and they receive it in\nfrugal quantity, so frugal that their thoughts always go back to the\nEast, where there is the fulness of it, as to a wonder-land of art.\nReceived thus in frugal quantity, through many generations, that\nworld of Asiatic tectonics stimulates the sensuous capacity in them,\naccustoms the hand to produce and the eye to appreciate the more\ndelicately enjoyable qualities of material things.  But nowhere in\nall this various and exquisite world of design is there as yet any\nadequate sense of man himself, nowhere is there an insight into or\npower over human form as the expression of human soul.  Yet those\narts of design in which that younger people delights [221] have in\nthem already, as designed work, that spirit of reasonable order, that\nexpressive congruity in the adaptation of means to ends, of which the\nfully developed admirableness of human form is but the consummation--\na consummation already anticipated in the grand and animated figures\nof epic poetry, their power of thought, their laughter and tears.\nUnder the hands of that younger people, as they imitate and pass\nlargely and freely beyond those older craftsmen, the fire of the\nreasonable soul will kindle, little by little, up to the Theseus of\nthe Parthenon and the Venus of Melos.\n\nThe ideal aim of Greek sculpture, as of all other art, is to deal,\nindeed, with the deepest elements of man's nature and destiny, to\ncommand and express these, but to deal with them in a manner, and\nwith a kind of expression, as clear and graceful and simple, if it\nmay be, as that of the Japanese flower-painter.  And what the student\nof Greek sculpture has to cultivate generally in himself is the\ncapacity for appreciating the expression of thought in outward form,\nthe constant habit of associating sense with soul, of tracing what we\ncall expression to its sources.  But, concurrently with this, he must\nalso cultivate, all along, a not less equally constant appreciation\nof intelligent workmanship in work, and of design in things designed,\nof the rational control of matter everywhere.  From many sources he\nmay feed this sense of intelligence [222] and design in the\nproductions of the minor crafts, above all in the various and\nexquisite art of Japan.  Carrying a delicacy like that of nature\nitself into every form of imitation, reproduction, and combination--\nleaf and flower, fish and bird, reed and water--and failing only when\nit touches the sacred human form, that art of Japan is not so unlike\nthe earliest stages of Greek art as might at first sight be supposed.\nWe have here, and in no mere fragments, the spectacle of a universal\napplication to the instruments of daily life of fitness and beauty,\nin a temper still unsophisticated, as also unelevated, by the\ndivination of the spirit of man.  And at least the student must\nalways remember that Greek art was throughout a much richer and\nwarmer thing, at once with more shadows, and more of a dim\nmagnificence in its surroundings, than the illustrations of a\nclassical dictionary might induce him to think.  Some of the ancient\ntemples of Greece were as rich in aesthetic curiosities as a famous\nmodern museum.  That Asiatic poikilia,+ that spirit of minute and\ncurious loveliness, follows the bolder imaginative efforts of Greek\nart all through its history, and one can hardly be too careful in\nkeeping up the sense of this daintiness of execution through the\nentire course of its development.  It is not only that the minute\nobject of art, the tiny vase-painting, intaglio, coin, or cameo,\noften reduces into the palm of the hand lines grander than those of\n[223] many a life-sized or colossal figure; but there is also a sense\nin which it may be said that the Venus of Melos, for instance, is but\na supremely well-executed object of vertu, in the most limited sense\nof the term.  Those solemn images of the temple of Theseus are a\nperfect embodiment of the human ideal, of the reasonable soul and of\na spiritual world; they are also the best made things of their kind,\nas an urn or a cup is well made.\n\nA perfect, many-sided development of tectonic crafts, a state such as\nthe art of some nations has ended in, becomes for the Greeks a mere\nopportunity, a mere starting-ground for their imaginative presentment\nof man, moral and inspired.  A world of material splendour, moulded\nclay, beaten gold, polished stone;--the informing, reasonable soul\nentering into that, reclaiming the metal and stone and clay, till\nthey are as full of living breath as the real warm body itself; the\npresence of those two elements is continuous throughout the fortunes\nof Greek art after the heroic age, and the constant right estimate of\ntheir action and reaction, from period to period, its true\nphilosophy.\n\nNOTES\n\n192. +The related Greek noun techn\u00ea is defined as follows: \"art,\nskill, regular method of making a thing.\"  (Liddell and Scott.)\n\n193. *Il. xviii.468-608.\n\n193. *Od. vii.37-132.\n\n197. +Transliteration: porpas te gnamptas th' helikas, kalukas te kai\nhormous.  Translation: \"delicate brooches, spriralled bracelets,\nrosettes, and necklaces.\"  Homer, Iliad 18.400.\n\n201. +Empaestik derives from the verb empai\u00f4, \"to strike in, stamp.\"\n(Liddell and Scott.)\n\n210. +The names are etymological--chalkos, argyros, and chrysos\nsignify, respectively, brass (or copper), silver, and gold.\n\n216. +Transliteration: poikilia.  Liddell and Scott definition:\n\"embroidery . . . (metaph.) cunning.\"  The metaphorical sense is the\none Pater invokes.\n\n218. +Euploea . . . Anadyomene.  Euploea means \"fair voyage\";\nAnadyomene, a participial form derived from the verb anady\u00f4, \"to\nrise, esp. from the sea,\"  (Liddell-Scott) may be rendered \"she who\nemerges from the sea.\"\n\n222. +Transliteration: poikilia.  Liddell and Scott definition:\n\"embroidery . . . (metaph.) cunning.\"  The metaphorical sense is the\none Pater invokes.\n\n\n\nBEGINNINGS OF GREEK SCULPTURE\nII: THE AGE OF GRAVEN IMAGES\n\n[224] CRITICS of Greek sculpture have often spoken of it as if it had\nbeen always work in colourless stone, against an almost colourless\nbackground.   Its real background, as I have tried to show, was a\nworld of exquisite craftsmanship, touching the minutest details of\ndaily life with splendour and skill, in close correspondence with a\npeculiarly animated development of human existence--the energetic\nmovement and stir of typically noble human forms, quite worthily\nclothed--amid scenery as poetic as Titian's.   If shapes of\ncolourless stone did come into that background, it was as the\nundraped human form comes into some of Titian's pictures, only to\ncool and solemnise its splendour; the work of the Greek sculptor\nbeing seldom in quite colourless stone, nor always or chiefly in\nfastidiously selected marble even, but often in richly toned metal\n(this or that sculptor preferring some special variety of the bronze\nhe worked in, such as the [225] hepatiz\u00f4n or liver-coloured bronze,\nor the bright golden alloy of Corinth), and in its consummate\nproducts chryselephantine,--work in gold and ivory, on a core of\ncedar.  Pheidias, in the Olympian Zeus, in the Athene of the\nParthenon, fulfils what that primitive, heroic goldsmiths' age, dimly\ndiscerned in Homer, already delighted in; and the celebrated work of\nwhich I have first to speak now, and with which Greek sculpture\nemerges from that half-mythical age and becomes in a certain sense\nhistorical, is a link in that goldsmiths' or chryselephantine\ntradition, carrying us forwards to the work of Pheidias, backwards to\nthe elaborate Asiatic furniture of the chamber of Paris.\n\nWhen Pausanias visited Olympia, towards the end of the second century\nafter Christ, he beheld, among other precious objects in the temple\nof Here, a splendidly wrought treasure-chest of cedar-wood, in which,\naccording to a legend, quick as usual with the true human colouring,\nthe mother of Cypselus had hidden him, when a child, from the enmity\nof her family, the Bacchiadae, then the nobility of Corinth.   The\nchild, named Cypselus after this incident (Cypsele being a Corinthian\nword for chest), became tyrant of Corinth, and his grateful\ndescendants, as it was said, offered the beautiful old chest to the\ntemple of Here, as a memorial of his preservation.   That would have\nbeen not long after the year 625 B.C.  So much for the [226] story\nwhich Pausanias heard--but inherent probability, and some points of\ndetail in his description, tend to fix the origin of the chest at a\ndate at least somewhat later; and as Herodotus, telling the story of\nthe concealment of Cypselus, does not mention the dedication of the\nchest at Olympia at all, it may perhaps have been only one of many\nlater imitations of antique art.   But, whatever its date, Pausanias\ncertainly saw the thing, and has left a long description of it, and\nwe may trust his judgment at least as to its archaic style.   We have\nhere, then, something plainly visible at a comparatively recent date,\nsomething quite different from those perhaps wholly mythical objects\ndescribed in Homer,--an object which seemed to so experienced an\nobserver as Pausanias an actual work of earliest Greek art.\nRelatively to later Greek art, it may have seemed to him, what the\nancient bronze doors with their Scripture histories, which we may\nstill see in the south transept of the cathedral of Pisa, are to\nlater Italian art.\n\nPausanias tells us nothing as to its size, nor directly as to its\nshape.  It may, for anything he says, have been oval, but it was\nprobably rectangular, with a broad front and two narrow sides,\nstanding, as the maker of it had designed, against the wall; for, in\nenumerating the various subjects wrought upon it, in five rows one\nabove another, he seems to proceed, beginning at the bottom on the\nright-hand side, along the front [227] from right to left, and then\nback again, through the second row from left to right, and,\nalternating thus, upwards to the last subject, at the top, on the\nleft-hand side.\n\nThe subjects represented, most of which had their legends attached in\ndifficult archaic writing, were taken freely, though probably with a\nleading idea, out of various poetic cycles, as treated in the works\nof those so-called cyclic poets, who continued the Homeric tradition.\nPausanias speaks, as Homer does in his description of the shield of\nAchilles, of a kind and amount of expression in feature and gesture\ncertainly beyond the compass of any early art, and we may believe we\nhave in these touches only what the visitor heard from enthusiastic\nexegetae, the interpreters or sacristans; though any one who has seen\nthe Bayeux tapestry, for instance, must recognise the pathos and\nenergy of which, when really prompted by genius, even the earliest\nhand is capable.  Some ingenious attempts have been made to restore\nthe grouping of the scenes, with a certain formal expansion or\nbalancing of subjects, their figures and dimensions, in true Assyrian\nmanner, on the front and sides.  We notice some fine emblematic\nfigures, the germs of great artistic motives in after times, already\nplaying their parts there,--Death, and Sleep, and Night.  \"There was\na woman supporting on her right arm a white child sleeping; and on\nthe other arm she held a dark child, as if asleep; [228] and they lay\nwith their feet crossed.  And the inscription shows, what might be\nunderstood without it, that they are Death and Sleep, and Night, the\nnurse of both of them.\"\n\nBut what is most noticeable is, as I have already said, that this\nwork, like the chamber of Paris, like the Zeus of Pheidias, is\nchryselephantine, its main fabric cedar, and the figures upon it\npartly of ivory, partly of gold,* but (and this is the most peculiar\ncharacteristic of its style) partly wrought out of the wood of the\nchest itself.  And, as we read the description, we can hardly help\ndistributing in fancy gold and ivory, respectively, to their\nappropriate functions in the representation.  The cup of Dionysus,\nand the wings of certain horses there, Pausanias himself tells us\nwere golden.  Were not the apples of the Hesperides, the necklace of\nEriphyle, the bridles, the armour, the unsheathed sword in the hand\nof Amphiaraus, also of gold?   Were not the other children, like the\nwhite image of Sleep, especially the naked child Alcmaeon, of ivory?\nwith Alcestis and Helen, and that one of the Dioscuri whose beard was\nstill ungrown?  Were not ivory and gold, again, combined in the\nthrone of Hercules, and in the three goddesses conducted before\nParis?\n\nThe \"chest of Cypselus\" fitly introduces the first historical period\nof Greek art, a period [229] coming down to about the year 560 B.C.,\nand the government of Pisistratus at Athens; a period of tyrants like\nCypselus and Pisistratus himself, men of strong, sometimes\nunscrupulous individuality, but often also acute and cultivated\npatrons of the arts.  It begins with a series of inventions, one here\nand another there,--inventions still for the most part technical, but\nwhich are attached to single names; for, with the growth of art, the\ninfluence of individuals, gifted for the opening of new ways, more\nand more defines itself; and the school, open to all comers, from\nwhich in turn the disciples may pass to all parts of Greece, takes\nthe place of the family, in which the knowledge of art descends as a\ntradition from father to son, or of the mere trade-guild.  Of these\nearly industries we know little but the stray notices of Pausanias,\noften ambiguous, always of doubtful credibility.  What we do see,\nthrough these imperfect notices, is a real period of animated\nartistic activity, richly rewarded.  Byzes of Naxos, for instance, is\nrecorded as having first adopted the plan of sawing marble into thin\nplates for use on the roofs of temples instead of tiles; and that his\nname has come down to us at all, testifies to the impression this\nfair white surface made on its first spectators.  Various islands of\nthe Aegean become each the source of some new artistic device.  It is\na period still under the reign of Hephaestus, delighting, above all,\nin magnificent [230] metal-work.  \"The Samians,\" says Herodotus, \"out\nof a tenth part of their profits--a sum of six talents--caused a\nmixing vessel of bronze to be made, after the Argolic fashion; around\nit are projections of griffins' heads; and they dedicated it in the\ntemple of Here, placing beneath it three colossal figures of bronze,\nseven cubits in height, leaning upon their knees.\"  That was in the\nthirty-seventh Olympiad, and may be regarded as characteristic of the\nage.  For the popular imagination, a kind of glamour, some mysterious\nconnexion of the thing with human fortunes, still attaches to the\ncurious product of artistic hands, to the ring of Polycrates, for\ninstance, with its early specimen of engraved smaragdus, as to the\nmythical necklace of Harmonia.  Pheidon of Argos first makes coined\nmoney, and the obelisci--the old nail-shaped iron money, now disused-\n-are hung up in the temple of Here; for, even thus early, the temples\nare in the way of becoming museums.  Names like those of Eucheir and\nEugrammus, who were said to have taken the art of baking clay vases\nfrom Samos to Etruria, have still a legendary air, yet may be real\nsurnames; as in the case of Smilis, whose name is derived from a\ngraver's tool, and who made the ancient image of Here at Samos.\nCorinth--mater statuariae--becomes a great nursery of art at an early\ntime.  Some time before the twenty-ninth Olympiad, Butades of Sicyon,\nthe potter, settled there.  The record of [231] early inventions in\nGreece is sometimes fondly coloured with human sentiment or incident.\nIt is on the butterfly wing of such an incident--the love-sick\ndaughter of the artist, who outlines on the wall the profile of her\nlover as he sleeps in the lamplight, to keep by her in absence--that\nthe name of Butades the potter has come down to us.  The father fills\nup the outline, long preserved, it was believed, in the Nymphaeum at\nCorinth, and hence the art of modelling from the life in clay.  He\nlearns, further, a way of colouring his clay red, and fixes his masks\nalong the temple eaves.\n\nThe temple of Athene Chalcioecus--Athene of the brazen house--at\nSparta, the work of Gitiades, celebrated about this time as\narchitect, statuary, and poet; who made, besides the image in her\nshrine, and besides other Dorian songs, a hymn to the goddess--was so\ncalled from its crust or lining of bronze plates, setting forth, in\nrichly embossed imagery, various subjects of ancient legend.  What\nPausanias, who saw it, describes, is like an elaborate development of\nthat method of covering the interiors of stone buildings with metal\nplates, of which the \"Treasury\" at Mycenae is the earliest\nhistorical, and the house of Alcinous the heroic, type.  In the pages\nof Pausanias, that glitter, \"as of the moon or the sun,\" which\nUlysses stood still to wonder at, may still be felt.  And on the\nright hand of this \"brazen house,\" he tells us, stood an [232] image\nof Zeus, also of bronze, the most ancient of all images of bronze.\nThis had not been cast, nor wrought out of a single mass of metal,\nbut, the various parts having been finished separately (probably\nbeaten to shape with the hammer over a wooden mould), had been fitted\ntogether with nails or rivets.  That was the earliest method of\nuniting the various parts of a work in metal--image, or vessel, or\nbreastplate--a method allowing of much dainty handling of the cunning\npins and rivets, and one which has its place still, in perfectly\naccomplished metal-work, as in the equestrian statue of Bartolomeo\nColeoni, by Andrea Verrocchio, in the piazza of St. John and St. Paul\nat Venice.  In the British Museum there is a very early specimen of\nit,--a large egg-shaped vessel, fitted together of several pieces,\nthe projecting pins or rivets, forming a sort of diadem round the\nmiddle, being still sharp in form and heavily gilt.  That method gave\nplace in time to a defter means of joining the parts together, with\nmore perfect unity and smoothness of surface, the art of soldering;\nand the invention of this art--of soldering iron, in the first\ninstance--is coupled with the name of Glaucus of Chios, a name which,\nin connexion with this and other devices for facilitating the\nmechanical processes of art,--for perfecting artistic effect with\neconomy of labour--became proverbial, the \"art of Glaucus\" being\nattributed to those who work well with rapidity and ease.\n\n[233] Far more fruitful still was the invention of casting, of\ncasting hollow figures especially, attributed to Rhoecus and\nTheodorus, architects of the great temple at Samos.  Such hollow\nfigures, able, in consequence of their lightness, to rest, almost\nlike an inflated bladder, on a single point--the entire bulk of a\nheroic rider, for instance, on the point of his horse's tail--admit\nof a much freer distribution of the whole weight or mass required,\nthan is possible in any other mode of statuary; and the invention of\nthe art of casting is really the discovery of liberty in\ncomposition.*\n\nAnd, at last, about the year 576 B.C., we come to the first true\nschool of sculptors, the first clear example, as we seem to discern,\nof a communicable style, reflecting and interpreting some real\nindividuality (the double personality, in this case, of two brothers)\nin the masters who evolved it, conveyed to disciples who came to\nacquire it from distant places, and taking root through them at\nvarious centres, where the names of the [234] masters became\nattached, of course,.  to many fair works really by the hands of the\npupils.  Dipoenus and Scyllis, these first true masters, were born in\nCrete; but their work is connected mainly with Sicyon, at that time\nthe chief seat of Greek art.  \"In consequence of some injury done\nthem,\" it is said, \"while employed there upon certain sacred images,\nthey departed to another place, leaving their work unfinished; and,\nnot long afterwards, a grievous famine fell upon Sicyon.  Thereupon,\nthe people of Sicyon, inquiring of the Pythian Apollo how they might\nbe relieved, it was answered them, 'if Dipoenus and Scyllis should\nfinish those images of the gods'; which thing the Sicyonians obtained\nfrom them, humbly, at a great price.\"  That story too, as we shall\nsee, illustrates the spirit of the age.  For their sculpture they\nused the white marble of Paros, being workers in marble especially,\nthough they worked also in ebony and in ivory, and made use of\ngilding.  \"Figures of cedar-wood, partly incrusted with gold\"--kedrou\nz\u00f4dia chrys\u00f4 di\u00eanthismena+--Pausanias says exquisitely, describing a\ncertain work of their pupil, Dontas of Lacedaemon.  It is to that\nthat we have definitely come at last, in the school of Dipoenus and\nScyllis.\n\nDry and brief as these details may seem, they are the witness to an\nactive, eager, animated period of inventions and beginnings, in which\nthe Greek workman triumphs over the first [235] rough mechanical\ndifficulties which beset him in the endeavour to record what his soul\nconceived of the form of priest or athlete then alive upon the earth,\nor of the ever-living gods, then already more seldom seen upon it.\nOur own fancy must fill up the story of the unrecorded patience of\nthe workshop, into which we seem to peep through these scanty\nnotices--the fatigue, the disappointments, the steps repeated, ending\nat last in that moment of success, which is all Pausanias records,\nsomewhat uncertainly.\n\nAnd as this period begins with the chest of Cypselus, so it ends with\na work in some respects similar, also seen and described by\nPausanias--the throne, as he calls it, of the Amyclaean Apollo.  It\nwas the work of a well-known artist, Bathycles of Magnesia, who,\nprobably about the year 550 B.C., with a company of workmen, came to\nthe little ancient town of Amyclae, near Sparta, a place full of\ntraditions of the heroic age.  He had been invited thither to perform\na peculiar task--the construction of a throne; not like the throne of\nthe Olympian Zeus, and others numerous in after times, for a seated\nfigure, but for the image of the local Apollo; no other than a rude\nand very ancient pillar of bronze, thirty cubits high, to which,\nHermes-wise, head, arms, and feet were attached.  The thing stood\nupright, as on a base, upon a kind of tomb or reliquary, in which,\naccording to tradition, lay the remains of the young prince [236]\nHyacinth, son of the founder of that place, beloved by Apollo for his\nbeauty, and accidentally struck dead by him in play, with a quoit.\nFrom the drops of the lad's blood had sprung up the purple flower of\nhis name, which bears on its petals the letters of the ejaculation of\nwoe; and in his memory the famous games of Amyclae were celebrated,\nbeginning about the time of the longest day, when the flowers are\nstricken by the sun and begin to fade--a festival marked, amid all\nits splendour, with some real melancholy, and serious thought of the\ndead.  In the midst of the \"throne\" of Bathycles, this sacred\nreceptacle, with the strange, half-humanised pillar above it, was to\nstand, probably in the open air, within a consecrated enclosure.\nLike the chest of Cypselus, the throne was decorated with reliefs of\nsubjects taken from epic poetry, and it had supporting figures.\nUnfortunately, what Pausanias tells us of this monument hardly\nenables one to present it to the imagination with any completeness or\ncertainty; its dimensions he himself was unable exactly to ascertain,\nand he does not tell us its material.  There are reasons, however,\nfor supposing that it was of metal; and amid these ambiguities, the\ndecorations of its base, the grave or altar-tomb of Hyacinth, shine\nout clearly, and are also, for the most part, clear in their\nsignificance.\n\n\"There are wrought upon the altar figures, on the one side of Biris,\non the other of [237] Amphitrite and Poseidon.  Near Zeus and Hermes,\nin speech with each other, stand Dionysus and Semele, and, beside\nher, Ino.  Demeter, Kore, and Pluto are also wrought upon it, the\nFates and the Seasons above them, and with them Aphrodite, Athene,\nand Artemis.  They are conducting Hyacinthus to heaven, with\nPolyboea, the sister of Hyacinthus, who died, as is told, while yet a\nvirgin. . . . Hercules also is figured on the tomb; he too carried to\nheaven by Athene and the other gods.  The daughters of Thestius also\nare upon the altar, and the Seasons again, and the Muses.\"\n\nIt was as if many lines of solemn thought had been meant to unite,\nabout the resting-place of this local Adonis, in imageries full of\nsome dim promise of immortal life.\n\nBut it was not so much in care for old idols as in the making of new\nones that Greek art was at this time engaged.  This whole first\nperiod of Greek art might, indeed, be called the period of graven\nimages, and all its workmen sons of Daedalus; for Daedalus is the\nmythical, or all but mythical, representative of all those arts which\nare combined in the making of lovelier idols than had heretofore been\nseen.  The old Greek word which is at the root of the name Daedalus,+\nthe name of a craft rather than a proper name, probably means to work\ncuriously--all curiously beautiful wood-work is Daedal work; the main\npoint about the curiously beautiful [238] chamber in which Nausicaa\nsleeps, in the Odyssey, being that, like some exquisite Swiss ch\u00e2let,\nit is wrought in wood.  But it came about that those workers in wood,\nwhom Daedalus represents, the early craftsmen of Crete especially,\nwere chiefly concerned with the making of religious images, like the\ncarvers of Berchtesgaden and Oberammergau, the sort of daintily\nfinished images of the objects of public or private devotion which\nsuch workmen would turn out.  Wherever there was a wooden idol in any\nway fairer than others, finished, perhaps, sometimes, with colour and\ngilding, and appropriate real dress, there the hand of Daedalus had\nbeen.  That such images were quite detached from pillar or wall, that\nthey stood free, and were statues in the proper sense, showed that\nGreek art was already liberated from its earlier Eastern\nassociations; such free-standing being apparently unknown in Assyrian\nart.  And then, the effect of this Daedal skill in them was, that\nthey came nearer to the proper form of humanity.  It is the wonderful\nlife-likeness of these early images which tradition celebrates in\nmany anecdotes, showing a very early instinctive turn for, and\ndelight in naturalism, in the Greek temper.  As Cimabue, in his day,\nwas able to charm men, almost as with illusion, by the simple device\nof half-closing the eyelids of his personages, and giving them,\ninstead of round eyes, eyes that seemed to be in some degree\nsentient, and to feel [239] the light; so the marvellous progress in\nthose Daedal wooden images was, that the eyes were open, so that they\nseemed to look,--the feet separated, so that they seemed to walk.\nGreek art is thus, almost from the first, essentially distinguished\nfrom the art of Egypt, by an energetic striving after truth in\norganic form.  In representing the human figure, Egyptian art had\nheld by mathematical or mechanical proportions exclusively.  The\nGreek apprehends of it, as the main truth, that it is a living\norganism, with freedom of movement, and hence the infinite\npossibilities of motion, and of expression by motion, with which the\nimagination credits the higher sort of Greek sculpture; while the\nfigures of Egyptian art, graceful as they often are, seem absolutely\nincapable of any motion or gesture, other than the one actually\ndesigned.  The work of the Greek sculptor, together with its more\nreal anatomy, becomes full also of human soul.\n\nThat old, primitive, mystical, first period of Greek religion, with\nits profound, though half-conscious, intuitions of spiritual powers\nin the natural world, attaching itself not to the worship of visible\nhuman forms, but to relics, to natural or half-natural objects--the\nroughly hewn tree, the unwrought stone, the pillar, the holy cone of\nAphrodite in her dimly-lighted cell at Paphos--had passed away.  The\nsecond stage in the development of Greek religion had come; a [240]\nperiod in which poet and artist were busily engaged in the work of\nincorporating all that might be retained of the vague divinations of\nthat earlier visionary time, in definite and intelligible human image\nand human story.  The vague belief, the mysterious custom and\ntradition, develope themselves into an elaborately ordered ritual--\ninto personal gods, imaged in ivory and gold, sitting on beautiful\nthrones.  Always, wherever a shrine or temple, great or small, is\nmentioned, there, we may conclude, was a visible idol, there was\nconceived to be the actual dwelling-place of a god.  And this\nunderstanding became not less but more definite, as the temple became\nlarger and more splendid, full of ceremony and servants, like the\nabode of an earthly king, and as the sacred presence itself assumed,\nlittle by little, the last beauties and refinements of the visible\nhuman form and expression.\n\nIn what we have seen of this first period of Greek art, in all its\ncurious essays and inventions, we may observe this demand for\nbeautiful idols increasing in Greece--for sacred images, at first\nstill rude, and in some degree the holier for their rudeness, but\nwhich yet constitute the beginnings of the religious style,\nconsummate in the work of Pheidias, uniting the veritable image of\nman in the full possession of his reasonable soul, with the true\nreligious mysticity, the signature there of something from afar.  One\nby one these [241] new gods of bronze, or marble, or flesh-like\nivory, take their thrones, at this or that famous shrine, like the\nimages of this period which Pausanias saw in the temple of Here at\nOlympia--the throned Seasons, with Themis as the mother of the\nSeasons (divine rectitude being still blended, in men's fancies, with\nthe unchanging physical order of things) and Fortune, and Victory\n\"having wings,\" and Kore and Demeter and Dionysus, already visibly\nthere, around the image of Here herself, seated on a throne; and all\nchryselephantine, all in gold and ivory.  Novel as these things are,\nthey still undergo consecration at their first erecting.  The figure\nof Athene, in her brazen temple at Sparta, the work of Gitiades, who\nmakes also the image and the hymn, in triple service to the goddess;\nand again, that curious story of Dipoenus and Scyllis, brought back\nwith so much awe to remove the public curse by completing their\nsacred task upon the images, show how simply religious the age still\nwas--that this widespread artistic activity was a religious\nenthusiasm also; those early sculptors have still, for their\ncontemporaries, a divine mission, with some kind of hieratic or\nsacred quality in their gift, distinctly felt.\n\nThe development of the artist, in the proper sense, out of the mere\ncraftsman, effected in the first division of this period, is now\ncomplete; and, in close connexion with that busy graving of religious\nimages, which occupies its second [242] division, we come to\nsomething like real personalities, to men with individual\ncharacteristics--such men as Ageladas of Argos, Callon and Onatas of\nAegina, and Canachus of Sicyon.  Mere fragment as our information\nconcerning these early masters is at the best, it is at least\nunmistakeably information about men with personal differences of\ntemper and talent, of their motives, of what we call style.  We have\ncome to a sort of art which is no longer broadly characteristic of a\ngeneral period, one whose products we might have looked at without\nits occurring to us to ask concerning the artist, his antecedents,\nand his school.  We have to do now with types of art, fully impressed\nwith the subjectivity, the intimacies of the artist.\n\nAmong these freer and stronger personalities emerging thus about the\nbeginning of the fifth century before Christ--about the period of the\nPersian war--the name to which most of this sort of personal quality\nattaches, and which is therefore very interesting, is the name of\nCanachus of Sicyon, who seems to have comprehended in himself all the\nvarious attainments in art which had been gradually developed in the\nschools of his native city--carver in wood, sculptor, brass-cutter,\nand toreutes; by toreutic\u00ea+ being meant the whole art of statuary in\nmetals, and in their combination with other materials.  At last we\nseem to see an actual person at work, and to some degree can follow,\nwith natural curiosity, [243] the motions of his spirit and his hand.\nWe seem to discern in all we know of his productions the results of\nindividual apprehension--the results, as well as the limitations, of\nan individual talent.\n\nIt is impossible to date exactly the chief period of the activity of\nCanachus.  That the great image of Apollo, which he made for the\nMilesians, was carried away to Ecbatana by the Persian army, is\nstated by Pausanias; but there is a doubt whether this was under\nXerxes, as Pausanias says, in the year 479 B.C., or twenty years\nearlier, under Darius.  So important a work as this colossal image of\nApollo, for so great a shrine as the Didymaeum, was probably the task\nof his maturity; and his career may, therefore, be regarded as having\nbegun, at any rate, prior to the year 479 B.C., and the end of the\nPersian invasion the event which may be said to close this period of\nart.  On the whole, the chief period of his activity is thought to\nhave fallen earlier, and to have occupied the last forty years of the\nprevious century; and he would thus have flourished, as we say, about\nfifty years before the manhood of Pheidias, as Mino of Fiesole fifty\nyears before the manhood of Michelangelo.\n\nHis chief works were an Aphrodite, wrought for the Sicyonians in\nivory and gold; that Apollo of bronze carried away by the Persians,\nand restored to its place about the year B.C. 350; and a reproduction\nof the same work in cedar-wood [244], for the sanctuary of Apollo of\nthe Ismenus, at Thebes.  The primitive Greek worship, as we may trace\nit in Homer, presents already, on a minor scale, all the essential\ncharacteristics of the most elaborate Greek worship of after times--\nthe sacred enclosure, the incense and other offerings, the prayer of\nthe priest, the shrine itself--a small one, roofed in by the priest\nwith green boughs, not unlike a wayside chapel in modern times, and\nunderstood to be the dwelling-place of the divine person--within,\nalmost certainly, an idol, with its own sacred apparel, a visible\nform, little more than symbolical perhaps, like the sacred pillar for\nwhich Bathycles made his throne at Amyclae, but, if an actual image,\ncertainly a rude one.\n\nThat primitive worship, traceable in almost all these particulars,\neven in the first book of the Iliad, had given place, before the time\nof Canachus at Sicyon, to a more elaborate ritual and a more\ncompletely designed image-work; and a little bronze statue,\ndiscovered on the site of Tenea, where Apollo was the chief object of\nworship,* the best representative of many similar marble figures--\nthose of Thera and Orchomenus, for instance--is supposed to represent\nApollo as this still early age conceived him--youthful, naked,\nmuscular, and with the germ of the Greek profile, but formally\nsmiling, and with a formal diadem or fillet, over the long hair which\n[245] shows him to be no mortal athlete.  The hands, like the feet,\nexcellently modelled, are here extended downwards at the sides; but\nin some similar figures the hands are lifted, and held straight\noutwards, with the palms upturned.  The Apollo of Canachus also had\nthe hands thus raised, and on the open palm of the right hand was\nplaced a stag, while with the left he grasped the bow.  Pliny says\nthat the stag was an automaton, with a mechanical device for setting\nit in motion, a detail which hints, at least, at the subtlety of\nworkmanship with which those ancient critics, who had opportunity of\nknowing, credited this early artist.  Of this work itself nothing\nremains, but we possess perhaps some imitations of it.  It is\nprobably this most sacred possession of the place which the coins of\nMiletus display from various points of view, though, of course, only\non the smallest scale.  But a little bronze figure in the British\nMuseum, with the stag in the right hand, and in the closed left hand\nthe hollow where the bow has passed, is thought to have been derived\nfrom it; and its points of style are still further illustrated by a\nmarble head of similar character, also preserved in the British\nMuseum, which has many marks of having been copied in marble from an\noriginal in bronze.  A really ancient work, or only archaic, it\ncertainly expresses, together with all that careful patience and\nhardness of workmanship which is characteristic of an early age, a\ncertain Apolline [246] strength--a pride and dignity in the features,\nso steadily composed, below the stiff, archaic arrangement of the\nlong, fillet-bound locks.  It is the exact expression of that midway\nposition, between an involved, archaic stiffness and the free play of\nindividual talent, which is attributed to Canachus by the ancients.\n\nHis Apollo of cedar-wood, which inhabited a temple near the gates of\nThebes, on a rising ground, below which flowed the river Ismenus,\nhad, according to Pausanias, so close a resemblance to that at\nMiletus that it required little skill in one who had seen either of\nthem to tell what master had designed the other.  Still, though of\nthe same dimensions, while one was of cedar the other was of bronze--\na reproduction one of the other we may believe, but with the\nmodifications, according to the use of good workmen even so early as\nCanachus, due to the difference of the material.  For the likeness\nbetween the two statues, it is to be observed, is not the mechanical\nlikeness of those earlier images represented by the statuette of\nTenea, which spoke, not of the style of one master, but only of the\nmanufacture of one workshop.  In those two images of Canachus--the\nMilesian Apollo and the Apollo of the Ismenus--there were\nresemblances amid differences; resemblances, as we may understand, in\nwhat was nevertheless peculiar, novel, and even innovating in the\nprecise conception of the god therein set forth; [247] resemblances\nwhich spoke directly of a single workman, though working freely, of\none hand and one fancy, a likeness in that which could by no means be\ntruly copied by another; it was the beginning of what we mean by the\nstyle of a master.  Together with all the novelty, the innovating and\nimproving skill, which has made Canachus remembered, an attractive,\nold-world, deeply-felt mysticity seems still to cling about what we\nread of these early works.  That piety, that religiousness of temper,\nof which the people of Sicyon had given proof so oddly in their\ndealings with those old carvers, Scyllis and Dipoenus, still survives\nin the master who was chosen to embody his own novelty of idea and\nexecution in so sacred a place as the shrine of Apollo at Miletus.\nSomething still conventional, combined, in these images, with the\neffect of great artistic skill, with a palpable beauty and power,\nseems to have given them a really imposing religious character.\nEscaping from the rigid uniformities of the stricter archaic style,\nhe is still obedient to certain hieratic influences and traditions;\nhe is still reserved, self-controlled, composed or even mannered a\nlittle, as in some sacred presence, with the severity and strength of\nthe early style.\n\nBut there are certain notices which seem to show that he had his\npurely poetical motives also, as befitted his age; motives which\nprompted works of mere fancy, like his Muse [248] with the Lyre,\nsymbolising the chromatic style of music; Aristocles his brother, and\nAgeladas of Argos executing each another statue to symbolise the two\nother orders of music.  The Riding Boys, of which Pliny speaks, like\nthe mechanical stag on the hand of Apollo, which he also describes,\nwere perhaps mechanical toys, as Benvenuto Cellini made toys.  In the\nBeardless Aesculapius, again--the image of the god of healing, not\nmerely as the son of Apollo, but as one ever young--it is the poetry\nof sculpture that we see.\n\nThis poetic feeling, and the piety of temper so deeply impressed upon\nhis images of Apollo, seem to have been combined in his\nchryselephantine Aphrodite, as we see it very distinctly in\nPausanias, enthroned with an apple in one hand and a poppy in the\nother, and with the sphere, or polos, about the head, in its quaint\nlittle temple or chapel at Sicyon, with the hierok\u00eapis, or holy\ngarden, about it.  This is what Canachus has to give us instead of\nthe strange, symbolical cone, with the lights burning around it, in\nits dark cell--the form under which Aphrodite was worshipped at her\nfamous shrine of Paphos.\n\n\"A woman to keep it fair,\" Pausanias tells us, \"who may go in to no\nman, and a virgin called the water-bearer, who holds her priesthood\nfor a year, are alone permitted to enter the sacred place.  All\nothers may gaze upon the [249] goddess and offer their prayers from\nthe doorway.  The seated image is the work of Canachus of Sicyon.  It\nis wrought in ivory and gold, bearing a sphere on the head, and\nhaving in the one hand a poppy and in the other an apple.  They offer\nto her the thighs of all victims excepting swine, burning them upon\nsticks of juniper, together with leaves of lad's-love, a herb found\nin the enclosure without, and nowhere else in the world.  Its leaves\nare smaller than those of the beech and larger than the ilex; in form\nthey are like an oak-leaf, and in colour resemble most the leaves of\nthe poplar, one side dusky, the other white.\"\n\nThat is a place one would certainly have liked to see.  So real it\nseems!--the seated image, the people gazing through the doorway, the\nfragrant odour.  Must it not still be in secret keeping somewhere?--\nwe are almost tempted to ask; maintained by some few solitary\nworshippers, surviving from age to age, among the villagers of\nAchaia.\n\nIn spite of many obscurities, it may be said that what we know, and\nwhat we do not know, of Canachus illustrates the amount and sort of\nknowledge we possess about the artists of the period which he best\nrepresents.  A na\u00efvet\u00e9--a freshness, an early-aged simplicity and\nsincerity--that, we may believe, had we their works before us, would\nbe for us their chief aesthetic charm.  Cicero remarked that, in\ncontrast with [250] the works of the next generation of sculptors,\nthere was a stiffness in the statues of Canachus which made them seem\nuntrue to nature--\"Canachi signa rigidiora esse quam ut imitentur\nveritatem.\"  But Cicero belongs to an age surfeited with artistic\nlicence, and likely enough to undervalue the severity of the early\nmasters, the great motive struggling still with the minute and rigid\nhand.  So the critics of the last century ignored, or underrated, the\nworks of the earlier Tuscan sculptors.  In what Cicero calls\n\"rigidity\" of Canachus, combined with what we seem to see of his\npoetry of conception, his freshness, his solemnity, we may understand\nno really repellent hardness, but only that earnest patience of\nlabour, the expression of which is constant in all the best work of\nan early time, in the David of Verrocchio, for instance, and in the\nearly Flemish painters, as it is natural and becoming in youth\nitself.  The very touch of the struggling hand was upon the work; but\nwith the interest, the half-repressed animation of a great promise,\nfulfilled, as we now see, in the magnificent growth of Greek\nsculpture in the succeeding age; which, however, for those earlier\nworkmen, meant the loins girt and the half-folded wings not yet quite\nat home in the air, with a gravity, a discretion and reserve, the\ncharm of which, if felt in quiet, is hardly less than that of the\nwealth and fulness of final mastery.\n\nNOTES\n\n228. *Chrysoun is the word Pausanias uses, of the cup in the hand of\nDionysus--the wood was plated with gold.  Liddell and Scott definition\nof the adjective chryseos: \"golden, of gold, inlaid with gold.\"\n\n233. *Pausanias, in recording the invention of casting, uses the word\nech\u00f4neusanto, but does not tell us whether the model was of wax, as in\nthe later process; which, however, is believed to have been the\ncase.  For an animated account of the modern process:--the core of\nplaister roughly presenting the designed form; the modelling of the\nwaxen surface thereon, like the skin upon the muscles, with all its\ndelicate touches--vein and eyebrow; the hardening of the plaister\nenvelope, layer over layer, upon this delicately finished model; the\nmelting of the way by heat, leaving behind it in its place the\nfinished design in vacuo, which the molten stream of metal\nsubsequently fills; released finally, after cooling, from core and\nenvelope--see Fortnum's Handbook of Bronzes, Chapter II.\n\n+Liddell and Scott definition of the noun ch\u00f4n\u00ea and the verb ch\u00f4nnymi:\n\"a melting-pit, a mould to cast in. . . . to throw or heap up . . .\nto cover with a mound of earth, bury.\"\n\n234. +Transliteration: kedrou z\u00f4dia chrys\u00f4 di\u00eanthismena.  Pater's\ntranslation: \"Figures of cedar-wood, partly incrusted with gold.\"\nThe root verb anthiz\u00f4 means \"to strew with flowers...and so, to dye\nwith colours.\"  (Liddell and Scott.)  Pausanias, Description of\nGreece, Book VI, Chapter 19, Section 12.  Pausaniae Graeciae Descriptio,\n3 vols. F. Spiro. Leipzig, Teubner. 1903.\n\n237. +Daidaleos means \"cunningly or curiously wrought\"; it is derived\nfrom the verb daidall\u00f4, \"to work cunningly, work with curious\nart....\"  (Liddell and Scott.)\n\n242. +The verb toreu\u00f4 means \"to bore through . . . to work in relief\n. . . to chase.\"  (Liddell and Scott.)\n\n244. *Now preserved at Munich.\n\n\n\nTHE MARBLES OF AEGINA\n\n[251] I HAVE dwelt the more emphatically upon the purely sensuous\naspects of early Greek art, on the beauty and charm of its mere\nmaterial and workmanship, the grace of hand in it, its\nchryselephantine character, because the direction of all the more\ngeneral criticism since Lessing has been, somewhat one-sidedly,\ntowards the ideal or abstract element in Greek art, towards what we\nmay call its philosophical aspect.  And, indeed, this philosophical\nelement, a tendency to the realisation of a certain inward, abstract,\nintellectual ideal, is also at work in Greek art--a tendency which,\nif that chryselephantine influence is called Ionian, may rightly be\ncalled the Dorian, or, in reference to its broader scope, the\nEuropean influence; and this European influence or tendency is really\ntowards the impression of an order, a sanity, a proportion in all\nwork, which shall reflect the inward order of human reason, now fully\nconscious of itself,--towards a sort of art in which the record and\ndelineation of humanity, as active in the wide, inward world of [252]\nits passion and thought, has become more or less definitely the aim\nof all artistic handicraft.\n\nIn undergoing the action of these two opposing influences, and by\nharmonising in itself their antagonism, Greek sculpture does but\nreflect the larger movements of more general Greek history.  All\nthrough Greek history we may trace, in every sphere of the activity\nof the Greek mind, the action of these two opposing tendencies,--the\ncentrifugal and centripetal tendencies, as we may perhaps not too\nfancifully call them.  There is the centrifugal, the Ionian, the\nAsiatic tendency, flying from the centre, working with little\nforethought straight before it, in the development of every thought\nand fancy; throwing itself forth in endless play of undirected\nimagination; delighting in brightness and colour, in beautiful\nmaterial, in changeful form everywhere, in poetry, in philosophy,\neven in architecture and its subordinate crafts.  In the social and\npolitical order it rejoices in the freest action of local and\npersonal influences; its restless versatility drives it towards the\nassertion of the principles of separatism, of individualism--the\nseparation of state from state, the maintenance of local religions,\nthe development of the individual in that which is most peculiar and\nindividual in him.  Its claim is in its grace, its freedom and\nhappiness, its lively interest, the variety of its gifts to\ncivilisation; its weakness is self-evident, and was what made the\nunity of Greece impossible. [253] It is this centrifugal tendency\nwhich Plato is desirous to cure, by maintaining, over against it, the\nDorian influence of a severe simplification everywhere, in society,\nin culture, in the very physical nature of man.  An enemy everywhere\nto variegation, to what is cunning or \"myriad-minded,\" he sets\nhimself, in mythology, in music, in poetry, in every kind of art, to\nenforce the ideal of a sort of Parmenidean abstractness and calm.\n\nThis exaggerated ideal of Plato's is, however, only the exaggeration\nof that salutary European tendency, which, finding human mind the\nmost absolutely real and precious thing in the world, enforces\neverywhere the impress of its sanity, its profound reflexions upon\nthings as they really are, its sense of proportion.  It is the\ncentripetal tendency, which links individuals to each other, states\nto states, one period of organic growth to another, under the reign\nof a composed, rational, self-conscious order, in the universal light\nof the understanding.\n\nWhether or not this temper, so clearly traceable as a distinct\ninfluence in the course of Greek development, was indeed the peculiar\ngift of the Dorian race, certainly that race is the best illustration\nof it, in its love of order, of that severe composition everywhere,\nof which the Dorian style of architecture is, as it were, a material\nsymbol--in its constant aspiration after what is earnest and\ndignified, as exemplified most evidently in the religion of its\npredilection, the religion of Apollo. [254] For as that Ionian\ninfluence, the chryselephantine influence, had its patron in\nHephaestus, belonged to the religion of Hephaestus, husband of\nAphrodite, the representation of exquisite workmanship, of fine art\nin metal, coming from the East in close connexion with the artificial\nfurtherance, through dress and personal ornament, of the beauty of\nthe body; so that Dorian or European influence embodied itself in the\nreligion of Apollo.  For the development of this or that mythological\nconception, from its root in fact or law of the physical world, is\nvery various in its course.  Thus, Demeter, the spirit of life in\ngrass,--and Dionysus, the \"spiritual form\" of life in the green sap,-\n-remain, to the end of men's thoughts and fancies about them, almost\nwholly physical.  But Apollo, the \"spiritual form\" of sunbeams, early\nbecomes (the merely physical element in his constitution being almost\nwholly suppressed) exclusively ethical,--the \"spiritual form\" of\ninward or intellectual light, in all its manifestations.  He\nrepresents all those specially European ideas, of a reasonable,\npersonal freedom, as understood in Greece; of a reasonable polity; of\nthe sanity of soul and body, through the cure of disease and of the\nsense of sin; of the perfecting of both by reasonable exercise or\nasc\u00easis; his religion is a sort of embodied equity, its aim the\nrealisation of fair reason and just consideration of the truth of\nthings everywhere.\n\n[255] I cannot dwell on the general aspects of this subject further,\nbut I would remark that in art also the religion of Apollo was a\nsanction of, and an encouragement towards the true valuation of\nhumanity, in its sanity, its proportion, its knowledge of itself.\nFollowing after this, Greek art attained, in its reproductions of\nhuman form, not merely to the profound expression of the highest\nindwelling spirit of human intelligence, but to the expression also\nof the great human passions, of the powerful movements as well as of\nthe calm and peaceful order of the soul, as finding in the affections\nof the body a language, the elements of which the artist might\nanalyse, and then combine, order, and recompose.  In relation to\nmusic, to art, to all those matters over which the Muses preside,\nApollo, as distinct from Hermes, seems to be the representative and\npatron of what I may call reasonable music, of a great intelligence\nat work in art, of beauty attained through the conscious realisation\nof ideas.  They were the cities of the Dorian affinity which early\nbrought to perfection that most characteristic of Greek institutions,\nthe sacred dance, with the whole gymnastic system which was its\nnatural accompaniment.  And it was the familiar spectacle of that\nliving sculpture which developed, perhaps, beyond everything else in\nthe Greek mind, at its best, a sense of the beauty and significance\nof the human form.\n\nInto that bewildered, dazzling world of minute [256] and dainty\nhandicraft--the chamber of Paris, the house of Alcinous--in which the\nform of man alone had no adequate place, and as yet, properly, was\nnot, this Dorian, European, Apolline influence introduced the\nintelligent and spiritual human presence, and gave it its true value,\na value consistently maintained to the end of Greek art, by a steady\nhold upon and preoccupation with the inward harmony and system of\nhuman personality.\n\nIn the works of the Asiatic tradition--the marbles of Nineveh, for\ninstance--and, so far as we can see, in the early Greek art, which\nderives from it, as, for example, in the archaic remains from Cyprus,\nthe form of man is inadequate, and below the measure of perfection\nattained there in the representation of the lower forms of life; just\nas in the little reflective art of Japan, so lovely in its\nreproduction of flower or bird, the human form alone comes almost as\na caricature, or is at least untouched by any higher ideal.  To that\nAsiatic tradition, then, with its perfect craftsmanship, its\nconsummate skill in design, its power of hand, the Dorian, the\nEuropean, the true Hellenic influence brought a revelation of the\nsoul and body of man.\n\nAnd we come at last in the marbles of Aegina to a monument, which\nbears upon it the full expression of this humanism,--to a work, in\nwhich the presence of man, realised with complete mastery of hand,\nand with clear apprehension of how he actually is and moves and\nlooks, [257] is touched with the freshest sense of that new-found,\ninward value; the energy of worthy passions purifying, the light of\nhis reason shining through, bodily forms and motions, solemnised,\nattractive, pathetic.  We have reached an extant work, real and\nvisible, of an importance out of all proportion to anything actually\nremaining of earlier art, and justifying, by its direct interest and\ncharm, our long prelude on the beginnings of Greek sculpture, while\nthere was still almost nothing actually to see.\n\nThese fifteen figures of Parian marble, of about two-thirds the size\nof life, forming, with some deficiencies, the east and west gables of\na temple of Athene, the ruins of which still stand on a hill-side by\nthe sea-shore, in a remote part of the island of Aegina, were\ndiscovered in the year 1811, and having been purchased by the Crown\nPrince, afterwards King Louis I., of Bavaria, are now the great\nornament of the Glyptothek, or Museum of Sculpture, at Munich.  The\ngroup in each gable consisted of eleven figures; and of the fifteen\nlarger figures discovered, five belong to the eastern, ten to the\nwestern gable, so that the western gable is complete with the\nexception of one figure, which should stand in the place to which, as\nthe groups are arranged at Munich, the beautiful figure, bending down\ntowards the fallen leader, has been actually transferred from the\neastern gable; certain fragments showing that the lost figure [258]\ncorresponded essentially to this, which has therefore been removed\nhither from its place in the less complete group to which it properly\nbelongs.  For there are two legitimate views or motives in the\nrestoration of ancient sculpture, the antiquarian and the aesthetic,\nas they may be termed respectively; the former limiting itself to the\nbare presentation of what actually remains of the ancient work,\nbraving all shock to living eyes from the mutilated nose or chin;\nwhile the latter, the aesthetic method, requires that, with the least\npossible addition or interference, by the most skilful living hand\nprocurable, the object shall be made to please, or at least content\nthe living eye seeking enjoyment and not a bare fact of science, in\nthe spectacle of ancient art.  This latter way of restoration,--the\naesthetic way,--followed by the famous connoisseurs of the\nRenaissance, has been followed here; and the visitor to Munich\nactually sees the marbles of Aegina, as restored after a model by the\ntasteful hand of Thorwaldsen.\n\nDifferent views have, however, been maintained as to the right\ngrouping of the figures; but the composition of the two groups was\napparently similar, not only in general character but in a certain\ndegree of correspondence of all the figures, each to each.  And in\nboth the subject is a combat,--a combat between Greeks and Asiatics\nconcerning the body of a Greek hero, fallen among the foemen,--an\nincident so characteristic [259] of the poetry of the heroic wars.\nIn both cases, Athene, whose temple this sculpture was designed to\ndecorate, intervenes, her image being complete in the western gable,\nthe head and some other fragments remaining of that in the eastern.\nThe incidents represented were probably chosen with reference to the\ntraditions of Aegina in connexion with the Trojan war.  Greek legend\nis ever deeply coloured by local interest and sentiment, and this\nmonument probably celebrates Telamon, and Ajax his son, the heroes\nwho established the fame of Aegina, and whom the united Greeks, on\nthe morning of the battle of Salamis, in which the Aeginetans were\ndistinguished above all other Greeks in bravery, invited as their\npeculiar, spiritual allies from that island.\n\nAccordingly, antiquarians are, for the most part, of opinion that the\neastern gable represents the combat of Hercules (Hercules being the\nonly figure among the warriors certainly to be identified), and of\nhis comrade Telamon, against Laomedon of Troy, in which, properly,\nHercules was leader, but here, as squire and archer, is made to give\nthe first place to Telamon, as the titular hero of the place.\nOpinion is not so definite regarding the subject of the western\ngable, which, however, probably represents the combat between the\nGreeks and Trojans over the body of Patroclus.  In both cases an\nAeginetan hero, in the eastern gable Telamon, in the western [260]\nhis son Ajax, is represented in the extreme crisis of battle, such a\ncrisis as, according to the deep religiousness of the Greeks of that\nage, was a motive for the visible intervention of the goddess in\nfavour of her chosen people.\n\nOpinion as to the date of the work, based mainly on the\ncharacteristics of the work itself, has varied within a period\nranging from the middle of the sixtieth to the middle of the\nseventieth Olympiad, inclining on the whole to the later date, in the\nperiod of the Ionian revolt against Persia, and a few years earlier\nthan the battle of Marathon.\n\nIn this monument, then, we have a revelation in the sphere of art, of\nthe temper which made the victories of Marathon and Salamis possible,\nof the true spirit of Greek chivalry as displayed in the Persian war,\nand in the highly ideal conception of its events, expressed in\nHerodotus and approving itself minutely to the minds of the Greeks,\nas a series of affairs in which the gods and heroes of old time\npersonally intervened, and that not as mere shadows.  It was natural\nthat the high-pitched temper, the stress of thought and feeling,\nwhich ended in the final conflict of Greek liberty with Asiatic\nbarbarism, should stimulate quite a new interest in the poetic\nlegends of the earlier conflict between them in the heroic age.  As\nthe events of the Crusades and the chivalrous spirit of that period,\nleading men's minds back to ponder over the deeds of [261]\nCharlemagne and his paladins, gave birth to the composition of the\nSong of Roland, just so this Aeginetan sculpture displays the Greeks\nof a later age feeding their enthusiasm on the legend of a distant\npast, and is a link between Herodotus and Homer.  In those ideal\nfigures, pensive a little from the first, we may suppose, with the\nshadowiness of a past age, we may yet see how Greeks of the time of\nThemistocles really conceived of Homeric knight and squire.\n\nSome other fragments of art, also discovered in Aegina, and supposed\nto be contemporary with the temple of Athene, tend, by their\nroughness and immaturity, to show that this small building, so united\nin its effect, so complete in its simplicity, in the symmetry of its\ntwo main groups of sculpture, was the perfect artistic flower of its\ntime and place.  Yet within the limits of this simple unity, so\nimportant an element in the charm and impressiveness of the place, a\ncertain inequality of design and execution may be detected; the hand\nof a slightly earlier master, probably, having worked in the western\ngable, while the master of the eastern gable has gone some steps\nfarther than he in fineness and power of expression; the stooping\nfigure of the supposed Ajax,--belonging to the western group in the\npresent arrangement, but really borrowed, as I said, from the\neastern,--which has in it something above the type of the figures\ngrouped round it, being this later sculptor's work.  Yet Overbeck,\n[262] who has elaborated the points of this distinction of styles,\ncommends without reserve the technical excellence of the whole work,\nexecuted, as he says, \"with an application of all known instruments\nof sculpture; the delicate calculation of weight in the composition\nof the several parts, allowing the artist to dispense with all\nartificial supports, and to set his figures, with all their complex\nmotions, and yet with plinths only three inches thick, into the basis\nof the gable; the bold use of the chisel, which wrought the shield,\non the freely-held arm, down to a thickness of scarcely three inches;\nthe fineness of the execution even in parts of the work invisible to\nan ordinary spectator, in the diligent finishing of which the only\nmotive of the artist was to satisfy his own conviction as to the\nnature of good sculpture.\"\n\nIt was the Dorian cities, Plato tells us, which first shook off the\nfalse Asiatic shame, and stripped off their clothing for purposes of\nexercise and training in the gymnasium; and it was part of the Dorian\nor European influence to assert the value in art of the unveiled and\nhealthy human form.  And here the artists of Aegina, notwithstanding\nHomer's description of Greek armour, glowing like the sun itself,\nhave displayed the Greek warriors--Greek and Trojan alike--not in the\nequipments they would really have worn, but naked,--flesh fairer than\nthat golden armour, though more subdued and tranquil [263] in effect\non the spectator, the undraped form of man coming like an embodiment\nof the Hellenic spirit, and as an element of temperance, into the\nsomewhat gaudy spectacle of Asiatic, or archaic art.  Paris alone\nbears his dainty trappings, characteristically,--a coat of golden\nscale-work, the scales set on a lining of canvas or leather, shifting\ndeftly over the delicate body beneath, and represented on the gable\nby the gilding, or perhaps by real gilt metal.\n\nIt was characteristic also of that more truly Hellenic art--another\nelement of its temperance--to adopt the use of marble in its works;\nand the material of these figures is the white marble of Paros.\nTraces of colour have, however, been found on certain parts of them.\nThe outer surfaces of the shields and helmets have been blue; their\ninner parts and the crests of the helmets, red; the hem of the\ndrapery of Athene, the edges of her sandals, the plinths on which the\nfigures stand, also red; one quiver red, another blue; the eyes and\nlips, too, coloured; perhaps, the hair.  There was just a limited and\nconventionalised use of colour, in effect, upon the marble.\n\nAnd although the actual material of these figures is marble, its\ncoolness and massiveness suiting the growing severity of Greek\nthought, yet they have their reminiscences of work in bronze, in a\ncertain slimness and tenuity, a certain dainty lightness of poise in\ntheir grouping, which [264] remains in the memory as a peculiar note\nof their style; the possibility of such easy and graceful balancing\nbeing one of the privileges or opportunities of statuary in cast\nmetal, of that hollow casting in which the whole weight of the work\nis so much less than that of a work of equal size in marble, and\nwhich permits so much wider and freer a disposition of the parts\nabout its centre of gravity.  In Aegina the tradition of metal-work\nseems to have been strong, and Onatas, whose name is closely\nconnected with Aegina, and who is contemporary with the presumably\nlater portion of this monument, was above all a worker in bronze.\nHere again, in this lurking spirit of metal-work, we have a new\nelement of complexity in the character of these precious remains.\nAnd then, to compass the whole work in our imagination, we must\nconceive yet another element in the conjoint effect; metal being\nactually mingled with the marble, brought thus to its daintiest point\nof refinement, as the little holes indicate, bored into the marble\nfigures for the attachment of certain accessories in bronze,--lances,\nswords, bows, the Medusa's head on the aegis of Athene, and its\nfringe of little snakes.\n\nAnd as there was no adequate consciousness and recognition of the\nessentials of man's nature in the older, oriental art, so there is no\npathos, no humanity in the more special sense, but a kind of hardness\nand cruelty rather, in those oft-repeated, long, matter-of-fact\nprocessions, on the [265] marbles of Nineveh, of slave-like soldiers\non their way to battle mechanically, or of captives on their way to\nslavery or death, for the satisfaction of the Great King.  These\nGreek marbles, on the contrary, with that figure yearning forward so\ngraciously to the fallen leader, are deeply impressed with a natural\npathetic effect--the true reflexion again of the temper of Homer in\nspeaking of war.  Ares, the god of war himself, we must remember, is,\naccording to his original import, the god of storms, of winter raging\namong the forests of the Thracian mountains, a brother of the north\nwind.  It is only afterwards that, surviving many minor gods of war,\nhe becomes a leader of hosts, a sort of divine knight and patron of\nknighthood; and, through the old intricate connexion of love and war,\nand that amorousness which is the universally conceded privilege of\nthe soldier's life, he comes to be very near Aphrodite,--the paramour\nof the goddess of physical beauty.  So that the idea of a sort of\nsoft dalliance mingles, in his character, so unlike that of the\nChristian leader, Saint George, with the idea of savage, warlike\nimpulses; the fair, soft creature suddenly raging like a storm, to\nwhich, in its various wild incidents, war is constantly likened in\nHomer; the effects of delicate youth and of tempest blending, in\nAres, into one expression, not without that cruelty which mingles\nalso, like the influence of some malign fate upon him, with the finer\n[266] characteristics of Achilles, who is a kind of merely human\ndouble of Ares.  And in Homer's impressions of war the same elements\nare blent,--the delicacy, the beauty of youth, especially, which\nmakes it so fit for purposes of love, spoiled and wasted by the\nrandom flood and fire of a violent tempest; the glittering beauty of\nthe Greek \"war-men,\" expressed in so many brilliant figures, and the\nsplendour of their equipments, in collision with the miserable\naccidents of battle, and the grotesque indignities of death in it,\nbrought home to our fancy by a hundred pathetic incidents,--the sword\nhot with slaughter, the stifling blood in the throat, the spoiling of\nthe body in every member severally.  He thinks of, and records, at\nhis early ending, the distant home from which the boy came, who goes\nstumbling now, just stricken so wretchedly, his bowels in his hands.\nHe pushes the expression of this contrast to the macabre even,\nsuggesting the approach of those lower forms of life which await to-\nmorrow the fair bodies of the heroes, who strive and fall to-day like\nthese in the Aeginetan gables.  For it is just that two-fold\nsentiment which this sculpture has embodied.  The seemingly stronger\nhand which wrought the eastern gable has shown itself strongest in\nthe rigid expression of the truth of pain, in the mouth of the famous\nrecumbent figure on the extreme left, the lips just open at the\ncorner, and in the hard-shut lips of Hercules.  Otherwise, [267]\nthese figures all smile faintly, almost like the monumental effigies\nof the Middle Age, with a smile which, even if it be but a result of\nthe mere conventionality of an art still somewhat immature, has just\nthe pathetic effect of Homer's conventional epithet \"tender,\" when he\nspeaks of the flesh of his heroes.\n\nAnd together with this touching power there is also in this work the\neffect of an early simplicity, the charm of its limitations.  For as\nart which has passed its prime has sometimes the charm of an absolute\nrefinement in taste and workmanship, so immature art also, as we now\nsee, has its own attractiveness in the na\u00efvet\u00e9, the freshness of\nspirit, which finds power and interest in simple motives of feeling,\nand in the freshness of hand, which has a sense of enjoyment in\nmechanical processes still performed unmechanically, in the spending\nof care and intelligence on every touch.  As regards Italian art, the\nsculpture and paintings of the earlier Renaissance, the aesthetic\nvalue of this na\u00efvet\u00e9 is now well understood; but it has its value in\nGreek sculpture also.  There, too, is a succession of phases through\nwhich the artistic power and purpose grew to maturity, with the\nenduring charm of an unconventional, unsophisticated freshness, in\nthat very early stage of it illustrated by these marbles of Aegina,\nnot less than in the work of Verrocchio and Mino of Fiesole.  Effects\nof this we may note in that sculpture [268] of Aegina, not merely in\nthe simplicity, or monotony even, of the whole composition, and in\nthe exact and formal correspondence of one gable to the other, but in\nthe simple readiness with which the designer makes the two second\nspearmen kneel, against the probability of the thing, so as just to\nfill the space he has to compose in.  The profiles are still not yet\nof the fully developed Greek type, but have a somewhat sharp\nprominence of nose and chin, as in Etrurian design, in the early\nsculpture of Cyprus, and in the earlier Greek vases; and the general\nproportions of the body in relation to the shoulders are still\nsomewhat archaically slim.  But then the workman is at work in dry\nearnestness, with a sort of hard strength in detail, a scrupulousness\nverging on stiffness, like that of an early Flemish painter; he\ncommunicates to us his still youthful sense of pleasure in the\nexperience of the first rudimentary difficulties of his art overcome.\nAnd withal, these figures have in them a true expression of life, of\nanimation.  In this monument of Greek chivalry, pensive and visionary\nas it may seem, those old Greek knights live with a truth like that\nof Homer or Chaucer.  In a sort of stiff grace, combined with a sense\nof things bright or sorrowful directly felt, the Aeginetan workman is\nas it were the Chaucer of Greek sculpture.\n\n\n\nTHE AGE OF ATHLETIC PRIZEMEN:\nA CHAPTER IN GREEK ART\n\n[269] IT is pleasant when, looking at medieval sculpture, we are\nreminded of that of Greece; pleasant likewise, conversely, in the\nstudy of Greek work to be put on thoughts of the Middle Age.  To the\nrefined intelligence, it would seem, there is something attractive in\ncomplex expression as such.  The Marbles of Aegina, then, may remind\nus of the Middle Age where it passes into the early Renaissance, of\nits most tenderly finished warrior-tombs at Westminster or in\nFlorence.  A less mature phase of medieval art is recalled to our\nfancy by a primitive Greek work in the Museum of Athens, Hermes,\nbearing a ram, a little one, upon his shoulders.  He bears it thus,\nhad borne it round the walls of Tanagra, as its citizens told, by way\nof purifying that place from the plague, and brings to mind, of\ncourse, later images of the \"Good Shepherd.\"  It is not the subject\nof the work, however, but its style, that sets us down in thought\nbefore some gothic [270] cathedral front.  Suppose the Hermes\nKriophorus lifted into one of those empty niches, and the\narchaeologist will inform you rightly, as at Auxerre or Wells, of\nItalian influence, perhaps of Italian workmen, and along with them\nindirect old Greek influence coming northwards; while the connoisseur\nassures us that all good art, at its respective stages of\ndevelopment, is in essential qualities everywhere alike.  It is\nobserved, as a note of imperfect skill, that in that carved block of\nstone the animal is insufficiently detached from the shoulders of its\nbearer.  Again, how precisely gothic is the effect!  Its very\nlimitation as sculpture emphasises the function of the thing as an\narchitectural ornament.  And the student of the Middle Age, if it\ncame within his range, would be right in so esteeming it.  Hieratic,\nstiff and formal, if you will, there is a knowledge of the human body\nin it nevertheless, of the body, and of the purely animal soul\ntherein, full of the promise of what is coming in that chapter of\nGreek art which may properly be entitled, \"The Age of Athletic\nPrizemen.\"\n\nThat rude image, a work perhaps of Calamis of shadowy fame, belongs\nto a phase of art still in grave-clothes or swaddling-bands, still\nstrictly subordinate to religious or other purposes not immediately\nits own.  It had scarcely to wait for the next generation to be\nsuperseded, and we need not wonder that but little of it remains.\nBut that it was a widely active phase of art, with [271] all the\nvigour of local varieties, is attested by another famous archaic\nmonument, too full of a kind of sacred poetry to be passed by.  The\nreader does not need to be reminded that the Greeks, vivid as was\ntheir consciousness of this life, cared much always for the graves of\nthe dead; that to be cared for, to be honoured, in one's grave, to\nhave tymbos amphipolos,+ a frequented tomb, as Pindar says, was a\nconsiderable motive with them, even among the young.  In the study of\nits funeral monuments we might indeed follow closely enough the\ngeneral development of art in Greece from beginning to end.  The\ncarved slab of the ancient shepherd of Orchomenus, with his dog and\nrustic staff, the st\u00e9l\u00e9 of the ancient man-at-arms signed\n\"Aristocles,\" rich originally with colour and gold and fittings of\nbronze, are among the few still visible pictures, or portraits, it\nmay be, of the earliest Greek life.  Compare them, compare their\nexpression, for a moment, with the deeply incised tombstones of the\nBrethren of St. Francis and their clients, which still roughen the\npavement of Santa Croce at Florence, and recall the varnished\npolychrome decoration of those Greek monuments in connexion with the\nworn-out blazonry of the funeral brasses of England and Flanders.\nThe Shepherd, the Hoplite, begin a series continuous to the era of\nfull Attic mastery in its gentlest mood, with a large and varied\nstore of memorials of the dead, which, not so strangely as it may\n[272] seem at first sight, are like selected pages from daily\ndomestic life.  See, for instance, at the British Museum, Trypho,--\n\"the son of Eutychus,\" one of the very pleasantest human likenesses\nthere, though it came from a cemetery--a son it was hard to leave in\nit at nineteen or twenty.  With all the suppleness, the delicate\nmuscularity, of the flower of his youth, his handsome face sweetened\nby a kind and simple heart, in motion, surely, he steps forth from\nsome shadowy chamber, strigil in hand, as of old, and with his coarse\ntowel or cloak of monumental drapery over one shoulder.  But whither\nprecisely, you may ask, and as what, is he moving there in the\ndoorway?  Well! in effect, certainly, it is the memory of the dead\nlad, emerging thus from his tomb,--the still active soul, or\npermanent thought, of him, as he most liked to be.\n\nThe Harpy Tomb, so called from its mysterious winged creatures with\nhuman faces, carrying the little shrouded souls of the dead, is a\nwork many generations earlier than that graceful monument of Trypho.\nIt was from an ancient cemetery at Xanthus in Lycia that it came to\nthe British Museum.  The Lycians were not a Greek people; but, as\nhappened even with \"barbarians\" dwelling on the coast of Asia Minor,\nthey became lovers of the Hellenic culture, and Xanthus, their\ncapital, as may be judged from the beauty of its ruins, managed to\nhave a considerable portion in Greek art, though infusing it [273]\nwith a certain Asiatic colour.  The frugally designed frieze of the\nHarpy Tomb, in the lowest possible relief, might fairly be placed\nbetween the monuments of Assyria and those primitive Greek works\namong which it now actually stands.  The stiffly ranged figures in\nany other than strictly archaic work would seem affected.  But what\nan undercurrent of refined sentiment, presumably not Asiatic, not\n\"barbaric,\" lifting those who felt thus about death so early into the\nmain stream of Greek humanity, and to a level of visible refinement\nin execution duly expressive of it!\n\nIn that old burial-place of Xanthus, then, a now nameless family, or\na single bereaved member of it, represented there as a diminutive\nfigure crouching on the earth in sorrow, erected this monument, so\nfull of family sentiment, and of so much value as illustrating what\nis for us a somewhat empty period in the history of Greek art,\nstrictly so called.  Like the less conspicuously adorned tombs around\nit, like the tombs in Homer, it had the form of a tower--a square\ntower about twenty-four feet high, hollowed at the top into a small\nchamber, for the reception, through a little doorway, of the urned\nashes of the dead.  Four sculptured slabs were placed at this level\non the four sides of the tower in the manner of a frieze.  I said\nthat the winged creatures with human faces carry the little souls of\nthe dead.  The interpretation of these mystic [274] imageries is, in\ntruth, debated.  But in face of them, and remembering how the\nsculptors and glass-painters of the Middle Age constantly represented\nthe souls of the dead as tiny bodies, one can hardly doubt as to the\nmeaning of these particular details which, repeated on every side,\nseem to give the key-note of the whole composition.*  Those infernal,\nor celestial, birds, indeed, are not true to what is understood to be\nthe harpy form.  Call them sirens, rather.  People, and not only old\npeople, as you know, appear sometimes to have been quite charmed away\nby what dismays most of us.  The tiny shrouded figures which the\nsirens carry are carried very tenderly, and seem to yearn in their\nturn towards those kindly nurses as they pass on their way to a new\nworld.  Their small stature, as I said, does not prove them infants,\nbut only new-born into that other life, and contrasts their\nhelplessness with the powers, the great presences, now around them.\nA cow, far enough from Myron's famous illusive animal, suckles her\ncalf.  She is [275] one of almost any number of artistic symbols of\nnew-birth, of the renewal of life, drawn from a world which is, after\nall, so full of it.  On one side sits enthroned, as some have\nthought, the Goddess of Death; on the opposite side the Goddess of\nLife, with her flowers and fruit.  Towards her three young maidens\nare advancing--were they still alive thus, graceful, virginal, with\ntheir long, plaited hair, and long, delicately-folded tunics, looking\nforward to carry on their race into the future?  Presented severally,\non the other sides of the dark hollow within, three male persons--a\nyoung man, an old man, and a boy--seem to be bringing home, somewhat\nwearily, to their \"long home,\" the young man, his armour, the boy,\nand the old man, like old Socrates, the mortuary cock, as they\napproach some shadowy, ancient deity of the tomb, or it may be the\nthroned impersonation of their \"fathers of old.\"  The marble surface\nwas coloured, at least in part, with fixtures of metal here and\nthere.  The designer, whoever he may have been, was possessed\ncertainly of some tranquillising second thoughts concerning death,\nwhich may well have had their value for mourners; and he has\nexpressed those thoughts, if lispingly, yet with no faults of\ncommission, with a befitting grace, and, in truth, at some points,\nwith something already of a really Hellenic definition and vigour.\nHe really speaks to us in his work, through his symbolic and [276]\nimitative figures,--speaks to our intelligence persuasively.  The\nsurviving thought of the lad Trypho, returning from his tomb to the\nliving, was of athletic character; how he was and looked when in the\nflower of his strength.  And it is not of the dead but of the living,\nwho look and are as he, that the artistic genius of this period is\nfull.  It is a period, truly, not of battles, such as those\ncommemorated in the Marbles of Aegina, but of more peaceful contests-\n-at Olympia, at the Isthmus, at Delphi--the glories of which Pindar\nsang in language suggestive of a sort of metallic beauty, firmly cut\nand embossed, like crowns of wild olive, of parsley and bay, in crisp\ngold.  First, however, it had been necessary that Greece should win\nits liberty, political standing-ground, and a really social air to\nbreathe in, with development of the youthful limbs.  Of this process\nAthens was the chief scene; and the earliest notable presentment of\nhumanity by Athenian art was in celebration of those who had\nvindicated liberty with their lives--two youths again, in a real\nincident, which had, however, the quality of a poetic invention,\nturning, as it did, on that ideal or romantic friendship which was\ncharacteristic of the Greeks.\n\nWith something, perhaps, of hieratic convention, yet presented as\nthey really were, as friends and admirers loved to think of them,\n[277] Harmodius and Aristogeiton stood, then, soon after their heroic\ndeath, side by side in bronze, the work of Antenor, in a way not to\nbe forgotten, when, thirty years afterwards, a foreign tyrant,\nXerxes, carried them away to Persia.  Kritios and Nesistes were,\ntherefore, employed for a reproduction of them, which would naturally\nbe somewhat more advanced in style.  In its turn this also\ndisappeared.  The more curious student, however, would still fancy he\nsaw the trace of it--of that copy, or of the original, afterwards\nrestored to Athens--here or there, on vase or coin.  But in fact the\nvery images of the heroic youths were become but ghosts, haunting the\nstory of Greek art, till they found or seemed to find a body once\nmore when, not many years since, an acute observer detected, as he\nthought, in a remarkable pair of statues in the Museum of Naples, if\nfreed from incorrect restorations and rightly set together, a\nveritable descendant from the original work of Antenor.  With all\ntheir truth to physical form and movement, with a conscious mastery\nof delineation, they were, nevertheless, in certain details, in the\nhair, for instance, archaic, or rather archaistic--designedly\narchaic, as from the hand of a workman, for whom, in this subject,\narchaism, the very touch of the ancient master, had a sentimental or\neven a religious value.  And unmistakeably they were young assassins,\nmoving, with more than fraternal unity, the younger in advance of and\ncovering [278] the elder, according to the account given by\nHerodotus, straight to their purpose;--against two wicked brothers,\nas you remember, two good friends, on behalf of the dishonoured\nsister of one of them.\n\nArchaeologists have loved to adjust them tentatively, with various\nhypotheses as to the precise manner in which they thus went together.\nMeantime they have figured plausibly as representative of Attic\nsculpture at the end of its first period, still immature indeed, but\nwith a just claim to take breath, so to speak, having now\naccomplished some stades of the journey.  Those young heroes of\nAthenian democracy, then, indicate already what place Athens and\nAttica will occupy in the supreme age of art soon to come; indicate\nalso the subject from which that age will draw the main stream of its\ninspiration--living youth, \"iconic\" in its exact portraiture, or\n\"heroic\" as idealised in various degrees under the influence of great\nthoughts about it--youth in its self-denying contention towards great\neffects; great intrinsically, as at Marathon, or when Harmodius and\nAristogeiton fell, or magnified by the force and splendour of Greek\nimagination with the stimulus of the national games.  For the most\npart, indeed, it is not with youth taxed spasmodically, like that of\nHarmodius and Aristogeiton, and the \"necessity\" that was upon it,\nthat the Athenian mind and heart are now busied; but with youth [279]\nin its voluntary labours, its habitual and measured discipline,\nlabour for its own sake, or in wholly friendly contest for prizes\nwhich in reality borrow all their value from the quality of the\nreceiver.\n\nWe are with Pindar, you see, in this athletic age of Greek sculpture.\nIt is the period no longer of battle against a foreign foe, recalling\nthe Homeric ideal, nor against the tyrant at home, fixing a dubious\nideal for the future, but of peaceful combat as a fine art--pulvis\nOlympicus.  Anticipating the arts, poetry, a generation before Myron\nand Polycleitus, had drawn already from the youthful combatants in\nthe great national games the motives of those Odes, the bracing words\nof which, as I said, are like work in fine bronze, or, as Pindar\nhimself suggests, in ivory and gold.  Sung in the victor's supper-\nroom, or at the door of his abode, or with the lyre and the pipe as\nthey took him home in procession through the streets, or commemorated\nthe happy day, or in a temple where he laid up his crown, Pindar's\nsongs bear witness to the pride of family or township in the physical\nperfection of son or citizen, and his consequent success in the long\nor the short foot-race, or the foot-race in armour, or the\npentathlon, or any part of it.  \"Now on one, now on another,\" as the\npoet tells, \"doth the grace that quickeneth (quickeneth, literally,\non the race-course) look favourably.\"  Ariston hyd\u00f4r+ he declares\nindeed, and the actual prize, as we know, was in itself of little or\nno worth--a [280] cloak, in the Athenian games, but at the greater\ngames a mere handful of parsley, a few sprigs of pine or wild olive.\nThe prize has, so to say, only an intellectual or moral value.  Yet\nactually Pindar's own verse is all of gold and wine and flowers, is\nitself avowedly a flower, or \"liquid nectar,\" or \"the sweet fruit of\nhis soul to men that are winners in the games.\"  \"As when from a\nwealthy hand one lifting a cup, made glad within with the dew of the\nvine, maketh gift thereof to a youth\":--the keynote of Pindar's verse\nis there!  This brilliant living youth of his day, of the actual\ntime, for whom, as he says, he \"awakes the clear-toned gale of song\"-\n-epe\u00f4n hoimon ligyn+--that song mingles sometimes with the splendours\nof a recorded ancient lineage, or with the legendary greatness of a\nremoter past, its gods and heroes, patrons or ancestors, it might be,\nof the famous young man of the hour, or with the glory and solemnity\nof the immortals themselves taking a share in mortal contests.  On\nsuch pretext he will tell a new story, or bring to its last\nperfection by his manner of telling it, his pregnancy and studied\nbeauty of expression, an old one.  The tale of Castor and Polydeukes,\nthe appropriate patrons of virginal yet virile youth, starred and\nmounted, he tells in all its human interest.\n\n\"Ample is the glory stored up for Olympian winners.\"  And what\nPindar's contemporaries asked of him for the due appreciation, the\n[281] consciousness, of it, by way of song, that the next generation\nsought, by way of sculptural memorial in marble, and above all, as it\nseems, in bronze.  The keen demand for athletic statuary, the honour\nattached to the artist employed to make his statue at Olympia, or at\nhome, bear witness again to the pride with which a Greek town, the\npathos, it might be, with which a family, looked back to the victory\nof one of its members.  In the courts of Olympia a whole population\nin marble and bronze gathered quickly,--a world of portraits, out of\nwhich, as the purged and perfected essence, the ideal soul, of them,\nemerged the Diadumenus, for instance, the Discobolus, the so-called\nJason of the Louvre.  Olympia was in truth, as Pindar says again, a\nmother of gold-crowned contests, the mother of a large offspring.\nAll over Greece the enthusiasm for gymnastic, for the life of the\ngymnasia, prevailed.  It was a gymnastic which, under the happy\nconditions of that time, was already surely what Plato pleads for,\nalready one half music, mousik\u00ea,+ a matter, partly, of character and\nof the soul, of the fair proportion between soul and body, of the\nsoul with itself.  Who can doubt it who sees and considers the still\nirresistible grace, the contagious pleasantness, of the Discobolus,\nthe Diadumenus, and a few other precious survivals from the athletic\nage which immediately preceded the manhood of Pheidias, between the\nPersian and the Peloponnesian wars?\n\n[282] Now, this predominance of youth, of the youthful form, in art,\nof bodily gymnastic promoting natural advantages to the utmost, of\nthe physical perfection developed thereby, is a sign that essential\nmastery has been achieved by the artist--the power, that is to say,\nof a full and free realisation.  For such youth, in its very essence,\nis a matter properly within the limits of the visible, the empirical,\nworld; and in the presentment of it there will be no place for\nsymbolic hint, none of that reliance on the helpful imagination of\nthe spectator, the legitimate scope of which is a large one, when art\nis dealing with religious objects, with what in the fulness of its\nown nature is not really expressible at all.  In any passable\nrepresentation of the Greek discobolus, as in any passable\nrepresentation of an English cricketer, there can be no successful\nevasion of the natural difficulties of the thing to be done--the\ndifficulties of competing with nature itself, or its maker, in that\nmarvellous combination of motion and rest, of inward mechanism with\nthe so smoothly finished surface and outline--finished ad unguem--\nwhich enfold it.\n\nOf the gradual development of such mastery of natural detail, a\nveritable counterfeit of nature, the veritable rhythmus of the\nrunner, for example--twinkling heel and ivory shoulder--we have hints\nand traces in the historians of art.  One had attained the very turn\nand texture of the [283] crisp locks, another the very feel of the\ntense nerve and full-flushed vein, while with another you saw the\nbosom of Ladas expand, the lips part, as if for a last breath ere he\nreached the goal.  It was like a child finding little by little the\nuse of its limbs, the testimony of its senses, at a definite moment.\nWith all its poetic impulse, it is an age clearly of faithful\nobservation, of what we call realism, alike in its iconic and heroic\nwork; alike in portraiture, that is to say, and in the presentment of\ndivine or abstract types.  Its workmen are close students now of the\nliving form as such; aim with success at an ever larger and more\nvarious expression of its details; or replace a conventional\nstatement of them by a real and lively one.  That it was thus is\nattested indirectly by the fact that they busied themselves,\nseemingly by way of a tour de force, and with no essential interest\nin such subject, alien as it was from the pride of health which is\ncharacteristic of the gymnastic life, with the expression of physical\npain, in Philoctetes, for instance.  The adroit, the swift, the\nstrong, in full and free exercise of their gifts, to the delight of\nothers and of themselves, though their sculptural record has for the\nmost part perished, are specified in ancient literary notices as the\nsculptor's favourite subjects, repeated, remodelled, over and over\nagain, for the adornment of the actual scene of athletic success, or\nthe market-place at home of the distant Northern or Sicilian town\n[284] whence the prizeman had come.--A countless series of popular\nillustrations to Pindar's Odes!  And if art was still to minister to\nthe religious sense, it could only be by clothing celestial spirits\nalso as nearly as possible in the bodily semblance of the various\nathletic combatants, whose patrons respectively they were supposed to\nbe.\n\nThe age to which we are come in the story of Greek art presents to us\nindeed only a chapter of scattered fragments, of names that are\nlittle more, with but surmise of their original significance, and\nmere reasonings as to the sort of art that may have occupied what are\nreally empty spaces.  Two names, however, connect themselves\ngloriously with certain extant works of art; copies, it is true, at\nvarious removes, yet copies of what is still found delightful through\nthem, and by copyists who for the most part were themselves masters.\nThrough the variations of the copyist, the restorer, the mere\nimitator, these works are reducible to two famous original types--the\nDiscobolus or quoit-player, of Myron, the beau id\u00e9al (we may use that\nterm for once justly) of athletic motion; and the Diadumenus of\nPolycleitus, as, binding the fillet or crown of victory upon his\nhead, he presents the beau id\u00e9al of athletic repose, and almost\nbegins to think.\n\nMyron was a native of Eleutherae, and a pupil of Ageladas of Argos.\nThere is nothing more to tell by way of positive detail of this so\nfamous [285] artist, save that the main scene of his activity was\nAthens, now become the centre of the artistic as of all other modes\nof life in Greece.  Multiplicasse veritatem videtur, says Pliny.  He\nwas in fact an earnest realist or naturalist, and rose to central\nperfection in the portraiture, the idealised portraiture, of athletic\nyouth, from a mastery first of all in the delineation of inferior\nobjects, of little lifeless or living things.  Think, however, for a\nmoment, how winning such objects are still, as presented on Greek\ncoins;--the ear of corn, for instance, on those of Metapontum; the\nmicroscopic cockle-shell, the dolphins, on the coins of Syracuse.\nMyron, then, passes from pleasant truth of that kind to the\ndelineation of the worthier sorts of animal life,--the ox, the dog--\nto nothing short of illusion in the treatment of them, as ancient\nconnoisseurs would have you understand.  It is said that there are\nthirty-six extant epigrams on his brazen cow.  That animal has her\ngentle place in Greek art, from the Siren tomb, suckling her young\nthere, as the type of eternal rejuvenescence, onwards to the\nprocession of the Elgin frieze, where, still breathing deliciously of\nthe distant pastures, she is led to the altar.  We feel sorry for\nher, as we look, so lifelike is the carved marble.  The sculptor who\nworked there, whoever he may have been, had profited doubtless by the\nstudy of Myron's famous work.  For what purpose he made it, does not\nappear;--as [286] an architectural ornament; or a votive offering;\nperhaps only because he liked making it.  In hyperbolic epigram, at\nany rate, the animal breathes, explaining sufficiently the point of\nPliny's phrase regarding Myron--Corporum curiosus.  And when he came\nto his main business with the quoit-player, the wrestler, the runner,\nhe did not for a moment forget that they too were animals, young\nanimals, delighting in natural motion, in free course through the\nyielding air, over uninterrupted space, according to Aristotle's\ndefinition of pleasure: \"the unhindered exercise of one's natural\nforce.\"  Corporum tenus curiosus:--he was a \"curious workman\" as far\nas the living body is concerned.  Pliny goes on to qualify that\nphrase by saying that he did not express the sensations of the mind--\nanimi sensus.  But just there, in fact, precisely in such limitation,\nwe find what authenticates Myron's peculiar value in the evolution of\nGreek art.  It is of the essence of the athletic prizeman, involved\nin the very ideal of the quoit-player, the cricketer, not to give\nexpression to mind, in any antagonism to, or invasion of, the body;\nto mind as anything more than a function of the body, whose healthful\nbalance of functions it may so easily perturb;--to disavow that\ninsidious enemy of the fairness of the bodily soul as such.\n\nYet if the art of Myron was but little occupied with the reasonable\nsoul (animus), with those mental situations the expression of which,\nthough [287] it may have a pathos and a beauty of its own, is for the\nmost part adverse to the proper expression of youth, to the beauty of\nyouth, by causing it to be no longer youthful, he was certainly a\nmaster of the animal or physical soul there (anima); how it is, how\nit displays itself, as illustrated, for instance, in the Discobolus.\nOf voluntary animal motion the very soul is undoubtedly there.  We\nhave but translations into marble of the original in bronze.  In\nthat, it was as if a blast of cool wind had congealed the metal, or\nthe living youth, fixed him imperishably in that moment of rest which\nlies between two opposed motions, the backward swing of the right\narm, the movement forwards on which the left foot is in the very act\nof starting.  The matter of the thing, the stately bronze or marble,\nthus rests indeed; but the artistic form of it, in truth, scarcely\nmore, even to the eye, than the rolling ball or disk, may be said to\nrest, at every moment of its course,--just metaphysically, you know.\n\nThis mystery of combined motion and rest, of rest in motion, had\ninvolved, of course, on the part of the sculptor who had mastered its\nsecret, long and intricate consideration.  Archaic as it is,\nprimitive still in some respects, full of the primitive youth it\ncelebrates, it is, in fact, a learned work, and suggested to a great\nanalyst of literary style, singular as it may seem, the \"elaborate\"\nor \"contorted\" manner in literature [288] of the later Latin\nwriters, which, however, he finds \"laudable\" for its purpose.  Yet\nwith all its learned involution, thus so oddly characterised by\nQuintilian, so entirely is this quality subordinated to the proper\npurpose of the Discobolus as a work of art, a thing to be looked at\nrather than to think about, that it makes one exclaim still, with the\npoet of athletes,--The natural is ever best!\"--to de phya hapan\nkratiston.+  Perhaps that triumphant, unimpeachable naturalness is\nafter all the reason why, on seeing it for the first time, it\nsuggests no new view of the beauty of human form, or point of view\nfor the regarding of it; is acceptable rather as embodying (say, in\none perfect flower) all one has ever fancied or seen, in old Greece\nor on Thames' side, of the unspoiled body of youth, thus delighting\nitself and others, at that perfect, because unconscious, point of\ngood-fortune, as it moves or rests just there for a moment, between\nthe animal and spiritual worlds.  \"Grant them,\" you pray in Pindar's\nown words, grant them with feet so light to pass through life!\"\n\nThe face of the young man, as you see him in the British Museum for\ninstance, with fittingly inexpressive expression, (look into, look at\nthe curves of, the blossom-like cavity of the opened mouth) is\nbeautiful, but not altogether virile.  The eyes, the facial lines\nwhich they gather into one, seem ready to follow the coming motion of\nthe discus as those of an onlooker might be; [289] but that head does\nnot really belong to the discobolus.  To be assured of this you have\nbut to compare with that version in the British Museum the most\nauthentic of all derivations from the original, preserved till lately\nat the Palazzo Massimi in Rome.  Here, the vigorous head also, with\nthe face, smooth enough, but spare, and tightly drawn over muscle and\nbone, is sympathetic with, yields itself to, the concentration, in\nthe most literal sense, of all beside;--is itself, in very truth, the\nsteady centre of the discus, which begins to spin; as the source of\nwill, the source of the motion with which the discus is already on\nthe wing,--that, and the entire form.  The Discobolus of the Massimi\nPalace presents, moreover, in the hair, for instance, those survivals\nof primitive manner which would mark legitimately Myron's actual pre-\nPheidiac standpoint; as they are congruous also with a certain\narchaic, a more than merely athletic, spareness of form generally--\ndelightful touches of unreality in this realist of a great time, and\nof a sort of conventionalism that has an attraction in itself.\n\nWas it a portrait?  That one can so much as ask the question is a\nproof how far the master, in spite of his lingering archaism, is come\nalready from the antique marbles of Aegina.  Was it the portrait of\none much-admired youth, or rather the type, the rectified essence, of\nmany such, at the most pregnant, the essential, moment, of the [290]\nexercise of their natural powers, of what they really were?  Have we\nhere, in short, the sculptor Myron's reasoned memory of many a quoit-\nplayer, of a long flight of quoit-players; as, were he here, he might\nhave given us the cricketer, the passing generation of cricketers,\nsub specie eternitatis, under the eternal form of art?\n\nWas it in that case a commemorative or votive statue, such as\nPausanias found scattered throughout Greece?  Was it, again, designed\nto be part only of some larger decorative scheme, as some have\nsupposed of the Venus of Melos, or a work of genre as we say, a thing\nintended merely to interest, to gratify the taste, with no further\npurpose?  In either case it may have represented some legendary\nquoit-player--Perseus at play with Acrisius fatally, as one has\nsuggested; or Apollo with Hyacinthus, as Ovid describes him in a work\nof poetic genre.\n\nAnd if the Discobolus is, after all, a work of genre--a work merely\nimitative of the detail of actual life--for the adornment of a room\nin a private house, it would be only one of many such produced in\nMyron's day.  It would be, in fact, one of the pristae directly\nattributed to him by Pliny, little congruous as they may seem with\nthe grandiose motions of his more characteristic work.  The pristae,\nthe sawyers,--a celebrated creation of the kind,--is supposed to have\ngiven its name to the whole class of like things.  No [291] age,\nindeed, since the rudiments of art were mastered, can have been\nwithout such reproductions of the pedestrian incidents of every day,\nfor the mere pleasant exercise at once of the curiosity of the\nspectator and the imitative instinct of the producer.  The Terra-\nCotta Rooms of the Louvre and the British Museum are a proof of it.\nOne such work indeed there is, delightful in itself, technically\nexquisite, most interesting by its history, which properly finds its\nplace beside the larger, the full-grown, physical perfection of the\nDiscobolus, one of whose alert younger brethren he may be,--the\nSpinario namely, the boy drawing a thorn from his foot, preserved in\nthe so rare, veritable antique bronze at Rome, in the Museum of the\nCapitol, and well known in a host of ancient and modern\nreproductions.\n\nThere, or elsewhere in Rome, tolerated in the general destruction of\nancient sculpture--like the \"Wolf of the Capitol,\" allowed by way of\nheraldic sign, as in modern Siena, or like the equestrian figure of\nMarcus Aurelius doing duty as Charlemagne,--like those, but like very\nfew other works of the kind, the Spinario remained, well-known and in\nhonour, throughout the Middle Age.  Stories like that of Ladas the\nfamous runner, who died as he reached the goal in a glorious foot-\nrace of boys, the subject of a famous work by Myron himself, (the\n\"last breath,\" as you saw, was on the boy's lips) were told of the\nhalf-grown bronze lad at the Capitol. [292]  Of necessity, but\nfatally, he must pause for a few moments in his course; or the course\nis at length over, or the breathless journey with some all-important\ntidings; and now, not till now, he thinks of resting to draw from the\nsole of his foot the cruel thorn, driven into it as he ran.  In any\ncase, there he still sits for a moment, for ever, amid the smiling\nadmiration of centuries, in the agility, in the perfect na\u00efvet\u00e9 also\nas thus occupied, of his sixteenth year, to which the somewhat\nlengthy or attenuated structure of the limbs is conformable.  And\nthen, in this attenuation, in the almost Egyptian proportions, in the\nshallowness of the chest and shoulders especially, in the Phoenician\nor old Greek sharpness and length of profile, and the long,\nconventional, wire-drawn hair of the boy, arching formally over the\nforehead and round the neck, there is something of archaism, of that\narchaism which survives, truly, in Myron's own work, blending with\nthe grace and power of well-nigh the maturity of Greek art.  The\nblending of interests, of artistic alliances, is certainly\ndelightful.\n\nPolycleitus, the other famous name of this period, and with a fame\njustified by work we may still study, at least in its immediate\nderivatives, had also tried his hand with success in such subjects.\nIn the Astragalizontes, for instance, well known to antiquity in\ncountless reproductions, he had treated an incident of the every-day\nlife of every age, which Plato sketches by the way.\n\n[293] Myron, by patience of genius, had mastered the secret of the\nexpression of movement, had plucked out the very heart of its\nmystery.  Polycleitus, on the other hand, is above all the master of\nrest, of the expression of rest after toil, in the victorious and\ncrowned athlete, Diadumenus.  In many slightly varying forms, marble\nversions of the original in bronze of Delos, the Diadumenus,\nindifferently, mechanically, is binding round his head a ribbon or\nfillet.  In the Vaison copy at the British Museum it was of silver.\nThat simple fillet is, in fact, a diadem, a crown, and he assumes it\nas a victor; but, as I said, mechanically, and, prize in hand, might\nbe asking himself whether after all it had been worth while.  For the\nactive beauty of the Agonistes of which Myron's art is full, we have\nhere, then, the passive beauty of the victor.  But the later\nincident, the realisation of rest, is actually in affinity with a\ncertain earliness, so to call it, in the temper and work of\nPolycleitus.  He is already something of a reactionary; or pauses,\nrather, to enjoy, to convey enjoyably to others, the full savour of a\nparticular moment in the development of his craft, the moment of the\nperfecting of restful form, before the mere consciousness of\ntechnical mastery in delineation urges forward the art of sculpture\nto a bewildering infinitude of motion.  In opposition to the ease,\nthe freedom, of others, his aim is, by a voluntary restraint in the\nexercise of such technical mastery, [294] to achieve nothing less\nthan the impeccable, within certain narrow limits.  He still\nhesitates, is self-exacting, seems even to have checked a growing\nreadiness of hand in the artists about him.  He was renowned as a\ngraver, found much to do with the chisel, introducing many a fine\nafter-thought, when the rough-casting of his work was over.  He\nstudied human form under such conditions as would bring out its\nnatural features, its static laws, in their entirety, their harmony;\nand in an academic work, so to speak, no longer to be clearly\nidentified in what may be derivations from it, he claimed to have\nfixed the canon, the common measure, of perfect man.  Yet with\nPolycleitus certainly the measure of man was not yet \"the measure of\nan angel,\" but still only that of mortal youth; of youth, however, in\nthat scrupulous and uncontaminate purity of form which recommended\nitself even to the Greeks as befitting messengers from the gods, if\nsuch messengers should come.\n\nAnd yet a large part of Myron's contemporary fame depended on his\nreligious work--on his statue of Here, for instance, in ivory and\ngold--that too, doubtless, expressive, as appropriately to its\nsubject as to himself, of a passive beauty.  We see it still,\nperhaps, in the coins of Argos.  And has not the crowned victor, too,\nin that mechanic action, in his demure attitude, something which\nreminds us of the religious significance of the Greek athletic\nservice?  It was a [295] sort of worship, you know--that department\nof public life; such worship as Greece, still in its superficial\nyouth, found itself best capable of.  At least those solemn contests\nbegan and ended with prayer and sacrifice.  Their most honoured\nprizes were a kind of religiously symbolical objects.  The athletic\nlife certainly breathes of abstinence, of rule and the keeping under\nof one's self.  And here in the Diadumenus we have one of its\npriests, a priest of the religion whose central motive was what has\nbeen called \"the worship of the body,\"--its modest priest.\n\nThe so-called Jason at the Louvre, the, Apoxyomenus, and a certain\nnumber of others you will meet with from time to time--whatever be\nthe age and derivation of the actual marble which reproduced for\nRome, for Africa, or Gaul, types that can have had their first origin\nin one only time and place--belong, at least aesthetically, to this\ngroup, together with the Adorante of Berlin, Winckelmann's antique\nfavourite, who with uplifted face and hands seems to be indeed in\nprayer, looks immaculate enough to be interceding for others.  As to\nthe Jason of the Louvre, one asks at first sight of him, as he stoops\nto make fast the sandal on his foot, whether the young man can be\nalready so marked a personage.  Is he already the approved hero, bent\non some great act of his famous epop\u00e9e; or mere youth only, again,\narraying itself mechanically, but alert in eye and soul, prompt to be\nroused to any [296] great action whatever?  The vaguely opened lips\ncertainly suggest the latter view; if indeed the body and the head\n(in a different sort of marble) really belong to one another.  Ah!\nthe more closely you consider the fragments of antiquity, those stray\nletters of the old Greek aesthetic alphabet, the less positive will\nyour conclusions become, because less conclusive the data regarding\nartistic origin and purpose.  Set here also, however, to the end that\nin a congruous atmosphere, in a real perspective, they may assume\ntheir full moral and aesthetic expression, whatever of like spirit\nyou may come upon in Greek or any other work, remembering that in\nEngland also, in Oxford, we have still, for any master of such art\nthat may be given us, subjects truly \"made to his hand.\"\n\nAs with these, so with their prototypes at Olympia, or at the\nIsthmus, above all perhaps in the Diadumenus of Polycleitus, a\ncertain melancholy (a pagan melancholy, it may be rightly called,\neven when we detect it in our English youth) is blent with the final\nimpression we retain of them.  They are at play indeed, in the sun;\nbut a little cloud passes over it now and then; and just because of\nthem, because they are there, the whole aspect of the place is\nchilled suddenly, beyond what one could have thought possible, into\nwhat seems, nevertheless, to be the proper and permanent light of\nday.  For though they pass on from age to age the [297]  type of what\nis pleasantest to look on, which, as type, is indeed eternal, it is,\nof course, but for an hour that it rests with any one of them\nindividually.  Assuredly they have no maladies of soul any more than\nof the body--Animi sensus non expressit.  But if they are not yet\nthinking, there is the capacity of thought, of painful thought, in\nthem, as they seem to be aware wistfully.  In the Diadumenus of\nPolycleitus this expression allies itself to the long-drawn facial\ntype of his preference, to be found also in another very different\nsubject, the ideal of which he fixed in Greek sculpture--the would-be\nvirile Amazon, in exquisite pain, alike of body and soul--the\n\"Wounded Amazon.\"  We may be reminded that in the first mention of\nathletic contests in Greek literature--in the twenty-third book of\nthe Iliad--they form part of the funeral rites of the hero Patroclus.\nIt is thus, though but in the faintest degree, even with the\nveritable prince of that world of antique bronze and marble, the\nDiscobolus at Rest of the Vatican, which might well be set where\nWinckelmann set the Adorante, representing as it probably does, the\noriginal of Alcamenes, in whom, a generation after Pheidias, an\nearlier and more earnest spirit still survived.  Although the crisply\ntrimmed head may seem a little too small to our, perhaps not quite\nrightful, eyes, we might accept him for that canon, or measure, of\nthe perfect human form, which [298] Polycleitus had proposed.  He is\nneither the victor at rest, as with Polycleitus, nor the combatant\nalready in motion, as with Myron; but, as if stepping backward from\nMyron's precise point ofinterest, and with the heavydiscusstill in\nthe left hand, he is preparing for his venture, taking stand\ncarefully on the right foot.  Eye and mind concentre, loyally,\nentirely, upon the business in hand.  The very finger is reckoning\nwhile he watches, intent upon the cast of another, as the metal\nglides to the goal.  Take him, to lead you forth quite out of the\nnarrow limits of the Greek world.  You have pure humanity there, with\na glowing, yet restrained joy and delight in itself, but without\nvanity; and it is pure.  There is nothing certainly supersensual in\nthat fair, round head, any more than in the long, agile limbs; but\nalso no impediment, natural or acquired.  To have achieved just that,\nwas the Greek's truest claim for furtherance in the main line of\nhuman development.  He had been faithful, we cannot help saying, as\nwe pass from that youthful company, in what comparatively is perhaps\nlittle--in the culture, the administration, of the visible world; and\nhe merited, so we might go on to say--he merited Revelation,\nsomething which should solace his heart in the inevitable fading of\nthat.  We are reminded of those strange prophetic words of the\nWisdom, the Logos, by whom God made the world, in one of [299] the\nsapiential, half-Platonic books of the Hebrew Scriptures:--\"I was by\nhim, as one brought up with him; rejoicing in the habitable parts of\nthe earth.  My delights were with the sons of men.\"+\n\nNOTES\n\n271. +Transliteration: tymbos amphipolos.  Translation: \"a much\nfrequented tomb.\"\n\n274. In some fine reliefs of the thirteenth century, Jesus himself\ndraws near to the deathbed of his Mother.  The soul has already\nquitted her body, and is seated, a tiny crowned figure, on his left\narm (as she had carried Him) to be taken to heaven.  In the beautiful\nearly fourteenth century monument of Aymer de Valence at Westminster,\nthe soul of the deceased, \"a small figure wrapped in a mantle,\" is\nsupported by two angels at the head of the tomb.  Among many similar\ninstances may be mentioned the soul of the beggar, Lazarus, on a\ncarved capital at V\u00e9z\u00e9lay; and the same subject in a coloured window\nat Bourges.  The clean, white little creature seems glad to escape\nfrom the body, tattooed all over with its sores in a regular pattern.\n\n279. +Transliteration: Ariston hyd\u00f4r.  Translation: \"Water is best...\"\nThe ode goes on to praise the Olympic contests.  Pindar, Odes,\nBook O, poem 1, line 1.  The Odes of Pindar including the Principal\nFragments with an Introduction and an English Translation by Sir John\nSandys, Litt.D., FBA. Sir John Sandys. Cambridge, MA., Harvard\nUniversity Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1937.\n\n280. +Transliteration: epe\u00f4n hoimon ligyn.  Translation: \"the clear\nstrain of words [i.e. song].\"  Pindar, Odes, Book O., poem 9, line\n47.  See page 279 note for reference.\n\n281. +Transliteration: mousik\u00ea.  Liddell and Scott definition: \"any\nart over which the Muses presided, esp. music or lyric poetry set and\nsung to music....\"\n\n288. +Transliteration: to de phya hapan kratiston.  Pater's translation:\n\"The natural is ever best!\"  Pindar, Odes, Book O., poem 9, line 100.\nSee See page 279 note for reference.\n\n299. +Proverbs 8.30-31.\n\nTHE END","title":"Greek Studies: a Series of Essays","tradition":"myth-cosmogony","translated_text":null,"word_count":73047}