ANCIENT ART.

The sixth of the course of lectures on ancient art, by Mr Stephen Thompson,  . .  . He went on to show that the creations of Greek and Roman art are co-extensive with all provinces of the ancient life and mind. There is no phase in Greece, or in the civilisation which Rome borrowed from Greece, which is not illustrated and illumined thereby. Nothing that the ancient Greek or, following him, the ancient Roman, did, or thought, or suffered, or desired, which has not found an embodiment in art—in the practical work of man's hands—as well as in their literature, and thus constantly brought home the beautiful stories of the ancient writers. The key to the Greek genius and religion was known by that ugly word "anthropomorphism"— that spirit which considered all things, whether the external aspects of the world, the forces of nature, or of the human spirit, under human lineaments, conceiving of everything that it is possible to conceive of at all in the likeness of a human being. The lecturer next surveyed the range and extent of the conceptions thus represented, personified—it might almost be said incarnated, for they became as real human beings under the creative touch of ancient art, whether in sculpture, painting, or the subordinate arts. To what of the Egyptian mythology they appropriated they added more poetic and beautiful forms. To the great celestial deities they added less awful ones—demigods, heroes, personifications of the virtues and the vices, times and seasons, and peopled all nature, the airs, the woods and waters, mountains and cities, with invisible beings, supposing that every object in creation, from the sun and sea to the smallest fountain and stream, was under the guardian care of some tutelar deity, and these beings thus became subjects which they embodied in some or other forms of art. This art-inspiring system of belief in some aspects is not separated by any wide gulf from the beautiful conception of Milton :—
 

"Millions of spiritual creatures walk the earth
Unseen both when we wake and when we sleep." 

The difference between the habitual tone of the old Greeks towards what was beautiful in nature was contrasted with the modern ideas, in which the idea of divinity is apt to get separated from the life of nature; approaching these visible things, as with a theory that they are dead, governed by physical laws, and so forth. To the Greek the fountain always sang and the flowers rejoiced, and his fellowship and sympathy were always for the spirit in the stream, not for the stream, always for the dryad in the wood, not for the wood, and upon this they founded those beautiful myths, such as Silenus keeping the shepherds spell-bound till twilight with his cosmic song; Proteus uttering his unwilling oracles upon the solitary shore; Clymene singing of love in the caverned water world, amid the rivers' roaring flow; Old Silvanus, and the sister nymphs, and countless others, which still cast a spell over every imaginative mind. The embodiments in art first passed in review were those of the twelve great Olympian gods, who by the time Greece was Greece, and Greek civilisation was at all developed, divided amongst them the whole empire of the Greek imagination. Originally the sole idea embodied in any god was the physical one, but by degrees, moral, intellectual, and political ideas became associated with them. Zeus, the sovereign father of all the gods, in whom it is probable the physical sky was first personified, the thunderbolt he holds in one hand being the symbol of sudden destruction, overwhelming powers of the sky, and his familiar attendant, the eagle—symbol of things that swoop down suddenly on the earth from above—and his characteristic features as stamped by Pheidias, combining majesty and nobleness, and all the attributes befitting the father of gods and men, was first enlarged upon. Next to Zeus, Poseidon, the god of the sea, was a representation favourable to art, as suggesting his own types and his own accompaniments, being generally represented in violent action, the best period of Greek art developing this idea very characteristically. Then came Vulcan, then Mars, and his attributes as god of war, generally represented together with Aphrodite. Hermes, the youth among the gods, and the messenger of Jupiter, was always easily recognisable by the Caduceus and the winged feet. His later development in art, ascribed to the Attic school, after the Peloponnesian war, was indicated; and then Apollo, the favourite subject of the great artists of Greece, the highest conception of ideal male beauty being expressed in his representations. From these gods, after brief notice, the lecturer passed on to the consideration of the six Olympian goddesses from a less familiar and more interesting point of view. There was a tendency, it was observed, to regard the Greek myths as only a chaos of confused fancies, yet it often took very little pains to disentangle them at least sufficiently to seize their main thread. There is little doubt, and this idea is shared by some most acute critics and commentators, that these six deities in their simplest aspect were but so many types of ideal womanhood. Woman's whole earthly career may be considered as depicted when we portray the girl, the maiden, the lover, the wife, the mother, and the housekeeper or queen of home. These are represented— giving both the Greek and Roman names— by Artemis or Diana, Athena or Minerva, Aphrodite or Venus, Hera or Juno, and Hestia or Vesta. First comes the epoch of free girlhood, symbolised by Artemis, the Roman Diana. She represents early youth, and all young things find in her their protector. She became, as we see by her representations in art, the goddess of hunters, and learns of her brother Phoebus to be a hunter herself. Her type of character is perfectly marked. She stands for the nymph-like period of existence. (A copy of the large bronze head of this goddess purchased a few years ago by the trustees of the British Museum for the large sum of £10,000 was here exhibited and described at length.)  After girlhood comes the maturity of virgin womanhood. This is symbolised in Pallas Athene. She is the riper Artemis, passing beyond her early nymph-like years, and reaching the highest consummation that woman can attain alone, and so fascinating is this moment of serene self-poise that the virgin Athene ranks in some respects at the head of all the goddesses. Beside her Artemis is undeveloped, while all the rest have passed out of themselves, and share the responsibilities of love and home. No compliment ever paid to woman was so high as that paid by the Greeks when incarnating the highest wisdom in this maiden's form, and making this attribute only increase her virtue and her charms. Hence at Athens—the Greece of Greece—she is reverenced above all deities. She had not only her statue carved in ivory and gold by Pheidias in the Parthenon, but standing on the Acropolis is a colossal bronze statue 60ft. high, visible far out at sea, so that the sailor's first glimpse of Athens was the glittering of the sun's rays on her spear and helmet. The cast of the Minerva Giustiniani in the sculpture galleries of the Museum was supposed to be a copy—or at least represents the type of this celebrated work. Two exquisite copies of antique gems of Athene were also exhibited in illustration of this subject—a very favourite one in Greek art. The ideal of Athene was perfected by Pheidias, and, as in these gems, the expression is always grave and sweet, and known from all others by the length of the hair, hence the Greek oath, "by the tresses of Athene." In descriptions, she alone is blue-eyed, to signify she dwells above all clouds, while even Aphrodite, the auburn-haired in the Iliad, has large black eyes. The pure forehead, the long and finely-shaped nose, the hair artlessly shaded back across the brow, and flowing down upon the neck, are all in accord with this wonderfully ideal creation. Her attributes were then described, one or more of these emblems being always found depicted in Greek art, although the Greek Athena was afterwards transformed in Rome to a prosaic Minerva. But Athene's maiden meditation is simply one stage in woman's life, not its completion; a career that seeks completion pauses not here. Then comes the reign of Aphrodite the Beautiful. She represents the passion which is the basis of purity. Accordingly married love is sacred to Aphrodite as the virgin condition. No animal sacrifices are offered to her, but only wreaths of flowers, and the month of April, when the earth stirs again into life, is her sacred time. But love legitimately reaches its conclusion in marriage; and after Aphrodite comes Hera, the Roman Juno, the wife of Zeus, and the type and protector of marriage. Her type in art is perfectly marked. Winckelmann says it is impossible to mistake a head of Hera. Athena commands like a princess, Hera like a queen. But woman's career is still incomplete; she must also be a mother. Then comes the maternal deity of Greece— Demeter, the Roman Ceres. Her very name signifies mother, or mother earth. She became the mother of Persephone or Proserpine, and all her existence is consecrated in this motherhood. She is glorified through suffering by the deprivation of her daughter, and Grote well names her the Mater Dolorosa of Greece. She is always represented in art as more maternal than Hera, and the enveloping draperies are all in keeping with her attributes. Besides these five embodiments of woman as girl, maiden, lover, wife, and mother, there must be finally one which completes them all. Hestia or Vesta, the sister of Zeus, not his wife like Hera, represents woman as queen of home. No separate temple is needed, for every hearth is her home. Every in-door oath in Greece is sworn by her, and as the city itself is but an extended family, so the city has also its sacred hearth where the public fire is kept burning, and where the fugitive is safe. If a colony goes forth, the emigrants take coals from the public hearth of the town they leave, for Hestia's fire must never go out. Her representations in art Were described, and the type and attributes under which she was depicted. So well did this series of divinities cover all the functions of womanly life that none could fail in finding her tutelary goddess in some shrine or temple. An imaginative Greek girl had not an epoch in her life that was not ennobled. Every act of her existence was glorified. Passing from the great Olympian gods to the lesser powers, their name is almost legion. They bewilder almost as much as they enchant our imagination. There is no power of nature, and there is no power of the human mind or heart, which is not personified in this way. For example, the powers of wine, of all fertile inspiriting products of the soil, which were personified in Bacchus and his numerous group of satyrs, fauns, and mænads. Bacchus, though not one of the greater gods was worshipped in certain regions of Greece—in Arcadia. In the decorative sculpture of the Temple of Apollo there were figures of Bacchus, and we have many representations of the type created by the later Attic school. 380 B.C. Bacchanalian subjects are commonly found in all minor forms of art, such as wall-painting, vase-painting, and especially the relief sculpture of the late Roman school, of which there are many examples in the Vatican—sarcophagi, and other kindred works. These powers of Bacchus bring us to the consideration of other nature powers, such as rivers for example. The great division among rivers was this. A river that ran straight into the sea was in all cases thought of as a son of Poseidon ; always a male god, sometimes a compound of man and bull, to typify the energy, the force and rush, the stream and power, of a river. The Greek imagination, however, as it became more refined, typified rivers by men of various character and type —that is, the large rivers ; but all the small rivers and mountain streams which run into the large rivers are always women—female nymphs. This was illustrated in the case of the River Hissus, close to Athens. Next came the winds—the wind figures being appropriately draped according to the quarter they represented, Boreas being always warmly draped, to show he came from the north.

Then there are figures, male or female, for every grove, every spring, every mountain, every valley, every natural division under which the mind can think of the influences of nature. And, passing from personifications of nature to personifications of the human spirit, we find human lineaments, more or less appropriate, invented for every spiritual or intellectual abstraction that it is possible to think of. The Muses was one which occurs on innumerable works of art Victory was one of several personifications to which the Greeks nearly always gave wings, as they did to other things which are fleeting and fugitive, which come suddenly and go away suddenly Victory is of that kind, and  the type of Victory is thus winged. The first great statue of Victory, belonging to the great central period of Greek art, has only been unearthed during the last few years at the excavations of Olympia by the Germans It was set on a lofty pedestal, and is a beautiful figure, in the act of swooping down from a rock, the winged motion and the way in which the drapery is made to flow hack from the figure, like waves from the prow of a ship, being rendered with inimitable grace and spirit Other winged figures were Eros or Love, generally represented in later Greek art as a winged boy. Death was also represented as winged. In Greek art, sleep and death are almost indistinguishable, they are both of them winged youths, and sometimes, though not always, carry an inverted torch, but it is only when the genius carries a sword that we are sure it is really death. This was illustrated by the figures on the drum of a column from the temple of Diana at Ephesus excavated by Mr. Wood, and copied in a large autotype from the museum of the Public Library.

Besides these, there are a thousand other simple and obvious abstractions of the mind, such as Peace and Plenty—Plenty, as the offspring of Peace, being represented in Greek art as a mother holding on her arm a child bearing a cornucopia. Then there was that wholly different class— the legendary heroes Hercules, Theseus, and Meleagar, are great and familiar examples, typefying all the beneficent operations of the early purging and purifying the world from noxious forces. Hercules was the stalwart purifying hero who went about purging all Greece of evils and mischiefs The large cast of Hercules and Omphale in the Museum galleries was referred to in connexion with these exploits. Theseus was more particularly the hero of Athens, as Hercules was of universal Greece, and Meleagar was the huntsman among heroes, and was generally represented in connexion with his victory over the Calydonian boar. Passing finally from all these personification and conceptions, natural or legendary, there was the delineations of real life, and even with these it was impossible to establish any very sharp division between what is imaginary and what is real in Greek art, because they seldom depicted real scenes without putting in as actors in those real scenes some one or other of these legendary creations. Eros is present in every marriage scene, and Victory is at hand to interview in every contest Then came the large class of portrait figures and busts, though these belonged chiefly to later periods, during and after Alexander, portraiture in Greek art being always to a great extent ideal. In Roman times every one sought to be thus glorified. A large and very beautiful class of works in Greek art with which we have only lately become extensively acquainted are representation, of death. At Athens—says Professor Colvin, in one of his Slade lectures, after a recent visit —go along an excavated street, and either side of the street is lined with sculptures in relief. All are funeral monuments, and bear the name of the persons in whose honour they are set up. In almost all cases death is represented in the quietest, most reserved, and tranquil natural way possible, by some scene of ordinary farewell. For instance, a man takes care of his dog, which jumps up and fawns upon him as he goes away ; or a lady sits in her chair, and her   servants bring her some ribbon or veil, which she would put on to go out for a walk. Elsewhere a mother pats a child under the chin, or lays her arm on the hand of another woman who comes to her, gestures of parting always expressed with the most perfect reserve and delicacy, goodbyes of every day, that symbolised to the Greek mind the last solemn good-bye of all. No two of these monuments are ever quite alike, says Professor Colvin, there is infinite refinement in all of them that belong to the good time, and they show with what gentle and collected thoughts the ancient Greek was ready to leave the world which was so full of glory to him, and bid farewell to that life which he spent in the worship, and almost in the companionship, of his gods—of those glad and strong and divine existences, himself only one degree less divine, glad, and strong than they. This concluded, it was observed, a by no means exhaustive survey of the subjects of Greek art, and it could not be better done than in the words of a distinguished American litterateur—"That wonderful old mythology is gone ; that great race shed it lightly as leaves in autumn and went its way. These names of Hera, and Aphrodite, and Athena, are but autumn leaves, caught in our hands to show the red tints that still linger on their surface; they have lasted long, but who knows how soon they will be faded and forgotten? Yet not till the world is rich enough to have a race more ideal than the Greeks will there be another harvest of anything so beautiful to the imagination."

 Argus August 1883, http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article8554339