of Lysicrates §. 128. R. 6.). A dense crowd of figures, difficult 8 to disentangle, and divided into several grounds, first made its appearance on the sarcophagi of the later Roman style (§. 207, 5.), while painting, which its means better enable to distinguish distances, often condensed the groups more, at least as early as the Macedonian period, although even here, a composition not very different from the basso-relievo always continued in general use.

1. On masks, Böttiger, N. Deutscher Mercur. 1795. St. 4. s. 337. by Köhler, Masken, ihr Ursprung und neue Auslegung einiger der merkwürdigsten. Petersb. 1833. (Mém. de l'Acad. Imp. des Sciences T. ii.). In reference to the Bacchian masks with the beard composed of leaves of the goals and other plants, which are here ingeniously handled, rounding off the oval by means of these is also to be taken into consideration. Feuerbach Vatic. Apollo S. 351. [Serie di mascheroni cavati dal antico la prima volta R. 1781. 4to. Six masks in terracotta, M. Borbon. vii, 44.]

3. On an image of the Dionysian Acratus at Athens, Paus. i, 2, 4. gooωπόν ἐστίν οἱ μόνον ἐνῳκοδομημένον τοίχῳ. A Dionysus mask was taken for a portrait of Pisistratus, Athen. xii, 533 c. In Naxos a gos. of Dion. Baccheus composed of vine, and one of Zeus Meilichius of beech-wood, Athen. iii, 78 c. A mask of this kind as a Bacchian idol on the sarcophagus PioCl. v, 18.

4. Clypei of Appius §. 181. R. 3. From statesmen they also transferred them to literary men, Tacit. A. ii, 83.; hence some of them are to be found in marble copies, not merely of Cicero (Visconti Ic. Rom. pl. 12.) and Claudius (L. 274. Clarac. pl. 162.), but also of Demosthenes and Eschines (Visc. Ic. Gr. pl. 30.), as well as Sophocles and Menander, Visc. pl. 4. 6. comp. T. i. pl. 13. The ancient clypei were of metal, especially argentei cum imagine aurea (Marini, Atti ii. p. 408.), but at the same time yeaτol, picti (Macrob. Sat. ii, 3.), according to the above supposition §. 311, 3. in tausia. The xxsos Saga of Timomachus, also called λov, which was exhibited at the Hyacinthia, was perhaps a shield-image of this kind, Aristot. Schol. Pind. I. 6, 18. Comp. Gurlitt, Archäol. Schr. s. 199.

8. Comp. Göthe xliv. s. 154. Tölken, Ueber das Basrelief und den Unterschied der mahlerischen und plastischen Composition. B. 1815. 345.** The internal principles of composition are, of all 1 portions of art, the most difficult to express, as they are connected in the closest manner with the peculiar idea of each work. It is true that the fulness of significance of the mythic forms, the facility of completing it by personifications, the great number and simplicity of attributive symbols, and the fixed and precise signification of the attitudes and gestures of ancient art, lend the capability of saying much by means of few and simply grouped figures. As everything in this 2 world of art found its representation in human form, and its simple expression in easily intelligible action, ancient art,

and especially sculpture, did not require the representation of masses of men; even in battle-pictures of the Macedonian, and in triumphal reliefs of the Roman period a 3 few figures stand for large armies. In like manner, great distances in time and place are (as in the trilogies of Eschylus) brought under view together, and the chief moments of a chain of events, although far divided, are gathered, without 4 external separation, into one frame. Thus ancient art is placed in a happy medium between the hieroglyphic picture-writing of the East, and modern art, which is directed to the immediate rendering of the actual appearance; although many of its productions, of the Macedono-Roman period, make a con5 siderable approach to the latter tendency. But as regards the general means whereby human feeling can be roused into agreeable excitement, and this again made to subside, in a satisfactory close, into the proper frame of the soul, Greek art from an early period made itself master of these, and understood well how to employ especially the charm of contrast, at first by mere juxtaposition, afterwards by a natural development of the fundamental idea.

1.2. Comp. Winck. W. iv. s. 178. f. [Rhein. Mus. 1834. ii. s. 462 f. 465 f. H. Brunn on the parallelism of the compositions of early Greek works of art, Neues Rhein. Mus. v. s. 321.]

3. See, on this point, besides numerous archæological notes to ancient Sarcophagi and Philostratus' Pictures, Thiersch, Kunstblatt. 1827. N. 18. Tölken Ueber das verschiedne Verhältniss der ant. und modernen Mahlerei zur Poesie. B. 1821. Schorn Umriss 8. 26. on Pelops and Hippodamia after the description of Apollonius with the note of the scholiast.

5. The five stripes on the coffer of Cypselus (§. 57.) are filled up with mythic groups in accordance with such motives. In the fourth especially (which with the exception of Dionysus contains, like the second, 12 groups) battle scenes always alternate with groups of lovers and similar subjects. And if we arrange properly the shield of Hercules in Hesiod, (the figure of the dragon in the innermost circle; the bear and lion in the second narrow stripe; the battle of the centaurs, a choir of deities, a harbour and fishing, Perseus and the Gorgons in the third; in the fourth stripe, the city of war above the Gorgons, the city of peace opposite, therefore above the choir; the ocean as a border) we shall see that the two principal stripes are divided into one half with peaceful, and another with martial representations, which are brought into beautiful contrast with one another. Comp. on Polygnotus' pictures §. 134. R. 3.

THIRD PART.

ON THE SUBJECTS OF THE FORMATIVE ART.

346. As the formative art has the imitation of nature as 1 signed to it for its forms, so also it is referred for its subjects to matters of positive existence; neither can it create any spiritual beings from pure arbitrary will, but must be prompted and sustained by presupposition and a certain belief in their existence. Now, these positive subjects are either furnished 2 by external experience, or by a world of spiritual intuitions in which the nation moves, that is, either historical forms or beings of religion and mythology, which are alone capable of supplying in a permanent manner the belief in a real existence of their creations, poetry being in itself only enabled to produce it transiently. The subjects of the latter kind will be 3 always the chief problem among a people endowed with a genius for art, because the artistic faculty can in them develope and test itself more freely and completely in all its creative power.

I. MYTHOLOGICAL SUBJECTS.

347. The Greeks were somehow so fortunate that long ere 1 art had arrived at external manifestation, the genius of the people had prepared the way for the artist, and formed beforehand the entire world of art. The mystical element, so 2 essential to religion, in which we augur and feel the divine existence as something infinite, and absolutely different from humanity, which never admits of representation but only of indication (§. 31.), although never completely banished (a thing not possible among a religious people), was however thrust into the back-ground especially by poetry. The le- 3 gends which depict the secret sway of universal powers of nature, in images often intentionally strange and formless, had, even in the Homeric times, become for the most part void of significance; the festal usages, which were rooted in this soil, continued to be practised as old traditional ceremonies; but poetry followed the path which was necessary to it, fashioning everything more and more after the analogy of human life, with which a cheerful and confiding piety, that conceived the deity as a human guardian and counsellor, as a father and friend in every trial, could be very well reconciled. The bards, 4

who were themselves only organs of the general voice, gradually developed these ideas in a more individual and stable manner, although indeed Homer had not in this way attained the sensible definiteness which existed in the times when the 5 plastic art was in full splendour (§. 65.). Now, when sculpture, on its part, had improved so far as to seize the external forms of life, in their truth and fulness of significance, there was nothing more required than to express those already individualized ideas in corresponding grandiose forms. Although this could never take place without an altogether peculiar conception, without inspiration and an effort of genius on the part of the artists; the general national idea of the deity, however, existed, and served as a touchstone of the correctness 6 of the representation. Now, if this established and definite idea of the god, in connexion with the exquisite sense of the Greeks for the character of forms, felt itself completely satisfied, NORMAL IMAGES resulted, to which succeeding artists adhered with lively freedom, and with that correct taste, peculiar to the Hellenic nation, which was equally removed from Oriental stiffness and modern egotism. There arose images of gods and heroes, which possessed not less internal truth and stability, 7 than if the gods themselves had sat to the artists.

could take place in such a way only among the Greeks, because in Greece only was art to such an extent a national activity, the Greek nation only a great artist.

3. Therefore the images of the gods seemed to the Greeks, as it were, a peculiar nation of nobler nature; if they had made their appearance in life, all others, says Arist. Pol. i, 2., would have looked like slaves beside them, as the barbarians beside the Greeks.

5. The way in which the ideals of the gods were gradually established by faithful adherence to the popular notion, is not ill detailed by Dion. Chrysost. xii. p. 210.

6. Therefore the images of the gods, especially those which by frequent imitation had become canonical, are also monuments of the religious notions prevailing at the time when they arose, and, on the other hand, the knowledge of the latter assists in determining the time of the former. Heyne's treatise De auctoribus formarum quibus dii in priscæ artis operibus efficti sunt, Commentat. Gott. viii. p. xvi., is based on an excellent idea, which must be again taken up in a more enlarged application. Schorn Umrisse s. 20: "These gods are human persons, but an innocence exalted above all opposition pervades their essence and their actions." Grüneisen ueber das Sittliche der bild. Kunst bei den Griechen in Illgen's Zeitschr. für die hist. Theol. iii, 2. s. 1. (a healthy corporeal organisation bears in itself elements of morality.) Comp. Tholuck Litt. Anzeiger 1834. No. 69. Grüneisen Ueber bildliche Darstellung der Gottheit, comp. Tholuck ibid. No. 68.

1 348. This activity was on the whole most completely devel

oped in those gods who had been most idealized, that is, whose whole essence could be least reduced to a fundamental notion. We can certainly say of them: they do not signify, they are; 2 but this has not its foundation in that they had ever been objects of external experience, but only in the circumstance that these ideal beings had so to speak lived through the entire history of the Greek tribes which worshipped them, and bore in their character the most diversified impressions thereof. Hence they are in art corporeal in the highest degree, they have the most energetic personality. These are 3 the OLYMPIAN GODS, supreme Zeus with his brothers, sisters and children.

1. For what follows we have to mention as general aids: Montfaucon, Antiq. expl. i. (an extremely rude, but still indispensable collection). A. Hirt's Bilderbuch für Mythologie, Archäologie und Kunst. 2 Hefte text, the same quantity of engravings. B. 1805 and 1816 in 4to. A. L. Millin, Galérie Mythologique. P. 1811. 2 vols. text, 2 vols. engravings (190 plates), published in German at Berlin. Spence's Polymetis (a comparison of works of art with passages in poets). L. 1774. fo. We pass by the frivolous and uncritically prepared collections of mythological figures, with which the public is always imposed upon from time to time.

3. Groups of the Twelve Gods of Olympus (not always of the same) in the old style, have been mentioned above, §. 96. N. 16; the most important monument is the Borghese ara. A Borghese vase (Mon. Gab. 16. 17; now in the L. 381. Clarac, pl. 171.) exhibits the heads of the twelve gods, arbitrarily arranged as it appears, and their attributes as signs of the months combined with zodiacal constellations. Aphrodite April, Apollo May, Hermes June, Zeus July, Demeter August, Hephaestus September, Ares October, Artemis November, Hestia December, Hera January, Poseidon February, Athena March. Eleven deities assembled round Zeus, M. Cap. iv, 8. G. M. pl. 5, 19. [comp. Lersch, Jahrb. des Vereins im Rheinlande iv. s. 150.] A Pompeian picture of the twelve deities, in a row, above two genii loci, Gell. pl. 76. Heads of many gods in medallions, Pitt. Erc. iii, 50. [Gerhard Ueber die zwölf Götter Griechenlands with 4 pl. B. 1842.]

A. THE TWELVE OLYMPIAN DEITIES.

1. ZEUS.

349. Zeus, the god of heaven, was regarded by the ancient 1 Greeks as the father of all life in nature. According to the legend of the Argives he solemnized, in the genial rain of spring, the sacred nuptials with Hera; the nourishing oak and the fruitful dove symbolized him at Dodona as a god of benign influence; and in Crete his youthful history was related pretty nearly in the same way as that of Bacchus in other places.