mark the progress, as yet but feeble, which art had made in still following this same style, and when slightly removed from this same period; and if we add to the monuments I have already mentioned the cover of the well at Corinth, and the celebrated bas-relief representing Hercules carrying off the tripod of Apollo, several ancient repetitions of which are well known, the most beautiful of which seems to be that of the Museum of Dresden, we have before us nearly all the ancient monuments of original workmanship, which can be referred to the period of the most ancient style considered in its entire development, setting out from the point when this style, as yet almost entirely devoid of imitation, presented all the characters of imperfection, which prove its infancy, to the point where the same style, reduced to a system, but considerably improved in its details, had already attained to all the necessary qualities in order to raise itself rapidly to that perfection which it soon achieved.

ELEVENTH LECTURE.

Historical sketch of the elements, and of the resources of the Athenian power after the Persian war- -Public Monuments-Private habitations-Edifices built under the administration of Cimon-The temple of Theseus, the Poecile Of the Odeon built by Pericles-Of some other contemporary constructions Sketch of the administration of Pericles with regard to ArtSchools of Art which flourished in the interval from the sixtieth to the seventy-fifth Olympiad: those of Argos, Athens, Ægina-Characteristics of the school of Ægina which result from an examination of the statues found in the temple of Jupiter Pan Hellenius, at Ægina-Eginetan Style, common to a great number of other monuments of Greek origin-Brief account of the principal of those monuments.

AFTER having related, doubtless very imperfectly with regard to the importance and extent of the subject, but sufficiently for the very restricted purpose which I have proposed to myself, the principal causes of the development of the arts in Greece, it remains now for me to speak of the monuments themselves which have come down to us of that great period of the history of art, and from which we can form an idea of the principles and resources of that art, at the period we are speaking of. The victories of the Greeks over the Persians had carried to the highest degree of elevation and energy all the faculties of that noble people. The enthusiasm for that liberty which had produced so many miracles, did not vanish with the danger which excited it; far from that, it acquired every day new strength, in taking a new direction, while boundless resources, the fruits of an extraordinary development of political energy, favoured this generous disposition. Athens above all, thanks to peculiar circumstances, such as the nature of her soil, the activity of her inhabitants, the strength of her naval power, so gloriously established by the victories of Salamis and Mycale; thanks too to the genius of four statesmen, whose appearance at the same time, and rivalry on the same theatre of glory, may be considered as one of the phenomena of that beautiful period of history, Themistocles, Aristides, Cimon and Pericles. Athens became, in the space of less than fifty years, the first city of Greece and of the world, while it obtained the proud

distinction through later ages, of having its name used to indicate among all nations the highest degree of cultivation and civilisation. Almost entirely rebuilt, Athens was embellished by a number of public edifices, and of monuments of all kinds.

The Piræus was finished: dock-yards, where twenty triremes were to be built each year, were established; and the double wall which joined the port and the city, was built in a space of forty stadiæ, equal to about two leagues. In a short time, by establishment of a common treasury, formed from the contributions of the allies, amounting to 460 talents a-year-a treasury at first deposited at Delos, then at Athens-this single town, having under her control all the tributes of the confederation, whose forces it directed, obtained the Hegemonia, or the command of all Greece; while under the administration of Cimon, a barren and stony country, the surface of which is not much beyond the extent of one of our counties, and whose population in free men was not above 21,000 souls, extended its dominion from the island of Cyprus to the Bosphorus of Thrace, along all the coasts, and over the forty islands of the Mediterranean, from Byzantium to Euboea, and from Samos to Sicily, and lastly, banished from the Ægean sea, and from the entire coast of Asia Minor, the great King, who a little while before, had led against this single territory his countless armies. Boundless wealth thenceforward flowed into Athens from the tributes raised from the subject towns, and from the rapid and brilliant fortunes of the citizens, who directed the naval and military forces, or who managed the public treasure? One may judge from the fine alone which was inflicted on Miltiades, and which amounted to 100 talents, to what degree the wealth of private individuals had increased in consequence of the general prosperity, from the time of Solon, when an income of 187. a-year constituted the first class of the citizens of Athens. Themistocles, assisted by his friends, saved, at the time of his banishment, the greater portion of his property, yet the value of what he could not take away, and which was placed in the public treasury amounted to the same sum of 100 talents. Now, according to Plutarch, he possessed but three, before he obtained any public employment. But this fortune, the source of which, if we may credit the writer I have mentioned just now, was not always as honourable as had been the poverty of former times, this fortune of private

individuals was made honourable at least by the use it was applied to. It was not in vain superfluities, or in trivial expenses that these fortunes were dissipated, acquired in a more or less legitimate manner, in the service of the state, or at the expense of their enemies; it was for the embellishment of their country, chiefly for the welfare of the people, or for their amusement, that those chiefs of the Athenian democracy employed their revenues, increased by their victories. Thus Themistocles being choregus or chief of the games at the representation of a tragedy of Phrynichus expended considerable sums; and generally this charge of choregus, so anxiously sought for by rich and powerful citizens, or by those who aspired to be so, seems to have been invented only for the purpose of giving the great the opportunity of raising themselves by amusing those of lower rank, and thus to restore to the public all that private individuals had acquired from the

enemy.

We may judge from the enumeration of the sums expended on different occasions, almost always for the public games or festivals, by a private individual who was not any way illustrious, sums which amounted to more than 2,400l., the amount of which has been handed down to us, in one of the harangues of Lysias, we may judge that the art of ruining oneself in the service of the people, was not less common at Athens than that of enriching oneself at its expense. Another kind of luxury of the great Athenian captains, which was not the less fitted to reconcile the people with the fortune of its chiefs, consisted in dressing the poor citizens, and feeding them, in paying the expense of their funerals, or in giving dowries to their daughters. This was one of the ways in which Cimon employed his fortune, or rather, was one of the elements of his fortune. Themistocles, choosing a poor son-in-law, but a man of merit and probity, thus justified, in the eyes of the people, wealth which he thus employed to render honourable the power he held, by recompensing virtue in another. But it was chiefly for the splendour they displayed in the public monuments with which they embellished their country, as well as for the simplicity of their domestic life, that the policy of these chiefs was remarkable, while their fortune became more honourable by returning, so to speak, to its source, consecrated by public glory and utility. Nothing was more modest than the private house of the Athenians of the first order; the houses of

Themistocles, of Cimon, of Pericles himself, were not remarkable, according to Demosthenes, for any exterior splendour, for any different arrangement, from those of the poorest citizens; and generally the private houses of the Greeks, even in the age of Alexander, were very small, very low, without any external appearance, without any convenience within. Dicearchus, who flourished about the 115th Olympiad, remarks that Platæa, Thebes, Athens itself, and the principal towns of Greece, were as yet very ill built; the streets of Athens were narrow, irregular, dark, in consequence of the projection of the roofs, to such degree that this inconvenience caused a law of the Areopagus. As to the houses themselves, they all consisted, according to the description which Lysias has given of those of his time, in only a ground floor inhabited by the men, and in an upper story which was reserved for the use of the women, but indeed without any ornament either of painting or of any other kind. We may judge, from the example of the house of Socrates, the contemporary of Pericles, of the small size in general of the houses, and of the little value of the objects which they contained. In a dialogue of this philosopher with Critobulus, one of his friends, a dialogue which has been preserved by Xenophon, Socrates values all he possesses, including his house, at five minæ, or 500 drachmæ, which would be equal to about 187. of our money; and I have already remarked, that those high in authority had not better houses at Athens than the philosophers, for ostracism stretched its arm over every one, and threatened in particular, as is well known, those who raised themselves above the others. At Sparta the houses of private individuals were not doubtless more imposing, to judge of them from that of the king, Polydorus, which the Lacedæmonians bought from his widow after his death for a certain number of oxen; and this house, which still existed at the time of Pausanias, bore a name which bore witness to this singular transaction, a proof at once of the scarcity of metal, of the simplicity of the manners, and the smallness of the place. But if the houses of private individuals were as yet humble and modest, to make amends, the city was filled with temples, porticos, theatres, gymnasia, and other public edifices, which were the pride of the citizens, and the admiration of the stranger, and by which that noble emulation of works, and of sacrifices, was called forth among the chiefs of the state, which became particularly at Athens the surest