Volume I Part 2 (2/2)

The Greece which we call ancient entered late into history, when civilization had already a long past behind it, a past of many centuries In this sense, the words which, as we are told by Plato, a priest of Sas addressed to Solon, were perfectly true, ”You Greeks, you are but children!”[29] In coypt, with Chaldaea, with Phnicia, Greece is ale of Pericles is nearer to our day than to that which saw the birth of Egyptian civilization

[29] _Ti thus lately upon the scene, when the genius of h a long procession of centuries, arrived at the power of giving clear and definite expression to his thoughts, by means either of articulate sounds and the symbols which represent them or by the aid of plastic fornorant of all that had been achieved before their ti into existence in some distant and isolated corner of the world, or in some inaccessible island

Their actual situation was a very different one In the earliest epoch of which we have any record we find them established in a peninsula, which is on one hand upon the very borders of Asia, and upon another seems to hold out a hand to Africa by the innumerable islands which surround its shores Between the shores of this peninsula and those of Asia, these islands are sprinkled so thickly over the narrow seas that nature see-stones which should tempt the least venturesome to cross from one continent to the other

The Greek race thus found itself, by the accident of its geographical situation, in contact with the Egyptian, assyrian, and Median empires, the masters of the Eastern Mediterranean; while the insular or peninsular character of ether with the nu coasts like vessels at anchor, had the effect of greatlythe points of contact The Greek frontier was thus one of abnormal extent, and was, n ideas and influences Her eyes were ever turned outwards; the Greek nationality was not one of those which renthe situation of Greece, it could not but happen, that, as soon as the Greek race drew itself clear froerms of art,--examples, models, processes,--should penetrate into the country fro East by all the channels of co how far civilization had advanced, would it not have been absurd for the Greeks to have turned a deaf ear and a blind eye to the experience of their predecessors; to have begun again at the beginning? Was it not better to take up the work at the point where it had been left, and to make use, for future developresses as fast as he can; as soon as he learns any newhis life, he inal fors it nearer to perfection

Thus then, the nize the truth contained in those myths and traditions which betray the influence exercised upon Greece by the people of Egypt, Syria, and Asia Minor To confine ourselves to the plastic arts, the historian of Greek art discovers _survivals_, forms and motives which had been employed in previous centuries and earlier civilizations, in exact proportion to the accuracy of his researches, and to the number of his elements for comparison He also finds that the Greeks borrowed from the sah not in the the antecedent conditions of art; na, weaving, e, in a word all those trades which seem so simple when their secrets are known, but which, nevertheless, represent the accumulated efforts of countless unknown inventors

It was not only the material outfit of civilization that the Greeks borrowed froether with that alphabet which represents the principal sounds of the voice by a few special signs, another alphabet which has been happily named the _alphabet of art_, certain necessary conventions, combinations of line, ornaments, decorative forms, a crowd of plastic elements which they had employed in the expression of their own ideas and sentiments

Even after Greek art had reached perfection and was in the full enjoyment of her own individuality, we still find traces of these early borrowings Soriffin, the palm-leaf, and many others, which, invented on the banks of the Nile or the Tigris, were transported to Greece and there preserved to be handed down to our et to the fountain head of Greek art, the more we are struck with these rese beyond mere coincidences The deeper we penetrate into what is called archaism, the more numerous do those features become which are common to oriental, especially assyrian, art, and that of Greece We find analogousits articulations, of representing the drapery hich the forms are covered Greek taste had not yet so transfornizing the ht for its use over the waves of the aegean or the in are continually visible, and yet a practised eye can perceive that the Greeks were never satisfied, like the Phnicians, within various proportions the ypt or assyria; the facilities of such a soulless and indiscri eclecticism as that could not satisfy the ambitions of a race that already possessed the poetry of Hesiod and Hoinal in the best sense of the word It was far superior to all that went before it; it alone deserved to become classic, that is, to furnish a body of rules and laws capable of being trans In what does its superiority consist? How does its originality show itself, and how can its existence be explained? These are the questions which we propose to answer; but in order to arrive at a just conclusion we in with the study of those nations to whom the Greeks went to school, and of whose art they were the heirs and continuers We should be unable to grasp the exclusively Greek features of Greek art did we not begin by defining the foreign elements which have taken their part in the work, and that we can only do by going back to the civilizations in which they were produced; we must endeavour to penetrate into the spirit of those civilizations, to discover whence they started and how far they progressed; we must first define their ideas of the beautiful, and then show, by well-chosen exareat a measure of success, they realised their own conception

We undertake this long detour in order that we may arrive in Greece instructed by all that we have learnt on the way, and prepared to understand and to judge; but during the whole voyage our eyes will be turned towards Greece, as those of the traveller towards his long-desired goal Our route will conduct us froris, over the plains of Medea and Persia and Asia Minor to the shores of Phnicia, to Cyprus and Rhodes But beyond the obelisks and pyraypt, beyond the towers of Chaldaea and the domes of Nineveh, the lofty colonnades of Persepolis, the fortresses and rock-cut toe ramparts of the cities of Syria, we shall never cease to perceive on the horizon the sacred rock of the Athenian acropolis; we shall see it before us, as our history of the past advances, lifting into the azure sky the elegant severity of its marble porticoes, the majesty of those pediments where live and breathe the Gods of Homer and Phidias

When we have crossed the threshold of the Propylaea, and have visited the Parthenon, the Erecthaeuless Victory; e have seen all Greece become covered with monu those of Athens in purity of line or finesse of execution, bear the impress of the same style and the same taste; e have seen Praxiteles and Scopas succeed to Phidias and Polycletus, will it not cost us a struggle to quit the scene of so e? If we leave the Athens of Cius, for the pompous capitals of the heirs of Alexander; if we cross the sea to visit Veii and Clusiunificence of their decoration; if at last we find ourselves in i its basilicas, its baths, its amphitheatres, and all the suain turn our eyes with regret to e have left behind; and, although we shall endeavour to coeness of taste and sympathy which is the honour of conteh for that ideal of pure and sovereign beauty which we adored in Greece; and shall feel, now and again, the nostalgia of the exile

IV

In this sketch of our plan, we have reserved no place for the art which is called _prehistoric_, the art of the caverns and the lake dwellings This o to subrave reflection, have induced us to refrain fro the first manifestations of the plastic instinct of mankind

We are actuated by neither indifference nor disdain We fully appreciate the importance of such researches, and of the results to which they have led No sooner had it entered into the mind of man to look for and collect the humble remains upon which so many centuries had looked with indifference, than they were found almost everywhere, thickly dispersed near the surface of the earth, heaped arottoes for which men and animals had once contended, buried in peat marshes and sandy shores, sometimes even sprinkled upon the surface of the fields and country roads Pieces of flint, bone, or horn, fashi+oned into instruments of the chase, into fishhooks, and domestic utensils; shells, perforated teeth, a upon necklaces and bracelets; fragarments; seeds and carbonized fruits; earthen vessels made by hand and dried in the sun or sis, bones and pieces of horn have been found upon which the figures of animals are carved with a truth and spirit which allow their species to be at once and certainly recognized

But none of these rens for the transests writing; and, nificant still, there is a complete absence of metal All this is evidence that the re to a very remote antiquity, to a period much nearer the priypt and Chaldaea, to say nothing of that of Greece and Rome The comparative method, which has done so much for natural science, has also taken these reain from them some notion of the life led by the early human families which manufactured them These arms, tools, and instruments which have been recovered from the soil of the old and cultivated nations of Europe, have been carefully coe races which people the far corners of the world These comparisons have enabled us to decide the for the observations of the various travellers who have visited the savage races in question, we have been enabled to foroes, of the life and social habits of those primitive Europeans who made use of sieneral character of those early periods being established, further exaht the local differences which prevailed then as now Thus the proneness to plastic ih traces of this taste are found elsewhere, it is nowhere so ord whom Christy and Edouard Lartet have so patiently studied

By dint of careful classification and coress through those countless centuries whose number will never be known to us, whose total would, perhaps, oppress our iinations if we knew it; we have been enabled to discover the slow steps by which mankind raised itself from the earliest, almost shapeless, flint axe, found with the bones of the mammoth in the quaternary alluvial deposits, to the rich and varied equipment of ”lacustrian civilization,” as it has sometimes been called In this unlimited field, of which one side at least must ever be lost in unfathomable obscurity, the e has been defined and divided into the _palaeolithic_ and _neolithic_ epochs; the age of bronze followed, and then cae With the appearance of the former metal the tribes of northern and central Europe established a connection with the civilized races which surrounded the Mediterranean, and with iron we are in the full classic period

We can never be too grateful for the persevering labours of those who have carried on these researches in every corner of Europe; their deserts are all the greater froreeable surprises which come now and then to reward excavators on the sites of ancient and historic cities Their chances are s those objects of art which, by their beauty and elegance, repay any aht have little to say to our aesthetic perceptions; they repeat a few types with an extrehts back to a point far nearer the cradle of our race than the ypt and Chaldaea They cast soes of which humanity has preserved no recollection They people with unknown multitudes those remote epochs into which scientific curiosity had, but yesterday, no desire to penetrate There can be in all this no real question of chronology, but when fro up the first flint iments of bone, of ivory, of reindeer horn, which have preserved to us the first attes, it takes us far beyond those days of which our only knowledge coue tradition, and still farther beyond those centuries which saw the first struggling dawn of history

We have, then, decided not to embark upon these questions of prehistoric art, because, as the title which we have chosen declares, we propose to write a _history_, and the word history, when the human race is in question, iroups of facts and certain portions of ti to probable truth

We do not yet possess, probably we shall never possess, anyeven within five or six thousand years, the actual duration of the stone age Fro, exceedingly slow; like that of a falling body, the rapidity of industrial progress is continually accelerating This acceleration is not of course quite regular; the phenomena of social life are too complex, the forces at work are too numerous and sometimes too contrary to allow us to express it by the mathematical formula which may be applied to movement in the physical world; but on the whole this law of constantly accelerated progress holds good, as indeedas eneration, in all probability, added but little to the discoveries of that which preceded it; enerations succeeded one another without any further attempt to advance Ever since they have been under our observation, the savage races of the world have been practically stationary except where European commerce has profoundly modified the conditions of their lives It is probable, therefore, that more centuries rolled away between the first chipped flints and the well polished weapons which succeeded them than between the latter and the earliest use of bronze

But we cannot prove that it was so, nor satisfy those whom probability and a specious hypothesis will not content Where neither written evidence nor oral tradition exist there can be little question of historic order The ree are not calculated to dissipate the silence which enshrouds those centuries In the art of a civilized people we find their successive ht interpreted by expressive forms; we may even attempt under all reserve to sketch their history with the sole aid of their plastic remains

The chances of error would of course be numerous; but yet if all other materials had, unhappily, failed us, the atte The more ancient portions of our prehistoric collections do not offer the same opportunities; they are too sie who reat and painful difficulty, could iross instincts which are co froles with his ene effort to procure food for himself

The word history cannot then be pronounced in connection with these remote periods, nor can their remains be looked upon in any sense as works of art Art commences for us with man's first attempts to impress upon matter some form which should be the expression of a sentiment or of an idea The want of skill shown in these attempts is beside the question; the mere desire on the part of the work of those idols in stone or terra-cotta which are found in the islands of the Greek Archipelago, at Mycenae and in Botia, idols which represent, as we believe, the great Goddess ht to the Greeks, are works of art; but we are unable to give that title to the axes and arrowheads, the harpoons and fish-hooks, the knives, the pins, the needles, the crowds of various utensils which we see in the glass cases of a pre-historic h it be to those ish to study the history of labour, is nothing but an industry, and a rudi the simplest wants It is not until we reach the sculptures of the cave-dwellings that we find the first gerures of animals upon the handles of his tools and upon those objects which have been called, perhaps a little recklessly, batons of coive himself pleasure, it was because he found true aesthetic enjoy nature Art was born, we e, with those first atteht fairly be expected that our history should commence with the point for any continuous ypt and Chaldaea, was prosecuted in Greece and led in tih developments; even its competent students confess that the art of the cave-men was an isolated episode without fruition or consequence Specimens of this art are found at but a few points of the vast surface over which the vestiges of prie, nor even in that of bronze--both far in advance in other ways of that of the cave-dwellings--does it ever seem to have entered into the anic world, still less those of ured in one or two caves in the Dordogne[30]

[30] _Dictionnaire archeologique de la Gaule_, vol i, Cavernes, figure 28 Al BERTRAND, _Archeologie celtique et gauloise_ (1 vol 8vo Didier, 1876, p 68)

Towards the close of the prehistoric age the taste for ornament becomes very marked, but that ornaeole decorative etable world Like the rude efforts of the cave-ined and who frequently employed it with such happy results, were not contented with bare utility, but, so far as they could, sought after beauty A secret instinct worked in theive soance to the objects which they had in daily use This geometrical style of decoration prevailed all over central Europe until, in the first place, the movements of commerce with Greece and Etruria, and secondly the Roman conquest, introduced the methods of classic art

From e have said, it will be seen that we could not have passed over in silence this systeain find it in our path e come to treat of that prehistoric Greece which preceded by perhaps two or three centuries the Greece of Homer By the help of the discoveries which have been lately made in the Troad, at Mycenae, and in other ancient sites, we shall study the works produced by the ancestors of the Greeks before they went to school to the nations of the East But even with the discoveries which carry us farthest back, we only reach the end of the period in question, when ht to the islands and the yptian, Phnician or Chaldaic manufacture, but before those objects were sufficiently numerous or the relations with those countries sufficiently intireat effect upon the habits of native workenerally possible to distinguish those works which are of foreign origin; and such works excluded, it is easy to foreneral idea of the art practised by the forefathers of the historic Greeks--by the Pelasgians, to use a conventional teric art did not differ, in its general characteristics, from that of the various peoples spread over the continent of Europe, and still practised for centuries after the dawn of Greek civilization in the great plains to the north of the Alps and the Danube Its guiding spirit and its motives are similar There is the same richness, or rather the same poverty, the sa linear elereat ocean and the Baltic to those of the Mediterranean, all the workmen laboured for the same masters Struck by this resemblance, or rather uniforists, Herr Conze, has proposed that this kind of ornament shall be called Indo-European; he sees, in the universality of the system, a feature common to all branches of the Aryan race, a special characteristic which uish it from the Semites