Part 1 (2/2)

The sanct.i.ty of the old image was sometimes transferred to the new one; a striking example of this is seen in the case of Artemis Brauronia on the Athenian Acropolis. It had been the custom for the garments presented to the G.o.ddess by her wors.h.i.+ppers to be placed upon her primitive statue; and when a new and worthier representation of the G.o.ddess was placed in the temple in the fourth century, we are informed by inscriptions that dedicated garments were sometimes hung upon it, even though it was a statue from the hand of Praxiteles. It sometimes happened that the old and the new statues stood side by side in the same temple, or in adjacent temples, and they seem then to exemplify the two kinds of idolatry--the literal and the imaginative--the one being the actual subject of the rites ceremonially observed, and the other being the visible presentment of the deity, and helping the wors.h.i.+pper to concentrate his prayers and aspirations. Here the art of the sculptor had the fullest scope, and it is in such cases that he could, as Quintilian said of Phidias, ”make some addition to the received religion.”

This duality was, however, the result of accident rather than the normal arrangement, and, so long as the primitive image remained the official object of wors.h.i.+p, it was difficult, if not impossible, for the new and more artistic statue to have its full religious effect. In many cases, probably in most cases, it was actually subst.i.tuted, sooner or later, for the earlier embodiment of the deity. Sometimes the early image, which was often of wood, may have decayed or been worn away by the attentions lavished upon it; we hear of a statue of which the hand had perished under the kisses of the devout. We hear also of cases in which it had been entirely lost--for instance, the Black Demete of Phigalia, an uncouth image with a horse's head; here, when a plague had warned the people to replace it, the AEginetan sculptor Onatas undertook the task; and he is said to have been vouchsafed a vision in sleep which enabled him to reproduce exactly this unsightly idol. It would not seem that such a commission gave much scope to his artistic powers; but it is noteworthy that the Phigalians employed one of the most famous sculptors of the day. Elsewhere the conditions were more favourable, and it was possible for the artist, while conforming to the accepted type, to give it a more correct form and more pleasing features.

Daedalus, we are told--and in this story Daedalus is an impersonation of the art of the early sculptors in Greece--made statues of the G.o.ds so life-like that they had to be chained to their pedestals for fear they should run away. It is likely that this tale goes back to a genuine tradition; for Pausanias actually saw statues with fetters attached to them in several early shrines in Greece. The device is natural enough.

Daedalus was a magician as well as a sculptor; and if he could give his statues eyes that they might see, and ears that they might hear, it was an obvious inference that if he gave them legs they might run away and desert their shrines and their wors.h.i.+ppers.

We may very likely find also in a similar notion the explanation of a peculiarity often found in early statues of the G.o.ds--the well-known archaic smile. Many explanations, technical and otherwise, have been given of this device; but none of them can get over the fact that it was just as easy, or even easier, for a primitive sculptor to make the mouth straight as to make it curve up at the ends, and that he often did make it straight. When he does not do so, it is probably done with intention; and it is quite in accordance with the conditions of early religious art that he should make the image of a deity smile in order that the deity himself might smile upon his wors.h.i.+ppers; and a pleasant expression might also, by a natural transfer of ideas, be supposed to be pleasing to the G.o.d, and so attract him to his statue. We are told that at Chios there was a head of Artemis set high up, which appeared morose to those entering the temple, but when they left it seemed to have become cheerful. This may have been originally due to some accident of placing or lighting, but it seems to have acquired a religious significance; and we can hardly deny a similar significance to the smile which we find on so many early statues. In some cases, especially in statues of men, it may have been intended merely as a device to give expression and life to the face; but it cannot have been a matter of indifference to a primitive wors.h.i.+pper that his deity should smile on him through the face of its visible image. This point of view being given, it is evidently only a question of how far it is within the power of art to express the benignity of the G.o.d, and later on his character and personality, in an adequate manner; and this power depends on the gradual acquisition of mastery over form and material, of knowledge and observation of the human body and face, and of the technical skill requisite to express this knowledge in marble or bronze, or more precious materials such as gold and ivory. All this development belongs to the history of art, not to that of religion. But before we can pursue the investigation any further, it is necessary to consider the different sources and channels of religious influence on art with which we have to deal.

CHAPTER II

VARIOUS ASPECTS OF RELIGION

Religion, for our present purpose, may be considered as (1) popular, (2) official, (3) poetic, and (4) philosophical. These four divisions, or rather aspects, are not, of course, mutually exclusive, and they act and react extensively upon one another; but, in their relations to art, it is convenient to observe the distinction between them.

(1) The beliefs of the people are, of course, the basis of all the others, though they come to be affected by these others in various degrees. There is no doubt that the people generally believed in the sanct.i.ty and efficacy of the shapeless idols or primitive images, and this belief would tend to support hieratic conservatism, and thus to hinder artistic progress. But, on the other hand, the people of Greece showed throughout their history a tendency to an intensely and vividly anthropomorphic imagination. This tendency was doubtless realised and encouraged by the poets, but it was not created by them, any more than by the mythologists who defined and systematised it. The exact relation of this anthropomorphic imagination to the primitive sacred stocks and stones is not easy to ascertain; but it seems to have tended, on the one hand, to the realisation of the existence of the G.o.ds apart from such sacred objects, and thus to reduce the stocks and stones to the position of symbols--a great advance in religious ideals; and, on the other hand, to the transformation of the stocks and stones into human form, not merely by giving them ears and eyes that they might hear and see, but also by making them take the image and character of the deity whom they represented.

It was impossible for any ordinary Greek to think of the G.o.ds in other than human form. He had, indeed, no such definite dogma as the Hebrew statement that ”G.o.d created man in His own image”; for the legends about the origin of the human race varied considerably and many of them represented crude philosophical theorising rather than religious belief.

But the monstrous forms which we find in Egypt and Mesopotamia as embodiments of divine power were alien to the Greek imagination; if we find here and there a survival of some strange type, such as the horse-headed Demeter at Phigalia, it remains isolated and has little influence upon prevalent beliefs. The Greek certainly thought of his G.o.ds as having the same human form as himself; and not the G.o.ds only, but also the semi-divine, semi-human, sometimes less than human beings with which his imagination peopled the woods and mountains and seas. His Nereids had human feet, not fishy tails like our mermaids; and if centaurs and satyrs and some other creatures of his imagination showed something of the beast within the man in their visible shape, they had little about them of the mysterious or the unearthly. It would be a great mistake to regard all these creatures as mere impersonations or abstractions. If ”a pagan suckled in a creed outworn” could

”Have sight of Proteus coming from the sea And hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn,”

much more were such sights and sounds familiar to his forefathers, to whom the same beliefs were fresh and real. Even to the present day Greek peasants may often be found who can tell of such experiences; to them, as to the Greeks of old, desert places and remote woods and mountains are terrible, not because they are lonely, but because when a man is alone then is he least alone; hence the panic terror, the terror of Pan.

The same idea, which later takes the religious or philosophic form of the belief in the omnipresence of the deity, peopled the woods with dryads, the streams and springs with nymphs and river-G.o.ds, the seas with Nereids and Tritons. When an artist represented a mountain or a river-G.o.d, a nymph or a Triton, or added such figures to a scene to indicate its locality by what seems to us at first sight a mere artistic convention, he was not inventing an impersonation, but he was representing something which, in the imagination of the people, might actually be seen upon the spot--at least, by those whose eyes were opened to see it. It was the same gift of imagination that made Blake say: ”'What,' it will be questioned, 'when the sun rises, do you not see a disc of fire, somewhat like a guinea?' 'Oh no, no! I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host, crying ”Holy, holy, holy is the Lord G.o.d Almighty!” I question not my corporeal eye, any more than I would question a window, concerning a sight. I look through it, and not with it.'”[1]

[Footnote 1: Blake, ”Aldine” edition, p. cvi.]

In the case of the G.o.ds, the matter is somewhat less simple than in that of all these daemonic creatures of the popular imagination. G.o.ds imply a greater power of generalisation and a higher stage of religious development. It was not thought likely that the G.o.ds would show themselves to mortal eyes, as had been their habit in the Golden Age, except perhaps upon some occasion of a great national crisis; and even then it was the heroes rather than the G.o.ds who manifested themselves.

But the ordinary Greek believed that the G.o.ds actually existed in human form, and even that their characters and pa.s.sions and moods were like those of human beings. The influence of the poet and the artist could not have been so vigorous if it had not found, in the imagination of the people, a suitable and sympathetic material.

(2) Official or state religion consisted in the main of an organisation of popular ritual. There was no priestcraft in Greece, no exclusive caste to whom the wors.h.i.+p of the G.o.ds was a.s.signed, although, of course, the right to practise certain cults belonged to particular families. But a priesthood, as a rule, was a political office like any other magistracy, and there was no exclusive tradition in the case of the chief cults of any Greek state to keep the point of view of the priests different from that of the people generally. The tendency of state religion was, as a rule, conservative, for reasons that we have already noticed; innovations in the matter of ritual are dangerous, for the new rite may not please the G.o.ds as well as the old; and the same feeling applies to the statues that form the centres of ritual. Pericles, for example, doubtless wished to make the Athena Parthenos of Phidias the official and visible representation of the G.o.ddess of Athens, and thereby to raise the religious ideals of the Athenians. In this last part of his attempt he was successful; the statue became the pride and glory of the city in its fitting shrine, the Parthenon; but the old image was still preserved in the temple of Athena Polias, and remained the official centre of wors.h.i.+p. We are not told that Pericles meant to supersede it; but it is very probable that he intended to do so, and was only prevented by the religious conservatism that curtailed other plans of his for the beautifying of the Acropolis. On the other hand, there is no evidence that in Greece--at least, in the best period of Greek art--any statesman held the views as to the official religion frankly expressed in Rome, that it was expedient for this religion to be accepted by the common people, but that educated men could only reconcile their consciences to taking part in it by a philosophical interpretation.

There is something unreal and artificial about any such compromise. If Pericles was intimate with Anaxagoras, who was prosecuted for atheism, he was also the friend of Phidias, who expressly said that his Zeus was the Zeus of Homer, no mere abstract ideal of divinity. If this was the case with Pericles, who held himself aloof from the common people, it must have been much more so with other statesmen, who mingled with them more freely, or even, like Nicias, shared their superst.i.tions. Under such conditions the influence of art upon the representations of the G.o.ds could not well go in advance of popular conceptions, though it might accompany and direct them. The making of new statues of the G.o.ds, to be set up as the centres of wors.h.i.+p in their temples, in some cases received the formal sanction of the Delphic oracle, the highest official and religious authority. Public commissions of this sort are common at all times, but commonest in the years immediately succeeding the Persian Wars, when the spoils of the Persians supplied ample resources, and in many cases the ancient temples and images had been destroyed; and at the same time the outburst of national enthusiasm over the great deliverance led to a desire to give due thank-offerings to the G.o.ds of the h.e.l.lenic race, a desire which coincided with the ability to fulfil it, owing to the rapid progress of artistic power. Such public commissions, and the popular feeling which they expressed, offered an inspiration to the artist such as has rarely, if ever, found a parallel. But any great victory or deliverance might be commemorated by the setting up of statues of the G.o.ds to whom it was attributed; and in this way the demands of official religion offered the sculptor the highest scope for the exercise of his art and his imagination.

(3) The influence of poetic mythology upon art can hardly be exaggerated. The statement of Herodotus that Homer and Hesiod ”made the Greek theogony, and a.s.signed to the G.o.ds their epithets and distinguished their prerogatives and their functions, and indicated their form,” would not, of course, be accepted in a literal sense by any modern mythologist. But it is nevertheless true that the clear and vivid personality and individuality given to the G.o.ds by the epic poets affects all later poetry and all Greek art. The imagination of the poets could not, as we have already noticed, have had so deep and wide an influence unless it had been based upon popular beliefs and conceptions.

But it fills these conceptions with real and vivid character, so that the G.o.ds of Homer are as clearly presented to us as any personalities of history or fiction. They are, indeed, endowed not only with the form, but with the pa.s.sions, and some even of the weaknesses of mankind; and for this reason the philosophers often rejected as unworthy the tales that the poets told of the G.o.ds. But even an artist such as Phidias expressly stated that it was the Zeus of Homer who inspired his greatest work, quoting the well-known pa.s.sage in the Iliad in which the G.o.d grants the prayer of Thetis:--

”He said; and his black eyebrows bent; above his deathless head Th' ambrosian curls flowed; great heaven shook.”

Descriptive pa.s.sages such as this are not, indeed, common, because, as Lessing clearly pointed out, the poet depends more upon action and its effect than on mere enumerative description. Even here it is the action of the nod, and the shaking of heaven that follows it, that emphasises the impression, rather than the mere mention of eyebrows or hair. In many other cases the distinctive epithet has its value for all later art--the cow-eyed Hera, the grey-eyed Athena, the swift messenger Hermes; but, above all, it is the action and character of the various G.o.ds that is so clearly realised by the poet that his successors cannot, if they wish, escape from his spell.

The influence of the various Greek poets is not, indeed, for the most part, to be traced in contemporary Greek art. This is obvious in the case of the Homeric poems, for the art of the time was of a purely decorative character, and was quite incapable of representing in any adequate way the vivid and lively imagination of the poets; and, for that matter, for many centuries after the date of the composition of the Iliad and Odyssey, h.e.l.lenic art made no attempt to cope with any so ambitious problems. Even when the art of sculpture had attained to a considerable degree of mastery over material and expression, we find its aims and conceptions lagging far behind those of the poet. This will become clearer when, in the next chapter, we consider the conditions of artistic expression in Greece; but it must be noted here, in order to prevent possible misconception. As soon, however, as art became capable of aiming at something beyond perfection of a bodily form--a change which, in spite of Pausanias' admiration of something divine about the works of Daedalus, can hardly be dated earlier than the fifth century B.C.--the Homeric conceptions of the G.o.ds came to have their full effect. Zeus, the king and father of G.o.ds and men; Athena, the friendly protectress of heroes, irresistible in war, giver of all intellectual and artistic power; Apollo, the archer and musician, the purifier and soothsayer--these and others find their first visible embodiment in the statues whereby the sculptors of the fifth century gave expression to the Homeric conceptions.

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