Page:An Elementary History of Art.djvu/216

 186 Greek Sculpture. from 400 B.C. to the death of Alexander the Great, in 323 B.C., in which period Sparta became the ruling city; and the fourth, from the death of Alexander to the conquest of Greece by the Romans, 146 B.C. 1. First Period. The earliest sculptures of Greece known to us date from the eighth century B.C. They are a colossal statue of Niobe on Mount Sipylus, mentioned in the Iliad, and Fig. 76. — Sculpture on the Lion gate at Mycenae. the famous Lion gate of Mycenae (Fig. 76), supposed to be still older : in the reliefs of this gate Assyrian influence can be distinctly traced. The carved chest of Cypselus — a work dating from 650 B.C. made at Corinth — had reliefs partly cut in cedar-wood, and partly laid on in gold and ivory, representing heroic myths. It was noticeable as being probably the earliest attempt to give visible form to the word-pictures of Homer and Hesiod. Pausanias {about A.D. 176) saw this chest and describes it. The earliest names of artists which have come down to