Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/369

Rh FIRST PERIOD.] ARCHAEOLOGY 347 trade lay chiefly between the Assyrians on the one hand and the Greeks on the other. &quot; It was the Phoenicians,&quot; says Brunn (Die Kunstbei Homer, Muncheu, 1868), &quot;whobrought from the East to the Greeks an alphabet which they modified and employed for a language peculiar to them selves; and it was the Phoenicians who brought to them from the same quarter an alphabet, so to speak, of art, which they also modified and employed for a language of art equally their own.&quot; He proceeds to define this alpha bet of art as consisting of a knowledge of the processes of weaving and embroidery, of working in wood, ivory, and the various metals, with the exception of casting in bronze with which and Avith sculpture in marble, which he also excludes, commenced the art of statuary, and commenced, therefore, the independence of true Greek art. Besides these processes of working, the Greeks derived from the same source at least some of the decorative patterns which we find in usa in later times, though greatly modified. But, above all, they obtained from the Assyrians that manner of sculpture in low flat relief, and in parallel hori zontal bands, which they appear to have practised almost exclusively down to the 7th century B.C., that is, down to the collapse of the Assyrian empire, and after that to have retained as one of the charms of their architecture. If, then, an intercourse such as is assumed actually took place in Homers time between the Greeks and the Assyrians, who were then artistically in a very advanced condition, it will be necessary, before lightly calling the shield of Achilles a poetic dream, as has frequently been done, to see whether the poet may not have had before his mind some manner of a counterpart for it in Assyrian art. We need not suppose that such a shield ever existed. But a poet cannot create out of nothing; and it is clear from his division of the shield into five concentric bands, resem bling the large bronze shields found at Caere some years ago in a tomb of very high antiquity, that he had be fore his mind the customary arrangement of ornaments in works of this kind. Now, on an Assyrian bronze bowl in the British Museum (Layard, plate 61), which exactly resembles in shape and is of about the same size as a boss of a shield, we have a representation of the earth and heavens which very strikingly recalls the decoration of the boss on the shield of Achilles; while in the com paratively few remains of Assyrian sculpture we have cities at war, cities at peace, and many scenes from daily life, which vividly illustrate the Homeric description of the shield (see Brunn Die Kunst lei Homer, who deals with the various subjects in detail). It should be observed, however, that though the evidence of the Homeric poems and the remains of Greek art from the Homeric age both point to an Assyrian influence, the Greeks of later times looked rather to Egypt as the land whence their ancestors had experienced their first impulse both in religion and in art. They believed that Dcedalus, the first Greek sculptor who knew how to give movement to his figures, and was regarded as the father of Greek sculpture, had learned his art in Egypt. Diodorus of Sicily asserted that Telecles and Theodorus of Sarnus had visited Egypt, and on their return executed a statue of Apollo in the Egyptian style for a temple in Samus, each having made a half of it, and that apart from the other. Strabo (p. 806) compares the old Greek sculpture with the Egyptian; while Pausanias in several places (ii. 19, 3; iv. 32, 1) speaks^of Egyptian statues in Greek temples, or (i. 42, 3 ; vn. 5, 5) of statues resembling the Egyptian in style. According to another theory, the influence of Egypt on Greek art, though admitted, is relegated to the time of L sammetichus, in whose service it is known many Greek mercenaries were employed, and through whose inclination towards the Greeks an active intercourse sprang up between the two countries. Among the Greeks who visited Egypt at that time were Thales, Cleobulus, Solon, and Pythagoras. Of the connection which is assumed to have existed Remains in between the earliest monuments of Greek art and the con- Asiailinor. temporary art of Assyria, evidence is cited from remains of undoubtedly early workmanship in the countries of Asia Minor, Lycia, Lydia, and Phrygia, of which the two latter were intimately associated with the oldest traditions and religious beliefs of Greece. The peculiar feature of Lycian art is its tombs cut in the rock, of which the oldest class are direct imitations of wooden structures such as we may conceive the primitive temples of an Oriental race to have been. In Phrygia we have another class of rock-cut tombs of very remote antiquity, of which that of Midas (Semper, Der Stil, i. p. 429) is the best preserved example. Here the style of decoration is obviously derived from Assyrian tapestry. In Lydia we have tombs again, but they are in the form of immense tumuli, as, for instance, that of Alyattes near Sardis, which astonished Herodotus by its size, being 1300 feet in diameter at the i base, and over 250 feet high. Similar tumuli occur among the old Chaldeans. With the immigration of the Dorian race commenced Progress of the development of an independent style of architecture in Arehiteo Greece, the first step apparently being the invention of a turc house supported by columns as the design for a temple. From the description given by Pausanias (v. 16) of one of these early Doric temples that of Hera at Olympia, erected shortly after the Dorian immigration we gather that it had the form of a temple in antis, surrounded by columns, and with not only a 2^ onaos led into by two columns, but also 1 a similar chamber at the back. One of the two columns of this latter chamber was of wood, apparently a reminis cence of a former style of construction in that material. About the same time originated also, it is supposed, the Ionic order, which though presenting a certain Asiatic richness of ornament strongly opposed to the severe sim plicity of the Doric, was still a pure Greek invention. The fact of it having first appeared among the Greeks of Asia Minor is enough to account for its admission of a greater softness and flow of lines than was admitted in the Doric. With the new movement in architecture a fresh impetus was given to the art of sculpture. At first Sculpture, the reports sound somewhat fabulous, as, for example, that in which Butades the Corinthian potter is described as having hit on the idea of modelling a face in clay and baking it along with his vases. Butades himself, however, is an historical person, and Corinth is known to have been a flourishing seat of potters and other artists as early as the time of the tyrant Cypselus (650 B.C.), through whose oppression it is said the artists, Eucheir, Diopus, and Eugramnms emigrated to Etruria, which afterwards became celebrated for its sculptures in terra-cotta. At the com mission of Cypselus, or of his successor Periander, a colossal statue of Jupiter was executed at Corinth, and dedicated at Olympia. But the most remarkable specimen of early sculpture, presumably Corinthian, was the chest in which the infant Cypselus was concealed, and of which a detailed description is given by Pausanias (v. 17, 5, fol.) The chest, itself of cedar, was ornamented with a wealth of figures in gold and ivory, arranged in parallel horizontal bands, and representing heroic legends and scenes from daily life, the names of the individual figures being in scribed boustrophedon, that is, in the manner characteristic of early times, and in what Pausanias calls very ancient letters. The Frangois vase in Florence (Monumenti dell Institute di CorrespondenzaArcheologica, vol. iv. pis. 54-58) gives a tolerable notion of what the composition must have been. Artistic activity was not then confined to Corinth. A school of sculpture in marble existed in Chius as early