Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/370

Rh 348 ARCHAEOLOGY CLASSICAL as CGO B.C., and there also Glaucus is said to have dis covered the art of welding iron (692 B.C.), the substitute for which had previously been nails. At this period we have frequent mention of splendid metal utensils, as, for instance, the enormous cauldron (Herodotus, iv. 152), with projecting gryphons heads and a support formed of kneel ing figures, seven ells in height. As the oldest example of sculpture in bronze which he had seen, Pausanias (iii. 17, 6) describes a statue of Jupiter at Sparta, the work of Clearchus of Rhegium, whom some called a pupil of Daedalus. It was made of plates of bronze, beaten out to express the whole figure, and then fastened together with fine nails, the arts of soldering and of casting being still unknown. Of sculpture in this manner we possess only one example, the bronze bust found at Polledrara, near Vulci, and now in the British Museum. Throughout this early period the statues or images of deities seem to have retained their helpless primitive form, feelings of piety and gratitude being apparently expressed rather in gifts of metal utensils to the temples than in statues of the gods as in later times. No such statues exist now, but we have sufficient evidence of their want of artistic merit in the numerous representations of them which occur on the painted vases of a later period, when the sanctity of a spot is frequently indicated by such a figure. Apparently to this early and as yet barely historical period belongs a Fla 1. Fictile yase. Brit. Mus. From Athens. Design in black, on drab ground. class of painted vases decorated with figures of animals and flowers arranged in parallel horizontal bands, and there fore both in the choice and disposition of the decorations presenting a marked instance of Assyrian influence. From their shape it appears that many of these vases were made to hold precious liquids, such as perfumes ; and it is very probable that they were imported from the East with those perfumes, the names of which in the Greek language have an obvious Oriental origin. A considerable advance is noticeable in a second class of these vases, in which the human figure is introduced as the principal subject in the decoration, the designs being in general chosen from the heroic legends of Greece. These vases still retain the shape of the former class, the method of disposition in parallel bands, and the choice of sub ordinate ornaments. The names of the heroes are frequently written beside them, and sometimes the artist adds his own name. The alphabet in which these names are written is the old Corinthian, and hence the vases in question are also styled Corinthian. As to their date, it is agreed that they cannot be later than G20 B.C. With the introduction of the human figure as the subject most worthy of artistic rendering, commenced in vase painting also the independ ence of the potter s art in Greece (Brunn, Prolleme in der Gcschichte der Yasenmalerei). Second Period. From the date of the earliest historical notices of sculp tors, backward to that usually assigned to the Homeric poems, there is an interval of several centuries, during which it would at first sight appear that the art of sculp ture had made no sensible advance, if indeed it had not declined. This being improbable, an explanation must be sought for, either with Ulrichs (Die Anfdnge der Griech- ischen Kiinstlergeschichte, Wiirzburg, 1871) in the con fusion which seems to reign among the dates of the earliest sculptors, or with Brunn (Die Kunst lei Homer} in the theory that the art of sculpture in Greece during that interval was, like the contemporary art of Assyria, strictly confined to working in relief, and that in this direction it may well have made steady progress, though particular artists are not singled out for praise. It is with sculpture in the round, and with some particular invention, as that of welding iron or casting bronze, or with some new technical procedure, as the working of marble, that the first records of artists begin. With regard to the confusion in the dates of these records, it is true that in ancient times the artistic faculty was handed down in certain families, among whom there was also a partiality for certain names. But ta assume on the strength of this, as Ulrichs does, that later writers, finding a recurrence of the same name, generally identified it with the most distinguished and hence pro bably the latest of the artists who bore it, is a means of peopling an apparent void which ought to be supported with better evidence than that which Brunn has contro verted at almost every point. For example, in treating of Theodoras of Samus, of whom it is said that he invented the process of casting in bronze, and supposed that he was a contemporary of Polycrates, Ulrichs argues that there must have been two artists of that name (and suggests that there may have been several), because the one who invented bronze-casting must have lived before 576 B.C., previous to which date this art may be inferred to have been known from the remark of Herodotus (v. 82), that the Epidaurians were ordered by an oracle to obtain figures of Damia and Auxesia, not ^aA/coC 17 XiOov, but i Aov. Why ^O.KOV should not refer to hammered as well as to cast bronze, Brunn is unable to see. Again, it was Theodorus of Samus who built the substructure of the temple of Diana at Ephesus, and Ulrichs is at a loss to conceive how the people of that town could have remained till 576 B.C. without a temple worthy of their goddess. That the previous temple was unworthy of Diana cannot be proved by us, who are ignorant of the feelings of the Greeks in these matters, and who are aware that Jupiter himself had not even in hia favourite Olympia a great temple till 456 B.C. The view taken by Brunn is, as has been said, that until the invention of casting in bronze the Greek sculptors con tinued to work in relief except when images were required for the purposes of worship, and that in these cases, whether