Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/381

Rh TBIKD 1ERIOD.] A 11 CH^OLOGY 359 finished that it had to be restored by Pausias of Sicyon. At Platan he painted for one of the walls of the pronaos of a temple the scene in which Ulysses appeared with the dead suitors at his feet. The companion picture was by an otherwise unknown artist, Onasias, the subject of it being the Expedition of the Seven against Thebes (Pan- manias, ix. 4, 2). Lastly, Pausanias (i. 22, G) ascribes to Polygnotus a series of paintings in the so-called Pinako- theke on the Acropolis of Athens. If he is right, the painter must then have been full seventy years of age. The subjects were (1.) Ulysses carrying off the bow of Philoctetes ; (2.) Diomede carrying off the Palladium of Troy; (3.) Orestes and Pylades slaying /Egisthus and the sons of Nauplius, who had come to his aid; (4.) Polyxena about to be sacrificed to the manes of Achilles ; (5.) Achilles in Scyrus ; and (G.) Ulysses meeting Nausicaa and her maids. The other pictures had become unrecog nisable through the effects of time. This second mention of the decay of his works reminds us of the fleeting nature of the material with which the fame of the great painter was bound up. It was well that high honours were paid him in his lifetime. The enduring marble in which Phidias worked has preserved his fame to our times, to mock the indignities which he suffered in life. As regards the style of Polygnotus,. we have the distinction drawn by Aristotle (Poet., 2, G ; Pol it., viii. 5) between it and that of Zeuxis a distinction which he expressed by the words ethos and pathos. By ethos, as applied to the paintings of Polygnotus, we iiliderstaud a dignified bearing in his figures, and a measured movement throughout his com positions, such as the Parthenon frieze presents, compared with the pathetic rendering of scenes in the frieze from the temple of Apollo at Phigalia, or in the frieze of the Maiisoleum at Halicarnassus. It was also said (Pliny, A . //., xxxv. 35, 58) that in place of the old severity and rigidity of the features he introduced a great variety of expression, and was the first to paint figures with the lips open ; and further, he was accredited (Lucian, Imay., 7) with great improvements in the rendering of draper) 7, so as to show the forms underneath. He painted in mono chrome on a white ground ; so that, in fact, the principal charm of his work must have been in the drawing. His brother Aristophon appears to have also inherited an elevated conception and a power of carrying out large compositions. Among the younger contemporaries of Polygnotus were Dionysius of Colophon, laboriously accu rate, and Pauson, the butt of Aristophanes (Thesmoph., v. 949, and elsewhere), remarkable for his talent of cari cature and animal painting. ainteu The works of these painters have entirely perished, noi ses, in what remains of the work of their humble imitators, the vase painters, is there much that can be justly regarded as reflecting their style. Besides the Athenian lecythi, which give some sort of an idea of the effect of colours as em ployed by Polygnotus, there is a class of vases, with red figures on a black ground, which, by the treatment of the drapery as a transparent substance, recall the statement to the same effect made in respect of the great painter. In many cases, also, the figures are large in conception and measured in their movement. itcc- ^ e hi storv of architecture during this period is an unexampled record of great undertakings throughout Greece, but more especially in Athens, which, if.it had suffered most from the Persian invasion, had also in the end acquired the most ample means of repairing its ruins and adding fresh lustre to its aspect. Themistocles having been banished, the administration and the carrying out of works begun by him such, for example, as the long walls connecting the city with the harbour fell to Cimon. The city walls on the south side of the Acropolis were rebuilt, and a tower erected to command the entrance, whuh, however, being afterwards rendered useless by the ereothn of the Propylsea, was removed to make way for the temple of Athene Nike. Among the new temples the first to be mentioned is the Thcseiim, which is not only well pre served still, but is also the oldest existing example of the Attic-Doric order (Stuart and Rivett, Antiquities of Athens, iii. pi. 7). The other temples, the erection of which may with great probability be traced to Cimon, are the Anaceum, or temple of the Dioscuri, at the foot of the Acropolis, on the north side ; and a small temple, now quite destroyed,- on the left bank of the Ilissus, which existed in Stuart s time, and, from his drawing (Antiquities of Athens, L pi. 7), is seen to have been of the Ionic order, differing from the Attic-Ionic in wanting the dentils of the cornice, in having the base of its columns composed of a trochilus between two spirals, and in having its architrave quite plain. Cimon was succeeded by Pericles, under whose administration the resources of the city, not only in means, but in the talent of using the existing means, were applied with the greatest judgment and energy, foremost among his advisers being Phidias. According to Plutarch (Pericl., 133), Phidias exercised a general supervision over all the public works then going on. Apparently at this time was erected the Odeum, a building intended for musical performances, circular in form, and, as appears from the records of it (Vitrav., v. 9 ; Pausanias, i. 20, 4), brilliantly decorated with numerous columns in the interior, and with a tent-shaped roof of wood. It was the Acropolis, however, that was reserved for the crowning effort of architecture in this period. Within the space of probably not more than five or six years there rose ou the site of an old temple of Athene, which had been destroyed by the Persians, the Parthenon, a model for all time of the Doric order, pure and perfect in its architectural forms and pro portions. The architect was Ictinus, who was assisted by Callicratidas (Stuart, Antiquities of Athens, ii. pi. 7 ; Penrose, An Investigation of the Principles of Athenian Architecture, 1851; Beule&quot;, L Acropoled Athcnes; Botticher, Bericht iiber die Untersuchungen auf der Akropolis von, Athen, 18G2 ; Michaelis, Der Parthenon, 1871). The next undertaking was the so-called Propyloea, a building which, though practically serving as an entrance to the Acropolis, aspired to a highly decorative character (Stuart, Antiquities of Athens, ii. pi. 42). The architect was Mnesicles. Contemporary with the building of the Pro- pylyea, it appears, was that of the small temple of Athene Nike, on the Acropolis, which, on the removal of a Turkish structure in 1835, was recovered in almost all its parts, except some slabs of the frieze, brought by Lord Elgin to England, and now in the British Museum (Beule&quot;, L Acro- polc, p. 124; Kekule, Die Balustrade des Niketempels). Outside of Athens the example of the Periclcan activity was felt at Eleusis, where a great temple for the Mysteries was commenced, from designs by Ictinus, and carried to completion by the three successive architects, Corcebus, Metagenes, and Xcnocles. The small temple, in antis, of Artemis Propylcea at Eleusis probably belongs to this period, as does also the temple of Nemesis at Pihamnus, of which we have still important remains. There is yet to be men tioned the Erechtheum, or temple of Athene Polias, on the Acropolis of Athens, which, though the only date we possess of it falls after the death of Pericles, bears the strongest impress, both in its architectural and sculptured forms, of the great age. The date referred to is the twenty-third year of the Peloponnesian war, and occurs in an inscrip tion found on the Acropolis in several pieces, in which is given the report drawn up by a commission appointed to inspect the progress of the works (Inwood, The Erecldheum of Athens, 1827; Piangabe, Ant. lldl., Nos. D6-GO; Corpus