Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/61

Rh Frescoes and other works lately discovered in Crete show that perhaps more than a thousand years B.C. considerable skill had been attained both in painting and sculpture; while those found at Pompeii, which belong to the end of the classical period, have many of the excellences of a highly-developed technique. But between these two extremes there were periods of decadence and revival. In painting, indeed, of the great period, we have only that on vases and other pottery, which cannot be taken to fairly represent what could be done in delineation and the use of colours, though they vary from the most primitive ideas of drawing to the most elaborate and skilful compositions. In statuary, the remains of work before the Persian wars (B.C. 490–478) are stiff and conventional. The difficulties in representing posture, drapery, the eyes and hair, have not been overcome. It was after that period that the great artists—Pheidias, Polycleitos, Myron, and many others, whether independent artists or working under their instruction and direction—showed what could be done with stone or bronze. The men and horses on the frieze of the Parthenon live and move, their faces express life-like emotion, and their eyes see. The names of the artists mentioned belong to the fifth century B.C., but in the next century Scopas of Paros, Praxiteles of Athens, Lysippus of Sicyon, worthily maintained the tradition; and if it is true that the Aphrodite of Melos (now in the Louvre) belongs to the second century B.C., Greek art remained at the very highest point of excellence at least till that time, while some of the statues of the