Page:History of Art in Persia.djvu/516

 492 History op Art in Antiquity. centuries, or from European Greece, which she invaded ? Did Ionian artists teach her nothing f Did they give her none of their taste and style when they entered her service, either of their own free will or when forcibly taken from their native towns and trans- planted in the interior of Asia ? Above all, did she learn naught of those marbles and bronzes, chiselled by the best Grecian sculptors, of which she despoiled the temples of Hellas to decorate the palaces of Susa and Persepolis ? It would be passing strange if these points of touch, whether spontaneous or enforced, together with the presence of stupendous models, had exercised no influence, had left no trace on the art- productions of Persia. Though slight and unobtrusive, these traces exist. Greek genius made itself felt both in architec- ture and sculpture; but the difficulty is correctly to define the mode in which the action was produced and measure its intensity, without omitting any indication which may testify to the points in touch under notice, keeping free at the same time from exaggeration as to its importance and effects. The temptation to sin in this direction has not always been sufficiently resisted. Many are apt to start with the idea — right if not pushed too far — that Grecian art was superior to all and everything which had preceded it in the antique world, and the mind thus biassed cannot readily grasp why, from the day when relations were entered into between the Greeks and their neighbours, the mastery of Hellenic art should not have been powerful enough to bear down all opposition and impose itself on those Barbarians, as they would say, and cause them to adopt a system of forms quite fresh from the mint of that gifted race. By applying this theory to Persia we should not only be guilty of anachronism, but the dupes of optical delusion. Grecian art could only possess this ascendency on the day when its technkjue was so perfect that it could use, with supreme freedom,, all the means of expression which belong to plastic art Now, towards the end of the sixth century B.a, when Persian art finally constituted itself and adopted its style and forms, Grecian architecture and sculpture were still groping and trying to emerge from the trammels of archaism. Nor is this all. Their noblest master- pieces, the fruit of their intellectual travail, had to wait until the battles fought on the Granicus, Issus, and at Arbela laid Asia at the feet of the conqueror, and compelled her to open her gates to Hellenic culture. Military and political conquest led the way to