Page:History of Art in Phrygia, Lydia, Caria and Lycia.djvu/192

 176 HISTORY OF ART IN ANTIQUITY. It is small in comparison with the size of the head, as a lion's ear should be. The eye is deeply cut, and the eyelid frankly pro- jects, with a clean vertical edge, from the eyeball. The muscles about the cheek, the wrinkles of the nose, are rendered with truth and decision as if from direct observation of the living animal ; other details, however, would seem to belie such a conclusion. If there are no teeth in the upper jaw, that is because they were broken when the block fell in, but the marks left by them are still distinct. Those in the lower jaw are well preserved, and curious to behold in a lion's mouth. Instead of the nail -shaped, sharply pointed teeth proper to animals of prey, it is the broad, flat molars of herbivorous animals which make their appearance here. Yet it seems probable that when these sculptures were executed the lion still haunted the hilly range of the peninsula ; he fills too important a place in the Homeric poems, his habits and physiognomy are painted in too lifelike, vivid colours, to induce the belief that the dwellers of the ^Egean coast only knew him from the accounts of travellers and the more or less conventionalized portraitures of Oriental art. Despite these inexactitudes and the very arbitrary mode in which certain details are handled by the artist, the figure had its modicum of beauty and dignified aspect. What was its attitude ? In all likelihood the lion was rampant, as in several monuments of this neighbourhood (Figs. 64, 79, 92). Our illustration (Fig. 121) shows how M. Ramsay thinks the animal can be restored. Of the other two lions carved, he thinks, on the same face of the tomb (F in plan, Fig. 66) nothing is left but two paws, opposed one to the other a movement suggestive of two animals set up against each other in true Oriental taste and fashion (Fig. I22). 1 The decoration of the broken tomb is perhaps the masterpiece of Phrygian sculpture. Next conies the exemplar with two lions standing on their hind legs, and separated by a pillar. The work, though in better condition, betrays a more rudimentary style, and the relief of the two great figures is not so accentuated ; in both, however, the joints, muscles, and folds of skin are indicated by the same process. The main front faces north, and is for the most part covered with greenish moss. As the figures are considerably above the ground, details are not easily made out, but the eyes, 1 The two restitutions (Figs. 121, 122) are made from sketches by M. Ramsay; the parts restored are merely outlined.