Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/118

 100 HISTORY Of GREECE. hand of the artist was greatly restrained in dealing with statues of the gods. It was in statues of men, especially in those of the victors at Olympia and other sacred games, that genuine ideas of beauty were first aimed at and in part attained, from whence they passed afterwards to the statues of the gods. Such statues of the athletes seem to commence somewhere between Olympiad 53-58, (568-548 B.C.) JN'or is it until the same interval of time (between 600-550 B.C.) that we find any traces of these architectural monuments, by which the more important cities in Greece afterwards at- tracted to themselves so much renown. The two greatest tem- ples in Greece known to Herodotus were, the Artemision at Ephesus, and the Heraeon at Samos : the former of these seems to have been commenced, by the Samian Theodorus, about 600 B.C., the latter, begun by the Samian Rhoekus, can hardly be traced to any higher antiquity. The first attempts to decorate Athens by such additions proceeded from Peisistratus and his sons, near the same time. As far as we can judge, too, in the absence of all direct evidence, the temples of Paestum in Italy and Selinus in Sicily seem to fall in this same century. Of painting, during these early centuries, nothing can be affirmed ; it never at any time reached the same perfection as sculpture, and we may presume that its years of infancy were at least equally rude. The immense development of Grecian art subsequently, and the great perfection of Grecian artists, are facts of great impor- .ance in the history of the human race. And in regard to the Greeks themselves, they not only acted powerfully on the taste of the people, but were also valuable indirectly as the common Coast of Hellenism, and as supplying one bond of fraternal sym- pathy as well as of mutual pride, among its widely-dispersed sections. It is the paucity and weakness of these bonds which renders the history of Greece, prior to 560 B.C., little better than a series of parallel, but isolated threads, each attached to a sep- arate city ; and that increased range of joint Hellenic feeling and action, upon which we shall presently enter, though arising doubtless in great measure from new and common dangers threatening many cities at once, also springs in part from Urns'} .-other causes which have been erumerated in this chapter