Page:Studies in the history of the renaissance (IA studiesinhistor01pategoog).djvu/203

Rh an umpire; as also at Megara by the grave of Diocles. At Sparta, and at Lesbos in the temple of Juno, and among the Parrhasii, there were contests for beauty among women. The general esteem for beauty went so far, that the Spartan women set up in their bed-chambers a Nireus, a Narcissus, or a Hyacinth, that they might bear beautiful children .'

So from a few stray antiquarianisms, from a few faces cast up sharply from the waves, Winckelmann, as his manner is, divines the temperament of the antique world, and that in which it had delight. It has passed away with that distant age, and we may venture to dwell upon it. What sharpness and reality it has, is the sharpness and reality of suddenly arrested life. Gymnastic originated as part of a religious ritual. The worshipper was to recommend himself to the gods by becoming fleet and serpentining, and white and red, like them. The beauty of the palæstra and the beauty of the artist's studio reacted on each other. The youth tried to rival his gods, and his increased beauty passed back into them. Ομνυμι πάντας θεούς μή έλέσθαι άν τήν βασιλέως άρχήν τού καλός είναι. That is the form in which one age of the world chose 'the better part'—a perfect world, if our gods could have seemed