The Crown of Wild Olive

by John Ruskin

  LECTURE VI.

  THE SCHOOL OF ATHENS.

  _December, 1870._

  181. It can scarcely be needful for me to tell even the younger membersof my present audience, that the conditions necessary for the productionof a perfect school of sculpture have only twice been met in the historyof the world, and then for a short time; nor for short time only, butalso in narrow districts, namely, in the valleys and islands of IonianGreece, and in the strip of land deposited by the Arno, between theApennine crests and the sea.

  All other schools, except these two, led severally by Athens in thefifth century before Christ, and by Florence in the fifteenth of our ownera, are imperfect; and the best of them are derivative: these two areconsummate in themselves, and the origin of what is best in others.

  182. And observe, these Athenian and Florentine schools are both ofequal rank, as essentially original and independent. The Florentine,being subsequent to the Greek, borrowed much from it; but it would haveexisted just as strongly--and, perhaps, in some respects, morenobly--had it been the first, instead of the latter of the two. The taskset to each of these mightiest of the nations was, indeed, practicallythe same, and as hard to the one as to the other. The Greeks foundPhoenician and Etruscan art monstrous, and had to make them human. TheItalians found Byzantine and Norman art monstrous, and had to make themhuman. The original power in the one case is easily traced; in the otherit has partly to be unmasked, because the change at Florence was, inmany points, suggested and stimulated by the former school. But wemistake in supposing that Athens taught Florence the laws of design; shetaught her, in reality, only the duty of truth.

  183. You remember that I told you the highest art could do no more thanrightly represent the human form. This is the simple test, then, of aperfect school,--that it has represented the human form, so that it isimpossible to conceive of its being better done. And that, I repeat, hasbeen accomplished twice only: once in Athens, once in Florence. And sonarrow is the excellence even of these two exclusive schools, that itcannot be said of either of them that they represented the entire humanform. The Greeks perfectly drew, and perfectly moulded the body andlimbs; but there is, so far as I am aware, no instance of theirrepresenting the face as well as any great Italian. On the other hand,the Italian painted and carved the face insuperably; but I believe thereis no instance of his having perfectly represented the body, which, bycommand of his religion, it became his pride to despise, and his safetyto mortify.

  184. The general course of your study here renders it desirable that youshould be accurately acquainted with the leading principles of Greeksculpture; but I cannot lay these before you without giving undueprominence to some of the special merits of that school, unless Ipreviously indicate the relation it holds to the more advanced, thoughless disciplined, excellence of Christian art.

  In this and the last lecture of the present course,[135] I shallendeavour, therefore, to mass for you, in such rude and diagram-likeoutline as may be possible or intelligible, the main characteristics ofthe two schools, completing and correcting the details of comparisonafterwards; and not answering, observe, at present, for anygeneralization I give you, except as a ground for subsequent closer andmore qualified statements.

  And in carrying out this parallel, I shall speak indifferently of worksof sculpture, and of the modes of painting which propose to themselvesthe same objects as sculpture. And this indeed Florentine, as opposed toVenetian, painting, and that of Athens in the fifth century, nearlyalways did.

  185. I begin, therefore, by comparing two designs of the simplestkind--engravings, or, at least, linear drawings, both; one on clay, oneon copper, made in the central periods of each style, and representingthe same goddess--Aphrodite. They are now set beside each other in yourRudimentary Series. The first is from a patera lately found at Camirus,authoritatively assigned by Mr. Newton, in his recent catalogue, to thebest period of Greek art. The second is from one of the series ofengravings executed, probably, by Baccio Baldini, in 1485, out of whichI chose your first practical exercise--the Sceptre of Apollo. I cannot,however, make the comparison accurate in all respects, for I am obligedto set the restricted type of the Aphrodite Urania of the Greeks besidethe universal Deity conceived by the Italian as governing the air,earth, and sea; nevertheless the restriction in the mind of the Greek,and expatiation in that of the Florentine, are both characteristic. TheGreek Venus Urania is flying in heaven, her power over the waterssymbolized by her being borne by a swan, and her power over the earth bya single flower in her right hand; but the Italian Aphrodite is risingout of the actual sea, and only half risen: her limbs are still in thesea, her merely animal strength filling the waters with their life; buther body to the loins is in the sunshine, her face raised to the sky;her hand is about to lay a garland of flowers on the earth.

  186. The Venus Urania of the Greeks, in her relation to men, has poweronly over lawful and domestic love; therefore, she is fully dressed, andnot only quite dressed, but most daintily and trimly: her feetdelicately sandalled, her gown spotted with little stars, her hairbrushed exquisitely smooth at the top of her head, trickling in minutewaves down her forehead; and though, because there's such a quantity ofit, she can't possibly help having a chignon, look how tightly she hasfastened it in with her broad fillet. Of course she is married, so shemust wear a cap with pretty minute pendant jewels at the border; and avery small necklace, all that her husband can properly afford, justenough to go closely round the neck, and no more. On the contrary, theAphrodite of the Italian, being universal love, is pure-naked; and herlong hair is thrown wild to the wind and sea.

  These primal differences in the symbolism, observe, are only because theartists are thinking of separate powers: they do not necessarily involveany national distinction in feeling. But the differences I have next toindicate are essential, and characterize the two opposed national modesof mind.

  187. First, and chiefly. The Greek Aphrodite is a very pretty person,and the Italian a decidedly plain one. That is because a Greek thoughtno one could possibly love any but pretty people; but an Italian thoughtthat love could give dignity to the meanest form that it inhabited, andlight to the poorest that it looked upon. So his Aphrodite will notcondescend to be pretty.

  188. Secondly. In the Greek Venus the breasts are broad and full, thoughperfectly severe in their almost conical profile;--(you are allowed onpurpose to see the outline of the right breast, under the chiton:)--alsothe right arm is left bare, and you can just see the contour of thefront of the right limb and knee; both arm and limb pure and firm, butlovely. The plant she holds in her hand is a branching and floweringone, the seed vessel prominent. These signs all mean that her essentialfunction is child-bearing.

  On the contrary, in the Italian Venus the breasts are so small as to bescarcely traceable; the body strong, and almost masculine in its angles;the arms meagre and unattractive, and she lays a decorative garland offlowers on the earth. These signs mean that the Italian thought of loveas the strength of an eternal spirit, for ever helpful; and for evercrowned with flowers, that neither know seed-time nor harvest, and bloomwhere there is neither death, nor birth.

  189. Thirdly. The Greek Aphrodite is entirely calm, and looks straightforward. Not one feature of her face is disturbed, or seems ever to havebeen subject to emotion. The Italian Aphrodite looks up, her face allquivering and burning with passion and wasting anxiety. The Greek oneis quiet, self-possessed, and self-satisfied; the Italian incapable ofrest, she has had no thought nor care for herself; her hair has beenbound by a fillet like the Greeks; but it is now all fallen loose, andclotted with the sea, or clinging to her body; only the front tress ofit is caught by the breeze from her raised forehead, and lifted, in theplace where the tongues of fire rest on the brows, in the earlyChristian pictures of Pentecost, and the waving fires abide upon theheads of Angelico's seraphim.

  190. There are almost endless points of interest, great and small, to benoted in these differences of treatment. This binding of the hair by the
single fillet marks the straight course of one great system of artmethod, from that Greek head which I showed you on the archaic coin ofthe seventh century before Christ, to this of the fifteenth of our ownera--nay, when you look close, you will see the entire action of thehead depends on one lock of hair falling back from the ear, which itdoes in compliance with the old Greek observance of its being bent thereby the pressure of the helmet. That rippling of it down her shoulderscomes from the Athena of Corinth; the raising of it on her forehead,from the knot of the hair of Diana, changed into the vestal fire of theangels. But chiefly, the calmness of the features in the one face, andtheir anxiety in the other, indicate first, indeed, the characteristicdifference in every conception of the schools, the Greek neverrepresenting expression, the Italian primarily seeking it; but far more,mark for us here the utter change in the conception of love; from thetranquil guide and queen of a happy terrestrial domestic life, acceptingits immediate pleasures and natural duties, to the agonizing hope of aninfinite good, and the ever mingled joy and terror of a love divine injealousy, crying, "Set me as a seal upon thine heart, as a seal uponthine arm; for love is strong as death, jealousy is cruel as the grave."

  The vast issues dependent on this change in the conception of the rulingpassion of the human soul, I will endeavour to show you, on a futureoccasion: in my present lecture, I shall limit myself to the definitionof the temper of Greek sculpture, and of its distinctions fromFlorentine in the treatment of any subject whatever, be it love orhatred, hope or despair.

  These great differences are mainly the following.

  191. 1. A Greek never expresses momentary passion; a Florentine looks tomomentary passion as the ultimate object of his skill.

  When you are next in London, look carefully in the British Museum at thecasts from the statues in the pediment of the Temple of Minerva atAEgina. You have there Greek work of definite date;--about 600 B.C.,certainly before 580--of the purest kind; and you have therepresentation of a noble ideal subject, the combats of the AEacidae atTroy, with Athena herself looking on. But there is no attempt whateverto represent expression in the features, none to give complexity ofaction or gesture; there is no struggling, no anxiety, no visibletemporary exertion of muscles. There are fallen figures, one pulling alance out of his wound, and others in attitudes of attack and defence;several kneeling to draw their bows. But all inflict and suffer, conqueror expire, with the same smile.

  192. Plate XIV. gives you examples, from more advanced art, of trueGreek representation; the subjects being the two contests of leadingimport to the Greek heart--that of Apollo with the Python, and ofHercules with the Nemean Lion. You see that in neither case is there theslightest effort to represent the [Greek: lyssa] or agony of contest. Nogood Greek artist would have you behold the suffering, either of gods,heroes, or men; nor allow you to be apprehensive of the issue of theircontest with evil beasts, or evil spirits. All such lower sources ofexcitement are to be closed to you; your interest is to be in thethoughts involved by the fact of the war; and in the beauty or rightnessof form, whether active or inactive. I have to work out this subjectwith you afterwards, and to compare with the pure Greek method ofthought, that of modern dramatic passion, engrafted on it, as typicallyin Turner's contest of Apollo and the Python: in the meantime, becontent with the statement of this first great principle--that a Greek,as such, never expresses momentary passion.

  PLATE XIV.--APOLLO AND THE PYTHON.

  HERACLES AND THE NEMEAN LION.]

  PLATE XV.--HERA OF ARGOS. ZEUS OF SYRACUSE.]

  193. Secondly. The Greek, as such, never expresses personal character,while a Florentine holds it to be the ultimate condition of beauty. Youare startled, I suppose, at my saying this, having had it often pointedout to you, as a transcendent piece of subtlety in Greek art, that youcould distinguish Hercules from Apollo by his being stout, and Dianafrom Juno by her being slender. That is very true; but those are generaldistinctions of class, not special distinctions of personal character.Even as general, they are bodily, not mental. They are the distinctions,in fleshly aspect, between an athlete and a musician,--between a matronand a huntress; but in no wise distinguish the simple-hearted hero fromthe subtle Master of the Muses, nor the wilful and fitful girl-goddessfrom the cruel and resolute matron-goddess. But judge foryourselves;--In the successive plates, XV.--XVIII., I show you,[136]typically represented as the protectresses of nations, the Argive,Cretan, and Lacinian Hera, the Messenian Demeter, the Athena of Corinth,the Artemis of Syracuse, the fountain Arethusa of Syracuse, and theSirem Ligeia of Terina. Now, of these heads, it is true that some aremore delicate in feature than the rest, and some softer in expression:in other respects, can you trace any distinction between the Goddessesof Earth and Heaven, or between the Goddess of Wisdom and the WaterNymph of Syracuse? So little can you do so, that it would have remaineda disputed question--had not the name luckily been inscribed on someSyracusan coins--whether the head upon them was meant for Arethusa atall; and, continually, it becomes a question respecting finishedstatues, if without attributes, "Is this Bacchus or Apollo--Zeus orPoseidon?" There is a fact for you; noteworthy, I think! There is nopersonal character in true Greek art:--abstract ideas of youth and age,strength and swiftness, virtue and vice,--yes: but there is noindividuality; and the negative holds down to the revivedconventionalism of the Greek school by Leonardo, when he tells you howyou are to paint young women, and how old ones; though a Greek wouldhardly have been so discourteous to age as the Italian is in his canonof it,--"old women should be represented as passionate and hasty, afterthe manner of Infernal Furies."

  194. "But at least, if the Greeks do not give character, they give idealbeauty?" So it is said, without contradiction. But will you look againat the series of coins of the best time of Greek art, which I have justset before you? Are any of these goddesses or nymphs very beautiful?Certainly the Junos are not. Certainly the Demeters are not. The Siren,and Arethusa, have well-formed and regular features; but I am quite surethat if you look at them without prejudice, you will think neitherreach even the average standard of pretty English girls. The VenusUrania suggests at first, the idea of a very charming person, but youwill find there is no real depth nor sweetness in the contours, lookedat closely. And remember, these are chosen examples; the best I can findof art current in Greece at the great time; and if even I were to takethe celebrated statues, of which only two or three are extant, not oneof them excels the Venus of Melos; and she, as I have already asserted,in _The Queen of the Air_, has nothing notable in feature except dignityand simplicity. Of Athena I do not know one authentic type of greatbeauty; but the intense ugliness which the Greeks could tolerate intheir symbolism of her will be convincingly proved to you by the coinrepresented in Plate VI. You need only look at two or three vases of thebest time, to assure yourselves that beauty of feature was, in popularart, not only unattained, but unattempted; and finally,--and this youmay accept as a conclusive proof of the Greek insensitiveness to themost subtle beauty--there is little evidence even in their literature,and none in their art, of their having ever perceived any beauty ininfancy, or early childhood.

  PLATE XVI.--DEMETER OF MESSENE. HERA OF CROSSUS.]

  PLATE XVII.--ATHENA OF THURIUM.

  SEREIE LIGEIA OF TERINA]

  195. The Greeks, then, do not give passion, do not give character, donot give refined or naive beauty. But you may think that the absence ofthese is intended to give dignity to the gods and nymphs; and that theircalm faces would be found, if you long observed them, instinct with someexpression of divine mystery or power.

  I will convince you of the narrow range of Greek thought in theserespects, by showing you, from the two sides of one and the same coin,images of the most mysterious of their Deities, and the mostpowerful,--Demeter and Zeus.

  Remember, that just as the west coasts of Ireland and England catchfirst on their hills the rain of the Atlantic, so the westernPeloponnese arrests, in the clouds of the first mountain ranges ofArcadia, the moisture of the Me
diterranean; and over all the plains ofElis, Pylos, and Messene, the strength and sustenance of men wasnaturally felt to be granted by Zeus; as, on the east coast of Greece,the greater clearness of the air by the power of Athena. Ifyou will recollect the prayer of Rhea, in the single line ofCallimachus--"[Greek: Gaia phile, teke kai su teai d' odines elaphrai],"(compare Pausanias iv. 33, at the beginning,)--it will mark for you theconnection, in the Greek mind, of the birth of the mountain springs ofArcadia with the birth of Zeus. And the centres of Greek thought on thiswestern coast are necessarily Elis, and, (after the time ofEpaminondas,) Messene.

  196. I show you the coin of Messene, because the splendid height andform of Mount Ithome were more expressive of the physical power of Zeusthan the lower hills of Olympia; and also because it was struck just atthe time of the most finished and delicate Greek art--a little after themain strength of Phidias, but before decadence had generally pronounceditself. The coin is a silver didrachm, bearing on one side a head ofDemeter (Plate XVI., at the top); on the other a full figure of ZeusAietophoros (Plate XIX., at the top); the two together signifying thesustaining strength of the earth and heaven. Look first at the head ofDemeter. It is merely meant to personify fulness of harvest; there is nomystery in it, no sadness, no vestige of the expression which we shouldhave looked for in any effort to realize the Greek thoughts of the EarthMother, as we find them spoken by the poets. But take it merely aspersonified abundance;--the goddess of black furrow and tawny grass--howcommonplace it is, and how poor! The hair is grand, and there is onestalk of wheat set in it, which is enough to indicate the goddess who ismeant; but, in that very office, ignoble, for it shows that the artistcould only inform you that this was Demeter by such a symbol. How easyit would have been for a great designer to have made the hair lovelywith fruitful flowers, and the features noble in mystery of gloom, or oftenderness. But here you have nothing to interest you, except the commonGreek perfections of a straight nose and a full chin.

  197. We pass, on the reverse of the die, to the figure of ZeusAietophoros. Think of the invocation to Zeus in the Suppliants, (525),"King of Kings, and Happiest of the Happy, Perfectest of the Perfect instrength, abounding in all things, Jove--hear us and be with us;" andthen, consider what strange phase of mind it was, which, under the verymountain-home of the god, was content with this symbol of him as awell-fed athlete, holding a diminutive and crouching eagle on his fist.The features and the right hand have been injured in this coin, but theaction of the arms shows that it held a thunderbolt, of which, Ibelieve, the twisted rays were triple. In the, presumably earlier, coinengraved by Millingen, however,[137] it is singly pointed only; and theadded inscription "[Greek: ITHOM]," in the field, renders the conjectureof Millingen probable, that this is a rude representation of the statueof Zeus Ithomates, made by Ageladas, the master of Phidias; and I thinkit has, indeed, the aspect of the endeavour, by a workman of moreadvanced knowledge, and more vulgar temper, to put the softer anatomy oflater schools into the simple action of an archaic figure. Be that as itmay, here is one of the most refined cities of Greece content with thefigure of an athlete as the representative of their own mountain god;marked as a divine power merely by the attributes of the eagle andthunderbolt.

  PLATE XVIII.--ARTEMIS OF SYRACUSE.

  HERA OF LACINIAN CAPE.]

  PLATE XIX.--ZEUS OF MESSENE. AJAX OF OPUS.]

  198. Lastly. The Greeks have not, it appears, in any supreme way, givento their statues character, beauty, or divine strength. Can they givedivine sadness? Shall we find in their artwork any of that pensivenessand yearning for the dead, which fills the chants of their tragedy? Isuppose if anything like nearness or firmness of faith in afterlife isto be found in Greek legend, you might look for it in the stories aboutthe Island of Leuce, at the mouth of the Danube, inhabited by the ghostsof Achilles, Patroclus, Ajax the son of Oileus, and Helen; and in whichthe pavement of the Temple of Achilles was washed daily by the sea-birdswith their wings, dipping them in the sea.

  Now it happens that we have actually on a coin of the Locrians therepresentation of the ghost of the Lesser Ajax. There is nothing in thehistory of human imagination more lovely, than their leaving always aplace for his spirit, vacant in their ranks of battle. But here is theirsculptural representation of the phantom; (lower figure, Plate XIX.),and I think you will at once agree with me in feeling that it would beimpossible to conceive anything more completely unspiritual. You mightmore than doubt that it could have been meant for the departed soul,unless you were aware of the meaning of this little circlet between thefeet. On other coins you find his name inscribed there, but in this youhave his habitation, the haunted Island of Leuce itself, with the wavesflowing round it.

  199. Again and again, however, I have to remind you, with respect tothese apparently frank and simple failures, that the Greek alwaysintends you to think for yourself, and understand, more than he canspeak. Take this instance at our hands, the trim little circlet for theIsland of Leuce. The workman knows very well it is not like the island,and that he could not make it so; that at its best, his sculpture can belittle more than a letter; and yet, in putting this circlet, and itsencompassing fretwork of minute waves, he does more than if he hadmerely given you a letter L, or written "Leuce." If you know anything ofbeaches and sea, this symbol will set your imagination at work inrecalling them; then you will think of the temple service of thenovitiate sea-birds, and of the ghosts of Achilles and Patroclusappearing, like the Dioscuri, above the storm-clouds of the Euxine. Andthe artist, throughout his work, never for an instant loses faith inyour sympathy and passion being ready to answer his;--if you have noneto give, he does not care to take you into his counsel; on the whole,would rather that you should not look at his work.

  200. But if you have this sympathy to give, you may be sure thatwhatever he does for you will be right, as far as he can render it so.It may not be sublime, nor beautiful, nor amusing; but it will be fullof meaning, and faithful in guidance. He will give you clue to myriadsof things that he cannot literally teach; and, so far as he does teach,you may trust him. Is not this saying much?

  And as he strove only to teach what was true, so, in his sculpturedsymbol, he strove only to carve what was--Right. He rules over the artsto this day, and will for ever, because he sought not first for beauty,nor first for passion, or for invention, but for Rightness; striving todisplay, neither himself nor his art, but the thing that he dealt with,in its simplicity. That is his specific character as a Greek. Of course,every nation's character is connected with that of others surrounding orpreceding it; and in the best Greek work you will find some things thatare still false, or fanciful; but whatever in it is false or fanciful,is not the Greek part of it--it is the Phoenician, or Egyptian, orPelasgian part. The essential Hellenic stamp is veracity:--Easternnations drew their heroes with eight legs, but the Greeks drew them withtwo;--Egyptians drew their deities with cats' heads, but the Greeks drewthem with men's; and out of all fallacy, disproportion, andindefiniteness, they were, day by day, resolvedly withdrawing andexalting themselves into restricted and demonstrable truth.

  201. And now, having cut away the misconceptions which encumbered ourthoughts, I shall be able to put the Greek school into some clearness ofits position for you, with respect to the art of the world. Thatrelation is strangely duplicate; for on one side, Greek art is the rootof all simplicity; and on the other, of all complexity.

  PLATE XX.--GREEK AND BARBARIAN SCULPTURE.]

  On one side I say, it is the root of all simplicity. If you were forsome prolonged period to study Greek sculpture exclusively in the ElginRoom of the British Museum, and were then suddenly transported to theHotel de Cluny, or any other museum of Gothic and barbarian workmanship,you would imagine the Greeks were the masters of all that was grand,simple, wise, and tenderly human, opposed to the pettiness of the toysof the rest of mankind.

  202. On one side of their work they are so. From all vain and meandecoration--all weak and monstrous error, the Greeks rescue the forms
ofman and beast, and sculpture them in the nakedness of their true flesh,and with the fire of their living soul. Distinctively from other races,as I have now, perhaps to your weariness, told you, this is the work ofthe Greek, to give health to what was diseased, and chastisement to whatwas untrue. So far as this is found in any other school, hereafter, itbelongs to them by inheritance from the Greeks, or invests them with thebrotherhood of the Greek. And this is the deep meaning of the myth ofDaedalus as the giver of motion to statues. The literal change from thebinding together of the feet to their separation, and the othermodifications of action which took place, either in progressive skill,or often, as the mere consequence of the transition from wood to stone,(a figure carved out of one wooden log must have necessarily its feetnear each other, and hands at its sides), these literal changes are asnothing, in the Greek fable, compared to the bestowing of apparent life.The figures of monstrous gods on Indian temples have their legs separateenough; but they are infinitely more dead than the rude figures atBranchidae sitting with their hands on their knees. And, briefly, thework of Daedalus is the giving of deceptive life, as that of Prometheusthe giving of real life; and I can put the relation of Greek to allother art, in this function, before you in easily compared andremembered examples.

  203. Here, on the right, in Plate XX., is an Indian bull, colossal, andelaborately carved, which you may take as a sufficient type of the badart of all the earth. False in form, dead in heart, and loaded withwealth, externally. We will not ask the date of this; it may rest in theeternal obscurity of evil art, everywhere and for ever. Now, besidesthis colossal bull, here is a bit of Daedalus work, enlarged from a coinnot bigger than a shilling: look at the two together, and you ought toknow, henceforward, what Greek art means, to the end of your days.

  204. In this aspect of it then, I say, it is the simplest and nakedestof lovely veracities. But it has another aspect, or rather another pole,for the opposition is diametric. As the simplest, so also it is the mostcomplex of human art. I told you in my fifth Lecture, showing you thespotty picture of Velasquez, that an essential Greek character is aliking for things that are dappled. And you cannot but have noticed howoften and how prevalently the idea which gave its name to the Porch ofPolygnotus, "[Greek: stoa poikile]," occurs to the Greeks as connectedwith the finest art. Thus, when the luxurious city is opposed to thesimple and healthful one, in the second book of Plato's Polity, you findthat, next to perfumes, pretty ladies, and dice, you must have in it"[Greek: poikilia]," which observe, both in that place and again in thethird book, is the separate art of joiners' work, or inlaying; but theidea of exquisitely divided variegation or division, both in sight andsound--the "ravishing division to the lute," as in Pindar's "[Greek:poikiloi hymnoi]"--runs through the compass of all Greekart-description; and if, instead of studying that art among marbles youwere to look at it only on vases of a fine time, (look back, forinstance, to Plate IV. here), your impression of it would be, instead ofbreadth and simplicity, one of universal spottiness and chequeredness,"[Greek: en angeon Herkesin pampoikilois];" and of the artist'sdelighting in nothing so much as in crossed or starred or spottedthings; which, in right places, he and his public both do unlimitedly.Indeed they hold it complimentary even to a trout, to call him a"spotty." Do you recollect the trout in the tributaries of the Ladon,which Pausanias says were spotted, so that they were like thrushes andwhich, the Arcadians told him, could speak? In this last [Greek:poikilia], however, they disappointed him. "I, indeed, saw some of themcaught," he says, "but I did not hear any of them speak, though I waitedbeside the river till sunset."

  PLATE XXI.--THE BEGINNINGS OF CHIVALRY.]

  205. I must sum roughly now, for I have detained you too long.

  The Greeks have been thus the origin not only of all broad, mighty, andcalm conception, but of all that is divided, delicate, and tremulous;"variable as the shade, by the light quivering aspen made." To them, asfirst leaders of ornamental design, belongs, of right, the praise ofglistenings in gold, piercings in ivory, stainings in purple,burnishings in dark blue steel; of the fantasy of the Arabianroof--quartering of the Christian shield,--rubric and arabesque ofChristian scripture; in fine, all enlargement, and all diminution ofadorning thought, from the temple to the toy, and from the mountainouspillars of Agrigentum to the last fineness of fretwork in the PisanChapel of the Thorn.

  And in their doing all this, they stand as masters of human order andjustice, subduing the animal nature guided by the spiritual one, as yousee the Sicilian Charioteer stands, holding his horse-reins, with thewild lion racing beneath him, and the flying angel above, on thebeautiful coin of early Syracuse; (lowest in Plate XXI).

  And the beginnings of Christian chivalary were in that Greek bridling ofthe dark and the white horses.

  206. Not that a Greek never made mistakes. He made as many as we doourselves, nearly;--he died of his mistakes at last--as we shall die ofthem; but so far he was separated from the herd of more mistaken andmore wretched nations--so far as he was Greek--it was by his rightness.He lived, and worked, and was satisfied with the fatness of his land,and the fame of his deeds, by his justice, and reason, and modesty. Hebecame _Graeculus esuriens_, little, and hungry, and every man'serrand-boy, by his iniquity, and his competition, and his love of talk.But his Graecism was in having done, at least at one period of hisdominion, more than anybody else, what was modest, useful, and eternallytrue; and as a workman, he verily did, or first suggested the doing of,everything possible to man.

  Take Daedalus, his great type of the practically executive craftsman, andthe inventor of expedients in craftsmanship, (as distinguished fromPrometheus, the institutor of moral order in art). Daedalus invents,--he,or his nephew,--

  The potter's wheel, and all work in clay;

  The saw, and all work in wood;

  The masts and sails of ships, and all modes of motion; (wings onlyproving too dangerous!)

  The entire art of minute ornament;

  And the deceptive life of statues.

  By his personal toil, he involves the fatal labyrinth for Minos; buildsan impregnable fortress for the Agrigentines; adorns healing baths amongthe wild parsley fields of Selinus; buttresses the precipices of Eryx,under the temple of Aphrodite; and for her temple itself--finishes inexquisiteness the golden honeycomb.

  207. Take note of that last piece of his art: it is connected with manythings which I must bring before you when we enter on the study ofarchitecture. That study we shall begin at the foot of the Baptistery ofFlorence, which, of all buildings known to me, unites the most perfectsymmetry with the quaintest [Greek: poikilia]. Then, from the tomb ofyour own Edward the Confessor, to the farthest shrine of the oppositeArabian and Indian world, I must show you how the glittering andiridescent dominion of Daedalus prevails; and his ingenuity in division,interposition, and labyrinthine sequence, more widely still. Only thislast summer I found the dark red masses of the rough sandstone ofFurness Abbey had been fitted by him, with no less pleasure than he hadin carving them, into wedged hexagons--reminiscences of the honeycomb ofVenus Erycina. His ingenuity plays around the framework of all thenoblest things; and yet the brightness of it has a lurid shadow. Thespot of the fawn, of the bird, and the moth, may be harmless. ButDaedalus reigns no less over the spot of the leopard and snake. Thatcruel and venomous power of his art is marked, in the legends of him,by his invention of the saw from the serpent's tooth; and his seekingrefuge, under blood-guiltiness, with Minos, who can judge evil, andmeasure, or remit, the penalty of it, but not reward good: Rhadamanthusonly can measure _that_; but Minos is essentially the recognizer of evildeeds "conoscitor delle peccata," whom, therefore, you find in Danteunder the form of the [Greek: erpeton]. "Cignesi con la coda tantevolte, quantunque gradi vuol che giu sia messa."

  And this peril of the influence of Daedalus is twofold; first in leadingus to delight in glitterings and semblances of things, more than intheir form, or truth;--admire the harlequin's jacket more than thehero's strength; and love the gilding of the missal mo
re than itswords;--but farther, and worse, the ingenuity of Daedalus may even becomebestial, an instinct for mechanical labour only, strangely involved witha feverish and ghastly cruelty:--(you will find this distinct in theintensely Daedal work of the Japanese); rebellious, finally, against thelaws of nature and honour, and building labyrinths for monsters,--notcombs for bees.

  208. Gentlemen, we of the rough northern race may never, perhaps, beable to learn from the Greek his reverence for beauty: but we may atleast learn his disdain of mechanism:--of all work which he felt to bemonstrous and inhuman in its imprudent dexterities.

  We hold ourselves, we English, to be good workmen. I do not think Ispeak with light reference to recent calamity, (for I myself lost ayoung relation, full of hope and good purpose, in the foundered ship_London_,) when I say that either an AEginetan or Ionian shipwright builtships that could be fought from, though they were under water; andneither of them would have been proud of having built one that wouldfill and sink helplessly if the sea washed over her deck, or turn upsidedown if a squall struck her topsail.

  Believe me, gentlemen, good workmanship consists in continence andcommon sense, more than in frantic expatiation of mechanical ingenuity;and if you would be continent and rational, you had better learn more ofArt than you do now, and less of Engineering. What is taking place atthis very hour,[138] among the streets, once so bright, and avenuesonce so pleasant, of the fairest city in Europe, may surely lead us allto feel that the skill of Daedalus, set to build impregnable fortresses,is not so wisely applied as in framing the [Greek: treton ponou]--thegolden honeycomb.

  FOOTNOTES:

  [135] The closing Lecture, on the religious temper of the Florentine,though necessary for the complete explanation of the subject to myclass, at the time, introduced new points of inquiry which I do notchoose to lay before the general reader until they can be examined infuller sequence. The present volume, therefore, closes with the SixthLecture, and that on Christian art will be given as the first of thepublished course on Florentine Sculpture.

  [136] These plates of coins are given for future reference andexamination, not merely for the use made of them in this place. TheLacinian Hera, if a coin could be found unworn in surface, would be verynoble; her hair is thrown free because she is the goddess of the cape ofstorms though in her temple, there, the wind never moved the ashes onits altar. (Livy, xxiv. 3.)

  [137] Ancient Cities and Kings, Plate IV. No. 20.

  [138] The siege of Paris, at the time of the delivery of this Lecture,was in one of its most destructive phases.