greek personality in archaic sculpture () || vi. ionian sculpture in the sixth century

VI. IONIAN SCULPTURE IN T H E SIXTH CENTURY

TH E stimulating influence which monumental ori-ental art exercised upon early archaic sculpture in

Greece would naturally have been felt first in those Eastern Ionian regions which bordered on the un-Hellenic realms of Asia Minor and were connected both with Syria and Egypt by long-established com-mercial intercourse. Yet the archaeological evidence does not bear this out. There is as little trace of Earliest Archaic as of Daedalid large-scale sculpture in the ruins of the wealthy Ionian cities and sanctuaries on the Micrasiatic mainland, the great islands border-ing it, and the Aeolian regions farther to the North. Small pieces of a younger cousin of the "Nikandre" (above, p. 94) have come to light in the Samian He-raeum. But this is an exception which proves the rule, besides being probably a Naxian offering, like the "Nikandre" herself. Of course we still know far too little about several centres of Eastern Ionian and Aeol-ian art, like Clazomenae and Phocaea, Chios and Lesbos. But it seems incredible that not a single large plastic work earlier than 600 B.C. should have turned up, either in excavations or as a stray find, if such stat-ues had been in use in Eastern Greece, as they undoubt-edly were in the Cyclades. It thus seemed logical to begin our survey with these central Aegean islands.

1. The Cyclades

Of all the Cyclades, Naxos evidently was foremost in the production of marble, ever since the first half of the seventh century. The evidence of a long line

Brought to you by | New York University Elmer Holmes Bobst LibraryAuthenticated

Download Date | 10/15/14 10:26 PM

ι8ι of statues, dedicated at Delos, and ranging from the "Nikandre" to developed archaism, is borne out by extensive marble quarries of ancient date on the North-ern coast of the island. That they were worked very early is proved by two blocked out kouroi twice life size and an enormous, roughly trimmed block, more than thirty feet long, which seems to be intended for a bearded draped statue. Stanley Casson has recently studied it.1 In size it exceeded even the Delian colos-sus to be discussed below. Quite a number of early archaic statues from various island and mainland sites are apparently of Naxian marble—though there is rea-son to be prudent in such assignments, since several other Cyclades are rich in marble. However, the Nax-ian variety is fairly characterized by its large crystals, while Parian for instance has a finer grain. From the later sixth century it was justly preferred to Naxian and prized more than any other kind. But between about 650 and 550 B.C. Naxos appears to have held the field, and a local school of sculpture developed and flourished in consequence.2

At least one signed and datable work of this school has escaped the wholesale destruction of the Delian sanctuary : a triangular base with the heads of a ram and a lion and a Gorgoneion in high relief at the cor-ners. Both the general shape and the plastic decora-tion are unique among the numerous archaic bases known to us.8 A hexagonal depression on top of the block contains a plinth with remains of two feet; evi-dently a large kouros stood on this base, whose lower part is only roughly blocked out and must have been covered by the ground : a very welcome proof that the statue was only very slightly raised above the level of



182 GREEK PERSONALITY the sanctuary. W e will find the same practice at Samos (pp. 199. 203) ; standing, seated or recumbent figures in marble seemed to mingle with the visitors who thronged the sanctuaries. T h e effect must have been singularly like Rodin's Bourgeois de Calais in the market place of the town.

T h e Delian base is inscribed in early letters, point-ing like the style of the corner heads to the very begin-ning of the sixth century: "Euthykartides dedicated me the Naxian, having made (me) . " Evidently the sculptor, who is not otherwise known to us, devoted special pains to a work which would proclaim his origi-nality to the innumerable potential customers that con-gregated at Delos f rom all parts of Ionian Greece. Such a base with its unique and rich decoration would attract everybody's attention. Perhaps the kouros which it carried likewise had unusual traits. I t is sug-gestive to find the taste for lavish ornament, so char-acteristic of later Ionian sculpture, at such an early stage.

Remains of two earlier kouroi in Delos are assigned to the time of "Nikandre" and to the third quarter of the seventh century by Gisela Richter, to whom we owe the latest and best summary of the problems involved.4

Euthykartides could thus draw on half a century of artistic tradition. His statue apparently did not ex-ceed life size. Another Naxian kouros at Delos, dis-tinguished by a broad belt, must have been consider-ably larger.5

But all these are dwarfed by the huge marble Apollo which the Naxians set up at Delos at this time.® Plu-tarch states that it was knocked down when a bronze palm tree dedicated by Nicias fell. I t was evidently



IN ARCHAIC SCULPTURE, CH. VI 183 re-erected and remained standing to the end of an-tiquity. While the Italian traveller Bondelmonte (about A.D. 1420 ) found the statue prostrate but suf-ficiently well preserved for an (unsuccessful) attempt to set it up again, it had already been smashed into sev-eral pieces by 1655, and the head disappeared soon afterwards. Today only the torso, parts of the left hand and foot and the base survive. T h e latter is very large but low: 3. 47 χ 5.15 χ 0.70 m. I t must have stood on a foundation, the visible part of which hardly exceeded two or three feet in height, though what re-mains is too incomplete to admit of accurate measure* ments. T h e plinth which fitted into a deep depres-sion on the upper surface of the base is only 0.64 m. high. Thus the statue, which was about four times life-size, towered above those who stood before it from a comparatively very low substructure. Its knees would be about twelve feet or more above the sanctuary's level. T h e colossal figure of the god contrasted im-pressively with the other kouroi which seemed to min-gle with the votaries around them.

Just enough is left of this most ambitious Naxian achievement to show that Apollo was represented as a normal kouros, except for some bronze accoutre-ments of which only rivet holes remain: four long locks of hair on each side of the chest and a broad belt round the waist. The clenched left hand is pierced, evidently for a bronze bow, the right is lost. The statue was made of a single block. An inscription on the base reads: " I am of the same stone, statue and base." But this cannot mean that enough marble was left over for the base, since its breadth is nearly double that of the statue, and such a senseless squandering of



184 GREEK PERSONALITY precious material would be incredible. Evidently the text merely stresses the unusual fact that such a huge base was of marble, not limestone.

Enough is preserved of the body to show that its proportions were less heavy, the trunk more slender than those of the Argive Twins in Delphi (above, p. 106). I t is rather with Attic kouroi of the same pe-riod that the Naxian Apollo should be compared (be-low, pp. 250 ff. ) . The same appears to be true for two or more colossal marble kouroi, of which fragments were found in 1931 on Thera (Santorin), not far f rom the ancient city.7 The volcanic island possesses neither marble nor any other stone fitted for sculpture, so that no plastic school could have arisen there. The statues just mentioned must be imported, probably from one of the Cyclades. But neither adequate illustrations nor reports on the quality of the marble are as yet available to solve the question.

Next to the great Apollo, the most ambitious con-tribution of Naxos to Early Archaic sculpture is a series of colossal lions which stood on the bank of a sacred lake West of the sanctuary of Apollo at Delos.8

Six have been replaced upon their bases by the French excavators, several are lost, one was carried off to Venice in the seventeenth century and placed in front of the Arsenal gate there. T h e row of magnificent brutes is extremely impressive and at once recalls simi-lar "avenues" of lions or sphinxes in Egyptian sanctu-aries. Evidently these gave the Naxians the general idea of their grandiose offering to Apollo. But the lions themselves are as un-Egyptian, as purely Hel-lenic as possible. They are also quite different, both from the Dorian lions we have discussed (p. 126) and



IN ARCHAIC SCULPTURE, CH. VI 185 the Eastern Ionian types of Samos and Miletus (p. 213). The long, slender, high-legged bodies and the small heads with wide-open maws are hardly feline. They closely resemble great hounds. And such were evidently the models of Naxian sculptors who not only had never seen a lion themselves, but ap-parently lacked the oriental prototypes which had plentifully reached the great commercial and artistic centres of Mainland Greece. Moreover, an original conception contrasting with Dorian art governs the lions of Delos: they sit back on their haunches, the rigidly straight forelegs supporting neck and head. The outlines of the back and belly are almost parallel and only very slightly curved. The result is an almost Romanesque heraldic immobility, imposing enough, but devoid of the dynamic intensity of Peloponnesian lions. Nor has the structure of the great elongated bodies been more than summarily rendered.

We do not know whether the Delian lions were ded-icated all at once—the most probable hypothesis—or at intervals. Nor can we guess the reasons for this imposing offering. The style is uniform^ a date around 600 B.C., or somewhat earlier, is indicated by comparison with a great Naxian work that must be not inconsiderably later: the Sphinx at Delphi, which is now generally assigned to the third decade of the sixth century.

We are again ignorant of the occasion which led to this sumptuous offering: an Ionic marble column, some thirty feet high and crowned by a huge sphinx seated in a poise strongly reminiscent of the Delian lions.® No other sphinx so drastically illustrates how the monster came to be called "dog" in Greek poetry:



186 GREEK PERSONALITY the body is still that of a great hound. T h e high curv-ing wings, the treatment of the breast feathers like wooden roof-slats, the elongated head with its great staring eyes over gaunt cheeks, the thin-lipped, un-smiling mouth, all convey a forbidding and very archaic impression. This is entirely borne out by the flat, linear treatment of the capital and the numerous small flutings of the column shaft (forty-four, with sharp edges between them) ; it stands on an unadorned cylindrical base. W e are far from the normal early Ionic order here, even the oldest Samian column bases are appreciably less archaic. On the other hand, such a soaring column, with the very heavy load of the great sphinx on top, was not only an artistic achieve-ment, but a remarkable feat of engineering. Both pre-suppose a tradition of several generations, such as was available to early archaic artists of Naxos, more than to any others in the Cyclades. The little we know of the island's history shows that it was important only in the seventh and sixth centuries.10

T h e magnificence of the sphinx colutnn in Delphi (first of its kind by a hundred and f if ty years in a sanctuary later so rich in high-soaring monuments) as well as the imposing array of sumptuous offerings at Delos, where there was also a fine Naxian treasury, all proclaim the wealth of Naxos and her consciousness of high distinction. She seems to have been the guid-ing spirit in an amphictyony or confederation of island Ionians with its religious centre at Delos. In a passage of the Homeric Hymn to the Delian Apollo (11. 146 ff. ) , composed towards the end of the seventh century, a festive gathering of these "graceful Ionians with trailing robes" is described in brilliant colors; and in



IN ARCHAIC SCULPTURE, CH. VI 187 the Hymn to the Pythian Apollo (11. 449 ff.), the god himself, "like to a man, lusty and powerful, in his first bloom, his hair spread over his broad shoulders," at once recalls the great statue of the Naxians at Delos. There could be no better illustration of island Ionian personality—if only the head had survived.

Unfortunately, the heads of all Naxian, in fact of all Cycladic statues between 650 and 580 or 570 are either lost or too much defaced to give any idea of their features. In the succeeding generation, at least the Naxian sphinx and a kore from the Athenian Acrop-olis provide images of contemporary womanhood, while other statues at Athens and Delos are again headless. These two faces, alike in their high, narrow skulls, gaunt features and serious, almost surly ex-pression, are remarkably unlike what we should ex-pect the Ionisns of the Homeric Hymn to look like. Had their temper changed in the intervening three or four decades ? We cannot tell, for lack of both monu-mental and historical evidence. Only one kouros of Naxian marble at Delos belongs to this period (Gisela Richter's Orchomenos-Thera Group, ca. 590-570), and here again the face is almost entirely destroyed, though one can recognize that the lips curve upward.11

As for the kouros discovered in 1836 near some rock tombs on Thera, and long considered one of the in-cunabula of Greek sculpture, it cannot be connected with Naxos. This rather inferior work has certain traits in common with Athens and Samos. In the sec-ond quarter of the sixth century, I know of no Naxian work. Within Miss Richter's Melos group kouroi (ca. 555-540) a single statue comes from the island itself ; but it is only a torso." However, two kouroi



188 GREEK PERSONALITY closely related to it and to each other are made of Naxian marble ; one was found on the volcanic island of Melos, which lacks marble and does not appear to have had a plastic school of its own, the other from the Ptoan sanctuary of Apollo, in Boeotia. Since by this time Parian marble seems to have increasingly sup-planted Naxian everywhere, the Melian kouros at least should be attributed to Naxos, while the Ptoan might be a Boeotian imitation. These statues can give us a fair idea of the "smart set" under the tyrant Lygdamis of Naxos, who must have been a powerful ruler around 550-540 B.C., since he helped both Peisistratos in Athens and Polycrates in Samos to the tyranny.13 The statues just mentioned are singularly suggestive of a polished court : slim, lithe figures of graceful elegance, crowned by comparatively small, long and narrow heads with carefully groomed hair. The Melian kouros has a gently smiling countenance, refined but rather weak. T h e Ptoan's features are similar, but the mouth is instinct with Boeotian seriousness. No female counterparts of these last extant specimens of Naxian marble sculpture have survived.

As for the late decades of the archaic century, still a flourishing period of Naxos, as a passage of Hero-dotus and a fine marble temple of the Ionic order can show,14 the only plastic work known to me is a bronze kouros, now in Berlin: a large statuette (h. 18.5 cm.) of very careful workmanship, dedicated, as an incised inscription tells, by a certain Deinagores "to far-dart-ing Apollo as a tithe." T h e youth holds a pomegranate (or possibly a small oil-flask) in his outstretched right hand. H e is sturdier, less aristocratically slim, than the "Apollo" from Melos, the expression of his face



IN ARCHAIC SCULPTURE, CH. VI 189 is untroubled but rather serious. Both traits are char-acteristic of a change which set in all over Greece to-wards the end of archaism ; they cannot be claimed as specifically Naxian or even Ionian.

This transformation of spirit and temper is the most momentous in Greek history: the serene and often joyous calm of archaism, its naive acceptance of things as they were, gave place to an introspective frame of mind, grave and pensive as befitted a gener-ation that lived through and fought the Persian inva-sion, the most terrible menace of Hellenic history. Aeschylus's Persians are the magnificent hymn of vic-tory which this heroic generation has produced; the heavy burden which the times had imposed upon them is expressed not in poetry, but in a series of plastic works, some few of them masterpieces (below, pp. 279 ff.), others (and they are the most significant) unas-suming productions of mediocre artists who executed statues or funeral reliefs for ordinary people. It so happens that the earliest of these reliefs known to us is the work of a Naxian. But he had left his home, probably in the turmoil of the Persian inroads, and worked in the inferior bluish Boeotian marble for an unknown client.15 A bearded man of mature age oc-cupies the entire field of the high, narrow stele. But instead of standing rigidly upright, at attention, like his numerous archaic predecessors, naked or in full armor, this Boeotian of about 490-480 B.C. is draped in a long, soft cloak which leaves only the right shoul-der and arm, as well as the feet and ankles uncovered. He relaxes at ease, resting on a staff propped under his left armpit, and leaning against the frame of the relief which here for the first time is drawn into the



I90 GREEK PERSONALITY composition, even more patently by the dog who stead-ies himself against it, as he leaps up to snap at the lo-cust offered by his master. This charmingly idyllic trait motivates the man's attitude and the gentle melan-choly of his countenance as he bends down for a last farewell to his faithful friend. All this is new and unexpected in Greek art, and in spite of some imper-fections of detail one is tempted to agree with the artist's proud signature: "Alxenor made (this) the Naxian ; just look at it !" However, this late straggler of the Naxian school, otherwise unknown to us, ap-parently was no original creative genius. Funeral stelai showing the same motive have come to light in Thrace and Southern Italy. They are later than Alxenor's "masterpiece," but evidently not copied from such an obscure provincial tombstone. The mo-tive must have been created by an Ionian artist soon after 500 B.C. Its wide-spread popularity is signifi-cant both of the change of artistic temper at this turn-ing-point of Greek history, and of the rapid inter-change of ideas and types across the Aegean.

Lying near each other in the little island world of which Delos is the centre, equally rich in marble and poor in other commodities, Naxos and Paros were predestined to be rivals. And though of kindred Ion-ian stock, they were bitter enemies for a while." We cannot tell why Paros at first lagged behind in the marble trade. Before the middle of the sixth century, she was already contesting the old-established Naxian markets on the Mainland, and a few decades later the superior quality of her marble was recognized every-



IN ARCHAIC SCULPTURE, CH. VI 191 where. It was to maintain its supremacy to the end of Hellenism, at least for the finest works.

As yet it is impossible to trace the beginnings of a Parian school of sculpture. There is no evidence for the seventh or the first decades of the sixth century. During the succeeding generations, the fact that a statue is of Parian marble means nothing, since the precious material was used all over Greece. Plastic works found on the island can naturally be claimed for native artists, but there are only a few of these, and they are not characteristic enough to constitute an in-dividual style.17 We have a few kouroi of Miss Rich-ter's Melos Group (ca. 555-540), but they are not very important,—nor are the traits which have been claimed as Parian lacking in other contemporary work. The same is true of the fine late archaic torso of a girl in New York, and of a few korai in Delos and Athens which have been grouped with it. We get a fair idea of what good Parian sculptors produced towards the end of the sixth and the beginning of the fifth cen-tury, chiefly by two fine heads of youths in Berlin and New York. That is about all ; and it provides a whol-ly inadequate foundation for the fascinating picture of Parian artistic personality which Langlotz has drawn : a personality standing—as the island lies—midway be-tween Attic and Eastern Ionism, exceeding all others in restless, quick-witted vitality. All this may be true, and I am loth to be unfair to the Parians ; but there is no possibility of proving anything of it.

One might hope to gain an approach to Paros from her colony in the extreme North of the Aegean, the island of Thasos.1* It is so rich in marble that even the city walls are built of this noble material ; and as it



192 GREEK PERSONALITY

also possessed gold mines, Thasos was predestined both for wealth and for an early artistic development. Yet the first period in the life of the colony (founded shortly before 700 B.C.) must have been poor enough. The poet Archilochos, who lived there in the seventh century, speaks of "thrice-miserable Thasos," where "the misery of all Greece gathered," and the archae-ological evidence corroborates this. But by the end of the century a colossal marble statue, 3.60 m. high, shows both a remarkable increase in prosperity and an original artistic trend of Thasian sculpture.

It would be a kouros, if the small ram which the left arm clutches to the breast did not proclaim the great figure a god, more probably Hermes than Apollo. Charles Picard, who found it built into a mediaeval wall on the acropolis of Thasos, tends to consider the marble Parian.18 The roughly trimmed block was brought up the steep hill—no mean feat of engineering —to be worked there. But after some preliminary blocking and at least partial completing of the back hair, the statue was unfortunately abandoned, prob-ably on account of some defect in the marble. Even so, it tells an interesting story. Though the hair is treated very much like the Argive Twins at Delphi, there could be no greater contrast than the bodies. The Kriophoros (ram-bearer) is almost exaggeratedly slim, much more so than even the Attic kouroi (below, p. 250) or what we know of early Naxian ones. The legs are exceedingly long, the trunk short, recalling Boeotian figures mentioned above, p. 173. These rather unbalanced proportions give the Kriophoros a very youthful look. Of later kouroi the one from Melos resembles it in slender elegance, though it is far



IN ARCHAIC SCULPTURE, CH. VI 193 more balanced. The Thasian's style is undoubtedly Cycladic Ionian. I t might be Parian, or akin to Parian, as Corcyraean sculpture was to Corinthian; if we only had an early archaic work from Paros!

A survey of Thasian sculpture next takes us to a female head now in Copenhagen, made around 550 B.C. Its proportions and coiffure are not unlike the Naxian sphinx, but it is of course more developed, and the expression is quite different. T h e pronounced "archaic" smile, true sign of this phase of artistic de-velopment, is less mannered than in the Tenean Apol-lo or his Attic cousins (below, p. 2 5 7 ) ; there is some-thing radiantly happy about this youthful countenance, instead of the courtly smirk of the heads just men-tioned. The Thasian girl's joy of life is uninhibited by convention. One would like to know whether this was also a Parian trait; in any case the difference from Naxian heads, both contemporary and later, is strik-ing.

T h e torso of a kouros of the Melos Group in local marble, now in Constantinople, completes our concep-tion of mid-sixth century Thasian sculpture. W e can imagine its head similar to the one in Copenhagen. But a very different note is struck by a few contemporary clay antefixes from small temples or treasuries, which find their parallels not in the Cyclades, but in the semi-exotic art of Aeolian Larisa (below, p. 223 ) . Exactly similar antefixes, with Gorgon's masks, monsters, horsemen and chariots have come to light there. Non-Hellenic Asiatic influence is manifest, though all these works are essentially Greek.

One is tempted to look for Micrasiatic inspiration in a more important feature of Thasian art.20 Five of



194 GREEK PERSONALITY the dozen gates in the marble city walls were adorned with reliefs, and while I know of no parallel to this practice in Greece, it is frequent in Hitt i te Asia Minor, though at a far earlier period, and of course all over the Near East. A direct connection can hardly be es-tablished. The Thasian reliefs were not all executed at the same time, they range f rom the late sixth to well into the fifth century. Without exception they are purely Hellenic, in subject as in style T h e finest rep-resents a huge satyr just entering the city, with a great kantharos in his right hand. Among the innumerable satyrs of late archaic art (our relief cannot be much older than 500 B.C.) , hardly any can rival the exuberant vitality, the joyous élan with which this kindly wood-sprite of an island rich in trees and vines prances along, bringing his precious gif t to the Thas-ians, a peaceful conqueror. The other gate reliefs show divinities : Zeus and Iris, Semele being retrieved from Hades, a goddess on a chariot driven by anoth-er, Herakles the Archer and Dionysus.

A number of votive and funerary reliefs complete our knowledge of Thasian art. Like the gate reliefs, these were undoubtedly made on the island, though the marble, and occasionally an artist, may have come from Paros. T h e most ambitious composition ( in the Louvre since 1864) is a group of three slabs arranged around a votive niche and adorned with figures of Apollo and the Muses. They can be dated around 520-500 B.C. A slightly older relief, dedicated to Cybele, is still in Thasos. The most important grave stele, a woman seated on an armchair and holding a spindle, time-honored emblem of the good housewife, may be-long to the third quarter of the century. But the fin-



IN ARCHAIC SCULPTURE, CH. VI 195 est of all Thasian funeral reliefs, now in Constanti-nople, is a more ambitious composition: The dead man is stretched out on a couch, food on a table before him, his boyish cup-bearer standing behind him, his wife seated demurely at his feet, according to the mainland custom, while in Eastern Ionia women like-wise reclined at meals. This is by far the most beauti-ful of the funeral banquet scenes which became in-creasingly popular in later times, and it conveys a high opinion of Thasian sculpture at the end of ar-chaism.21

This is borne out by an exquisitely carved marble protome of Pegasus, which was most probably part of a door jamb. I know no piece of architectural sculp-ture which exceeds it in delicate, almost over-refined craftsmanship. One would like to credit the mother island of Thasos with similar perfection ; but the rich and varied marbles just surveyed contribute no more than possibilities or probabilities to our conception of archaic Parian sculpture.

2. Samos and Miletus.

The Greek name Sporades, the Scattered, aptly describes the loosely continuous chain of six large and many small islands that stretch along the whole west-ern coast of Asia Minor, from the Dardanelles to the Dodekanese, the Twelve Islands around Rhodes. They are, in fact, outposts of the mainland, which is clearly visible from all of them, often separated only by a narrow channel that a good swimmer could eas-ily cross. Yet the cultural unity of island and main-land is by no means complete. With the exception of Lemnos, at the northern end of the chain, all the



ig6 GREEK PERSONALITY Sporades had a purely Greek population from early times, while the Hellenic cities in Western Asia Mi-nor originally occupied only parts of the coast line. T h e hinterland was slowly conquered to very unequal depth, the un-Hellenic native population was not ex-terminated. North of the Meander Valley, all the way to the Hellespont, the Lydians and Phrygians re-mained a constant if intermittent menace all through the archaic period. And towards the turn of the sixth century, the irresistible onslaught of the Persian Em-pire crushed the flourishing colonies, some of them for-ever. I t is only natural that these conditions are re-flected in the art of Eastern Ionia. Moreover the Greek cities north of the Gulf of Smyrna were Aeolian in race, while those to the south of the Meander val-ley had at least a strong admixture of Dorian blood. But this does not seem to have modified the Ionian character of their art to any considerable extent. Yet it is expedient to begin our survey with the two great islands which are purely Ionian : Samos and Chios.

T h e peculiarly favorable archaeological conditions on Samos22 during early Hellenic times have been dis-cussed above, pp. 39 ff. For the archaic period, the Heraeum is again almost the only source of our knowl-edge—fortunately a very rich source. One curious negative fact emerges at once: no architectural deco-ration, no stone sculpture older than the second quar-ter of the sixth century has been found ; the only ex-tant exception, a marble female figure of the Nikandre type (above, p. 180) proves the rule. It was probably imported from Naxos. Nor are there many bronzes of the earliest archaic phase. Only one has been pub-lished, a water-spout from the sacred tank (p. 45)



IN ARCHAIC SCULPTURE, CH. VI 197 in the shape of a lion's head with a frog squatting on it,23 just as a live one would use any convenient foot-hold in this marshy region. Earliest of its kind, it is also unique in its originality. While the lion's head is rendered in a style that is still Orientalizing and some-what conventional, the frog is amazingly alive; and the whole conception, the entirely original little scene of animal life in its natural setting, has the Ionian touch of an Homeric simile. There is nothing here of the fierceness of contemporary lions, either Dorian or Cycladic (pp. 59 f., 184).

The waterspout can be dated shortly before 600 B.C. The following decades have produced some excellent bronzes from the Heraeum.24 The earliest and by far the largest figure, which must have been at least twenty inches high, (the lower part is lost), is a kore in the sphyrelaton technique of the statues from Dreros discussed above, p. 95, but showing unmistak-able early sixth century traits and one of two types which appear to have existed side by side at Samos, through the greater part of the archaic period. The face is rather long and narrow, the nose pointed, the mouth thin and unsmiling. W e are at once reminded of the Naxian sphinx and a kore of Naxian marble in Athens (p .187) .

The second Samian style is represented by a kore from the Heraeum and another from Olympia, both supporting figures probably from tripod bowls ( above, p. 151). Like all the other figurines to be discussed here, these two are cast solid. They show what was evidently the favorite type in the second quarter of the century: globular head, full, healthy features with large eyes, the body likewise almost redundant in its



I98 GREEK PERSONALITY rounded modelling; the folds of the draped chiton reproduce the rather heavy softness of woolen cloth.

A somewhat simpler and shorter garment is worn by the central figure of a curious little group (around 560-550 B.C.) : a woman stands between two youths of the kouros type, evidently a divine triad. Buschor suggests Kleobis and Biton with their mother. This leads us to four statuettes of single kouroi, 19-20 cm. in height, which afford enlightening comparisons with their marble cousins from the Dorian Mainland and the Ionian Cyclades. The two earlier ones have the hard, quadrangular trunks of Miss Richter's Sounion Group, but the heads are rounder and more fleshy than any but the Argive Twins, which, however, have a very different structure.25

The profiles recall Cycladic vases. Altogether, these bronzes seem to indicate that Samos was open to influences from the Western islands, during the years immediately succeeding 600 B.C. But the later kou-roi, datable to the second quarter of the century, show a very remarkable change in style. Not only have the bodies now attained the slender yet rounded and soft forms familiar from Paros or Melos, but the heads have developed into a type unknown on any Western site. The faces are fuller, one might call them more carnal, the eyes have the typically East-ern almond shape, the nose an almost Semitic curve, the full lips are parted in a gentle smile. And the heavy mass of hair, which falls over the shoulder-blades, seems to press the head forward without en-croaching on its free movement by lateral strands. In our survey we have not yet encountered anything as typically Eastern Ionian.



IN ARCHAIC SCULPTURE, CH. VI 199 The importance of these bronzes is all the greater,

since all the marble statues of the Heraeum are head-less,28 probably owing, at least in great part, to Mos-lem fanaticism during the Turkish rule over Samos. In his admirable study of every fragment discovered both in the sanctuary and the town area, Buschor has traced more than sixty statues, all of them Samian works, since the marble came from quarries on the island. We thus gain an idea of a Samian school of marble sculpture hitherto unknown to us, since ancient Greek tradition does not mention it. This school does not seem to have begun before the second quarter of the sixth century, nor to have flourished for more than about fifty years, though marbles occasionally appear to the end of archaism The flowering of this art coincides with the last two generations of wealthy Geomoroi or Landowners, the aristocratic rulers of Samos till Polycrates established his tyranny about 540 B.C.

These powerful noblemen evidently preferred stat-ues of kouroi, the embodiment and ideal of archaic manhood, as votive offerings even to the great goddess of their island. Fragments of at least eighteen such statues have been found in the Heraeum, ten of them more than life size, several about ten cubits (180 inches) in height. One or two belong to the early decades of the sixth century, but most of them were dedicated shortly before or after 550 B.C., when the wealth of Samos had reached a high peak and the temple and altar by Rhoikos arose in their new splen-dor (below, p. 205 ). The kouroi were set up in vari-ous parts of the great sanctuary, on low bases like their Naxian cousins. But they differed very mark-



200 GREEK PERSONALITY edly, in character and temperament. All the statues which we have discussed had one essential quality in common, however much they might vary in style: they represented an ideal of youthful manhood, in which aristocratic refinement, a certain pride of race, and athletic training found equally full expression. Moreover the artists were almost always concerned, often predominantly, with the tectonic structure of the body. Something of this preoccupation is appar-ent in early Samian bronzes. But the sculptors in marble followed another tradition. From the first of their works that we know to the very end of archaism, their interest centres on the outward aspect of human forms. While to Dorian, as well as to Western Ionian and Attic artists, the human body was a skele-ton clothed with muscles, sinews and flesh, to the Sa-mians (and to other Eastern Ionians of whom we know less) it appealed chiefly in the polished smooth-ness of its surface, under which the structure is divined rather than indicated. The soft sheen of fine marble lends itself to such effects, in which the Samians gained increasing mastery, apparently unrivalled anywhere in Greece during the brilliant rule of Polycrates ( ce.· 540-520 B.C.) .

This is not simply a problem of style; it reaches the very roots of Ionian personality in the regions that produced the great epics and later the lyric poetry whose most polished though by no means strongest masters, like Anacreon, graced the court of Polycrates. Ionian charm and elegance by no means excluded strength, during the earlier phases of archaism, though it weakened more and more towards the end. But the agonistic ideal was never prominent here, as in the



IN ARCHAIC SCULPTURE, CH. VI 201 West ; youth was admired and cherished for its beauty, not for its athletic prowess. Nothing could illustrate this Ionian attitude of mind better than kouroi from Samos, coupled with contemporary poetry and history. One of the later kouroi is called "a most lovely stat-ue" in its inscription; and Polycrates dedicated a bronze statue of the beautiful Bathyllos, playing the lyre in rich robes, in front o'f the temple of Hera.

Naturally, the same spirit is reflected by female stat-ues, of which there was no lack in the Heraeum, though youthful male figures seem to have been even more acceptable to the goddess. We still have noth-ing older than a great marble image of Hera, which was found some ten feet from the temple front and reached the Louvre in 1879." Its inscription pro-claims it an offering of one Cheramyes, not other-wise known to us; its style is datable to 570-560 B.C. Far larger than life (the headless statue is 1.82 m. high), the divine bride of Zeus stands firmly, though not rigidly erect on a circular plinth, both feet close together, with only the toes showing under the arched seam of the long garment which trails on the ground in a gentle sweep. The right arm clings to the side, the clenched left hand lies on the breast. All this corresponds to the attitude of the Lady from Auxerre (above, p. 95) and similar Daedalid statues. Yet the Hera of Cheramyes is essentially and profoundly different. There is nothing block-like about her ; no separate front and side views. The rounded, column-like form of the figure is what the artist mainly aimed at. It is emphasized by the innumerable tiny parallel folds of the chiton, evidently conceived as a fine linen garment. (We are reminded of the many flutings



202 GREEK PERSONALITY of the contemporary sphinx column at Delphi). All monotony is avoided by the irregular drapery of the himation; its fine woolen texture shows clearly in the soft convex folds. A great bridal veil hangs straight down the back and right side, while its left end is tucked into the girdle which shows in front, under the arch of the himation. These garments were of course originally distinguished by their colors, of which not a trace remains. But the different fabrics can be eas-ily recognized on the original even today, and would be far more apparent if it could be replaced in the full southern sunlight which brought out the translu-cent gleam of the marble, as well as the surprisingly delicate modelling of bosom, back and thighs. The statue is a masterpiece of its time and anything but a translation of the ancient sphyrelaton bronzes into stone, as used to be claimed at a time when it was con-trasted with the "Nikandre," supposed to be derived from wooden xoana. Both works are conceived for marble. The Cheramyes Hera, a century later than the Daedalid "Nikandre," is the first and finest ex-ample of the Eastern Ionian korai which, like their living prototypes, charmed the whole Greek world by their gracious elegance, during a couple of genera-tions.

The Heraeum has yielded remains of a dozen con-temporary female figures ; seven of them are proved to represent the great Bride of Zeus by their veils, the rest are mortal maidens. Buschor thinks two of these might be works of the Cheramyes master. An artist of hardly inferior rank must have been active in Samos at the same time. He has signed his name, Geneleos, on a monument unique of its kind : a family group of



IN ARCHAIC SCULPTURE, CH. VI 203 six life-size marble figures, set up side by side, on a long, low, two-stepped base,28 which is preserved in situ on the Sacred Way leading from the Heraeum to the city. The cavities for statue plinths on this base fix the place of each figure. The first on the left, seated on a high-backed chair, is Phileia. "Geneleos made us" is engraved on the seam of her himation. She was evidently a married woman, her husband, now lost, may have stood beside her. Three standing korai, probably Phileia's sisters, followed. Only one, Phil-ippe, is preserved. She wears only a fine linen chiton, whose folds her right hand raises in the gracious ges-ture sung by Sappho.29 She is quite young, with child-like breasts and a mass of gleaming hair falling down her back. Beside her, at the other end of the group from Phileia, the mother of the family proudly proclaims: " I am . . . oche, who has dedicated (the monument) to Hera ." The dedicatory inscrip-tion is engraved on a large cushion which supports the recumbent matron ; her left hand holds a dove, the right rests on her knee. This attitude, so unusual for a votive statue, must have a religious significance. Perhaps ( Peri ) oche, or whatever her name may have been, was a priestess of Hera, represented in her offi-cial function at the ritual banquets to which the god-dess convened the faithful on her wedding day. When they flocked to the sanctuary, they would pass this row of marble statues, as near to the beholder as some we have met at Delos (above, p. 182), but more fa-miliarly associated with the living, through the va-riety of their attitudes. Moreover, this is by far the earliest family group of Greek art.

In the series of successive cult images in the He-



204 GREEK PERSONALITY raeum (above, p. 43) , an early archaic standing type may well have inspired the Cheramyes master. W e have no evidence for an enthroned Hera like the one in Olympia (above, p. 127). But such a statue of colossal size would have been a fitting new cult im-age which the huge new temple at Samos demanded. W e can form at least an idea of what it would have looked like from a marble statue larger than life, which was discovered nearly forty years ago on a hill west of the port of Samos.30 Dedicated by one Aea-kes, in all probability the father of the tyrant Polycra-tes, it has usually been taken to represent him. But Buschor has very plausibly claimed it for Hera . As the heads of all marble statues from the Heraeum are missing, the question can hardly be solved with cer-tainty. Sex is not clearly indicated in many such early seated figures. At first sight Aeakes' offering seems to carry on the ancient seventh century tradition of rigid immobility. But a closer scrutiny reveals a wealth of delicate details in the drapery, even to an almost translucent effect of the ankle showing under the thin fabric of the chiton. Besides, the proportions of the figure are based on a new canon, and life is subtly stirring in the limbs. Altogether, this statue marks the beginning of a new phase in Samian archaism.

The same is true of a second, even larger mid-six-century figure : a bearded god, Zeus, Poseidon or Di-onysus, once seated on a small artificial mound be-tween the town and the sanctuary.31 Fortunately, the head is preserved here ; it shows us how inadequately the small bronzes mentioned above fill the gap caused by the loss of marble heads. The effect of this mighty and rather fierce-looking divinity must have been tre-



IN ARCHAIC SCULPTURE, CH. VI 205 mendous, as he looked across land and sea from his hillock which formed an exalted natural throne.

The decision to build a huge new temple to Hera must have revolutionized Samian art in all its branches. Nothing is more suggestive of the wealth of the island, or of its cultural flowering shortly before 550 B.C. The date is of very great importance here. It used to be taken for granted that the mid-sixth-century Artemisium at Ephesus (to be discussed below) was the first attempt to build a temple that would dwarf all others in Greece. And very naturally the new He-raeum, almost equally large, was associated with the tyranny of Polycrates, the most brilliant phase of Sa-mian culture. The excavations conducted by Wie-gand and Schede in 1908-1911 could not modify this view, since the study of archaic art had not progressed sufficiently for exact dating. But Buschor's very mi-nute investigations and their unexpectedly fruitful re-sults leave no doubt as to the priority of the Herae-um, which must have been built before, but not long before 550 B.C. Polycrates rose to power around 540 B.C., so he cannot be credited with this greatest achievement of Samian art, the daring conception of a temple more than a hundred feet longer than any Greek building standing at the time. We must at-tribute the plan and its surprisingly rapid execution to the wealthy old land-owning families of Samos, further enriched by far-flung trade relations.82

The audacity of such a plan can best be understood by realizing that no Greek temple ever exceeded the maximum size of a little more than three hundred and fifty feet. Only four such attempts were made in the sixth century, at Samos, Ephesus, Selinus in Sicily and



2O6 GREEK PERSONALITY Athens. Only the former two were virtually com-pleted, while the construction of the third dragged on ineffectually for generations and the Olympieion at Athens was abandoned in its initial stages, to be re-sumed in Hellenistic times and finished by the Emper-or Hadrian.83 All this makes the Samian enterprise all the more admirable and explains a wise economy of artistic means : the only decorated parts appear to be the column bases ; they are simple and severe, though varied in their mouldings, which represent the earliest type of Ionic base known to us. Compared to Ephe-sian exuberance, their sobriety seems less a proof of age than of conscious restraint in decoration. The ter-rible destruction of the Heraeum has deprived us of capitals and entablature ; we may imagine them equally simple, and the plain palmettes of the roof decora-tion corroborate this, as well as a small piece of a lime-stone akroterion. The walls consisted of double panels of thin poros slabs with a rubble core, a simple and expeditious technique. Altogether, everything was done to make rapid completion possible, and the suc-cess was amazing : the great work must have been fin-ished in about ten years. Immediately afterwards, a sumptuous new altar arose in front of the temple, on the old site, as well as the so-called South Building. Then, probably around 540 B.C., the great temple must have suffered so badly, probably through fire, that Polycrates inaugurated his rule by an entirely new construction, of the same size and on the same site as its predecessor, but on a far more ambitious scale, including an unusually rich plastic decoration. But this was never completed. Only fragments of poros reliefs tell the sad tale of destruction in the Mid-



IN ARCHAIC SCULPTURE, CH. VI 207 die Ages. From these shattered bits, Buschor has most ingeniously deduced the existence of four separate friezes.84 One ran around the great altar, below the top moulding. In fact, this narrow band of couchant or crouching lions, panthers, sphinxes and their prey was a sort of ornamental moulding transformed into curiously elongated animals. Some contemporary ivory panels from Rhodes give a better idea of the effect than the scanty remains of the original altar re-liefs in poros and of the almost equally shattered mar-ble copies which replaced them in Roman times ( ca. 50 B.C.-50 A.D.) . The characteristic Eastern Greek type of altar appears here for the first time: a great platform surrounded by more or less richly decorated low walls, while a stately staircase occupied the greater part of one side. We can follow the further develop-ment of this beautiful Samian creation in Miletus (be-low, p. 213) and down to the famous Hellenistic al-tars of Magnesia and Pergamon.

The fragments of a second poros frieze are claimed by Buschor for his South Building. This frieze is the largest of its kind known to me before the Parthenon, it is two and a half times the size of the Siphnian re-liefs discussed below. Buschor compares an exquisite profile of a girl engraved on a piece of limestone, evi-dently a sculptor's sketch.86 I t increases our regret that so little of this Samian art in poros has survived.

The most ambitious friezes must have adorned the Polycratean temple. One of these probably was placed rather high up inside the pronaos (porch), whose walls had a total length of nearly two hundred feet. A far larger frieze can be taken as encircling the outer walls of the cella ; their total length would



2O8 GREEK PERSONALITY exceed five hundred feet, but of course we cannot say whether all of them were thus adorned. Nor do the few surviving fragments reveal the subjects, no doubt drawn from several myths. One seems to have been a hieros gamos, the sacred marriage of Zeus and Hera . The style of the reliefs points to a date slight-ly later than the death of Polycrates (525 B.C.). The construction of the temple he in all probability started took many decades. Its sculptural decoration thus represents the last flowering of Samian art, before the Persian invasion destroyed it, in 494 B.C.

Ancient tradition very naturally links the three most famous names in sixth century Samos : Polycrates and the artists Rhoikos and Theodoros, universal geniuses equally proficient in architecture, sculpture, gold-smith's work and the engraving of gems. Herodotus mentions them as builders of the Heraeum." Pau-sanias claims that they were the first to cast statues in (hollow) bronze and mentions one of Night by Rhoi-kos in the Artemisium at Ephesus. Pliny tells a curi-ous tale, open to considerable doubt, about a self-por-trait by Theodoros, and Diodorus Siculus is even more fanciful (1.98) : Telekles and Theodoros, here called the sons of Rhoikos, are supposed each to have made half of the bronze statue of the Pythian Apollo for the Samians, one of them working at Samos, the other at Ephesus : yet the two halves of what is described as a kouros in Egyptian style (above, p. 103) fitted to-gether so perfectly "that the whole figure appeared to be the work of one artist".

Whatever the facts underlying these anecdotes may be, it is certain that both Rhoikos and Theodoros were masters of delicate metal technique, and that they



IN ARCHAIC SCULPTURE, CH. VI 209 worked from at least the middle to the twenties of the sixth century. For Theodoros made a silver bowl for King Croesus of Lydia (+546 B.C.), and a fa-mous ring for Polycrates, while Rhoikos' masterpiece seems to have been the bronze statue of Bathyllos, a youth renowned for his beauty at the tyrant's court (above, p. 201 ) . Naturally none of these works have survived. But at least a reflection of the grace of Bathyllos playing the lyre may be recognized in the small bronze statue of a young flute-player from the Heraeum, which shows a marked advance on mid-sixth-century Samian sculpture in refined delicacy of drapery and lithe gliding movement.88 There are no external criteria for dating this figure or a remarkably fine bronze horseman of about the same time. But fortunately such evidence exists for an exquisite little marble head of a statuette which cannot be later than 540 B.C. Our Plate XVII gives only a very imperfect impression of the gentle and gracious loveliness of the face, with its soft features and dreamy eyes that are more hinted at than actually expressed by plastic forms. The effect of a morbidezza quite unexpected in a work of such an early age must have been height-ened by the southern sunshine in which it stood. Its high artistic rank will best be realized if we compare it with modest figures in clay, the oil flasks in the shape of standing korai which must have been in great de-mand all over the Ionian world and as far to the West as Sicily.88 Some of the finest were undoubtedly made on Samos and they show greater individuality than the more commercial Rhodian series. A charming little lady from the Heraeum has an almost elfin smile



210 GREEK PERSONALITY on her delicately modelled features; her eyes are nar-rowed to slits in mischievous amusement. Most of her sisters look dull beside her.

Samian coroplasts (makers of terracottas) had a wide range of subjects, including oil flasks in the shape of sphinxes, sirens, kneeling bearded men (above, p. 47 ), as well as satyr masks whose gravity is in strik-ing contrast with the joyous exuberance of their West-ern brothers ( above, p. 118 ) . In a way, these modest little objects illustrate the high standard of Samian art in the days of Polycrates, almost more strikingly than more ambitious works.

Of these there was no lack. Kouroi of later ar-chaic style, remarkable for their soft, unathletic forms, have come to light both in the Heraeum and in the neighboring town and its cemeteries. Fragments of draped standing and seated men suggest interesting comparisons with the very dissimilar figures from the neighboring Miletus/0 And a series of funeral stelai crowned by the finest of all Greek palmettes and ranging from 550 B.C. to the early fifth century, are eloquent witnesses of the assured taste of Samos for decorative sculpture.

By a practical joke of the capricious goddess of chance, the only large marble statue found complete and almost uninjured at Samos is of foreign origin. It came to light some forty years ago, near the an-cient town (modern Tigani), but seems to have been brought over from the mainland in recent times.41 The sound between Samos and the Asiatic coast is only a few hundred yards wide. We do not know where



IN ARCHAIC SCULPTURE, CH. VI 211 this statue originally stood, but there can hardly be any doubt as to its Milesian origin or its mid-sixth-cen-tury date. A life-size young man in the poise and stance of a kouros, but as different from a real kouros as a figure can be. He seems to stand uncertainly on nerveless feet. Fat legs carry a heavy, flabby trunk; both are swathed in a chiton and himation that hide the forms in a manner reminiscent of the Orient, though the drapery itself is Hellenic enough in type and style. The arms hang limp against the body, there is no firmness in the clenched hands. The great breadth of chest and shoulders does not suggest strength. The small round head seems hunched on a neck short and thick to excess. The features are full and fleshy, but they lack the glow of health so conspic-uous in most Ionian sculpture. There is little life in the eyes or in the elaborately flowing hair. Of course some of these defects are due te a rather inferior artist, but they have only contributed to the general expres-sion of a racial and plastic personality directly op-posed to the Samian, or in fact, to practically all other Ionians except Miletus. For this young nobleman of so un-Hellenc a temperament clearly belongs to the well-known series of seated marble statues on the Sacred Way which led from Miletus to the sanctuary of Apollo at Didyma on the southern tip of the Mi-lesian peninsula." In 1821 the English traveller Gell counted sixty or seventy, more or less intact. In 1857/8 C. T . Newton could find no more than fourteen, which he brought to the British Museum. Originally there may have been hundreds of these votive offerings of local chieftains, priests and their ladies. One of them bears the inscription: " I am Chares, lord of



212 GREEK PERSONALITY Teichioussa," a small town near Didyma (Plate XVIII) .

These statues range from the seventies to the end of the sixth century and naturally follow the development of archaic Ionian sculpture. But their foreign, ori-ental spirit is very apparent, through the successive stages of stylistic development. Even the earliest seated figures of purely Greek art are tense with a vitality fettered, but never extinguished by Daedalid rigidity. The Branchidae, as they are often called from another small town on the Milesian peninsula, are motionless with the immobility of oriental stat-ues, from early Sumerian times through thirty cen-turies. Chares and his colleagues are one and all permanently established on their throne-like seats, their ample, flabby forms seem rooted there. If they got up, they would look like the young man at present exiled at Samos; but they do not want to get up. Their heavy garments emphasize what form and attitude of the bodies express : lordly relaxation.

How can one explain such a semi-oriental group of figures in Miletus, in one of the most flourishing cen-tres of Ionia, home of the oldest of Greek philosoph-ers, Thaïes, who proclaimed the surpassing beauty of the universe, God's own handiwork the city where Thrasyboulos held his court at the time when the old-est of the Branchidae was made? The only plausible explanation is that these petty dynasts were of the old native Carian stock, un-Hellenic by race and tradition, in spite of Greek names and official speech. Imitating the great and small rulers of the Near East, they would wish to appear in hieratic oriental immobility. And the artists who made their statues (perhaps of native



IN ARCHAIC SCULPTURE, CH. VI 213

blood themselves) would cater to their wishes: an ex-

pression of complex personality which we would never

guess, but for these sculptures. Fortunately, we know that a very different school

of plastic art flourished at Miletus, and even at Di-dyma, from the second quarter of the sixth century. It is significant that it apparently began at about the same time as at Samos.44 A n d Samian influence seems manifest in the beautiful ornamental mouldings of al-tars and other architectural members discovered both at Miletus and in the Didymaion, as well as in the im-perfectly explored ruins of Myus to the East of Mi-letus.46 Very probably Samian craftsmen brought this flower of Eastern Ionian decorative art to the main-land. T h e sumptuous adornment of the "Rhoikos" altar in the Heraeum must have been a model of its kind for decades. A s far as we can tell, it was never surpassed. But we know that the Milesians imitated it, from a marble corner block with a four-winged Gor-gon in high relief and a monumental marble altar that stood West of the Didymaion, on an isolated head-land overlooking the sea (now called Monodendri) ; it was fittingly dedicated to Poseidon, and practically all its decorative members are preserved.4® T h e Gor-gon has a certain kinship with the later Branchidae in her heavy, fleshy forms; but she is wholly Hellenic in temper and style. A n d the same can be said of three marble couchant lions which guarded the port of Mi-letus.47 They are contemporaries of Chares and share some of his redundance of form. T h e y do not crouch or lie ready to spring like their brothers across the Aegean. A t first sight they seem harmless though formidable monsters, relaxed in rest. But the ma-



214 GREEK PERSONALITY levolent gleam of their eyes, watchful under half-closed lids, betrays a dangerous readiness to rise sud-denly and destroy an invader of the port. Quite un-oriental in style and attitude, they are a perfect expres-sion of Milesian art, shortly before 550 B.C.

But by no means its only expression. At least one important work of undoubtedly Milesian workman-ship shows an entirely different style, though it was found at Teichioussa, the fief of Chares. It is a slab (Plate X I X ) , probably from the frieze of an early ar-chaic temple of Apollo at Didyma, which the mag-nificent Hellenistic building completely obliterated.48

The relief was never finished, so that a detailed analy-sis of its style is impossible. But its characteristic qual-ities are evident enough. Half a dozen male and female figures are striding forward in what looks like an ecstatic dance, but is probably a procession hurry-ing towards the sanctuary. It is unique of its kind: none of the stately dignity which we associate with Greek processions. Instead, a surging joyous en-ergy animates each wide-stepping figure. The par-allel slanting outlines, the bowed heads thrust forward at different levels, as boys alternate with grown-up women, like successive waves rolling towards the beach, all unite in an unrivalled effect of eagerness. The composition betrays a master. Note the subtle variations of gesture, such as the right hand of the last woman reaching back to clasp that of the boy behind her. Intense vitality is the key-note of the whole relief, an enlightening contrast to the seated figures on the Sacred Way, along which such, a pro-cession would pass, just before reaching the Didy-maion.



IN ARCHAIC SCULPTURE, CH. VI 215 There is a gap between this frieze and the next im-

portant Milesian work known to us (unless we claim some Ephesian sculptures for Miletus ; below, p. 220 ) : a marble head now in Berlin (Plate XVII) , 4 · which we may compare with the little Samian head on the same plate, both in date and style. It is probably a little later and is certainly not Samian, though as char-acteristically Eastern Ionian. The youthful features are soft and rounded, the eyes, very long and narrow, as if they were blinking in the strong southern light, are set far apart under brows only lightly modelled. The lips seem ready to part in an unconscious smile of quiet contentment. The face is isolated by a veil tied tightly over the skull; the ears show under it, unob-trusively. The serene charm of this head is compel-ling. Its creator, no doubt a master of high rank, was fascinated by the pictorial possibilities of plastic art to an unusual degree.

Of contemporary works only the head of a kouros from Didyma survives. We hear all too little of Mi-lesian art from ancient sources. Of archaic sculptors, just a few names. Olbia, the flourishing colony of Miletus on the Black Sea (near the modern Nico-laiev), has yielded only a couple of insignificant mar-bles. It is possible, even probable, that artists from the great Ionian city at the mouth of the Meander plied their craft in the semi-barbarous regions to the South, Caria and Lycia, where sculptures of a simi-lar style have been found.50 The most important of these is the frieze from a funeral monument near Xanthos in Lycia, already mentioned above, p. 161. Here the departed ancestors who enjoy the cult of their descendants are seated on throne-like chairs like



2I6 GREEK PERSONALITY the Branchidae. But their attitude and temperament are entirely Greek, there is nothing of the oriental strain so obvious in the figures from Didyma. Only the shape of the monument and the sirens carrying off the souls of the departed, at the corners, are native Carian traits and distinctly un-Hellenic. Perhaps these provincial noblemen were proud to adorn their fam-ily memorial in the approved metropolitan Ionian style of their day, towards the end of the sixth cen-tury, while they insisted on observing their traditional funeral customs. It is interesting to compare the attitude towards Greek art of two different groups of Hellenized Asiatics.

3. Ephesus and Chios

Between the Meander Valley and the Gulf of Smyr-na, the Ionian coastline of Asia Minor is set with a chain of cities that flourished in archaic times : Klaros, Ephesus, Kolophon, Lebedus and Teos on the south-ern stretch, Erythrai and Clazomenae on the prom-ontory jutting out towards Chios, Smyrna at the east-ern end of its bay, Phocaea on its northwestern tip.61

N o doubt all these wealthy centres of overseas trade vied in artistic endeavor ; but very little has survived successive devastations, ever since the Persians crushed Ionia before invading Greece proper. Besides, only desultory excavations have been undertaken on these sites, with the sole exception of Ephesus, where the venerable sanctuary of Artemis was rediscovered by J . T . Wood in 1869 ff. and finally investigated by David Hogarth in 1904/5, on behalf of the British Museum. Destruction by man is increased here by the marshy ground : the archaic strata are almost per-



IN ARCHAIC SCULPTURE, CH. VI 217

manently under water. Yet Hogarth's arduous work was rewarded by rich hoards of small but precious vo-tive offerings ranging from the eighth to the sixth cen-tury, especially jewellery and ivories.52 The latter in-clude a few very oriental-looking animals, a galloping lion, a couchant ibex, a sphinx of Syrian style, and a re-markable series of figurines, which have usually been dated to the seventh century. That may well be true for the older statuettes, e.g. a couple of stiffly upright women in tight-fitting garments, a third who wears a crown-like headdress and holds a spindle, as well as a standing nude goddess with hands clasped to her breast, or even the strangest of these figures, evidently one of the eunuch priests of the Ephesian Artemis called Megabyzes : a fat, chubby young man, clad in heavy garments of Assyrian fashion, a large crown-like hat on his head. His broad face is alight with a radiant smile, both hands hold the heavy rosary hang-ing from his neck to below the broad belt around his waist. Beazley has justly stressed the excellence of this little "mixhellenic" work which eloquently reveals the unusually deep influence of the East on Ephesus. But I cannot agree with his early dating of the finest Ephesian ivory, a priestess holding a jug and a flat cup in hands pressed tightly to her sides, and with a long pole crowned by a hawk rising from her head. In spite of this unhellenic Egyptianizing emblem she is a genuine Ionian maiden of early archaic times, a slightly older sister of the Samian girls by Geneleos. Her chiton with its bunch of vertical folds and her short-sleeved jacket look old-fashioned and a trifle foreign. But the delicately modelled face, radiant with youth and health, the gleaming wealth of hair



2I8 GREEK PERSONALITY which falls in heavy curls over both shoulders and in a broad flood behind nearly down to the waist ; the full bosom and long aristocratic hands; all this soft and gracious beauty expresses, better than any other work of art, the ideal of Ionian womanhood that inspired Sappho.

We have no reason to doubt that these ivories were Ephesian works, while a curiously ill-favored bronze statuette of a girl in heavy drapery, with a gaunt, an-gular face unlike any other Ionian figurine, is evidently imported, perhaps from the hinterland.53

There is a gap between the ivories and the oldest Ephesian marbles. The earliest known to me are con-nected with the great temple of Artemis which can be dated by the active collaboration of King Croesus of Lydia, whose votive inscription appears on one of the column bases that have survived.84 He was de-feated by Cyrus in 546 B.C., but we cannot say how much longer it took to complete the vast building. Some of the sculptures which adorned it were undoubt-edly later than 546, though they still distinctly precede the latest phases of archaism."

One would expect the joint efforts of one of the greatest Greek cities and the most wealthy Micrasiatic ruler of his time to have produced the prototype of what Ionian art could achieve ; and thus the mid-sixth-century Artemisium has generally been considered the first, as it certainly was the most magnificent of the great archaic temples. Buschor's investigations have now shown that the daring conception of such a huge building is due to Samos and her great son Rhoikos (above, p. 205). The development is entirely nat-ural. The Heraeum is ambitious in its unprecedented



IN ARCHAIC SCULPTURE, CH. VI 219 dimensions and in the number of its columns. But it is built of cheap materials, unadorned by sculpture, and its only decorative innovation, the column bases, were produced mechanically by turning them on a wheel. This new invention remained famous;" it corrobo-rates the general tendency to make the construction as rapid and inexpensive as possible. The simplicity of the mouldings bears this out. Their beauty lies in their restrained good taste.

A t Ephesus, the temper of the enterprise is essen-tially different: magnificence and dazzling effects are the key notes. T h e column bases are not only inordi-nately high, but almost over-rich in varied mouldings and bands of ornament derived from the heavy fleshy leaves of aquatic plants. Moreover, some of the col-umns were adorned by figures in high relief that sur-rounded their lowest drum, a feature that was to re-main peculiar to Ephesus. T h e capitals are florid compared to that of the Naxian sphinx, and in fact to those of all other Ionic temples. Their modelling in high relief must have produced strong sculptural ef-fects of light and shade. It was enhanced by varying ornaments, stars and rosettes, which seem to have de-veloped from simple motives such as the akroterion of the Rhoikos temple at Samos. Though the Arte-misium apparently did not possess a sculptured frieze, the sima was adorned with long bands of figurate re-liefs.67 A s far as the shattered fragments admit of a comparison, we are reminded of the great "Rhoi-kos" altar at Samos, roughly contemporary, though very probably somewhat older, since the sima would be among the very latest parts of the Artemisium to be completed.



220 GREEK PERSONALITY The whole effect has aptly been called flamboyant

Ionic. And such an opulent display well fitted the city whose wealth and luxury Callinus had described more than a century earlier.88

There is no reason to doubt the Ephesian origin of this exuberant Ionian sculpture ; even though Rhoikos and Theodoros apparently worked there (above, p. 208), the great city certainly produced artists of her own. They appear to have set the fashion which was followed by Chios and perhaps other Ionian re-gions (below, p. 223). The mutilated remains have not been sufficiently studied for a conclusive analysis of their somewhat varied style. The reliefs of a col-umn drum, best known through numerous illustra-tions and plaster casts, show parts of a man and a girl which certainly do not seem to be Samian or Milesian. And the same is true of a youthful head, soft and delicate in its modelling.08 Altogether, it is impos-sible as yet to reconstruct an Ephesian school. As for the other coastal cities of Ionia, they have yielded hardly any archaic works so far. We can gain some idea of Clazomenian style from vases and a peculiar kind of painted clay sarcophagi ranging from mid-sixth-century to the end of archaism; but sculpture is represented in this region by only one kore of minor interest.40

It is specially regrettable that Chios still remains almost a terra incognita for our purpose. Second only to Lesbos in size, it was the most fertile of the Spo-rades and is known to have played a leading part in archaic art, from the turn of the seventh century. Glaukos of Chios was credited with the invention of



IN ARCHAIC SCULPTURE, CH. VI 221 soldering iron for artistic use. His most famous work was a great openwork iron stand for a silver bowl which King Alyattes of Lydia (617-560 B.C.) dedi-cated at Delphi. Herodotus calls it one of the most remarkable offerings to be seen there.81 Iron corrodes so badly that hardly any remains of Greek decorated work remain; recently a couple of iron shield-straps have been recovered at Olympia. They convey at least an idea of what the "small figures and other ani-mal and vegetable forms carved upon" the stand of Glaukos looked like.

The torsos of two early archaic marble korai were discovered on Chios nearly a century ago. They are completely isolated examples of a peculiar, rather primitive style.62 We cannot connect them with the ancient mentions of Chiot sculptors. Pliny gives a pedigree beginning with Melas (who was, however, the mythical founder of Chios) and passing through Mikkiades and Archermos to Boupalos and Athe-nis. The latter pair of brothers is dated to the six-tieth Olympiad (540-537 B.C.). This would put their father Archermos back to about the second quar-ter of the century, a date borne out by two bases, one signed by him alone (on the Athenian Acropolis), the other jointly with his father Mikkiades, found at Delos. As Archermos was credited with having been the first to give the goddess of victory wings, it was natural enough that such a statue, likewise discovered at Delos (Plate XX) , should have been connected with this base." But this was too good to be true. Stud-niczka has shown that we know nothing about the Del-ian statue by Mikkiades and Archermos. The Nike, however, either stood on a high pillar or, as a lateral



222 GREEK PERSONALITY akroterion, on a temple roof. She may well be derived from Archermos' famous creation, or even made by him. But we cannot prove it. However, it is hardly too daring to consider her a Chiot work of about 570-560 B.C. And for us she is certainly the prototype of the Flying Victory.

What makes this statue so important is not that great incurved wings grow from the shoulder blades, and small ones from shoulders and ankles, but that it is the first attempt in ancient sculpture to represent a flying figure in the round: a virtual impossibility for a large-size statue, which cannot, like small Mino-an ivories, be suspended in mid-air. What we ad-mire here, is the daring idea conceived by a country-man and contemporary of the Ionian natural philos-ophers, to whose imagination we owe the first gran-diose systems of the universe. No Dorian sculptor would have attempted anything as foreign to all con-cepts of stability and tectonic structure as the statue of a flying figure, though they had paved the way by numerous paintings and reliefs of such figures, rep-resenting them as running through the air in the con-ventional motive of the Corfu Gorgon (Plate IX).8* Actually all that Archermos had to add was a foot-hold such as the rounded edge of the Nike's chiton provides. On both sides of this slender support, the goddess's legs wave like the limbs of a puppet. It does not seem a convincing solution to us, but it must have had a prodigious effect far beyond its time. A great number of flying Nikai in marble and bronze, ranging well into the fifth century, follow the Deli an statue's lead practically without a change. In fact, the first attempt at a new solution, and the only successful one,



IN ARCHAIC SCULPTURE, CH. VI 223 was made around 425 B.C. by Paionios, an Ionian like Archermos, when he placed a soaring eagle under his Nike's feet, so that seen from below, she seemed to float down from heaven above the bird of Zeus which outflies any other.

The Delian Nike has a harder and less rounded modelling than the Eastern Ionian works we have dis-cussed. If she is a Chiot work, we must admit that the art of that island had closer affinities with the Cyclades than with Samos or Miletus, at least in the second quarter of the sixth century.

A few decades later, decorative sculpture on Chios must have reached a high peak. Our evidence is scan-ty : a few marble cornice blocks from a small nameless temple or treasury, which K. Kourouniotis discov-ered in 1913.e5 Their delicately carved ornaments in-clude such original motives as pine cones and a Gor-goneion in a corner. In time and style they are akin to, but not quite closely related to the Delphic treas-uries discussed below, pp. 229 ff.

Little need be said of the regions which border Io-nia to the North and South. In the Aeolian area, La-risa, northwest of Smyrna, has produced mixhellenic pottery and exotic terracotta revetments very like some from Thasos mentioned above, p. 193. Far more important are the richly carved Aeolic capitals from this site and from Neandria opposite the greatest of the Sporades, Lesbos.98 These capitals, akin to Ionic but more orientalizing, range from the turn of the sev-enth century to about the middle of the sixth, and then disappear entirely: an eloquent proof of the subordi-



224 GREEK PERSONALITY nate part played by Eastern Aeolia as compared to Ionia.

Lesbos itself, home of the great lyric poets Alcaeus and Sappho, has yielded hardly any archaic sculpture. As to the smaller islands to the North, only a stray, rather early relief from Samothrace, probably part of a great altar, tells of artistic endeavor on this wind-swept outpost of Hellenism off the coast of Thrace.61

The style appears to be a provincial Ionian about the middle of the sixth century.

At least one great building of Aeolia is well known to us: the temple of Assos to the South of Troy, ex-cavated by two American missions in 1881 and 1902®8

Curiously enough, it was built in normal Doric order of middle archaic style, the only un-Doric feature be-ing a profusely sculptured epistyle on the façade, under the frieze of metopes and triglyphs. The reliefs re-covered at Assos are distributed among Constantino-ple, Paris and Boston. T h e epistyle frieze contains several scenes which are not separated from each other and are moreover executed in very different scale : Her-akles shooting at fleeing centaurs, men reclining at a banquet, bulls, lions, monsters. The result is a con-fused medley which adds to the inferior effect of a pro-vincial, probably local style. The same may be said of a stray stele found at Dorylaion (Eski-she-hir ) in Lydia, but carved in island marble and adorned with reliefs on both sides.8· Aeolia evidently contrib-uted very little to archaic style.

The case of the Dorian regions south of Ionia is more complicated. W e have already mentioned Car-ian and Lycian monuments (p. 215) . T h e islands of the Dodekanese were inhabited by an almost entirely



IN ARCHAIC SCULPTURE, CH. VI 225 Hellenic population, and Rhodes especially early at-tained great wealth and considerable artistic profi-ciency (above, pp. 52 if.). But the sixth century seems to have marked no advance on the seventh, rather the contrary.70 Cypriote and Egypto-Syrian imports con-tinue to be more numerous than anywhere else in the Aegean. They were evidently fostered by the part which Rhodes took in the founding and exploiting of Naukratis in the Nile Delta. It is amazing to find a number of the unpleasing Naucratite statuettes of alabaster and limestone, as well as hybrid Cypriote works, on a leading Greek island like Rhodes. To offset these witnesses of a questionable taste (to say the least), we have only very few archaic marble works, in spite of intensive explorations, both in ear-lier times and during the Italian domination." And these marbles for the most part look rather like im-ported works from Samos or Miletus. The smaller islands around Rhodes follow her lead. The only remarkable archaic sculpture, a funeral stele from Syme with a standing draped youth and a boar below him, is a somewhat provincial variant of Southeastern Ionian style soon after 550 B.C. Altogether no Rho-dian school can be traced, except for terracottas, some of which are very fine. They include figurines, espe-cially gracious late archaic korai, and oil flasks of var-ious shapes (maidens, animals). But even this branch of Rhodian art shows no great originality and evi-dently depended on Ionia for artistic inspiration.

4. Delphi

I t seems strange to devote a chapter on Ionian art to the great sanctuary in Phokis, and of course there



226 GREEK PERSONALITY is no Delphic school of Ionian or any other art. But so many and so important Ionian offerings have survived that we can study their architecture, marble sculpture and metal work better at Delphi than anywhere else.

Before 1939, our survey would have begun with the four marble treasuries to be discussed presently. But not many months before the war, a young French archaeologist, Pierre Amandry, had the unexpected good fortune to discover two great pits in which ar-chaic precious offerings, defaced by fire, had been bur-ied for some twenty-four centuries. These unique relics were preserved, restored and drawn by E. Gil-liéron fils shortly before his death and published by their fortunate discoverer just before disaster engulfed France." So the entire material has been placed at our disposal with exemplary promptitude and com-pleteness, though naturally Amandry's report could not be more than preliminary.

By far the most important of these finds are the remains of eight chryselephantine (ivory and gold) statues, three of them life-size, which range from about 600 to shortly before 550 B.C. Only very few, and with a single exception quite insignificant remains of such works were known before 1939 ; none of these were archaic.7' We could only guess at the construc-tion of such a statue; now we have evidence for all its parts. The core was of wood; the carving and fitting had long been perfected by the makers of the ancient xoana. Metallic parts were fastened by iron nails of which more than four hundred were found at Delphi, along with innumerable fragments of thin bronze sheets, the backing for the silvergilt garments and similar parts ; these consisted of an alloy contain-



IN ARCHAIC SCULPTURE, CH. VI 227 ing 63% gold, 37% silver. Locks of hair and orna-ments, diadems, earrings, necklaces, bracelets, belts, etc. were of pure gold, as also some large embossed plaques which adorned a goddess's chiton. As for the nude parts, faces, necks, fore-arms and hands, toes, they were carved in ivory and connected with the core by wooden rivets, since bronze or iron would have de-faced the ivory surface when it rusted. Since neither upper arms and shoulders nor legs and feet were found in the Delphi pits, all the statues evidently wore long, close-fitting sleeved garments. Only the toes peeped out from under the flat arc of the lower chiton rim, according to Daedalid and early archaic practice down to statues like the Cheramyes Hera. Two symmet-rical gold plaques must have adorned the front of one statue, their lower rims incurved above the ivory toes. Each is divided into ten fields, a horizontal band of three original and beautiful rosettes frames eight square fields with a quadruped in each: an ibex, a winged horse, two lions each carrying off a spotted deer, a griffon, a bull, a spotted stag and a sphinx. The repoussé work is delicate and sure, the style finest Ionian of developed archaism, certainly not much earlier than 550 B.C. Silver nails with golden, enam-eled heads fastened these beautiful plaques to the stat-ue's robe. It must have been one of the three life-size figures. Though much defaced, their faces show that one, larger than the others, was male, two female: Apollo, Leto and Artemis, according to M. Aman-dry's plausible suggestion. Four exquisitely delicate gold flowers probably formed the earrings of the god-desses, who also wore diadems and plain golden brace-lets.



228 GREEK PERSONALITY Three other faces, about half life-size, are consid-

erably older ; they appear to carry on an Ionian Dae-dalid style, distinct from the Dorian, and may be dat-ed around 600 B.C. T w o faces of somewhat more than a quarter life-size, stand about half way between the two larger groups.

The Delphic ivories include an un-Hellenic oriental statuette of a youthful god holding a lion, and more than two thousand fragments of tiny human figures in high relief, which may have adorned precious boxes like the Chest of Kypselos (above, p. 119) . Though somewhat later and much smaller, they provide a most welcome Ionian counterpart to that famous Dorian work. Intensive study of the shattered pieces will, we hope, lead to a reconstruction of at least parts of the exquisite reliefs.

A last, but by no means the least of the Delphic treasures was a life-size sphyrelaton lion of pure silver, composed of many pieces connected by innumerable tiny rivets. They were crushed flat on the bottom of the smaller pit, but can perhaps be at least partially restored. One at once recalls that a golden lion was the most remarkable of King Croesus' offerings at Delphi, and the silver lion can give some idea of it. Moreover, the closest parallel to the large ivory faces is the marble head from Ephesus mentioned above.74

When the Delphic remains can be studied minutely, we may learn more than what is at once evident : their Eastern Ionian origin.

Delphi has long been famous as a treasure-house of ripe archaic Ionian architecture and sculpture in marble. The precinct of Apollo has yielded remains



IN ARCHAIC SCULPTURE, CH. VI 229 of three .richly decorated treasuries, one of which could be completely reconstructed in plaster, while a fourth, belonging to the same phase of the Ionic or-der, was discovered in the sanctuary of Athena.76 In general plan and size they resemble the Doric treasur-ies familiar to Delphi ever since the end of the seventh century: small rectangular temple-like buildings with two columns between antae in the pronaos or porch, and an unadorned room where precious or perishable offerings could be safely kept. The four Ionic treas-uries are by far the finest of their kind in Greece. The manifold problems connected with them have been discussed for nearly half a century by various schol-ars, and the issues were often obscured. Now the main difficulties appear to be solved, thanks to the painstaking investigations of P. de La Coste-Mes-selière. See Plate XXI.

The oldest of these buildings was erected by Kni-dos.7e Its votive inscription reads: "The Knidians dedicated this treasury and the statues to Pythian Apollo, having taken (booty) from their enemies." It does not mention these enemies by name, and we know too little of the history of the flourishing city on the coast of Lycia, in southwestern Asia Minor, to identify them. The walls of the building are of the finest and hardest light grey limestone, from the St. Elias quarries west of Delphi, all decorated parts of Parian marble. Their style points clearly to middle sixth century. Only small fragments of a pediment in low relief have survived; they show coursing quad-rupeds at one end. Perhaps a Potnia theron once occupied the centre. The frieze which ran round the treasury has almost entirely disappeared. But enough



230 GREEK PERSONALITY survives of one of the two Caryatids which supported the porch to permit reconstruction. These carrying statues were an innovation in Greek architecture; that explains their special mention in the dedicatory inscrip-tion. The importance of this Greek re-creation of Oriental supporting figures has been pointed out above, pp. 49 f. The twin maidens of the Knidian treas-ury are slim but strong young korai, clad in the gra-cious Ionian fashion and easily bearing the burden to which they have freely submitted in the great god's service. They stood on high pedestals and carried slender-shafted but broadly spreading capitals of unique shape on their heads. Such statues, which took the place of Ionic columns, needed much higher bases and capitals to reach the level of the architrave ; oth-erwise the figures themselves would have had to be inordinately elongated or far too large in proportion to the small building, which is only 5.125 m. wide, less than seventeen feet. The mouldings of the bases or pedestals were simple, the capitals richly decorated: a procession of slender figures in very low relief, so to speak the opposite of Ionic flutings, run around the neck, below the spreading echinus; this is a trans-formation of the Doric type into something quite orig-inal that recalls the convex mouldings of certain mel-ons. In such details, the artist could evidently give free reign to his imagination; but he exercised a wise restraint which his successors did not always maintain, as the Siphnian Caryatids will show.

Fortunately one of the Knidian heads is well pre-served ( Plate XXII ). A comparison with the Thasian head in Copenhagen mentioned above reveals very marked differences : instead of the elongated ovai



IN ARCHAIC SCULPTURE, CH. VI 231 of the latter's face, the Knidian kore has fuller, softer, less sophisticated features of different proportions ; her smile is less pronounced, her expression simple, straightforward. Neither does she resemble heads from Miletus or Samos, the artistic centres nearest to Knidos. It would be easier to find something similar among the sculptures of the Artemisium at Ephesus (above, pp. 219 f . ) . The Delian korai have lost their heads, but some of those from the Athenian Acropolis offer certain analogies. But in the present state of our knowledge it is impossible to determine the school to which the sculptures of the Knidian treasury belong.

The artists assembled at Delphi for its construction and decoration can hardly have stayed on there after their work was done. But it remained an inspiring model for other Ionians from overseas, who built a sumptuous treasury a decade or two later, in the pre-cinct of Athena Pronaia." It was in all probability an offering of Massalia (ancestress of Marseille), the wealthy colony of Ionian Phocaea, on the Asiatic coast. This treasury was built entirely of marble, in very refined workmanship. Instead of Caryatids a pair of columns in its porch combine Ionic bases and shafts with capitals which recall the ancient and iso-lated Cretan specimen discussed above (p. 16). They are considered a variation of the Aeolic order. Besides these, the Massaliot treasury, like the Knidian, pos-sessed very fine lotus and palmette chains on the cor-nice and sima, as well as richly decorated mouldings above and below the frieze, of which only a few heads and other fragments in high relief survive. They suggest a date around 530 B.C. An almost exact rep-lica of this building was erected in the precinct of



232 GREEK PERSONALITY Apollo, some ten years later; it need not detain us here ."

By far the richest of all these marble treasuries is that of Siphnos." This rather insignificant island on the southern rim of the Cyclades attained sudden wealth around 525 B.C., through the discovery of gold mines which were soon exhausted. During her short-lived prosperity Siphnos evidently decided to outdo all other cities by the lavish decoration of its treasury at Delphi. I t is larger than the Knidian, slightly smaller than the other two, built of Siphnian marble, according to a wide-spread custom of using native ma-terial for such votive buildings. But as the Siphnian variety is not pure white, but has greenish veins, and splits easily, it is unfitted for sculpture. Parian was therefore used for all the decorated parts. And there is an exaggerated profusion of these : a rich moulding runs around the base of the walls, others, more and more elaborate, adorn every part of the entablature, cornice and sima, as well as the jambs and lintel of the great entrance door. Two Caryatids, more ornate than their Knidian predecessors, sustain the architrave of the porch ; the frieze must have numbered at least 150 figures in high relief; both pediments contained groups in the same technique, and statues of korai and Victories crowned ridge and corners of the marble roof. N o wonder that seven centuries after the dedi-cation Pausanias was informed that the Siphnians had built their treasury to show off their wealth.

The result may be called a compendium of Ionian art about 525 B.C.; but which branch of it? Cer-tainly not Siphnian, since the island never had a school ôf its own, and the only noteworthy archaic work ever



IN ARCHAIC SCULPTURE, CH. VI 233 found there is a small bearded herm of Parian marble and no particular distinction, slightly earlier than the treasury in Delphi. The wealthy Siphnians were no doubt anxious to secure artists of acknowledged fame for a building that was to spread their renown all over Greece, outdoing Knidos and Massalia, whose offer-ings were unrivalled at the time in any Hellenic sanc-tuary. It is thus quite possible that Siphnos engaged an architect and sculptors who had already worked at Delphi.

M. de La Coste-Messelière has studied the deco-rative as well as the figurate sculptures of the treasury from every possible angle ; few monuments have been analyzed so carefully and, I think, so convincingly. It had long been noticed that two very different mas-ters worked on the frieze, each of them with at least one assistant. The East pediment (only a few frag-ments of the western survived) seemed so inferior and so much more archaic that it has repeatedly been assigned to another building, just as the frieze was distributed, rather arbitrarily, among the Knidian and Siphnian treasuries. All such vagaries have now been definitely eliminated.

The technique of the pediment is unique in Greek art. The block is so thick that it might have proved top-heavy. That was evidently the reason for cutting away a considerable part of the background. Thus the central figures (Herakles carrying off Apollo's tripod, with Athena, Leto and Artemis, each assisting one of the gods) appear in low relief up to their thighs, while their bodies and heads stand out in open-work, with deep shadow behind them. While this cen-tral group is well composed, the tiny horses, chariots



234 GREEK PERSONALITY and figures on both sides are unmotivated by the myth and out of all proportion. A comparison with the Corfu pediment (which is half a century older I) shows the glaring inferiority of the Siphnian, which no ingenuity of modern scholars has explained away. There is, however, a very simple reason for the amaz-ing clumsiness of an otherwise high-ranking sculptor : it was not customary to decorate pediments in Ionic architecture. Moreover, it is useful to remember that an Ionian artist working around 525 B.C. at Del-phi (or in any of the great Pan-hellenic sanctuaries, Olympia, Délos, Ephesus, the Argive or Samian He-raeum) could not be guided by any older pedimental composition, except the Knidian, because there were none. The Alkmaeonid pediments at Delphi and the Megarian at Olympia are at least a few years later (pp. 175, 270). Athens was of course rich in pedi-ments of early and middle archaic times; and the— for us—solitary grandeur of Corfu presupposes sim-ilar works in Corinth ; but the sculptors commissioned by the Siphnians need not have known these monu-ments. We have, moreover, a striking parallel in the celebrated Nereid Monument from Xanthos south of Knidos, which is later by a century : here again the pedimental composition is clumsy and far inferior to the friezes and statues.80

The Siphnian frieze is composed of four mytholog-ical scenes, each occupying one side of the building and quite independent of its neighbors. The front, turned westward, showed three goddesses with their chariots and four attendant divinities. M. de La Coste has been the first to recognize a Judgment of Paris. The long side to the North was occupied by



IN ARCHAIC SCULPTURE, CH. VI 235 a splendid battle of the gods and giants, more than fifty figures in violent movement, two or three giants to each divinity, thus showing the prowess of the latter (for a different solution in the Corfu pediment, see above, p. 116). To the East, under the only extant pediment, the assembled gods watch a combat of Greeks and Trojans; the southern long side is occu-pied by a series of horsemen and chariots, on one of which a girl is being carried off : most probably the con-test of Pelops and Oinomaos starting from the altar of Zeus at Olympia.

Two sculptors of clearly divergent tendencies divid-ed the work equally, one taking the West and South, the other the North and East sides. The former, who may also have made the sole surviving pediment, favored a silhouette-like technique, with very flat, deli-cate modelling of details, contours cut vertically to the background and limbs undercut, where necessary. His colleague, on the contrary, carved his figures in high relief, with rounded modelling, much undercutting and amazing attempts at perspective, foreshortening and spatial illusion in depth. Not only are the four horses of a chariot as well as the wheels (which were only painted on the background) shown in three quar-ter view, but parts of shields are cut into the back-ground in a naive attempt to break through to an at-mospheric effect. Exactly the same feeling that the background is an actual hindrance, a cramping barrier, not merely a neutral plane or backdrop, ap-pears clearly in an ambitious attempt to show two groups of figures, entirely distinct in their action, be-hind one another, within the same lateral limits, but at different depth or distance from the beholder



236 GREEK PERSONALITY (Plate XXII I ) . While in the Gigantomachy Dionysus swings his sword against a giant, behind Cybele's lion-drawn chariot, one of her two opponents, who has escaped the terrible brutes, flies panic-stricken to the right between (but in the artist's conception behind) the group of Apollo and Artemis and their adversa-ries, of whom the fugitive is quite unconscious. The re-sult is not entirely satisfactory and rather confusing, because such an amount of spatial development was beyond the artist's powers. But his intense preoccu-pation with the problems of perspective and foreshort-ening is impressive enough, all the more so as it is one of the earliest attempts of this kind in Greek sculpture, and fortunately datable within such narrow limits. It has justly been stressed that perspective in art is by no means a natural result of progressive endeavor : more than one nation of high artistic genius, like the Chinese, have simply ignored the problem. It was first consciously attacked by the Greeks in the sixth century and is one of their greatest contributions to the world's art.81 While the Sicyonian metopes (above, pp. 134 f.) represent an initial, rather tentative phase of this momentous endeavor, the North and East friezes of Siphnos, half a century later, mark a very considerable, decisive advance. Henceforth, these problems will not disappear again from Hellenic art, though they may often be disregarded, even in late archaic or early classical works.

We would dearly like to know the name of the mas-ter to whom we owe those Siphnian reliefs. And he has actually engraved his signature on the shield of one of Apollo's opponents (Plate XXII I ) , adding to his name, now unluckily lost, the proud statement: "has



IN ARCHAIC SCULPTURE, CH..VI 237 made these (figures) and those at the back (of the treasury)." The curiously ornate letters give no clue to the artist's home. As for the painted names still discern-ible beside several giants and combatants, they were in the local alphabet, according to Delphic practice.82

That one of our artists thought it necessary to sign his work, contrary to the universal anonymity of archi-tectural sculpture in Greece, seems to prove that he was not a recognized master, but a rising man conscious of his progressive genius. This is confirmed by the fact that the front of the treasury was not entrusted to him, but to an artist of more conservative tendencies, whose fame was no doubt firmly established. His genius is not so readily apparent, but closer examination re-veals a wealth not only of delicate craftsmanship, but also of original ideas in the treatment of myths. Very probably the general disposition of the sculp-tured panels are due to this master, who seems to have been a man of more linear and architectonic style than his impetuous colleague.81 The choice of subjects ap-parently lay in the hands of the Siphnians. As the island had no well-known local myths, they may have consulted the Delphic priesthood. It is significant that, apart from the Gigantomachy (which is also full of individual traits), unusual phases of myths were chosen in at least two cases : if the South frieze repre-sented the moment when Pelops lifts Hippodamia to his chariot, near the altar of Zeus at Olympia, and before her father Oinomaos started in pursuit, this choice is a remarkable proof of originality. And the same is true of the Judgment scene, where victorious Aphrodite descends from her chariot, while Athena, bitterly disappointed, is mounting hers (Hera and her



238 GREEK PERSONALITY chariot as well as Paris are lost). This originality can be credited to the artist. On the other hand, the East frieze is entirely Homeric in spirit, without il-lustrating any single episode of the Iliad. The gods are assembled as an official court, and Zeus evidently decides in favor of the Trojans, to appease the wrath of Achilles whose mother Thetis is reminding him of his promise. Yet it is impossible to identify the combat raging to the right of the gods with any of those de-scribed by Homer, although two names of heroes painted on the background, Aeneas and Menelaos, are still legible : M. de La Coste-Messelière has stressed the epic qualities of the Gigantomachy master as op-posed to the more lyrical tendencies of his presumably elder colleague.88 Their temperaments differ pro-foundly, the latter appears imbued with the spirit of Eastern Ionia, the former rather to partake of both Ionia and Attica. Several stylistic features of the Judgment master are found in the flourishing city of Clazomenae on the Gulf of Smyrna, while his col-league perhaps came from the neighboring island of Chios (above, p. 223). Unfortunately, Clazomenae has yieldéd only one not very remarkable kore hold-ing a sparrow; but a number of painted clay sarcoph-agi and vases give a fair idea of the peculiar style of this important centre of Eastern Ionian art, which had dedicated a treasury to Apollo at Delphi early in the sixth century.84 Only a foundation of poros blocks can be tentatively identified with this building, the "Aeolian" marble treasury being far too late. But ancient relations between Delphi and Clazomenae may have led an artist from the city to apply for a commission from the Siphnians.



greek personality in archaic sculpture () || vi. ionian sculpture in the sixth century

Documents