all probability, very clearly realised; but, so far as one can trace it from the ritual procedure, what appears to be implied is that a suppliant will have a better chance of reaching the deity he addresses if he approaches one of the images preferred by that deity as the abode of his power; often there is one such image preferred to all others, as this early one of Athena at Athens. The deity was not, therefore, regarded as immanent in any image—at least, in classical times; the gods lived in Olympus, or possibly visited from time to time the people whom they favoured, or went to the great festivals that were held in their honour. But the various images of them, especially the most ancient ones, that were set up in their temples in the various cities of Greece were regarded as a means of communication between gods and men. The prayer of a worshipper addressing such an image will be transmitted to the deity whom he addresses, and the deity may even come in person to hear him, if special aid is required. A close parallel may be found even in modern days. I have known of a child, brought up in the Roman Catholic religion, who had a particular veneration or affection for a certain statue of the Virgin, and used often to address it or, as she said, converse with it. And she said she had an impression that, if only she could slip in unawares, she might see the Virgin Mary herself approaching or leaving the statue, whether to be transformed into it or merely to dwell in it for a time. On Greek vases we see the same notion expressed as in the Eumenides, when a god or goddess is represented as actually present beside the statue to which a sacrifice or prayer is being offered.

In such a stage of religious belief or imagination it is clearly of high importance that the image of any deity should be pleasing to that deity, and thereby attract his presence and serve as a ready channel of communication with him. From the point of view of art, it would seem at first sight that the result would be a desire to make the image as beautiful as possible, and as worthy an embodiment of the deity as the sculptor could devise. This doubtless was the result in the finest period of art in Greece, and it involved, as we shall see, a great deal of reciprocal influence on the part of religion and art. But in earlier times the case is not so simple; and even in statues of the fifth century it is not easy to understand the conditions under which the sculptor worked without some reference to the historical development that lay behind him.

Before the rise of sculpture in Greece, images of the gods, some of them only rudely anthropomorphic, had long been objects of worship; and it was by no means safe in religious matters to depart too rashly from the forms consecrated by tradition. This was partly owing to the feeling that when a certain form had been accepted, and a certain means of communication had worked for a long time satisfactorily, it was a dangerous thing to make a change which might not be agreeable to the powers concerned, and which might, so to speak, break the established connection. But while hieratic conservatism tended to preserve forms and formulæ almost for what we may call magic reasons, there was also a sentiment about the matter which gave popular support to the tendency. Thus Pausanias probably expresses a common feeling when he says that the images made by Dædalus, "though somewhat strange in aspect, yet seem to be distinguished by something in them of the divine."

It is true that these early images attributed to Dædalus showed already a considerable advance on the shapeless or roughly shaped stocks or stones that had served as the most primitive objects of worship; but it was their resemblance to these rather than their difference from them that impressed the imagination of Pausanias. He appreciated them not so much as examples of an art that promised much for the future, but rather as linked with the past by the tradition of an immemorial sanctity. We find, in fact, that the rude early images remained the centres of state cult and official worship, as well as of popular veneration, long after the art of sculpture had become capable of providing their worshippers with more adequate embodiments of the gods they represented. It was the early image of Athena, not the Athena Parthenos by Phidias, that was annually washed in the sea, and for which the peplos was woven by the chosen women of Athens. The connection between art and religion is, in such a case, reduced to narrow limits; but, on the other hand, we hear of many instances where new statues of the gods were made as temple statues, to be the chief objects of worship and centres of cult. And this was sometimes done with the official sanction of the gods themselves, as expressed through the oracle of Delphi.

The sanctity of the old image was sometimes transferred to the new one; a striking example of this is seen in the case of Artemis Brauronia on the Athenian Acropolis. It had been the custom for the garments presented to the goddess by her worshippers to be placed upon her primitive statue; and when a new and worthier representation of the goddess was placed in the temple in the fourth century, we are informed by inscriptions that dedicated garments were sometimes hung upon it, even though it was a statue from the hand of Praxiteles. It sometimes happened that the old and the new statues stood side by side in the same temple, or in adjacent temples, and they seem then to exemplify the two kinds of idolatry—the literal and the imaginative—the one being the actual subject of the rites ceremonially observed, and the other being the visible presentment of the deity, and helping the worshipper to concentrate his prayers and aspirations. Here the art of the sculptor had the fullest scope, and it is in such cases that he could, as Quintilian said of Phidias, "make some addition to the received religion."

This duality was, however, the result of accident rather than the normal arrangement, and, so long as the primitive image remained the official object of worship, it was difficult, if not impossible, for the new and more artistic statue to have its full religious effect. In many cases, probably in most cases, it was actually substituted, sooner or later, for the earlier embodiment of the deity. Sometimes the early image, which was often of wood, may have decayed or been worn away by the attentions lavished upon it; we hear of a statue of which the hand had perished under the kisses of the devout. We hear also of cases in which it had been entirely lost—for instance, the Black Demete of Phigalia, an uncouth image with a horse's head; here, when a plague had warned the people to replace it, the Æginetan sculptor Onatas undertook the task; and he is said to have been vouchsafed a vision in sleep which enabled him to reproduce exactly this unsightly idol. It would not seem that such a commission gave much scope to his artistic powers; but it is noteworthy that the Phigalians employed one of the most famous sculptors of the day. Elsewhere the conditions were more favourable, and it was possible for the artist, while conforming to the accepted type, to give it a more correct form and more pleasing features.

Dædalus, we are told—and in this story Dædalus is an impersonation of the art of the early sculptors in Greece—made statues of the gods so life-like that they had to be chained to their pedestals for fear they should run away. It is likely that this tale goes back to a genuine tradition; for Pausanias actually saw statues with fetters attached to them in several early shrines in Greece. The device is natural enough. Dædalus was a magician as well as a sculptor; and if he could give his statues eyes that they might see, and ears that they might hear, it was an obvious inference that if he gave them legs they might run away and desert their shrines and their worshippers.

We may very likely find also in a similar notion the explanation of a peculiarity often found in early statues of the gods—the well-known archaic smile. Many