in. There seems to be a new interest in the adventures of the gods themselves, apart from their relation to mankind; romantic and even pathetic stories are told about them, implying almost a psychological appreciation of their personality—the tale of Demeter's mourning for her daughter Persephone, her wanderings and adventures; of the love of Aphrodite for a mortal; of how Hermes invented the lyre and tricked Apollo about his cattle; of the birth of Apollo and the founding of his worship at Delos and Delphi; of the marvellous birth of Athena from the head of Zeus. It is hardly too much to say that in the later of these Homeric hymns—those that are mentioned first in the above enumeration—an almost human interest is given to the gods, to their sufferings and adventures. It is the same tendency which we see in the lyric poetry of the Greeks, with its intensely personal note. The reflexion of this tendency in art is not, indeed, to be seen until the fourth century; not only the power of expression, but the desire to express such a side of the character of the gods seems to be absent until this period.

It may seem curious at first sight that art was so slow in this case to follow the lead given it by poetry; but it is to be remembered that a power of expression such as would have enabled it to do so was not attained until the fifth century, and that in this age there was an exaltation of national and religious enthusiasm, owing mainly to the victories over the Persians, which checked the tendency to sentiment and pathos; and it was not until this vigorous reaction had died away that the tendency once more asserted itself. The early fifth century was also marked by poets such as Pindar and AEschylus, who raised the religious ideals of the nation on to a higher plane, who consciously rejected the less worthy conceptions of the gods, and, whether in accordance with the popular beliefs or not, gave expression to a higher truth in religion than had hitherto been dreamed of. The gods whom the sculptors of the fifth century were called upon to represent may have been the gods of Homer, but they were the Homeric gods transformed by the creative imagination of a more reflective age, and purified by a poetic, if not a philosophic, idealism. But while AEschylus suggests "a deeply brooding mind, tinged with mysticism, grappling with dark problems of life and fate,"2 and so was, in some ways, remote from the clarity and definition of sculptural form, Sophocles "invests the conceptions of popular religion with a higher spiritual and intellectual meaning; and the artistic side of the age is expressed by him in poetry, much as in architecture and sculpture it is interpreted by the remains of the Parthenon; there is the same serenity and wholeness of work; power joined to purity of taste; self-restraint; and a sure instinct of symmetry."3 Sophocles was a friend and companion of Pericles, and therefore probably of Phidias; and in both alike we see the same harmony and absence of exaggeration that are characteristic of Greek art at its best. In this case we may say with some confidence that the poet and the sculptor probably influenced each other.

2 Sir R. C. Jebb in Cambridge Companion to Greek Studies, p. 110.

3 Ibid. p. 113.

It seems a tempting hypothesis to see something of the influence of "Euripides the human" in the individualistic tendencies of the art of the fourth century; but it seems hardly to be justified by the facts. The influence of his dramas is, indeed, to be seen in later vase-paintings; but this is not a matter with which we are here concerned. In his treatment of the gods, Euripides can hardly be quoted as an example of the humanising tendency. "He resented the notion that gods could be unjust or impure"; but the purer and more abstract conceptions of divinity that appealed to him were hardly such as could find expression in art; it has even been said that "he blurred those Hellenic ideals which were the common man's best without definitely replacing them." The bringing of these ideals nearer to the common life of man finds its poetic inspiration rather in the tendency which has already been noticed in the Homeric hymns and the lyric poets, and which now, after the reaction of the fifth century, exerts its full force on the art of Scopas and Praxiteles.

There is no need to dwell here on the influence of later poets upon religious art, though we shall have to notice hereafter the parallel development of the representation of the gods in Hellenistic sculpture. The Alexandrian poets expressed in elegant language their learning on matters of religion and mythology, but there was no living belief in the subjects which they made their theme; and the art they inspired could only show the same qualities of a correct and academic eclecticism. The idylls of Theocritus find, indeed, a parallel in the playful treatment of Satyrs and other subjects of a similar character; but these belong to what may be called mythological genre rather than to religious art. The dramatic vigour and intensity which we find in the art of Pergamon cannot easily be traced to the influence of any similar development in literature, though its artificial and learned mythology is such as we find also in the work of Hellenistic poets.

(4) The philosophical aspect of religion had no very great influence upon art in Greece. We might perhaps expect that, so far as the philosophers accepted the popular religion, they would tend to purify it and to give it a higher meaning, just as the more thoughtful of the poets doubtless assisted the idealising tendency of fifth-century art. And it might well seem that, for example, Plato's theory of ideas supplies a more satisfactory basis for an idealist art than any other system, since it might be maintained that the true artist represents not the material object which he sees before him, but the ideal prototype of which it is but a faint and inadequate reflexion. This theory is peculiarly applicable to statues of the gods, and we find it so applied by later philosophical and rhetorical writers; for instance, Cicero says that Phidias "when he was making the statue of Zeus or of Athena did not derive his image from some individual, but within his own mind there was a perfect ideal of beauty; and gazing on this and in contemplation of it, he guided the craft of his hand after its likeness."4 The same notion underlies the saying quoted by Strabo, that Phidias was "either the only man that saw, or the only man that revealed to others the images of the gods."5 But there is no trace or encouragement of any such feeling in the philosophic literature contemporary with the great age of Greek art. Plato expressly states that the artist only makes "an imitation of an imitation"; and the higher ideas of divinity preached by philosophers did not so much tend to ennoble the popular conceptions as to substitute others for them. Above all, the monotheistic idea, even if associated with the name of Zeus, tended to become an abstract conception with little relation to the national god of Hellas, whom Phidias embodied in his Olympian statue.

4 Or. 2. 8.

5 viii. p. 353. It does not matter whether the passage is quoted by Strabo himself or by an interpolator.

The philosophic or theological conception of a monotheistic deity does not, in fact, seem to lend itself at any time to impressive artistic representation. We may observe the same thing in Christian art, in which representations of God the Father are not very common nor, as a rule, very expressive of the most vivid religious ideals; while Christ, usually not as God, but as man or child, and the Virgin Mary are the constant themes of the most devout religious art, not to speak of the numerous saints who correspond more or less to the gods of a polytheistic system. Philosophical thought was