Mesopotamian art, or of the hybrid craftsmanship of Phoenicia. The borrowing or imitation of such foreign types may at first sight appear to show even less promise of artistic progress than variations on the old native images; but it is not in its origins, but in its development and perfection that the chief excellence of Greek art is to be found.

The types borrowed by sculpture from foreign art are almost exclusively of human form. The monstrous mixed forms in which the deities of Egypt or Mesopotamia often found the expression of their superhuman and mysterious powers do not seem to have appealed to the imagination of the Greeks. Such mixed forms were, indeed, frequently borrowed by early decorative art, and on "Orientalising" vases we constantly find human-headed and bird-headed quadrupeds, usually winged, and human-headed birds. The delight in winged figures generally, which was mainly decorative in early times, also finds its origin in Oriental woven stuffs. Greek sculpture adopted and translated into stone or bronze some of these mixed types—notably the human-headed bird and the human-headed winged lion; these it identified as the Siren and the Sphinx of Greek myth, and associated them with the mysteries of the tomb. To some other forms, that of the Centaur and the Satyr and the Triton, it also gave considerable scope. But all these, if not human, are hardly to be regarded as divine; they are mostly noxious, and, even if benignant, do not attain the rank of gods. Perhaps a nearer approach to divine character is to be found in the river-gods, who are often represented as bulls with human heads or as human with bull's horns; but here, too, we have only to deal with minor deities. No sculptor represented Dionysus in this way, even though he was called "bull-shaped" by poets; nor is the horse-god Posidon even represented as a Centaur. The horse-headed Demeter of Phigalia remains the strange and solitary exception, however we may explain her existence.

The process by which the early human types were gradually improved and made more life-like, by a continuous struggle with technical difficulties, by constant and direct observation of nature, and by the building up of an artistic tradition in different schools and families, is a question that concerns the history of art rather than our present study. But it is impossible to distinguish rigidly between the two, because these types, whether of the nude standing male figure, of the draped female, or of the seated figure, are all of them used alike to represent human and divine personages; and, apart from inscriptions of dedication or conditions of discovery or distinctive attributes, it would often be impossible to tell whether any particular statue was meant to represent, for example, the image of a god or a conventional portrait of a man. These nude male statues, commonly known by the name of "Apollo," were certainly, some of them, made to commemorate athletes, whose images were set up either in the place where they won their victories or in their native town; others were placed over graves as memorials of the dead; and even in a sacred precinct it is sometimes uncertain whether the god himself is represented or the worshipper who dedicates this record of his devotion.

At this early period, therefore, Mr. Ruskin's strictures as to the impossibility of distinguishing the individuality of the different gods must be admitted, and even supplemented by an admission of the impossibility of distinguishing gods and goddesses from human beings. The explanation is obvious enough. During this age of early progress the constant aim of the sculptor is to attain to complete mastery over the material and to perfection of bodily form. In religious art, what corresponds to this is the struggle towards anthropomorphism—first to represent the gods in human form, and then to make that form the most perfect that human art can devise. During this stage of artistic and religious development the type and the ideal cannot be distinguished. It was only when a type or a varying series of types had been brought to perfection in the fifth century, so as to satisfy the demand for a harmonious system of bodily proportions, for beauty of outline and dignity of countenance, that these types could be used as a means of expression for the religious ideals of the nation. In developing the type the accidental has to be discarded, and with it much of the feeling of individuality; works of early archaic art, for all their defects, often show more sign of individual character than the more perfect works of the earlier part of the fifth century. The attainment of the type is followed by an infusion of character and individuality, drawn from the artist's trained memory and observation with clear artistic intention, not from the mere caprice of an accidental recollection or a casual peculiarity of a model. The character and individuality thus expressed must be considered in subsequent chapters; it is only necessary here to distinguish it from the suggestion of an individual, almost of a caricature, which we find sometimes in archaic art, and which is certainly to be seen occasionally in works of Florentine sculpture. During the period of the rise of Greek sculpture the various schools were advancing each in its own way towards what has been called naturalism in art, as opposed to realism on the one side and idealism on the other. That is to say, they were striving by constant study of the athletic form, of proportions and muscles, of drapery and hair, to attain to a series of types both in harmony with themselves and in accordance with nature; and they were too much absorbed in this attempt to go far beyond their predecessors in rendering the character of the gods according to the form consecrated by tradition. Even in the expression of the face the same process is to be traced. In early works we find sometimes no expression at all, or an apparent stolidity which is really the absence of expression; in the archaic smile we see an attempt to enliven the face, and possibly also, as we have noticed, to express and even to induce the benignity of the deity. But this attempt, made with inadequate artistic resources, tends to result in a mere grimace; and as we approach the transitional age before the greatest period of sculpture, we often find a reaction against any such exaggeration of expression in a severity and dignity that may have a certain grace of their own, but that are in some sense a retrograde movement so far as the expression of character is concerned.

It follows that the statues of the gods dating from this early period, however interesting they might be for the history of sculpture, would not, even if we possessed many more of them than we do possess, throw very much light upon the development of the ideas of the Greeks concerning their deities. They would probably conform to a limited number of clearly defined types. The most familiar of all, the standing nude male figure, would, if beardless, usually represent Apollo, with a bow or a branch of bay, or sometimes other attributes. A similar type, bearded, would stand for Zeus or Posidon or Hermes, if provided with thunderbolt or eagle, with trident or fish, or with a caduceus. Similar figures might also be draped, and still represent gods; or, if female, would serve for Hera, Artemis, Aphrodite, and sometimes for Athena, if she was represented without her arms and ægis. Then, too, there was the seated type, usually enveloped in full drapery, which might readily be adapted to a statue of any of the chief gods. In all of these there is no question of distinguishing the gods from one another in character and individuality; apart from attributes, there is hardly any attempt to distinguish gods from men.

Perhaps the earliest class of statues in which we find any attempt to give artistic expression to superhuman power is that in which we see the god in vigorous action, often striking with his characteristic weapon: Zeus with his thunderbolt in his raised right hand, Posidon with his trident, or Athena advancing rapidly with brandished