The Historians' History of the World 03 [Greece to the Peloponnesian War]

Greek Lyres

PAINTING, MUSIC, ETC.

If the description in the Iliad of the shield of Achilles is a work of imagination, those of the Athene of the Parthenon and the Zeus of Olympia, as given by Pausanias after an attentive study of the works themselves, show that the school of Athens had carried the art of carving metal and ivory to a high degree of perfection, as well as that of working hard stones for casts or in relief. Yet this skill was borrowed from the school of Argos, where work in bronze was held in high honour.

It was not so with painting, which in Greece had never the perfection of statuary, whatever may be said on the faith of anecdotes more famous than veracious. Modern painting seeks to move; that of the ancients was rather sculptural in its character, in the sense that it sacrificed colouring to design and the effects of light and shade to form—a stranger to what might be called, if we have Rembrandt in mind, the drama of light and shade, or, in referring to the Venetians, the harmonious chant of colours. Sicyon was the first Greek town which had a school for design. Athens, Miletus, and subsequently Corinth, followed this example. We shall see presently that Greece had great painters, and that those of Athenian origin did not occupy the first rank in this art. But it would be rash to speak of Greek painting except according to the judgment of the ancients, since nothing of it remains save painted vases, which belong to industry rather than art; and the mural decorations at Pompeii and Herculaneum, which are too often mere conventional productions, executed hurriedly and probably for small payment by workmen rather than artists. The Roman mosaics were also made by Greek hands, but there is not one, except the battle of Issus, which is of a high order of art.

Lyre Player

The Greeks possessed the merit of realising that the highest intellectual culture is one of the conditions of greatness in the individual and the state; and they understood how to utilise every means of attaining it. In their plan of education, besides the study of poets and philosophers to form the mind, and gymnastic exercise to develop suppleness and strength, they included music, which habituates the mind to harmony, and dancing, which bestows grace. These two secondary arts were the chief ones at Lacedæmon; they also ranked high among the Athenians, though Athens did not set her mark on them as she did on architecture and the art of statuary. They were indispensable auxiliaries at festivals, sacrifices, and funerals, and played a part in the performance of religious rites. The marvellous effects of the lyre of Orpheus were universally kept in mind, and Achilles, the hero who was the ideal type of warlike courage, was represented celebrating his exploits on the cithara; in the Iliad or the Odyssey there is no feast to which a melodious singer is not invited. Down to the last days of Greece the beneficent action of music was believed in: Polybius attributed the misfortunes of the Arcadians to the neglect among them of the art which calms the passions and which, by teaching the rules of harmony, trains the learner not to violate public peace. Damon the musician, a friend of Pericles and of Socrates, held that musical methods could not be changed without threatening the foundation of morality and the laws of the city. Plato thinks the same, and Aristotle calls music “the greatest charm of life.” It is well known how much importance was attached to it by the school of the Pythagoreans, who professed to hear the music of the celestial spheres turning harmoniously through infinite space.

Greek Dancing Girl

(Hope)

The Greeks also conceived of dancing in another fashion from ours, for they had introduced into it number and measure, which in art are a manifestation of beauty, but no longer remain so when whirling speed is substituted for grace. With them the dance formed part of their religious solemnities and military education. “The ancients,” says Plato in the Seventh Book of the Laws, “have bequeathed us a great number of beautiful dances.” In the Dorian cities dancing was one of the necessary rites in the worship of Apollo, and the gravest people participated. Theseus, returning from Crete, danced the γέρανος in the holy island of Delos, to celebrate his victory over the Minotaur; and the Spartans, in annual commemoration of their triumph over the people of Thyrea danced the γυμνοπαιδια before the images of Apollo, Diana, and Latona, singing verses of Aleman and the Cretan Thaletas. The Bacchic dances, with thyrsi and lighted torches, were a mimic representation of the life of Dionysus.

In the neighbourhood of Eleusis was to be seen the fountain of beautiful dances, Callichorum, where the initiated chanted the invocation to Iacchus as they danced: “O adored god, approach at our voice. Iacchus! Iacchus! come and dance the sacred thiasus in this meadow, thy well-beloved home; strike the ground with a bold foot and mingle in our free and joyous dances, inspired by the graces who rule our consecrated chorus.”

Plato, in his treatise on “Law,” which is a kind of commentary on Athenian legislation and customs, attaches extreme importance, even for the moral education of youth, to the possession by the ephebi of the “art of choruses,” which includes song and dance.

We may well believe that demoralising dances existed in Ionia and elsewhere. At Sparta and Athens the Pyrrhic dance was a military exercise and a patriotic training. The ephebi danced them at the greater and lesser Panathenæa, imitating all the movements of a combat for attack, defence, or the evasion of darts. And was not the heroic circle of the Suliote women a recollection of these warlike dances? Having taken refuge on the summit of a mountain to escape a harem or the yataghan of the Turks, they sang their funeral hymn, joined hands and danced on this narrow peak, which was surrounded by precipices. Each time that the ring approached the abyss, the circle was narrowed, for one of their number detached herself from it to fling herself down; and one after another, all threw themselves over.