The Historians' History of the World 04 [Greece to the Roman Conquest]

In the Athenian art of the fifth century, as in Æschylean tragedy, the elements of Eastern and Western Greece interpenetrate, and each heightens the effect of the other. The Parthenon is a Doric temple with an Ionic frieze. To Ionic monumental fresco painters is given the task of painting Homeric stories on the broad surfaces of Athenian and Delphic porticoes; the capacity to immortalise the deeds of contemporary life is its own contribution. From the devout spirit that inspires the poet of the Oresteia, Phidias, with all the wealth and all the art at his command, tries to create images of the gods that will satisfy the religious feeling of his time. To the Greeks they were the greatest for all time. Precisely as in the case of tragedy, such a high strain of endeavour lasts but a short time. Then the Ionic element becomes preponderant; the human, subjective aspect thrusts itself into prominence. It is inevitable, and the thing it created is worthy of admiration. But in the pathos and ethos of the divine types created by Praxiteles and Scopas there is nothing but the mythological character of Homer’s gods; they are immortal men, and no more; to Scopas and Praxiteles they were nothing higher than this. And it was right that it should be so; for in the meantime the comprehension of the truly divine had so far progressed that its circumscription in a person was merely symbolical, and implied no idea of physical incarnation.

Ionia’s greatest and most important contribution was that provided by the audacity of the great thinkers and observers of the sixth century, that indeed which, by setting the whole conception of the world on a new basis, was bound to destroy the fair illusion of gods in the form of men which Æschylus and Phidias might still have regarded as a truth. It was only on Ionian soil, on the soil of Homer, that man had courage and strength to fling aside all convention, all tradition, to step into the centre of the universe himself and say “Thou art naught but what I recognise as thee, thou signifiest what I discover in thee.” The idea was not at the outset formulated with this precision, but such is the spirit in which the Ionians early went to work—not the philosophers alone, but the reckless natures who in the world of action took themselves for the standard of conduct—men like Archilochus the poet, whose subjectivism combined with his brutal outspokenness and license aroused the delight and horror of his contemporaries and of posterity. A terrible moral danger lurked in this attitude, and Ionia, which changed nothing but its masters, brought an infection into the mother-country which neither the state nor society availed to overcome. But for strong natures it also provided the remedy, and the world, for its part, owes to this Ionic element the best of what the Greeks have bequeathed to her—science, philosophy, natural science, and history, though it is true that they had first to be ennobled by the Athenians. This is most easily seen in the case of history.