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1shing its objects and annihilating its most substantial rewards; for wealth and ease and safety deny all exertion to heroic virtue; and in a society marked by these characteristics, such endowment can neither lead to power, to eminence, nor to fame.

Such was the situation of Greece, when, extending her conquests and importing both the wealth and the manners of foreign nations, she lost with her ancient poverty her ancient virtue. Venality and corruption pervaded every department of her states, and became the spring of all public measures, which, instead of tending to the national welfare, had for their only object the gratification of the selfish passions of individuals. Under these circumstances, it was no wonder that she should become an easy prey to a foreign power, which in fact rather purchased her in the market, than subdued her by force of arms.

Yet Greece, thus degenerate and fallen from the proud eminence she once maintained, continued in some respects to hold a distinguished rank among the contemporary nations. Conquered as she was, she continued in one point of view to preserve a high superiority even over the power which had subdued and enslaved her. Her progress in letters and philosophy, and her unrivalled eminence in the arts, compensated in some degree the loss of her national liberties, and forced even from her conquerors an avowal of her superiority in every department of science and mental energy. The victors did not blush to become the scholars of the vanquished. The most eminent of the Roman orators perfected themselves in their art in the school of Athens. The Greek philosophy had for some ages its disciples in Italy; and from the golden era of the administration of Pericles at Athens, the Greeks furnished the models of all that is excellent in the arts of poetry, painting, sculpture, and architecture.

We proceed, therefore, to take a short survey of the attainments of the Greeks in those departments of science and of art, beginning with an account of their extraordinary eminence in sculpture, painting, and architecture, in which they arrived at a pitch of perfection which has been the admiration and envy of all succeeding ages.

CHAPTER VII.

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The Greeks not eminent in the Useful Arts-Commerce-Superiority in the Fine Arts-Greek Architecture-Gothic Architecture-Sculpture Inferi ority of the Moderns-Greek religion favorable to Sculpture and PaintingGreek Painters.

It is not among the Greeks that we are to look for the greatest improvement in the useful or the necessary arts of life. When we speak of the eminence of this people in the arts, we are understood to mean those which, by distinction, are termed the fine arts, or those which mark the refinement of a people, and which come in the train of luxury. Agriculture, which deservedly holds the first rank among the useful arts of life, does not appear ever to have attained a remarkable degree of advancement among the Greeks.* At Sparta, this, as well as other arts, being confined to the slaves, it is not there that we are to look for any remarkable. progress in those departments. With respect to Attica, the soil of that country was naturally barren: its best produce was the olive; and the Athenians the more readily confined themselves to that branch of husbandry, that it was little, if at all, attended to in any of the other states of Greece. That Attica produced little or no grain is evident from this fact, mentioned by Demosthenes, that the Athenians imported annually 400,000 medimni of corn. The medimnus was somewhat more than four pecks of English

measure.

Deficient as the Greeks seem to have been in agriculture, they were not much more considerable as a commercial people. Xenophon, indeed, in his treatise on the Public Revenue, advises his countrymen to spare no pains in advancing their commerce, and lays it down as a sound maxim, that the riches of individuals constitute the strength of a state: but such ideas were repugnant to. the common notions of his countrymen, at least in the earlier periods of the republics. The laws of Lycurgus, we have seen, proscribed commerce, with all other arts, as tending to produce an inequality of wealth: nor did the system of Solon give any encouragement to trade. Notwithstanding these impediments, however, from the time when the Greeks had seen and tasted the

* Plato de Legg. 1. 7, and Aristotle in his Politic. 1. 8, c. 10, both explode the practice of agriculture by the free-born citizens, and confine it to the slaves.

Asiatic luxuries, from the era of the invasion of Xerxes, the Athenians began to cultivate commerce with considerable assiduity. Corinth, we know, and the Greek colony of Syracuse, became from that source extremely opulent. They navigated the Mediterranean in large vessels, capable of containing 200 men; and in the age of Alexander we have seen a voyage performed, of ten months' duration, in sailing from the mouth of the Indus to Susa, in the farther extremity of the Persian Gulf.

But these were not the arts for which Greece was ever remarkable among the nations of antiquity. We must now speak of those for which she was eminently distinguished; in which she surpassed all the contemporary states, and of which the remaining monuments are at this day the models of anxious imitation, and the confessed standard of excellence in the judgment of the most polished nations of modern times. I speak of what are termed the fine arts, in all of which, architecture, sculpture, painting, and music, the Greeks were superlatively excellent.

After the defeat of Xerxes, the Greeks, secure for some time from foreign invaders, and in full possession of their liberty, achieved with distinguished glory, may certainly be considered as at the summit of their grandeur as a nation. They maintained for a considerable time their power and independence, and distinguished themselves during that period by an universality of genius unknown to other ages and nations. The fine arts bear a near affinity to each other; and it has seldom been known in any age which produced or encouraged artists in one department, that there were wanting others who displayed similar excellence in the rest. Of this, both ancient and modern history affords ample proof, in the ages of Pericles, of Leo X., and of Lewis XIV. The arts broke out at once with prodigious lustre at Athens, under the luxurious administration of Pericles. In architecture and sculpture, Phidias at that time distinguished himself by such superior ability, that his works were regarded as wonders by the ancients, as long as any knowledge or taste remained among them. His brother Panaus (or Pananas) was an able assistant in some of his noblest works, and is himself distinguished as the artist who painted the famous picture in the Poecile at Athens, representing the battle of Marathon, which is described by Pausanias and Pliny as so perfect a picture, that it presented striking portraits of the leaders on both sides. It was from the designs of Phidias that many of the noblest buildings of Athens were reared; and from the example of these, a just and excellent taste in architecture soon diffused itself over all Greece. Phidias had many

disciples; and after his time arose a succession of eminent architects, sculptors, and painters, who maintained those sister arts in high perfection for above a century, till after the death of Alexander the Great. This, therefore, may be termed the golden age of the arts in Greece; while in those departments the contempo

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rary nations were yet in the rudest ignorance. We shall afterwards see what reason there is to believe that the Etruscans were an exception from this observation: but it is certain that, whatever were their attainments in the fine arts in those remote ages, their successors, the Romans, inherited none of that knowledge from them; for at the period of the conquest of Greece, the Romans had not a tincture of taste in those arts, till they caught the infection from the precious. spoils which the sole love of plunder then imported into Italy. But of this change operated on the taste and manners of the Romans, we shall, in its proper place, treat more at large. It is sufficient here to observe, that even when time had brought the arts to the highest perfection they ever attained among the Romans, this people never ceased to acknowledge the high superiority of the Greeks, of which we have this convincing proof, that when the Roman authors celebrate any exquisite production of art, it is ever the work of a Phidias, Praxiteles, Lysippus, Glycon, Zeuxis, Apelles, Parrhasius, or, in fine, of some artist who adorned that splendid period, and not of those who had worked at Rome, or who had lived nearer to their own times than the age of Alexander the Great.

The Greeks are universally acknowledged as the parents of architecture, or at least of that peculiar style of which all after ages have confessed the superior excellence. The Grecian architecture consisted of three different manners, or what artists have termed the three distinct orders; the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian The Doric was probably the first regular order among the Greeks. It has a masculine grandeur, and a superior air of strength to both the others. It is, therefore, the best adapted to works where magnitude and sublimity are the principal objects. Some of the most ancient temples of Greece were of this order, particularly that of Theseus at Athens, built ten years after the battle of Marathon, that is, 481 years before the Christian era; a fabric which has stood more than 2300 years, and is at this day almost entire.

One observation may here be made which is applicable to all the works of taste. The character of sublimity is chaste and simple. In the arts dependent on design; if the artist aim at this character, he must disregard all trivial decorations; nor must the eye be distracted by a multiplicity of parts. In architecture, there must be few divisions in the principal members of the building, and the parts must be large and of ample relief. There must be a modesty of decoration, contemning all minuteness of ornament, which distracts the eye, that ought to be filled with the general mass, and with the proportions of the greater parts to each other. In this respect the Doric is confessedly superior to all the other orders, of architecture, as it unites strength and majesty with a becoming simplicity, and the utmost symmetry of proportions.

As the beautiful is more congenial to some tastes than the

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sublime, the lightness and elegance of the Ionic order will, perhaps, find more admirers than the chastened severity of the Doric. The latter has been compared to the robust and muscular proportions of a man, while the former has been likened to the finer, more slender and delicate proportions of a woman. Yet the character of this order is likewise simplicity, which is as essential a requisite to true beauty as it is to grandeur and sublimity. . But the simplicity of beauty is not inconsistent with that degree of ornament which would derogate from the simplicity of the sublime. The Ionic admits with propriety, of decorations which would be unsuitable to the Doric. The volute of the Ionic capital, frequently ornamented with foliage, the entablature consisting of more parts, and often decorated with sculpture in basso, and even alto relievo; all these have a propriety in this order of architecture, which is quite agreeable to its character. Of this order were constructed some of the noblest of the Greek temples; particularly the temple of Apollo at Miletus, that of the Delphic oracle, and the superb temple of Diana at Ephesus, classed among the wonders of the world.

The last of the Grecian orders of architecture is the Corinthian. It marks a period of luxury and magnificence, when pomp and splendor had become the predominant passion, but had not so far prevailed as to extinguish the taste for the sublime and beautiful. It had its origin at Corinth, one of the most luxurious cities of Greece; and was, probably, the production of an artist who wished to strike out a novelty agreeable to the reigning affectation "of splendor, and to preserve at the same time a grandeur and beauty of proportions; thus studying at once to captivate the vulgar eye, and to preserve the approbation of the critic Of this order were built many of the most superb temples of Greece, particularly that of Jupiter Olympius at Athens, founded by Pisistratus, but not completely finished till seven hundred years after, under the reign of Hadrian. Its remains are yet very considerable. But pleasing' as this magnificent order may be to the general taste, it will hold but an inferior estimation with those who possess a refined judgment. It conveys not to the chastened eye that calm and sober pleasure which arises from grand and simple symmetry, or the effect of a few striking parts united to produce one great and harmonious whole; but leads off the attention to admire the minute elegance of its divisions, and solicits applause less from the production of a great and beautiful effect, than from the consideration of the labor, the cost, and artifice employed in its construction.

I have thus endeavored to give some idea of the distinct characters of the three different orders of Grecian architecture. They have been elegantly and happily distinguished by the poe of the Seasons :

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