THE "ALEXANDER SARCOPHAGUS" FROM SIDON, NOW IN THE MUSEUM AT CONSTANTINOPLE. (After Hamdi Bey and Théod. Reinach, Une Nécropole royale à Sidon.) A political romance, which, about 300 B. C., under the cloak of an amusing traveller's tale, proposed to solve the most burning social questions, was conspicuously appropriate to this popular crisis. It was the sacred chronicle of Euhemerus, who, from his explanation that the gods represented distinguished men who formerly lived on earth, has given his name (Euhemerism) to the rationalistic method of interpreting mythology. Priests, artists, and craftsmen composed the first class of this well-organised State, which lay in the southern ocean near the coast of India. In it there was no individual property beyond house and garden. All produce belonged to the State; and the priests, acting as stewards, divided the common store on a definite scheme, which did not, however, insist on absolute equality. The State thus appeared as an economic institution, presiding over the production and distribution of wealth. Finally, the plastic arts had approached every-day life, and had been led towards realism. Lysistratus (brother of Lysippus) executed portraits from plaster masks. The prose of contemporary society forced its way into sculpture in the form of beggars and old crones, and great creations were brought nearer to the comprehension of the multitude, travestied in terra-cotta. The youth painfully extracting a thorn becomes a street urchin blowing on his foot with chubby cheeks (Priene). The nickname “Dirt Painter" was given to Pausias, who painted the interiors of kitchens and barbers' shops; and mosaic pavements were executed representing such themes as an untidy room, strewn with the refuse of the banquet. Hellenistic art was not invariably enlisted in the service of the masses and popularised; it worked occasionally for the kings. The Niké of Samothrace, with its marvellous floating robe, glorified the naval victory of Demetrius Poliorcetes; the dying gladiator (on the capitol), and the Gaul who has killed his wife and is now falling by his own hand, were carved for the victories of King Attalus of Pergamum. A large number of historical pictures were produced; we only know the copy of the battle of Alexander in mosaic (see the plate in Vol. IV, p. 116). The intimate connection between sculpture and painting, so noticeable in Lysippus and Apelles, when used to emphasise the general effect as opposed to the details, and to represent the ideal not the actual, is distinctly visible in the so-called sarcophagi of Alexander;1 painting certainly asserts itself there. Religious art continued to produce noble works in Athens, as, for instance, the Hera of the Ludovisi and the Venus of Milo (in the Louvre), which belong to the Attic school. The increase in the number of monuments and the custom of wearing the portrait of the sovereign on a ring promoted the art of portraiture. Lastly, the influence of the East on Hellenistic art must not be neglected. On this subject we possess at present only scanty information; in the case of the capitals of the East we know that they were laid out symmetrically according to the principles of Hippodamus the Milesian (cf. Vol. IV, p. 287), but nothing about the application of the accepted Eastern types, which, so far as we know, make their first appearance quite suddenly in the Byzantine age, although they must have been preserved all along. We may, perhaps, observe such effects on plastic art in the widespread realism of the Rhodian school, with its Laocoon group, and in the Serapeion at Alexandria, where the Egyptian arrangement of courtyard and pylons was employed. Oriental customs and vices, beliefs and superstitions, slowly fil 1 See the accompanying illustration, "The Sarcophagus of Alexander in the Museum at Constantinople." tered into Greek life. Its centre of gravity lay in the Greco-Oriental capitals of the East. Greece proper took no large share in the production of great men; and centres of intellectual activity arose in the East, or far westward in Sicily and Italy. D. THE ROMAN RULE (146 B. C.-395 A. D.) THE Roman rule appeared a guarantee of peace and order to its subjects. The Romans could not suppress all political life, since the municipal administration of the city-state still involved many questions of a political character, and the Greeks fancied that they still kept political freedom existent. Hellas did not drink deeply of the cup of misery until Sulla (Vol. IV, p. 376) destroyed the prestige of Athens, and the shores and shrines of Greece became the hunting-grounds of Cilician pirates. It is true that Acrocorinth was raised by Cæsar from its ruins, and Corinth itself became a prosperous trading town, but only as a Roman colony, in which the Latin language, Roman life, and a Roman constitution prevailed. The last vestiges of independence, the prosperity which, under old forms of government, had accrued to the new and motley population of Athens after Sulla's conquest, were wholly destroyed by Augustus. He emancipated Eretria and Ægina from their dependence on Athens; similarly Sparta endured the mortification of seeing a "free Laconia " (consisting of twenty-four former Periocic towns) founded near her. A new Roman colony arose in Patras, with ruinous effects on the prosperity of the Ætolian country population which was forced to settle there, and a Greek colony was established in Nicopolis. The emperor Tiberius, who laid down the principle that the provincials might be shorn, not flayed, gave Greece a short respite from the caprice of the senatorial governors by uniting Macedonia and Achaia with the imperial province of Mosia. Nero's grant of freedom (Vol. IV, p. 426), which has recently been authenticated by inscriptions, and was only a measure of financial relief, meant that Greece should be exempt from taxes; this did not prevent Nero, after the burning of Rome, from systematically plundering Greece of her artistic treasures. This immunity from taxation was revoked by Vespasian. The renaissance of the second century roused a widespread enthusiasm for the old culture of Greece. The imperial throne of Rome was occupied by no more splendid representative of this movement than Hadrian (Vol. IV, p. 441). Not merely did he show his love and reverence for Hellas by completing ancient edifices, such as the temple of Olympian Zeus at Athens, and by erecting new temples, but he attended to the practical needs of the Greeks by constructing aqueducts and high-roads. He also promoted legal uniformity by codifying local customary rights. Tib. Claudius Atticus Herodes (101-177) rivalled the example of the emperor by rebuilding the Odeion. The university of Athens flourished, and the election of the professors excited no less interest than that of the city magistrates in former days. It might almost be concluded from the influx of spectators at the Pythian, Isthmian, and Olympian games that ancient Hellas was still flourishing as before; and the vitality of the old dialects gave to this view of the case a certain plausibility. But the enormous indebtedness of the landed proprietors and of the entire nation discloses the social misery of Greece. The country was living on its capital, paying for imports by the exportation of its gold and silver; the value of the precious metals increased immensely. After Caracalla had conferred the citizenship upon every subject of the Roman Empire (Vol. IV, p. 448), Hellenism became supreme in the East. But the heart of Greece gained nothing thereby. There had been a heavy withdrawal of men into the countries of the East, the new world, and Greece became more and more depopulated. The invasion of the Goths and Herulians in 267 affected Athens (whose warriors distinguished themselves under the historian Herennius Dexippus) less than Argos and Corinth; yet Corinth reappears in 275 as one of the most important towns of Greece. But in the field of intellectual culture Athens with her splendid university still stood in the forefront, although many of her art treasures, like those of other towns, were fated to be carried away to Constantinople. Her magnificent statues and her ancient fame softened the heart of the Gothic king Alaric, so that he granted the city favourable terms. On the other hand, Corinth, Nemea, Argos, and Sparta fell victims to the devastations of the Goths. 2. BYZANTIUM A. THE FOUNDING OF THE BYZANTINE EMPIRE AN Italian bureaucracy had hardly grown up out of the Roman aristocracy when it fell into the power of the military despotism. Augustus indeed had established the military monarchy, victorious after seventy years of war, under such moderate forms that, although legally based on military and civil force, it seemed to be rather a civil magistracy, dividing sovereignty with the Senate. But even in the first century the prætorian guards - that portion of the army which stood nearest to the source of power came prominently forward in deposing and enthroning the emperors. Then, in the words of Tacitus, the secret how emperors were proclaimed was revealed to all the world, and the provincial armies refused to be left in the background. Adoption, the selection of the most capable, then for a comparatively long period secured to the empire internal peace and strength; but the old causes of instability were at once revived when, in the person of Commodus, an emperor for the first time succeeded to his power by hereditary right. Some fifty rulers "reigned" ninety years until Diocletian: two submitted to foreign foes, one abdicated, and one ended his days peacefully; all the others died a violent death. All the bonds of order were loosened; agriculture and stock-breeding, industries and commerce, died out; the empire was one vast desert, Italy slowly became the prey of malaria, and the towns mere memories of more prosperous times. 1 Then the Illyrian Diocletian 1 once more welded the empire together, but at the same time divided it into four parts. He transformed the imperial office into an Oriental despotism, shifted the centre of gravity to the East, and created from germs which had long existed in the State a social organisation which made the Roman Empire a caste State. (a) The West outstripped by the East. At the court of Diocletian, in Nicomedia, Constantine had become acquainted with the expansion of the East. To one who reviewed the situation from that point of outlook Hellenism and Chris 1 Possibly of Albanian stock (cf. Vol. IV, p. 455). |