for the aesthetic theories of Lessing and Goethe. In our days the histrionic and strained character of the group is regarded as greatly diminishing its interest, in spite of the astounding skill and knowledge of the human body shown by the artists. To the same school belong the late representations of Marsyas being flayed by the victorious Apollo (Plate II. fig. 54), a somewhat repulsive subject, chosen by the artists of this age as a means for displaying their accurate knowledge of anatomy.
On what a scale some of the artists of Asia Minor would work is shown us by the enormous group, by Apollonius and Tauriscus of Tralles, which is called the Farnese Bull (Plate I. fig. 51), and which represents how Dirce was tied to a wild bull by her stepsons Zethus and Amphion.
The extensive excavations and alterations which have taken place at Rome in recent years have been very fruitful; the results may be found partly in the palace of the Conservatori on the Capitol, partly in the new museum of the Terme. Among recently found statues none excel in interest some bronzes of large size dating from the Hellenistic age. Rome. In the figure of a seated boxer (Plate V. fig. 72), in scale somewhat exceeding life, attitude and gesture are expressive. Evidently the boxer has fought already, and is awaiting a further conflict. His face is cut and swollen; on his hands are the terrible caestus, here made of leather, and not loaded with iron, like the caestus described by Virgil. The figure is of astounding force; but though the face is brutal and the expression savage, in the sweep of the limbs there is nobility, even ideal beauty. To the last the Greek artist could not set aside his admiration for physical perfection. Another bronze figure of more than life-size is that of a king of the Hellenistic age standing leaning on a spear. He is absolutely nude, like the athletes of Polyclitus. Another large bronze presents us with a Hellenistic type of Dionysus.
Besides the bronzes found in Rome we may set those recently found in the sea on the coast of Cythera, the contents of a ship sailing from Greece to Rome, and lost on the way. The date of these bronze statues has been disputed. In any case, even if executed in the Roman age, they go back to originals of the 5th and 4th centuries. The most noteworthy among them is a beautiful athlete (Plate V. fig. 73) standing with hand upraised, which reflects the style of the Attic school of the 4th century.
After 146 B.C. when Corinth was destroyed and Greece became a Roman province, Greek art, though by no means extinct, worked mainly in the employ of the Roman conquerors (see Roman Art).
IV. Select Bibliography.[1]—I. General works on Greek Art.—The only recent general histories of Greek art are: H. Brunn, Griechische Kunstgeschichte, bks. i. and ii., dealing with archaic art; W. Klein, Geschichte der griechischen Kunst, no illustrations; Perrot et Chipiez, Histoire de l’art dans l’antiquité, vols. vii. and viii. (archaic art only).
Introductory are: P. Gardner, Grammar of Greek Art; J. E. Harrison, Introductory Studies in Greek Art; H. B. Walters, Art of the Greeks.
Useful are also: H. Brunn, Geschichte der griechischen Künstler, (new edition, 1889); J. Overbeck, Die antiken Schriftquellen zur Geschichte der bildenden Künste bei den Griechen; untranslated passages in Latin and Greek; the Elder Pliny’s Chapters on the History of Art, edited by K. Jex-Blake and E. Sellers; H. S. Jones, Ancient Writers on Greek Sculpture.
II. Periodicals dealing with Greek Archaeology.—England: Journal of Hellenic Studies; Annual of the British School at Athens; Classical Review. France: Revue archéologique; Gazette archéologique; Bulletin de correspondance hellénique. Germany: Jahrbuch des K. deutschen arch. Instituts; Mitteilungen des arch. Inst., Athenische Abteilung, Römische Abteilung; Antike Denkmäler. Austria: Jahreshefte des K. Österreich. arch. Instituts. Italy: Publications of the Accademia dei Lincei; Monumenti antichi; Not. dei scavi; Bulletino comunale di Roma. Greece: Ephemeris archaiologikè; Deltion archaiologikon; Praktika of the Athenian Archaeological Society.
III. Greek Architecture.—General: Perrot et Chipiez, Histoire de l’art dans l’antiquité, vol. vii.; A. Choisy, Histoire de l’architecture, vol. i.; Anderson and Spiers, Architecture of Greece and Rome; E. Boutmy, Philosophie de l’architecture en Grèce; R. Sturgis, History of Architecture, vol. i.; A. Marquand, Greek Architecture.
IV. Greek Sculpture.—General: M. Collignon, Histoire de la sculpture grecque (2 vols.); E. A. Gardner, Handbook of Greek Sculpture; A. Furtwängler, Masterpieces of Greek Sculpture, translated and edited by E. Sellers; Friederichs and Wolters, Bausteine zur Geschichte der griechisch-römischen Plastik (1887); von Mach, Handbook of Greek and Roman Sculpture, 500 plates; H. Bulle, Der schöne Mensch in der Kunst: Altertum, 216 plates; S. Reinach, Répertoire de la statuaire grecque et romaine, 3 vols.
V. Greek Painting and Vases.—Woltmann and Woermann, History of Painting, vol. i., translated and edited by S. Colvin (1880); H. B. Walters, History of Ancient Pottery (2 vols.); Harrison and MacColl, Greek Vase-paintings (1894); O. Rayet et M. Collignon, Histoire de la céramique grecque (1888); P. Girard, La Peinture antique (1892); S. Reinach, Répertoire des vases peints grecs et étrusques (2 vols.); Furtwängler und Reichhold, “Griechische Vasenmalerei,” Wiener Vorlegeblätter für archäologische Übungen (1887–1890).
VI. Special Schools and Sites.—A. Joubin, La Sculpture grecque entre les guerres médiques et l’époque de Périclès; C. Waldstein, Essays on the Art of Pheidias (1885); W. Klein, Praxiteles; G. Perrot, Praxitèle; A. S. Murray, Sculptures of the Parthenon; W. Klein, Euphronios; E. Pottier, Douris; P. Gardner, Sculptured Tombs of Hellas; E. A. Gardner, Ancient Athens; A. Bötticher, Olympia; Bernoulli, Griechische Ikonographie; P. Gardner, The Types of Greek Coins (1883); E. A. Gardner, Six Greek Sculptors.
VII. Books related to the subject.—J. G. Frazer, Pausanias’s Description of Greece (6 vols.); J. Lange, Darstellung des Menschen in der älteren griechischen Kunst; E. Brücke, The Human Figure; its Beauties and Defects; A. Michaelis, Ancient Marbles in Great Britain (1882); Catalogue of Greek Sculpture in the British Museum (3 vols.); Catalogue of Greek Vases in the British Museum (4 vols.); J. B. Bury, History of Greece (illustrated edition); Baumeister, Denkmäler des klassischen Altertums (3 vols.). (P. G.)
GREEK FIRE, the name applied to inflammable and destructive compositions used in warfare during the middle ages and particularly by the Byzantine Greeks at the sieges of Constantinople. The employment of liquid fire is represented on Assyrian bas-reliefs. At the siege of Plataea (429 B.C.) the Spartans attempted to burn the town by piling up against the walls wood saturated with pitch and sulphur and setting it on fire (Thuc. ii. 77), and at the siege of Delium (424 B.C.) a cauldron containing pitch, sulphur and burning charcoal, was placed against the walls and urged into flame by the aid of a bellows, the blast from which was conveyed through a hollow tree-trunk (Thuc. iv. 100). Aeneas Tacticus in the following century mentions a mixture of sulphur, pitch, charcoal, incense and tow, which was packed in wooden vessels and thrown lighted upon the decks of the enemy’s ships. Later, as in receipts given by Vegetius (c. A.D. 350), naphtha or petroleum is added, and some nine centuries afterwards the same substances are found forming part of mixtures described in the later receipts (which probably date from the beginning of the 13th century) of the collection known as the Liber ignium of Marcus Graecus. In subsequent receipts saltpetre and turpentine make their appearance, and the modern “carcass composition,” containing sulphur, tallow, rosin, turpentine, saltpetre and crude antimony, is a representative of the same class of mixtures, which became known to the Crusaders as Greek fire but were more usually called wildfire. Greek fire, properly so-called, was, however, of a somewhat different character. It is said that in the reign of Constantine Pogonatus (648–685) an architect named Callinicus, who had fled from Heliopolis in Syria to Constantinople, prepared a wet fire which was thrown out from siphons (τὸ διὰ τῶν σιφώνων ἐκφερόμενον πῦρ ὑγρόν), and that by its aid the ships of the Saracens were set on fire at Cyzicus and their defeat assured. The art of compounding this mixture, which is also referred to as πῦρ θαλάσσιον, or sea fire, was jealously guarded at Constantinople, and the possession of the secret on several occasions proved of great advantage to the city. The nature of the compound is somewhat obscure. It has been supposed that the novelty introduced by Callinicus was saltpetre, but this view involves the difficulty that that substance was apparently not known till the 13th century, even if it were capable of accounting for the properties attributed to the wet fire. Lieut.-Colonel H. W. L. Hime, after a close examination of the available evidence, concludes that what distinguished Greek fire from the other incendiaries of the period was the presence of quicklime, which was well known to give rise to a large development of heat when brought into contact with water. The mixture, then, was composed of such materials as sulphur and naphtha with
- ↑ The date is given when the work cannot be considered new.
