ARCHAEOLOGY not a success; only the latest art of Greece is at home in dealing with children. But the Hermes, strong without excessive muscular development, and graceful without leanness, is a model of physical formation, and his face expresses the perfection of health, natural endowment, and sweet nature. The statue can scarcely be called a work of religious art in the modern or Christian sense of the word religious, but from the Greek point of view it is religious, as embodying the result of the harmonious development of all human faculties and life in accordance with nature. The discovery of the Hermes has naturally set archaeologists searching in the museums of Europe for other works which may from their likeness to it in various respects be set down as Praxitelean in character. In the case of many of the great sculptors of Greece—Cresilas, Silanion, Calamis, and others—it is of little use to search for copies of their works, since we have little really trustworthy evidence on which to base our inquiries. But in the case of Praxiteles we really stand on a safe level. Naturally it is impossible in these pages to give any sketch of the results, some almost certain, some very doubtful, of the researches of archaeologists in quest of Praxitelean works. But we may mention a few works which have been claimed by good judges as coming from the master himself. Prof. Brunn claimed as work of Praxiteles a torso of a satyr in the Louvre, in scheme identical with the well-known satyr of the Capitol. Prof. Furtwangler puts in the same category a delicately beautiful head of Aphrodite at Petworth. And his translator, Mrs Strong, regards, with greater probability, the Aberdeen head of a young man in the British Museum as the actual work of Praxiteles. Certainly this last head does not suffer when placed beside the Olympian head of Hermes. At Mantinea has been found a basis whereon stood a group of Latona and her two children, Apollo and Artemis, made by Praxiteles. This base bears reliefs representing the musical contest of Apollo and Marsyas, with the Muses as spectators, reliefs very pleasing in style, and quite in the manner of Attic artists of the 4th century. But of course we must not ascribe them to the hand of Praxiteles himself; great sculptors did not themselves execute the reliefs which adorned temples and other monuments, but reserved them for their pupils. Yet the graceful figures of the Muses of Mantinea suggest how much was due to Praxiteles in determining the tone and character of Athenian art in relief in the 4th century. Exactly the same style which marks them belongs also to a mass of sepulchral monuments at Athens, and such works as the Sidonian sarcophagus of the Mourning Women, to be presently mentioned. Excavation on the site of the temple of Athena Alea at Tegea has resulted in the recovery of works of the school of Scopas. tells and us that Scopas was Scopas. f-pg architectPausanias of the temple, so important in the case of a Greek temple is the sculptural decoration, that we can scarcely doubt that the sculpture of the temple at Tegea was under the supervision of Scopas, especially as he was more noted as a sculptor than as an architect. In the pediments of the temple were represented two scenes from mythology, the hunting of the Calydonian boar and the combat between Achilles and Telephus. To one or other of these scenes belong two heads of local marble discovered on the spot, which are very striking from their extraordinary life and animation. Unfortunately both are so much injured that they can scarcely be made intelligible except by the help of restoration ; we therefore engrave one of them, the helmeted head, as restored by a German sculptor (Fig. 35). The strong bony frame of this head, and its depth from front to back, are not less noteworthy than the parted lips and
(CLASSICAL)
583
deeply set and strongly shaded eye; the latter features impart to the head a vividness of expression such as we have found in no previous work of Greek art, but which sets the key to the developments of art which take place in the Hellenistic age. The head of the Calydonian boar, which was found at the same time, is a curious work ; the sculptor has transferred to the representation of a boar too much of his special style, and made it but little like an actual wild beast. Until these heads were found, Scopas was known to us, setting aside literary records, only as one of the sculptors who had worked at the Mausoleum. But it has now become possible to detect his style in many extant statues, such as the Meleager of the Vatican and the Hercules of the Lansdowne Gallery. It is also by no means unlikely that Scopas may have had a share in the carving of those sculptured pillars from the 4th-century temple of Artemis at Ephesus with which the spade of Mr Wood enriched the British Museum.
Fig. 35.—Head of warrior, restored : Tegea. The interesting precinct of Aesculapius at Epidaurus has furnished us with specimens of the style of an Athenian contemporary of Scopas, who worked Timotheus, with him on the Mausoleum. An inscription Bryaxis, which records the sums spent on the temple of Leochares, the Physician-god, informs us that the models Dam°Phoafor the sculptures of the pediments, and one set of acroteria or roof adornments, were the work of Timotheus. Of the pedimental figures and the acroteria considerable fragments have been recovered, and we may with confidence assume that the models for these at all events were by Timotheus. It is strange that the unsatisfactory arrangement whereby a noted sculptor makes models and some local workman the figures enlarged from those models, should have been tolerated by so artistic a people as the Greeks. The subjects of the pediments appear to have been the common ones of battles between Greek and Amazon and between Lapith and Centaur. We possess fragments of some of the Amazon figures, one of which is here engraved (Fig. 36) striking downwards at an enemy. Their attitudes are vigorous and alert; but the work shows no delicacy of detail. Figures of Nereids riding on horses, which were found on the same site, may very probably be roof ornaments (acroteria) of the temple. We have also several figures of Victory, which probably were acroteria on some smaller temple, perhaps that of Artemis. A base found at Athens, sculptured with figures
