Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/62

early Emperors of Rome show scarcely less skill. In this, as in literature, Athens long had the supremacy, though never the monopoly. Nearly every important Greek town contributed, and especially the islands of Ægina, Chios, and Samos, and the wealthy city of Pergamus. Two motives may be regarded as the strongest in promoting this art—religion and athleticism. The adornment of temples and the desire to express the ideal of divine personages are responsible for a large number of the finest statues that remain, while almost as many came from the study of the nude figure as seen in the contests of the Stadium. The Roman conquest transferred a great quantity of the best works of Greek art to Italy, and in many cases the artists themselves migrated thither also; for in Italy they would best find patrons and purchasers. This later, or Hellenistic, period of Greek art was, no doubt, inferior in many ways to that which had preceded it; but just as the later philosophy of Epicurus and Zeno (circ. B.C. 340–260), while owing much to the earlier speculations of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, exercised an even greater influence upon many generations, so the later Greek art—with the glory of the older still clinging about it—modified the tastes, as philosophy did the thoughts and beliefs, of that great part of Europe and Asia which was included in the Roman Empire. That influence, after long periods of darkness and degradation, has revived with full force in these later centuries. We can still conceive nothing greater in Art than the highest achievements of Greece.