"And round thine altar's mouldering stones are born
Mysterious harpings, wild as ever crept
From him who waked Aurora every morn,
And sad as those he sung her till she slept!
A thousand, and a thousand years have swept
O'er thee, who wert a moral from thy spring--
A wreck in youth! nor vainly hast thou kept
Thy lyre! Olympia's soul is on the wing,

And a new Iphitus has waked beneath its string !"

THE contrast of art, at all times a delightful study, can scarcely be more pleasantly illustrated than in the change we are about to make from the colossal roughness of Ninevite and Babylonish sculpture, to the chastened and delicate style of Greece. But delicate and graceful as is the character of Grecian art,—an art, be it remembered, that is the parent of all modern excellence the foundation and standard of all modern taste, it is as perfect in its grandeur and origin of conception and execution, as in the beauty and accuracy of its details. In the æsthetic school of Greece, we find ourselves among a tribe of artists and sculptors, who cared not for the material, provided the design was realized, and who, however large a statue was to be in its dimensions, still kept to the strictest rules of proportion. The stalwart nude figure of the Grecian warrior gave birth to a study of the proportions of the human frame, and of the play of the muscles, which could never be hoped for from the contemplation of the long-clothed Assyrians. To be beautiful, was to be natural; and it was by copying nature so truly, that Greece learnt what true art was, and handed down not only its precepts, but supplied the models, which, to this day, are the most precious heirloom to the painter and the sculptor.

We are about to describe the most renowned work of the most illustrious artist of Greece, Phidias. He was a native of Athens, and although the exact date of his birth is not known, as far as can be judged from the ascertained dates of his works it must have been about B.C. 490.*

The times in which Phidias lived were peculiarly favourable to the development of his genius and talents, and his ability must have been displayed at a very early age, as he was extensively employed upon public works during the administration of Cimon. When Pericles attained the supreme power in Athens, Phidias was consulted on all occasions in which the embellishment of the city, either by magnificent buildings or by sculptured decorations, was contemplated: it was Phidias who had the designing and direction of all such works, although other architects and artificers were employed to erect them.

It was at this time that the genius of Phidias conceived the daring idea of constructing statues of the gods of Greece, which should unite the opposite qualities of colossal dimensions with the employment of materials of comparative minuteness of parts. In Greece, sculpture had been gradually developing itself, through several ages, from the primitive use of the commonest woods to the employment of those of rarer growth, such as ebony or cedar; it had thence begun to mould in clay, and work in marble and in metals, till it at length reached, according to the taste of the age, the

* See an able article in Dr. Smith's valuable Dictionary of History and Mythology, vol. iii. p. 243, et seq., to which the editor gladly confesses his obligations for many remarks in the present chapter.

highest point of perfection, in the combination, upon a grand scale, of ivory and gold. There was, indeed, independently of the delicate texture of ivory, its pleasing colour, and capacity for high polish, something wonderfully stimulating to the imagination, to consider that the colossal objects of the popular worship, which, in their forms alone, might well command the most profound reverence,--uniting all the characteristics of the lovely, the majestic, or the terrible, in the idea of superior intelligence, that even a single one of these great works of art had required, for its completion, the slaughter of hundreds of mighty beasts in distant regions.

The Olympian Games, the chief national festival of the Greeks, were celebrated at Olympia, near Elis, in the Peloponnesus, every fifty-ninth year. The origin of the festival is lost in the obscurity of Grecian history. Olympia was a sacred spot, and possessed an oracle of Jupiter long before the institution of the games. The Eleans had a tradition, and it is the most received opinion, that the games were first established by Hercules in honour of Jupiter Olympius, after a victory B.C. 1222, and afterwards renewed by Iphitus B.C. 884. They again fell into neglect; but, 776, Corobus, who had obtained a victory, again restored them. The care and superintendence of these games were at length intrusted to the people of Elis; and Phidias, having fled from Athens to avoid the consequences of a false charge made against him, was, by the Eleans, commissioned to execute a costly statue of Jupiter Olympius; and the artist, as if in revenge of the illtreatment of the Athenians, determined on producing a statue which should rival the fame of that of Minerva,

which he had executed at the request of Pericles, of ivory and gold, thirty-nine feet high, and which then ornamented the Parthenon.

Of the stories concerning the banishment of Phidias, on an alleged charge of misappropriating the gold and ivory which was to have been employed in the construction of his great works, it will be sufficient to observe, that there is an apparent confusion. Philochorus alleges that he was banished Athens on this account, and that he was afterwards put to death, or, at all events, died in prison, at Elis, for the same offence. A clever writer in Dr. Smith's Dictionary of History thinks that one tale is a repetition of the other, and rejects the whole story of his banishment.

In this sublime work, Phidias is said, by his own confession, to have followed Homer's sublime description, long after so eulogized by the critical, but eloquent pen, of Longinus :

"He spoke, and awful bends his sable brows,
Shakes his ambrosial curls, and gives the nod,
The stamp of fate, and sanction of the god;
High heaven with trembling the dread signal took,
And all Olympus to the centre shook."

We may justly compare the serene majesty described by Virgil:

"Smiling with that serene indulgent face

With which he drives the clouds and clears the skies ;"

And our English Homer's picture of the Almighty: "Thus while God spake, ambrosial fragrance fill'd

All heaven, and in the blessed spirits elect
Sense of new joy ineffable diffused."

The description furnished us by Pausanius from personal observation, and corroborated by Strabo,

although inadequate to give a precise idea of the splendour of this amazing work of art, which commanded the wonder and admiration of the time, is sufficient to show us that the effect produced by the combinations of various materials, in a great diversity of colour and ornament, was essentially different from that of sculpture of marble.

The god was formed of gold and ivory, seated on a throne, and almost touching the summit of the temple, so that it appeared that if he had risen he would have lifted off the roof. His head was crowned by an olive-branch; in his right hand he carried a figure of Victory, also of gold and ivory, holding a wreath, and having a crown upon her head. In the left hand of the god was a shining sceptre of varied metals; and on the summit of the sceptre was an eagle. The sandals and the robe thrown over the lower part of the body were of gold. Upon this robe were painted figures of various animals and flowers, particularly lilies. The throne was composed of a diversified mixture of gold, of precious stones, of ivory, and of ebony, exhibiting figures of all kinds, painted and sculptured. We are not told what were the dimensions of the statue, but the height of the interior of the temple in which it was placed was sixty English feet.

A new career had been opened to Phidias by the magnificence of Pericles. The ancient temples had statues of gold and ivory; but they were not colossal. It was for him to create those gigantic monuments which should cause the shrine to appear too small for the divinity, and thus bring the ideas of the infinite and finite into a contrast too powerful for the senses to withhold their homage.