Fairbanks, Arthur: Greek art: the basis of later European art (New York: Longmans, Green & Co., 1933)

GREEK ART

wears no helmet and her aegis is scarcely more
than an ornament. The Artemis from Gabii
(Plate XILz) is a different phase of the goddess
from the Artemis of Versailles (Plate XII&),
but she is the same person; for this complex be-
ing 1 is at the same time the goddess who pro-
tects wild life, and the patroness of hunters, and
withal she is the goddess of childbirth for man
and beast. Apollo, whose shafts deal destruc-
tion to his enemies, who at Delphi both foretells
the future and points out the way of escape
from devastating plague, the leader of the
Muses and the god of music, Apollo is one per-
son, whose nature the sculptor must depict in
his image. It is the crowning achievement of
humanism in Greek art to create these statues
of the gods, divine beings made visible to their
worshippers not only in their physical human
form, but with the mind and individual per-
sonality of men.
In Roman days the influence of humanism
was less strong, for the Roman gods were in
themselves personified functions rather than
persons. Juno was the wife, Ceres the giver of
grain, Mercury the messenger, up to the time
1 Cf. A. Fairbanks, Handbook of Greek Religion, Ap-
pendix I, New York, 1910.
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