DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9187#0184
ATHENS AND GREECE. PORTRAITS
147
It would not be easy to imagine a more vigorous and
lifelike image of a fallen warrior than this. Drapery and
bodily forms alike are of the noblest. The face, with its square
form, overhanging eyebrows, and parted lips, breathes the very
spirit of military ardour. Such as every friend of Aristonautes
would wish him to look when he sprang forward in his last
fatal rush upon the foe, such- he stands in imperishable marble.
A grave in Westminster Abbey is supposed to recompense
the English soldier for pain and untimely death, but surely
the idea of living in marble under the eyes of all his fellow-
citizens might furnish at least as strong an impulse to valiant
deeds as the thought of a modern cathedral with its tasteless
monuments and inanimate likenesses. It would, however, be
a mistake to suppose that this figure, for all its lifelikeness,
is an individual portrait. It is too strongly marked by the
style of one of the noblest of Attic sculptors, Scopas, to allow
us to doubt that there is in it a strong ideal element.
Another monument of the same school is the well-known
relief (PL XII) in which we see Dexileosof the Athenian cavalry
riding down and transfixing an overthrown foe, who vainly
tries to strike back \ The inscription beneath this relief, which
comes from a small chapel near the Dipylon gate of Athens,
proves that it was executed in memory of a horseman who
fell in the Corinthian War of 394 B.C. History records that
in the battle the Athenians were defeated, and one is tempted
to pause for a moment to consider how a modern sculptor
would have represented Dexileos. An artist such as those
who have modelled the tombs of St. Paul's and Westminster
would probably have sculptured him smitten to death, falling
back in the arms of a grateful country; perhaps would have
added above an angel crowning him with a wreath of celestial
1 Reins, sword, and lance were added in metal, as is shown by the remaining
holes in which these were fixed. Colour was doubtless freely added.
L 2
147
It would not be easy to imagine a more vigorous and
lifelike image of a fallen warrior than this. Drapery and
bodily forms alike are of the noblest. The face, with its square
form, overhanging eyebrows, and parted lips, breathes the very
spirit of military ardour. Such as every friend of Aristonautes
would wish him to look when he sprang forward in his last
fatal rush upon the foe, such- he stands in imperishable marble.
A grave in Westminster Abbey is supposed to recompense
the English soldier for pain and untimely death, but surely
the idea of living in marble under the eyes of all his fellow-
citizens might furnish at least as strong an impulse to valiant
deeds as the thought of a modern cathedral with its tasteless
monuments and inanimate likenesses. It would, however, be
a mistake to suppose that this figure, for all its lifelikeness,
is an individual portrait. It is too strongly marked by the
style of one of the noblest of Attic sculptors, Scopas, to allow
us to doubt that there is in it a strong ideal element.
Another monument of the same school is the well-known
relief (PL XII) in which we see Dexileosof the Athenian cavalry
riding down and transfixing an overthrown foe, who vainly
tries to strike back \ The inscription beneath this relief, which
comes from a small chapel near the Dipylon gate of Athens,
proves that it was executed in memory of a horseman who
fell in the Corinthian War of 394 B.C. History records that
in the battle the Athenians were defeated, and one is tempted
to pause for a moment to consider how a modern sculptor
would have represented Dexileos. An artist such as those
who have modelled the tombs of St. Paul's and Westminster
would probably have sculptured him smitten to death, falling
back in the arms of a grateful country; perhaps would have
added above an angel crowning him with a wreath of celestial
1 Reins, sword, and lance were added in metal, as is shown by the remaining
holes in which these were fixed. Colour was doubtless freely added.
L 2