DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9177#0114
04
PRINCIPLES OF GREEK ART
CHAP.
Generally speaking, in later art the gods are almost wholly
humanized. Most people will think that in the fourth century
this tendency was, by Praxiteles and others, carried too far,
so as to ruin the divine dignity. The Apollo Sauroctonus of
Praxiteles is not manly nor serious; his satyr has nothing to
distinguish him from a shepherd boy save the pointed ears;
his Aphrodite is represented in the not very dignified occupation
of bathing. After this somewhat frivolous treatment of the
gods, a sign that belief in them was dying down, there was a
reaction, and some of the divine types from the school of Lysip-
pus and by Hellenistic artists are of more dignified character.
And a certain degree of mysticism may be found in some of the
new types, for example, in the head of Sarapis, the god of the
world of the dead, or in the great group of Demeter and Per-
sephone set up by Damophon at Lycosura in Arcadia, one of
the seats of their mystic cult.
In some ways, no doubt, the spiritual and ethical level of
modern Christianity is far higher than that of the Olympian
religion. Such phrases as "loving the will of God," "the divin-
ity of self-sacrifice," "the beauty of holiness," are at a higher
level than the Greek. But the Greek conception that every
act of life, all our emotions and energies, bring us into relations
with the divine element in the world is one which we have almost
forgotten, and which but for the present working of Greek litera-
ture in education we might entirely forget. And we see on all
sides of us, beneath the thin crust of material civilization,
tendencies which work in the direction of a much more backward
religion than that of the Greeks. The materialized Catholicism
of the peasants in remote districts in Italy or Syria is much on a
level with the primitive beliefs out of which the splendid temple
of Hellenic religion arose. Among ourselves, the fashionable
women who resort to the fortune-tellers of Regent Street cer-
tainly cannot look down upon those who in Greece resorted to
the oracles of Zeus and Apollo in honest search for the better line
PRINCIPLES OF GREEK ART
CHAP.
Generally speaking, in later art the gods are almost wholly
humanized. Most people will think that in the fourth century
this tendency was, by Praxiteles and others, carried too far,
so as to ruin the divine dignity. The Apollo Sauroctonus of
Praxiteles is not manly nor serious; his satyr has nothing to
distinguish him from a shepherd boy save the pointed ears;
his Aphrodite is represented in the not very dignified occupation
of bathing. After this somewhat frivolous treatment of the
gods, a sign that belief in them was dying down, there was a
reaction, and some of the divine types from the school of Lysip-
pus and by Hellenistic artists are of more dignified character.
And a certain degree of mysticism may be found in some of the
new types, for example, in the head of Sarapis, the god of the
world of the dead, or in the great group of Demeter and Per-
sephone set up by Damophon at Lycosura in Arcadia, one of
the seats of their mystic cult.
In some ways, no doubt, the spiritual and ethical level of
modern Christianity is far higher than that of the Olympian
religion. Such phrases as "loving the will of God," "the divin-
ity of self-sacrifice," "the beauty of holiness," are at a higher
level than the Greek. But the Greek conception that every
act of life, all our emotions and energies, bring us into relations
with the divine element in the world is one which we have almost
forgotten, and which but for the present working of Greek litera-
ture in education we might entirely forget. And we see on all
sides of us, beneath the thin crust of material civilization,
tendencies which work in the direction of a much more backward
religion than that of the Greeks. The materialized Catholicism
of the peasants in remote districts in Italy or Syria is much on a
level with the primitive beliefs out of which the splendid temple
of Hellenic religion arose. Among ourselves, the fashionable
women who resort to the fortune-tellers of Regent Street cer-
tainly cannot look down upon those who in Greece resorted to
the oracles of Zeus and Apollo in honest search for the better line