DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9177#0115
VI
THE TYPES OF THE GODS
95
of conduct. The individualists who feel no sense of duty to the
state and society would be infinitely improved if they could
find in the beauty of a statue an expression of the divinity of the
common life of the city or the state. Many of the tendencies to
be traced in our religious societies point backwards towards
sheer barbarism. And the influence of many schools of modern
art tells not merely towards artistic chaos but towards ethi-
cal degradation. Of course not all Greek art moved towards
what was noble. Their lighter art often mixes up what is in-
decent with what is amusing. But the sculpture of the temple
and the market-place in the great ages is as constantly ideal
as the dramas of Aeschylus and Sophocles. In this respect no
people that ever existed can be compared with the Hellenic race.
In the great work of Professor Overbeck on the types of the
deities, the Kunstmythologie, we constantly find the question
raised: What sculptor is responsible for the type of such
and such a deity ? Overbeck maintains that nearly always it
is one or two great sculptors who fixed for all time the type
of each, just as the Homeric poems fixed for all time the po-
etic character of many of them. Overbeck perhaps falls into
the fault of over-schematizing. But still it is quite true that
when once a high type had been fixed for a deity in sculpture,
that type was seldom afterwards lost sight of or entirely super-
seded. At a moment which can be fixed, the fruit was ripe,
and afterwards it began to decay. The types of Zeus and Athena
were founded by the splendid colossal statues of Pheidias; the
type of Dionysus was fixed for later art in the school of Prax-
iteles ; that of Poseidon in the school of Lysippus. It almost
seems that when once the national idea had been fully ex-
pressed by an artist whom it inspired, it receded like the sea
when it has touched high-water mark.
The heroes of Greek legend and of ancestral cult are depicted
in art at a lower level than the deities, indeed they appear as
THE TYPES OF THE GODS
95
of conduct. The individualists who feel no sense of duty to the
state and society would be infinitely improved if they could
find in the beauty of a statue an expression of the divinity of the
common life of the city or the state. Many of the tendencies to
be traced in our religious societies point backwards towards
sheer barbarism. And the influence of many schools of modern
art tells not merely towards artistic chaos but towards ethi-
cal degradation. Of course not all Greek art moved towards
what was noble. Their lighter art often mixes up what is in-
decent with what is amusing. But the sculpture of the temple
and the market-place in the great ages is as constantly ideal
as the dramas of Aeschylus and Sophocles. In this respect no
people that ever existed can be compared with the Hellenic race.
In the great work of Professor Overbeck on the types of the
deities, the Kunstmythologie, we constantly find the question
raised: What sculptor is responsible for the type of such
and such a deity ? Overbeck maintains that nearly always it
is one or two great sculptors who fixed for all time the type
of each, just as the Homeric poems fixed for all time the po-
etic character of many of them. Overbeck perhaps falls into
the fault of over-schematizing. But still it is quite true that
when once a high type had been fixed for a deity in sculpture,
that type was seldom afterwards lost sight of or entirely super-
seded. At a moment which can be fixed, the fruit was ripe,
and afterwards it began to decay. The types of Zeus and Athena
were founded by the splendid colossal statues of Pheidias; the
type of Dionysus was fixed for later art in the school of Prax-
iteles ; that of Poseidon in the school of Lysippus. It almost
seems that when once the national idea had been fully ex-
pressed by an artist whom it inspired, it receded like the sea
when it has touched high-water mark.
The heroes of Greek legend and of ancestral cult are depicted
in art at a lower level than the deities, indeed they appear as