DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61301#0211
THE METOPES OF SELINUS. \T1
their outside form should be beautiful. It was reserved
to the Greeks to see clearly two things : first, that the only
fitting form in which the gods could be embodied was
the most beautiful of known forms ; second, that this
most beautiful of forms was the human form.
We see this high conception of the gods in literature
long before it appears in art. Homer’s gods are men
and Avomen divinely fair, while the idols by which
art represented these gods are still uncouth images
venerated for their age, not their beauty; sometimes
mere fetich symbols—a pillar or a board, or a hybrid
figure a legacy from the east. We have seen in what
lovely human guise Hera appeared on Mount Ida to
Zeus ; but the image of Hera, worshipped at Samos, was
just an unwrought board ; at Argos a rude column re-
presented her. The gods of Homer, when they desire
to appear to some favoured hero, disguise themselves in
many fashions, but when they make themselves known
in their proper shape it is in familiar, human form. We
remember how the goddess Athene in the guise of a
young man of Ithaka comforted Odysseus, shipwrecked,
unknown to himself, on his native shore; when she
would declare herself she takes as her proper shape the
form of a goodly woman : “ And the goddess, grey-eyed
Athene, smiled and caressed him with her hand, and
straightway she changed to the semblance of a woman,
fair and tall, and skilled in splendid handiwork.”
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their outside form should be beautiful. It was reserved
to the Greeks to see clearly two things : first, that the only
fitting form in which the gods could be embodied was
the most beautiful of known forms ; second, that this
most beautiful of forms was the human form.
We see this high conception of the gods in literature
long before it appears in art. Homer’s gods are men
and Avomen divinely fair, while the idols by which
art represented these gods are still uncouth images
venerated for their age, not their beauty; sometimes
mere fetich symbols—a pillar or a board, or a hybrid
figure a legacy from the east. We have seen in what
lovely human guise Hera appeared on Mount Ida to
Zeus ; but the image of Hera, worshipped at Samos, was
just an unwrought board ; at Argos a rude column re-
presented her. The gods of Homer, when they desire
to appear to some favoured hero, disguise themselves in
many fashions, but when they make themselves known
in their proper shape it is in familiar, human form. We
remember how the goddess Athene in the guise of a
young man of Ithaka comforted Odysseus, shipwrecked,
unknown to himself, on his native shore; when she
would declare herself she takes as her proper shape the
form of a goodly woman : “ And the goddess, grey-eyed
Athene, smiled and caressed him with her hand, and
straightway she changed to the semblance of a woman,
fair and tall, and skilled in splendid handiwork.”
13