Perry, Walter Copland: Greek and Roman sculpture: a popular introduction to the history of Greek and Roman sculpture (London, 1882)

14

INTRO D UCTION.

And as, on the one hand, the gods of Greece are but sublimated
men, so the heroes of myth and plastic art partake of the divine.
The strongest link between earth and heaven resulted from the com-
merce of the Gods with the royal heroines of the mythical period
whom the former not unfrequently preferred to their own Olympian
peeresses. The offspring of their union were

Kinsfolk of gods, not far from Zeus himself,

Whose is the altar to ancestral Zeus

Upon the hill of Ida, in the sky:

And still within their veins flows blood divine.1

These demigods had a sort of claim to the inheritance and dignity
of their celestial sires, and were expected to prove their origin,
and win the prize of immortality by the dignity of their character
and the lustre of their achievements. This commingling of earth
and heaven, which naturally offends the philosopher, made Homer
the intellectual founder of the plastic arts. He brought down
heaven within the reach of men, pointed to its bright eternal citadels
as the goal of their aspirations, and thus raised the standard of
humanity ; for

Da die GStter menschlicher noch waren
Waren Menschen gottlicher.'-

1 Plato, Rep. iii. 391 (Davies and
Yaughan's translation). Supposed to be

from the Niobe of yiischylus.
1 Schiller's Gbttcr Griechehlands.