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

ART UNDER THE DIAD0C1H.

the only one founded by Alexander which attained greatness, became
the chief centre of the learning and civilisation of the Graco-Asiatic
world.

But the extraordinary mental activity and literary industry which
distinguish the reign of the Ptolemies in Egypt, and to which all
succeeding ages are deeply indebted, was of an essentially different
character from the free spontaneous life and movement of Grecian
intellect and fancy in the golden age of Pericles. Greece had be-
come what it was in the most brilliant period of its history by its
very division into little states, which could only hold their ground
in the hot rivalry which existed among them by cultivating to the
utmost every bodily and mental power, and by giving to the energies
of every individual citizen the utmost freedom of development and
display. Alexander, and still more his successors, used Hellas as a
leaven to hcllenize the East, and in its wide diffusion the leaven
lost both strength and flavour. Literature and art were again
protected and patronised, especially at the court of the Ptolemies
in Egypt, but no patronage, however generous, could rekindle the
flame of genius which had burned so brightly on the altars of free
Greece. The spontaneous productiveness of the Greek intellect which
manifested itself in a thousand majestic and beautiful forms had
died out. The season of growth was past, but industry and taste
might gather in the rich fruits which had germinated in the genial
spring and ripened in the golden summer of the most glorious
year in the annals of the heathen world. Literature and art
were torn away from their connexion with the popular life, and
made the exclusive property of the learned. The Poet and the
Artist no longer sought inspiration in their own bosoms, or in the
religious and political instincts and practices of the people around
them, but in the literary and artistic remains of happier ages, which they
were satisfied to understand and to imitate. ' The critics,' we know,
' are those who have failed in literature and art,' and the Alexandrine
age which could no longer produce was content to criticise. Instead
of the art faculty we find elaborate theories of art ; and instead of
poetry we meet with philosophy or reflexion, foreign to its very
nature, dressed up in metrical forms. This is the age of pointed cpi-