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

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CONCL USION.

So fleet, so faint, so fair,

The powers of earth and air
Fled from the folding star of Bethlehem.

Apollo, Pan and Love,

And even Olympian Jove,
Grew weak, for killing truth had glared on them.

The statues of heathen divinities were no mere harmless or
beautiful objects in the eyes of the early Christians, but powerful
and baleful demons, perverters of the people and rivals of the
one true God. We trace a spirit of bitter enmity to them in
the writings of the Fathers—an enmity which took an active shape
among the people, and led to the mutilation by pious hands of many
a godlike and beautiful form. What remained of art in ancient
Rome ' descended into the catacombs,' to rise again in a new form,
in which it was no longer feared as a snare and a delusion, but
could be loved for its eternal beauty, and pressed into the service of
truth and holiness.