CHAPTER VII, PERSONIFICATION, CONVENTION, AND SYMBOLISM
In the Hellenistic age we find the Greek types of the gods adapting
themselves to new conditions and new meanings. With the conquests of
Alexander, Greek language and civilisation spread over the Eastern
world; and with them went the artistic forms of the Greek pantheon,
though often to be modified by local beliefs or influences. Similarly,
when at a later time the Roman conquest of Greece spread Hellenic
influence to the West, there also the types of the Greek deities came to
be adopted or adapted to new mythological meanings. Greek art
practically became cosmopolitan; its influence was broadened; but at the
same time its essential nature, in its harmony with the imagination of
the Hellenic race, was lost or obscured. It becomes more intelligible to
us for this very reason, but at the same time less instructive in its
relation to religious conceptions.
In the art of the Hellenistic and Græco-Roman age we find two main
tendencies, the one towards academic generalisation, and the other
towards excessive realism, often coupled with a theatrical or
sensational treatment. This latter is the more interesting to us, partly
because it is in itself more original, partly because it is more in
accordance with modern artistic practice. The two tendencies are by no
means rigidly distinguished; for example, we often find a theatrical
treatment combined with academic work; and throughout are to be seen
traces of eclecticism—that is to say, of the habit of imitating or
reproducing, often in an unintelligent manner, the devices and even the
style of earlier art. It does not follow that no great works of art were
made in the Hellenistic age; the fine traditions of the fifth and fourth
centuries were not easily lost. But the inspiration of the subject, so
far as it still exists, comes from new and different sources.
If we consider first the statues of the older gods of Greece, we often
find in them the individualistic tendencies of the fourth century
carried to a further pitch—sometimes to an extreme—in the sentimental
or passionate works of the Hellenistic age; there is often something
affected or dramatic about them, as if they were not merely realised as
expressing their individual character in their mood or action, but
acting their part as the representative of such a character; in fact,
they tend to embody impersonations rather than to express personalities.
One might almost repeat here much that has been said about the gods in
the fourth century, but that there is often, in this case, a touch of
exaggeration which is avoided by the finer artistic instinct and
appreciation of harmony that mark the work of earlier sculptors; and
joined with this we often find a love of display and a seeking after
effect which imply that the artist thinks more of his skill than of the
idea he is striving to express.
We can trace in the Hellenistic age not only the traditions of earlier
art, but the direct influence of the masters of the fourth century, the
Praxitelean cult of beauty for its own sake, the passion and dramatic
force of Scopas, and the preference for allegorical subjects and for
statues of colossal size which we may see, as well as many higher
qualities, in the art of Lysippus. We have already noticed how in the
Apollo Belvedere there is an impression of theatrical posing which was
probably either introduced by the copyist or at any rate much
exaggerated by him in imitating an earlier type; and how in the Venus
de' Medici we find a crude insistence on a gesture of mock modesty which
is a mere travesty of the hint at half-conscious shrinking from exposure
which we see in the Cnidian Aphrodite. Even in a statue which, like the
Aphrodite of Melos, shows an endeavour to return to the nobler ideals
and more dignified and simple forms of an earlier age, there is
something artificial and conventional about both figure and drapery; and
one feels that the sculptor, though both his aims and his attainments
are of the highest, is trying rather to reflect the best influences of
his predecessors than to embody a present religious conception.
The influence upon art of religious personifications is perhaps stronger
than any other during this period. There had, indeed, been such
personifications at an earlier time, such as the statue by Cephisodotus
of Peace nursing the infant Wealth. The most interesting example of such
personification may be seen in the figures of cities, or, to speak more
accurately, of the Fortunes of cities, such as the Antioch of
Eutychides. The influence of the city or state upon religious art was
conspicuous in the fifth century; but here we find the city itself or
its presiding genius represented in a statue which seems at first sight
a mere allegory of its situation. The way in which the figure is seated,
half turned on herself, and with her feet resting upon the shoulder of
the river that swims below her, seems to suggest an artificially
invented symbolism; yet we are expressly told that this statue received
great veneration from the natives of the district. In the decay of the
belief in the gods, there seems to have been a craving for nearer and
more real objects of worship.
We can see the same tendency in a more extreme form in the deification
of human beings. Though some examples of this occur earlier, especially
in the case of the heroes or founders of cities, these are not placed on
a level with the gods; but the worship of Alexander, and in imitation of
him, of his successors, placed him in a distinctly divine rank. It is
difficult to say how far this was due to non-Hellenic influences. In the
case of Alexander, with his marvellous, almost superhuman achievements,
and his final solution of the great drama of the contest of East and
West, such idealisation is easy to understand; and we find not only that
Alexander is himself represented as a god, but that his expression and
cast of features come to affect the sculpture of his age, even in the
representations of the gods themselves. On coins, too, his head occurs;
an honour that before his time was not given to mere mortals. In other
cases this worship of men reached a pitch which was a matter of shame to
the later Greeks; thus Demetrius Poliorcetes, when he gave Athens back
her freedom, was welcomed at the city with divine honours. Even hymns
were composed in his honour, of which we find specimens preserved.7
After welcoming his advent at the same time as that of Demeter, the poet
addresses him thus:—"Other gods are either far away, or they have no
ears, or they exist not, or have no care for us. But we see thee, a
present deity, not of wood or stone, but real; therefore we pray to
thee." It is true that such materialistic and atheistic expressions were
probably reprobated by many at the time, as well as by later writers;
but the mere possibility of their public enunciation shows how far the
Athenians had gone from their old religious beliefs.
7 Athen., VI, 63.
Allegorical impersonations, such as that of Antioch, are religious
conceptions of a high order compared to this. Nevertheless, one feels
that such impersonations can have no separate divine existence apart
from the city or the people whom they represent. They are on a different
plane of religious belief from Athena, for example, as the goddess of
the city. The goddess was, indeed, in some ways representative of what
was best in her chosen people; but she was not a mere symbol of its
character and its greatness. She existed before it, and would continue
though it should disappear from the earth, unlike the Fortune of
Antioch, whose very existence was bound up with that of the city she
represented.
Another example of personification may be seen in the recumbent figures
of river-gods—notably that of the Nile, with his sixteen cubits, as
babies, playing around him. River-gods were indeed an object of worship
from early times in Greece, and so appear on coins and elsewhere; but
this figure of the Nile, a product of Alexandrian art, is not like the
earlier gods, who were looked upon as the givers of increase and
fertility; it is a mere allegorical impersonation of the river, such as
might be made by a modern artist who made no pretence to believe in the
existence of such an anthropomorphic river-god. It cannot be counted as
religious art at all. And the attributes and accessories of such a
figure, the crocodile and hippopotamus, the sphinx and corn and horn of
plenty, are all of them symbolic allusions such as are suitable to such
a frigid personification. The art of Alexandria is full of such devices;
that of Pergamon is more vigorous and dramatic; but in both alike we
find the influence of a learned study of mythology, full of quaint and
far-fetched allusions and symbols. The culmination of this learned
mythology is to be seen in the great altar of Pergamon, on which the
gods who are in combat with the giants include not only all figures,
appropriate and inappropriate, from the Hellenic pantheon, but many
other deities whose right of admission to that pantheon is more than
doubtful. The figures of the gods no longer correspond to the belief in
any real divinities, but are either mere artistic types, repeated again
and again in accordance with convention, or else they are regarded as
symbols representing different aspects of divine power.
Symbolism of this kind is a common symptom of the decay of religious
faith. The more thoughtful or educated classes, who follow the
speculations of philosophers as to the nature of the deity, find it
possible to reconcile these speculations with the forms of popular
religion by accepting the forms in a symbolic sense. The common people,
on the other hand, finding the old forms inadequate to satisfy their
religious aspirations, import new and strange divinities, whose cult is
often mixed with magic or mystic rites. Here, too, the symbols have a
meaning other than what appears to the uninitiated eye, and the province
of art, which approaches the mind through the senses, is closely
circumscribed. A statue or other work of art which needs explanation of
its allusions, which does not express an ideal that appeals directly to
the imagination of the people, has lost touch with religion, and cannot
to any appreciable extent influence it or be influenced by it. The age
of idolatry in the higher sense, of a religious imagination that enables
the artist to bring the people nearer to their gods, or even the gods
nearer to the heart of the people, has passed away, and in its place we
find either a superstitious clinging to the magic power of the early
objects of worship, or a mere acceptance, as conventional symbols, of
forms that bear no direct relation to anything that is believed in as
real.
Our brief historical survey has shown us how the Greeks, starting from a
belief, such as is common to many primitive religions, in the superhuman
powers or sanctity of certain objects, were enabled by their vivid
anthropomorphic imagination first to think of the gods as in like form
to themselves, and then to make their images in human shape. And as
their art progressed towards the power of making a physical type of
perfect beauty to serve as the means of expression of this "human form
divine," and also to skill in expressing character by means of human
features and figures, it became possible for them to embody in their
great statues the various ideals of divinity which belonged to their
chief gods. Here the skill of the artist would have availed little or
nothing if he had not shared with the people for whom he worked a belief
in the reality of these ideals, not merely as philosophic aspects of the
divine nature, but as real beings who were able to help and to inspire,
and to manifest themselves to their worshippers in this human form. The
next step is towards an even more vivid realisation of the personality
of the gods; but by bringing them nearer to human level it made the
worship of their images less easy to accept in a literal sense to the
more thoughtful, while such worship tended, with the common people, to
enter upon a more material and less exalted phase. The result was a
tendency towards symbolism in which the symbol itself was regarded as a
mere convention, and the inspiration and actual communion with men,
vouchsafed by the gods through their ideal images, was no longer sought
after. When any means of communion between god and man, whether by means
of a solemn service or by means of an image which the god himself
accepts as his earthly representative, ceases to be felt as anything
more than a human device, its religious power must fail. When, on the
other hand, we find a union of religion and art to provide a means for
this divine intercourse, we may recognise idolatry in its highest form,
the use of images not merely as accessories of religious service, but as
providing in themselves a channel of worship and inspiration.
WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LTD.
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