Chapter 5 - Greece and the Greeks
(Part III)
“A Country Without
Borders”
[pg 75]
You remember the stirring sight in the Potters’ field just beyond the
walls of Athens--the outer Ceramicus--of prancing horses being
soothed into taking their places, of youths fastening their
sandals, of busy marshals getting the procession into order? From
hard buy this spot come most of the beautiful tomb-stones which
are shown in the Phigaleian Room,
where we saw the metopes and frieze from the Temple of Apollo, built by
one of the architects of
the Parthenon.
The workmen who had helped Pheidias turned to account the taste and
skill they had gained under the great master by carving grave
reliefs for private people. There is the mother leaving her baby
to the care of the nurse; another tablet shows the beloved lad,
Tryphon, in his prime, standing in the doorway, towel over
shoulder, strigil in hand, on his way to or from the bath; Glykylla
is shown with her bracelet and her jewel-case. The stones were
clearly meant to give [pg 76] a picture of the dear ones as they looked
in their old everyday life.
The votive reliefs in this room were chiefly offered to secure success
in some race, or to express thanks when victory had been won. The
races were those such as we saw painted on the vases. The chariot
hurls by with “four-footed trampling”; and the swift
torch-bearers carry, in relays, the sacred fire from one shrine
to another. Look at the natural poses of the successful squad offering
their torch to Artemis Bendis. Another of these tablets shows
the winner being crowned with a wreath; it is a little mare, with
a four-footed friend looking on.
The same wonderful art is found in the fifth-century work in the
Terra-cotta Room, where we have
already looked at Greek fashions
in clothes.
The group of dainty little Tanagra figures (as they are generally
called, after the place where they were found) show, as we have
seen, the people who walked about Athens, who watched the
processions, who paid visits, chatted, rested, danced, raced,
played with knuckle-bones, and enjoyed life generally in sunny,
clear-skyed Athens.
The earliest baked-clay figures in this room are amusingly like nursery
efforts, especially in the case of the seated ladies. We saw some
like them in the First Vase Room.
Even amongst quite old specimens we recognize the subjects, such as
Perseus cutting off the head of Medusa; Bellerophon on his horse,
Pegasus; Thetis seized by Peleus; Helle crossing the sea on the
ram. [pg 77]
One of the most interesting among many of the subjects on the
terra-cotta lamps is Diogenes in his tub--a large jar--such as we
saw in First Vase Room, and
again in the picture showing
Eurystheus receiving the boar from Heracles as the result of his
fourth labour.
Let us now consider the meaning of the words “Etruscan” and
“Graeco-Roman,” found in the guide-book, and in the rooms of the
Museum, and referring to classes of objects more or less like the
Greek in style.
If you look at the name of the place where the sarcophagus came
from in the Terra-cotta Room,
with the effigy of the
good-natured, prosperous looking lady, Seianti, reclining on her
elbow, as she admires her jewellery in her mirror, you will see
it is Chiusi, or Clusium.
Read the “Lay of Horatius” and you will come to the verse:
“Shame on the false Etruscan
Who lingers in his home,
When Porsena of Clusium
Is on the march for Rome.”
On your map you will see the position of Etruria about the centre of
Italy.
It was a powerful and rich country before Rome had risen to greatness,
and many are the remains now brought to light, hidden for
centuries, of temples and great tombs, adorned with paintings and
reliefs, besides many treasures of statues, bronzes, and gold
ornaments.
You can compare them with the Greek ones, for [pg 78] in some cases
they are side by side in the Museum, remembering that
much of the best work in bronzes and vases is believed to have
been imported from Greece.
For long years little or nothing was known of the old Etruscans;
their literature has perished; a key to their language is still
wanting; yet, to-day, in their wonderful tombs in Italy--there
are models of some in the Graeco-Roman
Basement--the little
protecting genii still hang on the walls from the very same wires
that were used in the far away prosperous past.
It was in the ninth century B.C. that Etruria was founded, and about
the middle of the eighth century came the Foundation of Rome. In
the beginning of the fifth century the sea power of Etruria was
broken, and in the beginning of the third century Etruria was
made subject to Rome. Lastly, in the middle of the second
century, we come to the Graeco-Roman exhibits. It was then that
the Hellenes--called by the Romans Graeci--in their turn, also
passed under Roman rule.
The order in which the two words are placed is significant; the
conquered first. You know the stories of the triumphs of
successful generals? How long processions of captives in chains,
of wild beasts from hot countries, of treasures of gold and
silver from the East, wound through the streets of Rome, and past
the Forum, adding excitement and pride to the joy of victory.
When the Romans conquered Greece and her colonies, the spoils that
passed and passed were the [pg 79] silent grand forms: “In the stone
that breathes and struggles, the
brass (bronze) that seems to speak.”
Picture the sadness of those who saw the treasures dismounted and taken
away from their familiar places in the cities, from the temples
and shrines of the gods; picture also the tumultuous rejoicing
with which they were received and borne along in the streets of
Rome.
Now, before the time of the conquest, Rome had begun to admire and copy
Greek taste, and study the Greek language and literature; so when
this flood of wealth, captured statues, and other works of art,
poured into the country, its influence was enormous.
Romans went to study in Athens; Greek workmen crossed over to Rome; and
always for years and years went on a steady rifling of the old
sites for the treasures they contained, to be set up in Rome or
Constantinople and other great cities.
This Greek conquest over Roman minds makes the saying true: “Captive
Greece led captive her proud conqueror.” So it is true that when
Greece died as a nation her influence spread all over the known
world, carried by Roman arms, as province after province fell
before them. From that time “Greece practically became the
country without borders.”
As we wander through the galleries containing statuary in the British
Museum, it is sad to think that of all the enormous wealth of
beautiful work of the fifth and fourth centuries (the result of
over a thousand years’ growth) so little has survived the dark
ages that followed the fall of the Roman Empire.
Barbarians of every nationality, who saw no beauty [pg 80] in them,
broke them down, burnt the marble into lime, recast the bronze
into weapons. What is left we owe chiefly to the protecting care
of Mother Earth, which has kept them safely buried till recent
times.
Let us look again at some of our greatest treasures: at Thesus on the
Parthenon pediment; at Mausolus and Artemisia in their chariot;
at the gentle sorrowing mother, Demeter; at the Nereids, scudding
like foam on the curling waves; at the lion-headed Alexander.
When our time comes to visit other museums, perhaps even some of the
old sites, we shall find others to store beside them in our minds
that we now know only by pictures and casts, such as Praxiteles’
Hermes carrying the baby Dionysos to his nurses, and the Victory
binding her sandal.
Many of the sculptures bear the labels on their plinths, giving
particulars of where they were found, and what parts of them are
restored. Amongst many of great interest are the cast of the
bronze charioteer of Delphi, with the garment of beautiful
straight folds; Myron’s disc-thrower (the Discobolos), also from
a bronze statue; the little Cupid on a dolphin; the youth binding
a fillet round his head.
As we read the Roman names given to the Greek ideals we realize how
many words we get from them. Juno for Hera, gives us June; Ceres
for Demeter, cereal; Vulcan for Hephaistos, vulcanite; besides
many more.
We may linger by the Beautiful Dreamer; by Niobe and her children; by
Homer, with Zeus, the nine Muses and Apollo; with Dionysus
visiting at a [pg 81] Greek house, with delightful details of wreathing
the walls, and of the
success in a chariot race, and of the probable calling of the
host.
It is interesting to compare the Graeco-Roman basket-bearing girl with
her more natural and easy sister in the Elgin Room from the south
porch of the Erechtheum.
We have already studied the Roman portraits, and little by little have
become familiar both with their names and faces as time after
time we pass through the Roman Gallery
of sculpture; we shall
have opportunities of testing our memory when we find the
portraits on a smaller scale upstairs on the gems and coins.
If you visit the Room of Gold
Ornaments you must have a good magnifying
glass, and go very slowly, looking at only a few things at a time.
Look at the gems first. The subjects seem to recall what we have seen
in the sculpture and vases of the best period, and how delicate
and clear is the work! Here are Zeus, Athene, Medusa, Heracles;
Achilles mourning his friend Patroclus; the priest Laocoon and
his sons in the toils of the serpent. There are also illustrations of
daily life: one pretty girl is reading from a scroll;
another is seated on a rock, writing--they remind us of the
Tanagra figures.
We find an athlete twisting on his boxing-glove, as we saw on the
vases; another tying his sandal; a youth playing on a lyre.
Then the interesting animals; a horse falling, a mule rolling on his
back, goats prancing, a camel, an [pg 82] ape, a grasshopper, and fly,
a wild goose flying, and many more full of
delight and charm.
This art of engraving on gems, chiefly to be used as seals, dates back
to those very old times, of which we have seen relics from
Cnossus and Mycenae, perhaps two thousand to sixteen hundred
years B.C. These seals were found at Myceae in Argolis--a place
which has given its names, as you will have noticed, to a class of
specimens belonging to these far-off times found in many islands of
the Eastern Mediterranean.
Amongst the cameos (the design being carved in relief, instead of “cut
in” like the gems) you will find many Romans you know by sight;
Julius Caesar, Augustus, Nero, Severus and Caracalla, Hadrian,
and many others.
To find more we must turn to the Coin
Room where are shown a series of
Roman coins (electrotyped), the dates of which stretch over a
period of about eighteen hundred years. Looking at this £ s. d.
so
spread over the world, and with which so
much was effected--paying the soldiers, settling colonies,
building great temples, palaces, baths--we see, besides the
portraits and figures of the gods and goddesses we already know,
“The Great Twin Brethren who fought so well for Rome.” There were
Janus, the god of beginnings, hence the name of our first moth in
the year; Vesta, the goddess of the fire on the hearth, whose
services was kept up by the Vestal Virgins.
Even more interesting than these are the coins that illustrate
facts in history, or the manners and customs of the time, such as
the priest tracing the [pg 83] walls of a city; the making of a treaty;
the German Campaigns of
Drusus; Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul; and scores of others.
In cases just beside the Coin Room
door are the electrotype copies of
the wonderfully beautiful Greek coins. They are, like the gems.
Untouched and unrestored, just as the artist hand finished them,
and show the local style of art at different times during six
hundred years. From them we can learn much that would be
otherwise quite hidden from us.
Besides this, look at the names of the places where they come from;
some you know well, such as Athens, Sparta, Corinth, but some
bear names never heard of till the coin was found. Look further
at the portraits on the later ones; amongst many less well-known
faces we find Alexander, his generals, and Cleopatra, one of hers
closely resembling the bust that we saw in the Hall of Inscriptions by the entrance
to the Reading Room. The calm,
powerful
face of Mausolus too, so like that of his grand statue.
These coins moreover often show us copies of some lost sculpture, and
help us to put together fragments that have come down to us.
We can only mention a few. There are the fine coins of Athene and her
owl of wisdom (the slits across some of the large ones recall the
Persians’ trial to test the quality of the metal). E find, too,
Zeus, seated on his chair, perhaps as Pheidias presented him in
his great gold-and-ivory statue; pan, with his pipes beside him;
Pegasus, with wings and golden bridle, whose kick was able to stop
Mount Helicon as it rose heaven- [pg 84] ward with delight at the
sweet song of the daughters of Pierus.
If you look amongst the earlier coins from Cnossus in Crete, you will
see the labyrinth--like a very large Hampton Court maze--long
believed to be the haunt of the monster who devoured the tribute
of young men and maidens. Late discoveries show that King Minos’
huge palace itself was the labyrinth; full of frescoes and great
jars, treasure chambers, and thrones. (There is the cast of one in
the Archaic Room) This Palace
of the Axe--the religious symbol of
a double axe was found on the walls--is intricate and vast
indeed, and most necessary it must have been to have a guide,
such as Ariadne and her clue of thread, to find a way out.
In the Gold Room, there are
many wonderful articles of jewellery from
these very distant times, that adorned the fashionable ladies
from Rhodes, Crete, and Cyprus--all belonging to the old
Mycenaean period. Some fine ornaments of the seventh and sixth
centuries bring us on to the cases of the finest specimens of Greek
jewellers’ art.
Here your magnifying glass will show you wonders of fine work in
threads of gold, in braids and chains and fringes of gold, in
devices of winged Victories, doves, animals, almost delicate and
beautiful.
The Etruscan ornaments are close by, and you will notice the use of
tiny globules of gold instead of threads. The later taste was for
large showy necklaces and ear-rings, which remind one of Seianti;
some of the finer wreaths of gold leaves must have looked lovely,
especially against dark hair. [pg 85]
The moulds in which many of the ornaments were made are shown, as well
as bars of gold, in shape like sticks of liquorice. These belong
to Roman times, as does the jewellery, which is of more
commonplace design, and is often set with precious stones and
pearls.
Some of the finger-rings are very interesting, especially the Greek one
engraved with Odysseus beneath the ram, escaping from the blinded
monster; a Victory driving a four-horse chariot. Another has
Cupids at play in a boat; if you think of it without the wings
the picture is one you may see on any shore, in any age. Notice,
too, a youth fishing, a parrot on a branch.
We must give a passing glance to the silver-plate of the sumptuous
Romans, and a very interesting figure wearing a crown like the
walls of a city. The figures of deities above her head represent
the days of the week. Read them: Saturn, the Sun, the Moon; Mars,
Mercury, Jupiter, Venus. English names from the first three--Saturday,
Sunday, Monday; French ones from the last four--Mardi,
Mercredi, Jeudi, Vendredi.
The three silver gilt votive tablets to Jupiter carry us back to the
temples and the mob that roared from hours for fear their trade
should be taken from the, and remind us that he gods and
goddesses were not only honoured by marble statues and reliefs,
but by a great wealth of metal ones of every kind, chiefly bronze.
So we now end our way to the Bronze
Room close by to see the examples
the Museum possesses of those that have escaped the melting-pot.
When the dark [pg 86] days came, and the treasures that had been taken
from Greek temples
were scattered and neglected, only those escaped destruction that
were buried and out of sight of the destroyers.
So, looking round this room, we find but few traces of the wonderful
large statues in bronze so admired by Pausanias and other ancient
travelers and writers. You remember the great bronze figure of
Athene on the Acropolis; the bronze group of the two liberators
of Athens from the Tyrant; the famous wounded Amazon in bronze
that won a first prize? All have perished.
Amongst those which show us what has been we have the figure of Apollo
with inlaid eyes; the fine large head of a goddess, broken off
from a great statue; the beautiful winged head of Sleep; also a
splendid fragment of a leg from a colossal male figure.
The boy playing morra is an interesting link with the Italy of to-day;
the game of guessing the number of fingers held up by two players
at the same time was played by the Roman soldiers who conquered
the world, as well as by the street boys of Italy to-day.
There are numbers of small statues, chiefly of gods, from Zeus to
Cupid, and of animals; some very fine, many of them Roman, and
echoes of greater works now lost.
The bronze reliefs are very beautiful, especially those beaten out from
the back--repoussé. Look very carefully at the fragment
from the shoulders of a cuirass, found in the River Siris, the
figures--a Greek and an Amazon--are very wonderful.
So, too, are many of the reliefs on the backs or [pg 87] cases of
mirrors. On one of these mirrors is an amusing picture,
incised on the metal, of graceful Aphrodite playing at the game
of five-stones, with a grotesque Pan with goat legs. He holds up
a finger to the Beauty, as much as to say “Play fair.”
A great many of the small bronzes are now arranged in the cases so
helpfully set out and classified in the Italic Room and Room of
Greek and Roman Life.
We have already looked at the table-case of toys and games. We can
still linger amongst the babies and school children and
understand their games and pleasures. We read of a boy who gained
as a writing-prize eighty beautiful knuckle-bones, such as these
near the dolls, and what treasures those fine glass striped marbles
must have been.
Near the writing materials are the painters’ palettes and colours, and
the remains of a portrait in an “Oxford” frame. The scraps of
painting--you can easily understand how these would perish in the
course of years--remind us of the pictures painted on the walls
of the cities, buried under the dust and ashes of Vesuvius. A
good many are shown close by, as well as in the Gold Room, their colours being still
fresh and bright, and the subjects very familiar.
In the case illustrating Industrial Arts we have a picture of the forge
of Hephaestus, the worker in metal. You remember the story of the
devoted mother, Thetis, hastening to this forge to obtain a new
set of glittering armour for her great son Achilles, to replace
that lost on the body of his friend? [pg 88]
On one of the Etruscan bronzes--it may have been brought over from
Greece--there is the picture of a Nereid crossing the sea on a
sea-horse, carrying the helmet of Achilles. Bellerophon leading
Pegasus with a halter--fancy a winged horse submitting to a
halter!--is on another, also the sacrifice of Trojan captives at the
funeral pyre of Patroclus.
Another ancient art is finely shown by the picture of the potter at his
wheel, by the tools and the moulds used; also by a model of the
kiln used to fire the objects when ready. The heap of spoiled,
overbaked lamps must have been a disappointment to the man who
made them.
The specimens of fretwork and delicate products of the lathe, in marble
as well as in softer material, are particularly interesting; so
too are the illustrations of spinning and weaving in the case of
the Domestic Arts.
Note the shuttle, the spindles and whistles, the clay loom weights, the
pictures of the industrious girls, one spinning as she walks
along, the other with a handloom on her knee. Here, too, are
specimens of the woven material, as well as netting-needles; pins
of every description, starting with a thorn; a thimble, pair of
scissors, needle-case full of needles, all complete.
The case of toilet articles carries us back to the fine ladies we saw
on the latest vases, and their care for their complexions, hair,
and ears! Those mirrors are dull now; they once reflected radiant
faces, pleased with their fine jewels and wreaths and becoming
attire! [pg 89]
Dancing or running must have been very easy in those fine specimens of
footwear.
The safety-pin brooches, some ornamented with a little animal or figure
(here is one with a very tame Centaur), also the hook-and-eye
fastening, and the cork soles, all remind us of the fact that
there is little new under the sun.
The case illustrating acting shows the masks worn to give the
required expression of sadness or laughter, and here, too, are
inscriptions on metal, telling of old treaties; the Athenian
jurymen’s tickets, with their names and homes written on the, and
a very pathetic medal belonging to a slave. Imagine having to
wear round your neck such words as these, “Hold me, lest I escape,
and take me back to my master, Viventius, on the estate of
Callistus.”
One wonders if the hoard of tiny copper coins, found in the terra-cotta
jug, were the savings of some very poor man; and those Athenian
silver coins, and those corroded ones from Pompeii--how were they
earned, how spent?
Weapons seem much the same all the ancient world over, but here we
have, besides spears and daggers, relics from the Field of
Fennel--Marathon--that heroic day when the Athenians defeated the
Persians under Darius I.
We must turn now to the cases round the walls. We have already looked
at the Etruscan corner and seen things that were buried and lost
to sight for some twenty centuries.
It was when the sea power of Etruria was being [pg 90] broken, early in
the fifth century, that that helmet fell from an
Etruscan soldier’s head at the battle near Naples. It was taken
as booty and dedicated to Zeus at Olympia.
Passing the cases of armour, we come to the objects illustrating the
public games; the view on the top of a lamp of the circus while a
chariot race is going on; the disc for throwing, like the one in
the hand of the Discobolus statue; the pair of jumping weights,
halteres, held in the hands and swung up high, as we saw on the
vases to give an impetus.
The series of models of wheels, animals, hands, legs, ears, plaits of
hair, deposited in the temples of the gods in prayer, or in
thanksgiving, remind us of the votive tablets in the Phigaleian
Room. Clothes and toilet articles were also much dedicated in
this way (you remember the dolls’ clothes of Sappho and Timarete), and
here we have lists of various articles, amongst them is
“a little tunic, with a washed-out purple border.”
A list of the treasures in the Parthenon--you remember the treasure
chamber in the model?--at the beginning of the fourth century,
includes two specially interesting things; one is “a gilded
Persian sword.” How the heart of an Athenian, who had heard the
story from his grandfather, would throb at the sight of the
ruined and burnt city, the escape of the country, the enthusiasm
of restoring and beautifying the sacred Acropolis.
The other treasures was some of the “golden olive [pg 91] petals” from
the wreath of the Victory that stood, six feet high, on
the hand of Pheidias’ great gold-and-ivory statue of Athene the
Virgin.
We must pass on the wall-case showing methods of burial and see the
tablet of the dog, with speaking ways, and the urn holding human
ashes, near which you can see the tiny coin found amongst them,
still adhering to the jawbone. This was the fee for ferryman,
Charon, for the passage across the Styx, place in readiness
between the lips of the dead.
The illustrations and models of shipping in old days set one dreaming
of the blue tideless Mediterranean, and the journeys for pleasure
or profit on the great highway of nations. The more we look at
the remains from the countries round its shores, the more we
realize how much their inhabitants must have traveled about and
traded together.
The specimens of Roman building materials, such bright marbles and
alabaster, help us to see the great city in its glory; below them
is the slab with the print of a dog’s paws; he had run over
it--so dog-like!--before it was dry, and here are the marks fro
all time.
The scales and weights, both Greek and Roman, are a study in
themselves, and so is the water apparatus, which made the baths
of Rome so perfect. Here we see many strigils and other bath
necessities.
The kitchen department contains not only every variety of ladle and
implement, including an egg-whisk, pepper-castor, egg-spoons,
with pointed ends to get the snails out of their shells, and
moulds for stamp- [pg 92] ing cakes, but also a basin of eggs from
Rhodes, charred nuts and corn
from Pompeii. Then come the lamps, the bronze ornaments for seats
and couches, the candelabra, and the brazier with tongs and fuel
for a chilly day.
(typed by Dawn Taylor)