1902 Encyclopedia > Archaeology > Classical Archaeology - Fourth Period: Seopas, Praxiteles, Argive-Sicyonian, Zeuxis, Parrahasius, Timanthes, Sicyon, Apalles

Archaeology
(Part 12)




SECTION II: CLASSICAL ARCHAEOLOGY (ART, SCULPTURE, ETC. OF CLASSICAL GREEK AND ROMAN PERIODS)

Fourth Period: Seopas, Praxiteles, Argive-Sicyonian, Zeuxis, Parrahasius, Timanthes, Sicyon, Apalles


Since the beginning of our last period, the political and social circumstances of Greece have suffered a marked change. More or less it was then accepted as a dogma that, provided the state was flourishing, the prosperity of individuals mattered little. All were for the state, and by their union in the state's emergency had achieved a glorious freedom, the sense of which filled the national mind, and prepared it to respond with a fostering sympathy to the efforts of artists, whom it also inspired. Yet, conscious as they must have been of their own services, the men of that generation turned rather in pride to the deeds of their ancestral heroes, and in humility to the assistance of the gods. They sought to frame their conduct on the traditions of the past. They were rigorous and strong in thought. Passion was a thing to deplore, not to study, analyse, and represent. The national history was still unchequered. Nor was the house of Hellas as yet to any degree openly divided against itself. There was no need of artists-whether poet, as Aeschylus, or sculptor, as Phidias-to depict the struggles of passion or other conditions of the mind. Now this is all changed. The nation has lost it suniuty, and the Peloponnesian was has made havoc of its resources. Aechylus has given way to Sophocles and Euripides, Phidias to Scopas and Praxiteles. Poets and sculptors of the new generation have chosen as their theme the representation of pathos and of the conditions of the mind generally. That such was the character of what is called the second Attic school of sculpture is known principally from the records of artists. Of works directly from the hand of any of the masters of this school there is no example in existence, so far as we know at present. On the other hand, there are many copies of their works, from which, with the aid of records, some idea may be formed of their style.

The first of the artists of this school was Scopas, a native of Parus, and, as it would seem, the son and pupil of Aristandrus, a worker in bronze, in which material the son appears to have commenced his career as a sculptor. An example of his work in bronze was the statue of Aphrodite sitting on a goat, Elis (Pausanias, vi. 25, 2). This subject occurs on a fragmentary cameo in the British Museum. Marble, however, was a material more congenial to his style. The first yeats of his activity were spent in the Peloponnesus, and particularly at Tegea in Arcadia, where the erection of a temple, in honour of Athene Alea, in the place of one that had been burned 395 B.C., was under his direction as regards both the architecture and the sculpture. About 380 B.C. he settled in Athens, where for nearly thirty years he maintained a reputation for an unparalleled power of rendering the human or divine figure, not imposing, but attractive by the charm of bearing, and the expression of that feeling which for the moment the person was most sensitive to. Sometimes this feeling was one of excited passion accompanied by great bodily agitation, as for example, in the case of his statue of a Maenad at Athens, in the attitude of rushing with head thrown back and streaming hair, and holding a slain kid in her hand. At other times the passion he sought to express was one of peaceful inspiration as in the statue of Apollo Citharoedus, with long flowing robe and head thrown back as in a dreamy enjoyment of the strains from his lyre. When considerably advanced in life, possibly over sixty years of age, Scopas was invited by Artemisia, the queen of Caria, to assist or direct the sculptures for a monument which she was erecting at Halicarnassus in memory of her husband Mausolus. Accompanied by Bryaxis, Leochares, and Timotheus (or Praxiteles, as others said), he proceeded thither, but as to what part he had in the work we have no information. The site of the Mausoleum was discovered and excavated by Mr C. T. Newton in 1856-7, the result being the recovery of an important part of the sculptures, which, with the slabs of the frieze previously known, now constitutes the principal illustration of the art of that time (Newton, Discoveries at Halicarnassus, Cnidus, and Branchidae, 1862). While occupied on the Mausoleum or after its completion, Scopas executed several sculptures for other towns in Asia Minor, as at Cnidus, Ephesus, and Chyrse in the Troad. In a temple of Nepture, erected in Rome by Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus, was a large composition by Scopas, representing Poseidon, Thetis, and Achilles, attended by nereids riding on dolphins and hippocamps, and by tritons and other marvelous creatures of the sea. Not as a copy of this work, but as reflecting vividly the manner of this sculptor, has been accepted the large marble relief in Munich (O. Jahn, Berichte der Sächs Ges. d. Wiss., 1854, pls. 3-8), representing the marriage of Poseidon and Amphitrite. How far the merit belongs to scopes of having introduced into Greek art the ideal types of those marine beings who personified the element of the sea, is unknown. In a temple of Apollo at Rome there was further a large composition, representing the slaughter of the children of Niobe, about the authorship of which there were two opinions, - the one ascribing it to Scopas, the other to Praxiteles. While this dubiety is itself proof that the two artists were rivals in the power of expressing pathos and suffering, there is a considerable probability that the composition in question was more adapted, of the two, to the genius of Scopas. Of this work there exists what is believed to be a more or less complete copy in the series of marble statues in the gallery of the Uffizi at Florence. The work is very uneven throughout, as might be expected in Roman copies; but the dramatic character of the action, and the powerful rendering of pain and suffering in the faces, still bespeak the style of the original sculptor, who, whether Scopas, Praxiteles, or another, was cert ainly an Athenian artist of the first half of the 4th century B.C. (Friederichs, Bausteine, i. pp. 230-246). Another example of the style of this period, in the combination of beauty with a lovable and touching expression of face, is the so-called statue of leucothea, in the glyptotheke of Munich, which there are grounds for assigning to Cephisodotus, the father, it would seem, of Praxiteles, who is recorded to have made of Athens a statue of Irene with the boy Plutus in her arms, which, as it appears on the coins of Athens, closely resembles the Leucothea. This Cephisodotus, standing as he did in the period between the old and the new Attic schools, seems to have shared the qualities of both, but to have inclined rather to the latter.

That Praxiteles was directly a pupil of Scopas is not proved even by the fact that he worked in the same artistic vein and spirit, with a result which rendered his style undistinguishable from that of the older master to the eyes of Roman connoisseurs. Still, it will be safe to assume that he was largely influenced in his youth by the then favourite sculptures of Scopas. The scene of his labours was mostly Athens and the neighbouring towns. That he accompanied Scopas to Halicarnassus to assist with the sculptures of the Mausoleum, as is stated, is probably true; but from the fact that elsewhere in place of his name occur that of Timotheus, it has been inferred that he may there have abandoned his original intention, and confined himself to the execution of those status for towns in that district of which we have records. About 340 B.C. he returned to Athens, and there -remained till his death, studying, with Phryne as his model, the expression of sensual beauty in its highest type. Like Scopas, he had little taste for bronze in comparison with marble, with its surface finely sensitive to the most delicate modulation. Unsatisfied with even this, he endeavoured to soften the asperity of the marble in the crude parts by a process of encustic, in which, or perhaps rather in the colouring of the draperies, he employed in difficult cases the contemporary painter Nicias (Pliny, N. H., xxxv. 39, 122). That he was peculiar in this tinting the marble, and an exception among other Greek sculptors, cannot be meant, in the face of so many instances as we now have of the application of the circumlitio in the remains of Greek sculpture and architecture (Semper, Der Stil, i. pp. 398 and 514). The fact, however, of his being mentioned in connection wit it may be taken as a proof that the process was an exceedingly refined one, since his favourite subjects were those of youthful or feminine ideal beauty, in which it is to be supposed that the tints corresponding to those in nature would appear almost evanescent in their delicacy. Of his works, the number of which was unusually large, the most celebrated were - (1.) The marble statue of Aphrodite at Cnidus, of which the more or less modified copies, as the Venus of the Capitoline Museum and the Venus de Medicis, together with the ancient records, show that the goddess was represented standing nude at the moment when she has left her bath, and, being sensitive to the air, presses her left leg against her right, and looks towards the drapery which she has already laid hold of with her left hand. Originally commissioned by Cos, but declined on account of its nudity, this statue was replaced by another of Aphrodite, with which the marble statue in the Louvre, founding Melus in 1820, has frequently been compared. But before accepting it as an illustration of the type of Aphrodite by Praxiteles, or of the more highly praised figure of the goddess by Scopas, it is necessary to bear in mind that on a base found with it, which, though now lost, is vouched for on creditable authority, was inscribed the name of the artist, Alexandrus, son of Menides of Antioch, who must have lived after Alexander the Great (Friedrichs, Bausteine, i. pp. 331-334). (2.) A statue of Aphrodite at Thespiae; beside which was placed (3) a portrait statue of Phryne; and 94), a statue of Eros, in Parian marble, of which there are two accounts, - either that it was given by him to Phryne in token of his admiration, or that she contrived to obtain it by a ruse, and then dedicated it at Thespiae. The figure of Eros was here not that of a boy, as in later art, but was taken from the period of youth at which love is purely ideal, and the whole being is pervaded by an elevating ardour. Apparently exhibiting the same refinement of youthful form was his statue known as the "Celebrated Satyr," in Athens. Of his Apollo Sauroetonus several copies of inferior merit exist. His statue of Artemis Brauronia at Athens had a mouth inviting to a kiss.





The ablest of the contemporaries of Scopas and Praxi tales were Bryaxis, Timotheus, and Leochares, of whom the last worked chiefly in bronze, and traveled over a wide field of conceptions, including deities, portraits, mythological and allegorical subjects. Another new type which belongs to this period is that of Serapis by Bryaxis. From the time of Philip and Alexander the Great, portrait statues furnished a large part of the occupation of sculptors, and in this they were not confined to living models, as we gather, for example, from the portraits of Sappho and Corinna by Apollidorus, a sculptor of this time, - a fact from which it may be inferred that portraiture was still inclined to idealism, though doubtless a strong tendency to realism had already set in. The development of the art of sculpture in the Argive-Sicyonian school, corresponding to that just described in the second Attic school, was begun by the Corinthian Euphranor, whose principal study was directed with the view of modifying the hitherto canonical proportions of Polycletus, to suit the changed tastes with which he had probably become imoregnated during his long stay in Athens. To this end he introduced a smaller head and a slimness of the arms and legs which gave a greater lightness to the figure, and which, under the hand if his follower Lysippus, became the favourite type of ideal athletic statues. Lysippus, a native of Sicyon, and originally employed as an ordinary worker in bronze, rose by dint of study to the position of a sculptor of the first order. Nor was the quality of his work more surprising than the quantity. About 1500 statues and groups in bronze were counted as having been produced in his workshop, and among them two at least of colossal size-the statue of Jupiter at Tarentum, 60 feet high, and that of Hercules in the same place. The masterpieces, which he appears to have studied most were those of his townsman Polycletus. Like Euphranor, however, he was compelled to seek a new system of proportions, - to exchange the immovable dignity and repose by which the old masters suggested the possession of physical power, for new attitudes, in which the exercise of physical power should be made apparent by its effect on the body and on the face. The colossal frame of Hercules was a favourite study with Lysippus, for this reason especially, we presume, that of all the ancient heroes he was represented in the legends as bearing about with him always the effect of the arduousness of his labours. There was no gaiety or elasticity in his composition. A figure of an athlete in the act of scraping the sweat and dust from hisbody, Apoxyomenus, which enjoyed a high reputation in Rome, where it stood before the baths of M. Agrippa, has an additional interest for us in the fact that a marble copy of it still exists, which, though of inferior work, forms an admirable illustration of the statements regarding the proportions adopted by Lysippus, viz., a small head and comparatively long slim arms and legs (Monumenti d. Inst. Arch. V. pl. 13; Freiderichs, Bausteine, i. p. 286). That he was also equal to the times in the production of allegorical figures may be gathered from the description (see Overbeck, Schriftquellen, Lysippus) of his bronze statue of Cairus, a personification of what is vulgary called the "nick of time." It remains to point out, with reference to the style of Lysippus, that he confined himself mostly to the rendering of male forms, and that in regard to the few female figures by him there is no mention of the charm of sensual beauty which characterized the second Attic school; nor, again, do we find that other characteristic of theirs, the expression of pathos, in the male figures by him. His animosa signa must be taken as expressing physical life - anima, not animus.

Among the remaining sculptures which belong to this period the most remarkable are - (1.) The sculptures of the so-called Nereid monument discovered at Xanthus, in Lycia, by Sir Charles Fellows, and now in the British Museum. These sculptures consists (a) series of female figures in the round, about the size of life, wearing a thin long drapery through which the forms are entirely visible; (b and c) a broad and a narrow frieze, both representing battle scenes. While the design of the narrow frieze is singularly Assyrian in conception, that of the broader frieze and the statues in the round is purely Greek, at one time suggesting the style of the Parthenon sculptures, at another the refining and movement of the second Attic school (Fellows, An Account of the Ionic Trophy Monument excavated at Xanthus, London, 1848; W.W. Lloyd, The Nereid Monument, London, 1845). (2.) The reliefs on the monument of Lysicrates, a round building in Athens, popularly known as the Lantern of Demosthenes. The victory which it was erected to commemorate was gained in the year 334 B.C. The subject is Bacchus and his suite transforming the Tyrrhenian pirates into dolphins. The figures are powerful, but light of foot and tall. The unusually large spaces between the groups and figures is suggestive of the lonely distances on the sea-shore, and in this respect the frieze seems to encroach on the province of painting (Marbles of the British Museum, ix. Pls. 22-26). (3.) A series of portrait sculptures, for which reference is made of Friederichs, Bausteine, i.pp. 290-308. The great bronze head (fig. 10) placed here may, on further consideration, require to be moved to an earlier period, though the many carelessnesses in details which it exhibits seem at present to render such a step unadvisable.

Besides sculptors, otherwise famous, who applied themselves to toreutic art, there were others who made this their principal occupation. Of these we know Mys, who executed the designs on the shield of the bronze Pallas of Phidais on the Acropolis of Athens; and, more celebrated, mentor, who worked chiefly on silver bowls, and cups, for which fabulous sums were afterwards paid by Roman collectors. He must have lived before the time of Alexander the Great, since some of his works perished in the burning of the temple of Diana at Ephesus. Two other caelatores apparently of this period were Acragas and Boethus.

A branch of art allied to the caelatura is that of die-sinking and gem-engraving. Of the former the finest examples during this period are the silver coins of Syracuse, especially the decadrachms with the head of Arethusa on the obverse and a quadriga on the reverse. The presence of the engraver's name on many these coins is testimony of the value attached to their work. From this source we know the engravers Cimon and Euaenetus. Other names, such as Euclides, Eumenus, Phrygillus, and Sosion, also occur on smaller silver coins. With the exception of Athens, where the archaic type was preserved, there is a general feeling for beauty throughout the Greek coinage of this period, the specimens most deserving of study being those of Arcadia, of the Opuntian Locri, of the Macedonian kings Philip and Alexander, of the Chalcideans of Thrace, of Cydonia in Crete, where the name of the engraver Neuantus occurs, and of Lesbus. In gem engraving during this period the fame of Pyrgoteles is known, but of all the existing gems which bear his name it may be questioned whether one reflects adequately his style. It may be taken as certain that some of them are from his hand. He was the court engraver of Alexander the Great, whose portrait he made on an emerald. The marble head here given (fig. 11) shows a distinctly realistic tenency, compared with the head on the coins. Possibly the portrait of Alexander which appears on the coins of his successor Lysimachus was in some way drawn from the gem (Brunn, Gesch. d. Griech. Künstler, ii. p. 629). Among the few examples of gems that can be unhesitatingly assigned to this period is the chalcedony with the figure of a crane found in Kertch, and now in the Hermitage, St Petersburg, bearing the signature of Dexamenus of Chius, DEXAMONOS EPOIE CHOIS {Gk.] (Compte Rendu de la Comm. Arch pour l'ann. 1861, p. 147, pl. vi. 10).

In painting, the transition from the style of Polygnotus to that of the new school was again, as has been said, a transition from ethos to pathos, from character and noble bearing to beauty and effect. The change, as elsewhere, was in harmony with the spirit of the times; but of the steps by which its was brought about two deserve attention; the first is the exigencies of scene-painting, on which Sophocles, and, after his example, his older contemporary Aeschylus, laid great value. In this direction the artist of the day was Agatharchus of Samus, who also wrote an account of the decoration executed by him, and by this led to the investigation of the principles of perspective in paintong by democritus and Anaxagoras. The second step was the gradation of light and shade and of colours introduced by Apollodorus, who for this service is regarded as the founder of the new school. At the door opened by Apollodorus entered Zeuris, as he himself is reported to have said, into the sanctuary of art. Not that Zeuxis was directly a pupil of the older master. All that is known of their relations to each other consists of mutual compliments. That the charm of Zeuxis's popularity was in great part due to novelty of situation and effect might be inferred from the statement regarding his picture of a centauress suckling her young, the spectators of which forgot the painter in the subject. On the other hand, the story of his having constantly before his eyes five of the most beautiful maidens of the town of Croton while he was painting his figure of Helena, suggests that he must have been a close student of form and perhaps also of colour. His figures were of a large mould, as in the earlier school, and for this reason his heads and limbs appeared a little coarse to Roman connoisseurs accustomed to the elegance of a later time. In this direction a great step in advance was made by his contemporary Parrhasius of Ephesus, who like Zeuxis also lived some time in Athens, enjoying the society of Socrates, and vaunting his personal appearance as well as his artistic powers. The dominant faculty of drawing in Parrhasius led him to choose his subjects from male heroic figures, and led him also, it will be charitable and not without analogy to conjecture, to produce the immoral scenes with which his name is connected. From excellence in drawing and colouring the next step was towards just conception of the subject on hand, and this step was taken by Tomanthes, of the island of Cythnus. One of his great pictures was the tragic scene of the sacrifice of Ipgigenia, in which the expression of sorrow was rendered with a masterly gradation, from the bystanders (Calchas, Ulysses, Ajax, and Menelaus) up to Agamemnon, in whom the deep grief of a father was expressed by his covering his face and turning it away from the spectator. This subject, with various modification, and particularly with the absence of the gradation of grief among the bystanders, but still obviously preserving the profound pathos of a great original, occurs in Pompeian paintings, and on a Greek relief in the gallery of Florence (O. Jahn, Archäol. Beiträge, p. 378). Whether or not a resident at Ephesus, the centre of Asiatic painting, it is clear that Timanthes stood in close relation to the school there. Contemporary with the Asiatic school existed in Greece proper two schools of painting, of which the one, with its seat in Sicyon, seems to have studied most drawing and a system of form and proportions; while the other, centred at Athens, but including some Theban painters, looked rather to the expression of pathos and the emotions of the mind. The founder of the Sicyonian school was Eupompus (401-381 B.C.). It was, however, to his pupil Pamphilus that it owed most of its reputation, and became a school for practical instruction which attracted students from remote quarters. From his distinction in mathematics and geometry, and from the fact of his having introduced drawing as a general element of instruction for youth, it is inferred that his teaching was mainly directed to the reproduction of form. On the other hand, it is also known that his researches led to an improvement in the colours employed in encaustic painting, and further that this art was carried to its highest perfection by his pupil Pausias. In a middle position between the Sicyonian and Attic schools stood Euphranor the Corinthian, of whom as a sculptor mention has already been made. His subjects were of the higher grade of historical painting, being mostly large compositions of mythological scenes or historical events, of which an example was to be seen on the portico of Zeus Eleutherius in the Agro of Athens. In Thebes, where since the recovery of freedom from the Lacedaemonians a new impulse for art as well as politics had been felt, a school of painting was formed, apparently at first under the influence of that of Sicyon. At its head was Nicomachus, a son and pupil of Astristiaeus. A greater fame was achieved by his son Atistides, as an example of whose work, Pliny (N. H., xxxv. 36, 98) quotes a picture from the capture of a town in which a mother appeared mortally wounded, and with a harrowing expression of dread on her face lest the child clinging to her breast should suck blood instead of milk. His activity extended to portraiture and to genre subjects; but he worked by preference in the encaustis process, the credit of inventing which has been wrongly ascribed to him. Among the other painters of note who followed the manner of the second Attic school of sculpture there remains only Nicias, a son of Nicomedes of Athens, and a pupil of Antidotus, from whom he learned the extreme care of execution originally taught by Euphranor.





In the person of Apelles, the son of Pytheas, a native of Colophon, were combined, if we may judge from his reputation, all the best qualities of the hitherto existing schools of painting. It should, however, be remembered that what we know of him comes entirely from Roman and late Greek sources, and represents rather the taste of these times than a critical judgment on his works. He was a pupil of the otherwise unknown painter Ephorus of Ephesus, which town, already celebrated as a centre of painting, he adopted as his home. But so high was then the reputation of the Sicyonian school, headed by Pamphilus and Melanthius, that on completing his studies at Ephesus he repaired to Sicyon, either to see for himself or to profit by the fame of these masters. From Sicyon he proceeded, perhaps through the influence of Melanthius, to the court of Macedonia, where he was employed, first by Philip, and afterwards, under circumstances of the greatest intimacy, by Alexander, whom he accompanied as far as Ephesus on his expedition into Asia. Of the figures of deities painted by him the most renowned was that of Aphrodite Anadyomene, originally in the temple of Aesculapius in Cos, represented rising out of the sea, and wringing the wet out of her hair, with swelling bosom and an expression of desire in her eyes. A second figure of the goddess, also intended for Cos, remained unfinished at his death. Of personifications and allegorical figures or groups, such as delighted the age in which he lived, we have examples - of the former in his group of Bronte, Astrape, and Ceraunobolia; and of the latter in his famous picture of calumny. Partly of this character also were his two pictures of Alexander grouped with castor, Pollux, and Victory; and Alexander in a triumphal car, beside a personification of war, in the form of a captive with hands bound behind back and seated on armour. The execution of subjects of this nature, for which thought and reflection are mainly required as opposed to the poetic and spontaneously creative faculty of a true artist, has been urged as detracting from the greatness of Apelles, and to this extent, no doubt, he was subject to the weakness of his times. Like Correggio, with whom he has been compared, he lived at a time when the great creative spirit had passed away, and it remained for him, as for the Italian master, to discover the last resources of his art for the attainment of powerful effect and absolute finish simultaneously. To refine the harmony of his light and tones, as well as to protect his paintings from dirt, he employed a peculiar black glaze which broke the sharp contrasts of colours (Pliny, N. H., xxxv. 97) required for such powerful effects as the appearance of Zeus hurling lighting. With regard to his colours little is known. The statement that he used only four (Pliny, M. H. xxxv. 50, 92) may or may not be correct (Cicero, Brut., 18). Of his mere skill we have an example in the figure of Hercules, afterwards in Rome, of which it was said that the face, though turned away from the spectator, was suggested almost as vividly as if it had been actually painted (Wustmann, Apelles' Leben und Werke, 1870). In technical skill Apelles confessed himself equalled by his contemporary Protogenes the Rhodians, claiming, however, as his own special superiority, that he knew when to stop. The fault of Protogenes was over-elaboration. On one painting he is said to have worked seven or eleven years, finishing it with four separate glazes to protect it from injury. Of the painters of this period there are still to be mentioned Antiphilus, a native of Egypt, and a pupil of Ctesidemus; Theon of Samus, who was praised for his happy choice of the right moment at which to sezie an action; and Aetion.

Though the works of the masters of this period have wholly perished, there remain two sources from which some idea may be gathered of their manner, - first, a number of Pompeian paintings, which, though executed in a later age, and often intentionally varied form the originals, are still copies of the spirit and manner of the works of this time; and secondly, a large series of painted vases, which, though the production of inferior workmen, display a wonderful facility of execution, a splendour of glaze, and an application of colours which show that the example of the great painters had not been neglected. The figures stand out in red from the black ground of the vase; for the accessories, red, yellow, violet, black, blue, green, and gilding are employed. It is not, however, alone from their possession of certain traits which are assumed to have characterized the style of painting in this period that these vases are assigned to it. There exists a small but increasing series of painted vases which had been gained at the Panathenaic games at Athens, on several of which is inscribed the name of the archon for the year in which they were obtained. We have thus the exact years in which these vases were made, and at the same time specimens of the art of the time, from which a comparison is easily made with the larger series of undated vases (see Catalogue of the Vases of the British Museum).

With the close of the Periclean period in Athens the public desire for m ore temples seems to have ceased; so that the architecture of the period now before us is to be traced rather in works of utility, whether public or private . Of the former class are 0 (1), the stadium at Agrae for the athletic competitions at the Panathenaic festival; (2), the gymnasium; (3), the store-house at the Piraeus built to contain the equipment of 1000 ships. From private sources were (4), the temple of the Muses, said to have been erected by Plato, in the Academy; and (5), the choragic monument of Lysicrates, which is the only existing example of Athenian architecture of this time (Staurt, Antiquities of Athens, i. pls. 23-30). A greater architectural activity prevailed in the Peloponnesus. At Tegeae was erected, under the direction of Scopas, a temple which scarcely yielded in splendour to that of Zeus at Olympia. The laying out and building of new towns which followed upon the recovery of freedom by Thebes under Epaminondas, gave abundant scope for architects. A remarkable example of this was Megalopolis in Arcadia, which was built in an elliptical form, on the principle laid down by Hippodamus of Miletus, and carried out in the Piraeus, Thurium, and Rhodes. A more magnificient example of a new town erected in this period was Alexandria, founded by Alexander to be the first city of the world of which he was master, and built in that spirit by his favourite arhictect Dinocrates. The model of Alexandria was adopted by the successors of Alexander for the many new towns raised by them, as, for example, Antioch on the Orontes, the architect of which was Cenaeus. The temples of Asia Minor erected in the time of Alexander may be judged from the ruins of those of Athene Polias at Priene, of Artemis at Magnesia on the Maeander, and of Artemis at Ephesus, of which last the site has lately been excavated, with the result of confirming the few existing statements regarding its dimensions and style. The Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, and the Nereid monument of Xanthus, are instances of temple architecture modified for the purposes of a tomb.


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