CHAPTER V.

THE ARCHITECTURAL EPOCH OF PERICLES.

The age of Pericles was so distinctively an era in the advancement of the arts, especially architecture, not alone in the city where Athene shed her divine intelligence and tutelary influence with generous favor, but throughout all the Hellenic states, and has left so many models and criterions for the architects of all time to follow, that a few words in reference to Pericles himself and the sculptor Phidias, into whose hands he entrusted the direction of his public buildings and the adornment of Athens, may be admissible, before we consider the architectural geniuses who sprung forward to meet the great requirements of the time.

Pericles was a descendant of that noble and refined, if sometimes unfortunate, house of Alcmæonidæ, which did so much for the Delphic temple of Apollo, and a son of Xanthippus, the victor of Mycale, and Agariste, niece of Cleisthenes, founder of the later Athenian constitution. The date of his birth is not known, but that he early evinced a leaning toward the fine arts and philosophy is recorded. Under Pythocleides he studied music, under Damon political science, under Zeno philosophy; but it remained for the erudite Anaxagoras to give the final burnish to his character and thought. He was therefore, both by birth and disposition, as well as cultivation, possessed of a mind singularly comprehensive in its grasp of the advantages which the arts of peace could contribute to the progress of his people, and naturally turned his attention to their exploitation and development, when he became dominant in the year 444 B.C. His rule of peace lasted but thirteen years, or until the breaking out of the Peloponnesian war, but was crowded with numerous artistic and architectural triumphs.

That he may have gone a step too far in the encouragement of pleasure and the peaceful virtues among a people of warlike antecedents and a future before them of foreordained defence and conquest, if not final defeat, may be a subject for speculation; but that he gave an impetus to literature and art, and by the fervent warmth of his patronage fostered the growth of genius in a way that had not been equalled before his time, and which has never been excelled since, is the principal reason, doubtless, for his immortality.

His head was abnormally long, a defect which the artists of his time invariably corrected with a helmet when painting or sculpturing his portrait, and the contemporaneous comic poets and satirists as continually ridiculed in verse and jest. Speaking of his eloquence and powers of persuasion, Thucydides relates a pleasant story in respect to his dexterity in this regard. When Archidamus, king of the Lacedæmonians, asked Thucydides whether he or Pericles was the better wrestler, he replied: “When I have thrown him and given him a fair fall, he, by persisting that he had no fall, gets the better of me, and makes the bystanders, in spite of their own eyes, believe him.” But in other respects his physique was well proportioned and his bearing noble and commanding. His manner was dignified and reserved, his eloquence strong, fearless and convincing, and his general appearance such as to inspire the people to compliment him with the name “Olympian Zeus,” a character in which his portrait was also painted by his favorite, Phidias.

An English writer well says that the age of Pericles was “the milky way of great men,” for it was certainly clouded to whiteness with intellectual stars. The names associated with this era are not only among the most celebrated in all Grecian history, but among the most renowned that have sprung forward in the history of all the world. Poets, philosophers, dramatists, musicians, sculptors, painters, architects, not only arose in great numbers under his fostering encouragement, but to the highest eminence in their respective avocations. In fact, it seems as though the human plant that had long been growing, strengthening and broadening upon Hellenic soil had suddenly sprung into the fullest flower and enveloped itself in intellectual beauty.

The Athens which we so frequently see pictured in all her restored architectural grace and grandeur, the Athens which from her Acropolis of chiselled white so proudly surveys the Ægean sea and surrounding plains, is the Athens of Pericles, noblest of all cities in the pursuits of virtue, of beauty and contentment, and in the pure realization of that happiness which the practice of the arts alone can afford.

The budding of Athenian architectural magnificence may be said to have begun under Themistocles and Cimon, the immediate predecessors of Pericles, but not to have ripened and flowered in its perfection until his advent into power. Then it was that the task of building a city in every way worthy of the people who had proved their prowess before the Persian hosts in war, and who in peace could delight in the musical poems of Homer, was pushed to a speedy realization with enthusiasm.

Nothing in all the biography of Pericles has contributed so greatly to the perpetuity of his fame as this attention which he gave to the development of the architectural magnificence of Athens. “That which gave most pleasure and ornament to the city of Athens,” says Plutarch, “and the greatest admiration and even astonishment to all strangers, and that which now is Greece’s only evidence that the power she boasts of and her ancient wealth are no romance or idle story, was his construction of the public and sacred buildings. The materials were stone, brass, ivory, gold, ebony and cypress-wood; the artisans that wrought and fashioned them were smiths and carpenters, moulders, founders and braziers, stone-cutters, dyers, goldsmiths, ivory-workers, painters, embroiderers, turners; those again that conveyed them to the town for use, merchants and mariners and ship-masters by sea; and by land, cartwrights, cattle breeders, wagoners, rope-makers, flax-workers, shoemakers and leather-dressers, road-makers, miners. And every trade in the same nature, as a captain in an army has his particular company of soldiers under him, had its own hired company of journeymen and laborers belonging to it banded together as in array, to be, as it were, the instrument and body for the performance of the service. Thus, to say all in a word, the occasions and services of these public works distributed plenty through every age and condition.”

“Architecture,” says Robert Adam, “in a particular manner depends upon the patronage of the great, as they alone are able to execute what the architect plans.” This being so, the architects of his time had in Pericles a patron in every way worthy their best efforts. Indeed, so ambitious was he to grace the city of his nativity with all the beauties of architecture that his enemies found here a pretext for censure, and complained that he spent too much of the public treasure for such a purpose. He met the criticism, however, with the argument that those who pursued the arts of war should not be the only ones to receive support at the expense of the state, but that those who possessed the skill and industry of true artists and artisans were quite as much entitled to public encouragement and support as the soldier.

This answer for a time appeased the clamor of the opposition, which had been set up against what they would lead the people to believe was extravagance and wastefulness on the part of Pericles. But it soon broke out again. When finally it became no longer bearable, Pericles addressed his accusers and said: “If you think that I have expended too much let the money be charged to my account, not yours, _only let the new edifices be inscribed with my name and not that of the people of Athens_.” It is to the credit of the Athenians that their pride was touched by the words of their ruler and their cupidity restrained. They at once replied that Pericles might spend as much of their money as he pleased, and they even went further, and insisted that he should not spare the public treasury in the least. Like all great men, Pericles was assailed in a variety of ways. When his enemies did not accomplish their purpose in bringing him to public disgrace by one method of assault, they tried another. We have seen how they failed in one instance; another was similar in accusing him, in complicity with Phidias, of appropriating to his own use the public treasure, donated to pay for the golden plates on the chryselephantine statues of the latter’s creation. But this charge also not proving successful, they attacked his religious character, strange as it may appear, when it is remembered how deeply he was interested in erecting temples of pagan worship. But he survived the slanders of his time and continued his aims and purposes in life, content, doubtless, that posterity should judge him aright, as did the majority of the people of his own time. His last words are perhaps the best epitome of his life’s work: “No Athenian ever put on black through me.”

Teleclides has put into verse the great surrender which the Athenian people appeared finally to make to Pericles of their rights in peace and war:

“The tribute of the cities, and, with them, the cities too, To do with them as he pleases, and undo; To build up, if he likes, stone walls around a town; And, again, if so he likes, to pull them down; Their treaties and alliances, power, empire, peace and war, Their wealth and their success forevermore.”

As already stated, in no branch of the arts did the age of Pericles make a deeper and more lasting impression than in that of architecture. Although the Doric order was employed many hundred years before his time, and the Ionic scarcely less many, yet the finest types of each and the examples of these orders which stand for their most perfect and artistic development are to be found in the Acropolis at Athens in the time of Pericles, the Parthenon serving as the criterion of one and the Erechtheum as the model of the other. That these orders should have been brought to such perfection and endowed with their crowning dignity and grace, must alone prove without further argument, if need be, that the architectural talent and artistic sense of the age was incomparable.

The part which the great sculptor Phidias played in the art drama of his time has been already alluded to, but not sufficiently, perhaps, to exclude a further reference to him.

The comparison has often been made between Phidias and the talented revivalist of the fifteenth century, Michael Angelo, and a casual consideration of the two eminent artists would indicate that it was a proper one. They were both sculptors, both painters, both engravers (Phidias of gems), but they were not both architects, as is erroneously assumed. As to the respective degrees of talent which each manifested toward the branches of art which he professed, they also differed widely. In sculpture the school of Michael Angelo will not outlive that of Phidias, but in painting, especially in its application to mural decoration, the Greek must bow to the Italian. In architecture also Phidias possessed none of the technical knowledge and skill which in Michael Angelo enabled him to suspend the great dome of St. Peter’s “as if in the air,” and which was so important a factor in his long artistic career, manifested in other ways as well, and gaining for him perpetual applause. However, the two artists may be well compared, inasmuch that they both created epochs of their own; and both excelled in exhibiting a noble understanding as to the high and exalted possibilities of art that has never been equalled.

Phidias’s comprehensive grasp of broad artistic effects had as much to do, probably, with gaining for him the favor of Pericles as his technical skill. Quintilian calls him the “Sculptor of the gods.” He realized the greatness of large things and could calculate their power in influencing the imagination and understanding. He was once invited, together with his contemporary artist, Alcamenes, to design a statue of Minerva, destined to be placed upon a high column. When both statues were finished and exhibited, that made by Alcamenes was at once preferred on account of its elegance of finish, while that by Phidias was rejected as being rough and crude. Phidias, however, insisted that each should be shown from the high pinnacle upon which it might ultimately be placed. When this was done all the elegant graces of the statue of Alcamenes were lost to sight, as well also the apparent roughness of that by Phidias, which now took on the perfect proportions he had foreseen. This story will serve to illustrate the breadth of his artistic discernment.

Of all the artists of his time, Phidias was by far the best gifted to have placed in his hands, by Pericles, the supervision of the public buildings of Athens, and to have entrusted to his discretion and judgment the planning, posing and arranging of the grand architectural _mise en scène_, which his patron had determined should be set there. If Phidias did not draw the actual plans of a building or other structure, his judgment could indicate its order, its location and such other characteristics it should possess to harmonize with the features with which it was to be associated. He could group the majestic masonry of his time in grand display, could beautify it with his own chisel, and could form and mould the complete architectural picture. If he was not the architect of the Parthenon, he at least enhanced its effect with the magnificence of his sculpturings and designs in the metopes of the frieze and the tympanums of the pediments, some of which are still to be seen among the “Elgin marbles” in the British Museum, of which Canova remarked they would alone compensate for a visit to England. It is not improbable, also, that he may have suggested the Caryatides of the Erechtheum, and proved to the Egyptians, from whom the architectural idea was borrowed, how far more beautifully and gracefully such figures could be carved in Athens than on the banks of the Nile.

There can be no doubt as to the value of statuary, which was the special province of Phidias, in enhancing the _ensemble_ of Grecian architectural grouping, and particularly valuable was the colossal figure of Minerva Promachus in contributing to the grandiose effect of the Athenian Acropolis. This noble work of Phidias was seventy feet high and made entirely of bronze, said to have been taken from the Medes, who disembarked at Marathon. The colossal goddess stood exposed, and in a position where, in looking far away over the Ægean sea, she might be an inspiration to the returning Athenian mariner, and where, in glancing from her lofty eminence, “she seemed, by her attitude and her accoutrements, to promise protection to the city beneath her, and to bid defiance to her enemies.”

Another architectural statue, if it may be called such, was that of the same goddess, in gold and ivory, which dominated the interior of the Parthenon. This work of Phidias, second only in beauty and size to the chryselephantine statue of Jupiter at Olympia, is said to have cost $465,000. The figure of Minerva was forty feet in height, and was presented standing in a tunic which reached to her feet. A casque covered her head, her right hand held a spear, and her left a figure of Victory. The exquisite workmanship of the carving on the buckler resting at the feet of the deity came near involving Pericles and Phidias in another web of trouble, for it was asserted that the sculptor had introduced his own portrait and that of his patron among the combatants of a battle between the Athenians and Amazons, there portrayed. The captious objection was set up that such a liberty was insulting to Athene. Phidias, as related by some writers, was cast into prison for this act of impiety, and died there. Others claim, however, that this was not so, but that Phidias, before sentence could be passed, fled to Elis, where he at once entered upon the work of modelling the great statue of the Olympian Jupiter.

In respect to both statues, he was implicated with Pericles, as accused by his enemies, with pilfering the gold donated for their construction. These various accusations have led to considerable confusion in respect to much of his personal history and final end, and although it was proved by removing the gold plates and weighing them, that he was not guilty of the alleged crime, it is very probable that his death was as much due to disappointed hopes and mortification consequent upon the false charge as it was to any public executioner of the time.