House -furnishing.—The interior arrangement of the house was origin ally as simple as the building itself. We know how primitive were the couches made of skins and blankets as described in the Odyssey. This simplicity was established by law in Sparta, and the skilful mechanics among its subjugated neighbors had to work principally for the export trade. Elsewhere, and especially in the Greek colonies of Asia Minor, the influence of the effeminate despotisms by which they were surrounded led to the adoption of some customs tending to greater domestic comfort; this tendency became so widespread as to attract numerous artisans from Eastern countries to commercial Athens and to voluptuous Corinth.
In the palace of Odysseus each guest sat on a wooden stool before a separate small table. Subsequently, the people reclined on comfortable cushions along a single table, and costly couches became a part of the furniture of every wealthy house. But this Asiatic influence was merely an incentive. The superior mind and fine taste of the Greeks shaped and improved whatever was introduced. The thorough accomplishment of the task imposed on them by their very nature—namely, the transmuta tion of all their ordinary surroundings into objects of resthetic form and shape, thus removing them from the sphere of mere utility to that of aesthetic impressions—constituted a characteristic which no other nation possessed in the same degree, and which indeed was the point about which their culture centred.
Ceramic Art.—The treatment of Greek utensils is very properly included in the history of ancient art, but it also belongs to the history of civilization, for, after all purely historical and technical questions have been answered, we still ask, What natural talent, what bent of mind, could have originated such artistic skill, such fine feeling, and such a cultivated sense of beauty? And how were they so unrestrainedly exercised in a domain where vulgar comfort and easy acquiescence in traditions usually hold sway? In an attempt to reveal that underlying spirit, which shows itself perhaps more delicately and more variously in the smaller products than in the great monuments of Greek art, our study, even while holding fast to historical facts, would be able to go beyond the limits of a history of art could it find words to express precisely the secrets that lie concealed in the very lines of those productions.
Plate 22 shows the general character of those articles which added to the comfort and adornment of Greek domestic life. It would lead us too far to describe each in detail; a few words of description must suffice.
The first glance shows what a prominent place the fabrication of vessels, both useful and ornamental, occupied in the industry of this people. The art had come down to them from ancient times; nevertheless, we perceive in the productions of the earlier period (pl. 22, figs. 61-65) evidences of Oriental influence. Such characteristics are seen, aside from their techni cal construction, in their more rounded form and their dwarfish shape.
Among their ornamentations we meet with the peculiar kind of foliated decorations and animal figures which are already known to us from the art of Central Asia, and which in Greece, having lost their symbolical meaning, assume an entirely fantastic expression. In Hellas proper and in the Italian colonies these forms appear as transitory only side by side with the original native ceramic art, which, in so far as it did not venture into the domain of luxury, retained its peculiar character unimpaired; but in the Greek-Asiatic countries they continued in vogue for more than a thousand years longer and survived the most terrible vicissitudes. The color of these articles is generally a faint yellow; the decorations consist of designs engraved upon the surface.
We again step on truly national soil when the low forms begin grace fully to increase in height, when animal give place to human figures (jig. 67), and when the hero-worship, through which the nation had attained to maturity, was introduced by means of these vessels into every day life. Figures and ornaments are as yet black (fig. 66), no longer engraved, but accurately outlined. The material is most carefully treated. The gracefulness of this period rose to the highest elegance during the palmy days of Greece, and finally led to those magnificent productions which seemed to the Greeks themselves not unworthy to serve as the prize of victory in their national games, and which to us are unapproachable models of technical skill.
In the preceding periods a symmetrical whole had been attained by the skilful accommodation of the parts, the base, body, neck, and handle, to their respective purposes; but now, independent of all ideas of utility, the vessels acquired their perfect resthetic effect. This merit belongs to the simplest as well as to the most elaborate articles, and they form an unsurpassed col lection, the components of which can be graded only according to the time of their production, and not according to excellence of workmanship.