ANTIQUE' (Lat. antiques, old). As the term "ancients" is commonly applied to the Greeks and Romans, the word antique is used with reference to their works of art, especially their incomparable sculptures. The antique style in works of art is distinguished by critics from the romantic or also from the mod ern. The sculpture of the Greeks is character ized by freshness, originality, and ideality; and the phases it underwent have their parallels in the development of the literature and general culture of that people. In the earliest times, the statues had a rigid, formal character, and looked more like the idols of barbarous nations than deities in human form; then came stern, Titan-like forms, corresponding with the Pro metheus of ..Eschylus; next, the sculptures of Polycletus, and Polygnotus, like the characters in the dramas of Sophocles, present to us humanity in its purest and noblest ideal forms. Then, as Euripides in poetry left the old domain of destiny, and derived motives and action from ordinary human passions, so stat uary descended from the ideal to a closer re semblance to the forms of actual life, as we see in the works of Praxiteles and Lysippus. After
ward, when Aristophanes introduced comedy, forms of every-day life began to appear in sculp ture; and thus a gradual transition was made from the art of the Greeks, which was ideal in the true sense of the word, to that of the Romans, which was real, monumental. and portrait-like. The Romans were the realists of the ancient world; their indigenous philosophy was of a pop ular kind; their poetry, so far as it was national, was satiric and dramatic; and their works of art may he regarded as monuments and portraitures of real life, quite suitable for a nation of sol diers, lawyers, and politicians, but vastly inferior to the ideal beauty displayed in the best period of Grecian art.