IV. PERIOD OF HELLENIC PRIME. The period which we now enter upon is naturally subdivided by that great convulsion of the Greek world, the Peloponnesian War (B.C. 431-404), into an earlier and a later half, in which diverse social and political influences are at work, wherefore it will he of advantage to keep this subdivision in mind. The most noteworthy development of this time for us is that of sculpture and statuary, the great monuments of the painter's art having irretrievably perished. It runt be borne in mind that no hard and fast line separates these Greek periods, such as divides the Myeenwan from the later times. The great development in Greek art is indeed later than the Persian wars, but the germs arc in the later Sixth Century, and many works, which artistically belong to the archaic period, were made after n.c. 500. The same remark applies to all the later periods: the dates given are merely convenient approxima tions.
In the early part of this period the develop ment of bronze statuary was continued chiefly by the so-called Argive-Sicyonian School. We find Ageladas of Argos and Canaehus of Sieyon famous as statuaries in bronze about the end of the Sixth Century. Gold and ivory (in the famous chryselephantine work) and marble were more popular in Attica. where the quarries of Pentelieus furnished inexhaustible material. Pythagoras of Rbegium (the author of the limp ing "Philoctetes"), and Calamis and Myron among Attie artists, the latter famed for his "Discobolus" and bronze cow, are the forerun ners of "Phidias" in the development of the great art of the Fifth Century. Here also be long the sculptures from the temple of Zeus, at Olympia (q.v.), whose artistic origin has been sought in many schools, perhaps with most probability in lonM.
Greek sculpture, however, reached its highest ideal development, though not its full legitimate growth, in Phidias (q.v.), son of Charmides, and pupil of Ageladas, of Argos, the superintendent of the Parthenon (q.v.) sculptures, and the art ist of the ch•yselephantine Athena Parthenos, as well as the creator of the highest anthropo morphic type of Greek religion in the great ehry;elephantine Zeus at Olympia, of whose calm and marvelous beauty and dignity we can now, unfortunately, gain but feeble conception.
We have noticed Phidias's activity in connec tion with the Parthenon, but we must not leave unmentioned the other great buildings of the time, the Propylaea, the so-called Theseum, the Erechtheum, the temple at Eleusis, and that at Rhamnus, while a like architectural activity was going on across seas in lonia, Sicily, and Magna Gnecia.
Painting as a great and independent art was developed contemporarily with Phidias, by Po lygnotus, of Thai:os, whose paintings in the Leschc (portico) at Delphi have been fortu nately described to us by Pausanias. He must have powerfully influenced the art of the cera mic painters, as we seem to be able to trace in their works. After him may be mentioned Agatharchus, of Samos; Apollodorus, the first painter of pictures in the more modern sense (i.e., on flat, movable surfaces, anciently not of canvas, but of board) : Zeuxis, the contemporary of Socrates, whose "Centaur Family" is mi nutely described to us by Lucian, and Pa rthasins, of Ephesus.
The work of the Argive-Sieyonian School was carried forward by Polyclitus (q.v.). He was the author of the Doryphorus (spear-bearer), and Diadumenus (youth binding on bend-band), which are known to us through Roman copies; and he established a canon of proportion charac terized by a certain squareness and heaviness.
After the stormy period of the Peloponnesian War we find Cephisodotus and Praxiteles (q.v.), probably his son, carrying out Greek plastic art to its legitimate and logical conclu sion, and to fullest bloom and perfection. The "Eirene" (Peace) with the baby "Plutus," pre served in Munich, a replica of a work of Cephis odotus, is a gracious and lovely figure; but Praxiteles's marble "Hermes," with the baby "Dionysus," found in the place designated by Pausanias, the Herceum at Olympia, in exquisite sensuous beauty, in perfection of manly strength and grace, and in the combination of the divine ideal with human form, as well as in complete mastery of technique, surpasses all that is left us of ancient art, while the pensive expression of the god's face indicates but too clearly the speculative thought that was undermining the old faith. There is no more perfect image of the period than this marvelous statue. It is to Praxiteles that we are to attribute the develop ment, if not the invention, of languid but not yet effeminate figures, with hand supported on hip, such as the famous "Faun," of which sev eral replicas exist, perhaps even the torso of the Praxiteles is preeminently the sculp tor of youthful beauty, not merely in man but also in woman, as proved by his famous "CM dian Aphrodite," inadequately preserved in replicas.