"I throw an apple at my fair, And if she love me, love me truly, She have no mind to be persuaded, Still let her take the lover's token And think how soon it will be faded." Translated by J. H. MERIVALE. Charming and valuable as the statuettes are which deal with the outer aspect of a woman's life, they are still more interesting when they take us into the women's apartments and open for us what otherwise would be a sealed book. We see the little girl We see the little girl dressed in her best, seated on a square stool (Fig. 23), quivering all over with suppressed excitement at the prospect of some outing, perhaps the yearly fair, when toys of all kinds were given to the children. An older maiden strolls in the garden talking to the pet bird cooing on her shoulder (Fig. 21). Birds are not infrequent accessories of the Tanagra figures, whether boys or girls, youths or maidens, and the figure serves to illustrate that fondness for pets to which Greek epigrams so often allude. Another phase of life, the interchange of visits between neighbours, is amusingly illustrated by the accompanying group of two ladies seated on a sofa (Fig. 27), enjoying a good gossip; it is the plastic representation of the opening scene between "Gorgo" and "Praxinoë" of the Adoniazuse of Theocritus.1 Praxinoë. Dear Gorgo! you are quite a stranger; I'd almost given you up. Sit down! Gorgo. I hardly thought to get here alive; such a crush! all sorts and conditions of men, and what a distance away you do live now! P. Oh, well! that tyrant of mine took this hovel, I can't call it a house, at the back of beyond, to keep us apart—it's just like him! Tiresome pest! G. My dear! don't talk like that about your husband before the child. Look! how he's staring! Never mind, Zopyrion, my pet, mama's not talking about dada! Good gracious! he understands! Dear Dada! P. "Dear dada" had some marketing to do the other day, soda and rouge to get, and if you believe me he brought home salt! and so on, the gossip being only cut short by the necessity of Gorgo's putting on her shawl and hat to go and see the Adonis show in Alexandria. 1 Adoniazusa, 1—16. The koroplastæ did not neglect that most important of persons in a Greek household, the nurse, though being a slave they usually treat her in a spirit of caricature (Fig. 24). Greek writers are loud in condemnation of the custom of entrusting the care of a free-born Greek to a barbarian. who could not even speak properly, but in spite of their protests. Thracian nurses were in great demand, and the memory of one of these, Cleita, has been preserved to us, by her grateful charge.1 "TO CLEITA. The child Medeius to his Thracian nurse This stone, inscribed To Cleita,' raised in mid high way. Who doubts it? Is not Cleita's worth' a proverb to this day?" The tie which bound nurse and nursling was a very close one, and in one of Demosthenes' orations 2 the plaintiff explains that after long and faithful service his nurse was set free and married. Long years afterwards her husband died, and she being alone and friendless, turned for help to her foster son, now a married man with children, and "of course I took her in, I could not see my nurse or my pedagogue in want. The Boeotian artist treats the nurse in a spirit of caricature, but his attitude to the mother is quite different, and one of the most charming statuettes (Fig. 25) in the collection shows us a graceful young mother in her high-backed chair singing her baby to sleep, perhaps with the cradle-song, which the Greek poet, Simonides, puts into the mouth of Danaë.3 "Sleep on, my babe, I bid thee sleep, And sleep, thou raging sea; And sleep, ye countless cruel griefs Of miserable me.”—Translated by W. HAY. The statuettes which illustrate this account of a Greek woman's life 1 Ὁ μικκὸς τό δ' ἔτευξε τᾷ Θρείσσα Μήδειος τὸ μνᾶμ ̓ ἐπὶ τῇ ὁδῷ, κἠπέγραψε Κλείτας. ἑξεῖ τὴν χάριν ἡ γυνὰ ἀντὶ τὴνων ὧν τὸν κῶρον ἔθρεψε. τὶ μάν; ἔτι χρησίμα καλεῖται. 2 Dem. contra Everg et Mnesib, 55, 56. THEOC. Epig. xviii. 3 κέλομαι δ' εἶδε βρέφος, ενδέτω δὲ πόντος ἑυδέτω δ' ἄμοτον κακόν.—SIMONIDES, Bergk, op. cit. 1131. and habits do not come only from Tanagra; some, and those not the least beautiful, are from other parts of Greece, though all are of the type which we associate with the name. It is noteworthy that when the importers did not merely content themselves with a rough reproduction of the graceful figures, their renderings of them have just the touch of character which the Tanagra statuettes lack. A comparison of the two standing figures from Corinth (Plate I.) and from Eretria (Fig. 17) with another (Fig. 20) from Tanagra shows the precise nature of this difference. Both figures are characterized by less delicacy of workmanship and by greater breadth of treatment than their model; this shows in the firmer pose, the attitude of the head, the arrangement of the drapery, while the Corinthian potter has substituted for the usual thin, rectangular plinth, a high one of columnar form which adds much to the effectiveness of the figure, though it detracts somewhat from its poetry. Just the same difference is shown in the group of two ladies talking together (Fig. 27). It is from Myrina in Asia Minor, and obviously inspired by Tanagra types, but we are immediately impressed with the reality of the scene; whatever the subject of the conversation, the talkers are engrossed in it, and the group gains immensely in value by the addition of this touch of realism. The Tanagra potter was, however, particularly happy in his rendering of figures or scenes in which gentle grace predominates, and one of his most attractive groups is that of the mother and child which has all the sweet serenity of a medieval Madonna (Fig. 25), but it is not a matter for surprise that with the growing taste for realism in art, his dainty productions ceased to please and had to give way to a coarser and more human type of figure. CHAPTER VI GENRE STATUETTES OF MASCULINE TYPE "The first of mortal joys is health, Next beauty; and the third is wealth, The fourth, all youth's delights to prove, With those we love.”—Translated by J. H. MERIVALE. Υγιαίνειν μὲν ἄριστον ἀνδρὶ θνατῷ, δεύτερον δὲ φυὰν καλὸν γενέσθαι, τὸ τρίτον δὲ πλουτεῖν ἀδόλως καὶ τὸ τέταρτον ἡβᾶν μετὰ τῶν φίλων. Bergk op. cit. 1289. THE Greek passion for beauty of form led to a cultus of youthful physical beauty and of its fortunate possessors; the beauty of youth, the deformity of age, is the frequent theme of the Greek poets; the pitifulness of growing old, of losing the vigour and freshness of youth, the horror and disgrace of physical decay, impressed the Greek imagination.1 "The fruit of youth remains Brief as the sunshine scattered o'er the plains, To die were better than to breathe the day."-Translated by F. ELTON. The sentiment was no late importation into Greek literature, it finds voice even in Homer,2 and the crowning argument used by Tyrtæus to incite the Spartan youth to prowess in war, is the cruelty 1 μίνυνθα δὲ γίγνεται ἥβης καρπός, ὅσον, τ ̓ ἐπὶ γῆν κίδναται ἠέλιος, αὐτὰρ ἐπὴν δὴ τοῦτο τέλος παραμείψαται ὥρης αὐτίκα τεθνάμεναι βέλτιον ἢ βίοτος. MIMNERMUS, Frag. 2; Bergk op. cit. 409. 2 Iliad, xxii. 71f. 53 of allowing an elder man to suffer death in battle, a death which would reveal the deformities of age, but which could only bring fresh glory to the beauty of youth.1 "Leave not our sires to stem the unequal fight, Whose limbs are nerved no more by buoyant might. Nor lagging backward, let the younger breast To welter in the combat's foremost thrust, His hoary head dishevelled in the dust - But youth's fair form, though fall'n, is ever fair, Translated by T. CAMPBELL. This idea is so characteristically Greek, so interwoven with the fibre of Greek life and thought, that it would be strange if the potter had not given expression to it. Every collection of Tanagra figures contains a certain number of male types, and these almost without exception represent youths under twenty; it is only very rarely that we find the portrait of a man of middle age, while old age is usually treated in a spirit of caricature, with special reference to its loss of figure, hair and teeth. the Here again the statuettes afford valuable evidence of contemporary Greek taste and thought, and an interesting commentary on statements of classical authors about the education and training of the Greek boy. This was conducted on principles diametrically opposed to those on which his sister was brought up, she entirely at home, he entirely away from it. This absence of family life is the weak point in the Greek social system; a boy was removed from his mother's care 1 τοὺς δε παλαιοτέρους ὧν οὐκέτι γούνατ' ἐλαφρά, αἰσχρὸν γὰρ δὴ τοῦτο μετὰ προμάχοισι πεσόντα κεῖσθαι πρόσθε νέων ἄνδρα παλαιότερον ἤδε λευκὸν ἔχοντα κάρη πολιόν τε γένειον θυμὸν ἀποπνείοντ ̓ ἄλκιμον ἐν κονίῃ αισχρὰ τάγ ̓ ὀφθαλμοῖς καὶ νεμεσητὸν ἰδεῖν καὶ χρόα γυμνωθέντα νέοισι δὲ πάντ' ἐπέοικεν ὀφρ' ἐρατῆς ἥβης ἀγλαὸν ἄνθος ἔχῃ.—TYRTUS, Bergk op. cit. 398. |