"Quaff with me the purple wine, Into dull sobriety."-Translated by J. H. MERIVale. Turning from the lessons the statuettes teach us to the statuettes themselves, it will be noticed at once how few they are in comparison with their feminine counterparts, about one in fifteen is the usual proportion. All the specimens, however, merit careful attention; the figure on Plate IV. representing a laughing boy, is noticeable not only for its expression, which is unusually animated for a terracotta statuette, but for the extreme care with which all the details of the costume are rendered, mantle, fillet and sandals fastened with cross-way thongs. Another (Plate IV.) has an interesting peculiarity of technique, the nude portions are not merely dipped in lime-wash and then painted, they are enamelled in colour, and hence the excellent preservation of the surface and the colour. The same technique appears in several other statuettes in the British Museum collection representing Leda and the swan, a grotesque old woman, etc. In the first century B.C. the potters of Centorbi in Sicily reverted to this technique with great success, an Eros (Plate VIII.) has the nude portions enamelled in pink, and other statuettes in a lurid purple which is the reverse of pleasing. In order to fully appreciate the excellence of the Tanagra statuettes at their best period we have only to compare Fig. 28 and Fig. 29, both representing the semi-nude figure of a youth. The graceful, easy pose, the effective contrast of the nude forms and the drapery, the gentle expression of the Tanagra youth, make up an artistic whole in which we see the ideal ephebe of Greek fancy; the other figure, which probably comes from the neighbouring district of Eretria, and belongs to a later period, gives us a faithful and conscientious portrait of the ephebe as he was, seen through a less artistic medium than the Praxitelean ideal. 1 Σύν μοι πίνε, συνήβα, συνέρα, συστεφανηφόρει, PRAXILLA, Bergk op. cit. Frag. 1293. The same may be said of the stalwart warrior shown in Fig. 30, who bears the same relation to the youthful armed warriors found among Tanagra figures, that the female figures from Corinth and Eretria do to the ordinary Tanagra type: he has gained in character what he has lost in grace. If we may judge from the infrequency with which they were reproduced by foreign workshops, the masculine types did not enjoy the same favour as the feminine ones, and this was probably the case; they were consecrated to the glory of the ephebe, and represent a phase of life and thought which was too local, too exclusively Greek to appeal to nations among whom it did not exist. CHAPTER VII STATUETTES ILLUSTRATIVE OF MYTH AND LEGEND "To shaggy Pan and all the wood-nymphs fair, And reached him sweetest water with their hands." Translated by J. W. BURGON. Φριξόκομα τόδε Πανὶ καὶ αὐλιάσιν θέτο Νύμφαις οὕνεχ ̓ ὑπ ̓ ἀζαλέου θέρεος μέγα κεκμηῶτα ANYTE, Anthol. Pal. xvi. (App. Plan.) 291. THE border-land of Greek mythology is peopled with a throng of beings neither human nor divine, satyrs, nymphs "those daughters fair of Ægis-bearing Jove,"—and nereids, who filled a very large place in popular fancy, and who, especially to the country folk, were everpresent and very real. The shepherd heard them as he wandered with his flocks among the mountains: "Pan on his oaten pipes awakes the strain, And fills with dulcet sounds the pastoral plain; Lured by his notes the nymphs their bowers forsake, From every hill and ancient grove around, And in the mazy dance trip o'er the ground." Translated by J. H. MERIVALE. it was the wood-nymphs whom he thanked for grateful shade at noon-day, and for the fresh springs at which his parched flock slaked 1 Αὐτὸς ἐπεὶ σύριγγι μελίζεται εὐκελάδῳ Πάν |