Archaic Greek Art.

students and visitors . The five previous lectures treated of the earlier stages of Greek art from its rude beginnings at Mycenas to the period when great advances hacl been made in the casting of bronze , when marble had come into more general use as the material of sculpture , ancl when we first found Greek inscriptions on works of art . In these five lectures Greek art was traced to

as late as about B . C . 520 . The later archaic period might be conceived as extending over about the . half-century from B . C . 520 to about B . C . 470 , soon after which date Phidias flourished . This period of fifty years was pregnant with great historical revolutions , the ultimate results of which were to establish the pre-eminence of Helenic civilization and secure the national indeoendenoe . Within this period fell the expulsion of the Pisistratidte from Athens

, the defeat of the Carthaginians by Gelon , and his rule and that of his brother Hiero at Syracuse ; the revolt of the Ionians from Persia , ancl their final submission after the fall of Miletus ; the successive victories of the Greeks over the Persians at Marathon , Salamis , Plata * . In the same age tragedy , under Phrynichus and iEschylus , was developed at Athens , Pindar flourished , and Herodotus was . born . . The progress of art during the same period was

commensurate with these great changes . One principal cause of this was the growing importance of the great Agonistic festivals , especially of that of Olynipia . It became the custom for victorious athletes or winners of the chariot-race or horse-race to dedicate statues and gronps in commemoration of their victory either at Olympia or in their native cities . Bronze was the principal material used , ancl thus the artists gradually learnt how to represent groups in violent action , while their observation of nature was sharpened b y the study of living forms . Ageladas , an Argive sculptor , who was the teacher

of Phidias , made several of these groups . Onatus , of iE gina , was another celebrated sculptor of this period . He made at Olympia a group representing the Greek heroes casting lots who should fight with Hector ^ and other groups ancl statues at Olynipia . Three artists of this period—Canachus , Gallon , Calamis—are associated in tw r o well-known passages of Cicero ancl Quintillian , from . which we gather that in the judgment of Roman critics Canaobus ancl Gallon were harder in style than Calamisand less true to nature . The most

, notable work from the Attic school in this period was the group of Harmodius and Aristogiton , by Oritius and Nesiotes , of which we may form some notion from a group in marble extant at Naples , from an Athenian coin , and from a vase . Calamis , who was an Athenian artist , excelled in the representation of horses , and commemorated the Olympic victories of Hiero by bronze groups at Olympia . P ythagoras of Rhegium was another sculptor who made statues

of Olympic victors , and who is distinguished as having made considerable advance tow arcls the more correct rendering of nature , especially in the representation of the surface of the body with its veins and muscles . The temples built in this period further promoted the progress of sculpture by the decorations they required in the metopes and pediments . Thus artists were exercised in the composition of comjiljeated groups of figures in the round . The

lecturer then described the various drawings which were exhibited : Two metopes from temples at Selinus , in Sicily ( the earlier mi ght date from as early as B . C . 600 , the other probably as iateas B . C . 470 ) ; one side of the frieze of the Harpy tomb ; casts of two Sphinxes from Xantbus ; a bronze representing the Apollo of Miletus ; the western pediment of the temple of Athene atiEgina ; a coin of Syracuse of the time of Gelon I . ; a terra-ootta figure from Camirus , in Rhodes ; the warrior on an Athenian steed , by Aristocles a seated figure of Athene , from Athens .