Religion and Art in Ancient Greece

Religion and Art in Ancient
Greece, by

Ernest Arthur Gardner This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at
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Title: Religion and Art in Ancient Greece
Author: Ernest Arthur Gardner
Release Date: February 6, 2007 [EBook #20523]
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK RELIGION
AND ART IN ANCIENT GREECE ***

Produced by Ron Swanson

RELIGION AND ART IN ANCIENT GREECE
BY ERNEST A. GARDNER
YATES PROFESSOR OF ARCHAEOLOGY AND PUBLIC
ORATOR IN THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON; LATE DIRECTOR

OF THE BRITISH SCHOOL AT ATHENS

LONDON AND NEW YORK HARPER & BROTHERS 45
ALBEMARLE STREET, W. 1910

PREFACE
Greek religion may be studied under various aspects; and many recent
contributions to this study have been mainly concerned either with the
remote origin of many of its ceremonies in primitive ritual, or with the
manner in which some of its obscurer manifestations met the deeper
spiritual needs which did not find satisfaction in the official cults. Such
discussions are of the highest interest to the anthropologist and to the
psychologist; but they have the disadvantage of fixing our attention too
exclusively on what, to the ordinary Greek, appeared accidental or even
morbid, and of making us regard the Olympian pantheon, with its
clearly realised figures of the gods, as a mere system imposed more or
less from outside upon the old rites and beliefs of the people. In the
province of art, at least, the Olympian gods are paramount; and thus we
are led to appreciate and to understand their worship as it affected the
religious ideals of the people and the services of the State. For we must
remember that in the case of religion even more than in that of art, its
essential character and its influence upon life and thought lie rather in
its full perfection than in its origin.
In a short sketch of so wide a subject it has seemed inadvisable to make
any attempt to describe the types of the various gods. Without full
illustration and a considerable expenditure of space, such a description
would be impracticable, and the reader must be referred to the ordinary
handbooks of the subject. A fuller account will be found in Dr. Farnell's
Cults of the Greek States, and some selected types are discussed with
the greatest subtlety and understanding in Brunn's Griechische
Gotterideale. In the present volume only a few examples are mentioned
as characteristic of the various periods. It may thus, I trust, serve as an
introduction to a more complete study of the subject; and may, at the

same time, offer to those who have not the leisure or inclination for
such further study, at least a summary of what we may learn from
Greece as to the relations of religion and art under the most favourable
conditions. It is easy, as Aristotle says, to fill in the details if only the
outlines are rightly drawn--[Greek: doxeie d' an pantos einai
proagagein kai diorthosai ta kalos echonta te perigraphe.]

CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. IDOLATRY AND IMAGINATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
II. ASPECTS OF RELIGION--POPULAR, OFFICIAL, POETICAL,
PHILOSOPHICAL . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
III. THE CONDITIONS OF RELIGIOUS ART IN
GREECE . . . . . . . . . 48
IV. ANTHROPOMORPHISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 58
V. IDEALISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
VI. INDIVIDUALISM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
VII. PERSONIFICATION, CONVENTION, AND
SYMBOLISM . . . . . . . . . 108

RELIGION AND ART IN ANCIENT GREECE
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION--IDOLATRY AND IMAGINATION
The relation of religion to art has varied greatly among different

peoples and at different periods. At the one extreme is the
uncompromising puritan spirit, which refuses to admit any devices of
human skill into the direct relations between God and man, whether it
be in the beauty of church or temple, in the ritual of their service, or in
the images which they enshrine. Other religions, such as those of the
Jews or of Islam, relegate art to a subordinate position;