But the efflorescence of the sculptor’s art in fifth-century Greece can only be realised by reference to the efforts of an earlier age. In comparison with poetry, sculpture developed late in Greece. Homer had lived and died. His epics had been chanted by the minstrels of the feudal courts for hundreds of years; but it was not until the tribal organisation became weakened, and the Greek trading and manufacturing cities arose, that men looked to marble and bronze to give material form to their fleeting imaginations. The case of Greece is, however, typical. The sculptor, like the dramatist, needs the atmosphere of a city and the vivifying effects of a city’s ever-changing influences to kindle the vital spark. Both are inspired, not by the appreciation of the few, but by the homage of the many. So long as the Greek husbandmen met by tens to honour Dionysus, the god’s feast was the occasion of a rude medley of rustic song and dance. When thousands gathered in the theatre below the Acropolis at Athens, an Æschylus showed that an art, using the same elements, could sound the depths of all hearts and imaginations. So, in the spot where a few rustics offered up their prayers and their praises for the increase of their herds, a rude wooden image was sufficient to mark the resting-place of the god. But when the Athenian populace gathered near the shrine of Athene, the goddess was symbolised by the great ivory and gold statue of Phidias. The earliest Hellenic images were of wood hewn into the rough semblance of human figures. There was no attempt at more than vaguely indicating the limbs. The heavy blocks were, however, covered with richly embroidered dresses which served to hide some of their rudeness. When stone began to be used instead of the more perishable wood, the masons did not conceive the possibility of any great improvement. Yet these painted wooden images were not the first instances of the sculptor’s art in the Ægean peninsula. Six hundred years before, the Mycenæan civilisation in the south of the Peloponnesus and in the island of Crete, which the excavations of Dr. Schliemann and Sir Arthur Evans have recently revealed, had given birth to work far nearer to nature than any produced in the eighth and ninth centuries. But during the years following the so-called Dorian invasion this was lost. Mycenæ, Tiryns, and Cnossus became vague memories—the dwelling-places of mythical kings and heroes—invaders and natives, settling down to an agricultural life in a not-too-fruitful country. The bare necessities of life were hard to come by. There was no leisured class such as alone could support an art like sculpture.