as well as of technical skill in execution. We do not therefore find in this age that the sculptor lacks the power to express his ideas, or that his ideas are too strong for the forms in which they are expressed; there is rather that perfect harmony between the two that, here as elsewhere, is characteristic of Hellenic art. CHAPTER VI INDIVIDUALISM The great religious ideals of the fifth century were, as we have seen, closely bound up with the subordination of the individual to the State; and their expression in sculpture was also due in almost every case to the employment of the artist by the community. In the fourth century, on the other hand, we find on every side a stronger assertion of individuality. It was a commonplace among Attic orators in the fourth century to contrast the private luxury and ostentation of their own day with the simplicity of life among the great men of the earlier age, whose houses could not be distinguished from those of the common people, though their public buildings and the temples they raised to the gods were of unparalleled splendour. In religion, and above all in religious art, we find something of the same tendency. There are few if any records of the dedication during the fourth century of those great statues of the chief gods which were looked back to by all subsequent generations as the embodiment of a national ideal. But there were, perhaps, more statues of the gods made in the fourth century which were the objects not merely of artistic admiration, but of intense and sometimes morbid personal devotion. The mere list of the gods preferred for representation is an indication in itself; while in the fifth century, Zeus and Athena and Hera, the great gods of the State or of the Hellenic race, are the subjects of the most famous statues, in the fourth century it is rather Aphrodite and Dionysus and Asclepius, those whose gifts contribute to individual happiness or enjoyment, that offer most scope to the powers of the artist.