Not only beautiful music, but beautiful art also, was believed to produce, by an unconscious but irresistible influence, beautiful characters in those who came into contact with it; while, on the other hand, bad art, as well as bad music, was the cause of vice and low moral ideals.[693] This, they naturally thought, was particularly true in the case of children, who are so sensitive to all external influences; moreover, it is the early impressions that make most difference in a man’s life. To serve this educational end, the Hellenes expected every statue and painting, as well as every poem and tune, to have ἦθος [êthos], that is, according to Aristotle’s definition,[694] to be such that its moral purpose was manifest to the average man. For this purpose Hellenic art had to become impersonal: the great statues represent a single trait of character. The smaller individualising traits are omitted: the single trait chosen is then idealised and carried to its utmost possible development. This produced a single and easily intelligible effect. The frieze on the Parthenon represented the perfect knight in various attitudes, not So-and-so and Somebody-else. The same idealised abstractions can be traced in the “Theseus” of the Pediment, and in most of the dramas of Sophocles. The realisation of this artistic ideal was made possible by the fusion of the two currents, Doric and Ionic. At the end of the sixth century a wave of Doricism passes over Athens, and the first competent athlete-sculptors arise there. A second wave came in the middle of the next century, in the period of Perikles. The Dorian characteristics now dominate Attic artists alike in poetry, sculpture, and vase-painting. Aeschylus had possessed the best traits of the Ionic temperament, chastened by the great crisis of the Persian wars: his imagination is half oriental, and he has often been compared to a Hebrew prophet. But the canons of Sophocles are purely Doric, as are those of Pheidias. The mixture of Doric ethics with Ionic imagination produces the great age of Hellenic art and literature. With art in such an educative condition, the effect of the great public buildings and temples, which adorned even quite humble villages, and of the glorious statues of which every temple, agora, and gymnasium formed a perfect treasure-house, must have been very great upon the Hellenes, who were probably the most susceptible of all peoples to artistic influences. Moderns vaguely realise that a great Gothic Cathedral does direct the emotions quite perceptibly. The more susceptible Athenians must have been much more strongly influenced by the Parthenon and the Propulaia. In fact, it is related that Epaminondas declared that his countrymen could never become great unless they removed these buildings bodily to Thebes. Strangers visiting Athens were so overcome by her architectural glories that they thought her the natural capital of the world――an effect which Perikles may well have intended. Great