It would not be easy to imagine a more vigorous and lifelike image of a
fallen warrior than this. Drapery and bodily forms alike are of the
noblest. The face, with its square form, overhanging eyebrows, and
parted lips, breathes the very spirit of military ardour. Such as every
friend of Aristonautes would wish him to look when he sprang forward in
his last fatal rush upon the foe, such he stands in imperishable marble.
A grave in Westminster Abbey is supposed to recompense the English
soldier for pain and untimely death, but surely the idea of living in
marble under the eyes of all his fellow-citizens might furnish at least
as strong an impulse to valiant deeds as the thought of a modern
cathedral with its tasteless monuments and inanimate likenesses. It
would, however, be a mistake to suppose that this figure, for all its
lifelikeness, is an individual portrait. It is too strongly marked by
the style of one of the noblest of Attic sculptors, Scopas, to allow us
to doubt that there is in it a strong ideal element.
Another monument of the same school is the well-known relief (Pl. XII)
in which we see Dexileos of the Athenian cavalry riding down and
transfixing an overthrown foe, who vainly tries to strike back[172]. The
inscription beneath this relief, which comes from a small chapel near
the Dipylon gate of Athens, proves that it was executed in memory of a
horseman who fell in the Corinthian War of 394 B.C. History records that
in the battle the Athenians were defeated, and one is tempted to pause
for a moment to consider how a modern sculptor would have represented
Dexileos. An artist such as those who have modelled the tombs of St.
Paul’s and Westminster would probably have sculptured him smitten to
death, falling back in the arms of a grateful country; perhaps would
have added above an angel crowning him with a wreath of celestial
reward. But the Greek artists of the good period could not find in
defeat and death any elements worthy of their art: they must represent
those whom they portrayed in the moment of success and victory, not in
that of overthrow. The difference is very suggestive. Infinitely
inferior to Greek art in charm, in simplicity and dignity, modern art
introduces higher elements than were usually taken into account in
Hellas. From the artistic point of view the ancients were right; but
from the ethical point of view there may be more to be said for the
moderns.
[Illustration: FIG 56. WARRIOR OF TEGEA.]
A more modest memorial of a warrior comes from Tegea[173] (Fig. 56). In
the relief we see a man named Lisas in the
[Illustration:
PLATE XII
_Page 148_
]
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