General Character of Greek Ceramics.--Form and Color.--Borrowed from Egypt and Phœnicia.--How Original.--UNBAKED CLAY: Bricks and Statues.--TERRA-COTTA: Where Used.--Tiles.--Models.--Vessels.--Pithos.--Amphora.--Pigments used on Terra-cotta.--Rhyton.--GLAZED WARES: Quality of Glaze.--Paste.--Enumeration and Description of Vessels.--Uses of Vases.--Chronological Arrangement.--Methods of Making Vessels.--Successive Styles of Ornamentation.--Figures.--Earliest Style.--Archaic Style.--Human Figures.--“Old Style.”--Approach to Best Art.--“Fine Style.”--“Florid Style.”--Decline.--Classification according to Subjects Represented on Vases.--Reliefs and Statuettes as Decoration. [Illustration: Fig. 165.--Early Greek Aryballoi. Egypto-Phœnician Style. (Trumbull-Prime Coll., N. Y. Metrop. Museum.)] Were we to be guided solely by continuity in point of time and the succession of ideas, our next subject would be the art of Spain and Italy. We turn, in preference, to that of Greece. It claims the precedence due to priority of date. It holds also a position of what might be called isolation. Its general character has been indicated in the Introduction. The severity and simplicity of the taste of the Greek, and his indifference to effects in color, while permitting him to receive suggestions from Egypt and the East, led him to disregard those adjuncts of art which they held in highest esteem. To him beauty of form was everything, color little or nothing. The former he brought to such perfection that no advance has been made beyond the point he reached. Greek form embodies all that can be said of grace and proportion. We may imitate, but we can hardly hope to excel, what Greece accomplished in her early bloom. We may find prototypes in Egypt for some of her vessels (Fig. 165), but still her art, the culmination of all that was best in preceding forms, is pre-eminently her own. We say this without disparagement to those who were her teachers. To Egypt, in particular, Greece turned, at a remote age, for instruction, and learned from Phœnicia and the other nations with which trade brought her into contact. In this connection the group (Fig. 166) of vases from Athens may be compared with the Phœnician from Cyprus. There are in the decoration the same geometrical designs, the same vertical concentric circles, the same animal figures which the Phœnicians drew from Assyria. But after making every allowance for suggestions from abroad, after conceding that Grecian art is the development of that which preceded it, and that it occupies a well-defined place in progressive history, we fail to find anywhere the equals of the best ceramic works of Greece. [Illustration: Fig. 166.--Primitive Vessels, from Athens and Argos.]