All this time art has been slowly reviving. Lyric poetry and music had found a patroness in the advancing city of Sparta. The Heroic and Olympian cults which were fostered by the epic poets and by the influence of the Delphic oracle undoubtedly gave an impetus to art, partly by requiring temples and temple statues, and partly by fixing certain artistic types for the principal deities. Even the potter, though he is still where we left him in the Dipylon and Geometric styles of ornament, begins to depict the heroic mythology, and to evolve types which can be imitated and improved. This fixing of types or motives was essential to the progress of ancient art. The Greek sculptor does not carve a statue, as novel and original as possible, to send to an exhibition of art. He is commissioned to make, we will say, an Athena; in that case he has to express the armour, the ægis, the owl, perhaps the snake. He tries, indeed, to make the goddess as lovely and strong and benignant as he can. Perhaps he is allowed to choose between the Polias type or the seated statue, but in any case the type is fixed for him. Or he may be asked to make an athlete statue; in that case he will have to carve a nude male figure as physically perfect as possible, in an athletic attitude. He will not be asked, yet, to portray accidental facts, such as the lineaments of the particular man the statue is to honour. That is how, by concentrating on a limited number of motives, Greek art succeeded in a few generations in approaching so near to perfection. Show me the patron, and I will show you the style of art which will prevail. The horse-riding aristocracies of Northern ancestry, who prevailed everywhere in Greece in the eighth century, cared little for art. Poetry they could enjoy, if it sang the praises of their ancestors, or if it cheered them at their cups. Hence the popularity of Homer and the Homeridæ and Hesiod on the one hand, of Archilochus, Simonides, and Alcman on the other. But these little “Basileis” were not kings enough to keep courts where art could flourish without starving, and as yet there were few cities great enough to supply the want of a patron. Once more we must look to politics if we wish to understand the revival of art.