Winkelmann, who on so many questions connected with art has put forward opinions highly just and philosophical, appears to have fallen short of his wonted acumen in the theory he had formed of the beauty of the goddesses. His language in fact descends to puerility where he says:—"Since on the subject of female beauty there are few observations to be made, it may be concluded that the study of it is less complicated and far easier for the artist. Nature itself appears to experience less difficulty in the formation of women than of men, _if it be true_ that there are born fewer boys than girls."[969] Since the direct contrary is true, this imaginary difficulty of Nature (not to hazard a more sacred word) may be dismissed with contempt; but the remark by which it is ushered in requires to be confuted. Artists are well aware, and Winkelmann himself admits, that the beau ideal of heroic beauty (that for example of Achilles or of Theseus) is merely the blending of feminine loveliness with masculine power, so as to leave it undetermined, from the countenance, to which sex it belongs. And still the beauty of the Grecian youth, where they are beautiful, consists in a near approach to that of the female, so near indeed that they might be easily mistaken for women. If, therefore, the beauty of men when highest and most perfect, consists chiefly in what it borrows from that of woman, the latter necessarily constitutes the apex of human beauty; and the artist whom this conviction guides in his creations, will be the first to rival the great masters of antiquity. Another observation which it is strange to find in the Historian of Art, is that artists draped their female figures because of the little difficulty there is in imitating the naked form. But was it the extreme facility of representing paternal grief that led Timanthes to veil the face of his Agamemnon? In draping their goddesses and heroines, artists were guided by other reasons, of which the principal was their desire to conform to the ideas of the poets and to popular belief. Footnote 969: Hist. de l’Art, iv. 2. 67. CHAPTER X. HELLENIC LITERATURE.