The Legacy of Greece: Essays By: Gilbert Murray, W. R. Inge, J. Burnet, Sir T. L. Heath, D'arcy W. Thompson, Charles Singer, R. W. Livingston, A. Toynbee, A. E. Zimmern, Percy Gardner, Sir Reginald Blomfield
Philosophy
The Legacy of Greece: Essays By: Gilbert Murray, W. R. Inge, J. Burnet, Sir T. L. Heath, D'arcy W. Thompson, Charles Singer, R. W. Livingston, A. Toynbee, A. E. Zimmern, Percy Gardner, Sir Reginald Blomfield
Greece -- Civilization
[Illustration: FIG. 2. A, Jaw bones of lion; B, head of lioness from
Caere vase (Fig. 1), after Morin. Note the careful way in which the
artist has distinguished the molar from the cutting teeth.]
Animal paintings of this order are found scattered over the Greek world
with special centres or schools in such places as Cyprus, Boeotia, or
Chalcis. The very name for a painter in Greek, _zoographos_, recalls the
attention paid to living forms. By the fifth century, in painting them
as in other departments of Art, the supremacy of Attica had asserted
itself, and there are many beautiful Attic vase-paintings of animals to
place by the side of the magnificent horses' heads of the Parthenon
(Fig. 6). In Attica, too, was early developed a characteristic and
closely accurate type of representation of marine forms, and this
attained a wider vogue in Southern Italy in the fourth century. From the
latter period a number of dishes and vases have come down to us bearing
a large variety of fish forms, portrayed with an exactness that is
interesting in view of the attention to marine creatures in the
surviving literature of Aristotelian origin (Fig. 3).
[Illustration: FIG. 3. Paintings of fish on plates. Italo-Greek work of
the fourth century B. C. From Morin.
A. Sargus vulgaris.
B. Crenilabrus mediterraneus.
C. Uranoscopus scaber?]
These artistic products are more than a mere reflex of the daily life
of the people. The habits and positions of animals are observed by the
hunter, as are the forms and colours of fish by the fisherman; but the
methods of huntsman and fisher do not account for the accurate portrayal
of a lion's dentition, the correct numbering of a fish's scales or the
close study of the lie of the feathers on the head, and the pads on the
feet, of a bird of prey (Fig. 4). With observations such as these we are
in the presence of something worthy of the name _Biology_. Though but
little literature on that topic earlier than the writings of Aristotle
has come down to us, yet both the character of his writings and such
paintings and pictures as these, suggest the existence of a strong
interest and a wide literature, biological in the modern sense,
antecedent to the fourth century.
[Illustration: FIG. 4. Head and talons of the Sea-eagle, _Haliaëtus
albicilla_:
A, From an Ionic vase of the sixth century B. C.
B, Drawn from the object.
From Morin.]
Greek science, however, exhibits throughout its history a peculiar
characteristic differentiating it from the modern scientific standpoint.
Most of the work of the Greek scientist was done in relation to man.
Nature interested him mainly in relation to himself. The Greek
scientific and philosophic world was an anthropocentric world, and this
comes out in the overwhelming mass of medical as distinct from
biological writings that have come down to us. Such, too, is the
sentiment expressed by the poets in their descriptions of the animal
creation:
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