CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME 
 OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT 
 FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY 
 
 HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE 
 
Cornell University Library 
 NB155 .H98 
 + 
 Greek terracotta statuettes. 
 
 3 1924 031 048 824 
 olin Overs 
 
The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031048824 
 
GREEK TERRACOTTA STATUETTES 
 
A LADY 01> CORINTH. 
 
 Brit. Mus. C. 7. 
 
 -APrl'TH 
 
GREEK TERRACOTTA 
 STATUETTES 
 
 BY 
 
 C. A. HUTTON 
 
 WITH A PREFACE BY A. S. MURRAY, LL.D. 
 
 KEEPER OF GREEK AND ROMAN ANTIOUJTIES IN THE BRITISH MUSEUM 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 is 99 
 
; ' Why should little things be blamed? 
 Little things for grace are famed. 
 Love, the winged and the wild, 
 Love was once a little child." 
 
 Trans, by J. P. Rogers 
 
 Mt] v€{ittTa (3aio7(Ti ' x°-P iS &<uOL<rtv hirrfiet' 
 fiaths Ka\ Yla<pirns (-VAe-TO Kovpos ^Epcos" 
 
 Anthol. Pal. ix. 784 
 
PREFACE 
 
 It may be said of a certain number of Greek terracottas that they 
 do not need much explanation. If a statuette is charming in its expres- 
 sion, its pose, and its costume, that was about all it was meant to be. 
 Or if we meet with a figure taken from common life, such as an old 
 nurse with a child on her lap, and are amused by it, that again was about 
 all it was meant to be. Only, what we admire through an acquired 
 taste, the old Greeks for whom these things were made admired in- 
 stinctively. The terracottas of that class reflected the daily life of 
 the Greeks, refined upon just enough to gratify the average household 
 tastes of the time. They do not call for much mythology, and in an 
 artistic sense they are not very ambitious — far less so than the bronzes, 
 for instance, or the painted vases. On the other hand, no one can 
 thoroughly understand that simplest class of statuettes without a know- 
 ledge of the people for whom they were made, and of how it came about 
 that the artistic tastes of the Greeks assumed different aspects in different 
 centuries. 
 
 That is one instance where the classical learning and artistic discrimina- 
 tion of Miss Hutton come in usefully. Still more necessary is her aid 
 if one desires to go further into the subject. For instance, it may not 
 be difficult to distinguish a Tanagra statuette from among the others 
 without knowing precisely why, but to be assured and confident in the 
 matter means a careful study of the interesting problem of local fabrics 
 in Greece and her colonies. It will then be seen, to take one illustration, 
 that the terracottas of Sicily compared with those of Tanagra are like a 
 different dialect of the Greek tongue. Or again, it may not require 
 much artistic perception to distinguish at first sight an archaic terracotta 
 of the sixth century b.c. from a later one of the third century b.c. But 
 if this first impression is to be deepened it can only be by a careful 
 
Vlll 
 
 PREFACE 
 
 analysis of artistic details, such as are characteristic of each ot these 
 periods, supplemented by knowledge of artistic development in Greece 
 during that most momentous interval of three centuries. In the archaic 
 period there is obviously greater refinement of execution and greater 
 variety of subject. There are comparatively few statuettes of fashionable 
 young women (corae), the abundance of which in the later periods justified 
 the name of coroplasta;, applied to the makers of statuettes. That is a 
 change both in style and in subject which can only be discussed and in 
 some degree explained after laborious research such as Miss Hutton's 
 in a region of archaeology which hitherto has tempted hardly any 
 scholar. 
 
 Apparently it was not till a late period that the coras began to take 
 the form of mourners, and to be associated with funeral ceremonies like 
 the " Pleureuses," as they are called, who surround the sarcophagus from 
 Sidon now in Constantinople. The terracottas in question are perhaps 
 rather more demonstrative, but there is a further analogy between them 
 and the " Pleureuses " in the fact of their being often placed in groups on 
 large terracotta vases, which vases were intended for the furniture of 
 a tomb almost as explicitly as is a sarcophagus. We know that a large 
 proportion of the terracottas, whether archaic or late, have been found in 
 tombs, and we know that the same is true of the Greek painted vases. 
 But just as there was one class of vases — the white lekythi — which had 
 been made expressly for funeral purposes, so also there was at least one 
 class of terracottas — the mourning cora; — similarly destined to the tomb 
 from the first. But these terracottas and vases, however melancholy in 
 action or in subject, and however well adapted to occasions of death, had 
 no monopoly in the furnishing of a tomb. Miss Hutton's pages show that 
 abundantly, and at the same time give many curious instances of other 
 purposes for which terracottas were produced. 
 
 One of the first things a student wants to know is how the terracottas 
 were made, and that is a point on which Miss Hutton has taken special pains 
 to be minute and exact in her information, describing at some leno-th 
 the process of making the mould and taking an impression from it in soft 
 clay, on which the artist could, if he chose, bestow any amount of finish. 
 With a few moulds and some dexterous touches on the soft clav it is 
 astonishing what a variety of figures could be produced. Then came the 
 
PREFACE ix 
 
 colouring, combined occasionally with gilding. I suppose the blues and 
 pinks of the Tanagra statuettes represent the favourite colours of dress in 
 Bceotia for display out of doors. In Athens we read of purples, saffrons, 
 and whites in a Greek inscription which gives a list of dresses that had 
 been presented to the goddess Artemis in her temple on the Acropolis. 
 On the vases we often have pictures of young women being elaborately 
 decked out, and in archaic times the women of Samos were reproached for 
 the extravagance of their ornaments and dress when they turned out to 
 ceremonies at the Temple of Hera. No wonder dress is an important 
 feature in the terracottas. 
 
 Speaking generally of the statuettes one would say, young women are 
 in a great majority, boys and girls fairly numerous, young men scarce. 
 Clearly it was the young woman who ruled the taste of the household. 
 But the coroplast may also have been guided to some extent by the very 
 practical consideration that a young woman with her dress reaching to the 
 ground presented a broad base and secured stability for the statuette, whereas 
 the figure of a young man, bare from the knees downwards, was easily broken 
 across at the ankles. Boy-figures are often made to sit on rocks, apparently 
 for no other purpose than to have a broad base and not be easily over- 
 turned. But with young men this is not at all common, and the reason 
 may be found in the difference of up-bringing between them and young 
 women which Miss Hutton has described. 
 
 There is no doubt that many of the statuettes belong to the same 
 age, and reflect the same spirit, as the epigrams of the Greek anthology. 
 I think Miss Hutton has done wisely in drawing liberally from that 
 sparkling source. 
 
 A. S. Murray. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATION'S ....... \iii 
 
 I. THE USE AND MEANING OF THE STATUETTES .... I 
 
 II. METHODS OF MANUFACTURE . . . . . 14 
 
 III. ARCHAIC STATUETTES . . . . . . . 2 1 
 
 IV. DEVELOPMENT OF LHE GENRE STATUETTE . . . .32 
 V. GENRE STATUETTES OF FEMININE TYPE ... 44 
 
 VI. GENRE STATUETTES OF MASCULINE TYPE . . . . 'S3 
 
 VII. STATUETTES ILLUSTRATIVE OF MYTH AND LEGEND ... 65 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 N.B. — All figures arc in the British Museum unless otherwise so stated. The numbers following 
 the provenance are those at present affixed to the figures in that collection, hut a new catalogue is 
 now being compiled, and this will eventually necessitate the re-numbering of the figures. Hie reputed 
 provenance is assigned in all cases. 
 
 The coloured illustrations show the present condition of the statuettes ; the notes describe their 
 original colouring. 
 
 /■(The dimensions are given in centimetres. 6 inches=rc/n. 15 centimetres.) 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS IN COLOUR. 
 
 Plate I. Standing female figure on a round plinth. Height O.30. Blue 
 shawl ... ... ... ... Corinth. C. 7. 
 
 „ II. Standing goddess. Height 0.21. Fig. broken below the knees. 
 Hair and border of robe black ; head-dress and robe red ; lower 
 necklace and bulla yellow. Thickness, 0.2. Solid. Cypriote 
 Phenician workmanship. Found on the ' Plateau Sacre ' at Cameiros. 
 
 A. 22. 
 
 „ II. Standing Aphrodite with a leveret. Height 0.24. Fine clay, no 
 
 vent. Reverse moulded. Tunic and mantle red ; sleeve green. 
 
 Used as a vase, mouth broken off. ... Cameiros. B 105 
 
 „ III. Seated Artemis. Height 0.20. Yellow pattern on stephane and 
 on back of throne ; throne blue ; footstool, hair, diplois and fawn 
 red. Square vent. Right arm added. From the Piot collection. 
 
 Uncertain. B. 358 
 „ III. Eos carrying off Kephalos. Height 0.15. Relief a jour; wings, 
 lining to cloak and figure of Kephalos red ; tunic yellow ; hair black 
 plinth blue ... ... ... Cameiros. B. 219 
 
 IV. Man on a mule. Height 0.12. Figure moulded. Mule modelled 
 by hand. Blue coat ; red hat ... ... Tanagra. B. 270 
 
 IV. Boy on a swan. Height 0.12. Swan white, with red beak; boy': 
 tunic blue ; legs and cap red ... ... Tanagra \ B. 271 
 
 IV. Athenian Boy. Height 0-12. White mantle; crown and hair red 
 Sandalled shoes. No vent ... ... Tanagra i C. 334 
 
 IV. Boy with a bag of knuckle-bones in his hand. Height 0.16. Flesh 
 rose-pink, enamelled ; hair red. Vent oblong Tanagra. C. 324. 
 
xiv LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Plate IV. Satyr mask ; height 0.5. Beard and hair blue ; face red. From 
 
 the outside of a tomb ... ... Capua. B. 479. 
 
 V. Eros, muffled in a cloak, bearing ostrich feather fan. Height O.I I. 
 
 Found in a tomb at iEgina with others of similar style, and an 
 
 archaic figure ; fan, blue, pink, and yellow ... JEgina. C. 40. 
 
 „ V. Eros bearing a musical instrument. Height 0.9. Phrygian costume, 
 
 blue. Figure modelled behind with small hole for suspension. The 
 
 tunic is not indicated behind ... ... Tanagra. C. 192. 
 
 „ VI. The cup-bearer. Nude standing youth. Height 0.17. Modelled 
 
 back and front. No vent. Flesh red ; eyeballs white ; pupil black. 
 
 Athens. C. 14. 
 „ VI. Pan the hunter. Height 0.16. Black legs ; red flesh tints and 
 
 hair. Long vent. Plinth hollow ... Eretria. C. 282. 
 
 „ VII. A dancing-girl. Height 0.30. Flesh pink ; cap and tunic black ; 
 
 hair red. Modelled behind ... ... Tanagra ? C. 286. 
 
 „ VIII. An attendant spirit. Semi-nude maiden seated on a rock. Height 
 
 0.17. Shawl pink ; hair red ; sphendone white ; mask red. 
 
 Tanagra. C. 316. 
 „ VIII. Eros. Height 0.15. Arms broken. Flesh enamelled pink. No 
 
 other trace of colour ... Centorbi, Sicily. D. 26. 
 
 ILLUSTRATIONS IN MONOCHROME. 
 
 Fig. 1. Toy goat. Height O.io. Horns red; red and black lines on body to 
 mark the wrinkles in the fleece ... ... Tanagra. B. 279. 
 
 „ 2. Jointed doll with crotala in her hands. Height 0.18. Covered with fine 
 flesh-coloured glaze. Hair brown ; ditto eyes and eyebrows ; lips 
 re ° ••• ••• •■• ... Cameiros. B. 236. 
 
 „ 3. Woman kneading bread. Height 0.12. Face and head moulded, the 
 rest modelled. No colour ... ... Cameiros. B. 221. 
 
 „ 4. Nike holding an alabastron. Height 0.26. Wings and drapery pink. 
 
 Canosa. D. 81. 
 „ 5. Nike. Height 0.25 ... ... ... j h](L D g 2 
 
 „ 6. Mould and cast of upper part of Caryatid figure. Height 0.10. 
 
 Tarentum. E. 14. 
 
 „ 7. Eros burning a butterfly. Height 0.21. Signature, APTEMilNI on 
 
 base . . . i\/r f-y 
 
 Iv-Lyrina. C. 535. 
 
 „ 8. Eros burning a butterfly. Height 0.21. Finely retouched and coloured. 
 Chlamys pink ; hair brown ; altar green // • / p , 
 
 „ 9. Seated veiled goddess. Archaic. Height 0.13 Cameiros. B tf 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xv 
 
 Fig. io. Seated goddess. Later type. Height 0.16. No trace of colour. 
 
 Cameirm. B. 83. 
 
 „ II. Nude crouching male figure. Height 0.14. Back modelled. No vent. 
 
 Traces of red on feet. Vase mouth green Cameiros. B. 89. 
 
 „ 12. Oscillum. Height 0.16. Necklace red ... Cameiros. B. 176. 
 
 „ 13. Seated Aphrodite. Height 0.30. No colour. Base open." 
 
 Larnaca. C. 80. 
 „ 14. Athena. Height 0.20. No colour. Small circular vent. 
 
 S a /amis. C. 1 25. 
 
 „ 15. Mask of Pan. Height 0.12. Surface bright pink, except beard 
 
 (brown). Two holes for suspension. Central Museum, Athens. 
 
 Discovered in American excavations in Eretria ... Eretria. 
 
 „ 16. An Athenian nymph. Height 0.16. No colour. Fine light clay. 
 
 In the collection of C. H. Smith, Esq. ... ... Athens. 
 
 „ 17. Greek lady in outdoor dress. Height 0.31. Anthemion pattern in red 
 on the fan. No colour ... ... Eretria. C. 215. 
 
 „ 18. Aphrodite with a vase of perfume. Height 0.19. Roughly modelled at 
 back ... ... ... Canosa. D. 88. 
 
 „ 19. Artemis. Height 0.23. Flesh pink ; blue tunic with gold border. 
 
 Roughly modelled behind. No vent ... Myrina. C. 530. 
 
 „ 20. Lady in outdoor dress. Height 0.26. Tunic pink. Square vent in 
 
 back, round in base ... ... Tanagra. C. 263. 
 
 „ 2r. Girl with bird. Height 0. 16. Hair red. Square vent. 
 
 Tanagra. C. 246. 
 „ 22. Corinna. Seated figure with an apple in her hand. Height 0.25. 
 Rock blue ; mantle rose-pink ; flesh pink ; hair red ; fillet gilt. 
 
 Athens ? C. 336. 
 „ 23. Little girl. Height 0.10. No colour ... Tanagra. C. 321. 
 
 „ 24. Nurse and child. Height 0.11. Hair of child red. No vent. 
 
 Tanagra. C. 279. 
 
 „ 25. Mother and child. Height 0.13. No colour. Tanagra. C. 278. 
 
 „ 26. Writing lesson. Height 0.11. Boy nude. Fillet in curly red hair. 
 
 Teacher semi-nude. Red cloak ; hair and beard red ; desk yellow. 
 
 Square vent ... ... ... Eretria. C. 214. 
 
 „ 27. Two women talking. Length 0*26. Height 0.18. Blue couch with 
 
 red cushions. Younger woman red mantle Myrina. C. 529. 
 
 „ 28. Standing athlete with oil flask and strigil. Height 0.18. Flesh pink; 
 
 pillar blue ; hair red ... ... Tanagra. C. 323. 
 
 „ 29. A banqueter. Semi-nude ephebe with a cock. Height 0.31. Flesh, 
 hair, cock, red ; cloak pink. Eretria. In a private collection in England. 
 
xvi LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Fig. 30. Bearded warrior. Height 0.24. No colour. Slightly modelled behind. 
 Oblong vent ... ... ... Thebes. Ibid. 
 
 „ 31. A Greek lady in gala dress. Height 0.24. Tunic blue and pink ; 
 shawl blue with gilt border; wreath gilt ... Tanagra. C. 254. 
 
 „ 32. Nereid bearing a helmet. Height 0.15. Hair yellow ; eye and snout 
 of dolphin red. No vent. Plinth hollow Eretria r C. 335. 
 
 „ 33. Small gold box with figure of a Nereid. Width 0.3. Found in a tomb 
 at Cameiros in Rhodes in 1862 with a vase (E. 424) now in the 
 British Museum. The other end of the box shows Eros twirling a 
 metal disc on a twisted string. The box with another like it and a 
 gem, were found in an alabaster box ... ... Cameiros. 
 
 „ 34. Marsyas playing the double flute. Height 0.10. Modelled back and 
 front. No vent. Figure and cloak red ; plinth green. Burgon 
 Coll. ... ... ... Melos. C. 73. 
 
 „ 35. Satyr with the infant Dionysos. Height 0.16. Whole body painted 
 pink ; drapery blue ; grapes black. Back roughly modelled. Small 
 round vent. Very heavy ... ... Uncertain. C. 10. 
 
 „ 36. Seilenos as a Pedagogue with Dionysos. Height 0.20. Cloak blue. 
 No vent. Plinth hollow. ... ... Eretria r C. 281. 
 
GREEK TERRACOTTA STATUETTES 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE USE AND MEANING OF THE STATUETTES 
 
 " This little toy was mighty Brutus' pet, 
 Great its renown, though small the statuette." 
 
 " Gloria tarn parvi non est obscura sigilli 
 Istius pueri Brutus amator erat." — Martial, Epig. xiv. 171. 
 
 Greek terracotta statuettes have a double charm, archaeological 
 and aesthetic, the one appealing to a rather restricted class of students, 
 the other to a much wider public. 
 
 To the archaeologist a statuette is interesting in proportion to the 
 evidence it affords of successive phases of thought and custom and 
 the light it throws on obscure points in the evolution of religion 
 and art ; from this point of view archaic figures of the sixth century, 
 some of which are frankly ugly, are much more attractive than the 
 charming genre figure of the fourth or third century, whose in- 
 terest lies mainly in its prettiness. So far, except in France, Greek 
 statuettes have been chiefly treated from the archaeological stand- 
 point, but the present publication is addressed to that wider public 
 which, though not repelled by their archaeological interest, is mainly 
 attracted by their aesthetic charm, and curious as to the circumstances 
 under which they had their being, and the civilization which they 
 represent. It therefore deals more particularly with those figures which 
 are beautiful, roughly speaking those of later date than the middle of 
 the fifth century B.C. and which represent genre subjects or hieratic and 
 mythological ones, modified by the influence of the genre types. It 
 is, however, impossible to entirely ignore the archaic statuettes of 
 
2 GREEK TERRACOTTA STATUETTES 
 
 the seventh, sixth and fifth centuries, for the genre figures are their 
 lineal descendants, and by so doing we should lose the key to the 
 most interesting and certainly the most important problems which 
 arise in connection with these figures, the uses to which the Greeks 
 put them and the meaning they attached to them. 
 
 The difficulty of the problem is much increased by the absence of 
 definite contemporary statements ; not a few classical writers allude 
 incidentally to the figures, and valuable information can be gleaned 
 from these scattered hints, but in the main we must rely on the results 
 of excavation, which in the case of terracotta figures are often in- 
 accessible, partly because in former days they were generally over- 
 looked owing to their relative insignificance, and partly because the 
 results of early excavations are often unmethodically recorded. 
 
 By far the greater number of Greek statuettes, and almost all the 
 best specimens, have been taken out of tombs, but many are found 
 on the sites of temples and houses, and it is with respect to the last- 
 named finds that we especially feel the want of accurate records, 
 because the only Greek town preserved to us is Pompeii, and its 
 excavation dates from so far back that most of the documentary 
 evidence has disappeared. The material at our disposal is, however, 
 considerable, and by its help we may hope to explain the allusions 
 of classical writers. 
 
 The evidence provided by the excavation of temple precincts is 
 extremely important as it fully bears out the statements of Greek 
 authors as to the practice of dedicating terracotta figures in temples 
 and shrines. The best known passage is in the PJutdrus of Plato. 1 
 — " By Hera," quoth Socrates, « a fair resting-place, full of summer 
 sounds and scents. Here is the lofty and spreading plane tree, and 
 the stream that flows beneath it is deliciously cool to the feet. 
 Judging from the ornaments and the images, this must be a spot 
 sacred to Achelous or the nymphs." 
 
 It may be confidently stated that every temple or shrine, so far 
 excavated, has yielded numbers of these objects, and the finds are 
 
 > P/W. 2 20, B. A vase in the Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris shows a fountain 
 decorated with terracotta figures. 
 
THE USE AND MEANING OF THE STATUETTES 3 
 
 usually of a very peculiar character, an accumulation of broken figures 
 of varying type and style, always accompanied by pieces of pottery, 
 small bronzes, etc. It is well known that the temple guardians 
 periodically emptied the shrines under their charge of the votive offerings 
 which had accumulated there ; l some of the metal objects were melted 
 down and made into basins and lavers for the temple service, but 
 nothing could be done with the terracotta figures or vases, so they 
 were thrown away, but to prevent the desecration of objects which 
 had belonged to a divinity, they were first broken. 
 
 In all such collections there are broadly speaking two classes of 
 figures — those which have some obvious connection with temple worship, 
 and those which have not. Under the first heading we may class 
 representations of the local divinity or of other divinities, of persons 
 and things employed in temple worship, and votive offerings proper, 
 such as models of animals, limbs, etc. ; under the second come grotesque 
 figures, genre figures and miscellaneous objects. 
 
 The relative proportions of these two groups vary considerably, and 
 if we take the finds at two Greek temple sites — the shrine of Demeter 
 and Kore at Tegea in the Peloponnesos, and the temple of Athene 
 Kraneia at Elatsea in Northern Greece — we obtain the following results. 
 At Tegea two hundred figures of the local goddesses, five hundred 
 water-carriers (temple attendants) and a number of pigs (sacrificial 
 animals). At Elatasa only eight statuettes of Athene, and twenty- 
 two of other divinities ; eighteen dancing figures (temple attendants) 
 and one of a priestess bearing a pig. 
 
 The second group, consisting of grotesque and genre figures and 
 miscellaneous objects, was represented at Tegea by six hundred gro- 
 tesque and ten genre statuettes, among the latter a woman riding on 
 a camel. Athene, on the other hand, received only twelve grotesque 
 figures and seven hundred genre, chiefly matrons of fourth-century type 
 (Fig. 20), and such miscellaneous objects as a dolphin, a tortoise, fans, 
 jointed dolls (Fig. 2), and weights and measures. 
 
 These two finds establish the important fact concerning the use of 
 terracotta figures in temples, that any figure was a suitable offering to 
 any divinity, — and that though some may have been more appropriate 
 1 Corpus Inscrip. Grac. vol. i. 1570. 
 
4 GREEK TERRACOTTA STATUETTES 
 
 in particular circumstances than others, there was no class that could not 
 be given. One of the most curious points elicited is that the image 
 of another divinity was apparently as acceptable an offering as one of 
 the god or goddess to whom the dedication was made ; no doubt such 
 figures were sometimes copies of the statue of the pilgrim's own local 
 deity, especially when the local statue was a celebrated one, but at 
 Elatasa we find Eros, Psyche, Leda, Dionysos, Aphrodite and Demeter, 
 and it is difficult at first sight to see how they can be considered 
 appropriate offerings to Athene, because we read into them an esoteric 
 character which they did not possess. It was the intention of the 
 giver, the fact of their being offered, which made them appropriate 
 offerings, not any inherent fitness of their own, and that is why the 
 objects unearthed are so various in character. Such figures as pigs, 
 birds, water-carriers, dancers and priestesses present no difficulty, for 
 they may embody a certain idea of substitution, of performing by 
 deputy duties whose constant performance was impossible. Again, the 
 offering of votive limbs to any deity, not merely to Apollo and 
 Asklepios, is too natural a form of thanksgiving to require any 
 comment, while classical writers supply an explanation of the presence 
 of toys and jointed dolls in the sanctuaries of Apollo, Artemis and 
 Aphrodite, when they tell us that a maiden before marriage, and a 
 boy at about fourteen, dedicated their toys to these deities, a custom 
 referred to in the following epigram which accompanied such an 
 offering — 
 
 TO ARTEMIS.i 
 
 " Maiden, to thee, before her marriage Timarete gives 
 Her cap, her tambourines, her favourite ball, 
 And as is meet, oh ! Artemis, the maiden brings 
 Her childhood's toys, her dolls, their clothes and all." 
 
 but dolls are found in the shrines of other divinities, not merely in 
 those of Artemis and Aphrodite. 
 
 1 TifJMpera irpb yd/xoio to. TVfnrava, ti'jv t tpaxtwriv ' 
 (Tfpaipav, tov tc KOyitas pvropa KtKpvtf>a\oi\ 
 tus Te hupas, Ai/xrari, KOpa. Kopa ojs (TrietKh, 
 avOeTo, koL to. Kopiiv ivhvpjxT , 'ApT€fj,L8i. — Anthol. Pal. vi. 280 
 
THE USE AND MEANING OF THE STATUETTES 5 
 
 Objects which had been the personal property of the giver, such 
 as fibula;, hairpins, weapons and jewellery, were often presented, and a 
 number of the dedicatory epigrams which accompanied them are 
 collected in the sixth book of the Anthologia Palatina, among them 
 the following by Mnasalcos on a bow and quiver given to Apollo. 1 
 
 " Phoebus, to thee this curved bow and empty sounding quiver 
 Are ottered at thy sacred shrine by Promachos the giver. 
 But ah ! the shafts that used within that painted case to rattle, 
 Now in the foemen's hearts are sheathed whom he hath slain in battle." 
 
 Translated by J. H. MerIVALE. 
 
 With these offerings we may class such statuettes as show marked 
 differences of clay and technique, or peculiar artistic merit, and in such 
 cases the personal element sufficiently explains the gift, but when 
 all these deductions are made, there remain a vast number of figures 
 whose dedication cannot be accounted for on such grounds, as for 
 instance the hundreds of figures representing a Greek woman of the 
 day, offered to Athene ; and in support of the theory that the choice 
 of an offering was more or less the result of chance we may quote 
 another epigram showing under what circumstances a school-boy offered 
 a comic figure to the Muses. 2 
 
 " Konnaros' skill with style and reed has gained the writing prize, 
 And eighty shining knuckle-bones delight his eager eyes. 
 1 am funny little Chares, and 'mid his comrades' glee, 
 To the Muses who inspired him, he dedicated me." 
 
 Our information as to the use of terracotta figures in private 
 
 houses is based entirely on the excavations at Pompeii. It is so far 
 
 unsatisfactory, that we have no means of discriminating between local 
 
 and general custom, a point of great importance in this case, because 
 
 1 %ol p.er ku.jj.it vka. rdfa, Kai lu^iiupix <papeTpr], 
 hmpa. irapu. npo/xa^ou, <I>oi/3e, raoe Kpep.a.TO.1 
 iovs <*>c impoevrwt &va kKovov avopes e^oi'ixti' 
 iv KpaSi'cus, oA.oa £eaaa 8vcrp.evea>v. — Anthol. J at. vi. 9. 
 
 - NtKJjtras tous ;ra«Sas, itrd KaXa ypd/XjUa-r' kypa\j/ev 
 Kovrapos oySi&KOVr' darpayaAous iXapev. 
 K&pX, x i '-t JLV Moucrats, rbv koj/ukov woe Xap-qra. 
 wpe<r/3vTriv Qopvjita, 6,)k<j.to rrcuSapiuiv. — Asklepiades, Anthol. Pal. vi. 30S. 
 
6 GREEK TERRACOTTA STATUETTES 
 
 though we are justified in including Pompeii among Greek towns, objects 
 found there belong chiefly to the middle of the first century a.d. Some 
 few are prae-Augustan, but none can be assigned to an earlier date 
 than the end of the Hellenistic age. The term is a conveniently 
 vague one, and is applied to the last three centuries of the pagan era 
 when the empire of the Greeks extended over the known world, but 
 was one of taste and intellect only, and every educated person, whether 
 Greek or barbarian, was a Hellene and adopted Greek customs, with 
 such modifications as were suggested by local requirements. The 
 customs of Pompeii do not therefore prove Greek custom as the 
 customs of Athens would do, but they are the only evidence available, 
 and therefore for the present must suffice. 
 
 About two hundred perfect figures of varying size have been dis- 
 covered in the ruins of Pompeii ; they appear but sparingly in the 
 better class houses, but were found in increasing, but not large, 
 quantities as the industrial part of the town was uncovered. It is 
 therefore evident that by a.d. 79 they had gone out of fashion 
 among the rich, and were even losing their popularity among the poor. 
 A number lay in the outbuildings (probably the slaves' quarters) of 
 one of the larger houses, but when found actually in the palaces, they 
 always show some novelty of technique or style which explains their 
 presence there. Their comparative scarcity is doubtless caused partly 
 by a change of taste, which led to the employment of metal rather 
 than clay, even for vases, but something may be due to an earthquake 
 which took place in a.d. 63. Great damage was done by it and 
 the necessary repairs were not entirely completed when the town was 
 overwhelmed in a.d. 79. The terracotta ornamentation of the 
 temples suffered severely, and there is every reason to suppose that 
 the figures did so too, but fortunately sufficient remain to show the 
 uses to which they were put, and their presence in larger numbers in 
 the poorer houses is in itself a proof that at one time they had been 
 more common in the richer ones. 
 
 In the latter all statuettes stand in niches, whether in the atrium, 
 the inner rooms or the garden court : sometimes the high garden 
 wall contained recesses, in one case six, two still holding figures. 
 
 The most usual place for them was evidently the atrium, where 
 
THE USE AND MEANING OF THE STATUETTES 7 
 
 th;y are found in company with small bronzes of a kind which shows 
 thtt the niche was the lararium or shrine of the household deities. 
 In the House of Lucretius, this contained five such bronzes and a 
 terracotta bust of a boy with a bulla round his neck. A similar recess 
 in -mother house held two bronzes, a warrior and a Diana, and two 
 terricottas, a female bust and a seated woman with a child in her arms. 
 Besides the niches which served as lararia, there were others over 
 the inner door of the house ; for instance Minerva with shield and 
 bowl had her place in one peristyle, and a similar figure in a similar 
 position was found at Herculaneum. This custom of placing a house 
 under the protection of a divinity was a common one in Greece, and 
 is referred to in several dedicatory epigrams, as : x 
 
 " A hero warder of Eetion's door I stand, 
 No weapon save my sword is in my hand. 
 A little sentinel just fits a little shrine, 
 He hates the 'Guards' so chose me from the 'Line.'" 
 
 Similar recesses were found over the doors of inner rooms, and a 
 Greek commentator refers to the custom of placing a little terracotta 
 figure of Hephaistos opposite the hearth as " protector of the fire." 
 
 Those figures which stood either on pedestals in the niches, or for 
 greater security in depressions in them, were probably objects of worship, 
 but the niches themselves were not used merely as lararia ; one in the 
 peristyle of the House of M. Gavius Rufus contained a relief of /Eneas 
 carrying off Anchises, a group of two slaves bearing a palanquin with a 
 figure in it, a seated figure of Abundantia and a crouching slave. The 
 number of figures it contained suggests that it was a cupboard, but niches 
 were also used to display the figures, for the garden cloister of the Villa 
 of Julia Felix, one of the most gorgeous of the Pompeian houses, 
 decorated in the taste of the Neronian age, had eighteen, containing 
 alternately small herms and terracotta figures of which the subjects are 
 comic, a bearded barbarian, a young man with a cake and a bald-headed 
 man. It will thus be seen that only two classes of figures appear, sacred 
 
 1 "HpOJS AlCTlOJl'OS 'ETTidTO.OjJ.O'; ' A/J.<j>nro\tT€0) 
 'ISpV/JLCLL pllKptZ /XlKpOS £7Tl TTpO&vpw 
 
 \o£ov o<$iiv KOU jjiovvov e^ojv £i'<£os' avSpl iwjtkjil 
 0vp.o6(h iratjiv Kap.i 7rapu)Ki'<7a,TO. — Anthol. Pal. ix. 336. 
 
8 GREEK TERRACOTTA STATUETTES 
 
 and profane, the former found only in the lararia, where they are clearly 
 objects of worship, or in niches over the doors, in which case we may 
 regard them as tutelary deities ; the genre figures are the only ones used 
 as ornaments, though their frequent presence in the lararia suggests that 
 they were offered to the household deities, as in temples they were offered 
 to the greater gods. Some at least were highly valued by their owrers, 
 for two skeletons were found in the streets, fugitives who had gathered 
 up their treasures in haste ; one, a man, clutched his money, his jewellery 
 and a statuette ; the other, a woman, was still holding a little female figure 
 with a child in its arms. 
 
 From the presence of these statuettes in Pompeian houses, we can 
 argue that Greek houses also contained them, both as ornaments and as 
 objects of worship, but we can draw no conclusion from them as to the 
 subjects chosen. Doubtless many were religious, like the Aphrodite 
 dedicated by Chrysogona, 1 
 
 " Here heavenly Aphrodite you survey, 
 Style her celestial, and your offering pay. 
 This in the house of Amphicles is placed, 
 Fair present of Chrysogona the chaste." — Translated by Fawkes. 
 
 and probably there were fewer purely genre subjects, as the taste for 
 realism is characteristic of the Roman age. At Pompeii we find none of 
 the indefinite figures so common in the temples and tombs of earlier date, 
 which form a link between religious and profane types ; for instance, there 
 are no graceful winged youths and maidens, whose place is taken by men 
 and women in Roman costume, warriors and gladiators ; the Seileni and 
 grotesque nude figures of the sixth and fifth centuries are replaced by the 
 caricatures of slaves, barbarians and actors which appear for the first 
 time in the second century B.C., and which at their first appearino- are 
 still associated with mythological subjects in which beauty of form is 
 more sought after than a realistic and accurate representation of nature. 
 This difference of national temperament makes it impossible to base on 
 
 1 A Kvwpis ov TravSa/ios' i'A<;'<r«o rav 6cov, dirmv 
 Ovpa.vi.av, dyvas arOe/xa Xpvcroyovas 
 OLKia iv 'AfxrpiKXiovs, £ (cat tckdi (cat jiiov l.ryc 
 tvvi>v\ da Se crtpiv Awtov ets etos Sv 
 £k o-iOtv dpxo/HeVots, 3 tti'itvm. — Anthol, Pal. vi. 34.0, 
 
THE USE AND MEANING OF -THE STATUETTES 
 
 9 
 
 the contents of Pompeian houses, any theory as to the type of figure 
 likely to be found in a Greek dwelling, though it is fair evidence of 
 their presence there, but if any connection can be proved between the 
 contents of Pompeian tombs and houses, we may reasonably assume a 
 like connection between the contents of a Greek house and of the 
 contemporary cemeteries. The inadequate records of early Pompeian 
 excavations render this comparison somewhat difficult, but one Pompeian 
 tomb contained a cameo vase of blue glass and eight terracotta statuettes, 
 viz. — 
 
 A female mask of hieratic type. 
 
 Two animals. 
 
 Mars. 
 
 Mercury. 
 
 Two porters bearing burdens. 
 
 A gladiator. 
 
 Replicas of the mask and the gladiator were found in two houses, 
 palanquin bearers and a huckster, similar in style to the porters, in 
 three houses, while the Mars, from its purely Roman treatment, may 
 be compared with a group of lEnezs and Anchises found in the 
 Plouse of M. Gavius Rufus. 
 
 The intimate connection between the contents of a Pompeian house 
 and tomb being; thus obvious it remains only to show that Greek 
 tombs contain obiects of somewhat similar character, in order to prove 
 a like connection between their contents and those of Greek houses. 
 
 It was by no means an invariable custom to place statuettes in 
 the tombs. MM. Pottier and Reinach opened five thousand in a 
 cemetery at Myrina in Asia Minor which dates from the end of the 
 third century b.c. to the beginning of the first, and found that the 
 percentage was as follows : — forty seven contained nothing, nineteen 
 contained figures, and thirty three other miscellaneous objects. MM. 
 Salzmann and Biliotti explored two hundred and eighty six tombs in 
 a sixth-century cemetery at Cameiros in Rhodes : only a few were 
 absolutely empty, fifty yielded figures and other objects, and the rest 
 contained vases and articles of bronze and bone. Pages could be filled 
 with an inventory of the contents of Greek tombs, but for purposes ot 
 comparison with the Pompeian one, three will suffice chosen at random 
 from different places and different ages. 
 
io GREEK TERRACOTTA STATUETTES 
 
 Cameiros in Rhodes. Sixth century b.c. 
 Two terracotta reliefs a jour. Eos carrying off Kephalos (Plate III.), and the contest 
 of Peleus and Thetis. 
 
 One seated female figure (Fig. g)-\ 
 
 One female mask (Fig. 12). I Terracotta. 
 
 Ten fruits. I 
 
 Two Seileni. 
 
 Two vases. 
 
 Two glass bottles. 
 
 One large sea shell (engraved). 
 
 Eretria. Third century b.c. 
 Three white Athenian funeral vases. 
 Six terracotta figures. 
 
 Dionysos. 
 
 Boy with grapes. 
 
 Eros. 
 
 An actor. 
 
 A herm. 
 
 A mask of Pan (Fig. 15). 
 Five gold diadems. 
 
 One gold ribbon decorated with tinsel leaves. 
 One gold ring. 
 Ten gilt terracotta buttons. 
 One writing instrument. 
 
 Myrina in Asia Minor. Second century b.c. 
 
 One mirror. 
 
 One dish. 
 
 Fibula?. 
 
 One bust of Demeter (hieratic), s 
 
 One nude Aphrodite. 
 
 „,, . . L 1 erracotta. 
 
 1 hree weeping sirens. 
 
 Three floating female figures. 
 There is a curious similarity between the contents of the four 
 tombs, which range over a period of 600 years ; the difference 
 between the Greek and the Pompeian tombs (see page 9) is one of 
 degree, not kind ; the glass bottles of Cameiros correspond to the 
 engraved blue glass vase of Pompeii. We have the same personal 
 possessions, sea shell, golden ring, mirror and cameo vase, and in each 
 case a collection of terracotta figures. We saw how faithfully the 
 contents of that one Pompeian tomb reflected the finds in Pompeian 
 palaces, and therefore we may assume that had a Greek city met with 
 the fate of Pompeii, we should find standing in its houses such things 
 
THE USE AND MEANING OF THE STATUETTES n 
 
 as we now find in its tombs, and that among them would be not a 
 few of the same terracotta statuettes. 
 
 Returning to the study of the contents of the earlier Greek tombs, 
 we find that all contain some objects made purposely for them, i. e. 
 the female bust from Cameiros, the gilt clay buttons and tinsel 
 jewellery from Eretria, and the weeping sirens from Myrina ; but 
 that in addition to these, all contain hieratic, genre and grotesque 
 figures, and personal possessions such as fibula;, so that the contents 
 of a tomb and the contents of a temple also differed only in extent 
 — in kind they were the same. They also show the same change in 
 the terracottas offered. 
 
 In the fifth and sixth centuries, they are almost without exception 
 hieratic (Fig. 9) and grotesque (Fig. 11) in type and the explanation 
 of their use and meaning is comparatively simple. They were 
 intended as amulets to protect the dead from evil influences, and 
 there is no difficulty in giving a religious explanation of the figures ; 
 but after the end of the fifth century the hieratic types, i. e. the 
 figures of the under-world goddesses, the Seileni and nude crouching 
 figures, gradually die out, and their place is taken by a multitude of 
 graceful female figures (Fig. 17) which in turn are succeeded by 
 floating youths and maidens and figures from the Dionysiac cycle. 
 Caricatures of scenes from everyday life take the place of the 
 grotesque figures, and it is no longer possible to find the faintest 
 suggestion of religious motive in the greater number of the figures, 
 though down to the latest period one figure in a tomb is usually of 
 hieratic type ; for instance, the female mask found in a tomb in 
 Pompeii (page 9). 
 
 During the last seven centuries, therefore, of the Pagan era, a 
 change was gradually taking place in the relative proportions of the 
 hieratic and the " profane " figures placed in the tombs, until by 
 the beginning of the first century b.c. their positions were reversed, 
 and the latter were in the majority. The earliest necropolis under 
 discussion, that of Cameiros, contained many objects to which no 
 religious meaning can possibly be attached : strigils, mirrors, sea-shells, 
 swords, glass bottles, spindle-rings, toys, vases, and two terracotta 
 reliefs dealing with mythological subjects, the carrying off of Kephalos 
 
12 GREEK "TERRACOTTA STATUETTES 
 
 by Eos (Plate III.), and the struggle of Peleus and Thetis. The 
 difference between the earlier and the later tombs is, that in the 
 former the secular objects are generally not terracotta figures, but 
 such objects as those enumerated above, while in the latter, in 
 addition to such objects, which appear down to the Christian era, 
 there is a large and increasing number of female figures of such 
 indefinite type that they are known to Greek writers merely as " xopat " 
 maidens (Fig. 16). This indefiniteness of type makes it impossible 
 to account for their presence by the theory that they protect the dead, 
 like the hieratic or grotesque amulet figures, but some light is thrown 
 on the subject by Vitruvius, the Roman architect, who in describing the 
 origin of the Corinthian capital, tells how a young girl died, and 
 how her nurse brought to the tomb " those things which in life she 
 had most dearly loved and placed them in a basket there." l Numer- 
 ous passages in wills relate to the custom of burying personal 
 possessions ; for instance, a law case opens thus ~ — A woman on her 
 death-bed made her will as follows : " I desire to be buried as my 
 husband wishes. Everything I wear on the day of my funeral is to 
 be buried with me, and of my jewels, the two strings of pearls and 
 my bracelets set with emeralds." Another testator says :; — " All my 
 implements of the chase are to be buried with me, lances, swords, 
 knives, nets, snares, ropes, decoys, cages, my bath furniture, my 
 palanquins, my corracle and my woven and embroidered robes." 
 
 No special mention is made either of terracotta figures or of 
 vases, which occur quite as frequently as the objects mentioned. 
 Panathenaic vases, the symbol of the proudest moment in a Greek's 
 lite, are usually found in tombs ; so are the greater number of the 
 beautiful red-figured vases signed by artists of renown, which were 
 won in games of skill, and like the amphorae were buried with their 
 possessors, but were certainly not made for that purpose. On the 
 analogy of this custom it is likely that any very beautiful statuette 
 (Plate VIII.), especially if not of local manufacture, found in a grave, 
 was the personal property of the deceased, and had served to adorn 
 
 1 "Post sepulturam eius quibus ea virgo viva delectabatur, nutrix collecta, et comporta 
 in calatho, pertulit ad raonuraentum et summo conlocavit." — Vitruv. iv. i q. 
 
 - Digest, xxiv. 2, 40. :! Hubnhr, Annali, 1X64, p. 207. 
 
THE USE AND MEANING OF THE STATUETTES 13 
 
 his house ; but this would only account for a small number. Besides 
 these very choice figures there are others of similar type which are 
 found in great numbers. They cannot all have adorned the houses, 
 because one tomb often contains several replicas of the same figure, 
 and at Myrina one had nothing in it but ten pairs of wings ; so 
 that they must be offerings from the friends of the deceased, not an 
 offering in the sense that offerings were made to divinities to appease 
 them, but a last tribute of respect, like the flowers sent now-a-days. 
 There was no religious meaning attached to them any more than to 
 the fibulae, the jewellery and the vases, and it must be borne in mind 
 that we have no proof that even these were always the personal 
 property of the deceased, they may have been offerings from friends. 
 
 We therefore learn that all terracotta figures can be divided into 
 two classes, those which occupy the position in which they are found 
 in virtue of a definite meaning attached to them, and those which 
 derive a meaning from the accident of the position in which the 
 will of the purchaser placed them. These latter first attain import- 
 ance in the fourth century B.C., but they existed from the earliest 
 times, in the shape ot vases in human or animal form (Fig. 11). 
 This class provided the bulk of the offerings to divinities and the 
 presents to the dead ; their variations of type, style and technique 
 are the natural consequences of fluctuations of taste, both local and 
 national ; from the indefinite " maidens " of fourth-century type 
 we pass to floating figures and groups to which the taste of the age 
 gave mythological names and attributes (Figs. 4 and 5), and through 
 this stage to the intensely realistic types which first appear in the 
 comic figures and ultimately reign supreme. The variety of types 
 all used for one purpose, is in itself sufficient to show that no deep- 
 seated meaning can be attached to them. They had three recom- 
 mendations : they were cheap, and so within the reach of all, they 
 offered no temptation to tomb-robbers, and they were pretty and 
 pleasant to look at and good to live with, but they had no mean- 
 ing until the purchaser had decided on their destination, and, certain 
 " funereal " types apart, the same figures served to decorate Greek 
 temples, Greek tombs and Greek houses. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 METHODS OF MANUFACTURE 
 
 "For they (the image-makers) use a mould; and whatsoever clay they put into it 
 comes out in shape like the mould." 
 
 Kal yap Ikzivoi (ol KOpoirXaOoi) tvttov tlvo. Trape^oi'TC? hiroiov av irqXov ets TOVTOV 
 
 €fx/3d\oj(TLV OfJ.OiOV TUJ TV7TIO TO ClSoS aTTOTe\oVO~lV- DlO. Chl'yS. Or. Ix. 25> 
 
 The terracotta statuettes afford convincing proof of the high artistic 
 level of popular taste in Greece. Their makers, the Koroplastas, 1 to give 
 them their Greek name, occupied no distinguished position in the hierarchy 
 of art, they were its humblest servants, and neither received nor claimed 
 the name of artists, but neither were they mere craftsmen and their work 
 only the product of generations of inherited mechanical skill, for it shows 
 that sense of beauty of form which was the birthright of every Greek, 
 and which he absorbed as insensibly as the air he breathed. The potter 
 was not an artist whose creations appealed only to the select few, his 
 cheap reproductions were for the many, his one aim to hit the public 
 taste, therefore the terracottas are the surest evidence of what this taste 
 really was. Any large collection of Greek statuettes contains some figures 
 that are rough, some that are careless, some that offend our notions of 
 decency, but none that are in bad artistic taste ; the conception is always 
 large, the lines harmonious. They are in very truth statuettes, statues 
 in little, and retain the breadth and grandeur of conception of the 
 great works by which they were inspired. 
 
 Our admiration for these statuettes is only increased by a knowledge 
 of the simple methods used in their production. There were two ways 
 of making them, modelling by hand and casting from a mould ; the 
 former process is the more ancient, and in later times was used only for 
 
 1 Harpocr. 114, 27: KOpoir\<Wo<s Toi'S e« 7n;Aoii tt\o.ttovt<x% Kopas rj /copous outius 
 on'o/xa£ov. 
 
 14 
 
METHODS OF MANUFACTURE 
 
 very small, rough figures, made by giving a pinch here and there to a bit 
 of clay until it assumed the rough form of a human being or of an 
 animal. Some of these little figures (Figs, i and 3) are wonderfully 
 spirited and true to nature ; but the earliest human figures found are 
 simply slabs of clay with a triangular lump at 
 the top for a head and two fin-like appendages 
 for arms ; seated figures were made by bending 
 the clay and placing a support beneath it, 
 standing ones by thickening it at the base, so 
 as to form a cone or wedge. The first im- 
 provement effected is to stamp a face on the 
 upper part of the clay and to round off the top 
 roughly in the form of a head ; the next, to 
 use a stamp for the whole of the front of the 
 figure, and we thus have a solid lump of clay 
 with the figure embossed on it. When the 
 margin was cut away it presented a superficial 
 likeness to some of the early moulded figures, 
 but there is always this difference, that in the 
 one case the clay is put into the mould, and 
 in the other the stamp is pressed upon it. 
 
 The practice of moulding figures instead of stamping them doubtless 
 arose from the difficulty of firing a solid lump of clay without warping 
 it. Many of the moulds used in the manufacture of statuettes have been 
 found ; this one from Tarentum (Fig. 6) represents the upper part of a 
 draped female figure with her hands clasped above her head. A mould 
 necessarily presupposes the existence of an original figure which must 
 have been in the first instance modelled by hand, but of these models 
 nothing is said by classical authors. Pliny indeed mentions that the 
 little clay models (proplasmata) of the sculptor Pasiteles fetched high 
 prices among amateurs of art, and quotes a saying of his to the 
 effect that " modelling in clay was the parent art of chasing, carving and 
 sculpture," but the extreme cheapness of the Greek statuettes and the 
 absolute impossibility of " patenting " a novelty, would put sculptors' 
 models out of the reach of the koroplast, and those he employed were 
 probably made by a rather superior class of artificer. Now-a-days such 
 
 Central Museum, Athens ; from Eretria. 
 
16 GREEK TERRACOTTA STATUETTES 
 
 models are built up on a wooden substructure which burns away in 
 the firing, leaving the figure hollow, and probably the same method was 
 used in classical times. The mould was made of clay baked very hard, 
 and into it the workman carefully pressed a thin layer of fine moist clay, 1 
 adding others until the requisite thickness was obtained ; the mould was 
 then set to dry, and the shrinkage produced by evaporation soon allowed 
 of the cast being removed from it. 
 
 For the commonest class of figures a mould is used for the front 
 only, and the back is formed by a convex mass of clay cemented 
 to the front so as to form with it a rough cylinder : for the backs of a 
 better class of statuette there was a second mould, giving the general 
 outline, and sometimes sufficient sketchy detail to complete the main 
 features of the front, and the two casts are carefully joined with a little 
 liquid clay. There are a small number of statuettes in which the back is 
 modelled as carefully as the front, but these are imitations of bronzes, 
 and comparatively rare (Plate VI.). 
 
 Statuettes in which only one mould is used for the whole length of 
 the figure are necessarily somewhat stiff and constrained in pose, and 
 are treated rather as if they were reliefs than figures in the round ; 
 the head is joined to the shoulders either by the head-dress or the 
 hair, and portions of the background are left wherever their absence 
 would endanger the safety of the cast ; the result is an impression of 
 hieratic stiffness and rigidity, and for that reason this, the earliest 
 method, was retained down to the latest times in making statuettes for 
 temple offerings. 
 
 Many more moulds and a more complicated method of procedure 
 are required for most of the later figures, i, e. for those which appear 
 in and after the fourth century b.c. ; for instance, a dancing girl (Fig. 
 31) required thirteen, three for the head and cap, two for the body 
 from neck to knee, and two for each arm and leg ; the draped lady 
 shown in Fig. 17 five in all, two for the head, back and front, 
 two for the draped figure, and one for the fan. All the parts 
 were cast separately, then very carefully fitted into one another and 
 cemented with liquid clay, all roughnesses removed and the whole set 
 to dry. 
 
 1 Dio. Chrys. Or. lx. 25. 
 
METHODS OF MANUFACTURE 17 
 
 It would be a mistake to suppose that because a Greek koroplast 
 used thirteen moulds for one particular figure, he required a vast 
 assortment of them to pursue his trade. Nothing is more characteristic 
 of Greek art than its extreme economy of method ; the sculptor, 
 instead of inventing new types, developed and modified old ones, the 
 koroplast, his humble follower, made half a dozen different figures 
 out of the judicious combination of a few moulds, and that is the reason 
 why the heads and arms are frequently too big or too small for the 
 bodies to which they are attached. 
 
 A careful study of any large collection of figures from Bceotia, 
 Asia Minor or Italy shows that though there is a strong family like- 
 ness between those from one locality there are hardly ever two which 
 are exactly alike, because by selection and combination of different 
 moulds the potter was able to produce an infinite number of variations. 
 The two accompanying figures are a striking example of the manner 
 in which these variations were obtained (Figs. 4, 5) ; the same mould 
 has been used in each case for the body, but the addition of different 
 heads, wings, arms and attributes has changed not merely the type 
 but the pose of the figures. 
 
 Sometimes these more or less haphazard combinations are not very 
 happy, but as a rule they are, thanks to the sense of beauty of form 
 which was, so to speak, in the air, and it is on the artistic feeling with 
 which the Greek potter combined his moulds that he rests his claim 
 to be something more than a mere craftsman. 
 
 After the statuette had been put together and before it was fired, 
 it was subjected to a very delicate and skilful process of retouching ; 
 the workman went over the whole surface with a graver, sharpening 
 outlines, smoothing roughnesses, intensifying details of feature, head- 
 dress and drapery, and giving to the whole that aspect of individuality 
 which is the great charm of the Boeotian statuettes from the Tanagra 
 district, and which is so characteristic of them that any specially 
 pretty figure, whatever its provenance, is popularly known as a 
 " Tanagra." The value of this retouching process is shown by two 
 figures from the same mould, representing Eros burning a butterfly 
 (Psyche) ; in the one (Fig. 7) the details are barely distinguishable, and 
 the whole is heavy and lifeless, while in the other (Fig. 8) after 
 
1 8 GREEK TERRACOTTA STATUETTES 
 
 retouching, they are clear, and the whole scene is instinct with life and 
 
 grace l — 
 
 " Oh, love, be kinder, or some day, 
 Alighting with thy cruel torch, 
 Again my singed soul to scorch, 
 Thou wilt not find her. She too has wings to fly away." 
 
 Translated by W. R. Paton. 
 
 The retouching process was not unaccompanied by risk and of 
 course added to the cost of a figure, so that numbers even of the 
 statuettes from the Tanagra district have not undergone it, and the 
 vast majority of statuettes found in other places are left just as they 
 came from the mould. 
 
 To avoid risk the figures were fired at a very low temperature, 
 and for the same reason a hole was cut in the back to facilitate 
 evaporation ; it varies in shape, size and position according to the 
 district in which the figure was made, and is entirely absent in some 
 figures which are imitations of bronze statuettes (Plate VI.). After 
 the firing the accessories were stuck on : these, tans, hats, wreaths, birds, 
 etc., were made and fired separately and added at the caprice of the 
 potter. The whole figure was next coated with a white lime-wash, the 
 object being to make a medium for the final decoration in colour. 
 Unfortunately this lime-wash peels off and brings the colour with it, 
 so that we do not often find a statuette in which the original tints 
 are well preserved, but enough remains to show that the scheme of 
 colour was a brilliant one in which red and blue predominated, as 
 might be inferred from the words ot a Greek, who in advising 
 his friend to cultivate solid learning says, 2 " otherwise vou will be- 
 like potter's work, all blue and red outside, and all clay and rubbish 
 inside." Common figures are roughly coloured, but the finer ones are 
 decorated with care, red-brown being used for the hair, red for the 
 lips, rose pink for flesh tints, pink and blue for masses of drapery, 
 green tor borders and patterns, and yellow or gold for trinkets. 
 
 In every district where these statuettes were made, and it would 
 
 Trjv Trvpi j'7/^o/i.err/i' ij/vxrjv ill' ttoXXiikl Kcurjs, 
 
 e^ei'feT , Eptos- KavTi] cr^cT/Vi', «x e '- TTe/royas. — Meleager, Anthol. Pal. v. C7. 
 1 cos vvv ye i\e\rj9us cravrbv t<hs vtto twv KopowXildior eh T-ijv ayopav 7rAaTTOueV(n<j 
 
 COIKOJS, Kt^)MITp.ivi><; pkv TYj IJ.iX.TW Kill TW KI'Ul'w, TO 8' evSo0£V 77?;All'OS T£ KO.I fv0uVTTTO<; 
 
 wr. — Lucian, Lexiph. 22. 
 
METHODS OF MANUFACTURE 19 
 
 be difficult to find one from which they are entirely absent, the same 
 methods of manufacture were pursued, but almost every centre of 
 production has certain local peculiarities of make and a predilection 
 for certain classes of figures (Chapter IV.). By a very careful study 
 of the rough figures excavated in any one locality we can determine 
 the local types or type, because such rough figures are made on the 
 spot, and it is not unreasonable to consider that finer statuettes of like 
 type are likewise local work. As the result of such comparisons we 
 are now in possession of a certain number of types of which we can 
 speak unhesitatingly as Boeotian, Attic, Corinthian, etc., but it must 
 be borne in mind that from all the most famous centres of production 
 there was a regular export trade in moulds and statuettes, and that 
 given the mould and skill in retouching, there was nothing to 
 prevent a potter in Asia Minor from reproducing a Boeotian figure, 
 local peculiarities and all, and in some cases it is impossible for even the 
 most experienced eye to distinguish between the two unless there happens 
 to be some unmistakable peculiarity in the clav used for the copy. 
 
 It might be supposed that in such cases the texture of the clay 
 would be a sure guide as to provenance, but this is not the case ; 
 excavation only reveals the character of the local clay or clays under 
 normal conditions of firing. We can therefore discriminate between 
 local and imported figures in any one district and determine the 
 characteristics to be expected in the normal figures of a given place, 
 but these hold good only tor average figures. A fine specimen is 
 usually better fired, and then the local characteristics so far disappear that 
 they can only be detected by chemical analysis, and there are obvious 
 difficulties in the way of applying such a test to a fine statuette. 
 
 The Greek laws respecting excavations are unfortunately so framed 
 as to put every obstacle in the way of bond-fide excavators and to 
 encourage clandestine operations, and therefore most of the fine genuine 
 statuettes which come into the market are the result of the latter ; 
 the finder has every reason to conceal the real locality of his trouvaille, 
 and his statements on the subject need not be taken seriously unless 
 confirmed by the presence of a number of minute details of style 
 and technique which can only be learnt by the constant handling and 
 study of genuine examples. 
 
20 GREEK TERRACOTTA STATUETTES 
 
 The question of provenance is, however, one which chiefly concerns 
 the archaeologist, for inability to as'sign a Greek statuette to its proper 
 provenance, to distinguish a figure from Asia Minor from one from 
 Bceotia or Africa, does not affect our enjoyment of its artistic charm ; 
 we may even derive legitimate artistic satisfaction from one class of the 
 forged statuettes. These, roughly speaking, fall into two groups, modern 
 casts from ancient moulds and figures, and modern casts from modern 
 moulds. Nothing can be simpler than to reproduce the ancient methods of 
 casting, retouching, firing, and painting ; and though the figures thus 
 obtained are usually too heavy, too fresh and clean, too daintily painted, 
 too artistically damaged, to deceive a practised eye and touch, they are 
 at least of authentic Greek type ; they have the beauty of outline 
 and large simplicity of design which is found in Greek work, and the 
 forger's offence is a sin against morality, not against art. It is not, 
 however, this class of forgery which usually tempts the non-expert, and 
 his mistakes are due to ignorance of the precise nature of the charm of 
 Greek art, and notably of its simplicity, for the forger does not content 
 himself with copying, he invents and fathers on the ancient world, types 
 which are the outcome of modern ways of looking at classical models. 
 Modern artistic taste, even when good, is the " heir of all the ages," a 
 curiously complicated product, enriched with the accretions of two thou- 
 sand years and the spoils of many nations ; it cannot look at the beautiful 
 from the simple Greek standpoint. Therefore the forger produces a 
 figure which sins against every canon of Greek art, but which appeals to 
 even cultivated modern taste, for many, judged by modern standards, 
 are quite charming, only they are not Greek, and to an eye trained in 
 the severe school of Greek art, they are not merely ridiculous, they are a 
 crime against that art. 
 
 For this reason much bitterness has been imported into recent 
 discussions of the question ; the possessors of such figures feel that their 
 treasures are beautiful, and cannot understand why archaeologists, usually, 
 in their opinion, persons of no pretensions to taste, should at a glance 
 relegate them to " a class of antiquities which no museum cares to 
 possess." 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 ARCHAIC STATUETTES 
 
 " Despise me, Mercury, because I'm only clay ! 
 Cheap product of the potter's art. 
 / glory in my humble birth, and say 
 
 ' I only saw the humble giver's grateful heart.' " 
 
 AvTOUZV OCTTftOLKlVOV [X€ KO.t iv TTOcrl "ffjivOV 'Ttjpfxfjv 
 
 €Tr\acr€v dipt'dos kvk\o$ eAunro/xevos. 
 
 II7/A.0S i<f>vpdOi]v, 01) ipevcrojjMt, AAA' i^lX-qcra. 
 
 oj %€iv , ocrrpaKcon' ov(rp.opov ipyatrirjv. 
 
 Anthol. Pal. xvi. {A[>p. Plan.) 19 1. 
 
 The statuettes dealt with in the present chapter are those archaic 
 figures which in the sixth and fifth centuries were used as temple offer- 
 ings, and placed in the tombs to protect the dead from evil influences. 
 
 The study of any large and representative collection of these archaic 
 statuettes shows that it contains little beside hieratic types, /. e. figures of 
 feminine divinities and grotesque male figures ; further examination 
 shows that the same fundamental idea underlies all the figures of 
 feminine divinities, that precisely similar figures are to be found in 
 places which are separated from each other by the whole length of the 
 Mediterranean Sea, and that two types of figure predominate to the 
 practical exclusion of all others, — a seated woman dressed in a long 
 robe, with a veil falling over her shoulders from her high head-dress, her 
 feet resting on a footstool, her hands lying stiffly in her lap (Fig. 9), 
 and a standing one, with one foot advanced, one hand pressed to her 
 bosom, the other drawing aside the skirt of the long tunic over which 
 she wears a curiously pleated little mantle (Plate II.) ; the faces of both 
 figures are somewhat full and fleshy, their eyes are oblique and their 
 mouths are distorted by a fixed smile. The curiosity aroused by the 
 universal diffusion of these two types of statuette, which are obviously 
 
22 GREEK TERRACOTTA STATUETTES 
 
 the creation of one and the same school, is heightened when we find 
 that the culminating point of every collection of archaic Greek statues 
 is a feminine figure, which in attitude, dress, face, and expression is 
 identical with those just described, and that in sculpture, as in the terra- 
 cotta statuettes, the standing and the seated variants exhaust the artist's 
 repertory. 
 
 The discovery that at the end of the sixth century one type of 
 face and dress dominated Greek art throughout its whole extent, that 
 statues which are close parallels of our seated figure are found at 
 Miletus in Asia Minor, in the island of Rhodes, in Athens, at Marseilles, 
 that others which are only a more perfect rendering of the standing one 
 exist in Athens, in Sicily and in the islands of the /Egean, that no 
 other feminine types are found except these two, and that the faces of 
 the masculine statues are fashioned in accordance with the same canon of 
 taste, naturally leads us to enquire under what social and artistic influences 
 the Greeks evolved the type. 
 
 Briefly its history is this — It had its rise in the Greek trading 
 communities who in the period between 900 and 550 b.c. migrating 
 from Greece, established themselves on the eastern coast of Asia Minor 
 (Ionia), where they came into contact with the oriental kingdoms of 
 Phrygia and Lydia, and in the islands of the ZEgean where they settled 
 among a population of more primitive Greek race. The cities of Ionia, 
 under the rule of the descendants of their original leaders, attained to 
 great wealth and prosperity, some of their members intermarried with 
 Lydians, and their Greek civilization thus acquired an oriental tinge. 
 The island settlements, conspicuous among which were the Rhodian 
 towns of Cameiros, Lindos and Ialysos, were no less prosperous, the 
 Rhodian and Ionian merchants wrested the trade of the vEgean Sea from 
 the Phenicians in whose hands it had been, they founded colonies in 
 Southern Italy and in Sicily, and the islands and shores of the iEgean Sea 
 were peopled by busy communities of enterprising Greek traders in 
 constant communication with each other, wealthy enough to desire to 
 surround themselves with the material evidences of their prosperity, 
 those foreign objects of luxury which the chances of trade threw in 
 their way, and intelligent enough to adapt and modify them to suit their 
 own taste. These objects they obtained from two sources : from the 
 
PLATE II 
 
 Phoenician Figure. 
 Brit. Mus. A. 22. 
 
 Aphrodite, with a Leveret. 
 Brit. Mus. B. 105. 
 
ARCHAIC STATUETTES 23 
 
 Lydians and from the Phenicians, who though driven out of the ZEgean 
 Sea by Greek enterprise had a large trade with them and a basis of 
 operations in Cyprus, where they had maintained the supremacy which at 
 a very early period they had established over the indigenous Greek 
 population. The geographical position of Phenicia at the eastern- 
 most end of the Mediterranean Sea between Egypt and Assyria, made 
 her the natural channel of communication between the oriental and the 
 Greek world, so that we are not surprised to find that a large portion of 
 the Phenician merchant's trading material consisted of copies oi the 
 minor productions of Egyptian and Assyrian art. 
 
 The Phenician workers in metal were famous, and their beautiful 
 engraved bronze bowls and carved ivory figures teach us both the 
 manner and the matter of the national art ; this was necessarily oriental 
 in character because it grew up under the shadow of oriental art, but 
 when we examine its designs we find that they consist in a skilful 
 juxtaposition of Egyptian and Assyrian " motives " ingeniously com- 
 bined to form a decorative whole, but not fused into a new and 
 original form ; it is purely imitative, an artistic industry not an art, 
 by turns' Egyptian and Assyrian in form, and even Greek when this 
 force had pushed its way to the front, and a curious statuette which 
 comes from a Phenician workshop in Cyprus well represents this 
 admixture of styles (Plate II.). It shows a draped female figure in 
 the pose of the ushabtiu or "answerers" of Egyptian funeral ritual 
 and belongs to a period when Greek potters were still making form- 
 less crescents and cylinders to represent human figures. Technically it 
 is a fine specimen, modelled by hand, retouched, carefully painted and 
 well fired, but artistically it shows a most disconcerting mixture of 
 styles ; the face and pose are Egyptian, so is the attempt at showing 
 the modelling of the body, the turban and long straight robe are 
 Assyrian, and so is the triple necklace, though it is made of lotus buds. 
 It is therefore a fair specimen of the figures which Phenician art 
 made for the Greek market, and shows how incapable it was of pre- 
 senting to a nation ignorant of oriental art, such a view of the larger 
 monuments as would enable it to form any just idea of their style 
 and technique, and to apply these to its own statues. What it did 
 was to introduce its minor productions to the Greek, and so to 
 
24 GREEK TERRACOTTA STATUETTES 
 
 provide him with a series of fantastic forms — gryphons, human-headed 
 birds, winged lions, grotesque dwarfs, etc., with which he clothed 
 his own vague conceptions of the spirits of earth, air and sea, 
 whose power for evil was ever present to his mind. These forms he 
 used to decorate his pottery, but they were useless to him in the 
 composition of a statue, and therefore Egyptian art, which was known 
 to the early Greek only through a Phenician medium, had little 
 influence on the development of his archaic sculpture, until long after 
 its main features had been determined by other forces. 
 
 With Assyrian sculpture, on the other hand, the Greek came into 
 contact also through the kingdom of Lydia, with which from a very 
 early period Ionia had had friendly relations. All that we know of 
 Lydian art shows that it was strongly Assyrian in character, and it was 
 therefore through it that the Greek artist derived his first and 
 strongest impressions of the style and technique of Assyrian sculpture, 
 with its wealth of decorative detail, its technical finish and its hide- 
 bound conventionality ot subject and style. 
 
 The material with which this oriental element was to combine 
 was twofold, the remains of the civilization known as " Mycenasan," 
 and the productions of an art of which we find traces in all the 
 early necropoleis of the iEgean islands. One of the main features of 
 " Mycenasan " art is its earnest and careful study of nature, a feature 
 which we also find, though in a much more primitive form, in the 
 art of the Greek race indigenous to the iEgean islands, for specimens 
 of which we must have recourse to terracotta statuettes. 
 
 At Troy, in the earliest Cypriote graves, in the prae-Phenician 
 settlement at Ialysos in Rhodes, and in many other places, we find 
 formless little idols made by flattening out a piece of clay, pinching 
 it in at the neck, moulding a knob on the top with a point for a 
 nose and a gash for a mouth, and adding two fins for arms (see 
 cut on p. 15). This is the primordial statuette ; whenever the potter 
 is thrown on his own resources for a rendering of the human figure 
 he produces it, and it is interesting because the sculptor in making 
 a statue of a divinity proceeded in just the same way. The Greek 
 gods, unlike all the Assyrian and many of the Egyptian, were always 
 anthropomorphic ; but though the Greeks imagined their divinities 
 
ARCHAIC STATUETTES 25 
 
 in human shape, they, like many other nations, worshipped them 
 under the form of stones or of trees. When the tree died and was 
 cut down, the trunk lopped of its branches presented a certain rough 
 resemblance to a human figure, and from worshipping it as the abode 
 of a divinity, to trying to cut it into his or her form, is but a small 
 step, and the earliest Rhodian terracotta figures show us that this 
 was done by roughly carving the head and face while leaving the 
 body still imprisoned in the tree trunk. In this statue the divinity 
 had his home, and so we are told that before the fall of Troy the 
 gods, knowing that the city was doomed, picked up their statues 
 and carried them away ! The slow and laborious process by which 
 the artist, first in wood and then in stone, freed the limbs of his 
 statue from the mass in which they were imprisoned, moved first a 
 foot and then an arm, and finally attacked the difficult problem of 
 rendering the drapery of a figure and the broken folds produced by 
 motion, his naive attempts to put expression into the face, are all 
 shown in a series of marble statues from Delos, now in the museum 
 at Athens, and are reflected faithfully in the archaic statuettes. His 
 art was a fusion of oriental types by the qualities which he had 
 inherited from his Greek ancestry, the desire for truth and for the 
 study of nature, and in this sense it was oriental in its origin, but 
 the Greek artist was never content to use the types of oriental art 
 until he had modified them to suit his own taste ; he did not, like 
 the Phenician, "convey" them en bloc with no comprehension of their 
 meaning, and he had this advantage over his oriental confrere, that 
 his gods were human in form and spirit, and he was thus early 
 driven to the study of the human figure and the human face with 
 all their grace of movement and variety of expression. 
 
 The widespread diffusion of the same type of statue through the 
 Greek world ceases to be a matter for surprise when we consider 
 that its art grew up among communities of the same race, all 
 exposed in a greater or less degree to oriental influence, and all in 
 constant communication with each other, so that the efforts of several 
 centres of production were concentrated on the evolution of one type. 
 The island schools busied themselves with the male figure, which is 
 nude, while the feminine types with their elaborate drapery and rather 
 
26 GREEK TERRACOTTA STATUETTES 
 
 full, rounded features, showing stronger oriental influence, were the 
 especial achievement of the Ionian cities whose position brought them 
 more immediately into contact with it. Owing to ritual reasons the 
 potters copied only the feminine types, and it is these which appear 
 in the two statuettes from Cameiros in Rhodes, which are represented 
 in Fig. 9 and Plate II. 
 
 The type of the seated figure appears in sculpture in the sixth 
 century, in the statues of the Branchidas family from the Sacred Way to 
 the temple of Apollo at Miletus, 1 but the statuette differs from them in 
 sex, and in wearing the high head-dress which belonged to divinities. 
 The collection of Rhodian statuettes in the British Museum, which is of 
 unrivalled completeness and extent, contains no less than six variations 
 of the tvpe, showing its gradual modification until it ends in the figure 
 which was the supreme effort of the Rhodian potter towards the end of 
 the fifth century (Fig. 10). The high head-dress has gone, the Ionic 
 tunic and veil are replaced by the Doric dress, with its folds and drapery 
 carefully worked out, the disproportionately long arms are shortened, 
 and the hands now lie idly in the lap, the face has lost its fixed smile, 
 and has assumed rather a pensive expression, while the whole figure 
 retains only just so much archaism as is necessary to establish its con- 
 nection with its prototype. 
 
 We can also trace the standing type through all its different phases, 
 amongst which the figure on Plate II. occupies a middle position. The 
 angular lines of the lower part of the statuette, the stiff position of the 
 left toot, the timid rendering of the transverse folds, recall the time 
 when the sculptor was still struggling to disengage his figure from a 
 block of wood or marble, and the figure has a curious reminiscence of 
 the tree origin of the statue in the way in which the drapery spreads 
 out at the feet like the roots of a tree ; the latest member of the series 
 corresponds to the seated lady in tvpe of face, dress and the rather 
 studied elegance with which she holds out the folds of her drapery. 
 
 These are, however, only artistic modifications introduced into types 
 
 whose integral form was fixed by the end of the sixth century, and which 
 
 down to the end of the fifth represent a feminine divinity whose 
 
 presence in the tomb was due to a desire to protect the dead from evil 
 
 J British Museum, Archaic Room, Nos. - 16. 
 
ARCHAIC STATUETTES 27 
 
 influences, but who at this period had neither a special name, nor any 
 very definite functions. 
 
 Deep seated in the mind of every primitive people there is an in- 
 stinctive idea of the Earth-mother, the principle of fertility, the type of 
 continual birth and death, and therefore when they wish to express this 
 idea in a concrete form, they choose a woman for their type. The Assy- 
 rians called her Astarte, and represented the reproductive powers of the 
 earth by a coarsely symbolical nude figure ; the Greeks chose for this 
 purpose the draped type which was the conventional rendering for a female 
 figure, and indicated her godhead by adding the high head-dress reserved 
 for divinities, but neither Greek nor Assyrian would have any difficulty 
 in recognizing their own gods under another form, for the beliefs of 
 polytheism are too vague and indefinite to be crystallized into a shape 
 which would exclude all representations ot a divinity but one. Thus 
 the cultus image of Athene worshipped at Lindos in Rhodes, was a 
 Phenician idol, in whom the Greeks recognized some traits of their 
 own goddess, and therefore when they expelled the Phenicians from 
 the island they maintained the worship of their divinity under the name 
 of Athene Telchinia. 
 
 This vagueness of thought is reflected in the statuettes, which 
 when found in tombs have a natural reference to the underworld 
 character of the goddess-mother and her power of protection there, as 
 in the upper world, therefore in time they are connected with the 
 goddess Demeter, who as the Earth-mother had always such functions, 
 but who became more particularly the underworld goddess, when the 
 legend of the rape of Persephone and her sway among the dead as 
 the bride of Hades had been shaped into words. In time the two 
 goddesses ousted all other divinities from the underworld cycle, and 
 endowed with their own personality not only the feminine statuettes, 
 but also the female masks (oscilla) which were hung on the walls ot 
 the tombs (Fig. 12). In their origin these are derived from the 
 Egyptian coffins, the upper part of which is moulded in the likeness 
 of the head and shoulders of the dead. The Greeks, misled by their 
 beardless faces, and knowing them only in rough Phenician copies, 
 turned them into female busts, and adapted them to the representation 
 of a veiled goddess, while in time their truncated form, which gave 
 
28 GREEK TERRACOTTA STATUETTES 
 
 them the appearance of rising from the earth, connected them with 
 the Persephone myth. They vary in height from three inches to two 
 feet, and show every stage of archaic art. 
 
 The preponderance of female figures among the archaic statuettes 
 is directly due to the fact that the underworld divinities were 
 feminine ; the small number of types is due to the indefiniteness of 
 idea underlying the conception of these divinities, for there was no 
 necessity to differentiate the figures when the personality was so 
 vague. The standing and the seated figures have no necessary 
 difference of meaning ; the standing type is usually, from its elegance, 
 connected with the name of Aphrodite, but at the period at which it 
 was evolved, Aphrodite is only another name for the Earth-mother's 
 reproductive power, of which the young leveret in the hands of our 
 statuette is a sign (Plate II.). 
 
 Side by side with the archaic feminine figures we find masculine 
 ones of an entirely different character, but fulfilling the same protective 
 duties. The Greeks were deeply impressed with the idea that only 
 the good could be beautiful, so though they imagined the under- 
 world divinities in human form, they clothed the underworld spirits, 
 who were malignant in character, in the grotesque shape of those 
 oriental figures with which Phenician art had made them familiar. 
 The two commonest types are those of a nude, beardless, crouching 
 figure, which is derived from the Egyptian god Bes (Fig. n), and a 
 bearded one, based on Seilenos, an Assyrian hunter-demon. In 
 Egyptian ritual, statuettes of Bes were a symbol of joy, and were thus 
 often used to form little perfume bottles, so that our Greek statuette 
 has had a vase mouth placed on it, in imitation of the original model, 
 though there is no corresponding hole in the figure. The beardless 
 type is particularly common in Rhodian tombs, but in Greece proper 
 the bearded Seilenos is the favourite amulet and appears in the 
 slightly modified form of an elderly man with shaggy hair and beard, 
 and in Italy it takes the form of a little satyr mask (Plate IV.). 
 Its popularity led to the Seilenos being included in the train of the 
 god Dionysos when the latter assumed an underworld character 
 through his mystic connection with Demeter and Persephone, but his 
 individuality was then merged in that of the satyr, and regaining his 
 
 "to to 
 
ARCHAIC STATUETTES 29 
 
 woodland character he lost his protective one, so that in the fifth 
 century the grotesque figures disappear almost entirely from the tombs 
 and leave the field to the feminine types. A modification had in the 
 meantime taken place in the shape in which the latter appear, but it 
 was purely artistic and did not affect their meaning, and was the 
 consequence of the great manifestation of energy in art, as in every 
 other way ot life which followed the Persian wars. 
 
 At the beginning of the fifth century a change took place in the 
 Greek world ; during the sixth the centre of the world had shifted west- 
 ward across the JEgean Sea to the towns of continental Greece, Corinth, 
 Argos, Sikyon and Athens, whose wealthy rulers attracted to their courts 
 all that was most brilliant and talented in the Greek world. With the 
 defeat of the Persians, Athens, which had taken the lead in the national 
 defence, leaped at once into the foremost place. She had suffered most 
 at the hands of the foe, her city was destroyed and had to be rebuilt, 
 hence it was to Athens that the sculptors and artists of the day flocked, and 
 there grew up there a school of taste which for the next fifty years set 
 the artistic tone for the rest of the Hellenic world. 
 
 Its influence is shown in the fifth-century statuettes which, from 
 whatever part of the Greek world they come, from Athens (Plate III.), 
 Rhodes (Fig. 10), or Cyprus (Fig. 13), all have the grandeur of concep- 
 tion, the nobility of design and purity of outline which we find in the 
 sculpture of the time ; they have lost whatever air of stiffness their 
 hieratic character gave them, and in its place they display a certain 
 dignity and reserve which makes the graceful abandon of the figures of 
 the next century look slightly vulgar. Part of the additional charm of 
 the fifth-century figure is certainly due to a change in dress from the 
 Ionian tunic (Plate II.) to the Dorian (Fig. 16), a change which was 
 one of the consequences of the Persian wars. How far or for how 
 long patriotic feeling led the women to make the change in private life, 
 we do not know, for in the fourth century they had reverted to the 
 Ionian tunic (Fig. 21), but sculptors clothed their figures in the Dorian 
 garment, whose heavy drapery with its perpendicular and transverse folds 
 afforded charming effects of light and shade. 
 
 We have good examples of the modification which the seated goddess 
 figure underwent in two statuettes, one from Athens (Plate III.), and one 
 
3 o GREEK 'TERRACOTTA STATUETTES 
 
 from Cyprus (Fig. 13), both of which show the more elaborate and ornate 
 style of the period. 
 
 Incidentally both bear witness to the greater precision of thought of 
 the age, for though they differ only in the position of the left arm, this 
 slight difference suffices to show that the one (Plate III.) is Artemis, the 
 other (Fig. 13), Aphrodite. 
 
 The potter has been constrained by hieratic conventions to seat his 
 Artemis on a high throne with her feet on a footstool, to place a high 
 coronet on her head, and to tuck her symbol, a fawn, in a very uncom- 
 fortable position under her left arm, but satisfied that these concessions 
 allow of no doubt that the figure is not only a goddess, but the goddess 
 Artemis, he has rendered her long tresses and full, soft hair in a free style, 
 he has painted her coronet with honey-suckle pattern, and has lavished a 
 wealth of decoration on her throne and footstool. The same elaboration 
 of detail is seen in the Aphrodite (Fig. 13), which comes from the 
 Cypriote town of Kittion (Larnaca), a centre which produced some 
 charming figures when, as in this case, it was inspired by Athenian types, 
 but was not so successful in its unaided efforts. The potter has indicated 
 the divinity of his figure by the same adherence to the conventional 
 attitude and accessories, but the high head-dress is covered with 
 ornament, the legs of the throne are in the form of sphinxes, and even 
 the outstretched dish is elaborately embossed ; the coquettish action 
 with which the goddess holds her shawl together beneath her chin 
 identifies her with Aphrodite, the chief goddess on the island, for a statue 
 of her in precisely the same attitude is shown on a coin of Nagidos, in 
 Cilicia. 1 The novelty in this figure is the coquettish treatment of the 
 drapery, and a comparison with any of the fourth-century genre types 
 shows how slight the barrier was between the two. Religious con- 
 servatism led to the preservation of existing archaic hieratic types, which 
 were made down to the end of the Pagan era, but no new ones were 
 invented after the fifth century, and as a class they decline rapidly in 
 number and importance, giving place to other feminine figures whose 
 indefiniteness is so complete that they are known to Greek writers only 
 as " maidens." With these appear in ever-increasing number mytho- 
 logical figures and figures drawn from real life. 
 
 1 Journal oj Hellenic Studies, vol. xix. Pt. I. p. \ 64. 
 
3 
 
 ►s 
 
 8 
 
 X 
 
 s 
 
 
 ffl 
 
 s 
 
 °3 
 
ARCHAIC STATUETTES 31 
 
 It must not, however, be supposed that in the archaic period the 
 potter busied himself exclusively with hieratic figures. A series of 
 archaic reliefs of very delicate sixth-century workmanship, which from 
 their fragile character must have been made to decorate some solid object 
 like a box, deal entirely with subjects drawn from legend or from real 
 life. One of these represents the goddess Eos (the Dawn) carrying off 
 Kephalos (Plate III.), a beautiful shepherd youth with whom she fell in 
 love as he was hunting at break of day on Mount Hymettus. The 
 artist's power of design is hardly on a level with his technical skill, and the 
 group shows a curious archaic convention, by which the human figure is 
 represented as very much smaller than the divine one, but the truth of 
 rendering in the wind-blown drapery and hurrying figure shows that 
 the picture is based on a direct study of nature, just as much as the 
 other reliefs of the series which depict such scenes from real life as a man 
 and woman conversing (British Museum, B. 317). 
 
 Besides these reliefs there are a number of small vases in statuette 
 form, the subjects of which are drawn from real life and depict male and 
 female busts, mythological persons and animals, while one whole series 
 from Athens is in the form of a foot in its sandalled shoe. In addition to 
 these vases and reliefs, the potter made dolls (Fig. 2) and toys (Plate IV. 
 and Fig. 1) for the children, and there are many little groups repre- 
 senting scenes from real life, such as a woman cooking (Fig. 3), all 
 roughly but cleverly modelled and wonderfully true to nature : the 
 suggestion of effort with which this little woman rolls out her paste 
 is very well given, and her paste-board and rolling-pin might be the 
 basis of a dissertation on ancient kitchen utensils. 
 
 It will thus be seen that there was always a non-hieratic side to the 
 potter's work based on the direct study of nature, as opposed to the 
 hieratic side based on a conventional rendering of it ; but the distinction 
 between the two was very clearly made until the end of the sixth century. 
 During the fifth the barrier was partially broken down by the intro- 
 duction of greater grace and beauty into the hieratic types ; it was the 
 final elimination of the conventional element, the application to all 
 figures of the principles derived from the direct study of life which 
 produced the graceful women, the charming youths and pretty 
 children of the fourth century. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 DEVELOPMENT OF THE GENRE STATUETTE 
 
 " How oit does taste 
 Aiming too high, its toilsome efforts waste." 
 
 " Quibus addere plura 
 Dura cupit, ah, quotiens perdidit auctor opus." — Martial, xiv. 115. 
 
 The modifications of form introduced into the hieratic statuettes by 
 the influence of Attic art did not affect their meaning as long as they 
 retained any vestige, however slight, of their hieratic character, but were 
 in a great measure responsible for their disappearance. In the gradual 
 process of humanizing which continued throughout the fifth century, the 
 divinities lost the conventional attributes of their godhead, and it was 
 expressed by superhuman beauty, grace, and dignity rather than by 
 outward symbols. To represent this distinction between the divine and 
 the human, to treat a human model in such a way as to turn it into a 
 divinity, requires the talent of a great artist ; it is beyond the powers of 
 a potter, and therefore his feminine divinities, when they become beautiful 
 women in outward appearance, become women in nature ; they merge 
 the goddess in the woman, and forget that they ever had any hieratic 
 meaning or function. 
 
 As the potter drew more and more of his inspiration from the direct 
 study of real life he was able to widen his horizon, and henceforth his 
 productions are not entirely confined to feminine figures, though these 
 still predominate ; male figures appear and figures drawn from legend, 
 and there are even imitations of celebrated statues. His studies from 
 life, however, fall into two clearly marked divisions, the realistic present- 
 ment of the individual and the idealistic presentment of the type : the 
 
 o 2 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE GENRE STJ-TVETTE 33 
 
 realistic deals with those figures which are concerned with the material or 
 commonplace side of life ; cooks, nurses, old men and women ; the 
 idealistic on the other hand deals with its cultivated and charming side, 
 and its figures are chosen for their beauty, youth and grace. In the 
 fourth and third centuries, while Greece still held sway in the world of art, 
 these latter maintained their position in the potter's world, but with the 
 decline of Greece, when the centre of civilization passed to the Hellenistic 
 courts of the semi-oriental rulers of Asia Minor and Egypt, the realistic 
 figures acquire a gradually increasing importance and finally oust the 
 idealized types, as these had ousted the hieratic. 
 
 The figures with which we have now to deal mark the highest point 
 which the potter reached, and then his gradual falling away from his own 
 high standard of excellence. In the fourth century he attained to such 
 technical and artistic perfection as his material allowed, and then partly 
 owing to a change of taste, partly to the decay of material prosperity in 
 Greece, his craft died out, and by the end ot the third century was 
 practically extinct there. 
 
 At the close of the fifth century Athens, in spite of her political 
 misfortunes, is still the centre of artistic influence, and we see in the 
 Athenian statuettes of this period a decided tendency to the adoption 
 of sculptural types, not based on the direct imitation of particular 
 statues, but inspired by the general influence of the many beautiful 
 works of art contained there. In point of type the earliest is the 
 standing maiden (Fig. 16),' whose attitude with the whole weight 
 falling on one leg recalls that of the Caryatids of the Erechtheion, 
 though the position of the arms is different, and our figure seems to be 
 lifting them above her head as if to place a burden on it. The 
 potter has carefully worked out and retouched all the details of his 
 figure so as to give full effect to the soft, thick hair, the delicately- 
 rounded features, the contrasting folds of the fine under-dress and the 
 thick robe over it, and even the elaborate necklace, and has thus 
 produced a composition which gives a perfect idea of the combination of 
 delicacy of finish and largeness of conception of Attic art. A figure 
 of Athene (Fig. 14) presents it to us under another form, as inter- 
 
 1 This iigure is in the possession of Cecil H. Smith, Esq., to whom I am indebted for 
 permission to publish it. 
 
34 GREEK TERRACOTTA STATUETTES 
 
 preted in a foreign workshop, which has deprived it of its technical 
 perfection, but has not been able to obscure the noble idea which 
 underlies the composition. The figure is a Cypriote cast from an 
 Athenian mould and is a very rough and clumsy production, but 
 this roughness and clumsiness cannot hide the dignified simplicity of 
 the whole and the skill with which the qualities of a statue have 
 been transmitted to a statuette. We see before us the goddess to 
 whom the Athenians prayed, 1 
 
 "Pallas Athena, mighty protectress, 
 Shield us from storm and stress, 
 Guard thou this folk and state 
 From civic strife and fierce debate. 
 Thou and thy sire, thy servants save 
 From doom of an untimely grave." 
 
 Translated by J. H. Mf.rivale. 
 
 A certain amount of interest attaches to the copy, because the 
 goddess holds her helmet in her hand, and it is suggested this was 
 the attitude of the celebrated Athene Lemnia of Pheidias, a statue so 
 fair that when a Greek art critic was composing a figure " compact 
 of every statue's best," he took the oval of her face and her grace 
 of expression for his "beauty." 
 
 The technical skill of the Athenian potter is shown by the nude 
 youth on Plate VI., and the dainty grace which he imparted to his 
 less ambitious productions by a figure of a school-boy (Plate IV.), 
 and by two little toys, one a boy riding on a swan {Ibid.), and 
 the other a man on a mule {Ibid.). 
 
 In the middle of the fourth century the centre of interest shifts 
 from Athens further north to the district which lies between the 
 island of Eubcea and the Corinthian Gulf, and which comprises 
 Eretria, Aulis, the cities of Bceotia and of the Opuntian Locri. 
 During the whole of the fifth century Bceotia was under a cloud 
 owing to its unpatriotic conduct during the Persian wars, and in 
 
 1 HaAAas TpiToyevu' avaacr' 'ABtjvcL, 
 
 OpOoV T7]VO€ 7TU/W T€ K(U 7ToA(Va9 
 
 arcp dXyewv Kat CTacretuv 
 
 KO.L OavdroiV aoipitiV <rv re /cat 7rari']p. 
 
 Bergk :! , Poet.i- Lyrici Graci, Scholia 2; Frag. 12S7. 
 
PLATE IV 
 
 Toy. 
 Brit. Mus. B. 271. 
 
 SATYR MASK— AMULET. 
 
 Brit. Mils. B. 479. 
 
 Toy. 
 Z.Y/A JkfKj. B. 270. 
 
 ATHENIAN BOY. 
 Brit. Mus. C. 334. 
 
 Boy with Knucklebones. 
 Brit. Mus. C. 324. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE GENRE STATUETTE 35 
 
 addition to this, Attic wit fastened on its inhabitants a reputation 
 for clumsiness, stupidity and general coarseness of appetite. Nothing 
 that we know of Bceotia justifies this reputation, for Pindar was a 
 Boeotian, and so were the celebrated poetesses Corinna and Myrinna, 
 who were his contemporaries, while the Boeotian fourth-century 
 statuettes reveal a delicate fancy which we should imagine could 
 hardly have emanated from an uncultivated people, or have proved 
 acceptable to them. As the political power of Athens waned, 
 Bceotia gained in consideration, for the cities of Greece were all 
 gradually included in the Macedonian kingdom, and none could triumph 
 over the others when all were conquered. 
 
 It is just at this period, in the middle of the fourth century, that 
 the statuettes from Bceotia assume the place of honour which had so 
 far belonged to Athens. This district had always been a centre of 
 vase production, and has yielded every variety of statuette both of 
 archaic and of transition type. The latter are all rather heavy and 
 massive in form, distinguished by high bases and crowns, both 
 moulded in one with the figure, and by an unusual predominance of 
 male figures. It is, however, rather difficult to distinguish the pro- 
 ductions of one district from those of another, owing to the general 
 similarity of the clay used and the constant interchange of moulds 
 among the different workshops. In the latter part of the fourth 
 century, when the so-called Tanagra figures acquired such a vogue as 
 to practically monopolize the market for a time, these causes lead to a 
 still greater similarity in the productions of the different districts, and 
 therefore Bceotian types are usually named after the district in which 
 they first appear in any quantity. The name of "Tanagra" has 
 thus been bestowed on a whole series of idealized studies from real 
 life representing youths, maidens and children in every-day costume, 
 engaged in their every-day pursuits, which were first discovered in 
 the graves there. 
 
 Tanagra is the centre of a district which, even in the second century 
 a.d., was still "a land of potters," and there is no a priori improbability 
 in the type having first originated there, though it soon spread not 
 only to all the other workshops in Bceotia, but in Greece, and was 
 extensively copied in Africa and Asia Minor. The phase of art which 
 
36 GREEK TERRACOTTA STATUETTES 
 
 these figures represent is that which in sculpture is chiefly associated 
 with the name of Praxiteles. He chose by preference for his statues 
 those subjects in which beauty and grace were the leading features, and 
 while drawing his inspiration from the living model, yet by the selection 
 of its most general and expressive features, produced from it an abstract 
 type which was perfectly true to nature, but more beautiful than any 
 concrete figure. The idealized human types thus created served 
 admirably for figures of the younger gods, Aphrodite, Eros, Apollo 
 and Dionysos, and the Boeotian potter used them to depict the 
 graceful women (Fig. 31), the athletes who "radiant with youth 
 like living statues lounge, decking the streets" (Fig. 28), the pretty 
 children (Plate IV.) who passed daily before his eyes, and he was 
 so charmed with his human models that even when he wished to 
 represent the denizens of the air, the graceful attendant spirits who 
 play so large a part in Greek imagery (Chapter VII.), he drew them 
 as semi-nude maidens (Plate VIII.) and as winged children (Plate V.), 
 differing only in their nudity and their wings from the maidens and 
 children of every-day life. 
 
 Part of the attraction of these figures lies in their human interest, 
 but part is due to the perfection of their technique and the care and 
 skill with which they were retouched, so that the details are rarely 
 smudged or blurred as in most of the earlier figures (see Chapter II.). 
 Their greater freedom of gesture and of pose, owing to the employ- 
 ment of several moulds, which allowed the potter to represent more 
 complicated attitudes, is also part of their charm. Their only fault 
 is that they are rather monotonous, because they represent a type, 
 not an individual, but that is the fault of the period, not of the 
 potter. 
 
 In his treatment of his favourite types there is no brusque breaking 
 away from past traditions but only a modification of them, in 
 accordance with the spirit of the age ; his athletes, save in the Greater 
 freedom of their attitude, differ very little from the youthful male 
 figures of Locri or Thebes, whose slightly hieratic attitude obliges us 
 to call them Hermes or Ganymede instead of Konnaros or Philochares ; 
 it requires only a very little modification to transform the figure of 
 a seated goddess, shrouded in her mantle, with her hand muffled in the 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE GENRE STATUETTE 37 
 
 folds of her drapery (Fig. 13), into a Tanagra lady gracefully wrapped 
 up in her shawl and holding its folds together coquettishly (Fig. 20) ; 
 deprived of her hieratic accessories, her throne, her high head-dress 
 and her sacrificial bowl, with a pointed hat on her head and a fan in 
 her hand, the goddess would differ little from the woman. 
 
 Imitations of Tanagra types occupied a large place in the stock 
 of other centres of production, and it is interesting to compare these 
 with their models. The winged children of Tanagra, the little Erotes 
 (Plate V.) who dance along on tip-toe, are among the most graceful 
 and original of their productions, and the prototypes of all the floating 
 figures so common in later workshops (Plate VII.). With these we may 
 compare another child Eros from iEgina, muffled in a cloak with a 
 large wreath on his head, and wielding an enormous feather fan of 
 oriental type, quite different from the ordinary ivy-leaf fan of Tanagra 
 figures (Plate V.). He differs from them, too, in being of a heavier, 
 more human build, and in not having just that touch of spirituality 
 which is their distinguishing characteristic. That is the point in which 
 the imitations differ from the originals in most centres ; when the 
 workman did not content himself with reproducing the type, but 
 attempted to modify it, his work is more human and less graceful. 
 
 He did not, however, confine himself entirely to these reproductions, 
 and some of the figures assigned to other centres are extremely in- 
 teresting, notabiy those from Eretria, which is especially distinguished 
 for a taste for greater definiteness of subject showing itself in the 
 choice of legendary subjects (Plate VI.), and of character studies from 
 real life, the pictorial character of which proves that they belong 
 rather to the second than the first half of the third century. It is 
 present even in their imitations of Tanagra types (compare Fig. 17 
 with Fig. 20), and finds full scope in such subjects as a school-master 
 teaching a boy to write (Fig. 26), or the Nereid bearing the helmet of 
 Achilles (Fig. 32). 
 
 Among the figures of undoubted Eretrian provenance is a mask of 
 Pan (Fig. 15) found in the "Tomb of Aristotle," l which is especially 
 interesting because it embodies those qualities of simplicity and breadth 
 
 1 In the Central Museum at Athens. I am indebted to the Ephors, and to the 
 discoverer, Dr. Waldstein, for permission to publish it. 
 
38 GREEK TERRACOTTA STATUETTES 
 
 of design which are inseparable from good work in clay. The material 
 has its limitations — it is well able to reproduce the main features of a 
 design, to suggest its outlines and the idea it contains, but it is not 
 suited to the reproduction of minute detail. The charm of most of the 
 Greek statuettes arises from the potter's knowledge of these limitations, 
 which Jed him in making his figures to eliminate all unnecessary detail, and 
 only to render the broad masses and outlines of his model. Of this 
 broad treatment the little Pan mask is an admirable example ; the potter 
 had to suggest the woodland character of the god and his shaggy goat 
 form, and therefore the pointed ears, the shaggy eyebrows and knotted 
 forehead melt insensibly into the little horns, the horns into a fringe of 
 hair with leaf-like locks. The lines of the forehead and the snub nose 
 run down through the long pendent moustachios into the goat-beard, 
 and the whole face is set in a frame of shaggy hair ; there is no attempt 
 at special treatment of any separate part of the composition, no insisting 
 on details which might distract the eye, and therefore the design 
 produces its full effect and suggests the dual character of the god better 
 than another Eretrian statuette, a full-length portrait of him (Plate VI.) 
 in which all the details of horns, pointed ears and goat legs are carefully 
 worked out. The striving after effect seen in most of the Eretrian 
 figures is not peculiar to them, for we find it in a late Athenian statuette 
 (Fig. 22) of a lady poising an apple, and in a Corinthian one (Plate I.). 
 It was the means by which the potters tried to keep in touch with the 
 taste of the age, and it is to this desire also, that is due the prominence 
 assigned to the uglier members of the Dionysiac cycle, the Satyrs and 
 Seileni. 
 
 In a previous age the Seilenos under the type of a nude bearded 
 elderly man with pig's ears, was used as an amulet (page 28) and thus 
 came into contact with the underworld god Dionysos. Dionysos had, 
 however, another character as a woodland divinity, in whose train were 
 Pan, the nymphs and the satyrs. The satyr was also a bearded nude 
 male figure, and with him Seilenos was confounded, while the satyr took 
 over the protective character of Seilenos, and guarded the infant god 
 from harm. This legend is referred to in two statuettes ; in one (Fig. 
 36) the Seilenos pedagogue is taking his charge to" school, and in 
 another (Fig. 35), the satyr is shown carrying him on one arm, and 
 
a 
 
 ^ 
 
 s 
 
 w 
 a 
 
 p 
 
 ■A 
 
 in 
 
 -A 
 
 U 
 
 w 
 p 
 
 <! 
 
 W 
 
 o 
 
 M 
 
 w 
 
 ft) 
 
 £ 
 
 
 <J 
 
 o 
 
 Ph 
 
 "t 
 
 << 
 
 o 
 
 
 
 
 
 H 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 'S 
 
 
 
 c/l 
 
 >a 
 
 f) 
 
 is. 
 
 p4 
 
 ^ 
 
 w 
 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE GENRE STATUETTE 
 
 39 
 
 teasing him with a bunch of grapes. 1 The contrast between the native 
 ugliness of the satyr and the childish grace of the little god is well 
 expressed, but the group is rather clumsy and heavy, both in technique 
 and style, and contrasts unfavourably with another satyr portrait, 
 which represents him playing on the double flute (Fig. 34). This figure 
 is from Melos, an island which was celebrated for its pottery from a 
 very early period in Greek history ; all its productions are marked by 
 great technical perfection in kneading, moulding and firing the clay, and 
 by a certain dryness and sharpness of outline which recalls bronze 
 technique. The figure is modelled back and front, the pelt of the satyr 
 is incised, not given by the mould, and special pains have been taken 
 that no detail of the figure shall fail of its effect, probably because 
 statuettes dealing with a definite legend are extremely rare, and the artist 
 wished to make his story quite clear. 
 
 There is no violent break between the figures found in Greece 
 proper and those of the Hellenistic world, for at Myrina, a town in Asia 
 Minor, to which the interest shifts, a considerable number of imitations 
 of Tanagra types were found (Fig. 27), some very exact, others rather 
 rough and heavy, but the Myrina potters soon advanced beyond the stage 
 of imitation, and it is in this centre that we first find a profusion of the 
 winged floating youths and maidens whose popularity rivalled that of the 
 Tanagra figures, and it is here that we follow out the gradual cleavage of 
 the statuettes into two distinct groups ; the mythological, which engross all 
 the beauty of the series, and the genre, which rapidly develop into cari- 
 catures. The mythological figures belong to that cycle of youthful 
 divinities to which the Praxitelean school had given such prominence, 
 Aphrodite, Dionysos and Eros, for in the Asiatic cities the cult of 
 Aphrodite and Dionysos, in whose train came Adonis, Atys and other 
 local heroes, assumed an importance which threw all other divinities into 
 the shade, and supplied the potter with a variety of subjects, not only 
 mythological but hieratic, for he was not exempt from the necessity of 
 producing hieratic figures. 
 
 Eros appears in two forms, but in neither case as a god, either as a 
 winged youth, who with his feminine pendent Nike is merely a member 
 
 1 The provenance of this statuette is unknown, but both clay and technique point to 
 Asia Minor as its home. 
 
4 o GREEK TERRACOTTA STATUETTES 
 
 of Aphrodite's train, or as a mischievous boy (Fig. 8), that cruel Eros 
 whose pranks the Hellenistic epigrammatists bewailed so prettily. In this 
 character he is frequently engaged in burning a butterfly (Psyche), but the 
 group can have no reference to the legend of Cupid and Psyche which is 
 of much later origin. 
 
 The statuettes of Myrina are remarkable for the extent and variety 
 of their types, and among them are every variety of floating and dancing 
 figure posed with wonderful freedom and grace. These floating figures 
 mark a phase of Hellenistic art which began with the little Erotes of 
 Tanagra, and inspired a charming figure of a dancing-girl (Plate VII.), 
 which though found in Greece is more closely connected with Asiatic than 
 with Greek statuettes, both by its technique, its type of face, and its 
 style. A certain number of copies of famous statues are found, chiefly of 
 Aphrodite, but these are less numerous than at Smyrna, where the potters 
 were chiefly occupied in making copies of bronze statuettes, which were 
 frequently gilt to represent metal, just as at the same period the vase 
 maker silvered his embossed cups and bowls. 
 
 The figures from every-day life are all drawn from the artisan or 
 actor class, and are remarkable for the vividness with which they are 
 modelled. As a rule these figures are not retouched and the potter 
 relied rather on the general effectiveness of his work than on its 
 technical perfection of detail, though on occasion he could retouch as 
 cleverly as the Tanagra potter. The principal features of his style 
 are its decorative and pictorial character, the figures are rounder and 
 fuller, their features softer, their attitudes more conscious than in the 
 Greek work of the preceding age (Fig. 19), the contrasts between the 
 nude forms and the drapery are more insisted on, and we are con- 
 fronted with an art of a more assertive and realistic type. 
 
 We find the same characteristics in the Sicilian and Italian terra- 
 cottas, for there were no such barriers in the Hellenistic world as 
 had formerly divided the cities of Greece ; individualism had died 
 out, and had given place to a monotonous uniformity of thought, of 
 feeling and of taste, and the same subjects, mythological and genre, 
 appealed to Italian and to Asiatic alike. The mythological figures are all 
 taken from the Aphrodite cycle, copies of statues of the goddess 
 (Fig. 18), graceful winged feminine (Figs. 4 and 5) and masculine 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE GENRE STATUETTE 41 
 
 types, and figures of a boy-Eros (Plate VIII.). The genre figures are 
 all caricatures and drawn from the same class of subject ; the full 
 type of face, the strong contrast between nude and draped forms, 
 are found in both places. 
 
 But in spite of the similarity of the subjects chosen there is 
 a certain difference in the way in which they are treated ; the winged 
 figures do not float, they stand, or rather lean against a pedestal, 
 in an attitude common among Tanagra figures which borrowed it 
 from Praxitelean art. This attitude necessitates a somewhat different 
 arrangement of drapery : instead of a short tunic girdled round the 
 waist and floating in the air, the Italian figures are swathed in a 
 heavy mantle, which leaves the upper part of the body bare but 
 falls in massive folds to the ground and forms a base for the figure, 
 which thus assumes a more statuesque pose. It results from this 
 that while the Asiatic types are the more dramatic and ornate in 
 character, the Italian and Sicilian ones are more simply conceived and 
 so approach more nearly to the traditions of Hellenic art. How far 
 both fall short of them, not only in style but in mere technical skill, is 
 shown by a comparison of three statuettes from Athens (Plate VI.), 
 from Myrina (Fig. 19), and from Canosa (Fig. 18), all of which 
 are reproductions of statues. 
 
 The nude youth crowned with flowers, with wine-cup and jug in 
 his hands, is one of those fifth-century conceptions which hover on 
 the confines of the real and the ideal world, and for which it is 
 difficult to find a name ; but whether we call him " The Cup-Bearer " 
 or the " Spirit of the Banquet " (page 66), the name can add little to 
 his charm. The slender figure is so perfectly balanced, the feet sink 
 so naturally into the little clay plinth, the still undeveloped body is 
 modelled with such attention to anatomical detail, but no undue 
 insistence on it, the watchful attitude of the willing cup-bearer is so 
 well expressed, that we seem to have before us one of those pro- 
 plasmata or sculptor's models of which Pliny speaks as commanding 
 so high a price. The technical skill displayed in firing so fragile 
 a figure is no less remarkable. 
 
 With it the Artemis (Fig. 19) from Myrina compares but poorly, 
 for the potter has in proverbial phrase " aimed at perfection and 
 
+2 GREEK TERRACOTTA STATUETTES 
 
 attained mediocrity," and though the figure is picturesque its general 
 effect is clumsy and wanting in dignity, for he has been more anxious 
 to render all the details of the goddess' equipment and to put her into 
 a striking attitude, than to express her character, and therefore his figure 
 is not the Artemis of whom Homer sang : ] — 
 
 " Great Artemis, whose very heart 
 Is on her arrows set, across some mount 
 Her path pursues, on steep Taygetus 
 Or Erimanthus coursing, where in bears 
 And swiftly rieeing deer is all her joy, — 
 And ever in her train the rural nymphs 
 (Those daughters fair of aegis-bearing Jove,) 
 Disportive play, and with the scene elate 
 Latona too, shows gladness, while 'bove all 
 By a whole head and brow she towers high 
 Even where all are lovely, instant known." 
 
 Translated by G. Musgrave. 
 
 but the Artemis of the Hellenistic epigrammatist : 2 — 
 
 " I am great Artemis, and worthy oi the name, 
 My sire none else than Jove, these looks proclaim. 
 Confess such maiden vigour here is found 
 All earth's too narrow for my hunting-ground." 
 
 Translated by J. H. Merivale. 
 
 The Aphrodite from Canosa (Fig. 18) shows better workmanship, 
 and the potter has cleverly avoided the difficulty or balancing an 
 undraped full-length figure by adopting a crouching position. 
 
 The nude Aphrodite of Praxiteles, perhaps the most famous statue 
 in antiquity, is the basis of all the statues of the goddess bathing, 
 wringing the water from her hair, etc. ; and in the third century 
 b.c. a Bithynian sculptor, Daidalos, taking the idea from a picture, 
 represented her as a kneeling bather. The type is known to us by 
 many replicas, of which the most famous is one in the Louvre, the 
 so-called "Venus de Vienne." In time these copies degenerate into 
 mere toilet scenes from every-day life, but our statuette is distin- 
 
 1 Oilys. vi. 1 02. 
 
 - fis 7rpt7rei ApTe/xis elfx ' e? 8' ApTe/«r cu'tos 6 xaA./<o<; 
 
 jxavvzi ZrjVOS, koi'x erepov Ovyarpa. 
 
 TcK/xai'pot) to Opa.do<i tus TrapOh'ov. H pa k(v zliroi.%. 
 
 Ilucra x#u>i' oXi'yov Ta8e Kvvayimov. — Anthol. Pal. xvi. (App. Plan) 158. 
 
DEVELOPMENT OF THE GENRE STATUETTE 43 
 
 guished from these by its absence of affectation, and by the noble 
 
 simplicity of the head and expression. It is these qualities which, 
 
 though the bodily forms are too heavy and massive for grace, and 
 
 the limbs somewhat disproportioned, make it no unworthy picture of 
 
 the goddess.' 
 
 "Thine own fair form's sweet image take 
 Than this no choicer offering can I make." 
 
 Translated by J. H. Merivale. 
 
 In these three statuettes we have a resume of the history of 
 Greek art during the last four hundred years of the Pagan era, of 
 the variations of style and taste through which it passed, and of the 
 phases of thought which dictated them, but a study of the statuettes 
 shows that they have a human interest as well as an artistic one, 
 and as human documents they have much to tell about the manners, 
 customs and beliefs of classical Greece. 
 
 1 2ot fjiop(f>r}s avcO'ijKa rd)s 7re/)tk'a/\A.e9 ayaX/xa, 
 
 Lucian, Anthol. Pal. xvi. (App. Plan) 164. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 GENRE STATUETTES OF FEMININE TYPE 
 
 " Not such your burden, happy youths, as ours — 
 
 Poor women children, nurtured daintily — ■ 
 
 For ye have comrades when ill fortune lours, 
 
 To hearten you with talk and company ; 
 And ye have games for solace, and may roam 
 
 Along the streets, and see the painters' shows ; 
 While woe betide us if we stir from home — 
 
 And there our thoughts are dull enough, God knows!" 
 
 Translated by William M. Harding. 
 
 'Hidcot? ovk eiTTi twos 7TOVOS O7T7T0Cr0S rjfJ.IV 
 
 Tais aTaXoxpv^OLS «XP ae vrjh.VTepa.is. 
 
 Tois p.ei' yap -n-apiamv op.ijA.iMS, ois t« jUepi/AV^s 
 
 uAyea /ivOuvTai cpOtyfUin OapcraXtui. 
 
 iraiyvia T upc^ieVoicxi 7rap)Jyopa k<u sat ayvias 
 
 irAufoi'Tai ypa<j)L$u)V xpajpacri pep./3d^.ero[. 
 
 r/fjlv S' oi>Se </>dos Aei'o-creiF 6ip,i<S, dAAa p£Aa#pois 
 
 Kfiv7TTuiJ.€0a, £o<£epats (ppoVTLCTi, TiJKO/ievat. 
 
 Agathias Scholasticus, Anthol. Pal. v. 297. 
 
 To ninety-nine people out of a hundred the interest in any collection 
 of Greek statuettes centres in the dainty little ladies from Tanagra whose 
 acquaintance a delighted world made for the first time about thirty years 
 ago, when they revealed to us a phase of Greek art whose existence 
 we were far from suspecting. Since then their popularity has never 
 decreased, and the reason of it is not far to seek. They are so human in 
 their dainty prettiness that we realize at once that their type of beauty 
 is not the ideal one of the sculptor, but the real one of every-day life. 
 True, the modelling is sometimes sketchy, but the sketchiness is that of 
 a Japanese drawing, not the omission of anything important, but the 
 suppression of the unimportant ; for instance, the most interesting part 
 
 44 
 
GENRE STATUETTES OF FEMININE TYPE 45 
 
 of the human body is the face, and the heads of these statuettes are 
 treated in a spirit of delicate and refined realism which is only enhanced 
 by the less detailed execution of the other parts of the figure. In this 
 realism lies the secret of their charm ; we see the Greek woman of the 
 upper classes, we learn how she dressed, the shape, colour and fashion of 
 her different garments, and how coquettish! y and with what infinite 
 variety she arranged a costume which, in itself, is extremely simple, and 
 whose elements never varied ; and we also learn how she amused herself. 
 Such details are all the more interesting because classical authors tell us 
 so little about her daily life, and the general impression is that we know 
 nothing of it, because she spent her days in the seclusion of which 
 Agathias' epigram (quoted above) gives us so vivid a picture. But why 
 do more than half the Tanagra ladies wear hat and shawl if " they 
 were not allowed to breathe the outer air, and brooding on their own 
 dull thoughts, must stay within " ? 
 
 The status of women in Greece varied from century to century and 
 from district to district, just as it has done in other lands. Homer and 
 iEschylus probably drew their heroines from life, and neither suggests 
 that they lived in Oriental seclusion ; on the contrary, both represent 
 them as having a dignified position in the household and conversing 
 freely with such strangers as came to their husband's or father's house, 
 but after the Persian wars (b.c. 490), and possibly even before, when 
 there was a great influx of Greeks from Asia Minor, Eastern ideas 
 as to the propriety of secluding women seem to have crept in, especially 
 in Athens. It is, however, quite clear that even there the restraining 
 power was public opinion, not physical force. 
 
 It must be borne in mind that our impressions of Greek life and 
 custom are mainly derived from one epoch in the history of one state, 
 the sixty years in the history of Athens which has been aptly named 
 her "Imperial period" (b.c. 470-410). Athens was then the centre 
 of the world, her streets were thronged with a motley crowd of Greek 
 and foreign sailors and traders, and an Athenian gentleman may have 
 been well justified in thinking that his woman-kind were better at home, 
 except when they were taking part in religious processions and cere- 
 monies, where custom protected them from insult. These functions 
 afforded a fair number of outings, but they gave no opportunity of 
 
46 GREEK TERRACOTTA STATUETTES 
 
 meeting the other sex, for a Greek lady was entirely restricted to the 
 society of her own or her husband's immediate male relations, and for a 
 male friend, however intimate, to enter a house when the master of it 
 was absent, would have been considered a wanton insult. 
 
 It must also be remembered that the remarks of Athenian authors 
 only refer to the women of the noble and wealthy classes, and to dwellers 
 in towns. Prior to the Peloponnesian war, most wealthy Athenian 
 families lived on their estates in Attica, and only came into Athens when 
 their presence was required there. Xenophon, in his treatise, The 
 Householder, mentions amongst the advantages of a country life, " that 
 it is so much more pleasant for the wife ; " and Demosthenes draws a 
 pretty picture of the excellent relations which had formerly existed 
 between the mothers of two litigants, when they used to meet in the 
 evening, and sit spinning and chatting in the fields, " as they naturally 
 would, being neighbours in the country, and their husbands good 
 friends." 1 
 
 The object of quoting these passages from Athenian authors is to 
 show that by using the terracotta statuettes as the basis of this account 
 of a Greek lady's life and habits, a truer general view of the subject can 
 be obtained than by emphasizing the peculiar local conditions of life at 
 Athens, which was undoubtedly more restricted, though rather in the 
 direction of separation from the man's life than in entire seclusion at 
 home. At the close of the first years of the Peloponnesian war, Pericles 
 delivered a funeral oration at Athens in honour of the slain, in which 
 occurs this passage addressed to their widows : — " Your greatest glory 
 is not to fall short of the standard set up for your sex, and she is best 
 whose name is least spoken of among men, either for praise or for 
 blame." - This would certainly have missed its effect had the widows 
 not been present to hear it ; undoubtedly they were, in a place apart, 
 and that represents the Athenian, and in a lesser degree, the Greek view 
 of what was becoming in a woman, to live modestly and discreetly in the 
 background of a man's material life, a faithful guardian of his house and 
 gear, leaving him free to seek abroad among his own sex the companion- 
 ship and mental stimulus which she could not give. 
 
 Judged by the standards of the present day, the life of a Greek woman 
 1 Demosthenes contra Kallielen, 23. 2 Thucvd ii j.c 
 
GENRE STATUETTES OF FEMININE TYPE 47 
 
 was dull and monotonous, but we should pass the same verdict on an 
 English country gentlewoman's life a hundred years ago — a round of 
 household cares and duties, broken only by domestic anniversaries and 
 religious ceremonies. 
 
 One of the most important duties of the women was the preparation 
 of the clothing of the household, no light matter when every web 
 of cloth had to be carded, spun, and woven at home. Theocritus : 
 sang the 
 
 " Blithely whirling distaff, azure-eyed Athena's gift 
 To the sex, the aim and object of whose life is household thrift." 
 
 Translated by Calverley. 
 
 and though one poet hurled an angry epigram at " wool which makes 
 women grow old " a Greek lady was proud of her skill in spinning 
 and weaving, and claimed for herself the lines in which Theocritus 
 sang of Helen,' 2 
 
 " And who into the basket e'er 
 The yarn so deftly drew ; 
 Or through the mazes of the web 
 
 So well the shuttle threw, 
 And severed from the framework 
 As closely woven a warp, 
 As Helen, Helen in whose eyes the loves for ever play " 
 
 Translated by Calverley. 
 
 Spinning, weaving and embroidery were the most important items 
 of a Greek girl's education, which was conducted entirely at home, 
 and therefore restricted to such accomplishments as her mother could 
 teach her, music, singing and probably a little reading and writing ; 
 the most important thing, in Xenophon's words, 3 being " that she should 
 be brought up to see and hear as little and ask as few questions as 
 possible." Her marriage, which took place at about fifteen, was a 
 
 1 rA.ai)Kas, oj <f>i\tpid' oXaKixra, Saipov 'Ar?ai'uas 
 
 yvvai££v, I'o'o; oiK-ax^eAi'as alcnv en-d/JoAos. — Theoc. Id. xxvni. 1, 2. 
 
 2 ovre tis « TaAa'pojs 7rav«rO£Tai ipyo. ToiavTa 
 ovt ivl SaiSaAe'w TrvKivu')T€pov arptov «tto> 
 KepKiSi (Tvp.Tr\e$o.<Ta p.aKpwv trap €k koVcoi'Toji/ 
 
 ojs 'EAeVa, tos 7rai'T€s iir' o/xpaaiv L/xepoi ivn. 
 
 Theocritus, Epithalamium of Helen, 31 — 37- 
 '■' Xenophon, (Economkus, vii. 5 — 7. 
 
4 8 GREEK TERRACOTTA STATUETTES 
 
 matter of arrangement between the relations on either side, and the 
 shy, frightened demeanour of a young wife is well described by an 
 Athenian husband, who told Socrates that when his young wife was 
 " sufficiently tamed," he began to ask her questions, and to teach her 
 how to manage the household, because all she knew when she came 
 to him, — and it was all he could expect — was how to take wool and 
 make a dress, and how to apportion the daily spinning tasks to the 
 handmaidens, as she had seen it done in her mother's house. 
 Xenophon is of course referring to life at Athens in the fourth 
 century B.C., and we gain some details as to provincial life from one 
 Dicsarchus, 1 a Greek dilettante whose notes of a tour through 
 Attica and Bceotia in the third century have come down to us. He 
 stayed at Tanagra, where he found much wealth but little display ; he 
 praises the uprightness and hospitality of the inhabitants which made 
 it the pleasantest place in Bceotia for a stranger to stay in, though at 
 first it looked a mere heap ot lime-washed houses. He passed by 
 Plata;a where the inhabitants lived on the memory of " the brave days 
 of old," thence through well-watered plains to Thebes, a charming 
 place for a summer residence, even though it was hot, because the 
 gardens were the loveliest in Greece. The Theban men had every 
 vice, but the women ! there was nothing Boeotian about them, nay ! 
 they were like the women ot Sikyon, so gentle and pleasant were 
 their voices. " Their height, beauty and graceful carriage makes 
 them the fairest and most elegant women in all Greece." Then he 
 notes some details of their dress. " Their method of wearing the 
 shawl over the head is such that only the eyes show, the rest of the 
 face is veiled ; this shawl is always white. Their hair is auburn and they 
 wear it twisted up in a knot on the top of the head ; the local name of 
 this coiffure is lampadion (the torch). Their shoes are thin, cut low, red 
 in colour, and so neatly fitted to the foot that it looks almost bare." 
 
 On the whole of this passage the statuettes form a most interest- 
 ing commentary; we see the tall, graceful Theban lady with her shawl 
 thrown over her head (Fig. 17) and draped closely round her in 
 elegant folds, gracious and pleasant in looks, sometimes with, 
 sometimes without, a hat (Fig. 20) to protect her from the scorching 
 1 Dicaearchi, Descriplio Grgcine, 8 — 22. 
 
GENRE STATUETTES OF FEMININE TYPE 49 
 
 rays of the sun, often bearing a fan with the same object. Until 
 the discovery of the statuettes we were far from suspecting how 
 important an adjunct a fan was to the toilette of a Greek lady, 
 nor did we know the fashion and shape of the big straw hat (tholia) 
 which Praxinoe wore when she and Gorgo went to see the Adonis 
 play at Alexandria (page 50). 
 
 In the same way the statuettes show us that the ordinary house dress 
 was a long tunic (Fig. 21), with or without sleeves, girdled under the 
 arms, and reaching to the feet ; this garment was usually white, but was 
 often decorated with coloured borders and embroideries. Such a costume 
 was, however, only suited for indoor wear, and on occasions of ceremony 
 a shawl was added, even indoors. Of this we have a charming example 
 in a standing figure with a wreath in her hair, who is draped in a large 
 square shawl of a blue tint (Fig. 31). This shawl was de rigueur 
 when a Greek lady walked abroad, and we see in how many and how 
 varied ways it could be worn (Plate I.). According to Dicaearchus, it 
 was always white, but as a rule, those of the statuettes are pink or blue. 
 Another difference is in the shoes, which are of untanned leather with a 
 red sole, and probably, though we do not see them, high red heels. The 
 Theban " lampadion " coiffure frequently occurs (Ibid.), and so does a 
 variation of it in which the knot is supported by a shaped band fastened 
 over the forehead (Plate VIII.). 
 
 Occasionally, but only occasionally, we find a statuette which seems 
 to possess a definite personality, and to aim at representing not any lady, 
 but some particular lady, and such is the dignified matron (Fig. 22) 
 seated on a rock in one of those shady Theban gardens of which 
 Dicasarchus spoke. Her gala costume, no less than her beauty, remind 
 us of the beautiful Boeotian poetess Corinna, who five times won a 
 prize from Pindar, and who boasted that by her sweet-toned songs she 
 had brought great honour to Tanagra's white-robed dames, though 
 current gossip ascribed her victory not to her poetry, but to her beauty ! 
 In one hand she poises an apple, the lover's token. 1 
 
 ' Tui ij.i'jXui /SaXXo) ere' tv 8' el plv eKOvaa ^H/Yei? /-te, 
 (iefo./j.erv; tj}? <n]<; -0.p9ei'O]<> /xeraOo;' 
 €i 6 ap j it fMrj ytyvoiTO, 7'oets, tovt avTO Xapovva 
 CK^ij/ai TrjV wp'ijv ws oAtyo^(0OVtO5. 
 
 Plato, Bergk op. cit. 619. 
 
5o GREEK TERRACOTTA STATUETTES 
 
 " I throw an apple at my fair, 
 
 And if she love me, love me truly, 
 She'll guess aright the hidden prayer, 
 
 Accept it, and reward me duly. 
 But if — oh ! let it not be spoken, 
 
 She have no mind to be persuaded, 
 Still let her take the lover's token 
 
 And think how soon it will be faded." 
 
 Translated by J. H. Merivale. 
 
 Charming and valuable as the statuettes are which deal with the outer 
 aspect of a woman's life, they are still more interesting when they take 
 us into the women's apartments and open for us what otherwise would be 
 a sealed book. We see the little girl dressed in her best, seated on a 
 square stool (Fig. 23), quivering all over with suppressed excitement at 
 the prospect of some outing, perhaps the yearly fair, when toys of all 
 kinds were given to the children. An older maiden strolls in the 
 garden talking to the pet bird cooing on her shoulder (Fig. 21). Birds 
 are not infrequent accessories of the Tanagra figures, whether boys or 
 girls, youths or maidens, and the figure serves to illustrate that fondness 
 for pets to which Greek epigrams so often allude. 
 
 Another phase of lite, the interchange of visits between neighbours, 
 is amusingly illustrated by the accompanying group of two ladies seated 
 on a sofa (Fig. 27), enjoying a good gossip ; it is the plastic representa- 
 tion of the opening scene between " Gorgo " and "Praxinoe" of the 
 Adoniazitsw of Theocritus. 1 
 
 Praxinoe. Dear Gorgo! you are quite a stranger; I'd almost given you up. Sit 
 down ! 
 
 Gorgo. I hardly thought to get here alive ; such a crush ! all sorts and conditions of 
 men, and what a distance away you do live now ! 
 
 P. Oh, well ! that tyrant of mine took this hovel, I can't call it a house, at the 
 back of beyond, to keep us apart — it's just like him ! Tiresome pest ! 
 
 G. My dear! don't talk like that about your husband before the child. Look! 
 how he's staring ! Never mind, Zopyrion, my pet, mama's not talking about dada ! 
 Good gracious ! he understands ! Dear Dada ! 
 
 P. " Dear dada " had some marketing to do the other day, soda and rouge to get, 
 and if you believe me he brought home salt ! 
 
 and so on, the gossip being only cut short by the necessity of Gorgo's 
 putting on her shawl and hat to go and see the Adonis show in 
 Alexandria. 
 
 1 ./do/aa-z,i/s,e, I — 1 6. 
 
GENRE STATUETTES OF FEMININE TYPE 51 
 
 The koroplastEe did not neglect that most important of persons in a 
 Greek household, the nurse, though being a slave they usually treat her 
 in a spirit of caricature (Fig. 24). Greek writers are loud in condemnation 
 of the custom of entrusting the care of a free-born Greek to a barbarian 
 who could not even speak properly, but in spite of their protests 
 Thracian nurses were in great demand, and the memory of one of these, 
 Cleita, has been preserved to us, by her grateful charge. 1 
 
 " To Cleita. 
 
 The child Medeius to his Thracian mure 
 
 This stone, inscribed ' To Cleita,' raised in mid high way. 
 
 Her modest virtues ott shall men rehearse, 
 
 Who doubts it: Is not ' Cleita's worth' a proverb to this day!"' 
 
 Translated by Calyerley. 
 
 The tie which bound nurse and nursling was a very close one, and in 
 one of Demosthenes' orations - the plaintiff explains that after long and 
 faithful service his nurse was set free and married. Long years after- 
 wards her husband died, and she being alone and friendless, turned for 
 help to her foster son, now a married man with children, and " of course 
 I took her in, I could not see my nurse or my pedagogue in want." 
 
 The Boeotian artist treats the nurse in a spirit of caricature, but his 
 
 attitude to the mother is quite different, and one of the most charming 
 
 statuettes (Fig. 25) in the collection shows us a graceful young mother 
 
 in her high-backed chair singing her baby to sleep, perhaps with the 
 
 cradle-song, which the Greek poet, Simonides, puts into the mouth of 
 
 Danae. 3 
 
 " Sleep on, my babe, I bid thee sleep, 
 And sleep, thou raging sea ; 
 And sleep, ye countless cruel griefs 
 
 Of miserable me." — 'Translated by W. Hay. 
 
 The statuettes which illustrate this account of a Greek woman's life 
 
 1 'O /j.lkkos to 8' ereufe ra ®pdijcra 
 
 M?/8«os to /xra/x' iirl to. cjSoj, Kr/Tre'ypat/'e KAeiVas. 
 
 e£ei Tar \a.piv ''■ y vv " u, ' Tt T17V10V 
 
 mv tov Kwpov Wpefe. Ti fldv ; hi ^pyjaipa KaAeiTcu. 
 
 Theoc. Epig. xviii. 
 
 2 Bern, contra Everg et Mnes'ib, 55, 56. 
 
 '■'• Ke'Ao/xai S' eSSe /3pe'<£os, cuSeVoj Se xoVtos 
 
 €l'0€TOj 8' (ijXOTOV KO.KOV. SlMONIDES, Bel'gk, Op. Clt. I I 3 1 . 
 
52 GREEK TERRACOTTA STATUETTES 
 
 and habits do not come only from Tanagra ; some, and those not the 
 least beautiful, are from other parts of Greece, though all are of the type 
 which we associate with the name. It is noteworthy that when the 
 importers did not merely content themselves with a rough reproduction 
 of the graceful figures, their renderings of them have just the touch of 
 character which the Tanagra statuettes lack. A comparison of the two 
 standing figures from Corinth (Plate I.) and from Eretria (Fig. 17) with 
 another (Fig. 20) from Tanagra shows the precise nature of this 
 difference. Both figures are characterized by less delicacy of workman- 
 ship and by greater breadth ot treatment than their model ; this shows 
 in the firmer pose, the attitude of the head, the arrangement of the 
 drapery, while the Corinthian potter has substituted for the usual thin, 
 rectangular plinth, a high one of columnar form which adds much to the 
 effectiveness of the figure, though it detracts somewhat from its poetry. 
 Just the same difference is shown in the group of two ladies talking 
 together (Fig. 27). It is from Myrina in Asia Minor, and obviously 
 inspired by Tanagra types, but we are immediately impressed with the 
 reality of the scene ; whatever the subject of the conversation, the talkers 
 are engrossed in it, and the group gains immensely in value by the 
 addition of this touch ot realism. The Tanagra potter was, however, 
 particularly happy in his rendering of figures or scenes in which gentle 
 grace predominates, and one of his most attractive groups is that of the 
 mother and child which has all the sweet serenity of a mediaeval Madonna 
 (Fig. 25), but it is not a matter for surprise that with the growing 
 taste for realism in art, his dainty productions ceased to please and had 
 to give way to a coarser and more human type of figure. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 GENRE STATUETTES OF MASCULINE TYPE 
 
 " The first of mortal joys is health, 
 Next beauty ; and the third is wealth, 
 The fourth, all youth's delights to prove, 
 
 With those we love." — Translated by J. H. Merivale. 
 
 Yyiaivtiv jxkv apirrrov avSpl 6raTuJ, 
 0€vT€pov 8e tpvixv kiiXov ya'tvOaL, 
 to TfjLTOv 6e irXovrtLV dooAojs 
 
 koX to reraprov i]/3av /xeTu rtov <j>l\ciiv. 
 
 Bergk op. cit. 1289. 
 
 The Greek passion for beauty of form led to a cultus of youthful 
 physical beauty and of its fortunate possessors ; the beauty of youth, 
 the deformity of age, is the frequent theme of the Greek poets ; the 
 pitifulness of growing old, of losing the vigour and freshness of 
 youth, the horror and disgrace of physical decay, impressed the Greek 
 imagination. 1 
 
 " The fruit of youth remains 
 Brief as the sunshine scattered o'er the plains, 
 And when these shining hours have fled away, 
 To die were better than to breathe the day." — Translated by F. Elton. 
 
 The sentiment was no late importation into Greek literature, it 
 finds voice even in Homer,' and the crowning argument used by 
 Tyrtajus to incite the Spartan youth to prowess in war, is the cruelty 
 
 1 /j.i'rvvOa 8e ylyvtTai y/3i]<; 
 
 Kap7ros, oltov, T iirl yrjv KLOVCiTiU 77eAiOS, 
 avrap €71-771' 07) tovto t€/Vos Trapa/u.eii^aTcu 07/7775 
 avTLKti reOvdpxvaL fiiXrLov 7} ptOTOS. 
 
 Mimnermus, Frag. 2 ; Bergk op. at. 409. 
 - Iliad, xxii. 7 \ Jf. 
 
 53 
 
54 GREEK TERRACOTTA STATUETTES 
 
 of allowing an elder man to suffer death in battle, a death which 
 would reveal the deformities of age, but which could only bring fresh 
 glory to the beauty of youth. 1 
 
 " Leave not our sires to stem the unequal light, 
 Whose limbs are nerved no more by buoyant might. 
 Nor lagging backward, let the younger breast 
 Allow the man of age (a sight unblessed), 
 To welter in the combat's foremost thrust, 
 His hoary head dishevelled in the dust 
 And venerable bosom bleeding bare : 
 But youth's (air form, though fall'n, is ever fair, 
 And beautiful in death the youth appears, 
 The hero vouth who dies in blooming years." 
 
 Translated by T. Campbell. 
 
 This idea is so characteristically Greek, so interwoven with the 
 fibre of Greek life and thought, that it would be strange if the potter 
 had not given expression to it. Every collection of Tanagra figures 
 contains a certain number of male types, and these almost without 
 exception represent youths under twenty ; it is only very rarely that we 
 find the portrait of a man of middle age, while old age is usually 
 treated in a spirit of caricature, with special reference to its loss 
 of figure, hair and teeth. 
 
 Here again the statuettes afford valuable evidence ot contemporary 
 Greek taste and thought, and an interesting commentary on the 
 statements of classical authors about the education and training of the 
 Greek boy. 
 
 This was conducted on principles diametrically opposed to those 
 on which his sister was brought up, she entirely at home, he entirely 
 away from it. This absence of family lite is the weak point in the 
 Greek social system ; a boy was removed from his mother's care 
 
 1 roes <^e TTaXaiOTepovs ct>v ovksti ytn'var' i\a<f>pn< 
 ji>j KCLTaXenrovTts t^euyere, roe? yepaiovs' 
 uirry/>ui' yap orj tovto pera — popA^otfTl — arovra 
 KelaOcu —p6(r^€ re'oji- avopa iraXaioTtpov 
 i/oe Aet'Kor e^orra KO.prj iro\lov re yeVetov 
 dvpov airoTTVUOVT uA/a/xur er kovi'ij 
 di0"xpa Tuy 0(p6aXp.oZ^ kcll vtfutri/Tov ideh' 
 Kul xpoa yvp.VMOi.VTa' veoim. 8e ttu.vt e—eoiKev 
 i'xj>p' cpaTijs r//3rj<; ayXaov avdo's t^ij. — iyrtteus, Bergk op. at. ^98. 
 
GENRE STATUETTES OF MASCULINE TYPE ^ 
 
 when he was about seven, his father's day was passed almost entirely 
 away from home, and tenderly attached to their children as the Greeks 
 were, this tenderness did not lead them to take an intelligent interest 
 in a child's upbringing, in which the parents had little share, for a 
 father who had engaged an efficient attendant and competent in- 
 structors for his son had done all that the most exacting theorist 
 could require. 
 
 The cause of this curiously detached attitude lies in the radical 
 difference between the ancient and the modern conception of the 
 objects of education. In our view education is directed to the 
 advantage of the individual who belongs to himself, but the ancients 
 sought the advantage of the State, to whom a man belonged. 
 
 This theory carried to its logical conclusion would oblige the 
 State to undertake the whole of a boy's education, but save in Sparta, 
 it contented itself with providing him with two years' military train- 
 ing at the age of eighteen, and left his previous studies to private 
 enterprise. 
 
 A Greek lad's education therefore fell into two parts : the first 
 from seven to eighteen years of age, the second, from eighteen to twenty. 
 During this latter period it is easy to follow his life, but not so easy 
 to discover how he spent the preceding eleven years in acquiring the 
 very slender amount of knowledge which constituted a liberal education 
 in a world which had not much past of its own, and had not yet 
 learnt to take an interest in the past of " barbarian " nations. 
 
 Until he was seven a boy remained in the charge of his mother 
 and nurse, but about that age he passed into the care of an elderly 
 male slave, called a pedagogue, who had no literary duties, but whose 
 function it was to attend him to and from school, and to teach him 
 the ordinary rules of good behaviour — " not to sit with his feet crossed, 
 nor to lean his chin on his hand ; not to stare about him in the 
 streets, but to keep his eyes fixed modestly on the ground ; how to 
 wear the big cloak which was his outdoor dress (Plate IV.), and 
 how to eat tidily, taking one finger to relishes and sauce, two to 
 bread and fish." The conventional representation of a pedagogue is 
 an elderly man, with bald head, long beard and wrinkled forehead 
 (Fig- 36). 
 
5 6 GREEK TERRACOTTA STATUETTES 
 
 There were three branches of learning — grammar, music and 
 gymnastics ; until he was fourteen a boy was principally concerned 
 with the two first-named, but at fourteen he was supposed to have 
 finished his studies in "grammar," and it was replaced by gymnastics, 
 to which and music, he chiefly devoted his attention during the last 
 four years of his school life. 
 
 " Grammar " comprised reading, writing and a little elementary 
 arithmetic. After three years' instruction the pupil could usually begin 
 to read the poets ; his acquaintance with their works was not, how- 
 ever, postponed until he could read them for himself. The great 
 poets supplied the religious influence in Greek life, and a Greek child 
 learnt by heart passages from Homer and Hesiod, as an English child 
 learns passages from the Bible. These were committed to memory 
 from the oral instruction of the teacher, and we now see why education 
 proceeded at so leisurely a pace ; there were, of course, no home lessons, 
 for there were no school books, and though a Greek boy had not 
 continuous holidays, there were a sufficient number of public festivals 
 to seriously interrupt the course of study, for during these the schools 
 were closed, and it is recorded as characteristic of a mean man that he did 
 not send his children to school during the month Anthesterion because 
 half of it was occupied by public festivals, and he thereby saved a 
 whole month's school fees ! 
 
 Besides selections from the works of Homer and Hesiod, a Greek 
 boy had to learn the many popular songs, hymns, catches, dirges and 
 choral odes, knowledge of which constituted a liberal education. Few 
 of these have come down to us, except in quotation, because the greater 
 part of a Greek gentleman's library was housed in his head, and every- 
 body knew them by heart ; one of the finest, the " Song of Harmodios 
 and Aristogeiton," x which was the Athenian National Anthem ("I'll 
 wreath my sword in a myrtle bough"), is well known in translations 
 to English readers. 
 
 We learn from a terracotta statuette how writing was taught 
 (Fig. 26) ; the teacher traced the letters on the wax-covered surface 
 of a wooden tablet and guided the pupil's hand over these lines until 
 
 Calli stratus, Frag. 11 ; Bergk op. fit. 1291. 
 
GENRE STATUETTES OF MASCULINE TYPE 57 
 
 he could form them for himself ; he also learnt to write in ink with 
 a reed on papyrus, and as papyrus was expensive, these school exercises 
 are usually written on the back of some other document. 
 
 Numbers in Greek are denoted by the letters of the alphabet, 
 differentiated by accents, a! = 1, but a = 1000, and the Greek boy 
 learnt enough arithmetic to transact the ordinary business of life, but 
 abstract quantities had no fascination for the Greek mind, and the 
 followers of Pythagoras who devoted much time to their study were 
 more concerned with the mystical qualities inherent in them than with 
 their uses and capabilities. 
 
 The Greeks attached more importance to the study of music than 
 to any other branch of education. Reading and writing were com- 
 paratively late innovations which old-fashioned folk viewed with some 
 disfavour, but choral singing accompanied every public festival: ' — 
 
 " Oh, would I were an ivory lyre ! 
 A lyre of burnished ivory, 
 That in the Dionysian choir 
 Beauteous boys might carry me." 
 
 Translated by J. H. Mkrivale. 
 
 A hymn was sung at every banquet before the symposion began, and 
 catches, glees, and songs during it. Thus Socrates, to put an end to 
 a discussion which was growing heated, says : " — " Well ! if we are all so 
 eager to be heard at once, what fitter time than now to sing a song in 
 chorus," and started one, perhaps this by Hybrias the Cretan : 3 — 
 
 1 EWe Xvpa KaXrj ytvoijx-qv iXe<j>avTivrj 
 
 ko.1 /j.e KaXot iraxoes <£e/jotei' \covvo~tov e<? \opov. 
 
 Scholia, 19; Bergk op. ril. 1293. 
 
 2 Xen., Symp. 7, 1. 
 
 3 "Eo"Tt p.01 ttXovtos /Aeyas oopv ko.1 £/<£o? Sir. a . 
 
 ko.I to KaXov Xaicn'jiov, Trp6/3Xrnxa ^pojro?' 
 tovtu) yap dpoj, rovrio Otpi^o), 
 Tovrui 7rareat TOV advv oivov a7T ap.7ri.Xur 
 TOVTOi 0€cr7roras /xvoias KO<Xrpj.U.L. 
 
 Tot 8e p.yj ToXp.wvT e'x e "' oopv Kal ii<f>o<; Str. p. 
 
 Kal to KaXov Xaurrjlov irpopX-qp.a ^pojtos' 
 
 7rai'T£? yovv 7re7rT'//ioTe9 (ap,<f>i) 
 
 eadr . . . (Trpos)KVV£VVTl (/j.e) Seo-TroTar 
 
 Kal piyav fiaiTiXrja cpiovtovres. — Bergk op. cit. 1295. 
 
5 8 GREEK TERRACOTTA STATUETTES 
 
 " My wealth's a burly spear and brand, 
 And a right good shield of hide untanned 
 
 Which on my arm I buckle. 
 With these I plough, I reap, I sow, 
 With these I make the sweet wine flow, 
 And all around me truckle. 
 
 But your wights that take no pride to wield 
 A massy spear and well-made shield, 
 
 Nor joy to draw the sword. 
 Oh ! I bring these heartless, hapless drones 
 Down in a trice on their marrow-bones, 
 
 To call me king and lord ! " — Translated by T. Campbell, 
 
 Then there were drinking songs : 1 — 
 
 " To be bowed with grief is foil v, 
 Naught is gained bv melancholy, 
 Better than the pain of thinking 
 Is to steep the sense in drinking." 
 
 Translated by J. H. Merivale. 
 
 and many others, each with its own traditional air, knowledge of which 
 was as necessary as a knowledge of the alphabet, for ignorance showed 
 lack of breeding. 
 
 Music included proficiency on some instrument, usually the lyre ; at 
 one time the flute was in fashion, but, besides being ungraceful, it was a 
 solo instrument, and, as such, lett to professional artists, the gentleman's 
 object being merely to accompany himself when he sang. 
 
 The amusements of a Greek bov did not differ materially from those 
 of any other boy. We get a list of his favourite toys from a dedicatory 
 epigram, which show that boy tastes have not changed much in two 
 thousand years. - 
 
 ' Oi' xfn) KtxKQitjl Ov/xov eV n-^e':r7/r- 
 TrpOKoif/Ofjiev yap ovoev dcra^Ltej/ot, 
 oi fjrK^L, <f>apfjiaKov o apuTTOv, 
 furor iv€LK(X[Aevois fitOvcrOwv. 
 
 Alczeus, Bergk op. at. 941 (Schol. 35). 
 
 - hvcfuj/jor rat (Tcftalpav, ivKp6ra\6v re $iAokA.«s 
 Epfaurj, Tavrrjv, vTrt'ireS/r -Aaruyi/r, 
 cMTTpayaAas 6 "is — oAA eV e/xi/ruTo, xat riir kXiKTOV 
 I'xifj.pur. Kovpoavvrj'i -a.i'yri' . aviKpifxau^v . 
 
 Leonidas, Anthol. Pal. vi. 509. 
 
GENRE STATUETTES OF MASCULINE TYPE 
 
 59 
 
 " To Hermes, this fair ball of pleasant sound, 
 This boxen rattle full of lively noise, 
 These maddening bones, this top well spinning round, 
 Philocles offers here, his boyhood's tovs." 
 
 Translated by Lord Neaves. 
 
 And besides these, numbers of toys — jugs, dolls (Fig. 2), cups, carts, 
 animals (Plate IV r . and Fig. 1) have been found in the tombs, and one 
 Athenian father mentions that he bought his son a toy cart and horse 
 with his first juror's tee. Two of our statuettes represent boys in 
 holiday trim, the one wrapped in a huge mantle, with a fillet on his 
 head (Plate IV.), waiting to take part in some festival, the other with 
 a ball in one hand, and a bag of knuckle-bones in the other (Plate IV.), 
 just off to play with a comrade. These knuckle-bones took the place of 
 our marbles in the favour of school-boys, and we learn that one Konnaros 
 won eighty of them as a writing-prize (see page 5). 
 
 At about fourteen a boy began his gymnastic training, which included 
 running, leaping, hurling the quoit and throwing the javelin. The 
 gymnasia in which the boys trained were private ones, under private 
 teachers, the public ones being reserved for the ephebi and the older men. 
 At all the great games there were contests lor boys, whose victories 
 were duly honoured in song by Pindar and the later lyrists. Among the 
 upper classes at Athens riding was a favourite amusement, and the last 
 four years of the boy's school life was spent in learning the arts he would 
 have to practise as an ephebe ; he was still, however, under the care of 
 his pedagogue, and the strictest rules were laid down tor his behaviour ; 
 the market-place and the law-courts were forbidden ground to him ; he 
 was enjoined not to dawdle in the streets on his way home from 
 school, to observe silence in the presence of his elders, and, in a word, to 
 cultivate that modest and shamefaced reserve which was the crown of 
 virtuous youth. 
 
 At eighteen he became a citizen, and entered on his two years' military 
 training. He doffed the great mantle and fillet, his boy dress, and 
 assumed the traditional dress of the ephebe class, which he had now 
 entered, the chlamys, or short cloak, and petasos, or sun-hat, with 
 which the statuettes have made us familiar (Fig. 28). This was a 
 Thessalian riding costume, and adopted by all Greek states as a fighting 
 or travelling garb. At Athens the chlamys worn on state occasions 
 
60 GREEK TERRACOTTA STATUETTES 
 
 was dark, but this was a local fashion, mourning for the last king 
 Kodros of blessed memory, and as a rule it was white or coloured. 
 
 The Athenian ephebe was drilled for a year at Athens, then armed 
 publicly with lance and buckler at the shrine of Agraulos, where he 
 swore l not to abandon his comrade in arms, to fight for hearth and 
 home and his country's gods, to obey all magistrates and to respect the 
 belief of his ancestors, " so help me Aglauros, Enyalios, Ares, Zeus, 
 Thallo Auxo and Hegemone." His second year was spent in the 
 frontier guard of which there were two branches, infantry and cavalry, 
 and at its expiration he was free from further service, unless war broke 
 out. 
 
 In the fifth and fourth centuries b.c. an ephebe was entirely occupied 
 with physical culture ; but in later times he was expected to continue his 
 other studies, and a Greek writer draws the following picture of a well- 
 born youth's day 2 : — " He rises early from his unluxurious bed, washes 
 away the remains of sleep from his eyelids with pure water, and with his 
 classic cloak fastened on his shoulders by a clasp, he leaves his father's 
 house with downcast eyes, looking at no one whom he meets. He is 
 escorted by a decorous train of servants and pedagogues, who bear after 
 him the honourable material for toil, no ivory combs to smooth his 
 locks, no painted pictures of beauteous objects, no mirrors, but in their 
 stead writing-tablets, volumes which enshrine the value of ancient deeds, 
 and, if he is going to his music-master, his lyre. When his mind is 
 satiated with lessons diligently learnt, he trains his body by liberal 
 exercise ; in peace he practises the arts of war, casting the javelin, and 
 hurling the dart with steady hand. Then come the sports of the 
 palaestra, and under the sun's fierce rays he rolls his body in the dust 
 till the sweat drops from it in the struggle. Next a brief bath and a 
 frugal meal, and then his masters come again, expounding which hero 
 was brave and which prudent, and who was famed for justice, who for 
 temperance. Night puts an end to toil, and recruited by needful food, 
 he enjoys the sound and refreshing slumber which is the reward of 
 hard work." 
 
 The statuettes show us this model youth on his way to the palaestra 
 (Fig. 28), strigil and oil-flask in hand. It must not, however, be 
 
 1 Stob*us, Florikg. +1, N. 141. - Lucian, Amor. 44, 45. 
 
GENRE STATUETTES OF MASCULINE TYPE 61 
 
 supposed that he had no amusements ; of these cock-fighting was one of 
 the most popular ; another statuette shows us a somewhat older youth 
 (Fig. 29), no longer wearing his working-dress, but draped in a mantle of 
 ceremony, with a woollen fillet wreathed with ivy on his head, on his 
 way to a feast with his pet cock under his arm. In addition to the 
 amusements of private life, the young man, as the flower of the state, and 
 therefore most pleasing to the gods, took a prominent part in all festal 
 processions, embassies, etc. 
 
 A Greek usually married young, but that made little difference in his 
 way of lite, for " for a man to remain indoors, instead of devoting 
 himself to outdoor pursuits is a thing discreditable," and an Athenian 
 gentleman in the fourth century B.C. gave the following account of his 
 day to Socrates : 1 — 
 
 " Why then, my habit is to rise early when I may still expect to 
 find at home this, that, or the other friend whom I may wish to see. 
 Then, if anything has to be done in town, I set off to transact the 
 business and take a walk ; or it there is none, my groom leads my 
 horse on to the farm. I follow, and so make the country road my walk, 
 which suits me as well or better than pacing up and down the colonnade. 
 After I have looked round the farm I generally mount my horse and 
 take a canter. I put him through his paces, avoiding neither slopes, 
 ditches, nor streams, only taking care not to lame him. That done, the 
 groom leads him home, and I return too, partly walking, partly running, 
 and when I cret home I have a bath and a rub down, and then I take my 
 midday meal." 
 
 This was rather an exceptional way of life for a townsman, though 
 it must fairly represent the ordinary pursuits of a country gentleman, 
 of whom Fig. 30 gives us an excellent portrait, a burly, rough-looking 
 person in military costume, who would come up to Archilochus' idea of 
 what a soldier should be. 2 
 
 1 Xen. (Economicus, 11, 14 — 1*. 
 
 1 Ov tfuXio) fj.cyu.v (TTpaTrjybv oioe SLa^cn-Xiy/xevoi', 
 ou8e jlocTTpvyQiirrL yavpov oio vTrzsvprjfJLtvov, 
 d\\d p.01 crfALKpos T15 thj ku.I 7re/jt KVijp.us loeiv 
 potKos, d(T0u.A.f'oJs /3e/:?}/Kws —iMTiri, KapoLTjs — Xeos. 
 
 Bergk op. cit. 698. 
 
62 GREEK TERRACOTTA STATUETTES 
 
 " Boast me not your valiant captain 
 
 Strutting fierce with measured stride, 
 Glorying in his well-trimmed beard and 
 Wavy ringlet's measured pride. 
 
 Mine be he that's short of stature, 
 
 Firm of foot with curved knee, 
 Heart of oak in limb and feature, 
 
 And of courage bold and free." 
 
 Translated by J. H. Merivale. 
 
 Most dwellers in towns spent the morning in the agora, where they 
 did the household shopping, and in the law courts, where a good deal of 
 time was taken up in the performance of civic duties, and took their 
 exercise in the colonnades. 
 
 Afternoon and evening were the hours consecrated to social inter- 
 course ; the evening meal was served about sunset, and after it the 
 guests, having offered three libations, sang a hymn such as the 
 following : 1 — 
 
 " Pray we or not, great Jove, do thou supply 
 All good ; all harm, e'en to our prayers, deny." 
 
 Translated by Dr. H. Welleslev. 
 
 as a prelude to the symposion or drinking-feast, at which they 
 entertained each other with songs, riddles and discussions. On very 
 grand occasions the assistance of professional musicians and dancing-girls 
 was called in. A statuette shows us one of these with balls in her hands 
 (Plate VII.), " and with these in her hands she falls to dancing, and the 
 while she dances she flings them into the air, overhead she sends them 
 twirling, judging the time they must be thrown to catch them as they 
 fall in perfect time." 
 
 Sometimes a symposion was a mere drinking bout, but though we 
 can hardly believe that it was such a " feast of reason and a flow of 
 soul " as Plato and Xenophon suggest, its attraction lay not only in its 
 opportunity for drinking, it was a means of social intercourse. A Greek 
 found no pleasure complete unless " enjoyed with friends," and his 
 feeling is well expressed in the words of a popular refrain — 
 
 1 Ze? /3aut\ev, to fj.ev irr$\a Kal cvvofj.ivoi's Kal avevKTOis 
 ajjifiii otoov' to. Se Xvypa Kal evyofxivoiv a7rcpvK-ot?. 
 
 Anthol. Pal. X. IOiS 
 
PLATE VII. 
 
 S«r 
 
 A DANCING GlRI,- 
 Brit. Mus. C. 286. 
 
 HanhartI/th. 
 
GENRE STATUETTES OF MASCULINE TYPE 63 
 
 " Quaff with me the purple wine, 
 And in youthful pleasures join ; 
 Crown with me thy flowing hair, 
 With me love the beauteous fair ; 
 When sweet madness fills my soul, 
 Rave thou too, without control ; 
 When I'm sober, sink with me 
 
 Into dull sobriety." 1 — Translated by J. H. Mlrhall. 
 
 Turning from the lessons the statuettes teach us to the statuettes 
 themselves, it will be noticed at once how few they are in comparison 
 with their feminine counterparts, about one in fifteen is the usual propor- 
 tion. All the specimens, however, merit careful attention ; the figure on 
 Plate IV. representing a laughing boy, is noticeable not only for its 
 expression, which is unusually animated for a terracotta statuette, but 
 for the extreme care with which all the details of the costume are 
 rendered, mantle, fillet and sandals fastened with cross-way thongs. 
 Another (Plate IV.) has an interesting peculiarity of technique, the 
 nude portions are not merely dipped in lime-wash and then painted, they 
 are enamelled in colour, and hence the excellent preservation of the 
 surface and the colour. The same technique appears in several other 
 statuettes in the British Museum collection representing Leda and the 
 swan, a grotesque old woman, etc. In the first century r.c. the potters 
 of Centorbi in Sicily reverted to this technique with great success, an 
 Eros (Plate VIII.) has the nude portions enamelled in pink, and other 
 statuettes in a lurid purple which is the reverse of pleasing. 
 
 In order to fully appreciate the excellence of the Tanagra statuettes 
 at their best period we have only to compare Fig. 28 and Fig. 29, both 
 representing the semi-nude figure of a youth. The graceful, easy pose, 
 the effective contrast of the nude forms and the drapery, the gentle 
 expression of the Tanagra youth, make up an artistic whole in which we 
 see the ideal ephebe of Greek fancy ; the other figure, which probably 
 comes from the neighbouring district of Eretria, and belongs to a later 
 period, gives us a faithful and conscientious portrait of the ephebe as he 
 was, seen through a less artistic medium than the Praxitelean ideal. 
 
 1 %vv jxoi. 7rtre, crvvrjfio., crwipa, rrvo-Tefiavjjipopei, 
 (Tvv /J.OL /j.aii'o/xo'u) /AutVeo, tri/v (rutppovi (Tuxppovei. 
 
 Praxilla, Bergk op. at. Frag. 1293. 
 
64 GREEK TERRACOTTA STATUETTES 
 
 The same may be said of the stalwart warrior shown in Fig. 30, who 
 bears the same relation to the youthful armed warriors found among 
 Tanagra figures, that the female figures from Corinth and Eretria do 
 to the ordinary Tanagra type : he has gained in character what he has 
 lost in grace. 
 
 If we may judge from the infrequency with which they were repro- 
 duced by foreign workshops, the masculine tvpes did not enjoy the 
 same favour as the feminine ones, and this was probably the case ; they 
 were consecrated to the glory of the ephebe, and represent a phase of life 
 and thought which was too local, too exclusively Greek to appeal to 
 nations among whom it did not exist. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 STATUETTES ILLUSTRATIVE OF MYTH AND LEGEND 
 
 " To shaggy Pan and all the wood-nymphs fair, 
 Fast by the rock this grateful offering stands, 
 A shepherd's gift — to those who gave him there 
 Rest, when he fainted in the sultry air, 
 And reached him sweetest water with their hands." 
 
 Translated by J. W. Burgon. 
 
 <PpLtoKO[i.a rooe Llai'i Kat avXidcnv Oiro rSTvzAcAais 
 
 OUipOV V7TO (JK-OTrtOS ©evSoTOS OtOVO/XO?' 
 
 owe^ inr a^aXiov Oepeos /xeya KeKjxnwTo. 
 Travaav, opetacraL \ep(rl fitXiypov v8wp. 
 
 Asite, Anthal. Pal. x\i. [App. Plan.) 291. 
 
 The border-land of Greek mythology is peopled with a throng of 
 beings neither human nor divine, satyrs, nymphs — " those daughters 
 fair of .ZEgis-bearing Jove," — and nereids, who filled a very large place 
 in popular fancy, and who, especially to the country folk, were ever- 
 present and very real. The shepherd heard them as he wandered 
 with his flocks among the mountains : 1 — 
 
 " Pan on his oaten pipes awakes the strain, 
 And fills with dulcet sounds the pastoral plain ; 
 Lured by his notes the nymphs their bowers forsake, 
 From every mountain, running stream and lake, 
 From every hill and ancient grove around, 
 And in the mazy dance trip o'er the ground." 
 
 Translated by J. H. Merivale. 
 
 it was the wood-nymphs whom he thanked for grateful shade at 
 noon-day, and for the fresh springs at which his parched flock slaked 
 
 1 Autos tirel (TVpiyyi {LfXitfiTai tvKekaou) llav 
 vypov t€ts £eu/<Tojv ^etA-os virtp KaAafiuw' 
 at Sc irlpi.1; OaXepoiat \opov irocrlv icmjcravTu 
 'YSpiaSes vvp.<f>au, vv/J.<f}ai A/mopuaoes. 
 
 Plato, Frag. 24; Bergk op. at. 625. 
 
 65 ' F 
 
66 GREEK TERRACOTTA STATUETTES 
 
 their thirst ; it was Pan who sent the hunter home with well-filled 
 bag. These spirits were not all beneficent : the nymphs waited at the 
 bottom of the reedy pools, and dragged the shepherds down to death ; 
 the sailor saw the nereids dancing and singing on the tops of the waves, 
 and prayed that they might not wish him to dwell with them in the 
 halls of their father Nereus, and so these minor divinities were the objects 
 of a more constant and careful worship than the great Olympian gods 
 and goddesses who were the official protectors of states and cities. 
 
 The townsman into whose life wood-nymphs and nereids entered 
 in a far less degree, peopled his world with attendant spirits, more 
 particularly concerned with the occupations of a human life in its 
 relations to other human lives, — who presided over its every act from 
 birth to death, and had charge of everything connected with it 
 from a lady's wool-basket to the cups for a drinking feast. The 
 form under which popular fancy conceived these attendant spirits was 
 very vague and indefinite, until Greek literature crystallized them into 
 shape by providing art with a series of graceful conceptions to which 
 it gave plastic expression. The potters could not neglect so fertile a 
 field and one so admirably suited to the character of their wares, and 
 in every centre of production we find figures which are neither 
 presentments of divinities nor studies from real life, but something 
 between the two, the form of which varies according to local taste. 
 
 It is to this class that the semi-nude maidens and winged children 
 of Tanagra belong ; in Athens the spirits take a severer, more sculptural 
 form, often of fully-draped female figures both winged and wingless : at 
 Myrina we find floating youths and maidens changed by the addition of 
 a pair of wings into Eros and Nike, and in Italy, too, the same winged 
 youthful forms occur, usually semi-nude and leaning against a pillar. 
 
 The grave and stately maiden with arms uplifted (Fig. 16) is 
 a fine specimen of the type which these figures take under the influence 
 of the delicate and rather severe laws of Attic taste, but we can 
 hardly picture her as presiding over a wool-basket or a mirror — 
 rather she is one of the maidens to whom Athene committed the 
 care of the youthful Ericthonios, or a divine attendant bearing water for 
 the purification of those about to sacrifice to the " deathless gods," and 
 is a worthy sister of the beautiful little nude cup-bearer (Plate VI.), 
 
STATUETTES ILLUSTRATIVE OF MYTH AND LEGEND 67 
 
 crowned with ivy, who is one of the gems of the British Museum 
 collection. This figure, owing to its beauty, is known as Ganymede, 
 the cup-bearer of Zeus, but it would be equally well adapted for the 
 genius of a symposion, waiting with jug and cup to minister to the 
 pleasure of the guests. 
 
 The maidens and winged children of Tanagra are separated from 
 these two Attic figures by a wide difference of taste. The local 
 preference, as we have already seen, was for delicately idealized 
 realism, and so we find that the supernatural character of these 
 attendant spirits is indicated not by giving them wings, but by partially 
 undraping them and seating them out of doors to show that they 
 were not to be taken for mere mortal maidens (Plate VIII.), but for 
 the genii who presided at their toilet, their games and their pleasures. 
 Sometimes they hold a mirror, sometimes a fruit, a mask, or a 
 tambourine, but little importance can be attached to these accessories 
 which were distributed very much according to the caprice of the potter. 
 
 The winged figures of Tanagra are the little loves afterwards so dear 
 to Hellenistic art, distinguished only from mortal children by their 
 winglets (Plate V.). These loves are not the great god Eros of early 
 Greek mythology, nor even the naughty boy-love of the earlier poets 
 (Fig. 8).i 
 
 " Innumerable curling tresses grace 
 His impudent and rakish face, 
 His hands are tiny, but their power 
 Extends to Pluto's gloomy bower. 
 The peevish urchin carries wings 
 With which from heart to heart he springs, 
 As little birds, from spray to spray 
 Fly carelessly, in wanton play." — Translated by Rev. W. Shepherd. 
 
 Not content with one love, later lyrists brought into being a whole 
 troop of loves to sport and play with human hearts : - — 
 
 1 EvTrXoKa/J-ov to Kapavov, i\(.i irafxov to irpoo-umov . 
 fjXKKvXa jxiv Trjvoj TO. ^(pv&pia, p.o.Kpa Se /3aAXet. 
 
 /JaAAa K€ts ' kxipovTa koX 'AiSecu /3ao-iAr)a. — Moschus. Id. i. 12 — 15. 
 
 2 Ovk tip.' ov&' irewv &vo kclkoo-l, kixl kottlw Jiv 
 "iipwTes, tl kclkov tovto ; tl fi€ (^Aeyere ; 
 
 "Hv yap iyw tl tt6.6<x>, tl 7rou;crcTe; brj\ov, "Eporres 
 a)S to Trdpo'i 7raL^eo~0' atppoves ao~Tpayd\ois. 
 
 ASKLEPIADES, Atlthol. Pell. Xli. 46. 
 
68 GREEK TERRACOTTA STATUETTES 
 
 " Ye loves why doth it so content ye 
 
 To rend the hearts of men ? 
 Think, loves, if mischief should beset me, 
 
 Would it not grieve you then ? 
 No ! by my faith ! you'd straight forget me, 
 
 And to your dice again ! " — Translated by C. Merivale. 
 
 The Tanagra sprites assume the form of these latest creations of 
 Greek literature ; they flit and float about and personify the pleasure 
 they dispense to mortals. Sometimes they are crowned and wreathed, 
 they play on divers instruments, they muffle themselves up coquettishly 
 in their cloaks in imitation of human beings, sometimes they bear 
 mirrors, caskets, fans (Plate V.) or perfumes, but whatever the 
 occupation of the moment, whether to serve beauty, or to promote 
 the mirth of a banquet, they dance gaily along, adding to the joy of 
 life by the zest with which they perform their duties. 
 
 If we turn to the woodland spirits ruled over by 
 
 " Pan, the cloven-footed deity, 
 Dread king of sylvan Arcady," 
 
 not the least picturesque among them are the satyrs, the wild men of 
 the woods, rough and unkempt, with forms cast in human mould, but 
 covered with shaggy hair, and with a little feathery tail and pigs' ears 
 to mark their beast nature. 
 
 The satyr of Greek literature is a creature " flown with insolence 
 and wine," skilled in the dance, revelling and rioting over the country 
 in the train of Dionysos, but there is an earlier tradition of a gentler 
 satyr-race whose haunts were where 1 
 
 " Through orchard plots with fragrance crowned, 
 The clear cold fountain murmuring flows, 
 And forest leaves with rustling sound, 
 Invite to soft repose." — Translated by J. H. Merivale. 
 
 To one of these Greek legend gave a name, Marsyas, and told 
 his story thus : — Marsyas (Fig. 34), like Pan, was a skilled performer 
 on the reed pipes, and in an evil hour he drew near to listen to the 
 dulcet strains which Athene was drawing from a double flute, her own 
 
 1 Api(f>l 8e (vSojp) if/i'xpov KtXdbei Si vtrSoiV 
 fjia\iVO)Vj aWvfTfrofievoiv nc <fivW<t)V 
 
 k-wfia KarapptZ — Sappho, Frag. 4; Bergk op. at. S.Sl. 
 
STATUETTES ILLUSTRATIVE OF MYTH AND LEGEND 69 
 
 invention, to imitate the dying shrieks of the gorgon Medusa ; but 
 when she saw herself mirrored in a forest pool : 
 
 " Athena flung away, 
 From her pure hand, the noxious instruments 
 It late had touched, and thus did say, 
 ' Hence, ye banes of beauty, hence ! 
 What r Shall I my charms disgrace, 
 By making such an odious face?'" — Translated by J. H. Meriyale. 
 
 Marsyas laughed, but he picked up the discarded flutes, and 
 entranced with their music and certain of success, challenged Apollo to 
 a contest in which the victor was to work his will on the vanquished. 
 The upshot of the trial Alcaeus tells : 2 — 
 
 " No more, mid Phrygian pines, the trills 
 Of the sweet-sounding flute Athena flung away 
 Will echo as of yore among the listening hills. 
 Hushed now, poor Satyr, is thy pleasant lay, 
 Fast bound thy hands, for that thy mortal breath 
 And goatherd pipes, feared not to vie 
 With Phoebus' golden lyre, and thou of death, 
 Hast gained the crown, not victory." 
 
 Marsyas was flayed alive by Apollo's orders, but our statuette 
 does not deal with the last scene in the tragedy, we only see him in 
 festal trim, playing on his pipes, a wreath of ivy-leaves in his hair, 
 a cloak floating over his shoulders, hair and beard well brushed, as 
 if to heighten the contrast between the crouching figure and the 
 glorious beauty of his invisible antagonist. The artist has not shrunk 
 from emphasizing all the details of his beast nature, shaggy pelt, 
 pointed ears and feathery tail. The legend, as typifying the triumph 
 
 1 'A per 'Addva 
 
 opyo.v' ippapev & tcpus atrb ^£ipos, 
 
 (Ittc t'" "EppeT aio-vea, (TOifian kvp.a, 
 
 or p.t to.6 iyi.o ku.koto.ti Si'oojlu. — Melanippides, Bergk op. fit. 1245. 
 
 • Oi'kcV ai'a Qpvyiqv TriTvoTpbcpov ok TroTi, p.£/\.i//as 
 Kpovp.a oY iVTpi'/Tviv fideyybp-evos oovaKow 
 ovS' in orats TruAap^ai; Tpi-roji'to'os ipyov 'AOdi'us, 
 (1>S TTpXv £1TU.v6l)<T£l wp.<poyevl$ ~2,aTvpe. 
 A?; yap aAi>h-T07re'oais cr^iyyy X e 7 ms ovveKO. $01/3(1) 
 6Vcitos kwv, 6uav eis ipiv rjVTiacras. 
 AojToi. 8' ol kA.u£oi'tes urov (popp.iyyi peXixpov 
 wwao-av i$ ac6\w ov oretyos dXX' aihav.—Anthol. Pa/.\x\u (Jpp. Plan.) 8. 
 
70 GREEK TERRACOTTA STATUETTES 
 
 of Greek over barbarian, was a favourite one with the artists of the 
 fifth and fourth centuries, who feeling the impolicy of laying so much 
 stress on Marsyas' beast nature, made him human, save for his ears — 
 and the wits of Athens made merry over the Satyr of Praxiteles who 
 had lost his tail ! 
 
 Another woodland musician (Plate VI.) challenged Apollo 1 — 
 
 " Pan, the bright-haired god of Pastoral, 
 Goat-footed, two-horned, amorous of noise, 
 Who } et is lean and loveless and doth owe, 
 By lot, all loftiest mountains crowned with snow, 
 All tops of hills and cliffy highnesses, 
 All sylvan thickets ; and the fortresses 
 Of thorniest queaches here and there doth rove." 
 
 Translated by T. Chapman. 
 
 the gay insouciant being, leader of sylvan mirth and revelry, whose 
 appearance so charmed the gods in festal assembly in Olympos, that 
 "they call the name of him Pan because he delighted them all" and 
 to whom mortals sang.' 2 
 
 o 
 
 " Io Pan ! we sing to thee, 
 King of famous Areadv ! 
 Mighty dancer ! follower free 
 Of the nymphs, mid sport and glee ! 
 Io Pan, sing merrily, 
 To our merry minstrelsy." — Translated by J. H. Merivale. 
 
 To charm the mountain nymphs, Pan fashioned the reed pipes, 
 and challenged Apollo to prove his lyre the better instrument. 
 Worsted in the contest he withdrew to his woodland fastnesses, content 
 
 alynroo-rjv, SiKepmra, (piXoKporov, out ava ttutii 
 ZevhprjfVT a/tvAs <£om£ x<yjo?^«ri vvp.tpa.is, 
 iii'tc ko.t' aiyi'AiTros TrcVpv/? a-Tel/3ov(TL K a.pr)va 
 Ilav , ayaKexXofxevai, vopwv #eor, aykaidupov 
 av^ij.ija'0' , os TraiTtt \6<f>ov VKpoiVTa. AtAoyve 
 u Kopvcpus optmr /cat TrtTprjiVTa. KeXevda 
 ra o €v6a Kal erOa Sid punrrjia. ttvkvo.. 
 
 Homer, Hymn to Pan, I — 7. 
 
 - Q Ilav, 'ApKaSi'as /xe8«W /cAaevvas, 
 opX']<TTix, Bpo/it'ais 07ruSe Nv/i<£ais, 
 yeAuo-etas, (i Ilav, lw' ip.a?s 
 ev(ppoa~vvai(TL, Taio-o' doiSats Kevap^/xevos. 
 
 kSchol. Callistr. 5 ; Bergk op. cit. 1288. 
 
 K(U. 
 
 <f>otra 
 
STATUETTES ILLUSTRATIVE OF MYTH AND LEGEND 71 
 
 with the adoration of his special votaries the shepherds and hunters, 
 and many were the offerings made 
 
 "To shaggy Pan, and all the wood-nymphs fair." 
 
 He was himself a mighty hunter, the character in which our statuette 
 represents him with scrip and staff (Plate VI.), and he was moreover 
 the patron of all simple light-hearted folk, and more than any other 
 divinity typifies that delight in living which is the keynote of the 
 Greek attitude towards life and death. To the Greek "life" was 
 earthly life, this world was beautiful, and the best he had to hope 
 for in the nether world was a poor, faint copy of its joys ; it is this 
 love of life, this joy in the mere fact of being alive, not dead, which 
 separates the ancient world so sharply from the modern, — to the Greek, 
 life was not a vale of tears, it was a garden full of flowers with 
 
 " Gather ye roses while ye may, 
 Old time will still be flying," 
 
 for a motto, and it is this joyous spirit, of which Pan was the outward 
 expression, which is such a joy and refreshment to our world in its inter- 
 vals of sighing " vanity of vanities, all is vanity and vexation of spirit." 
 
 The popularity in legend and in art of the sea-nymphs, the 
 nereids, is in striking contrast to the silence of Greek literature about 
 them ; there they hardly appear at all, and then only in the train of 
 their sister Thetis, but doubtless their importance in legend is largely 
 due to their connection with the story of Achilles and the events of 
 his brief life. 
 
 When Homer tells the tragic tale of how Achilles lost his dearest 
 friend Patroklos ] — 
 
 " Whom I honoured most 
 Of all my comrades, loved him as my soul ; 
 Him have I lost; and Hector from his corpse 
 Hath stripped those arms, those weighty, beauteous arms, 
 A marvel to behold, which from the gods 
 Peleus received, a glorious gift." — Lord Derby's Translation. 
 
 1 eVei <f>lko<s w/\e$' eruipos 
 HaTpo/cA.os, tov iyw irepl warron' TiOV eraipiijv 
 l<rov i/j.rj Kicf>aX.y, tov aTrwXecra, Tcr^ea 6 ' Ektio/u 
 8;/o'jcrus aTTi'Svire 7re/\ojpia, 6u.vjj.o. ihar6ai 
 /caAa' — Iliad, xviii. Ho — S + . 
 
72 GREEK TERRACOTTA STATUETTES 
 
 how at the prayer of his goddess-mother, silver-footed Thetis, Hephaistos 
 
 fashioned for him ] — 
 
 " A shield vast and strong, 
 A breastplate, dazzling bright as flame of fire, 
 And next, a weighty helmet for his head, 
 Pair richly wrought, with crest of gold above, 
 Then last, well-fitting greaves of pliant tin." — Lord Derby's Translation. 
 
 he passes over the delivery of the armour in a few words, 2 
 
 " She, like a falcon, darted swiftly down, 
 Charged with the glittering arms Hephaistos wrought." — Ibid. 
 
 but for some reason, possibly this very reticence, the scene took hold 
 of popular fancy, which decorated and adorned it with the graceful 
 figures of Thetis' sister-nereids, the sea-maids throng, 3 
 
 " Whose dance enrings 
 The eternal river springs, 
 
 When dances heaven star glancing 
 Adoringly, 
 And the white moon is dancing." — Translated by W. Way. 
 
 and instead of the solitary figure of Thetis we see 
 
 " The sea maids flitting by shores Eubcean, 
 From the depths where the golden anvils are 
 Of the fire god, a hero's harness bearing." — Ibid. 
 
 The story gains in grace what it loses in pathos, for our attention 
 is distracted from the doomed figure of Achilles, to the graceful sisters 
 
 1 7rotet oe Trpwrurra ctuko5 /-te'ya tc 0"Tl/3ap6V re, 
 rev± apa ot OotpijKa cpaeivoTepov -jrvpos avyrjs. 
 rer£e oe ot KopvOa fipiaprjv, Kporacpots apapvtav 
 Ka\ijv oatoaAevp', liri oe ypvcreov \6<pov, $Kev. 
 
 Tev£e oe ot Kvrjploas iavov KacraiTepoto. — Il/ad, xvin. 608 — 612. 
 
 2 f] 8' e's 1/770.5 "/cave $eov irapa botpa c/je'poi'cra. — Ibid. xix. 3. 
 
 ''' ore km. Aios («rrepa)7ros 
 ave^opevrra' afflrjp 
 X<j>p€V€l oe 2eA.um 
 koI 7r€rriiKovra KOpOLt 
 Ni/peos at Kara ttovtov 
 aevatjiv Te 7roTap.wv. 
 St'ras yppzvap.evai. — Iiurip. Ion. \o~^Jf. 
 
 4 Ni^pTjoes 0' Ei'/Joioas uktus A.l7roBa"ai 
 H<pcu(TTOV y^pv<jiun> uKpoViur 
 fio^Oovs u.mri(TTLi% e<f>epov T«UY6to'v. — Eurip. Elect. 442 ff. 
 
STATUETTES ILLUSTRATIVE OF MYTH AND LEGEND 
 
 73 
 
 who bear their heavy burdens so lightly over the sea. It is this 
 version of the legend which our statuette illustrates (Fig. 32), and 
 borrowing yet another touch from popular fancy, adds a dolphin steed, 
 the good-humoured clumsy beast, who plays so important a part in all 
 sea legends, and forms a piquant contrast to the graceful maiden who 
 sits securely upon his back, giving all her care to the helmet 
 
 " Fair richly wrought, with crest of gold above." 
 
 The composition is worthy of note for two reasons ; it illustrates 
 a definite legend, and it is evidently a close copy of some famous 
 sculptural group. Statuettes inspired by some famous statue are not 
 rare, but in that case the potter usually simplifies the design, and gives 
 only its main features ; here he has given the details of the original, the 
 round face, small head with its close curls, the attitude of the Nereid, 
 sitting tight on her dolphin, the wind-blown drapery strained tightly 
 across her knees by the pace at which the dolphin dashes along, even the 
 elaborate helmet, difficult though its reproduction was in clay. The 
 same design appears on the lid of a little gold box (Fig. 33) of fifth- 
 century (405 b.c.) Attic workmanship, and considering the great interest 
 taken at Athens in all matters pertaining to the sea, it is not strange il 
 the potter attempted a cheap reproduction of" a popular group. His 
 copy is not highly finished, the hair is only roughly indicated at the back 
 of the head, the graving tool has slipped at the corner of the mouth, 
 giving the face rather a sulky expression, one hand is a flat, shapeless 
 mass, the fingers of the other are not separated and contrast curiously 
 with the care bestowed on the helmet, but the latter is the keynote of the 
 composition ; a Nereid on a dolphin might be : 
 
 " escorting Achilles, the fleet-foot sen 
 Of Thetis, with King Agamemnon, on 
 Unto where broad Simo'i's, seaward creeping 
 Rippled and glittered on Trojan strand." — Translated by W. Way. 
 
 but a Nereid with a helmet in her hands could only be journeying to 
 Achilles' tent. The beautiful design, the clumsy hands, and the elabor- 
 
 1 7TOp€V(J)V TOV TUS ©€TlOOS 
 
 Kovdtov aXfJLa ttoomv A^u\rj 
 txvv AyafjLefjLVOvt Tpot'as 
 
 £77-1 2l/AOWTt5uS UKTUS. Eu.RIP. Ekd. \^' J] ■ 
 
74 GREEK TERRACOTTA STATUETTES 
 
 ate helmet are all typical of a Greek potter's work, for it was grace and 
 novelty of design, not finish of detail, which was expected of it. 
 
 The humorous side of Greek life is the only one about which the 
 statuettes tell us nothing, because the intense objection which the Greeks 
 had to absolute realism in art, led them to exclude a class of subject, 
 the comic, in which we should have thought that they, with their keen 
 sense of humour, would delight, but comic events happen only in real life 
 and generally lose their point when transferred to that ideal world which, 
 in the eyes of the Greeks, was the only sphere of art ; art could 
 however represent a scene from real life in a spirit of jest, if that scene 
 could be transferred from the real to the ideal world. 
 
 The accompanying statuette (Fig. 36) is an excellent example of 
 this ; at first sight it represents an every-day scene, a pedagogue with his 
 young charge, but a closer inspection shows that the pedagogue has a 
 socratic satyr face and pig's ears, that he holds a wine-jar on his head, and 
 the child a bunch of grapes in his hand, and that the group therefore 
 represents an elderly Seilenos taking the little god Dionysos to school, 
 and thoughtfully bearing a jar of wine for their mutual refreshment 
 there. The humour of the situation lies in the idea of a Seilenos, a 
 maudlin old good-for-nothing, assuming the functions of a governor, and 
 of the god Dionysos walking sedately to school through the streets like 
 a good little boy. 
 
 The Hellenistic cities of Asia Minor and Italy did not share this 
 objection to realism in art, and we find countless " comic " figures, 
 caricatures of the physical defects of the weaker parts of the population, 
 the old, the crippled, the slaves, the actors. There are of course some 
 character-studies from real life among the Greek statuettes (Fig. 24), 
 but they are meant not to give a funny portrait, but a true one, whereas 
 the Hellenistic figures are deliberate caricatures for the purpose of raising 
 a laugh. The Hellenistic sense of humour was a more brutal thing, 
 amused by physical peculiarities, whereas the Greek required the skilful 
 commingling of incongruous ideas, as for instance the conjunction of a 
 Seilenos and a pedagogue in one and the same person. 
 
 For this reason parodies, in our sense of the word, the degrading of 
 the ideal into the real, are almost unknown in Greek art, for the only 
 permissible parody was one which remained in the world of fancy. 
 
STATUETTES ILLUSTRATIVE OF MYTH AND LEGEND 75 
 
 An amusing instance of such is the accompanying travesty of the 
 Hermes of Praxiteles, where instead of the graceful figure in the prime 
 of manly beauty, we see an ugly old satyr (Fig. 35), whose ugliness is 
 only intensified by his wreath. To parody the group by turning 
 Hermes into a slave, and Dionysos into a squalling baby would not 
 have been permissible. 
 
 It is this apt association of incongruous ideas to which the ancient 
 world applied the term " Attic salt " ; the salt is apt to lose its savour 
 in translation, but there is one little folk-song, on the theme of " the 
 pot called the kettle black," which may bear the test. : 
 
 " With his claw the snake surprising 
 Thus the crab kept moralizing — 
 Out on all such turns and graces, 
 Straight's the word for honest paces." 
 
 Translated by D. K. Sandford. 
 
 The bulk of the statuettes reproduced in the present publication are 
 in the British Museum, and my thanks are due both to the Trustees, and 
 to Mr. A. S. Murray, Keeper of the Department of Greek and Roman 
 Antiquities, for permission to use them for this purpose. To Mr. 
 Murray I have also to express my warmest thanks for his kindness, not 
 only on this but on many other occasions, and for the unfailing interest, 
 patience, and courtesy with which he has always helped me in my work. 
 
 1 'O KOpKlVO% 38' e<£a, 
 \o.X.a tov orfiiv Xapwv, 
 £v8vv xpr] tuv kraipov efifxev 
 kcu fj/rj (TKOAta, (ppovetv. 
 
 rergk op. clt. Schol. 16; Frag. 1292. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Achilles. See Nereids 
 
 Amulet, ii, 26, 28 
 
 Amusements, 50, 58, 61, 62 
 
 Aphrodite, 4, 8, 28, 30, 42 
 
 Arithmetic, 57 
 
 Art, Greek, 22 ; economy of, 17 ; evolution 
 of, 25, 31, j6 ; archaic, 2, 21, 25; 
 constituent elements of, 24. iEgean, 
 24. Assyrian, 24. Attic, ,33, 34, 41, 
 66, 73. Cypriote, 30. Hellenistic, 40, 
 41. Mycenaean, 24. Phenician, 23 
 
 Artemis, 4, 30, 41, 42 
 
 Athene, 68 f., Kranaia, 3, Lemma, 34, 
 Telchinia, 27 
 
 Athens, artistic position of, 29, 3% ; imperial 
 period of, 43 ; life at, 43 f., 61 f. ; 
 statuettes from, 29, 33, 34, 38, 41, 66 f. 
 
 Bes, 28 
 
 Bocotia, 34, 33, 43 
 
 Boys, training of, 34 ff. ; dress, r ^, 39, 63 ; 
 amusements, 38 f. 
 
 Cameiros, 9, 10, 22; statuettes trom, 20, 
 
 26, 27, 28, 31 ; gold box from, 73 
 Caricatures, 8, 11, 40; 31, 74 
 Colour, use of, 18 
 Corinna, 3-,, 49 
 
 Corinth, figure from, 38, 49, 32 
 Cyprus, 23, ; statuettes from, 23, 29, 30, .34 
 
 Demeter, shrine of, 3 ; functions of, 27, 28 
 Divinities, underworld, 27, 28; youthful, 
 
 32, 36. 39 
 Dolls, 4, 3,i, 39 
 Dress, 21, 29, 33, 41, 48, 49, ^S, 61, 6;] 
 
 Education, ^, ; of girls, 47 ; of boys, ^ ff. 
 
 Eos, 10, 31 
 
 Ephebi, 39; duties of, 60; dress of, 39; 
 
 amusements of, 61 
 Eretria, 34; statuettes from, 10, 34,37,3,8, 
 
 31, 32, -jG, 63, 73, 7 i- 
 Excavations, 2, 19 
 
 Fan, 37, 49 
 
 Feminine statuettes, hieratic, 21, 29, 30, 
 
 32, 37; genre, 33, 36, 44; predomin- 
 ance of, 28, 64 
 
 Forgeries, 20 
 
 Funeral customs, 12; offerings, n, 13; 
 statuettes, 13 
 
 Genre statuettes, 8, 12, 31, 33 
 
 Girls, education of, 47, 48, 30 ; pleasures 
 
 of, 30 
 Grammar, 36 
 
 Grotesque statuettes, 3, 11, 28 
 Gymnastics, 36, -39 
 
 Hat, 37, 49, 39 
 
 Hellenistic, age, 6 ; art, 40, 67 ; humour, 74 
 
 Hieratic statuettes, n, 21, 28,31; types, 
 
 paucity of, 21, 28 ; diffusion of, 21, 23 ; 
 
 evolution of, 32; indefiniteness ot, 27, 
 
 28; persistence of, 11, 30 
 
 Italy, statuettes from, 12, 42 
 
 Kore. See Persephone 
 Koroplastce, 14, 31 
 
 Lararia, 7, 8 
 
 Marsyas, 39, 68 ff. 
 
 Masculine statuettes, hieratic, 28 ; genre, 
 
 33, 34; paucity of, 6], 64 
 Masks, 10, 27, 28, 37 
 
 Melos, 39 
 
 Men, pursuits of, 61, 62 ; amusements of, 62 
 
 Moulds, 13 ; export of, 19, 3^ 
 
 Music, 37, 38 
 
 Myrina, 9, 3,9; statuettes from, 17, 39, 40, 
 
 41,30,32 
 Mythological statuettes, 1, 8, 13, 39 t. 
 
 Nereids, 37, 71 ff. 
 Nike, 17, ,39, 40 
 Nurse, 3 1 
 Nymphs, 63 f. 
 
78 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Offerings, votive, 3 f. ; funeral, 11, 1 3 
 Oscillum, 27 
 
 Pan, 37 f., 66 f., 70 f. 
 
 Parodies, 74 
 
 Pedagogue, 55, 74 
 
 Persephone, 3, 27, 28 
 
 Pompeii, 2, 5 ; statuettes from, 6 ft. 
 
 Praxiteles, influence of, 36, 39, 41, 63, 70 
 
 Proplasmata, 15, 41 
 
 Quotations, GYce/c ; from Anthologia Pala- 
 tina, ii, 4, 5, 7, 8, 18, 43, 44, 58, 62, 
 67 ; App. Plan., 21, 42, 65, 69 
 
 Alceeus, 58 ; Archilochus, 61 ; Callis- 
 tratus, 56,70; Hybrias, 57 ; Melanip- 
 pides, 69 ; Mimnermus, 53 ; Plato, 49, 
 6$ ; Sappho, 68 ; Scholia, 34, 37, 63, 
 75; Simonides, 31; Tyrtaeus, 54; 
 (Bergk 3 , Poetce Lyrici Grceci) 
 
 Homer, Iliad, $3, 71, 72; Odyssey, 42; 
 Hymn tn Pan, 70 ; Euripides, /oh, 
 72 ; Etectra, 72, 73 ; Theocritus, 47, 
 50,51; Mosch.us.67; Lucian, 18,43,60 
 
 Plato, 2; Dio. Chrys., 14, 16 ; Stobseus, 
 60 ; Xenophon, 46, 48, 37, 62 ; Thu- 
 cydides, 46 ; Harpocrates, 14 
 
 Latin: Martial, 1, 32; Vitruvius, 12 
 
 Reliefs, 10, 11, 31 
 Re-touching, 17, 40 
 Rhodes, 22 ; statuettes from. 
 
 See Cameiros 
 
 Satyr, 28, 59, 68 f., 75 
 
 Seiienos, 8, 28, 38, 74 
 
 Sicily, statuettes from, 40, 63 
 
 Songs, ^6 f. 
 
 Spirits, 24, 28, 36, 41, 65 ff. 
 
 Stamps, 15 
 
 Statues, 33, 42, 66, 73 
 
 Statuettes, bronze, imitations of, 16, 18, 
 39, 40, 41 ; terracotta, artistic character 
 of, 1, 14, 37 ; human value of, 43, 45, 
 54; manufacture of, 14 ff., 63; in 
 temples, 3 f., 11 ; in houses, 6 f., 13 ; 
 in tombs, 9 ff. ; decay of industry, 6, 
 33 ; varieties of. See under Hieratic, 
 Genre, Grotesque, Mythological 
 
 Symposion, 57, 61, 62 
 
 Tanagra, 17, 3',, 48; statuettes from, 17, 
 
 3 6 > 37> 44- 5 2 ' 54. 63, 66, 67 
 Temples. See under Statuettes 
 Tombs. See under Statuettes 
 Toys, 4, 31, 34, 50, 58 
 Tree worship, 2 5 
 
 Vases, 9, 10, 11, 12, 28, 31, 35 
 Venus de Vienne. 42 
 
 Wills, 12 
 
 Women, position of, 45 ; in Athens. 46 : 
 dress of, 48 t. ; duties of, 47 f. ; amuse- 
 ments, 45, 50 
 
 Writing, 56 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS IN MONOCHROME 
 
 1. A TOY ANIMAL 
 
 2. A DOLL 
 
 3. WOMAN KNEADING BREAD 
 
 4. NIKE WITH AN ALABASTRON 
 
 5. NIKE 
 
 6. MOULD AND CAST 
 
 7. EROS BURNING A BUTTERFLY, NOT RE- 
 
 TOUCHED 
 
 8. SAME FIGURE RETOUCHED 
 
 9. ARCHAIC VEILED GODDESS 
 
 10. VEILED GODDESS OF LATER TYPE 
 
 1 1. GROTESQUE FIGURE 
 
 12. OSCILLUM 
 
 13. APHRODITE FROM LARNACA 
 
 14. ATHENA 
 
 15. MASK OF PAN 
 
 16. AN ATHENIAN NYMPH 
 
 17. GREEK LADY IN OUTDOOR DRESS 
 
 18. APHRODITE WITH A VASE OF PERFUME 
 
 19. 
 20 
 21. 
 
 2~» 
 
 23- 
 
 24. 
 
 25- 
 26. 
 27. 
 28. 
 29. 
 30- 
 
 3i- 
 
 5-- 
 33- 
 34- 
 35- 
 
 ARTEMIS 
 
 GREEK LADY IN OUTDOOR DRESS 
 GREEK GIRL WITH A PET BIRD 
 CORINNA 
 A LITTLE GIRL 
 IN THE NURSERY 
 A GREEK MADONNA 
 THE WRITING LESSON 
 A COSY CHAT 
 AN ATHLETE 
 A BANQUETER 
 A SOLDIER 
 
 GREEK LADY IN GALA DRESS 
 NEREID WITH THE HELMET OF ACHILLES 
 NEREID, DESIGN FROM A GOLD BOX 
 MARSYAS 
 
 SATYR WITH THE INFANT DIONYSOS 
 SEILENOS AS A PEDAGOGUE WITH THE 
 YOUNG DIONYSOS 
 
Richard Clay & Sons, Limited. 
 London & Bungay. 
 
> ^ 
 
 £ 
 
 c 
 
 r- 
 
 a 
 
 M 
 
 
 m 
 
 > 
 
 
 o 
 
 ^ 
 
 H 
 
 ^ 
 
 
 
 
 
 ^ 
 
 < 
 
 
 
 
 }v 
 
 d 
 
 Bt) 
 
 £ 
 
 

 
 sa 
 
 
 y, 
 
 
 
 ( i 
 
 'A 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 ■^ 
 
 •**■ 
 
 
 2 
 
 C 
 
 05 
 
s s 
 
 2 
 
 p 
 a h 
 
 O P 
 
 ^ o 
 
 — 
 
 * fc S 
 
 
Fig. io. Later type of 
 Seated Goddess. 
 
 brit. Mus. B 83. 
 
 Fig. 9. Archaic Goddess, 
 Brit. Mus. B 58. 
 
 Fig. 11. Grotesque Figure. 
 Brit. Mus. E 89. 
 
 Fig. 12. Oscillum. 
 Brit. Mus. B 176- 
 
Fig. 13. Aphrodite, from Larnaca. 
 But. Mm. C So. 
 
2 
 
 S 
 3 
 
 
 < 
 
 Ph 
 P. 
 
 o 
 
 a 
 
 < 
 
 a 
 
 o 
 
 < 
 
 S5 
 
 U 
 
 IT) 
 
 04 
 
 K 
 f- 
 
 u 
 
 < 
 
 
 
 r* 
 
 «t 
 
 S= 
 
 
 
 
 >J 
 
 6 
 
 
 Ik 
 
 
Fig. 17. Greek Lady in outdoor Press. 
 Brit, Mas. C215. 
 
1 °C| 
 
 
 
 5 ^ 
 o 
 
 
(« 
 
 w 
 
 On «3 
 SB CJ 
 
 O 
 
 O 
 
 a! 
 
 Q 
 
 a 
 o 
 o r ^ 
 
 : * 
 J1 
 
Fig. 22. Corinna. 
 Brit. Mus. C 25. 
 
4 
 
 Fig. 23. A little Girl. 
 Brit. Mus. C 321. 
 
 ^Fig. 24. In the Nursery. 
 Brit. Mus. C 279. 
 
 Fig. 25. A Greek Madonna. 
 Brit. Mus. C 278. 
 
 Fig. 26. The Writing Lesson. 
 Brit. Mus. C 214. 
 
a 
 u 
 
 o o 
 
 

 a 
 
Fig. 31. A Greek Lady in Gala Dress. 
 Brit. Mus. C 254. 
 
2 -<S 
 
 a2 i 
 6 to 
 
 s 
 
 B U 
 X 
 
Q 
 
 Q 
 
 ■A 
 
 O 
 
 o 
 
 'J 
 
 Q 
 
 Q-i «s