² Throughout this paper I use the designation ‘Classical’ to refer exclusively to the sculptural style seen to emerge around the middle of the fifth century BC with the sculptural decoration of the Parthenon and statues like the Polykleitan Doryphoros. Works of the preceding period, before the style matured, I refer to (as is customary) as ‘Severe’ or ‘Early Classical’. For reasons which will become clear from my description and definition of this style, I do not regard works of the late fifth century, like the reliefs of the Nike parapet or the Nike of Paionios, as a separate stylistic development, but as merely a further elaboration of what is here referred to as the Classical style. I wish to emphasize, however, that all these terms are only convenient labels; and in using them I do not wish to commit myself to any strict chronological division of the monuments into a theoretical succession of distinct stylistic phases. Cf. Robertson, C. M., Between archaeology and art history (Oxford 1962) 22 Google Scholar f.: ‘I reject a very precise chronology based on stylistic development since I do not believe that it is true. I also do not believe that it is important.’

³ To compile a full bibliography on the Classical style would involve writing, in effect, a short history of scholarship on Greek art. Thus in my notes throughout this paper, I cite only the most essential references. For the sake of convenience, the discussion of the various earlier approaches to this subject makes reference only to a selection of works by English and American scholars; as will be seen, their writings divide themselves very neatly into three major groups. Since this division does not work so precisely for the writings of German scholars, to include a full account of their important contributions would have complicated the discussion too much, and not substantially altered the overall picture. The following abbreviations are observed: Ashmole 1964 = Ashmole, B., The Classical ideal in Greek sculpture (Cincinnati 1964)Google Scholar; Carpenter 1959 = Carpenter, R., The esthetic basis of Greek art in the fifth and fourth centuries BC ² (Bloomington 1959)Google Scholar; Carpenter 1960 = Carpenter, R., Greek sculpture (Chicago 1960)Google Scholar; Gombrich 1977 = Gombrich, E. H., Art and illusion ⁵ (London 1977)Google Scholar; Gombrich 1978 = Gombrich, E. H., Norm and form ³ (London 1978)Google Scholar; Pollitt 1965 = Pollitt, J. J., The art of Greece 1400–31 BC (Englewood Cliffs, N.J. 1965)Google Scholar; Pollitt 1972 = Pollitt, J. J., Art and experience in Classical Greece (Cambridge 1972)Google Scholar; Richter 1951 = Richter, G. M. A., Three critical periods of Greek sculpture (Oxford 1951)Google Scholar; Ridgway 1981 = Ridgway, B. S., Fifth century styles in Greek sculpture (Princeton 1981)Google Scholar; Sörbom 1966 = Sörbom, G., Mimesis and art: studies in the origin and early development of an aesthetic vocabulary (Stockholm 1966)Google Scholar.

⁴ Richter 1951, 6 f.

⁵ Ridgway 1981, 11: ‘… it is dangerous to ascribe such a major influence to a single personality.’

⁶ Ibid. ‘Greek beliefs, popular but devout, were turning into state religion, official but cold.’

⁷ Carpenter 1959, 89: ‘Because fifth century Greek sculpture inherited all the schematic forms [of archaic art] for representing objects it could not be true to life.’

⁸ Carpenter 1960, 98.

⁹ This thesis is fully set out in Carpenter 1959, 55–99. Carpenter derived most of his ideas on the formal development of style, unacknowledged as far as I know, from Wölfflin's, Heinrich Die Klassische Kunst ⁸ (Basel 1948)Google Scholar, and his Kunstgeschichtliche Grundbegriffe (Munich 1915)Google Scholar; he did, however, extend and elaborate Wölfflin's method very skilfully, adapting it to the field of Greek sculpture.

¹⁰ This idea provides the whole theoretical foundation for Carpenter's book The esthetic basis of Greek art.

¹¹ Carpenter 1960, 108.

¹² Carpenter 1960, 17: ‘Like Attic tragedy and comedy [Greek sculpture] must be rated as the manifestation of the uniquely original creative Hellenic genius.’ Carpenter himself seems to have been dissatisfied with this formulation as an adequate explanation for the Classical style in all its features. In his last statement on the subject ( Greek art [Philadelphia 1962] 158 Google Scholar ff.) he speculates that the ideal regularity of Classical faces and the perfect proportioning of the figures could have been the result of a ‘number mysticism’ which he thinks may have become prevalent among Greek sculptors at this time.

¹³ Ashmole 1964, passim.

¹⁴ Ibid. 4, 12.

¹⁵ Ibid. 21.

¹⁶ Pollitt 1972, 64 ff.

¹⁷ For a representative and fairly recent example see Schefold, K., The art of Classical Greece (English transl., London 1967)Google Scholar.

¹⁸ See now Gombrich's, E. H. essay, ‘The father of art history’, in his Tributes (Oxford 1984) 51–69 Google Scholar.

¹⁹ Wölfflin, H., Renaissance und Barock ² (Munich 1907) 58 Google Scholar.

²⁰ Gombrich, E. H., Meditations on a hobby horse ³ (London 1978) 51 Google Scholar.

²¹ Ibid.

²² Cf. Boas, George, The heaven of invention (Baltimore 1962) 16:Google Scholar ‘There never was an age when everyone was in harmony with everyone else. … The reason why our own age seems more confused than the past is that we know more about it.’

²³ The most forceful arguments against this kind of interpretation of art works–that is, assuming that a given style is somehow a collective statement, in which we can somehow read the essential feelings, the Weltanschauung of the people of the day–are contained in Gombrich (n. 20), in the essays ‘On physiognomic perception’, 45–55, and ‘Art and scholarship’, 106–19; see now also Gombrich (n. 18) 51–69.

²⁴ Pollitt 1972, 68 ff. In this connection he quotes the funeral speech of Pericles, Thuc. ii 34 ff., the teachings of Protagoras, and the famous chorus Soph. Ant. 322 ff.

²⁵ Pollitt 1972, 64.

²⁶ Ibid. 98.

²⁷ Unlike Pollitt and a number of other scholars I do not believe that late fifth century sculpture should be set apart stylistically from what went before. The basic traits of the Classical style, as I outline them below on pp. 80–82, can be seen to survive with little alteration down into the fourth century.

²⁸ Pollitt 1972, 115.

²⁹ Pollitt's ‘Refuge in gesture’ (ibid. 115–25), while ingenious, remains entirely unconvincing. For further discussion of this subject see below, pp. 83–4.

³⁰ Familiarity with any better documented period of history tells us that there may be many different currents perceptible in the intellectual and cultural life of a people at any given time–some of them seemingly diametrically opposed to one another. If we acknowledge this it becomes rather more difficult for us to read the dominant style of the religious monuments of the day as somehow expressing some all-encompassing ‘spirit of the times.’

³¹ Popper, K. R., The poverty of historicism (London 1957) 149 Google Scholar.

³² Gombrich 1977, 17, where this quotation from Popper's work is also discussed.

³³ POxy 2162, Egyptian Exploration Society 26; The Oxyrhyncus Papyri xviii (1941) 14–22;Google Scholar Lloyd-Jones, H., Appendix to Loeb Aeschylus ii (Cambridge, Mass. and London 1957) 541–56;Google Scholar Mette, H.J., Die Fragmente der Tragödien des Aischylos (Berlin 1959) 7 Google Scholar ff.; See now also Sutton, D. F., The Greek satyr play (Meisenheim 1980) 29 ffGoogle Scholar.

³⁴ The Oxyrhyncus Papyri xviii (1941) 14 Google Scholar.

³⁵ Tr. Else, G. F., ‘Imitation in the fifth century’, CP liii (1958) 78 Google Scholar.

³⁶ Following the text of the Loeb editor H. Lloyd-Jones; his translation is here slightly adapted.

³⁷ κἀπιπασσάλευʼ ἕκαστος τῆς κ[α]λῆς μορφῆς σ̣[αφῆ

ἄγγελον, κήρυκʼ [ἄ]ναυδον, ἐμπόρων κωλύτορ[α,

ὄς γ’]ἐπιοχήσει κελεύθου τοὺς ξένο[υς], φό̣[βον βλέπων.

‘Let each fasten up the likeness of his handsome face, a truthful messenger, a voiceless herald to keep off travellers; he'll halt strangers on their way by his terrifying look. (Text and translation H. Lloyd-Jones, Loeb edition 551.)

³⁸ The Oxyrhyncus Papyri xviii (1941) 14 Google Scholar.

³⁹ Ibid. n. 1 Mette, H. J. (Der Verlorene Aischylos [Berlin 1963] 165)Google Scholar shares this view.

⁴⁰ Sörbom 1966, 41–53.

⁴¹ G. F. Else (n. 35) 78.

⁴² Sörbom 1966, 44 f. For the sake of brevity Sörbom's argument has been paraphrased and compressed rather drastically.

⁴³ P. Guggisberg (Das Satyrspiel [1947] 71–74) and Seaford, R. (‘On the origins of Satyric Drama’, Maia n.s. xxviii [1976] 216 Google Scholar ff.) have pointed out that marvelling at new inventions—εὕρηματα—seems to be a regular activity of the choruses of satyrs in the extant fragments of Satyric Drama. (This is denied by D. F. Sutton [n. 33] 157 n. 455, but her objections are not compelling.) This observation, however, does not seem to me to undermine the point that Sörbom is making. Other marvels—τέρατα—to which satyrs react with vigorous amazement are fire, wine, the sound of a lyre and so on. For the creation of lifelike images to be thought suitable as the subject of such satyric enthusiasm would place it among the most magical of ‘discoveries’.

⁴⁴ Gombrich 1977, 53.

⁴⁵ Boccaccio, Decamerone Giornata vi, Novella 5.

⁴⁶ Gombrich 1977, 54.

⁴⁷ Sörbom 1966, 49 n. 17.

⁴⁸ See Gow, A. S. F. and Page, D. L., The Greek anthology: Hellenistic epigrams ii (Cambridge 1965) 63 Google Scholar (Antipater of Sidon xxxvi pref.) for the references to all these. Pollitt 1965, 63 f. gives six of them in translation.

⁴⁹ Anth. Plan. iv 54, following the text of Aubreton, R. and Buffiere, F., Anthologie de planude xiii (Paris 1980) 102 Google Scholar. Some have thought that this statue must have been by a later Myron (for references see Richter 1951, 3 n. 4); like Richter (loc. cit.) and Pollitt 1965, 65, I see no difficulty in accepting this as a poetic description of a work by the Myron who created the Diskobolos.

⁵⁰ Porphyrius, de Abst. ii, 18; following the text of Bouffartigue, J. and Patillon, M., Porphyre de l'abstinence ii (Paris 1979)Google Scholar.

⁵¹ As far as later generations were concerned the greatest triumphs of Greek religious art were created by Pheidias and his generation, most probably some time after Aeschylus' death. One thinks specifically of Pheidias' cult image of Zeus at Olympia, and Quintilian's famous remark that ‘it seems to have added something to traditional religion, to such an extent is the majesty of the work equal to the majesty of the god’ (xii 10.9). Similar expressions of admiration for this work are contained in many late writers (see for example the collection of passages on this statue in Pollitt 1965, 221 ff.).

⁵² Gombrich, E. H., The story of art ¹³ (Oxford 1978)Google Scholar ch. ii.

⁵³ Gombrich, E. H., Ideals and idols (Oxford 1979) 80;Google Scholar in this fascinating essay, ‘The logic of Vanity Fair’ (60–92), Gombrich considers technical advance as a ‘polarising issue’ in artistic traditions. See also his ‘Norm and Form’ in Gombrich 1978, 81–98, especially 94 f.: ‘Clearly, the more a painting or statue mirrors natural appearances, the fewer principles of order and symmetry it will automatically exhibit. Conversely, the more ordered a configuration, the less will it be likely to reproduce nature. … An increase in naturalism means a decrease in order.’

⁵⁴ Plato Hipp. Min. 282a.

⁵⁵ Instances of both these tendencies can be seen in tentative form in some of the pedimental figures from the temple of Zeus at Olympia.

⁵⁶ Ridgway 1981, 13.

⁵⁷ Cf. Martin Robertson's masterly analysis of the Doryphoros: ‘… the Polykleitan pose is a return to an archaic ideal after the experiments of the early classical period. … The explanation of [the exaggerated musculature and the special emphasis given to the pectorals and flank muscles’ is surely not either the desire to show off anatomical knowledge or the display of a muscular athletic ideal. The anatomy is markedly simplified, and the forms chosen for emphasis are arbitrary from either of those points of view. It must be done for aesthetic reasons: part of the imposition of a new formal discipline to replace the archaic schema abandoned half a century before. The looser balance of the classical statue is felt to need again a more emphatic surface pattern' (my italics): Robertson, C. M., A history of Greek art (Cambridge 1975) 330 Google Scholar. In contrast to Robertson I would not wish to exclude the possibility that ‘a desire to show off anatomical knowledge’ and ‘the display of a muscular athletic ideal’ both had a part to play in the creation of Polykleitan figures. But in my opinion this does not affect the validity of the general observation.

⁵⁸ Gombrich 1978, 95.

⁵⁹ This appears to make the relationship between the Severe and Classical styles seem rather complex; but it can be expressed I think as follows. The basic traits exhibited by works of the Severe period (collected by Ridgway, B. S., The Severe style in Creek sculpture [Princeton 1970] 8–11)Google Scholar do not add up to a single coherent style, but represent something of a hotchpotch of experimental tendencies and passing interests. This was clearly a time of bold experiment and rapid innovation, and one should not expect any uniform stylistic development. However, one strand within all this stylistic variation seems, as one might expect, directly to anticipate the Classical style in many of its features (the Olympia metopes and the Omphalos Apollo are obvious examples; and there are some particularly outstanding instances offered by grave stelai, e.g. Ridgway, op. cit. figs. 61, 66, 67, 69). The Classical style, on this view, was thus the elaboration and perfection of certain artistic devices and compositional techniques, which can already be seen in some Severe style works, and which were felt to be more successful in fulfilling the requirements of a fifth century public monument than were rival modes of naturalistic representation in the Severe Period (as for example the observation of more realistic facial expressions on figures in motion, like the Marsyas of the Athena and Marsyas group from the Athenian acropolis, or the victor statue of Ladas by Myron, described in the epigram quoted earlier).

⁶⁰ Can we use the sentiments Thucydides put in the mouth of Pericles to account for the appearance of Polykleitos' Doryphoros? Can we really assert in all confidence that Polykleitos or Pheidias subscribed to the enlightened humanism of Protagoras and the other sophists? Might they not just as likely have been rather conservative and traditional in their beliefs, and the appearance of their sculptures owe more to their feelings about what was appropriate in a religious monument than to contemporary intellectual speculation about the nature of man?

⁶¹ On the intractable problems of ever deciding what was the intended meaning of a work of art, see Gombrich, E. H., ‘Aims and limits of iconology’, in Symbolic images ² (Oxford 1978) 1–22 Google Scholar, especially ‘The elusiveness of meaning’, 1–5.

⁶² On this subject see Dodds, E. R., The Greeks and the irrational (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1951) 179–206 Google Scholar, especially 180: ‘In that period [between Aeschylus and Plato] the gap between the beliefs of the people and the beliefs of the intellectuals, which is already implicit in Homer, widens to a complete breach’; and 189. See also Dodds', essay ‘The religion of the ordinary man in Classical Greece’ in The ancient concept of progress and other essays (Oxford 1973) 140–155 Google Scholar, especially his judicious comments at 143.

⁶³ See Dodds 1951 (n. 62) 189 ff.; Pollitt 1972, 111–114.

⁶⁴ Gombrich 1978, 95.