upersede it; but it is very probable that he intended to do so, and was
only prevented by the religious conservatism that curtailed other plans
of his for the beautifying of the Acropolis. On the other hand, there is
no evidence that in Greece--at least, in the best period of Greek
art--any statesman held the views as to the official religion frankly
expressed in Rome, that it was expedient for this religion to be
accepted by the common people, but that educated men could only
reconcile their consciences to taking part in it by a philosophical
interpretation.

There is something unreal and artificial about any such compromise. If
Pericles was intimate with Anaxagoras, who was prosecuted for atheism,
he was also the friend of Phidias, who expressly said that his Zeus was
the Zeus of Homer, no mere abstract ideal of divinity. If this was the
case with Pericles, who held himself aloof from the common people, it
must have been much more so with other statesmen, who mingled with them
more freely, or even, like Nicias, shared their superstitions. Under
such conditions the influence of art upon the representations of the
gods could not well go in advance of popular conceptions, though it
might accompany and direct them. The making of new statues of the gods,
to be set up as the centres of worship in their temples, in some cases
received the formal sanction of the Delphic oracle, the highest official
and religious authority. Public commissions of this sort are common at
all times, but commonest in the years immediately succeeding the Persian
Wars, when the spoils of the Persians supplied ample resources, and in
many cases the ancient temples and images had been destroyed; and at the
same time the outburst of national enthusiasm over the great deliverance
led to a desire to give due thank-offerings to the gods of the Hellenic
race, a desire which coincided with the ability to fulfil it, owing to
the rapid progress of artistic power. Such public commissions, and the
popular feeling which they expressed, offered an inspiration to the
artist such as has rarely, if ever, found a parallel. But any great
victory or deliverance might be commemorated by the setting up of
statues of the gods to whom it was attributed; and in this way the
demands of official religion offered the sculptor the highest scope for
the exercise of his art and his imagination.

(3) The influence of poetic mythology upon art can hardly be
exaggerated. The statem