th any so
ambitious problems. Even when the art of sculpture had attained to a
considerable degree of mastery over material and expression, we find its
aims and conceptions lagging far behind those of the poet. This will
become clearer when, in the next chapter, we consider the conditions of
artistic expression in Greece; but it must be noted here, in order to
prevent possible misconception. As soon, however, as art became capable
of aiming at something beyond perfection of a bodily form--a change
which, in spite of Pausanias' admiration of something divine about the
works of Daedalus, can hardly be dated earlier than the fifth century
B.C.--the Homeric conceptions of the gods came to have their full
effect. Zeus, the king and father of gods and men; Athena, the friendly
protectress of heroes, irresistible in war, giver of all intellectual
and artistic power; Apollo, the archer and musician, the purifier and
soothsayer--these and others find their first visible embodiment in the
statues whereby the sculptors of the fifth century gave expression to
the Homeric conceptions.

The tales, too, that were told about the gods, some of them trivial
enough, but others full of religious and ethical significance, had for
some time before this been common subjects upon reliefs and
vase-paintings, and on these also the influence of the poets was very
great. Here we have not only the Iliad and Odyssey to consider, but many
other early epics that are now lost to us. The vase-painter or sculptor
did not, indeed, merely illustrate these stories as a modern artist
might; often he had a separate tradition and a repertory of subjects
belonging to his own art, and developed them along different lines from
those followed by the poets. But although this tradition might lead him
to choose a version less familiar to poetry, or even to give a new form
to an old story, his conception was essentially poetical, in that it
implied an imaginative realisation of the scene or action, and even of
the character of the deity or hero represented.

The conception of the gods to be found in other early epics probably did
not differ essentially from that we find in the Iliad and Odyssey; but
with the Homeric hymns and with some of the earlier lyric poets we find
a change setting in. There seems to be a new interest in the adventures
of the gods themselves, apart from their relation to mankind; romantic
and even pathetic stories are told about them, implying a