oetry, much as in
architecture and sculpture it is interpreted by the remains of the
Parthenon; there is the same serenity and wholeness of work; power
joined to purity of taste; self-restraint; and a sure instinct of
symmetry."[3] Sophocles was a friend and companion of Pericles, and
therefore probably of Phidias; and in both alike we see the same harmony
and absence of exaggeration that are characteristic of Greek art at its
best. In this case we may say with some confidence that the poet and the
sculptor probably influenced each other.

[Footnote 2: Sir R. C. Jebb in _Cambridge Companion to Greek Studies_,
p. 110.]

[Footnote 3: _Ibid_. p. 113.]

It seems a tempting hypothesis to see something of the influence of
"Euripides the human" in the individualistic tendencies of the art of
the fourth century; but it seems hardly to be justified by the facts.
The influence of his dramas is, indeed, to be seen in later
vase-paintings; but this is not a matter with which we are here
concerned. In his treatment of the gods, Euripides can hardly be quoted
as an example of the humanising tendency. "He resented the notion that
gods could be unjust or impure"; but the purer and more abstract
conceptions of divinity that appealed to him were hardly such as could
find expression in art; it has even been said that "he blurred those
Hellenic ideals which were the common man's best without definitely
replacing them." The bringing of these ideals nearer to the common life
of man finds its poetic inspiration rather in the tendency which has
already been noticed in the Homeric hymns and the lyric poets, and which
now, after the reaction of the fifth century, exerts its full force on
the art of Scopas and Praxiteles.

There is no need to dwell here on the influence of later poets upon
religious art, though we shall have to notice hereafter the parallel
development of the representation of the gods in Hellenistic sculpture.
The Alexandrian poets expressed in elegant language their learning on
matters of religion and mythology, but there was no living belief in the
subjects which they made their theme; and the art they inspired could
only show the same qualities of a correct and academic eclecticism. The
idylls of Theocritus find, indeed, a parallel in the playful treatment
of Satyrs and other subjects of a similar character; but these belong to
what may be called mythological genre rather than to religious art. The
dramatic vigour and in