kine with upright horns, and the
kine were fashioned of gold and tin," "and herdsmen of gold were
following after them." "Also did the glorious lame god devise a
dancing-place like unto that which once, in wide Knosos, Daidalos
wrought for Ariadne of the lovely tresses. There were youths dancing
and maidens of costly wooing, their hands upon their waists." "And now
would they run round with deft feet exceedingly lightly"--"and now
would they run in lines to meet each other." "And a great company
stood round the lovely dance in joy; and among them a divine minstrel
was making music on his lyre; and through the midst of them, as he
began his strain, two tumblers whirled. Also he set therein the great
might of the River of Ocean, around the utmost rim of the
cunningly-fashioned shield."[55]

There is, indeed, every proof that Greek art was the joint product of
the Egyptian and Assyrian civilizations. Their amalgamation gave birth
to the archaic style, struggling to express the strength and the
beauty of man--half heroic, half divine. Gradually, all the
surrounding decorations of life assumed as a governing principle and
motive, the worth of noble beauty.

The Greeks were the first artists. They broke away from the ancient
trammels of customary forms, and replaced law with liberty of thought,
and tradition with poetry.

They destroyed no old ideas, but they selected, appropriated, and
evoked beauty from every source. From the great days of Athens we may
date the moment when materials became entirely subservient to art, and
the minds of individual men were stamped on their works and dated
them. Phases indeed followed each other, showing the links of
tradition which still bound men's minds together to a certain extent,
and formed the general style of the day. Yet there was in art from
that time--life, sometimes death,--but then a resurrection.

It appears from classical writers that about 300 B.C. Greek art had
thrown itself into many new forms. Painting, for example, had tried
all themes excepting landscapes. We are told that within the space of
150 years the art had passed through every technical stage; from the
tinted profile system of Polygnotus to the proper pictorial system of
natural scenes, composed with natural backgrounds; and Peiraiikos is
named as an artist of genre--a painter of barbers and cobblers,
booths, asses, eatables, and such-like realistic subjects.[56]

I suppose there is no doubt that all the Rom