193. Secondly. The Greek, as such, never expresses personal character,
while a Florentine holds it to be the ultimate condition of beauty. You
are startled, I suppose, at my saying this, having had it often pointed
out to you, as a transcendent piece of subtlety in Greek art, that you
could distinguish Hercules from Apollo by his being stout, and Diana
from Juno by her being slender. That is very true; but those are general
distinctions of class, not special distinctions of personal character.
Even as general, they are bodily, not mental. They are the distinctions,
in fleshly aspect, between an athlete and a musician,--between a matron
and a huntress; but in nowise distinguish the simple-hearted hero from
the subtle Master of the Muses, nor the willful and fitful girl-goddess
from the cruel and resolute matron-goddess. But judge for yourselves. In
the successive plates, XV.-XVIII., I show you,[38] typically represented
as the protectresses of nations, the Argive, Cretan, and Lacinian Hera,
the Messenian Demeter, the Athena of Corinth, the Artemis of Syracuse;
the fountain Arethusa of Syracuse, and the Siren Ligeia of Terina. Now,
of these heads, it is true that some are more delicate in feature than
the rest, and some softer in expression: in other respects, can you
trace any distinction between the Goddesses of Earth and Heaven, or
between the Goddess of Wisdom and the Water Nymph of Syracuse? So little
can you do so, that it would have remained a disputed question--had not
the name luckily been inscribed on some Syracusan coins--whether the
head upon them was meant for Arethusa at all; and, continually, it
becomes a question respecting finished statues, if without attributes,
"Is this Bacchus or Apollo--Zeus or Poseidon?" There is a fact for you;
noteworthy, I think! There is no personal character in true Greek
art:--abstract ideas of youth and age, strength and swiftness, virtue
and vice,--yes: but there is no individuality; and the negative holds
down to the revived conventionalism of the Greek school by Leonardo,
when he tells you how you are to paint young women, and how old ones;
though a Greek would hardly have been so discourteous to age as the
Italian is in his canon of it,--"old women should be represented as
passionate and hasty, after the manner of Infernal Furies."

194. "But at least, if the Greeks do not give character, they give ideal
beauty?" So it is said, without contradiction. But will you look again