A Greek temple could accommodate figurative sculpture, in the triangle of the pediment, as akroteria, and on the frieze, whether it was a Done frieze divided into metopes or an uninterrupted Ionic frieze. The way in which Archaism solved the problems entailed, by adapting the imagery to predetermined architectural frames, was discussed above. Fundamentally, Classicism was only exploiting the formulas gradually perfected during the sixth and very early fifth centuries. Architectural sculpture later than the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, where, as we saw, the hesitations of Archaism ended, thus requires us to consider other aspects of the subject.

First, let us consider the quantity and spatio-temporal distribution of architectural sculpture of the period. Apart from the monuments built outside Greece itself (and there are good reasons for treating them as a separate subject), most of this body of work is found in Athens. In the form of the monuments still standing on the Acropolis, most of the works made in the second half of the fifth century are found there. The Parthenon reigns supreme in the wealth of its decorative sculpture: two pediments, representing on the east pediment (the façade) the birth of Athena, and on the west pediment the dispute between Athena and Poseidon for the possession of Attica; the frieze of metopes and triglyphs, canonically arranged above the colums of a Doric temple and with ornamentation on all four sides of the building, a gigantomachy on the east side, a centauromachy on the south side, an Amazonomachy on the west side and the sacking of Troy on the north side; and finally, the famous Ionic frieze showing the Panathenaic procession, setting out from the west side, namely, the back of the monument, and making its way along the long north and south sides in two symmetrical files which join to the east in front of the assembly of the gods. In the matter of innovation, too, the Parthenon deserves its special place and the high esteem in which it is held today: it went against traditional Done usage for the Panathenaic frieze to be placed at the top of the exterior wall of the cella, and while Archaism had established the thematic homogeneity of the Ionic frieze on all sides of a building, this particular frieze takes the formula to extremes, exploiting the absence of any break at the angles of the building (while the Done frieze, on the contrary, has a strong break at those angles consisting of two adjacent triglyphs) and developing the same subject all round the four sides of the temple. It is the same on the pediment, where the usual figures shown lying in the angles give way to the chariot of the sun apparently rising above the horizon on the left, while the chariot of the moon is going down at the other end.

The subject matter is almost exclusively mythological and not very varied. Contemporary scenes are unusual. The most notable of them is the Ionic frieze of the Parthenon, showing the participants in the festival of the Panathenaea going in procession all along the temple, like the real procession climbing uphill from the Kerameikos quarter, the area north-west of the Acropolis, to the statue of Athena Parthenos (although it has recently been claimed that past heroes of Athens are shown among them, visual imagery bringing together characters who never co-existed). Then there is the frieze of the Temple of Athena Nike, which seems to show scenes from the Persian Wars, namely, from very recent history. However, the rest of the subjects belong to what we call mythology, including legends of the gods, such as the gigaotomachy with gods and giants in combat, and stories from ancient history such as the “Ilsoupersis” (the sack of Troy), the Calydonian Hunt, and so on. Identification of the various legendary scenes and characters is not always obvious; for instance, opinions on the subject of the akroteria of the temple at Epsdauros have varied widely. Despite these uncertainties, however, a really original subject like that of Dionysos and the pirates on the Monument of Lysiskrates is rare, and we are bound to notice the considerable number of gigantomachies, centauromachies, Amazonomachies and sacks of Troy which populate the Done metopes of the Parthenon, the Ionic frieze of Bassae, and the pediments of Epidauros.

This surprising recurrence of subjects leads one to formulate the question of the relationship between sculptural ornamentation and the edifice upon which it appears in new terms. In discussing Archaism, we studied the way in which the imagery had to conform to architectural constraints, but there is another way for images to relate to a budding: they may also relate to its function or to the individual who commissioned the work. And while sculptural decoration must be strictly subordinated to the frames imposed by the frieze and the pediment, there seems to be more latitude with themes arising from the function and history of the building itself

Sometimes, of course, there can be no argument. The sculptural imagery may refer to the divinity presiding over the temple, although, contrary to expectations, this is not at all frequent. The Parthenon is in fact quite unusual in that its pediments show two incidents from the story of Athena, and its Ionic frieze is a marble record of the procession organized in her honour every four years. Much more often, there are references to local history or the background and pretensions of the patrons who commissioned the work. For instance, the Telephos story on the west pediment at Tegea is explained by the family tree of Telephns whose grandfather was king of Tegea. At Delos, the abduction of Oreithyia depicted on the roof-ridge of the Temple of the Athenians is an Athenian legend, and the same is also true of the Theseid in the anonymous fourth-century temple. Similarly, the Doric frieze of the Theseion depicts the labours of Herakles and the deeds of Theseus, as the Athenian Treasury at Delos had done some decades earlier; the repetition of both themes shows that the juxtaposition of these two series of exploits was not a matter of chance: the Athenians must have wanted to show that their own national hero was as good as the great hero of their Peloponnessan adversaries. However, this relationship between sculptural imagery and the patrons who commissioned it can be regarded as of frequent occurrence only if we accept the almost certain hypothesis which has long been proposed as an explanation of the choice of gigantomachies, centauromachies, Amazonomachies and depictions of the sacking of Troy. The common factor between those four subjects is that the gods or the Greeks (a flattering correlation) are shown conquering either brutes like the giants and centaurs or “barbarians” like the Amazons and Trojans, and consequently:, less than fifty years after the battle of Salamis, such scenes were like a legendary echo of the victories of the Persian Wars. This transference of the very recent to the very distant past explains the predominance of those four subjects, and also the rarity in Greece of what is called, in Roman art, historical relief the representation of contemporary figures and events. The Parthenon is a perfect illustration of these two kinds of iconographic relationship between architectural sculpture and the building upon which it stands. First, the temple consecrated to Athena bears two episodes from her story on the pediments, and shows the ritual of her worship in the Ionic frieze; second, it was built by the Athenians and its metopes are a fourfold commemoration of their victories over the barbarians, transferred to four episodes of the legendary past.

But not all cases are so clear. For instance, there is no obvious reason why the Calydonian Hunt was chosen for the main pediment of the temple at Tegea. Of course scholars have never been short of ingenious explanations for their belief that the sculptural ornamentation of a temple or other building is iconographically linked to it, but such explanations do not always carry conviction, particularly since people often make the customary choice without much thought about it. For in spite of the admiration for Greek art normally felt to be obligatory, from the fifth century onwards it was extremely repetitive. We have only to observe how constantly the type of the Greek temple is found throughout antiquity, or how all Greek architecture comes down to indefinite exploitation of the peripteros, or external colonnade, and the peristyle, or internal colonnade. After all, adaptation of the decoration to the building which accommodates it is no more obvious in other arts; there have been frequent attempts to detect such links in the choice of subjects for mosaics, but in this case too the recurrence of subjects to which artists and their clients were accustomed obviously prevailed over any supposed concern for relevance.

This kind of iconographical laziness, a penchant for returning to the same subjects, is no bar to variations in their treatment, and indeed this is what seems to have interested sculptors most. In the Parthenon, for instance, the centauromachy was to be extended over more than thirty metopes, their rectangular form allowing each metope to show only two characters, but a centaur may be abducting a woman, brandishing a rock, rearing up in various ways, while his adversary may be shown standing and fighting, or with a knee on the ground, or lying down vanquished. The combination of such attitudes produces as many different single combats as there are metopes to be ornamented. At Bassae, by contrast, the centanromachy is shown in an Ionic frieze, so that the fight is no longer separated into single combats. Instead, the continuity of the struggle had to be shown, and accordingly we see a centaur straddling his lifeless comrade as he bites a Lapith, whose leg touches the leg of another Lapith, who is running the other way and is himself attacked by a third centaur who has fallen to the ground, with the knee of a third Lapith on his hindquarters. This Lapith in turn is threatened by another centaur, and so it goes on for dozens of yards. The exercise was even more arduous when the sculptor had to provide a variation on a hackneyed subject without changing the architectural frame. A sculptor who had seen the Ionic Amazonomachy of Bassac might have felt it possible to adapt the theme for a pediment, as at Epidauros, but have been very reluctant to rework it for a second continuous frieze which, as is demonstrated later, was done in the Mausoleum of Halikarnassos. It is not surprising that modern scholars have often been anxious to define the means used by the sculptors of Halikarnassos to distinguish themselves from their predecessors, turning to a more “airy” composition leaving large gaps between the adversaries, making attitudes tenser, drapery less undulating in order to give an impression of “dryness”, and so on.

This accepted ascendancy of skill over the invention of new subjects is seen again in the story of the painter Zeuxis, who was indignant when the strange concept of his centaur family was praised, rather than his skill in executing the painting. But visual art was not alone in producing countless variations on the same theme, and in its reluctance to renew the repertory; literature was just the same. Nine new tragedies were performed every year in Classical Athens, that is, nine hundred in a century, all drawing on the same stock of legends. The old stories were told again and again; the skill lay in making something new out of an old theme. Though few tragedies have come down to us, we have three about the recognition of Orestes by his sister Elektra, and it has become a classic exercise to contrast the play of Euripides with those of Sophocles and in particular Aeschylus, whose weaknesses Euripides criticized. Novelty of plot was not what made a great poet tragic.

The advantage of studies of separate artists is that they provide an idea of the variety of artistic personalities and careers in antiquity, and also provide a clear survey of the’ themes of Classical statuary. Even when we have no originals or reliable replicas, the works of the great masters are known to us by name from literary texts, something of great importance in establishing what the repertory was. Conversely, the statues which have been preserved are useful when it comes to assessing the skill of he artists, but present considerable difficulty when it comes to identifying their subjects. However, many of them do seem to fit perfectly into the thematic repertory of the lost statues, and therefore can usefully supplement it.

Probably Myron’s Heifer was so famous throughout antiquity because it was very unusual. In any case statues of animals, already very infrequent in the Archaic period, are in an even smaller minority in the Classical epoch. Almost all the statues show gods or men.

The literary tradition records a vast number of divine statues, principally intended for cult purposes, which is explained by the multitude of temples (often several dozen in a city, and the cities themselves were extremely numerous). No doubt an additional reason, as taste evolved, was a wish to replace old idols which did not always meet with the respect due to their age, judging by the story of Parmeniskos bursting into laughter before the Leto of Delos. To the divine statues may be added what modern scholars, making a slightly misleading distinction, call penonificafions. It is true that the Eirene of Kephnodotos, the Eros of Praxiteles and the Pathos of Skopai (meaning “Peace”, “Love”, and “Desire”), are only representations in human form, or visual anthropomorphizarions, of words where grammatical gender determines the sex of the figure. Eirene is a woman because eirene is a feminine noun, Eros a youth because Eros is masculine. However, it is also true that in a polytheistic system the pantheon is never complete, and the Greeks did not hesitate to welcome new divinities into it, including such “personifications’. We know, for instance, from textual evidence, of the existence of the worship of Eirene, made official in Athens in 374, and of Eros, who had his temple at Thespiae. So the distinction between divinities and personifications of concepts is not clear, and no doubt was not clear even in antiquity. In terms of statuary, however, the obvious significance of their names means that the personifications lend themselves to what might be called discourse through imagery. For instance, the statue by Kephisodotos shows a woman holding a little boy in her arms; Pausanias describes it as “Eirene carrying Ploutos”, which in Creek means that “Peace carries (or brings with it) wealth”, and if Ploutos (the noun is masculine) is still only a little boy, then obviously peace will ensure his growth. However, such “meanings” remain more or less enigmatic, to the point where it was said of the Kairos (Opportunity) of Lysippos that it was little better than a charade. This cannot be historically fortuitous. Himerius, writing at the end of the fourth century AD and no doubt aware of the mechanism explained above, says simply that Lysippos “had enrolled Kairos among the gods”, but it is notable that the Eirene, Eeos, Pothos and Kairos are all from the fourth century BC, aud so in painting were the Demos (People) of Parrhasios and the Dsabolos (Slander) of Apelles. We have only to read Lueian’s account of this last—named painting, full of secondary attributes and personifications, to realize that presenting complex concepts as images was much to the taste of the time.

Whereas divine statuary is at one with the organization of the Greek pantheon in giving plenty of room to goddesses, human statuary is almost always masculine, with a few exceptions like the Phrynes of Praxsteles. As in the works of Myron, Pulyclitus and Lysippos described, it comprises two categories. On the one hand, there are the many individual likenesses, most of them athletes who had been winners at the Olympic Games or other such competitions; these were consecrated in the relevant sanctuaries as votive offerings in thanks for victory. On the other, there is a small number of generic images demonstrating an activity or gesture, such as the Diskobolos of Myron, the Doryphoros and Diadoumenos of Polyclitus, and the Apoxyomenos of Lysippos.

While thematically relevant, the distinction between gods and men is of no stylistic importance, for the anthropomorphism of the Greek divinities makes no clear distinction between divine and human bodies. In this respect, the main point is that statues closely resemble the flesh and bone of the model.’ As mentioned in the discussion of Archaism, a patient might well fear the attentions of a surgeon who had learnt anatomy from the study of a seventh-century kouros, but he might have more faith in one who had taken the Doryphoros as his anatomical model. But this conformity of the sculptured to the living body is very largely generic; differences due to individuality, age or background appear seldom or at a very late date.

The one constant distinction drawn as between the sexes, a feature inherited from Archaism. Over a long period, in the tradition of the kore, female figures remain clothed in thick drapery concealing the body, which meant that sculptors did not concern themselves with anatomical differences of sex. However, sculptors did not wait for Praxsteles to present his nude Aphrodstes in the fourth century (to be followed by many others, such as Timotheos with his Leda and the Sw4n) before discovering, in sculptural terms, those features of the female body that distinguish it from the male. In the middle of the fifth century BC they devised a way of compromising between the requirements of the image and those of the person being represented, between the sculptural exhibition of the female form and the immodesty of showing a goddess or a virtuous woman unclothed (in vase painting, only courtesans are shown entirely nude). This is the effect known as “wet drapery”; the figure is no longer shown wearing several thick and ample garments, but a single layer of very thin fabric which clings to the skin, so that a body both clothed and naked shows through. Among the works employing this effect are the Nike of Paionias at Olympia, the “Venus of Fréjus” in the Louvre, thought to be from a fifth-century original, the Nereids of the Nereid Monument, and in rehefs, the Victories on the parapet of the Bastion of Athena Nike on the Acropolis. There is no doubt, then, that the sculptors of the Classical period were equally able to depict male and female bodies.

Distinctions of age, on the other hand, are exceptional. There are hardly any sculptures of old men except the seated figure in a pediment at Olympia, bald and with sagging flesh, and few children except those in the votive offerings at Brauron, a little boy, and above all the little girl “bears”, the arktoi, whom the young girl at Delphi greatly resembles. The existence of these few examples shows that sculptors of the period had the necessary skill to show age differences, but that such differences were not generally of interest to them. Almost all the men and women of Classical statuary resemble real men and women aged about twenty, but as they encounter no older or younger people within the imagery of sculpture they are essentially ageless: when so few statues show old people and children, it cannot really he said that this is statuary of the young.

Other physical differences are either absent or appear quite late. Vase painting from the sixth century onwards shows Egyptians clearly characterized by their negroid profiles, shaven heads and very obvious circumcision, but ethnic distinctions are absent from Classical statuary. As for individuality of features, there is no evidence that sculptors were capable of showing this before the second half of the fifth century, when the Pericles of Kresilas was produced. (Krcsilas competed with Polyclitus and Phidias to make the wounded Amazon of Ephesus and was thus their contemporary.) In the light of probable replicas this portrait of Pericles, even if not a good likeness — something we cannot judge for lack of personal acquaintance with the famous leader — at least did not show just anyone’s face. Others who depicted individuality were the sculptor Demetrios of Alopeke, whom Luesan calls “creator of human beings” and who, according to Quintifian, was “more in love with likeness than beauty”, and later on Lysippos with his portraits of Alexander. Finally, many statues arc shown in positions which can be held for a long time, such as the pose known by its Cerman name of Spielbein (“trailing leg”) assumed by the Doryphoros. Even if the Diskobolos, Diadoumenos and Apoxymenos appear to be depicted frozen in a momentary attitude, again there is scarcely any evidence (leaving aside lost works such as Myron’s spnnter Ladas, who seemed to be panting) that before the fourth century sculptors were able to show anything of the changes of expression brought by a fleeting emotion. There is still little transitory expression shown except pain, in what is known as the “pathetic” or “Skopas” look, because Skopas introduced a slightly rolling eye and opened lips: a fleetmg expression indeed, which contrasts with the impassive immobility of fifth-century faces.
Thus the intended realism — that is to say, maximum reduction of the gap between the image and what it depicts — which seemed discernible in Archaic sculpture despite the inadequate results, leads in the Classical era to a more satisfactory realism, even if it is usually without distinction of age, individuality of features, or expression of emotion.

The Canon of Polyclitus seems to be an obstacle to this account of the style of Classical statuary. It is true that the few ancient texts which mention it are far from being very illuminating. We know that Polyclitus wrote a treatise entitled Kanon (“rule”), and that he provided a visible illustration of its precepts in a statue also called the Canon, which is the Doryphorus, but sometimes we seem to be dealing with a model of the human body and sometimes with the “rules of art” or liniamenta artis, as Pliny puts it. He adds this surprising statement: “Only Polyclitus is thought to have made art itself in a work of art” (artem ipsam fecisse artis opere). All the same, whether we are speaking of a live or statuary body, there is no doubt — as in Miss World contests today — that the perfection proposed by Polyclitus is a matter of exact measurements: it is “precisely measured”, says Lucian, and Galen adds: “It offers a perfect proportion between all the parts.”

As the beauty of the Canon thus derives from an arithmetical structure and not the faithful reproduction of a real and beautiful body, this approach has been described as “idealism”, as opposed to the “realism” represented by Myron, whose Diskobolos, Ladas, and Athena with the Satyr group were like snapshots holding the truth of a brief moment. “Realism” was also represented by Demetrios of Alopeke, who “preferred likeness to beauty”, and by Lysippos, who might even be called a “naturalist”, since as we have seen, he thought it best to imitate nature and not art. In fact the distinction between Classical idealism and realism is less clear—cut than we might suppose from the strong opposition between the two terms which exists today (as for instance when someone whose head is in the clouds is called idealistic). For one thing, the sculptors described as realist actually incline towards idealism: they all give their statues a “Greek profile”, shown by the study of skulls to have been no more common among the people of antiquity than it is now (it is not found in Archaic statues), or genitals too small to be anatomically likely. Similarly, though he claimed to imitate nature, Lysippos still worked in the tradition of the Canon because he modified its proportions, thereby implicitly accepting its general principle. Above all, the opposition between the ideal and the real is only an apparent one in the Greece of this period. We can tell this from Plato, who was certainly some sixty years later than Polyclitus, but the time gap is no problem because, like any other philosopher, Plato was bound to draw upon both the thought of his own time and on earlier ideas. In his Republic, Plato speaks of the myth of the cavern where most people see only appearances, like the shadows cast by a superior world, the intelligible worid or worid of ideas. A little later in the same dialogue, the comparison between three .kinds of couches is even more explicit: the painter is imitating the couch made by the carpenter, but his painting and this is Plato’s reason for condemning it is an imitation at a third remove, since the carpenter himself is imitating the “idea” of the couch (in Greek, Plato says eidos) which is the work of God: “he does not make (the couch) which is, but something which, without being it, is like (the couch) which is”. In this view of the world, the idea is not a kind of phantasm opposed to reality: it is reality itself, but understood on a superior level, that of the intelligible world to which only philosophers have access, and nothing else exists. “The idea (of the couch) n what the couch is” it is the very essence of the couch.

Their respective dates make it impossible for Polychtus to have been a disciple of Plato’s philosophy and as Plato ranks sculptors among the lower classes in the city, no doubt he would have thought very little of the artist. But today, speaking of Polyclitus or of Classical statuary in general, we talk of idealism, we are well advised to take the term in a Platonic sense and to see it not as anti—realism, but as an endeavour to attain the highest form of the real. Seen as models from which the whole variety of what is perceptible indefinitely proceeds, Platonic ideas are necessarily alien to individuality and contingency. Therefore, if there was idealism in Classical statuary and an entire artistic trend was going in the direction of the “idea” of the body, it must inevitably have given pride of place to the generic and non-temporal. This may well be the explanation of a general rejection of the individual and the fleeting moment. In Archaic statuary, we surmised that realistic intentions were thwarted by mad—equate skills; here, conversely, it may reasonably be argued that idealistic intentions delayed the acquisition of the technical mastery required to render every aspect of what is real: distinctions of age, individuality, ethnic groups and brief moments. This is a mastery that Hellemstic sculpture clearly exhibits.