regularly on Greek vases. On the tomb’s ceiling (FIG. 5-61), a youth
dives from a stone platform into a body of water. The scene most
likely symbolizes the plunge from this life into the next. Trees resem-
bling those on the Niobid krater are included within the decorative
frame.
Late Classical Period
The Peloponnesian War, which began in 431BCE, ended in 404BCE
with the complete defeat of a plague-weakened Athens. The victor,
Sparta, and then Thebes undertook the leadership of Greece, both
unsuccessfully. In the middle of the fourth centuryBCE, a threat from
without caused the rival Greek states to put aside their animosities
and unite for their common defense, as they had earlier against the
Persians. But at the battle of Chaeronea in 338BCE, the Greek cities
suffered a devastating loss and had to relinquish their independence
to the Macedonian king, Philip II. Philip was assassinated in 336,
and his son, Alexander III, better known simply as Alexander the
Great, succeeded him. In the decade before his death in 323BCE,
Alexander led a powerful army on an extraordinary campaign that
overthrew the Persian Empire (the ultimate revenge for the Persian
invasion of Greece in the early fifth centuryBCE), wrested control of
Egypt, and even reached India (see Chapter 6).
Sculpture
The fourth centuryBCEwas thus a time of political upheaval in
Greece, and the chaos had a profound impact on the psyche of the
Greeks and on the art they produced. In the fifth centuryBCE, Greeks
had generally believed that rational human beings could impose or-
der on their environment, create “perfect” statues such as the Canon
of Polykleitos, and discover the “correct” mathematical formulas for
constructing temples such as the Parthenon. The Parthenon frieze
celebrated the Athenians as a community of citizens with shared val-
ues. The Peloponnesian War and the unceasing strife of the fourth
centuryBCEbrought an end to the serene idealism of the previous
century. Disillusionment and alienation followed. Greek thought
and Greek art began to focus more on the individual and on the real
world of appearances rather than on the community and the ideal
world of perfect beings and perfect buildings.
PRAXITELES The new approach to art is immediately apparent
in the work ofPraxiteles,one of the great masters of the fourth
centuryBCE. Praxiteles did not reject the themes favored by the sculp-
tors of the High Classical period. His Olympian gods and goddesses
retained their superhuman beauty, but in his hands they lost some of
their solemn grandeur and took on a worldly sensuousness. Nowhere
is this new humanizing spirit plainer than in the statue of Aphrodite
(FIG. 5-62) that Praxiteles sold to the Knidians after another city had
rejected it. The lost original, carved from Parian marble, is known
only through copies of Roman date, but Pliny considered it “superior
to all the works, not only of Praxiteles, but indeed in the whole
world.” It made Knidos famous, and many people sailed there just to
see the statue in its round temple (compare FIG. 5-72), where “it was
possible to view the image of the goddess from every side.” According
to Pliny, some visitors were “overcome with love for the statue.”^3
The Aphrodite of Knidos caused such a sensation in its time be-
cause Praxiteles took the unprecedented step of representing the
goddess of love completely nude. Female nudity was rare in earlier
Greek art and had been confined almost exclusively to paintings on
vases designed for household use. The women so depicted also
tended to be courtesans or slave girls, not noblewomen or goddesses,
and no one had dared place a statue of an unclothed goddess in a
temple. Moreover, Praxiteles’ Aphrodite is not a cold and remote
image. In fact, the goddess engages in a trivial act out of everyday
life. She has removed her garment, draped it over a large hydria
(water pitcher), and is about to step into the bath.
Although shocking in its day, the Aphrodite of Knidos is not
openly erotic (the goddess modestly shields her pelvis with her right
hand), but she is quite sensuous. Lucian wrote in the second century
CEthat she had a “welcoming look” and a “slight smile” and that Prax-
iteles was renowned for his ability to transform marble into soft and
radiant flesh. Lucian mentioned, for example, the “dewy quality of
Aphrodite’s eyes.”^4 Unfortunately, the rather mechanical Roman
copies do not capture the quality of Praxiteles’ modeling of the stone.
Those qualities are evident, however, in a statue once thought to
be by the hand of the master himself but now generally considered
either a copy of the highest quality or an original work by a son or
grandson of Praxiteles. Found in the Temple of Hera at Olympia, the5-62Praxiteles,Aphrodite of Knidos.Roman marble copy of an
original of ca. 350–340 bce, 6 8 high. Musei Vaticani, Rome.
The first nude statue of a goddess caused a sensation in the fourth
centuryBCE. But Praxiteles was also famous for his ability to transform
marble into soft and radiant flesh. His Aphrodite had “dewy eyes.”1 ft.Late Classical Period 1375-62AHead of a
woman, Chios,
ca. 320–300 BCE.