of the Classical era as models. The Aphrodite from Melos (the Venus de Milo) (fig.
73), named after the island where it was discovered in 1820, is regarded as an
example of a neo-Classical style that is found in the second century. The swirling
figure of this fine statue is draped from the hips to the feet. The pose has less natural
poise than that of her Cnidian counterpart (fig. 65), but the grave beauty of her
handsome head with its confident gaze reflects something of the serenity of the
Classical models from which her sculptor doubtless worked.
There is one artistic development that may be regarded as an invention of the
Hellenistic period, the fine art of mosaic composition. Mosaics are found earlier but
there is nothing extant that is comparable to the remarkable examples uncovered at
the Macedonian capital of Pella, on the floor of two buildings that may have been a
palace. The wonderfully dynamic stag hunt of Gnosis (fig. 74; the artist’s name
appears at the top of the picture) has perspective and depth in the composition and
shading in the coloration of the constituent pebbles, which can be detected even in
a black and white reproduction, so it looks more like a painting than a mosaic.
Another famous example is the Alexander mosaic depicting the battle of Alexander
and the Persian king Darius discovered at Pompeii and believed to be a copy of an
earlier painting. The stag hunt, by contrast, is a scene from ordinary life and in this it
exhibits another general tendency of post-Classical Hellenistic art, a movement away
from the abstract and the ideal to the realistic and the natural.
Realism can be a tricky term in art and literature, but the subject alone of the
sculpture of the drunken old lady (fig. 75) is not one that might be expected in the
Classical period. Drunkenness is frequently represented on vases but the figures are
usually merry satyrs, followers of Dionysus, or young men carousing too much in a
symposium. But here there is no question of over indulgence of the pleasure
principle; in fact, though she is clutching a pot of some kind that may be a wine bottle,
and though her dress is only anchored on one shoulder, it is not the drunkenness of
the woman that impresses the viewer but the pathos of old age, unflinchingly seen
in the wrinkles, the sunken cheeks and withered chest with jutting collar-bone and
almost visible ribs. The upturned face is expressive too. The neatness of her hair and
cap does not suggest abandon; rather the attitude and direction of the gaze suggest
the helplessness of the blind, even if this is to some extent a result of the passage of
time undergone by the statue itself rather than its subject. There is something
beseeching in the set of the mouth and the upward tilt of the head. It is as if the artist
has noticed a figure that might be encountered and ignored in the streets of any
Greek town. As a work of art, in its simple triangular form and its concentrated
subject, it has a real beauty that prompts the viewer to wonder about its unknown
origin and its destination: what could have motivated it, who commissioned it
and since this is designated a Roman copy, the same questions apply to its
reproduction.
270 THE GREEKS