One
by one these [241] new gods of bronze, or marble, or flesh-like
ivory, take their thrones, at this or that famous shrine, like the
images of this period which Pausanias saw in the temple of Here at
Olympia--the throned Seasons, with Themis as the mother of the
Seasons (divine rectitude being still blended, in men's fancies, with
the unchanging physical order of things) and Fortune, and Victory
"having wings," and Kore and Demeter and Dionysus, already visibly
there, around the image of Here herself, seated on a throne; and all
chryselephantine, all in gold and ivory. Novel as these things are,
they still undergo consecration at their first erecting. The figure
of Athene, in her brazen temple at Sparta, the work of Gitiades, who
makes also the image and the hymn, in triple service to the goddess;
and again, that curious story of Dipoenus and Scyllis, brought back
with so much awe to remove the public curse by completing their
sacred task upon the images, show how simply religious the age still
was--that this widespread artistic activity was a religious
enthusiasm also; those early sculptors have still, for their
contemporaries, a divine mission, with some kind of hieratic or
sacred quality in their gift, distinctly felt.
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