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THE CHARIOTEER (BRONZE)

Delphi Museum

HARMODIUS

National Museum, Naples

Still the stiffness and conventionality of the archaic period died hard. Even in the works of Myron, whose reputation was established by the middle of the fifth century, there are still traces of archaic treatment, as in the hair. But in such a statue as his “ssss1,” with its truthfulness to nature, its rhythmic grace of design and its triumphant mastery over all technical difficulties, we can realise how far the sculpture of his age was ahead of the best work possible fifty years earlier.

The mention of Myron, the earliest artist to benefit by the freeing of the plastic arts from the shackles of conventionalism, brings us upon one of the prime problems of Greek sculpture. Practically, the history of Greek sculpture depends upon the connections which can be established between the art and three leading ideals. The difficulty of really understanding it depends upon the distance we moderns have progressed—pardon us the term—from those three dominating ideas.