The Mausoleum Charioteer
British Museum
For thirty years after Ægospotami, Sparta, with the help of Persia, ruled Greece. After the peace of Callias in 371 b.c. came the domination of Pheræ and Thebes, and the military supremacy of Epaminondas. During all this time Athens looked on. Her commerce had suffered little. The wealth of her capitalists had rather been increased than decreased by the abandonment of the luxury of empire. But if the material difference was small, the psychological difference was immense. Whereas Demosthenes could cry of the Athenian who had fought at Salamis, that he believed himself “not born to his father and mother alone, but also to his country,” the State in the fourth century came to be regarded as a joint stock corporation, to be bled for the benefit of its most noisy members. Mercenaries took the place of citizen soldiers in the army of the State. Regardless of the necessity for providing against emergencies, the citizens voted themselves largesses from the public funds. A popular statesman was the man who lessened the cost of public administration, and so could distribute ever increasing dividends of festival money to the proletariat.
This new regard for the individual was entirely foreign to the ideals which had dominated Hellas fifty years earlier. Each man began to realise that apart from citizenship there was an entity which also claimed attention, an “I” with passions and emotions which required satisfaction and called for artistic expression. The sculptor no longer rejected those subjects which derived their interest from the successful expression of individual emotion.
The Age of Scopas (400 B.c.-350 b.c.)
Scopas was the first artist to realise the new necessity laid upon the plastic arts. He was the chief architect of his day, and in his work we can trace the effect of the new ideas before sculpture was divorced in great measure from architecture. We have already mentioned his association with the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus—one of the “Seven Wonders.” The Carian ruler Mausolus died in 353 b.c., leaving his widow Artemisia to rule. She determined to erect a great monument to his memory, and impressed the best known artists of Magna Græcia into her service for the purpose. The restoration by C. R. Cockerell in the Mausoleum Room at the British Museum, or, still better, that by Oldfield (The Antiquary, vol. liv., pp. 273-362), give some idea of the great pyramidical building, glowing with colour, which stood on a lofty basement by the harbour side. The whole was surmounted by a great chariot group by Pythis, containing the heroic figure of Mausolus, possibly accompanied by Artemisia, after the fashion of Zeus and Hera in the chariot of the gods.
To the art historian, however, the most interesting feature is the frieze. The principal subject of the existing fragments in the British Museum is a fight between Greeks and Amazons. But the most beautiful section is perhaps a sadly-mutilated slab from a portion of the frieze whereon was pictured a chariot race. It is known as the “Mausoleum Charioteer.” Nothing could bring home more clearly the immense strides Greek art has made than a comparison of this tiny marble fragment with the “Bronze Charioteer” from Delphi, sculptured about one hundred and twenty years earlier. The Mausoleum figure is also clad in the long close-fitting robe of his calling. But every trace of conventionalism has vanished. Even the calm restraint with which an Alcamenes would have treated the subject has gone. Instead we find a passionate intensity which is altogether new. As Mr. E. A. Gardner reminds us, the “Mausoleum Charioteer” might well be of the company described by Shelley, who:
“With burning eyes, lean forth and drink
With eager lips the wind of their own speed,
As if the thing they loved fled on before,
And now, even now, they clasped it.”