Starts and stops in construction now reflect the heavy expenditures of the war that began in 431. A unique sculpture found on the akropolis has been variously associated with the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War, its later course, and Sophokles’ lost Tereus - and plausibly attributed to Alkamenes (the dedicant) (Figure 22.4). Tereus’ wife Prokne, daughter and sister of Athenian kings, is preparing to take revenge on her adulterous barbarian husband by murdering their young son Itys. The stiff columnar folds of her old-fashioned-looking drapery serve as a foil for the contorted figure of Itys, who senses danger and presses as close as possible against his mother; the danger is the knife in his mother’s right hand, and the disturbance he creates among the regular folds reveals his hiding place like a searchlight. A small figure on the nearby Erechtheion frieze has a similar pose, and Prokne is often compared to the Erechtheion caryatids - possibly later work by the same Alkamenes.
Close in date to all these (c. 420) is a mighty statue of Nike at Olympia, which an inscription identifies as a commission by the Ionian Paionios for Athens’ Messenian allies, commemorating their share in the startling victory over Sparta in 425. She was designed to be seen from below, as a flying figure about to alight on a tall pillar, and her impetus is conveyed both by the heavy drapery billowing behind and by the transparent, windblown garment with thin folds that model the body even more revealingly than where it is uncovered.
The Prokne and Nike are diverse developments of the sculpture of the Parthenon. Around the same time or even slightly earlier, the direction taken by Paionios was followed further by the sculptors who carved the parapet of the Athena Nike temple. The frieze consists mainly of Nikai leading bulls to sacrifice and depicts, unusually, the
Figure 22.4 Prokne with Itys, Athens Akropolis Museum. DAI, Athens. Neg. No. 1975/420. Photographer: Hellner.
Act of slaughter; the figures wear clinging drapery whose calligraphic folds, like chiaroscuro in painting, bring to three-dimensional life bodies that are not always anatomically credible. The overall effect is of unreal sensuous beauty at odds with the subject matter and the motive for the monument. This Rich Style, as it is often called, based on the combination of filmy drapery, modeling lines, and a variety of complex, active poses, originated in post-Periklean Athens - perhaps largely the creation of non-Athenian sculptors - and became predominant in Greek sculpture well into the fourth century. Its use outside Attika can often be connected with direct Athenian influence; conversely, local versions (Peloponnesian, West Greek, Ionian) developed. In free-standing sculpture, there is an increasing tendency to privilege a single viewing angle, a rhetorical approach. The Rich Style is used both for subject matter for which its prettiness might be thought unsuitable, such as battles, and for softer, emphatically feminized themes, especially Aphrodite and Maenads. The Meidias Painter, who flourished shortly before 400, specialized in the latter and his work is often cited as the painted equivalent of the Nike parapet. As for free painting, around this time Parrhasios of Ephesos portrayed Theseus (the greatest Athenian hero, robust and indestructible); it was said (by a later painter) that he appeared to have been fed on roses.
The Rich Style has analogies in late fifth-century architecture, especially the Athenian version of the Ionic order that culminated in the lacy Erechtheion. There is comparable mannered prettiness in contemporary literature, most notably the jingles and flourishes of Gorgianic rhetoric. Euripides, whose verses are occasionally precious, has a number of his characters express a fervent wish to escape - and the most plausible overall explanation for this emphasis on sheer beauty which variously thrills, seduces, and soothes is escapism, as several scholars have suggested (again, a transition is not universally acknowledged). The Rich Style appears at a time when, especially among the Athenians, there was good reason for escapism; there is good evidence as well. Interest in magic increased noticeably, and religion became more emotional and personal. Aphrodite and Dionysos were particular favorites, and the cult of the healer-savior hero-god Asklepios expanded rapidly and was memorably introduced to Athens in 420.
Escapism was clearly a factor but not the only one. Throughout the Peloponnesian War, the spirit of Aristophanes continues irrepressible, and the Athenians were capable of confidence, even euphoria, down to their final defeat by Lysander in 405 - another way of explaining the gorgeousness of the Nike parapet, with its characterization of Victory as a desirable woman, the more available for being pluralized. Thucydides recorded Athenian mood swings, also noting that the plague resulted in increased cynicism and selfishness (although Athenians continued capable of extraordinary self-sacrifice), caused conspicuous consumption, and created nouveaux riches. The emphasis on private rather than civic life, often called the hallmark of the fourth century, has begun, along with corresponding trends in material culture; Olynthos, expanded along a grid plan after 432 and destroyed by Philip of Macedon in 348, offers especially full evidence. Houses became larger toward 400, also more elegant, with peristyle courts, pebble floor mosaics, and wall painting (some foreshadowing the ‘‘First Pompeian Style’’). Spending on family tombs, especially in Athens, reached obsessive levels.
Of several major Peloponnesian temples built in the late fifth century, only that of Apollo Epikourios at Bassai, because of its remote location high in the Arkadian mountains, is complete enough to have permitted extensive anastylosis (Figure 22.5). Construction was coeval with the Peloponnesian War, beginning in 429 and completed shortly before 400 - and sponsored by mercenary soldiers. Their architect was Iktinos, whose temple was remarkably different from the Parthenon and comparably original. The austere exterior, lacking most subtle refinements of mature Doric (even sculptural decoration!), served as a foil to the wild landscape - but more intentionally to the surprises of the interior. Unprecedentedly, the scale increases because of tall Ionic half-columns along each side; at the back, the last two flank a free-standing column surmounted by the first known Corinthian capital. Whether or not such capitals were used previously in the Parthenon, they derive from Athenian use of akanthos decoration, notably on the akropolis.
This colonnade supported an equally unusual continuous frieze; facing the interior, this was undoubtedly even harder to see clearly than the Parthenon frieze. Its battles with centaurs and Amazons are a familiar subject never depicted with such melodramatic violence. Some stylistic elements, especially male torsos, reflect the Parthenon, but the execution must be local (a number of Arkadian sculptors are known by name); although there are examples of skillful work (notably in foreshortening), many female figures are pudgy, many poses are exaggerated or rigid, and the clinging drapery is often inept.
Three statues found in Rome were once attributed to the Bassai pediments before it was determined that these held no sculpture; they certainly belong to a pedimental group depicting the slaughter of Niobe’s children. The most surprising is a kneeling girl reaching for an arrow in her back and succeeding only in displacing so much of her garment that she becomes the first large-scale nude in Greek art (the Ludovisi
Figure 22.5 Temple of Apollo Epikourios at Bassai. © Bettmann/CORBIS
Throne with its famous flute girl is not comparable and may ultimately be proved a fake). Her anatomy is not very feminine and there are other oddities of proportions; viewing from below might have ameliorated some of these problems.
Two monuments sum up the confusion in Greece following the end of the Peloponnesian War. Spartan arrogance soon led many Greeks to ally themselves with Athens - not for war against Persia, as in 478, but for war against Sparta with Persian assistance. The Spartan leader Lysander died in a defeat by former allies in 395, after commemorating his decisive victory of 405 with an enormous group of bronze statues at Delphi; this vanished monument appears to have been innovative and influential.
Dexileos was among the Athenian cavalrymen honored by burial in a public monument after the battle of Korinth in 394/3, where Sparta defeated Athens and former allies. His family also set up a cenotaph with a large stele, which survives complete and among Attic stelai is unique in recording his birth-date (in the archon-ship of Teisandros, 414/13: IG2'2 6217; Dexileos was therefore too young to be tainted by the notorious support given the Thirty Tyrants by most Athenian cavalrymen); unusual in depicting a battle scene (Dexileos on a rearing horse about to spear a fallen enemy); and interesting for its stylistic links. The figures resemble and probably cite a now-fragmentary Athenian relief of the later fifth century, close to the Parthenon frieze, and the clinging drapery shares a number of features with the Bassai sculptures. Despite its very high relief, however, the treatment of space is much flatter than on those earlier bas-reliefs and the drapery folds are more mechanical. These peculiarities combine with emphatic diagonals to create a chilly dignity softened by the youthful face and not inappropriate to a hero’s tomb. A corresponding sober version of the Rich Style to commemorate a woman is Hegeso’s funerary stele dated 400, where transparent drapery reveals the body without denying the matron respectability.
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