and beauty,” as the Greek traveler, Pausamas (about 165 A. D.), puts it.  It is fortunately one of the best preserved.  Fig. 74, a view taken from a considerable distance will give some idea of that quality which Pausanias justly admired.  Fronting the auditorium was the stage building, of which little but foundations remains anywhere.  So far as can be ascertained, this stage building had but small architectural pretensions until the post classical period (i.e., after Alexander) But there was opportunity for elegance as well as convenience in the form given to the stone or marble seats with which the auditorium was provided.

CHAPTER IV.

Greek sculpture.—­General considerations.

In the Mycenaean period, as we have seen, the art of sculpture had little existence, except for the making of small images and the decoration of small objects.  We have now to take up the story of the rise of this art to an independent and commanding position, of its perfection and its subsequent decline.  The beginner must not expect to find this story told with as much fulness and certainty as is possible in dealing with the art of the Renaissance or any more modern period.  The impossibility of equal fulness and certainty here will become apparent when we consider what our materials for constructing a history of Greek sculpture are.

First, we have a quantity of notices, more or less relevant, in ancient Greek and Roman authors, chiefly of the time of the Roman Empire.  These notices are of the most miscellaneous description.  They come from writers of the most unlike tastes and the most unequal degrees of trustworthiness.  They are generally very vague, leaving most that we want to know unsaid.  And they have such a haphazard character that, when taken all together, they do not begin to cover the field.  Nothing like all the works of the greater sculptors, let alone the lesser ones, are so much as mentioned by name in extant ancient literature.

Secondly, we have several hundreds of original inscriptions belonging to Greek works of sculpture and containing the names of the artists who made them.  It was a common practice, in the case especially of independent statues in the round, for the sculptor to attach his signature, generally to the pedestal.  Unfortunately, while great numbers of these inscribed pedestals have been preserved for us, it is very rarely that we have the statues which once belonged on them.  Moreover, the artists’ names which we meet on the pedestals are in a large proportion of cases names not even mentioned by our literary sources.  In fact, there is only one indisputable case where we possess both a statue and the pedestal belonging to it, the latter inscribed with the name of an artist known to us from literary tradition. (See pages 212-3.)