Though a great deal was produced in the period of the Diadochi, and, in the line of portraiture, much that was good, still there must have been truth in the saying of Pliny that “after the 121st Olympiad (290 B.C.) art ceased, and revived again only in the 156th (150 B.C.).” It ceased, namely, in so far as it was made subservient to courts and decoration; but upon the soil of Greece itself, and among the people, it grew, and strove after higher aims. The production continued, but its artisan-like elaboration did not make good the lost artistic originality. Men of vigorous talent followed in the paths of Praxiteles and Lysippos, producing works which are the ornaments of our antique collections; but the character of reproductions, clinging to their creations, robs them of the name of artist in the full sense of the word. The scanty notices of Pliny are, in general, correct; but he omits to mention some exceptions which represent a further development of sculpture, not quite unimportant, though questionable in principle.
[Illustration: Antiochos I. of Syria. 281 to 262.
[Illustration: Fig. 236.--The So-called Dying Gladiator. School of Pergamon.]
In two places, at the royal court of Pergamon and in the republic of Rhodes, productive art rose again to a certain independence and originality. Pliny himself, in another place, says that “several artists illustrated the battles of Attalos and Eumenes against the Gauls; namely, Isigonos, Phycomachos, Stratonicos, and Antigonos.” The great victory over these barbarians was fought in 229 B.C. by Attalos, with which Eumenes, by a misunderstanding easily to be explained, appears to have been connected. Attalos erected in his capital a grand monument to his victory, and, not contenting himself with this, consecrated another upon the Acropolis at Athens, perhaps in part a copy of that in Pergamon. Remnants of both monuments still exist which give a comparatively good knowledge of the artistic peculiarities of this school. The investigations upon this site, now approaching completion, have unearthed hundreds of fragments in high-relief, part of a gigantomachia originally forming the decoration of an altar. The altar was surrounded by Ionic colonnades, the high stereobate of which was ornamented with sculptures in high-relief, the whole being elevated upon a gigantic terrace, 38 m. long, and 34 m. broad. The frieze, representing the gigantomachia, stands midway between the works of Lysippos and the Laocoon, and forms the most extensive and important monument of sculpture remaining from the time of the Diadochi; it is in many respects a parallel to that of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassos which represents the decorative work of the school of Scopas and Praxiteles. These works have now found their way to Berlin, but a critical account of them will be possible only when they shall have been made generally accessible by an official publication. The statue of the so-called Dying Gladiator of the Capitol belonged to the group in Pergamon already known (_Fig._ 236); as did the two figures in the Villa Ludovisi, representing a Gaul who, to escape the shame of slavery, has stabbed his wife, who sinks beside him, and is about to thrust the sword into his own neck. In the so-called Dying Gladiator, the rough hair growing low upon the neck, the strongly marked indentation between the brow and the projecting Northern nose, the beard shorn to the upper lip, the heavy cheek-bones, the fleshy and somewhat clumsily formed body, the hard and calloused skin upon the hands and feet, the twisted neckband, and the curved battle-horn have long since shown the meaning of this statue. In the group in the Ludovisi Villa, the same marble, a like and peculiar treatment of the forms, with the same type of head, leave no doubt that this also belonged to a large group representing a victory over the Gauls. From its style, it cannot be considered as a Roman monument, particularly as some notices of the Athenian Votive Offering of Attalos clearly identify it.