P. V. N. Myers, A General History for Colleges and High Schools…
“ GREEK ARCHITECTURE, SCULPTURE, AND PAINTING. The Greek Sense of Beauty.—The Greeks were artists by nature. "Ugliness gave them pain like a blow." Everything they made was beautiful. Beauty they placed next to holiness; indeed, they almost or quite made beauty and right the same thing. They are said to have thought it strange that Socrates was good, seeing he was so unprepossessing in appearance. PELASGIAN MASONRY. ”
P. V. N. Myers, A General History for Colleges and High Schools…
“ ATHENIAN YOUTH IN PROCESSION. (From the Frieze of the Parthenon.) the Periclean Age, Hellenic genius and piety adorned this spot with temples and statues that all the world has pronounced to be faultless specimens of beauty and taste. The most celebrated of the buildings upon the Acropolis was the Parthenon, the "Residence of the virgin-goddess Athena." This is considered the finest specimen of Greek architecture. It was designed by the architect Ictinus, but the sculptures that adorned it were the work of the celebrated Phidias. ”
P. V. N. Myers, A General History for Colleges and High Schools…
“ The exercises of the gymnasium and the contests of the sacred games afforded the artist unrivalled opportunities for the study of the human form. "The whole race," as Symonds says, "lived out its sculpture and its painting, rehearsed, as it were, the great works of Phidias and Polygnotus, in physical exercises, before it learned to express itself in marble or in color." As the sacred buildings increased in number and costliness, the services of the artist were called into requisition for their adornment. At first the temple held only the statue of the god ”
