tues; and the individuality of the model, however
beautiful, would thus tend to assert itself against the type. Thus
personality and individual character, "the ultimate condition of
beauty," to use Mr. Ruskin's words, in modern as in Tuscan art, comes
much nearer to expression in the fourth century than in the fifth. But a
study of such a statue as the Cnidian Aphrodite shows us nevertheless
that in the beauty of the type and the avoidance of the accidental, the
art of Praxiteles was as far removed from realism as it was from the
vague generalisation of Graeco-Roman and modern pseudo-classical art. It
is full of life and individuality, but it is the individuality of a
character realised within his mind by the artist, not merely copied from
the human model he set before him.

Another method by which the motive becomes prominent in the art of the
fourth century is to be seen in the interpretation of mythological
conceptions. These are realised and embodied in statues; but the statues
offer a new, sometimes, it seems, almost an accidental and trifling
version of a solemn religious conception; it appears as if the artist
were playing with a mythological subject. Thus in the statue made by
Praxiteles of Apollo Sauroktonos, "the lizard-slayer," the god stands
with an arrow in his hand, as if trying to catch with it a lizard who
runs up a tree; it suggests a boyish game rather than the epithet of a
god. Again, the worship of Artemis Brauronia at Athens was one of the
oldest and most sacred cults in the city, and women at marriage and at
other critical times of their life used to offer her their garments,
thereby bringing themselves into close contact with the goddess and
claiming her special protection, the garments being actually placed on
the old image. If, as is probable, the Artemis of Gabii is a copy of the
statue substituted by Praxiteles for this old image, we see there the
goddess, as a graceful girlish figure, fastening a cloak upon her
shoulder. This may be taken as symbolical of the earlier custom of
placing the garments on the statue; but we have evidence that the
worshippers were not content with such a symbolic contact, but had the
actual garments placed on the new statue as they had been on the old.
Here we have probably a case of unsuccessful substitution; the artistic
representation did not suffice to replace the actual rite. But the
representation itself is doubtless intended in a way which, however
graceful,