does not represent any deep religious feeling; one feels that
the artist found the subject a convenient one as an artistic motive,
rather than that he had any deep religious idea to express.

We must not, however, go too far in denying religious ideals to the
fourth century altogether. Some of the gods, who came very near to the
life of man, but who were nevertheless worshipped with a real belief in
their power and benevolence, found at this time their fullest expression
in art. An example may be seen in the Demeter of Cnidus, the mother
sorrowing for her daughter, whose suffering brings her into close
sympathy with human weakness, and whose mysteries, perhaps more than any
other Hellenic service, brought men and women into personal communion
with the gods. We may take as another instance the head of Asclepius
from Melos in the British Museum. Here, as Brunn has pointed out in his
admirable analysis of its forms, we may recognise not so much the god as
the half-human, half-divine physician, a genial and friendly spirit who
persuades rather than commands. The expression is not only intellectual,
but has also an infinite gentleness, as of one not himself unacquainted
with mortal pain and sorrow; and such a conception, as we know from
Christian art, often appeals to those who find the majesty of Zeus too
distant, the idea of his godhead too abstract. In such almost human
ideals the individuality of the fourth century finds its full scope, as
in other half-human creations of the artist's imagination. Apollo as the
inspired musician or--if we accept the derivation of the Apollo
Belvedere from a fourth-century original--as the disdainful archer,
Hermes, the protector and playmate of his little brother Dionysus, and
many other such representations of the gods in their personal moods and
characteristic actions, seem in many ways less divine, less full of
religious feeling than such an Asclepius; if the great gods are brought
too near to human passions and weaknesses, they cannot but lose much of
their divinity.

One might easily multiply examples of similar motives in the statues of
the gods made in the fourth century; but we should find the same
underlying principles in all cases. The gods are indeed more clearly
realised as having personal character and individuality, and for this
reason they may sometimes inspire keener personal feelings of worship or
even of romantic devotion. But the older and higher conceptions of the
g