s eaten the shoulder of flesh. With
that you have Broteas, the brother of Pelops, carving the first statue
of the mother of the gods; and you have his sister, Niobe, weeping
herself to stone under the anger of the deities of light. Then Pelops
himself, the dark-faced, gives name to the Peloponnesus, which you may
therefore read as the "isle of darkness;" but its central city, Sparta,
the "sown city," is connected with all the ideas of the earth as
life-giving. And from her you have Helen, the representative of light in
beauty, and the Fratres Helenae--"lucida sidera;" and, on the other side
of the hills, the brightness of Argos, with its correlative darkness
over the Atreidae, marked to you by Helios turning away his face from the
feast of Thyestes.

152. Then join with these the Northern legends connected with the air.
It does not matter whether you take Dorus as the son of Apollo or the
son of Helen; he equally symbolises the power of light: while his
brother, AEolus, through all his descendants, chiefly in Sisyphus, is
confused or associated with the real god of the winds, and represents to
you the power of the air. And then, as this conception enters into art,
you have the myths of Daedalus, the flight of Icarus, and the story of
Phrixus and Helle, giving you continual associations of the physical air
and light, ending in the power of Athena over Corinth as well as over
Athens.

Now, once having the clue, you can work out the sequels for yourselves
better than I can for you; and you will soon find even the earliest or
slightest grotesques of Greek art become full of interest. For nothing
is more wonderful than the depth of meaning which nations in their first
days of thought, like children, can attach to the rudest symbols; and
what to us is grotesque or ugly, like a little child's doll, can speak
to them the loveliest things. I have brought you to-day a few more
examples of early Greek vase painting, respecting which remember
generally that its finest development is for the most part sepulchral.
You have, in the first period, always energy in the figures, light in
the sky or upon the figures;[13] in the second period, while the
conception of the divine power remains the same, it is thought of as in
repose, and the light is in the god, not in the sky; in the time of
decline, the divine power is gradually disbelieved, and all form and
light are lost together. With that period I wish you to have nothing to
do. You