Caricature and Other Comic Art in All Times and Many Lands. James Parton
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approved the course of his representative. He tells him, however, not to go out of his way to look for Christians; but if any were brought before him, why, of course he must inflict the penalty unless they proved their innocence by invoking the gods. The remains of Roman literature have nothing so interesting for us as these two letters of Pliny and Trajan of the year 103. We may rest assured that the walls of every Roman town bore testimony to the contempt and aversion in which the Christians were held, particularly by those who dealt in "victims" and served the altars—a very numerous and important class throughout the ancient world.
CHAPTER II.
AMONG THE GREEKS.
Greece was the native home of all that we now call art. Upon looking over the two hundred pages of art gossip in the writings of the elder Pliny, most of which relates to Greece, we are ready to ask, Is there one thing in painting or drawing, one school, device, style, or method, known to us which was not familiar to the Greeks? They had their Landseers—men great in dogs and all animals; they had artists renowned in the "Dutch style" ages before the Dutch ceased to be amphibious—artists who painted barber-shop interiors to a hair, and donkeys eating cabbages correct to a fibre; they had cattle pieces as famous throughout the classic world as Rosa Bonheur's "Horse Fair" is now in ours; they had Rosa Bonheurs of their own—famous women, a list of whose names Pliny gives; they had portrait-painters too good to be fashionable, and portrait-painters too fashionable to be good; they had artists who excelled in flesh, others great in form, others excellent in composition; they took plaster casts of dead faces; they had varnishers and picture-cleaners. Noted pictures were spoken of as having lost their charm through an unskillful cleaner. They had their "life school," and used it as artists now do, borrowing from each model her special beauty. Zeuxis, as Pliny records, was so scrupulously careful in the execution of a religious painting that "he had the young maidens of the place stripped for examination, and selected five of them, in order to adopt in his picture the most commendable points in the form of each." And we may be sure that every maiden of them felt it to be an honor thus to contribute perfection to a Juno, executed by the first artist of the world, which was to adorn the temple of her native city.
They played with art as men are apt to play with the implements of which they are masters. Sosus, the great artist in mosaics, executed at Pergamus the pavement of a banqueting-room which presented the appearance of a floor strewed with crumbs, fragments and scraps of a feast, not yet swept away. It was renowned as the "Unswept Hall of Pergamus." And what a pleasing story is that of the contest between Zeuxis and his rival, Parrhasius! On the day of trial Zeuxis hung in the place of exhibition a painting of grapes, and Parrhasius a picture of a curtain. Some birds flew to the grapes of Zeuxis, and began to pick at them. The artist, overjoyed at so striking a proof of his success, turned haughtily to his rival, and demanded that the curtain should be drawn aside and the picture revealed. But the curtain was the picture. He owned himself surpassed, since he had only deceived birds, but Parrhasius had deceived Zeuxis.
Burlesque of Jupiter's Wooing of the Princess Alcmena.
Could comic artists and caricaturists be wanting in Athens? Strange to say, it was the gods and goddesses whom the caricaturists of Greece as well as the comic writers chiefly selected for ridicule. All their works have perished except a few specimens preserved upon pottery. We show one from a Greek vase, a rude burlesque of one of Jupiter's love adventures, the father of gods and men being accompanied by a Mercury ludicrously unlike the light and agile messenger of the gods. The story goes that the Princess Alcmena, though betrothed to a lover, vowed her hand to the man who should avenge her slaughtered brothers. Jupiter assumed the form and face of the lover, and, pretending to have avenged her brothers' death, gained admittance. Pliny describes a celebrated burlesque painting of the birth of Bacchus from Jupiter's thigh, in which the god of the gods was represented wearing a woman's cap, in a highly ridiculous posture, crying out, and surrounded by goddesses in the character of midwives. The best specimen of Greek caricature that has come down to us burlesques no less serious a theme than the great oracle of Apollo at Delphos, given on page 30.
This remarkable work owes its preservation to the imperishable nature of the material on which it was executed. It was copied from a large vessel used by the Greeks and Romans for holding vinegar, a conspicuous object upon their tables, and therefore inviting ornament. What audacity to burlesque an oracle to which kings and conquerors humbly repaired for direction, and which all Greece held in awe! Crœsus propitiated this oracle by the gift of a solid golden lion as large as life, and the Phocians found in its coffers, and carried off, a sum equal to nearly eleven millions of dollars in gold. Such was the general belief in its divine inspiration! But in this picture we see the oracle, the god, and those who consult them, all exhibited in the broadest burlesque: Apollo as a quack doctor on his platform, with bag, bow, and cap; Chiron, old and blind, struggling up the steps to consult him, aided by Apollo at his head and a friend pushing behind; the nymphs surveying the scene from the heights of Parnassus; and the manager of the spectacle, who looks on from below. How strange is this!
But the Greek literature is also full of this wild license. Lucian depicts the gods in council ludicrously discussing the danger they were in from the philosophers. Jupiter says, "If men are once persuaded that there are no gods, or, if there are gods, that we take no care of human affairs, we shall have no more gifts or victims from them, but may sit and starve on Olympus without festivals, holidays, sacrifices, or any pomp or ceremonies whatever." The whole debate is in this manner, and is at the same time a burlesque of the political discussions at the Athenian mass-meetings. What can be more ludicrous than the story of Mercury visiting Athens in disguise in order to discover the estimation in which he was held among mortals? He enters the shop of a dealer in images, where he inquires the price first of a Jupiter, then of an Apollo, and, lastly, with a blush, of a Mercury. "Oh," says the dealer, "if you take the Jupiter and the Apollo, I will throw the Mercury in."
Greek Caricature of the Oracle of Apollo at Delphos.
Nor did the witty, rollicking Greeks confine their satire to the immortals. Of the famous mirth-provokers of the world, such as Cervantes, Ariosto, Molière, Rabelais, Sterne, Voltaire, Thackeray, Dickens, the one that had most power to produce mere physical laughter, power to shake the sides and cause people to roll helpless upon the floor, was the Greek dramatist Aristophanes. The force of the comic can no farther go than he has carried it in some of the scenes of his best comedies. Even to us, far removed as we are, in taste as well as in time, from that wonderful Athens of his, they are still irresistibly diverting. This master of mirth is never so effective as when he is turning into ridicule the philosophers and poets for whose sake Greece is still a dear, venerable name to all the civilized world. In his comedy of "The Frogs" he sends Bacchus down into Hades with every circumstance of riotous burlesque, and there he exhibits the two great tragic poets, Æschylus and Euripides, standing opposite each other, and competing for the tragic throne by reciting verses in which the mannerism of each, as well as familiar passages of their plays, is broadly burlesqued. Nothing in literature can be found more ludicrous or less becoming, unless we look for it in Aristophanes himself. In his play of "The Clouds" occurs his caricature of Socrates, of infinite absurdity, but not ludicrous to us, because we read it as part of the story of a sublime and affecting martyrdom. It fills our minds with wonder to think that a people among whom a Socrates could have been formed could have borne to see him thus profaned. A rogue of a father, plagued by an extravagant son, repairs to the school of Socrates to learn the arts by which creditors are argued out of their just claims in courts of justice. Upon reaching the place, the door of the "Thinking Shop" opens, and behold! a caricature all ready for the artist's pencil. The pupils are discovered with their heads fixed to the floor, their backs uppermost, and Socrates hanging from the ceiling in a basket. The visitor, transfixed with wonder, questions his companion. He asks why they present that portion of their bodies to heaven. "It is getting taught astronomy