Note 101.2 — Chapter IV · THE THIRD PERIOD, 500-338 B.C.

Nor had any of the poets presented Hera in forms so winning and gracious as those in which the best art of this age embodied her, as the Argive Goddess ‘of good works’ “in whose face and person brightness appeared by the side of majesty.”101.2 The poetic presentation of Apollo is blurred and incomplete compared with such plastic types as the Apollo of the Parthenon frieze and the Pheidian statue in the Museo delle Terme. The older poetic ideal of Aphrodite was shallow and trite compared to the Aphrodite of the Pheidian type, such as we see presented by the Laborde head in the Louvre; here is something of the majesty of the great cosmic goddess imagined by Æschylus in his Danaides, but combined with an emotion of human love in the countenance and a winning appeal that the verses of the great poet do not clearly convey. And we may surmise that the ‘Ourania’ Aphrodite of Pheidias had some influence on the theory of Plato and his distinction between the heavenly and the sensual love. The full imagination of the personality of Kore would combine the radiance and the grace of the young cornfield with the awe and mystery of the lower world; the former is masterfully presented by a coin101.3 of Lampsakos that shows her rising from among the cornstalks with uplifted yearning face; the unknown artist of the great Syracusan medallion struck towards the close of the fifth century combines this aspect of her, in a type of surpassing loveliness, with a touch of melancholy that hints at the character of the Goddess of death.102.1