Inscriptions (No. 1833) affords what is almost certainly a copy of the Euripides belonging to the famous trio of bronze statues which the orator and statesman Lycurgus put up to the three great Attic tragedians about 330 B.C. in the theatre of Dionysus at Athens (plate 2). This example, which is only inferior to the better-known replica at Ny Carlsberg in lacking the line of the lost tragedy of Alexander by which it was originally identified, shows Euripides as a sinister misanthrope in studied contrast to the Sophocles of the same group, which has long since been recognised in the well-known statue in the Lateran. The Lycurgan Sophocles, amiable and good-looking, well-groomed and slightly corpulent, is pre-eminently the successful man of the world, whose honourable career as poet gives him distinguished rank among his fellow-citizens; and the pungent saying of Mr Gilbert Murray that Sophocles 'is classical in the vulgar sense of the word' might be more justly applied to this his most celebrated statue than to his poetry.

Two other two portraits of Sophocles, which far surpass in interest the official statue of the Lateran, are in the British Museum. The first (No. 1831), which shows him as an old man with helpless gaze, and tired and flaccid lips,' is probably derived from the statue erected soon after his death in the year 406, by his son, the tragedian Iophon. Closely akin to this is the fine bronze, brought from Constantinople in the 17th century by the second Earl of Arundel, in which we may, I think, safely surmise another version of the aged poet's features (Bronze Room, No. 847). Both works are careful studies of old age, and show the many-sided effort of fourth-century portraiture. The collection also boasts two replicas of the head of a seated poet, one with ivy wreath (No. 1830), the other with a fillet (No. 1851), a complete copy of which passed of recent years from the Villa Borghese to Ny Carlsberg. As so often happens, the head seen apart from the figure loses much individuality, the poetic temperament being suggested mainly by the attitude of the body, as of one listening to his own melodies. But incomparably the finest poethead in the Museum is the Hellenistic Homer (No. 1825), who, with quenched and sunken eyes, lifts his head as if

rapt in an inner vision'—a work of majestic strength and depth, where the spiritual nature of the poet is powerfully suggested by the sightless eyes that piercingly look into the invisible world.

Of statues of orators-where gesture as a means of expression naturally found its fullest scope-the Museum possesses no complete example. The head of Demosthenes (No. 1840) from the copy of the statue attributed to Polyeuctos serves, however, to recall what must have been one of the grandest of fourth-century works, known to us from the excellent replica in the Braccio Nuovo of the Vatican. It is only recently that the full beauty of the original rhythm has been revived by the discovery that the hands, instead of grasping the commonplace roll invented by the restorer, were nervously clasped in front of the body. A study of this marvellously individual gesture should alone serve finally to dispel the obsolete doctrine as to the 'ideal' quality of Greek portraiture and its exclusion of realistic elements. For idealism, far from being incompatible with realism, springs from it and perfects it, being simply the idea which-as in the Demosthenes-transforms the observation of unstable fact into immutable reality.

In the fourth century even the portraiture of women began to be affected by the new tendencies and to take upon itself a more individual colouring. A fine example is the naturalistic head of an old woman in the Hall of Inscriptions (No. 2001), which is perhaps a copy after the Priestess Lysimache of the sculptor Demetrius of Alopece, a famous realist of his day who, according to Lucian, had represented Pellichos, the Corinthian general, 'with fat paunch, bald head, ragged wind-tossed beard like the very man himself.' Modern critics incline to see in him the master who created the originals not only of the Lysimache, but of the pathetic head of Euripides at Naples that offers so vivid a contrast to the effigy of the same poet from the Lycurgan group.

The statue (No. 1301) from the sanctuary of Demeter at Cnidus dedicated by one Nicocleia, and generally supposed to be this lady herself, shows a further advance in the portrayal of women. The wan and faded face betrays in its uplifted look a depth of spiritual experience that explains why Sir Charles Newton, in first describing

the statue, doubted whether it represented a priestess or a Demeter sorrowing.' That the Nicocleia, which gained so much by being seen, as in the days of Newton, in the recess facing the Demeter, should have been separated from the object of her devotion and placed in the Hall of Inscriptions, is a violation of every sound principle of exhibition, which we trust may soon be made good. In his 'Greek Studies' Pater has analysed the peculiar beauty of the figure and dwelt on the 'unrivalled pathos of the expression.' Quite as interesting, from another point of view, is the marked individualisation of all the details. The cruel advance of middle age is apparent in the thickening body and in the pose which has lost all elasticity; the creases left by the folding of the woollen drapery are rendered with Pergamene fidelity.

With the rise of the Græco-Asiatic monarchies from about the middle of the fourth century, a demand for royal portraits was created which was further to extend the scope of the art, since not the monarch alone, but all that belonged to him-his wife, his children, and his courtiers-became subjects for portrayal. In the statue of Mausolus the British Museum possesses what is probably the greatest portrait of a ruler left us by fourth-century Greek art, and one of peculiar significance in that it is altogether pre-Alexandrine. It is an original from the hand of a great master, possibly Leochares, one of the four sculptors of almost equal fame employed on the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus, to whose work it bears a striking resemblance. The statue reveals itself as a faithful study of the Carian ruler, with his non-Hellenic face and beard, his flowing mass of hair combed back from the forehead, his full habit of body and the dreamy melancholy of the Oriental. The hot suffering Eastern life' which suffuses the atmosphere of the Sick King in Bokhara,' has cast its spell upon this monarch also. As Mausolus was in life, so he stood in death, in the inner shrine of the Heroon by the side of his consort-sister Artemisia, whose statue, though the face is mutilated, forms a noble pendant to his own.

Round this great central figure of Mausolus was once grouped a whole portrait gallery-the princes and princesses of his house, his bodyguard, and possibly

members of the allied families. Of all this splendour only a few fragments survive—the grandiose torso of a horse and its rider (No. 1045); a few draped figures now headless; a few heads now detached from their bodies. In one head of distinctly Alexandroid character (No. 1054), a modern critic inclines to recognise a portrait of Philip of Macedon, whose house was connected with the family of Hecatomnus through a series of intermarriages and political intrigues. Besides Mausolus and Artemisia, portraits of two other children of Hecatomnus-Idrieus and his sister-consort Ada-may now be seen in the Museum, They are carved on the interesting relief from Tegea, almost the last of the Museum's pre-war purchases, where they flank the image of the Carian Zeus of Labranda, much as, centuries later, Imperial consorts appear on Byzantine ivories beside the glorified Christ.

Statues of the type of the Mausolus exerted upon Hellenistic portraiture an influence which has been too much disregarded, and explain, moreover, the Eastern strain in much of the portraiture of Alexander. Even the youthful radiancy of the head from Alexandria (No. 1857) seems tempered by a touch of Oriental sensuousness. Though not generally recognised as a faithful likeness of the king, this head comes, according to Mr G. F. Hill, nearer than any other to the idealistic head on the coins of Lysimachus, which must always be the basis of any identification of Alexander portraits.' It is an impressive version of the half-barbaric face, with its hair falling in leonine locks on either side, its heavy brows, parted lips, and proud turn of the neck, later imitated with varying success by the Roman Emperors— by Nero, for instance, as by Caracalla and by Gallienus.

The Museum is sadly deficient in portraits of Alexander's successors. Quite recently an impressive Hellenistic portrait, the Queen Amastris' from the Ponsonby collection, has been allowed to migrate to America. As it is, three monuments only afford some conception of this celebrated branch of portrait art. The first, now exhibited in the Ephesus Room, is the fine head from the temple of Apollo at Cyrene (No. 1383), which is distinctly marked as that of an Hellenistic ruler by the diadem that confines the clustering curls. The second is the magnificent third-century relief of a king-possibly

Hieron II of Syracuse and his consort-which remains over a door of the Phigaleian room. The third is the portrait of Cleopatra (No. 1873), which till recently was in the Hall of Inscriptions and has now been placed among the Roman busts in amusing juxtaposition to a spurious Mark Antony (No. 1961). The marked Semitic features exactly tally with the images of the Queen on her coins. The captivating expression is made up of intellectuality and sensuousness, while the indubitable air of high breeding marks the advent of the 'great lady' on the stage of art. The Cleopatra' heralds the attractive female portraiture of the Roman Empire. The haughty mien of the aged Livia, the coquetry of the Julio-Claudian ladies with their crimped and puffed-out bandeaux, the provocative elegance of the Flavian mondaines, the aristocratic severity of the ladies of Trajan's court, and the accomplished femininity of those of the Antonine dynasty, were all to be interpreted by artists belonging to schools deriving from that of the court sculptors of Alexandria. Nor is it surprising to find these traditions alive in the Roman Africa of the

second century A.D. An apt illustration from the Museum collection is afforded by the bust of a young and lovely girl found at Cyrene (No. 1414); the dainty freshness of the face, with its pure mouth and rounded chin, and the fashion in which the hair is drawn back from the brow, suggest Nattier or Gainsborough rather than any ancient parallel (see plates 3, 4).

To make up for the dearth of portraits of Hellenistic rulers the Museum possesses a representative collection of sepulchral and votive portraits of the post-Alexandrian period. Among these the beautiful stele with the three figures of a mother and her sons from Tremithus near Golgoi in Cyprus may be as late as the Augustan age. This Cypriote School, with its grand Græco-Oriental seriousness, had many ramifications, one of which, the Palyrene, represented in the Museum by a characteristic series of priests and priestesses, lasted down to the third century A.D. The whole of the ancient civilised world, Egypt, Syria, Etruria, and finally Rome, was now drawn into the Hellenistic orbit.

The new artistic sympathies are evident in the interest now taken in the non-European races-in Egyptians and