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Zaproburno Yollanica Directory 14
Page 05
Once more I must caution the reader against expecting to find highly-finished gems of art in the chapels I have been describing. A wooden figure not more than two feet high clogged with many coats of paint can hardly claim to be taken very seriously, and even those few that were cut by Tabachetti himself were not meant to have attention concentrated on themselves alone. As mere wood-carving the Saas-Fee chapels will not stand comparison, for example, with the triptych of unknown authorship in the Church of St. Anne at Gliss, close to Brieg. But, in the first place, the work at Gliss is worthy of Holbein himself: I know no wood-carving that can so rivet the attention; moreover it is coloured with water-colour and not oil, so that it is tinted, not painted; and, in the second place, the Gliss triptych belongs to a date (1519) when artists held neither time nor impressionism as objects, and hence, though greatly better than the Saas-Fee chapels as regards a certain Japanese curiousness of finish and naivete of literal transcription, it cannot even enter the lists with the Saas work as regards elan and dramatic effectiveness. The difference between the two classes of work is much that between, say, John Van Eyck or Memling and Rubens or Rembrandt, or, again, between Giovanni Bellini and Tintoretto; the aims of the one class of work are incompatible with those of the other. Moreover, in the Gliss triptych the intention of the designer is carried out (whether by himself or no) with admirable skill; whereas at Saas the wisdom of the workman is rather of OberAmmergau than of the Egyptians, and the voice of the poet is not a little drowned in that of his mouthpiece. If, however, the reader will bear in mind these somewhat obvious considerations, and will also remember the pathetic circumstances under which the chapels were designed--for Tabachetti when he reached Saas was no doubt shattered in body and mind by his four years' imprisonment--he will probably be not less attracted to them than I observed were many of the visitors both at Saas-Grund and Saas-Fee with whom I had the pleasure of examining them.
The Romans now declared war against Antiochus, and in the following year (B.C. 191) the Consul Acilius Glabrio marched into Thessaly. The king had intrenched himself in the passes of Thermopylae, that he might prevent the Romans from penetrating into Central Greece. But there was, as is well known, a difficult passage across Mount Oeta, by which the Persians had descended to fight with Leonidas. This passage was now forced by M. Cato, who was serving as one of the Consul's lieutenants, and as soon as he appeared in the rear of the Syrian army they fled in confusion, and the battle was won. Antiochus now hastened back to Asia, abandoning all farther hopes of conquest in Greece. As soon as he had placed the sea between himself and the Romans he thought that he was safe; but Hannibal warned him of his error, and said that he wondered that the Romans had not already followed him.
MACEDONIA was still a powerful kingdom, governed at this time by Philip V., a monarch of considerable ability, who ascended the throne in B.C. 220, at the early age of seventeen. His dominion extended over the greater part of Greece; but two new powers had sprung up since the death of Alexander, which served as some counterpoise to the Macedonian supremacy. Of these the most important was the ACHAEAN LEAGUE, which embraced Corinth, Arcadia, and the greater part of the Peloponnesus.[36] The AETOLIAN LEAGUE included at this time a considerable portion of Central Greece. ATHENS and SPARTA still retained their independence, but with scarcely a shadow of their former greatness and power.
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