Rise of Religious Art.--The seventh century B.C. was a period of rapid development and of great prosperity in Greece. It was the age of colonisation; manufacture and trade were active, and though the Phenicians were not now in the Egean, Greeks sailed to the East and brought home with them many ideas. It was a time like the sixteenth century in Europe, when the world of geography was quickly opening out, and views and sentiments were also widening. Worship could not fail to share in the upward movement of such a period, and it is here that we find the appearance of the ideas in religious art which have made Greece the envy of the world. Architecture received a new impulse from Egypt and Babylon; dwellings were built, not for human rulers, as in the Mycenæan period, but for the gods. In country districts or small towns the wooden shed might still suffice to shelter the rude image, but in large towns, where the higher conception of the gods and the artistic impulse were both present in many minds, temples of more durable material were built. This came to be a universal practice; among the first tasks of a new colony was always that of erecting on a commanding site in the rising town, splendid temples to the gods of the mother city. The Greek temple is not a place to accommodate a large body of worshippers, but a dwelling for the god. It is of oblong shape, and is placed on a raised platform which is ascended by steps. It is generally surrounded by pillars, is roofed, and has a low gable at each end. The most important chamber in it is that containing the image of the god. From his dim chamber the god looks out to the east through the doorway facing him, which opens on the pillared portico in front. Here the worshipper stands when praying, his face turned westward to the god. As it was essential that the smoke of the sacrifice should ascend freely to heaven, the god's real dwelling, the altar stood outside. In some cases the roof was partly open, and the altar could stand under the sky in the _cella_ of the god.
In the building and adornment of the temples Greek art found its highest exercise. The architecture of those specimens which can still be seen or described is of a dignity and beauty never before attained; the beings must have been lofty and reverend indeed for whom such dwellings were formed. The gable spaces and the flat surfaces between the tops of the pillars and the roof gave opportunity for sculpture; and the archæologist traces on these metopes (spaces between the beam-ends under the roof) and friezes, the progress of Greek sculpture from a rude stage to that in which the sculptor has gained complete mastery over his material, and can give an imposing representation of a myth, or place on the marble a complete religious procession of brave men and fair women. The images of the gods to be placed in the temples called forth the artist's highest skill; even when the rude old god was retained, a fine work of art could also find place. It is the ideal gods of poetry that are coming to be worshipped; the conception of the poet is expressed in marble. Sculpture, however, came to its highest point in Greece somewhat later than architecture. And offerings were made to the temples of just such rare and costly things as men loved then and love still to store up in their houses,--bowls and cups wrought curiously in precious metals, statues and tapestries and all kinds of treasure.