A simplistic view of this would be: the Peloponnesian War drastically affected Greek society. Prior to the War, Greek society—as represented by Athens—was supremely optimistic in the aftermath of the Greece’s victory over Persia, the world’s superpower, in the Persian Wars. Athens, in particular, maintained a firm belief in her own rightness and faith in Humanistic ideals, and created a society that was supremely optimistic about Greek culture with a firm belief that the Greek way was the best way. It celebrated civic pride with a willingness to make personal sacrifices for the common good. These ideals were expressed in the beautifully-idealized figure sculptures that symbolized the perfection of Mankind:
But Athens sowed the seeds of her own destruction through her hubris (and her mis-use of the funds of the Delian League). The Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC) was a disastrous conflict that lasted for some 30 years in which Sparta and her allies determined to cut Athens down to size and prevent her from forming an Athenian Empire. Athens had her own allies, of course, and the war surged back and forth across the land with first one alliance then the other on top in a complicated dance of self-destruction.
By the time the conflict wore down to a demoralizing end with Athens being brought abjectly to her knees, all the city-states were drained emotionally, morally, and economically. As a consequence, there was an accompanying loss of faith in the Humanistic ideals that had seemed to promise such a bright future for the Greeks following the Persian Wars because they had failed to create the ideal society that had been expected. The values that had made Greece extraordinary began to change in the late 4th century. With the loss of faith in Humanist ideals; there was a decline in optimism, a growing pessimism with an accompanying emphasis upon self, the desire for personal comfort, materialism, pleasure, and emotion in place of reason and civic virtue. In other words, since sacrificing to achieve a better, more perfect society didn’t work, just take as much as you can while you can. (The ‘one with the most toys wins’-type of attitude.) (Sound familiar? I would argue that we Americans are in the same cycle today—basically ever since the Viet Nam War era….).
It is interesting to note the subtle change that also occurred in figure sculpture that accompanied this new mind-set; instead of beautiful figures that represented the way we should be, they became beautiful figures that represented the way we are. In other words, ‘Humanistic’ art was replaced by ‘Humanizing’ art:
As a result Realism gradually began to replace Idealism, Emotion replaced Reason: there developed a growing interest in emotional portrayals of character, age, and mood. Interestingly, a subject that had been forbidden before during the Golden Age’ now began to appear: an interest in female anatomy. In previous generations, female figure sculpture was always fully clothed like this:
Now nude female sculptures became all the rage. Here’s a Roman copy of the very first one, by Praxiteles (the Aphrodite of Melos):
Politically, as a consequence of these changes in mindset and the exhaustion and militarily-weakened condition of the city-states (even for the victorious Sparta), Greece lay ripe for picking by Philip II of Macedonia and his son Alexander the Great who scooped them up to become a no-longer-independent part of his growing Empire forming the beginning of the Hellenistic Era.
