THE HELIX OF HISTORY 33 



Straight line for sculpture, and the cycles clearly differ in 

 length, the early ones lasting only about five hundred years, 

 while the classical and medieval cycles last sixteen hundred 

 and fifty and fifteen hundred years, respectively. 



The long cycles can very probably be corrected by con- 

 sideration of the historical facts. The classical cycle in 

 Greece did not start in 1200 B.C.; at any rate, it did not 

 start at any level corresponding to that existing in Egypt in 

 1200 B.C. If we put the beginning of the Greek classical 

 cycle at 800 B.C., and its end at 200 B.C., with the defeat of 

 Macedon by Rome, we get a cycle of normal length, which 

 can be followed by a Roman cycle of six hundred and fifty 

 years, starting with the destruction of Carthage and ending 

 with the fall of Rome. The course of art in the Roman cycle 

 is naturally affected by the persistence of Greek architecture 

 and statuary. Similarly, we can accept a discontinuity be- 

 t^veen the Roman and the medieval cycles and give the latter 

 its beginning in a.d. 1000 and its end in a.d. 1700, a length of 

 seven hundred years. If we accept these modifications of 

 Petrie's later cycles, we get the chart shown in Figure 2. 



In an article in Antiquity, Collingwood discusses Petrie's 

 book and questions the value of his standards of artistic 

 achievement.* He points out that what Petrie calls decadent 

 another critic of art might consider beautiful. For example, 

 he holds that the Byzantine grave stele of Bellicia (Figure 3), 

 which Petrie classifies as occurring in the period of degrada- 

 tion between the classical and medieval periods, sho^vs vigor 

 of drawing and an "unearthly" beauty, and he considers that 

 it is unfair to compare its beauty ^vith that of a classical stele, 

 since it cannot be compared either as superior or inferior but 

 only different; that is, Collingwood claims that "beauty is 

 in the eye of the beholder," and that there are no fixed stand- 

 ards by which art at different times can be compared. He 

 says, in fact, that not only are there no dark ages except in 

 the sense in which every age is dark, and that there are ages 



* R. G. Collingwood, "The Theory of Historical Cycles and Prog- 

 ress," Antiquity, II, 435 (1927). 



