It is the same tendency which we see in the lyric poetry of the Greeks, with its intensely personal note.

The reflexion of this tendency in art is not, indeed, to be seen until the fourth century; not only the power of expression, but the desire to express such a side of the character of the gods seems to be absent until this period.
It may seem curious at first sight that art was so slow in this case to follow the lead given it by poetry; but it is to be remembered that a power of expression such as would have enabled it to do so was not attained until the fifth century, and that in this age there was an exaltation of national and religious enthusiasm, owing mainly to the victories over the Persians, which checked the tendency to sentiment and pathos; and it was not until this vigorous reaction had died away that the tendency once more asserted itself.

The early fifth century was also marked by poets such as Pindar and AEschylus, who raised the religious ideals of the nation on to a higher plane, who consciously rejected the less worthy conceptions of the gods, and, whether in accordance with the popular beliefs or not, gave expression to a higher truth in religion than had hitherto been dreamed of.

The gods whom the sculptors of the fifth century were called upon to represent may have been the gods of Homer, but they were the Homeric gods transformed by the creative imagination of a more reflective age, and purified by a poetic, if not a philosophic, idealism.

But while AEschylus suggests "a deeply brooding mind, tinged with mysticism, grappling with dark problems of life and fate,"[2] and so was, in some ways, remote from the clarity and definition of sculptural form, Sophocles "invests the conceptions of popular religion with a higher spiritual and intellectual meaning; and the artistic side of the age is expressed by him in poetry, much as in architecture and sculpture it is interpreted by the remains of the Parthenon; there is the same serenity and wholeness of work; power joined to purity of taste; self-restraint; and a sure instinct of symmetry."[3] Sophocles was a friend and companion of Pericles, and therefore probably of Phidias; and in both alike we see the same harmony and absence of exaggeration that are characteristic of Greek art at its best.