theme or pressure in the complex configuration. He watches 
the reduction of the resonant poetic modes to the simple visual 
lines of prose, and cites the Parthenon sculptures as “the most 
perfect art-prose work of the Greeks.” These representational 
forms of sculpture he notes (p. 66) as prose because of their 
“descriptive realism”:

     The fact, however, remains that prose literature and art-
     prose began to appear among the Greeks at about the 
     same time, and that before the fifth century was out 
     each had produced its masterpiece; the history of 
     Thucydides, and the sculptures of the Parthenon.

     What cause or causes led to the adoption of descriptive 
realism in art to the near exclusion of poetic formalism? It is of 
no use to talk of development or growth, for the Parthenon no