The Kore of Nikandre

At first sight this seems an unremarkable statue.  If it offers another example of the Daedalic style, it can hardly compare on that score to the Lady of Auxerre, if only because of its badly worn condition.  In fact it is a significant piece, marking the passage, at least in the extant record, to a new material and a new scale.  At 5’9” it is life-size or over-life-size, and it is made of marble.  Thus it stands at the beginning of the great tradition of monumental marble sculpture in Greece.  In fact it is the earliest large-scale statue to have survived in any type of stone.  There is no telling whether it is earlier or later than the Lady of Auxerre.  The date is usually put at 650-625 BC. 

The statue was discovered in 1878 in the sanctuary of Artemis on the island of Delos, the island sacred to Artemis and her brother Apollo (it was, after all, their birthplace).  The findspot alone suggests that the statue was a dedication to Artemis.  But running along its left side is an inscription--one of the earliest in stone.  The words are written boustrophedon, i.e., from right to left and from left to right in alternating lines:

“Nikandre, the excellent daughter of Deinodikos of Naxos, sister of Deinomenes, now wife of Phraxos, dedicated me to the far-shooter, the pourer of arrows.”

The inscription confirms that the statue is a dedication to Artemis--the goddess is easily identified by the two archery-epithets.  And we learn a fair bit about Nikandre.  She defines herself by three men in her life: her father, brother, and husband.  But to whom does the pronoun “me” refer?  There are three possibilities:

• Nikandre.  The statue is a likeness of its dedicator, left in the sanctuary as a worshipper in permanent attendance on the goddess.
• Artemis.  The statue represents the recipient of the dedication, the goddess in whose sanctuary the offering is made.
• Agalma.  The statue is merely an intermediary, a vehicle of the dedicator’s devotion to the goddess, perhaps a priestess. At all events, a “pleasing gift” (agalma).

This is a puzzle that cannot be solved.  There is a clue, but it leads nowhere: holes in the statue’s hands.  The holes were drilled there to hold accessories now lost.  What accessories?  Hypotheses abound.  If flowers or some other offering, then Nikandre.  If a bow and arrows or a leash for lions, then Artemis as archer-huntress or as Potnia Theron (Mistress of Animals: she is often depicted with a lion or other animal to either side).  But these are just guesses.  As for Nikandre herself, John Boardman (34) and Nigel Spivey (64) have suggested that she was a priestess at the sanctuary.  And “the last line of the inscription suggests that the statue was dedicated on the occasion of her wedding and release from service” (Hurwit 186).  Did the priestess leave the statue to mark the end of her service to the goddess?

The Kore of Nikandre follows the basic Daedalic pattern. The face is an inverted triangle. Little more can be said about it because it has been so battered, although it seems that its facial features were not so heavy as those of the Auxerre Kore. The hair falls in four segmented locks on either side, forming a larger triangular frame for the face. The arms are held stiffly at the sides. The kore wears a long robe divided by a belt. What appears to be a cape for the shoulders is material folded back (cf. the previous post on the Lady of Auxerre). The incised guidelines for the paint are worn off, as are all traces of the original colors. So we have to imagine how statue was decorated. The flesh was perhaps left in the color of the polished marble (whereas in limestone red was used for male flesh, white for female flesh). But the garment, the hair, and the details of the face were all picked out in color.

The form is severely frontal, not meant to be viewed from the side or from the back. The block is shallow, never more than about seven inches thick (see the image at the top of this post). Even when viewed from the front, the form retains the rectilinearity of the block from which it is carved. Hurwit thinks that the form recalls a centuries-long indigenous tradition of large-scale statues carved from wooden beams. The kore is plank-like because it renders in stone the form of the xoanon or bretas or kolossos: ancient wooden images “only barely human in form” (188). On the other hand, Boardman sees in the kore “a small terracotta writ large”: the technique borrowed from the East to make the Daedalic terracottas, whereby clay was pressed into the mold for the front only, was at first simply transposed to the new medium of marble (34).

The choice of material is nothing less than momentous.  For marble had not been used to make a statue in Greece for well over a millennium.  It was not that there was no marble to be had.  Nikandre hailed from Naxos, and Naxian marble was the best there was.  Naxos also yielded emery, the abrasive used to polish marble.  So why the long hiatus in marble sculpture?  For one thing, marble was very hard to carve, unlike, say, limestone.  Working marble was something of a lost art, requiring special tools and techniques.  So what induced the turn from soft to hard stone in the middle of the seventh century BC?  That is a great question.

For some, the answer is Egypt.  Andrew Stewart writes: “Archaic marble sculpture owed its inception to the Greeks’ rediscovery of Egypt” (108).  Likewise John Pedley: “Greek sculptors turned to a new material--marble--and a new scale.  As with architecture, the impetus for change came from Egypt” (148).  Greeks visiting that ancient land saw what could be done with hard stone (granite, basalt, porphyry, marble)--on a grand scale.  They resolved to give it a go themselves.  And they came back with more than just inspiration and carving know-how.  They also adopted the Egyptian canon or grid system, whereby grids were drawn on the blocks before carving to ensure uniformity in the representation of the human form.  An analysis of the proportions of the Kore of Nikandre shows a high degree of correlation (89%) with the Egyptian canon as revised in the Twenty-Fifth Dynasty.  A coincidence?  Probably not.  Still, the Egyptian hypothesis has had its detractors: see the article by R. M. Cook).  We will return to this question when we come to look at the rise of the kouros.

• Boardman, John, ed.  The Oxford History of Classical Art.  1993.

• Hurwit, Jeffrey M.  The Art and Culture of Early Greece, 1100-480 BC.  1985.

• Pedley, John Griffiths.  Greek Art and Archaeology.  3^rd ed.  2002.

• Robertson, Martin.  A History of Greek Art.  2 Vols.  1975.

• Spivey, Nigel.  Greek Sculpture.  2013.

• Stansbury-O’Donnell, Mark D.  A History of Greek Art.  2015.

• Stewart, Andrew.  Greek Sculpture.  2 Vols.  1990.

Emily Claire Kibbe

The Lady of Auxerre

This limestone statuette (at a little over 2 feet tall it is about one third life-size) is named for the French city in which it was first exhibited (retrieved from the storeroom of the Auxerre Museum in 1907, it was later moved to the Louvre in Paris).

The Auxerre Kore or "Lady of Auxerre" is widely regarded as the showpiece of the Daedalic style, partly because it is so well preserved, although most of the left side of the face is missing.  Its Daedalic features include:

• severe frontality: it is meant to be viewed from the front, although the back is carved, too
• minimal depth: this is a consequence of its frontality.  “There is little depth to Daedalic figures: faces are mask-like, bodies plank-like; the profile view tends to be minimal” (Spivey 63).
• triangular face: the inverted triangle, with the chin rounded off to a U-shape
• flattened head: a consequence of its triangularity
• low forehead: a consequence of the flattened head
• large eyes and nose, prominent eyebrows, thick lips
• coiffure: the hair falls before each shoulder in four tresses crimped at even intervals and tied off at the ends in what look like little knobs.  The crimping or sectioning of vertical tresses the give the effect of horizontal bands: the lines along the two axes suggest a grid.  Yet for all this rectilinearity there are gentle curves, and the hair across the forehead is in curls.
• the gesture: while the left arm clings to the side, the right is laid across the chest (more on this below)

The Lady of Auxerre is thought to have been made on Crete between 650 and 625 BC.  The nature of its limestone speaks for Crete, as does a comparison of its features with numerous works in other media from the island.  Indeed, Nicholas Stampolidis has argued that it comes from the necropolis of Orthi Petra in Eleutherna, comparing it to another statue discovered there, the Eleutherna Kore, of which only the lower half is preserved.  See the picture below, taken in 2004, when the two statues were juxtaposed in an exhibition at the Museum of Cycladic Art in Athens.

Like other female Daedalic figures, the Lady of Auxerre wears a long tubular dress that gives no hint of legs or knees, although her (rather large) feet do emerge below.  Her high, narrow waist is cinched by a broad belt.  Some have supposed that over her robe she is wearing a cape, sometimes called an epiblema.  Evelyn Harrison has shown that there is but a single garment, pinned in front on each side of the collarbone, and that what appears to be a cape is really the material of the back part of the robe pulled so far forward as to cover the shoulders.  The sleeve-like forms behind her arms are pouches of cloth which she could, at will, pull forward to cover the shoulders or push back to bare them.  A drawing by Harrison is shown to the right.

The statuette was originally polychrome, in other words, painted in various colors, like all Greek sculpture.  Some idea of the appearance of the Lady of Auxerre may be had from the painted plaster cast in the collection at the Museum of Classical Archaeology in Cambridge (pictured to the left).  The incisions in the stone offer a guide (they outlined the colors), along with a few traces of red paint on the statue’s chest.  The lower part of the robe was decorated with a squares-within-squares motif, echoed in the garment’s upper border at the neck.  Overlapping scales form the pattern on the upper part.  The belt and bracelet were painted to represent bronze or gold.  Such bronze belts are known from the archaeological record.  Does the painted cast at Cambridge seem gaudy?  Sir William Gell noted 200 years ago: “No nation ever exhibited a greater passion for gaudy colors.”

Finally, there is the question of the gesture of the right held to the breast.  What does it signify?  The truth is that no one knows for sure.  Nigel Spivey has suggested that the figure is a votary reaching forward in supplication (this explains the oversize hand, since it is meant to be closer to the viewer), “for the rules imposed by frontality would demand that an arm extended at the elbow be carved as lying across the belly” (Spivey 63).

This is a much-admired statue.  Robertson praises the tension between the formal and the dynamic: "The whole figure has a charm and a sense of life that seem achieved almost in defiance of the extreme formalism of its method” (38).  Stewart observes that the “delicate balance of straight lines and subtle curves, large volumes and precise transitions, sturdy modeling and eyecatching surface is what gives the piece its extraordinary sculptural power” (107).  But it remains a limestone statuette.  For a grander example of the Daedalic style in marble, we must turn to the Kore of Nicandre, the subject of our next post.

• Boardman, John.  Greek Sculpture: The Archaic Period.  1978.
• Harrison, Evelyn.  “Notes on Daedalic Dress.”  The Journal of the Walters Art Gallery 36 (1977) 37-48.
• Robertson, Martin.  A History of Greek Art.  2 Vols.  1975.
• Spivey, Nigel.  Greek Sculpture.  2013.
• Stampolidis, Nicholas.  “Eleutherna on Crete; An Interim Report on the Geometric-Archaic Cemetery.”  The Annual of the British School at Athens 85 (1990) 375-403.
• Stewart, Andrew.  Greek Sculpture.  2 Vols.  1990.

Emily Claire Kibbe

The Daedalic Style

A new style of sculpture appeared in Greece early in the seventh century, imported from the Near East. In the Levant there were terracotta votive figurines representing Astarte in the nude (Astarte is Ishtar, the goddess of fertility, love, war, sex, and power). These were mass-produced in molds. Hence they were easy to make, and they were cheap. In Greece the technique and the style were quick to spread. Soon the style found expression in media other than clay: wood, ivory, metal, and stone.





There are some male figures, always nude, except for a belt. But the favored subject remains the female figure. Unlike the nude Astarte, she is usually draped. She is strictly frontal, symmetrical, and static, standing or sitting with feet together and wearing a full-length belted robe.

The true hallmarks of the style are seen in the hair, head, and face. The hair takes the form of a big triangle, falling in front of the shoulders either in a mass with horizontal waves or layers (hence the term often applied to it, Etagenperücke or “layered wig”) or in heavy locks crimped at even intervals (the Perlenlocken or “strings-of-pearls-tresses”). Within this big triangular headdress the face is a smaller inverted triangle. The lower part of the face may have the shape of a V or be rounded to that of a U. The face is flat and sometimes buried so deep in the hair that the ears are covered. The top of the head is flattened to maintain triangularity, giving a “brainless look” (Andrew Stewart) and producing a low forehead with a straight hairline. The eyes are usually large and set rather high.

Sharp angles are rounded and most lines are slightly curved, in a movement toward naturalism. Yet the underlying design, that of an inverted triangle for the face within a larger triangle for the headdress, is unmistakable. (Indeed a frontal head alone--without a body--is enough to identify this style.) The resulting tension is thus described by Martin Robertson: “In the Geometric period no interest is shown in the human face as such; it is treated, if at all, in a summary and impressionistic manner. Here [in Daedalic art] we see, as in black-figure vase painting, the reimposition of Geometric discipline on a new realization of nature; and it is the tension between an ever-growing interest in natural forms and a stubborn sense of the decorative patter proper to a work of art that gives Greek art its peculiar character, not only in the Archaic period” (Robertson 1.34)

The Daedalic lies between the Geometric and Archaic periods. Why not just “Orientalizing,” to match the analogous and more or less contemporary period in vase painting? After all, the style was borrowed from the Near East. “Daedalic” as a term in art history goes back to the beginning of the twentieth century. It is true that the tradition about Daedalus the artist goes back to Homer (Iliad 18.590-92). There is the builder of a dancing floor on Crete. Later authors tell us that he was the grandson of the early Athenian king Erechtheus and the creator of amazing life-like statues, even the inventor of sculpture.

For them it was only natural to associate the earliest statues with some protos heuretes (“inventor”), and Daedalus belonged to the world of Homer, the go-to source for early Greek culture then as now. The only problem was that Daedalus was Greek and in reality the origins of sculpture lay outside of Greece. For Sarah Morris, the attribution of sculpture to the Athenian Daedalus is yet another instance of “Orientalism” (Edward Said), which, taking for granted the superiority of the West, has denied credit to the East. “The modern convention recapitulates the ancient rejection of an Oriental role by substituting the name of a Greek craftsman to account for the most profoundly Oriental of Greek styles” (Morris 256). But the term is conventional, and it not likely to go away.

A periodization Daedalic art (into Proto-, Early, Middle, and Late) was attempted long ago by R. J. H. Jenkins in his Dedalica (1936). Few today would accept his chronology. Still, it will be useful to look at some examples of the style in different periods and media.

An early example of the new style is a bronze statuette from Olympia dating to c. 700-675 BC: a warrior, naked but for his belt and crested helmet, stands with his right arm raised to hold a spear (missing). His hair is an early rendition of the Etagenperücke.

Representing the Early Daedalic (675-c. 655) is this ivory sphinx from the sanctuary of Hera Limenia in Perachora. In this phase the faces tend to be long triangles, with the chin rounded off.






The Middle Daedalic (c. 655-630) has shorter and wider faces, with squarer chins. It is represented in the fragment of a limestone relief from the acropolis of Mycenae, shown in the picture at the top of this post. The date is 650-625 BC. A woman is drawing a cloak over her head, breaking the symmetry typical of Daedalic sculpture. Two rows of ringlets cross the forehead. She wears the Etagenperücke. This piece may be compared with the Lady of Auxerre, the subject of an upcoming post.

Also representing the Middle Daedalic is this torso from a female figurine, mold-made out of terracotta, from Crete, one of a series produced there from c. 680-625 BC. The detailed coiffure (Etagenperücke) and anatomy indicate a date toward the end of the series, c. 650-625 BC.

Yet another Middle Daedalic piece is this Protocorinthian aryballos (oil flask) from Thebes. The head was made with a mold. The decoration was by a known artist, the Boston Painter, and can be dated with some confidence to around 650 BC. Datable vases such as this one are important, for they give us a means of dating other Daedalic pieces, such as the ones to be featured in upcoming posts.

Representing the Late Daedalic (c. 630-600) is this torso of a seated woman from Eleutherna on Crete. The medium is limestone. The oval face points to a late date, c. 600.  The coiffure is crimped tresses (Perlenlocken).

Also late is this plaque of electrum (a natural alloy of gold and silver) from Kamiros on Rhodes, showing a bee goddess.  It was a piece of personal jewelry, “probably worn strung across the top of a garment, fastened at the shoulders,” according to the British Museum website.





Enough has been shown here to display the hallmarks of the Daedalic style and the extent of its distribution outside of Crete (if it is true that it emanated from that island). The examples shown also suggest the diverse media in which it found expression: clay (terracotta), bone, bronze, electrum, gold, wood (rare), limestone, marble.

Do all these pieces really belong to a single style? Today few would speak, with Robertson, of “the extraordinary unity of the Daedalic style” (1.36). Stansbury-O’Donnell is among those who find it fanciful. “Daedalic persists as a term to describe seventh-century sculpture, but it implies a greater unity of style and concept than exists” (135). Would it not be better to call it “Orientalizing,” putting the focus on the multiple sources of its inspiration rather than on a supposedly cohesive set of principles dubiously attributed to a Greek protos heuretes? Nonetheless, for the time being, the term and the concept persist.

• Boardman, John. Greek Sculpture: The Archaic Period. 1978.
• Carter, Jane.  "Daedalic Art."  In: Gargarin, Michael, ed.  The Oxford Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece and Rome.  7 vols.  2009.  1.353-355.
• Hurwit, Jeffrey M. The Art and Culture of Early Greece, 1100-480 BC. 1985.
• Morris, Sarah.  Daidalos and the Origins of Greek Art.  1992.
• Robertson, Martin. A History of Greek Art. 2 Vols. 1975.
• Said, Edward.  Orientalism.  1978.
• Spivey, Nigel. Greek Sculpture. 2013.
• Stansbury-O’Donnell, Mark D. A History of Greek Art. 2015.
• Stewart, Andrew. Greek Sculpture. 2 Vols. 1990.

Emily Claire Kibbe

The Grand Camée de France

At 31 by 26.5 cm, the Grand Camée de France is the largest ancient cameo to have survived. With 24 human figures in three registers, it is complex. The sardonyx has five layers (while the Gemma Augustea has but two), with colors ranging (outer to inner) from dark reddish-brown to cream to light reddish-brown to white to bark brown. The carving in low relief is exquisite. The stone is beautiful. And enigmatic.

Enigmatic: in other words, yet another locus of scholarly dispute. Yet there are points of general agreement.

The figures in the top register are aloft. Those in the middle register are seated or standing on a ground line, while those in the lower register appear to be crouching in a space in which they can neither stand nor even move much at all. The natural reading of this composition is that the upper register represents the heavenly realm in which all the figures must be divine—either deities or divine personifications or deified mortals, while the middle register is the earthly realm, that of the living; the lower realm is just that: a nether world in which all figures are subdued, confined, imprisoned.

In the top register, a togate male figure (10) bearing a scepter and wearing a radiate crown, his head shrouded, rides on the back of a flying male figure (13) holding a sphere. To the left is another flying male figure (12). His head is crowned with a laurel wreath; he wears military clothing and carries a shield in his hands. To the right, a cherubic boy (14) leads a winged horse on which rides another male figure (11) in military dress, his head adorned with a laurel wreath.

In the middle register, the central male figure (1) is seated, facing to the left, with an aegis on his lap. He cradles a tall scepter in his raised left arm and holds a lituus in his right hand. His chest is bare and his head is adorned with a laurel wreath. To the left of (1) is a standing male figure (3) in full military dress: helmet, shield, sword, cuirass, and greaves. He is flanked by a woman (4) standing and facing him on the right and on the left by another woman (8) seated and facing him, with a scroll in her hand. In front of her is a boy (7) whose military costume corresponds to that of the male figure (3). To the right of (1) and sharing a footstool with him is a seated woman (2) holding wheat sheaves and poppies. To the right of her, two figures gaze heavenward: one, a man (5) in military dress,  gestures toward (10) in the heavenly realm; behind him is a woman (6) seated in on a chair shaped like a sphinx.

The lower register is crammed with the vanquished: Parthians wearing the Phrygian cap and Germans with long hair.

So who are all these figures? Everything depends on the identification of the central figures in the middle and upper registers.  Here we consider two possibilities.

A. In the middle register the central figure (1) is Tiberius, Augustus’ adopted son and successor; the woman (2) to the right is Livia, Augustus’ wife and the mother of Tiberius. The young general (3) presenting himself before Tiberius is Germanicus. The boy (7) whose military outfit matches that of Germanicus (3) is his son Caligula, the darling of the army and the people, looking like his daddy in the miniature legionary kit fashioned for him by the soldiers who gave him his nickname.

In the top register the central figure (10) is Augustus. He is being carried upwards: this top register represents his apotheosis, his ascent to heaven as a new god

In short, the Grand Camée affirms the cohesion and continuity of the Julio-Claudians. And it affirms their legitimacy: to question the Julio-Claudians’ right to rule is to question that of Jupiter himself.

If one accepts this reading, one may date the cameo to the reign of Tiberius, between AD 14 (Tiberius’ accession) and 29 (Livia’s death). Yet some have argued for a later date, pointing out that Tiberius is here depicted in the guise of Jupiter: partially nude, with aegis and long scepter. Impossible during his reign, they say. For Tiberius followed Augustus in refusing divine honors, at least in the western half of the Empire. So, they contend, the Grand Camée postdates Tiberius’ death and was probably made under Claudius.  (The same argument has been made concerning the Gemma Augustea, on which Augustus is presented as seminude, holding the long scepter, and with an eagle beneath his seat.)

B. And now for another, quite different reading.  The central figure (1) in the middle register is not Tiberius but Claudius, sitting next to his wife Agrippina (2). The focal figure (3) in military dress is Nero. In the upper register the central figure is not Augustus but Antonia, Claudius’ mother, in the guise of Venus Genetrix, with Cupid at her side. She rides on the back of Aeternitas, the personification of Eternity, holding the globe that represents Rome’s imperial possessions. The stone affirms the Julio-Claudian dynasty, to be sure. But its special purpose is to legitimate the rule of Claudius (cf. our previous post on Claudius in the guise of Jupiter). The date is about AD 50.

Symptomatic of the history of this cameo’s interpretation is the disagreement on the gender of the central figure in the top register (10).  Man or woman?  If even this is disputed, the cameo is likely to remain what it has been thus far: an enigma.

Heinlein, Christine. Kaiser und Kosmokrator. Der Große Kameo von Frankreich als astrale Allegorie. Dissertation, Tübingen. 2011. 41-98 (on the history of the cameo's interpretation).

Kleiner, Diana. Roman Sculpture. 1992. 149-152.

Tuck, Steven. A History of Roman Art. 2015. 158-160.

The Four Seasons Altar

WINTER

This round altar (of white marble and 73 cm tall by 57 cm in diameter) adorned the Horti Sallustiani, the Gardens of Sallust between the Pincian and Quirinal hills.  Found in 1886, it is one of many sculptures found there, including the famous Dying Gaul (a Roman copy of a Hellenistic original) and the Ludovisi Throne (long regarded as an early classical masterpiece but now controversial).  On stylistic grounds the altar has been dated to the early years of Claudius’s reign, at about the time when the Horti Sallustiani became imperial property in AD 41.  It was then that the adopted grandson of the historian C. Sallustius Crispus (86-34 BC), the early developer and eponym of the gardens, married Agrippina the Younger at Claudius’ behest.

Decorating this altar are four winged putti (cherubic boys), each representing a season.  They are separated by tall vase-shaped cultic pillars embellished with acanthus leaves and blossoms.  Atop the pillars are grooved amphorae with pointed covers, suggesting vessels for burning incense.  From the handles of the amphorae hang draperies like baldachins, like heaven’s vault above the head of the each putto.

Winter (above) wears a short tunic that leaves one shoulder bare.  In his lowered left hand he holds an object left unfinished by the sculptor, probably a goose.  With his right hand he shoulders a water pitcher.  The reference is to the cult of the Egyptian goddess Isis, whose rites were celebrated in January under the Roman Empire.  The putto’s tunic refers to the white linen shirts worn by the Isiac celebrants.  The goose refers to the one slaughtered at the festival of Isis and whose liver was offered to the goddess.  Ritual ablutions belonged to the cult, too, and the water pitcher alludes to them.

SPRING

The naked figure of Spring recalls the festival of Magna Mater or Cybele.  At her festival simple country foods were eaten, such as cheese, herb dumplings, and fruit; the participants were bedecked in garlands of flowers.  In his right hand Spring holds such a garland, while on his left arm he balances a tray of first fruits.

Winter and Spring face one another, heads lowered and with a melancholy expression.

SUMMER

With his back to Spring stands Summer, naked, like Spring, and with a small cloak draped over his left forearm.  In his right hand he holds a sickle for reaping grain.  In his left hand he holds a stalk with a poppy seed capsule.  These are the attributes of Demeter-Ceres, goddess of agriculture, honored especially in Eleusis, to the west of Athens.  Her mysteries were celebrated in late summer.

AUTUMN

Finally, Autumn.  On a pedestal to his left stands a basket full of grapes. In his right hand he holds a knotty shepherd’s crook.  An animal skin is draped over his shoulder: the nebris, also worn by followers of Dionysus.  Dionysus’ most important festival took place at the time of the autumn grape harvest.  This putto has the largest wings.  He looks back at Summer, who, like him, has a cheerful expression.

On this altar it is the mystery religions, not the official Roman state cults, that mark the seasons.

Most Roman altars are rectangular, but this round one follows the Archaic East Greek tradition, which came to Rome via Pergamum.  The round form corresponds to the cyclical nature of seasons.

This altar is the earliest specimen of putti representing the seasons.  Male Seasons are attested on sculpture from the first century AD, as, for example, on the Tomb of the Haterii.  They are also found on the Arch of Trajan at Beneventum and on the Arch of Septimius Severus in the Roman Forum.  Under the Severans they begin to appear on sarcophagi.  Indeed, the “season sarcophagus” constitutes a type.

The example pictured above is the Season Sarcophagus from Rome.  It dates to ca. AD 330.  The four winged figures (youths, not cherubs) represent Winter, Spring, Summer, and Autumn.  Spring and Summer hold a roundel whose rim is decorated with the signs of the zodiac and which contains the portraits (unfinished) of the deceased husband and wife.  Supporting the roundel are putti harvesting grapes; to the left, between Winter and Spring, another little figure milks a goat, while to the right, between Summer and Autumn, there is yet another one harvesting wheat.

George Hanfmann showed that it was the Romans who invented the representation of the seasons as putti and first used them in funerary sculpture.  The Greeks of the Archaic and Classical periods had their Horae (they are already on the François vase), but it was not until the Hellenistic period that they came to represent the Four Seasons personified and began to stand for cyclic regularity, cosmic order, and earthly prosperity.  On Roman sarcophagi they came to represent eternal happiness for the deceased.  And the use of male Seasons was indeed Roman: they appear for the most part in art produced in and around the city of Rome.  Specimens outside Rome and Italy are few and far between.

Hanfmann says that the first representation of the Seasons as boys occurred on the Arch of Trajan at Beneventum (built AD 114-117).  It seems that he forgot about the Four Seasons Altar from the Horti Sallustiani produced over a half century earlier!

Hanfmann, George.  The Season Sarcophagus in Dumbarton Oaks.  1951.

Kleiner, Diana.  Roman Sculpture.  1992.  458-459.

Knauf-Museum Iphofen.  Reliefsammlung der grossen Kulturepochen.  2005.  182-183.

Simon, Erika.  Der Vierjahreszeiten-Altar in Würzburg.  1967.

The Philosophers' Mosaic

In 1897 this small (33” by 33 1/2”) mosaic was discovered in a villa at Torre Annunziata near Pompeii, nearly perfectly preserved by the protective blanket of ash laid over it by Mt. Vesuvius in AD 79. It is similar to another, slightly smaller mosaic found at Sarsina in Umbria and now in the Villa Albani in Rome. Two similar mosaics? That suggests that they are copies of a lost Hellenistic original, probably a painting.

The mosaic depicts seven men. Four are seated on a semicircular stone bench with lion’s-paw feet. Three are standing: the first, fourth, and seventh (we number them from left to right). To the left there is an open chest, probably a container for the scrolls. In front of the group is another open chest. The sphere that it contains is a focal point for the group. The first figure, the only one wearing a diadem, appears to be looking at it (perhaps explaining it) while the third points to it with a staff and the seventh figure seems to turn away from it with an air of suspicion.

In the background (left to right): two pillars support an architrave on which stand votive vessels, a tree with green foliage, a single column surmounted by a sundial, and, in the upper right corner, a fortified town or citadel.

The tree and the sacred gateway suggest a rural sanctuary, as often in Hellenistic art. The city in the distance shows that the gathering is taking place in the country. But a gathering of whom, exactly? Philosophers, it seems, given the sphere and the scrolls. Which philosophers? At this point, the modern consensus about the mosaic and its meaning ends.

Konrad Gaiser believes that the scene depicts the Academy of Plato. For him, the city in the upper right-hand corner is the key: it is Athens. He discerns the Acropolis, even the Parthenon. Thus, the scene is exo teichous (outside the city walls), where the Platonic Academy was located. Gaiser identifies the figures on the basis of their clothing, attributes, poses, and positions within the circle. The first figure is the lecturer. All the others appear to be looking at him, except figures three and four, whose eyes are on the sphere. For Gaiser, this figure’s diadem and the snake that he is holding identify him as Heraclides of Pontus (in northeast Asia Minor), known for his theory of the motions of celestial objects (he proposed that the movement of the stars was an illusion created by the daily rotation of the Earth). The second figure is Speusippus; the third Plato (pointing to the celestial sphere with his staff); the fourth, standing as he is behind the bench, is Eratosthenes of Cyrene, his position marking him as a philosopher from another era; the fifth Eudoxus of Cnidus; the sixth Xenocrates; and the seventh Aristotle (turning away in disapproval—and calling to mind the empiricist gesture of Aristotle in Raphael’s "The School of Athens").

Of the many other identities proposed for the philosophers, the most compelling is that they are the Seven Sages, a collection of sixth-century philosophers and statesmen renowned for their wisdom. If we accept this, all of Gaiser's fourth-century identifications are out. The third figure holding the staff is now not Plato but, e.g., Thales.

Or could the gathering involve an anachronism? Accepting the Seven Sages hypothesis did not prevent G. W. Elderkin from seeing in the first figure the late fourth-century ruler of Athens Demetrius of Phalerum. Demetrius was an early Peripatetic philosopher known to have collected the sayings of the Seven Sages. Why not show him conversing with those giants of two centuries earlier? Elderkin has been followed by Richard Brilliant, among others.

Truth be told, this is another case of non liquet.

Brendel, Otto.  Symbolism of the Sphere: A Contribution to the History of Earlier Greek Philosophy.  (1977) 1-18.
Brilliant, Richard.  "Intellectual Giants: A Classical Topos and the 'School of Athens'," Notes in the History of Art 3.4 (1984) 1-12.
Elderkin, G. W.  “Two Mosaics Representing the Seven Wise Men.”  American Journal of Archaeology 39.1 (1935) 92–111.
Gaiser, Konrad.  Das Philosophenmosaik in Neapel.  1980.

- Christian McKittrick

Herakles and Busiris

Among the parerga of Herakles was the slaying of Busiris, a mythical Egyptian pharaoh. (A parergon was a subsidiary or minor labor that the hero undertook while performing his major ones, i.e., the canonical twelve.) Like Herakles’ encounters with Nereus and Antaios, the killing of Busiris took place during his eleventh labor, the acquisition of the Golden Apples in the Garden of the Hesperides (cf. the post for 3/16).

When Egypt was ravaged by drought, Busiris sought advice from a seer, who told him that he could insure himself against calamity every year by sacrificing a stranger. The seer himself hailed from outside Egypt, so Busiris put the seer’s claim to the test by sacrificing him! And the trick worked: no drought that year, no famine. So the next year when Busiris began looking for another victim, is so happened that a certain stranger showed up as though on cue. You guessed it: that stranger was Herakles. When he was led to the altar and realized what his hosts intended to do to him, Herakles broke free from his bonds and slew Busiris and his son.

The earliest extant depiction of this story on a complete pot is on this black-figure hydria from Caere belonging to the second half of the sixth century BC. Here Herakles is a huge, dark figure who with his bare hands hurls around numerous dark- and light-skinned, white-clad Egyptian priests in front of the altar. He tramples two even as he chokes two more in the crook of his arms, strangles a third, and grasps a fourth by the ankle. The other Egyptians are doing their best to escape.

Most scholars regard this and similar later depictions as a parody of Egyptian monuments showing Pharaoh smiting or trampling his enemies. The great J. D. Beazley saw it this way as early as 1910. “The wit in the painting,” writes Susan Woodford, “comes from fitting the style to the subject; Herakles turns the tables on the Egyptians, the artist turns the tables on the Egyptian style!”

Such parody presupposes familiarity with Egypt. At the end of the eighth century Greeks were serving as mercenaries in Egypt, and they were influenced by the monuments there.  They had a trading post at Naucratis in the Nile delta from the seventh century BC. Contacts between Greece and Egypt were regular. “It is hardly conceivable,” concludes Martin Robertson, “that the painter of the Busiris vase had not himself seen Egyptian monuments.”

Another illustration of the myth, the earliest complete one in Attic vase painting, is this one by the Swing Painter from the second half of the sixth century BC. Here the figure that has fallen over the altar must be Busiris.  Herakles, wearing the lionskin, holds a white-clad Egyptian by the ankle and is about to use him to club Busiris, while another priest expresses his dismay. The others flee.

The story of Herakles and Busiris is popular in Attic red-figure vase painting during the first half of the fifth century. On this pelike by the Pan Painter from about 460 BC Herakles encounters more opposition than he did on the two vases considered above. One Egyptian is poised to strike the hero with an ax. For his part, Herakles has grabbed another by both ankles, prepared to meet the ax with a human weapon, even though his club is within easy reach.

The basic type is constant in these and other Attic depictions of Herakles and Busiris for most the fifth century: in the center Herakles attacks Busiris in front of the altar, while priests and attendants flee for their lives. Then, toward the end of the century, the type vanishes from Athens.

Carpenter, T. H.  Art and Myth in Ancient Greece.  1991.  128.

Robertson, Martin.  A History of Greek Art.  2 vols.  1975.  2.139.

Woodford, Susan.  Images of Myth in Classical Antiquity.  2003.  73-76.

- Ryan Summers