XXV. [1] Above the Cassotis is a building with paintings by Polygnotus (1) : it was dedicated by the Cnidians, and is called by the Delphians the Club-room (Lesche, «place of talk»), because here they used of old to meet and talk over both mythological and more serious subjects. That there were many such places all over Greece is shown by Homer in the passage where Melantho rails at Ulysses :
And you will not go sleep in the smithy,
Nor yet in the club-room, but here you prate. (Od.
XVIII. 329 sq)
[2] On entering this building you perceive that all the painting on the right represents Ilium after its capture (2), and the Greeks setting sail.
 |
Menelaus' crew is making ready to put to sea : the ship is
painted with the sailors on board, and children amongst them
: in the middle of the ship is the pilot Phrontis with two
punting-poles in his bands. Homer represents Nestor talking
with Telemachus (Od. III, 276 sqq) , and saying,
amongst other things, that Phrontis was a son of Onetor and
pilot to Menelaus, that he was esteemed a master of his
craft, and that he met his end as he was sailing past Sunium
in Attica. Up to that point Menelaus had been sailing in
company with Nestor, but then he stayed behind to bury
Phrontis and pay him funeral rites.
[3] Phrontis, then, is seen in
Polygnotus' painting, and below him is a certain Ithaemenes
carrying raiment, and Echoeax (3) going down the gangway
with a bronze urn. Polites, Strophius, and Alphius are taking
down Menelaus' hut (4), which stands not far
from the ship ; and Amphialus is taking to pieces another
but. Under the feet of Amphialus is seated a boy ; but there
is no inscription at the boy. Phrontis is the only man with a
beard. He is also the only figure whose name Polygnotus has
taken from the Odyssey (5) : the names of the
rest, I suppose, he invented.
[4] Briseis is represented
standing, Diomeda is above her, and Iphis is in front of both
(6) : all theee
seem to be scrutinising Helen's form. Helen herself is seated
(7), and so is
Eurybates near her. We surmised that the latter was Ulysses'
herald, though he had no beard (8). Beside Helen stands
her handmaid, Panthalis, while Electra, another handmaid, is
putting on her mistress' sandals. These names are also
different from the names in the Iliad (9), where Homer represents
Helen, accompanied by ber slavewomen, going to the
city-wall.
[5] Above Helen, a man clad in
a purple mantle is seated in an attitude of profound
dejection (10) :
you might guess it to be Helenus, son of Priam, even before
reading the inscription. Near Helenus is Meges, who is
wounded in the arm, just as he is described by Lescheos of
Pyrrha, son of Aeschylinus, in his poem, The Sack of
Ilium (11) :
the poet says he was wounded by Admetus, son of Augeas, in
the battle which the Trojans fought by night.
[6] Lycomedes, son of Creon, is also depicted beside Meges
with a wound on his wrist : Lescheos says that he was so
wounded by Agenor. Clearly Polygnotus could not thus have
depicted their wounds unless he had read the poem of Lescheos
; however, he has given Lycomedes in addition a wound on the
ankle and another on the head. Euryalus, son of Mecisteus, is
also wounded on the head and wrist.
[7] These figures are higher up
than Helen in the painting. Next to Helen is the mother of
Theseus, with her hair closely cropped, and Demophon, one of
the sons of Theseus (12) : to judge from his
attitude, Demophon is considering whether it will be in his
power to rescue Aethra. The Argives say that Theseus had also
a son Melanippus (13) by the daughter of
Sinis, and that Melanippus won a race when the Epigoni, as
they are called, celebrated the Nemean games for the first
time since the original celebration of them by
Adrastus.
[8] As to Aethra, Lescheos says
(14) that when
Ilium was taken she stole out to the Greek camp, and was
recognised by the sons of Theseus, and that Demophon asked
her from Agamemnon. Agamemnon said he was willing to gratify
him, but would not do so till he had obtained Helen's consent
; so he sent a herald, and Helen granted the favour.
Accordingly, in the painting Eurybates appears to have corne
to Helen about Aethra, and to be delivering Agamemnon's
message.
[9] The Trojan women are
depicted as captives and lamenting. Andromache is painted,
and in front of her stands the boy grasping her breast : this
child, says Lescheos, was killed (15) by being hurled from
the tower, not that he was doomed by the Greeks, but that
Neoptolemus took it on himself to murder him. Medesicaste is
also painted : she was another of the bastard daughters of
Priam. Homer says that she left Troy (Il. XIII, 170
sqq) to go to the city of Pedaeum as the wife of Imbrius, son
of Mentor.
[10] Andromache and
Medesicaste wear hoods ; but Polyxena has her hair braided
after the manner of maidens (16). Poets tell how
Polyxena was slain on Achilles' tomb (17), and both at Athens
and at Pergamus on the Caicus I have seen pictures of her
tragic fate (18).
[11] Nestor is painted with a
cap on his head and a spear in his hand ; and there is a
horse in an attitude as if it were about to roll on the
ground (19). As
far as the horse the scene is the sea-shore, and pebbles may
be distinguished on it ; but from that point the scene is no
longer the sea.
XXVI. [1] Above the women
grouped between Aethra and Nestor are other captive women,
Clymene (20),
Creusa, Aristomache, and Xenodice. Stesichorus, in his
Sack of Ilium (21), reckons Clymene
among thecaptive women ; also in the Returns
(Nostoi) (22) he represents
Aristomache as a daughter of Priam and wife of Critolaus son
of Hicetaon ; but I know of no poet or prose writer who
mentions Xenodice. Touching Creusa, they say that the Mother
of the Gods (23)
and Aphrodite rescued her from Greek slavery because she was
the wife of Aeneas. But Lescheos and the author of the epic
called the Cypria (24) say that Aeneas' wife
was Eurydice.
[2] Above these are painted
sitting on a couch, Deinome, Metioche, Pisis, and Cleodice.
Of these, Deinome alone is mentioned in the Little
Iliad (25), as
it is called : the names of the others, I suppose, were
invented by Polygnotus. Epeus is painted naked, in the act of
razing to the ground the wall of Troy : above the wall
appears the head alone of the Wooden Horse. Polypoetes, son
of Pirithous (26),
is represented with a fillet tied round his head, and beside
him is Acamas, son of Theseus, wearing a helmet on his head,
and there is a crest on the helmet.
[3] Ulysses is also represented
... and Ulysses is clad in a corselet. And Ajax, son of
Oileus, holding a shield, is standing beside an altar,
taking, an oath with regard to the outrage on Cassandra
(27). Cassandra
herself is seated (28) on the ground and is
holding the image of Athena, for she overturned the wooden
image (29) from
its pedestal when Ajax dragged her out of sanctuary. The sons
of Atreus are also depicted wearing helmets. Menelaus holds a
shield, and on the shield is wrought a serpent, in allusion
to the prodigy which appeared at Aulis (30). They are swearing
Ajax on the sacrificial victims.
[4] In a straight line with the
horse (31) which
stands by Nestor's side, is Neoptolemus : he has just slain
Elasus, whoever Elasus may be. Elasus is represented still
faintly breathing. Astynous (32), who is also
mentioned by Lescheos, has fallen on his knees, and
Neoptolemus is smiting him with his sword. Neoptolemus is the
only one of the Grecian host whom Polygnotus depicted as
still engaged in slaughtering the Trojans, and the reason is
that the whole painting was to be executed over the grave of
Neoptolemus. The son of Achilles is always named Neoptolemus
by Homer (33) ;
but in the epic called the Cypria it is said that he
was named Pyrrhus by Lycomedes, and Neoptolemus («young
warrior») by Phoenix, because Achilles began to make
war at an early age (34).
[5] In the painting is seen an
altar and a little boy clinging to it for fear, and on the
altar is a bronze corselet (35). Corselets of the
sort represented are scarce nowadays, but they were worn in
the olden time. They consisted of two bronze pieces called
guala (36)
: one fitted the breast and the parts about the belly ; the
other was meant to protect the back. One was put on in front,
the other behind ; then they were joined by buckles.
[6] Such a corselet was thought
to he a sufficient protection even without a shield ; hence
Homer represents Phorcys (Il. XVII, 312, sqq), the
Phrygian, without a shield, because he had one of these
corselets. I have seen a corselet of this sort depicted, not
only in Polygnotus' painting, but also in a painting by
Calliphon the Samian (37) in the temple of
Ephesian Artemis, where women are represented buckling on the
guala of Patroclus' corselet.
[7] On the farther side of the
altar Laodice is painted standing. I do not find Laodice
(38) included by
any poet in the list of captive Trojan women, and probability
appears to me entirely in favour of the supposition that she
was released by the Greeks. For Homer in the Iliad
describes the hospitable reception of Menelaus and Ulysses in
the house of Antenor (Il. III, 205, sqq), and how
Laodice was the wife of Antenor's son Helicaon (Il.
III, 122, sqq).
[8] And Lescheos says that
Helicaon, wounded in the nocturnal battle, was recognised by
Ulysses and carried alive out of the fray. Hence the regard
which Menelaus and Ulysses had for the house of Antenor would
make it natural that Agamemnon and Menelaus should do no ill
turn to the wife of Helicaon. The tale which Euphorion, a
Chalcidian poet, tells about Laodice (39) is wholly
improbable.
[9] Next to Laodice in the
picture is a bronze wash-basin on a stone stand (40). Medusa (41) is seated on the
ground grasping the stand in both hands. She, if we were to
follow the ode of the Himeraean poet (42), would have to be
reckoned among the daughters of Priam. Beside Medusa is an
old woman (43) or
eunuch, with closely cropped hair, holding a naked child on
his or her knees. The child is represented holding its hand
before its eyes for fear.
XXVII. [1] Of dead bodies there
are the following. The naked man, Pelis by name, is flung on
his back. Below Pelis lie Eioneus (44) and Admetus, both
still clad in their corselets. Lescheos says that Eioneus was
slain by Neoptolemus and Admetus by Philoctetes. Other
corpses lie higher up. Under the wash-basin is Leocritus, son
of Pulydamas, slain by Ulysses. Above Eioneus and Admetus is
Coroebus, son of Mygdon (45). This Mygdon has a
famous tomb at the boundaries of the territory of Stectorium
(46) in Phrygia,
and after him poets have been wont to give to the Phrygians
the name of Mygdones (47). Coroebus came to wed
Cassandra and was killed, according to the general account,
by Neoptolemus, but according to Lescheos by Diomede.
[2] Above Coroebus are Priam,
Axion, and Agenor. Lescheos says that Priam was not killed on
the hearth of the God of the Courtyard, but that he was
dragged from the altar (48) and made short work
of by Neoptolemus at his own door. As for Hecuba,
Stesichorus, in The Sack of Ilium, represents her as
conveyed to Lycia by Apollo. Lescheos says that Axion was a
son of Priam, and was slain by Eurypylus, son of Euaemon.
Agenor, according to the same poet, was butchered by
Neoptolemus (49) ;
and thus it would appear that Agenor's son Echeclus was
slaughtered by Achilles, but Agenor himself by
Neoptolemus.
[3] Sinon, a comrade of Ulysses
(50), and
Anchialus are bringing out the corpse of Laomedon. Another
dead man is painted, Eresus by name. But no poet, so far as
we know, has sung of the fate of Eresus and Laomedon. The
house of Antenor is seen with a leopard's skin hung over the
entrance (51), as
a sign to the Greeks to spare the house. Theano (52) is painted with her
children, Glaucus being seated on a corselet composed of
back-piece and breast-piece, and Eurymachus on a rock
(53).
[4] Beside Eurymachus stands
Antenor, and next Antenor is his daughter Crino, with a baby
in her arms. The expression on all their faces is sorrowful.
Servants are putting a coffer and other gear upon an ass
(54) ; and on the
ass is seated a little child. At this part of the picture
there is also a couplet of Simonides (55) :
Polygnotus, a Thasian by birth, son of Aglaophon
Painted the sack of Ilium's citadel.
 |
XXVIII. [1] The other
portion of the painting, that on the left hand, represents
Ulysses in hell (56), whither he has
descended to consult the soul of Tiresias about his return
home. The painting is as follows. There is water to indicate
a river, obviously the Acheron : reeds are growing in the
river, and so dim are the outlines of the fish that you would
take them for shadows rather than fish. There is a bark on
the river, and the ferryman at the oars.
[2] Polygnotus, it seems to me,
followed the poem called the Minyad (57) ; for in the
Minyad there is a passage about Theseus and Pirithous
:
Then the bark of the dead, which the ancient
Ferryman, Charon (58), was wont to guide,
they found not at its moorings.
Accordingly Polygnotus has represented Charon as an aged
man. The passengers on board the bark are not very famous
personages.
[3] Tellis appears as a lad,
and Cleoboea as still a maid (59), holding on her knees
a box such as they make for Demeter (60). All I heard about
Tellis was that the poet Archilochus was his grandson. As for
Cleoboea, they say that she was the first who brought the
orgies of Demeter to Thasos from Paros.
[4] On the bank of Acheron,
just below Charon's bark, is a man who had once ill-used, and
is now being throttled by, his father. For the men of old set
the greatest store by their parents, as we may judge by the
example, amongst others, of the so-called Pious Folk at
Catana, who, when the stream of fire poured down from Etna on
Catana (61),
recked nothing of gold and silver, but picked up, this one
his mother, that one his father, and fled. As they toiled
onwards, the flames came scudding along and overtook them.
But even then they did not drop their parents ; so the stream
of lava, it is said, parted in two, and the fire passed on
without scathing either the young men or their parents.
[5] Hence these pious folk are
stil] worshipped at the present day by the Catanians. In
Polygnotus' picture, near the man who maltreated his father
and is suffering for it in hell, there is a man punished for
sacrilege. The woman who is chastising him is skilled in
drugs (62),
especially baleful ones.
[6] Hence we see that in those
days men were still exceedingly pious, as the Athenians
showed when they captured the sanctuary of Olympian Zeus at
Syracuse (63), for
they disturbed none of the votive offerings, and left the
Syracusan priest in charge of them. Datis the Mede also
showed it, not only in the words he spoke to the Delians
(64), but also in
his conduct ; for finding an image of Apollo in a Phoenician
ship (65), he
restored it to the Tanagraeans at Delium. Thus ail men feared
God in those days, and that is why Polygnotus painted the
punishment of the sacrilegious man.
[7] Higher up than the figures
I have enumerated is Eurynomus (66) ; the Delphian guides
say that he is one of the demons in hell, and that he eats
the flesh of the corpses, leaving only the bones. But Homer's
Odyssey, and the poem called the Minyad, and
the one called The Returns, though they all speak of
hell (67) and its
terrors, know of no demon Eurynomus. However I will describe
his appearance and attitude in the painting. His colour is
between blue and black, like that of the flies that settle on
meat : he is showing his teeth, and is seated on a vulture's
skin.
[8] Next after Eurynomus are
Auge from Arcadia, and Iphimedea. Auge went to the court of
Teuthras in Mysia (68), and of ail the women
with whom Hercules is said to have consorted none bore a son
so like his father as did Auge. Iphimedea receives great
marks of honour from the Carians of Mylasa.
XXIX. [1] Higher up than the
figures I have enumerated are Perimedes and Eurylochus, the
comrades of Ulysses, bringing sacrificial victims (69), and the victims are
black rams. After them is a man seated : an inscription sets
forth that the man is Indolence (Oknos). He is
represented plaiting a rope (70), and beside him
stands a she-ass furtively eating the rope as fast as he
plaits it. They say that this Indolence was an industrious
man who had a spendthrift wife, and as fast as he earned
money she spent it.
[2] Hence people hold that in
this picture Polygnotus alluded to Indolence's wife. I know,
too, that when the Ionians see a man toiling at a fruitless
task they say he is splicing the cord of Indolence. The same
name of Indolence (oknos) is also given to a certain
bird (71) by the
soothsayers who observe birds of omen : it is the largest and
handsomest of the herons, and is amongst the rarest of
birds.
[3] Tityus, too, is painted :
his punishment is over, but the prolonged torture has worn
him duite away, and he appears as a dim and mangled spectre
(72). Continuing
our survey of the picture, we see Ariadne close to the man
who is twisting the rope. She is seated on a rock, and is
looking at her sister Phaedra, who is in a swing (73) and is grasping the
rope on each side with both hands. The posture, though
graceful enough, suggests the manner of Phaedra's
death.
[4] Ariadne was wrested from
Theseus by Dionysus, who bore down with a larger fleet : the
encounter may have been accidental, or Dionysus may have lain
in wait for her. This Dionysus is, in my opinion, no other
than he who first led an army against India (74), and first bridged
the Euphrates. Zeugma («joining, bridge») was the
naine given to a city at the point where the Euphrates was
bridged ; and to this day the rope is there preserved
wherewith he spanned the river : it is plaited of vine and
ivy branches.
[5] Many are the tales told of
Dionysus both by Greeks and Egyptians (75). Underneath Phaedra
is Chloris leaning on Thyia's knees (76). It is safe to say
that the two women were friends in their lifetime ; for one
of them, Chloris, belonged to Orchomenus in Boeotia, and the
other... They told another story about them, that Poseidon
had convection with Thyia, and that Chloris was the wife of
Neleus (77), son
of Poseidon.
[6] Beside Thyia stands
Procris, daughter of Erechtheus, and after her is Clymene,
who is turning her back to Procris. In the poem called The
Returns, it is said that Clymene was a daughter of Minyas
and married Cephalus, son of Deion, and that they had a son
Iphiclus. But the story of Procris is in every one's mouth
— how she was the wife of Cephalus before he married
Clymene, and how she was slain by her husband (78).
[7] Inward from Clymene you
will perceive Megara (79) of Thebes. This
Megara was taken to wife by Hercules, but dismissed by him in
course of time because he lost the children whom he had by
her, and so concluded that his marnage with her had been
inauspicious. Over the heads of the aforesaid women is the
daughter of Salmoneus (80) seated on a rock, and
Eriphyle is standing by her, holding up the tips of her
fingers through the neck of her tunic, and you may guess that
in the folds of the tunic she is grasping the famous necklace
with the other hand (81).
[8] Above Eriphyle are depicted
Elpenor and Ulysses. Ulysses is crouching and holding his
sword over the trench (82), and the soothsayer
Tiresias is advancing towards the trench. Behind Tiresias is
Anticlea, the mother of Ulysses, on a rock. Instead of a
coat, Elpenor is clad in a mat, such as is commonly worn by
sailors (83).
[9] Lower down than Ulysses are
Theseus and Pirithous seated on chairs (84). Theseus is holding
the swords in both hands, the sword of Pirithous and his own,
while Pirithous is gazing at them : you may guess that he is
vexed at the swords for proving useless and unavailing in
their bold emprise. The poet Panyasis says that Theseus and
Pirithous were not pinioned to their chairs, but that the
rock growing to their flesh held them as in a vice. The
famous friendship of Theseus and Pirithous is alluded to by
Homer in both his poems.
[10] Thus Ulysses is
represented saying to the Phaeacians (85) :
And now should I have seen yet others of the men of
old, whom I longed to see,
Theseus and Pirithous, famed children of the gods.
Again in the Iliad he has represented Nestor admonishing Agamemnon and Achilles in the following verses amongst others :
| For never saw I yet, nor am I like to see such
men As Pirithous and Dryas, shepherd of the people, And Caeneus and Exadius, and god-like Polyphemus, And Theseus, son of Aegeus, like to the immortals. (86) |
XXX.[1] Next Polygnotus has
painted the daughters of Pandareos (87). Homer, in a speech
of Penelope, says that the parents of the damsels perished by
the wrath of the gods, and that the orphan girls were brought
up by Aphrodite, and received gifts from other goddesses,
from Hera wisdom and beauty, from Artemis tall stature, and
from Athena instruction in women's work.
[2] But Aphrodite (he goes on)
went up to heaven to obtain a happy marriage for the girls
from Zeus, and in her absence they were snatched away by the
Harpies, and by them given over to the Furies. Such is
Homer's account of them. Polygnotus has painted the damsels
crowned with flowers and playing at dice : their names are
Camiro and Clytie. You must know that Pandareos was a native
of Miletus in Crete (88), and that he was an
accomplice in Tantalus' theft (89) and in the stratagem
of the oath.
[3] After the daughters of
Pandareos there is Antilochus, with one foot on a rock and
his face and head resting on both his hands (90). After Antilochus
there is Agamemnon leaning on his sceptre, which is under his
left armpit, while he holds up a rod in his hands.
Protesilaus is looking at Achilles, who is seated. Such is
the attitude of Protesilaus. Above Achilles is Patroclus
standing.
[4] All these except Agamemnon
are beardless. Above them is Phocus, depicted as a lad, and
Iaseus, the latter well bearded. Iaseus is represented taking
a ring off the left hand of Phocus, which is explained by the
following legend. When Phocus, son of Aeacus, crossed from
Aegina (91) to
what is now called Phocis, and was desirous of acquiring
sovereignty over the people of that part of the mainland, and
of settling there himself, Iaseus struck up a fast friendship
with him, and gave him amongst other presents a signet-stone
set in gold ; but when Phocus returned to Aegina not long
afterwards, Peleus immediately plotted his death. Therefore,
in memory of that friendship Iaseus is represented wishing to
look at the signet, and Phocus is allowing him to take
it.
[5] Above them is Maera
(92) seated on a
rock. In the Returns it is said that she died a maid,
and was a daughter of Proetus, son of Thersander, who was a
son of Sisyphus. Next to Maera is Actaeon, son of Aristaeus,
with his mother : they hold a fawn in their arms, and are
seated on a deer-skin. A hound is stretched at their side in
token of the life that Actaeon led and the death he
died.
[6] Casting your eye back again
to the lower part of the picture you perceive, next to
Patroclus, Orpheus (93) seated as it were on
a sort of hill. With his left hand he grasps the lute, while
with his other hand he touches some willow-branches (94) , and he is leaning
against the tree. The grove seems to be the grove of
Proserpine (Od. X, 509, sqq), where, as Homer thinks,
black poplars and willows grow. The aspect of Orpheus is
Greek : neither his dress nor head-covering is Thracian. On
the other side of the willow leans Promedon.
[7] Some think that the name Promedon was invented by
Polygnotus by a sort of poetical fiction; but others say'
that he was a Greek with a love for music, and especially for
the singing of Orpheus.
[8] At this part of the
painting is Schedius, who led the Phocians to Troy (95) . After him is Pelias
seated on a chair, with hoary beard and head : he is looking
at Orpheus. Schedius holds a dagger in his hand, and is
crowned with grass. Near Pelias sits Thamyris with his
sightless eyes (96) and lowly mien : long
are his locks and long, too, his beard : at his feet is flung
a lyre, its sides and strings broken.
[9] Above him is Marsyas seated
on a rock (97) ,
and beside Marsyas is Olympus in the likeness of a blooming
boy learning to play the flute. The Phrygians of Celaenae
maintain that the river which flows through their city was
once the famous flute-player, and that the Mother's Air on
the flute was composed by Marsyas. They say, too, that they
repulsed the Gallic army by the help of Marsyas, who defended
them against the barbarians by the water of the river and by
the music of his flutes.
XXXI. [1] If you look back to
the upper part of the picture you see that next to Actaeon
are Ajax of Salamis, Palamedes, and Thersites, amusing
themselves with dice (98) , the invention of
Palamedes. The other Ajax is looking at them as they play.
The complexion of the latter Ajax is like that of a castaway
(99) , the brine
forming a scurf on his skin. Polygnotus has purposely grouped
together the enemies of Ulysses.
[2] Ajax, son of Oileus, bore
Ulysses a grudge, because Ulysses advised the Greeks to stone
him (100) for his
outrage on Cassandra ; and Palamedes, as I have read in the
epic called the Cypria, was drowned by Ulysses and Diomede
when he went out a-fishing.
[3] Meleager, son of Oeneus, is
higher up in the painting than Ajax, son of Oileus, and
appears to be looking at Ajax. All these except Palamedes are
bearded. 2. As to the death of Meleager, Homer says that the
Fury hearkened to the curses of Althaea (101), and that was the
cause of Meleager's death. But the poem called the
Eoeae and the Minyad agree in saying that
Apollo helped the Curetes against the Aetolians, and that
Meleager was slain by him.
[4] The legend of the
fire-brand (102),
how the brand was given by the Fates to Althaea, and Meleager
was not to die till the brand was consumed by fire, and how
Althaea in a rage burnt it — this legend was first
dramatised by Phrynichus, son of Polyphradmon, in his play of
The Pleuronian Women :
For chilly doom
He did not escape, but a swift flame consumed him
While the brand was being destroyed by his grim mischievous
mother.
But Phrynichus, as we see, has not worked out the story in
detail, as an author would do with a creation of his own : he
has merely touched on it as a story already famous all over
Greece.
[5] In the lower part of the
picture, after the Thracian Thamyris, is Hector seated : his
hands are clasped round his left knee (103), and his attitude
speaks of sorrow. After him is Memnon seated on a rock, and
Sarpedon next to Memnon : Sarpedon's face is buried in his
hands, and one of Memnon's hands is laid on Sarpedon's
shoulder.
[6] All are bearded. On
Memnon's cloak are wrought birds, called Memnonides. The
people of the Hellespont say that every year on certain days
these birds go to Memnon's grave (104), and where the tomb
is bare of trees and grass the birds sweep it and sprinkle it
with their wings which are wet with the water of the
Aesepus.
[7] Beside Memnon stands a
naked Ethiopian boy, because Memnon was king of the Ethiopian
race. However, he came to Ilium, not from Ethiopia, but from
Susa in Persia (105), and from the river
Choaspes, having subjugated all the intervening nations. The
Phrygians still show the road (106) by which he led his
army, choosing the short cuts : there are halting-places at
intervals along the road.
[8] Above Sarpedon and Memnon
is Paris, beardless as yet : he is clapping his hands
(107) just as a
churl might do ; you would say that he was calling
Penthesilea to himself by the noise. Penthesilea is there
also, looking at him ; but by the toss of her head she seems
to disdain him and hold him of no account. She is depicted as
a maiden armed with a bow of the Scythian sort, and with a
leopard's skin on her shoulders.
[9] The women above Penthesilea
are carrying water in broken pitchers (108). One of them is
represented in the bloom of youth, the other advanced in
years. Neither of them has a separate inscription, but an
inscription common to them both sets forth that they are of
the uninitiated.
[10] Higher up than these
women is Callisto, daughter of Lycaon, also Nomia, and Pero,
daughter of Neleus : it was as the price of Pero's hand that
Neleus demanded the kine of Iphiclus (Od. XI, 287
sqq). Callisto has a bearskin for a mat (109), and her feet rest
on the knees of Nomia. I have already mentioned the statement
of the Arcadians that Nomia is one of their local nymphs
(110). The poets
say that the nymphs live a great many years (111), but are not quite
beyond the pale of mortality. After Callisto and the women
with her is the outline of a cliff, and Sisyphus, son of
Aeolus, is struggling to shove the stone up the cliff
(112).
[11] In the picture you may
also see a wine-jar, and an elderly man, a boy, and two women
: one of the women is young, and is under the rock ; the
other is beside the elderly man, and is, like him, elderly.
All the others are carrying water, but the old dame's pitcher
appears to be broken : all the water that is left in the
potsherd she is pouring into the wine-jar. We inferred that
these perlons also were of the number of those who held the
Eleusinian rites of no account. For the Greeks of an earlier
age esteemed the Eleusinian mysteries as much superior to all
other religious exercises, as they esteemed gods superior to
heroes.
[12] Under this wine-jar is
Tantalus suffering all the torments that Homer has described
(Od. XI, 582, sqq), and added to them all is the
terror inspired by the stone hung over him (113). Clearly Polygnotus
has followed Archilochus' account ; but whether Archilochus
borrowed the incident of the stone or invented it himself, I
do not know. So varied and beautiful is the painting of the
Thasian artist.
XXXII.[1] Abutting on the
sacred close is a theatre (114) which is worth
seeing. Ascending from the close... And here there is an
image of Dionysus, an offering of the Cnidians. There is a
stadium in the highest part of the city (115) : it was made of
the common stone of Parnassus, until Herodes the Athenian
rebuilt it of Pentelic marble. Such were the notable objects
left at Delphi in my time.
Translated with a commentary by J.G. Frazer - Macmillan and co, London (1913)
NOTES
(1) A building with
paintings by Polygnotus. Plutarch has laid the scene of
one of his dialogues (De defectu oraculorum) in this
building. He says (ch. 6) : «Advancing from the temple
we reached the doors of the Cnidian club-house. So we entered
and saw the friends of whom we were in search seated and
awaiting us». Pliny mentions the paintings of
Polygnotus at Delphi, but seems to suppose that they were in
a temple (Nat. hist. XXXV. 59). Of the two series of
paintings in the club-house, the one which represented Troy
after its capture seems to have been especially famous : it
is mentioned by Philostratus (Vit. Apollon. VI. 11.
64) and by a scholiast on Plato (Gorgias, p. 448 b).
Lucian refers to the graceful eyebrows and rosy checks of
Cassandra in this picture (Imagines, 7). In the time
of Pausanias the pictures were already between four and five
hundred years old, and they seem to have survived for at
least two centuries more, for they are mentioned with
admiration by the rhetorician Themistius, who lived in the
fourth century of our era (Or. XXXIV. II).
The scanty remains of the club-house (Lesche) which
contained these famous paintings were excavated by the French
in recent years. Although the building was completely
excavated in 1895, when I visited it under Mr. Homolle's
guidance, no account of it, so far as I know, has up to the
present time (November 1897) been published by the French
archaeologists. Little more than a bare mention of the
discovery has appeared in the learned journals
(Athenaeum, 7th December 1895, p. 800 ;
Archäologischer Anzeiger, 1896, p. 73). To my
great regret, therefore, I can offer the reader only a few
jottings on this interesting monument. They are taken partly
from my own journal, partly from the notes furnished to me by
Mr. Cecil Smith.
The Lesche is situated, in accordance with the description of
Pausanias, higher up the hill than the spring Cassotis, a few
steps to the cast of the theatre. It was built on a terrace,
which is supported on the south by a high retaining-wall. A
marble slab in this wall bears an inscription :
 |
«The Cnidian people (dedicated) the supporting-wall
to Apollo». From the style of the letters the
inscription seems to date from the third century B.c. On the
terrace supported by this wall stood the Lesche, building of
no great size, with its long axis lying east and west. At the
time of my last visit to Delphi (October 1895) Mr. Homolle
explained to me that he believed the Lesche to have been a
quadrangular and oblong building with a door in cach of the
two short sides. The paintings, in his opinion, probably
occupied the two short walls as well as the long north and
south walls. Now, however, as I learn from Mr. Cecil Smith,
the building is believed to have been a colonnade open on
three sides, with columns in front and the paintings of
Polygnotus occupying only the long back wall. Considerable
remains of this back wall exist ; and in my journal I find it
noted that a small piece of the south wall and, to the best
of my recollection (I was not allowed to make notes on the
spot), a piece of the east wall also are preserved. But if
the building was a colonnade open on three sides, it can
hardly have had walls on the south and east. Towards the
eastern end of the building, there are four foundations of
columns placed so as to form a square (::). This perhaps
points to the existence of a double row of columns running
along the whole length of the building. On the face of the
back wall, close to the ground, are some romains of stucco
painted with a bright blue pigment. This is all that remains
of the paintings of Polygnotus. Behind the wall and separated
from it by a channel about 18 inches wide rises a
retaining-wall which supported an upper terrace. The interval
between the back-wall of the Lesche and the terrace-wall
behind it was no doubt left on purpose to prevent the clamp
from percolating through and injuring the pictures.
Apparently the pavement of the Lesche was, like the lower
part of the back wall, coloured blue.
For our knowledge of the paintings we are indebted to the
minute account of them given by Pausanias (X. 25-31). So full
and precise is his description that not a few attempts have
been made in modern times to reconstruct the pictures from
it. The first of these attempts was made by the Comte de
Caylus in 1757, and the latest by Dr. Paul Weizsäcker in
1895. Amongst the others may be mentioned those by the
brothers Riepenhausen in 1805 and again in 1826, of Mr. W.
Watkiss Lloyd in 1851, of Prof. O. Benndorf in 1887, and of
Prof. C. Robert in 1892 and 1893, who has accompanied his
reconstructions with elaborate commentaries. Of these various
restorations the most artistically beautiful are those which
were drawn by Mr. Hermann Schenck for Prof. Robert. They are
here reproduced (pl. VI. VII.). Some exceptions may be taken
to them in detail, but on the whole they probably give a
fairly correct idea of the composition and general effect of
the pictures.
The arrangement of some of the figures above others, for
which we have the authority of Pausanias, is probably to be
explained, with Lessing (Laokoon, XIX) and Messrs.
Weizsäcker and Schreiber, simply by the artist's
ignorance of the laws of perspective rather than, with Prof.
Robert, by supposing the figures to be placed one above the
other on sloping ground. Some have held that the figures were
disposed in regular horizontal bands, one above the other,
but a better artistic effect is certainly produced by
grouping them freely at various levels, as both Prof. Robert
and Dr. Weizsäcker have done. This arrangement is
supported by the analogy of many ancient vase-paintings,
which taken along with Pausanias's description supply the
most trustworthy materials for a reconstruction of the
paintings in the Lesche. Probably many ancient vase-painters
were influenced directly or indirectly by the pictures of
Polygnotus, and it is quite possible that in some extant
vasepaintings we possess imitations, more or less free, of
certain masterpieces of the great painter. We have seen
indubitable evidence that a famous work of art like the Chest
of Cypselus at Olympia sometimes furnished subjects to the
vase-painter (vol. 4. pp. 608 sqq., 613) ; and if the
Chest of Cypselus, why not the stiil more celebrated works of
Polygnotus ?
Much difference of opinion has prevailed as to the shape of
the Lesche and the disposition of the paintings on its walls.
From Pausanias we learn that the pictures fell into two great
sets, one representing Troy after its capture, the other
Ulysses in hell : the first was on the spectator's right as
he entered the building, the second was on his left (Paus. X.
25. 2, X. 28. 1). Hence it may fairly be inferred either that
the two sets of pictures were on opposite walls of a
quadrangular building, or that they were on the same wall but
divided from each other by a doorway. In the former case the
paintings probably occupied the two long sides of the
building, while the doorway was in one of the two short
sides. In the latter case the building was probably in the
form of a colonnade with one or three sides open and the
doorway in the middle of the back wall. On the whole,
archaeologists who have discussed the problem have declared
themselves, with some minor differences of opinion as to
details, in favour of one or other of these two solutions.
The Riepenhausens, Letronne, Otto Jahn, Ch. Lenormant, and
Prof. C. Robert decided for the quadrangular building with
the pictures on the opposite walls : Ruhl, Schubart, Prof.
Michaelis, Mr. P. Girard, Dr. Weizscker, and Dr. Th.
Schreiber decided for the colonnade with both pictures on the
back wall. The recent excavation of the ruined Lesche would
seem to show that the latter were right. But pending an exact
and authoritative description of the remains that have been
found it might still be premature to award judgment in this
long debate. We have seen that as late as 1895, after the
excavation of the Lesche, Mr. Homolle was inclined to favour
the quadrangular building.
When we learn the exact shape and dimensions of the Lesche,
we shall be able by comparing them with Pausanias's
description to estimate approximately the scale of the
figures in the paintings and so to decide the question, which
has lately been discussed by Prof. Robert and Dr.
Schöne, whether they were life-size or not. That they
were life-size is denied by Dr. Schöne and affirmed by
Prof. Robert (Die Marathonschlacht in der Poikile, p.
82 sqq.), who bases his opinion chiefly on an ambiguous
passage of Aelian (Var. hist. IV. 3) which may perhaps
be translated thus : «Polygnotus painted large figures
and earned his prizes by life-size pictures»
(egraphe ta megala kai en tois teleiois eirgazeto ta
athla). This translation of the adjective teleios
Prof. Robert defends by comparing the expression
eikôn graptê teleia which occurs in two
inscriptions (C. I. G. Nos. 3068, 3085) and the expression
pinax teleios gegrammenos which occurs in the Lives
of the Ten Orators (p. 843 e) attributed to Plutarch.
However this verbal question may be settled, the scale of the
pictures in the Lesche will be determined within certain
limits as soon as the measurements of the building are made
public. Speaking from impression (I was not allowed to take
measurements) I should say that the building is too small to
allow us to suppose that the figures were life-size.
[Since writing as above I have obtained, through Mr.
Homolle's courtesy, a copy of part of the Bulletin de
Corresp. hellenique for 1896 in which (pp. 633-639) the
remains of the Lesche are described and discussed. The
description reached me too late to allow me to modify the
text in accordance with it, the volume having been already
set up in pages. But see below, p. 635 sq.]
The further question discussed by Prof. Robert and Dr.
Schöne whether Polygnotus painted directly on a marble
wall or on stucco has been definitely decided in favour of
Dr. Schöne and stucco by the remains of blue-painted
stucco on the wall of the Lesche. It is due to Prof. Robert
to add that in deference to the objections urged by his
adversary he afterwards inclined with some hesitation to
discard marble for stucco (Die Marathonschlacht in der
Poikile, p. 104).
With regard to the date of the paintings it has been commonly
supposed that they must have been executed before 467 B.C.,
since the couplet attached to the pictures (Paus. X. 27. 4
note) is ascribed to Simonides, who died in that year. This
argument would have to be abandoned if with Prof. Robert and
Prof. Hauvette (De l'authenticité des
épigrammes de Simonide (Paris, 1896), p. 138) we
believed the verses not to be by Simonides. But the reasons
for this scepticism seem wholly insufficient to counterweigh
the express testimony not only of Pausanias but of the
compiler of the Palatine Anthology (IX. 700) as to the
authorship of the epigram. It seems safer therefore to
acquiesce in that testimony and to believe accordingly that
one or both the pictures in the Lesche were painted in the
lifetime of Simonides. Prof. Robert believes that a surer
clue to the date of the paintings is furnished by observing
that of the four Theban ladies whom, according to Homer
(Od. XI. 26o-28o), Ulysses saw in hell, only one was
depicted in the lower world by Polygnotus (X. 29. 7). The
omission of the other three was intended, Prof. Robert
thinks, as a deliberate slight to the Thebans, and the
picture must accordingly have been painted between 458 and
447 B.C., when the Phocians, the bitter enemies of Thebes,
were in possession of Delphi. Without going so far as to
reverse the argument and affirm that the omission of the
ladies from the picture of hell may have been meant as a
delicate compliment to Thebes, I find Prof. Robert's
reasoning in the highest degree improbable. If three of the
four women were left out for the reason supposed, why was the
fourth inserted ? If the painter put her in before the
Phocians had time to stop him, surely it would have been easy
for them to take her out again with the help of a brush and a
little paint or whitewash. But to discuss such possibilities
is futile.
[See F. S. C. Koenig, De Pausaniae fide et auctoritate
(Berlin, 1832), p. 46 sqq. ; K. O. Müller, Kleine
deutsche Schriften, 2. pp. 398-404 ; Otto Jahn,
«Die Gemälde des Polygnotus in der Lesche zu
Delphi», Kieler philologische Studien (Kiel,
1841), pp. 81-154 ; F. G. Welcker, «Die Composition der
polygnotischen Gemälde in der Lesche zu Delphi¹,
Philolog. und histor. Abhandlungen d. kön. Akad. d.
Wissen. zu Berlin, 1847, pp. 81-151 ; J. Overbeck,
«Antepicritische Betrachtungen über die
polygnotischen Gemälde in der Lesche zu Delphi»,
Rheinisches Museum, N. F. 7 (1850), pp. 419-454 ; W.
Watkiss Lloyd, «On the paintings by Polygnotus in the
Lesche at Delphi», The Museum of Classical
Antiquities, 1 (1851), pp. 44-77, 103-130 ; ib. «On
the plan and disposition of the Greek Lesche», by the
Editor, pp. 78-86 ; L. Ruhl und J. H. C. Schubart,
«Glossen zur Beschreibung des Polygnotischen Gemildes
in der Lesche zu Delphi bei Pausanias», Zeitschrift
für die Alterthumswissenschaft, 13 (1855), Nos.
49-52 ; ib. 14 (1856), Nos. 38-42 ; C. Bursian, in
Fleckeisen's Jahrbücher, 2 (x856), p. 517 sqq. ;
Ch. Lenormant, Mémoire sur les peintures que
Polygnote avait exécutées dans la Lesche de
Delphes (Bruxelles, 1864) ; H. Blümner, «Die
Polygnotischen Gemälde in der Lesche zu Delphi»,
Rheinisches Museum, N. F. 26 (1871), pp. 354-369 ; J.
H. C. Schubart, in Fleckeisen's Jahrbücher, 18
(1872), pp. 173-178 ; W. Gebhardt, «Die polygnotischen
Leschebilder», Fleckeisen's Jahrbücher, 19
(1873), pp. 815-820 ; Miss J. F. Harrison, Myths of the
Odyssey, pp. 118-134 ; Wiener Vorlegeblätter
für Kunstübungen, 1888 (Wien, 1889), Tafeln x.,
xi., xii. ; A. S. Murray, Handbook of Greek
Archaeology, p. 361 sqq. ; P. Girard, La peinture
antique, pp. 157-165 ; C. Robert, Die Nekyia des
Polygnot, Hallisches Winckelmannsprogramm (Halle a/S,
1892) ; id., Die Iliupersis des Polygnot, Hallisches
Winckelmannsprogramm (Halle a/S, 1893) ; id., Die
Marathonschlacht in der Poikile und Weiteres über
Polygnot, Hallisches Winckelmannsprogramm (Halle a/S,
1895) ; R. Schöne, «Zu Polygnots delphischen
Bildem», Jahrbuch d. arch. Inst. 8 (1893), pp.
187-217 ; Th. Schreiber, «Die Nekyia des Polygnot in
Delphi», Festschrift für J. Overbeck
(Leipzig, 1893), pp. 184-206 ; id., «Die Wandbilder des
Polygnot in der Halle der Knidier zu Delphi»,
Abhandlungen der philolog. histor. Classe der könig.
sächs. Gesell. der Wissenschaften, 17 (1897), No. 6,
pp. 1-178 ; P. Weizsäcker, Polygnot's Gemälde in
der Lesche der Knidier in Delphi (Stuttgart, 1895).
The restorations of the pictures by the Comte de Caylus, W.
K. F. Siebelis, the Riepenhausens, F. G. Welcker, W. Watkiss
Lloyd, and W. Gebhardt are republished in a convenient form
in the Wiener Vorlegeblätter far
Kunstübungen, 1888 (cited above), which also
contains a reconstruction drawn by L. Michalek for Prof. O.
Benndorf.]
(2) Ilium after its
capture. As to representations of the sack of Troy in
existing works of ancient art, especially vase-paintings, see
H. Heydemann, Iliupersis auf einer Trinkschale des
Brygos (Berlin, 1866) ; C. Robert, Bild und Lied,
p. 59 sqq. ; A. Schneider, Der troische Sagenkreis in der
ältesten griechischen Kunst, p. 168 sqq. ; W. Klein,
Euphronios, p. 159 sqq. ; Baumeister's
Denkmäler, s.v. «Iliupersis». Among
the most notable of such representations is a fragmentary
marble relief, known as the Tabula Iliaca, which is
preserved in the Capitoline Museum at Rome. It seems to date
from about the first century A.D., and represents a great
variety of scenes from the Trojan legends. It professes to be
based on the Iliad of Homer, the Sack of Ilium
of Stesichorus, the Aethiopis of Arctinus, and the
Little Iliad of Lesches. From fragments of similar
reliefs which have been discovered we may infer that tablets
of this sort, illustrating the legends of the siege of Troy,
were manufactured wholesale, probably for use in schools.
These reliefs have been published with an elaborate
commentary by Otto Jahn and Ad. Michaelis. See their work
Griechische Bilderchroniken (Bonn, 1873) ;
Baumeister's Denkmäler, p. 716 sqq. ; A.
Brüning, «Über die bildlichen Vorlagen der
ilischen Tafeln», Jahrbuch d. archäolog.
Instituts, 9 (1894), pp. 136-165. With regard to the
poetical sources from which Polygnotus may be supposed to
have drawn some at least of the scenes in his great tableau,
Mr. F. Noack has argued at length that the painter borrowed
everything except some names from the epic known as the
Little Iliad, particularly from that part of it which
Pausanias cites (X. 25. 5 note) under the title of The
Sack of Ilium and attributes to Lesches. See F. Noack,
Iliupersis : de Euripidis et Polygnoti quae ad Trojae
excidium spectant fabulis (Gissae, 189o), pp. 45-74 Prof.
C. Robert, while he admits that Polygnotus drew on this poem,
holds that the painter's chief poetical authority was the
epic poem of the same title (The Sack of Ilium) which
Proclus ascribes to Arctinus (Epicorum Graecorum
fragmenta, ed. Kinkel, p. 49). See C. Robert, Die
Iliupersis des Polygnot, PP. 74-80.
(3) Echoeax. His name
means «holding the tiller». Hence Prof. C. Robert
conjectures that the name really applied to a figure seated
at the helm in the ship, and not to the man going down the
gangway (Die Iliupersis des Polygnot, p. 56
sq.).
(4) Menelaus' hut.
The Greek word here translated «hut»
(skênê) may also mean «tent» ;
and though the dwellings of the Homeric warriors were perhaps
huts rather than tents, Polygnotus may have preferred to
represent them, in accordance with the usage of his own time,
as tents. On red-figured vases and in Pompeian paintings the
abodes of the Homeric heroes in the field are regularly
represented as pavilions supported on round poles (C. Robert,
Die Iliupersis des Polygnot, P. 39).
(5) The only figure whose
name Polygnotus has taken from the Odyssey. The name of
Amphialus also occurs in the Odyssey (VIII. 114, 128),
though not as the name of one of Menelaus's companions.
(6) Briseis - Diomeda -
Iphis. These were female slaves of Achilles (Homer,
Il. I. 184, IX. 664 sqq.). After his death they may
have passed into the possession of his son Neoptolemus. Cp.
C. Robert, Die Iliupersis des Polygnot, p. 57.
(7) Helen herself is
seated etc. Prof. C. Robert compares a scene on a fine
Attic vase now in the Hermitage Museum at St. Petersburg. It
represents the wooing of Helen by Paris. The Grecian beauty
appears seated among her maidens while Paris, in Phrygian
costume, approaches and greets her. See Compte Rendu
(St. Petersburg) for 1861, Atlas, pl. V with Stephani's
remarks, p. 115 sqq. The scene of course differs from that
depicted in Polygnotus's picture, but possibly there are
traces of that picture in the attitude of Helen and her
handmaids. Prof. Robert inclines, however, to think that the
vasepainter stood directly under the influence of Zeuxis
rather than of Polygnotus. See C. Robert, Die Iliupersis
des Polygnot, pp. 34-36.
(8) Eurybates Ulysses'
herald, though he had no beard. In the Odyssey
(XIX. 244 sqq.) Homer describes Eurybates, the herald of
Ulysses, as older than his master and with a great shock of
hair on his head. Hence the surprise of Pausanias that in the
picture Eurybates appeared as youthful and beardless.
Eurybates is mentioned as the herald of Ulysses in the
Iliad also (II. 184). But Agamemnon had a herald of
the same name (Il. I. 320) ; and it is probable that
he rather than the herald of Ulysses was represented by
Polygnotus, since we know from Pausanias himself (below
§ 8) that Eurybates was sent by Agamemnon, not by
Ulysses, to Helen.
(9) Different from the
names in the Iliad etc. See Iliad, III. 143 sq.,
where Helen's handmaidens are called Aethra and Clymene. As
to Aethra, see § 8 note ; as to Clymene see note on X.
26. 1.
(10) A man in an attitude
of profound dejection etc. It is said that after Paris's
death, the soothsayer Helenus and his brother Deiphobus
quarrelled for the hand of Helen. Deiphobus was successful,
and Helenus, mortified at his failure, withdrew from Troy to
Mt. Ida. Here he was captured by the Greeks and was induced
or compelled to reveal to them the means by which Troy could
be taken. See Apollodorus, ed. R. Wagner, p. 206 ; Conon,
Narrationes, 34 ; Servius on Virgil, Aen. II.
166 ; Sophocles, Philoctetes, 604 sqq. ; Quintus
Smyrnaeus, Posthomerica, X. 344 sqq. ; Dio Chrysostom,
Or. LIX. vol. 2. p. 187 ed. Dindorf. Hence Polygnotus
appropriately depicted Helenus seated in the midst of the
ruin of his native city overwhelmed with grief and remorse.
The story of the capture and prophecy of Helenus was told by
Lesches in the Little Iliad, from which Sophocles may
have borrowed it (Epicorum Graecorum fragmenta, ed.
Kinkel, p. 36).
(11) Lescheos of Pyrrha
— in his poem, The Sack of Ilium. This poem is
repeatedly referred to by Pausanias in the sequel
(§§ 6, 8, 9 ; X. 26. 1, 4, 8 ; X. 27. 1, 2). It is
commonly supposed that the Sack of Ilium which
Pausanias attributes to Lesches was not a separate poem but
merely a part of the Little Iliad (D. B. Monro, in
Journal of Hellenic Studies, 4 (1883), p. 317 sq. ;
Fr. Noack, Iliupersis, p. 45 sq. as to the Little
Iliad see note on X. 26. 2). That the Little Iliad
included a description of the sack of Troy is proved by the
testimony of Aristotle (Poetics, 23, p. 1459 b 4
sqq.), though Proclus in his summary of the poem makes it end
with the introduction of the Wooden Horse into Troy
(Epicorum Graecorum fragmenta, ed. Kinkel, p. 37). But
against the identification of the Sack of Ilium by
Lesches with part of the Little Iliad it must be
observed that Pausanias certainly seems to have regarded the
two poems as distinct ; for whereas he assigns the former
poem to Lesches, he apparently considered that the author of
the Little Iliad was unknown (III. 26. 9 ; X. 26. 2).
That Pausanias distinguished between the two poems has been
recognised by Prof. von Wilamowitz-Müllendorff
(Homerische Untersuchungen, p. 342). Prof. C. Robert's
attempt to prove that Pausanias regarded the Sack of
Ilium by Lesches as part of the Little Iliad is
unconvincing («Homerische Becher», 50tes
Programm zum Winckelmannsfeste, Berlin 1890, p. 64 sqq.).
The name of the poet whom Pausanias always calls Lescheos
appears as Lesches on the Tabula Iliaca (Baumeister's
Denkmäler, pl. XIII) and on an ancient vase (C.
Robert, «Homerische Becher», p. 33). The form
Lesches is commonly regarded as the correct one, but the form
Lescheos is defended by Mr. O. Immisch
(«Lescheos-Lesches», Rheinisches Museum,
N. F. 48 (1893), pp. 290-298), whose view is, however,
combated by Mr. W. Schmid (ib. pp. 626-628) and rejected by
Prof. C. Robert (Die Iliupersis des Polygnot, p. 74
note 13).
(12) Demophon, one of the
sons of Theseus. His mother was Phaedra (Apollodorus, ed.
R. Wagner, p. 179 sq.) or, according to Pindar, Antiope
(Plutarch, Theseus, 28).
(13) Theseus had also a
son Melanippus etc. Pausanias implies, though he does not
say directly, that Melanippus was depicted along with
Demophon meditating the rescue of his grandmother Aethra. The
descendants of Melanippus, named Ioxids, are said to have
revered asparagus because their ancestress Periguna, daughter
of Sinis, took refuge in a bed of asparagus from the pursuit
of Theseus (Plutarch, Theseus, 8).
(14) As to Aethra,
Lescheos says etc. It is said that Aethra, the mother of
Theseus, having been captured by the Dioscuri at Aphidna
(Paus. V. 19. 3 note), was given by them as a handmaid to
Helen whom she followed to Troy (Homer, Il. III. 143
sq. ; Dio Chrysostom, Or. XI. vol. 1. p. 184 ed.
Dindorf). The story of her release from captivity after the
taking of Troy seems to have been told in somewhat different
forms. One version, here given by Pausanias on the authority
of Lesches, appears to have been followed by the poet
Lysimachus (Schol. on Euripides, Troades, 31) and
Dionysius, author of the prose Cycle (Schol. on Euripides,
Hecuba, 123 ; Frag. Hist. Graec. ed.
Müller, 4. p. 653). The other version was that during
the sack of Troy her two grandsons Demophon and Acamas, the
sons of Theseus, found and rescued Aethra without,
apparently, having to beg for her release from Helen and the
Greek leaders. This latter version was seemingly followed by
Arctinus in his Sack of Ilium (Epicorum Graecorum
fragmenta, ed. Kinkel, p, 50), Quintus Smyrnaeus
(Posthomerica, XIII. 496-543), and Apollodorus (p. 211
cd. Wagner). It would appear to have been also adopted by
Stesichorus ; at least in the Tabula Iliaca (see note
on § 2), which in so far as it represents the capture of
Troy is professedly based on Stesichorus's poem the Sack
of Ilium, we see Aethra within the walls of Troy being
hurried away by her two grandsons amid scenes of slaughter
and flight. The same version of the story is depicted on
redfigured vases, of which one is in the British Museum
(Catalogue of Greek and Etruscan Vases in the British
Museum, vol. 3, Vases of the finest period, by
Cecil H. Smith, No. 458, p. 281). See H. Heydemann,
Iliupersis, p. 21 sq. ; A. Michaelis, in Annali
dell' Inst. di Corrisp. Archeol. 52 (1880), pp. 32-40 ;
O. Jahn, Griechische Bilderchroniken, p. 34 ;
Baumeister's Denkmäler, fig. 775, Tafel XIII,
fig. 795. Tafel XIV., pp. 743, 748 ; Müller-Wieseler,
Denkmäler, 1. pl. XLIII. No. 202 ; C. Robert,
Bild und Lied, pp. 72 sq., 75 sq.
(15) This child, says
Lescheos, was killed etc. The verses in which Lesches
describes the murder of the infant Astyanax, son of Hector
and Andromache, by Neoptolemus are preserved by Tzetzes
(Schol. on Lycophron, 1263 ; Epicorum Graecorum
fragmenta, ed. Kinkel, p. 46). Their substance is
correctly given by Pausanias. According to another version of
the legend the murderer of the child was not Neoptolemus but
Ulysses. This latter is the version followed by Arctinus in
his poem the Sack of Troy (Epicorum Graecorum
fragmenta, ed. Kinkel, p. 50), by Tryphiodorus
(Excidium Ilii, 644-646), and by Tzetzes
(Posthomerica, 734). Euripides represents the death of
Astyanax as resolved upon by the Greeks in solemn conclave,
the chief advocate of the deed being Ulysses (Troades,
704 sqq.). According to Seneca (Troades, 1088 sqq.)
Ulysses was deputed to execute the doom, but the child
anticipated his fate by leaping from a tower. Quintus
Smyrnaeus (Posthomerica, XIII. 251 sq.), Apollodorus
(p. 212 ed. Wagner), and Hyginus (Fab. 109) merely say
that the child was hurled from the walls by the Greeks ; they
do not name the murderer. In the vase-paintings Neoptolemus
is depicted seizing Astyanax by the leg and preparing to
clash him to pieces against the altar at which the boy's
grandfather, Priam, has taken refuge. See H. Heydemann,
Iliupersis, pl. I. ; C. Robert, Bild und Lied,
p. 59 ; Baumeister's Denkmäler, p. 745 ;
Catalogue of the Greek and Etruscan Vases in the British
Museum, vol. 2, Black-figured Vases, by H. B.
Walters, p. 135, No. B 205. Cp. F. Noack, Iliupersis : de
Euripides et Polygnoti quae ad Trojae excidium spectant
fabulis, pp. 29-36.
(16) Her hair braided
after the manner of maidens. See note on I. 19. 1.
(17) Poets tell how
Polyxena was slain on Achilles' tomb. Among the poets who
described the sacrifice of Polyxena at the grave of Achilles
were Arctinus (Epicorum Graecorum fragmenta, ed.
Kinkel, p. 50) and Euripides (Hecuba, 109-582).
(18) At Athens I have
seen pictures etc. See I. 22. 6.
(19) A horse about to
roll on the ground. Prof. C. Robert conjectures that we
are to suppose this horse to have been ridden by Elasus and
Astynous, two of the victims of Neoptolemus (see below, X.
26. 4), and to have fallen under their weight, thus allowing
their relentless pursuer to overtake and dispatch them. He
thinks that the same subject is represented, at a somewhat
earlier stage, on two of the northern metopes of the
Parthenon. On one of the metopes (No. 29) we see two figures
riding a horse which seems about to fall, white on the metope
next to it (No. 28) appears a young warrior rushing along. If
Prof. C. Robert is right, the scene on the former metope (No.
29) represents the flight of Elasus and Astynous, and the
scene on the latter metope (No. z8) their pursuit by
Neoptolemus. See C. Robert, Die Iliupersis des
Polygnot, pp. 59-61 ; id., Die Marathonschlacht in der
Poikile, p. 124. Against this view of Prof. Robert's,
which is accepted by Mr. P. Weizsäcker (Polygnots
Gemälde, p. 26 sq.), it must be said that the horse
in the picture, to judge by Pausanias's description, had not
fallen but only seemed about to do so ; it is, therefore, a
necessary part of Prof. Robert's theory that Pausanias
mistook the attitude of the beast. A horse rolling on the
ground is depicted on a black-figured vase (Mittheil. d.
arch. Inst. in Rom, 4 (1889), pl. 7 ; the vase is B 364
in the British Museum) and is engraved on a number of ancient
gems. See O. Rossbach, in Aus der Anomia (Berlin,
1890), pp. 195-200. The painter Pauson is said to have
painted a horse in this posture (Lucian, Demosthenis
encomium, 24 ; Aelian, Var. hist. XIV. 15 ;
Plutarch, De Pythiae oraculis, 5).
(20) Clymene. In the
Iliad (III. 144) Clymene is one of the two handmaids
of Helen, the other being Aethra. It is quite possible that
in the picture she may have been represented as a Greek slave
waiting on Helen, and that Pausanias made a mistake in
classing her with the captive Trojan women. See F. Noack,
Iliupersis, p. 56 sq. ; C. Robert, Die Iliupersis
des Polygnot, p. 43 sq.
(21) Stesichorus, in his
Sack of I1ium. The representation of the sack of Ilium on
the Tabula Iliaca professes to be based on this poem
of Stesichorus. See O. Jahn, Griechische
Bilderchroniken, p. 32 sqq. Prof. Ad. Michaelis has
argued that part of an abstract of this poem is contained in
the fragments of Proclus's work in the Epic Cycle. See
Michaelis, in Jahn's Griech. Bilderchroniken, p. 95
sqq. ; id., in Hermes, 14 (1879), pp. 481-498.
(22) In the Returns.
We must distinguish this poem of Stesichorus from the epic of
the same name which was ascribed to Agias (or Hagias) of
Troezen. See note on X. 28. 7. Cp. Poetae Lyrici
Graeci, ed. Bergk,3 3. p. 983.
(23) Touching Creusa,
they say that the Mother of the Gods etc. Virgil makes
Creusa say (Aen. 785 sqq.) that she will not be
carried captive into Greece, because the Mother of the Gods
detains her in Asia. Mr. D. B. Monro thinks that the story of
Creusa was told in Arctinus's poem the Sack of Ilium
(which is to be distinguished from the two poems of the same
name by Stesichorus and Lesches). See Journal of Hellenic
Studies, 5 (1884), p. 30 sq.
(24) The epic called the
Cypria. The poem called the Cypria or
Cypriaca, an epic in eleven books, was variously
ascribed to Stasinus of Cyprus, Hegesinus of Salamis,
Hegesias, and Homer (Photius, Bibliotheca, p. 319 ed.
Bekker ; Athenaeus, XVI. p. 682 d e). Herodotus explicitly
denied (II. 117) that the poem was by Homer ; and Aristotle
did so implicitly (Poetics, 23, p. 1459). The subject
of the poem was the origin and progress of the Trojan war
down to the point where the subject is taken up in the
Iliad. See Epicorum Graecorum fragmenta, ed.
Kinkel, p. 15 sqq. ; F. G. Welcker, Der epische
Cyclus, 1. p. 30o sqq. ; id., 2. p. 85 sqq. ; D. B.
Monro, in Journal of Hellenic Studies, 5 (1884), p. 2
sqq. ; W. Christ, Gesch. d. griech. Litteratur, p. 59
sq. «The Cypria was considered one of the
grandest epics of antiquity, scarcely inferior to the
Iliad and the Odyssey... It would appear that
the poem of Stasinus [the Cypria] was more popular,
had greater influence over the poets and painters of Greece,
than the poems of Homer. At least, in the poems and plays
which have come down to us the subject is oftener taken from
the Cypria than the Iliad. In the case of Greek
painted vases, whereas representations taken from the
Iliad are rare, we find very frequent paintings of the
incidents of the Cypria, such as the Judgment of
Paris, the marriage of Peleus and Thetis, or the surprise of
Troilus and Polyxena by Achilles at the well» (P.
Gardner, New Chapters in Greek History, p. 16o
sq.).
(25) The Little
Iliad. Here and in III. 26. 9 Pausanias refers to the
Little Iliad in a way which seems to imply that he
thought the author unknown. It was ascribed to Lesches by
Proclus (Epicorum Graecorum fragmenta, ed. Kinkel, p.
36), a scholiast on Aristophanes (Lysistrata, 155), a
vase painter (C. Robert, «Homerische Becher»,
5otes Programm zum Winckelmannsfeste, Berlin, 1890, p.
30 sqq.), and the sculptor of the Tabula Iliaca.
Proclus (l.c.) calls Lesches a native of Mytilene in
Lesbos ; but a scholiast on Aristophanes (l.c.) and
the sculptor of the Tabula Iliaca agree with Pausanias
(X. 25. 5) in calling Lesches a native of Pyrrha in Lesbos.
Others attributed the Little Iliad to Thestorides of
Phocaea ; others, including the historian Hellanicus, to
Cinaethon the Lacedaemonian (see II. 3. 9 note) ; others to
Diodorus of Erythrae. See Schol. on Euripides,
Troades, 822. Prof. C. Robert has argued that the
claim of Lesches to the authorship of the poem is invalidated
by the evidence of Hellanicus, who, being himself a Lesbian,
would have certainly attributed the poem to a
fellow-countryman if there had been any plausible ground for
doing so. Prof. Robert concludes that Lesches is a literary
myth concocted in the fourth century B.C. by local Lesbian
patriotism as a counterblast to the Ionic legend which
claimed the poem for Thestorides of Phocaea. See C. Robert,
Bild und Lied, p. 225 sqq. ; cp. id.,
«Homerische Becher», p. 64 sqq. Aristotle, like
Pausanias, refers to «the author of the Little
Iliad» in a way which seems to indicate that the
author's name was unknown to him (Poetics, 23, p.
1459, Berlin ed). According to Proclus's abstract of the
Little Iliad, the poem was in four books, and related
the events of the Trojan war from the award of the arms of
Achilles down to the introduction of the Wooden Horse into
Troy. But in its original form the poem must have carried the
history of the war down to the sack of Troy and the departure
of the Greeks. See Aristotle, l.c. ; Epicorum
Graecorum fragmenta, ed. Kinkel, p. 36 sqq. ; F. G.
Welcker, Der epische Cyclus, 1. p. 267 sqq. ; id., 2.
p. 237 sqq. ; D. B. Monro, in Journal of Hellenic
Studies, 4 (1883), p. 317 sq. ; id., 5 (1884), p. 18 sqq.
; W. Christ, Gesch. d. griech. Litteratur, p. 61
sq.
(26) Polypoetes, son of
Pirithous. He is repeatedly mentioned by Homer
(Il. II. 740, XII. 129, 182).
(27) Ajax taking an oath
with regard to the outrage on Cassandra. Presumably he
swore that he had not been guilty of the outrage. This
explanation, however, is too simple for Prof. C. Robert, who
conjectures (Die Iliupersis des Polygnot, p. 63 sq.)
that Ajax was swearing to atone for his sacrilege by sending
two maidens periodically to Athena at Troy. For we are told
that in expiation of the guilt of the Locrian Ajax the cities
of Locris used to send annually to Athena at Troy two maidens
whom the Trojans slew, and burning their bodies on the wood
of certain trees which bore no fruit threw the ashes into the
sea. If the maidens managed to escape, however, they took
refuge in the sanctuary of Athena, which they thenceforward
swept and washed, never quitting it except at night, and
always going barefooted, shorn, and clad in a single garment.
Probably the custom of sacrificing the maidens was sooner or
later mitigated by allowing them regularly to escape to the
sanctuary, though for form's sake a show of pursuing them was
kept up. The custom is said to have been observed for a
thousand years down to the Phocian war in the fourth century
B.C. See Strabo, XIII. p. 600 sq. ; Plutarch, De sera
numinis vindicta, 12 ; and especially Lycophron,
Cassandra, 1141 sqq., with the scholia of Tzetzes, who
refers to the historian Timaeus (Frag. Hist. Graec.
ed. Müller, vol. 1. p. 297, No. 66) as his authority.
The trial of Ajax before the Greek leaders for his outrage on
Cassandra was depicted by Polygnotus also in the Painted
Colonnade at Athens (Paus. I. 15. 2).
(28) Cassandra herself is
seated etc. Lucian especially refers to the beauty of
Cassandra's eyebrows and her rosy cheeks in this painting
(Imagines, 7).
(29) She overturned the
wooden image etc. This scene was described by Arctinus in
his epic the Sack of Ilium, and was carved on the
Chest of Cypselus at Olympia. See V. 19. 5 note.
(30) The prodigy which
appeared etc. When the Greeks were sacrificing at Aulis
before they set sail for Troy, a serpent issued from under
the altar and devoured a sparrow and eight young ones which
were perched on a neighbouring plane-tree. Having done so the
serpent was turned to stone. The seer Calchas interpreted the
prodigy to mean that the war would last nine years and that
Troy would be captured in the tenth. See Homer, Il.
II. 303-330.
(31) In a straight line
with the horse etc. This seems to mean that the following
group (Neoptolemus slaying Elasus) was on the same line with
and next to the group of Nestor and the horse (see X. 25.
11). The groups which Pausanias has describcd in the
intermediate passage (the captive Trojan women, Epeus
throwing down the walls of Troy, Polypoetes, Acamas, Ulysses,
Ajax, etc.) were on the upper line. Nestor and the horse were
on the lower line, and next to them also on the lower line
was Neoptolemus in the act of slaying Elasus. The Greek
expression which I have translated «in a straight line
with» is kat' euthu tou ippou. The same
expression is used by Pausanias elsewhere. Thus in V. 11. 3
tô men dê kat' euthu tês esodou
kanoni, «the bar which is in a straight fine with
(i.e. faces) the entrance». Again in VII. 23. 10 en
de oikêmati kateuthu tês esodou «in a
chamber in a straight fine with (i.e. facing) the
entrance». The expression has been misunderstood in
different ways by Welcker and Prof. C. Robert. Sec F. G.
Welcker, «Die Composition der polygnotischen
Gemälde», p. 101 ; O. Jahn, in Kieler
philologische Studien (Kiel, 1841), p. 93 sq. ; Overbeck,
in Rheinisches Museum, N. F. 7 (1850), p. 444 ;
Schubart, in Zeitschrift für die
Alterthumswissenschaft, 13 (1855), p. 409 sqq. ; Ch.
Lenormant, Mémoire sur les peintures, etc., p.
54 sq. ; C. Robert, Die Iliupersis des Polygnot, p.
49.
(32) Elasus -
Astynous. In the Iliad (V. 144 and XVI. 696) a
Trojan named Elasus and another named Astynous are slain by
Patroclus and Diomede respectively.
(33) The son of Achilles
is always named Neoptolemus by Homer. See Iliad,
XIX. 327, Od. XI. 506.
(34) Because Achilles
began to make war at an early age. The name Neoptolemus
(«young warrior») is explained more naturally by
Eustathius (on Homer, Il. XIX. 327, p. 1187) as
referring to the martial youth of Neoptolemus himself. A
scholiast on Homer (Il. XIX. 326) seems to take the
same view. See Critical Note on this passage, vol. I. p. 61o.
However, Pausanias's view of the origin of the name is
supported by the parallel case of Gorgophone, who was so
called because her father Perseus had slain the Gorgon (II.
21. 7).
(35) On the altar is a
bronze corselet. Prof. C. Robert suggests that we are to
suppose this corselet to have been brought by Laodice,
daughter of Priam (Il. VI. 252), to her father at the
altar where he had taken refuge, and that before Priam could
put it on he was murdered by Neoptolemus (Die Iliupersis
des Polygnot, p. 64). Virgil has described the aged king
arming his feeble body (Aen. II. 509 sqq.). In
Polygnotus's picture Laodice was portrayed standing beside
the altar (below, § 7). Prof. Robert's explanation of
the corselet on the altar is accepted by Mr. F. Noack
(Iliupersis, p. 64 sq.).
(36) They consisted of
two bronze pieces called guala. See Homer, Iliad,
V. 99, 189, XIII. 507, 587, XV. 530, XVII. 314. As to coats
of mail in the Homeric age, sec Buchholz, Die homerischen
Realien, 2. i. p. 370 sqq. ; W. Leaf, in Journal of
Hellenic Studies, 4 (1883), p. 73 sqq. ; W. Helbig,
Das homerische Epos aus den Denkmälern
erläutert, 2 p. 286 sqq. ; Baumeister's
Denkmäler, p. 2018 sq. A. Bauer, «Die
Kriegsaltertümer», in Iwan Müller's
Handbuch der klass. Altertumswissenschaft, 4. p. 235
sq. Mr. W. Reichel has adduced arguments to prove that in the
Homeric, as apparently in the Mycenaean age, coats of mail
were unknown, the want of them being supplied by the large
heavy shield which covered nearly the whole body of the
warrior, and thatwherever the mention of a cuirass or coat of
mail occurs in Homer the verse is a late interpolation. See
W. Reichel, Ueber homerische Waffen, pp. 79-111. His
views are accepted by Dr. Walter Leaf (Classical
Review, 9 (1895), p. 55 sq.).
(37) A painting by
Calliphon the Samian etc. This was doubtless Calliphon's
picture of the battle at the ships, which Pausanias has
already mentioned (V. 19. 2). Cp. H. Brunn, Gesch. d.
griech. Künstler, 2. p. 56.
(38) I do not find
Laodice in the list of captive Trojan women. According to
one story, Laodice was swallowed up by the earth at the sack
of Troy (Quintus Smyrnaeus, Posthomerica, XIII. 544
sqq. ; Tryphiodorus, Excidium Ilii, 66o sqq. ;
Tzetzes, Posthomerica, 736 ; id., Schol. on Lycophron,
497 ; Apollodorus, ed. R. Wagner, p. 212 ; Epitoma
Vaticana ex Apollodori Bibliotheca, ed. R. Wagner, pp.
69, 247 sqq.). Polygnotus depicted her also among the captive
Trojan women in the Painted Colonnade at Athens. See note on
I. 15. 2.
(39) The tale which
Euphorion tells about Laodice. The story was that Laodice
fell in love with Acamas, son of Theseus, and bore him a son
named Munitus, who was afterwards killed by a snake while he
was out hunting. This tale is told by Tzetzes, who has
preserved some of Euphorion's verses on the subject (Schol.
on Lycophron, 495), and it is told in greater detail by
Parthenius (Narrat. Amat. 16). According to a
different version of the legend the name of the child was
Munychus and his father was Demophon, another of the sons of
Theseus (Plutarch, Theseus, 34).
(40) A bronze wash-basin
on a stone stand. In Greece at the present day many
fluted pedestals of stone, about 2 feet high, may be found,
especially in or about the churches. They have sometimes
Ionic, but more commonly Doric capitals, mouldings, and
flutings. The common shape is illustrated by the annexed
cut.
«The use of these pedestals, says Leake, I conceive to
have been, that of supporting large basins for holding
lustral or sacrificial water, and many of them may have
become baptismal fonts after the conversion of Greece. That
the ancient basins are never entire is easily accounted for,
their form being so much more fiable to fracture than that of
the pedestal, which has the solidity of the column increased
by its shorter dimensions ; it is probable also that the
basin was often of metal, and therefore tempting to the
plunderer. The pedestals thus deprived of their lustral vases
now often serve to support the holy table or altar of the
church». The reason why these pedestals are now so
commonly found in Greek churches may be, as Leake suggested,
that the ancient temples to which they belonged were
converted into churches on the establishment of Christianity.
In the Museum at Sparta I remarked a number of such stands
with the top or capital complete. (In the similar pedestals
at Athens the top is often wanting.) In these tops there is a
square hole, obviously intended for fastening something,
probably a water-basin, as Leake conjectured. Indeed one of
the pedestals at Sparta actually supports a sort of
orna-mental font, which is clearly of the same workmanship as
the pedestal. This confirms Leake's conjecture as to the use
of these stands. Leake may be also right in suggesting that
the stone stand supporting the washbasin in Polygnotus's
picture may have been a pedestal of this sort. See Leake,
Morea, 1. p. 498 sq. ; id., Northern Greece, 2.
p. 302 sq. Pausanias calls the stand upostatês
and upostaton. The latter form of the name is the one
given by Pollux (X. 10. 46 ; X. 22. 79). In an Attic
inscription recording the sacred treasures of Athena and the
other gods mention is made of a golden upostaton (C.
I. A. II. No. 652 ; Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscr.
Graec. No. 366. 44) ; and in the double Sigean
inscription the pedestal which supported the bowl is called
upokrêtêrion (Ionie) and epistaton
(Attic) (C. I. G. No. 8 ; Roehl, I. G. A. No. 492 ; Loewy,
Inschriften griech. Bildhauer, No. 4 ; E. S. Roberts,
Greek Epigraphy, No. 42).
(41) Medusa. This
daughter of Priam is mentioned also by Apollodorus (III. 12.
5) and Hyginus (Fab. 90). Mr. F. Noack conjectures
that her name, as written by Polygnotus beside her figure,
was not Medusa but Melusa (Iliupersis, p. 73). The
conjecture, which seems to have nothing to recommend it, is
rejected by Prof. C. Robert (Die Iliupersis des
Polygnot, p. 65).
(42) The ode of the
Himeraean poet. The Himeraean poet is Stesichorus. His
«ode» is probably the Sack of Ilium. See
§ 1.
(43) An old woman.
Prof. C. Robert suggests that this may have been Hecuba
(Die Iliupersis des Polygnot, p. 65 sq.), and the
suggestion is approved by Mr. F. Noack (Iliupersis, p.
68 sq.).
(44) Eioneus. He is
mentioned by Homer as the father of Rhesus (Il. X.
435).
(45) Coroebus, son of
Mygdon. Coroebus is not mentioned by Homer, but Virgil
tells how he came to Troy for love of Cassandra and how at
the capture of the city he perished in the attempt to rescue
her (Aen. 341 sqq., 407 sq.). Quintus Smyrnaeus says
that Coroebus was slain by Diomede before he could enjoy the
marriage for the sake of which he had come to Troy
(Posthomerica, XIII. 168 sqq.). Mygdon, the father of
Coroebus, is mentioned by Homer (Il. III. 186).
(46) Stectorium. The
remains of Stectorium are near Ille Mesjid in the valley of
Sandykli. Among the ruins is a small theatre. Professor W. M.
Ramsay identified the site by means of an inscription in
1891. He had previously supposed the ruins to be those of
Eucarpia. See W. M. Ramsay, in Journal of Hellenic
Studies, 8 (1887), p. 476 id., Historical Geography of
Asia Minor, p. 139 ; id., in Athenaeum, 15th
August 1891, p. 234 ; American Journal of Archaeology,
7 (1891), p. 5o5.
(47) Poets have been wont
to give to the Phrygians the name of Mygdones. In a
passage of the Argonautica of Apollonius Rhodius (II.
787) the name of Mygdones was by some ancient authorities
read in place of Phrygians, according to a scholiast on the
passage. Moschus speaks of a Mygdonian flute (I. 97 sq.),
meaning a Phrygian flute. On the borders of Phrygia there was
a tribe called Mygdones and a district Mygdonia or Mygdonis
(Strabo, XII. pp. 550, 564, 575, 576 ; Pliny, Nat.
hist. V. 145 ; Stephanus Byzantius, s.v.
Mugdonia).
(48) Priam was dragged
from the altar etc. Another version of the legend was
that Priam was actually slain on the altar by Neoptolemus.
This was the version followed by Arctinus in the Sack of
Ilium, if we may trust the brief abstract of the poem by
Proclus (Epicorum Graecorum fragmenta, ed. Kinkel, p.
49). Stesichorus in his poem the Sack of Ilium seems
to have adopted the same version ; for in the Tabula
Iliaca, which in this part is professedly based on
Stesichorus's poem, Priam is seen seated on an altar in the
middle of the courtyard of his palace, while Neoptolemus
seizes him by the head with his left hand and prepares
tostabhim. See O. Jahn, Bilderchroniken, pl. I. ;
Baumeister's Denkmäler, pl. XIII. fig. 775. Later
writers seem to have followed Arctinus and Stesichorus in
representing Priam as slain at the altar. See Euripides,
Troades, 16 sq., 481 sqq. ; id., Hecuba, 23 sq.
; Quintus Smyrnaeus, XIII. 220 sqq. ; Tryphiodorus,
Excidium Ilii, 634 sq. ; Tzetzes, Posthomerica,
732 sq. ; Virgil, Aen. II. 550 sqq. ; Dictys
Cretensis, V. 12 ; Apollodorus, p. 211 ed. R. Wagner ;
Epitoma Vaticana ex Apollodori Bibliotheca, ed. R.
Wagner, pp. 69, 236 sq. ; Pausanias, IV. 17. 4 (ep. II. 24.
3). The death of Priam is the subject of vase-paintings, and
in all cases the painters appear to have followed Arctinus
and Stesichorus rather than Lesches. See H. Heydemann,
Iliupersis, pp. 15 sq., 34 ; A. Michaelis, in
Annali dell' Inst. di. Corr. Arch. 52 (1880), p. 40
sqq. ; A. Schneider, Der troische Sagenkreis, p. 169
sqq. ; Baumeister's Denkmäler, p. 745 ; E. A.
Gardner, in Journal of Hellenic Studies, 14 (1894),
pp. 170-177, with pl. IX. ; Catalogue of Greek and
Etruscan Vases in the British Museum, vol. 2 (London,
1893), Nos. B 205, B 241 ; id., vol. 4 (London, 1896), No. F
278.
(49) Agenor was butchered
by Neoptolemus. This is mentioned also by Quintus
Smyrnaeus (Posthomerica, XIII. 216 sq.).
(50) Sinon, a comrade of
Ulysses. He was a cousin of Ulysses, according to Tzetzes
(Schol. on Lycophron, 344).
(51) The house of Antenor
with a leopard's skin hung over the entrance etc. In his
play of the Locrian Ajax Sophocles mentioned that at
the sack of Troy a leopard's skin was hung up before
Antenor's door as a sign that his house was to be respected.
See Schol. on Aristophanes, Birds, 933 ; Pollux, VII.
70 ; Strabo, XIII. p. 608 ; Eustathius, on Homer, Il.
III. 207, p. 405 ; Sophocles, Frag. 16, ed. Diodorf.
The same story is told by Tzetzes (Posthomerica,
741-743). Antenor and his sons are said to have escaped to
Thrace and thence to Venetia (Strabo, l.c. ;
Eustathius, l.c.). Hence Polygnotus painted the family
preparing to set out on the journey.
(52) Theano. She was
the wife of Antenor (Homer, Il. VI. 298 sq.).
(53) Glaucus -
Eurymachus. Apollodorus mentions p. 211 ed. R. Wagner)
that when Troy was sacked Glaucus son of Antenor took refuge
in his father's house, where he was recognised and protected
by Ulysses and Menelaus. According to Tzetzes (Schol. on
Lycophron, 874) the two sons of Antenor, whom he calls
Glaucus and Erymanthus, sailed from Troy with Menelaus, and
being shipwrecked at Cyrene in Crete took up their abode
there. Homer mentions three sons of Antenor, namely Polybus,
Agenor, and Acamas (Il. XI. 59 sq.). Virgil gives the
names of the three as Glaucus, Medon, and Thersilochus
(Aen. VI. 483 sq.), borrowing them from a passage of
Homer (Il. XVII. 216), where, however, nothing is said
to show that the three men so called were sons of
Antenor.
(54) Servants are putting
gear upon an ass. Hesychius in a gloss (s.v.
Polugnôtou tou zôgraphou onos) describes a
picture by Polygnotus of an ass represented facing the
spectator and bearing on his back a load of myrtle and a
sutler. This picture, which would seem to have been famous,
may very well have been the one at Delphi here described by
Pausanias. It is true that at the end of the gloss Hesychius
says, «It is preserved in the Anaceum» ; but he
seems to be here referring to Polygnotus's picture of the
hare which was certainly in the Anaceum at Athens (see vol.
2. p. 166), and which Hesychius mentions in the present
passage immediately before the words «It is preserved
in the Anaceum», though the full description of it has
fallen out. Prof. C. Robert ingeniously suggests that the
myrtle boughs with which the ass was loaded pointed to
Antenor's intention of going forth to seek a new home in a
foreign land, myrtle boughs having been apparently carried by
colonists (Aristophanes, Birds, 43, with the
scholiast's note). See C. Robert, Die Iliupersis des
Polygnot, p. 54 sq.
(55) A couplet of
Simonides etc. This epigram occurs in the Palatine
Anthology (IX. 700). It is quoted, but without mention of the
author's name, by Plutarch (De dejectu oraculorum, 47)
and a scholiast on Plato (Gorgias, p. 448 b), and it
is clearly alluded to by Philostratus (Vit. Apollon.
VI. 11). The words which contain the names of the artist and
his father are cited, with the change of a word, by Photius
(Lexicon, s.v. Thasios pais Aglaophôntos) and
Hesychius (Lexicon, s.v. Thasios pais
Aglaophôntos). These numerous references show that
the couplet was celebrated, though its poetical merit is of
the slightest. That it was composed by Simonides is denied on
insufficient grounds by Prof. C. Robert (Die Nekyia des
Polygnot, p. 76 ; id., Die Marathonschlacht in der
Poikile, p. 70 sq.) and Prof. Hauvette (De
l'authenticité des épigrammes de
Simonidé (Paris, 1896), p. 137 sq.). The
genuineness of the verses is rightly maintained by Prof.
Milchhöfer (Jahrbuch des archäolog.
Instituts, 9 (1894), p. 72 note 36). Cp. Bergk's
Poetae Lyrici Graeci, 3.3 p. 1178.
(56) The descent of
Ulysses to hell etc. On the literary authorities followed
by Polygnotus in his delineation of the nether world, see F.
Dümmler, «Die Quellen zu Polygnot's Nekyia»,
Rheinisches Museum, N. F. 45 (1890), pp. 178-202 ; C.
Robert, Die Nekyia des Polygnot, p. 74 sqq. Prof.
Dümmler holds that Polygnotus followed the epic poem
called The Returns ; Prof. Robert holds that he did
not. As the poem in question has perished, it is obvious that
either opinion may be maintained with equal confidence and
absence of conflicting evidence. A brief abstract of The
Returns has been preserved by Proclus (Epicorum
Graecorum fragmenta, ed. Kinkel, p. 52 sq.), but there is
no mention in it of a descent to hell. On the other hand
Prof. Robert accepts the view of Pausanias (below, § 2)
that Polygnotus knew and used the Minyad in addition
to the Odyssey. With regard to copies of Polygnotus's
picture on existing vases, Prof. Robert tells us that none
has yet been found, but he is of opinion that some of the
particular groups of the famous painting have been freely
adapted by vase-painters to form new scenes (op. cit.
p. 53). Scenes of the under world are depicted on about a
dozen existing vases of Lower Italy. See A. Winkler, Die
Darstellung der Unterwelt auf unteritalischen Vasen
(Breslau, 1888) ; E. Kuhnert, «Unteritalische
Nekyien», Jahrbuch d. archäolog. Instituts,
8 (1893), pp. 104-113.
(57) The poem called the
Minyad. This poem was attributed to Prodicus of Phocaea.
See IV. 33. 7. F. G. Welcker conjectured that it was
identical with the Phocaeis, a poem which Homer was
said to have composed at Phocaea ([Herodotus,] Vita
Homeri, 16, in Biographi Graeci, ed. Westermann,
p. 8). See Epicorum Graecorum fragmenta, ed. Kinkel,
p. 215 sqq. ; F. G. Welcker, Der epische Cyclus, 1. p.
248 sqq. ; id., 2. p. 422 sqq. ; W. Christ, Gesch. d.
griech. Litteratur, p. 64.
(58) Ferryman,
Charon. The belief in Charon still survives among the
modern Greeks. They call him Charos and regard him as a
personification of Death, who with his own hand snatches the
souls of the dying from their bodies and conveys them to the
nether world. But the conception of him as a ferryman who
transports the souls of the departed across the river of
Death is also occasionally to be met with. See B. Schmidt,
Das Volksleben der Neugriechen, p. 222 sqq.
(59) Tellis -
Cleoboea. It has been supposed that these two personages
were chosen by Polygnotus on account of their connexion with
Thasos in order to indicate the Thasian origin of the painter
himself (C. Robert, Die Nekyia des Polygnot, p. 81 ;
R. Schöne, in Jahrbuch d. arch. Inst. 8 (1893),
p. 200 note 23 ; P. Weizsäcker, Polygnots
Gemülde, p. 15). The connexion of Cleoboea with
Thasos is mentioned by Pausanias himself. But what had Tellis
to do with Thasos ? Nothing whatever, so far as we know. His
son Telesicles, the father of Archilochus, did indeed migrate
from Paros to Thasos (Eusebius, Praepar. Evang. VI.
7.6 ; Stephanus Byzantius, s.v. Thassos) ; but that
can hardly be regarded as establishing a Thasian connexion
for Tellis himself. Mr. Dieterich may be right in supposing
that the identification of the Tellis of the picture with the
grandfather of Archilochus may have been nothing but a guess
of the ciceroni, and that the painter may have chosen the
name merely with a punning reference to the mysteries
(telos) which his companion in the infernal bark had
brought to Thasos (A. Dieterich, Nekyia : Beiträge
zur Erklärung der neuentdeckten Petrusapokalypse,
Leipzig, 1893, p. 69).
(60) A box such as they
make for Demeter. The «box» was probably the
mystic cista, which seems to have been a basket rather
than a box. See VIII. 25. 7 note.
(61) The Pious Folk at
Catana. These Pious Folk were generally said to have been
two brothers, Amphinomus and Anapias (or Anapius). The spot
where the torrent of lava surrounded them and their parents
without scathing them was called the Place (or Field) of the
Pious, and stone statues of the brothers were erected there.
See Conon, Narrationes, 43 ; Lycurgus, contra
Leocratem, XXIII. 95 sq. ; [Aristotle,] De Mundo,
p. 400 Berlin ed. ; [Aristotle,] De mirab. Auscultat.
154 (165), p. 56 ed. Westermann ; Seneca, De
beneficiis, III. 37, Vi. 36 ; Solinus, V. 15 ; Strabo,
VI. p. 269 ; Valerius Maximus, V. 4. Ext. 4 ; Silius
Italicus, XIV. 196 sq. ; Philostratus, Vit. Apollonii,
v. 17. The Syracusans claimed the pious brothers for Syracuse
and called them Emantias and Crito (Solinus, l.c.). In
his list of people distinguished for piety Hyginus says
(Fab. 254) that at the first eruption of Etna Damon
saved his mother from the fire and Phintias saved his father.
In a Greek metrical inscription found at Catana, the city is
called «the famous town of the Pious»
(Eusebeôn kluton astu) (G. Kaibel,
Epigrammata Graeca, No. 887).
(62) The woman who is
chastising him is skilled in drugs etc. How was her skill
in drugs indicated in the picture ? Was she depicted
administering a dose to the miscreant ? And did the wry face
he pulled betray his internal anguish ? This is the view of
Prof. E. Rohde (Psyche, p. 291), Mr. R. Schöne
(Jahrbuch d. arch. Instituts, 8 (1893), p. 201 note
25), and Mr. A. Dieterich (Nekyia, p. 68 note 2).
Prof. C. Robert, on the other hand, suggests (Die Nekyia
des Polygnot, p. 60) that the woman was not an apothecary
or poisoner at all but a goddess of vengeance who was
represented belabouring the sinner with a club which
Pausanias mistook for a pestle, remembering the figures of
women with pestles on the chest of Cypselus (V. 18. 2). This
seems improbable, and we shall do better to adhere to the
more natural view that she was offering a poisoned cup to the
sacrilegious man. Mr. Dieterich (l.c.) has well
pointed out that such a punishment seems to have been
regularly inflicted in hell by Tisiphone (Valerius Flaccus,
II. 194 sq.).
(63) When they captured
the sanctuary of Olympian Zeus at Syracuse. It does not
appear from Thucydides that the Athenians ever captured this
sanctuary, which stood in a suburb of Syracuse. The
Syracusans put a garrison into it to protect the treasures
which it contained, but the Athenians did not approach it.
See Thucydides, VI. 70 sq., VII. 4 and 37. Plutarch says
(Nicias, 16) that although the Athenians were eager to
gain possession of the sanctuary on account of the many
votive offerings of gold and silver which were stored in it,
the pious general Nicias purposely hung back and allowed the
enemy to throw a garrison into it unmolested, for fear his
soldiers might plunder the treasures and the blame of the
sacrilege might rest on himself. On the other hand, Diodorus
relates (XIII. 6) that the Athenians succeeded in seizing and
fortifying the sanctuary and repelled an attack of the
Syracusans.
(64) The words he spoke
to the Delians. When the inhabitants of Delos fled at the
approach of the Persian fleet, the Persian commander Datis
sent a herald after them with a message inviting the
«sacred men» to return and assuring them that no
harm would be done to them or to their sacred island, the
birthplace of Apollo and Artemis (Herodotus, VI. 97).
(65) Finding an image of
Apollo in a Phoenician ship etc. According to Herodotus
(VI. 118), who is doubtless Pausanias's authority for the
anecdote, Datis himself conveyed the image to Delos and
charged the inhabitants to restore it to Delium. The Delians
neglected to obey this injunction, but twenty years
afterwards the Thebans, in compliance with an oracle, had the
image brought back to its original home.
(66) Eurynomus. This
demon appears to be mentioned by no other ancient writer.
Prof. C. Robert regards him as a personification of death,
pointing out that his name, which signifies
«wide-ruling», would on this hypothesis be
appropriate (Die Nekyia des Polygnot, p. 61 ; Die
Marathonschlacht in der Poikile, pp. 117-119). Mr. A.
Dieterich prefers to consider him as a personification of the
grave in which the dead are laid and which, as it were,
consumes their bodies, leaving only the bones (Nekyia,
p. 47 sq.).
(67) The Returns speak of
hell etc. In Proclus's abstract of the epic called The
Returns there is no mention of a descent to hell. See
Epicorum Graecorum fragmenta, ed. Kinkel, p. 52 sq.
Hence Mr. D. B. Monro has conjectured (Journal of Hellenic
Studies, 4 (1873), p. 319) that the editor or editors who
redacted the Epic Cycle left out this episode, because a
similar one had been already described in the eleventh book
of the Odyssey.
(68) Auge went to the
court of Teuthras in Mysia etc. Cp. VIII. 47. 4, VIII.
48. 7 ; and sec the note on I. 4. 6 «the band which
crossed to Asia with Telephus». Prof. C. Robert
conjectures that it was Leda and not Auge whom Polygnotus
here painted in the under world, and that the mistake of
Pausanias or of his authority originated in misreading the
name attached to the figure, the name LHDH being easily confused with AUGH. He points out that in the
Odyssey, which Polygnotus may have followed, Auge is
not mentioned among the famous dames seen by Ulysses in the
lower world, but that on the other hand Leda is so mentioned
and is moreover coupled with Iphimedea (Od. XI. 208,
305), just as the figure in question in Polygnotus's picture
is coupled. See C. Robert, Die Nekyia des Polygnot, p.
75. The conjecture is ingenious and not improbable. Even if
it be accepted, however, it would involve no change in the
text of Pausanias, as the mistake, if it be one, was
obviously made by Pausanias himself and not by a copyist. As
to Iphimedea cp. IX. 22. 6.
(69) The comrades of
Ulysses, bringing sacrificial victims. Dr. R. Schöne
conjectures that they were really represented carrying away
the carcasses of the slaughtered rams in order to skin and
sacrifice them to Pluto and Proserpine, as they are ordered
by Ulysses in the Odyssey (XI. 44 sqq.) to do. He
points out that in Polygnotus's picture Ulysses was supposed
to have already slaughtered the rams, since he was depicted
holding his sword over the trench in which their blood had
flowed (X. 29. 8). See R. Schöne, in Jahrbuch d.
arch. Inst. 8 (1893), p. 200. To this Prof. C. Robert
replies that in the Odyssey there is nothing said
about carrying away the victims and that it is much more
probable that they were to be offered to the infernal deities
on the spot (Die Marathonschlacht in der Poikile, p.
120 sq.).
(70) Indolence plaiting a
rope etc. This punishment of Indolence in hell seems to
have been a familiar topic with the ancients and to have been
often depicted in art. We know of two paintings of it by
distinguished artists, the one by Polygnotus which Pausanias
here describes, the other by Nicophanes, a pupil of the
Sicyonian painter Pausias (Pliny, Nat. hist. XXXV. 137
; H. Brunn, Gesch. d. griech. Künstler, 2. p.
155). Plutarch refers to «the picture of the
rope-twister in hell who allows a browsing ass to consume
what he is plaiting» (De tranquillitate animi,
14). Cratinus, in one of his comedies, also referred to
«the man plaiting a rope in hell and the ass eating
what he plaits» (Photius, Lexicon, s.v. onou
pokai ; Suidas, s.v. onou pokai). Propertius
speaks of the subject (V. 3. 21 sq.) as if it were
proverbial. The story is illustrated by at least six existing
monuments of ancient art, namely :
- A round marble well-head, sometimes described as an altar, formerly in the Museo Pie-Clementino, now in the Vatican. Here Indolence is represented in relief seated on a knoll and plaiting his rope, while at his back the other end of the rope is being eaten by an ass. Beside him the Danaids are also represented in relief pouring water into a great jar. See Visconti, Musée Pie-Clementin, vol. 4. pl. XXXVI. and pl. XXXVI* (both plates illustrate the same monument, but the second gives a more careful and accurate rendering of Indolence and the ass), with Visconti's remarks, p. 264 sqq. ; Berichte über die Verhandl. d. k. sächs. Gesell. d. Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, Philolog. histor. Cl. 8 (1856), pl. III. A. ; J. J. Bachofen, Versuch über die Gräbersymbolik der Alten (Basel, 1859), pl. ii. ; Baumeister's Denkmäler, p. 1925, fig. 2041 ; W. Helbig, Führer durch die öffentlichen Sammlungen klassischer Alterthümer in Rom, 1. p. 278 sq., No. 372 (179).
- A stucco relief in a Columbarium of the Vigna Campana near the Porta Latina at Rome. Here Indolence is represented as an old bearded man kneeling and plaiting his rope, while the ass quietly eats the other end of the rope full in front of him. See Berichte (l.c.), pl. III. E ; J. J. Bachofen, op. cit. pl. i. ; Müller-Wieseler, Denkmäler, 2. pl. LXIX. No. 867.
- A wall-painting in a Columbarium of the Villa Pamfili at Rome. Here Indolence appears sitting idly on a Stone, holding in his right hand the end of a rope, which an ass, lying on the ground in front of him, is eating. The buildings and trees in the background prove that the scene is not laid in the lower world. See Abhandlungen d. philosoph. philolog. Cl. d. k. bayer. Akad. d. Wissenschaften, 8 (1858), pl. III. 8, with the remarks of O. Jahn, pp. 245-249 ; J. J. Bachofen, op. cit. pl. II.
- A painting found in a tomb at Ostia, now in the Lateran Museum at Rome. Here Indolence is depicted sitting and plaiting his rope, while the ass is eating the other end of it behind his back. The scene is laid in the lower world. We see the figures of Pluto, Orpheus, and Eurydice, all with their names attached, and the gate of hell guarded by Cerberus and a doorkeeper. The painting, executed in an exceedingly dull prosaic style, is believed to date from the first century of our era. See Monumenti Inediti, 8 (1864-1868), pl. XXVIII. 1 ; C. L. Visconti, in Annali dell' Instituto, 38 (1866), pp. 292-307 ; W. Helbig, op. cit. vol. 1. p. 540, No. 696 (1064).
- A painting on a vase (lekythos) found in a grave on Monte Saraceno near Ravanusa. The picture treats the stories of the nether world in a spirit of caricature. Male and female figures, representing probably the uninitiated (see below, X. 31. 9 note), are depicted carrying water in pitchers on their heads to pour it into a large jar, and Indolence is seated gazing before him at some lines which are supposed to stand for his rope. Behind him is the ass falling on its nose, while one of the male water-carriers pulls it by the tail. See Archäologische Zeitung, 28 (1871), pl. 31. 22, with the remarks of H. Heydemann, p. 42 sq.
- A drawing in the Codex Pighianus (fol. 47) preserved in Berlin. The drawing exhibits in five separate compartments five scenes of the lower world, namely, Ixion stretched on his wheel, Hercules fetching up Cerberus, the Danaids engaged in pouring water into a large broken jar, Sisyphus heaving his rock up hill, and Indolence and the ass. In this last scene Indolence appears as a beardless man clad in a shirt and trousers, seated on a four-legged stool and plaiting a rope, of which the other end is being eaten by an ass. The drawing may be, as O. Jahn supposed, a copy of reliefs on a Roman sarcophagus. See Berichte (l.c.), pl. II. with the remarks of O. Jahn, p. 267 sqq. ; Abhandlungen (l.c.), pl. VII. 21 ; Bachofen, op. cit. pl. III. 2.
Diodorus reports (I. 97) that at Acanthus in Egypt
certain ceremonics were observed which bore some resemblance
to the stories of the Danaids and Indolence in hell. Every
day three hundred and sixty priests brought water from the
Nile and poured it into a jar which had a hole in it ; and at
a certain festival one man twisted an end of a long rope,
while many men at his back untwisted it just as fast. This
latter ceremony Diodorus expressly compares to the Greek
story of Indolence and his rope.
The story of Indolence further occurs, with a slight
variation, in the Buddhist collection of stories known as the
Jatakas. «A man was weaving rope, sir, and as he wove,
he threw it down at his feet. Under his bench lay a hungry
she-jackal, which kept eating the rope as he wove, but
without the man knowing it. This is what I saw. This was my
seventh dream. What shall come of it ? This dream too shall
not have its fulfilment till the future. For in days to come,
women shall lust after men and strong drink and finery and
gadding abroad and after the joys of this world. In their
wickedness and profligacy these women shah drink strong drink
with their paramours ; they shall flaunt in garlands and
perfumes and unguents ; and heedless of even the most
pressing of their household duties, they shall keep watching
for their paramours, even at crevices high up in the outer
wall ; aye, they shall pound up the very seed-corn that
should be sown on the morrow so as to provide good cheer ; in
all these ways shall they plunder the store won by the hard
work of their husbands in field and byre, devouring the poor
men's substance even as the hungry jackal ate up the rope of
the rope-maker as he wove it» (The Jataka or stories
of the Buddha's former births, vol. 1. translated by R.
Chalmers (Cambridge, 1895), bk. I, No. 77, p. 189). The
parallelism of this Indian tale to the Greek one was first
pointed out, so far as I know, by Mr. A. Grünwedel
(Original-Mittheilungen aus der ethnologischen Abtheilung
der kônigl. Museen zu Berlin, 1 (1885), p. 42). It
was afterwards indicated independently by Mr. W. H. D. Rouse
(Folklore, 1 (189o), P. 409).
The fable of the rope-weaver and the ass or jackal seems a
sufficiently obvious apologue of misdirected and therefore
fruitless labour. This explanation, which lies to hand, is
not however profound enough to satisfy most of the scholars
who have touched upon the subject. They have accordingly
propounded interpretations of varying degrees of
improbability and even absurdity. The tale has been treated
as a symbolical expression of the creative forces of
primitive nature, as an allegory of the sea devouring the
ships of the Phoenicians, as a folk-tale of a man who
gathered sticks in a wood, as a high moral allegory of the
weakness of the will, and as a veiled description of a bucket
being let down into a well. See J. J. Bachofen, op.
cit. pp. 301-412 ; P. Cassel, Aus Literatur und
Symbolik (Leipzig, 1884), pp. 290-309 ; E. Rohde,
Psyche, p. 290 sq. ; U. von
Wilamowitz-Möllendorff, Homerische
Untersuchungen, p. 202 ; C. Robert, Die Neykia des
Polygnot, p. 62 sq. ; A. B. Cooke, in Journal of
Hellenic Studies, 14 (1894), P. 96 sqq.
(71) The same name is
also given to a certain bird etc. The species of heron
which the Greeks nicknamed Indolence (oknos) is the
bittern. Its ordinary Greek name was asterias.
Aristotle distinguished three kinds of herons, of which the
bittern (asterias or oknos) was one. He says
that the ancestors of the bittern were fabled to have been
slaves and that in accordance with its name (oknos,
«indolence») the bird was the laziest of the
heron tribe. See Aristotle, Hist. anim. IX. 1. p. 609
b 21 sqq., IX. 18. p. 617 a 5 sqq. Cp. Callimachus, quoted by
a scholiast on Homer, Il. X. 274, p. 296 ed. Bekker ;
Pliny, Nat. hist. X. 164. Aelian assures us that in
Egypt, where the bittern (asterias) was tamed, the
bird understood human speech and felt hurt if any one called
it «slave» or «indolence»
(oknos) (Nat. anim. v. 36). Antoninus Liberalis
(Transform. 7) tells a fable of the transformation of
a man named Antonous into a bittern (oknos). That the
heron was a bird of omen we learn from a passage in Homer
(Il. X. 274 sqq.), where Athena sends a heron to
Ulysses and Diomede, as they are about to set forth on their
perilous adventure by night ; they hear the bird screaming on
their right in the darkness and greet it as a good omen.
Pliny tells us (Nat. hist. XI. 140) that a species of
heron called leucon (Greek leukos, English
«egret») was of verygood omen if seen flying
south or north. The heron is said to have been sacred to Hera
(Hesychius, s.v. nuktaietos). See J. J. Bachofen,
Versuch über die Gräbersymbolik der Alten,
p. 354 sqq. ; L. Stephani, in Compte-Rendu (St.
Petersburg) for 1865, p. 125 sqq.
(72) He appears as a dim
and mangled spectre. The Greek words are amudron kai
oude oloklêron eidôlon. Professors Benndorf
and C. Robert suppose this to mean merely that the figure of
Tityus was partially hidden by a fine indicating a rise in
the ground (O. Benndorf, in Ephêmeris
archaiologikê, 1887, p. 127 sq. ; C. Robert, Die
Nekyia des Polygnot, p. 63), and this view has been
accepted by Mr. P. Girard (La peinture antique, p. 175
sq.). But the words of Pausanias are more naturally
interpreted to mean that the body of Tityus was represented
as partially consumed by the vultures that had been preying
on his vitals (Homer, Od. XI. 578 sq.). And on this
interpretation the figure of the sinner has a tragic
significance which is wholly wanting on the other.
(73) Phaedra who is in a
swing etc. Otto Jahn conjectured that this euphemistic
way of hinting at Phaedra's suicide may have been suggested
by the Swinging Festival, which was commonly said to have
been instituted as an expiation for the death of Erigone who
had hung herself from grief at the murder of her father
Icarius (Hyginus, Fab. 130). See O. Jahn,
Archäologische Beiträge, p. 324 sqq.
(74) Dionysus first led
an army against India. On the warlike character and
exploits of Dionysus, particularly his expedition to India,
and the works of ancient art illustrative of it, see L.
Stephani, in Compte-Rendu (St. Petersburg) for 1867,
pp. 161 sqq., 182 sqq. ; Graef, De Bacchi expeditione
Indica monumentis expressa (Berlin, 1886).
(75) Tales told of
Dionysus by Egyptians. By Dionysus is here meant Osiris,
whom the Greeks identified with Dionysus. See Herodotus, II.
42, 144 ; Plutarch, Isis and Osiris, 13, 34 sq. ;
Diodorus, I. 13, 25, 96, IV. 1.
(76) Thyia. See x. 6.
4. There was a precinct dedicated to her at Delphi, and here
the Delphians set up an altar to the winds on the eve of the
Persian invasion (Herodotus, VII. 178).
(77) Chloris was the wife
of Neleus. Cp. IX. 36. 8.
(78) Procris - was slain
by her husband. Cp. I. 37. 6.
(79) Megara. Dr. Th.
Schreiber conjectures that this Megara was not, as Pausanias
supposed, the wife of Hercules, but the mother of Ixion
(Anthol. Palat. III. 12) (Festschrift für Johannes
Overbeck, P. 194).
(80) The daughter of
Salmoneus. Her name was Tyro. See Homer, Od. XI.
235 sq.
(81) In the folds of the
tunic she is grasping the famous necklace. As to the
necklace of Eriphyle see V. 17. 7, V. 24, 8, IX. 41. 2 sqq.,
with the notes. The attitude in which the painter portrayed
Eriphyle is perhaps illustrated by a graceful bronze
statuette found at Corinth which represents a woman standing
and holding her hands on her breast concealed under a flap of
her tunic ; the fingers are pushing up the flap from
underneath and touching the neck. See J. Six, «Die
Eriphyle des Polygnot», Mittheilungen des
archäolog. Instituts in Athen, 19 (1894), pp.
335-339. As Mr. Six, who was the first to compare the
attitude of the statuette with that of Eriphyle in the
picture, has well observed, it is indifferent whether we
suppose Eriphyle to have actually grasped the necklace under
her robe or merely to have been unable to take away her hand
from the place where the fatal bauble, which had cost her and
hers so dear, had once rested. In the latter case the
pathetic significance of the figure would be even deepened.
However that may be, the indication of the whole tragic story
by a mere gesture is worthy of a great artist and, as Mr. Six
again remarks with justice, comes near the manner and spirit
of Dante. Prof. Robert has done well to accept Mr. Six's view
and to abandon the rash conjecture by which he had corrupted
the text of Pausanias (Die Marathonschlacht in der
Poikile, p. 121 sq.). For Prof. Robert's now abandoned
conjecture see vol. 1. p. 611.
(82) Ulysses is crouching
and holding his sword over the trench etc. The interview
of Ulysses with Tiresias in the lower world (sec Homer,
Od. XI. 90 sqq.) is the subject of (1) a fine
wall-painting in a Roman house on the Esquiline ; (2) a
marble relief now in the Louvre ; (3) a vase-painting ; (4)
an engraving on an Etruscan mirror. See Miss J. E. Harrison,
Myths of the Odyssey, p. 99 sqq. ; Baumeister's
Denkmäler, figures 939, 1254, 1255. The
vase-painting in question (Monumenti Inediti, vol. 4
(1844-1848), pl. XIX) represents Ulysses, almost naked,
seated on a heap of rough stones ; in his right hand he holds
his drawn sword, in the left the scabbard. Under his feet is
the slaughtered ram, and close to the ram's head appears the
face of the aged Tiresias, emerging from the ground, which
conceals the rest of his body.
(83) A mat, such as is
commonly worn by sailors. The fishermen in Theocritus
(XXI. 13) sleep with «a small mat, their clothes, and
their caps» under their heads ; but it does not seem
certain that this mat was a garment.
(84) Theseus and
Pirithous seated on chairs etc. In the
recently-discovered Epitome of Apollodorus it is said that
when Theseus arrived in hell with his friend Pirithous to
carry off Proserpine, he was outwitted ; for in the
expectation of receiving friendly presents they sat down on
the chair of Forgetfulness (Lethe), to which they grew
and were held fast by coils of serpents. See Epitoma
Vaticana ex Apollodori bibliotheca, ed. R. Wagner, pp.
58, 155 sq. ; Apollodorus, ed. R. Wagner, p. 182. The editor,
Mr. Wagner, conjectures that Apollodorus's authority was
Panyasis ; for Panyasis, as we learn from Pausanias,
represented Theseus and Pirithous growing to the rock on
which they sat. Cp. Suidas, s.v. lispoi. «The
chair of Forgetfulness» is not expressly mentioned by
any other ancient writer, but there seems to be an allusion
to it in Horace, where he says (Odes, IV. 27 sq.) that
Theseus was not able to free his dear Pirithous from the
«Lethaean bonds» (vincula Lethaea). With
the «chair of Forgetfulness» we may compare the
chair in which Hephaestus caused Hera to be held fast by
invisible bonds (see I. 20. 3), and the chair in which the
smith in the folk-tale holds fast Death or the Devil. See
note on II. 5. 1. The story of Theseus and Pirithous in hell
is the subject of a painting in an Etruscan tomb at
Tarquinii, and is illustrated by vase-paintings and other
monuments of ancient art. See E. Petersen, «Theseus und
Peirithoos im Hades», Archäologische
Zeitung, 35 (1877), pp. 119-123.
(85) Ulysses is
represented saying etc. See Homer, Odyssey, XI.
631 sq. But the second of these lines, in which Theseus and
Pirithous are mentioned, was said by Hereas of Megara to have
been interpolated by Pisistratus to please the Athenians. See
Plutarch, Theseus, 20.
(86) For never saw I
yet etc. The lines are from Iliad, I. 262 sqq. But
here again the line (265) in which Theseus is mentioned is
thought by some modern critics to have been interpolated by a
patriotic Athenian from the pseudo-Hesiodean Shield of
Hercules, v. 182. Other scholars reverse this theory and
suppose that the author of the Shield of Hercules
borrowed the line from the Iliad. This latter is the
view of Professor von Wilamowitz-Moellendorf (Homerische
Untersuchungen, p. 26o) and J. Töpffer (Aus der
Anomia, p. 31).
(87) The daughters of
Pandareos etc. See Homer, Od. XX. 66-78. According
to an account preserved by Eustathius (on Homer, Od.
XIX. 518, p. 1875) and a scholiast on Homer (Od. XX.
66, vol. 2. p. 688 ed. Dindorf) the damsels were three in
number and their names Merope, Cleothera and Aedon. The story
of their father's guilt and of their own tragic fate is told
by Eustathius (l.c. and on Od. XX. 66, p.
1883), the scholiast on Homer (l.c.), a scholiast on
Pindar (Olymp. I. 97), and, with some variations, by
Antoninus Liberalis (Transform. 36). It ran thus. Zeus
had a golden dog which guarded his sanctuary in Crete.
Pandareos of Miletus stole the dog, but fearing to take it
home with him entrusted it for safe keeping to Tantalus, who
dwelt on Mount Sipylus. When Zeus sent Hermes to reclaim the
stolen animal, Tantalus swore a great oath he knew nothing
about it. But Hermes found the dog in the house, and Zeus
punished the perjured Tantalus by burying him under Mount
Sipylus. Hearing of the fate of his accomplice, Pandareos
fled with his wife and maiden daughters to Athens, and thence
to Sicily. But Zeus saw him and killed both him and his wife.
As for the orphan daughters, the angry god set the Harpies on
them, who snatched them up and delivered them over to the
Furies to be their slaves. «Moreover, adds the
scholiast on Homer, Zeus inflicted on them a disease, which
is called dog». This dog disease, as Dr.
W. H. Roscher has lately pointed out in a learned and
instructive paper, was probably a form of insanity which
stems to have prevailed among many races and the essence of
which consists in the patient imagining himself to be an
animal and behaving as such. This sort of madness was known
to the ancients as the cynanthropic (dog-man) or lycanthropic
(wolf-man) disease, and is thus described in the medical
treatise On Melancholy which is printed among the
works of Galen (vol. 19. p. 719 ed. Kühn).
«Persans afflicted with the cynanthropic or
lycanthropic disease go out by night in the month of
February, imitating wolves or dogs in all respects, and till
break of day they pass most of their time in grubbing among
the graves». The writer then describes the symptoms of
the disease—the pale face and hollow eyes, the dry
tongue, parched mouth, and ulcered legs of the patients. A
similar form of insanity occurs among the inhabitants of the
Garrow Hills in Bengal. It has been described as follows by a
writer of last century who was sent on a mission to the hills
: «Among the Garrows, a madness exists, which they call
transformation into a tiger, from a person who is afflicted
with this malady walking about like that animal, shunning all
society. It is said, that, on their being first seized with
this complaint, they tear their hair, and rings from their
ears, with such force as to break the lobe. It is supposed to
be occasioned by a medicine applied to the forehead : but I
endeavoured to procure some of the medicine thus used,
without effect : I imagine it rather to be created by
frequent intoxications, as the malady goes off in the course
of a week or a fortnight : during the time the person is in
this state, it is with the utmost difficulty he is made to
eat or drink. I questioned a man, who had thus been
afflicted, as to the manner of his being seized, and he told
me he only felt a giddiness without any pain, and that
afterwards he did not know what happened to him» (J.
Eliot, in Asiatick Researches, vol. 3. p. 34 of the
octavo edition). At the present day a type of madness of the
same sort is very common in Japan. The patient is popularly
believed to be possessed by an animal, most commonly by a
fox, and behaves «as much like the animal itself
— be it badger, fox, or what not — as it is
possible for a human being to do». Sometimes the
sufferer takes to the woods and hills, where he lives on
berries and what he can find, all the while running or
crawling about on all fours. So generally are foxes feared
for their power of possessing human beings that shrines and
temples in their honour exist in nearly every part of the
country, and opposite their holes images of foxes in clay or
stone are set up and receive propitiatory offerings of the
food in which the creature is known to delight. This form of
insanity, which is accompanied by «strange and
apparently unaccountable swellings in different parts of the
body, or varions forms of nervous disease», attacks
women chiefly, indeed almost exclusively. Exorcism of the
fox-spirit is practised largely at celebrated shrines, and in
some places there are hospitals devoted entirely to this
purpose. See W. Weston, Mountaineering and Exploration in
the Japanese Alps (London, 1896), pp. 308-316. From facts
like these Dr. Roscher would explain other ancient legends
and religious practices, such as the story of the madness of
the daughters of Proetus who fancied they were cows and
roamed the woods bellowing (Virgil, Ecl. VI. 48, with
the note of Servius), and the behaviour of the Bacchanals,
who clothed themselves in the skins of beasts, tore live
animais to pieces and devoured the flesh raw as if they were
themselves wild beasts, and fondled and suckled wolfcubs,
fawns, and young panthers as if they were their own offspring
(see Roscher's Lexikon, 1. p. 1037 sqq., 2. p. 2250
sq.). It would seem to have been especially women who were
liable to such attacks of insanity in antiquity, just as at
the present day it is women who are chiefly subject to the
fox-madness in Japan. Dr. Roscher makes the pregnant
suggestion that delusions of this sort are closely connected
with the religions beliefs of the patients, who seem
peculiarly liable to fancy themselves transformed into that
particular animal which is especially associated with the
deity they worship. Thus the cow-madness of the daughters of
Proteus, who were Argives, may have taken its special form
through the association of cows with the worship of the
Argive Hera ; and the dog-madness of the daughters of
Pandareos would seem to have been in some way connected with
a worship of the dog, if we may judge from the legend of the
theft of the sacred dog by their father Pandareos. Dr.
Roscher conjectures that the bear-dances of the young Attic
maidens (see above, vol. 4. p. 224) may perhaps have
originated in a similar epidemic of insanity among girls
under puberty. For the girls who acted as bears might not be
more than ten years old (Schol. on Aristophanes,
Lysistrata, 645) ; and the symptoms of hysteria, of
which such illusions are apparently a special form, often
manifest themselves before puberty is reached. If he is
right, the questions would still have to be asked, Why are
certain animals specially associated with the worship of
certain deities ? and are the illusions we have been
considering merely the effects of such religious associations
? may they not have been in some cases the cause ? The
prosecution of these enquiries may possibly throw some light
on the origin of totemism or the primitive system of belief
that the men and women of a particular kin are the brothers
and sisters of animais or plants of a particular sort. In any
case Dr. Roscher can hardly fail to be right in connecting
closely the belief in were-wolves and similar superstitions
with the type of insanity under consideration. See his essay
«Das von der Kynanthropie handelnde Fragment des
Marcellus von Side» in the Abhandlungen der
philolog. histor. Classe der k. sächs. Gesell. der
Wissenschaften, vol. 17 (1896), No. 3 (pp. 3-92).
(88) Miletus in
Crete. This town is mentioned by Homer (Il. II.
647). It is said to have been the mother-city of Miletus in
Ionia (Strabo, XII. p. 573, XIV. p. 634).
(89) He was an accomplice
in Tantalus' theft etc. The reference is to the theft of
the golden dog, as to which see above, note on § 1
«the daughters of Pandareos».
(90) Antilochus, with his
face and head resting on both his hands. He had brought
to Achilles the evil tidings of Patroclus's death and had
wept as he delivered his message. See Homer, Il. XVII.
694 sqq., XVIII. 16 sqq. Prof. C. Robert thinks that
Pausanias's description (to de prosôpon kai
tên kephalên epi tais chersiv amphoterais
echôn estin) means no more than that Antilochus
rested his chin on one hand and supported that hand with the
other (Die Nekyia des Polygnot, p. 65). This
interpretation, which would empty the posture of Antilochus
of meaning, can hardly be reconciled with the words of
Pausanias. This is only one of several cases in which
Professor Robert would strip the figures of all the character
and pathos with which the genius of the great painter had
invested them and thereby reduce them from the tragic to the
commonplace. Compare his remarks on the figures of Tityus (X.
29. 3), Eriphyle (X. 29. 7), Hector (X. 31. 5), and Orpheus
(X. 30. 6).
(91) Phocus crossed from
Aegina etc. Cp. II. 29. 2 sq., 9, X. I. 1.
(92) Maera. She is
mentioned by Homer, Od. XI. 326. According to
Eustathius (on Od. XI. 325) Maera was one of the
maidens who attended on Artemis ; but she had an intrigue
with Zeus and was therefore slain by Artemis. «But
others, adds Eustathius, say that Maera died a maid».
From the present passage of Pausanias we learn that among the
others who held the latter view was the author of the
epic called The Returns.
(93) Orpheus seated as it
were on a sort of hill... The aspect of Orpheus is Greek.
On existing monuments of ancient art Orpheus is generally
represented in full Thracian attire, or at all events clad in
a gay minstrel's robe with a tiara on his head. He seldom
appears in ordinary Greek costume. See O. Jahn, in Kieler
philologische Studien (Kiel, 1841), p. 112 ; E. Gerhard,
Ueber Orpheus und die Orphiker (Berlin, 1861), pp. 35
sqq., 89 sqq. Philostratus Junior (Imagines, 7)
describes a picture of Orpheus wearing a glittering tiara on
his head, and Callistratus (Descript. 7) mentions a
statue of Orpheus in the grove of the Muses on Mount Helicon
which represented him with a spangled tiara on his head and
girt with a golden belt under his breast. But on the other
hand on all Attic vases of the first two-thirds of the fifth
century B.C. the bard appears, as in the contemporary
painting of Polygnotus, clad in Greek costume, without any
indication of his Thracian descent (A. Furtwängler, in
Fünfzigstes Programm zum Winckelmannsfeste
(Berlin, 189o), p. 156 sq.). Thus on a fine vase found at
Gela but now at Berlin he is depicted sitting on a knoll,
singing and playing on the lyre ; his costume consists merely
of a loose mantle which covers the lower part of his body,
but the four men who stand listening wear the full Thracian
attire, namely caps of foxskin and long-striped mantles
hanging from the shoulders. See Fünfzigstes Programm
zum Winckelmannsfeste (Berlin, 1890), Tafel II., with the
observations of Prof. A. Furtwängler p. 154 sqq. Prof.
C. Robert holds that in style and date this vase-painting
cornes nearest to Polygnotus's picture of Orpheus. He further
compares a Neapolitan vase of somewhat later date on which
Orpheus, similarly attired, is depicted playing on the lyre
amid a group of listening Thracians (Raoul-Rochette,
Monuments inédits d'antiquité
figurée (Paris, 1833), pl. XIII.), and a
red-figured Boeotian vase which presents us with a like scene
except that both the minstrel and his listeners wear the
Phrygian costume (Dumont et Chaplain, Céramiques de
la Grèce propre, 1. pl. XIV.). See C. Robert,
Die Nekyia des Polygnot, PP. 53-55.
(94) He touches some
willow-branches. Why Orpheus should be depicted touching
the branches of a willow-tree is not clear. Pausanias has
himself rightly pointed out that wiliows grew in the grove of
Proserpine, but that does not suffice to explain the gesture
of Orpheus in the picture. Mr. J. Six ingeniously suggests
(Mittheilungen d. arch. Inst. 19 (1894), p. 338 sq.)
that when Orpheus went to hell to fetch the soul of his lost
Eurydice he may have carried in his hand a willowbranch, just
as Aeneas carried the Golden Bough, to serve as a passport or
«open Sesame» to unlock the gates of Death to a
living man, and that in memory of this former deed the
painter may have depicted the bard touching the willow.
Virgil tells how at sight of the Golden Bough, «not
seen for long», the surly Charon turned his crazy bark
to shore and received Aeneas on board (Aen. VI. 406
sqq.). Mr. Six suggests that here the words «not seen
for long» refer to the time when Orpheus, like Aeneas,
had passed the ferry with the Golden Bough in his hand. If he
is right, Polygnotus took a different view of the Golden
Bough from Virgil, who certainly regarded it as a glorified
mistletoe (Aen. VI. 201 sqq.). Prof. C. Robert accepts
Mr. Six's explanation (Die Marathonschlacht in der
Poikile, p. 122). Formerly lie held that Pausanias had
misinterpreted the gesture of Orpheus (Die Nekyia des
Polygnot, p. 32). The bard, on Prof. Robert's earlier
view, was depicted merely holding the lyre with one hand and
playing on it with the other, and a branch of the willow
under which he sat drooped down and touched the hand that
held the plectrum. This view, which Prof. Robert has wisely
abandoned, is open to several objections. It substitutes a
commonplace gesture, which Pausanias could hardly have so
grossly mistaken, for a remarkable one which, however it is
to be explained, had clearly struck Pausanias as unusual and
significant. Again, if Orpheus had been depicted playing,
would not some one have been represented listening ? But so
far as appears from Pausanias's description not a soul was
paying any heed to the magie strains of the great minstrel.
It seems better, therefore, to suppose that, like Thamyris,
he sat sad and silent, dreaming of life in the bright world,
of love and music.
(95) Schedius, who led
the Phocians to Troy. See X. 4. 2, X. 36. 10 ; Homer,
Il. II. 517, xvii. 306 sqq. The grass with which in
the picture Schedius was crowned may have been the special
kind which grew on Parnassus (Dioscorides, De materia
medica, IV. 32 ; Pliny, Nat. hist. IV. 178 sq.).
Such a crown would be very appropriate to the Phocian
leader.
(96) Thamyris with his
sightless eyes etc. Cp. IV. 33. 3, 7, IX. 30. 2.
(97) Marsyas seated on a
rock etc. On a vase found in Crete and now at Athens
Marsyas is depicted sitting under a tree and playing the
double flute in presence of Artemis, Athena, and Apollo
(Ephêmeris, 1886, pl. 1). Prof. C. Robert holds
that this vase-painting reflects the style of Polygnotus
(Die Nekyia des Polygnot, p. 56).
(98) Amusing themselves
with dice. Prof. C. Robert conjectures (Die Nekyia des
Polygnot, p. 57 note 37) that Euripides may have had this
group in his mind in describing the two Ajaxes and
Protesilaus playing at draughts (Iphigenia in Aulis,
192 sqq.). The subject of warriors playing at dice is
depicted on vases, but apparently all such vase-paintings are
older than the time of Polygnotus and cannot therefore be
copies of the group here described by Pausanias (C. Robert,
l.c.).
(99) The complexion of
the latter Ajax is like that of a castaway etc. The
Locrian Ajax was said to have been shipwrecked and drowned on
his return from Troy (Homer, Od. IV. 499 sqq.). Hence
every year the Locrians used to lade a ship with costly
sacrifices, hoist a black sail on the mast, set the ship on
fire, and thon let the burning barkdrift away across the sea,
that it might conveythe offerings to the ghost of the drowned
hero (Tzetzes, Scholia on Lycophron, 365).
(100) Ulysses advised the
Greeks to stone him etc. Arctinus in his poem the Sack
of Ilium described how the indignant Greeks were eager to
stone Ajax and how he escaped their fury by flying to the
altar of Athena. See Proclus, in Epicorum Graecorum
fragmenta, ed. Kinkel, p. 49 sq. As to stoning as a mode
of execution, see note on IV. 22. 7.
(101) Homer says that the
Fury hearkened to the curses of Althaea etc. See
Iliad, IX. 565 sqq. Meleager's death is mentioned by
Homer elsewhere (Il. II. 642).
(102) The legend of the
fire-brand etc. See Aeschylus, Choeph. 604 sqq. ;
Apollodorus, I. 8. 2 sq. ; Hyginus, Fab. 171 and 174 ;
Diodorus, IV. 34.6 ; Antoninus Liberalis, Transform. 2
; Ovid, Met. VIII. 445 sqq. The legend of Meleager,
including the story of his death, is illustrated by reliefs
on Roman sarcophaguses and other monuments of ancient art.
See R. Kekulé, De fabula Meleagrea, p. 35 sqq.
; F. Matz, «Sarcofaghi di Meleagro», Annali
dell' Inst. di Cori,. Archeol. 41 (1869), pp. 76-103 ; G.
Körte, ib. 53 (1881), pp. 168-181 ; Th. Hartmann,
Meleager in dergriechisch-römischen Kunst
(Wohlau, 1889) ; Baumeister's Denkmäler, p. 914
sqq. According to another version of the story Meleager's
life depended, not on a fire-brand, but on a twig of olive
which his mother swallowcd in her pregnancy and which
afterwards she gave birth to along with the child, and it was
the burning of this olive twig which caused Meleager's death.
See Tzetzes, Schol. on Lycophron, 492 ; Malala,
Chronogr. VI. p. 165 sq., cd. Dindorf ; G. Knaack,
«Zur Meleagersage», Rheinisches Museum, N.
F. 49 (1894), pp. 310-313, 476-478. For parallels to the
story of Meleager see The Golden Bough, 2. p. 296
sqq.
(103) Hector seated : his
hands are clasped round his left knee. In vase-paintings
some figures are depicted in this attitude (Raoul-Rochette,
Monuments inédits d'antiquité
figurée (Paris, 1833), pl. XXXI. A ; Baumeister's
Denkmäler, p. 86o, fig. 940 ; P. Girard, La
peinture antique, p. 173, fig. 93, p. 174, fig. 94), and
one of the seated gods, perhaps Ares, is so represented in
the Parthenon frieze (E. Petersen, Die Kunst des
Pheidias, p. 250 sq. ; A. H. Smith, Catalogue of Greek
Sculpture in the British Museum, 1. p. 155 sq.). Prof. C.
Robert holds that Pausanias was wrong in interpreting the
attitude as indicative of sorrow (Die Nekyia des
Polygnot, p. 68), and it may be admitted that to nurse
one's leg is not necessarily a mark of deep grief. But the
sorrow which Pausanias detected may have been expressed by
Hector's face rather than by his legs. He had reason enough
to be sad. Cp. R. Schöne, in Jahrbuch d. arch.
Inst. 8 (1893), pp. 214-216.
(104) On certain days
these birds go to Memnon's grave. Aelian describes the
birds of Memnon as black in colour and like hawks in shape ;
they were not carnivorous but fed on seeds only. They
inhabited the districts of Parium and Cyzicus on the
Propontis ; but every year, at the beginning of autumn, they
flew in flocks to the tomb of Memnon in the Troad. Here they
took sides and fought till half of them were killed ;
whercupon the rest flew back to the place from which they had
come. Sec Aelian, Nat. anim. v. 1. According to some
authorities the birds came from Ethiopia to Memnon's tomb in
the Troad ; and Cremutius affirmed that the birds fought in
like manner at Memnon's palace in Ethiopia (Pliny, Nat.
hist. X. 74). Some said that the birds were originally
Memnon's comrades who had bewailed his death so bitterly that
the gods in pity had turncd them into birds (Servius on
Virgil, Aen. i. 751). According to Ovid (Met. XIII.
600 sqq.) the volumes of black smoke rising from Memnon's
pyre were changed, by the will of Jupiter, into birds, which
afterwards behaved in the way described above. Near Memnon's
grave in the Troad there was a village called Memnon's
village. The river Aesepus was not far off (Strabo, XIII. p.
587). According to Simonides in his poem Memnon the
grave of Memnon was at Paltus in Syria (Strabo, XV. p. 728).
The name Memnon is said to be the Semitic Naaman,
«darling», W. Robertson Smith identified Memnon
with Adonis. He says : «The characteristic feature in
the ritual of Adonis is that the god was worshipped first as
dead and then as again alive, and accordingly his tomb was
shown at various places of his worship in connexion with
temples of Astarte. Adonis (lord) is a mere title, and
essentially the same worship is associated with other narres,
especially with that of the eastern Memnon, a figure quite
indistinguishable from Adonis, whose tombs (Memnonia)
were shown in various parts of the East». See W.
Robertson Smith, «Ctesias and the Sémiramis
legend», English Historical Review, 2 (1887), p.
307.
(105) He came to Ilium
from Susa in Persia. Cp. I. 42. 3 ; IV. 31. 5 note.
(106) The Phrygians still
show the road etc. This was probably not the «Royal
Road» to Susa (Herodotus, V. 52 sq.), for that road was
very circuitous, whereas Memnon's road, according to
Pausanias, took short cuts. Prof. W. M. Ramsay, whom I
consulted as to the present passage, wrote to me (20th
September 1892) : «I have not a Pausanias by me ; but
the sentence seems to imply a different road from the Royal
Road, forking at Leonton Kephalai from it and going down the
Rhyndacus. I had vainly sought for some evidence of this path
having been in use in early time ; and I hope you have
supplied it». In my letter to Prof. Ramsay I suggested
that Memnon's road was possibly so called on account of
certain sepulchral mounds by which it may have been lined at
intervals and which might have been known as the graves of
Memnon (sec note on § 6). In his reply Prof. Ramsay says
: «The Royal Road was certainly marked by a series of
large tumuli, several of which to my knowledge retain traces
of old religions feeling attaching to them». In a
subsequent letter, Prof. Ramsay mentions that one of these
large tumuli contains a Hittite' inscription, which he
published in the Mittheil. d. arch. Inst. in Athen
some years ago.
(107) Paris is clapping
his hands. Prof. C. Robert (Die Nekyia des
Polygnot, p. 56) compares a vase-painting in which a
Bacchanal is represented dancing and clapping her hands
(Dumont et Chaplain, Les céramiques de la
Grèce propre, pl. XVII).
(108) The women are
carrying water in broken pitchers etc. These women,
described by the legend as being of the number of the
uninitiated, were most probably carrying the water to pour it
into the wine-jar mentioned below. That jar, though Pausanias
does not say so, may be supposed to have been represented as
broken, so that the task of attempting to fill it with water
would be endless. «To pour water into a broken
jar» was an ancient proverb (Xenophon,
Oeconomicus, VII. 40 ; Aristotle, Oeconomicus,
i. 6 ; Lucretius, III. 936 sq. ; Plautus, Pseudolus,
Act I. Scene III. 150). Plato refers to the uninitiated in
hell carrying water in a sieve to a broken jar
(Gorgias, p. 493 b). It has been suggested that the
reason for assigning this peculiar punishment to the
uninitiated in hell is illustrated by the ancient Greek
custom of placing a pitcher of a special sort called
«bath-bearer»(loutrophoros) on the grave
of an unmarried person (Demosthenes, XLIV. 18 and 30, pp.
1o86, 1089). Some of the ancient interpreters, who wrote
after the custom had fallen into disuse, supposed that the
«bath-bearers» placed on the tombs of the
unmarried were figures of boys or girls carrying such
pitchers (Harpocration and Suidas, s.v. loutrophoros ;
Pollux, VIII. 66) ; but archaeological discoveries have
confirmed the view of Eustathius (on Homer, Il. XXIII.
141, p. 1293) that it was the pitcher itself, or at all
events a representation of it carved in relief, which was
thus used to mark the graves of maids and bachelors. In shape
these pitchers, of which some have been found, were tall and
slender, with a high neck and high handles on either side.
See A. Milchhöfer, in Mittheilungen d. arch. Inst. in
Athen, 5 (1880), pp. 174-177 ; A. Herzog, `
«Lutrophoros», Archäologische
Zeitung, 40 (1882), pp. 131-14.4 ; P. Wolters,
«Rotfigurige Lutrophoros», Mittheilungen d.
arch. Inst. in Athen, 16 (1891), pp. 371-405, and ib. 18
(1893), p. 66 sq. The intention was, according to Eustathius
(l.c.), to intimate that the person on whose grave one
of these pitchers stood had never enjoyed the bath which a
Greek bride and bridegroom took on their wedding day, and for
which the water was fetched from a special spring by a boy
who was a near kinsman (Harpocration and Suidas, s.v.
loutrophoron ; Photius, Lexicon, s.v.
loutra ; Pollux, III. 43, who is probably wrong in
saying that the water was fetched by a girl). Now since
marriage was regarded and spoken of as an initiation (Pollux,
III. 38), it is possible that persons who died unmarried were
believed to be subjected to the same penalty in the nether
world as those who had never been initiated in the Eleusinian
or other great religions mysteries, and that their penalty
was to fetch water for ever for that bath which, having
failed to take in the upper world, they could never more take
in a world where there is neither marrying nor giving in
marriage. Similarly we may suppose that candidates for
initiation in the great mysteries had always to take a bath,
as they had in the case of the Eleusinian mysteries
(Hesychius, s.v. alade mustai ; Polyaenus, III, 11, 2
; G. F. Schömann, Griechische Alterthümer,3
2. p. 387), and that their punishment in the lower world was
in like manner a vain attempt, prolonged for ever, to enjoy
the sacred privilege which they had missed in life. It is
possible that the original reason why the Danaids were
believed to be condemned to this punishment in hell was not
so much that they murdered, as that they did not marry, the
sons of Aegyptus. According to one tradition, indeed, they
afterwards married other husbands (Paus. III. 12. 2) ; but
according to another legend they were murdered by Lynceus,
apparently before marriage (Schol. on Euripides,
Hecuba, 886). They may, therefore, have been chosen as
types of unmarried women, and their punishment need not have
been peculiar to them but may have been the one supposed to
await all unmarried persons in the nether world. Further, if
this explanation of their punishment is correct, it may very
well be that some of the water-pouring figures in existing
monuments of ancient art, which have been interpreted as the
Danaids, really represent unmarried or uninitiated women in
general, not the Danaids in particular. This view is
confirmed by a vase-painting, already referred to (note on X.
29. 1), which represents male as well as female figures
bringing water in pitchers and pouring it into a large jar
(Archäologische Zeitung, 28 (1871), pl. 31. 22).
This scene, which is proved to be laid in hell by the
presence of Indolence and his ass, probably represents the
punishment of the uninitiated or unmarried. The explanation
here given of the punishment in question is substantially the
one which has been put forward or accepted by Prof. E. Rohde
(Psyche, p. 292 note 1), Mr. E. Kuhnert (Jahrbuch
des archäolog. Instituts, 8 (1893), pp. 109-111),
and Mr. A. Dieterich (Nekyia : Beiträge zur
Erklärung der neuentdeckten Petrusapokalypse
(Leipzig, 1893), p. 7o note 1). It may be suggested that
originally the custom of placing a water-pitcher on the grave
of unmarried persons had a more kindly significance than that
of hinting at the weary task to which they were doomed to all
eternity. It may have been meant to help them to obtain in
another world the happiness they had missed in this. In fact,
it may have been part of a ceremony designed to provide the
dead maiden or bachelor with a spouse in the spirit land.
Such ceremonies have been observed in various parts of the
world by peoples who, like the Greeks, esteemed it a great
misfortune to die unmarried. Thus Marco Polo reports that
among the Tartars «if any man have a daughter who dies
before marriage, and another man have had a son also die
before marriage, the parents of the two arrange a grand
wedding between the dead lad and lass. And marry them they
do, making a regular contract ! And when the contract papers
are made out they put them in the fire, in order (as they
will have it) that the parties in the other world may know
the fact, and so look on each other as man and wife. And the
parents thenceforward consider themselves sib to each other
just as if their children had lived and married. Whatever may
be agreed on between the parties as dowry, those who have to
pay it cause to be painted on pieces of paper and then put
these in the fire, saying that in that way the dead person
will get all the real articles in the other world»
(Marco Polo, translated by Col. H. Yule, 2nd ed., 1. p. 259
sq.). The same custom is also vouched for the Tartars by
Alexander Guagninus («De religione Muscovitarum
omniumque Ruthenorum», printed in De Russorum,
Muscovitarum et Tartarorum religione, sacrificiis, nuptiarum,
funerum ritu (Spirae libera civitate, 1582), p. 253).
Similarly in China at the present day the spirits of boys who
died in infancy are, after a proper interval, formally
married to the spirits of girls who have been cut off at a
like early age ; the ceremony is performed over two paper
effigies representing the bride and bridegroom, which are
afterwards burned, together with a liberal supply of paper
clothes, paper money, paper man-servants and maid-servants,
etc., for the use of the newly-wedded couple in the spirit
land (J. H. Gray, China, 1. pp. 216-218 ; cp. S. Kidd,
China, p. 179 sq.). Amongst the Ingush of the Caucasus
when a man's son dies another man whose daughter is dead will
go to him and say, «Your son may need a wife in the
other world, I will give him my daughter. Pay me the price of
the bride». Such an obliging offer is never refused,
though the price of a bride is sometimes as much as thirty
cows. See J. von Klaproth, Reise in den Kaukasus und nach
Georgien, 1. p. 616 sq. ; Potocki, Voyage dans les
steps d'Astrakhan et du Caucase (Paris, 1829), 1. p. 127
(who, however, merely copies Klaproth). The old Slavonians
«so severely pitied the lot of the unmarried dead,
that, before committing their bodies to the grave, they were
in the habit of finding them partners for eternity. The fact
that, among some Slavonian peoples, if a man died a bachelor
a wife was allotted to him after his death, rests on the
authority of several witnesses, and in a modified form the
practice has been retained in some places up to the present
day. In Little Russia, for instance, a dead maiden is dressed
in nuptial attire, and friends come to her funeral as to a
wedding, and a similar custom is observed on the death of a
lad. In Podolia, also, a young girl's funeral is conducted
after the fashion of a wedding, a youth being chosen as the
bridegroom who attends her to the grave, with the nuptial
kerchief twined around his arm. From that time her family
consider him their relative, and the rest of the community
look upon him as a widower. In some parts of Servia when a
lad dies, a girl dressed as a bride follows him to the tomb,
carrying two crowns ; one of these is thrown to the corpse,
and the other she keeps, at least for a time» (W. R. S.
Ralston, Songs of the Russian People, p. 309 sq.).
Similar practices appear to have prevailed in Germany in the
Middle Ages, for the Würzburg Synods of 1329 and 1330
forbade the priests to bless the survivor of a betrothed pair
beside the dead body of the other (G. Lammert,
Volksmedizin und medizinischer Aberglaube in Bayern
(Würzburg, 1869), p. 153). This blessing of the living
beside the dead may possibly have been the relie of a more
barbarous and realistic marriage ceremony such as is still,
or was till lately, celebrated between the living and the
dead in the caste known as namboury in Travancore (J. A.
Dubois, Moeurs, Institutions et Cérémonies
des peuples de l'Inde, 1. p. 4 sq.). Amongst the Romans
it was customary, when a number of corpses were being burned
together, to place one woman's body with every ten bodies of
men (Plutarch, Quaest. Conviv. III. 4. 2 ; Macrobius,
Saturn. VII. 7. 5). It is possible that this custom
originated in the feeling that it was necessary to provide
dead men with female companions in the other world. The
notion that it is highly improper to appear in the
spirit-land without a wife or a female companion of some sort
is deeply impressed on the Fijian mind. At a certain place on
the road to the Fijian hell «there lies in wait a
terrible god, called Nangganangga, who is utterly implacable
towards the ghosts of the unmarried. He is especially
ruthless towards bachelors, among whom he persists in
classing all male ghosts who come to him unaccompanied by
their wives. Turning a deaf ear to their protestations, he
seizes them, lifts them above his head, and breaks them in
two by dashing them clown on a projecting rock. Hence it is
absolutely necessary for a man to have at least one of his
wives, or, at all events, a female ghost of some sort
following him» (Lorimer Fison, in Journal of the
Anthropological Institute, 10 (1881), p. 139). Hence in
Fiji a woman was always killed and buried with a dead man,
and the Roman custom just mentioned may have been originally
similar. Women who died before their husbands in Fiji, on the
other hand, were not obliged to produce their husbands'
ghosts before being admitted to the spirit land ; it was
enough if they showed a certificate of marriage in the shape
of their husband's beard, which the widower was careful to
place under his wife's left arm in committing her to the
grave (Fison, ib.).
(109) Callisto has a
bearskin for a mat. See note on VIII. 3. 6.
(110) The statement of
the Arcadians that Nomia etc. See VIII. 38. II.
(111) The poets say that
the nymphs live a great many years etc. See the
Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite, 257 sqq. ; Hesiod, quoted
by Plutarch, De defectu oraculorum, II. According to
Hesiod, a crow lives nine times as long as a man, a deer four
times as long as a crow, a raven three times as long as a
deer, a phoenix vine times as long as a raven, and a nymph
ten times as long as a phoenix.
(112) Sisyphus
struggling to shove the stone etc. See Homer, Od.
XI. 593 sqq. Sisyphus and his stone are depicted on vases and
form the subject of a wall-painting found on the Esquiline
hill at Rome. See Müller-Wieseler,
Denkmäler, I. pl. LVI. No. 275 a ; id., 2. pl.
LXVIII. No. 861 ; id., 2. pl. LXIX. No. 866 ; Miss J. E.
Harrison, Myths of the Odyssey, pp. 116 sq., 135, pl.
VII. and 33 ; Baumeister's Denkmäler, pp. 1923
sq., 1928, 1929, 1930, figures 2040, 2042 A, 2042 B.
Cratère de Munich |
(113) The stone hung
over him etc. This punishment of Tantalus, which is not
mentioned by Homer, was alluded to by the poets Alcaeus,
Alcman, and Archilochus. The couple of lines in which
Archilochus referred to the stone of Tantalus have been
preserved. See Schol. on Pindar, Olymp. I. 97 ;
Plutarch, Praecept. gerend. reipub. 6 ; Poetae
Lyrici Graeci, ed. Bergk, 2.3 p. 696. The author of the
epic The Return of the Atridae, which was probably
identical with the epic commonly known as The Returns
(Nostoi), also mentioned this punishment (Athenaeus, VII.
p. 281 b e ; Epicorum Graecorum fragmenta, ed. Kinkel,
p. 56), and in the extant works of classical writers it is
often referred to. See Pindar, Olymp. I. 89 sqq.,
Isthm. VII. [VIII.] 20 sq. ; Euripides, Orestes, 5 sq.
; Plato, Cratylus, p. 395 d ; Hyperides, Frag.
176, p. 102 ed. Blass ; Antipater, in Anthologia Palatina,
Appendix Planudea, IV. No. 131 ; Apollodorus, ed. R.
Wagner, p. 182 ; Epitoma Vaticana ex Apollodori
bibliotheca, ed. R. Wagner, p. 58 ; Plutarch, De
superstitione, II ; Philostratus, Vit. Apollon.
III. 25 ; Apostolius, Cent. VII. 6o, xvi. 9 ;
Mythographi Graeci, ed. Westermann, Appendix, p. 386,
No. 73 ; Lucretius, III. 98o sq. ; Cicero, Tuscul. IV.
16. 36, De Finibus, i. 18. 6o ; Hyginus, Fab.
82. In the original version of the story it would seem that
Tantalus endured this torment not in hell but in heaven,
where he had been admitted to the table of the gods. Zeus
promised to give him whatever he desired, and Tantalus asked
to live for ever, like the gods. Angry at his presumption
Zeus kept his promise by granting him the wished-for
immortality, but hung a great stone, like the sword of
Damocles, over his head, the fear of which prevented Tantalus
from enjoying the heavenly banquet which was for ever spread
out before his eyes. This was apparently the form which the
story took in The Return of the Atridae, if we may
judge from the abstract of it given by Athenaeus. See F. G.
Welcker, «Alcmanis fragmentum de Tantalo»,
Rheinisches Museum, N. F. Io (1856), pp. 242-254 ; D.
Comparetti, «Die Strafe des Tantalus bei Pindar»,
Philologus, 32 (1873), pp. 227-251 ; J. E.
Hylén, De Tantalo (Upsala, 1896), pp. 51 sqq.,
77 sqq. Cp. K. Schwenk, in Rheinisches Museum, N. F.
II (1857), p. 451 sq.
(114) Abutting on the
sacred close is a theatre. The statement of Pausanias
that the theatre abutted on the sacred precinct is exact. It
stood in fact outside of the precinct on the north-west,
occupying an angle formed by the wall of the precinct which
bounds the theatre on two sides, the south and east. When the
early traveller Cyriacus of Ancona visited Delphi in the
fifteenth century, he counted thirty-three rows of seats in
the theatre, built of large stones. After his time, however,
the building was gradually buried under the soil which
slipped down from the steep ground above, so that towards the
end of the nineteenth century very little of it appeared
above ground. The southeast corner, however, together with
pieces of the southern and eastern walls and a good piece of
the north wall, supported by two buttresses, were visible. On
the south wall, which was standing to a height of about 9
feet, inscriptions might be read like those on the polygonal
terrace-wall of the temple, with which they are approximately
contemporary ; they record the manumission of slaves.
Chandler saw these inscriptions in the eighteenth century
(Travels in Greece, p. 267). Now, however, the whole
theatre has been excavated by the French and turns out to be,
contrary to expectation, one of the best preserved in Greece.
The foundations of the stage, the orchestra with its stone
pavement, and the seats of the spectators almost or quite to
the top of the theatre, together with the supporting-walls of
the auditorium at both sides, are all preserved. The material
of which the edifice is constructed is the common stone of
Parnassus. Thirty-three tiers of seats exist, divided into
seven wedge-shaped blocks by staircases radiating from the
orchestra. The diazoma or horizontal passage dividing the
tiers of scats into an upper and a lower section, is paved
with stone and is well preserved. There are no chairs in the
front row, next to the orchestra ; the seats there are just
like those in the rest of the theatre, except that they are
covered with inscriptions recording the manumission of
slaves. The passage (parodos) leading into the
orchestra from the west is blocked with a large marble
pedestal, on the north side of which an inscription, now
upside down, mentions that the offering, whatever it was, had
been dedicated by the Cnidians. We may conjecture that the
offering was no other than the image of Dionysus mentioned by
Pausanias. The front of the stage was adorned with sculptured
reliefs in white marble about .8o metre (2 ft. 7½ in.)
high, of which considerable remains have been found. They
represent the labours of Hercules. We see the hero shooting
arrows at the Stymphalian birds, rescuing Hesione from the
sea-monster, fighting the Centaurs, and contending with the
giant Antaeus and with King Diomede and his man-eating
steeds. It is supposed that these sculptured decorations were
added by Attalus, king of Pergamus, and that the subject of
the reliefs was chosen with reference to the legendary
connexion of Pergamus with Hercules through Telephus, the son
of the hero by Auge. The remains of the stage-buildings, Mr.
Homolle informed me, throw no fresh light on the vexed
question of the use of a raised stage in Greek theatres. The
earliest inscription which mentions the theatre dates from
about 150 B.C., and to this period approximately the building
may be assigned. It faces south-east across the deep glen of
the Plistus : the view from it is fine. See Athenaeum, 29th
June 1897, p. 846 ; Berliner philolog. Wochenschrift,
13th July 1895, p. 928 ; id., 27th February 1897, p. 287 ;
Archäologischer Anzeiger, 1896, p. 73. For
notices of the theatre before its complete excavation sec H.
N. Ulrichs, Reisen und Forschungen, 1. p. io8 ; F. G.
Welcker, Tagebuch, 2. p. 67 sq. ; P. Foucart,
Mémoire sur les ruines et l'histoire de
Delphes, p. 103 sq. ; Baedeker,3 p. 16o ; Guide-Joanne,
2. p. 41; H. Pomtow, Beitrage zur Topographie von
Delphi, p. 4o sq.
(115) A stadium in the
highest part of the city. In accordance with this
statement of Pausanias the stadium occupies a commanding
situation in the very highest part of Delphi, to the
north-west of the sacred precinct. Standing on its southern
edge you look, as it seems, almost perpendicularly down on
the ruins of the sanctuary and the deep glen of the Plistus,
across which rise, in full view, the high rocky mountains
that stretch thence southward to the sea. On the other three
sides, west, north, and east, the stadium is bounded by steep
ascending slopes of rugged rocks and the soaring precipices
of Parnassus. A more striking scene for the celebration of
national games could hardly be imagined. The narrow shelf of
flat ground which thus breaks the slope of the mountain and
was chosen as the site of the stadium extends east and west
or, to be more exact, north-east and south-west for a length
of about 63o feet. In breadth as well as length the stadium
includes every foot of flat ground that was to be had. On its
southern or rather south-eastern side it is supported on the
abrupt slope by a massive and well-preserved wall of ancient
polygonal masonry, which is still in some places from 9 to 12
feet high with from five to seven courses of stones. Some of
these stones are large : one of them measures 13 feet long.
The antiquity of the wall is attested by an inscription,
carved on it in letters of the sixth century B.c., which
forbids the bringing of new wine into the sanctuary of
Eudromus. The interior of the stadium was entirely excavated
by the French in 1896, and was found to be in almost perfect
preservation from end to end. Like the southern
supporting-wall it is built of the reddish local stone. There
are twelve tiers of seats, and at regular intervals of 14
metres a flight of twentyfour steps, forming a gangway, leads
up through them. The seats resemble those in Greek theatres.
The front of each is hollowed out somewhat below, and on the
upper surface, towards the back, there is a sinking to
receive the feet of the person who sat in the tier above. A
good many of the seats were lying detached on the southern
edge of the stadium before the French excavations. In the
middle of the lowest tier of seats on the north side there is
a scat of honour for the presidents of the games. It consists
of a long bench with projecting ends. At the eastern end of
the race-course a few seats are hewn in the side of a massive
rock, which here bounds the stadium at the foot of the tall
cliffs of Parnassus. From these seats we catch a glimpse of
the Gulf of Crisa away to the south-west.
Of the Pentelic marble with which, according to Pausanias,
Herodes Atticus refaced the stadium, not a scrap has been
discovered by the French. There is no need, however, on that
ground to question the accuracy of Pausanias's statement ;
for his testimony is confirmed by that of his contemporary
Philostratus, who in his well-informed life of Herodes
Atticus tells us that the wealthy sophist dedicated the
stadium at Pytho (Delphi) to the Pythian Apollo (Vit.
Sophist. II. 1. 9). Philostratus does not indeed mention
the facing of Pentelic marble, but that a radical
reconstruction was carried out may safely be inferred from
the fact that Herodes Atticus dedicated the stadium afresh to
Apollo. A man of his vast wealth and princely munificence
would certainly not have had the effrontery to offer the old
stadium to the god unless he had first beautified it in some
such way as Pausanias indicates. He had similarly adorned the
stadium at Athens (Paus. I. 19. 6). Moreover, the marble
seats existed apparently in good preservation down to the
middle of the fifteenth century, and some of them were still
to be seen towards the end of the seventeenth century. In the
fifteenth century Cyriacus of Ancona described the
hippodrome 600 feet long, richly adorned with marble steps
(ornatissimum gradibus marmoreis), in the high citadel
of the city, at the foot of most lofty rocks» (quoted
by P. Foucart, Mémoire, p. 105). In the
seventeenth century Wheler, who describes the situation of
the stadium correctly, says : «Some of the degrees yet
remain of white marble» (Journey, p. 315). The
accuracy and good faith of these two early travellers in
Greece have never, I believe, been questioned. The fidelity
of Cyriacus has been recently confirmed at Delphi itself by
the excavation of the theatre, in which the number of tiers
of seats discovered (thirty-three) tallies exactly with the
description of Cyriacus. We may therefore safely conclude
that the marble seats were to be seen for at least twelve
centuries after the time of Pausanias. They have probably
gone the way of so many other ancient marbles in Greece, into
the lime-kiln.
See Wheler, Journey into Greece, p. 315 ; E. D.
Clarke, Travels, 4. p. 190 ; Dodwell, Tour, 1.
p. 181 sq.; Leake, Northern Greece, 2. p. 577 ; H. N.
Ulrichs, Reisen und Forschungen, 1. p. 37 ; Mure,
Journal, 1. p. 187 sq. ; Thiersch, «Ueber die
Topographie von Delphi», Abhandlungen d. philos.
philolog. Classe d. kön. bayer. Akad. d. Wissen.
(Munich), 3 (1840), pp. 18 sq., 51 ; F. G. Welcker,
Tagebuch, 2. p. 68 sq. ; C. Bursian, Geogr. 1.
p. 178 ; P. Foucart, Mémoire sur les ruines et
l'histoire de Delphes, p. 104 sq. ; Guide-Joanne,
2. p. 41 ; Berliner philolog. Wochenschrift, 15th
August 1896, p. ro86 sq. ; Journal of Hellenic
Studies, r6 (1896), p. 343. For the account of the
excavation of the stadium I am indebted to the notes of Mr.
Cecil Smith.
Pausanias has now concluded his description of Delphi.
Here may be the most convenient place to notice some ancient
remains of which he says nothing.
To the south-west of Delphi, on the slope of the ridge which
bounds the valley on the west, is the small chapel of St.
Elias. It lies to the south of the stadium and a good deal
lower down the hill. The chapel stands upon a quadrangular
platform 51.2 metres (about 167 feet) long by 37 metres
(about 123 feet) wide, the supporting-walls of which on the
eastern and northern sides are partly composed of ancient
masonry. On the west the platform is bounded by a
terrace-wall of polygonal masonry about 58 paces long and 10
feet high, which supports the higher ground above, and with
it the old road to Chryso (Crises) and Itaea. The modern road
is now carried a good deal lower down the hill than the
chapel of St. Elias. Of the wall which supports the platform
on the east a considerable piece, about 21 paces long, is
ancient. It is built in a massive style and is strengthened
by five buttresses which project 2 ft. 3 in. The stones on
the whole are squared and laid in horizontal courses, but a
tendency to the polygonal style may be observed in some
places. For a short distance the wall is standing to a height
of about 13 or 14 feet with nine courses of masonry. One of
the buttresses has ten courses, but its top is flush with the
top of the wall. This ancient wall also extends round the
north-east corner and partly supports the platform on the
north side. The material of which these walls are built is
the reddish stone of the district. On the quadrangular
platform supported by them, outside of the chapel, is a piece
of an ancient mosaic pavement consisting of red, white,
black, and blue stones set in an ornamental pattern. At the
beginning of the nineteenth century Clarke found two very
large architraves of Parian marble in the chapel of St.
Elias, and many years afterwards Mr. Foucart found, a few
feet below the platform, some fragments of Doric columns of
Pentelic marble, which from the width (.25 metre) of their
flutes may have measured about 5 metres (16 ft. 5 in.) in
circumference.
These architectural remains have now disappeared, having been
broken up to be used in repairing the chapel. It is supposed
that the ancient building, to which they belonged and which
doubtless occupied the quadrangular platform, was the Pylaea
or place of assembly of the Amphictyonic Council. Commonly
the name Pylaea designates one of the two annual meetings of
the Amphictyonic Council, but that it also designated the
place of assembly appears from one of the inscriptions
engraved on the polygonal wall at Delphi, which speaks of the
services rendered by a certain man Hermias «both at
Pylaea and at Delphi». See Bulletin de Corresp.
hellénique, 7 (1883), p. 417 sqq. Plutarch says
(De Pythiae oraculis, 29) that in his time Pylaea
renewed its youth along with Delphi and had been more adorned
with «sanctuaries and places of assembly and
waters» than it had been for a thousand years before.
From this passage of Plutarch it has sometimes been inferred
that a new suburb sprang up here in Hadrian's time ; but
Plutarch makes no mention of houses ; he speaks only of
public buildings, sacred and civil. That the place of
assembly of the Amphictyonic Council at Delphi must have been
situated near the chapel of St. Elias is shown by a passage
of Aeschines (contra Ctes. 115-124), in which he says
that the Cirrhacan plain lay spread beneath and in full view
of the meeting-place of the Amphictyonic Council. The orator
himself, he tells us, was one of the Athenian representatives
at a meeting of the Council. Addressing it he pointed to the
smiling and peaceful plain stretched at their feet, with its
olive-groves and corn-fields, its cottages and potteries, and
in the dis-tance the shining waters of the gulf, with the
port-town visible beside it. «You see, he cried, yonder
plain tilled by the men of Amphissa and the potteries and
cottages they have built. You see with your eyes the
fortifications of the cursed and execrated port. You know for
yourselves that these men levy tolls and take money from the
sacred harbour». He then reminded his hearers of the
oath sworn by their ancestors that this fair plain should lie
a wilderness for ever. His words were received with a tumult
of applause, and next day at dawn the men of Delphi, armed
with shovels and mattocks, marched down into the plain,
razedthe fortifications of the port to the ground, and gave
the houses to the flames. It is refreshing to know that on
their way back they were hotly pursued by the Amphissaeans in
arms and had to run for their lives. This was the beginning
of the chain of events which in a few months more brought
Philip at the head of a Macedonian army into Greece and ended
in the overthrow of Greek freedom at Chaeronea.
The view described by the orator, whose ill-omened eloquence
brought ail these miseries and disasters in its train, is to
be obtained, not from the platform on which the chapel of St.
Elias stands, but from a point a little way to the south-west
of it, where the traveller coming from Delphi reaches the end
of the high ridge that shuts in the valley of Delphi on the
west. Here as he turns the corner the whole Crisaean plain,
now covered with luxuriant olive-woods, comes suddenly into
sight. The scene is again as rich and peaceful as it was
before Aeschines raised his voice, like the scream of some
foui bird snuffing the carrion afar off, and turned it into a
desert. We may suppose either that in his time the
Amphictyonic Council met at this point, or, what is far
likelier, that the orator's description of that day's doings
is more graphic than correct.
An interesting inscription on an upright hewn stone which may
still be seen beside the chapel of St. Elias confirms the
view that here the Amphictyonic Council met. The inscription,
which was found within the enclosure in 1877, records that
the Deiphians and Chaeroneans, in compliance with a decree of
the Amphictyonic Council, set up a portrait of Plutarch. From
the style of the pedestal on which the inscription is eut we
see that the portrait must have been a bust. As Plutarch was
manager (epimelêtês) of the Amphictyonic
Council in the reign of Hadrian (see C. I. G. No. 1713 ; H.
Pomtow, Beiträge zur Topographie von Delphi, p.
77 sq.), it is natural enough that a portrait of this
excellent man and admirable writer, erected by order of the
Council, should have been placed in or near the place where
the Council held their meetings.
Between the chapel of St. Elias and the site of the old
village of Kastri, now destroyed, is another platform
supported by substructions. It is on the slope of the hill,
lower down than the old road to Chryso but higher than the
new road. The supporting-wall of the terrace, built of ashlar
masonry, is 34.5 metres (113 feet) long and 4 to 5 metres
(about 13 to 16 feet) high ; it is strengthened by twelve
buttresses which project about 12 feet. Buttresses were not
used in Greek architecture before the time of the Roman
empire. Hence this platform may have supported one of the new
sanctuaries with which this part of Delphi seems to have been
adorned in Plutarch's age (Plutarch, De Pythiae
oraculis, 29). Between this platform and the chapel of
St. Elias, just above the old road which leads to Chryso, is
a large sepulchral chamber hewn in the rock, with a high
doorway and arched roof. On the three sides of the chamber
are three niches for sarcophaguses, also hewn in the rock.
There were paintings on the walls above each grave ; above
the middle grave a red and green parrot with a long tail
could still be plainly made out in the first hall of the
nineteenth century. A few yards to the east of this
sepulchral chamber a semicircular recess is hewn in the rock,
with a rock-cut bench running all round it. The spot commands
a wide prospect over the valley of Delphi and the course of
the Plistus, away to the mountains beyond which lay the
ancient Ambrosus.
See Wheler, Journey, p. 314 sq. ; Chandler, Travels
in Greece, p. 266 sq. ; Clarke, Travels, 4. p. 191
sq. ; Dodwell, Tour, 1. p. Co sq. ; Leake, Northern
Greece, 2. p. 566 sq. ; H. N. Ulrichs, Reisen und
Forschungen, I. pp. 25, 36, rIo ; Fiedler, Reise,
1. p. 143 ; F. G. Welcker, Tagebuch, 2. p. 69 sq. ; W.
Vischer, Erinnerungen, p. 610 ; C. Bursian,
Geogr. 1. p. 178 sq. ; P. Foucart, Mémoire
sur les ruines et l'histoire de Delphes, p. 107 sqq. ;
Baedeker, 3 p. 161 ; Guide-Joanne, 2. p. 41 sq. ; H.
Pomtow, Beiträge zur Topographie von Delphi, p.
73 sqq. A view, a plan, and a section of the sepulchral
chamber are given by Le Bas, Voyage archéologique,
Itinéraire, pl. 39. See also H. Pomtow, op.
cit. pl. XI. No. 31.
On the ridge which shuts in the valley of Delphi on the west,
foundations of well-built Greek walls, flanked with towers,
may be traced at intervals along the crest of the ridge as
far as the lofty precipices which rise to the north of Delphi
and which were themselves a sufficient protection on that
side. The wall and towers are standing in some places to a
height of several courses. These were evidently the western
walls of Delphi, and may have been built by Philomelus in 355
B.c. when he seized Delphi in the Sacred War, for we are told
that he built a fortification-wall round the sanctuary
(Diodorus, XVI. 25). Before his time Delphi seems to have
been an open town, and the fortifications erected by him
appear to have soon fallen into decay ; for Justin,
describing the attack of the Gauls on Delphi in 278 B.C.,
expressly affirms (XXIV. 6. 7) that the town was defended not
by walls but by precipices, not by art but by nature.
Further, an expression used by Livy (XLII. 15. 5) in
narrating the attempted assassination of King Eumenes near
Delphi in 172 B.C. seems to imply that Delphi was then
unwalled.
Outside these walls, on the western side, are many graves
hewn in the rock ; and on the crest of the ridge, about
midway between the old road to Chryso and the foot of the
high cliffs at the back of Delphi, is a conspicuous tumulus
which (if I am not mistaken) is popularly identified as the
tomb of Philomelus.
The view from the crest of the ridge is magnificent. It
embraces on the one side the profound valley of Delphi as far
east as Arachova, on the other side the Crisaean plain with
its olive-groves, bounded on the west by the lofty mountains
of Locris, wooded with dark pines, and on the south by the
Gulf of Corinth with the distant mountains of Peloponnese
rising beyond it.
See Leake, Northern Greece, 2. p. 565 sqq. ; H. N.
Ulrichs, Reisen und Forschungen, 1. p. 117 ; P.
Foucart, Mémoire sur les ruines et l'histoire de
Delphes, p. 110 ; Baedeker,3 p. 156 ; Guide-Joanne, 2. p.
41. On the western necropolis of Delphi, see H. Pomtow,
Beiträge zur Topographie von Delphi, p. 72
sqq.
Lastly it may be mentioned that the French excavations have
brought to light a beehive tomb eut in the rock and
approached by a short passage (dromos). In the tomb
were found a dagger, knife, razor, and brooch, all of bronze,
and some Mycenaean pottery of the lustrons sort decorated in
the usual fashion with lines and circles or complicated
patterns that mark a transition towards the purely
geometrical style of ornamentation. The finest of the vases
found is a stirrup-vase (sec vol. 3. p. 112) adorned with two
large octopuses, splendidly drawn and accompanied by
geometrical patterns. These discoveries, as Mr. Homolle says,
remind us of the Iegend which connects the foundation of the
Delphic sanctuary with Crete, the country where Mycenaean
remains abound. See Th. Homolle, Gazette des
Beaux-Arts, Décembre 1894, p. 442 ; id., in
Bulletin de Corresp. hellénique, 18 (1894), p.
195 sq. Mycenaean tombs, Mr. Cecil Smith informs me, have
been discovered immediately below the middle point of the
south wall of the sacred precinct, and two more on the site
of the present Museum. All around the temple and altar the
soil is reported to be full of Mycenaean romains, including
pieces of amber.
ADDENDA
VIII. The Cnidian Lesche (Bulletin de Corresp.
hellénique, 20 (1896), pp. 633-639). The terrace
on which the Lesche stood is supported on the south by a high
retaining-wall built of blue limestone in the regular ashlar
style. No doubt this is the wall referred to in the
inscription of the third century B.C. (above, p. 357). The
edifice itself formed a rectangle 18.70 metres long by 9.53
metres broad. Nothing of it now remains above the foundations
except sonie blocks of the first course on the north side. At
the south-west corner even the foundations have partly
disappeared. An earthquake or more probably a great flood of
the torrent Rodini seems to have destroyed the building and
swept away the stones, some of which were found lower down
the hill at the level of the great altar or even as low as
the eastern entrance to the sanctuary.
The two long walls of the building were on the north and
south sides respectively. All along the north wall ran
another wall built of polygonal masonry which protected the
edifice from the thrust of the ground above and served at the
same time as the boundary of the sacred precinct. This
boundary wall was supported at its two ends by short walls at
right angles to it, one at each end, which skirted the
eastern and western ends of the Lesche so closely as to
render the building inaccessible on these sides. Hence there
can have been no doors in the two short sides of the Lesche.
The terrace on which the Lesche rests is hardly longer than
the building itself, but it is deeper by 3.28 metres. Thus
there was room for a passage along the southern side of the
Lesche, and as this was its only accessible side the building
must have opened to the south. The passage or walk is
continued westward to a point where two roads seem to have
met, one corn-mg from the east along the foot of the terrace,
the other from the theatre which lies to the west. In the
interior of the Lesche four cubes of marble have been found
occupying their original positions in the eastern hall of the
building. They are disposed so as to form a square of 4.50
metres, the sides of which are symmetrical to the walls. In
the upper surface of each there is a deep narrow socket, into
which the foot of a wooden pillar was probably fixed. A
similar arrangement existed in the western hall of the
building. Mr. Homolle concludes that we have to conceive of
the Lesche as a quadrangular building closed on all sides
except that the southern wall was broken by a doorway and
perhaps by windows. There was, he thinks, no colonnade on any
side, and no large opening in the walls. In the interior
eight pillars, arranged in two parallel rows, supported the
roof, in which there may have been an opening to light the
building. Round the walls benches may have run where idlers
could lounge and talk. The paintings of Polygnotus, in Mr.
Homolle's opinion, began on each side of the door, to the
right and left as Pausanias says (x. 25. 2, X. 28. 1) ; they
were continued round the short walls and met at the middle of
the long north wall just opposite to the door. Thus each of
the two great pictures (Troy after its capture and Ulysses in
hell) was distributed in three different sections over three
separate walls. Traces of this triple division may, Mr
Homolle thinks, be detected in Pausanias's description of the
paintings.