Ancient Greek Orientalist Painters: The Literary Evidence

To Sister Eucharia O. P
   Mary Joan Delahunt

Tomasz Polański











Ancient Greek

Orientalist Painters: The Literary Evidence


















Kraków 2002

© Copyright by Tomasz Polański




Projekt okładki: Maciej Kuś






Na okładce wykorzystano portret młodej kobiety z Hedżar - rys. J. -L. Gćróme






Korekta językowa: Teresa Bałuk-Ulewiczowa








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ISBN 83-7188-555-5








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Acknowledgements



     My book could not have been compiled without encouragement and financial support from a number of both private persons and representatives of the scholarly institutions and foundations. I began my work in 1997 thanks to a scholarship awarded by the Fundacja z Brzezia Lanckorońskich. The sojourn in London offered me an unparalleled opportunity of working in three closely located libraries of the Classical Institute, the Warburg Institute and the School of Oriental and African Studies. Professor Karolina Lanckorońska was of great assistance for many Polish scholars particularly during the prolonged period of the totalitarian dictatorship in Poland before 1989. In many ways she actually played the role of the Polish Ministry of Culture in Exile. And it happened that the generosity and magnanimity of one noble Lady saved much of what was destined to be destroyed by the army of beaurocrats from Orwell’s Ministry of Memory in its Polish version. Also in 1997 Professor Hugo Montgomery from the Classical Institute, the University of Oslo, submitted my candidature to the Research Council of Norway which kindly awarded me a four-month scholarship in Norway. The generous grant of money gave me a chance to live and work between the Lake of Sognsvann and the libraries of Oslo University. I cherish the memory of my meetings with the members of the staff and the students of the Classical Institute who so often expressed their sympathy and assistance for a foreigner in such a natural and friendly way. My occasional hiking excursions to the north of Oslo brought to me unsurpassed and unfogettable experiences of the particularly profound metaphysics which may unexpectedly emerge in the human soul when confronted with the virgin beauty of the Norwegian mountains, lakes and forests. A passage from Knut Hamsun’s Pan is now resounding in my nostalgic feelings: ‘... a view across to a little stream and perhaps to a break of blue in the sky. It need not be more. ’ Thanks to encouragement from Professor Seymour Gitin and Professor Joachim Śliwa I decided to apply for a scholarship of the Andrew Mellon Foundation at the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research in Jerusalem. The generous gift of money from the Foundation let me undertake a dream-like Orient-Reise which led me via the Balkans, Athens, Patmos, Rhodes, Cyprus, Haifa to Jerusalem, and then along the ways and paths of the Holy Land to Massada, Panyas, Qumran, En Gedi, Dor, Bet Shean, Kafarnaum, Sepphoris, Caesarea Maritima, Tel Aviv-Jaffo, Samaria, and eventually across Sinai to Cairo and Luxor. In Jerusalem I had the opportunity to work among the wonderful book collections of the Albright Institute of Archaeological Research, the Ecole Biblique, the Rockefeller Library and the Archaeologi-

8

cal Institute at the Hebrew University on Mount Scopus, the libraries in which one occupied with Classical and Oriental studies can find virtually everything he needs and simultaneously discover much more then he ever expected. I would like to express my gratitude to all the membrs of the staff and the visitors who worked and stayed at the Albright Institute in autumn 1999, and most of all to Professor Seymour Gitin, for their sympathy, assistance and discussion. I will always remember your faces, no matter what conflicts divide your communities, all of you - Moslems, Jews and Christians. To Professor J. Philips and his archaeological passion for the Stone Age I owe a trip to Wadi Chareitun, to the Canadian archaeologist Elaine Myers a long march through the Judean Desert to reach the Muraba’at Caves and then back to the shores of the Dead Sea, which we faced tired in the rays of the sun set. Yet another scholarship, this time from the Adam Krzyżanowski Foundation, established by Pruszyński Family from Liechtenstein, granted to me in the year 2000, offered me the luxury of the independence necessary to collect the materials and complete writing up. I would also like to thank Mrs. Irene Sury from the Oriental Society in Basel and Monsignor John Wilson from Dublin for their incessant interest in my studies. To Professor Romuald Turasiewicz, the Jagiellonian University of Kraków, I owe the editorial review of my book; to Dr Teresa Baluk-Ulewiczowa, from the Institute of the English Philology, the Jagiellonian University, for a skilful linguistic correction which substantially improved the original English text, however at the same time preserved untouched the original content of every phrase. To Dr Stephanie West, Hertford Colledge, Oxford and Dr Theodor Lindken, Klassische Seminar, Ruhr-Universität, Bochum, I owe the regular, time-consuming and efficient task of sending to Kraków again and again new and new copies of the papers from different periodicals unavailable to me in Poland. Thank you very much. Finally 1 would like to express my gratitude to my reviewers, Sylwester Dworacki, Tomasz Mikocki, and Romuald Turasiewicz. 

Contents






    Abbreviations..................................................11
I. Orientalism in the Greek Art and Literature.....................13
II. Mythology and Exotism: The Semito-African Orient
    in the Mythological Landscape Painting.........................65
    1. The Heroines of Ethiopia and Phoenicia......................67
          The Rape of Europa.......................................67
          The Rescue of Andromeda..................................89
    2. The African Adventures of Heracles.........................117
          Heracles and Antaeus.....................................117
          Heracles and the Pygmies................................135
III. History and Romance: The Iranian Orient in the Greek Easel Painting .151
    1. On the Battlefields of Issos and Marathon..................153
          Persian Warriors on the Poecile Marathon Painting.......153
          The Alexander Mosaic and the Greek Battle Painting......171
    2. Three Persian Princesses...................................193
          The Death of Pantheia...................................193
          The Warrior Princess Rhodogoune.........................211
          The Wedding of Alexander and Roxana.....................227
IV.  Final Remarks................................................239
    Bibliography..................................................249
    Index.........................................................265
    Plates........................................................281


Abbreviations



AA - Archäologischer Anzeiger
ABV - J. D. Beazley, Attic Black-Figure Vase Painters, Oxford, 1956
ADAW - Abhandlungen der Deutschen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin AfO - Archiv für Orientforschung
AJA - American Journal of Archaeology
AJPh - American Journal of Philology, Baltimore AK - Antike Kunst
ANET - Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, ed. J. B. Pritchard, Princeton, 1969
ANRW - Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt, ed. H. Temporini, W. Haase, Berlin, New York, 1972-
AO - Der Alte Orient
AP - Anthologia Palatina
API. - Antike Plastik
ARV - J. D. Beazley, Attic Redfigured Vase Painters, 1-3, Oxford, 1964
ARW - Archiv für Religionswissenschaft
ASAE - Annales du Service des Antiquités de l’Egypte, Cairo
AZ - Archäologische Zeitung
BCH - Bulletin de Correspondence Hellénique, Paris
BIFAO - Bulletin de l’institut Français d’Archéologie Orientale, Le Caire
BAC - Bochumer Altertumswissenschaftliches Colloquium
BMC - H. Mattingly, Coins of the Roman Empire in the British Museum, I-Vl,
    London, 1923-1962
Boisacq - Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque, ed. E. Boisacq Brockelmann - C. Brockeimann, Syrische Grammatik mit Paradigmen, Literatur.
    Chrestomathie und Glossar, Leipzig, 1960
CAH - Cambridge Ancient History
CHCL - Cambridge History of Classical Literature
Chd’E - Chronique d'Egypte
CHI 3(1) - Cambridge History of Iran. The Seleucid, Parthian and Sassanian Periods,
    ed. E. Yarshater, Cambridge, 1983
CIG - Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum
CIS - Corpus Inscriptionum Semiticarum
Collezioni - Le Collezioni di Museo Nazionale di Napoli, I (1986), 11 (1989), Rome
CQ - Classical Quarterly, Oxford
CR - Classical Review, Oxford
CVA - Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum
EAA - Enciclopedia dell 'arte antica, classica e orientale
EPRO - Etudes Préliminaires aux Religions Orientales dans l’Empire Romain,
    ed. M. J. Vermasseren, Leiden, 196Iff.
FGH - F. Jacoby, Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, Leiden, 1926-62 GB - Grazer Beiträge
Gesenius - W. Gesenius, Hebräisches und aramäisches Handwörterbuch über das Alte
    Testament, Leipzig, 1910
GRBS - Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies
HA - Historia Augusta
HE - Historia Ecclesiastica
Hebert, Schriftquellen - B. Hebert, Schriftquellen zur hellenistischen Kunst, Hom-Graz, 1989 HSCPh - Harvard Studies for Classical Philology
JDAI - Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Berlin
JEA - Journal of Egyptian Archaeology
JHS - Journal of Hellenic Studies

12

JOAI - Jahreshefte des Oesterreichischen Archäologischen Instituts, Wien
JRS - Journal of Roman Studies
JNES - Journal of Near Eastern Studies
LÄ - Lexikon der Ägyptologie, hrsg. W. Helck, E. Otto, Wiesbaden, 1975
LCL - Loeb Classical Library
LIMC - Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, Munich, 1981
Living Races - The Living Races of Mankind, ed. H. Johnston, R. Lydekker, A. H. Keane, H. N. Hutchinson et al., vols.1-2
LREL - Latomus. Revue d’Etudes Latines
LSJ - H. G. Liddel, R. Scott, H. S. Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon, Oxford
MAAR - Memoirs of the American Academy in Rome
MDAIA - Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Athenische Abteilung
MDAIR - Mitteilungen des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts, Römische Abteilung
NC - Numismatic Chronicle, London
OCD - The Oxford Classical Dictionary
Overbeck - J. Overbeck, Die antiken Schriftquellen zur Geschichte der bildenden Künste bei den Griechen, Leipzig, 1868
PBA - Proceedings of the British Academy
PG - J.-P. Migne, Patrología Graeca (1857-1934)
Pitture - Pompei.Pitture e mosaici. Enciclopedia Italiana, Roma, 1990-
PM - B. Porter, R. Moss, Topographical Bibliography of Ancient Egyptian Hieroglyphic Texts, Reliefs and Paintings, Oxford
RA - Revue Archéologique, Paris
RACh - Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum, hrsg. T. Kiauser et al., Stuttgart
RE - Realencyklopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, ed. A.Pauly, G.Wissowa et al., Stuttgart, 1893-
Recueil - A. Reinach, Textes grecs et latins relatifs d l'histoire de la peinture ancienne, Recueil Milliet, Paris, 1921 (repr. 1985)
REG - Revue des Etudes Grecques
Répertoire - S. Reinach, Repertoire des peintures, Paris, 1922
RhM - Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, Frankfurt a. M.
RIC - H. Mattingly, The Roman Imperial Coinage, 7 vols., London, 1923-1967
Roscher - Ausführliches Lexikon der griechischen und römischen Mythologie,
    hg. v. W. H. Roscher
RQ - Römische Quartalschrift
SAAC - Studies in Ancient Art and Civilization, Krakow
SBAW - Sitzungsberichte der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, München
SIFC - Studi Italiani di Filologia Classica, Firenze
TAPA - Transactions of the American Philological Association
TGF - Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. A. Nauck
Westendorf - W. Westendorf, Koptisches Handwörterbuch, Heidelberg, 1965/1975
ZÄS - Zeitschrift fur Ägyptische Sprache und Altertumskunde ZAW - Zetschrift für die Alttestamentliche Wissenschaft, Berlin ZNW - Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft

Orientalism
in Greek Art and Literature










     bappho loved the glamour of the Lydian ladies, with their stylish apparel and cosmetics. The soldier Alcaeus could not help admiring a Babylonian shield. The anonymous Corinthian miniaturist vase painters were apparently enchanted by the colours, shapes and designs of Syrian, Mesopotamian or Anatolian fabrics, leather, or works wrought in bronze, silver or gold, adorned with fantastic hybrid creatures. They all expressed their fascination in verse or the figural arts. Their works are exactly what I mean by “Orientalism” as a component of literary or figural style. Through their work the Hellenic craftsmen and poets expressed their fascination with foreign, exotic forms, adapted to a different style, based on different artistic doctrines. Consequently my perspective is one taken by an outsider, by one who directly or indirectly accedes to and establishes contact with a world that remains unknown or almost unknown to his own paideia or basic, standard education within his indigenous cultural milieu. Just like the art of the Aztecs, or of the African masks can exert a strong impression on Western observers, though they do not speak Aztec or African dialects, the glamour of Oriental cavalrymen or the colourful, richly decorated dresses of the Palestinian women may cast a powerful enchantment on us, supplying yet another proof that literature and the fine arts have their own ways of influencing the human imagination, emotions and stimulating the creative powers, even if the recipient does not possess a real knowledge of foreign people and the language in question. The Arabian Nights may be used as the standard commonplace to illustrate this phenomenon, providing yet another argument to confirm the opinion that art and literature can cross cultural barriers with their own means of expression.

     “Orientalism is fundamentally a political doctrine willed over the Orient because the Orient was weaker than the West.”¹ This is by far not the Orientalism which I am going to write about. In his argument Said takes a narrowly Arab and politicized position. In fact although renewed efforts have been continually undertaken for a long time, in recent decades as well, to wall up the fine arts and belles let-tres within the confines of political doctrines, they have preserved their own autonomy and their own ways of expression, and they have followed their own rhythms of development.

      Said 1979, p. 204.

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    The impact of the Orient on the West since the decline of the Mycenaean civilization until the fall of the Roman Empire was always significant, in some instances reaching the deepest layers of the Western civilization and affecting many fields of human activity, as for example in the spheres of the Western theories of state, religion, warfare, language, economics, customs, dress etc. Even in the literature alone the problem appears complex. It exceeds by far the limits drawn for this study. Let us take the phenomenon of the Syrian-Greek, Jewish-Greek or Egyptian-Greek literatures. Many Orientals made so good a use of the Greek language that they entered the standard histories of the Greek letters. They transferred their knowledge into an alien cultural milieu. This phenomenon remained unparalleled on the Greek side. Manetho, Chaeremon, Bardaisan, Porphyry, St. Anthony, Josephus Flavius, the writers of the Corpus Hermeticum, the Fathers of the Desert, the anonymous authors of the Apocrypha and Pseuepigrapha of the Old and New Testament, the Septuagint interpreters - Syrians, Egyptians, Jews - they either wrote in Greek themselves or were translated into Greek by their compatriots and in this way made names for themselves in the Greek-speaking intellectual world. In this connection I would like to emphasize the difference between the literary style, Orientalism as stylization, as a fashion, snobbery or decoration, as a fascination with the mystery of the alien on the one hand - and the Orient as a self-identity in all its forms of inner life and external expression. Josephus Flavius and Philo of Alexandria were Orthodox Jews. Bardaisan, who had an excellent command of Greek, wrote in Syriac and at heart felt deeply Syrian. The Egyptian monks spoke and wrote Egyptian and only the importance of their writings for Western Christianity persuaded others to translate their works into Greek, Latin and other languages. They did not style themselves on Oriental motifs. They were Orientals, not “Orientalists.” We used to label the historical process they belonged to the “Orientalization” of the West, something different from Orientalism and the Orientalists. St. Matthew naturally employed his native Aramaic idiom and syntax in his Gospel. For long his Semitic figures of speech remained unacceptable to many Classical intellectuals. His religion, which gradually dominated the Pagan West, was born among the hills of the rugged country between the northern shores of the Yom Kinnereth and the mouth of Jordan on the shores of the Dead Sea. The Septuagint and their translation of the Bible was first rejected by the Pagans even in Alexandria, where it was accomplished, but in the course of time turned out to be the canonical version used in the Early Church. A long-lasting process of Orientalization appears to have been so apparent at some stage that it made von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff record some angry words, namely that the spirit of Late Antiquity stemmed “aus dem Orient und ist dem echten Hellenen-tum todfeind.”² His characteristic of Poseidonios of Apamea sounded very much the same. In his view Poseidonios was “doch schon Orientalisch infiziert.”³

    ² Hellenistische Dichtung I, 1924, p. 2.

    ³ Die Kultur der Gegenwart, 1910 (3), p. 145.

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      “In the Orient one suddenly confronted unimaginable antiquity, inhuman beauty, boundless distance,” wrote Said referring the 19'h-century “Orientalist” writers and painters.⁴ Lamartine called the Orient “la patrie de mon imagination.”⁵ And this is our realm - the imaginary Orient of the Greek painters whose work has perished, their memory saved by the Greek belles lettres, mostly by the authors of the Late Antonine and Severan periods. It is an imaginary Orient, not the Orient of the insiders or experienced travellers or of those who lived for long in the East, converted to a local religion, who leamt the indigenous languages and assimilated with the indigenous people. Ours is the Orient which appeared to outsiders as full of eccentricities, “with its odd calendars, its exotic spatial configurations, its hopelessly strange languages.”⁶ ⁷ And now I am going to present a short review of this “Orientalism” conceptualized as a component of the literary and figural Classical style, laying emphasis on the points which are relevant to the contents of the main chapters of this study.

      Hesiodic and Homeric comparative studies have already brought enough material to speak of a significant influence of the Babylonian, Syrian, Hittite and Egyptian lore on the Greek belles lettres of the Archaic period. A memorable scene of Zeus, Poseidon and Hades throwing lots in order to divide the cosmos in the II-iadic poem Apate Dios (II. 15, 187-193) found a strikingly close parallel in a similar ceremony related by the Babylonian epic Atrahasis.¹ The Apate Dios, with the symptomatic peculiarities in its formulaic language and hence regarded by A. Dihle to have been originally written as an independent composition,⁸ revealed even more affinities. The poem’s cosmogony with Oceanus and Tethys as parents of all the gods, to some resembles the motif of Apsu and Tiamat in the Enuma elish.⁹ ¹⁰ * Burkert observes that “the Greek text would present a contamination of motifs from Atrahasis and Enuma elish.”'⁰ The Atrahasis epic tells us about the earth, which suffered from the burden of overpopulation and the gods felt disturbed by the noise of the human beings rising to heaven. As a result the gods decided to destroy mankind." We can easily recognize here the prooemion to Cypria, where we read that Zeus “decided to relieve the all-nourishing earth of mankind / by setting alight the great conflict of the Ilian War.”¹² The island of Cyprus, which probably inspired the title of the epic poem, played the role of a bridge between East and West in the Archaic period. The Chigi Vase, dated c. 650 BC, decorated


    ⁴ Said 1979, p. 167.

    ⁵ Ibid., p. 177.

    ⁶ Ibid., p. 166.

    ⁷    Atrahasis, ed. Lambert and Millard, 1969; J. Bottero, S. N. Kramer, 1989; S. Dailey, Myths of Mesopotamia, Oxford 1989.

    “ A. Dihle, Homer-Probleme, 1970, pp. 83-92; Burkert 1992, p. 91.

    ’ Burkert 1992, p. 92f.

    ¹⁰ Burkert 1992, p. 93; of. Calypso’s catalogue of goddesses enamoured of mortal men (Od. 5.118-128); Odysseus’ catalogue of the heroines unhappy in love (Od. 11, 235-330).

    " Burkert 1992, p. 103; Atrahasis I 352-359 = Il 1-8.

    ¹² Kypria fr. 1 Allen = fr. 1 Davies = Schol. AD II. 1.5.

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with the scene of the Judgement of Paris, provides us with an approximate date for the Cypria epic. In the 7,h century Cyprus was controlled by the Assyrian Empire. It was a period of prosperity and well-being for the islanders. “The flavour of this period on Cyprus appears to be a mixture of eastern luxury and Homeric lifestyle.”¹³ Aphrodite enjoyed a particular reverence on Cyprus. She came over to the island from the East as a West Semitic Ashtorith, the Mesopotamian Ishtar. The collection of parallels gathered by the Homeric and Hesiodic scholars has already been growing for a long time. The myth of Uranos, Cronos and Zeus with a castration scene of the old father-god, a scene marked by primaeval brutality and primitivism, and the successive fight with the monster Typhoeus as narrated by the Theogony have their analogies in the Hittite and Babylonian epics.¹⁴ The return of Enkidu from the Netherworld and his story resemble the appearance of the ghost of Patroclus to Achilles in the moving scene from the Iliad {II. 23, 65-102).¹⁵ Siduri, a heroine of the same Babylonian epos, seems to have returned in the Greek literature in the shape of the sorceress Circe.¹⁶ Who of us readers of the Iliad does not remember the gloomy, pathetic downfall of Hector, and the dramatic climax of the epos, when Zeus grasps the golden balance and casts human souls on its scales {II. 22, 208-13). At such a moving moment we may remember the words of W. Marg, who called the Iliad “the poem of death.”¹⁷ It has been suggested already some time ago that this Homeric motif goes back ultimately to the Egyptian Book of the Dead.¹⁸ All the time new materials emerge in outcome of diverse research undertakings. We generally agree that the Phoenician silver and bronze bowls with their concentric decorative bands must have inspired the imagination of the poet of the Iliad when he composed the Shield of Achilles Poem {II. 18, 477-608).¹⁹ Three of those bowls carry inscriptions in a North-West Semitic dialect, one in cuneiform.²⁰ The silver bowl from the Bernardini Tomb in Praeneste, dat


    ¹³ Burkert 1992, p. 103.

    ¹⁴ CHCL 1989, p. 56; M. West, Hesiod. Theogony, 1966, pp. 19-30, 106 f„ 379 f.

    ¹⁵    Burkert 1991, p. 163; G. S. Kirk, Myth. Its Meaning and Functions in Ancient and Other Cultures, Berkeley, 1979, p. 108.

    ¹⁶ Burkert 1991, p. 163.

    ¹⁷ W. Marg, AuA 18, 1973, 10; Griffin 1980, p.95.

    ¹⁸    Burkert 1991, p. 163; E. Wüst, Die Seelenwägung in Aegypten und Griechenland, ARW 36, 1939, pp.162-171, 1939; A. Setaioli, L'immagine delie bilance e il giudizio dei morti, S/FC 44, 1972, pp.38-54. 1972.

    ¹⁹    Burkert 1992, p. 16; K. Fittschen, Der Schild des Achilleus, in Archaeologia Homerica, fase. N, Bildkunst, T. 1, Göttingen 1973; M. W. Edwards, The Iliad: A Commentary, ed.G. S. Kirk, vol.V, Cambridge 1991, pp.200-232, figs. 1-3 (a shield from the Idean Cave, silver dish from Amathus; silver dish from Praeneste); K. Stanley, The Shield of Homer. Narrative Structure in the Iliad, Princeton, 1993; W. Marg, Homer über die Dichtung. Der Schild des Achilleus, Münster, 1971; cf. on Hesiod’s shield of Heracles, J. L. Myers, Hesiods ‘Shield of Heracles ’: its Structure and Workmanship, JHS 61, 1914, pp. 17-38.

    ²⁰    A. Furtwängler, Die Bronzen und die übrigen kleineren Funde von Olympia, Olympia IV, 1890, p. 141 Pi. 52; CIS II 112; bowl from Pontecagnano in the Tyszkiewicz Collection, Paris, B. D. Agostino, Stud.Etr. 45, 1977, 51-58; the bowl from Falerii, in: M. Cristofani, P. Fronzardi, Stud.Etr. 39, 1971, 313-331.

19

ed c. 700 BC, shows a continuous narrative, and not just separate scenes or purely decorative animal motifs.²¹ Andersen argued against this traditional archaeological interpretation of Homer’s Shield of Achilles and put emphasis on the poem’s purely literary connections with other passages of the Iliad.²² However not only the elements of narrative or archaeological evidence can sometimes offer instances of striking parallels. The problem also involves the close affinities in literary technique, e.g. long verse in stychic composition, standard epithets, formulaic language, repetition of verses or typical scenes.²³ H. Diels once wrote of “Oriental fables in Greek clothing.” He had in mind a piece of Callimachus’ verse, the fable of The Laurel and the Olive Tree, which originated in the Lydian lore.²⁴ Babrius acknowledged in his collection of fables that they were invented by the ancient Syrians in the period of Ninos and Belos, i.e. the Assyrians of the 7lh century BC (Babrius 2.2f.).²⁵ All the above examples selected from among many others point to the East as a source of inspiration. The modes of transmission in individual cases and also in general terms may not be entirely clear as regards geography, media or chronology. However since L. Woolley’s excavations in Al-Mina, a Greek factory at the mouth of the Orontes active from the late 9th century BC, and the excavations in Levkadi in Euboea, we have at least some geographical indications.²⁶ The comparative studies in this field must be carried out in a strict and rigorous way. They need knowledge of both ancient Semitic languages and Greek, which is not easy to accomplish. Otherwise they may lead scholars astray. Astour evidently went too far when he pointed to the Ugaritic literature as the source of the Greek mythology, arguing for a Semitic etymology of the Greek heroic names.²⁷ Some works verge on charlatanry or may even raise suspicion as to ideological one-sidedness and prejudice. Inspired by Fraser’s theory of “myth and ritual,” Fries interpreted the Phaecian body of the Odyssey as an illustration of a Babylonian ritual.²⁸ Bernal, whose much publicized book Black Athena became a bestseller, whether we like it or not, put forward his extravagant etymologies coined under


    ²¹    CIS I 164; M. G. Guzzo Amadasi, Le inscrizionifenicie epuniche delle colonie in occidente, Rome 1967; Burkert 1992, p. 104f., fig.7.

    ²² O. Andersen, Some Thoughts on the Shield of Achilles, Symbolae Osloenses 51, pp. 5-18.

    ²J Burkert 1992, pp.114-120; Burkert 1991, p.l70f.

    ²⁴    H. Diels, Orientalische Fabeln in griechischem Gewände, Internationale Wochenschrift 4, 1910; Burkert 1992, n.5, p. 214.

    ²⁵    cf. the fable of the Eagle and the Fox, Archilochus fr. 174-181 West; West 1978, p. 28f. vv. 202-14. with the analogy to the Poem of Etana.

    ²⁶    L. Woolley, JHS 58, 1938, pp. 1-30, 133-170; J. Boardman, The Greeks Overseas, Oxford 1980, pp. 35-84; West 1988, JHS 108: Euboea as a place central for the originis of the Greek epic; J. Boardman, Al Mina and History, Oxford, Journal of Archaeology 9, 169-190; P. J. Riis, Griechen in Phönizien, in: H. G. Niemeyer ed., Phönizier in Westen, Madrider Beiträge 8, Mainz, 1982, pp. 237-255.

    ²⁷    M. C. Astour, Hellenosemitica. An Ethnical and Cultural Study in West Semitic Impact on Mycaenian Greece, Leiden, 1965, 1967 (2).

    ²⁸ C. Fries, Studien zur Odyssee, vol.I: Das Zagmukfest auf Scheria. Leipzig, 1910.

20

the influence of some modern, anachronistic theories, prevalent for quite a long time now in the 20Ih-century Western mass media.²⁹ These recent examples can be a warning to all of us who are engaged on interdisciplinary studies. Imagination accompanied by incompetence may produce an imaginary world which has never had anything in common with any real people, time or location.

      The strong current of influence which came to the Aegean and Mainland Greece from the East played an important role in the Archaic period, the formative period of the Classical World. Burkert was probably right when he observed that it was “the formative epoch of Greek civilization that experienced the Orientalizing revolution.”³⁰ The examples which we have adduced above selected from among the many available, of which the majority only rarely present themselves as equally apparent and convincing, do not illustrate a conscious stylization, a skilful play on Oriental motifs. Nevertheless they testify to the scale of the long process of Orientalization in the West. However, the Greek Archaic literature abounds in material which shows Greek Orientalism as a stylistic predilection endowed with its own charm and original forms. Homer’s Odyssey is particularly relevant here. Yet Blackwell asked if Homer had not actually visited Egypt.³¹ Whether he did or not is another matter,³² but in fact the Eastern chronological references which seem to refer directly to the Odyssey are concentrated in one decade. The Greek-Egyptian relations must have begun not significantly later than c. 660 BC, and they coincide with the rise of the 26,h Saite Dynasty. A colourful simile of Achilles who, rejecting Agamemnon’s offer to marry the king’s daughter, recalled the proverbial wealth of hundred-towered Egyptian Thebes (o0i nXeioTa Sopoiq ev Kifipa-ra Kairat//. 9, 381-383), calls to mind the punitive expedition of Assurbanipal (669-629 BC) which concluded in the seizure and absolute spoliation of the Holy City of Egypt in 663 BC.³³ If Scheibner is right, we may have yet another important date for the chronology of the Odyssey.³⁴ Eumaios tells Odysseus how he was abducted from his home by Phoenician traders aided and abetted by the child’s treacherous nurse. The nurse herself descended from a wealthy family of Sidon “of many bronze gates” (tcoXdxciXkov - Od. 15,425 ff.). This is a story of Phoenician freedom and prosperity. We are also told that Menelaus offered Telemachus a gold-rimmed, cast silver crater which he once got from Faedimus, King of Sidon, his


     ²⁹ M. Bemal, Black Athena. The Afroasiatic Roots of Classical Civilization, vol. 1, London, 1987.

     ⁵⁰ Burkert 1992, p.8.

     ³¹ T. Blackwell, Enquiry into the Life and Writings of Homer, London, 1735; Burkert 1991, p. 156.

     ³²    on the efforts aimed at reconstruction of the unknown biography of Homer cf. E.Vogt, Homerein grosser Schatten? Die Forschungen zur Person Homers, in: Zweihundert Jahre Homer-Forschung. Rückblick und Anblick, her. J. Latacz, Colloquium Rauricum 2, Stuttgart, 1991.

     ³³    ANET pp. 295, 297; cf. S. West, Homer i Egypt, Filomata 402, 1991, pp. 83-103; T. F. R. Braun, The Greeks in the Near East, CAH 111 3, 1982, The Greeks in Egypt, pp. 32-56.

     ³⁴    G. Scheibner, Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena, Ges-ellsch. u. Sprachwiss., Reihe 15, 1965, pp. 93-96; Burkert 1992, n. 24, p. 161.

21

host on his way back from Troy {Od. 4,614-619). Sidon was seized and destroyed by Asarhaddon in 667 BC. Scheibner defined this date as the terminus ante quern for the Odyssey. In fact more dates accumulate in the decade of c. 670-660 BC in connection with the Odyssey.

      It is certainly a coincidence, but a meaningful one, that at the very beginning of the Greek letters Proteus, an old and wise marine divinity, appeared as a personification of the Orient. He was described as unseizable, all-knowing, immortal and able to take any shape he wished, even of fire and water. The Orient also rose up before the Greek eyes as inscrutable and incomprehensible. Menelaus managed to leam something from the Egyptian Wise Man only thanks to Proteus’ disloyal daughter Eidothea {Od. 4, 398-459).³⁵ In yet another meaningful scene of Homer’s Odyssey Helen, as if performing a magic ritual, throws some herbal substances, gentle and pain-soothing, into Telemachus’ and Menelaus’ drinking pots, which have the power to bring oblivion of all evil experienced in one’s life {Od. 4, 220-226). The poet sings that Helen acquired her miraculous medicines (<papp.aica p.-q'tioEv-ca) from the Egyptian Polydamna, wife of Thon. The reader can deduce from the narrative that it was in Egypt that Helen had learnt how to use them, because they might be dangerous if used by one ignorant of their power {Od. 4, 229-30). The Egyptians knew this art. Every Egyptian was a physician, continued the poet, all of them descended from the divine healer Paeeon {Od. 4, 231-32). The motif of herbs soothing pain and bringing a feeling of perfect bliss and complete oblivion to a tired wanderer returns again in the story of the Lotus Eaters. The folk-tales based on the motif of a sweet fruit causing oblivion is known to many peoples all around the world. It is told in the Homeric Hymn to Demeter of Persephone, who ate the sweet pomegranate fruit; by the Maoris of New Zealand; by the Zulu people in South Africa; in the Indian Deccan, and on the Isle of Man.³⁶ To Herodotus the Lotus Eaters are real. They eat only the lotus, which tastes like sweet dates, and resembles the fruit of the mastic. If you are among them you may also drink wine made of the lotus, Herodotus assures readers {Hdt. 4, 177). “The Lotus Eaters of Homer have no home in the real world,” writes Page.³⁷ In fact the lotus (6 XcoToq) must have been always associated with Africa and India, an Eastern fairyland. Let us again return to Helen in the scene where she is at table with Telemachus and Menelaus. The Odyssey narrates that she got precious gifts wrought in silver and gold from Alkandre, the wife of Polybos of Thebes, where people lived a luxurious life among fabulous riches. Thus the Egyptian Thebes turns into a synonym of wealth {Od. 4, 125-132). The treasures of the Oriental monarchs went into proverbial usage in the colloquial Greek. Pedley collected proverbs referring to Croesus, who usually appears accompanied by the Assyr


    ³⁵    Od. 4, 384f. yepcov aXiog vT]p.Eptr]<;, a06va-ro<; npcoTEVg Aiyuntiog.; Od. 4, 417f. oac’ E7ti yatav, Epjtetct yiyvovtai Kai i58cop Kat 0Ea7ti6aE<; jvup.

    ³⁶ Page 1973, pp. 17ff.

    ³⁷ Ibid. p. 10.

22

ian Sardanapalus and the Phrygian Midas.³⁸ Even in the Netherworld Midas was thinking only of his gold, Sardanapalus about his great luxury, and Croesus of his treasures (Luc, Dial. mort. 3, 2). We are at the source of a myth which has proved particularly long-lasting, blazing forth again into full Hollywood glory, one would like to say, in the 19Ih century, as shown recently by Bohrer.³⁹ We will also find Croesus and the golden sand of Pactolus on the Pantheia painting (Phi-lostratus, Imag. II, 9). A private art gallery described by Philostratus the Elder also owned a work showing Midas with his gold (Imag. 1, 22).

      The story of Helen, Menelaus and their young guest from Ithaca turns out to be relevant and meaningful in many ways for our study. At one point the heroine describes an incident when Odysseus managed to penetrate into the besieged city of Troy. Only Helen recognized him and at once addressed him, but he strongly denied his identity. So Helen washed him and anointed his body with olive oil. In outcome of this feminine manoeuvre the Achaean hero confessed to Helen all he knew about the Greek military plans. Helen kept quiet and never mentioned a word of this to her Trojan husband (Od. 4, 244-256). But she finally divulged the story at table in Sparta in the company of her first husband and the young Telemachus. Several lines later Menelaus recollected the memories of that critical night within the walls of Troy, when Helen followed by a third husband she had managed to acquire following the death of Paris, went round the wooden horse skilfully imitating the voices of the Achaeans’ wives apparently in order to provoke those inside the horse to leave it and die at the hands of the Trojans (Od. 4, 271-284). I am recalling these well-known stories in order to emphasize that in Book 4 of the Odyssey Helen styles herself on a learned Oriental woman living among the treasures of the East. Her motivation throughout remains ambiguous, her psychology inscrutable and opaque, her deeds unpredictable.⁴⁰ Thus she appears as Helen the mysterious, Helen the sophisticated and irresistibly beautiful.

      Other familiar female figures also turn out to contain substantial portions of Orientalism in their psychological and mythical make-up. Like Ishtar in the Gilgamesh Epos, Circe receives her lovers and turns them one after another into animals. “The magician male or female, is a stranger to Greek legend; and it is presumably significant that the two exceptions who come most readily to mind, Circe and Medea, are at home in the remote Orient, closest to the centres of Akkadian culture.”⁴¹ Very similar fables are known from the Sanskrit Ocean of the Streams of Story.⁴² Sheherezade during her 510,h night unfolds a strikingly similar tale of Queen


    ³⁸   Pedley 1972, no 73-83, e.g. Dio Chrys. or. 78, 32; Favorinus, de fort. 26-27; Luc. dial.mort. 3(2); Seneca, cont. 2.1(9).7.

    ” Bohrer 1998, pp. 336-356.

    ⁴⁰ Griffin 1980, pp.76ff.

    ⁴¹ Page 1973, p.60.

    ⁴² Katha Sagit Saqara, or. Ocean of the Streams of Story, trans. C. H. Tawny, Calcutta, 1880.

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Lab and Bedr Basim. Even the recurrent motif of nocturnal meetings, long talks and love between Circe and Odysseus betoken an Arabian Nights analogy. What we have is yet another long-lived Western myth of the Orient, which has inspired the old masters whose paintings we are going to present. This is the image of an Oriental woman irresistibly attractive and dangerous to her admirers. Said referred to the women of Nerval and Flaubert in the following words: “such female figures as Cleopatra, Salome, and Isis have a special significance;... in their work on the Orient,. .. they pre-eminently valorised and enhanced female types of this legendary, richly suggestive, and associative sort.”⁴³ Flaubert’s Kutchuk Hanem, an Egyptian dancer and courtesan, is yet another incarnation of the myth. Ale-mah means a learned woman in Arabic. “It was the name given to women in conservative 18,h-century Egyptian society who were accomplished reciters of poetry. By the mid-19th century the title was used as a sort of guild name for dancers who were also prostitutes.”⁴⁴ Flaubert was infatuated by her sensuality and delicacy. Conrad’s Alma, a musician, originated from the same sources of inspiration. Axel Hengst apparently suffered from Flaubert’s Oriental syndrome. If we read the repetitive and standard stories of Herodotus on the behaviour of the Gindane and Nasamone women from Libya (IV, 177), the common possession of wives and odd sexual conduct practised by the Massagetae men (I, 216), the treatment of virgin brides among the Adyrmachidae (IV, 68), a tale of King Cheops’ daughter (II, 126) etc., then we will see more clearly a popular cliché, an ageless stereotype, which is also reflected in Lane’s Orient which “exuded dangerous sex, threatened hygiene and domestic seemliness with an excessive freedom of intercourse.”⁴⁵ A European “day-dream of the Orient.”⁴⁶

      The story of Eumaios in the Odyssey brings us to yet another standard Western view of the Orient in the making. It shows an idyllic Oriental landscape, a fairyland, a Blessed Island of Syria which had never ceased to be ейротод EupriXog, oivo7cXr]0f]<; яоХЬлирод // neivri 5’ой лоте 5f¡p.ov éoÉpxEtai, ov5é tig аХХт] // vobaog (Od. 15, 406ff.). The same passage brings us a characteristic of the Phoenicians: they appear to be good sailors and successful traders, but at the same time greedy knaves (тршктаг), cruel and ruthless pirates, and deceitful kidnappers. This image of the Semites in the Classical letters would survive for many centuries. We find it reflected in Apuleius’ image of the priests of Atargatis, in Herodian’s portrait of Heliogabalus, or Tacitus’ history of the Jews. The inevitable limits of this study do not allow for a more detailed discussion of the subject.⁴⁷ We meet it again and


     ⁴⁵ Said 1979, p. 180, cited after M. Praz, The Romantic Agony, trans. A. Davidson, Cleveland, 1967.
     ⁴⁴ Said 1979, p. 186.
     ⁴⁵ ibid, p.167.

     ⁴⁶    V. G. Kiernan, Europe’s collective day-dream of the Orient, in: The Lords of Human Kind: Black Man, Yellow Man and White Man in the Age of Empire, Boston, 1969.

     ⁴⁷    cf. e.g. M. Stem, Greek and Latin Authors on Jews and Judaism, I-Ill, Jerusalem, 1974 ff.; Polański 1997a; Polański 1997b.

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again with mixed sentiments of sympathy and repulsion both in Classical descriptions and their figural representations of the Orient and its inhabitants.

     The rise to power of the Lydian monarchs in the mid 7th century BC led to the gradual imposition of their power over the Eastern Greeks, which was eventually accomplished by Alyattes. It was an epoch of upheavals. In 612 BC the joint forces of the Medes and Babylonians stormed the gates of Niniveh. A reinstated Babylonian kingdom soon revealed its imperialist ambitions. An Egyptian military expedition sustained defeat by the Babylonian army in the Holy Land. Daniel’s Nebuchadnezzar (605-562 BC) took Jerusalem in 597 BC. The stormy period around 600 BC was echoed by the Aeolic monody. The impact can still be felt even in the preserved fragments of Lesbian verse. In one of the most charming stanzas of the Greek poetry Sappho confessed that the Lydian style of dress was all the fashion among the Greek ladies, and the chambers of royal Sardis the most desirable place, where young Greek ladies felt on the top of the world (96 LP). Like every born poet, Sappho possessed the art of playing melodies on the resonant Aeolic hexameter scale, harmonizing together even commonplace expressions into a musical phrase, as if she were stringing together a chain of pearls puppa xai Kaaia Xißavoq T’ôvepEÎxvuxo (44LP). Here she harmonized the names of popular cosmetics, all of them were words of a north-western Semitic origin.⁴⁸ A modem Polish poet, the outsider and incurable dissident J. K. Kelus, composes his poems to the accompaniment of the guitar, frequently out of the most worn colloquial phrases, sometimes even employing dissected phrases drawn from the Polish totalitarian version of George Orwell’s newspeak. His, Sappho’s and other poets’ achievements show that real poets are endowed with the power to change Cin-derellas into princesses. Sappho had serious reasons to be distressed by her brother’s pernicious fondness for the women he met in Egypt. They seduced him and swindled him out of his money. Sappho disclosed the name of one Doriche (15LP). Herodotus was more outspoken. He gossips about a Charaxus who bought a prostitute Rhodopis in Egypt, and that she was worth a king’s ransom (Hdt. II, 135). We also learn of another Rhodopis, who was a slave of one Iadmon, with her paramour Aesop. Aesop was himself black, flat-nosed, had protruding lips, as tradition goes.⁴⁹ Herodotus mentioned yet another Egyptian courtesan famous in Greece in his days, Archidike (II, 135), and added with an air of melancholy: tpiXÉouoi Sè kcùç èv tfi NaVKpàTi ÈnatppôSiToi yivEGÖai èxaipai (II, 135) (It somehow happens that the prostitutes in Naucratis are the most beautiful of all). It is difficult to say who of those women was Oriental. Rhodopis was probably Thracian,


    ⁴⁸    on further borrowings from the N-W Semitic languages, cf. H. Rosen, L’hébreu et ses rapports avec le monde classique. Essai d'évaluation culturelle. Études chamito-sémitiques, Supp. 7, Paris 1979; E. Masson, Recherches sur les plus anciens emprunts sémitiques en grec, Paris, 1967; B. Hemmerdinger, Glotta 48, 1979, pp. 40-66; W. Krause, Griechisch-Orientalische Lehnwortbeziehungen, Festschrift K.Vretska, Heidelberg, 1970, pp. 89-115.

    ⁴⁹ Snowden 1970, p.6; Proemium Vitae Aesopi (Planudes), in: B. E. Perry, Aesopica, I 215.

25

not Greek (Hdt. II, 134). A Greek proper name may not say very much to us in such a context. Two Egyptian ladies with resonant Greek names, Zosime and Rhodous, known to us from a Greek letter of the Imperial times (the 2ⁿd century AD), could neither speak nor read Greek themselves. Like all the native Egyptian women they were illiterate and spoke only Egyptian.⁵⁰ Thus we have gone round full circle to find ourselves again in the world of Conrad’s Alma. We may also probably improve Charaxus’ bad reputation a little. If Rhodopis was actually thriving under King Amasis (570-526 BC), her liaison with Charaxus should be ruled out on chronological grounds (unless it was a wealthy aristocrat’s Faustian love).

     Alcaeus was a professional soldier, a warrior with a truly Homeric love of weaponry (357LP). In a surviving passage of an original poem he admired an ivory sword-hilt belonging to his brother who served in the Babylonian army (350 LP).⁵¹ One may only guess in which campaign he took part. Was Antimenides in Egypt, in Jerusalem, or in Phoenicia? In the 6,h century BC many Greeks and Carians served as mercenaries in the armies of Oriental monarchs. An unsavoury detail of the Battles of Salamis and Plataea was that in them thousands of Greeks found themselves confronting each other in fraternally mortal combat. The impression exerted by the Syrian army units in full array resounded in a lively, waggish stanza of the Sapphic poem 16 LP dedicated to one Anactoria: “her lovely walk and the bright sparkle of her face I would rather see than those chariots of the Lydians and infantry in armour.”⁵²

     Burkert remarked that “it is not Greek texts, but rather archaeological finds which offer a solid foundation for tracing Eastern cultural influences in Greece in the eighth and early seventh centuries and for evaluating their significance.”⁵³ Since Poulsen’s Der Orient und die friihgriechische Kunst (1912), “the Orientalizing period” has become a component of a rudimentary knowledge of the Archaic art and archaeology. If viewed from the perspective of the Corinthian painted pottery, the chronology of which was established on solid grounds, in contrast to the wavering and generally uncertain dating of the Greek literature of the corresponding epoch, the “Orientalizing style” in the figural arts and handicrafts can be estimated as around c. 725, and even as late as 550 BC if we include its late phase, the so-called Ripe Animal style.⁵⁴ It is not at all amazing that this period coincides with the epoch of the Homeric and Hesiodic epics, the Cyclic poems and the late Aeolic school of poets from Lesbos. The second half of the 8"' and


    ⁵⁰ R. Bagnall, Egypt in Late Antiquity, Princeton, 1993, p. 234; Polanski 1997a, p. 81.

    ⁵¹ cf. Lesky 1984, p. 134.

    ⁵² transl. Campbell, CHCL p. 207.

    ⁵J Burkert 1992, p. 14.

    ⁵⁴    Of many available books and studies on the subject I would like to recall a well-known handbook by R. M. Cook, Greek Painted Pottery, London, 1972, which I personally like and esteem highly; cf M. L. Bernhard, Greckie malarstwo wazowe, Wroclaw, 1966.

26

the 7th centuries BC witnessed political and economic domination in the Eastern Mediterranean by the Assyrian Empire, and after its fall the rise of new Oriental monarchies c. 600 BC, of which Babylonia, Lydia and Egypt were of key importance for the Aegean and Mainland Greece. In this period the Greeks borrowed the ancient Eastern invention - the alphabetic script which came to Greece from the north-western Semitic milieu. This finding allowed them to record their rich, accumulated literary lore.⁵⁵ “The impact of written as opposed to oral culture is perhaps the most dramatic example of transformation wrought from the outside, through borrowing,” Burkert commented aptly.⁵⁶ At the same time the excavations carried out on the sites of Greek temples have provided us with numerous Eastern imports, such as those at Olympia with its rich collection of bronzes.⁵⁷ The miniaturists of the so-called Middle-Proto-Corinthian period (c. 700-650 BC) reached a level of real perfection as regards their feeling for the decorative values of shape and design. They and their later followers populated their vases with sphinxes, sometimes arranged in heraldic compositions, with lions, chimaeras, Gorgons, sirens, tritons, Typhons etc., and adorned them with chains of lotus flowers and palmettes, drawn with sophisticated elegance and natural grace on the bestquality painted pottery. These patterns, intricate in their precision of lines, their hybrid or heavily stylised animals, their repetition of unending sequences so perfectly chosen for the globular surfaces of aryballoi or stout oenochoai, resemble arabesques or Egyptian hieratic script transmogrified into graphic design. Their works reflect the repertory of the almost unknown contemporary art of the Middle East, which produced an abundance of goods for export, such as patterned fabrics, leather, silver and gold vessels, jewellery or furniture. We come across these wares only occasionally and know them only from scattered and fragmentary testimonies. However, those traces leave us in no doubt as to the roots of the Corinthian Orientalizing style, the Corinthian “dream of the Orient.” E. Akurgal who successfully showed the origins of the Greek art from among the East Mediterranean forms, collected items like the heads of griffins from the orthostats of Sakçegôzü and Ankara, dated c. 700 BC (Late Hittite style),⁵⁸ a griffin and a sphinx from Zin-cirli dated about 830-810 BC (Neo-Hittite style),⁵’ an impressive chimaera from Carchemish, the second half of the 8th century BC (Neo-Hittite style),⁶⁰ or pegasoi from Assyrian cylinder seals or Urartian bronze plates ⁶¹ (Pl.I). The centaurs are known from Babylonian boundary stones, their image transferred through imported textiles. The Gorgon’s head came from Syria.⁶² About 600 BC the Assyrian lion


    ⁵⁵    L. H. Jeffrey, The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece, Oxford, 1961 ; B. B. Powell, Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet, Cambridge, 1991.

    ⁵⁶ Burkert 1992, p. 7.

    ⁵⁷ A. Furtwängler, Die Bronzen unddie iibrigen kleineren Funde von Olympia, Olympia IV, 1890.

    ⁵⁸ Akurgal 1968, Figs. 16-17.

    ⁵⁹ Ibid. Fig. 64.

    ⁶⁰ Ibid. Fig. 78.

    ⁶¹ Ibid. Figs. 118, 119.

    ⁶² Ibid. p. 187.

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replaced in the Greek art an earlier preferred design, the Hittite lion.⁶³ This was an oddity in itself, because the Greeks of that period could only have known lions from images: one more indication that the lions of the painted pottery owed their career in the Greek milieu to a process of transmission from the East. Greek mythology and art drew a lot from Eastern bestiaria. It was by no means a frigid imitation; just as the best 19lh-century painters and craftsmen did not simply copy Japanese drawings, Persian miniature paintings, Egyptian sculptures or Chinese porcelain. They adapted it to their needs, applying their fresh and creative sensitivity.⁶⁴ In this connection the words of Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, who once summed up East-West relations as “die seit Jahrhunderten faulenden Völker und Staaten der Semiten und Ägypter, die den Hellenen trotz ihrer alten Cultur nichts hatten abgehen können als ein paar Handfertigkeiten und Techniken, abgeschmackte Trachten und Geräte, zopfige Ornamente, widerliche Fetische für noch widerliche Götzen,” must sound pretentious and mistaken.⁶⁵ The impact of the East Mediterranean Semito-Hamitic world on the Aegean and Mainland Greece in the 8th to 6lh centuries BC was substantial and thorough in many fields of the activities pursued by the young Hellenic civilization. Oriental inspirations reached its deepest cultural layers and were assimilated in such a way that in many instances they looked and still look integral and original. Hence we cannot legitimately call all of them creations of an Orientalizing style, or of an Orientalist mannerism, or simply Orientalism. Many of them were not felt to be such. This is particularly valid in respect of religion. “The typically Greek” images of Zeus or Poseidon derive ultimately from the idols of the Hittite and Syrian warrior gods brandishing their weapons. A number of bronze statuettes have preserved their ancient divine images.⁶⁶ It may be amazing to a student of Classics that the image of the seated chryselephantine Asclepius in Epidauros accompanied by a dog originated in all likelihood from the cult of the Babylonian healing goddess Gula. Bronze figurines of the so-called “dogs and dog-leaders” were found in Hera’s sanctuary on Samos.⁶⁷ By the way, the reliefs attached to the throne of Asclepius in Epidauros showed two Greek heroes and their Oriental exploits: Bellerophon with the Chimaera, and Perseus with the Gorgon (Paus., Descr. 2,27,2). Burkert explained that during the Archaic period, the formative epoch of the Greek civilization, “Greek culture must have been much less self-conscious and therefore much more malleable and open to foreign influences than it became in subsequent generations.”⁶⁸ Not religion then, but art and literature naturally offer instances of at first self-conscious Orientalisms, i.e.


    ⁶³ Cook 1972, Hittite lion, Fig. 6 C-E, and Assyrian lion. Fig. 6 F-J.

    Mcf. e.g. Poulsen 1912; Dunbabin 1957; Boardman 1980; W. Helck, Die Beziehungen Aegyptens und Vorderasiens bis ins 7. Jahrhundert vor Chr., Darmstadt, 1979, Akurgal 1968.

    ⁶S Homerische Untersuchungen, Berlin, 1884, p.215=Burkert 1991, p. 160= Burkert 1992, n.9, p. 154.

    “ Akurgal 1992, p. 19.

    ⁶⁷ Burkert 1992, p.77, fig.4.

    ⁶⁸ Ibid. p.8.

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the imitation of Oriental forms, stylization, Orientalizing mannerisms, conscious borrowings and adaptations to the needs of a different style. Oriental motifs were employed in order to enrich the repertoire of literary or figural style, to make it more attractive and meet the demands of fashion, which in 7lh- and 6'h-century Greece favoured the Orient.

     “The Greeks had become aware of their own identity, as separate from that of the ‘Orient’ when they succeeded in repelling the attack of the Persian Empire.”⁶⁹ During the decades following the Battle of Plataea three great works of art shaped the vision of the conflict, which had been always regarded as a turning point in the history of the Greeks: the Persians by Aeschylus, Herodotus’ History and the Marathon painting in the Stoa Poecile. They also called to life the image of the Persian and more generally of the Oriental in the Greek literature, art and even in popular mentality, an image which proved strikingly persistent. In 472 BC the Athenian audience had the opportunity to attend a performance of the Persians by Aeschylus. They could learn a lot about the Persian religion, history, political system and customs from this play composed of dialogues and songs performed by Atossa, the Choir of the Persian Elders, the Angelos, who witnessed the Battle of Salamis, the ghost of Darius and eventually Xerxes himself. However, as a matter of fact it is only a scenic illusion created on the stage for an hour or so by Greek actors in Persian garb. The actors think, feel and speak like Greeks. The very theology and historiosophy with the dominant motifs of the wrath of the gods for the destruction of the Greek temples, the motif of uPpiq, of a mortal who oversteps the human bounds in his blind haughtiness in the face of the gods, who would retaliate with a cruel punishment - this idea, too, is Greek rather than Persian.⁷⁰ Atossa calls Athens world-famous (kXeivcdv ’AOtivcov v. 474), which sounds odd in the mouth of the Queen Mother of an Empire stretching from the Indus to Macedon. The Persian envoy from Xerxes on his part recites the following verse: 0£oi noXiv ocb^ovai naXXdSog 0£dq (v. 374) (the gods saved the town of Pallas Athena). In his pathetic report of the battle he further recites that “then the Greeks sang their holy hymn” (v. 393), and quotes it before the Persian Elders and the Queen word for word: lofty, bold, pathetic verses sung by the Greeks slap in the face of the Persians (vv. 402 ff.). He does not forget to add that the voices of the Persian soldiers were weaker and confused. The Angelos sings of the glory of the Athenians. Such a scene must be regarded as entirely unlikely and anachronistic at the court of Susa in Iran. When he mentions the number of the Persian warships, and as if casually adds Kai. yap ol8a (v. 341) (as far as I know), it looks as if he were throwing off his Persian mask for a passing while and betraying the Greek narrator.⁷¹ In the same play Atossa comes to the altar so that she may perform a sacrifice


    ⁶⁹ Burkert 1992, p.l.

    ⁷⁰ Broadhead 1960, p. XXIX.

    ⁷¹ Ibid. s. 115.

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to Apollo, and in doing so she follows the Greek sacrificial rituals (vv. 201 ff.). Herodotus informs his readers that the Persians had no altars (Hdt. 1, 132). We come across even more striking points. The Choir of Elders lays emphasis on humiliating SEOJiÓTTig - 8obXoq relationships and glorifies the Athenians who were slaves to none, never dependent (vv. 231 ff.). And particularly when the Choir of the Persian Counsellors pathetically recites ovkéti nEpoovopovviai / ou8’ ETi Saopocpopobatv / Seokoguvoichv áváyKar / oú8’ ég yáv KponinToviEg (vv. 585ff), those who fell in the Battle of Salamis are no longer subjects of their Persian masters, they no longer have to bring tributes obeying the orders, or to kow-tow before the king. So when the Choir recites this one can legitimately feel unconvinced by the extremely inauthentic tunes struck by the Persians ashamed of their ancient court rituals. The exaggeration may be justified perhaps only by the atmosphere of the year 472 BC in Athens, only a few years after Salamis and Plataea. A similar misunderstanding may be observed in many Europeans and North Americans, who widely believe that their civilization must be a subject of universal admiration, while actually it looks quite the opposite to millions upon millions of people in the Islamic and Subsaharan countries. Avi-Yonah did not hesitate to label Aeschylus “mostly hostile” to the Orientals. However the dream of Atossa Avi-Yonah refers to is not a convincing analogy in this connection.⁷² Aeschylus’ comparison of the corpses of the Persian soldiers and sailors floating on the sea after the Battle of Salamis to tuna-fish (vv. 424ff.) would better fit Avi-Yonah’s argument. This strange verse sounds like an adaptation to the metrical units of the tragic verse of a colloquial phrase in current use in the years following the battle. However, it is not so much the Hellenization of the Orientals as the Orien-taliza-tion of the Greek actors on the Attic scene that is more captivating to us.

     It is true that like his audience, Aeschylus “knew little, if anything, about the Persian religion.”⁷³ Evidently Xerxes was no atheist (v. 497). Herodotus wrote that the Persians venerated the sky, moon, fire, water and winds (Hdt. 1, 131). Nevertheless Aeschylus made some effort to suggest something of the Persian religious realities, such as their worship of mountains and rivers, sun, sky and earth, interpretation of dreams, or Oriental funeral ceremonials.⁷⁴ We have two moving, monumental and significantly prolonged scenes of the Oriental dirge performed by the Elders in commemoration of the fallen Persian warriors (vv. 533-597). Particularly the second of them, in which Xerxes joins, may be called a great lament, a sort ofpersisches Requiem, displaying the Aeschylean poetic and dramatic tal


    ⁷²    Avi-Yonah 1978, p. 136, n. 3; in Hecuba v. 1199 and 1A v. 1400 the actors say that the Greeks should rule barbarians and that the two can never be friends, Avi-Yonah 1978, ibid.; H. Diller, Die Hellenen-Barbaren Antithèse im Zeitalter der Perserkriege, in: Grecs et Barbares, Fond. Hardt, Entretiens VIII, Geneva, 1962, pp. 39-68.

    ⁷³ Broadhead 1960, p. xxix.

    ⁷⁴    Pers. 205-9, 497-9; fr. 144 Mysi\ cf. Hdt. 1,131; the association of eagle, sun and altar with sacred fire as in Pers. 205-9 has analogies in the Persian art, Gow 1928, pp. 138-140.

30

ent at the peak of its achievement. The reader may have a feeling that Aeschylus had a chance to witness the extremely prolonged Oriental funeral ceremonies, inherited by the Islamic world from its pre-Islamic ancestors, an unforgettable experience to any visitor who has the opportunity to spend some time in the East. We Europeans are more constrained in our behaviour during the rites of mourning, while in the same situation the Orientals in the Near East are more emotional, emphatic and theatrical.

     Aeschylus tried to reproduce the atmosphere of the Oriental court, its king endowed with the divine right and despotic power, its exotic court ceremonials of tribute-bringing 7tpooKÓVT]crię, the royal pomp and the enormous wealth of the Persian monarchy.⁷⁵ According to a contemporary view shared by the Greeks, it was the abundance of this wealth that degraded the Orientals physically and morally. Francis remarked that Aeschylus “applied the adjective àppôç ‘delicate, sensual’ and its derivatives exclusively to the Orientals and to women, aiming at adequate description of the ‘unmanly vulnerable hordes of barbarian despotism.”’⁷⁶ It may be observed in this connection that Herodotus preserved something of the fascination experienced by the first Greeks who entered the Persian tents after the Battle of Plataea (Hdt. IX, 80).⁷⁷ Similar emotions must have been the lot of Polish soldiers as they went into the tents of the Turkish generals after the Relief of Vienna in 1683. The tents and most of all the richest of them, the one used by Kara Mustafa, were full of Persian carpets, delicate china, precious objets d’art, gorgeously inlaid military equipment, and fabulous woven saddles. Some of those riches can still be seen in the royal apartments at Wawel Castle and the Czartoryski Museum, Cracow, though a very considerable part of the collection disappeared into thin air after the passage of the Red Army through Podhorce Castle in September 1939.

     On the Myson Vase with Croesus (Pl. II) - approximately a contemporary of Aeschylus’ Persians - we can see Theseus and Antiope, the Amazon queen, on the reverse. The Orientalizing decoration on this artefact allows us to interpret the scenes as a symbolic portrayal of the Athenians fighting with “the efTeminate Oriental masquerading as a warrior,” as aptly expressed by Francis.⁷⁸ Schauen-burg published a red-figure vase which shows a Persian before an Athenian supplied with the following inscription: “I am Eurymedon. I stand bent over.”⁷⁹ This higly risqué joke refers to the battle at the River of Eurymedon in the early 460’s.⁸⁰


    ⁷⁵ Pers. 80, 150, 157, 634, 643, 711, 856; on proskynesis see: Gow 1928, pp. 134-7.

    ⁷⁶ Francis 1980, p. 56f.

    ⁷⁷    cf. Hdt. 9,22; W. Gauer, Weihgeschenke aus den Perserkriegen, Istanbuler Mitteilungen 2, Tübingen, 1968.

    ⁷⁸ Francis 1980, p. 70.

    ⁷⁹ K. Schauenburg, Eurymedon eimi, MDAIA 90, 1975, pp. 97-122.

    ⁸⁰ K. J. Dover, Greek Homosexuality, London, 1978, p. 105.

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Such a distorted representation of the Orientals earned a permanent place for itself in the Classical letters. Susan Sherwin-White and Amélie Kuhrt in their extremely interesting and important book (1993) refer to the prevailing image of the Seleucid kings and their subjects as “degenerate weaklings lacking the moral and physical fibre to fight.” Athenaeus (IV, 176) drew on Posidonius, who described the Seleucid soldiers in the following memorable way: “they grasped daggers and small lances covered with rust and dirt. They put on hats with visors, which afforded shade, but did not prevent breathing at the throat; they carried with them drinking-homs full of wine and food of every variety, and beside these lay small flutes and single pipes, implements of revel, not of battle.”⁸¹ This view of the Orientals became a cliché of the Classical letters in the Imperial period. It bundled the Egyptians, Jews and Syrians all together.⁸² However in the aftermath of the Battle of Pla-taea the image was more ambiguous than in later times. The prominent works of art of the period, such as Herodotus’ History, The Persians by Aeschylus, and the painting in the Stoa Poecile, strike a high pathetic note, showing Persians dying in the way Homer had depicted the fighting and dying Sarpedon, Patroclus or Hector in the Iliad. They appear as the Greeks’ noble adversaries. Herodotus’ reader will not forget the cavalry charge led by Masistios, the death of Mardonius and his élite bodyguard on the battlefield, the Lament of the Choir of Elders from The Persians with the long string of names of the Persian heroes fallen in action. The tall, tremendous figures of the Persian warriors in the Stoa Poecile must have stimulated similar feelings, as documented by the 4"'-century BC rhetoric or later by Pausanias. The Persian Wars gradually changed into a sort of new Greek mythology. Its iconography became strongly idealized. The Persians of Darius and Xerxes stood beside the Amazons or Eumolpus’ Thracians, as opponents of the Greeks in the heroic struggle, in the iconographie programmes as well as in the literature and rhetoric.⁸³

      Faced with the apparent alternative choices of contempt and idealization, we tend to forget that other attitudes were also possible. Philodemus, probably because he had been born in Eastern Gadara on the verge of the vast deserted plateau overhanging the Valley of the Jordan, did not share such racial prejudice against barbarians, and not at all against barbarian women, particularly when they were young and beautiful, as attested by his charming poem: (AP 5, 132):
            œ noSôç, ci) Kvrip.T|ç, ci) tôv ànôXœXa ôiKaiœç p.T]pâ>v, ci) yXoutcùv, ci) ktevôç, â) Xayôvcov,

    ⁸¹ Sherwin-White, Kuhrt 1993, p. 228; FGH 82 F2.

    ⁸²    Luxury-loving Syrians, Herodian 2.10.7; 3.11.8; 4,8,7; Zos. 3, 11,8; Aurel. Viet, de Caes. 42,17; Dio 78,6,1a; on Egyptians: R. MacMullen, Nationalism in Roman Egypt, Aegyptus 44, 1964, pp. 179-199; Polanski 1997a; Polanski 1997b.

    ⁸³    Lys. Epitaphios 4ff.; Plato, Menex. 239; Isoc. Paneg. 66-72; Aethiop. 75; Panath. 195; Archid. 42; Drews 1973, p. 163: the conflict with Persia took its place alongside the war against the Amazons and the battle between the gods and the giants.

32

           <b tbpoiv, & paoTcbv, co too pa8ivoio TpaxfiXoi),
           co xEipcov, ¿b tcdv paivopai oppaticov,
           co KaTaTEXvoTaTov KivTipatog, cb 7CEpiaXXcDv yX.CD'CTlOp.CDV, CD TCDV 0UE pE (pCDVaptCDV. ei 8’ ’Okikt] Kai OA-copa Kai oi)K aiSovaa -ca Zancpobg, Kai riEpoEvg ’ Iv8fjg fipaaax’ ’Av8popE8r]g.
     (O foot, O leg, O thighs, my just undoing, O buttocks, O scallop, O flank, O shoulders, O breasts, O slender neck, O hands, O darling eyes, that have driven me mad, O skilful vibrations, O incomparable kisses, O whispered words that were the death of me - what though she be an Oscan, and with a name like Flora, unable to sing the verse of Sappho; Did not Perseus love Andromeda, though she was an Indian?).⁸⁴

     However it is again Aeschylus and his Persians who offer one of the most interesting instances of the Orientalizing style in literature. One might call the Choir’s stanza vv.657-663 an Oriental incantation:
           [3aA.A.T]v, apxatog 0aXXr]v, i0i, ikou eX0’ etc’ aKpov KopvpPov oxfiou, KpoKoParcrov noSog Evpapiv aEipcDV, PaaiXEiov Tvrjpaq tpaXapov nicpauoKCDv.
           PaoKE rcaTEp aKOKE Aapiav, oi.
     The strophe was woven by Aeschylus out of either Oriental, or Greek words with an Oriental etymology. PaXA.T]v is a Phrygian word for “king” (Hesych.).⁸⁵ Evpapiv acc. a sandal worn by Persians, a foreign-sounding word, though its etymology is not clear (LSJ).⁸⁶ tiapa a Persian head-dress;⁸⁷ cpaXapov, cpaXapa, is a part of the head-gear of horses used by the Massagetae (Hdt. 1,215). Hesychius called it “cheek-pieces” (napayaSiSeg). Porada and van den Berghe published a number of gorgeously decorated horse “cheek-pieces” and other items of equestrian gear.⁸⁸ These particular items precede the Achaemenid period but they illustrate well the old tradition of the horse-breeding tribes of the Iranian plateau. The stanza closes with Aapiav, which was to suggest an original sound of the name pronounced by the Greeks as AapEioq.⁸⁹ Such instances of an Orientalizing linguistic mime


    ⁸⁴ The Greek Anthology. The Garland of Philip, ed. A. S. F. Gow, D. L. Page, vol. I, Cambridge, 1968.

    ⁸⁵    Frisk s.v. Anatolian origin; there are other Anatolian words in Aeschylean dramas: naXpoq, king (fr.437, Boisacq s.v.); PaKKapig, incense (fr. 14 Amymone) (Schol.Pers.42; Frisk s.v.); aiavpva, aiovpa, a leather garment (Hdt.4,109; Boisacq s.v.); apivBoq, mouse (fr.227, Sisyphus).

    ⁸⁶    Bacon 1961, p.28f.; ibid. n. 13; A. Alfoldi, Gewaltherrscher und Theaterkonig, Fest. A. Mathias 1955, p. 51.

    ⁸⁷ Hdt. 1, 132; 3, 12; 7, 61; 8, 120; Boisacq s.v.

    ⁸⁸ van den Berghe 1959, Pl.l 19; Porada 1965, p. 88, Pl. 21.

    ⁸⁹ Broadhead 1960, pp. 170f. Aapiav (Pers.651,663,671); cf.Bacon 1961, p.21.

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sis are scattered all over the text of the Persians. The actors said ’Iaoveq in place of'HXXTiveg, or original "Ioveg, which recalls a widespread popular usage in the East.⁹⁰ ⁹¹ Thus we read jJc^ yawnayeh (the Greeks) in the Syriac Teaching of the Apostle Addaif C’Dl*’ (yewanim) in Hebrew, OY^-I^NIN in Sahidic Coptic, oy^ianin in Ahmimic Coptic. The Scholiast explains that the battle-cry oa is Persian (nepatKOv 0pT]VT]p.a), at least it was regarded as such by the Greek audience.⁹² Broadhead remarked that “most effective of all are numerous Persian names that stud the napoSoq, the Messenger’s first speech and the Koppog.”⁹³ There are altogether 49 of them, of which 10 sound like original Iranian names (Ariomardes, Arsakes, Arsames, Artames, Artaphrenes, Artembares, Megabates, Mitragathes, Oibares, Pharnuchos). The others seem to be imitations of Persian, and yet others Hellenized Persian names.⁹⁴ All in all, the extant text of the Per-sae contains approximately 70 foreign words. It should be added that about 100 names of foreign peoples and places occur in Supplices, Persae and Prometheus, only 29 in Septem contra Thebas and the Oresteia (with the dialogues of the Oriental Princess Cassandra included), and 39 in the fragments. Consequently this was by no means symptomatic of the Archaic art, the style of which was allegedly reflected in the vocabulary of the Aeschylean drama, as once held by Kranz,⁹⁵ but it was a matter of Oriental mimesis, a deliberate literary stylization, a phenomenon confined to a few plays which referred to foreign heroes and lands. Also it may be not purely coincidental that Aeschylus’ titles of the Great King and his officers show analogies with the Behistun Inscription and other Persian documents, e.g. SeonoTa 8eo7ro-tav {Pers. 666), PaaiXECoq peyaXov {Pers. 24), 0eopT|aTtop {Pers. 655), otpOaXpoq PaoiXecoq {Pers.979), nioioq, rticrca, niOTcbpa'ca (Peri. 171, 443,528,681,979), narnp {Pers. 663,671), poptovTapxoq {Pers. 314), napaGTcrcat {Pers. 957).⁹⁶

     The “Orientalist” stanza makes a component of a longer evocation of the ghost of Darius from the Netherworld. Since time immemorial it has always been believed that foreign-sounding, obscure words are endowed with more magic power than colloquial words. Hence the conservatism of religious and magic formulae. The Phrygian language survived only in incantations still chanted in the Imperial period, in a period when the vernacular Phrygian was already a dead language.


    ⁹⁰    Pers.69; Pers. 178, 563, 899, 950, 951, 1011, 1025; Bacon 1961, p. 18, n. 5 ibid.; Hes.s.v. "lavva.

    ⁹¹ Brockelmann, p. 12, II, 1.

    ⁹² Broadhead 1960, p. xxx; Pers. 117, 122, 570, 573, 578, 581; Bacon 1961, p. 21.

    ⁹⁵ Ibid.

    ⁹⁴ Bacon 1961, p. 23, n. 9 ibid.

    ⁹⁵    Stasimon p. 72, following Bacon 1961, p. 61; other Persian words in Aeschylus’: ayyapoq (Ag.282), a mounted Persian messenger (Hdt.3,126;8,98; Frisk s.v.), navSut], a wooden cloak (fr. 364 inc.).

    ⁹⁶ Bacon 1961, p. 39f.

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MacMullen aptly remarked that the “magic would have lost its force in translation.’”⁷ I certainly do not mean that Aeschylus translated an Oriental incantation. He imitated it by applying both Oriental and archaic words. Lucian of Samosate wrote that Alexander of Abonuteichos “often delivered oracles ... in Syriac” {Alex. 51), sometimes in Hebrew {Alex. 13), which to the Greek intellectual must have sounded like a confused gibberish. He shared the same opinion of Persian and other Oriental languages {Deo. Cone. 9, 14; Alex. 13; 51).* ⁹⁸ In one of the most important books written in the twentieth century, The Myth of the State, Ernst Cassirer drew our attention to the deep layers of magic, in his view suppressed by the Western culture, however actually still embedded in our minds. The magic qualities of words discovered anew were successfully employed by totalitarian regimes in the 20,h century, which made intensive use of the lexis to cast a modern version of the magic spell on human minds. Aeschylus, a true verbal magician, intuitively knew that such a “magic” stanza would make an impression on his audience, which for a while would feel transferred to Susa, to the depths of the Orient.⁹⁹ In this connection it were not out of place to observe that Aeschylus was endowed with a great talent for depicting images of distant lands. His readers will always keep in their memory the surging waters of the Nile in the hot African sun (fr. 300 inc.), or the streams of lava flowing down the slopes of Etna and flooding the fertile fields of Sicily {PV 362-72), or the chariot of Helios stopping to take a bath in the holy waters of the Persian Gulf which glimmered with red hues (fr. 172 PL).

     It has been already suggested that a well-known richly ornamented volute crater by the Darius Painter in the National Museum of Naples represents scenes inspired by Aeschylus’ Persians, while some others point to a lost play by Phrynichus.¹⁰⁰ On the middle decorative registers the painter showed Darius among his counsellors as he was taking the decision to send his army overseas to Marathon, and the collection of the tribute with the scene of proskynesis on the lower register. The Persians are variously dressed, to represent different parts of the Empire, but depicted in accordance with the principles of the Classical style.¹⁰¹ I think there is actually no connection between the iconographic programme of this vase and Aeschylus’ Persians, except perhaps for individual figures, such as Zeus on the throne, and some personifications: Ate (Delusion), Europe and


    ” MacMullen AJP 87, p. 13, n. 29.

    ⁹⁸ Bompaire 1958, p. 151, n. 3.

    ⁹⁹   Bacon 1961, pp. 102f.: Sophocles represented Trojans as Persians, “or what passed for Persian among the fifth century Greek, instructed by Aeschylus, Hecataeus and Herodotus.”A vehicle on which Agamemnon returned from Troy {A gam. v. 1054) apparently referred to Xerxes’ thronewagon (Hdt. 7, 41), cf. D. B. Thompson, The Persian Spoils in Athens, in: The Aegean and the Near East: Studies Presented to Hetty Goldman, ed. S. Weinberg, Locust Valley, 1956, p. 287.

    ¹⁰⁰    Naples, Heydemann 3253, bibliogr. in: Hölscher 1973, 291, n. 1077; M. Schmidt, Der Dareiosmaler und sein Umkreis, Münster, 1960; Francis 1980, p. 84f.; Trendall-Webster 1971, p. 112; Francis 1980, pp. 84f.

    ¹⁰¹ Francis 1980, p. 85.

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Asia on the upper register, who in a way refer to the ideological content of the drama, but we find no indication of the dramatic events from the Aeschylean play.

     In his Suppliants Aeschylus preserved the story of Io’s escape to Egypt, a story which to the Greeks had always had an Oriental flavour. When the Choir sings of Io Potov ... pi^opPpoxov, Tav pev Poog, tav 8’ av yuvaixog {Suppl. 569-71) (a beast, of half-animal, half-human shape, in part a cow, in part a woman), it seems to be referring to hybrid Egyptian divinities. It is not implausible that the Greek myth salvaged an originally Oriental kernel. We know an incantation text from the Semitic lore which tells about the moon-god Sin who united with a cow, and later helped her during the ensuing birth. This bears a striking resemblance to the story of Zeus and Io and their son Epaphos, whose name was etymologically explained as the one who was bom with the help of his father’s touch.¹⁰² The motif of the conception of new life by a god’s breath and touch introduced to the Io story by Aeschylus is originally Egyptian {Suppl. 17).¹⁰³ Like other Oriental heroines in the Greek mythology, Medea, Andromeda or Europa, Io turned out to be a popular subject for the red-figure vase painters,¹⁰⁴ who particularly in the period of the Late Classical style were keen to glorify feminine beauty and tenderness. The omnipresence of women in the Greek minor arts in a way foreshadows their ubiquity in Art Nouveau, where women are lamp-stands, or the central piece of an ash-tray; but also in that quality of the East present in Art Nouveau. The echoes of Io’s commercial success resounded in the great ateliers. One of the most celebrated painters, Nicias of Athens, presented his version of Io as a pictura grandis (a large-scale painting) {HN 35, 132). Pliny the Elder left no hint as to the appearance of the work. However, he mentioned four paintings by Nicias on display in the Roman Museums,¹⁰⁵ which attests to the esteem in which that artist was held by the connoisseurs in the cosmopolitan melting-pot of Rome, which in the Early Imperial period grew to the rank of the world capital of the arts. Consequently we can conjecture that the painting of Io with Argus, testified by a number of its Pompeian copies, can be traced back to the famous Nician original documented by Pliny the Elder. The Fourth Style copies with their square fields, voluminous and dominant figures, conspicuous for their oblique compositional lines, and their austere backgrounds, just like Io in the Pompeian Macel-


    ¹⁰² Burkert 1992, p. 125.

    IOJ Bacon 1961, p. 34.

    ¹⁰⁴    N. Yalouris, lo, LIMC V, 1-2; cf. A. Denti, 11 pittore délia Phiale di Boston ed il mito di Andromeda, Klearchos 25, 1983, pp. 27-61; N. Yalouris, Le mythe d’io: les transformations d’Io dans l’iconographie et la littérature grecque, in Suppl. XIV, BCH, Iconographie Classique et Identités Régionales, Paris 26 et 27 Mai 1983, Paris 1986, pp. 2-21; R. Engelman, Die Io-Sage, JDAI 18, 1903, H.2, pp. 37-58.

    ¹⁰⁵   Hyacinthus in Templum Augusti (HN35, 191); Dionysus in Templum Concordiae (77A35, 131); Alexander the Great (HN 35, 132); Nemea on a lion in Curia lulia (HN 35, 28).

36

lum (VII, 9, 7),¹⁰⁶ or in the Casa del Meleagro (VI 9, 2.13)¹⁰⁷ seem the best fit for the Late Classical, maybe the Nician original. The Io with Argus on the walls of the Casa di Livia on the Palatine, which, though strongly effaced, still shows the features of a best-quality fresco painting, presents a fine example of a Second Style adaptation of a Late Classical work with its characteristic vertical element produced by a sacred column in the background and with the notion of a third person, which “by thrusting Io into the middle of the picture, transforms what was originally a brooding duet into the simple story of a damsel in distress.”¹⁰⁸

      The Alexandrian culture, marked by its Oriental colour and syncretism, linked the Egyptian chapter of the story of Io to the sacred myths of the Isiac religion, which spread out towards the West after the Roman invasion of the Ptolemaic Kingdom. A fine tableau shows Io half-naked like the female figures on many Late Classical vases, carried on the arms of the personified Nile, emerging from the waves, and solemnly welcomed by Isis seated on the throne in Canopus ¹⁰⁹ (Pl.IV). Numerous Orientalizing attributes on the painting with a Sphinx, a crocodile at the feet of Isis, a cobra in her left hand and lotus flowers in her tresses, and a girl clattering the sistrum and the child Harpocrates beside Isis, exemplify the Hellenistic Orientalist style in quest of a new artistic identity. That new Orientalist style found its expression through a skilful blend, an amalgam of purely Classical forms and compositions (a Late Classical half-naked Io in a himation rippling in the wind, a preferred Late Classical oblique arrangement of the whole field), combined with suggestive Oriental details, or whatever was regarded by the Greeks as markedly Oriental. The original behind the Io painting in the Pompeian Temple of Isis can be dated c. 150 BC. A second copy of the same painting found in House VI9, 1, though of inferior quality, makes us confident of the original’s authenticity.¹¹⁰ A magnificent,


     ¹⁰⁶   Schefold 1972, Pl. XXXVI; Ling 1991, fig. 133; the original painting dated c. 340-330 BC, the Macellum decorated c. AD 65-70.

     ¹⁰⁷    Collezioni MNN I, fig. 163, Inv. 9556; Pitture, vol. IV, fig. 50, p. 681; yet another copy of the same painting, ibid, in Casa dei Dioscuri, fig. 169, p. 948 (preserved in an aquarel copy). It was painted as a pendant to the Perseus and Andromeda painting, the original by Nicias (?)

     ¹⁰⁸    Ling 1991, p. 130; Schefold 1972, Pl. IX, a copy made before 30 BC; another copy in the C.del Citarista, 1 4, 5( 37), MNN Inv. 9557, the 4th style, dated c. AD 65-70, Pitture I, fig. 21, p. 129.

     ¹⁰⁹    Schefold 1972, Pl. XLII1, the original painting behind the copy dated c. 150 BC, a copy made c. AD 65-70; Yalouris, Io, LIMC V, 1, no 65, ibid. 2, 65; Egypt and the Nile in the Classical authors, bibliogr. in Morenz 1968, p. 118, n. 3.

     ¹¹⁰    Yalouris, Io,LIMC\\ 1, ibid. 2 (fig.); CollezioniMNNI, fig. 97, C. del Duca di Aumale, VI 9, 1, inv. 9555 (3rd style - the period of Vespasian?); for other Imperial representations of Io, cf. C. W. Müller, Io und Argos auf einem frühkaiserlichen Wandmosaik, RhM, N. F. 129, H. 2, 1986, pp. 142-156; Yalouris, Io, LIMC V, 1-2; literary sources: Nicias’ painting (HN 35, 132); on the throne of Amyklae (Paus. 3, 18, 13); the statue of Deinomenes on the Athenian Acropolis (Paus. 1,25, 1); Brommer III, 1976, Io, pp. 176-180, paintings no 1-18; a mosaic tondo modelled on the Macellum type, F. de Almeida, Sur quelques mosaiques du Portugal, Pl. LXXX, 2, pp. 219-226, in: La mosaique greco-romaine, II, Vienne 30 Aout-4 Sept. 1971, Paris, 1975.

37

embossed silver patera from Boscoreale illustrates the same experiments in form. In its richly modelled tondo it shows the bust of a personified Aigyptos adorned with numerous attributes, a uraeus, lion, leopard, sistrum, snake, a comucopiae with Helios and an eagle, that is a mixture of native Egyptian and Ptolemaic symbols (Helios and the eagle)."¹ Io and Hathor were soon identified with one another, because they were both represented with cow’s horns.* ¹¹² ¹¹³ ¹¹⁴ ¹¹⁵ ¹¹⁶ A group of preserved female heads with horns, all originating in the Alexandrian art circle, convinced B. Freyer-Schauenburg that Arsinoe II was celebrated as a second Io."³ Arsinoe’s escape from Europe to Egypt to her brother Ptolemy II and the successive birth of their son Ptolemy III Euergetes provided an analogy to the fate of the mythical Io and her son Epaphos. This analogy did not pass unnoticed by the Egyptian royal propaganda machine. Pollitt juxtaposed two portraits of Arsinoe II, one made in compliance with the principles of Classical portraiture, and another carved in the Pharaonic style, and summed up the cultural ambivalence of Ptolemaic Egypt as a land of two faces: Egyptian and Hellenic."⁴

     The rising wave of interest in the Orient among the Greeks after the Persian Wars brought a series of works conventionally labelled “Oriental histories.” These were more like collections of stories and descriptions mingled with sporadic historical data diverse in documentary value. Their chronologies were frequently wrong, their facts often fictitious. Herodotus’ Histories, Xenophon’s Anabasis and Cte-sias’ Persica have come down to us from that once vast Orientalist historical and ethnographic literature. A lot has been written about Herodotus’ work. His Books I - V 27 are regarded by some as the history of Persia."⁵ There is no room in this introductory chapter to relate even in the most economical and disciplined way the controversies and achievements of Herodotean scholarship in its references to the Orient."⁶ I am going to speak in short only of some points directly relevant to the successive chapters on “Orientalist” painting. Consequently I am compelled to limit myself to some conclusions of a general nature, which may however bring to light some traits of the Hellenic view of the Orient as conceptualized by Herodotus,


      M.-O. Jentel, Aigyptos, LIMC I, 1, ibid. 2 (fig.).

    ¹¹² A. Burton, Diodorus Siculus, Book I, A Commentary, Leiden, 1972, c. 28, 4.

    ¹¹³ Freyer-Schauenburg 1983.

    ¹¹⁴ Pollitt 1986, p. 251, figs. 266, 267.

    ¹¹⁵ Drews 1973, p. 38.

    ¹¹⁶   See for further bibliography: A. Wiedemann, Herodots zweiter Buch, Leipzig 1890; A. B. Lloyd, Herodotus. Book II, vols. I-III, Leiden, 1975-1988; P. E. Legrand, Hérodote, Livre II (2), Paris, 1963; D. Fehling, Herodotus and His ‘Sources’: Citation, Invention and Narrative Art, Leeds, 1989; orig. id. Die Quellenangaben bei Herodot, Berlin - New York, 1971; O. K. Armayor, Herodotus' Autopsy of the Fayoum: Lake Moeris and the Labyrinth of Egypt, Amsterdam, 1985; C. Obsomer, Hérodote, Strabon et le mystère des labyrinthe d’Égypte, Amosiades, Mélanges offerts au Prof. C. Vandersleyen, Louvain, 1992; W. Aly, Volksmärchen, Sage und Novelle bei Herodot und seinen Zeitgenossen, Göttingen, 1921; Drews 1973; Karttunen 1989; S. Gsell, Hérodote (IV 168-199; II 31-38; IV 42-43), in: Textes relatifs à l’histoire de l’Afrique du Nord, Alger, 1915.

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Xenophon and Ctesias, standard authorities on the East for the educated Greeks. Let us just look en passant at their heritage taking two different perspectives - the historical and the literary - which point to two different qualities: documentary and fictionalized. Herodotus had been criticized already in Antiquity for his historical inadequacy, by Diodorus for his Egyptian account (Lib. I, 69, 7), and by Ctesias for his Babylonian account. Plutarch of Cheronea, who expressed his views on Herodotus in de malignitate Herodoti, apparently conceived his de Iside et Osiride as a learned treaty on the Egyptian religion, an alternative to the Herodotean fabulous presentation.¹¹⁷ Actually already in Antiquity the real extent of Herodotus’ visit to Egypt had been regarded as debatable and consequently as questionable. Modem scholarship has piled up a supplementary heap of suspicions and criticism on Herodotus.¹¹⁸ S. West must have been right when she laid emphasis on Herodotus’ detailed and abundant information on Memphis, Sais or Bubastis, in an apparent contrast to the parallel scarcity of his factual knowledge on Thebes.¹¹⁹ No visitor who has ever been to ancient NH, flOX ~ KD the “noAmon” of the Hebrews, the hundred-towered Thebes of Homer, and faced that still magnificent and impressive Triimmerfeld sunk in the monumental theatre of Nature, will ever believe that a genuine description might have been so superficial.

      The criticism levied by other ancient writers might have been regarded as justified and sound if it were not burdened by the original sin of the whole of Greek Orientalist scholarship - the never overcome inability to reconcile the Greek view of Antiquity with the traditions of the Eastern peoples.¹²⁰ Diodorus, who in his Assyrian chapters (Bibl. II, 1-28) followed Ctesias, as others did, saw “nothing worth mentioning” in the 1300 years of Assyria’s history.¹²¹ Cephalion gave an


       Plutarchi de Herodoti malignitate, ed. P. A. Hansen, Amsterdam, 1979; R. Flacelière, Sagesse de Plutarque, Paris, 1964, pp. 105-118 on de Iside; T. Hopfner, Plutarch über Isis und Osiris, 1-11, Prague 1940-41 (repr. 1974); I. G. Griffiths ed., Plutarch ’s De Iside et Osiride, Univ, of Wales, 1970; C. Froidefond, ed. Plutarque. Oevuvres morales. V. 2. Isis et Osiris, Paris, 1988.

     ¹¹⁸ C. Sourdille, Le durée et l'entendue du voyage d'Hérodote en Egypte, Paris, 1910; Fehling 1989 see above n. 107; A. H. Sayce, The season and extent of the travels of Herodotus in Egypt, JPh 14, 1885, pp. 257-86; Spiegelberg 1927; Armayor 1985, see above n. 107.

       S. West, Herodotus’ Portrait of Hecataeus, JHS 111, 1991, pp. 144-160.

    ¹²⁰ Drews 1965, p. 129.

    ¹²¹    K. S. Sacks, Diodorus Siculus and the First Century, Princeton, 1990; E. Murphy, The Antiquities of Asia. A Translation and Notes of Book II of the Library of History of Diodorus Sicul-cus, New Brunswick, New Jersey, 1989; A. Burton, Diodorus Siculus. Book! A Commentary, Leiden, 1972; J. Palm, Über Sprache und Stil des Diodors von Sizilien, Lund, 1955; W. Spoerri, Späthellenistische Berichte über Welt, Kultur und Götter. Untersuchungen zu Diodor von Sizilien, Schweizerische Beiträge zur Altertumswissenschaft, H. 9, Bâle, 1959; F. W. von Bissig, Bericht des Diodors über Pyramiden (I63, 2-64), Berlin 1901; H. R. Hall,TheTwo Labyrinths, JHS 25, 1907, pp. 320-27; W. W. Ehlers, Mit dem Südwestmonsun nach Ceylon. Eine Interpretation des Istam-bul-Exzerpte Diodors, Würzburg, Jahrbücher für die Altertumswissenschaft NF 11, 1985, pp. 73-84; G. Goossens, Le tombeau d’Osymandyas, Chd'E 17, 1942, pp. 117-184; Polanski 1998, pp. 29-44; 49-51 ; E. Iversen, Diodorus’ Account of the Egyptian Canon, JEA 54, 1968, pp. 215-218;

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account of Perseus’ visit to the court of King Belimos of Assyria, which apparently occurred 640 years after Ninus; and of Medos, son of Medea, and ancestor of the Medes. Cephalion also quoted a letter of Priam to Teutamun, yet another King of Assyria. Ctesias’ list of Assyrian kings dissolved into fiction after the rediscovery of the ancient Orient by the 19th-century philologists and historians.¹²² The efforts to save the historicity of Ctesias’ Ninus, Semiramis and Sardanapalus with the use of historical names do not seem convincing (Ninus = Tukulti-Ninurta I; Semiramis = Sammu-ramat; Sardanapalus = Assurbanipal). The Christian writers who were better acquainted with Oriental sources or the Hebrew Bible, were so strongly influenced by Classical Pagan learning that they felt compelled to invent two Assyrian Empires (an earlier Ctesian and later Hebrew and Babylonian variant) in order to reconcile the predominant Ctesian tradition with the conventional Hebrew chronology, which situated the peak of Assyrian power in the 8th and 7lh centuries BC. Eusebius of Caesarea’s reconciliatory chronology was acknowledged until the 19th century Orientalists dug up the ancient Oriental histories from under the layers of oblivion.¹²³ The Egyptian lists of kings resorted to by Herodotus, Hecataeus of Miletus, or later writers like Diodorus, were equally inadequate. The Greek authors had much to say on Egyptian geography, animal life and floral world, ethnography, but little worthy of history. “Whether Egypt’s history went back 5,000, 18,000 or 100,000 years made little difference; it could not, at any rate, be related to Greek history,” Drews concluded aptly.¹²⁴ Paraphrasing another of his commentaries we might say that the Oriental histories of the Greek scholars were suspended in a quasi-historical limbo.¹²⁵ Xenophon passed by the ruins of Niniveh unaware of the fact (Anab. Ill, 4, 10-12), though he would have been rightly angry at us if we suspected him of being ignorant of Sappho, Alcaeus or Solon. These dreamy observers were the very ones who witnessed one of the world’s greatest historical catastrophes ever: the capture of Niniveh by the Medes and Babylonians and the fall of the Assyrian Empire. Xenophon’s Cyro-paedia, with its characteristic accumulation of historical fiction, had already in ancient times been interpreted as a polemical work inspired by the fashion for the utopian social and political literature symptomatic of the 4lh century BC, and most of all by Plato’s Republic (Aulus Gellius XIV, 3). Cicero aptly observed that Xenophon did not write the Cyropaedia “ad historiae fidem, sed ad effigiem iusti imperii”


J. Boncquet, Diodorus Siculus (II, I-34) over Mésopotamie, Brussel, 1987; on Ctesias: Drews 1973, pp. 103 ff. with bibliogr. ; J. Bigwood, Ctesias of Cnidus, Diss. Harvard 1964; id. HSCPh 70, 1965, pp. 263-5; G. Goossens, L’Histoire d’Assyrie de Ctesias, L'Antiquité classique 9, 1940, pp. 25-45; Jacoby, in RE, Ktesias; Nikolaus RE; Photius, Bibl. 72, 36a- 45a; Glombiowski 1981; cf. D. D. Luckenbill, trans. Ancient Records of Assyria and Babylonia, repr. N. York, 1968; Vogelsang 1992.

     ¹²² Drews 1965, p. 135.

     ¹²³ Ibid. p. 137.

     ¹²⁴ Ibid. p. 138.

     ¹²⁵ Ibid. p. 135.

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(Ep. ad Q.frat. I, 1, 23).¹²⁶ This way of writing would resemble Plato’s Critias, endowed with the form of an original ancient myth retrieved from the Egyptian writings, which is sometimes interpreted as an allusive dialogue composed of contemporary historical and archaeological data and referring in fact to the contemporary Greek world.¹²⁷

     Certainly we cannot despise all the Classical knowledge of ancient Oriental history en masse. No-one can legitimately repudiate Spiegelberg’s argument that “today our knowledge of the Saite and Persian periods (in Egypt) depends mainly upon Herodotus’ admirable information.”¹²⁸

     Now, when we have touched upon the question of the factual precision behind the Orientalist style, it may perhaps not be out of place to refer to the Greek science of etymologizing, which actually has very little in common with modern linguistics. Already known to Plato, as illustrated in the Cratylus, the art was further developed by the Hellenistic Stoic philosophers, and was followed quite uncritically by the Neo-Platonists and Stoics of the Imperial era, who practised it with true zeal and predilection. Plutarch in de Iside 14 (356 D) explained the place-name Koptos as deriving from Isis mourning after the loss of Osiris (kokxeiv). t in Konrco is alien and secondary in the verb-root which carries the meaning (cf. KÓnq), but original in Egyptian K.HBT, KCBTCL), KCITTO (Sahidic). Similarly Diodorus was wrong when he derived the name of the town Bouoipiq from a wooden coffin in the shape of an ox (Pouq), in which Isis collected the scattered remains of Osiris (eiq pouv E,uXí.vt]v) and covered them with fine linen (Pvooiva) (Diod. I, 85, 5). Egyptian TTOyCipi, BOYCipi (Boharic), Arabic Abusir, means the House of Osiris. Among the Greeks Plutarch and Diodorus enjoyed the reputation of learned Orientalists.

      However, if we now put aside the scale of evaluation given by the erudite reference books like H. W. F. Saggs’ The Greatness that was Babylon or E. Hor-


    ¹²⁶ Drews 1973, p. 120 f.

    ¹²⁷    K. A. Morgan, Designer History: Plato’s Atlantis Story and Fourth-Century Ideology, JHS 118, 1998, pp. 101-118; P. Vidal-Naquet, Athene et l’Atlantide. Structure et signification d’un mythe platonicien, REG 77, 1964, pp. 420-444.

    ¹²⁸    Spiegelberg 1927, p. 39; Eastern gifts for Greek sanctuaries make another recurrent motif in Herodotus: of Amasis to Kyrene (a statue of Athena (Neith), Amasis’ painted portrait); of the same to the temple of Athena in Lindos, to the sanctuary of Hera in Samos (two wooden statues of the king) (Hdt. 2, 182); the Lydian votives in Delphi: deposited by Gyges, six goblets of gold (Hdt. 1, 14); by Alyattes, a huge silver bowl (Hdt. 1,25): by Croesus, a golden statue of a woman, a lion of gold (Hdt. 1, 50-51); the motif is related to recurrent stories of the wealth of eastern monarchs, cf. AP XVI, 27 (Sardanapallus’ aphorism); a similar motif of a stela incised with a native script which tells the story of luxury and debauched life of the king Menes, Plut. de ¡side 8 (354 A-B); the same motif in Hdt. 2,4; Diod. I, 45; cf. D. B. Thompson, The Persian Spoils in Athens, in: The Aegean and the Near East, Studies Presented to H. Goldman, ed. S. Weinberg, Locust Valley, 1956.

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nung’s Grundzüge der ägyptischen Geschichte, and return to the world of the Arabian Nights, we shall probably find that Wiedemann’s despised Geschichten, which he found instead of the Geschichte he was looking for, may bring recreation and much pleasure.¹²⁹ The reader of Herodotus will never forget his story of Gyges and Kandaules or the story of King Rhampsinitus (II, 121 ff.). Spiegelberg labelled the latter story, together with the legend of Sesostris, another of the popular Egyptian stories in the Greek letters,¹³⁰ “purely Egyptian and genuine in their local colouring.”¹³¹ Ctesias’ “mere intrigues”¹³² in fact sound exciting even in the bold abridgement fashioned by Photius, who showed his appreciation in his beautifying amplification of Ctesias’ style. In his opinion Ctesias’ stories were moving and captivating thanks to the unexpected turn of events in them, and the variety which turned them into real fables (Phot. Bibl. 45a). This original, one would like to say “Oriental”, art of story-telling had earlier been mastered by Herodotus, as can be illustrated by his story of Artaunte and Amastris, a harem intrigue woven of jealousy, hatred and perverse revenge (Hdt. IX, 108 ff.), or the piquant folk tale of King Cheops and his daughter (Hdt. II, 126).

     The Indians and India, or in fact just its north-western part, regularly confused with Ethiopia, which was symptomatic of the Greek lack of distinction between South and East, went well with the world of folk-tale and fantasy, with its unimaginable and exotic animal life, its unique natural resources and miracles of nature, its perplexing customs, the unnatural proportions prevalent in its flora and fauna, and its diverse religions and economies.¹³³ In their detailed study “Who knows what monsters demented Egypt worships?” Smelik and Hemelrijk showed


    ¹²⁹ A. Wiedemann, Herodots zweiter Buch, Leipzig, 1890.

    ¹¹⁰ C. Obsomer, Les campagnes de Sesostris dans Herodote, Brussels, 1989; Burton 1972, see above n. 112. pp. 163 ff.; K. Sethe, Der Name Sesostris, ZÄS 41, 1905, pp. 43-57; M. Malaise, Sesostris, pharaon de legende et d’histoire, Chd'E 41, 1966, pp. 244-272.

    ¹³¹ Spiegelberg 1927, p. 20.

    ¹³² Drews 1973, p. 104.

    ¹³³    Karttunen 1989; U. D. Arora, Greek Image of the Indian Society, MaseöoviKa 12, 1982, pp. 470-82; F. Bromer, Fontes Historiae Religionum Indicarum, Bonnae, 1931; L. Casson, Travel in the Ancient World, London, 1974; N. Chapekar, Ancient India and Greece. A Study of their Cultural Contacts, Delhi, 1977; R. Christinger, Les Arimaspes, Asiatische Studien 14, 1961, pp. 9-14; Ar-rien, L’lnde, ed. P. Chantraine, CUF, Paris, 1952; Arrian, Der Alexanderzug, Indische Geschichte l-II, ed. G. Wirth, O. von Hinüber, Berlin, 1985; A. Dihle, Antike und Orient. Gesammelte Aufsätze, Heidelberg 1984 (in: The Conception of India in Hellenistic and Roman Literature, pp. 89-97); J. R. Hamilton, Cleitarchus and Aristobulus, Historia 10, 1961, pp. 448-458; G. W. B. Huntingford, The Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, London, 1980; J. W. de Jong, The Discovery of India by the Greeks, Asiatische Studien 27, 1973, pp. 115-142; O. Keller, Die Antike Tierwelt, 1-2, Leipzig, 1909-1913; T .J. Lomperis, Hindu Influence on Greek Philosophy. The Odyssey of the Soul from the Upanishads to Plato, Calcutta, 1984; W. McCrindle, Ancient India as described by Megasthenes and Arrian, Calcutta-London, 1877; L. Pearson, The Lost Histories of Alexander the Great, London, 1960; W. H. Shaff, The Periplus of the Erythrean Sea, N. York, 1912; W. W. Tarn, The Greeks in Bactria and India, Cambridge, 1951.

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that the Severan period brought an ebb in the Greek and Roman interest in Egypt, to the benefit of a rising fashion for India.¹³⁴ According to Flavius Philostratus, it was in India that Apollonius of Tyana accomplished his search for true wisdom. The Indian sages in the book naturally spoke Greek (E Apoll. Ill, 12). The author of the Alexander Romance tells us about a long discussion Alexander the Great held with the wise men of India, which by the way sounds unnatural, pretentious and probably not very Indian (Hist. Alex. Mag. 3, 5 ff., pp. 104 ff., ed. G. Kroll). The picture of Herodotus’ Egypt or Ctesias’ Persia is, to tell the truth, selective, biased, sometimes misinterpreted, but in a roundabout way roughly correct; while their visits to India, Arabia or Ethiopia bring to mind the story of Little Alice behind the looking-glass, finding herself in Wonderland with everything around so incredibly different, distorted, turned upside down, topsy-turvy or reversed like a mirror reflection.

      The Indian and Ethiopian context leads us to Heliodorus’ Aethiopica. Some points related to the Late Antique novel may in fact prove useful in view of our further discussions. A standard representative of the Graeco-Oriental romance genre,¹³⁵ the Aethiopica shows some characteristics symptomatic of the Greek Orientalism - for example the ambivalent attitude towards the Orient, which on the one hand exerts an irresistible attraction, but excites feelings of contempt and rejection on the other. “When Theagenes heard the words Egyptian and prophet he was filled with sudden delight... as if he had come upon some treasure.” (Aeth. Ill, 11 - trans. M. Hadas). We learn that Oriental medicine worked miracles. The severely wounded Theagenes returned to perfect health in a matter of just three days after the application of Egyptian herbs (Aeth. I, 8). We know this motif from the Odyssey, where Helen demonstrates the power of Egyptian herbs (Od. IV, 227-232). Ethiopian jewels are of unparalleled beauty and possess miraculous qualities: “the Ethiopian amethyst is clear and deep in colour, and flames out with a fresh beauty like the spring’s. If you turn it in your hand it sends forth a golden ray . . .” (Aeth. 5, 14). After a general introduction to that treatise on precious stones, which calls to mind similar mediaeval writings, Heliodorus goes into great detail about the pantarbe stone, a rare, splendid intaglio gem endowed with a divine power strong enough even to save its owner’s life (Aeth.5, 14). By the way its figural decoration is strikingly reminiscent of the bucolic style, which is conventionally labelled Hellenistic Alexandrian, a style which gained popularity among the affluent Greeks and Romans of the Late Republican and Early Imperial periods. The way the stone is described by Heliodorus re-echoes a somewhat similar ec-


    l³‘l K. A. D. Smelik, E. A. Hemelrijk, Who knows not what monsters demented Egypt worships?’ ANRW II 17.4, pp. 1852-2000.

    ¹³⁵   B. Merkelbach, Roman und Mysterium in der Antike, Berlin, 1962; K. Kerenyi, Die Griechisch-Orientalische Romanliteratur in religionsgeschichtlicher Beleuchtung, Tübingen, 1927; S. West, Joseph and Asenath: A neglected Greek Romance, CQ 24, 1974, pp. 70-81; Lesky 1996, pp. 857-870.

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phrasis in the Syrian Goddess, traditionally attributed to Lucian of Samosate.¹³⁶ In that text the lychnis was a magnificent ruby jewel of incredible size, which adorned the forehead of the statue of Atargatis and gleamed with its mysterious light during the night in her temple in Hierapolis, Syria (DS 32). We find lychnides again in another piece of the Orientalist literature, this time in the description of the necklace of Harmonia depicted by Nonnos (Dion. 5, 144-189) with all the fine details of the art of goldsmithery and jewellery. Jewels studded the golden eagle which joined the gaping mouths of two dragons on the bride’s neck. The descriptions of jewels in the Orientalist literature in a way reflect a literary technique employed by the Greek authors, who peppered their Hellenic literary forms and structures with Oriental details as if they were applying precious stones to the artefacts or curios of Eastern metalwork.

     The Orient also had its undecipherable, dark side. It was a lair of abhorrent black-magic practices. In the night, there was the gruesome scenery reminiscent of the horror films. An old Egyptian woman evokes the spirit of her dead son. She splutters her necromantic incantations, which sound primitive and barbarian to the Greek ear (PapPapoiq xe Kai ^Evi^ovat xf]v dicof]v ovopaat KaxEU^apEvq -Aeth. 6, 14 - she invoked the moon in a barbarous jargon strange to the ear). She spoke Egyptian. We know from different Classical sources that the Oriental languages sounded ill and barbaric to the learned Hellenic ear.¹³⁷

     Theagenes, idealized Greek hero of the novel, felt unable to degrade himself to perform the Persian ceremonial of proskynesis before Arsake, a princess of the blood from the Achaemenid family (Aeth. 7, 19). The Persians were looked down on by the Greeks, who saw them as slaves - we learn from this audience scene. Theagenes, a poor captive, stood proudly before a member of the Persian royal family “without bending the knee or bowing down, but with head erect. . .” (ibid.). We find a similar scene on the painting in the Neapolitan gallery described by Philostratus the Elder (Imag. 11,31). The rhetorician describes a painting which represents Themistocles before the Great King seated on the throne in the Palace of Babylon (cf.Pl.III). It is worth quoting a passage from this description: "EX-Xqv ev PapPapoig, avf]p ev ouk avbpaaiv axE anoXcoXoat Kai xpucpcooiv (Imag. II, 31, 1 - A Greek among barbarians, a true man among those who are not men, inasmuch as they are ruined and dissolute, trans. A. Fairbanks). Themistocles “is not perturbed at all by his Median surroundings, but is as bold and as tough as when he stood on the Athenian bema.” (Imag. II, 31, 2). The painter must have felt real pleasure in putting in the details of the royal garments, eI xiapav Ka-Xcog pEp.ip.qxai Kai KaXaaipiv q kciv5dv q Qqpicov XEpaxcbbEq popcpag oia


    ¹³⁶   On the temple of Hierapolis in The Syrian Goddess and the discussion of the Lucianic authenticity, cf. e.g. Polanski 1998, pp. 79-117 with bibliogr.; on the lychnis jewel, ibid. p. 101 f.

    ¹³⁷   Luc. AlexAl, 51 (Syrian, Hebrew); Luc. Deor. Cone. 9, 14 (Persian and other); id. Nav. 2, Conv. 18; Phps. 34 (Egyptian); Bompaire 1958, p. 151, n. 3-4.

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KOiKiXXovai PapPapoi (his fine representation of a tiara and tasselled cloak or sleeved jacket or of the monstrous shapes of animals with which barbarian garments are embroidered, trans. A. Fairbanks). In the usual manner the rhetorician enriched the description with some foreign-sounding words: tcavSuq, Tiapa, Kaldoipig (Egyptian 6A.AA.tyipe). A similar Oriental colourism was employed by Xenophon in his account of the royal garments of Cyrus {Cyr. 8, 3).¹³⁸ Philos-tratus’ hesitation to identify the figure of Themistocles as such adds authenticity to the painting,¹³⁹ which was probably purchased from an antiquarian or a private person unaware of its history and subject - quite a common situation on the art markets.

     In fact Philostratus might have been right in his identification of Xerxes in this painting. Themistocles escaped from Athens in 471 BC. Xerxes was murdered in 465 BC. However the dates of Themistocles’ coins minted in Magnesia (463 -450 BC) point rather to Artaxerxes I, whose favours the Athenian hero won.¹⁴⁰ ¹⁴¹ It was apparently difficult to admit to the Hellenic moralists that Themistocles had to fall on his face before the Majesty of the Great King at Susa (not in Babylon as asserted by Philostratus), as all the others who received the favour of the King’s audience did. During the ceremony he was obliged to keep his hands in his sleeves all the time, and had to be cautious not to put his foot on the carpet which paved the King’s way.“" As a fugitive Themistocles must have shown a lot of patience, skill and servility to win first of all the favours of Artabanus, the chief of the royal guard, since only he was in the position to open the gates of the audience hall to the Athenian and allow him to fall on his face before the King. The further course of the hero of Salamis’ life was even more unheroic. Themistocles was rewarded for his services with the city of Magnesia in Ionia, which supplied him with an income of 500 talents, and some other privileges in Myus, Lampsacus and Scepsis, all Greek cities he governed on behalf of the Great King. Two of the four preserved coins of Magnesia show that Themistocles’ administration was a heavy burden for his compatriots. The coins are forgeries with a core of copper plated with silver - simply false money.¹⁴² He married a Persian woman and wanted his daughter to become a priestess of the goddess Cybele.¹⁴³ The air of admiration for Themistocles


    ¹³⁸   Cyr. 8, 3: e%cov tt)v riapav Kai xixcbva noptpupovv peaokeuKov ... Kai ttepi roig aKeXeaiv ava^vpifiag uaytvoPatpEg Kai KavSuv oXonoptpvpov. eixe 8e Kai 8ia8T]jia nepi -tf) Tiapa.

    ¹³⁹    Steinmann 1914, p. 100; Philostratus, the author of V. Apoll. I, 29 referred to the meeting of Themistocles with the Persian king, which is one more point in the argument for identity of the authorship of the V. Apoll. and the Imagines.

    ¹⁴⁰ Seltman 1965, p. 108, Pl. XV, 14, 15.

    ¹⁴¹   Olmstead 1974, p. 272; cf. Apollonius of Tyana during his audience before King Wardanes in Babylon asked the King if he could speak Greek fluently enough, and they decided to discuss in Greek (K Apoll. I, 29); Apollonios before the satrap of Babylon, “a true man before a frightened eunuch” (K Apoll. 1, 21).

    ¹⁴² Seltman 1965, p. 108, Pl. XV, 14, 15.

    ¹⁴³ Olmstead 1974, p. 279.

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among the Persian courtiers is another edifying and fictitious point on the painting and in Philostratus’ ecphrasis (Imag. II, 31,2). Themistocles could feel lucky enough to win the support of Artabanus. Roxanes, another high- ranking Persian courtier, did not try to mask his hatred of the Greek. It was allegedly Roxanes who was behind the attempted murder of Themistocles after his return to Ionia. Alcibiades did not aim as high as Themistocles, and satisfied himself with services rendered for Phamabazus, satrap of Bithynia (?), one of the most intelligent Persian politicians. He pursued a policy of corrupting the Greek leaders and in this way, in the early 4lh century BC, transformed them gradually into Persian clients. Alcibiades was rewarded with the stronghold of Gryneion (an income of 50 talents). Like Themistocles, Alcibiades wore Persian apparel and leamt Persian (unlike the Themistocles shown on the painting, who wears a modest Athenian cloak).¹⁴⁴ It will not be out of place to add in this connection that the contempt of the Greeks for the Orientals, whom they envisaged as endowed with an innate spirit of servility, had yet another connotation. It was a sort of self-justification for the economic exploitation of many Orientals in the Greek economies. It also had a theoretical explanation, formulated by Pseudo Aristotle in the following way: “the best labourers came from the races of mankind which were neither bold enough to revolt not too weak to work. Such a population would be ideal for the Greeks to manipulate . . .” (Econ. 5, 5; II 1, 7). This quotation again focuses our attention on the Aethiopica and on the Bukoloi, who, according to Heliodorus, were brigands operating in the most inaccessible parts of the Delta. In fact the Bukoloi were Egyptian rebels who rose up against the Romans under Antoninus Pius. They were eventually defeated by the supreme military force concentrated in the Delta by Avidius Cassius (HA, Pius 5, 5). The Bukoloi - along with the African circum-celliones, Celtic Bagaudae, or Egyptian guerrillas, who fought their long-lived and determined peasant war in the 3rd and 2ⁿd centuries BC against their Macedonian rulers - belong to the forgotten histories of the Classical world.¹⁴⁵ The Bukoloi did not merit a place in the new edition of the OCD or in the Kleine Pauly, our excellent reference books. “Mighty rulers always use the term latrones in speaking of those whom they slay...” remarked MacMullen.¹⁴⁶ The latrones never catch the attention of the court historians. So they will never be pardoned.

     Thus we have touched the long-disputed problem of the authorship and chronology of the Ethiopian Romance. The author’s sphragis runs as follows: “a Phoenician of Emesa, of the race of the Sun - the son of Theodosius, Heliodorus.” (àvr|p d>oîvi£,


    ¹⁴⁴ Ibid. p. 350.

    ¹⁴⁵   Eddy 1961 ; MacMullen 1966; Polański 1999; E. A. Thompson, Peasant Revolts in Late Roman Gaul and Spain, Past and Present 2, 1952, pp. 11-23; C. Préaux, Esquisse d’une histoire des révolutions égyptiennes sous les Lagides, Chd 'E 22, 1936, pp. 522-52; M. Alliot, La Thébaide en lutte contre les rois d’Alexandrie sous Philopator et Épiphanes (216-184), Revue Belge de Philologie et d’Histoire 29, 1951, pp. 421-443.

    ¹⁴⁶ MacMullen 1966, p. 224.

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’E|xiot]vôç, râv à(p’ 'HXiov yévoç, 0eo5ooi.ou naîç 'HXiôSœpoç). Effectively he repeats the same name, Helios, four times. The Arabian tribe around Emesa venerated a bethyl believed to have fallen from heaven. Herodian passed on a colourful description of the cult in his biography of Heliogabalus (Emesa: 5, 3, 4-8; Rome: 5, 5, 8-10). In his account Herodian also informs us that the newly enthroned Syrian Emperor commissioned an unknown artist to paint a large scale tableau (e"KÔva p.eyioTT|v), which showed the young arch-priest sacrificing to the holy idol of Emesa, which was a big conical stone (tôv tvkov toû EirixcopioD Oeoû - 5, 5, 6), and presented it to the Senate in Rome. We can imagine the appearance of the Emperor priest on the painting basing on the above mentioned colourful and suggestive description of his richly decorated ritual garments. Thus the author of the Aethi-opica emphasized his own Phoenician origins and also probably his noble descent from a priestly family. In other words, he assured his readers that he knew the Orient from autopsy as a born Oriental. Was he really Oriental? We put aside the writings of Philo of Alexandria, Josephus Flavius, Berossus, Manetho or St. Matthew, because they were Orientals, they were insiders. They did not write about the Orient as an exterior phenomenon to their experience. I have a feeling that the accumulation of the “Helios” words and allusions (Emesa, Theodosius) sounds unnatural. The novel offers many passages where the author puts emphasis on the pure Hellenic origin of his heroes as contrasted with the alien Orientals. Cnemon was "EXXt]v cbç àXî|0cûç to yévoç xal ttjv <pœvT]v (verily a Greek in race and tongue) (Aeth. 1, 8). Charicleia swears to her beloved Theagenes after she has received an offer of marriage from an Oriental that Theagenes was “foolish to believe she should prefer a barbarian to a Hellene” (Aeth. I, 25), only to add later even more emphatically: “Better to be killed by your hands and obtain a Greek funeral than to endure a life more grievous than death and the love of a barbarian more odious than the hatred of a Greek.” (Aeth.VL, 10). The Greek Cnemon certainly learnt Egyptian, and could perform the duties of an interpreter, while his Egyptian counterpart Thyamis, the son of the high priest of Memphis, had little Greek (Aeth. I, 19). The Persian Bagoas had a poor pronunciation of Greek and was prone to making solecisms (Aeth. 8, 15). These characteristics coincide with the standard views of the Imperial Greek literature on the Orientals, who could not speak Greek at all, or if they could they spoke it abysmally, whose languages sounded alien and barbaric, like gibberish or a degraded jargon. In fact all the accessible evidence proves something quite the opposite. There were always Orientals who learnt Greek, because in the Ptolemaic Egypt, Seleucid Syria or Roman Empire the Greek language opened up opportunities for ladder-climbing in the Greek-speaking administration. Numerous Orientals entered the history of the Greek letters, but no Greek made a name in any of the Oriental literatures. Sherwin-White and Kuhrt wrote of the monolingualism of the Hellenistic Greeks in Alexandria, Asia Minor and the Aegean.¹⁴⁷ And eventually Heliodorus concocted the character of Charicleia,


    ¹⁴⁷ Sherwin-White, Kuhrt 1993, p. 148.

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born miraculously white from her royal black parentage, which made her worthy of Theagenes, a noble young man from Thessaly, the embodiment of an idealized Greek hero. Heliodorus styled his heroine, a chaste and beautiful Ethiopian princess, as a second Andromeda (Aeth. 10, 14-15).¹⁴⁸ It seems, then, that Heliodorus felt unable to tolerate a true Ethiopian as a bride for Theagenes. As a result he redesigned her by means of an ingenious conception influenced by the Hellenic painting of a nude Andromeda, turning her into a princess of the blood, and eventually sending her to school in Greece. This is not an insider’s view; this is not what a genuine Oriental could have said, even if fluent in Greek. When I sometimes listen to the news coming to us from the Middle East or from Africa as it is related by the Western media, I have a feeling that we have not moved too far away from the Classical prejudices and cliches.

     Syria and Phoenicia are almost absent from the plot of the novel, except for some general references. The geography, ethnography and natural world of Ethiopia is like Ctesian India, with its fantastic animals and vegetation remarkable for its gigantic dimensions, as a result of the incredibly fertile soil which “produces trees beyond the common size. Gigantic palm trees bear enormous and succulent dates. The stalks of wheat and barley are tall enough to hide a man mounted on a horse or even a camel” (Aeth. 10, 3 - trans. M. Hadas). The Tryglodytes brought “the gold dust which ants collect,” a commonplace of Classical Indies and Ethiopian accounts, as their tribute to the King of Ethiopia. They also led gryphons guided by golden reins (Aeth. 10, 26). This fabulous description of Ethiopia is completed in an ecphrasis of the fictitious camelopard (Aeth. 10, 27). The religion of the Ethiopians has as little to do with any real ethnography of indigenous Semitic or African populations as Heliodorus’ animal life with Linnaeus’ classification. Heliodorus’ Ethiopians venerated the statues of Memnon, Perseus and Andromeda as their native gods (Oecov eyxcopicov dyaXpaxa - Aeth. 10, 6). On the other hand he has a good knowledge of Athens, Delphi (e.g. II, 26-28), the valley of Crisa, Zacynthus, etc. in a word of Mainland Greece. I would venture to say that “Heliodorus the Phoenician,” born into a family of Emesan priests, is the pseudonym of a Greek writer, probably of the second half of the 3rd century, or perhaps of the second half of the 4,h century, someone like Macrobius, influenced by the religion of the Sun, which, ever since Aurelian’s episode of Sol Invictus worship, continued to make a strong impact on the Pagan world of Late Antiquity. Certainly not all of Heliodorus’ knowledge of the Orient is a worthless sham. His reference to the paintings in the royal palaces of Nubia (Aeth. IV, 8; 10, 14-15) may reflect some kind of reality. The Nubian galleries of Christian paintings can be rivalled only by Pompeii or Dura Europos, and attest to the old and great


     l⁴" Cf. E. Simon, Andromeda auf einem spätantiken Stoff, in: Studien zur Mythologie und Vasenmalerei. Festschrift K. Schauenburg, ed. E. Böhr, W. Martini, Mainz, 1986, pp. 253-260, Taf. 44, 45. The author presented a Coptic fabric with Andromeda chained to the rock.

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tradition of painting in this part of Africa. The Nubian galleries still bring newer and newer fascinating discoveries. Heliodorus’ description of the Nilometer at Philae and Memphis {Aeth. 9, 22) coincides with the style of the Late Antique Egyptian-izing mosaics with Nilometers, such as those at Sepphoris or Tabgha. His exact and detailed description of the Persian cavalry in scaled armour covering both rider and steed is an anachronism for the Achaemenid period. This point has been noticed by Altheim.¹⁴⁹ The kataphraktoi did not appear on the battlefields in the Parthian armies of the Middle East until the Is' century BC.¹⁵⁰ They were probably first used by the Massagetae. Zenobia sent such units against Aurelian’s Roman legionaries. The cataphracti (clibanarii) were introduced to the Roman army roughly about the mid 4th century AD and higly reputed by Julian, Ammian Marcellinus, Claudian as well as Heliodorus. Their units in full array inspired admiration of the contemporaries, e.g. of Claudian: credas simulacra moveri (c. Rufin. II 359), who described them along the same lines as Helidorus: o<pvpT]XaTog avSptaq Kivovpevoq {Aeth. 9, 15, 6).¹⁵¹ The opulent description of the Persian cavalry as well as the recurrent motif of Oriental dances remind readers of the most popular subjects in the later Orientalizing art, as for example T. Chasseriau’s Ali ben Hamed followed by his escort (1845, Versailles), The Polish Rider by Rembrandt or the Oriental female dancers by D. Chiparus or C.-J.-R. Colinet, or J. Descomps’ Art Deco-style statuettes of female dancers dressed in gorgeous Orientalizing garments.¹⁵² Oriental dances have always been a subject of admiration by visitors from outside. Heliodorus gave a vivid description of a Syrian dance (’Aooóptoę vópoę) {Aeth. IV, 17) - a reminiscence of Xenophon’s colourful account of a dance performed by a female dancer in armour with a shield, who danced by night in Anatolia, surrounded by singing and clapping soldiers after their troublesome expedition against Artaxerxes II {Anab. 6, 1, 12-13). One more point in Lacombrade 1970 deserves our attention as regards the chronology of Heliodorus’ novel. The French scholar pointed to the Blemmyes who appeared in the narrative of the Ethiopian Romance during the siege of Syene. Egypt had been attacked by the Blemmyes from the mid 3rd century AD on. Since they appear in the narrative of the Aethipica, we would then have a date post quern. Unfortunately we have only blurred and dispersed information about their incursions. We learn that Diocletian fortified Syene in anticipation of their attack in 297 AD. They again attacked the town in 392 AD, and again under the rule of Theodosius II, when they were defeated by Maximinus in 453 AD. Lacombrade is right, I think, in associating the siege of Syene in the Aethiopica with the constant threat from the Blemmyes in the South of Egypt in the 3rd and 4lh century AD.¹⁵³ And if Lacombrade is correct that the strategem employed by Hydaspes, King of Ethiopia, during his siege of Syene


    ¹⁴⁹ F. Altheim, Literatur und Gesellschaft im ausgehenden Altertum, Halle, 1948, p. 108.

    ¹⁵⁰ J. Warry, Armie świata starożytnego, Warszawa, 1995.

    ¹⁵¹ Julianus, Const. 37C; Ammian 16, 10, 9; cf. Lacombrade 1970, p. 83 f.

    ¹⁾² J. Miller, Antyki. Encyklopedia, Warszawa, Chiparus p. 405, Colinet, Descomps p. 427.

    ¹⁵³ Lacombrade 1970, p. 83.

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described with full details in the Aethiopica, reflected the events around Nisibis, which was surrounded with huge dykes by Sapor in 350 AD, who subsequently directed the water of the Djakhjaka River (Mygdonius) into an artificial reservoir and in this way sacked the besieged Roman fortress, we would be closer to the second half of the 4th century as the date of Heliodorus’ Romance.'™

     Heliodorus’ etymologies sound purely Greek. He explains the etymology of the River Nile saying that the Egyptians understood it as Nea ilus ( a new mud): veav ilvv 5i’ Eiovg ETtayowca «at NeiXov evtevvOev ovopa^opEvov (Aeth.9, 22). In fact the Egyptians called it the Great Channel CiepO. It is also symptomatic of Heliodorus’ “Orientalist” novel that it was embellished with the names of secondary figures, which refer in one way or another, through literary allusion or language, to the East, e.g. Thisbe (Pyramus’ story, Babylon), Arsace (Persian), or Rhodopis (Herodotus' Egypt).

     Photius praised Heliodorus for his clear and pure vocabulary {Bibl.13, 50a). He complimented him as a Greek intellectual and man of letters. There is probably some residual truth embedded in the information passed on by Socrates Scholasticus that Heliodorus the author of Aethiopica became a bishop in Thessaly later in his life {HE 5,22).¹⁵⁴ ¹⁵⁵ Thus Socrates offers an indirect pointer to Heliodorus’ Greek descent from Mainland Greece.

     An eulogy of Homer, allegedly an Egyptian son of Hermes and bom in Thebes, and his poetry, reputedly marked by an Egyptian charm and air of liberty {Aeth. 3, 14-15), leads us to yet another topos of the Greek Orientalist literature - the Egyptian travels of Greek writers, poets and artists in quest of wisdom and skills.¹⁵⁶ Plato provides some intriguing “information” about Solon translating the Egyptian names of the Egyptians’ Athenian ancestors back into Greek {Crit. 110 B; 113 A-B). According to him the names were preserved in an unbroken ancient Egyptian written tradition, a treasure of the most remote history of mankind. Morgan is certainly right in putting forward the argument that the Athenian Acropolis provided

    ¹⁵⁴ Ibid.p. 85 f.

    ¹⁵⁵    Lesky 1996, p. 866; similarly Nicephorus Kallistos, HE 22, 34 (PG 146, c. 860); Lacombrade 1970, pp. 87 f.

    ¹⁵⁶    Plut. de Iside 10, 354 E on Pythagoras, Solon, Thales, Plato, Eudoxus and their relations with Egyptian priests; T. Hopfner, Orient undgriechische Philosophic, Beihefte zum Alten Orient 4, Leipzig, 1925, Hopfner was sceptical about the alleged visits and possible influences of religious ideas; Plutarch s De Iside et Osiride, ed. J. G. Griffith, Univ, of Wales, 1970; Strabo 17, 806 (Eudoxus and Plato); A. Burton, Diodorus Siculus. Book I. A Commentary, Leiden, 1972, p. 275, on Diod. 96, 3, the belief that much of the Greek learning came from Egypt was particularly connected with the Academy (cf. Plato, Timaeus); Diod 1,98, 1, on Solon, Lycurgus and Plato in Egypt; Amm. Marc. 22, 16, 22; Hdt. 2, 109, on geometry born in Egypt; Hdt. 2, 177, Solon modelled his legal code on Amasis' judicial regulations; Diod. 1, 23, 2, Orpheus took part in the Osiriac mysteries in Egypt; Cadmus (Diod. 1, 23, 4), Perseus (Diod. 1, 24, 2).

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a contemporary inspiration for the great Temple of Poseidon in Atlantis.¹⁵⁷ In fact Plato himself suggested an alternative inspiration, writing that the Temple of Poseidon had “something of the barbaric in its appearance” (trans. R. G. Bury - eïôoç 8è ri PapPapiKÔv ëxœv - Crit. 116 D). These words are followed by a description of the temple decoration gleaming with gold, silver and ivory, which is also symptomatic of the Greek descriptions of Oriental temples, for example in Josephus’ Ant. 8,68 of Solomon’s Temple (2 Chron. 3,6), in the Syrian Goddess of the Temple of Atargatis in Hierapolis (DS 32), or in Clement’s Paedagogus (3, 2, 4, 2-3) of an Egyptian temple. Lucian of Samosate writes that Orientals prefer their heavy opulence and their empty luxury, and do not know the real and true beauty of the Greeks (Luc. dom. 5).¹⁵⁸ A large number of statues with those of the kings “from all the foreign peoples over whom they ruled” (Crit. 116 E), a huge altar before the façade, and the king’s palace beside the temple, different animals at large within the temple gardens (Crit. 119E) resemble other Greek descriptions of Oriental temples, e.g. the Temple of Atargatis in Hierapolis. Consequently if Poseidon’s temple in the Atlantis myth was not entirely Oriental in its appearance, its imaginary architecture owed many details to what the Greeks regarded Oriental in origin.¹⁵⁹ It is probably not coincidental, either, that the city of Atlantis reflects the plan of the concentric walls of Herodotus’ Ecbatana, with the royal palace and treasury in the central part of the structure (Hdt. I, 98). A recent inference by S. West that Plato’s criticism of the disadvantage of script in Phaedrus (274 C-275 B) was inspired by a knowledge of the Book of Hermes, believed to contain all the Egyptian philosophy (Clem. Strom. 6, 4), may turn out to be correct.¹⁶⁰ Such a conviction is reinforced in readers of Friedlander’s impressive chapter on relations between the Platonic path to true knowledge on the one hand, and Buddhist meditation or Islamic mysticism on the other.¹⁶¹ It is natural, then, that the vast Platonic bibliography includes the two specialist studies, Platon und der Orient by J. Kirschensteiner (1945), and Eos, ou Platon et l'Orient by J. Bidez (1945). However we must always remember that what we have at our disposal is a fragmentary knowledge of the once extensive Greek Orientalist art and literature.¹⁶²

     ¹⁵⁷   K. A. Morgan, Designer History: Plato’s Atlantis Story and Fourth Century Ideology, JHS 118, 1998, pp. 102-118.

     ¹⁵⁸ Polański 1998, p. 64 f.; ibid. p. 128 ff.

     ¹⁵⁹    P. Vidal-Naquet pointed to Persian analogies in his interpretation of the Platonic Atlantis, Athènes et l’Atlantide. Structure et signification d’un mythe platonicien, REG 77, 1964, pp. 420-444, here: p. 427.

     ¹⁶⁰ S. West, a private letter.

     ¹⁶¹ P. Friedlander, Plato 1. An Introduction, Princeton, 1973, pp. 59-84.

     ¹⁶²    E.g. a Gyges drama modelled on Hdt., fragm. in Lobel, PBA, 35, 1; Phrynichus, The Capture of Miletus (cf. Plut. Themist. 5); id. The Phoenician Women, 476 BC; Suda on Simonides: He wrote in the Doric dialect The Reign of Cambyses and Darius, The Sea-Battle of Xerxes, The Sea-Battle of Artemisium', all in elegies; The Sea-Battle of Salamis in the melic verse; Choerilus of Samos, the epic, late 5th c. BC; Xanthus, Lydiaca, cf. on Herodotus’ successors, Drews 1973, pp. 97-132; Ion of Chios, Omphale', Aeschylus, Danaids, Memnon, Psychostasia', Andromedas by Sophocles

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     The Classical style in the figural arts suppressed Oriental elements, and reduced the Oriental subjects, decorative fields and patterns so prominent in the Archaic Orientalizing art. However, Orientalism never ceased to be felt in the Greek art, even if it was only a discreet presence, as in the reliefs and painted representations of the wars with the Persians, which would be depicted in the Hellenic mythologized history alongside the Amazons, Giants and Lapiths. Orientalism could also appear in the Classical sculpture, as for example in a sphinx flanked by gryphons on the helmet of Athena Parthenos (Paus. I, 24, 5), or the Ethiopians on the cup held by Nemesis in Rhamnus, which was made of a block of marble transported to Greece by Xerxes’ invasion army (Paus. I, 23, 3). In a similar way the leopard and snaky-tailed bird symbolizing Ethiopia and Libya decorate the helmet of Menelaus in the Pasquino Group in the Loggia dei Lanzi.

     The expedition of Alexander the Great brought about a real social, ethnic and political earthquake in the Eastern Mediterranean. The world which emerged from that catastrophe could never have been the same again. The lasting presence of the Greeks in the East resulted in a new Orientalism in art and literature. Some of its creations will be discussed in the successive chapters of this book. A long-lasting process of interchange between Greeks and Orientals significantly influenced the patterns of Hellenic culture, as documented by the phenomena marking the disintegration of the Classical forms already felt under the late Antonines, and successively in the birth of Late Antique and Byzantine art and literature. The Christian Greek world assimilated much of the Oriental lore. Most of the problem of the Orientalization of the West which we are facing now is beyond the limits of this study, though it cannot be passed by in silence without any reference. The ardent interest and large scale of translation from foreign languages into Greek, Egyptian, Syriac or Latin between the 3rd and 6th centuries AD is virtually unparalleled for its extraordinary sense of the importance of translation. We still hope to regain some of the lost Greek writings through Georgian, Armenian, Syriac or Coptic.

     However we cannot forget that those processes always had a limited scale, and always struck against intercultural barriers. Readers of the brilliant study by Sherwin-White and Kuhrt (1993) may be reminded of this in their important conclusion: “Older ideas of a ‘fusion’ (or synthesis) of Greek and Oriental culture... are generally - and it seems rightly - now regarded as too crude to be of much use in analysing


and Euripides; Timotheus of Miletus, The Persians, a lyric hymn to Apollo, 410 BC, D. Page, Poetae Melici Graeci, Oxford, 1962, pp. 404-413; Bacon 1961; Deinon of Colophon and Heraclides of Cyme, Persica; popularity of Adonis in the 4th century BC: Antiphanes, Adonis; Philetaerus, a drama Adonisiazusae; Philiscus, The Marriage of Adonis; cf. Plato, Leg. 2, 656 D-E, on the unchanging forms of the Egyptian art; Diodorus’ story of Theodorus and Telecles and the Egyptian canon of proportions, (I, 98, 5-9), E. Iversen, Diodorus 'Account of the Egyptian Canon, JEA 54, 1968, pp. 215-218.

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the complicated process of cultural change . . . This sounder methodological approach underlies a current orthodoxy which tends to see the general pattern of contact between Greeks and non-Greeks as the juxtaposition or co-existence of Greek and non-Greek cultures with little interchange except to a limited extent in the case of local non-Greek élites.”¹⁶³ In the gradually strongly diminished East of Alexander the Great the Greeks kept on living in their own communities, the Jews turned to Jewish traditions, the Egyptians chose Coptic, the Syrians Syriac, and often in opposition to the Greeks. The Greek Gadara, geographically so close to the shores of the Sea of Galilee, proved too distant for the Messiah to reach it. He was turned back on his way up to the town (Mt. 8, 28 ff.).

     The new Hellenistic Orientalist style marked its presence for the very beginning of the epoch, for example on the coins issued by the Eastern Greek monarchs, heirs of Alexander the Great. They appeared with Oriental attributes, e.g. Alexander with the ram’s horns of Ammon of Siwa, or the elephant’s scalp of Dionysus on the coins of Ptolemy I.¹⁶⁴ A decadrachm shows Alexander mounting Bucephalus and fighting Porus seated on an elephant.¹⁶⁵ The above images reflected the official iconography reproduced on a larger scale in the sculpture, relief or painting. In India Apollonius of Tyana was contemplating the exploits of Porus and Alexander on a relief cast in coloured metals (Phil. V. Apoll. II, 20).¹⁶⁶ Hellenistic issues of Orientalizing coins found their continuation in the Imperial money which sometimes carries images or attributes referring to Oriental deities such as Sera-pis, Elagabal or Isis.¹⁶⁷

     The Graeco-Oriental interchange sometimes conjured up intriguing blends of Eastern and Western aesthetics, as can be seen in the bronze statue of a triumphant Ptolemy III in the Museum of Antiquities of Istanbul.¹⁶⁸ However, there is a class of antiquities which we automatically associate with the Orientalist style - the


    ¹⁶³ Sherwin-White, Kuhrt 1993, p. 144.

    ¹⁶⁴ Bieber 1964, figs. 40-42.

    ¹⁶³ Seltman 1965, Pl. 49, figs. 6-7; Bieber 1964, fig. 22.

    ¹⁶⁶ Recueil 52, pp. 52 f.

    ¹⁶⁷   A concise review in Nock, CAH 12, Ch. 12, pp. 413 ff; Mattingly 1987, f. ex. Nilus, AU, c. 134 AD, Pl. XXXVIII, 10; Serapis, on Caraclla’s Antoninianus, 216 AD, Pl. XLI, 3; the fetish of Emesa, AU, Elagabalus, 220 AD, Pl. XLI, 4; a crocodile, AU, Augustus, c. 28 BC, Pl. XL1II, 3; Parthians, AU, Sept.Severus, c. 195 AD, Pl. XL1V, 3; rhinoceros, Quadrans, Domitian, c. 85 AD, Pl. XLV1, 4; the phoenix, AU, Trajan, 118 AD; temple of Serapis, AG, Domitian, c. AD 95, Pl. XLVII, 5 etc.; For further references, see: P. V. Hill, The Monuments of Ancient Rome as Coin Types, London, 1989, p. 96: Tigris and Euphrates (Trajan); Egyptian obelisks in the Circus Maximus, pp. 47 f.; Iseum-Serapeum, p. 28 f.; Parthians on the Augustus Arch, p. 53, etc.; M. J. Price, B. L. Trell, Coins and their Cities. Architecture on the Ancient Coins of Greece, Rome and Palestine, London, 1977, the sanctuary of Aphrodite in Byblos, Luc. DS 6, pp. 150 ff.; Europa-Astarte from Sidon, Luc. DS 4, pp. 155 ff.; Emesa, Elagabal, pp. 167 ff.; the temple of Serapis in Alexandria, pp. 103 ff.; the Nilometers, pp.180 ff.

    ¹⁶⁸ Schefold, Jung 1988, Abb. 204, p. 168, dated c. 240 BC.

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Nilotic landscapes, known from numerous paintings, mosaics and other media.¹⁶⁹ The group is in no way uniform. Among them are the sacred and idyllic landscapes, Pygmy grotesques, illustrations with animals and vegetation, and hunting scenes. The great Barberini Mosaic in Palestrina and the mosaics from the Casa del Fau-no belong to the best-known examples of the style.¹⁷⁰ Among the paintings we come upon different techniques. Sometimes it is a yellow monochrome painting with Egyptian elements like a camel, a statue of Isis, a winged sphinx, all of this intermingling with not specifically Egyptian temples, porticoes or columns, and even Greek deities, as in the Casa di Livia (c. 30 BC).¹⁷¹ Sometimes it is a frieze composed of uraei, Egyptian crowns and the double feather of Isis with a hippo and a Pygmy at a well, as in the Aula Isiaca on the Palatine Hill. Isiac statues grow out of fantastic, vegetal candelabra reminiscent of Vitruvius’ critique of the contemporary wall decorations: “there are monsters rather than the definite representations taken from definite things. Instead of columns there rise up fluted reeds; instead of gables, decorative appendages with curled leaves and volutes. Candelabra support shrine-like forms, above the roofs of which grow delicate flowers with volutes containing little figures seated at random, some with human, some with animal heads” {de architectura 7, 5, 3). The observer can sometimes come upon a tranquil paysage with the Djebel rocks of Upper Egypt rising up in it, or palms and boats sailing along the winding band of the Nile, as in the Casa dei Cei (16, 15 - Pl.V),¹⁷² or eerie landscapes filled with half-real architecture, grotesque humanoids and animals, with piquant erotic scenes appended, as in the Casa del Efebo (I 7, 11),¹⁷³ or in House VII 2, 25 in Pompeii.¹⁷“' Their chronological and territorial extent shows that they enjoyed incessant popularity for many centuries in the Graeco-Roman Mediterranean.¹⁷⁵ The Nilotic landscapes have their


     ¹⁶⁹    Egyptian landscapes on mosaics, terracottas, coins, lamps and gems, bibliogr. Morenz 1968, p. 117, n. 5.

     ¹⁷⁰    P. G. P. Mayboom, The Nile Mosaic of Palestrina. Early Evidence of Egyptian Religion in Italy, Leiden 1995, dated c. 120/110 BC; an excellent illustrations in Charbonneaux et al. 1973, fig. 181, dated c. 80 BC, p. 182: “the taste for exoticism and local colour ... was doubtless never again carried quite so far in Greek art”; the landscapes with the Pygmies in Morenz 1968, pp. 118 f.; a mosaic with the Pygmies in Carthage in Aug. Civ. Dei 16, 8.

     ¹⁷¹ Ling 1991, p. 142 f., fig. 149.

     ¹⁷⁷ Pitture vol. I, f. 107; D. Michel, Casa dei Cei (1 6, 15), 1990, Hauser in Pompeii 3.

     ¹⁷³ I 7, 11, Pitture vol. I, fig 166, 186-7; 173 a-b.

     ¹⁷⁴    Pitture Vol. VI, figs. 7, 8; cf. a mosaic tondo with the Pygmies on the boat, C. del Menan-dro I, 10, 4, Pitture vol. I, p. 297; a tondo with a Nilotic landscape, 17, 1, C. di Paquius Proculus, Pitture vol. I, f. 84; emblema in Cardiff, White House, AJA 1985, Pl. 28.

     ¹⁷⁵    E. Alfoldi-Rosenbaum, A Nilotic Scene on Justinianic Floor Mosaics in Cyrenaican Churches, pp. 149-153, Pl. LV-LVIII, in: La mosaiquegreco-romaine, Paris, 1965; the Nilotic mosaics in Tabgha and Sepphoris, J. Murphy-O’Connor, The Holy Land, Oxford, 1998, fig. 71, The Church of the Multiplication of the Loaves and Fishes; Z. Weiss, E. Netzer, The Mosaics of the Nile Festival Building, pp. 127-131, figs. 61-64, in: Sepphoris in Galilee. Crosscurrents of Culture, ed. R. M. Nagy, C. L. Meyers, et al. 1996; Piccirillo 1993, p. 37, cat. 752 (Umm al-Marabi), cat. 660 (Zay al-Gharby), cat. 209 (Khirbat al-Mukhayyat).

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literary parallels, e.g. in the Romance by Achilles Tatius who described the Egyptian Delta and its animal life (IV, 11 ff.) or in the Natural History by Pliny the Elder (HN 7, 2).¹⁷⁶ The Nilotic landscapes caused a real invasion of exotic animals and birds into the Graeco-Roman art: elephants, monkeys, lions, tigers, rhinoceros, hippopotami, ibises, storks, ducks, the latter depicted with the use of splendid, fresh colours for their plumage to cheer the eyes of the viewer.¹⁷⁷ The representations of the birds are so exact, vivid and colourful that they recall to one’s memory the Atlases of Birds. Schefold wrote a paper on Alexandrian illustrated papyri produced for Greek and Roman visitors (Schefold 1956). The papyri were later used as models for Egyptianizing architectural landcapes placed on the walls of Roman and Campanian houses. It may also happen that the scale of those mosaics is so impressive that they change into some sort of mosaic zoological garden, as in the great hunting mosaic of the Piazza Armerina, which depicts Numidia, Egypt and India.¹⁷⁸

      It has been held for a long time that all those grotesque and bucolic landscapes originated in Alexandria, because they depict the Egyptian flora and fauna, in the workshops of artists like Demetrios Topographos, a contemporary of Ptolemy VI Philometor. However, the context offered by Diodorus (Lib. 31, 18, 2) is not altogether clear, and it is actually difficult to interpret “topographos” as “landscape painter.” R. Brown was probably right, then, that the exotic subjects were fashioned somewhere outside Alexandria, and that they might be compared to the chinoiserie produced by the rococo artists of the 18lh century.¹⁷⁹ “The traits that have been so often ascribed to the ‘Alexandrian style’ are noticeably absent from the extant monuments,” she concluded.¹⁸⁰ Her thesis contradicts opinions that are still being expounded in handbooks of art and archaeology. Brown’s hypothesis still sounds somewhat like J. Isager’s argument put forward under a provocative title: “The lack of evidence for a Rhodian School.”¹⁸¹

      The Orientalist style of the Julio-Claudian and early Flavian period is well attested on the walls of Campania. Sometimes the style is only too apparent, as on the fresco in the Isiac Temple of Herculaneum, copied from the original made c. 320-310 BC, which shows an ecstatic dance performed by a black-skinned male dancer at the gates of a temple during some Osiriac celebrations.¹⁸² An owner’s


    ¹⁷⁶ Morenz 1968, p. 109, n. 1, on Seneca and Virgil in Egypt.

    ¹⁷⁷   C.f. Toynbee 1973, pp. 32 ff.; J. Boesneck, Die Tierwelt des alten Ägypten, 1988; P. F. Houlihan, The Birds of Ancient Egypt, 1986; O. Keller, Die antike Tierwelt, I-Il, 1909-1913; H. H. Scullard, The Elephant in the Greek and Roman World, 1974.

    ¹⁷⁸   A. Carandini, A. Ricci, M. de Vos, Filosofiana. La Villa di Piazza Armerina. Immagine di un aristocrato romano al tempo di Constantino, Palermo, 1982, Taf. 1, fig. 122, 123.

    ¹⁷⁹ Brown 1957, p. 88.

     ¹⁸⁰ Ibid.

    ¹⁸¹    J. Isager, The Lack of Evidence for a Rhodian School, MDAIR, 102, 1995, pp. 115-131; compare Ling 1991, p. 140; Pollitt 1986, p. 208.

    ¹⁸² Schefold 1972, Pl. XLI1, p. 177.

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Oriental predilections may also hide away behind a Classical curtain taking the shape of Europa, Andromeda, Thisbe or Myrra, or they may only be alluded to, as on the painting which depicts Paris on Mount Ida, in the National Museum of Naples, where the presence of Isis is subtly marked only by a portico with Hecate. Isis was always dressed as Diana, which can be explained by the repressive policy against Oriental religions introduced by Augustus and Tiberius.¹⁸³ A private mania for the Orient was never expressed on a more monumental scale in the West than by the Emperor Hadrian, a snobbish intellectual and pretentious art connoisseur with his fancy gardens of Tibur, where he recreated his imaginary world with Egyptian Pyramids and Canopus.

     It must be added here, though this is a matter of secondary importance for our inquiry, that collecting Oriental or fake Oriental objects was not just a pure fashion, a private propensity which had a decisive impact on the tastes of the Westerners in the Late Hellenistic and Imperial period. The crucial factor determining the impact were the Oriental religions with their clergy and sanctuaries. The evidence for this has been piled up in many books and papers. On this point I would like to refer en passant only to a couple of books which I personally like: the irreplaceable and inspiring Oriental Religions in the Roman Paganism by F. Cumont; Les cuites orienteaux dans le monde romain (1992) by R. Turcan, a useful and informative compendium which encompasses Iranian, Egyptian, Syrian and Anatolian evidence; and finally A. Roullet’s book Egyptian andEgyptianizing Monuments of Imperial Rome (1972). Roullet impressively revives the world of the Egyptian sanctuaries of Imperial Rome, with the Iseum and Serapeum on the Campus Martius, populated with exotic stone animals and half-human, half-animal divinities.

     Usually in this study we shall be dealing with wicked ogres, beautiful princesses, sumptuous cavalry parades, that is mostly with archetypal patterns, existing in the oral or literary lore of different peoples all around the world, and recurrent in the tradition of Western Orientalism since its Greek emergence. Let us tum to Memnon, who seems to be an original Hellenic creation of lasting fame, divulged by the epic poem Aethiopis, one of the most regrettable losses in the history of the Greek letters. Its popularity attested by the black- and red- figured painted pottery, challenged only by the Iliad as regards frequency of its occurrence on pottery, offers a vivid testimony of its cultural impact. The subject turned out to be a particularly attractive artistic challenge, because it was distinguished in some of the most memorable artistic creations of their times. Pausanias contemplated the duel of Achilles and Memnon assisted by their mothers, Thetis and Eos, on the Kypselos Chest, the decorative plates of which were wrought in gold and carved in ivory and cedar-wood. This chef d’oeuvre was fashioned around the middle of the 6lh century BC and treasured in the Heraion of Olympia (Paus. 5, 17, 5-19, 9). ¹⁸⁵


     ¹⁸⁵ Ibid. PL XXV, p. 176 f; bibl. n. 1, p. 176.

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A similar scene of Achilles and Memnon, this time without their mothers, was carved in relief on the panneau of Apollo’s throne in Amyclae (c. 500 BC).¹⁸⁴ ¹⁸⁵ Pausanias depicted it with an air of symptomatic partiality to the original beauty of the Archaic art (Paus. 3, 18, 9-19, 5; Memnon, ibid. 3, 18, 12), also shared by other intellectuals of the Flavian and Antonine age. Many centuries later E. Kästner meditated over the ruins of Corinth with the same liking of pre-Classical Greece, and his fascination engraved itself on the pages of his Ölberge, Weinberge, one of the most charming and moving books of modem literature in the Western world: “Durch die Decke des Römerzeitlichen, dem man zuviel Ehre antat, als man es ausgrub, denn es ist nur mittelmässiges Zeug, ist Althellenisches wieder ans Licht gekeimt. Nur an ein paar Stellen: die aber heben das eingebildete Monumentale aus dem Stand wie geklebte Attrappen.”¹⁸⁵ We may even venture to recreate in our imagination the original appearance of the heroic duel on the Kypselos Chest and the Throne of Amyclae, because we have at our disposal numerous images on the contemporary Corinthian and black- and red-figured Attic vases.¹⁸⁶ The earliest Corinthian image showing the duel goes back to c. 580 BC,¹⁸⁷ which provides probably a close date ante quem for the composition of the Aethiopis (by Arcti-nus of Miletus?). I am putting emphasis on this point, bearing in mind an illuminating paper by Schefold, “Die Bedeutung der Kunstgeschichte für die Datierung der frühgriechischen Epik” (1991). Schefold was searching for new ways out of the vicious circle frustrating attempts to establish reliably exact dates for the history of the Archaic literature.¹⁸⁸

     The Orientalist air surrounding the duel must have been even more tangible in the original setting. Pausanias remembered the sphinxes carved under the horses of Castor and Polydeuces on Apollo’s Throne in Amyclae (Paus. 3, 18, 14); or the woman standing behind Heracles and playing a Phrygian flute; then the figure probably of Omphale on the Kypselos Chest (Paus. 5, 17, 9). Close to the Hippodamion in Olympia Pausanias saw a group of bronze sculptures, a votary gift from the citizens of Apollonia, commissioned to Lykios, son of Myron. The group showed Thetis and Eos when they asked Zeus to pardon their sons. Achilles and Memnon were separately represented in close fighting, beside other heroic duels of the Iliac cycle: dv0T|GTT]Kaai 5e Kai. dXXoq aXAcoi Korea rd aura,


    ¹⁸⁴    A. Kossatz-Deissmann, Memnon, LIMC VI, 1, no 27, p. 453; W⁷świątyni i w micie. Z Pau-zaniasza wędrówki po Helladzie, ks. I, II, III I VII, koment. B. Filarska, Wroclaw, 1973, p. 325, dated c. 530 BC.

     ¹⁸⁵ E. Kastner, ólberge, Weinberge. Ein Griechenlandbuch, Wiesbaden 1953, p. 116.

     ¹⁸⁶   A close face-to-face fight on an Attic bf amphora, Vatican 16591, a skilful pattern in the bf style at its best, c.5 20/510 BC, Memon, LIMC VI, 1, 38; ibid. 2, fig. 38; cf. ibid. 33 (Corinthian); 34, 35 (Chalcidic); 39, 40 (Att. bf.).

    ¹⁸⁷   Kossatz-Deissmann, Memnon, LIMC VI, 1,29, a column crater, Berlin, Staatl. Mus. F 1144; ibid. 30, column crater, Bern Univ. 36, fig. 30, ibid. 2.

    ¹⁸⁸ Schefold 1991.

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ävfjp ßapßapog äv8pi "EXXrivi (Paus. 5, 22, 2) (They stand face to face with each other, a barbarian against a Greek). Not far away from the Heraion a magnificent curtain embellished with Syrian designs on Phoenician purple adorned the interior of the Temple of Zeus (Paus. 5, 12, 4). We have already mentioned above that a significant part of the votaries dedicated to the Olympian divinities during the Archaic age was of Eastern origin. Judging by Pausanias’ account, still in the late Antonine period the sanctuary of Olympia left a different impression than the one conjured up out of the Classicist, pure idealized forms by the 18lh and 19lh century philologists and archaeologists. The struggle of Memnon and Achilles over the fallen body of Antilochus made a thematic focus of the eastern frieze of the Siphnian Treasury in Delphi, fortunately preserved in large sections (c. 525 BC).¹⁸⁹ * The great drama of this duel, which struck a high pathetic note was rivalled only by the three great duels of the Iliad and their famous contenders: Hector, Achilles, Sarpedon and Patroclos. The Aethiopis also inspired Aeschylus, who introduced the tragedies of Memnon and Psychostasia to the stage {TrGF III F 127-130, F 279-280a), as well as Sophocles, as documented by Aethiopis (TrGF IV F 28-33). Pindar probably saved something of the original pathos and greatness of ths Aethiopis in his lofty, religiously inspired verse. Memnon became one of his favourite tragic heroes. He appeared to Pindar as Koipavoq (leader) {Nem. Ill, 64), as ätpoßoq xaXKodpag (fearless, clad in bronze) {Isth. V, 43-4), as Me-pvovoq ßia (powerful) {Isth. VIII, 49). The heroic, deeply moving scene of Sarpedon’s psychostasia and consequent fall, the struggle and saving of his body, and eventually his funeral in distant Lycia may give a glimpse of the original impact of the Memnonis, the central part of the Aethiopis, which was styled on the Iliad (cf II. 16,420-684). It seems likely that the motif of psychostasia (the weighing of the souls) was at some stage assimilated by the Greek religious imagination from the Egyptian Book of the Dead.'w

      The abduction of Memnon’s body from the battlefield by Eos can be seen on a well-known painting by Duris, pictured on a cup in the Louvre (G115 MNB 1698).¹⁹¹ A sequence of the earlier graphic patterns shows that Duris was simply following an earlier model. However he raised it up to the level of unprecedented emotional expression and artistic perfection.¹⁹² A comparison of this image

    '** Kossatz-Deissmann, Memnon, LIMC VI, 1, fig. 14, p. 451; for further Memnonic bibliogr. cf. V. Brinkmann, BCH 109, 1985, 110-121; D. von Bothmer, The Death of Sarpedon, in: The Greek Vase, the Troy Congress, New York, 1979, (1981), pp. 63-80; G. E. Lung, Memnon-Archdologische Studien zur Aithiopis, 1912; Snowden 1970, pp. 151-153.

    ¹,⁰ Burkert 1991, p. 163; O. Gruppe, Griechische Mythologie und Religionsgeschichte, München, 1906, 681, 6; J. G. Griffiths, The Divine Tribunal, Swansea, 1975.

    ¹.¹   C. Weiss, Eos, LIMC 111, 1, 324, ibid. 2, fig. 324, c. 485/80 BC; S. Woodford, The Trojan War in Ancient Art, fig. 87, p. 93; M. Wegner, Duris. Ein Künstler Monographischer Versuch, 1968, 74-76; Schefold 1989, Abb. 228; bibliogr. Eos, LIMC III, 1, 324.

    ¹.²   E.g. skyphos, Berlin, Staatl. Mus. F 2318, Weiss, Eos, LIMC III, 1,322, ibid. fig. 322; olpe, Bochum, Univ. S. 494, ibid. 318, ibid. 2, fig. 322.

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to the late mediaeval Pietas has become standard practice in the Memnonic bibliography. It is also meaningful that Duris’ emotional and epitaphic Eos with Memnon was created soon after the Battle of Marathon, and perhaps in a chronological relation to Salamis.¹⁹³ Polygnotus placed Memnon among the heroes of his Nekya put on display in the Delphic Lesche of the Cnidians (Paus. 10,31, 5-7). Memnon was seated on a rock resting his hand on Sarpedon’s arm. He was clad in a chlamys adorned with images of birds and accompanied by a Negro boy, which played the role of an explanatory motif (“the Negro boy was painted naked, because Memnon was the king of the Ethiopians,” Pausanias explained). In the Archaic as well as the Classical art Memnon had always been represented as a Greek warrior, consequently the artists frequently added explanatory motifs like a winged Eos, Negro attendants or Memnonides birds (Pl. VI). It is a matter of debate what Aeschylus’ Memnon looked like in his costume on the stage. Judging by the number of references to the ethnic characteristics and damask and linen Sidonian garments of the Danaids in the Supplices ¹⁹⁴ and also by one impressive sherd with a sumptuously dressed Ethiopian princess in a scene suggesting a dramatic performance, probably Euripides’ Andromeda (Pl. VII), we can suspect that Aeschylus’ Memnon was in some way portrayed as a foreigner. Thus it is not surprising that Aristophanes should have remembered the Aeschylean Memnon as an outlandish-looking figure characterized with Cycnus as K(o8covo<paXapond>Xoug (boastful riders on horses adorned with bells and phalara - Ranae 973). The above-presented chain of masterpieces leads to a painting of Memnon in the Neapolitan gallery described by Philostratus the Elder (Jmag. I, 7). The Gallery’s Oriental collection is one of the central subjects of our study. Lehmann-Hartleben exhibited the Philostratean Memnon on the walls of the Room of the Rivers in his reconstruction of the Gallery.¹⁹⁵ The painting showed Negro mourners, the soldiers of Memnon, who occupied the central part of the field. They gathered around the dead body of their king on the plain closed on the sides by the walls of Troy and the trench of the Achaean camp. With his long hair and muscular body, Memnon was beautiful even in death. His complexion was dark, but not black like his soldiers’. Up in the sky the painter placed the figures of Eos, the Night and probably Helios. On the verge of the tableau the viewer could see the Egyptian Colossus of Memnon (cf. Pl. IX). The painting had a concentric composition, with the fallen body of Memnon in the lower part of the field, surrounded successively by the mourners, next the city walls and the trench, and finally by the heavenly divinities. This regular composition had one divergence. Probably in the upper right corner of the picture the painter placed the Vocal Colossus in order to allow the viewer to identify the subject. Dark and even black hues made up its colouristic dominant (black skin, the Night, the Colossus), lit up probably by the golds of Helios and rays touching the lips of the black seated Memnon on the edge of the picture.

    ¹.³ Schefold, Jung 1989, p. 253.

    ¹.⁴ Vv. 277-90; 496-8; garments: 121 f„ 134, 432.

    ¹.⁵ Lehmann-Hartleben 1941, pp. 37 f.

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     The painter recalled the ancient Greek iconography of mourning, prothesis (npOTi0evTai) {Imag. I, 7, 1), which had always been remarkable for its “essential conservatism”, as Shapiro observed.¹⁹⁶ We know a unique picture on an Attic black-figure amphora in the Vatican (16589) of Eos mourning over the naked body of her son, who lies outstretched on the ground.¹⁹⁷ An arresting red-figure image by the Penthesileia Painter shows a group of mourners remarkable for their studied gestures shaped by emotion and despair (London BM E 67 - Pl. VIII).¹⁹⁸ In the Neapolitan Memnon, however, the traditional ritualistic solemnity of prothesis was dissipated by the Late Hellenistic experiments with representations of young, muscular dead or dying bodies, modelled by many artists again and again with an air of morbid propensity. Enough to mention the Amazon, the Giant or the Persian from the National Museum in Naples, or the Dead Gaul from Venice.¹⁹⁹ Philostratus the Elder showed the same liking, as attested by his descriptions of the beautiful and young dead bodies of Hyacinthus {Imag. I, 24), Memnon {Imag. I, 7) or Antilochus {Imag. II, 7). The latter also pictured Memnon who in that instance was represented as standing aside, covered with a lion skin, contemptuously looking down at his victim Antilochus, and next to him a mourning Achilles. Antilochus’ blood “shines red, like colour on ivory,” wrote Philostratus, which is by the way symptomatic of the sort of colourism richly represented in the Neapolitan painting gallery. Ephebic beauty is particularly delightful to Philostratus (Meles, Imag. II, 8; Antilochus, II, 7; Hippolytus, II, 4; Achilles, II, 2; Narcissus, I, 23), and so is the athletic beauty (ibid. Arrichion, II, 6; Pelops, I, 30; Amphiaraeus, I, 27; Phaeton, I, 11), and also the warrior’s beauty (ibid. Perseus, I, 29; Hunters, I, 28; Memnon, I, 7). Divine beauty stands as if far apart and unique in the painting collection, but is of particular glamour (ibid. Apollo, I, 26). Since the earliest documented stages of the Greek literature and art, Memnon had always been portrayed as a young man of exquisite comeliness. When Odysseus tells Achilles about his son Neoptolemus in the katabasis scene with the apparent intention to console and cheer the father, he says that Achilles’ son was so handsome as only Memnon among the warriors on the battlefield of Troy {Od. 11, 522). We find an inscription MEMNON KAAOL, the work of a skilful Attic red-figure painter, dated late 6,h century BC.²⁰⁰ As regards the Philostratean painting’s composition {Imag. I, 7), which apparently developed in two stages, we do not have to follow Brunn, who strongly argued against the alleged principle of unity in representation, that is one scene on one icon, emphasized by Friedrichs as necessary


    ¹⁹⁶ H. A. Shapiro, The Iconography of Mourning in Athenian Art, AJA 95, 1991, pp. 629-656, here: p. 629.

    ¹.⁷ Weiss, Eos, LIMC III, 1, 327; ibid. 2, fig. 327, c. 530 BC; EAA IV 1000, fig. 1190.

    ¹.⁸    Kossatz-Deissmann, Memnon VI, 1-2, 55 fig.; cup, Ferrara, MN44885, c. 460/50 BC; Schefold, Jung 1989, Abb. 229, ibid. p. 255.

    ¹⁹⁹ Pollitt 1988, figs. 89, 91, 93, 94.

    ²⁰⁰   Kossatz-Deissmann, Memnon, LIMC VI 1,42, ibid. 2. fig. 42; a cup, rf., N. York, MMA 1906.1021.139.

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in the Classical painting.²⁰¹ Friedrichs argued for the archaeological inauthenticity of the Philostratean gallery. He believed it was a rhetorical fiction. Brunn grounded his exposition on a limited range of examples, and hence his efforts might have been unconvincing to many. However his intuition proved to be correct. A series of studies from the late twentieth century, such as Peters’ Landscape in Romano-Campanian Mural Painting (1963) or a brilliant paper by Blanckenhagen, Daedalus and Icarus on Pompeian Walls (1968), settled the question. They detailed the style of narrative mythological landscape painting flourishing since the late 2ⁿd century BC (Pl. XXI, XXII, XXXV).²⁰² Thus following the principles of the style, the old master documented in the guide to the Neapolitan painting collection unrolled the story in two stages: the death on the battlefield (a central scene), and the heroic immortality as the Vocal Colossus (a side scene). The secondary scene with the Memnon Colossus (ent reppaot xfiq ypaqniq - Imag. I, 7, 3 - at the edge of the painting) also played the role of an explanatory device which appeared in scenes whose meaning might not have been immediately clear, as in the case of the funeral iconography where we are naturally liable to confuse Achilles, Memnon, Sarpedon, Patroclos and others. Croesus’ pyre on the Pantheia painting is likewise illustrative of this device {Imag. II, 9). On the Galatea and Polyphemus painting in Pompeii (17,7) it is a ship in the upper right part of the tableau which additionally throws a sinister shade on the tranquil bucolic scene, foretelling the imminent disaster.²⁰³

      The Colossus of Memnon on the painting in Naples {Imag. I, 7) in itself makes an intriguing point of the ecphrasis. One is not easily led to believe that someone who once set eyes on it could paint or describe it as black. The Colossi were cut out of Egyptian red conglomerate limestone. The painter, naturally sensitive to colours, might have worked with a drawing or some other illustration which specified the colour as black, or else made no indication of colour at all. This consideration also provides evidence against Philostratus’ alleged Egyptian travels. His Egypt in the Vita Apollonii is unconvincing. By the way, I share the opinion that some connecting points in the Imagines and Vita Apollonii speak for the same authorship.

      Brunn was also correct in assuming in his contention with Friedrichs that the Greek art after Alexander the Great had no reason to fear the black Memnon.²⁰⁴ Steinmann on his part adduced a wide range of skin colour attested by the Fayumic portraits.²⁰⁵ We must be particularly cautious here. The Philostratean Gallery collected a certain number of the best-quality originals, first-rate academic copies, and skilful manneristic works, while the Fayumic funeral por


    ²⁰¹ Brunn 1861-67, pp. 233 ff.

    ²⁰² E.g. the Artemis and Acteon story, C. dei cubicoli floreali, I 9, 5, Pitture II, fig. 76, p.54.

     ²⁰³ Blanckenhagen 1968, Taf. 42, 2; I 7, 7, C. del Sacerdos Amandus, Pitture 1, fig. 15, p. 599.

    ²⁰⁴ Brunn 1861-67, p. 211.

    ²⁰⁵ Steinmann 1914, p. 36.

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traits represented works by provincial craftsmen who worked for the local undertakers.

     In my view F. Mayence was not necessarily wrong to identify the Negro warrior standing between two Amazons on a black-figure Attic amphora dated mid 5th century BC. as Memnon, though it would betoken a confusing divergence from the generally observed conventions of that period.²⁰⁶ The Roman writers who inherited the Greek lore in its Late Hellenistic form were in no doubt that Memnon was black-skinned (Manil. I, 767; Ov. Am. 1, 8, 3-4; Verg. Aen. I, 489; Sen. Ag. 212 etc.). Antaeus was also painted black (Imag. II, 21). More details in the painting speak for the authenticity of Philostratus’ Memnon. His long hair can be found on many painted vases, like the one by Duris just mentioned above, or on an Attic red-figure cup from Vulci (London BM E67),²⁰⁷ or the bronze mirror from Chicago (Art. Inst. Chic. 1984, 1341 ).²⁰⁸ Philostratus’ Memnon was visualised as “struck in the breast ... by the ashen spear” (Imag. I, 7, I), which is in agreement with Memnon’s pictures on the painted vases.²⁰⁹ From c. 540 BC on Memnon had been often depicted as surrounded by Negro warriors.²¹⁰ They were carefully drawn with emphasis laid on their ethnic characteristics and their exotic weaponry (Pl. VI).

     Can we deduce any chronology for the Neapolitan Memnon (Imag. I, 7) from the extant evidence? The stylistic analogies to the Hellenistic sculpture and the narrative landscape painting point to a Late Hellenistic date as the earliest possible. The painting was probably purchased as a souvenir of the romantic Egyptian holidays enjoyed by Septimius Severus and Julia Domna in the spring of AD 200. Together they visited Alexandria, Memphis, Fayum, Thebes and Syene. In May AD 200 they stayed for some days on the Island of Philae, where they attended a local feast of Isis and Osiris. It is probably only the presence of the Vocal Colossus on the painting which, if anything at all, may give us more trustworthy grounds for dating. The earliest graffiti on the Colossus are contemporary with Tiberius, while the most recent can be associated with the period of Septimius Severus. The inscriptions include the Aeolic poems by Julia Balbilla, the Sappho of Hadrianic times. She paid a visit to Thebes with Hadrian and Sabina in


    ²⁰⁶    F. M. Snowden, Aithiopes, L1MC I, 1-2,6 fig., Brussels, Musées Royaux, A. 130, Beazley, AB V 308, 82 and Bothmer 1957, 95 identify the warrior as an attendant of Memnon.

     ²⁰⁷ Memnon, LIMC VI, 1, 53, ibid. 2, fig. 53, the Castelgiorgio Painter, c. 490/80 BC.

    ²⁰⁸ Ibid. 83, 2, fig. 83, c. 470/50 BC.

    ²⁰⁹    E.g. a cup, att. rf. Ferrara, MN 44885, c. 460/50 BC, ibid. 55, fig. 55; a chalice crater, att. rf. Bologna, Mus. Civ. 290, ibid. 56, fig. 56.

    ²¹⁰    E.g. amphora, att. bf. N.York, MM A 1898.8.13, ibid. 6, fig. 6; CVA 4 Taf. 21 (749) 3; amphora, att. bf. Leiden, Rijksmus. K.94/1 10, c. 510 BC, Memnon, LIMC VI, 1,7, fig. 7; CVA I, Taf. 35(129)3; amphora, att. bf. München, Antikensammlung 1507, c. 510/500 BC, Memnon, L1MCW, 1,9, ibid. 2, fig. 9 etc.

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AD 130.²" According to Letronne and Gardiner who followed Eusebius of Caesarea’s account, the Colossus began to sing after it had suffered damage in the earthquake of 27 BC. The origins of the legend of Memnon’s Egyptian sojourn seem to have been late, probably even not earlier than the second half of the Is¹ century BC.²¹¹ ²¹² The Vocal Memnon as a major tourist attraction cannot be dated earlier than for the period of the Julio-Claudians, that is Augustus or even more likely Tiberius. The inflow of Western tourists to Thebes could not have been an earlier phenomenon, even if we put aside the question of the alleged earthquake. The Egyptians rose up against the Macedonian administration soon after the Battle of Raphia (217 BC). It was only the beginning of an endemic guerrilla war in Upper Egypt, which had always been difficult to penetrate because of its geographical and climatic barriers. However, since the end of the 3rd century BC the area of Thebes was closed for a long time to Western visitors. In 88 BC Ptolemy IX seized and devastated Thebes. In 58 BC Heracleopolis became the scene of an anti-Greek revolt.²¹³ * ²¹⁵ Thus not until the economic and political stability achieved during the latter part of Augustus’ reign was Egypt re-opened to tourists from the West. This late popularity of the Vocal Colossus was reflected by the ecphrasis in the Imagines (I, 7, 3): “No tomb of Memnon is anywhere to be seen but in Ethiopia, he himself has been transformed into a statue of black marble. The attitude is that of a seated person, but the figure is that of Memnon yonder . . .” (trans. A. Fairbanks). Consequently the date of the Neapolitan Memnon cannot be earlier than the Julio-Claudians, and maybe a work by a Classicist painter of the Severan period, who based his style on Late Hellenistic models.

     I chose Memnon’s ecphraseis (Imag. I, 7 and II, 7) as the conclusion of my introductory chapter and simultaneously as a bridgehead into the chapters on Orientalist painting, because this ecphrasis contains a number of problems we will be continually dealing with in the successive sections of this book. They are as follows: Philostratus pointed to the details which allowed him to identify the subject on the painting and consequently to interpret it. His uncertainty in some points offers an indirect proof of the painting’s authenticity. “For when I find a broad plain and tents and an entrenched camp and a city fenced in with walls, I feel sure that these are Ethiopians and that this city is Troy and that it is Memnon, the son of Eos, who is being mourned” (Jmag. I, 7, 1 - transl. A. Fairbanks). “The figure is that of Memnon yonder, if I mistake not...” (ibid. 3); 2) The ecphrasis is a mixture of literary quotations, allusions and commentaries sometimes inextricably blended

    ²¹¹   R. S. Bianchi, Memnonskolosse, LÀ IV, c. 24; A. and E. Bernand, Les inscriptions grecques et latines du Colosse de Memnon, Paris, 1960, pp. 80-98, no. 28-31.

    ²¹²   A. J. Letronne, La statue vocale de Memnon (1833), in: Oeuvres choisies II, pp. 1-97, Paris,

1881, here: p. 25; A. Gardiner, The Egyptian Memnon, JEA 47, 1961, pp. 91-99, here: p. 98; G.

Haeny, L’origine des traditions thebaines concernant Memnon, BIFAO 64, 1966, pp. 203-212; cf. Polanski 1998, pp. 44-47. n. 1, p. 182 f. (traditions, tourist visits, epigraphy, archaeology).

    ²¹⁵ Préaux 1936; Alliot 1951, see above n. 137.

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with art description. It may cause confusion in a reader who sometimes feels unable to decide which is which. In Antilochus’ ecphrasis {Imag. II, 7) the boundary is clearly marked, which is generally quite rare. After a sort of literary introduction to the ecphrasis Philostratus continues: “Now such is the scene in Homer, but the events depicted by the painter are as follows . . .” {Imag. II, 7, 1); 3) The Memnon ecphrasis {Imag. I, 7) provides a clear testimony of the style of narrative mythological painting, which we also suspect to be the case in some other paintings in the Neapolitan gallery, which it is not always possible to prove beyond any doubt. Here it can be easily deduced from the following passage: Kai i8où eKKEK^EKTai Kai ectiv È7Ù TÉpp.aoi rfjç ypatpfjq {Imag. I, 7, 3 - And look! Memon has been stolen away and is at the edge of the painting, transi. A. Fairbanks).

     The selection of materials which has been collected for the introductory section is far from a complete review of the “Orientalist” style in the Greek art and literature. Its aim was above all to show the contents of the main chapters focusing on the Hellenic Orientalist easel painting as documented by the literary sources in a broader but also relevant context of the Greek Orientalism. It may also be interesting to observe that the ancient Orientalist painting prompted a fascination which is not unfamiliar to us, as can be illustrated by J.-L. Gérôme’s View of the Plain of Thebes (1857), with the Colossi of Memnon dominating the perspective of the rugged land of the Egyptian desert (Pl. IX).

Mythology and Exotism:
The Semito-African Orient in the Mythological Landscape Painting

The Heroines of Ethiopia and Phoenicia



The Rape of Europa



     The Hellenic myth of Europa shows vestiges leading back to more ancient Oriental sources, as attested by both its narrative and iconography, which in many of its images had never lost certain qualities of an original divine imagery. In the most popular version of the myth Europa’s father was Agenor, King of Tyre and Sidon. Io, who found refuge in Egypt, was one of her ancestors on her father’s side. Europa’s uncle was Belos, whose name can be related to the North Semitic divinity Baal or Bel. Other relatives were Aegyptus, King of Egypt, and Kepheus, King of Ethiopia and father of Andromeda.¹

     Europa’s name may be explained as a woman “of big eyes” or “with a wide range of view”, which seems to reflect the etymology of the Syrian Anat,² e.g.

in Syriac (aynete), plural of “eye

or in Hebrew PU pl. fflrV (ayan-


ot). In the North Semitic religions Anat was equivalent to Ishtar, Ashtaroth, or Atargatis, and she was known in Egypt as Astarte. The author of The Syrian Goddess mentioned a large temple in Sidon dedicated to her, where she was venerated as Astarte, Europa or Selene {DS 14), that is as a moon divinity. The melodramatic story of Leucippe and Cleitophon by Achilles Tatius opens in a portico joined to the architectural complex of the Astarte sanctuary in Sidon, where a visitor contemplates a painting which shows the rape of Europa. In the Syrian mythology the goddess sometimes played the role of consort to the god Reshef, with whom she could be depicted driving a chariot (as represented on an Egyptian stele from the period of Amenophis II);³ or as the wife of Hadad, a Syrian bull-god. We know the appearance of the temple idols of Hadad and Atargatis in Hierapolis/Mabbug


    ¹    The literary sources for the myth collected by Zahn 1983, pp. 184 f., of which the most essential are as follows: Apollod. Bibl. 2, 5, 7; 3, 1, 1 f.; 3, 4, 2; Moschus, Europa, ed. M. Campbell 1991; Achill. Tat. 1, 1, in: Recueil 547; Ov. Met. 2, 836 ff.; id. Fast. 5, 603 ff.; Hyg. Fab. 178; Luc. Dial. mar. 15; M. Robertson, Europa I, LIMCp. 76 with bibliogr.; iconographic studies: Wattel de Croizant 1995; L. de Brauw, Europa en de Stier, Amsterdam, 1940; Zahn 1983; Bühler 1968; Jahn 1870; Brommer 1976, Denkmdlerlisten III, 118-127; A. B. Cook, Zeus, III, 1940, pp. 615 ff.; M. Robertson, Europa 1, LIMC IV, 1-2.

    ² Morenz 1975, p. 444, following W. W. Dombrowski, Europa and Phenicia.

    ³ Leclant 1975, Astarte, LÄ 1, p. 500, n. 6; K. Sethe, Urkunden der 18.Dynastie, IV 1282,1. 15.

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from both literary description by the author of The Syrian Goddess (DS 31-32; 15), and by Macrobius (Sat. 1, 23, 20), as well as from the archaeological evidence, of which the most illustrative are the reliefs from Dura Europos and Beirut.⁴ Hadad sits on a throne which rests on bulls. It is clear then that Europa’s association with the bull in the Greek mythology is neither incidental or indigenously Greek. Europa’s early Classical terracotta images (c. 470-460 BC) which show the heroine on a bull are regarded as modelled on idols of Oriental divinities.⁵ Wattel-de Croizant observed that the Greek Europa kept her original appearance of the “déesse cavalière.”⁶ ⁷ In the Egyptian art Astarte is sometimes pictured as a young girl riding a horse en amazone;¹ sometimes (e.g. on a votive stele from the Ramesseum in Thebes) she rides astride, but armed and naked.⁸ * We also learn from the Greek myth that Europa was given an ever-reliable spear by her divine lover Zeus. A number of epigrams preserved in The Palatine Anthology refer to a statue of an armed Aphrodite venerated in Sparta. And it is probably not incidental that one of the most gifted poets in this collection, Antipater of Sidon, whom the philologists have associated with Meleager and Philodemus of Gadara in the circle of Syrian Greek poets, devoted two epigrams to the armed Aphrodite, of which one tells of an Aphrodite who held ccvti 8è xpuoEÎcov âKpEjiôvœv Kapaica (bears a spear instead of golden branches, trans. W. R. Paton - AP XVI, 176).’

     Hauser believed he had identified a replica of the armed Aphrodite in a statue discovered in Epidaurus. In his view the original had been made by Polikleitos (the Younger) on commission from the Spartans after the Battle of Aigospota-moi, and offered as a votive for a sanctuary in Amyclae.¹⁰ Pausanias also testi


    ⁴    The Dura relief published by H. Stocks, Studien zur Lukians De Dea Syria, Berytus 4, 1937, pp. 1-40; the Beirut relief: H. Seyrig, Bas-relief des dieux de Hiérapolis, Syria 49, 1972, pp. 104-108; cf. H. J. W. Drijvers, Dea Syria, LIMC III, 1; Polanski 1998, pp. 79-117.

    ⁵    Wattel de Croizant 1995, p. 25; for other archaeological materials representing the goddess on the bull cf. id. n. 8, p. 210; on Assyrian cylinders: Catalogue des cylinders orientaux du Musée du Louvre, II, Paris 1923; on a Cretan helmet: J. Marcadé, Un casque crétois à Delphes, BCH 73, 1949, II, pp. 421-446.

     ⁶ Wattel-de Croizant 1995, p. 32.

     ⁷    On a stela in Turin (Thutmosis IV?), Turin no. 1308 Suppl., Leclant 1975, Astarte, LÀ I, c. 502; Astarte among the gods of Hermupolis, the temple in the Oasis of Khargeh (the Persian period), Norman de Garis Davies, The Temple of Hibis in El Khargeh Oasis, III: The Decoration, N. York 1953, Pl. Ill, Pl. LXX1IB; Leclant 1975, Astarte, LÀ I, c. 502, n. 73; Cornelius 2000, a newly discovered relief from Tell Zawyet Sultan, fig. 5; J. Leclant, Astarté a cheval d’après les representations égyptiennes, Syria 37, 1960, pp. 1-67.

     “ Ashmolean Mus. E3897; Leclant 1975, Astarte, LÀ I,c. 503, n. 84; J. E. Quibell, The Ramesseum, London, 1898 (repr. 1989), Pl. XXVII, 6.

     ’ 9 epigrams were dedicated to the armed Aphrodite: AP IX, 320-321; AP XVI, 171-177; the epigram by Antimachus of Klaros (AP IX, 321) is the oldest of them, c. 400 BC; cf. the commentary on the epigrams by Schwarz 1971, pp. 54-57.

     ¹⁰ F. Hauser, MDA1R 17, 1902, pp. 233 ff.; Schwarz 1971, p. 55, there are altogether four known replicas of the statue.

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fied to the ancient cult of an armed Aphrodite on the island of Cythera (Descr. 3, 23, 1). One cannot avoid a conclusion that the cult must have been established on the island by Phoenician sailors. A mosaic from Madrid dated the 4lh century AD shows a naked Europa riding on a bull en amazone." A rather risqué image on an African mosaic now in the National Museum of Algiers (late 4th century AD) shows a nude Europa riding astride and kissing the bull with affection.* ¹² Some of the Egyptian ostraca on which she appears emphasize her female beauty. Although these images still show her as a warrior goddess, nevertheless she still wears a necklace and ear-rings, e.g. on a finely drawn Berlin ostracon.¹³

     Some 15 centuries after the Europa on the Byblos mosaic, her successor, beautified with a hairstyle typical for the Severan queens and princesses, was being portrayed wearing a diadem, necklace and ear-rings (Pl. X).¹⁴ Her veil forming a canopy above her head and arms, took the shape of a crescent moon, which may have referred to her aspect of lunar divinity, that is to the Phoenician Astarte.¹⁵ In the Temple of Tod in Egypt Astarte had been pictured crowned with a disk surrounded by horns.¹⁶ A Late Antique mosaic from Djemila (c. 400 AD) offers a unique image of Europa portrayed as a Berber beauty (Pl. XI). She is adorned with a necklace studded with magnificent jewels.¹⁷ She looks as if she were playing the role of a god’s bride in a ritual of sacred marriage, which is corroborated for the North Semitic religions. Europa on the mosaic from the House of Murabas in Sparta, dated to the Constan-tinian period, wears a precious diadem, a necklace and bracelets on her naked arms.¹⁸ Wattel-de Croizant classified this image within the purely decorative genre in which the heroines are conspicuous for their “gestes élégants des Vénus à leur toilette.”¹⁹

     These mosaics, together with their Byblos and Daphne counterparts, are remarkable for their Orientalizing style, probably influenced by Oriental tapes


    " M. Robertson, Europa 1, LIMC 146, fig., Mus. Arch. Madrid; Répertoire 14, 5; Zahn 1983, Taf. 26, 1.

    ¹² Zahn 1983, Taf. 26, 2; J. Lassus, Réflexions sur la technique de la mosaïque, 1957, fig. 33.

    ¹³    Leclant 1975, Astarte, LÀ 1, c. 503; Berlin ostracon 21826, E. Brunner-Traut, Die altàgyp-tische Scherbenbilder,. 1956, 29-31, no 16, Pl. VIII; also in S. Wenig, The Woman in Egyptian Art, Leipzig 1969, fig. on p. 19; for other ostraca, cf. Leclant 1975, Astarte, LÀ I, nn. 86-87 (in Stockholm and Cambridge).

    ¹⁴    Wattel-de Croizant 1995, Pl. XXVa, in the National Museum of Beirut, dated in the Severan period (Wattel-de Croizant 1995, p. 202) or in the 3rd/4,h century AD (Europa 1, LIMC IV, 1, 157, p. 85).

    ¹⁵ Wattel-de Croizant 1995, p. 202.

    ¹⁶    B. Porter, R. Moss, Topographical Bibliography, V, 168, 3-4; Leclant 1975, Astarte, LÀ I, c. 503, n. 79.

    ¹⁷    Zahn 1983, Taf. 29; Djemila Mus., Europa 1, LIMC IV, 1, 164 fig.; M. Blanchard-Lemée, Maisons à mosaiques du quartier central de Djemila (Cuicul), 1975, 129-151, Pls. 35-37.

    ¹⁸    Wattel-de Croizant 1995, Pl. XXIb, the House of Mqrabas, Sparta, c. the beginning of the 4lh century AD, Répertoire 13, 2.

    ¹⁹ Wattel-de Croizant 1995, p. 178.

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tries.²⁰ Theocritus in his Idyll XV, which is actually a mime describing the Feast of Adonis in Alexandria, or Athenaeus in his description of the parade tent of Ptolemy II strewn with Persian carpets richly adorned with stunning figural designs (Athen. V 197 a-c), preserved something of the Greek fascination for the peerless skills of the Oriental weavers.²¹ Von Lorentz interpreted Athenaeus’ ytlai nepoixai as “tapestries hanging between legs of the couches” (klinai), Kepio'tpcbp.aTa TtoiKiXa as “cushions”, dptpiTtaxoi as “carpets.”²² Pausanias admired a magnificent curtain richly decorated with Syrian designs and dyed with Phoenician purple (De-scr. 5, 12, 4). It was a gift donated by Antiochus IV. For a long time it has been suspected that the Olympian curtain must have been the same as the one which was looted from the Temple of Jerusalem (7 Macc. 1, 22; Jos. Ant. 12, 5, 4).²³ We remember that Apollonius of Tyana admired the tapestries adorning the walls of the Arsacid palace in Babylon, which pictured mythological (Andromeda, Orpheus, Amymone) and historical scenes from the Greek-Persian wars (Naxos, Eretria, Athos, Thermopylae - Philostr. V. Apoll. 1, 25, 34).²⁴ Xenophon was impressed by the softness of Persian carpets (Cyr. 8, 8, 16). Von Lorentz pointed to numerous instances of Oriental designs transferred to the decoration of the Late Classical and Early Hellenistic floor mosaics in Motye, Corinth, Olynthos, Assos, Alexandria, Olbia and Sikyon.²⁵ He emphasized that they were used for the same purpose as carpets and added that “zweifellos ist es auch die Absicht der Mosaizisten und ihrer Auftraggeber gewesen, den Eindruck eines mit einem bunten Teppich ausgelegten Zimmers hervorzurufen.”²⁶

     In the Egyptian ritual Astarte was associated with Baal,²⁷ just as Europa was linked with Belos. The Egyptian sources often called her the Syrian Goddess.²⁸ The already-mentioned Europa portrayed as a young Berber woman (Pl. XI) holds a calathos, which plays an important role in the imagery of Moschus’ Europa. The Alexandrian poet’s Europa also carried a calathos, a magnificent specimen


     ²⁰ Ibid. p. 177 f.

     ²¹ Testimonies collected by Hebert, Schriftquellen, Q 112 (Theocritus), Q 302 (Callixeinus).

     ²²    Von Lorentz 1937, p. 218; Hebert, Schriftquellen, p. 146 f. rendered ttEpiaxpcbpaxa as bunte Überdecken, dpcpinaxoi as “Teppiche.”

     ²³ Ibid. Q 397, p. 206.

     ²⁴    xa 8e noiKiXpaxa xd>v ttfenXcov ek xöv 'EXX.T]viKci>v ocpiaiv t]kei Xoycov, ’Av8pope8ai Kai ’Apvpcövat Kai ’OptpEV«; rcoXA.axo-0. xaipovat 8e xö ’Opipei, xtapav iacoc, Kai ava^upiSa xipcovxEi;, oil yap povatKT]v yE, ouSe cp8ä<;, aig sOsÄ-yev. ¿vixpavxai rcov Kai ö Aaxu; xf]v Nä^ov ek xf|<; 0aXäxxTii ävaattöv Kai ’Apxacpepvrv; KEptEaxriKtbg xf|v ’EpExpiav Kai xcbv apcpi Eep^nv, a viKäv EtpaoKEv ’AOfjvai yap 8f) exopevai Eiat Kai 0EpponvXai Kai xä MriSiKcbxEpa exi, ttoxapoi eJjaipovgEvot xfjg y rye, Kai 0aXäxxr](; (¡EÜypa Kai 6 “A0co<; tlx; Expf]0ri.

     ²⁵ Von Lorentz 1937, p. 181.

     ²⁶ Ibid. p. 216.

     ²⁷    Leclant 1975, c. 500; R. Stadelmann, Syrisch-Palästinensische Gottheiten in Ägypten, Leiden 1967.

     ²⁸ Hdt. II, 112 tells about a sanctuary in Memphis dedicated to a “foreign Aphrodite.”

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of the goldsmith’s craft decorated with the story of Io wrought in precious metals {Eur. 37-62).²⁹ Moschus placed the story of Io within the main narrative of his Europa epyllion as a thematic analogon and gave it the shape of ecphrasis, the description of a work of art, a precious exemplar of Alexandrian goldsmith-ery: a basket cast in silver, bronze and gold inlaid with lapis lazuli (kv6vou 5’ etetvkto edXaooa, v. 47 - Eur. 43-62). The way in which the Io story was presented by the poetry in the epyllion seems to have been modelled on the analogy of a mosaic emblema framed by a decorated border (as e.g. Pl. X-XI). The ecphrasis was distinguished from the rest of the narrative by verses with a remarkable symmetry of words, phrases and poetic figures, as shown by Schmiel in his brilliant analytical paper Moschus' Europa (1981). The Alexandrian poetic technique which was particularly fond of crossing the borders between different media was once characterized by Manakidou with terminology borrowed from Classicist French poetics: ‘Tart pour Tart” and ‘Tart dans Tart”³⁰ Mario Praz recalled Walter Pater, who in his School of Giorgione observed that every art shows an inclination to enter into the realm of another art.³¹

     The main decorative band of Europa’s calathos in Moschus’ poem shows two fishermen or shepherds standing on the rocks and witnessing the central mythical scene. This motif remains in harmony with the Late Hellenistic style of painting, which had a real predilection for the image of witnesses standing close at hand, as can be illustrated for example by the Europa mosaic in Praeneste (P. XII). The Praeneste mosaic must be dated more or less to the same period as Moschus’ poem (late 2ⁿd century BC). The Io-cow in the epyllion of Moschus swims across the waves of the straits between Europe and Asia, which by the way may also be interpreted symbolically. A second scene on the calathos pictured a golden Zeus restoring his beloved to her previous female shape. The meeting of Zeus and Io takes place on the silver waves of the Nile, which is probably personified, as in a painting preserved on the walls of the Pompeian Iseum, copied from an original dated c.150 BC (Pl. IV).³² There was yet one more decorative band on the rim showing another episode of the Io story, with Hermes and the Phoenix bird, which comes to life from the purple blood of the slain Argus. Incidentally, this is a unique version of the story of the Phoenix, a mysterious bird which used to return from Arabia or India to Egypt at regular intervals of time, as if closing successive cycles of

    ²⁹   Aesch. Prometheus 561-896; Suppl. 291-315, 531-94; Diod., 5, 60, 4; Apollod. Bibl. 2, 1, 3; Ov. Met.\, 588-750; Hyg. Fab.145; N. Yalouris, Io, LIMC\, 1-2; Roscher, II 1 (1890 ff.), pp. 263 ff.; RE IX (1916), 1732 ff., s. v. Io; Campbell 1991, particularly pp. 52-70; Pemice, Gross 1969, pp. 434 f.; H. Brunn, Die griechischen Bukoliker und die bildende Kunst, SBAW 1879, pp. 1-21; id. Kleine Schriften, III, 1906, pp. 217 ff.; cf. B. Freyer-Schauenburg, Io in Alexandria, MDAIA 90, 1983, pp. 35-49.

    ³⁰ Manakidou 1993, p. 270.

    ³¹ M. Praz, Mnemosyne, 1981, trans.W. Jekiel, p. 29.

    ³² Schefold 1972, Pl. 43.

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history. For Moschus its last re-appearance had occurred only recently, during the reign of Ptolemy III Euergetes (Tac. Ann. 6, 28).³³ Hicks argued for Egyptian origins of the Io story. She pointed to some analogies between the travels of Isis in search of Osiris (an unforgettable story told by Plutarch in de Iside and Osir-ide) on the one hand,³⁴ and Io’s search for her child abducted by the Curetes (Apoll. Bibl. 2,1,3).³⁵ She also suspected that the Homeric Pocdku; Hera may be yet another sacred epithet of the same goddess known as Io-Hera.³⁶ Hicks resorted to the authority of A. Gardiner in her argument for the idea of “a Hellenization of an Egyptian word either ‘moon’ or ‘ox’ (feminine ‘cow’).”³⁷ Such a view may indeed be substantiated by viable evidence. We have already noticed that the Syrian and Egyptian goddesses frequently identified as Isis, Astarte, Selene and Atargatis or Europa were known for their lunar and bovine symbolism. The linguistic evidence presents itself even more attractively. IO£ in Boharic, ICL>2 or   *ⁿ Akhmimic means
“moon” (masc.),³⁸ while 6^6 (S.A.B.), ih (j), Demotic ih means “cow”.³⁹

     It will be sufficient to show that the Europa myth was deeply rooted in the North Semitic lore, and more widely in the Semito-African heritage judging by its relations with the story of Andromeda and Io, which seemed to have been of Egyptian and Ethiopian origin. The Greeks never extracted them out of their indigenous geographical context. They never ceased to place them either in the Middle East or in North-East Africa.

     Before I focus more specifically on the literary sources, let me carry out a concise review of the extant archaeological evidence of Europa and the bull in the seacrossing scene. I will concentrate on the painted pottery, mosaics, coins, clay moulds, reliefs and mirror covers. Such a classification is a necessary task in view of the hundreds of images which seem hopelessly different and incoherent. In recent decades some scholars (E. Zahn - 1983, M. Robertson - 1988, and O. Wattel-de Croizant - 1995) have undertaken efforts to classify the iconography of Europa, which spanned a period of over a millennium and proved to have been among the most inspiring and popular subjects in the history of the Graeco-Roman art. I am going to limit myself to the central motif of Europa and the bull as portrayed on the sea waves,


     ³³    R. van den Broek, The Myth of the Phoenix according to Classical and Early Christian Traditions, Leiden, 1972; J. Hubaux, M. Leroy, Le mythe du Phénix dans les littératures grecque et latine, Liège, Paris, 1939; F. Sbordone, Riv. Ind. Germ. 1935, pp. 1-46; Polański 1998, pp. 162-168.

     ⁵⁴    T. Hopfner, Plutarch über Isis and Osiris. 1-11, Prague, 1940-41, repr. 1974; C. Froidefond, ed. Plutarque. Oeuvres morales. V. 2. ¡sis et Osiris, Paris, 1988; J. G. Griffiths ed., Plutarch s De ¡side and Osiride, University of Wales, 1970.

     ³⁵ Hicks 1962, p. 96.

     ³⁶ Ibid. p. 93.

     ³⁷ Ibid. p. 95, quoting A. Gardiner, Egyptian Grammar, Oxford, 1927.

     ³⁸ Westendorf, p. 142.

     ³⁹ Ibid. p. 44.

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the scene which in many cases appears as a constituent part of more complex compositions. I would like to review it again with the narrower purpose of relating the images with the corresponding literary descriptions.

     One of the best-known Europa patterns emerged in the Late Archaic art and attracted the interest of many 5,h-century vase painters (Pl. XIII). Europa clad in a chiton and himation sits up straight on the bull and holds on to one of his horns with one hand, while her other hand rests on his back. Sometimes she turns her head back as if looking at the shore of Asia vanishing in the distance. Europa from the metope in Selinunt presents probably the most memorable example in this class of mostly painted images, which originated in Mainland Greek, Sicilian and South Italian potters’ workshops.⁴⁰ The design had no direct continuation in its original 5lh-century form, however in a revised version it endured until the end of the Classical pagan art, as attested by the archaeological evidence. For the sake of convenience let us label it the Classical Europa (Type 1). Though it is not entirely proven beyond all reasonable doubt, since the poet’s description is extremely economic, this was probably the type represented on a painting put on display in Rome during the Augustan period and reproduced verbally by Ovid: per aequo-ra ponti //fert praedam: pavet haec litusque ablata relictum // respicit et dextra cornum tenet, altera dorso // inposita est, tremulaeque sinuantur flamine vestes (Ov. Met. 2, 873-6).

     Yet another design pictures Europa sitting on the bull with outstretched arms. She grasps a horn with one hand while with her other hand lifted upwards she catches hold of the edge of her peplos (or himation) as it billows out behind her (Pl. XIV-XV). The fluttering robe takes the shape of an arch which surrounds her head and arms. She is shown half naked, her transparent himation covers only her legs. We shall label her the Europa of Sidon (Type 2), because this image shows a close relationship with the Europa described by Achilles Tatius. The design probably originated in the mid-4lh century BC, judging by a Paestan calyx crater (c. 330 BC) which shows Europa accompanied by Zeus, Pothos, Aphrodite, Adonis and other deities.⁴¹ Wattel-de Croizant noted a class of South Italian vases with figures placed on different levels which are believed to reflect the style of a large-


    ⁴⁰   The Selinunt metope, c. 550 BC, Temple Y, Mus. Reg. Palermo; L. Giuliani, Die archaischen Metopen von Selinunt, 1979, pl. 10; M. Robertson, Europa 1, LIMC IV, 1,78 fig.; oenochoe, Univ. Mississippi 77. 3. 73, Greece, early 5lh century BC, Robertson ibid. 34; ibid. 45, ARY 2, 775, 3; stater of Cyzicus, 5lh century BC, Babylon, Traite 2, no 2674 pl. 174,44, Europa 1, LIMC IV, 1, 105; gr.-phoen. scarab impression from Ibiza, Spain, 5,h century BC, ibid. 85; terracotta figurine, 5,h century BC, Basel, ibid. 116; Nolan amphora, c. 450 BC, Achilles Painter ibid. 47; Europa turning back her head: Nolan amphora, Achilles Painter, c. 450 BC, ibid. 46, Jahn 1870, lb; pelike, c. 440 BC, Phiale painter, Europa 1, LIMC IV, 1, 52, ARV2, 1017, 47; Nolan amphora, c. 440 BC, Phiale Painter, Hermitage, Europa 1, LIMC IV, 1,51; pelike, Agrigento, c. 480/70 BC, ibid. 42; ARV 2, 286,13; Wattel-de Croizant 1995, fig. 8.

    ⁴¹ Calyx-crater, Malibu, Getty Mus. 81 AE 78, c. 330 BC, Europa I, LIMC IV, 1, 74 fig.

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scale painting.⁴² Repeatedly imitated by many craftsmen on different materials down the centuries, the Europa of Sidon may be legitimately called the most successful and inspiring pictorial version of this heroine in the Graeco-Roman art. We recognize it on a finely cut cameo gem with a gracious Europa in a transparent robe (p'/2ⁿd century AD),⁴³ which calls to mind Ovid’s cornua . . .facta manu puraque magisperlucida gemma (Met. II, 855 f.). This design can also be seen on a Pompeian painting (V 3, 5) which pictures Europa surrounded by the Nereids riding seamonsters (Pl. XIV);⁴⁴ or on a mosaic discovered in the Villa di San Marco in Castellamare di Stabia (lsl century AD) (Pl. XV).⁴⁵ These last two exemplars must have been copied from painted originals. The charming Europa from the Villa di San Marco resembles some elements of Achilles Tatius’ ecphrasis in a number of points, with her transparent garments underlining the shape of her body (to be atopa bta Tfjq EoOfjTOt; uneipaiveTo), her sailing with the wind (dianep icmcp tqj 7te7tX(p %pcopevT|), and the bull with his curved forelegs jumping over the waves (KapKTOupevov tov Poog KupTomai to oiceXog), his head slightly turned towards the girl (¿TteoTpaKTO Tawr] paXXov repot; to Tfjg xeipot; eXkov fivioxoipevog), the whole scene set among the frothy waves and rocks (dtppot; ¿7tenoiT|TO Kai neTpai Kai KupaTa. ai 7tETpai TTjt; yfjg 'U7tepPePA.T|pEvai). This finely executed mosaic belongs to a group of what we call peintures en pierre, a class of Italian mosaics dated between the lsl century BC - 2ⁿd century AD, which were influenced by the Alexandrian art. The Europa of Sidon design can also be identified on coins struck in Sidon, significantly in the 1st and 2ⁿd centuries AD, which coincides with the chronology of Achilles Tatius.⁴⁶ The time-span and variety of arts and materials (wall paintings, coins, mosaics, gems, clay moulds, mirrors, ivory reliefs, terra sigillata, lamps) seem to point to an influential large-scale painted composition, which established the popularity of this pattern.⁴⁷ Additionally it is interesting to observe that because of the limitations imposed by the media (gems, lamps, coins, minor decorative objects) many of the images in the Type 2 class,


    ⁴² Wattel-de Croizant 1995, p. 38.

    ⁴³    Onyx gem, Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery 42. 135, lsl century AD, Europa 1, LIMC IV, 1, 185 fig.; Furtwängler 1900, Pl. 57, 22; Wattel-de Croizant 1995, p. 47, suspects that Ovid could have in mind a bronze group, perhaps by Pythagoras of Rhegium.

     ⁴⁴ Schefold 1957, 89(d); Europa I, LIMC IV, 1, 142 fig.

     ⁴⁵ Wattel-de Croizant 1995, Pl. IX.

    ⁴⁶    AE Sidon, BMC Phoenicia 166, 143-144, 169-170, 163-167, Pl. 22, 12. 18; more similar types struck in Byzantium (Severan), Hadrianopolis and Seleucia ad Calycadnum, Europa I, LIMC IV, 1, 204 fig.; cf. Luc., Dea Syria 4 (a coin of Europa).

    ⁴⁷    Clay moulds, 3rd century BC, Hildesheim, Pel.-Mus. 2079, Buhler 1968, fig. 6; Zahn 1983, no. 112; Europa I, LIMC IV, 1, 104 fig.; mosaic, Ancona, Mus. Naz. 4867, Zahn 1983, Pl. 28, 2; Europa I, LIMC IV, 1, 160 fig.; furniture attachment, 1 s,-2ⁿd century AD, Walters Art Gallery 71. 593, Europa 1, LIMC IV, 1, 205 fig.; terra sigillata, F. Oswald, Index of Figure-types, Pl. 62, Europa I, LIMC IV, 1, 189 fig.; bronze relief, Ashmolean Mus. 1971.822, Europa I, LIMC IV, 1, 197 fig.; painting (lost), Tomb of Nasoni, Is' century AD, Repertoire 12, 3 (reversed), Europa I, LIMC IV, 1, 127 fig.; mosaic, Lullingstone, c. 330-360 AD, Europa I, LIMC IV, 1, 162 fig.; Wattel-de Croizant 1995, Pl. XXII, a-b.

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which may be reduced to the central motif of Europa on the bull, show tell-tale traces of a larger composition behind them, as attested by surviving vestiges such as dolphins, Erotes, sea waves, rocky shores etc.

     Europa of Sidon adorned with an arching veil blown out by the wind gave rise to a number of variations. One of them, which appeared in the early Imperial era, portrayed Europa very much as the original Type 2, but differing in that now the heroine was reclining on the bull’s neck (Pl. XVI). I shall label it the reclining Europa (Type 2a). It may be interesting to observe that we know its most prominent examples from wall paintings and the related mosaic art of Italy and Gaul. A Type 2a fresco painting from the Domus Aurea depicted her being carried away by the bull, with her maidservants on the sea shore.⁴⁸ A mosaic in Rome endowed with a real Hellenic /ctpiç shows Europa surrounded by a marine retinue of dolphins, Erotes and Tritons, who play on long, twisted shells as in Moschus’ poem (Eur. 123-4) (Pl. XVI).⁴⁹ A Late Antique bronze disc (perhaps a fitting or furniture attachment?) portrayed a reclining Europa (2a) entirely nude (3rd/4th century AD).⁵⁰ The Italian context of the reclining Europa (2a) and some details of her charming Hellenic image finely pictured on a mosaic once kept in Rome (Pl. XVI) raise a question of its possible relations with the intriguing blonde Europa from Ovid’s Fasti: ilia iubam dextra, laeva retinebat amictus, / et timor ipse novi causa decoris erat; / aura sinus implet, flavos movet aura capillos (Ov. Fast. 5, 606 ff.).

     Yet another variation which seems to have originated during the Late Hellenistic or Early Imperial times pictures the heroine in a similar pose to the Europa of Sidon, but in this design she rests her left hand on the bull’s back (Type 2b).⁵¹ A grave relief with Europa from the Vatican Museums reminds us that in one of its interpretations the myth was regarded as a metaphor of death and the journey of the soul to the Netherworld.⁵²

     A Europa on a mosaic discovered at Byblos, dated to the Severan period, turns her right hand towards the bull’s harnessed muzzle (Pl. X). This is one more variation of Type 2 (Europa of Sidon).⁵³ The chronological and territorial interrelations make this version (Type 2c) one of the most cogent points of reference to Achilles Tatius’ ecphrasis. An already-mentioned Late Antique exemplum of


    ⁴⁸ Répertoire 13, 4, Thermae Titi, c. 60 AD; Europa I, LIMC IV, 1, 128.

    ⁴⁹ Wattel-de Croizant 1995, Pl. XII a, in: Tsarskoye Syelo, 2ⁿd century AD.

    ⁵⁰   England, private coll., Europa 1, LIMC IV, 1,. 199 fig.; other examples of a reclining Europa; mosaic tondo, NyCarlsberg Glypt. 890, Jahn 1870, 47; Poulsen, CatNyCarlsberg Glypt no 390; Europa I, LIMC IV, 1, 166 fig.; Wattel-de Croizant 1995, 2ⁿd/3rd century AD, Pl.XIII a; mosaic in Auriol, Gaul, Répertoire 14, 1; painting, Domus Aurea, ibid. 14, 3.

    ⁵¹   Limestone group, Padua Mus., 1” century BC/AD, Europa, LIMC IV, 1, 170 fig.; mosaic, Tivoli, c. 125-150 AD, Wattel-de Croizant 1995, Pl. Xllb.

    ⁵² Wattel-de Croizant 1995, pp. 248 ff., fig. 25.

    ⁵³ Ibid. Pl. XXVa (Severan), Europa I, LIMC IV, 1, 151, Nat. Mus. Beirut.

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the Sidon Europa, portrayed as a young Berber woman on the Djemila mosaic, depicts the heroine feeding the bull with a basket of flowers (Pl. XI).⁵⁴ The basket in Moschus’ Europa with the story of lo (vv. 37-62) offers a mythical analo-gon to the story of Europa. The beauty and precision of its craftsmanship harmonized with the poetic perfection of Moschus’ hexameters presents a fine example of the Alexandrian artistic principle, which can be expressed as aemulatio in imitando. The Djemila mosaic suggests a larger painted composition too. It shows a real marine thiasos with dolphins, different species of fish, sea monsters and two Erotes playing on the sea waves (Pl. XI). The scene is reminiscent of the marine retinues described by Moschus and Lucian {dial. mar. 15).

     An Archaic Europa composition⁵⁵ with a hand resting on the bull’s neck blended with a Hellenistic heroine surrounded by her robe blown out by the wind is one more pattern derived from Type 2 (Europa of Sidon) - Type 2d. On the mosaic from the House of Murabas in Sparta (early 4lh century AD) a veil is transformed into a sort of canopy outstretched over the bride’s head by two Erotes.⁵⁶ Wattel-de Croizant observed that the bride’s finely modelled anatomical form reflects the pictorial conventions.⁵⁷ Europa portrayed as a bride on the mosaic in Sparta is a superb illustration of the stylistic alterations introduced by the Alexandrian artists, who converted the religiously inspired images into a joyful love story.⁵⁸

     A half-naked heroine caught trois quarts dos (I shall call her Europa Kallipygos) established a separate class of artefacts (Type 3), containing one of the most attractive ancient mosaics, uncovered in the nympheum of the Temple of Fortuna in Praeneste (Pl. XII).⁵⁹ Here the heroine sits on the bull, which is running through the foamy waves of the deep blue sea. The observer may also notice a group of confused girls on the shore, beside an old man (Cadmus?) on the cliff, and a perplexed fisherman with a nymph in front of a cave facing the sea. The mosaic was apparently made by an Alexandrian workshop which was active in Southern Italy in the late 2ⁿd century and 1st century BC. Its composition and colour-scheme manifestly refers to the Late Hellenistic narrative mythological painting which flourished


    ⁵⁴    Zahn 1983, Taf. 29; Wattel-de Croizant 1995, Pl. XXX b (the beginning of the 5'h century AD); Europa I, LIMC IV, 1, 164 fig.; cf. Europa with calathos, on plate from Athens, 5lh century BC, Nat. Mus. 2451, Europa I, LIMCW, 1, 36 fig.

    ⁵⁵ E.g. a “caeretan” hydria, Villa Giulia 50643, c. 530-520 BC, Europa I, LIMC IV, 1, 24 fig.

    ⁵⁶    Wattel-de Croizant 1995, Pl. XXI b; Répertoire 13, 2; a mosaic, Corinth, Wattel-de Croizant 1995, Pl. XX a-b, 2"d/3rd century AD; T. Shear, Corinth V, 1930, Pl. I, 3-5, 7-10; cf. bell-crater, Louvre K 239, Paris Painter, c. 350-340 BC, Europa I, LIMC IV, 1, 75 fig.

    ⁵⁷ Wattel-de Croizant 1995, p. 178.

    ⁵⁸ Ibid. p. 38.

    ⁵⁹    The end of the Is' century BC, Wattel-de Croizant 1995, PL Vil; Répertoire 12, 1; now in Oldenburg, Schlossmuseum.

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during that period. A small mosaic emblema from Cannes (2ⁿd century AD),⁶⁰ which contains only the central motif of Europa on the bull, as if separated off from the Praeneste mosaic, adds substance to the view that both mosaics were copied from the same painted original. The Praeneste mosaic also offers an illustrative example of the collaboration between mosaicists and painters, as shown by the vivid representations of the figures, the richness of the palette, and the miniature size of the tesselae.⁶¹ The Cannes emblema also presents an interesting instance of the practice of selective copying. We know it from the Pompeian painting. It may be exemplified by the scene of Achilles’ identification among the daughters of Lycomedes on the Pompeian fresco. The painted scene has its exact mosaic version, but reduced to the central group isolated from the full painted model.⁶² Signs of the same practice can also be observed on some minor arts objects (lamps, gems, coins).

      I have already mentioned the Bacchant Europa, that is the figure riding astride the bull (Type 4), which is derivative of the Dionysiac iconography and particularly suggestive of some images of Astarte. A nude heroine from an Algiers mosaic (4lh century BC) kissing the upward-pointing muzzle of the galloping bull, accompanied by the Erotes and dolphins, is the most representative of this genre.⁶³

      Just as Europa riding astride was derived from the Dionysiac retinues, Europa floating beside the bull originated in the Nereid imagery. The Late Classical Nereid Europa was clad in transparent garments and shown in a three-quarter front view (Type 5).⁶⁴ We can recognize one of them on the fish plate from the Pontic area, among the figures of a marine thiasos which included Erotes, Nereids on a hippocampus, fish, and Poseidon - a scene similar to that described by Lucian 'mDial.mar. ( 15).⁶⁵ The Nereid-Europa of the Imperial period was either fashioned in a three-quarter front view like the previous one, but now naked, as for example the girlish Europa in the Casa del poeta tragico in Pompei (VI 8, 3.5) (Pl. XVII),⁶⁶


    ⁶⁰    Wattel-de Croizant 1995, Pl. Villa, beginning of the 2¹”¹ century AD, a mosaic traced down in Ciampini, Vetera Monumenta 1690, I 34, Répertoire 14, 2.

    ⁶¹ Wattel-de Croizant 1995, p. 81.

    ⁶²    C.dei Dioscuri, VI 9, 6 (M. N. Naples 9110), Schefold 1972, Pl. XXXIX; Ling 1991, fig. 137; Pompei IX 5, 2, Ling 1991, fig. 138, M. N. Naples 116085; a mosaic in C.di Apollo, VI 7, 23, Pitture V, fig. 64, p. 507, S. Woodford, The Trojan War in Ancient Art, London 1993, fig. 22.

    ⁶³    Wattel-de Croizant 1995, Pl. XXXa, 2ⁿd half of the 4,h century AD; Zahn 1983, Taf. 26, 2; painting, Domus Aurea, Répertoire 11,4.

    ⁶⁴    Apulian cup, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Mus. IV 189, c. 440-430 BC, Europa I, LIMC IV, 1, 72 fig.; pelike, Hermitage T.18.70.63 (KAB 4d), c. 340 BC, Schefold 1934, 436; column-crater, Ferrara, Mus. Naz.2425 (T. 597), Europa 1, LIMC IV. 1, 56 fig.; ibid. 61 fig. (bell-crater); ibid. 100 (bronze-mirror cover).

    ⁶⁵    Fish-plate, Petersburg, Hermitage B 3292, Schefold 1934, 58, Europa I, LIMC IV, 1, 59 fig.; Barringer 1998, Pl. 111.

    ⁶⁶   Pitture IV, p. 595; cf. painting in Pompei, Répertoire 14, 6; clay model, Athens, Nat. Mus. 14973, Crete, c. 370 BC, Europa I, LIMC IV, 1, 99 fig.; a cast from metal vase decoration, Hildesheim, Pel.-Mus. 1111,4"'/3,d century BC, Europa 1, LIMC IV, 1, 103 fig.

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or in a three-quarter back view, also naked, as in the Pompeian painting or on a mosaic from Cos (the House of Europa).⁶⁷

      A detailed description of the Europa painting which the narrator contemplated in Sidon, probably in a portico attached to the Temple of Astarte (the context is not clear) opens The Romance of Leucippe and Cleitophon by Achilles Tatius, a novelist of the Antonine era. The author describes a flowery meadow by the sea, surrounded and shaded by a thicket of trees. A gardener (literally oxettiyoi;) works among the flower-beds watered by a fountain spring gushing in the middle of the meadow. A group of girls, whose faces and gestures suggest mixed feelings of joy and fear, are looking in the direction of the open sea and stretching out their hands towards a bull which is just carrying away their princess. They wear chitons drawn up by girdles so as to leave their calves bare and show their sandalled feet. Their hair is adorned with garlands of flowers and falls down their arms. The colours of the sea range from red along the shore to navy blue for the deep waters. The waves break into surf on the rocks. The bull pictured with his forelegs bent seems to be climbing the waves. Europa sits on his back, not astride, but en amazone, as emphasized by the narrator, with her legs joined together on the bull’s right side (he approaches the right side of the tableau). The girl servants occupy the left part of the painting. Europa grasps the bull’s horn with her left hand , as if she were a true rider, and not a victim (¿6o7tep qvioxoq xa^-lV⁰^)> as a result of which the bull has his head slightly turned up towards her. Europa is dressed in a white chiton covering her body down to her lap, and a red chlaina which enfolds her legs. Her transparent garments accentuated the curves of her body ('to 5e ocbpa 8ia Tfjq eaQfj'Coq VTCEtpaivEio. PaOvq optpaXoq, yaoTqp Terapevri, Xanapa otevti). The observer could also see her breasts under the girdled chiton. She stretches out her arms, one hand resting on a horn (tt| Xaia tou KEpcoq ¿xopEVT]), the other extending out towards the bull’s tail (q 8e ek’ ovpav).⁶⁸ Her robe is blown out by the wind over her head and arms (TipTq'co 8e aptpotv ekci-TEPCO0EV 'U7CEP TT]V KE<paXf]V T] KaZi)KTpa kvkXco TCOV VCOTCOV EpKEnETaOp-evt]). Consequently she looks as if she were using it as a sail to navigate across the sea (¿jonep iaTicp tco TtEnXcp XPCOJJ-£VT1)- Dolphins dance around the bull, and winged Erotes play above the waves. One of them, equipped with a wedding torch, draws the bull along (eiXke tov Povv).⁶⁹

    ⁶⁷    The House of Europa, Cos, 2ⁿd half of the 3rd century AD, Wattel-de Croizant 1995, Pl. XXIa; painting, Pompei, Répertoire 14, 4; painting, Pompei, VIII 2, 38-39, Schefold 1957, 217 (c); Europa I, LIMCÏV, 1, 140 fig.

    ⁶⁸    Baldwin 1980, pp. 115-19, here: p. 117: “one hand grasps the hom, the other the tail.” Actually we know such a class of images, but in this instance as regards Europa’s right hand the novelist seems to me to refer only to the direction.

    ⁶⁹    Baldwin’s rendering is “Love in place of Eros”, ibid., making the whole picture different from the described one. There is no Aphrodite on the painting.

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     The extant repertory of artefacts does not provide any image which would give a perfect, or even general, fit for Achilles Tatius’ ecphrasis. However as regards the painting’s details, the art references are so numerous that the ecphrasis can by no means be considered irrelevant to the extant archaeological evidence. I have already touched upon it in the discussion of the Sidon Europa (Type 2). The central group of the Achilles Tatius painting - Europa on the bull - recalls the Hildesheim clay mould (3rd century BC),⁷⁰ with its half-naked heroine, her peplos falling from her lap, her veil blown out by the wind, the bull’s head turned towards his mistress, two Erotes and dolphins. The already-discussed mosaic from the Villa di San Marco in Stabia (Pl. XV), with its perfect renditions, its chiaroscuro effects, and the glamour and elegance of the peinture en pierre, presents a high-quality analogy. Europa on the mosaic is actually seated on the bull as if on the deck of a ship and uses her peplos as a sail (as if reflecting Achilles Tatius’ wording: a>o7tEp Ioticd tcd nenXco xpcopevT)) (Pl. XV).⁷¹ Achilles Tatius’ description of the tightly-fitting chiton clinging to Europa’s body must have been something of a reflection of the design on the Louvre Campanian bell-crater, dated c. 350-340 BC.⁷² Wattel-de Croizant regarded the dark red hue of Europa’s peplos on the mosaic uncovered in Sarrin in the region of Carrae/Harran (5'h/6,h century AD) as an monographic analogy to Achilles Tatius’ ecphrasis.⁷³ This mosaic was supplied with an inscription (EI)AQN and a pictogram of the town. A mosaic tableau from Antioch was adorned with borders decorated with Nilotic floral and animal motifs, which also framed two neighbouring mosaics of Dionysos and Heracles.⁷⁴ Europa on the Byblos mosaic (Pl. X) wears a white chiton and a brownish-red himation -the same composition of colours as on the painting from the Temple of Astarte in Sidon in the Achilles Tatius ecphrasis. The Syrian mosaics provide even more analogies. Achilles Tatius’ Europa rides a tame bull and looks as if she were his mistress, not his victim. The bull appears to follow her orders. The Father of the gods allows himself to be drawn by a little Eros. The Europas on the mosaics at Byblos and Daphne (early 4th century AD) hold the reins of a harnessed bull. Despite the differences, the extant similarities allow us to envisage a common model for both the Syrian mosaics from Byblos and Daphne. If we add the crescent shape of the Byblos Europa which may refer to her divine lunar aspect of Astarte-Selene, and the red hues of Europa’s robes both in the Greek Romance as well as in the Syrian mosaics of Byblos and Sarrin (her royal nature is additionally emphasized by her fully dressed body and her jewellery), then we can conclude that the Sidon Europa was influenced by the local Syrian iconography. The “Eros bou-vier” motif (Achilles Tatius’ "Epcoq eiXxe rov Povv) can also be observed on


    ⁷⁰ Hildesheim, Pel.-Mus. 2078, , Bühler 1968, fig. 6; Europa I, L1MC IV, 1, 104 fig.

    ⁷¹ Wattel-de Croizant 1995, Pl. IX.

     ⁷² Bell-crater, Louvre K239, Paris Painter, Europa I, LIMC IV, 1, 75 fig.

    ⁷³ Wattel-de Croizant 1995, p. 205.

    ⁷⁴    Ibid. The House of the Boat of Psyche, Daphne, Antioch (triclinium), Constantinian, Walters Art Gallery 37129; Wattel-de Croizant 1995, PI. XXVb; Levi 1947, Pl. 35 a.b.

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the Djemila mosaic (Pl. XI), endowed with an African colour emphasizing the heroine’s exotic beauty.⁷⁵ Erotes invaded the iconography of Europa as early as the 4th century BC, as corroborated by the Kertsch vases painters as shown by the indispensable study by C. Schefold, Untersuchungen zu den Kertscher Vasen (1934). Eros holding a wedding torch appears on the mosaics of Cos (the House of Europa, 3rd century AD) and in Tsarskoye Syelo (2ⁿd century AD) (Pl. XVI).⁷⁶ I also have a feeling, which naturally may be delusive, that Achilles Tatius’ seashore landscape with the sea xudveov 5e to npdg to neXayog ... ai nETpai Tfjg y-qg UTcepPepXqpEvai, 6 arppog nepiXeuKaivcov Tag 7tETpag, to Kvpa xopu-cpoupevov xai Kept Tag 7t£Tpag Xuopevov cig Tovg acppovg (in the depth the sea turned dark blue, rugged rock masses jutted far out into sea, in the coves the waves were breaking into foam on jugged rocks), as well as the landscapes on the Praeneste and Stabia mosaic (Villa di San Marco - Pl. XII, XV), indicate personal experience, a real, autopsy view transformed through the process of metamorphosis of artistic convention. To my mind they recall rugged rock-masses jutting out towards the open sea and emerging from among the deep blue colour of the waves and silver surf. I have in my mind’s eyes the coves of the Phoenician Dor, one of the most captivating ancient sights I have ever seen.

      The Nasoni Painting in Rome (mid lsl century AD) is sometimes recalled in the context of Achilles Tatius’ ecphrasis,⁷⁷ with the painting’s trees on the shore, the frightened girls and the buildings (the comparison employed by the novelist is somewhat ambiguous: the row of trees compared to a columned portico: oXov eteixi-££ tov XEiptova nEpiPoXf]. Did Achilles Tatius mean a portico among the trees, or just a row of the trees surrounding the meadow?). In fact the Roman fresco may be treated only as an analogy in very general terms. The differences are numerous. They regard both the central group as well as the whole composition. This remark also refers to the Praeneste mosaic (once in the Bar-berini Collection in Rome - Pl. XII), sometimes incorrectly related to the Europa of Achilles Tatius.⁷⁸ The Barberini mosaic may be called similar only in a very general sense of the word: it is a large picture with the sea-shore and the group of girls. Their hair falls down to their arms. The spring is gushing from the rock just beside them. These details actually call to mind Achilles Tatius’ ecphrasis. But that is all. In fact the Praeneste mosaic and the ecphrasis represent two entirely different painterly compositions (respectively Types 2 and 3). In Reinach’s view, the Europa of Sidon can be traced back to the early Ptolemaic period, when the Ptolemies ruled Phoenicia.⁷⁹ Some 3rd-century BC images of Europa grouped together earlier under the Type 2 label (the Hildesheim


    ” See above, n. 17.

    ⁷⁶ Cos: see above n. 65, Tsarskoye Syelo: see above n. 46.

    ⁷⁷ A. Klugman, Ant. Inst. p. 111 ff.; Wattel-de Croizant 1995, p. 109, n. 49.

    ” Ibid.

    ” Recueil, n. on p. 416.

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clay mould, a Graeco-Babylonian terracotta etc.)⁸⁰ coincide with the time of the Romance’s plot, and thus seem to support Reinach’s thesis. In fact, as a type Europa of Sidon does not acquire much substance in the archaeological evidence until the ls,-2ⁿd century AD, the times of Achilles Tatius.⁸¹ Consequently the painting described by the Alexandrian novelist might have been significantly later than suggested by Reinach. The painting I believe Achilles Tatius actually contemplated in the portico of the Temple of Astarte at Sidon might have even been a Hadrianic Classicist copy of an earlier work - judging by the fresh and rich colour-scheme (purple, red, dark blue, white) emphasized in the literary description. These Classicizing tendencies can be recognized in the transparent robes, which cover the whole of Europa of Sidon’s body, or in her limited entourage: a couple of dolphins and Erotes. A Hadrianic date is naturally only a highly tentative hypothesis.

     The Europa of Sidon, a work by an anonymous Classicist of either the Hellenistic or Hadrianic period, is at variance with other popular Europas of the Imperial period, who were often represented half naked, or even entirely nude, surrounded by baroque thiasoi of sea monsters, Tritons, Nereids, Erotes, or even Aphrodite and Poseidon. Later Hellenistic and Imperial art conventions did not care about the religious meaning here, but presented stories of rape and seduction in purely secular terms. The artists wanted to show a young lady entangled in a love affair, as reflected by the ecphraseis of Moschus and Lucian {dial. mar. 15).

     The chronology of Achilles Tatius may also have some significance. This author’s date provides an instructive example of the overwhelming power of authority in the arts and sciences. E. Rhode once characterized The Leucippe and Cleito-phon Romance as stylistically and thematically derived from Heliodorus’ Aethi-opica, and consequently dated the former as 6th century AD. The papyrus found in Oxyrhynchos (POxy. 3836) established the novel’s date as the late 2ⁿd century AD.⁸² I do not want to depreciate the value of Rhode’s Psyche, one of the most meaningful contributions to Hellenic studies. However, in the particular case of the Greek novel, Rhode’s authority is still responsible for the late dating of Achilles Tatius even in the most recent works.⁸³


    ⁸⁰    Hildesheim, see above n. 68; terracotta group, Graeco-Babylonian, British Mus. 91 782, Babylonia 3rd/2ⁿd century BC (later?), Europa I, LIMC IV, 1, 118 fig. ; mould, Budapest, Tarentum, c. 300 BC, Z. Oroszlan, Cat. des terres cuites (Hungarian), J. 13; coins, A E, Sidon, c. 174-150, 72/71, 39/ 38 ВС, ВМС Phoenicia 156, 92-96; 166, 143-144 pls. 21,9-10; 22, 12; Europa 1, LIMC IV, 1, 110 fig.

    ⁸¹    E.g. onyx gem, see above n. 40; sardonyx gem, British Mus. 1282, Waters, BMGems, p. 18, 1«.2ⁿd century AD, Europa I, LIMC IV, 1, 182 fig.; coins, A E, Sidon, l"-2"d century AD, ВМС Phoenicia 166, 143-144; 169-170, 163-167, pl. 22, 12.18, Europa 1, LIMC IV, 1, 204 fig.; ivory relief, Walters Art Gallery 71.593, ls'-2ⁿd century AD, Europa I, LIMC IV, 1, 205 fig.; painting, Pompei, V 5, 3, see above n. 41; mosaic, Villa di San Marco, Stabia, 1” century AD (Flavian); Wattel-de Croizant 1995, Pl. IX., Musée Condé, Chantilly (Salon d’Europe), etc.

    ⁸² K. Brodersen, Achilleus Tatios, Der Neue Pauly, 1, c. 82.

    ⁸³ For example Wattel-de Croizant 1995, p. 41.

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      Only the ecphrasis by Achilles Tatius allows for an exact identification of the painting (if ever at all possible), while Lucian {dial. mar. 15) and Moschus {Europa), although they supply us with wonderful descriptions of the thiasoi, are not equally explicit in their accounts of Europa’s attitude and garments. Lucian presents his Europa through the humorous narrative of Zephyros, a witness of the seduction. There is no reference to a work of art in Lucian, but the rhetorical picture in many details points to the figural arts, to a large-scale painted tableau. As regards the central group (Europa on the bull) Lucian’s Europa resembles Type 2 (Europa of Sidon) (Pl. XIV, XV). However, the setting of the central group in Lucian’s and Achilles Tatius’ ecphraseis makes them different. Lucian touches upon the appearance of Europa only in passing, focusing on the description of the marine thiasos {dial. mar. 15). The position of Europa’s left hand is ambiguous (xp Xaia |iev eixETo too KEpaxoq ... xfi Etspa 5e f]VEpcop.Evov xov лелХоу ovveixev). She has it either raised up as in the charming Pompei fresco with Europa among the Nereids (V 5, 3) (Pl. XIV),⁸⁴ or resting on the bull’s back as in a stone relief in Padua (lslc. ВС/ 1st c. AD).⁸⁵

      Lucian’s magnificent marine cortege which includes flying Erotes carrying torches,⁸⁶ half-naked Nereids as if borrowed from the just mentioned wall painting in Pompeii (V 5, 3) (Pl. XIV), Tritons, Poseidon,⁸⁷ Amphitrite on a chariot,⁸⁸ and finally Aphrodite on a shell floating on the surface of the sea and drawn by the Tritons,⁸⁹ can be matched for size and splendour perhaps only by the mosaic in Djemila (Pl. XI) or the fish-plates from the Hermitage.⁹⁰

      While Lucian’s Europa may be legitimately suspected only as the potential source for art history, the Alexandrian epyllion Europa by Moschus actually contains two ecphraseis which could be used in an anthology of art description: Europa’s basket which I have already discussed (vv. 37-62), and Europa abducted by the bull (vv. 108-134). In his illuminating paper Schmiel (1981) carried out a thorough analysis of the poem’s structural components and their mutual relations, as a result of which he divided it into the descriptive sub-sections. Schmiel’s exact philological procedures have given us firm ground for a pictorial analysis. The problem is that this, or any other poem’s thematic or even pictorial analyses may re


    ⁸⁴ See above n. 41.

    ⁸⁵   Europa I, L1MC IV, 1, 170 fig., F. Ghedini, Sculture greche e romane del Mus. Civ. di Padova, 1980, no. 29.

    ⁸⁶ Erotes became popular on the Apulian vases, c. 330-320 BC.

    ⁸⁷   Pelike, Hermitage T. 1870.63 (KAB 4d), c. 340 BC, Aphrodite Painter, Europa I, LIMC IV, 1, 66 fig.; Schefold 1934, no. 436; see also fish plates in the Hermitage, thiasos and Poseidon, c. 380-70 BC, Barringer 1998, Pl. 110-111.

    ⁸⁸ E.g. a mosaic in Ostia, Thermae, c. 140 AD, Sadurska 1980, fig. 158.

    ⁸⁹ Venus on the mosaic, Thermae, Setif, the end of the 4lh century AD, ibid. fig. 256.

    ⁹⁰   See above n. 85, Pl. Ill in Barringer 1998 = Europa I, LIMC IV, 1, 59 fig. = Schefold 1934, no. 58.

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suit in a confusion of unclear or deceptive clues. For example, unless exactly demarcated, the narrative structures of the epyllion Europa may seem to suggest a narrative mythological painting with a sequence of scenes, where the reader cannot exactly see the inner divisions which separate the descriptive from the narrative. Moreover he may feel confused about the usual blend of mythological explanations and actual descriptive parts referring to a work of art. This blend is symptomatic of the rhetorical and poetic ecphraseis. Schmiel managed to distinguish between mythological introduction (origin of basket, 37-43) and the description itself (the story of Io, Hermes, Argos and Phoenix, vv. 37-62). He achieved this by applying poetic and linguistic means. This is of crucial importance. If literature is to be of use to an art historian, it must be approached through the preparatory literary procedures. Otherwise literary sources may bring distortions and misunderstanding. Schmiel showed that the poet built his epyllion out of purely literary narrative material such as monologues, dialogues, or scenes clearly referring to the epic tradition (the dream of Europa modelled on Nausicaa’s dream, 1-20), adorned by symmetrically arranged and clearly demarcated descriptions of works of art. Manakidou explains this on the basis of the Alexandrian aesthetic principle which she defines as “die bildende Kunst innerhalb der Dichtung, oder ein Kunstwerk innerhalb eines Kunstwerkes.”⁹¹


      I am not going to dwell on the full results of Schmiel’s study, though his work is really worth studying in its entirety. I will only limit myself to selected passages, those which are related to this undertaking. Schmiel emphasizes the poem’s “elegantly symmetrical composition, the several sections of which are now demarcated by rings, now related thematically as well as by verbal repetitions.”⁹² “Europa has a symmetrical structure,” Schmiel continues, “of the sort commonly described as ring composition.”⁹³ Europa’s basket offers an illustrative example of demarcating rings: %pvo-, raXap- occurs in the first and second-to-last lines of the ecphrasis (vv. 37-62); nepiKaXXe- occurs in the fourth and the last lines. By means of these rings, 37-62 is separated from the rest of the poem.⁹“¹ The descriptive unit of Europa on the bull (108-134) is framed by her two speeches and “demarcated from its context and subdivided into three subsections by a ring composition: vcîùtoictiv ÈcpiÇavE 108 and ÈcpiÇopévri . . . vcütoiç 125 . . . novr-llOand 133;x£Îp 112and 126; axT- 113 and 132.”⁹⁵ Employing a pictorial metaphor, we could say that in their idiosyncratic way, the ecphraseis imitate by literary means the mosaic emblemata enclosed by decorative borders of repetitive designs (Pl. X, XV). These are paralleled by verbal repetitions and rings in the ecphrasis, which embrace the clearly defined figurai emblemata (symmetrical composition in the


    ⁹¹ Manakidou 1993, p. 272.

    ⁹² Schmiel 1981, p. 261.

    ⁹⁵ Ibid.

     ⁹⁴ Ibid. p. 263.

    ⁹⁵ Ibid. p. 264.

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ecphrasis) on the large tapestry of the whole mosaic field (as compared with the whole epyllion containing the ecphrasis within its structures).

     The more we become familiar with the rhetorical ecphrasis the better we can read the usual Sophistic literary code, which is employed to expand purely descriptive components. The standard techniques consisted of non-pictorial qualities like fragrances or sounds, psychological portraits suggestive of the emotions and motivation of the characters painted, references to the events which either precede or follow the scene painted. The rhetorical repertoire also included mythological or historical allusions to enrich the interpretation.⁹⁶ Thus we frequently find hermeneutic interpretations or intertextual references. The Sophists often dramatized their style and described the figures as if they were actually moving, acting or even speaking.⁹⁷ The rhetor could even join their dialogues himself. The aim of all these tricks of “verbal wizardry” was to transform listeners into spectators.⁹⁸

     The central group of Moschus’ Europa recalls the ecphrasis from The Romance of Leucippe and Cleitophon, sometimes even in the very wording: vp Xaiâ toû KÉpœç èxopÉvri (Achill. Tat.) vs. Tfj pèv e%ev xavpov ... xépaç (Mosch.); iaxiov oià te vt]ôç (Mosch.) vs. œcnrEp ioxicp xâ> nénX.q> xpaipEvq (Achill. Tat.). The resemblance can also be detected in the colours: 7rop<pupÉT)v koIkou tttu-Xa (Mosch.) vs. f] xA.aîva nopcpupâ (Achill. Tat.). Both descriptions are highly sensual, since they follow the principles of mimetic art. The most prominent role is played by the colour red (roses, Europa’s robe, the Phoenix’s blood, the reddish shallows). One has a feeling that in Lucian’s, Achilles Tatius’ and Moschus’ passages we are faced with three large-scale painted compositions, in which the central groups showing Europa and the bull resemble one another, while their settings are diverse. Moschus’ thiasos differs from the other two. In Moschus we find Nereids riding sea monsters, as in the Pompeian fresco (V 5, 3) (Pl. XIV), a dolphin playing on the waves, Poseidon and the Tritons, who blow long twisted shells, as on the mosaic in Tsarskoye Syelo (2ⁿd century AD) (Pl. XVI).

     It is certainly tempting to attribute Moschus’ Europa to Antiphilus’ masterpiece put on display in the Porticus Pompeii in Rome (/7A35, 114), allegedly confiscated by Augustus in Alexandria. The wording in Pliny the Elder is somewhat ambiguous: in Pompeia vero Cadmum et Europen [scil. Antiphilus pinxit] (HN 35, 114). His description may suggest both Europa and Cadmus on one painting (the old man in the Praeneste mosaic? (Pl. XII)), or perhaps a Europa painting with a pendant with the wedding of Cadmus and Harmonia (that is two


     ⁹⁶ Shaffer 1998, p. 313.

     ” Ibid. p. 310.

     ” Ibid. p. 312.

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paintings), as Reinach suggested.” Reinach suspected that the highly priced Antiphilus’ tableau (HN 35, 114) inspired the Alexandrian poets, and through them influenced the Augustan poetry (Ov. Met. VI, 103-7?). According to him the masterpiece was later confiscated, brought to Rome and displayed in the Pompeian Portico.* ¹⁰⁰ Helbig on his part thought Moschus was directly influenced by Antiphilus’ tableau. He believed that the Praeneste mosaic (Pl. XII) was its copy.¹⁰¹ Similarly, according to Reinach, Achilles Tatius’ Europa or rather its copy would find its way to the Porticus Agrippae in Rome, and be documented there by Martial (and also by Ovid, Fasti V, 605-609).¹⁰² These fascinating speculations on the history of museums though attractive must be approached with caution. So far it has been impossible to provide substantiating evidence for them. In quoting Martial and collecting four epigrams together under one label, Reinach appears to have confused different buildings and pictures.¹⁰³ Like other authors, he frequently treats the Porticus Pompeii as synonymous with Martial’s Porticus Europae, which is erroneous.¹⁰⁴ In Martial’s epigram II, 14 one Selius was out looking for someone who would invite him to dinner, and went to the (Porticus) Europae, and next to the Saepta. Since he found no joy there he turned his steps to the neighbouring Iseum (Memphitica templa), and was once again disappointed. Finally he ended up in the Porticus Pompei (centum pendentia tecta columnis,/ Illinc Pompei dona nemusque duplex). C. Neumeister in his captivating literary guide to ancient Rome, an invaluable supplement to Coarelli’s guide, explains that the Porticus Europa was identical with the Porticus Vipsa-nia, which was situated to the west of the Horologium Augusti and the Ara Pa-cis, not far from today’s Piazza San Silvestro. Neumeister appended a succinct archaeological commentary to Martial’s II, 14.¹⁰⁵ The epigrammatist’s Pompeius vel Agenoris puella (XI 1) which was probably also responsible for mistaken interpretations should then perhaps be read as separate locations, and not synonymous (“go to the Pompeian or to the Vipsania”).

     Martial knew of yet another painted Europa in Rome. This one was exhibited in the Temple of Augustus (XIV, 180).¹⁰⁶ Martial’s Europa picta made part of the art gallery put on display by Tiberius in the pronaos of the Templum Divi Augusti (Mart., XIV 170-182) (Pl. XVIII). The picture was probably a pendant panel to


    ” Recueil, n. on p. 416.

    ¹⁰⁰ Ibid.

    Iܹ Helbig 1873, p. 224.

     ¹⁰² Recueil, n. on p. 417.

     ¹⁰³ Ibid.

     ¹⁰⁴ Jex-Blake, Sellers 1896, n. on p. 246; Recueil, n. 2 on p. 358.

     ¹⁰⁵    Neumeister 1991, p. 142-145; Martial’s other epigrams referring to Roman Europa paintings: III 20; VII 32; XI 1; XIV 180.

    ¹⁰⁶    Wattel-de Croizant 1995, p. 41; Lehmann 1945; F. Castagnoli, Roma nei versi di Marziale, Athenaeum 28, 1950.

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the painting of Danae by Nicias (Mart., XIV 180), and was also mentioned by Pliny the Elder {HN 35, 131).¹⁰⁷ Consequently according to Martial’s testimony there must have been at least three different painted Europas on display in the Roman museums during the Flavian period.

     Similar doubts surround the two Europas of Ovid. The one mentioned in The Metamorphoses turns her head backwards to look at the shore receding behind her and grasps the bull’s horn with her right hand, while her left rests on his back {litusque ablata relictum //respicit et dextra cornum tenet, altera dorso // inposita est - Met. 2, 873-5). She reminds us of the Classical images on a number of the painted vases.¹⁰⁸ Ovid actually seems to allude to a work of art when he writes verum taurum, freta vera putares {Met. 2, 104).

     The intriguingly blonde-haired Europa of Fasti (V, 605 ff.) presents a patently different iconographic scheme. She grasps the bull’s mane with her right hand while her left holds up her robe {ilia iubam dextra, laeva retinebat amictus). The description of this image is so general that it could refer to very different artefacts, for example to a limestone figurine from Padua (1s' century BC/1S¹ century AD),¹⁰⁹ the Roman mosaic from Tsarskoye Syelo (Pl. XVI), or a painting from the Domus Aurea.¹¹⁰ Both the mosaic and the painting show Europa bringing up her legs to her body, as in Ovid’s ecphrasis: subduxit ab aequoreplantas {Fasti, V, 610). Ovid’s haeret ut collo fortius illasuo is also suggestive of a reclining Europa (Type 2a-cf. Pl. XVI) well represented in the Italian art of the Julio-Claudian era.¹¹¹ ¹¹² *

     There is no way out of this confusion of literary sources and archaeological data in the face of extant evidence. It is probably safer to observe a well-established presence of two basic types in Italy: 2, (2a/2b - Europa of Sidon) and 3 (Europa Kallipygos or the Praeneste Europa).
     1)     the Europa of Sidon is represented by the mosaic in Stabia (Villa di San Marco - 1st century AD- Pl. XV), the Pompeian painting with Europa among the Nereids (c. 70 AD - Pl. XIV), and the Nasoni painting (lsl century AD).
     2)     the reclining Europa (Type 2a) on two paintings from the Domus Aurea,"² a mosaic from Tor Tre Teste (NyCarlsberg Glyptothek),"³ or on a mosaic now in Tsarskoye Syelo (mid 2ⁿd century AD - Pl. XVI).


    ¹⁰⁷ Lehmann 1945, p. 263 f.

    ¹⁰⁸ Europa I, LIMC IV, 1,42, 46, 47, see above n. 37.

    ¹⁰⁹ See above n. 83.

    ¹¹⁰ Répertoire 14, 3; see above n. 46.

    ¹¹¹   Painting, Domus Aurea, Répertoire 14, 3; painting, Domus Aurea, 13, 4 = Europa I, LIMC IV, 11, 128.

    ¹¹² See above n. 105.

    ¹¹¹ Wattel-de Croizant 1995, Pl. XIII a, 2“¹/3r<l century AD = Europa I, LIMC IV, 1, 166 fig. = Poulsen, CatNyCarlsberg Glypt no. 390.

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     3)       the Tivoli Europa (Type 2b) exemplified by a mosaic from Tivoli (c. 125-150 AD),¹¹⁴ a grave relief in the Vatican (2ⁿd century AD),"⁵ or a limestone group from Padua (1st century BC/AD).
     4)       the Kallipygos Europa (Type 3), represented by the Praeneste mosaic (late Is¹ century AD - Pl. XII) and the emblemata from Cannes (Sainte Marguerite), attested as Roman by Ciampini, Vet. Mon. I, 34, 2 {Rép. 14, 2).

     The chronology and Italian setting of all of these mosaics and paintings allows us to relate them to the history of the “plundered art,” that is with the inflow of works of art confiscated in the Hellenic East. In consequence during the last decades of the Republic the City of Rome turned into the cultural and artistic capital of the Mediterranean. This process of concentration also resulted in a stream of commissions to emigrant Greek artists, and among them to Alexandrian mosaicists, whose presence in Italy in the 2ⁿd half of the 2ⁿd century and lsl century BC is well attested.

     It is almost certain that one of the above-mentioned groups of artefacts was derived from an original model in a painting by Antiphilus. I do not think that anyone today can safely decide which of them it was. Our museum collects three artistically prominent mosaic images, which must have been copied from painted originals. They are contained within the Italian circle defined by the three above-mentioned classes of artworks: the Praeneste mosaic, the mosaic from the Villa di San Marco (Stabia), and the Roman mosaic now in Tsarskoye Syelo. All three of them differ in essential points which speak for three different models. If forced to play a game of roulette, like Helbig 1 would be inclined to place my bet on the Praeneste mosaic (Pl. XII).¹¹⁶ Wattel-de Croizant argued that the mosaic was a Romano-Alexandrian version of a Hellenistic painting."⁷ It seems so natural, though it does not have to be necessarily so, for the Alexandrian mosaicists in Italy to have chosen a work by Antiphilus for a display of their skills. The Praeneste mosaic is conspicuous for its bizarre circular composition, its perspective en plongée, its vivid and sophisticated colours, its bucolic motif of a fisherman and a nymph witnessing the central mythological scene, as in Europa’s basket in Moschus, where witnesses watch Io swimming across the sea from Asia to Europe.¹¹⁸ At the same time the Praeneste mosaic seems to me reminiscent of the East Mediterranean shores of Phoenicia, while Europa herself was portrayed neither as an innocent girl nor as a goddess, but as an elegant society lady riding a bull, and is viewed from behind. Wattel-de Croizant would add to these characteristics the mosaic’s vivid repre

    IN Wattel-de Croizant 1995, Pl. XII b.

    ¹¹⁵ Ibid. fig. 25, Coll.Gia Lateranese 531.

      See above n. 57.

    ¹¹⁷ Wattel-de Croizant 1995, p. 81.

    ¹¹⁸   Cf.convincing interpretation of the ambiguous verse in Eur. 48-49 by M. Campbell, Moschus. Europa, Hildesheim, 1991, pp. 62 f.

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sentation of the figures, the richness of its palette, and the exiguous size of its tesselae.¹¹⁹ Zanker noted the pervasiveness of Alexandrian pictorialism, “its delight in detail, its association with mimesis biou and its use of motivating narrative.”¹²⁰ This is what we call Alexandrism in the figure arts. Writing about the artistic phenomenon of mannerism Mario Praz characterised it as “a liking for rare and bizarre forms” and illustrated it by Giorgio Vasari’s Perseus and Andromeda from the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence.¹²¹ Elsewhere Praz wrote words which seem applicable to some of the paintings we are concerned with, such as the Praeneste Europa, Action’s Roxana, Pantheia or Rhodogoune from the Philostratean gallery, or Andromeda by Euanthes: “Ariosto described Angelica chained to the rocks of Ebud, exposed as a victim for a monster. We certainly remember all the An-dromedas portrayed by painters to satisfy lecherous and corrupted lords, and particularly we remember the Andromeda by Titian or The Rescue of Arsinoe by Tintoretto, where a contrast between the nude body and the chains and steel armour was introduced by the painters on purpose to arouse a particular set of emotions.”¹²² Praz also referred to a baroque Orientalist painting of Joseph in Egypt by Pontormo, who presended his Egypt as an enigmatic allegory of winding staircases adorned by the statue of Apollo killing the lizard. Pliny the Elder in his unique History of Painting also told us about the Greek Orientalist painters, Antiphilus, Nealces, Aetion or Philoxenus of Eretria.

    ¹¹⁹ Wattel-de Croizant 1995, p. 81.

     ¹²⁰ Zanker, Realism 94, following Manakidou 1993, p. 211.

    ¹²¹ Praz 1981, p. 128, fig. 62.

    ¹²² Ibid. p. 126.

The Rescue of Andromeda


     The Classical writers identified the scene of the story of Andromeda in different and distant places, ranging between East Mediterranean and East African locations. Josephus Flavius witnessed in person the marks imprinted by the princess’s chains on Andromeda’s Rocks in Joppa, modern Jaffo (BJ3, 9, 3). With its crags emerging from among the foam only to sink in the deep blue and green waters of the sea, the place was really well selected as a stage for a romantic love story involving a beautiful princess, a brave knight and a dragon. In the same region a local guide showed Pausanias, a wealthy Roman tourist, a spring which gushed blood-red water. The anonymous guide explained to the learned Greek visitor that it had looked like that ever since Perseus washed his hands besmeared in the blood of the slain dragon in the spring (Paus. 4, 35, 9).¹ However Apollodorus, an exact and trustworthy mythographer, writes of Ethiopia {Bibl. 2,4, 3-5). Philostra-tus the Elder in his confusing statement wrote that Andromeda was Ethiopian, and that the rocks should probably be looked for somewhere along the eastern shores of Black Africa on the Indian Ocean {Imag. 1,29).² The Greek genealogy and geography as well seems to preserve traces of Eastern origins for this myth. We can easily recognize Orientals among the princess’ ancestors and relatives, such as Danaos and Aigyp-tos, her uncle, or Busiris, all of them Egyptians. In a different branch of her family we find Agenor, Belos and Europa, who were Syrians. The myth itself is post-Homeric, that is late in the terms of the Greek mythology. As late as the 5,h century BC Herodotus briefly mentions Perseus and Andromeda when referring to their son Perses, the father of the Persians (VII, 61,2-3). The story actually became popular and widely known only that late, when Sophocles (mid 5th century BC) and Euripides (412 BC) introduced it to the theatre in their successful performances.³ The Athenian and Italiot red-figured pottery reveals the same chronological pattern as documented by the literary sources. The evidence stretches between the mid 5lh and the end of the 4,h centuries BC. There is one intriguing exception, a black-figured shard which shows Andromeda with Perseus fighting the monster in hand-to-hand combat.⁴

     ¹ Tacitus pointed out the same location, Hist. 5, 2, 3.

    ²     Similarly Ps.Eratosthenes, Cat. 15-17 etc. Schauenburg, Andromeda 1, LIMC 1, 1, p. 774; the complete story can be found in the Scholia to Apollonius Rhodius (IV, 1091 ff. and 1515), in Apollodorus, Bibl. II, 4, 1 -5 and in Ovid, Met. IV 607-V 249; cf. Roscher I 1,345-7. s.v. Andromeda; Wernicke, RE I 2154-2159, s.v. Andromeda.

    ³     For the evidence of the possible earlier performances cf. T. Howe, Illustrations to Aeschylus’ tetralogy on the Perseus theme, AJA 57, 4, 1953, pp. 269-275; Petersen 1904; Billault 1981, pp. 69 f.; Schauenburg, Andromeda LIMC I, 1, p. 775 with bibliography; II. 14, 319-20 (Danae); ibid. 19, 116; 19, 123;Hes. Theog. 276-86; Aspis 216-37; Simonides, Lyrica Graeca Selecta, Oxford, 1968, ed. D. Page, no 371; Pind. Pyth. X, 29-48; XII, 9-18.

    ⁴     Andromeda I, LIMC I, 1, p. 775, ibid. 2, p. 662; late Corinthian, 2ⁿd quarter of the ö"¹ century BC, Staatliche Mussen, Berlin, F1652 (Cerveteri); for the evidence of the Greek vase painting cf. Schauenburg 1960; Brommer 1973, pp. 284 f; Brommer 1976, 380-387; Philips 1968; Andromeda 1, LIMC I, 1-2.

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     This Greek genealogy and mythical geography reflected some forgotten early chapters of East-West cultural relations. Dispersed pieces of a more complete set of evidence can be collected from both Greek and Oriental lore. Herodotus vividly described the Temple of Perseus in Chemmis, modern Akhmim, in Thebaid, with its monumental propylea, standing colossi in front of them and a statue of Perseus within the precinct. The whole site was surrounded by palm groves (II, 91). The priests used to show curious visitors Perseus’ sandal, apparently to fit a foot nearly a metre long. Once upon a time, explained Herodotus, Danae and Lynkeus left Chemmis and sailed for Greece. Perseus, who got to know his family story from his mother, decided to pay a short visit to his relatives in Chemmis while on his way from Libya, where he had killed the Gorgon and cut off her head.⁵ It is quite generally agreed that Herodotus must have had in mind the temple of the god Min, the main deity venerated in Chemmis.⁶ Sauneron observed that one of the divine epithets of Min was wrs, the watcher, which after prefixing with the definite article would give a highly satisfactory word sounding something like Porses.⁷ Lloyd, however, convincingly argued that the Greeks identified the ithyphallic Min with their Pan (Chemmis was the Greek Panopolis). Consequently the identification of Min with Perseus must be ruled out. In his view it was Horus, a youthful warrior, fighter of the monsters of the god Seth, who might have been the most suitable candidate for the role of Perseus, armed with his scimitar (apitTi). In Antaeopolis, near Chemmis, Horus was to make sandals for himself from the hide of his enemy Seth.⁸

     The myth of Perseus and Andromeda seems to have originated from the ancient Semito-Hamitic lore. The Ugaritic myth of the strife between Ba’al and lam⁹ and its Egyptian version, the myth of Astarte and the Sea,¹⁰ tell the story of the combat between Ba’al (Egyptian Seth) and the sea monster. The monster was eventually defeated by Ba’al assisted by Astarte. We have already referred to the black-figured sherd with a picture of Andromeda throwing stones at the monster. This image probably reflects an original version of the myth which later underwent changes, most of all in the workshops of the Athenian playwrights. We can quite naturally identify Perseus with Ba’al (Seth), Astarte with Andromeda, and lam with KqToq of the Greek mythology. Morenz concluded that the name Androme


    ⁵    Cf. a watchtower of Perseus in the Western Delta (Hdt. II, 15); the slaying of the Gorgon in Africa: the scholiast to Pind. Pyth. X, 47; Apoll. Rhod. IV, 1513-17; Schol. ibid. 1515; Ovid, Met. IV, 617 ff; Serv. Aen. VI 289 (the Atlas Mountains).

    ⁶ Brugsch, Lanzone, Maspero, Legrand, cf. Lloyd 1969, pp. 81 ff; Morenz 1975, p. 445.

    ’ Revue d'Egyptologie 14, 1962, pp. 53 ff.

    ⁸ Lloyd 1969, pp. 84 ff.

    ’ Pritchard ANET2, 129 ff.; O. Kaiser, Die mythische Bedeutung des Meeres in Ägypten, Ugarit und Israel, Beihefte ZAW7&, 1959, pp. 44 ff.; Morenz 1975, p. 442 f.

    ¹⁰ A. H. Gardiner, Late Egyptian Stories, Bibliotheca Aegyptiaca 1, 1932, pp. 76 ff.; id. The Astarte Papyrus, Studies Presented to F. L. Griffith, 1932, pp. 74 ff.; Morenz 1975, p. 442 f.

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da, which is a meaningful name - “ruling” or “dominating over men”- shows traces of the archetypal love and fertility goddess Astarte." More recently J. C. Baity endeavoured to reconstruct a forgotten version of the Cassiopea myth which was allegedly testified by a Late Antique mosaic from Apamea. The mosaic pictured Cassiopea being crowned by Nike, in an apparent contradiction of the standard version of the Andromeda myth.* ¹² In the author's view the popular Phoenician version had its local North Syrian variation, which gradually fell into oblivion.¹³ Baity referred to a confusing genealogy of Cassiopea, who once played the role of the daughter of Arabos, the eponym of Phoenicia, another time of the mother of Phineus and Europa, or the wife of Epaphus and mother of Libya, and in yet another version she appeared as the wife of Cepheus and mother of Andromeda.¹⁴ Even if Baity’s reconstruction of the North Syrian myth sounds speculative and unconvincing, nevertheless he managed to present new evidence which refers to the Oriental origins of the Cassiopea myth and collected data which look promising for future mythographic research. It must be emphasized at the conclusion of this section of our presentation that the Andromeda myth was not a mere transplant from the Oriental lore. Morenz wrote that “es ist, wie alles von den Griechen Übernommene, tief und überdies in paradigmatischer Weise umgebildet worden” and adds that the very idea of Gottheit, next the motif of the human hubris punished by God, the heroic qualities of human nature, all that enriched the crude Oriental story, came from the fifth-century Greek tragedians. “Die orientalische Göttergeschichte ist im edelsten Sinne humanisiert worden.”¹⁵

     After a gap of a century in the archaeological evidence since Andromeda appeared on the Late Corinthian amphora (Berlin F 1625), she returns in the third quarter of the 5,h century on a number of Attic vases, as if on the wave of a new popularity.¹⁶ The images show her awaiting exposition or already bound to the posts, dressed in coloured skin-tight leggings and a patterned tunic with short sleeves. The tunic covers a sort of undergarment with long sleeves worn beneath the tunic. This is a Persian man’s attire, which was probably already worn by the Persian chorus in the Persae by Aeschylus, and by Andromeda in the Sophocles drama.¹⁷ This series of images with Andromeda continued until the end of the 5lh century BC, though the garments changed slightly now and again. The type of apparel seen on Andromeda is usually labelled “luxurious, barbaric robes”. Their designs


     " Morenz 1975, p. 444, peSci).

     ¹² Baity 1981.

     ¹³ Ibid. p. 101.

     ¹⁴ Ibid. p. 97.

     ¹³ Morenz 1975, p. 447.

     ¹⁶    Pelike, Boston, Mus.of Fine Arts 63, 2663, LIMC I, 1, no 2, p. 776, ibid. 2, no 2; Philips 1968, Pl. 7, Fig. 13; hydria, London BM, E 169, Petersen 1904, Pl. 5; LIMC 1, 1, no 3, p. 776, ibid. 2, p. 623; Philips 1968, Pl. 6, fig. 11-12.

     ¹⁷ Brooke 1962, p. 99.

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would be characterized by Brooke as the “bold, colourful patterns ... that we associate with textile printing rather than weaving.”¹⁸ Andromeda painted on a red-figure Attic calyx crater from Berlin (3237) makes a real show of her richly decorated Oriental attire.¹⁹ The Andromedas on similar Orientalizing Attic vases were not infrequently accompanied by Negro slaves, remarkable for their prominent West African racial features, or sometimes by Cepheus clad in a rich royal, Oriental, apparel.²⁰

     All the above-mentioned images are generally associated on chronological grounds with the mid-5'h century performance of Sophocles’ Andromeda. Sophocles probably dressed his actors in Oriental garments, or more likely in conventional, theatrical Oriental-looking clothes, styled on the real contemporary African or Asian fashion. He might also have introduced Negroes on the stage, as some of the vase paintings seem to suggest. The reclining mulatto lady on the Berlin crater (3227), adorned with a splendid Oriental woollen garment and a chiton might have been one of Sophocles’ chorus members (Pl. VII).²¹ Sophoclean performances, marked by the air of Orientalism, were not a precedent at all. Aeschylus’ Suppliants, the daughters of the king of Libya (performed on the stage c. 465 BC), were dressed in “strange un-Greek styles and luxurious barbaric robes and diadems.” Aeschylus’ Danaus pointed in the direction of the sailors as they arrived and spoke of “their dark limbs conspicuous in white robes.” The impressive Orien-


     ¹⁸ Ibid, p 97.

     ¹⁹    Philips 1968, Pl. 6, fig. 17; Pl. 17, fig. 16, Staatliche Museen 3237, Berlin, early 4"’ century ВС; LIMC I, 1, no 8, p.776; Philips 1968, p. 7 comments on the image as follows: “Andromeda appears for the first time ... in a long flowing garment. Her cap and dress are still very Oriental but she will not be seen again in long trousers. The innovation may reflect a change in the tragic costume which Andromeda wore in Euripides’ play;” it is actually difficult to decide if Andromeda’s costume in Euripides’ play was Oriental or Hellenic during the first-night performance in 412 BC. One can only say that the Berlin crater (3237) dated the beginning of the 4lh century shows the last of the Andromedas adorned in Oriental attire; Attic r. f. bell crater, Gela, Museo Civico V 1818, c. 440 BC, LIMC I, 1, no 4, p. 776; Philips 1968, Pl. 6, fig. 14; Attic r.f. calyx crater, Basel, Antikenmuseum BC 403, by the Clcophon Painter, c. 440 BC, LIMC I, 1, no 6, p. 776, ibid. 2, p. 624; a piece of a pelike, Louvre (without number), c. 400 BC, LIMC 1, 1, no 7, p. 776, ibid. 2, p. 624. The dress in this case may be legitimately described as adorned with “stripes and rings, spots and checks in dozens of different arrangements,” Brooke 1962, p. 99.

     ²⁰    The Negro servants on the London hydria BM E 169, see above n. 16, Philips 1968, Pl. 6, fig. 11, 12; Andromeda 1, LIMC I, 1, no 3, p. 776, c. 450/440 BC, ibid. 2, no 3, p. 623, here some of the servants are tying Andromeda, while others bring funeral gifts; the calyx crater from Gela V 1818, see above n. 19, a Negro digging a hole in order to erect a post for Andromeda; Cepheus on the Boston pelike, MFA 63. 2663, see above n. 16, with “thick lips and upturned nose suggesting that he was intended as a mulatto,” Snowden, Aithiopes, LIMC I, 1, no 19, p. 416; Cepheus on an Apulian patera, Tarent NM 8928, c. 320/310 BC, Andromeda I, LIMC 1, 1, no 17, p. 777, ibid. 2, 17, p. 617; Schauenburg 1960, Taf. 25, 2; Philips 1968, Pl. 10, fig. 23; Schauenburg 1960, p. 57, compares Cepheus to representations of a Persian king.

     ²¹    Snowden, Aithiopes, LIMC I, 1, no 21, p. 416, ibid. 2, p. 324; Philips 1968, Pl. 6, fig. 17, Pl. 7, fig.16, see above n. 19.

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tai male and female fashion as well as the pictorial contrasts of black and white actors or masks became a permanent component part of the Greek painters’ and mosaicists’ repertoire, as we will see later on.

     The style of Andromeda’s garments on the painted pottery changed decisively at the end of the 5th century BC, which is commonly associated with the influence of Euripides’ Andromeda performed on the stage with Helen in 412 BC as already mentioned.²² It was an extremely successful performance, played again and again throughout the whole of Classical Antiquity.²³ Euripides’ vision of Andromeda’s marble white body endowed with a statuesque beauty napQevou t’eIküj Tiva ... ootpfjc; ayalpa xeipoq (TGF 125) turned out to be a never forgotten quotation from the tragedians for the Classical poets, painters and sculptors - as exemplified in Ovid’s marmoreum ratus esset opus (scil.Perseus), or by the chained naked Andromeda from Alexandria,²⁴ or by the illusionist, almost sculptural shape of Andromeda from Pompeii by Maestro Ellenico,²⁵ or by the sublime Psyche-Andromeda from Naples conspicuous for her studied Classicism.²⁶ From that time on in the 4th century BC Andromeda was almost always styled as a young Greek woman dressed in a chiton and himation.

     The influence of the Attic tragedy on the vase painting should not be overestimated. It is true that it was considerable. The great playwrights profoundly reshaped the myth both in its story as well as on its spiritual level. They permanently impressed the imagination of the Classical sculptors and painters.²⁷ However Schauenburg stressed that a number of images which originated in Magna Graecia in the 4lh century BC, where the myth gained real popularity, can be referred to the funeral art, with its own demands peculiar to this branch of the minor decorative arts, which followed its own development path to a high degree independent of the theatre or easel painting.²⁸ The myth of Andromeda expressed


     ²²    Petersen 1904, undertook efforts to reconstruct the play and consequently collected a list of the extant passages (Nauck TGF) together with alleged representations on the painted vases.

     ²³    Luc. de hist, conscr. 1 ff.; Schol. Aristoph. Ranae 53; Athenaeus 12, 537 D; Eunap. Hist. Frgt. 54, p. 247 f.

     ²⁴   Adriani 1961,2, Tav.54, fig. 157,159,161, Graeco-Roman Museum, Alexandria 3457, Andromeda 1, LIMC I, 1, no 157, p. 787, ibid. 2, p. 641.

     ²⁵    Ragghianti 1954, fig. 134; Andromeda 1, LIMC I, 1, no 68, p. 781, ibid. 2, p. 633; MN Naples 8997, Pomp. VII Is. occid. 15; Curtius 1929, p. 256, Abb. 153.

     ²⁶ Bandinelli 1942, Tav. 1, IV.

     ²⁷ Schefold 1979, p. 155.

     ²⁸    Apulian rf patera with knobbed handles, Tarent, Nat. Mus.8928, c. 320/10 BC; Andromeda I, LIMC 1, 1, no 17, p. Til, ibid. 2, p. 627; Schauenburg 1960, Pl. 25, 2; Philips 1968, pl. 10, fig. 23; Perseus and Andromeda accompanied by a mourning scene with a funerary um under the canopy, on the Apulian rf lutrophoros from Bari, Arch. Mus. 5591, the end of the 4,h century BC, Schauenburg 1960, Taf. 24, 1; Andromeda I, LIMC I, 1, no 18, p. 777, ibid. 2, p. 627 (only the exposition scene represented); Philips 1968, Pl. 2, fig.30.

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a feeling of hopelessness in the face of the inevitability of death, which was symbolized by the ketos, while Perseus incarnated hope of future salvation in the afterlife. On the Apulian patera from Tarento (NM 8928) we can see a heartbroken father standing at the grave of his daughter. He was only superficially disguised by the mask of Cepheus adorned with the Oriental royal attire. The atmosphere of mourning dominates the picture.

      The older archaic Orientalizing style was quite rapidly abandoned in the period after the Persian wars. A growing feeling of self-identity marked by a more and more perfected Hellenism and Classicism reached its maturity in the 4th-century art, remarkable for its own original aesthetic values. This process, deeply rooted in the cultural developments, also affected the imagery of the Andromeda myth. Its Oriental characteristics fell into oblivion, superseded by new, purely Hellenic forms.

      When Pliny the Elder was writing his epitomae from the Greek art histories and mentioned the Andromeda by Nicias of Athens (HN 32, 132), one of the most famous masterpieces of the Classical painting, made by one of the most expensive old masters of the Graeco-Roman auction sales,²⁹ ³⁰ he was unaware that he would leave us one of the most intriguing and intricate riddles of Classical painting. Except for the title, Pliny the Elder did not pass on to us any information about the painting’s appearance. It has been held for a long time by many scholars, though not without occasional doubts and criticism, that the Andromeda by Nicias was saved for posterity by the Early Imperial copyists who worked for their clients in the towns of Campania. The Andromeda fresco painting from the Casa dei Dioscuri has always been referred to as the best extant copy of the chef-d’oeuvre (MN Naples 8998).⁵⁰ The painting was one of the most popular components of the Pompeian wall decoration, if we are to judge by the number of its extant copies. Two other copies (MN Naples 8993, Pomp. VI 10,2(6) (Pl.XIX) and MN Naples 8997, Pomp. VII Is. occid. 15), with their slender, elongated bodies, gracious expression of faces, subtle play of colour contrasts, elegance of gestures and fashion of clothing, their air of serenity and the discreet presence of the Actai who graciously rest on the rocks, with all the figures set within a landscape which calls to mind the bright blue waves of the shallow waters around the Aegean islands with their bare bright yellow-brown crags, all that in my view makes the latter copies su-


    ²⁹    The Nekyomanteia Homeri was estimated at 60 talents by antiquarians who made purchases on behalf of Attalus II (HN 35, 134). Nicias’ Hyacinthus was confiscated by Augustus in Alexandria and later adorned the walls of his temple in Rome (HN 35, 191).

    ³⁰     Andromeda I, LIMC I, 1, no 69, p. 781, ibid. 2, p. 634; frequently reproduced, e.g. Curtius WP 255, Taf. 3; Neutsch 1939, 36-51; H. Lauter-Bufe, Zur Stillgeschichte der figürlichen pompe-janischen Fresken, 1967, pp. 20-29 etc. Attribution opposed by Curtius 1929, pp. 255 ff. who dated the original which stood behind the Pompeian copy to the early Hellenistic period; similarly W. Helbig, Wandgemälde Campaniens, Leipzig, 1868, no 1186.

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perior to the Dioscuri painting despite their damaged condition.³¹ This image of Perseus and Andromeda enjoyed incessant popularity throughout the centuries of Classical Antiquity, copied again and again, known from replicas and variations, also transformed for different media like mosaics, reliefs and sculpture in the round.³²

      The accumulation of the evidence points in the direction of one original, a masterpiece by an influential Late Classical old master, even if he were not Ni-cias of Athens himself. However numerous and different the copies, they cannot prove Nician authenticity, particularly in the case of the Andromeda iconography which has several successful rival versions. The situation was in a way analogous to the Renaissance Davids. We are divided in our preferences between the works of Andrea del Verocchio, Donatello and Michelangelo. Apart from the Dioscuri type allegedly by Nicias of Athens which we have just discussed above, we know of a Perseus and Andromeda sitting and embracing one another. They are looking at the reflection of the Gorgoneion in the water - an elegant and successful iconographie design, even if actually modelled on earlier group compositions of Aphrodite and Ares or Adonis (Pl XXVI).³³ This charming composition is not attested by the literary sources. Yet another composition resembles the painting ascribed by Achilles Tatius to Euanthes, and still yet another shows Perseus fighting the monster in front of Andromeda, known from the Pompeian painting as well as from the Greek vase painting (the 3238 hydria in Berlin, dated for the young


    ³¹    MN Naples 8993, Andromeda I, LIMC I, 1, no 67, p. 781, ibid. 2, p.633; Schefold 1957, 123; MN Naples 8997, Andromeda I, LIMC1, 1, no 68, p. 781, ibid. 2, p. 633; other painted copies of the same original: Pomp. VI 13, 19 (h), C. di Sex. Pompeius Antiochus, damaged, Schefold 1957, 131; Andromeda I, LIMC 1, 1, no 70, p. 781, ibid. 2, p. 634, Pitture V, p. 221; Pomp. IX,9,17 (14), Schefold 1957, 284; Andromeda I, LIMC I, 1, no 71, p. 781, ibid. 2, p. 634; Pompeii VI 10, 2, C. dei cinque scheletri, damaged, Pompei, Pitture IV, p. 1042; cf. Neutsch 1938, pp. 36 ff.; Klein JOAI 15, 1912, 143, n. 1; a distant late Antique replica in the Capitoline Antiquarium Communale, Ling 1991, fig. 214.

    ³²    Mosaics: the House of Dionysus and Ariadne, Antioch, Andromeda I, LIMC I, 1, no 73, p. 781, ibid. 2, p.635, Levi 1947, pp. 150-156, fig. 38, dated early 3rd century AD; Bardo Mus. A 390, Tunis, Andromeda I, LIMC I, 1, no 75, p. 781, ibid. 2, p. 635; Philips 1968, Pl. 5, fig. 8, dated mid 3rd cent. AD; the marble group Schloss Marienburg (bei Nordstemmen), Andromeda I, LIMC 1, 1, no 89, p. 782, ibid. 2; Philips 1968, Pl. 5, fig. 10; the relief in the Museo Capitolino 501, dated Hadrian, Andromeda 1, LIMC 1, 1, no 86, p. 782, ibid. 2, p. 637; a type continued in variations by Early Hellenistic gem cutters, with Perseus seen in back view as on the beautiful cameo piece, Paris, Cab. Med. 369, Andromeda 1, LIMC I, 1, no 78, p. 781; ibid. 2; on the Roman coins, Andromeda I, LIMC I, 1, no 79-81; relief: ibid. 88; lamp: ibid, no 98; cf. Schauenburg 1960, pp. 73 ff.; Schefold 1979; Philips 1968, pp. 5 ff.; Levi 1947, I, pp. 150-156; Neutsch 1939, pp. 36 ff.

     ³³   MN Napoli 8996, Pompei VII 4, 51 and 31 (c), Casa dei Capitelli Colorati; Pompei I, 10, 4; Casa di Menandro; for the list of the painted copies cf. Andromeda 1, LIMC I, 1, 102-107, 109-111, 113-114; mosaic: J. Toynbee, Art in Britain under the Romans, 1964, p. 256; Andromeda I, LIMC I, 1, no 116; gems: a charming sardonyx cameo from Petersburg, Ermitage, Andromeda 1, LIMC 1, 1, no 118, ibid. 2; Staatliche Museen, Berlin 3101; lamps: Andromeda 1, LIMC I, 1, no 119-122, ibid. 2, no 120-121 (figs.); reliefs: ibid. 123-126.

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years of Nicias, c. 360-350 BC).³⁴ Consequently only more detailed and specialized arguments may add some substance to the discussion.

      Levi observed that the Andromeda tableaux allegedly by Nicias were sometimes accompanied by a representation of Io with Argus in the Pompeian wall decorations, allegedly another copy of a painting by Nicias mentioned by Pliny the Elder (HN 35, 132).³⁵ Levi turned our attention to the Capitoline relief, a work of the highest quality and exquisite charm (Pl. LXI1I). In his view it was a Late Hellenistic variation of the Nician Andromeda. Its quality speaks for the artist’s great inspiration. An unknown master who adhered to the principles of the Late Hellenistic eclecticism, he modelled his work on the Nician piece, but styled the figures in a tasteful and sophisticated way seeking inspiration in the 4,h-century BC, Hermes of Andros for his Perseus, and in a Neo-Attic dancing Maenad as Andromeda.³⁶ Levi’s ascription of the Capitoline relief to Lucian’s ecphrasis of the liberation of Andromeda (dial.mar. 143 (324)) is particularly apt and convincing. Exactly as in Lucian’s ecphrasis, the Capitoline Perseus is gently stretching his arm out towards Andromeda in a chivalric gesture of assistance (vKooxcbv rpv xeipa intESE-Çato ... KaTtoûoav), while the heroine is cautiously trying to step down from the crag, gracefully on tiptoe since the rock is slippery (àKpono5ï|Ti. Karioûoav èk Tfjq KÉrpaç àÀtoQripâq ovot|ç). In G. Schwarz’s invaluable book Die grie-chische Kunst des 5. und 4. Jahrhunderts v. Chr. im Spiegel der Anthologia Graeca, a long-awaited and welcome study updating and continuing from two ^"’-century works by Benndorf ( 1862) and Vitry ( 1894), there is a return to the analysis of Antiphilus’ epigram on the Andromeda painting (AP XVI, 147), with a reference to the Dioscuri type. In quite a similar way as Lucian, as if to say it was self-evident, Antiphilus of Byzantium failed to mention the name of the master painter,³⁷ perhaps in the same way we today speak of the Great Altar of St. Mary’s in Cracow and do not add “by Veit Stoss”, or of the Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel, or of the Mona Lisa. The names are only too well known. Neutsch identified two separate levels in the epigram: a literary introduction and the description itself. At the story level Antiphilus described the heroine’s earlier misfortunes, and the hero’s adventures (the sea monster, the slaying of the Gorgon, the haughtiness of Cassiopea). He incorporated the description of the image in the last dis-tichon in a fine example of the highly compressed language of epigrammatic poetry: Xà pèv ànô GKonÉXoïo xakâ rcôSaq f]0à8i vàpica vcù0pôv ô 8è |ivaoTf|p vupcpoKopeî tô yépaç

     ³⁴    The Campanian hydria, Berlin 3238, the Cassandra Painter, Andromeda I, LIMC 1, 1, no 19, p. 777, ibid. 2, p. 627 (fragmentary illustrated); Philips 1968, Pl. 13, fig. 37 (the whole decorative field represented).

     ³⁵ Levi I, 1947, p. 152.

     ³⁶ Ibid.; cf. Schefold 1979, p. 157.

     ³⁷    Schwarz 1971, pp. 114-120; K. Muller, Die Epigramme des Antiphilus von Byzanz, Berlin 1935; Neutsch 1938.

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     The helpful gesture of the outstretched arm to aid Andromeda so that she might step down safely from the rock was expressed through a metaphor in the last verse of Antiphilus’ epigram. Schwarz concluded her commentary with an appraisal of Antiphilus’ poetic skills: “Er liefert uns so eine nicht nur eingehende, sondern auch künstlerisch dem Vorbild nach kongeniale Beschreibung.”³⁸ The procedure presented by Neutsch seems particularly promising when applied to the ecphraseis by Philostratus the Elder with their symptomatic blend of figural art descriptions and literary quotations.

     Schefold stressed the difference between the iconographic traditions of the Attic and Italian Greek schools of vase painters. The vase painters of Magna Graecia preferred the fabular elements of the Andromeda myth, like the fight with the monster, or the hero’s negotiations with Cepheus; while the Attic vase painters focused on the emotional contents of the story. The latter painted with an apparent predilection for the scene of the meeting of the two lovers.³⁹ In Schefold’s view Ni-cias naturally followed the local Attic traditions. The first hand touch between Perseus and Andromeda betokens a real drama, tense with emotions just below the surface of a tranquil delivery scene. Schefold observed that a Neronian copyist managed to preserve in his work “die plastische Struktur der Figurengruppe ... rein spätklassisch wie beim Iogemälde.”⁴⁰ In fact the appearance of Andromeda’s peplos has analogies in the art of the Marsyas painter (c. 375-350 BC).⁴¹ Schauenburg on his part observed that the monster, painted with an overt curiosity by the vase painters of Magna Graecia, was at the same time absent from the Attic red-figure pottery decoration.⁴² Philips argued that because no parallel was known from the vase painting the Dioscuri type could not have been created during the 4th century. Rather it must have been 3rd- or 2ⁿd -century in origin.⁴³ In my view the chronology of the Attic vase painting with Nicias of Athens located somewhere at its final stages (the last four decades of the 4th century BC) speaks rather for than against a Nician authorship for this design. The vase painters had no time to introduce Nician innovations. The gesture of Perseus’ arm stretched out towards the heroine still chained to the rocks, on an inferior painting from the loutrophoros in Bari (MA 5591) dated the late 4th century BC, may be a meaningful sign of a Nician impact on the Greek painted pottery (Pl. XX).⁴⁴

      Schwarz 1971, p. 119.

    ³⁹ Schefold 1979, p. 157.

    ⁴⁰ Ibid. p. 156.

    ⁴¹   Ibid.; R. S. Folsom, Handbook of Greek Pottery. A Guide for Amateurs, London, 1967, p. 35.

    ⁴² Schauenburg 1960, p. 74 f.

    ⁴³   Philips 1968, p. 15; Schauenburg 1962, p. 62, found one probable exception, however of uncertain date.

    ⁴⁴   Andromeda I, LIMC I, 1, no 18, p. 777, ibid. 2, p. 627; Philips 1968, Pl. 2, fig. 30; an uncertain (modern?) representation of Andromeda (?) on the oinochoe, MN Naples, Stg. 318, Philips 1968, Pl. 9, fig. 21; Andromeda 1, LIMC 1, 1, no 138, p. 185.

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     In our discussion we may also try to take the perspective of ancient art connoisseurs and, to put it in modem terms, feel as if we were attending an auction sale, and look at the extant images from a purely aesthetic point of view. We can ask some basic and simple questions: which of the ancient Andromedas would we choose for our imagined art collection? Which of them is the most beautiful, best value for money, or best suited for the front page of the Art Bulletin or some other exclusive art critics’ magazine? Which glitters with the sparkle of genius, which is irresistibly attractive, and really worthy of the walls of the most prestigious pinacothecas? There is actually a very limited number of them: the Andromeda from the Villa of Agrippa Posthumus in Boscotrecase Pl. XXI), a girlish-looking heroine in the House of Menander (Pl. XXIII), and a well-known charming danseuse from the Spada relief (Pl. LXIII). They represent three different monographic types. A pictorial tradition is apparent in every case. They are marked by the air of a sublime and sophisticated Classicism verging on a sort of Classical purism symptomatic of the late 4lh century and some Hellenistic artworks. The impressive landscape painting with the chained Andromeda in Boscotrecase will lead us eventually to a mysterious painter, whose name was probably Euanthes. The teenage Andromeda with the girlish appearance from the collection of the House of Menander points indirectly to the ecphrasis of Philostratus the Elder; and only the Capitoline danseuse or probably the sitting couple who look at the water reflection of the Gorgon’s head (Pl. XXVI), may be perhaps taken into account as replicas of the Nician Andromeda. The latter, however, is a Late Hellenistic invention.⁴⁵ Consequently this reductionist procedure points to the Capitoline Andromeda (Pl. LXIII) as the most likely candidate for Nician authenticity.

     Achilles Tatius embellished his romantic novel of Leucippe and Cleitophon with a series of art descriptions. The fashion for a rhetorical ecphrasis of a work of art was well established as a literary genre in its own right (Lucian, the Phi-lostrati, Callistratus), it became an indispensable component of antiquarian works (Pausanias), and entered the repertoire of the novelists (Achilles Tatius, Helio-dorus, Longus). Achilles Tatius left us a vivid description of Alexandria, its inhabitants, the city’s monumental colonnades in the sunlight of midday, a nocturnal religious festival performed in the streets illuminated by torches (V, 1-2). He also described the paintings from the gallery in Sidon (I, 1) and a sacred idol of Zeus Cassius together with paintings which pictured the delivery of Andromeda, and Prometheus (III, 6-8). The latter could be seen in the oracular sanctuary of Pelu-sium (to the east of Tel el Farame?) on the shores of the Bay of Khalig el Tina. Achilles Tatius’ ambiguous statement e"ko>v SikIt) (a double picture) may be understood perhaps as a metaphor which would mean “two pictures one beside the other.” Alternatively it may be explained by analogy to a similar painting, as for example the fresco painting from the House of Menander (I, 10,4) which shows


    ⁴S Andromeda 1, LIMC 1, 1, p. 789.

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Helen and Cassandra placed on the extreme right and left of the field, accosted respectively by Menelaus and Ajax. The two groups are separated by Priam.⁴⁶ In a similar way Euanthes’ painting in Pelusium might have been an elongated composition which would have fitted the back wall between the wings of the opisthodomos of the Temple of Zeus (tcocra töv 07tio065o|iov).⁴⁷

     The Andromeda painting in Pelusium showed the heroine with her arms stretched out and chained to the rock. She was dressed in a white transparent chiton falling down to her feet. The description of her beauty occupied a considerable part of the ecphrasis. The monster with its jaws wide open was just approaching the heroine, while simultaneously being attacked by Perseus flying down from the air. Perseus was clad only in a chlamys, thrown around his shoulders. He was armed with the Gorgon’s head, which he held in his left hand while with his right he grasped the harpe, a sword combined with a sickle (III, 6-7).⁴⁸
      If Winter was right in his supposition, which however cannot be corroborated with certainty, about a sculptural group of Prometheus and Heracles from Pergamon which was perhaps modelled on a painting by Euanthes, and if, as he surmised, it was actually Mithradates VI who was portrayed as Heracles, liberator of the Asian Greeks from Roman rule, we would have the date ante quem of Euanthes: 88 BC.⁴’ This widely accepted date remains uncertain. Nevertheless, we can assert that Pfuhl was not right when he dated Euanthes between c. 400 BC and some time later in the Imperial period.⁵⁰ One can deduce more exact dates basing on stylistic and historical grounds. The motif of a flying Perseus and an Andromeda chained to the rock can be easily envisaged within the scale and style of the landscape mythological painting which gained popularity in the 2ⁿd-1st century BC. It was thus a Late Hellenistic invention the origins of which can be traced back to the late 3rd and early 2ⁿd century BC.⁵¹ We know about 80 paintings illustrative of this style. Its imagery was dominated by four legends: Artemis observed by Acteon, Daedalus and Icarus, Polyphemus and Galatea, and the liberation of Andromeda. As many as 12 Andromeda panels belonging to this stylistic tradition have been counted (Pl. XXI, XXII).⁵² Blanckenhagen believes that there once existed two mythological landscape paintings, possibly by the same hand, Dae


    ⁴⁶ Picture I, Casa del Menandro 1, 10, 4, fig. 56, p. 277.

    ⁴⁷   Philips 1968, p. 6 argued for the Italian origin of the majority of instances of Andromeda’s iconographic patterns. In his view also Euanthes came from Tarentum, ibid. pp. 22 f., cf. n. 162, p. 23 (one Euanthes in an epigram by Leonidas ofTarentum, AP 6,129). He was criticized by Schauenburg, Andromeda I, LIMC 1, 1, p. 789 and Schefold 1979, p. 155.

    ⁴⁸ Recueil 545, pp. 406 ff.; Achille Tatius, ed. J-Ph. Gamaud 1991, pp. 79 ff.

    ⁴⁹   F. Winter, Die Skulpturen mit Ausnahme Altarreliefs. Altertümer von Pergamon 7, Berlin, 1908, no 168, pp. 175-180, pl. 25, fig. 168a; M. Bieber, The Sculpture of the Hellenistic Age, New York, 1955, p. 122, n. 82; Philips 1968, p. 4 f.

    ⁵⁰ Pfuhl 1923, II, § 907; Schwarz 1971, p. 121.

    ⁵¹ Von Blanckenhagen 1968; id. 1957.

    ⁵² Von Blanckenhagen 1968, p. 106; von Blanckenhagen-Alexander 1962, p. 48, nn. 72 f.

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dalus and Icarus and the Liberation of Andromeda, dated tentatively to the middle of the 2ⁿd century BC and imitated by a Pompeian copyist in House IX 7, 16.⁵³ The Villa of Agrippa Posthumus in Boscotrecase, which once contained an Andromeda painting of the best quality (PL XXI), was erected between 20-10 BC. These substantially narrower dates (mid-2"d century - late Is¹ century BC), than those previously suggested by Pfuhl, do not diminish the value of Winter’s proposal for the identity and dates of Euanthes (a Late Hellenistic painter, before 88 BC).

     Unlike the Nician Andromeda, where we cannot be absolutely sure which class of the Andromeda repertory reflects this great tableau of Classical painting, even though all the lines of both analytical and reductionist procedural evidence, as we have already observed, seem to converge on the type which lies behind the Capitoline relief or the Dioscuri painting, here in the case of the Pelusiac painting we are offered what is, I believe, a rare opportunity to identify a number of more or less exact copies or variations of a chef-d’oeuvre of Greek easel painting. There cannot be any doubt that it was a real masterpiece. Art connoisseurs do not fritter away their time on describing inferior works or works they do not like. Only a real chef-d’oeuvre is worthy of such a detailed and impressive description. Achilles Tatius’ account brings testimony of his genuine fascination with this painting.

     A long time ago Helbig referred to the resemblences between the ecphra-sis by Achilles Tatius (3, 7) and the fresco in the Casa della parete nera (VII, 4, 59), no longer extant.⁵⁴ A few of the Pompeian paintings reflect the same original.⁵⁵ On the painting from House IX, 7, 16 the heroine is chained to the rock while Perseus is just flying down from the air to attack the monster which is approaching Andromeda from the sea. In the opinion of Blanckenhagen a painting with such a composition became the model for the Boscotrecase Andromeda, with its small figures set in a large pictorial space at wide distances from one another (Pl. XXI).⁵⁶ We know this painting from other Pompeian versions, of which the one in the House of Sacerdos Amandus (I 7, 7) is the most successful of all (Pl. XXII). It contains the same components arranged in the same way, however it is more compact, with the figures distributed at significantly closer distances from each other.⁵⁷ The scene of the meeting of Perseus with the king


    ⁵³   Von Blanckenhagen 1968, p. 136 f., Taf. 30, 1; 46, 2; the paintings with Andromeda collected by F. Brommer, Marburger Winckelmannprogramm 1955; Dawson 1944, p. 122 f, p. 142 ff.

    ⁵⁴   Philips 1968, p. 4; W. Helbig, Wandgemalde Campaniens, Leipzig 1868, no 1183; Andromeda 1, LIMC I, 1,1, 37, Casa dei bronzi.

    ⁵⁵   Casa del centenario (IX, 8, 6), Dawson 1944, 109 no 60; the House VI 7, 3, von Blanckenhagen 1962, 48 n. 73; IX 7, 16 (a), Andromeda I, LIMC I 1,40, ibid. 2, 40, Dawson 84, no 10, PI. 4; von Blanckenhagen 1968, pp. 136-138, Taf. 46, 2; VII 15, 2 (i), no longer extant, Andromeda I, L1MCL 1, 38, ibid. 2, fig. 38.

    ⁵⁶ N. Y. Metr. Mus. 20.192.16; von Blanckenhagen 1962, Taf. 44-46; Schmaltz 1989, fig. 1.

    ⁵⁷ Pitture 1, pp. 603-604, fig. 20-22; Andromeda I, LIMC I, 1, 33; Pompeii 1, 8, ibid. 34.

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of Ethiopia which appears on both the Boscotrecase (Pl. XXI) as well as on the Pompeian painting (I 7, 7) (Pl. XXII) was apparently not a Hellenistic invention. Neither was the mourning Nereid (or Cassiopea) on the rock. They were well-known as motifs from the Andromeda repertoire in Magna Graecia in the 4lh century BC.⁵⁸ The elegant diagonal arrangement of the Boscotrecase replica, with the centrally placed figure of Andromeda and other dramatis personae situated at the ends of diagonal lines which cross at the heroine’s feet, present the painting as a work marked by a studied simplicity and harmony. A moderate, constrained and dense colour scheme, a capacious surface and a roomy, illusionist depth, a soft, perfected texture, all these elements successfully dissolved the tension of the drama in the paintings’ dreamy, evanescent matter. Except for the arrangement of the figures in the space available, there are details which show amazing parallels with the ecphrasis of Achilles Tatius. The rock was described in the same way as it was represented on the Pompeian versions: opcbpuxTai pev ouv cig to pETpov Tfjg KopT|g p TtSTpa. GeXei 8e to opuypa Xeyeiv oti pf) Tig auro KE7toiT|KE x£ip- £<7Tiv auTOxQov. ETpaxwe yap tou Xi0ou tov koX-nov 6 ypatpEug, dig etekev aurov f] yfj (3, 7, 1 - There was a hollow in the rock of about the size of the maiden, but it was of a sort that would indicate that it was not artificially made, but natural, for the painter had made its surface rough, just as nature has fashioned it).⁵⁹ The dragon in the Boscotrecase painting was shown in the transparent waters of the bay in the same way as its literary image was recorded by the novelist: povp 8e tt) KEtpalp ttjv QaXaaaav ajtobvETat. uno 8e tt|v aXpuv tou xuparog T] tcov vcotcov ¿yeypanTO cpaivopevT] axia, Ta tcov <poXi8cov cnappaTa, Ta tcov auxevcov xupTcbpara, t) Xotpia tcov axavBcov, oi Tfjg oupag ¿Xtypoi. yevug noXXf] Kai paxpa. ocvecokto 8e itaaa pEXpi Th? tcov ©pcov aupPoXfjg, xai Eu0ug tj yaoTfjp (3, 7, 6 - its head alone being above the surface, but beneath the foam the outline of its back was represented as apparent, as well as its knotted scales, its arched neck, its pointed prickles, and its twisting tail. Its mouth was wide and deep, and gaped open to where its neck joined its shoulders, and straightway there was the belly).⁶⁰ It is interesting to observe that in his description of the heroine Achilles Tatius alluded to Euripides’ drama: xai eoike to Osapa, el pev Eig to xaXXog dni8oig, ayaXpaTi xaivco (3, 7, 2 - if one gazed upon her beauty, one would compare her to a newly carved statue).⁶¹ Achilles’ description of Andromeda’s chiton reaching to her feet might be interpreted as a literary illustration of the style of transparent draperies: to utpaapa Xektov, apaxvicov ¿oixog nXoxfi, ou Kara


     ⁵" Apulian hydria, London BM F. 185, c. 380/70 BC, Philips 1968, Pl. 8, Fig. 19; Andromeda I, LIMC 1, 1,9, ibid. 2, 9 (fig.); Apulian oinochoe MN Napels Stg. 318 (modern?), Philips 1968, Pl. 9, fig. 21; Andromeda I, LIMC I, 1, 138; Apulian dish, Tarent MN 8928, c. 320/10 BC, Philips 1968, Pl. 10, fig. 23; Andromeda 1, LIMC 1, 1, 17, ibid. 2, fig. 17.

     ⁵⁹ My translation, TP.

     ⁶⁰ My translation, TP.

     ⁶¹ My translation, TP - cf. Nauck fr. 125.

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tt|v t&v npoPaxeicov xpixcbv, aXXa ката xf]v tcov epicov tcov ntr|va>v, olov ano SevSpcov £A.KOvaai утщата yuvaiKEg vtpaivovoiv ’IvSai (3, 7, 5 - a tunic of the thinnest woof like a spider’s web; not like that woven of the wool of sheep but of the produce of that winged insect which Indian women spin into thread from trees and weave into silk).⁶² Andromeda’s chiton was made of silk imported from the Far East. The posture of her body elegantly curving along a reverse S-line and her outstretched arms recall a Hellenistic Aphrodite Anadyomene squeezing water out of her tresses, as can be seen on the painting in the Casa del Principe di Napoli (VI 15, 7. 8),⁶³ or one of the dancing Maenads from a relief in the Uffizi Gallery.⁶⁴ Perseus was modelled on the traditional design for heroic nudity, with his Hades’ cap, the red chlamys around his shoulders, the Gorgoneion and the harp on both the Pelusiac painting and on the Boscotrecase replica as well. Achilles Tatius’ description exactly matches the images of Perseus in Boscotrecase and the Casa di Sacerdos Amandus (17,7- Pl. XXI, XXII).⁶⁵ The Boscotrecase Andromeda offers us a unique opportunity to see a first-class copy. The painting was commissioned to the artist by the owners of the Imperial Villa of Agrippa Posthumus. It cannot be doubted that he was one of the best Classicist painters in Rome in 20-10 BC. The popularity of this composition in Augustan Italy is also attested by the imagery employed by Ovid, who in all likelihood derived his inspiration from the very same painting. Ovid’s Perseus also attacks from the air, with Cassiopea and Cepheus present as well and promising Perseus their daughter’s hand. Ovid’s monster approaches its victim from the water (imminet), with its head uplifted. Ovid’s Andromeda is bound to the rock, too, and looks shame-facedly at her rescuer (nec audet appellare virum virgo manibusque eelasset vultus, si non religata fuisset). The Euripidean pictorial imagination can be felt in Ovid’s metaphor marmoreum ratus esset opus (sc. Perseus - Met. IV, 675 and Nauck no 125).⁶⁶

      Benndorf believed that an epigram by Arabios Scholasticus (АР XVI, 148) reflected the masterpiece from the Temple of Zeus Cassius.⁶⁷ Judging by his phrase, ootpog tig avfjp каре, which may be paraphrased as “it is a work by a great master,” Arabios Scholasticus might have had in mind one of the masters of the Greek painting.⁶⁸ Unfortunately only a few ambiguous words relate to the compositional pattern,


    ⁶² My translation, TP.

    ⁶⁵ Pitture V, Reg.VI 15, 7. 8, p. 671, fig. 33.

    M Fuchs 1959, Taf. 16c, Florence Uffizi 15, the one on the right.

    ⁶⁵ Achilles Tatius 3,7,7: he was advancing to attack the monster, quite naked except for his mantle thrown about his shoulders, his winged sandals upon his feet, and a cap on his head, which signified Pluto’s helmet. In his left hand he bore the Gorgon’s head and held it before him like a shield; Pitture I, Reg. I 7, 7, C. del Sacerdos Amandus, fig. 21, p. 604, an enlarged section of the painting with flying Perseus.

    “ cf. Recueil 1985, p. 408, no 2.

    ⁶⁷ Benndorf 1857, p. 71; cf. Recueil p. 408 n.l.

    ⁶⁸ Schwarz 1971, p. 120.

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otherwise described with the standard rhetorical phraseology full of affected language. The poet’s words tj Kpioig apcptpoXog mean that the picture behind it probably visualized a combat scene, which must have been very similar to that described by Lucian of Samosate in his ecphrasis of the Lecture Hall (de domo 22). Lucian’s Andromeda looks down from the rock at the struggle (eniOKonetv p.a£T]v avco-0ev ek Trig KETpag), while Perseus is striking the dragon with his sword (xfi ap^TI KOKTEiai).⁶⁹ In his ecphrasis Lucian mentioned that Perseus turned the monster to stone with the Gorgon’s head. This rare pictorial motif can be found on the mosaic in Coimbriga and on a relief in the Landesmuseum of Graz, both dated as the Imperial Period.⁷⁰ The scene with the face-to-face fighting was one of the most popular compositions in the Italiot painted pottery of the 4lh century BC, so far unattested in the Pompeian painting.⁷¹ A painted fresco once in the House of the Reg. VI (MN Naples 9447) which had for long been interpreted as representing Perseus fighting the sea monster, was eventually vindicated for the repertory of ‘he Heracles-Hesione iconography by R. Merkelbach, who observed that the hero on the Pompeian fresco attacks the monster with a mace and holds no Gorgon’s head in his left hand, thus he lacks the usual attributes of Perseus.⁷² It seems as if during the Late Hellenistic and Early Imperial Periods the snobbish Campanian bourgeoisie preferred the Alexandrian or pseudo-Egyptian fashion to the local tradition.

     Except for a few Attic red figure vases with decorations attesting to the presence of an Orientalist trend in the art of the 5th century BC and selected images on the 4lh-century BC painted pottery in Magna Graecia, all the literary and archaeological material together with the pictorial tradition as it is preserved by the Pompeian murals, shows purely Classical forms. Oriental warriors,⁷³ ⁷⁴ Negro servants (Pl. VII),¹⁴ Cepheus in an Oriental king’s attire,⁷⁵ Andromeda in


    ⁶⁹    Lucian (de domo 22) does not describe “the color of the water during the battle”, as deduced by Philips 1968, p. 5.

    ⁷⁰ Schauenburg 1960, p. 69, Taf. 28, 1; ibid. p. 70 f., Taf. 29, 2.

    ⁷¹    Apulian pelike , MN Naples S. A. 708, c. 330/20 BC, Philips 1968, Pl. 10-11, Figs. 25, 26; Schauenburg 1960, Taf. 23; Andromeda I, LIMC I, 1, 14; Apulian loutrophoros, MN Naples H. 3225, c. 350-325 BC, by the Darius Painter, Philips 1968, Pl. 10, fig. 24, Schauenburg 1960, Taf. 24, 2; Andromeda 1, LIMC I, 1, 13, ibid. 2, 13 (fig.) (only the upper register); Campanian hydria, Berlin, St. Mus. 3238, c. 360/365 BC, by the Cassandra Painter, Philips 1968, Pl. 13, Fig. 37; Andromeda
1, LIMC I, 1, 19, ibid. 2, 19 (fig.) (Andromeda well represented, the lower register shown only fragmentarily); cf. Etruscan bronze cista, Louvre, Philips 1968, Pl. 14, Fig. 41.

    ⁷² Merkelbach 1994, p. 85.

    ⁷³ Pelike, MN Naples SA 708; loutrophoros, Fiesole, private collection, CVA Fiesole, Coll.Constantini
2, Taf. 20 (2580), 21 (2581), Andromeda I, LIMC I, 1, 15, ibid. 2 (15) (fig.).

    ⁷⁴    Pelike, Boston MFA 63.2663; hydria, London, BM E.169; calyx crater, Berlin, Stat.Mus.3237 (sitting Negro woman - Pl. VII).

    ⁷⁵   Hydria, London BM El69; bell crater, Gela MC V 1818; pelike (frag.), Würzburg, Martin von Wagner Museum 855; loutrophoros, MN Naples 3225; loutrophoros, Fiesole, private collection; dish, Tarent MN 8928.

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a richly decorated sleeved jacket “skin-tight ballet-like tights finishing at the ankle,”⁷⁶ or an Andromeda dressed in an Egyptian-styled long tunic “with a wide band of design around the neck and another running from neck to hem, with a belt or girdle of some sort worn at the waist,”⁷⁷ - all this gives the impression of a theatrical spectacle. They may have been inspired by stage performances of the Classical tragedies such as the Persians, the Suppliants, or the Andromedas of Sophocles and Euripides.

     The wave of increased interest in the Orient in mid-5th century Athens may be also interpreted as an aftermath of the Persian wars and Athenian engagement in the revolt of Inaros in Egypt. The Athenian intervention on behalf of the Egyptian rebels concluded in a military catastrophe for the Greek expedition in the Delta. The Orient which appears in the literary description as well as in the archaeological evidence looks highly conventional. One has a feeling that its forms are allusive and restrained. Although Lucian used the expression nàOoç ’AiOioKiKÔv, an Ethiopian love story or Ethiopian romance, nevertheless the picture he described did not show anything which exceeded the limits of Classical aesthetics {de domo 22). Achilles Tatius compared his Andromeda to the bride of Adonis, the Syrian divinity which symbolized the Netherworld (3, 7, 5). The same author described the softness and transparency of Andromeda’s chiton and mentioned that the raw material for the fabric was produced by “that winged tree-inhabiting insect from which Indian women spin thread and weave [it] into silk.”⁷⁸ However the disposition of the figures in the illusionist space and many of the stylistic components in Euanthes’ painting are clearly Hellenic. On the Boscotrecase fresco Perseus speaks to the king of Ethiopia in front of the elegant Classical façade of a royal palace in the depths of Africa (Pl. XXI). The scenery of the painting might be labelled fantastic or bucolic, typical of the Greek landscape painting of the 2ⁿd and 1st century BC. In all these works the Orient is purely allusive. Euanthes’ Andromeda is a Greek model whose posture was styled on the fashionable female images of the Greek art. Perseus appearing here in the heroic nudity form does not differ from Theseus or Heracles, except for his specific attributes. Perhaps only his harpe may be a distant reflection of an Egyptian sickle-sword.

     However, among the prevailing Classically shaped images of the Orient, we can also discern efforts to create a real Orientalist style still perceptible in selected


    ⁷⁶     Hydria, London BM E 169; pelike, Boston MFA 63.2663; quotation: Brooke 1962, p. 99.

    ⁷⁷     Oinochoe, Naples MN Stg. 318 (modern?); hydria, Berlin St. Mus. 3228; pelike (frag.), Wurzburg M. von Wagner Mus. 855; lutrophoros, Fiesole, private collection; quotation: Brooke 1962, p. 97.

    ⁷⁸ trans. TP.

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red figure vases of the 4th century BC as well as among the testimonies of the easel paintings. As regards the art of the painted pottery this style can be studied in some vases from the iconographic repertory of Busiris, Memnon and Andromeda.” In the realm of easel painting it relates to the ecphrasis of Memnon (Jmag. I, 7) and Perseus (Imag. I, 29) by Philostratus the Elder. As Europa, Pantheia or Rhodogoune reflected the North-West or North-East Semitic or Iranian world, the iconography of Andromeda, Memnon or Antaeus mirrored inspirations flowing from Hamitic Africa or from Ethiopia, in other words from Black Africa. The Orientalist Andromeda paintings that have just been discussed might be compared to Degas’ Semiramis Constructing the City (c. 1860), which was influenced by the performance of Rossini’s opera Semiramide in 1860. Semiramis and her entourage were dressed by Degas in Neo-Classical garments and put in a setting of Graeco-Roman architecture.* ⁸⁰ The case is similar to a famous earlier Orientalist work by Delacroix, The Death ofSardanapalus, inspired by Shakespeare and Byron, where again nothing referred to the reality of 6th-century BC Assyria, and where the subject was ingeniously selected by the artist to express his own emotions. L. Nocklin observed that “it is not Western man’s power over the Near East that is at issue, but rather . . . contemporary Frenchmen’s power over women . . ,.”⁸¹

     We are now turning from the Orientalist art influenced mostly by myth, literature or the theatre, visualized within the limits restricted by the Hellenic Classical aesthetics, even if sometimes allowing for Oriental or reputedly Oriental requisites, to the Orientalist painting which mirrored and transformed a living experience of the Oriental world with its people and environment. The Dream of Sardanapalus by Ford Maddox Brown may be taken as the 19th-century analogy of the latter. The observer can see two Assyrian animals at a gate, the frieze behind the king adorned with figures borrowed from Assyrian reliefs, the king’s couch, his bracelet and earring, all copied from the Assyrian orthostats on display in the British Museum.⁸² Nanteuil’s poster for the 1867 opera Sardanapale by H. Becque and V. Jonciere offers another useful analogy to a Hellenic Orientalist painting.⁸³ Nanteuil visualized Sardanapalus set against the background of Egyptian lotus capitals, hieroglyphs and the ram god Chnum from Elephantine. The king has an “Assyrian” beard modelled on the Assyrian antiquities from the Louvre, but at the same time he wears Neo-Classical garments. His favourite concubine who is going to die with him is styled on a Greek Charite. It is thus also an eclectic, or even perhaps a hybrid composition, like the previous paintings. However, in this painting the Oriental illusion is present not only in the subject, as if lurking


    ” Aithiopes, LIMC I, 1, pp. 413-419, ibid. 2, Tigs. 1.2, 4-7; 11-15, 17, 18, 21.

    ⁸⁰ Bohrer 1998, p. 347 f., fig. 7.

    ⁸¹   L. Nocklin, The imaginary Orient, in: The Politic of Vision, New York, 1989, p. 42, following: Bohrer 1998, p. 340.

    ⁸² Bohrer 1998, figs. 9-11.

    ⁸³ Ibid. p. 374, figs. 5-6.

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just beyond the picture. It is clearly marked on the surface by numerous components, even if they are mostly anachronistic or have nothing in common with a real historical or documentary approach. But it is not our aim to measure the degree of historical exactness in works of art. Instead, we want to comprehend something of the interplay of Oriental inspirations on the figural arts, literature, theatre and craftsmanship. We cannot forget that ratio pingendi has its own principles, very different from the ratio scenica, and that both of them are even more distant from the scientia. Art has its own autonomy. Although it may seem highly unsatisfactory if not ridiculous to a student of the ancient Semitic or African languages or to an Oriental archaeologist, the contents of a picture may exert an irresistible power to enrapture our aesthetic senses by a perfect balance of its pictorial qualities within the terms of the visual arts. Such a situation may be exemplified by Delacroix’s Death of Sardanapalus or Long’s Babylonian Marriage Market, two masterpieces of the 19lh-century Orientalist works of well-deserved fame.

     In the part of the gallery which Lehmann-Hartleben labelled the Room of Dionysus (Jmag. I, 14-30)⁸⁴ Philostratus focused his attention on the Andromeda panel (Jmag. I, 29). Andromeda was one of the most popular subjects in the Campanian galleries, and particularly apt for the genre of the landscape mythological painting. Only three other motifs gained comparable popularity: Artemis and Acteon, Polyphemus and Galatea, and Daedalus and Icarus.⁸⁵ There are also other reasons for the presence of the Andromeda tableau among the Dionysiac legends. The liberation of Andromeda was sometimes included in the cycles of liberation myths, which comprised the figures of Andromeda, Hesione or Icarus.⁸⁶ * The liberation ideology was prominent in the Dionysiac legends.

     The panel documented by Philostratus the Elder shows the drama just after the killing of the monster. The dragon is lying stretched out on the sea shore. The waves are stained with its blood. A winged Eros is liberating Andromeda from her chains. Though still frightened, she is already beginning to feel joy. Perseus is lying on the grass. He looks exhausted after the fight. He holds the Gorgon’s head and is dressed only in a purple chlamys. He is staring at Andromeda. A group of Ethiopians is approaching the hero. They bring gifts.

     The panel displays an odd mixture of tradition and invention, if compared with the extant set of related antiquities. Eros was in fact a frequent figure in the Andromedan imagery. On the lower decorative register of an Apulian loutropho-


    ⁸⁴ Lehmann-Hartleben 1941, pp. 33 ft.

    ⁸⁵ Von Blanckenhagen 1968, p. 106.

    ⁸⁶   Ibid. p. 109, Daedalus and Icarus, MN Naples 9506, was supplemented with Andromeda and

Hesione panels.

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ros (MN Naples 3225) he was about to crown Perseus. The picture on the vase was dependent on a large-scale painting with figures arranged along three planes.⁸⁷ On an Apulian pelike (MN Naples Stg. 708) Eros was standing beside Aphrodite.⁸⁸ On a lost vase from Mantua he was crowning Andromeda.⁸⁹

     Philostratus observed that “Eros is painted with wings as usual, but here, as is not usual, he is a young man” (Imag. II, 29, 2). This comment speaks well of Philostratus’ erudition as an art historian. The information has a stylistic and chronological value. Eros was represented as such in the 5,h- and 4,h-century Greek art. Yet Philostratus the Elder seems to recall the art of Classical Greece in one more point. He wrote that Andromeda’s beauty “would surpass a Lydian girl in daintiness, an Attic girl in stateliness, a Spartan in sturdiness” (Imag. II, 29, 3). His Au5f] áPpá seems to point to slender female figures in richly draped and ornamented chitons from the Ionic archaic art, as can be seen on the relief of the Seasons in the Louvre,⁹⁰ his ’AxOig ónóaepvoq to the Classical art of the Periclean period, probably even directly to the Korae of the Erechteion, while his EnapTiáxig éppcopévp to the Peloponnesian art with such works like the young sportswoman from the Vatican Collection.⁹¹ The mixture of anxiety and joy impressed on Andromeda’s face was also observed by Achilles Tatius: “Upon her face was a mixture of beauty and fear; fear sat upon her cheeks, and beauty shone from her eyes. Even so, the pallor of her cheeks was not utterly without colour, but there was a gentle flush upon them: nor was the flower of beauty in her eyes without care, but was rather to be compared to violets that have just begun to fade. The painter had depicted her with the terror that did but enhance her charms” (3, 7, 3). It seems Philostratus the Elder was describing a portrait from a similar class, a psychological, deeply emotional portrait which originated in the Hellenistic art: “Her beauty is enhanced by the circumstances of the moment; for she seems to be incredulous, her joy is mingled with fear, and as she gazes at Perseus she begins to send a smile towards him” (Imag. I, 29, 3). One image of Andromeda in the Pompeian painting corresponds with the above literary description: it is a girlish Andromeda in the Casa del Menandro, a copy of the highest quality (Pl. XXIII).⁹² Bashful Andrómedas were not altogether absent from the vase painting, as can be deduced from one of the most graceful images of an embarrassed girl on a white


    ¹,⁷ Philips 1968, Pl. 10, fig. 24.
    ““ Andromeda I, LIMC I, 1, 13, 350-325 BC, by the Darius Painter, Philips 1968, Pl. 10, fig. 24; Schauenburg 1960, Taf. 24, 2.

    "⁹ Andromeda I, LIMC I, 1, 141; Schauenburg 1960, p. 59, cf. Eros on the calyx crater from Mantua, Museo Riddola 12538; Andromeda 1, LIMC I, 1,64; ibid. 2, 64 (fig.); Philips 1968, Pl. 10, 27, Pl. 11, 28-29; Pl. 14, fig. 43 (stone urn, Volterra 330).

    ⁹⁰ Fowler 1989, Pl. 115.

    ⁹¹ Bernhard 1975, fig. 108.

    ⁹²   Pitture II, Casa del Menandro 1, 10, 4, p. 322, fig. 129; Andromeda 1, LIMC I, 1, 35, ibid. 2, 35 (fig.); Philips 1968, Pl. 4, fig. 6.

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ground calyx crater in Agrigento.” Incidentally, the Andromeda panel in the Casa del Menandro is probably the closest of all the representations we know to Phi-lostratus’ Andromeda (Imag. II, 29). An unknown Pompeian master caught the same moment of the story: the heroine is still chained, the monster killed, while the exhausted Perseus stands apart. However, the differences remain significant. The Pompeian Perseus is shown standing. There are no Negro attendants. The motif of the rescuer contemplating the heroine can be found on many extant images in the Andromeda repertory - on the painted vases as well as on Imperial mosaics and reliefs.⁹³ ⁹⁴

     We come now to the question of Andromeda’s appearance on the Philos-tratean tableau. What did she actually look like? Philostratus is ambiguous on this point. Achilles Tatius’ Andromeda was dressed like a bride (vuptptKcog ectto-Xiopevt|), her white transparent chiton reached to her feet (no5T]pT|g 6 xitcov, Xevkoij 6 xixcbv; to bcpaopa Xetctov - 3,7,5). Lucian’s Andromeda was almost certainly decently dressed judging by his phrase aibcbq nap0Evov (de domo 22). We can also be sure that the Nician Andromeda was dressed according to the latest fashion of the 320’s BC. However Heliodorus’ Queen Persinna of Ethiopia had in the bedroom of her African palace a painting which showed Andromeda navTaxo0Ev yupvi], completely nude (Aeth. IV, 8, 5). Nude Andromedas are rare in the Late Classical repertory. An exposed ugly Andromeda with African features on the hydria from the Spinelli Collection is probably unique.⁹⁵ In this particular instance we must take into account a reflection of a stage production, an Italiot or Sicilian obscene farce. In his comedy The Eunuch, modelled on earlier Greek dramas, Terence introduced a Negro girl who in practice contributed nothing to the plot, but was always a source of entertainment for his Greek and Roman audiences.⁹⁶ A caricatural terracotta mask with Negroid features from Agrigento offers a vivid testimony to such performances. A half-nude or barely clad Andromeda became more and more popular in the Hellenistic, Etruscan and Roman art judging from her numerous images on mosaics, gems, bronzes and reliefs.⁹⁷


    ⁹³    Museo Civico, by the Phiale Painter, c. 450/40 BC, Andromeda I, LIMC I, 1,5, ibid. 2, 5 (fig.); Philips 1968, Pl. 7, fig. 15; cf. the calyx crater in Heidelberg, Univ. 26, 69, Andromeda I, LIMC I, 1, 22, ibid. 2, 22 (fig.); Philips 1968, Pl. 8, Fig. 18; Schauenburg 1960, Taf. 29, 1.

    ⁹⁴    Vases: a white ground calyx crater, Agrigento, Museo Civico, cf. n. 93 above; the Attic calyx crater, Basel, Antikenmus. BS 403, Andromeda 1, LIMC 1, 1, 6, ibid. 2, 6 (fig.); oinochoe, Bari, MA 1016, Andromeda seated on a chair, Andromeda I, LIMC I, 1, 16, ibid. 2, 16 (fig.); pelike (frag.), Louvre, c. 400 BC (without number), ibid. 7, ibid. 2, 7 (fig.); mosaic from Tarragona, Schauenburg 1960 Taf. 28, 2, p. 69; relief from Gap, Mus.Arch. 1st century AD (?), Andromeda I, LIMC
1, 1, 152, ibid. 2, 152 (fig.).

    ⁹⁵ Campanian hydria, Naples, Spinelli, 1952, c. 340/30 BC, Andromeda 1, LIMC I, 1,20, ibid.
2, 20 (fig.); Philips 1968, Pl. 8, Fig. 20; partly preserved pelike, Louvre, Andromeda dressed in a widely opened richly decorated Oriental (?) jacket which shows her nude body, Andromeda I, LIMC I, 1,7, ibid. 2, 7 (fig.) no catalogue number.

    ⁹⁶ Beardsley 1929, p. 114.

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Philostratus’ Ad8t] àPpà, which seems to resound with the Sapphic verse and the Archaic Ionic art, suggests a picture of a body tightly dressed in a richly decorated long Ionic chiton which also covers the arms down to the wrists. In another ecphrasis Philostratus wrote about Kritheis, that she had a delicate, truly Ionian figure (àPpôv pèv auTf] tô eî8oç Kai pàXa Tcdvikov - Imag. II, 8). In his Andromeda ecphrasis Philostratus mentioned her apparel, but did not also say either directly or indirectly that she was nude. It is unlikely that he could have passed over such a detail in silence if Andromeda had been painted in the nude. Philostratus’ sleeping Ariadne was “bare to the waist” {Imag. I, 15). Kritheis’ “breasts gleamed under the garment” {Imag. II, 8). The baby centaurs “sucked their mother’s breasts” {Imag. II, 3). Thus in his descriptions Philostratus always referred to female nudity, whenever it appeared on a painting. By the way, it was not the female nude which focused his attention, but young male bodies - as might have been expected in the categories of the Greek Classical and Classicizing writings. The next phrase ’ At01ç wcÔGEp.voq emphasizing the heroine’s decent appearance may even heighten the general impression. We are told that Andromeda was both beautiful and robust (î]8EÎa, EnapTiâriç ÈppcûpvÉT|). It seems from Philostratus’ description that Andromeda was already partly liberated from her bonds, which is also attested by a number of images.⁹⁸ We read in Achilles Tatius’ romance that “her arms were stretched out on the surface of the rock” (3, 7, 4). Philostratus does not say this. As regards the archaeological evidence, we know Andromedas with outstretched arms, with hands bound on their backs, and an Alexandrian Andromeda with her hands chained in front of her.⁹⁹

     Numerous analogies to the extant works of art may create an impression that there is nothing particular in Philostratus’ Andromeda. In fact the panel appears to be an amazing blend of tradition and invention. It was an experimental work. Perseus lying on the ground beside Andromeda and Eros liberating the heroine -such a design has not been attested by the archaeological evidence.

     Philostratus the Elder emphasized that Andromeda was white, though in Africa (t] KÔpn 8è f]8EÎa pév, ôti Xeukt] èv ’A0io7tig). Heliodorus’ Andromeda was also white-skinned {Aeth. IV, 8, 5). We are nonetheless able to trace a tradition


    ” E.g. one out of many images, a marble torso with hands bound in front (nude), Alexandria, Greco-Roman Museum 3457, Adriani 1961, Taf. 54, 83; Andromeda I, LIMC I, 1, Andr. I, 157, ibid. 2, 157.
    ” Flask, Tunisia, 4"* century, Andromeda I, LIMC 1, 1, 55; ibid. 2, 55 (fig.); a painting, MN Naples 8993, Pompei, VI, 10, 2(b); painting, ibid. VII Is. occid. 15; painting, ibid. 8998, C. dei Dioscuri.
    ” Hands bound behind her back: Andromeda I, LIMC 1,1,53, stucco relief, London BM 1956.12.4.18 (modern); ibid, relief, Metz Mus., 59, ibid. 2, 59 (fig.); relief, Landesmuseum, Trier, ibid. 61; bell crater, Gela, V 1818, Philips 1968, fig.14; in front: ibid.157.


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of a dark-skinned, Negroid Andromeda, tanned by the African sun. In Ovid’s love poems Andromeda appears as a bronze-skinned beauty (fusca - Her. 15, 35-36; Ars 3, 191; Met. 4,676). One of Ovid’s contemporaries left a record on a Pompeian wall of his infatuation for a Nigra.'⁰⁰ The girl Ovid was thinking of could not have been a true Negress, but perhaps a representative of a mixed stock, of the white race with the Negro, an Ethiopian or a Nubian woman. A 19lh-century anthropologist wrote about the Gala, the Somali people, who probably inhabited the land of Andromeda, that they were “seldom darker than a reddish brown and ordinarily had pale yellow skins.” He added that they were “the handsomest race in Africa.”* ¹⁰¹ He illustrated his remark with an impressive photograph showing a Somali man and his wife from the British Somaliland (Pl.XXIV). In this connection he referred to the Classical Greek standards - which was symptomatic of the 19lh-century scholars: “The Abyssinians of Semitic race have hair that is long and fairly straight, with only a ripple occasionally to indicate the strain of Negroid blood that runs through all Africa. The nose is usually straight, almost Grecian in some respects.”¹⁰² The regular, studied lines and shape of the marble head of a Negroid woman in the Museo delle Terme seems to document the efforts undertaken by the Roman Imperial artists to create a rival ideal of beauty to the models based on the European racial characteristics (Pl. XXV).¹⁰³ A marble personification of Africa originating from Egypt which shows a young woman with long, thick hair and Negroid facial features, dressed like Achilles Tatius’ Andromeda in a tunic “of the thinnest woof,” that delineates her body - a body which as in Philostratus’ ecphrasis “would surpass ... a Spartan in sturdiness” (Imag. I, 29, 3) - testifies to a fascination with the exotic beauty of the mixed races of Africa.¹⁰⁴ * We have already observed some affinities and chronological coincidence between the Boscotrecase panel (Pl. XXI) and Ovid’s Andromeda from the Metamorphoses. It is not unlikely then that Ovid had seen one of the copies of a popular Hellenistic original which was behind the Boscotracase fresco. His Metamorphoses offer promising clues as regards research on the history of the Classical painting.

       “Many cow-herds come offering him milk and wine to drink, charming Ethiopians with their strange colouring and their grim smiles; and they show that they are pleased, and most of them look alike.” (f]8Etq Ai.0i.onEg ev t© tov xp©paroq axon© Kai pXoaupov p£i8i©vTEg Kai ouk aSrjXot. xaipetv Kai oi kXeiotoi dpoiot) (Imag. I, 29, 3). Thus we are presented with a unique description of Negroes in the Greek painting. One of the preserved passages of Euripides’ Andromeda offers a strikingly similar picture: 7tag 8e 7toipEV©v eppet XE©g, 6 psv yaXaKtoq


    ,<w CIL IV 6892.

    ¹⁰¹ Living Races 2, p. 402.

    ¹⁰² Ibid. p. 411.

    ¹⁰² Snowden 1970, fig. 72.

    I⁰'' ilbid. fig. 67, p. 91; cf. a bronze bust of a Nilotic-type child, Hellenistic period, ibid. fig.

62, p.8 7, Florence, Museo Archeologico 2288.

Ill

Ktaoivov tpepcov axitpog, novcov dva\|/VKTT]p, d 8* apneXcov yavoq (Nauck fr. 146). It convinced Matz that the Philostratean Andromeda had never existed as a real painting, that it was only a creation of a rhetorical imagination inspired by a theatrical performance of Euripides’ Andromeda.'⁰⁵ The argument put forward by Matz might sound convincing if isolated from a wider context. In Tren-dall and Webster’s Illustrations of Greek Drama (1971) there are hundreds of vases and shards directly referring to the imagery of the Greek drama. Could such an inspiration have come from the theatre only in one, literary way, as might be concluded from Matz? Trendall and Webster’s collection clearly points to an inflow of inspiration from different media - the theatre and painting. A considerable number of Pompeian paintings apparently reflects the imagery of Euripidean dramas. On the other hand, a certain unity of art description and literary quotation is symptomatic of the rhetorical ecphrasis as a genre. Philostratus the Elder frequently quotes his favourite Classics: Euripides, Pindar, Herodotus and Homer.

     Perseus’ recumbent position and the group of Negroes, which is reminiscent both of the Greek drama choirs as well as of the procession with gifts on the painted pottery,¹⁰⁶ may contain some clues as regards the arrangement of the figures on the Philostratean Andromeda painting. The figure of Perseus lying on the ground opened up an empty space behind it for a crowd of the Negro attendants, as on a fresco painting from the House of M. Gavius Rufus in Pompeii (VII 2, 16). The sprawling, elongated body of the centaur greeting Perithous left room for a crowd of guests behind him.¹⁰⁷

     The Negroes in the Andromeda painting grin or grimace (pioovpov peiSicbvTeq). In the ecphrasis by Philostratus the Younger Medea frowns grimly (pXoaupov ¿niOKUviov bnep otpOaXpcbv aipouoa). But the Negro herdsmen in the Philostratean Andromeda were pleased (oi)K aSriXoi xa'-Peⁱ-v)- What may their smile mean in pictorial terms? It seems obvious that Philostratus the Elder was looking at images of the inhabitants of a world once named / 'Afrique noire by its French explorers. He must have been observing representatives of the race described as true Negroes, or the purest type of African Negro, in other words the West African Negro. Their thick, fleshy lips, sometimes described as puffy or everted, their protruding jaws, a feature sometimes referred to as subnasal prognathism, their broad, flat noses and high cheek-bones, their receding chin must have looked just the same to Europeans even in modern times as it had to Philostratus. A 19,h-cen-tury anthropologist observed that “both the upper and lower lips are generally


    '°⁵ Schönberger 1968, p. 373; Matz 1872, p. 625.
    I⁽X| Attic hydria, London BM E 169; Attic pelike, Boston MFA 63.12663; Apulian hydria, London BM F 185; Apulian oinochoe, Bari 1016; loutrophoros, Fiesole, private coll.; dish, Tarent, MN 8928.

    ¹⁰⁷ Ling 1991, fig. 126.

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much everted, which gives the face at times a hideous aspect.”¹⁰⁸ The authors of the old classic The Living Races of Mankind collected a rich and representative selection of photographs which demonstrate the racial characteristics of the African people. Their wording may sometimes sound “racist” to us, to put it in modem terms, but on the other hand their carefully selected photographs often show something which could be called the beauty of Africa. A Yoruba man (Pl. XXVII), or a Mulolo warrior with his wife from the Central Congo (Pl. XXVIII), embody the above description of their facial proportions, and at the same time show the people of Africa as full of dignity, their enjoyment of life marred by that consummate streak of tropical sadness; their counterfeits demonstrate their attractive exotic beauty, which inspired Greek artists to attempt a definition of an alternative canon of human beauty. Snowden collected materials to illustrate all the qualities we have just mentioned in his wonderful book Blacks in Antiquity. “Though the numerous likenesses of Negroes are the work of artists and not of photographers, there can be little doubt that the Greeks and the Romans were well acquainted with types we today call Negroes and that their artists have left us a rather accurate picture of the Negroid Ethiopians whom they saw in their daily life.”¹⁰⁹ A Janiform can-tharos with the heads of a Negro and a white man, dated c. 510 BC, clearly shows by way of contrast that by that time already the Greek artists had managed to accurately define all the prominent features of a “true Negro”, with his symptomatic thick lips, broad nose, retreating chin, high cheek-bones and prognathous jaws (Pl. XXX).¹¹⁰ A terracotta mask from Agrigento illustrates the typical grin, though not without a touch of caricature."¹ The same can be said of an Attic-head vase from Berlin, ¹¹² or a Faliscan wine pitcher in the shape of a Negroid head recently put on temporary display in the Israel Museum.¹¹³

     Some of those vessels, reliefs, sculptures or bronzes attest to an African trend in the Classical culture, which in the atmosphere of civilized colonialism pervading Beardsley’s book is designated as a “vogue with the rich.”¹¹⁴ Some of these artefacts, such as the statuette of a crouching boy from Alexandria,¹¹⁵ or of a famous


    ¹⁰⁸ Living Races, p. 363.

    ¹⁰⁹ Snowden 1970, p. 22.

    "“A white-ground kantharos, Tarquinia, c. 510 BC, Rome, Villa Giulia 50571, Snowden 1970, fig. 12; cf. aryballos with conjoined heads, the end of the 6"¹ century BC, Louvre CA 987; kantharos with heads of Heracles and a Negro, c. 480-70 BC, Vatican, Museo Etrusco 16539.

    ¹¹¹ The 6th/5,h century BC, Agrigent, MN Archeologico, Snowden 1970, fig. 7.

    ¹¹² The 6lh/5'h century BC, Berlin, Staatliche Mus. F 4049, Snowden 1970, fig. 9.

      The Israel Museum temporary display 1999, from the Badisches Landesmuseum.

    ¹,⁴ Beardsley 1929, p. 111; cf. a marble statue of an acrobat, Roman, a water fountain, Snowden 1970, fig.5 1, S. Aurigemma, Le Terme di Diocleziano e it Museo Nazionale Romano, 1946, 72, no. 184; glass cup molded in form of a Negro head, Roman, Snowden 1970, fig. 59, New York MM A 81.10.226; sarcophagus, c. 180-200 AD, with a triumph of Dionysius and two Negro boys on panthers.

    ¹¹⁵ Boston MFA 01.8210, Snowden 1970, fig. 42.

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Hellenistic terracotta boy sleeping beside an amphora,"⁶ were evidently fashioned sympathetically and with a feeling for affectionate detail. There are also works which show all the characteristics of real studies, works marked by emotional fascination, and an air of artistic perfectionism. These mementoes of feeling, like the Hellenistic bronze street singer,"⁷ or the bronze bust of a child in Florence,"⁸ or a bronze jockey in Athens,"⁹ are real works of art, even if at times on a minor scale.


     In the literature a 4lh-century AD poem entitled Moretum preserved in the frame of the Appendix Vergiliana, records a likeness of racial characteristics as precisely as works of art do. One Scybale, a Negro slave, “Erat unica custos/ Afra genus, tota patriam testante figura, /torta comam labroque tumens et fusca colore, /pectore lata, iacens mammis, compressior alvo,/ cruribus exilis, spatiosa prodi-ga planta” (vv. 31-35).¹¹⁶ * * * ¹²⁰ We can easily imagine the stage effects achieved by the anonymous author of a farce in Magna Graecia, who had an ugly naked Negress perform the role of Andromeda, a heroine who to his public had always been synonymous with beauty, who had always played the role of a Classical feminine ideal. Philostratus the Elder and his painter were virtually unable to accept the fact that in all likelihood Andromeda was dark-skinned. Philostratus’ Andromeda was styled on the Greek female portraits, as emphasized by the rhetorician himself when he referred to the Attic, Doric and Ionic art in her description. Philostratus’ Andromeda was thus white-skinned. Her skin colour adds to the pictorial effects by way of contrast with that of her black subjects. “They are charming people,” Philostratus tells us, “even though their complexion is strange (trans. A. Fairbanks).” His wording ev Tcp too xpcbpaToq aTOKip should be interpreted as “abnormal” rather than “strange.” (Imag. I, 29, 3). Beardsley, who was writing in the 1920’s when British East Africa was a reality on the political map of the world, may help us to understand Philostratus’ intentions: “Their Greek masters evidently appreciated what are now considered to be among the best of the Negro qualities - personal loyalty, ready laughter and a gift for song and dance.”¹²¹ Philostratus added that they were all alike (oi kXelotoi opotot). We now understand that the author changed


    ¹¹⁶ Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, 1884584, Snowden 1970, fig. 46; Asmolean Museum. Summary Guide. Department of Antiquities 4, Oxford 1931,90.

       Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale, Collection Caylus 1009, Snowden 1970, figs. 60 a-c; M. Bieber, The Sculptures of the Hellenistic Age, New York, 1961, 96, c. 200 BC.

     "" Florence, MA 2288, Snowden 1970, fig. 62.

       C. 240-200 BC, from Cape Artemisium, Athens, NM 15177, Snowden 1970, fig. 63, G. Richter, A Handbook of Greek Art, London 1967, 166; G. M. A.Hanfmann, Classical Sculpture, 1967, Pl. 232-233.

    I²U “African in race, her whole figure proof of her country - her hair tightly curled, lips thick, color dark, chest broad, breasts pendulous, belly somewhat pinched, legs thin, and feet broad and ample.” (trans. Snowden 1970. p. 6); cf. Prooemium Vitae Aesopis by Maximus Planudes, B. E. Perry, Aesopica I 215: fjv crtpôç Tqv pîva ... npôxetXoç, péXaç.

    ¹²¹ Beardsley 1929, p. 111.

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his literary style from the heroic to the satirical. The Negroes in the painting were being ridiculed. It is difficult to say if that is what the painter’s original intentions were, but it cannot be excluded because caricatures of Africans were widespread in the Classical art. I would like to postpone the discussion of the subject to the chapters on Antaeus and the Pygmies. But it cannot be ruled out that the painting behind the description did not contain any satirical elements, that the Negroes looked ridiculous only to Philostratus, which seems to be testified by his own words: f]5Eia pev, oti Ieukt] ev ’AiBioKia, she is beautiful because she is white though (she was born) in Ethiopia. Philostratus wrote that the Ethiopian attendants were f]5efg. This was no accident. A few lines earlier he had called his Andromeda fjbEia, “beautiful, sweet, charming.” They were sweet and charming people, as beautiful as Andromeda. “I cannot see any difference between them,” he added. Philostratus shared the tastes of the Spinelli hydria painter (Spinelli 1952) and of the anonymous creator of the farce whose stage production inspired the vase painter.

     Did the painter of Philostratus’ Imagines share the same tastes? I do not think so. The studied Classicism of his mannerist work, maybe Late Hellenist, maybe Early Imperial, manifest in his renderings of Andromeda, Perseus and Eros (the latter modelled on his 5th/4,h century BC images), and further the air of expectation in the painting, attested by the recumbent pose of Perseus, Eros liberating Andromeda,¹²² and the group of black actors - all this speaks against any satirical intention on the part of the painter.

     The anonymous painter employed an impressive device by contrasting black and white bodies. Snowden commented succinctly: “The mysterious and romantic clash of colour, which later fascinated Shakespeare in his portrayal of the Venetian girl and the dusky Moor, apparently appealed also to the Greek artist.”¹²³ Philostratus the Elder was sensitive enough to observe this highly pictorial effect. In one of his ecphraseis he wrote: EKnetpvKE Kai pelaivTig inKou Xeukt] KEVxaupu; Kai -ca Evav-cicbTaTa tcdv xpajpaxcov cig ttiv -cou KaAAovq avv0T]KT]v opo-loyai (Imag. II, 3) (there is also a white female centaur that grows out of a black mare, and the very opposition of the colours helps to produce the united beauty of the whole).¹²⁴ There is another illustration of the effect in an erotic sympleg-ma, a mosaic from a carefully arranged Orientalist collection of the owner of the


    ¹²²    Brunn 1871, p. 83, referred to the Apulian loutrophoros, MN Naples 3225, with a flying Eros; I did not see the second vase Brunn adduced (Arch. Ztg. 1852, t. 42): “hier ruht Perseus auf einem Korallenriffe sitzend aus, tö Seiypa ropyoö«; e%cov ¿rtoOexov, während Athena die Wegführung der Andromeda übernommen hat.” (Brunn 1871, p. 84); Schönberger 1968, p. 373 adduced a picture on a vase published by Fairbanks (fig. 15), with Dionysus assisting the liberation of Andromeda (non vidi).

    ¹²³ Snowden 1970, p. 25.

    ¹²⁴ Translated by A. Fairbanks.

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Casa del Fauno (Pl. XXIX).¹²⁵ A discovery in Thmuis in the Delta of an Egyptian version speaks for a common Late Hellenist painted original.

     The Andromeda tableau was an Orientalist painting which, like the Rhodo-goune, may be compared to the works of the 19th-century “Orientalists.” The painting’s Oriental air was emphasized by Philostratus in the first words of his ecphrasis: ’AX1’ ovk ’Epv0pd ye at>TT] Oalaoaa ovS’ ’IvSoi rama, Ai0i.O7CE<; 5e Kai avf]p “EAAriv ev ’AiOionia (Jmag. I, 29, l).”¹²⁶ He distinguished between the peoples of Black Africa and from the Indian subcontinent. This is not the Mare Erythreum, he says. In other words - not the sea stretching between the Arabian Peninsula and India, but either the African coast further south, the shores of the ancient Ethiopia, modem Somalia, or probably the territories to the south of Tangier, somewhere along the lands explored by Hannon’s expedition, which would contradict the firm tradition situating the myth either in Ethiopia or in the region of Jaffo. Philostratus’ ’ArXavtiKOv Kffcoq ev ’ AiOiorcia an Atlantic monster in Ethiopia, is probably unintentionally misleading (Fairbanks’ monster from the Sea of Atlas), and may be explained by the influence of Euripides’ wording, which caused a geographical confusion in the ecphrasis: KfjToq ... e^ ’ArXavriKfig aloq (Nauck frg. 145).¹²⁷ There is no doubt, however, that the “Ethiopians” of Philostratus mean the Black Africans.¹²“ The phrase “a Greek man in Ethiopia” relates the same pride of the Greek explorers that lies in exactly the same phrase, in the opening words of another Philostratean ecphrasis, Themistocles at the court of Babylon: "E1X-r|v ev PapPapoig (Jmag. II, 31). This Orientalist tune is struck again and again as the Andromeda ecphrasis develops. What we are reading about here is a young white woman among a black people - a text comprising a mixture of feelings: of both estrangement and superiority. Heliodorus wrote that in Ethiopia Perseus, Andromeda and Memnon were worshipped as divinities (Aeth. IV, 8). The white complexions of the rulers of Ethiopia might have been the result of Africans and Greeks intermingling not only in the legend, but a reminiscence of the historical reality as well. We have already mentioned that the Abyssinians of the Semitic race, particularly in the northern parts of the land, happen to be as pale as olives.¹²⁹ Au8f] aPpa, a dainty Lydian girl, sounds like a Greek archetype of an Oriental woman, if we recall a charming piece from Sappho: Nov 8e AvSaicnv EjinpEn-Erai. yuvaiKEOOiv (fr. 7), taken from one of the most delightful stanzas in Greek poetry. XtPavcbSrig, a word first attested in Philostratus’ writings, is redolent of Oriental fragrances.

    ¹²⁵ Pitture V, C. del Fauno, VI 12, 2, p. 38; MN Naples 27707.

    ¹²⁶    No, this is not the Red Sea nor are these inhabitants of India, but Ethiopians and a Greek man in Ethiopia, trans. A. Fairbanks.

    ¹²⁷    Cf. Schönberger’s note: “Die Handlung jedoch spielt am Atlantischen Ozean” etc. Schönberger 1968, p. 371.

    ¹²⁸ ’AiOioy, Aethiops as an equivalent of peXag, niger, Snowden 1970, p. 4.

    ¹²⁹ Living Races 2, p. 411.

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     The range of different, equally successful rival patterns for the liberation of Andromeda motif is extensive. Its literary sources only in part overlap with the archaeological evidence. On the other hand, there are literary subjects which remain so far unattested by the extant works of art. The Orientalist current is still discernible in the Attic vase painting of the 5,h century BC. It was stimulated, as we have seen, by the stage productions of Sophocles and Euripides. If looked at from the perspective of Greek art in general, this local Attic phenomenon seems quite rare. The Andromedan iconography was almost exclusively Classical in form, as evidenced by the Pompeian paintings, which inherited the traditions of Greek easel painting, and by the mosaics and gems. The Philostratean Andromeda (Imag. I, 29) appears to have been a unique Orientalist painting - a markedly eclectic work by a late mannerist who shared the Hellenistic artists’ feeling for exoticism. A Classicist tendency dates the tableau to the 2ⁿd-1st century BC, but equally well it might have been a later work by an artist of the Imperial era. Its experimental composition -Perseus lying on the ground, Eros liberating Andromeda and a group of Africans with gifts - was bizarre and eventually proved unsuccessful. Such a design was of little use as a model for minor artefacts like lamps or gems. Its failure is even better visible if compared with the success of the Capitoline type (Pl. LXIII) or the scheme with Perseus and Andromeda sitting beside one another and contemplating the Gorgon’s head (Pl. XXVI). Both of these were transferred to different media, which may be regarded as a proof of their commercial success. All the winners (the Capitoline type, the seated couple, and the Pelusiac type) had originated from painters’ ateliers. In general the liberation of Andromeda theme proved an undying inspiration for artists. It lived through the fall of paganism and survived the political and cultural catastrophe of the Greek Orient. It has been returning again and again over the centuries in the Western art, each time as fresh as ever, every time attractive as if just invented. Its new creative versions are remarkable for something which make them unforgettable once seen. Whether it is a dramatic bronze relief by Cellini with the grimacing face of Perseus running towards Andromeda, in a work full of passion and dynamism, or Bocklin’s Angelika guarded by a dragon, on a canvas pervaded by an intriguing nervous tension highlighted by satirical overtones that make it almost a kitsch, or Burne-Jones’ Andromeda pictured from her back in a relaxed upright position, looking at Perseus entangled in the coils of the dragon - all the modern scions of the Andromeda myth share the quality of memorability with their ancient predecessors.

The African Adventures of Heracles


Heracles and Antaeus.

     The myth of Heracles and Antaeus immediately calls to mind a bronze group by Antonio del Pallaiuolo in the Museo Bargello, with a slender and graceful Heracles in the Florentine Renaissance style. Pallaiuolo leaves so deep an impression on our imagination that we are inclined to see the struggle between the two great athletes of Antiquity through his Renaissance sensibility.¹

     Antaeus was a giant-king of Libya, a strong and skilled wrestler, and son of Poseidon and Gaia. He would challenge his guests to fight in the arena, and killed them in his crushing grip. Then he put up the skulls of his victims as ornaments in the temple of his divine father. There was a painting in the Neapolitan gallery of Philostratus the Elder showing the fight between the giant Phorbas and Apollo {Imag. II, 19). Phorbas, King of the Phlegyans, shared Antaeus’ barbaric habit. “The heads (of his victims) hang dank from the branches, and some you see are withered and others fresh, while others have shrunken to bare skulls,” {Imag. Il 19, 2 - trans. A. Fairbanks), writes Philostratus the Elder with a symptomatic sense of the macabre looming in the paintings he liked best {Imag. I 18; II 6; II 10; Il 23; II 25). Antaeus happened to challenge Heracles, who was once wandering from the Garden of the Hesperides to the Temple of Zeus in the Oasis of Siwa, the famous Classical Ammonium, which other claimants of divine parentage such as Perseus or Alexander the Great also frequented. Despite the assistance received from Gaia, Antaeus breathed his last in Heracles’ iron grip. The winner married his dead rival’s wife Tinge, who subsequently bore him a son, Sophax. Heracles’ grandson from this union, Diodorus, became the founder of the Mauretanian dynasty. Sertorius had an opportunity to carry out his own autopsy of Antaeus’ skeleton dug out from under the giant’s tumulus in the region of Tingis (Iphinoe). The skeleton measured nearly 18 metres (Plut. Sert. 9). The ancient writers argued as regards the exact location of the combat, identifying the place of the drama at various sites in Northern Africa, on territories stretching from Kyrene, (present-day North-Eastern Libya), through Utica in Tunisia, to Tangier (Tingis/ Iphinoe) in Morocco.²


    ¹   Cf. a drawing from the Kunsthalle in Karlsruhe by Moritz von Schwind, Schönberger 1968, 2, 21b, p. 519.

    ²    The story was related with different details by a number of ancient writers: Pind. 1 4, 52-54; Schol. Pind. I 4, 87-92, ed. Drachmann III, pp. 235-6; Apollod. II 5, 11; Diod. 14, 17; Lucan 4, 589-660; Hyg. Fab. 31; Stat. Theb. 6, 893-896; Pomp. Mela I 5, 25-26; 3, 10, 105-106; Plin. HN V 8; Graves 133 g, h, i, j; Olmos, Balmaseda, L1MC I, 1, p. 800 f.; Roscher s.v. Antaios; K. Wernicke, Antaios, in: RE 1, Sp. 2342, 6 ff.

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     The literary tradition has handed down to us a repository of widely scattered items of information about artworks in sculpture or painting by the most venerated masters of Classical Antiquity on the subject of the deadly wrestling match of these two muscle-men. Strabo testified to the existence of a sculpted group by Lysippus in Alytsya, Acarnania. The wrestler there was a component part of the dodecathlos collection (Strabo 10, 2, 21)? Pausanias saw an Antaeus group in Thebes, in the Labours of Heracles cycle carved by Praxiteles, and located ev Totq aETotg of the Heracleion (Descr. 9, 11,6). Pausanias seems to have been intrigued by the fact that Praxiteles replaced the canonical subjects of the Stymphalian Birds and the Augean Stable by Antaeus. In his description of the metopes in the Temple of Zeus at Olympus Pausanias on his part omitted Kerberos (Descr. 5, 10, 9). “First cast out the beam out of thine own eye” (Math.7, 5).

     The archaeological evidence offers us quite a different view. In this area Antaeus appears to have been well established within the dodecathlos cycles, as attested by numerous antiquities like the oval medallion within the frame of the triclinium mosaic in the Maison £ l’apside, in Volubilis, Africa,* ⁴ a relief on a decorative projection of the pilaster in the Severan Basilica of Leptis Magna,⁵ and a partly preserved sarcophagus relief in the Museum of Thespiae.⁶ *

     Unfortunately we know next to nothing about the form of the Praxitelean group fashioned in marble and located in the pediment of the Heracleion of Thebes. But as regards the bronze cast by Lysippus, we can identify it in all likelihood as one of the most popular ancient groups of wrestlers, replicas of which are treasured by several art collections. The still impressive, though intensively restored marble athletes from the Palazzo Pitti have become the most popular of them? The Pitti wrestlers feature the common characteristics shared by all the replicas of the original presumably by Lysippus. The statuary shows Antaeus lifted up into the air by Heracles, who is standing behind his antagonist and grasping him from the back so forcefully that the giant’s body is bent in half. Antaeus looks hopelessly down to his mother as if imploring her help. One can identify the same pattern in the mosaic of Avenches, Switzerland, with the powerful, muscular bodies of the wrestlers;⁸ and similarly on the Tarentine silver diobolos dated 302-228 BC, which still has something of the air of a work in bronze despite its miniature scale;⁹ or in the bas-relief from the Basilica in Leptis Magna;¹⁰ or in the silver applique


    J Overbeck 1477; cf. the dodecathlos in AP XVI 90, 91,96, 97-99; XVII 198.

    ⁴ Antaios, L1MC I, 1, no 42, p. 805.

    ⁵ Ibid, no 46, p. 806; ibid. fig.46 1, 2

    ⁶ A drawing represented in Antaios, L1MC I, 1, p. 806.

    ’ Ibid., no 60, p. 808; fig. 60, ibid. 2.

    ' Ibid., 1, no 40, p. 805; ibid. 2, fig. 40.

    ’ Ibid. 1, no 37; ibid. 2, fig. 37; cf. Schwarz 1971, p. 104, n. 279.

    ¹⁰ Antaios, LIMC I, 1, no 46; ibid. 2, fig. 46.

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from the British Museum.¹¹ Mobius first spotted this similarity with the Pitti wrestlers, which in his view are a marble copy of the bronze original by Lysippus, and settled a date of the copy for c. 200 BC.¹² And it was undoubtedly this group which aroused such admiration from one of the anonymous epigrammatists of the Palatine Anthology. Unfortunately for us archaeologists, however, the unnamed poet presented only a blurred vision of the Lysippean bronze, finding pleasure in a chain of standard rhetorical affectations. We can only learn from him that Antaeus’ body was bent in two (I5vœ0£iç) (AP XVI, 97).¹³

     Vitry observed that as many as 16 epigrams in the AP describe the works of art showing the Herculean Labours, with different scenes from the dodecathlos not excluding Antaeus.¹⁴ Heracles was always one of the central figures of the Classical art and literature. He was in the limelight at Pompeii. Vitry comments: “Nous voyons au moins six des tableaux de Philostrate consacrés à la légende d’Héracles dont un le représente avec Antée. C’était un sujet fort répandu à toutes les époques de l’art grec, mais sa vogue à l’époque alexandrine s’explique par ce fait que tandis qu’Aphrodite incarnait la beauté féminine ideale, Apollon et Dionysos, la beauté masculine adolescente, Héraclès était resté à peu près le seul représentant de la véritable force virile et les artistes qui aimaient à faire jouer les muscles et saillir les mouvements violents, se rejetaient toujours sur lui.”¹⁵

     Pliny the Elder registered a painting by Apelles showing Heracles and Antaeus (HN 35,93). Was this tableau in any way reflected in the Antaeus ecphrasis by Philostratus the Elder (Imag. II, 21)? The position of the wrestlers’ bodies as described in the ecphrasis corresponds with that in the bronze sculpture by Lysippus (the Hochhebetypus of the Pitti wrestlers).¹⁶ In a similar way to the Pitti marble statuary, so impressive for its massive tension and air of monumentality, the Philostratean Heracles “throws his opponent in wrestling above the earth” (KaraJtaXaíei ôè aùrôv avœ Tqç yfjç - Imag. 1121, 5). The Philostratean Heracles, too, “caught Antaeus by the middle just above the waist, where the ribs are,”


    " Ibid. 1, no 54; ibid. 2, fig. 54; cf. J. Toynbee, Art in Britain under the Romans, 1964, p. 304, dated 2"d/3rd century AD; other replicas of the Lysippean group: a relief on the glass cup, Trier, 4,h century AD, LIMC I, 1, no 43, ibid. 2, fig. 43; on the right side of the frontal slab of the sarcophagus in the Museo delle Terme, with representation of Gaia, LIMC 1,1, no 47, ibid. 2, fig. 47; a republican gem, Munich, LIMC I, 1, no 51b, ibid. 2, fig. 51b; the coins of Alexandria, Antoninus Pius: BMC Alexandria 123, 1054, pl. VI 188; Tarsus, Caracalla: BMC Cilicia 195 no 184, pl. 35, 5.

     ¹² Möbius 1970; Olmos, Balmaseda LIMC I, 1, p. 808.

     ¹³ An archaeological commentary to AP XVI, 97, in Schwarz 1971, pp. 103-106.

     ¹⁴ Vitry 1894, p. 340.

     ¹⁵ Ibid.

     ¹⁶    Hebert 1983, p. 94: “ein Epigram auf eine bronze Ringergruppe von Herakles und Antaios lässt in seiner flüchtigen Beschreibung keine Rekonstruktion des Kunstwerkes zu, es wird sich aber um die häufigste Darstellungsart dieses mythischen Kampfes, den Hochhebetypus, gehandelt haben, der auch dem bei Philostrat beschriebenen Gemälde zugrunde liegt.”

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which is exactly paralleled by the Pitti athletes. In consequence of this rear tackle, Heracles “set him (Antaeus) upright on his thigh still gripping his arms about him”. The painted Antaeus is “groaning and looking to the earth, who does not help him” (ibid.).

     It was a customary in Classical art for the most prominent artists to compete with one another in the treatment of the same subject in different media. Aphrodite Anadyomene by Praxiteles was a contender of Apelles’ painted image of Venus. Both artefacts would continue to command admiration for many centuries.¹⁷ Similarly Lysippus and Apelles rivalled each other in their likenesses of Alexander the Great.¹⁸ The most prominent masters of the epoch entered the lists to fight for the superiority of their art, whether sculpture or painting, in yet another instance of the aemulatio symptomatic of the Classical civilization. We cannot be surprised, then, that Antaeus too had his Praxitelean, Lysippean and Apellian versions.

     However, the question remains whether the painting described by Philostratus referred in any way to Apelles’ treatment of the same subject. It is tempting to give an affirmative answer and infer that this artefact might have been the work of an academic copyist, possibly even in Severan times, which cannot be excluded; and that the copyist had before his eyes a Hellenistic master copy or a mannerist work. There are, however, serious objections to such a solution. It is difficult to believe that two contemporary geniuses of art might have been imitating each other’s compositions even using different media of expression. We can give an answer of “yes” to replicating subject, but “no” to form. It seems self-explanatory that Apelles, one of the greatest idealists in art history, was devoted to his indefatigable search for more and more harmonious, soft and perfect forms. It is no coincidence, then, that Apelles turned out to be one of the principal models in painting for the masters of the Florentine Renaissance. But the Antaeus by the anonymous painter from the Neapolitan art gallery had ridiculously distorted, overgrown and unnaturally swollen limbs which emphasized his primitivism. Antaeus in the Philostratean tableau was monstrously ugly, almost animal-like. Ugliness, monstrosity, deformation, and the pathology of the human body were widely and courageously studied by the Hellenistic artists. Perhaps one of them modelled his picture on the pattern created by one of the most influential artists of the Hellenistic age - Lysippus. His repainted original or its later copy could have been purchased for the Neapolitan art collection studied by Philostratus the Elder.

     I agree with Brunn and Gstader that the meeting scene of the heroes and their preparation for the fight described by the rhetorician served only as a literary


    ¹⁷    Luc. Imag., id. Amores 13; Aphrodite of Cnidos: AP XVI 159, 160-163, 165-170; Aphrodite Anadyomene of Apelles: AP XVI 178, 179, 181, 182.

    ¹⁸ The portraits of Alexander in the AP: XVI 119-122; Plin. HN 35, 92-94 (by Apelles).

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introduction to the scene of the wrestling itself presented in colour on wood. The centrally positioned symplegma occupied most of the surface.¹⁹ Narrative painting was certainly not unknown to Hellenic art, as attested by the Flavian fresco copy in the House of Sacerdos Amandus (I, 7, 7 - Pl. XXII), on which the central scene, the liberation of Andromeda, is neighboured by a minor scene on its right showing Perseus in front of Cepheus. On another tableau in the same House the viewer can see the fall of Icarus in the upper part of the picture, and his corpse washed ashore by the waves in the lower part of the fresco.²⁰ “A l’étendue spatiale s’ajoute donc ici également l’étendue temporelle, le récit continu qui accentue le sens de l’événement, comme dans une quinzaine d’autres tableaux de cette tendence,” Schefold comments upon this style in his unsurpassed book on Classical painting.²¹ Weicker, Nemitz and Matz argue for a narrative interpretation of the Phi-lostratean painting,²² which in their view can be explained by analogy with the narrative composition which adorned the Antaeus sarcophagus in the Museo del le Terme. Their point of view has gained a new popularity as attested by the work of Cammerer and others who are strongly inclined to recognize the fashionable kontinuierender Stil of the artistic ateliers of Late Antiquity and still extant mostly on the sarcophagi, as a key factor for the explanation of the rhetorical narrative technique employed by Philostratus the Elder and also of the style of the paintings from the Neapolitan gallery of his Imagines.²³

     In fact it is not always easy to decide about the actual content of a painting documented by literary sources. We are not infrequently compelled to rely on our intuition and erudition, which may, however, suggest images amounting to no more than figments of our imagination. Pausanias tells us about a painting by Micon, put on display in the Athenian Theseion (1, 17, 3). The picture was substantially damaged in the course of centuries and furthermore, never actually completed by the old master. As a result, Pausanias continues, observers stop before it in confusion since they cannot properly read its subject. At this point of his description, in accordance with the usual rhetorical manner manifest also in Philostra-tus’ Imagines, Pausanias engages in telling us the story of the myth - sequence by sequence. We learn about Minos falling in love with Periboia, her defence by Theseus on board a ship, their subsequent quarrels sparked by Minos’ provocation, then about Theseus being received in audience by Amphitrite in the depths of the sea, and finally about his return to the ship with Minos’ ring and a garland from the Queen of the Seas. In this way we gradually learn the sequence of events, but at the same time we become more and more confused, exactly like the learned


    ¹⁹ Brunn 1861-1867, p. 242; Gstader 1940, 72 f.; Schönberger 1968, p. 444 f.

    ²⁰ Schefold 1972, pp. 158 ff., PI. 28, 29.

    ²¹ Ibid. p. 159.

    ²² Nemitz 1 875, p. 27; Matz 1867, p. 49 f.

    ²¹ Pcrnice, Gross 1969, p. 440 f.

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tourists on their sightseeing tour in Athens, which brought them one day to the Theseion, since we are unable to decide ultimately what the subject was of the work of art by the renowned old master. We are helpless before Pausanias’ simple and seemingly all-too-clear Mîkcdv où tôv itàvta Eypaye Xôyov (Descr. 1, 17, 3). Was it a narrative painting with one or two scenes missing? Or perhaps an unfinished and partly destroyed tableau with one central scene? Here our imagination reminds us of a well-known image from the tondo of a roughly contemporary, though chronologically earlier, Athenian red-figured phiale with Theseus before Amphitrite, by the Panaitios Painter. Its charming composition with finely drawn figures shows signs of readjustment of the tondo requirements adapted from a square arrangement. A painting on wood can be inferred as the influence stimulating the vase painter, who apparently drew inspiration from a larger picture on wood, an older, Late Archaic version of Micon’s tableau.²⁴ The problem of progressing decay and destruction of the painted panels is also reflected in the epigram by Pollianus, a poet of Hadrian’s time, who praised a painting of the dying Polyxena, which preserved its original colourism since it has never been repainted (AP XVI, 150). We also learn about a partial decay and subsequent repainting of Apelles’ Aphrodite Anady-omene which was commissioned by Nero to Dorotheus (HN 35, 91).

     The detail with Hermes carrying a wreath of victory to crown the hero on the Philostratean Antaeus is a conventional motif in view of the Antaeus myth as well as the Classical iconographie conventions. In the Nicolaus ecphrasis we read that Heracles wrestling with Antaeus wore a wreath (Lib. Progymn. 496, 3).²⁵ On the above-mentioned painting from the Pompeian Basilica, Diana hovering in the air assists the triumphant Theseus, just as Hermes descending from heaven does on the painting described by Philostratus. In a similar way a baby Heracles throttling the snakes is accompanied by the Eagle of Zeus.

     In his Progymnasmata Libanius described a group of wrestlers, Heracles and Antaeus {Progymn. 13, 492-495). The group’s bizarre composition, barely conceivable in marble, allows for the supposition that it had originally been cast in bronze.²⁶ Libanius’ description is so detailed that in points it may be hard for the reader to imagine what he actually had in mind. The ecphrasis gradually unveils before our eyes a symplegma of the two fighting athletes. Heracles is grasping his adversary with both his arms clasped around Antaeus’ body, which was sticking up above Heracles’ head in an upside-down position. His widely outstretched legs are waving hopelessly in the air. Bergstedt made a discovery that a little bronze


    ²⁴  Bernhard 1975, p. 160, fig. 59; dated c. 500-490 BC, Louvre G104. The Theseion was raised c. 474 BC, after Kimon had discovered the sacred relics of Theseus on the Island of Skyros and sent them to Athens.

    ²⁵   A wreath between the herm of Heracles and the wrestlers on the bronze vase in the Cabinet des Médaillés, LIMC I 1,7 4, p. 809; Heracles on the mosaic of Avenches, LIMC I 2, 40.

    ²⁶ Hebert 1983, p. 71.

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work in the Collection d’Arleux in Paris was a minor replica of the original bronze group described by Libanius.²⁷ A slightly larger set of bronze figurines of wrestlers in the National Museum of Athens with a bearded Heracles remarkable for his individualized face, offers an even more exact parallel to Libanius’ group.²⁸ Kiinzl dated this bronze model as the 2ⁿd half of the 3rd century BC.²⁹ All in all, no-one can now reasonably claim that Libanius’ ecphrasis was merely a literary fiction. He must have observed a real bronze group of wrestlers from the Late Hellenistic period.³⁰

     Libanius, or more likely Nicolaus, whose ecphrasis was inserted in the Pro-gymnasmata by Libanius, described yet another, but this time different sympleg-ma of Heracles and Antaeus (Progymn. 14,496-498). This author saw a spectacular bronze (ev xaXKCp) group of wrestlers out in a square in an unnamed city. In this composition Heracles was standing behind Antaeus, twisting his antagonist’s right arm back and upwards in a nelson hold and simultaneously strongly pressing Antaeus’ head down to the ground with his left hand. In consequence Antaeus was bent double, still standing on the ground with his left foot, but his right leg lifted up. Antaeus was making desperate efforts to free himself of Heracles’ masterly tackle and to reach Heracles’ chest with his free left hand. The second group more successfully accentuated the drama of the fatal contest than the first. The deadly wrestling match seemed still to be lying in the lap of the gods. Still resting his foot on the ground and drawing new power from his mother Earth, Antaeus still seemed ultimately invincible. However the observer could already sense the passion of defeat and dying incorporated in the athlete’s bronze body. The son of Zeus would gradually prevail over the son of the Earth {Progymn. 14, 6). In a desperate effort Antaeus would once again try to fill his lungs against the crushing block applied by his adversary, his mouth opened (ibid. 10), his utter fall imminent (ibid.).

     Some museums number among their antiquities little bronzes corresponding more or less to the Mariemont Type. They were once compiled by Kiinzl (Pl. XXXII).³¹ They actually match even the minor details of the literary description. “Nach dieser Beschreibung der Bronzegruppen in Statuettenformat und Heran-


    ²⁷ Bergstedt 1881, p. 75; Hebert 1983, p. 71, Abb. 6.

    ²⁸     Kiinzl 1968, p. 114, n. 2, Abb. 16; Hebert 1983, Abb. 7; the group is also recognizable on the vase from the Cabinet des Médaillés, Hebert 1983, Abb. 7, ora more complete drawing in Antaios, LIMC I 1, p. 809; a gem in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, Hebert 1983, Abb. 9, dated Is' century AD, id. P. 73.

    ²⁹ Hebert 1983, p. 75.

       Ibid. p. 76.

    ¹¹ Kiinzl 1968, p. 56 ff.; the Mariemont Bronze, Hebert 1983, Abb. 10; Kiinzl, Abb. 5; LIMC I l,no75, ibid. 2, 75; the Paris group, Hebert 1983, Abb. 11-12; Kiinzl 1968, no 2; the wrestlers from London, Kiinzl no 3; N. Gardiner, Athletics from the Ancient World, 1975, pp. 218 f. no 197; the bronze from Lyons, Hebert 1983, Abb. 13-15 (Hebert’s finding added to the collection of Kiinzl 1968, ibid. p. 90).

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ziehen der entsprechenden Stellen des Textes kann kein Zweifel bestehen, daß die Kleinbronzen und die Ekphrasis auf dasselbe Original zurückgehen, was bislang in der archäologischen Forschung unbeachtet geblieben ist. Diese Übereinstimmung zwischen literarischer Überlieferung und monumentalem Befund stützt die Glaubwürdigkeit der ‘rhetorischen Kunstbeschreibung’ entscheidend und lässt neue Erkentnisse in Bezug auf die Vorgangsweise des Beschreibens gewinnen,” Hebert aptly concludes.³² The description of the artful grip employed by Heracles would have been hard to follow or even unclear in places, if had it not been illustrated by the bronze figurines. The work of the Austrian archaeologist made clear some doubtful places in the ecphrasis.³³ We can settle on a 3rd-century BC date for the bronze original from which the minor Mariemont groups were derived (Pl. XXXII).³⁴ The original cast by an unknown Hellenistic master must have survived until the time of Libanius, and if we accept Nicolaus’ authorship of Ecphrasis 14 in Libanius’ Progymnasmata, for even longer.

     The picture from Philostratus’ painting gallery of Naples which we have just unfolded belongs to the literary art history. The literary description leaves us sometimes uncertain in view of its ephemeral shapes which not infrequently cannot be corroborated by material findings. Olmos and Balmaseda offered us a different insight into the same subject - a synthetic overview of the extant antiquities.³⁵ A substantial part of the adduced images of the Antaeus-Heracles fight originate from the Late Archaic and almost exclusively Athenian vase painting, their dominant composition depicting the wrestlers touching the ground.³⁶ In the 490’s BC the subject disappeared from the Athenian painted pottery.³⁷ The design with Antaeus lifted up by Hercules, so well attested by the literary history of art, came into existence only in the 4lh century BC as confirmed by numismatic sources.³⁸ The Roman art brought a renewed interest in the Antaeus and Heracles motif as shown by their numerous images on coins, gems, mosaics and sarcophagi of the Imperial period.³⁹

    ³² Hebert 1983, p. 90 f.

    ” 6 8e 5t| Xatoq vjtoPePA.r]Tai pev ton; ’Avraiov pTipotq (497/14) takes on sense when compared with any of the adduced bronzes.

    ³⁴    Hebert 1983, p. 93, 2ⁿd half of the 3rd century BC; cf. ibid. n. 212, p. 274; Lippold, between 240-200 BC; Charbonneaux, 3rd century BC; Leveque-Donnay, the end of the 3rd century BC; Kiinzl, the 2ⁿd quarter of the 3rd century BC.

    ³⁵    Antaios, LIMC 1, cf. Brommer 1973, pp. 25-27: a catalogue of Greek vase paintings; Brommer 1971, a catalogue of sculptures, reliefs, mosiacs, bronze works, gems and coins, pp. 25-28; Olmos, Balmaseda did not notice a relation between the ecphrasis of Libanius (their no 64) and the Mariemont bronze (their no 78); similarly they did not connect Libanius’ ecphrasis 13 (Forster VIII 492-494) with the relief on the bronze vase in Paris (their no 74).

     ³⁶ Antaios, LIMC 1, 1, 1 -29; ibid. 2, figs. 1 -29.

     ³⁷ Ibid. 1, p. 811.

     ³" Ibid. 2, fig. 37.

    ³⁹ Ibid. 1, p. 81, cf. n. 31; Brommer 1971, pp. 25-28.

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     There is a group of the most impressive antiquities of the Imperial era which coincide almost exactly with the biography of Philostratus the Elder. The popularity of this subject in the Antonine and Severan periods justifies the purchase of the particular work in question, the objective being to enrich the private Neapolitan art museum. The Avenches mosaic was made in the 3rd century AD (Pl. XXXI).⁴⁰ The crude, block-form and monstrous, almost animal bodies of the pugilist which manifest a bare, brutal, irresistible and primitive force immediately call to mind the athletes from the mosaics once in the Baths of Caracalla in Rome. Now these mosaics are on show in the Museo Gregoriano Profano, one of the most impressive museums I have ever visited, where antiquities are arranged in an ultramodern space populated by forms shaped in steel, concrete and wood. The avant-garde setting of the Gregoriano Profano is only one more proof among many others of the sublime and sophisticated tastes of Pope Paul VI, one of the most innovative and sensitive art collectors and connoisseurs, a true arbiter of taste in the second half of the 20lh century.

     Heracles was always popular in the Imperial propaganda. In the motif of Pindar Antaeus seemed well suited to the African origins of Septimius Severus and his dynasty. This did not pass unnoticed by the official art. “Sur les monnaies que nous trouvons d’une manière siginificative dans les régions orientales de l’Empire, Héraclès incarne l’empereur vanqueur et doté d’une grande puissance.”⁴¹ Consequently we can safely attribute a Severan date to the wrestlers of Avenches, by analogy with the athletes on the large-scale mosaics once on the floors in the Baths of Caracalla in Rome. So conspicuous for their studied style of brutality and primitivism as well as for size, they could not have failed to stir the imagination of the thousands who visited the Baths. The already-mentioned pilaster relief in the Basilica of Leptis Magna was engraved in the early 3rd century AD.⁴² Similarly the silver tondo of Capheaton in England can be dated around the turn of the 2ⁿd/3rd century AD.⁴³ The Antaeus sarcophagus in the Museo delle Terme also originated in the Severan ateliers.⁴⁴ All these images allude to the Pitti paradigm, which was apparently a copy of the original bronze cast by Lysippus, one of the most revered artists for the Hellenistic masters.

     In what way are the images of the Orient reflected in the Antaeus story? In his 4lh Isthmian Ode composed in honour of Melissus of Thebes, winner of a first


    ⁴⁰   LIMC 1, 1, no 40, ibid. 2, fig. 40; W. Deonna, L'art romain en Suisse, 1942, pl. 56; Gonze-bach 1961, pls. 76-77.

    ⁴¹ Olmos, Balmaseda, LIMC I, 1, p. 811.

    ⁴²    Antaios LIMC 1, 1, no 46, ibid. 2, fig. 46; M. Floriani Squarciapino, Sculture del faro Severiano di Leptis Magna, 1974, p. 144, pl. 54.

    ⁴⁵   Antaios LIMC 1, 1, no 54, ibid. 2, fig. 54; J. M. Toynbee, Art in Britain under the Romans, 1964, p. 304.

    ⁴⁴ Antaios LIMC I, 1, no 47, ibid. 2, fir. 47.

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prize in wrestling championships, Pindar compared his victory with an air of pathetic exaggeration to the triumph of Heracles over Antaeus. As with Heracles, “fate had not allotted him the stature of an Orion, but he was mean to look upon, though heavy to grapple with his strength” (trans. J. Sandys). In his lofty verse Pindar, one of the Classical authors most studied and admired by the Second Sophistic Movement and Philostratus the Elder himself, confronted the Greek hero “short in stature but in soul unflinching” with the Libyan savage who “roofed Poseidon’s temple with the skulls of strangers” (vv. 55-56). This antithesis corresponds well with one of the subjects depicted by Philostratus the Elder (Jmag. II, 19). This painting portrayed Apollo and Phorbas, King of the Phlegyans. According to Philostratus* description the artist counterposed two contrasting forces: the young Greek’s skill and power against the brutal force of primitivism. “Rays of light rise from about Apollo’s brow and his cheek emits a smile.” (Jmag. II, 19, 3). Phorbas “is already stretched on the ground,” “the blood gushes forth from his temple”. TeypanTai be cbpog Kai aixbbTig to eiboq (he is depicted as a savage and of swine-like features). Both Antaeus and Phorbas used to cut off the heads of their defeated victims. These heads “hang dank from the branches, and some you see, are withered and others fresh, while others have shrunken to bare skulls; and they grin and seem to lament as the wind blows on them” (Imag. Il, 19, 2 - trans. A. Fairbanks). In this way Philostratus the Elder described one of his favourite paintings, remarkable for its mannerist tone of the macabre. We know an existing painting gallery from the Flavian period, namely the gallery in the House of the Vetti family who like Philostratus appreciated gloomy styles and dark dispositions. It is intriguing whether such a choice of paintings was inspired in the rich Pompeian owners or in the Severan aristocracy and contemporary intellectuals by their mannerist predilections for insane passions, or by the very substance of the Hellenic mythology with its stories of cruelty, jealousy, violence and vendetta. However, if we set side by side the Olympian metope picturing Heracles taming the mares of Diomedes with the corresponding subject on the painting documented in Philostratus’ Imagines, with its “half-eaten body of Abderus, which Heracles has snatched from the mares . . . the portions that are left . . . still beautiful . . . lying on the lion’s skin,” (trans. A. Fairbanks) we can easily observe that it was not so much the subject as its treatment that proved decisive.

     The scholiast to Pindar mentioned Antaeus’ dvavOpconia and aoePeta (inhumanity and impiety).⁴⁵ This image of the non-Greek neighbouring peoples had already been deeply rooted in the Greek mentality for a long time in fact. It is sufficient to adduce a similar picture of the Cyclops (Od. 9, 106 ff.) or the Laes-trigonians, who in the words of Homer were ovk dvbpeooiv eoiKOTeg, akka riyaotv (Od. 10, 120). In Diodorus we come upon the usual Homeric characteristic of Antaeus as one of the napavopot (the lawless). The myth of Antaeus may

    ⁴⁵ Ed. Drachmann III, pp. 235-236; Olmos, Balmaseda, Antaios LIMC 1, 1, p. 801.

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have historical grounds as a mythical reflection of the adventurous colonization period during which the Therans subdued Kyrene. We know the story from a long narrative in Herodotus (4, 156 ff.).⁴⁶ ⁴⁷ The Greeks conceptualized this conflict as a confrontation between Hellenic civilization and African barbarity. In their ex-clusivist attitude they were no different from many European scholars of the 19Ih and early 20lh century, the period of the highest growth of European colonialism, which left its impression on the works of the great English historian William Tarn. “The old colonial British empire view (and that of German scholars), encapsulated in the work of William Tarn,... attributed to the Hellenistic kings an almost missionary role as disseminators of Hellenism .... In his view, Hellenism is a political mechanism for unifying the discrete, as well as being a blessing,” wrote Sherwin-White and Kuhrt in their recent illuminating book From Samarkhand to Sardis*¹ Klügmann delineated the mythological portrait of Antaeus in a similar way, as “eine Repräsentation des lybischen Barbarismus” (vis consilii expers), and the triumph of Heracles as “der Sieg des Hellentums und das Eindringen seiner Kultur in Libyen.”⁴⁸

      Pirdar’s chromatic spectrum was wider. In his 9,h Pythian Ode he tells us about the land of Libya in the colours of a romantic love affair between Apollo and the nymph Kyrene (vv. 5-70). In one of the most charming stories of his Odes he drew a picture of Libya as “a land rich in flocks and fruits” (vv. 6-7) (noX.vp.TiXo'u // Kai KoKuKapnoTaxa^ ... xOóvog), and “the land of fair women” (KaXXiyúvaiKt náxpa) (v. 74). The African scenery is also visible in the Philostratean ecphrasis: Kai AtßvTi taita (Imag. II, 21, 1). This is Libya, and Antaeus is African. He is black (pÉXag) (Imag. II, 21,4), and “resembles some wild beast, being almost as broad as he is tall, and his neck is attached to the shoulders in such wise that most of the latter belongs to the neck, and the arm is as big around as are the shoulders” (ibid.). One of the Archaic vase painters deliberately emphasized the monstrosity of Antaeus’ face.⁴⁹ ⁵⁰ Conventional elements of the African landscape materialized in many works of Greek and Roman art. The observer, if attentive, could catch a glimpse of KÓvig (sand -Imag. II, 21, 1). We can see palm trees behind Heracles and Antaeus engaged in fighting on an Attic oinochoe.™ Egypt remained in fashion for a couple of centuries among


     ⁴⁶   Cyrene was founded c. 630 BC. Herodotus tells us a dramatic story of a major military catastrophe sustained by the Cyrenian Greeks under the command of Arcesilaus II (c. 570-550 BC), when some seven thousand hoplites met their death in a battle with the indigenous people (Hdt. 4, 160).

     ⁴⁷ S. Sherwin-White, A. Kuhrt 1993, p. 186.

     ⁴" A. Kliigmann, in: Roscher 1, 1, s.v. Antaios, cc. 362-364; Followed by Olmos, Balmaseda LIMC I, 1.

     ⁴⁹   On the oinochoe from Stanford, Antaios, LIMC I, 1, 13, ibid. 2, fig. 13, dated c. 500-480 BC; cf. the famous beaker painted by Euphronios, Louvre, LIMC I, 1, no 24, ibid. 2, fig. 24, c. 515-500 BC.

     ⁵⁰ A black-figured oinochoe, Munich, c. 500-480 BC, Antaios, LIMC I, 1, no 8, ibid. 2, fig. 8.

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the Greeks and Romans during the Late Hellenistic and Early Imperial period. It is sufficient to refer to the great mosaic of Palaestrina, the Egyptianizing style in the wall decoration in the Campanian cities, the decoration of the Roman Iseum and Serapeum or the imitation of Egyptian antiquities in Tivoli with “the pyramids” and the elegant architecture of its Canopus.⁵¹ In his description of the background behind the wrestling athletes Philostratus drew our attention to “the stelae and incised letters” (ibid. 2 - OTfjXai Kai KoiXa ypamiaTa). In all likelihood Philostratus had in mind the graves of Antaeus’ victims. However the slabs with inscribed characters, exotic and undecipherable and hence remembered by Philostratus, may also call to memory an impressive passage from the Latin Asclepius, the Egyptian Apocalypse dated 3rd century AD, in which the letters incised in stone were employed as a paradigm of Egypt. The solemn words of the Asclepius predict an imminent eclipse of Egypt, which once powerful and fertile will fall into utter oblivion. Solaque supererunt verba lapidibus incisa tuapia facta narrantibus,⁵² In its Egyptian version it is as follows: A.YCD CCyXC ^GNCDNG NG NGKCyXXe GTG NCynHpC (and your words are stones and are wonderful).⁵³

      To Libanius and Nicolaus, representatives of the Late Antique Classical revival, authors of the ecphraseis on two different bronze statuary groups of wrestlers, the subject appeared purely Classical. They did not introduce any reference to the African setting or monstrous qualities of Antaeus. Their Antaeus and Heracles were heroes of divine descent, both of them figures taken from the Greek mythology. The purity of Classical art forms caused confusion in some areas of the Heracles-Antaeus iconography as to their identification as such. In consequence Heracles and Antaeus may sometimes be wrongly classified as a group of pan-cratists, sportsmen, with no mythological meaning to them.⁵⁴

      The Antaeus painting must have been acquired for the art gallery on account of the particular thematic cycle and the architecture of the gallery as a whole. The painting had its individual setting within the frame of the pinacotheca, in relation to the other works of art. This situation can naturally add new meaning to the picture. In the rooms of the gallery a Greek-Oriental student might have been struck by the number of Asian and African motifs assembled together. As many as three tableaux out of a total of six put on display in the Room of Heracles ⁵⁵ told the story of the hero’s African adventures (Antaeus, Atlas, the Pygmies) (Pl. XXX11I). But in fact the African motifs played only a secondary role in Hera-


    ⁵¹ Roullet 1972; Morenz 1969; Malaise 1972; Turcan 1992.

    ⁵²   “And only words will survive inscribed on stones that narrate your pious accomplishments,” Nag Hammadi Codices V, 2-5 and VI, p. 420.

    ⁵³ Ibid. p. 420 f.

    ⁵³ Hebert 1983, p. 92.

    ⁵⁵ Lehmann-Hartleben 1941, pp. 21 ff., fig. 1.

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cíes’ mythical biography and consequently in the “Herculean” art repertory. The distinctive set of paintings in this room was remarkable for its, if I may be allowed to put it in this way, male and African dominant.

     The atmosphere changed in the Room of Aphrodite (Pl. XXXIV).⁵⁶ Here a guest to the gallery had an opportunity to study a set of paintings which portrayed Persian and Anatolian princesses: Pantheia, Rhodogoune (or Hippolite?), Cassandra. Even Kritheis, though she was of Greek descent, came from Asia Minor. Concluding, we might say this time that the Room of Aphrodite was signal for its female and Asian dominant.

     The highly individualized and calculated pattern which emerges from an intelligent analysis of the whole exhibition carried out by Lehmann-Hartleben revealed yet one more African wall in his Room of the Rivers,⁵⁷ with the tableau of Memnon, a hero who himself met with a wave of new popularity in connection with Septimius Severus’ Egyptian pleasure-tour, and subsequent restoration of the Vocal Colossus in Western Thebes. In the same hall the observer had the opportunity to see the painted version of the Personified Nile, whose impressive statue put on show in the spacious promenade of the Braccio Nuovo can never be forgotten by a guest to the Vatican Museums. We would be no more amazed if we discovered the Ethiopian Andromeda on the wall of Dionysus’ Room. Thus all the lines converge on two persons: Septimius Severus and Julia Domna. First, the male and African dominant is noticeable in the Room of Heracles: Septimius Severus. Interfecto Didio Iuliano Severus Africa oriundus imperium obtinuit: so began the Emperor’s biography by the Author of Historia Augusta, who could neither forget nor forgive Septimius Severus his African and Semitic origin. His resentment can still be felt despite the passage of almost two centuries (Sept. Sev. 1, 1). The Emperor’s sister, who came to Rome from Africa proved to be a disgrace to the royal couple, because she could hardly speak any Latin (ibid. 1,7). Born in Leptis Magna, Septimius never lost his African accent and sounded Semitic until the very end of his life (ibid. 19, 9 - Afrum quiddam usque ad senectutem sonans). Some of his official portraits were markedly African-styled. With the four corkscrew curls above his forehead, they were a clear allusion to the great image of Serapis.⁵⁸ Hannestad observed that this class of Severus’ portraits “indicate North African affinity.” As an illustration he cited the statue of the personified province of Mauretania.⁵⁹


    ⁵⁶ Ibid, pp.31 ff., fig. 3.

    ⁵⁷ Ibid. pp. 36 ff., fig. 5.

    ⁵⁸    Hannestad 1986, p. 260 f. with the NyCarlsberg Glyptothek portrait carved on the model of the Serapis type, fig. 159.

    ⁵⁹    Ibid. Mauretania, found in Hadrumetum, now in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, ibid. fig. 122, p. 261.

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     The archaeological excavations once carried out in Kyrene brought to light a relief which illustrated “Severus and his sons doing battle with barbarians.”⁶⁰ Unfortunately we know very little about Severus’ African campaign. The anonymous author of Historia Augusta handed down to us only that Severus Tripolim unde oriundus erat, contusis bellicosissimis gentibus serenissimam reddidit (ibid. 18, 3). Lehmann-Hartleben specified a Herculean {Imag. II, 20-25) and a Dionysiac {Imag. I, 14-31) cycle within the gallery. It is probably not incidental that Bacchus (Liber) and Hercules were the tutelary deities of Leptis Magna, Septimius Severus’ dii patrii.⁶¹ Their reliefed images adorned the walls of the basilica in Leptis Magna, founded by Septimius Severus and opened in AD 216.⁶² We may guess that Septimius Severus’ diipatrii were actually Tammuz and Melqart, identified with Dionysus and Heracles. We need not add that Heracles had always played an important role in the cult of the Roman Emperors.

     As we have already mentioned, the visitor to the gallery reflected again and again on the intriguing atmosphere of the macabre and the inclination for perverse passions lurking among the images on the walls. One possible explanation may lie beyond the scope of the art critic’s strictly defined field. The gloomy atmosphere inherent in some of the paintings hanging on the walls was probably in a way reechoing the fates of the Severan family history and its personalities, the perfect material for a Shakespearean tragedy. Herodian and the author of Historia Augusta, both conspicuous for their vivid and colourful imagination, can supply many such horrifying scenes. It is emphasized several times in the Historia Augusta that Severus was extremely cruel.⁶³ The story of his treatment of the vanquished Al-binus and his relatives related by the Historia Augusta discloses psychological analogies with some of the Philostratean ecphraseis {Imag. II, 9, 10, 19,23,25).⁶⁴ In the opinion of Cassius Dio the nature of Caracalla betrayed “the harshness and cruelty of Africa.” (78, 6, 1). Herodian expressed the view that Severus deliberately used Mauretanian cavalry units against civilians in Syria during the civil war of the mid-nineties, because ot 8e Mavpovoiot dv'req tpoiviKcb'ta'coi, the Mauretanians “were extremely cruel” (III, 3, 5). Plautianus, the most influential figure beside the Emperor was also Libyan (Herod. Ill, 10, 6). “Certain parts of the higher state administration were dominated by Africans in those years,” comments Hannestad.⁶⁵

    “ Ibid. p. 272.

    ⁶¹ Kotula 1986, p. 78 f.

    ⁶² Ibid. p. 63.

    ⁶³ Sept. Sev. 11,7: crudelissimus; ibid. 17, 7: crudelior; ibid. 21, 9.

    w Sept. Sev. 11,7: reliquum autem cadaver eius ante domum propriam exponi a diu iacere iussit. Equum praeterea ipse residens supra cadaver Albini egit expavescentem que admonuit, ut et effre-natus audacter protereret. Addunt alii, quod idem cadaver in Rhodanum abici praecepit, simul etiam uxoris liberumque eius. Ibid. 21,9: tristior vir ad omnia, etiam crudelior.

    ⁶⁵ Hannestad 1986, p. 256.

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     In a similar way the Room of Aphrodite (Pl. XXXIV) may reflect the personality of Julia Domna, a woman of the highest political and intellectual ambitions, as that of Heracles might have referred to her husband. Julia was herself of Oriental descent. Noldeke and von Domaszewski were certainly right when they observed that Domna was a rendering of Syriac ) ij£> martha, dom(i)na.⁶⁶ The syncope Domna-Domina is corroborated by some inscriptions from the Eastern Provinces of the Empire. It might have arisen from a linguistic interference between Latin and the North-West Semitic languages (see for example Heb. HDD“I (dimnah), the town in Zabulon). Dio Cassius relates Julia’s behaviour after Caracalla’s death. According to the historian Julia hated her son during his lifetime, but mourned him after his death. Dio explained this change of feelings as Julia’s realization that she was going to lose her high position and prestige. At first then she wanted to commit suicide, but later after she had recollected herself she undertook an adventurous plan to take over the throne for herself, like “Semiramis or Nitocris, women of the same stock” (Dio 79,23, l).⁶⁷ It is interesting to observe that the author of HA employed the same comparison in his characterization of Zenobia of Palmyra. There is no epigraphic, numismatic or other evidence for a representation of Julia as Omphale (a sculpture in the Vatican) or as Tanit (cameo), as once believed by von Kaschnitz-Weinberg.⁶⁸ However Oppian in Cyn. 7 taught us to be cautious. He calls Julia ’ Aocrupvri Kv0epEia xai ov Xeinouoa EeA.t]vt|. In his poetic portrait of the Empress we can recognize Atargatis of Hierapolis and the Phoenician Astarte, which is not corroborated anywhere else by either numismatic or epigraphic evidence. In fact the coins show that Julia styled herself on the goddess Aphrodite. A beautiful aureus depicts her as Venus Callipygos, with the legend “to Venus Victorious”.⁶⁹ On a series of issues the Empress appears as Venus Genetrix or Venus Felix.⁷⁰

     Philostratus belonged to the closest circle of intellectuals at her side. It is not central for our argument that the “circle of Julia Domna” eventually proved to have been a fiction of some 19th century scholars as shown by Bowersock.⁷¹ Kettenhofen identified only three intellectuals from her circle, all of them Greeks: Philostratos of Lemnos, Gordian of Cappadocia, and Philiskos of Thessaly.⁷² Consequently Kettenhofen argued against the alleged Oriental-Syrian character of the court intellectual circle. The interests in the Orient on the part of those few Greek intellectuals probably resembled a contemporary fondness for “postcards”


    ⁶⁴ Kettenhofen 1979, p. 76.

    ⁶⁷ Ibid. p. 12.

    ⁴’ Following ibid. p. 126.

    ⁶⁹ R1C 536, VENERI VICTR, 193-196 AD.

    ⁷⁰   RIC 578: VENERI GENETRIC; R1C 580: VENUS FELIX; cf. the As of Caracalla, Rev. VENUS GENETRIX, Venus enthroned and holding a sceptre, c. 215-217 AD, in the Czartoryski Collection, Kraków, BMC V, 229-230.

    ⁷¹ Bowersock 1969, p. 108.

    ⁷² Kettenhofen 1979, p. 15.

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from Egypt or the Holy Land shared by those who like to see the pyramids of Gizah but simultaneously remain in isolation from the indigenous people, who seem alien, dirty or at the best too “exotic”. All those arguments do not contradict Julia’s Syrian-Hellenic cultural identity. Her homeland was Syria, the Bekaa Valley, her religious milieu - the Arabian cult of Elagabal of Emesa. The land surrounding Emesa was inhabited by the Arabian tribes from the South. During Julia’s life the Syrian language was only rising to the level of the literary language. Syriac had been for a long time only a spoken vernacular of the prevailing majority of the Syrians, while Greek played the role of literary language used by the Greek minority and educated Syrians. As can happen in such cultural environments, the later Empress was brought up in a milieu of different cultural crosscurrents: her ethnic and cultural identity was Syrian, while her literary and also cultural identity was Hellenic. We have just mentioned that Dio Cassius emphasized Julia’s Oriental descent (Xiph. 343, 21-24). The predominantly Classical subjects and exclusively Classical form of the paintings from the Neapolitan gallery gives a good picture of the cultural milieu of the Severan court, Hellenized Rome with an Oriental undercurrent.

     By the way I think that Kettenhofen’s attitude is somewhat extreme in its neglect of the different cultural identities in Julia and Septimius Severus.⁷³ Ket-tenhofen emphasized that there was no sign that Cassius Dio regarded the family as strange, exotic or “Oriental”. “Die nationalistische Perspektive, aus der heraus eine solche Geschichtsinterpretation verständlich wird, erledigt sich daher von selbst.” Strong words. Again and again the Westerners have been learning along the centuries, and recently only too painfully, that there are also “others” in the world, essentially different others, although biologically the same, but meaningfully different with respect to their cultural identity, their religion or language. I think that a racial or nationalist interpretation of history may bring about as much distortion and deformation in the history writing as the extremely opposite attitude which neglects substantial religious or linguistic differences.

     I cannot resist a feeling that the River Nile as well as Memnon with the Vocal Colossus in the background were not coincidental choices for the gallery. They probably commemorated, as has been already mentioned, the lavish, much-publicized visit by the Imperial couple to the Land of the Pharaohs, which included in its programme sightseeing tours to the Tomb of Alexander the Great, the Labyrinth in Fayum, the Great Pyramids of Gizeh and naturally the Vocal Memnon in Western Thebes. Neither is it coincidental that S.Severus liked to stay within the boundaries of his res privata - the vast estates in Campania.⁷⁴ They were even enlarged in the wake of land confiscations. It is perhaps yet another item of in


     ⁷³ Ibid. p. 20.

     ⁷⁴ Kotula 1986, p. 100 f.

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formation pointing in the direction of the hypothetical owners of the Neapolitan gallery.

     Who, then, was the owner of that refined and precious art collection at Naples? A member of the Severan family or an influential and wealthy aristocrat from the Imperial court circles in Rome? Why not Julia Domna herself? Her personality and the actually Imperial scale of the collection might seem to justify such a solution in the best possible way. In one of the last descriptions in the Imagines (II 28) we come across an intriguing and moving picture of an abandoned house, with ruined portico, and fallen columns, a house which was once prosperous, as emphasized by the author with a particular feeling of nostalgia. A fallen column has always been a meaningful metaphor of the past glory. And only the spiders adorned its empty rooms with their fragile and intricate webs. Inspired by this motif, Philostratus compared his own art to the work of Penelope who shed tears over her night-work at the weaving machine. The image has really something painful in it. Would that be another allusion to Julia Domna and the house of the Severi? Is it not unlikely that the weeping Penelope and Arachne punished by the jealous gods for her divine skills, gave a literary sphragis and a date added by the author of the Imagines. Were they published after 217, or even after 235?



Heracles and the Pygmies


     It would be hard to find another equally successful genre of paintings among the works of the Greek “Orientalists” than the Pygmies pictured in their African setting. The Greeks of the later Archaic age cherished a real predilection for the Geranomachia with the Pygmies. The Classical period did not share these tastes, but the subject of the Pygmies returned during the Hellenistic period. Refreshed and enriched by the Alexandrian painters, it gained a popularity that might legitimately make a chapter in a study on the Graeco-Roman mass culture. It apparently responded to popular tastes for paradox, grotesque, satire, parody and burlesque attuned to the intellectually and emotionally lower registers of the popular culture of the Late Hellenistic and Imperial period.

     Heracles and the Pygmies (Imag. II, 22) was once put on display beside the Heracles and Antaeus canvas (Imag. II, 21) in the Philostratean gallery (PI. XXXIII). The Greek hero was pictured lying asleep on the African sands after the slaying of Antaeus. The painter emphasized the difference between Heracles’ heroic body with Hypnos standing behind him in the background, and the dead, withered body (auov) of his monstrous adversary. The artist introduced a fine description of the Pygmies depicted in their everyday life. It is followed by their attack against Heracles. Brandishing their weapons, the Pygmy units direct their assault against Heracles’ feet and hands. His right hand is besieged by a double force of Pygmies, since the hero’s dexter is naturally stronger than his left hand. The painter individualized the bowmen and slingers among them. The main force, however, under the command of their king, the most courageous of the Pygmies, is launching an attack against Heracles’ head. They deploy fire and different engines of war in their effort to blind the hero with a mattock, and also to suffocate him with a sort of clamp thrust straight at Heracles’ mouth and nose. “All these things are being done, to be sure, around the sleeping Heracles; but lo! he stands erect and laughs at the danger (rauTi 8f] nepi xov Ka0ev8ovxa, I8ou 8e dig op0ouxai Kai. cog ¿7ti xcp Ktvu8v(p yeXa - Imag. II, 22,4), and sweeping together the hostile forces he puts them in his lion’s skin, and I suppose he is carrying them to Eurystheus” (trans. A. Fairbanks). I have quoted the last section of the Pygmy ecphrasis to refer to one of its central literary problems. A long time ago Kalinka and Weicker expressed an opinion that the painter had combined two separate scenes in one panel.¹ But their point of view did not gain general recognition. Brunn’s Unitarian interpretation of the passage beginning with the words I8ov 8e cog opOouxai, read as “wait just a moment and you will see,” in the sense of “you certainly know how the story continues,” explained it as a rhetorical supplement to the picture, with no


     Schönberger 1968, p. 449.


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reference to the pictorial contents of the panel, and has prevailed in the discussion on the subject.² * ⁴ The gist of Brunn’s argument was that the painting contained only one central episode. In fact, the vocative ISob Sè cbç even if not interpreted in its etymological and actually only rarely justified meaning “now see” or “just look at,” makes a strong caesura in the ecphrasis. As we remember, the ecphrasis had already earlier been divided by the digression on the life of the Pygmies, which evidently played the role of an explanatory comment appended to the description proper of the painting.

     There is perhaps a better way of elucidating this intricate question. Recent decades have brought important studies on the narrative landscape painting of the Late Hellenistic period. I would like to refer first of all to a brilliant paper by P. von Blanckenha-gen, Daedalus and Icarus on Pompeian Walls The Telephus frieze, an example of a continuous narrative, which is believed to be a copy of a painted model/ precedes the Odyssey cycle by more than a century. The Odyssey cycle from the Es-quiline comprises a panel with two successive, separate scenes from the story of Circe and Odysseus, with the main characters represented twice within the same field.⁵ The wall of the Casa dei Cubicoli Floreali (Pompei, Reg. I 9, 5) offers us another example of the narrative style. This time the story is unfolded in three different episodes with Acteon represented three times on the same panel, peering at a naked Artemis from behind some rocks, next as frightened and fleeing, and eventually attacked by his own dogs.⁶ This Acteon fresco, dated to the Claudio-Neronian period, was an eclectic creation, whose painter incorporated at least two earlier Hellenistic compositions, one with Artemis styled on Aphrodite by Doidalses and pictured in an idyllic scenery with crags and waterfalls, and another which showed the punishment of Acteon. In this particular case the richness of the inherited iconographie tradition would have made any new invention in this area both difficult and in a way superfluous. Roman Imperial ateliers simply followed a range of earlier, established traditions.⁷ In this connection we may also recall the Marsyas painting (Pompeii, V 2, 10), which shows him in three separate episodes (Pl. XXXV): 1) Marsyas descends from the rocks attracted by Athena’s flute music performance, 2) he flees back with the flute, 3) he himself performs before the Muses.⁸ On the Andromeda panel in the House of Sacerdos Amandus (Pompei, I 7, 7 - Pl. XXII) Perseus is represented twice - in the central scene he attacks the dragon, while in a side scene he strikes a deal with Cepheus concerning his future marriage with the king’s daughter.

    ² Brunn 1861-1867, pp. 447 f, who pointed to earlier suggestions by Heyne and Jahn, ibid. 448; similarly Steinmann 1914, p. 91; Gstader 1940, p. 73 f.

    ¹ Von Blanckenhagen 1968; id. 1957; Dawson 1944.

    ⁴ Von Blanckenhagen 1957, p. 79.

    ⁵ Schefold 1972, Pl. VII; Brommer 1983, Taf. 29a.

    ⁶ Ling 1991, fig. 117; von Blanckenhagen 1968, Taf. 40; Pittwe. II, Reg.l, 9, 5, p. 54.

    ⁷ Von Blanckenhagen 1967, p. 136.

    “ Ibid. Taf. 473; id. 1957, fig. 12; Ling 1991, fig. 118.

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Polyphemus and Galatea in a tranquil ritual and idyllic scene with the ominous ship of Odysseus approaching but still far away in the background, a clear allusion to the imminent disaster, makes a pendant to the Andromeda fresco. Both paintings were modelled on another pair of paintings from Boscotrecase, which were put on the wall during the third decade of Augustus’ reign (Pl. XXI).⁹

     The Pygmy painting in the collection of the Imagines (II, 22) must have originally been a component in a series of paintings probably by the same hand, which illustrated the African adventures of Heracles. This African cycle was conspicuous for its air of grotesque, parody and burlesque. The original cycle probably began with (1) an exhausted, sweating Atlas and Heracles eager to help with the giant’s burden (Imag. II, 20), and was followed by (2) Heracles in the Garden of the Hesperides,¹⁰ not represented in Philostratus’ Neapolitan museum, but alluded to in the next panel in the series, (3), where Heracles was preparing for combat with an Antaeus distinguished by his distorted, monstrous limbs {Imag. 11,21, 1 -2). It might have been a secondary scene to a central one (4) showing the fight between the two wrestlers (Imag. II, 21, 3-6). In Philostratus’ narrative order there should have been a place for a picture with scenes of everyday life in the Pygmy world (Imag. II, 22, 1). Its contents might have been exhaustively illustrated by the Pompeian painting and mosaics, consequently it cannot be treated as a purely literary motif with no relation to the figural arts, but as the art historian’s digression into the popular genre of “Orientalist” painting, cited from memory in the immediate context of the Heracles African cycle of the Neapolitan museum. (5) On the next painting of the cycle Heracles was being attacked by the Pygmies (Imag. II, 21, 2-3). This panel probably contained a secondary scene with Heracles carrying the Pygmies in the lion’s hide on his back (Imag. II, 21,3). It seems that the original cycle comprised four paintings: Atlas (1), the Hesperides (2), Antaeus (3-4), and the Pygmies (5).

     Blanckenhagen’s collection of paintings analyzed in his brilliant paper on Daedalus and Icarus may also be employed as a useful analogy to the collection owned by the Severan gallery in Naples, which also contained “a faithful copy of a Hellenistic landscape painting, the creation of a new Roman work, adaptations of Hellenistic and of Roman panels, transformations of Hellenistic models into Roman works and Roman models into ‘Grecian’ ones, pasticcios of megalographic groups put into landscape settings, and even Pompeian originals ... [a number of] ‘originals’ and pasticcios clearly pretending to be versions of Hellenistic paintings.”¹¹


    ⁹   Von Blanckenhagen-Alexander 1962, pp. 43 ff., Pl. 44-46; von Blanckenhagen 1968, Taf. 42, 1-2; 43, 1-2,44, 1-2; Schefold 1962, PI. 29; Andromeda 1, LIMC I, 1, 32, ibid. fig. 32; Pitture 1, Reg. 1, 7, 7, p. 599; Schmalz 1989, Abb.l; Ling 1991, fig. 115.

    ¹⁰   Cf. the analogies offered by the Pompeian painting: Pitture I, Reg. 1,7,7, p. 592; von Blanckenhagen 1968, Taf. 45, 1 (Reg. V, 2, 10), Taf. 45, 2 (Reg. 1, 7, 7).

    " Blanckenhagen 1968, p. 142.

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     The Old Masters of the 4lh-lsl centuries BC, even if in some cases extensively restored and repainted, and their first-rate academic copies, whose quality we may imagine in the light of such masterpieces as the Icarus and Daedalus in the Villa Imperiale, Heracles and Telephus in the Basilica of Herculaneum, or Heracles and Omphale from the House of M. Lucretius Fronto, must have been at the roots of the project to establish Philostratus’ Neapolitan collection. However that collection also contained latter-day adaptations of the Classical originals, or compositions of selected well-known Classical motifs. The Heracles and Pygmies panel seems to have been such a pasticcio or an “original” which pretended to be a version of a Hellenistic painting, the work of a Classicizing “Grecian” atelier, as aptly defined by Blanckenhagen in his commentary to the frescos from Houses IX 7, 16 and IX 17, 12 in Pompei.¹²

     The two bodies, of the dead Antaeus and the living Heracles, designed to emphasize the contrast between life and death, recall the Pergamene workshops. Heracles carrying a bag filled with “the little folk” is a burlesque of the well-known types which show Heracles hauling the monsters to Eurystheus in the Dodecath-lon cycle. Hypnos bent over a sleeping Heracles is reminiscent of a Classicizing sarcophagus with a sleeping Endymion, or the sleeping giant Alcyoneus accompanied by Hypnos on a painted vase.¹³ The Pygmies attacking the giant offer a range of parallels, such as the Geranomachia, the Erotes stealing Heracles’ equipment, or Polyphemus blinded by Odysseus and his comrades, a popular motif of the art inspired by the Homeric epics.¹⁴ “The painter or his atelier was eclectic - adapting, changing, or inventing without preference, but always following established traditions.” This is how Blanckenhagen characterized the collection of frescoes from House V 2, 10 in Pompeii (e.g. Pl. XXXV).¹⁵ His definition fits in very well with the Heracles/Pygmy panel (Imag. II, 21). This particular painting was in all likelihood of a late date, perhaps by a Julio-Claudian or Flavian artist, produced on a wave of widespread popularity of the Egyptianizing art among the Roman nouveaux riches of the Early Imperial era.

     With Homer’s aoPeoToq yeXcoq, the unquenched laughter of the gods, so aptly labelled by Nestle as Gotterburleske, which can also be illustrated by the battle of the gods around the walls of Troy (II. 20/21) or by Hera seducing her divine husband on Mount Athos (II. 15), we are undoubtedly in the sphere of light shed by the Greek culture. It comprised the minor chapter of Heracles and the Pygmies as well. We feel as if the Greeks were smiling to us across the span of

     ¹² Ibid.

     ¹³ Schefold 1988, p. 170, Abb. 233.

     ¹⁴   Brommer 1983, Taf. 13,14a-b, 15-18, Abb. 24-25; Pygmaioi, L/A/C VII, 1, pp. 594-601, ibid. 2, figs. 1 -68b; Omphale, LIMC VII, 1; Woodford 1989.

     ¹⁵ Von Blanckenhagen 1968, p. 141.

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the millennia. The confrontation of a tiny creature with a giant always proves inspiring, always fresh and successful in the tall stories of different epochs, lands and generations, as attested by the Jack the Beanstalk story, Swift’s Gulliver or the blinding of Polyphemus in Homer’s Odyssey. In the Greek art Heracles and the Pygmies had many analogies. The Satyrs depicted by Timanthes in the scene of the measuring of the width of the Cyclops’ finger with their thyrsoi (HN 35, 74), and the blinding of Polyphemus were already pointed out by Brunn.¹⁶ More recently a captivating study by Brommer, Odysseus. Die Taten und Leiden des Helden in antiken Kunst und Literatur, offered us a collection of images which illustrate the subject.¹⁷ Woodford on her part collected some even more closely linked motifs, related both iconographically and chronologically. She focused our attention on the Kerkopes, who were pictured stealing Heracles’ weaponry. Heracles woke up, caught and carried them away tied upside down to the ends of a pole. The scene appears in the archaeological evidence in the 6th-4’h centuries BC, later it vanishes.¹⁸ An oenochoe from Taranto dated c. 360 BC shows two little Aegipans robbing the sleeping Heracles of his personal effects (Pl. XXXVI).¹’ The same role was performed by the Erotes and Satyrs in the vase painting and literary sources illustrative of the history of Greek art.²⁰ The Erotes also played with Alexander’s armour, a motif discussed in the chapter on the Wedding of Alexander and Roxana by Aetion (Luc. Herodotus 4-6), as well as with the armour of the drunken Heracles in the Omphale paintings.²¹ On a bronze from the British Museum Heracles awakes and tries to catch the Erotes who escape with his stolen objects.²² “Three different kinds of thieving creatures - Kerkopes, Satyrs and Aegipans - none of them quite human,” Woodford concluded.²³

    ¹⁶ Brunn 1861-1867, p. 215.

    ¹⁷ Brommer 1983, pp. 57-69, and related plates.

    '• Woodford 1989, p. 201, a vase from Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum, no 81, AE 189, ibid. Pl. IV b; Brommer 1984, pp. 28-32; S. Woodford, Kerkopes, LIMC VI, 1; for further references cf. Woodford 1989, n. 8, p. 201.

    ¹⁹ Rf oenochoe, Woodford 1989, Pl. IV d.

    ²⁰   Satyrs snatching Heracles’ weaponry from his funeral pyre on the vase no 2360, Munich, Antikensammlungen; J. D. Beazley, Heracles (?) derubato, Apollo (Bolletino dei Musei Provincial! del Salernitano) III-1V. 1963-64, 3-14; Woodford 1989, p. 201; satyrs robbing Heracles in LIMC V, 1, 3230-3238; Lysippus’ statue of Heracles bereft of his weaponry by the Erotes in AP XVI 103-104.

    ²¹   MN Naples, 9000, Omphale, LIMC VII, 1, 28, ibid. 2, fig. 28; ibid. Sala 54, H. Scharmer, Der gelagerte Herakles, Berlin 1971, no 14, fig. 8; Pompei, Casa del Sirico Vll, 1, 27, in Eros/ Amor, Cupid, LIMC HI, 1, no 616, Pl. 720; ibid. VII 1, 41, Erotes carring Heracles’ cup or dragging his lionskin to Omphale, on a clay relief plaque, Tubingen/Museo Naz.Romano 39600; cf. a fine silver bowl, Paris Cab.Med., from Berthouville 1920, Pl. 15, Omphale, LIMC VII, 1, 80; ibid. 2, Pl. 80, with sleeping Omphale, the Erotes and Heracles’ mace, bow and cup; lamp, ibid. 79.

    ²²   Woodford 1989, Pl. IV f; further instances: a plaster relief, bronzes, Pompeian wall painting, E. Loewy, MDA1R XII, 1897, 144, fig. 1, relief medallion, sarcophagus relief from Villa Doria Pamphili, R. Calza et al., Antichita di Villa Doria Pamphili, Rome 1977, no. 183, Pl. 115, glass intaglio, cf. Woodford 1989, n. 39, p. 203.

    ²⁾ Woodford 1989, p. 202.

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     Although the genre is abundant with examples, we do not have exact parallels to Philostratus’ Heracles with the Pygmies. The closest candidate so far is a marble relief piece from the Villa Albani with such a tiny creature (a Pygmy ?) climbing a ladder to drink from the sleeping Heracles’ cup (Pl. XXXVII).²⁴ An Alexandrian coin issued by Domitian represents a theme disseminated for the needs of the Imperial propaganda. It shows a powerful standing Heracles/Domitian with tiny weaklings scurrying around his feet in an apparent allusion to the enemies of the Empire.²⁵

     The images of the Pygmies gained more popularity during the Hellenistic period and effectively replaced older corresponding subjects. The Bearded Heracles accompanied by the Erotes might have influenced the artist who invented the figure of the reclining Nile with the “Cubits” (nf]%eu;) who clamber over him.²⁶ The panel with Heracles and the Pygmies {Imag. II, 22) had its stylistic pendant in the River Nile and the Cubits, a burlesque painting put on display in Lehmann-Hartleben’s Room of the Rivers {Imag. I, 5). This room of the museum contained another painting thematically related to the River Nile tableau - the Death of Memnon. The Vocal Colossus appeared in the background of the composition {Imag. II, 7). In the Philostratean painting the Cubits were shown sitting on the Nile’s shoulders, clinging to his curling locks, slumbering in his arms, while others were playing on his chest or clattering an Isiac sistra. A protective divinity keeping guard over the sources of the Nile was standing behind, surmounting the main scene.

     The image of the personified Nile, a reclining divinity with thick curly locks flowing down onto his shoulders, well-rooted in the older Greek tradition, was probably produced in its bronze original version by the Alexandrian sculptors in the 3rd/2ⁿd centuries BC.²⁷ This creation proved a real success. Numerous sculptures, mosaics and coins, collected in the contemporary museums, as well as a number of preserved literary passages mostly from the Imperial period, attest to its popularity.²⁸ I shall not be discussing the personification of rivers now, which has its own bibliography, but shall only touch on the points of direct reference to the


    ²⁴ Herakles, LIMC V, 1, 2805 (with drawing).

    ²⁵ Ibid. 2806; ibid. 2, Pl. 2806, AE, AD 94-95, R. Mourat, RNum 1900, 423-428.

    ²⁶    Woodford 1989, p. 203, n. 38: “The uncertainty of dating in the Hellenistic period makes it possible, however, that the image of the Nile was earlier and may have contributed to the creation of this type of Heracles with Erotes.”

    ²⁷    Robertson 1975, vol. 2, fig. 176c (2ⁿd century BC); Ostrowski 1991, p. 23 (3rd/2ⁿd century BC).

    ²⁸    M.-O. Jentel, Neilos, LIMCW, 1, ibid. 2, figs. 3-63; N. Bonacasa, A. M. Rovers, EAA 1963, 489-496, Nilos; P. M. Gilmore, The seated and reclining Nile on tetradrachms of Alexandria, NumCirc 84, 1976, 318-319; O-M, Jentel, La representation du dieu Nil sur les peintures et les mosaiques et leur contexte architectural, Echos du monde classique 31, 1987, 209-216, pl. 1-9; L. Kakosy, The Nile, Euthenia and the Nymphs, JEA 68, 1982, 290-298; Ostrowski 1991, pp. 22-25, 31, 38 f; 41 ff.; for further bibliographic references cf. Neilos, LIMC VI, 1, p. 720.

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Philostratean tableau. No doubt it was a picture of the reclining Nile, as suggested by the placement and occupations of the Cubits. This is also corroborated by Lucian’s description of a similar painting (avrov pev Keipevov - Rhet. praec. 6). Philostratus was right when he observed that crocodiles and hippopotami were the usual components of the imagery of the Nile personification (Imag. I, 5, 2). The hippopotamus is the attribute of the personified Nile most frequently documented by the archaeological evidence.²⁹ The figure of the Nile reclines on a hippopotamus in a mosaic from the House of Kyrios Leontis in Scythopolis/Bet Shean, dated mid-5,h century AD,³⁰ or in another Palestinian mosaic in Seppho-ris.³¹ Lucian’s Nile also reposes on a hippopotamus or a crocodile (Rhet. praec. 6). The painting described by Philostratus the Elder remains unique in this respect. The exotic monsters “are now lying aloof in its [the Nile’s] deep eddies so as not to frighten the children” (Imag. I, 5,2). Deviation from an established iconographic pattern is one of the favourite devices in Philostratus’ rhetoric. It offers him a chance to make the most of his erudition as an art historian. On one occasion he toys with variations on the theme of Dionysus, who is dressed in purple and wreathed with roses but shown without his usual attributes (Imag. I, 15); another time with a Meles who “does not pour forth turbulent streams at his source, as boorish rivers are equally painted ... the water trickles noiselessly by” (Imag. II, 8, 2). On yet another occasion he focuses his attention on a painting with a mad Heracles not accompanied by the Erinies, which would have been the standard practice.³² In an Andromeda painting he describes Eros as a young man nap’ 6 e’ícüOe (as is not usual - Imag. I, 29, 1). In the same way the sistra carried by the Cubits replace the usual Nilotic animals synonymous of Egypt in Philostratus’ Nile. On a well-known Pompeian panel which depicts Isis welcoming Io with the long-haired muscular Nile who bears her on his waves, an Egyptian priest accompanied by a little Cubit clatters the sistrum (Pl. IV).³³

     In his description of the personified Nile Philostratus also mentions “symbols of agriculture and navigation,” which probably mean a plough and a rudder, as suggested by Schönberger.³⁴ I do not think we should interpret Philostratus’ “symbols” so narrowly. A famous Tazza Farnese, one of the most beautiful works of the ancient gem cutters, a magnificent sardonyx bowl of the Ptolemaic period, glittering with its impressive grey-brown surfaces, shows Horus with a plough


    ²⁹    Neilos, L1MC VI, 1, nos 7-18, 35-36 (hippopotami). 19-24 (crocodile), 1 (hippopotamos, crocodile, mangoust).

    ³⁰    R. Ovadiah et alii, Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine Pavements in Israel, 1987, PI. 22, 1; Neilos, LIMC VI, 1, 7; ibid. 2, fig. 7.

    ³¹    Weiss, Netzer, The Mosaics of the Nile Festival Building, in: Nagy et alii, 1996, pp. 127, 131, fig. 61.

     ³² Brunn 1861-1867, p. 195.

     ³³ Schefold 1972, PI. 43, the original dated c.150 BC, ibid. p. 253.

     ³⁴ Schönberger 1968, p. 288.

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and a sower’s bag. Beside him two nymphs carry a hom and bowl. The Nile himself, with a big cornucopiae on his lap, rests regally on a sycamore tree. The horn of plenty is in fact the most common attribute of the personified Nile.³⁵ Lucian’s painting with the Nile reclining on a crocodile or a hippopotamus (rhet. praec. 6) on the one hand, and the colossal statue of the Nile from the Braccio Nuovo Gallery,³⁶ might naturally bring close fitting analogies to the Philostratean panel, if not the presence of a crocodile and an hippopotamus on the former, and a crocodile and a mongoose on the latter. In the majority of the extant works of the ancient art, the Cubits are accompanied by Nilotic animals. A colossal reclining statue found among the remnants of the Iseum Campense points to a passage in the Historia naturalis regarding a similar monument made of black basalt and dedicated by Vespasian in his Templum Pacis (HN 36, 58). Pausanias on his part added that the personified Nile monuments were usually made of black stone, which emphasized their connection with Ethiopia, Black Africa. The colour black, according to Pausanias, was something extraordinary among the monuments of the rivers, which were generally cut in a white stone (Descr. 8, 24, 12). The reposing Nile in the Palazzo Doria Pamphili was cut in a black basalt block some time during the 2ⁿd century AD.³⁷

     The question of the identity of the xaplaç aÙTÔ> (scil. zœ NeiXcu) Saipcov È<pÉaTT|KEv . . . yéypanTai 5è ovpavopfiKrig Ènivof|oai xai tôv nô8a èné-%ei taîç KEyaîç (a divinity is set over it as its steward . . . this divinity has been painted so as to seem heaven-high, and he plants his foot on the sources -Imag. I 5, 2),³⁸ has been a bone of contention since the 19th century. Brunn followed Weicker and explained the mysterious figure as the constellation of Aquarius.³⁹ Aquarius was believed to be responsible for the annual flooding of the Nile. Pindaric influence was suspected here as a decisive factor for the creation of that allegedly purely imaginary picture. Philostratus, author of the Vita Apol-lonii, quoted Pindar, who in one of his hymns addressed a divinity which kept guard over the springs of the Nile and controlled the volume of its waters {Vit. Ap. 6, 26 E). Steinmann, however, was right when he observed that there were no phraseological or lexical correspondences between Philostratus’ account and


    ³⁵    Neilos, LIMC VI, 1,37, MNNaples 27611, dated mid 2ⁿd-Is' century BC; Schönberger 1968, p. 290 f.

    ³⁶    Neilos, LIMCW, 1, 1, found in 1513 in the neighbourhood of S.Maria sopra Minerva and S.Stefano del Caco, the area of the former Iseum Campense; Toynbee 1934, pp. 32-33 (Flavian period); Adriani 1961, 194, (Tav. 89-91), dated “la prima meth del II sec.d. C.,” p. 53, its replicas: ibid. 197, Tav. 94, Paris, Louvre MA 309 (2), 198, Tav. 94, M. Gregoriano-Egizio, Vatican; Ostrowski 1991, p. 42 (Flavian creation); Neilos, LIMC VI, 1, no 15, ibid. 2, fig. 15.

    ³³ Neilos, LIMC VI, 1, no 15, ibid. 2, fig. 15.

    ³⁸ Translated by A. Fairbanks.

    ³⁹    Weicker (Jacobs, Weicker 1825) followed by Brunn 1861-1867, p. 216; Schönberger 1968, 289.

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the Pindaric quotation.⁴⁰ In other words, we may conclude that Philostratus the Elder made use of literary citations as a mode of commentary in the composition of his Images, which was actually a literary production with its lexical media of expression, but he did not put them together to create a sort of kaleidoscope with no reference to the figural arts. Steinmann also found a solution to the confusing problem of the arrangement of the figures in Philostratus’ painting. He replaced the hardly imaginable autq> e(peaTT]Kev, interpreted as “above” or “over” (the figure of Nile), with a new distribution arranged in two adjacent triangles. According to this new grouping, the lower triangle was to be occupied by the Nile, while the upper was left for Aquarius.⁴¹ We can adduce a number of illustrations of that popular oblique division of the field in the Late Classical painters and sculptors, for example Dionysus and Ariadne,⁴² Selene and Endymion (Pl. XXXVIII), Kyparissos from the Casa dei Vetti,⁴’ the Andrians (Imag. I, 25), or the Tiber, Mars and Rhea Silvia from a Vatican sarcophagus.⁴⁴

     The tone of the Pygmy images in the Greek works of art ranges from good-humoured warm ridicule to malicious caricature. Philostratus’ Heracles and the Pygmies would have been included among the former, together with numerous pictures of armed Pygmy warriors bravely fighting the cranes. They fight with maces, curved batons or slings, as in Philostratus’ Imagines (II, 23 - a<pEv3ovr|-Ttbv d%Xog).⁴⁵ The Pygmies’ accessories, their caps, shoes, peltae and bows, are sometimes suggestive of their Oriental descent. Philostratus also mentions “bowmen” (to^orai) among his Pygmies (Imag. II, 22). They can be seen on the fine miniature paintings from the masterly hand of the Brygos Painter.⁴⁶ Sometimes the Pygmies would be armed with long spears and protected by cuirasses, helmets and shields like the Greek hoplites, which we may see on the paintings from the


    ⁴⁰   Bergk, frag. 282; Bowra, frg. 294 a.b.; Phil. Vita Ap. 6, 26 E; also in Schol. Arat., Phain. 283, Schönberger 1968, p. 289; cf. E. Petersen, Blitz- und Regenwunder und der Marcus-Säule, RhM(N. F.) 50,1895,473; Philostratus’ oùpavopTpcriç was paralleled for example in Pindar’s description by ÉKaTOVTOpymov (Bergk frg. 282), “also nicht eine einzige wörtliche Übereinstimmung ist nachgewiesen worden,” concluded Steinmann 1914, p. 30.

    ⁴¹ Steinmann 1914, p. 30 f.

    ⁴²   Herrmann-Bruckmann 1906, Taf. 40; a wonderful reproduction in Charbonneaux, Martin, Villard 1973, figs. 147-8 of Dionysus discovering Ariadne, the House of the Cithara-player, after a 2ⁿd century BC original painting, MN Naples 9278; cf. a drawing by N. La Volpa, Pitture. VI, p. 1046; further copies of the same original: Casa dell’Ara massima VI 15, 1, ibid. V, p. 540; VII 4, 31.51, ibid, vol VI; similar oblique divisions: Maenads in Casa dell’Ara massima VI 16, 15.17, Pitture. V, 23, p. 865.

    ⁴³ Hermann-Bruckmann 1906ff., Taf. 45.

    ⁴⁴ Steimann 1914, p. 31; Robert 1897, III.2, no 188a, Abb. S.232.

    ⁴⁵   Dasen, Pygmaioi, L1MC VII, 1, ibid. 2, fig. 1 (Vase François, by Kleitias, c. 570 BC); ibid, fig. 2, aryballos, by Nearchos, c. 550 BC, N. York, MMA 26. 49; ibid, rhyton, by Brygos, Ermitage (679, St. 360), c. 480 BC; ibid. fig. 11, rhyton, Mus. Vivenel 898, Compiegne, c. 450 BC; ibid. 17, cantharos, Staatl. Mus., Berlin, V.I.3159 (from Kabirion).

    ⁴⁶ Ibid. fig. 8, (vide supra).

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House of Ariadne (Casa dei Capitelli Colorati VII 4,31.51 - Pl. XXXIX).⁴⁷ Their àpiGTEiai in the combat with the cranes, and their glorious death on the battlefield makes of this mock heroic epic a thematic counterpart of the great epic tradition. Philostratus apparently alluded to the genre when he wrote àXXà tov Qpàoovç (but ah, their boldness! -Imag. Il, 22). It was also documented by Kleitias on his opus magnum, the François Vase, where the Geranomachia neighbours on the Calydonian Boar Hunt, the Liberation of the Athenian Children by Theseus, and a grandiose, pathetic scene with Ajax carrying the body of the dead Achilles. Homer wrote that the cranes KXayyfi tai ye nérovxai èn’ ’QKeavoîo poàcuv, àvSpàat nvyp.ai.oi.oi tpôvov Kai Kfjpa (pépovoai (scream overhead ... over the flowing waters of Okeanos to bring death and destruction on the Pygmies - trans. S. Butler) {II. 3, 5-6). This detail is additionally illustrative of the argument which says that the François Vase was inspired by the Archaic epics.⁴⁸ Philostratus informs his readers that the Pygmies “dwell in the earth just like ants . . . they sow and reap and ride on a cart drawn by Pygmy horses, and it is said that they use an axe on stalks of grain believing that these are trees” {Imag. II, 22, trans. A. Fairbanks). This picture immediately calls to mind dozens and dozens of mosaics and paintings showing the tiny folk in Nilotic scenery. The Pygmies won in the rivalry with the earlier Archaic and Classical geranomachiai, or the Busiris and Heracles motif, and eventually, during the Hellenistic and Imperial period, dominated the African grotesque genre. On one of the Pompeian frescoes two little humanoids are busy catching fish. They sit in a boat facing each other, so that their angling-lines cross over their heads. They do not seem to mind at all that a monstrous crocodile and a hippopotamus are lurking among the reeds with the apparent aim of making their own catch for dinner.⁴⁹ On yet another painting a dwarfish creature runs happy and free as a bird over a bridge under which a huge crocodile lies in ambush. In this painting Egypt was symbolized by the idol of the Apis bull set on a high stone base.⁵⁰

     In his paper Les mosaïques nilotiques africaines L. Foucher collected a number of motifs remarkable for their “humeur parfois féroce.” On the El Alia mosaic a Pygmy armed with an axe confronts a monstrous hippo.⁵¹ A huge hippopotamus swallows a little Pygmy on the mosaic of Ouad ez Zgaia.⁵² The Pygmy may sometimes feel confused or even frightened (El Alia, Zliten). Sometimes he catches


     ⁴⁷    Ibid. 20 bis, kelebes, Mus. Arch. Florence 4035; Casa delie nozze d’argento, Picture V, 2 (?), no. 76, p. 713; Pitlure VI, VII 4, 31.51, fig. 80 a-c, p. 1053, vanished, c. 70 AD; Dasen, Pyg-maioi, L1MC VII, 1, fig. 23, ibid. 2.

     ⁴⁸   Schefold 1991; H.-G. Buchholz, Die archäologische Forschung im Zusammenhang mit Homer, in: Zweihundert Jahre Homer-Forschung, ed. J. Latacz, Colloquium Rauricum 2, 1991, pp. 11-44.

     ⁴⁹ Pitture 1, Reg. I, 7, 1, no. 84, p. 533.

     ⁵⁰ Ibid. Reg. I 7, 11, no 173, p. 718, Casa dell’Efebo.

     ⁵¹ Foucher 1965, pp. 137-45, figs. 1-23, here; fig. 138.

     ⁵² Ibid. fig. 22.

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water birds with a lasso. Landscapes showing the River Nile as it winds between the rocks of Upper Egypt, its river banks abundant with a multiplicity of animal and floral species, adorned with the exotic shapes of the local architecture, still look impressive. I am thinking of the great Palestrina mosaic or the mosaic from the Aventine Hill, now in the Terme Museum (Pl. XL).⁵³

     At the extreme end of the iconographic and thematic spectrum we find paintings like those published by A. Maiuri, discovered in the Casa dello Scultore (VIII 7, 24).⁵⁴ The distorted, steatopygic, short-legged bodies in them, surmounted by overgrown heads with hideous faces, move in the rhythm of an orgiastic African dance. All of them are macrophallic and remarkable for their protuberant bellies. A group of them swings in a wild, ecstatic dance on a boat, which Maiuri euphemistically calls a “piroga priapea.”⁵⁵

     In his presentation of a painting now in the National Museum of Naples (113196): “unter einem weissen Zeltdach Zechkompane auf einem Sofa um einen runden Tisch gelagert. Unter dem Baum spielt ein Flötenblöser auf zu einer ‘figura Veneris,’ die ein alter am rechten Ende des Sofas drastisch miterlebt. Weiter rechts ergehen sich zwei Pygmäen als würdige ältere Herren im Gespräch, der eine zuredend, der andere sokratisch kritisch.”⁵⁶ Schefold aptly described a predilection for paradox and caricature as symptomatic of the “Alexandrian” grotesques. Another picture of this sort was once discovered in the Casa dell’ Efebo (Pompei I, 7, 11).⁵⁷ One or two of those figurae Veneris were imitated again and again in paintings and mosaics and were apparently regarded as particularly amusing if they showed the distorted bodies of the lustful little African creatures.⁵⁸ The Archaic and Classical images of Busiris and Heracles with their inclination to stress the differences between the athletic, noble, superhuman Heracles, and the effeminate, circum-cized, platyrrhine weaklings, their primitivism emphasized by the shape of their skulls, demonstrate that the Alexandrian grotesques had long traditions in the Greek art.⁵⁹ It is also typical of those early images that they tended to be careless over


    ” Gullini 1956. The author clearly showed the scale of later restorations; Mayboom 1995; a wonderful reproduction in Charbonneaux, et. al., 1973, fig. 181.

     ⁵⁴ Maiuri 1955, Tav. I, 2; II, 2; III; V, 1.

     ⁵⁵ Ibid. Tav. V, 1; Dasen, Pygmaioi, LIMC VII, 1, ibid. 2, fig. 44.

     ⁵⁶ Schefold, Jung 1988, p. 169; Dasen, Pygmaioi, LIMC VII, 1, ibid. fig. 46b, MN Naples, 113196.

     ” Pitture 1, nos 186-187, pp. 726 f.

    ⁵" Ibid. vol.VI, Reg. VII, 2, 25, p. 687; a mosaic from the M. N. delle Terme 125.535, Dasen, Pygmaioi, LIMC VII, 1, ibid. 2, fig. 51; a mosaic from Ostia, Isola Sacra, ibid. fig. 51a, c. 150-200 AD, fig. 51b, Naples, once in the Cabinet secret, 3rd century AD.

    ⁵⁹ A.-F. Laurens, Bousiris, LIMC III 1- 2, fig. 9, a Ceretan hydria, Vienna, c. 530 BC; fig. 11, a cup, London, BM E 38, c. 510 BC; a cup, Villa Giulia 57912, c. 510 BC; ibid. fig. 25, a chalice crater, Bale, c. 460 BC; Snowden, Aithiopes, LIMC I, 1, ibid. 2: fig. 13, pelikc by the Pan Painter, Athens, MN AP 9683, c. 470-460 BC.

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detail and often confused Egyptian and Ethiopian racial characteristics and attributes, which reveals their ignorance of the Egyptian religion.⁶⁰

     In a word, just as the images of the Pygmies, which range from good-humoured burlesques to extreme caricature, similarly the African landscape may appear as a ritual and idyllic vision with the tranquil waters of the Nile flowing among the Egyptian sanctuaries and palm groves, as in the charming fresco from the Casa dei Cei (Reg. 16, 15 - Pl. V), or alternatively it may take the shape of a Nilotic green thicket populated with primitive, lustful, dwarfish humanoids, as can be seen in the rhyparographic pictures of the Casa dello Scultore (Reg. VIII7, 24).⁶¹ It is interesting to observe that the anonymous owner of the Casa dell’Efebo commissioned a painter to cover the walls of a sort of private summer-house in his garden with these perverted Pygmy images.⁶² These caricatural images were obviously a smash hit on the Late Hellenistic and Roman Imperial markets.

     The Pygmy images share much in common with the literary sources which reveal a lack of real ethnography of Africa except for its northernmost lands. The Pygmies on the great Palestrina mosaic were placed at the sources of the Nile, that is on the verge of the Unknown. The depths of Africa remained a great enigma, the impenetrable heart of darkness. Nevertheless, behind the vague and hardly real Pygmies of fairy-tale country there were the real tribes of Africa. Rediscovered by modern anthropologists, they turned out more real than ever to the Europeans. On a cute photograph in the 19lh-century classic Living Races of Mankind a reader can see a group of the Congo-Bambute Pygmies dancing.⁶³ “This low, prognathous black Negro may be the descendant of that vanished race, scarcely more advanced in culture than the Neanderthal man of Paleolithic Europe, that wandered all round the coast of Africa . . . living on fish and shellfish, roots and grubs and such birds and beasts as could be easily captured; sleeping in caves, ignorant of the use of fire, acquainted only with the humblest type of stone implement,”⁶⁴ wrote a Victorian anthropologist, his words dictated by a White Man’s burden of superiority, which he shared with the Greek and Roman intellectuals. “Something very like the . . . Congo Pygmy reappears in the Bahr-al-Ghasal region near the Nile known as the Red Bongo and Red Djur . . . the Red Bongo of the Egyptian Sudan are a dwarfish race, with short legs and reddish skins.”⁶⁵ Aristotle knew that they lived on the swamps of the Upper Nile (hist. anim. 7 (8)


    " Laurens, Bousiris, LIMC Ill, 1, p. 152.

    ⁶¹     Cf. caricatural images of the Pygmies in the Nilotic scenery in a mosaic tondo, Pitture 1, Casa di Paquius Proculus, 17,1, fig. 84; a similar mosaic in the Casa del Menandro, Reg. I, 10,4, Pitture 1, p. 297.

     ⁶² Pitture 1, Casa dell’Efebo, Reg. 1, 7, 11, fig. 164.

     ⁶⁵ Living Races, vol. I, p. 359.

     ⁶⁴ Ibid.

     ⁶⁵ Ibid. p. 375.

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12, 597a). They appear in his description as macrophallic, with overgrown heads, and short limbs and trunks (Arist. hist. anim. 6, 24, 577b). Ctesias presented them as distorted, bearded dwarfs with long sex organs (FGrH 688 F 45 p. 493). According to Hecataeus the Pygmies ploughed fields and cut crops with axes (FGrH 1, F 328b). The Classical authors were inclined to look at them as one looks at domesticated animals (Ctesias, FGrH 688, F 45, p. 494 ?; Arist. nat.anim. 7 (8), 12, 597a).⁶⁶ Pliny the Elder devoted a passage of his Natural History (5, 8) to the most primitive tribes of the other side of the African interior. His commentary has something in common with the caricatural Africa of the “Alexandrian” grotesques. His Atlantes had lost all characteristics of humanity, the Troglodytes lived in caves and had no articulate speech, the Garamantes had no institution of marriage, the Blemmyae had no heads, their mouths and eyes were located on their chests. “Africa was insufficiently known for the development of a specific ethnography, and instead the image of monstrous people and monstrous customs had wide acceptance.”⁶⁷ As we can see, the nasty Egyptianizing grotesques so popular among the ordinary Greeks and Romans had their literary parallel in the works of the Classical intellectuals.

      The River Nile with its people and natural environment, and Black Africa with its seductive exoticism, exerted a magnetic attraction on the Greek and Romans. This attraction was a mixture of fascination, fear and alienation in the face of the undecipherable hieroglyphs of that enormously vast land which stretched south of the Mediterranean. Hanno, who sailed across the Straits of Gibraltar and then continued his exploration of the African coast southwards, in his diaries mentioned a great river full of crocodiles and hippopotami. His expedition spent many nights out on the coast of West Africa, looking anxiously at the surrounding hills, where all night long they could see hundreds and hundreds of camp fires up in the jungle. They heard flutes, cymbals and tambourines mixed with the terrifying cries of the savage Africans. Hanno stopped his exploration only when, according to his testimony, the earth became so hot that it was no longer possible to descend from the ships onto the beach and when at the same time the Ocean changed into a torrent of fire.⁶⁸ On the other hand, both archaeological and literary evidence attests to the popularity of the African rhythm and tribal dances, as can be illustrated by the Ariccia marble relief which shows Negro women in a wild knees-up, head-tossing jitterbug,⁶⁹or a fresco from Herculaneum with a black dancer performing in the gates of an Isiac temple, probably during an Osiriac feast.⁷⁰ We also hear of crocodile shows, and Negro acrobats, musicians and wrestlers popular in Classical Italy.⁷¹

    w Dasen, Pygmaioi, L1MC VII, 1, p. 594.

    ⁶⁷ Brilliant 1994, p. 320.

    ⁶⁸ Mueng 1972, p. 46 f.

    ⁶⁹ M. N. delle Terme, 77255, early 2ⁿd century AD, Snowden 1970, fig. 105.

    ⁷⁰ Schefold 1972, Pl. 42; Snowden, Aithiopes, LIMC 1, 1, ibid. 2, fig. 39.

    ⁷¹ Snowden 1970, pp. 164 ff.

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      The grotesque dominated the characteristics of the Pygmies. Pictures of them were rarely inventive and fresh. They were represented again and again along a set of standard patterns. In the same way Africa’s cavalry forces, the exotic beauty of the women, the landscapes of palm-groves and ancient ruins, the African air of cruelty, mystery, lust and luxury - became a run-of-the-mill matrix for the 19lh-century French and English “Orientalists” who turned the Orient into a “style.” Their paintings are remarkable for their touch of exoticism, seductive and fascinating, impressive in its unusual composition of colours and strange objects. Our contemporary Orient is marketed for the tourist who flies to China to take a stroll along the Great Wall and a meal in a “real” Chinese restaurant. In the cosmopolitan atmosphere of the modem West we feel in a way unable to acknowledge that we actually know very little about the Orient and understand even less. Momigliano was right when he observed that “the average knowledge of an educated modern man about India is not superior to that which is to be found in Greek and Roman writers. Even now there is no obligation in our traditional curriculum to know anything about China because the Greeks and the Romans knew nothing or almost nothing about it. The eighteenth century performed the greatest rescue operation for forgotten civilizations humanity had ever witnessed. The Chinese, the Indians and the Celts were the most important beneficiaries. But the consequences were felt only by professors, philosophers, poets and cranks.”⁷² In his brilliant paper Homerstudien und Orient W. Burkert added: “Der alte Orient ist etwas Exotisches, Esoterisches geblieben, die Domäne einer Handvoll von Spezialisten .. .. Auch heutzutage ist längst nicht an allen Universitäten die Altorientalistik vertreten.”⁷³ In quite the same way the so-called “Hellenization of the Orient” is more the story of Greek settlement and administration in conquered dominions than a real or lasting change of cultural identity in the local people. The Coptic art and literature contains a treasury of the Egyptian and Ethiopian lore of indigenously African origin blended in with Christian inspiration. The same applies to the ancient Syriac literature and art. By way of contrast the art of the Alexandrian Greeks was intensely Hellenist, an Egyptian counterpart of the art of the Greeks in Antioch, where a similar phenomenon developed in the midst of the Orontes, and in deep isolation from the surrounding Syrian world, if we are to judge by its classicism still vigorous well into the last centuries of Greek domination in Syria. Anyone who sets out to write an adequate history of the Persian and Graeco-Roman Egypt will find the knowledge of Egyptian as well as Greek indispensable. Aramaic would also be helpful. To compile a satisfactory history of the Seleucid monarchy one needs to master Greek to the same level as Aramaic and the Iranian dialects. These are high hurdles. Afro-Semitic studies tend to be pursued outside the context of Indo-European studies, and often neither of them takes any account of the study of the Classics. The turnkey to the Orient lies hid

    ⁷² Momigliano 1975, p. 12.

    ⁷³ Burkert 1991, p. 159.

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den in its writing systems, obstinately resistant to Western decoding sleuths, its hopelessly alien languages, its religions, art, history, distant mentalities, its different ritual of daily gestures, its strange climate and natural world. Western “Orientalisms” in art and literature have always reflected the skin-deep reality of what can be observed at first sight. The exotic colour and fashion of apparel, the Negroid or Semitic facial characteristics, the palm-trees or outlandish animals satisfy the superficial investigators. We are unable to liberate ourselves from the standard educational patterns of Western civilization. The Madis, who live to the west of the Nile have “ugly Negro faces,”⁷⁴ while in the Abyssinians of Semitic race “the nose is usually straight, almost Grecian in some respects, and rarely assumes the hook or the prominence of the Arab or the Jew.”⁷⁵ The Berbers “are a fine, tall people, with well-shaped noses and a Greek profile.” Their women exhibit cheeks as pink “as those of French women.”⁷⁶ Let the above quotations from a book compiled by an anthropologist suffice to show that our Western standards still serve as the matrix for the evaluation of unfamiliar phenomena.

     ⁷⁴ Living Races, vol. I, p. 375.

     ⁷⁵ Ibid. p. 411.

     ⁷⁶ Ibid. p. 414.

History and Romance: The Iranian Orient in the Greek Easel Painting






On the Battlefields of Issos and Marathon



The Persian Warriors in the Poecile Marathon Painting

    A decade after the Athenians had honoured Aeschylus with the first prize for his trilogy which included the tragedy Persians (472 BC), still celebrating their victory of Salamis, they adorned the Stoa of Peisianax in the lower northern end of the Athenian Agora, with a monumental painting on wood: The Battle of Marathon) In the years to come the Stoa was to enrich its collection with other monumental mythological and historical paintings, such as The Fall of Troy by Polygnotus, The Amazonomachy of Micon, The Battle of Oenoe (by Polygnotus?). In this way it gradually achieved the status of a “national gallery” of painting, and even had its epithet changed in colloquial speech to the Stoa Poecile, the Painted Stoa. This makes it all the odder that we cannot be entirely sure of the name of the painter who created the tableau celebrated by so many, including Aeschines (c. Ctesiph. 186), Demosthenes (c. Nearch. 94), Himerius (or. 10 (59), 2), and, it seems, indirectly by Polemo of Laodicea in his two pretentious orations in honour of the Marathonomachos Kynegeirus (or. 1-2).¹ ² The painting exerted a lasting influence, most of all on the rhetoric. It was eventually removed with other paintings from the Stoa by a Roman proconsul, but not before around 400 AD, as attested by Synesius’ letter (Ep. 135). Synesius himself only mentioned Polygnotus by name. All the testimonies regarding its authorship are late, that is of Imperial date. Some of them refer to Micon, but only in the anecdotal contexts. Micon was said to have been reproached for having made the Persians taller than the Athenians, which was considered offensive to patriotic feelings.³ In Robert’s opinion the Attic orators who


    ¹     tag aaviSa^ atpeiXeto (Synes. Epist. 115), Overbeck 1057; Recueil 114, ibid. p. 159, cf. ibid. 114, Sopatros’ nival;.

    ²     The literary testimonies on the Battle of Marathon in art were carefully collected by Overbeck 1054D: Paus. 1, 15, 3 with references to other passages: HN 35, 57; Aelian, nat. anim. VII, 38; Tzetzes, Chit. IV, 182 ff., XII, 560 ff.; Arrian, Anab. 7, 13, 10; Sopatr. I, 8, p. 180, ed. Walz; Harpocr. Mt]kcdv; Recueil 141-155 which included Lycurgus, Persius III, 52-4; Demosth. c. Nearch 94; Lucian, Jup. trag. 32; Choricius (Rec. 145), Aesch. c. Ctes. 186; Corn. Nep. Milt. 6, 3; Himerius or. 10. 2 (Diibner); Gregory of Nazianz or. ad lul., Rec. 139, et alios; see carefully collected evidence by Harrison 1972, p. 371-378 with passages drawn from Plutarch, Polemo, Herodotus, Justin, epigraphical evidence, Lucian, Suidas, Paulus Silentiarius, Aelius Aristides et al.; cf. Pernice, Gross 1969, p. 456, on Aesch. and Demosth. in the context of the Marathon painting.

    ’ Sopatr. Disc, quant. 1, 8, p. 120, (ed. Walz), Recueil 142=Overbeck 1084); Harpocration, in Recueil 141; Arrian, Anab. VII, 13, 5 (Recueil 137=Overbeck 1082); Tzetzes, Chil. IV, 182-139; Aelian, nat. anim. 7, 38, the latter two in a meaningfully ambiguous context (Polygnotus or Micon?).

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related the story were unwittingly commenting on a technique which can be observed on the painted vases influenced by the “Polygnotean” style, involving the location of slightly diminished figures on a higher level, as a result of which those on the lower level looked taller.⁴ Aelian personally expressed a certain feeling of confusion not unknown to the ancient authors, when he wavered between Polygnotus of Thasos and Micon (nat. anim. 7, 38).⁵ Some modem scholars have focused on a not very well known Pleistaenetus as one more candidate for this authorship. They based their assumptions on a passage in Plutarch’s de gloria Athen. 2. This name is significantly absent from the carefully compiled list of 5,h- and 4lh-cen-tury painters in Pausanias’ Description of Greece.⁶ Pausanias in fact only added to this sense of uncertainty. He omitted the painter’s signature in his description of the Marathon painting in the Poecile, which he set about with his usual clarity and exactitude (1, 15,3-4). And only in his Olympia Book did he quite unexpectedly attribute the Poecile Marathon to Panaenus, brother of Phidias (5, 11, 6). Pliny the Elder corroborated: Panaenus quidem frater Phidiae etiam proelium Athen-ien-sium adversus Persas apud Marathona factum pinxit - (HN35, 57). However, the Roman scholar did not mention the painting’s location. We have every reason to believe Pausanias, whose erudition in matters of art and painstaking attentiveness to the collecting of details we have to thank for a large part of our ancient Greek archaeology.⁷

     The tableau showed the battle in three successive stages as a sort of painted epic trilogy,⁸ which developed from left to right, each section marked by the figure of an Athenian hero. They were: Miltiades leading the attack early at dawn and clashing impetuously with the Persians (ioa <xa> nap’ aptpoTEpcov ¿g to epyov) {DescrA, 15, 3); next Callimachus falling in action in pursuit of the Persians who, fleeing the field, drown in a swamp (to 8e eoco Tfjq p.axTiq tpEuyovTEq sioiv oi ßäpßapoi Kai Eq to EXoq cbÖo'övTEq ctXAf]Xouq); and finally Kynegei-rus, the central figure of the battle, near the Phoenician ships (EO%aTai. 8e Tqq Ypatpfjq vf)sq te al <I>oiviooai Kai tcüv ßapßaptov Tot>q EoninTOVTaq sq TauTaq ipovEvovTEq oi "EXlT|VEq). This way of representation was deeply rooted in the Archaic art, as aptly observed by Hölscher, who recalls an analogy on a Boston cup, which shows Kirke mixing a magic potion and changing the Greeks into animals, while Eurymachus escapes and Odysseus approaches with a bare sword in hand.


    ⁴ Robert 1895, p. 18.

    ⁵ Recueil 154=Overbeck 1083=Harrison 1972, 1 22 A.

    ⁶ K. O. Müller corrected Plutarch’s Plaestanetus to Panaenus, Robert 1895, p. 41.

    ⁷     Cf. a concise discussion on the authorship in Rec. p. 157 f.; Robert expressed the opinion that both Pausanias and Pliny the Elder were influenced by the Pergamenic art historians who exaggerated the role played by Panaenus in the Greek history of art, which resulted from their admiration for Phidias, while at the same time they degraded Micon, an authentically prominent artist of the period Robert 1895, p. 41.

    ⁸ Harrison 1972, p. 363.

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Thus three different scenes selected from Homeric narrative are united in a single artefact by the anonymous vase painter (c. 560 BC).⁹ ¹⁰ Hölscher contrasts this archaic arrangement with the unified and focal composition of the Alexander Mosaic, and labels the former “an incoherent way of art composition” (inkohärente Darstellungsweise}.'⁰ In fact the paintings by Polygnotus and his contemporaries such as Micon or Panaenus, already looked somewhat outdated to the later ancient viewers and art critics, as documented by Quintilian, who personally regarded them as quite primitive. Commendation for them, in his view, was pretentious and insincere (proprio quodam intellegendi, ut mea opinio est, ambitu -their private motive being, in my opinion, a desire to make a display of connoisseurship: Inst. oral. 12,10,3).¹¹

     I am not going to try to give a hypothetical reconstruction of the painting. The job has already been undertaken by Robert (1895 - so far the most exhaustive and thorough study: the central and left part of Robert’s reconstruction is reproduced on Pl. XLI), Harrison ( 1972), and Hölscher in his brilliant and erudite book Griechische Historienbilder (1973).¹² I will limit myself exclusively to the Persian references, which are, to tell the truth, rather scanty in the literary sources.

     Panaenus caught the Persian warriors in three stages of the battle: first, as they clashed with the Greeks in close fighting (ïaoiv èç xeîpaç xoîç ßapßapoiq). Secondly, after defeat as they were making their escape and pushing one another into the swamp and drowning (cpEuyovTÉç eiorv oi ßapßapot Kai èç to eXoç cûôoûvteç àXXfiXovç). Pausanias would once again return to this point later in his description of the Plain of Marathon, when he reflected on the terrible bloodshed suffered by the Persians who, unaware of the local topography, panicked and were trapped between their Athenian pursuers and the muddy swamp (Descr. 1, 32, 7). At the same time he recognized that he was unable to identify the burial place of the fallen Persians (1, 32, 5). Finally, in Pausanias’ description of the Poecile painting, the old master depicted the Persians entangled in the skirmish by the ships, as they tried to board and sail to safety (ëoxaxcn 5È Tfjç ypacpfjç vfjéç te ai <J>oiviooai xai tûv ßapßapcov toùç ÈO7tiitT0VTaç èç xaviaç (povevovteç oi ’'EXXtiveç). So much Pausanias. In pictorial terms we have received from him only blurred images of a confused mass of barbarians defeated by the Athenians, who were supported by their native gods. Apart from Pausanias, there are some

    ⁹ Hölscher 1973, p. 78; cf. the description of the scene in Brommer 1983, p. 71 f., Taf. 27.

    ¹⁰ Hölscher 1973, p. 80.

     " Pollitt 1978, p. 160.

    ¹²     See a concise discussion on the literary sources, their pictorial value and interdependence in: Hölscher 1973, n. 186, p. 239 f.; Reconstruction efforts in: B. Schröder, Jd\ 26, 1911, 281 ff.; W. Klein, Jdl 33, 1918, 20 ff.; Pfuhl, 1923, II, 660 ff., 673; G. Lippold.Jrfl 38/39, 1923/24, 150 ff; id. RE 21, 192 ff. s.v. Pleistainetos; Wycherly, Phoenix 7, 1953, 20 ff; E. Simon, AJA 67, 1963, 46 ff.

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other literary accounts which return time and again to two episodes of Persian warriors engaged in fighting. One is the story of Epizelos, sometimes also called Polyzelos.¹³ Herodotus relates that Epizelos found himself all of a sudden facing a giant Persian warrior, whose monstrously big beard covered all of his shield (dv8pa oi Sokeelv önXitT|v ävxiofqvai pEyav, rob xo yeveiov xf]v acnuSa naoav otaa^Eiv - Hdt. 6,117).¹⁴ Now we have a better understanding of a meaningful Herodotean comment, that until the Battle of Marathon the very name of the Persians raised terror among the Greeks (Hdt. 1,112). Curtius Rufus also recalled the ter-ribiles facies . . . Bactrianorum: hirta Ulis ora et intonsas comas esse, praeterea eximiam vastorum magnitudinem corporum (4, 13, 5). Hölscher believes that a somewhat similar “epiphany” must have influenced the vase painter who decorated the Basel chalice crater (c. 470/60 BC).¹⁵ On a chalice by Duris we find an en face portrait showing the grim bearded face of a dying Persian warrior (c. 490/80BC).¹⁶ The date of the vase suggests a reference to that horror Orientis experienced by the Athenians at the time of Marathon. Hölscher placed the Epizelos episode in the central part of the painting, above the swamp scene; Robert did likewise in his reconstruction (Pl. XLI).¹⁷ However, the accounts which clearly refer to the painting directly, that is by Pausanias and Pliny the Elder, do not mention Epizelos, while Herodotus recalls the story which he himself heard in Athens but does not relate to the Poecile painting. This is a wider problem. A large part of the literary tradition concerning the Battle of Marathon belongs to the rhetorical and above all probably purely literary tradition. It is certainly likely that we can come across some bildliche Formulierungen in Himerius’ rhetoric, as argued by Hölscher.¹⁸ In one of his orations Himerius in fact refers to the painting as his source of inspiration (or. 10 (59), 2).¹⁹

    ¹³    Hdt. 6, 117; Plut. glor. Athen. 347D; Plut. Parallela I (303B-C); Polemo 1, 44; id. 2, 56; Aelian, nat. anim.7, 38; Diog. Laert. 1, 56; Harrison 1972, V 1-8, p. 376

    ¹⁴    Apart from Herodotus’ version, the story is told in Plut. ParallA (305B-C), and Suidas s.v. Hippias (2): «päcrjia Oeaadpevoi; 10 ncbycovt Kputtraiv tt]v ctaniSa. Others mention Epizelos only by name. Robert 1895, p.24 f.; Harrison 1972 does not place this episode in her tentative reconstruction of the painting, P). 1, p. 364.

    '•'Hölscher 1973, p. 43, ibid. A8, p. 39, Antikenmuseum, Basel.

    ¹⁶    Louvre G117; Bovon 1963, Fig. 1; Beazley JÄF2 433, No. 62; Schoppa 1933, 28, No. 1; E. Pottier, Vases antiques du Louvre, 3. Ser. 1922, p. 163 f.; Pl. 109; M. Wegner, Duris. Ein Künstler monographischer Versuch, München, 1968, p. 100 ff.

    ¹⁷    Hölscher 1973, Taf. 5; Robert 1895, on an impressive illustration based on vase paintings at the end of his study.

    ¹⁸    Hölscher 1973, No. 186, p. 239, e.g. Himerius 6: eipöveuov äXXou«; ev aXXotc roic ei'Seat td>v mövcov. tout; p.ev -taxei cpOdvovrei;, rov<; 8e -rep <poß<p xetpovpevot, Kai xovg pev eni Tfj<; f]6vog cpovevovre«;. Or ibid.: eiarfiKei (scil. Callimachus) Kai pe-ta Odvarov coanep Sicokcov otpat nepaag Kai pdvco OTfipaTt.

    ¹⁹    Sei^co pfev upiv xöv MapaOcbva ev zf) ypaipp. Further on Callimachus and Kynegeirus are mentioned as figures on the painting. Harrison believes that Polemo’s orations also preserved reflections on the Poecile painting.

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     The second scene involving Persians is the Kynegeirus episode. According to Herodotus, Kynegeirus grasped hold of a Persian ship’s stem, and fell only when his hand was severed off by a sailor’s axe (Hdt. 6, 114).²⁰ Pliny the Elder corroborated this episode for the Marathon painting (HN 35, 57) (Pl. XLI). Some painted vases, for example the Basseggio chalice (c. 470 BC) or the Berlin amphora 2331 (c. 460 BC), show Persians brandishing axes.²¹ ²² In his catalogue of the Persian forces, Herodotus wrote of the Saccae, who were armed with axes called oaydpig (Hdt. 7, 64). Egyptian sailors used a sort of large axe (tuxotmj pEydXoug) (Hdt. 7, 89), which seems even more apt for the scene as displayed on the tableau in the Painted Stoa. Polemo’s “big axe” (keXekei pEyaXcp) (or. 1,42) might have reflected a related episode from the painting.

     Pliny the Elder named two Persian generals engaged in the battle, Datis and Artaphernes, who were painted by Panaenus. Pliny used the phrase iconicos duces pinxisse (HN 35,57). “Iconicus” apparently did not mean “a real portrait,” as interpreted by Jex-Blake in his fundamental edition of Pliny the Elder’s History of Art.²¹ It could not have been an image like the later Hellenistic psychological portraits, but a sort of likeness which only identified the person through his/her attitude, gestures, clothing, and inscription. The widespread and well-documented practice of introducing explanatory inscriptions containing personal names in paintings adds substance to such an interpretation of Pliny’s iconicus (this practice is also corroborated for the Poecile painting by literary comments on the intriguing lack of such an inscription under the figure of Miltiades, who was victimized by a democratic damnatio memoriae, Aesch. in Ctes. 186). Recalling the Mardonios analogy, Robert imagined both Datis and Artaphernes on horseback: the former close to the ships (Pl. XLI), and the latter charging against the Greek hoplites in


     ²⁰    Plut. Parallela I (350C); Himerius 6, 20-21; Just. Hist. Philipp. 29, 14-19; Polemo 1,42; 1, 8-10, where Kynegeirus appears almost naked, cf. Harrison, PI. 77, Fig. 13, where Kynegeirus is clad in a himation, while his companion and other Greeks are represented nude. Greek hoplites appear naked on the Persian vases in the mid-5lh century BC. In the Battle of Marathon the Greeks wore armour. A naked Greek warrior appears on the Boston oenochoe, c. 460 BC, MFA 13 196, by the Chicago Painter, Beazley ARV2 631 No. 38; Bovon 1963, Fig. 13; Schoppa 1933, 30, No. 3. Its date may suggest an iconographic relation to the Marathon painting. Robert (1895) placed both nude and armoured Greeks in his reconstruction. The case is difficult to decide.

     ²¹    (1) The Basseggio chalice, by the Painter of the Paris Gigantomachy, (now lost), Beazley ARV2 417, No. 4; Bovon 1963, Fig. 7; Schoppa 1933, 28, No. 3, 29, No. 7; (2) Nolan amphora 2331, Berlin-Charlottenburg F2331, by the Oinokles Painter, c. 460 BC (Bovon 1963, c. 480 BC), Beazley ARV2 646, No. 7; Bovon 1963, Fig. 10; Schoppa 1933, 30, No. 1.

     ²²    Jex-Blake, E. Sellers 1896, p. 103; even if iconicus was actually understood as a “real portrait” by Pliny, they could not have been such. Sellers added, “there can be no question of real portraiture . . . perhaps there was an attempt at characterization,” ibid. No.5, p. 102; W. H. Gross, “Quas iconicas vocant”, Nachr. d. Akad. d. Wiss., Göttingen, phil.-hist. KI. 1969, Nr. 3; Hölscher 1973, No. 247, p. 245; B. Schweitzer, Studien zur Entstehung des Porträts bei den Griechen, Abh. Leipzig9\, No. 4, 1939, 21 f. Anm. 58; Hölscher concluded that they were characterized by a general “Erkennbarkeit der Figur durch Stellung und Gestik,” Hölscher 1973, p. 59.

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the middle of the tableau.²³ He suspected that two vases from the Ermitage might have reflected selected episodes from the Poecile Marathon. The Ermitage amphora and hydria are outstanding for their special pictorial qualities. They show groups of warriors embroiled in close fighting. The knight on horseback on the Ermitage hydria is identified by Robert as Panaenus’ Datis (Pl. XLI1), and placed in the left part of Robert’s Poecile Marathon (Pl. XLI), while another figure from the amphora is diagnosed as Artaphemes and placed in the central part of the tableau.²⁴ Herodotus with his Hellenic feeling for pathos and beauty portrayed Mardonios charging in the Battle of Plataea as àrc’ ïrcrcov re pa%ôp.£voç Xedkoû ëxœv te rtEpi ÈœvTÔv XoyàSaç riEpoÉcov toùç àpicTovç xiXiouç (riding a white horse in the battle and surrounded by a thousand picked men who were the flower of the Persians - Hdt. 9,63). A cavalry charge led by Masistios, or Mardonios mounted on his white horse, offered a real opportunity for Herodotus’ imaginative, literary mind and his prolific style. Neither he nor Pausanias could have resisted putting an equestrian picture in their descriptions of the Battle of Marathon, if an attack led by Persian generals on horseback had actually taken place there. Polemo seems to suggest that Datis was represented on board a ship (or. 1,41; 2, 45). Zingerle believes that Panaenus’ Datis and Artaphemes can still be recognized on the Brescia sarcophagus represented one behind the other on board a ship (Pl. XLIII).²⁵

      The literary evidence regarding the imagery of the Persians on the Marathon painting is scanty. The publication and identification of the Brescia sarcophagus dated for the Imperial period in its turn has been the most substantial contribution so far to the search for iconographie parallels.²⁶ The sarcophagus is believed to represent the right part of the Panaenus painting showing the battle by the ships (Robert’s left part - Pl. XLI, XLIII). The relief portrays the Kynegeirus episode. The observer can see the powerful figure of a bearded axe-wielding Persian dressed in a sleeved chiton and tiara. He is drawing back his axe ready to swing and sever off Kynegei-

    ²³ Robert 1895, p. 27 f.; cf. Hammond 1968, p. 30.

    ²⁴ Robert 1895, p. 27 f.

    ²⁵    Zingerle JOAl 10, 1907, pp. 166-8, emphasised Polemo’s cxvœOev (Polemo Or. 1,41); Harrison 1972, p. 366.

    ²⁶    O. Jahn, AZ 24, 1866, 217 ff.; Vanderpool, Hesperia 35, 1966, 105, No. 26; Hölscher 1973, p. 51; Harrison 1972, Pl. 77, Fig. 16. There is yet another one, the Pola sarcophagus which also contains a battle by the ships, which are defended by the Persians, J. Zingerle, JOAl 10,1907, pp. 157 ff.; Hölscher 1973, p. 51, aptly comments on the point that “freilich können unmöglich beide Reliefs von demselben Vorbild abhängen, denn keine Figur kehrt auf beiden auch nur annähernd gleich wieder.” The Brescia and Pola sarcophagi are good illustrations of the problem of eclectic compositions produced by Roman workshops which used to collect together in one work different motifs drawn from different iconographie sources. It was also believed that a section of the painting with Echetlus, a local hero who miraculously appeared on the battlefield and killed many Persians with his ploughshare (Paus. 1, 15, 3; 1, 32, 5) can be identified on some Etruscan cinerary urns, Robert 1985, p. 32-35 with illustrations on p.32; G. Körte, 1 rilievi delie urne etrusche. 111 1916, Taf. 4-7; Harrison 1972, p. 367, Pl. 78, Fig. 18; Jameson, TAPA 82, 1951, p. 49-61.

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rus’ left arm still resting on the stem of the ship. Another Persian on deck is dying of wounds. The two figures in the background are sometimes identified as Arta-phemes and Datis. A subsidiary episode reliefed on the sarcophagus which portrays a recumbent Persian who bites a Greek hoplite’s leg is not corroborated by the literary evidence. Harrison adduces even more alleged analogies, which in her view may offer new archaeological parallels to Marathon in the Painted Stoa. Her principal argument concerns the severely obliterated reliefs from the south frieze in the Temple of Nike on the Athenian Acropolis.²⁷ She also directs her attention to the reliefs on the Trysa Heroon and on a funerary stele of one Marcus Curtius, which shows a knight with his horse sinking in a marsh.²⁸ Even if we regard Harrison’s Trysa and South Frieze analogies as unconvincing, her illustration of the general arrangement of the figures on the Marathon painting as placed on different levels and joined together in close combat, by analogy to Aison’s lekythos from Naples which pictures a heroic battle with Phylakos (?), is really brilliant (Pl. XLIV).²⁹

     We can reconstruct the technique employed by the painter to show the Persians sinking in the mud, for instance through comparisons with Amphiaraos, who disappears under the earth, as we see on the volute crater from Spina,³⁰ or with Elpe ior who on the red-figure pelike in Boston (5lh century BC) emerges from Hades at the feet of Odysseus. The latter may reflect an analogical scene on the Nekya by Polygnotus, once on display in the Lesche of the Cnidians in Delphi (Paus. 10, 29, 3).³¹ In the Painted Stoa Theseus emerged from under the ground and joined the Athenian fighters (Paus.1,15,3). It is clear, then, that the Persians drowning in the marsh were represented according to a technical formula which became popular among the Greek painters of that period.

     Can we actually obtain a more or less exact counterfeit of the Persian warriors who crowded the large tabula which occupied the western wing (?) of the Stoa? The reliefed images of Persians on the Brescia sarcophagus are of Imperial date.

    ²⁷ Robert 1895, p. 43, also pointed to this analogy.

    ²⁸    The South Frieze: Harrison 1972 put the Berlin and London pieces together: Pl. 73, Fig. 1, Pl. 75, Figs. 7-9, Pl. 76, Fig. 12; Trysa: 0. Benndorf, “Das Heroon von Gjölbaschi-Trysa,” Jahrbuch der Kunsthistorischen Sammlungen des Allerhöchsten Kaiser-Hauses XI, 1890,4-8; O. Benndorf, G. Niemann, Das Heroon von Gjölbaschi, 1899, 156 ff.; Harrison 1972, PI. 77, Fig. 13, PI. 78, Figs. 15 & 19 (drawings from Benndorf 1890); Marcus Curtius’ stele: Stuart Jones, Sculptures of the Palazzo dei Conservatori, 36, No. 1, PI. 13 (now in the Braccio Nuovo); Helbig 1963-1972, II 404, No. 1602; Harrison 1972, PI. 76, Fig. 11, and a similar scene from the Nereid monument (BM London), Block 861, Harrison 1972, Pl. 76, Fig. 10. Hölscher 1973, No. 195, labelled the Trysa analogy "abortive,” and the Nike Frieze parallel “groundless.”

    ²⁹ Harrison 1972, Pl. 78, Fig. 17.

    ³⁰ Alfieri-Arias-Hirmer, Spina, 1958, Pl. 43; Hölscher 1973, p. 54.

    ³¹    Brommer 1983, Taf. 31; p. 81 f.; cf. Teiresias coming up from Hades with only his head visible above the ground on the Italian crater from Paris (Brommer 1983, Abb. 39), which strikes a parallel with Pausanias’ wording (Paus. 10,29,8): Kai ö pavru; Tetpeaiat; Jtpoeiaiv eni töv ßoOpov.

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Perhaps they resemble the sculptures of Persians from Roman monuments, so carefully collected and impressively presented in a fine edition of R. M. Schneider’s Bunte Barbaren, rather than Panaenus’ Persians.³² Herodotus on his part, in the catalogue of Xerxes’ invasion army, in the account compiled about two decades after the Marathon painting was presented to the public, pictured Persian arms and uniforms in the following way: nepl jiev rfioi KEtpaXpoi eixov xiapaq KaXeopevovt; niXovq dnayeaq, nepl 8e to acbpa KiOdtvaq XEtpiScoTovg noiKiXovq, . . . XEniSoq Gi3T]pET|g 6ytv IxOvoEiSEog, 7tEpi 8s rd ctkeXecc ava^vpiSaq, avri 8e aaniScov yippee uno 8e <papETpEd>vsg EKpipavro- aixpag 8e Ppaxeag eixov, ro^a 8e pEyaXa, oiOTobg 8e KaXapivovg, npog 8e ¿yxcipi-Sia napa rov Se^lov p-qpdv napaicopEopEva ek rfjg £ibvT]g (the dress of these troops consisted of the tiara, or soft felt cap, embroidered tunic with sleeves, (a coat of mail looking) like the scales of a fish, and trousers; for arms they carried light wicker shields, quivers slung below them, short spears, powerful bows with cane arrows, and daggers swinging from belts beside the right thigh - Hdt. 7, 61).³³ The Persians in the painted Stoa must have looked more or less like their images on the so-called Persian vases, which were produced by Athenian potters from c. 490 BC until roughly the date of the Peace of Callias (449 BC). The extant evidence was collected together by Schoppa (1933) and later updated in a concise informative paper by Bovon (1963).³⁴ The Persians on the vases are remarkable for their short foreheads, prominent sharp noses, small eyes, and pointed beards, which makes them so markedly different from their Greek opponents, and simultaneously so strikingly similar to the images from Xerxes’ reliefs in Persepolis or on Persian cylinder seals.³⁵ They wear tight-knitted vests, and closefitting kaftans on these (xiOcbvag xeⁱPl5a>Tovg noiKiXovg) (Hdt. 7, 61), adorned with a black galloon running along the sleeves and also along the trouser-legs (dvalgupiSEq-Pl. XLV, XLVI).³⁶ All the details mentioned here find their analogies in the Persian art.³⁷ Some of the Persian soldiers wear scale-armour (0cbpr]Kag) XE7ti8oq ai8T|p£T|g o\|/rv ix^ooEiSEog (Hdt. 7, 61), pictured with particular care on the chalice by the Oxford Brygos Painter (1911.615-c.480 BC - Pl.

    ³²    R. M. Schneider, Bunte Barbaren. Orientalstatuen aus farbigem Marmor in der römischen Representalionskunst, 1986.

    ³³    Hdt. 9, 22; Xen. Cyr. 7, 1,2; ibid 1,2, 13 (with reference to painted images of the Persians); Persius III 59: braccatis illita Persisporticus (sc. Poecile); Strabo 15, 3, 19.

    ³⁴ Schoppa 1933; Bovon 1963.

    ³⁵    Bovon 1963, p. 592, Fig. 16; H. Frankfort, 1939, Pl. 37; F. Sarre, Die Kunst des alten Persiens, Figs. 26-27; E. F. Schmidt, Persepolis I, Pl. 197.

    ³⁶    (1) Chalice, Louvre G117, by Duris, c. 490/80 BC; Beazley ARV2 433, No. 62; Schoppa 1933, 28, No.l; Bovon 1963, Fig. 1; M. Wegner, Duris, 1968, 100 ff; (2) chalice, Ashmolean Mus., 1911. 615, by the Oxford Brygos Painter, c. 480 BC, here:Pl. XLV, Beazley ARV2 399; Schoppa 1933, 29, No. 6; Bovon 1963, Fig. 2; (3) chalice, Tiibingen, Univ. E 25, c. 480/70 BC, Schoppa 1933, 28, No. 4; Bovon 1963, Fig. 5.

    ³² J. Wieseman, Cylinder Seals of Western Asia, Pl. 99; von Lorentz 1937.

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XLV).³⁸ When he described the heroic fall and death of Masistios, Herodotus also gave us a description of the Persian aristocratic apparel and armour, and did so with a truly Homeric love of military paraphernalia: ev-rdt; 06pT]Ka ei%e Xpbaeov XejuScotov (a golden scale-armour), KarunepSe 5e rou 6a>pT]Kog KtOajva (poivtKEOv eveSeSukee (a purple upper kaftan) (Hdt. 9, 22).

     However, some of the Persians also wore Greek armour with arm protectors andpteryges, visible on the neck amphora 061021 117 from the Metropolitan Museum of Art (c. 460 BC) (Pl. XLVII).³⁹ ⁴⁰ ⁴¹ The scale-armour and cuirasses in the Persian Greek iconography made a distinctive element, because neither Scythians nor Amazons, who symbolized the lasting conflict between the Greeks and the Orient, ever wore this sort of protection.'’⁰ The Greek vases also depict Persian shoes, made of soft leather with fronts slightly bent upwards, sometimes curved, as on one lekythos from Tanagra (c. 460 BC - see also Pl. XLV).'" Aeschylus’ phrase KpoKoPanrov noSoq eupapiv (Pers. 660), a saffron-dyed eumaris, became synonymous with Oriental luxury, eupapiq is a loan word in Greek.

     The Persian soldiers represented on the Greek Persian vases wear Phrygian caps on their heads, but occasionally also Thracian alopekes, or Scythian pointed caps.⁴² However, some of the vases portray them with a soft baschlik tied under the chin (Pl. XLVIII-by the ship’s stem on Robert’s Marathon, Pl. XLI) . This cap was correctly identified by Schoppa as the true Persian tiara (riapaq kocXe-opEvooq niXovg anayEag in Hdt. 7, 61). It differs both from the rounded caps of the Persian soldiers in the Achaemenid art and from their Phrygian caps, which


    ³" See 36 (2) above; in this context Bovon (1963) quotes Hdt. 8, 113, incorrectly, I think. Hdt. mentioned only 0copqKO<pôpovç, those who wore armour, which is not synonymous with scale-armour as in Hdt. 7, 61 and 9, 22; other vases with scale-armour: ( 1 ) Basseggio chalice, see above 21 ( 1 ); (2) Nolan amphora, Berlin-Charlottenburg F 2331, see above 21 (2).

    ³⁹    (1) Neck amphora, New York, MMA 06.1021.117, here: Pl. XLVII; Beazley ARP2 1656; Schoppa 1933, 30, No. 2; Bovon 1963 Fig. 3; Richter-Hall, Red-Figured Athenian Yases in the Metropolitan Museum, 1936, 56, Fig. 34; Hölscher 1973, pp. 40 f; (2) a moulded vessel, Louvre CA 3825, Potter Sotades, c. 460/50 BC; J. D. Beazley, Paralipomena, 1971,416i ; L. Ghali-Ka-hil, Revue Archéologique 1972, 27 ff.; Hölscher 1973, p. 39, A12; (3) Chalice, Orvieto, by One-simos. Coll.Faina 65, c. 480 BC; Beazley ARY2 329, No. 132; Vos, Archers. Taf. 14, 2; Hölscher 1973, p. 39, Bl; (4) a Nolan amphora, Berlin-Charlottenburg, see above 21 (2).

    ⁴⁰ Bovon 1963, p. 593; Hölscher 1973, p. 40.

     ⁴¹    (1) Lekythos, Tanagra, Beazley ARY2 1644, (p. 303) No. 11 bis; Schoppa 1933, 36, No. 5; Bovon 1963, Fig. 12; (2) chalice from Ashmolean Museum, see above 36 (2); (3) amphora from New York, see above 39 (1); (4) Nolan amphora from Berlin-Charlottenburg, see above 21 (2). Bovon 1963, p. 594; Vos, Archers, p. 44 f.

    ⁴²    Hölscher 1973, p. 41; alopekis: (1) chalice, Edinburgh 1887.213, the Triptolemos Painter, c. 480 BC; Beazley ARY2 364, No. 46; Schoppa 1933, 28, No. 2; 29, No.5; Bovon 1963, Fig. 4; (2) chalice, Basseggio, see above 21 ( 1 ); Scythian cap: (3) lekythos, Cabinet des Médailles, Paris 496 bis, the Tymbos Painter, c. 460 BC; Beazley ARY2 758, No. 94; Schoppa 1933, 36, No. 4; Bovon 1963, Fig. 11.

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are the most frequently occurring head-gear in the Greek vase painting. The carefully drawn tiara on the head of a Persian on the Berlin skyphos 3156 serves as a particularly good illustrative example (Pl. XLVIII). Similar head-gear can be recognized on a sherd from the Campana Collection in Florence.'’³ Both vases were made c. 450 BC, which is probably not coincidentally synchronistic with the chronology of the Marathon painting. The tiaras drawn by the Greek vase painters look the same as the ones in the Achaemenid art. A small bronze statuette from Berlin may be regarded as a good instance of this/⁴ This statuette is not unique in this respect. Persian satraps also wore tiaras, as can be seen on the Sidon sarcophagus from Istanbul, or on some local issues of Persian coins minted in the first half of the 5th century BC.⁴³ ⁴⁴ ⁴⁵

     The sabres which are held by the Persians on the Greek painted pottery, conspicuous for their curvature and bird-head shaped hilts (Pl. XLVII), can also be observed in the hands of Greek warriors on Persian vases.⁴⁶ This is not the Persian akinakes, as known from the Iranian art, like the one which Xerxes offered in sacrifice and threw into the Hellespont (Hdt. 7, 54). Such swords were also found in the Persian camp after the Battle of Plataea (Hdt. 9 , 80).⁴⁷ The bows on the Greek vases also look the same in the Persian art. They take a sigma or simple curved shape (Pl. XLVI).⁴⁸ On the Edinburgh chalice by the Triptolemos Painter (c. 480 BC) the Persian riders even shoot in the Oriental way, straining the string towards the archer’s arm.⁴⁹ The mounted archers make a half-tum and shoot arrows at the hoplites attacking them from behind as they make their escape. This form of combat was regarded as natural and indigenous to the Persians, and was not practised by the Greeks. The Triptolemos Painter synthesized two different schools

    ⁴³    (1) Skyphos, Berlin 3156, c. 450 BC, here: Pl. XLVIII; Bovon 1963, Fig. 14, Gow 1928, p. 153, Fig. 9; Greifenhagen, CVA Berlin 3, Pl. 141,2, 5, 6; (2) sherds, Camapana Coll., Bovon 1963, Fig. 15; D. Levi, CVA 1, Ill, 1, Pl. 14, 223; (3) Schoppa 1933, Frag. E 791, rhyton, BM London; Bovon 1963, p. 594.

    ⁴⁴ F. Sarre, Die Kunst des alien Persien, Pl. 43; Bovon 1963, Fig. 18.

    ⁴⁵    G. Mendel, Cat. Sculpt. Mus. Ott. I, p. 33; Bovon 1963, p. 594; E. Babeion, Traitedes monnaies grecques el roniaines, Paris, 1901 ff., 11/2, No. 504-8 (c. 475 BC), No. 509-513 (c. 450 BC), Bovon 1963, No. 8, p. 594.

    ⁴⁶    E.g. The Basseggio chalice, see above 21 (1); neck amphora from New York, see above 39 (1); moulded vase from the Louvre, see above 39 (2).

    ⁴⁷    The Caspians armed with the akinakes, Hdt. 7. 67; Bovon 1963, p. 596, labelled the swords pictured on the Persian vases kopis, in reference to Xen. Cyr.1, 1, 9.

    ⁴⁸    Holscher 1973, p. 42; sigma-shaped bow: (1) Edinburgh chalice, see above 42 (1); (2) Or-vieto chalice, see above 39 (3); (3) alabastron, Louvre CA 1682, c. 470 BC; Beazley AS Vi 202; Bovon 1963, Fig. 6; (4) lekythos from Paris, Cab. Med., see above 42 (3); (5) Tanagra lekythos, see above 41 (1); simple form of the bow: (6) neck amphora from New York, see above 39 (1); (7) oenochoe, MFABoston 13.196, the Chicago Painter, c. 460 BC, here: Pl. XLVI; Beazley AS V2 631 No. 38; Schoppa 1933, 30, No. 3, Bovon 1963, Fig. 13; Holscher 1973, Taf. 4, 1.

    ⁴⁹ See above 42 (1).

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of warfare on his beautifully painted chalice, regarding them as indigenous to the Greeks on the one hand and the Persians on the other. The hoplites armed with spears and big round shields try to join with the Persians in close combat, while the Persians fight from a distance and shoot arrows while pretending to escape. In this way the Athenian painter epitomized two arts of war, Hellenic and Oriental. This particular battle situation can in no way be related to the Battle of Marathon. The date of the Triptolemos Painter’s chalice, c. 480 BC, increases the probability that this specific vase reflects the Battle of Plataea. The chalice 1911.615 from the Ashmolean Museum (c. 480 BC - Pl. XLV) and the already-mentioned Berlin skyphos 3156 (c. 450 BC) with a fine, archaeologically exact image of a Persian warrior (Pl. XLVIII), show big rectangular shields (xa yep-pa), which we know from the Persian reliefs in Darius’ palace in Persepolis.⁵⁰ It is interesting to notice that the same type of shield was in use in the Assyrian army of Sennacherib, as documented by an orthostat from Niniveh.⁵¹ A reader of Herodotus cannot forget his dramatic account of the critical hour of the Battle of Plataea, when the Tegeans and Spartans attacked and broke through the Persian defence wall made of such big rectangular shields tied one to another in a row, which had protected the Persians standing behind them (Hdt. 9, 61-62). The evidence offered by the Persian vases which present a wide range of different details relating to clothing, armour and weaponry, corroborated by Achae-menid antiquities, leads us to the conclusion that the Marathon painting by Pa-naenus must have represented a similar and certainly not inferior level of historical exactness. The Basseggio chalice (c. 470 BC) by the painter of the Paris Gigantomachy or Aison’s already-mentioned lekythos from Naples (Pl. XLIV) may actually give us an idea of the general vista of the battle as shown by Pa-naenus. The scenes of combat depict duels, in accordance with the contemporary conventions already known from images of Scythians and Amazons. On chronological grounds it is likely, though not proven beyond all doubt, that some Persian vases dated c. 460-450 BC may directly show selected sections or even singular figures and their postures from the Marathon painting. This applies most of all to the Berlin amphora 2331 by the Oinokles Painter, the Tanagra lekythos, perhaps also to the New York amphora 06.1021.117, dated c. 460 BC by Hols-cher (c. 480 BC, Bovon 1963 - Pl. XLVI1), and the Boston oenochoe 13.196 with a nude Greek warrior by the Chicago Painter (Pl. XLVI), which though in patent disagreement with the historical truth, might have been a result of the direct influence of the Marathon painting (c. 460 BC). This conjecture also applies to two later vases dated c. 450 BC: the Berlin skyphos 3156 (Pl. XLVIII), and the sherds from the Campana Collection in Florence.⁵²

    ⁵⁰    Chalice from Ashmolean Museum, see above 36 (2); Berlin skyphos, see above 43 (1); Bovon 1963, p. 595, Fig. 19; Schmidt, Persepolis I, Pl. 151 B.

    ⁵¹ Bovon 1972, p. 596, Fig. 20; H. Schafer, W. Andrae, Die Kunst des alien Orients, p. 561,2.

    ⁵² Berlin skyphos, see above 43 (1); Campana sherds, see above.43 (2).

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    A number of crucial points regarding the course of the Battle of Marathon remains unclear. Still unanswered historical questions might bring explanations to some problems related to the iconography of the Poecile Marathon. We feel unable to decide about the position and actions of Datis and Artaphernes, though their presence on the painting was corroborated by Pliny the Elder beyond all doubt (HN 35, 57). We cannot say whether or not the painter portrayed the Persian cavalry. The Brescia sarcophagus shows a Persian steed (Pl. XLIII). Harrison draws attention to five men on horseback on the severely obliterated Nike south frieze, in her view modelled on the Poecile Marathon. Aelius Aristides’ words are often quoted in this context, though it is not certain if they can be actually referred to the painting: Kai innot auveXapPdvovTO Kai vf]£q e'IXkovto (Panath. 88 (202)). Pausanias also mentioned horses whinnying at night near the monument of Kimon, as he learned during his visit to the Plain of Marathon (Descr. 1, 32, 5). Robert on his part referred to a passage in Himerius’ Polemarchicus (2 (6), 20), which mentions Persian soldiers trampled by horses during the battle hear the ships (long pev E7ti Tf|g povoq tpovEUovTEq, xovq 8e KaOinna^op-Evouq eti tt]v TjKEipov, Tobq 8e 'roiq xXoioiq ¿pnimovTag). In Robert’s view Himerius wrote his orations 2 (6) Polem. and 10 (59) Ion. under the direct inspiration of scenes from the Poecile Marathon.” It seems, then, that at least a group of horses was painted on the right part of the painting (Robert’s left - Pl. XLI). At the same time there were probably no mounted figures in the battle scenes arranged in the middle and left part of the tableau. Some historians regard the above-quoted passages as convincing enough to argue for the idea of cavalry operations on the battlefield of Marathon.⁵³ ⁵⁴ Neither Pausanias mentioned this in his description of the painting, nor did Herodotus in his account. Let us then return to the enigmatic points of the battle, which must carry a clue to some of the iconographic problems of Panaenus’ painting. What actually happened at Marathon on 11lh (?) September 490 BC?⁵⁵ Why did the Athenians attack the Persian forces unexpectedly after a delay of many days just before the arrival of the Spartans, for whom they had been patiently waiting for several days? On the battlefield, why did they not confront the Persian cavalry - the cavalry they were so afraid of - but only the Persian infantry units? Why did the Persian commanders not employ their cavalry, although earlier they had themselves chosen the Plain of Marathon exactly for that purpose (Hdt. 6, 102), that is to defeat the hoplites by the use of cavalry on open land, a lesson they had leamt during the Ionian rebellion? What happened at night and during the battle that the victorious Greeks managed to seize only 7 ships out of about 200-300? Why did the Persian commanders decide to sacrifice a strong

    ⁵³ Robert 1895, p. 16.

    ⁵⁴    Harrison 1972, p. 365; Vanderpool, Hesperia 35, 1966, 105, No. 25; Hammond 1968; H. Immerwahr, Form and Thought in Herodotus, Cleveland, Ohio, 1966, p. 251; for the opposite view. Burn, JHS 1969, 118.

    ⁵⁵ The date as calculated by Hammond 1968, No. 121, p. 4.

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Persian and Saccan infantry division though it had broken through the Greek centre and pursued escaping Greek soldiers towards the mountains? What happened in the critical night hours to put the Athenians on full alert and dressed in battle array, making them rush towards the shore as soon as the first rays of dawn appeared? Herodotus’ information that the Greeks were much less numerous in the centre but outnumbered their enemies on the wings contradicts all the Classical writers who upheld that the Persian expedition was by far superior in numbers to the Athenians and Plataeans. Perhaps this was so because the Persian commanders embarked their cavalry during the night but had not managed to complete the task, which they had undertaken in view of the apparent deadlock in the military operations, and with the intention of making a direct attack against the city of Athens, which had been left undefended. Their decision must have been additionally motivated by news coming in of the approaching Spartan expedition. Were the Persians attacked when a part of their infantry was still ashore, while the embarkation of the cavalry had already been completed? Faced with a choice between their earlier plan to sail off and the immediate necessity to help and save the men stranded on the shore who were unexpectedly compelled to confront the Greeks, the Persian commanders proved unable to make a swift decision.⁵⁶ These questions seem to bring us to a conclusion on iconography: there was no Persian cavalry charge portrayed on the Poecile Marathon, simply because there was no factual reason for it to be painted there.
     The above questions also throw some light on the Marathon painting, which showed a heroic, simplified and smooth version of the events, an edifying tale ad usum delphini, an apt subject for prospective rhetoric. We have here an interesting case of a new democratic propaganda in the making. The newly concocted myth became so psychologically dominant in the popular mentality that Herodotus, who must have known the whole truth, did not dare to reveal all, leaving lacunas which today we are no longer able to fill. He probably had a choice between a detailed and not always heroic truth on the one hand, and sensationalist success during his recitations in Athens, with some stages of the drama partially (or entirely) suppressed. It is not my intention to cast blame on Herodotus for anything. I admire him as a writer and historian. He told us much about the battle and its circumstances. I am also far from any desire to query or belittle the significance of the Greek victory. It was actually a psychological breakthrough. Its consequences would be felt during the great war of 480-479 BC. I only want to say that the Persians did not suffer a disastrous defeat in the narrow military sense of the word, and


    S⁶    For the battle see Hammond 1968 (a thorough historical, military and topographical discussion); A. R. Burn, Persia and the Greeks, London, 1962 (he argues against any use of the Persian cavalry); W. W. How, Cornelius Nepos on Marathon and Paros, JHS 34, 1914; F. Maurice, The Campaign of Marathon, JHS 52, 1932; J. A. R. Munro, The Campaign of Marathon, JHS 19, 1899; W. K. Pritchett, Marathon, University of California Publications in Classical Archaeology IV 2, Berkeley 1969; N. Whatley, On the Possibility of Reconstructing Marathon and Other Ancient Battles, JHS 84, 1964; Holscher 1973, No. 202, p. 241.

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that the full untreated details of the Marathon campaign were perhaps not an ideal subject for straightforward panegyrical rhetoric. The war of 490 BC looked more like a game on a chessboard with many carefully deliberated moves and hazardous decisions reminiscent of a gambling spree. The better players were indisputably on the Athenian side. Unfortunately such a picture is not conducive to epic presentation. All in all, the Persians failed to achieve their goals: the destruction of the Athenian army and the seizure of the city of Athens. The Athenian victory cost the lives of 192 brave men. Let us recall that Herodotus acknowledged the loss of some 4,000 Greek soldiers in the Battle of Thermopylae, and that about 40 years after the Battle of Marathon, and a decade before Herodotus’ public recitation in Athens, namely in 454 BC, many Athenians who took part in the Egyptian expedition on behalf of Inaros’ anti-Persian uprising, either fell in action, died from diseases, or were captured by the Persians in the Delta. The expedition was so unpopular with the Classical historians that we do not know much about it though it employed a contingent boarded on about 200 war ships. The fallen soldiers did not find their historian, poet or painter, which reflects a more general principle in historiography. The defence of the Polish military post at Westerplatte in Gdansk at the beginning of the Second World War by a unit of some 200 men, which ended with seven privates falling in action, gained much more attention and praise in Polish public opinion than the long and bloody battle fought by the Polish forces in the region of Tomaszów Lubelski at the end of the September campaign in 1939 with the heavy loss of the lives of thousands of men trapped by the combined Nazi German and Soviet Russian forces. That’s how it goes. The Poecile painting exemplified an alternative history in the making, the birth of a tribal or national myth. This becomes even clearer when the painting is considered in its integral original context, where the Battle of Oenoe made a pendant to the Fall of Troy while the Battle of Marathon was a pendant to the Amazonomachy, that is a mythological war against Asia.⁵⁷ Panaenus’ painting may be placed side by side with works such as the Athena, Apollo and Miltiades group commissioned to Phidias and offered to the Delphic sanctuary, or the Athena Promachos erected after the victory over Xerxes, or Athena Decate on the palm at Delphi set up in commemoration of the Eurymedon victory. Thus the Persian wars were soon assimilated into the tribal mythology, and envisaged as such by the Greek artists, beside the Amazonomachy, the Trojan saga or the Gigantomachy.

     The Greeks who withstood a global empire and won a war for freedom developed a feeling that they had become actors in a Titanic struggle, that the great time of the heroic age had returned in their contemporary history. This feeling had an impact on the figural arts, poetry, rhetoric and historiography. The style created in such historical circumstances was a certain blend of mythical idealism with scientific exactness of detail. Much of the power endowed in its works


    ⁵⁷ Robert 1895, p. 45.

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came from a growing feeling of group-identity and pride which emerged during the dramatic military confrontation with the alien, distant and deeply different East. What we are discussing here is not a question of peaceful exchange of cultural values, but the account in art of cruel wars fought between two adversaries determined to win or die. Thus the offering in the Athenian Acropolis also included the armour of Masistios, the sword of Mardonios (Paus. 1,27, 1), the Persian bows (AP VI, 2), the Oriental helmet dedicated by the Athenians in Olympia.⁵⁸ Herodotus expressed the pathos of that Titanic struggle in his memorable scenes of the Battle of Thermopylae. Simonides put a truly monumental quality into his dedicatory epigrams. The Herodotean prose, the Simonidean epitaphs, Aeschylus’ drama The Persians, and Panaenus’ Marathon struck the highest notes among the works of the cultural heritage left after the Persian wars. Harrison wrote that the Poecile painting presented history “in a slanted and propagandistic manner,” though essentially not as fiction, because eye-witnesses were still alive.⁵⁹ We can observe a similar tendency in the mythological subjects. In his monumental Wooden Horse (Aoúptoq), cast of bronze and inaugurated in the Athenian Acropolis in 414 BC, Strongylion showed Menestheus, Teucros and the sons of Theseus, that is the Athenian heroes, descending down from the 4-metre-high monument (Descr. 1, 23, 8),⁶⁰ which may be surprising to a reader of the Odyssey who has only heard of heroes in “fiction,” Menelaus, Odysseus, Diomedes, Antikles, and their like.

     However, it would be wrong to deduce that the historical painting or in general historical art played a prominent role in the Greek figure arts of the period. In fact it was quite the contrary. In the 5,h century BC Marathon and Oenoe paintings belonged to a small group of historical artworks of the Classical age attested in literature. We can add to this list The Passage over the Bridge by Darius ’ Army, a painting commissioned and offered to the Samian Hera by the Greek engineer Mandrocles (Hdt. 4, 88). As regards the extant archaeological evidence, the historical subjects amount to the Nike frieze and grave reliefs in the Attic art.⁶¹ The Persian vases belong to the branch of the minor decorative arts, with all the specific privileges and limitations imposed by the medium. Diese Gefässe sind keine Staatsmonumente, as Hölscher aptly observed.⁶² Their purpose was not to commemorate historical events, but to serve as an additional decorative element, e.g. in a house interior. In general they picture duels or single warriors transformed into refined decorative patterns. Only in a few known cases is there some likelihood that they can be legitimately referred on chronological grounds either to Marathon (the chalice by Duris, Louvre G117), or to Plataea (the Edinburgh cup by the


    ⁵" Thompson 1956.

    ⁵⁹ Harrison 1972, p. 369.

    ⁶⁰ Hölscher 1973, No. 231, p. 243.

    ⁶¹ Ibid. p. 205.

    ⁶² Ibid. p. 46.

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Triptolemos Painter, the Orvieto cup by Onesimos).⁶³ There are, however, some interesting exceptions, such as the moulded vase by Sotades (Louvre CA 3825), which depicts the defeated Greeks and Africans. Its chronology allows us to associate it with Inaros’ uprising (c. 460-450 BC).⁶⁴ A sherd attributed to the workshop of the Hephaistos Painter (c. 450/440BC) with an inscription ARTOBA ... seems to have referred, in its full context, to Artabanus, the murderer of Xerxes (465 BC).⁶⁵

     The heroes of the Persian vases always fight and die anonymously. The Greeks always seem to have the upper hand, while the Persians are portrayed as resisting against hopeless odds or fleeing. Even in those vases where the Persians are represented alone they are still either losing or escaping.⁶⁶ In this respect the Persian vases differ from the Centaur or Amazon vases, where the Athenians are occasionally shown as defeated or in defensive positions.⁶⁷ We do not encounter any propensity for caricature in the painters of the Persian vases.⁶⁸ Though defeated, the Persian warriors still confront the Greeks on equal terms and die with a heroic pathos, like Aeschylus’ Ariomedos, called noble in death {Pers. 321), or Syennesis who eoxXecbg arccbXe'to (died the heroic death - Pers. 328). It is interesting to observe that the Persian vases differ on this point from the representation of the Egyptians or Negroes, among which a statistically significant number of extant specimens reveals a definitive predisposition to caricature their subjects.

     The Persian vases as well as the Poecile Marathon represented a stream of Orientalism in the Greek art of the 5lh century BC, inspired by the Persian wars and subsequent Greek economic expansion in the East. Suffice to recall some selected names and titles: Phrynichus’ Egyptians and Antaeus, Aeschylus’ Persae, Mem-non or Prometheus containing the song of Io, the Histories by Herodotus or Xanthus of Lydia.⁶⁹ Herodotus’ Histories resound time and again with anti-Persian war propaganda, as in Themistocles’ f] E%0pq npoq tov PapPapov (hatred of the barbarians - Hdt. 8, 22). Euripides pathetically declares that PapPapcov 5’ ' EXXqvaq ap-%elv eiKoq, aXX’ oil PapPapovg . . . 'EIXtivcov {Iphig. Aulid. 1400). Aristotle


    ⁶³    Ibid. p. 44; Duris cup, see above 36 (1); Orvieto cup, see above 39 (3); Edinburgh cup, see above 42 (1).

    M Moulded vessel from the Louvre, see above 39 (2); Hölscher 1973, p. 47.

    ⁶⁵    C. H. Smith, Catalogue of the Greek and Etruscan Vases in the British Museum, III, 1886, E812, 2; Schoppa 1933, 30, No. 3; Bovon 1963, Fig. 9; Hölscher 1973, p. 49 f.; cf. Arkesilas cup and Croesus amphora, Hölscher 1973, p. 214.

    ⁶⁶    Cup from Tübingen, see above 36 (3); alabastron from the Louvre, see above 48 (3); leky-thos from Tanagra, see above 31 (1).

    ⁶⁷ Hölscher 1973, p. 46 f.

    <l" Ibid. p. 45; Bovon 1963, p. 598.

    ⁶⁹ Bacon 1961, p. 5-63 on Aeschylus; Delcourt 1934, p. 234;

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later remarked that Tocino (púoei ßapßapov Kai 5oñXov öv (Polit. 1252 b, 9).⁷⁰ In stark contradiction of such jingoism, the Persian vases preserve a sedately decorative, stylish and elegant exclusivity, and are remarkable for their sense of detail and perfectionism in composition.⁷¹ The depiction of powerful Titans, furious and sturdily built Centaurs, well-shaped and clever Amazons, brave and pathetic even in death, was an idiosyncratic attribute of the Greek art. The enemy as portrayed in the Imperial Egyptian, Assyrian and Persian art was shown humiliated, defenceless and caricatured. This was not altogether alien to the Greek Classical art, nevertheless it was marginal to the Greeks, but central to the Oriental art of the Late Bronze Age and the Is' millennium BC.

      The Greek historians, playwrights or painters managed to foist their vision of history, sometimes even down to the minor details, upon our imagination. The Persian view of the same events must have been essentially different. In the Battle of Salamis thousands of Ionian Greeks died on the Persian side. Before the Battle of Plataea thousands of mainland Greeks joined the camp of Mardonios. In Greece defection took a paralyzing scale. So one can admire the courage and determination of the Spartans and Athenians all the more. Even the role played by the priests of the Delphic sanctuary was euphemistically speaking ambiguous. They evidently kept some of their cards up their sleeves. The neighbouring temple of Abae was razed to the ground, like many other sanctuaries. Delphi remained unscathed. The Athenian Egyptian expedition in the mid-50’s ended in a large-scale military catastrophe. In the mid 380’s BC it was Artaxerxes II and his diplomats who dictated the conditions of the peace agreement to the Greeks. Tissa-phernes and Farnabazos perfected a real art of playing the Greek cards just as they wanted them. When, centuries later, Apollonius of Tyana, in the account of Phi-lostratus the Elder, paid a visit to the Arsacid palace in Babylon he had the opportunity to contemplate tapestried walls decorated in a Hellenic style (Philostr. Vita Apoll. I, 25). There he saw Datis attacking the Island of Naxus, Artaphernes sailing along the banks of Eretria, the artificial channel cut through the Athos Peninsula by Xerxes, the king’s victory in Thermopylae, and finally the seizure of Athens.

      By way of historical paradox it was actually the Greek art and literature, Herodotus, Aeschylus, and the masters of the Persian vases, who reflected the lost glory of the monumental Greek historical painting, leaving us a lasting epitaph in honour of the Persian commanders and warriors who fought and died in the protracted wars against the Greeks in the 5,h century BC.


    ⁷⁰   Arist. Pol. 1285a, 20: SovXiKÓTEpoi eivai xa rj0T] ipúaet oi pev ßapßapoi tó>v ‘EXXf]vcov; Plato. RepN, 470 c: "EXXtivikóv yevog (...) xcp 8e ßapßapiKÜ óOveíóv te Kai áXXÓTpiov; while Antipho presents opposite view B44, Diels II, p. 353:7tpó<j áXXf]Xov<; ßeßapßaptopEOa, énei tpóaet návia rcávtEt; ópoícot; rreipÓKajiev Kai ßapßapoi Kal "EXXr|ve<; eivai.

    ⁷¹   Hölscher 1973, p. 43 explained this phenomenon by the earlier painters’ tradition of rendering the images of Amazons, as well as by the conviction that the Persians were noble adversaries.



The Alexander Mosaic and the Late Classical Battle-Painting


     Ever since Wilhelm Zahn discovered the Casa del Fauno and the Alexander Mosaic, generations of scholars have taken part in uninterrupted and vivid discussion regarding the date, subject and origins of the Mosaic.¹ And we must admit that after some 150 years the discussion still remains inconclusive in a number of essential points. What we know for certain is that the Mosaic was laid out on the floor of a stylish Greek exedra (Pl. XLIX G) which gave a captivating view of the summit of Vesuvius, and that it was accomplished in the late 2ⁿd or early 1st century BC. We also know that it was a copy of a large-scale battle painting (5.12 x 2.71 m), since it is clear that the image was originally not conceived for the medium of mosaic, which is attested by the complexity of its treatment,² by manifest vestiges of the original painterly techniques, and the resulting adjustments to the demands of a different medium with all the inevitable simplifications and shortcomings. Thus we can detect a shading focal light, sophisticated perspective, minute and complex details simplified by the mosaicists who transferred the design of the painting to the mosaic. The Alexander Mosaic presents an outstanding example of the Late Classical pictorial style based on the four colours, white, yellow, red, and black {austeri colores) {HN35,50) used by the Thebano-Attic School of painters, who were the rivals of the contemporary colourists {colores floridi) {HN 35, 30).³ Their artistic contention is in a way illustrated by the art collection in the Casa del Fauno, where the Alexander Mosaic is distinguished by its four-colour style from other mosaics, which are remarkable for the use of other hues, such as for example blue and green.⁴ However, some details on the Mosaic speak for a late fourth-century date, as for example Alexander’s armour which resembles the iron-and-gold corslet from the so-called Tomb of Philip II in Ver-gina,⁵ or a unique portrait of Alexander which shows no traces of the apotheosis typical of Hellenistic and Roman victors’ portraits.⁶ Stylistic and thematic analogies to some Apulian vases, such as the amphora from Ruvo attributed to the Darius Painter, or the now lost Apulian vase from the Hamilton Collection, both dated c. 330-320 BC,⁷ and further the so-called Abdalonymus Sarcophagus from


    ' Winter 1909; Fuhrmann 1931; Körte 1907; Zahn 1842; Pernice 1907; Byvanck 1955; Hölscher 1973; Rumpf 1962; Andreae 1977; Cohen 1996; Zevi 1998; Nylander 1983 etc.

    ² Cohen 1996, p. 63.

    ³1. Scheiber, Die ‘Vier Farben’ der griechischen Malerei, AK 17, 1974, pp. 92-102; Fuhrmann 1931, p. 46.

    ⁴ Fuhrmann 1931, p. 201.

    ⁵ Cohen 1996, p. 53, fig. 30.

    ⁶ Fuhrmann 1931, p. 206; Winter 1909, pp. 130 ff.

    ⁷   Cohen 1996, pp. 64 ff, figs. 41 a-b; Hölscher 1973, pp. 174 ff., Taf. 14, 1; H. Heydemann, Alexander der Grosse und Dareios Kodomannos auf unteritalischen Vasenbildern, 8. Hallisches Winckelmannsprogramm, 1883.

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Sidon (c. 325-311 BC),⁸ should also be taken in account here. Hölscher observed that this mosaic copy of a 4lh-century painted original shows no traces of adjustments to the style of the 2ⁿd century BC,⁹ when the detailed mosaic imitation was made on commission from the snobbish, wealthy owner of the Casa del Fauno to adorn his private art museum remarkable for its sophisticated taste. In the course of time that private museum would be gradually turned into a sort of ossified art sanctuary, and preserved in its pristine condition by his descendants for the following 150 years.

      Cohen remarks that “originality was not the copyist’s aim; faithful reproduction of the original was.”¹⁰ A close study of the monochrome paintings on marble in the National Museum of Naples led to the discovery of a network of underdrawing lines, and thus showed that these painted marble tablets were all exact copies of Classical works. Von Graeve managed to demonstrate that two particular paintings form that collection were made by the same painter, who strove to imitate two different styles: of the early 4th and late 4lh century BC.¹¹ Quintillian mentioned “the painters whose sole aim is to be able to copy pictures by using the ruler and the measuring rod” (Inst. Or. 10, 2, 6-7 - trans. H. E. Butler). The copyist Zenodotus imitated cups by Calamis so perfectly that observers were unable to distinguish the originals from the clever fakes (HN 34, 47).¹² But the idea to copy a monumental battle painting in a mosaic which preserved its original size is unique. Thanks to the bizarre and pretentious fancy of a wealthy connoisseur, we have regained a great work of art from a genre which was irreparably lost. The practice of copying Greek paintings with a view to using them as the equivalent of a permanent carpet laid out on the floors of Roman villas is widely attested. The scenes pictured on 34 mosaic emblemata in Pompeii are known from more than one example, which attests to the existence of common originals behind their mosaic imitations.¹³ A well-known Orientalizing mosaic of street musicians, signed by Dioscorides, from the Villa of Cicero (2ⁿd/1st century BC), can be regarded as such an imitation, if we compare it with the painted version of manifestly the same tableau, which was uncovered in Stabia (1st century AD). We know both painted and mosaic versions of Achilles drawing his sword before Agamemnon;¹⁴ we have


    * Graeve 1970; B. S. Ridgeway, Hellenistic Sculpture. The Styles of ca 331-200 BC, Univ, of Wisconsin 1990, pp. 37-45, bibliogr. n. 27, p. 65 f.; Cohen 1996, pp. 35 ff. Fig. 20; Fuhrmann 1931, pp. 208 ff.; cf. the so-called Alketas relief, Termessos, Cohen 1996, fig. 18, p. 34; a rider on a lost painting from Lefkadia, 4lh/3rd century BC, Cohen 1996, fig. 32, p. 54; a wounded Persian trying to support himself on the painting in the House of Dionysus on Delos, 2"d/lsl century BC, Cohen 1996, fig. 34.

    ⁹ Hölscher 1973, p. 158.

    ¹⁰ Cohen 1996, p. 72.

    " Ibid. p. 71 f.

    ¹² Ibid. p. 61.

    ¹³ Ibid. p. 59.

    ¹⁴ Woodford 1993, figs. 60-61.

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identified Achilles among the daughters of Lycomedes portrayed on a high-quality painted copy from the Casa dei Dioscuri (VI 9, 6), and also on a mediocre, though integral fresco from the Pompeian House IX 5, 2, and finally in yet another version fashioned as a mosaic emblema, this time reduced to a central group, nevertheless conspicuous for its careful rendering of the original details.¹⁵ These images are sometimes extrapolated back to a lost original by the influential Late Classical master Athenion of Maroneia, whose painting Achillem Virginis habitu Ulixe deprendente (Achilles in the guise of the maiden at the moment of detection by Odysseus, trans. K. Jex-Blake) is mentioned by Pliny the Elder (HN 35, 134).¹⁶ It is clear, then, that the practice of transferring paintings to a mosaic medium was quite common.

      Copying artworks by the celebrated old masters was only a branch of the large and flourishing art market which developed after the capture of Syracuse and Tarentum during the later phase of the Second Punic War. “The Age of Plunder,” as aptly labelled by Pollitt,¹⁷ was marked by an inflow of works of art confiscated successively in Macedon (194 BC), Ambracia (187 BC), Asia Minor (186 BC), and again in Macedon (168 BC), Corinth (146 BC), and in the Is¹ century BC by Sulla, Lucullus and Pompey in Mainland Greece and the Hellenic Orient from the early 80-ties to the late 60-ties. As a result the city of Rome gradually changed into a museum of art, where tourists, snobs and connoisseurs had a unique opportunity to contemplate works by Praxiteles, Scopas, Lysippus, Phidias, Nicias, Apelles, Nicomachus, Zeuxis, Parrhasius, Antiphilus and others attested and unattested by the literary sources. All the related evidence has been carefully collected in a set of captivating guides to the Roman museums of the late Republican and early Imperial period by Rouveret (1989) or Sellers in the indexes to Pliny the Elder’s Chapters on the History of Art.¹* A portrait of Pompey, for example, modelled in pearls and displayed in Rome in 61 BC, illustrates the acquired wealth which flowed into Rome from the Eastern Mediterranean (HN 31, 14). Pollitt delineated an appropriately vivid picture of the Roman art market: “All the familiar features of today’s art market were there: passionate collectors, dealers (some unscrupulous, some reliable), smugglers, forgers, restorers, appraisers, fads and fashions, and inflated prices.”¹⁹ The enormous prices paid by art collectors throw an interesting light on the professional rivalry between Cicero and Hortensius. The latter paid 144,000 sesterces for the Argonaut Painting by Kydias (HN 35, 130), while Cicero had to make do with some Megarian statues, certainly not to be sniffed at, but “only” for 20,400 sesterces (Att. 1, 8, 2). Quotations in hard currency give


    ¹⁵    Ling 1991, figs. 137, 138; Schefold 1972, Pl. 39; Woodford 1993, Figs. 21, 22; Picture IV, 64 (C.di Apollo VI, 7, 23).

    ¹⁶ Six 1921-22, pp. 1-13; cf. Jex-Blake, Sellers 1896, pp. 158 f. (with note).

    ¹⁷ Pollitt 1978, p. 158.

     ¹⁸ Ibid. pp. 170-174; Rouveret 1989, pp. 475-496; Jex-Blake, Sellers 1896.

     ¹⁹ Pollitt 1978, p. 162.

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a slightly different perspective on the proverbial rivalry of the two prominent Roman lawyers than the ones in the schoolboy’s Latin book, which tend to give Cicero the edge. Naturally the supply of ancient Hellenic originals must have been limited, particularly during the Imperial era. Many private and state-owned galleries used to put on display works fashioned by contemporary classicists and copyists. Augustus invested some money in the art market, making purchases of both Greek originals as well as imitations of Greek works (Suet./l»g. 57, l).²⁰ By the way, this information offers an important contribution to our discussion on the Severan gallery in Naples documented by Philostratus the Elder.

     We still lack evidence exhaustive and convincing enough to solve the riddle of the authorship behind the Alexander Mosaic. The case resembles a detective story about the search for a lost Raphael or Rembrandt. The lost model for the Alexander Mosaic must have been a monumental battle painting created along an ingenious artistic conception in the latter half of the 4lh century BC by one of the best Greek painters. The oblique arrangement of the whole composition was constructed by the long sarissae invasively lacerating the sky, an effect intensified by the parallel oblique line pattern of the horses’ legs, filling the picture with movement and dramatic dynamism (Pl. L). This was augmented by a pyramidal part to the composition, with ascending lines converging on the central figure of the painting, the Persian king (Pl. L 7, LI). The pyramid was built up of the confused crowd of men and horses surrounding the elevated king: the four horses of the chariot, the fallen Persian under the chariot’s wheels inadvertently stretching out his hand towards his monarch (Pl. L 19), the Persian who is trying to tame his raging horse, the horse’s hind legs paralleled by the lines of its lord’s body (Pl. L 5, LII), the circle finally closed by the dramatically contorted body of a Persian nobleman pierced by Alexander’s long sarissa (Pl. L extreme left, LIV). All this is accentuated by the consistent use of the four-colour style applied to the surface with masterly perfection, with evidence of an intuitively ingenious use of colours as illustrated by the white patch of the king’s tunic in the focal point of the composition, or the red breeches and white shoes of the Persian knight who appears in front of Darius (Pl. L 6, LII). The observer’s attention is also attracted by the classically discreet presence of a background, a technique which helps to bring out and deepen the spatial qualities of the condensed figural composition. The faces of some of the Persian warriors show a torrent of emotions, their expression additionally emphasized by gestures indicating confusion, despair or determination (Pl. LUI, L 12). This, too, makes a strong impact on the viewer’s sensitivity. The old master had manifestly employed a range of Late Classical technical innovations, as illustrated by the bold shortening of the horse shown from its hind,


    ²⁰    Ibid. p. 168; e.g. G. Asinius Pollio displayed in his gallery the Classicist works by Stephanos and Arcesilaos beside the statues by Praxiteles, Kephisodotos and Scopas (/¿V 36, 23-34); specifically on the art gallery of Asiunius Pollio ibid. pp. 33-34.

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or a mirror reflection of the dying warrior’s face (Pl. L 19), which appears as if soothed by the peace of death congealed in the impersonal glimmer of the mirror image. We can observe more stock motifs of Greek battle-painting, such as the stumbling wounded horse with its rider falling off forwards, a chariot drawn by four horses, or the group around Alexander piercing the Persian knight, a motif with old analogies in the Greek painting, as documented by Cohen, who exemplified it by the Amazonomachy from the volute crater by the Painter of the Woolly Satyrs (c. 450 BC).²¹ Then there are the horses charging with nostrils wide open, and the Gorgon head on Alexander’s breastplate.²² Pausanias informs us that in his painting The Battle of Mantineia Euphranor focused the whole composition on the duel between Epaminondas and Gryllus (Descr. I , 3, 3 =Ov. 1791). The idea of arranging the battle around two adversaries provides the analogy for the composition which lay behind the Alexander Mosaic, which also focuses on the close encounter between Darius and Alexander.²³ All the adduced elements reflect the technique of Late Classical illusionism, once severely criticised by Plato in Book i 0 of the Republic. He blamed the contemporary Attic painters for creating a seductive illusory world of non-existent forms. In the particular case of the Alexander Mosaic we have a unique opportunity to estimate the scale of the losses suffered by Western art history. We have a feeling that we have irreparably lost a complete epoch of painting, whose artistic achievement may be legitimately compared with the Italian Renaissance, or with the Dutch or Flemish masters.

     In his extensive and detailed study Fuhrmann did his best to substantiate the thesis which emerged straight after the discovery of the Mosaic, associating the Mosaic with a painting mentioned by Pliny the Elder in his History of Painting. The Roman author writes of Nicomachus’ student and follower Philoxenos of Eretria cuius tabula nullis postferenda, Cassandro regipicta, continuit Alexandriproe-lium cum Dario (HN 35, 110=Ov. 1777 - who painted for King Cassander the


     ²¹ Cohen 1996, p. 46; fig. 28, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

     ²² For wonderful illustrations with enlarged details see Andreae 1977.

     ²³    It is not unlikely that the Greek battle-painting was inspired by the monumental Oriental historical relief, Hölscher 1973, p. 170; Hölscher asked if the painting commissioned to Bular-chos by Candaules (HN 35, 55) and the painting by Mandrocles of Samos were not a missing link between the Hellenic and the Oriental battle-painting, Hölscher 1973, p. 213; more recently Fehr 1988 argued for the Egyptian origins of the Alexander Mosaic. He emphasized the artist’s propensity for drastic details, which, in his view, were alien to the aesthetics of the Greek art, p. 125; the detailed representation symptomatic of the Near Eastern art, Fehr 1988, p. 126, and the confusion of the fallen bodies crushed by the king’s running chariot is also a common Egyptian motif, ibid., p. 128. HN 35, 55: quid quod in confesso perinde est Bularchi pictoris tabulant. in qua erat Mag-netum proelium, a Candaule, rege Lydiae Heraclidarum novissimo . . . repensant auro? According to Pliny Candaules lived during the 18lh 01. (708-705 BC), cf. Jex-Blake, Sellers 1896, notes on p. 100. Hdt. IV, 88: Çôkx ypayâpevoç nâaav tï]v Çeûtjiv toû Boanópov xai ßaatXea te Aapeîov év 7tpoe5pÎT| xatfipevov xai tàv atpatôv avtoû Staßaivovta, rauta ypayâpevoç avéOrpce èç tô "Hpatov.

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battle between Alexander and Darius, a picture second to none, trans. Jex-Blake). According to Fuhrmann the painting was allegedly confiscated in Macedon at the time of the Battle of Pydna (168 BC) by the Roman invaders and later displayed in Rome.² * * ²⁴ In his view another Battle of Issos reputedly painted by one Helen of Egypt and put on exhibition in the Templum Pacis in Rome during the Flavian period as mentioned by Ptolemy Hephaistion (Chennos) was actually the same painting by Philoxenos of Eretria, attributed by the unreliable writer to a non-existent paintress. Ptolemy needed a paintress for his catalogue of famous Egyptian women and consequently fabricated an Egyptian female painter.²⁵ Helen’s authorship was already rejected a long time ago by Sellers, who called Chennos a notorious liar.²⁶ But the idea returned to scholarship with a paper by Saflund (1994), in which she recognized the paintress’s self-portrait in the image of the Medusa on Alexander’s breast.²⁷ Putting aside for a while the question of authorship, the Battle of Issos, which was displayed in the gallery of the Templum Pacis beside the Ialysos of Protogenes, the Scylla of Nicomachus, the Heros of Timanthes, and the sculpted Nile with Cubits, added some more Oriental flavour to the precious Imperial collection, yet another instance of its undeniable Orientalizing undertones. Returning to the question of authorship, Sellers on his part wavered between Aristides (HN 35, 99) and Philoxenos of Eretria.²⁸ The theory of the painting’s eastern origin has actually gained popularity in recent decades. Fehr argues for a Hellenistic/Egyptian source of inspiration. He concludes that the painting was manifestly designed for both Greek and Egyptian viewers.²⁹ Fehr is persuasive, and his paper worth reading. However when he comes to the identification of the Horus eye in the portrait of Alexander his argument seems to depart from his previous disciplined procedure.³⁰ Don-derer (1990) supposes that the Mosaic was made some time in the lsl half of the 2ⁿd century BC and later removed in two parts from an unspecified eastern palace and transported to Italy.³¹ Nylander sees the painted original’s “location and propagandistic function in a Graeco-Macedonian-Iranian palatial context somewhere in the formerly Achaemenid Near East, possibly Syria or Phoenicia.”³² Zevi in


    ²ⁱ Fuhrmann 1931, p. 42 f. passim.

    ²⁵ Phot. Bibl. 190: 149 b, 1.30-33; ibid. p. 225 f.: cf. Holscher 1973, p. 171 f.;=Overbeck 1976:
Kai f] ^coypacpog 'EXevti . . . -firt? vnv ev "Iaacp paxr]v eKeivoig ctKpd^ovaa toi<; %povoi<; eypaye. Kai ev         'Eipfivrig -repevei eiti 'OueoTtaaiavov dvereOr) t] ypatpf].

    ²⁶ Jex-Blake, Sellers 1896, p. 134.

    ²⁷    L. Saflund, in: Opus Mixtum. Essays in Ancient Art and Society, Acta Inst. Rom. R. Suec., Ser. 8, 21, 1994, pp. 93-96.

    ²S Jex-Blake, Sellers 1896, p. 134 (Aristeides of Thebes): idem pinxit proelium cum Persis.

centum homines tabula ea conplexuspactusque in singulos minas denas a tyranno Elatensium Mnasone

(HN 35, 99 - he also painted the battle with the Persians; the picture contains a hundred figures,

for each of which Mnason the tyrant of Elateia had agreed to pay him ten minae, trans. Jex-Blake); =Overbeckl779, no. 2.

    ²⁹ Fehr 1988.

    ³⁰ Ibid. p. 129.

    ³¹ M. Donderer, in: Das antike Rom und der Osten. Festschrift K. Parlasca 1990, pp. 19-31.

    ³² Nylander 1993, p. 146.

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his extensive and captivating paper emphasizes the chronological and thematic coincidence between the mosaics of the Casa del Fauno and the Temple of Praeneste, and consequently infers that an Alexandrian mosaicist workshop must have been active in Italy in the late 2ⁿd and early l⁵¹ century BC.³³ Zevi rejects Fuhrmann’s inference of the owner’s participation in the Battle of Pydna. In his view the gap of two generations between the battle and the making of the Mosaic excludes such a possibility. He also observes that Fuhrmann’s “Macedonian” explanation would contradict the villa’s comprehensively Orientalizing decorative programme.³⁴ Finally Zevi lays emphasis on the owner’s Egyptian connections.³⁵ Hölscher treats the Alexander Mosaic and the literary evidence on Philoxenus and Helen with caution and places them in separate, apparently not directly related chapters.³⁶ However, he admits Philoxenos’ authorship as acceptable on both chronological and stylistic grounds.³⁷

    There is no way of reconciling all these contradicting views on the present level of our knowledge and escaping from the growing tangle of confusion. However, although we may feel tired of the old theories, we should not forget in our ardour for novelties that our aim is to get to the truth, and consequently even the most recent date on a paper or book does not necessarily bring us closer to a solution of the problem. I have a feeling that the study by Fuhrmann, which has been treated in recent decades as secondary or generally outdated, is still the most comprehensive and thorough work on the subject. One may even suspect that if anyone has ever been close to a solution it was Fuhrmann in his Philoxenos von Eretria. Archäologische Untersuchungen über zwei Alexandermosaike (1931). In fact his reconstruction of the authorship and origin of the painting behind the Mosaic still has its strong points, which include not only his judicious chronological, historical, literary and art-historical considerations. The painted original exerted a considerable impact on the Italian minor arts of the 2ⁿd and 1sl centuries BC, which is well attested by the extant archaeological evidence. It is an indirect record of the painting’s public display in Rome. The evidence comprises seven Etruscan cinerary urns discovered in the region of Perugia (2ⁿd century BC),³⁸ an Italo-Megarian terracotta bowl made in the workshop of C. Popilius (late 2ⁿd/early 1st century BC),³⁹


     ³³ Zevi 1998.

     ³¹ Ibid. p. 48.

     ³⁵ Ibid. pp. 45 ft.

     ³⁶    Hölscher 1973, the Alexander Mosaic: pp. 122-169 (a competent and complex treatment); on Philoxenus: pp. 170 f.; on Helena: p. 171 f.

     ³⁷ Ibid. p. 162.

     ³⁸    Cohen 1996, p. 63, fig. 37 (drawings by Körte 1916, Pl. Ill, 112,4); Körte’s Pl. 112,4 is much better reproduced in Andreae 1977, fig. 21; bibliogr. of the urns: Cohen 1996, n. 45, p. 214; Hölscher 1973, p. 123.

     ³⁹   Cohen 1996, p. 63, fig. 38, n. 46; Hölscher 1973, p. 123; Andreae 1977, fig. 23: Fuhrmann 1931, p. 226; (Boston, MFA 99542).

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and a limestone relief from Isernia with a battle scene (late 2ⁿd/early 1st century BC).⁴⁰ The impact of the painting was still being felt in the Imperial art: in the Ruesch relief where either Domitian or Trajan replaced Alexander,⁴¹ or in the Trajanic relief reused for the decoration of the Constantinian triumphal arch in Rome.⁴² But I do not think Fuhrmann was right when he expressed the opinion that Pliny the Elder did not attest his autopsy of Philoxenos’ Alexandriproelium cum Dario (HN 35, 1 1 ).⁴³ Pollitt observes that Pliny sometimes implies that particular works were in Rome without directly saying so.⁴⁴ If we compare Pliny’s wording tabula nullispostferenda Cassandro regipicta with his usual economical, narrowly informative and highly condensed style which in extensive parts of his art history amounts to mere name- and title- dropping occasionally interrupted by longer bouts of moralizing or witty anecdotes, we may share a legitimate feeling that in the case of Philoxenos of Eretria Pliny the Elder indirectly referred to something he had in his eyes when writing. It also seems clear that we must look for its creator in a strictly limited circle of the most prominent painters of the late decades of the 4,h century BC. Philoxenos of Eretreia, even if not certain, is one of the most likely candidates.

     The subject of the Alexander Mosaic may seem obvious at first sight: the battle between Alexander and Darius III. In fact this is not strictly true. The immediate question is which of the battles? It is not an irrelevant question in this particular case, when we are dealing with historical battle-painting, where an exact definition is always vital. Unfortunately the possible answers do not amount to the simple alternative of either Issos or Gaugamela. We learn from our literary sources that Alexander was struck on the head by Spithridates at the Battle of Granikos, in outcome of which he was temporarily fighting without a helmet (as on the Mosaic) (Plut. Vit. Alex. 673; Arrian’s Mithridates, Anab. 1, 15, 8). We also read in Arrian’s Anabasis that in the same battle Alexander killed the satrap Rhoisaces naioag tcd ^•uo'ctp 5ia tou 0a>paKoq eq to OTepvov {Anab. 1, 15, 8 - his blow pierced the armour and reached the enemy’s breast), which also seems to be represented on the Mosaic.⁴⁵ The Granikos evidence has some substance, but is generally unconvincing for many reasons, of which the most important is the presence of Darius III on the tableau. Fuhrmann carried out a laborious analysis of the extant Greek


    ⁴⁰    Cohen 1996, p. 63, fig. 39; n. 47 (bibliogr.); Isemia, Museo Arch. 13511 (18); Hölscher 1973, p. 123, n. 679, p. 270 (bibliogr.).

    ⁴¹    Fuhrmann 1931, p. 226 f.; Rizzo 1926, fig. 5; A. Ruesch, I bassorilievo con motivo della battaglia di Alessandro.

    ⁴² Hölscher 1973, p. 123; n. 680 (bibl.); Andreae 1977, fig. 22.

    ⁴³ Fuhrmann 1931, p. 226.

    ⁴⁴ Pollitt 1978, p. 158.

    ⁴⁵    Plut./l/ex. 16 (673) told the story in a different way: Rhoisaces fell in action ■utt’ ’AXe^ctvöpou fiepet nX-Tiyeii; (with the sword), while Kleitos the Black killed Spithridates tcd ^va-tep SieXctoai; peoov (piercing him through).

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historical sources regarding the Battles of Issos and Gaugamela and came to some interesting conclusions: we have at our disposal two relations - the first of Issos, by Diodorus (17, 60) and Curtius Rufus (4, 13, 47 ff.), who followed the testimony of Kleitarchus; and the second of Gaugamela preserved in Plutarch, who in turn based his description on Callisthenes {Alex. 33). In both accounts Alexander noticed Darius in the crowd of warriors and attacked him at the head of his élite cavalry unit of hetairoi. Darius, however, managed to escape thanks to the determination and self-sacrifice of his bodyguards, who stopped Alexander’s assault with their own bodies. The Mosaic pictures such a situation. So Gaugamela or Issos? In Fuhrmann’s view Kleitarchus adapted Callisthenes’ account of Gaugamela for his description of the Battle of Issos. This fact was to be responsible for our confusion with respect to the Greek accounts.⁴⁶ “Clitarchi probatur ingenium, fides infamatur,” remarked Quintilian (10, 1,75). In addition, for obvious chronological reasons the painter could have used exclusively Callisthenes’ account if any at all. Callisthenes was executed by order of Alexander in 328 BC.⁴⁷ The Chronicle of Ptolemy was not published until the 280-ties BC. The history of Aristo-bulos, the historian of Lysimachos, was more or less of the same date. Kleitarchus’ chronology is not clear, but his book could not have been significantly earlier than the former two.⁴⁸ It is also possible that the painter relied on the verbal relations of Alexander’s officers. If so, they must have been close to Callisthenes’ account of the Battle of Gaugamela. Arrian recorded that in the Battle of Gaugamela Alexander led his élite cavalry unit straight against the position of the Great King, penetrated deep into the Persian ranks, and eventually found himself close to Darius {Anab. 3, 14, 1 ff.).⁴⁹ At the same time he observed that the monarchs never faced one another on the field of Issos. Kleitarchos wrote that they did, but that it was the infantry division of Kardakes Alexander attacked at Issos, and not a cavalry guard as seen on the Mosaic (Arrian, Anab. 2, 8, 6). Consequently Arrian’s account of Gaugamela seems to fit the situation portrayed by the Pompeian Mosaic quite well. A conventional barren tree does not help us much in the identification of the geographical surroundings (the mountains of Issos or the flat desert of Gaugamela?). It is also believed by some that the long spears behind the king and his guard are held by the Persians, and that this refers to the rearmament of the Persian infantry before the final clash with Alexander (Diod. 17, 53, 13). A passage from Callisthenes’ description of the Battle of Gaugamela (Plut. Alex. 33) depicting the royal chariot stuck in the confusion of fallen bodies and raging horses (xai twv npoTETaypevcov Suvápecov épeinopévcov eiq amóv, cbq ovk fjv ánoaTpéyat to appa Kai Ste^eXáoai páStov, áXX’ oí te xpoxoi ctvveíxovto 7tT(í)p.aoi nEcpvppévoi ToaoÚTOig, oí 0’ ínnot KaTalapPavógEvoi xai áKOKpunTÓps-


    ⁴⁶ Fuhrmann 1931, p. 169, passim.

    ⁴⁷ Ibid. pp. 158 f.; p. 166.

    ⁴¹¹ Ibid.

    ⁴⁹ Plutarch preserved the same picture (Plut. Alex. 3, 3).

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vol T(b 7tXT|0ei tcov vEKpcov, e^XXovto Kai ouvETapaxtov tov T]vio%ov - the impetus of the concerted Macedonian attack made it difficult for the king to drive his chariot and lead it out of the tumult of battle; its wheels became stuck in the large number of the fallen bodies and the horses entangled in the heaps of the dead; so they struggled until the king’s driver finally lost control over them) also reminds us of the central scene of the Mosaic. Similarly Arrian’s image from the Battle of Gaugamela p te tpaXay^ f] MaKESovtKT) kvkvt] Kai xalg oapiaaatq KEippiKuta (the compact Macedonian phalanx bristling with the thicket of saris-sae) brings another detail strikingly illustrative of the artistic vision (Anab. 3,14,1). However the critics of this interpretation argue that at the Battle of Gaugamela Alexander wore Persian double-linen armour (OcbpaKa StnXouv Xtvovv) and not ordinary Macedonian armour as shown on the Mosaic (Plut. Alex. 32). Feeling unable to reconcile all the conflicting testimonies, Fuhrmann issued a thesis that we are not dealing with a particular battle, either Issos or Gaugamela, but a generalized conflict between Alexander and Darius, as described by Pliny the Elder, a sort of artistic hybrid containing elements of the three legendary battles of Alexander the Great.⁵⁰ His thesis gained some popularity, even if not wider acceptance.⁵¹ Nevertheless, like some other authors (Fuhrmann, von Salis, Andreae), I am personally inclined to interpret the Mosaic as reflecting the critical minutes of the final victory at Gaugamela, which in a symbolic way epitomized the success of Alexander’s Persian expedition.

     The painting was apparently only one in a series of commissions founded by different people in commemoration of different events relating to Alexander’s anabasis. Krateros dedicated a lion hunt by Lysippos in Delphi with Alexander cast in bronze (HN 34,64; Plut. ?l/ex.40), the King himself founded the Granikos monument in honour of the hetairoi fallen in battle, cast in bronze by Lysippos. This monument, set up in Dion, was later confiscated and put on display in Rome (148 BC) (HN 34, 64: Veil. Pater. I, 11,3). Aetion on his part celebrated the marriage of Alexander and Roxana in his painting put on exhibition in Olympia (Luc. Hdt.). In the same way Cassandros founded Philoxenos’ painting, which according to Stewart, was made immediately after the Battle of Issos and soon brought to Macedon.⁵² According to others the painting was not created until 317/316 BC, when Cassandros became Viceroy of Macedon, or even later in 303 BC, when he was crowned


    so Fuhrmann 1931, p. 171; Hölscher 1973, p. 147; H. Heydemann, Alexander der Grosse und Dareios Kodomannos auf unteritalischen Fasenbildern, 1883, p. 12, n. 44; Schoppa 1933, 30 f.; A. v. Salis, Antike und Renaissance, 1947, pp. 89 ff.; A. W. Byvanck, La Bataille d'Alexandre, 1955, p. 28; G. Mansuelli, EAA 1 240 s. v. Alessandro Magno; Andreae 1977, p. 28.

    ⁵¹    Some authors argue for Issos: A. Maiuri, Roman Painting, 1953, p. 70; M. Robertson, Griechische Malerei, 1959, p. 169; Rumpf 1962.

    ⁵²    A. Stewart, Faces of Power. Alexander's Image and Hellenistic Politics, 1993, pp. 130-157; Zevi 1998, n. 76, p. 49; the Apulian vases if dependent on the painting speak for early dating in the late 330’s or 320’s BC.

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King, if we read Pliny the Elder’s Cassandro regi picta literally (HN 35, 110). In my opinion the final battle of the campaign, that is Gaugamela, was just right for such a commission. To a soldier a representation of a general fray may seem meaningless, 1 would think. It must have been a real battle. Correct details are essential in such a situation - generals, enemies, setting, date, uniforms, weaponry. All the historians and archaeologists emphasize the exactness of the details represented, which significantly enhance the notion of the picture’s historicity. Yet it is impossible to prove beyond doubt that the painting showed the critical minutes, the turning point of the Battle of Gaugamela, that is the final overthrow of the Achaemenid Empire.

      We have a unique opportunity to imagine a large-scale easel painting in its original size and power of expression, as hardly anywhere else, perhaps only with the exception of a few other group compositions such as Hercules with Omphale (Pompeii, IX, 3, 5) or Dionysus and Ariadne (MN 9278).⁵³ ⁵⁴ By the way, Dionysus and Ariadne in the House of the Cithara-player made a pendant to a picture identified by A.Lagi de Caro as the Wedding of Alexander and Roxana. If this were correct, then we would have a copy of Action’s painting described by Lucian (Hdt.).⁵A P. Moreno argued for a different interpretation. In his view it is Stateira and not Roxana who is portrayed on the Pompeian fresco.⁵⁵

      The Orientalist component in the Alexander Mosaic is so substantial and prominent that one may legitimately call the painting behind the Mosaic a monumental historical battle painting in the Orientalist style. The painter expressed the Orientalist element most of all through the Persian dress and military equipment pictured with striking care and historical exactness.

      Let us begin with the central figure of the Great King (Pl. L 7, LI).⁵⁶ On the Mosaic Darius wears the ceremonial robes of the Persian king, which consisted of a purple chiton with a white front %iT<ava nopipvpoôv peoôXevKOv (Xen. Cyr. 8, 3, 13), bordered with a star design and a purple sleeved coat KavSvv ôXo7tôp<pvpov (ibid.), a symbol of royal power, waving in the wind.⁵⁷ The glamour of the Persian royal robes embroidered with the signs of the zodiac and stars


    ⁵³    Heracles and Omphale, Schefold 1972, Pl. XLI; Dionysus and Ariadne: Villard in Char-bonneaux et al. 1973, presents wonderful reproductions of the painting from the House of the Cithara-player, figs. 147-148; its copies: Pompeii, VII 31, 51, C.dci Capitelli Colorati, the original probably made in the 2ⁿd century BC; Pitture VII, 1, 1996, fig. 68 (a drawing by N. La Volpa), 69, pp. 1046-1047; Reg. VI, 16, 15.17, C. dell’ Ara Massima, Pitture V, f. 38, p. 877; Reg. VI, 15, 1, C. dei Vetti, Pitture V, p. 540; House of the Ariadne, Sabratha, the 4lh century AD, Ling 1991, fig. 209.

     ⁵⁴ Classica et Pompeiana, Festschrift W. Jashewski, 1988, pp. 75-78.

     ⁵⁵ Pittura greca, 1987, p. 146; Zevi 1998, p. 38, n. 46.

     ³⁶ Andreae 1977, fig. 10.

     ⁵⁷ Curt. Ruf. Ill, 3 (8); Hölscher 1973, p. 133; Neuffer 1929, p. 32; Fuhrmann 1931, p. 135; v.Graeve 1970, pp. 95 ff.; Schönberger 1968, p. 470.

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deeply impressed the imagination of the Greeks and Romans. They were synonymous for them with wealth and power, and were used to express a prominent social status or even royal aspirations. Athenaeus colourfully described the garments worn by Demetrius Poliorcetes: al 8e /XapiSeq avrov qoav optpvtvov E%ouoat to ipEyyog Tqg xpoag, to 8e 7tav 6 7t6Xog evucpavTO xpuoobc, actTEpac, ex<ov Kai Ta 8cb8EKa £d)8ta. ptTpa 8e xpvaonaoTog qv, <q> Kauaiav aXoupyfj oioav ECTtpiyyEv, E7ti to vcotov tpspovoa Ta TEXeuTata KaTa|3XqpaTa twv vcpaopaTCDV (12, 535 f. - his riding-cloaks had a lustrous dark-grey colour, and the universe with its golden stars and the twelve signs of the Zodiac were woven in it. His headband was spangled with gold, and tightly in place a hat of purple; the fringed ends of its woven material extended down to his back). Plutarch mentioned them in his biography of Demetrius. They were embroidered with EiKaopa tou Koapou Kai tcov kot’ oupavov tpatvopEvcov (the image of the universe and the celestial bodies - Demetr. 41). Scipio put on a similar robe for his triumph over Carthage (Appian, Pun. 66). Euripides’ Ion raised a magnificent tent in Delphi the roof of which was made of a peplos adorned with rich embroideries that pictured the sky and constellations with Eos, the Sun, Night and the Stars (Eur. Ion 1141-1162). Euripides labelled them PapPapcov vcpaapaTa (barbarians’ i.e. Oriental embroideries).⁵⁸ In a similar way Darius’ coat depicted on the Mosaic was woven with golden thread in designs which show hawks facing one another, which we also know from Curtius Rufus’ account (3, 3, 17). We remember that on the painting by Polygnotus, which was put on display in Delphi, Memnon the King of Ethiopia was dressed in a chlamys decorated with images of birds (Paus., Descr. 10, 31,6). Europa wears a peplos embroidered with little birds on a white ground chalice from Munich.⁵⁹ We can suspect that the hawk design embroidered on Darius’ coat actually represented a symbol of the winged Ahura Mazda.⁶⁰ Pollux described it as 6 8e KaTacrriKTog XiTtbv (a polka-dotted chiton) with C,6a q avOq EvvtpaopEva (woven animals and flowers - 7, 55). Ctesias wrote that the royal garments struck a religious awe in the Persians.⁶¹ As we have already mentioned, the royal robe was a manifestation of kingship and was synonymous with the right to the Achae-menid throne. Darius on the Mosaic wears the tiara on his head (op0qv excov Tqv Tiapav-Xen. Cyr. 8, 3, 13), but meaningfully without a diadem, a precious object of the Persian regalia which embodied the right to the throne held by its wearer (8ta8qpa tie p i Tfj Ttapa - Xen. Cyr. ibid.).⁶² We can only suspect the


    ⁵" Von Lorentz 1937, p. 199, 201-202.

    ⁵⁹ Von Lorentz 1937, p. 215=Europa I, LIMC IV, 1,44 fig. (the images clearly visible on the representation).

    “ Eddy 1961, p. 45.

    ⁶¹ Ctesias cited by Aelian, nat.anim.W, 46, 1.

    ⁶²    Neuffer 1929, pp. 33 ff.; O. M. Dalton, The Treasure of the Oxus, XXXII ff., fig. 21, Taf. IV, Nr. 7, Taf. XIII, nr. 2; Hölscher 1973, p. 133, v. Graeve 1970, p. 105, n. 142; H. W. Ritter, Diadem und Königsherrschaft, Vestigia 7, 1965, pp. 6 ff.; Fuhrmann 1931, pp. 85 f., p. 135.

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reasons for the omission of this central detail on the Mosaic. Was the painter afraid of hurting Alexander’s feelings, Alexander who himself aspired to the Achaemenid throne? Does it not bespeak an early date for the painting, which consequently must have been made before the death of Alexander? Alexander wore the diadem from 330 BC onwards, after the final victory over Darius. Such a detail would fit in with an early date of the Apulian vases, which show the duel between Alexander and Darius (330/320 BC). The vases are adduced as a proof by those who argue for the late thirties as the date of the monumental painting.⁶³ Darius on the Mosaic also wears a twisted golden necklace with animal heads on its ends. The cuffs which separate the heads from the twisted ring find their exact analogies in the archaeological materials.⁶⁴ Herodotus called the Persians GTpenTocpôpovç Kai yeXiocpopoug (torque and armlet wearers - 8, 113).⁶⁵ Golden torques and armlets were also a mark of rank.⁶⁶ On the Mosaic we can recognize the aristocrats in Darius’ élite bodyguard by them. We see such a fine golden torque on the neck of the Persian knight to the right of Darius (Pl. L 12, LIII), or a disconnected torque sliding down the arm of the dying Persian trampled und-^r the wheels of the royal chariot (Pl. L 19).

      The Persian pierced by Alexander’s sarissa at the very moment of his desperate effort to free himself from his fallen horse is particularly notable for his rich, wonderful Persian nobleman’s attire (PI. L extreme left, LIV). He wears a Median tiara with a nepiSeopov (Kupßaoia, KÎôaptç, Kitapiç). A similar baschlik covers the heads of other Persian horsemen on the Mosaic, and is well attested by the Persian archaeological data.⁶⁷ The transfixed knight is dressed in a yellow chiton (XiTcbv xetptôœTÔç) bordered with trimmings decorated with triangles, a composition of designs attested for Persian textiles.⁶⁸ His yellow breeches are richly ornamented with gryphon designs (àva^upiôeç),⁶⁹ and they give the same kind of impression as the red àvaÇupiÔEÇ of a young Perisan noble who is trying to calm his fright


    ⁶³    A. Stewart, Faces of Power, 1993, pp. 130-157, argues for 334 BC, on the other hand he wrote that the Apulian vases and the Philoxenos’ painting should be discussed as not related with one another, p. 152; L. Giuliani, AK 20, 1977, 26-42; Zevi 1998, p. 49, n. 75-76; Cohen 1996, pp. 63 ff.

    ⁶⁴   W. Deaonna, Bijoux Annulaires et spécialement colliers en forme de serpent, Artibus Asiae 1957, pp. 265-281; Hölscher 1973, n. 767, p. 275.

    ⁶⁵    Cf. Hdt. 7, 83; 9, 80; Xen. Anab. 1,2, 27; 5, 8; 8, 29; Cyr. 1,3, 2; 3, 3; 2, 4, 6; 6, 4, 2; 8, 5,18; Plat. RP 553 c ‘like an oriental despot with tiara, chain, and sword’; Neuffer 1929, p. 34.

    “ Hölscher 1973, p. 143; Dalton 1926, p. XXX1I1; Fuhrmann 1931, p. 135; G. Walser, Die Völkerschaften auf den Reliefs von Persepolis, Teheraner Forschungen 2, 1966, p. 70.

    ⁶⁷    Andreae 1977, fig. 6; described by Strabo 15, 3, 15; Hdt. 7, 61; Aristoph. Aves, Schol. v. 487; O. M. Dalton, The Treasure of Oxus, 2, 1926, p. XXVIII f. Pl. XIV-XV; Neuffer 1929, p. 33; F. Sarre, Die Kunst d.alten Persiens, Taf. 43; Bovon 1963, fig. 14, 18 (=Sarre taf. 43).

    ⁶⁸   Hdt. 7, 61; Strabo 15, 3, 19; Pollux 7, 58; Dalton 1926, Pl. XIV-XV; Sarre, Kunst, Taf. 43, 51; 9, 14; Hölscher 1973, p. 132; Ghirshman 1962, Abb. 190,469-70; G. Widengren, Arctica, Studia Ethnographica Uppsaliensia 11, 1956; 237 f.; v. Graeve 1970, p. 96.

    ⁶⁹ Hdt., Strabo, Pollux etc. see above n. 66; von Lorentz 1937, 200 ff.

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ened galloping horse in front of the Great King’s chariot (Pl. L 6, LII). His trousers have elaborate garland and animal patterns, among which we can still recognize fantastic hybrid monsters and octopuses.⁷⁰ The Persian knight who tries to stop the impetus of Alexander’s attack at Darius with his own body (Pl. L extreme left) also wears a richly decorated cloak (Kdv8uq), which distinguishes him as a man of princely status (Pl. LIV). The gryphon design which we observe on the Persian noble’s trousers on the Mosaic was actually one of a narrow group of the most popular decorative designs in the Greek Orientalizing art. The gryphons appeared on animal friezes, in scenes of war with the Arimasps and in animal combat. One of the most impressive images on a Faliscan volute amphora in the Villa Giulia in Rome shows a gryphon fighting with a powerful charging bull.⁷¹ Von Lorentz gathered an impressive collection of artefacts in his brilliant paper on the Oriental monsters as ornaments in Greek textiles (1937). He identified them on painted vases, silver vessels, furniture, weaponry (a sheath from Ukraine), Etruscan sarcophagi and buckets.⁷² The impact of Oriental textiles, this time carpets and tapestries, is particularly well attested for Late Classical and Early Hellenistic mosaics, where we find gryphons (Assos, Alexandria, Olynthos, Corinth), animals fighting each other (Motye, Corinth), animal friezes (Olbia, Olynthos), animals in antithetic heraldic compositions (Assos), and hunting scenes (Olynthos, Sikyon). The Orientalizing climate of those mosaics is additionally emphasized by the decorative motifs of palmettes and lotus flowers.⁷³ It is interesting at the same time to observe that the gryphon as well as the double sphinx motifs (an old Iranian motif according to Roes⁷⁴), ubiquitous in the Orientalizing objects produced in Archaic Greece, almost disappear in the Classical art of the 5th century BC, but only to re-emerge in a new abundance c. 420 BC together with a growing fashion for Oriental textiles.⁷⁵ Von Lorentz observed that the Greek Archaic or Archaistic and Orientalizing styles went hand in hand in the Hellenic art of the Classical age. The Archaistic stream in the Greek art c.420 BC marked by such names as Callimachus and Alkamenes coincided with a wave of a new Orientalism in the decorative arts.⁷⁶

     Euripides mentioned barbarian purple-dyed textiles with fantastic designs of p.i^o0T|paq (parraq, InnEiaq t’ aypaq eXacpcov, Xeovtcov t’ aypicov 0T|pdp.aTa (and half-human creatures, and the pursuit of deer on horse-back, and hunting of savage lions - Ion. 1161 f.) in his description of Ion’s tent in Delphi. Ps. Aristotle described a richly decorated himation of one Alkimenes (Alkisthenes?) embroidered with £cp8i.oig . . . dvcoGev pev Eovooiq, Ka-ccoOEv 8e IlEpoau; (mi-


    ⁷⁰ Andreae 1977, fig. 11.

    ⁷¹ CVA 1 IV Br, Pl. 5 (Italia 41) 1; Pl. 6 (Italia 42) l=von Lorentz 1937, no 24, p. 183, Abb. 1.

    ⁷² Von Lorentz 1937, p. 182 f. his cat.no 1, 3, 8, 9, 19, 14, 15, 20, 24, 31, 35.

    ” Von Lorentz 1937, cat. of Orientalizing mosaics on pp. 166-170; cf. p. 181.

    ⁷⁴ BCH 59, 1935, 313 ff.

    ⁷⁵ Von Lorentz 1937, p. 179.

    ⁷⁶ Ibid. p. 222.

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rab. auscult. 96). It is difficult to decide what the author had in mind by “Susian and Persian figural designs.” Reinach interpreted it as imagines Susiorum et Per-sarum.¹¹ Wackernagel understood it as the two Persian cities of Susa and Perse-polis.⁷⁸ It is not unlikely that the designs simply pictured Oriental hybrid monsters. Classical literary sources specified the locations of the best weavers’ workshops in the Mediterranean. Very many were situated in the East (Assyria, Babylon, Sardis, Sidon, Tyre, Alexandria, Cyprus).⁷⁹ The colourful dresses of the Sidonian ladies were mentioned as early as the Homeric times (II. 6, 288 f.). However, judging by the number of references, Babylon enjoyed a particular prestige for the textile industry.⁸⁰ We remember that Apollonius of Tyana was very impressed by the charm of the Hellenic-styled tapestries in the Arsacid palace of Babylon (Philostr. V. Apoll. 1, 25, 34), which pictured historical scenes and the Greek myths of Andromeda, Amymone and Orpheus.

      The high social status of the Persian knight dressed in magnificent yellow garments on the Mosaic (Pl. L extreme left; LIV) is additionally emphasized by his earrings and now barely discernible necklace.⁸¹ If we add his white shoes with a separated big toe made of soft leather, we have the Median aristocratic apparel, conspicuous for the lack of the linen armour worn by other Persian knights on the Mosaic, for example by the charioteer protected by armour remarkable for its chequered design (Pl. L 8).⁸² The charioteer is distinguished by his chiton adorned with decorated cuffs and a twisted golden armlet. Linen armour with a high neck protector is also visible on two already-mentioned Persian warriors (Pl. L 6,12; LII-LIII).⁸³ Fuhrmann emphasized the distinct ethnic characteristics of the Persians, their thick black hair and moustaches, their strong big noses, well documented in both Iranian art and in the Classical authors.⁸⁴

      There is an admirable level of exactness and care taken on the Mosaic to imitate every detail of the Persian dress and military equipment. This also applies to the Great King’s chariot, which corresponds closely to the Persian type.⁸⁵ It is equipped with big, strong wheels and bindings conspicuous for a thick row of knobs, and is supplied with 12 spikes. The high chariot box has a rectangular shape. It is equipped


    ” Rev. Phil.35, 1911, pp. 34 ff.
    ” Glotta 14,1925, pp. 36 ff.

    ” Von Lorentz 1937, p. 211.

    ⁸⁰ Ibid.

    ⁸¹ Hölscher 1973, p. 132; Ghirshman 1962, 215, 226; 237 f.; Andreae 1977, fig. 6.

    ⁸²   Andreae 1977, fig. 10; Hölscher 1973, p. 133; Bovon 1963, p. 593 f. fig. 2; J. K. Anderson, Military Theory and Practice in the Age of Xenophon, 1970, p. 23.

    ⁸⁵ Andreae 1977, fig. 11, 17.

    ⁸,¹ Fuhrmann 1931, fig. 11, 17; Xen. Cyr. 8, 4, 21; Plut. Moralia, ed.Bernardakis, Il p. 2, 19 ff. (Apopth. Cyr. 1); ibid. V. S. 119, 11 ffr.; Schol. ad Apoll. Rhod. v. 1024 (ed. Keil), p. 364, 4; Bovon 1963, p. 592.

    ⁸⁵ Andreae 1977, fig. 10, 11, 14.

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with golden arched handles at the back. The reins are attached to a side wall on the box, where one can also notice a richly ornamented quiver. Three decorative bands crossing each other on the front wall of the chariot box and their designs reflect Oriental models. They are adorned with rows of squares, fantastic monsters and running wild animals. They look Persian, while the swastika meander on the back strip of cloth waving in the air behind the chariot seems to represent a Greek rather than a Persian motif.⁸⁶

     Diodorus Siculus described Alexander’s funeral chariot which was adorned with four paintings of a similar genre {Bibl. 18,26, 6-27, 1). One of them showed Alexander on a chariot holding a magnificent sceptre, surrounded by the Macedonian and Persian guard. Diodorus called the Persians p.T]Xo<p6poi (those who bear spears ended with a golden apple). We know their impressive images from the Achaemenid art of Persepolis. Another of those decorative Orientalist paintings related to the art of Philoxenos of Eretria portrayed Indians with elephants. Yet another had a cavalry battle.⁸⁷ The painting behind the Alexander Mosaic was thus not a unique phenomenon. It was representative of a new Orientalism in the Greek art which grew up as a result of the Persian expedition of Alexander and his generals who celebrated and commemorated their exploits through a series of commissions to the best Greek sculptors and painters.

     The dressing of the manes and tails of the horses drawing the royal chariot resembles the images of Scythian and Sogdian horses on the Persepolis reliefs.⁸⁸ The bird design on the harness is remarkable for its Persian appearance.⁸⁹ The impression made on foreigners by the careful dressing of the horses was reflected in the imaginative comparison of Jamblichus, who wrote of the Persians that TpiXE? 8e t©v iK7ta)v ovXai StaKleKov-cai KaOanep nXoKapoi yvvaiKcbv (they plait the thick manes of their horses like women their tresses).⁹⁰ The dying horse of the Persian aristocrat to the left of the Great King (Pl. L extreme left, LIV) is covered with a Persian-looking horse-rug with a leaf-shaped and pointed design,


    ⁸⁶    Hölscher 1973, p. 133 f.; Fuhrmann 1931, p. 136; O. Nuoffer, Der Rennwagen im Altertum, Leipzig 1904, pp. 56 ff.; description in Jambl.Babyloniaca, Erotici Graeci II, LX VI; Dalton 1926, p. XXXVII ff.; chariots on the Greek-Persian gems, Fuhrmann 1931, n. 64a, p. 320; golden models: Nuoffer 1904, Taf. VIII; Dalton 1926, Fig. 20, 21; Taf. IV; W. Nagel, Der mesopotamische Streitwagen und seine Entwicklung im ostmediterranen Bereich, 1966, pp. 61 f.; Hölscher 1973, nn. 782, 783, p. 276; H. Kantor, JNES 16, 1957, pp. 5 ff.; P. Amandry, AK 1, 1958, 10, fig. 7, 1; v. Graeve 1970, p. 109 f.

    ⁸⁷ Hebert, Schriftquellen, pp. 138 ff. (Q 293).

    ⁸⁸    Hölscher 1973, p. 134; Walser 1966, p. 104, Taf. 83, 84; v. Graeve 1970, p. 100; J. Borchardt, Istambuler Mitteilungen 18, 1968, 164 f.

    ” Hölscher 1973, p. 134; Dalton 1926, Taf. 13, no 47; 15, no 70; von Lorentz 1937, p. 206.

    ⁹⁰    Erotici Graeci, ed. Herscher, 11 S. LXV1; Fuhrmann 1931, p. 136 f.; on horse harness: Hdt. 9, 20; Xen. CyrA, 3, 3; 8, 3, 16; Anab. 1, 2, 27.

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and decorated with winged monsters. The horse’s short trimmed mane is an analogy of the Nisean horses in the Persepolis reliefs.⁹¹

      Summing up, we can enumerate once again all the Persian elements: tiaras with 7tepi.0Eop.ov, chitons, kandys, trousers with Oriental designs, shoes with a distinctly separated big toe, necklaces, armlets and earrings, short Persian cavalry spears, armour, the dressing of the horses, horse-rugs, fringed horse harnesses, the chariot and the royal attire with a xitcov pEOÓXevKO^ and a napa óp0fj.

      The damage to the upper right part of the Mosaic caused by an earthquake and an increasing level of wear and tear since the day it was uncovered by Zahn have been responsible for the long discussion on the correct identification of the military standard, held in the picture as it seems by a Persian (Pl. L 13).⁹² However a number of scholars do not accept such an interpretation, and more recently Andreae and Hölscher have argued that the standard should be understood as the Macedonian phoinikis war standard.⁹³ In his brilliant contribution Nylander (1983) brought this discussion to a conclusion. He returned to the earliest drawings of the Mosaic, which clearly show the traces of a bird outline on the standard. Zahn himself interpreted them as the head of either a cock or gryphon.⁹⁴ Consequently it is a Persian royal standard as documented by both the Iranian archaeological evidence as well as the Greek literary sources. Philostratus the Elder mentioned it in his ecphrasis of a painting from the Neapolitan gallery, which portrayed Themistocles before the Great King: tö oppewv to ßaaiXetov ó xpuaovq ¿ttí tt)c, néXTTig áETÓq (the royal standard - the golden eagle on the shield - Imag. II, 31).⁹⁵ Nylander held that some vestiges of yellow can still be seen on the Mosaic in the National Museum of Naples.⁹⁶ Such a standard can also be identified in the audience scene in the Apadana and the Throne Hall in Persepolis (Pl. III).⁹⁷ The reliefs were once richly painted, but the paint disappeared, leaving only flat, imageless surfaces.

      Since the spears in the background of the Mosaic overlap with the standard, they must be interpreted as Persian, and not as Macedonian. We learn from Diodorus that Darius rearmed his army before the Battle of Gaugamela and equipped it with longer spears to match the Macedonian sarissae (Bibl. 17, 53, 1). Conse


    ⁹¹ Andreae 1977, figs. 6, 7, 11.

    ⁹² Andreae 1977, fig. 14.

    ⁹³ Hölscher 1973, p. 143 f.; Andreae 1977, p. 15 f„ 33 f.

    ⁹⁴   Nylander 1983, p. 29; ibid. fig. 9=Real Museo Borbónico VIII, 1832, Tav. XXXVI; Nylander 1983, fig. 11= W. Zahn, Die schönsten Ornamente und Merkwürdigsten Gemälde aus Pompeji, Herculaneum und Stabiae nach den an Ort und Stelle gemachten Originalzeichnungen von Wilhelm Zahn, Berlin, 1844, X Heft, 93.

    ⁹⁵ Cf. Xen. AnabA, 10, 12; Cyr. 7, 1,4.

    ⁹⁶ Nylander 1983, p. 29.

    ⁹⁷ Ibid. figs. 3-6; on coins: fig. 7; cf. Bovon 1963, fig. 1, on a chalice from Louvre G 117.

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quently it might be one more argument for Gaugamela, fought on 1st October 331 BC, as the subject of the Mosaic. It should be remembered, however, that if the Mosaic is viewed from a purely artistic perspective the question may be irrelevant. The thicket of long, oblique spears adds significantly to the power of the artistic concept, endowing it with spectacular movement and drama. Nylander discriminates between “the historical and art-historical interpretation.”⁹⁸

     It is difficult to avoid a reflection that the painter must have known all the details from autopsy, that he had had the opportunity to paint from models at hand. In other words he had seen the spoils taken either in the Battle of Issos or Gaugamela. Consequently the Mosaic may be regarded as an important document for the studies on Persian dress, weaponry, horse harnesses, and chariots.

     The Mosaic’s Orientalist style becomes even more vivid when evaluated in its complex, original Orientalizing setting of the Casa del Fauno, whose owner reputedly had strong connections with Ptolemaic Alexandria, as argued by Zevi in his erudite paper ( 1998). At the entrance of the exedra which sheltered the Great Mosaic (Pl. XLIX) the Alexandrian mosaicists laid three mosaic images which pictured different species of the Nilotic flora and fauna. One of the mosaics in the Villa shows a triumphant Bacchic genius on a hybrid lion-tiger. This design decorated the floor of the room near the tablinum (Pl. XLIX).⁹⁹ The cat emblema, which alluded to the sacred animal of Egypt, with ducks eating lotus flowers, was placed in the right ala of the atrium (Pl. XLIX).¹⁰⁰ The fancy Orientalist collection of the Villa also included a fish mosaic with sea creatures (Pl. XLIX),¹⁰¹ which has an analogy in the lower sanctuary of Praeneste, and a symplegma mosaic which pictures a Negro boy with a white girl in an amorous embrace. This picture adorned the cubiculum by the atrium (Pl. XLIX; XXIX). The same mosaic image was discovered in Thmuis (Tell Timai) in the Nile Delta.¹⁰² We can only add that the fauces were originally ornamented with two sphinxes or winged lions.¹⁰³ Consequently if viewed together, the mosaics reveal a prearranged decorative programme as the principle of that Pompeian private art museum. This artistic programme focused on Dionysus’ triumph in India, interpreted as a mythological préfiguration of Alexander’s anabasis. This was the central idea of the decoration enriched with Egyptian elements.¹⁰⁴

     All these Orientalist forms crystallized out in the stylistic structures of the Greek illusionism. The Alexander Mosaic offers us a wonderful metaphor of this


    ⁹⁸ Nylander 1983, p. 36.

    ” Zevi 1998, Taf. 14, 3.

       Ibid. Taf. 16, 1; Boardman 1997, fig. 292.

    ¹⁰¹ Boardman 1993, fig. 173, MN Naples 9997.

    ¹⁰² Zevi 1998, Taf. 16, 2; Pitture V, VI 12, 2, C. del Fauno; MN Naples 27707.

     ¹⁰³ Zevi 1998, p. 26.

       Zevi 1998, p. 45.

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transformation. I refer in particular to the dying Persian knight who looks with his fading eyes at the mirror made incidentally by a polished shield (Pl. L 19). The shield reflects his rich garments adorned with a lion-rampant design, the golden twisted necklace sliding down his arm, and his face quietened by the solitude of death.¹⁰⁵ We cannot see his face otherwise than in the mirror reflection; we cannot see his real face. This skilful trick was one of the favourite techniques used by the Late Classical and Hellenistic painters, as corroborated by the painting of Thetis in Hephaestus’ workshop (Pompeii, IX 1, 7),¹⁰⁶ Narcissus mirrored in the pond (Pompeii VI, 20, 22),¹⁰⁷ or Perseus with Andromeda looking at the Gorgon’s face reflected in the water.¹⁰⁸

     The painter’s conception of the Alexander and Darius tableau seems to have been inspired by the theatre crowded with Persian actors performing their tragic roles as if full of the lofty Homeric or Aeschylean pathos of defeat and destruction. Some of the Persian actors, with their gestures of sorrow and despair, with hands raised or resting on their heads, take up gestures resembling those in Greek scenes of mourning as depicted on the painted vases (Pl. Pl. L 12, LIII, Pl. VIII).¹⁰’ Darius, the central figure of the drama, performs his own role in the tragedy. Like a defeated and dying tragic hero, in harmony with the Greek sense of beauty and decorum, Darius was portrayed as a tall, handsome man, gorgeously dressed in his ceremonial robes. We learn from Plutarch’s biography of Alexander that this is precisely what Darius was, a KdX.A.i<rcoq dvSpcov (Alex. 21). Plutarch’s portrait of Darius III in the Battle of Gaugamela is a striking fit to the imagery of the mosaic: kocXov av8pa Kai peyav e<p’ appa-cog •uvnA.ov (a tall, handsome man on the high chariot - Alex. 33). Only in the Hellenic art could the Great King have been shown as defenceless and bereft of hope as the Darius III on this Mosaic. In the royal Persian art the images of the Persian monarchs were always endowed with an air of supernatural power and hieratic divinity. The Oriental arts would portray a monarch according to the basic principles of the hieratic scale, centrality, frontality, in separation from the immediate context as in the reliefs of Persepolis, Naqsh-i-Rustam and Behistun. On this Mosaic the king was portrayed as a man, in compliance with the perspective of the Greek art.¹¹⁰

    ¹⁰⁵ Andreae 1977, fig. 13.

    ¹⁰⁶ Ling 1991, fig. 128; Fowler 1989, fig. 12.

    ¹⁰⁷   Pitture IV, C. dell’ Argentaria, p. 455; another copy in C. dell’ Ara Massima, VI 16, 15, Pitture V, fig. 45, p. 881; cf. H. Montgomery, They did it with mirrors. Some reflections in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, EST XI, 1995, pp. 73-81.

    ¹⁰⁸   MN Napoli 8996, Pompeii VII 4, 51.31 c, C. dei Capitelli Colorati; Schauenburg, Andromeda I, LIMC I, 1, 104 fig.

    ¹⁰⁹   Andreae 1977, figs. 14, 16, 17; Shapiro 1991; mourning over Memnon, Memnon, LIMC VI, 1, 55 fig., rf chalice, Ferrara, MN 44885, c. 460/50 BC.

    ¹¹⁰ Holscher 1973, p. 167.

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     Naturally the Persians did not see themselves at all as actors in a tragic play. They felt culturally superior to the Europeans, most of all in terms of religious supremacy.¹“ The ideas essential to the Greek theatre and historiography were alien to them. The Iranians visualized the Macedonian army as the host of “Demons of the Race of Wrath,” Alexander himself as “a madman struck with frenzy,” “a wild beast rushing for destruction.”* ¹¹² Alexander was the one who destroyed the Book of Avesta when he plundered Persepolis. It was said that this manuscript made up one of the two existing copies. The second was sent to Greece for translation and never returned to Iran. Alexander was visualized in the mysteries of Mithras as a demonic spirit with the head of a lion.¹¹³ * Actually we also learn about the Macedonian atrocities committed in the East. One Kleandros occupied himself with ransacking temples and sepulchres (Arrian, Anab. 6, 27, 3-5), while Polemarchos plundered the tomb of Cyrus the Great (Plut. Alex. 49), which sets a contrast with Alexander’s official pro-Persian propaganda after the Battle of Gaugamela. It is natural that the historical scene and the sense of history which the Persians and Greeks read from the course of events must have been fundamentally different. We have mentioned the cycle of Oriental tapestries in the royal palace of Babylon and their images of the Persian expeditions of Darius and Xerxes against the Greeks in the chapter on the Battle of Marathon (Phi-lostr., V. Apoll. I, 25). They were Parthian rather than Achaemenid Persian, but they apparently contradicted Herodotus’ interpretation of the Persian-Greek conflict c. 490-480 BC. The monumental scale and artistic genius protects the painting behind the Mosaic from easy interpretations narrowed down exclusively to the immediate political context. However, the Darius and Alexander painting cannot be separated from Alexander’s war propaganda. It was one of his triumphant images, one in a series of triumphal presentations in the history of the Greek art. Contemporary recipients as well as later generations saw it in the context of what we may call a colonial and war propaganda mentality, which came to the fore already in the 4lh-century Greek letters. This mentality, which emerged in the era of military confrontation with the East, was conspicuous for its feelings of superiority over the Orientals. It reveals to us a dream of opulence cherished by the poverty-ridden Mainland and Aegean Greeks of the Classical age, who had been subsisting on an economy of endemic scarcity. Let us follow selected passages from Eddy’s admirable description of Greek clichés of the Persians. In his Cyropae-dia Xenophon accused the Persian aristocrats of “debauchery, cowardice, and physical weakness.” The Persian cavalry, the once feared scourge of the plains, was now, he said, “recruited from porters, bakers, cooks, cup-bearers, bathroom attendants,

      Eddy 1961, p. 59.

    ¹¹²   Ibid. p. 31; Curt. Ruf. 4, 13, 12-14; Yasht I, 5; II 24-26; as Dinkard III, 3-5; Yasna XLV1II 12; on the problem of the so-called “Mercenary Source” see W. W. Tarn, Alexander the Great, 1950, Il 71-75, 128-130; cf. Pearson 1960, pp. 78-82.

    ¹¹³   Eddy 1961, p. 52; G. F. Hill, Alexander the Great and the Persian Lion-Gryphon, JHS 43,

1923, 156-161.

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butlers, waiters, chamberlains and beauty-doctors.”¹¹⁴ Arrian called Darius III “an enervated weakling:” {Anab. 3, 22, 2-5). Curtius Rufus preserved the metaphorical image of Persian gold in military confrontation with Macedonian iron (3 3, (7)). Momigliano reminded his readers of Plato’s opinion in the Laws, where he wrote of harems as the source of corruption in the East.¹¹⁵ The anonymous author of the Hippocratic treaty On Airs, Waters and Places was closer to the truth when he distinguished between the slaves of the Asiatic river valleys and the warlike freemen of the mountainous regions (Aer. 16).¹¹⁶ For Iran the Greeks proved to be no more than passing invaders. They did not manage to hold their Eastern outposts beyond the Euphrates for long. Eddy’s conclusion has the value of a historiosophical reflection: “As far as Iranian culture as a whole was concerned, there were far too few Greeks in Iran seriously to modify it. Those Europeans who did settle in Iran were in course of time entirely assimilated by intermarriage.”¹¹⁷

    ¹,⁴ Eddy 1961, p. 5.
    "’Momigliano 1975, p. 135; id. p. 134, recalls the last chapter of Cyr. (its authenticity is sometimes questioned), where Xenophon wrote that in Persia corruption took the place of the austerity and virility of Cyrus’ epoch; the Great King’s voluptuous habits in Chares of Mytilene (FGH 125, 2).

    ¹¹⁶ Cf. Hdt. 9, 122.

    ¹¹⁷ Eddy 1961, p. 37.





Three Persian Princesses


The Death of Pantheia

     In one of the rooms of the Neapolitan painting gallery Philostratus the Elders’ gaze came to focus on a tableau showing the Death of Pantheia (Imag. II, 9 - Pl. XXXIV). At the beginning of his description the rhetorician directs the observer’s attention to the city walls of Sardis, just taken by the Persian warriors, its houses gutted by fire, its women fallen into slavery, and to the suicide pyre of King Croesus in the background. In the foreground the old master painted a scene marked by tragic overtones: Pantheia was killing herself in an act of mourning over the horribly bloodstained and mutilated body of her young husband Abra-dates who had fallen in action. A chariot stood beside the central group, loaded with funeral gifts and the proverbial Lydian golden sand brought by King Cyrus to pay his last respects to the dead hero. Pantheia had just driven a short Persian sword through her bosom. She was portrayed still breathing in agony. Her loveliness in dying gave Philostrates the focal point for his ecphrasis. She looked tranquil, as if not suffering at all, modestly dressed, unadorned, without any jewellery, her thick black hair flowing down her neck and shoulders. Philostratus detailed the bloody scratches on her neck, done with her own fingernails in the ritual act of mourning. Her eyes were sparkling with a fateful blend of sagacity, love and dignity. Eros and the Lydian woman dressed in a golden robe, who personified the Power of Love and the land of Lydia, formed a frame for the central group.

     We can easily recognize in this composition a standard lamentation scene with a woman mourning over the body of her slain husband, a scene containing traditional ritualistic elements with unrestrained women’s hair in confusion, modest funeral robes, intentional scratches on the body of a female mourner, and funeral gifts.¹

     The panel recounted historical events, namely the seizure of Sardis, Croesus’ stronghold, by Cyrus the Great in 546 BC. The story of the Elamite Prince Abradates and his wife Pantheia of Susa, presented against a vast historical panorama, displayed all the features of historical romance: the story of a mutual, undying, conjugal love which joined a heroic warrior with the most beautiful woman of the Orient. Xenophon wrote on the subject in his Cyropaedia in Books IV (6, 11), V (1, 2-8), VI (4, 4-10) and VII (3, 2-16). The story resembles the narratives of


      Shapiro 1991.


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the later Greek romances in many details. They burnt with love for one another and wedded, however a fatal course of events was to sunder them. Soon afterwards Pantheia fell into the hands of the Persians in the camp of Nabonidus and Balthasar, the vanquished Kings of Babylon, somewhere in the north of the country. Araspas, a Persian aristocrat and Cyrus’ friend, was commissioned by him to take care of Pantheia. In compliance with all the rules of the romantic genre, Araspas tried desperately to seduce her, but she rejected his advances. Subsequently the molested young woman turned to Cyrus for protection and brought about his intervention on her behalf. In consequence Araspas raised a mutiny against the king, while Abradates, quite on the contrary, abandoned his Babylonian lords and joined Cyrus’ ranks. Before the decisive battle in a moving, melodramatic scene Pantheia and Abradates (according to Xenophon’s story) said farewell to one another. For a short while Pantheia followed her husband’s departing chariot, as it moved on for the battlefield, and unable to kiss Abradates himself, she kissed the edge of his chariot. Abradates, who noticed this, turned his head and uttered his memorable words: Qáppei, návGeia, Kai %aip£ Kai ániQi fí8r] (Cyr. VI, 4, 10). Here in his narrative the cool and exact historian Xenophon struck the sentimental tones symptomatic of the Greek novelists. This pathetic, strongly emotional atmosphere was additionally intensified by the painter, who made it the dominant feature in his work.

     Both Philostratus and the old master undoubtedly recalled the narrative of the Cyropaedia. Brunn was mistaken in his remark that the absence in the picture of the old nurse from Xenophon’s narrative and the introduction of the personified figures of Love and Lydia proved that Philostratus’ painting was independent of Xenophon’s account.² Following Brunn’s argument Steinmann observed that Philostratus’ word-for-word “reminiscences” (Anklage) actually originated from just one section of Xenophos’s Cyropaedia, namely VI, 1-4, and not coincidentally. This passage belonged to the standard repertoire of the rhetorical school. Steinmann found only one quotation sensu stricto from the Cyropaedia. In his view other references were only free reminiscences.³ I would rather say that the explanation of differences between prose composition and picture lie in the entirely different, in many respects incomparable medial substances, which stimulate different senses and different spheres of our intellectual perception.

     This problem was once addressed by R. Lee in his brilliant, exhaustive study “Ut pictura poesis. The Humanistic Theory of Painting”, where he argued that the theory of particular affinities between the fine arts and literature, cherished * ⁵


     ² Brunn 1871, p. 83.

     ⁵    Steinmann 1914, p. 100 f.; Schönberger is on the other hand not right when he states that Steinmann “zeigt, dass Philostratus nicht von Xenophon abhängt.” Steinmann did not write it in the referred place, ibid. p. 100 f.

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so much by generations of humanists of the Classical and Christian West, was based on some false premises.⁴ ⁵ The position taken by the Mourning Women on the pediment of the sarcophagus of Sidon, dated c. 350 BC, where two are lying while one is sitting, is per se implied by the triangular field of the pediment.⁵ The ratio of ars pingendi is different from the ratio of ars scribendi. The painter naturally followed his own autonomous ways and enriched the original literary content, which was his inspiration, by the standard elements from his Classical palette. He introduced the personified figures and Croesus on the pyre. The nurse did not suit his composition. The additions might have been original, i.e. introduced by the painter of the Hellenistic age. However it cannot be ruled out that they might have been introduced by a copyist of the Roman Imperial era, a practice attested by the Pompeian painting. Suffice it to adduce the reproved Amorino from the radiant master copy in the Casa del Amore Punito with his spurious hoe, which appears to be held in his left hand, which is inconsistent, because actually he is holding Peitho with his left, while wiping off his tears with his right hand. The model can be dated c. 330-320 BC. Someone at a later date apparently reinterpreted its meaning along the lines of the fashionable story of Amor and Psyche.⁶ Achilles and Chiron, who appear on the shield on the late Neronian fresco panel depicting Achilles on Scyros in the Casa dei Dioscuri, seem to harmonize with the story of the secret affection between Achilles and Daidamea. In fact the allusion is alien to the version chosen for the painting. The stories of Chiron and Lycomedes in the biography of Achilles were exclusive to the Greek mythography.⁷ The model painting was made c. 330-320 BC and is sometimes regarded to have come from under the brush of Athenion of Maronea. It seems then that the original composition must have been later “enriched” with the Achilles and Chiron motif probably by a Neronian copyist. Fortunately we possess another copy of the same masterpiece in Pompeii. Daidameia on the Roman copy in the Casa dei Dioscuri is half-naked. The same girl in the House of R. IX, 5, 2 is clothed.⁸ The latter immediately calls to mind the glamorous ultramarine blue ingeniously applied by Maderna over the legs of the Virgin Mary in Michelangelo’s Last Judgement in the Sistine Chapel. In the same way the Herodotean motif of the pyre of Croesus, absent in Xenophon’s narrative, might have been either deliberately introduced by the creator of the original tableau or by a copyist at some stage later in order to make the contents immediately clear to the viewer.

     Croesus is one of the cherished Oriental heroes of the Greek art and literature. He appears on the pyre on a magnificent painting by Myson on an Attic amphora dated c. 500 BC (Pl. II). The story of the suicide pyre of the Lydian monarch in


    ⁴ Lee 1940.

     ⁵ Richter 1950, fig. 398.

     ⁶ Schefold 1972, p. 161.

     ⁷ Ibid. p. 204, pl. 39.

     " Ibid. p. 188.

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spired Bacchylides and made him write the lofty verses of Epinicion 3 composed in honour of Hieron, victor in the Olympic games of 460 BC (Pedley 124, Epin-ic. 3, 23-62). In Herodotus it is Croesus who lit a pyre to test the reliability of the Hellenic gods, and most of all his patron Apollo. Apollo put out the fire and saved Croesus, who later became Cyrus’ counsellor. It is a Herodotean story (Hdt. 1, 86 ff.). In Xenophon’s Cyropaedia Croesus does his best to explain to Cyrus that it was not Apollo’s mistaken oracle but his own (Croesus’) misreading of the divine message that brought the king and his realm to disaster. The story of the pyre is absent from Xenophon’s narrative. Xenophon’s narrative provided the inspiration only for the central scene with Pantheia over the body of Abradates in the Imagines. Philostratus himself identified the pictorial source of inspiration as such, as evidenced by the text of the Imagines. The Sardanapalus of the Greek legend handed down to us by Diodorus (II, 27, 2) voluntarily perished on the pyre in his own palace when besieged by the rebel forces of Arbaces (cf. Athen. 12, 38), while Croesus in Xenophon’s story survived and even managed to persuade Cyrus to save Sardis. Here Xenophon again fundamentally contradicts Herodotus’ account, which tells us that Sardis was razed and looted by the Persians (nav to cxotu enopSEETo: Hdt. 1, 84), as can be seen in the background of Philostratus’ painting. Consequently although Philostratus’ painter in general relied on Xenophon for the main details of his subject-matter (the central scene of the suicide), this time on the contrary he agrees with Herodotus and Bacchylides in some of the pictorial components. In a word, from the literary point of view, the picture is a hybrid, composed of literary inspirations drawn from different authorial sources. The plunder and destruction itself in Philostratus’ ecphrasis (Imag. II, 9, 2) seems to re-echo the Bac-chylidean wording (Epinl). The painting from the Neapolitan gallery also reflected a motif which appears to have been idiomatic in both literary and colloquial Greek - the riches of Croesus. In Lucian’s Dial.mort. 3, 2 three Oriental monarchs nostalgically recall their earthly biographies: Midas speaks of his gold, Sardanapalus of his great luxury, Croesus of his treasures. In Philostratus’s ecphrasis the riches of Croesus are symbolized by the golden sand of Pactolus. The personifications of Lydia and Eros belong to the class of commonplace motifs in the Greek and Roman painting. On the Late Classical chefs-d’oeuvre with a triumphant Theseus greeted by liberated children, copied in the Basilica of Herculaneum, one can notice a protective goddess seated in the background on the rock behind the main group (copy dated c. 70 AD). The original was probably made around 340/330 BC. Thus in the ecphrasis of Philostratus we face a confusing mixture of literary allusions (Xenophon, Herodotus, Bacchylides) blended with the popular tradition. This motley of literary allusions is laced with material apparently originating in the pictorial tradition. It would have made no sense if it were all viewed exclusively from the perspective of literary criticism. However, when placed against a backdrop of the figural arts it looks natural and clear. Let us take the motif of Croesus, rooted in the pictorial tradition of the Classical vase painting (Pl. II). It was introduced by the easel painter so that the observer might not confuse the central scene with another


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one, for example the popular scene of Thisbe’s suicide over the body of Pyramus, which we know from a late 2"d century BC painting copied again and again on the walls of the Campanian houses, a popular motif of the Classical Orientalist art and literature (notice the lion in the background of Pl. LV, one of the usual components of the Orientalist landscapes). This Late Hellenistic painting documented on the Campanian wall decoration shows striking parallels with the central scene of the Pantheia tableau (Pl. LV). In her illuminating paper I. Baldassarre collected all the extant copies of the Pyramus and Thisbe tableau.⁹ Referring to the pictorial components of Philostratus’ ecphrasis we can also point to the personifications or attendants witnessing the central scene set around the group of Abradates and Pantheia (Eros and Lydia). Bystanders around a central mythological scene are a favourite motif for the Pompeian Classicizing Mannerist painters.

     Both Steinmann and Schonberger are excessively cautious in identifying Xenophon’s parallels in the Philostratean description. In fact they are striking. Philostratus’ ’Appa5aTT| ¿PouXeto Koivqv yf|v E7tiEaaa0ai (Imag. 9, 1) is reechoed exactly in Xenophon’s koivt] yfjv E7iieoao0ai, the words from Pantheia’s emotional speech before the battle (Cyr. VI, 4, 6). Philostratus’ tov Koapov q yvvf] tov eccuttv; 07tXa auTtp ¿noiEiTO (Imag. 9, 2) is only a slightly paraphrased quotation of Xenophon’s wording: onyKoyaoa tov aauTf|g Koapov Ta onXa poi EKoir]OE (Cyr. VI, 4, 3). These words were said by Abradates, whose armour was ordered by Pantheia. The young woman offered the artisan her own jewellery. Her gift of a magnificent golden helmet (Cyr. VI, 4, 2) can be seen on the painting, bloodstained (Imag. 9, 3). Abradates’ chariot with four poles and eight horses (Imag. 8,2) was directly transferred from the Cyropaedia without any additional ornamentation (Cyr. VI, 4,2: to TETpappupov appa Kai inncov oktcd). In a horrifying scene depicted in the Cyropaedia Cyrus takes hold of the dead warrior’s hand unaware that Abradates’ arm has been severed off his body (Cyr. VII, 3, 8-9). The maker of the Philostratean painting influenced by this passage, showed the hero’s body literally cut to pieces in the turmoil of the deadly clash with the Egyptians (Imag. 8, 3). The artist in general also followed the main features of Xenophon’s portrait of Pantheia, as shown in the impressive recognition scene in the Babylonian camp. She was decently looking down to the ground (ciq yfjv opcocta), full of inner virtues and grace contrasting with her modest dress (Cyr. V, 1,4-5: tt| apETfj Kai tt) EUOXTlM-⁰Ot⁾vTl Kaⁱ ⁿeP TanEivcp o%T]paTi). She looked very much the same on the Neapolitan picture, where she also “kept her beauty unadorned” (Imag. I, 9, 3). Her loveliness and modesty made her apparel (Imag. II, 9, 6: q (Spa Kai f] ai8coq). “All the virtues of the soul” were reflected in her eyes (Imag. II, 9, 5). We know of one Soterichos who devoted a poem to Pantheia, as well as of a Sophist Celer who celebrated her love for Abradates in prose.¹⁰

    ⁹ Baldassarre 1981.

    ¹⁰ Schönberger 1968, p. 403.

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     All the components of Philostratus’ ecphrasis of Pantheia, the details hardly touched upon, the outlines of the pictorial pattern, its hints as to light and colour, its literary layer with numerous citations and allusions, all that directs the reader as if along converging lines to the focal point of the ecphrasis - Pantheia’s facial portrait. This ascending structure up to an emphatic highlight is typical of his descriptive technique. His portraits of Pantheia {Imag. Il, 9), Rhodogoune {Imag. II, 5) and Kritheis {Imag. II, 8) show his personal predilection for portrait painting, which he studied with the passion of a connoisseur and a man of taste, incorporating it in his rhetorical workshop conspicuous for a perfected artistry of ecphrasis. We may safely trust his choice. There can be no doubt he concentrated on the true masterpieces of painting.

     One of the characteristic features of the Late Classicism of the mid and the second half of the fourth century BC is its focus, in female portraits, on an air of charming elegance, sweet graciousness, unparalleled subtlety and refined garments, as may be observed e.g. on the Kertsch vases." The artists of this period of the Greek art made of their idiosyncratic and easily recognizable way of portraying feminine beauty one of the central points of their style and aesthetics, their way of expressing the idea of beauty in general. Philostratus said of Xenophon something which may sound intriguing. In his opinion Xenophon did not actually describe Pantheia’s appearance in detail, “though he was particularly clever at telling of such things” {Imag. II, 9,1). In fact Xenophon remains constrained in his description of the appearance of Pantheia and only in a general way does he describe the air of admiration surrounding her and her fame as the most beautiful woman of Asia. In the recognition scene Pantheia tears her peplos in a ritual gesture of despair. Thus the Persian warriors are able to see “almost all her face, then her neck and her arms” (Cyr. V, 1, 7). Neither the painter nor the author of Pantheia’s ecphrasis exceeded the general pattern and limits of Xenophon’s description. However they filled his form with abundant detail drawn from their own imaginations. What Philostratus meant by saying that Xenophon was particularly skilled in describing women remains unclear to me. Philostratus probably had in mind a passage from his Oeconomicus which describes Greek women’s cosmetics, jewellery and fashion, or perhaps the scene of an impressive dance by a captive woman dressed in male armour, which was performed with two shields in the light of a fire in the midst of the Greek warriors, as recorded in his Anabasis (Anab. VI, 1, 12-13). However, this is certainly not sufficient to justify the above opinion about Xenophon expressed by Philostratus.

     Pantheia’s facial portrait, as well as Rhodogoune’s and Kritheis’, belong to the most perfected and detailed likenesses of Philostratean women. Some archaeological parallels have been indicated already a long time ago. Wiedasch observed *


      Schefold 1934.

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that Pantheia’s p.'DKTfjpeg dveoTaXpevoi (her upcurved nostrils) may be illustrated by the nostrils of the Hera Farnese or the head on one of the vases of Eu-phronios.¹² Benndorf in his turn compared the scratches on her neck to similar scars on the body of the seated bronze statue of a boxer from the Museo delle Terme.¹³ This powerful statue signed by the copyist Apollonius of Athens in the lsl century BC can be dated c. 150 BC¹⁴ on the grounds of analogy to the Belvedere Torso. Pausanias examined a statue of Heracles in Tegea, with a wound sculpted on his thigh, which he received during his fight with the sons of Hippokoon {Descr. 8, 53, 9).

     What was the position of Pantheia’s body on the painting in relation to her husband’s corpse? Wiedasch asserted that she was just sitting beside him.¹⁵ Schönberger observed that Wiedasch’s reconstruction must have been influenced not so much by Philostratus’ as by Xenophon’s description, where Pantheia Ktt0T]Tcxi %apai . . . tt]v Ke(paA.f)v avrou exouaa ent rofg yovaot {Cyr. VII, 3, 5).¹⁶ However later on in Xenophon’s narrative we can see Pantheia dying with her head resting on her husband’s chest {Cyr. VII, 3, 14), as if she had only fainted and sunk down while still seated. This is reminiscent of Aphrodite caressing the head of the dying Adonis on her lap.¹⁷ But what can we leant about it from Philostratus’ Imagines? He said that the heroine was dying en’ avrco “beside him” i.e. beside Abradates {Imag. II, 9, 2). Further on we can learn that she keu«xi “she lies there” (ibid. 5). “Pantheia liege mit zuriickgesunkenem Kopfe im Dreiviertelprofil und sitze nicht.”¹⁸ A Pompeian painting with Pyramus and Thisbe showing the heroine half lying beside the dead body of her lover may probably illustrate the position of the two bodies in their mutual relations as represented on the Philos-tratean painting (Pl. LV).¹⁹

     Now let us look closer at Philostratus’ painting and Pantheia’s portrait {Imag. Il, 9, 5-6). Focusing on her face Philostratus describes successively, in a regular sequence, her hair, neck, cheeks, nose, eyebrows and eventually her eyes. Consequently his portrait is selective (no chin, ears, eyelids, forehead etc.).His technique immediately calls to mind the way Lucian described his ideal woman, and also Pantheia in his own Imagines. Like Philostratus Lucian adds the components


    ¹²    Wiedasch, “Panthia, ein Gemälde aus Philostrati sen. Imag.2, 9, zusammengestellt mit der Panthia in Xen. Kyropädie, und die Panthia in Lukianos Bildern”, Allg. Schulzeitung 5, 1828, Abt. 2, pp. 369-382, here: p. 374; Schönberger 1968, p. 404 f.

    ¹³ Schönberger 1968, p. 405.

    ¹⁴ Richter 1950, fig. 770, 771.

    ¹⁵ Wiedasch 1828, p. 377.

    ¹⁶ Schönberger 1968, p. 406.

    ¹⁷ Repertoire 65, 4.

    " Schönberger 1968, p. 406.

    ¹⁹ Repertoire 182, 2.

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one by one as if he were a jeweller at work on a sparkling chain of pearls. Lucian selected his components from the most admired masterpieces of the Greek sculpture and painting. His head of Pantheia came from the Cnidian Aphrodite, also her eyes and brows, her cheeks were provided by the Aphrodite in the Gardens of Alkamenes, while the contours of her face and her shapely nose were modelled on the Lemnian Athena, her mouth and neck on Phidias’ Amazon, her modesty on Sosandra by Calamis {Imag. 6). Turning to the masterpieces of painting, Lucian selected the colours of Euphranor, and chose Polygnotus for her flushed cheeks, Kapeicbv to evepev0eg, Apelles for her complexion as it was seen on the master’s delicate white, slightly rouged female bodies, and eventually turned to Action and his Roxana’s ruby lips {Imag. 7). Both Philostratus and Lucian drew inspiration from one of the most cherished principles of the Classical theories of art, which said that perfect harmony may be achieved by a well-harmonized unity of the perfectly rendered components. Pliny the Elder illustrated this principle by the anecdote about Zeuxis and Hera Lacinia in Agrigentum {HN 35, 64). Lucian’s way of describing his Pantheia was highly artificial and purely literary. If looked upon from the painter’s perspective, the pictorial equivalent of Lucius Verus’ mistress composed of selected elements drawn from stylistically different and incongruous sculptures and paintings artificially extracted out of their original context, must have appeared caricatural, reminiscent of a modern collage with satirical contents referring to a public opinion dominated by mass culture and colour magazines. Here the split between the Classical fine arts and literature is conspicuous.

     A long time ago Wiedasch wrote about the potential relationships between Philostratus’ and Lucian’s Pantheias.²⁰ He argued that the passion of pain and suffering which permeated the Neapolitan Pantheia would agree with the predilection for the Stoic philosophy at the court of Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, and would consequently speak for a Late Imperial date for the painting.²¹

     Pantheia’s mouth retains “its natural shapeliness and ... a beauty the blossom of which ... rests upon her lips” {Imag. 9, 5 - to CTopa ^oppETpiav tt)v ECCDTob (pulccTTOv). The lips of Rhodogoune are described in a strikingly similar way: they are “delicately formed ... full of colour and even the mouth is well proportioned”        av0T|pd xai i'oa, QTopa avppETpov -Imag. II, 5, 5). Rho-
dogoune’s delicately shaped mouth is filled with “love’s harvest,” writes Philostratus quoting Pindar {Isth. 2, 6), and most sweet to kiss (oropa 5e anaXov Kai avapEOTOv oncbpaq EpcoTiKfjq, (piXfjaai pEv qSiciTov - ibid.).

     Pantheia’s “thick black hair falls unrestrained over her shoulders” and white neck {Imag. II, 9, 5). Similarly part of Rhodogoune’s hair hangs loose in disar


    ²⁰ Wiedasch p. 379 f.

    ²¹ Wiedasch 1828, p. 377 f. Schönberger p. 406 f.

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ray (Imag. II, 5, 4). The description of both male and female hair-styles is one of the refinements of the rhetorical art of Philostratus the Elder (Pantheia II, 9, 5; Rhodogoune II, 5, 1; ibid. 4; Pelops I, 30, 3; Olympus I, 21, 2). Pelops’ hair is “trickling down like golden sprays of water . . . and though it falls this way and that, yet it lies gracefully”. Olympus’ hair “is not unkempt nor does it lie smooth” (trans. A. Fairbanks). The air of a charming profusion is present in all of these descriptions.

     When Philostratus describes Pantheia’s cheeks he writes that the flush “has not left them even in death” (ev tt] napeta EpEuOoq - Imag. 11,9,6). Lucian employed the same device: rcapetcov to evEpevOeq (Imag. 7). Fowler aptly observed that “the word EpevOog ‘red’ is thematic in the Argonautica, it will take on several qualities and be a part not only of the magic but of the eroticism that pervades the poem”.²²

     Pantheia’s eyebrows come next in the description. They are crescent-shaped and “spring like branches” (Imag. II, 9, 5), while in a similar way Rhodogoune’s brows “begin at the same point and rise together from the nose . . . more charming still in the curve they make” (Imag. II, 5, 4). The detailed descriptions of the heroines’ harmonious, shapely mouths, their eyebrows drawn along regular archlines, their hair-styles, all in delightful disarray, seem to suggest a certain category of portraits. The descriptions are so detailed and exact that one cannot help a feeling that they were inspired by the fine arts, and consequently that the archaeological evidence may well offer an opportunity for their identification.

     Finally we come to the description of the eyes. In Pantheia’s portrait they express her “great intelligence” and “all the virtues of the soul” (onooa t6v Tfjq ayaOcbv - Imag. II, 9, 5). The colours of Rhodogoune’s eyes “vary from grey to black”, her eyes express joy and beauty (to IXapov, to cbpaiov - Imag. II, 5, 5). Philostratus focused for a while on yet another detail, not paralleled by Rhodogoune’s ecphrasis, but found elsewhere in his Imagines. His hawk-eyed scrutiny rested for a fleeting while on her “shapely fingers” (f]5iouq oi 5aKTvA.oi - Imag. II, 9, 5). His Kritheis’ fingers are also “delicate of graceful length, as white as the forearm.” Her forearm shines still whiter through the white garment (Imag. II, 8,5).²³ Her breasts also “gleam under the garment” (oi |ia£oi opQoi wtavyd^o'DOi.) (ibid.). In the above passages we can easily recognize a reflection of the transparent drapery style (c. 425-375 BC). Pelops’ left arm gleams against a dark background in much the same way (Imag. 1, 30, 4). The chiaroscuro effect is also con- * ²⁵


    ²²    Fowler 1989, p. 17; cf. her corresponding quotation from Callimachus “O maidens, the blush arose on her, like the color of the morning rose or seed of pomegranate”, ibid. p. 27.

    ²⁵    arcaXoi oi SaKTuXoi Kai ev)j.t]keii; Kai XevkoI Kata zt|v ¿Xevt]v. opaq 8e koi -tqv ¿Xevtiv d><; 8ta Xeukt)<; Trjq eaOfitoq XevKotEpa vitotpaivE-tat

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spicuous here. Philostratus wrote about Pantheia’s eyes expressing strong emotions of desire (epcoq), and longing (ípepoq - Imag. II, 9, 5), that “emotion seems clearly to drip from them” (ibid.). Philostratus’ conception of “the desire as a companion of love” (ÓTtaSóg 5e Epcotoq ipepoq) is also strikingly Classical. It may refer to a well-known sculptural group by Scopas observed once by Pausanias in the Temple of Aphrodite in Megara (Descr. 1, 43, 6).

      Summing up, the reader can note that Philostratus the Elder followed the conventional standards of art description developed in the rhetorical schools, standards relating both to the components as well as to their composition within the framework of the rhetorical ecphrasis. Philostratus referred to such a standard pattern at the very beginning of his Pantheia (Imag. II, 9, 1) expressing it in an orderly, scholarly way: “what her hair was like, what the breadth of her brow, what her glance and the expression of her eyes.” And next he successively built up the points of the above instruction in his ecphrasis. His Imagines bring more analogical instances of this technique. Pasiphae’s eyes express the mixture of jealousy and hopelessness (Imag. I, 16), the Satyr’s eyes display desire when he is looking at the sleeping Olympus (Imag. I, 20), Narcissus’ eyes are “that of a man deeply in love” (Imag. I, 23, 4), in Andromeda’s eyes the observer could read a certain mixture of distrustjoy and fear (Imag. I, 29). This technique is one of the refinements of Philostratus’ learned guide to the painting gallery.

      According to the ancient art critics Apelles was the first to achieve perfection in rendering female figures. His Aphrodite Anadyomene and Aphrodite of Cos strongly influenced the whole of Greek and Roman iconography, becoming a source of constant and lasting inspiration for prose writers and poets (HN 35, 91-92). Pliny the Elder wrote that Apelles’ contemporary, Nicias of Athens, won equal fame for his lovely images of women (diligentissime midieres pinxit, HN 35, 130). The reader may find more instances of female portrait painting in the Imagines, e.g. of Andromeda (I, 29), Ariadne (I, 15), the female centaurs (II, 3) and the Horae (II, 34). The sculptured and painted female portraits of the 4lh and 3rd century BC testify to the progressing perfection in this area of Greek art. We have mentioned above the female images remarkable for their unparalleled grace and elegance on the Kertsch vases. Richter selected the Bartlett Head from Boston to illustrate a model idealist portrait of a young lady of the Late Classical and Early Hellenistic period, with its typical harmonious, shapely eyes and softly accentuated brows.²⁴ ²⁵ She wrote that the mouth of the Bartlett Aphrodite and other contemporary portraits “becomes rounder and more fleshy with lower lip shorter than the upper”.²⁵ Comparing the Greek head from the Acropolis with its Berlin copy of the Roman period, she pointed to the original’s inimitable art of model


     ²⁴ Richter 1950, p. 75, Fig. 175.

     ²⁵ Ibid. p. 74.

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ling, its “melting look of the eyes, the variegated hair, the sensitive lips ... the softness of outline, the imperceptible passing of one plane into another . . .”²⁶ Referring to the hair-style of Bartlett’s Aphrodite, Richter observed that “instead of the flat locks and strands there are irregular tufts of considerable depth creating manifold shadows”.²⁷ These effects did not pass unnoticed by the Greek epigammatist poets, admirers of the artworks by the old masters. One of them described Courage represented as a seated weeping woman, with her hair in disarray and heart filled with pain (AP 7, 145, 146). The images of suffering women are not infrequent in the Palatine Anthology. The eyes of Polyxene by Polykleitus expressed all the suffering brought by the Trojan War (AP 16, 150).²⁸ Philoctetes with his hair in confusion might stand for the very incarnation of pain (AP XVI, 111-113). The portrait of Polyxene admired by a Greek epigrammatist may be regarded as representative of the type of facial expression perfected by the Early Hellenistic workshops. Vitry wrote about “une face toute vibrante de passion et de douleur.”²⁹

      Philostratus’ Pantheia has an entirely absent look in her face. “She does not seem to suffer pain at all but rather to depart in joy.” (Imag. II, 9, 5). The Roman Niobid’s “beautiful composed features do not suggest in any way the physical agony she is in”.³⁰ Referring to the dying Amazon from the Phigalean frieze, Richter adds that “there is no need of agonized expressions in the faces, the positions of heads and arms and legs are sufficient in themselves to indicate the sculptor’s meaning”.³¹ When Philostratus wrote about a feeling of longing which “so suffuses the eyes that it seems clearly to drip from them” (trans. A. Fairbanks - ipepoq ovtcd ti EKiKEX'UTai. xoig otpOaXpofq, cog Etci.bTiXo'raTa 8f] cwt’ avzcov dnooTd^Etv) (Imag. II, 9, 6) he specified a class of Late Classical and Hellenistic portraits, conspicuous for their moist, detached and dreamy eyes, filled with deep emotions emerging from the depths of the psyche. His words call to mind the impressive head from Chios.³² And Lucian of Samosate cherished the memory of the same class of portraits when he was compiling his model female face remarkable for tcov ocpOaXpcov 8e to vypov apa xco cpai8pcb Kai KE^apiapEvco (the eyes also, that gaze so liquid, and at the same time so clear and winsome). According to his testimony it was Praxiteles who mastered this particular technique of portraying women’s faces (Imag. 6). The heads on the funerary stelae are all marked by the expression of this dreamy detachment.³³ Emotional epitaphs notable for their perfected


     ²⁶ Richter 1950, p. 180, figs. 508, 509.

     ²⁷ Ibid.

     ²⁸ Vitry 1894, p. 353 f.

     ²⁹ Ibid. p. 356.

     ³⁰ Richter 1950, p. 79, fig. 196.

     ³¹ Ibid. p. 79, fig. 204.

     ³² Ibid. Fig. 174.

     ³³ Ibid. p. 81.

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form recall nostalgic memories of the faces of girls and young women “dans toute leur grâce et leur fraîcheur trop tôt évanouies”, as put by Vitry.³⁴ One of the elegiac poets of the Anthologia Palatina pictured the bust of a very young girl on her sepulchral column (AP 7, 481). The funereal portraits may help us in the best possible way to visualize the Philostratean Pantheia, a chef-d’oeuvre of the Neapolitan painting gallery.

      Pliny the Elder wrote about Aristides of Thebes, another contemporary of Apelles, as one who omnium primus animum pinxit et sensum hominis expressit, quae vo-cant Graeci ethe, itemperturbationes (HN35,98 - he was the first among all painters to paint the soul, and gave expression to the affections of man, I mean to what the Greeks call ethe - and also the emotions, trans. K. Jex-Blake). According to the testimony of the same art critic, Zeuxis painted a picture of Penelope in quia pinxisse mores (HN 35, 62). An AP poet sketched a portrait of an honest woman, in which he emphasized her nobility, wit and virtues even more manifest in the frame of her physical beauty (AP 4, 354). The eyes of Philostratus’ Pantheia sparkled with intelligence and courage, and though still gleaming with life, yet were already shadowed by the darkness of imminent death. (Imag. 11,9,6). In a similar way the eyes of Rhodogoune reflected the flashes of mixed emotions of joy, haughtiness and authority united with her loveliness (Imag, II, 5, 5). Richter enriched her charming collection consisting of the Bartlett Aphrodite and the Chios Head with the Goldman Head of Toledo, conspicuous for her “evenescent charm”, feelings of pride and dignity modelled in the stone by an anonymous master.³⁵ “Like a true artist he also goes over and beyond the external appearance and conveys a comprehensive picture of his sitter’s character,”³⁶ Richter adds. Her words may be illustrative of the above collected archaeological evidence as well as for the female painted portraits. This reflection has survived in the masterful Greek of the expert Severan art critic: “Feminine grace and delicacy could not find a more perfect expression.”³⁷

      Philostratus’ Pantheia reflects a markedly Hellenistic predilection for antithesis, sometimes coloured by dramatic, pathetic or even startling overtones. Richter pointed to “a love of movement and of violent contrasts ... of a tendency toward dramatic and turbulent effects.”³⁸ On the Philostratean painting the bloodstained, horribly mutilated corpse of a warrior was contrasted with the subtle charm of a woman. The still visible flush on her cheeks getting paler and paler showed the struggle between life and death. In his Rhodogoune Philostratus constructed a veritable hierarchy of contradictions and opposites. A young, graceful lady on horseback was dressed in male armour, and represented in a scene of triumph over the van


    ³⁴ Vitry 1894, p. 360; cf. AP VII, 481, 565, 645, 695.

     ³⁵ Richter 1950, fig. 174, 175, 207.

    ³⁶ Ibid. p. 84.

     ³⁷ Ibid. p. 81.

    ³⁸ Ibid. p. 107.

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quished male sex. Her hair was partly decently fastened up, but partly hanging loose in disarray. Her girlish joy contrasted with her haughtiness and authority as a queen. This woman looked as if created for love, wrote Philostratus, however she herself renounced the pleasures of love. This point made Lehmann-Hartleben doubtful about the correcteness of Philostratus’ interpretation of the painting. The German scholar wondered whether it was not Hippolyte, Queen of the Amazons, portrayed by an anonymous master, wrongly identified as Rhodogoune by the rhetorician.³⁹ Her Oriental costume would have been justified in both cases. We know innumerable representations of the Amazons dressed in richly decorated jackets and sleeves, which are conventional in their imagery.

     The weakening and dying body, or insensible, lifeless corpses were again and again studied by the Hellenist masters in contrast with the vigour and tension of athletic, muscular figures endowed with the irresistible power of life, often next to each other in the same group. This feeling for contradiction is also symptomatic of Philostratean rhetoric. We all know the Menelaus and Patroclus group from the Florentine Loggia dei Lanzi. No-one will ever forget the spell of magnificence and pathos cast by the Gaul killing his wife from the Museo delle Terme. The bronze original was probably set up, together with the bronze casts of Amazons, Giants and Persians, on the Acropolis on the occasion of Attalos I’s visit in 200 BC. A lost bronze group of Achilles with the dying Penthesilea reconstructed from coins is another example of the style. All these groups can be dated for the second half of the 3rd century BC. Pliny the Elder testified to the exspirantium imagines by Apelles, the images of dying people (HN 35, 90).⁴⁰ The guide to the Neapolitan art gallery focuses our attention on Menoeceus dying young (Imag.
I, 5), Hippolytus dying in the fatal accident in his chariot (Imag. II, 4), the two wrestlers clutched in mutual deadly grip (Jmag. II, 6), the death of Agamemnon in Cassandra’s ecphrasis (Jmag. II, 10), a muscular Antaeus gasping in agony (Imag.
II, 21), and finally Pantheia (Imag. II, 9). Philostratus the Younger inherited his master’s artistic taste. He focused his attention on Eurypylus killed by Pyrrhus (Phil. Iun. 10), and Nessus shot by an arrow of Heracles (Phil. Iun. 16). There is something morbid in this Hellenistic interest in the bodies of the dying and dead. One can collect a number of passages from the verse by Apollonius Rhodius, noteworthy for the same trend. B. H. Fowler called Apollonius “the most baroque of the Hellenistic poets”.⁴¹ In order to make her argument clearer Fowler quoted Apollonius’ vision of the slain giants (Arg. 1003-11) and collected together the four sculptured dead bodies, a collection marked by the taste for the alien and the mythical: the Gaul from Venice, the Persian, the Giant and the Amazon from Naples.⁴²

    ⁾⁹ Lehmann-Hartleben 1941, n. 43, p. 31.

    ⁴⁰ Jex-Blake, Sellers 1896, n. on p. 126 f. they may also refer to the funeral portraits.

    ⁴¹ Fowler 1989, p. 37.

    ⁴² Ibid. figs. 23-26.

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     The Hellenistic artists studied the opposition of life and death with the nervous anxiety of explorers. But they went further, devoting the same zeal to the exploration of other similar possibilities, like the contest of beauty and ugliness, or the confrontation of strength with weakness. Their nude and tall Aphrodite appears in the company of a minor and ugly Pan; their slightly dressed Nereids in the triumphs of Amphitrite ride sea monsters armed with paws, scales and dragon tails. They appreciated a disproportionately huge Polyphemus, awkward and naive, trying to win the favours of a little Galatea. A charming fresco with Polyphemus has survived among the chef-d’oeuvres of the Classical painting in the Villa of Boscotrecase, as well as in a heavily damaged master copy in the House of Livia on the Palatine.⁴³

     In the same way they juxtapose young and old, or the delicacy of a young human body, male or female, with the monstrosity of the beast, as in the scene of a grotesque and bestial Pan endowed with goat’s legs and beard embracing Olympus represented as a boy of ephebic beauty.⁴⁴ On an eclectic painting in the Flavian Basilica of Herculanum a Chiron with a huge head, thick lips, short nose and hybrid half-human, half-horse body, is giving a music lesson on the cithara to a boy Achilles rendered with a feminine grace. The antithesis is noticeable in both the physical sphere (age and size) as well as in the moral (love and education).⁴⁵ The rhetoric of Philostratus the Elder manifests the same sensitivity. In his selection of paintings we find dwarfs playing with Father Nile, represented as a powerful bearded half-reclining divinity {Imag. I, 5); satyrs, “ruddy, grinning creatures” contemplating the beauty of a sleeping Olympus {Imag. I, 20); and also horsetailed satyrs seducing Lydian women {Imag. II, 22); Achilles and Chiron, a parallel to the Pan and Olympus group {Imag. II, 2); next a hybrid creature uniting in one body the physical beauty of a woman with the trunk and limbs of a wild horse in the ecphrasis on the female Centaurs {Imag. II, 3); a heroic Heracles and some miniature, burlesque Pygmies {Imag. II, 22); a crude mental primitivism blending in with the barbarous power of an overgrown and distorted body, contrasting with the intelligence and agile, harmonious body of Heracles in the Antaeus ecphrasis {Imag. II, 21) or (II, 19).

    ⁴³   Amphitrite on a marine centaur in the Pompeian painting, Repertoire p. 36, 4; Thetis, Venus Marina and Europa appear in compositions similar to the triumphs of Amphitrite, e.g. Thetis riding a sea monster, ibid. p. 39, 1, a Nereid on a marine centaur on the mosaic from Timgad, ibid. p. 39,4; a Nereid on a sea-horse, Domus Aurea, painting, ibid. p. 40,2; a naked Nereid on a monstrous sea-panther, Pompeian painting, p. 40, 5, etc. Cf. ibid., pp. 41-43; Polyphemus and Galatea: Blan-ckenhagen-Alexander 1962; R. VII, 4, 59; VII, 15, 2; IX, 6, 4-5, Schefold 1962, pl. 52, 5; VI, 5, 5; VII, 4, 52, Schefold 1962, pl. 155; The House of Sacerdos Amandus, R. I, 7, 7.

    ⁴⁴   They invented a group of baby Erotes mounted on the old centaur, Bernhard 1980, figs. 207 a-b, Louvre; Olympus and Pan, ibid. fig. 213, Museo Nazionale, Naples.

    ⁴³ Schefold 1972, p. 204, pl. 46; cf. other painted groups by Chiron and Achilles, Casa dei Dioscuri, R. IX, 3, 5 (4); the House of R. VI, 7, 18; in the Villa ofCicero, Schefold 1972, Pl. 26; the Temple of Isis in Pompei.

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     However, one detail in the Pantheia painting may prove to be decisive for the establishing of the date of the original. It is a short Persian dagger, an aki-nakes, Pantheia’s suicide weapon: f] 5e Ktbnri ponalcp xpvafi) eiKaarai apapaySivcp Tobq o^ouq. Its hilt was golden and branched out at the top into emerald ramifications (Jmag. II, 9, 5). We have such Iranian daggers among the Luristan bronzes.⁴⁶ However, we are able to adduce an even closer analogy: an undoubtedly Achaemenid, exuberant golden akinakes from Hamadan (Ecbatana), dated exactly by a vessel adorned with inscriptions which clearly refer to Xerxes I (Pl. LVII). The dagger of Ecbatana is 43 cm long, its width at the top of the hilt is almost 10 cm. The emerald colour of the ramifications in the painting can be explained by the inlays, well represented in the extant Achaemenid art. The Victoria and Albert Museum holds a gold armlet from the Oxus treasure, with its hollows originally filled with inlays.⁴⁷ The Greeks of Mainland Greece as well as Ionia witnessed an inflow of wealth from the Persian spoils of war, which were taken during Alexander’s expedition and the following decades of hostilities. Weaponry must have prevailed among them. Herodotus witnessed an analogous situation after the Battle of Platea, when the Greeks seized the tent of Xerxes with all of its treasures. His description is so impressive that the reader has a feeling of looking at the spoils with his own eyes. Herodotus must have personally seen some of opulence: “. . . many tents richly adorned with furniture of gold and silver, gilded and silver-plated couches, golden bowls, mixing vessels, and drinking cups . . . bracelets and daggers of gold” (Hdt. 9, 86). A ceremonial golden dagger is also mentioned on the Parthenon treasure list.⁴⁸ The old master who painted Philos-tratus’ Pantheia studied the Persian dagger with great attention. He knew that such detail was essential in a historical painting. It always gave an air of authenticity even if chronologically incorrect. Besides, such a detail contributed special qualities to the artefact, bringing an Oriental colour to a painting which otherwise was very Greek in its iconographic and literary references (Pyramus and Thisbe, Croesus on the pyre, the fall of Sardis - Pedley 1972, 113-123), the proverbial beauty of the Lydian women (cf. Sappho 218 (96)), the Lydian golden sand and the riches of Croesus (Pedley 1972, 73-83) . The original tableau, in my opinion, was not of Imperial date, as sometimes suggested. It can be dated within the span of the 3rd and 2ⁿd century BC.

     These contrasting qualities are additionally emphasized by the colour compositions on the paintings, dominated by juxtaposed reds and whites with admixtures of blacks and golden hues. This Late Classical and Hellenistic sensitivity is well attested by the portraits of Rhodogoune and Pantheia in the Philostratean collection. One cannot resist reference to the colour compositions of many of the al


    ⁴⁶ Berghe van den, 1959, p. 91, Pl. 117.

    ⁴⁷ Porada 1965, Pl. 51, p. 172, 5,h/4'h century BC.

    ⁴⁸ Francis 1980, p. 81.

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ready-mentioned Kertsch vases, intended to heighten the impression of conflicting qualities, to affect the observer’s memory for colour, and to raise the dramatic tension in perfect unity with subject-matter. We are reminded of a popular Hellenistic poem, Adonis by Bion, dated c. 120 BC. The imagery of this poem is dominated by the density and concentration of red and white hues. It is tempting to infer that the poem must have been inspired by a real painting. Its description seems to begin in v. 7: KEÎTat Kalàç ’"ASœviç exactly as in a funeral monument from the Vatican or in Tammuz in Damascus.⁴⁹ tô 8È oi péXav XeipeTai aipa xtovaéç Kaxà aapxôç (vv. 9-10 - dark blood on his snow-white body). His lips are tinted red (tô pôôov T© xeiXeoç - v. 11). Adonis is mortally wounded in the thigh (ayptov eXkoç koctôc pT|pov - v. 16). Adonis’ wound can be seen on the above-referred monument from the Vatican Museums. The reference to Abradates from Philostratus’ Pantheia seems natural in this context. The hunting dogs join in the mourning for the dying hero both in Bion’s Adonis (v. 18) and in the Vatican monument, xai Nuptpat KXaiouoi ôpeiàôeç (v. 19 - and the mountainous nymphs are crying too). Behind the central group on a Pompeian painting we can notice a “déesse locale debout devant un arbre”⁵⁰ - like the nymph from Bion’s Adonis (Pl. LVI). Eros, who appeared on the chef-d’oeuvre from the Neapolitan gallery, is also a frequent guest in the imagery of Adonis and Aphrodite.⁵¹ Bion’s Aphrodite in a gesture of despair lets her fair flow down loosely in disarray over her shoulders (Xvoapéva nXoKapîôaç (20), vf|jtXeKTOÇ (21)). In a similar mode Pantheia unravelled her thick black hair, which fell unrestrained down her shoulders (xocîttiv pèv outcù pÉXaivav te Kai àpcpiXacph 7tEpixÉaaa toÎç œpoiq - Imag. II, 9,5). Both Abradates on the tableau and Bion’s Adonis had blood on them from their wounds. Both Pantheia and Aphrodite carry bloody scars on their white skin. Pantheia 8Épr|v 8e Xevkt)v inEKtpaivovoa, fj v È8pin|/aTO .. . Tà yàp oripEÎa tôv ôvvxcùv {Imag. II, 9, 5 - showing her white throat, on which she had scratched . . . the marks made by her finger-nails). Aphrodite cut her skin against the branches of the thicket when running to the wounded Adonis (ai 8è pàToi vtv èpxopévav KEipovTi Kai iepàv aîpa 8pénovTai - vv. 21-22). Aphrodite calls her Assyrian paramour ( ’Ao-ovptov nÔCTiv - v. 24), Pantheia her Persian husband. Bion’s Aphrodite and Philostratus’ Pantheia are beautiful, like all the Oriental heroines in the Greek imagery, like Roxana, Semiramis or Andromeda (Bion’s KunpiBi KaXov eî8oç).

     Lehmann-Hartleben (1941) suspected that the hunting scene in the Imagines I, 28 was actually the Adonis hunt. He might not have been right, however this does not change the fact that Philostratus’ description of that painting documented a number of strikingly Orientalist details. We find for example a digression on paints produced by barbarians on the islands or shores (?) of the Ocean {Imag. I,


     ⁴’ Servais-Soyez, Adonis, LIMC 1, 1-2, no 33 (Vatican), 34 (Damascus).

     ⁵⁰ Ibid. 35, p. 226; Pompeian painting, VI 7, 18, Casa d’Adonide ferito.

     ⁵¹ Ibid. 10, 11, 13, 15, 26, 35.

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28,3). The central figure in the painting, a handsome young man mounted on a white horse, wore a sleeved purple tunic, while his steed was adorned with a harness made of gold and Medic scarlet (kokkod MtiSikou). Further on in the same ec-phrasis we find a eulogy of Phoenician purple fabrics suggestive of the eulogy of silk in Achilles Tatius’s description of the Andromeda painting in Pelusium. However the most striking passage in the “Adonis hunt” painting tells us about the precinct of a female deity, which was painted somewhere in the background of the tableau. The sanctuary comprised a garden inhabited by tame deer, wolves and horses. One can easily recognize a well-known motif of the Greek Orientalist style: the temple of an Oriental goddess, this time called Artemis Agrotera, surrounded with a garden inhabited by wild animals. It reminds us of the Temple of Atargatis in the Syrian Goddess or the Palace of Circe in the Odyssey. One of the details in the Hunting Scene of Philostratus, “a statue worn smooth with age,” is reminiscent of the Orientalizing sacro-idyllic landscapes from the walls of Campania and Rome.

      We have an exact date for Action’s Wedding of Roxana and Alexander. Pausanias, Lucian, the poets of the Palatine Anthology, Callistratus, all of them, frequently remind us of the chronology of the paintings and sculptures they choose to describe. Philostratus the Elder, who mastered the ecphrasis on artworks, poses extreme difficulties as regards the dating of his selected works of art. Summing up the chronological evidence which has emerged from the above discussion, I would be inclined to date the Philostratean Pantheia as 2ⁿd century BC. Like the Chiron and Achilles from the Basilica of Herculanum, this painting is conspicuous for its eclectic taste blending together Late Classical and Late Hellenistic elements.⁵² Philostratus’ description demonstrates that it was a masterpiece of the highest quality by an unknown artist, either an original painting or a master copy (diroypatpov) made by a talented Academician, well aware of the achievements of the best Late Classical and Hellenistic workshops.

     ⁵²   Achilles imitated the figures of Late Classicism, c. 330-320 BC, Chiron Late Hellenistic forms, c. 150-100 BC, Schefold 1972, p. 203, pl. 49, cf. Theseus in front of the Labyrinth in the same Basilica on Pl. 47, and Heracles in the allegorical painting, ibid. Pl. 48.





The Warrior Princess Rhodogoune


     In the very first word of his ecphrasis {Imag. II, 5), to ai|ia (blood), Philostratus the Elder impinges on our imagination, to make it remain under the impression of the intense red dominating the chromatic scale of the tableau. The expansive red hues heightened the effects in a composition marked by the confusion of corpses of fallen warriors, horses running amok in terror, and the turbid and polluted waves of the river. A battle had just finished.¹ All the lines of the composition focused on the central figure of the Persian princess and her horse. She had led her soldiers to victory over the treacherous Armenians, who had broken the peace treaty. The observer could see a group of them taken prisoner beside the tropaion. Here Philostratus turned with undisguised fascination to the description of the queen’s wonderful, thorough-bred, black Nisean mare, with her noble white legs, and her body adorned in a rich harness studded with jewels. Rhodogoune herself was envisaged pouring the libation to the gods in an act of thanksgiving. She wore a scarlet robe and trousers, held a spear and a small shield {Imag. II, 5, 4). However the highest note in the ascending scale of this description, which passes more and more from the general to the particular, is Rhodogoune’s portrait, one of the most detailed and accomplished in the artistic spectrum of the gallery. The portrait engages more than half of the whole ecphrasis.

     In my view the emphasis put on the female portrait in this ecphrasis speaks against Cammerer, who argued for the idea of direct analogies to the Rhodogoune painting allegedly discernible in the reliefs of the 2ⁿd century AD Roman battle sarcophagi rendered in the narrative style {kontinuierender Stil, style continu). We all know how helpful it is to refer to the kontinuierender Stil in our studies - a notion once put forward by F. Wickhoff and W. von Hartel in their illuminating book Die Wiener Genesis (1895). However, we also know that a useful device when employed excessively may sometimes prove to be an obfuscating prejudgement.


     ¹    In Cammerer’s view the painting showed two different scenes, the first with Rhodogoune emerging from the chaos of the battle in the background, and the second showing the princess before the tropaion (Cammerer 1967, p. 48). One cannot find any hint in the description which would suggest the battle was still continuing. It seems that all the lines of the composition focus on the central figure of the queen, who celebrates the victory. Cammerer proved unable to find any archaeological parallels for a composition which would join together the triumphal scene with captives and the battle scene (Cammerer 1967, p. 50). The battle sarcophagi dated from the second half of the 2ⁿd century AD show the battle scenes with the tropaia in the corners of the frontal decorative slab (ibid. p. 51). It was a triumphal scene which was represented on the painting. The enemies were shown as either dead or captive.

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     There are substantial doubts as to the historical identity of Philostratus’ Rho-dogoune. Schönberger found as many as seven Persian and Parthian princesses with this name in Justi, lranisches Namenbuch. We know a little bit only about one of them, namely the wife of Demetrius II Nikator (129-125 BC), Schönberger concluded his research in this area.² In fact the story of Rhodogoune, wife of Demetrius II, is extremely non-heroic, and in no way fits the legend of a warrior queen. Demetrius II married his Rhodogoune when he was being held captive at the court of Mithradatas I (Appian, Syr. 67). Mithradatas pardoned his vanquished enemy and even offered him his daughter in marriage, and was ready to forgive Demetrius his several and sundry efforts to escape to the West, doing so apparently for the welfare of his grandchildren, who had been born to Demetrius by Rhodogoune. Cammerer felt equally helpless in the face of the confusion of the historical evidence on this point.³ ⁴ Steinmann referred exclusively to her mythical and literary identity.'' Rhodogoune was a name of old tradition in the royal house of the Achaemenids. We know of a daughter of Xerxes and Amastris, and sister to Artaxerxes II, who bore this name.⁵ One scanty trail in the historical material may perhaps lead us to the Rhodogoune of the writers, artists and popular legends. In the 380’s BC the Persians put down a mutiny on Cyprus. The military operations were commanded by Aroandas, called Orontes, son of Artasyras, a Bactrian by descent. Aroandas married Rhodogoune, daughter of Artaxerxes II. Her dowry was the satrapy of Armenia.⁶ Who knows then, if, when her husband, the satrap of Armenia, was far away from home, his wife was not compelled to confront a local mutiny by her Armenian subjects and, showing bravery and determination, distinguished herself in a way which gave the beginning to the legend which quickly lost its original historical context. Ctesias, who is reputed by some to have drawn on the original Iranian lore⁷, tells us a story of Queen Spamithres (?), wife of King Amorges who “when her husband was captured, continued the war against Cyrus the Great.”⁸

     Rhodogoune’s mythical and literary identity appears far more clear than her historical personality. Her story reflected the popular archetype of Oriental warrior-queen, both brave and beautiful, vengeful, cruel and cunning, particularly in her relations with men. In this form she entered the belles lettres and fine arts of the Greeks. We recall the Herodotean Queen Tomyris, who ordered the dead body of Cyrus the Great to be drowned in a buklak filled with the blood of his executed soldiers (Hdt. I, 205-216); we recall Semiramis of Ctesias, who murdered her lovers; or even Kanake from the Romance of Alexander, who in the eyes


    ² Schönberger 1968, p. 389, ‘um 250 v. Chr.’ (?).

    ³ Cämmerer 1967, n. 1, p. 86.

    ⁴ Steinmann 1914, p. 100.

    ⁵ Olmstead 1974, p. 279.

    ⁶ Ibid. p. 374; Orontes married Rhodogoune in 401 BC, cf. CHI, Lang, p. 506.

    ⁷ Vogelsang 1992, pp. 210-214.

    " Ibid. p. 211, Phot. 3.

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of the Macedonian conquerors appeared as yuvf) exovoa KaXXog VJtEpf|<pavov (a woman of unparallelled beauty). Kanake, by the way, was a descendant of Semiramis (Romance III, 18).⁹ We also leam from Diodorus that one Onnes, husband of Semiramis “out of his passion for his wife, fell into a kind of frenzy and madness” and eventually committed suicide {Bibl. 2, 6, 10, sec. Ctesias). According to an otherwise unknown historian Athenaeus, who presented a different version of Semiramis’ story, a contrast to the one in Ctesias, she was a beautiful courtesan beloved by the King. Athenaeus’ Semiramis managed to be united to the King in lawful marriage. However as soon as she had come to power she ordered her royal husband thrown into prison (Diod. Bibl. 2, 20, 3-5). Diodorus also described Semiramis’ military exploits in Libya, Ethiopia and India (Diod. 2, 14-19, sec. Ctesias). Xenophon penned a similar portrait of the local autocratrix Manya, a friend and ally of Famabazos, and a participant in his military expeditions (HG III, 1, 10-15). I am going to return to the motif of the Oriental femme fatale in the section devoted to Roxana. That we are in the dreamy world of the commonplace and widespread folk tale was once persuasively shown by D. Page in his unforgettable Folk Tales in Homer's Odyssey. The Indian Nischayadatta on his way through the forest came face to face with a sorceress who bewildered and devoured her victims. She used to appear “dancing, playing from afar on her lute of bones . . . intoxicated with flesh and blood.”¹⁰ * The tale of Gilgamesh and Ishtar in the Epic of Gilgamesh sounds like an earlier version of the Classical story of Semiramis. The Akkadian tale of Nergal and Ereshkigal spins a yarn of yet another cruel goddess queen." A similar story of Queen Lab and Bedr Basim is told in The Arabian Nights. “Circe and Medea are at home in the remote Orient, closest to the centres of Akkadian culture. Circe is daughter of the Sun; her island, Aia, is where the sun rises . . . Like the goddesses of the Orient, but not of Greece, she has a sanctuary surrounded by parkland infested with wild animals.”¹² The ogresses from the Pali Jataka (Birth Stories of Buddha) “seduce wayfarers with honeyed words . .. they ensnare men’s senses, captivating the sense of beauty with utter loveliness, the ear with sweet minstrelsy . . .” They eventually devour their victims.¹³ The beautiful female-form genii, the prapangan, “exercise upon men a bewitching fascination, disturb their mental faculties, and render them mad.”¹⁴ A Siren also lures the sailors of Brittany. She is “belle comme le jour, elle chante comme un ange.”¹⁵ Readers of Homer feel at home


    ’ Kandake’s story Romance III, 18-23, Historia Alexandri Magni, Ps. Callisthenes, vol. I, ed. G. Kroll, Berlin, 1926.

    ¹⁰ Page 1973, pp. 58 f.; Katha Sagit Saqara, or. Ocean of the Streams of Story, transl. C. H. Towney, Calcutta, 1880.

    " ANET p. 130 f.

    ¹² Page 1973, p. 60; cf. Atargatis in her sanctuary of the Syrian Hierapolis in The Syrian Goddess.

    ¹⁵ Page 1973, p. 88.

    ¹⁴    Ibid. p. 87; A. Featherman, Social History of the Races of Mankind: Second Division: Papua and Malayo Melanesians, London, 1887, p. 396.

    ¹⁵ Melusine: Recueil de Mythologie 2, Paris, 1884-5, p. 280; following Page 1973, p. 88.

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with all those stories through his tales of Circe (Od. 10, 133-454) and the Sirens (Od. 12, 39-54). The latter, however, were not at all “the beautiful females whose singing lures the traveller”, to recall once again the phraseology of D. Page, as once ingeniously visualized by the great English Classicist John Draper or Arnold Bocklin, who gave the reins to their 19,h-century Romantic imagination. Since the 8lh century BC on, images of Sirens appeared in the Greek funeral art as monsters, and were associated with the cult of the dead. They were human-headed croaking birds that lived in the darkness of Hades (Plato, Cratylus, 403D) and threatened the souls of men. ¹⁶

     Philostratus’ account of Rhodogoune is the most detailed of all in the Greek literature¹⁷ about her. As soon as she was informed of the mutiny, Philostratus tells us, the princess immediately jumped on her horse “not even allowing herself to fasten up the right side of her hair” (Imag. Il, 5, 1 - trans. A. Fairbanks) and won the battle. Valerius Maximus handed down a similar story of Semiramis (9, 3, 4).¹⁸ Lehmann-Hartleben on his part reminds us of an epitaph in commemoration of one Epagatho who complains over the span of millennia “that now they call her Rhodogoune from the name of a queen.”¹⁹ Epagatho was stoned to death by her rejected suitor. Already a long time ago Weicker pointed to the similarity between the stories of Semiramis and Rhodogoune.²⁰ In the Philostratean version we can also recognize the motif of refusal to surrender to love: oi> yap poi Sokei ¿pav too ¿pacfQai (for I do not think she loves to be loved -Imag. Il, 5,4). Semiramis’ dishevelled hair, cruel treatment of her lovers, and her eventual suicide testified by Diodorus (II, 4 f.; 13; 20.5 f) raise doubts in Lehmann-Harleben as regards the correctness of Philostratus’ interpretation of the subject itself of the picture. The German scholar preferred a slightly different reading of Kai Tfjq aoniSoq ayaoOai xpfj to pexpiov Kai anoxpcov tcd OTEpvco (Imag. II, 5, 3) than Fairbanks’: “One should also admire the moderate size of the shield, which is large enough to cover the breast,” reads Lehmann-Hartleben. He concluded that it must have been the pelta, the small shield of the Amazons.²¹ This led Lehmann-Hartleben to the conclusion that the painter actually represented not Rhodogoune but Hip-polyte, Queen of the Amazons.²² I do not share his assumption. In fact Philostratus seems to have been a little confused when he observed that Rhodogoune’s “dress is not that of an Amazon” (Imag. II, 5, 2).

    ¹⁶ D. Levi, AJA 49, 1945, pp. 280 ff.

    ¹⁷    She was mentioned by Dio Chrysostomos (or. 64, 1, p. 206D), and only briefly treated by Polyaenus (Strateg. VIII, 27).

    ¹⁸ Schönberger 1968, p. 390

    ¹⁹    Lehmann-Hartleben 1941, n. 43, p. 3 1, CIG 5724 = IG XIV, 499 dated for the early Imperial period.

    ²⁰ Jacobs, Weicker 1825, p. 425.

    ²¹ Lehmann-Hartleben 1941, n. 43, p. 3 1.

    ²² Ibid.

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      Thus we pass to the question of the painting’s archaeological identity. In Lehmann-Hartleben’s view it was a rather tall rectangle, placed on the wall in Philostratus’ Room of Aphrodite as a pendant to the tableau picturing the death of Hippoly-tus, who was equally unwilling to yield to love (Imag. II, 4 - Pl. XXXIV). The two paintings made up part of a thematic cycle which illustrated the motif of tragic love. They hung on the walls of the Room of Aphrodite beside Pantheia’s suicide (Imag. II, 5), and the death of Cassandra, a picture which stressed her amorous liaison with Agamemnon (Imag. II, 10).²³ We can adduce many instances of analogous thematic cycles in the Pompeian painting. The owners of the House of Jason, also called the House of the Fatal Love, dated as the last decade of the Augustan period, commissioned an artist to paint a cycle of unfortunate lovers with Phaedra, Helen with Paris, and Medea.²⁴ These pictorial representations were reechoed in popular verses by the contemporary poets. Propertius blamed his love torments on Cynthia and compared her successively to Phaedra, Medea, Circe and Helen (II, 1,50 ff.). The mosaic cycle in Antioch added Atalanta and Sthenoboea to the triad of the unfortunate women from the House of the Fatal Love.²⁵ Another cycle of paintings treasured in the Vatican Library show Myrrha, who gave herself up to her father; Kanake, who yielded to her brother; Scylla, who submitted to the enemy of her native land; and Pasiphae, who yielded to an unnatural temptation (cf. Propertius, III, 19).²⁶ The decorative fresco arrangement of the Late Neronian Casa dei Dioscuri also included tableaux with Myrrha and Scylla (cf. Ovid. X, 298 ff.; VIII, 1 ff.). The high-pitched choir in Hippolytus by Seneca pathetically praises the power of love which compelled Apollo to work for Admetus, Zeus to take the shape of a swan or a bull, Diana and Heracles who forgot about their dignity for Endymion and Omphale (Hipp. 296 ff.). There was once a Dionysiac cycle in the House of M.Lucretius with one of the best ancient copies showing Heracles and Omphale, an analogy to a similar cycle in the Philos-tratean art gallery (the Room of Dionysus Imag. I, 14-30). The heroic cycle of Heracles and Theseus in the Basilica of Herculanum may also be regarded as an analogy to the Heracles cycle in Philostratus’ gallery (the Room of Heracles, Imag. II, 20-25). It is clear, then, that the ecphraseis of Philostratus the Elder mirrored much of the usual arrangement of a Roman pinacotheca, as can fortunately be corroborated by the extant wall painting in the Campanian towns buried by Vesuvius.

      What did Philostratus actually contemplate in Naples: the painting of Rho-dogoune, Semiramis or Hippolite? We can draw at least one advantage out of this


    ²³ Ibid. p. 31.

    ¹A Schefold 1972, p. 144, PI. 16, 17, 55.

    ²⁵ Ibid. p. 145.

    ²⁶    Ibid.; in the House of R. IX, 9,17 (14) the panels with Theseus departing from Ariadne are opposite Achilles with Penthesilea, Pyramus and Thisbe, and neighbours Paris and Oenone; R. IX, 2, 16 (3) again Theseus leaving Ariadne, Meleager and Atalanta, Endymion and Acteon.

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confusion of different interpretations. Referring to the ecphrasis on the tableau which pictured Themistocles at the court of Babylon (Imag. II, 31), Steinmann put it in the following way: “Wie bei /rn.II, 19, so heben sich auch hier die letzten Bedenken, wenn wir Philostrats Deutung als unsicher und wahrscheinlich falsch anerkennen; und wie dort, so können wir auch hier in der Missdeutung eine positive Gewähr für ein konkretes Vorbild erblicken.”²⁷ The hesitancy in interpretation on the part of Philostratus provided one more proof of the painting’s authenticity.

     We have already mentioned that Cämmerer argued that the Gallic sarcophagi of the Hadrianic and early Antonine period were a direct parallel to the Rho-dogoune painting.²⁸ As far as we know the great battle sarcophagus from the Museo delle Terme marked the culminating point in the development of the tropaion motif, which played the role of a frame for the battle scene in the middle.²⁹ In Cämmer-er’s view, Philostratus’ own words aXXoq aXXcoq nenrcoKOTeg (men who have fallen in different postures) correspond well with the fallen barbarians in the lower registers of the frontal decorative side of the sarcophagus. Philostratus’ innoi te axaKTOuvTE«; (horses running wildly) would coincide with the upper decorative band of the sarcophagus, which is full of horses running in different directions. “Das unruhige Hin und Her”, writes Cämmerer, “von Waffen, Rüstung und Gliedern, das grelle Geflimmer in dem das Auge nirgendwo Halt findet - das alles liefert eine klassische stilistische Entsprechung zu Philostrat.”³⁰ In conclusion Cämmerer wrote that the theme of the triumph, consequently also the motif of Rhodogoune’s triumph, belonged to the repertory of the most popular motifs of Philostratus’ contemporary fine arts. Subsequently, in his view, we might settle a Late Antonine or Early Severan date for Rhodogoune of the Imagines. Consequently it was allegedly an original work by one of Philostratus’ contemporaries, a “modern” work.³¹ This point of view on the problem of dating extended to the whole gallery of the Imagines has gained enthusiasts in the contemporary archaeological circles. In my view it is still a controversial issue. We must remember, for example, that the tropaion is a motif deeply rooted in the Greek Classical and Hellenistic art, as shown by the extensive and thorough study by Picard (1957). He showed its Greek development and gradual acquisition and adaptation in the Roman art. I would prefer to say that the Neapolitan gallery as it appears in the ecphraseis by Philostratus the Elder contained paintings from various periods and origins,


    ²⁷ Steinmann 1914, p. 100

    ²¹ Cämmerer 1967, p. 51, Taf. IV; B. Andreae, Motivgeschichtliche Untersuchungen zu den römischen Schlachtsarkophagen, Berlin, 1956, Taf. 1,3.

    ²⁹ Cämmerer 1967, p. 51, Taf. III.

    ³⁰   Ibid.; for other parallels: S. Aurigemma, Die Diokletiansthermen und das Museo Nazionale Romano, Rom, 1954, p. 33, Nr 57, Taf. 15; Rodenwaldt, Über den Stilwandel in der antoninischen Kunst, ADAW 1935, Taf. 8-10.

    ³¹ Cämmerer 1967, p. 52

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with valuable ancient Greek Classical originals, even if repainted or renovated, a number of adaptations of the Classical works, more or less exact copies with master copies included, forgeries of the Classical old masters purchased as originals, works of the contemporary Academicians styled on the chefs-d’oeuvre of the Classical and Hellenistic age, etc. Anyone who has ever become familiar with a large art collection with quite a long history behind it has gradually learned its secrets, stories of purchases of fake bronzes, sculptures, vases or paintings. Cunning antiquarians have had their days of glory in deceiving even the most erudite and expert art critics, even if only temporarily. The matter is complex. Every panel in our gallery calls for an independent attitude and individual treatment. We are familiar with the arrangement of the Roman painting galleries of Pompeii or Her-culanum marked by an eclectic spirit. A magnificent Theseus dated c. 330-320 BC neighbours an idyllic Heracles with Telephus, a chef’d’oeuvre from under the brush of a Late Hellenistic master (c. 150-100 BC), in the Flavian Basilica in Her-culanum. In the pinacotheca in the Casa del Poeta Tragico a strongly Classicistic copy of Theseus with a sleeping Ariadne (c. 400 BC) was hanging on the wall together with a Late Hellenistic Classicizing Zeus and Hera (the original dated c. 150-100 BC). We know of such eclectic arrangements from the wall decorations of the 2"d, 3rd and 4,h style. If their owners had a feeling for art, their not infrequently refined tastes prevailed and proved decisive as regards commissions. A highly individualized choice in good private art collections always offers their visitors a particular sense of pleasure.

     It is not difficult to point to numerous Classical reminiscences in the Rho-dogoune painting. We can remember the Amazons on horseback in the central part of the decorative field on the New York chalice craters by the Master of Horses. The central figures of the Amazons on the vase paintings appear surrounded by fighting Greek warriors and the bodies of the fallen. One of the Amazons is pictured in a side view,³² another in a graphically bold frontal position, achieved by too adventurous and not an entirely successful telescoping of the perspective.³³ Like Rhodogoune the Amazons wear richly decorated trousers and tight-sleeved jackets. The described vase paintings originated in the late 5th century BC. However we are in need of some later analogies. Philostratus’ description calls to mind one of the most successful of all the extant Greek representations of a woman on horseback: the Amazon on the sarcophagus of Tarquinia, dated late 4lh century BC.³⁴ The Amazon represented in a side-view is galloping on a white and grey horse. As she is trying to repel the attack of a Greek who approaches from the back, she is shown sharply turned to the right. As a result she is turning full-face


    ” Pfuhl 1923, III, f. 506.

    ” Ibid. f. 507, the chalice crater ibid. II, p. 536; cf. ibid. pp. 528 ff., Ill f. 504, the Amazons in Oriental clothing.

    ³⁴ Charbonneaux 1973, fig. 102, Museo Archeologico, Florence.

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to the observer. She is clad in a light pink chiton, tightly girdled around her waist, and her thick brown hair flows in the air. We have a wonderful image of a triumphant Amazon in the Casa dei Vetti (VI 15,1), which offers a particularly apt analogy to Philostratus’ Rhodogoune (Pl. LVIII).

     The imperial purple of the Queen’s apparel only intensifies the red hues prevailing on the chromatic scale. Philostratus gradually introduces new colours and, together with them, new effects of contrast on the panel. In this way he accentuates the interplay of black and white on Rhodogoune’s horse and enriches his palette by light patches on the jewels of the harness which make them sparkle. In this section of his ecphrasis Philostratus reveals a deep sensitivity to colour and colour harmony, his inborn feeling for the beauty of the fine arts, the sharp eye characteristic of his connoisseurship.

     The Rhodogoune painting was symptomatic of the same predilection for contrasting qualities as Bion’s already discussed manneristic Adonis. The yearning (tpepov) in the Queen’s eyes blended in with the merriment adorning her cheeks (Imag. II 5, 5). Her eyes gleamed with young joy (IXapov) and loveliness (cbpafov) with an admixture of haughtiness and royal authority (to yaupov ano too ap%Eiv). Ten epigrams in the Palatine Anthology express their admiration for Medea, a chef-d’oeuvre of the ancient painting by Timomachus (c. 280 BC). The poets were impressed by the melange des sentiments latent in her portrait (AP XVI, 136, 138, 140).³⁵ Timomachus ingeniously visualized her emotions as torn between a passion of jealousy and tender feelings of maternal love, between rage and pity, concern and destructiveness (AP XVI, 136).³⁶ The portrait of Iphigenia in Tauris in the ana-gnorismus scene was remarkable for the same mixture of contradictory feelings (AP XVI, 128 - cf. the portrait of Sappho in AP XVI, 360). We also learn from Pliny the Elder’s History of Painting that it was Pausias, one of the late Classical masters, who achieved real perfection in the art of portraying the dignity of heroes (expressisse dignitates heroum - HN 35, 128). The air of veneration for heroes pervaded the whole of Classical art. It was inherited by the Pompeian painting marked by the preference for cycles of pictures referring to Hercules, Theseus or Perseus. The choice of Philostratus the Elder shows the same patterns, if we are to judge by his Menoeceus (Imag. 1,4), Perseus (ImagA, 29), Pelops (Imag. I, 30), Hippolytus (Imag. II, 4), his Apollo (Imag. II, 19), Heracles (Imag. II, 21) or Antilochus (Imag. II, 7).

     The portraits of Rhodogoune and Pantheia show many similarities. To some we have already referred. Pantheia’s and Rhodogoune’s “eyebrows begin at the

     “ Vitry 1894, p. 355.

     ³⁶    Ibid. cf. /4PXVI, 139; W. Speyer, Die Euphemia-Rede des Asterios von Amaseia, in: Frühes Christentum im antiken Strahlungsfeld. Ausgewählte Aufsätze, pp. 91-99, Tübingen, 1989.

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same point and rise together from the nose ... more charming still in the curve they make” (trans. Fairbanks -Imag. II, 5,4; ibid. II, 9, 5). An apparently Classical feature in their portraits, Rhodogoune’s mouth is “delicately formed ... the lips are full of colour and even the mouth is well proportioned” {Imag. I, 5, 5 -xeiXp av0T]pa Kat ioa, ox6p.a ouppEtpov vs. Pantheia’s to oxopa ^uppExpiav xfiv eavxoii (puXdxxov). We are again referring in this context to the three excellent female portraits which originated in the early Hellenistic workshops: the Bartlett head, Aphrodite of Chios and the Goldman head from Toledo.³⁷ However that would not be enough. We are dealing with painted images and consequently look for the painted analogies. The Pompeian painting sometimes unexpectedly unveils strikingly successful and attractive female portraits, as for example a facial portrait enclosed within a tondo in the Pompeian House of Apollo (VI 7, 23), a face with a unique elegance and subtlety, with its profound, intelligent and noble eyes,³⁸ or a softly shaped, rounded face with thick, sensual lips and large eyes looking up in the Pompeian House Vll 1,40,³⁹ or a sligthly confused and defenceless face of a Maenad in the Casa del Bracciale Nuovo in Pompeii (VI 17 (Ins. Occ.) 42),⁴⁰ or finally the face of “Helen” absorbed in thought as if set in the Classical ideal of the feminine xaptq on a frequently reproduced fresco from the Casa del poeta tragico. Philostratus himself says that Rhodogoune’s facial portrait reflected a Greek female portrayal convention: “if we listen attentively, we will surely hear her Greek” (xaxa eX1t|viei - Imag. II 5,5), only to add that “she will be celebrated for her exploit with lyre and flute and wherever there are Greeks” {Imag. 11,5, 1). Her paideia calls to mind other Oriental heroines; Roxana, Barsine, the Fair Persian from the Arabian Nights or even the Queen of Sheba. Part of Rhodogoune’s golden hair was fastened up, and arranged with modesty, while the other part hung loose {Imag. II, 5, 4). Brunn compared this with a particularly charming effect created by the broken symmetry of Helens’s hair on an oinochoe from the Vatican collections.⁴¹ The frenzied Bacchantes were pictured with their hair in disarray {AP IX, 7 7 5).⁴² One of the most memorable Pompeian paintings which imitated earlier Greek models depicts a Centaur tormented by a Maenad riding his back in a frenzy of love. Her hair flows loose in the air.⁴³ In his antithetical structure Philostratus compares and contrasts Rhodogoune’s girlish delicacy with her militant spirit, a victorious woman over a defeated man.⁴⁴

    ³⁷ Richter 1950, Bartlett head fig. 175, the head from Chios ibid. fig. 207.

    ³⁸ Pitture IV, Reg.VI 7, 23, p. 485.

    ³⁹ Pitture VI, Reg. VII 1, 40, p. 425.

    ⁴⁰ Pitture VI, p. 83.

    ⁴¹ Brunn 1871, p. 11 f.

    ⁴² cf. AP IX, 774; the Maenad by Scopas AP 16, 60; also in AP 9,774 by Glaucus.

    ⁴³    The House of Cicero, c. 50-60 AD, Schefold 1972, Pl. 27, ibid. pp. 182 f.; Hermann-Bruck-mann 1906 ff., I, p. 139, collected earlier models for the Pompeian group.

    ⁴⁴ Schönberger 1968, p. 391.

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     Also in this case we are confronted with the highly controversial issue of assigning a date to the original Rhodogoune. Cammerer argued that the model for the Rhodogoune painting was provided by Gallic battle sarcophagi from the 2ⁿd century AD, with their decoration strongly influenced by the Pergamene school.⁴⁵ Even if so, that need not necessarily mean that the original painting was as late as the sarcophagi. The original Rhodogoune might equally well have been made in the in the 3rd or 2ⁿd century BC. Her portrait reveals affinities with the portraits of this period. Achilles and Briséis, Heracles and Omphale, Perseus and Andromeda or The Battle of Issos, to recall only a couple of the best Pompeian copies deriving ultimately from originals on wood three or four centuries older. They attest to the genius and accuracy of the Academic painters of Late Hellenism and the Early Empire, who did their best to preserve the works of revered old masters. The numerous copies from the walls of the buried Campanian villas document a genuine cult of the Classical painters. The case of the Rhodogoune painting calls to my mind the Meleager sarcophagus in the Czartoryski Museum of Cracow, which shows so many affinities with the Pompeian chef-d’oeuvre of Achilles and Briséis that it may be regarded as an adaptation with a restructured composition of the same figures of Briséis, the Phoenix and the Female Servant. The artist changed the position of Achilles (Meleager) and made him stand in an apparent effort to achieve isokephaleia. The figures on the sarcophagus are stretched out along a prolonged rectangular field, while on the Pompeian painting they fill a square arrangement. The model for the Pompeian Achilles and Briséis can be dated c. 330-320 BC.⁴⁶ Its marble adaptation is of Hadrianic date (?). Hanfmann might have been right when he wrote that “it is very probable that the gallery seen by Philostratus contained pictures made in Roman times .. . but many of them were derived from Hellenistic originals.”⁴⁷

     However there is a point which could have made Philostratus sure of his identification of the subject: her dress and the uniforms and armour of the Persians and Armenians depicted on the tableau. Unfortunately he hardly touched upon it: “the Persians are conquering the Armenians” (Imag. II5,1). He also mentioned a group of Armenian captives (Imag. 11,5, 1). The soldiers must have been identifiable by their requisites: some details of their clothing or their facial characteristics which were regarded by their painter and the observers as “Armenian” or “Persian”, in the same way as Micon’s or Panaenos’ Persians were always recognizable in the Athenian museums by generations of visitors. The concentric composition of the ecphrasis which focuses on the Queen’s facial portrait, had no information at all on the soldiers’ armour, which was presumably treated as irrelevant. However we can catch a glimpse of Rhodogoune’s magnificent royal


    ⁴⁵ Cammerer 1968, p. 51

    ⁴⁶ Schefold 1972, Pl. 51.

    ⁴⁷   Hanfmann 1951, following Cammerer 1967, p. 11; Lehmann-Hartleben 1941 felt uncertain with respect to the date of the painting, n. 43, p. 31.

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attire. She was entirely clad except for her face. Her robe fell “only to her knee” (Imag. II 5, 2), and was clasped with “a charming girdle” at her waist (ev f]8eia 8e Tfj £6vt|), resembling a Parthian tunic, as can be exhaustively illustrated by the impressive collection of Hatran sculptures. King Uthal of Hatra wore a warrior’s ceremonial costume, made of richly decorated textiles, with sword and belt, “a typically Parthian costume” as noticed by Ghirshman (Pl. LIX).'"* The whole rendering of the statue is extremely detailed. The standing statue of Uthal was made in the 2ⁿd century BC/⁹ The discoveries at Hatra have offered us a great deal of interesting comparative material used by Homes-Fredericq (1963) in his assiduous and valuable study. Two statues of standing generals from his collection show the officers dressed in richly ornamented tunics, tied with wide belts. Both wear fastidiously ornamented trousers.* ⁴⁹ ⁵⁰ Though Rhodogoune’s robe was labelled “chiton” (by the way a borrowing from the North-West Semitic kutanna), yet it looked like a sleeved tunic. This seems to be implied by such expressions as “her raiment covered all except her face”, or “the shoulder was covered” (6 8e copoq eyicEvtai), while her arm was clad in such a way that it was completely concealed (to 8e ano aipoo eq ayxcova tov ytTcbva 8taXei7to'uoai. nopnat ^•uvanTouatv vnavia%ouoT|g evaXXa^ T-qq coX-Evrig). “The dress is not that of an Amazon,” adds the Classical author. Consequently it was not a Greek-styled dress. This is not what the Greeks call a chiton, Philostratus seems to be saying. It appears that Rhodogoune was dressed in a male Oriental uniform.

     “Le long pantalon accompagne toujours la tunic.”⁵¹ Rhodogoune wore “charming trousers on which designs were woven” (f^Eta 8e tt) ava^opi8i Kai nape/o-p.EVT] ypacpaq ano KEpKi.8oq). It might have been an ancient Iranian costume, in widespread use in the Middle East and Iran in the epoch of the Achaemenids and Arsacids. This fashion seems typical of the Parthian men’s clothes.⁵² Some examples selected from among the Hatran sculptures offer impressive analogies to Rhodogoune’s apparel. There are trousers with one vertical row of pearls, or with a decorated band (Pl. LX).⁵³ Ghirshman referred to the “Parthian naturalism based on close observation of costumes, coiffures and jewellery.”⁵'¹ “Le long pantalon,” writes Homes-Fredericq, “semble appartenir depuis toujours au monde iranien: le climat changeant, les hautes herbes de la steppe le rendaient obligatoire.”⁵⁵ Pearls and embroidery were an obligatory form of garment decoration of the Hatran aristocrats, and a mark of status. In the same way Rhodogoune’s clothes were adorned


    ⁴,¹ Ghirshman 1962, fig. 100, p. 89; Hdmes-Fredericq 1963, VI, 1.

    ⁴⁹ Ghirshmann 1962, ibid.

    ⁵⁰ Homes-Fredericq 1963, VI, 2; VII, 1; cf. ibid. II, 2; VIII, 4.

    ⁵¹ Ibid. p. 23

    ⁵² Ibid.

    ” Ibid. VI, 2.

    ⁵⁴ Ghirshman 1962, p. 90.

    ⁵⁵ Homes-Fredericq 1963, p. 23

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with a golden thread (ypatpàç ànô KepKÎSoç) {Imag. II 5,2). “Ces différents modèles montrent une fois de plus l’importance que les hommes attachaient a la sumptuosité de leurs vêtements,”⁵⁶ wrote Homès-Federicq about the richly decorated belts of the Parthian warriors. The women’s girdles were different from those of the men. They were just simple cords round the waist. “Toujours très sobres et ne présentant jamais les perles et les joyaux que nous trouvons chez les hommes.”⁵⁷ This passage helps us to better understand the meaning of Philostratus’ èv f|8eia pèv rfi Çcôvt] (she wears a charming girdle). The Parthian male aristocratic raiment was adorned with pearls,⁵⁸ quite the contrary to what we have become accustomed to as regards the modem European haut-couture. Whatever historical background stood behind the Philostratean Rhodogoune, whether she was originally a Persian, Parthian or Median princess, on the tableau exhibited in the Neapolitan gallery she was dressed according to the Parthian fashion adhered to from the 2ⁿd century BC to the 2ⁿd century AD.⁵⁹

     “Bildliche Darstellungen des Sieges der Rhodogoune sind nicht bekannt.”⁶⁰ This is not quite true. We know one precious testimony of her mounted statue. Valerius Maximus tells us a familiar story about the Queen of the Assyrians: when she was informed while occupied with her hairdressing that the Babylonians had raised a mutiny, she immediately rushed into the fray with part of her hair still falling down undone, and she did not return to her toilet until she had regained control over Babylon. Therefore she had a statue in Babylon which pictured her in this disarray rushing to take revenge on the Babylonians {Memorabilia, 9, 3, Ext. 4, ed. C. Kempf, p. 439).⁶¹ It is clear, then, that the victorious Rhodogoune on horseback with her hair partly in disarray could not have been a Severan artist’s invention, as sometimes suggested.⁶² The testimony of Valerius Maximus is roughly 200 years older. The statue of a queen on a galloping horse could not have been any later than Late Hellenistic. Valerius Maximus owed his colourful exotic reference to the earlier Greek sources. Ctesias also saw an image of Semiramis on horseback with her husband hunting a wild animal reliefed on the brick walls of Babylon (Diod. Bibl. 2, 8, 6): KarEOKEvaoTO 8’ èv avroîq Kai f] ZEpipapiç à<p’ Ï7t7tou nàp8aXiv KOVTÎÇouaa, Kai nXr|aiov aÙTfiç ô àvqp Nivoç naicov èk xeipàç Xéovta XôyxTI (on the walls of Babylon Semiramis was shown throwing a spear at the panther, and close to her her husband Ninos smiting the lion with his spear).

    ⁵⁶ Ibid. p. 26.

    ⁵⁷ Ibid. p. 28

    ⁵⁸ Ibid. p. 30

    ⁵⁹ The trousers seem to have gone out of fashion in Palmyra in mid 2nd century AD, ibid. p. 23 f.

    “ Cämmerer 1967, p. 50.

    ⁶¹    Semiramis Assyriorum regina, cum ei circa cultum capitis sui occupatae nuntiatum esset Babylona defecisse, altera parte crinium adhuc soluta protinus ad earn expugnandam cucurrit nec prius decorem capillorum in ordinem quam urbem in potestatem suam redegit.

    ⁶² Cämmerer 1967, p. 52; Steinmann 1914, p. 142; Pernice, Gross 1969, p. 440 f.

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     In view of the perspective taken for this study one point is of major importance: stylistically the Rhodogoune painting represented a new Orientalist stream which emerged in the Hellenistic age. This new Orientalism which reaped the harvest of Alexander’s expedition exceeded the formal limits of the previous Classical Orientalism that decidedly preferred Oriental themes in purely Classical forms with additions of theatrical, scenic and conventional “Oriental” elements. The new Hellenistic Orientalism constituted an important aesthetic factor in the Greek art of its age and deserves separate treatment in the handbooks on the Hellenistic art.⁶³ The Rhodogoune painting belonged to the circle of artworks by those Hellenic masters who were markedly influenced by the Oriental world which found reflection in their works in its most apparent requisites like clothing, art, architecture, landscape, ethnic features or animal world. This phenomenon can be richly illustrated by e.g. mosaics and painted Egyptian landscapes with the Pygmies (Pl. XL), the Isiac statues or the animal and floral life of the Nile Valley, the latter so strongly reminiscent of the ancient Egyptian wall painting of the 2ⁿd millennium BC.

     The composition of the Rhodogoune painting also reminds me of material chronologically more distant from Iran. Here I do not mean direct mutual influences exerted by artists and artistic workshops on one another. I am only thinking of certain factors which remain in the sphere of universal art ideas and techniques and need not necessarily be corroborated along the lines of archaeological accuracy. They probably existed only in the impenetrable world of archetypes. We know of an impressive image of the goddess Anahita, Xenophon’s Hestia, from the Iranian literary lore: “a beautiful maiden, very strong, full grown, high girdled, noble, illustrious, decent ... A robe embroidered with gold covers her body ... Her waist is tightly girdled that her breasts may be well shaped ...” She was dressed in a robe interwoven with golden thread, on her feet she wore glittering shoes inlaid with gold. “Ahura Mazda has created for her four chariot steeds, tall, swift and white - the wind, the rain, the cloud and the sleet.”⁶⁴ (Yasht 5, F. Wolff, Avesta (1924) pp. 166 ff.; H. Lom-mel, Die Yast's des Avesta (1927)). M. Smurzynski of the Institute of Oriental Philology, Jagiellonian University of Cracow, might have been very close to the mystery of the Greek Rhodogoune when he observed an analogy between her and the warrior Princess Gordafarid, a Persian Amazon from the Shah-na-me, whose name seems to echo the Greek stem -yowri (from affaridan - create; gord- brave, courageous). Would that be one more example of etymological translation in the Greek mythology, as seems to happen in the case of Andromeda or Europa?

     Philostratus left us a description of Rhodogoune’s mare composed in a way that may charm anyone who loves horses: NTjoaia innoq peXarva enl XevKoiq ⁶⁵


    ⁶⁵   A chapter on the Orientalist style is in my view missing in the otherwise brilliant book by B. H. Fowler 1989.
    M Yasht 5, F. Wolff, Avesta, 1924, pp. 166 ff.; H.Lommel, Die Yasts des Avesta, 1927.

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Toíg okéXecti, ка1 та aéxpva Хепка ка1 то nveñpa ало Xeukov той цик-Tfjpog (a black Nisean mare with white legs; its breast also is white, its breath comes from white nostrils . . . and it champs its bit delicately - Imag. II, 5, 2; trans. A. Fairbanks). Herodotus knew of the Nisean steeds bred on the plains of Media (7, 40). The Greeks were impressed by the Persian cavalry and its riding skills. Pausanias tells us that after the Persian War of 480-479 BC the Lacedaemonians turned to horse-breeding, having in their memory the achievements of the Persian cavalrymen on the battlefields of Greece. In the Parthian art we observe a predilection for the scenes depicting horsemen in sleeved coats and trousers, their horses adorned with rich harnesses. Parthian horsemen appear in scenes of hunting, fighting or triumph. We are familiar with the Parthian rider from the Louvre,⁶⁵ or the Parthian horseman in a breath-taking gallop shooting an arrow, from a terracotta in the Berlin Museum.⁶⁵ ⁶⁶ There is also a fighting horseman on a fresco in Dura Europos.⁶⁷ The horse of Shapur I in the monumental scene of triumph in Naqsh-i-Rustam is conspicuous for its magnificent harness.⁶⁸ A Sassanian horse’s head from Nizamabad, now in the Berlin Museum, demonstrates a precious harness studded with jewels like the harness of Rhodogoune.⁶⁹ A silver-gilt horse’s head from the Kerman region also wears a richly ornamented golden harness.⁷⁰ The analogy of the richly decorated harness on the Alexander Mosaic in the Casa del Fauno is instructive enough as regards the degree of exactness achieved by the Greek painters in the 2ⁿd half of the 4th century BC, their feeling for detail and ornamental qualities.

     Scenes of triumph were a favourite subjects with the Achaemenid, Arsacid and Sassanid monarchs. I do not want to postulate that the anonymous master of the Rhodogoune painting drew direct inspiration from the monumental art of the Iranian monarchs. However this genre of art, usually monumental, royal and triumphal, can be found in formally, geographically and chronologically different art worlds. In Bishapur the defeated enemies of King Shapur I were carved in rock in a monumental scene of triumph over Rome. The Emperor Philip the Arab kneeling and humiliated pleads for peace, while Gordianus III lies prostrate on the ground, apparently dead, pinned down by the hoofs of the King of Persia’s steed.⁷¹ To be absolutely exact, this time Shapur I was calling our bluff: Gordianus III, though actually defeated, died among his legionaries in the Roman camp in Northern Mesopotamia.⁷²

    ⁶⁵ Ghirshman 1962, fig. 119.

    ⁶⁶ Ibid. fig. 340, dated 1 s,-2ⁿd century AD.

    ⁶⁷ Ibid. fig. 223 dated 3rd century AD

    ⁶" Ibid. fig. 205.

    ⁶⁹ Ibid. fig. 227.

    ⁷⁰ Ibid. fig. 243, dated 4lh century AD, Louvre.

    ⁷¹ Ibid. fig. 202, p. 159.

    ⁷² Millar 1993, p. 154.

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     We have already observed that Rhodogoune was remarkable for its specific mixture of Hellenic components (facial portrait, composition, illusionist forms) and Oriental elements (textiles, harness, weaponry, fashion of dress) combined together. This strange blend of Hellenic and Oriental ingredients is also symptomatic of the Parthian art. The phenomenon of the Greek-Oriental eclecticism is clearly visible in the reliefed scene in Nimrud Dagh which represents the King of Commagene, Antiochus I (69-34 BC) in the attire of an Oriental monarch face to face with a naked Hellenic Heracles.⁷³ A relevant comment by Ghirshman has a more general value: “In such works we find the Iranian and Hellenic viewpoint united on the plane of art and religion.”⁷⁴ Like the painting of Rhodogoune, the relief of Nimrud Dagh provides an interesting testimony of a certain heritage. It is the heritage of an experiment once undertaken by many to unite different peoples of the new states which rose up on the ruins of the Empires of Darius III and Alexander the Great. This heritage proved to be topical again in the period of the Severans, an Afro-Semitic family on the Roman throne. The Seleucids as well as some peripheral Oriental-Greek dynasties temporarily achieved partial success in this field, while at the same time the Lagids created a gruesome alternative with their long-lasting brutal civil wars which left the Greeks and Egyptians deeply divided during the centuries of Roman rule. A coin of Mithradates I (171-138 BC) shows the Parthian king as a Hellenic monarch: the craftsmanship is Hellenic, too.⁷⁵ Just ten years later Mithradates II (123-88 BC) radically changed the style of his representations and ordered himself depicted as bearded and dressed in Oriental attire.⁷⁶

     Thus we have the dates of a large-scale historical crisis of far-reaching consequences for the Greeks and their Oriental neighbours. This decisive break which deeply separated and isolated entire cultural communities, that in the 3rd and 2ⁿd centuries BC occasionally seemed to be closer to one another than ever before or afterwards in the Semito-Iranian Middle East, coincided in time with the battle which brought a fatal defeat to the Seleucid King Antiochus VII (138-129 BC), who tried to halt Phraates II (139-129 BC). The battlefield with thousands of Greek corpses witnessed the birth of a new epoch marked - as it sometimes happens in the history of man - by religious and ethnic separatisms. The unification efforts undertaken on both sides gave birth to the phenomenon of the Orientalizing Hellenistic art, with its counterpart in the Hellenized Parthian art, or more properly in the Parthian province of art, which was in fact inhabited by communities speaking Aramaic, Arabic or Iranian languages. This new art searched for a new formal unity, a new idiom of expression. It was sometimes experimenting with adven


     ⁷³ Ghirshman, Iran Parth fig. 79

     ⁷⁴ Ibid. p. 65

     ⁷⁵ Ibid. fig. 135.

     ⁷⁶ Ibid. fig. 137

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turous patterns and forms. It endeavoured to blend into one the intrinsically different ideas and qualities which originated in East or West in the realms of religion, art, politics or literature. This art, or more properly its Greek branch, provides much of the subject of this study.

     Consequently Rhodogoune of the Imagines was probably fashioned in the Orientalizing circles of the Greek artists in the Greek Syria of the Seleucids some time in the 3rd or 2ⁿd century BC, probably not later than mid 2ⁿd century BC. It might have been a later copy of a Hellenistic tableau, if so a master copy, truly worthy of the walls of a pinacotheca, such as that in the Propyleia of Athens or the Porticus Octaviae in Rome, a gallery where real pinakes on marble or wood were hanging on the walls. The Rhodogoune was probably traced and purchased in the East in view of the arrangement of a royal gallery, since its subject went well with the ideology of the Severan dynasty and most of all complied with the artistic tastes, intellectual occupations and Arabian origin of the Empress Julia Domna.

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The Wedding of Alexander and Roxana

     Lucian described a painting by Aetion, The Wedding of Alexander and Roxana, which he saw while in Italy (Luc. Herodotus 4-6). On this painting a beautiful Roxana, in the role of a blushing bride surrounded by cheering Amorini, was sitting on a marriage bed. One of the little creatures had just uncovered her head, removing her bridal veil, while at the same time another was trying to pull one of the bride’s sandals off. A third Amorino was pushing Alexander with all his strength towards the bride. Alexander’s best man Hephaistion was carrying a torch. Hephaistion was pictured leaning on a young boy, probably Hymen, as inferred by Lucian, himself hesitant as to the identity of this person, left unnamed by the painter (ou yap E7tEyÉypa7tTO Touvopa). On the other side of the picture a group of little Erotes was busy with Alexander’s armour. Two of them were carrying Alexander’s spear, bending under the burden as if lugging a heavy tree trunk (ojióte Sokov (pÉpovTEq Papoivro). A third one was relaxing, lying comfortably on the concave side of Alexander’s shield, like a real king (PaoiXéa Sfj0Ev Kai añróv). Two others were dragging the shield towards the armour, where one of their companions waited in ambush hidden inside the cuirass. He would jump out at them as soon as they approached.

     In his History of Painting Pliny the Elder referred to this famous tableau when he mentioned Aetion’s nova nupta verecundia notabilis (HN 35, 78). His words seem to reflect Lucian’s phrase éq yfjv ópcoaa (looking down at the ground), apparently out of modesty. The Classical master had in his memory a traditional image of a bride with her ritual behaviour expressing a mixture of shame, modesty and anxiety. In exactly the same way Xenophon portrayed Pantheia before Araspas and his companions in the sacked Babylonian camp {Cyr. 5,1,4): KaOT]pÉvr|, KEKaXvppévT| te Kai Eig yfjv opcoaa (sitting, dressed and decently looking down at the ground). This picture immediately recalls the brides from the Aldobrandine Wedding and Villa dei Misteri. In a similar way Philostratus the Younger described the painting showing Hippodameia as a bride driven in Pelops’ chariot: tt]v psv napEiav aiSof ypácpo-uoa, vúpcpTiq 5e OToXqv ápnEXopévr] (she colours her cheek with a modest blush, wears the raiment of a bride - trans. A. Fairbanks; Imag. 9, 3). Similarly Hippodameia from the ecphrasis by Philostratus the Elder is “dressed in a wedding garment, and has just unveiled her cheek” {Imag. I, 17, 3). Lucian selected one detail from Aetion’s Roxana for his overpitched, obsequious portrait of Pantheia, the mistress of Lucius Verus, modelled on a perfect feminine beauty. He wrote that Pantheia’s lips were like the ruby lips of Aetion’s Roxana {Imag. 1}.

     The historical Roxana, who bore an ancient Iranian name, Roshanak, traditional among the Persian aristocracy, fell into Alexander’s hands in the stronghold of her father Oxyartes in Bactria, 327 B.C. Soon afterwards Alexander ar


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ranged his marriage with her. It cannot be excluded that Aetion’s painting was made on the commission of Alexander or Hephaistion as an element in a wider propaganda undertaking aimed at promoting the idea of the multinational empire. Plutarch wrote that even if the marriage of Alexander and Roxana was a result of love at first sight, it was also very good policy (Plut. Alex. M, 7). Sogdiana never again was a cause of trouble to Alexander.¹ The king’s example was followed by others. Hephaistion married the daughter of Darius III, Craterus her niece, Near-chus the daughter of Barsine. It happened during the crowded wedding celebrations in Susa in 324 BC. During the same celebrations Alexander took his second wife, Barsine, daughter of Darius III. 80 high-rank officers and some 10,000 privates followed and took native Iranian women for better or worse. Seleucus married Apamea, the daughter of Spitamenes, a Persian general who had resisted the Macedonians for a long time in Sogdiana. Thus the picture of Aetion reflected, and probably deliberately so, the ambitious effort to achieve a sort of roconciliation and strengthen the joints of the vast multinational Empire. Aetion figured it in an allegorical way as a union of Europe and Asia. Consequently the painting by Aetion could not have been put on display sooner than in the summer of 324 BC, during the Olympic Games, as alluded to by Lucian himself {Herodotus 4).² And no later than that, because still in the same year, Alexander celebrated his marriage in Susa to Stateira, daughter of Darius III. We can guess that it was Hephaistion in person who commissioned the artist to paint the celebrated image. This may account for his presence in the wedding scene. Lucian’s own words ou yap é7reyÉypanto rouvopa (his name, i.e. of the boy assisting Hephaistion, was not inscribed) speak for the authenticity of his description. Pausanias was just as hesitant exerting his erudition to identify some unnamed figures on the monumental painting in the Lesche of the Cnidians at Delphi.

     The ecphrasis of Lucian corresponds chronologically with the Parthian wars in the mid 160’s AD, that is the period which witnessed an ambitious plan undertaken by M.Aurelius to conquer Mesopotamia and Iran. Lucian engaged in a discussion over the historical documentation of the war and expressed his thorough criticism as to the real value of the reports presented by the court historians {Hist. Conson). If Hall is right in her dating of the Syrian Goddess for this period and in her contention for the Lucianic authenticity of the essay, we would then have an Orientalist trilogy composed by Lucian in the face of a new West-East military confrontation.³ It is also tempting to believe that the Lucianic ecphrasis in Herodotus sive Aetion might have been an allusion to a connection between a Syrian beauty Pantheia (Lucian’s Imagines) with Lucius Verus, nominally a commander in chief in the Parthian War.

    ¹ CH1 p. 457.

    ² Recueil, p. 377, n. 5.

    ³ J. A. Hall, Lucians Satire, New York, 1981, p. 380.

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      In his composition Aetion referred to one of the most fashionable motifs of the contemporary Greek art, the wedding scene, for which there are still rich exemplars extant on the Kertsch vases and Pompeian mural painting. In fact it was a conventional motif of old standing in the Greek art. It can be traced back to the Doric metopes with the sacred union of Hera and Zeus, known also from the Flavian copy of a Classicist Late Hellenistic original which adorned the atrium pinacotheca of the Casa del Poeta Tragico, the illustration of a well-known passage from the Iliad {II. 14, 294-353).⁴ The Kertsch vases present many pictures, which correspond so well in so many details with Lucian’s ecphrasis that we may visualize Action’s masterpiece fairly adequately. On a London hydria a young woman in a transparent dress is seated on a bed looking modestly down at the ground. A winged Eros is flying over her.⁵ On yet another hydria from London a heroicized, half-naked Heracles, covered with a lion’s skin and holding a mace, appears before a graceful, seated young woman with Eros just beside her. There is also a standing woman behind Heracles, a female counterpart of Action’s groomsman. This is a wedding scene showing Heracles and Hebe on Olympus with Aphrodite as bride’s attendant,⁶ a suitable préfiguration for the marriage of Alexander the Great. On a St. Petersburg hydria Eros stands on a seated young woman’s thighs. There are two young men on their left.⁷ A Berlin hydria shows us a scantily dressed Paris looking at a richly adorned Helen who is sitting on the bed. Hermes attends the love scene with Eros hovering over the woman’s head.⁸ We can also find Eros pulling a young man towards a seated woman in a composition picturing a drama which involves Phaedra, Hippolytus and Aphrodite.⁹ It is difficult to avoid the feeling that the charming portrait of a young lady leaning on her left hand with her lovely right hand raised, sitting among a group of women attended by a young man and Eros, pictured on a lekythos, preserves something of the stylish beauty of Action’s Late Classical Roxana.¹⁰ ¹¹ One of the most ingenious Greek paintings preserved in a Tiberian copy in the Casa del Amore Punito shows Aphrodite with two Amorini, in a scene full of endearing warmth." The Greek original can be dated c. 330 BC. We can adduce a parallel to the composition of the central group of Action’s tableau in a Pompeian painting Reg.I, 7, 7, which shows the seduction of Helen by Paris (Pl. LXI). Helen is sitting with her hand modestly rested on her thighs and looking down to the ground. She is dressed in a transparent chiton which shows her body while her legs are covered with a thicker himation. Paris


    * Schefold 1972, Pl. 49, the original painting dated c. 150-100 BC, pp. 213 ff.

    ⁵ Schefold 1934, Taf. 12, 1, Nr 172.

    ⁶ Ibid. Taf. 14, 2; Nr 184.

    ⁷ Ibid. Taf. 9, 1; Nr 162.

    ⁸     Ibid. Abb. 27, Nr 145; cf. a graceful Paris, slightly dressed, standing before a seated Helen, chalice crater in Munich, ibid. Abb. 25, Nr 252; cf. also Dionysus and Ariadne with Eros on a pelike, ibid. London, Taf. 7, 2, Nr 514; similarly Taf. 8, 2, Nr 474.

    ’ Ibid. Hydria in Berlin, Abb. 19, Nr 144.

     ¹⁰ Ibid. Abb. 17, Nr 289, Berlin.

     ¹¹ Schefold 1972, Pl. 20, pp. 160 ff.

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is shown standing almost naked, with a cloak falling down his back, with his hand stretched towards the heroine. Schefold explains the role played by the Amorini: “Si deux Eros sont ici représentés, c’est qu’ils incarnent l’amour et le sentiment réciproque . . . sur un des plus somptueux vases du classicisme tardif, la mariée . . . tient sur ses genoux un Eros aux petites mains tendues, plein de désir et soulignant ainsi les sentiments de l’amoureux absent. Un seconde plane derrière son dos, incarnant son propre désir.”¹² Philostratus the Elder phrased the sentiment in exactly the same way (Imag. I, 6).

      There is a fresco painting in the Casa del Bracciale d’oro in Pompeii VI 17 (Inc. Occ.), 42, which is believed by some to represent Aetion’s Wedding of Alexander and Roxana. The fresco portrays a Greek warrior shown in a heroic nudity, covered only with a red chlamys, leaning on a spear. He faces a standing woman clad in a transparent yellow chiton and a blue himation, while a little Amorino holds a big shield between them. A “Persian” soldier dressed in trousers, tunic and tiara stands behind the Greek hero. The differences between the Pompeian version of the Wedding and Lucian’s description are so substantial that Moreno interpreted the fresco in the Casa del Bracciale d’oro as the Wedding of Alexander and Stateira (1985). In view of this discovery it is actually difficult to decide whether Lucian was wrong in his attribution of the painting which he saw in Italy to Aetion, or if the Pompeian fresco might not better reflect the 4th century original, or if it is not a distant variation of Aetion’ original. Whatever the answer, it is important to observe that the form of the painting from Pompei shows every characteristic of the Classical illusionism, with a heroic Alexander and a Hellenic Roxana dressed in Greek nuptial gowns and leaning on the column like a Muse. The Persian behind the hero plays the role of an explanatory detail. Otherwise the identification of the Jason or Perseus looking hero as Alexander, and consequently the heroine as Roxana, would be hardly imaginable.¹³

      We are thus both chronologically and stylistically close to Aetion’s Wedding of Alexander and Roxana. The Pompeian wall painting offered many inspiring analogies in the various scenes which show the rendezvous of Ares and Aphrodite, all of them touched up with their modulated intimate style, all of them expressed in a cheerful mood. The fresco panel preserved in the Casa del Citarista retains certain qualities of monumental paintings by the great masters of the past.¹⁴ In the Casa delle Nozze d’Ercole,¹⁵ Mars and Venus are pictured sitting on a bed with a band of little Amorini who frolic joyously around them. Some try to handle Ares’s sword, which is much too big for them. Another is pushing hard, mak


    ¹² Ibid. p. 161.

    ¹¹ V. Sampaolo, Pitture VI, Parte I, pp. 92-93, figs. 104 a-c.

    ” Casa del Citarista, I, 4, 5, oecus (20), Inv. 112282, Collezioni 1, no 62, measures 253 x 150 (3rd style).

    ¹⁵ VII 9, 47, tablinum, Inv. 9248 (4lh style), Collezioni 1, no. 157.

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ing a serious effort to put the huge helmet on his tiny head.¹⁶ They are enjoying themselves with the helmet and shield in a successful pyramidal composition presenting the love scene between Ares and Aphrodite on a wall painting in the Casa dell’Ara Massima.¹⁷ It was a popular pattern throughout Classical antiquity. It can be seen in a large-scale floor mosaic in the hall of Hippolytus in Madaba (lsl half of the 6th century AD). The emblema portrays a half naked Aphrodite adorned with gorgeous jewellry, seated beside Adonis on the marriage bed. Three Graces and little winged Amorini play in front of them.¹⁸ ¹⁹ There are further analogies in the scenes with Adonis and Aphrodite on their marriage bed. The Aphrodite in the painting in the Casa dei Capitelli Colorati is veiled.” One of the good-humoured Greek epigrammatists with a feeling for burlesque painting pictured a band of Amorini amusing themselves with the gear of the Olympian gods. They were carrying the bow of Apollo, the thunderbolt of Zeus, the spear and helmet of Ares, the trident of Poseidon, the thyrsus of Dionysus, the shoes of Hermes and the torch of Artemis (APXVl 214, 215).

     Further analogies can be drawn from another ancient affaire de coeur which united thefemmefatale Omphale and Heracles. The lovers were portrayed on a Pompeian painting acquired during the excavations by the Prince de Montenegro, now in the Museo Nazionale di Napoli. Omphale is sitting, with a drunken Heracles lying at her feet surrounded by Amorini who exert themselves under the heavy burden of his mace (Pl. LXII).²⁰ Roughly the same composition was painted on the walls of the Casa del Sirico, a Roman copy dated c. 70 AD, where “the Erotes take his cup and club, and three on an altar hold his quiver”.²¹ Helbig was perhaps right in concluding that all those Late Hellenistic motifs with playful Amorini must have had their ultimate origin in Action’s masterpiece.²² However the most famous Omphale


     ¹⁶   The Amorino is pushing Ares towards Aphrodite, the helmet and shield on the ground, Casa delle parete rosse, Pompeii, R. VIII, 5, 37 (b), Schefold 1962, fig. 119; Ares and Aphrodite are sitting on a bed in a pyramidal composition, with Amorini playing about with helmet and shield, The House of Sallustius, Pompeii, R. VI, 2, 4 (34), ibid. fig. 160; cf. Ares and Aphrodite, Pompei, R. IX, 7, 20 (i), ibid. fig. 178, 1.

     ¹⁷ Pompei, R. VI, 16, 15, Schefold 1962, fig. 139.

     ¹⁸ Piccirillo 1993, fig. 5-6.

     ¹⁹   Pompeii, R. Vll, 4, 51, Schefold 1962, fig. 159, 2; cf. Aphrodite and Adonis on a marriage bed attended by Amorino with the nuptial torch, Pompeii, R. IX, 7, 16, ibid. fig. 55, 3.

     ²⁰   Pompeii, VII Ins. Occ. 15, Inv. 9000 (3"* style), Collezioni I, no 79; Omphale, LIMC VII, 2, no 28, p. 48; cf. Schefold 1972, n. 1, p. 193 f. on Dionysiac cycles in the Pompeian mural painting, with Omphale and Heracles included.

     ²¹ J. Boardman, Omphale, LIMC VII, 2, p. 48, no 27.

     ²²   Recueil p. 378, n. 4; Helbig 1873, p. 242, removing bride’s veil 1237, 1239 (Ariadne), pulling the bridegroom towards the bride 327, 954, 955, 974, 1235, 1290, 1397. Helbig refers all the examples to Aetion’s model; for other parallels: the Erotes playing with Hercules’ quiver behind Omphale on a sarcophagus fragment from the Vatican, 3rd century AD, Omphale, LIMC VII, 1,40, ibid. 2, 40; the Amorini asleep after play beside Omphale also asleep, all lying around Heracles’ cup, bow and club, a charming scene represented on the silver bowl from Berthouville, ibid.80; it

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and Heracles composition once adorned M. Lucretius’ tablinum in Pompeii (IX, 3, 5) and now fascinates the visitors of the National Museum in Naples. Schefold called it the jewel in the crown of the ancient painting.²³ Its colour-scheme reminded him of the palette of Rubens. A large and muscular Heracles leaning strengthless and drunk on a lecherous Priapus who looks at the hero with an ironic and malicious smile, is the dominant figure in the tableau, and also in the tablinum of the Lucretian pinacotheca. The enamoured and humiliated hero wears women’s shoes and golden bracelets around his ankles. The Erotes play with impunity with his cup and the quiver at his feet. A triumphant and slightly conceited smile adorns Omphale’s lips. She had dressed herself in a transparent gown and put on Heracles’ lion skin, with its paws fastidiously tied at her neck. With one breast bared, Omphale styled herself on the Amazon queen. Richter writes about the style of transparent drapery which developed in the last quarter of the fifth century BC making costumes almost translucent and allowing the body to be seen clearly through it, “these transparent garments are intended to reproduce very thin materials ... the Siatpavq xvnbvia referred to in Arist. Lys. 48, and the %vnbvia apopytva which ‘make women appear naked’ (v. 150). Possibly they were of silk.”²⁴ The noisy music of tympana and pipes might allude to the cult of Kybele of Anatolia, also venerated in the kingdom of Lydia. “Comme la poesie l’art aime l’allusion,” writes Schefold.

     A similarly subtle air of Orientalism is also discernible in one of the most admired paintings of Classical Antiquity, the allusively allegorical fresco painting of the Flavian Basilica in Herculanum, which shows Heracles and Arcadia. For long the presence of a lion remained unexplained in the intellectually refined structures of this allegorical arrangement. It now appears that the lion refers to Arcadia represented as the Magna Mater Kybele, here the personification of Tel-ephus’ motherland.²⁵ The tableau of Heracles and Omphale from the Lucretian collection is a perfect Flavian copy of a Late Hellenistic original maintained in a Classicizing style and painted c. 200 BC. Its style symptomatic of the Titanic creations of the Pergamene school, this work has analogies in the Barberini Faun of Munich, and the colossal groups of Gauls or Nike of Samothrake.²⁶

     Both Aetion’s and the last described masterpiece are purely Classical. They refer to the Orient by their subject through their allusive language, which may be interpreted through the mythological genealogies. As in the Rooms of Hera


is probably not Aphrodite as inscribed in Mansuelli. 1950, fig. 85, p. 834, but Omphale with Heracles’ club and lion skin and the Erotes playing with his armour. On the difficulties related to identification of a number of images allegedly representing Omphale, see Omphale, LIMC VII, 1, p. 50; see also Atalanta with Meleager, Pitture VI, 15, 6; no 19, 20, p. 634 f.

    ²³ Schefold 1972, p. 195.

     ²,¹ Richter 1950, p. 99 f.

     ²⁵ Schefold 1972, p. 205, Pl. 48.

     ²⁶ Ibid. p. 196, pl. 41.

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cles and Aphrodite remarkable for their African and Oriental motifs (Pl. XXXIII, XXXIV), in its original setting Heracles and Omphale of the House in VII, Ins. Occ. 15, was a pendant to a Rape of the Phoenician Europa, the Delivery of the Ethiopian Andromeda, and a composition with Bellerophon and Sthenoboea, the latter referring to the Asian land of Lycia.²⁷ All of these works of art reflect the conviction inherent in the myth that even the greatest heroes, like Heracles and Alexander, lose their masculine and heroic qualities when immersed in the proverbial Oriental luxury, submitting to the passion of love and seductive Oriental queens and princesses. In some cases it may be just a single detail which refers to the East, e.g. the dark-coloured youth standing behind Omphale, who looks on with irresistible fascination at the giant body of Heracles, or the tympanon player in the same painting. Just a single clay figurine of Omphale from Nea Paphos roughly dated for the Roman period wears a sleeved Oriental jacket.²⁸ Except for the fact that Roxana was a Persian princess, the whole painting by Aetion and its composition, content and even its details were purely Classical and referred to the Hellenic iconography of old and well-established standing. It is impossible in this context to avoid a reference to the Aldobrandini Wedding, the jewel in the crown of the Vatican Art Galleries. And most of all to its central group which, according to Buschor’s illuminating interpretation, pictures a veiled bride carefully listening to the instructions of Aphrodite standing by, and a Heracles who sits on the ground beside a marriage bed. According to Buschor this fresco painting which has proved so difficult to analyse for style and content portrays the marriage ceremony of Heracles and Hebe on Mount Olympus. “On pourrait se le figurer comme une offrande lors du manage d’Alexandre le Grand,” adds Schefold.²⁹

     We have already referred to the images on the Greek painted pottery showing the wedding of Heracles and Hebe, c. 350 BC.³⁰ Philostratus the Elder obviously enjoyed describing the mythical lovers, setting them also in the context of symbolic or real wedding scenes (Imag. I, 2).³¹ In one of their composition types Perseus and Andromeda seated intimately next to each other look at the reflection of the head of the Gorgon.³² The so-called Alcibiades with the Heterae,

    ²⁷    Ibid. n. 1, p. 194; similarly Omphale of the House in R. VI, 13, 6 is a counterpart of Venus and Adonis, Schefold 1962, Pl. 165.

    ²⁸ Omphale,L1MC VII, 1-2, 67 fig., Paphos Museum 3942, BCH95, 1971, p. 416, fig. 127.

    ²⁹ Schefold 1972, p. 108.

    ³⁰ Cf. ibid. p. 107.

    ³¹    According to Philostratus this is Comus. Cämmerer 1967, pp. 13-18, argues for Philostratus’ misinterpretation of the Hymenaios motif. Steinmann 1914, s.v. Komos i, 2, used this detail as a proof for the painting’s authenticity: “Bei diesem Gemälde haben wir einen Beweis für die Authentizität, den man für absolut sicher ansehen darf. Es lässt sich nämlich nachweisen, dass Philostratus den Maler hier mit seiner Deutung der Tutelfigur missverstanden hat, und ein solches Missverständnis setzt eo ipso ein Original voraus.”

    ³²    This is a popular scene represented in the painting, e.g. in a charming scene from the Casa dei Capitelli Colorati, Pompeii VI, 10, 2 (6), M.N.Napoli 8996; Andromeda I, LIMC 1, 1 no 104,

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a relief from the National Museum of Naples may be interpreted as a frivolous version of Action’s Wedding.™
     The Classical form of the painting was only strengthened by the image of Alexander. Où Katôià 8è âXXœç xamà êotiv où8è TrepieipyaoTai èv aÙTOîç ó ’Aetîcùv, àXXà 8t|Xoî -coû ’AXe^àv8pov Kod tôv èç "ta KoXepiKà ćpana, Kai ćm aga Kai 'Pœ^àvqç qpa Kai tôv ôtcXcdv oùk eneX.ćXqoTO (Hdt. 6). Lucian points to the essential characteristics of Alexander’s portraits, of which the best showed a wavering play between his soft emotions expressed in his liquid glance and his heroic manliness. Plutarch wrote that only the greatest masters, as Lysippus, were able to catch the charming ambiguity of his face (de Alex.Magni Fortuna II, 2).

     Consequently, except for the Persian heroine herself modelled on the Greek bride and represented in the setting of the Greek marriage ritual, the painting by Aetion was entirely Classical. It was visualized as such by Sodoma in his fresco from the Villa Farnesina. Sodoma followed the example of Botticelli, who aimed at recreating Apelles’ Calumny, also described by Lucian. This manner of Orien-talization, well-established in the Western tradition, reminds me of two Baroque paintings. There is an altar painting by a Late Baroque Italian master in the old Camaldolese Hermitage in the neighbourhood of Cracow, which portrays the martyrdom of St. Sebastian. The visitor sees the martyr depicted as a fleshy, naked body in a heroic Late Baroque style and catches a glimpse of his executioners dressed in conical Turkish caps, which Polish recipients automatically associate with Mongols, Tartars or generally barbarians. This way of expressing the alien is certainly anachronistic and not historical, nevertheless it is effective. In the background one can recognize the elongated pinnacles of a medieval town. In the Benedictine Abbey of Święty Krzyż (the Holy Cross), in the Świętokrzyskie Mountains, Central Poland, in the Chapel of the Reliquiary of the Cross, the visitor can view a cycle of fresco paintings which tells the story of St. Helena and the Discovery of the True Cross. Constantine the Great resembles the effigy of King Vladislaus Jagiełło from his marble sarcophagus in Wawel Cathedral, Cracow, while Helena resembles the portraits of Queen Jadwiga. The medieval illusion embodied in the artwork of Wawel Cathedral and introduced into the Late Baroque world of painting at Święty Krzyż is disturbed solely by the conical “Turkish” caps of the guards and their buńczuki (Mongolian war standards).

     The subject of Action’s painting contained deliberate references to mythical and historical préfigurations. The court circles of artists and intellectuals were busy *


p. 784, ibid. 2,fig.; also on a sardonyx cameo from the Ermitage, ibid. 118; on the lamps, ibid. 120-121. Cf. L. Jones Roccos, Perseus, L1MC VII, 1-2, 224 a-d (Pompeian frescoes), 226 (sardonyx cameo). In all those scenes Andromeda appears half-naked, “unveiled”.
    ” Collezioni II, 1989, from the Farnese Collection, no. 181, p. 65.

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fabricating the chains of mythical models for Alexander’s weddings and his affaires de coeur with Persian princesses. The romance of Ninos and Semiramis, or Ares and Aphrodite were highly apt for this purpose. Action’s ceremonial painting is one more good example of the legend of Alexander in the making. It seems that in consequence of this particular and a number of other commissions Aetion joined the society of Greek artists who enriched or developed anew the Orientalist current re-emerging in the Greek art as a fruit of Alexander’s fabulous Eastern expedition. In fact Pliny the Elder produced evidence for the existence of a tableau by Aetion picturing Queen Semiramis ex ancilla regnum apiscens (rising from slavery to royal power -HN 35, 78).³⁴ It was once suggested that this painting might have shown the nuptials of Semiramis and Ninos.³⁵ Consequently Action’s Semiramis might have been conceived as a pendant to his Wedding of Alexander and Roxana, and thus formed part of a diptych.³⁶ The story of Semiramis was related by Ctesias in his Ninos Romance. All the Oriental heroines were very beautiful according to literary, historic and legendary testimonies, and represented as such in works of art. Barsine, the wife of Memnon, was taken captive in Damascus in 333 BC (Curt. 3, 12, 14). Olmstead remarked that “her beauty and Hellenic education charmed the young king.”³⁷ All those Iranian young women were also conspicuous for their thorough Hellenic education. The fame of their beauty and intelligence was immortalized by the Arabian lore. The Fair Persian in the Arabian Nights Entertainments was “so surprisingly beautiful that she excelled all the women his eyes had ever beheld . . . She was equally superior in wit and knowledge.” The merchant told the vizier that “she plays upon all kinds of instruments to perfection, she sings, dances, writes better than the most celebrated authors, makes verses, and there is scarcely any book but she has read [it].” They certainly spoke Greek and apparently had no communication problems in relations with their Macedonian lords and husbands. In 327 BC the son of Barsine and Alexander was bom (Diod. 20, 7). They named him Heracles. The Roxana described by Arrian was beautiful, too. This reticent writer, never inclined to exaltation, remarked that her beauty was the only reason for the marriage. Roxana from the Romance ofAle-xander engaged in writing letters in Greek to her royal husband. She was still very young at the time, and in all likelihood could speak one or two Iranian dialects. If we are to judge by the narrative of the Romance, she wrote such good Greek that her letters were entered on the pages of the Classical literatures. The author of the Romance of Alexander ennobled her to the status of Darius’ daughter, exchanging roles with Stateira, who waited almost ten years to become one of Alexander’s wives.

      Queen Omphale might have rivalled Semiramis in a beauty contest. Omphale’s ancient statues and her full-length nude portraits belong to the most charming feminine


    ³⁴ Cf. the same wording in Diodorus II, 5, 1.

    ³⁵ Jex-Blake, Sellers 1896, n. 2, p. 120.

    ³⁶ Jex-Blake, Sellers 1896, n. 2, p. 120, following Brunn; Recueil n. 2, p. 376.

    ³⁷ Olmstead 1974, p. 468.

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representations of Antiquity, as testified by the Viennese intaglios,³⁸ the now lost Wurzburg intaglio,³⁹ a gold ring in a Swiss private collection,⁴⁰ or Lechat’s Omphale, a headless statue modelled on the Aphrodite of Cyrene type, from a private collection in Paris.⁴¹ The other Oriental heroines do not differ in their literary as well as archaeological images from the beautiful Roxana or Omphale. Philostratus the Elder admired the charms of the painted Andromedas, Rhodogounes, Pantheias or Hesiones; Achilles Tatius had his Europas and Andromedas, whose loveliness he contemplated in the art galleries of Egypt and Phoenicia.. The archetype of the warrior and the beauty, love and war, was recalled by Herodotus in his famous prooimion (Hdt. 1, 1-5), and became the standard image of East-West relations. It was once again imitated in the legend of Alexander and Roxana, and reflected by Aetion in his Orientalist diptych.

      Aetion’s Orientalist diptych, the Romance of Alexander, and popular legend mixed the elements of history, folk-tale and myth. The Greek painter represented the Iranian princess in a purely Classical setting, as a Greek bride, celebrating her Greek-styled nuptials, though the actual wedding was in all likelihood arranged according to the Iranian custom.⁴² At the time Alexander intended to build a multi-national, universal monarchy, and styled himself more and more as heir to the Achaemenid legacy. At this stage Alexander adopted also the Royal Persian attire.⁴³ We can be sure that as such Alexander appeared with Roxana among the Persian aristocrats of Bactria and Sogdiana at the wedding ceremonials in 327 BC. “In ritual they probably followed Iranian customs.”⁴⁴ Aetion showed the royal couple in a different way. He dressed them like the Greek brides and bridegrooms. Alexander was represented as a Greek hero, Heracles or Perseus, at least partly naked, dressed only in a chlamys. It must have been clear to Aetion that the Greeks would have been shocked by the image of Alexander dressed in Persian royal attire, beside his Persian wife. In fact we have some modest traces of Alexander’s Orientalizing iconography on the coins issued by Ptolemy I since c. 318 BC on. The Ptolemaic coins portrayed Alexander adorned with the ram’s horns of Ammon or wearing the elephant’s scalp of Dionysos.⁴S

      Aetion’s portrait of Roxana was that of a Classical Greek young woman. We have an opportunity to witness Hellenistic royal portrait-painting in the making.


    ³⁸ Omphale, L1MC VII, 1; 16, 34, ibid. 2, 16, 34.

    ³⁹ Ibid. 43.

    ⁹⁰ Ibid. 72.

    ⁴¹   Lechat 1912; cf. Omphale, LIMC VII 1-2; Brommer 1971, pp. 127-139; the literary evidence for her painted images: Luc. Hist. Consc. 10; Plut. An seni resp. ger. sit. 4, 6; id. Dem. cum ant. compar.3, 2.

    ⁴² CHI p. 456.

    ⁴³ Neuffer 1929, pp. 10-11,30-38.

    ⁴⁴ CHI p. 456.

    ⁴⁵ Bieber 1964, figs. 40-42.

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We learn from the Anthologia Palatina that Satyricus created a successful model portrait of Queen Arsinoe II, famous for her regular features and physical beauty (AP IX 776). Satyricus’ Arsinoe left an impression on the art of the Greek epigram (AP XVI 77, 78).⁴⁶ The Hellenistic art of royal portrait-painting can still be studied in its most integral and perfected condition on the coins. Seltman’s engrossing book Greek Coins may still be recommended as a guide to this branch of Hellenistic art. It seems natural that a portrait displayed during the life of its model, the queen of a great empire, must have contained real portrait features, which reflected in one way or another her ethnic Iranian characteristics. We can acquire a fair amount of facts about Alexander’s portraits. There must also have been an official iconography of his wives, even if it was short-lived, ultimately an ephemeral artistic experience. We have clear proof that Roxana’s seated portrait by Aetion mirrored the principles of the Late Classical female portraiture. As we have already mentioned, Lucian drew inspiration from Action’s Roxana (Imag. 7) for the description of the lips of his model woman. Thus we may assume that Roxana’s facial portrait did not exceed the limits of the Classical conventions. Undoubtedly it was a portrait of the highest artistic quality, still admired by Lucian 500 years after it was made.

      With the story of Semiramis we touched a certain charge of ambiguous content hidden behind the sweet legend rich in its bucolic overtones. Semiramis was cruel. The first thing she did after she had been introduced to the throne by her royal lover was to order his execution. The story of Omphale, a tale of the disarming of a warrior by a woman, also contains such elements. Reading the expression of the faces of the two girls pictured between Omphale and Heracles from the Lucretian pinacotheca, one of them deeply disturbed by the hero’s humiliation, Schefold wrote of the “profondeur tragique de la peinture grecque.”⁴⁷ The literary and popular tradition selected Omphale for the paradigm of the domineering woman, and applied it to Aspasia and Pericles, and later to Anthony and Cleopatra. It is Olympias who impersonates Omphale on the Late Antique contorniates.⁴⁸ “The popularity of the naked figure on ring-stones might suggest that the motif of feminine domination was appealing to women wearers.”⁴⁹ The son of Barsine bom in 327 BC was named Heracles. Alexander’s weddings and affairs with Oriental princesses must have been maliciously commented by his courtiers and generals. We are very close to breaking the illusion created by the “soft graciousness”⁵⁰ of the Late Classical art, the style mirrored so well by Aetion’s masterpiece. It was not all a fairy tale with a happy end, as we well know. There is a shocking contrast between the tranquilly


    ⁴⁶ Vitry 1894, p. 361.

    ⁴⁷ Schefold 1972, p. 195 f.

    ⁴H Omphale, LIMC VII, 1, p. 51; ibid. 1 -2, 56.

    ⁴⁹ Ibid. 1, p. 52.

     ⁵⁰ Richter 1950, p. 80.

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bucolic atmosphere crystallized in the form of sophisticated, Late Classical idealism, and the personal fates of Alexander’s women and their children. If they were ever tolerated after Alexander’s death, it was only due to the immediate political calculations of his generals. When finally one day they turned out to be useless, they were abruptly removed from the scene. Roxana and her son Alexander lived a nomadic life, until they were murdered by Cassandrus, the executioner of the Argeads (310 BC).

     Did Aetion himself outlive this unedifying finale and witness the grim end of the son of a great father, born by an influential satrap’s daughter and heroine of the Romance of Alexander, a woman who became a legend during her life? Barsine and Heracles suffered the same fate. However, to be just and make the story complete, we are obliged to remark that the fair Roxana herself was not exactly the sweet angel from Action’s painting. After their joint husband’s death this coy mipta verecundia notabilis allured her rival Stateira to Babylon and ordered her execution (Diod. 17, 54, 2).

     We espy two worlds, one of them populated by greedy, cruel and treacherous men, and their ambitious, jealous and equally cruel women; and another -the Orientalist illusion reflected in the dreaminess and gentleness of the Late Classical idealist art, composed along the lines of the Romance of Alexander, which shows the Macedonian conqueror in a discussion with Buddhist philosophers, or exchanging letters with the fabulously rich Oriental queen and sorceress Kanake, or visiting the enchanted garden in India. Only the names of the heroes of those two worlds overlap.


Final Remarks










     This study deals with masterpieces of art which are no longer extant, mostly Classical Greek painting, a branch of art which in human and artistic terms achieved perfection and later was totally consumed by time and deliberate destruction. This is a study of the great artists who lived in the Greek cities between the 4,h and 1st century BC and their copyists of the Imperial era, artists as prolific as the painters of Siena, Florence or Venice. Nomina nuda tenemus, say the concluding words of The Name of the Rose by Umberto Echo. They now return to my mind. This is a lost art, a lost universe of forms, reflected only in some ancient scripts, which have proved more enduring than wood and paint.

     Now I think it is also time to express one more reflection. In no place of my work was I willing to insist on differences between “Greek” and “Roman” in this realm of studies. The Old Masters were always popular, as attested by the walls of the Campanian houses, and by the literary sources from the lsl-3rd centuries AD, such as Pliny the Elder’s history of painting which dealt almost exclusively with the Greek painters from the second half of the 5,h century until the early 3rd century BC. Pausanias shared the same tastes. A short list of the names of the artists adduced by him comprises a limited number of Late Archaic artists, dozens and dozens of names from the 5th and 4,h centuries BC, and again only some names from the 3rd and the 2ⁿd centuries BC. The Old Masters were venerated by the educated and propertied classes of the Empire to a degree which proved destructive for the gifted artists of the Imperial era, who were regarded as inferior. No-one bothered to record their names for posterity. The division between “Greek” and “Roman” is also inadequate because we are dealing not only with the originals and their exact copies, but with their later variations and adaptations as well, and with later eclectic or mannerist works which drew on the prominent paintings that had originated in the Classical and Hellenistic periods. Neither would I stress the chronological caesura of the year 31 BC, largely irrelevant to the history of art. Sometimes political and military histories can explain much, but should not be treated as an absolute category. The history of art progresses at a pace of its own; like the history of religion, it has its own autonomy. It possesses its own identity, its idiosyncratic rhythm of changes, its own principles. The art of Cracow from the Młoda Polska period (turn of the 19th/20th century), regarded by many Polish recipients as the epitome of Polishness, when looked upon from the perspective


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of the political history of Europe, makes up only a chapter in the history of the Austrian art, or more properly the art of the Habsburg Empire. And it can be identified all the more so as such when we realize that it shared much of the inspirations symptomatic of the Wiener Sezession or the German Jugendstil. We might also mention the case of the Uniate Eastern-rite art of the Province of Galicia in the former Austro-Hungarian Habsburg Empire. If judged in terms of state affiliation, it would have to be interpreted as Polish, Austrian or even Soviet Russian -which is not true in all three cases. That art has always been indigenous, endowed with its own individual spirituality and aesthetics flowing from the source of East European Byzantine-rite Christianity.

     If one goes through the priceless anthology of J. Overbeck one easily finds the epigrams from the AP, but not ecphraseis by Philostratus the Elder. In my view Philostratus is no less trustworthy and valuable than Pausanias, who by far preferred the history of the Greek sculpture than of the painting. Philostratus the Elder is at the same time more detailed than Lucian or Pliny the Elder. Pausanias, Lucian, Pliny the Elder, the epigrammatist poets of the Palatine Anthology focused on the Classical art of the 5,h-4,h century BC, with the notable addition of the archaistic predilection in Pausanias. They shared their views with the Late Hellenistic Greek art historians and biographers like Antigonos of Karystos or Duris of Samos, whose canon of artists spanned from the Persian wars to the early 3rd century BC. This picture of the history of the Greek art had been cherished for centuries until the times of Libanius and Aphthonius, when the Christian art with its own aesthetics came up to the surface in the writings of Paulinus of Nola, Asterius of Amasea, Prudentius or later with Procopius of Gaza and Choricius. Could Philostratus significantly differ from all of them, Philostratus that arch-Classicicst, who was able to identify a golden fibula on the painting, the type of fibula which was in fashion among the elegant Athenian ladies of the Periclean époque, Philostratus who was an admirer of Homer, Pindar and Euripides, who himself referred to different schools of Classical painting in the introduction to the Imagines? Philostratus’ gallery shows striking parallels to the Classicizing galleries known from the wall-painting of the Campanian houses. In my view Philostratus’ gallery in Naples perhaps did not own many Classical or Hellenistic originals, however it did display many Antonine or Severan academic master copies of them. I do not believe it was a gallery of modem, i.e. contemporary painting as inferred by Matz or Cammerer. The gallery was remarkable for the eclectic tastes of its owners, who admired the great Classical past according to the fashion of their epoch, intellectually dominated by the arch-Hellenist Sophists, who like the stylists and lexicographers of the time devoted to the search for the idealized pure Athenian literary language and culture. The eclectic phenomenon of the Roman pinacothecas is abundantly attested in the Pompeian fresco painting. In the Pompeian Basilica a first-class Flavian copy of Theseus and the dead Minotaur, the original model of which can be dated c. 380 BC, was put on display side by side with another, not inferior Flavian copy


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of the late Pergamene Hercules and Telephus, painted according to an original from c. 100 BC.¹ The same can be said of the House of the Tragic Poet or the House of the Vettii family, and others. Besides Philostratus’ Imagines arranged in a museum are not unique in the Classical letters. Lehmann (1945) adduced an excellent parallel, yet another literary art gallery which he discovered in a carefully collected group of epigrams by Martial (XIV 170-182) (Pl. XVIII). In his epigrams Martial presented a carefully selected set of works of art displayed by Tiberius in the pro-naos of the Templum Divi Augusti. The poet visited the museum and described its statues, reliefs and paintings, with the painted panel of Europa among them (XIV 180), in a curious poetic guide composed of 13 epigrams. The prestige of the Imperial gallery speaks for originals, and not copies. “The order of the epigrams,” observed Lehmann, “reflects an arrangement not of poetic invention but of an actual - surprisingly modern - museum.”²

     As regards Lehmann, his merit lies not so much in the arrangement of Philostratus’ collection along a chain of rooms, that is in the architectural reconstruction of the gallery, which naturally may be legitimately argued (Bryson 1994, otherwise Vetters 1972-1975), but in his identification of a number of thematic cycles. It speaks for a collection of paintings behind the descriptions, even if the originally described collection was at some stage of the editorial work of Philostratus enriched by a number of arbitrarily selected paintings from the outside. Philostratus placed his additional paintings at the end of the Imagines. Within the thematic cycles we can easily identify painting genres in the gallery, as for example mythological heroic subjects, still nature, landscape painting or hunting scenes, all of them corroborated by the archaeological evidence. Fuchs (1987) argued against Lehmann-Hartleben’s reading of ópocpf] as a “storey” and proposed a new reading - according to Od. 22, 298, ópoqrr] as a “plafond.” He additionally emphasized that Philostratus himself never used the word Eikones, which we have actually inherited from the Suda Lexicon as the title of Philostratus’ progymnas-mata. Consequently in Fuchs’ view Philostratus described a series of painted plafonds, a work of highly valued pictores imaginara, the painted ceilings arranged along the halls of a vaulted portico, as for example in the Domus Aurea or in the Se-veran catacombs of Priscilla.

     In fact Philostratus assured his readers that the descriptions were rendered after the pinakes, that is real paintings, and added that the “paintings ... had been collected with real judgement.. . they exhibited the skill of very many painters” (Proem. Imag.). The gallery received a luxurious setting and arrangement. It was “resplendent with all the marbles favoured by luxury.” It is true that we do not have exact parallels to Philostratus’ Eikones among the collection of the extant


    ¹ Schefold 1972, p. 207, Pl. 47, 48.

    ² Lehmann 1945, p. 269.

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ancient paintings. However new dicoveries and continuing research have brought a growing number of analogies. Von Blanckenhagen 1968 managed to describe a genre of narrative mythological landscape painting. His work proved to be an important contribution in the field of the Philostratean studies. Fuchs 1987 on his part pointed to some new discoveries of mural paintings, which came to light in the 70-ties and 80-ties in different parts of the former Empire (Ephesus, Narbonne, Famars). The newly discovered paintings show human figures in the megalographic scale, that is a size between the human height and about two-thirds of it. For long paintings of such a size had been unique. We knew them only from the Villa dei Misteri or from the literary descriptions like Vitruvius’ Arch. 7, 5. Unfortunetely those newly found paintings have been so far published only in selection. In his paper Fuchs 1987 pointed to paintings like the wounded Adonis (Boult-sur-Suippe), hunting scenes (Cologne, Nizy-le-Comte), nymphs (Lullingstone), Venus (Kingscote, Augst) and others.³ Fuchs shared a view that their composition, next to a sort of expression embedded in painted characters, their frontality, a rich palette of colours, and the play of shadows remain in harmony with Philostratus’ descriptions.

     Using the opportunity offered by the subject, I would also like to add some words of commentary on the problem of race, or “ethnicity” if preferred. In a recent BBC radio programme a modern anthropologist and biologist said that there are no grounds as regards biology to make any differences between the so-called races. He admitted that there were some differences between the white race’s genes and those of the Negroes of Central Africa, who had genes which made them resistant to malaria, which did not occur in “European” genetic material. But this was a secondary problem. Biology offered no evidence, he argued, to draw dividing lines between the races as the 19lh-century anthropology had done. The author of this book takes the modern biologist’s attitude for granted. However, such a point of view was alien to the ancient Greeks and Romans, just as it was to many Europeans of the colonial period. In general the Greeks were exclusivists. This word is in fact a euphemism. They were proud of their Greek descent and cultural identity, and prouder still when confronted with the outside world of the Orient and Africa. Certainly there were some Hellenic enthusiasts of the East. We also know of numerous cases of intermarriage. But the prevailing atmosphere in the intellectual circles was the imperialistic air of cultural and racial superiority and alienation. The Living Races of Mankind which I have been quoting above offers many signs of this tendency to arrange human beings along a hierarchical ladder of developed or backward “species”. The chapters on Africa are particularly symptomatic of this. The 19,h century witnessed a breathtaking rate of development in Western civilization, but at the same time it also gave birth to two ominous myths, which justified the extermination of millions and millions of men and women all around the world: the myth of race and the myth of class. Their rise was described in the


    ⁵ Fuchs 1987, p. 13.

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illuminating book by Ernst Cassirer, The Myth of the State. On the other hand, in a way The Living Races of Mankind is a valuable book. Its authors collected hundreds of excellent photographs. They managed to preserve much of a world swept away by the winds of change. They had a wonderful opportunity of working in British or French colonies under the protection of the local administration. They had access to vast stretches of Africa or Asia which are no longer accessible now or else extremely dangerous owing to a medley of isolationist totalitarian regimes or different sorts of dictatorship, owing to civil wars, endemic intercommunal violence, tribal conflicts, degradation of the infrastructure, or an insufficient level of security guaranteed by the authorities.

     The longer I study this subject the more convinced I am that there is no justification for the building up of any sort of order of cultural precedence in the world of the ancient Eastern Mediterranean. A student of the Classical and Oriental languages knows only too well that if someone reads a poem by Ephraim or the Teaching of the Apostle Addai in Syriac, a handful of the Coptic Apoph-thegmata Patrum or the Coptic Asclepius, or the Hebrew Song of Songs, or the Book of Genesis, and Plato’s Phaedrus and the Homeric Odyssey, then there is neither means nor category for their arrangement in order of superiority or inferiority. They are all ingenious creations of the human mind and faculties. There is no such thing as a Greek and Roman Mediterranean surrounded by a number of subsidiary, culturally less developed societies of Syrians, Egyptians or Ethiopians. All of them were entangled in the course of human history, which at times may assume the shape of tragedy; and all of them together make up the Eastern Mediterranean world: one beside another, Greeks and Romans alongside Iranians, Armenians, Hebrews, Egyptians, Syrians, Phoenicians and Ethiopians. And also the art historian has a chance to collect blossoms of great beauty in the Oriental gardens, as attested by a description of a painting which showed Christ picking herbs in the Teaching of the Apostle Addai (15, 6-7, ed. C. Brockelmann) or of a synagogue in Elephantine portrayed by the author of an Aramaic papyrus from Egypt.⁴ It would be impossible, then, for this author, who was born in East Central Europe, which in the 20lh century witnessed an extreme degree of humiliation of the human dignity from both alien and indigenous systems of oppression, to share the racial opinions he is forced to comment on. He is only presenting the views of others. And if he writes of “an air of civilized colonialism,” it is certainly neither in apology nor appreciation for the sense of White Man’s Burden dominating the 1920’s and 30’s. The purpose of this book is exclusively scholarly: the “Orientalist” easel painting of the Greeks and the authenticity of the ecphraseis written by Philostratus the Elder. However, I would


    ⁴ Brockelmann, Die Lehre des Apostels Addai 15. 6-7; A. Cowley, Aramaic Papyri, Oxford, 1923, no 30, a petition concerning the restoration of the Jewish temple.

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like to add my voice, one among many, for the case of the Black Africa and the Near East.

     Let us once again return to the Orientalist style in literature and figure arts of the Greeks. We have already observed that the Classical Orientalist authors trimmed their writings with imitations, translations or borrowings from Oriental languages and blended them with images recalled from memory or acquired through their paideia, images of landscapes, ritual, buildings, Oriental warriors, gorgeously decorated carpets, or beautiful women. Hermogenes wrote that “the special virtues of an ecphrasis are clarity and visibility; the style must contrive to bring about seeing through hearing,” only to add that “it is equally important that expression should fit the subject: if the subject is florid, let the style be florid too, and if the subject is dry, let the style be the same” (trans. M. Baxandall). Philostratus the Elder or Achilles Tatius followed those principles exactly and even undertook efforts to deepen the effects of verbal and visual illusionism. They adorned their ecphraseis of Rhodogoune, Pantheia, Themistocles, Antaeus or Andromeda with foreign words, as if with some small hieroglyphs, hieroglyphs suggestive of the imaginary pictorial world of the Orient. In this way according to the theory of ecphrasis they turned visual images into verbal equivalents.⁵ Shaffer expressed it through a brilliant metaphor: “just as the painted image consists of deposited layers of pigment, the linguistic surface renders with equal color and evidence the face of real and imaginary things.”⁶

     Thornton has made the remark that there was no such thing as a school of Orientalist painting. The pictures were linked thematically rather than stylistically.⁷ Les paons blancs by Clairin, with his beautiful women among white peacocks, the inscrutable and mysterious beauty of Dea Syria by Rossetti, Esther Dressing by Chassériau, the sensual bodies of the dead young women of the harem in Constant’s The Shariff's Justice, the provocative nudity of Burne-Jones’ Andromedas, the naked, sweet and seductive Salambô by Tanoux, or La mort de Cléopâtre by Rixens - all of them are interrelated in some way and they all bring to mind their ancient predecessors in the unending chain of fascination with the Orient. Again and again they invoke the ancient archetype of the Fair Persian, once embodied in Roxana or Semiramis by Aetion, in Rhodogoune or Pantheia by the anonymous masters of the Philostratean painting gallery of Naples, or in Andromeda by Nicias of Athens or Euanthes, in Europa or Hesione by Antiphilus. Chassériau expressed his fondness of the Oriental cavalry in his Ali ben Hamed Followed by His Escort, as did Schreyer in his Bedouins on Horseback. They had their predecessors in Philoxenus of Eretria and his Battle of Alexander

    ⁵ Shaffer 1998, p. 314.

    ⁶ Ibid. p. 313.

    ⁷ Thornton 1983, p.l 3.

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with Darius, where a real fascination with the Persian armour, the exotic appearance of the Oriental warriors and their horses seems to dominate the central subject of the Macedonian victory. Delacroix’s Chasse au lion was foretold in the mysterious way known only to art, by Antiphilus’ King Ptolemy Hunting (HN 35, 138). In the Greek-Persian Battle on the River Nile Nealces did not forget about the Nilotic landscape. We only know that the Greek master painted a donkey and a crocodile waiting in ambush (HN 35, 138). The tranquillity of the distilled colours of the Nile winding among the rocks of Djebel - in the Casa dei Ceii (16, 15) is remarkable for the same magnetic and captivating beauty of the Orient seen as a mirror of lake-water surrounded by rocks and palms in The Oasis by Belly, or Medinet el-Fayoum by Gerome, as well as in his nostalgic View of the Plain of Thebes (Pl. IX). Thornton characterized her carefully selected collection of 19th-century Orientalist paintings as “colourful, sunlit, strange, sanguinary, tender or instructive . .. they enchant and fascinate us .. ..’’And we stand enchanted and deeply impressed lifting “the veils of myth and mystery in which the Orient had been shrouded”⁸ as if we were participating in an act of ancient ritual.

     * Ibid. p. 14.

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265

Index

Entries in the Index refer to the main text only.

Abae 169
Abderus 126
academic copies 138, 242
Academic painters 220
Academicians 217
Achaemenids 43
Achilles and Agamemnon, mosaic and painting 172
Achilles and Briséis, Pompeian painting 220
Achilles and Chiron, Pompeian painting 206, 209
Achilles and Memnon, bronze group 56
Achilles and Penthesileia, sculpture 205
Achilles on Scyros, mosaic 77, 173
Achilles on Scyros, painting 173, 195
Achilles on Scyros, Pompeian painting 77
Achilles Tatius 54, 67ff„ 73, 74, 78, 81 chronlogy, 95, 99f., 109f., 209, 236, 246
Acropolis of Athens 49
Acteon, Pompeian paintings 99, 136 adaptations 137, 217, 241
Adonis 70, 73, 95, 104, 199
Adonis and Aphrodite, mosaic 231
Adonis hunt, ecphrasis 208f.
Adonis of Bion 208, 218
Aegipans 139
Aelius Aristides 164
aemulatio 120
Aeschines 153
Aeschylus 168
Aethiopica of Heliodorus 42, 45ff., 48f., 81
Aethiopis 55, 57
Aetion 88, 139, 200, 227, 229f„ 235f., 238

African dance 54, 145, 147
African grotesque genre 144f.
African landscape 127f.
Agamemnon 20
Agenor 67, 89
Agrippa Posthumus 102
Ahura Mazda 182, 223
Aison 159, 163
Aigyptos, personification 37 akinakes 162
Aktai 94
Alcibiades 45
Alcyoneus 138
Aldobrandini Wedding 227, 233
Alexander, son of Roxana 238
Alexander mosaic 171ff., 220, 224
A lexander Romance 21,42,212,235,238
Alexander the Great 42, 5If., 60, 120, 139,180,190,225
Alexander the Great, tomb 132
Alexander of Abonuteichos 34
Alexandria 84, 98, 112, 185, 188
Alexandrian art 37, 74
Alexandrian culture 36f.
Alexandrian grotesques 145
Alexandrian pictorialism 88
Alexandrian style 42, 54
Alkamenes 184, 200
Alkandre 21
allegory 88, 232 alternative history 166
Altheim F., 48
Altorientalistik 148
Alytsya in Acamania 118
Amastris 41
Amazon of Phidias 200
Amazonomachy 166
Amazons 31, 161, 163, 169, 217ff., 232

266

Ammianus Marcellinus 48 Ammon of Siwa 51
Amphiaraos 159
Amphitrite 12If., 206
Amyclae 68
Anabasis of Xenophon 198 Anahita 223
ava^vpiSeg 183
Anat 67
Andersen O. 19
Andreae B. 180, 187
Andromeda 32, 35, 47, 55, 67, 70, 72,
   88, 89ff., 121, 129, 208 Andromeda, Attic vase painting 9Iff. Andromeda, Capitoline relief 96,98, 116 Andromeda, by Burne-Jones 116 Andromeda, ecphrasis in AP, 96, 102f. Andromeda, ecphrasis of Achilles Tatius
   107ff„ 209
Andromeda, ecphrasis of Lucian 96,104,
   108
Andromeda, ecphrasis of Philostratus
   106ff., 113ff., 202, 218
Andromeda, etymology 90f.
Andromeda, Negroid 108ff. Andromeda, nude, ecphrasis 108
Andromeda, Pompeian paintings 94,98,
   100, 106f„ 233
Andromeda, painting from Boscotrecase
   98, 100, 110
Andromeda, vase painting of Magna
   Graecia 93f.
Andromeda and Perseus seated, Pompeian painting 116, 189
Andromeda in Greek drama 9Iff.
Andromeda of Euanthes 98, 101f., 104,
   246
Andromeda of Euripides 58,93,104,1 lOf. Andromeda of Nicias 94f.,97, 100, 108,
   246
Andromeda of Sophocles 92, 104 Antaeus 61, 114, 117ff„ 137, 138 Antaeus, coins 124

Antaeus, ecphraseis in Libanius’ Pro-
   gymnasmata 122f., 128
Antaeus, ecphrasis in AP 119
Antaeus, ecphrasis of Philostratus 119f.,
   205 f.
Antaeus, mosaic of Avenches 118 Antaeus and Heracles by Apelles 119 Antaeus and Heracles in Severan prop-
   aganda 125,130
Antigonos of Karystos 242 anti-Greek revolt, Heracleopolis 62 Antikles 167
Antilochus 55, 59, 218
Antilochus, ecphrasis 59
Antioch 215
Antiochus IV, 70
Antiochus VII, 225
Antipater of Sidon 68
Antiphilus, painter 84f., 87f., 173 Antiphilus of Byzantium, epigrammatist
   96
Antoninus Pius 45
Apamea 228
Apelles 119f., 122, 173, 200, 202, 205
Aphrodite 18,68f., 73,95,107, 129,131,
   199,208,229
Aphrodite and Ares, Pompeian painting
   230
Aphrodite Andyomene, painting, 122,202
Aphrodite ofDoidalses 136
Aphrodite of Cnidus 200
Aphrodite of Cos 202
Aphrodite of Megara 202
Aphthonius 242
Apis 144
anoypacpov 209
Apollo 119, 126, 196, 218
Apollo, Athena, Miltiades, sculptured group 166
Apollo, ecphrasis 218
Apollodorus 89
Apollo’s Throne in Amyclae 56 Apollonius of Athens, copyist 199

267

Apollonius Rhodius 205
Apollonius of Tyana 42, 52, 70, 169 Apophthegmata Patrum 245 Aquarius 142f.
Arabia 42, 71
Arabian Nights 213, 235
Arabic 225
Arabic tribes 132
Arabios Scholasticus 102f.
Arachne, ecphrasis 134
Aramaic 148, 225
Arcadia 232 archaeological identity 214 Arctinus of Miletus 56
Argeads 238
Argonautica by Apollonius 201
Argonauts, painting by Kydias 173
Ariadne, ecphrasis 202
Arimasps 184
Ariomedos 168
Aristides, painter 176, 204
Aristobulus, historian 179
Aristophanes 58
Aristotle 146, 168 armed Aphrodite 68
Armenia 212
Armenian 51
Armenians 211, 220
Arsinoe II, 37, 237 art market 173
Art Nouveau 35
Artabanus 168
Artaphernes 157f., 164
Artaxerxes I, 44
Artaxerxes II, 48, 169
Asarhaddon 21
Asclepius, Apocalypse 128 Ashtorith 18
Aspasia 237
Assurbanipal 20
Astarte 67ff„ 72, 77, 79, 90f„ 131 Astour M. 19
Atargatis 43, 50, 67, 72, 131, 209

Athena Decate 166
Athena of Lemnos 200
Athena Parthenos 51
Athena Promachos 166
Athenaeus, historian 213
Athenaeus, rhetorician 31, 70, 182
Athenian Acropolis 159, 167, 205
Athenion of Maroneia 173, 194
athletic beauty 59
Athos 169
Atlantes 147
Atlantis 50
Atlas 128, 137
Attalos I, 205 audience scene 43f.
Augustus 174
Aurelian 47
Aventine mosaic 145
Avesta 190
Avidius Cassius 45
Babrius 19
Babylon 49,169, 185,194,216,222,238
Bacchant Europa (Type 4) 77
Bactria 227, 236
Bacchylides 196
Bagaudae 45
Baldassare I. 197
Balmaseda L. 124
Balthasar 194
Barsine 219, 228, 235, 237f.
battle painting 172
Battle of Alexander with Darius 175,246
Battle of Issos, painting by Helen 176
Battle of Mantineia, painting 175
Battle of Oenoe, painting 153, 166f.
Battle ofTomaszów Lubelski 166
battle sarcophagi 216, 220 Beardsley G. 112f. Bedr Basim 213
Behistun 189
Behistun Inscriptions 33
Bekaa Valley 132
Belos 19, 67, 70, 89

268

Benedictine Abbey of Święty Krzyż 234
Benndorf O.96, 102,199
Berber people 149
Berg-Damara woman 112
Bergstedt H. 122
Bernal M. 19f.
Berossus 46
Bet Shean (Scythopolis) 141 bethyl from Emesa 46 Bidez J. 50
bilingualism of the Orientals 46
Bishapur 224
Black Andromeda 109f.
Black Dancer, Pompeian painting 147 Black Memnon 60f.
Blackwell T. 20
BlanckenhagenP.von60,100,136ff.,244
Blemmyes 48, 147
Böcklin A. 214
Böcklin’s Angelika 116 borrowings from Oriental languages 32f.,
   44
Bońaiptę 40
Bowersock G. 131
Brescia sarcophagus 158, 164
Broadhead H. 33
Brommer F. 139
Brooke I. 92
Brown F.M. 105
Brown R. 54
Brunn H. 59f., 120, 135, 139, 142, 194
Brygos Painter 161
Buddhist philosophers 238
Buddhist meditation 50
Bukoloi Uprising 45
Burkert W. 148
burlesque 135, 137, 231
Buschor E. 233
Busiris, king 89, 105, 144f.
Byblos 75
Calamis 172, 200
Callimachus 154
Callimachus, sculptor 184

Callisthenes 179
Callistratus 98, 209
Calumny by Apelles 234
Camaldolese Hermitage, Krakow 234 camelopard, ecphrasis 47
Cammerer F. 21 If., 216, 220, 242 Canopus 36,55, 128
Caracalla 13 If.
Carcemish 26 caricature 113f., 168f.
Casa d’Adonide Ferito 208
Casa dei Cei (I 6, 15) 53, 146, 247
Casa dei Cubicoli Floreali (I 9, 5) 136
Casa dei Dioscuri 94, 173, 195, 215
Casa dei Vetti 126, 218, 243
Casa del Amore Punito 195, 229
Casa del Bracciale d’Oro (VI17 (Ins.Occ.) 42)230
Casa del Bracciale Nuovo (VI 17,42) 219 Casa dell’Efebo (I 7, 11) 53, 145f.
Casa del Fauno 53, 115, 171, 177, 188
Casa del Meleagro (VI 9, 2.13) 36
Casa del Menandro 107
Casa del Poeta Tragico 77,217,219,229, 243
Casa del Principe di Napoli (VI 15, 7.8) 102
Casa del Sirico 231
Casa dell’Ara Massima (VI 16, 15)231
Casa delle Nozze d’Ercole (VII9,47) 230
Casa dello Scultore 145f.
Casa di Apollo 173
Casa di Livia 36, 53, 206
Cassandra 33, 99
Cassandra, ecphrasis 129, 205, 215 Cassandros 180
Cassiopea 91, 101 f.
Cassiopea, mosaic from Apamea 91 Cassirer E., 34, 245
Cassius Dio 130ff. cataphracti 48 centrality 188
Cephalion 38

269

Cepheus 9If., 102, 121, 136
Xapig 219
Chasseriau T. 48
Chemmis (Akhmim) 90
Cheops 41
chiaroscuro 201
China 148
XtTcbvia apopytva 232
Choricius 242
Christ picking herbs, painting 245 Christian painting in Ethiopia 47f. Cicero 39, 173
Circe 18, 22, 136, 154, 209, 213f„ 215 Circle of Julia Domna 131 f.
circumcelliones 45
Chiparus D. 48
clarity 246
‘Classical Europa’ (Type 1) 73 classicist copy painting 217
Claudian 48
Clement of Alexandria 50
Cleopatra VII, 237
coins, Domitian 140, Persian 162, Ptolemaic 236
Colinet C. 48
Colossus of Memnon 58, 60, 61 f., 129, 132,140
colourism 122
colourists 171
Congo-Bambute Pygmies 146
Coptic 40, 44, 49, 51,72, 128, 148,245 Corinthian orientalizing style 26 Cratylus of Plato 40
Critias of Plato 40, 49, 50
Croesus 2lf„ 30, 60, 193ff„ 196, 207
Ctesias of Cnidus 37ff., 41f., 147, 182,
   212,222,235
cult of the Roman Emperors 130 cultural identity 132, 148
Cumont F. 55
curtain in the Temple of Zeus in Olympia 57
Curtius Rufus 156, 179, 191

Cyclic epics 25
Cybele 44, 232
Cyclops 126
Cyprus 17f., 185, 212
Cyropaedia 39f., 193f., 196f.
Cyrus the Great 44, 190, 193, 196, 212 Cythera 69
Czartoryski Museum, Krakow 30, 220 Daedalus and Icarus, Pompeian painting 121,138
dagger from Ecbatana 207 damage to paintings 12If.
Damascus 235 damnatio memoriae 157 Danae of Nicias 86 dance in armour 198 dancing Maenads, Uffizi 102
Darius I 190
Darius III, 174, 18If., 189, 191,225,228
Darius Painter 171
Datis 157f., 164, 169
de Iside et Osiride 38, 40, 72 decorative arts 184
decorative programme 188 decorum 189
Delphi 47, 166, 169, 180, 182, 184,228
Demetrius II 212
Demetrius Poliorcetes 182
Demetrius Topographos 54
Demosthenes 153
Descomps J. 48
deviation from the iconographie pattern 141
Diana 215
Diels H. 19
dii patrii 130
Diodorus Siculus 38f., 40, 54, 126, 179, 186f., 196, 213f.
Diomedes 167
Diomedes, the mares of, ecphrasis 126
Dionysiac cycle 215
Dionysus 52, 106, 119, 141, 188, 231, 236

270

Dionysus and Ariadne, Pompeian painting 143
Dionysus wreathed in roses, ecphrasis 141 Dioscorides 172
Discovery of the True Cross 234 divine beauty 59
Domaszewski A. von 131
Domitian 140, 178 Domus Aurea 243 Donderer M. 176 Dor 80
Dorotheus 122
Souptoq of Strongylion 167 Draper J. 214 Drews R. 39
Dura Europos 47, 68, 224 Duris, vase painter 57f., 156, 167 Duris of Samos 242
Eastern bestiaria 27 Ecbatana, ecphrasis 50 eclecticism 96, 116, 209, 24If. eclecticism, Greek-Oriental 225 ecphrasis 42f., 45, 60, 62, 71, 75, 79f., 82f.,99,101, 103,109, 111, 115,122f., 127, 135ff„ 187, 193, 197f„ 216,220, 227,246
Eddy S. 190
Egypt, descriptions of 54 Egypt 69, 245
Egyptian anti-Greek revolts 62
Egyptian guerillas 45 Egyptian medicines 21,42 egyptianizing art 138 egyptianizing grotesques 147 egyptianizing painting 53 egyptianizing style 128 Elagabal 52,132 Elephantine 245 Elpenor 159 Emesa 45f., 132 Enkidu 18
Enuma elish 17
Eos 56f„ 58, 59

Epaminondas 175
Epaphos 35, 37 ephebic beauty 59
Ephraim 245
Epic of Gilgamesh 213
Epidauros 68
Epizelus (Polyzelus) 156
Ereshkigal 213
Eretria 169
Eros 107, 109, 114, 116, 141 , 197 Erotes 76, 82, 138, 227ff„ 230f. erotic scenes 53
Ethiopia 42,47,51,67,89,104f„ 115,213
Ethiopian jewels 42 etnography of Africa 146f. etnography of Ethiopia 47 etymology 19, 35, 40, 49, 67, 72, 131,
   136,232
Euanthes, painter 88, 95, 98, 99, 104 evpapig 161
Eunuch of Terence 108
Euphranor 200
Euphronios 199
Euripides 89, 116, 168, 182, 184, 242 Europa 35, 55, 67ff„ 105, 182, 243 Europa, ecphrasis of Achilles Tatius 67,
   74f., 78ff., 82
Europa, ecphrasis of Lucian 82
Europa, ecphrasis of Moschus 70ff., 87
Europa, mosaic from Stabia 74, 80, 86f.
Europa, mosaic from Praeneste 76, 80, 84f., 87
Europa, mosaic from Byblos 69, 75f., 79
Europa, mosaic in Djemila 69f., 76
Europa, mosaic in Tsarskoye Syelo 75,
   80, 86
Europa, Nasoni painting 80, 86f.
Europa, painting in Porticus Agrippae 85
Europa, paintings in Italy 86f.
Europa, paintings in Martial’s epigrams 85f.
Europa among Nereids, Pompeian painting 74

271

Europa in Ovid’s Fasti, ecphrasis 75 Europa in Ovid’s Met., ecphrasis 73 Europa in Templum Divi Augusti 85f. Europa Kallipygos (Type 3) 76f., 80 Europa of Antiphilus 84f., 87, 246 Europa of Sidon, (Type 2), 73f. , 80f. Europa of Sidon (Type 2b) 75 Europa of Sidon (Type 2c) 75f. Europa of Sidon (Type 2d) 76 Europas of Ovid 86 Eurymachus 154
Eurypylus, ecphrasis 205 Eurystheus 135
Eusebius of Caesarea 39, 62 exact copies 217, 241 exotic animals 54 exoticism 116, 147f.
explanatory inscriptions 157 fable 41
facial portrait, ecphrasis 201 Faedimus, king of Sidon 21 tpàXapa 32, 58
Fall of Troy by Polygnotus 153 Fehr B. 176
female Centaurs, ecphrasis 114,202,206 female facial portrait, ecphrasis 211 female nudes in Philostratus’ ecphraseis 109
Flavius Arrian 178f., 191, 235 folk-tale 2Iff., 41, 213f., 236 forgeries 217 four-colour style 171, 174 Foucher L. 144
Fowler B. 201, 205 François Vase 144 Freyer-Schauenburg B. 37 Friedlander P. 50
Friedrichs K. 59f.
Fries C. 19 frontality 189 Fuchs M. 243 Fuhrmann H. 175,177,180 fusion of Greek and Oriental elements 51

Gala, Somali people 110
Garamantes 147
Gardiner A. 62, 72
Gaugamela 178f., 187
Genesis 245
geography of Antaeus myth 117 geography of Andromeda myth 89, 115 Georgian 51
Geranomachia 138, 143
Gerome J.-L. 63
yeppa 160, 163
Ghirshman R. 221, 225
Gigantomachy 166
Gordafarid 223
Gordian 131
Gordian III 224
Gorgon 90, 99, 175
Gotterburleske 138
Graeco-Oriental interchange 52
Graeco-Oriental romance 42
Graeve V. von 172
Granikos 178
Granikos Monument, Dion 180
Greek Orientalists 135
Gregoriano Profano 125 grotesuqe 135, 137
Gryllus 175
Gryneion 45
gryphons 26, 47,51, 183, 187
Gstader H. 120
Gyges 41
Hadad 67
Hadrian 55, 61
Hadrian’s Egyptian tour 6If.
Hall J. 228
Hanfmann G. 220
Hannestad N. 129f.
Hanno, Periplus of 115, 147
xapu;
Harpocrates 36
Harrison E. 155, 164, 167
Hartel W. von 211
Hathor 37

272

Hatra 221
Hauser F., 68 Hebert B. 124
Hebrew 245 Hecataeus of Miletus 39
Helbig W., 85, 87, 100, 231 Helen 2Iff., 42, 99
Helen and Cassandra, Pompeian painting 99
Helen and Paris, Pompeian painting 215 Heliodorus 45, 48, 98, 109, 115 Heliogabalus, painting 46 Helios 37, 46, 58
Hellenistic Orientalism 223 Hellenization of the Orient 148 Hemelrijk E. 41
Hephaistion 227f.
Hera Farnese 199 Hera Lacinia 200
Hera of Samos 167
Heracles 118ff., 229, 236 Heracles, African cycle of 129 Heracles, son of Barsine 237 Heracles and Hesione, Pompeian painting
   103
Heracles and Omphale, Pompeian painting 138f„ 181, 215, 220, 232, 237
Heracles (reclining) and Omphale, Pompeian painting 231
Heracles and Pygmies, ecphrasis 13 5ff., 206
Heracles of Tegea, statue 199
Heracles and Telephus, Pompeian painting
   217,232,243
Heraion of Olympia 55f. Heraion of Samos 27 Hercules cycle 218 Hermogenes 246
Herodian 46, 130 Herodotus 21,23f„ 28f„ 31,37,38f., 40ff.,
   49,90, 111, 127, 156ff., 160f., 163ff., 167f., 190, 196, 207, 224, 236 Heroon in Trysa 159

Heros, painting by Timanthes 176
Hesione 106
Hesione of Antiphilus 246
Hesperides 117, 137
Hezychius 32
Hicks R. 72
Hierapolis/Mabbug 43, 50, 67 hieratic scale 189
Himerius 153, 156 , 164
Hippolyte, Amazon 205, 214
Hippolytus, ecphrasis 205, 215
Hippolytus by Seneca 215
Historia Augusta 129, 130 historical identity 212 historical painting 207 Hochhebetypus 119
Hölscher T. 154f„ 172, 187
Homer20f., 38,49, 111, 138f„ 144,213,
   242
Homer, the Egyptian 49
Homeric studies 17
Homös-Fredericq D. 22If.
Horae, ecphrasis 202
Hornung E. 40f.
horror Orientis 156
Hortensius 173
Horus 90, 141
House VI 9, 1, p.36
House VI 10, 2 (6), 94
House VII 1,40, p.219
House 1X7, 16, p.100
House of Apollo (VI 7, 23) 219
House of Ariadne 143 f.
House of Gavius Rufus (VII 2, 16) 111
House of Menander (I 10, 4) 98
House of M.Lucretius Fronto 138, 215, 232
House of Sacerdos Amandus 100, 102, 121, 136
House of the Cithara Player 181
House of the Fatal Love 215 hunting scenes 53, 222, 224, 243, 244 Hyacinthus, ecphrasis 59

273

Hypnos 135, 138
Ialysos, painting by Protogenes 176 lam 90
iconicus 157
idealism 238
idealist female portrait 202f.
Iliad 55, 57, 229 illusionism 175, 188, 225, 230, 246 imitation 28
imitations of Greek works 174
Inaros Uprising 165, 168
India 41f., 148, 213, 238
Indian reliefs in metals, ecphrasis 52
Io 87, 168
Io, ecphrasis 7If., 82f.
Io and Isis, Pompeian painting 36
Io and Argus, Pompeian painting 35ff.,
   96
Io of Nicias 35
Ion of Euripides 182, 184
Iphigenia 218
Iranian dialects 148, 225
Isager J. 54
Iseum Campense 55, 85, 128, 142
Ishtar 18, 22, 67, 213
Isis 40, 52, 53, 61, 72f.
Isis and Io, Pompeian painting 141
Islamic mysticism 50 isokephaleia 220 Issos 178f., 188
Iusti 212
Jadwiga, Queen 234
Jamblichus 186
juxtaposition of Greek and non-Greek 52 Jaffo 115
Jerusalem 70
Jex-Blake E.157
Josephus Flavius 46, 89
Jugendstil 242
Julia Balbilla 61
Julia Domna 61, 129f„ 134, 226
Julian, the Emperor 48
KaXàaipiç 43

Kalinka W. 135
Kanake 212, 238
Kanake, painting 215
Kandaules 41
KctvSuq 43, 181, 184, 187
Kastner E. 56
Kerkopes 139
Kertsch vases 80, 198, 207, 229 Kettenhofen E. 13If.
Kimon 164
Kirschensteiner J. 50 Kleitarchus 179
Kliigmann A. 127 kontinuierender Stil 120, 211
Koptos 40
Kritheis, ecphrasis 109, 129, 198, 201 Kuhrt A. 31, 46, 51, 127
Kynegeirus 153f., 157f.
Kiinzl E. 123
Kypselos Chest 55f.
Kyrene 129f.
Kyrene, nymph 127
Lab, Queen 213
Labours of Heracles by Lysippus 118 Labours of Heracles by Praxiteles 118 Labours of Heracles in AP 119 Labyrinth ofFayum 132
Lacombrade C. 48 Laestrigonians 126
Lagi de Caro A. 181
Late Antique Classical revival 128 latrones 45
Lee R. 194
Lehmann-Hartleben K., 58, 106, 129f., 208,214
Leptis Magna 125, 129f.
Lesche of the Cnidians 58, 159, 228 Letronne A. 62
Levi D. 96
Levkadi 19
Libanius 122, 128, 242
Libya 51
linen armour 185

274

Lion hunt by Lysippus 180 literary art history 124 Lloyd A. 90 Longus 98
Lorentz F. von 70, 184 Lotus Eaters 21
Lucian of Samosate 34, 43, 76, 78, 81, 96, 98, 103f., 142, 199f„ 201, 203, 227, 230, 242
Lydia, personification 193, 196f., 232 Lykios, son of Myron 56 Lysippus 118, 125,234 macabre (the) in Philostratus’ ecphraseis
   117,126 Macellum (VII 9, 7) 35f. MacMullen R. 34, 45 Macrobius 47, 68 Madaba 231 Maderna 195 Madi people 149 Magnesia in Ionia 44 Maiuri A. 145 Manakidou F. 71 Mandrocles, painting offered by 167,175 Manetho 46 mannerism 88, 116, 126, 241 mannerist painters 197 Manya 213 Maoris 21
Marathon 58, 164f., 190 Marcus Aurelius 200, 228 Mardonios 31, 157f., 167, 169 Marg W. 18
Mariemont bronze 123 marine thiasos 76f., 82, 84 Marsyas, Pompeian painting 136 Martial 85, 243
‘Martial’s art gallery’ 243 Masistios 31, 158, 161, 167 mass culture 135 Massagetae 32, 48 Master of Horses 217 Matz F. Ill, 120, 242

Mayence F. 61
Medea 22, 34, 213
Medea, Pompeian painting 215
Medea of Timomachus 218
Media 224
Medic scarlet 209
Meleager of Gadara 68
Meleager sarcophagus, Kraków 220
Meles, ecphrasis 141
Melqart 130
Memnon 47, 55f„ 58, 105, 115, 129, 132
Memnon, ecphrasis 58f., 62f., 105
Memnon and Achilles, Siphnian Treasury 57
Memnon by Polygnotus 182
Memnon of Aeschylus 57f., 168 Memnonides 58
Memphis 48
Menelaus 20f., 51, 99, 167
Menelaus and Patroclus, sculpture 205
Menestheus 167
Menoeceus, ecphrasis 205
Merkelbach R. 103
Messiah 52
Micon, paintings of, in Theseion 121 f.
Micon 121, 153ff., 220
Midas 22
Miltiades 154, 157
mimesis 32L, 88
Min 90
miniaturists, vase painters 26f. minor decorative arts 167
Minos 121
mirror reflection 175, 189
Mithradates I, 225
Mithradates II, 225
Mithradates VI, 99, 212
Młoda Polska 241
Mobius H. 119
mock heroic epic 144
Momigliano A. 148, 191 monochrome painting 172 monolingualism of the Greeks 46

275

Moreno P. 181, 230
Moretum 113
Morgan K. 49 mosaic imitation of the painting 172 mosaics in Thermae of Caracalla 125
Moschus 70f., 76, 8Iff., 87
Mulolo people 112
Myrrha 55
Myrrha, painting 215
Myson 195
mythical identity 212
mythological landscape painting 60,104, 136f., 243
Myus 44
Nabonidus 194
Naqsh-i-Rustam 189, 224
Narcissus, ecphrasis 202 narrative painting 121, 136, 244
Naxus 169
Nea Paphos 233
Nealces 88, 247
Nearchus 228
Necklace of Harmonia, ecphrasis 43
Nekya by Polygnotus 58, 159
Nemesis, in Rhamnus 51
Nemitz G. 120
Nereids 77, 84, 206
Nergal 213
Nessus, ecphrasis 205
Neumeister C. 85
Neutsch B. 96f.
Nicias of Athens 35, 86, 94f., 97, 173,
   202
Nicolaus 122, 128
Nicomachus, painter 173, 175
Nike, Temple of 159
Nile 36, 49, 71, 132
Nile with the Cubits, ecphrasis 140ff., 206
Nile with the Cubits, sculpture 176
Nile, Lucian’s ecphrasis 141 f.
Nile, personification 36, 129, 140, Tern-plum Pacis 142
Nilometer 48

Nilotic landscape 53f., 128,144ff., 188, 223,247
Nilotic Mosaic in Palestrina 53, 145 Nimrud Dagh 225 Niniveh 24, 39, 163 Ninus 19, 39, 222, 235 Niobid, M.delle Terme 203 Nisean horses 187, 211, 223 Nisibis 49 Nitocris 131
Nonnus of Panoplis 43
Nubia 47
Nylander C. 176, 187 oblique arrangement 174 oblique division 143
Odysseus 59, 136, 154, 167
Odyssey 20ff., 42, 139, 167, 209, 245 Odyssey cycle, Esquiline 136 Oeconomicus of Xenophon 198 Oinokles Painter 163
Olmos R. 124
Olmstead A. 235
Olympia 55, 154, 180
Olympia, metopes of 118
Olympias 237
Olympus, ecphrasis 20If.
Omphale 56, 131, 215, 23If., 235ff. On Airs, Waters and Places 191 Onesimos 168
Oppian 131
oral tradition 26
Oriental chronology 38ff.
Oriental court 30
Oriental dances 48, 54 ‘Oriental embroideries’ 182
Oriental fragrances 116 ‘Oriental histories’ 37ff.
‘Oriental incantation’ 32
Oriental origins of Andromeda myth 89 Oriental religions 55
Oriental tapestries 69f., 169, 190
Oriental textiles 184
Oriental warrior-queen 212

276

Oriental women in literature and myth 2 Iff.
Orientalisation 51, 234
orientalizing art 51, 184
orientalizing coins 52
orientalizing decorative programme 177
Orientalizing Hellenistic art 225
Orientalizing mannerism 28
Orientalizing period 25
Orientalizing sacral-idyllic landscape 209
Orientalizing style 26, 94, 184
Orientalism 51, 55, 92, 149, 168, 186, 223,232
Orientalism, Attic 116, 184
Orientalist art 197
Orientalist art collection 58, 115, 128f., 232f.
Orientalist diptych 236
Orientalist illusion 238
Orientalist literature 50
Orientalist painters 88, 148
Orientalist painting 37, 63, 137, 186
Orientalist style 37, 40, 52, 54, 63, 69, 181,188,235,246
Orientals in Greek economy 45 originals 217, 220, 241
Osiriac feast, Pompeian painting 54
Osiris 40, 61, 72
Overbeck J. 242
Ovid 75, 85f„ 93, 102, 110, 215
Oxyartes 227
Page D. 21, 213f.
Painting gallery of Naples 43, 58, 106, 124, 129, 202, 204, 208, 215f„ 222, 242f„ 246
Palatine Anthology 68, 96, 203f., 209, 218, 231, 237, 242
Palestinian women 16
Panaenus 220
Panaenus, Marathon painting 153ff., 160, 163,167
pantarbe stone, ecphrasis 42
Pantheia 88, 105, 129, 227

Pantheia, ecphrasis 22,60,129, 193,215, 246
Pantheia, mistress of L. Verus 200, 227f. parody 137
Parthenon 207
Parthian art 225ff.
Parthian dress 22If.
Pasiphae, ecphrasis 202
Pasquino group 51 pasticcios 137
Pater W. 71
patera from Boscoreale 37
Patroclus 18, 22, 31, 57
Paul VI, the Pope 125
Paulinus of Nola 242
Pausanias 31,55f., 58,68,70,89,98,118, 121, 142, 153, 155f„ 158, 164, 199, 202, 209, 228, 24If.
Pausias 218
Pedley J. 21
peinture en pierre 14
Pelops, ecphrasis 201, 218
Pelusium 98f.
Penelope by Zeuxis 204
Penthesileia Painter 59
Periboia 121
Persae of Aeschylus 28ff., 34f., 91, 104, 153, 167f.
Persephone 21
Persepolis 160, 163, 185ff., 189f.
Perseus 47, 59, 89ff., 117, 121, 136 Perseus and Andromeda by G. Vasari 88 Persia 42
Persian armour 160f.
Persian cavalry 48
Persian ceremonial robes 181
Persian golden torques 183
Persian Gulf 34
Persian miniature painting 27
Persian royal attire 43f., 236
Persian royal chariot 185
Persian royal diadem 182, 187
Persian royal standard 187

277

Persian spoils 207
Persian vases 160ff., 163
Persians, bronze group 205
Persinna 108
Peters W. 60
Pfuhl E. 99f.
Pharnabazus 45, 169, 213
Phidias 166
Philae 48
Philip II, 171
Philip the Arab 224
Philips K. 97
Philiskos 131
Philo of Alexandria 46
Philodemus of Gadara 31, 68
Philostratus the Elder, 22, 43f., 58f., 89, 97f., 105ff„ 109,113,119ff„ 126,128, 131, 134, 141, 169, 174f., 187, 193f„ 197, 200, 206f„ 211, 230, 233, 236, 242f„ 246
Philostratus the Younger 111, 227
Philoxenus of Eretria 88, 177, 180, 186, 246
Phoenicia 47, 80, 87, 176, 236
Phoenician purple 57, 209
Phoenix bird 7If.
Phorbas, ecphrasis 117, 126
Photius 49, 41,
Phraates II 225
Phrygian caps 161
Piazza Armerina 54
Picard G. 216
pictores imaginarii 243
pinacotheca 215, 226, 232, 242
Pindar 57, 111, 125f„ 127, 142, 200, 242
Pitti wrestlers 118f.
Plataea 158, 162f„ 168f„ 207
Plato 39f., 49, 175, 191, 245
Plato and the Orient 49f.
Pliny the Elder 35, 54, 84, 86, 94, 147, 156f., 164, 173, 175, 178, 181, 197, 200, 204, 218, 241f.

Plutarch of Chaeronea 38, 40, 72, 179,
   182,189,227,234
Polaemo ofLaodicea 153, 157f.
Polish Rider, by Rembrandt 48 Pollianus, epigrammatist 122
Pollitt J. 37, 173, 178
Polydamna 21
Polygnotean style 154
Polygnotus ofThasos58,153ff., 159,182 Polyphemus 139
Polyphemus and Galatea, Pompeian paintings 60, 99, 137, 206
Polyxena, ecphrasis in Ji’ 122 Polyxena of Polycleitus 203
Pompey, portrait of 173
Porada E. 32
Porticus Octaviae 226
Porticus Pompeii 84f. portrait painting, ecphrasis 198ff., 218f. portraits of Black Africans 109ff. portraits with dreamy eyes 203
Porus 52
Poseidon 27, 50, 77, 126
Poseidonios of Apamea 16
Pothos, personification 73
Praxiteles 118, 120, 203
Praz M. 71, 88 predilection for Archaic art 56 Procopius of Gaza 242 Progymnasmata of Libanius 122f. Prometheus, ecphrasis 98
Propertius 215 prothesis 59 proskynesis 43
Proteus 21
Prudentius 242
Ps.Aristotle 45 psychostasia 57
Ptolemy I, 52, 179
Ptolemy II, 37, 70
Ptolemy III, 37, 52, 72
Ptolemy Hephaistion 176
Ptolemy hunting by Antiphilus 247

278

Pygmies 114, 128, 135ff., 206, 223
Pygmy grotesques 53
Pyramus 49
Pyramus and Thisbe, Pompeian painting 197, 199,207
Queen of Sheba 219
Quintillianus 155, 179
ratio pingendi 106, 195
ratio scribendi 195
reclining Europa (Type 2a) 75
Red Bongo people 146
Red Djur people 146
Reinach A. 85
Rescue of Arsinoe by Titian 88 restauration of Apelles’ Aphrodite 122 Rhampsinitus 41
rhetorical ecphrasis 84, 202
Rhode E. 81
Rhodogoune 88, 105, 115, 200, 207 Rhodogoune, daughter of Xerxes I, 121 Rhodogoune, ecphrasis 129, 198ff., 204, 211, 246
Rhodogoune, wife of Aroandas 212 Rhodogoune, wife of Demetrius II 212 Rhodopis 49
Richter G. 202, 204, 232 ritual garments, Emesa 46
Robert C. 153, 155, 157f„ 164
‘Room of Aphrodite’ 215, 232f.
‘Room of Dionysus’ 106
‘Room of Heracles’ 215, 232f.
Roullet A. 55
Rouveret A. 173
Roxana 88,139,208,213. 219,233,238, 246
Ruesch Relief 178
ryparographic pictures 146
Saccae 157, 165
Saflund L. 176
Saggs H. 40
Saite period 20, 40
Salamis 58, 153, 169
Sappho 61, 116, 207, 218

Sardanapalus 22, 39, 105, 196
Sardis 185, 193, 196
Sarpedon 31, 57, 58, 60
Satyricus, painter 237
Satyrs and Lydian women, ecphrasis 206
Satyrs and Olympus, ecphrasis 206
Satyrs ofTimanthes 139
Scepsis 44
Schauenburg K. 30, 93, 97
Schefold K. 54, 56, 80,97, 120,145,230, 232f„ 237
Scheibner G. 20f.
Schmiel R. 71, 82f.
Schneider R. 160
Schönberger O. 141, 197,212
Schoppa H. 160,162
Schwarz G. 96f.
Scopas 202
Scylla, painting by Nicomachus 176
Scythians 161
Second Sophistic 126
Selene 67, 72
Selene and Endymion, Pompeian painting
   143
Seleucids 225
Seleucus I, 228
Selinunt 73
Sellers E. 176
Seltman C. 237
Semiramis 39, 105, 131,212f., 214,222, 235,237
Semiramis by Aetion 235, 246
Semiramis mounted, statue 222
Sennacherib 163
Sepphoris 48, 141
Septimius Severus 61, 125, 129f., 132
Septimius Severus, Egyptian tour of 61, 129
Serapis 52, 129
Sertorius 117
Sesostris 41
Severans, literary portrait of 129ff.
Shaffer D. 246

Z19

Shah-na-me 223
Shakespeare 105, 114 Shapiro H. 59 Shapur I, 224
Sheherezade 22
Sherwin-White S. 31, 46, 51, 127 Shield of Achilles 18f.
shortening 174
Sidon 20f„ 67, 74, 78, 98, 185
Sidon sarcophagus 162
Siduri 18
silk 102, 209, 232
Sin 35
Siphnian Treasury in Delphi 57
Sirens 26, 213
Sistine Chapel 195
Siwa 117
Smelik K. 41
Smurzynski M. 223 Snowden F. 112, 114
Socrates Scholasticus 49
Sodoma, painter 234 ‘soft graciousness’ 237 Sogdiana 228, 236
Sol Invictus 47
Solomon’s Temple, ecphrasis 50 Solon 39, 49 Song of Songs 245
Sophocles 89, 116
Sosandra 200
sphinx 26, 51, 53, 56, 184 Spiegelberg W. 40f.
Spitamenes 228
Stateira 181, 230, 235, 238
Steinmann F. 60, 142f„ 194, 197, 212, 216
still life 243
St.Matthew 46
Stoa Poecile 153ff. stylisation 28 Synesius 153
Supplices of Aeschylus 33, 58, 92, 104 Susa 44, 185,228

Syene 48, 61
symplegma 115, 122, 188
Syria 26, 43, 47, 148, 176, 226
Syriac 34, 51, 132, 148, 245
Syrian Goddess 43, 50, 67, 209, 228
Syrian Greek poets 69
Tabgha 48
Tammuz 130
Tanit 131
tapestries, with historical scenes 169 Tarn W. 127
Tazza Farnese 141
Teaching of the Apostle Addai 33, 245
Telephus 138, 217
Telephus frieze 136
Temple of Astarte, Sidon 78
Temple of Atargatis, ecphrasis 50
Temple of Isis, Pompeii 36 temple of Oriental goddess 209, 213
Temple of Perseus, Chemmis 90
Temple of Poseidon in Atlantis 50
Temple of Zeus, Pelusium 99
Temple of Zeus Cassius 102
Temple of Zeus in Olympia 57
Templum Divi Augusti 243
Templum Pacis 176
Teutamun 39
Thebano-Attic School 171
Thebes, Egyptian 20f„ 49, 6If., 129,132
Themistocles, ecphrasis 43f., 115, 169,
   187,216
Theocritus 70
Theodosius II, 48
Theogony of Hesiod 18
Thermopylae 167, 169
Theseion in Athens 121 f.
Theseus 159
Theseus, Pompeian painting 196, 215 , 217, 242
Theseus by Micon 121 f.
Theseus and Ariadne, Pompeian painting 217
Thisbe 49, 55

280

Thmuis 115, 188
Thon 21
Thornton L. 246f.
Throne of Asclepius, Epidauros 27
Ttäpa 32, 43, 161 f„ 182f„ 187, 230 Tiberius 243
Tibur 55
Timomachus 218
Tissaphernes 169
Titans 169
Torso Belvedere 199
transparent drapery style 201, 232
Trendall A. 111
tribal myth 166
Triptolemos Painter 162f., 168 tropaion 211,216
Turcan R. 55
Tyre 185
Ugaritic literature 19
unity of components 200
Uprising of Bukoloi 45
Uprising oflnaros 165, 168
Urartian bronzes 26
Uthal 221
Valerius Maximus 214, 222
van den Berghe L. 32 variations 241
Veit Stoss 96
Vergina 171
Vespasianus 142
Villa dei Misteri 227
Villa Imperiale 138

Vitruvius 53, 244
Vitry P. 96, 204
Wackernagel J. 185
Wattel-de Croizant O. 68, 73, 76, 79, 87 Webster T. 111
Wedding of Alexander and Roxana by Aetion 139, 180, 209, 227, 246
‘Wedding of Alexander and Roxana’, Pompeian painting 181
Weicker F. 135, 142, 214
West S. 38, 50
Wickhoff F. 211
Wiedasch E. 198f.
Wiedemann A. 41
Wiener Sezession 242
Woodford S. 139
Woolley L. 19
Xenophon of Athens 37f., 39f., 44, 48, 70,190,193,196f., 199,213,223,227
Xerxes I, 44, 51, 160, 162, 190, 207 Yoruba man 112
Zahn W. 171, 187
Zänker G. 88
Zenobia 48, 131
Zenodotus, copyist 172
Zeus 17, 34f„ 56f„ 68, 71, 73, 122
Zeus and Hera, Pompeian painting 217,229
Zeus Cassius 98, 102
Zevi F. 176f„ 188
Zeuxis 200
Zingerle J. 158
Zulu people 21

281

Píate s




Unless otherwise stated illustrations are from my private collections.


Pl. I. Pegasus on the Assyrian cylinder seal. Last quarter of the 2ⁿd millennium BC, Frankfort, Cylinder Seals, Pl. 35c.
Pl. II. King Croesus on the pyre. Myson. c. 500 BC, A. Furtwängler, K. Reich-hold, Griechische Vasenmalerei, II, 1904-1932, p. 277.
Pl. III. Audience scene from Apadana, Persepolis.
Pl. IV. Io before Isis on the waves of the Nile, Pfuhl 1923, Taf. 666.
Pl. V. The River Nile winding between the rocks of Djebel, Casa dei Ceii, Pompeii, 1, 6, 15.
Pl. VI. Memnon between his black warriors, Attic amphora, by Exekias (?), London, British Museum 1849. 5-18. 10, Beardsley 1929, no. 63.
Pl. VII. An Ethiopian lady looking at Andromeda chained to the rocks, kalyx-krater, early 4"' century BC, Berlin 3237.
Pl. VIII. The death of Memnon with mourners, chalice, the Penthesileia Painter, c. 460-450 BC, Ferrara, Mus. Naz. 44885.
Pl. IX. Jean-Léon Gérôme. View of the Plain of Thebes, 1857, oil on canvas, 76x 131 cm, Musée des Beaux-Arts, Nantes.
Pl. X. Europa on the mosaic from Byblos, 3rd century AD, Chéhab 1959, Pl. V.
Pl. XI. Europa on the Djemila mosaic, c. 400 AD.
Pl. XII. Europa on the Praeneste mosaic.
Pl. XIII. Europa on a Nolan amphora, Berlin Staatl. Mus. F 2347, c. 450 BC, Jahn 1870, Pl. I b.
PI. XIV. Europa among the Nereids on the fresco from Pompeii, c. 70 AD, Sche-fold 1957, 217c.
Pl. XV. Europa on the mosaic from the Villa di San Marco in Stabia, Wattel-de Croizant 1995, Pl. IX.
Pl. XVI. The reclining Europa on the mosaic from Rome, Tsarskoye Syelo, c. 150 AD, S. Korsunska, JDAI 43, 1928, fig. 1,P1. 12.
Pl. XVII. The Nereid Europa, a 19"’ century drawing of a Pompeian painting, Casa del Poeta Tragico,VI 8, 3.5.
Pl. XVIII. The art gallery of Martial, Lehmann 1945, fig. 1.
PI. XIX. Perseus and Andromeda on the Pompeian fresco, Museo Nazionale, Naples, 8993, Pfuhl 1923, Abb. 647.
Pl. XX. Perseus and Andromeda, lutrophoros, the end of the 4"’ century BC, Bari MA 5591, Schauenburg 1960, Taf. 24, I.
Pl. XXI. Perseus and Andromeda on the painting from Boscotrecase, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, Blanckenhagen, Alexander 1962, fig. 44.

282

Pl. XXII. Perseus and Andromeda, Pompeii, Casa del Sacerdos Amandus I 7,7, Rizzo 1929, Tav. CXIX.
Pl. XXIII. Perseus and Andromeda, Pompeii, Casa del Menandro I 10,4, A.Maiuri, La Casa del Menandro, 1932, Fig. 77.
Pl. XXIV. Somali man and his wife from Berbera, Living Races 2, p. 51.
Pl. XXV. Marble portrait of an African woman, Museo Nazionale Romano, Snowden 1970, fig. 72.
Pl. XXVI. Perseus and Andromeda looking at Gorgon’s head reflected in the pond, Museo Nazionale in Naples 8996, Curtius 1929, Abb. 150.
Pl. XXVII. Yoruba man, Living Races 1, p. 367.
Pl. XXVIII. Mulolo warrior and his wife, Central Congo, Living Races 1, p. 373
Pl. XXIX. A young couple on the mosaic from the Casa del Fauno, Pompei, VI 12, 2.
Pl. XXX. Janiform heads on the kantharos, Tarquinia, c. 510 BC, Snowden 1970, fig- 12.
Pl. XXXI. Heracles and Antaeus on the mosaic from Avenches, the 3rd century AD, Anzeiger fur Schweizerische Altertumskunde 1, 1869,6.
Pl. XXXII. Heracles and Antaeus, Mariemont Bronze, Mus. B 270 (Coll. Philip 484), Kiinzl 1968, 56, Pl. 5.
Pl. XXXIII. The Room of Heracles in Philostratus’ painting gallery. Drawing by E. Polańska.
Pl. XXXIV. The Room of Aphrodite in Philostratus’ painting gallery. Drawing by E. Polańska.
Pl. XXXV. The story of Marsyas, Pompeii V 2, 10, Peters 1963, XIX, 69.
Pl. XXXVI. Aegipans and the sleeping Heracles, Apulian chous, mif 4th century BC, Woodford 1989, Pl. IV (d).
Pl. XXXVII. Albani relief with a Pygmy (?) drinking from Heracles’ cup, Is' century AD, Herakles, T. Schreiber, Die hellenistischen Reliefbilder, 1894, Taf. 30, 1.
PI. XXXVIII. Selene and Endymion, on a 19,h century drawing from Pompeii, VII 4, 29.
Pl. XXXIX. Pygmies in hoplite armour fighting cranes on the drawing by W. Zahn, Pompeii VII 4, 31.51.
Pl. XL. Nilotic landscape on the Aventine mosaic, Museo Nazionale Romano, Rizzo 1929, Tav. XCVI.
Pl. XLI. Robert’s Marathon Poecile Painting, left part of his reconstruction, Robert 1895.
Pl. XLII. Painting on a hydria from Hermitage, Pfuhl 1923, Abb. 603.
Pl. XLIII. Sarcophagus in Brescia. Battle of Marathon, J.Zingerle, JOA110, 1907, 157.
PI. XLIV. Greeks and Amazons in battle, squat-lekythos, Aison, Monumenti antichi dei Lincei 22, 1913, Pl. 86.
Pl. XLV. Duel between a Persian and a Greek, the Oxford cup 1911.615, c. 480 BC, Schoppa 1933, 29, 6.

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Pl. XLVI. Duel on the Boston oinochoe 13.196, c. 460 BC, Schoppa 1933, 30, 3. Pl. XLVII. Duel on the New York amphora MMA 061021 117, c. 480 BC, Schoppa 1933, 30, 2.
PI. XLVIII. Persian warrior, skyphos, Berlin 3156, c. 450 BC, Greifenhagen CVA Berlin 3, Pl. 141.
Pl. XLIX. Placement of the Orientalist mosaics in the Casa del Fauno, Pompeii. Drawing by E. Polańska.
PI. L. Right half of the Alexander Mosaic. Drawing by K. Atarashi.
Pl. LI. Darius III on the Alexander Mosaic.
PL. LIL Persian aristocrat trying to tame his horse on the Alexander Mosaic,. Pl. LIII. Persian cavalryman on the Alexander Mosaic.
PI. LIV. Persian aristocrat pierced with the sarissa of Alexander the Great on the Alexander Mosaic.
Pl. LV. Thisbe commits suicide over the dead body of Pyramus from a Pompeii fresco, Casa di M. Lucretius Fronto V 4a, Rizzo 1929, Tav. CXXXIV.
Pl. LVI. The Dying Adonis on a Pompeii painting, Pfuhl 1923, Abb. 669.
Pl. LVII. Ecbatana (Hamadan) dagger, Archaeological Museum, Teheran, Ghir-shman 1964, Pl. 328.
Pl. LVIII. Amazon from the Casa dei Vetti in Pompeii, VI 15, 1.
PI. LIX. King Uthal of Hatra, 2ⁿd century BC, Mosul Museum of Iraq, Ghirsh-man 1962, fig. 100.
PL LX. Sanatruq, the King of Hatra, l-2ⁿd century AD, Baghdad Museum, Ghir-shman 1962, Pl. 105.
Pl. LXI. The Seduction of Helen on the a Pompeian wall-painting, I 7, 7, Museo Nazionale in Naples, Rizzo 1929, Tav. XCVI.
PI. LXII. Heracles and Omphale on a Pompeian mural painting, Museo Nazionale in Naples, Rizzo 1929, Tav.CXIX.
Pl. LXIII. Perseus and Andromeda, Museo Capitolino 501, T. Schreiber, Die hellenistischen Reliefbilder, 1894, Taf. 12.

Pl. II

PLI

PI. III



Pl. VI

Pl. VII

Pl. VIII

Pl. IX

Pl. XII

PI. XIII

PI. XIV

Pl. XV

Pl. XVI

Pl. XVII

PI. XVIII

PI. XIX

PI. XX

Pl. XXIII

Pl. XXIV

Pl. XXV

Pl. XXVI

Pl. XXVII

Pl. XXVIII

Pl. XXIX

Pl. XXX

PL XXXI                              PI. XXXII

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5

Al im А

Pl. XXXIII

Pl. XXXVI

Pl. XXXVIII

Pl.XXXIX

Pl. XLI

Pl. XLII

Pl. XLIII

Pl. XLV

PI. XLVI

PI. XLVII

PI. XLVIII

PLL

PI. LI                                                    PI. LII

PI. LIII

PI. L1V

PL LV                        PL LVII

PL LVI

Pl. LVIII

Pl. LIX

Pl. LX

PL LXI

Pl. LXII

PL LXIII