Note 1, p. 8.
Antiochus (Anthol. lib. ii. cap. 4). Hardouin, in his commentary on
Pliny (lib. xxxv. sect. 36), attributes this epigram to a certain Piso.
But among all the Greek epigrammatists there is none of this name.
Note 2, p. 9.
For this reason Aristotle commanded that his pictures should not be
shown to young persons, in order that their imagination might be kept as
free as possible from all disagreeable images. (Polit. lib. viii. cap.
5, p. 526, edit. Conring.) Boden, indeed, would read Pausanias in this
passage instead of Pauson, because that artist is known to have painted
lewd figures (de Umbra poetica comment. 1, p. xiii). As if we needed a
philosophic law-giver to teach us the necessity of keeping from youth
such incentives to wantonness! A comparison of this with the well-known
passage in the “Art of Poesy” would have led him to withhold his
conjecture. There are commentators, as Kühn on Ælian (Var. Hist. lib.
iv. cap. 3), who suppose the difference mentioned by Aristotle as
existing between Polygnotus, Dionysius, and Pauson to consist in this:
that Polygnotus painted gods and heroes; Dionysius, men; and Pauson,
animals. They all painted human figures; and the fact that Pauson once
painted a horse, does not prove him to have been a painter of animals as
Boden supposes him to have been. Their rank was determined by the degree
of beauty they gave their human figures; and the reason that Dionysius
could paint nothing but men, and was therefore called pre-eminently the
anthropographist, was that he copied too slavishly, and could not rise
into the domain of the ideal beneath which it would have been blasphemy
to represent gods and heroes.
Note 3, p. 11.
The serpent has been erroneously regarded as the peculiar symbol of a
god of medicine. But Justin Martyr expressly says (Apolog. ii. p. 55,
edit. Sylburgh), παρά παντὶ τῶν νομιζομένων παρ’ ὑμῖν θεῶν, ὄφις
σύμβολον μέγα καὶ μυστήριον ἀναγράφεται; and a number of monuments might
be mentioned where the serpent accompanies deities having no connection
with health.
Note 4, p. 12.
Look through all the works of art mentioned by Pliny, Pausanias, and the
rest, examine all the remaining statues, bas-reliefs, and pictures of
the ancients, and nowhere will you find a fury. I except figures that
are rather symbolical than belonging to art, such as those generally
represented on coins. Yet Spence, since he insisted on having furies,
would have done better to borrow them from coins than introduce them by
an ingenious conceit into a work where they certainly do not exist.
(Seguini Numis. p. 178. Spanheim, de Præst. Numism. Dissert. xiii. p.
639. Les Césars de Julien, par Spanheim, p. 48.) In his Polymetis he
says (dial. xvi.): “Though furies are very uncommon in the works of the
ancient artists, yet there is one subject in which they are generally
introduced by them. I mean the death of Meleager, in the relievos of
which they are often represented as encouraging or urging Althæa to burn
the fatal brand on which the life of her only son depended. Even a
woman’s resentment, you see, could not go so far without a little help
from the devil. In a copy of one of these relievos, published in the
‘Admiranda,’ there are two women standing by the altar with Althæa, who
are probably meant for furies in the original, (for who but furies would
assist at such a sacrifice?) though the copy scarce represents them
horrid enough for that character. But what is most to be observed in
that piece is the round disc beneath the centre of it, with the evident
head of a fury upon it. This might be what Althæa addressed her prayers
to whenever she wished ill to her neighbors, or whenever she was going
to do any very evil action. Ovid introduces her as invoking the furies
on this occasion in particular, and makes her give more than one reason
for her doing so.” (Metamorph. viii. 479.)
In this way we might make every thing out of any thing. “Who but
furies,” asks Spence, “would have assisted at such a sacrifice?” I
answer, the maid-servants of Althæa, who had to kindle and feed the
fire. Ovid says (Metamorph. viii.):—
Protulit hunc (stipitem) genetrix, tædasque in fragmina poni
Imperat, et positis inimicos admovet ignes.
“The mother brought the brand and commands torches to be placed upon the
pieces, and applies hostile flame to the pile.”
Both figures have actually in their hands these “tædas,” long pieces of
pine, such as the ancients used for torches, and one, as her attitude
shows, has just broken such a piece. As little do I recognize a fury
upon the disc towards the middle of the work. It is a face expressive of
violent pain,—doubtless the head of Meleager himself (Metamorph. viii.
515).
Inscius atque absens flamma Meleagros in illa
Uritur; et cæcis torreri viscera sentit
Ignibus; et magnos superat virtute dolores.
“Meleager, absent and unconscious, is consumed in that fire, and feels
his bowels parched with the unseen flames; yet with courage he subdues
the dreadful pains.”
The artist used this as an introduction to the next incident of the same
story,—the death of Meleager. What Spence makes furies, Montfaucon took
to be fates, with the exception of the head upon the disc, which he also
calls a fury. Bellori leaves it undecided whether they are fates or
furies. An “or” which sufficiently proves that they are neither the one
nor the other. Montfaucon’s further interpretation should have been
clearer. The female figure resting on her elbows by the bed, he should
have called Cassandra, not Atalanta. Atalanta is the one sitting in a
grieving attitude with her back towards the bed. The artist has very
wisely turned her away from the family, as being only the beloved, not
the wife, of Meleager, and because her distress at a calamity of which
she had been the innocent cause must have exasperated his family.
Note 5, p. 14.
He thus describes the degrees of sadness actually expressed by
Timanthes: “Calchantem tristem, mæstum Ulyssem, clamantem Ajacem,
lamentantem Menelaum.” Ajax screaming would have been extremely ugly,
and since neither Cicero nor Quintilian, when speaking of this picture,
so describe him, I shall venture with the less hesitation to consider
this an addition with which Valerius has enriched the canvas from his
own invention.
Note 6, p. 15.
We read in Pliny (lib. 34, sect. 19): “Eundem [Myro] vicit et Pythagoras
Leontinus, qui fecit statiodromon Astylon, qui Olympiæ ostenditur: et
Libyn puerum tenentem tabulam, eodem loco, et mala ferentem nudum.
Syracusis autem claudicantem: cujus hulceris dolorem sentire etiam
spectantes videntur.” “Pythagoras Leontinus surpassed him (Myro). He
made the statue of the runner, Astylon, which is exhibited at Olympia,
and in the same place a Libyan boy holding a tablet, and a rude statue
bearing apples; but at Syracuse a limping figure, the pain of whose sore
the beholders themselves seem to feel.” Let us examine these last words
more closely. Is there not evident reference here to some person well
known as having a painful ulcer? “Cujus hulceris,” &c. And shall that
“cujus” be made to refer simply to the “claudicantem,” and the
“claudicantem,” perhaps, to the still more remote “puerum?” No one had
more reason to be known by such a malady than Philoctetes. I read,
therefore, for “claudicantem,” “Philoctetem,” or, at least, both
together, “Philoctetem claudicantem,” supposing that, as the words were
so similar in sound, one had crowded out the other. Sophocles represents
him as στίβον κατ’ ἀνάγκην ἕρπειν, compelled to drag his limping gait,
and his not being able to tread as firmly on his wounded foot would have
occasioned a limp.
Note 7, p. 24.
When the chorus perceives Philoctetes under this accumulation of
miseries, his helpless solitude seems the circumstance that chiefly
touches them. We hear in every word the social Greek. With regard to one
passage, however, I have my doubts. It is this:—
Ἵν’ αὐτὸς ἦν πρόσουρος οὐκ ἔχων βάσιν,
οὐδέ τιν’ ἐγχώρων,
κακογείτονα παρ’ ᾧ στόνον ἀντίτυπον
βαρυβρῶτ’ ἀποκλαύ—
σειεν αἱματηρόν.
Lit.: I myself, my only neighbor, having no power to walk, nor any
companion, a neighbor in ill, to whom I might wail forth my echoing,
gnawing groans, bloodstained.