Part 11

In short, we may, I think, take it as a safe criterion that all artists who employed the ἐποίησε, the definite past tense, flourished long after the time of Alexander the Great, either under the empire or shortly before. Of Cleomenes this is unquestionably true; highly probable of Archelaus; and of Salpion the contrary, at least, cannot be proved. So also of the rest, not excepting Athenodorus.

Let Winkelmann himself decide. But I protest beforehand against the converse of the proposition. If all who employed the ἐποίησε belong among the later artists, not all who have used the ἐποίει are to be reckoned among the earliest. Some of the more recent artists also may have really possessed this becoming modesty, and by others it may have been assumed.

XXVIII.

Next to his judgment of the Laocoon, I was curious to know what Winkelmann would say of the so-called Borghese Gladiator. I think I have made a discovery with regard to this statue, and I rejoice in it with all a discoverer’s delight.

I feared lest Winkelmann should have anticipated me, but there is nothing of the kind in his work. If ought could make me doubt the correctness of my conjecture, it would be the fact that my alarm was uncalled for.

“Some critics,” says Winkelmann,[186] “take this statue for that of a discobolus, that is, of a person throwing a disc or plate of metal. This opinion was expressed by the famous Herr von Stosch in a paper addressed to me. But he cannot have sufficiently studied the position which such a figure would assume. A person in the act of throwing must incline his body backward, with the weight upon the right thigh, while the left leg is idle. Here the contrary is the case. The whole figure is thrown forward, and rests on the left thigh while the right leg is stretched backward to its full extent. The right arm is new, and a piece of a lance has been placed in the hand. On the left can be seen the strap that held the shield. The fact that the head and eyes are turned upward and that the figure seems to be protecting himself with the shield against some danger from above would rather lead us to consider this statue as representing a soldier who had especially distinguished himself in some position of peril. The Greeks probably never paid their gladiators the honor of erecting them a statue; and this work, moreover, seems to have been made previous to the introduction of gladiators into Greece.”

The criticism is perfectly just. The statue is no more a gladiator than it is a discobolus, but really represents a soldier who distinguished himself in this position on occasion of some great danger. After this happy guess, how could Winkelmann help going a step further? Why did he not think of that warrior who in this very attitude averted the destruction of a whole army, and to whom his grateful country erected a statue in the same posture?

The statue, in short, is Chabrias.

This is proved by the following passage from Nepos’ life of that commander:—[187]

“Hic quoque in summis habitus est ducibus; resque multas memoria dignas gessit. Sed ex his elucet maxime inventum ejus in prœlio, quod apud Thebas fecit, quum Bœotiis subsidio venisset. Namque in eo victoriæ fidente summo duce Agesilao, fugatis jam ab eo conductitiis catervis, reliquam phalangem loco vetuit cedere, obnixoque genu scuto, projectaque hasta impetum excipere hostium docuit. Id novum Agesilaus contuens, progredi non est ausus suosque jam incurrentes tuba revocavit. Hoc usque eo tota Græcia fama celebratum est, ut illo statu Chabrias sibi statuam fieri voluerit, quæ publice ei ab Atheniensibus in foro constituta est. Ex quo factum est, ut postea athletæ, ceterique artifices his statibus in statuis ponendis uterentur in quibus victoriam essent adepti.”

The reader will hesitate a moment, I know, before yielding his assent; but, I hope, only for a moment. The attitude of Chabrias appears to be not exactly that of the Borghese statue. The thrusting forward of the lance, “projecta hasta,” is common to both; but commentators explain the “obnixo genu scuto” to be “obnixo genu in scutum,” “obfirmato genu ad scutum.” Chabrias is supposed to have showed his men how to brace the knee against the shield and await the enemy behind this bulwark, whereas the statue holds the shield aloft. But what if the commentators are wrong, and instead of “obnixo genu scuto” belonging together, “obnixo genu” were meant to be read by itself and “scuto” alone, or in connection with the “projectaque hasta,” which follows? The insertion of a single comma makes the correspondence perfect. The statue is a soldier, “qui obnixo genu,[188] scuto projectaque hasta impetum hostis excipit,” who, with firmly set knee, and shield and lance advanced, awaits the approach of the enemy. It shows what Chabrias did, and is the statue of Chabrias. That a comma belongs here is proved by the “que” affixed to the “projecta,” which would be superfluous if “obnixo genu scuto” belonged together, and has, therefore, been actually omitted in some editions.

The great antiquity which this interpretation assigns to the statue is confirmed by the shape of the letters in the inscription. These led Winkelmann himself to the conclusion that this was the oldest of the statues at present existing in Rome on which the master had written his name. I leave it to his critical eye to detect, if possible, in the style of the workmanship any thing which conflicts with my opinion. Should he bestow his approval, I may flatter myself on having furnished a better example than is to be found in Spence’s whole folio of the happy manner in which the classic authors can be explained by the old masterpieces, and in turn throw light upon them.

XXIX.

Winkelmann has brought to his work, together with immense reading and an extensive and subtle knowledge of art, that noble confidence of the old masters which led them to devote all their attention to the main object, treating all secondary matters with what seems like studied neglect, or abandoning them altogether to any chance hand.

A man may take no little credit to himself for having committed only such errors as anybody might have avoided. They force themselves upon our notice at the first hasty reading; and my only excuse for commenting on them is that I would remind a certain class of persons, who seem to think no one has eyes but themselves, that they are trifles not worthy of comment.

In his writings on the imitation of the Greek works of art, Winkelmann had before allowed himself to be misled by Junius, who is, indeed, a very deceptive author. His whole work is a cento, and since his rule is to quote the ancients in their very words, he not infrequently applies to painting passages which in their original connection had no bearing whatever on the subject. When, for instance, Winkelmann would tell us that the highest effect in art, as in poetry, cannot be attained by the mere imitation of nature, and that poet as well as painter should choose an impossibility which carries probability with it rather than what is simply possible, he adds: “This is perfectly consistent with Longinus’ requirement of possibility and truth from the painter in opposition to the incredibility which he requires from the poet.” Yet the addition was unfortunate, for it shows a seeming contradiction between the two great art critics which really does not exist. Longinus never said what is here attributed to him. Something similar he does say with regard to eloquence and poetry, but by no means of poetry and painting. Ὡς δ’ ἕτερόν τι ἡ ῥητορικὴ φαντασία βούλεται, καὶ ἕτερον ἡ παρὰ ποιηταῖς, οὐκ ἂν λάθοι σε, οὐδ’ ὅτι τῆς μὲν ἐν ποιήσει τέλος ἐστὶν ἔκπληξις, τῆς δ’ ἐν λόγοις ἐνάργεια, he writes to his friend Terentian;[189] and again, Οὐ μὴν ἀλλὰ τὰ μὲν παρὰ τοῖς ποιηταῖς μυθικωτέραν ἔχει τὴν ὑπερέκπτωσιν, καὶ πάντη τὸ πιστὸν ὑπεραίρουσαν· τῆς δὲ ῥητορικῆς φαντασίας, κάλλιστον ἀεὶ τὸ ἔμπρακτον καὶ ἐνάληθές.[190]

But Junius interpolates here painting instead of oratory, and it was in his writings, not in those of Longinus, that Winkelmann read: “Præsertim cum poeticæ phantasiæ finis sit ἔκπληξις, pictoriæ vero, ἐνάργεια, καὶ τὰ μὲν παρὰ τοῖς ποιηταῖς, ut loquitur idem Longinus,” &c.[191] The words of Longinus, to be sure, but not his meaning.

The same must have been the case with the following remark:[192] “All motions and attitudes of Greek figures which were too wild and fiery to be in accordance with the character of wisdom, were accounted as faults by the old masters and classed by them under the general name of _parenthyrsus_.” The old masters? There can be no authority for that except Junius. _Parenthyrsus_ was a word used in rhetoric, and, as a passage in Longinus would seem to show, even there peculiar to Theodorus.[193] Τούτῳ παρακεῖται τρίτον τι κακίας εἶδος ἐν τοῖς παθητικοῖς, ὅπερ ὁ Θεόδωρος παρένθυρσον ἐκάλει· ἔστι δὲ πάθος ἄκαιρον καὶ κενόν, ἔνθα μὴ δεῖ πάθους· ἢ ἄμετρον, ἔνθα μετρίου δεῖ.

I doubt, indeed, whether this word can be translated into the language of painting. For in oratory and poetry pathos can be carried to extreme without becoming _parenthyrsus_, which is only the extreme of pathos in the wrong place. But in painting the extreme of pathos would always be _parenthyrsus_, whatever its excuse in the circumstances of the persons concerned.

So, also, various errors in the “History of Art” have arisen solely from Winkelmann’s haste in accepting Junius instead of consulting the original authors. When, for instance, he is citing examples to show that excellence in all departments of art and labor was so highly prized by the Greeks, that the best workman, even on an insignificant thing, might immortalize his name, he brings forward this among others:[194] “We know the name of a maker of very exact balances or scales; he was called Parthenius.” Winkelmann must have read the words of Juvenal, “lances Parthenio factas,” which he here appeals to, only in Junius’s catalogue. Had he looked up the original passage in Juvenal, he would not have been misled by the double meaning of the word “lanx,” but would at once have seen from the connection that the poet was not speaking of balances or scales, but of plates and dishes. Juvenal is praising Catullus for throwing overboard his treasures during a violent storm at sea, in order to save the ship and himself. In his description of these treasures, he says:—

Ille nec argentum dubitabat mittere, lances Parthenio factas, urnæ cratera capacem Et dignum sitiente Pholo, vel conjuge Fusci. Adde et bascaudas et mille escaria, multum Cælati, biberet quo callidus emtor Olynthi.

What can the “lances” be which are here standing among drinking-cups and bowls, but plates and dishes? And what does Juvenal mean, except that Catullus threw overboard his whole silver table-service, including plates made by Parthenius. “Parthenius,” says the old scholiast, “cœlatoris nomen” (the name of the engraver). But when Grangäus, in his annotations, appends to this name, “sculptor, de quo Plinius” (sculptor spoken of by Pliny), he must have been writing at random, for Pliny speaks of no artist of that name.

“Yes,” continues Winkelmann, “even the name of the saddler, as we should call him, has been preserved, who made the leather shield of Ajax.” This he cannot have derived from the source to which he refers his readers,—the life of Homer, by Herodotus. Here, indeed, the lines from the Iliad are quoted wherein the poet applies to this worker in leather the name Tychius. But it is at the same time expressly stated that this was the name of a worker in leather of Homer’s acquaintance, whose name he thus introduced in token of his friendship and gratitude.[195]

Ἀπέδωκε δὲ χάριν καὶ Τυχίῳ τῷ σκύτει. ὃς ἐδέξατο αὐτὸν ἐν τῷ Νέῳ τείχει, προσελθόντα πρὸς τὸ σκύτειον, ἐν τοῖς ἔπεσι καταζεύξας ἐν τῇ Ἰλιάδι τοῖσδε:

Αἴας δ’ ἐγγύθεν ἦλθε, φέρων σάκος ἠΰτε πύργον, χάλκεον, ἑπταβόειον· ὅ οἱ Τύχιος κάμε τεύχων σκυτοτόμων ὄχ’ ἄριστος, Ὕλῃ ἔνι οἰκία ναίων·[196]

Here we have exactly the opposite of what Winkelmann asserts. So utterly forgotten, even in Homer’s time, was the name of the saddler who made the shield of Ajax, that the poet was at liberty to substitute that of a perfect stranger.

Various other little errors I have found which are mere slips of memory, or concern things introduced merely as incidental illustrations.

For instance, it was Hercules, not Bacchus, who, as Parrhasius boasts, appeared to him in the same shape he had given him on the canvas.[197]

Tauriscus was not from Rhodes, but from Tralles, in Lydia.[198]

The Antigone was not the first tragedy of Sophocles.[199]

But I refrain from multiplying such trifles.

Censoriousness it could not be taken for; but to those who know my great respect for Winkelmann it might seem trifling.

NOTES TO THE LAOCOON.

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.

The common translation of Winshem renders the lines thus:—

Ventis expositus et pedibus captus Nullum cohabitatorem Nec vicinum ullum saltem malum habens, apud quem gemitum mutuum. Gravemque ac cruentum Ederet.

The translation of Thomas Johnson differs from this only in the choice of words:—

Ubi ipse ventis erat expositus, firmum gradum non habens, Nec quenquam indigenarum, Nec malum vicinum, apud quem ploraret Vehementur edacem Sanguineum morbum, mutuo gemitu.

One might think he had borrowed these words from the translation of Thomas Naogeorgus, who expresses himself thus (his work is very rare, and Fabricius himself knew it only through Operin’s Catalogue):—

... ubi expositus fuit Ventis ipse, gradum firmum haud habens, Nec quenquam indigenam, nec vel malum Vicinum, ploraret apud quem Vehementer edacem atque cruentum Morbum mutuo.

If these translations are correct, the chorus pronounces the strongest possible eulogy on human society. The wretch has no human being near him; he knows of no friendly neighbor; even a bad one would have been happiness. Thomson, then, might have had this passage in mind when he puts these words into the mouth of his Melisander, who was likewise abandoned by ruffians on a desert island:—

Cast on the wildest of the Cyclad isles Where never human foot had marked the shore, These ruffians left me; yet believe me, Arcas, Such is the rooted love we bear mankind, All ruffians as they were, I never heard A sound so dismal as their parting oars.