Hostname: page-component-7479d7b7d-68ccn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-07-12T00:26:47.407Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Homeric Art1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 October 2013

J. L. Myres
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

The phrase ‘Homeric Art’ is ambiguous. It may mean either the poet's description of works of art familiar to himself and his audience, or transmitted to them as the furniture of the legends; or the poet's own style of presentation, in relation to other modes of craftsmanship in his time. There is also the reproduction, by painting or otherwise, of episodes from the poems, and as these may be contemporary as well as later, the study of them merges in that of Homeric representations, either of scenes of combat, or of the wild life which inspired so many of the similes.

Type
Research Article
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 45 , November 1950 , pp. 229 - 260
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1950

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

2 Payne, Necrocorinthia, pl. 34, 5.

3 FR, pl. 13.

4 CVA Italia I, pl. 4.

5 Buschor, , Griechische Vasenmalerei (1925), 44, fig. 28.Google Scholar

6 Buschor, 49, fig. 57.

7 Buschor, 28, fig. 33.

8 Buschor, 53, fig. 62.

9 BSA XLII, pl. 18A.

10 MuZ, nos. 64–5.

11 Buschor, 18, fig. 18.

12 Artemis Orthia, pls. CIX–CX.

13 Bossert, 400 e.

14 AJA LI, 273.

15 AJA XLI, 88; Swedish Cypr. Exped. IV, 2, 186.

16 IX, 40–1.

17 Nilsson, , Myc. Origins of Gk. Mytholoey (1932), 47.Google Scholar

18 PM III, fig. 79, 80 b.

19 l. 282.

20 l. 308.

21 Minns, Scythians and Greeks, Index, s.v. ‘Bells’.

22 Bossert, 449.

23 Ibid., 243–7, 344.

24 Ibid., 259–60.

25 For the fundamental principle of Minoan art, see Matz, Die Frühkretischen Siegel, especially the contrasts with Egyptian and with Mesopotamian art.

26 Bossert, 224, 245, 246.

27 Ibid., 230.

28 Ibid., 450.

29 Ibid., 170–71.

30 Ibid., 231.

31 PM I, 544–7.

32 Bossert, 445.

33 Ibid., 239, 246.

34 Ibid., 168–9.

35 Ibid., 233–5.

36 PM II, 46–65, pls. XVI–XVIII.

37 Bossert, 271–75.

38 Ibid., 276–81.

39 Ibid., 38–9.

40 Ibid., 43.

41 Bossert, 243.

42 Ibid., 244.

43 Ibid., 344.

44 Ibid., 456–58, 475–83.

45 To describe Minoan representative art as ‘frieze art’ is not inconsistent with the presentation of it by Matz, Die Frühkretischen Siegel, as a free-field style capable of extension equally in two dimensions, i.e. width and height: compare Furumark's contrast between ‘zonal’ and ‘unit’ compositions. This free-field quality is fundamental, and is well illustrated both on the earlier pottery, in the frequent diaper-patterns, such as the tomb-ceiling at Orcho-menus, and on some of the Palace frescoes. But, in practice, limitations of height in buildings and the use of the wheel in pot-making restricted extension upwards and downwards, while leaving it free laterally. Where both dimensions are limited, as on the seal-stones, there is often neither top nor side: as on the seal-stones, there is often neither top nor side: an animal, for instance, is coiled with its feet on the circular margin, and background scenery appears above and below, as in the larger landscapes.

46 Bossert, 458, 482–3.

47 Myres, , JHS LXI, 17–38Google Scholar; for the converse view that the poem borrows from the vase-paintings, see Cook, R. M., CR 1937, 204–14, and footnote 98 below.Google Scholar

48 E.g. a tin flask in the Ashmolean Museum, of the XVIII Dynasty.

49 Bossert, 148.

50 Cf. Furumark, , Eranos XLIV, 41–53, who takes a different view.Google Scholar

51 Bossert, 57–60.

52 Ibid., 491.

52a Benton, , BSA XXXV, 58–9, fig. 15, pl. II.Google Scholar Cf. ibid., 88–9.

53 I Kings, vii, 27–37; Burney, Kings, 91–2; Myres, , PEQ 1948, 38Google Scholar; Brit. Mus. Exe. Cypr., fig. 18 (the best dated, from Enkomi in Cyprus, not later than 1200 B.C.); Furtwängler, , Sitzb. k. Bayr Akad. Wiss. (ph. hist. Kl.) II, 3, 1899 (the most perfect).Google Scholar

54 Brit. Mus. Exc. Cypr., pls. VIII–XII, bulkheads 244, 403, 452–3; Myres, Cesnoio Coli. Handbook (N.Y.), nos. 3116–35.

55 Ohnefalsch-Richter, Kypros, the Bible, and Homer, pl. CLXII, 9, CLXXXII, 1; Cesnola, L. P., Cyprus, pl. 54; Myres, and Ohnefalsch-Richter, , Cyprus Museum Catalogue (1899), pl. VII, no. 8003Google Scholar; Myres, Cesnola Coll. Handbook, nos. 3162–75; Helbig, Hom. Epos 2, 274, figs. 97–98 (Etruria).

56 Cypr. Mus. Cat., 4023.

57 Ohnefalsch-Richter, Kypros, the Bible, and Homer, pl. XI, 4, 5, 6; XXXIII, 3; LXVIII, 13; XCIII, 2; CCX, 4; jewellery, XXXVIII, 18, 19; LXVII, 7, 12.

58 Bossert, 236.

59 Ibid., 385.

60 Swedish Cypr. Exped., III, 399 ff.

61 Hdt. V, 113.

62 Brit. Mus., Exc. Cypr., 27, figs. 58–60.

63 Myres, , JHS 1906, 84 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

64 III, 18.

65 Les Poèmes Homériques (Paris 1948), ch. iv.

66 Randall-Maclver, Villanovans and Etruscans, pl. 31, 10; Montelius, Civ. Prim, en Italie, pl. 295.

67 Bossert, 491.

68 Heinemann, Margaret, Landschaftliche Elemente in der griech. Kunst bis Polygnot, Bonn, 1910, quoted by Nilsson, , Homer and Mycenae, 126, n. 2.Google Scholar

69 Homer and Mycenae, 125.

70 Evans, , PM IV, 188, 195 and Index s.v. ‘Addermark’.Google Scholar

71 In modern Greek is a tablefork.

72 Montelius, Civ. Prim, en Italie, pl. 51, 4.

73 Montelius, ibid., pl. 51, 4.

74 Montelius, ibid., pl. 295, 6.

75 Maclver, Villanovans and Etruscans, 164, fig. 67; cf. Montelius, op. cit., pl. 371, 1–2. Three examples, Vetulonia (Lictor Tomb), Maclver, op. cit., pl. 28, 4. From Olympia is a lion resting on hinge and catch- plate, with two pins, Blinkenberg, Fib. grecques et or., 35, 280, fig. 319. Several lions from Sparta, Artemis Orthia, pl. LXXXVIII ff.

76 Maclver, op. cit., fig. 67.

77 Helbig, Epos 2, 277–8, figs. 99–100. Nilsson, Homer and Mycenae, 124, fig. 27, top.

78 Artemis Orthia, pl. CXLIX ff.

79 Maclver, op. cit., pl. 40, 6.

80 They are relatively frequent in the Iliad; other examples are Il. XV, 362; XVI, 157; XVII, 725; XVIII, 318; XXI, 257; XXIII, 234.

81 Bossert, 168–9.

82 Bossert, 398.

83 Bossert, 77.

84 Bossert, 276–81.

85 JHS 1890, pl. 1, 2; Johansen, Les vases sicyoniens, pl. 31.

86 Bossert, 271–3.

87 Metr. Mus. of Art, New York, Handbook to the Cesnola Collection, no. 1368.

88 Ibid., nos. 1092–1100; 1360; 4224.

89 Ibid., no. 1843.

90 Brit. Mus. Exe. Cyprus, pl. 1.

91 Pausanias V, 17–19; cf. JHS LXVI, 122.

92 JHS at press.

93 Compare Dr. J. T. Sheppard's analysis of the Pattern of the Iliad (1922), and my own article JHS LII, 264–96.

94 Pliny N.H. VIII, 77.

95 Herodotus, V, 58.

96 Bossert, 168–9.

97 Bossert, 398 e.

98 MrCook, R. M. (CR 1937, 204–14) draws the converse conclusion, that the poet of the Shield selected subjects that were popular with the vase-painters. But on the same hypothesis, did the poet of the Iliad collect the death of Euphorbus (Il. XVII, 59–81) from the ‘Rhodian’ plate?Google Scholar

99 Z.f. Gymnasialwesen LXIV, Oct. 1940, 612–19.

100 Bossen, 231.

101 JHS XXXII, 277–97.

102 Miriaux, E., Les Poèmes homériques, I, Paris 1948, 249.Google Scholar

103 A. Meillet, Origines indo-européennes des mètres grecs.

104 Op. cit., I, 334–47, 350. Cf. Ch. Autran, Les origines sacerdotales de la poésie homérique.

105 Opera I54–73.

106 Hesiod, Th. 79, 100.

106a FR Il, pl. 88.

107 The Pattern ojthe Iliad (1922).

108 JHS LII, 264–96, esp. 268–90. Figs. 1–4 are reprinted here.

109 JHS, in press.

110 Myres, ProcBritAc, 1949, in press.

111 Myres, The Father of History, in press.

112 Hdt. II, 53.

113 For Anatolia, see Bossert, Alt-Anatolien (1942), 1066–1078.

114 Gardner-Roberts, , Manual of Greek Inscriptions I, 514, no. 390Google Scholar; Kirchner, , Imagines Inscr. Aitic. 2 (1948), pl. I, 1.Google Scholar

115 I quote Jackson Knight's paraphrase, London, 1949.