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Scopas in Chryse

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2015

V. R. Grace
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Extract

Certain passages in Overbeck are generally supposed to refer to a statue by Scopas of Apollo Smintheus, an aspect of the god to which classical students were probably introduced in Strabo's time as they are to-day by the old priest's prayer in the first book of the Iliad. It seems at first a not very serious suggestion that one at least of these passages reads as though the mouse alone, not the statue, were the work of Scopas. But further investigation indicates that the ambiguity is a little more than apparent, indeed real enough to have sheltered a few scholars in their endeavour to escape the difficulties and confusion of reconciling the usual interpretation of the Strabo passage with coin types of Alexandria Troas, and with what can be surmised of Scopas's style.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 52 , Issue 2 , 1932 , pp. 228 - 232
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1932

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References

1 Die Antiken Schrifiquellen zur Geschichte der bildenden Künste bei den Griechen, Nos. 1168, 1169, 1170.

2 II. I, 39. Quoted by Strabo, XIII, 604.

2a I am indebted to the Cabinet des Médailles for figs. 2 and 6; to the British Museum Department of Coins and Medals for figs. 3 and 4; and to Mr. E. T. Newell for figs. 1 and 5. I should like to make further acknowledgment to Dr. Charles Morgan, of Amhurst College, to Dr. H. M. Sanders of Bryn Mawr College, and to Dr. Oscar Broneer of the American School at Athens.

3 See e.g. BMC. Troas, Pl. III, 6, Pl. IV, 1, 2, 5, Pl. V, 3–6, 10–14, 16–18, Pl. VI, 1, 9, 10. See also illustrations in Baumeister, iii, p. 1669–70, in Gardner, Types of Greek Coins, etc.

4 See Wroth, in BMC. Troas, p. xvi, and Weil in Baumeister, iii, p. 1670 Google Scholar.

5 E.g. Baumeister, iii, p. 1669, fig. 1737.

6 E.g. ibid., p. 1670, fig. 1741, and Wroth, op. cit., Pl. III, no. 6. (See text, p. 9, for description and enumeration. The creature is, of course, not represented on the coin as actually under the foot of the statue, or we should not see it.)

7 Types of Greek Coins, p. 177.

8 Op. cit., p. xvii.

9 Cults of the Greek States, IV, p. 346.

10 Discussed by Weil, Baumeister, iii, p. 1670.

11 Sculpture and Sculptors of the Greeks, p. 206; 2nd ed., p. 272.

12 P. 524.

13 Scopas, Leben und Werke (Greifswald, 1863), p. 112.

14 Beside the Hesychius gloss here quoted, we have the following from Strabo, still on p. 604: ‘Heracleides of Pontus says that the mice which swarmed round the temple were regarded as sacred, and that for this reason the image was designed with its foot upon the mouse.’ (Loeb edition, the text reading ).

15 Leaf, , on p. 242 of Strabo on the Troad (Cambridge, 1923)Google Scholar, quotes from Frazer, Pausanias, II, p. 69 Google Scholar (not 59 as in his text): ‘Strabo applies the word to the gold and ivory statue of Zeus by Phidias at Olympia; to the gold and ivory statue of Hera by Polyclitus at the Heraeum; to the marble statue of Nemesis at Rhamnus, and to the statue of Sminthian Apollo by Scopas at Chryse, which was almost certainly of marble (see Brunn, , Gesch. der Griech. Künstler, i, p. 325 Google Scholar).’ The evidence for which Brunn is quoted is simply that marble was what Scopas worked in. The statue of Nemesis, the only certain marble mentioned, seems to have taken over a good deal of the venerable into its fifth-century edition—witness the motive on the crown, the meaning of which was certainly lost on Pausanias. (Paus. I, 33, 3: ‘On the head of the goddess is a crown ornamented with deers and small figures of Victory.’—Frazer's translation.)

16 Johnson, (Lysippos, pp. 142–3Google Scholar) rejects as a cult image the corresponding statue of Isthmian Poseidon by Lysippos.

17 No. 1170 (Menander Rhet., in Rhetores Graeci, ed. Spengel, Vol. III, p. 445). The rhetoric student is to compare the statue with those of Olympian Zeus and Athena on the Acropolis at Athens, and to add, ‘What Phidias, what Daedalus, wrought so great a xoanon? Perhaps this statue slid from heaven, etc.’ Scopas is not mentioned.

18 Starting from the Isthmian Poseidon. For a summary of the evidence there see Johnson, , Lysippos, pp. 143 Google Scholar fol.

19 Gardner, op. cit., p. 177.

19a That such ‘mikrotechnik’ was practised by great artists of the best period, witness Overbeck, 776 and 777. The former is taken from a letter of the Emperor Julian, from a translation of which I quote (Loeb edition, Vol. III, p. 225):—

‘For it is possible for much to be revealed in little. Nay even Pheidias the wise artist not only became famous for his statue at Olympia or at Athens, but he knew also how to confine a work of great art within the limits of a small piece of sculpture; for instance, they say that his grasshopper and bee, and, if you please, his fly also, were of this sort; for every one of these, though naturally composed of bronze, through his artistic skill became a living thing.’

20 Strabo, p. 604.

21 See Farnell, loc. cit., and Aelian, (Nat. An. XII) quoted by Leaf, op. cit., p. 243. See further Leaf, pp. 244–245, on the cult and the reason for it.

22 Overbeck, no. 1170.

23 Loc. cit.

24 Troas, Pl. III, 6. Dated (with others not illustrated) about 300 B.C.

25 Ibid., Pl. XI, 2. Dated about 400–310 B.C.

26 Dated uncertainly A.D. in the new Liddell and Scott.

27 Leaf, op. cit., p. 242.

28 Dinsmoor's chronological list of temples, included in his new edition of Anderson and Spiers, dates the splendid new temple on this site ‘c 250,’ a date one would like to change. But need this exclude an earlier designed by Scopas?

29 Studien über Skopas, p. 7.