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Pausanias' attitude to antiquities1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2013

K. W. Arafat
Affiliation:
King's College London

Abstract

This article examines the criteria by which the periegete Pausanias selected the objects he discussed. His interest in manifestations of age in the material of artefacts, in their technique, and in their design is considered as a basis for his distinction between the recent and distant past. The historical and social background to his writings is also considered.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1992

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References

2 On art criticism and art history in antiquity in general, see Pollitt 9–84, including sections on Pliny (73–81), and Quintilian and Cicero (81–4). On Pliny see Jex-Blake, K. and Sellers, E., The Elder Pliny's Chapters on the History of Art (London, 1896)Google Scholar, introduction, esp. xiii–xiv, xlvi–ii. On Lucian see Jones, C. P., Culture and Society in Lucian (Harvard, 1986)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Delz, J., Lukians Kenntniss der athenischen Antiquitäten (Freibourg, 1950)Google Scholar, with reviews by Oliver, J. H., AJP 62 (1951), 216–19Google Scholar, and Hopper, R. J., CR 66 (1952), 47–8.Google Scholar Also n. 4 below.

3 Habicht 142.

4 On Douris and the tradition of art-criticism in the Hellenistic and early Roman periods, see Frazer i, pp. xxxiii–iv, lxxxii–xc; Pollitt 9–10, 60–6, 73–84.

5 Snodgrass, A. M., An Archaeology of Greece: The Present State and Future Scope of a Discipline (California, 1987), 77.Google Scholar

6 ‘Panhellenion I’ and ‘II’.

7 ‘Panhellenion I’, 104.

8 ‘Panhellenion II’, 104. The opposite view is hinted at by Snodgrass (n. 5), 76–7.

9 ‘Panhellenion II’, 93–4, on the interest in antiquarianism among Ephesians, Pergamenes, and Smyrnaeans.

10 Ibid. 104.

11 Pollitt 10.

12 Habicht xi–xii; cf. 165–75.

13 e.g. i. 5. 4, ii. 27. 5, iv. 31. 10, viii. 26. 7, ix. 2. 7.

14 e.g. x. 9. 2 at Delphi; v. 21. 1, vi. 1. 2 at Olympia; i. 39. 3 at Athens; iii. 11. 1 at Sparta; ii. 13. 3 at Phleious.

15 Habicht 134–5 and n. 74.

16 Pollitt 45.

17 vii. 5. 3–8. This is taken to refer to the late II B style by Strong, D. E., Roman Art (Harmondsworth, 1976), 94–6Google Scholar; Bastet, F. L. and de Vos, M., Proposta per una classificazione del terzo stile Pompeiano (Gravenhage, 1979)Google Scholar; Zanker, P., The Power of Images in the Age of Augustus (Michigan, 1988), 279.Google Scholar It has also been suggested that the third style is being attacked (e.g. Liversidge, J., in Henig, M. (ed.), A Handbook of Roman Art (Oxford, 1983), 101).Google Scholar

18 It is noteworthy that in defending the Nymphaeum, it is its practicality that Lucian stresses (Peregrinus, 19), and that he discusses it in order to attack Peregrinus rather than for its own sake. The passage is discussed by Walker, S., ‘Roman nymphaca in the Greek world’, in Macready, S. and Thompson, F. H. (eds.), Roman Architecture in the Greek World (London, 1987), 60–1Google Scholar; also by Jones (n. 2), 125. On Lucian's attitudes to past and present in general, see Jones, esp. 150–9.

19 Select Passages from Ancient Writers Illustrative of the History of Greek Sculpture (London, 1895; rev. A. N. Oikonomides, Chicago, 1966), xxvi.

20 The meaning of the phrase is discussed by Pollitt 27; on the art of this period see Stewart, A., Attika: Studies in Athenian Sculpture of the Hellenistic Age (London, 1979), 364.Google Scholar

21 Habicht 176; the following owes much to his pp. 176–80.

22 Ibid. 10.

23 Trophonios and Agamedes' most famous reputed work was the fourth temple of Apollo at Delphi in the first half of 6th cent. BC (x. 5. 13).

24 On whose identity see Habicht 10.

25 Ibid. 117–40, esp. 131–40.

26 Stewart, A., Greek Sculpture (Yale, 1990), 39Google Scholar; Wycherley, R. E., Studies in Athenian Architecture, Sculpture and Topography (Hesperia suppl. 20; 1982), 187.Google Scholar

27 Examples include Aristotle's attributions of theatrical developments to Aeschylus, Sophocles, Epicharmus, Phormis, and Krates (Poetics 4, 5); see Arafat, K. W., ‘Fact and artefact: texts and archaeology’, Hermathena, 148 (1990), 63.Google Scholar

28 Arist. Pol. ii. v. 1–5; vii. x. 4. McCredie, J. R., ‘Hippo-damos of Miletos’, in Mitten, D. G., Pedley, J. G., and Scott, J. A. (eds.), Studies Presented to G. M. A. Hanfmann (Cambridge, Mass., 1971), 95100Google Scholar; Burns, A., ‘Hippodamus and the planned city’, Historia, 25 (1976), 414–28Google Scholar; Wycherley, R. E., How the Greeks Built Cities (2nd edn; London, 1962) 1535CrossRefGoogle Scholar; id., ‘Hippodamus and Rhodes’, Historia, 13 (1964), 135–9; Martin, R., L'Urbanisme dans la Grèce antique (2nd edn; Paris, 1974), 103–6Google Scholar; Garland, R., The Piraeus (London, 1987), 26–7, 181–2.Google Scholar

29 There is a lacuna in the text here, and the word ‘statue’ is understood.

30 Pollitt (142) wonders whether hapla means ‘uncomplicated? primitive?’.

31 Pollitt (142) draws a pertinent parallel with the use of colour in painting.

32 Here and elsewhere, P. Levi (Penguin edn, 1971) translates argos as ‘rough’, W. H. S. Jones (Loeb edn) and LSJ as ‘unwrought’. Polliti does not discuss the word.

33 Adams, L. T., Orientalizing Sculpture in Soft Limestone from Crete and Mainland Greece (BAR S42; Oxford, 1978).Google ScholarAdam, S., The Technique of Greek Sculpture in the Archaic and Classical Periods (London, 1966).Google Scholar

34 Parian: i. 14. 7; 43. 5; iv. 31.6; ix. 20. 4. Pentelic: v. 10. 3 (exceptional in referring to tiles at Olympia); vii. 25. 9; 26. 3; viii. 30. 10; 47. 1; ix. 2. 7; 11. 2; 25. 3; x. 4. 3; 33. 2; 35. 10. All these are referred to as made of lithos, and most are statues by recognized masters (including Pheidias, Praxiteles, Damophon, Kephisodotos, Skopas). Lithos, therefore, is used here to denote marble; so too in the building inscription referring to the altar of Athena Nike on the Akropolis of Athens (ML 44, line 13). Paus. has no separate word for marble, although marmaros had been used by Homer (Il. xii. 380; Od. ix. 499), albeit not to mean marble. The word was apparently first used in this sense in the Hippokratic corpus (Mul. ii. 185) or by Theophrastus (Lap. ix. 69). The phrase marmaros lithos is used by Strabo (ix. 1. 23).

35 White: i. 22. 4; ii. 20. 1; 24. 6; vii. 5. 9; 22. 6; viii. 37. 12; ix. 40. 2. These all refer to statues, except the first (the roof of the Propylaia) and the last (which is in relief) of lithos leukos; Frazer translates these all as ‘marble’, which, in view of the previous note, may be correct but cannot be claimed to be so with certainty. Black: x. 36. 3 (local Phokian stone used for a wall).

36 It is a mark of the quality of the stucco covering on the temples at Olympia that Paus. did not remark on the very shelly nature of the marine conglomerate from which they are made.

37 This is an apparent misunderstanding caused by the use of stucco over the stone: Dinsmoor, W. B., The architecture of ancient Greece (3rd edn; London, etc., 1950), 236.Google Scholar For the Philippeion, see Seiler, F., Die griechische Tholos (Mainz, 1986), 89103.Google Scholar

38 e.g. i. 20. 2; ii. 17. 4; 27. 2.

39 e.g. vii. 23. 5; viii. 31. 6; ix. 4. 1.

40 Dinsmoor (n. 37), 54, pointing out that the use of wood in this case is not attributable to the early date, since stone temples had been built by this time; Coulton, J. J. suggests this is a matter of economics (Greek Architects at Work (London, 1977), 43).Google Scholar For present purposes, the important point is that the remaining wooden column would have been seen as particularly old by Paus.'s time, simply by virtue of its being wooden. The same may be applicable to the wooden decorations (metopes?) of the Epidamnian treasury at Olympia showing the exploits of Herakles (vi. 19. 8; corrupt passage). (The passage concerning the wooden column at Olympia is omitted from Levi's translation.)

41 e.g. i. 3. 5; 40. 3; ii. 19. 6; 31. 9; 32. 4; v. 26. 6; vi. 19. 6; 19. 8.

42 Xoana and the Origins of Greek Sculpture (Atlanta, Ga., 1988), 140.

43 Donohue (n. 42), 146.

44 Gardner, E. A. suggested (JHS 11 (1890), 133–4)Google Scholar tnat there were three occasions on which other writers used xoanon to indicate an object not made of wood (Xen. Anab. v. 3. 12; E. Tro. 1074; Str. ix. 1. 17 (396)). However, in the first case, the point is one of contrast between a wooden and a gold statue, rather than comparison of like objects. In the second, it is likely that an ideal and splendid vision of an imagined heroic past is being summoned up, complete with imagined golden xoana. In the third example, Strabo refers to the 5th-cent. marble cult statue of Nemesis at Rhamnous as a xoanon; this cannot be a mistake or misinterpretation, and I wonder whether it can be attributed to his not being a regular commentator on statuary, in contrast to Paus. with his practised use of vocabulary.

45 There is also the added factor of the antiquity associated with Egypt (e.g. Hdt. ii), and the cachet of such an association.

46 Since my primary concern is with Paus.'s references to wood, I am not here concerned with the belief expressed by Donohue (n. 42), 140, that Paus.'s use of the word xoanon was ‘out of step’ with that of his contemporaries because he used it to mean only wooden images of gods; this is disputed by A. Stewart in a review of Donohue, , AJA 94 (1990), 158–9Google Scholar; note also the review by Sourvinou-Inwood, C., CR 40 (1990), 129–31.Google Scholar

47 Kron, U., Die zehn attischen Phylenheroen (AM Beiheft 5, Berlin, 1976), 84103.Google Scholar

48 Apollodoros, , Library, iii. 14. 1Google Scholar; Callim. Iambi, fr. 194. 66–8; Hekale, fr. 260. 24–6; Arafat, K. W., Classical Zeus: A Study in Art and Literature (Oxford, 1990), 156–9.Google Scholar

49 Smallness was not a necessary feature of wooden statues (e.g. vii. 5. 9; Donohue (n. 42), 141).

50 On the particular role of cult in the establishment of Argos' supremacy in the plain, see Morgan, C. and Whitelaw, T., ‘Pots and politics: ceramic evidence for the rise of the Argive state’, AJA 95 (1991), 79108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

51 vii. 4. 4–5; also DS iv. 77–9; Str. vi. 2. 6–7; Hdt. vii. 170. On the literary and archaeological evidence for the tradition surrounding Daidalos, see Arafat (n. 27), 52–3.

52 This is presumably the 5th-cent. sculptor of the Diskobolos, rather than the possible Hellenistic sculptor of the same name; see Ridgway, B. S., The Severe Style in Greek Sculpture (Princeton, NJ, 1970), 84–6, 131.Google Scholar

53 Pollitt 156.

54 As Levi notes (Penguin edn, vol. ii, 248 n. 165), these references put him near either end of the 4th cent.; but this complication is not relevant here.

55 e.g. Harrison, E. B., The Athenian Agora, 11: Archaic and Archaistic Sculpture (Princeton, 1965)Google Scholar; Zagdoun, M. A., La Sculpture archaïsante dans l'art hellénistique (Paris, 1989).Google Scholar

56 An athlete from Mende was also portrayed at Olympia with ancient jumping weights (v. 27. 12), but his date is unknown.

57 Contemporary archaizing in architecture is discussed at ‘Panhellenion II’, 100–1, 104.

58 Goody, J. R. and Watt, I., ‘The consequences of literacy’, in Goody, J. R. (ed.), Literacy in Traditional Societies (Cambridge, 1968), 2768Google Scholar; Harvey, F. D., ‘Literacy in the Athenian democracy’, REG 79 (1966), 585635CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cartledge, P., ‘Literacy in the Spartan oligarchy’, JHS 98 (1978), 2537CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goody, J. R., The Domestication of the Savage Mind (Cambridge, 1977).Google Scholar

59 Dittenberger, W. and Purgold, K., Die Inschriften von Olympia (Berlin, 1896), 723–8, no. 717.Google Scholar The inscription is dated to the 7th cent. by Fellman, B. in Burck, E. (ed.), 100 Jahre deutsche Ausgrabung in Olympia (Munich, 1972), 127, no. 117Google Scholar; to the early 6th cent. by Karageorgia-Stathakopoulou, Th. in Yalouris, N. (ed.), Athletics in Ancient Greece: Ancient Olympia and the Olympic Games (Athens, 1976), 255Google Scholar; to the mid-6th cent, by Harris, H. A., Sport in Greece and Rome (London, 1972), 142.Google Scholar

60 Richter, G. M. A., Kouroi (London, etc., 1970).Google Scholar

61 Richter (n. 60), 77. Ridgway's, B. S. view that the word andrias suggests ‘a carved, most likely wooden, image’ (The Archaic Style in Greek Sculpture (Princeton, 1977), 18)Google Scholar is contradicted by the inscription on the base of a stone kouros from Delos, first quarter of 6th cent. (Richter 51–3, no. 15, figs. 87–90; LSAG 2 292, 304, no. 10, pl. 55). Further, Ridgway's view would only be tenable in the case of Arrachion if his statue were wooden, in which case Paus. would almost certainly have said so. Levi translates andrias as ‘portrait-statue’, perhaps an acknowledgement of an unusual word (rather than agalma); the word is not in Pollitt's glossary, but Stewart (n. 20), 9, 38, and 109, discusses the use of the word in relation to Classical and Hellenistic sculpture. Paus. saw the identifying inscription, and may have thought the statue a literal portrait of Arrachion, a reasonable view of a contemporary representation of a still-living mortal. The andrias of Damaretos cited above (p. 397) may have been bronze, which would be the most natural medium in which to represent armour, including greaves; the verb ποιεîν is used in connection with the statue, as it is with that of his grandson, leaving the question open. Levi's translation in the second instance, ‘carved’, is unjustified.

62 Pollitt 157.

63 Stewart, A.F., ‘The canon of Polykleitos: a question of evidence’, JHS 98 (1978), 122–31.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

64 Ridgway, B. S., Roman Copies of Greek Sculpture: The Problem of the Originals (Michigan, 1984)Google Scholar; Bieber, M., Ancient Copies: Contributions to the History of Greek and Roman Art (New York, 1977).Google Scholar

65 Habicht 131.

66 It is worth noting that Paus. here uses the words xoanon and agalma interchangeably, an indication that he does not see either as having strong chronological implications; this observation is applicable only to his discussion of the works of Daidalos, and the two words are by no means intended as general synonyms.

67 Mattusch, C. C., Greek Bronze Statuary from the Beginning through the Fifth Century Century BC (Cornell, 1988), 41–4Google Scholar; Rolley, C., Greek Bronzes (London, 1986), 30Google Scholar; Papadopoulos, J., Xoana e sphyrelata: testimonianza delle fonti scritte (Rome, 1980), 75100.Google Scholar Stewart (n. 26, p. 37 and fig. 17) aptly cites the sphyrelaton statuettes from the temple of Apollo at Dreros (beginning of 7th cent.) as exemplifying the technique Paus. is describing.

68 Habicht 64–94.

69 Walsh, J., ‘The date of the Athenian stoa at Delphi’, AJA 90 (1986), 320 n. 2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

70 Ibid. 320.

71 Ibid. 319–36.

72 Thompson, H. A. and Wycherley, R. E., The Athenian Agora, 14: The Agora of Athens (Princeton, NJ, 1972), 204Google Scholar; cf. Habicht 23, ‘no recent artist is praised like the old masters’.

73 Although whether in its entirety is another question; see Habicht 6–7.

74 Habicht 151–9.

75 A sense of wonder at Eleusis was long established: Pi. fr. 12 Bowra; S. fr. 837 Pearson; h. Cer. 480–2; and the prosperity and importance of Eleusis were at their height just after Paus.'s day with the building of, among other features, the greater Propylaia; see ‘Panhellenion I’, 101–3.

76 Theseus: Plut. Thes. 36, Paus. iii. 3. 8. Orestes: Hdt. i. 67–8; Paus. iii. 3. 5–7; viii. 54. 4.

77 Kept in the temple at Aulis in Boeotia; the passage of Homer referred to is Il. ii. 305.

78 Cartledge, P. and Spawforth, A. J. S., Hellenistic and Roman Sparta: A Tale of Two Cities (London, etc., 1989), 136–9.Google Scholar