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Cleon caricatured on a Corinthian Cup

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

E. L. Brown
Affiliation:
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Extract

John Boardman has recently published a Sam Wide Group cup, on the interior of which is painted a caricature of Oedipus and the Sphinx. His accompanying illustration (Plate II 1) fully confirms the interpretation offered, that the Theban Sphinx— for once, in its physiognomy as well as in its anatomy, obtrusively male—is committing the nuisance of public masturbation. Although such offensive conduct seems, as Boardman observed, inexplicable within the Sphinx's mythic context, the artist's motive for this innovation becomes clearer if one can detect here an instance of the easy ‘glide from the contemporary into the mythical world’.

First, however, it should be recalled that, at least as early as Aeschylus' satyr play Sphinx, the Theban pest could be called Σφίγγα δυσαμϵριᾱν πρύτανιν κύνα (182 Mette, 236 Nauck).

Type
Notes
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1974

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References

1 JHS XC (1970) 194–5.

2 Webster, T. B. L., The Art of Greece: The Age of Hellenism (N.Y. 1966) 71Google Scholar.

3 Jeffery, L. H., The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece (Oxford 1961) 97 f.Google Scholar, 99 (8), 402, pl. 11 (8); cf. SEG XXIII 453.

4 (Oxford 1971) 250, comm. ad 1.895, and p. 1.

5 For the full extent of this imagery see the Univ. of North Carolina dissertation by John Blakey, M.: Canine Imagery in Greek Poetry (Ann Arbor, Mich. 1973) 163 ffGoogle Scholar.

6 Dudley, D. R., A History of Cynicism (London 1937) 29 and 5Google Scholar; von Fritz, Kurt in Philologus Suppl. XVIII, 2 (1926) 47–9Google Scholar.

7 We can well imagine Cleon's basing his demand for public negotiations with the Spartan envoys upon the argument that only shameful terms of peace required the cloak of secrecy. But the sexual colouring of this piece of anti-Cleonian propaganda is perhaps more likely to reflect the counterattack against his attempt to reform public morals (Eg. 878–9, οὔκουν σϵ δῆτα ταῦτα δϵινόν ἐστι πρωκτοτηρϵῑν,/ παῦσαί τϵ τοὺς βινουμένους;): some objected to the shamelessness of public delving into such matters, others may have circulated insinuations about the legislator's own mores.

8 E.g. D.L. VI 46: Cf. VI 69, where the phrase πάντα ποιϵἶν ἐν τῷ μέσῳ occurs.

9 On the sources for, and circumstances of, Anaxagoras' trial see now Montuori, M. in De homine (Centro de Ric. per le Sc. mr. e soc., Ist. di Filos. Univ. di Roma) No. 22–3 (1967) 103–48Google Scholar.

10 McKay, K. J., ‘Studies in Aithon 11’, Mnem. XIV (1961) 20Google Scholar.

11 Szemerényi, O., Zeitschr. für vergleich. Sprachforsch. LXXIII (1955) 75Google Scholar, n. 1, calls it an Illyrian loan; on the basis of Hdt. III 110, LSJ lists its meaning as properly ox-hide. Yet it may be worth noting (1) that Herodotus' βύρσαι καὶ ἄλλα δέρματα in an Arabian setting need not have signified ox-hides; (2) that even if βύρσαι came to mean hides generally, it may originally, like βοϵίη and κυνέη, have applied to one animal; (3) that Late Latin burdo ‘mule’ and burricus ‘small horse’ (whose eventual derivative is ‘burro’, but whose supposed source in burrus ‘red’ troubled Buck, C. D., Dict. of Selected Synonyms, p. 172Google Scholar) may both lack a convincing etymology. Inasmuch as the most famous literary reference to the Paphlagonians (Il. II 851–2) also introduces the region's ἡμιόνων γένος ἀγροτϵράων, however exactly that phrase should be interpreted (Devereux, G., ‘Homer's Wild She-Mules’. JHS LXXXV 1965 2932CrossRefGoogle Scholar), I therefore venture the suggestion that βύρσαι for ‘hides’ was once restricted to equidae. If this proposal has merit, we may detect a second reason for Aristophanes' choice of ethnic for his ‘slave’, and translate ‘the Brayer’ as well as ‘the Blusterer’ (παφλάζων).

12 For ancient testimonia that the meaning given by LSJ s.v. ‘κύων’ VII is too narrowly restrictive see J. Blakey, supra n. 5; for realia, Marini, G. L., Il Gabinetto segreto del Museo naz. di Napoli (Turin 1971Google Scholar).

13 I (London 1965) 34. Cf. Webster, T. B. L., Art and Literature in Fourth-Century Athens (London 1956) 1819Google Scholar on the realism of certain late-fifthcentury artists.

14 The earliest graphic example of political caricature known to me is the figure in Persian dress—cap, trousers, pointed shoes, and all—that an irate Athenian incised on the back of an ostracon bearing the name of Kallias Kratiou (preliminary reports of this 1966 Ceramicus find in Metzler, D., Porträt und Gesellschaft [Münster 1971] 86Google Scholar and Vanderpool, E., Ostracism at Athens [Cincinnati 1970] 21–3 and n. 17Google Scholar). The presence of the epithet ‘Mede’ on four others of the 800 extant ostraca cast (c. 485 B.C.) against this ‘friend of the tyrants’ confirms the direct connexion of his name with the figure.

Caricature of historical or quasi-historical persons in fifth-century vase-painting does not entirely elude detection, either. A little seated figure with disproportionately large head, who ‘must represent Aesop’ (Richter, G. M. A., The Portraits of the Greeks, I [London 1965] 72Google Scholar), is depicted on a Vatican kylix and has been characterised by Pfuhl, Ernst, Masterpieces of Greek Drawing and Painting, transl. Beazley, J. D. (London 1955) 62Google Scholar: ‘In the early classical style the old emphatic manner retreats to the sphere within which it is countenanced in every age— caricature. A brilliant example is the picture <fig. 79> of the poet Aesop listening to the fox’.

Further, Lippold, Georg, RM LII (1937) 44–7Google Scholar and Pl. 14, recognised a dwarfish figure with Silen-like profile, who was shown dancing, on a table apparently —only a stamnos-fragment containing part of the scene, wim -ΚΛΕΙΔΗΣ legible above the dancer, survives—as the Hippoclides famed from Herodotus' account of Agariste's wooing. Beazley, J. D., JHS LIX (1939) 11Google Scholar, while accepting the reading, was more inclined to see there not a parody of the Herodotean tale, but a scene from contemporary life of ‘a popular dancing dwarf in Athens at the time’ (c. 435 B.C.).

Metzler (op. cit. supra, pp. 87 and 101, especially, on figs. 3 and 11) detects caricature of an individual in other figures on fifth-century vases and sherds, but none of them can be identified. I add the equally nameless cartoon of a man's head (London, B.M. F704), illustrated by Bielefeld, Erwin, Zur griechischen Vasenmalerei des 6. bis 4. Jahrhunderts vor Christus (Halle 1952Google Scholar) fig. 40, and discussed by him (p. 19) as possibly exemplifying the style of the painter Pauson. This ‘antike Karikaturist par excellence’ (Metzler, op. cit. supra, p. 315) was censured by Aristotle (Poet. 1448a2) for representing men in a manner tending to degrade. Though Bielefeld's end-of-fifth-century date for this Pauson, and Guerrini, L.'s ‘contemporaneo di Polignoto’ in Encicl. dell' Arte Ant. V (1963) 998Google Scholar s.v. ‘Pauson’, are both reconcilable with the Pauson mentioned by Aristophanes in Acharnians and two later plays, it must be sheer coincidence that the comic poet writes (Thesm. 948–49), even if Demeter and Kore are favourite subjects in the Sam Wide Group (Stroud, R. S., Hesperia XXXVII (1968) 302 fGoogle Scholar.

15 Conceivably the bema can account for the odd ‘abacus’ atop Ionic capital on which our painter has perched his Sphinx, like ‘a cormorant on a stone’ (λάρος κϵχηνὼς ἐπὶ πέτρας δημηγορῶν: Eq. 956, describing the device on the signet-ring worn by Paphlagon).

16 That the war did not interrupt the flow of pottery from Athens to Corinth has been noted by Herbert, Sharon, ‘The Origin of Corinthian Redfigure’ (summary), AJA LXXVI (1972) 211Google Scholar: ‘Throughout the late fifth century some Attic rf. and undiminished black-glaze imports are found in the same contexts with Corinthian rf.’

17 For a recent assessment of ‘Portrait-masks in Aristophanes’, see Dover, K. J. in Κωμῳδοτραγήματα. Studia… W. Koster in honorem (Amsterdam 1967) 1628Google Scholar.

18 While the diminutiveness of trunk and limbs accords with the mannikins of normal Greek caricature, it remains to account for the scale of the ‘Sphinx's pestle’, outsize even by satyric standards. But ἀλϵτρίβανος and δοῑδνξ, of course, are the terms under which Cleon is apprehended in the famous scene (Pax 228–88) in which War threatens to crush the cities of Greece in a great θνϵία or mixing-bowl. (For the precise import of these terms consult Sparkes, B. A., ‘The Greek Kitchen’, JHS LXXXII [1962] 125–6Google Scholar and references there.) There is no reason to suppose that Cleon was called a ‘pestle of war’ only here (cf. Eq. 976–84), or that our painter would hesitate to turn the epithet in malam partem. That masturbation could be imagined in terms of kneading(?) imagery is indicated by Clouds 676, on Dover, K. J.'s interpretation of the line (Aristophanes: Clouds [Oxford 1968] 183CrossRefGoogle Scholar); at the least, a sexual double entendre is involved.

19 A Gillray etching of ‘St George and the Dragon’, which celebrates Admiral George Rodney's victory over the French fleet in June 1782, is instructive. There, despite the great caricaturist's penchant for exaggeration, the admiral's features are rendered with unemphatic faithfulness, while only the national identity of his monstrous adversary is shown, by the fleur-de-lis of the Old Regime patterned on its wings and by the frogs leaping from its bestial maw (Thomas Wright and Evans, R. H., Account of the Caricatures of James Gillray [London 1851] no. 4)Google Scholar.

20 However tenuous a Brasidas-Oedipus link may now appear, it is no more far-fetched than the parallel drawn between Oedipus and Demetrius Poliorcetes, whom the famed Ithyphallic Hymn (Athen. VI 253e–f) hails as saviour of Athens from the Aetolian Sphinx. The grisly sequel to Oedipus' triumph may not have loomed as large in the Corinthian version of the myth, but even the Attic tragedies failed to deter Demetrius' Athenian encomiast.

That Brasidas invited comparison with the heroes of old is shown by Plato, Symp. 221c, where Alcibiades implies his likeness to Achilles, παναώριως as Gomme comments ad Thuc. V 11.1; cf. Diod. Sic. XII 43.2: Our Oedipus' age agrees with the rendering found on other vases of the time, but also suits the precociousness of the Spartan general.

21 Similarly as St George is seen in the guise of King George III while the Dragon is given the head of Napoleon, when Gillray renews the theme in the critical days of August 1805: Broadley, A. M., Napoleon in Caricature, 1795–1821 (London/New York 1911) I, 231Google Scholar.

Just as the historical figures and forces represented by St George and Dragon had changed between 1782 and 1805, a quite distinct occasion would naturally underlie the Boeotian caricature of Oedipus and Sphinx which Boardman notes (JHS XC [1970] 195 and Pl. III 1). If A. Greifenhagen's mid-fifth-century dating is correct (CVA iii, p. 30), it removes any temptation to see in the ‘dog’-Oedipus there an intelligent and energetic Laconian fox-hound (ἀλωπϵκίς) specifically symbolising Brasidas.

22 On this interpretation a choice of dates for the cup, ranging from c. August 424, when Brasidas foiled Athens' attempt to take Megara, to c. September 422, when word of Cleon's initially successful counteroffensive in Chalcidice reached Corinth, would be possible (time limits derived from Gomme ad Thuc. IV 70.1, 84.1, and V 2.1). The most plausible moment is perhaps to be sought in the days after the electrifying news of Amphipolis' fall, at the very end of 424, became known. This period tallies well with recent chronological conclusions on the activity of the Wide Group workshop. MrsUre, A. D. (JHS LXIX [1949] 22Google Scholar) dated its products c. 430 B.C., but noted the close resemblance of a pyxis found in the polyandrion for the Thespian dead at Delium in 424, and of details on a number of cups made c. 430–420. Callipolitis-Feytmans, D. (BCH LXXXVI [1962] 142Google Scholar) concluded that production could not have started before the third quarter of the fifth century, and ‘peut même être plus tardive puisqu'il s'agit d'une imitation … des ateliers attiques’.

23 Thuc. IV 78–V 11. ‘Brasidas is alone in suggesting a systematic policy of liberation as an answer to Athenian imperialism, in using all his strength…to persuade Athens’ allies that they must desert her, to undermine her rule and to put a policy of anti-imperialism into practice. And it is obvious that Thucydides has given him a place of honour in his work….': de Romilly, J., Thucydides and Athenian Imperialism, transl, by Thody, P. (Oxford 1963) 43Google Scholar.

24 My warm thanks are due Professor Kenneth Reckford for very helpful comments on a draft of this paper. Naturally, responsibility for the ideas presented and the errors uncorrected rests solely with the author.