Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2013
Apparently there had been sculptured on the missing half of the marble stelè lately acquired by the British Museum from Athens a seated figure with hand upraised (Pl. 1.). There is a trace of the raised arm and also of a footstool. The subject had therefore been one of those scenes of parting or meeting so common on Athenian stelae. But the young man leaning on his staff is not of the usual Athenian type. In several respects he resembles a youthful Heracles on a relief from Mt. Ithome now in Athens, which figure it has been the custom to regard as Polycleitan (Fig. 1). So far as the pose of the head and the Diadumenos-like modelling of the body are concerned that opinion may be right. Only we must remember that the somewhat formal modelling of the thorax both in the Ithome relief and the new stelè is not unfrequent in Greek art, at least from the time of Lysippos onwards. A familiar instance is the Hermes on the sculptured drum of a column from Ephesus in the British Museum. It is a modification of the type of Polycleitos and may have set in much earlier than Lysippos. It may even have extended to Athens.
page 1 note 1 Outline in Schoene, Gr. Reliefs, Pl. 27, No. 112: cf. Kekulé, Bildwerke im Theseion, No. 374.
page 2 note 1 I have to thank Miss Godden for the drawing of this vase.
page 3 note 1 Orphic fragments, No. 153 (ed. Abel).
page 3 note 2 C.I.Gr. 8721.
page 3 note 3 Athen. Mittheilungen xxi. Pl. 12. Compare the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 4, 16. … χάνε δὲ χθὼν εὐρυάγυια
page 3 note 4 Maass, , Orpheus, p. 19Google Scholar
page 4 note 1 Claudian, , De Raptu Proserpinae ii. 287Google Scholar:
Zephyris illic melioribus halant perpetui flores quos nec tua protulit Henna. See also Aeneid vi. 640:
largior hie campos aether et lumine vestit purpureo, solemque suum, sua sidera norunt.
page 4 note 2 Foerster, R., Raub und Rückkehr p. 242Google Scholar, and Philologus Supplement-Band iv. p. 646.
page 4 note 3 White Athenian Vases, Pl. 20. Cf. Anth. Pal. xvi. (App. Plan.) 177:
σοὶ Παιὰν φίλος ἦν καὶ ὁ χρυσοκόμης ῾γμεναίος
καὶ λιγυρῶν αὐλῶν ἡδυμελεῖς χάριτες