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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2013
The statuette illustrated in Fig. 1 and Pl. VII was recently acquired for his Museum by Mr. A. Benaki, who has kindly allowed me to publish it. There are, as everyone knows, many bronzes of this sort, most of them representing either Herakles or Zeus; but a glance at our illustrations, which inevitably do not do full justice to the original, will shew that the new example has few rivals in this series, and few in the whole company of contemporary bronzes. I doubt if there is in existence a figure more characteristic of the archaic conception of Herakles, of the hero as the ideal strong man, short, thickset, and naturally developed: μόρφαν βρἁχυς ψυχὰν δ᾿ἄκαμπτος προσπαλαίσων ἤλθ᾿ ἀνήρ… Pindar certainly had some such conception in mind when he wrote these words, within a year or two of the time when this statuette was made.
The new Herakles is three and five-eighths inches high, and is perfectly preserved except for the loss of part of the club, the bow (once held in the left hand, which is perforated), the right foot, and part of the tang below the left foot. It has a smooth dark green patina. The photographs make detailed description unnecessary, and it will be enough to call attention to a few points.
1 As in the Zeus from Olympia (Δελτ. 1931, 57, fig. 12), the athlete from Ligourio (Langlotz, pl. 27, c), the Apollo from Naxos (Berlin Kat. I, no. 192), the Louvre Dionysus from Olympia (Langlotz, pl. 4), the Athena from the Acropolis (de Ridder, 796), and an Arcadian bronze in Boston: cf. Neugebauer, , Berlin Kat. p. 92Google Scholar.
2 Corinthian pottery from Ptoon, BCH. 1892, 360, 368Google Scholar; Peloponnesian bronzes, Louvre 143 (de Ridder, pl. 16); Athens 7389 (BCH. 1888, pl. 10; Lamb, Greek and Roman Bronzes, pl. 35, c: compare, for the face, BSA. XXXII, pl. 15, 7 from the Argive Heraeum); Attic statues BCH. 1888, pls. 7, 13–14; Karouzos, Τὀ Μουσεἴο τῆς Θήβας, figs. 4–6; and bases BCH. 1920, 226–7, Karouzos, l.c. fig. 13 and p. 18. The bronzes BCH. 1886, pls. 8–9; 1887, pls. 10; 11, 1; 12 I take to be Boeotian, though Langlotz attributes the first to Argos; pl. 11, 3 is probably a Boeotian copy of Corinthian: compare the Corinthian lions from Perachora Ill. London News, Nov. 15, 1930, 869, fig. 5, and July 8, 1933, 67, fig. 18.
3 Δελτ. 1930–1, 41 ff.
4 Compare the Oppermann Herakles, where the whole club is preserved (Bulle, Der schöne Mensch,2 55, fig. 37; Brunn-Bruckmann, pl. 351 a; Karouzos, p. 56); the hole in the hand of the Perachora Herakles proves the position of the club to have been as described above.
5 For example: in the hoplite and in the Zeus (fig. 3) from Dodona, in Berlin (Neugebauer, Führer, pls. 8–9; Kekulé, pls. 2, 1; Richter, Sculpture, figs, 100–2); in the bronzes, Δελτ. 1930–1, 59, fig. 14; 61, fig. 16; 62, fig. 17; in the statue, l.c. pl. 1 ff., the essence of the scheme is still unchanged; near these, l.c. 57, fig. 12. There are important exceptions: the New York Herakles, fig. 4; the Oppermann Herakles (see last footnote); and others such as the Zeus from Ambracia (Δελτ. 1920–1, parartema 170–1), the Hybrisstas bronze (Neugebauer, Ant. Bronce-statuetten, fig. 27 [Petit Palais, not British Museum]), and Δελτ. 1930–1 figs. 11, 13γ, 15.
6 E.g. Δελτ. 1931, 58, fig. 13a; 62, fig. 17.
7 The difference of temperament between the Benaki statuette and the Artemisium statue is as great as that of form. The classical sculptor was interested in action, not only for its own sake, but also as a symbol of his subject, as an attribute of the personality of the god; and for this reason the action has lost something of its immediate character, and approximates to gesture. Archaic art is free from symbolism of this kind; its motive is the immediate expression of simple ideas, and anyone can see that to the man who made the Benaki Herakles the idea of action was a sufficient inspiration—not a means to an end, but something complete within itself.
8 And this oppressive quality is already to be seen in the Myronian Herakles Marotti, Boston Cat. no. 64 (Lippold, in Antike Plastik, 127 ffGoogle Scholar.).
9 Richter, , Sculpture, 49Google Scholar. The head seems to me to go admirably with heads of Amasean type, such as that of Dionysus on the amphora in the Cabinet des Médailles (Pfuhl, fig. 220), and the treatment of the body is surely conceivable in that period. I would suggest a date between 540 and 530.
10 The only exceptions to this rule are given by three Attic vases nearly a hundred years older than this bronze, which are no doubt influenced by Corinthian models: New York, Cesnola Coll., Myres 1729 (see NC. p. 126, n. 2), Berlin F 1704 (Payne, NC. p. 126, n. 2) and Louvre 66 (CV. III He. pl. 77, 8, on which see Beazley in JHS. 1933, 310Google Scholar).
11 Theoretically we might read either ἡρακεας or ἡρακεαι; but the last letter must be sigma, not iota, for the three-stroked iota was not in use at Corinth in the fifth century. It seems, moreover, most unlikely that Herakleas could take a dative Herakleai. A dative, implying a dedication to Herakles, is further highly improbable in view of the discovery of the bronze at the Ptoan sanctuary.
12 The Hybrisstas bronze, Neugebauer, fig. 27.
13 Graef, Akropolisvasen, pl. 109, 2587; pl. 110, 2591.
14 No one would seriously maintain that inscriptions were put on vases as decoration; true, they are sometimes decorative, on black-figure vases; but to call red-figure inscriptions decorative would, in the great majority of cases, be grotesque.
14a I know of only one instance of the name of the person represented on a vase written by anyone other than the artist: that is on the Attic sherd JHS. 1929, pl. 16, 16 and p. 261.
15 Neugebauer, Ant. Bronce-statuetten, figs. 18–19; for an inscription on a similar base, compare Berlin no. 180, Kat. pl. 28.
16 Pfuhl, fig. 182.
17 JHS. 1933, 282–3Google Scholar.
18 As to the termination in -eas: names normally ending in -es are found to end in -eas in various districts of Greece—in Thessaly, Phocis, Boeotia, Aetolia (Buck, Gr. Dialects, § 166, 1), and, as the inscription quoted in the last footnote shews, in Ithaca also. Since our inscription is in the Corinthian alphabet, we must infer either that the forms in -εας were in use at Corinth (which is not impossible), or that the writer of the inscription came from one of the districts mentioned above and settled at Corinth. In any case the termination in -εας throws no light on the origin of the bronze. On the forms of the name, see the detailed article in RE. s.v.
19 Pfuhl, fig. 481 (AD. II, pl. 50, 1).
20 Professor Zahn has kindly verified the reading for me and informs me that it is quite certain; it is wrongly given in Furtwängler's catalogue, rightly in AD.
21 Cf. also the confused inscription on the Peiraion pinax, NC. p. 159.
22 Langlotz's Laconian group is by far the most convincing of his several Peloponnesian categories, and, with one or two modifications of detail, will certainly stand the test of future discoveries. It is the only one which rests on a considerable series of local finds.
23 E.g. Δελτ. 1916, 109, figs. 53, 55. Recent discoveries in Messenia confirm the existence of a Messenian subdivision: cf. p. 190 of this number of the Journal.
24 See next footnote.
25 The principal error appears to me to be the inclusion of Arcadians, most of whom, as their unmistakably ‘peasant’ character, to say nothing of their provenances, shews, must be the work of local Arcadian artists: cf. Lamb, , Greek and Roman Bronzes, 88Google Scholar, n. 1. Further, the attribution of the clay head Arg. Heraeum, II. 37 nos. 212–13 (Langlotz, pl. 22, g, BSA. XXXII, pl. 13, 5) to Sicyon is undoubtedly wrong, as Jenkins, BSA. l.c. p. 30, remarks; this and others like it from the Argive Heraeum are certainly Argive. The greater part of the Argive list consists of works which certainly illustrate Langlotz's conception of Argive character, but which cannot be said to be certainly Argive; only the draped female types are directly connected with Argos by a large body of local finds (terracottas from the Heraeum, from Tiryns, and from graves at Argos itself).
26 The only close parallel for the rendering of the hair (depressions and spirals) is given by the Louvre Herakles from Mantineia (Langlotz, pl. 30, b). The spirals recur on the boy from Megalopolis (fig. 5), which, though a little later, resembles the Benaki Herakles in the form of the chest and trunk (compare the view, pl. VII, 2), though, of course, the modelling is much less detailed. For a later and freer version of the hair cf. the Lapith from the west pediment at Olympia (Schrader, , Pheidias, 165Google Scholar, fig. 145). For the ‘cap’ of hair coming down very low over the forehead, cf. several ‘Argive’ bronzes (Langlotz, p. 62). For the shortness of the trunk, compare Kleobis and the New York Herakles, fig. 4 (better seen, for this purpose, in Langlotz, pl. 27, b). Kleobis naturally brings us into direct contact with Argos, and the New York bronze, which comes from Mantineia, is so far superior in technique and elaboration to the average archaic work from Arcadia that Langlotz may well be right in calling it Argive; it is in the same class (in respect of quality) as the two magnificent kriophoroi in Boston (Langlotz, pls. 2 and 20, a), neither of which is Arcadian in the ordinary sense of the word. In a private collection in Athens, from Argos, is a fragment of a third ‘Arcadian’ of this group. Among classical bronzes, I find a distinct analogy to the body of the Benaki Herakles in the fine bronze from Tegea, at Mount Holyoke in America (AJA. 1929, pl. 4; Karouzos, p. 79, n. 1).
27 P. 65, reference to Argive ‘Vorliebe für grosse, weich ineinander übergehende, wenig bewegte Flächen’; cf. also p. 62.
28 Many of the early bronze pins are identical in every detail with examples from Argos, and some must be Argive.
28a JHS. 1932, 242Google Scholar; Ill. London News, 8th July, 1933.
29 Cf. Jenkins, in BSA. XXXII, 23 ff.Google Scholar
30 NC. p. 222 ff., and p. x.
31 Ibid., pl. 33, 5.
32 I have to thank Professor Beazley, Dr. Kunze and Mrs. Wade-Gery for their kindness in reading the above in proof, and for several valuable suggestions.