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Herakles Epitrapezios

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

A. S. Murray
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Extract

While excavating in the ruins of the palace of Sennacherib at Koujounjik in 1880 Mr. Rassam found a small figure of Herakles sculptured in calcareous stone, and inscribed on the front of the plinth with a dedication by a certain Sarapiodoros (Σαραπιόδωρος Ἀρτεμιδώρου—κατ᾿ εὐχήν), and on one side of the plinth with the name of the artist Diogenes (Διογένης ἐποίει). The letters are painted red. The figure is now in the British Museum. Its height is 1 ft. 9 in.

A Greek sculptor of the name of Diogenes is known only, so far as I am aware, in the one instance cited by Pliny, in speaking of the sculptural decorations of the Pantheon of Agrippa in Rome, among which he mentions Caryatides ‘in columnis,’ whatever that may mean. These Caryatides by Diogenes the Athenian were much admired. But if Brunn is right, as he appears to be in identifying the statue of this kind in the Vatican Museum as a survivor from the Pantheon, he is evidently right also in concluding that Diogenes had merely made very careful copies from the Caryatides of the Erechtheum. Even a careful copyist was perhaps rare to find in the time of Agrippa. Our Diogenes was no doubt also a copyist, but apparently not a very careful one. For this among other reasons he cannot well be identified with his Athenian namesake. If our Diogenes had been an Athenian he would have said so on the plinth unless he had sculptured his Herakles in Athens where there would have been no occasion to say it.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 3 , November 1882 , pp. 240 - 243
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1882

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References

page 240 note 1 Nat. Hist. xxxvi. 38.

page 240 note 2 It evidently meant an unusual thing to Stark in the Arch. Zeitung, 1866, p. 249.

page 240 note 3 Gr. Künstler, i. p. 548 and p. 568.

page 241 note 1 See Catalogue of Greek coins in the British Museum, Seleucidae, Pl. 5, Nos. 5, 6, for examples of what is a not uncommon type on the coins.

page 241 note 2 ix. 44: see also Statius, , Silv. iv. 6Google Scholar.

page 241 note 3 The skyphos was the drinking-cup of Herakles. See Athenaeus, xi. 99. The small marble figure of Herakles in the British Museum, here referred to, is engraved in the Museum Marbles, x. Pl. 41, Fig. 3: cf. Guide to Graeco-Roman Sculptures, Pt. i. No. 142.

page 241 note 4 ProfessorMichaelis, , in the Bullet. dell' Inst. Arch. 1860, p. 124Google Scholar, identifies the figure of Herakles on a vase in Gerhard's Trinkschalen (1848), Pl. 8, as a copy of the figure by Lysippos. But on the vase Herakles is holding not far from his mouth a kantharos (not a skyphos) which a satyr has brought him; he is turned round with his body to the side, and rests his club on his left thigh. In this respect it corresponds with several coins. Yet I do not think it is so near the original of Lysippos as is our figure by Diogenes.

page 242 note 1 Nat. Hist. xxxiv. 65.

page 242 note 2 Specimens of Ant. Sculpt. i. Pl. 32. Though usually called Jupiter this figure seems to me more like Poseidon, and might be restored with his right hand resting on a trident and in his left a dolphin.

page 243 note 1 Stephani, , Der Ausruhende Herakles (Mémoires de l'Acad. Imp. St. Petersburg, 1855), p. 403Google Scholar, concludes that there is no proof and no great probability of this figure having been made by Lysippos.

page 243 note 2 See Overbeck's Ant. Schriftquellen, Nos. 1468–1472.