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The Pergamene Frieze: Its Relation to Literature and Tradition
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2013
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The frieze of the Pergamene altar, on which the battle between the gods and giants is represented, however its artistic work may be judged, will always hold henceforth an important place in the history of Greek art. The main outlines of its subject, the broad marks of its style, have already been made known in England through descriptions and photographs. A slight knowledge of the frieze will show one at once a mass of elaborate detail, which finds its place there because the artists have endeavoured to express in their work the various traditions which have grown up around the myth. We have therefore to deal here with a learned and reflective art; and to search out its full meaning is to ask how it stands in relation to the earlier tradition. When one looks at the forms which these enemies of the gods are here made to assume, one remarks instantly the distinction between those who are rendered with full human shape, and those whose bodies are a combination—often motley enough—of animal forms appearing side by side with the human. Now it is with this distinction that the whole history of the development of the tradition is concerned—and it is my aim to show that the Pergamene work reproduces the elements which an analysis of the myth discloses. The earth-born giants may have been regarded under three different aspects—as autochthones, a primeval race of men, or a race anterior to men, (2) as daemones, or beings that belonged to the worship of a primitive people, (3) as allegorical figures, as personifications of certain physical forces, certain powers in the natural world hostile to man. It is obvious that these ideas need not be distinct, and that by a fusion of the last two the giant may appear as a daemon whose being is rooted in certain elementary operations of nature. But one may ask the question—and the answer intimately touches the Pergamene frieze—whether, whenever the giants appear either in literature or art, there is always one and the same original conception in the background, or whether the one and the other of the above-mentioned ideas is prominent at different times and in different places?
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- Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1882
References
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page 305 note 1 Cacus seems an Italian Typhoeus, according to the description of Propertius, iv. 9, 10.
page 305 note 2 Strabo, xvi. 751.
page 305 note 3 Paus. viii. 29.
page 306 note 1 Published by Bekker, , Abhand, d. k. preus. Acad. d. Wiss. 1840Google Scholar.
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page 307 note 1 Apollod. 3, 12, 6.
page 307 note 2 Cf. the Pallatides rocks, Callimachus, Lav. Pall. 42.
page 307 note 3 Hesych. Etym. Mag.
page 307 note 4 Cf. Eur. Ion, 987, where the earth is said to produce the monster Gorgo, whom Athene slays.
page 307 note 5 Vase from Altamura, published by Heydemann, Gigantomachie auf eine Vase, &c.
page 308 note 1 Apollonius Rhod., Argon, i. 989.
page 308 note 2 Lucan, , Phars. ix. 655Google Scholar.
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page 313 note 1 Cf. Myth. Vat. ii. 58, de gigantum sanguine natus Lycaon.
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page 314 note 2 48, 49.
page 314 note 3 Cf. Myth. Vat. i. fab. 2. Ceres, i.e. Terra, irata ob sui Tantalique irrisionem, produces the Titan giants.
page 314 note 4 On the neck of the vase of Xenophantus in St. Petersburg, the Centaurs and giants are found on the same frieze, vide Compte rendu de la Comm. Arehœol. de St. Petersb. 1866, p. 141. A Centaur appears as the badge on the helmet of a giant who is attacking Zeus on the vase of Altamura, and Mimas is the name both of a giant and a Centaur. Eur. Ion, 215.
page 315 note 1 Our cut (see next page) is taken from the plate in this periodical.
page 315 note 2 Vide Stark, Gigantomachy.
page 317 note 1 Cf. the figure of the giant Tmolus Lycoph. Alex. 124, who compelled strangers to wrestle with him.
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page 318 note 1 Imag. 2, 17.
page 318 note 2 In Ovid, Met. i. 182, the monstrous character of the giants becomes exaggerated with mere poetical caprice.
page 319 note 1 P. 246 a.
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page 321 note 1 [We owe the engravings of these groups on the opposite page to the courtesy of the proprietors, the Century Company, New York.—Ed.]
page 321 note 2 In Aristides (Dindorf, ii. p. 16), she is given the first place in the action, which is there regarded as a contest between reason and unreason.
page 321 note 3 Cf. also the coin of Antiochus (Overbeck, , Kunstmythologie, Münztafel, iii. 29)Google Scholar.
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page 323 note 5 
page 324 note 1 The resemblance is striking, whether Müller's theory above mentioned is true or not.
page 324 note 2 Gerhard, Auserles. vasenb. Pt. i. Pl. vi.
page 324 note 3 Unless put to an energetic use, the serpentine limbs of the giants become a ludicrous and clumsy trait of the representation, as may be seen on the Vatican sarcophagus (Overbeck, Kunst. Myth. Atlas, Pl. ix. a, b, c, taf. v.), with its stiffened symmetrical rows of figures, and on the small reliefs from Aphrodisias in Caria.
page 325 note 1 Od. ii. 19, 21.
page 325 note 2 Metam. v. 326.
page 325 note 3 Gigantomachy, 51.
page 325 note 4 The coins on which a giant is seen overthrowing a griffin or stag are shown by Wieseler to bear an entirely different meaning.
page 325 note 5 Atlas zu Kunstmythol. taf. iv. Pl. 6.
page 325 note 6 Herc. Fur. 177.
page 326 note 1 The letter refers to the arrangement in the Assyrian hall of the Berlin Museum.
page 326 note 2 Archœolog. Zeit. 1882, p. 162.
page 328 note 1 The student of the Pergamene gigantomachy will be often reminded of this vase, on account of its elaborate detail and varied movement. Vide Heydemann, , Gigantomachie auf einer Vase aus Altamura, p. 15Google Scholar.
page 329 note 1 The skill with which the leather wrapping is treated on the boy in the British Museum, who is biting the leg of his comrade, makes for the theory which the character of the subject and the semi-barbaric forms suggest, that the work belongs to the Pergamene school.
page 330 note 1 As for instance on the relief from Aphrodisias, , Denkmäler d, a, k., 845a, b.Google Scholar
page 331 note 1 Brunn, 's Künstler-Geschichtc, Dic Kunst von Pergamon, s. 445Google Scholar.
page 332 note 1 Cf. Claudian, 's Gigantomachy, lines 91—93—Google Scholar
Tritolila Virgo
Prosilit, ostendens rutila cum Gorgone pectus:
Aspectu contenta suo, non utitur hasta.
page 332 note 2 Corresponding with the figure of the winged giant whom Athene is dragging down, there might seem to have been another of like form on the right if the fragment of a wing has to be thus interpreted; but its texture seems to be hardly that of a giant's or an eagle's wing; might it belong to the winged horses that are drawing the chariot of Athene Hippia?
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page 333 note 1 Vide Die Geburt der Athene, Fleckeisen, Wien, Jahrbuch für Philologie, 1881, s. 486Google Scholar.
page 333 note 2 Sid. Ap. Carm. vi.—
Diva Gigantei fudit quam tempore belli Armatus partus vertice dividuo.
page 334 note 1 Henceforth it seems to have been very commonly used for scenes of the gigantomachy; as it is probably to be found in the frieze of Priene, once on the crater of Ruvo, and more than once on the Louvre vase.
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