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Pompeian Paintings and their Relation to Hellenic Masterpieces, with Special Reference to Recent Discoveries

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Talfourd Ely
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Extract

From August, 1894, till the middle of last year, the explorers of Pompeii were employed in excavating the house of A. Vettius, a house distinguished among its fellows by its sumptuous marble fittings and lavish decoration, and still more so by the splendid series of brilliant frescoes with which its walls are still adorned.

According to the official plan, the position of the house should be defined thus:—Regio VI., insula 12.

It lies opposite the Casa del Labirinto, close to the north-east of the Casa del Fauno, to the south of the third tower of the North Wall, counting from the Gate of Herculaneum eastwards. It possesses no tablinum, but a very fine peristyle, the Corinthian columns of which have not (as is usually the case) flutings filled for one-third of their height with stucco painted red or yellow.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 16 , November 1896 , pp. 143 - 157
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1896

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References

1 Facts about Pomyei, p. 61.

2 Details as to these will be given in my paper on the House of A. Vettius, to be published by the Society of Antiquaries.

3 For details as to these and other paintings in the House of Vettius, see the above mentioned paper. For an account of the unique representation of the process of coining, see my paper in the Numismatic Chronicle, 1896, Part i.

4 Soph., Fragm. 778Google Scholar.

5 Gazette archéologique, 1875, pl. 14.

6 Monumenti xi. 42, 2.

7 Idyl. xxiv. 1. Pindar, , Nem. i. 35Google Scholar, 36, and 49, seems to place the incident immediately after the birth of Herakles.

8 See below, page 146.

9 Archäologische Zeitung, 1868, p. 33, note 7.

10 Early in the fourth century, according to Head, , Coins of the Ancients, p. 45Google Scholar. Gardner places the type even before 431 B.C., as well as after, Types of Greek Coins, iii. 48.

11 On the obverse is ΣγΝ. Gardner, op. cit. xvi. 6.

12 Ib. xvi. 7.

13 Head, op. cit. p. 39; Gardner, op. cit. v. 10.

14 Gardner, op. cit. viii. 1, and xvi. 8.

15 L'art grec, p. 85.

16 i. 24, 2.

17 Among the numerous works of art on which this subject occurs may be mentioned the fanciful capital of a pilaster at Pompeii itself; the cover of a mirror from Corinth (see Mylonas, , Mitth. Ath. 1878, p. 266Google Scholar, Taf. x.), in which the position of the serpents is unusual; and an askos in the British Museum (Fourth Vase Room, Table-case E, no. G 50).

18 vi,

19 MissHarrison, J., Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens, p. 411.Google Scholar

20 Furtwängler, , Beschreibung, 3866.Google Scholar

21 In Fourth Vase Room, wall-ease 66, no. F. 479; Catalogue of Vases, iv. Pl XIII. See Murray, A. S., in Classical Review, 1888, p. 327.Google Scholar

22 Numismatic Chronicle, 1887, p. 83, Plate III. 14.

23 In Roscher's Lexikon, col. 2222.

24 Nat. Hist. xxxv. 63.

25 Loc. cit.

26 P. 33, Taf. 4. See also Sogliano, Le Pitture murali campane, no. 493.

27 Cf. Pindar, , Nem. i. 52Google Scholar,

28 It must be remembered that this is much restored, and not altogether correctly. See Friederichs-Wolters, , Bausteine, 1402.Google Scholar

29 Cf. the Cameo, Naples. See A.Z. 1853, p. 90Google Scholar, Taf. Ivi. See also Sogliano, , Il supplizio di Dirce, Atti dell' Accademia di Archaeologia Napoli, 1895, vol. xvii.Google Scholar

30 Baumeister, , Denkmäler, p. 457.Google Scholar

31 Helbig, , Wandgemälde, 1151 and 1152Google Scholar. In the Archäologische Zeitung of 1878, Dilthey (p. 44, note 8, c.), says Helbig is wrong in marking 1152 as no longer existing.

32 See Dilthey, loc. cit. p. 45.

33 Propertius iv. 15, 40.

34 See Taf. 7 of A. Ztg. 1878.

35 Baumeister, , Denkmäler, Abb. 502Google Scholar; Arch. Ztg. 1878, Taf. 7; cf. Furtwängler, , Beschreibung, 3296.Google Scholar

36 Quoted by Nauck, , Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, 221Google Scholar, from Longinus, , De Subl. 40Google Scholar, 4.

37 i. 38, 9.

38 Nat. Hist. xxxv. 98–100 (whore, however, Pliny confuses two persons of the same name; Aristeides ‘the Theban’ was really father of Nicomachos, and grandfather of a younger Aristeides; see Oemichen, , Plinianisehe Studien, p. 234)Google Scholar.

39 See Woltmann, and Woermann, , History of Painting (Eng. edn.), p. 54.Google Scholar

40 See Robert, , Bild und Lied, p. 36.Google Scholar

41 See Nauck, , Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, ed. sec., pp. 410–426.Google Scholar

42 See Vogel, , Scenen euripideischer Tragödien, p. 59, ‘Statt Ennius ist Pacuvius zu lesen.’Google Scholar Cf. Ribbeck, , Trag. Lat. Rel. p. 279Google Scholar; and Röm. Trag. 281.

43 Fab. 8. It is to be noted that in Hyginus, ‘Dircen ad taurum crinibus religatam necant.’

44 Anthol. iii. 7.

45 See Archäol. Zig. 1853, Taf. lviii.

46 Doet, Num. Vet. iii. p. 122.

47 Descr, des Médailles antiques, iv. p. 172, no. 990.

48 Apollodoros iii. 5, 6.

49 We learn from Sogliano, , Il supplizio di Dirce, p. 9Google Scholar, that, besides Dirke's gold armlets and bangle, the colours blue, red, and purple appear on the drapery. It is, of course, impossible to decide how far these are due to the copyist, and how far to Aristeides, who, according to Pliny (xxxv. 98), was ‘durior paulo in coloribus.

50 E.g. Agavè's right foot is much larger than her left; and the right arm of the other maenad seizing Pentheus is shapeless.

51 See Marriott, , Eng. Ill. Mag. Jan. 1896, p. 455.Google Scholar

52 Eurip., Bacchae 1125–27.Google Scholar

53 i. 20, 3.

54 Since writing the above, I have lighted on Helbig, 's opinion (Untersuchungen, p. 256Google Scholar) that the original of these pictures of Ariadne was the painting in the temple of Dionysos, mentioned by Pausanias. Helbig adds (p. 257) that such scenes as the Pentheus in that temple could not be earlier than the time of Zeuxis and Parrhasios.

55 Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens, p. 256.

56 i. 17.

57 Pentheus und die Mainaden, p. 8.

58 vi. 130–140.

59 Vogel, , Scenen euripideischer Tragödien, p. 112Google Scholar. Cf. Ribbeck, , Die Römische Tragödie, pp. 280, 281.Google Scholar

60 V. v. 1170 seq.

61 Plutarch, , Crassus, 33.Google Scholar

62 Bacchae, v. 1127.

63 See Fritsche, Argumentum of Idyl. xxvi.

64 xxvi. 20–24.

65 Metamorphoses, iii. 712–728.

66 Persius i. 100; part of four lines supposed. to be quoted from Nero.

67 iii. 5, 2, 2.

68 ii. 2, 7.

69 xiv. 631.

70 Denkmäler, ii. 436. See Jahn, Pentheus, Taf. i. a.

71 See O. Jahn, pentheus, Taf. ii. a; and Baumeister, , Denkmäler, Abb. 1396.Google Scholar

72 Single figures of Pentiums and Agavè are to be found on gems (see A. H. Smith's Catal. of Gems in the Brit. Mus., nos. 1081 and 1082), but these do not help us as to the grouping.

73 Prof. Percy Gardner has called my attention to a maenad holding a spear, not thyrsus, on a late monument, Stephani, Ausruhende Hercules, pl. I. See also Sandys, Bacchae, p. cxv.

74 See Robert, , Bild und Lied, p. 35.Google Scholar

75 Aelian, (V. H. xiv. 17)Google Scholar, quotes Socrates as saying that Archelaos commissioned Zeuxis to decorate his palace, and paid him a fee of £1,400.

76 Zeuxis was probably an Asiatic Greek. Klein has shown that he cannot have been a native of the Lueanian Heraclea, as that was not founded till 432 B.C., while Aristophanes mentions a picture of his in the Acharnians (vv. 991–2), which play was acted in 426.

77 On v. 992 of the Achamians. The scholiast's words suggest that the wall itself was painted, not that a picture was brought from the studio to be fixed upon it.

78 See Pausanias i. 19, 2.

79 Cf. Helbig, , Untersuchungen, pp. 256, 257Google Scholar. See ante, p. 153, note 54.

80 Homer, , Iliad v. 407–409.Google Scholar

81 Tibullus iii. 6, 23, 24.

82 Il supplizio di Dirce, p. 8, note 1.

83 See his ‘Gegenstücke in der Wandmalerei,’ Archäol. Zeitung 1876, p. 2; also ‘Der innere Bezug zwischen Gegenstücken,’ ib. p. 79. See too the remarks on external similarity with a view to selection of pendants in Woltmann and Woermann, op. cit. p. 138.