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Various Works in the Pergamene Style

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Extract

The chief object of this paper is to record and classify the various monuments which on the ground of subject-matter or style may claim to be connected with Pergamene work. It may be well also to notice by way of introduction what we can gather from ancient testimony.

Of most of the existing works that I shall mention I have had personal knowledge, and where I have had to rely merely on published representations of them, I can only bring them forward for the purpose of suggesting to those who have direct acquaintance with them to consider them from this point of view. The theory which I wish to work out—a theory already suggested by others—is that certain fields of Greco-Roman and late Roman art have received a deep and abiding impress from Pergamon. That this should be a priori probable does not need elaborate proof; Rome was the heir of the Pergamene kingdom, and had always friendly intimacy with it, and we hear of many Pergamene works being transferred to Rome by Nero (Dio Chrys. 644 R.): between certain Roman and certain Pergamene myths there was a close analogy, which coloured the artistic representation of them: the struggle of the Pergamene kingdom with the Gauls, or—to speak perhaps more correctly—with Antiochus Hierax supported by Gallic mercenaries, was the most recent counterpart to the struggle of Rome with the barbarians: it was the Pergamene school—as Professor Brunn was the first to demonstrate—who idealized and fixed for artistic representation the type of the northern barbarian and really created historic sculpture, and I think that it can be shown that their rendering of this type became conventionalized and remained traditional throughout many centuries.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1890

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References

page 181 note 1 E.g. the exposure of the twins and Telephos, the infants suckled by the wolf: compare the legend in Plutarch (Romulus ch. 2) that Aeneas married Roma, a daughter of Telephos.

page 181 note 2 Vide Köhler, Die Gründung des Königsreichs Pergamon: Urlichs, who combats many of his arguments in his Pergamenische Inschriften, yet admits the main part of his theory.

page 181 note 3 Isolated works, such as the Nubian head—a bronze work from Cyrene—published by Rayet, , Mon. de l'art Antique 2Google Scholar. No. 58, showing powerful realistic treatment of the barbaric type, are perhaps earlier than the Pergamene school: but theirs is the earliest systematic work in this field which could make a new epoch in sculpture.

page 182 note 1 Pergamenische Inschriften, p. 27.

page 182 note 2 Göttingen Gelehrte Anzeigen, 1882.

page 182 note 3 Reinach, M. in the Bulletin de Corr. Hellén. (Janv. 1889)Google Scholar and Dr. Milchhöfer in Die Befreiung des Prometheus give a more favourable estimate of the Neapolitan works, both maintaining that they cannot be copies of the Greco-Roman age. They may certainly be copies wrought in Asia Minor, but after a careful study I failed to detect in them any excellence of style or execution that might prevent us assigning them to the Greco-Roman period. The prostrate giant suggests a good original, but the work is dull and cold. Neither in face nor attitude is there much power of expression, and the treatment of the muscles, the hair, and the wild-beast's fell, shows little marked style or ‘Pergamenian’ character.

Still more superficial and dull is the rendering of the Amazon; though the drapery shows some skill and delicacy. The face has the high oval contour common in Alexandrine sculpture, but none of the specific marks of that type which appears on the frieze. The figure of the dying Persian displays more obviously still the cold formalism of the later copyist's hand: there is a moderate expression of pain in the face, and some violence in the attitude, but otherwise little that speaks of any school. The dying Gaul of Naples has far more character and gives some proof of the Pergamene power in historic sculpture; but if the earlier Greco-Roman period could not produce such imitative works as these, it had fallen very low. The ‘Attalid’ figures at Venice are of far higher value, but even these we can best estimate after considering the data afforded by the monuments from the soil of Pergamon.

page 183 note 1 Perhaps by such a term we may distinguish ‘Pergamenian’ expression from the expression in a work of Scopas, a mental or spiritual pathos—such for instance as the epigrammatist found in the unknown ἄγαλμα Μηδείας (Anthology, ix. 593).

page 185 note 1 On a Bithynian coin of Lysimachus (in the British Museum, soon to be published in the series of Bithynian Kings) is a head of Heracles with many of the essential traits of the Pergamene type of countenance.

page 185 note 2 Sketched, in Die Ergebnisse der Ausgrabungen zu Pergamon, p. 66.Google Scholar

page 185 note 3 Overbeck, Geschichte d. Griech. Plastik, vol. ii. fig. 133a.

page 186 note 1 Jahrbuch des Arch. Inst. 1887, p. 256.

page 186 note 2 Robert, , Jahrb. d. Arch. Inst. 1888, p. 91, T.Google Scholar

page 186 note 3 Jahrbuch des Arch. Inst. 1888, p. 45, Pl. I.

page 186 note 4 Ibid. p. 87, Q.

page 186 note 5 Ibid. p. 57, P.

page 187 note 1 Vide Hellenic Journal, 1886, p. 271, ‘The Works of Pergamon and their Influence.’

page 187 note 2 Vide the oracle in C.I.G. 3538: Dio Cassius, Book XLI. 61: letter from Ptolemy to the Pergamenians, C.I.G. 3537.

page 188 note 1 Mionnet, vol. iii. p. 601: Cilicia, No. 298.

page 188 note 2 Clarac. Pl. 667, No. 1548, A.

page 188 note 3 Vide Robert, C., Hermes, xix. p. 307.Google Scholar

page 188 note 4 In the first part of sec. 19, Book XXXIV., Pliny enumerates the various epochs of bronzesculpture, and afterwards the works that illustrate these epochs. If the Polyeles he mentions is not the latest sculptor of that name, then he has left the latest period without any monument to illustrate it.

page 189 note 1 Vide Wroth, Warwick, ‘Asclepios on the Coins of Pergamon,’ Num. Chron. Ser. III. vol. ii. p. 22, Pl. II. 8.Google Scholar

page 189 note 2 Aristid. Ιερ. λογ. β., Dindorf, i. 469.

page 189 note 3 Vierzigstes Programm zum Winckelmannsfeste 1880.

page 191 note 1 N.H. 35, 160: ‘In Asia Pergamon retinet nobilitatem hujus artis.’

page 192 note 1 Imhoof-Blumer, Die Münzen der Dynastic von Pergamon, Taf. 3, No. 19.

page 193 note 1 Pliny, , N.H. 36, 184Google Scholar.

page 193 note 2 The art of mosaic had been employed perhaps as early as the fifth century for the decoration of temple-pavements; vide Letronne, , Lettres d'un Antiquaire, pp. 313315.Google Scholar

page 193 note 3 P. 44.

page 194 note 1 Pompeii, p. 425.

page 194 note 2 The epigrams were first noticed by Visconti, , Iscrizioni Greche Triopee, p. 102Google Scholar: for textual criticism vide Jacob's, Exercitationes Criticae, vol. ii. p. 139Google Scholar; they have scarcely received any archaeological criticism.

page 194 note 3 Vide Anth. Pal. iii. 1.

page 195 note 1 Collect. Sabouroff, vi. 23.

page 195 note 2 But the presence of the Sileni in the scene may be an allusion to the Dionysiac society that existed at Pergamon of Βουκόλοι and Σειλῆνοι. Vide inscription, vol. vii. p. 40 of Hermes.

page 195 note 3 Vide sketch in Jahrb. d. deut. Inst. 1887, p. 245, fig. C.

page 195 note 4 The meaning of the relief in Brocklesby Hall (Michaelis, Ancient Marbles), ‘Telephos and Auge,’ is very doubtful.

page 196 note 1 Die Griechischen Kulte und Mythen, p. 530.

page 196 note 2 Hellenic Journal, 1885, p. 127.

page 196 note 3 Απόλλων ὁ καλλίτεκνος, Arist. Ιερ. λογ. β., Dind. 469; Hekataeus, , Frag. Müller, 202Google Scholar.

page 197 note 1 Arch. Zeit. 1852, Taf. 47, 48. Zahn, iii. 91.

page 198 note 1 Die Gigantomachic.

page 199 note 1 Zahn, i. 58.

page 199 note 2 1888, p. 95.

page 200 note 1 Friederichs-Wolters's Bausteine. But Professor Brunn, in a recent paper, has ably and convincingly defended the old view.

page 201 note 1 Vide especially Livy, xxxviii, ch. 39.

page 201 note 2 Pliny, xxxiii. 154, and xxxiv. 84.

page 201 note 3 Anth. ii. 120, 9: Planud. iv. 239.

page 201 note 4 Vide Reinach, , Revue Archéol. 1889, p. 320.Google Scholar

page 201 note 5 Strabo, 667.

page 201 note 6 Mütheil. d. deutseh. Inst. 1885, p. 21.

page 202 note 1 Polybius, v. 77.

page 202 note 2 Published in the Mon. del. Inst. ii. 41, and by Furtwängler, in Collection Sabouroff, vi. 23.Google Scholar

page 202 note 3 Livy, xxxviii. 39, and Strabo, 641.

page 202 note 4 Bull. de Corresp. Hell. 1889 (Janvier), Plate XI.

page 202 note 5 Telmessos is among the places mentioned by Livy as ceded to Eumenes II. by the Romans for his help in the war against Antiochus. Livy, xxxviii. 39.

page 202 note 6 Vide Overbeck, Atlas zur Kunst Mythologie, Bd. I. Taf. v.; cf. Mon. del. Inst. III. xv.

page 203 note 1 In Tegea there was also a temple and a statue of Auge, ἐπονομαζομένη Αὐγη ἐν γόνασιν (Paus. viii. 48, 5); this probably has no reference to the myth of Telephos' birth, but the pose ἐν γόνασιν and the evidence from ancient Spartan sculpture—a representation of a kneeling woman between two divinities of childbirth, published Mitth. d. deutsch. Instituts, 1885—suggest that the worship and the statue at Tegea refer to Eileithyia, and the name Pausanias gives us may be due to a popular misunderstanding.

page 203 note 2 Bild und Lied, p. 35.

page 203 note 3 Pliny, xxxiv. 45.

page 203 note 4 I have suggested in Hell. Journ. 1886, that in all probability this group is an original invention of the Pergamene school; there is only negative evidence for this belief, and even this is not complete as long as we do not know the date of the representation of Telephos and the goat seen by Pausanias at Helicon: ix. 31, 2.

page 203 note 5 Vide Zahn, iii.

page 204 note 1 Numismatic Chronicle, 3, Ser. III. Taf. I. 5.

page 204 note 2 Heuzey, , Mont Olympe et Acarnanie, Pl. XI.Google Scholar

page 204 note 3 In nearly all the instances the hand with the apples is modern; a genuine example is the coin of Philippopolis struck in the reign of Caracalla (Müller-Wieseler, Denk. d. a. K. I. No. 155). On the other hand nearly all the antique representations of Heracles with the apples are of quite different type; e.g. Clarac, , Musée de Sculpt. Pl. 787, 1969, 1971.Google Scholar

page 204 note 4 As Helbig, (Annali dell' Instituto, 1868, p. 336)Google Scholar has shown by comparing it with the head of Heracles in the Museum of Bale, which he supposes to be of good Greek period, but which seemed to me rather to be excellent work of the early Roman period.

page 205 note 1 Year 1880.

page 206 note 1 Photographed and briefly noticed by Lanciani, in the Bull, della Commiss. Archaeol. Comunale di Roma, xii. year 1884, p. 213214Google Scholar, who suggests that it represents a Prometheus bound; he compares other representations of Prometheus, e.g. Millin, Gall. Myth., Pl. XCIII., but the Carlsruhe fragment proves that the legs were posed differently.

page 208 note 1 Vide the year 1879, Pl. II.

page 208 note 2 Published in the Arch. Zeit. 1845, Pl. XXX.

page 208 note 3 Arch. Zeit. 1869, p. 31.