Heracles and the Apples of the Hesperides: A New Type

1905 ◽  
Vol 25 ◽  
pp. 157-162
Author(s):  
K. A. McDowall
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Archaic Period ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
New Type ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Greek Art

Of all types of Heracles in Greek art, that with the apples of the Hesperides is perhaps the most familiar. Yet in the archaic period it scarcely occurs, and even in the fifth century, though the scene is often represented among the Labours, when accessory figures are consequently present, there are few examples of the hero holding the apples in free sculpture. With the fourth century, however, the subject becomes common, for it is to Lysippus and his followers that we owe the type of the Wearied Heracles holding the apples, which has given rise to the popular conception. That this became the stock representation to the ancient world as to the modern we learn from Suidas καὶ γράφουσι δορὰν λέοντος φοροῦντα, καὶ ῥόπαλον φέροντα, καί γε μῆλα κρατοῦντα. The earliest representation of the type, best known from the Heracles Farnese, appears to be on a tetradrachm of Alexander, and there can be little doubt that its origin is due to Lysippus. The replica in the Pitti bears the inscription ΛΥΣΙΠΠΟΥ ΕΡΓΟΝ.

Chinese Painting and Archaic Greek Art

1940 ◽  
Vol 9 (27) ◽  
pp. 129-136
Author(s):  
T. B. L. Webster
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Chinese Painting ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Greek Art ◽  
Manchester School

‘If a man were a good painter, he could deceive children and fools by painting a carpenter and showing it from a long way off, because it would seem really to be a carpenter.’ Plato here (Republic, 598c) is undoubtedly describing realistic painting, perhaps not so photographically realistic as the paintings in Pompeii or the painting that we know to-day, but painting which aimed at producing a likeness and rendering the appearance of the original. Such pictures can be seen on the vases of the fourth century and of the late fifth century b.c., for instance the two women on a red-figured perfume vase in the Manchester School of Art, which was painted about the time of the dramatic date of the Republic (Pl. I). But if we go back rather over a hundred years to the black-figure vase reproduced by Mr. Austin in Greece and Rome, vol. vii, we are in a completely different world of flat figures in conventional poses, and if we go further back still to the Geometric vase (Fig. I) which forms the subject of Mr. Austin's article, we are yet further from the world of ‘likeness’. These early Greek painters cannot have wanted to produce likenesses; but what was their aim ?

Aristotle and the Dramatisation of Legend

1954 ◽  
Vol 4 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 151-157
Author(s):  
H. C. Baldry
Keyword(s):  
Lyric Poetry ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Wide Field ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Scanty Information ◽  
The One ◽  
Traditional Stories

This article is a survey of familiar ground—those passages of the Poetics of Aristotle which throw light on the treatment of legend by the tragic poets. Although sweeping generalizations are often made on the use of the traditional stories in drama, our evidence on the subject is slight and inconclusive. We have little knowledge of the form in which most of the legends were known to the Attic playwrights, for the few we find in the Iliad and Odyssey appear there in very different versions from those they take on in the plays, and the fragmentary remains of epic and lyric poetry between Homer and the fifth century B.C. present us with a wide field for speculation, but few certain facts; while vase paintings and other works of art supplement only here and there the scanty information gained from literature.The comments of ancient writers on this aspect of tragedy are surprisingly few, and carry us little farther. The Poetics stands out as the one source from which we can draw any substantial account of the matter. Even Aristotle, of course, is not directly concerned with the history of drama, and deals with it only incidentally in isolated passages; and in considering these it must constantly be borne in mind that he is discussing tragedy as he knew it in the late fourth century, for the benefit of fourth-century readers. But even so, his statements are the main foundation on which our view of the dramatists' use of legend must be built.

Lute-Players in Greek Art

1965 ◽  
Vol 85 ◽  
pp. 62-71 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. A. Higgins ◽  
R. P. Winnington-Ingram
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
British Museum ◽  
String Length ◽  
Open Strings ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Greek Art

The primary purpose of this article is to publish two terracotta representations of lute-players in the British Museum. The subject is rare, but not quite so rare as might be supposed from the scarcity of literature about it. It has, therefore, seemed worth while to add a Ust of the examples known to us—a list which does not claim to be exhaustive—and to discuss briefly some of the problems which they raise. We do this in the hope that it may stimulate further investigation of a neglected theme.Between lutes and lyres there is a difference of principle which could hardly be more fundamental. The strings of the lyre are relatively numerous, but, in default of a fingerboard, fret-board, or neck, against which they could be firmly pressed (or ‘stopped’), the possibilities of obtaining more than one note from each string, in so far as they existed, must have been limited as to the number and quality of notes obtainable. The lute has few strings, but they are stretched over a solid neck, or a prolongation of the sound-box, against which they can be pressed so as to shorten the string-length and produce notes of higher pitch than those of the open strings; each string can thus provide a number of notes of approximately equal quality. Lutes and lyres were both common in Asia and in Egypt. In Greek lands the lyre predominated, and no examples of the lute are found in art before the fourth century B.C. The examples known to us are mostly terracottas.

Red-Figure Cups with Incised and Stamped Decoration.—II

1944 ◽  
Vol 64 ◽  
pp. 67-77 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annie D. Ure
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Figure Painting

In Volume LVI of this Journal I published a series of. Attic stemless kylikes with red-figure painting outside and stamped or incised patterns inside. These run from about the middle to the end of the fifth century. Characteristic of the early part of the fourth century, though the earliest examples are to be dated before the end of the fifth, is a series of cup-kotylai with similar decoration which forms the subject of this paper.The cups range in size from a height of 0·09 m. with a diameter of 0·165 m. to a height of 0·06 m. with a diameter of 0·12 m. Their deep and comparatively narrow bowls presented more difficulties to the stamper than the shallow kylikes and restricted his designs to smaller and simpler patterns.The earliest group consists of a pair of cups from the same hand. The stamped pattern shows five or six separate palmettes set closely round a small incised central circle and surrounded by a pair of incised circles.

The Later Comic Chorus

1935 ◽  
Vol 29 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. J. Maidment
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
New Comedy

The history of Attic comedy after the fifth century is not simple. The comic fragments are obscure, because they are fragments: and the ancient interpreters, because they are determined to interpret. But the subject still remains interesting and important, especially in so far as it is concerned with Middle Comedy, which filled the gap between Aristophanes and Menander. Formally and materially, Menander was a modern, while Aristophanes was not: and it was during the fourth century that the ground was being prepared for the change. Now one of the most noticeable differences between Old and New Comedy was the altered position of the chorus; and although the very mixed assortment of facts available makes coherent conclusions difficult, I think it worth enquiring how much can be known of the chorus after Aristophanes.

scholarly journals ‘DAY WATCH’ OR BAYWATCH? A NOTE ON ΗΜΕΡΟΣΚΟΠΟΣ (AR. LYS. 849)

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Mark Janse
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Male Population ◽  
Avant Garde ◽  
Female Speech ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Military

Abstract This article argues that ἡμεροσκόπος at Lys. 849 constitutes a pun based on iotacism, a well-known feature of female speech in fifth-century Athens aptly illustrated by Socrates in Plato's Cratylus. By describing herself as ἡμεροσκόπος ‘day watch’ pronounced as ἱμεροσκόπος ‘lust watch’, Lysistrata perverts the military term associated with the occupation-plot to a sexually charged word associated with the strike-plot. Its use would be very appropriate in a scene in which the φαλληφόρια of the men (not just Cinesias’ but later on also the Spartan herald's and the Spartan and Athenian delegates’) become the subject of a φαλλοσκοπία by the women (not just Lysistrata but later on also the chorus of women) and perforce also by the onlooking audience. Additional contemporary evidence from orthographic mistakes made by schoolboys suggests that Athenian elite women of the late fifth century were the avant-garde of socially prestigious innovations such as iotacism, which would definitively catch on with the male population in the fourth century and change the face of Greek phonology forever.

scholarly journals A guest at the table of the gods: Religion and the origins of academic life

2015 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 257-76
Author(s):  
Peter Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Religious Practice ◽  
Religious Discourse ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Academic Life ◽  
History Of Religions ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Critical Task

Proceeding from the Renaissance philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola’s Oration on the Dignity of Man, this paper is an attempt to survey the historical premises of the academic study of religion, both as a practice of detaching the subject matter of religion from its institutional restrictions, and as a practice of rehearsing certain modalities of thought and action (philosophical as well as religious) flourishing in the ancient world long before Christianity conquered the sphere of public worship in the fourth century. By paying particular attention to themes of suspension and commensality in religious practice and discourse, an attempt is made to reconsider the critical task of the history of religions, famously devised by Bruce Lincoln as a reversal of the orientation of religious discourse.

Athenian Democracy and Legal Change

2004 ◽  
Vol 98 (2) ◽  
pp. 311-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
MELISSA SCHWARTZBERG
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Legal Change ◽  
Athenian Democracy ◽  
Apparent Paradox ◽  
Legal Procedure ◽  
Greek World

The ancient Athenians regarded their ability to modify their laws as a fundamentally democratic trait; indeed, the faculty of “pragmatic innovation” was well known throughout the Greek world and was widely viewed as a key advantage that Athens had over its rival, Sparta. The Athenian commitment to legal change endured despite disastrous consequences at the end of the fifth century, a comprehensive revision of the laws, and the complication of legal procedure in the fourth century. In an apparent paradox, however, the Athenians also used “entrenchment clauses” to make certain laws immutable. Through analysis of entrenched laws and decrees, it is shown that the innovativeness that made Athens enviable also made it a difficult ally; entrenchment enabled the Athenians to make its commitments more credible. Although today entrenchment is typically used to protect crucial constitutional provisions, such as rights, in the ancient world it served a strategic purpose.

A Forger of Graffiti

1955 ◽  
Vol 50 ◽  
pp. 251-265
Author(s):  
P. Corbett ◽  
G. Woodhead
Keyword(s):  
Fourth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Third ◽  
Detailed Exposition ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Political Ferment ◽  
General Concern ◽  
Made In

A Recent number of this Annual (BSA XLVIII 191 ff.) included an account of a lengthy graffito, which was tentatively interpreted as a product of the political ferment in Athens in 411 B.C. The graffito was on a fragment of a fish-plate, and round the rim was a second inscription, part of a dedication, the latest possible date for which appeared to be c. 435 B.C.; however, the evidence at present available indicates that plates of this form were not produced before the fourth century. This discrepancy was pointed out, but as the content and execution of the graffito seemed to exclude the likelihood of forgery, the only remaining explanation appeared to be that the evidence for the chronology of Attic pottery had been misinterpreted; more specifically, that fish-plates were in fact already being made in the third quarter of the fifth century, and that the shape remained stable, without any perceptible variations for over forty years. A conclusion of this kind would have far-reaching implications, since the dating of buildings or objects in an excavation often has to be inferred from the pottery discovered with them; accordingly when further material came to light which proved beyond all doubt that the graffito concerned must be rejected as a forgery, it was felt that the subject is of sufficiently general concern to warrant a detailed exposition.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document