Hesiod's ‘Shield of Herakles’: its Structure and Workmanship

1941 ◽  
Vol 61 ◽  
pp. 17-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. L. Myres
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Positive Evidence ◽  
Literary Arguments ◽  
Greek Art ◽  
Real Composition ◽  
Shield Of Achilles

What follows is an attempt to interpret the Hesiodic Shield of Herakles by the same method as I have used elsewhere for the ‘Shield of Achilles.’ Long ago Brunn attributed obscurities to interpolation, mixed the zones, and allegorized; but nevertheless perceived that a real composition was in the poet's mind. Studniczka endeavoured to prove that the shield which Hesiod described was a real shield. But to support his theory he had to manipulate the text; his positive evidence was weak; it was, indeed, too soon for such an enterprise, and perhaps it is too soon still; and what was known then about archaic Greek art led in another direction. Recently, Mr. R. M. Cook has argued that while parts of the description of Herakles' shield were based, in subject and in phrasing, on the Homeric ‘Shield of Achilles,’ most of the other parts had parallels, sometimes very close, in archaic Greek art; and at a meeting of the Hellenic Society on 3rd May, 1938, he supplemented this argument with illustrations. Assuming, not unreasonably, that the vase-paintings are fairly representative, he showed that all the required models are to be found within the decade 580–570 B.C., and within the Attic and Corinthian schools. He found no evidence of the influence of Ionia, nor of Chalcis. He noted that these results agree with the view, based on historical and literary arguments ‘perhaps inadequate’ (I follow the summary circulated at the meeting of 3rd May, 1938) that the poem was written about 575 B.C. by a Boeotian or a Thessalian.

New Light on the Grylli

1935 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 232-235
Author(s):  
Anne Roes
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Other ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Greek Art

Well known though the grylli are, we have still very little to say about their meaning and about their origin.Our knowledge of them, which has hardly increased since the days of Furtwangler, amounts to the following facts. Grylli were one of the most popular motives for the decoration of gems in Roman times; they remained in favour during more than three centuries. Several indications lead us to believe that some pro-phylactic value was ascribed to them; this may also account for their long popularity. In appearance they can as a rule be divided into two classes. Either they are a composition of various human and animal heads, sometimes with birds added to them, or else they consist of the body of a bird, generally a cock, to which heads and masks are attached in different ways. As the cock often is provided with a horse's head, we are reminded of the Attic hippalectryon; it is, however, impossible to trace their descent from Greek art, for we do not know of any more complicated Greek design that may have inspired Roman gem-cutters; the hippalectryon itself even does not seem to have lived down to the Hellenistic period. On the other hand, it is equally impossible to regard them as an original Roman fantasy. In the first place, their connexion with the hippalectryon, though distant, is unmistakable; secondly and chiefly, we know there were grylli before the days of Roman glyptic art. In the necropolis of Tharros in Sardinia have been found several scarabs decorated with motives closely resembling the Roman grylli. Now the necropolis seems to have been in use for a very long time, but Furtwangler believed, no doubt rightly, that the bulk of the objects found in it, and especially the grylli, must be dated rather early as they still show some of the traditions of archaic art. Our Fig. 3a is a good example.

The Psychiatric Differentiation of Senility and Arteriosclerosis

1972 ◽  
Vol 120 (556) ◽  
pp. 321-325 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. P. Birkett
Keyword(s):  
Mental Hospital ◽  
Brain Disease ◽  
The Other ◽  
Positive Evidence ◽  
Brain Infarcts ◽  
Hospital Patients ◽  
Mental Symptoms ◽  
Senile Brain

This study compares the mental symptoms of two groups of aged mental hospital patients. One group had senile brain disease but no brain infarcts. The other group had brain infarcts but no positive evidence of senile brain disease.

scholarly journals The Metrological Relief at Oxford

1883 ◽  
Vol 4 ◽  
pp. 335-350 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ad. Michaelis
Keyword(s):  
Great Britain ◽  
Early Period ◽  
The Other ◽  
Very Old ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Greek Art ◽  
Artistic Interest ◽  
As If

Of peculiar interest among the Arundel marbles of the Pomfret donation at Oxford, is a slab in the shape of a pediment, ‘in which there is in basso relievo the figure of a man as big as the life with his arms extended as if he was crucified, but no lower than about his paps is seen, the cornice cutting him off as it were; and this extension of his arms is called a grecian measure, and over his arm is a grecian foot.’ The marble thus described by George Vertue, the engraver, was first published in Chandler's Marmora Oxoniensia, Pt. I., Pl. lix., No. 166, but its importance was completely overlooked until the late Prof. Matz, in one of his last papers, published a better drawing and pointed out the artistic interest of the relief as a sculpture belonging to a rather early period of Greek art. On the other hand, the merit of the monument as an authentic document of Greek metrology was set forth, at my request, by my friend Dr. Fr. Hultsch, the author of Griechische Metrologie, whose views are repeated in my Ancient Marbles in Great Britain. The chief result of his exposition was that our relief unites in a most interesting way the indication of the length of a fathom (ὀρλυιά) of 2·06 or 20·07 m. with that of a foot of 0·295 m., which is not, as one might expect, the sixth, but exactly the seventh part of the fathom. As such a division of the fathom does not agree with the well-known facts of Greek metrology, Hultsch imagined that the foot on our marble might rather be a modulus used by sculptors and architects, and he observed that the recent excavations of Olympia seem to show the dimensions of some of the temples, particularly of the very old temple of Heré, to be based on a double measure, on a foot but little longer (of 0·298 m.), as well as on a fathom of 2·084 m. which, again, corresponds to seven of those feet.

Theopompos and Athenian lies

1960 ◽  
Vol 80 ◽  
pp. 194-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Raphael Sealey
Keyword(s):  
Good Reason ◽  
The Other ◽  
General Reference ◽  
Positive Evidence ◽  
Delian League

At the end of book X of thePhilippikaTheopompos gave a digression on die Athenian demagogues. In book XXV he gave a digression on Athenian lies. This, which may have been a shorter digression, specified two lies and questioned the accepted account of the battle of Marathon; perhaps Theopompos discussed these problems alone in full and contented himself with a general reference to other lies. One lie was the oath allegedly taken by the Greeks before the battle of Plataea; today many people believe, with Theopompos, that this oath was not authentic. The other lie was the peace of Callias. Today some people believe, against Theopompos, that the peace was authentic. It is not always easy to discover their reasons. Some of them claim to produce nebulous allusions to the peace from the text of Thucydides. This search in Thucydides for references to the peace is not likely to carry conviction; it simply draws attention to the silence of Thucydides about the peace in his account of the Pentecontaetia. In fact the positive evidence for the peace is flimsy, but there is one good reason for believing in the peace; that is the fact that no major fighting is recorded between Persia and the Delian League after 450. Whether this outweighs the reasons against authenticity is a question for judgement.

Chariot Groups in Fifth-Century Greek Sculpture

1955 ◽  
Vol 75 ◽  
pp. 104-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cornelius C. Vermeule
Keyword(s):  
Southern Italy ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Positive Evidence ◽  
Greek Sculpture

Some of the most magnificent representations of chariots in mid career are seen on the coins of Sicily and Southern Italy toward the close of the fifth century B.C. There are two major theories concerning the appearance of these striking compositions in Sicilian numismatic art. One theory is that dies for these coins are the independent products of local, native artists of highest competence. The other is that the dies for these pieces are the work of Attic artists who migrated to the prosperous cities of Sicily to take up new careers as workers in the minor metallic arts, as gem cutters, and as die sinkers for the various local rulers. We lack positive evidence. We cannot identify any artist who left Attica to pursue work of this type in Southern Italy or Sicily. Scholars have produced a mass of conjecture and speculation on this subject.The treatment of space and depth in the chariot compositions seems to the writer to provide a new possibility for grouping and relating the representations of chariots in the late fifth century—both those on the major monuments in sculptured relief and those on the Tetradrachms and Dekadrachms of Syracuse and Akragas. From a restudy of the methods of relief representation and from a survey of information derived from such connecting links between major sculpture and coinage as silverware, gems, and vases further light may be thrown on the problems of the artistic derivation of the renowned die compositions of later fifth-century Sicily.

Aktaion and a lost ‘Bath of Artemis’

1990 ◽  
Vol 110 ◽  
pp. 26-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lamar Ronald Lacy
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Greek Literature ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Other Hand ◽  
Greek Art

Aktaion's own hounds devoured him, convinced by Artemis that he was a deer. This grim reversal, the great hunter who dies like a hunted beast, was the strongest element of the mythic tradition associated with the Boiotian hero and inspired numerous scenes in Greek art. Aktaion's Offense, on the other hand, received little iconographic attention before the imperial era, and Greek literature accounted for Artemis' hostility in a variety of ways. The chronology of the extant sources suggests a neat sequence of misdeeds, and the resulting succession of versions is the object of a well-established scholarly consensus. The information which survives is actually too scant and too fragmentary to bear so straightforward a reading, but a critical approach can suggest the outlines of more plausible, if less neat, picture.

scholarly journals Hermeneutics, Practical Wisdom, and Cognitive Poetics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yi Zheng
Keyword(s):  
Practical Wisdom ◽  
Background Knowledge ◽  
The Other ◽  
Literary Study ◽  
Literary Interpretation ◽  
Cognitive Poetics ◽  
Cognitive Perspective ◽  
Literary Arguments ◽  
The Status ◽  
Micro Level

AbstractIt may seem trivial to stress that our background knowledge is essential for literary interpretation, but what about practical wisdom, the inarticulable background knowledge? Can we articulate all the things that we know and are able to do in literary interpretation? Are we fully aware of all the assumptions behind our literary arguments? Instead of generally reflecting the status of hermeneutics at a macro-level, this essay argues that one way for hermeneutics to remain meaningful today is not to be tried as a theoretical whole, but as a source of sporadic inspiring arguments. To show that, at a micro-level, we can evaluate the strength of these arguments case by case without generalizing, we analyze from a cognitive perspective Gadamer’s argument that practical wisdom is crucial for literary interpretation. Using cognitive science to provide insights for literary study does not make the latter subservient to the former. Rather, cognitive poetics is a two-way street where each field complements the other by providing hypotheses and functioning as a testing ground. By demonstrating that we know more than we can tell in literary interpretation and that the three features Aristotle and Gadamer attribute to practical wisdom (contingent, inarticulable, and only learnable through experience) are at least tentatively empirically justified, this essay argues that hermeneutics has offered a noteworthy example for the two-way street of cognitive poetics.

Cattle egrets and Bustards in Greek Art

1961 ◽  
Vol 81 ◽  
pp. 44-55 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sylvia Benton
Keyword(s):  
Bronze Age ◽  
British Museum ◽  
The Other ◽  
Late Bronze Age ◽  
Marsh Bird ◽  
Cattle Egret ◽  
Greek Art ◽  
Crow Tribe ◽  
The One ◽  
Considerable Depth

There is a bird perched on the neck of a bull on a Late Bronze Age krater from Enkomi in the British Museum (plate I 1). It has long legs and a long neck, and it is much larger than any of the crow tribe, so often seen on cattle. Its long pointed bill is fixed on a point in the bull's neck probably removing a tick or something of the sort. The operation is painful and the bull tosses his head. On the other side of the vase the bird has lost his footing but still keeps the grip of his bill on the neck of the bull (plate I 2). That daggerlike bill is longer than the one on the other side of the vase. We must therefore suppose that the bill in the earlier scene has been inserted into the bull's neck to a considerable depth. No wonder the bull is plunging about to dislodge the operator.A bird with long neck, long legs, and long beak can only be a marsh bird, and as it is hunting for insects on the neck of a bull, it can only be a Cattle Egret (plate I 4.), though its body bears some resemblance to the bodies of birds which are probably meant for geese or swans; its beak is more formidable. Presumably this insect-hunting bird is not a deity revealing him or herself; but perhaps Cypriots are more secular than Mycenaeans.

scholarly journals The Shield of Achilles: From Metalepsis to Mise En Abyme

Ramus ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irene J.F. de Jong
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Natural Image ◽  
Central Question ◽  
The Third ◽  
Mise En Abyme ◽  
The Spectator ◽  
Shield Of Achilles

The Shield of Achilles (Iliad 18.478-608) can easily be qualified as ‘the mother’ of all ekphraseis, and scholarly interest in this passage has been massive. Scholars have mainly discussed three issues: the relation between the Shield and real shields; the relation between the scenes on the Shield and the Iliad; and the method of description.In this article I will focus on the third point. As noted famously by Lessing, the description of the Shield is dynamic, both in the sense that we see Hephaestus making the shield and that the scenes depicted become stories, with characters speaking and thinking and events following one after the other. My central question is: who is responsible for these narrativised scenes, Hephaestus or the Homeric narrator? Or to put it more poignantly: who creates the scenes on the Shield? I note the following positions. It is the divine artist Hephaestus who either creates figures which (1a) can really move, like his tripods and handmaids: 18.376f., 418-20 (‘the figures are not merely lifelike, they really live!’), or (1b) at least suggest movement, a suggestion to be decoded by the narrator (‘the consistent transformations of gold into natural image, of image into action, give us to understand that the qualities of sound and movement and emotion come into being through the responsive participation of the spectator in the work’). Or, it is the Homeric narrator who either (2a) cannot suppress a ‘youthful pleasure in animated narration’ and himself narrates stories instead of describing the figures which Hephaestus makes, or (2b) subtly blends description and narration (‘a cycle of scenes wrought in metal—or in words? This description of the shield actually is a poem’).

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