Laocoon

by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing

NOTES TO THE LAOCOON.

Note 1, p. [8].

Antiochus (Anthol. lib. ii. cap. 4). Hardouin, in his commentary on Pliny (lib. xxxv. sect. 36), attributes this epigram to a certain Piso. But among all the Greek epigrammatists there is none of this name.

Note 2, p. [9].

For this reason Aristotle commanded that his pictures should not be shown to young persons, in order that their imagination might be kept as free as possible from all disagreeable images. (Polit. lib. viii. cap. 5, p. 526, edit. Conring.) Boden, indeed, would read Pausanias in this passage instead of Pauson, because that artist is known to have painted lewd figures (de Umbra poetica comment. 1, p. xiii). As if we needed a philosophic law-giver to teach us the necessity of keeping from youth such incentives to wantonness! A comparison of this with the well-known passage in the “Art of Poesy” would have led him to withhold his conjecture. There are commentators, as Kühn on Ælian (Var. Hist. lib. iv. cap. 3), who suppose the difference mentioned by Aristotle as existing between Polygnotus, Dionysius, and Pauson to consist in this: that Polygnotus painted gods and heroes; Dionysius, men; and Pauson, animals. They all painted human figures; and the fact that Pauson once painted a horse, does not prove him to have been a painter of animals as Boden supposes him to have been. Their rank was determined by the degree of beauty they gave their human figures; and the reason that Dionysius could paint nothing but men, and was therefore called pre-eminently the anthropographist, was that he copied too slavishly, and could not rise into the domain of the ideal beneath which it would have been blasphemy to represent gods and heroes.

Note 3, p. [11].

The serpent has been erroneously regarded as the peculiar symbol of a god of medicine. But Justin Martyr expressly says (Apolog. ii. p. 55, edit. Sylburgh), παρά παντὶ τῶν νομιζομένων παρ’ ὑμῖν θεῶν, ὄφις σύμβολον μέγα καὶ μυστήριον ἀναγράφεται; and a number of monuments might be mentioned where the serpent accompanies deities having no connection with health.

Note 4, p. [12].

Look through all the works of art mentioned by Pliny, Pausanias, and the rest, examine all the remaining statues, bas-reliefs, and pictures of the ancients, and nowhere will you find a fury. I except figures that are rather symbolical than belonging to art, such as those generally represented on coins. Yet Spence, since he insisted on having furies, would have done better to borrow them from coins than introduce them by an ingenious conceit into a work where they certainly do not exist. (Seguini Numis. p. 178. Spanheim, de Præst. Numism. Dissert. xiii. p. 639. Les Césars de Julien, par Spanheim, p. 48.) In his Polymetis he says (dial. xvi.): “Though furies are very uncommon in the works of the ancient artists, yet there is one subject in which they are generally introduced by them. I mean the death of Meleager, in the relievos of which they are often represented as encouraging or urging Althæa to burn the fatal brand on which the life of her only son depended. Even a woman’s resentment, you see, could not go so far without a little help from the devil. In a copy of one of these relievos, published in the ‘Admiranda,’ there are two women standing by the altar with Althæa, who are probably meant for furies in the original, (for who but furies would assist at such a sacrifice?) though the copy scarce represents them horrid enough for that character. But what is most to be observed in that piece is the round disc beneath the centre of it, with the evident head of a fury upon it. This might be what Althæa addressed her prayers to whenever she wished ill to her neighbors, or whenever she was going to do any very evil action. Ovid introduces her as invoking the furies on this occasion in particular, and makes her give more than one reason for her doing so.” (Metamorph. viii. 479.)

In this way we might make every thing out of any thing. “Who but furies,” asks Spence, “would have assisted at such a sacrifice?” I answer, the maid-servants of Althæa, who had to kindle and feed the fire. Ovid says (Metamorph. viii.):—

Protulit hunc (stipitem) genetrix, tædasque in fragmina poni

Imperat, et positis inimicos admovet ignes.

“The mother brought the brand and commands torches to be placed upon the pieces, and applies hostile flame to the pile.”

Both figures have actually in their hands these “tædas,” long pieces of pine, such as the ancients used for torches, and one, as her attitude shows, has just broken such a piece. As little do I recognize a fury upon the disc towards the middle of the work. It is a face expressive of violent pain,—doubtless the head of Meleager himself (Metamorph. viii. 515).

Inscius atque absens flamma Meleagros in illa

Uritur; et cæcis torreri viscera sentit

Ignibus; et magnos superat virtute dolores.

“Meleager, absent and unconscious, is consumed in that fire, and feels his bowels parched with the unseen flames; yet with courage he subdues the dreadful pains.”

The artist used this as an introduction to the next incident of the same story,—the death of Meleager. What Spence makes furies, Montfaucon took to be fates, with the exception of the head upon the disc, which he also calls a fury. Bellori leaves it undecided whether they are fates or furies. An “or” which sufficiently proves that they are neither the one nor the other. Montfaucon’s further interpretation should have been clearer. The female figure resting on her elbows by the bed, he should have called Cassandra, not Atalanta. Atalanta is the one sitting in a grieving attitude with her back towards the bed. The artist has very wisely turned her away from the family, as being only the beloved, not the wife, of Meleager, and because her distress at a calamity of which she had been the innocent cause must have exasperated his family.

Note 5, p. [14].

He thus describes the degrees of sadness actually expressed by Timanthes: “Calchantem tristem, mæstum Ulyssem, clamantem Ajacem, lamentantem Menelaum.” Ajax screaming would have been extremely ugly, and since neither Cicero nor Quintilian, when speaking of this picture, so describe him, I shall venture with the less hesitation to consider this an addition with which Valerius has enriched the canvas from his own invention.

Note 6, p. [15].

We read in Pliny (lib. 34, sect. 19): “Eundem [Myro] vicit et Pythagoras Leontinus, qui fecit statiodromon Astylon, qui Olympiæ ostenditur: et Libyn puerum tenentem tabulam, eodem loco, et mala ferentem nudum. Syracusis autem claudicantem: cujus hulceris dolorem sentire etiam spectantes videntur.” “Pythagoras Leontinus surpassed him (Myro). He made the statue of the runner, Astylon, which is exhibited at Olympia, and in the same place a Libyan boy holding a tablet, and a rude statue bearing apples; but at Syracuse a limping figure, the pain of whose sore the beholders themselves seem to feel.” Let us examine these last words more closely. Is there not evident reference here to some person well known as having a painful ulcer? “Cujus hulceris,” &c. And shall that “cujus” be made to refer simply to the “claudicantem,” and the “claudicantem,” perhaps, to the still more remote “puerum?” No one had more reason to be known by such a malady than Philoctetes. I read, therefore, for “claudicantem,” “Philoctetem,” or, at least, both together, “Philoctetem claudicantem,” supposing that, as the words were so similar in sound, one had crowded out the other. Sophocles represents him as στίβον κατ’ ἀνάγκην ἕρπειν, compelled to drag his limping gait, and his not being able to tread as firmly on his wounded foot would have occasioned a limp.

Note 7, p. [24].

When the chorus perceives Philoctetes under this accumulation of miseries, his helpless solitude seems the circumstance that chiefly touches them. We hear in every word the social Greek. With regard to one passage, however, I have my doubts. It is this:—

Ἵν’ αὐτὸς ἦν πρόσουρος οὐκ ἔχων βάσιν,

οὐδέ τιν’ ἐγχώρων,

κακογείτονα παρ’ ᾧ στόνον ἀντίτυπον

βαρυβρῶτ’ ἀποκλαύ—

σειεν αἱματηρόν.

Lit.: I myself, my only neighbor, having no power to walk, nor any companion, a neighbor in ill, to whom I might wail forth my echoing, gnawing groans, bloodstained.

The common translation of Winshem renders the lines thus:—

Ventis expositus et pedibus captus

Nullum cohabitatorem

Nec vicinum ullum saltem malum habens, apud quem gemitum mutuum.

Gravemque ac cruentum

Ederet.

The translation of Thomas Johnson differs from this only in the choice of words:—

Ubi ipse ventis erat expositus, firmum gradum non habens,

Nec quenquam indigenarum,

Nec malum vicinum, apud quem ploraret

Vehementur edacem

Sanguineum morbum, mutuo gemitu.

One might think he had borrowed these words from the translation of Thomas Naogeorgus, who expresses himself thus (his work is very rare, and Fabricius himself knew it only through Operin’s Catalogue):—

... ubi expositus fuit

Ventis ipse, gradum firmum haud habens,

Nec quenquam indigenam, nec vel malum

Vicinum, ploraret apud quem

Vehementer edacem atque cruentum

Morbum mutuo.

If these translations are correct, the chorus pronounces the strongest possible eulogy on human society. The wretch has no human being near him; he knows of no friendly neighbor; even a bad one would have been happiness. Thomson, then, might have had this passage in mind when he puts these words into the mouth of his Melisander, who was likewise abandoned by ruffians on a desert island:—

Cast on the wildest of the Cyclad isles

Where never human foot had marked the shore,

These ruffians left me; yet believe me, Arcas,

Such is the rooted love we bear mankind,

All ruffians as they were, I never heard

A sound so dismal as their parting oars.

To him, also, the society of ruffians was better than none. A great and admirable idea! If we could but be sure that Sophocles, too, had meant to express it! But I must reluctantly confess to finding nothing of the sort in him, unless, indeed, I were to use, instead of my own eyes, those of the old scholiast, who thus transposes the words:—Οὐ μόνον ὅπου καλὸν οὐκ εἶχέ τινα τῶν ἐγχωρίων γείτονα, ἀλλὰ οὐδὲ κακόν, παρ’ οὗ ἀμοιβαῖον λόγον στενάζων ἀκούσειε. Brumoy, as well as our modern German translator, has held to this reading, like the translators quoted above. Brumoy says, “Sans société, même importune;” and the German, “jeder Gesellschaft, auch der beschwerlichsten, beraubt.” My reasons for differing from all of these are the following. First, it is evident that if κακογείτονα was meant to be separated from τιν’ ἐγχώρων and constitute a distinct clause, the particle οὐδέ would necessarily have been repeated before it. Since this is not the case, it is equally evident that κακογείτονα belongs to τίνα, and there should be no comma after ἐγχώρων. This comma crept in from the translation. Accordingly, I find that some Greek editions (as that published at Wittenberg of 1585 in 8vo, which was wholly unknown to Fabricius) are without it, but put a comma only after κακογείτονα, as is proper. Secondly, is that a bad neighbor from whom we may expect, as the scholiast has it, στόνον ἀντίτυπον, ἀμοιβαῖον? To mingle his sighs with ours is the office of a friend, not an enemy. In short, the word κακογείτονα has not been rightly understood. It has been thought to be derived from the adjective κακός, when it is really derived from the substantive τὸ κακόν. It has been translated an evil neighbor, instead of a neighbor in ill. Just as κακόμαντις means not an evil, in the sense of a false, untrue prophet, but a prophet of evil, and κακότεχνος means not a bad, unskilful painter, but a painter of bad things. In this passage the poet means by a neighbor in ill, one who is overtaken by a similar misfortune with ourselves, or from friendship shares our sufferings; so that the whole expression, οὐδ’ ἔχων τιν’ ἐγχώρων κακογείτονα, is to be translated simply by “neque quenquam indigenarum mali socium habens.” The new English translator of Sophocles, Thomas Franklin, must have been of my opinion. Neither does he find an evil neighbor in κακογείτων, but translates it simply “fellow-mourner.”

Exposed to the inclement skies,

Deserted and forlorn he lies,

No friend nor fellow-mourner there,

To soothe his sorrow and divide his care.

Note 8, p. [34].

Saturnal. lib. v. cap. 2. “Non parva sunt alia quæ Virgilius traxit a Græcis, dicturumne me putatis quæ vulgo nota sunt? quod Theocritum sibi fecerit pastoralis operis autorem, ruralis Hesiodum? et quod in ipsis Georgicis, tempestatis serenitatisque signa de Arati Phænomenis traxerit? vel quod eversionem Trojæ, cum Sinone suo, et equo ligneo cæterisque omnibus, quæ librum secundum faciunt, a Pisandro pene ad verbum transcripserit? qui inter Græcos poetas eminet opere, quod a nuptiis Jovis et Junonis incipiens universas historias, quæ mediis omnibus sæculis usque ad ætatem ipsius Pisandri contigerunt, in unam seriem coactas redegerit, et unum ex diversis hiatibus temporum corpus effecerit? in quo opere inter historias cæteras interitus quoque Trojæ in hunc modum relatus est. Quæ fideliter Maro interpretando, fabricatus est sibi Iliacæ urbis ruinam. Sed et hæc et talia ut pueris decantata prætereo.”

Not a few other things were brought by Virgil from the Greeks, and inserted in his poem as original. Do you think I would speak of what is known to all the world? how he took his pastoral poem from Theocritus, his rural from Hesiod? and how, in his Georgics, he took from the Phenomena of Aratus the signs of winter and summer? or that he translated almost word for word from Pisander the destruction of Troy, with his Sinon and wooden horse and the rest? For he is famous among Greek poets for a work in which, beginning his universal history with the nuptials of Jupiter and Juno, he collected into one series whatever had happened in all ages, to the time of himself, Pisander. In which work the destruction of Troy, among other things, is related in the same way. By faithfully interpreting these things, Maro made his ruin of Ilium. But these, and others like them, I pass over as familiar to every schoolboy.

Note 9, p. [35].

I do not forget that a picture mentioned by Eumolpus in Petronius may be cited in contradiction of this. It represented the destruction of Troy, and particularly the history of Laocoon exactly as narrated by Virgil. And since, in the same gallery at Naples were other old pictures by Zeuxis, Protogenes, and Apelles, it was inferred that this was also an old Greek picture. But permit me to say that a novelist is no historian. This gallery and picture, and Eumolpus himself, apparently existed only in the imagination of Petronius. That the whole was fiction appears from the evident traces of an almost schoolboyish imitation of Virgil. Thus Virgil (Æneid lib. ii. 199–224):—

Hic aliud majus miseris multoque tremendum

Objicitur magis, atque improvida pectora turbat.

Laocoon, ductus Neptuno sorte sacerdos,

Solemnis taurum ingentem mactabat ad aras.

Ecce autem gemini a Tenedo tranquilla per alta

(Horresco referens) immensis orbibus angues

Incumbunt pelago, pariterque ad litora tendunt:

Pectora quorum inter fluctus arrecta, jubæque

Sanguineæ exsuperant undas: pars cetera pontum

Pone legit, sinuatque immensa volumine terga.

Fit sonitus, spumante salo: jamque arva tenebant,

Ardentesque oculos suffecti sanguine et igni

Sibila lambebant linguis vibrantibus ora.

Diffugimus visu exsangues. Illi agmine certo

Laocoonta petunt, et primum parva duorum

Corpora natorum serpens amplexus uterque

Implicat, et miseros morsu depascitur artus.

Post ipsum, auxilio subeuntem ac tela ferentem,

Corripiunt, spirisque ligant ingentibus; et jam

Bis medium amplexi, bis collo squamea circum

Terga dati, superant capite et cervicibus altis.

Ille simul manibus tendit divellere nodos,

Perfusus sanie vittas atroque veneno:

Clamores simul horrendos ad sidera tollit.

Quales mugitus, fugit cum saucius aram

Taurus et incertam excussit cervice securim.

And thus Eumolpus, in whose lines, as is usually the case with improvisators, memory has had as large a share as imagination:—

Ecce alia monstra. Celsa qua Tenedos mare

Dorso repellit, tumida consurgunt freta,

Undaque resultat scissa tranquillo minor.

Qualis silenti nocte remorum sonus

Longe refertur, cum premunt classes mare,

Pulsumque marmor abiete imposita gemit.

Respicimus, angues orbibus geminis ferunt

Ad saxa fluctus: tumida quorum pectora

Rates ut altæ, lateribus spumas agunt:

Dat cauda sonitum; liberæ ponto jubæ

Coruscant luminibus, fulmineum jubar

Incendit æquor, sibilisque undæ tremunt;

Stupuere mentes. Infulis stabant sacri

Phrygioque cultu gemina nati pignora

Laocoonte, quos repente tergoribus ligant

Angues corusci: parvulas illi manus

Ad ora referunt: neuter auxilio sibi

Uterque fratri transtulit pias vices,

Morsque ipsa miseros mutuo perdit metu.

Accumulat ecce liberûm funus parens

Infirmus auxiliator; invadunt virum

Jam morte pasti, membraque ad terram trahunt.

Jacet sacerdos inter aras victima.

The main points are the same in both, and in many places the same words are used. But those are trifles, and too evident to require mention. There are other signs of imitation, more subtle, but not less sure. If the imitator be a man with confidence in his own powers, he seldom imitates without trying to improve upon the original; and, if he fancy himself to have succeeded, he is enough of a fox to brush over with his tail the footprints which might betray his course. But he betrays himself by this very vanity of wishing to introduce embellishments, and his desire to appear original. For his embellishments are nothing but exaggerations and excessive refinements. Virgil says, “Sanguineæ jubæ”; Petronius, “liberæ jubæ luminibus coruscant”; Virgil, “ardentes oculos suffecti sanguine et igni”; Petronius, “fulmineum jubar incendit æquor.” Virgil, “fit sonitus spumante salo”; Petronius, “sibilis undæ tremunt.” So the imitator goes on exaggerating greatness into monstrosity, wonders into impossibilities. The boys are secondary in Virgil. He passes them over with a few insignificant words, indicative simply of their helplessness and distress. Petronius makes a great point of them, converting the two children into a couple of heroes.

Neuter auxilio sibi

Uterque fratri transtulit pias vices

Morsque ipsa miseros mutuo perdit metu.

Who expects from human beings, and children especially, such self-sacrifice? The Greek understood nature better (Quintus Calaber, lib. xii.), when he made even mothers forget their children at the appearance of the terrible serpents, so intent was every one on securing his own safety.

... ἔνθα γυναῖκες

Οἴμωζον, καὶ πού τις ἑῶν ἐπελήσατο τέκνων

Aὐτὴ ἀλευομένη στυγερὸν μόρον....

The usual method of trying to conceal an imitation is to alter the shading, bringing forward what was in shadow, and obscuring what was in relief. Virgil lays great stress upon the size of the serpents, because the probability of the whole subsequent scene depends upon it. The noise occasioned by their coming is a secondary idea, intended to make more vivid the impression of their size. Petronius raises this secondary idea into chief prominence, describing the noise with all possible wealth of diction, and so far forgetting to describe the size of the monsters that we are almost left to infer it from the noise they make. He hardly would have fallen into this error, had he been drawing solely from his imagination, with no model before him which he wished to imitate without the appearance of imitation. We can always recognize a poetic picture as an unsuccessful imitation when we find minor details exaggerated and important ones neglected, however many incidental beauties the poem may possess, and however difficult, or even impossible, it may be to discover the original.

Note 10, p. [36].

Suppl. aux Antiq. Expl. T. i. p. 243. Il y a quelque petite différence entre ce que dit Virgile, et ce que le marbre représente. Il semble, selon ce que dit le poëte, que les serpens quittèrent les deux enfans pour venir entortiller le père, au lieu que dans ce marbre ils lient en même temps les enfans et leur père.

Note 11, p. [37].

Donatus ad v. 227, lib. ii. Æneid. Mirandum non est, clypeo et simulacri vestigiis tegi potuisse, quos supra et longos et validos dixit, et multiplici ambitu circumdedisse Laocoontis corpus ac liberorum, et fuisse superfluam partem. The “non” in the clause “mirandum non est,” should, it seems to me, be omitted, unless we suppose the concluding part of the sentence to be missing. For, since the serpents were of such extraordinary length, it would certainly be surprising that they could be concealed beneath the goddess’s shield, unless this also were of great length, and belonged to a colossal figure. The assurance that this was actually the case must have been meant to follow, or the “non” has no meaning.

Note 12, p. [39].

In the handsome edition of Dryden’s Virgil (London, 1697). Yet here the serpents are wound but once about the body, and hardly at all about the neck. So indifferent an artist scarcely deserves an excuse, but the only one that could be made for him would be that prints are merely illustrations, and by no means to be regarded as independent works of art.

Note 13, p. [40].

This is the judgment of De Piles in his remarks upon Du Fresnoy: “Remarquez, s’il vous plaît, que les draperies tendres et légères, n’étant données qu’au sexe féminin, les anciens sculpteurs ont évité autant qu’ils out pu, d’habiller les figures d’hommes; parce qu’ils ont pensé, comme nous l’avons déjà dit qu’en sculpture on ne pouvait imiter les étoffes, et que les gros plis faisaient un mauvais effet. Il y a presque autant d’exemples de cette vérité, qu’il y a parmi les antiques, de figures d’hommes nuds. Je rapporterai seulement celui du Laocoon, lequel, selon la vraisemblance, devrait être vêtu. En effet, quelle apparence y a-t-il qu’un fils de roi, qu’un prêtre d’Apollon, se trouvât tout nud dans la cérémonie actuelle d’un sacrifice? car les serpens passèrent de l’île de Tenedos au rivage de Troye, et surprirent Laocoon et ses fils dans le temps même qu’il sacrifiait à Neptune sur le bord de la mer, comme le marque Virgile dans le second livre de son Enéide. Cependant les artistes qui sont les auteurs de ce bel ouvrage, ont bien vu qu’ils ne pouvaient pas leur donner de vêtements convenables à leur qualité, sans faire comme un amas de pierres, dont la masse ressemblerait à un rocher, au lieu des trois admirables figures, qui ont été, et qui sont toujours, l’admiration des siècles. C’est pour cela que de deux inconveniens, ils out jugé celui des draperies beaucoup plus fâcheux, que celui d’aller contre la vérité même.”

Note 14, p. [42].

Maffei, Richardson, and, more recently, Herr Von Hagedorn. (Betrachtungen über die Malerei, p. 37. Richardson, Traité de la Peinture, vol. iii.) De Fontaines does not merit being reckoned in the same class with these scholars. In the notes to his translation of Virgil, he maintains, indeed, that the poet had the group in mind, but he is so ignorant as to ascribe it to Phidias.

Note 15, p. [44].

I can adduce no better argument in support of my view than this poem of Sadolet. It is worthy of one of the old poets, and, since it may well take the place of an engraving, I venture to introduce it here entire.

DE LAOCOONTIS STATUA JACOBI SADOLETI CARMEN.

Ecce alto terræ e cumulo, ingentisque ruinæ

Visceribus, iterum reducem longinqua reduxit

Laocoonta dies; aulis regalibus olim

Qui stetit, atque tuos ornabat, Tite, Penates.

Divinæ simulacrum artis, nec docta vetustas

Nobilius spectabat opus, nunc celsa revisit

Exemptum tenebris redivivæ mœnia Romæ.

Quid primum summumque loquar? miserumne parentem

Et prolem geminam? an sinuatos flexibus angues

Terribili aspectu? caudasque irasque draconum

Vulneraque et veros, saxo moriente, dolores?

Horret ad hæc animus, mutaque ab imagine pulsat

Pectora, non parvo pietas commixta tremori.

Prolixum bini spiris glomerantur in orbem

Ardentes colubri, et sinuosis orbibus errant,

Ternaque multiplici constringunt corpora nexu.

Vix oculi sufferre valent, crudele tuendo

Exitium, casusque feros: micat alter, et ipsum

Laocoonta petit, totumque infraque supraque

Implicat et rabido tandem ferit ilia morsu.

Connexum refugit corpus, torquentia sese

Membra, latusque retro sinuatum a vulnere cernas.

Ille dolore acri, et laniatu impulsus acerbo,

Dat gemitum ingentem, crudosque evellere dentes

Connixus, lævam impatiens ad terga Chelydri

Objicit: intendunt nervi, collectaque ab omni

Corpore vis frustra summis conatibus instat.

Ferre nequit rabiem, et de vulnere murmur anhelum est.

At serpens lapsu crebro redeunte subintrat

Lubricus, intortoque ligat genua infima nodo.

Absistunt suræ, spirisque prementibus arctum

Crus tumet, obsepto turgent vitalia pulsu,

Liventesque atro distendunt sanguine venas.

Nec minus in natos eadem vis effera sævit

Implexuque angit rapido, miserandaque membra

Dilacerat: jamque alterius depasta cruentum

Pectus, suprema genitorem voce cientis,

Circumjectu orbis, validoque volumine fulcit.

Alter adhuc nullo violatus corpora morsu,

Dum parat adducta caudam divellere planta,

Horret ad aspectum miseri patris, hæret in illo,

Et jam jam ingentes fletus, lachrymasque cadentes

Anceps in dubio retinet timor. Ergo perenni

Qui tantum statuistis opus jam laude nitentes,

Artifices magni (quanquam et melioribus actis

Quæritur æternum nomen, multoque licebat

Clarius ingenium venturæ tradere famæ)

Attamen ad laudem quæcunque oblata facultas

Egregium hanc rapere, et summa ad fastigia niti.

Vos rigidum lapidem vivis animare figuris

Eximii, et vivos spiranti in marmore sensus

Inserere, aspicimus motumque iramque doloremque,

Et pene audimus gemitus; vos extulit olim

Clara Rhodos, vestræ jacuerunt artis honores

Tempore ab immenso, quos rursum in luce secunda

Roma videt, celebratque frequens: operisque vetusti

Gratia parta recens. Quanto præstantius ergo est

Ingenio, aut quovis extendere fata labore,

Quam fastus et opes et inanem extendere luxum.

LAOCOON, BY JAMES SADOLET.

So, from the depths of earth and the bowels of mighty ruins, the long-deferred day has brought back the returning Laocoon, who stood of old in thy royal halls and graced thy penates, Titus. The image of divine art, a work as noble as any produced by the learning of antiquity, now freed from darkness, beholds again the lofty walls of renovated Rome. With what part shall I begin as the greatest? the unhappy father and his two sons? the sinuous coils of the terrible serpents? the tails and the fierceness of the dragons? the wounds and real pains of the dying stone? These chill the mind with horror, and pity, mingled with no slight fear, drives our hearts back from the dumb image. Two gleaming snakes cover a vast space with their gathered coils, and move in sinuous rings, and hold three bodies bound in a many-twisted knot. Eyes scarce can bear to behold the cruel death and fierce sufferings. One gleaming seeks Laocoon himself, winding him all about, above, below, and attacks his groins at last with poisonous bite. The imprisoned body recoils, and you see the limbs writhe and the side shrink back from the wound. Forced by the sharp pain and bitter anguish, he groans; and, trying to tear out the cruel teeth, throws his left hand upon the serpent’s back. The nerves strain, and the whole body in vain collects its strength for the supreme effort. He cannot endure the fierce torture, and pants from the wound. But the slippery snake glides down with frequent folds, and binds his leg below the knee with twisted knot. The calves fall in, the tight-bound leg swells between the pressing coils, and the vitals grow tumid from the stopping of the pulses, and black blood distends the livid veins. The same cruel violence attacks the children no less fiercely, tortures them with many encircling folds, and lacerates their suffering limbs. Now satiated upon the bloody breast of one, who, with his last breath, calls upon his father, the serpent supports the lifeless body with the mighty circles thrown around it. The other, whose body has as yet been hurt by no sting, while preparing to pluck out the tail from his foot, is filled with horror at sight of his wretched father, and clings to him. A double fear restrains his great sobs and falling tears. Therefore ye enjoy perpetual fame, ye great artificers who made the mighty work, although an immortal name may be sought by better deeds, and nobler talents may be handed down to future fame. Yet any power employed to snatch this praise and reach the heights of fame is excellent. Ye have excelled in animating the rigid stone with living forms, and inserting living senses within the breathing marble. We see the movement, the wrath and pain, and almost hear the groans. Illustrious Rhodes begot you of old. Long the glories of your art lay hid, but Rome beholds them again in a second dawn, and celebrates them with many voices, in fresh acknowledgment of the old labor. How much nobler, then, to extend our fates by art or toil than to swell pride and wealth and empty luxury.

(Leodegarii a Quercu Farrago Poematum, T. ii.) Gruter has introduced this poem with another one of Sadolet into his well-known collection, but with many errors. (Delic. Poet. Italorum. Parte alt.)

Note 16, p. [45].

De la Peinture, tome iii. p. 516. C’est l’horreur que les Troïens ont conçue contre Laocoon, qui était nécessaire à Virgile pour la conduite de son poëme; et cela le mène à cette description pathétique de la destruction de la patrie de son héros. Aussi Virgile n’avait garde de diviser l’attention sur la dernière nuit, pour une grand ville entière, par la peinture d’un petit malheur d’un particulier.

Note 17, p. [51].

I say it is possible, but I would wager ten against one that it is not so. Juvenal is speaking of the early days of the republic, when splendor and luxury were yet unknown, and the soldier put whatever gold and silver he got as booty upon his arms and the caparisons of his horse. (Sat. xi.)

Tunc rudis et Grajas mirari nescius artes

Urbibus eversis prædarum in parte reperta

Magnorum artificum frangebat pocula miles.

Ut phaleris gauderet equus, cælataque cassis

Romuleæ simulacra feræ mansuescere jussæ

Imperii fato, geminos sub rupe Quirinos,

Ac nudam effigiem clypeo fulgentis et hasta,

Pendentisque Dei perituro ostenderet hosti.

The soldier broke up the precious cups, the masterpieces of great artists, to make a she-wolf, a little Romulus and Remus to deck his helmet with. All is plain down to the last two lines, where the poet proceeds to describe such a figure on the helmets of the old soldiers. The figure is meant for the god Mars, but what can the term pendentis mean as applied to him? Rigaltius found in an old gloss the interpretation “quasi ad ictum se inclinantis.” Lubinus supposes the figure to have been on the shield, and, as the shield hung from the arm, the figure might be spoken of as hanging. But this is contrary to the construction, the subject of “ostenderet” being not “miles” but “cassis.” According to Britannicus, whatever stands high in the air may be said to hang, and the expression may be used of this figure perched above or upon the helmet. Some would read “perdentis” as a contrast to the following “perituro,” though none but themselves would think the contrast desirable. What does Addison say to this doubtful passage? He thinks all the commentators are wrong and maintains this to be the true meaning. “The Roman soldiers, who were not a little proud of their founder and the military genius of their republic, used to bear on their helmets the first history of Romulus, who was begot by the god of war and suckled by a wolf. The figure of the god was made as if descending upon the priestess Ilia, or, as others call her, Rhea Silvia. As he was represented descending, his figure appeared suspended in the air over the vestal virgin, in which sense the word ‘pendentis’ is extremely proper and poetical. Besides the antique basso-rilievo (in Bellori) that made me first think of this interpretation, I have since met with the same figures on the reverses of a couple of ancient coins, which were stamped in the reign of Antoninus Pius.” (Addison’s Travels, Rome, Tonson’s edition, 1745, p. 183.)

Since Spence considers this such a happy discovery on the part of Addison, that he quotes it as a model of its kind and as the strongest proof of the value of the works of the old artists in throwing light on the classic Roman poets, I cannot refrain from a closer examination of it. (Polymetis, dial. vii.) I must observe, in the first place, that the bas-relief and the coin would hardly have recalled to Addison the passage from Juvenal, had he not remembered reading in the old scholiast, who substituted “venientis” for “fulgentis” in the last line but one, this interpretation: “Martis ad Iliam venientis ut concumberet.” Now, instead of this reading of the old scholiast, let us accept Addison’s, and see if we have then the slightest reason for supposing the poet to have had Rhea in mind. Would it not rather be a complete inversion on his part, where he is speaking of the wolf and the boys, to be thinking of the adventure to which the children owe their life? Rhea has not yet become a mother, and the boys are already lying under the rock. Would an hour of dalliance be a fitting emblem for the helmet of a Roman soldier? The soldier was proud of the divine origin of the founder of his country, and that was sufficiently typified by the wolf and the children. What need of introducing Mars at a moment when he was any thing but the dread-inspiring god? His visit to Rhea may have been represented on any number of old marbles and coins: did that make it a fitting ornament for armor? What are the marbles and coins on which Addison saw Mars in this hovering attitude? The old bas-relief to which he appeals is said to be in Bellori, but we shall look for it in vain in the Admiranda, his collection of finest old bas-reliefs. Spence cannot have found it there or elsewhere, for he makes no mention of it. Nothing remains, therefore, but the coins, which we will study from Addison himself. I see a recumbent figure of Rhea, and Mars standing on a somewhat higher plane, because there was not room for him on the same level. That is all: there is no sign of his being suspended. Such an effect is produced very strongly, it is true, in Spence’s copy. The upper part of the figure is thrown so far forward as to make standing impossible; so that if the body be not falling, it must be hovering. Spence says this coin is in his possession. It is hard to question a man’s veracity, even in a trifle, but our eyes are often greatly influenced by a preconceived opinion. He may, besides, have thought it allowable for the good of the reader to have the artist so emphasize the expression which he thought he saw, that as little doubt might remain on our mind as on his. One thing is plain: that Spence and Addison refer to the same coin, which is either very much misrepresented by one or embellished by the other. But I have another objection to make to this supposed hovering attitude of Mars. A body thus suspended, without any visible cause for the law of gravitation not acting upon it, is an absurdity of which no example can be found in the old works of art. It is not allowable even in modern painting. If a body is to be suspended in the air, it must either have wings or appear to rest upon something, if only a cloud. When Homer makes Thetis rise on foot from the sea-shore to Olympus, Τὴν μὲν ἄρ’ Οὔλυμπον δὲ πόδες φέρον (Iliad, xviii. 148), Count Caylus is too well aware of the limitations of art to counsel the painter to represent her as walking unsupported through the air. She must pursue her way upon a cloud (Tableaux tirés de l’Iliade, p. 91), as in another place he puts her into a chariot (p. 131), although exactly the opposite is stated by the poet. How can it be otherwise? Although the poet represents the goddess with a human body, he yet removes from her every trace of coarse and heavy materiality, and animates her with a power which raises her beyond the influence of our laws of motion. How could painting so distinguish the bodily shape of a deity from the bodily shape of a human being, that our eyes should not be offended by observing it acted upon by different laws of motion, weight, and equilibrium? How but by conventional signs, such as a pair of wings or a cloud? But more of this elsewhere; here it is enough to require the defenders of the Addison theory to show on the old monuments a second figure floating thus unsupported in the air. Can this Mars be the only one of its kind? why? Were there some particular conditions handed down by tradition which would necessitate such exceptional treatment in this one case? There is no trace of such in Ovid (Fast. lib. i.), but rather proof that no such conditions ever could have existed. For in other ancient works of art which represent the same story, Mars is evidently not hovering, but walking. Examine the bas-relief in Montfaucon (Suppl. T. i. p. 183), which is to be found, if I am not mistaken, in the Mellini palace at Rome. Rhea lies asleep under a tree, and Mars approaches her softly, with that expressive backward motion of the right hand by which we warn those behind to stay where they are, or to advance gently. His attitude is precisely the same as on the coin, except that in one case he holds his lance in the right, in the other in the left hand. We often find famous statues and bas-reliefs copied on coins, and the same may well be the case here, only that the cutter of the die did not perceive the force of the backward motion of the hand, and thought it better employed in holding the lance. Taking all these arguments into consideration, what degree of probability remains to Addison’s theory? Hardly more than a bare possibility. But where can better explanation be had if this fails? Possibly among the interpretations rejected by Addison. But if not, what then? The passage in the poet is corrupted, and so it must remain. It certainly will so remain, if twenty new conjectures are invented. We might say that “pendentis” here was to be taken figuratively in the sense of uncertain, undecided. Mars “pendens” would then be the same as Mars “incertus” or Mars “communis.” “Dii communes,” says Servius (ad. v. 118, lib. xii. Æneid), are Mars, Bellona, and Victory, so called from their favoring both parties in war. And the line,—

Pendentisque Dei (effigiem) perituro ostenderet hosti,

would mean that the old Roman soldier was accustomed to wear the image of the impartial god in the presence of his enemy, who, in spite of the impartiality, was soon to perish. A very subtle idea, making the victories of the old Romans depend more upon their own bravery than on the friendly aid of their founder. Nevertheless, “non liquet.”

Note 18, p. [51].

“Till I got acquainted with these Auræ (or sylphs),” says Spence (Polymetis, dial. xiii.), “I found myself always at a loss in reading the known story of Cephalus and Procris in Ovid. I could never imagine how Cephalus crying out, ‘Aura venias’ (though in ever so languishing a manner), could give anybody a suspicion of his being false to Procris. As I had been always used to think that Aura signified only the air in general, or a gentle breeze in particular, I thought Procris’s jealousy less founded than the most extravagant jealousies generally are. But when I had once found that Aura might signify a very handsome young woman as well as the air, the case was entirely altered, and the story seemed to go on in a very reasonable manner.” I will not take back in the note the approval bestowed in the text on this discovery, on which Spence so plumes himself. But I cannot refrain from remarking that, even without it, the passage was very natural and intelligible. We only needed to know that Aura occurs frequently among the ancients as a woman’s name. According to Nonnus, for instance (Dionys. lib. xlviii.), the nymph of Diana was thus named, who, for claiming to possess a more manly beauty than the goddess herself, was, as a punishment for her presumption, exposed in her sleep to the embraces of Bacchus.

Note 19, p. [52].

Juvenalis Satyr. viii. v. 52–55.

... At tu

Nil nisi Cecropides; truncoque simillimus Hermæ!

Nullo quippe alio vincis discrimine, quam quod

Illi marmoreum caput est, tua vivit imago.

“But thou art nothing if not a descendant of Cecrops; in body most like a Hermes; forsooth the only thing in which you surpass that, is that your head is a living image, while the Hermes is marble.” If Spence had embraced the old Greek writers in his work, a fable of Æsop might perhaps—and yet perhaps not—have occurred to him, which throws still clearer light upon this passage in Juvenal. “Mercury,” Æsop tells us, “wishing to know in what repute he stood among men, concealed his divinity, and entered a sculptor’s studio. Here he beheld a statue of Jupiter, and asked its value. ‘A drachm,’ was the answer. Mercury smiled. ‘And this Juno?’ he asked again. ‘About the same.’ The god meanwhile had caught sight of his own image, and thought to himself,—‘I, as the messenger of the gods, from whom come all gains, must be much more highly prized by men.’ ‘And this god,’ he asked, pointing to his own image, ‘how dear might that be?’ ‘That?’ replied the artist, ‘buy the other two, and I will throw that in.’” Mercury went away sadly crestfallen. But the artist did not recognize him, and could therefore have had no intention of wounding his self-love. The reason for his setting so small a value on the statue must have lain in its workmanship. The less degree of reverence due to the god whom it represented could have had nothing to do with the matter, for the artist values his works according to the skill, industry, and labor bestowed upon them, not according to the rank and dignity of the persons represented. If a statue of Mercury cost less than one of Jupiter or Juno, it was because less skill, industry, and labor had been expended upon it. And such was the case here. The statues of Jupiter and Juno were full-length figures, while that of Mercury was a miserable square post, with only the head and shoulders of the god upon it. What wonder, then, that it might be thrown in without extra charge? Mercury overlooked this circumstance, from having in mind only his own fancied superiority, and his humiliation was therefore as natural as it was merited. We look in vain among the commentators, translators, and imitators of Æsop’s fables for any trace of this explanation. I could mention the names of many, were it worth the trouble, who have understood the story literally; that is, have not understood it at all. On the supposition that the workmanship of all the statues was of the same degree of excellence, there is an absurdity in the fable which these scholars have either failed to perceive or have very much exaggerated. Another point which, perhaps, might be taken exception to in the fable, is the price the sculptor sets upon his Jupiter. No potter can make a puppet for a drachm. The drachm here must stand in general for something very insignificant. (Fab. Æsop, 90.)

Note 20, p. [53].

Cretius de R. N. lib. v. 736–747.

It Ver, et Venus, et Veneris prænuntius ante

Pinnatus graditur Zephyrus; vestigia propter

Flora quibus mater præspargens ante viai

Cuncta coloribus egregiis et odoribus opplet,

Inde loci sequitur Calor aridus, et comes una

Pulverulenta Ceres; et Etesia flabra Aquilonum.

Inde Autumnus adit; graditur simul Evius Evan;

Inde aliæ tempestates ventique sequuntur,

Altitonans Vulturnus et Auster fulmine pollens.

Tandem Bruma nives adfert, pigrumque rigorem

Reddit, Hyems sequitur, crepitans ac dentibus Algus.

Spring advances and Venus and winged Zephyrus, the herald of Venus, precedes, whose path mother Flora fills with wondrous flowers and odors. Then follow in order dry Heat and his companion dusty Ceres, and the Etesian blasts of the Northwind. Then Autumn approaches, and Evian Bacchus. Then other tempests and winds, deep-thundering Volturnus and Auster (south and south-east winds), mighty with lightnings. At length, the solstice brings snow, and slothful numbness returns; Winter follows, and cold with chattering teeth.

Spence regards this passage as one of the most beautiful in the whole poem, and it is certainly one on which the fame of Lucretius as a poet chiefly rests. But, surely, to say that the whole description was probably taken from a procession of statues representing the seasons as gods, is to detract very much from his merit, if not to destroy it altogether. And what reason have we for the supposition? This, says the Englishman: “Such processions of their deities in general were as common among the Romans of old, as those in honor of the saints are in the same country to this day. All the expressions used by Lucretius here come in very aptly, if applied to a procession.”

Excellent reasons! Against the last, particularly, we might make many objections. The very epithets applied to the various personified abstractions,—“Calor aridus,” “Ceres pulverulenta,” “Volturnus altitonans,” “fulmine pollens Auster,” “Algus dentibus crepitans,”—show that they received their characteristics from the poet and not from the artist. He would certainly have treated them very differently. Spence seems to have derived his idea of a procession from Abraham Preigern, who, in his remarks on this passage, says, “Ordo est quasi Pompæ cujusdam. Ver et Venus, Zephyrus et Flora,” &c. But Spence should have been content to stop there. To say that the poet makes his seasons move as in a procession, is all very well; but to say that he learned their sequences from a procession, is nonsense.

Note 21, p. [62].

Valerius Flaccus, lib. ii. Argonaut, v. 265–273.

Serta patri, juvenisque comam vestisque Lyæi

Induit, et medium curru locat; æraque circum

Tympanaque et plenas tacita formidine cistas.

Ipsa sinus hederisque ligat famularibus artus;

Pampineamque quatit ventosis ictibus hastam,

Respiciens; teneat virides velatus habenas

Ut pater, et nivea tumeant ut cornua mitra,

Et sacer ut Bacchum referat scyphus.

“The maid clothes her father with the garlands, the locks and the garments of Bacchus, and places him in the centre of the chariot; around him the brazen drums and the boxes filled with nameless terror; herself, looking back, binds his hair and limbs with ivy and strikes windy blows with the vine-wreathed spear; veiled like the father she holds the green reins; the horns project under the white turban, and the sacred goblet tells of Bacchus.”

The word “tumeant,” in the last line but one, would seem to imply that the horns were not so small as Spence fancies.

Note 22, p. [62].

The so-called Bacchus in the garden of the Medicis at Rome (Montfaucon Suppl. aux Ant. T. 1, p. 254) has little horns growing from the brow. But for this very reason some critics suppose it to be a faun. And indeed such natural horns are an insult to the human countenance, and can only be becoming in beings supposed to occupy a middle station between men and beasts. The attitude also and the longing looks the figure casts upward at the grapes, belong more properly to a follower of the god than to the god himself. I am reminded here of what Clemens Alexandrinus says of Alexander the Great. (Protrept. p. 48, edit. Pott.) Ἐβούλετο δὲ καὶ Ἀλέξανδρος Ἄμμωνος υἱὸς εἶναι δοκεῖν, καὶ κερασφόρος ἀναπλάττεσθαι πρὸς τῶν ἀγαλματοποιῶν, τὸ καλὸν ἀνθρώπου ὑβρίσαι σπεύδων κέρατι. It was Alexander’s express desire to be represented in his statue with horns. He was well content with the insult thus done to human beauty, if only a divine origin might be imputed to him.

Note 23, p. [64].

When I maintained in a former chapter that the old artists had never made a fury, it had not escaped me that the furies had more than one temple, which certainly would not have been left devoid of their statues. Pausanias found some of wood in their temple at Cerynea, not large nor in any way remarkable. It would seem that the art, which had no opportunity of displaying itself on them, sought to make amends on the images of the priestesses which stood in the hall of the temple, as they were of stone and of very beautiful workmanship. (Pausanias Achaic. cap. xxv. p. 587, edit. Kuhn.) Neither had I forgotten that heads of them were supposed to have been found on an abraxas, made known by Chiffletius, and on a lamp by Licetus. (Dissertat. sur les Furies par Bannier; Mémoires de l’Académie des Inscript. T. v. 48.) Neither was I unacquainted with the Etruscan vase of Gorius (Tabl. 151. Musei Etrusci) whereon are Orestes and Pylades attacked by furies. But I was speaking of works of art, under which head I consider none of these to come. If the latter deserve more than the others to be included under the name, it would in one aspect rather confirm my theory than contradict it. For, little as the Etruscan artists aimed at beauty in most cases, they yet seem to have characterized the furies more by their dress and attributes than by any terrible aspect of countenance. These figures thrust their torches at Orestes and Pylades, with such a tranquil expression of face that they almost seem to be terrifying them in sport. The horror they inspire in Orestes and Pylades appears from the fear of the two men, not at all from the shape of the furies themselves.

They are, therefore, at once furies and no furies. They perform the office of furies, but without that appearance of violence and rage which we are accustomed to associate with the name. They have not that brow which, as Catullus says, “expirantis præportat pectoris iras.” Winkelmann thought lately that he had discovered, upon a cornelian in the cabinet of Stoss, a fury, running, with streaming hair and garments, and a dagger in her hand. (Library of the Fine Arts, vol. v.) Von Hagedorn at once counselled all the artists to turn this discovery to account, and represent furies thus in their pictures. (Betrachtungen über die Malerei, p. 222.) But Winkelmann himself presently threw doubt on his discovery, because he did not find that the ancients ever armed the furies with daggers instead of torches. (Descript. des Pierres Gravées, p. 84.) He must then consider the figures on the coins of the cities of Lyrba and Massaura, which Spanheim calls furies (Les Césars de Julien, p. 44), to be not such but a Hecate triformis. Else here would be exactly such a fury, with a dagger in each hand, and strangely enough also with flowing hair, while in the other figures the hair is covered with a veil. But granting Winkelmann’s first supposition to have been correct, the same would apply to this engraved stone as to the Etruscan vase, unless owing to the fineness of the work the features were indistinguishable. Besides, all engraved stones, from their use as seals, belong rather to symbolism; and the figures on them are more often a conceit of the owner than the voluntary work of the artist.

Note 24, p. [64].

Fast. lib. vi. 295–98.

Esse diu stultus Vestæ simulacra putavi:

Mox didici curvo nulla subesse tholo.

Ignis inextinctus templo celatur in illo;

Effigiem nullam Vesta, nec ignis, habet.

“I long foolishly thought there were images of Vesta; then I found that none existed beneath the arching dome. An ever-burning fire is hidden in that temple. Image there is none either of Vesta or of fire.”

Ovid is speaking only of the worship of Vesta at Rome, and of the temple erected to her there by Numa, of whom he just before says:

Regis opus placidi, quo non metuentius ullum

Numinis ingenium terra Sabina tulit.

“The work of that peaceful king who feared the gods more than any other offspring of the Sabine land.”

Note 25, p. [65].

Fast. lib. iii. v. 45, 46.

Sylvia fit mater: Vestæ simulacra feruntur

Virgineas oculis opposuisse manus.

Spence should thus have compared the different parts of Ovid together. The poet is speaking of different times; here of the state of things before Numa, there of the state of things after him. Statues of her were worshipped in Italy as they were in Troy, whence Æneas brought her rites with him.

Manibus vittas, Vestamque potentem,

Æternumque adytis effert penetralibus ignem,

says Virgil of the ghost of Hector, after he had warned Æneas to fly. “He bears in his hands from the innermost shrine garlands, and mighty Vesta and the eternal fire.” Here the eternal fire is expressly distinguished from Vesta herself and from her statue. Spence cannot have consulted the Roman poets with much care, since he allowed such a passage as this to escape him.

Note 26, p. [65].

Plinius, lib. xxxvi. sect. 4. “Scopas fecit.—Vestam sedentem laudatam in Servilianis hortis.” Lipsius must have had this passage in mind when he wrote (de Vesta cap. 3): “Plinius Vestem sedentem effingi solitam ostendit, a stabilitate.” But what Pliny says of a single work by Scopas he ought not to have taken for a generally accepted characteristic. In fact, he observes that on coins Vesta was as often represented standing as sitting. This, however, was no correction of Pliny, but only of his own mistaken conception.

Note 27, p. [66].

Georg. Codinus de Originib. Constant. Τὴν γῆν λέγουσιν Ἑστίαν, καὶ πλάττουσιν αὐτὴν γυναῖκα, τύμπανον βαστάζουσαν, ἐπειδὴ τοὺς ἀνέμους ἡ γῆ ὑφ’ ἑαυτὴν συγκλείει. Suidas, following him, or both following some older authority, says the same thing under the word Ἑστία. “Under the name of Vesta the Earth is represented by a woman bearing a drum, in which she is supposed to hold the winds confined.” The reason is somewhat puerile. It would have sounded better to say that she carried a drum, because the ancients thought her figure bore some resemblance to one, σχῆμα αὐτῆς τυμπανοειδὲς εἶναι. (Plutarchus de placitis Philos. cap. 10, id. de facie in orbe Lunæ.) Perhaps, after all, Codinus was mistaken in the figure or the name or both. Possibly he did not know what better name to give to what he saw Vesta holding, than a drum. Or he might have heard it called tympanum, and the only thing the word suggested to him was the instrument known to us as a kettle-drum. But “tympana” were also a kind of wheel.

Hinc radios trivere rotis, hinc tympana plaustris

Agricolæ.—(Virgilius Georgic. lib. ii. 444.)

Very similar to such a wheel appears to me the object borne by Fabretti’s Vesta (ad Tabulam Iliadis, p. 334) which that scholar takes to be a hand-mill.

Note 28, p. [70].

Lib. i. Od. 35.

Te semper anteit sæva Necessitas:

Clavos trabales et cuneos manu

Gestans ahenea; nec severus

Uncus abest liquidumque plumbum.

In this picture of Necessity drawn by Horace, perhaps the richest in attributes of any to be found in the old poets, the nails, the clamps, and the liquid lead, whether regarded as means of confinement or implements of punishment, still belong to the class of poetical, rather than allegorical, attributes. But, even so, they are too crowded; and the passage is one of the least effective in Horace. Sanadon says: “J’ose dire que ce tableau, pris dans le détail, serait plus beau sur la toile que dans une ode héroïque. Je ne puis souffrir cet attirail patibulaire de clous, de coins, de crocs, et de plomb fondu. J’ai cru en devoir décharger la traduction, en substituant les idées générales aux idées singulières. C’est dommage que le poëte ait eu besoin de ce correctif.” Sanadon’s sentiment was fine and true, but he does not give the right ground for it. The objection is not that these attributes are the paraphernalia of the gallows, for he had but to interpret them in their other sense to make them the firmest supports of architecture. Their fault is in being addressed to the eye and not to the ear. For all impressions meant for the eye, but presented to us through the ear, are received with effort, and produce no great degree of vividness. These lines of Horace remind me of a couple of oversights on the part of Spence, which give us no very good idea of the exactitude with which he has studied the passages he cites from the old poets. He is speaking of the image under which the Romans represented faith or honesty. (Dial. x.) “The Romans,” he says, “called her ‘Fides;’ and, when they called her ‘Sola Fides,’ seem to mean the same as we do by the words ‘downright honesty.’ She is represented with an erect, open air, and with nothing but a thin robe on, so fine that one might see through it. Horace therefore calls her ‘thin-dressed’ in one of his odes, and ‘transparent’ in another.” In these few lines are not less than three gross errors. First, it is false that “sola” was a distinct epithet applied to the goddess Fides. In the two passages from Livy, which he adduces as proof (lib. i. sect. 21, lib. ii. sect. 3), the word has only its usual signification,—the exclusion of all else. In one place, indeed, the “soli” has been questioned by the critics, who think it must have crept into the text through an error in writing, occasioned by the word next to it, which is “solenne.” In the other passage cited, the author is not speaking of fidelity at all, but of innocence, Innocentia. Secondly, Horace, in one of his odes (the thirty-fifth of the first book, mentioned above), is said to have applied to Fides the epithet thin-dressed:

Te spes, et albo rara fides colit

Velata panno.

“Rarus,” it is true, can also mean thin; but here it means only rare, seldom appearing, and is applied to Fidelity herself, not to her clothing. Spence would have been right, had the poet said, “Fides raro velata panno.” Thirdly, Horace is said to have elsewhere called faith or honesty transparent, in the sense in which friends protest to one another, “I wish you could read my heart.” This meaning is said to be found in the line of the eighteenth ode of the First Book:

Arcanique Fides prodiga, pellucidior vitro.

How can a critic allow himself to be thus misled by a word? Is a faith, “arcani prodiga,” lavish of secrets, faithfulness? is it not rather faithlessness? And it is of faithlessness, in fact, that Horace says, “She is transparent as glass, because she betrays to every eye the secrets entrusted to her.”

Note 29, p. [71].

Apollo delivers the washed and embalmed body of Sarpedon to Death and Sleep, that they may bring him to his native country. (Iliad, xvi. 681, 682.)

πέμπε δέ μιν πομποῖσιν ἅμα κραιπνοῖσι φέρεσθαι,

Ὕπνῳ καὶ Θανάτῳ διδυμάοσιν.

Caylus recommends this idea to the painter, but adds: “It is a pity that Homer has given us no account of the attributes under which Sleep was represented in his day. We recognize the god only by his act, and we crown him with poppies. These ideas are modern. The first is of service, but cannot be employed in the present case, where even the flowers would be out of keeping in connection with the figure of Death.” (Tableaux tirés de l’Iliade, de l’Odyssée d’Homère, et de l’Enéide de Virgile, avec des observations générales sur le costume, à Paris, 1757–58.) That is requiring of Homer ornamentations of that petty kind most at variance with the nobility of his style. The most ingenious attributes he could have bestowed on Sleep would not have characterized him so perfectly, nor have brought so vivid a picture of him before us, as the single touch which makes him the twin brother of Death. Let the artist seek to express this, and he may dispense with all attributes. The old artists did, in fact, make Sleep and Death resemble each other, like twin-brothers. On a chest of cedar, in the Temple of Juno at Elis, they both lay as boys in the arms of Night. One was white, the other black; one slept, the other only seemed to sleep; the feet of both were crossed. For so I should prefer to translate the words of Pausanias (Eliac. cap. xviii. p. 422, edit. Kuhn), ἀμφοτέρους διεστραμμένους τοὺς πόδας, rather than by “crooked feet,” as Gedoyn does, “les pieds contrefaits.” What would be the meaning of crooked feet? To lie with crossed feet is customary with sleepers. Sleep is thus represented by Maffei. (Raccol. Pl. 151.) Modern artists have entirely abandoned this resemblance between Sleep and Death, which we find among the ancients, and always represent Death as a skeleton, or at best a skeleton covered with skin. Caylus should have been careful to tell the artists whether they had better follow the custom of the ancients or the moderns in this respect. He seems to declare in favor of the modern view, since he regards Death as a figure that would not harmonize well with a flower-crowned companion. Has he further considered how inappropriate this modern idea would be in a Homeric picture? How could its loathsome character have failed to shock him? I cannot bring myself to believe that the little metal figure in the ducal gallery at Florence, representing a skeleton sitting on the ground, with one arm on an urn of ashes (Spence’s Polymetis, tab. xli.), is a veritable antique. It cannot possibly represent Death, because the ancients represented him very differently. Even their poets never thought of him under this repulsive shape.

Note 30, p. [76].

Richardson cites this work as an illustration of the rule that the attention of the spectator should be diverted by nothing, however admirable, from the chief figure. “Protogenes,” he says, “had introduced into his famous picture of Ialysus a partridge, painted with so much skill that it seemed alive, and was admired by all Greece. But, because it attracted all eyes to itself, to the detriment of the whole piece, he effaced it.” (Traité de la Peinture, T. i. p. 46.) Richardson is mistaken; this partridge was not in the Ialysus, but in another picture of Protogenes called the Idle Satyr, or Satyr in Repose, Σάτυρος ἀναπαυόμενος. I should hardly have mentioned this error, which arose from a misunderstanding of a passage in Pliny, had not the same mistake been made by Meursius. (Rhodi. lib. i. cap. 14.) “In eadem tabula, scilicet in qua Ialysus, Satyrus erat, quem dicebant Anapauomenon, tibeas tenens.”

Something of the same kind occurs in Winkelmann. (Von der Nachahm. der Gr. W. in der Mal. und Bildh. p. 56.) Strabo is the only authority for this partridge story, and he expressly discriminates between the Ialysus and the Satyr leaning against a pillar on which sat the partridge. (Lib. xiv.) Meursius, Richardson, and Winkelmann misunderstood the passage in Pliny (lib. xxxv. sect. 36), from not perceiving that he was speaking of two different pictures: the one which saved the city, because Demetrius would not assault the place where it stood; and another, which Protogenes painted during the siege. The one was Ialysus, the other the Satyr.

Note 31, p. [79].

This invisible battle of the gods has been imitated by Quintus Calaber in his Twelfth Book, with the evident design of improving on his model. The grammarian seems to have held it unbecoming in a god to be thrown to the ground by a stone. He therefore makes the gods hurl at one another huge masses of rock, torn up from Mount Ida, which, however, are shattered against the limbs of the immortals and fly like sand about them.

... οἱ δὲ κολώνας

χερσὶν ἀποῤῥήξαντες ἀπ’ οὔρεος Ἰδαίοιο

βάλλον ἐπ’ ἀλλήλους· αἳ δὲ ψαμάθοισιν ὁμοῖαι

ῥεῖα διεσκίδναντο θεῶν περὶ δ’ ἄσχετα γυῖα

ῥηγνύμενα διὰ τυτθά....

A conceit which destroys the effect by marring our idea of the size of the gods, and throwing contempt on their weapons. If gods throw stones at one another, the stones must be able to hurt them, or they are like silly boys pelting each other with earth. So old Homer remains still the wiser, and all the fault-finding of cold criticism, and the attempts of men of inferior genius to vie with him, serve but to set forth his wisdom in clearer light. I do not deny that Quintus’s imitation has excellent and original points; but they are less in harmony with the modest greatness of Homer than calculated to do honor to the stormy fire of a more modern poet. That the cry of the gods, which rang to the heights of heaven and the depths of hell, should not be heard by mortals, seems to me a most expressive touch. The cry was too mighty to be grasped by the imperfect organs of human hearing.

Note 32, p. [80].

No one who has read Homer once through, ever so hastily, will differ from this statement as far as regards strength and speed; but he will not perhaps at once recall examples where the poet attaches superhuman size to his gods. I would therefore refer him, in addition to the description of Mars just quoted, whose body covered seven hides, to the helmet of Minerva, κυνέην ἑκατὸν πολίων πρυλέεσσ’ ἀραρυῖαν (Iliad, v. 744), under which could be concealed as many warriors as a hundred cities could bring into the field; to the stride of Neptune (Iliad, xiii. 20); and especially to the lines from the description of the shield, where Mars and Minerva lead the troops of the beleaguered city. (Iliad, xviii. 516–519.)

ἦρχε δ’ ἄρά σφιν Ἄρης καὶ Παλλὰς Ἀθήνη,

ἄμφω χρυσείω, χρύσεια δὲ εἵματα ἕσθην,

καλὼ καὶ μεγάλω σὺν τεύχεσιν, ὥς τε θεώ περ,

ἀμφὶς ἀριζήλω· λαοὶ δ’ ὑπ’ ὑπολίζονες ἦσαν.

... While the youths

Marched on, with Mars and Pallas at their head,

Both wrought in gold, with golden garments on,

Stately and large in form, and over all

Conspicuous in bright armor, as became

The gods; the rest were of an humbler size.—Bryant.

Judging from the explanations they feel called upon to give of the great helmet of Minerva, Homer’s commentators, old as well as new, seem not always sufficiently to have borne in mind this wonderful size of the gods. (See the notes on the above-quoted passage in the edition of Clarke and Ernesti.) But we lose much in majesty by thinking of the Homeric deities as of ordinary size, as we are accustomed to see them on canvas in the company of mortals. Although painting is unable to represent these superhuman dimensions, sculpture to a certain extent may, and I am convinced that the old masters borrowed from Homer their conception of the gods in general as well as the colossal size which they not infrequently gave them. (Herodot. lib. ii. p. 130, edit. Wessel.) Further remarks upon the use of the colossal, its excellent effect in sculpture and its want of effect in painting, I reserve for another place.

Note 33, p. [82].

Homer, I acknowledge, sometimes veils his deities in a cloud, but only when they are not to be seen by other deities. In the fourteenth book of the Iliad, for instance, where Juno and Sleep, ἠέρα ἐσσαμένω, betake themselves to Mount Ida, the crafty goddess’s chief care was not to be discovered by Venus, whose girdle she had borrowed under pretence of a very different journey. In the same book the love-drunken Jupiter is obliged to surround himself and his spouse with a golden cloud to overcome her chaste reluctance.

πῶς κ’ ἔοι, εἴ τις νῶϊ θεῶν αἰειγενετάων

εὕδοντ’ ἀθρήσειε....

She did not fear to be seen by men, but by the gods. And although Homer makes Jupiter say a few lines further on,—

Ἥρη, μήτε θεῶν τόγε δείδιθι μήτε τιν’ ἀνδρῶν

ὄψεσθαι· τοῖόν τοι ἐγὼ νέφος ἀμφικαλύψω,

χρύσεον.

“Fear thou not that any god or man will look upon us,” that does not prove that the cloud was needed to conceal them from the eyes of mortals, but that in this cloud they would be as invisible to the gods as they always were to men. So, when Minerva puts on the helmet of Pluto (Iliad, v. 485), which has the same effect of concealment that a cloud would have, it is not that she may be concealed from the Trojans, who either see her not at all or under the form of Sthenelus, but simply that she may not be recognized by Mars.

Note 34, p. [87].

Tableaux tirés de l’Iliade, Avert. p. 5. “On est toujours convenu, que plus un poëme fournissait d’images et d’actions, plus il avait de supériorité en poésie. Cette réflexion m’avait conduit à penser que le calcul des différens tableaux, qu’ offrent les poëmes, pouvait servir à comparer le mérite respectif des poëmes et des poëtes. Le nombre et le genre des tableaux que présentent ces grands ouvrages, auraient été une espèce de pierre de touche, ou, plutôt, une balance certaine du mérite de ces poëmes et du génie de leurs auteurs.”

Note 35, p. [88].

What we call poetic pictures, the ancients, as we learn from Longinus, called “phantasiæ;” and what we call illusion in such pictures, they named “enargia.” It was therefore said by some one, as Plutarch tells us (Erot. T. ii. edit. Henr. Steph. p. 1351), that poetic “phantasiæ” were, on account of their “enargia,” waking dreams: Αἱ ποιητικαὶ φαντασίαι διὰ τὴν ἐνάργειαν ἐγρηγορότων ἐνύπνια εἰσίν. I could wish that our modern books upon poetry had used this nomenclature, and avoided the word picture altogether. We should thus have been spared a multitude of doubtful rules, whose chief foundation is the coincidence of an arbitrary term. No one would then have thought of confining poetic conceptions within the limits of a material picture. But the moment these conceptions were called a poetic picture, the foundation for the error was laid.

Note 36, p. [89].

Iliad, iv. 105.

αὐτίκ’ ἐσύλα τόξον ἐΰξοον

καὶ τὸ μὲν εὖ κατέθηκε τανυσσάμενος, ποτὶ γαίῃ

ἀγκλίνας·...

αὐτὰρ ὁ σύλα πῶμα φαρέτρης, ἐκ δ’ ἕλετ’ ἰὸν

ἀβλῆτα πτερόεντα, μελαινέων ἕρμ’ ὀδυνάων·

αἶψα δ’ ἐπὶ νευρῇ κατεκόσμει πικρὸν ὀϊστὸν,

ἕλκε δ’ ὁμοῦ γλυφίδας τε λαβὼν καὶ νεῦρα βόεια·

νευρὴν μὲν μαζῷ πέλασεν, τόξον δὲ σίδηρον.

αὐτὰρ ἐπειδὴ κυκλοτερὲς μέγα τόξον ἔτεινεν,

λίγξε βιὸς, νευρὴ δὲ μέγ’ ἴαχεν ἆλτο δ’ ὀϊστὸς

ὀξυβελὴς, καθ’ ὅμιλον ἐπιπτέσθαι μενεαίνων.

To bend that bow the warrior lowered it

And pressed an end against the earth....

Then the Lycian drew aside

The cover from his quiver, taking out

A well-fledged arrow that had never flown,—

A cause of future sorrows. On the string

He laid that fatal arrow....

Grasping the bowstring and the arrow’s notch

He drew them back and forced the string to meet

His breast, the arrow-head to meet the bow,

Till the bow formed a circle. Then it twanged;

The cord gave out a shrilly sound; the shaft

Leaped forth in eager haste to reach the host.—Bryant.

Note 37, p. [108].

Prologue to the Satires, 340.

That not in Fancy’s maze he wandered long,

But stooped to Truth and moralized his song.

Ibid. 148.

... Who could take offence

While pure description held the place of sense?

Warburton’s remark on this last line may have the force of an explanation by the poet himself. “He uses pure equivocally, to signify either chaste or empty; and has given in this line what he esteemed the true character of descriptive poetry, as it is called,—a composition, in his opinion, as absurd as a feast made up of sauces. The use of a picturesque imagination is to brighten and adorn good sense: so that to employ it only in description, is like children’s delighting in a prism for the sake of its gaudy colors, which, when frugally managed and artfully disposed, might be made to represent and illustrate the noblest objects in nature.”

Both poet and commentator seem to have regarded the matter rather from a moral than an artistic point of view. But so much the better that this style of poetry seems equally worthless from whichever point it be viewed.

Note 38, p. [108].

Poétique Française, T. ii. p. 501. “J’écrivais ces réflexions avant que les essais des Allemands dans ce genre (l’Eglogue) fussent connus parmi nous. Ils ont exécuté ce que j’avais conçu; et s’ils parviennent à donner plus au moral et moins au détail des peintures physiques, ils excelleront dans ce genre, plus riche, plus vaste, plus fécond, et infiniment plus naturel et plus moral que celui de la galanterie champêtre.”

Note 39, p. [115].

I see that Servius attempts to excuse Virgil on other grounds, for the difference between the two shields has not escaped his notice. “Sane interest inter hunc et Homeri clypeum; illic enim singula dum fiunt narrantur; hic vero perfecto opere nascuntur; nam et hic arma prius accipit Æneas, quam spectaret; ibi postquam omnia narrata sunt, sic a Thetide deferuntur ad Achillem.” There is a marked difference between this and the shield of Homer: for there events are narrated one by one as they are done, here they are known by the finished work; here the arms are received by Æneas before being seen, there, after all has been told, they are carried by Thetis to Achilles. (Ad. v. 625, lib. viii. Æneid.) Why? “For this reason,” says Servius: “because, on the shield of Æneas, were represented not only the few events referred to by the poet, but,—

... genus omne futuræ

Stirpis ab Ascanio, pugnataque in ordine bella,

“All the description of his future race from Ascanius, and the battles, in the order in which they should occur.” It would have been impossible for the poet, in the same short space of time occupied by Vulcan in his work, to mention by name the long line of descendants, and to tell of all their battles in the order of their occurrence. That seems to be the meaning of Servius’s somewhat obscure words: “Opportune ergo Virgilius, quia non videtur simul et narrationis celeritas potuisse connecti, et opus tam velociter expedire, ut ad verbum posset occurrere.” Since Virgil could bring forward but a small part of “the unnarratable text of the shield,” and not even that little while Vulcan was at work, he was obliged to reserve it till the whole was finished. For Virgil’s sake, I hope that this argument of Servius is baseless. My excuse is much more creditable to him. What need was there of putting the whole of Roman history on a shield? With few pictures Homer made his shield an epitome of all that was happening in the world. It would almost seem that Virgil, despairing of surpassing the Greek in the design and execution of his pictures, was determined to exceed him at least in their number, and that would have been the height of childishness.

Note 40, p. [118].

“Scuto ejus, in quo Amazonum prœlium cælavit intumescente ambitu parmæ; ejusdem concava parte deorum et gigantum, dimicationem.”

“Her shield, on the convex side of which he sculptured a battle of the Amazons, and on the concave side the contest of the gods and giants.” (Plinius, lib. xxxvi. sect. 4.)

Note 41, p. [122].

The first begins at line 483 and goes to line 489; the second extends from 490 to 509; the third, from 510 to 540; the fourth, from 541 to 549; the fifth, from 550 to 560; the sixth, from 561 to 572; the seventh, from 573 to 586; the eighth, from 587 to 589; the ninth, from 590 to 605; and the tenth, from 606 to 608. The third picture alone is not so introduced; but that it is one by itself is evident from the words introducing the second,—ἐν δὲ δύω ποίησε πόλεις,—as also from the nature of the subject.

Note 42, p. [123].

Iliad, vol. v. obs. p. 61. In this passage Pope makes an entirely false use of the expression “aerial perspective,” which, in fact, has nothing to do with the diminishing of the size according to the increased distance, but refers only to the change of color occasioned by the air or other medium through which the object is seen. A man capable of this blunder may justly be supposed ignorant of the whole subject.

Note 43, p. [128].

Constantinus Manasses Compend. Chron. p. 20 (edit. Venet). Madame Dacier was well pleased with this portrait of Manasses, except for its tautology. “De Helenæ pulchritudine omnium optime Constantinus Manasses; nisi in eo tautologiam reprehendas.” (Ad Dictyn Cretensem, lib. i. cap. 3, p. 5.) She also quotes, according to Mezeriac (Comment. sur les Epîtres d’Ovide, T. i. p. 361), the descriptions given by Dares Phrygius, and Cedrenus, of the beauty of Helen. In the first there is one trait which sounds rather strange. Dares says that Helen had a mole between her eyebrows: “notam inter duo supercilia habentem.” But that could not have been a beauty. I wish the Frenchwoman had given her opinion. I, for my part, regard the word “nota” as a corruption, and think that Dares meant to speak of what the Greeks called μεσόφρυον, and the Latins, “glabella.” He means to say that Helen’s eyebrows did not meet, but that there was a little space between them. The taste of the ancients was divided on this point. Some considered this space between the eyebrows beauty, others not. (Junius de Pictura Vet. lib. iii. cap. 9, p. 245.) Anacreon took a middle course. The eyebrows of his beloved maiden were neither perceptibly separated, nor were they fully grown together: they tapered off delicately at a certain point. He says to the artist who is to paint her (Od. 28):—

τὸ μεσόφρυον δὲ μή μοι

διάκοπτε, μήτε μίσγε,

ἐχέτω δ’ ὅπως ἐκείνη

τὸ λεληθότως σύνοφρυν

βλεφάρων ἴτυν κελαινήν.

This is Pauer’s reading, but the meaning is the same in other versions, and has been rightly given by Henr. Stephano:—

Supercilii nigrantes

Discrimina nec arcus,

Confundito nec illos:

Sed junge sic ut anceps

Divortium relinquas,

Quale esse cernis ipsi.

But if my interpretation of Dares’ meaning be the true one, what should we read instead of “notam?” Perhaps “moram.” For certainly “mora” may mean not only the interval of time before something happens, but also the impediment, the space between one thing and another.

Ego inquieta montium jaceam mora,

is the wish of the raving Hercules in Seneca, which Gronovius very well explains thus: “Optat se medium jacere inter duas Symplegades, illarum velut moram, impedimentum, obicem; qui eas moretur, vetet aut satis arcte conjungi, aut rursus distrahi.” The same poet uses “laceratorum moræ” in the sense of “juncturæ.” (Schrœderus ad. v. 762. Thyest.)

Note 44, p. [131].

Dialogo della Pittura, intitolata l’Aretino: Firenze 1735, p. 178. “Se vogliono i Pittori senza fatica trovare un perfetto esempio di bella Donna, legiano quelle Stanze dell’ Ariosto, nelle quali egli discrive mirabilmente le belezze della Fata Alcina; e vedranno parimente, quanto i buoni Poeti siano ancora essi Pittori.”

Note 45, p. [131].

Ibid. “Ecco, che, quanto alla proporzione, l’ingeniosissimo Ariosto assegna la migliore, che sappiano formar le mani de’ più eccellenti Pittori, usando questa voce industri, per dinotar la diligenza, che conviene al buono artefice.”

Note 46, p. [132].

Ibid. “Qui l’Ariosto colorisce, e in questo suo colorire dimostra essere un Titiano.”

Note 47, p. [132].

Ibid. “Poteva l’Ariosto nella guisa, che ha detto chioma bionda, dir chioma d’oro: ma gli parve forse, che havrebbe havuto troppo del Poetico. Da che si può ritrar, che ’l Pittore dee imitar l’oro, e non metterlo (come fanno i Miniatori) nelle sue Pitture, in modo, che si possa dire, que’ capelli non sono d’oro, ma par che risplendano, come l’oro.” What Dolce goes on to quote from Athenæus is remarkable, but happens to be a misquotation. I shall speak of it in another place.

Note 48, p. [132].

Ibid. “Il naso, che discende giù, havendo peraventura la considerazione a quelle forme de’ nasi, che si veggono ne’ ritratti delle belle Romane antiche.”

Note 49, p. [143].

Pliny says of Apelles (lib. xxxv. sect. 36): “Fecit et Dianam sacrificantium Virginum choro mixtam; quibus vicisse Homeri versus videtur id ipsum describentis.” “He also made a Diana surrounded by a band of virgins performing a sacrifice; a work in which he would seem to have surpassed the verses of Homer describing the same thing.” This praise may be perfectly just; for beautiful nymphs surrounding a beautiful goddess, who towers above them by the whole height of her majestic brow, form a theme more fitting the painter than the poet. But I am somewhat suspicious of the word “sacrificantium.” What have the nymphs of Diana to do with offering sacrifices? Is that the occupation assigned them by Homer? By no means. They roam with the goddess over hills and through forest; they hunt, play, dance. (Odyss. vi. 102–106).

οἵη δ’ Ἄρτεμις εἰσὶ κατ’ οὔρεος ἰοχέαιρα

ἢ κατὰ Τηΰγετον περιμήκετον, ἢ Ἐρύμανθον

τερπομένη κάπροισι καὶ ὠκείῃς ἐλάφοισι·

τῇ δὲ θ’ ἅμα Νύμφαι, κοῦραι Διὸς αἰγιόχοιο

ἀγρονόμοι παίζουσι·...

As when o’er Erymanth Diana roves

Or wide Taygetus’s resounding groves;

A sylvan train the huntress queen surrounds,

Her rattling quiver from her shoulder sounds;

Fierce in the sport along the mountain brow,

They bay the boar or chase the bounding roe.

High o’er the lawn with more majestic pace,

Above the nymphs she treads with stately grace.—Pope.

Pliny, therefore, can hardly have written “sacrificantium,” rather “venantium” (hunting), or something like it; perhaps “sylvis vagantium” (roaming the woods), which corresponds more nearly in number of letters to the altered word. “Saltantium” (bounding), approaches most nearly to the παίζουσι of Homer. Virgil, also, in his imitation of this passage, represents the nymphs as dancing. (Æneid, i. 497, 498.)

Qualis in Eurotæ ripis, aut per juga Cynthi

Exercet Diana choros....

Such on Eurotas’ banks or Cynthus’ height

Diana seems; and so she charms the sight,

When in the dance the graceful goddess leads

The choir of nymphs and overtops their heads.—Dryden.

Spence gives a remarkable criticism on this passage. (Polymetis, dial. viii.) “This Diana,” he says, “both in the picture and in the descriptions, was the Diana Venatrix, though she was not represented, either by Virgil or Apelles or Homer, as hunting with her nymphs; but as employed with them in that sort of dances which of old were regarded as very solemn acts of devotion.” In a note he adds, “The expression of παίζειν, used by Homer on this occasion, is scarce proper for hunting; as that of “choros exercere,” in Virgil, should be understood of the religious dances of old, because dancing, in the old Roman idea of it, was indecent, even for men, in public, unless it were the sort of dances used in honor of Mars or Bacchus or some other of their gods.” Spence supposes that those solemn dances are here referred to, which, among the ancients, were counted among the acts of religion. “It is in consequence of this,” he says, “that Pliny, in speaking of Diana’s nymphs on this very occasion, uses the word “sacrificare” of them, which quite determines these dances of theirs to have been of the religious kind.” He forgets that, in Virgil, Diana joins in the dance, “exercet Diana choros.” If this were a religious dance, in whose honor did Diana dance it? in her own, or in honor of some other deity? Both suppositions are absurd. If the old Romans did hold dancing in general to be unbecoming in a grave person, was that a reason why their poets should transfer the national gravity to the manners of the gods, which were very differently represented by the old Greek poets? When Horace says of Venus (Od. iv. lib. i.),—

Jam Cytherea choros ducit Venus, imminente luna;

Junctæque Nymphis Gratiæ decentes

Alterno terram quatiunt pede....

“Now Cytherean Venus leads the bands, under the shining moon, and the fair graces, joined with the nymphs, beat the ground with alternate feet,”—were these, likewise, sacred, religious dances? But it is wasting words to argue against such a conceit.

Note 50, p. [145].

Plinius, lib. xxxiv. sect. 19. “Ipse tamen corporum tenus curiosus, animi sensus non expressisse videtur, capillum quoque et pubem non emendatius fecisse, quam rudis antiquitas instituisset.

“Hic primus nervos et venas expressit, capillumque diligentius.”

Note 51, p. [162].

The Connoisseur, vol. i. no. 21. The beauty of Knonmquaiha is thus described. “He was struck with the glossy hue of her complexion, which shone like the jetty down on the black hogs of Hessaqua; he was ravished with the prest gristle of her nose; and his eyes dwelt with admiration on the flaccid beauties of her breasts, which descended to her navel.” And how were these charms set off by art? “She made a varnish of the fat of goats mixed with soot, with which she anointed her whole body as she stood beneath the rays of the sun; her locks were clotted with melted grease, and powdered with the yellow dust of Buchu; her face, which shone like the polished ebony, was beautifully varied with spots of red earth, and appeared like the sable curtain of the night bespangled with stars; she sprinkled her limbs with wood-ashes, and perfumed them with the dung of Stinkbingsem. Her arms and legs were entwined with the shining entrails of an heifer; from her neck there hung a pouch composed of the stomach of a kid; the wings of an ostrich overshadowed the fleshy promontories behind; and before she wore an apron formed of the shaggy ears of a lion.”

Here is further the marriage ceremony of the loving pair. “The Surri, or Chief Priest, approached them, and, in a deep voice, chanted the nuptial rites to the melodious grumbling of the Gom-Gom; and, at the same time (according to the manner of Caffraria), bedewed them plentifully with the urinary benediction. The bride and bridegroom rubbed in the precious stream with ecstasy, while the briny drops trickled from their bodies, like the oozy surge from the rocks of Chirigriqua.”

Note 52, p. [166].

The Sea-Voyage, act iii. scene 1. A French pirate ship is thrown upon a desert island. Avarice and envy cause quarrels among the men, and a couple of wretches, who had long suffered extreme want on the island, seize a favorable opportunity to put to sea in the ship. Robbed thus of their whole stock of provisions, the miserable men see death, in its worst forms, staring them in the face, and express to each other their hunger and despair as follows:—

Lamure. Oh, what a tempest have I in my stomach!

How my empty guts cry out! My wounds ache,

Would they would bleed again, that I might get

Something to quench my thirst!

Franville. O Lamure, the happiness my dogs had

When I kept house at home! They had a storehouse,

A storehouse of most blessed bones and crusts.

Happy crusts! Oh, how sharp hunger pinches me!

Lamure. How now, what news?

Morillar. Hast any meat yet?

Franville. Not a bit that I can see.

Here be goodly quarries, but they be cruel hard

To gnaw. I ha’ got some mud, we’ll eat it with spoons;

Very good thick mud; but it stinks damnably.

There’s old rotten trunks of trees, too,

But not a leaf nor blossom in all the island.

Lamure. How it looks!

Morillar. It stinks too.

Lamure. It may be poison.

Franville. Let it be any thing,

So I can get it down. Why, man,

Poison’s a princely dish!

Morillar. Hast thou no biscuit?

No crumbs left in thy pocket? Here is my doublet,

Give me but three small crumbs.

Franville. Not for three kingdoms,

If I were master of ’em. Oh, Lamure,

But one poor joint of mutton we ha’ scorned, man!

Lamure. Thou speak’st of paradise;

Or but the snuffs of those healths,

We have lewdly at midnight flung away.

Morillar. Ah, but to lick the glasses!

But this is nothing, compared with the next scene, when the ship’s surgeon enters.

Franville. Here comes the surgeon. What

Hast thou discovered? Smile, smile, and comfort us.

Surgeon. I am expiring,

Smile they that can. I can find nothing, gentlemen,

Here’s nothing can be meat without a miracle.

Oh, that I had my boxes and my lints now,

My stupes, my tents, and those sweet helps of nature!

What dainty dishes could I make of them!

Morillar. Hast ne’er an old suppository?

Surgeon. Oh, would I had, sir!

Lamure. Or but the paper where such a cordial

Potion, or pills hath been entombed!

Franville. Or the best bladder, where a cooling glister?

Morillar. Hast thou no searcloths left?

Nor any old poultices?

Franville. We care not to what it hath been ministered.

Surgeon. Sure I have none of these dainties, gentlemen.

Franville. Where’s the great wen

Thou cut’st from Hugh the sailor’s shoulder?

That would serve now for a most princely banquet.

Surgeon. Ay, if we had it, gentlemen.

I flung it overboard, slave that I was.

Lamure. A most improvident villain!

Note 53, p. [177].

Æneid, lib. ii. 7, and especially lib. xi. 183. We might safely, therefore, add such a work to the list of lost writings by this author.

Note 54, p. [179].

Consult the list of inscriptions on ancient works of art in Mar. Gudius. (ad Phædri fab. v. lib. i.), and, in connection with that, the correction made by Gronovius. (Præf. ad Tom. ix. Thesauri Antiq. Græc.)

Note 55, p. [182].

He at least expressly promises to do so: “quæ suis locis reddam” (which I shall speak of in their proper place). But if this was not wholly forgotten, it was at least done very cursorily, and not at all in the way this promise had led us to expect. When he writes (lib. xxxv. sect. 39), “Lysippus quoque Æginæ picturæ suæ inscripsit, ἐνέκαυσεν; quod profecto non fecisset, nisi encaustica inventa,” he evidently uses ἐνέκαυσεν to prove something quite different. If he meant, as Hardouin supposes, to indicate in this passage one of the works whose inscription was written in definite past time, it would have been worth his while to put in a word to that effect. Hardouin finds reference to the other two works in the following passage: “Idem (Divus Augustus) in Curia quoque, quam in Comitio consecrabat, duas tabulas impressit parieti: Nemeam sedentem supra leonem, palmigeram ipsam, adstante cum baculo sene, cujus supra caput tabula bigæ dependet. Nicias scripsit se inussisse; tali enim usus est verbo. Alterius tabulæ admiratio est, puberem filium seni patri similem esse, salva ætatis differentia, supervolante aquila draconem complexa. Philochares hoc suum opus esse testatus est.” (Lib. xxxv. sect. 10.) Two different pictures are here described which Augustus had set up in the newly built senate-house. The second was by Philochares, the first by Nicias. All that is said of the picture by Philochares is plain and clear, but there are certain difficulties in regard to the other. It represented Nemea seated on a lion, a palm-branch in her hand, and near her an old man with a staff: “cujus supra caput tabula bigæ dependet.” What is the meaning of that? “over his head hung a tablet on which was painted a two-horse chariot.” That is the only meaning the words will bear. Was there, then, a smaller picture hung over the large one? and were both by Nicias? Hardouin must so have understood it, else where were the two pictures by Nicias, since the other is expressly ascribed to Philochares? “Inscripsit Nicias igitur geminæ huic tabulæ suum nomen in hunc modum: Ὁ ΝΙΚΙΑΣ ΕΝΕΚΑΥΣΕΝ: atque adeo e tribus operibus, quæ absolute fuisse inscripta, ILLE FECIT, indicavit Præfatio ad Titum, duo hæc sunt Niciae.” I should like to ask Hardouin one question. If Nicias had really used the indefinite, and not the definite past tense, and Pliny had merely wished to say that the master, instead of γράφειν, had used ἐγκαίειν, would he not still have been obliged to say in Latin, “Nicias scripsit se inussisse?” But I will not insist upon this point. Pliny may really have meant to indicate here one of the three works before referred to. But who will be induced to believe that there were two pictures, placed one above the other? Not I for one. The words “cujus supra caput tabula bigæ dependet” must be a corruption. “Tabula bigæ,” a picture of a two-horse chariot, does not sound much like Pliny, although Pliny does elsewhere use “biga” in the singular. What sort of a two-horse chariot? Such as were used in the races at the Nemæan games, so that this little picture should, from its subject, be related to the chief one? That cannot be; for not two but four horse chariots were usual in the Nemæan games. (Schmidius in Prol. ad Nemeonicas, p. 2.) At one time, I thought that Pliny might, instead of “bigæ,” have written a Greek word, πτυχίον, which the copyists did not understand. For we know, from a passage in Antigonus Carystius, quoted by Zenobius (conf. Gronovius, T. ix. Antiquit. Græc. Præf. p. 7), that the old artists did not always put their name on the work itself, but sometimes on a separate tablet, attached to the picture or statue, and this tablet was called πτυχίον. The word “tabula, tabella,” might have been written in the margin in explanation of the Greek word, and at last have crept into the text. πτυχίον was turned into “bigæ,” and so we get “tabula bigæ.” This πτυχίον agrees perfectly with what follows; for the next sentence contains what was written on it. The whole passage would then read thus: “cujus supra caput πτυχίον dependet, quo Nicias scripsit se inussisse.” My correction is rather a bold one, I acknowledge. Need a critic feel obliged to suggest the proper reading for every passage that he can prove to be corrupted? I will rest content with having done the latter, and leave the former to some more skilful hand. But to return to the subject under discussion. If Pliny be here speaking of but a single picture by Nicias, on which he had inscribed his name in definite past time, and if the second picture thus inscribed be the above-mentioned one of Lysippus, where is the third? That I cannot tell. If I might look for it elsewhere among the old writers, the question were easily answered. But it ought to be found in Pliny; and there, I repeat, I am entirely unable to discover it.

Note 56, p. [186].

Thus Statius says “obnixa pectora” (Thebaid. lib. vi. v. 863):

... rumpunt obnixa furentes

Pectora.

which the old commentator of Barths explains by “summa vi contra nitentia.” Thus Ovid says (Halievt. v. ii.), “obnixa fronte,” when describing the “scarus” trying to force its way through the fish-trap, not with his head, but with his tail.

Non audet radiis obnixa occurrere fronte.

Note 57, p. [192].

Geschichte der Kunst, part ii. p. 328. “He produced the Antigone, his first tragedy, in the third year of the seventy-seventh Olympiad.” The time is tolerably exact, but it is quite a mistake to suppose that this first tragedy was the Antigone. Neither is it so called by Samuel Petit, whom Winkelmann quotes in a note. He expressly puts the Antigone in the third year of the eighty-fourth Olympiad. The following year, Sophocles went with Pericles to Samos, and the year of this expedition can be determined with exactness. In my life of Sophocles, I show, from a comparison with a passage of the elder Pliny, that the first tragedy of this author was probably Triptolemus. (Lib. xviii. sect. 12.) Pliny is speaking of the various excellence of the fruits of different countries, and concludes thus: “Hæ fuere sententiæ, Alexandro magno regnante, cum clarissima fuit Græcia, atque in toto terrarum orbe potentissima; ita tamen ut ante mortem ejus annis fere CXLV. Sophocles poeta in fabula Triptolemo frumentum Italicum ante cuncta laudaverit, ad verbum translata sententia:

Et fortunatam Italiam frumento canere candido.”

He is here not necessarily speaking of the first tragedy of Sophocles, to be sure. But the date of that, fixed by Plutarch, the scholiast, and the Arundelian marbles, as the seventy-seventh Olympiad, corresponds so exactly with the date assigned by Pliny to the Triptolemus, that we can hardly help regarding that as the first of Sophocles’ tragedies. The calculation is easily made. Alexander died in the hundred and fourteenth Olympiad. One hundred and forty-five years cover thirty-six Olympiads and one year, which subtracted from the total, gives seventy-seven. The Triptolemus of Sophocles appeared in the seventy-seventh Olympiad; the last year of this same Olympiad is the date of his first tragedy: we may naturally conclude, therefore, that these tragedies are one. I show at the same time that Petit might have spared himself the writing of the whole half of the chapter in his “Miscellanea” which Winkelmann quotes (xviii. lib. iii.). In the passage of Pliny, which he thinks to amend, it is quite unnecessary to change the name of the Archon Aphepsion into Demotion, or ἀνεψιός. He need only have looked from the third to the fourth year of the seventy-seventh Olympiad to find that the Archon of that year was called Aphepsion by the ancient authors quite as often as Phædon, if not oftener. He is called Phædon by Diodorus Siculus, Dionysius Halicarnassus, and the anonymous author of the table of the Olympiads; while the Arundelian marbles, Apollodorus, and, quoting him, Diogenes Laertius, call him Aphepsion. Plutarch calls him by both names; Phædon in the life of Theseus and Aphepsion in the life of Cimon. It is therefore probable, as Palmerius supposes, “Aphepsionem et Phædonem Archontas fuisse eponymos; scilicet, uno in magistratu mortuo, suffectus fuit alter.” (Exercit. p. 452.) This reminds me that Winkelmann, in his first work on the imitation of Greek art, allowed an error to creep in with regard to Sophocles. “The most beautiful of the youths danced naked in the theatre, and Sophocles, the great Sophocles, was in his youth the first to show himself thus to his fellow-citizens.” Sophocles never danced naked on the stage. He danced around the trophies after the victory of Salamis, according to some authorities naked, but according to others clothed. (Athen. lib. i. p. m. 20.) Sophocles was one of the boys who was brought for safety to Salamis, and on this island it pleased the tragic muse to assemble her three favorites in a gradation typical of their future career. The bold Æschylus helped gain the victory; the blooming Sophocles danced around the trophies; and on the same happy island, on the very day of the victory, Euripides was born.