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.
INDEX.
- Achilles, sceptre of, [98];
- shield of, [113].
- Action, culminating point of an, not the point to be represented by the artist, [16].
- Albani, Cardinal Alexander, his discovery of a vase which illustrated the date of the Laocoon, [178] et seq.
- Anacreon, two odes of, [133], [139].
- Apelles, his picture of Diana, [143].
- Ariosto, his description of Alcina, [128], [138].
- Aristophanes, element of disgust used by, [161].
- Aristotle, advice of, to Protogenes, [76];
- his reason why we receive pleasure from a faithful copy of the disagreeable, [154].
- Art should express nothing essentially transitory, [17].
- Arts among the ancients, subject to the control of law, [10].
- Bacchus, how represented in poetry and painting, [56] et seq.
- Beauty, the supreme law of the imitative arts, [11];
- Boivin, his explanations of Homer, [118], [121].
- Calaber, Quintus, his rendering of the story of Laocoon, [34];
- his account of the death of Thersites, [150].
- Callimachus, his picture of famine, [165].
- Caricature, law against, among the Thebans, [9].
- Caylus, Count, some points in his work considered, [71], [77], [80], [82], [86], [87], [93];
- his sketch for a picture of Helen, [140].
- Chateaubrun, his representation of Philoctetes, [25].
- Cicero, his views in regard to bodily pain, [28].
- Cleyn, Francis, illustrations by, [39].
- Constancy, how represented in art, [68] et seq.
- Dacier, Madame, her translation of Homer, [113].
- Dante, his description of the starvation of Ugolino, [166].
- Deformity, physical, in art, produces disgust, [159].
- Disgust produced more through the other senses than through that of sight, [160];
- object of, in painting, [167].
- Disgusting, the, its use in expressing the horror of famine, [164].
- Dolce, his dialogue on Painting, [131].
- Drama, expression of suffering in the, [21] et seq.
- Dryden, his Ode on Cecilia’s Day, [89].
- Flaccus, Valerius, his description of an angry Venus, [57] et seq.
- French language, not adapted to translation of Homer, [112].
- German language, compared to the Greek, [113].
- Gladiator, Borghese, the author’s theory in regard to the, [184] et seq.
- Gladiatorial shows, effect of, [29].
- Haller, Von, description quoted from his “Alps,” [103].
- Hercules, as represented by Sophocles, [6];
- the, of Sophocles, [31].
- Hogarth, his criticism of the Apollo Belvidere, [145].
- Homer, expressions of pain in his heroes, [4];
- representation of his heroes, [79] et seq.;
- his descriptions not generally available for pictures, [83], [143];
- his picture of Pandarus, [89];
- style of, [93];
- his description of the chariot of Juno, [94];
- his description of the sceptre of Agamemnon, [95];
- of the shield of Achilles, [98], [113], [118];
- of the bow of Pandarus, [99];
- his indebtedness to the flexibility of the Greek language, [112];
- his description of the beleaguered city, [121];
- avoids detailed description, [127];
- his representation of Helen, [136];
- his Thersites, [148] et seq.
- Imitations of the poet by the artist and the reverse, [49] et seq.
- Invention required less of the artist than of the poet, [72] et seq.
- Junius, Francis, an unsafe authority, [188].
- Juno, how represented in ancient art, [57].
- Kleist, Von, his own judgment of his poem “Spring,” [108].
- Klotzius, on the effects of different forms of the disagreeable in art, [158].
- Laocoon, of Virgil, [20] et seq.;
- Longinus, his remarks in regard to eloquence and poetry, [188].
- Lucian represents physical beauty by comparison with statues, [135].
- Manasses, Constantinus, his pictures of Helen, [127].
- Martiani, his opinion in regard to the date of the Laocoon, [34] et seq.
- Mazzuoli, his “Rape of the Sabines,” [109].
- Mengs, his criticism on Raphael’s drapery, [110].
- Milton furnishes few subjects for a painter, [87].
- Minerva, how represented in ancient art, [57], [78].
- Montfaucon, his want of taste, [14];
- his opinions in regard to the date of the Laocoon, [33] et seq.
- Olympic judges, law of the, [10].
- Ovid, his description of Lesbia, [137];
- Pain, expression of, in Sophocles, [3];
- Painting among the Greeks confined to imitation of beauty, [8].
- Passion, violent, not expressed in ancient art, [12].
- Pauson, character of his pictures, [9].
- Phidias, his indebtedness to Homer, [144] et seq.
- Philoctetes of Sophocles, the, his sufferings compared with those of Laocoon, [3];
- Picturesque, the, in poetry, [88].
- Pisander, possibly Virgil’s predecessor in the history of Laocoon, [34].
- Pliny, his mention of the Laocoon, [172];
- of famous Greek sculptors, [173] et seq.
- Poetry, how it surpasses art in description of physical beauty, [137] et seq.
- Polygnotus, pictures of, [123] et seq.
- Pope, contempt of, for descriptive poems, [108];
- his explanations of Homer, [122] et seq.
- Pordenone, his picture of the entombment, [167].
- Pyreicus, character of his pictures, [9].
- Religion, influence of, on art, [62] et seq.
- Richardson, remarks of, on Virgil’s Laocoon, [45];
- his criticism of Pordenone, [167].
- Ridiculous, the, heightened by an element of disgust, [161].
- Sadolet, extract from, [46].
- Shakespeare, his use of ugliness in the character of Richard III., [151].
- Sophocles, a Laocoon among his lost works, [6];
- his description of the desert cave of Philoctetes, [163].
- Spence, Rev. Mr., criticism of his work “Polymetis,” [50];
- Statius, his description of an angry Venus, [57] et seq.
- Statues, beautiful, produced beautiful men, [10].
- Stoicism not adapted to the drama, [6].
- Stosch, Herr von, his opinion of the Borghese Gladiator, [183].
- Symbols, use of, in poetry and painting, [67] et seq.
- Temperance, how represented in art, [68] et seq.
- Timanthes, picture of Iphigenia by, [12].
- Timomachus, his representations of Ajax and Medea, [18].
- Titian, his picture of the Prodigal Son, [109].
- Ugliness, as used in poetry, [149], [156];
- Urania, how represented in art, [67].
- Vesta, how worshipped, [64] et seq.
- Virgil, description from the Georgics, [106];
- Winkelmann, quoted, [1];
- Zeuxis, his picture of Helen, [140] et seq.
[1]. Von der Nachahmung der griechischen Werke in der Malerei und Bildhauerkunst, p. 21, 22.
[2]. Brumoy Théât. des Grecs, T. ii. p. 89.
[3]. Iliad v. 343. Ἡ δὲ μέγα ἰάχουσα.
[4]. Iliad v. 859.
[5]. Th. Bartholinus. De Causis contemptæ a Danis adhuc Gentilibus Mortis, cap. 1.
[6]. Iliad vii. 421.