Plate XXXI. RELIEFS FROM THE “LUDOVISI THRONE”
Alinari
America had added yet another to her list of trophies captured from Europe. The Boston Museum of Fine Arts has just acquired three more slabs which obviously belong to the same monument, and of which, by the courtesy of the Director, we are enabled to publish one of the earliest photographic representations.[40] It is said that these additional slabs had lain for years unrecognised in the hands of a collector at Lewes, in Sussex. Whether they formed the other half of the same throne, tomb, or altar, or whether they formed the second of a pair, the new slabs correspond precisely in shape, subject, and treatment to the old. The hooded figure of the old “throne” is balanced by the wonderfully realistic old woman of the new. The nude flute-player has her counterpart in the nude male citharist. And the long central slab is matched by the new relief of the winged male god and the two seated females.
As for the style, it is obviously identical; there is the same remarkable mixture of archaic imperfection in the delineation of heads and faces, with finished and confident mastery in the technique of relief. The architectural ornament, the carving of the nude bodies, the treatment of the wings and of the drapery, is as advanced as that of the Parthenon sculptures. Yet the archaic smile of the faces, the carving of the eyes, the imperfect setting of a head in profile upon a body full-face recalls the early Æginetan sculptures and the metopes of Selinus. We must, I suppose, date this work in the period between Marathon and Salamis, or a very little later. Even so, there is nothing even on vase-paintings to match the nude bodies or the winged god for half a century to come.
The subjects are equally puzzling. In the long slab the male god must be Love, or (as I rather think) Death. The holes in the marble indicate where the bronze balances he was holding were attached. The two female figures obviously indicate Joy and Sorrow. The god is smiling and the balance is inclined towards Joy. Close by the knees of the two women are mysterious objects of marble which seemed to hang from the scales and actually supported them. On each is a nude male figure with hands raised above the head as if in act to strike with the sword. The architectural scrolls which support this and the corresponding single figures of the new slabs seem to me to indicate a ship, especially as there is a dolphin, the regular symbol of sea, under one of them. In other corners there are pomegranates, a fruit associated with the underworld.
Mythological interpretation will no doubt attempt to bring these scenes into relation with the famous Homeric simile of the scales in connection with the fate of Hector. But that is highly unsatisfying. To my eyes the whole series bears reference to Death. The Winged God of Death reappears on Athenian funeral lecythi of a later date. The figure of Sorrow may be matched by a marble statue found at Eleusis. The musicians have the sad or pensive faces of dirge-players. The rising Persephone is the heroine of the Eleusinian myth of immortality. The old woman may be Fate, and her younger counterpart is surely trimming the lamp for the journey. In brief, I would hazard the opinion that the whole monument is Eleusinian and funereal in character, symbolical rather than mythological. Such a character is strange indeed for the period to which the art seems to belong, but the art itself is without any close parallel. More it would be unbecoming to say at present; the monument is sub judice, and until Professor Studniczka has spoken—“let no dog bark.”
The West
Wheresoever the patron is there will the poets be gathered together. When tyrants like Polycrates and Peisistratus ceased to exist in the East, and when the Ionian cities had fallen under the Lydian and Persian despotisms, the courtly poets migrated with their lyres and other luggage to Sicily and South Italy, where there were aristocracies as elegant and tyrants as bountiful. The centres of commerce in this