These two pairs of satyrs serve to express the transition from the untroubled ease of Dionysos and his immediate attendants, to the violence and confusion of the struggle. Thus the first pair (III:III¹) seem to feel that their active participation is unnecessary, and so belong rather to the central scene; while the second pair (iv:iv¹), hurrying to the combat, are to be reckoned rather with those who are actively engaged. This is also emphasized by the symmetrical alternation of young and old satyrs, i.e.:
old young old young old young
VIa Vb IV IV¹ V¹b VI¹b
and by their correspondence to VII:VII¹.
On the left side we have next a group, turned toward the right, consisting of a young satyr with flowing panther-skin (Vb), who places his left knee on the back of a prostrate pirate (Va) whom he is about to strike with a club which he holds in his uplifted right hand. The pirate (face now somewhat damaged) is, like all of his fellows, youthful and nude. The corresponding group on the right, faces the left, and represents a nude bearded satyr (V¹,) with left knee on the hip of a fallen pirate (V¹a), whose hands he is about to bind behind his back. Thus the arrangement of the two groups corresponds, but the action is somewhat different.
I now wish to point out an error which is interesting and instructive as illustrating how mistakes creep into standard archæological literature to the detriment of a proper appreciation of the original monuments; and I may perhaps hope not only to correct this error once for all, but also, in so doing, to make clearer certain noteworthy artistic qualities of this composition.
If we turn to the reproductions of the Lysikrates frieze in the common manuals of Greek sculpture, we find that the group (V¹) has exchanged places with the next group to the right (VI¹) while the corresponding groups on the left side (V, VI) retain their proper position. In order to detect the source of this confusion, we have only to examine the drawings of Stuart and Revett, from which nearly all the subsequent illustrations are more or less directly derived. In the first volume of Stuart and Revett, the groups (V¹, IV¹) occupy plates XIII and XIV, and it is evident that the drawings have been in some way misplaced. These plates have been reproduced on a reduced scale in Meyer's Gesch. d. bildenden Künste [92] (1825); Müller-Wieseler [93] (1854); Overbeck, [94] Plastik³ (1882); W.C. Perry, History of Greek Sculpture [95] (1882); Mrs. L.M. Mitchell, History of Ancient Sculpture; [96] Baumeister, Denkmäler [97] (1887); Harrison and Verrall, Andent Athens [98] (1890), and in all with the same misarrangement.
Nevertheless correct reproductions of the frieze, derived from other sources, have not been wholly lacking. There is, for example, a drawing of the whole monument by S. Pomardi in Dodwell's Tour through Greece [99] (1819), in which the correct position of these groups is clearly indicated. In 1842 appeared volume IX of the British Museum Marbles containing engravings of a cast made by direction of Lord Elgin, about 1800. [100] Inasmuch as this cast or similar copies have always been the chief sources for the study of the relief, owing to the unsatisfactory preservation of the original, it is the more strange that this mistake should have remained so long uncorrected, [101] or that Müller-Wieseler should imply [102] that their engraving was corrected from the British Museum publication, when no trace of such correction is to be found. A third drawing in which the true arrangement is shown, is the engraving after Hansen's restoration of the whole monument, published in Von Lützow's monograph [103] (1868). Although Stuart's arrangement violates the symmetry maintained between the other groups of the frieze, yet Overbeck [104] especially commends the symmetry shown in the composition of these portions of the relief.
Footnote 92:[ (return) ] Tajel 25.
Footnote 93:[ (return) ] I Taf. 37.
Footnote 94:[ (return) ] II, p. 91.