Week 5 (Oct 7-9) PDF

Monday, October 7 Anacreon fr. 358 PMG Once again golden-haired Love (Eros) strikes me with his purple ball and summons me to play with the girl with ornate sandals; but she — for she comes from Lesbos 5 with its fine cities— finds...

Monday, October 7 Anacreon fr. 358 PMG Once again golden-haired Love (Eros) strikes me with his purple ball and summons me to play with the girl with ornate sandals; but she — for she comes from Lesbos 5 with its fine cities— finds fault with my hair because it is white, and gapes after another Reading ancient literature is an interesting experience; you learn a lot about your own assumptions about the ancient world, and what you are bringing to the text. Anacreon was one of the great lyric poets. He was very much a creature of the symposium, whose works we only receive in fragments and quotations. Eros is a love god who throughout history takes on many forms. In his earliest attestations he is a golden-haired ball player. In later traditions he becomes an archer, who is the son of Aphrodite, but that’s not the case in the Archaic age. There is an idea that you would strike the object of your desire with a ball to make your intentions known, and earlier examples of the thrown object being an apple, although you shouldn’t try either these days. There was some academic consensus that this poem makes a comic implication of homosexuality, although that is a very modern understanding of the connotations of the word “lesbian,” and the likelier explanation is an ancient association between Lesbos and sophistication, and the woman rejecting the poet for a man with a younger head of hair. The ‘New’ Sappho It’s odd to think of ‘new’ ancient literature, but sometimes papyri turn up! Sappho is often at her most interesting when we think of her as looking at the world through the lens of memory. The Greeks generally had a very gloomy outlook on old age. Epic tells mythic stories in detail, while Lyric tends to give us little flashes. Here we see a glimmer of the story of the Trojan prince Tithonus, who was so handsome that he was carried off by the goddess Dawn, who petitioned Zeus to make Tithonus immortal. Zeus agrees, but Dawn forgot to ask that Tithonus stay eternally young, and he was thus cursed to grow older and older forever, but was unable to die. “For people used to think,” is an interesting phrasing that we otherwise do not see in other tellings of mythological episodes. The ‘Newer’ Sappho , or the ‘Brothers’ Poem (2014) This work is embroiled in an ongoing scandal. This papyrus was miraculously published by a distinguished scholar from Oxford, who claimed to source it from an anonymous donation from a private collection. Provenance is a major concern for all antiquities, including papyri. This same scholar, who was in charge of the great papyrus collection at Oxford, was accused of sellong papyrus fragments. This scholar was suspended from Oxford, has been sued by the owners of Hobby Lobby. It seesm likely that the ‘newer Sappho’ was taken from a museum in Iraq which was looted during the Iraq War, and sold on the black market. This poem seems to come from a period when Sappho’s brother Charaxus was away at sea. Archaic Art and Architecture Our evidence from this period is principally in the form of vase painting. From 11th-8th centuries BCE vases were decorated with intricate designs, but not images. Sometime after 750 BCE emerges a new style which begins to feature scenes from mythology. Greek Pottery Production: We’ve excavated numerous kilns. There were several stages of firing and oxidation which resulted in the iconic red and black colourations to the pottery. At the end of the Dark Age the Greeks are working within the “geometric” style. During this period there is seemingly no Greek word for “body” as a whole, outside of references to corpses. The animated body tends to be referred to as “limbs.” Did Homeric man not think of the body as a coherent whole, but as a collection of parts? The bodies which appear on geometric pottery seem to support this, but Dr. Brown (and I) are not totally convinced. Wednesday, October 9 Archaic Art and Architecture cont. Geometric art: we begin to see figures appearing in this style. Attic geometric amphora: Prothesis scene, the setting out of a corpse, here on some kind of platform, perhaps a funeral pyre, but maybe not. The scene features animals of some unknown significance, maybe decorative, maybe domestic, maybe sacrifices. The figures with hands on their heads are likely women, as that posture is later on the posture with which women are depicted when mourning. Horses are common features on geometric pottery, a popular symbol of the elite. Nessos Amphora: We begin to see scenes that are identifiably mythic. We see a neck amphora with a scene of Heracles slaying the centaur Nessos from the late 7th century. Centaurs are generally, with the exception of the immortal Chiron, disruptive figures in Greek myth. Half man and half animal, the centaur represents a threatening wildness. Heracles, as a monster slayer, thus “civilises” the world.  Gorgon motif: Apotropaic imagery, meaning that they were meant to ward off evil. The terrifying aspect of the gorgon was thought to scare off malevolent powers. Sphinx imagery: presumably an import from Egypt or the Near East, as is the case with any kind of mixed animal or composite beast. Proto-Attic vessel showing the blinding of Polyphemos c. 650. A tale from the Odyssey, wherein Odysseus and his men, trapped in the cave of the giant cyclops Polyphemos, use a spear to blind the giant. We begin to see scenes like this and other scenes from myth. Do scenes like this predate our Homeric epics? We don’t know, unfortunately. With the introduction of red-figure pottery techniques we see a refinement of detail. Attic red-figure showing the twin gods Hypnos (sleep) and Thanatos (death) under the supervision of Hermes bearing off the corpse of Sarpedon, c. 515. Made by Euphronios and Euxitheos. Sarpedon was a son of Zeus who was killed by Patroclus in the Trojan war, in an episode which is beautifully captured in the Iliad. Hermes is a psychopomp, a figure who shepherds the spirits of the dead to the underworld. This scene raises some questions, particularly about the question of fate. Sarpedon is “long ago fated to die,” according to Zeus, but Zeus is tempted to try to save him. If there is fate, do we have free will? In a philosophical context these two possibilities are mutually exclusive, but practically speaking it’s ultimately a matter of perspective. Culturally we tend to believe in free will, but our language is tied up in ideas of fate, particularly when understanding the past. It seems the Greeks believed things along similar lines depending on the context. This scene also touches on the idea of what a “good” death is. Sarpedon is borne off by ‘Sleep’ and ‘Death,’ which is Zeus intervening in a sense to grant his son the best kind of death. The two brothers working together is the ideal way to die. Scenes of athletic competition were also popularly depicted on vases. In black figure works, men are rendered in black, while women are rendered in white. There is an underlying point that men are tan, from working outside, and women are pale, from staying and working within the household. Corinthian amphora, Tydeus killing Ismene c. 560-550. A minor scene from myth depicting a man slaying his unfaithful wife. The wife’s lover who is fleeing is depicted with white skin, which is an exceptional depiction of a male on pottery. The Greeks were thoroughly concerned with adultery and the legitimacy of one’s children. In Athens a husband is well within his rights to kill either of the unfaithful parties. The wronged husband can also subject the adulterer to a humiliating and painful punishment, which evidently wasn’t common, but included the insertion of radishes or the (dangerously spiky) mullet fish into the anus of the adulterous man. The vase painter of this Corinthian piece has symbolically rendered the male adulterer as a woman. Sculpture From Dark Age to Archaic Age: We saw the impressive “Lion’s Gate” of the Mycenaeans. In the “Dark Age” we see a lack of sculpture on this scale, although sculpture continued in the production of smaller figures, which served aesthetic purposes as well as functional apotropaic purposes. The early figurines are quite stylized, and rather static.  Kouros: A common statue type, depicting an anonymous naked young man, with long hair. Puberty Initiation: rituals signifying the transition from childhood to adulthood, which in many Greek iterations involved the cutting of hair. Sculpture in the Archaic Period: (Orientalizing Period 700-600 BCE) Increased influence from Egyptian and Near Eastern neighbours. Bronze continues to be used, decorated cauldrons and tripods (the latter of which feature heavily in ritual use), and numerous small mould-made (i.e. mass produced) figurines. Early on representations of the human body are rather rigid and mechanical looking. It is a feature of archaic and classical Greek art that male figures are portrayed in the nude, while female figures are depicted clothed. Marble began to be used as a sculptural material near the end of the 7th century BCE. Kouroi of Cleobis and Biton. They feature in a scene in Herodotus’ Histories. The obscenely wealthy Lydian king Croesus asks the Athenian sage Solon who the richest man in the world is (in Greek olbitatos can mean ‘richest,’ as well as ‘happiest’), and Solon answers a number of minor Greek men, among them Cleobis and Biton, who carted their mother a great distance on foot to a festival of Hera, and as a reward from the goddess died a fortunate death in their sleep that night. The moral: you can’t call a man olbios unless he has died ‘happy.’ Herodotus’ Solon famously advises: “Count no man happy until he is dead, for the gods can reverse your fortune in an instant.” Gods and athletes were common subjects of statuary. Bronzes are quite rare, as metals tend to get melted down and repurposed. As antiquity continued sculptural techniques proceeded to get further refined, and by late antiquity artists were rendering statues with a stunning degree of naturalism.