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The Dating of Horses on Stands and Spectacle Fibulae in Greece1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Sylvia Benton
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Extract

In Evolution, I tried to date tripod-cauldrons by the development of their shape and decoration, and by the style of human and animal figurines upon them, particularly by the style of horses on tripod-handles. I now want to compare tripod-horses with horses on stands, but first I must examine the foundations, and cast a glance at dating evidence afforded by fibulae.

In my former study I ventured to tamper with the order laid down by Furtwängler. Not unnaturally, some of his successors at Olympia resisted. They have not met my contention that tripods with solid legs and handles show a consistent development in section from solid to flat, in decoration from simple to elaborate, but they still find it necessary to insert elaborate plated tripods, decorated with advanced horses, into the sequence, so that late solid tripods can imitate their patterns. Plated tripods cannot go in the middle of the series, as Furtwängler said, because too many solid tripods are hybrids between his classes I and III. Hampe puts plated tripods before the decorative period of solid tripods and equates the horses of the last-named with Boeotian rabbits of the seventh century. A horse is a horse and rabbits are different. Early seventh century horses are not at all like rabbits. Let him look again at his own Boeotian brooches.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 70 , November 1950 , pp. 16 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1950

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Footnotes

1

Contractions:

AO: Artemis Orthia.

Evolution: Benton, Evolution of the Tripod Lebes (BSA, XXXV).

M: Heurtley and Skeat, Marmariani (BSA, XXXI).

O: Olympia IV, die Bronzen.

PV: Payne, Protokorinthische Vasenmalerei.

VS: Johansen, Vases Sicyoniens.

W: Weinberg, Corinth, VII, 1.

References

2 Hampe, R. and Jantzen, U. (JDI) Bericht über die Ausgrabungen in Olympia, 1937, 65–69 Google Scholar. Markman, , The Horse in Creek Art, 21 Google Scholar, quotes these authors (op. cit. 42, fig. 18) as his authorities for an absurd dating. On reference to this passage it appears that he had translated ‘dasmittlere, achtc Jahrhundert’ as 875–825 B.C. with disastrous results to the chronology ot his first 200 years.

3 I mean tripods made of thin plates of metal.

4 R. HamPe op. cit. 70; Sagenbilder pl. 18.

5 Or at PV pl. 10, 6.

6 Neue Meisterwerke griechischer Kunst aus Olympia. It contains first-class illustrations of lovely bronzes.

7 Ithaca 3.

8 E.g. Robertson, , BSA XLIII Google Scholar, pl. 1, 1, perhaps to be dated about 750 B.C.

9 Op. cit., 4/5.

10 Cook, , BSA XLII, 143 Google Scholar See below p. 31.

11 E.g. on the plated handle op. cit., pl. 19, 2.

12 The pattern on the edges of a late solid tripod-leg at Olympia ( Hampe, , Die Antike XV 33 Google Scholar, Abb. 17), depicts birds, not debased spirals.

13 E.g. Ithaca tripod No. 9. (Ibid. pl. 17); no. 3 (pl. 14 d).

14 E.g. Robertson, BSA XLIII Google Scholar, pl. 21, 322. There are dozens of examples.

15 AM XVIII 414, pl. XIV: for vases found with it see BSA XXXV 125, n. 4.

16 BSA XXXV.

17 Who were the Greeks? 304, 425.

18 Festschrift für Otto Tschumi 73.

19 AO 196, 198.

20 AO 224.

21 AO 18.

22 It should be till 625 B.C. but no matter.

23 AO p. 63, fig. 37 A.

24 See below n. 64.

25 Lane has found some more of it and classes it as Laconian I, Orientalising (BSA XXXIV, pl. 25 e, 112). He tells me that he thinks it is too rough to be genuine Protocorinthian.

26 Kretische Bronzereliefs 254, 23.

27 O, pl. XXXI.

28 Cf. Payne, , Perachora, 170 Google Scholar: ‘The other Corinthian fibula of the seventh century is the ivory spectacle fibula.’

29 Thera I, 311 Google Scholar, Abb. 499 a; 317, Abb. 510.

30 Casson, , BSA XXVI, 1 ff.Google Scholar

31 Op. cit. 9. I have not been able to use W. Reichel, Griechisches Goldrelief which I see gives an earlier date for Chauchitsa.

32 Op. cit. Tomb 2, p. 10, fig. 3c. Tomb 2 is beside tomb 3, which contains a cup of late 8th century date: similar gold bands in both tombs.

33 Fouilles de Delphes V, 112, 154 Google Scholar. All the vases look seventh century.

34 Heurtley, and Skeat, , BSA XXXI Google Scholar. I apologise for the length and dullness of this section. General readers (if any) please skip on to the horses p. 21.

35 Desborough has called my attention to imported Middle Geometric vases found at Kapakli near Volo. This is just the sort of indirect influence that I had supposed to be at work on Marmariani.

36 Publication to date, Kerameikos, I and IV.

37 If bodies had been broadened under the influence of the gourd-like native jugs, they might be expected to be bulbous but not ovoid.

38 W pl. 11.

39 To be published.

40 Cf. Robertson, , BSA XLIII, 445 Google Scholar, pl. 30.

41 See above, p. 18.

42 Robertson, , JHS LX, 2 Google Scholar. The author merely states that it is not Protogeometric. None of the sherds found with it look earlier than 750 B.C See references given loc. cit.

43 Hampe, Sagenbilder, pls. 32, 33.

44 Heurtley, , BSA XXXI, 47, 52.Google Scholar

45 Kerameikos IV, pl. 34. See also pls. 22 and 23 from late graves, and contrast with Marmariani kraters. Desborough calls my attention to the rim of an Attic Protogeometric Krater in Munich, Kraiker, , Die Antike XV 220.Google Scholar

46 Cf. M 136, 145, 149 with Wide, , JDI XIV Google Scholar, figs. 65–68.

47 Kerameikos I, pl. 51; cf. N.M. 806. See Kahane, , AJA XLIV Google Scholar, pl. XXIII.

48 CVA Greece I, pl. 6, 5.

49 VS pl. 1, 2.

50 Wide, , JDI XIV, 213 Google Scholar, fig. 92. Compare also the krater Hampe, pl. 29.

51 See op. cit. pl. XXV.

52 Robertson, , BSA XLIII Google Scholar, pl. 30.

53 Wace, and Thompson, , Prehistoric Thessaly, 208 ff.Google Scholar

54 Kerameikos I, 83.

55 Kerameikos IV, pl. 39, Inv. M 2, M 22.

56 Perachora, pl. 73, 5.

57 The bow of this fibula is hexagonal in Crete (BSA XL, pl. 32, 39) from Praisos, and in Athens, where it has grown a large decorated plate ( JHS LI 167 Google Scholar in Toronto). The typology of this fibula is sound, even if, as I think, the grave group is at least two groups. Hampe should have seen that the Elgin gold fibulae (Sagenbilder, pl. 7) are typologically earlier than his monster fibulae. Their designs are simple like Iliffe's fibula and their bows are semicircular, i.e. hammered half-way to flat. Incidentally he has transposed the designs; there are two horses on one fibula. A chain of fibulae of a fully developed type is dated about 800 B.C. (not early ninth century as stated in the text) by a grave in the Kerameikos ( JDI LIII, 587 Google Scholar, Abb. 9 and 11).

58 Prehistoric Thessaly, 20g ff., p. 212 a and e.

59 Tomb 5 contained a spectacle fibula, as well as the oinochoe M 49 (pl. IV), with beautiful glaze and looking Early Geometric; M 54 which has a tall decorated neck in a Middle Geometric scheme, and M 137 (pl. IX) with a foot of Late Geometric shape. Cf. the big Corinthian krater, VS pl. 1.

60 PI. IV, a: From JDI LVIII, 15 Google Scholar, Abb. 8. Geometric Attic Amphora.

b: BSA XXXV, Pl. 15 c. Ithaca tripod 9. Scale 1:1.

c: Ibid. Pl. 18, 3. Horse on a plated tripod in Olympia. O. No. 607. Scale 1: 2.

d: Grave Group in Taranto. Scale 1:1. Pl. V, a: BSA XXXV Pl. 26, 1. Late Geometric Attic Amphora. Scale 1:4.

b: Horse from Aetos; Ithaca, Bronzes No. 3. Scale 1:1.

c: Horse at Syracuse. Mr. J. M. Cook's photograph. Scale 1:2.

d: Aryballos in the Ashmolean, CVA Oxford 2 Google ScholarPubMed, Pl. 1, 5. Scale 1:1.

e: Horse from Aetos; Ithaca, Bronzes No. 8. Scale 1:1.

61 Kerameikos IV, pl. 27.

62 I see G. Nottbohm puts them later still, JDI LVIII, 28.Google Scholar

63 E.g. the horses on a very late Geometric oinochoe, Evolution, pl. 25, 3 and 4. They look arthritic.

64 This is an unexpectedly early date to find Corinthian influence on the East Coast of Italy, but Beaumont ( JHS LVI, 192 Google Scholar, note 238) suggested something of the sort.

For me Payne's dating stands. R. M. Cook points out that ˚Akerstrom in Der Geometrische Stil in Italien starts from false premises ( JHS LXV, 120).Google Scholar

65 Kahane's phases 1 and 2 of the Late Geometric period are to me indistinguishable ( AJA XLIV, 482 Google Scholar). He has to split up the vases of a single burial, tomb XIII at Athens, to divide the period. Complicated patterns of phase 1 reappear word for word on a phase-2 vase. For me it is all one phase and to be dated in the last quarter of the century.

66 Perachora Pl. 37, p. 126.

67 The body is shaped like Johansen pl. X, 4, but it probably had two handles.

68 Cook, J. M., BSA XLII, 144 Google Scholar, fig. 4a.

69 Payne's date for this vase is ‘end of the first quarter of the seventh century’, CVA Oxford, pl. 1, 5.