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Locri Epizephyrii and the Ludovisi Throne

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Bernard Ashmole
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Extract

The starting-point for the following discussion is the stele from the Esquiline (Plate XI.). We remark first its stylistic relationship with a series of terracottas from Locri Epizephyrii, many of which have been published by Quagliati in Ausonia, iii. 1908, p. 136 sqq. and by Orsi in Bollettino d'Arte, iii. 1909, p. 406 sqq. and p. 463 sqq., while there are other examples in various museums. For style, we may compare particularly Aus. l.c. Figs. 9, 33, 44; Boll. l.c. Fig. 16, and Fig. 1 (=B.M. Terracottas, B488, Pl. XXI.): for subject Aus. l.c. Fig. 1. If this connexion can be established, the consequences are of importance, for the stele from the Esquiline has often been compared in style with the Ludovisi Throne, and the Ludovisi Throne involves the Boston reliefs. Before examining this comparison we must mention yet another work which has been brought into relation with these monuments, the so-called Ino-Leucothea relief of the Villa Albani. Its connexion with the Esquiline stele and with some of the terra-cottas is, in fact, equally striking. With the stele it has in common, in the seated figure the emphatically linear treatment of the himation, that is to say, a tendency to draw rather than to model; and the identical device for rendering the softer material in the standing figure (a device also used in the terra-cottas, while the line of the front of the thigh is indicated through the drapery in the same way. In short, it is fair to say that if a reduced copy of the Albani relief had been unearthed among such terra-cottas as Aus. l.c. Figs. 4, 15, 44, 45, 46, 58, and Boll. l.c. Fig. 43, to mention only a few examples, we should not notice any incongruity of style, and the subject in some cases is curiously similar.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , 1922 , pp. 248 - 253
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1922

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References

1 Conservatori Catalogue, Monumenti Arcaici, No. 5. Greyish island marble. Restored (in plaster): patches on edge of moulding, and a thin horizontal strip under right arm of figure where relief has been broken in two.

2 Helbig 3 1863.

3 Aus. l.c. Fig. 83. Here possibly imitated from metal technique like the granulated treatment in certain other of the terra-cottas (Aus. l.c. Fig. 74, etc.). Compare the silver rhyton from Tarentum, at Trieste, (Jahresh. v. 1902, p. 112).Google Scholar That Locri abounded in metal treasures we know both from the terra-cottas and from literary evidence.

4 The resemblance between the Ludovisi Throne and the terra-cottas has been noted both by Amelung, (Helbig 31286)Google Scholar and by Ducati, (L'Arte Classica, p. 293).Google Scholar

5 Aus. l.c. Figs. 44, 54, 55.

6 Ant. Denkm. v. 1890, Pll. LI. and LII. Röm. Mitt. v. 1890, pp. 161–227, Pl. IX. These articles deal also with other remains at Locri. Now at Naples, (Guida, No. 125, p. 39).Google Scholar

7 I am aware that, speaking broadly, all these monuments can be classed simply as Ionian. But that classification does not seem to account for all their peculiarities, though the style of the Albani relief is, I feel, not quite so characteristically South Italian as that of the Esquiline stele and the two thrones.

8 Boll. l.c. Figs. 25, 26; Aus. l.c. Fig. 50.

9 E.g. Aus. l.c. Fig. 57; Boll. l.c. Fig. 16.

10 See in this connexion Revue Hist. Relig. 80, (1919), xiv. p. 30.

11 Boll. l.c. Fig. 17; Aus. l.c. Fig. 53.

12 Boll. l.c. Fig. 6; Aus. l.c. Figs. 47, 48.

13 Aus. l.c. Fig. 63.

14 Aus. l.c. Figs. 60, 61 and 62. Her companion on the piacque has the left breast bare. That is to say we are looking at a religious ceremony of robing and disrobing, analogous to, if not identical with that sug gested by the three subjects of the Ludovisi Throne.

15 Casson, theory (J.H.S. xl. 1920, p. 137)Google Scholar, plausible enough in itself, lacks what the present argument would if the question of style were entirely omitted. Mystic bath and raiment formed part of the ritual of many, perhaps originally of most goddesses.

16 E.g. Aus. l.c. Fig. 62; Boll. l.c. Fig. 45.

17 The metaphor is common (see Hesiod, , Op. i. 620Google Scholar). Compare the Orion legend, Pseudo-Eratosthenes, Catast. fr. xxxii. It is hardly necessary to remark the analogy of the general conception with such myths as those of the Theseus cycle. In the Naples group the other horseman was possibly mounting.

18 Hesiod, , Op. i. 565Google Scholar, 598, 610, etc.

19 Vergil, , Aen. vi. 1. 121–2.Google Scholar Clement of Alexandria, , Protrept. ii. 30. 5Google Scholar; Pind. Nem. x. fin.; Pyth, xi. 60 sqq. De Quincey, reference (Opium Eater, p. 78, ed. Macmillan, )Google Scholar to the Dioscuri, as morning and evening star, going up and down like alternate buckets (possibly an imaginative re-creation of the passage of Vergil cited above) is an interesting modern parallel to the simile employed by the sculptor of the Boston relief.

20 Porphyr. Vit. Pyth. 56.

21 B.M.C. Italy, p. 368, Nos. 35, 36; id. p. 369, No. 40.

22 Röm. Mitt. xv. 1900, p. 3 sqq. Again there is the relief in the Louvre where the Dioscuri descend to the Theoxenia as the sun with his chariot rises above them. Reinach, , Reliefs, ii. p. 256Google Scholar, No. 4. We can hardly suppose that in all these cases the Dioscuri exercise the same functions, or that they are always identified with the same stars.

23 Aus. l.c. Fig. 82; cf. Boll. l.c. Fig. 13.

24 Boll. l.c. Figs. 8, 12, 16, 17; Aus. l.c. Figs. 15, 52.

25 Boll. l.c. Figs. 12, 38; Aus. l.c. Figs. 41, 42.

26 Appian Samn. iii. 12; Livy xxix. 18, etc.

27 Livy xxix. 8, 16–22; Diodorus xxvii. 4, etc.

28 Aus. l.c. Fig. 41.

29 It seems doubtful whether we are right in assuming, as Studniczka inclines to do, that the small figure who appears in the basket is Adonis, since in most cases it has long hair, and in one (Boll. l.c. Fig. 41), like the child on the Albani relief, is certainly female.

30 Doubtless the rites must have had a special application to the fate of the individual soul: compare Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 1. 480 sqq.

31 By certain of her officers Rome must have been filled with works of Greek art from Sicily and South Italy, few of which have been identified in modern museums.

32 Boll. l.c. Fig. 16.