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Vitruvius and the origin of Caryatids

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Hugh Plommer
Hugh Plommer
Affiliation:
Wolfson College, Cambridge
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Extract

Historias autem plures novisse oportet, quod multa ornamenta saepe in operibus architecti designant, de quibus argumenti rationem cur fecerint quaerentibus reddere debent. Quemadmodum si quis statuas marmoreas muliebres stolatas, quae caryatides dicuntur, pro columnis in opere statuerit et insuper mutulos et coronas conlocaverit, percontantibus ita reddet rationem. Carya civitas Peloponnensis cum Persis hostibus contra Graeciam consensit, postea Graeci per victoriam gloriose bello liberati communi Consilio Caryatibus bellum indixerunt. Itaque oppido capto viris interfectis civitate desacrata matronas eorum in servitutem abduxerunt, nec sunt passi stolas neque ornatus matronales deponere, uti non una triumpho ducerentur sed aeterno servitutis exemplo gravi contumelia pressae poenas pendere viderentur pro civitate. Ideo qui tune architecti fuerunt aedificiis publicis designaverunt earum imagines oneri ferundo conlocatas, ut etiam posteris nota poena peccati Caryatium memoriae traderetur. Non minus Lacones, Pausania Agesipolidos filio duce, Plataico proelio pauca manu infinitum numerum exercitus Persarum cum superavissent, acto cum gloria triumpho spoliorum et praedae, porticum Persicam ex manubiis, laudis et virtutis civium indicem, victoriae posteris pro tropaeo constituerunt, ibique captivorum simulacra barbarico vestis ornatu, superbia meritis contumeliis punita, sustinentia tectum conlocaverunt, uti et hostes horrescerent, timore eorum fortitudinis effectus, et cives id exemplum virtutis aspicientes gloria erecti ad defendendam libertatem essent parati. Itaque ex eo multi statuas Persicas sustinentes epistylia et ornamenta eorum conlocaverunt, et ita ex eo argumento varietates egregias auxerunt operibus. Vitruvius, De Arch. i 4.8–5.11 Rose.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 99 , November 1979 , pp. 97 - 102
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1979

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References

1 Frazer, J. G., Pausanias iii 320Google Scholar.

2 Rev. Arch. v.5 (1917) 1–67.

3 Poulsen, F., Delphi (London 1920)Google Scholar ch. 14.

4 de la Coste-Messelière, P., Delphes (Paris 1943) 328Google Scholar. He therefore dates them around 380 B.C., because they should have been thrown down with the Temple in 373. Yet, like many others, I wonder if they can be quite so early; and also whether the evidence of provenience, on such a site as Delphi, is absolutely conclusive.

5 My plate, of course, is from Stuart, and Revett, , Antiquities of Athens i (London 1762)Google Scholar ch. iv, pl. vi. While it is hard today to obtain a photograph half as clear as their drawing, examination of the monument will show that the feature I have noticed is exactly as they have rendered it.

6 In the first chapter of Book iv (86 Rose) he finds even the Ionic capital anthropomorphic. It imitates graceful curls of hair with its volutes to either side, and employs mouldings and half-palmettes—encarpia—in place of an ornamental coiffure. See BSA lxv (1970) 184–5.

7 Athen. 241d.

8 Lamb, W., Greek and Roman Bronzes (London 1929)Google Scholar pl. 44 (a late Archaic patera in Carthage).

9 See e.g. Robertson, M., History of Greek Art (Cambridge 1975)Google Scholar pl. 93c.

10 From the frontispiece by C. R. Cockerell to the Suppl. Vol. of Stuart and Revett (London 1830).

11 Klumbach, H., Tarentiner Grabkunst (Reutlingen 1937)Google Scholar pl. 25.

12 Even if the ungraceful pose restored by Hoermann, H. for the Cistophori of Eleusis is correct (Die Inneren Propyläen von Eleusis [Berlin 1932] pls 27, 28, 50)Google Scholar, they are not supporting the roof on their upturned hands, but steadying their baskets!

13 The figures stand out from the background, are in fact almost in the round (as I saw from a cast in the Wickham-Valentine House in Richmond, Vir.), making a Greek date rather more likely. Like earlier writers, I assume that, since it is in Mazois, this relief comes from Pompeii.

14 On Artemisia, a notoriously manly female, as on the whole ‘Persian Stoa’, I consider Picard, Charles wide of the mark in CRAI (Séances de 1935) 215Google Scholar ff., if only because he prefers the ‘correction’ to the interpretation of Vitruvius.

15 Matz, F., Geschichte der griechischen Kunst (Frankfurt a.M. 1950)Google Scholar pl. 247b and fig. 28b.

16 This would be especially true, if the Throne resembled its restoration by Fiechter, E. in JdI 1918Google Scholar. He envisaged a surround of two storeys, with the ‘figured Order’ above. On some recently discovered evidence, Martin, R. prefers a complicated one-storey design (Rev. Arch. 1976, 205 ff.)Google Scholar. The evidence is not yet sufficient; and in any case the mixture of two Orders and of Caryatid-like figures seems highly relevant to the Stoa. See also p. 39 of Coulton ADGS, which keeps an open mind, but agrees that the Stoa had a figured Order of some sort.

17 Abbreviated columns, directly supporting figures of Maidens, appeared on at least one sixth-century Treasury at Delphi, though I wish I had better evidence for their appearance than the small drawings of Dinsmoor, BCH xxxvii (1913) 17, 80Google Scholar.

18 Mau-Kelsey, , Pompeii (Macmillan 1899) 198–9Google Scholar. The best rendering of them is still that in Mazois, F., Les Ruines de Pompéi (Paris 1829)Google Scholar Pt III, pl. 50.