Sometimes these symbols occur singly in Greek art, as the types, for instance, of coins. In such cases they cannot be interpreted without being viewed in relation to the whole context of mythography to which they belong. If we find, for example, on one coin of Tarentum a shell, on another a dolphin, on a third a figure of Tarus, the mythic founder of the town, riding on a dolphin in the midst of the waves, and this latter group expresses the idea of the town itself and its position on the coast, then we know the two former types to be but portions of the greater design, having been detached from it, as we may detach words from sentences.
The study of the fuller and clearer examples, such as we have cited above, enables us to explain many more compendious forms of expression. We have, for instance, on coins several representations of ancient harbors.
Of these, the earliest occurs on the coins of Zancle, the modern Messina in Sicily. The ancients likened the form of this harbor to a sickle, and on the coins of the town we find a curved object, within the area of which is a dolphin. On this curve are four square elevations placed at equal distances. It has been conjectured that these projections are either towers or the large stones to which galleys were moored still to be seen in ancient harbors (see Burgon, Numismatic Chronicle, iii. p. 40). With this archaic representation of a harbor may be compared some examples of the Roman period. On a coin of Sept. Severus struck at Corinth (Millingen, Sylloge of Uned. Coins, 1837, p. 57, Pl. II., No. 30) we have a female figure standing on a rock between two recumbent male figures holding rudders. From an arch at the foot of the rock a stream is flowing: this is a representation of the rock of the Acropolis of Corinth: the female figure is a statue of Aphrodite, whose temple surmounted the rock. The stream is the fountain Pirene. The two recumbent figures are impersonations of the two harbors, Lechreum and Cenchreia, between which Corinth was situated. Philostratus (Icon. ii., c. 16) describes a similar picture of the Isthmus between the two harbors, one of which was in the form of a youth, the other of a nymph.
On another coin of Corinth we have one of the harbors in a semicircular form, the whole arc being marked with small equal divisions, to denote the archways under which the ancient galleys were drawn, subductæ; at the either horn or extremity of the harbor is a temple; in the centre of the mouth, a statue of Neptune. (Millingen, Médailles Inéd., Pl. II., No. 19. Compare also Millingen, Ancient Coins of Cities and Kings, 1831, pp. 50-61, Pl. IV., No. 15; Mionnet, Suppl. vii. p. 79, No. 246; and the harbor of Ostium, on the large brass coins of Nero, in which there is a representation of the Roman fleet and a reclining figure of Neptune.)
In vase pictures we have occasionally an attempt to represent water naturally. On a vase in the British Museum (No. 785), of which the subject is Ulysses and the Sirens, the Sea is rendered by wavy lines drawn in black on a red ground, and something like the effect of light playing on the surface of the water is given. On each side of the ship are shapeless masses of rock on which the Sirens stand.
One of the most beautiful of the figurative representations of the sea is the well-known type of Scylla. She has a beautiful body, terminating in two barking dogs and two serpent tails. Sometimes drowning men, the rari nantes in gurgite vasto, appear caught up in the coils of these tails. Below are dolphins. Scylla generally brandishes a rudder to show the manner in which she twists the course of ships. For varieties of her type see Monum. dell’Inst. Archeol. Rom., iii. Tavv. 52-3.
The representations of fresh water may be arranged under the following heads—rivers, lakes, fountains.
There are several figurative modes of representing rivers very frequently employed in ancient mythography.
In the type which occurs earliest we have the human form combined with that of the bull in several ways. On an archaic coin of Metapontum in Lucania, (see frontispiece to Millingen, Ancient Coins of Greek Cities and Kings,) the river Achelous is represented with the figure of a man with a shaggy beard and bull’s horns and ears. On a vase of the best period of Greek art (Brit. Mus. No. 789; Birch, Trans. Roy. Soc. of Lit., New Series, Lond. 1843, i. p. 100) the same river is represented with a satyr’s head and long bull’s horns on the forehead; his form, human to the waist, terminates in a fish’s tail; his hair falls down his back; his beard is long and shaggy. In this type we see a combination of the three forms separately enumerated by Sophocles, in the commencement of the Trachiniæ.
᾽Αχελῷον λέγω,
ος μ᾽ ἐν τρισἰν μορφαῖσιν ἐξῄει πατρὸς,
φοιτῶν ἐναργὴς αῦρος ἄλλοτ᾽ αἰόλος,
δράκων ἑλικτὸς, ἄλλοτ᾽ ἄνδρειῳ κύτεί
βουπρῳρος, ἐκ δὲ δασκίου γενειάδος
κρουνοὶ διεῤῥαίνοντο κρηναίου ποτοῦ.
In a third variety of this type the human-headed body is united at the waist with the shoulders of a bull’s body, in which it terminates. This occurs on an early vase. (Brit. Mus., No. 452.) On the coins of Œniadæ in Acarnia, and on those of Ambracia, all of the period after Alexander the Great, the Achelous has a bull’s body, and head with a human face. In this variety of the type the human element is almost absorbed, as in the first variety cited above, the coin of Metapontum, the bull portion of the type is only indicated by the addition of the horns and ears to the human head. On the analogy between these, varieties in the type of the Achelous and those under which the metamorphoses of the marine goddess Thetis are represented, see Gerhard, Auserl. Vasenb. ii. pp. 106-113. It is probable that, in the type of Thetis, of Proteus, and also of the Achelous, the singular combinations and transformations are intended to express the changeful nature of the element water.
Numerous other examples may be cited, where rivers are represented by this combination of the bull and human form, which maybe called, for convenience, the Androtauric type. On the coins of Sicily, of the archaic and also of the finest period of art, rivers are most usually represented by a youthful male figure, with small budding horns; the hair has the lank and matted form which characterises aquatic deities in Greek mythography. The name of the river is often inscribed round the head. When the whole figure occurs on the coin, it is always represented standing, never reclining.
The type of the bull on the coins of Sybaris and Thurium, in Magna Græcia, has been considered, with great probability, a representation of this kind. On the coins of Sybaris, which are of a very early period, the head of the bull is turned round; on those of Thurium, he stoops his head, butting: the first of these actions has been thought to symbolise the winding course of the river, the second, its headlong current. On the coins of Thurium, the idea of water is further suggested by the adjunct of dolphins and other fish in the exergue of the coin. The ground on which the bull stands is indicated by herbage or pebbles. This probably represents the river bank. Two bulls’ head occur on the coins of Sardis, and it has been ingeniously conjectured by Mr. Burgon that the two rivers of the place are expressed under this type.
The representation of river-gods as human figures in a reclining position, though probably not so much employed in earlier Greek art as the Androtauric type, is very much more familiar to us, from its subsequent adoption in Roman mythography. The earliest example we have of a reclining river-god is in the figure in the Elgin Room commonly called the Ilissus, but more probably the Cephissus. This occupied one angle in the western pediment of the Parthenon; the other Athenian river, the Ilissus, and the fountain Callirrhoe being represented by a male and female figure in the opposite angle; this group, now destroyed, is visible in the drawing made by Carrey in 1678.
It is probable that the necessities of pedimental composition first led the artist to place the river-god in a reclining position. The head of the Ilissus being broken off, we are not sure whether he had bull’s horns, like the Sicilian figures already described. His form is youthful, in the folds of the drapery behind him there is a flow like that of waves, but the idea of water is not suggested by any other symbol. When we compare this figure with that of the Nile (Visconti, Mus. Pio Clem., i., Pl. 38), and the figure of the Tiber in the Louvre, both of which are of the Roman period, we see how in these later types the artist multiplied symbols and accessories, ingrafting them on the original simple type of the river-god, as it was conceived by Phidias in the figure of the Ilissus. The Nile is represented as a colossal bearded figure reclining. At his side is a cornucopia, full of the vegetable produce of the Egyptian soil. Round his body are sixteen naked boys, who represent the sixteen cubits, the height to which the river rose in a favorable year. The statue is placed on a basement divided into three compartments, one above another. In the uppermost of these, waves are flowing over in one great sheet from the side of the river-god. In the other two compartments are the animals and plants of the river; the bas-reliefs on this basement are, in fact, a kind of abbreviated symbolic panorama of the Nile.
The Tiber is represented in a very similar manner. On the base are, in two compartments, scenes taken from the early Roman myths; flocks, herds, and other objects on the banks of the river. (Visconti, Mus. P. Cl. i., Pl. 39; Millin, Galerie Mythol., i. p. 77, Pl. 74, Nos. 304, 308.)
In the types of the Greek coins of Camarina, we find two interesting representations of Lakes. On the obverse of one of these we have, within a circle of the wave pattern, a male head, full face, with dishevelled hair, and with a dolphin on either side; on the reverse a female figure sailing on a swan, below which a wave moulding, and above, a dolphin.
On another coin the swan type of the reverse is associated with the youthful head of a river-god, inscribed “Hipparis” on the obverse. On some smaller coins we have the swan flying over the rippling waves, which are represented by the wave moulding. When we examine the chart of Sicily, made by the Admiralty survey, we find marked down at Camarina, a lake through which the river Hipparis flows.
We can hardly doubt that the inhabitants of Camarina represented both their river and their lakes on their coins. The swan flying over the waves would represent a lake; the figure associated with it being no doubt the Aphrodite worshipped at that place: the head, in a circle of wave pattern, may express that part of the river which flows through the lake.
Fountains are usually represented by a stream of water issuing from a lion’s head in the rock: see a vase (Gerhard, Auserl. Vasenb., taf. CXXXIV.), where Hercules stands, receiving a shower-bath from a hot spring at Thermæ in Sicily. On the coins of Syracuse the fountain Arethusa is represented by a female head seen to the front; the flowing lines of her dishevelled hair suggest, though they do not directly imitate, the bubbling action of the fresh-water spring; the sea in which it rises is symbolized by the dolphins round the head. This type presents a striking analogy with that of the Camarina head in the circle of wave pattern described above.
These are the principal modes of representing water in Greek mythography. In the art of the Roman period, the same kind of figurative and symbolic language is employed, but there is a constant tendency to multiply accessories and details, as we have shown in the later representations of harbors and river-gods cited above. In these crowded compositions the eye is fatigued and distracted by the quantity it has to examine; the language of art becomes more copious but less terse and emphatic, and addresses itself to minds far less intelligent than the refined critics who were the contemporaries of Phidias.
Rivers in Roman art are usually represented by reclining male figures, generally bearded, holding reeds or other plants in their hands, and leaning on urns from which water is flowing. On the coins of many Syrian cities, struck in imperial times, the city is represented by a turreted female figure seated on rocks, and resting her feet on the shoulder of a youthful male figure, who looks up in her face, stretching out his arms, and who is sunk in the ground as high as the waist. See Müller (Denkmäler d. A. Kunst, i., taf. 49, No. 220) for a group of this kind in the Vatican, and several similar designs on coins.
On the column of Trajan there occur many rude representations of the Danube, and other rivers crossed by the Romans in their military expeditions. The water is imitated by sculptured wavy lines, in which boats are placed. In one scene (Bartoli, Colonna Trajana, Tav. 4) this rude conventional imitation is combined with a figure. In a recess in the river bank is a reclining river-god, terminating at the waist. This is either meant for a statue which was really placed on the bank of the river, and which therefore marks some particular locality, or we have here figurative representation blended with conventional imitation.
On the column of Antoninus (Bartoli, Colon. Anton., Tav. 15) a storm of rain is represented by the head of Jupiter Pluvius, who has a vast outspread beard flowing in long tresses. In the Townley collection, in the British Museum, is a Roman helmet found at Ribchester in Lancashire, with a mask or vizor attached. The helmet is richly embossed with figures in a battle scene; round the brow is a row of turrets; the hair in the forehead is so treated as to give the idea of waves washing the base of the turrets. This head is perhaps a figurative representation of a town girt with fortifications and a moat, near which some great battle was fought. It is engraved (Vetusta Monum. of Soc. Ant. London, iv., Pl. 1-4).
In the Galeria at Florence is a group in alto relievo (Gori, Inscript. Ant. Flor. 1727, p. 76, Tab. 14) of three female figures, one of whom is certainly Demeter Kourotrophos, or the earth; another, Thetis, or the sea; the centre of the three seems to represent Aphrodite associated, as on the coins of Camarina, with the element of fresh water.
This figure is seated on a swan, and holds over her head an arched veil. Her hair is bound with reeds; above her veil grows a tall water plant, and below the swan other water plants, and a stork seated on a hydria, or pitcher, from which water is flowing. The swan, the stork, the water plants, and the hydria must all be regarded as symbols of fresh water, the latter emblem being introduced to show that the element is fit for the use of man.
Fountains in Roman art are generally personified as figures of nymphs reclining with urns, or standing holding before them a large shell.
One of the latest representations of water in ancient art is the mosaic of Palestrina (Barthélemy, in Bartoli, Peint. Antiques) which may be described as a kind of rude panorama of some district of Upper Egypt, a bird’s-eye view, half man, half picture, in which the details are neither adjusted to a scale, nor drawn according to perspective, but crowded together, as they would be in an ancient bas-relief.
22. ARABIAN ORNAMENTATION
I do not mean what I have here said of the Inventive power of the Arab to be understood as in the least applying to the detestable ornamentation of the Alhambra.105 The Alhambra is no more characteristic of Arab work, than Milan Cathedral is of Gothic: it is a late building, a work of the Spanish dynasty in its last decline, and its ornamentation is fit for nothing but to be transferred to patterns of carpets or bindings of books, together with their marbling, and mottling, and other mechanical recommendations. The Alhambra ornament has of late been largely used in shop-fronts, to the no small detriment of Regent Street and Oxford Street.
23. VARIETIES OF CHAMFER
Let B A C, Fig. LXXII., be the original angle of the wall. Inscribe within it a circle, p Q N p, of the size of the bead required, touching A B, A C, in p, p; join p, p, and draw B C parallel to it, touching the circle.
Then the lines B C, p p are the limits of the possible chamfers constructed with curves struck either from centre A, as the line Q q, N d, r u, g c, &c., or from any other point chosen as a centre in the direction Q A produced: and also of all chamfers in straight lines, as a b, e f. There are, of course, an infinite number of chamfers to be struck between B C and p p, from every point in Q A produced to infinity; thus we have infinity multiplied into infinity to express the number of possible chamfers of this species, which are peculiarly Italian chamfers; together with another singly infinite group of the straight chamfers, a b, e f, &c., of which the one formed by the line a b, passing through the centre of the circle, is the universal early Gothic chamfer of Venice.
Again. Either on the line A C, or on any other lines A l or A m, radiating from A, any number of centres may be taken, from which, with any radii not greater than the distance between such points and Q, an infinite number of curves may be struck, such as t u, r s, N n (all which are here struck from centres on the line A C). These lines represent the great class of the northern chamfers, of which the number is infinity raised to its fourth power, but of which the curve N n (for northern) represents the average condition; the shallower chamfers of the same group, r s, t u, &c., occurring often in Italy. The lines r u, t u, and a b may be taken approximating to the most frequent conditions of the southern chamfer.
Fig. LXXII.
It is evident that the chords of any of these curves will give a relative group of rectilinear chamfers, occurring both in the North and South; but the rectilinear chamfers, I think, invariably fall within the line Q C, and are either parallel with it, or inclined to A C at an angle greater than A C Q, and often perpendicular to it; but never inclined to it at an angle less than A C Q.
24. RENAISSANCE BASES
The following extract from my note-book refers also to some features of late decoration of shafts.
“The Scuola di San Rocco is one of the most interesting examples of Renaissance work in Venice. Its fluted pillars are surrounded each by a wreath, one of vine, another of laurel, another of oak, not indeed arranged with the fantasticism of early Gothic; but, especially the laurel, reminding one strongly of the laurel sprays, powerful as well as beautiful, of Veronese and Tintoret. Their stems are curiously and richly interlaced—the last vestige of the Byzantine wreathed work—and the vine-leaves are ribbed on the surfaces, I think, nearly as finely as those of the Noah,106 though more injured by time. The capitals are far the richest Renaissance in Venice, less corrupt and more masculine in plan, than any other, and truly suggestive of support, though of course showing the tendency to error in this respect; and finally, at the angles of the pure Attic bases, on the square plinth, are set couchant animals; one, an elephant four inches high, very curiously and cleverly cut, and all these details worked with a spirit, finish, fancy, and affection quite worthy of the middle ages. But they have all the marked fault of being utterly detached from the architecture. The wreaths round the columns look as if they would drop off the next moment, and the animals at the bases produce exactly the effect of mice who had got there by accident: one feels them ridiculously diminutive, and utterly useless.”
The effect of diminutiveness is, I think, chiefly owing to there being no other groups of figures near them, to accustom the eye to the proportion, and to the needless choice of the largest animals, elephants, bears, and lions, to occupy a position so completely insignificant, and to be expressed on so contemptible a scale,—not in a bas-relief or pictorial piece of sculpture, but as independent figures. The whole building is a most curious illustration of the appointed fate of the Renaissance architects,—to caricature whatever they imitated, and misapply whatever they learned.