Greek and Roman Small Size Sculpture 9783110741742, 9783110740790

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Greek and Roman Small Size Sculpture

Greek and Roman Small Size Sculpture Edited by Giovanni Colzani, Clemente Marconi, and Fabrizio Slavazzi

ISBN 978-3-11-074079-0 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-074174-2 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-074186-5 Library of Congress Control Number: 2023935963 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2023 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Cover image: Seated Hercules statuette, Wien KHM, ANSA VI 342 © KHM-Museumsverband Typesetting: Integra Software Services Pvt. Ltd. Printing and binding: CPI books GmbH, Leck www.degruyter.com

Contents Giovanni Colzani Small-Scale Sculpture in Greek and Roman Society: A Reassessment

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Michael Squire Sizing up Art: The Intermedial Semantics of Scale in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds 29 Évelyne Prioux Small Is Beautiful: The Aesthetic Approach to Small-Scale Sculptures in Ancient Criticism 69 Olga Palagia Small-scale Cult Statues of the Sixth Century BC

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Clemente Marconi Small Statements of Prestige: On a Group of Early Classical Marble Statuettes from Selinunte 101 Tobias Wild From Mold to Masterpiece: Producing Small-Scale Hellenistic Ruler Bronzes in Ptolemaic Egypt 125 Elena Calandra A Miniature Myth: About Some Clay Figurines of the Niobids

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Ralf von den Hoff Alexander Riders: Small-Scale Portraits of Alexander the Great on Horseback 173 Anna Anguissola Parvitatis ut miraculum: Pliny the Elder and Nature’s Sense of Scale

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Alessia Bonadeo Scripta effigies: un esempio di interazione testo-immagine in Marziale e in Stazio 221

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Eugenio Polito Una statua di Eracle al Museo Nazionale Romano: fra scultura ideale e ritratto 235 Maria Elisa Micheli Lavorare in scala: derivazioni e metamorfosi dell’Atena Parthenos

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Fabrizio Slavazzi Il mito nell’arredo di lusso. Modalità di adattamento di soggetti a tutto tondo nei monopodi marmorei romani 279 Index

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Small-Scale Sculpture in Greek and Roman Society: A Reassessment 1 Introduction What is a statue? “There is little ambiguity in the modern usage of the word,” writes Peter Stewart in his well-known essay Statues in Roman Society: “we use it to refer to free-standing sculptural representations of full figures; they are usually life-size or larger.”1 Although seemingly incidental, the final specification is anything but secondary: by occupying the same visual and spatial sphere as its viewers, sculpture inevitably tends to be appreciated in a size relation to the actual human body of the beholder.2 More or less consciously, what we expect to identify as a statue when using this term has to do with its dimensions: a statue stands, stages an illusion of presence, interacts with us on an equal footing in ways unknown to other types of images.3 This was also true for the ancients. Considerations about size and scale have always played a central role within Greek and Roman visual culture, deeply affecting sculptural production. Starting from the beginning of the seventh century BCE, the production of statues in human scale has rightly been seen as a crucial turning point in the history of Classical art (“une véritable rupture”): set up in sanctuaries, necropolises, and other public spaces of the cities, these figures were able to manifest their tangible existence within the society, participating together with people in a single “conceptual community.”4 Furthermore, both Greeks and Romans had a clear notion of colossality, with its capacity to convey an impression of power and divinity, and were able to fully exploit its implications with sculpture in many different areas of social, cultural, and religious life.5 An equal and contrary categorization for sculptural representations smaller than “life-size or larger” format does not seem to have existed in Greek and Roman culture. Nevertheless, as far as we can reconstruct, both public and private spaces of the ancient

 Stewart (2003) 19.  Morris (1992) 817: “In the perception of relative size the human body enters into the total continuum of sizes and establishes itself as constant on that scale. One knows immediately what is smaller and what is larger than himself. The awareness of scale is a function of the comparison made between that constant, one’s own body size, and the object.”  Crowther (2009) 86–98; Kenaan (2014).  Hölscher (2015) 70–71. On the development of life-size sculpture in Greece, see Homann-Wedeking (1950); Ridgway (1977) 17–42; Fuchs/Floren (1987); Martini (1990) 101–131; Stewart (1990) 103–110; Rolley (1994) 116–154; Bol (2002) 71–95, 97–132; Neer (2010) 46–57; Brisart (2011) 273–314.  On the category of colossality, see Cancik (2003). On its implications in different areas of ancient sculpture, see Karakatsanis (1986); Kreikenbom (1992); Fittschen (1994); Kyrieleis (1996); von den Hoff (2004); Ruck (2007); Fittschen (2010); Colzani (2020). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110741742-001

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world were pervasively populated by all sorts of small-scale images: statuettes, miniatures, and figurines in a variety of materials, associated with a great array of contexts and functions, and with extremely different levels of manufacture and patronage. This production covers a wide chronological horizon, assuming a variety of different connotations over time. As a matter of fact, terracotta and bronze figurines belong to the very beginning of the Greek visual tradition, extending their spread through the whole course of the Archaic and Classical age; mostly representing gods, worshippers, and animals, these artifacts populated both sanctuaries and graves in large quantities, with a prevailing religious and votive function.6 The last decades of the fifth and the beginning of the fourth century BCE mark the gradual establishment of small-scale sculpture in the domestic sphere, following a transition “from hieron to oikos” that affected a large part of the Hellenistic age.7 By the end of this period, figurines, statuettes, and small sculptures were no longer restricted to shrines and sanctuaries but could also be found in houses combining a number of decorative and devotional connotations.8 A strong connection with domestic cults undoubtedly played a key role also in the spread of small-scale sculpture in the Roman world, as the findings in lararia throughout the Empire evidence.9 At the same time, in a logic of “cultural rationalization of art,” highquality statuettes became extremely popular among connoisseurs and collectors, according to a trend destined to last (albeit with obvious transformations) until Late Antiquity.10 This phenomenon should not be considered simply a matter of ostentatious expenditure and selfish pleasure. On the contrary, it testifies to the strength of the “Kallimachean sentiment” in Hellenistic and Roman society, elevating small-scale sculptures to representatives of an approach to artistic values radically different from the one that was dominating the public space during the same period.11 Despite its extreme heterogeneity, this wide production can hardly be dismissed as insignificant or merely secondary evidence for the history of ancient art and society. In fact, small sculptures were often much more than cheap and simplified alternatives to larger-scale statues; compared with those, their peculiar format allowed for a wider range of choices, for example, in terms of using either cheap or extremely valuable materials (not only marble, bronze, and terracotta but also gold and silver,

 For an overview, see Neer (2020) 21–28.  Sharpe (2006).  Kreeb (1988); Harward (1989); Sanders (2001); Hardiman (2005); Sharpe (2006); Hardiman (2016). For an overview of small terracottas in Hellenistic domestic contexts, see Rumscheid (2006) 76–176.  Kaufmann-Heinimann (1998); Gagetti (2006) 487–503; Sharpe (2006) 75–78; Sofroniew (2015). On the finds from the Vesuvian cities, see Boyce (1937); Fröhlich (1991); Adamo-Muscettola (1984); Giacobello (2008).  On the notion of “cultural rationalization of art,” see Tanner (2006) 205–276, 301–302; Tanner (2010). Broadly on art appreciation and collecting in antiquity, see Neudecker (1998); Bounia (2004); Squire (2010); Hardiman (2012); Rutledge (2012); Wellington Gahtan/Pegazzano (2015). On statuettes and sculptural collecting in Late Antiquity, see Stirling (2005; 2007; 2014).  Bartman (1992), 169–171.

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ivory, hard stones, among others), methods of production (combining seriality and variation), modes of reception (involving a degree of intimacy with the beholder). Yet a traditional hierarchy underlying much accepted wisdom on ancient art has long favored “major” arts above “minor” ones, large statues above small, inevitably impacting on archaeological scholarship. Even in this context, few notions appear to be as elusive as that of “small sculpture,” often treated with a certain degree of diffidence well summarized in the formula klein, aber Kunst?12 Fragmentation of research further complicates this picture. Scholarship on small-scale sculpture necessarily tends to specialize by medium (e.g., terracotta, bronze)13 or genre (e.g., portraits, ideal sculpture),14 just to give a few examples, outlining perspectives that sometimes struggle to converge. Nevertheless, it is evident that modern descriptive and classificatory needs are poorly adapted to the actual heterogeneity of ancient materials, making necessary a continuous adaptation of interpretative tools at the expense of the development of an overall view.

2 Miniaturization, Portability, and the Semantics of Scale An inscribed base from the acropolis of Lindos documents the dedication of a bronze statue to the euergete Eupolemos, for which the inhabitants of the city commissioned the sculptor Andragoras of Rhodes:15 The Lindians have honored Eupolemos son of Eupolemos grandson of Eupolemos with commendation

 Rumscheid (2008). Bartman (1992) 102–146 openly spoke of a “modern prejudice against the miniature.”  On Greek and Roman terracotta figurines, see Higgins (1976); Uhlenbrock (1990; 1993); Burn/Higgins (2001); Jeammet (2007); Erlich (2015); Huysecom-Haxhi/Muller (2015); Muller/Lafli (2015); Muller (2017); Burn (2018); Papantoniou/Michaelides/Dikomitou-Eliades (2019); Der Ton macht die Figur (2021). For an overview of Graeco-Roman bronze statuettes, see Master Bronzes (1967); Lamb (1969); Montagu (1972); Small Sculptures in Bronze (1976); Rolley (1986); Kozloff/Mitten (1988); True/Podany (1989); Thomas (1992); Mattusch (2002); Sharpe (2006); Piccoli grandi bronzi (2015); Daehner/Lapatin/Spinelli (2017). On statuettes in hard stones, see Gagetti (2006). On statuettes in gold and silver, see Vermeule (1974).  On small-sized ideal sculpture and “miniature copies” in different materials, see Vermeule (1989); Bartman (1992); Barr-Sharrar (1996); Summerer (1996); Rumscheid (2008); Gagetti (2009); Koortbojan (2015); Spinola (2015); Barr-Sharrar (2017); Colzani (2020). On Graeco-Roman portraits in small format, see Schneider (1976); Dahmen (2001); Stähli (2014); Boschung/Queyrel (2021).  Lindos II 333, see DNO, 3827.

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golden wreath and bronze statue [. . .] Andragoras son of Andragoras of Rhodes made it

From the same island comes another base, in this case of small dimensions (15 x 37 x 30 cm), destined to house a bronze statuette.16 The dedicatory inscription reads: Eupolemos son of Eupolemos grandson of Eupolemos Andragoras son of Andragoras of Rhodes made it

Most probably, this is the same subject depicted by the same artist, the first time in a format suitable for an official dedication in public context, the second on a much smaller scale. The case may appear exceptional but is extremely significant here. Why distinguish between small and “life-size or larger” sculptural production? What are the reasons to look with different eyes at a large and a small sculpture made and signed by the same artist or workshop? In other words, how can a statuette be considered something more than and different from a (small) statue? Over the past few years, several studies have contributed to a renewed interest in this subject, finally dispelling many prejudices against small-scale sculpture and recognizing its great importance in the history of art of all times. In the English-speaking bibliography, these investigations gathered around the “miniaturization theory,” an anthropological and cognitive approach only partially focused on Graeco-Roman sculpture;17 the very notion of “figurine,” transversal to many of these researches, lends itself to an investigation from a variety of points of view, well beyond the narrow scope of Classical archaeology.18 By forcing the relationship between sculpture and beholder into a very close physical contiguity, miniaturization is described as a phenomenon capable of eliciting emotional reactions, hence the frequent association of these objects with religious and cultic practices and the extension of their agency to the social sphere. Close inspection and haptic interaction with figurines have been recognized as crucial in this sense, emphasizing the role played by their material qualities within a renewed reading of the traditional double opposition haptisch/

 Lindos II 706, see DNO, 3828.  For a discussion of this “miniaturization approach,” see Langin-Hooper (2020) 1–51. Broadly on the notion of miniaturization in archaeological and historical-artistic fields, see Martin/Langin-Hooper (2018) and the monographic issues of Pallas 86:The Gods of Small Things (2011); World Archaeology 47, no. 1 (2015); Art History 38, no. 2 (2015).  See, e.g., Bailey (2005; 2014); Insoll (2017) on prehistoric figurines; Joyce (2007; 2008); Halperin (2014) on Mesoamerican figurines. A geographically and chronologically wide overview is given in Elsner (2020).

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optisch, Nahsicht/Fernsicht.19 This kind of attention to the sensuous dimension, of which figurines and statuettes are exceptional evidence, seems to have been one of the distinctive features of ancient aesthetics as a whole, an approach widely based on noncognitive perception that can therefore be rightly defined as aesthetic in the etymological meaning of the word.20 A similar focus on the connection between small images and beholders has also been developed within more traditionally art historical studies, with particular regard to the concept of “portability.” Scholars have long reflected on this issue with reference to different forms of modern decorative statuary in small format—above all the genre of Renaissance “small bronze”—and more recently, some of these considerations have been extended to the Graeco-Roman sculptural production.21 In order to be fully portable, a statue must not only be small in size, nor should this term be understood in its simple meaning of mobile: a portable statuette is first of all conceived and displayed to be handled and viewed up close, allowing the viewer a strict inspection from all sides and stimulating several of the viewer’s senses at the same time. From this perspective, the size of a statuette takes on a significance that exceeds the quantitative datum, allowing for modes of presentation partially or entirely precluded for larger-scale sculptures. The approaches related to the notion of “portability” and the “miniaturization theory” thus converge within a largely complementary theoretical framework that can be challenged from different viewpoints, more or less supported by ancient written sources. Both perspectives concur in this sense to a better understanding of the sort of fascination with smallness that long pervaded Greek and Roman culture, finding parallel specifications between the language of literature and the language of art. It is what has been defined as “aesthetics of leptotēs” from the Hellenistic period onward, although there is no lack of significant antecedents in Archaic and Classical times.22 Such an attitude toward a poetic of refinement, details, and small scales in opposition to the monumental, the epic, and the grand was actually part of a complex large–small dynamics through which an authentic “semantics of scale” took consistency.23 Miniature and monumental forms were in this perspective inextricably combined: the miniature cannot be understood as small unless it stands in a contrast to  On the role of haptic interaction with sculpture, see Dent (2014); Gilbert (2014); more specifically on Graeco-Roman sculpture, see Platt/Squire (2017); Gaifman/Platt (2018) 404–408; on the prevailing ocularcentrism of classical studies, see Butler/Purves (2013).  For a phenomenalist point of view on these issues, see Porter (2010); Gaifman/Platt/Squire (2018).  Serial/Portable Classic (2015); Colzani (2021). Barr-Sharrar (2017) uses the term “portable” in a narrower sense. On (“portable”) small bronzes in the Reinassance, see Natur und Antike (1985); Von allen Seiten schön (1995); Pope-Hennessy (2000) 287–309; Gasparotto (2008; 2015); Kryza-Gersch (2015).  Onians (1979) 119–150; Bartman (1992) 147–186; Stephens (2004) 75–76; Zanker (2004); Squire (2011); Hunzinger (2015); Zanker (2015); Prioux/Linant de Bellefonds/Rouveret (2016); Prioux/Linant de Bellefonds (2017). On the “aesthetics of smallness” in Archaic and Classical Greece, see Neer (2020).  Porter (2011); Squire (2016).

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its large corresponding; it contains in itself both antipodes and simultaneously casts a light on both extremes of the scale. If, then, on a meta-poetic level, small objects were often praised for their capacity to inspire “great wonder,” involving even the largest narratives,24 statuettes more concretely entertained a rather ambivalent relationship with their larger counterparts, drawing from them schemes, forms, and iconographies. Sometimes, however, the opposite was also true, and types pioneered in small sculpture could be magnified and reproduced in larger formats.25 On the one hand, the dimensional choice could be connected to the taste of a refined patronage eager to possess objects that combined “preciousness and subtilitas.”26 On the other, the ubiquitous presence of small sculptures and figurines at all levels of ancient societies provides scholars with exceptional insight into the visual literacy of a much wider audience than the one able to commission “life-size or larger” statues.

3 What Is Smallness in Graeco-Roman Sculpture? What, then, is a statuette? Modern approaches to this question are by no means homogeneous, first of all with regard to terminological definition: expressions such as “statuette,” “figurine,” and “miniature” but also “under life-size,” “small-sized,” and “in reduced scale” are often used in a generic way, sometimes interchangeably, without being accompanied by any clear definition of their meaning. From a quantitative point of view, there is no agreement on what should be taken as “small” within this framework—small compared to what? In some cases, reference is made to so-called life-size and its fractions; for instance, a statue can be conventionally defined as a statuette if it measures less than about 80–90 cm, half the average size of the human (male) figure in antiquity.27 Other times, it is preferred to apply absolute, frequently arbitrary, parameters, such as the limits of 100, 50, 40, or 30 cm adopted in some studies.28 Georg Lippold, for example, argued that the depictions of children or young boys in Lebensgröße could not be defined as “statuettes,” “since it is not the absolute

 See, e.g., Porter (2010) on Poseidippos fr. 15 Austin-Bastianini, l.7. For a complementary discussion of the concept of wonder (thauma) and the aesthetic of scale in Archaic and Classical Greece, see Neer (2020) 14–21.  Neer (2020) 34–37.  Anguissola (2012) 51.  See, e.g., Manderscheid (1981) 58; Schneider (1976) 1; Dahmen (2001) 5; Gagetti (2006) 13. For some possible definitions of “life-size” as a conventional average value, see, e.g., Manderscheid (1981) 58 n. 260; Bartman (1992) 9; Fittschen (1994) 613; Dahmen (2001) 2–5; Gagetti (2006) 12; Ruck (2007) 26 n. 27.  See, e.g., Bartman (1992) 9; Filges (1999) 378 n. 50; Sporn (2014) 278 n. 33; Spinola (2015) 145. Kaufmann-Heinimann (2017) 151 speaks of “medium-sized statuettes” approximately 40–100 cm high as a connection between small statuettes and life-size statues.

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size, but the relation to the natural size that matters.”29 Elizabeth Bartman, on her part, included among the “small-scale” and “less-than-life-size” sculptures the Hellenistic groups of Eros and Psyche and of the Boy Strangling the Goose, although both are exactly the height one would expect in relation to the age of their subjects.30 Considering, then, Praxiteles’s Resting Satyr, after having observed that its large-scale replicas usually measure 172 cm, Bartman added: “This makes them slightly larger than life-size (assuming that satyrs are of human height).”31 But how tall is a satyr? Similar difficulties are also to be found in ancient definitions of small-scale sculptural representations.32 Compared to the almost unambiguous simplicity of the modern meaning of “statue,” Greek and Latin ways of referring to the semantic fields of image are known to be far more complex. As a matter of fact, both languages knew a variety of differently connoted and not interchangeable terms for statuary, connected from time to time to the identification of a sculpture’s subject, its functions, or the modes of its display: consider, for example, the differences between Greek expressions such as ἄγαλμα, εἰκών, and ἀνδριάς or between Latin words such as simulacrum, signum, and statua.33 Size played only a marginal role in articulating distinctions within such an extensive vocabulary, with the only notable exception being κολοσσός (together with its Latin double colossus): beyond discussions on its original connotations, this term was indeed used since the end of the first century BCE with the prevailing meaning of “colossal statue,” although it is already attested in this sense throughout the Classic and Hellenistic age.34 A corresponding unitary expression for small-scale sculptures does not seem to have existed. In the first place, it is unclear to what extent commonly employed denominations for statuary could also apply to smaller images, as sometimes seems to be the case.35

 Lippold (1923) 150.  Bartman (1992) 17–18.  Bartman (1992) 54. Hemelrijk (1995) 247 comments: “This however seems doubtful: perhaps it rather shows that this particular satyr is meant to be not quite full-grown, for male statues such as the Doryphoros, the Agias and the like, were all some 20 cm above normal human scale.” Furthermore on this point, see the remarks in Text und Skulptur (2007) 71–72.  Colzani (2022).  On the differences between εἰκών, ἄγαλμα, and ἀνδριάς, see Price (1984) 177; Koonce (1988); Smith (1989) 16; Höghammar (1993) 68–70; Damaskos (1999) 304–309; Stewart (2003) 25–27; Keesling (2017) 837–838. On ξόανον, βρέτας, and εἶδος, see Romano (1980) 42–57; Price (1984) 176; Donohue (1988); Spivey (1996) 45–46; Donohue (1997); Scheer (2000) 8–38. On εἴδωλον, see Siebert (1981). On ἀφίδρυμα, see Malkin (1991); Anguissola (2006). On Latin terminology of images (not only simulacrum, signum, and statue but also effigies and species), see Daut (1975); Lahusen (1982); Nodelman (1993) 11; Onians (1999) 157–158; Stewart (2003) 20–28.  On this debate, see Wilamowitz (1927); Benveniste (1932); Roux (1960); Dickie (1996); Kosmetatou/ Papalexandrou (2003); Prioux (2007). The use of both κολοσσός and colossus does not imply a precise quantification of size but rather alludes to the particularly remarkable proportions of a sculpture, see Ruck (2007) 19–20.  Bartman (1992) 14.

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For example, a well-known Plinian passage (NH 34, 23–24) refers to some three-foothigh statuettes erected in the Roman Forum, simply calling them (tripedaneas) statuas, a term widely used for larger sculptures.36 Other times, it was necessary to resort to more complex locutions and adjectives, such as μικρὸν ἄγαλμα (IG IV 1588), ξόανον μεικρόν (P.Oxy. 12, 1449, 12), signum modicum (Plin. Ep. 3, 6, 1), signum modicae amplitudinis (Frontin. Stratagemata 1, 11, 11). Beyond these possibilities, however, diminutive suffixes were by far the most common solution for designating small images. Ancient Greek knew at least three of them, all attested in reference to small sculptures: -ιον, -ίδιον, and -ίσκος. Expressions such as εἰκόνιον (εἰκών +-ιον), ἀνδριαντίδιον (ἀνδριάς +-ίδιον), or ἀνδριαντίσκος (ἀνδριάς + ίσκος) are, in fact, quite recurrent, although their connotations are not free of ambiguity, since their diminutive meaning is often accompanied by a shade of “similarity.”37 From this point of view, in the lack of contextual elements, ἀνδριάντιον may therefore often mean “statue representing a human figure” rather than “small statue.” Similarly, terms such as Παλλάδιον, Ἀφροδίσιον, and Ἀρτεμίσιον can be interpreted either as “small image of Pallas/Aphrodite/Artemis” or, more simply, as “image of Pallas/Aphrodite/Artemis.” Emblematic in this regard is the famous Myron’s bronze cow, certainly a large-scale sculpture, indifferently called by ancient sources βοῦς or βοίδιον.38 The significance of εἰκόνιον, already associated in the base form εἰκών with the idea of similarity, is all the more difficult to clarify,39 as is the meaning of ἀνδριαντίδιον in the sense of “statuette,” although its overlapping with the term ζώιδιον (literally “figurine”) in Hellenistic times seems to suggest a prevailing diminutive value. The latter is derived by the addition of the suffix -ιδον from ζῷον (or ζῶιον), “living being,” and never turns out to be attested with reference to large-scale statues (although it could also be used to designate non-sculptural images, unlike ἀνδριαντίδιον).40 Finally, a diminutive meaning seems to prevail in the case of ἀγαλμάτιον, for which the reference to a likeness value appears to be less suitable, and ἀνδριαντίσκος, exclusively referable to statuettes, as well as expressions with similar suffixes such as Ἀπολλωνίσκος, σατυρίσκος, Πανίσκος (“small figure of Apollos/satyros/Pan”) and the like.41 Compared to the relative abundance of Greek solutions, Latin language offers a more limited repertoire in terms of variety and quantity of occurrences. With the exception of the hapax statuncula, from statua, only attested in a well-known passage of the Satyricon (Petron. Sat. 50), the diminutive terms referring to works in small format

 On this passage, see Lahusen (1983) 78 n. 63; Sehlmeyer (1999) 63–66.  Prêtre (1997).  DNO, II, n. 24, 28–92, see Cundari (1970/1971) 415 n. 81; Krumeich (1997) 79 n. 228.  For a discussion of the meaning of εἰκόνιον, see the debate on Themistokles’s portrait dedicated at the sanctuary of Artemis Aristoboule in Athens and described by Plutarch (Them. 22, 1–2, DNO, n. 2103), Amandry (1967–1968); Krumeich (1997) 77–78; Keesling (2017) 885 n. 48.  Prêtre (1997) 674; Kosmetatou (2004) 481.  See, e.g., ID 1416, A. col. I.1, 21–22; ID 1416, A. col. I.1, 51–52; ID 1416, A. col. I.1, 86.

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were imaguncula and sigillum. The former is attested almost exclusively through literary sources and retains all the ambiguities already inherent in the starting form imago, “image”:42 for that reason, it is not always clear whether it actually refers to sculptures or to other kinds of representation. On the contrary, sigillum, diminutive of signum, was commonly used to designate statuettes, figurines, and other small images.43 Its connotations appear rather generic in this sense, so that the distinctions between specific expressions such as statue, signum, and simulacrum are summarized for small-scale sculptures within this one label. The term is attested in its first meaning of “small statue” from the Late Republican era throughout the Imperial age, and numerous epigraphs testify to this use referring to statuettes depicting gods (the binomial aram cum sigillo is particularly frequent in the case of dedications).44 Defining its meaning in the literary field appears to be more difficult. In a passage from Vitruvius’s De architectura (2, 7, 4), for example, the minora sigilla are opposed to the statuas amplas, a sign that the two terms could distinguish between sculptural representations of different sizes. However, the reference to statuettes seems to have been only one of many possibilities. Vitruvius himself speaks of sigilla with regard to wall paintings (Vitr. De arch. 7, 5, 3–4), Cicero does so with reference to a particularly decorated plate (Cic. Verr. 2, 4, 48, 14–17), and in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, even the embroidery on Athena’s web in her challenge with Arachne are sigilla (Ov. Met. 6, 86). In short, no strong connection with the production of sculptural images can be found, so that the term sigillatus seems to have soon acquired the sense of “figured” (Apul. Met. 2, 19), and already in Cicero a meaning is attested for sigillum similar to the English “seal” (Cic. Acad. 2, 85). Specific to Martial’s Apophoreta is the use of this term as “terracotta statuette” (Mart. 14, 170–172, 177–179, 181–182): more properly called sigillaria, these figurines were, in fact, one of the traditional gifts for the Saturnalia festivals in Rome.45 The term gestamen, “ornament,” employed by Statius with reference to the statuette of Hercules Epitrapezios in possession of his friend and patron Novius Vindex is finally worth specific attention (Silv. 4, 6, 45). In this poetic account, which is flanked by two Martial epigrams devoted to the same subject (9, 43–44), the little masterpiece is said to have been crafted by Lysippus for decorating the table of Alexander the Great, and it is with high admiration for the skills of the Sicyonian artist that Statius exclaims: “What preciseness of touch, what daring imagination the cunning master had, at once to model an ornament for the table [gestamina mensae] and to conceive in his mind

 See, e.g., Cic. Att. 6, 1, 25; Suet. Aug. 7; Suet. Nero 56.  Daut (1975) 84 n. 59.  See, e.g., AE 1987, 0877; AE 1975, 0747; AE 1987, 0872; AE 1987, 0873; AE 1987, 0878; CIL 06, 00671; CIL 03, 14207, 33; CIL 03, 07446; CIL 13, 06742.  See also Sen. epist. 12, 3; Svet. Claud. 16, 4; Macr. Sat. 1, 11, 49; Hist. Aug. Carac. 1, 8; Hist. Aug. Hadr. 17, 3. The maker of sigillaria was called sigillariarius (see CIL 06.2, 9895). On the Saturnalia festivals and the sigillaria, see Leary (1996) 5–6.

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mighty colossal forms [colossos]!”46 Within an opposition between large and small forms, the syntagma gestamina mensae constitutes here a hapax modeled on the Greek adjective epitrapezos, “on the table” (ἐπί τραπέζης/τραπέζῃ), alluding thereby to the privileged setting of the small bronze within the symposium. At the same time, in a conscious ambiguity, epitrapezios evokes the state of bacchic elation in which the hero is depicted “at the table,” with a cup in his hand and a joyful face “exhorting to the banquet” (Stat. Silv. 4, 6, 55–56).47 Connected with the root of the verb gero, gestamen (literally “what is carried”) furthermore alludes to the small size—in opposition to the colossos—and transportability of the tiny masterpiece: Alexander never parted with it, as if it were a sort of precious amulet, carrying the little Hercules everywhere in his campaigns of conquest (Stat. Silv. 4, 6, 61). None of the appellatives discussed so far, either in Greek or in Latin, involves a precise quantification of size. As with the corresponding modern terms and locutions, their use is limited to defining a generically “reduced” format. In addition, precise dimensional determinations of small sculptures are rather rare in ancient sources. The category of smallness differs from that of colossality also in this respect: the emphasized declaration of size was, in fact, almost a topos of ancient descriptions of colossal statues, arousing great amazement in readers and beholders.48 A specular mechanism was exploited only for a small group of particularly famous microsculptures, such as those made by Theodorus of Samos and his Hellenistic epigones Mymercides of Miletus and Callicrates of Sparta. The recurring insistence on the hyperbolic comparison between their size and that of the wings of a fly or a bee (Posidippus, AB 67; Plin. NH 8, 85; 36, 43; Schol. Dion. Thrax 2, 651, 30) seems, in fact, to rely on a similar intention of arousing wonder. More often, however, small sculptures were simply defined as such, and there was usually no reason to make clear how large an ἀγαλμάτιον, an ἀνδριαντίσκος, an imaguncula, or a sigillum was. Specific references in this sense are, in fact, quite exceptional and isolated: for example, Lucian hints at a one-cubit statuette of Hippocrates (πηχυαῖος τὸ μέγεθος, Luc. Philops. 21), Athenaeus reports on an Aphrodite figurine about one span high in possession of the merchant Herostratus (ἀγαλμάτιον Ἀφροδίτης σπιθαμιαῖον, Ath. 15, 18), the already mentioned tripedaneas statuas stood in the Roman Forum (NH 34, 23–24), and the Hercules Epitrapezios is reported to have been “confined within a foot’s height” (intra mensura pedem, Stat. Silv. 4,6, 39).

 DNO, nn. 2184, 2185, 2186. For a commentary on these poems, see Coleman (1988) 173–194; Kershaw (1997); Schneider (2001); Nauta (2002) 228–229; Newlands (2002) 73–87; Lorenz (2003); Chinn (2005); Zeiner (2005) 190–200; McNeils (2008); Bonadeo (2010); Dufallo (2013) 229–242. On the reconstruction of the hypothetical Lysippean statuette, see De Visscher (1954; 1961); Picard (1961); Bartman (1986); Berger (1987); Zadoks-Jitta (1987); Bartman (1992) 147–186; Latini (1995) 140–147; Ritter (1995) 90–95; Ridgway (1997) 294–304; Ensoli (2017) 75–80.  Bonadeo (2010) 38, 214–215.  Ruck (2007) 19–20.

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The foot as a recurring unit of measure for small sculptures is actually also attested within the rich epigraphic documentation preserved in the Delian inventories of the Hellenistic age, a particularly helpful type of text in this circumstance.49 By virtue of their peculiar function, the classification of all the objects dedicated in the sanctuaries of the island required a series of salient characteristics to be noted for each of them, including their dimensions; the size of numerous statuettes once consecrated here is therefore very frequently reported, although the constant presence of the adverbial particle ὡς suggests that these estimates are not to be taken too precisely.50 Besides the aforementioned foot (ποῦς), corresponding to 29.57 cm in the Attic system, several others units of measurement were used, such as the finger (δάκτυλος = 1.84 cm), the palm (παλαστή = 7.39 cm), and the span (σπιθαμή = 22.17 cm).51 Measurements in δάκτυλοι were actually not very frequent and were used as a matter of course in relation to very small figurines (e.g., ἀνδριαντίδιον [. . .] ὡς δακτύλων ε—-, ID 1416, A. col. I.1, 61) but also to other types of objects, such as phialai, skyphoi, and the like. More frequently attested, but always in the form ὡς τριπάλαστος,52 is the measurement in palms, which was employed for non-sculptural material but also for statuettes, such as a “small satyr of about three palms” (σατυρίσκον ὡς τριπάλαστον, ID 1417, A. col. I.1, 86), a “bronze Apollos of about three palms” (ἀπόλλωνα χαλκοῦν [. . .] ὡς τριπάλαστον, ID 1428, II.1, 47–48), and a “marble Hermes of about three palms” (Ἑρμῆς λίθινος ὡς τριπάλαστος, ID 1442, A.1, 58). However, most of the statuettes are measured in feet, in the three variants ὡς ποδιαῖος, ὡς τριημιποδιαῖος/ὡς τριῶν ἡμιποδίων, ὡς δίπους/ὡς ποδῶν δυεῖν, “of about one foot,” “of about three half-feet,” “of about two feet,” that is, within about 30, 45, and 60 cm in height, respectively. This is the case, for example, of a “statuette of Apollo of about one foot” (ἀπολλωνίσκον ὡς ποδιαῖον, ID 1412, frg. a.1, 17), of a “bronze statue of about three half-feet on a marble base” (ἄγαλμα χαλκοῦν ὡς τριημιποδιαῖον ἐπὶ βάσεως λιθίνης, ID 1403, B, col. II.1, 28), and of a “Hermes on a marble base of about two feet” (Ἑρμῆν ὡς δίπουν ἐπὶ βάσεως λιθίνης, ID 1416, A. col. I.1, 90). As relevant as they are, these limited occurrences nevertheless confirm the lack of regularity within a general picture, which fully agrees with the variegated reality reflected in the archaeological record. In this sense, the attempt to set a size limit by which a statue can be said to turn into a statuette seems to be simply useless. Rather, it should be noted that in the production of ancient sculpture (as well as in the ways of conceptualizing it), there was no such thing as an absolute small format as opposed to a large format, but instead there was a series of practicable formats—including several small formats—in view of the modes of reception, the uses, and the functions intended for each statuette. In the

 Hamilton (2000); Prêtre (2002); Prêtre (2020).  “With numeral marks that they are to be taken only as a round number”, see Liddell/Scott (1968) 2039.  Hornblower/Spawforth (2000), “measures,” 942–944.  Three palms are equivalent to a span/σπιθαμή.

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absence of any definitive quantitative criteria, these aspects therefore play a fundamental role in defining the specific nature of this type of objects.

4 Proximity, Tactility, Mobility “You carry a god about with you, poor wretch, and know nothing of it” (θεὸν περιφέρεις, τάλας, καὶ ἀγνοεῖς). So warned Epictetus in his Discourses (2, 12–13), immediately adding with explicit reference to amulets, protective idols, and statuettes of various kinds: “Do you suppose I mean some god without you of gold or silver? It is within yourself that you carry him; and you do not observe that you profane him by impure thoughts and unclean actions.”53 It is often difficult to fully understand what these “gods” were that many used to carry around with them, due mainly to the ambiguity of the vocabulary employed in many texts. It is not clear, for example, what exactly Apollonius of Tyana means when he speaks of the effigies that certain men carried around to boast about their particular closeness to the deities: “It is true that there are babbling buffoons who hang [ἐξαψάμενοί] upon their persons images [ἄγαλμα] of Demeter or Dionysus, and pretend that they are nurtured by the gods they carry” (VA, 5, 2). On the one hand, the term ἄγαλμα is frequently used in connection with votive or cult statues; on the other, the verb ἐξαπτάω (“to hang”) seems to refer to an image other than a small sculpture. Conversely, it is likely that the golden figure of Apollo that Sulla used to carry with him into battle was indeed a statuette, as the expressions ἀγαλμάτιον, parvum [. . .] signum, and signum modicae amplitudinis utilized by the sources seem to suggest (Plu. Sull. 29, 11; V.Max Facta et dicta memorabilia 1, 2, 3; Frontin. Stratagemata 1, 11, 11). Moreover, the verb περιφέρειν (“to carry around”) employed in the Plutarchian passage to describe its “transportable” dimension coincides with that used by Epictetus in his aforementioned maxim, although the following locution ἐν τῷ κόλπῳ (“clutched to the chest”) signals that it had to be a very small figurine.54 The practice of bringing along small sculptures during travels and other movements is widely attested by ancient literary sources. Just to name a few examples, a similar habit is also attested for the consular C. Cestius, very fond of a statuette “that he carried with him even in battle” (signum, quod secum etiam in proelio habuit, Plin. NH 34, 48) but also for the philosopher Asclepiades, who kept with him wherever he went (quocumque ibat) “a silver figurine of the celestial goddess” (argenteum breve figmentum deae caelestis secum solitus ferre, Amm. Marc. 22, 13, 3), and the rhetorician Apuleius, who carried everywhere among his papers an image of a deity (simulacrum alicuius dei inter libellos conditum gestare, Apul. Apol. 43). Περιφέρειν, secum habere,

 Robert (1981) 520–521.  Robert (1981) 520.

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secum portare, secum ferre, and gestare are therefore key expressions for understanding the modes of use and presentation connected to these statuettes, which often knew in the exclusive relationship with their owner the only limit to their autonomy. In many cases, the intimacy of this bond took on a devotional overtone, as is again well illustrated by the celebrated Hercules Epitrapezios. In the Statian text, the small hero assumes for the Great Macedonian the role of interlocutor and talisman, companion of his travels up to the extreme moment of death (which he himself miraculously foreshadowed, Stat. Silv. 4, 6, 71–74). Their familiarity is all expressed in the verb prensare, describing the gesture of the king, who “gladly clasped him with that same hand that had given crowns and taken them away, and had ruined mighty cities” (prensabatque libens modo qua diademata dextra | abstulerat dederatque et magnas verterat urbes, Stat. Silv. 4, 6, 62–63):55 the lexical choice conveys “the idea of repeatedly grasping and squeezing (the intensive and iterative valences interpenetrate in this verb), introducing the image of an Alexander almost eager to touch the powerful icon, as if through physical contact it releases a sort of spiritual force.”56 Within a relationship that overcomes any physical distance, the miniature appearance of the little Hercules is therefore capable of arousing modes of response that can well be defined as affective. Furthermore, the direct and emphatic reference to the hand of Alexander (dextra, 4, 6, 62) echoes in these verses the mention of the hand of Lysippus (dextra, 4, 6, 44), creator of the small masterpiece, following a well-attested topos of Hellenistic ekphrastic poetry.57 If the linguistic insistence on this body part and its creative and perceptive capacities seems to refer to the concrete physicality of the statuette, the visual reception can instead produce altered perceptions, bringing out the paradox of the diminutive form of a god famed for his strength and size (exiguo magnus in aere deus, Martial 9, 43, 2). The nature of small objects as “calculated attention-grabbers that demand to be viewed from up close”58 thus comes into play, manifesting itself in a series of antinomies that oppose the small to the large, finally reaching the poet’s astonished exclamation: “A god was he, ay, a god! and he granted thee to behold him, Lysippus, small to the eye, yet a giant to the mind!” (parvusque videri | sentirique ingens!, Stat. Silv. 4, 6, 37–38).59 The closeness between small sculptures and their possessors could at other times show itself in the sharing of the most intimate spaces of the house, as documented by numerous literary mentions of the presence of statuettes in cubiculo. The lives of the emperors are full of references to this sort of image, treated with every care and veneration, and often bearers of omens toward their owners. This is the case, for

 On this locus, see Bonadeo (2010) 233–235 n. 62; Vout (2018) 63.  Bonadeo (2010) 233–235 n. 62.  See, e.g., Platt/Squire (2017) 95 on Posidipp. AB 67, but also among Posidippus’s Andriantopoiika AB 62.3, 65.1, 66.3, 70.3.  Porter (2011) 286.  For a phenomenology of viewing in ancient Greece and Rome, see Elsner (2007); Squire (2016).

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example, of a figurine of a young girl that Nero believed could reveal the future and foil conspiracies against him (Suet. Ner. 4, 3); of the statuette for which Galba had reserved an entire wing of his residence in Tusculum (after having brought it there gremio suo) and disappeared in the imminence of his fall (Suet. Galb. 4, 3, 18, 2); of the golden image of Fortuna quae in cubiculo principum poni solebat, which Antoninus Pius wanted by his deathbed (SHA, Ant. Pius. 12, 5) and Septimius Severus wished to have duplicated for his two sons (SHA, Sev. 33, 5f); of the statuettes in the lararium of the emperor Tacitus, which, fallen to the ground, foretold his ruin (SHA, Tac. 17, 4). As in the last case, mentions of this kind are often precisely linked to the cult of the Lares and the lararia, in the widest meaning that these terms can assume within ancient domestic religion. There was often a very close correspondence between the statuettes venerated and the personality of their possessor, sometimes driven by religious, ideological, or political considerations. The most striking and well-known case is certainly that of Alexander Severus’s lararia, configured as real personal galleries of moral exempla. One, the lararium maius, contained the maiorum effigies, the divi principes, and the animae sanctiores, such as Apollonius of Tyana, Christ, Abraham, and Orpheus; the other, the lararium secundum, included the magni viri, such as Virgil and Plato, but also Achilles and Alexander the Great.60 Similarly, Hadrian had inter cubiculi Lares an ancient bronze image of the young Octavian, on which his name appeared “in letters of iron almost illegible from age,” perhaps because of the prolonged handling.61 Although varied in nature, these statuettes were thus intended to be enjoyed as part of a daily, private interaction, but they also found wide diffusion within sanctuaries, where the presence of small-scale sculptures is well attested in every age. These kinds of spaces could sometimes function as “a virtual cross between ‘at home’ and ‘in public,’”62 reproducing on a slightly different level some of the dynamics just described. According to Plutarch’s account, for example, before leaving for exile in the East, Cicero “took the statuette of Minerva which had long stood in his house, and which he honored exceedingly, carried it to the capitol, and dedicated it there with the inscription ‘To Minerva, Guardian of Rome’” (Cic. 31, 5). Through the tiny, private simulacrum, the great orator thus associated the city with the custody of his personal goddess, placing in her protection the hope of a future return. Less connoting a close connection between statuette and owner but equally significant with respect to the presence and meaning of similar objects in sanctuary contexts is the case of the Corinthian bronze statuette dedicated by Pliny the Younger in the temple of Jupiter at Novum Comum (Plin. Ep. 3, 6). No indication is given regarding its exact size, besides the fact that the signum was modicum (“small”), but its description is otherwise quite

 Settis (1972); Mondello (2017).  Wild (2017), 234.  Henderson (2002) 158.

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accurate: it was a very precious sculpture, a real objet d’art, depicting an old fisherman according to the tradition of Hellenistic genre figures. Pliny himself describes the reasons for this dedication, reflecting an ethos of non-appropriation very different from what has been discussed so far: “My purpose in buying it was not to keep it at home [non ut haberem domi], I do not in fact have any Corinthian ware as yet, but to have it set in some populous place in my native region, and for particular preference in a temple of Jupiter, for it seems to be a gift worthy of a temple and worthy of the god.” As evidenced by literary, archaeological, and epigraphic sources, temples and sanctuaries overflowed with offerings in the form of the most varied small-scale sculptures. Also in this case, the Delian inventories prove to be very interesting, since they supply a lot of information about the prevailing modes of presentation aimed at ensuring their accessibility (at least in relation to the most valuable objects, which deserved to be exhibited and listed). The most common solutions to this end were to raise the small sculptures to the height of the beholder’s gaze by using a variety of supports or inserting them into niches in the walls. The rather recurrent expression ἐπί κιονίου refers to the former, relating to the display of statuettes on top of small pillars made of materials such as wood, bronze, or marble.63 The term seems to be equivalent to ἐπὶ στυλίδος (“on a small column”), not attested in Delos but widespread in the micro-Asiatic area during late Hellenistic times, in relation to dedications both in sanctuaries and in other public areas less characterized by a religious point of view.64 Small sculptures could also find a place ἐν τῷ τοίχῳ, that is, within niches and openings made in the walls. This solution was probably adequate to house objects of various kinds, but it recurs very often precisely in association with statuettes.65 The same system was also employed in other sanctuaries, such as that of Athena in Pergamum, but also in public structures such as gymnasiums, including the Palestre du Lac in Delos.66 Starting from the second/first century BCE, the positioning ἐν τῶι τοίχωι seems to have been widespread in domestic contexts, where niches of variable size could accommodate “movable” but not strictly “portable” statuettes, favoring their almost exclusively frontal reception and emphasizing their decorative characters.67 Furthermore, precious sculptures could easily find their place together with other valuable objects in combination with elements of furniture such as tables, mensae, or abaci (the so-called

 See, e.g., ID 1442, A.1, 78; ID 1417 B. col. I.1, 140–141; ID 1442, B, 31.  See, e.g., SEG 39, 1243, 43–45; SEG 33, 1041, 29–30. Initially developed in sanctuary settings, displaying small sculptures on columns and pillars seems to have found later application also in Roman domestic contexts, see Bartman (1992) 41.  See ID 1416, A. col. I.1, 21–22; ID 1417, A. col. I.1, 134–135; ID 1417, B. col. I.1, 19–20.  Delorme (1961) 99–100, pl. 16, fig. 105; Radt (1988) 181–182, pl. 68; von den Hoff (1994) 135 n. 75.  On the role and functions of wall niches in Hellenistic Delian houses, see Kreeb (1988) 44–46; Trümper (1998) 68–76.

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Prunktische).68 The second-century BCE Kallistratos inventory (ID 1417, B, col. II, 57) mentions an Artemis statuette placed “above the table” (ἐπὶ τῆς τραπέζης), according to a form of display that closely resembles those depicted on the so-called Coupe des Ptolémées of the Bibliotèque Nationale in Paris or on the later silver skyphoi from the treasure of Bertouville.69 Following these models of luxury, such furnishings became part of the decor of many Roman villae and domus, often located in the atrium and made of marble, bronze, or simply wood.70 Small sculptures made a fine show of themselves here among other precious artifacts, where the most attentive observers could easily view them from close up, showing off their refined connoisseurship.71 An equally common alternative was to store the statuettes in special cabinets, kylikeia and armaria, as confirmed by several Pompeian and Herculaneum findings.72 In such an armarium were also stored Trimalchio’s silver Lares (Petr. 60), suddenly brought to the table and turned into tabletop trinkets during the famous banquet, proving the functional versatility of these objects. As a matter of fact, statuettes answered in a variety of different ways the concerns for visual display of both Hellenistic and Roman patrons, as is seen, for example, in the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum, one of the best-preserved sculpture collections known in a Roman house.73 Among the vast selection of bronzes and marble statues belonging to this famous ensemble, there are, in fact, a number of sculptures that to some extent can be defined as “small.” First are several statuettes intended to decorate the gardens and fountains of the villa, such as figures of children with various types of vases and vessels from which water flowed, all around 50 cm high.74 Indeed, the findings from the Vesuvian area testify to how frequently of small sculptures were installed in the gardens of Roman residences. Among the more purely “portable” statuettes, two main categories can be distinguished. On the one hand, is a group of small philosophers’ busts, a particular kind of representation which was likely to find a place in public and private libraries, closely reminding one of those images that some of Pliny’s contemporaries used to take along even into the bedroom (epicuri voltus per

 Kreeb (1988) 46; Bartman (1992) 40–42; Neudecker (1998) 78, 85; Cadario (2015) 56.  Lapatin (2015) 154, fig. 125; Le luxe dans l’antiquité (2017) 22–24, fig. 4, 216–223.  Richter (1966) 110–113, 116, figs. 566, 572–580. On domestic furnishing in Pompeii and Herculaneum, see De Carolis (2007); more specifically on Graeco-Roman luxury marble furnishing, see Cohon (1984); Moss (1988); Stephanidou-Tiveriou (1993).  See, e.g., the wall painting in Pompeii, Casa dei Vettii (VI 15,1), Ala (i), Parete Nord, Cadario (2015) 57.  See, e.g., NSc 1907, 556–557; NSc 1929, 404–406; NSc, 1930, 396; Kaufmann-Heinimann (1998) 212–213 n. GFV5, fig. 149. Broadly on kylikeia e armaria (Pl. Epid. 308–309; Cic. Clu. 179; Cic. Cael. 52; Dig. 1, 15, 3, 2; Ath. 11, 460e), see Richter (1966) 115, fig. 419; Gagetti (2006) 492, 509.  For an overview on the modes of display of small-scale sculptures in the Roman world, see Bartman (1992) 39–42. On the Villa of the Papyri and its sculptural collection, see Warden (1991); Warden/ Romano (1994); Mattusch (2005).  Mattusch (2005) 296–315.

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cubicula gestant ac circumferunt secum, Plin. NH 35, 2);75 on the other, are two elegant bronze statuettes depicting a young and an elderly satyr (20 and 29 cm high), a pair of fine artworks very much resembling the Corinthian bronzes highly appreciated by ancient collectors.76 From this point of view, Roman patrons also favored small sculptures as a means of advertising their ownership of Greek art and culture, to the point of never being able to part with them (Signis, quae vocant Corinthia, plerique in tantum capiuntur, ut secum circumferant, Plin. NH 34, 48), as did the orator Hortensius, the emperor Nero, and Marcus Junius Brutus, who is remembered for his love (amando, Plin. NH 34, 82; amator erat, Mart. 14, 171) for statuette by Strongylion, the famous little puer, or παιδίον, which was also reproduced in terracotta.77 For these collectors, luxury objects became a part of themselves, essential and prominent precisely because they were charged with affectivity.78 Pliny mentions these practices immediately following his digression devoted to colossal statues, to some extent thematizing size as an aesthetic category and consequently contrasting small sculptures with large ones. The moralistic tones that characterize his observations here do not only belong to a more general criticism against luxus, but they qualify these modes of reception as an extreme form within the opposition between appropriation and publicatio.79 The recovery of numerous valuable statuettes from the shipwrecks of Mahdia and Antikythera further confirms their appeal on the art market, but just as flourishing was the trade in more modest souvenirs and devotional objects.80 A trader similar to the owners of these ships must have been the one met and harshly rebuked by Apollonius of Tyana in Athens (Philostr. VA 5, 20). The philosopher asked him what his freight consisted of: “Of gods,” he replied, “whose images I am exporting to Ionia, some made of gold and stone, and others of ivory and gold.” “And are you going to dedicate them or what?” “I am going to sell them,” he replied, “to those who desire to dedicate them.” . . . “The image-makers of old behaved

 On small philosophers’ busts from the Villa of the Papyri, see Mattusch (2005) 289–295. Broadly on these kinds of images, see Bentz/Wesenberg (1999); Papini (2005); Spinola (2014) 164–165, 175, figs. 4–6; Spinola (2015) 149; von Hesberg (2021).  Neudecker (1988) 105–106, 149 nn. 14.14–14.15; Neudecker (1998); Mattusch (2005) 316–317. On Corinthian bronze, see Emanuele (1989); Jacobson/Weitzman (1992); Henderson (2002) 189–192; Mattusch (2003); Morcillo (2010); Darab (2015).  Leary (1996) 232–233; Prioux (2008) 256, 259–267, 283–284, 304–307, 330–332; Henriksen (2012) 217–223.  Citroni Marchetti (1991) 233–235.  Isager (1998) 90–96.  On the shipwreck of Mahdia and its cargo, see Fuchs (1963); Das Wrack (1994); Barr-Sharrar (1996) 111; Ciliberto (1997); Kaufmann-Heinimann (1998) 300–301 n. GF 104, fig. 265. On the Antikythera shipwreck, see Svoronos (1903); Bol (1972); Kaufmann-Heinimann (1998) 307–308 n. GF 112, fig. 273; Antikythera Shipwreck (2012) (in particular 93–98 nn. 38–44); Pergamon (2016) 289–299. On souvenirs and devotionalien, see Künzl/Koeppel (2002).

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not in this way,” answered Apollonius, “nor did they go round the cities selling their gods. All they did was to export their own hands and their tools for working stone and ivory; others provided the raw materials, while they plied their handicraft in the temples themselves; but you are leading the gods into harbors and market places just as if they were wares of the Hyrcanians and of the Scythians—far be it from me to name these—and so you think you are doing no impiety?”

5 “Not Just a Matter of Yardstick” Paraphrasing those in the past who have dealt with colossal statues, the following paradox can also apply to Greek and Roman small-scale sculpture: if, on the one hand, it is true that “size matters,”81 on the other, it must be recognized that smallness is “not just a matter of yardstick.”82 From a quantitative point of view, this very notion appears to be hard to define objectively: in terms of absolute dimensions, that is, from a size perspective, we must recognize the variety of “small formats” practiced in ancient sculpture; in terms of relative dimensions, that is, from a scale perspective, concepts such as miniaturization and reduction lend themselves to different—not always reconcilable—interpretations.83 Yet archaeological and literary evidence confirms that these objects were often meant to be more than small statues. Compared to larger sculptures, their format allowed them special modes of use and presentation, articulated on different levels of accessibility, defining a closeness in the relationship with the beholder up to the maximum degree of portability. First, a statue is generally realized in the function of a context, a space, and often even a precise architectural frame, out of which many of its meanings are diminished and modified. Statuettes, on the other hand, are conceived as largely autonomous objects and designed for an extremely close interaction; they could not only be moved but also handled, manipulated, and observed from every angle. Similar forms of relationship between the viewer and the artwork were not entirely extraneous even to larger-scale sculpture, which increasingly developed the expressive potential related to the simultaneous presence of a subject and an object within the same three-dimensional space. However, while in the case of “life-size or larger” statues the viewer’s involvement was aimed above all at producing the tangible “illusion of a presence,” statuettes shifted the focus of this relationship to a completely different level: what was lost in terms of “illusionistic potential” was on the contrary gained in closeness and intimacy with the beholders, somehow invited to approach, hold, and turn them in their hands.84 At the  Kosmetatou/Papalexandrou (2003).  Kreikenbom (1992) 4: “Damit wird das Problem angeschnitten, daß Kolossalität nicht nur eine Frage des Zollstock ist, obgleich antike Definitionen eines Kolosses nahezu ausschließich auf dieses Kriterium abheben.”  See, e.g., the different use of the terms miniature and miniaturization in Bartman (1992) and Langin-Hooper (2020).  Platt/Squire (2017) 96–97.

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same time, the small size of these objects paved the way for the use of a wider range of materials and production practices, allowing a more interpretive approach to models. Although parallel to that of their larger counterparts, statuettes and figurines therefore spoke a language capable not only of repeating but also of multiplying with great freedom the possibilities offered by them, all the more interesting because of the pervasiveness of their diffusion in ancient societies. Within the daily and unmediated practice that must have characterized their use, their role in the visual literacy of large sectors of the population excluded from the possession of regular statuary cannot therefore be underestimated. Size appears to have been much more than “a factor of negligible importance in the definition of a work” of sculpture, as has sometimes been paradoxically argued.85 On the contrary, these considerations converge in identifying in small-scale sculpture a specificity worthy of targeted attention, in parallel with the most recent studies dedicated to the “aesthetics of smallness” in GraecoRoman times. Thanks to this variety of research perspectives, a comprehensive and multidisciplinary approach can therefore create a better awareness of the status of this production within the general development of ancient art. Furthermore, it can also contribute to redefining some interesting aspects of the Greek and Roman ways of intending the aesthetic experience, bringing out both its theoretical and cultural aspirations and its material and social foundations.

Works Cited Adamo-Muscettola (1984): Stefania Adamo-Muscettola, “Osservazioni sulla composizione dei larari con statuette in bronzo di Pompei ed Ercolano,” in: Ulrich Gehrig (ed.), Toreutik und figürliche Bronzen römischer Zeit, Akten der 6. Tagung über Antike Bronzen, 13.–17. Mai 1980, Berlin, 9–32. Amandry (1967–1968): Pierre Amandry “Thémistocle à Mélitè,” in: Angelikē Kōn Andreiōmenou (ed.), Χαριστήριoν εις Aναστάσιoν K. Oρλάνδoν, Athens, 265–279. Anguissola (2006): Anna Anguissola, “Note on ‘aphidruma’,” ?: in Classical Quarterly 56, no. 2, 641–646. Anguissola (2012): Anna Anguissola, “Difficillima imitatio”: Immagine e lessico delle copie tra Grecia e Roma, Rome. Antikythera Shipwreck (2012): Nikolaos Kaltsas (ed.), The Antikythera Shipwreck: The Ship, the Treasures, the Mechanism (Catalogue of the Exhibition, Athens, 2013), Athens. Bailey (2005): Douglass Bailey Prehistoric Figurines: Representation and Corporeality in the Neolithic, London/ New York. Bailey (2014): Douglass Bailey, “Touch and the Cheirotic Apprehension of Prehistoric Figurines,” in: Peter Dent (ed.), Sculpture and Touch, Farnham, 27–44. Barr-Sharrar (1996): Beryl Barr-Sharrar, “The Private Use of Small Bronze Sculpture,” in: Carol C. Mattusch (ed.), The Fire of Hephaistos: Large Classical Bronzes from North American Collections (Catalogue of the Exhibition, Cambridge, 1996; Toledo, 1996; Tampa, 1997), Cambridge MA, 104–121.

 Bartman (1992) 15.

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Kreeb (1988): Martin Kreeb, Untersuchungen zur figurlichen Ausstattung delischer Privathäuser, Chicago. Kreikenbom (1992): Detlev Kreikenbom, Griechische und römische Kolossalporträts bis zum späten ersten Jahrhundert nach Christus, Berlin. Krumeich (1997): Ralf Krumeich, Bildnisse griechischer Herrscher und Staatsmänner im 5. Jahrhundert v. Chr., Munich. Kryza-Gersch (2015): Claudia Kryza-Gersch, “The Production of Multiple Small Bronzes in the Italian Renaissance: When, Where and Why,” in: Ricche minere 2, 5–25. Künzl/Koeppel (2002): Ernst Künzl and Gerhard Koeppel, Souvenirs und Devotionalien: Zeugnisse des geschäftlichen, religiösen und kulturellen Tourismus im antiken Römerreich, Mainz am Rhein. Kyrieleis (1996): Helmut Kyrieleis, Der große Kuros von Samos, Bonn. Lahusen (1982): Götz Lahusen, “Statuae et Imagines,” in: Bettina von Freytag-Löringhoff (ed.), Praestant interna: Festschrift für Ulrich Hausmann, Tübingen, 101–109. Lahusen (1983): Götz Lahusen, Untersuchungen zur Ehrenstatue in Rom: Literarische und epigraphische Zeugnisse, Rome. Lamb (1969): Winfried Lamb, Ancient Greek and Roman Bronzes, Chicago. Langin-Hooper (2020): Stephanie Langin-Hooper, Figurines in Hellenistic Babylonia: Miniaturization and Cultural Hybridity, Cambridge. Lapatin (2015): Kenneth Lapatin, Luxus: The Sumptuous Arts of Greece and Rome, Los Angeles. Latini (1995): Alexia Latini, “Il colosso di Alba Fucens e l’Eracle Epitrapezio di Lisippo,” in: Rivista di Archeologia 19, 62–74. Leary (1996): Timothy J. Leary, Martial, Book 14: The Apophoreta, London. Le luxe dans l’antiquité (2017): Mathilde Broustet and Cécile Colonna (eds.), Le luxe dans l’antiquité: Trésors de la Bibliothèque nationale de France (Catalogue of the Exposition, Paris, 2017), Arles. Liddell/Scott (1968): Henry G. Liddell and Robert Scott, Greek-English Lexicon, Oxford. Lippold (1923): Georg Lippold, Kopien und Umbildungen griechischer Statuen, Munich. Lorenz (2003): Sven Lorenz, “Martial, Herkules und Domitian: Büsten, Statuetten und Statuen im ‘Epigrammaton liber nonus,’” in: Mnemosyne: Bibliotheca Classica Batava 56, no. 5, 566–584. Malkin (1991): Irad Malkin, “What Is an Aphidruma?,” in: Classical Antiquity 10, 77–96. Manderscheid (1981): Hubertus Manderscheid, Die Skulpturenausstattung der kaiserzeitlichen Thermenanlagen, Berlin. Martin/Langin-Hooper (2018): Rebecca S. Martin and Stephanie M. Langin-Hooper (eds.), The Tiny and the Fragmented: Miniature, Broken, or Otherwise Incomplete Objects in the Ancient World, Oxford. Martini (1990): Wolfram Martini, Die archaische Plastik der Griechen, Darmstadt. Master Bronzes (1967): David G. Mitten and Suzannah F. Doeringer (eds.), Master Bronzes from the Classical World (Catalogue of the Exhibition, Cambridge MA, 1967–1968; St. Louis, 1968; Los Angeles, 1968), Mainz. Mattusch (2002): Carol C. Mattusch (ed.), From the Parts to the Whole. Acta of the 13th International Bronze Congress, Cambridge MA, May 28–June 1, 1996, Portsmouth. Mattusch (2003): Carol C. Mattusch, “Corinthian Bronze: Famous, but Elusive,” in: Corinth 20, 219–232. Mattusch (2005): Carol C. Mattusch, The Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum: Life and Afterlife of a Sculpture Collection, Los Angeles. McNeils (2008) : Charles A. McNelis, “‘Ut sculptura poesis’: Statius, Martial, and the Hercules ‘Epitrapezios’ of Nouius Vindex,” in American Journal of Philology 129, no. 2, 255–276. Mondello (2017): Cristian Mondello, “Sui Lares di Severo Alessandro (HA Alex. Sev. 29, 2; 31, 4–5): Fra conservazione e trasformazione,” in Hormos: Ricerche di Storia Antica 9, 189–229. Montagu (1972): Jennifer Montagu, Bronzes, London. Morcillo (2010): Marta G. Morcillo, “Zwischen Kunst und Luxuria: Die Korintishcen Bronzen in Plinius’ Naturalis Historia,” in: Hermes 138, no. 4, 442–454.

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Prioux (2007): Évelyne Prioux (ed.), Regards alexandrines: Histoire et théorie des arts dans l’épigramme hellénistique, Leuven. Prioux (2008): Évelyne Prioux, Petits musees en vers: Epigramme et discours sur les collections antiques, Paris. Prioux/Linant de Bellefonds (2017): Évelyne Prioux and Pascale Linant de Bellefonds (eds.), Voir les mythes: poésie hellénistique et arts figures, Paris. Prioux/Linant de Bellefonds/Rouveret (2016): Évelyne Prioux, Pascale Linant de Bellefonds and Agnès Rouveret, D’Alexandre à Auguste: dynamiques de la création dans les arts visuels et la poésie. Colloque tenu à Paris, Institut national d’histoire de l’art, INHA, 10–12 mai 2012, Radt (1988): Wolfgang Radt, Pergamon: Geschichte und Bauten, Funde und Erfoschung einer antiken Metropole, Cologne. Richter (1966): G. M. A. Richter, The Furniture of the Greeks, Etruscans and Romans, London. Ridgway (1977): Brunilde S. Ridgway, The Archaic Style in Greek Sculpture, Chicago. Ridgway (1997): Brunilde S. Ridgway, Fourth-Century Styles in Greek Sculpture, Madison. Ritter (1995): Stefan Ritter, Hercules in der römischen Kunst von den Anfängen bis Augustus, Heidelberg. Robert (1981): Lous Robert, “Le serpent Glycon d’Abônouteichos à Athènes et Artémis d’Éphèse à Rome,” in: Comptes rendus des séances de l’Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres 125, no. 2, 513–535. Rolley (1986): Claude Rolley, Greek Bronzes, London. Rolley (1994): Claude Rolley, La sculpture grecque, Paris. Romano (1980): Irene B. Romano, Early Greek Cult Images, Philadelphia. Roux (1960): Georges Roux, “Qu’est-ce qu’un κολοσσός ? Le ‘colosse’ de Rhodes: Les ‘colosses’ mentionnés par Eschyle, Hérodote, Théocrite et par diverses inscriptions,” in: Revue des Études Anciennes 62, 5–40. Ruck (2007): Brigitte Ruck, Die Grossen dieser Welt: Kolossalporträts im antiken Rom, Heidelberg. Rumscheid (2006): Frank Rumscheid, Die figürlichen Terrakotten von Priene: Fundkontexte, Ikonographie und Funktion in Wohnhäusern und Heiligtümern im Licht antiker Parallelbefunde, Wiesbaden. Rumscheid (2008): Frank Rumscheid, “Klein, aber Kunst? Berühmte Statuentypen in koroplastischer Umsetzung: Zum Verhältnis von Koroplastik zu Skulpturen aus Bronze oder Marmor,” in: Klaus Junker and Adrian Stähli (eds.), Original und Kopie: Formen und Konzepte der Nachahmung in der antiken Kunst. Akten des Kolloquiums in Berlin, 17.–19. Februar 2005, Wiesbaden, 135–157. Rutledge (2012): Steven H. Rutledge, Ancient Rome as a Museum: Power, Identity, and the Culture of Collecting, Oxford. Sanders (2001): Helen M. Sanders, Sculptural Patronage and the Houses of Late Hellenistic Delos, Ann Arbor. Scheer (2000): Tanja S. Scheer, Die Gottheit und ihr Bild: Untersuchungen zur Funktion griechischer Kultbilder in Religion und Politik, Munich. Schneider (1976): Beate Schneider, Studien zu den kleinformatigen Kaiserportraits von den Anfängen der Kaiserzeit bis ins dritte Jahrhundert, Munich. Schneider (2001): Werner J. Schneider, “‘Phidiae putaui’: Martial und der Hercules Epitrapezios des Nouius Vindex,” in: Mnemosyne: Bibliotheca Classica Batava 6, 697–720. Sehlmeyer (1999): Markus Sehlmeyer, Stadtrömische Ehrenstatuen der republikanischen Zeit: Historizität und Kontext von Symbolen nobilitären Standesbewusstseins, Stuttgart. Serial/Portable Classic (2015): Salvatore Settis, Anna Anguissola, and Davide Gasparotto (eds.), Serial/ Portable Classic: The Greek Canon and Its Mutations (Catalogue of the Exhibition, Milan, 2015), Milan. Settis (1972): Salvatore Settis, “Severo Alessandro e i suoi Lari,” in: Athenaeum: Studi di letteratura e storia dell’antichità 4, 237–251. Sharpe (2006): Heather F. Sharpe, From Hieron and Oikos: A Study of Bronze Statuettes from Hellenistic and Imperial Greece, Bloomington. Siebert (1981): Gérard Siebert, “Eidôla: Le problème de la figurabilité dans l’art grec,” in: Gérard Siebert (ed.), Méthodologie iconographique. Actes du colloque de Strasbourg, 27–28 avril 1979, Strasbourg.

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Michael Squire

Sizing up Art: The Intermedial Semantics of Scale in the Hellenistic and Roman Worlds To see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour. William Blake, ‘Auguries of Innocence’, vv. 1–4 (1803)

Nestled amid the thirty-fifth book of Pliny the Elder’s Natural History is a curious anecdote about Apelles and Protogenes, two undisputed masters of Greek painting in the late fourth century BC (HN 35, 81–3).1 Pliny has been discussing Apelles’ unique place in the history of art, surpassing all painters before and after him (omnes prius genitos futurosque postea superauit Apelles, HN 35, 79). Apelles was well aware of his talents, we’re told, and he compared them with those of Protogenes in particular: when Apelles visited Rhodes (where Protogenes lived), it was therefore to be expected that he should seek out his fellow artist.2 Pliny’s story about that subsequent meeting is worth recounting in full. Upon first venturing to Protogenes’ studio, Apelles found not the painter, but only a ‘large painting-panel fixed to an easel’ (tabulam amplae magnitudinis in machina aptatam), with an old woman keeping watch over it. Apelles then hits upon a cheeky idea: he would leave Protogenes a painterly memento of his visit (HN 35, 81–3):

 For some different discussions of the anecdote and its western reception, see van de Waal (1967), Gage (1981) and Elkins (1995). More generally on Pliny’s anecdotes about Protogenes, see now Platt (2018), esp. 251–7: here and elsewhere I have learnt from numerous discussions with Verity Platt, who also discussed this passage at a paper delivered on ‘Linea summae tenuitatis: Taste, skill and abstraction in Roman painting’ delivered at the American Philological Association at Chicago in 2008, as part of a round-table colloquium on ‘Naturalism and its discontents in Graeco-Roman art and text’.  According to Pliny, Apelles was well aware of Protogenes’ talents and how they compared with his own: in awe of Protogenes’ inmensi laboris ac curae supra modum, Apelles is said to have declared that the artist would be his equal, even his superior, if only Protogenes ‘were to know when to take his hand away from the picture’ (manum de tabula sciret tollere, HN 35.80). For ancient anecdotes and other ‘Schriftquellen’, see now Kansteiner, Hallof, Lehmann, Seidensticker and Stemmer (2014) 4.207–228, nos 2993–3032 (on Protogenes), and Kansteiner, Hallof, Lehmann, Seidensticker and Stemmer (2014) 4.125–205, nos. 2846–2990 (on Apelles, with discussion of this particular anecdote at 4.139–41, no. 2870). Note: My thanks to Giovanni Colzani for the invitation to contribute to the present volume. The chapter has been adapted from an article first published in French as ‘Sémantique de l’échelle dans l’art et la poésie hellénistiques’, in P. Linant de Bellefonds, É. Prioux and A. Rouveret (eds.), D’Alexandre à Auguste: dynamiques de la création dans les arts visuels et la poésie (Rennes: Presses Universitaires de Rennes), pp. 183–200. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110741742-002

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haec foris esse Protogenen respondit interrogauitque, a quo quaesitum diceret. ab hoc, inquit Apelles adreptoque penicillo lineam ex colore duxit summae tenuitatis per tabulam. et reuerso Protogeni quae gesta erant anus indicauit. ferunt artificem protinus contemplatum subtilitatem dixisse Apellen uenisse, non cadere in alium tam absolutum opus; ipsumque alio colore tenuiorem lineam in ipsa illa duxisse abeuntemque praecepisse, si redisset ille, ostenderet adiceretque hunc esse quem quaereret. atque ita euenit. reuertit enim Apelles et uinci erubescens tertio colore lineas secuit nullum relinquens amplius subtilitati locum. at Protogenes uictum se confessus in portum deuolauit hospitem quaerens, placuitque sic eam tabulam posteris tradi omnium quidem, sed artificum praecipuo miraculo. consumptam eam priore incendio Caesaris domus in Palatio audio, spectatam nobis ante, spatiose nihil aliud continentem quam lineas uisum effugientes, inter egregia multorum opera inani similem et eo ipso allicientem omnique opere nobiliorem. In answer to his query, [the old woman] told him that Protogenes was not at home, and asked who it was she should report as having wished to see him. ‘Say it was this person’, said Apelles, and taking up a brush he painted in colour across the panel an extremely fine line. When Protogenes returned the old woman showed him what had taken place. The story goes that the artist, after looking closely at the subtlety of this, said that the new arrival was Apelles, as so perfect a piece of work tallied with nobody else; and he himself, using another colour, drew a still finer line exactly on the top of the first one, and leaving the room told the attendant to show it to the visitor if he returned and add that this was the person he was in search of. And so it happened: for Apelles came back and, reddening at having been beaten, cut the lines with another in a third colour, leaving no room for any further display of minute work. Hereupon Protogenes admitted he was defeated, and flew down to the harbour to look for the visitor; and he decided that the panel should be handed down to posterity as it was, to be admired as a marvel by everybody, but particularly by artists. I am informed that it was burnt in the first fire which occurred in Caesar’s palace on the Palatine. It had previously been much admired by us: for on its vast surface it contained nothing other than almost invisible lines, so that among the outstanding work of many artists it looked like a blank space, and by that very fact attracted attention and was more esteemed than any masterpiece.

Pliny’s anecdote is remarkable for a variety of reasons. For one thing, it gives an insight into an aesthetic discourse that we Classical art historians all too often overlook: this story of artistic ‘signatures’ centres around not naturalistic verisimilitude, but rather the non-figurative, abstract, and vacant (hence the paradox: the finished painting ‘resembles’ nothing so much as emptiness, inani similem). But no less remarkable, I think, are the conceits of size. Pliny tells of a big painting (tabulam amplae magnitudinis), albeit one that consists of just three little lines: each line is drawn in a different colour, and each is shown smaller than the one containing it. We begin with Apelles’ first brushstroke which, despite (or rather because of) its size, embodies a paradoxically ‘great’ finesse (lineam summae tenuitatis). Protogenes’ second line then proves even thinner (tenuiorem) than the first, negatively outsizing Apelles’ achievement. But this second line too is in turn outdone by Apelles’ third, which is so small as to ‘leave no room for further subtlety’ (nullum relinquens amplius subtilitati locum). The artistic magnitude of the final painting, which metaphorically dwarfs all other masterworks (omnique opere nobiliorem), lies in its minimalist mastery: as Pliny concludes, ‘its vast surface contained nothing but lines receding from sight’ (spatiose nihil aliud continentem quam lineas uisum effugientes).

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As this chapter sets out to demonstrate, Pliny’s little story serves as a brilliant introduction to the larger discourse of absolute size and relative scale in both Hellenistic art and literature. What makes Apelles and Protogenes’ painting so universally marvellous (and especially marvellous among artists), Pliny suggests, is not its subject, nor some peculiarity of style, but rather the literal and metaphorical finesse of its three intertwined lines. When seen alongside other paintings, the tabula looked as though it were unworked and empty. As we view it more closely, though, we see the grand traces of huge artistic facture. So small are these lines that they paradoxically magnify the painterly mediation involved: as Protogenes immediately recognised, Apelles’ first line alone amounted to an absolutum opus. The critical stakes of such miniaturist handiwork have been elucidated by Susan Stewart, in her celebrated essay On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, The Souvenir and The Collection (originally published in 1984). Just as Stewart argues of miniaturist versions of objects and texts, Pliny’s line-painting too might be said to demonstrate how ‘signification is increased rather than diminished by its minuteness’: the diminutive size of these lines magnifies the marvellous artifice involved.3 In contrast to Stewart’s own mode of analysis, this chapter will be concerned less with miniaturism at large than with the at once smaller and grander ways in which scale could measure the cultural horizons of the Hellenistic. In the Hellenistic and Roman worlds, as in the cosmos of Pliny’s anecdotal competition, size becomes an important way of figuring the limits of artistic innovation – of measuring individual achievements against the towering precedents of the past. Just as scale provided a yardstick for sizing up the present, moreover, so too could it figure a new relativity of perspective. Within the vastly expanded geographical landscape of Hellenistic Greece, variables of size were useful for thinking about the limits of both individual and collective perception: because size always relies on varying scales of perspective, the trope probes much larger themes of (trans)cultural contact – our infinite capacity for different views. Among Classical Philologists, at least, this may seem like familiar territory. As we shall see, scholars have long discussed – and indeed contested – the cultural poetics of leptotes in Hellenistic poetry (at once ‘thinness’ and finesse’, variously translated as subtitlitas and tenuitas in Latin), associating it with the literary ideology of Callimachus in particular. My foremost aim in this little chapter, by contrast, is to demonstrate the transmedial stakes of this discourse, as pertinent to the visual as to the literary culture of the Hellenistic world; indeed, as I hope to show, one of the reasons that Hellenistic critics found size so good to think with lay in its playful deconstruction of the boundaries between ‘reading’ and ‘viewing’ in the first place. Once again,  Stewart (1993) 38. One might compare Lévy-Strauss (1962), discussing what he calls the ‘modèle reduit’ (38, with discussion by Wiseman (2007) 33–7, 126–7). For some initial attempts to apply such theory to ancient visual culture, see now Martin and Langin-Hooper (2018) (along with the other essays in the collected volume).

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Pliny’s story of Apelles and Protogenes wonderfully prefigures my point. As Hellenistic epigrammatists knew all too well, the tracing of ‘lines’ across a tablet could equally pertain to the acts of writing and drawing alike.4 Indeed, it is surely no accident that, in describing this absolutum opus, Pliny himself appropriates and translates into Latin Greek critical languages of literary leptotes (lineam. . . summae tenuitatis, subtilitatem, tenuiorem lineam, subtilitati, etc.).5 At stake in Pliny’s story is an aesthetic discourse that flies in the face of our modern disciplinary distinctions between ‘Classical art’ and ‘Classical literature’. With this intermedial idea in mind, this chapter proceeds in three distinct but intersecting parts. I begin with some brief introductory comments about the Hellenistic critical language of leptotes, taking my lead from the pioneering work of Jim Porter in particular.6 This leads me, second, to some of the ways in which Hellenistic artists played with the semantics of scale, and especially with the ideology of the miniature. Third and finally, I turn to re-scaled Hellenistic engagements with Homer, and more specifically to the Tabulae Iliacae: these highly ‘iconotextual’ Greek-cum-Roman objects, I argue, encapsulate and expand a number of larger underlying discourses about the relationship between the big and the small on the one hand, and between the visual and the verbal on the other.7

1 Literary leptotes In looking first to the literary tradition, where else to begin than with Callimachus.8 As is well known, Callimachus seems to have forged a programmatic poetic position around the aesthetics of the small and finely worked: ‘a big book is a big evil’, as our most famous formulation puts it (μέγα βιβλίον μέγα κακόν, frg. 465 Pf.). In the Hymn to Apollo, the god himself gives poetic voice to a related sentiment: shunning the ‘great stream’ (μέγας ῥόος, Hymn 2, 108), the poet is instructed to proceed to the ‘small trickle which rises up pure and unsullied from a holy fountain’ (πίδακος ἐξ ἱερῆς ὀλίγη λιβὰς ἄκρον ἄωτον, 2, 112). Declarations like these have been assembled alongside other Callimachean soundbites in an effort to reconstruct a supposed underlying agenda – the famous epigrammatic outcry against the ‘cyclical’ (ἐχθαίρω τὸ ποίημα τὸ

 Among the most important discussions is Männlein-Robert (2007).  For the artistic critical language of subtilitas, see Pollitt (1974) 441–4 (along with Pollitt (1974) 194–6 on leptotes).  See Porter (2010) 481–90 and idem (2011); cf. Squire (2011) 247–302 – on which this chapter partly draws.  My language of ‘iconotexts’ here is derived from the work of Peter Wagner in particular: see especially Wagner (1996) 15–17.  Gutzwiller (2007) 29–36 provides a solid introduction to the theme; cf. Bulloch (1985) 557–61 and Vogt (1966) 86–8.

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κυκλικόν), for example, and the associated refusal to ‘drink from a common spring’ (οὐδ’ ἀπὸ κρήνης πίνω, Callim. Epigr. 28, 3–4 Pf. = Anth. Pal. 12, 43).9 Still more programmatic are the declarations at the beginning of Callimachus’ Aetia.10 The ‘reply to the Telchines’, which introduces Callimachus’ four-book elegiac miscellany, promises an innovative take on the great subjects of the past. But it also pledges to privilege quality over quantity – the delicate singing of the cicada over and above the braying donkey, and in turn the explicit idea of leptotes.11 Following textual critical interventions, the reading αἱ κατὰ λέπτον in verse 11 of the Aetia’s fragmentary preface has been challenged in recent years.12 But a related idea certainly does appear a few lines later, when the speaker declares that ‘the poet must feed the sacrificial victim to be as fat as possible, my friend, but nourish a slender Muse’ (ἀοιδέ, τὸ μὲν θύος ὅττι πάχιστον / θρέψαι, τὴν Μοῦσαν δ’ὠγαθὲ λεπταλέην, fr. 1, 23–4 Pf.). What matters, we are told, is not length but techne (‘art’ or ‘craftsmanship’ – and in both the material and literary sense): ‘henceforth judge poetic wisdom [sophian] by its techne, and not by the Persian measuring-rope’ (αὖθι δὲ τέχνῃ /κρίνετε, μὴ σχοίνῳ Περσίδι, τὴν σοφίην, fr. 1, 17–18 Pf.).13 As always with Callimachus, there is an archaeology to such imagery and metaphor. Among the numerous debts seems to have been the Aristophanic scene in which Euripides and Aeschylus argue about their respective stylistic virtues: like the thundering poems against whom Callimachus rallies, Aeschylus too was advised to put his swollen poetry on a figurative diet (Ran. 939–44).14 As for earlier critical discussions of length and size, one might compare Aristotle’s explicit discussion in the Poetics, likening poetic plot to the living creature that has to be ‘seen all at once’ (συνορᾶσθαι: cf. esp. 1450b34–1451a6): when an epic plot is too large, Aristotle writes, it is not ‘properly visible all at once’ (οὐκ εὐσύνοπτος, 1459a33).15 Callimachus is certainly  For many (albeit not wholly unproblematically), such declarations have been read as responding to the poetry of Apollonius: for bibliography and balanced review, see especially Rengakos (2004).  For an excellent introduction with further references, see Fantuzzi and Hunter (2004) 66–76 (‘Callimachus rejects both the poetics and the gravitas in his extraordinary wish to start all over again’, 76). Among the most important discussions of the figurative poetics of size is Asper (1997) esp. 209–34; cf. also Acosta-Hughes and Stephens (2002); Harder (2002) esp. 206–11; Harder (2012) 2.6–93.  For the figurative sonic significance of the cicada (including the debt to e.g. Pl. Phdr. 259b–d, and [Artist.] De Audib. 804a: 22–4, discussing the insect’s leptos sound), see Asper (1997) 177–98.  Cf. Bastianini (1996), with further discussion and bibliography in Porter (2011) 276, 296–7, n.14 and Harder (2012) 2.41–3.  On the significance of the Telchines as prototypical ‘artists’ here, see Petrovic (2006) 24–36, along with Acosta-Hughes and Stephens (2002) 241 (with further bibliography) and Harder (2012) 13–14.  Cf. Fantuzzi and Hunter (2004) 70 (with more detailed references): ‘Both the Aristophanic Euripides and Callimachus wish to pare poetry down to what is strictly necessary, to an intellectual poetry where nothing is wasted and every word counts. Moreover, this is a poetry where innovation is important’. On the critical debt, compare Pfeiffer (1968) 137–8.  For the critical significance of the passage, see Goldschmidt (1982) 243–6, Prioux (2007) 122–130 and Purves (2010) 24–32.

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responding to an earlier set of critical ideas; what is arguably different and distinctive, though, is Callimachus’ recourse to scale in order to size up a larger literary outlook and poetic agenda. Just as Callimachus’ own programmatic declarations about size were undoubtedly influenced by others, so too did they in turn influence other Alexandrian poets.16 Although the precise chronology is somewhat uncertain, one poignant intertext comes in Aratus’ third-century Phainomena. Aratus writes a short hexameter poem on the grandest of subjects: the whole cosmos of constellations finds its poetic encapsulation in some 1154 verses. But given this larger project of didactic synthesis, Aratus’ programmatic nod to the language of leptotes is surely significant. As J.M. Jacques first recognised, the opening letters of vv. 783–7, which begin by describing the ‘slender’ leptê moon (and which repeat the idea in the second verse), spell out the idea by way of an acrostic.17 λεπτὴ μὲν καθαρή τε περὶ τρίτον ἦμαρ ἐοῦσα εὔδιός κ᾽ εἴη· λεπτὴ δὲ καὶ εὖ μάλ᾽ ἐρευθὴς πνευματίη· παχίων δέ καὶ ἀμβλείῃσι κεραίαις τέτρατον ἐκ τριτάτοιο φόως ἀμενηνὸν ἔχουσα ἤ νότῳ ἄμβλυνται ἢ ὕδατος ἐγγὺς ἐόντος. If the moon is thin and her light pure on the third day, there will be fine weather; if his and her light very red, there will be wind. If, however, she is on the large side and her horns are dull and her light weak on the third and fourth nights, she is being dulled by the approach of the south wind or of rain.

The small acrostic game seems to underline a larger aesthetic point about the parallel ventures of ordering – and indeed deciphering – the grand cosmos on the one hand, and the literary text on the other.18 Such is the great techne of the poet that his leptotes expands in all directions: just as the whole phenomenological world is brought to order in the poem, the ideology of the poetic project finds miniature expression in this hidden (and quite literally ‘slender’!) vertical text.

 Scholars have sometimes compared here the fifth book of Philodemus’ On Poems, which seems to confirm the long-lasting aesthetic-cum-philosophical impact of (what we term) ‘Callimachean’ poetics, even in the mid-first century BC: see e.g. Fantuzzi and Hunter (2004) 71–2, 449–461. Important is also Prioux (2007) 108–13 on the supposed leptotes–semnotes dichotomy informing Posidipp. 62–69 A-B.  See Jacques (1960) and Volk (2010) 205–08. Morgan (1993) 143 calls this a ‘gamma-acrostic’, in which the hidden word is also introduced in the first word that opens it (before its repetition in the following verse). Other discussions include Courtney (1990) 10–11, Haslam (1992) 199–200, and Hunter (2008) 1.161–3.  Cf. Fantuzzi and Hunter (2004) 230: ‘The successful searching out of acrostic patterns by the reader recreates the activity of the anonymous discoverer of the constellations . . . The pattern of Zeus’ universe is reflected in the pattern of Aratus’ poem’. On the issue of dates here (and more generally on the relationship between Callimachus and Aratus), see Cameron (1995) 321–8 and Volk (2010) 206–208.

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Such Hellenistic interest in scale, facture and craftsmanship helped determine not only how Hellenistic writers wrote, but also what they chose as subjects. It is of course possible to contextualise all manner of Hellenistic generic innovations in light of such grand aesthetic discourses about scale. One way of understanding the rise of epyllion, for example, has long been in association with Hellenistic predilections for cutting epic down to size.19 Perhaps still more pertinent are the innovations of Hellenistic epigram. Although epigram had long been a forum for pithy declarations and dedications – for example, in Archaic and Classical funerary, cultic and sympotic contexts – the fourth century witnessed a marked change in form, facilitated in part by the transition from inscribed text to literary creation, collected and anthologised in its own written right.20 This change brought about a new medial reflexivity about the graphic form in which epi-grammatic grammata were now encountered.21 But that reflexivity itself went hand in hand with a parallel interest in size. For all the discontinuities in performative context and display, one of the defining features of epigram had long been its brevity. From a Hellenistic perspective, moreover, that formal characteristic could be mobilised to deliver a quick-fire riposte to the very greats of the Greek literary tradition (not least among them, Homer).22 The generic games of epigram reveal something else about the Hellenistic poetics of scale, recently championed by Jim Porter. Within his reappraisal of the materialist and sensualist assumptions of Hellenistic literary criticism, and one acutely sensitive to the scholarly historiography, Porter argues that leptotes refers not simply to the ‘small’ or ‘pointillist’, but rather to ‘an organised aesthetic of contrastive opposites’ – a ‘scale of perspective’:23

 On the ‘genre’ of epyllion (a term for which there is no ancient authority), see especially Merriam (2001) and Sistakou (2008) 121–35, together with Baumbach and Bär (2012). For a stimulating discussion of scale and narrative in Hellenistic epic itself, see Hutchinson (2008) 66–89, along with Fantuzzi and Hunter (2004) 191–245 on Hellenistic ‘epic in a minor key’ (above all, in the works of Callimachus, Theocritus, Moschus and Aratus).  For the significance of this medial change, see especially Bing (1995); Gutzwiller (1998) esp. 47–119; and Meyer (2005) 25–126. For the literary games in the context of the ‘Myron’s cow’ poems (Anth. Pal. 9.713–42, 793–98), see Squire (2010a), along more generally with Squire (2010b).  Fundamental here has been the work of Peter Bing: esp. Bing (1998) 29–35 (revised in Bing (2009) 194–216); cf. Goldhill (1994); Prioux (2007); Männlein-Robert (2007); Tueller (2008). For the significance of the epi-grammatic terminology, see e.g. Meyer (2005): 27–33.  For Hellenistic epigrammatic treatments of Homer, see e.g. Harder (2007), on how ‘scenes of Homer are reduced in such a way as to fit the space allowed in epigram’ (411). Also important are Bolmarcich (2002) (on sepulchral epigrams on Homer) and Sistakou (2008) 55–61; cf. more generally Hunter (2018). Some epigrammatists evidently delighted in tracing the links between Homer and epigram, playing upon the two-sided derivation of each genre from the other, as discussed in Vox 1975 and developed by Elmer (2005).  Porter (2011) 285, 286 (his italics); cf. Porter (2011) 287: ‘I am coming to be convinced that the term leptotēs has no more singular meaning or internal cohesion than (say) the avant-garde label “form” had among the modern Russian Formalists, the formalists in art criticism . . ., or the New Critics, for

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A poet who dwells in the small scale invites us to entertain both ideas in our minds simultaneously (the miniature and the colossal) and . . . frequently invites us to confuse our points of orientation, hoping that we will forget whether the object before us stands at one end of the scale or other.24

‘The Hellenistic aesthetic is not one of simple refinement and smallness of scale’, as Porter again puts it, but ‘. . . produces sharply contrastive effects’: ‘at issue here is a dynamic of extremes, not a choice between them’.25 Porter’s corrective is an important one, and from a variety of different viewpoints. For when it comes to size, as indeed so many other aspects of Hellenistic poetry, things are never as they first appear. In the same way that Pliny views the microscopic lines of Apelles and Protogenes as drawing attention to the vastness of the empty canvas, the multiple references packed into even a single verse of Alexandrian poetry could simultaneously undermine any semblance of the small: each loaded allusion has to be unpacked, leading to whole libraries of other texts. One need only consider epigram to grasp the underlying point. However small each individual epigram, and whatever its ‘original’ supposed material context, the anthologised collection adds up to something on a quite different scale. ‘He who writes distichs, I suppose, wishes to please by brevity’, as Martial would later express the paradox; ‘but what use is brevity, tell me, if it’s a book? (Disticha qui scribit, puto, uult breuitate placere; / quid prodest breuitas, dic mihi, si liber est?, Mart. 8, 29).26 By the same token, each poem on an epigrammatic theme like Myron’s bronze statue of a heifer might look individually small. As a collective, though, these miniature poems on a setpiece visual stimulus amount to a veritable herd in their own right.27 The opening twenty poems of the ‘Milian Posidippus’ – dedicated to Lithika or ‘stones’ – nicely demonstrate the thinking, as again discussed by Porter.28 Numerous critics have noticed how the Lithika’s very first poem nods to the ideology of leptotes

whom form meant sensuous material: In each case form is being asked to stand in for quite different, and often incompatible things . . . Leptotēs, I suspect, played a similar, underdetermined, and contradictory function among the Hellenistic literary avant-garde’. Compare also Porter (2010) 481–90.  Porter (2010) 487.  Porter (2011) 288.  For Martial’s own games, and their relation to the Greek generic history of epigram, see Rimell (2008) 7–14. Cf. Rimell (2008) 94: ‘One of the most basic dynamics of Martial’s poetics. . . is its simultaneous shrinking down of big to small, and magnification or elevation of the small. In this way the most lowly genre can aim for epic status, and objective measurements are utterly subjectivised, when it suits: short can seem long, a thin book can become fat in the reading, and vice versa, and simplicity can be deceptive’.  On the Hellenistic development of epigrammatic books, see especially Cameron (1993) (‘epigram was...destined by its very nature to be anthologized’, p.3 [his emphasis]); Gutzwiller (1997); Gutzwiller (1998) esp. 15–56; Argentieri (2007); Bing and Bruss (2007) esp. 17–26.  Porter 2011: 282–6. Among the most important discussions of the poems are Hunter (2002) (revised and expanded as Hunter (2004) and Hunter (2008) 1.457–469); Schur (2004); Smith (2004); Petrain (2005); Kuttner (2005); Prioux (2006) 131–138; Prioux (2008) 159–200; Fuqua (2007); Elsner (2014). A major new way of reading the Lithika is to be found in Platt forthcoming.

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(1, 4 A-B), just as the subsequent epigrams make much of the poetics of size (not least poem poem 15, where the engraver’s eyesight is described as a ‘great marvel’: θαῦμα... μέγα, 15, 7 A-B). And yet, at the same time, such interest in the small is counterbalanced by the language of mass and bulk (πλῆθος: 16, 3 A-B; ὀγκός: 8, 7 A-B; 11, 5 A-B; 13, 2 A-B; 13, 3 A-B; cf. e.g. πύκνος: 15, 3 A-B; 19, 8 A-B; μέγας: 15, 7 A-B; 19, 1 A-B; 19, 11 A-B; πολύς 16, 3 A-B; 18, 6 A-B). The idea comes to a head in the final three poems of this self-contained collection – and not least the very last epigram, in which the vast kingdom of the Ptolemies itself metamorphoses into something ‘lithic’. Following contemporary taxonomic discussions of gems, which associate different stones with different regions,29 the geopoetic span of the collection takes readers on a miniature journey around the vast geopolitical landscape of Ptolemaic rule;30 in line with the later Plinian sentiment whereby gems materialise and encapsulate the manifold wonders of nature (making them, of course, an apposite subject for the final book of the Natural History),31 moreover, the Lithika not only encompass the human and natural world, but are also inscribed with the full force of the cosmos tout court.32 These (poems on) stones transport readers through a recession of different scales and media, all framed within the still larger recessions of the still larger poetic anthology. But perhaps the most monumental-cum-literary encapsulation of this thinking lies in the great library at Alexandria itself.33 In this single monumental complex, the whole literary world, both past and present, found itself collected, with each and every scroll duly classified, catalogued and arranged (according to a newly conceived  Cf. Theophr. Lap. 6: αἱ μὲν οὖν κατὰ τὰ χρώματα καὶ τὰς σκληρότητας καὶ μαλακότητας καὶ λειότητας καὶ τἆλλα τὰ τοιαῦτα, δι’ ὧν τὸ περιττόν, πλείοσιν ὑπάρχουσι καὶ ἐνίοις γε κατὰ τόπον ὅλον (‘Numerous stones, then, possess characteristics in respect of colour, hardness, softness, smoothness, and other such qualities which cause them to be exceptional. Moreover, in some cases at least, these differences belong to the stone of a whole region. . .’).  E.g. India (1, 1 A-B; 2, 4 A-B; 8, 5 A-B); Persia (4, 5 A-B; 5, 2 A-B; 11, 2 A-B; 13, 3 A-B); Arabian mountains (7, 2 A-B); Arabian stream (16, 1 A-B); ‘Mysian Olympus’ (17, 1 A-B); Nabataea (10, 9 A-B), Cicilia (14, 3 A-B), ‘Capheran sea’ (19, 9–10 A-B).  Cf. Plin. HN 37.1: Ut nihil instituto operi desit, gemmae supersunt et in artum coacta rerum naturae maiestas, multis nulla parte mirabilior. tantum tribuunt uarietati, coloribus, materiae, decori, uiolare etiam signis, quae causa gemmarum est, quasdam nefas ducentes, aliquas uero extra pretia ulla taxationemque humanarum opum arbitrantes, ut plerisque ad summam absolutamque naturae rerum contemplationem satis sit una aliqua gemma. On the way in which ‘Les comparaisons de Posidippe préfigurent les idées exposées dans le livre qui couronne l’Histoire naturelle de Pline l’Ancien’, see Prioux (2007) 126, n. 33.  Human agents: Kronios (2, 2 A-B; 7, 3 A-B), Timanthes (5, 1 A-B), Lynceus (15, 4 A-B). Flora and fauna: ‘triple tendril’ of golden flowers (3, 2 A-B), lion (13, 3 A-B), horses (14, 5 A-B), snake (15, 1–2 A-B). Natural elements: sun (13, 4 A-B; 16, 5–6 A-B), moon (ἀντισέληνον, 4, 3 A-B), stars (ἀστερόεντα, 5, 1 AB), rainbow (ἕλκει δὲ γραπτὴν ἶριν, 6, 2 A-B), sea (11, 1–2 A-B; 12, 1 A-B; 19, 1–2 A-B), rivers (15, 1 A-B; 16, 1–2 A-B), mountains (16, 1–2 A-B), air (αἰθερίῳ τῷδ’. . . λίθῳ, 14, 6 A-B – the medium thereby capturing the inscribed impression of Pegasus flying into the deep-blue sky, εἰς κυανῆν ἠέρα, 14, 4 A-B).  For an introduction, see e.g. Canfora (1988) esp. 7–22; cf. also Pfeiffer (1968) 87–104, Blum (1991) 95–123 and Harder (2013).

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indexical system, reflected in Callimachus’ own Pinakes – an encyclopedic list of authors and works allegedly catalogued in some 120 volumes).34 Readers were well aware of the library’s miniature encapsulation of learning: they move from each tiny reference to whole texts, oeuvres and genres, each one pertaining to the whole expanded world stretching beyond the library doors. Each little detail opens up all manner of further possibilities and references, holding the capacity for almost infinite expansion.35

2 The Art of Scale At this point I want to turn from literature to art. In art, as in life, size had always mattered in the Greek world. Right from the beginnings, moreover, we find artists and architects exploiting variables of size in all manner of different contexts: one thinks, for example, of the full range of scales occupied by Archaic kouroi, or else of the theological stakes of turning a god into a grand chryselephantine statue (as indeed into something pocket-sized and portable).36 Hellenistic artists were certainly not the first to experiment with the hermeneutic effects of shrinking their subjects, or indeed extending them to grand proportions. What distinguishes Hellenistic manipulations of scale from those that precede them, rather, is the degree of knowing self-reference.37 In a period which witnessed an explosion of writing about the history of art and its stylistic critique – a period when ‘art’ is often said to have been ‘rationalised’ as phenomenon in its own right – it is perhaps not surprising to find artists exploiting variables of size in order to pose knowing questions about artistic innovation: the semantics of scale served to interrogate the shifting relationships between viewed object and viewing subject.38 By experimenting with size, Hellenistic artists were toying with ideas not only about art, but also about the world as experienced. In the wake of Alexander ‘the Great’ and other towering monarchs – and in the aftermath of numerous newly founded ‘big cities’ or ‘megalopoleis’ – the ‘normal’ scales by which lives were led  On the pinakes, see Blum (1991) esp. 124–181, 226–243, along with Pfeiffer (1968) 128–34.  There is a substantial question here about the intersections between Hellenistic poetic texts and mathematical treatises: the most scintillating contribution is Netz (2009) esp. 54–8, esp. 57; cf. more generally now Retz (2022).  For some recent discussions of the theological implications of size in Greek sculpture, see e.g. Steiner (2001) 97–8; Osborne (2011) 185–215; Platt (2011) esp. 86–92. On fragmentation and the miniature in the context of votive offerings, see also Hughes (2018).  The best introduction remains Onians (1979) 119–49; compare also Beard and Henderson (2001) 147–202 on ‘sizing up power’ in both the Hellenistic and Roman worlds.  On the Hellenistic ‘invention of art history’, see especially Tanner (2006) 205–76. Cf. e.g. Goldhill (1994) 205: ‘[In the Hellenistic world] the culture of viewing is often constructed – in part at least – in and by a series of written responses to works of art. . . Hellenistic culture is where “art history” as a discipline first develops – with all the implications of that for the relations between a viewer and art’ (a sentiment rearticulated in e.g. Goldhill (2007) 2).

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must have looked strikingly different.39 In this connection, it is perhaps significant that leaders themselves exploited size to press their ‘megalomanian’ rhetorics of power. One remembers, for example, Deinokrates’ proposal to turn Mount Athos into a giant statue, holding a newly-founded city in the right hand (cf. Vitr. 2, praef. 1–4 – though never of course realised, the story resonated in the later western imagination).40 Similarly, one might compare the apocryphal tales of Alexander’s exploits in India – how, after failing to convince his army to cross the Hyphasis in 326 BC, Alexander ordered his men to build a gigantic camp (complete with colossal beds), all with the aim of leaving to posterity the proof of his supernatural stature. As Seneca would paraphrase the sentiment, ‘Alexander is too large for the world, and the world too small for Alexander’ (Alexander orbi magnus est, Alexandro orbis angustus est: Suas. 1, 3, 3). Among Hellenistic artists, as among Hellenistic poets, games with size could help figure these new cultural perspectives. Consider, as preliminary example, the evidence of Hellenistic gems. One of the things understood to make gem and intaglio engravings different from representations in other media had long been their size. Designed as prestige emblems and portable sealstones, gems were inherently small objects, and the most exquisite Hellenistic and Roman examples were executed with the greatest finesse – a gold-set sardonyx with the head of a laughing satyr, for example, measuring just 1.76 x 1.45 cm, and complete with an almost imperceptible inscription relating it to a certain Hyllos, ‘Son of Dioscurides’ [Fig. 1].41 Despite the tiny scale of engraved gemstones, we find numerous Hellenistic and Roman gems experimenting anew with conspicuously large subjects – a whole idyllic landscape, including farmstead, track (with chariot) and vessel-covered sea, squeezed into a Carnelian gem measuring just 1.8cm in height, for example,42 or else the colossal Pheidian chryselephantine statue of Olympian Zeus reframed within a nicolo agate.43 Other engravers took up the grandest literary themes of epic.44 Among the most formidable attempts to cut epic down to size is to be found on a first-century BC Carnelian gem in Vienna showing Thetis and Hephaestus before the shield of Achilles [Fig. 2].45 In this case,

 For an excellent preliminary discussion, see Onians (1979) 123–5.  For other ancient references to the story (associated with artists variously recorded as Deinokrates. Cheirocrates and Stasikrates), see Stewart (1993) 402–7, nos. S23, T132–9, with discussion on 28–9; on its significance and subsequent cultural resonances, cf. e.g. McEwan (2003) esp. 92–101; della Dora (2009) 116–19.  Berlin Antikensammlung (Staaliche Museen zu Berlin), inv. FG 11063: for the workshop, and its supposed relationship to the ‘Dioscurides’ mentioned at Suet. Aug. 50 and Plin. HN 37, 8, see Vollenweider (1966) 65–73, Zwierlein-Diehl (2005) 339–41; Zwierlein-Diehl (2007) 119–22; Squire (2011) 297–300.  Cf. Platt (2006) 237, discussing a Carnelian gem in the Hermitage (inv. K1488): ‘the magnitude of the object depicted is at odds with the miniaturism of the depiction itself’.  E.g. LIMC 8.1: 360, s.v. ‘Zeus’, no. 393 (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien, inv. ANSA IX. b 269), and s.v. ‘Zeus’, no. 405 (British Museum, no inventory).  For a preliminary diachronic survey, see Toso (2007).  Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien, inv. ANSA IX. b 679. On ancient literary and artistic receptions of the Homeric shield description, cf. Squire (2012a) and Squire (2019) (both with further bibliography), along now with the major contribution of Thein (2021).

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Fig. 1: Sardonyx (in gold setting) of a satyr, signed by ‘Hyllos, son of Dioscurides’, late first century BC: 1.76 x 1.45 cm. Berlin Antikensammlung (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin), inv. 11063. © Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz.

Fig. 2: Carnelian gem (in gold setting) of Thetis and Hephaestus crafting the shield of Achilles, mid-first century BC: 1.2cm x 0.9cm. Wien Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. ANSA IX b 679. © Kunsthistoriches Museum, Wien.

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the self-consciously ‘great and mighty shield’ of Homer (σάκος μέγα τε στιβαρόν τε, Il. 18, 478, 609) – forged using no fewer than 20 bellows (v.470), a ‘mighty hammer’ (v.477), and a ‘great anvil’ (v.476), and containing within its imagery the whole macrocosm of the universe – is shrunk so as to fit within the gem’s own microcosmic sphere: not for nothing, moreover, is the rounded form of the gem made to echo the oval shape of the shield (complete with yet further dotted elliptic patterning within). The recession of replications playfully prefigures the gem’s own function as sealstone, each time forging new impressions in the soft wax.46 In deciding to open the Milan papyrus with a series of poems on stones, Posidippus (or at least his subsequent editor) seems to have been very much influenced by such artistic games of size and mediation. As is to be expected from epigrams intently aware of their materialist ‘lithic’ backdrop (albeit scribbled on papyrus rather than chiselled into stone), there are numerous intersections between the archaeological and literary records. The grand Carnelian gem celebrated in Lithika 8, for instance, is differentiated from those preceding it not only on the grounds of its Persian royal owner (the gem belonged to Darius, as opposed to the females encountered in the proceeding epigrams), but also on account of its size. The extraordinary scale of the gem is aligned with its grand ancestry: the cameo is engraved with a chariot measuring the ‘length of a span’ (ἐπὶ σπιθ‫ ׅ‬αμή‫ ׅ‬ν μή‫ ׅ‬κεος, 8, 4 A-B), so that its total circumference measures three spans (τρισ]π‫ ׅ‬ί‫ ׅ‬θ‫ ׅ‬α‫ ׅ‬μον περίμετρον, 8, 7 A-B). We find in the Hellenistic world the earliest artistic examples of artists performing similar feats, expanding the gem’s customary lithic frame so as to accommodate a new, larger-than-life set of royal subjects: a reworked Ptolemaic cameo in Vienna provides one example, as indeed do later descendants like the ‘Grand Cameo of France’ in Paris (the gem’s frame now swollen to encompass not only the emperor, but also his empire).47 Gems like these materialise a lithic counterpart to Posidippus’ own poetic games: their leptotes playfully combines miniature craftsmanship with the grandest of subjects, and with the most knowing self-awareness about the artistic mediation involved. The summa tenuitas encapsulated in such gems returns us, of course, to the anecdote about the line-painting by Apelles and Protogenes. Although our knowledge of Hellenistic painting is somewhat limited by extant materials, we can glean some its tell-tale stylistic traits from later Roman adaptations.48 In keeping with the Plinian ‘line-drawing’, one of the things that seems to have characterised this work is an intense interest in the individual brushstroke. In the Roman world (and in the so-called

 On the underlying ‘ontological’ stakes of such sealstones, see Platt (2006).  On the ‘Ptolemaic cameo’ (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien, inv. ANSA IX. a 81), and its relationship to the Posidippan poem, see Prioux (2008) 189–91, along with Kosmetatou (2003). On the size games of Imperial gems like the ‘Grand Cameo of France’ (Bibliothèque Nationale de France: Monnaies, Médailles et Antiques, inv. 264) and Gemma Augustea (Kunsthistorisches Museum, Wien, inv. ANSA IX. a 79), see Beard and Henderson (2001) 195–7.  For some preliminary discussions, see Scheibler (1994) 122–8.

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‘Second Style’ of Pompeian wall painting in particular), an aesthetic interest in the mediating hand of the painter seems to have been combined with a certain conceit of scale – a transparent bowl of fruit, for example, placed on a make-belief shelf that dwarfs the landscape scene below (quickly executed in broad brushstrokes of ochre), in turn framing the ‘real’ vista from an adjacent window [Fig. 3].49 Still more revealing

Fig. 3: Detail of the north wall of cubiculum m of the Villa di P. Fannius Synistor, Boscoreale, late first century BC. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: Rogers Fund, 1903 (inv. 03.13.13a–g). Reproduced by kind permission of the Archiv, Institut für Klassische Archäologie und Museum für Abgüsse Klassischer Bildwerke, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich.

 For the ontological games in cubiculum m of the Villa di P. Fannius Synistor at Boscoreale, cf. Squire (2009) 402.

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is the evidence of miniature landscapes, sometimes made to float in the shiny space of an empty black wall [e.g. Fig. 4].50 In cases like these, variations in scale are harnessed to the larger artistic interrogation of the limits of painterly representation: the carefully composed but impossibly small landscapes flaunt the larger artifice of the mural surface, asking implicit questions about the viewer’s own relationship with the painted wall (as at once an extension of the ‘real’ villa’s space and an impossible façade).

Fig. 4: Central panel of the north wall of the ‘black room’ (room 15) of the Augustan villa at Boscotrecase, last decade of the first century BC. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York: Rogers Fund, 1920 (inv. 20.192.1). Reproduced by kind permission of the Archiv, Institut für Klassische Archäologie und Museum für Abgüsse Klassischer Bildwerke, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich.

The mediating effects of size were also explored by Hellenistic sculptors. Although we know little about their dates or other works, ancient authorities tell of artists like Callicrates and Myrmecides, celebrated for their apocryphally small statues.51 So tiny were Myrmecides’ sculptures, Varro informs, that viewers had to inspect them against black

 Cf. Blanckenhagen and Alexander (1990) 10–12: ‘With the introduction of the central vignette, floating but compact, which establishes a new fashion, the bucolic landscape takes on a strange character and suggest a different meaning’ (p. 12).  For the collected stories about Myrmecides and Callicrates, see Overbeck (1868) 422–3, nos. 2192–2201; cf. KLA 2: 96, s.v. ‘Myrmekides’; KLA 1: 393, s.v. ‘Kallikrates (IV)’; there is an additional reference at Gal. Protr 9.2.

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thread so as ‘to see them more easily’ (Ling. Lat. 7, 1: ut enim facilius uideant). Pliny likewise tells how Callicrates’ sculpted ants were so miniscule that their ‘feet and other limbs are not fully to be seen’ (HN 36, 43: formicarum pedes atque alia membra peruidere non est). As Pliny elsewhere puts it (HN 7, 85): Callicrates ex ebore formicas et alia tam parua fecit animalia, ut partes eorum a ceteris cerni non possent. Myrmecides quidem in eodem genere inclaruit quadriga ex eadem materia, quam musca integeret alis, fabricata et naue, quam apicula pinnis absconderet. Callicrates made ivory models of ants and other creatures that were so small that to anybody else their parts were invisible. As for Mymercides, he became famous in the same genre: by making a four-horse chariot from the same ivory material that a fly would cover with its wing, and a ship that a tiny bee could conceal with its wings.

Although Pliny tells of a similar miraculum parvitatis and magna suptilitas, associating it with the Archaic sculptor and architect Theodorus (HN 34, 83, following a story already known by Posidippus in the early third century), such miniaturist innovations seem to have been a distinctly Hellenistic obsession.52 In the same way that Chares’ colossus of Rhodes served as a figure for artistic magnification (as again celebrated by Posidippus, and in an epigram poignantly juxtaposed to the one on Theodorus’ miniature),53 micro-sculptures like those by Callicrates and Myrmecides served to emblamatise something larger about the aesthetics of miniaturism. Unsurprisingly, perhaps, nothing quite as small as the apocryphal sculptures of Callicrates and Myrmecides survives. As Elizabeth Bartman has demonstrated, however, the Hellenistic world witnessed the rise of a new sort of ‘sculptural copy in miniature’, whereby artists shrank some of the most iconic images of the Classical past into replicas for private display.54 According to this new cultural logic, a single sculpture could be subjected to both extremes of scale, minimised or maximised at whim. The most famous example is Lysippus’ statue of Heracles Epitrapezios (‘Heracles at the table’ or ‘Heracles on the table’?), copies of which survive in both micro- and macro- form.55 But whatever the size of Lysippus’ ‘original’ sculpture – and most

 On Posidipp. 67 A-B and its relationship to Plin. HN 34.83, see Angiò (2001) and Squire (2011) 285–91 (in the context of the ‘Theodorean’ miniature Tabulae Iliacae).  For the significance of the juxtaposition in Posidipp. 67–68 A.B., see esp. Prioux (2007) 122–3 and Prioux (2008) 239–52; cf. Gutzwiller (2002) 56–7 and Männlein-Robert (2007) 72–4.  On this ‘shift of taste’, whereby the ‘miniature stood again on the cutting edge of the artistic innovation’, see Bartman (1992) 147: ‘intended primarily for private viewing in domestic settings, the miniature copy offers a different view of ancient artistic values than the monumental work that once dominated a stoa or forum’ (4).  See Bartman (1992) 147–80, along with Beard and Henderson (2001) 197–99 on the statue type’s ‘play with reduction and enlargement in the Age of Imitation’ (p. 199). Such mediating games were knowingly developed in the ecphrastic poems by Statius (Silv. 4, 6) and Martial (9, 43–4), in the context of a copy owned by Novius Vindex – a statue that was ‘slight in appearance but mighty in impression’

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ancient viewers, we should assume, were probably as unsure about that as their modern scholarly counterparts – the subsequent game lay in recognising the replicated prototype behind each newly re-scaled copy. Like their contemporary literary counterparts, sculptors exploited size to raise knowing questions about originality, adaptation and innovation.

3 The Measure of Homer To relate such literary and artistic interest in size to a sense of cultural ‘burden’ or ‘anxiety’ about the past, as some scholars have done, would be to express the underlying point negatively.56 A more positive way of rationalising the outlook might be in terms of a new sense of relativity. The self-conscious play with scale served to remind viewers that there are always a variety of different views; as with the tiny lines on Apelles’ and Protogenes’ painting, hidden within the great empty canvas, the challenge lay in knowing where – and how – to look. Within the scholarly library, of course, this quest would spur countless commentaries and scholastic disputes – reams of words dedicated to a single line or phrase. It would also result in remarkable feats of learned synthesis. We have already mentioned projects like Callimachus’ Pinakes, at once summarising and ordering the whole cosmos of literary learning. But such literary monuments find their material counterpart in the extant archaeological record, too. One telling example is to be found in the so-called ‘Antikythera mechanism’, discovered amid a shipwreck of the coast of Point Glyphadia in 1900 [Fig. 5a].57 The precise reconstruction of this secondor first-century BC astronomical counting machine remains disputed, based on different models of reconciling the 82 or so extant (but highly corroded) bronze fragments [Fig. 5b]. What is certain is that the whirling wheels, gears and cogs of this machine were intended to chart the various movements of the heavens, measuring time by way of miscellaneous calendric systems (each complete with its own modes of cultural (paruusque uideri / sentirique ingens, Stat. Silv. 4, 6.37–8), depicting ‘a gigantic god in a miniature bronze’ (exiguo magnus in aere deus, Mart. 9, 43. 2); for further discussion, see Newlands (2008) 73–87, McNelis (2008), Bonadeo (2010) 43–56, Porter (2011) 288 and Squire (2011) 267–9.  For the idea of ‘the burden of the past’, see of course Bate (1970); on its pertinence for thinking about the Hellenistic world, see e.g. Bing (1988) 50–90 and Fantuzzi and Hunter (2004) 1–41.  The mechanism has spurred a large bibliography and has been the subject of a recent collaborative research project (www.antikythera-mechanism.gr): for important overviews (with critical discussion of earlier analyses), see Freeth, Jones, Steele and Yanis (2008), Freeth and Jones (2012) and most recently Freeth, Higgon, Dacanalis, MacDonald, Georgakopoulou and Wojcik (2021); also useful are the relevant discussions in the catalogue accompanying the 2012–2013 exhibition at Athens’ National Archaeological Museum (Kaltsas, Vlachogianni and Bouyia (2012) esp. 227–72, complete with excellent photographs). Various Hellenistic and Roman writers certainly knew of similar devices: e.g. Cic. De Nat. Deor. 2, 34–5.

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Fig. 5a: Tentative computer-generated reconstruction of the front panel of the ‘Antikythera mechanism’, second or first century BC: the central dial displays the positions of the Sun, Moon and five known planets, with graduated rings representing the zodiac and the Egyptian calendar months. Reproduced by kind permission of Tony Freeth.

understanding). Elaborately carved bronze panels, inscribed in miniature letters (ranging in height from between a dazzling 1.2 and 2.7mm), elucidated how one might use the various front and back dials to measure not only the time, but also one’s relationship to the sun, moon, stars and the five planets known in antiquity. By at once revealing and miniaturising the workings of the grand cosmos, the little mechanism refigured the relationship between human subjects and the world that contained them. And yet, most significantly of all, this remarkable machine for measuring all time and space was compacted within the smallest possible case: however it was used, and whoever used it,

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Fig. 5b: Photograph showing both sides of Fragments A (top), Fragment B (bottom left) and Fragment C (bottom right) of the ‘Antikythera mechanism’, enhanced by Polynomial Texture Mapping (PTM). Reproduced by kind permission of Tony Freeth.

the mechanism was designed to be highly portable (hence, we might assume, its lying unperturbed at the bottom of the Ocean for some two millennia).58 Faced with something like the ‘Antikythera mechanism’, twenty-first-century viewers understandably talk in terms of ‘science’ rather than ‘art’ – of the ‘world’s first computer’, as one recent book has it.59 My suggestion, by contrast, is that such devices of miniaturisation, prediction and control were themselves also resonant with the sorts of ideas already traced in the context of Hellenistic literary and visual culture. The ‘Antikythera mechanism’ takes up the paradox of encompassing the whole cosmos (no less than culturally divergent modes of understanding it) in something small, light and portable. With that underlying idea in mind, I turn in the third and final section of this chapter to Hellenistic and Roman engagements with Homer, and to the so-called Tabulae Iliacae in particular. Hellenistic responses to Homeric epic gravitated around the poetics of size. Just as the miniature ‘Antikythera mechanism’ served to measure all space and time, Homeric poetry could be understood to encapsulate the whole world in miniature.60 Homeric epic might be inherently ‘great’ and ‘big’, bound up with critical ideas

 Tony Freeth suggests to me (per litteras) an estimated total size of around 33.2 x 18.2 x 10.5 cm, including the front and back covers: my sincere thanks for his enthusiastic help.  Marchant (2008).  One might compare, here, Hellenistic cosmological and allegorical readings of the Homeric description of the shield of Achilles (Il. 18, 478–608), in particular Crates’ astrological interpretation: see Buffière (1956) 155–68, along with Hardie (1985) 15–17, Hardie (1986) 340–3, and Porter (1992) 91–103.

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of what critics like Pseudo-Longinus would call megethos and hypsos (‘height’, ‘loftiness’, ‘sublimity’).61 And yet Homeric poetry was simultaneously seen to kaleidoscope through many different scales at once: ‘nobody has surpassed Homer’s sublimitas when it comes to great things’, writes Quintilian, ‘nor his propriety when it comes to small’ (hunc nemo in magnis rebus sublimitate, in paruis proprietate superauerit, Inst. 10, 1, 46); as the grammarian Heraclitus (roughly contemporary with Quintilian) puts it, ‘Homer gives us the measure of the sphere of the universe in a single line’ (τὸ δὲ σφαιρικὸν ἡμῖν τοῦ κόσμου δι’ ἑνὸς ἐμέτρησε στίχου).62 Unsurprisingly, the same thinking finds contemporary visual expression. On the ‘Archelaos relief’ in the British Museum, for example, Homer is shown not only seated before personifications of the genres to which his all-encompassing poetry gave rise (each duly inscribed: ‘Myth’, ‘History’, ‘Poetry’, ‘Tragedy’, ‘Comedy’, ‘Nature’, ‘Excellence’, ‘Mindfulness’, ‘Trustworthiness’, ‘Wisdom’), but also being crowned by Chronos and Oikoumene [Fig. 6].63 Homeric poetry knows neither chronological or geographical limit. As the ‘Archelaos relief’ demonstrates, Hellenistic and Roman artists seem to have been especially interested in the paradoxes of Homeric size. On the one hand are apocryphal tales of manuscripts which shrunk the Homeric text – whether inscribing the Iliad onto a single parchment encased ‘in a nutshell’ (Plin. HN 7, 85), or else engraving both epics onto a sesame seed (Plut. Mor. (Comm. not.) 1083d–e; cf. Ael. VH 1, 17).64 On the other are cyclical Roman wall paintings that visualised the whole story of the Iliad in a single room: in oecus h of the Casa di Octavius Quartio, for example, an Iliadic frieze measuring just 30cm in height is playfully set below a much bigger frieze (measuring 80cm) relating to the exploits of Heracles, each one snaking around the quadrangular space in different (and multiple) directions [Fig. 7].65 Projects like these seem to have been driven by an interest in summary and synopsis (literalising the Aristotelian idea of ‘seeing all at once’). By contrast, other objects celebrated not the miniaturised totality of the Iliad, but rather its episodic fragmentation. Whatever else we make of the so-called ‘Megarian cups’ on Homeric subjects, for example, these exceptionally thin and lightweight terracotta vessels delighted in extracting scenes and events, bestowing different drinkers with different self-contained epic moments [e.g. Fig. 8]: if, as Kurt Weitzmann has argued, a patron sought to own a set of cups covering the entirety of the Iliad, he would have had to  Zeitlin (2001) provides an excellent guide to ‘visions and revisions of Homer’ in the Hellenistic and Second Sophistic worlds; also useful is Hillgruber (1994–9) 1.5–35; cf. Hunter (2018): esp. 24–42.  Heraclitus, Quaest. Hom. 36, 4 (Russell and Konstan (2005) 64), on Il. 8, 16.  The most detailed discussion is Pinkwart (1965) 19–90. Whatever the relief’s origins (sometimes associated with the Homereion at Alexandria), it is significant that it was later displayed in the same Roman villa at Torre di Messer Paolo which yielded the Tabula Capitolina [Fig. 12a] (cf. e.g. Granino Cecere (1995) esp. 377–84).  I have discussed these and other stories in Squire (2011) esp. 1–11.  The key publication is Aurigemma 1953: 971–1008: for discussion, see especially Croisille (1985); Coralini (2001); Coralini (2002); Squire (2014). For comparison with other Pompeian cycles of Iliadic themes, see Schefold (1975) 129–34; Brilliant (1984) 60–5; Croisille (2005) 154–65; Santoro (2005); Squire (2015).

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Fig. 6: Marble relief of the so-called ‘Apotheosis of Homer’ signed by Archelaos of Priene, probably second century BC (British Museum Sc. 2191; height: c.1.18m). Reproduced by kind permission of the Trustees of the British Museum (Sc. 2191).

purchase almost 200 hundred in total – each one small and lightweight on their own, and yet together amounting to a sizeable collection.66 Such critical thinking about size and synopsis also lies behind the Tabulae Iliacae.67 Some 22 objects have been grouped together under the name altogether, each crafted

 See Weitzmann (1947) 40: ‘all twenty-four books together would require about 168 cups in order to illustrate the Odyssey by roughly five hundred scenes’ (and compare ide, 1959: 37). The most important discussions are Robert (1890); Rotroff (1982) esp. 6–13; and Sinn (1979) (discussing Fig. 8 at pp. 90–1). My own interpretation of the cups is closest to that of Giuliani (2003) 263–80: the cups are not passive ‘reflections’ of ‘illustrated manuscripts’, as Weitzmann believed, but rather prompts for sophisticated sympotic discussion (‘Je vielfältiger die Bilder und je rätselhafter die Zitate, desto reizvoller das Spiel’, Giuliani (2003) 277).  There are three major catalogues: Jahn (1873) (completed posthumously by Jahn’s nephew, Adolf Michaelis, and discussing 12 tablets); Sadurska (1964) (discussing 19 tablets); and Valenzuela Montenegro (2004) (discussing 22 tablets); the two most recent monograph discussions are Squire (2011) and Petrain (2014). For an indexed catalogue of my own discussions of all 22 tablets, see Squire (2011) 387–412, along with Squire (2011) 413–16 on a new supposed tablet published in 2009. Some of the

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Fig. 7: Drawing of the east wall of oecus h in the Casa di Octavius Quartio, Pompeii II.2.2, with the Heracles frieze above, and the smaller Iliadic frieze below (the lower frieze shows first scenes from the end of the poem – the funerary games of Patroclus at the left, and the embassy to Achilles to the central right; it then switches to earlier episodes – Phoenix beseeching Achilles, and Achilles sulking alone in his tent). After Aurigemma 1953: 975, fig. 990. Reproduced by kind permission of the Archiv, Institut für Klassische Archäologie und Museum für Abgüsse Klassischer Bildwerke, Ludwigs-Maximilian-Universität, Munich.

from precious stones (like palimbino and giallo antico), and all of them inscribed in miniature Greek letters. We know little about their precise findspots and original contexts, although most seem to have been found in or around Rome, and a variety of factors confirm a date in the late first century BC or early first century AD. As for the ‘Tabulae Iliacae’ title itself, this is something of a misnomer: although some thirteen tablets certainly relate to the Iliad (with some further four fragments instead relating to other poems within the Trojan cycle), one tablet instead relates to the deeds of Heracles, another to the Theban Cycle, and three engage with historical themes.68 In each case,

inscriptions are catalogued in IG 14: 328–347, nos. 1284–1293, but with minimal reference to the visual context; cf. also Petrain 187–226. My system of referring to the tablets by number and letter follows that developed by Anna Sadurska (cf. IGUR 4, 93–98, nos. 1612–1633).  I have discussed the subjects, dates, materials, findspots and functions of the Tabulae in Squire (2011) 27–86. My own view challenges the standard Anglophone view – namely, that ‘the serious lover

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Fig. 8: Drawing of a ‘Megarian’ Homeric cup with scenes relating to Odyssey 22 (and quotations from vv. 205–8, 226–7, 233–4), second century BC. Berlin Antikensammlung (Staatliche Museen zu Berlin), inv. 3161n. After Robert 1890: 8, fig. A.

though, the tablets explore the semantics of representing grand literary or historical subjects in the smallest possible space. Whether telling/depicting a universal history from the time of Solon to Sulla (counted back from the year AD 15/16: tablet 18L), or else summing up the life of Heracles in pictures, prose and verse (tablet 19J), each tablet plays with much larger questions of synoptic synthesis.69 As the heralded ‘biggest’ and ‘greatest’ poem within the Greek literary tradition, the Iliad provided an ideal subject for such feats of tabular miniaturisation. In engaging with the Iliad, different tablets duly toyed with different modes of rescaling epic. On tablet 14G, for instance, we find an image of Homer reading his poem, surrounded by inscribed lemmata giving short titles of different Iliadic episodes (the surviving texts relate to events from the fourteenth to eighteenth books: Fig. 9); turn the tablet over, by contrast, and viewers are now faced with a single image of epic battle, the culmination of the descriptions on the obverse.70

of Greek literature would have been appalled by such a combination of the obvious, the trivial and the false’ (Horsfall (1979) 46), just as ‘the serious lover of art cannot have derived much pleasure from pictures so tiny that the sculptor could add little if anything of his own interpretations and emotions’ (Horsfall (1994) 79).  On tablets 18L and 19J, see Valenzuela Montenegro (2004) 276–88 and 310–33; cf. Squire (2011) esp. 39–54 and Petrain (2016).  See Valenzuela Montenegro (2004) 252–6, along with Squire (2011) esp. 99.

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Other tablets, like tablet 6B [Fig. 10], combined pictorial friezes, arranged book by book, with metrical summaries of the Iliad (in line with an attested scholastic tradition, whereby each book was summed up in a single verse, lined up collectively from alpha to omega): on this particular tablet, a set of Odyssean friezes seems to have been set below those relating to the Iliad so as to provide an all-in-one snyopsis of the two Homeric poems, and in both words and pictures.71 As fragments like these demonstrate, the Tabulae interlace ideas about the little and large with questions about the relations between the seeable and the readable. Better, perhaps, variables of size serve as a way of at once figuring and sizing up the visualverbal variables of medium: so small are the grammata inscribed on many tablets, after all, that, although audiences can see their visual presence, they would be hard pressed to make verbal sense of them. Take tablet 4N, one of two extant tablets dedicated to the shield of Achilles – the foundational paradigm of all later ‘ecphrastic’ descriptions of artworks, described in Book 18 of the Iliad.72 On one side of the tablet we find a so-called ‘magic square’ diagram in the shape of an altar [Fig. 11a]: so long as readers start from the middle letter and proceed to the outer peripheries, they can at once view and read the text in whatever direction they like; upon decrypting that text, moreover, audiences will find a hexameter title that itself expresses the subject of the relief (ἀσπὶς Ἀχιλλῆος Θεοδώρηος καθ’ Ὅμηρον, ‘The shield of Achilles, Theodorean after Homer’).73 Just as the verso prescribes (its figurative layout and multidirectional sequence teasingly interrogating the boundaries between the pictorial and the textual), the tablet’s recto at once materialises and monumentalises the Iliad’s textual description of the shield [Fig. 11b]. It does so, however, with the most remarkable self-awareness about the collaborative conceits of scale and medium. As with the gem discussed earlier in the chapter [Fig. 2], the object at once converts poem into picture and grand epic design into handheld miniature: for this physical materialisation of the shield measures  On tablet 6B, see Valenzuela Montenegro (2004) 150–68, along with Squire (2011) esp. 182 and Petrain (2014) 211–16. For the reconstruction of the whole, see Weitzmann (1941) 167–8 and Will (1955) 432–7. The one-verse metrical summaries bear a striking resemblance to e.g. Anth. Pal. 9.385 (attributed to a late antique grammarian named Stephanus): for discussion, and further parallels, see e.g. Jahn (1873) 85–6; Kaibel (1878) 494–5; Vogt (1966) 81; Sistakou (2008) 60–1; Squire (2011) 96, n. 39. As I argue in Squire (2011) 283–4, the ideology of at once miniaturising the poems, and setting them alongside one another, might be compared with that of Mart. 14, 184 (Ilias et Priami regnis inimicus Ulixes/ multiplici pariter condita pelle latent: ‘The Iliad and Odyssey, hostile to Priam’s kingdom, lie hidden together, stored in many layers of skin’).  For a more detailed discussion of tablet 4N, see Squire (2011) 303–70.  Such ‘magic squares’ can be found on the verso of seven different tablets (2NY, 3C, 4N, 5O, 7Ti, 15Ber, 20Par): see Squire (2011) 196–246, along with the important discussions of Bua (1971); Rouveret (1988); Rouveret (1989) 367–9; and Petrain (2014) esp. 62–8. Two of the tablets (2NY and 3C) evidently drew out the principle on their reverse side: ‘seize the middle letter/ stroke [γράμμα] and go whichever way you want’ (γράμμα μέσον καθ[ελὼν παρολίσθα]νε οὗ ποτε βούλει (for Guarducci’s reconstruction, see Bua (1971) 6–9, along with the critique and alternative suggestion of Gallavotti (1989) 49). For related ‘Formspiele in der griechischen Dichtung’, see Luz (2010) esp. 377–82.

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Fig. 9: Obverse of tablet 14G (= Berlin Anikensammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, inv. Sk. 1755): Homer is shown reading a scroll, surrounded by verbal lemmata drawn from the Iliad. © bpk – Bildarchiv Preussicher Kulturbesitz, Berlin: Bildagentur für Kunst, Kultur und Geschichte, 84.263.

a mere 17.8 cm in diameter. As though shrinking the ‘great and mighty shield of Achilles’ on tablet 4N were not wonder enough, a further conceit of both size and medium is inscribed around its periphery. According to Homer, whose own description was ringcomposed around this rim, the shield should be adorned with the ‘great rivers of Ocean’ (Il. 18, 483–9; 607–8). Amid these wavy marks of this tablet, by contrast, we find the oceanic source of the Homeric description itself: the entire length and breadth of the Iliadic description (vv. 483–608), running around the object in ten columns, and inscribed with letters measuring as little as 0.7mm. in height [Fig. 11c].74

 For transcription and critical discussion of the inscription’s tiny text – which is of excellent quality, complete with a handful of interesting variants – see Squire (2012b). There is additional learned significance in situating the Homeric quotation where Homer had himself placed the Ocean: for the widespread characterisation of Homer as the ‘Ocean’ to which all literary forms ebb and flow, see Williams (1978) 98–9.

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Fig. 10: Drawing of the obverse of tablet 6B (lost): as well as the surviving Iliadic scenes, central Ilioupersis, and emblem of Achilles’ shield, the tablet’s lower section was also probably adorned with scenes from the Odyssey. After Jahn 1873: Tafel II.

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Fig. 11a: Reverse of tablet 4N (=Rome, Musei Capitolini, Sala delle Colombe inv. 83a). D-DAI-Rom 1973.0228 (Singer): a ‘magic square’ text is arranged in the shape of an altar.

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Fig. 11b: Obverse of plaster cast of tablet 4N in author’s hand (Archäologisches Institut und Sammlung der Abgüsse, Göttingen inv. A1695): the miniature size of this replica ‘shield of Achilles’ makes larger-thanlife heroes of its users. Photograph by the author.

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Fig. 11c: Detail of Göttingen plaster cast of tablet 4N, showing the text inscribed on the outer rim of the obverse. The first three columns of text can be seen here: Il. 18.483–492 (top), vv. 493–504 (upper centre) and vv. 505–519 (lower centre); a fourth column, to the right (on the damaged part of the rim at the bottom) was inscribed with vv. 533–545. Photograph by Stefan Eckardt, reproduced by kind permission.

This is a game of size – of making a text so small as almost to be illegible. But it is also a game of ecphrasis.75 One might not be able to read the text, after all, but one can nonetheless see that it is there. Inverting the ecphrastic conversion of words into images, magnifying the representational artifice involved, we move here from the Homeric verbal description of the shield, to its visual materialisation on the tablet, back to the visible but barely lisible text of the inscription. Such games bring us to the best known tablet, also housed in the Musei Capitolini (and hence often referred to as the Tabula Capitolina) [Fig. 12a].76 The surviving

 The Younger Pliny would very much have appreciated the game (Ep. 5, 6, 42–4). As Pliny writes in a self-declared digression within his own ecphrastic description of a villa – self-consciously comparing ‘the big with the small’ (similter nos ut parua magnis) – one can see how many verses Homer uses to describe of the shield contains (uides quot uersibus Homerus. . . arma. . . Achillis. . . describat); when reading the poetry, however, the overriding description nonetheless gives the impression of being short (breuis).  The most detailed discussion is Mancuso (1909), supplemented by Valenzuela Montenegro (2004) 22–149.

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fragment measures around 25 x 30 cm (marginally bigger than a sheet of A4 paper), and is just 1.5cm thick. Despite this, the extant fragment is crowded with some 250 figures. We are treated to a microscopic – but nonetheless panoramic – synopsis of epic: not only friezes relating to individual books of the Iliad (books 13 to 24 survive, to the right of the extant fragment), but also the epic cycle at large. In the centre we see the self-declared Ilioupersis of Stesichorus, and below it are two friezes relating to the Aethiopis and Little Iliad (the single frieze hence even ‘littler’ than those pertaining to the Iliad); in addition to the visual imagery, a miniature stele offers a verbal synopsis of the latter books of the Iliad (108 lines occupying around 17.5cm). We can be sure that the original composition was symmetrical: there was once an additional stele to the left, and to the left of that twelve further friezes relating to the opening books of the Iliad [Fig. 12b]. For all its diminutive size – its placing of the larger-than-life epic world into the audience’s literal and metaphorical hands – everyone and everything finds its place within this literary map of the epic past: as one of the largest inscriptions has it, just below the tablet’s centre, the grand subject is simply ΤΡΩΙΚΟΣ (‘Trojan’).77 Perhaps still more remarkable is the miniature epigram inscribed on the tablet’s lower frame:78 [τέχνην τὴν Θεοδ]ώρηον μάθε τάξιν Ὁμήρου ὄφρα δαεὶς πάσης μέτρον ἔχῃς σοφίας. Understand [the techne of Theod]orus so that, knowing the order of Homer, you may have the measure of all wisdom.

The poem’s various literary nods could be expanded almost ad infinitum: the apparent allusion to Stesichorus’ Ilioupersis (perhaps even its opening verses); the knowingly intermedial language of techne and sophia; the resonance with the aforementioned opening of Callimachus’ Aetia discussed above, with its instruction to ‘judge poetic wisdom [sophian] by its techne, and not by the Persian measuring-rope’ (αὖθι δὲ τέχνῃ /κρίνετε, μὴ σχοίνῳ Περσίδι, τὴν σοφίην, fr. 1, 17–18 Pf.).79 The point I wish to draw out here, though, pertains to the metron of the pentameter. Such is the at once intermedial and multiscaled techne of this ‘Theodorean’ object that it not only turns Homeric poem into a set of pictures (and indeed back into words again via this virtuoso elegiac couplet), but also resizes the Homeric prototype. By offering a new

 On the meaning and significance of this large inscribed adjective, see the bibliography cited in Valenzuela Montenegro (2004) 32, along with Petrain (2010) 51–3.  For the supplement, see Mancuso (1909) 729–30. A patently related epigram is to be found on tablet 2NY – although only part of the pentamenter survives (τ]έχνην μέτρον ἔχῃς σο[φίας): see Bulas (1950) 114.  For discussion, see Squire (2011) 102–21; cf. Petrain (2012) and Petrain (2014) esp. 49–68. On the significance of the ‘Theodorean’ attribution (the phrase Θεοδώρηος ἡ τέχνη also recurs on 2NY, 2C, 5O, 20Par, and perhaps also on the obverse of tablet 4N), compare Squire (2011) 283–302.

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Fig. 12a: Obverse of tablet 1A (Tabula Capitolina = Rome, Musei Capitolini, Sala delle Colombe inv. 316): a central Ilioupersis is framed by two stelai of epitomising text, single-book friezes from the Iliad (to the left and right), and individual reliefs of the Aethiopis and Little Iliad (below). Reproduced by kind permission of the Direzione, Musei Capitolini, Rome.

‘measure of all wisdom’ (πάσης μέτρον. . . σοφίας), the tablet self-consciously comments on its combined recalibration of both size and medium: this single intermedial object brings together both image and text on the one hand, and the big and the small on the other. ✶✶✶✶ This has been a miniature, broad-brushed survey of a grand theme. But it suffices, I hope, to demonstrate some of the comparative ways in which Hellenistic critics exploited size to raise grander questions about cultural mediation. As with the linepainting of Protogenes and Apelles, recalibrations of scale thrust the very act of literary and artistic manufacture under the metaphorical microscope: within the expanded geographic and cultural horizons of the Hellenistic kingdoms, discourses of

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Fig. 12b: Reconstruction of the same tablet. Author.

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size served as a means not only of measuring the ‘normative’, but also of sizing up individual and collective innovation. One of my foremost aims in this chapter has been to demonstrate the crossmedial connections of this cultural discourse, as pertinent to visual as to literary forms. The Tabulae Iliacae arguably encapsulate that grand thinking: these literal poems in stones, designed (like the ‘magic squares’ on the versos of seven tablets [Fig. 11a]) at once to be ‘read’ and ‘viewed’, shrink the metaphorically grandest subjects into the smallest possible space. As such, they make larger-than-life heroes of their audience: in every sense, they place issues of interpretation and response in the viewer-reader’s hands. Let me conclude, though, with a different observation. For despite the Greek epic themes, the Greek poets named, and not least the numerous Greek inscriptions, all of the tablets seem to have archaeological provenances in and around Rome. Inspect a tablet like the Tabula Capitolina, moreover, and one sees, amid this Greek panorama, a distinctly ‘Roman’ (and highly politicised) gramma at its centre: Aeneas departing from Troy with Anchises and Ascanius [Fig. 12a–12b].80 The discourses of size and scale explored in this chapter pertain not just to (what we still differentiate) as ‘Greek’ art and literature, in other words. They also engaged artists and writers in the largest Hellenistic cosmopolis of them all: the city of Rome.

Works Cited Acosta-Hughes and Stephens (2002): Benjamin Acosta-Hughes and Susan A. Stephens, “Rereading Callimachus’ Aetia fragment 1,” in: Classical Philology 97, 238–255. Acosta-Hughes, Kosmetatou and Baumbach (2004): Benjamin Acosta-Hughes, Elizabeth Kosmetatou, and Manuel Baumbach (eds.), Labored in Papyrus Leaves: Perspectives on an Epigram Collection Attributed to Posidippus (P.Mil.Vogl. VIII 309), Cambridge, MA. Angiò (2001): Francesca Angiò, “Posidippo di Pella, P.Mil. Vogl. VIII 309, col. X, I. 38 – col. XI, II. 1–5 e Plinio il vecchio (Nat. Hist. XXXIV 83),” in: Analecta Papyrologica 13, 91–102. Argentieri (2007): Lorenzo Argentieri, “Meleager and Philip as epigram collectors,” in: Peter Bing and Jon S. Bruss (eds.), 147–64.

 On the centrality of Aeneas (and the iconographic allusion to the statue group in the northern exedra of the Forum of Augustus – paralleled on e.g. tablets 2NY and 3C), see Valenzuela Montenegro (2004) 130–3, 387–92, along with Squire (2011) 148–58, 240–3 and Petrain (2014) esp. 89–93. On the way in which ‘The central panel. . . transforms the end of an episode into a beginning in medias res, for which a past has been given circumstantially, and circumferentially, while the future has been left to the imagination of the viewer’, compare Brilliant (1984) 58. It is worth noting the explicit foreshadowing of Aeneas’ later history to the lower right of the central panel, where we see Aeneas boarding his ship and departing ‘to the west’ (Αἰνήας σὺν τοῖς ἰδίοις ἀπαί[ρ]ων εἰς τὴν Ἑσπερίαν, with discussion in Valenzuela Montenegro (2004) 143–5).

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Marchant (2008): Jo Marchant, Decoding the Heavens: Solving the Mystery of the World's First Computer, London. Martin and Langin-Hooper (2018): S. Rebecca Martin and Stephanie Langin-Hooper, “In/complete: An introduction to the theories of miniaturization and fragmentation,” in: S. Rebecca Martin and Stephanie Langin-Hooper (eds.), The Tiny and the Fragmented: Miniature, Broken, or Otherwise Incomplete Objects in the Ancient World, Oxford, 1–23. McEwan (2003): Indra K. McEwan, Vitruvius: Writing the Body of Architecture, Cambridge, MA. McNelis (2008): Charles McNelis, “Ut sculptura poesis: Statius, Martial, and the Hercules Epitrapezios of Novius Vindex,” in: American Journal of Philology 129, 255–76. Merriam (2001): Carol U. Merriam, The Development of the Epyllion Genre through the Hellenistic and Roman Periods, Lewison, NY. Meyer (2005): Doris Meyer, Inszeniertes Lesevergnügen. Das inschriftliche Epigramm und seine Rezeption bei Kallimachos, Stuttgart. Morgan (1993): Gareth Morgan, “Nullam, Vare . . . Chance or choice in Odes 1.18,” in: Philologus 137, 142–145. Newlands (2002): Carol Newlands, Statius’ Silvae and the Poetics of Empire, Cambridge. Netz (2009): Reviel Netz, Ludic Proof: Greek Mathematics and the Alexandrian Aesthetic, Cambridge. Netz (2022): Reviel Netz, A New History of Greek Mathematics, Cambridge. Onians (1979): John Onians, Art and Thought in the Hellenistic Age: The Greek World View, 350–50 BC, London. Osborne (2011): Robin G. Osborne, The History Written on the Classical Greek Body, Cambridge. Overbeck (1868): Johannes A. Overbeck, Die antiken Schriftquellen zur Geschichte der bildenden Künste bei den Griechen, Leipzig. Petrain (2005): David Petrain, “Gems, metapoetics, and value: Greek and Roman responses to a thirdcentury discourse on precious stones,” in: Transactions of the American Philological Association 135, 329–357. Petrain (2010): David Petrain, “More inscriptions from the Tabulae Iliacae,” in: Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 174, 51–6. Petrain (2012): David Petrain, “The archaeology of the epigrams from the Tabulae Iliacae,” in: Mnemosyne 65, 597–635. Petrain (2014): David Petrain, Homer in Stone: The Tabulae Iliacae in their Roman Context, Cambridge. Petrain (2016): David Petrain, “Hearing Heracles on the Tabula Albani,” in: Evina Sistakou and Antonios Rengakos (eds.), Dialect, Diction, and Style in Greek Literary and Inscribed Epigram, Berlin, 335–359. Petrovic (2006): Ivana Petrovic, “Delusions of grandeur: Homer, Zeus and the Telchines in Callimachus’ Reply (Aitia Fr. 1) and Iambus 6,” in: Antike & Abendland 52, 16–41. Pfeiffer (1968): Rudolf Pfeiffer, History of Classical Scholarship from the Beginnings to the End of the Hellenistic Age, Oxford. Pinkwart (1965): Doris Pinkwart, Das Relief des Archelaos von Priene und die ‘Musen des Philiskos’, Kallmünz. Platt (2006): Verity J. Platt, “Making an impression: Replication and the ontology of the Graeco-Roman seal stone,” in: Art History 29.2, 233–57. Platt (2011): Verity J. Platt, Facing the Gods: Epiphany and Representation in Graeco-Roman Art, Literature and Religion, Cambridge. Platt (2018): Verity J. Platt, “Of sponges and stones: Matter and ornament in Roman painting,” in: Michael J. Squire and Nikolaus Dietrich (eds.), Ornament and Figure in Graeco-Roman Art: Rethinking Visual Ontologies in Graeco-Roman Art, Berlin, 241–78. Platt (forthcoming): Verity J. Platt, Imprint and Line: Making and Mediating between Classical Art and Text, Oxford. Pollitt (1974): Jerome J. Pollitt, The Ancient View of Greek Art: Criticism, History and Terminology, Cambridge.

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Porter (1992): James I. Porter, “Hermeneutic lines and circles: Aristarchus and Crates on the exegesis of Homer,” in: Robert Lamberton and John K. Keany (eds.), Homer’s Ancient Readers: The Hermeneutics of Greek Epic’s Earliest Exegetes, Princeton, 67–114. Porter (2010): James I. Porter, The Origins of Aesthetic Thought in Ancient Greece: Matter, Sensation and Experience, Cambridge. Porter (2011): James I. Porter, “Against leptotes: Rethinking Hellenistic aesthetics,” in: Andrew Erskine and Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones, Creating a Hellenistic World, Swansea, 271–312. Prioux (2006): Évelyne Prioux, “Materiae non cedit opus: matières et sujets dans les épigrammes descriptives (IIIe siècle av. J.-C. – 50 apr. J.-C.),” in: Agnès Rouveret, Sandrine Dubel and Valérie Naas (eds.), Couleurs et matières dans l’antiquité. Textes, techniques et pratiques, Paris, 127–160. Prioux (2007): Évelyne Prioux, Regards alexandrins. Histoire et théorie des arts dans l’épigramme hellénistique, Leuven. Prioux (2008): Évelyne Prioux, Petits musées en vers. Epigramme et discours sur les collections antiques, Paris. Purves (2010): Alex C. Purves, Space and Time in Ancient Greek Narrative, Cambridge. Rengakos (2004): Antonios Rengakos, “Die Argonautika und das ‘kyklische’ Gedicht: Bemerkungen zur Erzähltechnik des griechischen Epos,” in: Anton Bierl, Arborgast Schmitt and Andreas Willi (eds.), Antike Literatur in neuer Deutung, Munich and Leipzig, 277–304. Rimell (2008): Victoria Rimell, Martial’s Rome: Empire and the Ideology of Epigram, Cambridge. Robert (1890): Carl Robert, Homerische Becher, Berlin. Rotroff (1982): Susan I. Rotroff, Hellenistic Pottery: Athenian and Imported Moldmade Bowls. The Athenian Agora: Results of the Excavations conducted by the American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Volume 22. Princeton. Rouveret (1998): Agnès Rouveret, “Tables iliaques et l’art de la mémoire,” in: Bulletin de la Societé Nationale des Antiquaires de France 1988, 166–76. Rouveret (1989): Agnès Rouveret, Histoire et imaginaire de la peinture ancienne (Ve siècle av. J.-C. – Ier siècle ap. J.-C.), Paris. Russell and Konstan (eds.) (2005): Donald A. Russell and David Konstan (eds.) (2005) Heraclitus: Homeric Problems, Leiden. Sadurska (1964): Anna Sadurska, Les tables iliaques, Warsaw. Santoro (2005): Sara Santoro, “I temi iliaci nella pittura pompeiana,” in: Gabriele Burzacchini (ed.), Troia trà realtà e leggenda, Palma, 97–123. Schefold (1975): Karl Schefold, Wort und Bild. Studien zur Gegenwart der Antike, Mainz Scheibler (1994): Ingeborg Scheibler, Griechische Malerei der Antike, Munich. Schur (2004): David Schur, “A garland of stones: Hellenistic Lithika as reflections on poetic transformations,” in: Benjamin Acosta-Hughes, Elizabeth Kosmetatou and Manuel Baumbach (eds.), 118–122. Sinn (1979): Ulrich Sinn, Die homerischen Becher. Hellenistische Reliefkeramik aus Makedonien, Berlin. Sistakou (2008): Evina Sistakou, Reconstructing the Epic: Close Readings of the Trojan Myth in Hellenistic Poetry, Leuven. Smith (2004): Martyn Smith, “Elusive stones: Reading Posidippus’ Lithika through technical writing on stones,” in Benjamin Acosta-Hughes, Elizabeth Kosmetatou and Manuel Baumbach (eds.), 105–17. Squire (2009): Michael J. Squire, Image and Text in Graeco-Roman Antiquity. Cambridge. Squire (2010a): Michael J. Squire, “Making Myron’s cow moo? Ecphrastic epigram and the poetics of simulation,” in: American Journal of Philology 131.4, 589–634. Squire (2010b): Michael J. Squire, “Reading a view: Poem and picture in the Greek Anthology,” in: Ramus 39, 73–103. Squire (2011): Michael J. Squire, The Iliad in a Nutshell: Visualizing Epic on the Tabulae Iliacae, Oxford. Squire (2012a): Michael J. Squire, “Ekphrasis at the forge: The shield of Achilles in Graeco-Roman word and image,” in: Word and Image 29.2, 157–91.

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Squire (2012b): Michael J. Squire, “Ἀσπὶς Ἀχιλλῆος Θεοδώρηος καθ’ Ὅμηρον: An early Imperial text of Il. 18.483–557,” in: Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 182, 1–30. Squire (2014): Michael J. Squire, “The ordo of rhetoric and the rhetoric of order,” in: Michel Meyer and Jaś Elsner (eds.), Art and Rhetoric in Roman Culture, Cambridge, 353–417. Squire (2015): Michael J. Squire, “Running rings round Troy: Re-cycling the epic circle in Hellenistic and Roman visual culture,” in: Marco Fantuzzi and Christos Tsagalis (eds.), A Companion to the Epic Cycle, Cambridge, 496–542. Squire (2019): Michael J. Squire, “A picture of ecphrasis? Re-viewing the Homeric shield of Achilles in the Younger Philostratus (Imagines 10),” in: Alexandros Kampakoglou and Anna Novokhatko (eds.), Gaze, Vision, and Visuality in Ancient Greek Literature, Berlin, 357–417. Steiner (2001): Deborah Tarn Steiner, Images in Mind: Statues in Archaic and Classical Greek Literature and Thought, Princeton. Stewart (1992): Andrew Stewart, Faces of Power: Alexander’s Image and Hellenistic Politics, Berkeley. Stewart (1993): Susan Stewart, On Longing: Narratives of the Miniature, the Gigantic, the Souvenir, the Collection, second edition, Baltimore. Tanner (2006): Jeremy Tanner, The Invention of Art History in Ancient Greece: Religion, Society and Artistic Rationalisation, Cambridge. Thein (2021): Karel Thein, Ecphrastic Shields in Graeco-Roman Literature: The World's Forge, London. Toso (2007): Sabina Toso, “Iliade glittica: Gli eroi attorno alle mura di Troia,” in: Isabella Colpo, Irene Favaretto and Francesca Ghedini (eds.), Iconografia 2006: Gli eroi di Omero. Atti del Convegno internazionale (Taormina, 20–22 Settembre 2006), 249–57, Rome. Tueller (2008): Michael A. Tueller, Look Who’s Talking: Innovations in Voice and Identity in Hellenistic Poetry, Leuven. Valenzuela Montenegro (2004): Nina Valenzuela Montenegro, Die Tabulae Iliacae. Mythos und Geschichte im Spiegel einer Gruppe frühkaiserzeitlicher Miniaturreliefs, Berlin. van de Waal (1967): Hans van de Waal, “The linea summae tenuitatis of Apelles: Pliny’s phrase and its interpreters,” in: Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft 12, 5–32. Vogt (1966): Ernst Vogt, “Das Akrostichon in der griechischen Literatur,” in: Antike & Abendland 13, 80–95. Volk (2010): Katharina Volk, “Aratus,” in: James J. Clauss and Martyn Cuypers (eds.), A Companion to Hellenistic Literature, Malden, MA, 197–210. Vollenweider (1966): Marie-Louise Vollenweider, Die Steinschneidekunst und ihre Künstler in spätrepublikanischer und augusteischer Zeit, Baden-Baden. Vox (1975): Onofrio Vox, “Epigrammi in Omero,” in: Belfagor 30, 67–70. Wagner (1996): Peter Wagner, “Introduction,” in: Peter Wagner (ed.), Icons – Texts – Iconotexts: Essays on Ekphrasis and Intermediality, Berlin, 1–40. Weitzmann (1941): Kurt Weitzmann, “A Tabula Odysseaca,” in: American Journal of Archaeology 45, 166–181. Weitzmann (1947): Kurt Weitzmann, Illustrations in Roll and Codex, Princeton. Weitzmann (1959): Kurt Weitzmann, Ancient Book Illumination, Cambridge, MA. Will (1955): Ernest Will, Le relief cultuel greco-romain. Contribution à l’histoire de l’art de l’Empire romain, Paris. Williams (1978): Frederick Williams (ed.), Callimachus, Hymn to Apollo, Oxford. Wiseman (2007): Boris Wiseman, Lévi-Strauss, Anthropology and Aesthetics, Cambridge. Zeitlin (2001): Froma Zeitlin, “Visions and revisions of Homer,” in: Simon D. Goldhill (ed.), Being Greek Under Rome: Cultural Identity, the Second Sophistic, and the Development of Empire, Cambridge, 195–266. Zwierlein-Diehl (2005): Erika Zwierlein-Diehl, “Gemmen mit Künstlerinschriften,” in: Volker M. Strocka, Meisterwerke: Internationales Symposion anläßlich des 150. Geburtstages von Adolf Furtwängler, Munich, 321–43. Zwierlein-Diehl (2007): Erika Zwierlein-Diehl, Antike Gemmen und ihr Nachleben, Berlin.

Évelyne Prioux

Small Is Beautiful: The Aesthetic Approach to Small-Scale Sculptures in Ancient Criticism The archaeological evidence presents us with a wealth of small-scale statues, but very few literary sources enable us to gain a better understanding of the approach of ancient critics and amateurs to small-scale and miniature sculpture.1 As a matter of fact, the literary sources focus on a small number of famous sculptors who created miniature or small-scale sculptures: Theodorus of Samos, Myrmecides, Callicrates, Phidias, Strongylion and Lysippus. Apart from these famous examples, a number of real or imaginary statuettes and small-scale works are mentioned, for instance, in the Greek Anthology and in Martial’s epigrams, but they remain anonymous. This chapter attempts to review the literary evidence that has come down to us in order to examine the appeal that small-scale and miniature sculptures had for ancient viewers. First, I explore the main topoi used for praising miniature sculptures: comparisons between miniature sculptures and the realm of insects, references to the effect of miniature sculptures on the senses of sight and touch, praise of the artist’s ability to move through varied formats. Second, I study the function of references to small-scale and miniature sculpture in ancient comparisons between the visual arts and literary creation.2

1 Why Small Is Beautiful: The Topoi Used for Praising Small-Scale Sculptures 1.1 Comparisons with the Realm of Insects Although a variety of diminutives (ἀγαλμάτιον, ἀνδριάντιον, ἀνδριαντίσκος, εἰκόνιον, εἰκονίδιον, εἰκόνις, ζώιδιον, imaguncula, sigillum) and adjectives (μικρός, modicus) were used in Greek and Latin with reference to statuettes and small-scale works, there was apparently no specific term for designating “miniatures.”3 And yet certain recurring motives show that the ancients perceived miniature and other small-scale works quite differently from life-size and larger works. A frequent feature in the praise of such sculptures is their possible connection with the realm of insects.

 On the imprecision of ancient terminology for statuettes, small-scale, etc., see Colzani (2022).  I wish to thank Regina Höschele for kindly reading this paper and for her very useful suggestions. All errors remain my own.  See Colzani (2022). https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110741742-003

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Although miniature sculptures could represent a whole variety of subjects, the ancient literary sources tend to focus on works that represented insects or that could be compared, in scale, to insects or other tiny animals. Several authors mention together the works of Callicrates of Sparta and Myrmecides of Miletus or Athens, whose very name or nickname4 brings to mind the ant (μύρμηξ). We know nothing of these artists, except that they were thought to have created miniature chariots so tiny that a fly could cover them with its wings and were thought to have inscribed lines of Homer or an elegiac distich on a millet seed.5 Callicrates was also thought to have carved ants and other animals made out of ivory,6 but the sources remain unclear about the nature of the fly that was to cover the chariot with its wings: was it a real fly or a sculpted fly designed by the artist? The image of the fly pulling the chariots made by Myrmecides and Callicrates only appears in Late Imperial and Byzantine commentaries on the grammatical works of Dionysius Thrax,7 which may well mean that those later authors interpreted earlier sources without knowing what the tiny miniatures really looked like. And yet the idea according to which an artist had simultaneously made a miniature fly and a miniature chariot also appears at an earlier date in an anecdote that Pliny connects with another bronze artist, namely, Theodorus of Samos.8 The idea of a miniature chariot that could fit under the wing of a fly was a perfect topic for striking and easily remembered anecdotes. It seems that the motive was even a topos, since it was applied to at least three artists: Myrmecides, Callicrates, and Theodorus of Samos. Pliny reports that Theodorus had created a self-portrait that showed him holding a miniature chariot in his left hand and a file in his right hand.9 He explicitly says that the chariot and its charioteer could hide under the wings of “a fly that he made at the same time” (simul facta musca). This passage used to be an isolated testimony for Theodorus of Samos until the discovery of the new Posidippus papyrus (P. Mil. Vogl. VIII, 309). A fragmentary epigram of this third-century BCE poet indeed praises the details of a tiny chariot and charioteer made by Theodorus (67 A–B) and appears to mention a fly (μυῖαν):

 The LGPN knows of no other Myrmecides.  See Cic., Acad. Prior. 2, 38, 120; Plin., HN 7, 85 (with the extra mention of a miniature boat that could hide under the wing of a small bee) and 36, 43; Ael., VH 1, 17; Plut., De communibus notitiis aduersus Stoicos 1089e; Jul. Ap., Orat. 2, 208; Theodos. Gramm. [Sp., fortasse Theodor. Prodrom.], Περὶ γραμματικῆς, 54 (no mention of the names of the artists); Choirobosc., Commentaria in Dionysii Thracis Artem Grammaticam, in A. Hilgard (ed.), Grammatici Graeci, vol. 1.3, 110.  Plin., HN 36, 43.  Theodos. Gramm. [Sp., fortasse Theodor. Prodrom.], Περὶ γραμματικῆς, 54 (no mention of the names of the artists); Choirobosc., Commentaria in Dionysii Thracis Artem Grammaticam, in A. Hilgard (ed.), Grammatici Graeci, vol. 1.3, 110.  Squire (2011) 287–288. See, in this book, Anna Anguissola’s chapter.  Plin., HN 34, 83.

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[ca. 14] . . [. .]. ἄντυγος ἐγγύθεν ἄθρει τῆς Θεοδωρείης χειρὸς ὅσος κάματος· ὄψει γὰρ ζυγόδεσμα καὶ ἡνία καὶ τροχὸν ἵππων ἄξονά θ’ [ἡνιό]χ‫ ׅ‬ου τ’ ὄμμα καὶ ἄκρα χερῶν· ὄψει δ’ εὖ [ca. 12] . . . ε‫ ׅ‬ο‫ ׅ‬ς‫ ׅ‬, ἀ‫ ׅ‬λ‫ ׅ‬λ‫ ’ ׅ‬ἐπὶ τῶιδε ἑζομέν[ην – – –] μυῖαν ἴδοις. [. . .] of the chariot, observe at close quarters how hard Theodorus’s hand has worked. For you will see the yoke-band, the reins, the ring on the bit of the horses, the axle, as well as the [driver’s] eye and the tip of his fingers. And you will see well [. . .], but you could see a fly sitting [. . .] over it. (Transl. C. Austin, with modifications.)

The optative ἴδοις (“you would see,” “one would be able to see” . . .) suggests that the fly is not an actual part of the artwork but only a figment of the imagination or a separate work of art that Posidippus here compares to the chariot;10 it is mentioned in order to indicate the chariot’s scale, not because Theodorus actually designed it to go with the chariot. Both Pliny’s anecdote and Posidippus’ epigram probably derive from the same source. I would argue that this lost source was Duris of Samos’ Περὶ τορευτίκης, a treatise that was allegedly one of Pliny’s main sources for book 34.11 When Posidippus wrote his epigrams, Duris of Samos was certainly one of the main authorities on art criticism, and Posidippus appears to have had a special connection with authors coming from Samos, such as his fellow epigrammatists Asclepiades and Hedylus. In his treatise on sculpture, Duris would obviously have sought to praise Theodorus, who had allegedly played a major role in the development of art, metallurgy, architecture, and sculpture on the island of Samos. Even though Posidippus says nothing about a self-portrait or the artist holding a file, he probably knew the same anecdote as Pliny and also believed that Theodorus’ chariot had been part of a signature piece conceived with a programmatic intent by an artist who wanted to be seen as a master of ἀκρίβεια, since he carefully and patiently revised, refined, and polished the minutest details of his creations. It is quite possible that third-century BCE literary criticism already played on a Greek equivalent of the limae labor et mora (“the labor and delay of the file”) metaphor that we know thanks to Horace (Ars Poet. 291). Connected through similar insect-related anecdotes, Theodorus, Callicrates, and Myrmecides are mentioned together by Apuleius the Grammarian (De orthograph. 139), who says that Myrmecides was “remarkable for creating miniature marble works, and better than Theodorus and Callicrates” (admirandus in minutis marmoreis operibus formandis, meliorque Theodoro et Callicrate).

 When describing the actual appearance of the work of art, Posidippus twice uses the indicative future (ὄψει) and not the optative.  See Linfert (1978).

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We have no idea of the century in which Myrmecides and Callicrates were believed to have lived. Even though Johannes Overbeck tentatively placed them at the turn of the fourth and third centuries BCE, it is probable that ancient authors thought of them as Archaic or Classical artists. Miniature works were apparently often felt to be characteristic of Archaic and Early Classical times.12 Of course, it is possible that Myrmecides was an entirely invented and legendary figure. Julian the Apostate believed him to be an adversary of Phidias and to have consciously “stood in opposition to the art” of his famous compatriot (ἀντιπραττόμενον τῇ Φειδίου τέχνῃ), which would set him, at the earliest, in the mid-fifth century BCE.13 It is difficult to know if we can trust the information passed down by Julian; as we will see, there appears to be a significant amount of confusion in ancient sources on miniature works, including Julian. According to several ancient authors, Phidias, a master of kolossourgia, also paid the greatest attention to details. Julian goes one step further, attributing to Phidias a series of miniature sculptures of insects: a cicada, a bee, and even a fly.14 He seems to draw this information from other unnamed sources (φασίν), possibly lost epigrams, as could be indicated by the final paradox which opposes the idea of being of bronze by nature but breathing thanks to art: ᾔδει καὶ μικρῷ γλύμματι μεγάλης τέχνης ἔργον ἐγκλεῖσαι, οἷον δὴ τὸν τέττιγά φασιν αὐτοῦ καὶ τὴν μέλιτταν, εἰ δὲ βούλει, καὶ τὴν μυῖαν εἶναι: ὧν ἕκαστον, εἰ καὶ τῇ φύσει κεχάλκωται, τῇ τέχνῃ γ̓ ἐψύχωται. ἀλλ̓ ἐν ἐκείνοις μὲν ἴσως αὐτῷ καὶ ἡ σμικρότης τῶν ζῴων εἰς τὴν κατὰ λόγον τέχνην τὸ εἰκὸς ἐχαρίζετο but he knew also how to confine a work of great art within the limits of a small piece of sculpture; for instance, they say that his grasshopper and bee, and, if you please, his fly also, were of this sort; for every one of these, though naturally composed of bronze, through his artistic skill became a living thing. In those works, however, the very smallness of the living models perhaps contributed the appearance of reality to his skilful art. (Transl. W. C. Wright.)

The reliability of Julian’s information is inevitably called into question when he subsequently introduces the praise of another masterpiece supposedly attributed to the same “Phidias”: σὺ δ’ ἀλλὰ τὸν ἀφ̓ ἵππου θηρῶντα Ἀλέξανδρον, εἰ δοκεῖ, σκόπει, οὗ τὸ μέτρον ἐστὶ πᾶν ὄνυχος οὐ μεῖζον. οὕτω δ̓ ἐφ̓ ἑκάστου τὸ θαῦμα τῆς τέχνης κέχυται, ὥστε ὁ μὲν Ἀλέξανδρος ἤδη τὸ θηρίον βάλλει καὶ τὸν θεατὴν φοβεῖ, δἰ ὅλου δυσωπῶν τοῦ σχήματος, ὁ δὲ ἵππος, ἐν ἄκρᾳ τῶν ποδῶν τῇ βάσει τὴν στάσιν φεύγων, ἐν τῇ τῆς ἐνεργείας κλοπῇ τῇ τέχνῃ κινεῖται . . .

 Hughes (2019).  See Jul. Ap., Εὐσεβίας τῆς βασιλίδος ἐγκώμιον 7. The idea was apparently proverbial: see Appendix proverbiorum, century 1, section 68, l.3, in Corpus paroemiographorum Graecorum, vol. 1, ed. von Leutsch and Schneidewin; Suda, s.v. Μυρμηκίδην.  Jul. Ap., Ep. 8 Metzler = 67 Wright.

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and do you, please, look at his Alexander hunting on horseback, for its whole measurement is no larger than a fingernail. Yet the marvellous skill of the workmanship is so lavished on every detail that Alexander at one and the same time strikes his quarry and intimidates the spectator, scaring him by his whole bearing, while the horse, reared on the very tips of his hoofs, is about to take a step and leave the pedestal, and by creating the illusion of vigorous action is endowed with movement by the artist’s skill. (Transl. W. C. Wright.)

Since Julian has been drawing a parallel between the letters written by his correspondent—letters that encapsulate wonderful eloquence in a small format—and a gemstone that produces an impression on his own soul, it is probable that Julian or one of his sources got confused by the existence of a series of Hellenistic gemstones signed “Pheidias.”15 If so, what Julian was describing was, in fact, a gemstone produced by a Hellenistic or imperial engraver. The appeal of anecdotes connecting great sculptors to miniature sculptures of insects resulted in more than one instance of confusion. It is well known that Pliny the Elder, misled by the blurred memory of a Greek epigram or perhaps by errors produced by a careless scribe, believed that the bronze artist Myron of Eleutherai had built a tiny funerary monument for a cicada and a locust.16 The comparison with epigram Anth. Pal. 7, 190, in fact, shows that the Hellenistic poem misremembered or misread by Pliny mentioned a monument made by a little girl, Myro, for her pet insects.17 These strange misattributions committed by Pliny and Julian, in fact, reveal the importance of the world of insects as a means to describe the scale of miniature works. Ancient viewers and readers were apparently mesmerized by miniatures that were as little as a fly or even tinier. These miniature sculptures are also often connected with the mention of costly materials such as ivory, because it was obviously easier to use such materials on a small scale and also because these costly materials enhanced the prestige and value of miniature works. Theodorus, Myrmecides, Callicrates, Myron, and Phidias were believed to be masters of toreutics as well as bronze sculptors, and their alleged or supposed talent in miniature making was felt to be a seminal part of their work. The authors who praised miniature makers such as Theodorus were possibly defending a vision of art that closely connected statue making and toreutics, presenting them as one and the same art, the τορευτίκη τέχνη. Duris, author of a lost Περὶ τορευτίκης, possibly defended this view, which would account

 See, for instance, the Hellenistic garnet engraved with a youth, perhaps Alexander the Great, fastening his sandal: London, BM, inv. 1872,0604.1343. The inscription, possibly genuine, reads: ΦΕΙΔΙΑC ΕΠΟΕΙ. The figure is strongly inspired by Lysippus, as was noted by Vollenweider (1987) 129.  HN 34, 57: Myronem fecisse et cicadae monumentum ac locustae carminibus suis Erinna significat (“Erinna indicates in her poems that Myron even made a monument for a cicada and a locust”).  On Pliny’s use of Greek epigrams as sources for his chapters on the visual arts, see Benndorf (1862) 8, 52–66, 69.

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for the importance that Posidippus gives to Theodorus and Myron in the andriantopoiika—his own miniature history of bronze sculpture.18

1.2 How Do Miniature Sculptures Appeal to the Senses? Several topoi of praise regard the appeal to the senses of miniature works. A recurring idea is that their details are so small that they can barely be seen. It is possibly this idea that Julian expresses when saying that “the very smallness of the living models perhaps contributed the appearance of reality to [Phidias’] skilful art” (Ep. 67 Wright, transl. W. C. Wright). Real and sculpted insects are so tiny that they somehow escape our sight, which prevents us from having full knowledge of their visual appearance. In a more positive way, Pliny twice says that it is not possible to fully see the miniature works of Myrmecides and Callicrates: tam parua fecit animalia, ut partes eorum a ceteris cerni non possent (“he made animals that were so tiny that their body parts escaped the sight of other people,” HN 7, 85); cuius formicarum pedes atque alia membra peruidere non est (“it is not possible to see clearly the legs and other body parts of his [= Callicrates’] ants,” HN 36, 43). Implicitly, it is thought that artists who made miniatures were gifted with an unusually sharp sense of sight that enabled them to make details that other people could barely perceive.19 Varro (De Ling. Lat. 7, 1, 1) speaks of grammarians who add or remove a letter from a word in order to clarify its etymology and, hence, its meaning and compares them to “the people [who] add black bristles on the barely visible ivory insects of Myrmecides so as to be able to see them more easily” (ut enim facilius obscuram operam Myrmecidis ex ebore oculi uideant, si extrinsecus admoueant nigras setas). If some miniature works are believed to escape the eyesight, others are praised because they stimulate the viewer’s desire to take a closer look and to touch and manipulate the artwork—which is, of course, much easier with a miniature or smallscale work than with a large-scale sculpture.20 This aspect is implicitly present in Pliny’s description of Theodorus’ self-portrait: when picturing the artist in the act of manipulating and observing the details of his miniature chariot, the reader will probably develop a desire to touch and examine, in his turn, the tiny statue. In this epigram, Posidippus encourages his reader to “take a closer look” at the statue (which, of

 Prioux (2015a). On the interest of Duris in artists connected with Samos through their origins or through their places of activity, see Linfert (1978).  This idea is made explicit by Posidippus’ praise of certain gem cutters; see 15 A–B, a poem also reproduced by Tzetz. Chil. 7, 653–660.  Cf. Langin-Hooper (2015) 62: a miniature’s “small size and delicacy draw in the viewer, encouraging inspection of intricate details.” See also Hughes (2019): “Although it is not only miniature votives that invite real and imagined touching, the handheld and decorative qualities of the tiny votives do bring the theme of tactile contact to the foreground.” See also Elsner (2020) 6.

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course, he is very unlikely to be observing in reality) by repeating forms of the verb ὀράω (“to see”) and ἀθρέω (“to gaze”): ἐγγύθεν ἄθρει (l.1: “observe at close quarters”), ὄψει/ὄψει δ’ εὖ (repeated in anaphor in l.3 and 5: “you will see,” “you will see well”), ἴδοις (l.6: “you might/could see”). The repetitions of verbs meaning “to see/to observe” contribute to the effect of evidence (enargeia) of this epigram: Posidippus clearly intends to give the reader the impression that the miniature work is really under his eyes. These repetitions also show how such a tiny masterpiece would appeal to the senses and require a very detailed examination of all its parts. The careful enumeration of all the small parts of the charioteer’s body (his eyes, his fingertips) or of the chariot itself creates the impression that one can distinguish and really observe the minute details of the work, whereas the body parts of Myrmecides’ insects tended to escape the eyesight. Posidippus’ epigram creates a sense of wonder; as a miniature chariot, Theodorus’ work echoes, within Posidippus’ book, poem 15 A–B, the description of a miniature chariot engraved on a gem, “a big wonder” (μέγα θαῦμα).21 Small-scale statuettes were easily moved and manipulated, and this encouraged a possible feeling of intimacy between the owner and his favorite artworks; one could, for instance, travel with one’s favorite works. Statius says that Alexander traveled with Lysippus’ Heracles Epitrapezios and often grasped it with his hands22 (the Epitrapezios was a Heracles sitting at the table of a divine banquet to drink the nectar of immortality,23 and/or it could be set on its owner’s table).24 Small-scale sculptures thus appear to have a sensual appeal for their viewer. About the Heracles Epitrapezios, Statius exclaims: Amphitryonades multo mea cepit amore / pectora nec longo satiauit lumina uisu / tantus honos operi finesque inclusa per artos / maiestas! (Silv. 4, 6, 33–36; “a Hercules, [. . .] with which I fell deeply in love; nor, though long I gazed, were my eyes sated with it; such dignity had the work, such majesty, despite its narrow limits”). Amatory and sensuous connotations are also present in the evocation of Nero’s interest in Strongylion’s Eucnemon Amazone (the Amazon of the beautiful legs), which was “carried around as being part of the emperor’s suite,”25 and pederastic associations are part of Martial’s praise of the same artist’s Βρούτου παιδίον, or Puer Bruti, a small-scale statue of a boy with whom Brutus,

 On miniature works and figurines as “a wonder to see” (θαῦμα ἰδέσθαι), see Neer (2020) 14–21.  Stat., Silv. 4, 6, 61–63.  Stat., Silv 4, 6, 54–56. On the ambiguous meaning of Epitrapezios, see Bonadeo (2010) 29–39.  Stat., Silv 4, 6, 33 (genius tutelaque mensae), 45 (gestamina mensae).  Plin., HN 34, 82: in comitatu Neronis princips circumlatam. The fact that the Amazone is carried around rather suggests that the Eucnemon was a statuette, although we do not have other sources identifying her as such. A megalomaniac emperor like Nero may have had a life-size statue in his retinue. A statuette from Herculanum (Naples, MAN, inv. 49999) that shows a youthful Amazon on the back of an unruly horse has been tentatively identified as a replica of Strongylion’s lost Eucnemon Amazone by several scholars, who noted the prominent legs of the figure and possible analogies with other works of Strongylion. See Corso (2004) 62–63.

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Caesar’s murderer, was believed to be in love.26 The possibility of touching and carrying the statuette along with oneself opens up the possibility of having a “pet statuette” and a quasi-agalmatophilic relationship with the artwork. Interestingly, Strongylion’s Puer Bruti and the Hercules Epitrapezios Nouii Vindicis are among the only examples that we know in which a work of art was named or renamed after a historical character who owned or dedicated it;27 an Athena by Euphranor that was dedicated by Quintus Lutatius Catulus became the Minerua Catuliana,28 and Cicero wishes he will receive from Appius Claudius Pulcher a Minerva which he will call “not only Pallas but Appias.”29

1.3 The Versatility of the Great Artist The praise of miniature artworks is often connected with the praise of the versatility of great artists who manage to move from large-scale or even colossal sculptures to the tiniest masterpieces and who manage to give to a very small work the meaningfulness of a colossal work. Memorable small-scale artworks appeal to the viewer’s mind and emotions, as would much larger statues. Statius notes that Lysippus’ Heracles Epitrapezios is paruusque uideri / sentirique ingens (“small to the eye, yet a giant to the mind!,” Silv. 4, 6, 37–38, transl. J. H. Mozley). As we have seen, Julian the Apostate, commenting on a miniature “hunt of Alexander” (Ep. 67 Wright), states that the miniature portrait of Alexander τὸν θεατὴν φοβεῖ, δἰ ὅλου δυσωπῶν τοῦ σχήματος (“intimidates the spectator, scaring him by his whole bearing”). Interestingly, the sculptural type of the Heracles Epitrapezios is known through several small-scale replicas but is also very close to a colossal sculptural type, attested, for instance, by the resting Heracles of Alba Fucens, now in the Museum of Chieti. It is impossible to determine if both the colossal and the small-scale versions of the Heracles Epitrapezios were conceived by Lysippus, as two different bronze archetypes, or if Lysippus only created the small-scale version and another artist reworked the type on a colossal scale at some later point in the tradition. Statius knew the small-scale original or at least a small-scale copy that was mistaken for the original, but he possibly also knew colossal replicas deriving from the same sculptural type. At any rate, he knew, as did every learned Roman, that Lysippus had conceived both small-scale

 Plin., HN 34, 32 (puerum quem amando Brutus . . . cognomine suo illustrauit: “a boy whom Brutus loved and made famous by passing his surname on to him”); Mart., Ep. 14, 17 (istius pueri Brutus amator erat: “Brutus was in love with that boy”).  The Heracles Epitrapezios is praised by Statius in a poem that details its pedigree of successive owners and is entitled Hercules Epitrapezios Nouii Vindicis, as if the name of the statuette’s owner had become part of the name of the little artwork.  Plin., HN 34, 77.  Cic., Ad Fam. 3, 1.

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statues and colossal artworks (e.g., the Heracles and the Zeus of Tarentum). Because it is impossible to know if Statius was aware of the existence of colossal sculptures closely related to the Epitrapezios type, the modern commentaries on Silva 4, 6 express various opinions on the meaning of lines 45–46. In these lines, Statius praises Lysippus’ capacity pariter gestamina mensae / fingere et ingentes animo uersare colossos (“at once to model an ornament for the table and to conceive in his mind mighty colossal forms!,” transl. J. H. Mozley). According to Alessia Bonadeo’s commentary, three different interpretations seem to be possible:30 1. Heracles left on Lysippus’ soul the same impression as would a colossal figure, and the artist managed to translate this impression into a miniature work. Lysippus has “seen” Heracles thanks to his phantasia (“power of imagination”) and has produced a perfect mimesis of the god in a small-scale format. Lines 45–46 would thus build on the idea according to which his Heracles was paruusque uideri / sentirique ingens (“small to the eye, yet a giant to the mind!,” l. 37–38). This is the interpretation that A. Bonadeo favors. 2. A second possibility consists in thinking that Statius alludes to the fact that Lysippus was able to move from one format to another, from colossal works (such as the Heracles of Tarentum) to small-scale works such as the Epitrapezios. 3. A third interpretation, building on De Visscher’s work and approach to this poem,31 consists in thinking that Statius here alludes to the fact that Lysippus had initially conceived two versions of the Heracles Epitrapezios, a small-scale one and a colossal one. I would personally favor the second interpretation, because Statius’ motivation for praising Lysippus’ work is possibly that he shared, as a poet, the versatility of the bronze artist, likewise moving through varied scales, from long epic poems such as the Thebaid to shorter forms such as the Silvae.32 Several authors indeed used the praise of miniature sculptures to promote their own choice to write small-scale poems or small-scale prose works. When praising the versatility of Phidias (Ep. 67), Julian the Apostate is primarily trying to draw an analogy between this great artist and his correspondent, who, he says, manages to show his mastery of eloquence even in short letters (“you now display the highest pitch of excellence in a few written words,” transl. W. C. Wright) and who shines in small prose texts after having delivered very long speeches. The connection between the praise of miniature works and the literary concerns and programmatic declarations of ancient authors thus leads us to consider the

 Bonadeo (2010) 215.  De Visscher (1962).  Compare with Klein (2017) 371–372.

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metapoetic and metaliterary reasons for which ancient authors chose to praise little statuettes and miniature sculptures.

2 From Posidippus to the Elder Philostratus: Problems of Scale in Ancient Comparisons between Statuary and Writing 2.1 Small-Scale Statuary as a Symbol for Small-Scale Poetry and Small-Scale Works One of the reasons for which ancient authors referred to small-scale artworks was the analogy they perceived between formats in sculpture and the length of a literary composition. For instance, it has been rightly suggested that Posidippus’ interest in glyptics and seals was motivated by his work as an epigrammatist;33 like the gem cutters he praised, Posidippus created tiny works. Literary epigrams were always felt to be connected to the epigraphic and inscribed form of the genre, and Posidippus could therefore think of himself as the author of tiny engravings. This interest in small-scale artworks as a symbol for epigrams certainly encouraged him to praise the tiny chariot conceived by Theodorus of Samos (67 A–B). Like Posidippus himself, Theodorus worked for kings and created tiny masterpieces.34 Posidippus is not the only epigrammatist who played on the possible analogy between statuettes and epigrams. One of his contemporaries, Leonidas of Tarentum, did the same but with a focus on rustic statuettes made of wood or clay, which possibly reflected the humbleness that Leonidas associated with the art of the epigrammatist. As a matter of fact, Meleager’s Garland apparently contained an entire series of epigrams by Leonidas of Tarentum and other authors that described votive statuettes set together in a rustic landscape. All these epigrams more or less recall the setting of Plato’s Phaedrus, a locus amoenus with shade and a clear stream, which ancient critics considered to be an example of charm and grace. Dionysius of Halicarnassus even echoes the words of the Phaedrus when describing Plato’s style, as if the landscape of

 Bing (2005); Hutchinson (2002); Höschele (2010) 163–170; Petrain (2005); Prioux (2008b) 173–177; Prioux (2010); Prioux (2013).  Squire (2011 and 2016) has argued that the “Theodorean τέχνη” mentioned on several of the Iliadic tables was not a signature of an unknown artist named Theodorus or a reference to an otherwise unknown Theodorus but a way of mentioning the affiliation of the Iliadic tables to a tradition of miniature art that takes its starting point from Theodorus of Samos. It is, of course, impossible to determine whether Squire is right in assuming this.

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the Phaedrus could be interpreted as a reflexive metaphor of Plato’s written style.35 Many poets of the Hellenistic period were probably aware of similar interpretations, and it is possible that at least some of the epigrams that echo Plato’s locus amoenus had a programmatic meaning. For instance, one may cite the following epigrams from Meleager’s Garland:36 Πέτρης ἐκ δισσῆς ψυχρὸν κατεπάλμενον ὕδωρ, χαίροις, καὶ Νυμφέων ποιμενικὰ ξόανα, πίστραι τε κρηνέων, καὶ ἐν ὕδασι κόσμια ταῦτα ὑμέων, ὧ κοῦραι, μυρία τεγγόμενα, χαίρετ’· Ἀριστοκλεης δ’ ὅδ’ ὁδοιπόρος, ᾧπερ ἀπῶσα δίψαν βαψάμενος τοῦτο δίδωμι γέρας. Hail, thou cold stream that leapest down from the cloven rock, and ye images of the Nymphs carved by a shepherd’s hand! Hail, ye drinking troughs and your thousand little dolls, ye Maidens of the spring, that lie drenched in its water! All hail! And I, Aristocles, the wayfarer, give you this cup which I dipped in your stream to quench my thirst. (Leonidas of Tarentum, Anth. Pal. 9, 326, transl. W. R. Paton.) Νύμφαι ἐφυδριάδες, ταῖς Ἑρμοκρέων τάδε δῶρα εἵσατο, καλλινάου πίδακος ἀντιτυχών, χαίρετε, καὶ στείβοιτ’ ἐρατοῖς ποσὶν ὑδατόεντα τόνδε δόμον, καθαροῦ πιμπλάμεναι πόματος. Ye Nymphs of the water, to whom Hermocreon set up these gifts when he had lighted on your delightful fountain, all hail! And may ye ever, full of pure drink, tread with your lovely feet the floor of this your watery home. (Hermocreon, Anth. Pal. 9, 327, transl. W. R. Paton.) Νύμφαι Νηϊάδες, καλλίροον αἳ τόδε νᾶμα χεῖτε κατ’ οὐρείου πρωνὸς ἀπειρέσιον, ὔμμιν ταῦτα πόρεν Δαμόστρατος Ἀντίλα υἱὸς ξέσματα, καὶ δοιῶν ῥινὰ κάπρων λάσια. Ye Naiad Nymphs, who shed from the mountain cliff this fair stream in inexhaustible volume, Damostratus, the son of Antilas, gave you these wooden images and the two hairy boar-skins. (Damostratus, Anth. Pal. 9, 328, transl. W. R. Paton.)

These epigrams are the only or among the rare testimonies that we have for the work of Hermogenes and Damostratus as epigrammatists. It seems that Meleager has chosen to summarize the production of these authors by selecting in their works an image of the multiple and especially the representation of multiple statuettes assembled together in one and the same stream. Gow and Page suspect Damostratus to be a

 Dem. 5 and 28 (to be compared with Pl., Phdr. 230 b–c). See Galand-Hallyn (1994) 122–123; Hunter (2012) chap. 4.  See Prioux (2014).

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ghost because we know nothing else of him. They note that the epigrammatist’s name could well have been inferred from the epigram. And yet the epigram by Hermocreon, who is indeed named as the author of another epigram (Anth. Plan. 11), shows that this may well be the sphragis of an epigrammatist of whose production we are now completely ignorant.37 Streams and sources were among the most frequent metapoetic metaphors used by ancient poets. I would therefore suggest that the image of the votive statuettes drenched by clear streams was used by several Hellenistic poets to represent their own literary production; such poems could have been set at the opening or closing of a cycle of epigrams published in the same book. The statuettes would have served as a metaphor for the epigrams, brought together in a sacred and charming place, namely, the book where written words flow thanks to the stream of inspiration. Hermocreon’s epigram speaks in favor of such a conclusion, since it is, obviously, a sphragis poem, highlighting the poet’s name. It could be interesting to note the precise differences in how the various streams are described in these epigrams: the Callimachean pure drink of Hermocreon differs from the inexhaustible volume of the mountain waterfall imagined by Damostratus. The earliest examples of the series are very interesting and have a clear metapoetic dimension. Meleager then assembled these collections of statuettes, putting them all together in one idyllic landscape on the pages of his Garland. It is certainly with a similar metapoetic purpose that Martial introduced in his Apophoreta the praise of a series of statuettes and little paintings (Ep. 14, 170–182)38 and that Statius, an author of both epic poems and shorter works, celebrated the versatility of Lysippus and his agility in moving from one format to another. Martial makes the connection between epigrams and statuettes explicit, when responding to Gaurus, a critic who wrote an epic poem and belittled the epigrammatist because of his brevity (Ep. 9, 50, 5–6): Nos facimus Bruti puerum, nos Langona uiuum: / tu magnus luteum, Gaure, Giganta facis (“I make a live Brutus’ Boy, a live Langon: you, Gaurus, great man that you are, make a Giant of clay,” transl. D. R. Shackleton Bailey). The Bruti puer is the famous small-scale statue by Strongylion that Caesar’s murderer allegedly fell in love with. The otherwise unknown Langon was probably another small-scale sculpture representing a boy named or nicknamed Langon; the possibility that this was a famous sculpture indeed gains weight if one considers that Hubert Gallet de Santerre and Henri Le Bonniec39 proposed to emend the text of Pliny, 34, 79 from the strange and self-contradictory Lyciscum mangonem, puerum subdolae ac fucatae uernilitatis (“[Leochares made] a Lykiskus, a slave trader, who was a servile boy and a devious counterfeit”) to Lyciscus Langonem, puerum subdolae ac fucatae uernilitatis (“Lyciscus

 HE II, 305.  Prioux (2008b) 253–335; Prioux (2015b).  Gallet de Santerre/Le Bonniec (1945); they based their reading on manuscripts V and R (Luciscus langonem).

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made the Langon, a servile boy and a devious counterfeit”).40 If Martial here compares his epigram to small-scale famous masterpieces, he also suggests, in other programmatic pieces, implicit comparisons with humble clay figurines, such as the gifts of the Saturnalia. In a similar manner, the anonymous author of the Carmina Priapea played on repeated comparisons between the statuettes of Priapus and his own epigrams.41

2.2 The Tension between Precision and the Sublime The praise of small-scale works sometimes involved references to the theory of style and to the complex relationship between the treatment of details and, for instance, the pursuit of stylistic sublimity. As an epigrammatist, Posidippus was certainly inclined to praise small-scale works of art, but an examination of his andriantopoiika reveals that he was also interested in large-scale and colossal statues and that his main goal may have been to formulate complex ideas on style and on the possibility of articulating a taste for the sublime, with an attention to small-scale details. The new epigrams by Posidippus indeed bring together the praise of Theodorus of Samos, a sixth-century BCE artist who was famous for his miniature works (67 A–B) and a poem celebrating Chares of Lindos, a Hellenistic sculptor famous for conceiving the Rhodian Colossus, an effigy of the god Helios that was more than 30 meters high. As a matter of fact, Posidippus’ andriantopoiika repeatedly bring together artworks that could be perceived as having opposed characteristics. He expresses admiration for Archaic as well as contemporary artworks and shows that it is possible to enjoy the σεμνότης (“nobility”) of statues of heroes and gods designed by Myron, Cresilas, or Chares of Lindos, while also praising the λεπτότης (“subtlety,” “slenderness”) of Hecataeus’ portrait of Philitas, a poet well known for his skinny and sickly body. In Posidippus’ view, it is also possible to express admiration for the μέγεθος of Chares’ and Lysippus’ colossal works and to appreciate fully the wonderful technical skill of Theodorus’ miniature chariot. The poet’s appreciation of contrasting sculptural styles was probably meant to express analogous ideas on literary criticism and the possibility of admiring examples of the high style, as well as minute poems, written with the utmost care. As a matter of fact, Posidippus apparently felt that there was an analogy between the art of Theodorus of Samos and that of the poet Anacreon. Epigram 9 A–B establishes a

 The sculptor Lyciscus is otherwise unknown, but the name was quite common (212 occurrences in the LGPN), especially in Athens. A Myron and a younger Lykiskos are both represented on a fragmentary and inscribed votive relief of Athenian provenance (Princeton University Museum, inv. y1978-3; ca. 390–375 BCE). It has been suggested that they could be the descendants of the famous sculptor Myron of Eleutherai, who had a son called Lykios; see Ridgway/Berkin (1994), no. 3; Vermeule (1995).  See Prioux (2008a).

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connection between the art of Theodorus and the performances of a contemporary poet. Posidippus informs us that the seal of Polycrates of Samos, a gem carved by Theodorus, represented the lyre of a poet who performed for the tyrant (9 A–B). Likely candidates are Ibycus of Rhegion and Anacreon of Teos. While other sources on the seal of Polycrates indicate either that the emerald was uncarved or that it represented a lyre, Posidippus felt that it was meaningful to draw a more precise connection between the work of Theodorus and contemporary poetic performances. The obvious conclusion would be that Posidippus intended to refer to Anacreon, one of the most important Archaic models for Hellenistic epigrammatists. Possible motivations for the analogy between Theodorus and Anacreon were that they both worked for Polycrates of Samos and that one could compare the scale of their works, since Anacreon wrote short poems. On the other hand, it is likely that the praise of Chares was implicitly meant to encourage readers to consider the qualities of longer poems. Active in the second quarter of the third century BCE, Posidippus wrote for an audience that could not foresee the fall and destruction of the Rhodian Colossus in 228/227 BCE. For his intended readers, the Rhodian Colossus would have mainly represented admirable grandeur, majesty, and the sense of proportion of an artist who, according to Posidippus, imposed reasonable limits on his work, refusing to be drawn into the hybris of his patrons who expected the statue to be twice as high (l. 1). Unlike certain later authors who were aware of the statue’s destruction and who apparently criticized the Colossus as a flawed work,42 Posidippus expresses a point of view that is entirely favorable to Chares and to his gigantic masterpiece. I would argue that Posidippus tries to express the idea that one can praise gigantic and miniature works at the same time and that his intention was to suggest an analogy between the visual arts and poetry. Since Theodorus and Chares were both admirable, though in different ways, one shouldn’t bluntly oppose long and short poems. The metapoetic reading of the andriantopoiika that I hereby suggest is based on the assumption that Posidippus was indeed one of Callimachus’ enemies and was one of the “Telchines,” whom Callimachus criticizes at the opening of the Aetia.43 The fragmentary elegy that serves as a preface to the Aetia indeed builds a series of oppositions between fat ladies and slender maidens, which allegorically represent the works of earlier elegiac poets. It seems Callimachus’ enemies believed that longer

 Sext. Emp., Adv. mathem. 7, 107. See also possibly Pseudo-Longinus, De sublimitate 36, 3, who speaks about a “faulty Colossus” and is possibly thinking of Chares’ work (see below).  The very nickname of the Telchines speaks for an identification of Callimachus’ enemies with a group of authors who were interested in the visual arts or who believed in the possibility of drawing an analogy between sculpture and poetry, since the Telchines were, in Rhodian mythological lore, the demons who had first invented metallurgy. Posidippus, who expresses a great interest in the visual arts is therefore a good candidate: he is mentioned, along with other authors such as Asclepiades of Samos, in the list of Telchines provided by an ancient scholiast in PSI XI, 1219.

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works, such as Mimnermus’ Smyrneis—“a big lady” (μεγάλη . . . γυνή)44—deserved as much praise as his shorter works such as the Nanno, a poem whose title sounds like a nickname for a very small or even dwarf-like lady.45 The fragmentary preface also suggests that the Telchines criticized Callimachus for not being able to “finish a continuous poem [celebrating?] the kings and heroes [. . .] in several thousands of lines” and for telling his story “like a child”46 and maybe even “like a little girl.”47 The comparison between the preface to the Aetia and Posidippus’ andriantopoiika thus suggests that third-century BCE critics already played on an analogy between small-scale sculpture and short poems or between colossal sculpture and longer literary works. The same analogy was possibly used from an early date with reference to prose works, to reflect upon the relationship between τέχνη and μέγεθος (is it possible to display as much τέχνη in a colossal artwork as in a small-scale masterpiece?) or about the possibility of combining ἀκρίβεια (“precision”) and σεμνότης (“majesty”) in the same work (does ἀκρίβεια ruin the artist’s efforts to achieve the sublime?). Thirdcentury sources are lost, but the reception of the Rhodian Colossus and the perception of the relationship between accurate τέχνη and μέγεθος were certainly modified by the accidental destruction of this artwork in 228/227. A tradition that probably developed after the fall of the Colossus narrates that Chares, the sculptor, realized that he had miscalculated his work and committed suicide before the monument was completed.48 Certain rhetors of the Imperial age indeed appear to think that the Rhodian Colossus had shortcomings, even though it was a sublime artwork. For instance, PseudoLonginus calls it the “faulty Colossus”:49 Πρὸς μέντοι γε τὸν γράφοντα ὡς ὁ Κολοσσὸς ὁ ἡμαρτημένος οὐ κρείττων ἢ ὁ Πολυκλείτου Δορυφόρος παράκειται πρὸς πολλοῖς εἰπεῖν ὅτι ἐπὶ μὲν τέχνης θαυμάζεται τὸ ἀκριβέστατον, ἐπὶ δὲ τῶν φυσικῶν ἔργων τὸ μέγεθος, φύσει δὲ λογικὸν ὁ ἄνθρωπος· κἀπι μὲν ἀνδριάντων ζητεῖται τὸ ὅμοιον ἀνθρώπῳ, ἐπὶ δὲ τοῦ λόγου τὸ ὑπεραῖρον, ὡς ἔφην, τὰ ἀνθρώπινα. In reply, however, to the writer who maintains that the faulty Colossus is not superior to the Doryphoros of Polykleitos, it is obvious to remark among many other things that in art we admire the utmost exactitude, whilst in the works of nature we admire grandeur; and that it is by nature that man is being gifted with speech. In the statues, likeness to man is the quality required; in discourse, we demand, as I said, that which transcends the human. (Transl. W. Rhys Roberts.)

 Aetia, 1, fr. 1 Pf., v. 12.  There is considerable controversy about the identity of the tall lady in the Aetia prologue. Harder (2012) has a good overview of the status quaestionis.  Aetia, 1, fr. 1 Pf., v. 3–5. On the interpretation of the preface, see esp. Cameron (1995); Harder (2012); Acosta-Hughes/Stephens (2002).  Gutzwiller (2020).  Moreno (1974) 460; Moreno (1994) I, 129–130.  De sublimitate, 36, 3; cf. Russell (1970).

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Unlike the unknown critic he is responding to, Pseudo-Longinus affirms that the same rules do not apply to the visual arts and the art of writing.50 According to his view, poets and prose writers should search for μέγεθος rather than focusing on ἀκρίβεια, and they should disregard the small flaws that are caused by the search for the sublime:51 [. . .] πότερόν ποτε κρεῖττον ἐν ποιήμασι καὶ λόγοις μέγεθος ἐν ἐνίοις διημαρτημένον ἢ τὶ σύμμετρον μὲν ἐν τοῖς κατορθώμασιν ὑγιὲς δὲ πάντη καὶ ἀδιάπτωτον; [. . .] ἐγὼ δ’οἶδα μέν, ὡς αἱ ὑπερμεγέθεις φύσεις ἥκιστα καθαραί· τὸ γὰρ ἐν παντὶ ἀκριβὲς κίνδυνος μικρότητος, ἐν δὲ τοῖς μεγέθεσιν, ὥσπερ ἐν τοῖς ἄγαν πλούτοις, εἶναί τι χρὴ καὶ παρολιγωρούμενον· [. . .] ἐπείτοιγε καὶ ἄπτωτος ὁ Ἀπολλώνιος ἐν τοῖς Ἀργοναύταις ποιητὴς κἀν τοῖς βουκολικοῖς πλὴν ὀλίγων τῶν ἔξωθεν ὁ Θεόκριτος ἐπιτυχέστατος· ἆρ’ οὖν Ὅμηρος ἂν μᾶλλον ἢ Ἀπολλώνιος ἐθέλοις γενέσθαι; . . . whether we ought to give the preference, in poems and prose writings, to grandeur with some attendant faults, or to success which is moderate but altogether sound and free from error? . . . For my part, I am well aware that lofty genius is far removed from flawlessness; for invariable accuracy incurs the risk of pettiness, and in the sublime, as in great fortunes, there must be something which is overlooked . . . . Granted that Apollonius in his Argonautica shows himself a poet who does not trip, and that in his pastorals Theocritus is, except in a few externals, most happy, would you not, for all that, choose to be Homer rather than Apollonius? (Transl. W. Rhys Roberts.)

In this harsh criticism of Alexandrian poetry, Pseudo-Longinus defends the idea that the search for ἀκρίβεια and the search for μέγεθος and σεμνότης are more or less incompatible. It is possible that the same idea was already expressed by some Hellenistic poets. In support of this idea, we can, for instance, compare Callimachus’ Sixth Iamb with Posidippus’ andriantopoiika. Whereas Posidippus presents us with a joint praise of Theodorus’ ἀκρίβεια and Chares’ σεμνότης,52 Callimachus seems to offer, in his Sixth Iamb, proof that, at least in literary works, ἀκρίβεια does not marry well with σεμνότης; in this poem, Callimachus provides his reader with a detailed account of the measurements of Phidias’ Olympian Zeus, a masterpiece well known for its majesty and colossal proportions but also for its ἀκρίβεια. Unlike Phidias’ masterpiece, Callimachus’ detailed written account of the statue’s proportions and measurements only frustrates its reader, who remains unable to grasp anything of the artwork’s majesty or of its impressive rendition of Zeus’ grandeur. I would argue that Callimachus intended precisely to demonstrate that literary works could not be appreciated and judged based on the

 Cf. De Angelis (2014) 97.  De sublimitate 33, 1–4.  One could object that Posidippus here praises two different sculptors for their akribeia and semnotes, respectively, and that the two qualities are not united in one and the same work. Posidippus expresses admiration for both stylistic qualities but does not identify them in the same works of art. On the other hand, Posidippus clearly intends to praise Lysippus, who was, as we saw, apparently renowned for having achieved perfection both in grand works and in small-scale works. This is at least the idea that is expressed later by Statius in Silva 4, 6.

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same criteria as visual artworks and that the interplay between scale and stylistic qualities was not the same in both forms of art. The idea according to which small flaws are acceptable in a large-scale work was closely associated with comments on colossal statues and especially on the Rhodian Colossus. Strabo expands on this idea in the captatio beneuolentiae that stands at the opening of the seventeen books of his Geography:53 ἔτι δὲ τὸν αὐτὸν τρόπον, ὅνπερ ἐκεῖ τὰ περὶ τοὺς ἐπιφανεῖς ἄνδρας καὶ βίους τυγχάνει μνήμης, τὰ δὲ μικρὰ καὶ ἄδοξα παραλείπεται, κἀνταῦθα δεῖ τὰ μικρὰ καὶ τὰ ἀφανῆ παραπέμπειν, ἐν δὲ τοῖς ἐνδόξοις καὶ μεγάλοις καὶ ἐν οἷς τὸ πραγματικὸν καὶ εὐμνημόνευτον καὶ ἡδὺ διατρίβειν. καθάπερ τε καὶ ἐν τοῖς κολοσσικοῖς ἔργοις οὐ τὸ καθ’ ἕκαστον ἀκριβὲς ζητοῦμεν, ἀλλὰ τοῖς καθόλου προσέχομεν μᾶλλον εἰ καλῶς τὸ ὅλον, οὕτως κἀν τούτοις δεῖ ποιεῖσθαι τὴν κρίσιν. κολοσσουργία γάρ τις καὶ αὕτη, τὰ μεγάλα φράζουσα πῶς ἔχει καὶ τὰ ὅλα, πλὴν εἴ τι κινεῖν δύναται καὶ τῶν μικρῶν τὸν φιλειδήμονα καὶ τὸν πραγματικόν. In the same manner as before [viz. in Strabo’s Historical Commentaries], where what happened in the lives of distinguished men was recorded but what is petty and doubtful was omitted, here what is petty and unclear is also rejected, in favor of using what is notable and important, and having within it what is practical, memorable, and pleasant. Just as, in regard to colossal works of art, we do not seek out each detail precisely but rather consider them as a whole, and whether they are pleasing in their entirety, this work must be judged in such a way. It too is a colossal work that only points out great things and the whole, except for minor things that are able to affect someone who is both fond of learning and practical. (Transl. D. W. Roller.)

Evidently, Strabo envisions his “colossal” work not as presenting flaws but as containing certain omissions which are, of course, to be expected in a very long work. In Strabo’s eyes, the comparison with a colossus is a favorable one. His Geography is meant to encompass the entire oikoumenē, instead of providing a fully detailed description of separate regions.54 Another possible motivation for the comparison between a colossal work of art and a literary work pertains to the techniques of composition involved in longer/bigger works, as opposed to the conceptual unity that characterizes small pieces. The Elder Philostratus relates an anecdote that involves Herodes Atticus and his young student Hadrian of Tyre. Having been invited to attend one of his student’s improvised performances,

 1, 1, 23.  On Strabo’s captatio beneuolentiae, see Pothecary (2005), who studies the various passages in which Strabo describes colossal artworks in order to explain the meaning of this programmatic metaphor. In 8, 6, 10, Strabo comments on the differences between Phidias’ approach to sculpture and Polycletus’ ἀκρίβεια. The passage clearly shows the geographer’s preference for Phidias’ colossal artworks, as opposed to the technicality of Polycletus’ art. In 8, 3, 30, Strabo criticizes descriptions of the Olympian Zeus that dwell, like Callimachus’ poem, on the measurements of the statue and states that they fail to convey anything of the statue’s magnificence. When evoking the Rhodian Colossus, which had collapsed long before his own lifetime, Strabo does not hesitate to say that it is the “best” ornament of the whole island (14, 2, 5). It thus seems that Strabo had taken a clear-cut position in the debate on colossal artworks: in his view, one should evidently prefer μέγεθος over ἀκρίβεια.

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Herodes praised the young man by exclaiming: “These might well be the great fragments of a colossus.”55 “While he tried to correct his disjointed and ill-constructed style as a fault of youth,” Herodes Atticus “applauded the grandeur both of his words and of his ideas.”56 In the present case, the comparison between Hadrian’s speech and a colossus is probably justified not by the length of the speech but rather by the sublimity of the speaker’s words and ideas. Just as the sculptor who operates on a large-scale sculpture has to cast separately the various body parts of a statue and then weld them together, Hadrian’s speech is somewhat disjointed and still lacks continuity; it is like a sculpture awaiting the welding and polishing of the surfaces, but one can already admire the beauty and grandeur of its parts.57 In ancient criticism, larger scales were thus often connected with the problem of achieving continuity, smoothness, and organicity, which are typical characteristics of the smaller works.

2.3 Miniature Sculpture as a Petty and Superfluous Form of Art? The admiration for colossal works that we can observe in several of the above-quoted sources sometimes involved a tendency to criticize the pettiness of a small format. Such criticism was especially and perhaps exclusively connected with references to Myrmecides’ ants. In the sources that have come down to us, the other authors of small-scale works are not subjected to harsh criticism but are rather praised and admired. The idea that miniature artworks are petty and perhaps even ridiculous lurks under the surface when Cicero criticizes the idea according to which the refined details of nature would be proof of divine action (Lucullus [Acad. Prior.] 120): negatis haec tam polite tamque subtiliter effici potuisse sine diuina aliqua sollertia [. . .] cuius quidem uos maiestatem deducitis usque ad apium formicarumque perfectionem, ut etiam inter deos Myrmecides aliquis minutorum opusculorum fabricator fuisse uideatur (“you say that all this could not have been accomplished with such refinement and attention to detail without divine resourcefulness [. . .] the majesty of which you nevertheless reduce to bringing to perfection ants and bees. All this would bring us to add, as it seems, a Myrmecides, an artisan of tiny and minute works to the number of the gods”). In this passage, Cicero is discussing conceptions of the divine, but several other authors shared, it seems, the same amused or irritated perception of people who praised and admired miniature artworks.

 VS 2, 10 (§ 586): κολοσσοῦ ταῦτα μεγάλα σπαράγματ’ ἂν εἴη (transl. W. C. Wright).  VS 2, 10 (§ 586): ἅμα μὲν διορθούμενος αὐτὸν ὡς ὑφ’ ἡλικίας διεσπασμένον τε καὶ μὴ ξυγκείμενον, ἅμα δὲ ἐπαινῶν ὡς μεγαλόφωνόν τε καὶ μεγαλογνώμονα.  One may compare Cicero’s approach to the beauty of the separate parts of Phidias’ shield, in Orator 234–235.

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For instance, when exhorting a young audience to pursue the study of an art that is both honest and useful for life, Galen criticizes the fabrication of miniatures and Myrmecides’ ants as having nothing to do with art; according to him, the making of miniature is yet one more kind of fancy acrobatics designed to attract attention (Adhortatio ad artes addiscendas 9). Aelian says more or less the same, when he states (VH 1, 7) that “serious people” should not praise miniature artworks, because they are only a waste of time. The criticism of miniature-scale works was also and perhaps mostly used in analogies between the visual arts and literary creations. For instance, the Elder Philostratus considered purity of style and minute corrections to be characteristic of small-scale endeavors, whereas the sublime was for him closely connected to the majesty of largescale sculptures. The sophist indeed uses once more the metaphor of colossal sculpture in order to praise the sublimity of the oratory style of Niketes of Smyrna, a contemporary of Nero. When describing his style, Philostratus first uses an architectural metaphor by playing on the double meaning of πάροδος (“passageway,” “gallery,” or “sophistic performance”) and περιβολή (“precinct,” “city walls,” or “amplification”). As Philostratus puts it, rhetoric had become a skimpy and cramped τέχνη by the time Niketes was trained as a sophist, but “he bestowed on it approaches far more splendid (ἔδωκεν αὐτῇ παρόδους πολλῷ λαμπροτέρας) even than those which he himself built for Smyrna, when he connected the city with the gate that looks to Ephesus, and by this great structure raised his deeds to the same high level as his words (διὰ μέγεθος ἀντεξάρας λόγοις ἔργα).”58 The speech that he wrote to defend himself against Rufus, his enemy, was so impressive that it managed to move his very adversary to tears, but this last work was later corrected by a certain Heracleides of Lycia, a sophist who published a work called Niketes purified (Νικήτην τὸν κεκαθαρμένον).59 Philostratus mocks Heracleides’ silly attempt at emending the sublime speech of Niketes and says that he “failed to see that he was fitting the spoils of the Pygmies on to a colossus” (ἠγνοησε δὲ ἀκροθίνια Πυγμαῖα κολοσσῷ ἐφαρμόζων). Julian the Apostate, who, as we saw, praised miniature works that he ascribed to Phidias in order to celebrate his addressee’s breuitas and mastery of concise eloquence, rejects the art of Myrmecides, which he sees as standing in conscious opposition to Phidias’ τέχνη (Εὐσεβίας τῆς βασιλίδος ἐγκώμιον, 7). In his view, the main admirers of such creations are people who, like women and children, are only guided by their senses and are easily seduced because of their weak intellect. After him, Theodosius the Grammarian also rejects miniature making as being a ψευδοτεχνία, a “false” or “spurious art” (ψευδοτεχνία).60

 VS I, 19 (§ 511) (transl. W. C. Wright).  VS I, 19 (§ 512).  Theodosius Gramm., Περὶ γραμματικῆς, 54 Göttling.

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3 Conclusions To sum up the evidence that has been collected in this chapter, there were no words in Latin or ancient Greek to qualify miniature-scale sculptures and to distinguish them from other types of small-scale sculptures, but miniatures apparently called for a different type of reception. Because of their size, ancient authors liked to compare them to insects. Miniature and small-scale sculptures are described as appealing to the senses of the viewers in specific ways: miniature sculpture could be felt to elude the senses of the viewer and to be too small to be seen clearly; small-scale and miniature sculptures were also felt to call for tactile contact and manipulation and are sometimes said to inspire a strong emotional connection; famous owners could travel with a beloved small-scale sculpture or “fall in love” with such works. Great artists such as Phidias and Lysippus were thought to be able to move across formats: their talent manifested itself in their ability to handle both the grand and the precise. And yet one should not forget that most of the literary evidence that we have on small-scale sculptures was primarily intended not to deliver critical judgments on statues or useful information about the visual arts but to illustrate theories on poetry and rhetoric. Small-scale sculptures are often mentioned by authors who, in fact, intended to praise small genres such as epigram or to promote innovative aesthetics in poetry, which makes it very difficult to know what ancient viewers actually thought about small-scale works of art. The comparisons between literary works and sculpted artworks involve recurring topoi, such as the difficulty of attaining the sublime when paying attention to details or the criticism of the pettiness and vanity of miniature works as a superfluous form of art. When reading these passages, we probably learn much more about ancient literary theories than about ancient art criticism.

Abbreviations HE LGPN P. Mil. Vogl. PSI

Andrew Sydenham Farrar Gow and Denys Page, Hellenistic Epigrams. Vol. I: Introduction and Text. Vol. II: Commentary and Indexes. Cambridge, 1965. Lexicon of Greek Personal Names. Papiro Milano Vogliano. Papiri della Società Italiana.

Works Cited Acosta-Hughes/Stephens (2002): Benjamin Acosta-Hughes and Susan A. Stephens, “Aetia fr. 1.5: I Told My Story Like a Child,” in: ZPE 136, 214–216. Cameron (1995): Alan Cameron, Callimachus and His Critics, Princeton. Benndorf (1862): Otto Benndorf, De anthologiae Graecae epigrammatis quae ad artes spectant, Leipzig.

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Bing (2005): Peter Bing, “The Politics and Poetics of Geography in the Milan Posidippus, Section One: On Stones (AB 1–20),” in: Kathryn Gutzwiller (ed.), The New Posidippus: A Hellenistic Poetry Book, Oxford, 118–140. Bonadeo (2010): Alessia Bonadeo, L’Hercules Epitrapezios Noui Vindicis: Introduzione e commento a Stat. Silv. 4,6, Naples. Colzani (2022): Giovanni Colzani, “Il lessico antico della scultura in piccolo formato,” in: Mélanges de l’École française de Rome – Antiquité 134, 317–333. Corso (2004): Antonio Corso, The Art of Praxiteles: The Development of Praxiteles’ Workshop and Its Cultural Tradition until the Sculptor’s Acme (364–1 BC), Rome. De Angelis, (2014): Francesco De Angelis, “Sublime, Histories, Exceptional Viewers: Trajan’s Column and Its Visibility,” in: Jaś Elsner and Michel Meyer (eds.), Art and Rhetoric in Roman Culture, Cambridge, 89–114. De Visscher (1962): Fernand De Visscher, Héraklès épitrapezios, Paris. Elsner (2020): Jaś Elsner, “Introduction,” in: Jaś Elsner (ed.), Figurines: Figuration and the Sense of Scale, Oxford, 1–10. Galand-Hallyn (1994): Perrine Galand-Hallyn, Le reflet des fleurs: Description et métalangage poétique d’Homère à la Renaissance, Geneva. Gallet de Santerre/Le Bonniec, (1945): Hubert Gallet de Santerre and Henri Le Bonniec, “Lyciscos et Langon (Pline, H. N., XXXIV, 79),” in: Revue archéologique 24, 110–114. Gutzwiller (2020): Kathryn Gutzwiller, “Under the Sign of the Distaff: Aetia, 1.5, Spinning, and Erinna,” in: Classical Quarterly 70.1, 177–191. Harder (2012): Annette Harder, Callimachus: Aetia—Introduction, Text, Translation, and Commentary, Oxford. Höschele (2010): Regina Höschele, Die blütenlesende Muse: Poetik und Textualität antiker Epigrammsammlungen, Tübingen. Hughes (2019): Jessica Hughes, “Tiny and Fragmented Votive Offerings from Classical Antiquity,” in: S. Rebecca Martin and Stephanie M. Langin-Hooper (eds.), The Tiny and the Fragmented: Miniature, Broken, or Otherwise Incomplete Objects in the Ancient World, Oxford, 48–71. Hunter (2012): Richard Hunter, Plato and the Traditions of Ancient Literature: The Silent Stream, Cambridge/ New York. Hutchinson (2002): Gregory O. Hutchinson, “The New Posidippus and Latin Poetry,” in: Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 138, 1–10. Klein (2017): Florence Klein, “Vergil’s ‘Posidippeanism’? The Ἀνδριαντοποιικά in Georgics 4 and Statius’ Siluae,’ in: Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 109, 353–375. Langin-Hooper (2015): Stephanie M. Langin-Hooper, “Fascination with the Tiny: Social Negotiation through Miniatures in Hellenistic Babylonia,” in: World Archaelogy 47, no. 1, 60–79. Linfert (1978): Andreas Linfert, “Pythagoras und Lysipp—Xenocrates und Duris,” in: Rivista di Archeologia 2, 23–27. Moreno (1974): Paolo Moreno, “Cronologia del Colosso di Rodi,” in: Archeologia Classica 25–26, 453–463. Moreno (1994): Paolo Moreno, La scultura ellenistica, 2 vols., Rome. Neer (2020): Richard Neer, “Small Wonders: Figurines, Puppets, and the Aesthetics of Scale in Archaic and Classical Greece,” in: Jaś Elsner (ed.), Figurines: Figuration and the Sense of Scale, Oxford, 11–50. Petrain (2005): David Petrain, “Gems, Metapoetics, and Value: Greek and Roman Responses to a ThirdCentury Discourse on Precious Stones,” in: Transactions and Proceedings of the American Philological Association 135, 329–357. Pothecary (2005): Sarah Pothecary, “Kolossourgia: ‘A Colossal Statue of a Work,’” in: Daniela Dueck, Hugh Lindsay and Sarah Pothecary (eds.), Strabo’s Cultural Geography: The Making of a Kolossourgia, Cambridge and New York, 5–26.

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Prioux (2008a): Évelyne Prioux, “At non longa bene est? Priape face à la tradition du discours critique alexandrin,” in: Frédérique Biville, Emmanuel Plantade, and Daniel Vallat (eds.), “Les vers du plus nul des poètes . . . ”: Nouvelles recherches sur les Priapées, Lyon, 157–180. Prioux (2008b): Évelyne Prioux, Petits musées en vers: Épigramme et discours sur les collections antiques, Paris. Prioux (2010): Évelyne Prioux, “Visite au cabinet des gemmes: Images et idéologie dans un cycle d’épigrammes hellénistiques,” in: Évelyne Prioux and Agnès Rouveret (eds.), Métamorphoses du regard ancien, Nanterre, 29–66. Prioux (2013): Évelyne Prioux, “Réminiscences de l’épigramme hellénistique dans les Carmina Minora de Claudien,” in: Marie-France Gineste and Céline Urlacher (eds.), La renaissance de l’épigramme dans la latinité tardive, Paris, 145–161. Prioux (2014): Évelyne Prioux, “The Jewels and the Dolls: Late Hellenistic Ecphrastic Epigrams as Metapoetic Texts,” in: Richard Hunter, Antonios Rengakos, and Evina Sistakou (eds.), Hellenistic Studies at a Crossroads: Exploring Texts, Metatexts and Contexts, Berlin, 185–212. Prioux (2015a): Évelyne Prioux, “Douris et Posidippe: Similitudes et dissemblances de quelques éléments de critique d’art et de critique littéraire,” in: Valérie Naas and Mathilde Simon (eds.), De Samos à Rome: Personnalité et influence de Douris, Paris, 91–120. Prioux (2015b): Évelyne Prioux, “Le fromage et le dentifrice: Le couple Virgile-Ovide dans les Xenia et les Apophoreta de Martial,” in: Florence Klein and Sévérine Clément-Tarantino (eds.), La représentation du “couple” Virgile-Ovide dans la tradition culturelle de l’Antiquité à nos jours. Villeneuve d’Ascq, http://books.openedition.org/septentrion/9021. Ridgway/Berkin (1994): Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway and Jon M. Berkin, Greek Sculpture in the Art Museum Princeton University: Greek Originals, Roman Copies and Variants, Princeton. Russell (1970): Donald Andrew Russell, Longinus: On the Sublime, Oxford (1st ed. 1964). Squire (2011): Michael J. Squire, The Iliad in a Nutshell: Visualizing Epic on the Tabulae Iliacae, Oxford/ New York. Squire (2016): Michael J. Squire, “Sémantique de l’échelle dans l’art et la poésie hellénistiques,” in: Pascale Linant de Bellefonds, Évelyne Prioux, and Agnès Rouveret (eds.), D’Alexandre à Auguste: Dynamiques de la création dans les arts visuels et la poésie, Rennes, 183–200. Vermeule (1995): Cornelius Vermeule, review of Ridgway and Berkin (1994), https://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/ 1995/1995.02.06/. Vollenweider (1987): Marie-Louise Vollenweider, “La survivance de l’oeuvre de Lysippe dans la glyptique antique,” in: Jacques Chamay and Jean-Louis Maier (eds.), Lysippe et son influence: Études de divers savants, Geneva, 129–133.

Olga Palagia

Small-scale Cult Statues of the Sixth Century BC This brief survey discusses the archaeological evidence for the use of miniature cult statues of the archaic period.1 We will deal with three examples here: in one case (see Fig. 2) the evidence is inconclusive because of the findspot of the image; in another (see Fig. 8) the excavation data are not yet fully published; and in the third case it appears that a votive bronze figurine of the Archaic period (see Fig. 6) was reemployed in the fifth century BC as a temporary cult statue after the violent destruction of the temple. In two out of three cases, it may be argued that archaic images were reused as cult statues in later periods. Architectural sculptures of the second half of the fifth and the first half of the fourth century BC, showing scenes of the Trojan War and the battle of Lapiths and centaurs, represent suppliant women clinging to an under-life-size cult statue of a goddess, standing on a pedestal. The statue appears to be archaic, no doubt in order to give the impression of an old and venerable image, what we would now call a xoanon.2 The trend is set in the metopes of the Parthenon: on north metope 25, Helen seeks refuge from Menelaos at the palladion of Troy, while on south metope 21, two Lapith women escape the fury of the centaurs by clinging to a female xoanon, one of them baring her breast to incite pity.3 The same motif can be seen in the centauromachy frieze of the late-fifth-century Temple of Apollo Epikourios at Bassai: two women suppliants, one with a bare breast, the other naked, entreat a small-scale divine image for help (Fig. 1).4 The Trojan theme is reprised in the pedimental sculptures of the Argive Heraion and the Temple of Asklepios at Epidauros, where Kassandra (now lost) takes refuge at the palladion, represented as a miniature archaic Kore.5 Attic and South Italian vase paintings of the fifth and fourth centuries present a wide range of suppliants taking refuge before a miniature divine image.6

 I am grateful to Clemente Marconi for inviting me to contribute to this volume; to Manolis Korres for advice on the temple at Metropolis, Thessaly; to Charalambos Intzesiloglou for permission to use the photos in Fig. 8; to Hans Rupprecht Goette for the photos of Figs. 2–4; and to Aristea Papastathopoulou and Aliki Moustaka for their assistance.  For the significance of xoana, see Donohue (1988).  Both metopes are now in the Acropolis Museum. North metope 25: Brommer (1967) 50–51, pl. 105. South metope 21: Brommer (1967) pl. 151, 2; Palagia (2022) 58, fig. 6.  London, British Museum 524. Hofkes-Brukker/Mallwitz (1975) 54–55, H-524; Palagia (2022) 55, fig. 9.  Palladion from the Argive Heraion: Athens National Museum 3869. Kaltsas (2001) 115, no. 205. Palladion from the Temple of Asklepios: Athens National Museum 4680. Yalouris (1992) 25, cat. no. 13, pl. 14.  de Cesare (1997) 123–140. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110741742-004

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Fig. 1: Detail of the centauromachy frieze from the Temple of Apollo Epikourios at Bassai. London, British Museum 524. Photo: Olga Palagia.

While it is likely that small-scale cult statues like those represented in artworks did exist in antiquity, it is now hard to recognize them as such if found out of context. A case in point is the marble statuette of Nemesis (Figs. 2–4) from the small Temple of Nemesis at Rhamnous.7 The goddess sits on a backless stool, her feet resting on a footstool. She wears a crinkly chiton forming a vertical pleat between the legs and a shawl-like himation. Despite her rigid stance, her drapery points to a date in the late sixth or early fifth century BC. For a small-scale statue, this has a surprising number of attachments: her head and neck were inserted by means of a rectangular tenon, while her right upper arm and both hands were made separately and glued on. The additions are thought to be due to repairs.8 Rhamnous was probably destroyed by the Persians in 480 BC, as attested by the devastation of the archaic Temple of Nemesis.9 The archaic temple was replaced by a small marble temple with polygonal walls built after 480. It too was replaced by what is now known as the large Temple of Nemesis, built in the third quarter of the fifth century BC.10 Henceforth the small temple functioned as a depository of statues of different periods, the statuette of Nemesis (Fig. 2) being the earliest.11 It has been suggested that it was repaired and briefly used as a  Athens National Museum 2569. Pentelic marble. H. 0.45 m. Möbius (1916) 176, pl. 13; Petrakos (1999) 277, fig. 187; Kaltsas (2001) 61, no. 79; Sturgeon (2006) 54–55, figs. 22a-b; Despinis/Kaltsas (2014) 69–71, no. I.1.40, figs. 166–171 (A. Moustaka); Petrakos (2020) 178, no. 1.  Despinis/Kaltsas (2014) 69–71, no. I.1.40.  Petrakos (1999) 194.  Petrakos (1999) 221–246.  Petrakos (1999) 200–204, 277.

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cult statue in the small temple before the installation of Agorakritos’ monumental cult statue in the new, large temple.12 The repair may indicate that the statue was particularly valued. This hypothesis, no matter how attractive, cannot be substantiated because of the findspot of the statuette, which was stored alongside a number of votive statues in the cella of the small Temple of Nemesis.

Fig. 2: Marble statuette of Nemesis (front). From Rhamnous. Athens National Museum 2569. Photo: Hans R. Goette.

In order to identify a cult statue we need evidence such as a findspot on or adjacent to a cult statue base. We do have such evidence suggesting that a statuette functioned as a temporary cult statue after the Persian destruction in another sanctuary, that of Apollo at Abai in ancient Phokis. Herodotus (8, 33) reports that after the battle of Thermopylai in 480, the Persians ravaged the sanctuary of Apollo at Abai, burning down the temple, which was full of treasures. Near the modern village of Kalapodi a succession of temples, attributed to the oracular sanctuary of Abai, was brought to light by

 Despinis/Kaltsas (2014) 71.

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Fig. 3: Marble statuette of Nemesis (left side). From Rhamnous. Athens National Museum 2569. Photo: Hans R. Goette.

the excavations of the German Archaeological Institute.13 What concerns us here is the installation of a temporary cult building in the ruins of the archaic north temple, complete with an offering table made up of a poros block facing an altar (Fig. 5). A bronze male figurine (Figs. 6–7) was fixed with lead into a socket at the corner of the table; it was thought by the excavator, Rainer Felsch, to have served as a provisional cult statue.14 In addition to the bronze figurine, the offering table carried two terracottas

 See Niemeier (2019) with earlier references.  Bronze figurine: Lamia Museum M 9730. H. 0.106 m with plinth. Dated ca. 500 BC. Felsch/Kienast/ Schuler (1980) 85–99 (on the temporary shrine), figs. 71–72 (offering table), 73–75 (figurine); Thomas (1981) 128, pl. 79, 1–2; Rolley (1986) 32, Fig.7; Mattusch (1988) 111–112, figs. 5.8 and 5.9; Thomas (1992) 32, fig. 20; Felsch (2007) 54–55, 259–260, no. 118, pl. 7. The identification of the bronze figurine as a provisional cult statue was contested (Ridgway (2005) 118 n. 25; Hölscher (2017) 359–360) because of its offcenter placement on the offering table.

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Fig. 4: Marble statuette of Nemesis. Detail. From Rhamnous. Athens National Museum 2569. Photo: Hans R. Goette.

(a cock and a protome), a bronze stand, rings, pins, obeloi, and a Phokian obol, minted between 457 and 445 BC.15 These votives are associated with a ceremonial burial of the makeshift sanctuary that took place shortly after 445, when the new classical temple was finally in place. The bronze figurine (Figs. 6–7) is naked and looks like a kouros, left leg advanced. His arms, however, are extended forward, left hand pierced for the insertion of an attribute. The right hand also held an object, cast with the body. His hair is short, crowned with a “pearl” diadem. His lower legs are embedded in lead, which functioned as a plinth for the attachment of the figurine to the offering table. The closest stylistic parallel to this image is a bronze male figurine from Kynouria, also from around 500 BC, which is attributed to a Laconian workshop. He wears a “pearl” crown, right hand raised in a praying gesture, left hand extended forward, pierced for the attachment of an attribute, perhaps a bow, which would identify the image as Apollo.16 The bronze figurine from Kalapodi (Fig. 6) was originally votive but was

 The table and its offerings are now in the Lamia Museum. For the offerings, see Alroth (1988) 199, Fig.4; Niemeier (2019) 225.  Athens National Museum X 16365. Rolley (1986) fig. 85; Kaltsas (2001) 83, no. 144.

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Fig. 5: Offering table from Kalapodi. Lamia Museum. Photo: Mattusch 1988, fig. 5.8.

adapted to its new function after the Persian destruction. It has been suggested that it may have originally depicted not Apollo but an athlete, though its pierced left hand may well have been intended to hold a bow.17 Yet another Temple of Apollo appears to have housed a small-scale cult statue in bronze (Fig. 8). The Temple of Apollo at ancient Metropolis near Karditsa was excavated from 1994 to 1997 and still awaits full publication.18 The attribution of the temple to Apollo is based on an inscribed pillar carrying a bronze dog dedicated to Apollo.19 It is thought to have been built around the middle of the sixth century BC and to have remained in use until the second century BC, when it was destroyed by fire. The roof tiles seem to have been replaced in the third century BC, and there is evidence of interior refurbishment in the fourth century or later. The architecture was studied by Manolis Korres: it has many interesting features, including a wooden interior colonnade that divides the cella in two aisles and stands in the way of the cult-statue base.20 The original pedestal of the Archaic period was modified at a later period and extended to accommodate three statues, as shown by the cuttings on top.21 None of these three statues has come down to us. However, the excavations revealed the remains of the bronze statuette of a hoplite (Fig. 8): its fragments came to light on

    

Felsch (2007) 55. For a preliminary report, see Intzesiloglou (2002). Intzesiloglou (2002) 111–112, fig. 2. Intzesiloglou (2002) 112, fig. 3. Intzesiloglou (2002) 112, Fig.3. Despinis (2010, 26) suggests that all three statues represented Apollo.

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Fig. 6: Bronze figurine from Kalapodi. Lamia Museum M 9730. Photo D-DAI-ATH-1978–0728.

top of the base and to the west of it.22 Its plinth does not fit any of the cuttings on the cult-statue base, so its original pedestal must be sought elsewhere. The statuette (Fig. 8) is made of hollow cast bronze and assembled from two parts. It is missing the crest of its helmet, the weapon held in the raised right hand, part of its left arm and hand, and perhaps a mitra protecting its abdomen, which has left its trace on the spot. Holes in the back of the helmet, the left thigh, and the corselet indicate further attachments that are now lost. The figure is heavily armed, with a bell cuirass, greaves, and armguards on upper and lower arms. He is of the kouros type, standing frontal, left leg advanced. His long locks of hair fall at the back and over his shoulders. The spiral curls over the forehead can be compared to the hairstyle of archaic marble kouroi like those of Kea and the Ptoon, and of the cult statue of Dionysos from Ikaria,

 Karditsa Museum 2190. H. 0.802 m. Intzesiloglou (2000); Intzesiloglou (2002) 109, 111, pls. 29B and 30A; Karanastassis (2002) 215–216, fig. 300; Ridgway (2005) 115; Despinis (2010) 26; Hölscher (2017) 447–449, fig. 76.

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Fig. 7: Bronze figurine from Kalapodi. Lamia Museum M 9730. Photo D-DAI-ATH-1978–0730.

all dating from ca. 530 BC.23 His pointed chin suggests a beard. Apollo is also represented as a warrior with helmet and spear in the colossal cult statue of Apollo Amyklaios in Laconia, dated to the middle of the sixth century BC.24 The small scale and material (bronze) of the statuette from Metropolis do not preclude the possibility that it had served as a cult statue in the archaic temple.25 The fact that it was found partly on the cult-statue base may indicate that it also served as a cult statue in the final phase of the temple, although we do not know its function in the Hellenistic phase, when the three large cult statues were in place. Alternatively, it may have been a votive figure, roped into service after a major destruction of the temple and its cult images, by

 Kouroi of Kea and the Ptoon: Athens National Museum 3686 and 12, respectively, Despinis and Kaltsas (2014) I.1, 186, fig. 668 and I.1, 200, fig. 714. Dionysos of Ikaria: Athens National Museum 3072, Despinis and Kaltsas (2014) I.1, 198, figs. 706–709.  Paus. 3, 19, 2. Hölscher (2017) 443–447, fig. 75 with earlier references.  So Ridgway (2005) 115; Despinis (2010) 26.

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Fig. 8: Bronze statuette from the temple at Metropolis (Thessaly). Karditsa Museum 2190. Photos: courtesy of Charalambos Intzesiloglou.

analogy with the situation in Kalapodi. The temples at Abai (Kalapodi) and Metropolis (Karditsa) may have shared more than the characteristic clay horse heads used as acroteria in the Archaic period.26

Works Cited Alroth (1988): Brita Alroth, “The Positioning of Greek Votive Figurines,” in: Robin Hägg, Nanno Marinatos and Gullög Nordquist (eds.), Early Greek Cult Practice, Göteburg, 195–203. Brommer (1967): Frank Brommer, Die Metopen des Parthenon, Mainz.

 For the horse head acroteria, see Moustaka (2010) 70–73.

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de Cesare (1997): Monica de Cesare, Le statue in immagine. Studi sulle raffigurazioni di statue nella pittura vascolare greca, Rome. Despinis (2010): Giorgos Despinis, Άρτεμις Βραυρωνία, Athens. Despinis/Kaltsas (2014): Giorgos Despinis and Nikolaos Kaltsas (eds.), Εθνικό Αρχαιολογικό Μουσείο. Κατάλογος γλυπτών Ι.1, Athens. Donohue (1988): Alice A. Donohue, Xoana and the Origins of Greek Sculpture, Atlanta. Felsch (2007): Rainer S. Felsch (ed.), Kalapodi. Ergebnisse der Ausgrabungen im Heiligtum der Artemis und des Apollon von Hyampolis in der antiken Phokis II, Mainz. Felsch/Kienast/Schuler (1980): Rainer S. Felsch, Hermann Kienast and Hans Schuler, “Apollon und Artemis oder Artemis und Apollon? Bericht von den Grabungen in neu Entdeckten Heiligtum bei Kalapodi 1973–1977,” in: AA 1980, 38–118. Hofkes-Brukker/Mallwitz (1975): Charline Hofkes-Brukker and Alfred Mallwitz, Der Bassai-Fries in der ursprünglich geplanten Anordnung, Munich. Hölscher (2017): Fernande Hölscher, Die Macht der Gottheit im Bild. Archäologische Studien zur griechischen Götterstatue, Heidelberg. Intzesiloglou (2000): Charalampos G. Intzesiloglou, “A Newly Discovered Archaic Bronze Statue from Metropolis (Thessaly)”, in: Carol C. Mattusch, Amy Brauer and Sandra E. Knudsen (eds.), From the Parts to the Whole I, in: JRA Supplement 39, 65–68. Intzesiloglou (2002): Babis G. Intzesiloglou, “The Archaic Temple of Apollo at Ancient Metropolis (Thessaly),” in: Maria Stamatopoulou and Marina Yeroulanou (eds.), Excavating Classical Culture, Oxford, 109–115. Kaltsas (2001): Nikolaos Kaltsas, Εθνικό Αρχαιολογικό Μουσείο. Τα γλυπτά. Κατάλογος, Athens. Karanastassis (2002): Pavlina Karanastassis, “Hocharchaische Plastik,” in: Peter C. Bol (ed.), Die Geschichte der antiken Bildhauerkunst I. Frühgriechische Plastik, Mainz, 171–221. Mattusch (1988): Carol C. Mattusch, Greek Bronze Statuary. From the Beginnings through the Fifth Century BC, Ithaca and London. Möbius (1916): Hans Möbius, “Über Form und Bedeutung der sitzenden Gestalt in der Kunst des Orients und der Griechen,” in: AM 41, 121–219. Moustaka (2010): Aliki Moustaka, “Considerazioni sugli acroteri in forma di cavallo,” in: Patricia Lulof and Carlo Rescigno (eds.), Deliciae Fictiles IV. Architectural Terracottas in Ancient Italy. Images of Gods, Monsters and Heroes, Oxford, 69–73. Niemeier (2019): Wolf-Dietrich Niemeier, “The Oracular Sanctuary at Abai/Kalapodi Before and After the Persian Destruction,” in: Olga Palagia and Elisavet P. Sioumpara (eds.), From Hippias to Kallias. Greek Art in Athens and Beyond 527–449 BC, Athens, 218–231. Palagia (2022): Olga Palagia, “The wedding of Peirithous: south metopes 13–21 of the Parthenon,” in: Jenifer Neils and Olga Palagia (eds.), From Kallias to Kritias. Art in Athens in the Second Half of the Fifth Century BC, Berlin and Boston, 53–68. Petrakos (1999): Basileios Petrakos, Ο δήμος του Ραμνούντος I. Τοπογραφία, Athens. Petrakos (2020): Basileios Petrakos, Ο δήμος του Ραμνούντος V. Τα νομίσματα – οι λύχνοι – τα γλυπτά, Athens. Ridgway (2005): Brunilde S. Ridgway, “‘Periklean’ Cult Images and their Media,” in: Judith M. Barringer and Jeffrey M. Hurwit (eds.), Periklean Athens and its Legacy. Problems and Perspectives, Austin, 111–118. Rolley (1986): Claude Rolley, Greek Bronzes (transl. Roger Howell), London. Sturgeon (2006): Mary C. Sturgeon, “Archaic Athens and the Cyclades,” in: Olga Palagia (ed.), Greek Sculpture: Function, Materials and Techniques in the Archaic and Classical Periods, Cambridge, 32–76. Thomas (1981): Renate Thomas, Athletenstatuetten der spätarchaik und des strengen Stils, Rome. Thomas (1992): Renate Thomas, Griechische Bronzestatuetten, Darmstadt. Yalouris (1992): Nikolaos Yalouris, “Die Skulpturen des Asklepiostempels in Epidauros”, AntP 21.

Clemente Marconi

Small Statements of Prestige: On a Group of Early Classical Marble Statuettes from Selinunte 1 Introduction The past few years have seen a renewed interest in scale among art historians and archaeologists, including the production and use of small-scale sculpture and figurines in the ancient world.1 Scholarship on this subject in relation to Greek and Roman art is now abundant, and the goal of this essay is to present a case study that challenges two approaches frequently found in the literature. The first approach is to neglect stone statuettes, focusing instead on figurines in other media, especially bronze and terracotta.2 This approach ultimately depends on a venerable, elitist tradition in the study of Greek and Roman art of identifying statuary, tout court, with life-size or larger figures and of questioning the value of stone statuettes as “art.”3 Stone statuettes, however, played a substantial role in Greek and Roman visual culture, as indicated by their numbers and ubiquity, and they often allow for an archaeological and contextual approach that can greatly enhance our general understanding of the phenomenon of statuettes in the Greek and Roman world. The second approach assumes a basic association between smallness and portability and lays emphasis on the handleability and portability of figurines in the ancient world. This would confer on figurines a distinctive agency, involving the full participation of the viewing and handling subject.4 If smallness is conducive to portability, however, we should not forget that statuettes, in the Greek and Roman world, could also be displayed like large-scale statuary, in which case handleability and portability would not be factors. This is not to deny that such statuettes, fixed to their often elaborate bases, could have their agency vis-à-vis large-scale statuary, namely, being seen up close, rather than from a distance, and thus allowing for a full appreciation of the materials and the quality of execution.

   

See the introduction. See, e.g., Neer (2020). This tradition is best exemplified, more recently, by Rumscheid (2008). See, e.g., Elsner (2020b).

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2 The Statuettes My case study involves a series of small marble peplophoroi from Selinunte, datable to ca. 460–450 BCE based on their stylistic similarities with the metopes of the local Temple of Hera (E) and repeatedly noted by scholars for their quality5 but never subjected to a detailed examination.6 A new analysis of the material and technique, style, and original context of these statuettes raises interesting questions which contribute to the larger scope of this volume. In my discussion, I will first examine the sculptures in detail and discuss their provenance and original context and then move on to larger interpretive issues. I open my review by considering two pieces from the Sanctuary of Malophoros which are the best known of the group. The first marble statuette (Palermo 3895, Figs. 1–2) features a seated figure preserved for a height of 19 cm, originally meant to measure about three half feet (ca. 45 cm) when standing.7 The statuette shows various damage issues. Its surface is slightly worn and has several chips and incrustations. In addition, the head, which was keyed to the rest of the body by a vertical pin at the base of the neck—smoothed to receive the butt joint—is missing. Finally, the part corresponding to the lower legs and feet is broken off. In spite of these damage issues, the figure clearly shows a frontal seated woman wearing a combination of chiton endymon—whose sleeves are carefully rendered on both arms—and a peplos with a relatively long apoptygma. The woman keeps both forearms pressed against the thighs and bent at the elbows at 45 degrees—as best appreciated in a lateral view—but whereas the left arm is in profile and the corresponding hand adheres to the part of the body above the knee grasping the peplos, the right forearm is slightly turned upward, and the corresponding hand holds at least one rounded object. The latter would be a fruit,8 and it has been variously identified with a pomegranate9 or an apple,10 but it is too worn to allow for a precise identification. The statuette was completed with metal attachments—missed by earlier literature—evidenced by four small holes at the wrists, two of which are more easily seen in a view from above and two in side views. Given the position of these four holes and their size, these metal attachments would be identified with bracelets.

 E.g., Ashmole (1934) 28–29; Rolley (1994–1999) I, 356n30.  Especially Tusa (1983) and to a far lesser degree Erik Østby in Stile Severo (1990).  Palermo, Museo Archeologico Regionale “Antonino Salinas” inv. no. N.I. 3895 (formerly S XV 237): Salinas (1894) 208; Gàbrici (1927) 164–167, pl. 26.2; Ashmole (1934) 29, fig. 80; Ridgway (1970) 26n2; Holloway (1975) 25–26, 49–50, no. 21a; Tölle-Kastenbein (1980) no. 35a, pl. 139a; Tusa (1983) 130, no. 32, pl. 41; Østby in Stile Severo (1990) 226, no. 72; Marconi (1994), 214–215, fig. 85; Danner 2001, 71–72, no. B45, figs. 41–42; Pafumi (2004) 70n111, no. 1, fig. 17.  Salinas (1894) 208.  Tusa (1983) 130; Østby in Stile Severo (1990) 226.  Gàbrici (1927) 165.

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Fig. 1: Marble statuette from the sanctuary of Demeter Malophoros at Selinunte. Palermo, Museo Archeologico Regionale “Antonino Salinas” inv. no. 3895. Author’s photograph.

A notable feature of this statuette, in comparison with other representations of seated figures in small-scale sculpture, including from Selinunte,11 is the lack of any indication of the seat, be it a simple cube or an elaborate throne. In modern times, the sculpture has been connected to its square base through a pinhole, and there is no reference in the literature or the archives to pinholes that might have once connected the seated figure to its support (a small hole in correspondence to the right buttock is due to modern testing of the marble). Yet one would expect the statuette to be joined to a more or less elaborate seat through a pin. I have mentioned the general wear of this statuette’s surface. Such wear is apparent on the folds of the apoptygma on the front, but it particularly affects the back, so much so that on a first look, the statuette may seem unfinished on that side. This first impression is disproved, however, by the clear indication of the edge of the peplos around the neck and by the detailed rendering of the chiton sleeves, which in the back were clearly executed with the same care as in the front. As we will see, disproving the idea that the back is unfinished has consequences for the general interpretation of this piece.

 Palermo, Museo Archeologico Regionale “Antonino Salinas” inv. no. N.I. 14802: Tusa (1983) 182, no. 300; Marconi (2020); Lazzarini and Marconi (2021) 21–23, fig. 3.

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Fig. 2: Marble statuette from the sanctuary of Demeter Malophoros at Selinunte. Palermo, Museo Archeologico Regionale “Antonino Salinas” inv. no. 3895. Author’s photograph.

This first statuette was excavated between March and May 1889 (based on the former inventory number, beginning with S XV, a sign applied to finds from Selinunte within that particular time frame) during the excavations at the Malophoros Sanctuary directed by Giuseppe Patricolo. These excavations led to the complete clearing of the propylon and the discovery, farther west, of the large monumental altar and the temple of Malophoros.12 In particular, according to Ettore Gàbrici, who provides the most detailed information about the findspot of our piece, the sculpture was found at the bottom of the stone well located between the large monumental altar of Malophoros and the water conduit crossing the entire sanctuary from north to south.13 The provenance from this well is confirmed by the original excavation report published by Antonino Salinas (who writes of a “pozzo avanti al monumento,” meaning the well in front of the Temple of Malophoros). Gàbrici considers this stone well a late structure, given that its

 Dewailly (1992) 3.  Gàbrici (1927) 164.

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parapet and internal lining are made with reused stones from the Temple of Malophoros, which by the time had fallen into disuse.14 This late well can now be associated with the remains of the Late Antique settlement identified by recent excavations at the mouth of the Modione River.15 From the same well comes the second marble statuette (Palermo 3894, Figs. 3–4), which has dimensions comparable to the first, having a preserved length of 23.5 cm and being meant to measure about three half feet when standing.16

Fig. 3: Marble statuette from the sanctuary of Demeter Malophoros at Selinunte. Palermo, Museo Archeologico Regionale “Antonino Salinas” inv. no. 3894. Author’s photograph.

This second statuette features another female wearing the same combination of chiton endymon and peplos with relatively long apoptygma as on the first, but it has a different and far more complex posture. The figure is, in fact, reclining to the right, with the head, arms with hands reaching to the ground, and upper body in profile. The legs are placed apart and bent; the left one, contributing to support the body, is placed frontally toward the viewer, while the right one is almost in profile, with a slight twist toward the viewer. It is no wonder that a statuette with such a complex

 Gàbrici (1927) 109.  Lentini (2010); Greco (2016); Greco (2020).  Palermo, Museo Archeologico Regionale “Antonino Salinas” inv. no. N.I. 3894 (formerly S XV 238 and 265): Salinas (1894) 208, fig. 8; Gàbrici (1927) 164–167, pls. 25–26.1; Ashmole (1934) 29, fig. 80; Ridgway (1970) 26n2; Holloway (1975) 25–26, 49–50, no. 21b, fig. 149; Tölle-Kastenbein (1980) 139, no. 35b, pl. 139b; Tusa (1983) 130 no. 31, pl. 42; Østby in Stile Severo (1990) 225, no. 71; Marconi (1994) 214–215, fig. 84; Danner 2001, 71–72, no. B45, figs. 41–42; Pafumi (2004) 70n111, no. 2, fig. 18.

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Fig. 4: Marble statuette from the sanctuary of Demeter Malophoros at Selinunte. Palermo, Museo Archeologico Regionale “Antonino Salinas” inv. no. 3894. Author’s photograph.

posture is broken off at the extremities, so that the head, forearms, and hands are missing. On the technical side, this second statuette, which shows far less wear than the first, is fully carved on both sides. Additionally, as with the first statuette, the head was carved apart and keyed to the rest of the body at the base of the neck by a pin, whose hole is preserved. Finally, the base, which corresponds to the left, bent leg, is flat and features two bronze pins in their holes, one modern and the other ancient. As for the provenance of this second statuette, Gàbrici states that “si rinvenne quasi al medesimo punto” of the first.17 Gàbrici’s expression is a bit vague, leaving it unclear whether the author is referring to the discovery in the same stone well as the first or a different, nearby place. Thankfully, Salinas is explicit in his report about the provenance of the first and second sculptures from the same stone well, and we owe to Vincenzo Tusa a reference to the excavation journal for 1889, which under May 6 records the discovery of the second statuette “in the well south of the new monument.”18 The “new monument” can only be the Temple of Malophoros, and at the time of the discovery of this building, the well may have been considered to be placed to its south. In conclusion, both statuettes were found in the Late Antique well, probably with other filling material and at different levels.

 Gàbrici (1927) 164.  Tusa (1983) 130.

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This discussion about the provenance of the second statuette leads to the question about its association with the first sculpture and their possible function. A number of modern authors have been reticent about these issues, and the only explicit comments available are by Salinas and Gàbrici. Salinas, noting the similarity in posture of the second statuette to the corner sculptures of the west pediment of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia (which is true only for the position of the upper body), which he considers not too distant in terms of dating and style, suggests its attribution to a figure in a similar location within a small pediment. Salinas does not involve our first statuette in his reconstruction, but the next step in that direction is made by Gàbrici, who, pointing to an alleged lack of carving in the back of the seated figure, restores it at the center of the pediment of a naiskos, against the tympanum wall. According to Gàbrici, this central figure would have been flanked by two reclining, symmetrical figures, which, given the carving of the back of the preserved one (our second statuette), would have been placed above the rampants of the pediment, not against the tympanum wall. Last but not least, Gàbrici identifies this group of three statuettes with Demeter seated in the center, flanked by two reclining figures of Kore (our second statuette) and Triptolemos. However appealing, Gàbrici’s theory—mentioned not without some hesitation by later authors19—is hard to maintain. First, the attribution of the two sculptures to a pediment is based on the wrong assumption that the back of the first would be flat and uncarved, which does not appear to be the case. This theory also plays down the fact that the second statuette is fully carved on both sides. Gàbrici’s consequent placement of this second figure above the rampants of a pediment is without parallels in Greek architectural sculpture. No less problematic is the reconstruction of a fully frontal figure (the first statuette) at the center of a pediment of the Early Classical period in Selinunte, which is a time in which frontal figures and frontal heads were carefully avoided in local architectural sculpture, as a deliberate reaction to Archaic sculptures such as the Small Metopes and the metopes of Temple C.20 Last but not least, according to Gàbrici himself,21 the few, fragmentary pieces of evidence for naiskoi with pediments from Selinunte, now in the Palermo Museum, come from the main urban sanctuary, not the Malophoros Sanctuary. In conclusion, there is no compelling reason for restoring these first two statuettes in a pediment, and we should consider the dedication of a group of statuettes on top of a support as a viable alternative. This type of offering is well attested starting in the Archaic period; one need only mention, on the Akropolis, the dedication by Psakythe featuring three small bronze statuettes placed at different angles to the observer,22 or the dedication by Onesimos

   

E.g., Pafumi (2004) 70. Marconi (2007) 214–222. Gàbrici (1927) 166. Raubitschek (1949) 86–87, no. 81; Keesling (2003) 88.

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and Theodoros consisting of four bronze statuettes on top of a pillar capital.23 Bases for stelae or pilasters supporting statues and other forms of votive offerings, although understudied, are well attested for the Malophoros Sanctuary, including five examples in the area before the propylon.24 To these one may add the two bases carrying the well-known dedicatory inscriptions to, respectively, Hekate and Malophoros, with cuttings on top for fastening anathemata.25 Implicit in this suggestion is the attribution of our first two statuettes to the same dedication, a possibility that is strongly supported not only by their comparable dimensions and stylistic similarities but also by the use of the same Paros 1 marble, an issue systematically addressed below. In his discussion of the first two statuettes, after developing his theory about their restoration in the same pediment and in conjecturing about their subject, Gàbrici writes of “tre figure scolpite in marmo”26 featuring a triad and representing Demeter, Kore, and Triptolemos, as we saw. Curiously, Tusa has interpreted this passage by Gàbrici as a reference to an unprovenanced small standing marble peplophoros in Palermo, which he has consequently attributed to the Malophoros Sanctuary and the same group as the first two examples. Gàbrici’s text, however, by no means refers to a third statuette in Palermo; it simply suggests the restoration of the group with a third figure featuring Triptolemos. It goes without saying that Gàbrici is obviously not referring to a standing peplophoros, since he is restoring a male figure in a lying posture. The unprovenanced statuette under discussion (Palermo 5779, Fig. 5), incorrectly assigned by Tusa to the Malophoros Sanctuary, features part of the torso of the third headless peplophoros wearing the peplos over a chiton endymon.27 The maximum preserved height of the statuette is 18 cm, and the figure was originally meant to measure somewhat above 2 feet; it is thus on a larger scale than the first two examples, which also does not support their association (nor does the different Paros 2 marble, for which see below). The sculpture was first published by Tusa, and after our previous comments, we must consider its provenance unknown; most likely, this could be either the Malophoros Sanctuary or the main urban sanctuary. Unfortunately, the statuette is poorly preserved. The figure was clearly standing and had the left arm hanging against the side. But the right side is broken off, as are the back and the area of the neck, of which only a small portion is preserved, without traces of a pinhole. The latter suggests that unlike our first two statuettes, the head of this third example was carved in one piece with the rest of the body. Last but not least, this third statuette features four small holes in the back, at least two of which

 Raubitschek (1949) 246–247, no. 217; Keesling (2003) 88.  Gàbrici (1927) 109–111.  Gàbrici (1927) 379–381.  Gàbrici (1927) 167.  Palermo, Museo Archeologico Regionale “Antonino Salinas” inv. no. N.I. 5779 (formerly 267): Tusa (1983) 130–131, no. 33; Østby in Stile Severo (1990) 227, no. 73; Marconi (1994) 214–215, fig. 87; Danner 2001, 71–72, no. B45, figs. 41–42; Pafumi (2004) 70n111, no. 3.

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Fig. 5: Marble statuette from Selinunte. Palermo, Museo Archeologico Regionale “Antonino Salinas” inv. no. 5779. Author’s photograph.

are modern: a smaller one near the lower edge for the testing of the marble and a larger one near the center for fastening the statuette to a support (more recently, the statuette has been keyed to its base by a bronze pin along its lower edge). It remains unclear whether the remaining two holes, in the area of the left shoulder, are ancient or modern. I mentioned the possibility that the third statuette could come not from the Malophoros Sanctuary but from the main urban sanctuary. This is said in consideration of the fact that in 1920–1921, Gàbrici found, in his excavations of this sanctuary on the acropolis, two additional small marble peplophoroi. The first piece (Palermo 3896, Fig. 6), the better preserved one, features a standing peplophoros wearing the usual combination of a peplos over the chiton endymon, the latter visible especially against the right forearm.28 With a maximum preserved height of 29 cm, the statuette was originally meant to measure about three half feet, although its dimensions are difficult to determine given its general condition. The statuette is, in fact, poorly preserved: it is recomposed from two joining fragments (the lower one corresponding to the area of the thighs); misses its head, left arm, and lower legs; and presents wear and chipping in various

 Palermo, Museo Archeologico Regionale “Antonino Salinas” inv. no. N.I. 3896 (formerly 269): Gàbrici (1929) 90–91, figs. 14a–b; Holloway (1975) 26; Tusa (1983) 131, no. 36; Østby in Stile Severo (1990) 228, no. 74; Marconi (1994) 214–215, fig. 88; Pafumi (2004) 71n113, no. 1, fig. 19.

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Fig. 6: Marble statuette from the main urban sanctuary of Selinunte. Palermo, Museo Archeologico Regionale “Antonino Salinas” inv. no. 3896. Author’s photograph.

parts, including the right forearm and hand. Still, one can appreciate the original posture of the woman, including the left leg clearly advanced and the right arm slightly bent at the elbow and pressed with the hand against the side. Apparently, both hands originally grasped the edges of the apoptygma, the same gesture seen on a more recent limestone peplophoros from Malophoros.29 On the technical side, in spite of the general wear of the surface, one can appreciate the care taken with the carving of the back, which comes close to our second statuette. Additionally, from three holes carefully drilled at the base of the neck, one can conclude that the head was originally joined to the rest of the body with a butt joint. Last but not least, the statuette was subjected to burning in antiquity, as indicated by the black patina visible particularly on the front. The two fragments of this statuette were discovered in two separate excavations during the investigations of the main urban sanctuary. According to Gàbrici, the upper part was found in an earlier, unspecified excavation (supposedly, the nineteenth-century excavations in the sanctuary area), while the lower one was found in the excavations led by Gàbrici himself in 1920–1921. These last excavations involved the area between the east front of Temple C and the stoa bordering the eastern limit of the sanctuary.

 Palermo, Museo Archeologico Regionale “Antonino Salinas” inv. no. N.I. 3897: Gàbrici (1927) 174, pl. 23.3–3a; Tusa (1983) 131, no. 34; Tölle-Kastenbein (1980) 193, no. 361; Østby in Stile Severo (1990) 230–231, no. 76.

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Gàbrici does not offer more specific indications, particularly concerning the stratigraphic context in which our sculpture was found, and generically writes of a single layer 1–1.50 m deep gradually formed between the foundation of Selinunte and the Roman period. This last suggestion is now seriously in question in light of the results of the excavations of the mission of the Institute of Fine Arts–NYU and the University of Milan in the southern sector of the main urban sanctuary. These excavations have disproved Gàbrici’s theory of the lack, in the stratigraphic sequence in the sanctuary, of layers of the Archaic and Classical periods (there is, in fact, a clear stratigraphic sequence stretching from the Orientalizing all the way down to the Hellenistic period), and they have also shown the existence of a thick layer of leveling fill of ca. 300 BCE which served as a base for the last, Punic phase of the settlement. This layer includes not only a large number of transport amphoras and architectural terracottas but also a significant amount of reused material related to life in the sanctuary in the Archaic and Classical periods, including marble sculpture. Most likely, the statuette considered here was found in this layer, and its breakage and burning happened in antiquity. The same considerations apply to the second peplophoros (Palermo 3898, Fig. 7) from the main urban sanctuary, of which only the upper torso—featuring a large part of the apoptygma—and the upper right arm are preserved.30

Fig. 7: Marble statuette from the main urban sanctuary of Selinunte. Palermo, Museo Archeologico Regionale “Antonino Salinas” inv. no. 3898. Author’s photograph.

 Palermo, Museo Archeologico Regionale “Antonino Salinas” inv. no. N.I. 3898 (formerly 268): Gàbrici (1929) 91, figs. 15a–b; Tusa (1983) 131, no. 35; Østby in Stile Severo (1990) 229, no. 75; Marconi (1994) 214–215, fig. 86; Pafumi (2004) 71n113, no. 2, fig. 20.

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Also, this statuette comes, in fact, from the 1920–1921 excavations, although Gàbrici unfortunately does not make any specific reference to its findspot, including its relation to the findspot of the previous piece. For this last statuette, a provenance from the layer of Hellenistic fill appears very likely. Leaving the provenance aside, with a maximum preserved height of 16 cm, this marble peplophoros was originally meant to have a height of about 2 feet, and its scale came closer to that of the statuette of uncertain provenance discussed above. More generally, this last piece is stylistically comparable to the rest of the group, except for the lack of the chiton endymon under the peplos, which leaves the upper right arm exposed. On the technical side, a relatively large pinhole at the neck indicates that, like most statuettes discussed earlier, the head was originally joined to the rest of the body, although featuring a tenon joining in a shallow socket. Additionally, like the rest of the group, our statuette was carefully executed on both sides, front and back, with the individual folds in the rear closely reminiscent of the previous statuette, also from the main urban sanctuary.

3 Material and Technique Earlier literature generically refers to the material of these statuettes as either marble/white marble31 or white insular marble.32 In fact, except for one, the statuettes have all been subjected to archaeometric analysis, some by Rosario Alaimo and Salvatore Calderone (Palermo 3895, 3894, 5779) in a study published in 198433 and some by Lorenzo Lazzarini (Palermo 3898) in a study published in 2021.34 In keeping with the results of these two studies, Palermo 3895 (Figs. 1–2) and 3894 (Figs. 3–4) are made of Paros 1 marble, whereas Palermo 5779 (Fig. 5) and 3898 (Fig. 7) are of Paros 2 marble. At present, the only statuette that remains untested is Palermo 3896 (Fig. 6), and understandably so, given its fragmentary state and poor surface conditions, including burning. The distinction between Paros 1 and Paros 2 marble is well known.35 Paros 1 refers to lychnites, the translucent, fine-grained variety of marble from the underground quarries of the Stefani Valley, near the village of Marathi, expressly mentioned by Pliny (36.14: “Omnes autem candido tantum marmore usi sunt e Paro insula, quem lapidem coepere lychniten appellare”). Paros 2 refers to the medium-grained variety from the

 Gàbrici (1927) and Tusa (1983).  Østby in Stile Severo (1990).  Alaimo and Calderone (1984).  Lazzarini and Marconi (2021).  See, more recently, Gorgoni and Pallante (2010) 500–504; Lazzarini and Luni (2010) 187; Lazzarini and Marconi (2014) 130.

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open-pit quarries scattered over the area of Lakkoi, particularly in the Valley of Chorodaki. Based on Pliny, one would assume that Greek sculptors would have made nearly exclusive use of Paros 1, but this view has been disproved by recent archaeometric studies pointing to the wide use of Paros 2 marble, particularly in the Archaic and Classical periods. For our case, it is particularly notable that Paros 2 was consistently used for export in the west (Magna Graecia)36 and in North Africa (Cyrene).37 In these regions, this marble of lesser quality in comparison with lychnites could still be used for major commissions, including the Mozia Charioteer, one of the most superbly sculpted marble statues from Greek antiquity.38 This brings us back to our statuettes. The quality of the carving of the first two pieces (Palermo 3895 and 3894), made of lychnites, is evident. Clearly, the sculptor was able to make the most of the finer grain of the marble, particularly in the detailed rendering of the folds of the apoptygma and the crinkling of the chiton sleeves. The result: little figure, big impact.39 Adding to the sophistication of the execution and appearance are the metal attachments for bracelets in our first example (Palermo 3895). These statuettes clearly speak to that close connection between small scale, quality of material, and detailed rendering that is often found in the Greek and Roman world and is generally explained with the close viewing required by such small objects, allowing for a full appreciation of the materials of the sculptures, the details of the figures, and the general quality of their execution, fascinating the viewer.40 These observations about the first two pieces, made of Paros 1 marble, should not make us forget that the carvers of the two statuettes of Paros 2 marble (Palermo 5779 and 3898) were able to achieve a comparable degree of detailing with the larger-grain marble. I have mentioned the Motya Charioteer, notable for the sophistication of its carving; this was clearly a time when sculptors felt comfortable in carving in both Paros 1 and Paros 2 marble, confident that patrons would have equally appreciated their work. This can also be seen in the case of the metopes of the local Temple of Hera (E), in which the Parian marble used for the exposed parts of the female figures included both varieties.41 Although the larger number of inserts that have come to us are, in fact, of Paros 1 marble, the remaining ones are made of Paros 2 and appear similar. These observations are of significance in that they run counter to the theory that the use of Paros 1 marble in Western Sicily would have been limited to the inserts  South Italy: Lazzarini (2007); Sicily: Gorgoni et al. (1993); Gorgoni and Pallante (2010); Basile and Lazzarini (2012); Lamagna and Lazzarini (2018); Lazzarini and Marconi 2021.  Kane, Attanasio, and Carrier (2010); Lazzarini and Luni (2010).  Gorgoni et al. (1993) 50–52; Gorgoni and Pallante (2010) 503; Marconi (2014). Identification of the marble was confirmed by the more recent analyses of the statue by Jerry Podani at the J. Paul Getty Museum.  Neer (2020) 20.  See Colzani (2021). Neer (2020) 17 puts it nicely: “if the very large can overwhelm, the very small can fascinate.”  Marconi (1994) 191.

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of the metopes of the Temple of Hera (E).42 Not only are some of the inserts of these metopes made of Paros 2 marble, but Paros 1 appears to have been used for other types of sculptures like the first two statuettes discussed here. If one were to note a distinction in the use of different types of Parian marble among these statuettes, it would concern size, with Paros 1 being used for the pieces measuring approximately 1 foot and Paros 2 for the sculptures double that size. Some correlation between the size of the sculptures and grain size may certainly be at work (but see below for an unfinished statuette from Selinunte 1 foot high and carved in Paros 2 marble). A second technical issue that needs to be addressed concerns the general piecing of the head: with one possible exception, Palermo 5779, all of these statuettes had the head carved apart and joined to the rest of the body. Although we are talking of a small number of sculptures, two different kinds of joints are documented:43 either a butt joint at the base of the neck keyed by one or more vertical pins (Palermo 3895, 3894, 3896) or a shallow socket meant to receive a corresponding tenon, with the joint keyed by one vertical pin (Palermo 3898). Another difference concerns the number of vertical pins: the statuettes generally feature one hole for a vertical pin, placed in correspondence to the center of the neck (Palermo 3895, 3894, 3898), except for one, featuring three holes for vertical pins placed around the center of the neck (Palermo 3896). The best sense we can make of this evidence is that, when possible, the piecing of the head was avoided, but when it became necessary, both the appearance and the stability of the joint were particular concerns for the sculptors, leading to the adoption of different kinds of joints or multiplying the pins. This frequent piecing of the head is best explained by the sculptors’ intention of making the most of the costly, imported marble blocks. This is the most common explanation for piecing in Greek and Roman sculpture, including stone statuettes,44 for which a good parallel for the Greek west is represented by Cyrene, similarly dependent on the importing of marble.45 This, of course, would imply local carving of the statuettes, which is not what one would expect at first sight, considering that smallscale sculpture is definitely more suitable for export as a finished product than larger-scale sculpture. In keeping with this, a different explanation for the piecing of our sculptures could be that it was intended to minimize the risk of breakage for sculptures finished on Paros and then shipped overseas. Speaking against this alternative scenario, however, is an unfinished statuette from Selinunte made of Paros 2 marble and featuring a matronly figure seated on a throne.46 This sculpture is a complex case, starting with its provenance, since it was

 Gorgoni and Pallante (2010) 503–504.  Compare Claridge (1990); Jacob (2019).  More recently, on piecing, see Jacob (2019) (Greek sculpture) and Claridge (2015) (Roman sculpture). For small-scale statues, see Colzani (2021).  Attanasio et al. (2006) 256; Kane (2010) 481.  See note 11 above.

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given to the Palermo museum by earlier clandestine excavators. Executed only down to the last 1–2 mm from the final surface, it presents conspicuous traces of the point and chisel all over and represents the only documented unfinished marble sculpture from Selinunte. Because of its unfinished condition, the statuette is difficult to date, but based on the intended clothing, it could be placed in about the late sixth century BCE. In Selinunte, by the Late Archaic period, small statuettes of Parian marble were clearly carved locally, and the same could be expected for our peplophoroi. Finally, considering the high quality of the carving of our sculptures and comparing them with Early Classical marble heads on a similar scale from Selinunte, such as a slightly earlier example in Berlin47 from Malophoros, we should exclude a third possible explanation for the piecing of the head often found in relation to Greek and Roman sculpture, namely, division of labor and the carving of the head by a more skilled craftsman. In conclusion, sparing the cost of imported material to a local workshop can be seen as the best explanation for the piecing of the heads of most of our statuettes. After all, the use of inserts of Parian marble in the metopes of the Temple of Hera (E) shows how valued this material was in Selinunte, how limited the concern for joining body parts was, and a comparable parsimony in the use of the imported stone.

4 Style Inevitably, these last considerations bring us to the issue of style and the identity of the sculptors responsible for the carving. As usual, for marble sculpture from Selinunte and more generally from Magna Graecia, there is a split in scholarship between the supporters of outside production—the sculptures being either imports or the work of foreign, itinerant sculptors—and the supporters of production by local artists.48 The case generally rests on stylistic comparisons, which can be highly subjective, as in the case of Østby’s association of our peplophoroi with the Nike from Paros.49 Østby has used this comparison to support his attribution of our statuettes to sculptors from Paros, but the parallel seems untenable.50 The conservative style of these statuettes could not be more alien to the rigorous Severe style of the Nike, including the chiton endymon under the peplos (characteristic of all our statuettes except Palermo 3898) and the array of symmetrical, stacked folds on both sides of the apoptygma. One can easily

 Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Antikensammlung Berlin, inv. SK 1474: Tusa (1983) 188 and 189nn11–13; Marconi (1994) 215, fig. 91; Pafumi (2004) 70n109, fig. 16; Arachne no. 106014 (Agnes Schwarzmaier).  See, in general, Marconi (2010) and Marconi (2021).  Østby (2000) 297, followed by Pafumi (2004) 70; on the Nike, see especially Rolley (1994–1999) I, 360–361, and, more recently, Prost (2015) and Katsonopoulou (2018) 107.  For a detailed critique, see Marconi (2021).

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understand how two connoisseurs such as Bernard Ashmole and Ernst Langlotz, while arguing for Cycladic and Parian connections for the Early Classical sculpture from Selinunte, never mentioned the Nike from Paros to make their case. Eliminating this comparison still does not rule out a possible Parian connection for our peplophoroi, given their similarities to one of the anthropoid sarcophagi from Portella di Mare in the hinterland of Soluntum.51 The woman depicted on this sarcophagus wears only a peplos, but the rendering of the individual folds comes very close to that of our pieces. The attribution of this sarcophagus to a Parian sculptor is disputed, but if correct, it would document the activity of sculptors with a more conservative approach and at variance with the prevailing style on the island. This is because the peplophoroi from Selinunte and the figure on the sarcophagus from Portella di Mare are quite different from the Early Classical peplophoroi (including the Nike already mentioned) more readily associated with Paros, both in the round and in relief.52 Particularly notable here are the combination of the peplos with a chiton and the rendering of the folds of both robes, including the crinkling of the chiton and the swallowtails of the peplos. While distancing them from local Early Classical sculpture, these last two features are reminiscent of Late Archaic Parian sculpture, as first pointed out by Ashmole, who has compared the first two statuettes with the enthroned goddess in the Paros Museum (A 162). The same features, however, are also reminiscent in Selinunte of the metopes of Temple F (490–480 BCE), which marked the opening of Selinunte to the international style of the Late Archaic period,53 and of the metopes of the Temple of Hera (460–450 BCE), which are notable for their general lingering Archaic approach to female costume, in contrast with the heads and the male bodies and clothes (Fig. 8).54 With such comparisons at hand, it is not surprising that our peplophoroi, instead of being attributed to Parian sculptors, have been regarded, quite the opposite, as “probably the most convincing evidence for a local school.”55 There is now undeniable evidence for the activity of Parian sculptors in Western Sicily during the Early Classical period, especially the roofs of Paros 2 marble associated with Temple A at Selinunte and the temple of Contrada Mango at Segesta56 and the Motya Charioteer, convincingly attributed by Olga Palagia to a Parian sculptor57 and apparently produced in Selinunte, based on archaeometric analysis.58 But whatever the  Palermo, Museo Archeologico Regionale “Antonino Salinas” inv. no. N.I. 5630: Antonella Spanò Giammellaro in Stile Severo (1990) 234–235, no. 78; Marconi (2021).  Rolley (1994–1999) I, 360–362.  Marconi (2009) 261–262.  Marconi (1994); Marconi (2007).  Ridgway (1985) 705.  Marconi (2021).  Palagia (2011); Marconi (2014).  According to Lazzarini, the marble block used for carving the Motya Charioteer was also used for carving part of a horsetail from the area of the Malophoros Sanctuary: Lazzarini and Marconi (2021) 35–38.

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Fig. 8: Metope of Artemis and Acteon, Temple of Hera (E) at Selinunte. Palermo, Museo Archeologico Regionale “Antonino Salinas” inv. no. 3921C. Author’s photograph.

origin, local or foreign, of the sculptors of our peplophoroi, it is clear that we are dealing with talented individuals whose work met international standards and whose style conformed to the expectations of local patrons.

5 Marble Statuettes in a Local Context Among the small-scale stone sculptures from Selinunte, these peplophoroi are the only ones that have attracted attention by scholars thus far. However, although we may tend to think of the sculpture at this site on a larger scale, especially considering the prolific production of architectural decoration (the “Small Metopes,” 0.85 m high; the metopes of Temple C, 1.47 m high; the metopes of Temple F, ca. 1.50 m high; the metopes of the Temple of Hera, 1.62 m high), it is a fact that the nineteenth- and twentieth-century excavations at our site (mainly focused on its sanctuaries) have produced a considerable number of stone statuettes less than 2 feet high. To provide a precise quantification of this production, in comparison with the general local output of sculpture, is simply impossible, given the gaps in documentation highlighted by more recent excavations and also given the fragmentary state of

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most of the material. But Tusa’s catalogue, the standard edition of the sculpture from Selinunte (systematically revised by myself over the years), lists thirty-nine smallscale59 statues (less than 2 feet high) and forty-three medium and large-scale60 statues (more than 2 feet high). These numbers are somewhat speculative, considering the fragmentary conditions of a few pieces, but they speak eloquently about the consistent use of small-scale stone statues in Selinunte from the Archaic down to the Hellenistic period. In this last regard, in Selinunte, we are bound to enlarge the perspective and take into consideration other media besides stone: metal, as shown by the dedication of bronze statuettes at the Sanctuary of Malophoros,61 and especially terracotta, considering the provenance from the same sanctuary of almost six thousand statuettes,62 variously identified with deities or worshippers or intentionally generic images open to either meaning.63 The last count includes fragments that may belong to the same statuette, and at present we are far from having a minimal number of individuals. Nonetheless, six thousand seems a high enough number for us to envision a local habit of dedicating terracotta statuettes at sanctuaries (especially Malophoros, based on present evidence), and this habit may be considered the framework for the particular local appreciation of statuettes in other media, including in stone. Within this context, I note that the case of Selinunte, which disposed of excellent limestone for carving, clearly shows that the frequent use of terracotta statuettes in Magna Graecia did not depend on the poor quality of the local stone.64 It remains to be said that the corpus of terracotta statuettes from Malophoros includes three hundred peplophoroi, rather standard and generally regarded as of Attic inspiration.65 These statuettes feature standing women in various poses: keeping the arms and hands along the sides; holding an oinochoe, a flower, or a piglet; or featuring a small youth (Eros?) against the chest. The height of these terracotta statuettes, generally standing on a low base, ranges from 24.5 to 41.5 cm, which is comparable to the dimensions of our marble statuettes. Our marble peplophoroi, however, were produced in a far more valuable material and show correspondingly greater elaboration, at the same scale. It is far from

 Small-scale statuary (less than 2 feet high): Tusa (1983) nos. 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 59, 60, 62, 66, 67, 81, 82, 97, 128, 135, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 158, 160, 161, 163, 170, 182, 212, 222, 223, 228, 257, 271, 297, 300.  Medium and large-scale statuary (more than 2 feet high): Tusa (1983) nos. 55, 56, 57, 58, 61, 64, 71, 94, 121, 125, 126, 143, 153, 156, 157, 159, 162, 184, 187, 204, 209, 210, 220, 229, 238, 239, 253, 270, 272, 273, 274, 275, 276, 277, 278, 279, 280, 285, 286, 288, 290, 298, 299.  E.g., Gàbrici (1927) 353–356, fig. 149.  Dewailly (1992) 150; Parisi (2017) 47.  See, more recently, Huysecom-Haxhi (2007); Parisi (2017) 512–521.  Pace Neer (2020) 21.  Gàbrici (1927) 283–284, pls. 72–74; Antonella Mandruzzato in Stile Severo (1990) 284, no. 117, 303–309, nos. 134–140; Dewailly (1992) 151; Parisi (2017) 47.

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my intention to suggest a competition between arts and between sculpture and coroplastics. Most likely, the competition was on the side of the elite patrons of these marble peplophoroi, who saw these dedications, in a costly imported material, crafted by sculptors of international standing, and notable for the quality of their execution, as symbols of social prestige. Usage and display were two other critical elements of differentiation between terracotta and marble statuettes. We saw how our marble peplophoroi were in all likelihood meant to be placed on display on top of elaborate stone supports to which they were fixed, as best revealed by the second statuette, still featuring a long bronze pin. The presence of metal attachments and the piecing of the head also speak against the handling and moving of these marble statuettes, which must have been conceived from the beginning as anathemata. The situation with terracotta statuettes appears to have been different. In spite of the massive excavations between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, we still have some reliable information concerning the conditions of use and display of the terracotta statuettes in the sanctuaries of Selinunte, starting with Malophoros.66 In this sanctuary, which has provided by far the largest number of terracottas from Selinunte, most of this material has been found discarded in secondary depositions. These depositions have generally not been accurately excavated and documented, leading to different opinions about their original shape and origination. For example, while Gàbrici has thought of periodical depositions in the form of layers of fill, made by the cult personnel in order to clear space in the area of the monumental altar of the goddess, Martine Dewailly has thought of subsequent depositions in the form of pits, for a variety of reasons. This second suggestion is problematic, considering that no pits have been documented by nineteenth- and twentieth-century excavators, who have consistently referred to these deposits as layers, arguably “depositi strato,” according to the recent classification of votive deposits by Valeria Parisi.67 An exception to this picture, however, comes from the recent excavations at Malophoros directed by Caterina Greco, which have revealed (Trench Z) a bothros at one of the corners of the propylon. This bothros reused an earlier pit and was filled with votive material, mainly pottery and terracotta figurines.68 Besides secondary depositions, there is evidence, however, for primary depositions, particularly in association with the first phase of cult in the sanctuary (ca. 630–590 BCE), in the open air, and with the successive phase that saw the construction

 Malophoros: Gàbrici (1927) 119–123, 203; Dewailly (1992) 29–30; Parisi (2017) 41–60; Greco (2018); Greco (2020); Greco (2021); compare also the depositions from the Sanctuary of Zeus Meilichios: Spatafora (2017) and Spatafora (2020).  Parisi (2017) 485–494. Such “depositi strato” have been clearly identified in the most recent excavations led by Caterina Greco: Greco (2021).  Greco (2020) 339–341; Greco (2021).

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of the first temple (“megaron”) of Malophoros (ca. 590–580 BCE).69 As an example, I will focus here on “rogo” number 11, a relatively small (2.35 m long) altar made of rubble, meant for animal sacrifice and showing extensive burning, and on which were deposited, together with thirty loomweights, three fragmentary terracotta statuettes, corresponding to two heads with the bust and one head.70 This is just one example of what appears to have been a common practice at Malophoros, namely, the performance of an animal sacrifice at an altar, accompanied by the deposition of a number of objects. The latter are generally varied and can include, besides terracotta figurines, pottery, loomweights, lamps, and elements of personal ornamentation, in metal or more precious material. It is clear that handleability and portability were two essential characteristics of terracotta figurines at Malophoros (here I refrain from addressing breakage, which is often found in the terracottas from this sanctuary and could be seen as a form of ritual killing of the object), which must have been handled just like other objects (starting with pottery) in order to be transported to the place where the sacrifice would have taken place. Additionally, it appears that these votive objects were meant to remain at the altar for only a limited period of time, possibly until the performance of the next sacrifice, after which they would be placed in storage, as indicated by their final deposition according to classes of materials, which presupposes their selection and sorting after the primary deposition.71 There is no reason to think that this usage and display of terracotta figurines at Malophoros would have changed in later periods, also considering the extreme conservatism of Selinuntines in religious matters. A comparable dynamic concerned terracotta figurines at the nearby sanctuary of Zeus Meilichios, which in the Archaic and Classical periods saw an extensive use of the area for votive depositions near altars, with similar assemblages of different materials, including pottery, terracotta figurines, and bronzes.72 Ultimately, although in Selinunte the practice of dedicating stone statuettes at sanctuaries may have been inspired by the dedication of terracotta figurines, the display setting of our examples was molded on large-scale statuary. While precluding handling and portability, these display conditions would have required closer viewing, placing these stone statuettes precisely where they belong, midway between large-scale statuary and figurines, partaking in some of the qualities of both but having their own distinctive agency in relation to the viewer.

 Gàbrici (1927) 119–155; Dewailly (1992) 3–21; Parisi (2017) 49–54.  Gàbrici (1927) 143–144, 149; Dewailly (1992) 3n11, 5n18, 9; Parisi (2017) 51. Dewailly (1992) 5n18 identifies the terracotta figurines with Gàbrici (1927) pl. 43, nos. 1, 2, 7.  See especially Gàbrici (1927) 123. Compare, more recently, Greco (2018) 214n45.  See, more recently, Spatafora (2017) and Spatafora (2020).

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Works Cited Alaimo and Calderone (1984): Rosario Alaimo and Salvatore Calderone, “Determinazione della provenienza dei marmi delle sculture di Selinunte attraverso le analisi di alcuni elementi in tracce e degli isotopi del carbonio e dell’ossigeno,” in: SicA 17, no. 56, 53–62. Ashmole (1934): Bernard Ashmole, Late Archaic and Early Classical Greek Sculpture in Sicily and South Italy, Oxford. Attanasio et al. (2006): Donato Attanasio, Susan Kane, Rosario Platania, and Paolo Rocchi, “Provenance, Use, and Distribution of White Marbles at Cyrene,” in: Emanuela Fabbricotti and Oliva Menozzi (eds.), Cirenaica: Studi, scavi e scoperte, Oxford, 247–260. Basile and Lazzarini (2012): Beatrice Basile and Lorenzo Lazzarini, “The Archaeometric Identification of the Marble of the Greek Statuary and Architectural Elements of the ‘Paolo Orsi’ Museum in Syracuse,” in: Marmora 8, 11–32. Claridge (1990): Amanda Claridge, “Ancient Techniques of Making Joins in Marble Statuary,” in: Marion True and Jerry Podany (eds.), Marble: Art Historical and Scientific Perspectives on Ancient Sculpture, Malibu, CA, 135–162. Claridge (2015): Amanda Claridge, “Marble Carving, Techniques, Workshops, and Artisans,” in: Elise A Friedland, Melanie Grunow Sobocinski, and Elaine K. Gazda (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Roman Sculpture, Oxford, 107–122. Colzani (2021): Giovanni Colzani, Statue in piccolo formato nel mondo greco e romano: La scultura ideale, Florence. Danner (2001): Peter Danner, “Westgriechische Giebeldekorationen, 2. Mythologische Szenen, sonstige figürliche Motive, nichtfigürliche Ornamente,” in: Römische historische Mitteilungen 43, 17–144. Dewailly (1992): Martine Dewailly, Les statuettes aux parures du Sanctuaire de la Malophoros à Sélinonte, Naples. Elsner (2020a): Jaś Elsner, Figurines: Figuration and the Sense of Scale, Oxford. Elsner (2020b): Jaś Elsner, “Introduction,” in: Elsner (2020a), 1–10. Gàbrici (1927): Ettore Gàbrici, “Il Santuario della Malophoros a Selinunte,” in: MonAnt 32, 1–419. Gàbrici (1929): Ettore Gàbrici, “Acropoli di Selinunte: scavi e topografia,” in: MonAnt 33, 61–112. Gorgoni et al. (1993): Carlo Gorgoni, Maria L. Amadori, Lorenzo Lazzarini, and Paolo Pallante, “Risultati dell’indagine micropaleontologica, minero-petrografica e geochimica preliminare sui materiali lapidei (calcari e marmi) dell’insediamento greco di Selinunte,” in: Selinunte 1, Rome, 33–59. Gorgoni and Pallante (2010): Carlo Gorgoni and Paolo Pallante, “On Cycladic Marbles Used in the Greek and Phoenician Colonies of Sicily,” in: Demetrio U. Schilardi and Dora Katsonopoulou (eds.), Paria Lithos: Parian Quarries, Marble and Workshops of Sculpture, 2nd ed., Athens, 497–506. Greco (2016): Caterina Greco, “Selinunte tra Tardoantico e medioevo: La città dopo la città,” in: Maria C. Parello and Maria S. Rizzo (eds.), Paesaggi urbani tardoantichi: Casi a confronto, Atti delle Giornate gregoriane, VIII edizione (29–30 Novembre 2014), Bari, 41–50. Greco (2018): Caterina Greco, “Nuove ricerche archeologiche nei santuari di Demetra Malophoros e Zeus Meilichios a Selinunte,” in: Claudia Antonetti (ed.), Gli esametri Getty e Selinunte: Testo e contesto, Alessandria, 203–228. Greco (2020): Caterina Greco, “Il santuario di Demetra Malophoros e Zeus Meilichios a Selinunte: Le nuove indagini,” in: Monica De Cesare, Elisa C. Portale, and Natascha Sojc (eds.), The Akragas Dialogue: New Investigations on Sanctuaries in Sicily, Berlin, 315–351. Greco (2021): Caterina Greco, “Ritualità e aspetti del culto nei santuari della Gaggera a Selinunte,” in: Emanuele Greco, Anna Salzano, and Ivan Tornese (eds.), Dialoghi sull’Archeologia della Magna Grecia e del Mediterraneo, Atti del IV Convegno Internazionale di Studi, Paestum, 15–17 Novembre 2019, Paestum, 155–170.

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Holloway (1975): R. Ross Holloway, Influences and Styles in the Late Archaic and Early Classical Greek Sculpture of Sicily and Magna Graecia, Louvain. Huysecom-Haxhi (2007): Stéphanie Huysecom-Haxhi, “Déesses et/ou mortelles dans la plastique de terre cuite: Réponses actuelles à une question ancienne,” in: Pallas 75, 231–247. Jacob (2019): Raphaël Jacob, “Piecing, Attachments, Repairs.” In Olga Palagia (eds.), Handbook of Greek Sculpture, Berlin, 657–689. Kane (2010): Susan Kane, “Parian Sculpture in the Greco-Roman City of Cyrene, Libya,” in: Demetrio U. Schilardi and Dora Katsonopoulou (eds.), Paria Lithos: Parian Quarries, Marble and Workshops of Sculpture, 2nd ed., Athens, 479–483. Kane, Attanasio, and Carrier (2010): Susan Kane, Donato Attanasio, and Samuel Carrier, “The Use of Parian and Pentelic Marble in the Greco-Roman City of Cyrene,” in: Mario Luni (ed.), Cirene e la Cirenaica nell’antichità, Rome, 101–104. Katsonopoulou (2018): Dora Katsonopoulou, “Recent Evidence of Sculptures in Parian Marble,” in: Dora Katsonopoulou (ed.), Paros IV: Paros and Its Colonies, Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on the Archaeology of Paros and the Cyclades, Paroikia, Paros, 11–14 June 2015, Athens, 101–113. Keesling (2003): Catherine M. Keesling, The Votive Statues of the Athenian Acropolis, Cambridge and New York. Lamagna and Lazzarini (2018): Gioconda Lamagna and Lorenzo Lazzarini, “La determinazione dell’origine dei marmi costituenti i principali manufatti di età greca del Museo Archeologico Regionale di Agrigento,” in: Marmora 14, 11–36. Lazzarini (2007): Lorenzo Lazzarini, “Indagini archeometriche sui marmi bianchi della statuaria e architettura della Magna Grecia,” in: Marmora 3, 21–52. Lazzarini and Luni (2010): Lorenzo Lazzarini and Mario Luni, “La scultura in marmo a Cirene in età greca,” in: Gianfranco Adornato (ed.), Scolpire il marmo: Importazioni, artisti itineranti, scuole artistiche nel Mediterraneo antico, Atti del convegno di studio tenuto a Pisa, Scuola Normale Superiore, 9–11 Novembre 2009, Milan, 185–222. Lazzarini and Marconi (2014): Lorenzo Lazzarini and Clemente Marconi, “A New Analysis of Major Greek Sculptures in the Metropolitan Museum: Petrological and Stylistic,” in: Metropolitan Museum Journal 49, 119–142. Lazzarini and Marconi (2021): Lorenzo Lazzarini and Clemente Marconi, “A New Archaeometric Analysis of Marble Sculptures and Architectural Elements from Selinunte in the ‘Antonino Salinas’ Museum in Palermo,” in: Marmora 16, 17–46. Lentini (2010): Ferdinando Lentini, “L’insediamento tardoantico alla foce del fiume Modione,” in: Sebastiano Tusa (ed.), Selinunte, Rome, 191–203. Marconi (1994): Clemente Marconi, Selinunte: Le metope dell’Heraion, Modena. Marconi (2007): Clemente Marconi, Temple Decoration and Cultural Identity in the Archaic Greek World: The Metopes of Selinus, New York. Marconi (2009): Clemente Marconi, “Arte e insularità: Il caso delle metope del tempio F di Selinunte,” in: Carmine Ampolo (ed.), Immagine e immagini della Sicilia e di altre isole del Mediterraneo antico, Atti delle seste giornate internazionali di studi sull’area elima e la Sicilia occidentale nel contesto mediterraneo, Erice, 12–16 Ottobre 2006, Pisa, I, 259–268. Marconi (2010): Clemente Marconi, “Orgoglio e pregiudizio: La connoisseurship della scultura in marmo dell’Italia meridionale e della Sicilia,” in: Gianfranco Adornato (ed.), Scolpire il marmo: Importazioni, artisti itineranti, scuole artistiche nel Mediterraneo antico, Milan, 339–359. Marconi (2014): Clemente Marconi, “The Mozia Charioteer: A Revision,” in: Amalia Avramidou and Denise Demetriou (eds.), Approaching the Ancient Artifact: Representation, Narrative, and Function, Berlin and New York, 435–447. Marconi (2020): Clemente Marconi, “An Unfinished Marble Statuette from Selinunte,” in: Angelos Delivorrias et al. (eds.), ΣΠΟΝΔΗ: Αφιέρωμα στη μνήμη του Γιώργου Δεσπίνη, vol. 1, Athens, 81–87.

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Marconi (2021): Clemente Marconi, “The Case for Parian Sculptors in Selinus and Western Sicily in the Early Classical Period,” in: Dora Katsonopoulou (ed.), Paros through the Ages: From Prehistoric Times to the 16th century AD, Paros V, Athens, 119–144. Neer (2020): Richard Neer, “Small Wonders: Figurines, Puppets, and the Aesthetics of Scale in Archaic and Classical Greece,” in: Elsner (2020a), 11–50. Østby (2000): Erik Østby, “Ionian Elements in the Metopes from Selinus,” in: Fritz Krinzinger (ed.), Die Ägäis und das westliche Mittelmeer, Vienna, 291–298. Pafumi (2004): Stefania Pafumi, “Scultura e committenza in Occidente: Contesto e ruolo sociale della scultura a tuttotondo in Sicilia tra la fine del VI e la prima metà del V secolo a.C,” in: NumAntCl 33, 41–96. Palagia (2011): Olga Palagia, “O νέoς της Moτύης και η μάχη της Iμέρας,” in: Angelos Delivorrias, Georges Despinis, and Angelos Zarkadas (eds.), Eπαινός Luigi Beschi, Athens, 283–293. Parisi (2017): Valeria Parisi, I depositi votivi negli spazi del rito, Rome. Prost (2015): Ffranxis Prost, “La tradition de la sculpture parienne en Asie Mineure,” in: Sophie Montel (ed.), La sculpture gréco-romaine en Asie Mineure: Synthèse et recherches récentes, Besançon, 209–222. Raubitschek (1949): Anthony E. Raubitschek, Dedications from the Athenian Akropolis, Cambridge, MA. Ridgway (1970): Brunilde S. Ridgway, The Severe Style in Greek Sculpture, Princeton. Ridgway (1985): Brunilde S. Ridgway, Review of Tusa (1983), in: AJA 89, 704–705. Rolley (1994–1999): Claude Rolley, La sculpture grecque, 2 vols., Paris. Rumscheid (2008): Frank Rumscheid, “Klein, aber Kunst? Berühmte Statuentypen in koroplastischer Umsetzung: Zum Verhältnis von Koroplastik zu Skulpturen aus Bronze oder Marmor,” in: Klaus Junker and Adrian Stähli (eds.), Original und Kopie: Formen und Konzepte der Nachahmung in der antiken Kunst, Wiesbaden, 135–157. Salinas (1894): Antonio Salinas, “Selinunte: Relazione sommaria intorno agli scavi eseguiti dal 1887 al 1892,” in: NSc, 202–220. Spatafora (2017): Francesca Spatafora, “Su una testa di terracotta dal Santuario del Meilichios a Selinunte,” in: Concetta Masseria and Elisa Marroni (eds.), Dialogando: Studi in onore di Mario Torelli, Pisa, 431–437. Spatafora (2020): Francesca Spatafora, “Il santuario di Zeus Meilichios a Selinunte: Dati e materiali inediti per la rilettura del contesto,” in: Monica De Cesare, Elisa C. Portale, and Natascha Sojc (eds.), The Akragas Dialogue: New Investigations on Sanctuaries in Sicily, Berlin, 291–313. Stile Severo (1990): Lo stile severo in Sicilia: Dall’apogeo della tirannide alla prima democrazia, exh. cat., Museo Archeologico Regionale di Palermo, 10 Febbraio–30 Settembre 1990, Palermo. Tölle-Kastenbein (1980). Renate Tölle-Kastenbein, Frühklassische Peplosfiguren: Originale, Mainz. Tusa (1983): Vincenzo Tusa, La scultura in pietra di Selinunte, Palermo.

Tobias Wild

From Mold to Masterpiece: Producing SmallScale Hellenistic Ruler Bronzes in Ptolemaic Egypt 1 Introduction: Production Processes as Cultural Practices Like countless other small-scale sculptures, Hellenistic ruler statuettes are considered dependent works of art: they reproduce, according to the common view, life-size or larger, famous originals and reflect the imagery of victory or honorific monuments that were erected for and by Hellenistic kings in the Eastern Mediterranean.1 Because those once publicly displayed and rarely preserved statues hold such a prominent place in the scholarly imagination, statuettes are forced to fulfill a massive role: they alone are believed to provide a detailed impression of the contents and messages that were communicated in large-scale sculpture in the round.2 Of major importance in this discussion are the bronze statuettes from Ptolemaic Egypt. They are believed to give a rich impression of this form of representation and illustrate the extent to which “official” forms of royal self-representation permeated more “private,” individual occurrences of

 This led, especially in German research, to far-reaching and definite conclusions. See, for example, Thomas (2002) 55; Fröhlich (1998) 244; Laubscher (1991) 230.  See especially Fröhlich (1998). The archaeological evidence is dominated in overwhelming number by heads, not full figures, with identification often disputed: Smith (1988). Traces on the upper sides of the bases allow only limited conclusions: Kotsidu (2000) 496–500. Cuirassed representations seem to make up an important portion of the large-scale sculpture corpus, in strong contrast to the imagery of small-scale sculpture: Laube (2006) 78–87. Note: This paper derives from my dissertation project on small-scale representations of Hellenistic rulers at Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg. An earlier version profited much from the comments of Ralf von den Hoff, Benjamin Engels, Jens-Arne Dickmann, Wolfgang Ehrhardt, Mariachiara Franceschini, and Florian Ruppenstein. For the opportunity to study some of the material discussed below, I am grateful to Lisa AndersonZhu (Baltimore), Kornelia Kressirer (Bonn), Séan Hemingway (New York) and Nina Willburger (Stuttgart). I would like to thank Kornelia Kressirer (Bonn), Viola Siebert (Hannover), Christian Beyer (Hildesheim), and Svetlana Adaxina (St. Petersburg) for providing me with images of the objects in their respective museums. Links and Arachne-nos. were included in the footnotes as often as possible as an additional means to study the material discussed below online in a greater variety of views than can be offered by the following images. Jessica Plant generously helped me to improve the English text and gave many remarks to sharpen my line of thought. All remaining mistakes or inconsistencies are, of course, my own. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110741742-006

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this practice of image making.3 As popular as this explanatory model was and still is, without new finds, it can neither be proven nor disproven.4 In only few cases, it is possible to confirm that small-scale ruler portraits actually refer to monumental sculpture or portrait types that were designed in other media.5 This explanation of the small-scale imagery of Hellenistic rulers is indicative of a problem that is deeply rooted both in research and in the conceptualization of small-scale works and results in scholars minimizing the complexity regarding the visual and practical places of those objects in ancient Greek and Roman culture.6 In the context of Hellenistic ruler representation, this has led to a one-sided and biased perception of small-scale images. This simplification cannot take into account the multitude of processes that must have influenced the making of small-scale images at different stages. Recent approaches that addressed the question of how small-scale sculpture might be related to or dependent on larger “masterpieces” concluded that we have to assume that specific needs and demands of customers as well as the possibilities and constraints of a material or medium had a great influence on the specific visual outcome of each statuette.7 In the absence of written or contextual evidence that could possibly elucidate parts of this process for the small-scale bronzes of Hellenistic rulers, the only point at which all those potential interests and options collide and could still be taken into consideration is in the production of the images. Yet until now, production has not been regarded as an important locus of investigation that could contribute to our understanding of Hellenistic ruler portraits in bronze. In the case of small-scale bronzes, production was a multifaceted process. Molds—one-, two-, or multiple-piece—formed the basis for production and served to shape figures or parts of figures in wax. Those intermediate products were reworked before the casting process. After casting, the bronze received a finishing touch where further details could be added.8 This means that the final image was actively shaped and constructed in three sequential stages.9 Yet finished bronzes  There is still no comprehensive discussion of small-scale ruler bronzes. For a first approach to the diverse material, see, besides the objects in the following discussion, the comprehensive index given by Thomas (2002) 99–103.  The only critical responses to this dependency are Kunze (2002) 157; Schmidt (1997) 59; Himmelmann (1989b) 102; Lehmann (1988); Smith (1988) 32.  This is the case, for example, when representations in different formats reproduce specific motifs of hairstyle. A recent summary of the available evidence is given by Azoulay/von den Hoff (2019) 174–187, 201–206.  On some similar conceptions in the context of miniature objects, see Martin/Langin-Hooper (2018).  Cf. Barr-Sharrar (2017); Rumscheid (2008); Leibundgut (1990). See also Koortbojian (2015).  For the production of bronze statuettes, see, for example, Mancuso (2013); Sharpe (2006) 163–168; Mattusch (1994); Thomas (1992) 14–18; Bol (1985) 110–117. The process in different formats is very similar yet usually presented in greater depth for large bronzes: Dafas (2019) 6–11, 139–145; Haynes (1992). A detailed documentation of different technical aspects of bronze casting is given in Lahusen/Formigli (2001) 480–500.  The importance of the different steps is emphasized, for example, by Leibundgut (1984) 149; Hill (1958) 313.

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usually provide little material evidence about the specific production stages, including the tools, methods, and procedures used for shaping and reworking. Therefore, the production of (especially) small-scale bronzes is largely understood on a theoretical basis, rather than materially through case studies of bronzes.10 In this regard, evidence from Egypt during Hellenistic and Roman Imperial times proves exceptional. Not only are numerous bronze statuettes known, but several large groups of plaster molds also had been found already in the early twentieth century.11 Additionally, the bronzes from Egypt are distinguished by a specific local workshop practice. Unlike in other traditions of bronze crafting, bronzes in Egypt were not carefully reworked in the wax model or after casting. Because of this specific regional production process, the use of molds and the reworking of the wax model can be detected rather easily, compared to the finished and carefully reworked examples that are known from other places in the ancient Greek and Roman world.12 Therefore, on the Egyptian corpus—which includes some of the most prominent small-scale bronzes considered to represent Hellenistic rulers—it is possible to differentiate the precise working procedure that was carried out on the individual statuette before casting. As an attempt to widen our perspective on the matter, this paper considers smallscale bronzes as objects of cultural practices and focuses on the material affordances and technical preconditions of bronze working.13 The aim of this paper is to use the unique evidence for Hellenistic Egypt presented by plaster molds and technical features on the surface of the bronzes in two case studies to differentiate the sequential stages of the production process of specific ruler bronzes (chaîne opératoire).14 Such a differentiation allows us to contrast permanently established workshop elements (molds) with individual production steps (reworking) and to address the question of how certain images were distributed and established in workshops. This—according to the underlying thesis—sheds new light on the decisions and desires of, as well as the dynamics between, different agents negotiating for the figure of a ruler. The first step in this approach is to outline conditions and possibilities that are defined by producing bronze statuettes with plaster molds in Egypt and to ask in which way a knowledge of this procedure can contribute to the inquiry. This outline serves as the backbone of the argument, which will be developed in two case studies: a type of  Cf. Thomas (1992) 19–20. A rare example for a detailed documentation and interpretation of the evidence on a small-scale Hellenistic ruler bronze is a statuette in Berlin, Antikensammlung, inv. 1993.3: Heilmeyer (2000); Heilmeyer (1997).  For plaster molds in Egypt, see below.  The basic study of the technique and surface treatment of Egyptian bronzes of the late period is Roeder (1933b). The similar practice in the Hellenistic period is described in detail by Kyrieleis (1973) 137–139, whose interpretation has been widely accepted since; cf., for example, Cheshire (2011) 160 n. 1248; Rabe (2010) 52–53; Laubscher (1991) 229; Barr-Sharrar (1990) 220. For a more nuanced view, see also Grawehr (2010) 130, who points to cold work on some Egyptian bronzes.  On the concept of material affordances, see Fox et al. (2015); Knappett (2005); Gibson (1979).  On the concept of chaîne opératoire, see Arntz/Lewis (2020); Dobres (2000); Edmonds (1990).

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pancratiasts used for the representations of Hellenistic rulers and the unique case of a figurine wearing an elephant’s exuvium in New York. The highly disputed identification and dating of most of the small-scale bronzes, which are often closely connected issues, interpretation of the iconographic choices, and the use of those objects as part of cultural history in the Hellenistic period fall outside the scope of this paper. Instead, I focus on the production and distribution of small-scale bronze images, breaking them free from their alleged dependency on large-scale sculpture to center issues of their image making on their own terms.

2 Plaster Molds: Serial Production and Creative Contribution Molds form the foundation of the bronze-casting process. In Egypt, several major finds attest to the deeply rooted practice of using plaster molds for the production of small-scale objects.15 While the practice itself was not invented in Hellenistic times, the findings attest to the widespread use of negatives in the production process during the Ptolemaic and Roman periods.16 The molds were made by applying plaster onto a model or prototype made of clay or wax. The details of the plaster forms demonstrate that freshly made and precisely worked figures usually served as the starting points to produce molds.17 The production of clay figurines usually required only one partial mold for the front and one for the back of the figure. Yet, in contrast, molds intended to produce small-scale bronzes usually consist of more partial molds, and some elements—especially limbs but also heads or attributes—were regularly made by separate molds.18

 Plaster molds from Egypt: Rabe (2011); Seif El-Din (1998); Cheshire (1997); Rubensohn (1911) 9–10, 75–82 nos. 65–77; Edgar (1903). The more than 800 specimens were almost exclusively found in Memphis—those in Cairo (Edgar [1903] i–iii), Hildesheim (Rubensohn [1911] 9–11), and Hannover (Rabe [2011] 11–12); possibly also a second group of molds in Cairo (Seif El-Din [1998] 166. 170). On the importance of Memphis for our knowledge of workshops, cf. Cheshire (2011). A detailed geographical distribution of plaster molds is given in Grawehr (2010) 125–128. The concentration of the evidence is usually seen as a distinct local workshop tradition which spread from Egypt to other places of the ancient Mediterranean: Reinhardt (2019) 30; Grawehr (2010) 154–155.  The molds cover chronologically and thematically a wide range from the early third century BCE to (at least) the second century CE: Rabe (2011) 15–16; Seif El-Din (1998) 166–167; Cheshire (1997) 156–159. For the attestation of this practice already in the late period in Egypt, see Roeder (1933a); Roeder (1933b).  Rabe (2011) 21 stresses the detailed execution of the models that were used for the production of the molds in Hannover.  For the manufacture of plaster molds intended for the production of bronze objects, cf. Rabe (2011) 12–15; Grawehr (2010) 128–135; Seif El-Din (1998) 167–168; Edgar (1903) iii–vi. For the differentiation of

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The most important notion that was emphasized in research on plaster molds is that this technique enabled workshops to produce separate elements or even whole figures or groups in a fast and serial way.19 Yet, beyond the specific use of the molds, the technical procedure that was necessary to produce the molds in the first place has aesthetic implications for the produced images, too. As a start, the process of deriving the molds from the models required an intermediate step. As was already observed by Campbell Cowan Edgar in his original publications of the plaster molds from Cairo in 1903, the molds were not taken directly from the original model. Rather, the prototype was dismembered first and cut into different parts (torso, limbs, head, attributes; here Fig. 3).20 After that, each separated part of the figure had to be molded as an isolated piece, and only in a second step could several individually molded wax parts be rejoined to create a new figure. A systematic decomposing of the model therefore preceded the production of the molds. Hence, serial production did not result in identical figures. Because craftspeople needed to assemble different figural elements every time, combined with the modeling of the wax by hand and reworking the metal after casting, it was likely inevitable that the exact positions of limbs or the head as well as the details of the surface differed considerably among a series of figures that were produced by the same molds. This means that a medium that was based on the logic of serial reproduction always created “inaccurate replicas” due to the constraints of its method.21 The process of rejoining body, limbs, and attributes forces slight changes in details while at the same time serially reproducing single elements. Besides this, research on smallscale bronzes, especially in the early and mid-twentieth century, discussed whether the separation of prototypes into single elements might have fulfilled more creative demands. Through the joining of parts that were taken from molds derived from different prototypes, according to the proposed interpretation, it must have been possible to combine parts that were not originally taken from the same model or to switch certain elements such as heads, limbs, or attributes and create completely new figures.22 As a consequence, the use of plaster molds would have to be interpreted not as a simply repetitive procedure but as a creative selection of and engagement with available visual elements.

molds for bronzes and terracotta, see Reinhardt (2019) 30 n. 128; Rabe (2011) 14–15; Grawehr (2010) 112–113; Seif El-Din (1998) 168–169; Edgar (1903) xiv.  The importance of the molds for serial production is stressed, for example, by Rabe (2010) 53; Sharpe (2006) 167–168; Mattusch (1994) 790–792; Hill (1982) 278. The most prominent stance in this (ongoing) discussion is taken by Carol C. Mattusch, with further bibliography in Mattusch (2015), whose arguments are discussed intensively by Ridgway (2015); Barr-Sharrar (2016); Ridgway (2016).  Cf. Edgar (1903) iv. Separation of the models by cutting: Rabe (2010) 52; Reeder Williams (1979) 93–94; Roeder (1933b) 230–231; Ippel (1922) 20.  Cf. already Barr-Sharrar (2017) 113, who links this specially to modeling by hand, not the use of molds; Leibundgut (1990) 399.  See especially Hill (1958); Roeder (1933a) 46; Roeder (1933b); Ippel (1922). Cf. Leibundgut (1990) 421; Bol (1985) 116–117.

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The division of the figures into various parts during the production of molds for bronze statuettes had technical reasons, at least in part. Images in this material show complex compositions and movements that rarely were executed in clay or, rather, could not be executed.23 Those voluminous and often daring motifs could, on the one hand, more easily be modeled in wax and were, on the other hand, realized in bronze, a far more stable and—at least concerning everyday handling—permanent material. Yet a differentiation of the practice of producing molds indicates that the separation of a figure into individual parts was not a standard procedure but was carried out only in specific circumstances. From a technical point of view, it would have been possible to produce the greatest part of a figure in a two-piece mold. In the case of a standing satyr in Hannover, the set of molds used to produce the statuette includes, besides the torso, also the head, legs, and rudimentary arms.24 This means that it was not an a priori condition to divide every model into many parts or to separate as many single elements as possible. While some of the molds for separate legs confirm that they had to be separated because of the complexity of the composition, many do not fit this interpretation as they belonged to standing or only slightly moving figures.25 Those separately modeled limbs were separated from the torso not for technical reasons but because they were supposed to be available as separated parts. Therefore, the division of the model was also a deliberate choice made to structure the process of image making. The evidence implies that creative demands might already have been an important consideration when it came to producing the molds and that this aspect has to be considered alongside factors of time and labor efficiency. This can be shown by a comparison between the specific ways different models were separated into individual parts. Molds based on similar prototypes, for example, in the case of naked male figures, usually show a similar decomposing of each figure.26 The limbs especially were separated from the torso at the same places, the arms around the shoulders, the legs beneath the hips.27 This means that it was important not only to decompose a prototype but also to repeat this specific procedure with other figures. At the same time, it was not important to permanently enable craftspeople using the molds to reassemble all the individual elements taken from the same model—as far as the scattered evidence allows for critical judgment. Indeed, it would not have been possible to identify the “prototype” of a mold by examining its insides: the negative has a distorting effect on our visual ability to clearly identify the image represented in most

 Technical reasons: Rabe (2010) 53; Roeder (1933a) 63–64.  Almost complete figure of a satyr (torso, head, legs) in a bi-partite mold: Rabe (2011) no. 54.  Separate limbs: Rabe (2011) nos. 130–231; Seif El-Din (1998) 174 nos. 9–10 fig. 11–12; 193 no. 47 fig. 49. Complex motifs are shown in Rabe (2011) nos. 61–64, 131–136.  Already pointed out by Roeder (1933a) 46–47; Roeder (1933b) 230–231.  Molds for male figures with very similar places of joining separately modeled arms: Rabe (2010) nos. 48, 54, 78, 81; Edgar (1903) pls. 2–3 nos. 32010, 32012, 32016, 32045.

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cases. The same is true for the exterior, which is abstract and unspecific, the plaster being often only coarsely applied. If the outside of a plaster mold was marked in any way, for example, by the use of letters, they were most often names of craftsmen or workshops or abbreviations that are probably related to that context.28 Only in rare examples does the outside of a mold indicate what kind of representation it could yield.29 As a consequence, the separate parts of a specific prototype could hardly be relocated among the corpus of molds in a workshop. The decomposing of the original model was therefore made permanent by this way of producing the plaster molds. Only a few molds attest to the opposite possibility of bundling a set of limbs (two arms and/or two legs, probably taken from the same model) in one mold.30 In the broader context of production, it was therefore mostly irrelevant and even impossible to reassemble all molds that derived from one specific prototype. Combining different body parts appears to be not only possible in theory but almost a necessity, as an intentional part in the process of mold-based production of small-scale bronzes. A statuette in Hildesheim (Fig. 1) demonstrates the possibilities of this praxis of combination. It was found in Galjûb, Egypt, and shows a riding Cybele, reclining on a lion.31 One “iconographic rupture” of the composition catches the eye immediately. The back of Cybele is—in contrast to the long vestment—naked and shows the navel. At this “visual rupture” as well as on other places, edges are clearly visible; they are traces of the production from six, probably even eight, two-piece molds, because the arms appear to have been cast separately. Those molds did not constitute one specific set. At least the molds for the belly derived from a different reclined but mirrored figure. There is evidence that the figure was created by combining several mold-made parts, beyond the belly, that did not derive from the same prototype. Though a reclining and riding Cybele is known in the visual repertoire of the Hellenistic period,32 it would have been easy to

 For the marking of molds, cf. Ferrandini Troisi et al. (2012) 45–52, with a detailed discussion of the phenomenon in general and Wild (2021) 57–59 with further reading.  Possible references on the outsides of molds to the iconography of the representation are collected by Wild (2021) 58 with n. 35. The percentage of marked plaster molds is extremely low: only 8 (around 1%) of the 853 plaster molds published by Rabe (2011) (343 pieces), Seif El-Din (1998) (51 pieces), Cheshire (1997) (85 pieces), Rubensohn (1911) (12 pieces), and Edgar (1903) (362 pieces). See Grawehr (2010) 123 fig. 152; Edgar (1903) nos. 32017, 32020, 32119, 32126, 32127, 32157, 32207. While some molds reveal traces of red color on the inside (cf. Rabe [2011] 22; Grawehr [2010] 135), there is no indication that the color might have been used to mark the exterior of a mold.  Pair of legs or arms in one mold: Rabe (2011) nos. 128–129, 140–142, 149–157, 165, 197–207, 228; Edgar (1903) nos. 32131, 32133, 32136, 32140, 32152, 32154, 32164. Two arms and two legs in one mold: Rabe (2011) nos. 225–226. Cf. Edgar (1903) iv, who suspected that this was the standard procedure.  Hildesheim, Roemer- und Pelizaeus-Museum, inv. 2269: Cheshire (2011) 218 pl. 37 fig. 79; Naerebout (2010) 57 n. 9; Roeder (1933b) 232–233 fig. 6; Ippel (1922) 23–24 no. 2 pl. 1 no. 2.  See, for example, the riding goddess (Cybele? Rhea?) on the south side of the Pergamon Altar: Queyrel (2020) 80 fig. 86. More common are seated representations of the goddess; cf., for example, Naumann-Streckner (1983).

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Fig. 1: Kybele on a lion. Hildesheim, Roemer- und Pelizaeus-Museum, inv. 2269. Photograph by Sh. Shalchi.

combine the upper torso and head with a sitting or standing lower torso.33 Albert Ippel already has pointed out the close relation between Cybele and Isis—or, respectively, lion and sphinx—from other figures found in the same context.34 Significantly, the upper part of the torso shows no trace of the strong movement of the rest of the body. Cybele’s body parts did not belong exclusively together but represent castings from felines and draped goddess molds of the same format—they represent only one possible solution among others. In the case of the reclining Cybele, it can be excluded that the division had technical reasons: the statuette does not show a very three-dimensional motif, and the size of 8 cm is not so large that a division was necessary. If the only goal was to repeat a specific representation of the goddess in an effective and efficient way, this would have been easily possible with a simple two-piece set of molds.35 The division of a prototype and the resulting possibility of creative combination were a central element of the production process that has yet to be incorporated into

 So already Ippel (1922) 19.  Ippel (1922) 38. See Naerebout (2010) 58 n. 9.  See, for example, mold for Harpocrates seated on a swan (Rabe [2011] no. 30); child god seated on a cock (Rabe [2011] no. 39); reclining Aphrodite on a throne (Rabe [2011] no. 53)—yet those molds were used for producing terracotta figurines, not wax models intended for bronze casting. But, as shown above (n. 25), the wax model of a standing figure could be formed by a two-piece mold.

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our investigation of small-scale bronzes from the very beginning.36 Yet the possibilities were not unlimited: the molds for the torsos and heads include the rudimentary limbs and therefore only allow a limited number of solutions to be realized. They define basic iconographic possibilities, for example, whether a figure’s arm was raised or how its legs were positioned. The molds channeled and prioritized certain combinations but did not define complete representations or force reproduction of only specific models. The molds contain a genuine creative potential. These conclusions hold importance for the study of small-scale ruler bronzes and require a differentiation of three levels of selection and refinement in the production process: (1) Which molds were used to produce specific images? (2) Did the molds deployed in this process derive from the same model? And, to include the perspective of reworking the wax model in the inquiry, (3) which elements of the figures were part of the molds at all and therefore permanently available in the workshops?

3 Varying Types: Ptolemaic Pancratiasts Currently, ten bronze statuettes and at least four parts of mold sets are known of a group of closely entangled fighters. Because they all reproduce very distinct details, which in combination define the fighting composition, they all represent one specific type referred to as the Istanbul type, named after the best-preserved statuette (Fig. 2).37 Most characteristic is the complex composition of the fighters which can most likely be identified as a representation of pancratium.38 A striding fighter is already  This is already alluded for the Galjûb find by Ippel (1922) 6–8, 19 (“mosaikartig”) and Naerebout (2010) 57 (“modular nature”).  For the type in general, see Spahlinger (2020) 35, 40–41; Queyrel (2020) 194; Wild (2017); Rabe (2010); Cheshire (2009) 60–63, 194–204; Maderna (2005); Künzl (2004); Kunze (2002) 155–168; Thomas (2002) 39; Thomas (1999); Fröhlich (1998) 62–70; Andreae (1998) 77–80; Barr-Sharrar (1990) 221–225; Kyrieleis (1973). The most recent overview on individual statuettes is Künzl (2004) 553–555. The plaster molds have been published by Rabe (2011) nos. 60–66; Rabe (2010). Because three different specimens among these molds represent the same part of the group, there must have been at least two sets of molds. A third mold of the same part, also in Hannover (Museum August Kestner, inv. 2007.370), is mentioned by Rabe (2010) 52 n. 21 pl. 10,9. Also, a plaster mold in Cairo shows the back of the victorious fighter and can be recognized as a representation of the group because of the characteristic hairstyle and movement of this fighter (n. 43). The eponymous statuette of the type is in Istanbul, Archaeological Museum, inv. 190: Arachne no. 17600; Spahlinger (2020) 35, 40–41, 163 fig. 21; Queyrel (2019) 210–211 fig. 8.10; Lorber (2014) 211 figs. 6–7; Rabe (2010) 54 n. 34 no. 1; Cheshire (2009) 60–61; Mlasowsky (2006) 21–22 appendix 1c–d; Künzl (2004) 553 no. IST 1; Kunze (2002) 155–165 pl. 21; Queyrel (2002) 36–37 figs. 26–27; Thomas (2002) 35, 60 pl. 15,1; Andreae (1998) 80 and fig; Kyrieleis (1975) 170 no. C14 pl. 19,3–4; Kyrieleis (1973) 133–134 no. 1 pl. 45–48 fig. 13. 27.  Although the fight is often described as wrestling, it is more likely a representation of pancratium. The main difference between the two is that in pancratium, victory is achieved through surrender of the opponent, while in wrestling competitions, the losing fighter had to be thrown to the ground three

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Fig. 2: Group of pancratiasts of the Istanbul type (eponymous statuette). Istanbul, Archaeological Museum, inv. 199. D-DAI-ATH-Konstantinopel 46. Photograph by Eva-Maria Czakó.

behind his opponent, who has been forced onto his knees, his torso, head, right arm, and left leg twisted and locked viselike in a brutal attack. The last resistance of the passive fighter is represented by his vertical left arm, which tries to withhold the strong grip of his opponent. Despite this desperate move, there is no doubt how this fight will soon end.39 Although similar entangled groups of fighters are a common subject in small-scale bronze sculpture, the details of the groups are so distinct that even the smallest elements of the group can be easily recognized.40 While all versions of the group repeat the details of the fighting motif and composition, there are a few differences regarding the iconography between the same fighter in different bronzes.

times: Poliakoff (1989) 39–43. Accordingly, secured representations of wrestling usually show a fighter who has already been lifted into the air. In contrast, pancratium is distinguished by the twisting of arms, which is closer to the representations of the type: Doblhofer/Mauritsch (1996) 205; Poliakoff (1989) 80–91. The Istanbul type is interpretated as pancratium by Cheshire (2009) 194 n. 1397; Kunze (2002) 155 n. 860; Queyrel (2002) 36; Svenson (1995) 66; Lehmann (1988) 294.  Based on a reenactment by Höfler (1978), it has been claimed that the fight was still undecided. See Rabe (2010) 55; Thomas (1999) 200–201. In detail against this suggestion see Kunze (2002) 164 n. 918.  Cf. Rabe (2010) 50–52, who identifies isolated legs used for the production of such a group. For other wrestlers or pancratiasts in bronze, see Rabe (2010); Künzl (2004); Thomas (1999).

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There are distinct “versions” for both the winning and the losing pancratiasts; the winners display a wide range of unique attributes, and alterations of the composition occur. The original of the type, thought to be represented by the eponymous statuette in Istanbul, is dated to the early or mid-third century BCE and is usually seen as a monument of Ptolemy II or III.41 Because some of the variations can be identified as ruler portraits as well, they have been interpreted by scholars as being later adaptions of the exceedingly popular motif by later rulers who updated the type for their own monumental representation.42 Each statuette is thus seen to be representing one specific large-scale sculpture. The visual variety of the extant groups is visible through the characterization of the fighters themselves. From the group of twelve victors, five are shown with a hairstyle that consists of long strands that fall from the top of the head down to the neck and shoulders (Figs. 3 and 5).43 Moreover, there are three bronzes in which the victor is shown bearded and with short curly hair.44 In three other cases, the hairstyle is

 Early third century BCE (identification as Ptolemy II): Spahlinger (2020) 35, 40–41; Kunze (2002) 158–161; Koenen (1983) 170–171. Second half of the third century BCE (identification as Ptolemy III): Maderna (2005) 258; Queyrel (2002) 36–37; Andreae (1998) 77; Kyrieleis (1973) 135–137, 140–141. Undecided but third century BCE: Rabe (2010) 54; Cheshire (2009) 194–204. Yet, those identifications fall short of explaining that the bronze was actually found in Antiochia, the capital of the Seleucid kingdom. In Thomas (2002) 39 and Thomas (1999) 205, the original is interpreted as a “symbolischer Zweikampf” and connected with the victory of Antigonus Gonatas at Lysimacheia in 277 BCE. See Künzl (2004) 550. Against this interpretation is Kunze (2002) 158 n. 887.  Since Kyrieleis (1973) 137–141, this updating is interpreted to have taken place under Ptolemy V or later, youthful Ptolemaic rulers; cf., for example, Koortbojian (2015) 52; Andreae (1998) 77. In the context of ruler portraiture have to be discussed—besides the Istanbul statuette—especially the victors of the figures in Athens (n. 43, fig. 5), Baltimore (n. 43), Hannover (n. 43, fig. 3), London (n. 43), and Stuttgart (n. 45). The type was still used in Roman imperial times; see the statuette of the motif as part of horse gear in Nîmes, Musée Archéologique, inv. 912.1.1 (n. 45).  The victors are shown with long hair in the following bronzes: Athens, National Museum, inv. 2547: Arachne no. 1093973; Queyrel (2020) 193–194 fig. 254; Lehmann (2012) 198–199 figs. 15a–c; Rabe (2010) 54 n. 34 Nr. 3; Künzl (2004) 554 Nr. IST 7; Andreae (1998) 77. 79; Tzachou-Alexandri (1989) 275–277 Nr. 166; Kyrieleis (1973) 134 no. 3 figs. 4–9, 15. Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery, inv. 54.1050: Queyrel (2020) 194 n. 69; Picón/Hemingway (2016) 155–156 no. 63 (M. F. Nichols); Koortbojian (2015) 49 figs. 12, 52; Rabe (2010) 54 n. 34 no. 2; Beck et al. (2005) 579–580 no. 152 (C. Maderna); Künzl (2004) 554 no. IST 6; Poliakoff (1989) 73 fig. 43; Reeder (1988) 151–152 no. 63; Kyrieleis (1973) 134 no. 2 figs. 1–3, 10–12, 14. Hannover, Museum August Kestner, inv. 1997.36a–b: Rabe (2011) nos. 60–66; Rabe (2010). Cairo, Egyptian Museum, inv. 32036: Edgar (1903) pl. VII no. 32036. London, British Museum, inv. 1891,0424.4: Rabe (2010) 53–54 and n. 34; Maderna (2005) 258 fig. 1; Künzl (2004) 554 no. IST 3; Kunze (2002) 157; Kyrieleis (1973) 134 no. 4 figs. 16–18. Online database of the British Museum: https://www. britishmuseum.org/collection/object/G_1891-0424-4.  The victors have short hair and are bearded in the following bronzes: Mainz, Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum, inv. O.11832: Wild (2017); Rabe (2010) 54 n. 34 no. 9; Künzl (2004) 551–552, 555 no. IST 9 fig. 3. Paris, Musée du Louvre, inv. 308: Rabe (2010) 54 n. 34 no. 8; Künzl (2004) 554 no. IST 4; Kyrieleis (1973) 134–135 no. 8.

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short and the face beardless (Fig. 2).45 There is less variety shown by the losing fighters. As far as the ten figures—the respective fighter is missing for the versions of the type preserved through plaster molds—allow judgment, the losing fighter is mostly shown with slightly longer hair which reacts to the dynamic movement of the head (Fig. 2). Only the bronzes in Athens (Fig. 5) and St. Petersburg (Fig. 4) show a fighter with short hair, like some of the victors. All losing fighters seem to be represented with an expressive, barbaric physiognomy which can be seen in the contracted brows and forehead as well as in the slightly opened mouth.46 Besides the doubtless existent variety, there are some specific elements of the figures that are frequently repeated. The long hair of some of the victors—which is usually seen as an interpretatio graeca of the Harpocrates lock—is almost unique to this very same group.47 Similarly, the hairstyles of the so-called barbaric fighters correspond closely in terms of length and even reproduce strands of hair above the forehead which constitute a specific motif. Especially the fighters of the bronzes in Mainz, Baltimore, and Istanbul (Fig. 2) could be called “copies” regarding their hairstyle.48 Therefore, not only do the groups follow a type regarding the complex composition and movement, but single versions of the fighters correspond so closely that they need to be considered “subtypes” of the group. All groups reproduce a specific composition of a fight, while some groups seem to reproduce one distinct version of a single fighter. Those subtypes are not exclusively put together in specific combinations. Comparison of the statuettes in Istanbul (Fig. 2), Athens (Fig. 5), Baltimore, and Mainz demonstrates that the “barbaric” fighter could be fighting a long-haired, short-haired,

 The victors have short hair and are beardless in the following bronzes: Istanbul, Archaeological Museum, inv. 190 (n. 37 above). Formerly Florence (now lost): Rabe (2010) 54 n. 34 no. 6; Künzl (2004) 555 no. IST 8; Kyrieleis (1973) 134 no. 6. Nîmes, Musée Archéologique, inv. 912.1.1: Rabe (2010) 54 n. 34 no. 10; Künzl (2004) 555 no. IST 10. St. Petersburg, State Hermitage Museum, inv. Do 1864 2–3: Rabe (2010) 51. 54 pl. 9,6; Künzl (2004) 554 no. IST 5; Kunze (2002) 168 fig. 72; Fröhlich (1998) 111–112, 306–307 no. 39 fig. 25; Moreno (1994) 333–334 no. 39 fig. 25; Lehmann (1988) 294 n. 76; Schalles (1985) 88; Kyrieleis (1973) 134 no. 7 fig. 20. Stuttgart, Württembergisches Landesmuseum, inv. 3826: Rabe (2010) 54 and n. 34; Künzl (2004) 553–554 no. IST 2; Fröhlich (1998) 68–70, 308 no. 41 fig. 58; Svenson (1995) 250 no. 188 pl. 30; Lehmann (1988) 294–297 figs. 6–7; Kyrieleis (1973) 134 no. 5.  This iconography is usually interpreted as barbaric: Maderna (2005) 259; Kunze (2002) 156; Thomas (1999) 199; Kyrieleis (1973) 135.  Interpretation of the hairstyle: Kyrieleis (1973) 139. Especially similar are the victors in Cairo, Egyptian Museum, inv. 32036 (n. 43 above), and Athens, National Museum, inv. 2547 (n. 43 above), as well as Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery, inv. 54.1050 (n. 43 above), and Hannover, Museum August Kestner, inv. 1997.36a–b (n. 43 above). Yet, very similar hairstyles are known for representations for youthful athletes outside of Egypt, too, which casts doubt on the exclusively Egyptian interpretation. Cf. for example the statuette of a nude male athlete (fourth or third century BCE) in Delphi, Museum, inv. 1715: Sharpe (2006) 226–227 no. 64 figs. 41–43; Rolley (1969) 164–165 no. 203 pl. XLIX; Perdrizet (1908) 39 no. 47 pls. vii–viii.  Mainz, Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum, inv. O.11832 (n. 44 above). Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery, inv. 54.1050 (n. 43 above). Istanbul, Archaeological Museum, inv. 190 (n. 37 above).

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or bearded opponent and vice versa; the long-haired victor was represented with an “un-barbaric” version, too. The types of the single fighters were not only exclusively combined but appear to be interchangeable.

Fig. 3: Mold for the victorious fighter of a group of pancratiasts in the Istanbul type. Landeshauptstadt Hannover, Museum August Kestner, inv. 1997.36a–b. Photograph by Christian Tepper.

There is a technical explanation for this impression which can be reconstructed by a detailed analysis of the plaster molds in Hannover (Fig. 3).49 The torso and head of the victor derive from a separate three-part mold. The body is split into a two-piece mold for the front and one mold for the back. It further contains the rudimentary arms and legs which were modelled separately, following the general pattern that could already be observed for the production and use of plaster molds. Though no specific set of molds is known for the figure of the losing opponent, it is not unlikely that he was composed in a similar way. Besides the molds in Hannover, other statuettes of the Istanbul type confirm that the division of the group followed the same pattern: a partial mold in Cairo parallels the evidence in Hannover and shows the back side of the victorious fighter;50 the victor’s head of the statuette in Istanbul (Fig. 2) shows different degrees of exactitude, especially visible at the whiskers, which implies that the front half of the figure was vertically divided by two partial molds;51 the group in Baltimore shows surface traces that correspond again with the division of the figure shown by the molds in Hannover;52 and also with the statuette in St. Petersburg (Fig. 4), the sites of fracture on

   

Cf. Rabe (2011) nos. 60–66; Rabe (2010). Cairo, Egyptian Museum, inv. 32036 (n. 43 above). Kyrieleis (1973) 133. Reeder (1988) 151–152 no. 63; Kyrieleis (1973) 134.

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the right arms of the fighters confirm the division of the group.53 The separation of the composition and the splitting of the group into single fighters is therefore a general characteristic for the production of every group. The central feature of the production is that there is no direct overlapping of the main parts of the two figures. The only contact between the fighters was present at the entangled left legs and the left arms, as well as the right arm of the victor and his opponent’s head,54 and was created during the assembling of the separately formed wax parts. This is an important detail: if the single figures were produced separately, this frees us from the (implicit) (pre)supposition that every version of the group derived from a distinct model and set of molds. In fact, the combination of different victorious and defeated fighters can be easily explained by the production of separate individual figures: over the course of time, multiple iconographic versions were established and allowed artists to freely combine elements. The scale of the figures underscores this possibility. The bronzes in Baltimore and Athens are almost of the same size, and the statuette in Istanbul is only slightly larger.55 The potential to combine different sets of molds for one figure is demonstrated by the statuette in St. Petersburg (Fig. 4), which has sometimes been called a mirrored version of the type.56 Yet the differences are restricted to a very specific part of the statuette. The losing fighter is shown in the same pose as in the “normal” versions of the group, which is clear when compared with the Istanbul statuette. Torso and legs of the losing fighter follow the standard type. The only difference between the two groups is the torso of the supreme fighter and, because of this, the movement of the arms of both fighters, too. Given how groups of this type were technically produced by molds, torso and limbs separately, there is no need to assume a completely different set was used for this statuette. It is more likely that a torso with a different torsion was combined with the set for the inferior fighter and the arms were adjusted or exchanged. Besides these options for combination or amalgamation, the evidence on other statuettes further attests to the ongoing process of upgrading and adjusting features during the whole production process. This is the case concerning alterations of the fighting composition. A statuette in London follows the layout of the Istanbul type and is only altered in one aspect.57 The arm of the inferior fighter is not used as the vertical, final support against the attack of his opponent but is moved diagonally forward.  St. Petersburg, State Hermitage Museum, inv. Do 1864 2–3 (n. 45 above).  The connection between the hand of the victorious athlete and his opponent’s head appears sketchy in some cases: Mainz, Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum, inv. O.11832 (n. 44 above); St. Petersburg, State Hermitage Museum, inv. Do 1864 2–3 (n. 45 above).  Athens, National Museum, inv. 2547 (above n. 43): 21 cm; Baltimore, The Walters (above n. 43): 19,9 cm; Istanbul (above n. 37): 25 cm. Hill (1949) 66 no. 140 thought that only the head would have been exchanged in such cases during the production process.  St. Petersburg, State Hermitage Museum, inv. Do 1864 2–3 (n. 45 above). The statuette is called a mirrored copy by Rabe (2010) 51; Cheshire (2009) 195.  London, British Museum, inv. 1891,0424.4 (n. 43 above).

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Fig. 4: Group of pancratiasts in the Istanbul type. © The State Hermitage Museum, inv. 1864-2/3. Photograph by Natalia Antonova, Inna Regentova.

Because the base on which the bronze is mounted would correspond in size to the “standard” version of the type but is too small for the diagonal arm, the surface of the base was extended by adding a flat semicircular element in the middle of the narrow side of the base to allow the representation of this alteration. This variation hence constituted an additional effort that was executed in the wax model after molding the figure and the base. On the statuette in Athens,58 the movement of the superior fighter is changed so that his torso is twisted in a dynamic way (Fig. 5). The left shoulder is moved backward, the head is tipped back, and the position of the arms is slightly different from that in the “standard” type. Because the movement of the arms stays the same despite the change in the torso, the inferior fighter’s right arm is overly long.59 On his arm as well as on his chest, the surface is different from that of the other parts of the bronze which probably derive from a manual reworking of the wax model.60 These reworkings correspond with those parts of the body that were altered from the type: the right arm of the defeated fighter and the chest of the victorious fighter. This indicates again that the fighting composition of the group was the result not of a specific set of molds but of a reworking of the wax model before casting. In both cases, it seems, only basic versions of the groups were established in a workshop, whereas unique versions of the motif were created as secondary steps in the production process.

 Athens, National Museum, inv. 2547 (n. 43 above).  This has been noted already by scholars; cf., for example, Andreae (1998) 80.  As a comparison for the waxlike surface, cf. Roeder (1933b) 239 fig. 11, 241 figs. 13–14. Usually referred to as superficial damage on the bronze: Kyrieleis (1973) 134 no. 3.

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Fig. 5: Group of pancratiasts. Athens, National Museum, inv. 2547 D-DAI-ATH-1970/1302. Photograph by Gösta Hellner.

An analysis of the different attributes further confirms that the starting point for each statuette was a basic version of the group with no single fighter displaying specific attributes. Three bronzes display evidence of a reworking of the wax model in connection with iconographic elements. Right above the forehead of the victorious fighter in Baltimore is a blunted protuberance which can be identified as the remainder of an uraeus.61 Because of the character of the surface and for technical reasons, it is safe to assume that this element was added in the wax model. The vertical division of the victorious fighter by the molds makes it unlikely that each half of such a small attribute was formed by a partial mold. Rather, it was a secondary addition to the wax model. A similar way of adding or altering iconographical details can be reconstructed for the Istanbul statuette (Fig. 2).62 Helmut Kyrieleis observed that a twisted headband, which is clearly visible at the back of the head, vanishes above the ears and is either not visible there or was never executed.63 In the area where the headband is not visible anymore, two attributes were placed: small wings and a lotus

 Kyrieleis (1973) 134.  Istanbul, Archaeological Museum, inv. 190 (n. 37 above).  Kyrieleis (1973) 133.

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leaf. Considering the same vertical division of the front of the fighter, it is safe to conclude that the lotus leaf was most likely not part of the set of molds. Because other molds for male figures often do show complete headbands, it is more likely that the original mold included the headband and the other attributes were added at a later step.64 The model from which the molds derived that were used to produce the Istanbul statuette thus probably showed a version of the victorious fighter with short hair, beardless, and wearing a headband. Finally, the most prominent case of this procedure of adding attributes is the statuette in Stuttgart.65 Above the forehead, the greatest part of the cranium is “holed.” Because it is neither a damage of the bronze or a modern intrusion, it must be, again, the result of secondary reworking of the wax model, where a place was prepared to add a large attribute. In those three cases, the visual elements that served to characterize the victorious fighter were not a part of the basic molds but were added at a later stage.66 These observations concerning how separate elements of the statuette group were assembled and the use and combination of these possibilities with the reworking of the wax model offer answers about which elements of the small-scale bronzes were a permanent part of the workshops. It is no longer necessary to assume that each visual solution derived from a unique set of molds that already contained all the specific iconographical elements of many of the figures. The only permanent parts of the figures were the basic compositions of the different fighters which offered a multiplicity of options and were exchangeable and combined in a variety of configurations. Most popular was the combination of long-haired victor and barbaric inferior fighter.67 Beyond that, hardly any element of the groups was established in a permanent and specific way; variation was achieved by reworking and modifying existing types.

 Male figures with headbands: Rabe (2011) nos. 57–58, 81; Cheshire (1997) 105–107 no. 44 figs. 127–129. Autopsy of a bronze statuette in Bonn (Akademisches Kunstmuseum, inv. C 301: Schmidt (1997) 58–59 no. 40 pl. 17) shows similar evidence that the headband had been removed above the forehead to add the lotus leaf and wings. But see also a plaster mold for a Roman imperial bust of Hermes which includes the attributes (yet no headband?): Furtwängler (1906) 195–196 fig. 3; Edgar (1903) 5 no. 32015.  Stuttgart, Württembergisches Landesmuseum, inv. 3826 (n. 45 above).  Already Kunze (2002) 157 n. 879 muses that the attributes of the statuettes must not necessarily derive from the supposed originals but might have been added by “der in den Traditionen der Kleinkunst beheimateten ‘Kopisten.’” On this phenomenon, cf. also Leibundgut (1990) 399.  As Künzl (2004) 551 remarks, the Heracles-like victor of the statuette in Mainz, Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum, inv. O.11832 (n. 44 above), has a thickened neck reminiscent of the shape of the longhaired fighter’s hairstyle. There is even a single strand of long hair still visible behind the right ear. It seems the bearded fighter is the remodeled result of a long-haired victor type.

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4 A Patchwork Figure: The Dattari Rider The Metropolitan Museum in New York is home to a statuette that is said to have been found in Athribis in the Nile Delta and that was formerly part of the Dattari collection (Fig. 6).68 The bronze represents a male figure which is naked except for an elephant exuvium that is draped like the lion’s skin of Heracles as a cape covering his head and knotted below the neck. The exceptional garment is wrapped around the left arm which is held in front of the chest in such a way that the cloth forms a small pouch between arm and body while the rest of the drapery is swirling as if in motion. The right arm is lifted above the head and swings behind. The raised hand is filled with a roughly structured mass, which has been interpreted by Hans Peter Laubscher as the representation of seed, arguing against the interpretation that this figure is a fighter raising his spear to attack.69 The spread legs and a large hole on the bottom of the figure, which served to attach it to a separately cast element, indicates that the figure was originally mounted on a horse. Because of the position of the legs, this horse can be reconstructed in the rear, which also mirrors representations of charging riders in military costume.70 The figure is remarkable in more than one way: not only does it represent one of the few cases in which the sculpture of a rider of the Hellenistic period is almost fully extant, but the connection of an elephant’s exuvium with a charging rider has led to complex interpretations of the iconography.71 Due to these unique features, research has concluded that the small-scale bronze must be the reduced copy of a large-scale (victory) monument that represented a Ptolemaic king of the third century, most likely Ptolemy II.72

 New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. 55.11.11: von den Hoff (2020) 38 n. 22; van Oppen (2019) 25 fig. 30; Karoglou (2019) 102–103 fig. 7; Picón/Hemingway (2016) 111 no. 12; Cheshire (2009) 11–63 color pl. A, pls. 1–2, 4; Queyrel (2009) 19, 31 nos. 27, 55 figs. 67–68; Barbantani (2007) 107–108; Pfrommer (1999) 111 fig. 113; Bergmann (1998) 34 pl. 4,3; Smith (1991) 19, 27 fig. 5; Laubscher (1991) 229–238 pl. 49; Smith (1988) 153 no. 4; Yalouris (1980) 123 no. 46; Kyrieleis (1975) 22, 166 no. B2. pl. 10,1–3. Online database of the Metropolitan Museum: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/ search/254825. The following discussion of technical details rests on a personal autopsy of the statuette in 2017. Due to restrictions during the pandemic, it was not possible to produce new photographs of the details on the head.  Cf. Laubscher (1991) 230–231; Laubscher (1988) 11–19; Cheshire (2009) 237 fig. 2e. The motif is still often described as that of an attacking rider with now-lost weapon, for example, by Picón/Hemingway (2016) 111 no. 12 (L. B. Stoner); Barbantani (2007) 108–109.  Cf. von den Hoff (2020) 35–38; Laubscher (1991) 229–230.  Cf. Laubscher (1991) 229–238.  For the stylistic dating, see Cheshire (2009) 15–18; Fröhlich (1998) 44–46. Among research the identification of the representation as Ptolemy II is widely accepted since Kyrieleis (1975) 22. Cf., for example, Queyrel (2009) 19; Laubscher (1991) 230. Other suggestions (Alexander, Ptolemy III, Demetrios I) are collected by Kyrieleis (1975) 166 no. B 2. Even without the—as will be shown below—highly problematic use of the figure’s physiognomy for identification, the elephant’s exuvium proves the

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Fig. 6: Rider wearing an elephant’s skin. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. 55.11.11, Edith Perry Chapman Fund, 1955.

Recently, the statuette has been analyzed as part of larger technical study of the representations of Ptolemy II by Wendy Cheshire. She recognized numerous spots on the surface that show signs of reworking of the wax model: the two feet are modeled with different care; the hands are only coarsely structured; only a part of the elephant’s exuvium shows a sophisticated surface treatment representing the skin as wrinkled. Furthermore, the brim of the garment next to the cheeks and ears of the rider, as well as on his back, shows that some elements were made by separate molds and only added to the torso in the wax model. Judging from a tiny crack at the joint of the right leg, she concluded further that the leg was separately modeled and added in the wax model. The same is probably true for the flapping and free-hanging part of the elephant’s exuvium.73

interpretation as a ruler. The attribute is not used for other representations until the first century BCE: Stribrny (1991).  Cf. Cheshire (2009) 13–15.

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The observation of the crack on the leg confirms that this statuette, too, followed the general separation of body and limbs traced so far in this essay. Similarly, the left leg was also modeled separately. It can be excluded, though, that the varying degrees of surface detail resulted from a careless use of partial molds or that those were already worn out. Though both shoes correspond in place and form to the “garter band” as well as the small lotus leaves on each side of every foot, there is no indication that the left foot originally showed the same amount of detail as the right foot. The shoe and the toes are not executed in detail; only the sole of the boot seems to be indicated by a small, incised line.74 Instead, the surface reveals a couple of sketchy stripes that follow the form of the foot and seem to be results of a reworking of the wax model. While the top rim and the lotus leaves on both feet correspond in position and overall form, there are strong differences between the two. The tips of the leaves do not arch outside but are flat and thicker and appear to be attached to the skin of the leg. This implies that the left foot was not made using an already worn mold but was rather reworked in the wax model. The process of reworking on the left foot obviously served not to remove the boots but rather to render the foot in a bootlike shape and to add important details of the iconography of the footwear that was already in place on the right side. That means that the left foot derived from a set of molds that originally did not represent a shoed leg. The top lip of the shoe with lotus leaves on the right leg that was judged most appropriate for the representation was only added in the wax model. According to this interpretation, the legs used for this representation of a rider derived from models that were close in size but could not have belonged together. Therefore, only one of the legs (at most) could have derived from the same model as the torso. Further observations indicate that even more molds derived from different models were combined to produce this statuette. The starting point for the bronze must be the torso, possibly also the head. While it seems, as Cheshire concluded, that large parts of the exuvium were modeled by hand, at least the part of the chest with the knot was taken from a mold. The garment is tied in a Heracles knot which, although it is not exclusively reserved for this hero, is most commonly found in representations of the lion’s skin.75 Yet technical details of this unique elephant garment suggest a creative reinterpretation of the lion’s skin. The knot on the Dattari rider’s chest clearly shows signs of reworking. The paws of the animal’s skin were removed with a clear cut. Because this is no recent damage of the bronze, it must again be a trace of reworking of the wax model. This means that the mold originally showed some form of

 Cf. Cheshire (2009) 13–14, 237 fig. 2c–d.  Cf., for example, Kansteiner (2000) figs. 36, 45–47, 55, 57. For a comprehensive overview of the vast material on Heracles, see the entry in the Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae: Boardman et al. (1988–1990).

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paws, but they were deemed unfitting for the representation of an elephant’s exuvium. Because among animal skins only lion skins are regularly knotted at the chest, it is safe to assume that the reworking did not take place on a torso that already showed elephant paws but that the rider is based on a mold that derived from the representation of a lion’s skin.76 In fact, a plaster mold in Cairo shows a torso for a representation of Heracles with a lion’s skin that corresponds closely to the movement and iconography of the rider.77 Because Cheshire could prove in the case of another small-scale representation of a Ptolemaic ruler with an elephant’s exuvium that this was the result of a massive reworking of a Heracles type with a lion’s skin,78 it is reasonable to assume that in the case of the New York statuette, another representation with a lion’s skin served as the starting point for the bronze. This means that there was no primary set of molds for the representation of an elephant’s exuvium regarding a complete figure, at least not in a manner appropriate for the intended representation. Comparing the rider to an extant mold for the torso of a Heracles figure has further consequences for the interpretation of the production process of this statuette. Because Heracles is not frequently shown riding or wearing boots, the right leg and the torso can consequently not derive from the same model.79 This means that both legs as well as the torso were taken from different originals to fit the purpose of fashioning the Dattari statuette. This impression of an “experimental work”80 is ultimately confirmed by the head (Figs. 6–7). It is striking that the irregularities in the details of the surface on the elephant’s skin end at specific places. On the sides of the head, close to the ears, the rim of the headgear is slightly pushed in, with no indication, again, that it might be modern damage to the bronze. Similarly, on the back of the head, between the ears of the elephant’s skin, the surface is slightly impressed in the shape of two flat stripes, reminiscent of the remodeling visible on the left foot. In both cases, the termination of surface

 A rare example is a small-scale bronze in Munich (Staatliche Antikensammlung, inv. NI 4606) that shows a panther’s skin that is worn the same way as the lion’s skin: Knauß (2017) 79–81 fig. 259. The elephant’s exuvium is usually not knotted at the chest: Domes (2007).  Cairo, Egyptian Museum, inv. 32010: Cheshire (2011) 188–191 pl. 30 fig. 64; Edgar (1903) pl. 2 no. 32010.  London, British Museum, inv. 38442: von den Hoff (2017) 297 fig. 20; Cheshire (2009) 64–89 fig. 15a–d; Himmelmann (1989a); Kyrieleis (1975) 166 no. B1, pl. 8,5–6, 9. Entry in the database of the British Museum: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/Y_EA38442. For the reworking, see Cheshire (2009) 65–69, 67: “original model for a statuette of Heracles . . . was fused into the present type with an elephant exuvium.”  At first sight, the shoes seem to resemble krepides, a common type of footwear used for the representation of riders in the Hellenistic period: Cheshire (2009) 12; Laubscher (1991) 229. Actually, the footwear, especially the lotus leaves on the “garter band,” have the closest parallels in Dionysiac imagery; see, for example, the small-scale bronzes in Manfrini-Aragno (1987) nos. 17, 24–26, 28–39, 43, 55–56, 70, 72–80, 86, 94, 97, 133. Cf. Himmelmann (1989a) 392.  Cheshire (2009) 13.

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Fig. 7: Back of fig. 6 (detail). New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. 55.11.11, Edith Perry Chapman Fund, 1955.

treatment details and reworking coincide for a specific reason. There are a number of plaster molds as well as finished bronzes each of which represents a head with elephant’s exuvium and coincides exactly in size, iconography, and the detailed treatment of the surface enclosed by the reworked parts of the Dattari rider.81 The heads, as, for example, in a specimen in Bonn (Fig. 8),82 show a round face; the hairstyle is parted in the middle of the forehead; the elephant’s exuvium covers the sides and the calvaria; the surface of the elephant’s skin is characterized by a number of flatly incised wrinkles. Even the physiognomy of the head and the hairstyle fashioned in the center of the forehead find the closest parallels in those representations.83 Indeed, none of these heads—except for the one used for the Dattari rider—is “contextualized.” Because of the specific section of the head that those objects show, it can be safely assumed that

 Material collected by Domes (2007) 183–189 cat. no. To 3–17). Add Cairo, Egyptian Museum, inv. 32047: Edgar (1903) 14 no. 32047. New York, Metropolitan Museum, inv. 55.11.12, http://www.metmu seum.org/art/collection/search/254826; New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. 27.7.1430, http:// www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/547814.  Bonn, Akademisches Kunstmuseum, inv. C 33: Schmidt (1997) 58 cat. no. 39 pl. 16.  The resemblance of the Dattari rider to the elephant-head bronzes and molds was already observed by Kyrieleis (1975) 22 and especially Sauer (1964) 156: “Da sie durch die Gleichartigkeit, ja sogar die gleiche Größe des Kopfes, auf den ersten Blick an einen Zusammenhang mit den Köpfchen denken lassen.”

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Fig. 8: Head with elephant exuvium. Photograph © Akademisches Kunstmuseum Bonn, inv. C 33. Photograph by Jutta Schubert.

they represent a popular type of figural attachments for vessels.84 These heads were originally not intended for the use on full statuettes. Still, one of those heads was used in combination with a Heracles torso and different legs in the production process of this statuette. Therefore, the Dattari rider is based on an assemblage of different sets of molds, derived from separate original models, that were combined and intensively reworked in the wax model.

5 Conclusion The two case studies provide answers to the initial question of how the analysis of working procedures might be used to interpret the medium of small-scale Hellenistic ruler portraits. Both the pancratiasts and the Dattari rider demonstrate distinctly how the technical affordances and preconditions of manufacture were used in the production

 The interpretation of Domes (2007) 183–185. Mold for the handle of a vessel with figural attachment of a similar head: Rabe (2011) no. 284.

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process to create small-scale bronzes. They are based on the use of molds yet do not rely on specific sets of molds that were meant to reproduce particular solutions. Instead, the craftspeople used molds that derived from models that were originally representing different subjects or even media. The statuettes are the result of the variation and alteration of commonly used types, in tandem with other figural forms and techniques of a workshop. These observations demonstrate the possibility for modern research to determine separate steps of production sequentially, their potential reproduction, and the connection between the working procedures and specific elements of iconography in the production of bronzes. The only part of the images that was chosen to be standardized by ancient craftspeople was the compilation of central elements (movement, composition, etc.) which were based mainly on mold-produced parts. This possibility of reproducing basic types and motifs served as the foundation for strongly “individualized” solutions. These were not “side products” of the production or material process but deliberately altered images. In particular, the reworking of the wax model, which was clearly visible on the attributes of the pancratiasts, was a way of customizing the fighters that could not be repeated in a standardized way. More important than the repetition of specific images was the reconfiguration of permanently established parts and compositions. Consequently, the separation of different steps of the production process demonstrates that the originality of the images is inherent to the deliberate choices in the process. From the perspective of standardization and repetition, it was not important to have access to several specific images at the same time. The main aim—at least of this segment—of small-scale bronze production was not to establish specific visual solutions for ruler representations but to be able to create ad hoc images and iconographies. This cannot, of course, disprove the theory that large-scale monuments were the source of inspiration for the bronzes or provide specific reasons for which craftspeople intervened in the production process.85 But more important is the positive evidence: even if those “originals” might have existed, it was obviously irrelevant to reproduce them in a standardized and serial manner—which would have been easily possible. More central than a series of specialized and ready-made options for the workshops was a repertoire that allowed and even required individual adjustments. It was important to be able to react to spontaneous external stimuli through the means of reworking and recomposing that were at the heart of a workshop. At the same time, the multiple possibilities of combination and alterations that can be observed from the bronzes in this study demonstrate how important individual solutions were for small-scale ruler portraits in bronze. While it is beyond the scope of this paper to differentiate what those “stimuli” might have encompassed, it shows the importance of further investigating ways of negotiating the figure of a ruler through the specific means of different media.

 For possible ways of artistic development beyond specific demands by commissions, see now Borbein (2020) 192–201.

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Works Cited Andreae (1998): Bernhard Andreae, Schönheit des Realismus: Auftraggeber, Schöpfer, Betrachter hellenistischer Plastik, Mainz. Arachne: Image Database Arachne. https://arachne.dainst.org/. Arntz/Lewis (2020): Monique Arntz and Michael Lewis (eds.), The Chaîne Opératoire. Past, Present and Future, Cambridge. Azoulay/von den Hoff (2019): Vincent Azoulay and Ralf von den Hoff, “Verbreitung: Mehrfache Bildnisstatuen und Medientransfers,” in: François Queyrel and Ralf von den Hoff (eds.), Das Leben griechischer Porträts: Porträtstatuen des 5. bis 1. Jhs. v. Chr. Bildnispraktiken und Neu-Kontextualisierungen, Paris, 161–206. Barbantani (2007): Silvia Barbantani, “The Glory of the Spear. A Powerful Symbol in Hellenistic Poetry and Art: The Case of Neoptolemus of Tlos (and Other Ptolemaic Epigrams),” in: Studi classici e orientali 53, 67–138. Barr-Sharrar (1990): Beryl Barr-Sharrar, “How Important Is Provenance? Archaeological and Stylistic Questions in the Attribution of Ancient Bronzes,” in: Marion True and J. Podany (eds.), Small Bronze Sculpture from the Ancient World. Colloquium Malibu, 16–19 March 1989, Malibu, 209–236. Barr-Sharrar (2016): Beryl Barr-Sharrar, “Review of J. M. Daehner and K. Lapatin (eds.), Power and Pathos. Bronze Sculpture of the Hellenistic World (Catalogue of the Exhibition of the Palazzo Strozzi in Florence, 14 March–2 June 2015, of the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles, 28 July–1 November 2015, and of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, 6 December 2015–20 March 2016), Los Angeles, in: Bryn Mawr Classical Review 02.29. Barr-Sharrar (2017): Beryl Barr-Sharrar, “Assertions by the Portable: What Can Bronze Statuettes Tell Us about Major Classical Sculpture?,” in: Jens M. Daehner, Kenneth Lapatin, and Ambra Spinelli (eds.), Artistry in Bronze: The Greeks and Their Legacy, Malibu, 107–115. Beck et al. (2005): Herbert Beck, Peter Cornelis Bol, and Maraike Bückling (eds.), Ägypten, Griechenland, Rom: Abwehr und Berührung (Catalogue of the Exhibition of the Städel Museum in Frankfurt, 26 November 2005–26 February 2006), Tübingen. Bergmann (1998): Marianne Bergmann, Die Strahlen der Herrscher: Theomorphes Herrscherbild und politische Symbolik im Hellenismus und in der römischen Kaiserzeit, Mainz. Boardman et al. (1988–1990): John Boardman, Olga Palagia, S. Woodford, W. Felten, G. Kokkorou-Alewras, L. Todisco., P. Brize, V. Smallwood, and A. F. Laurens, “Herakles,” in: Hans-Christof Ackermann (ed.), Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, Vols. IV–V, Zurich/Munich, 728–838 (Vol. IV), 1–196 (Vol. V). Bol (1985): Peter Cornelis Bol, Antike Bronzetechnik: Kunst und Handwerk antiker Erzbildner, Munich. Borbein (2020): Adolf H. Borbein, “Wie frei waren griechische Künstler?,” in: Adolf H. Borbein and Ernst Osterkamp (eds.), Kunst und Freiheit: Eine Leitthese Winckelmanns und ihre Folgen, Mainz, 183–201. Cheshire (1997): Wendy A. Cheshire, Die Gipsformen aus Memphis im Roemer-Pelizaeus-Museum zu Hildesheim, Trier. Cheshire (2009): Wendy A. Cheshire, The Bronzes of Ptolemy II Philadelphus, Wiesbaden. Cheshire (2011): Wendy A. Cheshire, The Ptolemies in Memphis, 130–80 B.C.: A Testimony of the Artists’ Workshops, Hanover. Dafas (2019): Kosmas A. Dafas, Greek Large-Scale Bronze Statuary: The Late Archaic and Classical Periods, London. Doblhofer/Mauritsch (1996): Georg Doblhofer and Peter Mauritsch, Pankration: Texte, Übersetzungen, Kommentar, Vienna. Dobres (2000): Marcia-Anne Dobres (ed.), Technology and Social Agency: Outlining a Practice Framework for Archeology, Oxford. Domes (2007): Ingeborg Domes, Darstellungen der Africa: Typologie und Ikonographie einer römischen Personifikation, Rahden/Westfalen.

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Elena Calandra

A Miniature Myth: About Some Clay Figurines of the Niobids One hundred years after the death of Rudolph Pagenstecher, a refined connoisseur of Hellenistic “Kleinkunst,” it seems appropriate to draw attention to one of his most interesting and lesser-known works, Niobiden, which analyzes a group of terracotta appliqués from ancient Apulia.1 The booklet is not particularly frequent in the literature about the Niobids and is certainly minor between Stark’s monograph and the peerless entry of Albin Lesky in the Realencyclopädie;2 in every case, it still deserves some consideration, since it focuses on a group of small-sized coroplastic representations, that, reconsidered in the light of more recent scholarship, can offer some new ideas. Indeed, it is worth reproducing the images of Pagenstecher, who remains a key scholar in German archaeology between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The myth of the Niobids is among the most represented in Greek and Roman art, changing materials, iconographies, cultural areas, and contexts: just scrolling through the dissertation by Wilfred Geominy and the entries of the Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae allows one to appreciate the complexity of representations of the unfortunate mother and her children. This variety naturally influences the studies that, apart from the great general voices, have dealt with specific classes of material, but one cannot fail to observe the frequent lack of connections, in scholarship, between the different kinds of representations. The most famous are probably the Niobid Crater from the necropolis of Crocifisso del Tufo in Orvieto, dated 460–450 BCE; the Zeus throne by Phidias at Olympia; and the group at the Uffizi Museum in Florence, found in Rome, at Vigna Tomassini on the Esquiline Hill, whose composition, however, has undergone substitutions and alterations in modern times. For the Roman period, other groups of statues exhibited in villas, paintings, and a series of sarcophagi have to be added.3

 Pagenstecher (1910).  Stark (1863); Lesky (1936) 691.  Geominy (1984); Geominy (1992); Schmidt (1992). Note: For this essay I am greatly indebted to: Dr. Amalia Faustoferri, Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio per le province di Chieti e Pescara, for discussions about the Niobids and their iconography; Dr. Marialucia Giacco, Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, and Dr. Martina Schwarz, Projekt Dyabola, for bibliographical support; Dr. Italo Muntoni, Soprintendenza Archeologia Belle Arti e Paesaggio per le province di Barletta-Andria-Trani e Foggia, for information about Canosa. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110741742-007

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Reconsidering Pagenstecher’s work is part of a renewed interest in the Niobids myth, particularly after the discovery, in 2012, of a group of statues dedicated to this subject in Ciampino (Rome), near the swimming pool of a suburban villa attributed to Valerius Messalla Corvinus. Around the time of the statues’ publication, several studies flourished, also thanks to Ovid’s centenary.4 In particular, publications on the Ciampino group have pointed out once more that a unique archetype, comprehensive of the entire Niobids group, does not seem to have existed; at the same time, all the available iconographies can be used for a possible reconstruction of the group. In his study, Pagenstecher collects some images, male and female: a group, coming from a tomb in ancient Gnathia (Fasano), was identified in 1846 by Giulio Minervini in the collection of Raffaello Barone in Naples, and was reassembled with additional fragments; the complex was acquired by the Museum für Kunst und Industrie in Vienna, and from there, with the entire Antikensammlung, moved in 1920 to the Kunsthistorisches Museum;5 the scholar adds two examples from Canosa, already property of Hamburg collector Johannes W. F. Reimers, and subsequently acquired, in 1917, by the city’s Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe.6 Thirteen elements in total have been attributed to the tomb context of Gnathia: six sons, five daughters, the pedagogue, and a bearded figure holding up a falling youth, identified by Pagenstecher as the father Amphion with a dead son;7 the height of the statuettes, reported by Masner in the museum catalog, varies between 15 cm and 23 cm.8 To the group Masner also links a fragment of a deer, as pertaining to the Artemis chariot.9 He concludes reporting doubtfully a female and a young male figure, and an Artemis, but expunging the last one, as did both Pagenstecher (no. 14) and Lesky later.10 Another statuette of Artemis, at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, of Canosan provenance, and perhaps part of the group, was published by Pagenstecher in 1916 with the image of the deer11 (Fig. 7, Abb. 7 and 6) – in effect, the Artemis is not incompatible either stylistically or in terms of size.

 Calandra et al. (2015) 487–517; Schollmeyer (2017) 19–23; Calandra (2018); Ghedini (2018); Ovidio (2018); Betori (2019); Calandra (2019a); Calandra (2019b); Betori/Calandra (2023), 207–231.  For the history of the museum’s archeological collection, see “Die Geschichte des Museums für angewandte Kunst”, https://www.mak.at/das_mak/geschichte (seen 2. June 2021).  Pagenstecher (1910), 3–5. The starting point is the work of Shebelew (quoted in Pagenstecher 1910, 3), published in 1901 and concerning the Panticapaeum Niobids.  Pagenstecher (1910) nos. 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 (the sons), nos. 9, 10, 11, 12, 13 (the daughters), no. 5 (the pedagogue), no. 2 (Amphion).  Masner (1892) nos. 860–872 (accession nos.: 8714–8730), 90–92; Pagenstecher (1910) 11–15 and 20–23, figs. 1–13.  Masner (1892) no. 873, 92; Pagenstecher (1910) 23.  Masner (1892) no. 876, 92; Pagenstecher (1910) 23; Lesky (1936) 691.  Metropolitan Museum of Art inv. no. 10.210.100: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/ 248387 (seen 27. May 2022); Pagenstecher (1916) 119–123, figs. 5–6.

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The two pieces from the Reimers collection, the statuette of the dead Niobid12 and the plaque with the falling Niobid,13 were probably part of a context in Canosa, also including six large vases with plastic decoration; a small jug of the same technique, adorned with a female head, and a small jug without decoration; two doves and a horse statuette with a curved back side; and a winged and horned female mask. Pagenstecher connects the horse and the mask to the Niobids, adding a golden laurel wreath, as well as two ivory fragments probably related to wooden furnishings, perhaps klinai.14 The tomb has to be distinguished from another one of Canosa, the so-called Ipogeo Reimers, which provided fourteen bronze buttons, a ram’s head, and bronze rings, for which Pagenstecher generically reports similar coroplastic finds, considered by the scholar as klinai ornaments. This second tomb, a chamber, is datable between 310 and 290 BCE, based on the associated materials, and has not yet been rediscovered.15 Pagenstecher, retracing the representations of the myth, recognizes the lack of stylistic homogeneity for the Copenhagen Niobids, reasonably pedimental sculptures; for the Florentine group, however, he agrees with Stark about an arrangement among the columns of a monument, adducing as models the Monument of the Nereids in Xanthos and the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus; he also refers to the Temple of Apollo Sosianus in Rome (Plin., HN 36.28), mentioning, for the setting in the intercolumniations, the sarcophagi of southern Russia.16 All these monuments do not provide clues concerning the spatial arrangement of the figures, so that Pagenstecher mentions also the tondo at the British Museum in London as reference.17 Pagenstecher indeed associates the two groups in Hamburg and Vienna on the basis of their technique and style and puts the series in Stark’s network of comparisons,18 with some observations: in particular, he considers nos. 1, 3, 4, 6, and 8 (Fig. 1, Abb. 1 and 3; Fig. 2, Abb. 4 and 6; Fig. 3, Abb. 8) as variants of the same type,19 whereas

 Hamburg, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe inv. no. 1917.976: https://sammlungonline.mkg-ham burg.de/en/object/Toter-Niobide-Schmuck-eines-Prachtgef%C3%A4%C3%9Fes/1917.976/dc00124533 (seen 27. May 2022); Pagenstecher (1910) 10–11, Taf. I.  Hamburg, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe inv. no. 1917.448: https://sammlungonline.mkg-ham burg.de/de/object/Sterbender-Niobide-Askosfigur/1917.448/dc00124076 (seen 2. June 2021); Pagenstecher (1910) 10, Taf. IIa.  Pagenstecher (1910) 11, note 32; the context includes the two vases with plastic decorations published in Pagenstecher (1910), Taf. IVa,b. Cf. van der Wielen–van Ommeren (1986) 217, no. 11, “Reimers, Group A”, with further bibliography.  van der Wielen (1992a).  Pagenstecher (1910) 4–7. For the Copenhagen group, see also Augusto (2013) nos. VI.10.1–3, 249 (Michael von Strocka).  Pagenstecher (1910) 8–9.  For Etruscan sarcophagi and urns, see Pagenstecher (1910) 9–10.  Pagenstecher (1910) 11–15.

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he includes the no. 5 in the type of the pedagogue (Fig. 2, Abb. 5) of the Uffizi group20 and identifies the bearded figure supporting a fallen youth as Amphion with a son.21 All the daughters, on the other hand, have drapery emphasizing their movement: the scholar compares no. 11 (Fig. 5, Abb. 11) with the dancing Maenad of Skopas,22 while for no. 13 (Fig. 6, Abb. 13) he doesn’t find comparisons, considering the restoration of the head inappropriate. His figurine no. 12 (Fig. 5, Abb. 12) is half naked, as she loses her dress in her flight, in accordance with the iconography of the paintings from the House of the Dioscuri in Pompeii, representing the Niobid daughters next to a tripod.23 For the falling Niobid in Hamburg (Fig. 9), indeed, the scholar refers to the Niobid from the Horti Sallustiani, whereas for the dead son he regrets the poor state of conservation.24 In discussing the iconographic transmission of images of this myth, Pagenstecher highlights the importance of small coroplastic images, properly mentioning the Panticapaeum area, rich with representations of the myth.25 Furthermore, he attributes the groups in Vienna and Hamburg to a craftsman from Canosa active in the third century BCE, combining the well-known types of statuary in the round of the fourth century BCE,26 and recalling the Canosan vase in the National Archaeological Museum of Naples, adorned with two groups of mourners and a couple of Niobids.27 The scholar takes into consideration the lower curvature of the statuettes, and connects the figures together, trying to set them in space.28 After Pagenstecher, our terracottas have been cited variously in the Niobids literature: Lesky refers synthetically to Pagenstecher’s work, while Mansuelli mentions the Gnathia statuettes, considering them a derivation from classical originals, “peraltro complicate da nuovi elementi tematici che ne rivelano il carattere eclettico”.29 The Canosan pieces have later been collected and sorted by Oliver in his accurate work of 1968, a turning point in the study of Canosan pottery.30 In 1984, Geominy, in his fundamental dissertation on the Niobids, mentions the appliqués from Gnathia, drawing attention to the pedagogue, and excluding that the type was created in a pottery workshop;31 more generally, the scholar illustrates well

 Pagenstecher (1910) 10 and 14.  Pagenstecher (1910) 20–21; the figure is classified as “Bergergruppe” by Geominy (1992) 923.  Pagenstecher (1910) 28–29.  Pagenstecher (1910) 22–23; see also Calandra (2019b) 26–27.  Cf. supra, note 10, and Pagenstecher (1910) 28, and see Göttliche Ungerechtigkeit? (2018) cat. nos. 32–33, 66–67. For the Niobid from the Horti Sallustiani see also Ambrogi (2013) no. 59.  Shebelew (1901) cited in Pagenstecher (1910) 3. For updates, Zhuravlev (2002) nos. 278–280; Heinritz (2008); for the studies history, Martin (2019); for appliqués sarcophagi, Samar (2019).  Pagenstecher (1910) 27–29.  Pagenstecher (1910) 23 and 24, and IVa; Levi (1926) no. 275, 64–65.  Pagenstecher (1910) 6–9.  Lesky (1936) 691; Mansuelli (1963).  Oliver (1968).  Geominy (1984), 315.

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the complexity of the derivations of the models – particularly for coroplastic images, mentioning also the reliefs from southern Russia – and refers to the Phidian reliefs and the creations of the fourth century BCE.32 In 1992, in the Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae entry, Geominy includes Pagenstecher’s appliqués in a heterogeneous series and with uncertain identifications,33 including the askós in Naples; a funnel-shaped jug at the Metropolitan Museum in New York, attributed to the Hypogeum Scocchera B of Canosa, adorned with a figure of a half-naked young man fleeing, seen from behind;34 and two fleeting dressed figures and a knight, not pertinent to the same vase.35 Two statuettes follow, representing the fleeing daughters of Niobe, both at the Louvre in Paris:36 one of them is strictly connected to Pagenstecher’s groups, due to its provenance (Canosa) and the collection’s history (it belonged to Raffaello Barone and was purchased by the Museum from the Marquis Giampietro Campana), whereas the other is of uncertain origin, either Gnathia or Canosa, and was also purchased by the Louvre from the Marquis Campana.37 The small terracotta representations of the Niobids, on the other hand, are more often mentioned than subjected to a detailed analysis: Marina Mazzei considers them to complete the corpus of figured ceramics on the subject, mentioning them together with the Naples askós, four statuettes in the Louvre (to be reduced to two as seen above), and a statuette published by Bieńkowski, depicting a warrior.38 Finally, some of the statuettes from Gnathia have been taken into consideration by Antonio Corso, regarding Pagenstecher’s nos. 3, 8, 9, 12, 13 as depending “on a Praxitelean creation”, and underlying their two-dimensionality.39 The reexamination of the statuettes in the light of most recent scholarship offers more than one suggestion. In general, from the technical point of view, the appliqués were figures in relief or in the round, molded and often with the surface covered with an engobe slip;40 they were applied on curved plates to adhere to the shape of the vase and were fixed, after firing, by adhesive pastes; the function of the holes that

 Geominy (1984) 289–308, particularly 302–303. On the reliefs see Zarkadas (2012–2013).  Geominy (1992) no. 51c, 923.  Geominy (1992) no. 51a, 923 = Oliver (1968) 17 and fig. 8, 1; De Juliis (1992b) no. 1, 232 (not identified as a Niobid).  Geominy (1992) no. 51b, 923 = Oliver (1968) 17, 18 and fig. 9; De Juliis (1992b) no. 1, 232, fig. 1.  Geominy (1992) no. 51e, 923: inventory nos. Cp 5216 and Cp 5224.  Cp 5216 = Principi, imperatori, vescovi (1992) no. 2, 527–528, https://collections.louvre.fr/en/ark:/ 53355/cl010266717 (seen 27. May 2022), produced in Gnathia or in Canosa, and Cp 5224 = Principi, imperatori, vescovi (1992) no. 1, 527, https://collections.louvre.fr/ark:/53355/cl010266726 (seen 27. May 2022).  Mazzei (1999) 472, which cites Bieńkowski (1928) 98–99, fig. 144: the object is preserved in the Provincial Museum in Lecce.  Corso (2010) 75–78.  Pagenstecher (1910) refers a white slip for some: 10, 26, 27.

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appear on the plaques remains uncertain.41 The production of these small figures has been traced back to Gnathia and Canosa, and their subjects also include Greek and barbarians warriors, hunting scenes, the gigantomachy, and a scene known as the discovery of the cist. The vases, mainly askoì and funnel-shaped jugs, were exclusively for sepulchral use and were often bottomless. A precise dating of the individual pieces is not possible, but the overall chronology from known contexts allows us to place them between the end of the fourth and the first decades of the third century BCE.42 Comparing the several statuettes in Vienna with the Naples vase, decorated on the shoulder by praying figures and on the belly by two Niobids, it is possible to suggest a narrative action on a set of vases for the Vienna Niobids. Unfortunately, we cannot be more specific about this, as many plastic vases in historical collections have often been tampered.43 The use of molds can be seen clearly in the similar form of some of the figures: no. 3 and no. 8 (Fig. 1, Abb. 3; Fig. 3, Abb. 8) ideally appear to be the front part of nos. 1 (Fig. 1, Abb. 1) and 6 (Fig. 3, Abb. 6); nos. 1, 4, and 6 (Fig. 1, Abb. 1; Fig. 2, Abb. 4; Fig. 2, Abb. 6) are very similar, and no. 6 is the mirror image of no. 4. The variatio is, however, continuous: the fleeing children are naked or partially draped, but they are all according to the same type, although from a stylistic point of view the figures on the back are more successful. Similarly, two of the daughters, nos. 9 and 10 (Fig. 4, Abb. 9 and 10), each dressed in an apoptygma without a belt, are symmetrical, even if no. 9 almost seems to fall, while no. 12 (Fig. 5, Abb. 12) is comparable to no. 10, differing in the drapery slipping off the bust while they flee. Generally, the nature of the appliqués points to a relief model, but the reference to the throne of the Olympian Zeus by Phidias remains hypothetical since comparisons with the reconstructed figures are generic.44 Phidian relief, indeed, has been invoked in the literature, citing the friezes of the Hephaisteion in Athens,45 but precise comparisons are absent; on the other hand, references to earlier styles can be seen in the rendering of the excited movements of the male figures, that have been even compared with the Centauromachy and Amazonomachy scenes on the friezes of the Temple of Apollo at Bassae, and with the scenes on the eastern side of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus, attributed to Skopas.46

 For technical aspects especially, van der Wielen–van Ommeren (1982) 80–81.  van der Wielen–van Ommeren (1985); van der Wielen (1992b) 527; De Juliis (1997) 141–146.  E.g., De Juliis (1992b) no. 1, 232. About the terracotta group compositions, Kaenel (2017) 31–38.  Vogelpohl (1980) 197–226; Geominy (1984) 289–300; Geominy (1992) no. 15a–m, 917–918.  Carter (1975) 28, for a generical comparison of two of the Gnathia Niobids (nos. 9 and 10) with acroterial female figures of the Hephaisteion in Athens.  E.g., Fuchs (1982) figs. 514–515 and 520–522.

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The female figures nos. 9 (Fig. 4, Abb. 9) and 11 (Fig. 5, Abb. 11), however, provide an antiquarian element useful for restricting chronology with reference to the model of Phidias, which may have been adapted over time: in fact, they present the Melonfrisur hairstyle, in use since the fourth century.47 The animated drapery of the young women, however, is handed down in a fragment of terra sigillata in Heidelberg, published by Pagenstecher himself, and in a marble relief found in Modena in 1971 and dated to the early imperial period.48 On the other hand, the pedagogue no. 5 (Fig. 2, Abb. 5) and the girl no. 11 (Fig. 5, Abb. 11) reference the sculptural tradition: the first belongs to the type in Florence,49 whereas for the daughter Pagenstecher mentions the Maenad by Skopas; another parallel is found in the Niobid statuette in the Louvre (Cp 5224), although both are draped, and the movement of the head less wild. The references to Skopas, make us think of Pliny’s mentions of this sculptor and of Praxiteles: even in the absence of confirmation, and only on a stylistic basis, it cannot be denied that a critical moment in the elaboration of the representation of the myth has to be associated precisely with these two masters. A third figure, the dead Niobid in Hamburg (Fig. 8), references the tradition of pedimental sculpture,50 but in a new iconography: he brings his right hand around his neck, in the extreme attempt at ridding himself of the arrow, whose corresponding hole is well preserved. The limited sample collection offered by the Apulian coroplastic figures, therefore, offers an example of how the group was formed over time, combining statuary and relief: the “Kleinkunst” therefore seems to be a link between different production traditions, and shows how the iconography of the myth of the Niobids stratified over time. The plastic vases, in fact, provide a new spatial arrangement for the myth, which takes place in different moments: the carnage and the funeral of the sons, the carnage of the daughters, the despair of their mother. At the same time, the variety of supports and placement is also found in other solutions: the tondo at the British Museum in London51 shows the disposition of the figures on several levels, as already in the Orvieto crater:52 they walk on a rocky base like the Apulian appliqués, and are closed within the surface of the circle. On the other hand,

 Dillon (2010) 214, note 448.  Mito di Niobe (2019) no. 33, 231–232 (Silvia Pellegrini and Paolo Pallante).  Geominy (1984) 117–124.  Augusto 2013 no. VI.10.1, 249 (Michael von Strocka).  Geominy (1992) no. 33, 921, dates the work to the early second century CE, according to the entry in https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/G_1877-0727-1 (seen 2. June 2021). The work comes from Italy, and is dated probably to the first century BCE, having as a model perhaps a frieze of 440–430 BCE. Purchased from Alessandro Castellani.  Denoyelle (1997) 9.

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the tondi from the Mahdia shipwreck provide the images of Niobe and a daughter, probably decorating a heroon.53 On the threshold of the Augustan Age, the problem of rendering in perspective will be solved, in the group found in the Ciampino villa, through statues of different sizes, arranged in a restricted space, with the effect of a diorama.54 The terracottas therefore take on the task of keeping the copyist tradition alive, though of relief rather than of sculpture in the round, and provide an important testimony precisely from a chronological point of view, as the statuettes date back to between the end of the fourth and the beginning of the third century BCE.55 At this point the cultural context of origin has to be taken in consideration: Hellenistic Apulia. The terracotta sculpture from this region has been the subject of a revival of studies in recent years, due both to the definitive edition of Canosan funerary contexts for the important 1992 exhibition Principi, imperatori, vescovi – a turning point for knowledge of the ancient Canosa, followed by an increasingly number of publications56 – and to the specific studies on appliqué ceramics and on Canosan funerary statuettes, deeply analyzed also in the light of their symbolic meaning, including specific religious and anthropological interpretations of the images of mourning.57 At the same time, the myth appears in the other relevant Daunian center of Arpi, where impressive discoveries have been carefully published, such as the Tomb of the Niobids, named for its most significant find.58 In a boundary line between Daunia and Peucetia, Ruvo also testifies to the presence of the myth,59 while Gnathia, from where the most consistent Pagenstecher group comes, is probably another production site.60 Apulia, but especially Daunia up to the Peucetian border, represents a circuit where the myth of Niobe and her children develops with extraordinary concentration, so much so that Mazzei has rightly written of “regionalità del mito”,61 while Claude Pouzadoux has defined the area between Canosa and Arpi as “un laboratoire exceptionnel pour étudier les rapports entre peintres, commanditaires et territoire”.62

 Prittwitz und Gaffron (1994) 311–314.  Calandra (2019a).  Pisani (2015) 194–195, for the analysis, through the coroplastic, of a “mixed” type.  Corrente (2003); Corrente (2014); MANN (2019) 285–300, 323–332.  Ancient Statues from South Italy (2013); Dodson/Jeammet (2014) 1–6; Ferruzza (2016) 122–147; D’Angelo/Muratov (2017) 65–93; MANN (2019) 333–341.  Caso Arpi (1998); De Juliis (1992a); Corrente (2013) 284–286. About coroplastic production of Arpi, van der Wielen–van Ommeren (2005); about the Arpi Painter recently, Todisco (2008).  On Ruvo, MANN (2019) 233–268; on the myth, Giacobello (2020) no. 52, 128–131.  Andreassi/Cocchiaro (n.d.).  Mazzei (1999) 471–473; comments in Lippolis/Mazzei (2005) 14; Pouzadoux (2005) 3, 16, 18.  Pouzadoux (2005) 18.

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Actually, the Apulian red-figured vases feature only the scene of the mother’s petrification,63 and they have also been found outside Daunia. Chronologically, these vases span from the first decades to the end of the fourth century BCE, whereas the vases from Canosa, Arpi, and Ruvo belong to the second half of the century.64 This proliferation of the Niobids’ myth continues to attract scholarly attention, including recent studies that agree in attributing a consolatory effect to the myth, usually in the private funeral environment.65 In this regard, Mazzei even briefly draws coroplastics and vase-painting together, as seen above, suggesting that the other plaque reliefs used as ornaments for the vases also had sculptural versions on a larger scale.66 Looking at the ceramic with plastic decoration, the contrast between the body of the vase (globular askoì and funnel-shaped jugs),67 of indigenous workmanship, and the appliqués following a Greek model is strong; despite the flourishing of Apulian vase-painting, which marked a turn toward Greek taste, plastic vases do not continue this tradition.68 Studies have shown that the last phase of red-figure vase painting continues into polychrome and plastic decoration, replacing painted vases in funerary contexts at the end of the fourth century BCE. Yet, the internal mechanisms of the workshops and the relationship between coroplasts and potters are, in effect, unknown.69 At the same time, the discrepancy between the two cultural traditions has been noted in the literature, which remarks how the aristocratic clientele was the same.70 This stylistic break, however, is also found in contemporary Tarentine sculpture, but it is only apparent, as the indigenous substrate remains, and reappears after the end of the figurative production;71 the Greek features are now entrusted to decorative elements, while the shapes continue the indigenous tradition, but “translated” into a new language since vases are now manufactured at the wheel.

 Aellen (1994) I: 127–132. Niobe is represented both as a subject (the mourning mother) and as a matter (the stone): Prioux (2006) 143.  Schmidt (1992) 910–912; see De Juliis (1992a) no. 118, 65–67, for the hydria of the Arpi Painter from the Tomba del vaso dei Niobidi; discussions in Pouzadoux (2005) 3, 16–19; Rebaudo (2012); Sciaramenti (2019); updated entries in Mito di Niobe (2019) nos. 5–13, 213–281; Giacobello (2020) no. 52, 128–131.  Gualtieri (2008) 224–227.  Mazzei (1999) 472.  Preliminary list of the funnel vases in van der Wielen–van Ommeren (1982) 83.  The chronology in the last quarter of the fourth century BCE is proposed by van der Wielen–van Ommeren (1982) 89–90, analyzing an apparently homogeneous context from Canosa (Apulian vases and pottery with plastic decoration); van der Wielen (1992a) extends the chronology to the first decades of the third century BCE.  van der Wielen–van Ommeren (1982) 109–111; Mazzei/Lippolis (1984) 200–201; Siebert (1985) 21–23.  Corrente (2003) 142–148; Lippolis (2012) 304–305.  Carter (1975) 28, for the reliefs; Corrente/Pouzadoux (2019) 722–725.

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In the last quarter of the fourth century BCE, red-figure vase painting illustrates the petrification of Niobe, the final act of the tragic event, probably under the effect of drama;72 on the other hand, at the beginning of the third century BCE (or at the end of fourth?) the plastic vases depict the massacre of her children. The “female” shapes, loutrophoros, pelike, hydria, host the mother’s images,73 showing a gender selection for the theme; the same is not certain for plastic vessels, and the existence of at least one female deposition in the Scocchera B Hypogeum is just a clue; a further element is provided by the imagery of the askós Catarinella, with mourning women and orphic references, about which Massimiliano Di Fazio argues with caution a female destination.74 The appliqué vases, however, carry a stronger message than the previous ones: they are also entrusted with the lamentation, and the weeping women enhance the scenography of mourning, being on the top of the vase and looking to the dramatic scene below. The myth of the Niobids, therefore, is repeatedly found across times and media: from pediments, to the throne of Zeus at Olympia, to Canosan appliqués, to the “tableaux” in the Roman villas: yet, each time it is used with a precise message and a contextualized meaning.

Fig. 1: Fleeing son, back view, Pagenstecher (1910), 11–14, Abb. 1. Male bearded figure (Amphion?) with a dead son, Pagenstecher (1910), 20–21, Abb. 2. Fleeing son, front view, Pagenstecher (1910), 11–15, Abb. 3.

 Sisto (2009).  Giacobello (2020) no. 52, 130–131.  De Juliis (1992b) 232; Di Fazio (2009) 211–212.

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Fig. 2: Fleeing son, back view, Pagenstecher (1910), 11–15, Abb. 4. Pedagogue, Pagenstecher (1910), 10 and 14–15, Abb. 5. Fleeing son, back view, Pagenstecher (1910), 11–15, Abb. 6.

Fig. 3: Son fallen on a knee, front view, Pagenstecher (1910), 24–25, Abb. 7. Fleeing son, front view, Pagenstecher (1910), 11–15, Abb. 8.

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Fig. 4: Fleeing daughter, front view, Pagenstecher (1910), 20, Abb. 9. Fleeing daughter, front view, Pagenstecher (1910), 23, Abb. 10.

Fig. 5: Fleeing daughter, three-quarter view, Pagenstecher (1910), 22, Abb. 11. Fleeing daughter, front view, Pagenstecher (1910), 22–23, Abb. 12.

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Fig. 6: Fleeing daughter, front view, Pagenstecher (1910), 22, Abb. 13. Artemis (?), not belonging to the group, frontal view, Pagenstecher (1910), 23, Abb. 14.

Fig. 7: Artemis, New York, Pagenstecher (1916), Abb. 5. Deer, Vienna, Pagenstecher (1916), Abb. 6.

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Fig. 8: Dead son, Pagenstecher (1910), 10–11, Taf. I.

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Fig. 9: Falling son, plaque, Pagenstecher (1910), 10, Taf. IIa.

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