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Athenagoras the Christian, Pausanias the Travel Guide, and a Mysterious Corinthian Girl*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

Louis A. Ruprecht Jr.
Affiliation:
Emory University

Extract

I say, then, that it was Orpheus and Homer and Hesiod who gave the genealogies and the names to those who are called gods. … And as for statuary (εἰκόνες), it did not exist until the plastic arts and painting and sculpture were invented, nor had it even been conceived.

These arts came in later with Saurias the Samian, Krato the Sikyonian, Kleanthes the Corinthian, and a Corinthian girl. Line drawing (σκιαγραφία) was discovered by Saurias, who sketched a horse in the sun; and painting (γραφική) by Krato, who traced the outline (σκιά) of a man and a woman in oils on a white background. Relief sculpture (κοροπλαθική) was discovered by the girl (she traced the outline [σκιά] of her lover on a wall while he was asleep). Her father was so delighted by the resemblance that, since he worked in ceramics, he engraved the impression and fleshed it out with clay. That figure (τύπος) is still preserved in Corinth. After them Daidalos, Theodoros, and Smilis invented sculpture and the plastic arts.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1992

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References

1 The Greek text I am using is found in Athenagoras Legatio pro Christianis (ed. Miroslav Marcovich; Patristische Texte und Studien 31; Berlin/New York: de Gruyter, 1990Google Scholar). The English translations are my own, with reference to those found in Cyril Richardson, C., Early-Christian Fathers (New York: Macmillan, 1970) 290340Google Scholar.

2 Mark 4:10–12. For a fascinating modern discussion of this inside/outside dichotomy, as well as some of its unfortunate spiritual implications, see Kermode, Frank, The Genesis of Secrecy: On The Interpretation of Narrative (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1979Google Scholar).

3 “Tradition” is always an obscure concept but nowhere more so than here. According to a marginal note in the fourteenth-century Codex Bodleiinas Baroccianus 142, fol. 216, the fifth-century church historian, Philip of Side, in the twenty-fourth book of his ecclesiastical history, identified Athenagoras as the first head of the Christian school in Alexandria, writing under the emperors Hadrian and Antoninus (sic). Philip also remarked that Athenagoras had begun (like Paul) as a persecutor of the church until he was converted to it. Philip finally made Athenagoras the teacher of Clement, the prolific Alexandrian theologian of the late second century. See Athenagoras, Legatio and De Resurrectione (ed. and trans. Schoedel, William R.; Oxford: Clarendon, 1972) ixxiGoogle Scholar.

4 This title is from a tenth-century manuscript known as the “Arethas Codex,” compiled i n Cappadocia by a scribe named Baanes for his archbishop, Arethas of Caesarea (who then rather incoherently reedited the manuscript), in 913–914 CE. See Athenagoras Legatio (ed. Marcovich) 15–19.

5 Ibid., vii.

6 Athenagoras Legatio, inscription.

7 Ibid., 3.1. Athenagoras returns to this grisly image of “tragic feasts” of Thyestos (τραγικὰ δεîπνα Θυέ) in De resurrectione 4.4.

8 Athenagoras Legatio 19.1. It is worth noting that this very rationale would prompt a divisive conflict within the next century, as the church attempted to hammer out the philosophical status of Christ's dual nature—as somehow “in between” these two extremes. The creedal “solution”—that Christ is “begotten, not created”—points to the lingering problems of christological consensus.

9 Ibid. This is a relatively standard apologetic line of attack. See, for instance, Diognetus 2, and Justin I Apol. 21–29, both available in Richardson, Early Christian Fathers, 214–15, 255–60.

10 “Since it is impossible without listing names (άνευ παραθέσεως ὀνομάτων) to show that we are not alone [in believing monotheistically as we do], I shall rely on collections of maxims (τὰο δόζαο)” (Athenagoras Legatio 6.2). For the dependence of Christian authors upon written sourcebooks and exercises, see Mack, Burton L. and Robbins, Vernon K., Patterns of Persuasion in the Gospels (Sonoma, CA: Polebridge, 1989) 167Google Scholar.

11 Pausanias Guide to Greece (trans. Peter Levi; 2 vols.; New York: Penguin, 1971Google Scholar). For the Greek text of Pausanias, I am using Pausaniae: Descriptio Graeciae (ed. Spiro, Frederico; 3 vols.; 1903; reprinted Stuttgart: Teubner, 1959Google Scholar).

12 For a fascinating discussion of the question of Pausanias's fidelity, see Veyne, Paul, Did the Greeks Believe Their Myths? An Essay on the Constitutive Imagination (trans. Wissig, Paula; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1988) 8, 95102Google Scholar, 111–12.

13 This insight is hardly new; it was already widely held at the turn of the century that Pausanias and Athenagoras were using “the same art-historical sourcebook”: “Finally, the same art-historical sourcebook which both Pausanias and Athenagoras are using identifies the Athena on the Akropolis and the Artemis of Ephesus as works of Endoios” (C. Robert “Endoios,” PW 5 [1905] 2554).

14 We still have such sourcebooks. See Jones, H. Stuart, Select Passages from the Ancient Writers Illustrative of the History of Greek Sculpture (1895; ed. Oikonomides, A. N.; reprinted Chicago: Argonaut, 1966Google Scholar).

15 The many stories about Daidalos often contradict each other, and matters are not helped by the fact that we have two figures named Daidalos who were often confused in the ancient sources. The one, strictly mythological figure was a craftsman of consummate skill who made the waxen wings whereby his son Ikaros plunged to his death (see Pausanias Descriptio Graeciae 9.11.2–3). The other, a semihistorical figure believed to have come originally from Athens and to have fled from there to Crete (Pausanias Descriptio Graeciae 7.4.4–5), was believed to have resuscitated sculptural traditions in the archaic period. While he is often complimented for creating statues of such lifelike vitality that they were thought capable of moving on their own (Diodorus Siculus [Bibliotheca historica 4.76] was merely recapitulating a widely told tale in this vein), others make mention of the bizarre otherworldliness of his art (so Pausanias Descriptio Graeciae 2.4.5). Plato (Hippias major 282a) even goes so far as to have Socrates remark that Daidalos's work “would be laughed to scorn” if it were recreated in this day and age. For additional ancient testimonia on Daidalos, see Jones, Ancient Writers on Greek Sculpture, 3–7. For a representative survey of secondary literature on Daidalos and the “Daidalic” style see, Boardman, John, Greek Sculpture: The Archaic Period (London: Thames and Hudson, 1978) 1317Google Scholar; Hurwit, Jeffrey M., The Art and Culture of Early Greece: 1100–480 BC (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985) 131–33Google Scholar, 186–94; Richter, Gisela M., Korai: Archaic Greek Maidens (Garden City, NY: Phaidon, 1968) 2136Google Scholar; idem, Kouroi: Archaic Greek Youths (Garden City, NY: Phaidon, 1960) 16Google Scholar, 26–28; and Ridgway, Brunilde S., The Archaic Style in Greek Sculpture (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975) 1742Google Scholar.

16 I reserve for a footnote the curious reference to an Athena called “Athela,” which Athenagoras identified (Legatio 17.3) as a “more mystical (μυστικώτερον) name for her.” The meaning simply is not clear, and the passage is likely corrupt. One conjecture is that this i s simply one among any number of local epithets attached to Athena. Pausanias himself referred to several, such as the Athena in Plataia (Descriptio Graeciae 9.4.1), carved by Pheidias and surnamed “Areia.” Whether this is to be translated as local nomenclature, or rather as “Athena of War (Apηο)” (which is the reading Peter Levi [Pausanias Guide to Greece 1. 316] prefers) is an open question. Both options may be correct, since local names, more often than not, did mean something, even if that meaning is lost on us. For the purposes of this article, it is important only to notice that Athenagoras here drew upon some local tradition that Pausanias either did not know or else chose not to mention. It would seem likely—and this is my central contention—that Athenagoras knew these traditions and names because he lived in this area, or somewhere nearby, whereas Pausanias was simply traveling through town.

17 Boardman, Greek Sculpture: The Archaic Period, 82–83.

18 Pausanias Descriptio Graeciae 1.26.4. See also Jones, Ancient Writers On Greek Sculpture, 7–8.

19 Pausanias Descriptio Graeciae 5.19.1; 6.3.16; 7.2.4; and 10.38.3. For a survey on the spread of the cult and the cult images of Ephesian Artemis, see Robert Fleischer, Artemis von Ephesos und verwandte Kultstatuen des Anatolien und Syrien (Leiden: Brill, 1973).

20 Athenagoras (Legatio 17.3) is the principle source for this ascription. Pliny's comment (Naturalis historiae 16.214) is commonly emended to “Endoios” on the strength of the passage from Athenagoras. Pausanias generally referred to sites in Asia Minor and the eastern Aegean only in passing, since his is a guidebook to mainland Greek antiquities, and this does not count for or against his knowledge of such stories. It is less surprising that Athenagoras should make much of the Artemis, since Ephesus had quickly become a Christian center of such early and long-lasting importance (and her sanctuary to Artemis presented such a problem to Christians in Acts 19). Athenagoras's is a curiously transparent kind of pride even for the pre-Christian antiquities from recognizable centers of the Christian world like Ephesus, Smyrna, and Corinth (there is perhaps another reason, to which I shall return). See also Jones, Ancient Writers on Greek Sculpture, 8.

21 Pausanias Descriptio Graeciae 3.12.10. It is worth mentioning at least, given all of the wordplay in Athenagoras centering upon the compounds of σκιάο/σκιά, that Pausanias is here discussing “the so-called Σκιάο of Theodoros.” As for what that might mean (Levi [Pausanias Guide to Greece 2. 43–44] translates it as “Σκιάο), I do not think we can say with any confidence. See also n. 42 below.

22 The most elaborate and lively account is from Diodorus Siculus Bibliotheca historica 1.98; see also Jones, Ancient Writers on Greek Sculpture, 24–25.

23 See Pausanias Descriptio Graeciae 9.41.1, where he attributes this piece to Theodoros and Rhoikos, not Telekles.

24 See ibid., 2.32.5; and Jones, Ancient Writers on Greek Sculpture, 13–14. Plutarch, an older contemporary of both Pausanias and Athenagoras, also mentions this statue in De musica 1136a.

25 Pausanias (Descriptio Graeciae 7.4.4) added that Smilis was a rough contemporary of Daidalos. See also Jones, Ancient Writers on Greek Sculpture, 15.

26 Pausanias Descriptio Graeciae 5.17.1; see also Jones, Ancient Writers on Greek Sculpture, 15–16.

27 The statement, Φειδίου τὰ λοιπὰ εἴδωλα, (“the other images are by Pheidias”), has an inconsistent manuscript history and makes no sense at all in this context. It seems to me clearly not to be original, which is to say, it seems a prelude to the Pheidian confusion that follows. See the critical apparatus of Marcovich on Athenagoras Legatio 17.3.

28 Pliny Naturalis historiae 36.20; see also Jones, Ancient Writers on Greek Sculpture, 151–53.

29 Pausanias Descriptio Graeciae 1.1.3.

30 ἒνθα καὶ τὰ λόγου μάλιστα 〈ἂηια〉 αὐτοιο έστίν (Pausanias Descriptio Graeciae 5.24.7).

31 See James G. Frazer, Pausanias's Description of Greece (6 vols.; London: Macmillan, 1898) 3. 241–42, where he argues that Athenagoras (and therefore his source) was responding to the Pheidian style of the work, not to its authorship.

32 Pausanias Descriptio Graeciae 2.27.2. IG 4.1/2.198 provides independent confirmation of this ascription.

33 Pausanias Descriptio Graeciae 5.11.9–10; see also Jones, Ancient Writers on Greek Sculpture, 89–90.

34 Pausanias, in fact, constantly referred to research he had conducted and to the matters about which he had read. For example, τάδε μὲν οὓτ ωο ἒπελεηάμην (“such were the things I have read about it”) (Pausanias Descriptio Graeciae 2.4.1).

35 I have presented the reasons for this at greater length in my “A Funny Thing Happens On The Way To Mantineia,” Soundings 75 (1992) 97127Google Scholar.

36 It is regrettable that Robert Fleischer, by limiting his discussion to Anatolia and Syria, has nothing to tell us about this Corinthian sanctuary in his otherwise excellent Artemis von Ephesos. The book serves to illustrate exhaustively that this statue, possibly carved by Endoios, was copied literally hundreds of times all over the eastern Mediterranean world. Presumably one of these copies would have been in Corinth.

37 Matters are made even more complex since the text (Athenagoras Legatio 17.3) makes reference to “the statue made of olive wood (ἐλαιας).” A suggested emendation implies that the word is actually “Alea” (‘Aλέαο), another one of these local names for Athena that Pausanias recorded. See Pausanias Descriptio Graeciae 2.17.7; 3.5.6; 7.10; 19.7; 8.4.8; 5.3; 9.6; 23.1; 45.4–47.4.

38 Pausanias Descriptio Graeciae 2.5.4–11.2. See also Charles K. Williams and Orestes H. Zervos, “Corinth, 1983: The Route to Sikyon,” Hesperia 53 (1984) 83–108, esp. 101–4.

39 Pausanias Descriptio Graeciae 1.15.1–4. Moreover, at 5.11.6, Pausanias ascribed the painting to Pheidias's brother, Panoinos.

40 Other local traditions were also quite unusual, such as the existence of “secret statues” (ἀγἀλματα ἐν ἀπορρήτω) that were brought out only once in the year at night. See ibid., 2.7.5.

41 Ibid., 2.7.2–4. See also Pausanias Guide to Greece (trans. Levi) 1. 147 n. 41.

42 The parallels to the Sikyonian customs already discussed—and highlighted by the playful use of Greek compounds of σκιά—are evident.

43 See Pausanias Descriptio Graeciae 2.1.2 and 5.10.5.

44 Charles M. Edwards, “Corinth, 1980: Molded Relief Bowls,” Hesperia 50 (1981) 189–210.