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A Group of East Greek Bronzes*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

D. E. L. Haynes
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Extract

The six bronzes which it is convenient to take as our starting point have already attracted a certain amount of attention, partly because of their enigmatic subject and partly because they provide a good illustration of an early type of plough. All six bronzes are substantially identical (Plate I). Each represents a naked ploughman standing with feet apart, his left hand on the plough handle, his right behind his back. All are bearded and give the appearance of being bald, though this may not be intended. The ploughs consist of stock, tail with handle, beam, pole, and double yoke. No joints are shown between stock, tail, and beam, which are perhaps all three to be thought of as formed from a single piece of wood. The joint between beam and pole is carefully indicated by a slanting incision or by making them overlap each other. On all but one plough the yoke joins the pole without any suggestion of how it would be attached in real life. On the exception (no. 2) it is fastened by a rivet which allows a small turning movement checked by a lug on the pole. Like the ploughmen the two oxen of each team are standing still. They are yoked by their horns, one (sometimes the right, sometimes the left) facing forwards, the other reversed to face the ploughman. No satisfactory explanation of the reversed ox has been suggested. As Drachmann points out, it can hardly represent the turning of the plough at the end of the furrow; this is usually done by lifting the plough up by the tail and carrying it round. Possibly the reversed ox symbolises in a more general way the boustrophedon process of ploughing. But ploughing is so often part of fertility cult that an explanation is perhaps more likely to be found in ritual or magic.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 72 , November 1952 , pp. 75 - 80
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1952

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References

1 For the early Greek plough see Gow, , JHS XXXIV, 249–75Google Scholar; Drachmann, , RE XXXVIIIGoogle Scholar Halbband, s.v. ‘Pflug’.

2 See Salis, von in Corolla Curtius, 162 f.Google Scholar

3 Op. cit. 1461.

4 For ceremonial ploughing in Greece cf. the arotoi hieroi (Harrison, and Verrall, , Mythology and Monuments of Ancient Athens, 166 ff.Google Scholar; Kern, , RE III Halbband 1215 ff.Google Scholar; Ashmole, , JHS LXVI, 9 f.Google Scholar). Drachmann (op. cit. 1471 f.) suggests the possibility of a ritual significance in ploughing naked.

5 My thanks are due to the Syndics of the Fitzwilliam Museum for permission to publish this and the other Cambridge bronzes.

6 A cast of the fractured yoke of Copenhagen ABa 708, which Professor P. J. Riis was good enough to send me, appeared to fit the break on the Fitzwilliam ox exactly. On the other hand Dr. Niels Breitenstein, to whom I sent a cast of the Fitzwilliam ox kindly provided by Dr. W. Lamb, is less certain of the join. He tells me that he believes the ox belongs, but that a small part of the yoke appears to be missing. My thanks are due to Dr. Breitenstein and Professor Riis for their help, and to the authorities of the National Museum for permission to publish the Copenhagen bronze.

7 I am indebted to Mr. J. M. Cook and Mr. Sinclair Hood for information about the bronzes in the British School at Athens. It was Mr. Cook who first drew my attention to Nos. 23, 25, and 32 in my list.

8 Bossert, , Altsyrien no. 472.Google Scholar

9 Cf. Usener, , Archiv für Religionswissenschaft VII, 297 ff.Google Scholar = Kl. Schriften IV, 437 ff.; Nilsson, , Griechische Feste 402 ff., 413 ff.Google Scholar; Farnell, , Cults III, 93 f.Google Scholar, V, 194.

10 Berlin. Bronzen I, 66 f., no. 163. The bronze statuette from Cephalonia in the British Museum (BMC Bronzes no. 216) is more complicated than Neugebauer suggests. If we take the feet as giving the forward direction, the legs from the knees upwards and the body to the top of the stomach are reversed; the chest faces forward; the left arm is reversed; and the head is turned 90° to the right. The head is not bearded, as stated in BMC Bronzes.

11 Cf. Giglioli, , St. Etr. III, 529 ff.Google Scholar The inscription on the lead statuette in Syracuse will, I understand, be published by Professor G. Pugliese Carratelli.

12 Centaurs 135.

13 Architect to King Otto of Greece. He accompanied Ludwig Ross on his travels to the Aegean Islands and the coast of Asia Minor, returning to Germany about 1844.

14 Cf. Payne, , Necrocorinthia 77 f.Google Scholar and fig. 22a.

15 Cf. Keller, , Antike Tierwelt I, 168 ff.Google Scholar Not all Keller's examples bear inspection. Of the animals he illustrates from the Tomba del Triclinio one (Keller's fig. 59; wrongly said to be from Caere) is certainly a leopard or panther (see Duell, Prentice, Tomba del Triclinio 17, pl. IGoogle Scholar). Another (Keller's fig. 58, the animal climbing the tree), of which only the tail survives, appears from old copies of the painting to be a leopard cub (see Prentice Duell, op. cit. 29, pl. II). The third (Keller's fig. 58, the animal on the ground on the extreme right), now headless, looks like a fox (see Prentice Duell, op. cit. 30, pl. II). The animals on the Sabouroff pyxis must be cats and mice as Furtwängler, originally suggested (Collection Sabouroff I, pl. LXVGoogle Scholar). On the Etruscan candelabrum cited by Keller (Reinach, , Rép. Stat. II 140Google Scholar) the animal is probably a leopard or fox as on other Etruscan, candelabra (cf. BMC Bronzes 772, 777–781Google Scholar; Ridder, , Bronzes antiques du Louvre II 3175Google Scholar). On the coin of Segesta it must be a hound. The animal on the Berlin, mirror (Arch. Zeit. 1879 p. 100)Google Scholar, not engraved on it, as Keller says, but cast in the round and attached to the rim, has the pointed ears, short body, and large haunches of a fox. On the other hand Keller does not notice a creature on the east wall of the Tomba del Triclinio which may well be a weasel as Prentice Duell suggests (op. cit. 27, pl. II). The animal, whose head and tail only are preserved, appears to be jumping up into the tree on the left of the plate. Another animal with a long, low body is climbing the tree in the centre of the west wall (Pl. III). This looks to me like another stoat or weasel, but Prentice Duell takes it to be a leopard cub.

16 Bossert, , Altanatolien 117Google Scholar, fig. 520.

17 E.g. clay figures: Artemis Orthia 155 f., pl. XL, XLI; Olympia IV, pl. XVII. Bronze figures: Olympia IV, pll. X, XI, XVI. Farrell's remarks on clay technique, quoted by Dawkins, , Artemis Orthia 155Google Scholar, are relevant.

18 Cf. Payne, , Necrocorinthia 77 f.Google Scholar; Shepard, , Fish-tailed Monster 10.Google Scholar

19 AD I, pl. VII, no. 11.

20 Cf. Weicker in Roscher's, Lexikon IV, 621 f.Google Scholar

21 Cf. Ilberg, in Roscher's, Lexikon IV, 1358 f.Google Scholar

22 The failure to note that one of the oxen is reversed is probably to be accounted forby the fact that this is t h e ploughing group (no. 2) from which both oxen had become detached.

23 See Gjerstad, , Eranos XLIII.Google Scholar

24 For Cybele see Rapp, in Roscher's, Lexikon II. I. 1638 ff.Google Scholar; Schwenn, in RE XXII Halbband 2250 ff.Google Scholar For the association of Cybele with animals of many kinds, cf. the Conservatori mosaic from the Hilariana, Basilica (Cat. Conservatori 277Google Scholar, Gall. Sup. I, no. 20, pl. 110) on which a crow or raven, a snake, a stag, a lioness, a bull, a scorpion, a bear, a goat, and a dove are grouped apotropaically round an evil eye. Another deposit of bronze animals found near Rome is published by Giglioli, (Bull. Comm. Arch. Com. Rom. LVI, 5 ff.)Google Scholar, who connects them with an oriental cult.

For the spread of the cult of Cybele among the Greek cities of Lydia see Schwenn, op. cit. 2252 f., 2287. It is recorded at Smyrna, Phocaea, Cyme, Clazomenae, Erythrae, and Chios, to name only cities in the neighbourhood of Tchesmé.

25 I should, however, point out that Borrell's ‘chariot with two seated figures’ must almost certainly be Purnell's ‘two men seated in a car, drawn by two oxen attached by the horns to the shaft’ (Appendix C, lot 628).

During the Hilaria at Rome (25 March) Cybele and Attis rode together in a car drawn by lions; heifers drew the plaustrum in which the goddess alone was taken to the Lavatici (27 March). See Graillot, , Culte de Cybèle 131 ff., 139 f.Google Scholar