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A Collection of Roman Sarcophagi at Clieveden

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

C. Robert
Affiliation:
Halle, a. S.

Extract

During my last visit to England, which was chiefly devoted to preparatory work for the forthcoming volume of my Corpus of Sarcophagi, Mr. Cecil Smith was kind enough to draw my attention to a small series of Roman sarcophagi which Mr. Astor has at Clieveden, and which, after the manner of Roman amateurs of the Renaissance, he has arranged in the garden of the property. As this important communication only reached me on the last day of my stay in London, and as it was impossible for me to delay my return to Germany, I was unfortunately obliged to abandon any idea of visiting Clieveden; but through the friendly intervention of Mr. Cecil Smith, and by the kindness of the owner, I was enabled to obtain excellent photographs which enable one with sufficient accuracy to form an opinion as to the style and condition of the originals. Mr. Cecil Smith further suggested that the Editors of this Journal would welcome a short notice of these interesting monuments in its pages: an honour for which I wish to express my warmest thanks. For the rest, I would ask that the following remarks be taken as an appendix to Michaelis' Ancient Marbles in Great Britain: in the case of the Theseus sarcophagus alone, which is in many respects peculiar, I have been obliged to go more into detail.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1900

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References

page 81 note 1 These photographs were made for the Journal by Mr. Plumbe of Maidenhead, Mr. Astor very kindly defraying the cost.

page 82 note 1 Mazois, Ruines de Pompeii, iv. pl. 15, 2.

page 82 note 2 Atti della R. Accad. di Napoli, xvi. p. 183 sq.

page 82 note 3 Sirena Helbigiana, 5.

page 82 note 4 Sark. Rel. ii. 139, 182, 193, iii. 2, 196. Here, as in the following lines, I am taking into consideration the second section of vol. iii. which will shortly make its appearance.

page 82 note 5 Cf. Sark. Rel. ii. 199a., iii. 1, 12a, 12b, 53a, 53a.

page 83 note 1 Pl. xxii. 80, p. 98 sq.

page 83 note 2 Sark. Rel. iii. 1, 77.

page 85 note 1 Mus. Capitol, iv. 63; Nuova descr. del Mus. Cap. 130.

page 85 note 2 Michaelis, , Ane. Marb. 144Google Scholar; Engravings pl. 6; Hist. and descr, of Woburn, 1890 p. 22, No. 144.

page 85 note 3 Matz-Duhn, 2275; Gall. Giust. ii. 122.

page 86 note 1 Comarmond, Musée lapidaire de Lyon, Pl. I; cf. Benndorf, O., Arch. Anz. 1865, p. 71.Google Scholar

page 86 note 2 Michaelis, , Anc. Marbles, p. 382Google Scholar, No. 249.

page 86 note 3 Notizie degli scavi, 1883, p. 372.

page 86 note 4 Arch. Zeit. 1884, p. 77.

page 86 note 5 Ibid. p. 272.

page 87 note 1 Ber. d. sächs. Ges. d. Wissensch. 1878, Pl. V. 3, p. 146; cf. Matz-Duhn, ii. 2909.

page 87 note 2 Sark. Rel. iii. 12–15, 19, 21, 164–171, 173, 179.

page 87 note 3 Cf. Sark. Rel. iii. p. 7.

page 87 note 4 Ibid. iii. 34.

page 87 note 5 The upper part of the spear is broken away; the position of the point is shown by a support still visible under the upper edge, on the right of the helmeted head.

page 87 note 6 A similar practice was earlier adopted by Etruscan artists. On an urn for ashes from Volterra (Urne Etrusche, II. xxxii, 4), which from its subject also may be compared with our sarcophagus (see below), a horse is similarly introduced behind Theseus, who is occupied with Minos.

page 87 note 7 Sark. Rel. iii. 12, 13, 15, 19, 21. The sculptor of No. 13 is the only one who shows himself to be an artist of consistent ideas, for he introduces the horse also in the hunting scene behind the wounded Adonis, where it is held by an attendant.

page 88 note 1 Sark. Rel. ii. 21a, 23, 25, 25a, 25b, 26, 26b, 62.

page 88 note 2 Gaz. des beaux Arts, 1881, p. 302.

page 88 note 3 Matz-Duhn, 2951; Monumenta Matthaeiana, iii. 40, 2.

page 88 note 4 The upper part is broken away, but the lower part which is preserved leaves no doubt as to the original object. The break in Theseus' mantle, which unfortunately is not very clear in the reproduction, marks the point at which the flame was attached.

page 88 note 5 Sark. Rel. iii 166.

page 88 note 6 Ibid. iii. 164–169, 171, 173; cf. 179.

page 88 note 7 As to the type of Honos, see Purgold, , Archäol. Bemerkungen zu Claudian u. Sidonius, p. 32Google Scholar; and Miscellanea Capitolina (Festschr. zum Jubilaeum des röm Inst. ), p. 22.

page 88 note 8 For the type, which as I think may be traced to the cultus-statue in the temple of Venus and Roma, cf. Sark. Rel. iii. 2, 188, 190.

page 88 note 9 Arch. Zeit. 1884, p. 77.

page 89 note 1 Sark. Rel. ii. 167–169, 172–174, 177–180.

page 89 note 2 Ibid. ii. 183.

page 91 note 1 Plutarch, , Thes. 18.Google Scholar

page 91 note 2 See my article ‘Daidalos’ in Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopädie.

page 91 note 3 In Plut., Thes. 19Google Scholar (FHG I 359, p. 5).

page 92 note 1 Schreiber, Villa Ludovisi, No. 94; Arndt-Bruckmann, 270, 271.

page 92 note 2 Aus der Anomia, 69.

page 92 note 3 Meisterwerke, p. 86.

page 92 note 4 See Ziehen, in Arch. epigr. Mitth. aus Oeslerr. xiii. p. 66Google Scholar, fig. 20.

page 92 note 5 Preller, , Griech. Myth., 4Google Scholar Aufl., i. p. 401, 404.

page 92 note 6 Sark. Rel. ii. 192, 192a.

page 93 note 1 In the upper section of the mirror a boy is introduced who holds in his 1. hand a roll of writing, and with his r. reaches towards a dove. The roll betokens merely the schoolboy, cf. the Durand vase with Kephalos Mon. dell' Inst. i., Pl. V., 4. Now, between this scene, which looks like a genre study, and the subject below it just described, is there any sort of connection? Körte is inclined to say no, and is even doubtful whether the artist really meant anything definite at all by this group. I see no true ground for such an attitude of resignation, but rather believe that we must recognise in the boy a mythical figure standing in the closest connection with the scene represented below, namely Glaukos, the son of King Minos, who, as is well known, in pursuing a mouse ( Apollod, iii., 3, 1, ed. Wagner) fell into a vat of honey, out of which he was in the end rescued by Polyeidos. The mouse is, I admit, on the mirror replaced by the dove, perhaps on artistic grounds, perhaps in reference to another version of the legend; for that there were variants is shown by Hyginus, (fab. 136Google Scholar) according to whose account the misfortune occurred during a game of ball. I should like then to trace this figure back to its Greek model, whether it turns out that these two episodes from the life of Minos were on it combined, or that the playing Glaukos was somewhere or other brought in in the Polygnotos manner as a subordinate figure; and then, that the catastrophe was not actually represented, but suggested in a genre fashion; this harmless game, so the spectator is meant to think, will on another occasion prove fatal to Glaukos.

A decisive answer on this point can only be arrived at when we have attained much fuller information about the models which the mirror-artists had before them; in this respect we have at any rate in recent years made a good stride forward, and as a matter of fact the credit of this is entirely due to Körte.

page 93 note 2 Körte, Irelievi delle Urne etrusche, ii., Pl, 32, 4; and thence reproduced in Strena Helbigiana, p. 167: cf. supra, p. 87, n. 6.

page 94 note 1 Urne etruschie, ii., p. 88; Strena Helb. p. 169.

page 94 note 2 De Euripidis Mythopoeia, Berlin, 1883, p. 63.

page 94 note 3 See Robert, , Eratosthenis cataster. 221Google Scholar; von Wilamowitz-Möllendorff, in Hermes, xv. 483Google Scholar and Euripides' Hippolytos, 11. 46–7.

page 94 note 4 Cf. Euripides' Hippolytos 339,

page 94 note 5 The compromise put forward by Körte, loc. cit. p. 470, suggesting that the first of the three wishes which Poseidon had promised Theseus to fulfil, was realised by the cooperation of Ariadne, I am obliged for the above reason also to reject. Moreover, a god needs no human assistance to enable him to keep his word.

page 94 note 6 Cf. Preller, , Griech. Mythol. i 4, p. 682.Google Scholar

page 95 note 1 According to Pherekydes, Fr. H.G. i. 97Google Scholar, p. 106 (cf. Apollodorus, , Epit. Vatic. i. 126Google Scholar) Theseus flies here it stands to reason that the flight could not have taken place immediately after he left the Labyrinth.

page 95 note 2 See the preceding note.

page 95 note 3 Gazette archéol. ix. 1884 pl. 1; cf. the article Daidalos in Pauly-Wissowa, Real-Encyclopädie.

page 95 note 4 This was first recognised by Wilamowitz (Bacchylides): and Blass, by his correct reading of xvi. 86 has confirmed the view.

page 97 note 1 Notizie degli Scavi, 1883, p. 372, C.I.L. xv. 4062.

page 97 note 2 Sark. Rel. iii. 163.

page 97 note 3 See Murray, A. S., Strena Helbigiana, p. 213.Google Scholar

page 98 note 1 Similar sarcophagi exist e.g. in the Br.Mus., (Anc. Marbles, x. 49Google Scholar) and in the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge (Michaelis, , Anc. Marbles, p. 263Google Scholar, No. 77), in the Vatican (Gerhard, Ant. Bildw. pl. 88, 5), in Pisa (Dutschke, , Ant. Bilder in Oberitalien, i. 19Google Scholar) in Naples (Mus. Borb. x. 28); and a specially fine example 20 years back was in the hands of a Venetian art dealer (see Robert, , Röm. Skizzenbuch, XX Hall. Winckelmannsprogramm, p. 66Google Scholar, No. 347–349.)

page 98 note 2 The type is well known as occurring in statuary, see e.g. Clarac, pl. 678, 1579, pl. 678B. 1619c.

page 98 note 3 Sark. Rel. ii. 26c, cf. ibid. p. 42.