GREEK SCULPTURE OUTSIDE GREEK

GREEK SCULPTURE OUTSIDE GREEK

In the next chapter we shall be coming to the period described as Hellenistic; the adjective, coined in modern times on the pattern of ancient Greek and meaning “living in the manner of the Greeks” corresponds to the noun Hellenism, the use of which was popularized by the German scholar J.G. Droysen to designate the three centuries from 323 to 30 BC, covering the period from the depth of Alexander the Great to the founding of the Roman Empire. During this period all the territories from Egypt to the frontiers of India, once the possessions of the Great King of Persia and now conquered by Alexander, came under the power of Greek dynasties, a fact which necessarily contributed to Hellenizing them. The artistic Hellenization of the east, however, began long before its political subjugation. There is evidence of that in several monuments which are important and exceptional enough to merit brief description here.

The Monument of the Harpies, probably built around the beginning of the fifth century at Xanthos in Lycia, is a tomb in the shape of a tower: a monolithic pillar some twenty feet in height, which is still standing, bore a funerary chamber, its external walls ornamented with reliefs which are now in the British Museum. The monument owes its conventional name to the relief on the north face:

a warrior stands before a seated person with whom he is exchanging a helmet. A bird with the breast of a woman is placed on each side of the group. These figures were at first taken for harpies, but they are much more likely to be sirens (the Greek siren was part woman, part bird and not, like the mermaid of later European folklore, a woman with a fish’s tail). They are carrying off small human figures. The west relief, which contains the door to the funerary chamber, shows a seated woman at each end, one holding a patera, the other holding a pomegranate in her lefr hand and a flower in her right hand; three more women are depicted in front of her. The first carries nothing, the second is smelling a flower and carrying a pomegranate, the third holds an egg. Above the door to the funerary chamber a cow is suckling her calf The two other reliefs are equally enigmatic. The length of these descriptions reflects the commentators’ perplexity: the reliefs of the Monument of the Harpies are stylistically close to reliefs of the same period in Greece, but thematically diverse. There can be no doubt that the images relate to native, non-Greek funerary ritual and eschatology. As we know nothing about that ritual, the meaning of the scenes almost entirely escapes us; we can be fairly sure that the small human figures being carried off by the sirens are the souls of the dead, and the repeated pomegranate motif signifies that in Lycia, as in Greece, the pomegranate was linked with death, but are the seated figures dead people or gods? Are the scenes illustrated ceremonies of this world or the underworld? Why is there a cow suckling her calf? We know so little of Lycian belief and cult practices connected with death that none of these questions can be answered.

Still in Xanthos, but of the Classical period, the Nereid Monument is also a tomb, but of a different architectural type. It is certainly Classical, but its date is disputed: in the absence of any independent information, the sculptural style is our only clue. The building of the Monument is usually dated to the last third of the fifth century, but some scholars have put it as early as 460 or as late as 360 BC. Only the foundations remain in Xanthos itself the entire elevation was taken to the British Museum to be reassembled there. A raised stylobate bears a small Ionic temple with peristyle which formed the funerary chamber. It is profusely ornamented with sculpture. The stylobate, first, has two friezes, one above the other. The lower frieze, which is also the larger, presents a kind of pseudo-Amazonomachy with warriors shown naked in the Greek style, fighting enemies dressed in the Persian style. The upper frieze probably illustrates some military exploit of the occupant of the tomb, but with scenes which have no counterpart in the imagery of Greece itself the besieged are shown coming out from behind the crenellated wall of their city, and their surrender is received by the victorious dynast seated on a throne in the shade of a parasol. Then, above the stylobate and between the columns, come the twelve female statues with marine attributes who have been interpreted as Nereids, and who give this anonymous tomb its conventional name. The architrave depicts scenes of bear-hunting and boar-hunting, and a procession of people coming to pay tribute, while a fourth frieze, above the cella, depicts scenes of sacrifice and a funeral feast. The two pediments are also embellished: on the east, the main façade, the dynast and his wife sit enthroned among their court, and the west pediment depicts a scene of combat. The carved decoration is complemented by akroteria: those on the roof-ridge show abductions, those on the sides female figures. The imagery here is not as completely enigmatic as on the Monument of the Harpies; there can be no doubt that the scenes of war and surrender are meant to commemorate the dead man’s exploits but the eschatological references elude us for the same reasons as before, and reams have been written trying to explain why the twelve alleged “Nereids” were placed around a tomb.

Still in Lycia, and also dating from the second half of the fifth century, the Heroon of Trysa is another funerary monument. This is an enclosed building, of which the insides of the walls and the outside walls around the door were covered with reliefs which are now preserved in Vienna. Of about six hundred feet of frieze, only about one-eighth is lost, and at five hundred and eighty human figures arranged on two levels, one above the other, this is one of the largest sculptural ensembles to have come down to us from antiquity. Some of the subjects can be explained by the function of the building: dancers with calathi (baskets) on their heads frame the outside of the door, there are gods of Egyptian appearance playing music over the lintel, and scenes of banqueting and dancing. The rest of the decoration does not seem to be connected with the dead person’s earthly life, as in the Nereid Monument, but is borrowed from Greek mythology — an Amazonomachy, the Calydonsan Hunt, the story of the Seven Against Thebes, and above all the Trojan cycle. Some rather complicated hypotheses have been constructed in the effort to identify personal allusions. As in the Nereid Monument, and unlike most relief in Greece itself, these scenes also include depictions of the city walls.

The fourth monument is the Mausoleum of Halikarnassos, which was counted as one of the Seven Wonders of the World. Although it has now been destroyed and is reduced to a few fragments, its fame in its own day means that we have a good deal of information about its construction and appearance. Among other writings, there are two quite long passages by Vitruvius and Pliny the Elder. The Mausoleum was built for a Carian ruler called Mausolos — hence the name of his tomb, now in use as a common noun — who died in 353 BC, it was comniissioned by his wife Artemisia. She called in Greek artists, two architects and five sculptors: Skopas, Bryaxis, Timotheos and Leochares, who took charge of the decoration of the east, north, south and west sides respectively, and Pythis, creator of the marble quadriga which crowned the monument. Pliny adds some comments on its architecture which have been taken as guidelines for the countless reconstructions suggested in our own time: rectangular in plan, it had a colonnade of thirty-six columns holding up a pyramidal roof at an angle of twenty-four degrees. Plaques from a frieze still survive from the sculpture of the Mausoleum and are nowadays in the British Museum. They show an Amazonomachy, a centauromachy and a chariot race, and they continue to provide material for the common but futile game of making attributions. For no particular reason, one writer will attribute this piece or that to Skopas, while another prefers to see it as the work of Timotheos. We also still have some statues, including statues a long—haired, moustachcd man in oriental dress and of a woman, customarily called Mausolos and Artemisia, and there arc some twenty lions.

Finally, we may add to these four great funerary monuments of the neighbouring provinces of Lycia and Caria the sarcophagi discovered so a necropolis near Sidon in ancient Phoenicia. Like the much later sarcophagi of the Imperial period, these are marble chests with lids, their sides ornamented with reliefs. The sarcophagus known as the “Sarcophagus of the Sarrap”, dating from the middle of the fifth century, has been given that name for its representation of the life of an oriental ruler, seen banqueting, enthroned and hunting. Another sarcophagus, probably of some decades later, has a tall, arched lid of the kind usual in Lycia, and has therefore been dubbed ‘Lycian Sarcophagus”. The cover is carved with sphinxes and griffins, there arc scenes of a centauromachy o the short sides of the chest, boys in quadrigas hunting kiln on one of the long sides, and horsemen, naked but wearing petasi or tiaras, hunting wild boar on the other. The fourth-century “Sarcophagus of the Mourning Women” takes its name from its very unusual decoration, reminiscent of the standing female statues between the columns of the Nereid Monument. Ionic columns are carved on the sides of the chest, linked half-way up by a parapet upon which draped women in grief—stricken attitudes are sitting or leaning. Last, and dating from the end of the century, the ‘4Alexander Sarcophagus” shows a battle between Greeks and Persians on two consecutive sides of the chest, with hunting scenes on the other sides (the creatures being hunted are the stag, lion and panther). The “Alexander Sarcophagus” never contained the mortal remains of the famous conqueror. In fact we know nothing about the makers or occupants of any of the tombs described above, with the sole exception of the Mausoleum, which escaped such anonymity because of its fame as one of the Wonders of the World. In the case of the Mausoleum, we are lucky enough to know that a non-Greek ruler of Caria, part of the Persian Empire, or rather his wife Artemisia, commissioned Greek sculptors and architects to build and decorate a vast tomb at Halikarnaisos, not particularly surprising when we remember that this city, situated on the Anatolian coast, was only a few sea miles from the island of Kos, so that it was very natural for its people to be familiar with Greek art and appreciate it. There we know the name of the person who commissioned the work and the artists who carried it out, but although their equivalents elsewhere may remain anonymous they must have been people of the same kind: “barbarians” (the term used in ancient Greece for all non—Hellenes), influenced and attracted by Hellenism, who commissioned Greek artists, or at least artists trained in the Greek manner.

Commissions of this nature, bringing Greeks to work in foreign countries, explain the special character of these monuments. In one way it ii easy to understand why they regularly feature in books on Greek art; one hardly needs to say that the friezes of the Mausoleum of Halikarnasios are entirely in keeping with other contemporary Greek relief, since we know for certain they are by Skopas or one of his colleagues. Moreover, the unknown creator of the Nereidi made statues in the round, very like the reliefs on the Acropolis at Athens or the Victories on the parapet of the temple of Athena Nike in their variety of attitudes, and their wind—blown or wet draperies clinging to the body. Similarly, the cavalcade of boar-hunters on the “Lycian Sarcophagus” at Sidon is reminiscent of the horsemen in the Panathenaic frieze, and the quadrigas hunting the lion are not inferior to similar Athenian votive reliefs. More examples could easily be given.