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Ashton, N.G.
1983.
The Lamian War — A False Start?.
Antichthon,
Vol. 17,
Issue. ,
p.
47.
Article contents
Two Athenian Marble Thrones
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2013
Extract
There are in Scotland two ancient Athenian marble thrones which I had an opportunity of studying and photographing some years ago. Both have already been published, but not so fully as to make a fresh study of them superfluous. The more important is in the Earl of Elgin's collection at Broomhall, the other is at Biel, in East Lothian, and belongs to Colonel J. P. Nisbet Hamilton Grant.
An incomplete description of this marble was published in 1837 by von Stackelberg, he having seen it in Athens about 1810 on what he called ‘the site of the ancient Prytaneion’. His description was accompanied by neat engravings of two views of the throne and a view of each relief. After a lapse of time Michaelis produced further notes about it in his ‘Ancient Marbles in Great Britain’, Supplement I, in JHS V (1884) 146 ff. (with Plate XLVIII) under the title Marble throne with reliefs. He had little to say of the chair itself, much about the relief of the Tyrannicides together with a brief comment on the second relief and the inscription.
It will therefore be best to give a fresh description of the throne which can now be illustrated by new photographs taken while it was in the Edinburgh exhibition (Pl. VI, a; VII; VIII, c).
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References
1 During the summer of 1943 when an exhibition of Greek art was held under the auspices of the Greek Government and the British Council with the support of the Trustees of the National Gallery of Scotland.
2 I was greatly indebted to Lord Elgin for his loan of this marble to the exhibition; and am indebted for his permission to publish it anew.
3 When I visited him at Biel to study the throne he gave me permission for this publication.
4 Gräber der Hellenen, Berlin (1837) 33Google Scholar.
5 Michaelis supplied a bibliography of references to the well-known Tyrannicides relief, illustrations being taken from von Stackelberg's line engraving. Since the publication in JHS of Michaelis' wet paper squeezes, illustrations have frequently been copied from these. The following references may now be added to those cited by Michaelis: Overbeck, J., Gesch. d. griech. Plastik, I (1893) 155Google Scholar, fig. 26; Mitchell, L. M., Hist. of Ancient Sculpture, I (1883) 286Google Scholar, fig. 135a; Gardner, E. A., Handbook of Greek Sculpture (1897) p. 182Google Scholar, fig. 34; Harrison, Jane E., Mythol. and Mon. of Ancient Athens (1890) 80, 82Google Scholar; Smith, A. H. in JHS XXXVI (1916) 286, 294Google Scholar (date of shipment from Athens); Seltman, , Exhibition of Greek Art (Edinburgh, 1943)Google Scholar no. 296; (Glasgow, 1943) no. 194.
6 Michaelis, loc. cit., p. 148, calls it Pentelic; von Stackelberg' white Pentelic'.
7 This is the opinion of the skilled workmen who handled it six times.
8 Michaelis, loc. cit., quotes von Stackelberg as supplementing other letters beyond the break υ]ἱός. I am unable to see any trace of these. Jane Harrison, op. cit., misquotes the inscription,
9 JHS XXXVI (1916) 286, 294Google Scholar.
10 One in the British Museum, two in Hildesheim; Arch. Anz. 1919, pp. 76 ffGoogle Scholar., Ippel, and Roeder, , Denkmäler d. Pelizaeus-Museums zu Hildesheim (1921) 175Google Scholar, both from the same tomb in Cyrene.
11 See Richter, Gisela M. A., Ancient Furniture (Oxford 1926) 127, fig. 306Google Scholar; and figs. 276, 277; and p. 154. See further Dilke, O. A. W. in BSA XLIII (1948) 165Google Scholar and Pl. 54a, c.
12 On a Boeotian kylix of mid fifth-cent, date is Demeter seated upon a throne which is, I think, a wicker chair. Cf. G. M. A. Richter, op. cit., fig. 7, from AM XXVI, Pl. VIII.
13 Since a lion sits cat-wise, if you sit on such a throne your own legs equal the lion's front legs, and the throne-legs give you lion's hind-legs, and you, in your majesty, play the lion. But this is a track which would lead us far astray from our own line of study and which would carry us right out of Europe.
14 A. W. Lawrence, Classical Sculpture, Pl. 11. Others chosen at random: late copy of statue of a poet in Copenhagen, Winter, , Kunstgeschichte, 8/9Google Scholar, Pl. 251, 5; on a B.F. kylix by Phrynos, Beazley, Attic Black-Figure, Pl. 1, 1, 2; and G. M. A. Richter, op. cit., figs. 1 to 22, 275 to 279; also Dilke, op. cit., p. 187, fig. 32 and p. 180 with Pl. 54b.
15 B.M. Guide Greek Coins, 1932, Pl. 27, 16; BMC Coins, Mysia, Pl. XXIII, 12, 13.
16 Newell, E. T., The Coinages of Demetrius Poliorcetes (1927) 127 fGoogle Scholar. and Pl. XV, 7. Fig. 3 is the coin in the British Museum, BMC Coins, Central Greece, Pl. VI, 1. Pl. VI, b, enlarged two diameters, was formerly in the Robert Carfrae Collection.
17 Pape-Benseler gives only one Athenian, and he is too early to have inscribed this marble; add three other Athenians, , Hesperia, Index to Vols. I–X (1946) 33Google Scholar, none of whom is likely to have been identical with this man.
18 On the dangers of such procedure see Seltman, , Approach to Greek Art, 87 f.Google Scholar
19 See op. cit., p. 111.
20 Op. cit., p. 59 f.
21 A photograph of the squeeze made by Michaelis and published in 1884 is shown beside the new photograph taken in 1943 (Pl. VII).
22 Other monuments are cited in connexion with this group. One is an electrum stater of Cyzicus, ca. 420 B.C., Seltman, Greek Coins, Pl. XVII, 4, but this is no more than a memory-picture by an engraver who had perhaps seen the group. Others are the blazons on the shield of Athene upon Panathenaic prize-amphorae of the early 4th century B.C.; again memory-pictures. The same applies to other representations, Richter, G. M. A., Sculpture and Sculptors of the Greeks, 1929, figs. 567–570Google Scholar. The bearded Aristogeiton on the Throne-sketch appears to me more like the bronze figure from Livadostro (ca. 500 B.C.) than any other bronze.
23 Arrian, III, 16, 7, and Pliny, NH, 34, 70Google Scholar, say Alexander had it sent back: Valerius Maximus, II, 10, says Seleucus sent it: Pausanias, i, 8, 5, says Antiochus sent it back. A part of the base with inscription on which statues of the Tyrannicides stood was found in March 1936 by the American excavators in the Agora (Hesperia, V, 355 ff.Google Scholar). Professor B. D. Meritt, who published this historic find, inclines to the view that it was the base for the second group; not for Antenor's group. Indeed, if Antenor's group was only re-erected about 293/2 B.C., and if it had an inscription, it would have been in third-century lettering. It is, of course, unlikely that Xerxes carried off the base of Antenor's statues. When the Athenians went home in 479 B.C. they may have used up the base as building material, or they may have placed the new statues on the old base. Improbable that they left it empty, as they could not foresee the return of Antenor's figures.
24 The squeeze (Pl. VIII, b) made by Michaelis is very inferior to the photograph taken in 1943.
25 Plutarch, following one tradition, represents Theseus as a great ravisher, but not as a killer of women.
26 Studniczka, F., JdI II (1887) 140Google Scholar: von Brauchitsch, G., die Panath. Preisamphoren (Leipzig 1910) 70Google Scholar, no. 109. Wolter pointed this out to Studniczka and Professor Beazley has now drawn my attention to it. I owe him thanks for a variety of suggestions for this paper.
27 In Boston; see Beazley, , Lewes House Collection of Ancient Gems, 25 ffGoogle Scholar., no. 31.
28 E.g. on the Penthesileia cup; Diepolder, Der Penthesileia-Maler, Pl. 14; or by the Painter, Niobid, Pfuhl, , MuZ., IIIGoogle Scholar, fig. 505; and elsewhere. However, on a calyx-krater by the Achilles painter, now in Ferrara, S. Aurigemma, Il R. Museo di Spina (1935) 162 ffGoogle Scholar. is a scene which Beazley thinks shows Theseus killing Antiope.
29 The composition resembles that of Theseus and Minotaur on late Athenian coins, Imhoof-Blumer and Gardner, Numis. Comment. on Pausan., Pl. DD, III. It recurs with variants on the Amazon frieze of the Mausoleum.
30 E. T. Newell, op. cit., p. 131 and Pl. XIV, 10. The coin was formerly in the Sir Hermann Weber Collection. It is here enlarged two diameters.
31 See Seltman, , Approach to Greek Art, 87 f.Google Scholar
32 See Smyth, H. W., Greek Melic Poets (1900) 512Google Scholar, who follows Bergk in dating the Pythian Festival held in Athens to October 290 B.C.
33 See Seltman, , Greek Coins, 258 f.Google Scholar; Tarn, W. W. in CAH VII 79Google Scholar.
34 See Tarn, W. W., Alexander the Great, II 52 fGoogle Scholar., and elsewhere.
35 Compare Smyth, op. cit. If my guess is no more than ingenious the fact remains that the most probable date for the throne is one very close to 290 B.C.
36 The Pythian festival of 290 B.C. was celebrated in Athens because the Aetolians were in control of Delph.
37 It is worth noting that the right of dining in the Prytaneion had been conferred in perpetuity on the descendants of Harmodios and Aristogeiton; see Frazer's, Pausanias II, p. 171Google Scholar. See also Dow, S. in Hesperia, Supp. I (1937) 23Google Scholar.
38 It passed into the possession of Mrs. Nisbet's grand-daughter, Lady Mary Christopher Nisbet Hamilton, then to the latter's daughter, the late Mrs. Christopher Nisbet Hamilton Ogilvy, who was the owner of Biel, and from whom Colonel Grant inherited the property.
39 Theoretically there might have been an arc of four, five or more thrones, but perhaps three is the more likely number, especially if this was one of a set of thrones on which the principal Judges sat at the agonistic Festivals. On sets see O. A. W. Dilke, op. cit. 175 ff.
40 A. H. Smith (loc. cit.) calls it ‘a spray of olive (?)’, to which it bears little resemblance. He was evidently dissatisfied with this description, for the question-mark is his. The position of the throne in its recess made it impossible to obtain a direct frontal photograph of the vase and the thing on top of it. But it seemed to me to be a mutilated figurine. See below.
41 See e.g. Sotiriou, G., transl. Merlier, O., Guide du Musée Byzantin d'Athènes (1932) 32Google Scholar.
42 The type occurred elsewhere. A list is given by Mischkowski, H., Die heiligen Tische im Götterkultus d. Gr. u. Röm., Königsberg, 1917Google Scholar, but this is not exhaustive.
43 Svoronos, J. N.Les Monnaies d'Athènes (Munich, 1923–1926)Google Scholar, Pls. 88 & 91.
44 Shear, Josephine P., ‘Athenian Imperial Coinage’, Hesperia, V (1936) 285–327CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
45 Loc. cit., Pl. II, 28; Pl. III, 13, 17; p. 305, fig. 14: our Pl. IX, a and fig. 5, scale 2 dianis.
46 Loc. cit., p. 304 f., p. 319 ff., with figs. 25 and 26: our figs. 6, 7, scale 2 diams.
47 Loc. cit., p. 301 and fig. 11. For the fullest and most interesting account of this remarkable Festival, see Cook, A. B., Zeus III 574 ff.Google Scholar
48 Or falcon; it is too long-legged to be another owl.
49 From about 220 B.C. onwards the so-called ‘New Style’ Athenian tetradrachms have an owl perched on a Panathenaic amphora that looks as though it were of bronze; see Seltman, , Greek Coins, 261Google Scholar. No pottery prize-vases of this, or later date have been found. See also von Brauchitsch, G., die Panath. Preisamphoren (Leipzig, 1910) 83 fGoogle Scholar. In Imperial times they must have been metallic.
50 Winter, , Kunstgeschichte, 8/9Google Scholar, Pl. 246, 7.
51 I mean (i) the Lenormant statuette in Athens, (ii) the statuette in Princeton, Richter, G. M. A., Sculpture an Sculptors of the Greeks, 1929Google Scholar, figs. 601, 604. The figure in Patras and the dreadful Varvakeion copy (op. cit., figs. 603, 599, 600) would have been too big for anyone short of the Farnese Hercules to take away with him, unless he put them into a hand-cart.
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