The Classical World (107 page)

38
. Colour reconstruction of the grave-stele of Aristion, by Aristocles. Aristion’s name is inscribed on its own, with no father’s name: perhaps he was a recent arrival in Attica, possibly the famous sculptor Aristion from Paros. Original
c
. 510
BC
, found at Marathon in Attica. (Photo: V. Brinkmann, Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek, Munich)

39
. The ‘Lady in Blue’, a terracotta Tanagra figurine found with four others in a tomb just north of Tanagra in central Greece in the early 1870s when thousands of local tombs, some with these figurines, were excavated. The ‘Tanagras’ seemed to give an intimate glimpse of ancient Greek life and were a sensation, especially in France of the 1870s for whose public many copies, and clever fakes, were mass-produced. The Tanagran ladies were hailed as the ‘Parisiennes’ of their day, apparently exemplifying the grace and innate
elegance of true Parisian ladies. The figurines’ original purpose is uncertain, some now considering them to be ‘dolls’. Their style, at times echoing marble sculpture, probably began in Athens, being imitated in Thebes (Before 335
BC
, when Alexander destroyed it) and then in nearby Tanagra. ‘Tanagras’ were widely exported, early to Macedon and then out eastwards as far as eastern Iran for Alexander’s settlers in Asia who wanted such figurines from home. French critics named several, this one being ‘La Dame en Bleu’. She preserves her blue and pink paint and some of the gold leaf, rare and precious, for her robe and the edge of her fan. Her robe, covered head and fan suggest that (like some Parisiennes) she is a courtesan. Tanagra, Greece,
c
. 330–300
BC
(Musée du Louvre, Paris)

40
. Silver plate, 25 cms in diameter, with gilded figures, found carefully buried in a city-temple on the site at Ai Khanum, Afghanistan. A goddess is driven by a winged Victory in a chariot pulled by lions, attended by a priest behind, with parasol, and driven to a high stepped altar where a second priest waits, making an offering. A youthful Sun, the moon and a star are in the sky. The goddess wears a turreted headdress and is currently, but uncertainly, identified as the Greek Cybele coming down from her mountains, shown behind. However she may be Syrian, or local. The chariot is of near Eastern style, as are the altar and the priest’s pointed hat, but the Victory and the youthful Sun are certainly Greek. A similar plaque has now been found just to the west, at Takht-i-Sangin (see 30), implying a local craftsman, not an import from Seleucid Syria. This fine plate survived the wars of the 1980s and 1990s and is still in Afghanistan (Photo: Délégation Archélogique Francaise en Afghanistan, courtesy of Professor Paul Bernard)

41
. Aerial view of the Greek city-site on the Oxus, in modern Afghanistan, at Ai Khanum. The site in the plain contained Greek inscriptions, fragments of Greek sculpture (including a big horse statue, with a wild animal-skin shown as its horse-blanket: ridden by a king, no doubt), a big Greek gymnasium, a palace, and a theatre set in the hillside. It was then plundered and devastated during the wars of the 1980s and 1990s. But the ‘acropolis’ was never excavated, nor a mound less than a mile up river: the site may thus be a foundation of Alexander in 329–7
BC
, subsequentlyenlarged and flourishing until
c
. 130
BC
(D. A. F. A., courtesy of Professor Paul Bernard)

42
. Wall painting from the big cist ‘Tomb of Persephone’ at Vergina (Aigai), the Macedonian royal centre, a few yards south-east of King Philip’s tomb. The god Pluto ascends to his chariot, with his left foot still free, carrying a distraught Persephone off to the underworld. Beyond her, a female, perhaps her friend Kyane, is shown distressed. Beneath the chariot are flowers, like those Persephone was gathering in the meadow. The couple are also shown
painted on the back of the marble throne in the tomb ascribed to King Philip’s mother Eurydice, also at Vergina (
c
. 340
BC
). The artist sketched freely, with visible revisions, before painting this four-colour masterpiece: he may be the famous Nicomachus. Dated
c
. 340
BC
(Vergina (Aigai): Photo: courtesy of Professor C. Paliadeli)

43
. Detail from the façade painting on the Tomb of Philip at Vergina (Aigai), showing the face of the man identified as Alexander
c
. 336/5
BC
(Photo: Professor C. Paliadeli)

44
. Detail from the tomb façade painting on the Tomb of Philip at Vergina showing King Philip II on horseback,
c
. 336/5
BC
(Photo: Professor C. Paliadeli)

45
. Modern reconstruction by G. Miltsakakis of the original hunt painting, found on the façade of King Philip II’s tomb at Vergina (Aigai). The scene is an expressive masterpiece, perhaps not true to one single day’s hunting. The figure of the prancing horse, directly over the door, is surely Alexander, centrally placed as the new king who paid for the scene. The dogs have been remarked for their exceptional jaws and fierce breeding. On the right, the older Philip (conforming to his coin portraits) attacks a lion, still at large in Macedon (a previous king had shown a lion pierced by a broken spear on his coinage). We are in Macedon, not Asia, and Philip hunts with younger lads, the Royal Pages whom he instituted. Alexander has brought down a boar, behind him, and now gallops to the lion: for the pose, compare our 21. The implausible notion that the Tomb contained the later Philip III, Alexander’s half-witted half-brother (died 317
BC
), is refuted by, among much else, the extreme implausibility of a painting on his tomb with Alexander himself at the centre and his absence (as a half-wit) from any such scene of hunting in person. Dated, therefore, 336/5
BC
, the year of Philip II’s murder, by a Greek master, possibly Aristides, whose use of a bare tree, the prancing horse and (possibly) these faces was paralleled in other near-contemporary paintings for Macedonians (Photo: Professor C. Paliadeli)

46
. Three sections of the painted frieze above the doorway of a Macedonian tomb, discovered in 1994, at Agios Athanasios (probably ancient Chalastra) about twelve miles west of Thessalonica in Macedonia. Our middle register shows the frieze’s centre, six men reclining at a symposion on bright cushions, listening to one woman (surprisingly, clothed) who plays the double
aulos
, like our oboe, while another, to the right, sits and plays a stringed
kithara
. A three-legged table is set with after-dinner dessert and the second male diner holds a drinking-horn, or
rhyton
, which ends in an ‘oriental’ griffin. Our upper register is the left of the frieze, showing three garlanded revellers on horseback, with others on foot carrying torches and a silver vessel for a
drinking-party, similar to known examples, including one found in King Philip’s tomb at Aigai. Our lower register shows eight Macedonian warriors, in military dress with shields typical of the Macedonian infantry. On either side of the door (not shown) a tall young Macedonian leans against a sarissa-spear, mourning the dead man inside. Arguably,
c
. 340–335
BC
, on coin evidence, but currently dated 330–20
BC
. This splendid painting appeared in time for the size of its shields and its plumed helmets to be a starting point for the designers of Oliver Stone’s epic
Alexander
film (2004), in which the comfortable lace-up cavalry boots, hand-made in Italy, resembled these Macedonians’ own. So did the revels during filming. (Greek Archaeological Service; M. Tsimbidou-Avloniti, excavator)

47
. Painting of drunken Silenus, Dionysus’ companion on his revels, set on a marble funeral-bed in a Macedonian Tomb, excavated at Potidaea in southeast Macedonia. He holds a drinking-horn, or
rhyton
, ending in an ‘oriental’ griffin, like the Macedonian diners in our figure 21. Late fourth century
BC
(Excavator: Dr. Costas Sismanidis: photo courtesy of Professor D. Pandermalis)

48
. Wall painting of Terentius Neo, holding a book-scroll, and his wife, holding a stylus-pen and a folded writing-tablet. Pompeii, House vii.2.6,
c
. 60
AD
. Terentius Neo’s common features remind us that literacywas not the art, or pretension, only of an upper class at Pompeii (Photo: AKG Images, London)

49
. Wall painting from the portico on the far side of the peristyle garden of the House of Marine Venus in a Shell, at Pompeii. Venus is drawn by a cherub on a dolphin and pushed by another cherub across the sea: the scene seems to have been painted by different hands, of which the artist for her head is best. Venus was a patron-goddess of Pompeii and here, her hairstyle follows a fashion in Nero’s reign at Rome. The
trompe l’
œ
il
style makes her and the sea seem to float beyond the adjoining wall paintings of enclosed gardens, at least when viewed from the peristyle’s entrance way.
AD 60
s (Photo: J. L. Lightfoot)

50
. Female–male sex scene from House of the Centenary, Room 43. Sited above the recessed bed in the small ‘slave-quarters’ room of the supervisor of the household: not, then, in a main room in this house, which was eventually owned by an aedile of the town.
c
.
AD 49
–70, Pompeii (Photo, Giovanni Battista)

51
. Male–Female sex scene, uncertain location, wall painting.
AD 40
–70, Pompeii (Museo Archeologico, Naples; photo, Giovanni Battista)

52
. Portrait of a boy, surrounded by the original mummy-wrappings which held his picture onto the mummy-case. From the Fayyum, Egypt. Reign of Trajan,
AD 98
–117 (British Museum, London)

53. Portrait of a woman, with fashionable pearl and red-stone earrings and unusual highlighting, suggesting a tear-drop in her left eye. Found at Anti-noopolis, Hadrian’s new city for his dead male lover. She will have been one of the first batch of settlers, keen to show her social status.
AD 130
s (Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Harvard University)

54
. Silver denarius from Rome, 113 or 112
BC
, showing voting scenes. On the left, a supervisor (the
custos
) gives a voting tablet to a voter who will mark it, walk up to a wooden ‘bridge’ and follow the man (right) who is putting his tablet into an urn. Both voters wear the required toga and above, the letter ‘P’ signifies a tribe. This voting one by one is at an assembly to pass laws for which a ‘secret’ ballot was relatively recent, and special to Rome. In 119
BC
, the ‘bridges’ had been narrowed, as proposed by Marius when tribune, so as to stop intimidation of individual voters. The moneyer who issued this coin, Licinius Nerva, maybe a partisan of Marius, celebrating the reform (Heberden Coin Room, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford)

55
. Silver denarius from Rome, 82
BC
, showing Sulla on the reverse triumphing in a four-horse chariot. Significantly, the coin was issued before Sulla actually celebrated a triumph for his victory over Mithridates in Asia. In 82
BC
, he invaded Italy and marched on Rome in open civil war. The triumph began only on January 27, 81
BC
(Heberden Coin Room, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford)

56
. Silver denarius, Rome, 44
BC
. On obverse, a portrait of Julius Caesar, dictator, in the year of his murder. On reverse, his ‘ancestor’, the goddess Venus (Heberden Coin Room, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford)

57
. Gold coin showing Nero and his mother Agrippina, face to face on the obverse. A unique placing for an imperial woman, but in December 54 (the coin’s date), Agrippina was a unique ‘queen mother’. Her titles are on this side of the coin, whereas Nero’s are only on the reverse. In the next year (55) the portraits are shown side by side and the titles swap sides, no doubt by order of Nero (British Museum, London)

58
. Relief frieze from upper storey of the portico leading to the shrine of the Roman emperors, the Sebasteion at Aphrodisias in modern Turkey, showing Augustus with symbolic representations of land and sea, symbolizing his world-wide power.
c
. 60
AD
(Photo: M. Ali Dü
ğ
enci, courtesy of Professor R. R. R. Smith)

59
. Relief frieze from same location, showing the Emperor Claudius conquering Britannia, as his army partly did in his presence in
AD 43
(Photo: M. Ali Dü
ğ
enci, courtesy of Professor R. R. R. Smith)

60
. Gold aureus from Judaea,
AD 70
, found at Finstock, West Oxfordshire,
UK in the 1850s and only recently recognized. Obverse, Vespasian, the new Emperor. Reverse, a personification of Justice, the first known. She expresses the Roman view of their ‘just’ sack of Jerusalem and its Temple. Struck under Titus, Vespasian’s son and the commander in Judaea (Heberden Coin Room, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford)

61
. Brass sestertius from Rome,
AD 96
, with a portrait of the ‘good’ Emperor Nerva on the obverse. The reverse shows clapsed hands symbolising, optimistically, the ‘concord’ of the armies (Heberden Coin Room, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford)

62
. Gold aureus from Rome,
AD 134
–8; obverse, a portrait of Hadrian; reverse, a personification of Egypt (Heberden Coin Room, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford)

63
. Modern reconstruction of the south-westerly of the two chambers which made up the Library of Trajan in his Forum at Rome, dedicated in
AD 112
–3. Between these two facing chambers stood his Column in its portico: on one side, able to be closed by grilles, each chamber opened out on to it. Two storeys high, this chamber was about 30 yards by 20 yards, a stairway leading to the upper gallery. Each side-wall had seven upper and seven lower niches for scrolls in ‘bookcases’, set away from the wall to avoid damp. The floor was paved in grey granite from Egypt with strips of yellow marble from north Africa. The walls of brick-faced concrete were covered with a layer of multicoloured marble from western Asia. The white marble statue at the far end was surely of Trajan. Perhaps the historian Tacitus worked here among the 10,000 rolls which each chamber held (Reconstruction by G. Gorski)