The Joan Palevsky
Imprint in Classical Literature
In honor of beloved Virgil— “O degli altri poeti onore e lume . . ...
27 downloads
584 Views
4MB Size
Report
This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Report copyright / DMCA form
The Joan Palevsky
Imprint in Classical Literature
In honor of beloved Virgil— “O degli altri poeti onore e lume . . .” —Dante, Inferno
The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generous contribution to this book provided by the Classical Literature Endowment Fund of the University of California Press Foundation, which is supported by a major gift from Joan Palevsky. The publisher also gratefully acknowledges the generous contribution to this book provided by Patricia H. McNear.
The Berkeley Plato
This Page Left Intentionally Blank
The Berkeley Plato From Neglected Relic to Ancient Treasure an archaeological detective story
Stephen G. Miller With an appendix by John Twilley
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley
Los Angeles
London
University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its activities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2009 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Miller, Stephen G. (Stephen Gaylord), 1942–. The Berkeley Plato : from neglected relic to ancient treasure : an archaeological detective story / Stephen G. Miller ; with an appendix by John Twilley. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn 978-0-520-25833-4 (cloth, alk. paper) 1. Plato—Portraits. 2. Hermae. 3. Inscriptions, Greek. 4. Portrait sculpture, Classical—Italy—Tivoli. 5. Portrait sculpture, Classical—California—Berkeley. 6. Classical antiquities—Conservation and restoration— California—Berkeley—History—20th century. 7. Phoebe Apperson Hearst Museum of Anthropology—History— 20th century. I. Title. N7587.P6M55
2009
733'.3-dc22
2009018650
Manufactured in the United States of America 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of ansi/niso z39.48-1992 (r 1997) (Permanence of Paper).
CONTENTS
List of Illustrations vii Preface and Acknowledgments xiii History of Acquisition and the First Century in California 1 Description of the Artifact 5 Pertinence of the Head 9 The Inscription 12 The Seven Sages 16 The Tivoli Plato 25
The Berkeley Plato and the Renaissance 29 Portraits of Plato 34 The Berkeley Plato and the Akademy 37 Ribbons 40 Plato and Ribbons 45 Why Plato and Ribbons 53 Conclusion 55 Appendix A. The Square-Omicron and Square-Theta Portrait Herms from Tivoli 57 Appendix B. Technical and Scientific Analysis, by John Twilley 69 Bibliography 77 General Index 83 Index of Ancient Sources 87 Index of Collections of Artifacts 91
ILLUSTRATIONS
Appearing after page 92 COLOR PLATES
1.
Detail of lines 7 and 8 of inscription on front of shaft of Berkeley Plato
2. Overall views of front and right side of Berkeley Plato 3. Overall views of Berkeley Plato with ultraviolet light 4. Location 2: interior of right shoulder socket 5. Location 8: detail of conditions on top of head 6. Location 9: detail of conditions on top of head 7. Location 11: phallus socket with frontal illumination 8. Location 14: rust concretions 9. Location 16: gray sandy accretion
BLACK-AND-WHITE FIGURES
1. Full frontal view of Berkeley Plato 2.
Face and first line of inscription of Berkeley Plato vii
viii
/
Illustrations
3.
Back of head of Berkeley Plato
4.
Right profile of head and side of shoulder of Berkeley Plato
5.
Left profile of head and side of shoulder of Berkeley Plato
6.
Drawing of left profile of Berkeley Plato with tainia restored
7.
Shaft of Berkeley Plato with phallus socket still plastered
8.
Shaft of Berkeley Plato with phallus socket cleaned
9.
Broken neck surface of head of Berkeley Plato
10.
Broken neck surface of shaft of Berkeley Plato
11.
Samples of Berkeley Plato head and neck
12.
Pseudo–Plato portrait with modern inscription
13.
Right-side view of pseudo–Plato portrait
14.
Pseudo–Plato portrait with modern inscription
15.
Right-side view of pseudo–Plato portrait
16.
Map of the Tivoli area
17.
Mosaic of Seven Sages and Sokrates
18.
Detail of Bias on Seven Sages mosaic
19.
Herm of Plato, Tivoli, Palazzo Municipale
20.
Detail of neck of Plato herm, Tivoli
21.
Plato portrait herm, Tivoli, Palazzo Municipale
22.
Ligorio’s drawing of various herms
23.
Front view of pseudo-Plato, Rome
24.
Right side of pseudo-Plato, Rome
25.
Inscribed portrait herm of Plato, Berlin
26.
Left side of head of Berlin Plato
27.
Right side of head of Berlin Plato
28.
Portrait of Plato, Cambridge
29.
Left side of Cambridge Plato
30.
Right side of Cambridge Plato
Illustrations
/
ix
31. Right side of portrait of Plato, Copenhagen 32. Portrait of Plato, Munich 33. Nike holds ribbon for wrestling victor 34. Nike and assistant prepare to tie ribbon on pankration victor 35. Nike holds out ribbon to runner at the start of race 36. Young victor with ribbons around bicep and thigh 37. Herald announces name of victor 38. Victorious athlete with ribbons around both thighs and head 39. Victorious athlete with ribbons around both arms, both thighs, and waist 40. Victorious athlete with tainia and mitra around head 41. Depiction of tomb of victorious athlete 42. Grave stele of Hermodotos son of Alkimos 43. Scene of Herakles and Cretan Bull with Nike 44. Reclining youth with tainia and mitra on head 45. Reclining youth playing kottabos, tainia on head 46. Athlete in palaistra with tainias on head and right bicep 47. Two athletes receive tainias from judges or trainers 48. Athlete with tainia on each arm 49. Headless herm of later second century b.c. 50. Portrait herm of kosm;t;s Sosistratos 51. Herm with phallus 52. Aischines herm inscription by Ligorio 53. Aischylos herm inscription by Ligorio 54. Azara Alexander, Paris 55. Alkibiades herm inscription by Ligorio 56. Andokides herm inscription by Pighius 57. Aristogeiton herm inscription by Pighius
x
/
Illustrations
58. Aristophanes herm inscription by Ligorio 59. Aristophanes herm inscription, Uffizi 60. Aristotle herm inscription by Pighius 61. Bias portrait herm, Vatican 62. Diogenes herm inscription by Ligorio 63. Euripides herm inscription by Ligorio 64. Herakleitos herm inscription by Ligorio 65. Hesiod herm inscription by Ligorio 66. Ibykos herm inscription by Leoncinus 67. Isokrates herm inscription by Ligorio 68. Karneades herm inscription by Ligorio 69. Kimon herm inscription by Ligorio 70. Kleoboulos portrait herm, Vatican 71. Kratippos herm inscription by Ursinus 72. Lykourgos portrait herm, Vatican 73. Lysias herm inscription by Ligorio 74. Miltiades herm inscription by Ligorio 75. Periander portrait herm, Vatican 76. Perikles portrait herm, Vatican 77. Philemon herm inscription sketch by Ligorio 78. Phokion herm inscription by Ligorio 79. Pittakos portrait herm, Vatican 80. Plato portrait-herm inscription by Smutney 81. Ptolemy herm inscription by Ligorio 82. Sokrates herm inscription by Ligorio 83. Solon portrait herm, Vatican 84. Speusippos herm inscription by Ligorio 85. Stesichoros portrait herm, Vatican
Illustrations
/
xi
86. Thales portrait herm, Vatican 87. Themistokles herm inscription by Ligorio 88. Theophrastos herm inscription and head by Ligorio 89. Theophrastos portrait herm, Villa Albani 90. Timon herm inscription by Ligorio 91. Location 2: detail of interior of right shoulder socket 92. Location 17: well-advanced grain-boundary dissolution 93. Location 17: grain-boundary dissolution 94. Location 17: early stages of dissolution-roughening 95. Location 17: drill marks under right ribbon 96. Location 17: drill marks under left ribbon 97. Location 7: continuous layer of reaction product 98. Location 13: cream mortar atop gray residues in incision 99. Location 14: doubly incised line with gray residue
This Page Left Intentionally Blank
PREFACE AND ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The reader deserves an introduction to the author and an explanation of why he has written this book. I am a dirt archaeologist who has excavated in ancient Greek lands an average of three months each year for the past forty years. As such, I sometimes feel that my knowledge is broad, but only rarely deep, and it must surely be admitted that I am not an art historian, that I am not a specialist in Greek sculpture, and that I have never worked in depth with Greek portraiture. So why am I publishing a portrait of Plato? The basic answer is one of time and place. When I first saw the Berkeley Plato in the basement of the Hearst Women’s Gymnasium on the university campus more than thirty years ago, I was told that it was a modern fake. My ignorance at that time was so great and my experience so limited that I had no reason to question the statement, and my work in the university’s excavations at Nemea assured that I would not have the leisure to think about the Berkeley Plato. Indeed, I probably never would have thought about him again had it not been for another development in my career. In 2002, as I completed my Ancient Greek Athletics, I was looking for a portrait of Plato to help illustrate, together with a portrait of Aristotle, the final chapter, which dealt with athletics as an agent of education and xiii
xiv
/
Preface and Acknowledgments
of the development of aret; (virtue, excellence, and more). Both Plato and Aristotle discuss this issue at length, and portraits of them were the only way I could imagine to illustrate that chapter. Portraits of Aristotle abound, and many of them are attractive, but that is not the case with Plato, whose portraits (always in Roman-period copies) are at best stiff and lifeless, and at worst ugly. I could not find a portrait that would illustrate my final Ancient Greek Athletics chapter in a way I thought appropriate. Then my memory stirred about a Plato that I had seen years before on the Berkeley campus. I was in the right place. More important, my experience had grown, and that in the context of working with the remains of Greek antiquity that come directly from the earth and could not be modern forgeries. In other words, the little data bank between my ears had been filling with the experience of dealing with authentic antiquities. And so, when I was told again that this Plato (who certainly looked attractive enough to use in the athletics book) was a modern fake, my response now was: Why? The marble was, to my now more experienced eye, from the Greek islands; the inscription had traces of red pigment like any good ancient inscription, and the head wore ribbons that were, as I happened to know, typical of the Greek athletic scene. I was, in other words, the right person in the right place at the right time to connect the dots and be able to establish the authenticity of the Berkeley Plato. I was not, and am not, the right person to carry the Berkeley Plato to the next level of scholarship, but he would never get there if I did not get him to a level of acceptance into the world of ancient Greek portraiture that will allow the specialist to absorb him into the full lineup of Plato portraits. That is why I am publishing a portrait of Plato. As a part of Plato’s acceptance into his proper place in that world, I have had much help from many people, and clearly the single most significant has been John Twilley. When, in May 2003, the story of the Berkeley Plato appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Dr. Twilley was asked his opinion, and he was properly cautious about accepting its authenticity. I contacted him and asked if he would come to Berkeley for a look at the Plato.
Preface and Acknowledgments
/
xv
He graciously agreed, saw enough to intrigue him, and came back for a week of intensive investigation in February 2005. The results of his work are to be seen in appendix B below and scattered throughout my own text. It is fair to say that, even though I was certain of the authenticity of the Berkeley Plato, John’s work has given the authentication another kind of validity that I could never have provided—especially since his were (and are) independent eyes that ask of Plato hard questions of a type different from mine. More recently, John’s queries have been augmented by those of Jerry Podany; together they have increased immensely my understanding of technical questions concerning the authenticity of the Berkeley Plato. The Phoebe Apperson Hearst Museum of Anthropology, in whose care the Berkeley Plato resides, has been supportive throughout my research. I would thank successive directors of the museum, Pat Kirch, Doug Sharon, and Kent Lightfoot, for their help and for permission to publish the Berkeley Plato. I also gratefully acknowledge indebtedness to several members of the museum staff: Therese Babineau for photographic work, Madeleine Fang for conservation help, Victoria Bradshaw and Barbara Takiguchi for help with public relations and with access when Plato was still in the basement of the Hearst Gymnasium, Joan Knudsen and Ira Jacknis for help in ferreting out the history of acquisition and of the early days of the collection in California, respectively, and Lisa Hart for opening doors and minds. Paolo Liverani and Maurizio Sannibale of the Vatican Museum, Anna Sommella Mura, Claudio Parisi Presicce, Angela Carbonaro, and Marina Bertoletti of the Capitoline Museums, the Amministrazione Principe Torlonia for the Villa Albani, Dimo Kojuharov of the Archaeological Museum at Nesebar, Joan Mertens at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Mette Moltesen of the Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek, and Nikolaos Kaltsas of the National Archaeological Museum at Athens have all been especially helpful at particular points in my research. My colleagues at Berkeley Crawford Greenewalt, Chris Hallett, Andrew Stewart, and Ronald Stroud have all lent their eyes and experience
xvi
/
Preface and Acknowledgments
to an examination of the Plato, as has Professor Vasileios Lambrinoudakis of the University of Athens. Vincent Jolivet of the École Française de Rome has helped to reduce the distance between Berkeley and both the Capitoline and the Vatican, Tom Ventresco that between Berkeley and Florence, and Eugenia Salza Prina Ricotti that between Berkeley and Tivoli. I am particularly grateful to Professors R. R. R. Smith and Paul Zanker for their reading of an earlier version of this manuscript and for their encouragement. The University of California Press has contributed to the production of this book in the persons of Stephanie Fay, Cindy Fulton, Eric Schmidt, Paul Psoinos, and Claudia Smelser. The expenses for the preparation of this publication have been supported by the S. G. Miller Retirement Fund, the Stahl Endowment Fund, John Carney, and Pat McNear. Finally, I must acknowledge the assistance of Frank Cope and especially that of Effie Davlantes Miller in the preparation of this manuscript, and of Erin Babnik in the preparation of this publication—I do so with the greatest pleasure and sense of indebtedness. Stephen G. Miller Ancient Nemea, Greece January 11, 2008
The Berkeley Plato
This Page Left Intentionally Blank
HISTORY OF ACQUISITION AND THE FIRST CENTURY IN CALIFORNIA
On November 12, 1902, eighty-eight cases of antiquities and plaster casts of ancient sculpture arrived in San Francisco. These had been shipped from Rome on August 27 via New York, whence they went overland to the Museum of Anthropology of the University of California. Case 186, which was nearly the last in the group to be prepared for shipping, contained an inscribed portrait herm of Plato (fig. 1), which is now in the Phoebe Apperson Hearst Museum of Anthropology (PAHMA) on the Berkeley campus.1 Mrs. Hearst had employed Alfred Emerson, a classical scholar and friend of Benjamin Ide Wheeler (then president of the University of California), to acquire Greek and Roman antiquities in Rome as part of her plan for a museum that would bring together char1. Inv. no. 8-4213. The cases were actually numbered beginning with 101. The case with the Plato portrait was number 186, although one of Emerson’s notes labels it as 185. Those two cases contained material purchased on the same day from the same source, so the confusion is as understandable as it is insignificant. The identity of the piece in case no. 186 with the Plato portrait is assured by a notebook in Emerson’s hand where the “herm of Plato” is mentioned and the herm’s inscription reproduced. 1
2
/
The Berkeley Plato
acteristic artifacts of ancient cultures for the edification of the citizens of northern California.2 The Plato herm was purchased by Emerson from the Fratelli Iandolo, a well-known firm of antiquities dealers in Rome,3 on August 16, 1902, less than two weeks before the shipment left for California. This herm, together with a large marble Roman matron, was paid for by a check in
2. An obituary of Emerson by Harold N. Fowler can be found in AJA 48 (1944): 80. The segment of his life that is especially significant for his work in Rome begins with an overlap with Wheeler at Cornell University from 1891 to 1895. Wheeler left in 1895 for a year in Athens at the American School of Classical Studies and stayed on for the following year, 1896–97. The next year Emerson left Cornell for two years at the American School in Athens (1897–99). Wheeler left Cornell in 1899 for a twenty-year stint as president of the University of California. Already in 1896, however, Wheeler had persuaded Phoebe Apperson Hearst to contribute to the American School’s then fledgling excavations at Corinth. Wheeler was obviously instrumental in Mrs. Hearst’s choice of Emerson as her representative in Rome, and Emerson would have been an obvious candidate in any event, since he had previously prepared the catalogue of the collection of plaster casts at Cornell. See A. Emerson, Catalogue of the H. W. Sage Collection of Casts from Antique Sculpture (Ithaca 1900); and Kuniholm et al. 2003, 14. 3. The two sons of Salvatore Iandolo, Antonio and Alessandro, were running the business at the time of Emerson’s visit and it was they who sold many pieces to a variety of museums just before and after the turn of the century. Their customers included the Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek, the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (to which they sold the “Boston Throne” in 1895), and many smaller collectors. The two sons of Antonio, Augusto and Ugo, continued the family business, even though they went through bankruptcy after an abortive scheme to excavate on the grounds of the Villa Adele at Anzio, which they had purchased for that purpose in 1909. A new law of the Italian state prohibiting the export of antiquities put a stop to that plan. See http://www.anzio.net/ davedere/iadele.htm. For the antiquity trade during this time, see Iandolo 1935, passim; F. Poulsen 1951, 8–9; and Pollak 1994, 138–40 et passim and fig. 15. I thank Mette Moltesen and Joan Mertens for these references.
The Berkeley Plato
/
3
the amount of three thousand lire on August 23, 1902.4 Emerson seems not to have been very impressed with his purchase, although his taste is open to question. In a long letter to Mrs. Hearst of September 21, 1902, he extols a portrait (PAHMA inv. no. 8-4214) that is heavily restored and of inferior material, but he mentions the Plato portrait only in passing: “Let me add a fourth terminal figure with a Greek inscription.”5 He is also rather dismissive in his lone published reference to the piece. In a synopsis of a brief lecture given at the annual meeting of the Archaeological Institute of America in the winter of 1902/3, Emerson presented a list of some of his Roman purchases. Number 11 is an “inscribed herma of pseudo-Plato.”6 Further, the inventory catalogue entry for the piece includes this statement, handwritten at an unknown time: “Pertinence of head is not certain.” We shall return to that remark, but the doubt thus expressed may explain at least in part why this portrait herm has been left in total obscurity for more than a century. Some of that darkness was lifted in 1965 and 1966, when two publications of the inscribed herm shaft appeared, but without the head.7 R. J. Smutny, then a graduate student at Berkeley who was working on Latin
4. The matron has the inventory number 8-4240 in the Hearst Museum collection. Earlier purchases from the Fratelli Iandolo of a number of pieces were paid for on July 1, 1902; they cost 6,550 lire. 5. Letter in the archives of the Phoebe Apperson Hearst Museum. The packing list for case no. 186 is even less precise: “1 hermes.” It is particularly frustrating that Emerson does not mention whether the head and the shaft had been broken and repaired. But his descriptions of all his purchases are very superficial and often devoid of such detail. 6. Emerson 1903, 97–98. His lecture may have been accompanied by lantern slides according to a letter he wrote to Wheeler in November 1902 asking for permission to present his purchases to the AIA. This is the only evidence of any photographic record of the portrait head until quite recently, when photographs were made for this publication. 7. Richter 1965, 166 under no. 8, fig. 907; and Smutny 1966, 2–5. Although Richter’s work appeared first, it is clear that she was dependent upon Smutny
4
/
The Berkeley Plato
inscriptions, included the inscription in his monograph Greek and Latin Inscriptions at Berkeley; the Plato text was the only Greek inscription in his collection, and Smutny presented it as a modern fake. He derived this opinion from the citation of a note from Thomas Ashby to G. Mancini that the latter published in 1952, and from the response of Margherita Guarducci, who examined a squeeze of the Berkeley text at Smutny’s request.8 We will return to this question of the antiquity of the Berkeley inscription, but we must note for the moment that Guarducci definitely never saw the Berkeley stone, and it is not certain that Ashby did either. As we shall see, firsthand examination reveals that the inscription is actually ancient. Meanwhile, the head had been detached and misplaced; Smutny says:9 when the piece entered the Museum it presumably possessed a head of some kind, for the inventory book carries the remark, “Pertinence of head is not certain.” In a thorough search of the Museum, I was able to find no head, Platonic or other, suited to this shaft, nor do the curators know of any head belonging to it.
Thus, the head has never been published.10 and his manuscript for her description. The inscription had been mentioned in 1952 by G. Mancini, Inscriptiones Italiae 4.1, under no. 583. 8. Smutny 1966, 3 n. 17. This assessment of the inscription has been repeated more recently, again without inspection of the stone itself, in Palma Venetucci 1992a, 281 n. 36. 9. Smutny 1966, 5. It is not known who entered this remark in the inventory or when. All the material collected by Emerson was put into the first Hearst museum, a large structure built in 1898 for the Hastings College of the Law on Parnassus Heights, about three miles west of the center of San Francisco—in the event, too far away from the center of the city for the lawyers. This is the present site of the University of California, San Francisco, School of Medicine. The museum collection, including the material collected by Emerson, moved to the Berkeley campus only in 1931. Presumably the Berkeley Plato went along with the collection, although there are no specific records to document this. 10. The head was located in 1966 when Charlotte Sweet carried out a reedition of the museum inventory. It is curious that her description of the Roman
The Berkeley Plato
/
5
DESCRIPTION OF THE ARTIFACT
Let us begin our study with dimensions. H.: 1.675 m H. to shoulder on left side: 1.345 m H., top of head (including mitra) to end of beard: 0.343 m11 W. of head inter tragos: 0.172 m12 W. of shaft at top: 0.266 m W. of shaft at bottom: 0.280 m TH. of shaft at top: 0.226 m TH. of shaft at bottom: 0.229 m Left shoulder socket: H. from bottom of shaft to bottom of socket: 1.209 m W.: 0.036 m H.: 0.102 m matron (inv. no. 8-4240; above, n. 4) includes the notation “the pertinence of the head is not certain,” which is the comment in the inventory book for the Plato head, and quoted as such by Smutny 1966, 5. A photograph of the head does appear in Miller 2004, 240, fig. 241. 11. I provide this dimension in recognition of the attempt by K. Vierneisel to compare the sizes of various copies of Plato portraits. The differing beard lengths make comparisons of this dimension suspect, however, and I prefer the space between the ears as a more reliable standard. Nonetheless, this dimension for the Berkeley Plato fits well enough within the 0.31–0.38 m range noted by Helga von Heintze and used as Vierneisel’s starting point. 12. This compares with the width inter tragos of Perikles, 0.170 m; of Bias, 0.186 m; of Periander, 0.180 m; and of Theophrastos, 0.205 m. See below, appendix A and note e under Alexander. With regard to Vierneisel’s question about whether Plato’s portrait (and implicitly any ancient portrait in general) was life-sized or greater, I offer the results of a random sampling of 35 middle-aged men in Berkeley in June 2006: average inter tragos width 0.157 m, rather smaller than the Berkeley Plato, although two of the human heads sampled were of a size similar to the marble head.
6
/
The Berkeley Plato
D.: 0.031 m Iron pin, 0.008 m diameter, in center of socket Very shallow (0.001 m) crude channel 0.025 m wide extends down from the socket for 0.54 m Right shoulder socket: H. from bottom of shaft to bottom of socket: 1.208 m W.: 0.040 m H.: 0.110 m D.: 0.032 m Iron pin, 0.008–0.009 m diameter, in center of socket Shallow (0.008 m) crude channel extends down from socket for a total of 0.61 m; channel is 0.045 m wide at socket, narrows to 0.025 m wide at a point 0.31 m from socket Cutting in back of left shoulder (rough, made with single point): W.: 0.035–0.037 m D.: 0.012 m, extending 0.066 m down from the top of the shoulder parallel to the edge of the shaft and 0.031 m from it Phallus socket: H. from bottom of shaft to bottom of cutting: 0.771 m Max. H.: 0.082 m W. at center: 0.041 m Max. W. of top: 0.059 m Max. W. of bottom: 0.054 m D.: 0.007 m A typical herm shaft narrows slightly toward the top and supports the head of a bearded male, perhaps in his fifties or early sixties. His head is crowned with a ribbon, or tainia, which is held in place by a headband,
The Berkeley Plato
/
7
or mitra, that encircles the crown of the head (figs. 2–6). The parts of the tainia between the head and the shoulder are broken away, doubtless at the time when the head was broken from the shaft.13 The ends of the tainia show the characteristic rounded form that derives ultimately from tying all the threads at the end of the ribbon together with a single knot. The overall appearance of the herm suggests that the head is proportionately too big for the shaft when compared with other examples (cf. below: e.g., figs. 50, 61, 75, 76, 89); in fact, the head is of a typical size, but the width of the shaft is 0.05–0.06 m smaller than usual; but there are several examples of such proportions.14 The hair of the back of the head was less detailed than that of the face (and now melted by its acid bath: see below) but still carefully done (fig. 3). The sides of the shaft have shoulder sockets that are slightly narrower 13. Since the condition of the piece when it arrived in California is not known, neither is the time when the break occurred, but it seems to have been before it left Rome and even before it was purchased by Emerson. (See below, pp. 9–10.) Presumably the missing pieces of the ribbons would still be extant if the break had happened in California. Certainly the break did not happen in the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. A letter from Alfred L. Kroeber to Mrs. Hearst’s agent, Edward Clark, on May 11, 1906, states: “Dr. Emerson’s collections escaped serious damage, in spite of their fragility, through applicances [sic] specially installed as a protection against earthquakes.” 14. A sample of the widths of portrait-herm shafts particularly relevant to the Berkeley Plato can be found below in appendix A. In general, they are about 0.32 m wide, which should be understood as representing a foot, probably so specified at the quarry. Their depth is typically about 0.24 m, or three-quarters of a foot, and their height (when preserved) ranges from 1.74 m (Bias) to 1.83 m (Perikles). Perhaps the quarry height of the block was six feet. For other portrait herms that have, like the Berkeley Plato, relatively slender shafts in proportion to the heads, see Kaltsas 2001, no. 683 (width inter tragos, 0.171 m; width of shaft, 0.292 m: I thank Dr. Kaltsas for providing these measurements to me); Hamiaux 1992, nos. 58 and 59; the portrait of Moiragenes from the Athenian Agora, inv. no. S 586 ( Harrison 1953 [Agora 1], no. 25); and many others. The archaic herm from Siphnos also has very slender proportions of its shaft with respect to the width of its head: Athens, National Museum, inv. no. 3728; see Kaltsas 2001, 61 no. 78.
8
/
The Berkeley Plato
than typical,15 but of a usual height and depth (figs. 4, 5). It should be mentioned that, even in the best-worked examples, there are variations in size from socket to socket on the same herm.16 The sockets have the remains of iron pins (plate 4), which can be paralleled on ancient examples.17 The socket for the phallus was filled with plaster until quite recently. (Compare figs. 7 and 8.) It belongs to a group of herms with similar cuttings that are sometimes flat across the top rather than rounded as on the Berkeley herm.18 The socket most closely resembling the Berkeley example is on the portrait herm of Bias (see fig. 61), which is still filled with plaster but has a discernible trace of a curved top.19 The original surfaces are smooth, and there are clear signs of the use of a saw on the back side. This is not unusual; perhaps the most pertinent analogy is on the side of the portrait herm of Periander (fig. 75), where the saw marks and a ridge remaining from the unfinished saw cut are quite visible. The front surface in particular has a number of broken areas, some of which have been inflicted by an instrument or tool not unlike a pickax. These are especially concentrated to the left of center in the first four lines of the inscription (fig. 7). There are two larger breaks, one at the right shoulder and one along the right side slightly above the phallus socket at the beginning of the fourth and fifth lines of text. There is encrustation on the front of the shaft and the head, but none on the back of the shaft 15. E.g., Kleoboulos, 0.047 m wide; Perikles, 0.049 m wide; Periander, 0.052 and 0.057 m wide; Pittakos, 0.054 m wide; Solon, 0.056 m wide; Bias, 0.057 m wide; see appendix A below. 16. E.g., one socket on Bias is about 0.012 m higher off the ground than the other (see appendix A below); the sockets on Periander differ from one another by half a centimeter and more in their dimensions. 17. E.g., Pittakos; see below, appendix A. See further below, appendix B, p. 71. 18. E.g., Perikles, see below, appendix A. 19. For other phallus sockets with similar curved tops, and of similar date, see the double herm of Dionysos and Ariadne discovered at Eleutherna: Themelis 2004, 50–52 and fig. 32.
The Berkeley Plato
/
9
or the head.20 This encrustation extends over the surface of the large break on the right corner, but not over the break at the shoulder. The latter break seems to have been caused at the time when the head was broken from the shaft. This break seems to have been deliberate and not the result of an accidental fall, for there are no signs of impact on head or shaft that would have resulted from such a fall. On the other hand, chips of marble missing from corresponding areas above and below the break on the back and right side (figs. 3, 4) might suggest that some wedgeshaped instrument, like a large chisel or drove or pickax, was driven into the marble at these points, but the broken surfaces of those areas do not show the effects of the acid bath (fig. 9). They must have been chipped away after the head was treated with acid and therefore after the head had been broken from the shaft. The acid bath has had an unfortunate effect on the surface of the head; details have been softened, and the hair has a watery appearance. The result is not only to muffle the facial details but also to make the head appear glazed and different from the body.21
PERTINENCE OF THE HEAD
We thus come to the question of the pertinence of the head to the shaft. The acid treatment of the head has ruined the edges of the marble around the neck, and it is impossible to prove a join between those outer edges (figs. 9, 10).22 The holes of the iron pin that was inserted at some time,
20. The breaks on the front and the lack of encrustation on the back, as well as the iron stains on the front only (see Twilley, below, appendix B), suggest that there was a time when the herm was lying on its back, perhaps just under the surface of the earth and being hit by agricultural tools such as picks and plows. 21. John Twilley’s investigation has shown that hydrofluoric acid was used, which suggests that the acid bath did not happen before the late nineteenth century at the earliest. See further appendix B below, p. 72. 22. The destruction of the marble on the neck of the head by the acid is visible where the surface is glazed, as beneath the 8-4 of the inventory number at the upper left of fig. 9 here.
10
/
The Berkeley Plato
probably before the herm arrived at Berkeley, have obliterated the surfaces at the center.23 The removal of two layers of adhesive from the remainder of the surfaces has further blurred the edges of the marble crystals on the broken surfaces. Nonetheless, general correspondences survive,24 and there is one position at which the head sits comfortably on the shaft. It feels right, but not as precisely so as if the break were fresh and the two pieces rejoined in their uniquely and reciprocally broken surfaces.25 In this position, the head is slightly tilted to the shaft, a relationship that can be paralleled on other portrait herms.26 Another reason for assigning this head to this shaft, beyond the fact that they were purchased together, is the existence (mentioned above) of encrustations on the front of each, and the lack of encrustation on the back of each. This is hardly conclusive, but it supports the association. A third and more compelling reason to associate head and shaft is the ribbons. These match perfectly in size and alignment, even though the 23. The relatively square cutting of the socket for the pin located in the head fragment would suggest that the hole was cut with a chisel and not made by means of a drill. The shape of the socket in the shaft is obscured by the pin, and efforts to remove it were defeated by an extremely hard filler that had been poured around the pin. This was beneath a softer adhesive, which is surely that used when the head was rejoined to the shaft and after the former’s acid bath had taken place. It would therefore appear that there was a period when head and shaft had been pinned together but were then separated before the bath. It has not been possible to test the lower, earlier, harder adhesive in the pin hole. 24. Note, for example, the low projecting ridge of stone, rounded at the top, slightly above and to the right of the pin (here fig. 10), which corresponds to a shallow elongated depression in the marble to the left of the center hole, below the 3 of 8-4213. (See fig. 9 here.) 25. In March 1987 I accompanied Jeffrey Hurwit to the Athenian Acropolis for the removal of the head of the Kritios Boy and its rejoining after the cleaning of an intervening layer of plaster. The feel of that join of the head to the body was, like that of the Berkeley Plato, a mushy fit rather than the crisp locking of two newly broken surfaces. See J. Hurwit, “The Kritios Boy: Discovery, Reconstruction and Date,” AJA 93 (1989): 41–80. 26. E.g., Perikles; see appendix A below.
The Berkeley Plato
/
11
segments that once connected head to shoulders are missing. Indeed, a small lump of marble on the left shoulder just next to the break mentioned above suggests that this break of the ribbon occurred at the time when the head was broken off (visible in fig. 4 just below the top-right edge of the break and directly below the ribbon on the head and a small lump on the neck). Since that break has no encrustation, it seems clear that the break occurred in relatively recent times. Conclusive evidence that head and shaft belong together comes from tests carried out by the Demokritos Laboratory of Archaeometry in Athens.27 A small fragment of marble from the core of the neck of the head and another from an analogous position in the shaft were tested by EPR spectroscopy and by optical microscopy. I quote from the report (fig. 11): The samples fall in the fields of PAROS (Lychnites) and HYMETTUS. However, the colour, texture and transparency of both samples examined under the stereoscope exclude the HYMETTUS origin. Therefore, the origin of both samples can be surely attributed to PAROS and specifically to the good quality marble quarried inside or around the famous underground quarries in the Marathi valley.
Thus, head and shaft came from the same quarry, which should be interpreted as meaning from the same block of stone. Further, that block came from the quarry that produced the favorite marble of ancient sculptors, as is recorded as early as Pindar in our written sources. He suggests that his ode is a “stele whiter than Parian marble.”28 Actual sculptural monuments show that the influence of Parian marble was much older than Pindar, and that it remained the most desirable of stones for sculptors well into the Roman period. Activity in the quarries continued at 27. I thank Prof. Y. Maniatis and Dr. K. Polikreti for carrying out the tests and sharing the results with me expeditiously. I also thank the Hearst Museum for allowing me to take samples to Athens, and M. Fang for extracting those samples from the Berkeley herm. 28. Pindar, N. 4.81: stavlan qevmen Parivou leukotevran.
12
/
The Berkeley Plato
least until the third century after Christ. Even during the Augustan period, when the Luna marble of Carrara was being exploited and provided a viable alternative to Parian, Strabo recorded that “the Parian stone, as it is called in Paros, is the best marble for sculpture.”29 The use of Parian marble should be taken as another indication that the Berkeley Plato is special. It is equally significant that the quarry ceased production in the Late Roman period and that, so far as I have been able to determine, there is not a single example of a Renaissance or early modern forgery or copy of an ancient statue made from the marble of Paros.30
THE INSCRIPTION
If the evidence for the authenticity of the herm and its portrait is conclusive, we may turn our attention next to the question of the authenticity of the inscription, which has been described as a modern addition to an ancient herm shaft.31 It is in eight lines, divided into three distinct units (fig. 8): Plavtwn jArivstwnoˇ Aqhnai j ¸oˇ aijtiva] : eJlomev nw/ : qeo;ˇ : ajnaivtioˇ 29. Strabo 10.5.7; cf. Pliny, NH 36.14. See also Herz 2000, 28: “Lychnites marble is the most translucent of all Classical marbles. Lepsius found that light is transmitted in Pentelic marble through 15 mm., Carrara 25 mm., and lychnites 35 mm.” For the importance of the translucency of Parian marble in architecture, see Hoepfner 2001. 30. Indeed, it seems clear that the earliest exploitation of the Lychnites quarries in modern times did not begin until the late nineteenth century. See Korres 2000, 75–79. It is, of course, theoretically possible that a modern forger might use an ancient block of Parian marble, but in Rome this marble was much less available than other types. 31. Smutny 1966, 2–5.
The Berkeley Plato
/
13
: yuch; : de;; : pa¸sa : ajqavnatoˇ
The first unit, which announces that the portrait is of Plato, the son of Ariston, the Athenian, consists of letters that are slightly larger than those of the second and third units, with an average height of about 0.035 m. The letter heights of the second and third units (exclusive of the raised horizontal stroke of the tau) range from 0.026 m to 0.030 m. The horizontal stroke of the tau in the second and third units sweeps up to the right and is distinctive and different from the taus in lines 1 and 2. Otherwise, the letter forms for all three units are the same. The second and third units make use of punctuation points to divide words, an instrument unnecessary in the one-word-per-line first unit. There are also traces of a double cutting of the letters, a detail that was observed by John Twilley (see below, p. 75) through his microscope but that I did not detect with the naked eye. Obviously, this characteristic could be significant were it to be recognized in other inscriptions. The second unit is a quotation from Plato’s Republic (617E), although the text as received has the genitive eJlomevnou rather than the dative eJlomevnw/ of the Berkeley inscription. The sense remains the same in either case: “Blame belongs to the one who chooses. God is blameless.” Or, in modern vernacular: “Blame the chooser, not God.” The third unit of text, located below the phallus socket, is also a quotation, this time from Plato’s Phaedrus (245C), but it also has a variation in the Berkeley version with the inclusion of the particle dev. Again, the sense remains “Every soul is immortal.” As we shall see, Plato expresses this sentiment frequently in other dialogues as well as the quoted Phaedrus. Is this inscription ancient? Or is it a modern forgery, as Smutny maintained? The differences between the quotations and the received texts of Plato would suggest that the inscription was not copied from any text known in recent times. Further, the letters are well carved and essentially uniform, and they have, as noted above, been damaged and broken away— especially the alpha of line 4 and the nu of line 5. Furthermore, those
14
/
The Berkeley Plato
breaks (as noted above) are filled with encrustation, which takes time to form.32 These facts alone would seem to preclude a recent forgery. There is, however, an even more compelling piece of internal evidence for the ancient origin of the inscription. In many cases the letters preserve substantial traces of miltos, the red pigment used in ancient inscriptions to make them more easily legible.33 Every line has some miltos present, although the most is preserved in lines 7 and 8 (plate 1; cf. plate 9).34 In line 7 the red pigment is discernible in the following letters: upsilon, chi, pi, alpha, sigma, and alpha. In the following line it is to be seen in: theta, alpha (second), omicron, and sigma. Finally, encrustation has clearly 32. Within the context of portrait herms, the one that has encrustation most similar to the Berkeley Plato is the Vatican Bias. (See appendix A below.) The latter displays that encrustation, like the Berkeley Plato, on the front half of head and shaft; it also shares with the Berkeley Plato an arched phallus socket filled with plaster. 33. As will be seen below (appendix B, p. 75), John Twilley has identified some of these iron-oxide remains as rust rather than as miltos. He is certainly correct about those that are not in the incisions, and some that are in the incisions, although he acknowledges that “there are many locations where intense red color exists that is too fine-grained to be distinguished as to whether it is a stain or a discrete layer.” I retain here the traditional understanding of the significance of red pigment within letters and hope for a thorough study of the chemistry of all inscriptions that retain red pigment in the future. Such a reference library of comparanda would be invaluable in cases like this in establishing which iron oxide is ancient color and which is modern rust. 34. In the first six lines I have been able to discern miltos in the following letters: Line 1: left end of the horizontal stroke of the tau. Line 2: lowest horizontal stroke of the final sigma. Line 3: second horizontal stroke of the sigma. Line 4: upper-left vertical stroke of the mu and lowest horizontal stroke of the epsilon. Line 5: upper-right corner of the theta and lowest horizontal stroke of the sigma. Line 6: top-right corner of the omicron.
The Berkeley Plato
/
15
formed over the miltos (presumably at some point when the shaft was in a horizontal position), which again shows that the pigment has been in the letters for a long time. We can, then, show a relative chronology for this herm and its inscription: 1. the block of marble was carved to size and shape with the portrait at the top, and the phallus and shoulders were added; 2.
the text was inscribed, and the letters were filled with miltos;
3. the herm stood exposed to the elements for a time sufficient to allow weathering on its upper surfaces (see figs. 92–96); 4. the surface of the stone was battered, the right front corner was broken away, and the phallus was removed; 5. encrustation formed over the whole surface, including the face, the letters with their remaining miltos filling, the break on the right front corner, and the phallus socket; 6. the head was broken off, and the top of the right shoulder was broken away; 7.
the head was treated with acid;35
8.
the head was rejoined to the body.
At some point after the formation of the encrustation, the phallus socket was filled with plaster, and a rough cutting was formed in the left rear shoulder. The time when this was done cannot be ascertained, but it was clearly not in antiquity and was after the encrustation had formed. In other words, the inscription is not modern and has nothing modern about it; I suspect that such an authority as Margherita Guarducci would have changed her opinion about the Berkeley inscription had she seen the stone itself and not merely a squeeze of it. Such a representation may have reminded her of the neat and uniform letters of patently modern inscriptions such as two different heads in the Capitoline, each 35. Would a forger have somehow created encrustation on the face only to ruin it with an acid bath?
16
/
The Berkeley Plato
inscribed as Plato although neither head has anything to do with him (figs. 12–15).36 The modern date of such inscriptions is assured by the fact that they appear on modern restored parts of the pieces. These were clearly ancient Herms (portrayals of the god Hermes) and not portraits of Plato. It is, however, relevant that the modern restorers gave their Platos long tresses and not ribbons. This is yet another indication that the Berkeley Plato with its ribbons falls outside the mainstream of modern forgeries. To be sure, to return to the inscriptions, Smutny was unable to find parallels for the sigmas of the Berkeley inscription, with their elongated central horizontal, but they do exist, as for example on a bust of Gaius Memmius Threptos (Gai?oˇ Mevmmioˇ Qrevptoˇ) dedicated to Zeus Hypsistos in the second century after Christ and now in the Piraeus Museum.37 They also occur in two of the three sigmas in the names Aristophanes and Solon on their portrait herms (see figs. 59 and 83, respectively), and many more parallels could be adduced.
THE SEVEN SAGES
The most distinctive letter forms in the Berkeley inscription, however, are the rectilinear omicrons and thetas. These can be paralleled, but only in a discrete group of thirty-seven portrait herms (mostly headless) all discovered near Tivoli.38 (See appendix A.) Twenty-four of these were reported already in the early sixteenth century (Aischines, Aischylos, Al-
36. Capitoline Museum nos. 263 and 405 (= Stuart-Jones 1912, 93–94 no. 13 and 180 no. 107, respectively). 37. George Steinhauer, TO ARCAIOLOGIKO MOUSEIO PEIRAIWS (Athens 2001), no. 511. 38. For discussions of the places of discovery, see Neudecker 1988, 225–26 and 229–34; and Palma Venetucci 1992b as indicated for each herm in appendix A below. There were certainly originally more than 37, for a fragmentary herm that has since disappeared carried square omicrons as the penultimate letters of the patronymic and the ethnic; see IG 14, 1224 = Inscriptiones Italiae 588.
The Berkeley Plato
/
17
kibiades, Andokides, Aristogeiton, Aristotle, Diogenes, Euripides, Herakleitos, Hesiod, Ibykos, Isokrates, Karneades, Kimon, Kratippos, Lysias, Miltiades, Philemon, Phokion, Plato, Ptolemy, Sokrates, Speusippos, Themistokles), and others were certainly known by the middle of that century (Aristophanes, Theophrastos). Some of these portrait herms were recorded by several observers, but nearly all were recorded by one: Pirro Ligorio. This man, who will play a role later in our story, is a fascinating character. An architect and artist of considerable talent, Ligorio is perhaps best known as the architect of the Villa d’Este at Tivoli, and it was during his work there (begun in 1549) that he first began to make drawings of portrait herms in preparation for a book that was to be a collection entitled Illustrious Men of Antiquity (Uomini illustri dell’antichità), wherein a biographical note was to be accompanied by a drawing of a portrait of each person.39 The book was never published, but major manuscripts of it do survive in Turin and Naples, and they reveal that Ligorio belonged to that school of antiquarians who might make preliminary records with relatively great accuracy but created a final presentation of a whole and complete restored version that was not necessarily an ancient artifact. Unfortunately, very few of his preliminary sketches survive, and it seems clear that he frequently put heads on herms to which they did not belong, both on paper and in marble.40 These facts have led 39. See Palma Venetucci 1992b, 1–7; Mandowski and Mitchell 1963, 2–5 et passim. For a biography of Ligorio’s many accomplishments, with only passing reference to his portrait herms, see Coffin 2004. 40. Ligorio rarely acknowledged his fabrications. An exception is Euripides, where the portrait head and the herm are shown clearly as two separate and unrelated pieces that he has united. See Palma Venetucci 1992b, 34 fig. 44. The assessment of Hülsen 1901, 130, that with Ligorio “die Fälschung, auf Papier und auf Steine, beginnt ihre unsaubere Thätigkeit” is perhaps more technically correct than generous and fails to acknowledge that Ligorio is frequently our only source for artifacts that have since disappeared, and it is clear that his worst sin is in putting an irrelevant head on a broken herm. But that does not mean that his drawing of the herm and its inscription was fraudulent. For a more balanced estimate of Ligorio, see Mandowski and Mitchell 1963, 50–51.
18
/
The Berkeley Plato
to an unfavorable reputation for Ligorio, with the result that some of the inscriptions that he records and that have since disappeared are considered to be his own creations, whereas others are accepted as authentic ancient texts. Aischines and Herakleitos, for example, are accepted, whereas Euripides and Hesiod are rejected. The criteria upon which the acceptance or rejection is based are not, however, stated.41 Nonetheless, the modern location of two of the square-omicron herms recorded by Ligorio is known today, and in many details these herms match his drawings of them: Aristophanes and Theophrastos.42 Thus we are compelled,
41. These drawings are most conveniently gathered in Palma Venetucci 1992b. See appendix A below for specific references. The editor of IG 14, G. Kaibel (1890), labels some of these inscriptions as fake and others as authentic. I cannot discover the criteria used in his distinctions. A. A. Amadio, in Palma Venetucci 1992b, 93, appears to be equally at a loss to explain the “fake” label proclaimed by epigraphists. Certainly the pronouncement of authenticity or forgery was not based on examination of the stone itself. As Coffin 2004, 186 n. 56, says: “most [of the texts recorded by Ligorio and reproduced as suspect in CIL] are not false inscriptions.” For a similar assessment, see Mark Jones, ed., Fake? The Art of Deception (London 1990), 135–36 no. 138. The situation is exacerbated by Ligorio’s own shaky control of Greek. The most common mistake is in the formation of the genitives of patronymics of the third declension: see, e.g., Herakleitos and Miltiades (here figs. 64, 74). Even nominative forms are not safe: see TIMONOS (fig. 90) and the LISIAS of his preliminary sketch (here fig. 22) vs. the LUSIAS of the later version (here fig. 73). At least the horizontal lines above and below the -NOS of PLATWNOS in our figure 22 alert the observer to a problem. Some of his unkind contemporaries thought he did not know Latin either, but his Neapolitan origins surely played a role in such Roman assessments. See Mandowski and Mitchell 1963, 31–32. 42. See figs. 58 and 59, and 88 and 89, respectively. Ligorio seems to have had a tendency to make square phis also, even if they did not actually exist. In his drawing of the Aristophanes inscription (here fig. 58), he miscorrects the first phi to a square, whereas the stone (and he originally) has the usual curvilinear form; Ligorio in his more polished drawing and the stone agree, however, that the phi of the patronymic is curvilinear, but on his general sketch (here fig. 22) that phi is also square. In other words, he made changes in later versions of the same inscription. One is not certain, then, whether to trust Ligorio’s drawings in other
The Berkeley Plato
/
19
I believe, to accept— albeit with reservations—Ligorio’s testimony unless there is specific evidence to contradict it. Even though we therefore lack important details such as the material from which the herms were carved and dimensions of the shafts, the authenticity of the square-omicron set of portrait herms should be accepted even if the whereabouts of many of them are unknown at present. Evidence for the validity of this acceptance appeared already in the 1770s, when two significant additions were made to the group. One addition was made in 1779: it included the Azara Alexander (fig. 54), now in Paris, and the Vatican Perikles (fig. 76). The other addition was a group of square-omicron portrait herms that were discovered together in an excavation at the so-called Villa di Cassio in winter 1774/5 (fig. 16, about equidistant between the modern city of Tivoli and the ancient Villa of Hadrian).43 Six of the herms found at this time clearly form a special group: Bias, Kleoboulos, Periander, Pittakos, Solon, and Thales. These are six of the Seven Sages; Cheilon of Lakedaimonia is missing from the group, although his absence may be simply the chance of discovery.44 In cases, such as his square phi in the patronymic of Lysias or those in Phokion and his patronymic (here figs. 73 and 78, respectively). Note also that in the preliminary sketch of LISIAS (sic; here fig. 22) the phi of the patronymic appears to be something like a sigma. 43. Neudecker 1988, 229–34; and Palma Venetucci 1992a, 182–224 and 231– 82. The remains of a Late Republican house or villa that had a traditional association with Cassius or Brutus (or both) were the reference point for this discovery, and it is not impossible that sixteenth-century references to the Villa of Hadrian (see below, appendix A) refer to this same area. It is far enough north of Hadrian’s Villa to suggest that the herms were not a part of that complex, and it seems likely that the whole collection—whether discovered in the sixteenth or in the eighteenth century—originally belonged in a single place. For other sculpture found in this same area, see Neudecker loc. cit.; and for an analysis of the purpose of this portrait collection, see Dillon 2000 (30–36, 40) and 2006 (49–54). 44. The Seven were not immutable. As will be seen below, Periander might be replaced by Myson (Plato: n. 46 below) or by Anacharsis (according to Plutarch, Dinner of the Seven Wise Men [Moralia 146B–164D]). See further Richter 1965, 81.
20
/
The Berkeley Plato
addition to the square-omicron script on each of these—which reveals some affinity to the Berkeley Plato—these six have brief statements added that were attributed to them. These pithy sayings, such as the “Nothing to Excess” (mhde;n a[gan) of Solon or the cynical “Most Men are Bad” (oiJ plei ¸stoi a[nqrwpoi kakoiv) of Bias, set these six portraits apart from the other thirty-one square-omicron herms of Tivoli. The only exception is the portrait of Plato, which, alone among the non-Sage portraits, adds two quotes from his works to the front of his herm. In other words, the portrait of Plato has not merely a vague affinity but a close association with those of the Seven Sages at Tivoli. That association becomes more than coincidental when we realize that the canonical Seven Sages are first mentioned, so far as preserved in our ancient sources, by Plato himself in the Protagoras (343A).45 Let us consider Plato’s statement, which occurs in the context of explaining that Spartans are not as dumb as they seem. They simply do not talk very much, and “the essence of being Laconic is much more the love of wisdom than the love of physical exercise [lakwnivzein polu; ma¸ llovn jesti filosofein¸ h] filogumnastein¸ ].” Plato continues: Such men were Thales of Miletos, Pittakos of Mytilene, Bias of Priene, Solon of our city, Kleoboulos of Lindos, Myson of Chenai,46 and, last of the traditional seven, Cheilon of Sparta. All these were enthusiasts, lovers, and disciples of Spartan culture; and you can 45. I make no claims about whether or not Plato invented the Seven Sages. See Martin 1998, 112–13; contra Fehling 1985, 9–19. But their frequent appearance in the texts of Plato assure that there may have been in later times (as in fact there was) an association of Plato with the Sages. The attempts by later chronographers to date the Seven to specific Olympiads or Athenian archon years is not really relevant to the question of their (later) inventor; see Alden Mosshammer, “The Epoch of the Seven Sages,” CSCA 9 (1976): 165–80. 46. Myson is listed as one of the Seven Sages only by Plato and his younger contemporary Eudoxos (apud Diogenes Laertius 1.30). He is so obscure that his ethnic is not sure, although it probably has to do with a small town on the slopes of Mt. Oita.
The Berkeley Plato
/
21
recognize that characteristic in their wisdom by the short, memorable sayings that fell from each of them; they assembled together and dedicated these as the firstfruits of their lore to Apollo in his Delphic temple, inscribing there those maxims that are on every tongue— ‘Know Thyself ’ and ‘Nothing to Excess.’ Why do I say this? To show how ancient philosophy had this style of laconic brevity.
In another dialogue, Plato mentions Pittakos, Bias, and Thales as members of the Seven (Hippias Maior 281C), and in yet another he names Solon as the wisest of the Seven (Timaeus 20E). Further, the two maxims he cites in the quoted passage are repeated elsewhere. “Nothing to Excess” (mhde;n a[gan) reappears in three other dialogues (Philebus 45E, Charmides 165A, Hipparchus 228E). “Know Thyself ” (gnwvqi sautovn) is in the same three dialogues, and in two others as well. In one of these dialogues it appears in three distinct places (Alcibiades Maior 124B, 129A, 132C), and in the other it is discussed for several pages (Charmides 164E– 169E). In other words, there is a close connection between Platonic writings and the Seven Sages. Further, a portrait of Plato with brief pithy statements would make him as if Laconic. Thus anyone who saw Plato— especially a Plato like the one in Berkeley— and the Sages side by side in the form of portrait herms in the second century after Christ would not have been surprised. Indeed, the association is so strong that one may wonder whether Plato has not assumed the role of the seventh Sage in the Tivoli group, or has joined the group as an eighth member. Such additions to the Seven are actually documented: for example, in a mosaic of the third century after Christ discovered in a suburb southeast of Baalbek (ancient Heliopolis).47 A composition consisting of eight circles around a central circle shows the Seven Sages plus Sokrates surrounding Kalliope and the signature of the mosaicist Ampheion (fig. 17). Indeed, Sokrates
47. Chéhab 1958, 32–43. For other examples of groups of the Seven Sages, see Richter 1965, 81–82; Schefold 1997, figs. 246–48, 262–67, 327. For epigrammatic additions of an eighth Sage in honor of a later wise personage, see Voutiras 1990, 673; and Bowsky 1989, 120–21.
22
/
The Berkeley Plato
holds the place of honor at the top of the composition. The Seven Sages, in addition to their names, have aphorisms added (many the same as the Tivoli Sages’: e.g., Bias, fig. 18; cf. fig. 61),48 and it is suggestive that the inscriptions use square omicrons and thetas, although the sigmas and omegas are also squared, and square omicrons are known, if infrequently, in other mosaics. Nonetheless, the fact that Ampheion used circular omicrons for his signature and for the name of the Muse suggests that a square-omicron tradition for the Seven Sages had a certain currency in the Roman period.49 Before we leave the six Sage portrait herms discovered in the eighteenth century at Tivoli, two more points should be made. First, the quality of the inscriptions varies greatly. Although the modern addition of a thick reddish-brown paint in the grooves of the inscriptions makes it impossible to examine the difference of tool marks, the form of the letters alone is revealing. The inscription for Thales is neatly laid out and cut with the distinctive square omicrons and thetas augmented by ornate, almost florid, forms of alpha, xi, and especially upsilon.50 The main text for Solon is equally carefully done, including two sig48. These match the Tivoli herm aphorisms exactly in the cases of Bias, Kleoboulos, and Solon. They vary slightly in the cases of Periander and Pittakos. The Tivoli Periander has melevth pa¸n (Study Everything), whereas the Baalbeck version has melevth e[rgon au[xi (Study Strengthens the Work). The Pittakos from Tivoli has kairo;n gnw¸qi (Know the Right Time), whereas the mosaic says kairo;n geivnwskai (Seize the Opportunity). Since the Thales herm is broken below the name, no aphorism is preserved, so that comparison with the Baalbek mosaic is not possible. 49. The widespread popularity of the Seven Sages is shown by a mosaic of them from the fourth century after Christ discovered at Mérida in Spain; see J. M. Alvarez Martínez, Mosaicos romanos de Mérida: Nuevos hallazgos ( Madrid 1990), 69–79. The Tivoli sculptural collection was just one of what must have been dozens of examples of the Seven Sages of ancient Greece spread throughout the Roman Empire, although we cannot document such popularity in the extant sculptural record. 50. It should be noted as an additional reason to accept the validity of many of Ligorio’s drawings of now-lost herms that he records exactly such ornate letter-
The Berkeley Plato
/
23
mas with the elongated central horizontal as in the Berkeley Plato. (See figs. 7, 8.) The added aphorism, however, runs uphill toward the right and is crowded against the right margin. The punctuation mark between the two words (which has not been painted) is uncomfortably squeezed in. These two words must be considered a later addition to a surface that was probably already standing upright and not still on the work table, where the carving might have been done more neatly. The same characteristics are to be seen in the Pittakos inscription: the aphorism is clearly added in a set of letters rather cruder and wider than the main text.51 Further, although the tops of the letters are more or less on a line, their heights vary so much that the text seems to expand and contract vertically across its length. Finally, the omega of the last line is curvilinear, without the squared legs of the Berkeley text. All the inscriptions of Bias, on the other hand, are crude and rather carelessly done. An attempt is made at an ornate upsilon, but this whole text is surely a later attempt to duplicate the style of, for example, the Thales inscription. The aphorism is near the left margin, with more space at the right, and the omega is like that of Pittakos although smaller. The same is clearly the case with Periander. The first epsilon lacks its bottom horizontal stroke, the upsilons and the psi are rather poor attempts at the ornate style, and the aphorism at the bottom runs uphill once more. Most significant, however: the text was clearly added to a preexisting surface. The name Periander is squeezed to the right by a break in the surface of the stone at the left edge; that break was already there when the text was inscribed. Further, the bottom tip of the first upsilon of KUYELOU and of the first iota of KORINQIOS were in-
forms in many of his inscriptions: Aischines, Aischylos, Euripides, Herakleitos, Hesiod, Ibykos, Isokrates, Karneades, Kimon, Phokion, Speusippos, Themistokles. 51. Between the last line of text and the bottom of the stone as preserved is a roughened surface that appears to be a rasura. I can discern the bottom tips of vertical strokes from an earlier inscription at points 0.077 m, 0.174 m, and 0.198 m from the left corner.
24
/
The Berkeley Plato
scribed into preexisting breaks in the surface of the stone. This should be contrasted with the breakage on the Berkeley Plato, which took place after the inscription. Finally, Kleoboulos shows every sign of haste. The ethnic LINDIOS starts from the left margin in close formation and then sprawls to the right, leaving much open space. There is no attempt to dress up the upsilon, and the size and alignment of the letters are not consistent. The aphorism could have been divided into two lines with one word in each; instead, the second word is broken in the middle, creating two very unequal lines. These differences among the six Tivoli Sages show that they (or at least their inscriptions) were not created all at once or by the same mason.52 Given the fluidity of the iconography of these very early figures of Greek history, one wonders about the heads. Where did the sculptor find his prototypes? Indeed, it seems clear that the Seven Sages did not have the same popularity, individually or as a group, that many other illustrious ancient Greeks enjoyed in the world of Roman literati. Of the six in the Tivoli group, two were unknown in the sixteenth century (Periander and Solon); three were known only in one example each (Bias, Kleoboulos, and Pittakos—and those by inscriptions that have been deemed modern creations), and one in two examples (Thales—again in faked inscriptions).53 These can be contrasted, for example, with Aristotle’s seven portrait inscriptions (of which five have been adjudged modern), Lysias’s six (three modern), and Miltiades’ two apparently genuine portrait inscrip-
52. Dillon 2006, 109 n. 103, believes that the irregularities of these inscriptions suggest that they “may have been regularly cut by a sculptor rather than by a professional letter-cutter.” This ignores some of the very neat inscriptions that do survive, as mentioned above, for (but not restricted to) the names on the portraits of Thales, Pittakos, and Solon, as well as the Berkeley Plato. Second, it has been my experience that the very best letter-cutters in modern times are the sculptors themselves, who do not want assistants ruining their work with bad letters. 53. These figures derive from the catalogue of Hülsen 1901, as do the figures for Aristotle, Lysias, and Miltiades.
The Berkeley Plato
/
25
tions. By the middle of the twentieth century, sculptural representations (excluding the Tivoli six Sages) have only marginally increased. Indeed, for example, “there is no reliable portrait of Solon extant to show us how the Greeks imagined their great lawgiver to have looked.”54 Another point to be considered derives from a comparison of some of these inscriptions with that of the Berkeley Plato. The quality of the Berkeley Plato’s inscription is clearly finer and neater than that of any of the Tivoli Sages’, and the extreme ornateness of the upsilon and psi that is to be seen in some of them does not exist on the Berkeley Plato. Further, whereas the Berkeley Plato is made of Parian marble, the Tivoli Sages are made of Pentelic—at least when it is possible to discern the characteristics that set Pentelic apart. (See appendix A, note c.) Finally, the width of the Berkeley Plato herm shaft ranges from 0.266 m to 0.280 m, whereas the widths of the Tivoli six, which range from 0.313 m (Periander) to 0.331 m (Bias), are all significantly greater. It seems to me that the Berkeley Plato has every claim to belong to the family of the Seven Sages, but that it cannot be closely associated with the Tivoli examples.
THE TIVOLI PLATO
Given that the Tivoli square-omicron portrait herms comprise a series with one and only one example of each famous ancient,55 this conclusion that the Berkeley Plato does not belong to the Tivoli group actually became inevitable already in 1846. In May of that year a group of forty publicspirited, monthly-dues-paying citizens of the modern town of Tivoli— the Società al Ritrovamento di Cose Antiche in Tivoli—encouraged by 54. Richter 1965, 85. R. R. R. Smith, in his abridgment and revision of Richter’s Portraits of the Greeks (Ithaca 1984), 204–5, could still not refer to a sculptural representation of Solon. 55. There were multiple portraits of the same personage from the excavations at Tivoli (e.g., the Vatican Perikles, here fig. 76, and the Perikles now in the British Museum, inv. no. 459), but the letter forms are different, and only one example exists in each case of the square-omicron portrait.
26
/
The Berkeley Plato
the works of diverting the Anio River (which were to be crowned by a papal visit later that year) and emboldened by successful excavations in March and April on the northeastern outskirts of the modern town, undertook an excavation to the south close to the place where the six Sages and other sculpture had been discovered in 1774.56 The discoveries of 1846 included another portrait herm of Plato (fig. 19), which has clouded the issue of the authenticity of the Berkeley Plato. Like the Tivoli Sages, this piece is made of Pentelic marble and has a similar width (0.321 m).57 It is particularly interesting that the neck is not broken but was worked in antiquity for the attachment of the head in a separate piece, whether in the original sculpture or as a later (but ancient) repair (fig. 20).58 56. Viola 1848, 228–29 and 288–90. Their excavation seems to have been a little to the south or southeast of the 1774 discoveries (Viola 1848, 289): “Non in questi luoghi già cavati [i.e., left by the 1774 diggings], ma nella parte inferiore e più bassa del terreno tentava la società uno scavo.” For the enthusiasm surrounding the visit of Pope Gregory XVI, see Stanislao Viola, Feste in Tivoli e gita dell’immortal Pio IX in quella città del 14 ottobre 1846 (Rome 1846). See Smutny 1966, 3–5, for discussion and previous bibliography. 57. So far as I can tell, a number of details about this herm have not been reported. I give them here. The preserved height is 1.678 m, and the thickness is 0.235 m. The shoulder sockets have earth in them; the neck dowel cutting was filled with cigarette butts until recently (visible here in fig. 21), and there is a cutting for a hook clamp running toward the rear of the herm on each side. (See here fig. 19.) I suspect that these cuttings were made in modern times in order to secure the herm to a wall; they are broader and flatter than the typical ancient hook-clamp cutting, and I can imagine no position in which they might be used except with the herm erect. 58. The central cutting for a dowel used to attach the head is irregularly circular with a maximum diameter of 0.035 m and a depth of 0.041 m at the rear. It is typical of the confusion surrounding the Tivoli and the Berkeley Platos that the former was reported as having a head, but in a damaged condition, by E. Gerhard, Archäologisches Zeitung 4 (1846): 342–43. See Smutny 1966, 3, for this confusion, which almost certainly derives from the fact that the Tivoli società had discovered another head in the same excavations that produced the Plato herm; but that head did not belong to the herm: Viola 1848, 289, states explicitly: “è acefalo.” All subsequent reports, beginning with W. Henzen, Rheinisches Museum für
The Berkeley Plato
/
27
Attention to the Tivoli Plato has, naturally, focused on the inscription (fig. 21; cf. fig. 80). As is immediately apparent, it is virtually a word-forword, letter-for-letter, punctuation-for-punctuation duplicate of the Berkeley text, with only minor variations in the forms of some letters and the absence of two interpuncts in line 7. Perhaps naturally, it has been assumed that one inscription is a copy of the other and that, since the Tivoli Plato was discovered in an excavation and must therefore be authentic, the Berkeley Plato must be the copy. This would mean that the Berkeley Plato must have been created between 1846, when the Tivoli example was discovered, and 1902, when the Berkeley version was sold to Mrs. Hearst. As we have seen, that would mean that the chronology outlined above (make head, inscribe text, color text with miltos, batter stone and break away parts of the text, form encrustation, break off head, try to remove encrustation from head with acid) had to take place in less than sixty years. This is clearly improbable. It also would mean that the putative forger of the Berkeley Plato invented a head with ribbons coming down on the shoulders, which the Tivoli Plato lacks. Where did he get that inspiration if he was copying the Tivoli inscription? Indeed, where is the head that he copied? A comparison of the Berkeley and Tivoli inscriptions is, however, revealing. At first glance and on purely aesthetic grounds, one might have supposed that, if one inscription copied the other, the Berkeley version was the prototype. This emerges from the relative crudeness of the inscription of the aphorisms on the Tivoli Plato, which is best paralleled by the Tivoli herms of Solon and Pittakos, discussed above, where a Philologie 5 (1847): 466–67, either state that the head was missing or simply ignore the question of the head. The first to note the fact that the neck was not broken seems to have been Neudecker 1988, 233 no. 66.60. We may note that the Cambridge Plato (Budde and Nicholls 1964, 29 no. 53; here figs. 28–30) has its neck worked for attachment to something like the Tivoli herm, but I cannot tell whether it fits the Tivoli cutting. R. R. R. Smith informs me that the Cambridge Plato’s neck appears to have been cleaned off since antiquity.
28
/
The Berkeley Plato
cruder hand added a text to a finer hand that had labeled the portrait. Further, the penultimate line of text on the Tivoli Plato begins so far in from the left margin that the sigma had to be miniaturized and squeezed between the two alphas of PASA; this failure to lay out the text carefully is emphasized by the fact that the Tivoli Plato is wider than the Berkeley; its mason had 0.05–0.06 m more stone surface available than did the Berkeley mason.59 Further, the omega of the Tivoli Plato is clearly like those of Pittakos and Bias. In other words, the Tivoli Plato has such affinities with the Tivoli Sages that they must have belonged together in antiquity, even as their proveniences demand. Of course, both the Tivoli Plato and the Berkeley Plato could have been copied from a common prototype, or the Tivoli copied from the Berkeley in antiquity. This takes us to the question of the provenience of the Berkeley Plato. It would be most helpful to know where the Fratelli Iandolo acquired it before selling it to Mrs. Hearst’s agent Emerson, but I have been unable to find any information.60 It would also be helpful to know the source of some confusion propagated by Bernoulli in his second volume on Greek iconography: “A headless herm of Plato . . . was found in 1846 at Tivoli. It did not, however, come to the Vatican as Ger-
59. It may also be significant that the penultimate letter of the patronymic of Solon (a vowel) is similarly miniaturized and squeezed between two letters (here fig. 83). Note that this same phenomenon occurs in the name Aristophanes, the patronymic of Lykourgos, and the name Theophrastos (here figs. 59, 72, 89). Given that Ligorio does not show this detail in his rendition of Aristophanes and Theophrastos (here figs. 58, 88), it is possible that the phenomenon also occurred on the stone of other inscriptions that are preserved to us only in Ligorio’s drawings. 60. Particularly frustrating are the chatty memoirs given by Augusto Iandolo (Iandolo 1935), who focuses on illustrious people with whom he had contact. Poor Alfred Emerson just didn’t make it into the company of J. Pierpont Morgan, Anatole France, Emile Zola, and Theodor Mommsen. And Emerson was probably not in Rome for a sufficiently long time to make an impression on Iandolo who was 27 years old then and not yet really running the family business. See Pollak 1994, 138–40.
The Berkeley Plato
/
29
hard thought, but is still at its place of discovery in the Municipal Museum (communication from Arndt). The head appears to have worn a ribbon, as one must conclude from the ends of it, which are still preserved.”61 In other words, Bernoulli says that the Tivoli herm has the ends of ribbons preserved, and he cites a communication from Paul Arndt. Someone—perhaps Arndt—confused the Tivoli and the Berkeley herms, but two facts emerge. Bernoulli published his statement in 1901, which means that the Berkeley herm with its ribbons was known at least a year or two before Emerson bought it from the Iandolo brothers. Second, the head was not attached to the Berkeley herm at that time. One wonders if this was when the attempt was made to clean the encrustation from the head with acid, in a (failed) attempt to increase its market value.
THE BERKELEY PLATO AND THE RENAISSANCE
The Berkeley Plato itself does, however, provide two clues about its modern history. One is the fact that the phallus socket had been filled with plaster just like the Bias now in the Vatican (fig. 61). This clear evidence of a fig-leaf mentality might suggest that the Berkeley Plato was once a part of a papal collection. It is interesting that, according to Arndt (see above), Gerhard thought that a Plato was in the Vatican and confused it with the Tivoli example. The mention of ribbons as a part of the presumed Vatican Plato would suggest that the Berkeley Plato might once have been housed where papal fig leaves grew.62 The second clue is the crude cutting on the back of the left shoulder (see fig. 3), which is to be explained, 61. Bernoulli 1901, 23: “Eine kopflose Platoherme . . . wurde 1846 bei Tivoli gefunden. Sie kam aber nicht in den Vatican, wie Gerard meinte, sondern befindet sich noch im Fundort im Museo municipale ( Mitteilung Arndts). Der Kopf scheint eine Binde getragen zu haben, wie man aus den noch erhaltenen Enden derselben schliessen muss.” 62. Inquiries of the Vatican museums have not been productive, although the job of sorting through the records has been greater than the impetus to do so,
30
/
The Berkeley Plato
I believe, as the socket for a brace tying the herm to a wall for purposes of stability.63 Again, this would mean that the Berkeley Plato was on display at some time and some place before it was sold to Emerson. This possibility is increased by two entries in the manuscripts of Pirro Ligorio, one of which refers to a task undertaken as another part of his career. Upon Michelangelo’s death in 1564, Ligorio succeeded him as the architect of St. Peter’s, but he had already been a papal architect from 1558, and he continued his work under Pope Pius IV (r. 1559–65). During those years Ligorio built the Casino in the Vatican Gardens, oversaw the completion of the Teatro Belvedere in the Belvedere Courtyard, and (in 1564–65) decorated that hemicycle with a series of statues and portrait herms.64 These included several of the square-omicron herms that had been taken to Rome, mostly at midcentury to the Villa of Pope Julius III (the present Villa Giulia, built 1550–55). In a reference to a herm of Philemon, Ligorio states that it had been in Rome in the villa of Julius III but was taken to the Vatican to decorate the hemicycle of the Belvedere Court (i.e., the Teatro Belvedere), where there were also the figures of Plato, Isokrates, and others.65 What was this figure of Plato? In a Naples manuscript, Ligorio drew a collection of herms all together; in other words, this is a preliminary drawing, not a finished piece for his book. Aristophanes, Aischines, Sokrates, Alkibiades (with ribbons), Kratippos, Plato (with ribbons), and Lysias are all there (fig. 22).66 This must
and to speak of a “papal collection” does not necessarily mean the Vatican museum per se. 63. Cf., for example, the iron ring in the back of Capitoline 934. I believe that this has not been published, but it will appear in an article that I am preparing on the portraits of Alkibiades. 64. Wrede 1998. 65. Ligorio, Taur. Cod. a.II.10.J.23, p. 76; see Mandowski and Mitchell 1963, 128 no. 6; and Palma Venetucci 1992b, 7. 66. Ligorio, Neap. fol. 413; see Mandowski and Mitchell 1963, pl. 37b; and Palma Venetucci 1992b, fig. 13. This rendition of Plato (and likewise that of Alkibiades) was copied by Ursinus in a Vatican manuscript, 3439 fol. 124' (re-
The Berkeley Plato
/
31
be the herm that Ligorio says he took from the Villa Giulia to the Vatican. Can this be a drawing of the Berkeley Plato? The bearded head is tilted appropriately, and the ribbons are there. If we had only Ligorio’s head to compare with the Berkeley Plato, we might be persuaded, despite the rather bushy hairdo, but the inscription—even with square omicrons— fails the comparison, for the theta is circular,67 the end of Plato’s name has been curiously restored to PLATWNHS,68 and the genitive of the patronymic has become ARISTONOU rather than the correct ARISTWNOS. Further, his drawing makes no attempt to render the Platonic quotations further down the stone—although we might suspect that Ligorio was not interested in drawing so much Greek. A brief digression may be in order at this point. First, Ligorio was hardly alone in his ignorance of Greek. At precisely the same time that he was setting up the Teatro Belvedere, a full catalogue of ancient sculpture in Rome was being undertaken by Lucio Mavro.69 At one point he saw “a most beautiful column in three pieces with many ancient Greek produced by Hülsen 1901, pl. VI). Ligorio later made up composite portraits of Plato; see the excellent discussion by Simonetta Savona in Palma Venetucci 1992b, 116–18. 67. On the other hand, it should be noted that Ligorio is not consistent and seems sometimes to draw circular thetas and omicrons in the same inscription with square examples. See Alkibiades (here figs. 22, 55) and Timon (here fig. 90). In the case of Kratippos, he shows a circular omicron in the first line and a square one in the second, followed by more circular examples (here fig. 22). The version of this same inscription recorded by Ursinus (here fig. 72) shows square omicrons throughout. The mixture of forms by Ligorio would seem to be the result of haste and habit, for in two cases he corrects his original circular forms with square ones: the patronymics of Aischines (here fig. 52) and of Miltiades (here fig. 74). 68. Plato’s name is not unique in suffering in such a way at the hands of Ligorio; see Phokion (here fig. 78). 69. Mavro 1558. The last two hundred pages of this book (115–315) are entitled “Le statue di Roma” and consist of a building-by-building, house-by-house description of the ancient sculpture in each. The list of subjects usually, however, consists of only a name (most frequently that of an emperor or of a member of an imperial family).
32
/
The Berkeley Plato
inscriptions, which are hard to read.”70 Mavro makes no further record of those inscriptions, and he gives only two Greek inscriptions in two hundred pages, both artists’ signatures, one of which contains errors worthy of Ligorio.71 Second, one must wonder what has become of the dozens of inscribed herms that Ligorio and others recorded in the sixteenth century. Very few are known today, and such squared marble pillars must have represented tempting candidates for reworking into, for example, thresholds or window frames.72 The statues and portrait herms that Ligorio set up in the Teatro Belvedere did not remain there for long. The next pope, Pius V, was no fan of pagan antiquities, and the year after the completion of Ligorio’s work, Pius V succeeded Pius IV and promptly shed the Vatican of 146 pieces of sculpture by giving them to the Roman people.73 Most of these went to the Capitoline Museum, although the inventory is sometimes so vague that one cannot be sure of the identity of particular pieces. Nonetheless, scholars have agreed that the Belvedere Plato is to be recognized in a bust now in the Capitoline (figs. 23, 24). But the Capitoline bust is not the portrait shown by Ligorio. The inscription and its Latin translation are clearly modern, and the Greek text has circular omicrons. Indeed, it is carved on a modern torso of dubious taste. Only the right shoulder and the ribbon (with its squared end!) and a small part of the 70. Mavro 1558, 161–62: “una colona in tre pezzi bellissima, con molte antiche inscrittioni Greche, che male si posson leggerre.” 71. Mavro 1558, 120: APOLLWONIOS NESTOROS ATQHNAIOS EPOIEI. 72. Their Greek inscriptions and phalluses or phallic sockets may also have created some ambivalence or indifference in the general society of the time. We may again note Mavro’s reaction to herms (1558, 123): “There are 22 ancient termini, which are heads with long and square bases” (“sono XXII. termini antichi, che sono teste con lunghe e quadre basi”). He does not identify the heads or mention inscriptions. 73. For a necessarily attenuated list of the pieces removed from the Vatican to the Capitoline by Pius V in 1566, see Michaelis 1890.
The Berkeley Plato
/
33
left shoulder, together with the head, are possibly ancient. The nose and the lips are restored. The square beard and the hair that falls down in the back to end in a straight line at about the shoulder blade make it is clear that this head has nothing to do with Plato. It is more likely, as has long been recognized, a classicizing Dionysos type, and perhaps a modern copy, at that. Certainly the workmanship of the putative ancient head (note, for example, the right ear, fig. 24) suggests poor quality at the very least. The inscription is nonetheless clearly based on the Ligorio drawing, and it has been thought that Ligorio himself made the Capitoline bust. However that may be, this bust is not what Ligorio drew. The squaredend ribbon, the squared beard, the circular omicrons, and the detailed breast all make this bust a creation perhaps based on his drawing, but not the basis for that drawing. Further, the Capitoline bust is said to have been once in a private house near the Theater of Pompey before going to the Capitoline.74 Ligorio’s Plato was in the Teatro Belvedere. I believe, but I cannot prove, that Ligorio’s Plato is the Berkeley Plato, which was in the Teatro Belvedere but never made it to the Capitoline. The Capitoline bust was a replacement for it, as is most readily seen in its use of tainia and mitra.75
74. Achilles Statius (d’Estaço), quoted by Kaibel, IG 14, 232*. 75. I would note, although I can make no connection, the curious history of the Bufalo collection that was originally formed in the sixteenth century in a lowlying part of the Campus Martius. Ligorio mentions another portrait of Alkibiades in the possession of “Monsignor Stephano del Bufalo gentilhuomo Romano” in his commentary to the Alkibiades in the Turin manuscript; see Mandowski and Mitchell 1963, 89–90; and Palma Venetucci 1992b, 94. This collection, or at least a part of it, seems to have been buried and dug up in 1885. This would fit the timing of the appearance of the Berkeley Plato on the antiquities market and its putative history of having been recorded by Ligorio in the mid-sixteenth century and having its phallus socket plastered at that time. But the suggestion is obviously very tenuous. See Wrede 1982.
34
/
The Berkeley Plato
PORTRAITS OF PLATO
At this point the Berkeley portrait must be considered in the context of the other identified portraits of Plato. It has long been a source of frustration that only the Berlin Plato (fig. 25) has come with an inscribed herm that allows for some security in establishing identity. But the crude workmanship and damaged surface of the marble provide a rather unsatisfactory Plato. Nonetheless, that portrait has enabled specialists to identify a series of others that are clearly modeled on the same type.76 Does the Berkeley Plato fit into this series, and do we learn anything more about the appearance of the type or of the man upon whom it was modeled? Two details of particular interest are to be observed on the Berkeley Plato. First, the ears are not the same, for the left ear has an enlarged, puffy lobe that suggests mistreatment resulting in disfiguration (fig. 5).77 Perhaps it is coincidence, but in his Protagoras (342C), Plato mentions that admirers of Sparta bind up their hands with himantes so that they can box and get broken ears in imitation of their heroes (oiJ me;n w\tav te katavgnuntai mimouvmenoi aujtouvˇ). Plato’s left ear would have been the natural target of a right-handed boxer. This same disfiguration of the left ear also occurs in other extant portraits, as for example the Berlin Plato, cited above; compare the ears in figures 26 and 27. It is also perhaps coincidence, but the sculptor of the only known portrait of Plato in his own time was Silanion of Athens.78 Silanion is known 76. For a good review of the history of scholarship on Plato portraits, and the frustration that has been embedded therein, see Lorenz 1996. To the Platonic bibliography now add Trianti 2002. 77. For a recent discussion of the cauliflower or boxer’s ears on the Rayet Head, see E. Walter-Karydi, “A Victor Statue for Dolly,” in N. C. Stambolides, ed., GENEQLION (Celebrating 20 Years of the Museum of Cycladic Art) (Athens 2006), 137–46. I know of no detailed study of such ears and the variations in depicting them. 78. Favorinus apud Diogenes Laertius 3.25. (See below, n. 93.) Since the “Mithradates” who commissioned the portrait seems to be Mithridates I of Pontus, who died in 363 b.c., the statue by Silanion must have been done before that
The Berkeley Plato
/
35
to have created nine other statues, of which three were of boxers victorious at Olympia.79 One would dearly love to see how he treated their ears.80 The second detail is that the ears are not placed symmetrically. (Compare figs. 4 and 5.) Whereas the left, puffy-lobed ear is essentially vertical, the right slopes backward at the top in a very pronounced fashion. This detail does appear on many other Plato portraits, as for example on the Cambridge and Copenhagen heads (figs. 30, 31). Finally, we are told that Plato was good-looking, with beautiful eyes, a finely shaped nose, and a modest demeanor.81 The Berkeley Plato cerdate—in other words, when Plato was at the most 62 years old, and perhaps rather younger. See E. Preuner, “Griechische Siegerlisten,” AthMitt 28 (1903): 349–50, based upon the identification of Mithradates son of Orontobates with Mithridates I of Kios son of Ariobarzanes by T. Reinach, Mithridate Eupator (Paris 1890), 4–5. For attempts to reconstruct the original by Silanion, see most notably Heckler 1934 and Vierneisel 1999. For the debate about the date of Silanion’s portrait of Plato, see Vierneisel 1999, 15–16. This is not the place to enter into the vexed question of contemporary portraits of Greeks in the fifth century b.c. For an overview of the issue, see S. Dillon’s review of Ralf Krumeich, Bildnisse griechischer Herrscher und Staatsmänner im 5. Jahrhundert v. Chr. ( Munich 1997) in BMCR 2001.10.2. My personal view is that the evidence increasingly shows that real-time portraits were certainly established as the norm by the second half of the fifth century, and Krumeich has shown that evidence to be compelling. Indeed, we need only to think of the many portrait statues of athletes who triumphed at Olympia, which were obviously wrought during their lifetimes, to understand that real-time portraits were ubiquitous well before the lifetime of Plato. 79. Satyros of Elis, Telestas of Messene, and Damaretas of Messene: Pausanias 6.4.5, 6.14.4, and 6.14.11, respectively. 80. If the head of the bronze boxer from Olympia now in Athens (National Museum inv. no. 6439) is of Satyros of Elis, as some have believed, then those ears might give a clue about how Silanion would show boxing-battered ears. For the most part the ears on that bronze are covered by hair and invisible, and the lobes are puffier than Plato’s. But then Satyros was a real boxer, not an amateur Spartan. 81. See Riginos 1976, 164; also Richter 1965, 166. The further information that Plato wore a gold earring in one ear during his youth ([Apuleius], De Dog-
36
/
The Berkeley Plato
tainly fills those specifications, and fills them better than other portraits that have been identified in the past. A comparison with, for example, the Plato in the Fitzwilliam Museum of Cambridge shows the same rich and flowing beard, as well as the same more closely cropped hair (figs. 28–30). Vertical lines of concentration extend into the forehead from either side of the nose, and the general modeling of eyes and cheeks is similar. The Cambridge hair is cut neatly across the top of the face, a feature that has been attributed to the style of the late first and early second century after Christ 82 rather than to the original, in which case the Berkeley Plato might be thought a little more faithful to that original.83 The Cambridge head seems a little broader than the Berkeley. This characteristic is present in several other examples. Perhaps this was a result of the same mentality that maintained—in the third century after Christ (in the extant sources)—that Plato was not the real name of the philosopher but a nickname derived from the breadth of his forehead (or of his body).84 When seen in profile, the Berkeley Plato (figs. 4, 5) shares with the Cambridge example (figs. 29, 30)— and all others that have the nose preserved— a distinct bump at the bridge of the nose and hair at the back that is worked in a sketchy and indifferent manner. Once again, I would mate Platonis 1.4: “auri tantum quantum puer nobilitatis insigne in auricula gestavit”) has not, so far as I can tell, left any traces in the surviving portraits’ ears. 82. Budde and Nicholls 1964, 29 no. 53. 83. Andrew Stewart points out to me that the Berkeley Plato’s hair is much closer to the style of fourth-century-b.c. Attic grave stelai than is the hair on other Plato portraits. This, too, would suggest that the Berkeley version harks back to Plato’s own lifetime. I would note in passing that differences in hairstyle do not, obviously, mean that a different individual is portrayed. One must look at the topography of the face and the architecture of the skull for similarities and differences, not at the hair. 84. Diogenes Laertius 3.4. As has been frequently pointed out, there is no reason to doubt the authenticity of the name Plato. It is well known in Athens and elsewhere in the Greek world. J. Kirchner, Prosopographia Attica 2 (Berlin 1903), could already cite 17 different Athenian examples.
The Berkeley Plato
/
37
suggest that the Berkeley Plato comes closer to having a finely shaped nose than the other examples. That both portray, however, the same type or portrait model is shown by, among other details, the right ear, which is not vertical but slants backward toward the top. This detail is on every other Plato portrait that has been identified, including, for example, the Plato in Copenhagen (fig. 31), where the right ear was cut for a repair but the slant is clear.85 On all examples the left ear is vertical or at least significantly more vertical than the right. (See, for example, the Cambridge version, figs. 29, 30.)
THE BERKELEY PLATO AND THE AKADEMY
More than a decade ago in his Sather Lectures, Paul Zanker reviewed the reactions of scholars to a portrait of Plato now in Munich (fig. 32) and by extension to all known Plato portraits.86 He noted that previous scholars thought that “it did not correspond at all to the way people imagined Plato” and that it did not portray Plato’s “true nature.” One scholar had concluded that there was an “ill-tempered, even malevolent quality” to be seen, where another saw an “inner tension joined with the painful resignation that comes of bitter disappointment,” and a third believed that “the innermost thoughts and experiences reveal themselves in the earnest, knowing, and concentrated gaze.” Zanker, while noting that beauty is in the eye of the beholder and that we each of us tend to see what we want to see, went on to postulate that a standard portrait type for an intellectual or philosopher had not yet come into existence during Plato’s time, that the extraordinary length of Plato’s beard was a sign not of a philosopher but of an aristocrat, and that the ultimate source of
85. See V. Poulsen 1954, 31–33 no. 6. The black marks on the Copenhagen Plato are from buckshot during the use of the piece for target practice in the nineteenth century, a treatment perhaps even more disrespectful than the Berkeley Plato’s acid bath. 86. Zanker 1995, 40–42; see also Schefold 1997, fig. 58a, b.
38
/
The Berkeley Plato
the extant portrait copies was a statue of Plato, not the philosopher but the good citizen.87 Hence, in later times, the heavy brow of a thinker had been implanted on a prototype with the features of the man himself. I believe that Zanker was correct, and that we see that good citizen in the Berkeley Plato. In other words, the Berkeley Plato does not belong directly within the relatively homogeneous usual and long-recognized Plato type but represents an earlier tradition, perhaps going directly back to the statue by Silanion (above, notes 78–80). Given the quality of material and workmanship, it can be suggested, although not proven, that the Berkeley Plato was copied directly from the head of the Plato statue in the Akademy of Athens for Hadrian and was placed in his version of the Akademy in his villa at Tivoli.88 The probability of this suggestion’s accuracy is increased by a consideration of Favorinus, a philhellene and man of letters whom Hadrian is said to have
87. Zanker 1995, 75–77. 88. “His Tiburtine Villa was admirably constructed, so that he inscribed in it the names of the most celebrated provinces and places, calling them Lykeion, Akademia, Prytaneion, Canopus, Poikile, Tempe” (S.H.A., Hadrian 26.5: “Tiburtinam Villam mire exaedificavit, ita ut in ea et provinciarum et locorum celeberrima nomina inscriberet, velut Lyceum Academian, Prytaneum, Canopum, Poikilen, Tempe vocaret”). See Salza Prina Ricotti 2001, 277–87, for a discussion of the remains called the Accademia since at least the time of Ligorio; and ibid. 281 for a quotation from Ligorio that one of the rooms in the Accademia was “di statue ornato.” Ligorio seems not to have stated what those statues were. For Hadrianic portraits and connections with generic herm-portraits in the gymnasion, see Papini 2002. If the suggestion is correct that the Berkeley Plato was originally set up in Hadrian’s Villa, then it would have been close at hand to serve as the prototype for the Tivoli Plato discovered about a mile north of the villa. See above, pp. 16n. 38, 25–26. I must note that two scholars, working completely independently, have suggested to me that a Hadrianic dating is too early and that the Berkeley Plato ought to be Antonine: Paul Zanker vis-à-vis the head and Angelos Matthaiou vis-à-vis the inscription.
The Berkeley Plato
/
39
honored above all the other men of letters in his court.89 Favorinus spent enough time in Athens so that the Athenians erected a bronze statue of him (although they subsequently tore it down),90 and he wrote many books, including works on the philosophy of Homer, on Sokrates and his erotic art, on Plato, and so on.91 It is perhaps coincidence that Hadrian 89. S.H.A., Hadrian 16.11: “eminente Favorino.” For a summary of Favorinus’s works and a translation of his “On Exile,” see Tim Whitmarsh, Greek Literature and the Roman Empire. The Politics of Imitation (Oxford 2001), 115 and 302– 24, respectively. For a discussion of Favorinus’s status vis-à-vis Hadrian, see E. Bowie, “Hadrian, Favorinus, and Plutarch,” in J. Mossman, ed., Plutarch and His Intellectual World (London 1997), 1–11. For Favorinus’s generally prominent position in the Greek intellectual circles of Hadrianic and Antonine times, we may note simply that he was a young favorite of Plutarch, with whom he traveled to Thermopylai on one occasion (Moralia 734F–735C), and who quotes him on another (Moralia 271C). Indeed, Plutarch dedicated his On the Principle of Cold to Favorinus by addressing him in the vocative at the beginning, middle, and end of the essay (Moralia 945F, 949F, 955A). In the next generation, Favorinus was himself a mentor of Herodes Atticus and especially Aulus Gellius. 90. Philostratos, Soph. 1.8. The Corinthians also pulled down their statue of Favorinus; see M. Gleason, Making Men (Princeton 1995), xvii–xix and 3–20, for an overview of Favorinus, including the importance to him of portraits, at least his own (pp. 10–20). On Hadrian’s supposed displeasure with and exile of Favorinus, see Leofranc Holford-Stevens, “Favorinus: The Man of Paradoxes, “ in Jonathan Barnes and Miriam Griffin, eds., Philosophia Togata, vol. 2, Plato and Aristotle at Rome (Oxford 1997), 191–98. 91. Suda, s.v. Fabwri ¸noˇ: . . . Peri; th¸ˇ Omhvrou filosofivaˇ Peri; Swkravtouˇ kai; th̑ kat’ aujto;n erwtikh¸ j ˇ tevcnhˇ Peri; Plavtwnoˇ. . . . Favorinus was a major source for Diogenes Laertius, who cites him nine times in his own biography of Plato: 3.3, 19, 24, 25, 34, 41, 48, 57, and 62. This contrasts with the three times Diogenes cites him in the biography of Aristotle, even though Plutarch described Favorinus as a devotee of Aristotle. But Favorinus seems to have been truly eclectic and could even be characterized as an Academic. See HolfordStevens (op. cit. above, n. 90), 213–16; cf. Simon Swain, “Plutarch, Plato, Athens, and Rome,” in Barnes and Griffin (above, n. 90), 174, 176–80, et alibi; and Whitmarsh (op. cit. above, n. 89), 167. I cannot understand Swain’s statement (p. 181) that “it is very unlikely that the Academy still existed in Plutarch’s time,” espe-
40
/
The Berkeley Plato
is said to have expressed with self-assurance his own opinions on these same subjects.92 But I doubt that it can also be coincidence that our only source for the mention of any statue of Plato from his own lifetime is the same Favorinus: “In the first book of the Memorabilia by Favorinus it is related that Mithradates the Persian set up a statue of Plato in the Akademy and inscribed on it ‘Mithradates the Persian, son of Orontobates, dedicated to the Muses a statue of Plato that Silanion made.’ ”93 If it is true that the Plato Favorinus saw in the Akademy was the one that served as the prototype for the Berkeley Plato, then the ribbons of the Berkeley Plato may have been a part of the fourth-century statue, although not necessarily carved in stone, as we shall see further below.
RIBBONS
The ribbons on the Berkeley Plato, however, have been the major reason for discrediting the inscription, and by extension the portrait, even if the latter has hitherto been unknown. These ribbons, for which the ancient name is tainiva (pl. tainivai), have rounded ends.94 The actual ribbons were made of woven wool, the threads of which were tied or even braided together, thereby creating the rounded ends of the ribbon and a cially since he then quotes Pausanias to show that it was open in Pausanias’s day. Indeed, as we know from older excavations in the Akademy and more recent ones in the Lykeion, the two gymnasia (technically palaistrai) were remarkably similar architecturally in the second century after Christ, and both seem to have survived into the third century after Christ. See E. Lygouri-Tolia, “Excavating an Ancient Palaistra in Athens,” in Maria Stamatopoulou and Marina Yeroulanou, eds., Excavating Classical Culture: Recent Archaeological Discoveries in Greece (Oxford 2002), 203–12 92. S.H.A., Hadrian 16.7. 93. Apud Diogenes Laertius 3.25: jende; tw¸/ prwvtw/ tw¸n Apomhnoneumav j twn Fabwrivnou fevretai o{ti Miqradavthˇ oJ Pevrshˇ ajndriavnta Plavtwnoˇ ajnevqeto eijˇ th;n Akadhv j meian kai; epev j graye: “Miqradavthˇ jOrontobavtou Pevrshˇ Mouvsaiˇ eijkovna ajnevqhke Plavtwnoˇ, h}n Silanivwn ejpoivhse.” 94. Krug 1967, 136–40.
The Berkeley Plato
/
41
tail to them. This method of securing the threads has been called practical if not particularly elegant, and it is portrayed in a variety of ways.95 Sometimes the tail that was the braided ends is shown, and sometimes not; sometimes it was probably portrayed originally but has not been preserved. Smutny’s assessment of the significance of the tainia on the Berkeley Plato has been universally accepted: “The vestiges of the taeniae are incongruous with a portrait bust of Plato. Such taeniae are customarily associated with Dionysus, Zeus-Ammon, Hermes, Heracles, Satyrs, Silenus, and with indeterminate bearded gods.” This statement is wrong.96 In the first place, a survey of vase paintings reveals that Dionysos most commonly wears an ivy crown when he wears anything at all on his head. On the relatively rare occasions when he is shown wearing a ribbon, it frequently has squared and not rounded ends.97 The round-end tainia is, however, shown first and most often in athletic scenes.98 Two Panathenaic amphoras in Athens, for example, show round95. Krug 1967, 4: “praktisch und rasch anzuwenden, wenn auch nicht sehr elegant.” 96. There are no examples in Krug’s collection of Zeus-Ammon, Herakles, or indeterminate bearded gods wearing ribbons, and only a very few examples of Hermes, Satyrs, and Silenos. 97. See, for example, the red-figure stamnos showing Dionysos wearing an ivy crown and a square-end tainia: Paris, Louvre, inv. no. G 411. Also note the square-ended ribbon on the pseudo-Plato in the Capitoline (inv. no. 288), above, p. 32, and figs. 23 and 24 here. This type of tainia does fit Smutny’s (1966, 4– 5) statement about appropriateness to various divinities. Krug’s lists of her first three types of ribbon, which are round-end and therefore those relevant to our study, show a number of Dionysos portrayals, but these are far outnumbered by the portrayals of Dionysos with an ivy crown, to judge from a superficial survey of the CVA. (This is not intended to be more than a general indication.) 98. Krug 1967, 6, 7, 67 (list 1 O). Her type-2 ribbon is also shown in many athletic scenes in two variants: ribbons the threads of which have been gathered and knotted in smaller clusters, resulting in multiple tails (as here fig. 39, where three tails are the norm), or ribbons that have a simple knot just above the ends of the threads, resulting in all the threads dangling separately (as here fig. 36). The type-2 ribbon is also first documented in athletic settings: Krug 1967, 10,
42
/
The Berkeley Plato
end tainias, in one case being held out by Nike in preparation for binding on the head of the winner of a wrestling match (fig. 33). On the other, Nike herself holds the palm branch while a small winged assistant flies in with the tainia for the winner of a pankration competition (fig. 34). On a red-figure krater Nike flies in with a tainia held out toward an athlete, who is in the starting position for a footrace (fig. 35).99 It is just such a composition that Pausanias (6.20.19) describes at one turning post in the hippodrome at Olympia, where a bronze statue of Hippodameia held a tainia with which she was about to bind the head of Pelops in recognition of his victory. So, too, should we understand the references to the Diadoumenos, a statue of a victorious athlete by Polykleitos that was described as “binding the head with a tainia.”100 The same description was given by another author for the statue of a boy victor at Olympia by Pheidias: “The boy is binding a tainia on his head.”101 Olympia also housed Pheidias’s most famous creation, the chryselephantine cult statue of Zeus holding in his hand a figure of Nike that “held a tainia and wore a crown on her head.”102 If sculptors of the fifth century used the tainia as a device to show victory, it is not surprising that poets did as well: Aristophanes shows that his audience understood that the tainia denoted victory.103 These are the ribbons that served, together with a palm branch, as the immediate and preliminary tokens of victory at the games. At the con70 (list 2 G). I doubt there is any significance in the different athletic types beyond the personal choice of the ribbon maker or the vase painter. 99. There are many similar vase paintings with Nike swooping in with a tainia of victory. See, for example, a red-figure amphora once on the Paris market, and another in the British Museum, E 312; Kephalidou 1996, G 83 and G 79, respectively; also here, fig. 43. 100. Lucian, Philopseudes 18: oJ diadouvmenoˇ thvn kefalh;n th¸/ tainiva/. Perhaps the best copy is that now in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, inv. no. 1826. 101. Pausanias 6.4.5: pai ¸ˇ oj ajnadouvmenoˇ tainiva/ th;n kefalhvn. 102. Pausanias 5.11.1: tainivan te e[cousan kai; jepi;th¸/ kefalh¸/ stevfanon. 103. E.g., Aristophanes, Ranae 392: nikhvsanta tainiou¸sqai.
The Berkeley Plato
/
43
clusion of the event, the herald announced the name of the victor while a judge tied a tainia around his head (figs. 36, 37). During this time, the victorious athlete would take a lap around the track, called the periagermos (periagermovˇ).104 The crowd, or at least that part of the crowd who were fans of the victor, would applaud, cheer, and shower him with flowers and leaves—the phyllobolia (fig. 38). The especially popular victor would also collect other, unofficial ribbons during his periagermos and might well end up extensively draped with them (fig. 39). He would wear these ribbons until he received his official crown of victory— olive at Olympia, laurel at Delphi, pine at Isthmia, wild celery at Nemea— and perhaps even after he was crowned (fig. 40).105 Indeed, it would appear that such ribbons might even go to the grave, as is portrayed on a South Italian vase where the grave stele has a ribbon tied around it. The athletic significance of the ribbon is assured by the scraper and oil jar on the
104. See Kephalidou 1996, 52–60. The victory lap is described already by Pindar, O. 9.91–94, albeit without using the term periagermovˇ or a cognate. The sequence of events within the initial victory celebration is most succinctly outlined by Clemens Alexandrinus, Paedagogus 2.8.72: “In the games there was first the award of the prizes, second the periagermos, third the phyllobolia, and finally the crown” ( jEn de; toi¸ˇ ajgw¸si prw¸ton hj tw¸n a[qlwn dovsiˇ h\n, deuvteron de; oJ periagermoˇ trivton hJ fulloboliva teleutai ¸on oJ stevfanoˇ). The text of Clemens given here is that of O. Stählin, ed., Clemens Alexandrinus, vol. 1, Protrepticus und Paedagogus, 3rd ed., rev. U. Treu (Berlin 1972). It should be noted, however, that the single manuscript of Clemens (Parisinus gr. 451), from the tenth century, is generally regarded as somewhat corrupt. In the relevant place, that manuscript has the word ej pegermovˇ. In the mid-fifteenth century Hieronymus Ferrarius emended that to ej pagermovˇ, which was emended again in 1862 to periagermovˇ as presented here. C. G. Cobet (“Ad Clementem Alexandrinum,” Mnemosyne 11 [1862] 388) based this change on Plato, Republic 621D (w{sper oiJ nikhfovroi periageirovmenoi: discussed below, p. 55), and on the scholiast to Euripides, Hecuba 569. 105. The ribbon as initial symbol of victory was frequently portrayed together with the ultimate victory token, the crown, as on a stele in Ephesos where the rounded-end ribbons dangle down in the middle of victory crowns. See W. Alzinger, Die Ruinen von Ephesos (Berlin 1972), 132 and pl. 104.
44
/
The Berkeley Plato
front of the stele (fig. 41).106 Just such a grave stele from Chersonnesos in the Crimea was perhaps originally draped with the actual victory ribbons of the deceased (fig. 42). In other words, the ribbon on the Berkeley Plato derives from the field of athletics.107 The mitra or headband is also frequently to be found in the same contexts as the tainia. It is to be seen holding the tainia in place, just as on the Berkeley Plato (figs. 4–6), on a variety of vase paintings (e.g., here figs. 40, 44). Although the word mivtra can be used of anything wrapped around the body— as, for example, the girdle used by charioteers or, earlier, a wrapping of defensive armor around the body108—by the fifth century it is clearly to be understood as a band on the head.109 There are references to its being used by women in conjunction with hairnets or kekryphaloi,110 which are to be seen on many vase paintings.111 Although
106. For this and a series of similar depictions, associated with Aischylos’s Choephori, see Trendall 1953, 116–21. See also a red-figure Apulian pelike, attributed to the Tarporley Painter, ca. 410–380 b.c., where an unfluted Ionic column has a ribbon tied around it, with another draped over the steps of its base and a third in the hand of a figure identified as Electra. The Ionic capital is topped by hydria. (Cornell University, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, transfer from the History of Art Collection; inv. no. 74.074.007. See Kuniholm et al. 2003, 32 no. 7a.) 107. These ribbons also appear in funerary contexts in vase paintings and as ribbons painted on grave stelai without specific reference to athletics. See D. C. Kurtz and J. Boardman, Greek Burial Customs (London 1971), 104, 123, et passim; and D. C. Kurtz, Athenian White Lekythoi (Oxford 1975), passim. One wonders if these fillets should be understood as symbolizing a victory over death. The topic is too large to be explored here. 108. Anth. Pal. 15.44 and Homer, Iliad 4.137, respectively. For discussion of the Homeric version of the mitra, see G. S. Kirk, The Iliad: A Commentary 1 (Cambridge 1985), 345. 109. Euripides, Bacchae 833, Hecuba 924. 110. Aristophanes, Thesm. 257. 111. See, for example, a red-figure krater by the Niobid Painter of about 460– 450 b.c. in the Walters Art Gallery, inv. no. 48.2712; E. Reeder, Pandora (Princeton 1995), 206–8 no. 44. The hairnet is commonly called a sakkos by modern
The Berkeley Plato
/
45
the mitra is frequently regarded as the equivalent of the tainia,112 Alkibiades on his return to Athens “crowned the Attic triremes with young branches and mitras and tainias.”113 Such allusions to victory with regard to the mitra are made in athletic contexts by Pindar,114 and we are justified in recognizing both the tainia and the mitra on the Berkeley Plato as athletic in their significance for his portrait, at least in general terms.
PLATO AND RIBBONS
This should not surprise us, for Plato was much involved with athletics. He repeatedly uses the status of the Olympic victor as representing the happiest of lives (Laws 729D and 807C, Republic 465D–466A), and Olympia as the best place to be honored by the dedication of a statue (Phaedrus 236B; cf. Apology 36D). And, for Plato, the contest between justice and injustice is as difficult as, or even more difficult than, the Olympic contest (Republic 583B; cf. Phaedrus 256B).115 He recounts the names of many Olympic victors.116 He tells us of one of his visits to the Olympic Games (Letters 350B), and we are told a charming story about another:117 Plato the son of Ariston shared a tent at Olympia with some men he did not know, nor did they know him. He so gained their affection with his comradery, eating with them simply and passing the days with all of them, that the strangers felt fortunate that they
scholars, but I have not been able to find an ancient use of the word with such a meaning. 112. E.g., Kephalidou 1996, 65. 113. Athenaeus 12.535C. 114. Pindar, O. 9.84, I. 5.62, N. 8.15. 115. See D. A. Rees, ed., The Republic of Plato, vol. 2, 2nd ed. (Cambridge 1963), note at 583B. 116. E.g., Ikkos of Tarentum, Krison of Himera (also in Protagoras 335E), Astylos of Kroton (later Syracuse), and Diopompos (presumably Theopompos of Thessaly): Laws 840A–B. Polydamas of Skotoussa: Republic 338C. 117. Aelian, Varia Historia 4.9.
46
/
The Berkeley Plato
had met this man. He made no mention of the Akademy, nor of Sokrates. He told them only that his name was Plato. Later, when they visited Athens, he received them graciously, and the strangers said, “Plato, please take us to see your namesake, the student of Sokrates; take us to his Akademy and introduce us to that man so that we can enjoy him.” He responded, quietly and with a smile as was his custom, “I am that man.”
We are also told that Plato trained as a wrestler and actually competed at the Isthmian Games. Since the source of this piece of information is the same as the one that claims his wide brow gave the name Plato to him, we may not want to accept a competitive athletic career as a part of Plato’s curriculum vitae, and there is nowhere any suggestion that he was victorious at Isthmia.118 The ribbons on the Berkeley Plato cannot be ascribed to any specific athletic victory. Ribbons were not, however, restricted to athletic victories, even though they seem to have originated there. For example, in a scene where Herakles has bested the Cretan Bull, a tainia is tied around his head, and Nike flies in with another (fig. 43). In 423 b.c., as Thucydides (4.121) tells us, Brasidas arrived at Skione in northern Greece to encourage the locals in their revolt from Athens. The Skionians publicly awarded him a gold crown as the liberator of Greece and privately tied ribbons on him, treating him as if he were an athlete ( ijdiva/ dev ejtainivoun te kai; proshvrconto w{sper aj qlhth/ ¸). Again, the soldiers of Alexander the Great, overjoyed that Nearchos had rejoined them after their dangerous trek across the arid Makran Desert,119 pelted him with flowers and tainias (a[nqesiv 118. On the other hand, [Apuleius], De Dogmate Platonis 1.15, has Plato competing at Delphi as well as Isthmia: “Pythia et Isthmia de lucta certaverit.” The anonymous Prolegomena Philosophiae Platonicae 2.35 actually records that he was victorious at Olympia and Nemea (duvo ajgw¸naˇ aujto;n nikh¸sai, jOluvmpiav te kai; Nevmea), but modern scholars have not always trusted this evidence. 119. See M. Wood, In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great (Berkeley and Los Angeles 1997), 211–17.
The Berkeley Plato
/
47
te kai; tainivh/sin ej bavlleto) when he appeared at games held by Alexan-
der, and it was there that Alexander also presented Nearchos with a golden crown (Arrian, Indica 42.9). Ribbons and crowns were joined in less happy but still triumphant situations: “The urn holding the ashes of Philopoimen was taken home in a procession that mixed triumph and funeral, for the people in it wore crowns even as their eyes were filled with tears. . . . the urn itself was almost hidden from sight by piles of tainias and crowns” (aujth;n de; th;n uJ drivan uJ po; plhvqouˇ tainiw¸n te kaiv stefavnwn: Plutarch, Philopoimen 21.3). In his Symposium (5.9) Xenophon has Sokrates stipulate that the prize for the victor in a beauty contest should be kisses rather than tainias, and the presence of ribbons in symposia is shown on several vases. A Boeotian kantharos of about 440 b.c. shows a young man reclining next to a table on which is depicted a kantharos (fig. 44). He holds a sprig of olive in his left hand and a crown in his right. On his head is a taina held in place by a mitra. This could represent the victory banquet that the Eleans provided Olympic victors at the conclusion of the games (Pausanias 5.15.12). This sort of victory tainia might be dedicated to the god. For example, before setting out for Syracuse from Corinth, Timoleon consulted with the oracle at Delphi.120 One of the dedications that was hanging in the temple fell down on his head. It was a tainia embroidered with crowns and figures of Nike, and this was believed, quite naturally, to be a good omen for Timoleon’s undertaking. Other contexts for these ribbons are not so serious. One example is a kylix that has symposiasts around the exterior and a youth on the interior (fig. 45). He reclines holding a drinking cup in his left hand while he prepares to toss the dregs of his wine from another kylix in his right hand in the well-known game of kottabos. Everything is labeled kalos, “beautiful”: his name above his head, both cups, and the ribbon around his head. The scene is reminiscent of Plato’s Symposium (212C–213E). About 120. Plutarch, Timoleon 8.3.
48
/
The Berkeley Plato
two-thirds of the way through the work, which is set in the house of Agathon, the discussion is interrupted by the arrival of the drunken Alkibiades. He staggers in “wearing very many ribbons on his head” (tainivaˇ e[conta ejpi; th¸ˇ kefalh¸ˇ pavnu pollavˇ). Alkibiades unties the ribbons and puts them on the head of his host, Agathon, but when he subsequently notices Sokrates, he turns back to him and says: “Give me back some of the ribbons, Agathon, so I can tie them on this one’s awesome head” (nu¸n dev moi jAgavqwn, metavdoˇ tw¸n tainiw¸n, i{na aj nadhvsw kai; th;n touvtou tauthni; th;n qaumasth;n kefalhvn). It is possible that the ribbons are those that adorned Alkibiades after his chariot victory at Olympia at the beginning of August 416 b.c.,121 but here they seem to symbolize the man as much as his victory. We have yet to consider another aspect of Plato and his ribbons, for we have considered only the ribbons that are associated with victory at the games. Ribbons are also to be found in another athletic context: the palaistra and gymnasion—the schools of ancient Greece. This is, of course, a setting very familiar to Plato and to his readers, since at least four (and perhaps six) of his dialogues occur in a gymnasion or a palaistra: Charmides (Palaistra of Taureos), Lysis (Palaistra of Mikkon), Euthydemus (Lykeion), and Theaetetus (unidentified).122 In yet another dialogue (Euthyphro 1A) Sokrates is asked why he is not in the Lykeion as usual. The place for the training of young minds and bodies was the natural setting where Sokrates might be expected to find grist for his mill, even as Plato set himself up as teacher and philosopher in one of the largest gymnasia of Athens—the Akademy— and lived in his own house on one side of it. The emphasis that Plato places on the need of the state and of the individual to train both body and mind, and not to overemphasize either the gymnastik; or the mousik;, is well known and hardly needs to
121. S. G. Miller, “The Date of Olympic Festivals,” AthMitt 90 (1975): 222. 122. This is clear from the action at 144C: young men are oiling themselves on the outer track. The Sophist and the Politicus are probably set in the same place, since they are continuations of the Theaetetus.
The Berkeley Plato
/
49
be mentioned.123 He is, moreover, at pains to be sure that the gymnastik; is not omitted or undervalued in the education of the young.124 Indeed, he prescribes an equal mix for the training of girls as well.125 It is interesting, however, that he establishes athletic training in his ideal state only to the extent that it is useful for military purposes. Thus all the footraces are to be in armor; the wrestling and boxing are to be replaced by fencing, and the pankration by training as peltasts.126 Nonetheless, all the usual gymnikoi competitions are used as metaphors or examples to make a point: footraces (seven times),127 pankration (once),128 pentathlon (once),129 boxing (six times),130 and especially wrestling (ten times).131 Not only does he use metaphors from wrestling 123. Republic 410C–D, 411 C–412A, 441E, 535D, 548C; Laws 764C–D, 828C; Timaeus 88C. 124. Gorgias 464B, 465B, 517B–518E. The Lovers has, at one level, this tension between the gymnastik; and the mousik; parts of education as its central theme, although its Platonic authenticity is not accepted by all. 125. Republic 452A, 456C–457A. 126. Laws 832E–834D. Nonetheless, delegations from his state are to attend all four crown games, at Olympia, Delphi, Isthmia, and Nemea: Laws 950E. In listing his uses of athletics, I exclude Plato’s “athletes of war” (ajqlhtai; polevmou or polemikoi; ajqlhtaiv), which he mentions several times, especially in the Republic (403E–404B, 416D, 422B, 521D, 525B). These are clearly the young men who are to be given military training, and they are distinct from athletes who compete at the games. For the specific distinction drawn by Plato between athletic training and military training, see Republic 403E–404B. 127. Footraces in general: Theaetetus 148C, Hippias Maior 295C, Hippias Minor 373C–374B, Cratylus 414B. The diaulos (double stadion) specifically: Republic 613B–C. The dolichos (long distance) specifically: Protagoras 335E, Laws 822A. 128. Euthydemus 271C. 129. Cratylus 413A–B. 130. Philebus 22E, Alcibiades Minor 145D, Charmides 159C, Laws 819B and 830A–B, Republic 422B–C. 131. Philebus 41B, Alcibiades Maior 107A and 108B, Charmides 159C, Hippias Maior 295C, Protagoras 343C and 350E, Hippias Minor 373C–374B, Republic 544A, Laws 819B. See also F. G. Herrmann, “Wrestling Metaphors in Plato’s ‘Theaetetus,’ ” Nikephoros 8 (1995) 77–110.
50
/
The Berkeley Plato
more frequently than from any other event, but Plato emphasizes its importance.132 He further notes how Thucydides the son of Melesias made his two sons the best wrestlers in Athens by turning them over to the best trainers, and he cites a handbook on wrestling by Protagoras.133 That Plato would have our final mortal judgment take place in the nude may or may not be a reference to ancient athletic nudity,134 but there can be no doubt about the context when Sokrates asks Theodoros: “If you went to Sparta and visited the palaistras, do you think it would be fair to look at the others who were naked, some of them weaklings, without stripping and showing your own physique?”135 Athletics and the physical and intellectual training in the gymnasion and palaistra are as ubiquitous in the writings of Plato as they were in his life. So, too, ribbons are to be found in such contexts, apparently as rewards for local competitions or even for exercises well done. For example, a red-figure cup shows a single nude athlete in front of a Doric column— a typical iconographic label for the palaistra (fig. 46). He wears two ribbons and is about to receive a third, perhaps even a fourth. Ribbons are even more plentiful on another cup, where the palaistra setting is indicated by the typical athlete’s gear hanging on the wall: strigil, aryballos, sponge (fig. 47). The athlete on the left has ribbons on his head, right bicep, and right thigh; he is being offered a fourth tainia. His colleague on the right has ribbons around his right thigh, left bicep, and head. He is about to receive a ribbon on his right bicep and another probably, given the anatomical space remaining, on his left thigh. Perhaps the most relevant depiction of ribbons in the palaistra, however, comes on a red-figure krater in Agrigento (fig. 48). Here a herm is about to be crowned by a beribboned athlete while Nike brings a ribbon
132. 133. 134. 135.
Laws 795B–796A and 814D–E. Meno 94C and Theaetetus 232D, respectively. Gorgias 523D–E. Theaetetus 162B.
The Berkeley Plato
/
51
for the herm. This is a herm of the original type, which portrays the bearded god Hermes at the top of a pillar equipped with a phallus and projecting shoulder stubs (seen here from the side as a black rectangle). The identification of this herm with Hermes is clearly marked by the k;rykeion or herald’s staff painted on its side. This is Hermes of the Palaistra, the god who gave his name to the gymnikos agOn of many cities’ annual festivals for their young men: the Hermaia. These competitions took place side by side with the Mouseia, and they reflect the same bipartite education of body and mind that Plato described and advocated. It is, then, not surprising that herms should be found in the palaistra, and there are many examples of exactly this phenomenon. For example, Hellenistic Delos has produced many herms in its wrestling school; dozens are documented epigraphically, and several actually survive (fig. 49).136 These are now headless, but they are of typical form, with sockets for shoulders and phallus. Although the inscriptions have been defaced, it is clear that most, perhaps all, were portrait herms of gymnasiarchoi or headmasters that were set up by grateful students. It does not require a great stretch of the imagination to picture a now long-perished wool tainia draped over the shoulders. Dozens of such herms that were set up to honor the superintendents of education survive, but the most cogent group was found at the site of the palaistra known as the Diogeneion in central ancient Athens.137 This was, in the second century after Christ, the headquarters of public education for the young Athenian male, and from here come many examples of portrait herms set up to honor favorite teachers, such as the herm of Sosistratos who served as kosm;t;s or superintendent of education in 136. For the various inscriptions on this herm, see Marie-Thérèse Couilloud, “Les graffites du Gymnase,” in J. Audiat, Exploration archéologique de Délos, vol. 28, Le Gymnase (Paris 1970), app. 3, 121–22 no. 22. 137. For the location, see S. G. Miller, “Architecture as Evidence for the Identity of a Polis,” in M. H. Hansen, ed., Acts of the Copenhagen Polis Centre 2 (Copenhagen 1995), 207.
52
/
The Berkeley Plato
a.d. 141/2 (fig. 50).138 The inscriptions above and below the phallus give us details about Sosistratos and about those who dedicated this herm to him. We can imagine that the walls of the Palaistra of Diogenes were lined with such herms, and that real tainias were put on them— and perhaps crowns as well. Of course, such ribbons have not survived, but there are three cases where their marble counterparts are extant: the Berkeley Plato, a marble herm from the ancient Mesembria on the Black Sea (mod. Nesebar: fig. 51), and a Hellenistic portrait herm from Melos. Although on the Mesembrian example the braided tails of the ribbons are exaggerated, it is clearly a herm that was adorned with ribbons, and it presents a translation into stone of a herm that had been adorned with perishable ribbons.139 The same is true of the Melian example, where the ribbons are carved on the nape of the neck and the back rather than on the front of the shoulders.140 The Berkeley Plato should be understood as another marble gymnasion portrait the original of which bore ephemeral ribbons that were the hallmark of victory in ancient athletics and have nothing to do with Dionysos but everything to do with Plato, the leader of the gymnasion known as the Akademy and the author of works of philosophy and ethics that are still immediate today. A final and perhaps unanswerable question must be raised about the Berkeley Plato. What was the nature of its prototype? Typically we understand that portrait herms derived from full-bodied original statues, at least with regard to mass-produced portraits of famous intellectuals, political leaders, and the like. Such portrait herms captured the essence of the subject without the additional cost of manufacturing and shipping a fully sculpted body. It is also the modern consensus that portrait herms of illustrious personages came into fashion only in the Late Hellenistic
138. See also, for example, Kaltsas 2001, nos. 683–701. 139. This herm is unpublished, and I thank the director of the Archaeological Museum at Nesebar, Dr. Dimo Kojuharov, for the photograph and permission to publish it. 140. Hamiaux 1992, 49–50 no. 59.
The Berkeley Plato
/
53
or the Roman Late Republican period.141 It is further agreed that the venue for this development was the Greek gymnasion, filled with its herms surmounted not only by heads of Hermes but also by heads of gymnasiarchs—real men whose likenesses had been placed on herms by grateful students.142 It would be a natural development, especially for literati like Cicero, to have that sculptural form for portraits of academics, and the custom certainly had been established by his time.143 Indeed, we should imagine that his library-gymnasium was decorated with portrait herms, including one of Plato. But was the prototype of the Berkeley Plato a full-figured statue? We have noted that the only attested portrait of him was set up in a gymnasion—the Akademy—of which he was the leader. Is it possible that the Akademy’s portrait of Plato was that of a gymnasiarchos and not that of a Ciceronian philosopher, of deus nostra, as Cicero called him?144 Might such a portrait herm of the fourth century b.c., with inscribed text added to the shaft of the copy, have been the source of the Plato that resided for so many years beneath the Women’s Gymnasium at Berkeley?
WHY PLATO AND RIBBONS
At the end of the Republic—generally regarded as Plato’s masterpiece— after he has argued for the various aspects of his ideal state, including the 141. Dillon 2000, 31. 142. Eve Harrison (1965 [Agora 11], 124–29) has already argued that the evolution of the portrait herm from the Hermes herm happened in the gymnasion, but with the heads of ephebes, not of their teachers. The evidence is not conclusive, and I prefer to think that the first honored were the more senior, although the evidence is even less compelling. In any event, it seems clear that the gymnasion was the site, whoever the first honorees were. 143. See, for example, Cicero, Letters to Atticus 1.4, 8, 9, et alibi. 144. Letters to Atticus 4.16. We might note that the Akademy’s Plato statue was dedicated to the Muses. (See above, n. 93.) The gymnasiarchos was typically responsible for two competitions for the young men: the Hermaia for their bodies and the Mouseia for their minds. See Miller 2004, 193.
54
/
The Berkeley Plato
nature of and the need for justice; after a discussion of the various types of government, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny; after the famous argument set in the cave; after the infamous proposal for women and children to be shared like common property; and after the defense of excluding poets from his state, Plato sets forth his notion of the immortality of the soul. We have already seen that the second quotation on the shaft of the Berkeley Plato states, “Every Soul Is Immortal,” and that the quote comes from the Phaedrus, but in the Republic (614B–621D) Plato develops the idea much more fully. He does this by telling the story of Er, the son of Armenios, who was killed in battle but whose body was still firm ten days later in the midst of the other, rotting corpses that had been left behind on the field. On the twelfth day after his death, as he was laid on the funeral pyre, Er suddenly came back to life and recounted his journey to the next world. Fundamental to the story is the notion that every soul is, indeed, immortal and that the total number of souls is immutable; each lives in cycles of eleven hundred years— one hundred on earth, and the next thousand years either above in the heavens (ouranos) or below the earth, depending upon the justice and virtue of the hundred years just completed. After a thousand years, each soul, having been allotted a place in line, may choose its life for the next cycle. The image is full of whimsy and lessons. Odysseus’s soul, for example, is about to reenter this world after its thousand-year journey, and it seeks and finds the life of an ordinary citizen who minds his own business and stays at home. Atalanta’s soul, seeing the great honors given to the male athlete (megavlaˇ tima;ˇ ajqlhtou¸ ajndrovˇ, 620B), chooses that life—her former tomboy life clearly foreshadowing the choice. Another soul quickly chooses to be a tyrant, only to learn that he will have to eat his own children. Now, in this context of the selected tyrant, Plato tells us to be careful: “Blame the one who makes the choice; God is blameless” (617E)— the first of the quotations on the shaft of our herm of Plato. At the conclusion of this vision of the next world, Sokrates comments that thus “the tale [of Er] was saved . . . and it will save us if we believe it” ( mu¸qoˇ ejswvqh . . . , kai; hJ ma¸ˇ a]n swvseien, a]n peiqwvmeqa aujtw¸/, 621B–C).
The Berkeley Plato
/
55
Now the Republic comes to an end with Sokrates’—that is, Plato’s— final words (621C–D): If we are guided by me, we shall believe that the soul is immortal and can endure every kind of bad and every kind of good [nomivzonteˇ ajqavnaton yuch;n kai; dunath;n pavnta me;n kaka; ajnevcesqai, pavnta de; ajgaqav], and so we shall always adhere to the upward path and pursue justice with wisdom in every way, so that we will be friends to ourselves and to the gods while we remain here and afterward when we receive our reward, just as the victors in the games do their periagermos [w{ sper oiJ nikhfovroi periageirovmenoi, and we will fare well both here [on earth] and in that thousand-year journey of which I have told you.
The image is clear: if we lead the good, the just, the wise life, at the end of the race we will be victorious and go on our final victory lap, our periagermos, to collect our ribbons.145 This is the beribboned Plato at Berkeley— a portrait of the good, immortal soul; of the virtuous member of society; of the philosopher and of his philosophy.
CONCLUSION
The Plato at Berkeley has been shown to be a genuine ancient portrait herm that was probably created in the second quarter of the second century after Christ, and may very well be based directly upon and reflect an original of 370–365 b.c. It does not fit neatly within the long-established Plato type, but it does have enough features in common with that type to show that it is related—the same man served as the model, and that man had ears of different shapes and orientations. The fine quality of the marble, the carving of the head and the inscription, and the verbal echoes of the written works of Plato suggest that the Berkeley Plato is a special creation that was associated with the portraits of the Seven Sages. The ribbon around the head and on the 145. Cf. G. R. F. Ferrari, Plato: The Republic (Cambridge 2000), 300 n. 13.
56
/
The Berkeley Plato
shoulders makes a direct connection with the world of athletics and the gymnasium-academy, but even more specifically with the Republic. The deformed left ear ties athletics and Plato’s writings closely together, and the use of such allusions shows that the Berkeley Plato was the creation of someone who knew his Plato as a person and as a literary figure. With these clues derived from the Berkeley Plato, our knowledge of Plato— man, author, teacher, citizen—has been enriched.
Villa of Hadrian, 1503
Provenienceb unknown
Shaft width marblec
Material unknownd
Present location
Hülsen no. 1; IG 14, 1128; Insc. Italiae 550; LeErme 108–10; M&M no. 73; Neudecker 64.8; Richter 213 no. 5
Bibliography
seen at Tivoli in the house of Ludovici Moderni by Mariangelo Accorsio in 1503 or shortly thereafter. Later taken to Rome and placed in the gardens of the Aldobrandini at the Porta Flaminia, then to Florence. It could not be found in 1727 by Gori and has not been located since.
d First
of marble not specified in the publication. Unless noted otherwise, the herms listed below as being of Pentelic marble are so defined in the publications. I have been able to verify that this is, in fact, the type of marble only in the cases of Periander, Perikles, Pittakos, Plato (at Tivoli), Solon, Stesichoros, and Thales. Bias and Kleoboulos are probably (and Lykourgos possibly) also Pentelic, but I could not verify the identification in their current situation. My criteria include crystal size (relative to, for example, the finer crystals of Parian marble and the coarser of Thasian and some other island examples) and especially the presence of veins of mica, which are sometimes green and sometimes yellow.
c Type
b The proveniends given here are taken from IG, but those given in LeErme may be more accurate. The problem in being certain that the inscription cited in IG is dependent upon the Turin manuscript of Ligorio. All the proveniences given are, in any event, very close to one another. Indeed, Hülsen (1901, 127) believed that references to Hadrian’s Villa (cited here) were probably due to its proximity of the “contrada dei Pisoni” (i.e., the Villa di Cassio) and that all the herms were probably from a single ancient building.
give single illustrations of each herm as depicted by Ligorio (when there exists a drawing by him) together with the actual piece when it survives. For those that are attested by other antiquarians as well as Ligorio, see the relevant entry in Palma Venetucci 1992b. For those that are not depicted by Ligorio, I give another sixteenth-century antiquarian’s illustration.
aI
NOTE: ErmeTib: Palma Venetucci 1992a; Hülsen: Hülsen 1901; LeErme: Palma Venetucci 1992b; Lippold: Lippold 1936; M&M: Mandowski and Mitchell 1963; Neudecker: Neudecker 1988; Richter: Richter 1965; Villa Albani: Bol 1989.
Aischines (52) AISCINHS ATRÄMHTÄU AÖHNAIÄS
Subject (fig.)a Inscription
THE SQUARE-OMICRON AND SQUARE-THETA PORTRAIT HERMS FROM TIVOLI
appendix a
Villa di Cassio, early sixteenth century
Villa dei Pisoni, 500 paces from Villa di Cassio, Tivoli, 1779
Villa of Hadrian, 1503
Church of Santa Mariaj on road from Tivoli to Villa of Hadrian, 1488–1503
Church of Santa Maria on roadfrom Tivoli to Villa of Hadrian, 1488–1503
Villa of Hadrian, early sixteenth century
Alexander (54) ALEXANDRÄS FILIPPÄU MAKE[DWN]
Alkibiades (55)g ALKIBIA DHS KLINIÄU AÖHNEÄS
Andokides (56)i ANDÄKIDHS LEWGÄRÄU AÖHNAIOS
Aristogeiton (57) ARISTÄGEITWN ÖEÄTIMÄU AÖHNAIÄS
Aristophanes (58, 59) ARISTÄFANHS FILIPPIDÄU AÖHNAIÄS
Provenience
Aischylos (53) AISCULÄS
Subject (fig.) Inscription
unknown
Pentelic marble
unknown
0.316 mm
unknown
Hülsen no. 4; IG 14, 1136; Insc. Italiae 556; LeErme 63–66; M&M no. 81; Neudecker 64.2
unknownl
Uffizi Gallery,n Sala delle Iscrizioni, Hülsen inv. no. 280 no. 7; IG 14, 1140; Insc. Italiae 558; LeErme 100–101; M&M no. 72; Neudecker 64.10; Richter fig. 794
Hülsen no. 3; IG 14, 1134; Insc. Italiae 554; LeErme 62–63; M&M no. 77; Neudecker 64.1; Richter 107
Hülsen no. 2; IG 14, 1131a (cf. 150*); Insc. Italiae 553; LeErme 93–95; M&M no. 74; Neudecker 64.9; Richter 106
ErmeTib 187–90; IG 14, 1130; Insc. Italiae 552; Neudecker 64.13; Richter fig. 173
LeErme 136–38
Bibliography
unknownk
unknownh
Louvre, inv. no. MA 436f
unknown
Present location
/
unknown
unknown
Pentelic marble
0.315 me
unknown
unknown
Material
unknown
Shaft width
58 Appendix A
Church of San Marco on road from Tivoli to Villa of Hadrian, 1488–1503
unknown
unknown
unknown p Hülsen no. 6; IG 14, 1138 (cf. 159*); Insc. Italiae 557; LeErme 66– 71; Neudecker 64.3; Richter 174
/ OV ARISTÄNÄS / TWN / FILÄSÄFWN / STAGEIRITHS. On the next page Ligorio gives circular omicrons in the same inscription.
o Inscription: so Pighius; see Palma Venetucci 1992b, fig. 6. Ligorio (Taur. 23, fol. 40v; see Palma Venetucci 1992b 67, fig. 105) gives: ARISTÄTELHS
n Taken to the villa of Pope Julius III ca. 1550 but moved to Florence already by the end of the sixteenth century. It could not be found in 1727 by Gori but now resides in the Uffizi.
am grateful to Thomas Ventresco for taking this measurement and examining the portrait of Aristophanes, and to Dottoressa A. Romualdi and her staff at the Uffizi Gallery for the assistance that they provided him.
mI
to the villa of Pope Julius III ca. 1550 (in Pighius’s list: see Mandowski and Mitchell 1963, 127 no. 3); reported in the possession of Cardinal di Carpi by Statius (1569), now lost.
l Taken
to the villa of Pope Julius III ca. 1550, now lost.
known as Santa Maria Empesone, as derived from the so-called Villa dei Pisoni.
k Taken
/
j Also
so Pighius ( Mandowski and Mitchell 1963, pl. 39c) and Ligorio in the Turin manuscript (ibid. pl. 46c. Ligorio mistakenly gives the patronymic as LIWNÖIÄU in the Naples manuscript (ibid. pl. 38b; here fig. 56).
i Inscription:
to the villa of Pope Julius III (the Villa Giulia) ca. 1550, now lost. Mandowski and Mitchell (1963, no. 74) suggest that the herm drawn by Ligorio, which is the basis for the inscription cited in IG 14, should be identified with a portrait head in the Conservatori ( MC 1160; inscription is modern, = IG 14, 150*), but Ligorio’s drawing shows clearly that the Alkibiades that is associated with the square-omicron inscription has ribbons, which is not the case with the Conservatori portrait. This does not mean that the latter is not a portrait of Alkibiades, but only that it has no connection with this series of square-omicron herms.
h Taken
omicron of the second line is circular in the Naples manuscript of Ligorio but square in the Turin manuscript; cf. Mandowski and Mitchell 1963, pls. 44a and 44c, respectively. Here compare figs. 22 and 55.
g The
is the Azara herm, named for the Spanish legate who acquired it at the time of discovery and subsequently gave it to Napoleon and thence to the Louvre.
f This
dimension of the Alexander inter tragos cannot be established precisely, because his ears are covered by hair, but it is a little less than 0.172 m. I would thank Anne Allary, Christophe Piccinelli, and Alain Pasquier, of the Louvre, for providing these dimensions to me.
e The
Aristotle (60)o ARISTÄTELHS NIKÄMACÄU STAGEIRITHS
Appendix A 59
Villa of Hadrian, early sixteenth century
Church of San Marco where unknown Villa of M. Taplius Capito is thought to have been, 1503
Villa of Hadrian, early sixteenth century
Euripides (63)s EUREIPIDHS MNESARCÄU AÖHNAIÄS
Herakleitos (64) HRAKLEITÄS BAUSWNÄSt EFESIÄS
Hesiod (65)v HSIÄDÄS DUÄU ASKRAIÄS unknown
unknown
unknown
unknown
unknown
Pentelic marble
Material
IG 14, 199*; LeErme 29–31; M&M no. 87
Hülsen no. 13; IG 14, 1159; Insc. Italiae 565; LeErme 75–77; M&M no. 79; Neudecker 64.4; Richter 80
unknownu
unknownw
Hülsen no. 64*; IG 14, 190*; LeErme 34–37
IG 14, 182*; LeErme 27–29
ErmeTib 236–39; IG 14, 1145; Insc. Italiae 560; Lippold 91 no. 528; Neudecker 66.14; Richter figs. 352, 354, 355
Bibliography
unknown
unknown
Vatican, Sala delle Muse, inv. no 279
Present location
/
unknown
unknown
Villa of Hadrian, early sixteenth century
Diogenes (62)r DIÄGENHS ISAKIÄU SINWPEUS
0.331 mq
Shaft width
Villa di Cassio, 1774–75
Provenience
Bias (61) BIAS PR(I)HNEUS ÄI PLEISTÄI ANÖRWPÄI KAKÄI
Subject (fig.) Inscription
60 Appendix A
unknown
unknown
Hülsen no. 18; IG 14, 1167; Insc. Italiae 569; LeErme 37–38; Richter 75 Hülsen no. 19; IG 14, 1168; Insc. Italiae 570; LeErme 77–79; M&M no. 76; Neudecker 64.5; Richter 209 no. 3
unknowny
unknownaa
qWidth
to Rome ca. 1550 by Julius III, now lost. of head inter tragos 0.186 m. rThus Ligorio (Taur. 23, fol. 52; see Palma Venetucci 1992b, fig. 30). Statius gives the ethnic as SINOPAIOS (ibid. fig. 31). Hülsen 1901 does not list this text. sHülsen (1901, no. 64*) does not note the square omicrons or theta. tThe reading of the patronymic varies among the copies made in the sixteenth century; some have a tiny omicron above the upsilon. Ligorio (Taur. 23, fol. 42) draws an upsilon on top of a sigma at the end of the second line; his command of the genitive of the third declension was never very strong. uTaken to Rome ca. 1550 (in Pighius’s list: Mandowski and Mitchell 1963, 127 no. 3), where Statius (1569) places it in the Medici Gardens near the villa of Julius III, but it had moved to Florence already by the end of that century. Now lost. vInscription: thus Ligorio in the Turin manuscript (Taur. 23, fol. 142); Naples manuscript (Cod. XIII.B.7, p. 414) and Ursinus (fol. 123r) correct the patronymic to DIOU. Hülsen (1901, no. 70*) does not reproduce the square omicrons but does refer to Ligorio’s drawing of them. wTaken to Rome ca. 1550 by Julius III; thereafter stolen and lost. xA fragmentary inscription once in the Lateran Museum preserving the letters IBUK, with characteristically ornate upsilon, was associated with this text by L. Moretti, “Erme acefale iscritte, edite e inedite,” ArchCl 25–26 (1973–74): 470. See also Palma Venetucci 1992a, 295. yMentioned by Accorsio, the portrait herm of Ibykos also appears in Pighius’s list and seems therefore to have been taken to Rome ca. 1550, presumably by Julius III. zLigorio shows a squared rho (which appears vaguely like a pi) in this line, but a curved rho in the next. aaTaken to Rome ca. 1550 by Julius III (in Pighius’s list: Mandowski and Mitchell 1963, 127 no. 3); thereafter in the Medici Gardens, near the villa of Julius III, and later transferred to Florence. Not found by Gori in 1727, nor by anyone else since.
pTaken
Church of San Marco where unknown Villa of M. Taplius Capito is thought to have been, 1503
Isokrates (67) ISÄKRATHSz ÖEÄDWRÄU AÖHNAIÄS
unknown
At Tivoli in the house of Moronti, 1503
Ibykos (66)x [IBUKÄS] FUTIÄU RHGINÄS
Appendix A / 61
Church of Santa Maria on road from Tivoli to Villa of Hadrian, 1503
Villa di Cassio, early sixteenth century
Villa di Cassio, 1774–75
unknown
Villa di Cassio, 1774–75
Kimon (69)cc KIMWN MILTIADÄU AÖHNAIÄS
Kleoboulos (70) KLEÄBÄULÄS LINDIÄS METRÄN ARIS TÄN
Kratippos (71)ee KRATIPPOS ASKIÄND[OU] MUTILEN[AIOS]
Lykourgos (72) LUKÄURGÄS LUKÄFRÄNÄS AÖHNAIÄS
Provenience
Karneades (68) KARNEADHS FILÄKWMÄU KURHNAIÄS
Subject (fig.) Inscription
unknown
unknowngg
0.320 mff
Pentelic marble
unknown
unknown
Material
Vatican, Galleria Lapidaris, inv. no. 7610 (Section XXIII)
unknown
Vatican, Sala delle Muse, inv. no. 320
unknowndd
unknownbb
Present location
ErmeTib 258; IG 14, 1178; Insc. Italiae 575; Richter 212
Hülsen no. 100*; IG 14, 221*; LeErme 103; M&M no. 84; Richter 283
ErmeTib 239–40; IG 14, 1174; Insc. Italiae 572; Lippold 3 no. 488a; Neudecker 66.19; Richter fig. 350
Hülsen no. 90*; IG 14, 218*; LeErme 101–3; Richter 102
Hülsen no. 20; IG 14, 1170; Insc. Italiae 571; LeErme 72–74; M&M no. 80; Neudecker 64.6; Richter 250 no. 9
Bibliography
/
unknown
0.326 m
unknown
unknown
Shaft width
62 Appendix A
Church of Santa Maria on road from Tivoli to Villa of Hadrian, 1503
Miltiades (74)hh MILTIADHS KIMWNÄS AÖHNAIÄS unknown
unknown
unknown
unknown
unknownii
unknown
Hülsen no. 30; IG 14, 1186; Insc. Italiae 576; LeErme 79–83; M&M no. 78; Neudecker 64.7; Richter 96jj
Hülsen no. 105*; IG 14, 224*; LeErme 39–40; M&M no. 87 add.; Richter 208
to Rome ca. 1550 by Julius III (in Pighius’s list: Mandowski and Mitchell 1963, 127 no. 3), where Statius (1569) places it in the Medici Gardens, near the villa of Julius III; later in the Aldobrandini Gardens. Now lost. cc Ligorio presents three different drawings of a portrait herm of Kimon. Two have round omicrons, one square; cf. Palma Venetucci 1992b, figs. 164 and 166 with fig. 165. dd Pighius ( Mandowski and Mitchell 1963, 127 no. 2) mentions a portrait of Kimon at Hadrian’s Villa but does not include it among those taken to Rome by Julius III ( Mandowski and Mitchell 1963, 127 no. 3). ee Ligorio’s text ( given here) mixes round and square omicrons in lines 1 and 2, respectively, and appears to restore the last letters of lines 2 and 3: Mandowski and Mitchell 1963, pl. 37b. Ursinus shows a complete text with all the omicrons square and the epsilon in Ligorio’s third line corrected to eta: Palma Venetucci 1992b, fig. 169. Hülsen 1901, as usual when he considers the text to be a Ligorio fake, does not show or mention as square either omicrons or thetas; see also Hülsen’s nos. 21, 25, 26, 29, 32, 37. ff I thank G. Filippi and R. S. Stroud for their assistance in acquiring this measurement. gg Material not published, and piece is now embedded in a wall 20 feet above the ground and not easily accessible, but photograph and Stroud’s observations do not preclude Pentelic marble. hh Inscription: thus Ligorio on one part of a manuscript page (Taur. 23, fol. 57) with a corrected square omicron in the patronymic; on another part of the same page he gives the patronymic as KIMWNOU. Cf. Palma Venetucci 1992b, figs. 131 and 133. ii Taken to Rome ca. 1550, where Statius (1569) places it in the Medici Gardens, near the villa of Julius III. Now lost. jj Richter 1965 cites only Ursinus and seems not to have known of the Ligorio drawings.
bb Taken
Villa of Hadrian, early sixteenth century
Lysias (73) LUSIAS KEFALÄU AÖHNAIÄS
Appendix A / 63
Villa di Cassio, 1774–75
Villa di Cassio, 1779
Villa dei Pisoni, 1503
Villa di Cassio, early sixteenth century
Villa di Cassio, ca. 1774–75
Perikles (76) PERIKLHS XANÖIPPÄU AÖHNAIÄS
Philemon (77) FILHMWN DAMWNÄS SURAKÄSIÄS
Phokion (78)oo FÄKIWN SÄFILÄU AÖHNAIÄS
Pittakos (79) PITTAKÄS URRA MUTILHNAIÄS KAIRÄN • GNWÖI
Provenience
Periander (75) PERIANDRÄS KUYELÄU KÄRINÖIÄS MELETH • PAN
Subject (fig.) Inscription
0.323 m
Pentelic marble
unknown
Vatican, Sala delle Muse, inv. no. 281
ErmeTib 242–43; IG 14, 1195; Insc. Italiae 582; Lippold 90 no. 527a; Neudecker 66.18; Richter fig. 368
Hülsen no. 159*;pp IG 14, 271*; LeErme 110–11; M&M no. 87 add.
Hülsen no. 43;nn IG 14, 1221; Insc. Italiae 587; LeErme 84–85; Neudecker 64.12; Richter 237 no. 2
Unknownmm
unknown
ErmeTib 259–60; IG 14, 1192; Insc. Italiae 580; Lippold 86 no. 525; Neudecker 66.35; Richter fig. 435
ErmeTib 240–42; IG 14, 1190; Insc. Italiae 578; Lippold 98 no. 531; Neudecker 66.15; Richter fig. 336
Bibliography
Vatican, Sala delle Muse, inv. no. 269
Vatican, Sala delle Muse, inv. no. 276
Present location
/
unknown
unknown
Pentelic marble
0.320 mll
unknown
Pentelic marble
Material
0.313 mkk
Shaft width
64 Appendix A
unknown
Pentelic marble
unknown
Tivoli, Palazzo Municipale
Hülsen no. 133*; IG 14, 250*; LeErme 51
ErmeTib 280–81; IG 14, 1196; Insc. Italiae 583; Neudecker 66.60; Richter fig. 368
ll Width
of head inter tragos 0.180 m. of head inter tragos 0.170 m. mmAlthough mentioned already by Accorsio, the portrait herm of Philemon does not appear in Pighius’s list and seems therefore not to have been taken to Rome as a part of the large collection. On the other hand, Ligorio ( Mandowski and Mitchell 1963, 128 no. 6) states that a herm of Philemon was taken to the villa of Julius III, and thence to the Vatican of Pius IV, where it was set together with portraits of Plato, Isokrates, Aristides of Smyrna, Diogenes, Sokrates, Hieron, Akibiades, and others in the “hemicyclo dell’atrio di Belvedere.” nnAlthough Hülsen 1901 accepts this as authentic, he neither reproduces nor notes the square omicrons. ooI give here the text in Ligorio’s Turin manuscript. ppHülsen 1901 also notes the version in the earlier Naples manuscript (Neap. fol. 413): FÄKIWNHS. This was supposedly corrected by Ligorio in the later manuscript based upon the edition by Ursinus, but even though he did remove the unhappy final -HS, the equally unhappy omicron is retained in both Ligorio versions of Phokion’s name. qqInscription: as the Berkeley herm, except as noted above, p. 27. Ligorio also records a herm of Plato that is discussed above, pp. 30–31. rr Ligorio shows this inscription on a headless herm. On a herm with a head he shows PTÄLEMAIÄS / ALEXAND / RINÄS / GRAMMATIKÄS / EFAISTIÄN[ÄS] / UIÄS: see IG 14, 251*; and Palma Venetucci 1992b, fig. 82. ( Here fig. 81.) Hülsen 1901 notes neither this variant nor the square omicrons in both.
kk Width
unknown
Ptolemy (81)rr PTÄLEMAIÄS ARISTÄNIKÄU GRAMMATIKÄS
Villa of Hadrian, early sixteenth century
0.322 m
Plato (80; cf. 21)qq Villa di Cassio, 1846 PLATWN ARISTWNÄS AÖHNAIÄS AITIA • ELÄME NW • ÖEÄS • ANAITIÄS • • YUCH DE • PASA AÖANATÄS
Appendix A / 65
Villa di Cassio, early sixteenth century
Villa di Cassio, 1774–75
Villa di Cassio, early sixteenth century
Villa di Cassio, 1774 or 1779vv
Villa di Cassio, 1774–75
Solon (83) SÄLWN EXEKESTIDÄU AÖHNAIÄS MHÖEN • AGAN
Speusippos (84) SPEUSIP PÄS EURUMEDÄN TÄS AÖH NAIÄS
Stesichoros (85)uu S]THSICÄR[ÄS E]UKLEIDÄ[U I]MERAIÄ[S
Thales (86)xx ÖALHS EXAMUÄU MILHSIÄS
Provenience
Sokrates (82)ss SÄKRATHS SÄFRÄNIS(KÄU) AÖHNAIÄS
Subject (fig.) Inscription
0.322 m
Pentelic marble
Pentelic marbleww
unknown
Pentelic marble
unknown
Material
Vatican, Sala delle Muse, inv. no. 333
Vatican, Sala delle Muse, inv. no. 327
unknown
Vatican, Sala delle Muse, inv. no. 266
unknown
Present location
ErmeTib 246–48; IG 14, 1163; Insc. Italiae 566; Lippold 20 no. 497a; Neudecker 66.16; Richter fig. 324
ErmeTib 282; IG 14, 1213; Insc. Italiae 585; Lippold, Gal. Lap. 84a; Richter 68
Hülsen no. 143;tt IG 14, 260*; LeErme 123–24; Richter 170
ErmeTib 243–46; IG 14, 1208; Insc. Italiae 584; Lippold 89 no. 526a; Neudecker 66.17; Richter fig. 329
IG 14, 261*; LeErme 118–21; M&M no. 82
Bibliography
/
(est.) 0.310 m
unknown
0.324 m
unknown
Shaft width
66 Appendix A
Villa di Cassio, midsixteenth century
Theophrastos (88, 89) ÖEÄFRASTÄS MELANTA ERESIÄS
0.315 m
unknown
unknownyy Hülsen no. 16; IG 14, 1163a (cf. 203*); Insc. Italiae 567; LeErme 48–51; Neudecker 64.11; Richter 98 no. 3
Hülsen no. 17; IG 14, 1165; Insc. (Pentelic?)zz Villa Albani, marble inv. no. 1034aaa Italiae 568; LeErme 126–29; M&M no. 143, pl. 55; Richter fig. 1022; Villa Albani 463–66
unknown
herm of Sokrates with square omicrons is known only from the Naples manuscript of Ligorio shown here (Neap. fol. 413). All other depictions have rounded omicrons and thetas, and the correct spelling of the names. Hülsen 1901 does not note this variant. tt Hülsen (1901, 143) concedes that this text may be authentic but does not list it as such in his catalogue. uu Shaft is broken on both sides. The first stroke preserved in line 2 is the upper diagonal of an upsilon (like those in Pittakos, Solon, and others), not of a sigma as Mancini states (Insc. Italiae 585). vv There is some confusion about the provenience of this piece, owing to the confusion by modern scholars about its inventory number and location. The piece is now, as given here, in the Sala delle Muse and bears the most recent inventory number 327. Richter 1965 places it in this room but gives it the number 273–-which, however, she also assigns to a Lykourgos. I suspect that her Stesichoros number is a typographical inversion. Nonetheless, the original provenience in the vicinity of Tivoli seems certain. wwMaterial not published, but autopsy suggests Pentelic. xx Note that an additional text—like those of the other Sages—may have appeared a little lower on the shaft, which is broken away less than 10 cm below the third line of extant text. A Thales head without a herm is shown by Ligorio in the Naples manuscript (Neap. fol. 413): Mandowski and Mitchell 1963, no. 83. yy Taken to Rome ca. 1550 (in Pighius’s list); now lost. zzIdentification based not on personal autopsy but upon appearance of marble in photograph. aaa The portrait of Theophrastos is reported in various private houses in Tivoli and Rome in the sixteenth century. It subsequently went to England and was in the house of a Dr. Mead, after whose death it was purchased by Cardinal Alessandro Albani (1692–1779) and returned to Rome to the Villa Albani (Torlonia), where it remains today.
ss The
Villa of Hadrian, early sixteenth century
Themistokles (87) ÖEMISTÄ KLHS NEÄKLEÄUS AÖHNAIÄS
Appendix A / 67
bbb Taken
Villa di Quintiliano, Tivoli, before 1550
Provenience
to Rome by Cardinal Giovanni Bellaio ca. 1550.
Timon (90) TIMONÄS TIMARCÄU APÄLLWN NEIKAIÄS
Subject (fig.) Inscription unknown
Shaft width unknown
Material unknownbbb
Present location Hülsen no. 151*; IG 14, 265*; LeErme 164–65
Bibliography
68 / Appendix A
appendix b TECHNICAL AND SCIENTIFIC ANALYSIS OF THE BERKELEY PLATO John Twilley
The objective of the program of examination and testing reported here was to attempt an interpretation of the past history of the marble through the independent perspective of physical and compositional analysis and thereby to suggest whether the herm is, in fact, an ancient artifact and whether the head and shaft can be said unequivocally to belong together. Tests that had previously been carried out served to demonstrate that the head and herm are carved of marble with the same Parian lychnitis origin, a source known to be active in the ancient world and to have become exhausted later (above, pp. 11–12). The objectives of the present testing were to go beyond that simple fact to explore the possibility that the herm may have been carved through reuse of, for example, an architectural element and, if not, to explain the circumstances of its survival.1 Sixteen discrete areas of the exterior surface were examined in detail (plate 2), with samples taken and analyzed. Surfaces were also examined microscopically with a view toward comparison of degrees of weathering.2 1. The full report, including detailed analyses, is on file and available at the Phoebe Apperson Hearst Museum of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. 2. The main analytical steps undertaken involved the following. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM ) of particulate samples was carried out in which the 69
70
/
Appendix B
First, however, examination of the sculpture using ultraviolet light demonstrated a wide variety of fluorescence behaviors on the surfaces of both head and shaft (plate 3) The strong and variable fluorescence of the shaft is characteristic of marbles that have been exposed to the uptake of organic matter from environmental sources. Additional contributions to the fluorescence behavior come from residues of materials that later testing has shown to be mortar remnants of several types. The treatment residues on the head also exhibit strong and variable fluorescence. However, the variations in fluorescence behavior there, like the variations in their visual appearance, do not correlate with any obvious compositional surfaces, undersides, or fracture sections were examined and elemental analysis carried out through the use of an associated X-ray spectrometer. Optical microscopy and SEM examination with elemental analyses of crosssections were undertaken on embedded fragments of surface residues that had been oriented so as to give a stratigraphic view. As a result of using nonstandard sample-preparation protocols, including strict avoidance of water, the cross-sections preserved evidence of soluble salts derived from magnesite cement in various locations. Cross-sections of the magnesite repair materials from the head were also examined and analyzed in order to compare with encrustations and mortar residues found on the surfaces. In some cases, chiefly those involving potentially ancient mortar residues, the cross-sections were reduced to thin sections for study by polarized-light microscopy. Individual phases in these sections were probed using Raman spectroscopy, which yielded confirmatory identifications for some of the detrital minerals but proved not to be very useful for secondary mineral formations because of a high fluorescence background. This is a typical problem with fine-grained or secondary minerals in Raman analysis. Subunits of some of the samples were crushed and mounted for polarizedlight microscopy as dispersed particulates in order to gain an impression of the quantities of the different species present. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) was used to confirm the compositions of some of the samples by distinguishing between possible polymorphs such as calcite and aragonite and between hydration states such as gypsum and hemihydrate. Surface-replica peels were taken from a few locations for possible examination and analysis of their residues in the SEM, but these were of low priority.
Appendix B
/
71
or microstructural variations. Laboratory testing has shown that deposits on the head that were sampled on the basis of their differing fluorescence behavior and appearance share the same compositional features. A thick orange patina on parts of the herm, including the interior of the right shoulder socket (plate 4 and fig. 91), has been shown to consist of calcium phosphate (hydroxylapatite), a widely underreported form of secondary mineralization encountered on calcareous antiquities from a variety of contexts around the world. In addition, there was strong microstructural evidence for the formation of the hydroxylapatite as a replacement mineral after calcite of the marble. Some thin residues of what appears to be rudimentary, preindustrial-age hydraulic mortar were found to contain abundant idiomorphic calcium carbonate with open tubular structures suggestive of the mineralization of fungal hyphae or lichen thallus residues. Despite attempts to locate calcium oxalate residues that are often associated with these organisms, no oxalate was detected. The herm exhibits abundant evidence of the dissolution effects of water from outdoor exposure on all surfaces, with a distinct trend in the intensity of those effects reaching a maximum on the upward-facing drainage surfaces: that is, those surfaces most exposed to meteoric water when the herm was standing upright. These effects are quite apparent on the victor’s ribbons (tainiai) that fall across the shoulders (figs. 92– 96). Similar features on the exposed marble of the head have been obliterated by acid treatment, but dislodging the surface deposits comprised of reaction products of the acid treatment and encrusting gypsum reveals a little evidence that the marble beneath the encrustation also experienced this weathering prior to the development of encrustations. The effects of the acid treatment (above, p. 9) were more severe for the portions of the marble surface that were exposed than for the encrusted areas that were intended to be stripped by the treatment. However, this unfortunate fact has meant that physical evidence preserved in these deposits may survive to be investigated. Analyses of the encrusting material on the head repeatedly demonstrated that it is comprised of stratified gypsum (calcium sulfate dihydrate)
72
/
Appendix B
and fluorite (calcium fluoride). The implications of this finding are that the head was first heavily encrusted with gypsum or plaster of paris and that the acid used in an attempt to remove it was hydrofluoric acid or a fluoride salt (plates 5 and 6, and fig. 97). The tests have not shown evidence of the former existence of a similarly heavy deposit of gypsum on the shaft, suggesting that the origins of the gypsum on the two parts may have been different or that they became separated and experienced different environments prior to being rediscovered. Gypsum can have natural sources or can arise in the burial environment from nearby gypsum plasterwork. Some gypsum residues could have resulted from taking molds of the sculpture. As a semisoluble mineral, gypsum from any source can migrate over time. No micromorphological evidence (such as air bubbles) was found for the direct application of gypsum plaster to the head, although much of the morphology was altered by reaction with the fluoride and thus less interpretable than would be desired. Gypsum, probably in the form of plaster of paris residue, was found in various places on the shaft. However, no generalized application of plaster or encrustation by gypsum, was found on the shaft like that that existed on the head at the time of the fluoride attack. The use of fluoride, probably in the form of dilute hydrofluoric acid, raises a question as to the timing of the attempted removal of the gypsum. Hydrofluoric acid was certainly known in the nineteenth century. Indeed, fluosilicates had already been advanced as candidates for the hardening and preserving of stone. However, fluosilicate was not involved in the removal attempt, and the free hydrofluoric acid had far fewer industrial uses in that era than it does now, raising questions as to whether it would have fallen into the hands of a nineteenth-century restorer. Therefore, we cannot rule out the possibility that this aggressive treatment was performed in the United States during the twentieth century, after the herm came into the university’s possession (see above, p. 29). A thorough microscopic search of the surface for pigment remains brought to light nothing other than the red-orange associated with the lettering.
Appendix B
/
73
Analyses of putative mortar remains in the phallus socket have brought to light the presence of traces of material that are consistent in composition with a lime mixture containing natural pozzolanic material (plate 7). Such mortars, which set partially by reaction of burnt silicates with water in the presence of lime, were used in the Roman period and prefigured the development of fully hydraulic or so-called portland cements. Although available in the nineteenth century and accordingly not proof of ancient origin, this material is at least consistent with Roman usage. When known modern residues such as magnesite cement occur together with this material, the modern material is observed to be outermost and thus later in its arrival. No modern portland cement was found in the shoulder or phallus sockets or as a contaminant elsewhere. In addition to comparisons that may be made between the herm and examples of ancient marble surfaces, it is useful to examine such contrasts as exist between this example and traits commonly encountered among forgeries of ancient marble sculpture. Examples are well known of marbles that have been distressed or patinated by a variety of chemical treatments. Usually such attempts on marble do not involve simple acids with highly soluble calcium salts (such as nitric or hydrochloric), as their use leads to a very unnatural smoothing or polishing of the surface that is at odds with the objective. Sulfuric, phosphoric, and oxalic acids have been used, resulting in semisoluble to highly insoluble reaction products that can be induced to remain on the surface. Such treatment serves the forger’s dual purpose of removing fine marble powder and stun marks left after finishing a sculpture that announce the recent shaping of the surface and of leaving behind a deposit of material that, in favorable cases, may resemble a natural burial deposit of some mineral. In most cases, these acids have naturally occurring counterparts, and the distinction between the products of artificial treatment and long-term natural exposure to environmental sources of these materials must be made on the basis of microstructural details and variations in the compositions of the products that reflect extremes of pH or reaction rate. For example, the 1960s saw large numbers of Cycladic forgeries pro-
74
/
Appendix B
duced with island marbles that were treated with sulfuric acid. Those examples do contain gypsum deposits on their surfaces intended to simulate weathering but have a characteristically eroded look that is quite distinct from the result of encrustation by gypsum from groundwater and quite distinct from the surfaces of both the head and shaft seen here. Hydrofluoric acid treatment has been used in recent years by Chinese forgers intent on simulating the appearance of softly weathered limestone sculpture of the third through sixth centuries C.E. However, this too has a very different appearance from that of the surface seen here. The origin of the universal presence of gypsum in the deposit on the head (whether it is a naturally acquired mineral deposit or an applied coating of plaster of paris) remains an unexplained feature of the Plato herm in spite of the laboratory work done to date. This interpretive difficulty is largely the result of the fluoride attack and of the ubiquitous magnesium chlorides from the reassembly cement. In the former case, the action of the fluoride on altering the diagnostically significant microstructure of the gypsum represents an unknown. In the latter, the pervasive saturation of all surface residues with magnesium chloride salt solution has served to promote reactions such as corrosion of modern iron particles contaminating the surface and recrystallization of the semisoluble gypsum. The best technical evidence for the antiquity of the head comes from the presence of apparent surface-weathering features beneath the gypsum and fluoride residues in areas that were less severely affected by the treatment. Examination of the tool marks remaining on the marble disclosed neither anachronisms in the means used to shape the stone nor any attempts at recutting or reinforcement of details. However, the attention that the inscription has received, including the taking of paper impressions, has led to a cleaner surface there than on some other parts of the herm. Some of the residues that are in the inscription— although not those in intimate contact with the marble—consist of magnesite cement residues, even in cases where the gray color differs from that of the magnesite used to mend the neck (fig. 98).
Appendix B
/
75
The presence of modern iron-corrosion spots among what are probably ancient residues of red iron oxides, applied as pigments in the lettering, confuses the situation with regard to the extent of surviving ancient color (plate 8). It should be noted that all the red is rustlike in color, the typical orange-red of hydrated iron oxides, rather than the deeper red typical of hematite iron oxide. The potential exists for the magnesium chloride solution to have promoted changes in both color and micromorphology of the fine-grained iron oxides over the decades of exposure to humidity variations since the reassembly work that introduced this material, perhaps further blurring the distinctions between pigment remnants and rust contamination (plate 9). One important idiosyncrasy of the letter cutting was observed and illustrated in this report that could provide a useful tool for comparison of this herm with other examples. Certain characters were observed to have two successive slightly offset incisions of differing depth, neither of which appears recent, resulting in an incised channel with a step along one side of its bottom (fig. 99). In general, the technical and scientific analyses of the Berkeley Plato have shown no evidence to suggest that it is not an authentic ancient piece and several items of evidence that support its authenticity.
This Page Left Intentionally Blank
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Abbreviations of titles of journals, and of standard collections of epigraphical inscriptions and of ancient vases, appearing in this bibliography and in the notes to this book are those found in the American Journal of Archaeology online at http:// www.ajaonline.org/index.php?ptype=page&pid=8. Abbreviations of the names of ancient authors and the titles of their works are those given in the frontmatter of the Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd edition, revised, ed. S. Hornblower and A. Spawforth (Oxford 2003), with minor and familiar variations. Ashmole, B. 1922. “Notes on the Sculptures of the Palazzo dei Conservatori.” JHS 42: 238–47. Bernoulli, J. J. 1901. Griechische Ikonographie. Volume 2. Munich. Bocconi, S. 1950. The Capitoline Collections. Rome. Boehringer, R. 1935. Platon: Bildnisse und Nachweise. Breslau. Bol, P. C., ed. 1989. Forschungen zur Villa Albani: Katalog der antiken Bildwerke. Volume 1. Berlin. Bowsky, M. W. B. 1989. “Epigrams to an Elder Statesman and a Young Noble from Lato Pros Kamara (Crete).” Hesperia 58: 115–29 Budde, L., and R. Nicholls. 1964. A Catalogue of the Greek and Roman Sculpture in the Fitzwilliam Museum. Cambridge. Burkert, W. 1993. Platon in Nahaufnahme. Lectio Teubneriana 2. Stuttgart. Chéhab, M. 1958. Mosaïques du Liban. Bulletin du Musée de Beyrouth 14. Beirut. Coffin, D. R. 2004. Pirro Ligorio, The Renaissance Artist, Architect, and Antiquarian. University Park. 77
78
/
Bibliography
Dillon, S. 2000. “Subject Selection and Viewer Reception of Greek Portraits from Herculaneum and Tivoli.” JRA 13: 21–40. ———. 2006. Ancient Greek Portrait Sculpture: Contexts, Subjects, and Styles. Cambridge. Emerson, A. 1903. “Greek Sculptures in California.” AJA 7: 97–98. Fehling, D. 1985. Die sieben Weisen und die frühgriechische Chronologie: Eine traditionsgeschichtliche Studie. Bern. Hamiaux, M. 1992. Musée du Louvre, Département des antiquités grecques, étrusques et romaines: Les sculptures grecques. Volume 2. Paris. Harrison, E. B. 1953. The Athenian Agora. Volume 1, Portrait Sculpture. Princeton. ———. 1965. The Athenian Agora. Volume 11, Archaic and Archaistic Sculpture. Princeton. Heckler, A. 1934. “Ein neues Platonbildnis in Athen und die Platonstatue Silanions: Ein Rekonstruktionsversuch.” PraktAkAth 9: 80–88. Helbig, W. 1886. “Über die Bildnisse des Platon,. JDAI 1: 71–78. ———. 1966. Führer durch die öffentlichen Sammlungen klassischer Altertümer in Rom. 4th ed. Volume 2, Die Städtischen Sammlungen. Tübingen. Herz, N. 2000. “The Classical Marble Quarries of Paros: Paros-1, Paros-II, and Paros-III.” In Schilardi and Katsonopoulou 2000 (q.v.), 27–32. Hoepfner, W. 2001. “Der parische Lichtdom.” Antike Welt 32: 491–506. von den Hoff, R. 1994. Philosophenporträts des Früh- und Hochhellenismus. Munich. Hülsen, C. 1901. “Die Hermeninschriften berühmter Griechen.” RömMitt 16: 130–36. ———. 1917. Römische Antikengärten des XVI. Jahrhunderts. Abhandlungen der Heidelberger Akademie der Wissenschaften 4. Heidelberg. Iandolo, A. 1935. Le memorie di un antiquario. Milan. [Published in German as A. Jandolo, Bekenntnisse eines Kunsthändlers (Berlin 1939).] Inscriptiones Graecae. Ed. G. Kaibel. Vol. 14, Siciliae et Italiae. Berlin 1890. Inscriptiones Italiae. Ed. G. Mancini. Volume 4, part 1. Rome 1952. Kaibel, G., ed. 1890. Inscriptiones Graecae. Volume 14, Siciliae et Italiae. Berlin. Kaltsas, N. 2001. EQNIKO ARCAIOLOGIKO MOUSEIO: Ta gluptav. Athens. Kephalidou, E. 1996. NIKHTHS: Eikonografikhv melevth tou arcaivou ellhnikouv aqlhtismouv. Thessaloniki. Korres, M. 2000. “Upovgeia latomeiva thˇ Pavrou.]” In Schilardi and Katsonopoulou 2000 (q.v.), 61–82. Krug, A. 1967. “Binden in der griechischen Kunst.” Ph.D. dissertation, University of Mainz. [Published Hösel 1968.]
Bibliography
/
79
Krumeich, R. 1997. Bildnisse griechischer Herrscher und Staatsmänner im 5. Jahrhundert v. Chr. Munich. ———. 2002 “Porträts und Historienbilder der klassischen Zeit.” In W.-D. Heilmeyer, ed., Die griechische Klassik: Idee oder Wirklichkeit, 235–36. Mainz. Kuniholm, P. I., N. H. Ramage, and A. Ramage. 2003. A Guide to the Classical Collections of Cornell University. Ithaca. Lamb, C. 1966. “Ligorio als Antiquar.” In Die Villa d’Este in Tivoli: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Gartenkunst, 86–90. Munich. Lippold, G. 1936. Die Skulpturen des vaticanischen Museums. Volume 3. Berlin. Lorenz, T. 1996. “Platon, Silanion und Mithridates.” In F. Blakolmer, ed., Fremde Zeiten: Festschrift für Jürgen Borchhardt 2: 65–73. Vienna. Mancini, G., ed. 1952. Inscriptiones Italiae. Volume 4, part 1. Rome. Mandowsky, E., and Charles Mitchell. 1963. Pirro Ligorio’s Roman Antiquities: The Drawings in MS XIII. B 7 in the National Library of Naples. London. Martin, R. P. 1998. “The Seven Sages as Performers of Wisdom.” In C. Dougherty and L. Kurke, eds., Cultural Poetics in Archaic Greece, 108–28. Oxford. Mavro, L. 1558. Le antichià della città di Roma. Venice. Michaelis, A. 1890. “Statuenhof im vaticanischen Belvedere.” Jahrbuch 5: 60–72. Miller, Stephen G. 2004. Ancient Greek Athletics. New Haven. ———. 2008. Plato at Olympia. Athens. Neudecker, R. 1988. Die Skulpturenausstattung römischer Villen in Italien. Mainz. Neumann, G. 1986. “Alkibiades.” AA, 103–12. Palagia, O. “Skopas of Paros and the ‘Pothos.’ ” In Schilardi and Katsonopoulou 2000 (q.v.), 219–26. Palma Venetucci, B., ed. 1992a. Le erme tiburtine e gli scavi del settecento. Uomini Illustri dell’Antichità 1.2. Rome. ———. 1992b. Pirro Ligorio e le erme tiburtine. Uomini Illustri dell’Antichità 1.1. Rome. Papini, M. 2002. “Der hadrianische Klassizismus.” In W.-D. Heilmeyer, ed., Die griechische Klassik: Idee oder Wirklichkeit, 659–62. Mainz. Pemberton, E. 1981 “Dedications by Alkibiades and Thrasyboulos.” BSA 76: 309 –13. Pollak, L. 1994. Römische Memoiren: Künstler, Kunstliebhaber und Gelehrte, 1893– 1943. Rome. Poulsen, F. 1951. Catalogue of Ancient Sculpture in the Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek. Copenhagen. Poulsen, V. 1954. Les portraits grecs. Copenhagen.
80
/
Bibliography
Richter, G. M. A. 1965. The Portraits of the Greeks. London. Riginos, A. S. 1976. Platonica: The Anecdotes concerning the Life and Writings of Plato. Leiden. Salza Prina Ricotti, E. 2001. Villa Adriana: Il sogno di un imperatore. Rome. Schefold, K. 1997. Die Bildnisse der antiken Dichter, Redner und Denker. 2nd ed. Basel. Schilardi, D., and D. Katsonopoulou, eds. 2000. Paria Lithos. Athens. Schreurs, A. 2000. Antikenbild und Kunstanschauungen des neapolitanischen Malers, Architeckten und Antiquars Pirro Ligorio (1513–1583). Cologne. Smith, A. H. 1904. A Catalogue of Sculpture in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, British Museum. London. Smith, R. R. R. 1990. “Late Roman Philosopher Portraits from Aphrodisias.” JRS 80: 127–54. ———. 1996. “Typology and Diversity in the Portraits of Augustus.” JRA 9: 31–47. Smutny, R. J. 1966. Greek and Latin Inscriptions at Berkeley. Berkeley and Los Angeles. Stewart, A. F. 1977. Skopas of Paros. Park Ridge. ———. 1990. Greek Sculpture: An Exploration. New Haven. Stuart-Jones, H. 1912. A Catalogue of the Ancient Sculpture in the Municipal Collection of Rome. Volume 1, Sculptures of the Museo Capitolino. Oxford. ———. 1926. A Catalogue of the Ancient Sculpture in the Municipal Collection of Rome. Volume 2, Sculptures of the Palazzo dei Conservatori. Oxford. Tagliamonte, G. 1990. “Guida archeologica alle ville romane.” In H. Mielsch, ed., La villa romana, 171–206. Florence. [Esp. pp. 186–89.] Themelis, P. 2004. PRWTOBUZANTINH ELEUQERNA. Volume 1. Athens. Trendall, A. D. 1953. “The Choephoroi Painter.” In G. E. Mylonas, ed., Studies Presented to David Moore Robinson, 2: 114–26. St. Louis. Trianti, I. 2002. “Ena nevo portraivto tou Plavtwna.” In ARCAIA ELLHNIKH GLUPTIKH: A evrwma sthn mnhvnh tou gl/pth Stevliou Triavnth, 157–69. Athens. Valavanis, P. 1990. “La proclamation des vainqueurs aux Panathénées.” BCH 114: 325–59. ———. 1991. “THNELLA KALLINIKE: Prozession von Panathenäensiegern auf der Akropolis.” AA, 487–98. Vierneisel, K. 1999. “Wie gross war Platons Statue in der Akademie?” In H. von Steuben, ed., Antike Porträts: Zum Gedächtnis von Helga von Heintze, 15–26. Möhnesee.
Bibliography
/
81
Viola, S. 1848. Tivoli nel decennio dalla deviazione del fiume Aniene. Rome. ———. 1850. Antichi monumenti scritti tiburtini posseduti ed illustrati. Rome. Volpi, C., ed. 1994. Il libro dei disegni de Pirro Ligorio all’Archivio di Stato di Torino. Rome. Voutiras, E. 1990. “A Funerary Epigram from Latos in Crete.” Hesperia 59: 669– 73. Winner, M., B. Andreae, and C. Pietrangeli, eds. 1998. Il Cortile delle Statue: Der Statuenhof des Belvedere im Vatikan—Akten des internationalen Kongresses zu Ehren von Richard Krautheimer, Rom, 21–23 Okt. 1992. Mainz. Wrede, H. 1982. Der Antikengarten der del Bufalo bei der Fontanen di Trevi. Mainz. ———. 1998. “Römische Antikenprogramme des 16. Jahrhunderts.” In Winner et al. 1998 (q.v.), 83–115. Zanker. P. 1995. The Mask of Socrates: The Image of the Intellectual in Antiquity. Berkeley and Los Angeles.
This Page Left Intentionally Blank
GENERAL INDEX
Athens and Athenians, 11, 36n.84, 39, 40n.91, 45, 51 athletes of war, 49n.126 Augustus, 12, 80
Accorsio, Mariangelo, 57n.d, 61n.y, 65n.mm Agathon, 48 Aischines, ix, 16, 18, 23n.50, 31, 31n.67, 57, fig. 52 Aischylos, ix, 16, 23n.50, 44n.106, 58, fig. 53 Akademy (Athens), vi, 37–40 and n.91, 46, 48 Alexander, ix, 19, 46, 53, 59n.e, fig. 54 Alkibiades, ix, 16–17, 30 and nn.63,66, 31nn.66,67, 33n.75, 58, 59n.h, fig. 55 Anacharsis, 19n.44 Andokides, ix, 17, 58, fig. 56 Anzio, Villa Adele, 2n.3 Apollo, Temple at Delphi, 21 arete, xiv Aristides of Smyrna, 65n.mm Aristogeiton, x, 17, 58, fig. 57 Aristophanes, xi, 16, 17, 18 and n.42, 28n.59, 30, 42, 58, 59n.m, figs. 58, 59 Aristotle, xi, xii–xiv, 17, 24 and n.53, 39n.91, 59, fig. 60 aryballos, 50, figs. 41, 42 Astylos of Kroton (Syracuse), 45n.116 Atalanta, 54
Baalbeck, 22n.48, figs. 17, 18 Berkeley, University of California, xiv, xv, xvi, 1 and n.1; Hearst Women’s Gymnasium, xiii, xv, 53 Bias, viii, x, 5n.12, 8 and n.16, 14n.32, 19, 20, 22 and n.48, 23, 24, 57n.c, 60, fig. 61 Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 2n.3 Brasidas, 46 Carrara, 12 Cheilon, 19, 20 Chersonnesos, 44, fig. 42 Cicero, 53 Corinth and Corinthians, 1n.2, 39n.90, 47 Cornell University, 2n.2, 79 Cretan Bull, 46, fig. 43 Damaretas of Messene, 35n.79 Delos, 51 and n.135, fig. 49 Delphi, 21, 43, 46n.118, 47, 49n.126
83
84
/
General Index
Demokritos Archaeometry Laboratory, 11, fig. 11 Diadoumenos, 42 Diogeneion (Athens), 51 Diogenes, 17, 60, 65n.mm, fig. 62 Dionysos, 33, 41 and n.97, 52 Elis and Eleans, 35n.79, 47 Emerson, Alfred, 1 and n.2, 2nn.3,5,6, 4n.9, 7n.13, 28 and n.60, 30, 78 Ephesos, 43n.105 Er, 54 Eudoxos, 20n.46 Euripides, x, 17 and n.40, 18, 23n.50, fig. 63 Favorinus, 34n.78, 38–40 fillet. See tainia Florence, 57n.d, 59n.n, 61nn.u,aa Gaius Memmius Threptos, 16 grave stele, 9, 43–44 and n.107, figs. 41 and 42 gymnasiarchos, 51–53 and n.144 gymnasion, 53 and n.142, 56 Hadrian, 19 and n. 43, 38–40 and nn.88–90, 79, fig. 16 head-band. See mitra Hearst, Phoebe Apperson, xv, 1–4 and nn.2,5,9 Heliopolis, 21 Herakleitos, x, 17, 18 and n.41, 23n.50, 60, fig. 64 Herakles, ix, 41 and n.96, 46, fig. 43 Hermaia, 51, 53n.144 Hermes, ix, 3n.5, 16, 41 and n.96, 51, 53 and n.142 Herodes Atticus, 39n.89 Hesiod, x, 17, 18, 23n.50, 60, fig. 65 Hieron, 65n.mm himantes, 34 Hippodameia, 42 Homer, 39 hydrofluoric acid, 9n.21, 72, 74 Hymettos, 11
Ibykos, x, 17, 23n.50, 61 and nn.x,y, fig. 66 Ikkos of Tarentum, 45n.116 iron oxide, 14n.33, 75 Isokrates, x, 17, 23n.50, 61, 65n.mm, fig. 67 Isthmia and Isthmian Games, 43, 46 and n.118, 49n.126 Jandolo, Fratelli, 2 and n.3, 3n.4, 28 and n.60 Julius III, 30, 59nn.h,k,l,n, 61nn.p,u,w,y,aa, 63nn.bb,dd,ii, 65n.mm Kalliope, 21 kalos, 47, fig. 45 Karneades, x, 17, 23n.50, 62, fig. 68 kekryphalos, 44 kerykeion, 51 Kimon, x, 17, 23n.50, 62, 63nn.cc,dd, fig. 69 Kleoboulos, x, 8n.15, 19, 20, 22n.48, 24, 57n.c, 62, fig. 70 kosmetes, 51–52 kottabos, 47, fig. 45 Kratippos, x, 17, 30, 31n.67, 62, fig. 71 Krison of Himera, 45n.116 Kritios Boy, 10n.25 Leoncinus, x, fig. 66 Ligorio, Pirro, viii–xi, 17–19 and nn.39–42, 28n.59, 30–33 and nn.65–68,75, 57nn.a,b, 59nn.g,h,i,o, 61nn.r,t,v, 63nn.cc,ee,hh,jj, 65nn.mm,oo-rr, 67nn.ss,xx Luna marble, 12 lychnites marble, 11 Lykeion (Athens), 38n.88, 40n.91, 48 Lykourgos, x, 28n.59, 57n.c, 62, 67n.vv, fig. 72 Lysias, x, 17, 18n.41, 19n.42, 24 and n.53, 30, 63, fig. 73
General Index
Makran Desert, 46 Mavro, Lucio, 31–32 and nn.69–72 Melos, 52 Mérida (Spain), 22n.49 Mesembria, 52 Michelangelo, 30 Miltiades, x, 17, 18n.41, 24 and n.53, 31n.67, 63, fig. 74 miltos, 14 and nn.33,34, 15, 27, 75 Mithradates, 34n.78, 40 and n.93, 79 mitra, 5, 7, 33, 44–45, 47, figs. 6, 40, 44, 97 Mouseia, 51, 53n.144 Muses, 40 Myson, 19n.44, 20 and n.46 Naples, 17, 30, 79 Nearchos, 46 Nemea and Nemean Games, xiii, xvi, 43, 46 and n.118, 47, 49n.126 New York Metropolitan Museum, xvi, 2n.3 Nike, ix, 42 and n.99, 46, 50, figs. 33– 35, 40, 48 Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek, xvi, 2n.3 Odysseus, 54 oil jar. See aryballos Olympia and Olympic Games, 35 and n.80, 42, 43, 45, 46n.118, 48, 49n.126 palaistra, ix, 40n.91, 48, 50, 51–52, figs. 46, 48, 49 Parian marble, 11–12 and nn.29–30, 25, 57n.c. See also lychnites Paros, 11, 78, 79 Pelops, 42 Pentelic marble, 25, 26, 11n.29, 57n.c, 58, 60, 62, 63n.gg, 64, 65, 66, 67 and n.ww Periander, x, 5n.12, 8 and nn.15,16, 19 and n.44, 22n.48, 23, 24, 25, 57n.c, 64, fig. 75 periagermos, 43 and n.104, 55
/
85
Perikles, x, 5n.12, 8 and nn.15,18, 10n.26, 19, 25n.55, 57n.c, 64, fig. 76 phallus (socket), viii, ix, 6, 8 and n.19, 13, 14n.32, 15, 32n.72, 33n.75, 51, figs. 7, 8, 51 Pheidias, 42 Philemon, x, 17, 30, 64 and n.mm, fig. 77 Philopoimen, 47 Phokion, x, 17, 19n.42, 23n.50, 31n.68, 64, 65 and n.pp, fig. 78 phyllobolia, ix, 43 and n.104, figs. 38, 39, 40 Pighius, Stephanus Vinandus, ix, x, 59nn.i,l,o, 61nn.u,y,aa, 63n.dd, 65n.mm, 67n.yy, figs. 56, 57, 60 Piraeus museum, 16 Pittakos, x, 8nn.15,17, 19, 20, 21, 22n.48, 23, 24 and n.52, 27, 28, 57n.c, 64, 67n.uu, fig. 79 Pius IV, 30 Pius V, 32 and n.73 Plato (herm at Tivoli), 25–29, 57n.c, 65, figs. 19–21, 80 Plutarch, 39nn.89,91 Polydamas of Skotoussa, 45n.116 Polykleitos, 42 Protagoras, 50 Ptolemy, 17, 55 and n.rr, fig. 81 Pythia, (Games), 46n.118 ribbon. See tainia Rome: Aldobrandini Gardens, 57n.d, 63n.bb; Belvedere courtyard, 30, 31,32, 33, 65n.mm, 79, 81; Bufalo house, 33n.75, 81; Capitoline museums, xv, xvi, 15–16 and n.36, 32 and n.73, 33, 77; Medici Gardens, 61nn.u,aa, 63nn.bb,ii; Porta Flaminia, 57n.d; St. Peter’s, 30; Theater of Pompey, 33; Vatican, xv, xvi, 19, 25n.55, 28, 29nn.61,62, 30–31, 32, 79; Villa Giulia, 30, 31, 59nn.h,k,l,n, 61nn.u,aa, 63nn.bb,ii, 65n.mm
86
/
General Index
San Francisco, 1, 4n.9 Satyros of Elis, 35nn.79,80 Satyrs, 41 and n.96 sakkos, 44n.111 scraper. See strigil Seven Sages, viii, 16–25 and nn.44–49, 55, 79, fig. 17 shoulder socket, 5–6, 7–8, 51, plate 4 Silanion, 34 and n.78, 38, 40, 78, 79 Silenos, 41 and n.96 Siphnos, 7n.14 Skione, 46 Sokrates, 17, 21, 30, 39, 46, 47, 48, 50, 54–55, 65n.mm, 66, 67n.ss, figs.17, 82 Solon, 16, 19, 20, 21, 22 and n.48, 24, 25 and n.54, 27, 28n.59, 57n.c, 66, 67n.uu, fig. 83 Sosistratos, 51 Sparta and Spartans, 20, 34, 50 sponge, 50 Speusippos, 17, 23n.50, 66, fig. 84 Statius, Achilles (d’Estaco), 33n.74, 59n.l, 61nn.r,u, 63n.ii Stesichoros, 57n.c, 66, 67n.vv, fig. 85 strigil, 50, figs. 41, 42 Syracuse, 45n.116, 47
Themistokles, 17, 23n.50, 67, fig. 87 Theodoros, 50 Theophrastos, 5n.12, 17, 18, 28n.59, 67 and n.aaa, figs. 88, 89 Theopompos of Thessaly, 45n.116 Thermopylai, 39n.89 Thucydides, son of Melesias, 50 Timoleon, 47 Timon, 18n.41, 31n.67, 68, fig. 90 Tivoli, v, vi, xvi, 16, 19–29, 57–68, 78, 79, 81, fig. 16; Anio River, 26; Hadrian’s Villa, 19 and n.43, 38 and n.88, 57 and n.b, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63 and n.dd, 65, 67, fig. 16; Ludovici Moderni, house of, 57n.d; Moronti, house of, 61; Palazzo Municipale, 29, figs. 19–21, 80; S. Maria (Empesone), Church of, 58, 59n.j, 62, 63; S. Marco, Church of, 59, 60, 61; Villa di Bruto, 19n.43, fig. 16; Villa di Cassio, 19 and n.43, 57n.b, 58, 60, 62, 64, 65, 66, 67, fig.16; Villa d’Este, 17; Villa de Pisoni, 57n.b, 58, 59n.j; Villa di Quintiliano, 68; Villa of M. Taplius Capito, 60, 61 Turin, 17
tainia, 6–7, 33, 41 and n.97, 42 and n.99, 43–47, 50–52, 71, figs. 6, 40, 45, 46, 47, 48 Telestas of Messene, 35n.79 Thales, 19, 20, 22 and n.48, 24 and n.52, 57n.c, 66, 67n.xx, fig. 86 Thasian marble, 57n.c
Ursinus, Fulvius, 30n.66, 31n.67, 61n.v, 66nn.ee,jj, 65n.pp, fig. 71 Wheeler, Benjamin Ide, 1, 2n.2, 3n.6 Zeus-Ammon, 41 and n.96 Zeus Hypsistos, 16
INDEX OF ANCIENT SOURCES
Aelian Varia Historia 4.9
46n.118
Anth.Pal. 15.44
44n.108
Aristophanes Ranae 392 Thesmoph. 257 Arrian Indica 42.9
45n.113
Cicero Atticus 1.4, 1.8, 1.9 4.16
53n.143 53n.144
Clemens Alexandrius Paedagogus 2.8.72
43n.104
45n.117
Anonymous Prolegomena Philosophiae Platonicae 2.35
[Apuleius] de Dogmate Platonis 1.4 1.15
Athenaeus 12.535C
Diogenes Laertius 1.30 20n.46 3.3 19, 24, 25, 34, 41, 48, 57, 62 39n.91 3.4 36n.84 3.25 34n.78, 40n.93
35n.81 46n.118
42n.103 Euripides Bacch. 833 Hecuba 924
44n.110
47
87
44n.109 44n.109
88
Historia Augusta Hadian 16.7 16.11 26.5 Homer Iliad 4.137 IG 14 150* 159* 182* 190* 199* 203* 218* 221* 224* 250* 260* 261* 265* 271* 1128 1130 1131a 1134 1136 1138 1140 1145 1159 1163 1163a 1165 1167 1168 1170 1174 1178 1186 1190 1192
/
Index of Ancient Sources
40n.92 39n.89 38n.88
44n.108 18n.41 58 and n.h 59 60 60 60 68 62 62 63 65 66 66 68 64 57 58 58 58 58 59 58 60 60 66 67 67 61 61 62 62 62 63 64 64
1195 1196 1208 1213 1221 Inscriptiones Italiae 4:1 550 552 553 554 556 557 558 560 565 566 567 568 569 570 571 572 575 576 578 580 582 583 584 585 587
64 65 66 66 64 4n.7 57 58 58 58 58 59 58 60 60 66 67 67 61 61 62 62 62 63 64 64 64 4n.7, 65 66 66 64
Lucian Philopseudes 18
420n.100
Pausanias 5.11.1 5.15.12 6.4.5
42n.102 47 42n.101
Philostratos Soph. 1.8
39n.90
Index of Ancient Sources
Pindar O 9.84 9.91–94 I 5.62 N 4.81 8.15 Plato Alcibiades Maior 107A 108B 124B 129A 132C Alcibiades Minor 145D Apology 36D Charmides 159C 165A 164E–169E Cratylus 413A–B 414B Euthydemus 271C Euthyphron 1A Gorgias 464B 465B 517B–518 523D Hipparchus 228E Hippias Maior 281C 295C Hippias Minor 373C–374B
45n.114 43n.104 45n.114 11 and n.28 45n.114
41n.131 41n.131 21 21 21 49n.130 45 49nn.130,131 21 21 49n.129 49n.127 49n.128 48 49n.124 49n.124 49n.124 50n.134 21 21 49nn.127 and 131 49nn.127 and 131
/
89
Laws 729D 764C–D 795B–796 807C 814D–E 819B 822A 830A–B 832E–834D 840A–B 828C Letters 350B Meno 94C Phaedrus 236B 245C 256B Philebus 22E 41B 45E Protagoras 335E 342C 343A 343C 350E Republic 338C 403E–404B 410C–D 411C–412A 416D 422B 441E 452A 456C–457A 465D–466A 521D 525B 535D 544A
45 49n.123 50n.132 45 50n.132 49nn.130 and 131 49n.127 49n.130 49n.126 45n.116 49n.123 45 50n.133 45 13 45 49n.130 49n.131 21 45n.116, 49n.127 34 20 49n.131 49n.131 45n.116 49n.126 49n.123 49n.123 49n.126 49nn.126 and 129 49n.123 49n.125 49n.125 45 49n.126 49n.126 49n.123 49n.131
90
Republic (continued) 548C 583B 617E 621C–D Theaetetus 148C 162B 232D Timaeus 20E 88C Pliny NH 36.14 Plutarch Moralia 52E 148C
/
Index of Ancient Sources
49n.123 45 54 54 49n.127 50n.135 50n.133 21 49n.123
12n.29
44n.108 19n.44
271C 734F–735C 945F 949F 955A Philopoemen 21.3 Timoleon 8.3
39n.89 39n.89 39n.89 39n.89 39n.89
47n.120
Suda, s.v. Fabwri ¸noˇ
319n.91
47
Thucydides 4.121
46
Xenophon Symposium 5.9
47
INDEX OF COLLECTIONS CITED
Agrigento, Museo archeologico
no. R178/a
50, fig. 48
Athens, Agora Museum
no. S 586
7n.14
———, National Museum:
no. 385 no. 3728 no. 20046 no. 20048
fig. 50 7n.14 fig. 34 fig. 33
Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery
no. 48.2712
44n.111
Berkeley, Phoebe Apperson Hearst Museum of Anthropology
figs. 1–10
Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Antikensammlung
no. 300
figs. 25–27
no. F 4221
fig. 39
Boston Museum of Fine Arts
no. 10.181
fig. 46
Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum
no. 15
27n.58, 35, 36– 37, figs. 28–30
Chersonnesos Archaeological Museum
44
fig. 42
Copenhagen, Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek
no. I.N. 2553
37, fig. 31
Cornell, Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art,
74.074.007
44n.106
Florence, Uffizi Gallery,
91
92
/
Index of Artifacts
Sala delle iscrizioni
no. 280
58, figs. 58–59
London, British Museum
no. E 312
42n.99
no. 548 no. 2420
37, fig. 32 fig. 36
Nessebar Archaeological Museum
no. 1401
52n.139, fig. 51
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art,
no. 79.11.9
figs. 38, 47
no. CA 1139 no. G 139–140 no. G 411 no. G 502 no. G 526 no. K 544 no. MA 436
fig. 44 fig. 45 41n.97 fig. 35 fig. 43 fig. 41 19, 58, 59nn.e,f, fig. 54 fig. 37
Munich, Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyptotheck
Paris, Louvre
MNC 706 Rome, Capitoline Museum
MC 263 MC 288 MC 405 MC 1160
———, Vatican Museum Galeria Lapidaris Sala delle Muse
Villa Albani
no. 7610 no. 266 no. 269 no. 276 no. 279 no. 281 no. 320 no. 327 no. 333 no. 1034
Tivoli, Palazzo Municipale Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum
16 and n.36, figs. 13–14 32, 41n.97, figs. 23–24 16 and n.36, figs. 13–14 59n.h 62, fig. 72 66, fig. 83 64, fig. 76 64, fig. 75 60, fig. 61 64, fig. 79 62, fig. 70 66, fig. 85 66, fig. 86 67 and n.aaa, figs. 88–89 25–29, figs. 19– 21, 80
no. IV.769
fig. 40
Figure 1. Full frontal view of the Berkeley Plato. (Phoebe Apperson Hearst Museum of Anthropology, inv. no. 8-4213; photograph © PAHMA)
Figure 2. The face and the first line of the inscription of the Berkeley Plato. (Phoebe Apperson Hearst Museum of Anthropology, inv. no. 8-4213; photograph © PAHMA)
Figure 3. The back of the head of the Berkeley Plato. (Phoebe Apperson Hearst Museum of Anthropology, inv. no. 8-4213; photograph © PAHMA)
Figure 4. (above left) Right profile of the head and side of the shoulder of the Berkeley Plato. (Phoebe Apperson Hearst Museum of Anthropology, inv. no. 8-4213; photograph © PAHMA) Figure 5. (above right) Left profile of the head and side of the shoulder of the Berkeley Plato. (Phoebe Apperson Hearst Museum of Anthropology, inv. no. 8-4213; photograph © PAHMA) Figure 6. ( left) Drawing of the left profile of the Berkeley Plato, showing tainia draped over the top of the head and down onto the shoulders, held in place by mitra. (Drawing by Erin Babnik)
Figure 7. Shaft of the Berkeley Plato, with the phallus socket still plastered. (Phoebe Apperson Hearst Museum of Anthropology, inv. no. 8-4213; photograph © PAHMA)
Figure 8. Shaft of the Berkeley Plato with the phallus socket cleaned, 2002. (Phoebe Apperson Hearst Museum of Anthropology, inv. no. 8-4213; photograph © PAHMA)
Figure 9. Broken neck surface of the head of the Berkeley Plato. (Phoebe Apperson Hearst Museum of Anthropology, inv. no. 8-4213; photograph © PAHMA)
Figure 10. Broken neck surface of the shaft of the Berkeley Plato. (Phoebe Apperson Hearst Museum of Anthropology, inv. no. 8-4213; photograph © PAHMA)
Figure 11. Samples of Berkeley Plato head and neck tested by the Demokritos Archaeometry Laboratory and plotted on ancient quarry fields.
Figure 12. Pseudo–Plato portrait with modern inscription. (Capitoline Museum, inv. no. 263; author’s photograph)
Figure 13. Right-side view of Capitoline no. 263, showing that the nose and everything below the ear and beard are modern. (Author’s photograph)
Figure 14. Pseudo–Plato portrait with modern inscription. (Capitoline Museum, inv. no. 405; author’s photograph)
Figure 15. Right-side view of Capitoline no. 405, showing that the back of the head, the bottom of the beard, the tresses, and the whole of the bust are modern. (Author’s photograph)
Figure 18. Detail of Bias on the Baalbek Seven Sages mosaic. The inscription reads: BIAS FROM PRIENE: MOST MEN ARE BAD. (Chéhab 1958, pl. 18)
Figure 16 (top left). Map of the Tivoli area, with the sites of the Villa di Cassio and the Villa di Bruto marked, north of Hadrian’s Villa. (Detail from map by Cabral and Del Re, 1778; W. L. MacDonald and J. A. Pinto, Hadrian’s Villa and Its Legacy [ New Haven 1995], fig. 12) Figure 17 ( bottom left). Mosaic of the Seven Sages and Sokrates from a villa near Baalbek. Surrounding Kalliope, the Muse of epic poetry and eloquence, and the oldest and wisest of the Muses, are—from the top and proceeding clockwise—Sokrates, Cheilon, Pittakos, Periander, Kleoboulos, Bias, Thales, and Solon. (Chéhab 1958, pl. 15)
Figure 19 ( left). Three-quarter view showing the front and the left side of a herm of Plato in the Palazzo Municipale, Tivoli. Note the horizontal cutting on the side. (Author’s photograph) Figure 20 ( below). Detail of the neck of the Plato herm at Tivoli, showing worked contact surface for attachment of the head. (Author’s photograph)
Figure 21. Plato portrait-herm shaft, Tivoli, Palazzo Municipale, showing inscription on front. (Neudecker 1988, 66.18)
Figure 22. Pirro Ligorio’s drawing of various herms. (Neap. fol. 413; Palma Venetucci 1992b, fig. 13)
Figure 23. Front view of pseudo– Plato portrait herm, Capitoline 288. (Author’s photograph)
Figure 24. Right side of pseudo– Plato portrait herm, Capitoline 288. (Author’s photograph)
Figure 25 (right). Inscribed portrait herm of Plato in Berlin. (Staatliche Museen, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Antikensammlung, inv. no. 300; museum photograph) Figure 26 ( below left). Left side of the head of the Berlin Plato. (Staatliche Museen, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Antikensammlung, inv. no. 300; museum photograph) Figure 27 ( below right). Right side of the head of the Berlin Plato. (Staatliche Museen, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, Antikensammlung, inv. no. 300; museum photograph)
Figure 28 ( left). Portrait of Plato in Cambridge. (Fitzwilliam Museum, inv. no. 15; museum photograph) Figure 29 ( below left). Left side of the Cambridge Plato. (Fitzwilliam Museum, inv. no. 15; museum photograph) Figure 30 ( below right). Right side of the Cambridge Plato. (Fitzwilliam Museum, inv. no. 15; museum photograph)
Figure 31(above). Right side of Plato portrait in Copenhagen. (Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek, inv. no. I.N. 2553; photograph by Claus Grønne) Figure 32 ( left). Portrait of Plato in Munich. (Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek, inv. no. 548; photograph by Koppermann)
Figure 33. Nike holds a ribbon (tainia) for a victor in wrestling. Panathenaic amphora, 363/2 b.c. (Athens, National Museum, inv. no. 20048; photograph © Treasury of Archaeological Receipts)
Figure 34. Nike and an assistant prepare to tie a ribbon (tainia) on the victor in a pankration. Panathenaic amphora, 360/59 b.c. (Athens, National Museum, inv. no. 20046; photograph © Treasury of Archaeological Receipts)
Figure 35 (top right). Nike holds out a ribbon (tainia) to a runner at the start of a race. Red-figure krater, fourth century b.c. (Paris, Louvre, inv. no. G 502; photograph © Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource) Figure 36 ( bottom right). A young victor with ribbons (tainias) already around his bicep and thigh has another tied around his head by a judge. In his hand he holds some of the leaves thrown at him in the phyllobolia during his victory lap, or periagermos. To the left another judge announces the victor’s name. Red-figure hydria, ca. 500 b.c. ( Munich, Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek, inv. no. 2420)
Figure 37. A herald, with a trumpeter at right, announces the name of a victor who stands before him with a palm branch in his hand, a ribbon (tainia) on his shoulder, and a crown in his hair. A young man with a tainia on his head runs off to the left, perhaps a portrayal of the same athlete during his periagermos. Panathenaic amphora of the Nikomachos Series, 340/39 b.c. (Paris, Louvre, inv. no. MNC 706; photograph by Herve Lewandowski © Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource) Figure 38 (top right). A victorious athlete with ribbons around one and perhaps both thighs and his head holds leaves from the phyllobolia in each hand while a judge prepares to tie yet another ribbon around his head. Red-figure tondo, ca. 490 b.c. For one side of the exterior of this kylix, see below, fig. 47. (New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 79.11.9: Purchase, Mr. and Mrs. Martin Fried Gift, 1979; David L. Klein, Jr., Memorial Foundations, Inc., and Stuart Tray Gifts, 1978; Gift of Dietrich von Bothmer, 1980; Classical Purchase Fund, 1988; Gift of Elizabeth Hecht, 1989) Figure 39 ( bottom right). A victorious athlete with ribbons around both arms, both thighs, and his waist holds leaves from the phyllobolia in his hands (partly broken away) and wears a victory crown on his head. Red-figure tondo in Berlin. (Staatliche Museen, inv. no. F 4221; museum photograph)
Figure 40. A victorious athlete with a tainia and a mitra around his head holds leaves from the phyllobolia in each hand while Nike approaches with even more leaves. Red-figure pelike by the Painter of Louvre G 539, ca. 410 b.c. (Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, inv. no. IV.769; museum photograph)
Figure 41. Depiction of the tomb of a victorious athlete. The strigil and aryballos on the stele are standard parts of the athlete’s gear. The ribbon (tainia) tied around the stele, another on the steps of the monument, and the crown in the hand of the youth on the right are all tokens of the deceased’s athletic success. Lucanian pelike, ca. 350 b.c. (Paris, Louvre, inv. no. K 544; photograph © Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource)
Figure 42. Late Classical–Early Hellenistic grave stele of Hermodotos son of Alkimos, with strigil and aryballos depicted on front. (Chersonnesos Museum; author’s photograph)
Figure 43 (top right). Scene of Herakles and the Cretan Bull with Nike about to add another tainia to one already on the head of the victorious Herakles. Red-figure krater, fourth century b.c. (Paris, Louvre, inv. no. G 526; photograph by M. and P. Chuzeville © Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource) Figure 44 ( bottom right). A youth reclining at a table on which stands a kantharos. A tainia and a mitra are on his head; a crown is in his right hand, and an olive sprig is in his left. Red-figure Boeotian kantharos, 450–430 b.c. (Paris, Louvre, inv. no. CA 1139; photograph by M. and P. Chuzeville © Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource)
Figure 45. A reclining youth playing kottabos, holding a kylix in each hand. A flute case hangs on the wall, and there is a tainia on his head. Inscriptions: EURUPTOLEMOSKALOS (around the edge of the tondo at the top), KAL- (upper cup, interior); KALOS (lower cup, exterior), OPAISKALOS (on tainia). Red-figure tondo by Apollodoros, ca. 500 b.c. (Paris, Louvre, inv. no. G 139-140; photograph © Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource)
Figure 46. An athlete in the palaistra has received tainias on his head and right bicep and awaits a third from a himation-clad older bearded man (trainer? judge?). At the left, two older men seem to debate whether the tainia that one of them holds should also be awarded to the young man. Red-figure kylix by the Euainon Painter, ca. 460 b.c. (Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, inv. no. 10.181 [ James Fund and by special contribution]; photograph © 2003 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)
Figure 47. Two athletes receive tainias from judges or trainers. Red-figure kylix, ca. 490 b.c. For the interior, see fig. 38 above. (New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, inv. no. 79.11.9)
Figure 48. On the right, an athlete with a tainia on each arm is about to place a crown on a herm of Hermes. On the left, Nike approaches with a tainia for the herm. Red-figure krater, ca. 430 b.c. (Agrigento, Museo Archeologico, inv. no. R178/a; museum photograph)
Figure 49. Headless herm of the later second century b.c. in the palaistra of Delos, with inscriptions defaced. (Author’s photograph)
Figure 50. Portrait herm of the kosm;t;s Sosistratos, a.d. 141/2. (Athens, National Museum, inv. no. 385; photograph © Treasury of Archaeological Receipts)
Figure 51. Herm of Hellenistic date from ancient Mesembria (mod. Nesebar), with phallus, shoulder stubs, and ribbon (tainia), carved from single block of marble. (Nesebar Archaeological Museum, inv. no. 1401; museum photograph)
Figure 52. Aischines herm inscription as copied by Pirro Ligorio. (Taur. 23, fol. 74; Palma Venetucci 1992b, 108 fig. 181)
Figure 53. Aischylos herm inscription by Ligorio. (Taur. 23, fol. 417; Palma Venetucci 1992b, 136 fig. 234)
Figure 54. Azara Alexander. (Paris, Louvre, inv. no. MA 436; photograph © Réunion des Musées Nationaux / Art Resource)
Figure 55. Alkibiades herm inscription by Ligorio. (Taur. 23, fol. 81; Palma Venetucci 1992b, 93 fig. 146)
Figure 56. Andokides herm inscription by Ligorio. ( Mandowsky and Mitchell 1963, fig. 38b)
Figure 57. Aristogeiton herm inscription by Ligorio. ( Mandowsky and Mitchell 1963, fig. 38b)
Figure 58. Aristophanes herm inscription by Ligorio. (Taur. 23, fol. 44; Palma Venetucci 1992b, 100 fig. 161)
Figure 59. Aristophanes herm inscription in the Uffizi Gallery. (Sala delle Iscrizioni, inv. no. 280; photograph T. Ventresco)
Figure 60. Aristotle herm inscription by Pighius. ( Mandowsky and Mitchell 1963, fig. 39b)
Figure 61. Bias portrait herm in the Vatican. (Sala delle Muse, inv. no. 279; Rome, Musei Vaticani, Archivio Fotografico)
Figure 62. Diogenes herm inscription by Ligorio. (Taur. 23, fol. 52; Palma Venetucci 1992b, 28 fig. 30)
Figure 63. Euripides herm inscription by Ligorio. (Taur. 23, fol. 78; Palma Venetucci 1992b, 34 fig. 44)
Figure 64. Herakleitos herm inscription by Ligorio. (Taur. 23, fol. 42; Palma Venetucci 1992b, 75 fig. 119)
Figure 65. Hesiod herm inscription by Ligorio. (Taur. 23, fol. 142; Palma Venetucci 1992b, 30 fig. 36)
Figure 66. Ibykos herm inscription by Leoncinus. (Sen. fol. 23; Palma Venetucci 1992b, 38 fig. 52)
Figure 67. Isokrates herm inscription by Ligorio. (Taur. 23, fol. 72. Palma Venetucci 1992b, 78 fig. 125)
Figure 68. Karneades herm inscription by Ligorio. (Taur. 23, fol. 68; Palma Venetucci 1992b, 73 fig. 113)
Figure 69. Kimon herm inscription by Ligorio. (Taur. 23, fol. 70; Palma Venetucci 1992b, 102 fig. 165)
Fig. 70. Kleoboulos portrait herm in the Vatican. (Sala delle Muse, inv. no. 320; Rome, Musei Vaticani, Archivio Fotografico)
Figure 71 (above). Kratippos herm inscription by Fulvius Ursinus. (1606, pl. 1; Palma Venetucci 1992b, 103 fig. 169)
Figure 72. Lykourgos portrait herm in the Vatican. (Galleria Lapidaris, inv. no. 7610; Rome, Musei Vaticani, Archivio Fotografico)
Figure 73. Lysias herm inscription by Ligorio. (Taur. 23, fol. 326; Palma Venetucci 1992b, 39 fig. 56)
Figure 74. Miltiades herm inscription by Ligorio. (Taur. 23, fol. 57. Palma Venetucci 1992b, 80 fig. 131)
Figure 75. Periander portrait herm in the Vatican. (Sala delle Muse, inv. no. 276; Rome, Musei Vaticani, Archivio Fotografico)
Figure 76. Perikles portrait herm in the Vatican. (Sala delle Muse, inv. no. 269; Rome, Musei Vaticani, Archivio Fotografico)
Figure 77. Philemon herm inscription: sketch by Ligorio. (Ottob. 2970, fol. 21v; Palma Venetucci 1992b, 85 fig. 141)
Figure 78. Phokion herm inscription by Ligorio. (Taur. 23, fol. 65; Palma Venetucci 1992b, 110 fig. 185)
Figure 79. Pittakos portrait herm in the Vatican. (Sala delle Muse, inv. no. 281; Rome, Musei Vaticani, Archivio Fotografico)
Figure 80. Plato portraitherm inscription as copied by R. J. Smutny. (Tivoli, Palazzo Municipale; Smutny 1966, pl. 2)
Figure 81. Ptolemy herm inscription by Ligorio. (Taur. 23, fol. 143. Palma Venetucci 1992b, 51 fig. 82)
Figure 82. Sokrates herm inscription by Ligorio. (Neap., fol. 413; Mandowsky and Mitchell 1963, fig. 50a)
Figure 83. Solon portrait herm in the Vatican. (Sala delle Muse, inv. no. 266; Rome, Musei Vaticani, Archivio Fotografico)
Figure 84. Speusippos herm inscription by Ligorio. (Taur. 23, fol. 2; Palma Venetucci 1992b, 123 fig. 215)
Figure 85. Stesichoros portrait herm in the Vatican. (Sala delle Muse, inv. no. 327; Rome, Musei Vaticani, Archivio Fotografico)
Figure 86. Thales portrait herm in the Vatican. (Sala delle Muse, inv. no. 333; Rome, Musei Vaticani, Archivio Fotografico)
Figure 87. Themistokles herm inscription by Ligorio. (Taur. 23, fol. 87; Palma Venetucci 1992b, 49 fig. 77)
Figure 88. Theophrastos herm inscription and head by Ligorio. (Taur. 23, fol. 118; Palma Venetucci 1992b, 127 fig. 222)
Figure 89. Theophrastos portrait herm in the Villa Albani. (inv. no. 1034; photograph © Amministrazione Principe Torlonia)
Figure 90. Timon herm inscription by Ligorio. (Taur. 23, fol. 82; Palma Venetucci 1992b, 164 fig. 259)
Figure 91. Location 2: detail of the interior of the right shoulder socket below and to the left of the iron pin socket, showing dense, somewhat glossy deposit or altered zone on the marble surface shown in plate 4. (Photograph © J. Twilley)
Figure 92. Well-advanced grain-boundary dissolution in the concavity created near the end of the right ribbon: stereo pair, × 6.6. (Photograph © J. Twilley)
Figure 93. Grain-boundary dissolution in the concavity of the left ribbon: stereo pair, × 6.6. (Photograph © J. Twilley)
Figure 94. Early stages of dissolution-roughening of the left chest: stereo pair, × 6.6. (Photograph © J. Twilley)
Figure 95. Drill marks in the channel under the right ribbon, viewed from below. (Photograph © J. Twilley)
Figure 96. Drill marks in the channel under the left ribbon, viewed from below. (Photograph © J. Twilley)
Figure 97. Location 7: continuous layer of reaction-product scale in the recess between the mitra and the tainia: stereo pair, × 6.6. (Photograph © J. Twilley)
Figure 98. Location 13: cream mortar atop gray residues in the incision of the first epsilon of ELOMENW in line 4, and smooth cream layer on marble: stereo pair, × 6.6. (Photograph © J. Twilley)
Figure 99. Location 14: doubly incised line with gray residue in the deeper of the pair of incisions at the bottom-right corner of the theta of QEOS in line 5: stereo pair, × 6.6. (Photograph © J. Twilley)
Plate 1. Detail of lines 7 and 8 of the inscription on the front of the shaft of the Berkeley Plato, showing traces of red pigment (miltos) in the cuttings of the letters, frequently beneath later encrustations. (Author’s photograph)
Plate 2. Overall views of the front and right side of the Berkeley Plato, with locations of samples indicated. (Photograph © J. Twilley)
Plate 3. Overall views of the Berkeley Plato with ultraviolet light. (Photograph © J. Twilley)
Plate 4. Location 2: interior of right shoulder socket with traces of iron in dowel hole; compare fig. 91 below. (Photograph © J. Twilley)
Plate 5. Location 8: detail of conditions on the top of the head resulting from acid treatment, with uniform glossy yellow scale and bare patches. (Photograph © J. Twilley)
Plate 6. Location 9: detail of conditions on the top of the head resulting from acid treatment, with uniform clear yellow crust. (Photograph © J. Twilley)
Plate 7. Location 11: phallus socket with frontal illumination, showing multilayered deposits, including a gray sandy accretion and a tan to cream-colored mortarlike material both within the socket toward the top and outside the top and sides of the socket. (Photograph © J. Twilley)
Plate 8. Location 14: rust concretions occurring both beneath and on top of the gray residue in the upper-right corner of the theta of QEOS in line 5: stereo pair, × 15. (Photograph © J. Twilley) Plate 9. Location 16: gray sandy accretion over orange pigment in the first alpha of PASA in line 7: stereo pair, × 6.6. (Photograph © J. Twilley)