DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.1118#0614
953 THESEUS RECOVERS RING WITH AMPHITRITE'S AID
Theseus 901s Vase', by Kleitias and Ergotimos. On none of the vase paintings
""\viti, however, is the ring itself in evidence, and we seem justified in concludino-
Amphi- that the same omission had occurred in Mikon's masterpiece. Neither ic
trite s aid. ^
this essential feature of the tale so much as mentioned by Bacchylides
whose rediscovered ' paean' is the latest contribution to the literature of
the subject.
From the point of view of Ancient Religion the most suggestive
feature is the prominence given to the female divinity Amphitrite, whose
consort Poseidon is left in the background. At the same time the equiva-
lence, emphasized above, of Amphitrite herself—Queen of the Sea and
Mistress of its Sea-Monsters—with the Minoan Goddess in the same
capacity, with her hippocampus-prowed boat, takes us still more definitely
Amphi- back to the pre-Hellenic stratum. The leap into the sea with which the
flection of story is bound up is itself seen to belong to an early Cretan cycle 2—witness
marine t[le Delphinian Apollo and the wild plunge of the flying Diktynna (or
Minoan Britomartis) from the sea cliff. Certainly, from an artist's point of view, the
Goddess's wreath, presented to Theseus by Amphitrite, formed a better
subject for illustration, but no object referred to in the whole story has
more purely Minoan associations than the signet-ring (o-^payis), in which
it centres. It only needs a glance at the first part of the present Volume
and at what has been said before regarding the still earlier seal-stones of
Crete to realize the large part which the signet has played in the inner
economy of Minoan life both in the origin of the pictographic script and the
evolution of artistic types that in some respects have never been sur-
passed. The signet is the very emblem of Minoan civilization.
Records The present writer long since ventured to put forward the view that
master-"'1 tne singularly accurate descriptions of master-works of Minoan Craft that
pieces in appear in Homer but had already become no longer extant at the epoch
Epic. of the Achaean invasions, owe their literal description to having been
already embodied in earlier lays. These had been taken over and incorpor-
ated in the later Epic during the transitional Age when the speech of the
country was still largely bilingual—as indeed a large part of Crete remained
to much later days.3 As has been often noticed, the ' Cup of Nestor' finds
its material prototype in the Dove Goblet from the Fourth Shaft Grave at
3 W. Klein, Enphronios, p. 190 seqq. episode, is a later intrusion (' Einschiebsel'), is
5 See on this, S. Wide in Theseus und der directly at variance with the probabilities ot
Meersprung(&znYi&oxlFestschrift),hu\. his con- the case.
elusion that the ring episode, on which is 3 A. E., Minoan, &°c, Element in Bedhnli
based the whole plot of the Minos-Theseus Life {/.Id. S., xxxii), p. 2S7 seqq.
Theseus 901s Vase', by Kleitias and Ergotimos. On none of the vase paintings
""\viti, however, is the ring itself in evidence, and we seem justified in concludino-
Amphi- that the same omission had occurred in Mikon's masterpiece. Neither ic
trite s aid. ^
this essential feature of the tale so much as mentioned by Bacchylides
whose rediscovered ' paean' is the latest contribution to the literature of
the subject.
From the point of view of Ancient Religion the most suggestive
feature is the prominence given to the female divinity Amphitrite, whose
consort Poseidon is left in the background. At the same time the equiva-
lence, emphasized above, of Amphitrite herself—Queen of the Sea and
Mistress of its Sea-Monsters—with the Minoan Goddess in the same
capacity, with her hippocampus-prowed boat, takes us still more definitely
Amphi- back to the pre-Hellenic stratum. The leap into the sea with which the
flection of story is bound up is itself seen to belong to an early Cretan cycle 2—witness
marine t[le Delphinian Apollo and the wild plunge of the flying Diktynna (or
Minoan Britomartis) from the sea cliff. Certainly, from an artist's point of view, the
Goddess's wreath, presented to Theseus by Amphitrite, formed a better
subject for illustration, but no object referred to in the whole story has
more purely Minoan associations than the signet-ring (o-^payis), in which
it centres. It only needs a glance at the first part of the present Volume
and at what has been said before regarding the still earlier seal-stones of
Crete to realize the large part which the signet has played in the inner
economy of Minoan life both in the origin of the pictographic script and the
evolution of artistic types that in some respects have never been sur-
passed. The signet is the very emblem of Minoan civilization.
Records The present writer long since ventured to put forward the view that
master-"'1 tne singularly accurate descriptions of master-works of Minoan Craft that
pieces in appear in Homer but had already become no longer extant at the epoch
Epic. of the Achaean invasions, owe their literal description to having been
already embodied in earlier lays. These had been taken over and incorpor-
ated in the later Epic during the transitional Age when the speech of the
country was still largely bilingual—as indeed a large part of Crete remained
to much later days.3 As has been often noticed, the ' Cup of Nestor' finds
its material prototype in the Dove Goblet from the Fourth Shaft Grave at
3 W. Klein, Enphronios, p. 190 seqq. episode, is a later intrusion (' Einschiebsel'), is
5 See on this, S. Wide in Theseus und der directly at variance with the probabilities ot
Meersprung(&znYi&oxlFestschrift),hu\. his con- the case.
elusion that the ring episode, on which is 3 A. E., Minoan, &°c, Element in Bedhnli
based the whole plot of the Minos-Theseus Life {/.Id. S., xxxii), p. 2S7 seqq.