DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9187#0068
BELIEFS AS TO THE FUTURE LIFE
4'
or gentle goddesses, in beautiful and dignified form1. He
took as his models the Gorgons and Harpies of earlier art.
So he himself tells us in the Eumenides2, where his priestess
thus describes the sleeping visitors : ' I call them not women,
but Gorgons; yet cannot I quite liken them to the forms
of Gorgons. In a picture once I saw Harpies painted bearing
off the food of Phineus : these, however, are unwinged in aspect,
but black and utterly abominable.'
Pausanias too says, when speaking of the shrine of the
Eumenides at Athens :i: 'It was Aeschylus who first wreathed
snakes in their hair: but in their statues there 'is nothing
terrible, nor in the other statues set up in honour of the
nether gods.' In a series of vase-paintings which represent
the flight to Delphi and the purification of Orestes, the
Erinnyes appear sometimes in Aeschylean guise as women,
unwinged, but with snakes in their hair and of terrible
aspect. With these the Poenae of our vase-painting are
almost identical in dress, though, the ugliness is softened
down. And as Polygnotus knows not the Poenae, it seems
likely that it was in part the influence of Aeschylus which
introduced them as ministrants of evil in the realm of Hades.
But the Poenae certainly fill very inefficiently the place of
the Christian demons. Greek art loved to soften, to general-
ize, while mediaeval art rejoiced, like Dante, in exact detail.
Greek art was always ready to sacrifice precise meaning
to beauty and grace, while mediaeval art had little sense
of beauty, but tried to work on the emotions of fear and
horror.
Side by side with the evidence derived from the works
of ancient painters we must place that derived from ancient
poets and other writers. The philosophers are outside our
scope, except so far as they testify to the opinions of ordinary
1 Cf. the relief published in Athcn. Mitthcil. iv. pi. ix.
! L. 50. 3 I. 28. 6.
4'
or gentle goddesses, in beautiful and dignified form1. He
took as his models the Gorgons and Harpies of earlier art.
So he himself tells us in the Eumenides2, where his priestess
thus describes the sleeping visitors : ' I call them not women,
but Gorgons; yet cannot I quite liken them to the forms
of Gorgons. In a picture once I saw Harpies painted bearing
off the food of Phineus : these, however, are unwinged in aspect,
but black and utterly abominable.'
Pausanias too says, when speaking of the shrine of the
Eumenides at Athens :i: 'It was Aeschylus who first wreathed
snakes in their hair: but in their statues there 'is nothing
terrible, nor in the other statues set up in honour of the
nether gods.' In a series of vase-paintings which represent
the flight to Delphi and the purification of Orestes, the
Erinnyes appear sometimes in Aeschylean guise as women,
unwinged, but with snakes in their hair and of terrible
aspect. With these the Poenae of our vase-painting are
almost identical in dress, though, the ugliness is softened
down. And as Polygnotus knows not the Poenae, it seems
likely that it was in part the influence of Aeschylus which
introduced them as ministrants of evil in the realm of Hades.
But the Poenae certainly fill very inefficiently the place of
the Christian demons. Greek art loved to soften, to general-
ize, while mediaeval art rejoiced, like Dante, in exact detail.
Greek art was always ready to sacrifice precise meaning
to beauty and grace, while mediaeval art had little sense
of beauty, but tried to work on the emotions of fear and
horror.
Side by side with the evidence derived from the works
of ancient painters we must place that derived from ancient
poets and other writers. The philosophers are outside our
scope, except so far as they testify to the opinions of ordinary
1 Cf. the relief published in Athcn. Mitthcil. iv. pi. ix.
! L. 50. 3 I. 28. 6.