DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9177#0300
280
PRINCIPLES OP GREEK ART
chap.
in the act of offering him a bowl of wine. Three distinct times,
the meal of the Cyclops, his drunkenness, and his blinding are
thus amalgamated. Quite as complete is the anachronism in
the black-figured Attic vase which I engrave (Fig. 97)-1 Here
Odysseus figures twice; his hat, his sword, and his spotted chi-
ton being identical in both representations. On the left he is
Fig. 97. — Attic vase.
hardening the pole in the fire, on the right he is directing it
into the eye of the Cyclops. This pole indeed appears thrice,
since it is represented also as a club in the hand of Polyphemus.
The monster is no monster, as he is in Etruscan and Pom-
peian art, save for size; he has apparently two eyes, and a
good Greek profile. Here we have the inevitable Greek dis-
like to the monstrous triumphant. It is noticeable that in the
Odyssey the deformity of the Cyclops is not dwelt on. He is
called ireXcopos, but this word only means "huge," and is indeed
often applied to the gods. Homer does not, like Hesiod, state
that the Cyclops had but one eye, though, of course, if Poly-
phemus could be blinded by one push of the sharp stake, he
can in logic have had but one eye. The fact is that the writer
of the Odyssey has not the concrete imagination of Greek plastic
1 Gazette Archeol., 1887, PI. 1.
PRINCIPLES OP GREEK ART
chap.
in the act of offering him a bowl of wine. Three distinct times,
the meal of the Cyclops, his drunkenness, and his blinding are
thus amalgamated. Quite as complete is the anachronism in
the black-figured Attic vase which I engrave (Fig. 97)-1 Here
Odysseus figures twice; his hat, his sword, and his spotted chi-
ton being identical in both representations. On the left he is
Fig. 97. — Attic vase.
hardening the pole in the fire, on the right he is directing it
into the eye of the Cyclops. This pole indeed appears thrice,
since it is represented also as a club in the hand of Polyphemus.
The monster is no monster, as he is in Etruscan and Pom-
peian art, save for size; he has apparently two eyes, and a
good Greek profile. Here we have the inevitable Greek dis-
like to the monstrous triumphant. It is noticeable that in the
Odyssey the deformity of the Cyclops is not dwelt on. He is
called ireXcopos, but this word only means "huge," and is indeed
often applied to the gods. Homer does not, like Hesiod, state
that the Cyclops had but one eye, though, of course, if Poly-
phemus could be blinded by one push of the sharp stake, he
can in logic have had but one eye. The fact is that the writer
of the Odyssey has not the concrete imagination of Greek plastic
1 Gazette Archeol., 1887, PI. 1.