DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9177#0312
292
PRINCIPLES OF GREEK ART
CHAP.
sight. The closeness of the situation to that which occurs at
the beginning of Aeschylus' Eumenides, where the priestess
comes forth from the stage door, which represents the door of
the temple, and tells what she has seen, will occur to every
one who has read Aeschylus. But after all the likeness is to
the play, not to the acting of it. Orestes and the priestess are
not clad in mask and flowing drapery and buskins, as they
would be on the stage. And the temple would certainly not
be thus erected on the stage: the front of it would be merely
the front of the stage building.1 The Erinnyes are a reminis-
cence of the description by the priestess in Eumenides, 52-55.
She speaks of them first as women, then as Gorgons, and yet
not quite like Gorgons, but rather like the Harpies in pictures
bearing off the food of Phineus, yet differing from Harpies in
not being winged, though black and hideous.
Now before the time of Aeschylus the Erinnyes had not thus
been represented, but as staid and venerable deities, clad in
long robes, carrying serpents,2 three in number, as were usually
the groups of nymphs and maiden deities at Athens. Aes-
chylus innovated by increasing their number, and by giving
them a foul and hideous aspect, and he succeeded so well in
this latter respect that he is said to have produced a panic in
the theatre. In both these respects our vase-painter follows
the Aeschylean stage tradition rather than the older type, and
we may see by this instance that the nearer a vase-painter
comes to actual illustration of a poet the less interesting does
he become.
In some of the Orestean vase-paintings the Erinnyes are rep-
resented as winged. They seem thus to have been brought on
the stage by Euripides; but in fact this was a reversion to an
older notion, the Gorgons, Harpies, and other unpropitious
daemons being generally represented in early art with wings.
1 Journal of Hellenic Studies, XIX., 257-262.
2 For example, a dedication at Argos, Athen. Mittheil., IV., 9.
PRINCIPLES OF GREEK ART
CHAP.
sight. The closeness of the situation to that which occurs at
the beginning of Aeschylus' Eumenides, where the priestess
comes forth from the stage door, which represents the door of
the temple, and tells what she has seen, will occur to every
one who has read Aeschylus. But after all the likeness is to
the play, not to the acting of it. Orestes and the priestess are
not clad in mask and flowing drapery and buskins, as they
would be on the stage. And the temple would certainly not
be thus erected on the stage: the front of it would be merely
the front of the stage building.1 The Erinnyes are a reminis-
cence of the description by the priestess in Eumenides, 52-55.
She speaks of them first as women, then as Gorgons, and yet
not quite like Gorgons, but rather like the Harpies in pictures
bearing off the food of Phineus, yet differing from Harpies in
not being winged, though black and hideous.
Now before the time of Aeschylus the Erinnyes had not thus
been represented, but as staid and venerable deities, clad in
long robes, carrying serpents,2 three in number, as were usually
the groups of nymphs and maiden deities at Athens. Aes-
chylus innovated by increasing their number, and by giving
them a foul and hideous aspect, and he succeeded so well in
this latter respect that he is said to have produced a panic in
the theatre. In both these respects our vase-painter follows
the Aeschylean stage tradition rather than the older type, and
we may see by this instance that the nearer a vase-painter
comes to actual illustration of a poet the less interesting does
he become.
In some of the Orestean vase-paintings the Erinnyes are rep-
resented as winged. They seem thus to have been brought on
the stage by Euripides; but in fact this was a reversion to an
older notion, the Gorgons, Harpies, and other unpropitious
daemons being generally represented in early art with wings.
1 Journal of Hellenic Studies, XIX., 257-262.
2 For example, a dedication at Argos, Athen. Mittheil., IV., 9.