DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9177#0315
xvii
LYRIC AND DRAMATIC POETRY
295
the carrying away of the image to Greece, — all is hinted at in
the painting; but there is no suggestion of acting, or of the
stage. Perhaps still more closely related to Euripidean ideas
and poetry is the figure of Medea holding the sword and meditat-
ing the slaying of her children, which we find in more than one
example at Pompeii. Sometimes the figure of Medea is de-
tached from its connection and stands as an epitome of a tragic
situation.1 No figure of antiquity has come down to us which
is fuller of expression. As a late Greek painter, Timomachus,
is known to have painted a noted picture of Medea, it is not
out of the way to suppose that he is the originator of the Medea
of the Pompeian paintings, though of course the Pompeian
artist greatly vulgarizes what he copies.
When we pass to a still later class of monuments than the
vase-paintings of Calabria and the wall-paintings of Pompeii,
namely, to the Roman sarcophagi,, we certainly find frequent
treatment of the subjects adopted by Aeschylus and Euripides.
The great dramatists had given form and currency to certain
myths, which thus became interesting to Roman poets and
mythcgraphers. And they became familiar also to the second-
rate sculptors who made sarcophagi for wealthy Romans. But
it was the tale as current in literature, not the play as acted
on the stage, which influenced these sculptors. We find no
reminiscence of the mask or the flowing tragic robes. What
we do find is something much nearer to illustration, in the
modern sense of the word; though the crowding of successive
events of the drama into a single field of the sarcophagus,
involving the method of continuous narration, of which I have
spoken above, is a thing foreign to modern art. Several sar-
cophagi, for example, give us a series of scenes from the story of
Orestes. In the case of one 2 we find on the side a representa-
tion of the slaying of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, with the
1 Museo Borbonico, V., 33; VIII., 22; X., 21.
2 Robert, Die antiken Sarkophag-Reliefs, PI. LV. Cf. PI. LIV.
LYRIC AND DRAMATIC POETRY
295
the carrying away of the image to Greece, — all is hinted at in
the painting; but there is no suggestion of acting, or of the
stage. Perhaps still more closely related to Euripidean ideas
and poetry is the figure of Medea holding the sword and meditat-
ing the slaying of her children, which we find in more than one
example at Pompeii. Sometimes the figure of Medea is de-
tached from its connection and stands as an epitome of a tragic
situation.1 No figure of antiquity has come down to us which
is fuller of expression. As a late Greek painter, Timomachus,
is known to have painted a noted picture of Medea, it is not
out of the way to suppose that he is the originator of the Medea
of the Pompeian paintings, though of course the Pompeian
artist greatly vulgarizes what he copies.
When we pass to a still later class of monuments than the
vase-paintings of Calabria and the wall-paintings of Pompeii,
namely, to the Roman sarcophagi,, we certainly find frequent
treatment of the subjects adopted by Aeschylus and Euripides.
The great dramatists had given form and currency to certain
myths, which thus became interesting to Roman poets and
mythcgraphers. And they became familiar also to the second-
rate sculptors who made sarcophagi for wealthy Romans. But
it was the tale as current in literature, not the play as acted
on the stage, which influenced these sculptors. We find no
reminiscence of the mask or the flowing tragic robes. What
we do find is something much nearer to illustration, in the
modern sense of the word; though the crowding of successive
events of the drama into a single field of the sarcophagus,
involving the method of continuous narration, of which I have
spoken above, is a thing foreign to modern art. Several sar-
cophagi, for example, give us a series of scenes from the story of
Orestes. In the case of one 2 we find on the side a representa-
tion of the slaying of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, with the
1 Museo Borbonico, V., 33; VIII., 22; X., 21.
2 Robert, Die antiken Sarkophag-Reliefs, PI. LV. Cf. PI. LIV.