DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.7416#0163
153
latter of which is written NOOSS, and over the former AAKQ2\
whilst he himself is distinguished by the title MOAKOZ: so that
this composition explicitly shows him in the character of universal
harmony, resulting from mind and strength ; these titles being, in
the ancient dialect of Magna Graecia, where the vase was found,
the same as NOTX, AAKH, and MO All H, in ordinary Greek. The
ancient dancing, however, which held so high a rank among liberal
and sacred arts, was entirely imitative ; and esteemed honorable or
otherwise, in proportion to the dignity or indignity of what it was
meant to express. The highest was that which exhibited military
exercises and exploits with the most perfect skill, grace, and agility;
excellence in which was often honored by a statue in some dis
tinguished attitude ; 1 and we strongly suspect, that the figure
commonly called " The fighting Gladiator," is one of them ; there
being a very decided character of individuality both in the form and
features ; and it would scarcely have been quite naked, had it repre-
sented any event of histoid.
188. Pan, like other mystic deities, was wholly unknown to the
first race of poets; there being no mention of him in either the Iliad,
the Odyssey, or in the genuine poem of Hesiod; and the mycolo-
gists of later times having made him a son of Mercury by Penelope,
the wife of Ulysses ; a fiction, perhaps, best accounted for by the
conjecture of Herodotus, that the terrestrial genealogies of the
mystic deities, Pan, Bacchus, and Hercules, are mere fables, bearing
date from the supposed time of their becoming objects of public
worship.* Both iu Greece and iEgypt, Pan was commonly repre-
sented under the symbolical form of the goat half humanised;3
from which are derived his subordinate ministers or personified
emanations, called Satyrs, Fauns, Tituri, IIANISKOl, &c.; who,
' Athen. Deipnos. lib. xiv. c. xxvi. ed. Schwci;:.
4 Aij\a jxoi o>v yeyoye 6n varepov eirvQovTo ol 'EAATjyes tovtuv ra owa/uiTa, 77 ra tojv
dKKuv OeuV an ov 5e ewvBovro xpopov, ano tovtov ytveT)\oyzovo-t avTew ttjk ytvmw.
Herodot. lib. ii. s. 146.
3 Tptupovai tc Srj Kai y\v<pou<ri ol £uypa(poi Kai ol ayaXixaronom too Tlavas ruyaX^a,
jcaTcwrep 'EAX^fcs, atyoirpoaomov Kai rpayoCKtKta' ovrt toiovtov vopu^ovrts ftvai p.tv,
aAA.' &p.oiov -rouri aWoia fleoicri- 6t(v 5e tlnna toiovtov ypatpovai avroy, ov put rfiiov *itti
toyw. Herodot. ii. 46.
latter of which is written NOOSS, and over the former AAKQ2\
whilst he himself is distinguished by the title MOAKOZ: so that
this composition explicitly shows him in the character of universal
harmony, resulting from mind and strength ; these titles being, in
the ancient dialect of Magna Graecia, where the vase was found,
the same as NOTX, AAKH, and MO All H, in ordinary Greek. The
ancient dancing, however, which held so high a rank among liberal
and sacred arts, was entirely imitative ; and esteemed honorable or
otherwise, in proportion to the dignity or indignity of what it was
meant to express. The highest was that which exhibited military
exercises and exploits with the most perfect skill, grace, and agility;
excellence in which was often honored by a statue in some dis
tinguished attitude ; 1 and we strongly suspect, that the figure
commonly called " The fighting Gladiator," is one of them ; there
being a very decided character of individuality both in the form and
features ; and it would scarcely have been quite naked, had it repre-
sented any event of histoid.
188. Pan, like other mystic deities, was wholly unknown to the
first race of poets; there being no mention of him in either the Iliad,
the Odyssey, or in the genuine poem of Hesiod; and the mycolo-
gists of later times having made him a son of Mercury by Penelope,
the wife of Ulysses ; a fiction, perhaps, best accounted for by the
conjecture of Herodotus, that the terrestrial genealogies of the
mystic deities, Pan, Bacchus, and Hercules, are mere fables, bearing
date from the supposed time of their becoming objects of public
worship.* Both iu Greece and iEgypt, Pan was commonly repre-
sented under the symbolical form of the goat half humanised;3
from which are derived his subordinate ministers or personified
emanations, called Satyrs, Fauns, Tituri, IIANISKOl, &c.; who,
' Athen. Deipnos. lib. xiv. c. xxvi. ed. Schwci;:.
4 Aij\a jxoi o>v yeyoye 6n varepov eirvQovTo ol 'EAATjyes tovtuv ra owa/uiTa, 77 ra tojv
dKKuv OeuV an ov 5e ewvBovro xpopov, ano tovtov ytveT)\oyzovo-t avTew ttjk ytvmw.
Herodot. lib. ii. s. 146.
3 Tptupovai tc Srj Kai y\v<pou<ri ol £uypa(poi Kai ol ayaXixaronom too Tlavas ruyaX^a,
jcaTcwrep 'EAX^fcs, atyoirpoaomov Kai rpayoCKtKta' ovrt toiovtov vopu^ovrts ftvai p.tv,
aAA.' &p.oiov -rouri aWoia fleoicri- 6t(v 5e tlnna toiovtov ypatpovai avroy, ov put rfiiov *itti
toyw. Herodot. ii. 46.