DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.7416#0167
157
especially in engravings upon gems, where sve often find the forms
of the ram, goat, horse, cock, and various others, blended into one,
so as to form Pantheic compositions, signifying the various attri-
butes and modes of action of the Deity. 1 Cupid is sometimes
represented wielding the mask of Pan, and sometimes playing
upon a lyre, while sitting upon the back of a lion; 1 devices of which
the ajnigmatical meaning has been already sufficiently explained in
the explanations of the component parts. The Hindoos, and other
nations of the eastern parts of Asia, expressed similar combinations
of attributes by symbols loosely connected, and figures unskilfully
composed of many heads, legs, arms, &c.; which appear from the
epithets hundred-headed, hundred-handed, &c, so frequent in the
old Greek poets, to have been not wholly unknown to them; though
the objects to which they are applied prove that their ideas were
taken from figures which they did not understand, and which they
therefore exaggerated into fabulous monsters, the enemies or arbi-
trators of their own gods.3 Such symbolical figures may, per-
haps, have been worshipped in the western parts of Asia, when the
Greeks first settled there ; of which the Diana of Ephesus appears
to have been a remain : for both her temple and that of the Apollo
DidymEeus were long anterior to the Ionic emigration ; 4 though the
composite images of the latter, which now exist, are, as before ob-
served, among the most refined productions of Grecian taste and
elegance. A Pantheic bust of this kind is engraved in plates lv. and
]vi. of Vol. i. of the Select Specimens, having the dewlaps of a goat,
the ears of a bull, and the claws of a crab placed as horns upon his
head. The hair appears wet; and out of the temples spring fish,
1 They are common, and to be found in all collections of gems; but never
upon coins,
1 See Mus. Florent. geram.
3 II. A, 402. Pindar. Pyth. i. 31., viii. 20.
From the publication of Denon of the sculptures remaining in Upper
vEgypt, it seems that such figures had a place in the ancient religious my-
thology of that country.
4 To Se iepov to tv Aifiv/xots tov AnoTO^wyos, not to fxavrciov tortv apx^ortpov 77 Kara
Tjjc lavuv eaouaiaw iroWu 5jj irpeo-fivrtpa en 7j Ka/ra lavas to a rrjv Apre/uv rip
typtaiav. Fausun. Achaic. c. ii. s. iv.
especially in engravings upon gems, where sve often find the forms
of the ram, goat, horse, cock, and various others, blended into one,
so as to form Pantheic compositions, signifying the various attri-
butes and modes of action of the Deity. 1 Cupid is sometimes
represented wielding the mask of Pan, and sometimes playing
upon a lyre, while sitting upon the back of a lion; 1 devices of which
the ajnigmatical meaning has been already sufficiently explained in
the explanations of the component parts. The Hindoos, and other
nations of the eastern parts of Asia, expressed similar combinations
of attributes by symbols loosely connected, and figures unskilfully
composed of many heads, legs, arms, &c.; which appear from the
epithets hundred-headed, hundred-handed, &c, so frequent in the
old Greek poets, to have been not wholly unknown to them; though
the objects to which they are applied prove that their ideas were
taken from figures which they did not understand, and which they
therefore exaggerated into fabulous monsters, the enemies or arbi-
trators of their own gods.3 Such symbolical figures may, per-
haps, have been worshipped in the western parts of Asia, when the
Greeks first settled there ; of which the Diana of Ephesus appears
to have been a remain : for both her temple and that of the Apollo
DidymEeus were long anterior to the Ionic emigration ; 4 though the
composite images of the latter, which now exist, are, as before ob-
served, among the most refined productions of Grecian taste and
elegance. A Pantheic bust of this kind is engraved in plates lv. and
]vi. of Vol. i. of the Select Specimens, having the dewlaps of a goat,
the ears of a bull, and the claws of a crab placed as horns upon his
head. The hair appears wet; and out of the temples spring fish,
1 They are common, and to be found in all collections of gems; but never
upon coins,
1 See Mus. Florent. geram.
3 II. A, 402. Pindar. Pyth. i. 31., viii. 20.
From the publication of Denon of the sculptures remaining in Upper
vEgypt, it seems that such figures had a place in the ancient religious my-
thology of that country.
4 To Se iepov to tv Aifiv/xots tov AnoTO^wyos, not to fxavrciov tortv apx^ortpov 77 Kara
Tjjc lavuv eaouaiaw iroWu 5jj irpeo-fivrtpa en 7j Ka/ra lavas to a rrjv Apre/uv rip
typtaiav. Fausun. Achaic. c. ii. s. iv.