DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.18218#0265
APOTHEOSIS OF HOMEK.
251
although it cannot be determined whether the temple in
the lowest tier is the temple at Delphi, and whether the
mountain is Parnassos with the Corycian cave, or Olyinpos
or a mountain elsewhere. The artist has represented
in the upper tiers the divine patrons and inspirers of
song, and in the lowest tier the most divine of mortal
poets, from whom, perhaps, the dedicator obtained his
inspiration. Homer is enthroned, and by an easily under-
stood allegory he is represented as receiving worship from
the poetic arts that were derived from his poems, from
the abstract qualities illustrated in them, and from the
Space and Time through which they exist. If the figure
running down the staircase is supposed to be the bearer of
a message from Zeus respecting the Apotheosis, the whole
composition is satisfactorily connected.
Nothing is known from any other source of the artist
Archelaos of Priene, and the date of the relief is therefore
doubtful. Several recent writers have assigned the work
to the time of Tiberius. The relief was found near
Bovillae, whence a Tabula Iliaca was also obtained.
As the Emperor Tiberius is said by Suetonius to have
had a pedantic love of mythological lore such as these
monuments record (" Maxime curavit notitiam historiae
fabularis, usque ad ineptias atque derisum," Suet., Tib., c.
70), and as he erected a temple at Bovillae to the Julian
Gens (Tac, Ann., ii. 41), it has been conjectured that he
there dedicated both the Tabula Iliaca (of. No. 2192) and
the relief here described. But it is clear that, even
supposing that the relief was placed at Bovillae by
Tiberius, there is no evidence that it may not have been
produced at an earlier period. That this was the case is
shown by the forms of the inscriptions, which are
decidedly earlier than the imperial times, and which
allow us to assign the relief to the second century B.C.
The absence of the adscript iota in the words TpaywSta
251
although it cannot be determined whether the temple in
the lowest tier is the temple at Delphi, and whether the
mountain is Parnassos with the Corycian cave, or Olyinpos
or a mountain elsewhere. The artist has represented
in the upper tiers the divine patrons and inspirers of
song, and in the lowest tier the most divine of mortal
poets, from whom, perhaps, the dedicator obtained his
inspiration. Homer is enthroned, and by an easily under-
stood allegory he is represented as receiving worship from
the poetic arts that were derived from his poems, from
the abstract qualities illustrated in them, and from the
Space and Time through which they exist. If the figure
running down the staircase is supposed to be the bearer of
a message from Zeus respecting the Apotheosis, the whole
composition is satisfactorily connected.
Nothing is known from any other source of the artist
Archelaos of Priene, and the date of the relief is therefore
doubtful. Several recent writers have assigned the work
to the time of Tiberius. The relief was found near
Bovillae, whence a Tabula Iliaca was also obtained.
As the Emperor Tiberius is said by Suetonius to have
had a pedantic love of mythological lore such as these
monuments record (" Maxime curavit notitiam historiae
fabularis, usque ad ineptias atque derisum," Suet., Tib., c.
70), and as he erected a temple at Bovillae to the Julian
Gens (Tac, Ann., ii. 41), it has been conjectured that he
there dedicated both the Tabula Iliaca (of. No. 2192) and
the relief here described. But it is clear that, even
supposing that the relief was placed at Bovillae by
Tiberius, there is no evidence that it may not have been
produced at an earlier period. That this was the case is
shown by the forms of the inscriptions, which are
decidedly earlier than the imperial times, and which
allow us to assign the relief to the second century B.C.
The absence of the adscript iota in the words TpaywSta