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AN EPIGRAM AND A TREASURY: ON SIM. FGE XXXIIIB [B. 162; D. 163; EG XXXIII]

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 November 2013

Andrej Petrovic
Andrej Petrovic*
Affiliation:
Durham University
*
andrej.petrovic@dur.ac.uk
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Extract

      Κίμων ἔγραψε τὴν θύραν τὴν δεξιάν,
      τὴν δ’ ἐξιόντων δεξιὰν Διονύσιος.
      Cimon painted the door to the right,
      and the right door as one goes out, Dionysius.
    (Anth. Pal. 9.758)
Denys Page correctly classified this epigram, which comes from a series of Simonidea in the ninth book of the Palatine Anthology, as a signature epigram. The Cimon mentioned in the first line of the epigram is regularly identified as Cimon of Cleonae, a late sixth-century B.C. painter commended by Pliny (HN 35.34) and Aelian (VH 8.8) for his technique and, possibly, use of perspective. The identity of Dionysius from line 2 is disputed: from little that we know of a painter named Dionysius of Colophon who may have been a younger contemporary of Cimon, it is difficult to reach any conclusion. What connects the two artists is that they were both famed for their portrayal of humans and that they may have entered in a sort of a competition with each other.

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Shorter Notes
Information
The Classical Quarterly , Volume 63 , Issue 2 , December 2013 , pp. 885 - 888
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 2013 
Κίμων ἔγραψε τὴν θύραν τὴν δεξιάν,
τὴν δ’ ἐξιόντων δεξιὰν Διονύσιος.
Cimon painted the door to the right,
and the right door as one goes out, Dionysius.
(Anth. Pal. 9.758)

Denys Page correctly classified this epigram, which comes from a series of Simonidea in the ninth book of the Palatine Anthology, as a signature epigram.Footnote 1 The Cimon mentioned in the first line of the epigram is regularly identified as Cimon of Cleonae,Footnote 2 a late sixth-century B.C. painter commended by Pliny (HN 35.34) and Aelian (VH 8.8) for his technique and, possibly, use of perspective. The identity of Dionysius from line 2 is disputed:Footnote 3 from little that we know of a painter named Dionysius of Colophon who may have been a younger contemporary of Cimon, it is difficult to reach any conclusion. What connects the two artists is that they were both famed for their portrayal of humans and that they may have entered in a sort of a competition with each other.Footnote 4

The location of the epigram proves elusive and commentators have so far refrained from suggesting a precise physical setting for the verses. Taking my cue from Page's remark that the epigram was painted on a door,Footnote 5 I would suggest that the phrase τὴν δ’ ἐξιόντων δεξιάν [θύραν], refers to the doors of a temple (or a precinct) or, most likely, to a door leading to a temple treasury (θησαυρός).Footnote 6

Epigrams with artists' signatures are very well attested on a variety of objects, from vases to monumental funeral paintings, and can be dated to as early as the late Archaic period. That such signatures can take form of verse inscriptions is also attested in the context of temple architecture: Pliny reports that in the early fifth century b.c. the shrine of Ceres in the Circus Maximus at Rome was decorated with paintings and sculptures by Damophilus and Gorgasus. Damophilus and Gorgasus decorated the right- and left-hand side of the shrine respectively, and their works of art were accompanied by verse inscriptions indicating in Greek who did what: there can be little doubt that these epigrams resembled XXXIIIb to some extent.Footnote 7

As is well known, painters' signatures typically consist of some form of the verb γράϕω and an object in the accusative.Footnote 8 The convoluted expression ἔγραψε … τὴν δ’ ἐξιόντων δεξιάν [θύραν] was considered by Page to be ‘oddly phrased’, while Hugh Lloyd-Jones stressed that this elocution ‘might be accounted for by the desire for an euphemism’.Footnote 9 Both observations are fitting: the repetition of δεξιά seems indeed to be motivated by the wish to avoid any quality judgement or comparison between the individual flaps which would be implied by the use of ἀριστερός.Footnote 10 On the other hand, the expression is indeed an unusual and a marked elocution – and one which has parallels in the very specific context of the language of Greek financial records (especially of the temple inventories and public accounts).

Δεξιᾶς εἰσιόντι, ‘on the right-hand side as one goes in’, like ἀριστερᾶς εἰσιόντι, ‘on the left-hand side as one goes in’, is a marked phrase found in Attic and Delian inscriptional temple inventory lists from the fourth century b.c. onwards.Footnote 11 Such inscriptions, often placed on the sacred ground in the vicinity of a treasury or on its walls, give a conspectus of the content of the treasury: typically, the lists record the object, its location, its monetary value and sometimes also the name of the dedicator.Footnote 12 In such a context, the elocutions δεξιᾶς εἰσιόντι and ἀριστερᾶς εἰσιόντι are used as topographical references pointing out the physical location of an object in the treasury (typical objects found in such lists would include phialai, lamps, cups, seals, rings, crowns, to name but a few). At times, the reference to the location of the object is doubly highlighted on the stone: first, by being cut in bigger letters than the rest of the text,Footnote 13 and second, in so far as the expression is often placed at the beginning of a line. Another financial record, IG II2 1657.5–6 (an account of the fortification of Piraeus), supplies a parallel for τὴν δ’ ἐξιόντων δεξιάν from line 2, that is for avoidance of the adjective ἀριστερός.Footnote 14

Thus, the expression τὴν δ’ ἐξιόντων δεξιάν in the epigram seems to have been modelled after a technical expression found in the epigraphic record: the author's clever deployment of the technical language typically limited to temple inventories and financial records thus implies the same status and value for the paintings themselves that the objects in the treasury possessed.

References

1 I would like to express my gratitude to the anonymous reader of CQ for a number of suggestions and improvements. I am grateful to Melissa Mueller and Ivana Petrovic for discussing this epigram with me. The abbreviations of the epigraphic corpora follow SEG. CEG = Hansen, P.A., Carmina epigraphica Graeca, vols. 1–2 (Berlin, 1983; 1989)Google Scholar; EG = Page, D.L., Epigrammata Graeca (Oxford, 1975)Google Scholar; FGE = Page, D.L., Further Greek Epigrams (Cambridge, 1981)Google Scholar. All references to EG and FGE are limited to the corpus of the epigrams ascribed to Simonides, unless otherwise stated. GVI = Peek, W., Griechische Versinschriften (Berlin, 1955)Google Scholar. Overbeck = Overbeck, J., Die antiken Schriftquellen zur Geschichte der bildenden Künste bei den Griechen (Hildesheim, 1959²)Google Scholar. On ‘signature epigram’, see FGE, 246. On the Simonidea in Bk. 9 of Anth. Pal., see Boas, M., De epigrammatis Simonideis (Groningen, 1905), 141–2; 185–7Google Scholar.

2 Identified also in a further epideictic epigram, Anth. Plan. 84, FGE XXXIIIa. For literary sources on Cimon, see Overbeck, nos. 375–9, 67–8; for further information, see G. Lippold, s.v. Kimon (10), RE 11, 454; for a bibliography, see Brill's New Pauly, Cimon [4].

3 FGE, ibid. Page rejects association of Dionysius from the epigram with Dionysius of Colophon (see Overbeck, No. 1136) accepted by Diehl, Budé and Beckby.

4 On Dionysius see Plin. HN 35.113: nihil aliud quam homines pinxit, ob id anthropographos cognominatus. The anonymous reader for CQ points out that the epigram may bear witness to an agonistic relationship between Cimon and Dionysius: Page FGE, 246 plausibly argues that epigram XXXIIIa (a signature epigram by Cimon) is a reply to XXXIIa (a boastful signature epigram by Iphion of Corinth), originating from a rivalry in a competition. In this sense it appears attractive to think of the epigram XXXIIIb as originating in a sort of a competitive context as well; its wording would then imply that Cimon and Dionysius both came out of it victorious or, at least, standing both on the right side, as equals. On official competitions between painters in context of sanctuaries, see Onions, J., Classical Art and the Cultures of Greece and Rome (New Haven, CT and London, 1999), 64–70Google Scholar. However, according to Pliny, competitions in painting were instituted at Delphi and Corinth only in the mid fifth century B.C. (Plin. HN 35.58). While this may be a slightly late date for Cimon's participation in such official competition, some sort of a local agonistic context cannot be excluded either.

5 Page concisely notes in the apparatus of EG XXXIII: picturae in portis inscr[iptae]. In FGE XXXIIIb, 246 Page points out that the epigram was in all likelihood a graffito.

6 Some have thought that the location of the epigram is fictitious:Hauvette, A., De l’ authenticité des épigrammes de Simonide (Paris, 1896)Google Scholar, 142 assumes the poem was a παίγνιον, and argues that the wordplay with the adjective is unsuitable for a real inscription. The reasoning is unassailable.

7 Plin. HN 35.154 (XLV) = Overbeck, No. 616: Plastae laudatissimi fuere Damophilus et Gorgasus, iidem pictores, qui Cereris aedem Romae ad circum maximum utroque genere artis suae excoluerunt, versibus inscriptis Graece, quibus significarent ab dextra opera Damophili esse, ab laeva Gorgasi. On Damophilus see also Overbeck, No. 1647.

8 The accusative object is often a deictic, sometimes a personal pronoun: the earliest attestation is the one of Exekias from CEG 1, Nos. 436–7, 242–3; cf. Ἐχσεκίας ἔγραϕσε κἀπόεσε ἐμέ; Ἐχσεκίας ἔγραϕσε κἀποίεσ’ ἐμέ. See also FGE XXXIIa: Ἰϕίων τόδ’ ἔγραψε and XXXIIb Ἰϕίων ἔγραψεν ἑᾶι χερί. On artists' signatures in verse, see Wachter, R., ‘The origin of epigrams on “speaking objects”’, in Baumbach, M., Petrovic, A. and Petrovic, I., Archaic and Classical Greek Epigram (Cambridge and New York, 2010), 254–6Google Scholar. For a list of epigrams of pre-Hellenistic artists' signatures in the literary record, see Gutzwiller, K., ‘Art's echo: the tradition of Hellenistic ecphrastic epigram’, in Harder, M.A., Regtuit, R.F. and Wakker, G.C. (edd.), Hellenistic Epigrams (Leuven, 2002), 85–112Google Scholar, at 90 with n. 9. For versified ἔγραψε signatures in the funerary context, see e.g. GVI 1482.3; 1895.12; 2035.16. For reflections on art in the Simonidean epigrams, see Bravi, L., Gli epigrammi di Simonide e le vie della tradizone (Roma, 2006), 120–4Google Scholar; at 124 Bravi stresses that Simonidean epigrams dealing with art objects often include technical vocabulary: ‘Sul piano della lingua va registrata la presenza di un lessico specialistico’ and lists ἀρχέτυπον (FGE LXVI.2), ἀσκητός (FGE LXIII.2), ἔγραψεν (FGE XXXIIIb.1), διηκρίβωσεν (FGE LXVI.1), and ξέσε (FGE LVII.1) as his examples.

9 FGE, 246; H. Lloyd-Jones, review of D.L. Page, Further Greek Epigrams: Epigrams before A.D. 50 from the Greek Anthology and other sources not included in ‘Hellenistic Epigrams’ or ‘The Garland of Philip’, CR 32 (1982), 139–44, at 141.

10 See LSJ s.v. ἀριστερός, 4. However, CQ's anonymous reader insightfully remarks that playful dexi-assonance (τὴν δεξιάν, | τὴν δ’ ἐξιόντων δεξιὰν) also prepares the viewer for ‘another word featuring Delta in a prominent position: namely the name of the artist Dionysius’. Furthermore, τὴν δεξιάν, | τὴν δ’ ἐξιόντων ‘creates a kind of pseudo-anadiplosis, which seems … somewhat humorous’.

11 In a forthcoming paper, Elizabeth Kosmetatou analyses pertinent idioms in the context of inventory lists; she kindly commented by email: ‘the phrase is usually δεξιᾶς / ἀριστερᾶς εἰσιόντι or δεξιᾶς / ἀριστερᾶς εἰσιόντων, but there are variations as well’. Topographic labels of Delian and (some) Athenian temple inventory lists, including ‘on the left / right entering the temple’, have been collected by Hamilton, R., A Treasure Map: a Guide to the Delian Inventories (Ann Arbor, 2000), 413–14CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Cf. e.g. IDélos 442 B 36–9: δεξιᾶς εἰσιόντι εἰς τὸν νεὼ τοῦ Ἀπόλλωνος· ϕιάλαι ἀργυραῖ ἐμ πλινθείοις , ὧν μία ἐν τῶι ναῶι ἐστίν· καὶ πῖλος ἀργυροῦς· στέϕανος χρυσοῦς ἐπὶ προκομίου καὶ ἡ ἀνατεθεῖσα ϕιάλη ἐπ’ ἄρχοντος Tηλεμνήστου ὑπὸ τῆς πόλεως τῆς Κώιων, ἀρχιθεώρου Ἀλθαιμένου, καὶ ἡ ἀνατεθεῖσα ϕιάλη ἐϕ’ ἱεροποιῶν Ὀρθοκλέους καὶ Πολυβούλου, ἀνάθεμα Mενεστράτου Ἀθηναίου· ἄλλη ϕιάλη, δεξιᾶς εἰσιόντι εἰς τὸν νεώ, Ἱπποκρίτου Κώιου. See also IG II2 1456.25–26 (partly restored); 1487.42 and 47 (partly restored); 1489.8 (partly restored); IG II2 1534.49.

13 Cf. e.g. IDélos 442 B 36, 39, 61.

14 ἐπ’ Εὐβολίδο ἄρχοντο[ς] |ἀπὸ τõ σημέο ἀρξάμε|νον μέχρι τõ μετώπ|ο τῶν πυλῶν τῶν κατὰ|τὸ Ἀϕροδίσιον ἐπὶ δεξ|ιὰ ἐξιόντι. See also: δεξ[ι]ᾶ[ς παρεξιόντι], SEG 21 562.27.