Day 43 - Peleus up a tree
April 11, 2018
This gallery (154) focuses on Greek art of the 6th century B.C.E. and mostly contains marble sculptures that served as grave markers, along with terracotta vessels of various sizes and shapes. The latter are helpfully arranged by theme, including warfare and athletics, the symposium, and mourning and the afterlife. I hadn't previously realized how closely athletic training was associated with military preparation in the Greek worldview. Through athletics, youths developed the discipline needed to be effective hoplites, or foot soldiers, who moved together in close formation.
But today's object doesn't reflect any of these themes. It calls to mind my experience as a schoolgirl in Italy, where I was expected, like my peers, to memorize the Iliad. I was pretty quickly exempted from this task on the grounds that learning Italian through an 18th-century translation would only confound my efforts to learn the Italian of the mid-20th century - as indeed it did. ("Primamente," a word appearing in one of the lines I learned, is not a word in current usage.) But I clearly remember the beginning of the epic: "Cantami, o diva, del Peliade Achille, l'ira funesta che infiniti addusse lutti agli Achei...." So I knew that Achilles was the son of Peleus, but I knew nothing of the myth surrounding Peleus himself. While a guest of King Akastos, Peleus became the object of the unrequited love of the queen, who falsely accused him of trying to seduce her (shades of Joseph and Potiphar's wife!). Akastos sought to punish Peleus by abandoning him on Mount Pelion, to be devoured by wild beasts. Fortunately for Peleus, Achilles, and world literature, the gods provided Peleus with a knife.
The scene on Mount Pelion is depicted on a graceful wine jug about 12 inches high. The figures are painted in black against a light tan ground. A miniature Peleus is shown high in the branches of a tree. I think a bit of the painting must have been lost, because he appears to be floating in mid-air, not holding onto anything. On either side of the tree's slender, curving trunk are a lion and a wild boar, both depicted on a much larger scale than Peleus and both looking pretty fearsome. The boar has lifted its hind leg, as if about to charge; the lion's mane stands up straight, his jaws are wide open, and it appears that the dismembered legs of the preceding human victim are sticking out of his mouth. The curves of the animals' backs echo the roundness of the vase. In contrast to the violence of this scene, the palmettes and spirals and other geometric designs on the shoulder, base, and back of the jug look completely innocuous.
At the base of the handle, at the back of the jug, is a human face, whether of a man or a woman I can't tell. A face also adorns the inside of the handle where it attaches to the neck of the jug. Again, I can't tell the sex of the face, but it's grinning broadly, its lips turned up and painted bright red, like those of a clown. I guess it signifies that Peleus' story has a happy ending after all!
But today's object doesn't reflect any of these themes. It calls to mind my experience as a schoolgirl in Italy, where I was expected, like my peers, to memorize the Iliad. I was pretty quickly exempted from this task on the grounds that learning Italian through an 18th-century translation would only confound my efforts to learn the Italian of the mid-20th century - as indeed it did. ("Primamente," a word appearing in one of the lines I learned, is not a word in current usage.) But I clearly remember the beginning of the epic: "Cantami, o diva, del Peliade Achille, l'ira funesta che infiniti addusse lutti agli Achei...." So I knew that Achilles was the son of Peleus, but I knew nothing of the myth surrounding Peleus himself. While a guest of King Akastos, Peleus became the object of the unrequited love of the queen, who falsely accused him of trying to seduce her (shades of Joseph and Potiphar's wife!). Akastos sought to punish Peleus by abandoning him on Mount Pelion, to be devoured by wild beasts. Fortunately for Peleus, Achilles, and world literature, the gods provided Peleus with a knife.
The scene on Mount Pelion is depicted on a graceful wine jug about 12 inches high. The figures are painted in black against a light tan ground. A miniature Peleus is shown high in the branches of a tree. I think a bit of the painting must have been lost, because he appears to be floating in mid-air, not holding onto anything. On either side of the tree's slender, curving trunk are a lion and a wild boar, both depicted on a much larger scale than Peleus and both looking pretty fearsome. The boar has lifted its hind leg, as if about to charge; the lion's mane stands up straight, his jaws are wide open, and it appears that the dismembered legs of the preceding human victim are sticking out of his mouth. The curves of the animals' backs echo the roundness of the vase. In contrast to the violence of this scene, the palmettes and spirals and other geometric designs on the shoulder, base, and back of the jug look completely innocuous.
At the base of the handle, at the back of the jug, is a human face, whether of a man or a woman I can't tell. A face also adorns the inside of the handle where it attaches to the neck of the jug. Again, I can't tell the sex of the face, but it's grinning broadly, its lips turned up and painted bright red, like those of a clown. I guess it signifies that Peleus' story has a happy ending after all!
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