Athena Polias Libre

The Ancient Image of Athena PoliasAuthor(s): John H. KrollSource: Hesperia Supplements, Vol. 20, Studies in Athenian Architecture, Sculpture andTopography. Presented to Homer A. Thompson (1982), pp. 65-76+203Published by: The American School of Classical Studies at AthensStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1353947 .

Accessed: 25/06/2014 17:21

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

The American School of Classical Studies at Athens is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve andextend access to Hesperia Supplements.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 163.1.159.1 on Wed, 25 Jun 2014 17:21:04 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ascsa

http://www.jstor.org/stable/1353947?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


THE ANCIENT IMAGE OF ATHENA POLIAS (PLATE 11)

But the most holy object, that was so considered by all many years before the unification of the demes, is the image of Athena which is on what is now called the Acropolis, but in early days the Polis. A legend concerning it says that it fell from heaven.

T HUS PAUSANIAS1 on the old olive-wood image of Athena Polias in the Erech- theion. This was the venerable image which was dressed in a newly woven peplos

every four years in the culminating rite of the Greater Panathenaia,2 and which, as if a protective talisman of the city, was taken aboard ship with the Athenians themselves during the temporary evacuation of Attica in 480 B.C.3 Yet for all its primacy in the state religion of Athens, Pausanias says nothing about the image's appearance and thus has left us to reconstruct it from a number of scattered references and possible reflections in the minor visual arts.4

For more than a century now, there has been notoriously little scholarly consensus as to which of this evidence is necessarily relevant, much less as to how it should be combined. Discussion has polarized around two opposing views. Most earlier scholarship argued that the image had the form of an armed, fighting Athena, like the conventional, standing Palladion type of Athena or like the striding Athenas pictured on Panathe- naic amphoras.5 A. Furtwdngler, however, proposed that the image was unarmed and seated;' and in 1908 this view was defended by A. Frickenhaus, who called attention to epigraphical evidence that the image wore a diadem and held a gold phiale in one

1i.26.6: TO 8E ayLaYTaToV Ev KOLJNL 7TOXXOLV 7TpOTEpOP VOIU(TEV ETETLV J) ioVV7JX\ov aio% TJWv 87.uwv eo-rV 'A07qva& aAya\A~a El

' V V aKpo0ToXEL, ToTE 8% 6voa~oA GroE ?r7.r 8E Es aUTO EXEL E7ELJ) EK

ToV oipavov . Translation of W. H. S. Jones, Pausanias I, Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, Mass. and London 1918, p. 137, with minor alterations.

The following special abbreviations will be used in this article: Herington = C. J. Herington, Athena Parthenos and Athena Polias, Manchester 1955 Shear = T. L. Shear, Jr., Hesperia, Suppl. XVII, Kallias of Sphettos and the Revolt of Athens in 286

B.C., Princeton 1978 2Herington, pp. 17, 32-33, with references. On the frequency with which the peplos was dedicated,

now see Shear, p. 36, note 89. 3Plutarch, Themistokles, 10 (quoting Kleidemos), which refers to the loss of TO yOPolYELOl) a7To T7g

6EOvj TOv ayaX,\LaToc and the subsequent search for it in the baggage being gathered at the Peiraieus during the evacuation. The gorgoneion was of gold; see footnote 18 below.

4The literary and most epigraphical references are collected in 0. Jahn and A. Michaelis, Arx Athenar- um, 3rd ed., Bonn 1901, pp. 68-69.

'E.g. 0. Jahn, De antiquissimis Minervae simulacris Atticis, Bonn 1866; L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States, Oxford 1896, I, pp. 334-337; J. G. Fraser, Pausanias's Description of Greece, London 1898, II, p. 341; E. Petersen, Die Burgtempel der Athenaia, Berlin 1907, pp. 40-60.

6A. Furtwdngler, "Athene in der Kunst," in Ausfihrliches Lexikon griechischen und ramischen Mytholo- gie, Leipzig 1884-1890, W. H. Roscher, ed., I, cols. 687-689.



66 JOHN H. KROLL

hand.' Noting that the only four Archaic portrayals of Athena holding a phiale show her in a seated posture (e.g., PI. 11:a), that two of these depict her with her helmet removed, and that a copious number of Archaic terracottas from the Acropolis portray a seated, unarmed Athena clad in a peplos,8 Frickenhaus argued that all these representations were derived from the ancient cult statue, which therefore was of a seated goddess, unhelmeted, and holding out a phiale. But not all authorities were convinced; and, the decisive detail of the gold phiale notwithstanding, the identification of the cult statue as that of a fighting Athena enjoyed a brief revival9 before it was finally laid to rest by C. J. Herington in the most critical and influential review of the problem to date.10 Although Herington comes out on the side of Frickenhaus' Sitzbild, his endorse- ment is far from unqualified; for, as he says, the Frickenhaus reconstruction is hazard- ously dependent on "arguments from the minor arts of a period when most of the minor artists ... were more likely to reproduce the living, or immortal, goddess as their contemporaries felt her than a statue only a decade or two old.""1

The truth of these words is brought home when one examines the most elaborate of Frickenhaus' four representations of a seated Athena holding a phiale (P1. 11:a). Here the seated goddess faces an altar and temple while a priestess prepares a sacrifice. As in the other three representations, there is no statue base beneath Athena's stool nor any other detail of style or iconography to suggest that the Athena is a statue. On the contrary, the circumstances that she is seated at the altar outside the temple and on a portable stool rather than a throne imply that it is Athena in person who has come to partake of the offerings; and, as any banqueter would, she has sat down, removed her helmet, and extended her cup, the phiale, the normal drinking-cup of the gods.12 Once it is recognized that a seated Athena with phiale is in effect a banqueting Athena, the association between posture and vessel is easily understood without reference to a putative cult statue. As for the seated terracotta Athenas from the Acropolis, there is

7A. Frickenhaus, "Das Athenabild des alten Tempels in Athen," AthMitt 33, 1908, pp. 17-32. Cf. idem, Tiryns I, Athens 1912, p. 110, note 1. For the epigraphical evidence, see footnote 18 below.

8Seated Athena with phiale: black-figured kalpis, ABV, p. 393, no. 20 = P1. 11:a, reproduced from E. Gerhard, Auserlesene Vasenbilder, Berlin 1840-58, IV, pl. 242; red-figured sherd by Myson from the Acrop- olis, AR V2, p. 240, no. 42 = B. Graef and E. Langlotz, Die antiken Vasen von der Akropolis zu Athen, Berlin 1925-33, II, pl. 72; black-figured lekythos, Athens N.M., no. P 1138 = Frickenhaus, op. cit., figs. 3, 4; terracotta relief from the Acropolis, ibid., fig. 1 = D. Brooke in S. Casson, Catalogue of the Acropolis Museum, Cambridge 1921, II, pp. 419-420, nos. 1337, 1338. Seated terracotta Athenas: ibid., pp. 330-332, 355-369.

9E.g., M. Bieber, "Two Attic Black-figured Lekythoi in Buffalo," AJA 48, 1944, pp. 124-129; H. L. Lorimer, Homer and the Monuments, London 1950, pp. 445-449; D. von Bothmer, "A Panathenaic Am- phora," BMMA 12, 1953, pp. 52-56.

0Herington, pp. 22-26. 'Ibid., p. 24.

12H. Luschey, s. v., 4LaX7J, RE, Suppl. VII, 1950, col. 1030, noting that in the visual arts the gods are never depicted drinking from stemmed kylikes. Luschey suggests that the gods employed the phiale because of its sacramental, hence godly, character.



THE ANCIENT IMAGE OF ATHENA POLIAS 67

simply no internal evidence to decide their possible relevance to the old Polias statue one way or the other.13 Since the case for a seated image of the Polias rests solely on the conviction that they and the representations of seated Athena with phiale are relevant, it is hard to feel much enthusiasm for it.

To judge from the literary testimonia, one would expect, conversely, that the image was in fact standing. Aristophanes refers to Athena Polias and the making of her peplos at Birds, 827-828 and to Athena as fully armed and standing (iravoiroXtav EOT7'K EXovO-a) two lines later; but as Herington demonstrates in detail, these lines are best understood as allusions to the city goddess herself and need not apply to a statue (or statues) of her.14 Two other relevant passages, however, are not easily dismissed. Athenagoras, Legatio, 17.3, attributes three cult statues to the sculptor Endoios: the Ar- temis in Ephesos, the old olive-wood image of Athena, and the Seated Athena.15 Since no location for the two Athenas is specified, they are surely images on the Athenian Acropolis, where Pausanias (i.26.4) saw a seated Athena by Endoios. The juxtaposition of the old olive-wood Athena with the seated one implies that the former was not seated. The second passage is from Strabo, xii.1.41, a discussion of whether the Trojan statue of Athena at Iliad vi.302-303 was a seated or standing figure. Homer assuredly thought of it as seated since the women of Ilion place a votive peplos "on its knees" (Eft yoi'vao-tv). But some ancient commentators assumed that it was similar to or identical with the famous Trojan Palladion, an upright statue of Athena, and that the peplos must therefore have been placed "beside" the knees of the image. Strabo argues for the seated interpretation, in part because "many ancient wooden statues of Athena

'3Their relevance is emphatically denied by Brooke, op. cit. (footnote 8 above), pp. 330-332, but is accepted, although provisionally, by R. A. Higgins, Greek Terracottas, London 1967, p. 72.

14Herington, pp. 24-26. 15To gv yap 4v 'E4ocx Tcar 'ApTE'WU80o Kat to trgs 'A6rjva& (.uaikov 8U 'Affqkav ta&O77 yap Wk ol

.VcTTLKWTEpOV ovTrw yapt) To T7J' a eXaia' to vakatoa v Kat re v Ka6-jgirrjv 'Ev8o0o0 ElyacoaTo UaO7JT7J

AaLMkov. "Endoios, a disciple of Daedalus, made the statue of Artemis in Ephesus and the ancient olive statue of Athene (or rather of Athela; for she is Athela, the unsuckled, as those ... the more mystical sense ... ) and the Seated Athena." Text and translation of W. R. Schoedel, Athenagoras, Legatio and De Resurrectione, Oxford 1972, pp. 34-36.

Following the edition of J. Geffcken (Zwei griechische Apologeten, Leipzig-Berlin 1907), Herington (p. 24, note 1, and pp. 69-70) argues that the text is too defective at this point to be admitted as evidence. But it is clear from Schoedel's more recent edition that the only textual problem lies within the parenthe- sized digression (which itself is largely clarified by paragraph 20.2 of the Legatio). Herington (p. 70) further objects that Athenagoras is "wildly inaccurate" in his attributions of statues to name artists, although Herington is able to point to only one such inaccuracy. I have not been able to consult G. Botti, "Atenago- ra quale fonte per la storia dell'arte," Didaskaleion 4, 1915, pp. 395-417; but Schoedel, who has, writes (op. cit., p. xx), "that Athenagoras' information on the history of art, though not profound, is ... generally reliable." Certainly there is nothing suspect about Athenagoras' attributions to Endoios. On the author- ity of Mucianus, Pliny (N.H. xvi.213-214) also names Endoios as the sculptor of the Ephesian Artemis. And Pausanias (i.26.4) quotes from the inscription on the base of the seated Athena on the Acropolis that Endoios was the maker (cf. A. E. Raubitschek, Dedications from the Athenian Akropolis, Cambridge, Mass. 1949, pp. 491-492). In support of Athenagoras' attribution of the Polias to Endoios, see below.



68 JOHN H. KROLL

are seen to be seated, such as those in Phokaia, Massilia, Rome, Chios, and several other places."16 The ancient xoanon of Athena in Athens is conspicuously absent from this list; and, although Herington counters that the list "seems to be haphazard and does not claim to be complete,"17 the list is undeniably a learned one and may be less haphazard than we can judge. The Polias image on the Acropolis was very well known in antiquity and was included in both Plutarch's and Philostratos' accounts of the most ancient cult statues in Greece (see below). Had it been seated, and had Strabo mentioned it, it would have stood first in his list and would have strengthened his argument immeasurably. That he does not mention it is less likely to be because of any ignorance or carelessness on Strabo's part than because, as we have seen from Athenagoras, it probably was standing.

Another problem regarding the appearance of the Polias concerns the location of the image's gold owl. Our knowledge of the owl, like that of the phiale, comes from the inventories of the statue's precious ornaments that were recorded by the Treasurers of Athena in several traditio inscriptions of the late 370's and early 360's. In the sections of these inscriptions that catalogue the valuables in the apXaqo' VEC0;, i.e., the Erech- theion, the statue's ornaments are listed in unvarying order as "a diadem that the goddess wears, the earrings that the goddess wears, a band that the goddess wears on her neck, five necklaces, a gold owl, a gold aegis, a gold gorgoneion, and a gold phiale that she holds in her hand."18 As throughout these traditio catalogues, each object is detailed only as much as it had to be for identification. Thus the diadem, earrings, and neck band at the beginning of the list are principally identified by their attachment to the image (and hence distinguished from miscellaneous votives in the temple) rather than by their metal, which, to judge from ancient jewelry in general and in view of the importance of the image, was almost certainly gold. The owl, aegis, and gorgoneion, on the other hand, were more concisely and meaningfully described as golden since this far into the list of ornaments there could be no question that they (and the five necklaces) belonged on the image. Finally, the phiale is said both to be of gold and held in the goddess' hand specifically to distinguish it from several, predominantly silver phialai that were deposited in the cella of the Erechtheion as votive offerings.19

It is clear that the ornaments are systematically catalogued from the headband downwards and that the owl, which is recorded between the necklaces and the aegis, must have been perched somewhere about shoulder level. Frickenhaus suggested that the owl stood on a pedestal next to the image or on the back of the throne on which his

v6roxxa 8E Tw apXauov rTjq 'AOqva&, (oavWv Kacd7JuEva 8ELKVVTaL, Kava1TEp Ev (IwKaUa, Maooakia,

PWA/L, XtC , aX 'aL; ITEL'o0LV.

7Herington, p. 24, note 1. 18IG 112, 1424, lines 11-16; 1425, lines 307-312; 1426, lines 4-8; 1428, lines 142-146; 1429, lines

42-47; and (printed in IG 112, part 2, fasc. II) 1424a, lines 362-366, in which alone the text is preserved in full: 0-TEAav7J, ,^v ,^ OEO' EXEL ITacTpa, a ,^ OEO' EXEL O'X6OLf3O, oS EXEL E T TL TpaX'XwtL Op/OL TEVTE'

oy~avf yxpvO, airyLs ypvOT, eOp7OVELOP OJXTVV- fLaX7J tJVO, ,^J El T7JL XELPL EXEL.

191n the cella there were four of these silver phialai and one made of gilded wood: IG 112, 1424a, lines 354, 355, 356, 359, and 371.




Sitzbild sat.20 Herington adds that the owl may equally have been affixed on the goddess' shoulder.21 But these conjectures must now be rejected in favor of a fourth possi- bility, which has some concrete, if indirect, documentary support, namely, that the owl was held in the goddess' other hand.

In 1979 T. L. Shear, Jr. published a recently excavated Attic inscription of 270/69 that honors a certain Kallias of Sphettos for his many services to Athens.22 From lines 55-70 of the decree we learn that Kallias was sent to the court of Ptolemy II in 279/8 and there persuaded the king to donate a gift of ropes for escorting the peplos at the Greater Panathenaia in the following year. Somewhat surprisingly, the text (line 65) refers to the festival as the "Panathenaia for Athena Archegetis" (Ta Hava0rvaux TEL

'ApXYYE'Td[8) rather than as the Panathenaia for Athena Polias, as one would ordinari- ly expect, inasmuch as this was the pre-eminent festival of Athena Polias. As noted in Shear's commentary, the implication is that the epithet Archegetis must be a title of Athena Polias.23 'ApXi y'Ts, "First Leader" or "Founder", has always been known as one of Athena's many epithets at Athens, but never is it attested with any distinctive civic or religious associations that might indicate whether or how Athena Archegetis should be distinguished from the city goddess in general.24 Thus before the publication of the new decree Athena Archegetis was barely more than a name. We can now see why: she and Athena Polias were apparently one and the same.

Now according to the scholion on Aristophanes, Birds, 516, there existed a statue of Athena Archegetis and an owl was held in its hand: TI)' 8E 'ApXr'YETL80 'A0rjva3 To' ayaXApa ykavKa EtxEV Ev r XELPL This notice, however, has never seemed a particularly meaningful gloss on the Aristophanic phrase it is supposed to illuminate, which says merely that "the daughter of Zeus has an owl."25 One assumes that the statue of Athe- na Archegetis cited by the scholiast was an Athenian statue; but even so, Athens must have been full of representations of Athena with an owl, and one must wonder why the scholiast singled out this particular statue, which is otherwise unmentioned in the sources. The answer is obvious, of course, if the statue is none other than the old image of Athena Polias on the Acropolis, the most ancient, the most authoritative, and probably the best known image of Athena involving an owl. Furthermore, its owl, being of gold and positioned at shoulder height, was especially prominent. Since the epithets Polias and Archegetis seem to have been interchangeable, and since there is every reason to

20Frickenhaus, op. cit. (footnote 7 above), p. 24. 2'Herington, p. 23, note 3. 22Shear, footnote 1 above. 23Shear, p. 36, note 88. 24See Plutarch, Alcibiades, 2; Aristophanes, Lysistrata, 644; scholion on Aristophanes, Birds, 516 (see

below); IG II2, 674 (= The Athenian Agora XV, Princeton 1974, no. 78), line 16 (the prytaneis of 273/2 sacrifice to Athena, Archegetis of the City, at the festival of the Chalkeia); and in the following dedicatory texts: IG II2, 3175, 3176, 3199, and 3474. Cf. Shear, p. 36, note 88.

25Birds, 514-516: ... 6 ZEus yap o vvv f3aGLXEVIWV v sor o ets so~K( (X@ IX ^n ean CAv aLETOV OpVLV EOTT7jKEV EXWV EITL T71' KEaaX- j3actLXEV'; W*V, ' 8' av9 OvyarT'qp ykaaiX' . .. .



70 JOHN H. KROLL

believe, therefore, that the scholiast's statue of Athena Archegetis and the old image of Athena Polias were identical, we may conclude that the image, which was probably standing, held a gold phiale in one hand and the gold owl in the other.

I have dwelt on this literary and epigraphical evidence because I believe it enables us to recognize a representation of the Polias image on the reverses of some Athenian bronze coins of the last third or last quarter of the 3rd century B.C. The coins were minted in two varieties, the first with the head of Zeus on the obverse (P1. 11:1-4), the second and more common variety with a head of Artemis on the obverse, so identified by a quiver at her shoulder (P1. 11:6-12).26 That the standing Athena on the coins' reverses is explicitly depicted in the form of a statue is clear both from the rigidity of the goddess' pose and from the conspicuous display of the objects held in her hands: a phiale in her outstretched right hand and an owl in her left hand, whose upturned palm is held up at shoulder level so that the owl itself is about even with the image's head. The image wears a Corinthian helmet and is dressed in a peplos, which blouses out in an overfold just below the waist but otherwise hangs straight down without a break at the knees. This last detail, together with the formal, elevated posture of the bent left arm supporting the owl, indicates that the image antedates the Classical era of Greek statuary, when balanced, relaxed poses (including an obligatory bent leg for standing figures) had become the norm. Yet despite the archaic features of the statue's composi-

26Plate 11:1-4, 6, 10-12 are reproduced from J. N. Svoronos, Les monnaies dAthenes, Munich 1923- 26, pl. 25:1-6, 8, 10; P1. 11:5 and 8 from F. S. Kleiner, "The Earliest Athenian New Style Bronze Coins," Hesperia 44, 1975, pl. 75, nos. 344 (cf. p. 324) and 89 (cf. p. 306); P1. 11:7 (same reverse die as the cor- roded P1. 11:6) from F. W. Imhoof-Blumer and P. Gardner, Numismatic Commentary to Pausanias, London 1885-1887, pl. AA.ii (cf. pp. 134-135); and P1. 11:9 from B. V. Head, British Museum Catalogue of Greek Coins: Attica, Megaris, Aegina, London 1888, pl. 15:3 (cf. p. 84).

The approximate date of the coins is deduced from their position (1) following coins of the type Svoronos, op. cit., pl. 24:10-17 (reverse of owl with amphora), all of which were overstruck on coins of Antigonos Gonatas, presumably after his death in 240; but (2) preceding coins of the type Svoronos, op. cit., pl. 81:1-16 (reverse of Zeus holding thunderbolt), which Kleiner, op. cit., p. 328, has firmly dated to the very end of the 3rd century. The coins therefore were probably minted during the period after Athens was freed from Macedonian control in 229. If so, their iconography is most plausibly understood as sym- bolic of Athens' newly won political autonomy, the reverse statue of the city goddess being particularly evocative in this respect, and the obverse heads of Zeus and Artemis possibly representing Zeus Eleuthe- rios and Artemis Soteira (cf. the heads of these two divinities and the accompanying inscriptions naming them on coins of Syracuse during the democracy of 344-317 restored by Timoleon: B. V. Head, On the Chronological Sequence of the Coins of Syracuse, London 1874 [reprinted from NC, 18741, pp. 24-33, pl. 6:1, nos. 15, 16, pl. 7:8, no. 10). Prophetically (though tenuously, in view of the evidence then available, cf. Imhoof-Blumer and Gardner, op. cit., p. 134, and Head, BM Catalogue: Attica, p. 84), the statue on the coins' reverses was identified as the Athena Archegetis of the scholion on Birds, 516 by E. Beule, in his pioneering Les monnaies d'Athenes, Paris 1858, p. 387.

It should be emphasized that the statue on these coins is the first statue of Athena or of any other deity to appear as an Athenian coin type; and it is furthermore the only statue in the numismatic iconography of Athens that can even be suspected of representing the Polias image. There are three reverse types of an Athena holding a phiale on Athenian coins of the 2nd and 3rd centuries after Christ (Svoronos, op. cit., pls. 86:40-42, 87:11-14, and 87:33-37) but none of these have an owl and (like all the Athenas on Athenian coinage of the Roman period) are rendered in the fully developed Classical style of the time of the Parthenon and later.




tion, the peplos, as shown on the earlier and more dependably rendered reverses (P1. 11:1-8) hangs most naturalistically, with a rounded flounce of the overfold and some relatively deep and irregular horizontal and diagonal folds below it.27 Such naturalistic dress would of course be quite incongruous on a typical Archaic statue made entirely of stone, bronze, or any other hard material; but it is precisely what we would expect for the old Polias image that was draped in an actual peplos of cloth.

The only detail that might argue against identifying the statue on the coins with the Polias image is the helmet, for in the inscribed inventories of the image's ornaments the goddess' headdress is listed as a UTE4C{ VT). If, however, the helmet were a normal helmet of bronze, as one would assume from the conventional materials of the image's woolen peplos and gold jewelry, it would hardly have been inventoried among the ornaments of precious metal. Moreover, the wearing of a diadem by no means preclud- ed the wearing of a helmet. The stephane need not have been a large, showy tiara; as D. B. Thompson writes, "The word appears to be used of almost any ornament that binds the head, such as a fillet or diadem."28 And we see from Plate 1 :a and other representations of Athena with her helmet temporarily removed29 that she often wore a decorative hairband beneath her helmet. In all other respects-phiale, owl 'held at shoulder height, natural appearance of the peplos, and the archaic, standing pose-the statue depicted on the coins agrees so exactly with the Polias image as it can be reconstructed from non-visual sources that it would seem almost perverse not to accept the identification and to regard the helmet as the one new element of the image that the coins have to contribute. On the coins, the helmet is tilted far back at about a ninety- degree angle on the goddess' head, allowing her face to be fully exposed. The diadem conceivably would have been visible under the helmet at the forehead, above the ears, or in both places.30

27The internal chronology of the coins can be reconstructed through the progressive simplification of the reverse-die engraving and the evidence of some probable overstrikes. On the earliest specimens, with a head of Zeus on the obverse and a dotted border around the circumference of the reverse (P1. 11:1-5), the statue's drapery is rendered most naturalistically; and P1. 11:1 even shows a slight bend in the right arm of the image. The realistic drapery is continued into the next phase of the coinage (P1. 11:6-8), with Artemis head on the obverse and dotted border on the reverse. But in the final Artemis-head phase (P1. 11:9-12), the dotted border is omitted from reverses and the peplos tends to be rendered rather more schematically, the overfold being indicated as two pointed "tails". That such archaistic-looking tails are the result of hasty die cutting and must not be regarded as faithful reflections of the peplos as it was actually seen on the image is especially clear from the cursive, linear rendering of the entire statue on P1. 11:12. Most of, if not all, the coins from the third phase of the coinage appear to have been overstruck on earlier specimens with the Zeus-head obverse.

28D. B. Thompson, "The Golden Nikai Reconsidered," Hesperia 13, 1944, p. 193. 29E.g., the Pheidian "Athena Lemnia" (G. M. A. Richter, Sculpture and Sculptors of the Greeks, 4th

rev. ed., New Haven 1970, figs. 654-658) and two vase paintings conveniently illustrated in J. Boardman, Athenian Red Figure Vases, the Archaic Period, London 1975, pls. 160 (amphora by the Berlin Painter, AR V2, p. 202, no. 77) and 185 (amphora by the Tyszkiewicz Painter, ARV2, p. 1643, no. 33bis).

30Cf. the amphora by the Andokides Painter showing Achilles and Ajax gaming (Boardman, op. cit., pl. 2:1; AR V2, p. 4, no. 7). The helmets of both heroes are tilted fairly far back on their heads so that their headbands are exposed over their ears.



72 JOHN H. KROLL

The representations on the coins show that the phiale, the owl, and the arms, which were specifically positioned to support these gold objects, were not added piece- meal but were all elements of a single artistic whole, as parts of which the helmet, the gold aegis, and the gold gorgoneion were, in all likelihood, also created. The episode in Plutarch31 that mentions the (temporary?) loss of the gorgoneion during the abandon- ment of Attica before Salamis provides a terminus ante quem of 480 B.C. for the manu- facture of this gold-ornamented ensemble. A terminus post quem of approximately 550 is indicated by the generally Late Archaic aspect of the image (note especially the slight, relaxed bend in the right arm that extends the phiale, shown on what seems to be the earliest and most reliable coin reverse, P1. 11:1) and by the form of the helmet, which, because of the way it is worn, can only have been of the fully developed Corinthian type. This variety of Corinthian helmet, characterized by extended cheek pieces and a cut-away neckguard at the back, which together allowed the helmet to be rested hori- zontally on the top of the head, did not evolve until around the middle of the 6th century.32 Since the resulting dating of ca. 550-480 corresponds with the career of Endoios, whose working life A. E. Raubitschek has fixed between ca. 540 and 500,33 the coin representations lend no small credence to Athenagoras' association of the statue with that master sculptor.

According to no fewer than five ancient authorities, however, the image of Athena Polias was vastly older than this. As quoted at the beginning of this paper, Pausanias informs that it was venerated long before the synoikismos of Attica and that it was said to have fallen from the sky. Others variously attributed its origin to Kekrops, the first king of Athens (Eusebios, Praeparatio Evangelica, x.9.15); to Kekrops' offspring, Erech- thonios (Apollodoros, iii.14.6); or to the aboriginal inhabitants of Attica, the autochtho- noi (Plutarch, De daedalis Plataeensibus).M Moreover, Plutarch (ibid.) thought it re- markable that the Athenians still preserved the image to his day; and he lists it among the oldest cult statues of Greece, along with the original wood image of Apollo on Delos that was given by Erysichthon (another son of Kekrops), the original wooden Hera of Samos, Danaos' wooden image of Athena at Lindos, and the original pear-

31See footnote 3 above. 32E. Kukahn, Der griechische Helm, Marburg 1936, pp. 45-47, pl. 4:1, 2; A. M. Snodgrass, Arms and

Armour of the Greeks, Ithaca 1967, pp. 93-94. 33Raubitschek, op. cit. (footnote 15 above), p. 495. 34Frag. 158 in F. H. Sandbach, Plutarch's Moralia XV, Loeb Classical Library, Cambridge, Mass. and

London 1969, pp. 293-297: 'H 8E TWcP 4oavwv 7TrotqoLt apXatov EOLKEV Elat LT Kat wakaLov, E"y Okwov

AP P 7rp^7pWTOl EL' A7^jX0o^ v7ro' 'Epvo-'X6oioo 'A7ri6XXwat 7rEO6E E'7rt T^7(0E OEWputv ayakaa, OvxL1wol' 8E

7^ H ao~tc~o' V7TO raW av'ToxO660cw P pvkE'', o ,utxpk i'i^ 'A6'qva^ ot 8bOvWaTov01. 'Hpac U Ka'

Ea/Uot L tvWov ELX0 s'8o, cs 4firn KaAWuo', OVIT(c) EKEXAP401 E"plyOl EV(OO1/, aA' E7TL TEO/AZW

8br waco yxvo&i'a V Aooq 'rfa oa Pt'L.

tJ8E yacp tipv0oPTO OEOV' TOTE Kat yap 'AOr7v1

P ALP&p AavaS XtTLrV Er)KEJ' 08o'.

XE'yETat 8E HdL'pas o 7rpwTo'; 'Apyokl8o r'Hpac LEpOIv Etcra4LEiO ... EK TrW ITEp'l Titpvv~a &'opcP olYxvxr TE~WO EVKEapop, 'Hpac acyaXAt /o(x*oat.




wood image of Argive Hera. Finally, Philostratos (Vita Apollonii iII.14) cites the Polias in his list of the most ancient images of the gods, which includes the same xoanon of Delian Apollo, the image of Dionysos in the Marshes, and the Apollo of Amyklai. Nothing is known about the appearance of the wooden Apollo on Delos or about the image of Dionysos in the Marshes, venerated at the site of the oldest festival of Diony- sos in Athens, according to Thucydides, ii.15.4. But the fragment of Kallimachos quoted by Plutarch (footnote 34 above) informs that the oldest cult statues of Hera on Samos and of Athena at Lindos were, respectively, an aniconic plank (Jooa o-aptc) and a plain image (AXrTw Ao,0.35 And Pausanias describes the pear-wood Argive Hera as a small seated statue (II.17.5-6)36 and the Amyklaian Apollo as an ancient and unskilful image about 40 feet high, having the form of a bronze pillar with feet, a helmeted head, and arms holding a spear and a bow (iii.9.2).37 Clearly, in the company of such comparanda as these, there must have been something conspicuously primitive about the Polias image as well.

How is this abundant and reasonably consistent testimony about the prehistoric origin of the Polias to be reconciled with the Archaic statue depicted on the coins? Since we are not entitled to assume that the Erechtheion housed two images of the goddess,38 both the prehistoric and the Archaic aspects of the Polias must have been combined in the same image. We have already accounted for its visible externals-the peplos that was renewed every four years and the helmet, the arms, and the gold ornaments and attributes that are to be associated with Endoios. This leaves only one com- ponent that could antedate the 6th century: its body or core, which was hidden beneath the peplos and which may very well have gone back to the time of the Bronze Age kings of Athens, if not much earlier still. If the nucleus of the image was indeed as ancient as the sources insist, we may readily envisage it as a primitive, aniconic or quasi-iconic fetish of olive wood.

Some rather more concrete evidence to this effect is possibly to be found in Tertul- lian, who, in a defense of the Christians' alleged worship of the cross, asks, "How much difference is there between the shaft of the cross and Pallas of Athens (Pallas Attica) or

35The unworked cravis of Samian Hera is mentioned also by Clement, Protrepticus iv.46.3. Cf. E. Buschor, "Heraion von Samos," AthMitt 55, 1930, pp. 4-5. On the original Athena Lindia, S. Casson, The Technique of Early Greek Sculpture, Oxford 1933, pp. 62-65; Lorimer, op. cit. (footnote 9 above), pp. 443-444.

36Cf. Lorimer, op. cit., p. 444, with references. 37The Apollo is illustrated on Spartan coins of the 3rd century after Christ: S. Grunauer-von Hoer-

schelmann, Die Minzprdgung der Lakedaimonier, Berlin 1978, p. 99, pl. 32:12, 13. Cf. L. Lacroix, Les repro- ductions des statues sur les monnaies grecques, Liege 1949, pp. 54-58, pl. 1:15, 16; Casson, op. cit. (footnote 35 above), pp. 56-57. The coins indicate that the columnar body was wooden and only sheathed with bronze.

38A hypothetical case for two "ancient" images is hardly worth considering. E.g., since the coins show the Panathenaic peplos on Endoios' image, the sacrosanct, prehistoric image, were it separate, would-in- credibly-have been left undraped. The fact is that neither Pausanias, whose account of the contents of the cella of the Erechtheion is unusually thorough, nor any of the other literary or epigraphical testimonia collected by Jahn and Michaelis, loc. cit. (footnote 4 above) allow for more than one image.



74 JOHN H. KROLL

the Ceres [sc. Isis] of Pharos (Ceres Pharia), each of which is displayed as a rude stake and unshaped piece of wood without effigy?"39 That Tertullian's Pallas Attica should be understood as the Athena Polias on the Acropolis is probable enough.40 By carefully pairing the Attic Athena and the Alexandrian Isis, Tertullian has not chosen any two aniconic pagan images at random but compares the abstract form of the cross to images of the chief deities of the most prominent intellectual centers of the pagan world. Apart from Pheidias' chryselephantine Athena Parthenos, the Polias is the only image of the goddess that could be meaningfully referred to as the Pallas of Attica, and it is, moreover, the only known wooden image of Athena in Attica that can even be suspected of having an essentially aniconic character. Granted that Tertullian may never have visited Athens and known the image at first hand, the casualness of his reference and the fact that he is addressing pagans about their own objects of veneration suggest that he is alluding to what was common knowledge at the time.4' Yet for all that, Tertullian does not name the Polias, and his credibility here can be checked only insofar as we have independent grounds for thinking that the unadorned Polias may have been more or less as primitive as his Pallas Attica. Consequently, while Tertullian's statement deserves at the very least to be taken seriously as possible complementary evidence for the under- lying nature of the statue, one can insist on neither its reliability nor its relevance.

This is particularly to be regretted when we turn to consider the image's face. The coins indicate only that it had a face and that the face was to some degree naturalistic. If the olive-wood core was therefore genuinely aniconic, the face would have had to have been a late addition, ascribable, like the arms and gold ornament, to Endoios. As illustrated in a number of 5th-century Attic vase paintings, aniconic column or tree-trunk fetishes of Dionysos were regularly anthropomorphized by the addition of a mask and by cloaking the wood column or log with a garment.42 And from Hyperides, pro Euxenippo,

39Apologia, 16.3.8: Et tamen quanto distinguitur a crucis stipite Pallas Attica, et Ceres Pharia, quae sine effigie rudi palo et informi ligno prostant? Cf. Tertullian, Ad Nationes I.12.3: Quanto distingqitur a crucis stipite Pallas Attica et Ceres Pharia, quae sine forma rudi palo et solo staticulo higni informis repraesentatur?

All the standard commentaries note that Tertullian's Ceres Pharia is Isis Pharia, for whom see P. M. Fraser, Ptolemaic Alexandria, Oxford 1972, I, p. 20; II, p. 54, note 125. All representations of Isis Pharia portray her in fully anthropomorphic, Hellenistic form (P. Bruneau, "Isis Pelagia 'a Delos," BCH 85, 1961, pp. 435-446, and BCH 87, 1963, pp. 301-308). Tertullian is the only source that mentions a primitive image.

40A. Schneider (Le premier livre Ad Nationes de Tertullien, Neuchatel 1968, p. 250) suggests alterna- tively that the Pallas may allude to the Palladion image housed near the Athenian lawcourt called Egii naX- ka8L'W (L. Ziehen, s. v., "Palladion," RE XVIII, 1949, cols. 176-179). But if this image could be designated as a Palladion, it almost certainly would have been anthropomorphic, unlike Tertullian's Pallas. On the form of Palladion Athenas, see G. Lippold, s.v., "Palladion in der Kunst," RE XVIII, 1949, cols. 189-201; J.-M. Moret, L'Ilioupersis dans la ceramique italiote, Geneva 1975, pp. 87-97, with plates.

41T. D. Barnes (Tertullian, A Historical and Literary Study, Oxford 1971, pp. 107-108, 194-210, 213) emphasizes that Tertullian was a respectably learned man, well educated and versed in classical pagan literature, and that his Apology was directed specifically to a cultured audience. Although evidence is lacking, Tertullian may have traveled widely through the Greek East (ibid., p. 198).

42The material is collected and discussed in A. Frickenhaus, Lendenvasen, Winckelmannsprogramm LXXII, Berlin 1912. Cf. W. Wrede, "Der Maskengott," AthMitt 53, 1928, pp. 81-92, figs. 1-3. Summary by A. Pickard-Cambridge, The Dramatic Festivals of Athens, 2nd ed., Oxford 1968, pp. 30-34, figs. 17-22.




24-25, we learn of a magnificent face or mask that the Athenians in the 320's pre- pared-along with "other appropriate parts and much expensive ornament"-for embel- lishing the apparently primitive image of Dione at Dodona.43 Thus, the addition of a fine mask to the olive-wood image of the Polias would have been fully in keeping with estab- lished practice. On the other hand, if we disregard Tertullian's reference to a featureless Pallas Attica, it becomes equally possible that the face of the Polias was carved directly out of the ancient olive-wood shaft. This too could have been the work of Endoios. Or it could have been a feature of the prehistoric image: in his survey of pre-Archaic Greek cult statues, S. Casson concludes that "it is possible to establish the working hypothesis that pre-Hellenic Cretan and some of the earliest Hellenic figures of deities shared the peculiarity of having plain or almost columnar bodies but realistic or, at least, partly detailed heads."44 But however this may be, without a close-up view of the Polias, the question of when and how she received her face must obviously be left open.

All the essential sources nevertheless can be reconciled and with the help of the coins may enable us to understand Pausanias' puzzling silence about the statue's appearance. With the possible exception of the face, all the external elements of the Polias would have been regarded by the ancients as ornamentation, distinct from the image per se. Throughout Hyperides' discussion of the Athenians' embellishment (EntKOcr-

LELOv) of the Dione statue at Dodona (footnote 43 above), the A8os or 'yaXtAta of the goddess is consistently distinguished from its rich and artistic KOcrUpOS. The same distinc- tion is explicitly applied to the statue of Athena Polias in Plutarch's account of the Athenian festival of the Plynteria as the time when the Praxiergidai removed the KOY-

Wu from the vwoq and veiled the latter from view.45 For a serious antiquarian like Pausanias, it was of course the ancient and true E'8oq, not its Kocrpsos, that was of conse- quence. Yet without lifting up the peplos there was nothing to be seen of the true image, except perhaps the face. One must add to this that even though Endoios' embellishments must have been exquisitely crafted, his remodeling of the Polias was lacking in the kind of artistic or iconographic novelty that would have attracted Pausanias' interest. The goddess was given only her usual attributes-owl, helmet, aegis, and gorgoneion-and the portrayal of her holding out a phiale was, to judge from other Archaic cult statues with phialai,46 a rather common and undistinguished conception. Given the

43WVZ yap 6 ZE w 6 A8can'os 7rpoaTE' Ev aj tai To ayaX Tc AUw0 ErLKO ̀OaLa Kat VEL1 7rpOOdT7rO7 TE 7roL7)OaA~Eu'oL W- OLOJ TE Ka'XXLO-TO Kat Ta9XXa 7raJ'Ta Ta aKoXov~a, Kai KOO-A0u 7roXVwv KaE ITOXvTEX7) 1 co iTapacTKEvao-avTE' ... EITEKoOTA~'qOaTE To ebo' T Aviwr~ &gwc Kat VwIJ avhc Kat

Irq^- OEOV.

44Casson, op. cit. (footnote 35 above), p. 58. 45Alcibiades, 34.1: 8p(Lt 8E% Ta opywa HlpaeEpyytbat 0apy'qXu^0vo' E`Kn OOLIi'TOI'' awopp)Ta, TO V TE

KO-A/O V KaOEXO'VTE# Kat TO E80o' KaTaKaXlAIjaVTEc. If my interpretation of the image is correct, the passage implies that all Endoios' additions, including the arms and possibly a face, were so constructed as to be removable. On the Plynteria further: L. Deubner, Attische Feste, Berlin 1932, pp. 17-22; Herington, pp. 29-30; D. M. Lewis, "Notes on Attic Inscriptions," BSA 49, 1954, pp. 17-21.

46E.g., the Piraeus bronze Apollo, whose phiale is not preserved (G. M. A. Richter, Kouroi, 2nd ed., London 1960, p. 136, figs. 478-480, no. l59bis); the Apollo Smintheus of Alexandria Troas (Lacroix, op.



76 JOHN H. KROLL

thoroughgoing conventionality of the statue's external form, it was only natural that Pausanias passed over it and chose to comment instead on the image's unique and profound historical significance as the religious focus of Athens since time immemorial.

Addendum Line drawings of several coins of the type discussed above published by Beule, op.

cit. (footnote 26 above), p. 387, and by A. B. Cook, Zeus, III, i, Cambridge 1940, p. 827, figs. 636, 637, show the reverse statue with the goddess' feet exposed and with one leg in advance of the other in the "walking-standing" pose common to many Ar- chaic korai. Since submitting my paper I have seen a few unpublished coins that con- firm these details of Beule's and Cook's drawings and clarify that the feet are depicted, although as rather formless dots, below the peplos on my Plate 11:11. Since the peplos clearly flounces on the ground and hides ope or both feet on other specimens (P1. 11:5-7, 9), I conclude (1) that the feet of the image were sometimes exposed but at other times covered, just as one would expect of a statue that was repeatedly undressed and dressed in a long woolen garment; and (2) that the feet and the legs to which they were attached must be added to the list of Endoios' embellishments for the image.

JOHN H. KROLL THE UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN

Department of Classics Austin, TX 78712

cit. [footnote 37 above], pp. 76-86, pl. 4:2-14); the Artemis statue depicted on Athenian coins of the 2nd century B.C. (M. Thompson, The New Style Silver Coinage of Athens, New York 1961, pls. 75, 76, nos. 709a-714c; Lacroix, op. cit., p. 205); the statue of Aphrodite depicted by the Meidias Painter in his scene of the rape of the daughters of Leukippos (AR V2, p. 1313, no. 5); and the completed image of Samian Hera, which held a phiale in each hand (Lacroix, op. cit., pp. 206-216, pl. 17:6-10; Buschor, op. cit. [footnote 35 above], fig. 2). In the Classical period, cult statues holding phialai seem to have become even more common; see B. Eckstein-Wolf, "Zur Darstellung spendener G6tter," A'IdI 5, 1952, pp. 64-65, and Lacroix, op. cit., pls. 24:1, 26:1, and 28:7.



PLATE 11

a. Black-figured kalpis (E. Gerhard, Auserlesene Vasenbilder, Berlin 1940-58, IV, pl. 242)

b * ~~j X~ ' .

2 3 4 5 6

..tj 9ACt.

7 8 9 10 11 12

JOHN S. KROLL: THE ANCIENT IMAGE OF ATHENA PoLIAS This content downloaded from 163.1.159.1 on Wed, 25 Jun 2014 17:21:04 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions


Documents

Athena Polias Libre