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Author Topic: Hermes and the infant Dionysos  (Read 13277 times)

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Offline Arminius

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Hermes and the infant Dionysos
« on: June 28, 2008, 01:43:55 pm »
Pergamon in Mysia, Marcus Aurelius, issued by T. Kl. Aristeas, strategos, 169–175 AD.,
Æ35 (34-36 mm / 23,94 g),
Obv.: [ΑΥ] ΚΑΙ Μ ΑΥΡΗΛΙ - ΑΝΤΩΝΕΙΝΟC , laureate, draped, and cuirassed bust of Marcus Aurelius right, seen from behind.
Rev.: [ΕΠΙ C-ΤΡΑ [ΚΛ] ΑΡΙCΤΕ[ΟΥ] ΠΕΡΓΑΜ - [ΗΝ]ΩΝ / [Β ΝΕ]ΟΚΟΡΩΝ , Hermes seated on cippus left, wearing nebris; playing with youthful Dionysos dancing on his right foot r.; pedum beneath Hermes' foot on ground.
RPC temporary № 3232 ( http://rpc.ashmus.ox.ac.uk/coins/3232/ ) ; von Fritze, Pergamon, p. 62, pl. V.4 (rev.) ; Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 63.1245 .

A statue showing Hermes and the infant Dionysos, attributed to Praxiteles of Pergamon, was discovered at Olympia in 1877.(see below)
The sculpture was located where Pausanias had seen it in the late second century CE. Hermes is represented in the act of carrying the child Dionysos to the nymphs who were charged with his rearing.The statue is today exhibited at the Olympia Archaeological Museum.


If there was another Praxiteles-sculpture of this theme (like the reverse depiction) at Pergamon?
(I should read Pausanias before bothering others with questions.)


regards

Offline gordian_guy

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Re: Hermes and the infant Dionysos
« Reply #1 on: June 28, 2008, 03:25:22 pm »


Arminius,

I am curious why you call the seated individual Hermes?? With that attributes listed I would suspect that it were just a Satyr, and is consistent with the coin in RPC that your reference - which at least appears to be from the same or similar dies as yours. Are you just asking if it might be a Hermes?? One would then need a kerykeion...

c.rhodes

Offline slokind

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Re: Hermes and the infant Dionysos
« Reply #2 on: June 28, 2008, 03:58:05 pm »
I could forgive Hermes for having his hands full with an infant god, and such a god, to play with.  And in RPC on line, as on the above coin, I cannot see a little satyr-tail.  But the pedum on the ground, which now I see on both coins, though logically Hermes might have one, in case one of his flock was teetering on the brink of a crevice and a ravine, to pull it back by its neck, in the art tradition (so far as I know) belongs strictly to Pan and the Satyrs.  If this were Hermes, I'd look for his kerykeion in that place on the ground.
It is a perfectly wonderful coin, a famous coin.
Pat L.
P.S. I think that this composition probably was Hellenistic rather than Late Classical, and it may well have been a painting rather than a sculpture.
Also, I'm suddenly interested in the pose of the infant.  It is that of an Æ19 from Philippopolis (my specimen in a scan is in RPC on line; here is a photo); there is also an inferior version at Nicopolis, for Commodus.  Another specimen of the Philippopolis one was posted here a couple of years ago, as I recall.  From the Pergamon coin, I am inclined to wonder whether there was not a painting at Pergamon, though a piece of repoussé metalwork also might have such a subject in such a style, or, for that matter, a virtuoso piece of sculpture.
Does anyone know: were the Pergamene palaces semi-public under the 2cCE Empire?  At least to the governing classes?  Anyway, I think an Attalid date for the creation of the composition is likely.
Pat L.
• 23 12 02 AE 19  PhilippopolisMarcus Aurelius, bareheaded, bust to r.  AV KAI MAR AVREta    ANTONEIN.  Rev., Dancing baby Dionysos (or, possibly, Bacchic infant), head wreathed, shouldering thyrsos beribboned on both ends in his r. and carrying kantharos in his l. hand.  He looks like a Dionysiac baby on a silver cup a century earlier.  PhILIPPOP  OLEITON.  Under his left foot is not an exergue line but a bit of "earth".

Offline slokind

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Re: Hermes and the infant Dionysos
« Reply #3 on: June 28, 2008, 05:05:23 pm »
I think I understand the humor... 
"Well, Hermes, we ancient artists anticipated modern customs agents' methods (Zoll, Douane, etc.) and relied on racial profiling, deeming anyone with a shepherd's crook to belong to the tribe of aliens or guest workers or fugitives from Neverland, and allowing that he who bore a herald's staff was probably a god of commerce."
Is that what you were talking about?  If so, it is true.  Ancient (and medieval and, yes, modern) iconogrepaphy relied on stereotypes.  And the Athenian stereotypes, 3c BCE, , of Theophrastus' Characteres, the ancient antetypes of psychological profiles, stuck so well that when Jean de la Bruyère hardly more than translated them they still passed muster in 17th c CE Paris.
Pat L.

Offline Jochen

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Re: Hermes and the infant Dionysos
« Reply #4 on: June 28, 2008, 05:17:45 pm »
Hi Arminius!

I think it is Zeus in the shape of Hermes with the attributes of Pan;)

Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem!

Best regards

Offline gordian_guy

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Re: Hermes and the infant Dionysos
« Reply #5 on: June 28, 2008, 05:32:34 pm »


Arminius, it is only by YOUR RULES that I play, and the question was only a half-zinger, as I am truly curious why a pedum would not be an attribute of Hermes - god of the shepherds and fields. Were it only from ancient sculpture that we had our image of Hermes we might never know what is in his outstretched hand - all of the sculpture depicting a Hermes have never shown the kerykeion. But we have liturature and coins and bronze etc to tell us - but never to they seem to tell why some other logical attribute is not and attribute. Hermes is one of my favorite gods and I collect numerous coins depicting him - there are many I do not have and continue my search - yours would truly be one to know about - if only it were him. Still curious

c.rhodes

Offline slokind

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Re: Hermes and the infant Dionysos
« Reply #6 on: June 28, 2008, 06:55:42 pm »
..."why a pedum would not be an attribute of Hermes":
The answer is, it just wasn't.  The association of pedum with the satyr-play tribe (rather than the uban comedy tribe--like Menander) or the Ancient and Tragic tribe (like Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides) was centuries old and stereotyped half a millennium already by the time of these coins.  The documentation associated with the theater makes allusion to its types natural--and they may have been determinative.
As for my sensing something of the character of Bacchic imagery of Attalid Pergamon, here is a detail of the little satyr that, alongside a still-life basket of fruit, completes the composition of Herakles Finding his Infant Son Telephos.  Note his pedum and his expression and spirit.
Pat L.

Offline Jochen

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Re: Hermes and the infant Dionysos
« Reply #7 on: June 29, 2008, 05:55:40 pm »
Being busy with this subject I found a coin showing Artemis with the infant Dionysos! I'm knowing nothing about a connection between these two deities and so I think that it was only an invention of the die cutter.

Best regards

Offline slokind

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Re: Hermes and the infant Dionysos
« Reply #8 on: June 29, 2008, 11:18:38 pm »
I am, needless to say, green with envy.  It is as you say: carrying babies around is not a normal rôle for Artemis.  Praxiteles and Kephisodotos really started something, holding up an infant that way.
But (attached, though I'm sure I posted it before) Philippopolis has a Septimius to go with your Domna, so far as the motif is concerned.  Only, Septimius has Herakles holding Telephos.  Of course, the subject is (like the Telephos frieze on the interior of the Great Altar and the doubtless famous painting copied at Herculaneum, where the Basilica also had copies of Apelles and, I think, Euphranor: Pergamon, Athens, Macedonia...), the founding myth of Pergamon.
P. G. Burbules has called to my attention another Herakles with infant Telephos (Lindgren, L&K, no. 934, where the baby is wrongly called Dionysos: was that because, again, the baby is in the Praxitelean pose--since Herakles was not a tender or playmate of the infant Dionysos).
The Artemis is like the agalma of Artemis with her stag that figures on some coins of Ephesos, with trees, showing plainly that it was an agalma, a park statue, of the temenos, not a cult statue.  There is a charming Julio-Claudian girl with the body of this statue type in the Museo Nazionale Romano.
Several media, several compositional arrangements, but I daresay all the Herakles with Telephos relate to works of art at Pergamon.
The wonder is that Artemis!  And the quite exceptional face of Domna.

Offline Britannicus

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Re: Hermes and the infant Dionysos
« Reply #9 on: July 03, 2008, 04:55:55 pm »
The Artemis is like the agalma of Artemis with her stag that figures on some coins of Ephesos, with trees, showing plainly that it was an agalma, a park statue, of the temenos, not a cult statue.  There is a charming Julio-Claudian girl with the body of this statue type in the Museo Nazionale Romano.

Offline Akropolis

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Re: Hermes and the infant Dionysos
« Reply #10 on: July 03, 2008, 05:07:19 pm »
Slokind writes:
"P. G. Burbules has called to my attention another Herakles with infant Telephos (Lindgren, L&K, no. 934, where the baby is wrongly called Dionysos: was that because, again, the baby is in the Praxitelean pose--since Herakles was not a tender or playmate of the infant Dionysos)"

See image below.
PeteB

Offline Britannicus

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Re: Hermes and the infant Dionysos
« Reply #11 on: July 03, 2008, 05:09:29 pm »
Here is another Heracles with Telephus reverse, on an unpublished (?) coin of Commodus from Nicomedia. Telephus is floating around rather mysteriously in front of Heracles. I bought the coin thinking the little figure was an Eros, but there are no wings etc. in evidence.

Offline curtislclay

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Re: Hermes and the infant Dionysos
« Reply #12 on: July 03, 2008, 05:20:29 pm »
It seems unlikely to me that Hercules in that "Farnese" pose, resting after his labors, could also be holding TelesphorusHis hands, after all, are both occupied, one holding apples behind his back, the other grasping his club to provide support.

So I would guess, yes, a putto crowning him, even if no wings are apparent.

A neat type in any case!
Curtis Clay

Offline Britannicus

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Re: Hermes and the infant Dionysos
« Reply #13 on: July 03, 2008, 05:39:49 pm »
Well, yes, that's why I tentatively wrote "floating". I'd much prefer him to be Eros, of course...   :)

Offline Jochen

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Re: Hermes and the infant Dionysos
« Reply #14 on: July 03, 2008, 06:02:29 pm »
Here is another Herakles with Telephos, a strange coin from an unknown Nikopolis, which I have found on the web. Telephos is so small that he is barely seen without magnification.

Best regards

Offline slokind

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Re: Hermes and the infant Dionysos
« Reply #15 on: July 03, 2008, 10:14:38 pm »
I am so glad that Jochen's rare and lovely Julia Domna / Artemis with Infant Dionysos has her little stag, too, because she seems to wear her chiton with her right shoulder bare--as an Amazon does.  Yet even at Ephesos, I don't think Amazons have stags.
I just got a Commodus at Philippopolis with a reverse figure with a bare shoulder, I'm practically sure.  The figure wears boots, too.
Of course, for Philippopolis, if it isn't in RPC on line or in Varbanov III, there is no place (but the Izvestiya for the Plovdiv museum by Mushmov, which no one has) to try to look it up.
So it is an interesting coin to have.  Because, if the emperor takes off his armor, but not his boots, we don't expect to see a bare shoulder, but, unlike an Amazon, Artemis does not usually (on Thracian Provincials) have a bare shoulder (as she has on the Parthenon frieze).
I have supposed that the figure (my reason for getting the coin) is the Emperor himself because he holds a scepter--but the Emperor usually has a spear when not togate or divinely nude?
I just finished photographing this so I have to check the facts.
I have put it here simply because there are so many considerations that come into play with these coins.
Pat L.

Offline Britannicus

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Re: Hermes and the infant Dionysos
« Reply #16 on: July 04, 2008, 06:08:38 pm »
unlike an Amazon, Artemis does not usually (on Thracian Provincials) have a bare shoulder (as she has on the Parthenon frieze).
Under "Coin of the Day" I've just uploaded a superb Artemis the huntress with Amazonian, bared right breast - not from Thrace, however, but from Mantineia in Arcadia.

Offline slokind

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Re: Hermes and the infant Dionysos
« Reply #17 on: July 04, 2008, 09:14:17 pm »
Yes, see the Mantinea Artemis that Britannicus just posted in "Artemis the Huntress" under Coin of the Day, and my note there.
Apart from that, this figure does seem to hold a scepter and the chiton or tunic is not double girt.  So I still suspect it's male.  Yet it doesn't read like the other reverses that I keyword as "ipse", meaning the Empreror himself.
Pat L.

Offline slokind

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Re: Hermes and the infant Dionysos
« Reply #18 on: July 07, 2008, 12:40:56 am »
Concerning the Julio-Claudian girl in the MNR in Rome, here is a fearsomely ugly Gallienus Ephesus, showing that she stands in a park, and a very pretty Nicopolis ad I. for Antoninus Pius, probably in the 140s, both showing the same pose.  Other cities, such as Hadrianopolis show the stag, too.
(1) This stance is like the stance of the coin with the figure I cannot name with assurance.  Like commercial artists, they had a stock of poses that could be put to any number of uses.
(2) It occurs to me that this standing girl Artemis is dressed rather like the Ephesos Amazons, the Amazons by famous artists which were one of her principal attractions.
Pat L.

Offline gordian_guy

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Re: Hermes and the infant Dionysos
« Reply #19 on: July 07, 2008, 08:46:53 am »


Here is my Gordian III from Seleucia ad Calycadnum that matches nicely slokinds wonderful Gallienus from Ephesus. My example shows the same scene with the stag looking up at artemis. She is wearing the short tunic and boots but neither shoulder appears to be bare.

c.rhodes

Offline Jochen

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Re: Hermes and the infant Dionysos
« Reply #20 on: July 07, 2008, 01:38:07 pm »
This thread has begun as thread about Hermes and Dionysos but now it has changed to Artemis! I think I have a very similar coin of Gallienus from Ephesos like Pat, may be even the same type.

Ionia, Ephesos, Gallienus, AD 253-268
AE 28
obv. AVT PO LIK GALLIHNOC
        bust, draped and cuirassed, seen from behind, laureate, r.
rev. EFECI[WN?] D - NEWKORWN
       Artemis, wearing a short hunting dress and boots, stg. frontal, head r., holding bow in l.
       hand and reaching with r. hand to quiver over her r. shoulder.
       Left beside her a leaved branched tree, one branch behind her to her l. shoulder.
ref. SNG Copenhagen 514

The garment which Artemis here is wearing I have never found on my other coins:
(1) She seems to wear very high boots reaching over her knees
(2) Her hunting skirt seems to have aprons hanging down over her thighs
(3) Her belly seems to be protected by a belly bandage   
(4) This bandage seems to be held by two straps over her shoulders.

This garment no longer is the beautiful often coquettish clothing of a young lady but more the working dress of a hard worker.

Best regards

Offline slokind

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Re: Hermes and the infant Dionysos
« Reply #21 on: July 07, 2008, 05:41:05 pm »
What still puzzles me is your coin, evidently an Artemis holding an Infant, and mine (the Phliippopolis of Commodus) which I regard as quite unidientifiable, that is in the same stance as your Artemis (only the stag helps convince me that it is she).  Only if Arminius' initial posting were a Hermes (prompting someone to post the Olympia statue, which is not the same Type, even if it were the same divinity as the one with a pedum on the ground beside him), would the thread have veered off.
Though I may regret the impulse to post my Commodus (to say that figure stances and iconographical types do not necessarily coincide), I certainly am glad that you posted your Julia Domna / Artemis with Infant, one of the most interesting coins I have seen.
Your Gallienus is in much better condition than mine, and iconographically must refer to the existence of the same statue.  In rendering the type, however, as you note, you'd think it was an Hephaistos (who wears an workman's chiton covering only one shoulder), except that, as your description makes plain, the engraver seems to have had no interest or notion of what he was representing.  Perhaps neither engraver had looked at the statue, ever, but the one who did my worse preserved one did know what he was doing carelessly.  The other one did not.  And this at Ephesos!
I think that the second Gallienus with the quite unfeminine and un-Artemis is "barbarous", the work of an engraver who was wholly "out of the loop" of Greco-Roman tradition.
CA does not Search for a type with trees in it very effectively.  It only turns up the palm behind the stag on Greek coins.
Pat L.

Offline Britannicus

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Re: Hermes and the infant Dionysos
« Reply #22 on: July 07, 2008, 06:24:10 pm »
here is a fearsomely ugly Gallienus Ephesus, showing that she stands in a park
For some reason I also have a photo of the reverse of this coin, although it's not in my collection...
My own coin is far uglier, and I'll try to photograph it this weekend. If you want to see something "fearsomely ugly", just wait!   :laugh:

 

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