The Calydonian boar hunt in ancient art

The Calydonian boar hunt in ancient art
King Oeneus ("wine man") of Calydon, an ancient city of west-central Greece north of the Gulf of Patras, held annual harvest sacrifices to the gods on the sacred hill. One year the king forgot to include Great "Artemis of the Golden Throne" in his offerings. Insulted, Artemis, the "Lady of the Bow", loosed the biggest, most ferocious wild boar imaginable on the countryside of Calydon. It rampaged throughout the countryside, destroying vineyards and crops, forcing people to take refuge inside the city walls, where they began to starve. Oeneus sent messengers out to look for the best hunters in Greece, offering them the boar's pelt and tusks as a prize. Among those who responded were some of the Argonauts, Oeneus' own son Meleager, and, remarkably for the Hunt's eventual success, one woman— the huntress Atalanta, the "indomitable", who had been suckled by Artemis as a she-bear and raised as a huntress, a proxy for Artemis herself. Many of the men refused to hunt alongside a woman but not Meleager. Atalanta was first to the boar with an arrow, then Meleager finished it off, but offered the prize to Atalanta for drawing first blood. This resulted in many of the hunters turning upon one another, contesting the spoils. Pausanias reported seeing the hide of the Calydonian boar in the Temple of Athena Alea at Tegea in Laconia "rotted by age and by now altogether without bristles" in the 2nd century CE. Pausanias stated that the tusks had been taken to Rome as booty from the defeated allies of Mark Anthony by Augustus and one tusk had been broken. "But the remaining one, having a circumference of about half a fathom, was dedicated in the Emperor's gardens, in a shrine of Dionysos."




Images: Terracotta plaque of the Calydonian Boar Hunt from Melos 460 BCE (inv 175B) at the Allard Pierson Museum in Amsterdam courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor Dick Osseman. Roman sarcophagus depicting the Calydonian boar hunt at the Palazzo dei Conservatori courtesy of Wikimedia Commons contributor Marie-Lan Nguyen. A study of Meleager and Atalanta and the Hunt of the Calydonian Boar by Peter Paul Rubens at the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena, California courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Imperial Italic G Roman helmet found near Hebron at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem

Image
Imperial Italic G Roman helmet found near Hebron at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. This distinctive Imperial Italic G-style helmet was a 2nd century development derived from the earlier Coolus-style helmets with a domed bowl fashioned after La Tène III helmet types. The original Coolus-style helmets were named after the city of Coolus in northeastern France where a helmet of the Coolus type was dredged from the River Marne. Ro man helmets were typically constructed of a copper alloy or bronze. Some were spun on a lathe rather than hammered into shape with a turned, cast-soldered or riveted crest knob. The brow-guard was designed to protect the front of the face from downward-slashing sword blows, just as the neck-guard was intended to deflect blows aimed at the nape of the neck and shoulders. The Hebron helmet is also constructed with post-Dacian Wars crossbars on the crown, thought to have been part of the original construction, as evidenced by the brass lunate decorations applie
Read more

A Brief History of Ships' Eyes

Image
(condensed from the Master's thesis of Troy Joseph Nowak, Texas A&M University, 2006, "Archaeological Evidence for Ship Eyes: An Analysis of Their Form and Function  ( https://nautarch.tamu.edu/pdf-files/Nowak-MA2006.pdf#:~:text=bows%20of%20ancient%20Greek%20ships%20between%20the%205th,guided%20the%20ship%20and%20helped%20to%20avoid%20hazards .) Between the Bronze Age and the 3rd century BCE, all types of watercraft used in the Mediterranean from small boats to large galleys were commonly adorned with eyes on their bows.  In Greece, the earliest clear depiction of a ship with eyes is a Late Helladic clay ship model decorated with circular eyes discovered at Phylakopi, Melos. However, ship representations with eyes do not reappear in the archaeological record again until the Geometric Period.  Excavations in the Dipylon cemetery at Athens have yielded an impressive collection of Late Geometric I [c. 760 to 735 BCE] ceramics decorated with ships. Eyes adorn the bows of these
Read more

Roman and Byzantine mosaics at the Haleplibahçe Mosaics Museum in Şanlıurfa, Turkey.

Image
Roman and Byzantine mosaics at the Haleplibahçe Mosaics Museum in Şanlıurfa, Turkey. Opened in 2015, the modern 6,000 square meter Haleplibahce Mosaic Museum houses the remains of the mosaic pavements of a large Roman villa uncovered during a municipal construction project i n Şanlıurfa, Turkey. Şanlıurfa, also known as Urfa, is built on the site of the ancient Greek city of Edessa. Discoveries include mosaics depicting the life of Achilles, including his mother, Thetis, holding him by the heel and dipping him into the waters of the River Styx, his training by the centaur, Chiron, and his departure for the Trojan War. Another pavement depicts Amazon queens hunting wild beasts. Mosaics from other archaeological areas depict various animals, Ktisis, a figure personifying the act of generous donation or foundation often found in 6th century Greek mosaics, and a 2nd century CE depiction of the myth of Orpheus. The Orpheus mosaic was recently repatriated from the Dallas Museum of Art.
Read more