accoutred with cothurni, and both Virgil and Cicero mention them as forming a part of the costume of hunters and tragedians. (20.) "Minerva (or Science) sprang from the head of Jove, contrived the texture of the universe, and to her, crowded with curious representations, is carried the robe, its emblem, in solemn procession from the town to her temple in the citadel." This idea gives much significance to the sacred Peplos. (21.) Canephores.-When a sacrifice was to be offered, the round cake, the chaplet of flowers, the knife used to slay the victim, and sometimes the frankincense were deposited in a flat, circular basket, called calathus, which was frequently carried to the altar on the head of a virgin. This practice was observed more especially at Athens. When the sacrifice was offered by a private citizen, either his daughter or some unmarried female of his family officiated as Canephoros; but in the Panathenæa, the Dionysia, and other public festivals, two virgins of the first Athenian families were appointed for the purpose. That the office was accounted highly honorable, appears from the fact, that the resentment of Harmodius, which instigated him to kill Hipparchus, arose from the insult offered by the latter in forbidding his sister to walk as Canephoros in the Panathenaic procession. In architecture, Canephores have sometimes been erroneously called Caryatides; the former are properly used only by the side of an altar, and were never applied by the Greeks in this manner to columns. (22.) (Owing to a mistake in the numbering, two notes are marked 22, two 23, and two 24.) Griffin-A fabulous animal, said to be generated between the Lion and the Eagle. It is described as having the head and paws of the lion, the ears of the horse, the wings of the eagle, and a crest formed like the dorsal fins of a fish. According to Ælian, in the fourth book of his History of Animals, this creature derived its origin from India. Its back was covered with black feathers, its breast with red, and its wings with white. Ctesias, Herodotus, and other writers, also give similar descriptions of the Griffin. According to a tradition of the Bactrians, the gold mines of the country were guarded by Griffins. The Griffin is also one of the attributes of Apollo; and according to Philostratus, in his life of Apollonius, the Indians figured the sun in a quadriga drawn by Griffins. (22.) The bulla was made of metal, and so called from its resemblance in form to a bubble floating upon the water. It was suspended round the neck of a child as a token of paternal affection, and a sign of high birth; as it was given to infants, it sometimes served to recognise a lost child. Probably it contained amulets. Instead of the bulla of gold, the children of inferior rank wore one made of leather. (23.) Theseus gave to his money the impression of an ox. Hence the expression worth ten or a hundred oxen. (23.) Mithras is generally represented in sculpture as a young man, his head surmounted by a Phrygian bonnet, and in the attitude of supporting his knee upon a bull that lies on the ground. With one hand he holds a horn of the animal, and with the other plunges a dagger into its neck. Mithras here represents the generative Sun, in the full bloom of youth and power, while the bull indicates the earth, containing in its bosom the seeds, or germs of things, that the sun-god causes to come forth in abundant flood from the wound inflicted by his dagger of gold.-Creuzer. (24.) Caryatides.-Figures in long drapery used to support entablatures. Their origin, according to Vitruvius, was this:-The inhabitants of Carya, a city of Peleponnessos, made a league with the barbarians in the Persian war against the other people of Greece; but the Persians being conquered, the Carytes were afterwards besieged, their city taken and reduced to ashes, the men put to the sword, and the women carried away to slavery. To perpetuate the memory of this victory, the conquerors caused public edifices to be erected, in which, as a mark of servility and degradation, the figures of the captives, in their matronal robes and ornaments, were used instead of columns in the servile office of supporting the entablatures; thus transmitting to posterity their infamy and their punishment. The most genuine specimen of these statues was in the Pandroscium at Athens. One of these figures is now in the British Museum. (24.) Homer arms Hercules with a bow and arrows; Hesiod describes him with shield and spear. Peisander and Stesichorus were the first who gave him the club and lion skin. |