APPENDIX, 21 463

With this profile representation of water may be compared the sculptured waves out of which the head and arms of Hyperion are rising in the pediment of the Parthenon (Elgin Room, No. (65) 91,¹ Museum Marbles, vi., pl. 1). Phidias has represented these waves like a mass of overlapping tiles, thus generalising their rippling movement. In the Mæander pattern the graceful curves of nature are represented by angles, as in the Egyptian hieroglyphic of water: so again the earliest representation of the labyrinth on the coins of the Cretan Cnossus is rectangular; on later coins we find the curvilinear form introduced.

In the language of Greek mythography, the wave pattern and the Mæander are sometimes used singly for the idea of water, but more frequently combined with figurative representation. The number of aquatic deities in the Greek Pantheon led to the invention of a great variety of beautiful types. Some of these are very well known. Everybody is familiar with the general form of Poseidon (Neptune), the Nereids, the Nymphs, and River Gods; but the modes in which these types were combined with conventional imitation and with accessory symbols deserve careful study, if we would appreciate the surpassing richness and beauty of the language of art formed out of these elements.

This class of representations may be divided into two principal groups, those relating to the sea, and those relating to fresh water.

The power of the ocean and the great features of marine scenery are embodied in such types as Poseidon, Nereus, and the Nereids, that is to say, in human forms moving through the liquid element in chariots, or on the back of dolphins, or who combine the human form with that of the fish-like Tritons. The sea-monsters who draw these chariots are called Hippocamps, being composed of the tail of a fish and the fore-part of a horse, the leg terminating in web-feet; this union seems to express speed and power under perfect control, such as would characterise the movements of sea deities. A few examples have been here selected, to show how these types were combined without symbols and conventional imitation.

In the British Museum is a vase, No. 1257,² engraved, (Lenormant et De Witte, Mon. Céram., i. pl. 27) of which the subject is, Europa crossing the sea on the back of the bull. In this design the sea is represented by a variety of expedients. First, the swimming action of the bull suggests the idea of the liquid medium through which he moves. Behind him stands Nereus, his staff held perpendicularly in his hand: the top of his staff comes nearly to the level of the bull’s back, and is probably meant as the measure of the whole depth of the sea. Towards the surface line thus indicated a dolphin is rising; in the middle depth is another dolphin; below, a shrimp and a cuttle-fish, and the bottom is indicated by a jagged line of rocks, on which are two echini.

On a mosaic found at Oudnah in Algeria (Revue Archéol., iii. pl. 50), we have a representation of the sea, remarkable for the fulness of detail with which it is made out.

This, though of the Roman period, is so thoroughly Greek in feeling, that it may be cited as an example of the class of mythography now under consideration

¹ [The Sun-god in his chariot emerging from the waves is now numbered 303 A in the Museum Catalogue of Sculpture.]

² [This vase is now numbered F 184; it stands on Pedestal vii. in the Fourth Vase Room.]

[Version 0.04: March 2008]