466 APPENDIX, 21

only indicated by the addition of the horns and ears to the human head. On the analogy between these varieties in the type of the Achelous and those under which the metamorphoses of the marine goddess Thetis are represented, see Gerhard, Auserl. Vasenb., ii. pp. 106-113. It is probable that, in the type of Thetis, of Proteus, and also of the Achelous, the singular combinations and transformations are intended to express the changeful nature of the element water.

Numerous other examples may be cited, where rivers are represented by this combination of the bull and human form, which may be called, for convenience, the Androtauric type. On the coins of Sicily, of the Archaic and also of the finest period of art, rivers are most usually represented by a youthful male figure, with small budding horns; the hair has the lank and matted form which characterises aquatic deities in Greek mythography. The name of the river is often inscribed round the head. When the whole figure occurs on the coin, it is always represented standing, never reclining.

The type of the bull on the coins of Sybaris and Thurium, in Magna Græcia, has been considered, with great probability, a representation of this kind. On the coins of Sybaris, which are of a very early period, the head of the bull is turned round; on those of Thurium, he stoops his head, butting: the first of these actions has been thought to symbolise the winding course of the river, the second, its headlong current. On the coins of Thurium, the idea of water is further suggested by the adjunct of dolphins and other fish in the exergue¹ of the coin. The ground on which the bull stands is indicated by herbage or pebbles. This probably represents the river bank. Two bulls’ heads occur on the coins of Sardis, and it has been ingeniously conjectured by Mr. Burgon² that the two rivers of the place are expressed under this type.

The representation of river-gods as human figures in a reclining position, though probably not so much employed in earlier Greek art as the Androtauric type, is very much more familiar to us, from its subsequent adoption in Roman mythography. The earliest example we have of a reclining river-god is in the figure in the Elgin Room commonly called the Ilissus, but more probably the Cephissus. This occupied one angle in the western pediment of the Parthenon: the other Athenian river, the Ilissus, and the fountain Callirrhoe, being represented by a male and female figure in the opposite angle; this group, now destroyed, is visible in the drawing made by Carrey in 1678.³

It is probable that the necessities of pedimental composition first led the artist to place the river-god in a reclining position. The head of the Ilissus being broken off, we are not sure whether he had bull’s horns, like the Sicilian figures already described. His form is youthful; in the folds of the drapery behind him there is a flow like that of waves, but the idea of water is not suggested by any other symbol. When we compare this figure with that of the Nile (Visconti, Mus. Pio. Clem., i., Pl. 38), and the figure of the Tiber in

¹ [This term denotes in numismatics the space immediately below the design on the coin.]

² [Thomas Burgon (1787-1858), a colleague at one time of Newton’s in the British Museum, being employed in the Coin Department.]

³ [In 1674 (not 1678), Jacques Carrey, a painter in the suite of the French Ambassador at the Porte, made sketches of the then extant portions of the pediments of the Parthenon; photographic reproductions of them are exhibited in the Elgin Room at the British Museum. The “Ilissus” is No. 304 A in the Catalogue of Sculpture; the other group (casts) is 304 V, W.]

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