+- RomanArmyTalk (https://www.romanarmytalk.com/rat)
+-- Forum: Research Arena (https://www.romanarmytalk.com/rat/forumdisplay.php?fid=4)
+--- Forum: Greek Military History & Archaeology (https://www.romanarmytalk.com/rat/forumdisplay.php?fid=9)
+--- Thread: Hoplite Shield Designs (/showthread.php?tid=4345)
Re: Hoplite Shield Designs - Gaius Julius Quartus - 09-06-2010
Greetings - I'm new to the Greek world and would appreciate some advice on aspis design...before its too late! I am just about ready to paint a design, but want to be sure. I have looked through all the posts on this thread (there are a lot!), and see nothing about Ionian colonies - maybe one or two comments. I have an interest in Ephesus, and am familiar with the "bee" + "E-PH" motif on coins from 6th-2nd Centuries BCE. I have in mind a blue background, with the bee and letters in the center. Would this be an acceptable design for a hoplite hailing from Ephesus?
Thank you!
John C.
Re: Hoplite Shield Designs - hoplite14gr - 09-06-2010
Nick Secunda interpreted the bee from one 4th century coin.
The cult of Artemis in Ephesos was not of the "huntress" but a surviving cult of the "mother goddess".
The life giving bee was an appropriate symbol.
Early coinage shows the bee in profile but pottery fragments from National Museum Athens give an insight in colouring.
See attached images.
A red faced lecythos of 450 B.C from the excavations of the American Archeolocial School in the Athenian agora shows a black bee on
a bronze(?) surface.
Kind regards
Re: Hoplite Shield Designs - Gaius Julius Quartus - 09-06-2010
Very nice - I had seen a coin like the one you mention, but not the painting of the aspis. Euxaristw!
John
Re: Hoplite Shield Designs - hoplite14gr - 09-06-2010
Good luck and please post a photo.
Kind regards
Re: Hoplite Shield Designs - Gaius Julius Quartus - 09-06-2010
Here's what I have so far - the design has been copied and enlarged, then taped on as a mock-up.
(One leg is missing, and the wingtips - this will be fixed, of course.)
It's amazing the level of detail those sculptors who worked on the coins were able to capture.
The bee is from a late 5th Century Ephesian coin (and there are other examples earlier and later).
The source is Catalogue of the Greek Coins of Ionia by Barclay Vincent Head, Plate IX.5 and IX.7.
(The 2005 Elibron Classics reprint of the 1892 original, published by the British Museum)
It may take a bit to complete, but you can see what I have in mind.
One further, question - if you will be so kind - is it plausible for the monogram "E-PH" to appear on the shield? This is very prevalent on coins, to signify the polis where the coins is from. And I am aware of the famous Lambda and Alpha from Sparta and Athens, respectively. But I am unsure whether both the bee and the letters might have appeared on an aspis at the same time. Thank you, in advance.
John
Re: Hoplite Shield Designs - hoplite14gr - 09-06-2010
With the possible exception of Chalkis, monograms of cities appear on shields after 400 B.C.
So if you represent a hoplite before that date the better avoid it.
Kind regrds
Re: Hoplite Shield Designs - PMBardunias - 09-08-2010
Quote:The cult of Artemis in Ephesos was not of the "huntress" but a surviving cult of the "mother goddess".
The life giving bee was an appropriate symbol.
I've read that a likely explanation for the "breasts" on statues of Artemis of Ephesus is that they are stylized honeybee hives. Unlike modern hives, the ancient hives were dome-shaped. Sort of a land of "milk and honey" thing.
Re: Hoplite Shield Designs - hoplite14gr - 09-08-2010
Well the 12 main Greek gods and the hundreds of minor onew are an more modern concept to provide a skeleton for study.
Each god used to have a "luminus" and a "dark" side. The cults evolved.
Initially there was the belief that all cults were of Eastern Origin but more recent studies question that.
The female goddess who represented the "mother nature" was evolving from the late neolithic age.
Bronze age seals depict a spear holding female form among two lions.
Perhaps this was the goddess from which the other cults evolved.
The change of "characteristics" and the "cults mingling" probably took place around 900 B.C.
Is is interesting Athena in the Doric dialect is "ATHANA" - ATHANATOS = Immortal.
In Ephesos there were coins with the deer of Artemis but are rare - (emblem of elite hoplites??????)
Kind regards
Re: Hoplite Shield Designs - Gaius Julius Quartus - 09-08-2010
Hello,
I have also done some reading on Artemis-worship as expressed in Ionic times through the Roman Imperial period. (But not so early as you refer to, into the Archaic period). I don't recall the reference just now (but can look it up if anyone is interested) - but another theory is that the collection of items on the Artemis of Ephesus statues are bull testicles. This line of thinking goes along with bull sacrifice at major festivals (in spring), at which time the bull was killed, burnt, with the choice portions dedicated to the deity, and the rest eaten by all those at the festival. Why testicles? They represent the power of the bull - ie the power of procreation and new life. I believe that a number of bone fragments have been recovered nearby the altar of Artemis at Ephesus, including goats and bulls.
John
Re: Hoplite Shield Designs - hoplite14gr - 09-08-2010
OK it is an interesting variation of the Artemis cult.
In the post 900 B.C. Artemis cult had replaced the cults of Britomartis, Eyrynome and other "mistress of Nature" cults
existing in the Bronze Age. Some of them survived in Arcadia though.
Its not surprising that had other animals associating with her except the deer.
In Phokis were she was also revered as martial goddess was the one "boars are pleasing to her".
Boar was usually the animal of Zeus like the bull too
Kind regards
Re: Hoplite Shield Designs - Paullus Scipio - 09-09-2010
Paul B wrote:
Quote:I've read that a likely explanation for the "breasts" on statues of Artemis of Ephesus is that they are stylized honeybee hives. Unlike modern hives, the ancient hives were dome-shaped. Sort of a land of "milk and honey" thing.
Gaius Julius Quartus/John wrote:
Quote:but another theory is that the collection of items on the Artemis of Ephesus statues are bull testicles. This line of thinking goes along with bull sacrifice at major festivals (in spring), at which time the bull was killed, burnt, with the choice portions dedicated to the deity, and the rest eaten by all those at the festival. Why testicles? They represent the power of the bull - ie the power of procreation and new life. I believe that a number of bone fragments have been recovered nearby the altar of Artemis at Ephesus, including goats and bulls.
Neither these, nor the 'many breasted' theory, turn out to be true. The 'Mother Goddess/Cybele' worship at Ephesus went back a long time, to the bronze age, with a sequence of pottery finds that extend forward to Middle Geometric times, in the second half of the eighth century BC. The peripteral (column colonnade style) temple at Ephesus was the earliest example of a peripteral type on the coast of Asia Minor, and perhaps the earliest Greek temple surrounded by colonnades anywhere.In the seventh century BC, a flood destroyed the temple, depositing over half a meter of sand and scattering flotsam over the former floor of hard-packed clay.
In the flood debris were the remains of a carved ivory plaque of a griffin and the Tree of Life, apparently North Syrian. More importantly, flood deposits buried in place a hoard against the north wall that included drilled amber tear-shaped drops with elliptical cross-sections, which had once dressed the wooden effigy of the Lady of Ephesus; (the original wooden statue itself was probably destroyed in the flood.) It is these rare and expensive amber tear-dropped necklace parts which decorated the original that have given rise to the later modern interpretations.It is of course possible that they had some ritual significance, though it should be noted that the customary offering to the Goddess was jewelry, hence the 'over-jewelled' look of the statue, and it may mean no more than that.
A new temple, now built entirely of marble, with its peripteral columns doubled to make a wide ceremonial passage round the cella, was designed and constructed around 550 BC by the Cretan architect Chersiphron and his son Metagenes, and paid for by Croesus of Lydia. A new ebony or grapewood cult statue was sculpted by Endoios,and a naiskos to house it was erected east of the open-air altar. This was the famous 'many breasted' image now familiar, with its necklace of amber crystals now carved in place, but the statue is (appropriately) mainly middle-eastern in style, not Greek. The temple itself was around three times as big as the Parthenon, and took over 120 years to build. Over the centuries it was endowed with many precious statues in particular. It was because of its size and wealth that it became one of the 'seven wonders of the world'.Naturally, over the centuries, the style of worship of the 'Mother Goddess of Ephesus' changed - the Greeks in typical fashion identifying her with Artemis, largely through the connection as 'moon Goddess'.
Croesus' temple was a widely respected place of refuge, a tradition that was linked in myth with the Amazons who took refuge there, both from Heracles and from Dionysus.
This epic monument was destroyed by a fame seeking arsonist, traditionally in 356 BC on the night Alexander was born, but more probably in reality 395 BC aprox, and later burnt by Goths in 268 AD, the Ephesians restoring/rebuilding each time.
In 401AD, the temple in its last version was finally destroyed and razed to the ground by a mob led by St. John Chrysostom, and the best stones and statues carted off to Constantinople for use in the construction of other buildings, the remaining marble burnt to make lime..... Some of the columns in Hagia Sophia originally belonged to the temple of Artemis of Ephesus.
Re: Hoplite Shield Designs - Gaius Julius Quartus - 09-09-2010
Paullus -
Thank you. Could you provide some references for me so I can read further? I'm especially curious about the "earliest Greek temple anywhere" and the amber find.
For anyone who cares to note it, the theory on the bull testicles is found here:
Knibbe, Dieter. “Via Sacra Ephesiaca: New Aspects of the Cult of Artemis Ephesia.” Ephesos: Metropolis of Asia. Helmut Koester, ed. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1995 (p.142).
In addition to what you mention, some stones from the Artemision were used in the Temple of St. John in Ephesus, and can still be seen in the (now ruined) walls there.
This is referenced in: Price, Simon. Religions and the Ancient Greeks. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1999 (p.65); and in Scherrer, Peter, ed. Ephesus: The New Guide. Turkey, 2000, (p.54-55)
John
Re: Hoplite Shield Designs - Paullus Scipio - 09-09-2010
Quote:Paullus -
Thank you. Could you provide some references for me so I can read further? I'm especially curious about the "earliest Greek temple anywhere" and the amber find.
For anyone who cares to note it, the theory on the bull testicles is found here:
Knibbe, Dieter. “Via Sacra Ephesiaca: New Aspects of the Cult of Artemis Ephesia.” Ephesos: Metropolis of Asia. Helmut Koester, ed. Valley Forge, PA: Trinity Press International, 1995 (p.142).
In addition to what you mention, some stones from the Artemision were used in the Temple of St. John in Ephesus, and can still be seen in the (now ruined) walls there.
This is referenced in: Price, Simon. Religions and the Ancient Greeks. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1999 (p.65); and in Scherrer, Peter, ed. Ephesus: The New Guide. Turkey, 2000, (p.54-55)
John
See:
Anton Bammer, "A Peripteros" of the Geometric Period in the Artemision of Ephesus" Anatolian Studies 40 (1990), pp. 137–160.
Lynn R. LiDonnici, "The Images of Artemis Ephesia and Greco-Roman Worship: A Reconsideration" The Harvard Theological Review 85.4 (October 1992), pp 389–415.
The following can be found online:
James Grout: Temple of Artemis, part of the Encyclopædia Romana
Diana's Temple at Ephesus (W. R. Lethaby, 1908)
Re: Hoplite Shield Designs - Gaius Julius Quartus - 09-09-2010
Thank you - I'll look these up.
Re: Hoplite Shield Designs - PMBardunias - 09-09-2010
Evidently there is a wide ranging connection between Artemis and bees. Below is pasted from a paper titled "The bee of Artemis" The American Journal of Philology, Vol. 60, No. 2
Quote:The early association of the bee with the cult of Artemis isattested by varied evidence. It appears not only upon the strange polymastoid statue of the Ephesian goddess but upon the earliest coins of her city. As the owl was the emblem of Athena at Athens, so the bee seems to have been the emblem of Artemis at Ephesus. Although the extant examples of the polymastoid statue are all of late date, it is hardly possible that the type with its medley of elements can have been a late Hellenistic creation. So important was the bee in the cult of Artemis that her priestesses received the name of Melissa, "Bee." There is no direct evidence that the Ephesian priestesses of the goddess bore that title, but the assumption that she did is justified by the monuments cited. Another such title was "bee-keeper." At Delphi there was a melissa delphis The first priestess with this title probably served in the temple of Apollo there which bees had made of wax. These Apolline " bees " must have had some relation to the " bees " of Artemis, the twin sister of the god.
Particularly significant is the part played by the bee in Cretan tradition, where it appears in the name of Artemis. The Cretans called her Britomartis a title which was anciently defined as dulcis virgo. Since the Cretan word for "sweet" was Brito-, the initial element of the name Britomartis was correctly translated dulcis. The closeness of britto the verb blittou, " to take the honey from the comb," and to the name of the nymphs, Brisai, who were said to have taught the Thessalian Aristaeus bee-culture, led Cook to the very reasonable conclusion that brito- is a variant of melissa. Thus the name Britomartis meant originally "bee-maiden" in view of the prominence of the bee in the cult of the goddess but acquired a secondary meaning of "honey," "sweet." That the Cretan Artemis had close ties with Delphi is indicated by the tradition that Cretans participated in the colonization of Delphic territory. Perhaps the "bees" that built the second temple of Apollo at Delphi were Cretan. A number of references attest the ancient prestige of the bee in the island. One states that the infant Zeus had been nourished by bees, whence perhaps came his title Melissaios. A second mentions a son of Zeus named Meliteus who, when exposed in the woods, was likewise nourished by bees.' Melissa, the daughter of the Cretan king Melissos, reared the new-born Zeus, the same Melissa who became the first priestess of the Magna Mater and bequeathed her title to her successors.12 To the literary references are to be added the monumental. A curious ritual vessel imitating a honey-comb was found at Cnossus, and Evans cites the honey-comb of gold which Daedalus wrought for Aphrodite of Eryx. Further the bee is a Minoan hieroglyph, which Evans compares with another in a royal Egyptian title where it means " bee-keeper."