07-06-2010, 10:36 PM
Quote:Actually there is an enormous amount of doubt about this in academic circles. I have spent a lot of time talking to Dr. Stella Miller Collett about this subject. I will find out from her who has published the recent paper that very convincingly argues by dating each of the items portrayed in the mosaic that it was made around 250 years later than previously thought. The style of art is also not particularly Greek.
Please do post the citations for such articles, because I'd be very eager to read them.
Quote:This is exactly my point; the equipment looks Hellenistic and Roman and matches no Classical or Alexandrian Macedonian depictions or artefacts yet found. The Persian depictions also do not match Achaemenid styles.
Firstly, how many depictions or artefacts of Alexandrian Macedonian date to we possess? We can't expect to be able to corroborate every minute detail with an exactly contemporary example. Secondly, the Alketos monument dates to c. 320, and so is just slightly later than Alexandrian.
Just a short list (and I'm sure Paul MS can pitch in here, because he's more familiar with the mosaic than I am), and I can't comment too thoroughly on the Persian details:
A late 4th - early 3rd c. BC marble statue of a Macedonian officer from Amphipolis shows shoulder pteryges in use with a cuirass like Alexander's.
The decorations on Alexander's bridle is almost identical to actual decorations found in late 4th-early 3rd c. BC rich Thracian burials.
Alexander's cuirass has a small section around his waist reinforced with scale, which I don't think I've ever seen on Roman art, and is almost entirely absent from Hellenistic examples (I know of one depiction of a cuirass from Pergamon reinforced with scales, but there they are vertical strips on either side of the torso), but which is common in Classical examples.
The guilloche pattern shown around the rim of the fallen Argive shield is a characteristic of Classical examples, but is absent from Hellenistic and later representations.
The Chalcidian helmet shown fallen on the ground disappeared after the 4th c. BC.
The Boeotian helmet shown on a rider behind Alexander crowned with a wreath is not found after the 3rd c. BC, but is identical to others found on late 4th c. BC representations.
The Persian shabraques are of a particular "stepped" style which disappears after the 3rd c. BC.
The Persian chariot matches the Oxus model quite closely.
Many of these details were not picked up by Classicizing artists, so I have no idea how an Italian artist of c. 100 BC would have been able to depict them together without some serious research.
Ruben
He had with him the selfsame rifle you see with him now, all mounted in german silver and the name that he\'d give it set with silver wire under the checkpiece in latin: Et In Arcadia Ego. Common enough for a man to name his gun. His is the first and only ever I seen with an inscription from the classics. - Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
He had with him the selfsame rifle you see with him now, all mounted in german silver and the name that he\'d give it set with silver wire under the checkpiece in latin: Et In Arcadia Ego. Common enough for a man to name his gun. His is the first and only ever I seen with an inscription from the classics. - Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian
