The Materiality of God’s Image: Olympian Zeus and the Ancient Christology.

24 THE MATERIALITY OF GOD’S IMAGE: THE OLYMPIAN ZEUS AND ANCIENT CHRISTOLOGY Christoph Auffarth THE LIVING GOD AND HIS OR HER IMAGE In the ancient world people imagined a god or a goddess by referring to a double ‘image’ of the divine being: one is the invisible and immaterial god in opposition to the visible and material world of humankind; the other represents it as a material image, in shape and size almost that of a human being. As I will argue in this chapter, most people were aware of the difference between these two images. Christians, however, accused their pagan adversaries of confusing the two – by taking the material representation as the invisible living god, they worshipped a dead stone, a tree or a beast. Yet the Christians themselves blurred the border between the divine and humankind, since they identified the invisible god with the material and visible man Jesus. They developed this notion by looking back to an older discourse on adequate images of divine beings: 1. a discourse on Pheidias’ masterpiece of the Olympian Zeus as the ideal representation of the invisible god; 2. a parallel discourse which argues that the relation between the invisible god and the material man called his son can be understood in the same framework as the relations between god and his image. In this respect the man Jesus Christ is the material visible image of God. When Christianity became a public religion, its cultic communication began to focus on increasingly monumental representations composed of the elements of ‘temple’, altar and cult image. Around AD I have to thank Jan Bremmer for inviting me to the conference, Andrew Erskine for a kind reception and for correcting my English paper, brushed up by Dr Tilman Hannemann (Bremen), and the Leventis Foundation for providing a comfortable setting for a wonderful conference. BREMMER PRINT.indb 465 3/6/10 13:42:47 466 christoph auffarth 400, there is a remarkable shift in the representation of the Christian cult image from a beardless child of peace to a majestic bearded man known as the Pantocrator. My argument is that not only in theory but also in reality the Olympian Zeus was the model according to which the Pantocrator type also turned out to be the most satisfactory way of representing the Christian God. In the main part of my argument, I will demonstrate that the Christian polemic about pagans, that they confuse the image with the original and identify the signum with the significatum, turns out to be true of the Christians themselves. While they insisted on the identity of the material image of God – that is, the man Jesus Christ – with the immaterial and invisible God himself, the classical handling of the images knew about the difference, despite intellectual caricatures of dim-witted men kissing, washing or getting very close to the statue in order to whisper a wish.1 Before addressing the Christian discourse, it will be necessary to examine the interrelation between the two images of the living god in ancient religion, the one material, the other invisible and immaterial, and so to understand how and under what circumstances the material image is regarded as a representation of god. I will also be concerned to outline some theoretical observations that underpin my approach. CLASSICAL DISCOURSE ON THE MATERIALITY OF GOD’S IMAGE: THE CULT STATUE OF ZEUS AT OLYMPIA AS A ‘LIVING’ MASTERPIECE In antiquity there was a long-lasting debate about the qualities of cult statues.2 I will briefly summarize three different typological opinions. Plato’s criticism of the artists will serve as a guide (Rep. 10.595a–608b). According to Plato, when artists attempt to represent the world of ideas in inanimate material, they make a major mistake in confusing materiality with ideas. There is, however, one exception: the master-artist might be able to express the living idea through stone or wood or metal. In producing his ‘masterpiece’, the master-artist 1 E.g. Sen., Ep. morales 41.1. 2 H. Funke, ‘Götterbild’, RAC 11 (1981), pp. 659–828; T. S. Scheer, Die Gottheit und ihr Bild: Untersuchungen zur Funktion griechischer Kultbilder in Religion und Politik (Munich: Beck, 2000). The first part of this contribution summarizes an argument I have presented elsewhere at length: C. Auffarth, ‘Das angemessene Bild Gottes: Der Olympische Zeus, antike Bildkonvention und die Christologie’, in N. Kreutz and B. Schweizer (eds), Tekmeria: Archäologische Zeugnisse in ihrer kulturhistorischen und politischen Dimension. Beiträge für Werner Gauer (Münster: Scriptorium, 2006), pp. 1–23. BREMMER PRINT.indb 466 3/6/10 13:42:47 the materiality of god’s image 467 achieves a creative competence like that of the god himself, since he succeeds in introducing life into the material. In the following example, the Platonic principles were applied to the seated statue of Zeus in the temple of Olympia, the masterpiece of Pheidias. (1) Callimachus, Iambus 6 (F 196, alluded to at Strabo 8.3.30) offers merely the physical dimensions, the cost and the weight, refraining from words of praise that referred to the vitality of the statue.3 (2) Strabo too himself expresses a critical distance in terms of size, but this time it is combined with the idea of life in the statue: he notes disapprovingly the smallness of the temple as the accommodation of the god. If Zeus were to get up from his throne, he would destroy the roof of the house: ‘Pheidias, Charmides’ son from Athens, has made the cult image of such a great size that though the temple itself is extremely large, it seems that the artist failed to find the apt proportions.4 So although he shaped his Zeus as a sitting majesty, nevertheless his head is nearly touching the ceiling. If he were to stand up, he would take the roof off the temple.’5 Hidden in this criticism is the idea that the statue has life within it: since it could do so, it would eventually stand up. And furthermore, the statue only seems to be motionless. Strabo recalls the famous verses from the Iliad (1.528–30): Zeus shook Mount Olympos just by moving his eyebrows. Nearly invisible, by the slightest movement in his face, Zeus could cause an earthquake. This, then, could be applied to the statue at Olympia: it only seems that it does not move, yet every visitor is moved by the impressions of the living statue. An active movement of the god cannot be observed, but the passive movement (πάθος) inside the observers is enough evidence of an action originating from god. As a conclusion, Strabo (8.3.30) quotes an ambiguous bon mot: ‘Either he [sc. the artist] is the only one who has seen the images of the Gods or the only one who has shown these images.’ The verb δείκνυμι, ‘to show (one’s fiction)’, is an alternative to the possibility that ‘he had the vision’ (θεάομαι) which nobody else could have had. But the artist’s task is also to define the 3 Callim.: Ia. 6, F 196 (Pfeiffer); see also A. Kerkhecker, ‘Kallimachos, Wieland und der Zeus des Phidias’, in J. P. Schwindt (ed.), Zwischen Tradition und Innovation: Poetische Verfahren im Spannungsfeld Klassischer und Neuerer Literatur und Literaturwissenschaft (Munich: Saur, 2000), pp. 135–62; A. Kerkhecker, Callimachus’ Book of Iambi (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), pp. 147–81. 4 On symmetria, harmonia, euschêmosynê, see J. J. Pollitt, The Ancient View of Greek Art (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1974), pp. 256–8, 151–4, 184. 5 Strabo 8.3.30; Dio Chrysostom, Or. 12, 72, answers in return, that the Eleans had given too little room to expose the immeasurable. On Dio’s Olympian speech, see H-J. Klauck and B. Bäbler (eds), Dion von Prusa: Olympische Rede oder über die erste Erkenntnis Gottes (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2000). BREMMER PRINT.indb 467 3/6/10 13:42:47 468 christoph auffarth modes of showing and seeing a god. Although Strabo’s description of the Olympian Zeus demonstrates a rather reserved stance in his closing pun, he nevertheless admires the liveliness of this outstanding image of the god.6 Nobody else but Pheidias could have shaped so animated a statue. (3) By far the most admiring description comes from the Olympian speech of Dio Chrysostom of Prusa. It takes the form of an apologia pronounced in the context of an imaginary trial, in which Pheidias is charged with fashioning the image of Zeus in the shape of man. By overstating the pathos, it was the artist and his image that overwhelmed the public, not the god himself (53). Pheidias himself answers these charges: leave aside the sun; it is impossible to represent it. Equally it is impossible to give an image of the mind. The artist is able to represent only the human body as a repository of thinking and reason (ἀγγεῖον ϕϱονήσεως καὶ λόγου, 59). The bodily representation serves merely as a mode of mystagogia (spiritual guidance) towards the theama, a helpful means to attain the vision of the living god.7 Finally Zeus himself confirms that Pheidias’ image meets the adequacy requirement of a god’s representation, because in the end he calls it ‘(the image) that god likes most’ (θεοϕιλέστατον).8 Plato’s critique of the so-called artists is answered in the description of a masterpiece of a ‘creative’ artist. Pheidias is not one of those humble craftsmen (δημιουϱγός) who try to make an image of god. What he achieves is the impossible: the material cannot represent the ideas, that is to say the immortal gods. None the less he is able to create by material means a representation of the immaterial ideas. Pheidias is as creative as the ideas are creative; his image is living, it breathes god’s aura, majesty and importance, it effects pathos in the people who come into the temple. Pheidias’ image is not bad materiality but effects in people the vividness and creativeness of the god, who is present through his image. 6 For the emotional effect for an image (ἦθος καὶ πάθος), see Pollitt, Ancient View, pp. 184–9. 7 Explicitly also in Lucian, Pereginus, 22 and 36. Just as in Eleusis there is even a dadouchos, a priest who ‘shows’ (δεικνύει) the mysterion. 8 Dio Chrysostom, Or. 12, 25 and 88. BREMMER PRINT.indb 468 3/6/10 13:42:47 the materiality of god’s image 469 A SYSTEMATIC APPROACH In cultural studies a generation ago a change of methodological paradigms was introduced. Instead of the progression, ‘artist – artefact – the modern scholar’, the following concept evolved. The model of aesthetic reception (‘Rezeptionsästhetisches Modell’, e.g. Wolfgang Kemp) Artist Public Artefact Figure 24.1 Model of aesthetic reception. The dialogue between the artist and the artefact has to be complemented by a third party: the public (Fig. 24.1). The public is more than a passive ‘spectator’; it both takes part in the process of creating the artefact and provides evidence for the contemporary process and the possible modes of reception, in other words how that image was considered at that time. The model of the cult image To meet the aims of comparative religion, however, the approach has to be complemented by the cultic dimension, which resides on the same level as the public looking at the artefact (Fig. 24.2). It is deeper and more intensive, and it refers to specific intentions: the cult image as a representation of the original god. During the cult, the image becomes the representation of god and so takes on the qualities of a cult image. The aesthetic and emotional impact (pathos) is not produced by the image but by the original god himself. But only a creative artist can realize this effect. A mere copyist and craftsman (δημιουϱγός) is able to make nothing else apart from a material copy; his artefact is no more than a fiction (μίμησις), which has the fatal effect that it prevents direct communication with the original. The creative artist, however, produces a living image that comes close to the original god by ὁμοίωσις. The difference between God and his representation was not invented BREMMER PRINT.indb 469 3/6/10 13:42:47 470 christoph auffarth The artist creates VISIBLE Public Cult image Cult Image (artefact) (Impact) INVISIBLE The original god/goddess Figure 24.2 Model of the cult image. with Plato’s distinction between idea and visible/material object.9 Among ordinary Greek men, the difference is well known and, for example, demonstrated in a south Italian vase painting showing the attack by Laokoon’s wife Antiope on Apollo (c.430–20 BC; Fig. 24.3). The attack was because Apollo did not intervene when monster snakes bit one of her sons to pieces. On the vase the remains of the son are shown still lying at the feet of the god, while the snakes are curling around the god. But ‘the god’ is just a statue of Apollo on a two-stepped base. The living god stands behind that scene. Even if the outraged mother were to destroy the statue, the god himself would not be harmed.10 The difference between a cult statue and the living god is not just a peculiarity of the south Italian vase painter, as a number of instances show. Another example comes from a sequence in Aeschylus’ Eumenides. Orestes, standing in front of the cult statue and altar of Athena, begs the goddess to come (ἔλθοι 297), but the Erinyes declare: the gods avoid meeting you. However, Athena follows the pleading voice of Orestes from far away and finds him sitting by the wooden statue (βϱέτας τοὐμὸν 409/446). God’s epiphany at the presence marker (see below, pp. 475–6) is not self-evident. The goddess does not dwell in the cult statue. 9 Plato, Leg. 10.906b, differentiates between ἄψυχοι and ἔμψυχοι. For a view of comparative religion, see H. S. Versnel, ‘what did ancient man see, when he saw a god? Some reflections on Greco-Roman epiphany’, in D. van der Plas (ed.), Effigies Dei (Leiden: Brill, 1987), pp. 42–55. 10 For a full description and a further example, see the appendix to this chapter. BREMMER PRINT.indb 470 3/6/10 13:42:47 the materiality of god’s image 471 Figure 24.3 The attack by Laokoon’s wife Antiope on Apollo (Lucanian krater, 430–420 BC). THE DEBATE ON THE MATERIALITY OF THE CHRISTIAN GOD IN HIS HUMAN EPIPHANY • The relationship between the invisible God • and the material man Jesus Christ • has been solved by adapting the discourse and theory of the living cult statue. • The artist is the creator himself (acheiropoieton image). • His masterpiece is Christ, identical with him. The model of Christology In the Christological model there is no human artist needed any more. God himself is the artist who creates men and especially his son. The image is not produced manually (ἀχειϱοποίητον)11 or by the devotion of the public to a masterpiece. The cult community itself creates the cult image during the cult, which becomes the god himself. Christ, who is addressed in the cult, is the material identity of the immaterial and invisible original god. In the Nicene Creed (Symbolum Nicaenum) 11 For classical images not made by men, see Funke, ‘Götterbild’, pp. 727–8. Examples are given in Eur. IT, 1384–5; Cicero, Actio secunda Verr. 2.5.187; Paus. 1.26.6. BREMMER PRINT.indb 471 3/6/10 13:42:47 472 christoph auffarth [Artist] The invisible God creates Public Christ as visible God Cult community material Man Jesus not only similar ( but identical ( ) ) to (invisible) God himself Figure 24.4 Model of Christology. Christ is identical with, and not only similar (ὅμοιος) to, God. Christ is the permanent identical creation of god in his materiality (Fig. 24.4). The role given to Mary in the process of creating the Man–God is of special interest. In her case, different terms were applied to the relationship between the living statue and God. She has no divine qualities for herself. Instead, she serves as: • • • • throne; vessel (ἀγγεῖον τοῦ λόγου); temple; theotókos (who gave birth to a god – not ‘mother’). Rejecting any possible divine quality of Mary, Ambrose calls her ‘the temple of God, not the God of the temple’: Incarnatio autem opus spiritus est, sicut scriptum est Spiritus sanctus superveniet in te et virtus altissimi obumbrabit tibi, et quod nascetur ex te sanctum, vocabitur filius dei (Luke 1.35) haud dubie etiam sanctus spiritus adorandus est, quando adoratur ille, qui secundum carnem ‘natus ex spiritu’ est. Ac ne quis hoc derivet ad virginem: Maria erat templum dei, non deus templi, et ideo ille solus adorandus, qui operabatur in templo. The Incarnation is the work of the Spirit, as it is written, ‘The Holy Spirit shall come upon thee (i.e. Mary), and the power of the Most High shall overshadow thee, and that Holy Thing Which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of God’. Without doubt the Holy Spirit also is to be adored, since He Who BREMMER PRINT.indb 472 3/6/10 13:42:48 the materiality of god’s image 473 according to the flesh was born of the Holy Spirit is adored. But let no one divert this to the Virgin Mary; Mary was the temple of God, not the God of the temple. And therefore He alone is to be worshipped Who was working in His temple.12 ZEUS OF OLYMPIA IN THE CHRISTIAN CAPITAL The image of the Olympian Zeus served as the model of an appropriate image of god not only in theoretical and intellectual discourse, but also in setting aesthetic and religious criteria. The case of Sarapis demonstrates how the model might be used in this way. The Egyptian beast– god in the shape of a bull was an object of abhorrence outside Egypt. In his transformation into Serapis, however, he became a favoured god of the Roman empire. Shaping the new god for the purpose of export, the artists adapted the model of the Zeus of Olympia, a full bearded portrait of a man in his best years with long hair. In order to mark him out as different and to make him recognizable he wears on his head the measuring cup for wheat, a modus (Fig. 24.5).13 When Christianity became a public religion, the need for it to have a monumental presence in the public realm led it to take up the common ‘language’ of ancient religion (as in the case of Sarapis), but with specific differences.14 One difference is the very image of God to be used in the cult. This difference, expressed in a two-dimensional representation instead of the three dimensions of the statue, cannot be seen as a reference to the invisible dimension,15 because the statue of Zeus did not answer prayers either. During the adaptation process, a characteristic change took place: • In the first stage, up to the years of the reign of Theodosius I (AD 392–5), Christ was represented as a very young man, or 12 Ambrose, De spiritu sancto 3, 11, 79–80. Tr. H. de Romestin in P. Schaff and H. Wace (eds), Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, vol. 10: Ambrose: Select Works and Letters (Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark). 13 Statuette, 24 cm high; time of Antoninus; reproduction of the colossal cult statue of Sarapis in Alexandria, fourth century BC. Rom Ostia Museum, Helbig 3034; Amelung vol. 1, p. 360, no. 74. Also the Sarapis statue in the National Museum of Naples Inv. 975. See C. Auffarth, ‘Götterbilder im römischen Griechenland: Vom Tempel zum Museum?’, in C. Witschel et al. (eds), The Impact of Empire on the Dynamics of Rituals (Leiden: Brill, 2009), pp. 307–26; P. Zanker, The Mask of Socrates: The Image of the Intellectual in Antiquity (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1995). 14 On religious language in the Roman empire, see C. Auffarth, ‘Kaiserkult und Christuskult’, in H. Cancik and K. Hitzl (eds), Die Praxis der Herrscherverehrung in Rom und seinen Provinzen (Tübingen: Mohr, 2003), pp. 283–317. 15 As M. Barasch, Das Gottesbild: Studien zur Darstellung des Unsichtbaren (Munich: Fink, 1998), pp. 25–6, puts it: ‘Das ganz Andere’. BREMMER PRINT.indb 473 3/6/10 13:42:48 474 christoph auffarth Figure 24.5 Statuette of Serapis from Puteoli, now in the National Museum, Naples. Cf. Reinhold Merkelbach, Isis regina – Zeus Serapis (Stuttgart, 1995), § 130; 116. rather a ‘child of peace’, without a beard and with the hairstyle of the emperor, like other princes in the emperor’s court. • But later, especially under the reign of Theodosius II (AD 408–50), the representation becomes different: an honourable man with long hair and a full beard. At the time when this change happened, the cult statue of the Olympian Zeus was present in the heart of the Christian capital. The eunuch Lausos, who was the grand chamberlain, collected in his palace many outstanding artworks, the use of which was no longer permitted in cult; now, imported to Constantinople, they served as aesthetic masterpieces of classical art.16 Prominent among these was the ‘ideal’ image, the living god expressed through a material masterpiece, Pheidias’ Olympian Zeus. Contrary to the view of Martin Büchsel, however, this change was not sudden. In his opinion, it was 16 First reports of Constantine in: Socrates, Hist. Eccl. 1.16; Sozom. Hist. Eccl. 2.5. Kedrenos 1, p 564, 7 ff, CSHB. The evidence is collected in Funke, ‘Götterbild’, pp. 815–17. BREMMER PRINT.indb 474 3/6/10 13:42:48 the materiality of god’s image 475 a result of the deep crisis that the Roman empire suffered after the fall of Rome in AD 410. After this crucial event, the Almighty God could not be depicted as a member of the emperor’s court, which had been decisively defeated. In consequence, Büchsel interprets the change of the image as a sign of a ‘crisis cult’.17 But first, there are still a few instances of a youthful image of God after AD 410. And secondly, the Olympian statue of Zeus had been evaluated as the ideal image of God long before that crisis, as the metamorphosis of the image of Sarapis demonstrates. In adapting it to the taste of the Graeco-Roman (classical) public, the artists chose the ideal image, that of the Olympian Zeus. As Paul Zanker has shown in the context of the image of the intellectual in ancient culture, the bearded philosopher is also an allusion to Pheidias’ Olympian Zeus.18 CULT IMAGES AND THE PERFORMATIVE SOLUTION Both • the theory of the living statue • and the theology of the living man Jesus Christ as an image identical with God fall into the fallacy of an ontological model. Again the ontological perception of images is due to Plato’s theory of images. Pheidias’ image of Zeus is Zeus himself – essentially not material but a being out of the immaterial world of ideas. The same is true for Jesus Christ: he is not the material man but a being essentially identical with god himself. This ontological model does not meet the realities of cult images: they become cult images through cult and lose this quality again when no cult is performed. Then they are aesthetic masterworks – or humble wooden poles. In response to this I would like to conceptualize a solution that pays attention to the performance of the cult. • The cult statue is a presence marker, where • God can be present, as long as he is worshipped during the performance of the cult as the ‘ordinary cult epiphany’. 17 The controversial dispute opposes the views that either the icon evolved out of Egyptian mummy-portraits (Belting) or a sudden invention happened in the context of a crisis cult (Büchsel); see H. Belting, Bild und Kult: Eine Geschichte des Bildes vor dem Zeitalter der Kunst (Munich: Beck, 1990); M. Büchsel, Die Entstehung des Christusporträts: Bildarchäologie statt Bildhypnose (Mainz: von Zabern, 2003). 18 See Zanker, Mask of Socrates. BREMMER PRINT.indb 475 3/6/10 13:42:48 476 christoph auffarth Men Symbolic action: – praying – giving food in sacrifice Society Presence marker (representing ‘God’) Figure 24.6 Religion as a function to integrate society. Men Symbolic action Society at the presence marker Cult community Performance of dramatic events: – God answers – God is suddenly present, epiphany – Healing and harming miracles As they are – narrated – played in theatre – played in rituals – evoked by magical acts How they should be conceived is the task of the director: – poet – artist – magician – priest Figure 24.7 Dramatization of the presence marker in ‘ordinary cult epiphany’. Religious performance and ‘the director’s point of view’ The symbolic action of rituals works with or without the dimension of the dramatic event, which happened in a mythical past or reoccurs from time to time. The presence marker is a link to a dimension beyond the interaction on the level of the present society. From time to time, especially when a new cult promises to cope better with the same problem, the dramatic event in the past or mythical past must be remembered, when god really acted, answered prayers or reacted to the gifts he accepted so often. Given this performance, the presence marker is also a memorial of earlier and eventually future actions of the god imagined behind the marker. BREMMER PRINT.indb 476 3/6/10 13:42:48 the materiality of god’s image 477 Men Symbolic action – with the actors Priestess/priest Participants Society Public at the presence marker Performance of a dramatic event: – God answers – Epiphany – Healing and harming narrated played in theatre played in rituals magical act God is ‘real’ as shown by –religious experience – power Director [God/goddess] Figure 24.8 What is a Greek god? Modern scholars’ and the director’s point of view. The ‘director’ is often aware of his role as the one who has to perform the dramatic event on the other side of the symbolic action, which is the double meaning of νομίζειν in the ordinary cult: ‘to do what is usual’ (νόμος), though this action has no effect in the sense of a functional and rational action. The actor has to provide the deeper sense of the ordinary cult activity (within the ordinary cult epiphany of the god) as talking with a thing, feeding it, washing it, etc.19 She or he believes (νομίζει) that the attentiveness she or he pays symbolically to the material statue is really paid to the god himself or goddess herself. In his role, the director stands between identification with and distance from the god. In his performance, he is presenting the dramatic event. Either he identifies himself with god or he is refusing this 19 See in full C. Auffarth, ‘Ritual, Performanz, Theater: Die Religion der Athener in Aristophanes’ Komödien’, in A. Bierl et al. (eds), Literatur und Religion. 1: Wege zu einer mythisch-rituellen Poetik bei den Griechen (Berlin and New York: De Gruyter, 2007), pp. 387–414; A. Henrichs, ‘why should I dance? Choral self-referentiality in Greek tragedy’, Arion, 3rd ser., 3 (1995), pp. 56–111; A. Henrichs, Playing God, Performing Ritual: Dramatizations of Religion in Greek Tragedy (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, in preparation). BREMMER PRINT.indb 477 3/6/10 13:42:48 478 christoph auffarth identification. In many instances (as most of the other chapters in this volume demonstrate) the latter is evident, at least in the form of ‘reluctance’. In the case of the Theophania in Delphi at the time of the Galatian invasions of 279/278 BC, the ‘Barbarians’ saw the god and his power, when he sprang from his temple together with the two white maidens (Artemis and Athena from the other two temples) to rush into battle against the ‘Barbarians’. Though the Greeks did not see the gods in this battle, they believed in the evidence given by the ‘Barbarians’ and used to celebrate the event in memory of their astonishing victory.20 As material evidence, they showed the two rocks in the valley that fell down from the mountain and killed some of the ‘Barbarians’. However, there is a third type pointing to the evidence and the ‘reality’ of the drama, on which the ordinary cult is founded. The vase painting in Figure 24.3 affords an example. It represents a man who raises his arms in an expression of anxiety: What will happen, if Antiope destroys the cult image? The ‘director’ (here, the vase painter) already knows the answer in depicting the ‘real’ and ‘living’ god on the other side of the scene. Apollo will not be harmed. But everybody who is acting in the cult will be as anxious as the man (Laokoon) looking at the woman with the axe and the cult image. The second meaning of nomízein, ‘to believe’, in the reality of the dramatic event on the level beyond the presence marker and its possible relation to a living and real god, is not the task of the director himself. Instead he describes the pathos/emotions of the people present at this dramatic event. My aim in this chapter has been a systematic distinction between different levels of analysis. The nomízein is the performance of a ritual as a symbolic action at the presence marker. The modern scholar is not forced into statements like ‘ancient people believed that’ or ‘there must have been a power of God’21 or ‘ancient men believed that the cult image was the god/goddess’. The director, who tells or plays the story or myth behind the ritual, allows reluctance, even unbelief. Νομίζειν/Nomízein, ‘to do what is usual’, is different from nomízein, ‘to believe that the myth or ritual action is reality’. 20 See C. Auffarth, ‘“Gott mit uns!” Eine gallische Niederlage durch Eingreifen der Götter in der augusteischen Geschichtsschreibung (Pompeius Trogus 24. 6–8)’, Der Altsprachliche Unterricht 33.5 (1990), pp. 14–38. 21 On the notion of power (‘Macht’), see B. Gladigow, ‘Macht’, in Handbuch religionswissenschaftlicher Grundbegriffe, vol. 4 (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1998), pp. 68–77; C. Auffarth, ‘Protecting strangers: establishing a fundamental value in the religions of the ancient Near East and ancient Greece’, Numen 39 (1992), pp. 193–216. BREMMER PRINT.indb 478 3/6/10 13:42:48 the materiality of god’s image 479 APPENDIX DESCRIPTION OF FIGURE 24.3 Lucanian red-figured bell krater, c.430 BC. Basel Antikenmuseum, Collection Ludwig 70. – LIMC 6 (1992), p. 198; Laokoon cat. 1 (Erika Simon), LIMC 2 (1984), p. 217; Apollo cat. 217 (Wassilis Lambrinudakis); Trendall LCS Suppl. 2, 154, 33a; Suppl. 3, 6, 33a (Pisticci Painter, mature period); K. Schauenburg, ‘Zu Götterstatuen auf unteritalischen Vasen’, Archäologischer Anzeiger (1977), pp. 285–97, 294–7 (figs. 10–11). On the left hand, the cult image stands on a two-stepped base. The image is in the form of a kouros, distinguished by a laurel crown, holding in his hands a laurel tree and his bow. Two bearded snakes are curling around the statue. On the first step, one sees the parts of one or more boy(s) bitten off: the upper part of the body and the head are still linked together, but the eyes are shut as in death. Obviously, the snakes have already devoured the missing parts. Laokoon, a bearded man in his prime, is running towards the god in a mood of desperation and lament, as is shown by his elevated arms. The desperate mourning stands in contrast to the action of his wife Antiope: she is brandishing an axe over her head against the god,22 the axe by which a sacrificial victim is usually killed at the altar. The whole scene expresses an accusation against the god Apollo that, despite his knowledge of the future, he did not intervene in favour of his servant priest. The painter has designed it, however, in an ambivalent and paradoxical way: the very same Apollo, with the same symbols in his hands, stands behind the men and observes the action of the outraged wife. This god is not standing on a base step; he has been designed as a living god, and the actors do not notice his presence. There could be an alternative interpretation: that the image is meant to depict another event during the sack of Troy (Iliupersis), namely the killing of Troilos and his tearing into parts (maschalismos) in the same sanctuary of Apollo, but this does not fit with the details of the scene.23 To be compared with Apulian red-figured bell krater, c.380/370 BC. (A fragment) from the Jatta collection in Ruvo. – LIMC 2 (1984), 292; Apollo cat. 883 (Wassilis Lambrinudakis) = Laokoon 2, now missing. In the centre, the statue of Apollo holds a phiale and his bow, two 22 ‘Directed against the snakes to no avail. Even if she is hitting the cult image, she cannot harm the “living” Apollo’ – Laokoon cat. 1 (E. Simon), in LIMC 2 (1984), p. 197. 23 For the evidence, see K. Ziegler, ‘Thymbraios [etc.]’, RE 6 A 1 (1936), pp. 694–9. BREMMER PRINT.indb 479 3/6/10 13:42:48 480 christoph auffarth snakes curling around his body. The lower one bites into a human arm. Lying between the base of the statue and a tripod, there are two further parts of the unfortunate boy, the lower legs and feet. On the right hand, the mother, Laokoon’s wife Antiope, seeks to tear away the snakes. On the left hand, behind the cult statue, the living god himself, together with his sister Artemis, watches the scene. He is wearing an identical himation on his back and a laurel tree in his right hand, as does the statue of him.24 Both versions of the myth stand in contrast to the Roman versions, where the snakes killed Laokoon and his sons by crushing their bodies (Virgil, Aen. 2.201–31, etc.). However, in this Greek version, the snakes devoured one boy piece by piece, whereas father and mother survived and had to watch the killing without any means of help. The story also appeared in the tragedy Laokoon, directed by Sophocles (the fragments in TrGF 4 F 370–7).25 24 Based on the description by Margot Schmidt (text to catalogue no. 70; figures), in E. Berger and R. Lullies (eds), Antike Kunstwerke aus der Sammlung Ludwig, vol. 1 (Mainz: von Zabern, 1979), pp. 182–5, and ‘Eine unteritalische Vasendarstellung des Laokoon-Mythos’, in Berger and Lullies, Antike Kunstwerke aus der Sammlung Ludwig, pp. 239–48, which also contains a depiction of the missing fragments from the Ruvo collection; Schauenburg, ‘Götterstatuen’, pp. 294–7. 25 See also B. Andreae, Laokoon und die Gründung Roms (Mainz: von Zabern, 19943). BREMMER PRINT.indb 480 3/6/10 13:42:48