imitations of Egyptian ornaments, and especially of Egyptian
scarabs, are found in great numbers on such sites as Amathus in
Cyprus, Camirus in Rhodes, in Etruria, and at Tharros in Sardinia.
The Egyptian hieroglyphics are imitated with mistakes, the
figures introduced are stiff and formal, the animals as a rule
heraldic. The scarab form, which in Egypt had had its sacred
significance, was now become nothing more than a convenient
shape for an object of jewelry or for the reverse side of a stone.
It was adopted from the Phoenicians both by Greeks and
Etruscans. By the Greeks, with whom we are at present concerned,
its use was occasional, and about 500 B.C. it was superseded
by the scarabaeoid. Under this name two forms, somewhat
similar but independent in origin, are usually grouped
without sufficient discrimination. The scarabaeoid proper is a
simplification of the scarab, effected by the omission of all details
of the beetle. But many of the stones known as scarabaeoids,
with a flat and oval base and a convex back, are in respect of
their form probably of North Syrian origin (so Furtwängler).
The earliest examples of archaic Greek gem-engraving (other
than the later “Island gems” already described) are works of
Ionian art. They show a desire, only limited by imperfect
power of expression, to represent the human figure, though the
particular theme may be a god or other mythical personages.
By the beginning of the 5th century the engravers had reached the
point of full development, and the scarabaeoids of the time
embody its results. As an example of fine scarabaeoids the
Woodhouse intaglio of a seated citharist (fig. 5; Cat. of Gems in
Brit. Mus. No. 555) may be quoted as perhaps the very finest
example of Greek gem-engraving that has come down to us. It
would stand early in the 5th century B.C., a date which would
also suit the head of Eos from Ithome in Messenia (fig. 6). The
number, however, of fine scarabaeoids known to us has been
considerably increased in recent years. They are marked by a
broad and simple treatment, which attains a large effect without
excessive minuteness or laboured detail. In these respects the
style has something in common with the reliefs of the 5th century.
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| Fig. 4.—Victory. Early Greek Scarab. (Brit. Mus.) |
Fig. 5.—Citharist. Early Greek Scarabaeoid. (Brit. Mus.) |
Fig. 6.—Head of Eos. (Brit. Mus.) |
Literary History.—The literary references to the early gem-engravers are no longer of the same importance as before in view of the fuller knowledge we possess as to the quality of early gem-engraving, but it is necessary that they should be taken into account.
The records of gem-engravers in Greece begin in the island of Samos, where Mnesarchus, the father of the philosopher Pythagoras, earned by his art more of praise than of wealth. “Not to carry the image of a god on your seal,” was a saying of Pythagoras; and, whatever his reason for it may have been, it is interesting to observe him founding a maxim on his father’s profession of gem-engraving (Diogenes Laërt. viii. 1, 17). From Samos also came Theodorus, who made for Polycrates the seal of emerald (Herodotus iii. 41), which, according to the curious story, was cast in vain into the deep sea on purpose to be lost. That the design on it was a lyre, as is stated in one authority, is unlikely, at least if we accept Benndorf’s ingenious interpretation of Pliny (Nat. Hist. xxxiv. 83). He has suggested that the portrait statue of Theodorus made by himself was in all probability a figure holding in one hand a graving tool, and in the other, not, as previously supposed, a quadriga so diminutive that a fly could cover it with its wings, but a scarab with the engraving of a quadriga on its face (Zeitschrift für die österreich. Gymnasien, 1873, pp. 401-411), whence it is not unreasonable to conclude that this scarab in fact represented the famous seal of Polycrates. Shortly after 600 B.C. there was a law of Solon’s forbidding engravers to retain impressions of the seals they made, and this date would fall in roundly with that of Theodorus and Mnesarchus, as if there had in fact been at that time a special activity and unusual skill. That the use of seals had been general long before, in Cretan and Mycenaean times, we have seen above, and it is singular to find, as Pliny points out (xxxiii. 4), no direct mention of seals in Homer, not even in the passage (Iliad, vi. 168) where Bellerophon himself carries the tablets on which were written the orders against his life. From the time of Theodorus to that of Pyrgoteles in the 4th century B.C. is a long blank as to names, but not altogether as to gems, the production of which may be judged to have been carried on assiduously from the constant necessity of seals for every variety of purpose. The references to them in Aristophanes, for example, and the lists of them in the ancient inventories of treasures in the Parthenon and the Asclepieion at Athens confirm this frequent usage during the period in question. The mention of a public seal for authenticating state documents also becomes frequent in the inscriptions. In the reign of Alexander the Great we meet the name of Pyrgoteles, of whom Pliny records that he was no doubt the most famous engraver of his time, and that Alexander decreed that Pyrgoteles alone should engrave his portrait. Nothing else is known of Pyrgoteles. A portrait of Alexander in the British Museum (No. 2307), purporting to be signed by him, is palpably modern.
From literary sources we also learn the names of the engravers Apollonides, Chronius and Dioscorides, but the date of the last-mentioned only is certain. He is said to have made an excellent portrait of Augustus, which was used as a seal by that emperor in the latter part of his reign and also by his successors. Inscriptions on extant gems make it probable that Dioscorides was a native of Aegeae in Cilicia, and that three sons, Hyllos, Herophilus and Eutyches, followed their father’s occupation. We have also a few scattered notices of amateurs and collectors of gems, but it will be seen that for the whole period of classical antiquity the literary notices give little aid, and we must return to the gems.
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| Fig. 7—Scarabaeioid by Syries. (Brit. Mus.) |
Early Inscribed Gems.—Various early gems are inscribed with proper names, which may be supposed to indicate either the artist or the owner of the gem. In some cases there is no ambiguity, e.g. on a scarab is inscribed, “I am the seal of Thersis. Do not open me”; and a scarabaeoid (fig. 7) is inscribed, “Syries made me.” But when we have the name alone, the general principle on which we must distinguish between owner and artist is that the name of the owner is naturally meant to be conspicuous (as in a gem in the British Museum inscribed in large letters with the name of Isagor[as]), while the name of an artist is naturally inconspicuous and subordinate to the design.
The early engravers known to us by their signatures are: Syries, who was author of the modified scarab in the British Museum, mentioned above, with a satyr’s head in place of the beetle, and a citharist on the base—a work of the middle of the 6th century; Semon, who engraved a black jasper scarab now at Berlin, with a nude woman kneeling at a fountain filling her pitcher, of the close of the 6th century; Epimenes, who was the author of an admirable chalcedony scarabaeoid of a nude youth restraining a spirited horse—formerly in the Tyszkiewicz Collection, and of about the beginning of the 5th century. But better known to us than any of these artists is the 5th-century engraver, Dexamenus of Chios, of whose work four examples[1] survive, viz.:—
- ↑ For Nos. 1-4 see Furtwängler, pl. 14; for Nos. 2-4 see Evans, Rev. archéologique, xxxii. (1898) pl. 8.
