PLATE XV
Dirke Bound to the Bull
The artists of this group (popularly known as the Farnese Bull) have followed the text of the myth in laying the scene of the episode on Mount Kithairon, which they have not merely indicated by the depiction of rocks and crags, but also personified in the small human figure in the right foreground. Amphion (identified by his lyre) is striving with all his strength to subdue a powerful bull so that his brother Zethos can pass a rope, attached to the struggling creature's horns, around the body of Dirke. Their mother, Antiope, a complacent spectator, stands lance in hand in the right background. From a Greco-Roman marble group by Apollonios and Tauriskos (end of second century b.c.), in Naples (Brunn-Bruckmann, Denkmädler griechischer und römischer Sculptur No. 367). See pp. 43-44.
