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Undergraduate
Classics Teaching Collections |
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| Backward |
Forward |
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| Name: |
The
Amazon Sarcophagus |
| Picture: |
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| Description: |
From
Cyprus. Vienna, Kunsthist. Museum. H. 1.7m. In two parts. Part 1,
from the left: naked Greek warrior with a crested helmet, a sword
in his right hand and a cloak and shield in his left, draws back from
an Amazon on horseback. She, and her sisters, wears a hat, sleeved
chiton and trousers, and boots. She aims a blow at the Greek. Her
horse is covered with an animal pelt, and he rears over the body of
a fallen Amazon. A Greek drags a fallen comrade from the field, parrying
with his shield as she strikes with a double-axe. A fallen Amazon
cowers beneath the hooves of her sister's horse that rears in surprise,
his rider seized by a Greek. Part 2, from the left: an Amazon rushes
onto the field to support her sister on horseback, who swings a curved
short sword at a helpless Greek who has lost his weapons and puts
up his arms in defence. On the ground, a fallen Amazon. |
| Date: |
c. 320 B.C |
| Discussion: |
Amazonomachies
were sculptural favourites of those people on the margins of Hellenic
civilisation. Like centauromachies and gigantomachies, the amazonomachy
represented the struggle by the Greeks to civilise the rest of the
Aegean and Mediterranean. It was ironic, then, that the colonised
'barbarians' should take such pleasure in erecting monuments that
celebrated their own subjugation, making themselves more Greek than
the Greeks. |
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