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| heraldry |
Date:
Fri, 12 Mar 1993
From:
David Meadows
Subject:
heraldry
Just
some idle musings ... Did the ancient Greeks have anything
approaching heraldry? I initially wondered this while musing about
the Lion's Gate at Mycenae and then, in one of those amazing bits of
synchronicity, while glancing through a touristy guidebook to the
Acropolis Museum, I saw a reproduction of two lions pulling down a
Bull. Could such imagery represent the Lions of Mycenae's defeat of
the Bull of Minos? Or am I wandering rather close to the edge of the
abyss of unwarranted connections ...
Date:
Fri, 12 Mar 1993
From:
John R Lenz
Subject:
Re: heraldry
The
lions goring bulls and the like is an old artistic motif, very
common; but the Archaic coinage of Athens does show emblems (like
the three-legged pattern) thought to be associated with aristocratic
families.
Date:
Fri, 12 Mar 1993
From:
Eugene Lane
Subject:
Re: heraldry
As
well as the so-called Wappenmuenzen of Athens, one's thoughts go
immediately to the shield-devices described in the Seven Against
Thebes, as well as to var ious representations of shield-devices in
vase paintings of battle scenes. Here at MU we have a preserved
bronze triskelis intended for attachment to a leath er shield.
Date:
Fri, 12 Mar 1993
From:
Penny Small
Subject:
Re: heraldry
For
any device to be considered heraldic, I assume that longevity and/or
repeated use of the symbol is required. In which case, it might
interest those interested in the subject that the shield devices
described by Aeschylus in the Seven against Thebes NEVER appear in
classical art. The closest one might get are "emblematic motifs"
like Athena's owl for Athena's.
Date:
Fri, 12 Mar 1993
From:
Joe Cotter
Subject:
Heraldry--Greek Shield Devices
There
is a good discussion by Leon Lacroix, "Les 'blazons' des villes
grecques"in "Etudes d' archeologie classique" I
1955-6, 89-115. Some years ago I argued at AIA meeting that the
device of a crab playing a double flute on the shield of the boy in
the center of the arming scene on the reverse of the Euphronius
Sarpedon vase in the Met might be read as a visual synekdoche for
the oligarchical crab song that survives as one of a group of
Alcmaeonid scolia (Page, "Poet. Mel. Gr. 892). The crab playing
a double flute also occurs on the Karkinos Painter's name vase (also
in the Met). For the sort of problems that such interpretations have
to confront one might consider Boardman's use of Greek Vases as
mirrors of political propaganda. (See Dyfri Williams "Herakles,
Peisistratos and the Alcmeonids" in "Image et Ceramique
Grecque". NB Plutarch's comment on Alcibiades' use of a
Thunderbolt-bearing Eros for his own shield's device (as opposed
e.g. to the communitarian "Lambdas" of ordinary Spartan
hoplites).
Date:
Sat, 13 Mar 1993
From:
"John D. Muccigrosso"
Subject:
Re: heraldry
John R Lenz writes: > The lions goring bulls and the like is
an old artistic motif, very common
True, but doesn't the use of the bull getting killed or attacked by
lions or men appear more frequently in the Myc (vs. Min) stuff? It
seems to me that it's used often enough to be at least potentially
heraldic. This would likely be not a family heraldry but a cultural
thing. Like the US flag, maybe? OR closer to the statue of liberty?
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