Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Squire, Michael

Titel

Tablet Editions

Ist Teil von

• Apollo (London. 1925), 2013-02, Vol.177 (606), p.46

Ort / Verlag

London: The Spectator Limited

Erscheinungsjahr

2013

Quelle

International Bibliography of Art (IBA)

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• To the far right are 12 lateral friezes, each corresponding to a single book of the Riad (and labelled from nu to omega - that is, from books 13 to 24, the second half of the poem) .4 As though the visual synopsis were not enough, an inscribed pilaster adds its own textual epitome, summarising events from the seventh to 24th Iliadic books (the 108 lines are crammed into a space measuring around 17cm in height) .5 Although we are dealing with a fragment, the layout of the tablet's missing left-hand section is beyond reasonable doubt (Fig. 3) .6 Another stele once adorned the space to the left of the Trojan cityscape (inscribed with a summary of earlier Iliadic events); to the left of that stele, 12 additional friezes originally flanked the tablet's left-hand side, relating to the 12 earlier books of the Riad (a section of the upper frieze survives, relating to the first book, and stretching above the central Trojan cityscape). According to Homer, who 'ringcomposed' his poetic description around the motif, this is the space where Hephaestus set 'the great might of the river Ocean, around the outermost rim of the well-made shield'. The verso prompt to privilege the middle perhaps encouraged viewer-readers to spin a rather different visual tale about the stories depicted on the recto - to expand horizons beyond the Greek, putting Aeneas at the literal and metaphorical Roman centre.42 All this helps us to understand the cultural framework in which the Iliac tablets operated. 20th-century critics - especially those writing in English - have been quick to belittle these objects: the tablets' 'illustrative' pictures are as 'faulty and jejune' as the inscribed texts, complains one prominent scholar; 'a pretence of literacy for the unlettered' expounds another, labelling the tablets 'tawdry gewgaws intended to provide the illusion of sophistication for those who had none'.43 But such rhetoric reveals more about the prejudices of modernday classical philologists that it does about antiquity: if we can be sure of one thing, it is that these objects catered to ancient audiences well versed in ancient Greek epic, as well as in more recent literary and artistic responses toit. WRITER MICHAEL SQUIRE Michael Squire is Lecturer in Classical Greek Art at King's College London and author of several books, including The Art of the Body: Antiquity and its Legacy (201 1).