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Myron's Pristae

A. S. Murray

The Classical Review / Volume 1 / Issue 01 / March 1887, pp 3 - 4 DOI: 10.1017/S0009840X00182988, Published online: 27 October 2009

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S0009840X00182988

How to cite this article: A. S. Murray (1887). Myron's Pristae. The Classical Review, 1, pp 3-4 doi:10.1017/ S0009840X00182988

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MYRON'S PRISTAE. HE sculptor Myron is credited by Pliny1 raised, so that the only hold they have on it T with certain works in bronze, among is where their knees rest. The plank is which are. figures of pristae. By a misunder- placed horizontally on a pivot raised a little standing these pristae were long considered from the ground. Such a group would suit to be sea-monsters. It is now held that they admirably for sculpture in the round. The could have been nothing else than ' sawyers of plank being short and placed at no distance wood,' and since the notion of a number of up from the ground, would range with the disconnected figures in the attitude of sawyers top of the pedestal and present no incon- is contrary to modern views about Greek gruity. The keen excitement of the contest sculpture of the higher order, recourse has would bring out a display of action and been had to the reasonable idea of a group expression such as would have commended of two sawyers at work. It would be easy itself to Myron, with his love of closely to conceive such a group in bas-relief, if that observing nature in her commoner forms. were admissible, as it is not; for Myron is While then it is clear that the Greeks had only known to have worked in the round. not only a game answering to our ' see-saw ' But a group of sawyers, executed in the but also a variety of it very suitable for a round, would present a spectacle for which group of sculpture, it remains to be proved there is nothing to prepare us among the that the word pristae was applied to it as remains of Greek sculpture. The saw and well as to actual sawyers. If that could be the piece of wood are elements in the design done, the difficulty in this case would be much which cannot be reconciled with the princi- reduced, if not altogether removed. Aristo- ples of Greek statuary; and yet they are phanes, Achar. 36, plays on the words irpia> necessary elements. As the matter now and vpLiov. The speaker says that his demos stands, it is admitted that the pristae were did not know the word ' buy '; his demos pro- a group of sawyers, but as yet no copy, or duced everything itself ; there was no •Kplutv, other trace of them than in Pliny, has been no ' see-sawing,' as I suppose. Upon this 2 found. the scholiast remarks, TOVTO TraiSia KoXtirar Believing that the strict interpretation of a/iro yap TOV irpiui ptffiaTOS ovo/Jta rov irpiwv. If he pristae as sawyers lands us in an impossible merely means ' This is what is called a pun,' group, I propose to argue that this word may then, being not much the wiser for that, we have been applied also to a game in which must look elsewhere for a definition of irpimv. the process of sawing was imitated in some Hesychius gives it as an equivalent of dyo- measure. There is in the British Museum p&Zfov, while the scholiast to Achar. 625 has a painted vase8 of the red figure style, on ayopd£satyrs playing at a game contained the sense of being pulled at by like our ' see-saw,' with this difference— rival traders in the market, the word irpiuiv important for a group in the round—that may readily have come to be used with the each is within arm's reach of the other. The same signification, since the working of a one, in fact, holds the other firmly by the saw by two persons presented so obvious an wrists, with the intention of pulling him analogy. To this I am inclined to add the over, and thus upsetting the balance of the proverb dyopa KepKwircoi/, because on one of plank, near the centre of which they are the archaic metopes from Selinus we see both placed, the one opposite to the other. Herakles carrying over his shoulder the two They do not stand on the plank, but have Kerkopes bound by the knees to a plank, sunk, each on his knees, with the heels and presenting just the appearance of the two satyrs on our vase, turned upside down. 1 Nat. Sist. xxxiv. 57, I would have liked to take the iraiSid of the 2 E. Petersen, Arch. Zeit. 1865, p. 91. scholiast in its ordinary sense of a game and 3 Vase Cat. No. 996; engraved in Bullet, de suppose him to say : ' from the verb trpiw is VAcad. de Bruxelles, xii. pt. i. p. 289. For an exam- 4 ple of 'see-saw,' practised in the modern manner, see the name of ?rptW, the game.' If that a Greek vase in Gerhard's Ant. Bildwerke, pi. 53, or 4 In another passage, Wasps, 694, Aristophanes Panof ka's Bilder antiken Lebens, pi. 18, fig. 3. seems to refer to an actual group of sawyers. B 2 THE CLASSICAL REVIEW. is right, the persons playing at this game ' fettered * had been superadded to the signi- would naturally be called pristae, and we fication of ' sawing.' It is conceivable that should be free to take Pliny's word as ap- the use of irpiwv for a game as practised plicable to Myron either in the sense of on our vase may have helped to bring about actual sawyers, or of a group of two figures this new meaning. But these are questions playing at a game, as on our vase. These on which I venture with all diffidence. figures may have been satyrs, as on the vase, It has been suggested that the game in or boys in ordinary life. A known group question may have been called TreTavpio-fios, by Myron consisted of Athene and a satyr. a plank being viravpa, Trcrsvpov or irevrevpov. But boys or satyrs would have made an But the metaphor of a •n-eTaupioy/.os T»JS -nr^s equally admirable subject for him. would seem to suit better the ordinary game I may note that Suidas gives wpio-flei's as of ' see-saw' as practised on a vase already equivalent to 8eo-p.eu0€is, citing Soph. Ajax, referred to (in note 3), than the vase of which 1019 (Lobeck), while Hesychius gives irptovas I have been speaking more particularly. = X€pu>v T'OVS &e

ON SOME POLITICAL TERMS EMPLOYED IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. THE title of this paper is vague, and needs TTJS KaAAiVnjs aTro8o)(rj€«;/x.i 67U T^s 7rp[o]- on 1 Tim. i. 15, we may quote the follow- } O 'Hpa.KA.afv] ing from an Ephesian inscription now at f p Ka.9a.ira£ Kara ] Oxford: TITOU AlXtov | IIpitrKou, dvSpos BOKI/XU)- fx,ov, TOLTOU, Kai ( 7rdo"*7s Tip^s Kai aTroSov^s a£iov (\Tp-ov airb TTCLVTOS KXrjpovofi. ] 10 (Baillie, Fasc. Inter. Gr. No. 2 ; see Wadding- [TJpiirecrTai (sic) avrbv OTTOV av fiov- ton, Fastes, p. 225). Other examples of the \] 0 [] same phrase may be found in the Corpus I-n- pj p(p [] y p scriptionumAtticarum, ii. 628_/wi. (1st century [xVlv Ounveia^ T€ KOX icpo(TKa{pr) [t]- B.C.) ; Keil, Sylloge Inscriptionum Bce.ot. xxxi. [p]>/crca>s,2 crweTrwevaravTiov Se 15 14 ; Corpus Inscr. Gr. 2349 6, compare 3524, Kai TISV KXrjp[o]v6f).wv /JWV 'I[ line 29 ; also in the well-known decree in KXCISOV Kai 'EXiKEphesus {ypaiifW.T€vs TOD Sij/jou, see Menadier, gogue worship. It was not uncommon in Greek deeds Qua condicione JUphesii usi sint, etc. Berlin, 1880, of manumission to make certain conditions (see Fou- p. 78), of the 'A