DEVOTIONS AND DYNASTY: VOTIVE RELIEFS AND THE PERGAMON ALTAR’S TELEPHOS FRIEZE Klint Ericson A thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Department of Art (Art History). Chapel Hill 2009 Approved by: Dr. Mary Sturgeon Dr. Eduardo Douglas Dr. Carol Magee © 2009 Klint Ericson ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT KLINT ERICSON: Devotions and Dynasty: Votive Reliefs and the Pergamon Altar’s Telephos Frieze (Under the direction of Dr. Mary Sturgeon) This thesis compares the Telephos Frieze from the Great Altar at Pergamon to Classical and Hellenistic votive reliefs. Previous authors have alluded to connections between votive reliefs and the Telephos Frieze, but this paper demonstrates the similarities and important differences between the frieze and specific votive reliefs. It argues that the Telephos Frieze evokes compositions and pictorial techniques that also occur in processional, banquet, Pan and Nymph, and hero reliefs. The final chapter addresses the function of the Altar and the Telephos Frieze, which were essential elements of Eumenes II’s urban consolidation in the second century B.C.E. This paper concludes that the votive elements of the Telephos Frieze efficaciously associated Attalid dynastic ideology with the personal emotions and beliefs of worshipers, reinforcing dynastic authority within the Pergamene kingdom. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES…………………………………………………………………………. iv Chapter I. INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………..… 1 II. CHAPTER 1: EXCAVATION AND SCHOLARSHIP OF THE TELEPHOS FRIEZE……………………………………………………………. 5 1. Early Excavations and Scholarship………………………………………..…. 5 2. Recent Excavations and Scholarship……………………………………….... 9 III. CHAPTER 2: VOTIVES IN CLASSICAL AND HELLENISTIC GREECE…. 21 IV. CHAPTER 3: VISUAL ANALYSIS OF THE TELEPHOS FRIEZE……….… 38 1. The Scene of the Rescue of Telephos………………………………………. 38 2. The Banquet Scene of Telephos in the Court of the Argives………………. 45 3. The Foundation of a Pergamene Cult………………………………………. 51 V. CHAPTER 4: CONCLUSIONS………………………………………………... 58 VI. FIGURES……………………………………………………………………….. 70 VII. BIBLIOGRAPHY……………………………………………………………..... 84 iv LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1. Model of the Pergamon Altar. After Wolfram Hoepfner, “Model of the Pergamon Altar,” in Pergamon: The Telephos Frieze from the Great Altar, 2 vols., ed. Renée Dreyfus and Ellen Schraudolph (San Francisco: Fine Arts Museum, 1996), vol. 1, 58. 2. Plan of the Pergamon Altar. After Wolfram Hoepfner, “The Architecture of Pergamon,” in Pergamon: The Telephos Frieze from the Great Altar, vol. 2, 54. 3. Archinos Relief from Oropos, Athens NM 3369. After Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway, Fourth-Century Styles in Greek Sculpture (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997) , pl. 49. 4. Votive Relief from the Athenian Asklepieion, Athens NM 1335. After Gerhard Neumann, Probleme des griechischen Weihreliefs (Tübingen: Ernst Wasmuth, 1979), pl. 45a. 5. Banquet Votive Relief from the Piraeus Asklepieion, Athens NM 1501. After Ulrich Hausmann, Griechische Weihreliefs (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1960), 30, ill. 15. 6. Banquet Votive Relief from Megara, Athens NM 1532. After Folkert Van Straten, Hiera Kala: Images of Animal Sacrifice in Archaic and Classical Greece (New York: E. J. Brill, 1995), 100, ill. 106. 7. Neoptolemos Relief from Athens, Agora I 7154. Source: Neumann, Probleme , pl. 31a. 8. Pergamon Cavalier Hero Relief, Istanbul Archeological Museum 362. After Franz Winter, Altertümer von Pergamon VII 1: Die Skulpturen mit Ausnahme der Altarreliefs (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1908), pl. 33. 9. Pergamos Votive Relief, Oxford Ashmolean Museum 1886 6566. After Winter, Die Skulpturen , 253, fig. 310. 10. Telephos Votive Relief, Pergamon Museum 432. After Doris Pinkwart, “Katalog,” in Pergamon: Ausstellung in Erinnerung an Boehringer (Ingelheim am Rhein: C. H. Boehringer Sohn, 1972), 47, no. 35. 11. Telephos Frieze, Panel 12. After Ellen Schraudolph, “Catalogue: Sculpture and Architectural Fragments,” in Pergamon: The Telephos Frieze, vol. 1, 61. 12. Telephos Frieze, Panel 7. After Hermann Winnefeld, Altertümer von Pergamon III 2: Die Friese des groszen Altars (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1910), 165, ill. 74. v 13. Telephos Frieze, Panel 8. After Huberta Heres, “The Myth of Telephos in Pergamon,” in Pergamon: The Telephos Frieze , vol. 2, 85, fig. 3. 14. Munich Glyptothek 206. After J. J. Pollitt, Art in the Hellenistic Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 196, fig. 210. 15. Pan and the Charites Relief, Kos Archeological Museum, no number. After Folkert Van Straten, “Daikrates’ Dream. A Votive Relief from Kos and some Other Kat’onar Dedications,” Bulletin antieke beschaving 51 (1976): 29, fig. 2. 16. Telephos Frieze, Panels 38-40. After Heres, “The Myth,” 92, fig. 14. 17. Telephos Frieze, Panel 48. After Heres, “The Myth,” 95, fig. 19. 18. Banquet Relief Fragment, Martin von Wagner Museum 2428. After Christa Bauchhenss-Thüriedl, Der Mythos von Telephos in der antiken Bildkunst (Würzburg: Konrad Triltsch Verlag, 1971), 11. 19. Telephos Frieze, Panel 42. After Schraudolph, “Catalogue,” 73. 20. Telephos Frieze, Panels 49-50. After Heres, “The Myth,” 94, fig. 17. 21. Telephos Frieze, Panel 11. After Heres, “The Myth,” 85, fig. 2. 22. Telephos Frieze, Panel 20. After Schraudolph, “Catalogue,” 65. 23. Telephos Frieze, Panel 1. After Heres, “The Myth,” 90, fig. 11. 24. Telephos Frieze, Panels 44-46. I produced this photomontage after two photographs in Heres, “The Myth,” figs. 15-16. 25. Telephos Frieze, Fragment 68. After Bauchhenss-Thüriedl, Der Mythos von Telephos, pl. 5.2. 26. Plan of the apsidal structure from the Altar foundation. After Jakob Schrammen, Altertümer von Pergamon III 1: Der grosze Altar der obere Markt (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1906), 84. 27. Plan of the foundation excavations of the Altar, with the remains of the apsidal structure in the upper right quadrant. Source: François Queyrel, L’Autel de Pergame: Images et Pouvoir en Grèce D’Asie (Paris: Éditions A. et J. Picard, 2005), 36, fig. 16. vi INTRODUCTION During the Hellenistic period, the city of Pergamon became an important kingdom and artistic center under the rule of the Attalid Dynasty. 1 The Attalids saw themselves as the heirs to Athenian Classical culture and sought to demonstrate their power and sophistication by sponsoring important commissions in Athens, Delos, and Delphi, as well as developing the city of Pergamon itself. Perhaps the most memorable construction of the Attalid period is the Great Altar of Pergamon, a monument that stood upon the Pergamene Akropolis, south of the Temple to Athena, and overlooked a theater and the upper agora. 2 The Altar was an elaborate raised structure in the Ionic order, with an internal open-air courtyard that may have contained a smaller, functional altar for performing sacrifices. 3 The Altar comprised a high, 1 The modern city of Bergama now sits below the Pergamene acropolis in western Turkey. Pergamon was an unimportant village until Alexander’s former general, King Lysimachos, deposited his treasure there under the protection of an officer named Philetairos. Philetairos eventually claimed the treasure for himself and defected to Lysimachos’ rival, King Seleukos in 282 B.C.E. Seleukos was assassinated shortly afterwards, allowing Philetairos to rule while only nominally under the authority of the Seleucids. His successor Eumenes I won independence in 262 B.C.E., marking the beginning of the Attalid kingdom and dynasty (named after Philetairos’ father Attalos). Eumenes I was succeeded by his adopted son Attalos I, followed by Attalos I’s sons Eumenes II and Attalos II. Attalos II’s son Attalos III willed Pergamon to Rome upon his death, marking the end of the kingdom in 133 B.C.E. See Esther V. Hansen, The Attalids of Pergamon (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1947); R. E. Allen, The Attalid Kingdom: A Constitutional History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983); and J. J. Pollitt, Art in the Hellenistic Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 79-83. 2 As I discuss below, the function of the structure is still in question, and therefore I will follow Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway’s use of the term “Altar” as a means of conforming to the conventional and historical designation of the monument, rather than as an indication of function. See Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway, Hellenistic Sculpture II: The Styles of ca. 200-100 B.C. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2000), 47, n. 1 (hereafter cited as HS II ). When capitalized, “Altar” refers to the Ionic structure on the Pergamene Akropolis; when in lowercase, it refers to altars in general or to a hypothetical sacrificial altar that some scholars reconstruct within the Altar court. 3 Excavators recovered three fragments of a sima and fasciae. For possible reconstructions of the altar see Volker Kästner, “The Architecture of the Great Altar and the Telephos Frieze,” in Pergamon: The Telephos pi -shaped podium with an Ionic colonnade above and two projecting colonnaded antae flanking a steep stair on the western side (figs. 1-2). Around the podium was a Gigantomachy Frieze in high relief, consisting of perhaps as many as one hundred interlocked, monumental combatants.4 Visitors to the Altar entered its terrace on the eastern side, where they first encountered the Gigantomachy’s representations of Olympian gods Zeus and Athena. Following the frieze around the Altar, they would have climbed the stairs on the western side, ascending between the projecting