No regal ensigns grace his potent hand, Nor shakes he there the lightning's flaming brand; Belies the god, and Ammon is his name. ROWE. Profile of JupiteR.-A garnet in Mr. Townley's collection. The distinguishing characteristic of this fragment is that of severity united with dignity. Phidias being asked how he could conceive that air of majesty raised into divinity, which he had expressed in the face of Jupiter, replied, he had only copied it from Homer*. Homer's lines are chiefly descriptive of the hair, the eyebrows, and the beard; indeed to these the best heads of Jupiter owe much of their dignity. Beards were fallen into disrepute in the days of Augustus; hence Virgil, in copying Homer's description, has omitted all the picturesque strokes on the beard, hair, and eyebrows, for which Macrobius censures him, and Scaliger extols him. It is justly observed by Spence, that we are led astray by our prejudice for modern fashion, to contradict our own eyes and our own judgment. A full beard is now only to be seen on the lowest of the people, and therefore it is that we associate an idea of meanness to the thing itself; yet in the East, a full beard carries an idea of majesty with it. We would not either enter into the history of the beard (of which there exists a very curious one) nor compose an eulogium on the beard itself; but we only wish to inculcate to the lovers of art, the necessity of emancipating themselves from the close chains of prejudice, and not to try by the standard of modern modes the fine relics of antiquity. Scaliger, like a true modern critic, attempts to be extremely humorous on the beard of Homer's Jupiter, while he extols Virgil for his omission of this appendage to the majesty of the god-but sober truth, and the truth of criticism, will agree with Spence, that Virgil described Jupiter in the properest manner for the Romans, and Homer in the noblest manner for the Greeks. An artist of this day ought, however, to be of no country. The style of execution in the gem before us is free, even to negligence; but it exhibits those happy touches of the master, which sometimes appear in a first effort, and which finishing seldom improves. * Macrob. lib. 5. c. 14. Val. Max. lib. 3. c. 7. JUPITER TONANS.-This thundering Jupiter is from a sulphur cast from Cab. Stosch. This justly esteemed fragment is a very shallow intaglio, like many of the antique gems; yet the anatomical expression loses nothing of its force, truth, and beauty. The disposition of the figure is justly appropriate to the action of launching the thunderbolt, and from what remains of this beautiful figure we must lament the accident that has deprived us of the whole. We shall just observe from Spence, that the best artists seem to have taken great care never to represent Jupiter in violent anger. He ever retains his majesty, and points his lightning with a composed air. It is only the low artist, and in the worst age of taste, who disturbs his celestial face, and swells out the cheeks with rage. How different from the air of that fine bust of the Jupiter terribilis at Rome; the terror is majestic; the anger is the anger of Jupiter. THE FULMEN.-A cornelian in the king of Prussia's collection. As a peculiar attribute of Jupiter, we have given a gem of the thunderbolt. Fulgur signified the blaze of the lightning, fulmen, the bolt, or a solid substance supposed to strike objects which were destroyed by lightning*. The fulmen in the hand of Jupiter was a sort of hieroglyphic, and had three different appearances and significations. The first is a cone, or conical wreath of flame (called sometimes the brutum fulmen). This was adapted to Jupiter when mild and calm. The second is the cone with the addition of two transverse darts or wings on each side, to denote swiftness. This characterized Jupiter inflicting punishment. The third is a handful of loose flames provided for the infliction of some extraordinary and exemplary destruction. The thundering legion bore the winged fulmen spread over their shield, as appears by the Antonine pillars. This fulmen agrees with the epithets trifidum and trisulcum in the Latin poets. There is a figure of Jupiter in Buonarotti's collection, at Florence, brandishing the three-forked lightning, as against some guilty wretch, with the conical fulmen under his feet, as of no use in cases requiring severity. * Pliny, lib. ii. 43. Virgil, in the eighth book of the Eneid, verse 429, describes the Cyclops forming the bolts of Jove, and the materials of which they are composed. Three rays of writhen rain, of fire three more, DRYDEN. This is more poetically spirited than closely translated. We do not find here the Fulgores nunc terrificos, sonitumque, metumque THE noise and terror of thunder.-Perhaps Pitt may notice this particular in his version. Virgil evidently alludes to the form of thunder as represented on gems, or medals. Pitiscus, in his curious Lexicon Antiquitatum Romanarum, under the article Fulmen, has a variety of Roman superstitions concerning it. They gave different names to the Fulmen, relative to the effects which they imagined it produced. Fulmen attestatum, was the thunder which confirmed what the first announced; Vanum, which had more noise than meaning, or, at least produced no ill; Consiliare, that determined to begin a doubtful matter, or not to begin it; Familiare, which prognosticated some domestic misfortune; Publicum, from which they drew predictions for thirty years, and Privatum, only for ten. Such, with others, were the mysteries and the property of the AUGURS, who so skilfully determined whether the thunder fell to the right, or to the left; or whether the strokes were even or odd; and were so profound in the vocabulary of that noisy language of their gods. EAGLE'S HEAD.-A CORNELIAN IN THE COLLECTION of Lord Beverly. The engravings on ancient gems furnish us with many beautiful specimens of skill in the formation of animals, birds, and symbolical reptiles. We have seen nothing superior to the Eagle's head from which our plate is taken. Its sharpness and clear relief is in the highest degree beautiful, and can only be equalled by the character and expression of the proud bird of Jove. Heads of eagles, insulated as the present one, are frequently seen on monuments and medals. The ancients are well known to have succeeded to perfection in engraving birds, and in none more than in their favourite eagle. The artist, who engraved the present fine head, intended, doubtless, only to convey an idea of his talents, by inclosing, in so small a space, a head, which, by its great character, elevates the imagination, and gives to us, as it were by inference, the body which belongs to the haughty bird. N ACRATUS. We have engraven this gem from a sulphur cast in the collection of Baron Stosch. It is not less remarkable for beauty, than for the rarity of its subject. It has sometimes been confounded with the busts of Cupid-but it is undoubtedly a winged Bacchus, called ACRATUS, or the genius of pure wine, one of the most favourite companions of Bacchus. It is deeply engraven on an amethyst, in Dactyliotheca Victoriorum; the purple colour of the stone confirms its Bacchic character. ACRATUS is crowned with myrtle, ivy, and rose buds, with wings on his shoulders, and his right arm wrapped in his dress. Pausanias*, describing the representations of the gods which decorated the mansion of Polytion, dedicated in his time to Bacchus, mentions ACRATUS, an attendant genius on the god of wine, and describes his countenance projecting from the wall. He informs us, that the Amiclei adored Bacchus under the name of Psila, which in the Doric signified wing; wine (he adds) lightens and exalts the soul, as wings, birds. As wings are a known celestial emblem (observes the writer of the Museum Worsleianum, p. 69,) it is not incredible that the sculptor might have employed them to express the spirit which exalts the brain, and warms the heart, and fires the blood. Athenæus describes, in his first book, a repast taken in the morning, called Acratism, consisting of bread dipped in the Acratos or pure wine, from angaros (acratos) signifying without mixture, or pure wine. Among his quotations, Book 2, we find a remarkable expression of Ion of Chios, who calls wine "an ungovernable child with a dark bull's eye." Does he not allude to such a personification of Bacchus as the one before us? the dark * Attics. |