AV 63, 2012: Katarina ŠMID

ARHEOLOŠKI VESTNIK

ARHEOLOŠKI VESTNIK 63, 2012

Katarina ŠMID

A rare mythological scene at Gornji Grad:
the tale of Scylla and Minos?

Abstract

The article discusses a central motif on the socle of a funerary monument at Gornji Grad, Slovenia. Together with those from Oswaldgraben (western Styria, province of Noricum) and Aquincum, it has been interpreted ever since the fundamental study written on the subject by Erna Diez as showing the reunion of Menelaus and Helen after the end of the Trojan War. This interpretation, however, becomes less certain upon comparing the relief to a less well-known mirror from the Bulla Regia cemetery (province of Africa proconsularis). The latter shows an almost identical composition, but includes the figure of an elderly woman who does not appear in the reunion story. The main features of the scene, the hand on the hilt of the sword, the woman offering an object to the man, and the active role of Eros, can be found in another, rarely depicted myth, namely the meeting of Minos and Scylla, described in most detail in the Ciris epyllion. According to the latter, Scylla, the daughter of King Nisus, falls in love with the enemy King Minos after an intervention by Eros, and is aided, in conspiracy against her father and homeland, by her nurse.

Iconographical analysis and literary sources have enabled the author to add four new depictions of Minos and Scylla to those already known. Three of those newly-added are depictions on stone reliefs, from Noricum (Gornji Grad, Oswaldgraben) and Pannonia (Aquincum), with the fourth one on the above-mentioned bronze mirror. All of them had previously been interpreted as the reunion of Menelaus and Helen after the end of the Trojan War.

Keywords: Roman period, aedicula tomb, Minos, Scylla, Menelaus, Helen, the Judgment of Paris, iconographic theme, Ciris epyllion, Noricum, Gornji Grad, Slovenia

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