Page:Philological Museum v2.djvu/320

310 On the Painting of an ancient Vase. of the tutelary goddess indicates that the scene takes place on the isle of Chryse, then the altar represented is that same altar : one of the most celebrated in antiquity, which the Greeks were bidden by the oracle to search for on their pas- sage to Troy, seventy-five years after it was first erected: which Philoctetes found and cleansed, and from which the snake darted out, which wounded the hero, whose long and cruel sufferings and glorious triumph were exhibited by the three masters of Greek tragedy. He was acquainted with the altar, not from the time when Jason erected it on his way to Colchis : for Philoctetes was not one of the Argonauts, though Hyginus and Valerius Flaccus, without the counte- nance of any other author, and in contradiction to all chro- nology, number him among them : his acquaintance with the altar dated from the expedition of Hercules against Troy, on which Philoctetes had accompanied his friend and foster- father. The painting of the vase enables us clearly to under- stand, how, in the course of more than sixty years, an altar piled like the one here represented, might be covered up, and overgrown with bushes, so that nothing but a lively recollection of the spot where it stood could lead to its dis- covery ; and also how the broad chinks and cavities left by stones so rounded off and laid on one another, might harbour a snake, which might dart forth and wound Philoctetes as he was busied in clearing out the altar. Altars of this structure are the most ancient of any : they are rarely represented on ancient monuments, and as rarely are they accurately described by ancient writers. It is just such an altar that Apollonius makes the Argonauts pile up with stones on the seashore, before they embark, in honour of Apollo, as the patron of navigation^. Widely different therefore from the original is the strange representation which Dosiadas gave of this same altar in long 3 1.402. "'EvQev ay Xdiyya^ d^ crx'^oov oyXiX^ovre^ 'Nijeov avTodi fiuijxov eirdicTLov ' AiroXXitivo's 'A/CTtou, 'Efxf^aartoio t' eTrcSvvfxov. The word Xatyye?, here used by Apollonius, has misled his learned Italian translator (L'Argonautica di Apollonio Rodio tradotta ed illustrata, Roma 1791.4) to suppose the altar composed of pietruzze: but Xaiy^ is not always used as the diminutive of Xa9. Hesychius explains Xdiyyes by Xidoi vird vdaTO's XeXetaa/uLevoL^ and Apollonius (iv. 1678) describes Talos as rolling Papeia^ Xdiyya^ to guard the harbour from the Argonauts. In the former passage therefore he probably had in his mind just such an altar as that represented in the painting.