Final Draft - Preview Matter - Florida State University
Final Draft - Preview Matter - Florida State University
Final Draft - Preview Matter - Florida State University
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students of comparative religion in the early nineteenth century and for at least a<br />
century afterwards. Myth at Rome is consequently often seen as derivative and<br />
parasitic, a borrowing from a more creative foreign culture in order to make up<br />
for something naturally missing: 'The Greeks were far more advanced and<br />
original than the Romans, supplying them from very early times with many of the<br />
myths and ideas about their own gods.'” 87<br />
For countless years, this has been the typical viewpoint of many scholars. It is only within the<br />
last three decades, that the Romans, and also the Etruscans, have been credited with a<br />
mythological prerogative. 88<br />
It is not difficult to see how such an attitude could develop. The study of Etruscan and<br />
Roman culture has long labored under the shadow of Greek influence. In the field of art history,<br />
scholars such as Johann Winckelmann in 1764 in his Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums<br />
referred to Roman art as a pale copy of Greek art. This attitude has plagued the study of Roman<br />
art up to the present day and is in no small part due to the fact that the Romans were indeed<br />
enamored with Greek culture. One is reminded of Horace’s verse, “Captive Greece captured her<br />
fierce captor and brought the arts into uncultured Latium.” 89<br />
In a similar manner to the preference given to Greek myth over Etruscan and Roman<br />
myth, there is preference given to literary sources over archaeological ones. A perfect example<br />
of this problem is, as I noted earlier, that Smelik and Hemelrijk’s study was completely devoid of<br />
archaeological evidence. There is not a simple relationship between art and text, i.e. one does<br />
not necessarily represent or copy the other. We must view these two different types of evidence<br />
on their own merits and recognize that variations will exist, for a myth or cycle of myths did not<br />
simply take one form. One scholar who has made great strides in analyzing the relationship<br />
between myth and text is J.P. Small. Her text, The Parallel Worlds of Classical Art and Text,<br />
hints at this dichotomy by implying in its title that art and text need not “intersect.” She even<br />
treats changes in the iconography of human and animal hybrids and its relation to the myth-<br />
making process when she states<br />
That the Sirens are not always the same in form is less bothersome than the<br />
number, since not only does each generation need up-to-date translations of<br />
87 Feeney 1998, 47. Here Feeney quotes Ogilvie 1981, 4.<br />
88 Oleson (1975, 189-91) presents a cogent appraisal of the relationship between Greek and Etruscan mythology.<br />
89 Hor. Epist. II.1.156-7. Latin Text taken from Horace Satires, Epistles, Ars Poetica, Loeb Classical Library,<br />
edited by G.P. Goold , Cambridge, MA: Harvard <strong>University</strong> Press, 1999, p. 408. (Translation by Author.)<br />
Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit et artes / intulit agresti Latio.<br />
22