the attic stelai - The American School of Classical Studies at Athens

218 W. KENDRICK PRITCHETT
done, leaning more heavily on literary evidence and using fewer graphic illustrations,
Both of these writers distinguish four major types of thronoi. First, and perhaps
earliest, a style which Richter considers orientalizing, with low curving back, often
ending in a decorative finial, and distinguished by carved legs, usually slanting outwards,
terminating in animal feet. This type sometimes has an arm rest; it may have
a stretcher beneath the seat, and it often shows a figure standing as a brace between
legs and seat.49 This chair we have absolute permission to call a thronos, for on an
amphora in Paris, where the birth of Athena is shown, Zeus sits on such a seat, under
which is the label epovog0 The second type of seat for gods and princes distinguished
by Richter and Hug is rectangular in shape, having straight rectangular legs which
are often highly decorated and may be carved out in the same manner as the legs of
beds. This chair may have a low or high back, or no back at all; it may have arms
or not. In early examples it often shows animal or human motifs continuing on the
back or in the figures in the space beneath the seat, but by the later fifth century the
design had become almost purely architectural. The third type is a chair with cylindrical
turned legs, with or without arms, which, like the rectangular-legged seat, may
show animal motifs in the early fifth century, but soon is purified of these only to
become excessively ornate in the fourth century. The final type of the thronos is the
typical seat of a terracotta goddess; a variation of it can be seen in the stone seats of
honor in the theatres. This thronos was made not with four legs, but with a solid
box-like base which extended upwards for the back and might continue around the
sides to create arms. According to Miss Richter,5" the most popular of these four
types in the late fifth century was the second, the throne with carved rectangular legs.
The thronos was also the seat of an authority which was neither political nor divine
but pedagogic. Plato, in the Protagoras (315 c), places Hippias on a thronos and his
companions upon surrounding bathra. Plutarch speaks of the sophist's loss of dignity
when he gets up from his throne and puts aside his books,52 and Philostratos frequently
mentions the thronos as the seat of the philosopher.53 This usage may be almost
entirely post-Platonic, however, for in vase-paintings of school-room scenes from
the fifth century there are teachers seated on folding stools, on plain diphroi, and
on the curved-backed chair which Richter calls a klismos, but not so far as I know
upon any of the types of thronoi listed above.54 It was probably following this tra-
48
R.E., s.v. Stuhl.
49 A variation of this first type, which Richter does not mention, can be seen in Ausonia, III,
1908, p. 175, fig. 29; here the base of the throne is a box set on animal feet.
50 Mon. Ined., VI, pl. LVI, 3; Richter, op. cit., p. 8.
"I Op. cit., p. 25.
52 Moralia, 43 F, De recte ratione audiendi.
!3Vit. Soph., II, 588, 591, 613.
54 See Daremberg-Saglio, Dictionnaire, II, figs. 2599-2603.