Ancient art and its remains, or, A manual of the archaeology of art / By C.O. Müller.
- Karl Otfried Müller
- Date:
- 1852
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Ancient art and its remains, or, A manual of the archaeology of art / By C.O. Müller. Source: Wellcome Collection.
647/664 page 629
![AMULETS, SYMBOLS. 6*7 3. AMULETS, SYMBOLS. 436. We conclude with a hasty notice of the amulets of 1 antiquity, which from their nature everywhere transgress the limits of art, nay are even in direct contradiction to the artistic sense. The dreaded invidia, according to the belief of antiquity, was with so much the greater certainty warded off, the more re- pulsive, nay disgusting the object worn for that purpose; and the numberless phallic bronzes, although originally symbols of life-creating nature, had afterwards, however, only this mean- ing and aim. The eye, the foot, the hand variously applied, 2 are to be met with in symbolical and superstitious significance; all the limbs of the human body were modelled without par- ticular signification as consecrated offerings to Esculapius for recovery from sickness. Figures from the Egyptian religion 3 and Alexandrine eclecticism are otherwise by far the most usual on amulet stones.—Fulness of life, health and bloom 4 were most usually denoted in the later period of art, by the CORNUCOPIA, which was also doubled, as an independently exist- ing symbol. Where a secret sense is given to mathematical 5 lines and figures, arbitrarily or from philosophical crotchets, all artistic activity completely vanished with the natural unity of the external and internal 1. The phaUus on houses in Pompeii with the inscription, hie habitat felicitas, is well known. Perhaps the oldest amulet of the kind is to be Been on the walls of Alatrium, Dodwell Views pi. 92. [The Editor found a similar one on a wall of the Homeric city Antheia.] An ithyphallic figure was probably called tychon as a symbol of Tyche. Probably the ordinary fixaKxi/iov, fascinum, before work-shops was also the same, Pol- lux vii, 108. (yeXoloc, rivx, turpicula res). Comp. Bottiger Amalth. iii. 8. 340. Arditi II fascino e I'amuleto contro del fascino presso gli antichi. N. 1825. 4to. II fico is often combined with phalli as an amulet. Ant. Ere. vi, 99, PhaUi alati. But death-like figures served this purpose, and a kind of grasshopper, which might be regarded as a larvalis imago, is said to have been erected before the acropolis by Pisistratus as a xaretx^. fascinum. Hesych., comp. Lobeck Aglaoph. p. 970. Hence the grasshop- per in all sorts of human occupations on gems, Impr. d. Inst, ii, 93. 95. 2. The malus oculus is most interestingly represented in the relief Wobum Marbles 14., comp. Millingen Archaeol. Brit. six. p. 70. where it is exposed to every kind of insult and filth. In a similar way we see •t attacked by many sorts of animals on gems (Lippert Suppl, ii, 466. Caylus V, 57. vi. 38. Kopp, Palasogr. iii. p. 604. and Expl. inscr. obsc. in amuleto. Heidelb. 1832.), which are all to be referred thereto, and not to eye-healing. Pedes votivi, entwined with serpents, with Capricorn thereon as a propitious sign, and the inscription, faustos redire, Passeri, Luc. fict. ii, 73. Feet, as signs of presence at places of pilgrimage. Amu-](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b2178016x_0647.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
