The Gnostics and Their Remains

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As for the Roman Pluto, or, to give him his native name, Dis (ditis, from the same root as death), there was the best of reasons for excluding him from the province of art which admitted nought that was hideous or of evil augury. For there can be no doubt, that, to the popular imagination, he still continued the Charun, * whom we still behold lording it over the sepulchres of their Etruscan teachers in the arts, a giant of horrid aspect with pointed ears, and frisky grinning jaws, winged buskins on legs, extending with one hand a hissing serpent, with the other wielding a monstrous mall. It was probably the traditional influence of the idea that caused the same instrument; mazza, to be retained at Rome for the execution of peculiarly atrocious criminals down to the recent introduction of the guillotine.

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That Pluto was really so personified in the shows of the Amphitheatre, as late as the third century, may be gathered from the remark of Tertullian (Apol. xxv.), that, "amongst the other scenic cruelties of the afternoon, the spectators laughed at the sight of Mercury raising the dead with his red-hot wand [applied doubtless to the feet of the slaughtered gladiators to

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ascertain if life still lingered within them]; whilst the 'Brother of Jupiter,' armed with his mall, escorted the dead bodies of the combatant" [for the purpose clearly of giving them the coup de grâce]. The primitive Etruscan image passed down into the belief of their mediæval descendants, for Dante brings on the stage:--

"Charon, demonio con occhi di bragia."
"Charon, a devil with live-coals for eyes."

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It is time now to dismiss the Lord of the Shades, and to consider by what Emblem ancient art sought to express the Shade itself, the disembodied spirit. The Greeks of early times appropriately painted it in the shape of a bird with a human head, as on that beautiful vase, "The Death of Procris" (British Museum), where such a fowl is conspicuously seen winging its flight from the month of the wounded Nymph. The celebrated Orléans (now Russian) scarabeus, engraved with the "Death of Achilles," has its back carved into the same creature, tearing her breast in an agony of despair. This expressive type was not, however, the birth of Grecian genius, but adopted, without alteration, from the most ancient symbolism of Egypt. In the "Judgment of the body and soul," regularly painted on the mummy-cases, the former, depicted as a mummy, stands before Osiris, "Lord of the West," to answer for its actions; whilst the soul, in shape of a hawk, with human head and wings uplifted, is brought before the same god under another form, to give an account of its thoughts. And the same soul, purified, and admitted amongst the gods, appears as before, but tranquilly standing with a golden disk, "a crown of glory," set upon her head: figures of the last kind in bronze frequently occurring amongst Egyptian remains, complimentary mementoes of deceased friends. Again, this same bird is often found painted on the mummy-case right over the heart (named in Coptic, "the abode of the soul"), a plain proof of what it signifies there; although Father Kircher, with his wonted extravagance, chose to explain it as figuring the iynx, the bird so renowned in the magical operations of the Greeks. Again, the same notion is expressed by the simple figure of a bird flying away, as often is done in Etruscan works, where the subject represented is the

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death of a hero. Latest of all, this somewhat grotesque Egyptian conception was modified by Grecian culture into the graceful girl with butterfly wings--the well-known Psyche--and such a form is seen seated upon the summit of Achilles’ tomb, before which the sacrifice of Polyxena is about to be offered. This ancient human-headed Bird, by a natural transition of ideas, came ultimately to be applied to express a widely different meaning. Instead of the dead, it was made to stand for the destroyer; and the Syrens are always painted in this shape whenever their interview with Ulysses becomes the theme of ancient art, or when they engage in their unlucky contest with the Muses. But here, for the sake of more grace, in the conformation of the monster, the whole of the female bust is adapted to the body of the fowl. Despite their beauty and melodiousness, the Syrens were considered as the most malignant and destructive of beings, for which reason the Harpies likewise were depicted in precisely the same figure. Although identical at first, the more refining art of Roman times introduced a distinction between them by giving to the Syrens the complete bust, to the Harpies the head only of the woman. Inasmuch as the name signifies "Snatcher-away," the Harpy was understood to embody the abstract idea of death, which acceptation explains why she is often represented armed with a sword, or carrying on her shoulder the funeral lecythus, and torch. For the same reason the Harpy holds a conspicuous place in the decorations of many ancient tombs, unless, indeed, the emblem may have been used there in its Egyptian sense.

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In what shape Death was personified by Euripides, in his Alcestis, cannot be made out from the insufficiency of data afforded by the lines relating to his appearance on the stage. It is, however, plain that the poet brought forward Θάνατος in a bodily form, perhaps considering him the same with Aïdoneus, for he styles him "King of the Dead;" and Macrobius, speaking of the same event, uses for his name the Roman equivalent, "Orcus." All that can be gathered from the incidental allusions of the other dramatis personæ to this apparition, is that he was robed in black, and carried a sword, wherewith to sever a lock from the head of his destined victim, and so devote it to

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the subterranean gods. It is, however, possible that Euripides brought on this Θάνατος in that harpy shape which sometimes is found in antique art where the bust is that of a grim aged man, in place of the smiling female's, and who, as badge of office, carries a naked sword. In such a form the Destroyer must have flitted before the eyes of Statius, when about to make prey of the young and beautiful Glaucius:--

                   "Subitas inimica levavit
Parca manus; quo diva feros gravis exuis ungues?"

This last word can apply to nothing but the Harpy, of whom claws were the distinctive attribute:--

"Unguibus ire parat nummos raptura Celæno."

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Nevertheless, a representation like this had in it nothing grotesque or offensive to the Athenian eye. Far different was the Pelasgic Κῆρ, likewise robed in black (according to Homer's normal epithet for her), in the form which the archaic sculptor had given her upon the Coffer of Cypselus, "having tusks as fierce as those of any wild beast." Such a conception was eagerly embraced by the gloomy genius of the Etruscans, ever delighting in the monstrous and the horrible. She therefore figures on their signets in a form to be described in the very words of Pausanias, having a huge Gorgonian head, grinning jaws, arms wreathed with serpents, impelled by quadruple wings, like an Assyrian deity, and her action that of furious haste. So, doubtless, appeared the Furies, brought on the stage by Æschylus, when the horror of their strange aspect struck the Athenian audience with such deadly fright. For his purpose he must have revived a very ancient and forgotten type of the idea, for the paintings on the vases of his epoch exhibit the Eumenides, who persecute Orestes, under a no more terrific form than as shadowy old women brandishing serpents and torches, as they chase their victim from shrine to shrine.

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Footnotes

181:* Exactly the same lesson is taught by a drinking-cup in the Orléans Museum, the decoration of which is a dance of skeletons. (Mém. Soc. Antiq. de France, vol. xxxi.)

182:* Such a larva also points the moral of the scene embossed upon a lamp, published by De Witte (Mem. Soc. Antiq. de France, 1871), where a philosopher seated, and grasping a scroll, is apostrophising a skeleton standing before him; at his feet lies an infant in swaddling-clothes. These adjuncts declare the subject of the philosopher's meditations--the destiny of Man coin birth to death.

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183:* διεστραμμένους τοὺς πόδας. The very obvious meaning of these words critics have contrived to misunderstand, and to render as "distorted." Nor is this all; entirely upon the authority of this blunder, Propertius "somnia vana" have been turned into "somnia vara," and ever since the whole tribe of Dreams are believed to walk bandy-legged.

184:* The child's skeleton in the Pompeian painting above quoted, similarly folds his feet.

184:†

Accipe belligeræ crudum thoraca Minervæ,
Ipsa Meduseæ quam timet ira comæ.
Dum vacat hæc, Caesar, poterit lorica vocari,
Pectore cum sacro sederit, Ægis erit.
              'Mart.' vii. 1.

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185:* A colossal example of the finest workmanship was exhumed at Alexandria a few years ago. It may have been contemporary with the coin of Commodus from that mint, which has for reverse a head of Serapis placed upon a foot for pedestal, with the date of his seventh year.

187:* As Etruria was the only school of art for Rome until very late times, she supplied the figures equally with the names of all the Roman deities.

190:* The same picture must have been in Horace's mind when he uses the figure . . . .

"Mors atris circumvolat alis."

http://sacred-texts.com/gno/gar/gar27.htm

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TOMB-TREASURES.
Serapis, in his double character of God of Death and God of Riches, has been the subject of preceding chapters; the present one shall be devoted to the consideration of the most striking method by which human superstition sought to turn to account the two ideas. To propitiate the Manes by placing his most valuable or beloved effects in the sepulchre of the defunct, dates probably from the very institution of interment; but the account now to be cited is the most interesting of any on record, owing to the circumstances of the time, person, and place. It is literally translated from the description of an eye witness, the earliest of Italian antiquaries, M. L. Fauno, given in his 'Antichita de Roma,' p. 154, published 1553.

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"In February, 1544, in the Chapel of the King of France, which is now being built in St. Peter's, after the plan of Julius II., the workmen, in excavating, came upon a marble coffin, which, from the things found therein, was clearly known to be the tomb of Maria, wife of the Emperor Honorius. Of the body, indeed, there was nothing left, except the teeth, the hair, and the two leg-bones. From the robes which were interwoven with gold, and from the head-tire, which was cloth of silk and gold, there was extracted by smelting more than forty pounds weight of the purest gold." [Suecius says thirty-six, but makes the total of all the gold found to amount to the above weight when they were melted down by order of Paul III., to be applied to the building fund of the Cathedral.]

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"Within the coffin lay a silver box, one and a half foot long by eight inches deep, with many articles inside, the which we shall proceed particularly to describe. There were vases and different things in rock crystal, thirty in all, big and little; amongst which were two cups, as it were, not very large, the one round, the other oval shaped, with most beautiful figures in intaglio of middling depth (mezzo-cavo), and a snail-shell (nautilus), likewise in crystal, fitted up for a lamp in fine gold, with which in the first place the mouth of the shell is overlaid, there being only left a hole for pouring in the oil; by the side

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of which hole is fixed a fly of gold upon a pivot, turning backwards and forwards, for the purpose of closing the orifice. In the same way is also made a nozzle with beak (pippio) for holding the wick, drawn out long and sharpened with the greatest elegance, and so fastened to the crystal that it appears all one piece naturally. The cover also is equally well made. The shape of the shell is that of a great sea-shell, encompassed all round with its points, which in this vessel are polished and very smooth, so excellently wrought is the

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crystal. There were also vases and various articles in agate, with certain little animals, eight in all, and amongst them two very beautiful vases, one like the glass ampullae, made big and squat for holding oil and such like liquids, so worked, so beautiful, and thin that it is a wonder to behold. The other is in the shape of those ladles with long handles used at Rome for baling water out of cisterns, and is supposed to be a vessel used by the ancients in their sacrifices [a lingula for the purpose of ladling the wine out of the great standing crater]. Next came four little vessels in gold of different kinds, and another little vessel of gold with a cover set round with jewels. A little gold heart that had been a pendant with jewels