The Golden Chariot of Achilles

Author: * Atunis Volumnius - 1 Post on this thread out of 7 Posts sitewide.
Date: Feb 13, 2007 - 15:14

Parade chariot with relief decoration. From Monteleone di Spoleto. 3rd quarter of 6th c BC. Embossed sheet bronze inlaid with ivory (lost). 1.2m. New York, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Rogers Fund, 1903.Photo from Sybille Haynes, Etruscan Civilization. © Sybille Haynes & The J. Paul Getty Museum,2000.

by Dionysia Xanthippos and Atunis Volumnius

This splendid chariot was found in 1902 by a farmer in a field near Monteleone di Spoleto, in Umbria, Italy. The farmer sold it — for two cows, they say — to dealers who smuggled it to New York, where they sold it to the Metropolitan Museum in 1903. Now, a century later, as the Met proudly announces "the golden chariot" will be the star exhibit when their new Classical court opens this spring, the villagers of Monteleone are suing the Met to return it.

Said to be the only Etruscan chariot ever found intact, it is 4 feet high, and with its long-lost wooden shaft was originally 14 feet long. It is a biga, a two-horse chariot rather than a four-horse quadriga. But if not the biggest, it was certainly the best. Created in the 6th century BC by an Umbrian artist from Vulci who was trained by an Eastern Greek, it was part of the burial treasure from a tomb in the Etruscan cemetery at Vulci. A splendid and expensive parade chariot from the start, it was never intended for battle, but only to make an impressive statement for the rich and powerful man who owned it. Whether he ever drove it in parades during his lifetime is unknown. But it was part of his funeral procession, and was buried with him in his tomb in the cemetery of the rich and powerful at Vulci.

The figures in relief are hammered out from the back side of a bronze sheet, a process called "repoussé" ("pushed out" or "repulsed"). All but one of the ivory inlays, shown here by the warrior's neck, has been lost. But to judge from this piece, the ivory inlays served as a bright white background for the bronze figures - inspired perhaps by the gold and silver of the splendid shield that the sea-goddess Thetis begged the blacksmith god Hephaestus to forge for her son Achilles: "So saying he left her there and went to his bellows, and he turned them toward the fire and commanded them to work. And the bellows, twenty in all, blew on the melting vats sending out a ready blast of every force, now to further him as he labored hard, and again in whatever way Hephaestus wished and his work went on. And on the fire he put stubborn bronze and tin and precious gold and silver; and then he set on the anvil block a great anvil, and took in one hand a massive hammer, and in the other he took the tongs. First he made a shield, great and sturdy, adorning it cunningly in every part, and round about it set a bright rim, threefold and glittering, and from it he fastened a silver baldric. Five were the layers of the shield itself, and on it he made many adornments with cunning skill. " (Iliad 18: 474-482)

Drawing of the bronze relief panels on the Spoleto chariot in the Met (550-540 BC); from Marie Françoise Briguet's article on Etruscan Art in Larissa Bonfanti, ed., Etruscan Life and Afterlife, Wayne State University Press, 1986, p. 144

In the central panel, which stood directly in front of the charioteer, Thetis hands her bearded son the armor forged for him by Hephaistos. The helmet and shield designs are not based on the Iliad, however. The helmet is an Italic version of a 6th century Corinthian style popular in parades and on vases, but not in war. And no wonder, with its tall horsehair crest, here made even more top-heavy by being mounted on a ram's-head prong. The Boeotian shield, though reminiscent of the large figure 8 shields of Mycenean times, is much smaller. Nor has the sculptor tried to duplicate on it Homer's elaborate panorama of two cities - an impossible task. Instead he hammered out on it two frightful apotropaic heads, one above the other, to ward off evil and inflict it on others. Above is the severed head of Medusa, the viper-haired Gorgon head cut off by Perseus and later worn by his patron, Athena, which turned all who looked at it to stone. And below, for good measure, is the head of a big cat, a panther or lioness.

Beneath the shield with its death-dealing, mask-like faces is a spotted fawn, upside down and obviously dead. Why? What does it signify? Or portend? A blood sacrifice?

Speaking of portents, why are those birds diving from the sky? Do they bring good news, or bad? For the Etruscans, who believed they could foretell the future by reading the guts of animals and the flights of birds, these birds may have been good omens, and additional heaven-sent protection against evils and enemies.

A third diving bird appears in the side panel at left, where Achilles, wearing his invincible armor, fights another warrior, maybe Memnon, over the naked body of a third, fallen warrior who lies on the ground beneath them, already stripped of his armor. Memnon aims his spear directly at Achilles' head, but the heaven-sent bird deflects it, causing its tip to glance off the divine helmet. At the same time, Achilles aims his spear at Memnon's heart, striking a fatal blow. Oddly, Achilles seems to wear the same Boeotian shield, but with the wild cat on top and the Medusa head below. How come? Perhaps the side panels, being less important than the central panel, were made by an assistant to the master, and they somehow got their wires crossed?

The dueling scene on the dead man's chariot may have had a real-life counterpart at his funeral, with real warriors or masked actors impersonating mythic heroes. They may even have dueled to the death, and had their bodies added to the dead man's funeral pyre. Wealthy Romans adopted these Etruscan rites for their own funerals, and finally the emperors, outdoing one another to provide gory spectacles, "bread and circuses" to entertain the masses, staged the massive bloodbaths of the gladiator games. By now we seem a long way from the funeral games staged by Achilles for the funeral of his beloved Patroclus.

The other side panel shows the apotheosis of Achilles. While Homer's dead Achilles went down to Hades, many later Greeks liked to see their heroes go to heaven. So did the Etruscans, who while depicting themselves riding off in their chariots to the Underworld, could envision mythic heroes riding chariots to the Above. Thus Achilles, their favorite hero, now dead from Paris' arrow in his vulnerable Achilles' heel, and stripped of his armor, is shown rising towards heaven, or rather to the Islands of the Blessed, on a chariot drawn by two winged horses (Xanthos and Balios).

Beneath the chariot wheels, her arms raised to protect herself from the horses' hooves, is a young maiden. She is Polyxena, a Trojan girl who was sacrificed on the funeral pyre of the dead Achilles. She was the daughter of Priam and the sister of Troilus and Hector, both slain by Achilles. He fell in love with her when she stood on the walls of Troy and cast down her jewelry to ransom Hector's body. She even offered to be his slave if he would return it. She found out about Achilles' heel and told Paris about it, so he could kill him. As Achilles lay dying in the arms of Odysseus and his friends, he asked them to sacrifice Polyxena at his funeral so they could be rejoined in marriage in the Islands of the Blessed. Or so wrote Seneca in his tragedy, The Trojans.

The Sacrifice of Polyxena on the funeral pyre of Achilles, black figure ... a black-figure Athenian amphora by Timiades probably found in Italy, and dated around 550 BC" From "Top of the Pots" www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~loxias/death_of_po...}

The Sacrifice of Polyxena had been told for centuries, and is graphically depicted on this splendid Greek vase, a black-figure Athenian amphora by Timiades, probably found in Italy, and dated around 550 BC - just a decade or two before the Chariot of Achilles was created. On it three of Achilles' comrades hold Polyxena over Achilles' flaming pyre while his son, Neoptolomos, grabs her by the hair and slits her throat to make her blood pour down upon Achilles' ashes. One wonders if this vase was also buried in an Etruscan tomb? For the Etruscans had their own blood sacrifices for the dead, as can be seen in the murals of the François tomb at Vulci, where Achilles, watched over by the ghost of Patroclus, slits the throats of his Trojan prisoners, and an Etruscan hero slits the throats of his Roman prisoners.

Otto Bendel, in his 1978 book on "Etruscan Art," saw the figure under the chariot wheels not as Polyxena trying to defend herself but as a "reclining woman" and as a "reclining earth goddess," who is "lifting up" one of the winged horses. This prompted Bendel to turn away from seeing the warrior in the three panels as Achilles to seeing him as a nameless "generic hero" who could stand for almost any hero. As Aeneas, maybe, who got his armor from his mother Venus. The Aeneas of the Aeneid, alas, was created centuries after the Chariot. Instead of Virgil, or even some ancient Ur-Virgil, why didn't Bendel appeal to Ovid, or some ancient Ur-Ovid? For in Ovid's Metamorphoses there is an apotheosis of Aeneas.

Concludes Bendel: "The panels seem to tell a story in three scenes, as follows: hero receives armour [from divine mother?]; he overcomes adversary in duel; he travels to heaven in a chariot with winged horses supported by the reclining earth-goddess [sic]." With all but that last bit, we can agree. Now to finish with the Chariot:

At the rounded corners between the central panel and each of the two side panels are two standing nudes: long-haired youths (kouroi) standing on lions. [Not shown in the drawing, but partially visible in the photo.]

In the frieze that runs along the lower border of the chariot, we see, left to right: the young Achilles training with his weapons, accompanied by the centaur Chiron teaching him how to capture wild animals: lions, panthers and gryphons. The myths say Chiron also fed Achilles the guts of lions and bears to give him courage, and the marrow of fawns to give him swiftness of foot.

One last puzzle: Why is the chariot called "golden"? Not because it is made of gold (it isn't), but because its brightly polished bronze shines with a fine golden color? Perhaps also because Homer mentions Hephaestos melting gold and silver as he creates Achilles' armor. Homer also describes the armor of Patroclus, which Hector had stripped from his dead body, as golden: Achilles rose onto the chariot, and lifting the golden armor [of Patroclus, which Achilles has just stripped from Hector's body] high, he started the horses running and dragged Hektor in a cloud of dust that trailed around the walls of Troy. Finally, a line from Pindar: "The god, increasing his fame, gave him a golden chariot and horses never weary with wings."(Olympian Ode I). Pindar is writing of Poseidon's gift to Pelops to help him defeat King Oenomaus in their fateful chariot race for the hand of the king's daughter. Pindar practically lifted his line from the Iliad, where Homer wrote, of the Thracian king Rhesos: "His chariot is a masterwork in gold and silver, and the armor, huge and golden, brought by him here, is marvelous to see, like no war gear of men but of immortals." Don't such lines describe the scene in the third panel of the Chariot of Achilles? A panel in which, to quote Bendel, "a hero without armour is represented in a vehicle almost identical to the chariot itself"?