The Pergamene Frieze

The description of the larger frieze cannot at present be completely methodical, as the task of arrangement and reconstruction is not yet near its end, and skill or accident may discover the relative position in the whole work of many fragments and slabs that are at present isolated, and through their isolation lose much of their significance. It is certain at least that the artists have been guided in their grouping of the figures bya higher principle than that of mere decoration. The natural affinity of personages has been to some extent respected: thus there is reason to believe, as has been shown, that Heracles stands near to Zeus; and we see engaged in one common action a family of deities that belong to the nether world; we see a group of sea-divinities, and around Cybele the nymphs that are attached to the Magna Dea, while before the Sungod the goddess of the dawnis riding. Yet such connections as one might suggest will not give a certain clue in the arrangement of the slabs. Thus the fragment upon which the figure of Dionysos is preserved might be supposed to belong to the part of the frieze containing Hekate; to whom, because of his Chthonian character, his affinity in myth is close. The tradition and probably also the art of the sixth century B.C. had taken notice of this aspect of the many-natured god, for in many of the black-figured vases published by Gerhard we see Dionysos in close connection with Persephone, prominent in the representations of her return to the upper world: and an allusion is conveyed of their mysterious marriage: while according to more than one authority Hades and Dionysos had been identified by Heraclitus.