The Judgment of Animals in Classical Greece: Animal Sculpture and ...

assume that they referred to images of gods, although the possibility of their being
images of animals that were not sacrificed cannot be precluded. At the same time, they
can simply mean “delightful things.” Apart from these definitions, the a)ga&lmata of the
fragment have been also thought to mean “offerings” and “gifts.” 354 That these
a)ga&lmata were presented to Kypris cannot be denied, but their identification with
“images,” in particular, pious “statues,” establishes them as works of art of religious
significance, and therefore allows a close-up view of their meaning. This view comes
from the meaning of a1galma as a “statue, [more precisely], an inanimate image, which
makes the living gods present,” which, despite its attestation in a later, but still Classical
author (Plato), when applied to the a)ga&lmata of Kypris’s age, illuminates the particular
meaning that these statues might have held for Empedocles and his contemporaries. 355 In
addition, the fact that Empedocles associates these pious statues with an early age like
that of Kypris is suggestive of the centrality of the visual arts in religious practice as a
prominent feature of the Greek conception of the past. 356 That the Egyptians—a race
much older than the Greek in the Greek imagination—were credited with inventing this
354 Offerings: Guthrie, In the Beginning 73; gifts: W. E. Leonard, tr., The Fragments of Empedocles
(Chicago, 1908) 59. There is a strong suspicion that these translations may be influenced, not by the
featuring of a)ga&lmata as offerings to Kypris in the context of the fragment, but by the fact that, the early
meaning of a1galma (e.g., in Homer and Hesiod) was that of a gift to a human being as well as to a god. It
is only in the first half of the sixth century, that the meaning of the term appears to be confined to that of an
object dedicated to the gods. For these definitions, see Philipp, Tektonon Daidala 103-104; also A. E.
Raubitschek, rev. of “H. Bloesh, Agalma, Kleinod, Weihgeschenk, Götterbild, ein Beitrag zur
frühgriechischen Kultur und Religionsgeschichte (Bern, 1943),” in AJA 50 (1946) 197.
355 Plato (Laws 931a): “some of the gods whom we honor we see clearly, but of other we set up statues
[a)ga&lmata] as images [ei0ko&naj], and we believe that when we worship these, lifeless though they be, the
living gods beyond feel great good-will towards us and gratitude”; translation: R. G. Bury, ed., tr., Plato
IX. Laws II (London and Cambridge, Mass., 1926; repr. 1952) 449. For the value of this passage in
expressing the meaning of a1galma as a statue, that is, an inanimate image that makes the living gods
present, see Schnapp, “Are Images Animated,” in Renfrew and Zubrow, eds., The Ancient Mind 43.
356 Such a connection between the past and art contrasts with the Greek idea of the past as an age before art.
For a discussion of the idea of an age before art, its featuring in the Greek conception of the past, and also
in antiquarian writings like those of Callimachus, Plutarch, and Pausanias on the history of art, see
Donohue, Xoana 196-197, and more generally, 177-205. This is evidence for the existence of several
Greek conceptions of the past that cannot be reconciled.
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