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

form of animals. 364 The expandable meaning of the term is also witnessed in the Object
Names Thesaurus of the British Museum, whose notes regarding the description of
objects, state that “figure” has been used for all animate subjects, and “model” for all
inanimate ones. 365 This distinction, however, does not seem to carry on in the additional
meanings of “figure.” As glosses in modern dictionaries explain, “figure” may also stand
for “a likeness or representation of a person or a thing,” and for “an object significant or
noticeable only in its form.” 366 Such an array of semantic possibilities puts in question
whether Empedocles’ “figures” should be understood synthetically, that is, as figural
images (representations) of both animate and inanimate subjects, or in association with a
particular meaning from the pool of those that “figure” has been seen to carry.
Returning to the remainder of modern definitions of zw|&oisi, one sees that the
attempts to identify the ancient term with “animal figures,” “pictured creatures,” and also
“images of living beings” are at home with, and decisively affected by, the Classical
meanings of zw|~on as “animal,” “creature” and “living being.” A closer view of these
definitions, however, reveals an intriguing common element, namely, their understanding
of zw|&oisi as subjects of representation. This treatment, when juxtaposed to the above
definition of “pictures,” which makes one to think of images, indicates two different
angles from which the meaning of zw|&oisi has been approached. Although this is
evidence that cannot be overlooked, its value lies in bringing to the foreground the
modern distinction between image and subject. As it has been remarked, however, the
364 The discussion, for example, of the Geometric phase of Greek art, in A. F. Janson, rev. H. W. Hanson,
History of Art I (fourth edition; New York, 1991) 151, opens with the following statement: “toward 800
B.C. human and animal figures begin to appear within the geometric framework, and in the most mature
examples these figures could form elaborate scenes.”
365 British Museum Object Names Thesaurus: http://www.mda.org.uk/bmobj/Obthesf1.htm.
366 First quotation: Guralnik, Webster’s New World Dictionary 521, s.v. figure; Second quotation: Gove,
Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 848, s.v. figure.
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