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

tendency not to distinguish between these two was an existing characteristic of the Greek
discussion of works of art. 367 That zw|~on constituted a term that did not escape from this
tendency will be shown in later parts of this discussion.
Herodotus
The second fifth-century author who uses the word zw|~on in connection with the
visual arts is Herodotus. The word appears eight times in his Histories, seven in its
regular form (zw|~on), and one in its diminutive (zw|&dion); it is associated with a variety of
media, namely, clothes, sculpture, painting, and bronze work; it carries both the meanings
of “image” and “subject of representation,” thus suggesting that it was used
interchangeably, and, therefore, stood for the absence of a distinction between image and
subject. The following discussion examines, first, the occurrences of zw|~on, and then that
of zw|&dion in the Histories.
a. Zw|~a on Clothes from the Caucasus
The first occurrence of zw|~on is in relation to clothes that feature in the first book
of the Histories. Like Empedocles, Herodotus uses the term to refer to images of some
kind, most likely, pictures. After his conquest of Sardis (546 B.C.), the Persian king
Cyrus (reign ca. 557-530 B.C.) campaigned against the Massagetae, a group of people
living in the area east of the Caspian Sea. Before narrating this encounter, and in an
attempt to be faithful to the concept of symmetry, 368 Herodotus describes the customs of
367 Donohue, Xoana 39, for the absence of distinction between image and subject, and 23, for the
unimportance of the idea of image as an object.
368 For a discussion of Herodotus’ penchant for geographical symmetry and its implementation in his
descriptions, see R. Thomas, Herodotus in Context. Ethnography, Science and the Art of Persuasion
229