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

zw|~a. Thus, they translate the first zw|~a as “figures,” and the second as “designs.” 372
David Grene, in contrast, suggests that both zw|~a are “figures of animals,” and Elizabeth
Barber says simply “animals.” 373 Finally, in his commentary on the first book of
Herodotus’ Histories, George Sheets translates the term as “creatures.” 374 The variety of
modern definitions for zw|~a reflects scholarly awareness of the split in the fifth-century
meaning of zw|~on, a situation, which is reminiscent of the treatment of zw|&oisi in
Empedocles’ fragment.
Syntactically, the term zw|~a is the object of the word e0ggra&fein, which is a
compound of the preposition e0n (“in”) and the verb gra&fw, whose meaning, as noted
earlier, is “to write,” “to draw,” and “to paint.” Given this evidence, it can be seen why
Liddell and Scott’s Lexicon defines e0ggra&fw as “to make incisions into,” “to mark in or
on,” and “to paint”). 375 Regarding this e0ggra&fein, De Sélincourt and Marincola, Grene,
Godley, Macaulay and Lateiner, and Waterfield suggest that it refers to painting. 376 In
her analysis, Barber maintains that Herodotus’ e0ggra&fein denotes that the inhabitants of
the Caucasus painted or drew all over their clothes. 377 These suggestions, which rely on
the semantic dependence of e0ggra&fw on gra&fw, place zw|~a, the direct object of
e0ggra&fein, in close proximity with Empedocles’ grapta& (also from gra&fw, and
therefore, “painted” or “drawn”) zw|~a. As seen earlier, the latter were images of some
372
A. De Sélincourt, tr., rev. J. Marincola, Herodotus. The Histories (London and New York, 1996; rev.
ed., 2003) 89.
373
D. Grene, tr., The History. Herodotus (Chicago and London, 1987) 126; E. J. W. Barber, Prehistoric
Textiles: The Development of Cloth in the Neolithic and Bronze Ages with Special Reference to the Aegean
( Princeton, 1991) 226.
374
G. A. Sheets, Herodotus Book 1. Commentary (Bryn Mawr, 1981) 73.
375 9
LSJ , 468, s.v. e0ggra&fw.
376
De Sélincourt and Marincola, Herodotus. The Histories 89; Grene, The History. Herodotus 126; Godley,
Herodotus 257; Macaulay and Lateiner, The Histories. Herodotus 74; Waterfield, Herodotus. The Histories
89.
377
Barber, Prehistoric Textiles 206 and 226 respectively.
231