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

g. The Zw|~a of Mandrocles’ Painting
A further occurrence of the term zw|~on as applied to the visual arts appears again
in connection with Darius. The term occurs in the fourth book of the Histories and has
again the meaning of the representational subject of a work of art, in this case a painting
depicting one of Darius’ military feats. A section of the fourth book (chapters 83-98)
narrates this king’s crossing of the Hellespont and the Danube as part of his campaign
against the Scythians. When Darius left Susa (c. 513 B.C.), 490 he made his way to
Chalcedon, that part of the Bosporus, where a bridge had been built as part of his regional
military projects that aimed to facilitate his invasion of Scythia. Herodotus reports that
when Darius reached Chalcedon, he wanted to inspect the Euxine Sea and the Bosporus
and thus boarded a boat and sailed around the area. Pleased with the construction of the
bridge over the strait, Darius offered a reward to its head engineer, Mandrocles of Samos:
After that, Darius was so delighted with his bridge of boats, that he gave
Mandrocles every sort of reward. This man took the first-fruits of his honors and
zw|~a graya&menoj depicting the whole bridging of the Bosporus and of King
Darius sitting high over it and the army crossing; he dedicated it in the temple of
Hera and made this inscription:
This is the bridge of boats over the fish-haunted Bosporus;
Mandrocles built it, and Hera received it as her memorial;
A crown for himself its builder made it, a glory of Samos;
All that he wrought he accomplished by the will of the King,
Darius. (4.88) [105]
The word graya&menoj, which defines Mandrocles, is the aorist participle of the verb
gra&fw, which, as seen earlier, means “to paint”, “to draw” and “to write.” The object of
graya&menoj is the plural zw|~a. The presence of graya&menoj establishes that the
context of the passage is directly involved with the arts; therefore, the meaning of zw|~a
490 C. Dewald, “Introduction; Notes,” in R. Waterfield, tr., Herodotus: The Histories (Oxford and New
York, 1998) 653 notes that 513 B.C. is an approximate date for Darius’ expedition against the Scythians
and one that cannot be confirmed from Persian records.
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