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

that is, “beauty.” 577 Both the concepts of greatness and beauty feature prominently in the
critical vocabulary of the visual arts in the Classical period to such an extent that their
pairing has been suggested to form an idiomatic phrase: ka&lloj kai/ me/geqoj. 578 In light
of this evidence, the connection of zw|~on with the visual arts is enhanced not only through
its meaning as the final product of painting, but also through its specific qualities of
greatness and beauty.
Despite the situation, instances where the meaning of this zw|~on has been
considered independently of its context are not absent. David Reeve, for example,
translates the word as “animal.” 579 Harold Fowler, in contrast, considers zw|~on along
with grafikh|~ and te&xnh; therefore, he translates zw|~on as a “picture,” made by the “art
of painting.” 580 In agreement with him is David Sedley, who notes that zw|~on is not an
“animal,” as suggested by Reeve, but a “picture,” which can be also understood as
“complete scenes.” 581 The translations of Fowler and Sedley suggest that the context of
painting has been considered crucial in their proposed definition of zw|~on as “picture.”
Considering that modern “picture,” however, is a term with multiple meanings, it is
difficult to determine which meaning these translators have applied here. 582 Only when
reduced to its modern definition of “a representation (as of a person, landscape, building)
577
Pollitt, Ancient View 191-194.
578
Pollitt, Ancient View 193, 200.
579
C. D. C. Reeve, tr., Plato. Cratylus (Indianapolis, 1998) 71.
580
H. N. Fowler, ed., tr., Plato. Cratylus. Parmenides. Greater Hippias. Lesser Hippias (Cambridge, Mass.
and London, 1963) 141.
581
D. Sedley, Plato’s Cratylus (Cambridge, 2003) 128, n. 10.
582
Gove, Webster’s Third New International Dictionary 1711, s.v. picture: a) the act, process, or art of
painting, b) representation by painting, c) a representation (as of a person, landscape, building) on canvas,
paper, or other surface produced by painting, drawing, engraving, or photography, d) such representation as
a work of art, e) a description so vivid or graphic as to suggest a mental image or give an accurate idea of
the thing described, f) something that by its likeness vividly suggests some other thing, that is, copy, g) a
concrete embodiment of an abstraction as illusion or symbol, h) a transitory visible image or reproduction
due to the working of physical laws or made by utilizing such laws.
296