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

on a surface produced by painting,” their “picture” appears semantically closer to this
zw|~on. In addition, Sedley’s paraphrase “complete scenes” may be seen as an attempt to
retain the aspect of completion in zw|~on, and is certainly preferable to Reeve’s “animal,”
but it is still an unsuitable modern equivalent of the ancient term.
Turning to the vocabulary of the passage, the terms that directly connect zw|~on to
painting are grafikh|~ te&xnh, literally meaning “the art of painting,” and zwgra&foi, that
is, painters. The first brings immediately to mind the words graptoi=j, e0ggra&fein and
graya&menoj, used by Empedocles and Herodotus in reference to painting and in direct
connection with zw|~a as painted images of some kind, resist-dyed decorations applied on
fabric, and also the historical subject of Mandrocles’ painting. These meanings do not
fall into the semantic range of the present zw|~on, but their sharing of a common context
with it—painting—highlights the dominance of this artistic process in dissociating zw|~on
from the meaning of “animal” in fifth- and fourth-century contexts directly associated
with the arts.
Further indication of this dominance can be seen in Plato’s use of the word
zwgra&foi for painters. The word appears numerous times in his dialogues, as, for
example, in Gorgias, where the status of Zeuxis as a painter is singled out and explained
as “o( ta_ zw|~a gra&fwn” (453c). Literally meaning “the one who paints zw|~a,” this
phrase is informative, for it, first, explains the etymology of the singular zwgra&foj—
painter, and second, defines zw|~a as the creations of his craft. 583 The phrase does not
distinguish among object, image and subject. As such, it supports the general meaning of
zw|~a as works produced by means of painting.
583 Also in the Sophist, where within the context of the art of painting, that is, grafikh|~ te&xnh| (234b) the
painter is coined poihth&j zw|&wn, that is, “maker of zw|&wn” (234a). For a brief discussion of this term, see
E. C. Keuls, Plato and Greek Painting (Leiden, 1978) 42.
297