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

orrowed voice, the boundary between art and reality dissolves; as a result, lifelikeness in
art is experienced as aliveness.
The same association between animal images and aliveness is also found in three
literary epigrams from the Greek Anthology which are also composed in the dialogue
form. The first is an anonymous epigram that records an exchange of questions and
answers between the image of an eagle on the tomb of Plato and the viewer:
A: Eagle, why standest thou on the tomb, and on whose, tell me, and
why gazest thou at the starry home of the gods?
B: I am the image of the soul of Plato that hath flown away to
Olympus, but his earth-born body rests here in Attic earth.
(Anonymous, Anth. Pal. 7.62) [14]
As in the previous epigram, the eagle speaks through the voice of the viewer as if it were
alive. It also explains its function as an image: a substitute for the soul of Plato. Again
the line between life and art is freely crossed, a type of action that permits the statue of
the eagle to be seen as lifelike and treated as if it were alive. The second epigram by
Antipater of Sidon from the first century B.C. contains a dialogue between a viewer and a
sculptured lion:
A: Tell, lion, thou slayer of kine, on whose tomb thou standest there
and who was worthy of thy valour?
B: Teleutias, the son of Theodorus, who was far most valiant of
men, as I am judged to be of beasts. Not in vain stand I here, but
I emblem the prowess of the man, for he was indeed a lion to his
enemies. (Antipater of Sidon, Anth. Pal. 7.426) [29]
Like the funerary images of the sphinx and the eagle in the above epigrams, the lion of
this epigram engages in direct conversation with the viewer by using his or her voice and
answers as if it were alive. As such, it blurs the line between a sculptured and a living
animal, thus between art and “reality.” Like the eagle above, the lion responds to the
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