Iranians and Greeks in South Russia - Robert Bedrosian's Armenian ...

FOURTH AND THIRD CENTURIES B.C. 109
recurs in the Scythian dialogues of Lucian. The two scenes might
be described as realistic idylls in the manner of Theocritus. It must
be remembered that they are the oldest Greek monuments which
attempt to give realistic illustrations corresponding to the ethnographical
treatises which were especially common about the time of
Alexander the Great.
I should like to conclude this series of racial representations
with the famous Chertomlyk vase (pi. XXI, 2). Once more the
Scythian camp on the eve of battle. The warriors are scattered over
the steppe, catching the horses which they will ride on the morrow.
I shall not dwell upon the artistic power with which the artist has
seized the type of the horses (pi. XXI, 3), of the Scythian warriors,
and even of the landscape. The whole atmosphere is that of the
Russian steppe : the artist must have known the steppe, must have
studied the life of a Scythian camp, and must have been thoroughly
well-acquainted with the little horse of the steppes, dry and muscular,
quite unlike the horses of Greece or of Asia Minor. The Chertomlyk
vase is a masterpiece, even compared with the vases of Voronezh and
Kul-Oba, which must belong to the same artistic school.
What was the artistic school that created these marvels of realistic,
slightly idyllic art, an art which devoted itself almost entirely to the
study of a nation, and which was able to catch the characteristic
features of a national life ? The artists cannot possibly have been
Athenians : Athens produced nothing similar, and the nature of
Athenian art was opposed to such ethnographical realism. Artists
of Asia Minor ? But where could they have obtained their profound
knowledge of Scythian life, of Scythian religion, and of the Russian
steppe ? Impossible for artists residing at Ephesus, at Miletus, nay,
at Cyzicus ; even supposing that they had visited Russia. But why
go so far afield ? Have we not admired the masterpieces of Greek
toreutic produced at Panticapaeum, particularly the gold and silver
coins of the fourth century (pi. XVIII, 5) ? Compare the three-quarter
face of the old silen with the head of the Scythian whose teeth
are being operated upon, compare the silen 's head in profile with
the profile head of the Scythian on the Solokha gorytus, compare the
beardless heads of the young satyr with the young Scythians on the
same, compare, finally, the realistic horse on the silver didrachms of
the third century with the horses on the Chertomlyk vase. Is the
a style derived from Scopaic art, a forerunner of
style not the same ;
the style of Pergamon ? Nowhere will you find more striking and
more convincing analogies. This is the dawn of Hellenistic art, the
art which we find later in the Hellenistic kingdoms ; which was