Erichthonius

From Ovid's Cecrops to Rubens's City of God in "The Finding of Erichthonius"Author(s): Aneta Georgievska-ShineSource: The Art Bulletin, Vol. 86, No. 1 (Mar., 2004), pp. 58-74Published by: College Art AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3177400Accessed: 06/01/2010 22:00

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From Ovid's Cecrops to Rubens's City of God in

The Finding of Erichthonius

Aneta Georgievska-Shine

... The poet says, Dear City of Cecrops; and wilt not thou say, Dear City of Zeus?-Marcus Aurelius, Meditations 4.231

The transitory character of all things as an aspect of a preor- dained natural course is a common theme in Peter Paul Rubens's written and painted musings on the world. In a 1629 letter toJan Caspar Gevaerts, the Antwerp humanist and his close friend, Rubens expresses condolences at the death of his wife, recalling his own bereavement for his beloved

wife, Isabella Brandt, who had died in 1626. As if to underscore the necessity of accepting one's fate, the artist invokes Marcus Aurelius, an author intensely studied by Gevaerts at this very time:

If any consolation is to be hoped for from philosophy, then you will find an abundant source within yourself. I commend you to your Antoninus, whose divine nourishment you will distribute liberally to your friends. I shall add only this, as a poor kind of comfort: that we are living in a time when life itself is possible only if one frees himself of every burden, like a swimmer in a stormy sea.2

Rubens is not citing a specific passage, yet this shared famil-

iarity with Aurelius allows him to convey by means of allusions the leitmotiv of this seminal Stoic thinker-the futility of remorse over the unstoppable passage of time:

One who has seen the present world has seen all that ever has been from time everlasting and all that ever will be into eternity.... For all things, in a sense, are mutually intertwined, and by virtue of that all are dear to one

another; for one thing follows duly upon another because of the tonic movement and the common breath that per- vades throughout and the unity of all substance.3

Whereas similar ideas can be followed in many other letters

by the artist, this engagement with the Stoic notion of the

cycle of life guided by Providence is even more apparent in his paintings. From such early works as The Fall of Phaeton (ca. 1606, National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.) to those he created at the close of his career, such as The Rape of Proserpina (ca. 1636-38, the Prado, Madrid), the "rushing torrent" of the "world-cause" that Aurelius wrote about remained a con- stant within his pictorial inventions.4 And no other source

provided him with richer material for an investigation of this

all-pervasive principle than Ovid's book of metamorphoses. Whether Rubens revisited a well-known story and rendered

it novel by highlighting an unexpected facet of its surface or chose a seldom recounted tale, his pictorial representations of myths invariably possess an opulence of meanings that could rival Ovid's intertwining of narratives in service to the

larger theme of his poem: the mutability of forms. One such

example of Rubens's affinity for this way of thinking is The

Finding of Erichthonius, a painting from the decade following his return from Italy to Antwerp (Fig. 1) .5

Created about 1616 for an unknown patron, and possibly without a specific commission, The Finding of Erichthonius is

arguably among the most ambitious and mysterious of Rubens's treatments of ancient fables. It is based on a Greek creation myth, rarely commented on in writing and even more seldom represented in painting, whose meaning cen- ters on the procreative power of nature. At its narrative core is a monstrous infant, Erichthonius, a half-human, half-ser-

pentine creature engendered when the seed of Hephaestus spills on the earth (Gaea) after a failed advance to Athena, his

great competitor for primacy among the Athenians.6 In Ovid's account of this story, the disreputable act leading to the birth of Erichthonius is completely omitted. Rather, the

poet begins with the moment shown in Rubens's painting: the daughters of the Athenian King Cecrops (Herse, Aglau- ros, and Pandrosos), whom Athena had charged with the

safekeeping of the basket holding Erichthonius, break their oath to the virgin goddess by uncovering the offspring of this divine indiscretion (Metamorphoses 2.552ff.).

No sooner has the reader been introduced to Erichthonius than Ovid decides to interrupt this story with an unusually long digression into a few seemingly unrelated transforma-

tions, so as to pick up the narrative at a much later moment, when one of these three royal daughters (Herse) catches the

eye of Hermes. The poet continues with an elliptical conclusion to the first part: Hermes punishes Aglauros, who had

attempted to thwart his desire for Herse and who had originally persuaded her sisters to open the basket with Erichtho- nius (Metamorphoses, 2.711ff.). This narrative lacuna is far from capricious, for it allows Ovid to avoid the problem of the different textual versions of the discovery of Erichthonius and the destiny of the princesses who had breached Athena's order. In another variant of this myth, for instance, going back to Euripides and Pausanias and popular among such Renaissance commentators of this myth as Natale Conti, all three daughters of Cecrops commit suicide as a result of a madness visited upon them by Athena.7

Classicists have frequentlyjudged the curious organization of book 2 of the Metamorphoses as being excessively self-reflex- ive and indulgent of the poet's wit. As has been pointed out in a recent study, this reaction is largely due to the tendency to view Ovid's storytelling method as a rhetorical scheme of "good" and "bad" episodes of changes, a tendency that often leads to interpretations lacking in an understanding of the subtle interplay of narrators and addressees within the larger metanarratives of this poem.8

The Finding of Erichthonius presents comparable interpretative difficulties for art historians. While the ostensible subject of this painting is the disclosure of an infant whose hybrid form should elicit fear and abhorrence, the palpable sense of

RUBENS'S THE FINDING OF ERICHTHONIUS 59

1 Peter Paul Rubens, The Finding of Erichthonius, ca. 1616. Vaduz, Sammlungen des Fuirsten von und zu Liechtenstein

bemusement among its protagonists imbues the scene with the atmosphere of a pastoral poem. Moreover, beyond pre- senting the characters relevant to the story, Rubens embel- lishes his composition with several figures of rather oblique import, including a cupidlike putto next to one of the princesses, an old nursemaid, a hermlike figure at the distant left, and a richly flowing fountain resembling Artemis of Ephesus on the right. Most scholars have seen these additions as mere

allegorical enhancements of the artist's invention. The one reader to speculate on their deeper meanings was Julius Held, who proposed that the cupid and the nursemaid may allude to the second episode of Ovid's story, where Hermes' choice of Herse as his mate ultimately leads to the punishment of her sister Aglauros, the true agent of this forbidden

discovery.9 The interpretation offered here builds on a significant

implication of Held's suggestion concerning these narrative allusions-that the visual intricacies of The Finding ofErichtho- nius exemplify a mode of pictorial commentary on myth comparable to Ovid's manner of storytelling. The clearest indexes of this approach on the part of the artist are the

figural prompts noted by Held, whereby the two parts of the Erichthonius narrative are brought together, as if in response to the poet who had decided to set them asunder in the

Metamorphoses. At the same time, by means of this sophisticated invention, Rubens leads the beholder toward a visual

exegesis whose elaborate texture can be seen as an equivalent to the discourse on ancient myths cultivated by the antiquarians of his generation.

Rubens's sophistication as an interpreter of the past needs no lengthy introduction. The letter to Gevaerts cited above

exemplifies the tenor of his voluminous correspondence, which is filled with references to an encyclopedic body of ancient texts. The same intellectual scope shaped his personal museum, which included both commonly collected

artifacts, such as paintings and sculptures, and objects reflect-

ing a rather more rarefied sensibility, such as ancient gems, burial urns, and even an Egyptian mummy.10 Likewise,

though the contents of his remarkable library have only recently been fully published, studies of his work have con-

sistently shown his firsthand knowledge of Greek and Roman

literature, as well as its afterlife in the works of later writers." This fluency with the cultural legacy of antiquity proved

especially pertinent in Rubens's representations of ancient

fables, where questions such as the source of a story and its different variants could present both challenges and intellectual rewards. As this discussion of The Finding of Erichthonius

hopes to demonstrate, Rubens was an artist who, in acknowl-

edgment of the "marvelous character" of ancient fables (ora- zione favolosa), distanced himself from the tradition of the Ovide moralise prevalent among northern painters of his time.12 In pursuing the meanings of an Ovidian favola, he

60 ART BULLETIN MARCH 2004 VOLUME LXXXVI NUMBER 1

could appreciate the rich allegorical, as well as poetic, potential of the separation between the "surface" of the story and the moral gloss hidden within.13 Hence, in the richly layered composition of The Finding of Erichthonius, one can see a

testimony to his antiquarian acuity as an interpreter of myths. At the same time, the opulence of this painting is a kind of

homage to Ovid, a poet whom his more sophisticated Renais- sance readers praised for a comparable copiousness of lan-

guage:

... of all Latin poetry, there is none so ample, so rich, so

diverse, and so universal as the Metamorphoses of Ovid, which contain in fifteen books composed in elegant heroic meter all (or nearly all) the stories of the ancient poets and writers, bound to one another, and so well linked by sustained narrative and by skilful transition, that each seems to arise from and to depend on the other in succession.... By means of all these myths Ovid's sole inten- tion is to teach us that, in the nature of things, forms are

continually changing, while matter never dies.... 14

Changing Forms and the Basket of Mysteries The manifold meanings of The Finding of Erichthonius begin with the characters that frame the narrative moment that

shapes its composition. These are the Pan terminus on the left and a fountain statue at the right modeled on the Ephe- sian Artemis, generally interpreted as visual reminders of

Hephaestus's desire for Athena and Gaea's motherly acceptance of its progeny, respectively. In the center, the putto and the maid seem to encourage the most restrained among the sisters (usually identified as Herse) to take in the forbidden

sight. Right above this royal daughter, barely discernible in the crown of the large tree that shades the pastoral scene, Rubens introduces a black bird-the first, clearly identifiable

signal of the various voices in Ovid's story. This is the crow, the internal narrator who details the

finding of Erichthonius to a fellow bird, the raven, as a

warning against disclosure of another secret, the betrayal of

Apollo by his lover Coronis (Metamorphoses 2.535ff.). As the reader learns from the admonishment, the crow's report to Athena of the disobedience of the Cecropides had resulted in her banishment from the entourage of the goddess, thus

concluding a series of changes of this bird from her original state as a human princess (Metamorphoses 2.569-77).

Another inconspicuous but potentially important narrative

prompt is the peacock half obscured by the statue of Pan.

Though associated in the literature with imperfection in nature and, by extension, with the aberrant birth of Erich-

thonius, in the context of the generative theme of Rubens's

painting, the peacock can also signify the abundance of

nature, as well as artistic creations. The latter meaning is invoked by a number of contemporary writers, including Piero Valeriano, who compares the colors of the peacock to the wealth of ornaments in Homer's poetry in his Hiero-

glyphica, a book purchased by Rubens in 1615, that is, not

long before the creation of The Finding of Erichthonius.15 The level of signification becomes all the more intriguing

as we consider how the peacock helps us locate the place of the represented story within the sequence of changes in Ovid's poem. The finding of Erichthonius is told after the

story of Callisto (a mortal who shares Herse's distinction of

being desired by a god), which concludes with a note on the embellishment of the peacocks' tails with the "immortal colors" of the eyes of Argus. Characteristically, Ovid uses this marvelous instance of the change of the peacocks' tails as a

segue to the transmutation of the showy white plumage of the raven to black (Metamorphoses 2.531ff.). Thus, through a skillful parallel between the transformations of these birds, Ovid creates a narrative transition to the dialogue between the raven and the crow that introduces both the finding of Erichthonius and its embedded stories, all of which resound with the dangers of garrulity.

Predictably, the crow's appeal to the raven not to disclose the infidelity of Coronis fails. The raven hastens to Apollo and causes the death of the nymph. Like the botched union of Hephaestus and Athena, the climactic resolution of this

parallel story involves an infant, Asclepius, whom Apollo pulls out of the womb of Coronis as she is consumed by fire. In the

postscript of the story, Ovid reminds us that the raven replays the crow's destiny for speaking of things beyond his author-

ity.16 This thematic cadence introduces the following inter-

mezzo, involving the metamorphosis of Ocyrrhoe, the daughter of the wise centaur Chiron charged with the education of

Asclepius. She, too, is privy to secrets and, like the raven and the crow, undergoes a change for their disclosure. Her specific crime is to foretell the dual power of the snake's venom to kill and bring the dead back to life (the future deeds of

Asclepius). As if to add to the complexity of these narrative

links, Ovid brings in still another episode of change, in which the shepherd Battus (Chatterbox in Greek) is turned into stone as a punishment for betraying Hermes' theft of the cattle of Apollo (Metamorphoses 2.685-708).17 Only at this

junction does the poet return his attention to the daughters of Cecrops, as they walk toward Athena's temple on one of her festivals:

It chanced that day was Pallas' festival and virgins carried, in the accustomed way, In baskets, flower-crowned, upon their heads The secret vessels to her hilltop shrine. (Metamorphoses

2.711ff.)

The ironic echo between these secret offerings for Athena's

temple ("in Palladis arces ... sacra canistris") and the earlier failure of the Cecropides to honor the virgin goddess by keeping the infant hidden in the box ("cista") leads the reader back to the central narrative of book 2. Simulta-

neously, this evocative image provides the poet with an occa- sion to introduce Hermes captivated by the sight of Herse's

beauty (Metamorphoses 2.715ff.).18 From this moment on, events move swiftly toward the fulfillment of his desire and the jealousy it provokes in Aglauros, who, as a result, follows the destiny of Battus by being transformed into "a lifeless statue" of stone (Metamorphoses 2.824-30).

In Ovid's narrative, we discern a thematic resonance between the forbidden discovery on the part of the Cecropides and a series of intermezzi through which Ovid develops the theme of changingforms, from white to black (the crow and the raven), from human and semihuman to animal (the crow


and Ocyrrhoe), and from animate to inanimate (Battus and

Aglauros). This thematic resonance in effect establishes a metanarrative bond between Erichthonius and Asclepius, the

god of healing who is likewise magically related to snakes.

Seventeenth-century viewers with a taste for poetic corre-

spondences would not have found it difficult to connect Athena's crow (cornix) in Rubens's painting to her absent

addressee, the raven (corvus), whose garrulity would acceler- ate the birth of Asclepius. Ovid had done much the same in his play on the common etymological root of the names of these feathered messengers in the Metamorphoses.19 Pausanias, whose famous Description ofGreece was also in Rubens's library around this time, related them in his discussion of the town called Corone, which, as he observes, received its name from "a bronze crow" discovered in its foundations. In the very next section, he added that "Artemis, called the 'Nurse of

Children,' Dionysus, and Asclepius" have temples at that site.20 The implication of this comment is quite clear: Ovid's

interpolation of the stories of Erichthonius and Asclepius drew on an existing connection between Coronis and her

offspring and the cults of Athena and her crow.

Though the circumstances surrounding the infancy of As-

clepius are pieced together from conflicting accounts, for most authors, his miraculous birth from the corpse of Coro- nis anticipates his future powers of healing and prophecy. Like Erichthonius, he was a divinity honored in a number of Attic cults.21 According to some sources, when Minerva slew the snake-haired Medusa, she gave the blood spilled from her severed head to either Asclepius or Erichthonius. Blood from the left vein took life away, while blood from the right one restored it.22 Furthermore, in one version of his birth, Coro- nis left Asclepius exposed on Mt. Myrtium, subsequently called Nipple, which brings to mind the multibreasted Gaea/ Artemis in Rubens's painting. Abandoned at that site, the infant was suckled by a goat and guarded by the dog protecting a flock.23

The little dog at center barking at the discovery of Erich- thonius can easily be accommodated to this segment of the

narrative, being an animal whose traditional association with

Asclepius extends to fanciful etymological equations between their names.24 Rubens alluded to this attribute of the god of

healing in one of the paintings from the Medicis cycle, The Birth of the Dauphin at Fontainebleau, where the Genius holding the young prince has a snake entwined around his arm and a little dog at his feet.25 In The Finding of Erichthonius, this connection to Asclepius draws further support from the dog as a signifier of arcane truths (philosophia communicata) and creates an ironic reminder of the betrayal of secrets that drives this story forward.26

None of these connections, however, is as pertinent to Rubens's invention as Asclepius's identification with the snake. His most famous portrayal in that form is found in the final pages of the Metamorphoses, where Ovid presents Pythagoras's teaching on the transmigration of souls as the theoretical key to his poem.27 The climactic moment of this final change is Asclepius's entry into Rome at the appeal of a

Delphic oracle, who summons him to help this city against a

devastating pestilence. Entering a ship as a huge golden snake, Asclepius reaches his new home at an island in the middle of the Tiber, thus concluding the translation of Greek

divinities to the new center of the world.28 This transfer, of

course, is related to the famous topos of the Sibylline Books

containing instructions for gaining the favor of foreign gods, which despite the initial objections of Tarquinius Priscus, the fifth king of Rome (trad. 616-579 B.C.E.), were finally en- shrined in Rome in a chest of stone.29

Where this story folds into Rubens's painting is through the opening of Athena's basket that had concealed the snake- infant Erichthonius from the eyes of the world. The disclosure of similarly prodigious infants is a common trope, which found its way into poems that the artist's brother Philip dedicated to his teacher and spiritual father, Justus Lipsius. In one of them, he extols the birth of this neo-Stoic thinker

by invoking the virgin goddess and the dwellers of Helicon, who would have "wanted to put [Lipsius] in the cradle and drink deeply [of his wisdom] with their eyes...."30 In another poem, occasioned by Lipsius's death in 1606, the teacher's mind is deemed superior to the wisdom of the ancient shrines of Athena ("Cecropiae ... praestantius arces").31 In a similar vein, the Leiden professor of Greek Daniel Heinsius

compared a 1609 treatise on ancient gems by the Antwerp antiquarian Abraham Gorlaeus to the Cecropian shrine

("Cecropis arces") whose contents have been granted for

safekeeping to its author.32

Offerings concealed in baskets, as we have seen, play an

important role in the second segment of the story of the

Cecropides.33 Ovid's orchestration of the first meeting between Hermes and Herse during her pilgrimage to the shrine of Athena is a telling detail of his interpretation of this myth. Indeed, it recalls a mystery cult discussed by Pausanias, which involves maidens "called by the Athenians Bearers of the Sacred Offerings" who take down from the temple of the

virgin goddess covered things that they could not look at,

carry them through the city, "leave down below what they carry, and receive something else which they bring back covered up." The term Pausanias uses for these maidens is

kistaphoroi, derived from the root kista (in Latin, cista) and

commonly employed for baskets containing secret offerings, including the one with the infant Erichthonius.34

Marjon van der Meulen, the author of the most compre- hensive study of Rubens's relation to antiquity, has identified a specific classical source for the snake-child that may help us understand further the nature of this mystery. This is the motif of a child opening a basket with a snake frequently found on Roman sarcophagi in representations of the "In- dian Triumph of Bacchus," reproduced in several drawings from the circle of Rubens as well as in an engraving for a treatise written by his son Albert, De Re Vestiaria Veterum (Figs. 2, 3). In one of the essays in this treatise, dedicated to an

antique coin of Emperor Augustus ("De nvmmo Avgusti, cvivs

epigraphe, Asia Recepta"), Albert specifically identifies this motif as a cista mystica.35

In typical antiquarian fashion, the author begins with a careful description of the coin, with its obverse portrait of

Augustus and the personification of Victory elevated on a cista and flanked by intertwined serpents on the reverse. These figures, together with the accompanying inscription "Asia Recepta," provide him with a starting point for a long and learned commentary on the meaning of this antique object. In Albert's opinion, the cista itself relates to the notion


j

:I" :.., 4,?

2 Copy after a lost drawing, possibly by Rubens, Motif of a Cista Mysticafrom a Bacchic Sarcophagus. London, Courtauld Institute Galleries, Princes Gate Collection, MsJohnson, fol. lllr

of the dog (canis), while the intertwined snakes designate fertility symbols, for which he cites various ancient rituals.36

Concerning the child opening a basket on Bacchic sarcophagi, he calls on a number of authorities, including Clement of Alexandria, who had interpreted the motif of the "cista mystica" as a revelation of mysteries pertaining to generation, leading Albert to conclude that the snake appearing from the basket symbolizes the conjunction of Jove with the great mother (Rhea).37 These themes all bring him to his central thesis, that the inscription "Asia Recepta" on the coin signifies the victory of Caesar Augustus over Anthony and Cleo-

patra and, by implication, Europe's supremacy over Asia.38

Notwithstanding the fact that Albert's essay postdates The Finding of Erichthonius by several decades, his analysis follows

very closely a discussion of the same type of antique coin in Valeriano's Hieroglyphica, a book that, as mentioned earlier, was owned by his father since 1615.39

Reading the fascinating exposition by Rubens's son on the "cista mystica" allows us to grasp some of the symbolic weight of this motif in seventeenth-century antiquarian discourse with respect to the transfer of cults, mysteries, and, ultimately, cultural systems. It also helps us gain a better sense of the

metaphorical relation between the secret contents of Athe- na's basket and the praise for Justus Lipsius in the poems by

3 R. Colin, engraving after Rubens, Three Motifs of a Cista Mystica, in Rubens, 270

Philip Rubens. More than anything else, however, what situ- ates these ideas within The Finding of Eriochthonius is Rubens's visual arrangement of figures in his composition.

Ordering as an Index of Time One of the most memorable contemporary passages on the

importance of composition in poetic or pictorial inventions comes from the influential treatise on the painting of the ancients by Franciscus Junius, another of Rubens's learned

correspondents. Published in Latin in 1637, Depictura veterum

is, in many ways, a synthesis of ideas that had shaped the work of earlier Renaissance theorists of painting and poetry, rang- ing from Josephus Justus Scaliger and Baldassare Castiglione to Paolo Lomazzo and Giovanni Battista Armenini. His most

important sources, however, are the standard works of ancients such as Pliny the Elder, Quintilian, Cicero, and the two Philostrati.40 Hence, it is not surprising thatJunius speaks of the "arrangement of matter" by paraphrasing the definition of "disposition [dispositio]" in book 10 of Quintilian's Institutio oratoria (10.7.16):

We must fix our minde, not upon one thing onely, sayth Quintilian, but upon many continued things at once: even as when we cast our eyes through a straight way, we see all at once what is in it and about it: we doe not onely see the

end, but to the end. There is most commonly in every historicall argument a first, second, and third sense: neither is it enough that we labour to settle them in order, but we must moreover endeavour to joyne and to connect them so cunningly, that it might not be perceived where and how they are joyned, as being now no more parts and

members, but an entire bodie.41

Clearly predicated on the venerable debate between the rel- ative values of painting and poetry with respect to the representation of time, this recommendation makes an unambig-

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uous claim about the power of painting to encompass a range of events (and meanings) in a potent narrative moment.42 As

Junius explains further by recourse to the Philostrati, the artificer who strives for such arrangement assigns "the principall place unto the principall figures which have the chief- est hand in the represented action," allowing others to recede into the background: "The Painter hath shed a mist about the other things... that they might rather resemble things al-

ready done, than things that are a doing."43 Analogous pre- cepts on disposition guide the composition of The Finding of Erichthonius, where several related mythological stories are combined into a Chinese box-like structure as yet another vivid example of a painting that can rival the temporal com-

pass of a poetic oration.44 The innermost layer of this arrangement is the infant, a

mythical figure inseparable from the idea of the generative powers of nature. It is worth mentioning that Erichthonius shares his half-serpentine form with the father of the three

princesses, King Cecrops, who also was an important figure for a number of snake cults at the Acropolis.45 Athena's connection with snakes was obvious to Renaissance commentators, who spoke of the snakes decorating her shield as

symbols of her unparalleled sight and insight.46 Desiderius Erasmus's adage "Serpentis oculis," dedicated to those who look at things "with keen and piercing eyes," reverberates in Rubens's painting both in the "finding" of the infant and in the eyes of the maid, who seems to look into the future of this disclosed mystery.47 Most importantly, through the related

story of Asclepius, The Finding of Erichthonius evokes the com-

monplace about snakes and rejuvenation.48 Like Erichthonius, the snake-tailed father of the three

princesses is of mysterious parentage and distinguished for his piety toward a number of divinities, including Saturn

(Heaven) and Ops (Earth), as well as Athena.49 The dynastic significance of Cecrops was recognized already by Homer, who called the citizens of Athens "people of the great-hearted Erechtheus, whom once Athena daughter of Zeus raised, but the life-giving earth bore him."50 In view of these associations between Cecrops and the establishment of Athens, this king would continue to denote the highest nobility of birth ("no- bilissimus a principe civitatis originem ducens") and the long- est pedigree ("Athenienses nobiles a Cecrope antiquissimo, &

primo suo rege") well into the seventeenth century.51 The daughters of Cecrops enrich the procreative theme of

this myth through the etymological relations of their names with "dew" (Herse), "bedewed" (Pandrosos), and "bright- ness" (Aglauros), a theme underscored by the ornate vase beside them, their traditional attribute and long-established symbol of "nourishing moisture."52 While most scholars agree that the bashful virgin shaded by the tree is Herse, the identities of the two other maidens are less certain. Both textual and visual traditions suggest that Aglauros is the dark-haired princess in the center holding the basket lid.53 Nonetheless, she recalls Pandrosos through the obvious pun between her gesture and the prototypical woman associated with boxes, which finds reflection in some accounts of this

myth, where she is called Pandora. In a teasing hint of this

possibility, Rubens adorns her with a pearl diadem that evokes the epithet "pan" and "drosos" (all-bedewed).54 In turn, he accords the sister commonly identified as Pandrosos

several attributes that bring to mind Aglauros, most notably, brilliant tresses and a shimmering garment, both of which recall the adjective aglauos (shiny, bright).55 Even her gaze, fixed on the infant, may be seen as a pictorial reflection of Ovid's description of Aglauros's amazement at that forbidden

sight, while her soft flesh against the stony fountain may intimate her subsequent transformation into stone.56

The ambivalence of identities is amplified by the figure of Herse, whose body, reminiscent of the Venus Pudica, echoes the Renaissance praise of this daughter of Cecrops ("Cecro- pis filia") and future bride of Hermes for her exquisite beauty ("formae praestantissimae").57 As Held insightfully observed, Rubens may have invoked this famous antique ideal of beauty and restraint in Herse's form in order to interpolate the moment of the sisters' betrayal of Athena's secret with the later episode of the story.58 The proleptic quotation brings into play a favorite Renaissance trope on beautiful maidens and ancient statues of Venus, exemplified by Lomazzo's words on a Venus Pudica from the Belvedere garden as an

archetype for any beautiful woman.59 Rubens seems to con- cur with his opinion in several annotated drawings of the female form preserved in studio copies, where he upholds the canonical value of this statue as a model of beauty and identifies the subject as "Greek Venus."60 In view of the

dynastic significance of the house of Cecrops for the history of Athens, the allusion to Venus Pudica in Herse's body can also be seen as a signifier of the specifically Greek origin of this myth.

Beyond all of these metaphoric possibilities, the reference to the Venus Pudica helps us return to the internal voice in Ovid's account of the myth of the Cecropides: the faintly visible crow above Herse. As noted earlier, this bird sacred to Athena tells the raven that she was once the royal daughter ("regia virgo") of King Coroneus. Explaining how the virginal goddess turned her into a bird in order to save her from the advances of the sea god, she poignantly adds that "my beauty was my undoing [forma mihi nocuit] ."61 Rubens has placed her above another princess divinely chosen for her beauty, whereby she becomes not only a messenger of the infant's

discovery but also an omen of the changes that will shape the narrative all the way to its conclusion with Aglauros's muta- tion into stone. At the same time, the statue of Venus Pudica enlivened in Herse's body performs an antithetical motion within the ordained chain of events, asserting the power of the artist to transform lifeless marble into an illusion of living flesh.62

The interplay between art and nature leads us to the fountain figure, whose resemblance to Artemis of Ephesus evokes a favorite Renaissance figure for the great mother goddess.63 A writer like Natale Conti emphasized the help of the

Ephesian virgin to mothers during childbirth, conveyed by her

eponyms Eileithyia and Lucina, while Guillaume du Choul related her to the Egyptian Isis.64 The indispensable textual source for these syncretistic proclivities of the late Renais- sance antiquarians, Macrobius's Saturnalia, also conflates Ar- temis and Isis, thus bringing us full circle to another aspect of Gaea/Artemis in Rubens's painting: her Delphic cult as a

prophetess.65 Furthermore, one can follow this interest in

religious polymorphism directly to Rubens's circle and, in the case of Artemis, to a copy of an antiquarian treatise by


4 Michelangelo, The Cumaean Sybil. Vatican State, Sistine Chapel, Vatican Palace (photo: Scala / Art Resource, NY)

Hubertus Goltzius believed to have originally belonged to Nico- las Claude Fabri de Peiresc, the great connoisseur of antiquity and friend of the artist, where printed entries on the various

figures from the Greek and Roman pantheon are frequently supplemented by handwritten names that elaborate on their

relationships to divinities from other ancient religions.6 The putto extends this web of relations by his own formal

debt to antiquity. If his placement next to the basket recalls the motif of the "cista mystica," his proximity to Herse may allude to the theme of the Judgment of Paris, whose representations on ancient sarcophagi often include similar cupid figures.'7 This suggestion is enriched by the resemblance between the sisters and the figures of nymphs also common within sarcophagi reliefs depicting that mythological scene.68 As creatures whose beauty could induce frenzy in the be-

holder, nymphs can serve as fitting epithets for the princesses, especially in view of Hermes' passion for Herse.9

Sustaining this simile is the association of the Cecropides with

nourishment, as well as the grovelike setting in which they are

depicted. The locus classicus of this caregiving attribute of the

nymphs is Aphrodite's speech to Anchises about Aeneas, the child born of their union on Mt. Ida, who will be left there to be raised by

... deep-girdled mountain Nymphai ... who dwell on this

great and holy mountain. They are numbered neither with mortals nor immortals.... But at their birth firs of lofty- crowned oaks are also born, trees fair and flourishing in the high mountains, and they are called precincts of the

gods.70

Like the visual reference to Venus Pudica in the body of

Herse, this passage offered to seventeenth-century beholders of The Finding of Erichthonius sensitive to poetic allusions a

parallel between Minerva's offspring and the great Trojan hero Aeneas, and thus between the progenitor of the Greeks and the ancestral hero of the Romans.

The lushly green foliage behind Herse resembling a crown of an oak tree continues this comparison through the traditional association of the oak with Pan and the nymphs as his

customary companions. Both Pan and the nymphs are com-

monly associated with prophetic powers, which extends the idea of prophecy beyond the figures of Gaea, the dog, the

putto, and, most importantly, the old nursemaid.71 As for this last character,Julius Held compared her gaze at the beholder to a Sibylline look into the future events of the story.72 Against the Athenian backdrop of The Finding of Erichthonius, she brings to mind Herophile, the Sibyl whose tomb in Attica carried an inscription recorded by Pausanias:

Here I am, the plain-speaking Sibyl of Phoebus, hidden beneath this stone tomb. A maiden once gifted with voice, but now forever voiceless.... I am buried near the

nymphs and this Hermes, enjoying in the world below a

part of the kingdom I had then. The Hermes stands by the side of the tomb, a square-shaped figure of stone. On the left is water running down into a well, and the images of the nymphs....73

While Rubens did not necessarily organize his composition to accord with this epitaph, the formal and literary confluences between Pausanias's passage and the painter's composition show the degree to which his approach to the Erichthonius

myth is attuned to classical topoi on sacred spaces and the

mysteries they contain.74 This becomes even clearer as we turn to the praise of Augustine for the Christian spirit of

Herophile (the Erythraean Sibyl), whose prophecy "not only has nothing that can relate to the worship of the false or


5 Michelangelo, lunette with Ezechias, Manasses, and Amon. Vatican State, Sistine Chapel, Vatican Palace (photo: Scala / Art Resource, NY)

feigned gods, but rather speaks against them and their wor-

shipers in such a way that we might think she ought to be reckoned among those who belong to the city of God."75

One of the most famous visual tributes to Augustine's apologia for the pagan ancestry of Christianity was Michelan-

gelo's work on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, whose Proph- ets and Sibyls were among Rubens's most important pictorial models during his Italian sojourn.76 Of these figures, the

Sibyl that appears most appropriate to the sisters' maid in The

Finding of Erichthonius is that of Cumaea, blessed with eternal life but doomed to perpetual old age (Fig. 4). Michelangelo had emphasized her nourishing role through her breasts, thus conveying the idea of the heavenly nourishment (lac de

coelo) she gave to mankind as a food of salvation.77 He further stressed this concept through the contiguous images of nurs-

ing mothers in two lunettes beneath the Cumaean Sibyl (Fig. 5).78

Though Michelangelo's Sibyls constitute discrete images within a larger cycle, his path to visual meaning follows a logic of allusions similar to the one in The Finding of Erichthonius.

Indeed, the placement of the Cumaean Sibyl next to the

nursing mothers in the lunettes of the Sistine ceiling can be

compared to the formal relationship between the nursemaid and the Gaea/Artemis fountain in Rubens's composition.

Certainly, the metaphoric potential of these formal align- ments depends on the larger theme of The Finding of Erich- thonius-the "discovery" of a miraculously begotten infant who brings about both death and a new beginning-and thus recalls the famous ancient locus on cultural succession from

Virgil's fourth Eclogue:

Now is come the last age of the song of Cumae; the great line of the centuries begins anew [nascitur ordo]. Now the

Virgin returns, the reign of Saturn returns; now a new

generation [nova progenisse] descends from heaven on

high. Only do you pure Lucina, smile on the birth of the

child, under whom the iron brood shall first cease, and a

golden race spring up throughout the world! Thine own

Apollo now is king!79

Terminus The one figure that remains to be reconsidered within this

arrangement of matter in Rubens's painting is the Pan flanked by a pinelike tree and draped with a cloak resembling a Greek pallium.80 As a herm, a favorite Renaissance symbol of

fertility, he underscores the complex nature of all beings and the generative theme of this story.81 For the artist's contem-

poraries, Pan's alter ego, the goat, was "the machine of the universe" that marked the new solar cycle and, even more in line with this painting, the birth of a new ruler.82

Among the deeds that brought Pan honor in Attica was his assistance to the Greek gods after they fled the Giants in

Egypt, where he taught them to disguise themselves as various animals.83 Moreover, as Pausanias observes, the Athenians were the first to "set up limbless Hermae."84 Pan's service to the citizens of Athens, especially during the Battle of Mara-

thon, earned him a game of torches alongside the other divinities celebrated in such festivals, including the progenitor of Erichthonius, Hephaestus.85

Among the Pan topoi, the most important for the artist's

purposes in The Finding of Erichthonius is one of the classic


6 Paolo Veronese, Moses Saved from the Waters. Dijon, Musee des Beaux- Arts (photo: Erich Lessing / Art Resource, NY)

accounts of his death. According to Plutarch, it happened during the reign of Tiberius, when a sailor passing by the Echinades Islands heard a mysterious voice proclaiming that the great god Pan was dead. This event, as later writers would

add, took place at exactly the time when Christianity was born in Judea.86

The theological significance of Pan's death is frequently noted by Renaissance mythographers, including the Antwerp antiquarian Johannes Goropius Becanus, who explicitly identifies him with Christ.87 Even his figuration in Rubens's painting as a herm can be seen as an aspect of this transition, for, as another influential northern humanist, HadrianusJunius,

explained in his emblem "Terminus," the form symbolized both inevitable death and an understanding of what is

present through that which is past ("ex praeteritatis praesentia aestimatur").88

As we move from Pan toward the figures in the foreground, the correlation between past and present becomes fully real- ized. Already Ludwig Burchard observed that the atmosphere of surprise in The Finding of Erichthonius is closer to scenes

depicting the finding of Moses than to other representations of the Erichthonius myth. Concurring with Burchard, Svet- lana Alpers noted that the central characters in Rubens's

painting resemble an engraving of the Finding of Moses by Baptiste del Moro, possibly based on a work by Parmigi- anino.89 One could add a number of similarly configured images on the theme, such as the various versions of the

discovery of Moses by Paolo Veronese, an artist who certainly influenced the young Rubens in Italy (Fig. 6). More important for our purposes is the interpretative value of such

similarities, that is, the manner in which formal recollections

point to a symbolic relationship between several related pagan stories and a famous instance of infant discovery from the Old Testament.

The potential for parallels between Rubens's painting and the finding of Moses includes the commonly accepted ety-

mological wordplay between the name of the patriarch and the Egyptian root ms ("child" or "child of god"), which can be related to Erichthonius as a divinely begotten infant.90 Re- naissance mythographers also compared Moses to the second infant within Ovid's narrative, Asclepius, specifically with re-

gard to the raising of the brazen serpent.91 These analogies are, once again, supported by the visual structure of Rubens's invention. The nursemaid calls to mind the midwives of the Hebrew women, who "feared God" and disobeyed the king of

Egypt, allowing the newborn male children to live (Exod. 1:17). The open basket can be compared to the arc of bul- rushes into which Moses was cast by his Hebrew mother "when she could no longer hide him" (Exod. 2:3). Standing at a certain distance from the infant, Herse resembles Moses'

sister, who "stood afar off, to wit what would be done to him"

(Exod. 2:4). At the same time, her nudity reminds us that the

Egyptian princess who discovered Moses by the banks of the Nile had come there to "wash herself' (Exod. 2:5). Finally, the stream of water from the Gaea fountain brings a fitting conclusion to this metaphor, echoing the explanation of the

pharaoh's daughter for naming the foundling Moses: "Be- cause I drew him out of the water" (Exod. 2:10).

Needless to say, this mapping of tropes can function only within the system of correspondences between mundane and celestial history to which Rubens and his contemporaries were so accustomed. In Eusebius's Cronica, a prime example of this intellectual heritage of seventeenth-century antiquarians, the various events from the life of Moses were diligently matched to the house of Cecrops.92 Augustine did much the same in his extended parallel between the earthly and heav-

enly cities, stating that in the time of "Cecrops king of Athens, in whose reign that city received its name ... God brought His people out of Egypt by Moses."93 As if to underscore the Greek king's piety, he added that Athena was "already wor-

shiped as a goddess when Cecrops reigned in Athens, in whose reign the city itself is reported to have been rebuilt or


founded."94 The temporal coincidence between the establishment of Mosaic Law and the Athenian royal house is reiter- ated several paragraphs into the account:

Moses led the people out of Egypt in the last time of

Cecrops king of Athens ... and having led forth the people, he gave them at Mount Sinai the law he received from

God, which is called the Old Testament, because it has

earthly promises, and because, through Jesus Christ, there was to be a New Testament, in which the kingdom of Heaven should be promised. For the same order be- hooved to be observed in this as is observed in each man who prospers in God, according to the saying of the apos- tle, "That is not first which is spiritual, but that which is

natural," since, as he says, and that truly, "The first man of the earth, is earthly; the second man, from heaven, is

heavenly."95

Rubens's viewers could easily recognize the dichotomy between the "earthly" and the "heavenly" state of being in the strife between Hephaestus's earthly energy and Athena's celestial intellect that led to the birth of the snake-infant Erich- thonius. Some of them might remember an even more canonical text on this theme: Paul's discourse on the death of the flesh and the resurrection of the soul in chapter 15 of the First Epistle to the Corinthians.96 Though Augustine does not cite Paul's comment on the distinction between the first

(mortal) and the last (spiritual) man, those very lines com-

plete the discourse on the transformation of the terrestrial into a celestial existence: "And as we have borne the image of the earthly, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly."97 One could say that this message is also part of Rubens's address to the beholder, who, led by these allusions to the

finding of Moses, is guided to uncover the sacred in the

image of the profane.

The Justification of the Fabulous

As for this story and others like it told about the gods, although I do not personally accept what I write down, nevertheless I write them down.-Pausanias, Description 2.17.4

When the learned interpreters of the past in Rubens's immediate circle or from the generation of his son Albert spoke about the continual mixing of the divine and human nature in ancient fables, they invoked a topos going back to Plato's account of the origin of hero myths.98 Augustine's grouping of Cecrops and Moses belongs to the same interpretative legacy, even as it is governed by a strict doctrinal claim about the falsity of pagan beliefs and the truth of Christian teach-

ing. When Augustine juxtaposes the pagan account of Vulcan and Minerva as parents of "Erichthonius king of Athens, in whose last yearsJoshua the son of Nun is found to have died," to the "more plausible" historic explanation of this mysterious infant as a child wrapped in snakeskin and left at the

temple of Minerva and Vulcan in Athens, he adds the follow-

ing note: 'Yet the fable accounts for the origin of his name

[eris and hton] better than the history. But what does it matter to us? Let the one in books that speak the truth edify religious men, and the other in lying fables delight impure demons."99

For the Church Father, all of these instances of mastery among "theological poets" of antiquity, such as Orpheus and

Musaeus, pale before the wisdom of Christian Prophets, specifically Moses, "whose writings are first in the authoritative

canon; and therefore the Greeks, in whose tongue the literature of this age chiefly appears, have no grounds for boast-

ing of their wisdom, in which our religion, wherein is the true

wisdom, is most evidently more ancient at least, if not superior."100

The treatment of fables as vague intimations of Christian doctrine did not disappear even in the most sophisticated antiquarian studies of the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. Some thousand years after The City of God, Guil- laume du Choul wrote that while Christianity appropriated numerous aspects of its religious practice from the pagan traditions, it brought to them an understanding previously unattainable by the "Gentiles."101 Becanus confirmed this

point of view in his Hieroglyphica, adding that all of the pagan fictions carried within themselves symbols of the Christian

102 mysteries.2

Later generations, including that of Albert Rubens, built on these broad analogies between the theologia prisca of ancient poetry and the clarity of Christian teaching with ever more elaborate compilations of sources and authorities. One such example is the treatise Demonstratio Evangelica by Bishop Pierre Daniel Huet, whose exegesis about Cecrops, Asclepius, and Pan as pagan images of Moses (Mosis effigies) possesses all of the complexity of a latter-day Saturnalia.l03

The transformation of the foreshadowing of divinity in

pagan myth to the light of the Catholic Church is the salient matrix of Rubens's appropriation of antiquity as well. An

example of this approach can be found in his account of the

history of the temple of the Ephesian Diana to Gian Francesco di Bagno, bishop of Patras and papal nuncio to

Brussels, in two letters of 1626.104 The first letter begins with an urbane apology because the artist was unable to consult his books or notes. In an echo of his famous epistolary description of the Aldobrandini Wedding fresco to his fellow

antiquarian Peiresc, Rubens appeals to his memory as his main instrument of interpretation.'05 Stating that the temple at Ephesus was built not by any king or ruler in particular, but

by all the people of Asia ("ab universis Asiae populis"), Rubens details the stages of its construction, from a bronze edifice destroyed in an earthquake to a marble one that burned "on the night of the birth of Alexander the Great, for the poets say that Diana (alias Lucina) was unable to guard her temple from the fire because she had gone to assist the

Olympias at the delivery of this great king."106 Restored dur-

ing the reign of Philip, the father of Alexander, and subse-

quently burned again "by that wicked Herostratus," the tem-

ple, as the artist repeats, was always rebuilt by the hands of the

people of Asia.107 The second letter, intended to correct the artist's earlier

imprecisions, adds to this account that "all the Roman em-

perors consecutively took care that it [the temple] was kept up and restored more or less according to the need, until the time of Julian ... the last of the emperors who sought to

perpetuate the ancient superstitions."108 At this point, Rubens introduces the cultural succession from paganism to

Christianity as the ideological axis of his reading of this


history of destructions and rebuilding, noting that after

Julian, "as Christianity gained strength, these vanities little by little declined, and finally, as one reads in the ecclesiastical

Annals, totally vanished."109 As he adds, though pagan antiquities were at first denied an entry into the canon of the

Church, they were later wisely appropriated: "And by main

force, through excessive zeal, those proud edifices were ruined which could have been preserved and applied to our

religion. This was done later, when the first fervor of the fanatics had moderated a little."'l

This colloquy on the temple of Diana of Ephesus owes as much to historical annals as it does to writers like du Choul and Natale Conti, the latter of whom provides a remarkably similar description of this edifice:

Ephesus had the most famous, most August temple to Diana which all of Asia helped build. Two hundred and

twenty years in the making, it was erected according to the

plan of the architect Chersiphone.... There were also excellent paintings and statues according with the sublim-

ity of the edifice. The whole temple was destroyed in a fire set by an Ephesian named Herostratus, whose only reason for doing so was that his life was undistinguished and he wanted his name eternally remembered.... Il

We have already mentioned the crucial role of the Pan herm for the theme of cultural conversion in The Finding of Erich- thonius. The Gaea fountain as his counterpart complements that discourse through her manifest kinship with the Ephe- sian Artemis, a conflation that can also trigger the memory of the series of incarnations of the famous temple of this goddess. The most notable of its destructions, as Rubens (and Conti) had noted, was the fire of Herostratus on the night when Diana (Lucina) helped with the birth of Alexander the Great, the emperor who was to bring Europe to Asia. That same name is already implicitly present in The Finding of Erichthonius through the reference to the theme of the "In- dian Triumph of Bacchus."112

The cista mystica that delivers Erichthonius had cultural

consequences comparable to the building of the temple of Artemis at Ephesus, since it led to the institution of the cult of Athena by Cecrops, in whose reign, as Augustine had

noted, "God brought His people out of Egypt by Moses."'13 Rubens followed this analogical mode of parallels between the terrestrial and the divine realms to create an image embedded with a number of other images that slowly yield the full semantic content of his invention: the crow and the

raven, Erichthonius and Asclepius, Pan and Moses, the prov- idential finding of the snake-infant against the discovery of Moses, and Gaea/Artemis presiding over this birth versus the

Ephesian goddess who facilitated the delivery of Alexander. The regret that Rubens expressed to Gian Francesco di

Bagno concerning the destruction of antiquities finds tangi- ble reflections in the putto figure borrowed from ancient

sarcophagi, the quotation of Venus Pudica in the body of Herse, and the evocation of the Bacchic cista mystica. Yet The

Finding of Erichthonius is not a lament for the past but a statement on the authority of painting to reactivate what has been lost, even if merely as a fiction that reestablishes another one, of an older provenance.

Throughout this discussion, I have argued that for Rubens and his contemporaries, including his brother Philip or his son Albert, the "monstrous" biformity of Erichthonius spoke of the mysteries in nature rather than its imperfection or randomness. The other, equally important theme of this

myth of discovery is the virtue of silence regarding divine secrets. Circumscribed by the stories of the garrulity of Apol- lo's raven and Athena's crow, Rubens's painting enunciates arcane knowledge through its allegorical veils while admon-

ishing us to keep it from less deserving minds, as it behooves fables that "pertain to the generation of elements, to the hidden things in nature ... nearly the only kind found in the

delightful, magnificent, awe-inspiring poems of the ancients."114 Through the snake-infant as an embodiment of the procreative powers of nature, the artist proffers his alle-

gorical reading of fables. At the same time, his resort to the

inherently open-ended language of visual and literary allusions in order to advance his interpretation seems to accord with his fellow antiquarians' growing realization of the her- meneutic difficulties presented by the marvelous character of classical myths:

Nevertheless, one should follow the excellent advice given by Melanchthon in his notes on Hesiod: namely, that it is not always necessary to seek assiduously for a reason, a

continuity, and an appropriate and consistent coherence in every detail of poetic fables; it is sufficient to have to some extent discovered and shown what the poets wanted in general to signify in the fable as a whole.ll5

Aneta Georgievska-Shine teaches at the University of Maryland, College Park. Recent publications include articles on paintings by Rubens in Artibus et Historiae (2002) and the MarburgerJahr- buch fur Kunstwissenschaft (2003). She is currently preparing a

book-length manuscript on Rubens's interpretation of ancient myths [Department of Art History and Archaeology, University of Mary- land, College Park, Md. 20742].

Frequently Cited Sources

Apollodorus, The Library, trans. James George Frazer, 2 vols. (London: W. Heinemann; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1939-46).

Arents, Prosper, et al., De Bibliotheek van Pieter Pauwel Rubens: Een reconstructie

(Antwerp: Vereniging der Antwerpse Bibliofielen, 2001). Augustine of Hippo, Saint, The City of God, trans. Marcus Dods (New York:

Random House, 1993). Conti, Natale, Natale Conti's Mythologies: A Select Translation, trans. Anthony

DiMatteo (New York: Garland, 1994). Du Choul, Guillaume, Discours de la religion des anciens Romains illustre (Lyons,

1556; reprint, New York: Garland, 1976). Euripides, Euripides: Selections, ed. and trans. David Kovacs, 5 vols. (Cam-

bridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994). Gantz, Timothy, Early Greek Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources (Bal-

timore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993). Held, Julius, "The Daughters of Cecrops" (1976), reprinted in Rubens Studies

(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982), 156-66. Hyginus, Fabularum Liber & Poeticon Astronomicon (Basel, 1535; reprint, New

York: Garland, 1976). Keith, A. M., The Play of Fictions: Studies in Ovid's Metamorphoses Book 2,

Michigan Monographs in Classical Antiquity (Ann Arbor: University of

Michigan Press, 1992). Macrobius, The Saturnalia, ed. and trans. Percival Vaughan Davies (New York:

Columbia University Press, 1969).


Magurn, Ruth Saunders, The Letters of Peter Paul Rubens (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1991).

Meulen, Marjon van der, Rubens, Copies after the Antique, Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, pt. 23, 3 vols. (London: Harvey Miller, 1994).

Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. A. D. Melville (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986).

Pausanias, Description of Greece, trans. W. H. S. Jones, 5 vols. (London: W. Heinemann; New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1926-35).

Rubens, Albert, Alberti Rubeni Petri Pauli F. De Re Vestiaria Veterum....

(Antwerp: Plantin, 1665). Valeriano, Piero, Hieroglyphica, seu De Sacris Aegyptiorum. ... (London: Thomas

Soubron, 1594).

Notes This essay is dedicated to the memory of Julius Held (1905-2002), whose words "not to be afraid of the great ones" helped me stay with Rubens at the beginning of a research that resulted in my dissertation. As my ideas devel- oped further, I was fortunate to discuss and defend them before an excep- tional scholarly committee, including H. Perry Chapman, Anthony Colan- tuono, Robert Dorfman, Douglas Farquhar, and Walter S. Melion, chaired by Arthur K. Wheelock (University of Maryland, 1999). The two readers from The Art Bulletin get my deepest admiration for their critical insights and their genuinely helpful suggestions. I only wish I could thank them in person for their anonymous guidance toward this version of my manuscript. Lory Frankel deserves thanks for her wonderful skills as a manuscript editor, and Wayne Millan for his patient advice with respect to the often perplexing neo-Latin of some of my literary sources.

1. Marcus Aurelius, Meditations, trans. Robin Hard (Ware: Wordsworth, 1997), 4.23.

2. For this letter, see Magurn, 336-38, no. 204. 3. Marcus Aurelius, 6.37-38 (as in n. 1), 52. 4. Ibid., 9.29, p. 87. 5. Ca. 1616, oil on canvas, 857/8 by 125/4 in. (218 by 318 cm), Vaduz,

Liechtenstein Collection, inv. no. 111. The literature on the Liechtenstein painting and its second version, preserved in a fragmentary state and belong- ing to the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin, Ohio, includes Ludwig Burchard, "Rubens's Daughters of Cecrops," Allen Memorial Art Museum Bulletin 11 (1953): 4-26; Wolfgang Stechow, "The Finding of Erichtonius: An Ancient Theme in Baroque Art," in Studies in Western Art: Acts of the Twentieth Interna- tional Congress of the History of Art, vol. 3 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963); and Held.

6. The struggle between Athena and Hephaestus is embodied in the com- pound name of the infant, composed of the Greek roots eris (strife) and chthon (earth). For a summary of the classical meanings of this myth, see Murray Fowler, "The Myth of Erichtonius," Classical Philology 28 (1943): 28ff. See also Evelyn Harrison, "Alkamenes' Sculptures for the Hephaisteion: Part 1, The Cult Statues," American Journal of Archaeology 81 (1977): 412. Isidore of Seville's derivation of Minerva from the first syllables of "munus artium variarum" (the gift of all arts, Origines 8.11.71) corresponds to the focus of Renaissance interpretations of this divinity. On Isidore's import for the Re- naissance, see Katherine Nell Macfarlane, Isidore of Seville on the Pagan Gods (Origines VIII.11) (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1980), 27. Ovid's description of Erichthonius's hybrid body involves the somewhat enig- matic phrase "aporectum dracone" (Metamorphoses 2.561), which can be trans- lated either as "next to him a snake" or, more freely, as "having a snake's tail." See Euripides, Ion 20ff.; and Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 3.14.6, for the version according to which Erichthonius as a human baby was encircled by serpents. Hyginus (2.13) states that Erichthonius was born as a serpent, which, when beheld by the daughters of Cecrops, drove them to their suicide, while the serpent hid under Athena's shield and was raised by her. See Pausanias, Description 1.24.7, for the statue of the virgin Athena on the Acropolis with a serpent coiled at her feet, which the author believes to be Erichthonius.

7. See Euripides, Ion 9-26, 260-82, for Athena giving the child to the daughters of Cecrops, 273-74, 496, for the daughters jumping from the Acropolis, and 1163-64, for a statue of the snake-tailed Cecrops and his daughters at the entrance of a temple. Pausanias is another like source, giving this comment on an Attic site dedicated to Aglauros: "Above the sanctuary of Dioscuri is a sacred enclosure of Aglauros. It was to Aglauros and her sisters, Herse and Pandrosus, that .. Athena gave Erichthonius, whom she had hidden in a chest [Greek: kista; Latin: cista], forbidding them to pry curiously into what was entrusted to their charge. Pandrosus, they say, obeyed, but the other two (for they opened the chest) went mad when they saw Erichthonius, and threw themselves down the steepest part of the Acropolis." Pausanias, Description 1.18.2; see also 1.2.6, 1.14.6. See also the entry on the annotated

tragedies of Euripides, ibid., fol. 17, col. 2. See Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 3.14.6; and Conti, 196. An edition of Conti's popular treatise is recorded in the

posthumous catalogue of the library of the artist's son Albert, Catalogus librorum bibliothecae clarissimi viri D. Alberti Rubens.... (Brussels: Franciscus Vivien, 1658), fol. 14, col. 1. I shall be referring to the facsimile of this

catalogue incorporated in Arents et al., 339-66. Many of the books in Albert's

library were inherited from his father, including an edition of Pausanias, recorded among Peter Paul Rubens's purchases from the Plantin press in 1615 (ibid., E32).

8. See Keith, 1-7. 9. Held, 160-61. Burchard (as in n. 5), 5, saw the putto as an enticer whose

role is comparable to the snake in the Garden of Eden. Wolfgang Stechow, in turn, compared the role of this character to the putti that aid the narrative in another early mythology by Rubens, The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus, and saw it as an "enhancement of the action by allegorical allusions which add to the liveliness of the scene." Stechow, Rubens and the Classical Tradition, Martin Classical Lectures, 22 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1968), 66.

10. The most systematic study of Rubens's collection to date is Jeffrey M. Muller, Rubens: The Artist as Collector (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989). See also Meulen.

11. As an example of the scope of this library, the books that were directly purchased by Rubens from the Plantin press amount to 213 volumes, as noted by Arents et al., 132-206.

12. I am referring here to a term common in the debates among Italian literary theorists of this period, specifically, to the words of Bardi di Vernio in his defense of the "marvelous" poetic language of Ariosto (In difesa dell'Ariosto, 1583), discussed in the seminal work of Bernard Weinberg, A History of the Literary Criticism in the Italian Renaissance (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1961), vol. 2, 986. The poetic character of fables was a classical commonplace repeated by most Renaissance interpreters. As an example, see the discussion of the epistemological value of fables and their relation to poetic fictions in Macrobius, Commentary on the Dream of Scipio, ed. William Harris Stahl (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), 83-87. See also one of the most influential later readers, Giovanni Boccaccio, for a comparison between the "veiled surfaces" of fables and poetic speech: "This fervour of poetry is sublime in its effects: it impells the soul to a longing for utterance; it brings forth strange and unheard-of creations of the mind; it arranges these meditations in a fixed order, adorns the whole composition with unusual inter- weaving of words and thoughts; and thus it veils truth in a fair and fitting garment of fiction." Boccaccio, Genealogia di gli Dei (Venice, 1582), 14.7, trans. and discussed in Terence Cave, The Cornucopian Text: Problems of Writing in the French Renaissance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), 152. See also Conti, 4, 9. For the currency of moralized readings of ancient fables among Netherland- ish artists and theorists of the time, with focus on the Dutch Republic, see Eric Jan Sluijter, De "heydensche fabulen" in de schilderkunst van de Gouden Eeuw: Schilderijen met verhalende onderwerpen uit de klassieke mythologie in de Noordelijke Nederlanden circa 1590-1670 (Leiden: Primavera Press, 2000).

13. For a good discussion of the essential duality of "surface" and "meaning" in ancient myths, see Conti, 70ff. Naturally, Conti's ideas are echoed by a number of other contemporary mythographers, both in Italy and elsewhere. The most popular English mythographer of the period, Abraham Fraunce, stressed the hierarchy of allegorical meanings generated by means of this distinction. In his opinion, the moral meaning of myth would be the first, most accessible layer: "They, whose capacities is such, as that they can reach somewhat further than the external discourse and history, shall finde a morall sence included therein, extolling virtue, condemning vice, euery way profit- able for the institution of a practicall and common wealth man." Only readers of greater refinement could enjoy the deeper levels of signification: "The rest, that are better borne and of a more noble spirit, shall meete with hidden mysteries of natural, astrological, or diuine and metaphysicall philosophie, to entertaine their heavenly speculation." Fraunce, preface to The Third Part of the Countesse of Pembrokes Yuychurch (London, 1592), B2.

14. Barthelemy Aneau, preface to Ovid, Metamorphoses, ed. Aneau (Lyons, 1556), fol. 5r-v, quoted in Cave (as in n. 12), 175, 345.

15. The use of the peacock as a metaphor for prodigious talent is an old topos, as evident from Piero Valeriano's comparison of the colors of the peacock to Homer's language rich with poetic colors ("varietatem poeticis coloribus"). Valeriano, 220. For the purchase of Valeriano's treatise by Peter Paul Rubens in 1615, see Arents et al., E23. The earlier interpretation has been put forth by Svetlana Alpers, based on a passage in Conti on the peacock's color, "Neque tamen totum est corpus coloribus distinctum sed quaedam pars deformis cum nihil omnino felix possit contingere," which she understood to mean that "nothing in nature is completely beautiful." Alpers, "Manner and Meaning in Some Rubens Mythologies," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 30 (1967): 284. Cf. Held, 161, for an alternative reading of Conti's passage, which he took to refer to happiness rather than beauty. See Conti, 80: "Nor is the whole body of the bird marked with colors, but a certain part is ugly since nothing that happens can be totally happy, always some adversity present." For the peacock's connection with the notion of abundance, see also Valeriano, 221. See Francis Bacon on Pan's "spotted mantle": "Pan's cloake or mantle is ingeniously fained to be the skin of Leopard, because it is full of spottes: so the heauens are spotted with stars, the sea with rockes and Islands, the land with flowers, and euery particular creature also is for the most part garnished with diuers colours about the

superficies, which is as it were a mantle vnto it." Bacon, De sapientia veterum (London, 1609), trans. as The wisdome of the ancients (London, 1619; reprint, New York: Garland, 1976), 29. See FranciscusJunius, "De pictura veterum," in The Literature of Classical Art, ed. Keith Aldrich, Philipp Fehl, and Raina Fehl

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), vol. 1, 85: "Nature ... a most fertil Artificer of good and bad ... would have us know that it fitteth her best


to delight her selfe somewhat in the varietie of things... as Plinie speaketh, 'seeing no man is so well able to speake, but Nature is still a great deal better able to paint, especially when she meaneth to make her selfesome sport in the midst of herjolly fertilitie ... the Peacockes, together with the spots of Tygers, Leopards, and so many more painted creatures,' as Plinie speaketh: for though such things doe sufficiently delight the lookers on, yet doe they not instruct the Artificers.'" See the annotations to Philostratus, Imagines, in Blaise de Vigenere, ed., Images... des deux Philostrates Sophistes grecs et les statues de Callistrate (Paris, 1615), 373.

16. The dangerous garrulity of the crow is used as a negative example in an emblem of prudent silence by the 16th-century antiquarian HadrianusJunius. Illustrated by Minerva's owl on a shield, the emblem, titled "Prudence Rather Than Speaking [Prudens mais quam loquax]," is inscribed: "Noctva Cecropiis insignia praestat Athenis, / inter aues sani noctua consilij. / Armifera merito obsequiis sacrata Minerua, / Garrula quo cornix cesserat ante loco" (The Owl, noted among birds for its wise counsel, showed its noteworthy features before Cecropian Athens-Arm-bearing Minerva, having received sacrifices deservedly-in the place where once the garrulous crow had been). The explicatio dwells on the supreme status of Athens among ancient cities and the prudence of its constitution-"et itaque Athenis, id est, emporio disciplinaru toto orbe notissimo, & urbe optimis instituta legibus, symbolum fuit, vt significaretur prudens matutumque consilium, & recta ciuitatis institutio...." (and so Athens, that is, the emporium most noteworthy with respect to teaching, and with the best laws in the world, was a symbol and represented prudent and quiet advice and the correct institution of the city-state ....)- and relates it again to the house of Cecrops ("Cecropidae Athenienses"). Junius, Hadriani Ivnii medici Emblemata: Eiusdem Aenigmatvm libellvs (Antwerp: Plantin, 1585), 19, 36, 633ff.

17. Keith, 95-115, observes that Battus echoes the punishments of the other garrulous characters in this part of Ovid's poem, notably, the raven, the crow, and Ocyrrhoe.

18. The enticingly displayed bodies of the Cecropides in Rubens's painting compel the beholder to think of this desire and relate it to Herse as the most perfect beauty chosen to become Hermes' consort ("tanto virginibus praes- tantior omnibus Herse"). Ovid, Metamorphoses 2.724.

19. For Ovid's exploration of the etymological relation between cornix and corvus, see Keith, 58-61. By its very placement in the dense foliage of the tree, the crow brings to mind ancient gems and rings that show Apollo's raven perched on a tree branch. See, for example, Abraham Gorlaeus, Abrahami Gorlaei Antverpiani Dactylotheca.... (Antwerp: Plantin, 1609), nos. 9, 10, 19. See Valeriano, 24.218, who notes that the raven was a sacred symbol of Apollo ("Corvus hieroglyphicum Apollinis haberetur").

20. Pausanias, Description 4.34.4, 4.34.6, where he adds that "the statue of Athena ... on the Acropolis is of bronze, and stands in the open air, holding a crow in her hand." For Rubens's purchase of Pausanias from Plantin in 1615, see Arents et al., E32. Later mythographers exploit the resonance between these related terms. See, for example, the alliterative play on Coronis and corvus in this passage from Hyginus (202): "... Apollo cum Coronida Phlaegiae filiam grauidam fecisset, coruum custodem ei dedit, ne quis eam uiolaret.... Apollo Coronidem grauidam percussit & interfecit, cuius ex utero exectum Asclepium educauit, at coruum qui custodiam praebuerat ex albo in nigrum commutauit" (When Apollo made Coronis the daughter of Phlegia pregnant, he gave to her the raven as a guardian so that she would not be violated ... [later] Apollo hit and killed the pregnant Coronis, from whose womb he extracted Asclepius to be educated, and the raven who had been her guardian, he turned from white to black).

21. On the cult of Asclepius in Athens, see Gantz, 355. For a summary of the various accounts, see the notes of James Frazer to Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 3.10. Most authors accept the view that Coronis was his mother: Pausanias, Description, 2.26.4, 2.26.6, 4.3.6, 4.31.12; Hyginus, 202; Apollonius Rhodius, The Argonautica 4.616ff., trans. R. C. Seaton (London: Heinemann; New York: Putnam, 1930). The semiotic bond between Coronis and the Crow was certainly instrumental in another variant, according to which Asclepius was born "out of the egg of a crow under the figure of a serpent." See Ronald Forsyth Millen and Robert Erich Wolf, Heroic Deeds and Mystic Figures: A New Reading of Rubens' "Life of Maria de' Medici" (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 157. For the healing powers of Asclepius, see Macrobius, 20.4. See H. Junius (as in n. 16), 25 (Medici Icon-Asclepius), with references to Pausanias and Macro- bius.

22. On Athena's killing of Medusa and the gift of her blood to Erichtho- nius, see Euripides, Ion 989-1018. On her giving that same blood to Asclepius, see Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 3.10.3. See Pausanias, Description 1.23.4, on "Health" as a shared surname of Athena and Asclepius. See Aratus, Solensis, Phaenomena, in Hugoni Grotii Syntagma Arateorum: Opus poeticae et astronomiae studiosis utilissimum.... (Antwerp: Plantin, 1600), 169.

23. See Pausanias, Description 2.26.4: "In the country of the Epidaurians she [Coronis] bore a son, and exposed him on the mountain called Nipple at the present day, but then named Myrtium.... As the child lay exposed he was given milk by one of the goats that pastured about the mountain, and was guarded by the watch-dog of the herd." Pausanias also notes that the shepherd in charge of the infant was Aresthanas, which recalls the name Aristaeus (the Thessalian incarnation of Pan). See Valeriano, 5.46, who refers to Pausanias for the version of the story according to which Asclepius was left exposed on "Nipple Mountain" ("Aescvlapius in solitudine Titthei montis expositus"),

where he was protected by a dog ("a Cane custodius fuerit"). This tradition remained current long after Rubens, as exemplified by Abbe Banier, who refers to Pausanias and other authors, such as Lactantius Placidus, for this version of the story. Banier, The Mythology and Fables of the Ancients Explain'd from History, 4 vols. (London, 1739; reprint, New York: Garland, 1976), vol. 3, 156.

24. Banier (as in n. 23), vol. 3, 159, also notes that the name Asclepius was derived from that of Kaleb, "which the Hebrews gave to a Dog... composed of these two words... Isch-Kalibi, Vir Canibus...."

25. For a summary iconography of this figure, see Millen and Wolf (as in n. 21), 88-89. These authors discount an earlier hypothesis that the Genius represents Eternity per se and support their argument about Asclepius by pointing to the similarity between his pose and attributes to those of Rubens's Hygieia, ca. 1615, Detroit Institute of Arts. For the dog as symbolic of princely rule, see Valeriano, 5.48.

26. Valeriano, who dwells on that meaning, notes that the dog can designate the prophet (oracle), and is thus frequently found as a guardian of images and temples of the gods. Among his sources are Pausanias and numerous biblical authorities such as Saint Gregory the Great, Isaiah, and Ezekiel, who had written about dogs and prophecy. Valeriano, 5.44-45, 47.

27. Ovid, Metamorphoses 15. See Valeriano, 16.147. See also du Choul, 104, on the serpent of Asclepius symbolizing rejuvenation.

28. Ovid, Metamorphoses 15.739-42. The cult of Asclepius is also connected to that of Cybele, or the great mother goddess, which is not irrelevant with regard to the "Gaea" fountain in Rubens's painting. For this relationship, see The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 29, 416ff.

29. Apollo was the first Greek god tojoin the Roman pantheon following an epidemic in 431 B.C., while his son Asclepius was the last one, arriving from Epidaurus in 293 B.C. It is noteworthy that among the books of unknown authorship recorded in the library of Albert Rubens is a volume on the subject of the Sybils, titled Sybillina Oracula. Catalogus librorum ... Rubens (as in n. 6), fol. 17, col. 2.

30. Philip Rubens, "In eiusdem natalem," in Philipi Rubeni Electorum Libri Duo ... in quibus antiqui Ritus, Emendationes, Censurae, EnVSDEM ad Ivstum Lip- sium Poematia.... (Antwerp: Plantin, 1608), 22-26, 106. I am using the English translation of this poem by George Angell included in app. I of Frances Huemer, Rubens and the Roman Circle: Studies of the First Decade (New York: Garland, 1996), 163: "Innuba quinetiam Pallas, doctique Heliconis/ Numina se pueri voluerunt sistere cunis, / Atque hauire oculis, qui mox suus esset alumnus, / Et fama reliquis sic antistaret alumnis, / Vt matutinus praestinquit Lucifer ignes" (Yes indeed, unmarried Pallas and the learned boys, the divinities of Helicon, wanted to put you in the cradle and drink deeply of you with their eyes, you who would soon be their pupil and would outshine in reputation the other pupils, just as the Morning Star makes dull the other early morning fires).

31. P. Rubens (as in n. 30), Lacrymae in FunereJusti Lipsi, 20-24, 118. I am using again the translation of George Angell, in Huemer (as in n. 30), 175: "O Atlantiade, & cum virgine Phoebe patrima / Vos decuit, decuit vos interce- dere iussis / Fatorum & vestro noxam defendere alumno: / Quo nil Cecropiae tulerunt praestantius arces, / Nil Latium vetus atque nouum, nil Gallia triplex" (O descendant of Atlas, and you, Phoebus, with the maiden whose father yet lives, it was your task, it fell to you to intercede in the orders of the Fates, and to defend your pupil from harm. The Cecropian citadels never bore anything more outstanding than this man, nor did old or new Latium, nor did tripartite Gaul). While Angell translates "arces" as citadels, from arca (arceo), in this context, I am inclined to read in "arces" the second possible meaning of this word as a chest or box. The epithets "Atlantiade" and "Phoebe patrima" establish the high ancestry of Lipsius, which is then extolled by the comparison to the mysteries (arcana) contained within the Cecropian citadel and/or chest (arces).

32. Gorlaeus (as in n. 19): "Uidimus AEGIDAE & Cecropis arces, / Quae uolucrem gestat diua Minerua tuam" (We see the shields and the arks of Cecrops, / which the Goddess Minerva swiftly carries to you).

33. Keith, 119, points out that in both episodes, "... the goddess Pallas Athena ... is served by virgins (Metamorphoses 2.555, 2.711, 2.724-25) carrying sacred baskets (Metamorphoses, 2.554, 2.560, 2.713)."

34. Pausanias, Description 1.27.3. On this term used for the basket with Erichthonius, see ibid., 1.18.2, 1.2.6, 1.14.6. On kistaphoreo as the carrying of a casket in mystic processions, see Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968), 954.

35. Albert Rubens. See Meulen, vol. 2, 151-54, cat. nos. 132-34. Of particular importance in this regard is the lid of a late Roman sarcophagus acquired by Cardinal Scipione Borghese in 1607 and seen during the same year by a group of antiquarians that included the two Rubens brothers (151-52, cat. no. 132). Another Roman sarcophagus (2nd century A.D., Museo Nazionale, Rome) showing the Indian Triumph of Bacchus was described by both Ulisse Aldrovandi and Cassiano dal Pozzo, though without a specific reference to the motif (153, cat. no. 133).

36. Rubens, 265: "Cistam autem esse ostendunt illae striae, quae cannas

significant, ex quibus conflabantur cistae. Canistrum fisis cannis contextum, unde nuncupatur: alij Graeciam afferunt. Cistella a costis ex canna uel ligno, quibus contexitur, nominata (Isidorus, Origines, 20.9)" (The basket is shown with three lines, which designate reeds, from which baskets are woven. The


flower basket bound with reeds was thus named; others say it is a Greek word. The small box made of reed or wood was also called thus). Albert singles out the Cretans, who had frequently juxtaposed the figure of the sacred basket and the intertwined snakes on their coins: "... Cretenses in nummis suis ab una parte duos angues, ab altera sacram cistam exprimebant; ita & in his Romanorum Impp. nummis in Creta signatis, cum Imperatoris caput unam partem numismatis occupet; a postica parte utraque simul Cretensium insignia, duos angues implexos & cistam mysticam, impressa esse" (... the Cretans impressed on one side of their coins two snakes, while on the other one, the basket; and the Roman coins that were minted in Crete showed the head of the Emperor on the obverse; while on the reverse were impressed the Cretan insignia, the two intertwined snakes with the basket of mysteries). He notes, 272: "Cretenses cum alia omnia mysteria Cereris, Bacchi, & Magnae Matris cum alijs gentibus communnia celebrarent ...." (since the Cretans used to celebrate with all other people the mysteries of Ceres, Bacchus, and Magna Mater....). As for the other peoples who had appropriated this symbol, Rubens mentions the Phrygians, Thracians, Lydians, and Macedonians, citing in support authors such as Diodorus Siculus, Euripides, Demosthenes, and Erasmus, "nam his in mysteriis Bacchanalibus utebantur, quod ea a vis sacra sit Baccho" (and they made use of these in Bacchic mysteries, because this power is sacred to Bacchus). Rubens, 267-68.

37. Rubens, 270-71, 273ff., mentions the engraving after the drawings from the circle of his father before citing Clement of Alexandria, who had suggested that the mystical baskets were used to reveal sacred things and enun- ciate secrets ("Oportet enim sancta eorum revelare, & arcana enuntiare"). He digresses further to include representations ofJove mating with Proserpina in the form of a snake and refers to authors including Clement of Alexandria, Arnobius, and Athenagoras, who had explained the procreative significance of the myth (274). In conclusion, he notes Cretan coins analyzed by Hubertus Goltzius that show a mystical basket with a serpent, encircled by an ivy wreath, and symbolic of Bacchic mysteries ("cista mystica cum serpente in corona hederacea, ob Bacchica mysteria," 275).

38. The connection to Anthony and Cleopatra is established in coins that show their portraits on the obverse ("imagines Antonij & Cleopatrae"), matched by two intertwined snakes and a female figure reclining on a basket on the reverse ("duo serpentes impliciti, ac cista mystica & figura muliebris ei insistens"). Rubens further adds, 276, that this imagery represents the devo- tion of Anthony, who had wanted to be initiated in these mysteries ("Quam pietatem Antonij esse existimo, qui forte mysterijs his initiari voluit"). There- upon, Albert, 277, notes that through these Cretan coins impressed with the symbols of snakes and the basket, the victory at Actium, where Octavian received all of Asia, was shown ("in hoc nummulo in Creta percusso, praeter serpentes & cistam Cretae insignia, adiuncta est victoria Actiaca qua Caesar Asia recepit").

39. Albert lists Valeriano as his main authority at the very opening of the essay. Valeriano's account of the snakes as symbols of Asia and of the Roman victory over the world reads: ". . .Serpentes tres, Asiam prouinciam signifi- cari.... Imperium Romanum tres iam orbis partes occupasse: Europa enim diu possederant, Africam paulo ante subiugarant, nunc Asia recepta" (... the three serpents signify the Asian province.... The Roman Empire occupied three parts of the world: Europe which they had possessed for a long time, Africa, which had been subjugated somewhat earlier, and now Asia has been received). Valeriano, 15.142.

40. For the manner in which Junius's treatise conforms to existing art theory ideas, see the editors' introduction to F.Junius (as in n. 15), 26, 34-36. Rubens received a copy of the treatise immediately after its publication, as indicated by his response toJunius in a letter of August 1, 1637. See Magurn, 406-8, no. 241.

41. F.Junius (as in n. 15), 274. As the editors of the 1991 edition ofJunius's treatise note, this emphasis on proper placement is very close to Aristotle, Poetics 17.1 (1455a), ed. and trans. Stephen Halliwell (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995).

42.Jeffrey Muller has recently returned to Held's suggestion about the chronological aspects of the arrangement of figures in The Finding of Erich- thonius in a study on the pictorial conception of time in paintings by Anthony Van Dyck, such as Vertumnus and Pomona and Rinaldo and Armida. Muller, "The Dimensions of Time in Anthony van Dyck's Inventions for History Paintings," Wallraf-Richartz Jahrbuch 55 (1994): 127-38. He also relates Van Dyck's approach to Junius's discussion of disposition.

43. F. Junius (as in n. 15), 275, with reference to Philostratus, Imagines 1.12.15 ("Bosphorus").

44. I am borrowing the "Chinese box" metaphor from E. J. Kenney's introduction to Ovid's Metamorphoses, trans. A. D. Melville, 26.

45. See Apollodorus, Bibliotheca 3.14.1. Athenians decorated the necks or bodies of their infants with golden serpents to commemorate the snakes that guarded Erichthonius. Euripides, Ion 20-26, 1426-31. When Rubens painted the serpent coiled around the infant in The Birth of the Dauphin from the Medicis cycle, in addition to referring to the divinity Salus, he may also have had in mind this ancient custom and its specifically Athenian provenance. See Millen and Wolf (as in n. 21), 88-89.

46. "But because in waging a war, wisdom is especially necessary, she [Minerva] is preeminent in battle and given a shiningly clear shield covered with many snakes. Indeed, what is the nature of a snake? It is to see most clearly, whence the Serpent's name in Greek [ophis]." Conti, 199. Like many

others, Conti derived his reading from Macrobius, who observed, 137, that the snake was called draco ("to see" in Greek), "for with its keen and watchful eyesight the serpent is said to resemble the nature of the sun and for that reason to be entrusted with the charge of protecting temples, shrines, oracles, and treasuries."

47. Desiderius Erasmus, Adagia 1.9.96, in Collected Works of Erasmus: Adages, ed. and trans. R. A. B. Mynors, 5 vols. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1989-92), vol. 2, 231.

48. "Statues of Asclepius and Salus, then, have figures of serpents in atten- dance because these two deities enable human bodies, as it were, to slough off the skin of weakness and to recover the bloom of their former strength, just as serpents each year shed the skin of old age and renew their youth ... it is for this reason that the sun itself is represented in the form of a serpent, because in its passage from the lowest point of its course to its height it always seems, as it were, to pass from the depth of old age and return to the vigor of youth." Macrobius, 137. Within Rubens's milieu, this topos is most explicitly addressed in a treatise by a fellow Antwerpian, Johannes Goropius Becanus, who details the varied meanings of the snake with a specific emphasis on its life-renewing power: "Scimus serpentes quotannis tempore veris vetus corium deponere.... De hac natura homines symbolum sibi fixerunt, quo per serpentem nouam vitam, abiecta vetere senecta, denotabant" (We know that the serpents shed their old skin every year.... from this nature of the animal, people established a symbol whereby they used to designate by the serpent the discarding of old age and the creation of new life). Becanus, Opera Joani Goropii Becani ... Hermathena, Hieroglyphica, Vertumnus, Gallica, Francica, His- panica (Antwerp: Plantin, 1580), 93. Becanus's treatise was recorded as a purchase by the artist in 1613. See Arents et al., E10. See Josephus Justus Scaliger, who likewise notes that the serpent may signify, among other things, the unbroken ring, the world, and the ruler ("Serpentem ... quo anum, mundum, Regem, & alia significabant"). Josephi Scaligeri Ivli Caesarisf. Opus de emendatione temporuvm (Antwerp: Plantin, 1598), 194.

49. "Philochorus says that Cecrops was the first to build, in Attica, an altar to Saturn and Ops, worshiping these deities as Jupiter and Earth ...." Ma- crobius 1.10, pp. 72-73. Macrobius's etymological explanations of Saturn "from the word for growth from seed (satus)" and Ops, who designates "her

bounty (ops)... or... the toil (opus) which is needed to bring forth the fruits of trees and fields," draw a clear analogy between their generative power and that figured by the "strife-earth" offspring of Hephaestus and Athena. See Pausanias, Description 8.2.3, for Cecrops as the first to establish Zeus as a supreme divinity. See Isidore of Seville on Cecrops instituting the cult of Athena in Athens, and in whose reign the city got its name: "Apud Graecos autem Cecrops, sub quo primum in arce oliva orta est, et Atheniensium urbs ex Minervae appelatione nomen sortita est" (Among the Greeks, it was Cecrops, in whose reign was the olive grown for the first time in the city, and when the city of Athens got its name from the appelation of Minerva). Isidore, Origines 8.11.9, quoted in Macfarlane (as in n. 6), 13, who identifies the praefatio of Jerome's translation of Eusebius's Cronica as the direct source of this passage. Erichthonius instituted the comparable festival of Panathenea. For this, see Hyginus, 75; and Aratus (as in n. 22), 168 ("primu Panathenaea constituisse").

50. Homer, Iliad 2.547-48, trans. A. T. Murray, ed. William F. Wyatt, 2nd rev. ed., 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999). For the conflation between Erechtheus and Erichthonius, see Gantz, 233.

51. Juvenal, D. JuniiJuvenalis & Auli Persii Flacci Satyrae cum veteris Scholiastae &' variorum commentaries (Amsterdam: Vetstenium, 1684), 289. For the importance of self-generation in myths of origin, see Oxford Classical Dictionary (as in n. 24), 224, s.v. "Autochthons." For the royal lineage of the Athenians, see Virgil, Aeneid 6.21, in Virgil, trans. H. Rushton Fairclough, rev. G. P. Goold, vol. 1 (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999). See Hyginus, 48 ("Reges Atheniensium"), who identifies Cecrops as son of the Earth ("Cecrops terrae filius") and Erichthonius as son of Vulcan ("Erychthonius Vulcani filius"). The entry on Cecrops in the seminal dictionary by Charles Estienne (Carolus Stephanus) refers to both Virgil and Hyginus, as well as to Herodotus, in identifying Cecrops as the first king of Athens ("primus Athe- niensum rex") and the Athenians as "Cecropidae." Carolus Stephanus, Dic- tionarium Historicum, Geographicum, Poeticum Authore Carolo Stephano, new ed. (Oxford, 1671), 256. The survival of this thinking in the later part of the 17th century is illustrated by the 1684 edition ofJuvenal's Satyres cited above, where the adjective Cecropides is explained as an attribute accorded to persons of the most noble origin and descending from the greatest city on earth, like the Athenians who originated from their most ancient king, Cecrops ("nobilissi- mus a principe civitatis originem ducens, ut Athenienses nobiles a Cecrope antiquissimo, & primo suo rege"). The Scholiast commentary on the same line confirms this relationship between Cecropides and the idea of nobility related to King Cecrops of Athens ("Nobilis. Cecrops rex fuit Atheniensium").

52. Calimachus calls Erichthonius "the Dew of Hephaestus." Ovid, Metamor- phoses, 2.559-60, p. 388. Cf. Keith, 35, for the etymological explanation of the names of the Cecropides. See Harrison (as in n. 6), 267, for the pitcher as a standard attribute of the Aglaurids (Cecropides) in Greek art.

53. For this opinion, see Stechow (as in n. 5), 32; Alpers (as in n. 15), 281; and Held, 159.

54. Fulgentius (Fabius Planciades), Mythologiae (Basel, 1535; reprint, New York: Garland, 1976), 75-76. On the meaning of her name, see Keith, 35.


55. On Aglauros and water, see Paulys Real-Encyclopadie der classischen Alter- tumswissenschaft, ed. G. Wissowa et al. (Stuttgart: A. Druckenmuller, 1893- 1983), vol. 1, 826.

56. Ovid, Metamorphoses 2.747-50. 57. Stephanus (as in n. 51), 428, with references to Ovid and Apollodorus. 58. Held, 160. According to him, the putto borrowed from ancient sarcoph-

agi reinforces the poetic simile between Herse and the goddess of love and further helps in connecting the two episodes of Ovid's account.

59. Held, 160; and Meulen, vol. 2, 73. See Paolo Lomazzo, "Idea del tempio della pittura," in Scritti sulle arti, ed. Roberto Paolo Ciardi, 2 vols. (Florence: Marchi e Bertolli, 1973-74), 1.12, pp. 56-57, 6.3, pp. 251-52, cited in Meulen. For the fame and the artistic legacy of the Medicean Venus Pudica, see Francis Haskell and Nicholas Penny, Taste and the Antique: The Lure of Classical Sculp- ture, 1500-1900 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), no. 88.

60. In MS Johnson, London, Courtauld Institute Galleries, Princes Gate Collection, fol. 97r, the drawing after this statue is inscribed "veneris grec [a] e da monte cavalli," while in MS de Ganay, whereabouts unknown (formerly Paris, collection of the Marquis J. L. de Ganay), fol. 63r, we find a similar inscription in Dutch, "Griecksche Venus ... op Monte Cauallo." See Meulen, vol. 2, 72-73, no. 58. Cf. the drawing after Rubens, Torso of a Venus Pudica (Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen), based on the Medici statue, and the related study (side view), in ibid., vol. 2, 71-74. A passage from the lost theoretical notebook of the artist is equally significant in this respect: "Et pro foemineae formae exemplari, unica sufficiat, Veneris Aphroditis, quae in mediceo est" (And for the female form it is sufficient to mention a unique example, the Aphrodite Venus who is in the Medici collection). "De figurae humanae statibus sive modis standi," MS de Ganay, fols. 22r-23r, in Meulen, vol. 1, 255, 262. In later drawings, Venus Pudica continues to be referred to as "Greek." Meulen, vol. 2, 73, reproduces one such example by Jan de Bisschop, accompanied by an inscription that identifies this particular Venus as a "Greek" one ("Venus Aphroditis gemeenlijck ghenaemt de Grieckse Venus").

61. Ovid, Metamorphoses 2.572. See Keith, 23ff., for the self-characterization of the crow and the analogy between her as a daughter of Coroneus and the Cecropian princesses.

62. Pan and Gaea, symbolic of Erichthonius's parentage, complement the dialogue on art and nature initiated through the reminiscence of Venus Pudica in the body of Herse. Alpers (as in n. 15), 283, notes the contrast between the statues and the bodies of the Cecropides, though not in the sense of the dialectic between art and nature: "it is clear from the position of these statues . . and from the fact that their gray-white stone is clearly differenti- ated from the rosy bodies and colorful robes in the center, that they are related to each other ... Gaia and Pan represent different aspects of nature... ."

63. Stechow (as in n. 9), 67, correctly points to Rubens's reuse of Artemis Ephesia throughout his oeuvre. For Renaissance beholders of this painting, the most important attribute would have been her numerous breasts, symbolic of nurturing power: "Au simulacre de la mere des Dieux donnerent les Anciens plusieurs mamelles come celle qui nourissoit tout le monde ...." Du Choul, 93, and 78, for a coin showing Artemis of Ephesus flanked by Minerva and Mercury. Cf. the relief of Mater Deum reproduced by Jean Jacques Bois- sard, with the headdress of Cybele, cornucopia in hand, a Mithraic figure behind her, and a sphinx by her feet. Next to her is a tree trunk encircled by a snake. Johannes Jacobus Boissardus, Topographia urbis Romae, Johannem Jacobum Boissardum (Frankfurt, 1681), 20, pl. 133.

64. Conti, 166, 169-70, with reference to Horace's Odes. A manuscript of Pirro Ligorio also illustrates this interest in the use of multiple names for Diana, such as Luna Lucifera, Diana Lucifera, Juno Lucina, Diana Victrix, Latona Puerpera, Luna Diana, and Juno-Dolichena. See Pirro Ligorio's Roman Antiquities: TheDrawings in MS XIII. B. 7 in the National Library in Paris, ed. Erna Mandovsky and Charles Mitchell (London: Warburg Institute, 1963), nos. 15, 16, 40, 41, 47, 48, 69, esp. 47, pl. 28c: ". . .Diana Lucifera, che vuol dire portafacella, et che luce, o vero la crescente Luna, per che il suo lume representa la facella che tiena, et e come dicemmo disopra dea delle par- torenti." See du Choul, 93: "Lune au Ciel, Diane sus terre & Proserpine aux enfers, quand il a dit, 'Tergeminaque Hecaten tria virginis ora Dianae.'. . ." and 307, for her connection to Isis, symbolic of "la fertilit6 du pais de l'Egypte."

65. Macrobius, 20, 13, 140, specifically relates Gaea to Isis, whose many breasts show that "everything that exists draws its sustenance and nourishment from the earth or world of nature." A copy of his work is also recorded in the library of Albert Rubens, Catalogus librorum ... Rubens (as in n. 6), fol. 14, col. 1. The oracular shrine at Delphi had originally belonged to Gaea, before passing to her daughter Themis, followed by Phoebe, and finally Apollo. See Aeschylus, Eumenides Iff., in Aeschylus, trans. Herbert Weir Smyth, vol. 2 (London: W. Heinemann; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1938). See also Pausanias, Description 10.5.5. The choice and disposition of elements around this "Mother" figure in Rubens's painting bring to mind two more descriptions in Pausanias: an effigy of the Mistress (Great Mother) accompanied by images of nymphs and Pans, and her representation with Demeter and Artemis, the latter goddess with serpents and a hunting dog at her side. Pausanias, Description 8.3.2-4.

66. Hubertus Goltzius, Thesaurus Rei Antiqvariae.... (Antwerp: Gerard Nolf-

schat, 1618). The copy I have examined in the rare book collection of the

Library of Congress bears Peiresc's device on its cover and the bookplates of

two subsequent owners. The printed pages are interleaved with numerous handwritten additions. Artemis (Diana) appears as Lucifera, Lucina, Triplex, and so on, whereas the entry on Isis, for instance, is complemented by handwritten names: Isis Paria (Faria), Fructiferae, or Isidi Myrionymae (5- 11). Cf. Ligorio's description of an altar dedicated to Magna Mater and Attis, in the Cesi collection until the end of the 17th century and presently in the Villa Albani, Sala dei Bigliardi, Rome. Ligorio (as in n. 64), 57, 67-68, no. 27, pl. 17a.

67. This connection to ancient sarcophagi was first suggested by Stechow (as in n. 5), 32.

68. One such example is the sarcophagus with the Judgment of Paris presently in the collection of the Villa Doria Pamphilj in Rome, discussed in P. P. Bober and R. Rubinstein, Renaissance Artists and Antique Sculpture: A Handbook of Sources (London: H. Miller; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 150, no. 120. The three nymphs of Spring on this sarcophagus echo the figures of the sisters; the personification of Nature at the right end of this sarcophagus finds its equivalent in the figure of Gaea/Artemis; while the dog seated beside Paris compares to the pet of the Cecropian princesses. For this sarcophagus, see also Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, ed. John Boardman et al. (Zurich: Artemis, 1981-), vol. 7, pt. 1, 183, no. 81.

69. On nymphs as goddesses of lower rank, see Homer, Iliad 24.616; idem, Odyssey 6.105; and Euripides, Helen 805. In the corpus of Greek literature, the term nymph is often applied to any marriageable maiden or a bride. Homer, Iliad 3.130, 9.560, 18.492; Herodotus, Histories 4.172, trans. A. D. Godley, 4 vols. (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press; London: William Heine- mann, 1938-46); Pindar, Olympian Ode 7.14; and Euripides, Medea 150. The fundamental text on the frenzy induced by nymphs, Plato's Phaedrus, became the basis for Marsilio Ficino's discourse on poetic inspiration. See Michael J. B. Allen, The Platonism of Marsilio Ficino: A Study of His Phaedrus Commentary, Its Sources and Genesis (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 3, 31ff.

70. "Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite," 256-70, quoted in Gantz, 140-41. 71. On oracles and the oak tree, see Pausanias, Description 7.21.2. Cf. Virgil,

Georgics 2.16 in Virgil (as in n. 51): "the oaks, deemed by the Greeks oracular." On Pan and the oak, see Pausanias, Description 8.54.4. See Virgil, Georgics 2.493-94: "Happy, too, is he who knows the woodland gods, Pan and old Silvanus and the sister Nymphs!" On nymphs and prophecy, See Pausanias, Description 9.3.9: "About fifteen stades below the peak on which they make the altar is a cave of the Cithaeronian nymphs. It is named Sphragidium, and the story is that of old the nymphs gave oracles in this place."

72. Held, 161. In Claudio Monteverdi's opera L'incoronazione di Poppea (Venice, 1643) the old nurse of Nero's bride, Poppaea, compares herself to an ancient Sibyl: "those who meet me in the street / now say: 'How youthful, still a beauty'-and I, although I know I look / like one of the ancient, legendary sibyls, everyone will flatter me like this / because they think by wooing me / to curry favour with Poppaea." Gian Francesco Busenello, libretto to II Nerone overo l'incoronatione di Poppea, by Claudio Monteverdi (Naples: Roberto Mollo, 1651; reprint, London: Archiv Production, 1996), 3, 6.

73. Pausanias, Description 10.12.6, 10.12.2-3: "The Delians remember also a hymn this woman composed to Apollo. In her poem she calls herself not only Herophile but also Artemis, and the wedded wife of Apollo, saying too sometimes that she is his sister, and sometimes that she is his daughter. These statements she made in her poetry when in a frenzy and possessed by the god. Elsewhere in her oracles she states that her mother was an immortal, one of the nymphs of Ida." See Stephanus (as in n. 51), 733, for a reference to this passage. Pausanias also notes that the Erythraeans, "more eager than any other Greeks to lay claim to Herophile," believed she was a nymph and surnamed her Idaean, because "men of those days called idai places that were thickly wooded."

74. This commonplace is present in Rubens's letter to Nicolas Claude Fabri de Peiresc of March 16, 1636 (Magurn, 403, no. 238), in which he describes a famous ancient landscape in the possession of Cardinal Barberini, concluding that the depicted site may be "a nymphaeum, being like a confluence multorum fontium undique scaturientium [of many fountains flowing from all sides]. That little temple with three female statues could be dedicated to the nymphs of the place, and those on the summit of the hill to certain deities of the fields or mountains."

75. Augustine, De CivitateDei 18.23 (I will be referrring to the translation by Marcus Dods). For the Sibylline lore in the Renaissance and its relation to the exegetical approaches of early Church Fathers, see Anthony Grafton, Joseph Scaliger: A Study in the History of Classical Scholarship, 2 vols. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983-93), vol. 2, 703-5. Renaissance commentators recognized that the Sybils often bore several names. Thus, Stephanus (as in n. 51), 734, noted that the Cumaean Sybil was also known as Erophyle, Amalthea, and Demophile ("Cumana, proprio nomine Amalthea, Erophyle & Demo- phile"), and, more importantly, that in her prophecy, she spoke in secret codes about the name of Jesus ("eius versus ... per numeros exprimitur nomen Jesu").

76. For Rubens's drawings after Michelangelo, see Frits Lugt, Musee du Louvre: Inventaire general des dessins des Ecoles du nord ... Ecole Flamande (Paris: Musees Nationaux, Palais du Louvre, 1949), 20-23.

77. See Edgar Wind, Michelangelo's Prophets and Sibyls, British Academy, Annual Lecture on Aspects of Art, 1960 (London: Oxford University Press, [1977]), 68.

78. Ibid.


79. Virgil, Eclogues 3.1-.10, in Virgil (as in n. 51). Having recognized the Sibylline character of the old serving maid, the viewers of Rubens's painting could trace several elements of this famous passage in the surrounding figures, notably Herse (the Virgin), the infant, and Gaea/Artemis (Lucina) protecting his birth.

80. See Gantz, 111, for the conflation between Pans and Silenoi / Satyroi. On Pan's charming of Diana (Artemis) with the gift of wool, see Virgil, Georgics 3.391-92. Cf. Elizabeth McGrath, "Pan and the Wool," Ringling Mu- seum of ArtJournal, 1983: 52-70. For Pan and the pine tree, see du Choul, 272.

81. A herm of Priapus flanked by two maidens reproduced in Boissard (as in n. 63), 15, pl. 73, exemplifies this function, as underscored by the accompanying inscription, in which the herm is identified as a guardian, custodian, keeper, and propagator of plants, vines, and gardens ("Hortorum Custodi Vigili Conservatori Propaginis VILLI CORVM"). See Goltzius (as in n. 66), 13 ("Priapus Hortorum Custos"). See Philostratus (as in n. 15), 369, for an illustration of Pan and the nymphs, one of whom holds a scythe near his erect phallus. See Gantz, 110-11. On the Renaissance view of Pan, see also Conti, 266-67; and Valeriano, 566. See also Alpers (as in n. 15), 283, for Pan's hybridity as a possible signifier of the half-human, half-divine nature of man; and Held, 161, for Pan's allusion to Hephaestus.

82. See Valeriano, 10.87-88 and ibid., 10.88 for Pan as a symbol for the birth of a prince. See also Philostratus (as in n. 15), 373.

83. For a summary, see Gantz, 110-11. For Pan's help to the gods, see Hyginus, fabula 196, p. 54: "Dii in Aegypto cum Typhoniis immauitatem meteuerunt, Pan iussit ut in feras bestias se conuerterunt quo facilis eum deciperent...." (When the Gods in Egypt feared the savageness of Typho- neus, Pan instructed them to turn themselves into various animals so that they could deceive him easily). See Gregorio Giraldi, De deis gentium libri siue syntagmata XVII, quibus varia ac multiplex deorum gentium historia, imagines, a cognomina.... (Leiden: HaeredesJacob, 1565), 384, on Pan as the Egyptian Mendes. See also Becanus (as in n. 48), 266, with reference to Herodotus, Histories 2.42, 2.46, 2.145, who underscores that Pan was held to be the most ancient among the gods in Egypt ("Panem vetustissimum inter primos Deos apud Aegyptios habitum fuisse"). For Pan as a companion to Dionysus (Bac- chus) in his conquest of India, see Diodorus Siculus, Bibliotheca 2.38.3-6, 3.65.7-8, in Diodorus of Sicily, trans. C. H. Oldfather, 12 vols. (London: W. Heinemann; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1933-67).

84. Pausanias, Description 1.24.3. See Giraldi (as in n. 83), 259, who invokes Pausanias as a grammaticus (philologist) regarding the origin of herms among the Athenians as statues of Hermes without arms or legs ("Statuas Mer- curij ... sine pedibus & manibus, Hermae vocantur").

85. Herodotus, Histories 6.105; and Pausanias, Description 1.28.4, 8.54.6. See Conti, 265: "The ancients recalled many heroic deeds of Pan. He is said to have sent fear one night into the hearts of the Gauls, enemies of the Greeks.... He also aided Athenians in a naval battle ... as Simonides testifies in these lines: Arcadian Pan, goat-footed, upon the Medes, / I've been told, worked for Cecrops' sake / Militiades' victory." See also Giraldi (as in n. 83), 384. Hephaestus was among the father figures of the Athenians, which was reflected in the name of one of the four Attic tribes (Hefaistias) and in the presence of his altar at the shrine of Erechtheus. Pausanias, Description 1.26.5.

86. See Plutarch, Moralia 419b-d, trans. Frank Cole Babbitt et al., 16 vols. (London: W. Heinemann; New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1927-69). See Philostratus (as in n. 15), 374: "Le Grand Pan est Mort...." (Great Pan is dead).

87. Becanus (as in n. 48), 266-67, discusses this connection in book 16, beginning with Plutarch's account of the voice that proclaimed the death of the "Great God Pan." His interpretation of the connection between Pan and Christ is as follows: "Videndum ergo quis Pan Tiberio imperante mortuus fit, ad cuius nuncium diamones & admiratione fuerint perculsi. Expostulat di- abolus cum Christo, quod ante tempus possessione sua vetusta expelleritur: & cum iamse sibi laquem in morte Christi praeparanda nexuise deprehendis- set.... Cum igitur mortus esset Christus, cuius solius morte cacodaemonum imperium est euersum.... Christus igitur magnus Pan est" (It must be recognized that during the reign of the Emperor Tiberius, Pan died, at precisely the time when demons were greatly overturned. The Devil de- manded the surrender of Christ, for he had been banished by him earlier from his original domain: and since he had already detected the snare for himself in the death that was prepared for Christ, when Christ was dead, by his death the imperial throne was defiled and overturned by the Devil.... Therefore Christ is the Great Pan). A direct parallel between Pan and Chris- tianity (through the horns shared by Bacchus, Pan, and Moses) is also drawn in the 1694 Vossius edition ofJunius's De pictura. For this, see F.Junius (as in n. 15), 339 n. 53. See also Bacon (as in n. 15), 24: "the Grecians (either by intercourse with the Egyptians or one way or other) ... heard something of the Hebrew mysteries: for it [Pan's origin] points to the state of the world not considered in immediate creation, but after the fall of Adam, exposed and made subiect to death and corruption: for in that state it was (and remains to this day) the offspring of God and Sinne .. ." and further (32): "Whereas Pan is said to bee (next vnto Mercury) the messenger of the Gods, there is in that a diuine Mystery conteined, for next to the word of God the image of the world proclaimes the power and wisdome diuine, as sings the sacred Poet. Psal. 19.1.... The heavens declare the glory of God, and the firmament sheweth the workes of his hands."

88. H.Junius (as in n. 16), 157, 189, s.v. "Terminus": "Terminus est, homines qui scopus unus agit. / Est immota dies, praefixaque tempora fatis, / Deque ferunt primis ultima iudicium" (Terminus is that one place that guides men. It is always unmoved, and fixed by fate for eternity, and from the earliest things, the final things carryjudgment). In the explicatio (350), he notes that the Terminus signifies the inevitability of death in all created things ("mortem significat, quae ineuitablem habet in res omnes"), adding an explanation to the line "deque ferunt primis" as "an understanding of the present by means of the past [ex praeteritatis praesentia aestimatur]."

89. Alpers (as in n. 15), 185. 90. On the etymology of Moses, see the comment in The New Oxford Anno-

tated Bible with the Apocrypha, ed. Herbert G. May and Bruce M. Metzger (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), 68; J. Gwyn Griffith, "The Egyptian Derivation of the Name Moses," Journal of Near Eastern Studies 12 (1953): 225-31; andJ. R. Towers, "The Name Moses," Journal of Theological Studies 36 (1935): 407-9.

91. See Valeriano, 16.147, on Asclepius and the serpent of Moses, and 14.138, for Moses' esteem of the snake as the most prudent of all animals ("Moses prudentissimum inter bruta Serpentem dixit").

92. Examples of Eusebius's comparisons in Eusebii Caesariensis Episcopi chronicon (Paris: Henricus Stephanus, 1512) include parallels between the travails of Moses in Egypt and the reign of Cecrops in Athens (fol. 29, cols. 108-10) and a direct alignment between the time of Moses and that of Erichthonius as a son of Vulcan and Minerva (fol. 31). Rubens's reliance on Eusebius as an Early Christian authority is underscored in his letter to Peiresc of August 1630, in which he comments on a bronze tripod owned by the French antiquarian as a type of object "so often mentioned in the Ecclesias- tical History of Eusebius ...." Magurn, 366, no. 216.

93. Augustine, De Civitate 18.8, p. 615. 94. Ibid., 615-16. See Valeriano, 384. 95. Augustine, De Civitate 18.11, pp. 617-18, and 618, for Moses' lineage:

'Joshua, the son of Nun, succeeded Moses, and settled in the land of promise the people he had brought in.... He also died, after ruling the people twenty-seven years after the death of Moses, when Amyntas reigned in Assyria as the eighteenth king, Coracos as the sixteenth in Sicyon, Danaos as the tenth in Argos, Erichthonius as the fourth in Athens."

96. I Cor. 15.46-47, in the King James version. 97. Ibid., 15.49. 98. Plato, Cratylus 398c-d, in Plato, trans. H. N. Fowler, 9 vols. (London: W.

Heinemann; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1937-42), vol. 6. 99. Augustine, De Civitate 18.12, pp. 619-20. 100. Ibid., 18.37, p. 646. 101. Du Choul, 312. 102. Becanus (as in n. 48), 61, where he observes that only the doctors of

the Church were able to ascertain the truthfulness beneath the veils of ancient myths ("quidem omnia, quae de Harpocrate & Horo & Apolline dicuntur, & symbolo denotatur, vt vera sunt, dum ad quosum discipulos & quosuis veritatis doctores accommodantur").

103. Pierre Daniel Huet, ... Demonstratio Evangelica.... (Lipsiaea: T. Fritsch, 1703). Naturally, when Huet compares Cecrops to Moses, he is citing Eusebius as his main authority (". . Cecrops, primus ille Atheniensium rex, Mosis effigies est. Aetas convenit in Eusebii Chronico...."). As a clarification of this point, he adds that just as Cecrops instituted certain rites and sacrifices in Athens, Moses performed the same function for the Israelites ("PrimusJovi bovem immolasse dictus est Cecrops, vel quod Vitulum aureum confregerit Moses, vel quod sacrificiorum ritus Israelitas docuerit," 193-94). Huet, 187- 89, produces persuasive proofs of the parallels between Moses and Asclepius through their "discoveries" as infants, the snake as their common attribute, their solar associations, and their shared restorative powers as healers. He further suggests that the doctrine of Moses is implied in the Greek accounts of Pan and Priapus, as well as Hermes and Apollo, albeit in the habitually obscure language of fables. He explains that in the fable of Asclepius we can discern Moses by means of their association with Egypt, since both Asclepius and Moses were termed "Egyptian." He proceeds to relate Moses and Asclepius by a number of shared attributes, including rivers as sites of their discoveries, their radiant countenances, their healing and prophetic powers, and their shared association with the dog as a symbol. I am grateful to Anthony Colantuono for bringing Huet's work to my attention.

104. Magurn, 126-27, no. 75, 129-30, no. 78. Peiresc had praised Rubens's antiquarian sophistication in a letter to di Bagno (Feb. 26, 1622): "In matters of antiquity especially, he [Rubens] possesses the most universal and remarkable knowledge I have ever seen." Ibid., 462.

105. Magurn, 126: "since I find myself deprived of books and my notes, I cannot answer you as precisely as I should like. But I shall tell you what I think as far as my memory serves me ..." Yet, as Magurn notes, 462-63, for all these disclaimers, Rubens gives an impressively detailed account of the history of this temple.

106. Magurn, 126. See Cicero, De natura 2.27.69: "Timaeus in his history with his usual aptness adds to his account of the burning of the temple of Diana of Ephesus on the night on which Alexander was born the remark that this need cause no surprise, since Diana was away from home, wishing to be present when Olympias was brought to bed."

107. The importance of memory is highlighted throughout: "And if I remember rightly, it was ruined seven times, by fire, earthquake, and the


incursions of the barbarians, and always restored by the same peoples up to the time of the Romans. And they, during the reign of Augustus or Tiberius, rebuilt it anew." Magurn, 126.

108. Magurn, 129. 109. Ibid. 110. Ibid., 129-30. 111. Conti, 173. On the rebuilding of the temple, Conti makes a specific

reference to Strabo, Geography 14, trans. Horace Leonard Jones, 8 vols. (Lon- don: W. Heinemann; New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1917-50). For another similarly detailed description of the temple, see du Choul, 78.

112. If we follow the allusion to the Judgment of Paris, we find an echo of Alexander in the story of Paris, who had been exposed on Mt. Ida in his infancy and later in life was accorded that very name. See Apollodorus,

Bibliotheca 2.47: "When Priam learned of the dream from Hecuba, he sent for his son Aesacus, for he was an interpreter of dreams.... He declared that the child was begotten to be the ruin of his country and advised that the babe should be exposed. When the babe was born Priam gave it to a servant to take and expose on Ida; now the servant was named Agelaus. Exposed by him, the infant was nursed for five days by a bear; and, when he found it safe, he took it up, carried it away, brought it up as his own son on his farm, and named him Paris. When he grew to be a young man, Paris excelled many in beauty and strength, and was afterwards surnamed Alexander, because he repelled rob- bers and defended the flocks."

113. Augustine, De Civitate 18.8, p. 615. 114. Conti, 12. 115. Aneau (as in n. 14), fols. c5v-c6r, quoted in Cave (as in n. 12), 176, 345.

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