Religious ritual in ancient Greece regularly incorporated music, so much so that certain instruments or vocal genres frequently became associated with the religious veneration of specific gods. The Attic cult of Pan and the Nymphs should also be included among this group: though little is often known about the specific ritual practices, the literary and visual evidence associated with the cults make repeated reference to music performed on the panpipes—and to auditory and sensory stimuli more generally—as a prominent feature of the worship of these gods. I consider the Vari Cave, sacred to Pan and the Nymphs, together with the surviving marble votive reliefs from that space, to explore the sounds and sensations associated with the veneration of the rural gods. I argue that the sensory experience offered by the cave and the images within it would have enhanced the worshiper's experience of the ritual and the gods for whom they were performed. In this way, visual and auditory perceptions blurred together to create a powerful experience of the divine.
As gods dance, women twirl in choruses, and men leap in kōmos revels on Athenian red-figure vases, their animate bodies must be made to conform to the rounded shape of the vessels. Occasionally, these vases are even included in the images themselves, particularly within the kōmos revel, where the participants incorporate vessels into their dance as props, markers of space, and tools to engage new dance partners. Positioning these scenes within their potential sympotic context, I analyze the vases held by the dancers according to the ancient viewer’s own possible use of these physical vessels. The symposiasts’ own dextrous interaction with the objects echoes the dancers’ behaviors, so that human and ceramic bodies come together in shared movement. The handling of vases thus suggests a tactile, embodied experience shared between dancers and viewers; by evoking viewers’ familiarity with handling similar vessels, the vase-paintings invite viewers to join in the dance.
This paper serves as a brief introduction to a recent MOISA-sponsored panel at the Annual Meeting of the Society of Classical Studies, held in Washington, D.C. from January 2–5, 2020. Three of these papers will appear in the current and subsequent issues as articles that, together with two additional contributions, are broadly dedicated to the theme of music and dance in Greek and Roman antiquity.
The presence of Hermes on many Attic fourth-century BCE votive reliefs dedicated to Pan and the Nymphs is a common but unexpected feature of the corpus. Although he is not mentioned in the dedications inscribed onto the reliefs, Hermes nevertheless occupies a prominent position within the images as leader of the Nymphs’ dance. The incongruity between the dedication and the sculpted scenes is accounted for by considering the votive reliefs’ ritual function within Athenian religion and the genealogical relationship established between Hermes and Pan by the Homeric Hymn to Pan. It is argued that the votive reliefs, as expressions of Athenian visual theology, emphasize Hermes and Pan as coordinated figures within the reliefs, suggesting that the two gods work together to integrate the cult of the Nymphs within Athenian religious life.
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