Finding Surrealism in Antiquity--Unintentional Bizarreness in Plato

JF Ptak Science Books   Quick Post

I was grazing through a new find, Veterum Illustrium Philosophorum, Poetarum, Rhetorum et Oratorum Imagines ...by Josseph Petri Bellorii, a lovely work illustrating great thinkers of antiquity, and printed in Rome in 1739.  And among the busts and statues of Pythagoras and Euclide and Socrates and so on, the holy thinks and philosophers and orators and poets, I found this unusual non-statue of Plato. "Marmoreus Platonis Herma Truncato Capite" reads the legend of the not-completed statue, and it describes the work on many levels.  Of course, the eye is drawn instantly to the center--and, well, there you have it.  The surviving bit, half-survived.

Decapitated, indeed.  There's a lot that could be done with "Herma", but I think the best is to take it for the root of hermeneutics--the study of the theory of interpretation--which comes from the god Hermes¹, the messenger to the mortals and inventor of fire.  Certainly the statue as it stands is open to discussion.

As it turns out fully 10% of the images in this book were like this one, which means I guess that finding fitfully/partially-completed statues like this of Plato was much more common than I realized. Or imagined. 

I wonder what Plato would've done with this one.

Notes:

1.  Hermes also had a son, Hermaphroditius, with Aphrodite, a person created with a nymph, Salmacis, creating a person endowed with the traits of both sexes. 

Comments

[Theparsley.wordpress.com]

It's not a "non-statue" or an "uncompleted" statue: it's a Herm, a very common sculptural form in ancient Greece. They depicted Hermes, and commonly consisted of a plain shaft with a head and a...er, shaft. A search of Google Images will turn up plenty of examples.

http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/herm/g/040510Herm.htm

[John F. Ptak]

Thanks for that correction! I had no idea, obviously, that this was the final form of the statue, and it does of course change the reading of the post--but I think I'll leave this alone for now and change the whole thing to accommodate the correct info later.

[Theparsley.wordpress.com]

This image of Plato as a headless Herm may be a reference to the infamous "Herm-breaking" of 415 B.C.E., when sacred Herm figures throughout Athens (people had them at their home entrances as protective guardian figures) were smashed and desecrated by parties unknown on the eve of the Athenian expedition to Sicily.

The controversy over this terrible impiety lasted for years, and reverberated all the way to the death of Socrates and beyond.

It would be interesting to know if there is any other text in the book surrounding the image of the headless Plato-Herm; perhaps the implication is that Plato's work or legacy has been desecrated in a manner analogous to the herm-breaking (but by whom?)

I also found this, about an extant sculpture of Plato as a Herm:

http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2003/04/09_plato.shtml