Page:Folk-lore - A Quarterly Review. Volume 14, 1903.djvu/299

 Greek Votive Offerings. 273

devotion, dedicated a carving or painting of themselves and felt that they had combined piety with practical sense. This substitute for themselves would be set up in the god's temenos and would win for the donor all the rewards of a devotee. Such, if I am right, is the root idea of that large class of votive offerings, which Dr. Rouse describes as " the human act blessed by the god." The dairyman, for instance, virtually says " At your service ! " by dedicating the bronze figure of a man milking a cow in the precinct of his divine patron, whilst he himself continues to sell his milk to human customers outside.

On this showing we might naturally expect to find numerous portraits among our dedications. But Dr. Rouse will have none of them. " Portraits," he exclaims rather dogmatically, " are out of the question, so is all idea of substitution by similitude " (p. 284). " It is true," he adds later (p. 371 f.), "that many of the examples which I have recorded have been taken by others to be portraits, but I have found no reason to believe that the portrait as such was ever dedicated by a Greek until the votive dedica- tion had lost its meaning." Dr. Rouse properly excludes such a statue as that of Miltiades in the Marathonian monument : " It makes all the difference in the world that Miltiades was part of an ideal group" (p. 372). Similarly he would, I suppose, exclude the athlete-statues at Olympia, for, though Pliny expressly states that, if a man had been thrice successful in the games, his statue w'as a portrait (Plin. nat. hist. 34. 16), yet it might be maintained that the TpLcroXvjxirtoviicri'i was the ideal athlete. Again, statues and pictures of priests might be ruled out of court on the ground that they " were doubtless properly characterised and .... represented the priest's function " (p. 264), or on various other conceivable grounds. Never- theless, that ordinary worshippers dedicated their own portraits is a supposition for which the antecedent proba- bilities are so strong that I cannot accept Dr. Rouse's

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