Page:History of Art in Phœnicia and Its Dependencies Vol 2.djvu/194

 1 72 HISTORY OF ART IN PHOENICIA AND ITS DEPENDENCIES. naked, for his action throws his only garment, a long cloak, entirely behind him. Looking back towards Hercules he seems to threaten him with his right hand, while he presses an uprooted willow across his chest with his left. His hooked nose and curly hair and beard recall the Assyrian sculptors. A curious resemblance may also be traced between the herds which here fly before Hercules and those driven by Assyrian conquerors in the Ninevite reliefs. 1 This myth of the triple Geryon seems to have been very popular in Cyprus, which is surprising when we remember that it was in the distant west that the poets laid the scene of the exploit. 2 The remains of no less than three groups representing' the monster have been found at Golgos. In the largest of the three, all the heads are missing, while they are at least partially preserved in the two smaller. The one we reproduce is the most broken of the three, but some curious details may be noticed upon it (Fig. 112). Thus the three shields are decorated with figures whose contours have suffered not a little, but among which we may distinguish warriors armed with the lance and buckler. Lower down, on what must have been a kind of cuirass, two personages are struggling with lions; their head-dresses and short tunics seem to proclaim Egyptians. The execution of the figure as a whole is heavy ; the legs are bare, the three left are advanced while the three right are kept in the background and only slightly blocked out. No doubt the theme was a most ungrateful one for the sculptor, but the Cypriot artist has made no attempt to lessen its difficulties or to adapt it for plastic treatment. There is nothing in the myth of Geryon to suggest a Phoenician origin. Until proof to the contrary we shall look upon it as Hellenic, both in form and essence ; whence it follows that those monuments in which the triple giant appears date from a time posterior to that which saw the influence of Greek poetry invade the kingdom of Kition, the most essentially Phoenician part of the island. But among the statues found upon the site of what seems to have been a temple of Hercules, there are some whose 1 See Art in Chaldcea and Assyria, Vol. I. Fig. 30, and Vol. II. Fig. 63. - HESIOD, Theogony, v. 287 et seq. Other traditions localise the myth in Epirus, in the neighbourhod of Ambracia or Apollonia (HECATEUS, fragm. 343. SCYLAX, Periplus, p. 26) ; but we do not find that it ever had anything to do with Phoenicia or the island of Cyprus.