Commentary Prepared by Dr. Julia Lenaghan, Ashmolean Museum

A 118
Slab 855 (archer, rider, and hoplite) from the large frieze of the Nereid Monument at Xanthos. London

Relief showing an archer taking aim, a young warrior on a rearing horse, and a bearded hoplite thrusting in the opposite direction. From the large frieze (frieze 1) on the podium of the grave monument of a Lycian dynast (probably Arbinas) at Xanthos. C. 390 - 380 BC

Marble
Architectural Relief
L 1.537 m, D 7 cm

From Xanthos in Lycia. Decorative slab of the podium of a grave monument on a hill within the Hellenistic walls of the city. The exact find location is unknown.
United Kingdom, London, British Museum, 855
c. 390 - 380 BC

Preservation:
On the upper edge, the ends and the center around a vertical dowel hole have been damaged. There is a hole for a section of a clamp on the right corner. On the bottom border, both ends have been damaged and there is clamp hole on the left corner. The left side is extremely damaged and the right side has been worked smooth. On the front of the panel, the upper border, the upper left corner, a central upper portion, and the upper right corner are all missing. Some extant areas are broken or weathered; for instance, the horse’s head, the area below the left arm of the horseman, the head of the foot soldier and his legs and right arm. There is a bronze mass on the upper edge of front left horseshoe.

Description:
The panel depicts three figures in relief: an archer, a mounted warrior, and a foot soldier. The first two figures face the viewer’s left; the third figure faces and moves toward the viewer’s right. Of the archer on the leftmost part of the panel, only his forward foot, the left arm, the right hand, the attic helmet, and a fraction of the upper face with the eye are visible. The left arm is extended and the right hand held near the face; they are in the appropriate position for holding a bow and shooting an arrow. The helmet is round with a large crest, a separate tail behind the crest, and a small visor that ends in volutes. The rest of the body is concealed. A large round shield, the upper border is held up to the level of the ears. Below the shield is drapery that extends to the shins. In front of the back foot and shin are the hooves of the horse behind the archer. Behind the archer and facing the same direction is a man riding a horse. The horse rears upward. Its front legs and head are raised. The man is missing his head and right arm, probably brandishing a weapon. He wears a military cuirass with leather flaps at the bottom, a skirt, a cloak over his shoulders, and fancy footwear. The cloak billows out behind him. The straps of footwear reach to just below the knees. They terminate in leopard’s heads. A trace of a pointed edge at the back of the head indicates that he probably wore a pointed hat or petasus. To the right of the horseman, stands a cuirassed man who lunges to the right. His weight has just landed on his front leg. His back leg extends backward in a long diagonal fashion. His left arm, bent at a 90 degree angle, is held at his side and his left hand grasps a large round shield, the inside of which faces the viewer. His right arm is raised above his head as if brandishing a spear. It overlaps the billowing cloak of the horseman, and the tail of the rearing horse passes behind his right leg and extends between his legs. The soldier wears a simple military cuirass with leather flaps around its bottom border over a long skirt that reaches to his knee and a cloak, the ends of which are knotted over the sternum. One side of the cloak falls over the left shoulder and down around the left arm. The other side of the cloak passes over the right shoulder and flares out behind the right side of the body. On his head, he wears a large crested helmet with a tail behind the crest like that of the archer, The figures appear as if made by a cookie cutter. They are raised surfaces with edges that are flat surfaces perpendicular to the background. The folds of the lunging foot soldier’s skirt and the cloaks of both the horseman and the foot soldier are rendered similarly. Against the body the folds are flat; off the body the folds become prominent ridges with deep hollows between them. They follow parallel sweeping paths.

Discussion:
Slab 855 in the British Museum comes from the so-called ‘Nereid monument’ at Xanthos. The ‘Nereid monument’, excavated in the nineteenth century and transported to London, was a funerary monument in the form of a temple. It was built around 390-380 BC, probably for the dynast Arbinas. It is more fully discussed and described in cat. no. A 116 and A 117. On the tall podium of the monument were two friezes. A smaller frieze, with specific historic references, crowned a lower, larger frieze. It is to this lower larger frieze that Slab 855 belongs. The exact arrangement of the slabs is difficult to recreate; it is generally based on find location, composition and style, and on clamp marks and joins. Yet the records of original find spots are poor and the composition is not always telling. It seems, nonetheless, that slab 855 belonged on the south side, to the left of the corner slab BM 860 C and slab BM 859. The interpretation of the large frieze is difficult because it is impossible to discern two distinct opposing parties. There are nude figures, armed hoplites, figures like hoplites but without cuirasses, horsemen, and Persians in long flowing garments. Details are unusual and inconsistent: the Persians do not wearing fighting equipment nor do they always lose. Childs suggests that the frieze is like that of the Temple of Athena Nike and actually represents different scenes on each of the four sides. In addition, he hypothesizes that the scenes are from a Lycian mythological repertoire and that they borrow only the Greek visual vocabulary. Even the visual vocabulary is often altered to a new purpose. For instance, on slab 855 there is an armed ‘Greek-looking’ soldier who shoots a bow. Shooting a bow was considered an unmanly and un-Greek manner of fighting and in Greek art Greek soldiers were not usually shown with bows. Two distinct workshops have been identified in the sculpture from the monument; they have been labelled M I, assumed to be Greek sculptors, and M II, a local workshop. In the large frieze these two different groups are easily distinguishable. The slabs created by workshop M I feature figures that naturally emerge from the background rather than seem to be cut out with a cookie cutter. Moreover, the figures have greater movement and are not simply overlapped to show depth. In addition, all the extant cuirassed figures have been done by M II and only one extant nude figure has been done by M II. Finally workshop M II is responsible for the representation of helmets with a separate tail behind the plume. Slab 855 was made certainly made by workshop M II. It has stiff, superimposed figures that are attached to the background by projecting bands of marble perpendicular to the background. Both the archer and the lunging foot soldier also feature the helmet with a tail. J. Lenaghan

Bibliography:
A.H. Smith, A Catalogue of Sculpture in the Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, British Museum II (London 1900) 10-12, 14-15, no. 855 catalogue entry
W. A. P. Childs and P. Demargne, Fouilles de Xanthos VIII : Le Monument des Néréides, Le décor sculpté (Paris 1989)
B. S. Ridgway, Fourth-Century Styles in Greek Sculpture (London 1997) 78-79, 83-84, discussion of the ‘Nereid Monument’, summarizes research to date and provides bibliography