Pausanias and modern perceptions ofprimordial Greeks
Milette Gaifman*
The history of the selection and extraction of Pausanias 7.22.4 — a passage about
thirty square stones in the city of Pharae in Achaea — has proved one of the most
significant matrices for the discussion of the primitive in both art and religion in
Greece. From Winckelmann, via a great German tradition, to Tylor and Frazer in
Britain, this piece explores the development of arguments about and interpretationsof this text from the eighteenth century to the early part of the twentieth century.
In book seven of the Periegesis we read the following:1
Close to the image stand about thirty square stones: these the people of Pharae revere, giving
to each stone the name of a god. In the olden time all the Greeks worshipped unwrought
stones instead of images (agalmata).
3st–kasi d1 2gg0tata toA 2g0lmato” tetr0gwnoi l0qoi tri0konta m0lista
2riqm0n� to0tou” sŒbousin o3 Fare8”, 3k0stN qeoA tin1” 5noma 2pilŒgonte”. t1
d1 7ti palai0tera ka1 to8” p8sin E2 llhsi tim1” qe8n 2nt1 2galm0twn e9con 2rgo1
l0qoi.
In modern scholarship, Pausanias’ Periegesis 7.22.4 is probably the most frequently
cited passage from ancient literature on Greek litholatry.2 Its appeal can be ex-
plained not only in the first-hand portrayal of the people of Pharae engaging in
stone worship in the second century AD, but also in the broader assertion, which
offers an entry into the inaccessible recesses of the past; in the depths of antiquity,
throughout Hellas, all Greeks alike, venerated rough rocks in place of images.
In this article I examine modern readings of this account, beginning with Johann
Joachim Winckelmann and ending with Sir James George Frazer. The exploration
of a broad range of receptions of one detail from the text, rather than the Periegesis as
a whole, reveals not only the vast scope of Pausanias’ readership and his work’s place
within a range of different scholarly discourses, but also some of the major twists
and turns in modern historiography of the subjects on which this particular
*Classics and Art History Departments, Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA.
1 Pausanias 7.22.4. Translation adapted from Frazer (1898: 1.361–2).
2 See for example in addition to the literature discussed below, Hiller von Gaertringen
et al. (1899–1902: 3.64); Burkert (1985: 85); Nilsson (1974: 206); Freedberg (1989: 66);
Steiner (2001: 82); Donohue (2005: 56).
Classical Receptions Journal Vol 2. Iss. 2 (2010) pp. 254–286
� The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved.For Permissions, please email: [email protected]:10.1093/crj/clq015
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passage reflects. The variety of inferences made from the same passage by German
and Anglo-Saxon scholars from the second half of the eighteenth century to the early
decades of the twentieth, encapsulates a twofold story concerning the Periegesis as an
ancient text, on the one hand, and modern perceptions of the earliest history of
Greek religious art, on the other. From the perspective of Pausanias’ work, this
range of interpretations reveals the degree to which the periegete’s descriptions not
only invite the reading of selected fragments, but also facilitate the excerption of
certain sections, and their subsequent incorporation into entirely different, some-
times contradictory, contexts and arguments. This process of de-contextualization
and re-contextualization is helped by Pausanias’ self-construction as a mere pre-
senter of monuments and ideas, who offers relatively little personal opinion on his
dryly painted picture of Greece. In the account of litholatry in Pharae, Pausanias’
manner allows for the excerpted statement to be deployed as support for a variety of
theories that are often incompatible with each other. By quietly shifting from veri-
fiable specifics regarding the city of Pharae in the second century AD and its thirty
quadrangular stones to vague generalizations concerning the entirety of Greece at an
unspecified point in the past, when unknown numbers of rocks of unmentioned
form were venerated, Pausanias has set a stage for the free usage of the concrete and
the notional as the bases for very different modern reconstructions of Greek
antiquity.
From the perspective of modernity, the texts discussed here, which vary greatly
yet rely on the same ancient passage, reveal Pausanias’ crucial place in modern
reconstructions of the earliest stages of Greek art and religion. The path paved by
these works, from Winckelmann’s grand opus of 1764,3 to Frazer’s Folk-Lore in the
Old Testament of 1918,4 captures some of the trends in the historiography of
Classical Studies in German and British circles of this period.5 In this context,
the stones of Pharae, which in Pausanias’ original text stood right next to an
image, a semi-figural herm,6 and were integral to the religious and visual landscape
of second-century AD Greece, have acquired the role of key witnesses of the earliest
phases of Greek culture. Whereas in Periegesis 7.22.4 the structuring of the passage,
specifically the generalizing comment regarding greater antiquity, merely suggests
that the square blocks of Pausanias’ times resemble the practices of the past, these
nuances have been obliterated through the rhetorical strategy of excerption and
quotation in most accounts. In contrast to Pausanias’ distinctions between Greece
under Roman rule and imagined primordiality, modern readings have mostly rele-
gated the square stones to the depths of antiquity, the age of rough rocks. They have
been seen as symptomatic of the earliest phases of Greek art and culture and as
fundamentally marginal to the great achievement of Greek art.
3 Winckelmann (1764).
4 Frazer (1918).
5 Vick (2002); Williamson (2004).
6 This is described in the previous sentence of the same section, Periegesis 7.22.3.
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Whereas this view remained essentially constant, from Winckelmann’s continen-
tal Enlightenment to Frazer’s Late Victorian Britain, the position of Pharae’s blocks
in the perceptions of Greek religious art specifically shifted profoundly. If for
Winckelmann and for early-nineteenth-century Classicists stone worship was inte-
gral to the origins of the grand Kunstgeschichte of the Greeks, in the course of the
nineteenth century Greek litholatry effectively lost much of its place in German and
Anglo-Saxon histories of Hellenic art and visual culture. At the time when the field
of anthropology and the notion of aniconism acquired their modern meanings, the
venerated stones came to be examined primarily through an anthropological rather
than an art-historical lens. Whereas in the late eighteenth century and early nine-
teenth century these stones were seen as the seeds of Greek art, by the early twen-
tieth century they came to exemplify fetishism, the lowest stratum in Greek religious
experience and behaviour.
The Stones of Pausanias’ Pharae: from the Seeds of Greek Art to Aniconic Symbols
Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717–68) was the father of the modern discipline of
the history of art and the greatest promoter of modern philhellenism.7 In his grand
opus, Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums, first published in 1764,8 the stones of
Pharae feature in the first chapter.9 After his brief overview of the arts of the Orient,
Winckelmann states:10
Among the Greeks, art began much later than in the Eastern lands but with the same
simplicity, such that the Greeks appear, as they themselves report, not to have gathered
the first seeds for their art from another people but rather to have been its original inventors.
For they already visibly honoured thirty deities before they gave them human form; they
were content to represent them by a rough block or a rectangular stone, as the Arabs and the
Amazons did.11
7 See, for example, Marchand (1996: 7–13); Potts (2000, 2006).
8 Winckelmann (1764); for a recent edition with commentary, see Borbein (2002).
9 Furthermore, on Winckelmann’s readings of Pausanias see the papers by Katherine
Harloe and Maria Pretzler in this issue.
10 Winckelmann (2006: 112).
11 Winckelmann (2002: 8).
Bey den Griechen hat die Kunst, ob gleich viel spater, als in den Morgenlandern, mit
einer Einfalt ihren Anfang genommen, daß sie, aus dem was sie selbst berichten, von
keinem andern Volke den ersten Saamen zu ihrer Kunst geholet, sondern die ersten
Erfinder scheinen konnen. Denn es waren schon dreyßig Gottheiten sichtbar verehret,
da man sie noch nicht in menschlicher Gestalt gebildet hatte, und sich begnugete, die-
selben durch einen unbearbeiteten Klotz, oder durch viereckigte Steine, wie die Araber
und Amazonen thaten, anzudeuten.
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The reference to the thirty deities hints at what becomes apparent from the text’s
notes,12 that Winckelmann used Pausanias’ description of Achaian Pharae as the
source for his vision of primordial Greeks. While drawing upon Pausanias’ text,
Winckelmann’s interpretative gloss altered the original; he transformed Pausanias’
thirty rectangular blocks, that were venerated in the second-century AD and named
as gods, into thirty divinities, who were visibly worshipped in the depths of time,
either as rough rocks or quadrangular stones. This re-presentation served
Winckelmann’s objective of offering a seemingly authentic portrayal of the very
beginnings of Greek art, rather than the picture of Pharae under Roman rule
combined with the hazy image of the distant past, which he found in Pausanias’ text.
By blurring the original passage’s distinctions between rough and square rocks,
between the remote past and the second century AD, Winckelmann could make a
claim which was fundamental to his project, namely that the Greeks themselves were
the inventors of their art. The notion of the indigenousness of Greek artistic pro-
duction was one of the cornerstones of Winckelmann’s Geschichte, whose purpose
was not only to describe the holistic path of image-making in antiquity, but also to
demonstrate the superiority of Greek art. Within his universal model for the devel-
opment of an artistic tradition from humble beginnings that were driven by neces-
sity, through the ascent to greatness and beauty to its eventual downfall, the art of
the Hellenes was to stand out.13 Its excellence was the result of Greece’s climate,
system of government, the appreciation of artists and the application of art.14 If this
eminence was the consequence of Greece’s natural conditions (among other causes),
then inevitably Greek art could not be anything but indigenous; it must be necessi-
tated by the blessed land of Hellas and its people.
Pausanias’ Pharae provided a powerful ancient support for this view. In contrast
to Herodotus, who asserted that carving images was imported to Greece from
Egypt,15 the claim of the periegete that Greeks in primordial times worshipped
stones in place of images provided an important endorsement for Winckelmann’s
perceptions. The notion that the functions fulfilled by agalmata were in earlier
periods accomplished by simple rough rocks could suggest that the very need for
artistic representation was already present in Greece in the depths of time; it was
12 Winckelmann originally refers to Pausanias 50.7. on p. 579. l.32, which is Pausanias
Periegesis 7.22.4, see Winckelmann (2006: 123).
13 On Winckelmann’s position in the historiography of the history of art, and its philhel-
lenic agenda, see Potts (2000: 11–46, 2006) with further bibliography.
14 These points are summarized in the opening of the fourth chapter of the first part of the
Geschichte. See Winckelmann (2002: 212, 2006: 186).
15 Herodotus Histories 2.4.2 (Text and translation A. D. Godley, Loeb ed.)
The Egyptians first brought into use the names of the twelve gods, which the Greeks
took over from them, and were the first to assign altars and images (agalmata) and temples
to the gods, to carve figures in stone. �u0dek0 te qe8n 2pwnum0a” 7legon pr0tou”
A2gupt0ou” nom0sai ka1 E2 llhna” par1 s’Œwn 2nalabe8n, bwmo0” te ka1 2g0lmata ka1
nho1” qeo8si 2pone8mai s’Œa” pr0tou” ka1 �Ja 2n l0qoisi 2ggl0yai.
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merely unrealized. In other words, the necessity for art was Hellenic. Originally, it
was visible only through the rough or the rectangular rock, and it was only a matter
of time for this urge to develop gradually into mimetic representation.
Winckelmann’s insistence on a gradual development further bolstered his agenda.
Art was the natural product of Greece, and not of external influence. To employ one
of his own favourite organic metaphors, Winckelmann could concede that the seeds
of art were disseminated across many ancient territories, and may have yielded some
of their earlier crops in the Orient. Indeed, in their fundamental need for art the
Greeks were no different from other peoples,16 who also deployed stones in order to
worship their gods. It was on Hellenic ground however, that these initial kernels
brought forth their most delectable fruit.
Winckelmann’s adoption of Pausanias as a faithful witness for the earliest evi-
dence of the innateness of Hellenic art surfaces more clearly in the second edition of
the Geschichte, which was published posthumously in 1776. Here, he specifies that
the thirty divinities, which were not rendered in human form in great antiquity,
could still be witnessed in Pausanias’ times in the city of Pharae in Arcadia.17
Whereas nowhere in the original does the periegete claim that the Pharaean
square blocks were survivors from the depths of the past but rather silently implies
that these recall ancient customs, in the 1776 version of the Geschichte Pharae’s
venerated rocks have become genuine fossils from the very beginning of Greek
civilization. This re-presentation of Periegesis 7.22.4 reveals once again
Winckelmann’s loose approach to his source, the interpretative possibilities made
possible by the process of excerption, and the extent to which his history was
agenda-driven.
Similarly, Winckelmann’s error in placing Pharae in Arcadia rather than Achaia
seems not to result from ignorance about its location,18 since in the Anmerkungen
uber die Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums, which was published in Winckelmann’s
lifetime in 1767, he correctly reports that Pharae was in Achaia.19 The assertion of
the second edition of the Geschichte emerges as an alteration of the original for the
sake of ideology; by moving Pharae from Achaia to Arcadia, Winckelmann could
support the claim made in both versions of his grand opus that Arcadia preserved the
oldest forms of art.20 This idea fits the broader Early Modern vision of Arcadia as a
16 In the same passage Winckelmann cites Maximus of Tyre’s description of the veneration
of stones by Arabs, in Discourses II.8c-d, and the description of the stone worship by the
amazons found in Apollonius Argonautica 2.1176.
17 ‘ . . . and these thirty stones were found in the city of Pharae, in Arkadia, still in Pausanias’
time.’ ‘ . . . und diese dreyßig Steine befanden sich in der Stadt Phera, in Arcadien, noch
zu den Zeiten des Pausanias.’
18 Commentators on the passage suggest that the error stems from Homeric references to a
city named Phere and Pherai in Arcadia. See Borbein et al. (2007: 73).
19 Borbein et al. (2008: 29).
20 Winckelmann (2002: 8–9).
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timeless land untouched by progress,21 a notion whose roots can be traced, at least in
part, back to Pausanias’ rendition of the region as profoundly antiquated.22 As
support for his assertion regarding the antiquity of art in Arcadia, Winckelmann
refers to Pausanias’ claim that the Arcadians seem to be particularly fond of the
tetragonon agalma, the square-shaped image, or in other words the semi-figural
hermaic form.23 By displacing the thirty stones of Pharae to Arcadia,
Winckelmann effectively amplified the impression made by Pausanias’ descriptions
of the region as old-fashioned, so that it could be envisioned as the locus of all
ancient art forms, not only the semi-figural herms described by the periegete but also
the simple stones.
Winckelmann’s clustering of the alleged earliest forms of art in the time-capsule
of Arcadia served to illustrate the process of evolution in art which he had postu-
lated.24 The visitor to Arcadia could witness the earliest developmental stages of
Greek art from the simple stone to the semi-figural herm, all of which belong in the
same section of his scheme. Rough stones, blocks, and herms attest the origins and
earliest development of art in Greece, and are the essential beginning points in the
grand story of the art of Hellas. At the same time, they do not possess any of the
features of the perfected and the beautiful, the main subject of the Geschichte.
Furthermore, whereas these rocks were the first evidence for the necessity of art,
it was wood with its natural malleability which allowed Daedalus to create the first
fully figural images,25 the earliest holistic representations of the human figure.
Consistent with this idea, and despite the position of the pillars of Pharae as corner-
stones in Winckelmann’s construct of Greek superiority, they do not receive any
attention in the main core of his book. These are effectively the marginal, nearly
invisible substructures of the grand edifice, not the shoots or the flowers of the
Greek ideal.
Against the backdrop of Winckelmann’s propositions,26 nineteenth-century
German intellectuals engaged in a debate on the origins and evolutions of Greek
art and culture, which included a spectrum of views, ranging from Winckelmannian
perceptions of indigenousness and gradual evolution to models which espoused
21 This notion was famously captured in Nicolas Poussin’s Et in Arcadia Ego of 1637–8.
Winckelmann’s esteem for Poussin is apparent in his reference to this artist’s works in
order to illustrate his notion of beauty. See Winckelmann (2002: 283) with Borbein et al.
(2008: 225).
22 Pretzler (1999).
23 Pasuanias Periegesis 8.48.6. Pausanias notes other sites in Arcadia in: 8.31.7, 8.32.1
8.35.6
24 That this is the meaning of tetragonon agalma is clear from Pausanias Periegesis 8.32.1.
25 Winckelmann (2002: 8, 2006: 112).
26 For Winckelmann’s impact on the field of classical archaeology in nineteenth-century
Germany, see Bruer (1994).
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external, primarily Oriental influences, and sudden shifts.27 This discourse was
more than a theoretical discussion of the earliest histories of the Greeks; it was a
highly charged locus for formulating ideologies about the nature of national identity,
particularly of the German people, through propositions regarding the Hellenes.28
Within this learned framework, Pharae’s stones were invoked time and again both by
those subscribing to Winckelmann’s postulates as well as those who questioned
them.
Among these intellectuals was the Classicist Georg Friedrich Creuzer
(1771–1858), one of the more radical challengers of the Winckelmannian model
and the author of the highly controversial Symbolik und Mythologie der alten
Volker, besonders der Griechen, first published in 1810–2.29 In this book, Creuzer
set out a broad and complex argument that esoteric symbolism formed the universal
foundation for religious experience throughout the ancient world; this cosmology,
which was based on the observations of the heavens and expressed in symbols,
originated among the Brahmanic priests, was transformed into myths which ren-
dered it more comprehensible, and spread from India all the way to Greece.30
Creuzer’s book was harshly criticized. The Protestant philologist who taught in
Heidelberg — a Catholic university — was attacked for shifting the emphasis
from Greece to the Orient, for undermining the admired values of freedom and
individuality, for digressing from the methodological norms of Classical Philology,
as well as for crypto-Catholicism.31 Despite the fact that to a large extent Creuzer
was on the losing side in the immediate aftermath of the scandal, and that his work
was never translated into English, the Symbolik exercised an immense influence,
which extended far beyond the study of Classical antiquity, leaving its mark on
figures such as Georg W. F. Hegel, Gustave Flaubert, and Carl Jung.32
Pausanias’ account of the stones in Pharae is cited in the first edition of the
Symbolik in support of an argument on the symbolic nature of images of the
divine.33 In place of Winckelmann’s Enlightened, effectively secularized vision of
Greek art, Creuzer claimed that the image of the god should express a
27 Notably, this discourse was one of the targets of Martin Bernal, who attacked the German
emphasis on Greek autonomy as driven among other factors by racism; yet as many have
pointed out, his position is one-sided and does not take into account the multiplicity of
factors influencing the thinking of this period. See Bernal (1987); Lefkowitz and Rogers
(1996); Bernal and Moore (2001). On German Orientalism see Marchand (2001);
Marchand (2004); Marchand (2009).
28 Vick (2002).
29 Creuzer (1810–2).
30 For a general overview of the Symbolik, see Williamson (2004: 127–135).
31 See for example one of the harshest critiques, Voss (1824–6). For further overview of the
scandal, see Williamson (2004: 135–45); Marchand (2009: 66–71).
32 Williamson (2004: 122); McGuire (1974: 122–3); on his impact in Britain, see Louis
(2005: 336–7).
33 Creuzer (1810–2: vol. I, 172).
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comprehensive theology of the divine being.34 Essentially, all forms of representa-
tions of the gods, whether fully naturalistic or hybrid types, such as the multi-
breasted Artemis of Ephesos, are symbolic. Despite the fundamental difference
with Winckelmann, Creuzer follows him in taking Pausanias’ account of Pharae
as the beginning point for the history of Greek image-making. Like Winckelmann,
whom he cites, he claims that this city preserved the earliest forms of Greek art.35
However, rather than evidence for indigenousness, in the Creuzerian scheme these
stones served the theory on the primacy of the symbol; according to Creuzer,
Pharae’s stones prove that initially all divinities resembled each other, and that
therefore in the earliest phase attributes were essential, for thanks to them a
visual differentiation between the otherwise identical monuments was possible.
These stones therefore prove that attributes, or signs, preceded figural images.
According to Creuzer’s history of religious art, these distinctive attributes were
abandoned over time, and the human form came to be regarded as essential. Art
separated itself from incidental elements and eventually reached a point in which the
divine could be seen in naturalistic corporeal representations. Although Creuzer’s
approach is radically different from the Winckelmannian model, his history both
starts and climaxes in the same place. In fact, he cites verbatim Winckelmann’s
evocative account of naturalistic images of the Greek gods as embodiments of the
ideal.36 Following this citation, Creuzer asserts that by this stage they were no
longer reminders or allegories of divinities, but that the supreme images in
Winckelmann’s history of Greek art were the highest ‘essences’ (Wesen) of worship
itself, being not only the highest ideas that art could create, but also, as Creuzer
emphasizes in the original text, Gottersymbole.37 Despite the significant shift in the
role of images from mnemonic devices and allegorical references to embodiments of
the essence of the divine, symbolism remained constant from the age of the simple
stones of Pharae to the era of the Greek ideal.
Whereas in this section of the Symbolik Creuzer deployed the stones of Pharae to
support his theory without paying much attention to their possible meaning in their
own right, in the third edition of his grand opus he comments on their significance.
In a discussion of hieratic images, Creuzer bolsters his universalist position by
arguing that the representation of divinities in what he calls multi-formed (mehr-
gestaltet) images, — forms that do not conform to the Winckelmannian ideal —,
such as a four-handed Apollo, or a two-headed silenus, was widespread and existed
34 Creuzer (1819–21: vol. I, 139): ‘Das Gotterbild sollte ein Inbegriff aller moglichen
Bezeichnungen seyn, die man bei seinem Begriffe denken mochte; es sollte Alles aus-
drucken, was eine inhaltsreiche Theologie von dem gottlichem Wesen aussagte.’
35 Creuzer (1819–21: vol. I, 144).
36 Creuzer (1819–21: vol. I, 145). Creuzer cites from Winckelmann’s discussion of ideal
figures, originally published in Winckelmann (1767). See Winckelmann and Gottfried
(1817: 83 no. 15).
37 Creuzer (1819–21: vol. I, 145–6).
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among a variety of peoples.38 In the footnote to his list of examples he asserts that,
prior to herms, stones occupied the place of cult statues (Cultusbilder), as is explicit
in Pausanias’ testimony. Tucked between parentheses, we find a comment which
endows the stones with a cosmological meaning: ‘7.22.3 is a passage about the 30quadrangular stones in Pharae, each named after a god; unmistakably, this is a
designation (Bezeichnung) of the 30 calendar-gods of the days of the month.’39
Here, the number thirty allowed for the Pharaean stones to confirm Creuzer’s uni-
versal cosmology and symbolism. Each stone is interpreted as a designator of the
divinities whose identity is determined by the heavenly bodies. The stones of Pharae
came to offer a firm proof for symbolic cosmology in Greek antiquity through
Creuzer’s reading of Periegesis 7.22.4.
In contrast to the harsh reception of Creuzer’s Symbolik in the Protestant north,
southern Germany greeted the book warmly. Its Catholic overtones could be seen, at
least in part, as the grounds for its wholehearted welcome in Catholic Bavaria.40 The
leading Classicist in Munich at the time was Friedrich Wilhelm Thiersch (1784–
1860), who was an admirer of Creuzer’s work,41 and like him a self-aware humanist
as well as a Protestant who taught in a Catholic environment. In fact, despite
Thiersch’s Protestantism, in 1829 he was entrusted by the royal court with the
task of restructuring the Bavarian educational system, as Wilhelm von Humboldt
had done in Prussia in 1809.42 In this context, Thiersch can be seen as a genuine
neohumanist who was engaged in the project whose purpose was the formation
(Bildung) of mankind so that the humanity (Menschheit) within each and every
person would be fully formed.43
Thiersch’s history of the earliest phases of Greek religious art and his approach
to Periegesis 7.22.4 incorporates the notion of symbol and intercultural exchange,
found in Creuzer’s theory; at the same time reinstates Winckelmann’s idea that
fully figural reprsentations were images (Bilder) rather than symbols. Upon closer
examination, however, this version is strikingly resonant with Thiersch’s own biog-
raphy, his internationalism, his role as the usher of philhellenic education in Bavaria,
and his overt adherence to Protestantism in a Catholic context.
38 Creuzer (1836–42: vol. I, 55).
39 Creuzer (1836–42: vol. I, 55): ‘Fruher als die eigentlichen Hermen vertraten Steine die
Stelle der Cultusbilder, woruber das audruckliche Zeugniss des Pausanias vorliegt
(7.22.3 von den 30 viereckten Steinen zu Pharae, jeder nach einem Gotte genannt;
unverkennbare Bezeichnung von 30 Kalendergottern der Monatstage);’
40 Notably the Munich Glyptothek, whose construction began in 1816 under the auspices
of the Crown Prince Ludwig, offered an illustration of Creuzer’s vision; see Williamson
(2004: 144), with further bibliography. See the reference to Creuzer’s Symbolik in the
museum’s description, which was written by its architect Leo von Klenze: Klenze and
Schorn (1837: 31).
41 Kirchner (1996: 60).
42 Sandys (1908: 110–2); Kirchner (1996: 5–155); Benes (2008: 178–9).
43 On the significance of Bildung see, in particular, Mann (2005: 144–5).
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In lectures first published in the years 1816, 1818, and 1825 under the title Ueberdie Epochen der Bildenden Kunst,44 Thiersch followed Herodotus in postulating that
the source for Greek image-making was the Eastern Mediterranean, primarily
Egypt. He argued that initially the Pelasgians, — an ethnic group typically
known from ancient literature as the primeval inhabitants of Greece —,45 did not
differentiate between the variety of gods either in name or in personality, and that
they had symbols in the form of rough stones.46 He finds support for the first part of
this claim in Herodotus’ assertion that formerly the Pelasgians did not refer to the
gods by individual names but rather called them ‘gods’, theoi.47 The second part
finds its ancient proof in Periegesis 7.22.4, namely in Pausanias’statement that in
still greater antiquity all Greeks worshipped rough rocks, which Thiersch quotes in
full. In this conflation Thiersch positions himself midway between Winckelmann’s
indigenousness and Creuzer’s symbolism; he adopts the idea of litholatry as native to
Greece and substantiates the point further, by equating Pausanias’ generic primeval
Greeks with the Pelasgians. At the same time, the local stone is identified as a
symbol, not as an object which proves an innate urge for art.
According to Thiersch, whereas the symbolic rock was Greek, plastic art was an
import; it was brought to Hellas by settlers, and even existed earlier among the
Greeks of the diaspora.48 The idea that the development in the visual arts was an
outcome of outside influences recalls Creuzer’s universalism, and places Thiersch in
a German intellectual lineage which viewed cultural transmission as central in
human history.49 From a biographical perspective, this is consistent with
Thiersch’s own intercultural position as an avid traveller50 interested in world
affairs, a self-conscious Christian admirer of the pagan Greeks, and a Protestant
educator in a Catholic environment.51 Along with Thiersch’s internationalism
comes an unequivocal rejection of evolution. In place of Winckelmann’s gradual
addition of bodyparts to pillars and poles, Thiersch argues that complete images
came to take the place of stones and planks; the old idols were not discarded but were
preserved as objects of worship. For proof he turns first to the stones of Pharae. For
Thiersch, these were nothing less than holy monuments. The locals worshipped
44 Thiersch (1816, 1819, 1825).
45 For a discussion of the complex identity of the Pelasgians in Herodotus, see Sourvinou-
Inwood (2003).
46 Thiersch (1829: 19).
47 Herodotus Histories 2.52. For further discussion of this passage and the significance of
calling each of the gods by individual names, see Thomas (2000: 275–8).
48 Thiersch (1829: 19–20).
49 This line of thought is exemplified by Johann Gottfried Herder’s critique of
Winckelmann. See Vick (2002: 485–9). Further on Herder and his interest in the
Orient in particular, see Marchand (2009: 43–52).
50 This worldview of a shared cultural heritage particularly with Italy emerges from the
introduction of the book’s second edition: see Thiersch (1829: 10).
51 Kirchner (1996).
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them, he emphasizes quoting the Greek: toutous sebousi; they gave each one a name of
a god he notes. Further he implies that the stones were ancient.52 Such sacred relics
could not be altered.
In addition to the Pharaean blocks, other venerated rocks and poles are listed,
mostly derived from Pausanias’ Periegesis. In conclusion, Thiersch claims that such
evidence shows that the ancient symbols did not accommodate the people’s urge to
create images (Bildungstriebe). The awe and sanctity with which they were regarded
by those who lived around them, rendered any quest for alteration a sacrilege
(Frevel).53 In this proposition, religion — specifically the sanctity of the ancient
monuments — is confronted with the urge for Bildung, or image making, and pre-
sented as an unassailable obstacle to the drive for transformation. Thirsch’s deploy-
ment of the terms Bildung and Frevel betrays the voice of a Protestant driven by the
urge for Bildung — a term which in the context of the passage can be understood as
the creation of distinctive forms, but as we have seen, signifies formation and edu-
cation as well. The transformation of the sacred symbol into a formed image is
nothing less than sacrilege. This vision of Greece formulates a statement on
Germany; the neohumanist impulse for Bildung is to take its proper course without
altering the old symbolic tradition, which like the native sacred stones of Pharae is to
survive. German Protestantism is to coexist side by side with the newly rediscovered
humanism of Hellas.
Both Winckelmann’s and Creuzer’s histories are holistic; the first assumes art as
primarily representational and indigenous, while the second sees it as essentially
symbolic and a product of cultural exchange. By contrast, Thiersch draws upon both
predecessors, yet introduces a sharp break in the trajectories they posit. Both symbol
and image are incorporated as fundamental elements: the first is native, the latter an
import, and rather than the gradual flow of a Kunstgeschichte, his model espouses
distinct eras, different Epochen. In response to these models, the great Classicist Karl
Otfried Muller (1797–1840) offered a fourth variant, which effectively re-endorsed
Winckelmann’s indigenous evolution and at the same time incorporated a religious
element like Creuzer’s and Thiersch’s histories.
K. O. Muller was a genuine prodigy; in 1819, when he was in his early twenties, he
was appointed to the chair of Altertumswissenschaft in Gottingen.54 Having studied in
Berlin with August Boeckh, promoter of the emerging historicism,55 he was one of
52 Thiersch (1829: 22).
53 Thiersch (1829: 23): ‘Solche Thatsachen zeigen, daß jene alten Gottersymbole am aller-
wenigsten dem Bildungstriebe des Volkes Raum gaben, und ihrerseits der Kunst eher
einen unubersteiglichen Damm entgegenstellten, weil die Ehrfurcht und Heiligkeit, von
denen sie umgeben waren, jeden Versuch der Aenderung als Frevel mußten erscheinen
lassen.’
54 Generally on K. O. Muller, see Sandys (1908: 213–6); for the immense impact and
reception of his work, see Calder et al. (1998).
55 See, for example, Marchand (1996: 42–3); Benes (2008: 171–7).
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the more vocal critics of Creuzer’s Symbolik, although he held Creuzer’s work in
great esteem.56 Muller’s rejection of the notion of cultural interractions is reflected
in his earlier grand project Geschichte Hellenischer Stamme und Stadte from the years
1820 to 1824, which included Die Dorier, first published in 1824.57 In this work,
Muller described the Dorians, the worshippers of Apollo from the north, and
praised them for their great piety, manliness, sense of order, obedience and self
restraint. The book with its profound racist undercurrents exercised an immense
influence and triggered much controversy well into the twentieth century.58
Muller offers his version of the earliest phases of Greek art in his Handbuch derArchaologie der Kunst, which was first published in 1830 and translated into English
as Ancient Art and its Remains.59 Here, along with the rescuscitation of
Winckelmann’s model of autochthony and evolution, we find piety, and simplicity
of forms, which he ascribed to his much admired Dorians,60 as dominant features of
primordial Greece. His philological training is evident in the presentation of the
evidence in discrete categories. According to Muller, originally the Greeks did not
have an image (Bild) — a term which he equates with the Greek word eikon — of a
god; they had a symbolic sign (Zeichen) in order to designate the presence of a
divinity. Muller’s own pietism surfaces in his explanation for this absence; the
piety of ancient times required less externalization, so that the belief in the presence
of the divinity was felt more internally.61
After listing the earliest types of monuments in cult including rough rocks, stone
pillars, and wooden poles, he notes that these were set up as cult images, recalling
Pausanias’ statement that in greater antiquity unwrought stones were venerated
instead of the agalmata. Muller then restates religion’s primacy in the depths of
time, claiming that these symbols were venerated more through their consecration
(hidrusis) and less because of their appearance and form. He notes however, that if a
monument of cult was made in a more costly and ornamental manner it was called an
agalma.
In the footnote accompanying this generalized account Muller not only cites
ancient sources, but also divides them into types and provides a Greek term for
most of the entries of his list. Yet, in this empirical taxonomy, Muller in effect treats
the sources as mines for technical terms, and more crucially distorts them for the
56 Williamson 2004 (145–7); Williamson (2006b); Blok (1994, 1998).
57 Muller (1824).
58 On Die Dorier and its reception, see, for example, Hall (1997: 5–16); Goldhill (2002: 150);
Donohue (2005: 88–95); Benes (2008: 186–7); Losemann (1998); Armstrong (1998). On
racism specifically see Martin Bernal’s critique in Bernal (1987: 1.308–16); in response
see Blok (1996); Marchand (1996: 44).
59 Muller (1830); Muller and Welcker (1850); further on his history of art, see Marchand
(1996: 46–7).
60 For Muller’s views of the simple art of the Dorians, see, for example, Muller (1824: vol.
II, 401–2) with Donohue (2005: 92–5).
61 Muller (1830: 42).
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creation of a seemingly well-founded picture of ancient Greek religion, which is
more a figment of his own imagination than an authentic reflection of his evidence.
The first among his ancient texts is Pausanias’ Periegesis, and the uniquely Pausanian
expression argoi lithoi (unwrought stones)62 is the first item in Muller’s list.
According to Muller, who cites Periegesis 7.22.4 as a comparandum, argoi lithoiare characteristic of great nature divinities. Yet Pausanias uses the phrase for a
variety of rocks, from the gigantic stones of the Cyclopean walls to the rock on
which Orestes sat in Laconia.63 Muller exemplifies his assertion by referring to
Pausanias’ description of the stone of Eros in Thespiae,64 as well as the periegete’s
account of the stones of the Graces in Orchomenos, although these are described in
the Greek text as petrai, and not as argoi lithoi.65
Following rough rocks, the second cateogry on Muller’s list is hermaia, which he
defines as heaps of stones, citing the medieval lexicon, the Suida.66 He refers to
Theophrastus’ mention of shiny stones on crossroads,67 as well as Pausanias’ de-
scription of Orestes’ rock in Laconia, which was named Zeus Kappotas, 68 although
in the original it is said to be an argos lithos, not a heap of stones. Next, under the
category of pillars, come the square stones of Pharae, which according to Muller’s
interpretation served as Bildsaulen (image-pillars) of many gods. Despite the evident
misrepresentation of his sources, this taxonomy nonetheless reveals Muller’s philo-
logical attentiveness to the Pausanian distinctions between rough and rectangular
forms. At the same time, it ignores the periegete’s distinctions between the deep past
and the second century AD; both rocks and pillars belong to the earliest phase, and
were signs.
In the next section, following the description of the period of signs, Muller offers
his explanation for the emergence of fully figural representations in ancient Grece
according to an evolutionary scheme. In place of Winckelmann’s innate urge for art,
Muller claims that the drive for change from signs to images was religion; in order to
create a closer link between the sign and the god, certain significant elements were
added to the original monuments, such as heads and phalloi. In this way, herms and
62 Generally in the Periegesis, the phrase argos lithos is not necessarily used to describe stones
in cult; it appears five times in the plural: in 1.28.5, for two stones in the Areopagos, in
1.37.7, for wall stones, in 2.25.8, and 7.22.4, to describe the ancient stones in Greece and
in 9.18.2, for three stones which were burial markers for heroic figures in Thebes. In the
singular it is found three times: in 3.22.1 for a stone which was said to be Orestes’ seat and
was named Zeus Kapotas, in 9.24.3 for a stone venerated in a sanctuary of Herakles and
for the stone of Eros in Thespiae in 9.27.1.
63 See note above.
64 Pausanias Periegesis 9.27.1.
65 See Pausanias Periegesis Pausanias 9.38.1.
66 Muller (1830: 42).
67 Theophrastus, Characters 15.5.
68 Pausanias Periegesis 3.22.1.
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the masked pillars of Dionysos came into being.69 In contrast to stone herms, which
according to Muller lasted for a long time, the first full images were made of wood.
These were the xoana, which represented the human figure in its entirety. Muller’s
scheme combines Winckelmann’s notion of evolution with Thiersch’s perception of
the symbol as fundamentally distinct from the image, yet marginalizes stone in
relation to wood; in this model, Pausanias’ unwrought stones, and Pharae’s thirty
blocks, did not lead to the creation of images, but rather to herms. The development
of art in stone remained effectively frozen for a long period. Wood, on the other
hand, allowed for the emergence of the holistic Bild of the human figure.
Despite Muller’s short life, his scholarship exercised an immense impact on the
study of Classics in general, as well as Classical Archaeology specifically.70 When the
question of origins and the initial evolution of Greek religious art came to be
scrutinized once again, it was Johannes Adolph Overbeck (1826–95) who engaged
more than any of the scholars I review here with Pausanias’ description of Greek
litholatry. Overbeck is probably best known today for his magisterial collection of
ancient texts on Greek art,71 a gem of nineteenth-century German erudition, whose
scope renders it still a fundamental resource.72 Overbeck came from a prominent
northern Protestant family, and was the nephew of Johannes Friedrich Overbeck,
the Nazarene painter who converted to Catholicism. He studied in Bonn with
Friedrich Ritschl and Friedrich Gottlob Welcker, was appointed extrordinarius in
Leipzig in 1853, and was made professor of Classical Archaeology in 1858, a post he
held for the rest of his life. As can be seen in his grand Schriftquellen, Overbeck could
be regarded as an exemplary product of the neohumanist tradition and the fields of
Altertumswissenschaft in which he was trained.
Overbeck’s reconstruction of the beginnings of Greek religious art, which incorp-
orates a variety of elements found in the earlier discussions we have seen, is more
detailed. Yet once examined in relation to its immediate context, Overbeck’s more
complex vision of primordial Greece emerges as a powerful statement of the affinity
between his own German culture and great Hellas. Following Winckelmann and
Muller, Overbeck held a firm view that Greek art was indigenous and strongly
rejected the idea that it originated in the Orient; like others, he postulated that
originally the Greeks did not produce images of gods.73 In a lecture published in
1864, he describes this era as one with no eikones, or in his words as the age of
Anikonismus, a term derived from the Greek noun aneikoniston — the quality of
being non-representable —, first attested in Clement of Alexandria’s writings.74
69 Muller (1830: 43–4).
70 For example, Fittschen (1998); Bruer (1994: 101–2).
71 Overbeck (1868).
72 See for instance a recent French edition, Muller-Dufeu (2002).
73 In addition to the scholars already mentioned, see, for example, Friedrich Gottlieb
Welcker in Welcker (1857: 219), and Eduard Gerhard in Gerhard (1854: vol. I, 35).
74 Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis I.24.163.6 with (Overbeck, 1864).
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The Germanic undercurrents of Overbeck’s primeval Greece are apparent from the
opening of this piece. Rather than taking unwrought rocks and Pausanias’ Pharae as
his point of departure, in the way his predecessors did, Overbeck begins with
tree-worship — relying on Karl Wilhelm Boetticher’s Baumkultus der Hellenen of
1856, which postulated that the Greeks were originally tree-worshippers.75 Like the
pagan Germans of Jacob Grimm (1785–1863, the great German grammarian,
mythologicist and collector of fairy tales), whose religion centred around the tree
as an all-bearing column, so Overbeck’s Greeks of primordial times worshipped
spirits of nature, who inhabited caves, springs and above all forests and trees.76
According to Overbeck’s narrative, which recalls Winckelmann’s organic model
of evolution, the worship of trees gradually led to the veneration of man-made
objects, namely wooden standing cult monuments, such as poles, planks, and scep-
tres. Recalling Grimm’s Germanic religion, which itself resembled Enlightened
Protestantism,77 the place of such wooden posts in Overbeck’s primeval Greece is
strikingly similar to the status of the wooden cross in Christian theology. In
Overbeck’s account, wood takes primacy for its malleability the way it does in
Winckelmann’s Geschichte, yet it is the symbolic relationship between wood as ma-
terial and the divinity, which accounts for tree worship as well as the creation of the
first fully anthropomorphic images of gods out of wood. Furthermore, the very
materiality of aniconic wooden monuments such as poles and planks (rather than
their form) endows them with a unique connection to the divine.78 Like the wooden
cross and its intimate connection with (the Christian) God, as described by the
second-century Christian apologist Clement of Alexandria in the key passage
where the term aneikoniston first appears in Greek,79 Overbeck’s primeval wooden
posts of the ancient Greeks had a special symbolic relationship with the divine. The
implicit Protestant Christianity of all this — with an aniconic wooden object at the
origin of divine worship — is no less obvious than its homology with the fantasy of
primitive Germanic tree-worship.
Pausanias’ description of the veneration of unwrought stones in the depths of
the past poses a challenge to this reconstruction, as is apparent from Overbeck’s
attentive critique of Periegesis 7.22.4, to which he turns twice in this article.
75 Boetticher (1856). Notably, Karl Wilhelm Boetticher (1806–89), who also published
under the name Carl Boetticher, was a classical archaeologist, a theorist of architecture
who taught in the Bauakademie in Berlin. Boetticher was the author of the influential
book on the aesthetics of architecture, Die Tektonik der Hellenen, whose first volume
appeared in 1844. See Botticher (1844–52); Schwarzer (1993); Mayer (2004).
76 Grimm (1854: 64); Williamson (2004: 105).
77 Williamson (2004: 105–12).
78 Overbeck (1864: 140), and in greater detail 147–8.
79 Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis I.24.163.6. Notably, the passage ends with a descrip-
tion of the holy light running through the entire cosmos and culminates with the wooden
cross, the xulon. For Clement of Alexandria’s account of the cross’ intimate relationship
to God, see, for example, Osborn (2005: 40, 46); Schneider (1999: 77–82).
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After reviewing the evidence for tree cult and asserting that wood was innately holy,
Overbeck turns to unwrought stones, to which he frequently refers in the text using
the Pausanian phrase argoi lithoi. He paraphrases Pausanias’ statement that in deep
antiquity all Greeks worshipped unwrought stones, and charges that as it stands the
periegete’s assertion is incorrect, requiring some additions and further specifica-
tions. He argues that the phrase argoi lithoi did not designate the only cult objects
from the beginning of antiquity, and he shrewdly notes that this expression appears
only in Pausanias’s description of Greece, and not in any other ancient source;
therefore, not only rough rocks, but also trees and wooden poles were worshipped
in primordial antiquity. As evidence for tree worship he refers again to Boetticher,
and for wooden poles he turns to his Christian source, Pausanias’ contemporary
Clement of Alexandria, who discusses pagan veneration of wooden beams and
planks. Furthermore, he contests that Pausanias fails to provide a specific chron-
ology for his argoi lithoi, and that tree worship should be regarded as more ancient.
Overbeck further criticizes Pausanias for not stressing that the veneration of rough
rocks continued throughout pagan antiquity, just like tree worship. Overbeck’s
engagement reveals the degree to which Periegesis 7.22.4 did not supply the evidence
he sought for his picture of primeval Greece.
Overbeck returns to Pausanias’ description of Pharae in his discussion of
man-shaped aniconic monuments, where he addresses the thirty square stones.
He situates his own view against two earlier interpretations of the passage: the
first proposed by his old professor, Welcker, in Griechische Gotterlehre of 1857,80
and the second made by Karl Bernhard Stark,81 in the second edition of Karl
Friedrich Hermann’s Lehrbuch der gottesdienstlichen Alterthumer der Griechenin 1858.82 Against Welcker’s position that the thirty square blocks were like the
argoi lithoi, Overbeck stresses that they were not rough rocks, but rather square
shaped. Against Stark’s claim that the Pharaean square stones were ‘also herms’,
Overbeck retorts with philological acuity that nowhere are herms referred to as
square stones. Further he notes the passage’s striking parallelism between the
square stones in a single city in Pausanias’ day and the rough rocks throughout
Greece in the depths of antiquity, and that all of these venerated objects were not
agalmata. In this critique, more than any of the readers I review here, Overbeck
emerges as acutely sensitive to Pausanian rhetoric.
Overbeck’s fundamental view of venerated rough stones as secondary to wood, is
most clearly demonstrated in the conclusion to his review of the evidence for
litholatry. While the worship of trees and wooden objects goes back to the very
beginnings of primeval Hellas, the origins of stone worship in Greece and Italy are of
less interest, he asserts, for its roots are in the Orient. In sharp contrast to
Winckelmann’s approach to Pausanias’ Pharae, Overbeck rejects the view of litho-
latry as indigenous; he asserts that the Oriental origins of Hellenic stone worship are
80 Welcker (1857: 220).
81 Karl Bernard Stark (1824–79) taught in Heidelberg. See Sandys (1908: 225).
82 Hermann (1858: 96).
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evident in the Greek word baitylos — an ancient term describing magical stones —
which he suggests comes from the Semitic hypostasis Beth-El, which literally means
house of god.83 For Overbeck, stone worship was originally Syro-Phoenician, where
it originated in the veneration of meteorites and star worship. This phenomenon has
spread from the East through Greece, where (as he notes invoking Pausanias’ state-
ment at Periegesis 7.22.4) rough stones took the place of agalmata, and continued
further west to Italy. Rather than a specifically Greek phenomenon, a practice shared
by all Greeks reaching back to the depths of time, the veneration of argoi lithoi is
presented here as an all-encompassing ancient Mediterranean phenomenon, which
stemmed from the Orient and migrated westward, through Greece, and even further
afield all the way to Italy.
Overbeck’s envisioned primordial Greece resonates with a variety of elements in
his German culture — its mythologized Germany and its paganism which revolved
around the veneration of trees, its Christian and specifically Protestant symbolism,
whose sacred monument was the cross, and its philhellenic Bildung. The only for-
eign (i.e. non-Greek and non-Germanic) element in this tableau were the stones.
They were part of a broader ancient Mediterranean phenomenon whose origins lay
in the Orient. If for Winckelmann Pausanias’ argoi lithoi and the thirty rectangular
stones of Pharae formed a foundation for a history of Greek art, for Overbeck they
were neither really Greek, but rather a product of a very ancient Oriental influence,
nor did they have any relation to Greek artistic production. Indeed, this perception
has been enshrined in the Schriftquellen fur die bildende Kunst; despite Overbeck’s
thorough acquaintance with Periegesis 7.22.4, the passage is not included in his
grand opus of texts on ancient Greek art.
The Stones of Pausanias’ Pharae: Primitive Fetishes
While some of Overbeck’s views, particularly his reconstruction of the transition
between the earliest aniconic age to the era of figural representation were still
under discussion in the latter part of the nineteenth century,84 the perception
of Greek litholatry as a long-surviving religious practice from the depths of time
which was effectively irrelevant to the study of Greek art, remained dominant in the
second half of the century. This can be seen in the Griechische Kunstgeschichte of
1893 by Heinrich Brunn (1822–94), Germany’s other luminary of Greek art and
archaeology of the period.85 Brunn’s point of departure is man’s innate artistic
83 On the term baitylos, see Gaifman (2008) with further bibliography.
84 For example, Schreiber (1883: 288).
85 This late work was published in two volumes: Brunn (1893); and the posthoumous
publication, Brunn and Flasch (1897). Like Overbeck, Heinrich Brunn studied with
Ritschl and Welcker in Bonn. Upon receipt of his doctorate in 1843, he moved to
Rome and worked at the Deutsches Archaologisches Institut. In 1865 he became the
first holder of the chair of Archaeology at Munich, which he held for the rest of his life.
On Brunn, see Emerson (1894); Flasch (1902); Sandys (1908: 221–2); Marchand (1996:
110–11).
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drive.86 The impulse for art is distinct from religion, as it stems from man’s predis-
position to translate visible reality into images, rather than give form to the invisible
gods. Religion is not irrelevant to this Kunstgeschichte, but is only a subcategory.
In a section on the earliest images of gods, we encounter rough rocks and upright
blocks when Brunn refers his readers to Overbeck’s article of 1864 and states that in
Greece at its deepest antiquity, the veneration of gods was without images.87 Standing
stones and pillars mark a place of worship, but only as symbols, not as works of art.
Periegesis 7.22.4 is not mentioned here, but Pausanias’ stones could be understood as
belonging to a stage in which religious practice did not call for the visual arts, and
hence they do not make up part of the grand story of Greek artistic production.
Rather than in Brunn’s history of Greek art, Periegesis 7.22.4 appears in diction-
aries and encyclopedias of the second half of the century. Under the heading argoilithoi, in Daremberg and Saglio’s Dictionnaire des antiquites grecques et romaines,88 and
in the Real-encyclopadie der classischen Alterthumswissenschaft,89 the passage is cited
as one of the primary ancient sources for the veneration of stones. In addition to the
familiar ideas of Greek litholatry as primeval, related to the cults of meteorites and
typical to the Orient, these entries include new attitudes, which originated in the
rising field of anthropology. Within the late nineteenth-century discourse on the
nature of primitive cultures, which was inseparable from the period’s colonialism,
Pausanias’ argoi lithoi and the square stones of Pharae came to exemplify primitive
fetishes of Greek antiquity.90
The ideas of the ‘primitive’ and of ‘fetishism’ gained firm ground in modern
scholarship with the publication in 1871 of Primitive Culture by Edward Burnett
Tylor (1832–1917), a founding figure in the modern field of anthropology.91 In this
seminal book, the stones of Pharae are cited among myriads of examples for a
phenomenon which Tylor classifies as a type of ‘animism’ — namely fetishism —
and which for convenience’s sake, as he puts it, he refers to as stone and stock
worship.92 Tylor’s point of departure is that the veneration of such objects is
characteristic of and comprehensible among lower cultures and races. He raises
the question whether the stone or the stock is thought to be intimately connected
86 Brunn (1893: 1–2).
87 Brunn and Flasch (1897: 56).
88 Saglio (1877).
89 Reisch (1895).
90 On the primitive, see, for example, Stocking (1987, 1995); contrast, for instance, with
French anthropology, Rogers (2001).
91 Tylor (1871). On Tylor’s place in the history of Anglo-American anthropology, see, for
example, Leopold (1980); Stocking (1995). Generally on the modern idea of the primitive
on its problematic nature, see, for example, Hsu (1964); Kuper (1988, 2005); and for
fetish and fetishism, see Pietz (2003); Apter and Pietz (1993).
92 Tylor (1871: vol. II, 147).
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with the divinity, or merely having a symbolic function, and admits to the difficulty
in assessing the conceptions of the worshippers. Rather than pondering this theor-
etical problem, Tylor turns to his survey of contemporary fetishism from around the
globe. His colonial worldview is apparent from his list of examples of present-day
fetishism, which opens with the ‘lower races of the Americas’, continues into West
India, includes a variety of regions in all continents, but excludes Europe and Great
Britain. He asserts that this overview helps explain through the theory of survival
the puzzling existence of this practice in more developed cultures.93
His first example for such survival from ‘barbaric antiquity’ is ancient Greece.
Tylor begins his account of Greek fetishism by citing verbatim the claim in George
Grote’s History of Greece, that ‘[t]he primitive memorial erected in honour of a god
did not even pretend to be an image, but was often nothing more than a pillar, a
board, a shapeless stone, a post, etc.’94 The resemblance between this statement and
the earlier German descriptions of primeval Greek worship with no images is hardly
surprising — Grote cites Thiersch and K. O. Muller as his modern sources.
If for Classicists like Thiersch or Muller the question of Greek stone worship was
part of a broader exploration of the nature of Hellenic art and culture, for Tylor
Greek litholatry was yet another example for the survival of the lower strata from the
age of barbarism in later, more developed ages of antiquity. The veneration of the
thirty stones of Pharae is simply characterized as being in ‘archaic fashion’.95 While
using Pausanias as a source for the existence of such underdeveloped behaviour,
Tylor pays no attention to the text or the stones’ possible meaning. Following
the Greeks, Tylor continues his anthropology of ancient cultures, surveying the
‘Semitic race’, and the Near East including the Muslim Ka’aba and the
Phoenicians. This list, which has no reference to stone worship in Rome or Italy,
is consistent with earlier German views of Greek stone worship, which we have seen;
this habit is a kind of rude barbarism, which was ubiquitous in antiquity, particularly
in the Near East.
From the survey of the ‘barbaric’ past Tylor finally turns to fetishism in European
societies. Once closer to home, his English and Protestant worldview surfaces more
sharply. Tylor begins with French and English prohibitions of such practices still in
the Middle Ages. He then invokes Indian standing stones as possible explanations
for the prehistoric European menhirs. Getting even closer to his contemporary
England, he describes stone worship among Norwegian villagers of the late-
eighteenth century.96 Finally, he cites an account from 1851, describing stone
93 Ibid.: 151.
94 Grote (1849: 132).
95 Tylor (1871: vol. II, 151).
96 This brief mention belongs to the broader British fascination with Norway in this period.
Norway was seen as having a shared Teutonic ancestry with the British, and at the same
time, as in Tylor’s case here, as a primitive backwater and the opposite of British
industrialized society. See Fjagesund and Symes (2003).
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worship on the Irish Isle of Inniskea. Thanks to these near-contemporaries Tylor
could resolve the problem, which he poses in the beginning of his discussion re-
garding worshippers’ perceptions of their fetishes: ‘No savage ever showed more
clearly by his treatment of a fetish that he considered it a personal being, than did
these Norwegians and Irishmen.’ Closest to home, among the neighboring savages
of the north the Englishman finally found the best evidence for his theory that the
fetish was thought to be inhabited by a spirit. In addition to his national identity, and
overt anti-Irish position, Tylor’s upbringing in the Quaker form of Protestantism97
is apparent in the assertion that the veneration of images is no less a form of fetish-
ism, and that higher culture discarded image worship.98
Although Tylor could hardly be regarded as an engaged reader of the Periegesis,
his reference to Pausanias is significant, for it reveals the point at which the Greek
text came to be read through the newly formed lens of anthropology. In this new
light the stones of Pharae have changed meaning again; from aniconic symbols of the
unseen spirits of nature, they have become mere fetishes. While remaining within a
Protestant perspective, Tylor’s High Imperial viewpoint reverses the line of
thought, which saw Greek worship of wood and stone through the German per-
ception of pre-Christian ancestry or Protestant plainness as ideally simple and sym-
bolic by contrast with mimetic imagery. If for Overbeck Pausanias’ stones still had a
legitimate place in the imagined religion of primeval Greece (despite their Oriental
connotations), for the Englishman their possible religious value is reduced to fet-
ishism; these are objects venerated by the savages, who are by definition other to his
English civilization.
The strongly Protestant perspective on idolatry as well as stone worship is still
more apparent in the account of fetishism offered by Friedrich Max Muller (1823–
1900).99 The German philologist and Sanskritist, who in 1851 took up residence in
Oxford, and was the first occupant of the Oxford chair in Comparative Philology
from 1868, held a theory which reversed Tylor’s position, and yet still saw fetishism
as a fundamentally lower form of religious behaviour. Whereas Tylor’s fetishism
constituted an early, lower stage in social development, for Max Muller it was a type
of regression in advanced cultures.100 One of his key-witnesses for the existence of
this corrupt stage of religion in ancient Greece was Pausanias’ Pharae.
97 On Tylor’s Protestantism and its impact, see Regard (2007). Further on Protestantism
and modern anthropology, see, for example, Douglas (1966); Higham (2003).
98 Tylor (1871: 154). Notably, in Tylor’s scheme, image worship is somewhat more
advanced than stone and stock worship, and lies somewhere in the intermediate
strata of culture, between extreme savagery and ‘middle civilization’.
99 On Friedrich Max Muller, who is usually known as Max Muller, see, for example,
Masuzawa (1993: 58–61); Girardot (2002); Williamson (2004: 217–8); Benes (2008:
211–21); Marchand (2009: 130–4).
100 Muller (1878: 105).
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In the Hibbert Lectures, which Max Muller inaugurated in Westminster Abbey
and published in 1878, he addressed the origin and growth of religion.101 The
second lecture tackles the problem of whether fetishism is a primitive form of re-
ligion. Muller argues against the view of Tylor and others that contemporary savages
provide evidence for the earliest cultures of the past, and he questions the idea of
continuous cultural progression. Before asserting that fetishism is a corruption of
religious experience, Muller surveys the evidence for fetishism, beginning with
ancient Greece in order to show its ubiquity.
His anthropological approach and utter disregard for the form of the venerated
object is apparent from the beginning; his first example of a Greek fetish is the
palladium of Athena in Troy, presumably a figural image of the divinity, and the
second is the stones of Pausanias’ Periegesis 7.22.4. Both image and stone worship
are seen as coexistent types of fetishism. Rather than fossils from the beginnings of
time, the stones of Pharae, as well as the other venerated rocks mentioned by
Pausanias, are first and foremost evidence for stone worship in the Greece of the
second century AD, side by side with the veneration of figural images of gods. Max
Muller proceeds to ancient Rome and then to Christian churches. His Protestantism
jumps off the page when he claims that the Spanish adoration of the Virgin Mary or
stories about Russian peasants covering the faces of icons when they do something
improper, provide evidence for recent and current fetishism, and hence are forms of
religious corruption.102 The general category of Muller’s fetishism includes
Christian image worship, statues venerated by the Greeks, as well as ancient
Greek litholatry. Rather than fossils of the deep past, the stones of Pharae are
presented here as an ideal type of religious corruption, a testament of decline,
rather than the practice of very ancient traditions. While earlier versions of the
stones of Pharae were primitive or primeval stages in the origin of religion, in
Muller’s scheme they are proof of its late decadence.
At the tail end of this trajectory we come to J.G.Frazer (1854–1941) and his
treatment of Periegesis 7.22.4, beginning with his landmark commentary on the
Periegesis.103 In contrast to all the other texts I have discussed here, this work
took Pausanias’ descriptions as its primary subject. We find the stones of Pharae
mentioned already in Frazer’s general introduction to his edition. The Cambridge
Classicist notes Pausanias’ interest in monuments of religion, ‘especially when they
were more than old and quaint’,104 and lists the thirty Pharaean blocks as the first
example among such ‘queer images’ found in the Periegesis. Although Frazer de-
scribes the venerated stones as types of images, they are not mentioned in his
101 Muller (1878).
102 On Muller’s overt Protestantism Girardot (2002: 218–9); Williamson (2004: 217).
103 On James George Frazer’s reading of Pausanias, see Sabine MacCormack’s paper in
this issue. On Frazer in general, see Ackerman (1975); Ackerman (1987); Ackerman
(1991); Stocking (1995); Stocking (2001: 145–62).
104 Frazer (1898: 1, 36).
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overview of Pausanias’ account of art. In Frazer’s view, they are remarkable not for
their beauty or form, but rather for their religious meaning and unique oddities.
Their primary meaning lies in the realm of religion, not visual culture.
Frazer’s anthropological perspective on the Pharaean monuments as examples for
fetish stones and not as curious works of religious art is evident in his commentary
to Periegesis 7.22.4.105 Rather than treating the textual features of the passage, its
particular usage of terms, rhetoric and structure, or its broader implications for the
history of Greek religious art, Frazer examines it from the vantage point of an
anthropologist. He begins his discussion by listing a number of places in the
Periegesis where other sacred stones are described.106 He finds further comparanda
in Plutarch’s account of the sacred rock of the Aenianes — a primeval tribe in the
north of Greece. He then paraphrases Plutarch’s description of the sacred rock, to
which the Aenianes sacrificed and which they covered with the fat of the victim.107
Frazer’s choice of comparanda reveals his interest in the specifics of ritual per se —
both the sacrifice and the smearing, over and above other potentially relevant issues
such as the representation of the divine, or the perception of the particular wor-
shipped deity.
Frazer’s anthropological and comparativist approach to Pausanias’ account
emerges further when he states that the worship of stones is ubiquitous, and like
Tylor offers a broad range of examples from a variety of geographic regions through-
out the world. For each case he reveals his fascination with the specificities of rituals,
noting for instance that the Mandan Indians smoke to the stone, or alternatively
smoke their pipe themselves, and then offer it to the stone.108 In this presentation,
Frazer’s Greeks are no different from Mandan Indians or Norwegian villagers.
Where Pausanias failed to offer a full description of the ritual performed for the
stones of Pharae (unlike other instances in his Periegesis, which may be seen as
models for Frazer’s own accounts of rituals),109 Frazer’s presentation frames
Pharaean practice within the context of other types of fetishism, supplied by himself
as commentator. The final item on the list is Syria, where he notes sacred stones
were known as baetylii. Once again the Orient represents a strong ancient tradition of
fetishism.
This overview not only signals Frazer’s anthropological bent, but also his back-
ground. Closing his brief account of Oriental fetishism he cites William Robertson
Smith’s overview of Semitic rituals and sacrificial rocks.110 Frazer was a friend of
105 Frazer (1898: 2. 154–5).
106 Frazer (1898: 2. 154).
107 Plutarch Greek Questions XIII = Moralia 294 C 1-7.
108 Frazer (1898) 2. 155.
109 For instance in the same section of the Periegesis Pausanias describes in details the ritual
directed to the herm at Pharae, see Periegesis 7.22.1–3. Further on ritual in Pausanias,
see Elsner (1996).
110 Robertson Smith (1889: 201).
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Robertson Smith (1846–92), the Scottish Semiticist, who, like Frazer, was a product
of the Free Church of Scotland.111 From an overtly Protestant standpoint, but
against Tylor who saw ritual as an expression of beliefs, Robertson Smith argued
that ritual, rather than creed or myth, was the defining feature of primitive reli-
gions.112 Frazer’s emphasis on ritual in his commentary on the fetishism of Periegesis7.22.4 rises from this line of thought and from the Protestant perception that sees
ritual as key to lower forms of religion.113
Frazer invokes his own Scottish roots when he recounts the practices in the
Highlands of Scotland, where every village is said to have venerated a stone called
Gruagach, a Gaelic and hence indigenous name. Along similar lines, Frazer cites
Tylor’s description of late-eighteenth-century Norwegian stone worship. Both these
instances of stone worship at the native pre-Christian stratum of northern Europe
are presented in the past tense. In contrast to the litholatry of his own homeland, the
worship of fetishes in places such as Burma and a variety of regions in India is
described in the present tense. In the colonies litholatry can still be witnessed in the
last decade of the nineteenth century. Among these uncivilized and untransformed
savages this habit continues. Unlike Germany’s romanticized tree-worshippers, who
were converted to Christianity, and acquired philhellenic education, or the Scottish
and Norwegian villagers, who up until recently adhered to native customs, these
barbarians are still engaged in these odd and at the same time fascinating rituals. The
stones of Pharae are reminiscent of old, bygone ancestral traditions, such as the one
found in Scotland, as well as the current practices of the colonized natives.
In Frazer’s treatment of Perigesis 7.22.4 in his Pausanias commentary we already
see the notion that stone worship is characteristic of the Orient, but this perception
emerges still more prominently in his other works, beginning with his most influ-
ential and popular book, the Golden Bough.114 As curious monuments worshipped
by the underdeveloped forefathers of the ancient Greeks, one might have expected
to find Pharae’s stones among the hundreds of pages of the Golden Bough, a project
whose professed initial objective was to uncover the meaning and origins of an
ancient Italian priesthood,115 and to offer an understanding of the religion of
111 Robertson Smith was a true prodigy appointed in his early twenties as Professor of
Hebrew and Old Testament at the Free Church College in Aberdeen. Following his
heresy trials he left Scotland and in 1883 became member of Trinity College,
Cambridge where he met Frazer. On Robertson Smith and his connection to Frazer,
see Wheeler-Barclay (1993); Ackerman (1987); Stocking (1995: 133–5).
112 On the relationship between Robertson Smith’s own religious belief, and his percep-
tions of primitive religion as ritual based, see especially Wheeler-Barclay (1993).
113 Similarly, see Douglas (1966: 66–7).
114 The Golden Bough’s three editions: Frazer (1890); Frazer (1900); Frazer (1911–5); and
abridged edition: Frazer (1922). On the Golden Bough and immense influence and
receptions see, for example, Ackerman (1987); Douglas (1978).
115 See the preface to the first edition, Frazer (1890: vii), with Smith (1973).
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Europe’s ancestors, namely the Aryans.116 However, the indices of the Golden
Bough’s different editions suggest that Pharae is completely absent from Frazer’s
majestic opus.117 As we shall see below, rather than in the Golden Bough it is
referenced in a book dedicated to the non-European primitives, the Folk-Lore in
the Old Testament, published in 1918.118
The Golden Bough does include a holy rock from Pausanias’ Greece, yet this relic
is cited within an entirely Levantine context. In the extensive twelve-volume third
edition, Frazer discusses Cyprus and the well-known shrine of Aphrodite in Paphos,
where according to ancient testimonia, notably Tacitus’ Histories, the goddess was
venerated in the form of a conical rock.119 Frazer refers to Pausanias’ account of
anointments of a stone at Delphi, which was said to have been the ancient stone
offered by Rhea to Cronos in place of the infant Zeus,120 in order to support his
reconstruction of the rituals in Paphos. For although no ancient text indicates that
the Paphian rock was the recipient of oil libations, Frazer follows an earlier mis-
reading of a Cypriot inscription,121 and asserts the stone was anointed in a solemn
festival.122 The Periegesis furnishes a useful supplement for this reconstruction.
The reason behind Frazer’s need to affirm the existence of anointments in ancient
Paphos is not so much an interest in antiquity, but rather his greater claim about the
present; in contrast to the Delphic stone, which is no longer the recipient of any
rituals, the ancient veneration of Aphrodite at Paphos survived among the Cypriot
peasants under the guise of the worship of the Maid of Bethlehem. In fact, Frazer
cites verbatim David George Hogarth’s account of Cypriot women’s anointment of
the cornerstones of the ancient temple at Kouklia with the assertion that Mary is still
116 See the preface to the first edition Frazer (1890), vii with the central argument of the
project found in Frazer (1911–5: X, v). See also Ackerman (1987: 81, 97). For the
origins of the notion of Aryanism, see Marchand (2009: 124–31).
117 Frazer (1890); Frazer (1900); Frazer (1911–5); Similarly, the index of the abridged
version does not list Pharae either. See Frazer (1922).
118 Frazer (1918).
119 Tacitus Histories 3.3. For Paphos and the shrine of Aphrodite, see Maier and
Karageorghis (1984).
120 Pausanias 10.24.6; for the myth, see Heoisd Theogony 497–500. Frazer follows
Montague Rhodes James’ original discussion of inscription from Kouklia, and the
alleged anointment festival. Hogarth et al. (1888: 188) and Frazer (1991–5: 5.36).
121 Frazer adopts the early interpretation of a marble inscription found at Kouklia, (New
Paphos), –British Museum (1888),1115.15; SEG 20.174–, which lists contributors to
the 2laiocr0stion. Originally, the Greek term was understood as a name of a festival
involving the anointment of oil, presumably of the stone. However, it apparently refers
to the usage of oil. See LSJ sv. 2laiocr0stion. The Cypriot inscription is now under-
stood as a list of contributors to oil supply at the gymnasium of New Paphos. Compare
Hogarth et al. (1888: 188, 231), with Mitford (1961: 6 no. 5).
122 Frazer (1991–5: 5.36).
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entreated by Moslems and Christians to remove the curse of barrenness from
Cypriot women, or increase the manhood of Cypriote men.123
The site for the continuous litholatry is neither Greece nor Italy, but rather
Cyprus, which, as the title of Frazer’s source suggests, was seen as an integral
part of the Levant at the time.124 This is a place where presently not only
Moslems but also Christians adhere to primitive practices. We find here an attack
on early-twentieth-century Christianity by a man who — in resistance to his up-
bringing in the Free Church of Scotland — was to claim that he was no Christian.125
Frazer’s direct target however is not his childhood Church or any other Protestant
denomination but rather the local Greek Orthodox Church.126 Cypriot Christianity
is presented as no different from Islam, the Levant’s distinctive religion, which for
Frazer was a marker of cultural decline.127 Both religions fit Frazer’s broader
portrayal of the Orient as a site of litholatry. This vision is brought home a few
pages later in a section dedicated to stone and stock worship among the Semites,
which details the procreative virtues the ancient Levantines ascribed to stones.128 As
in the deep past, in his contemporary Cyprus, the Oriental tradition of stone worship
for the sake of fertility still thrives.
Although not in the Golden Bough’s grand tour through Europe’s primitive strata,
Periegesis 7.22.4 is referenced in a book whose aim is to explore the traces of rude
practices among the ancient Israelites as attested in the Old Testament.129 In
Folk-Lore in the Old Testament Frazer takes the Hebrew Bible as his point of de-
parture, and focuses on the parts in which he identifies primitive behaviour. The
book is structured as a kind of commentary, where Frazer paraphrases sections of
the ancient text in his evocative language and then, in accordance with the
123 Hogarth (1896: 179–80).
124 This can be seen from the title of Frazer’s source on the citation, David Hogarth’s book
The Wandering Scholar in the Levant. Hogarth (1896).
125 See, for example, letter from 1904 where Frazer professes ‘I am not a Christian, on the
contrary I reject the Christian religion utterly as false,’ in Ackerman (1987: 188–89).
126 Although Frazer usually refers to Christianity as a single body, when he contrasts
Protestantism with other churches, particularly Catholicism, the differences are strik-
ing; Catholics emerge as far closer to the savage primitives whereas Protestants appear
as the more civilized. See, for example, his description of seventeen-century Catholics
treating a bell from a ruined Protestant church as if it were an animate object, Frazer
(1918: 3.443). Even more blunt is his discussion of the fear of the dead in primitive
religions in his later lectures from the 1930s: ‘This belief in the continued power of the
dead to affect life of the survivors for good or ill is one of the marked differences
between the primitive and the civilized conceptions of life after death. In Protestant
religion it has little or nothing to correspond to it, but in Catholicism it has a close
analogy in the cult of the saints. . .’ See Frazer (1933: 11).
127 Frazer (1917: 382).
128 Frazer (1911–5: 5.107–9).
129 Frazer (1918: 1.7).
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comparative approach, offers numerous parallels from among underdeveloped
societies in antiquity and mostly in modernity, whose purpose is to show the affinity
between uncivilized societies and the ancient Israelites.
Pharae and its blocks feature as one of these comparanda, specifically as parallels
to the well-known stone in Bethel, which according to the book of Genesis was
anointed by Jacob following his dream-vision of the ladder with the angels of
God.130 Frazer uses Pausanias to shore up his views that ancient Bethel was a site
where primitive practices flourished, an idea which is apparent already from
Frazer’s presentation of the original Hebrew text; while embellishing his sources
— other travelers’ accounts, guidebooks, and commentaries, which note the rocky
and stony terrain of the site —, Frazer portrays the town which greeted Jacob as a
desolate place, filled with grey rocks as well as stones that were ‘piled up in weird
forms of pillars, menhirs or cromlechs.’131 Whereas in the book of Genesis Jacob
merely picks up some stones and sets them under his head, in Frazer’s version Jacob
spent the night in the center of a circle of great stones. Ancient Bethel is uncannily
reminiscent of Stonehenge. The Biblical Orient is fused with primeval Europe.
Nonetheless, as becomes apparent later in the text, the differences between the
two are profound; ancient European standing stones are now abandoned, whereas
in the Levant stone worship still continues.
Frazer asserts that over the years Bethel turned from a dismal place to a thriving
religious center, in which the ‘great standing-stone or pillar, which doubtless stood
beside the principal altar, was believed to be the very stone on which the wanderer
laid his weary head that memorable night’. Furthermore, according to Frazer, ori-
ginally the deity was conceived as actually residing in the stone. Like numerous
scholars before and after him, he takes the complex passage in Genesis, in which
Jacob declares that should he return safely from his journey the stone shall be a
house of God,132 as evidence for this idea. He asserts that this perception of stones as
tenanted by gods was common among many peoples, and then offers as his first
comparison ancient Arab stone worship, which, as he stresses, still continues in the
worship of the Black Stone in Mecca. Whereas the prophet Isaiah denounced such
idolatrous practices and Israelite religion eventually condemned them, contempor-
ary Islam is the home for such savagery. Given this text’s date — the time when
Britain was engaged in great conquests in the Middle East — the underlying
Imperial tenet is conspicuous. The native majority in the newly conquered region
still adheres to customs which have long been denounced and rejected by more
sophisticated cultures. The implied message is quite blunt: the colonized
Moslems are primitive.133
130 Genesis 22.11–22.
131 Frazer (1918: 2.41).
132 Genesis 12.22. On the interpretations of this passage, see Gaifman (2008: 44–51).
133 One does not need to turn Edward Said’s Orientalism in order to identify this attitude
toward the inhabitants of the Middle East in Frazer’s text. See Said (1978), and for
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From the Levant Frazer turns to ancient Greece, and enumerates venerated
stones culled from Pausanias’ text. Periegesis 7.22.4 is his first example. The peri-
egete’s assertion that in greater antiquity Greeks worshipped unwrought stones
instead of images emerges as an ideal parallel; like the ancient Israelites, the
Hellenes, too, underwent a transition over time: in the past they had adhered to
litholatry, in place of the venerated images of Pausanias’ time. The deeper
significance of this change transpires from his presentation of the stone of Eros in
Thespiae, the last item on his list of rocks cited from the Periegesis. In the original the
periegete opens his description of the Thespian worship of Eros by stating that: ‘Of
all the gods the Thespians honour Love the most, and have always done so: they
have a very ancient image of him, consisting of an unwrought stone.’134 Frazer’s
version is: ‘The inhabitants of Thespiae, in Boeotia, honoured Love above all the
gods; and the great sculptors Lysippus and Praxiteles wrought for the city glorious
images of the amorous deity in bronze and marble. Yet beside these works of refined
Greek art the people paid their devotions to an uncouth idol of the god in the shape
of a rough stone.’135 The two images of Eros mentioned by Frazer are described
further in the same passage in the Periegesis, where Pausanias recounts the sinful
removals of Eros’ statue by Roman emperors, the loss of Praxiteles’ original master-
piece and its replacement with a copy.136 Frazer’s nuanced paraphrasing and usage
of Pausanian rhetoric betrays his deep familiarity with his Greek source and at the
same time his purposeful reversal of the original’s meaning.
In the Periegesis, the assertion regarding Eros’ ancient rock comes immediately
after the claim that the god is the most venerated in Thespiae. As a result of this
stringing of information, the second observation helps to substantiate the first; the
stone emerges as a tangible visible proof of the divinity’s elevated position. Frazer,
on the other hand, replaces the crude object with magnificent artworks; the statues
of the divinity are presented as a proof of the same idea, namely that Eros was the
most venerated god in Thespiae. If for Pausanias the unwrought relic demonstrates
the importance, antiquity and continuity of the Thespian cult, for Frazer Eros’
higher status is to be seen in the works of two of Greece’s greatest artists made of
precious materials. Whereas in the Preiegesis the lost Praxitelean original and its
substitution illustrate Roman destruction and the rough rock demonstrates Greek
survival despite foreign intervention, for Frazer the statue exemplifies Greek cul-
tural achievement, and the rock reveals the survival of the crude.
In the Periegesis stone and statues, which end up side by side, tell together the
history of the cult, and both belong to the same sphere of religion. For Frazer the
more recent discussions and revisions of the subject of British colonial discourses
Clarke (1997); Washbrook (1999).
134 Translation adapted from Frazer (1898: 1.476); Pausanias 9.27.1: qe8n d1 o3 �espie8”
tim8sin EA rwta m0lista 2x 2rc8”, ka0 s’isin 4galma palai0tat0n 2stin 2rg1” l0qo”.
135 Frazer (1918 : 2.60).
136 Pausanias 9.27.3–4.
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masterpieces reveal the centrality of Eros, and yet they are made by great artists and
are given to the city, not the shrine. Great art belongs to civic society, whereas
uncouth monuments, such as Thespiae’s stone and Pharae’s blocks, belong to the
lowest form of religion, to the sphere of inane superstitious idolatry. We return to
the point where we began Frazer’s readings of Periegesis 7.22.4; Pausanias’ un-
wrought stones are first and foremost monuments of religion, distinct from great
works of art.
Following his enumeration of Pausanias’ venerated stones, Frazer embarks upon
a textual journey to the world’s sites of litholatry. Numerous stones and pillars
venerated in a variety of places, including, among others, Canada, Burma, India,
Africa, Scotland, and Norway, are brought forth as parallels for stone worship in the
Orient, where not only in the past but also in the present savage practices continue.
In this sea of stones, Pharae’s blocks lose their unique meaning and ties to Greece.
They, like countless similar monuments, put in sharper relief the primitive nature of
the practice at the heart of the religion which dominates the Levant. If for
Winckelmann Greek litholatry and the stones of Pharae were the seeds of Greek
art, for Frazer they are uncouth fetishes, fundamentally distinct from works of art.
For the father of the field of Kunstgeschichte Pharae’s blocks confirmed the idea that
Greek artistic creation was indigenous, even if the Orient preceded Greece in
creating works of art. For Frazer the same stones demonstrated the lack of cultural
development in the colonies, particularly the Levant. The primarily Oriental phe-
nomenon existed in the past in ancient Greece, prehistoric Europe, and elsewhere;
however, among the colonized especially in the recently conquered Middle East,
primitive fetishism still thrives.
***
The trajectory which I have traced here left an undeniable mark on
twentieth-century scholarship on Greek litholatry — especially in approaches to
Periegesis 7.22.4 and to the phrase argoi lithoi. Pausanias’ venerated stones are often
seen as exemplary of the primitive strata in Greek antiquity, as fundamentally
marginal to Greek culture, as strongly associated with the Near East as well as
with cults of meteorites.137 However, this series of contextualized nineteenth- and
early-twentieth-century readings of the same extract not only casts lights on the
variety of methodologies and approaches to this text, in a range of discourses, but
more poignantly tells a very Pausanian story. If Pausanias’ Greek landscape
constituted a canvas for articulating Greek identities and ideologies of the second
century AD,138 Periegesis 7.22.4 set the stage for modern agenda-driven positions on
the nature of Greek antiquity, and by implication for the assertion of German,
137 See, for example, De Visser (1903); Kron (1992); Nilsson (1961).
138 See, for example, Elsner (2001).
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British Imperial and especially Protestant identities from the late eighteenth to the
late-nineteenth century.139
Acknowledgements
My thanks to the participants in the colloquium at Corpus Christi College, where
this article was first delivered, in particular to Maria Pretzler, Katherine Harloe, and
Sabine MacCormack. I have benefitted immensely on issues related to nineteenth-
century German and British cultures from conversations with Timothy Barringer
and Gundula Kreuzer. My deep gratitude to Jas Elsner for giving me the opportu-
nity to present this article, and for commenting on earlier drafts. Finally, my special
thanks to the anonymous readers and Constanze Guthenke for their insightful
comments.
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