Matthew Chaldekas (Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen)
Leonidas of Tarentum wrote many epigrams commemorating dedications by poor laborers. His epigrams also include ecphrases of famous artworks, e.g. Apelles’ Aphprodite Anadyomene and Myron’s Cow, which evoke aristocratic tastes and prestige. How do we reconcile these two seemingly discordant registers? Leonidas himself offers a solution when he presents two epigrams on the dedications of woodworkers (AP 6.204, 205) in ecphrastic terms. By framing this banausic craft in terms usually reserved for high art, Leonidas presents his characteristic appreciation of society’s lower classes in aesthetic terms. Moreover, his ecphrastic depiction of woodworkers also draws upon the actual iconography through which these craftsmen were represented in the ancient plastic arts. Thus, we can witness Leonidas’ engagement with his Lebenswelt and his endorsement of what I call the “aesthetics of manual labor.”
The first section of this paper explains how these two poems, likely companion pieces, bring the woodworkers’ tools before the eyes of the reader in vivid visual terms. The generic conventions of ecphrastic epigram were not yet firmly established in this period, but Leonidas’ poems reveal several parallels with other early representatives of the genre by Erinna, Nossis, Posidippus, and himself (Männlein-Robert 2007; Squire 2010). Common characteristics which appear in these poems include: objects which move as if alive, emphasis on the artist’s craft (techne), mention of skillful hands, and a divine artistic exemplar. These are traits which do not appear in Leonidas’ other dedicatory epigrams, and thus set these epigrams apart as different. Leonidas’ ecphrastic memorialization of the woodworker’s tools blur the lines between “high art” and handicrafts such as woodwork, even implying their parity.
The second stage of the paper demonstrates how Leonidas appropriates the imagery of woodworking as it appears in ancient artistic depictions of this craft. Leonidas’ ecphrastic epigrams do not simply place the worker’s tool before the eyes of the audience, they do so in a way which would be familiar from dedications, grave memorials, and even shop signs. Visual depictions of woodwork are rather scarce before the Roman period (Zimmer 1982)—possibly because such objects were made by the artisans themselves in their own easily perishable medium—but comparison with evidence for other professions, such as potters, metalworkers, and leatherworkers, suggests that there was a fairly stable artistic koine in the depiction of such professions across the centuries (Ziomecki 1975; Landskron 2011). Thus, Leonidas’ poems are not simply representations of woodworkers’ tools, but re-presentations in terms which the woodworkers themselves likely used. The epigrams are not just aesthetic reflections on manual labor, they also base these reflections on the perception (aesthesis) of these ancient laborers themselves.
As with ecphrastic epigrams on artworks such as Myron’s Cow, Leonidas’ poems draw upon lost artefacts that Leonidas and his readers may have encountered in their real lives. Like other examples of this genre, Leonidas’ poems simulate an act of perception (aesthesis), but they also make an aesthetic statement about the inherent value of handiwork, which draws upon the real iconographic discourse of ancient laborers.