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More from antoninus

13th February 2010

 

IDENTIFYING THE PLAQUE'S CHARACTERS.

 

Having surveyed the cultural and religious background of the region and noted that the plaques were the work of a Latinised cult operating widely along the Danube and across the Balkans, some attempt can be made to identify the icons portrayed.   The common identifying theme on virtually every plaque, is a goddess standing between two confronted equestrians.   Most often she is portrayed gripping their reins. She may also have between her hands, not reins, but what appears to be a rope.  Elsewhere, she may be represented with her hands raising the folds of her robe across her front to form a kind of cradle.

 

In ancient Greece such a cradle would have substituted for a liknos, or grain basket.   Women who sewed corn in the fields used their gown in this way to carry the grain they scattered.   In another context, a young child could be carried in such a makeshift crib, as Brimo was carried by Demeter in the ceremonies at Eleusis.   So why did this central figure adopt a varied pose?   The answer lies in the adherents to the cult.   With so many varieties of plaque being produced locally over such a wide area, there were bound to be preferences in the manner of portraying the objects of worship.   A study of these variations is the key to revealing the central themes.

 

Let us, for the moment, consider what the horse riders themselves represent.   Many plaques place identifiers above them.  In some instances this may be a star above one and a crescent above the other.  Similarly, a bust of the Sun and a bust of the Moon may be emphatically placed above.   The inference is clear.  As in coins that place a crescent moon on the head of a female deity, it is there to indicate that the deity is a moon goddess.   Why would plaque iconography differ?    What the plaque maker is indicating is that one rider is the Sun and the other, its twin, the Moon.   In a classical setting that would usually be Apollo and Artemis.  They are twin lights and they are being grasped together in the hands of the central goddess.   So who is this deity, grasping twin lights in her hands?

 

There are really only two candidates, frequently portrayed holding light bearing, flaming torches; Artemis and Demeter.   Artemis can be disregarded because, as the Moon, she is already present on one twin horse.   Demeter however, has a long history of association with horses.   She began as a horse goddess and, as a mare, she was raped by Poseidon.   In her Phygalion cavern she was portrayed wearing a horse's head.   More tellingly, the portrayal of her robe as a corn bearing lyknos and cradle, immediately places her into the camp of an agrarian goddess and potential mother.   That latter aspect would eliminate Athena.

 

That one of the equestrians should transpire to be Apollo, need raise no great surprise.   If it is considered that the coinage of the Celtic nations was based on the Macedonian model, from the Crimea to Britain and down to the south of Spain, it bore a common obverse portrayal of the head of Apollo, and on the reverse was a horseman, generally also regarded as Apollo.   Added to that is the equally abundant iconic Celtic horseman, the little bronze figurine who sits on a crude horse with his right hand raised in a salute, just like the one on the plaques.   They are also found right across the Celtic world and were current well into the Roman period.

 

The plaque horseriders are often shown holding snakes aloft on the tips of their spears (as illustrated below) and twin snakes are virtually always portrayed on the plaques.   Apollo was from his earliest months a renowned snake slayer and later closely associated with the Pythonic oracles at Delphi.   Snakes were also used in the Balkans in a similar prophetic way, as Aelian recorded  (Animalia- XI. 2)

 

 

"The people of Epirus and all strangers sojourning there, besides any other sacrifice to Apollo, on one day in the year hold their chief festival in his honour with solemnity and great pomp.   There is a grove dedicated to the god, and round about it a precinct, and in the enclosure are serpents, and these self same serpents are the pets of the god.   Now the priestess, who is a virgin, enters unaccompanied, bringing food for the serpents.  And the people of Epirus maintain that the serpents are sprung from the Python at Delphi.   If, as the priestess approaches, the serpents look  graciously upon her and take the food with eagerness, it is agreed that they are indicating a year of prosperity and of freedom from sickness.  If however, they scare her and refuse the pleasant food she offers, then the serpents are foretelling the reverse of the above, and that is what the people of Epirus expect."

 




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That the plaques are not after all purely Celtic but portray deities common to the Greco-Roman communities in which they were made, would explain why no written record of a "Danubian Horseman" cult has survived, or why no edifice specifically dedicated to them has ever been found.  In the tolerant ancient world any religion was open to any genuine pursuer of the truth and although cult members may have had their own personal adherences, nevertheless they were free to blend with other devotees.   Apollo as the god of intellectual light, symbolised by the Sun, was universally acclaimed and places for his worship already abounded.  There was no need to create more.

 

 

From antoninus.

12th April '10.

 

  

A feature often given central significance was the fish on an offering table, or ara sacra, placed immediately before the goddess.   The table is of interest because of its shape.   It replicates the pattern of the mythical tables made by Hephaestos for his wedding with Aphrodite.   They had three leonine legs but were generally regarded as sun wheels.  In Roman parlance, Hephaestos equated to Vulcan, the lame smithy god who employed the searing heat of flaming Vesuvius and Aetna to transform substances.

 

Pompeius Festus, in his Epitome of "De Verborum Significatu", written more or less contemporaneously with plaque production, recorded that King Numa skilfully brought about the abandonment of human sacrifice to Vulcan by replacing the human with a fish.   The odour of the fish burning in the sacrificial flames was sufficient to appease the God.   Ovid (Fasti) and Plutarch (Lives - Numa), both commented that the same king similarly replaced human sacrifice to Zeus with "pilchards", onions and hair.  Therefore, the plaque icon, of a fish placed on a sun-wheel ara, may have had a considerable significance, perhaps hinting at a sacrificial ceremony, and almost certainly designed as a double-entendre.

 

 

On a very rare, privately owned plaque, now located in Germany, a Latin inscription appears across the upper fields  -  the phrase " DAP  IMVS".   In these inscriptions, the last letters of the participles have been reoriented.  The 'P' has been reversed and the final 'S' has been rotated.

 

 

 


September 2017

Antony has completed his monograph on these plaques.

It can be seen as a pdf here: click on 'PISCIS REGALIS'

https://www.danubianhorsemanplaques.com/

Or open pdf here:

https://tinyurl.com/y9376toy

 

2019

 

Alas I need to record the death of my friend Antony Scammell.  (1937 - 2019)
I never actually met him in person but we exchanged frequent emails over many years.
He was an inveterate collector :  ancient coins and antiquities of all types. He was very knowlegeable and always keen to share his knowledge and expertise. It is a pleaure and privelege to have the early drafts of his work on Danubian plaques published here on my website and one of the few links online to the pdf of the completed thesis. (The Danubian Horsemen plaques website " 'PISCIS REGALIS'  no longer exists)