#Kleobis

[deathlessathanasia]

Kydippe: Hera, great goddess, please do your faithful priestess a favour and grant to her two sons, who helped her honour you properly, the best possible thing for human beings.

Hera: Sure, here you go.

Kydippe's two sons: Die that very night.

Kydippe: ...... Thank you?

[casskeeps]

kleobis and biton

basic information

name: kleobis and biton

date: 580 bce (early archaic)

artist: polymedes the argive

function: votive offerings to apollo at delphi

size: 2m high (monumental)

original, reconstruction, or copy: original parian marble

subject matter

kleobis and biton wer two brothers, known for their impressive strength and piety; they are particularly notable for carrying their mother to a sacred festival by pulling the cart themselves, then being so happy and pious that they died in their sleep that night. supposedly, this is a wonderful thing - dying at the peak of their lives meant they would be forever pious and joyous, remembered that way by their families for the rest of time.

these two kouroi are particularly notable for their size - less in height than in the robustness of their forms - they are much more dedicated to displaying strength than delicate geometric forms.

context

still in the archaic period, we are displaying idealised male forms; nude male figures with athletic builds. this is where kleobis and biton start to deviate from the norm - instead of appearing lithe and slender, the two figures have a much stronger impression of force and brute strength.

composition

the statues depict two kouroi in the typical archaic “walking pose”, with the left leg extended forward and the right leg held behind. both statues have their arms rigidly by their sides, although there is a more naturalistic bend in the elbow. the effect of this pose is that the statues are more balanced, and so less prone to breaking catastrophically - the tensile strength of marble is particulary low.

the figures are depicted as strong and robust, with vigorously rounded planes on the buttocks, thighs, and calves. this depiction of musculature is vastly different to that of the new york kouros, which is much lither and slenderer. the eyes are insectoid, however, as they are oversized and protrude from the skull more than is natural for human faces. there is still some influence from geometricism in these statues, particularly in the depiction of the pectorals, which are depicted using a softened gull-wing pattern, as well as more three-dimensional effects with the vigorous curving of the planes.

the two kouroi depict naked male figures (although they were originally wearing soft boots), robust and clearly an idealised representation of masculine strength and piety.

both kouroi have evidence of an archaic smile, used to enliven the statue, but are otherwise emotionless and stoic, as demonstrated by the lack of interaction between the mouth and the upper facial muscles – this helps to display a stoic and pious impression, supporting their existence as votive statues of kleobis and biton.

the kouroi, while still regular and consistent in the anatomy, have much thicker limbs and musculature than other kouroi – the waist is considerably smaller than the thighs, hips, and shoulders. this impressive musculature is also demonstrated by the difference in size between the thighs and the ankles – the upper legs are much larger than the ankles, demonstrating and emphasising the strength and power conveyed by these statues.

stylistic features

these statues are both clearly archaic, although they do have some deviation from the traditions of the era. they are still members of the archaic smile club and the insectoid eyes club, but the sculptor demonstrates an awareness of musculature that is less common for the time. interestingly, they also appear to have more non-muscular weight than many archaic kouroi; the stomach has very little definition, and the pectorals are more three dimensional than on previous (and later) sculptures.

the approach to hair is also notably different to that of other kouroi; the braids are thicker (perhaps to enhance the overall sense of robustness) and fall over the shoulder instead of into a curtain at the back.

scholars

woodford: "more interested in giving an impression of robustness through vigorously curved forms"

herodotus: "the argives made and set up images of them because of their excellence"

extra information

smarthistory

khan academy

[albumdigitale2023rita]

AUTORE: Polimede di Argo

NOME DELL'OPERA: Kleobi e Bitone

DATA: 600-589 a.C.

TECNICA: statue scolpite in marmo di Paro

COLLOCAZIONE: Delfi

FUNZIONE ORIGINALE: funzione di consacrazione, come esempio di vita vissuta felicemente

COLLOCAZIONE ATTUALE: Delfi, Museo Archeologico Nazionale

[ignaciogallego]

#Kleobis #Biton #KleobisBiton #kouros #archaicgreekkouros #ArcheologicalMuseumofDelphi #TempleofApolloinDelphi #PanhellenicSanctuaryofDelphi #Pithia #OracleofDelphi #Delphi #Phocis #Hellas🇬🇷 (en Delphi Archaeological Museum) https://www.instagram.com/p/B750inlpOnv/?igshid=a4s2az59k225

[verdantlyviolet]

Heraia Games Festival, ‘Sanctuary of Hera, Argos (The Argive Heraion)’ Warwick Classics and Ancient History

After Argos destroyed Mycenae, Tiryns and Midea, there were hekatoid games dedicated to Hera. At the end of the 3rd century BC, these honourific games were relocated to Argos and called the Heraia.

In the Heraia, an oxen-pulled chariot transported the priestess of Hera through the fields, where the oxen work, to the sanctuary. This could be a sort of sacred ploughing; all the participants moving slowly behind the priestess, through the communal fields. Hera is the goddess of fertility, this journey through the fields is symbolic of a successful farming. The procession included armed men; perhaps it was due to the Classical era, when bronze shields were awarded to the winners of games dedicated to Hera.

The origin of this tradition for oxen pulling the chariot comes from the story of Kleobis and Biton as shown below. Another reason is that there is a myth telling how the river Asterion’s three daughters raised Hera. The Asterion was the river which ran along her sanctuary. The mountain behind the sanctuary is named after Euboia, one of the three daughters of Asterion.

'The hill opposite the Heraeum they name after Acraea, the environs of the sanctuary they name after Euboea, and the land beneath the Heraeum after Prosymna. This Asterion flows above the Heraeum, and falling into a cleft disappears. On its banks grows a plant, which also is called asterion. They offer the plant itself to Hera, and from its leaves weave her garlands.' Pausanias (2.17.2)

The use of oxen may be due to Greek mythology; the priestess of Argive Hera, Io, was turned into a white cow by Hera to prevent her from being seduced by Zeus. This and the story of Kleobis and Biton, show early on in history, Argos was trying to exert their influence in the Archaic period by tieing the site to mythology regarding their polis.

Hera had an important place in the Argive community. It was she that saw children transitioning into adults. Virgin Argive girls were included in the Heraia and performed choral dances in honour of Hera.

[stoicbreviary]

Thomas Blanchet, Cleobis and Biton (c. 1660)  Nicolas-Pierre Loir, Kleobis and Biton (c. 1649)  Adam Müller, Kleobis and Biton (1830)  

[karl-bryullov]

Kleobis and Biton, 1827, Karl Bryullov

[heroicallynude]

I love the way the greeks viewed the idea of happiness and a life worth living. Like the story of the two brothers Kleobis and Biton, who were, for their hard work and good deeds, given the gift of dying at the height of their life - when they were young, strong and successful. They were the happiest people in the world, not because they got to live a long life, but because they never had to live past their prime. They died at their happiest. 

The story is told by Solon to the King Croesus, because Croesus, being the wealthiest man in the world, thought surely he would also be the happiest, asked Solon to tell him who he thought would be the happiest person in the world and objects to Solon not saying it must be him, with all that wealth. 

“Because, Croesus, man is entirely chance, and nobody knows what the gods may bring tomorrow. You should count no man happy until he dies.” Solon replies and I just think it is SUCH an interesting philosophy compared to ours today. The idea that you cant say you’re the happiest person in the world until you die because you don’t know what kind of tragedy is waiting for you in the near future, that only death can guarantee that you’re safe from sorrow.. In our modern age, we’re obsessed with the idea of having a long life, whereas the greeks were more focussed on the quality of said life and even seemed to think growing old was a tragedy in and of itself. 

All this to say the ancient greeks would definitely subscribe to the “Live fast, die young” philosophy

[headcanonbot]

Kleobis from The Praise Singer secretly loves terrible puns

[deathlessathanasia]

half-formed thought here… In most retellings and interpretations I see the assumption that Hera has always been first and foremost the goddess of marriage even as an unmarried maiden, that marriage has always been her primary concern and that her personality and behaviour must always have reflected that. Certainly, this is Hera's main sphere of activity in ancient Greek religion, but I don't actually think that this role should define her so strongly from the very beginning or that marriage should be considered her primary function before she actually marries Zeus.

In terms of mythology, there are indications that she only gained her marriage-related titles once she became the wife of Zeus: "… Temenos, who himself established three sanctuaries for the goddess, and gave her three surnames when she was still a maiden, Pais; when married to Zeus he called her Teleia" (Pausanias, Description of Greece 8.22.2); "… but when her marriage became openly known, and their intercourse first here in the neighbourhood of Citliaeron and of Plataea had been revealed, she was called Hera Teleia and Gamelios, goddess of the perfect life, and of marriage." (Plutarch, cited in Praeparatio Evangelica); In the scholion to Theokritos' Idylls 15.64, it is said that Zeus approached Hera and promised to make her his wife in the place where, in later times, a sanctuary of Hera Teleia would be built; in a scholion to Iliad 1.609, Hera's epithets Teleia and Syzygos are attributed to the fact that she is married to Zeus.

It is worth noting that the cult title Teleia likely wasn't always limited to the sphere of marriage for Hera. Gregory Nagy discusses at some length the connections between Hera,hora, heroes and telos in "The Ancient Greek Hero in 24 Hours". Here is an example of what Hera's aspect of Teleia might have also meant: "Being on time for death is precisely what happens to Kleobis and Biton, sons of the priestess of Hera … Their timely death marks them as cult heroes, and the word that expresses this timely death, which will lead to timeless immortalization, is telos. And it is most appropriate that Hera, the goddess of timelines, presides over the telos of heroes"." Joan O'Brien also suggests that "early Hera fulfilled worshippers, in the sense of bringing them to a completion (telos) of their life cycles".

Connected to the point above, it is theorized by some scholars that Hera's cults were slowly reshaped so that she could be integrated in the Panhellenic Olympian pantheon, which led to her role as goddess of marriage and wife of Zeus to be emphasised to the expense of her other aspects and functions. Jennifer Larson summarizes the theory more succintly in her "Greek Nymphs: Myth, Cult, Lore": „O’Brien has made a strong case that the major cults of Hera underwent a transformation about 600, partly as the result of the influence of Homeric epic, from celebrations of a powerful nature goddess of the potnia therôn (mistress of animals) type, to a more limited depiction of Hera as bride of Zeus and guardian of marriage. … the clothing and bathing of the image, in earlier times a devotional activity and a ritual renewal of the goddess’s powers, now took on the more specific denotations of the bridal raiment and bath. Hera’s high crown, the polos, came to be shared by brides, and her fertility symbol of the pomegranate also gained (or was narrowed to) a nuptial significance."

Similarly, Neta Aloni-Ronen, in "Marrying Hera: Incomplete Integration in the Making of the Pantheon", suggests that in the Argolid she was not seen primarly as the wife of Zeus, but as a patroness of heroes and warriors. In addition to her military function Hera Argeia was also a kourotrophos and goddess of childbirth, was concerned with the care of cattle, the tranzition of both females and males to adulthood (which would include marriage as well so she'd still be concerned with it to some extent) and even agriculture (in one Argive legend grain was called "the flowers of Hera" and the first king who yoked oxen to the plough was said to have dedicated a temple to Hera as "the goddess of the yoke").

In Samos, too, she was a fertility goddess who had the entire island under her protection and seems to have had wide-ranging functions. Philip Brize, in "Offrandes de l’époque géométrique et archaïque à l’Héraion de Samos", suggests that the functions of Samian Hera were similar to those Hesiod gives to Hekate in the Theogony: "And we can assume that many features of the cult of the Samian Hera date back to this pre-Hellenic [Carian] cultt, especially the importance of the sacred tree. It is not surprising that the Samian Hera resembles the most important goddess in Caria in historical times, Hekate. The hymn to Hekate, inserted in the Theogony of Hesiod, attributes to the goddess a plurality of functions - political, military, agonal and naval. She ensures the protection of the herds together with Hermes, and, moreover, she is Kourotrophos. This catalogue reads like a praise to the Samian Hera."

So it is not as if Hera would have had no honours before she became the wife of Zeus if she wasn't the marriage goddess par excellence, quite the contrary. Her importance might have been regional rather than universal, but her power was still great and was definitely not restricted to the marital and domestic sphere.

[eucanthos]

Polymedes of Argos

Statue of Kleobis (Biton). Detail. Marble. Ca. 600 BCE. Sculptor Polymides of Argos.

Credits: © 1963 Photo, text: Kolpinskij Ju. D. Skulptura Drevnej Ellady. Moskva, 1963. Ill. 3.

Believed to be Kleobis. Kleobis & Biton, 2 archaic Greek marble kouroi (pl. for kouros) from Argos at Delphi Archaeological Museum.

Their story dates back to about 580 BC. and is about maximum happiness, i.a.

It can first be seen in Herodotus Histories (1.31), where Solon tells King of Lydia, Croesus about the happiest persons in the world.

Inscriptions, though, on the base of the statues identify them as ϜΑΝΑΚΩΝ (wanakōn), i.e. the "princes", an attribute usually given to Castor and Pollux in Argos, a fact which supports identification with the Dioscuri. The inscription also identifies Polymedes of Argos as the sculptor. -Wiki

[thephysicalobject]

Kleobis, originally ca. 580 BCE https://museum.classics.cam.ac.uk/collections/casts/kleobis University of Cambridge, Museum of Classical Archaeology

[ignaciogallego]

#Kleobis #Biton #KleobisBiton #kouros #archaicgreekkouros #ArcheologicalMuseumofDelphi #TempleofApolloinDelphi #PanhellenicSanctuaryofDelphi #Pithia #OracleofDelphi #Delphi #Phocis #Hellas🇬🇷 (en Delphi Archaeological Museum) https://www.instagram.com/p/B750RrnJcCu/?igshid=g3c19p53qurh

[astrahct]

Kleobis e Biton

Kleobis e Biton

autore: Polimede di Argo

VI-VII secolo a.C.

marmo pario

Museo archeologico di Delfi

[karl-bryullov]

Kleobis and Biton, 1827, Karl Bryullov

[arteegrecaa]

Kleobis e Biton

Statue uguali del 600-580 a.C. ca. (età arcaica), marmo pario scolpito a tutto tondo, ritrovate presso il santuario di Delfi, conservate a Delfi (Museo Archeologico).

Sono alcun dei primi kouroi. Le due statue, oltre ad essere completamente identiche, sono perfettamente simmetriche, frontali e chiuse nel blocco: ricordano quindi la perfezione tramandata dagli egiziani.