The gate of the year

Figure above:

Terracotta statuette representing a boar, from Boeotia, dating to about the VI century B.C. and now in the Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA, USA. The boar is frequently represented as a terrible and frightening wild beast, generally associated with the goddess of the hunt, Artemis. It was also an attribute of Demeter, goddess of vegetation, to whom it was offered as a sacrifice. The boar was related with the most wild and inaccessible regions, like the fearful beast that ravaged the fields around Calydon, the main town of Aetolia. Aetolia was regarded by the Greeks as a wild region, not entirely integrated in the Hellenic world: it was said, indeed, that the people of this region spoke an incomprehensible language and that they ate raw meat (Thucydides, 3, 94, 5). To the wildness and primitiveness of its inhabitants corresponded the wilderness of the landscape: Herodotus (VII, 126) reports that, still at his own times, in the V century B.C., Aetolia was the only area in Europe where it was possible to meet lions and wild bulls (Del Corno, 2001, p.142-143).

[Source: http://library.artstor.org/library/]

Figure below:

Attic black-figure painting on pottery, dating to about 560 B.C., from Southern Etruria and now in the Altes Museum (Staatliche Museen), Berlin, Germany. Though produced by an Etruscan artisan, this object represents a very popular motif in Greek art, inspired to one of the mostly diffused mythological themes: the hunt to the Boar of Calydon. This frightening animal, “fierce and wild, with white tusks” (Iliad, IX, 539), had been sent by Artemis because the Calydon’s king, Oeneus, during a feast for the harvest, had offered sacrifices to all the gods but to her. The animal devastated the country, compelling the inhabitants to take refuge inside the city walls. The hunt to the boar was a venture to which many heroes participated, many of whom were killed by the beast. It was at last overthrown by Meleager, the king’s son.

[Source: http://library.artstor.org/library/]




Animals

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Figure above: Terracotta statuette representing a boar, from Boeotia, dating to about the VI century B.C. and now in the Smith College Museum of Art, Northampton, MA, USA. The boar is frequently represented as a terrible and frightening wild beast, generally associated with the goddess of the hunt, Artemis. It was also an attribute of Demeter, goddess of vegetation, to whom it was offered as a sacrifice. The boar was related with the most wild and inaccessible regions, like the fearful beast that ravaged the fields around Calydon, the main town of Aetolia. Aetolia was regarded by the Greeks as a wild region, not entirely integrated in the Hellenic world: it was said, indeed, that the people of this region spoke an incomprehensible language and that they ate raw meat (Thucydides, 3, 94, 5). To the wildness and primitiveness of its inhabitants corresponded the wilderness of the landscape: Herodotus (VII, 126) reports that, still at his own times, in the V century B.C., Aetolia was the only area in Europe where it was possible to meet lions and wild bulls (Del Corno, 2001, p.142-143). [Source: http://library.artstor.org/library/] Figure below: Attic black-figure painting on pottery, dating to about 560 B.C., from Southern Etruria and now in the Altes Museum (Staatliche Museen), Berlin, Germany. Though produced by an Etruscan artisan, this object represents a very popular motif in Greek art, inspired to one of the mostly diffused mythological themes: the hunt to the Boar of Calydon. This frightening animal, “fierce and wild, with white tusks” (Iliad, IX, 539), had been sent by Artemis because the Calydon’s king, Oeneus, during a feast for the harvest, had offered sacrifices to all the gods but to her. The animal devastated the country, compelling the inhabitants to take refuge inside the city walls. The hunt to the boar was a venture to which many heroes participated, many of whom were killed by the beast. It was at last overthrown by Meleager, the king’s son. [Source: http://library.artstor.org/library/]