Phantasms and Metonyms: The Limits of Representation in Fifth-Century Athens

Abstract

This essay reconsiders key questions about ancient Greek representational practice by studying representations of the dead. It examines both literary and visual evidence, stretching from the eighth to the fourth century BCE, but focuses especially on a fifth-century Attic vase painting. Historicist readings of textual sources indicate that the concept of the image was only fully developed in Greek philosophical writings of the fourth century BCE. The essay argues that Greek visual culture provides evidence of complex thinking about the role and status of images within a broader spectrum of representational possibilities prior to their philosophical theorization. This kind of material evidence supplies the historical matrix for the development of philosophical theory, but it also exceeds the complexity of that theory. In the face of the images themselves, philosophy presents not a revolution but a retrenchment.