The Corbridge Lanx

Abstract

The Corbridge lanx, a silver dish of excellent workmanship, unusually well preserved, is one of the most interesting relics of Roman antiquity as yet discovered on English soil (pl. viii). Its admirers, however, after more than two centuries, are faced with the problem, still unsolved, of satisfactorily understanding and explaining its puzzling decoration. Of the two lines of research hitherto adopted the first is mystical or allegorical, and is attracted particularly by the mysterious objects close to the undoubted figure of Apollo, though it exaggerates their mysterious character in every respect; and the explanation of them as illustrating a systematic cosmological antithesis between heaven and earth, in the style of Neo-platonism or of the Emperor Julian, has not so far proved likely to lead anywhere. The simpler and more definite interpretation of the second group is based on classical legend, an interpretation well justified by the undoubted presence of at least three Olympian deities. Yet the attempt to deduce a Judgment of Paris from no more than the joint presence of Artemis, Apollo, and Athena was from the first a difficult line to pursue; for of the normal characters in the scene only Athena is shown, while the presence of Apollo and Artemis is a positive drawback. Cogent proof is absent here also. Despite the light meanwhile thrown on numerous details, there is nothing to change in the statement made by Roger Gale in 1735, that a gathering of deities is represented, while their relation to any given legend, if such exists, is certainly still to seek.