Otium (Sep 2017)
Purificazione e salvezza negli amyetai della Nekya di Polignoto di Taso
Abstract
Among great myths of antiquity, the subject of amyetai is one of the less known by literary and iconographical sources, except for a bit of Athenian black figure vases and for the allusion of Pausanias, who recognises the representation in the Nekyia of Polygnotos of Thasos on the walls of Cnidian Lesche in Delphi. This painting has made on request by Cnidi and by Cimon, Athenian politician, initiate to eleusinian mysteries. He tried to role in Athens after Persian Wars. The description of Nekyia by Pausanias proposes again the concept of purity, purification and deliverance all together, by adding and combining well known ideas in Greek myth and in presocratic philosophy. These concepts seem be changed by the power of eleusinian rituals, in a safety religion that gives strenght to the polis. The relationship between the Nekyia depicted by Polygnotos of Thasos and the eleusinian mysteries connected with the ideological program of Cimon, has been underlining by L. Fiorini and by undersigned. In fact there is a deep link between the description of Pausanias and the building excavated by French School of Athens in a shelf of the sanctuary of Apollo in Delphi. It is possible to define Polygnotos the first big painter in the court of politician, the first that has translated into images the political program of Cimon. In this context, the presence of amyetai is a warning of ancient cultic legacies, re‐shaped and re‐integrated into cimonian Athens.
