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C ON DI T ION S OF V I S I BI L I T Y
V I SU A L C O N VE RS AT I O N S
I N A RT A N D A RC H A E O LO G Y
General Editor: Jaś Elsner
Visual Conversations is a series designed to foster a new model of comparative

inquiry in the histories of ancient art. The aim is to create the spirit of a comparative
conversation across the different areas of the art history and archaeology of the
pre-modern world—across Eurasia, Africa, Australasia, and the Americas—in ways
that are academically and theoretically stimulating. The books serve collectively
as a public platform to demonstrate by example the possibilities of a comparative
exercise of working with objects across cultures and religions within defined, but
broad, historical trajectories.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Conditions of Visibility
Edited by
R IC H A R D N E E R
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1
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The authors dedicate this book with gratitude to their students

and to the attendees at the Global Ancient Art conferences, whose
conversation and debate have inspired these essays.
P RE FA C E
Richard Neer
The Chicago Center for Global Ancient Art was founded in 2009 by members
of the Department of Art History at the University of Chicago. Its animating
idea is that a new research paradigm is emerging within art history. Antiquity
was, of course, one of the original topics of this discipline as it emerged in Europe
in the eighteenth century. For many years, however, art history derived its basic
research questions and its accepted ways of answering such questions from the
study of more recent epochs: the Latin Middle Ages, the European Renaissance,
nineteenth-century Paris, 1960s New York. That situation is changing: as the
discipline grows and expands, new questions and new ways of answering them
start to appear. The Center, in particular, explores two developments in recent
scholarship: an increasing tendency amongst art historians to study archaeological
corpora, and a corresponding tendency amongst archaeologists to move beyond
functionalism into “art historical” topics like beholding, iconography, materials,
phenomenology, stylistics, and aesthetics. What happens when these two worlds
collide?
We define ancient in procedural terms: wherever it is from, whenever it was
made, art is ancient if our knowledge of it derives to a significant degree from
archaeological data: stratigraphic, archaeometric, typological/stylistic, even quanti-
tative. Antiquity is, in short, a function of method. Because these methods apply
to a broad range of regions and corpora, this definition makes it possible to speak
in global, comparative terms—a comparativism, however, not so much of the
objects of knowledge as of the ways of producing and ordering them. Scholars of
ancient China, Greece, and Mexico may work with radically different materials
and possess radically different research skills, yet they all use similar kinds of data,
produce facts in similar ways. In a discipline that still partitions itself according
to nation, religion, and date (we have sinologists and classicists, modernists and
Islamists), these affinities of method provide a new, “horizontal” way to organize
research. On offer, in short, is a comparativism of method.
Perhaps the most controversial, even tendentious aspect of this program is the
apparently cavalier use of the term art. Art, we are sometimes told, is a quintes-
sentially modern concept that can be applied to older or alien materials only on
pain of gross anachronism. We do not pretend to know in advance the compass
of this term or the limits of the aesthetic. On the contrary, it is only by testing the
viii PR EFACE
methods of art history against the materials and protocols of archaeology that we
may be in a position to discover whether our questions are well formed, our
answers cogent. Like global and ancient, in short, our use of the term art is pro-
cedural, a function of method—a usage that, in its turn, enables comparison
across cultures, times, and places.
Each volume in this series examines and compares a basic concept or category
of art historical and archaeological inquiry. Unlike the widely available hand-
books or companions to standing fields of inquiry, these books do not codify or
survey well-defined bodies of knowledge. They are, instead, exploratory: at once
primers for students seeking to expand their research horizons and provocations
to specialists. They offer, in short, theory from the ground up: an apt description,
we hope, of a truly archaeological history of art.
CO NT E NT S
List of Illustrations xi
List of Contributors xv
Introduction1
Richard Neer
1. Three Types of Invisibility: The Acropolis of Athens 7

Richard Neer
2. What Lies Beneath: Carving on the Underside of

Aztec Sculpture 43
Claudia Brittenham
3. Concealment and Revelation: The Pola Casket and

the Visuality of Early Christian Relics 74
Jas ́ Elsner
4. The Archaeology of Passage: Reading Invisibility in

Chinese Tombs111
Wu Hung
Index147
L I S T O F I L L U S T RAT I O NS
1.1. Athens, Acropolis, view from the Pnyx. 8

1.2. Rogier van der Weyden, The Vision of the Magi, c.1445–8. Oil on panel.
Berlin, Gemäldegalerie der Staatlichen Museen. 9
1.3. Athens, sanctuary of Athena Nike, parapet relief: Nike unclasping
sandal. Marble, c.416 bce. Athens, Acropolis Museum. 10
1.4. Kore from the “Kore Pit” on the Athenian Acropolis. Marble,
c.520–500 bce. Athens, Acropolis Museum 671. 12
1.5. Athens, Acropolis, Parthenon, east pediment: Figure D (Dionysos),
front view. Marble, 447–432 bce. London: British Museum, inv.
1816,0610.93.17
1.6. Athens, Acropolis, Parthenon, east pediment: Figure D (Dionysos),
back view. Marble, 447–432 bce. London: British Museum, inv.
1816,0610.93.18
1.7. Athens, Acropolis, Parthenon, north frieze, Block II: Figure 4 (youth
with heifer). Marble, 447–432 bce. Athens, Acropolis Museum. 19
1.8. Athens, Acropolis, Parthenon: angles for viewing frieze. 20
1.9. Athens, Acropolis, Parthenon, east porch: exposed clamp. 22
1.10. Athens, Acropolis, temple of Athena Polias (Erechtheum), with modern
restorations: view from southeast. 421–406 bce.25
1.11. Athens, Acropolis, temple of Athena Nike and bastion: view from
northwest. Late 430s–420s bce.29
1.12. Athens, Acropolis, bastion of the temple of Athena Nike: polygonal
gap in the cladding of the bastion, revealing Mycenaean masonry.
Late 430s bce.30
1.13. Delphi, sanctuary of Apollo: polygonal masonry of sanctuary wall.
Sixth century bce.31
1.14. Olympia: Nike of Paionios, commemorating the Messenian and
Naupaktian contribution to the victory of the Athenians and their allies
over the Spartans at Sphakteria in 425 bce. Marble, c.425–420 bce.
Olympia, Museum. 34
1.15. Athens, Acropolis, Parthenon, south frieze, Block XLIII (youth
restraining heifer). Marble, 447–432 bce. London, British Museum. 35
1.16. Athens, Acropolis, sanctuary of Athena Nike, parapet relief: Nike
restraining bull. Marble, c.425–400 bce. Athens, Acropolis Museum. 36
1.17. Athens, Acropolis, temple of Athena Polias (Erechtheum): caryatid.
Marble, 421–406 bce. London, British Museum 1816,0610.128. 37
2.1. Coiled serpent, Mexica/Aztec, c.1480–1519. British Museum
Am1849,0629.1.44
2.2. Hackmack Box, Mexica/Aztec, 1503. Museum fur Volkerkunde,
Hamburg, B 3767. 48
xii LIST OF ILLUSTR ATIONS
2.3. Coatlicue, Mexica/Aztec, c.1480–1510, Museo Nacional de

Antropologia, Mexico. 50
2.4. Xiuhmolpilli or “bundle of years”, Mexica/Aztec. Museo Nacional de
2.5. Coiled and knotted rattlesnake, Aztec. Museo Nacional de
2.6. Coiled Xiuhcoatl, Mexica/Aztec, 1507. Dumbarton Oaks Research
Library and Collection PC.B.069. 58
2.7. Altars with maize cobs, Mexica/Aztec. Museo Nacional de
Antropologia and Ethnologisches Museum, Berlin. 59
2.8. Stone cactii with images of Tenoch on the underside, Mexica/Aztec
c.1400–1520. Museo Nacional de Antropología, Mexico. 61
2.9. Feathered Serpent and Flowering Tree mural, probably from
Techinantitla apartment compound, Teotihuacan, c.100–550 ce.
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco 185.104.1a–b. 62
2.10. Coiled serpent, Teotihuacan. First–sixth century ce. Museo de Sitio de
Teotihuacan.62
2.11. Feathered serpent with Tlaltecuhtli underneath, Mexica/Aztec,
c.1400–1519. Museum der Kulturen Basel IVb 1359. 63
2.12. Offering vessel (cuauhxicalli), Mexica/Aztec, c.1400–1519. Staatliche
Museen zu Berlin, Ethnologisches Museum, Preussischer Kulturbesitz,
IV Ca 1. 66
3.1. Marble statue of Flavius Palmatus from Aphrodisias in Asia Minor, early
sixth century ce. Aphrodisias Museum. 75
3.2. Bronze head of Augustus, from Meroe, Sudan, c.30 bce. British Museum. 76
3.3. Silver-gilt so-called Projecta casket from the Esquiline Treasure found in
Rome, c.350–80 ce. British Museum. 77
3.4. Silver objects from the Traprain Law hoard, containing mainly
‘hack-silver’ (cut up and ready for the melting pot) found in Edinburgh,
fourth–fifth century ce. National Museums of Scotland. 78
3.5. Silver missorium of Theodosius, folded and perhaps intended for the
melting pot, from near Merida in Spain, c.388 ce. Real Academia de
la Historia, Madrid. 79
3.6. Gold and niello pectoral cross from Pliska, Bulgaria, ninth century ce.
National Museum, Sofia. 80
3.7. The Pola casket, from the front and right. Ivory plaques and silver
brackets at the corners, as well as a silver lock and hinges, over a wooden
core. Found near Pola in Istria, early to mid-fifth century. Museo
Archeologico Nazionale, Venice. 81
3.8. The Pola casket, from the front, with the Hetoimasia and Lamb
between apostles. Venice. 82
3.9. The Pola casket, back, showing a church interior (perhaps Old St Peter’s)
with worshippers. 83
LIST OF ILLUSTR ATIONS xiii
3.10. The Pola casket, from the left, showing a church interior with closed
door and approaching devotees. 84
3.11. The Pola casket, from the right, showing a church interior with
devotees.85
3.12. The Pola casket, lid, with Christ between Peter and Paul, palm trees,
and lambs. 86
3.13. The Pola casket, lid, conjectural restoration. 87
3.14. Stone container and lid in which the Pola casket was found, from the
Church of St Hermagoras, Samagher, Istria. 88
3.15. The Basilica of St Maria Maggiore, triumphal arch mosaic with empty
throne, 432–40 ce. Rome. 88
3.16. Marble spiral columns (probably second century ce) reused for the
shrine of St Peter in the Vatican, first half of the fourth century ce,
and reused again in the Reniassance Basilica of St Peter’s. 90
3.17. Mosaic of Theodora and her entourage, from the Presbytery of
the Church of San Vitale, c.545–9 ce. Ravenna. 94
4.1. Cross-section and plan of Mawangdui Tomb 1 at Changsha, Hunan.
Western Han, early second century bce.113
4.2. Plan of Leigudun Tomb 1 at Suixian, Hubei. Early Warring States
period, fifth century bce.115
4.3. Marquis Yi’s outer coffin from Leigudun Tomb 1. 116
4.4. Marquis Yi’s inner coffin from Leigudun Tomb 1. 117
4.5. Drawing of a detail of the lacquer painting on Marquis Yi’s inner coffin. 118
4.6. Pottery coffin for a child from Zhengzhou, Henan, Yanshao culture.
Neolithic, fifth millennium bce.119
4.7. Jade bi-disk. Neolithic period, Liangzhu culture, third millennium bce.123
4.8. The “jade body” of Prince Liu Sheng of the Zhongshan principality,
from Mancheng Tomb 1, Hebei. Western Han, 113 bce.125
4.9. Detail of Dou Wan’s “jade body” from Mancheng Tomb 2, Hebei.
Western Han, 104 bce.125
4.10. The “jade head” of Prince Liu Yan of the Zhongshan principality,
excavated in Dingzhou, Hebei. Eastern Han, first century ce.126
4.11. Lacquer painting on the front side of a coffin from Shazitang,
Changsha, Hunan. Western Han, 157 bce (?). 128
4.12. Mawangdui Tomb 1: (a) top view, (b) cross section. Located at
Changsha, Hunan. Western Han, second century bce.129
4.13. Bi-disk placed on the front top of the innermost coffin in Mawangdui
Tomb 1. 130
4.14. Drawing of the silk painting from Mawangdui Tomb 1. Arrows indicate
three “ground levels” which devide the painting into four sections. 131
4.15. Detail of the silk painting from Mawangdui Tomb 1. 132
4.16. Drawing of the lacquer painting on the “red” coffin from Mawangdui
Tomb 1: (a) a narrow side, (b) a long side. 133
xiv LIST OF ILLUSTR ATIONS
4.17. A diagram showing the relationship between the bi-disk and the
two dragons in the silk painting from Mawangdui Tomb 1. 134
4.18. A miniature screen from Mawangdui Tomb 1: (a) front side,
(b) back side. 136
4.19. A mural in Zhang Shiqing’s tomb (Tomb 1) at Xuanhua, Hebei.
Liao dynasty, 1116 ce.142
4.20. Drawing of a mural in Houshiguo Tomb 1 at Mixian, Henan.
Eastern Han, mid-second century ce.142
Whilst every effort has been made to secure permission to reproduce the illustrations, we may
have failed in a few cases to trace the copyright holders. If contacted, the publisher will be
pleased to rectify any omissions at the earliest opportunity.
L I S T O F C ONT RI B UT O RS
Claudia Brittenham is Associate Professor of Art History and the College at the
University of Chicago. Her research focuses on the art of Mesoamerica, especially
Central Mexico and the Maya area, with particular interests in the materiality of
art and the politics of style. She is the author of The Murals of Cacaxtla: The
Power of Painting in Ancient Central Mexico (University of Texas Press, 2015),
The Spectacle of the Late Maya Court: Reflections on the Murals of Bonampak
(University of Texas Press, 2013; co-authored with Mary Miller), and Veiled
Brightness: A History of Ancient Maya Color (University of Texas Press, 2009;
co-authored with Stephen Houston, Cassandra Mesick, Alexandre Tokovinine,
and Christina Warinner).
Jaś Elsner is Professor of Late Antique Art at the University of Oxford and
Humfry Payne Senior Research Fellow in Classical Archaeology and Art at
Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He has been a Visiting Professor in Art History
at the University of Chicago since 2003, and also at the Divinity School since
2014, and was Senior Research Keeper in the Empires of Faith Project on art
and religion in late antiquity at the British Museum from 2013 to 2018. Since
2009 he has been an Honorary Foreign Member of the American Academy of
Arts and Sciences and in 2017 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy.
He works on art and its many receptions (including ritual, religion, pilgrimage,
viewing, description, collecting) in antiquity and Byzantium, including into
modernity, with strong interests in comparativism, global art history, and the
critical historiography of the discipline.
Richard Neer is Barbara E. and Richard J. Franke Distinguished Service
Professor in Art History, Cinema & Media Studies and the College at the
University of Chicago, where is also Director of the Franke Institute for the
Humanities. From 2010 to 2018 he was the Executive Editor of the journal
Critical Inquiry, where he continues to serve as co-editor. He has published
widely on Greek art, early modern French painting, stylistics, and mid-20th
century cinema. His most recent books are; Art and Archaeology of the Greek
World: A New History, 2500–100 bce (Thames & Hudson, second, expanded
edition, 2018); Davidson and His Interlocutors, co-edited with Daniele Lorenzini
(special issue of Critical Inquiry, Winter 2019); and Pindar, Song, and Space:
Towards a Lyric Archaeology, co-authored with Leslie Kurke (Johns Hopkins,
2019).
Wu Hung is Harrie A. Vanderstappen Distinguished Service Professor of Art
History and the College at the University of Chicago, and also Director of the
xvi List of Contributors
Center for the Art of East Asia and Consulting Curator of the Smart Museum of
Art. He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and
the American Philosophical Society, and sits on the boards and advisory
committees of many research institutes and museums in both the United States
and China. He has published widely on both traditional and contemporary Chinese
art, experimenting with different ways to integrate these conventionally separate
phases into new kinds of art historical narratives, as exemplified by two of his
most recent books, A Story of Ruins: Presence and Absence in Chinese Art and
Visual Culture (Princeton University Press, 2012) and Zooming In: Histories of
Photography in China (University of Chicago Press, 2016). Several of his ongoing
projects follow this direction to explore the interrelation between art medium,
pictorial image, and architectural space, the dialectical relationship between
absence and presence in Chinese art and visual culture, and the relationship
between art discourse and practice.
The contributors to this volume are the founding members of the Center for
Global Ancient Art at the University of Chicago.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Introduction
Richard Neer
What conditions must be met, what has to be in place, for an artifact or a work
of art to be visible as such? At some level the answer is simple: the lights must be
on. Quickly, however, the issues become more complex and turn out to vary
from discipline to discipline. Not everything is visible at every time, which means
that not every research program can see the same things. Material conditions are
certainly important, but so are perceptual capacities, technologies of visualization,
protocols of classification, and a great deal more.
Archaeology is, among other things, the science of making things visible.
It does so by digging them out of the ground; what time has hidden, the archae-
ologist reveals. The discipline is, as a result, keenly attuned to the material
conditions under which such visibility becomes possible. Those conditions can
be institutional, practical, and technological—funding, permits, and tools, be
they picks and shovels or ground penetrating radar. But the conditions that
archaeology investigates can also be historical, in the sense that, even in the dis-
tant past, visibility was neither uniform nor given. Historical agents, no less than
time, may do the work of concealment: burying things, hiding them, rendering
them variously obscure. It follows that archaeologists excavate more than arti-
facts. Equally, they excavate the conditions of each artifact’s potential visibility:
the material conditions under which entities in a past world could be conspicu-
ous and obtrusive, or recede into an unremarkable background. In short, they
excavate relations no less than things—hence, by extension, a potential stratifica-
tion in who saw what and at what time.
Art history, on the other hand, tends to take visibility for granted. Integral to
the discipline is a vast infrastructure of imaging and autopsy, from ArtSTOR to
high-quality printing to travel grants—all committed to what Michael Fried has
called “the primordial convention” that pictures and sculptures are meant to be
beheld.1 This commitment exceeds the requirements of empirical research: even
1
Fried 1998, 33. For discussion of this phrase, see Melville 1996, 178–80.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
2 R ICH A R D NEER
the most thorough technical documentation and the most meticulous description
will, by broad consensus, be no substitute for seeing the object with one’s own
eyes. Procedurally, archaeologists can use type-specimens to stand in for large
classes of object, but art historians typically attend to each and every instance and
its specific look (even mechanical prints and photographs come in editions and
impressions). It is as though there were something about the object of study that
required beholding, in the sense of autopsy. This “to-be-seen-ness” may seem an
essential, definitional criterion of the art historical object, but Fried’s insight is
that the visibility in question counts as essential only within specific historical
circumstances. Attending to the ways in which such works articulate a relation to
beholders helps us “to historicize essence,” that is, to produce “a narrative of the
shifting depths over time of the need for one or more basic conventions within
a pictorial or sculptural tradition.”2 Beholding—hence visibility in an extended
sense, the very interface of sensibility and comportment—is not a presupposition
but an object of art historical research.
The present volume documents four recent experiments in the historicization
of essence, under the aegis of the Center for Global Ancient Art in the
Department of Art History at the University of Chicago. Such experiments are,
in themselves, nothing new; the historical determination of the visible has been
one of art history’s major preoccupations since the days of Aloïs Riegl and Erwin
Panofsky and goes back ultimately to the Aesthetics of Hegel.3 New, however, is
the way that these experiments situate themselves at the intersection of the two
modes of visibility outlined above: the archaeological and the art historical. The
relation of disciplinary conditions of visibility to historical ones is, in each case, a
specific topic of reflection.4 Such reflection is, arguably, only possible within a
mongrel subdiscipline like archaeological art history, which might be defined as
the application of art historical research questions to corpora formed by strati-
graphic and archaeometric analysis. Constitutively interdisciplinary—or, better,
constitutively undisciplined—this subfield cuts across the traditional ethnic,
religious, and chronological categories that segregate the history of art into pagan
and Christian, Chinese and Roman, Maya and Greek. United around shared
problems of method, this second-order reflection is cheerfully parasitic on
2
Fried 1998, 33. Italics original.
3
For Panofsky and the historicization of the senses, see Wood 1991. For Riegl, see Olin 1992. For an
analysis of the Hegelian legacy in recent art history, see Pippin 2013. A particularly good recent treatment
of the historicization of the senses in art historical discourse is Davis 2011.
4
A pioneering work in this regard is Alpers 1983, on how new technologies of viewing (notably,
microscopes) produced new ways of construing truthfulness in early modern painting. Joel Snyder’s
account of how the apparatus of photography produced new kinds of visual fact is also extremely germane:
see e.g. Snyder 1980; 2002. Outside art history proper, see the discussion of scientific illustration in
Galison and Daston 2010. Bringing these topics into art criticism, see Bourdieu 1984; Rancière 2000.
INTRODUCTION 3
(hence, respectful of ) traditional, corpus-building scholarship, even as it aspires

to a new formation. The goal is nothing less than a triple comparativism: between
the academic present and the historical past; between the protocols of art history
and those of archaeology; and between the various area-studies subfields that
define current research.
This concern with the conditions under which a picture, a glyph, a coffin, or a
building is “to-be-seen” produces a series of essays that address the interface of
revelation and concealment. The question of invisibility—of artifacts coming to
light and receding into obscurity—turns out to be no less important than visibility
itself. For Claudia Brittenham, the question turns on the carved undersides of
certain Aztec sculpture: glyphs and other texts set where no eyes could see them.
Brittenham discusses such works in light of recent literature on absconding, that
is, the intentional concealment of images.5 But she also adduces Aztec poetry
as an analogy to sculptural practice. This literature can represent concepts and
things by elaborate circumlocutions or kennings, which often have a binary
structure: a couplet pairing two terms that, in tandem, represent a larger concep-
tual whole. For the phrase to be meaningful it necessarily combines the two ken-
nings in a regular, rule-bound manner. Brittenham argues that Aztec sculpture
works the same way: visible and hidden combine like a couplet, in an interplay of
seeing and knowing, of what the eye apprehends and what the mind understands
to be invisible and yet present all the same. The field of the visible is not just
informed but structured by all that passes stipulatively unseen; there is no “to-be-
seen-ness” without a concomitant “to-be-unseen-ness.”
Jaś Elsner is likewise concerned with absconding, but in a very different con-
text: a specific object and its unique conditions of discovery. The object is a late
antique box of wood, ivory, and silver found beneath the altar of a church near
Pola in Istria. As so often in the archaeological disciplines, the very circumstance
that requires excavation also denudes the artifact of secondary documentation.
Although the Pola casket was deliberately interred as a reliquary, we do not know
whether this role represents its primary function or was an adventitious, second-
ary reuse. The casket, in any event, is a hidden box that contains hidden relics;
Elsner describes its figural décor in a tour de force of close reading, a semiology
of absence that shows how the casket both narrates and performs the apophasis
of deity. Such close reading is arguably more common in the archaeological
wings of art history than it is in the study of later, better documented epochs; the
absence of secondary documentation means that scholars rely especially heavily
on the object as a source of data. Perhaps the boldest wager of Elsner’s paper is
that the distinction of primary versus secondary use really does not matter very
much; whether originally intended to do so or not, the Pola casket did provide a
5
Wu, Hay, and Pellizzi 2009.
4 R ICH A R D NEER
theologically inflected commentary on both relics and reliquaries. That is, the
casket’s thematic of visibility and apophasis may be entirely circumstantial, entirely
dependent upon the ritual and material conditions of its deposition—and no less
grounded in iconographic and stylistic detail for all that. In this way, the casket’s
own conditions of visibility turn out to be as religiously significant as they are
archaeologically, forensically determinative.
For the present author (Neer), the issue is less theology than power and access.
The conditions of visibility are material and social. Who gets to see? The case
study here is the most public, conspicuous monument of Classical Athenian
democracy: the Acropolis. Only in the crudest, most literal sense does the ques-
tion of visibility turn on literal occlusion or hiding from view, as in the case of a
pit in which certain recognizable statues were reverently buried after a Persian
army looted the sanctuary in 480 bce. More often it is a matter of privileged or
impoverished views, as in the case of the sculpted frieze of the Parthenon—a
costly addition that nobody could see from ground level. That the frieze contains
a wealth of finicky iconographic detail can be explained with the pious suggestion
that its intended audience is the goddess Athena, but de facto visibility must have
been restricted to the overseers and functionaries who supervised the project. The
result was a differential in the visible, which turns out to extend even to monuments
in plain sight. There is good evidence to suggest that the iconography of Athenian
public art was incomprehensible to most Athenians; the commons could not rec-
ognize, could not see, the gods and goddesses that adorned their monuments. In
this way, the very capacity to see was effectively rationed, not by any calculating
ideologue, but by the material conditions of production and consumption. The
sanctuary of Athena Nike (the Victorious) at the entry to the Acropolis is a virtual
allegory of this social rationing of visibility. A Bronze Age bastion sheathed in a veil
of marble that opens to reveal the rock within, adorned with sculpted figures that
wear the most diaphanous drapery in the Classical canon, it stages its own “to-be-
seen-ness” simultaneously as erotic access and martial power.
Lastly, Wu Hung asks how it is that an absence can become conspicuous in the
first place. How can you see a nothing? The question arises in a discussion of
Chinese tombs of the first millennium bce, which Wu finds to be staging grounds
for what he calls “constructed emptiness.” Starting with the Late Eastern Zhou
and working his way to the famous Mawangdui tombs of the Western Han, Wu
traces an archaeology of passages in which conspicuous voids, perforations, and
channels made way for the peregrinations of a soul after death. If the earlier
tombs consist of elaborate architectural ensembles within which conspicuous
voids chart the movement of an invisible soul, later ones distill this dialectic into
circular disks known as bi, each perforated with a large central hole to facilitate
the soul’s movement. The bi-disk effects a play of materiality and pure absence
in mutual implication: the disc exists for the soul but constitutes emptiness as
INTRODUCTION 5
such by its own perforation. From the semiology of absconding and the pragmatics
of visibility, in short, we move with Wu’s exegesis to a pure dialectic whereby
the portable disk amounts to something like a roving nonsite, a no-place for a
no-thing. Crucially, for present purposes, it is only in the archaeological context
of the excavated tomb, and by means of the archaeological methods of typology
and diachronic comparison, that this dialectic becomes visible in the present. In
this way, the reconstitution of early Chinese metaphysical contemplation coin-
cides with the canons of empirical research.
Each of the essays, then, reflects on the imbrication of visibility and invisibility
under specific historical and disciplinary conditions. The explanatory terms are
varied: ritual and poetry (Brittenham), theology (Elsner), power (Neer), and a
seriation of archaeological typologies and mortuary customs (Wu). Uniting them
all, however, is an ambition to probe the specific limitations and opportunities
that archaeological excavation affords to the close study of specific monuments.
On the one hand, the general absence of direct textual documentation (no Vasari,
no Bellori, no Diderot) returns attention to the objects themselves and the
material circumstances of their deposition and display; on the other, the vast data
sets of archaeological research tend to thicken descriptions and to draw attention
from specific artifacts to larger assemblages and contexts. The results cannot be
called postdisciplinary, insofar as they rely overtly on the most traditional forms
of philological, stylistic, and stratigraphic evidence. But they do point the way to
a new disciplinary cosmopolitanism.
One of the great challenges of recent years has been to produce a truly global
art history.6 This goal has proved elusive; it has, perhaps, been easier to retrofit
the old area-studies model in terms of diffusion and networking or simply to shift
faculty lines from “depleted” subfields to ones that promise growth. There are
very good reasons for this drag on diversification: for example, insofar as linguis-
tic competence is a sine qua non of serious historical research, it is very difficult
even for scholars (let alone graduate students) to acquire the requisite expertise
in multiple subfields. Truly to globalize the discipline requires globalizing the
skill sets of researchers, and that is no mean feat. More feasible, perhaps, is a
comparativism of methods and research programs. That is what Chicago’s Center
for Global Ancient Art undertakes and what these papers exemplify: a triple com-
parativism as a way to produce an art history that is cosmopolitan in method and
global in scope, to establish new ways of seeing—new conditions of visibility
for—shared objects of study. It is by such attention to the basic methods and
concepts of the discipline that new research questions may arise—and new ways
of answering them.
6
See e.g. Summers 2003; Elkins 2007; Mitter 2008; Ching, Jarzombek, and Prakash 2011; Casid and
D’Souza 2014; Necipoǧlu and Payne 2016.
6 R ICH A R D NEER
R EF ER ENCE S
A lpers , S. (1983), The art of describing: Dutch art in the seventeenth century (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press).
B ourdieu , P. (1984), “Outline of a sociological theory of art perception,” in The field
of cultural production: essays on art and literature (New York: Columbia University
Press), 215–37.
C asid , J. and D’S ouza , A., eds (2014), Art history in the wake of the global turn
(Williamstown: Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute).
C hing , F. D. K., J arzombek , M., and P rakash , V. (2011), A global history of
architecture, 2nd edn (Hoboken: Wiley).
D avis , W. (2011), A general theory of visual culture (Princeton: Princeton University
Press).
E lkins , J., ed. (2007), Is art history global? (New York: Taylor and Francis).
F ried , M. (1998), Art and objecthood: essays and reviews (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press).
G alison , P. and D aston , L. (2010), Objectivity (New York: Zone Books).
M elville , S. (1996), Seams: art as a philosophical context (New York: Routledge).
M itter , P. (2008), “Decentering modernism: art history and avant-garde from the
periphery,” The Art Bulletin 90, 531–48.
N ecipo ǧ lu , G. and P ayne , A., eds (2016), Histories of ornament: from global to local
(Princeton: Princeton University Press).
O lin , M. (1992), Forms of representation in Alois Riegl’s theory of art (University Park:
Pennsylvania State University Press).
P ippin , R. (2013), After the beautiful: Hegel and the philosophy of pictorial modernism
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press).
R ancière , J. (2000), Le partage du sensible: ésthetique et politique (Paris: Le Fabrique).
S nyder , J. (1980), “Picturing vision,” Critical Inquiry 6, 499–526.
S nyder , J. (2002), “Enabling confusion,” History of Photography 26, 154–60.
S ummers , D. (2003), Real spaces: world art history and the rise of Western modernism
(London: Phaidon).
W u H ung , H ay , J., and P ellizzi , F., eds (2009), “Absconding,” special issue of RES
55/56.
W ood , C. S. (1991), Introduction to E. Panofsky, Perspective as symbolic form, trans.
C. S. Wood (New York: Zone Books), 7–24.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Three Types of Invisibility

The Acropolis of Athens
Richard Neer
Classical Greek monuments were meant to be seen. The poet Pindar often refers
to the conspicuousness of architecture: “When a work is begun,” he declares, “it is
necessary to make its façade far-beaming” (Olympian 6.3–4), and a sacred precinct
can be te ̄lephantos, “shining from afar” (fr. 5 SM).1 According to Plato, the works
of Pheidias were made “conspicuously” (periphano s̄ ), literally, “so as to seen round
about,” a term that can also be used to distinguish freestanding sculpture from
relief (Meno 91d).2 The philosopher may have been thinking of Pheidias’ great
bronze Athena on the Acropolis of Athens, the spear and helmet of which, we are
told, were visible to ships at sea.3
The conspicuousness of Greek architecture was integral to its function. The
Acropolis itself, for instance, was the supreme monument of the most powerful
and long-lived democracy of Classical antiquity (Fig. 1.1).4 Soaring over Athens,
its great buildings—the temple of Athena Nike, the Parthenon, the Erechtheum—
were statements of the official ideology of the Athenian empire and testaments
to its glory. Clustered around them were numerous private and public dedica-
tions: statues, objets d’art, and inscriptions on stone. Today these monuments
are landmarks of art history and magnets for tourism.
Curiously, however, many of the Acropolis monuments were more or less
invisible in the 400s bce. Visibility was circumstantial and contingent, in ways that
I would like to thank Claudia Brittenham, Jaś Elsner, Wu Hung, and audiences in Chicago, Palo Alto,
and Williamstown for advice and debate.
1
Pindar uses te ̄lephantos also of the island of Delos, as part of an elaborate conceit in which he imagines
the island as a giant, temple-like structure resting atop columns (fr. 33 SM). On Pindar and conspicuous
monuments, see Neer and Kurke 2019.
2
Pausanias (2.12.5) uses this same term of grave monuments atop a hill.
3
Pausanias 5.25.12. On the Promachos, see Davison 2009, 277–96.
4
For overview, see Hurwit 1999.
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
8 R ICH A R D NEER
F ig . 1.1. Athens, Acropolis, view from the Pnyx.

Photo: Mirjanamimi, Wikimedia Commons.
I shall elaborate below. From this starting point flow two questions: what does
it mean for a democracy that its most glorious public monuments should be,
to a greater or lesser degree, unseen? And what are the consequences for art
history?
T H R EE T Y PE S OF I N V ISI BI LI T Y
The Acropolis monuments were subject to at least three distinct types of invisi-
bility. First, literal invisibility, in the sense of occlusion or concealment. In this
case, any light that strikes the object does not bounce back and hit an observer’s
eye. Were one to bury a statue in a hole, it would be occluded in this sense; the
statue would be, literally, invisible. When H. G. Wells spoke of an Invisible Man,
this is what he had in mind. Such literal invisibility shares with the other modes
the capacity to be either conspicuous or circumspect. One can trumpet the fact
of invisibility, advertise that something is hidden from view, or one can give no
signs at all so that what is out of sight truly is out of mind as well.
THR EE T Y PES OF IN V ISIBILIT Y 9
Second, practical invisibility, invisibility for all intents and purposes. In this case,
the light might reach your eye, but either you do not notice the image or do not
know what to make of it; you fail to recognize it in some way, hence properly to
see it at all. When Ralph Ellison spoke of an Invisible Man, this is what he had in
mind. Sometimes practical invisibility is just a matter of the extreme circumspec-
tion of certain entities in the visual field: the way that, due to habituation or
habitus, they pass unseen. At other times it is a matter of access to information,
in a word, iconography. To use Panofsky’s famous example, there is a difference
between seeing the baby in Figure 1.2 as a miraculous vision of the Messiah
appearing to the Magi and seeing it as an unfortunate tot who has been hurled
into the air from a catapult.5 Iconographic information determines what can and
cannot be seen: to one unacquainted with Renaissance altarpieces, the Messiah
simply is not to be seen at all, either as vision or as flesh; to one inculcated in the
historically specific way of seeing, by contrast, it is perverse to see anything else.
The third type is what I shall call diaphanous invisibility (e.g. Fig. 1.3). In Greek
as in English, one can speak of things that one does not literally see as though
one did see them. If someone were to ask, with reference to Figure 1.2, if we can
F ig . 1.2. Rogier van der Weyden, The Vision of the Magi,

c.1445–8. Oil on panel. Berlin, Gemäldegalerie der
Staatlichen Museen.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons/Google Art Project.
5
Cf. Panofsky 1955, 33–5.
10 R ICH A R D NEER
F ig . 1.3. Athens, sanctuary of Athena Nike,

parapet relief: Nike unclasping sandal. Marble,
c.416 bce. Athens, Acropolis Museum.
Photo: Richard Neer.
see the leg of the rightmost Wise Man in the picture, then it would be perfectly
correct to answer in the affirmative: of course we can see his leg. But it would
also be correct to say the opposite: we cannot see his leg because it is encased in
a brown stocking. A clothed limb is no less occluded than a buried statue, yet
there is world of difference between the two; in one sense we do see the limb, in
another sense we do not. In a word, we see one thing through another. Sometimes,
in English, we speak of clothing that leaves little to imagination, but this phrase,
while handy, is also a bit prejudicial, insofar as it imposes an artificial distinction
between seeing and imagining; seeing is itself complex, even multiplex. Diaphanous
invisibility, while cumbersome, refers to the way in which one can see without
seeing, in which two mutually exclusive descriptions can pertain simultaneously
but without paradox. This third class is in some ways the most interesting because
in such cases works of art can reflect upon, engage us in thinking about, their
own conditions of visibility.
On the ancient Acropolis, all three modes of invisibility overlapped and coin-
cided to produce an invisible promenade, whereby a visitor passed countless
items seen and unseen—conspicuously invisible in some cases, circumspectly so
in others—such that literal, practical, and diaphanous invisibility combined and
recombined to create a public, political environment. Within this dazzling site, the
weave of visible and invisible organized architecture and sculptures: images, times,
and places. One of the benefits of combining archaeological and art-historical
methods in the examination of such environments is that doing so brings out the
texture of that weave and reveals some of its patterns.
LI T ER A L I N V ISI BI LI T Y
Who could see the Acropolis?6 From a distance, anyone; all citizens would get
more or less the view in Figure 1.1 when they assembled to conduct the business
of democracy. But only some people were allowed through the gates at certain
times. In general it does seem that any Athenian citizen could enter, but archers
could be posted near the gates to keep runaway slaves or criminals from seeking
sanctuary on holy ground.7 Once you did get inside, access was unequal and situ-
ational. A decree of the early fifth century mandates that certain small rooms or
buildings be opened for public inspection three times a month, which implies
that they were closed at other times—the idea here being to make sure that
nobody had made off with sacred treasure—and the Parthenon could be screened
off with grilles for basically the same reason.8 The temple of Athena Polias
(“Guardian of the City”), known today as the Erechtheum, seems to have been
open most of the time but was sealed during one month of the year.9 Herodotos
tells a story of how King Kleomenes of Sparta was refused access because he was
ethnically Dorian, not Ionian like the Athenians (it is not clear whether this
rule was invented on the spot, to annoy the king).10 Kleomenes wanted to have
a word with the ancient statue of the goddess in the temple, but he never got
to see it.11
The Kore Pit and the Parthenon
These rules are all ways of enforcing literal or partial invisibility. They remind us that
visibility is often a question of access. A more extreme example of images rendered
literally invisible is the so-called Kore Pit, which happens to be the only stratigraph-
ically secure Archaic deposit on the Acropolis and the linchpin of ancient Greek
6
On this question, see Hurwit 1999, 54–7, from which I have drawn the examples in this paragraph.
7
Archers: Inscriptiones Graecae I3 45.
8
On grilles and screens, see Mylonopoulos 2011, 269–91. For general discussion of access to
Athenian sacred spaces, see Gawlinski 2015.
9
Sealing Erechtheum: Inscriptiones Graecae I3 7. 10
Herodotos 5.72.
11
Herodotos uses the verb prosereo ,̄ “to address,” literally “to inquire outwardly.”
12 R ICH A R D NEER
F ig . 1.4. Kore from the “Kore Pit” on the

Athenian Acropolis. Marble, c.520–500 bce.
Athens, Acropolis Museum 671.
sculptural chronology.12 It is, as the name suggests, a hole in the ground, on the
north side of the Acropolis rock to the northwest of the Erechtheum. It contained
nine, and perhaps as many as fourteen, statues of the so-called kore (“maiden”)
type, carefully laid out (Fig. 1.4).13 It also contained a monument erected after
the battle of Marathon and known today as the Nike of Kallimakhos, as well as
some inscriptions and small bronzes.14
A pit of this sort is known in Classical archaeology as a votive deposit: a ritual
burial of gifts to the gods. Such deposits are by no means uncommon in the
Greek world. Sometimes statues were knocked down by vandals or invaders and
reverently buried afterwards; sometimes renovations in a sanctuary made it expe-
dient to bury goods.15 Votive deposits typically represent secondary uses of the
artifacts in question. The statues and bronzes were not intended for burial;
12
On the kore pit, see Kavvadias and Kawerau 1906, 23–32; Lindenlauf 1997, 70 n. 179 and pl. 7;
Stewart 2008, with extensive earlier bibliography. On Archaic dedications on the Acropolis, see Scholl 2006.
13
The korai certainly in the Pit are: Athens, Acropolis Museum inv. 670, 672, 673, 677, 678, 680,
681, and 682, with AkrM 671. Akr. 679, 593, 594, and 595 seem to have been found elsewhere along
the north wall, and Akr. 671 was built into the wall. See Lindenlauf 1997 382.
14
Athens, Acropolis Museum 691.
15
On statue burials, see Donderer 1991–2.
rather, the burial occurred after some disturbance in the original display context.
The Acropolis, for instance, suffered wholesale destruction when the Persians
sacked Athens in 480 bce; the entire rock was razed and its monuments thrown
down. The items in the Kore Pit were reverently interred at some point after the
invaders withdrew the following year; many showed signs of burning. This is
why the Pit is so important for archaeologists; everything in it, supposedly, must
pre-date the sack of 480 bce, so it is a chronological fixed point. The origins of
Classical Greek sculpture are pegged to this date.16
The Persians were gone by 479 bce. How soon after their departure were the
statues buried, that is, rendered invisible? It is usual to assume that the burial
took place immediately, but that is far from certain. In fact, the Kore Pit contained
an unburnt Athenian coin of c.460–450 bce.17 Although it is possible that the coin
is just an intrusion, there is an outside chance that it is integral to the deposit.18
Its presence suggests that the statues in the Pit may have been above ground for
two decades before burial.
Regardless of whether the Kore Pit was created in the 470s, the 450s bce, or
sometime in between, it was an anomaly on the Acropolis rock; not all victims of
the Persian destruction received reverent burial. Countless statues and inscrip-
tions were damaged in the sack but, instead of being interred, were built into
the wall of the Acropolis or lay around for years before being tossed into the vast
mound of earth and rubble that supports the walls of the citadel, built 467–430.
Many of these less fortunate statues and inscriptions are now on public view in the
Acropolis Museum. In other words, we have to imagine any number of damaged
monuments remaining on the Acropolis, possibly for decades, at which point
some got treated as lumber while others were singled out for special treatment.
Why the disparity?
It is hard to discern a pattern to distinguish the objects in the Pit from those
elsewhere. Quality or state of preservation is not an index. Rather, there seem to
have been at least two necessary, but not sufficient, conditions for inclusion.
First, every inscription in the Pit has a proper name on it, even if the inscription
itself is incomplete. Not every inscription with a name made the cut; some inscrip-
tions with names were just tossed into the fill. The relevant factor cannot have been
just any old name, but only certain, apparently special names. Second, all the
16
Cf. Stewart 2008.
17
Stewart 2008, 383 with n. 28 (dismissed as an intrusion). On coins in votive deposits, see Crawford 2003.
18
This runs into the vexed question of the Pit’s association with the date of the north wall of the
Acropolis. The pit is part of the fill of the wall and should be contemporary with it; certainly the excavators
thought they went together (Kavvadias and Kawerau 1906, 28; see also Lindenlauf 1997, 70–1 and n. 187).
The wall’s date is not uncontroversial but, arguing for a high date (hence against deposition in the 450s),
see Korres 2002, with earlier bibliography. None of the arguments for dating (whether high, low, or in
between) is especially solid.
14 R ICH A R D NEER
inscriptions in the Pit record private, not public, dedications. Again, not every
private dedication made the cut, but only some special ones; no state dedication
did so. This pattern, such as it is, does suggest that some principle of selection
governed the inclusion of debris in the Pit. It is not just a random assortment
of debris.
What might the principle have been? In some cases, the individual in question
was prominent, a worthy. For example, a general named Kallimakhos died fighting
the Persians at the battle of Marathon in 490 bce; his family erected a monument
to his memory; ten years later the Persians knocked it down, and it wound up in
the Pit.19 It is very likely that the monument’s association with the Persian Wars
was an important factor. But, again, neither prominence nor an association with
the war was necessary or sufficient for inclusion; there is no evidence that any of
the other inscriptions had such associations. The Kallimakhos dedication does,
however, share a feature with at least some of the other inscriptions in the Pit:
it attests to family bonds. Kallimakhos did not make the offering himself (he was
dead); his family made it in his honor. Another inscription from the Pit records
two names, inscribed at different times, each with a dedication to go with it:
c.500 bce one Onesimos son of Smikythos made an offering, and then, some fifteen
years later, Onesimos’ son Theodoros added a second dedication to the same
base and had his own name cut alongside that of his father.20 Onesimos was a
pious man who made many dedications on the Acropolis, and Theodoros likely
made at least one other, but only the inscription that bears both names found its
way into the Pit.21
Such use across multiple generations may indicate particularly strong ties
between monument and family, not unlike the Kallimakhos monument. This
sample is desperately small but it may, perhaps, indicate that family members
with connections to a given inscription influenced the decision to include that
inscription in the Pit. A “pleasing gift” (agalma) that was in some way a “memor-
ial” (mne ̄ma) was specially apt for burial. In short, the conditions for inclusion
were: a private dedication with a proper name and, just perhaps, a special family
connection.
The case is even less clear with the statues. It is certainly possible that those in
the Pit represent a random sample of post-Persian ruination. The korai are generic
by nature. Given that there was a principle of selection in the case of inscriptions,
however, it seems unlikely that there was none at all when it came to statues. If
so, then it seems most economical (albeit speculative) to suppose the same principle
19
Athens, Acropolis Museum inv. 690; Inscriptiones Graecae I3 784.
20
Onesimos and Smikythos: Inscriptiones Graecae I3 699A–B; Löhr 2000, 37–8; Keesling 2005;
Jim 2014, 136–7.
21
On the dedications: Inscriptiones Graecae I3 926–32, 941.
pertained in each case. We must imagine the Athenian returning to the Acropolis
in 479 bce to find a spectacle of desolation: a smoking ruin with scattered stone
bodies lying about like so many petrified corpses. Perhaps statues with family got
good treatment, while orphans, so to speak, did not. Selection on just these terms
is exactly what happened on countless Greek battlefields in both myth and reality,
the classic example being Antigone picking through the corpses at Thebes to find
her brother and give him proper burial. “Who would want a girl bereft of family?”
as Euripides put it; in Athens, perhaps, they dumped those girls, those korai, into
the foundations of the Parthenon, while the ones “with family” got something like
burial.22 There is a telling analogy here with the famous Phrasikleia kore from
Merenda: after being knocked down by the Persians, it was interred alongside a
kouros and honored with an offering trench not unlike those that dead humans
received.23 A statue was like a corpse; it was the job of a survivor to give it burial.
That said, it is noteworthy that the korai in the Pit do not come with inscrip-
tions to match them; all (or all but one) were separated from their bases when
knocked down, so there are no identifying texts, no public marks of ownership.24
In other words, the texts have names, but the statues do not (with, again, one
possible exception). What did the work of a proper name in the case of statues?
As a practical matter, the absence of a text means that any claim on a statue must
have proceeded by simple recognition while picking through the rubble. But since
the statues bear no identifying inscriptions, the principle of selection (if there was
one) can only have been simple face-to-face recognition; eight of the statues still
had their heads.25 In short, if there were any principle of selection at all—if this
is not just a random sample of korai—then somebody had to recognize these statues
in the absence of any accompanying inscription and on that basis decide what got
special burial and what did not. The capacity to see, to recognize, a statue was as
important as family prestige. This point may seem banal, but, as we shall see,
visibility does not come about of itself.
In the case of the Pit, visibility is a function of external factors, from macrohis-
torical ones like the Persian Wars of 480–479 bce to microhistorical ones like family
ties in the town of Athens. But it is also a function of how a generic, stereotyped
statue was seen by particular people at a particular moment, its own peculiar
mode of visibility. What mattered was a qualitative difference in perception,
22
Euripides, The Children of Heracles, ll. 523–4.
23
On the burial of Phrasikleia, with evidence for dating, see Rosenberg-Dimitracopoulou 2015,
85–99. On the funerary ritual, see Kistler 1998.
24
The possible exception is the kore Akr. 681 (“Antenor’s kore”), which is commonly associated with
a base that was also found in the pit but to which it matches imperfectly at best: see Payne 1950, 31–2
and n. 2. Fragments of both base and statue were found scattered across the Acropolis, both in the Pit
and outside it.
25
Kavvadias and Kowerau 1906, 28. The text gives the impression that all eight come from the Pit.
16 R ICH A R D NEER
between seeing any old generic kore statue and seeing one’s very own generic kore
statue. It is a small but essential point: the Kore Pit directs us to attend less to the
specific fact of invisibility than to the conditions under which it arises. In order
to be made invisible in this special way—buried in a pit—the statue has first to be
visible in a special way, seen in a special way, by people in the know. In short, a
statue does not cease to be important once it becomes invisible. Rather, the way
it becomes invisible, the why and the how of invisibility, give it lasting meaning,
or consign it to oblivion.
For a second and third example of literal occlusion, we can turn to cases that
are not accidental, not a result of external interventions like a war, but an entirely
predictable, even intentional feature of the work. Both come from the Parthenon.26
It is well known that the pedimental sculptures are, in effect, freestanding statues
in an architectural frame: they were carved in the round to a high finish, an unusual
feature in Greece, and likewise painted (Figs 1.5–1.6).27 In addition, the east
pediment showed the chariot of the sun rising out of the sea at one corner, the
chariot of the moon sinking into the waves on the other. The waves are in each
case carved on a low, horizontal slab that lay directly atop the floor of the gable.
This position made it nearly impossible to see them from ground level; a crucial
iconographic detail, establishing the spatial parameters of the scene, was almost
perversely obscure.
The Parthenon frieze is an even more complex case (Fig. 1.7).28 Famously it
shows a great procession in honor of Athena. It is bewitchingly complex and
subtle in both its carving and its iconography, and scholars have devoted a great
deal of energy to both. With regard to style, the so-called pie-crust selvage is a
highly distinctive stylistic tic of the sculptors: the edge of a cloak or robe is crinkled
or crimped like the crust of a pie. This mannerism allows scholars to trace the
Parthenon sculptors as they pursued other projects after the great project was
finished. With regard to iconography, normal science consists in various forms of
decoding: Is the child holding Athena’s robe a boy or a girl? Why does one rider,
and one rider only, have a gorgon’s head on his breastplate? What’s inside the jars
that a group of young men are carrying?29 Iconography then shades into cultural
history: what do the answers to such questions tell us about ancient Athenian
religion or the political messaging of the Athenian empire? The justification for this
research program is, quite simply, the evident care and deliberation that went
into the frieze. These details really do seem carefully pondered, hence significant.
26
For a guide to bibliography on the Parthenon, see Barletta 2014.
27
For basic discussions of the pediments, see Palagia 1993; Mostratos 2004; Williams 2013. Paint:
Jenkins and Middleton 1988.
28
Basic discussion: Neils 2001.
29
Neils 2001 is an excellent statement of this approach; for a more recent example, see Nicgorski 2004.
F ig . 1.5. Athens, Acropolis, Parthenon, east pediment: Figure D (Dionysos), front view. Marble,
447–432 bce. London: British Museum, inv. 1816,0610.93.
Photo: © Trustees of the British Museum.
Even as both iconography and style cry out for close inspection, the fact remains
that the Parthenon frieze was almost impossible to see (Fig. 1.8).30 As Richard
Stillwell demonstrated long ago, the ideal viewing angle for the frieze would have
been “a zone or belt of observation, a few feet wide, that runs parallel to the four
sides of the building, approximately thirty feet away from the stylobate.”31 From
this position you are close enough that the top of the frieze does not get cut off
by the slabs that rest atop the columns, but not so close that the figures become
impossibly foreshortened. However, Stillwell took no account of lighting condi-
tions or of the loss of acuity that even a person with 20/20 vision will experience
when looking at fine detail from such a distance. As to light, the frieze, as noted, was
tucked up into the rafters of a building and will have received partial illumination
only from certain angles when the sun was very low in the sky or, more commonly,
from reflected light bouncing up from the marble floor. As to distance, for a
person standing within Stillwell’s “zone of observation,” the minimum distance
from eye to frieze will have been roughly 19.5 m (64 ft). Each frieze block,
30
The basic study is Stillwell 1969. More recently, see Osborne 1987; Marconi 2009.
31
Stillwell 1969, 232.
18 R ICH A R D NEER
F ig . 1.6. Athens, Acropolis, Parthenon, east pediment: Figure D (Dionysos), back view. Marble,
447–432 bce. London: British Museum, inv. 1816,0610.93.
Photo: © Trustees of the British Museum.
meanwhile, is just 1.16 m (3 ft 4 in.) high—difficult to see at such distance even

under the best conditions. In short, the Parthenon frieze was not completely
occluded from view, like the backs of the pedimental sculptures, but it was suffi-
ciently obscure that details of the sort that fascinate classicists were never clearly
visible to anyone without a tall ladder and an oil lamp. Ironically, this sheltered
position accounts in large part for the good preservation of the frieze and of the
fine details that so intrigue historians of art.
The challenge, therefore, is to reconcile the evident care and precision of the
frieze with its functional invisibility. The standard explanations are either reli-
gious or aesthetic. As to religion, it has been suggested that even if mortals eyes
could not see these details, still the goddess could do so; as Clemente Marconi puts
it, “those parts of the Parthenon frieze that would have remained obscure or
invisible to the visitors to the Acropolis would have been visible and a source of
F ig . 1.7. Athens, Acropolis, Parthenon, north

frieze, Block II: Figure 4 (youth with heifer).
Marble, 447–432 bce. Athens, Acropolis
Museum.
delight to Athena and the other gods.”32 As to aesthetics, Ruskin stated the basic
principle back in the nineteenth century: “Whenever, by the construction of a
building, some parts of it are hidden from the eye which are the continuation of
others bearing some consistent ornament, it is not well that the ornament should
cease in the parts concealed; credit is given for it, and it should not be deceptively
withdrawn: as, for instance, in the sculpture of the backs of statues of a temple
pediment: never, perhaps, to be seen, but yet not lawfully to be left unfinished.”33
In for a penny, in for a pound. If sculpture you must have, then best to do the
job right.
A compromise position takes partial occlusion as a salient visual fact in its own
right. Stillwell himself pioneered this approach, in which he has been followed by
Robin Osborne and, more recently, Marconi.34 On this view, a passerby would
look up through the colonnade to see snippets of the continuous frieze, like so
many frames in a comic strip; walking round the building one would experience
a continuous stream of such views, the comic strip becoming a film strip, so to
speak. The argument is surely correct, but it only takes us so far. While it is certainly
32
See e.g. Marconi 2009, 173. 33
Ruskin 1903, 47. 34
Osborne 1987.
20 R ICH A R D NEER
F ig . 1.8. Athens, Acropolis, Parthenon: angles for viewing frieze.

Drawing by the author after Richard Stillwell, Hesperia 38 (1969), fig. 1.
possible that the columns framed segments of the frieze, the basic problems of
distance, size, and lighting remain intractable. We are still talking about small
figures in semi-darkness seen from a great distance.
Tonio Hölscher offers a third way, playing on the affinity between “decoration”
and “decorum”: rather than communicating ideological messages or even telling
coherent stories, he suggests, the task of architectural sculpture in Greece is “to
convey cultural emphasis and ‘value’ by aesthetic and semantic exaltation,” such
that a temple “is a value in itself.”35 Sculpture need only be appropriate in theme
and lavish in execution in order to acquit its votive function; it is not intended to
communicate propositions but to exemplify a literally decorous piety. This thesis
represents a significant departure insofar as it tends to diminish the importance
of the viewer, whether real (a mortal visitor to the shrine) or imagined (Athena).
In what follows I will explore the space that Hölscher has opened up.
Explanations in terms of supernatural creatures and cultural rules are, of their
nature, rather abstract. As a practical matter, there is always somebody here in
35
Hölscher 2009, 54–67 (italics original).
the sublunar world who must apply the law or ensure that the supernatural crea-
ture is getting its due. Who decides what is pious, what is “appropriate,” what is
“lawful”? A big public-works project, like a temple, makes such questions clear
and concrete: there is inevitably an overseer, a functionary, somebody specifically
tasked to exercise a normative role. In Athens this office was called epistate ̄s, literally,
the “Bystander”; five served each year on a one-year term.36 De facto if not de
jure, the final cause in the carving of the pedimental figures was not Athena, or
an abstract principle of decorum, but the committee that approved the contract,
the supervisor who checked the work, the foreman who looked over the mason’s
shoulder. Plutarch mentions freeborn women who visited Pheidias’ workshop to
see the sculptures, which became a source of gossip; though the anecdote has
been much derided, it does not have to be literally true to underscore the general
sense that visibility was, in this situation, rationed.37
In short, the goddess may have been the ideal audience in theory, but in practice
it was a select group of human beings. In some cases the principle of selection
will have been formal, as with the commissioners and foremen; in others, a matter
of friendship and “access.” What mattered, therefore, were everyday relations of
power, relations articulated in and through the carving of stone. Insofar as it leads
us to overlook this point, religion is the opiate of art historians.
So let us look more closely at patronage. But first it is necessary to recall some
basic facts of Greek architecture. As a general rule, the design of any Greek tem-
ple followed one of two set formulae or orders: the Doric and the Ionic. These
formulae governed everything from the layout of columns to details of ornamen-
tation. The Parthenon is Doric, for the most part. Canonically, a Doric building
features a row of alternating flat and scored panels above the columns, known as
metopes and triglyphs. That is just what the Parthenon has on its exterior. An Ionic
building, by contrast, would have a continuous, ribbon-like frieze in the same
location. The carved frieze of the Parthenon, set inside the building’s colonnade,
is thus an architectural anomaly: an Ionic element on a Doric building.38
There is good evidence to show that the Parthenon frieze was an afterthought.39
The original plan called for Doric metopes and triglyphs over each doorway, and
indeed there are decorative elements (regulae and guttae) directly under the frieze
that would have matched up with metopes and triglyphs but have been left
stranded, as it were. Once the Athenians had built up to this height, they changed
their minds, scrapped the metopes and triglyphs, and added the frieze instead.40
Manolis Korres has shown, however, that the visibility of this frieze was taken
36
On the epistatai, see Marginesu 2010. For the building procedure, see Burford 1963; Shear 2016,
41–78.
37
Plutarch, Life of Pericles 13.9. 38
On Attic Ionic: McGowan 1997.
39
Korres 1994a; 1994b. For a contrary position, Barletta 2009.
40
Korres 1994a.
22 R ICH A R D NEER
into account; a concession was made. In order to provide a slightly better view-
ing angle in the porches, it was necessary to truncate the entire inner building.
The newly built east end was therefore dismantled and pushed back about 16 cm,
while the columns of the front porch were taken down, shifted westward by
about 2 cm, and rebuilt. Figure 1.9 shows a cutting for a metal clamp in the east
doorway of the building (essentially a giant staple, which Greek builders used
instead of mortar to keep blocks from shifting). Ordinarily this clamp would
have been hidden beneath one of the steps leading into the temple, but it was
revealed when the building was pushed backward those 16 cm—a conspicuous
and untoward visibility. Similar small but costly adjustments elsewhere on the
building only inflated the budget further.
Although it was not unknown for Greek temple builders to revise plans on the
fly, in this case the sheer wastefulness and expense is staggering; Pheidias, head
sculptor and project supervisor, must have played a leading role.41 Such inefficien-
cies reek of corruption, and it is hardly surprising that, in 438 bce, Pheidias had
F ig . 1.9. Athens, Acropolis, Parthenon, east porch: exposed clamp.

41
On Pheidias, see Davison 2009, with copious bibliography.
to flee Athens to avoid charges of fiscal impropriety.42 Although the indictment

centered on the golden statue, cost overruns associated with the building itself
can hardly have endeared the sculptor to state auditors, who wound up selling off
unneeded supplies that he had purchased.43 The scandal threatened to spread; in
his comedy Peace (421 bce), Aristophanes even suggested that Pericles had started
the Peloponnesian War to divert attention from his own role in the affair.44
This relatively sordid aspect of the Parthenon holds an important clue. It sug-
gests that we need a more pragmatic approach to questions of architectural
sculpture and to visibility in general. Lavish decor was not just a value in itself, not
just an expression of communal piety to delight a supernatural beholder. It may
have been those things, in some extended sense, but it was also an expression of
cronyism. The Parthenon was, in short, a public works project like any other.
What is distinctive about this building is that, by its very exquisiteness, it makes
these unseemly features visible. Visitors should not be able to see the clamps on
the floor; they are unsightly, aprepe ̄s in Greek, “things that should not be con-
spicuous,” all the more shocking for the context in which they appear. With the
clamps, other things come to light that usually remain obscure: a world of
wasteful expense, inflated budgets, and outright embezzlement, all chronic prob-
lems in Athens and, indeed, throughout the Greek world.45 It is in the space
between this tawdry reality and the idea that decoration is “a value in itself ” that
ideology becomes visible.
The politics of visibility, however, go deeper than an exposed clamp or a sweet-
heart deal. The sense that there is something amiss if a complex and expensive
work of public art is occluded from view may be a modern invention. There is
only a contradiction between finicky iconography and functional invisibility—
hence there is only a need for supernatural explanations—if it is assumed that the
intended beholder of these works was the Athenian hoi polloi. Perhaps that is
the wrong way to think about it. We need to get our heads around the massive
disregard that even the leaders of Athenian democracy had when it came to the
ordinary citizens. When it comes to the frieze, there is only one beholder who
really matters, and that is the epistate ̄s, the “Bystander” who comes into the work-
shop to make sure that the commission has been properly executed. And there is
only one rationale for its construction—a rationale that is by no means inconsistent
with piety—which is the usual one for boondoggles: graft, patronage, and prof-
iteering. It does not follow that a research agenda based on iconographic
details is invalid, merely that we need to acknowledge the institutional and
42
Ephorus in Diodorus Siculus 12.39.1–2; Plutarch, Life of Pericles 31.2–5; Philochorus, Fragmente
der griechischen Historiker 328 F 121. On Parthenon financing, see Kallet-Marx 1989; Kallet 2005;
Giovannini 2008.
43
Sale of supplies: Inscriptiones Graecae I3 449.389–94 (434 bce).
44
Aristophanes, Peace, ll. 603–14. 45
See, for instance, Strauss 1985; Taylor 2001.
24 R ICH A R D NEER
political setting in which it can arise. The conditions of iconographic visibility

is less a matter of propaganda or the ideology of empire than a social rationing
of the visible.
The Parthenon is a work of public art, produced in what was, at the time, a
radically inclusive democracy. It is a deep assumption of contemporary art history
that public art should address a public on a modern, liberal understanding of the
term. This way of thinking leads us to parse the building for ideological messages
or blind spots, to ask what it tells us about the Athenian empire, and so on. One
lesson of the Parthenon is that this notion is often inapt; the building is astonish-
ingly unconcerned with its public. Such disregard is integral to the political setting
in which the monument arose. If Hölscher has shown that architectural sculpture
is not necessarily concerned to communicate “messages,” that does not obviate
the political. On the contrary, the disregard of the beholder in Athenian public art
testifies to a stratification of seeing, in the literal sense of who sees the sculpture,
whose gaze matters. That stratification is the true ideological component of
the Parthenon frieze and what it shares with the Kore Pit. What matters is not
the ideological content of its iconography (a set of propositions, say, about the
Panathenaic procession), but the distribution of visibility that it enforces. Literal
occlusion is, in these cases, the function of a differential in visibility as such.
PR ACT IC A L I N V ISI BI LI T Y
The second form of invisibility is not literal but practical; the artifact is not literally
obscured from view, but it is effectively unseeable, unrecognizable, unnoticed,
incomprehensible, or illegible. A good example is the main temple on the
Acropolis, which is not the Parthenon but the so-called Erechtheum (Fig. 1.10).46
This building had a sculpted frieze on the outside, which employed an unusual
technique whereby the figures were carved in white marble and then doweled
into slabs of blue limestone.47 The frieze is quite fragmentary, so it can be hard
to identify the scenes; naturally almost every academic article on the topic for the
last fifty years has consisted of a new and ingenious decipherment. The same build-
ing also featured the famous caryatid porch: six maidens serving as columns. In
keeping with the iconographic paradigm of current scholarship, the big question
with the caryatids is: who are they? Participants in the Panathenaic procession,
mourners for a dead king, ancient princesses transported into constellations, a
lyric chorus—all have been mooted in recent years.48
46
The basic study of the Erechtheum is Paton et al. 1927. More recently, see Lesk 2004. A longer
version of this section appears in Neer 2018, 228–34.
47
On the Erechtheum frieze, see Boulter 1970.
48
Scholl 1995; Robertson 1996, 34. Gaifman 2018 is a superb treatment.
F ig . 1.10. Athens, Acropolis, temple of Athena Polias (Erechtheum), with modern restorations:
view from southeast. 421–406 bce.
We happen to have an exactly contemporary description of the Erechtheum

frieze and the caryatids. This description comes in the form of public records con-
cerning the building’s construction, which were carved on stone and set up in
public.49 The accounts tell us who carved which figure and how much he was paid,
and along the way they describe each figure. The following extract gives the flavor:
For the man holding the spear 60 drachmas. [To] Phyromachos of Kephisia, [for]
the young man with the breastplate: 60 drachmas. [To] Praxias living in Melite,
[for] the horse and the man who is visible behind it and who strikes its flank:
120 drachmas. [To] Antiphanes from Kerameis, [for] the chariot, the young man,
and the horse being harnessed: 240 drachmas. [To] Phyromachos of Kephisia, [for]
the one leading the horse: 60 drachmas. [To] Mynnion living in Argyle, [for] the
horse and the man striking it and the stele which he added later: 127 drachmas.
[To] Soklos resident at Alopeke, [for] the man holding the bridle: 60 drachmas. [To]
Phyromachos of Kephisia, [for] the man leaning on his staff beside the altar: 60 drach-
mas. [To] Iasos of Kollytos, [for] the woman embraced by the girl: 80 drachmas.50
49
Inscriptiones Graecae I3 474–9. 50
Inscriptiones Graecae I3 476, ll. 159–80.
26 R ICH A R D NEER
One inscription even mentions the porch with the caryatids—to whom it refers
simply as “the maidens.”51 In short, the building accounts fail to provide positive
identification for any figure; they name the sculptors but not the figures they
carved. Instead, they provide thumbnail descriptions, like “the man holding the
bridle.” Modern scholars have been able to identify some of the figures—Apollo,
for instance—but no thanks to the public records.
The importance of these texts for our understanding of Athenian art can
hardly be overstated. Scholars have made much use of them for the information
they provide about workshop organization and payment systems, but they are
clearly useless for an art history that takes iconography as its basic research question.
Or are they? Maybe the fact that they are useless for this question shows that the
question is misplaced. These texts come from public accounts, carved onto marble,
and set up for everyone to see. In short, they are no more and no less “public”
monuments than the Erechtheum itself. And they tell us what the Athenian state
believed an average Athenian would see when he looked at the sculpture. He or
she would not see, could not be counted on to see, mythological characters like
Apollo, so the state had to use simpler, more general terms. The clear implication
is that, as a practical matter, most people did not know who the caryatids were or
what the frieze represented. Indeed, it is not even clear that the functionaries
who composed this building’s accounts knew what they were talking about; they
may have been as mystified as everyone else. Here it is well to recall that, on the
best estimates, literacy in Athens ran at about 5–10 per cent; the democracy’s
habit of carving texts onto stone was as much symbolic as practical, an attempt
to impress and overwhelm an illiterate public as much to inform.52
Incomprehensibility was not always a bad thing in Greece. Poetry, for instance,
was often fiercely difficult to parse. As Pindar described his own impenetrable
verse, “I have many swift arrows in their quiver under my arm; they speak to the
perspicacious, but the crowd needs hermeneuts” (Olympian 2.82–6, translated
by the author). We might approach sculpture the same way. Set the Erechtheum
inscriptions alongside a passage in Ion, an almost exactly contemporary play by
Euripides (c.414 bce). Some Athenian women—servants of the city’s princess—
are visiting Delphi; as they look at the sculptures on the temple of Apollo, they
read out the iconography.
—Look! come see, the son of Zeus is killing the Lernean Hydra with a golden
sickle; my dear, look at it!
—I see it.
51
Inscriptiones Graecae I3 474, l. 86.
52
See the excellent discussion in Day 2010, 31. On literacy rates, see Harris 1989, 90; Thomas, 2009,
13–45. For a more expansive view, see Pébarthe 2006.
—And another near him, who is raising a fiery torch, is he the one whose story
is told when I am at my loom, the warrior Iolaus, who joins with the son of
Zeus in bearing his labors?
—And look at this one sitting on a winged horse; he is killing the mighty
fire-breathing creature that has three bodies.
—I am glancing around everywhere. See the battle of the giants, on the stone
walls.
—I am looking at it, my friends.
—Do you see the one brandishing her gorgon shield against Enceladus?—
I see Pallas, my own goddess . . . .53
And so on and so on. As Marconi notes, this passage “provides . . . the model for
understanding the process of reception of the images on the Parthenon at the
time of its construction.”54 But where Marconi takes the passage as evidence for
attentive contemplation of monuments, the Erechtheum accounts encourage a
different conclusion. The women of the chorus, while servile, are denizens of
the highest stratum of Athenian society; they actually live in the predecessor of the
Erechtheum, the house of King Erechtheus that, as Euripides puts it, “makes one
dwelling with that of Pallas.”55 As such, they have access to a kind of k nowledge
that ordinary people simply did not; they are, as Pindar would have it, “perspica-
cious.” “Look!” they say, “I see Pallas, I see it, I see”—but we know that “I see
Pallas” is exactly the sort of thing that an average Athenian could not say when
confronted with the sculptures of the Erechtheum. Pallas (or whomever) was de
facto invisible, and the average Athenian could only see something like “a man
holding a bridle.” Staging will have underlined the point; Nicolaos Hourmouziades
and others have argued that the chorus addresses an imaginary façade. There
were no sets or scenes behind the orchestra, so “nothing of what was referred
to in the chorus’s description was seen by the audience.”56 This ekphrasis of
the invisible, in short, attests to a differential or inequality in the capacity to see.
The “perspicacious” women of the chorus inhabit a different visual world from the
theater-going public. They do not need hermeneuts, they are hermeneuts.
Euripides, in short, helps us to recognize a social stratification in the capacity
to see architectural sculpture. His chorus exemplifies what Jacques Rancière calls
the “distribution of the sensible,” the distribution or sharing-out of the capacity to
see at all.57 The Erechtheum—for all that it is democratic, public art—instantiates
a differential between those who can see and those who cannot, those who are
53
Euripides, Ion, ll. 191–210. On this famous passage, see Stieber 2011, 284–302, with summary of
earlier discussions.
54
Marconi 2009, 168. 55
Euripides, Ion, ll. 235–6. 56
Hourmouziades 1965, 53–7.
57
Rancière 2000.
28 R ICH A R D NEER
perspicacious and those who require hermeneuts. A similar distribution of sens-

ibility was one function of the Acropolis. That is where we should be looking for
the ideology of this monument, not in the symbolism of this or that iconographic
detail. Ideology is upstream from iconography.
Plato recognized that who sees what is an essential question of politics; he fam-
ously condemned Athens as a theatrocracy (Laws 701b–c) or “rule by beholders,”
a politics in which the theatrical audience was sovereign. Instead of keeping to
their places, the common people set themselves up as judges of performances
they were not, on Plato’s view, competent to see at all. What appalled the philoso-
pher most about theatrocracy was its failure to respect proper distinctions, be they
social (e.g. can artisans judge art?) or ontological (e.g. is a mere imitation worthy
of thought?). Rancière has, in his turn, celebrated exactly these features of “rule by
beholders.”58 But the invisible Parthenon reveals how the architects of Athenian
theatrocracy constituted the demos as beholders of that which it cannot properly
be said to see: a theater of the blind, so to speak. To the extent that it was merely
incomprehensible, dazzling, unseeable, unrecognizable, invisible . . . to that
extent, the Parthenon might make visible exactly the conceptual anarchy, the
failure of proper discrimination, that Plato deplored. Yet even this pure spectacle
was policed, a cog in the creaky machinery of patronage.
DI A PH A NOUS I N V ISI BI LI T Y
Our last class of invisibility is the diaphanous: a double seeing, seeing what is not
there, a pun or play on two ways of articulating the distinction between visibility
and invisibility. The example here is the temple of Athena Nike that sits atop a
bastion just outside the gateway to the Acropolis proper (Fig. 1.11).59 This bas-
tion, a spur of fortification wall projecting from the citadel proper, was built in
the Late Bronze Age to provide a base for assaults on the exposed flanks of
attacking infantrymen.60 Later it became sacred to Athena in her aspect as a god-
dess of military victory. Starting in the late 430s bce—some eight hundred years
after its initial construction—the Athenians sheathed this bastion in a skin of
white marble and crowned it with a small temple.61 But it can get windy up on
the bastion and, without some sort of barrier, there was a real danger of falling;
58
For good synthetic discussions, see Hallward 2006; Halpern 2011. I am particularly grateful to
Richard P. Martin and Richard Meyer for pressing me on this point during a discussion at Stanford University.
59
Convenient resources for the temple are Mark 1993; Giraud 1994; Shear 2016, 341–58. For the
date of the temple, see Gill 2001; Shear 2016, 346–8. On the entry to the Acropolis, see Shear 1999;
Paga 2017 (with thorough review of the early history of the Nike precinct).
60
On the Mycenaean bastion, see Wright 1994; Shear 1999; Iakovides 2006.
61
Sheathing of bastion: Mark 1993, 69–70; Giraud 1994, 43–6; Shear 2016, 27–35.
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relaxed the rigid limbs. The next day the rigidity continued until
complete etherization was effected. In fact, when the breathing was
loudly stertorous and the conjunctiva insensible to touch, the rigidity
was complete, and it was not until a large amount of ether had been
inhaled that the limbs relaxed. While under the effects of the ether a
vaginal examination was made, and the uterus found normal in
position and size. No evidences of self-abuse were found, nor had
there been any reason for suspecting this. She continued in the
condition described for many days. She was filthy in her habits, and
would not use the commode, although she was made to sit on it for
hours. She would have a stool on the floor or in bed immediately
after rising from the commode. She seemed imbecile, and scarcely
spoke, or, if she did, would say she was dead or was a baby. She
would eat nothing voluntarily: food was put into her mouth, and she
would swallow it, but made no effort to close the lips herself. She
was fed in this way for four or five weeks. If taken up to be dressed,
she would make the procedure as difficult as possible, and when
dressed would not let her clothing remain buttoned, so that her
clothes had to be sewed on her.
After about ten weeks a slight improvement showed itself, first in her
taking food voluntarily, then in speaking. By degrees she became
reasonable, and in about four months from the time she was first
seen was perfectly well. The medication used was very slight, but
she was thoroughly fed, took bromide of sodium and ergot for a time,
and occasionally a dose of paraldehyde to produce sleep. She had
two efficient nurses, who carefully carried out all directions, and who
never yielded a point, but tried to be always as kind as firm. This
case is instructive, not only because of its phenomena, but also
because of the method of feeding and managing the patient and the
result of treatment.
At a meeting of the Philadelphia Neurological Society held February

22, 1886, I exhibited, at the request of Dr. C. P. Henry, of the Insane
Department of the Philadelphia Hospital, a case presenting
cataleptoid symptoms, the phenomena of automatism at command,
and of imitation automatism.
This patient had been recently admitted to the hospital, and no
previous history had been obtained. He was a middle-aged man, not
unintelligent-looking, and in fair physical condition. His condition and
his symptoms had remained practically the same during the short
time that had elapsed since admission. He remained constantly
speechless, almost continually in one position; would not open his
eyes, or at least not widely; would not take food unless forced; and
his countenance presented a placid but not stupid or melancholy
appearance. He had on several occasions assumed dramatic
positions, posing and gesticulating. It had been discovered by Henry
that the patient's limbs would remain where they were placed, and
that he would obey orders automatically. The case had been
regarded as probably one of katatonia, but in the absence of
previous history it was not known whether or not he had passed
through the cycle of mania, melancholia, etc. which constitutes this
fully-developed disease. He had had since admission attacks of
some severity, probably, from description, hystero-epileptic in
character.
In exhibiting the patient I first placed his arms and legs and body and
head in various positions, where they remained until he was
commanded to place them in other positions. His mouth was
opened, one eye was opened and the other was shut, and he so
remained until ordered to close his mouth and eyes. In most of these
experiments the acts performed were accompanied by remarks that
the patient would do thus and so as he was directed.
Various experiments to show automatism at command were

performed. I remarked, for instance, that the gentleman was a good
violin-player, when he immediately proceeded to imitate a violin-
player. In a similar way he took a lead-pencil which was handed to
him and performed upon it as if it were a flute. He danced when it
was asserted that he was an excellent dancer; placed his arms in a
sparring position and struck out and countered on telling him that he
was a prize-fighter; went through many of the movements of drilling
as a soldier, such as attention, facing, marking time, and marching.
He was told that he was a preacher and must preach, and
immediately began to gesticulate very energetically, as if delivering
an earnest exhortation. He posed and performed histrionically when
told that he was an actor. He was given a glass of water and told that
it was good wine, but refused to drink it, motioning it away from him.
He was then told that it was very good tea, when he tasted it,
evincing signs of pleasure. During all these performances he could
not be induced to speak; his eyes remained closed, or at least the
eyelids drooped so that they were almost entirely closed. He showed
a few phenomena of imitation, as keeping time and marching to the
sound of the feet of the operator.
In the nervous wards of the Philadelphia Hospital there is now an

interesting case of melancholia with catalepsy and the phenomena
of automatism at command—a man aged twenty-five, white, single,
who for thirteen years had worked in a type-foundry. Three years
before coming to the hospital he had an attack of acute lead-
poisoning with wrist-drop. Two years later he had an attack of mental
excitement with other evidences of insanity. He had hallucinations of
sight and hearing, and thought that he heard voices accusing his
sister of immorality. He at times accused this sister of trying to
poison him. He believed that his fellow-workmen were trying to have
him discharged. This condition lasted for six weeks, when he
became gloomy and stuporous, and would make no effort to do
anything for himself. His friends had to feed him. When first admitted
to the nervous wards he sat in the same position all day long, with
his head almost touching his knees, his arms fully extended by his
sides. He would not help himself in any way. His eyes were always
open, and he never winked. He never slept any during the day, but
was perfectly oblivious to all surroundings. He did not speak or move
out of any position in which he was placed. He could be placed in all
sorts of uncomfortable positions, and would remain in them. After
treatment with strong electrical currents and forced exercise he
brightened considerably, and would walk, after being started, without
urging. When treatment was discontinued, he relapsed into his
former state. Frequent experiments have been performed with this
man. Placing his limbs in any position, they will remain if a command
is given to retain them. He marches, makes movements as if boxing,
etc. at command.
The phenomena shown by both of these patients are those which

have for many years been known and described under various
names. I well remember when a boy attending a series of exhibitions
given by two travelling apostles of animal magnetism, in which many
similar phenomena were shown by individuals, selected apparently
at haphazard from a promiscuous audience, these persons having
first undergone a process of magnetizing or mesmerizing. In
experiments of Heidenhain of Breslau upon hypnotized individuals
many similar phenomena were investigated, and described and
discussed by this physiologist under the names of automatism at
command and imitation automatism. The hypnotized subjects, for
instance, were made to drink ink, supposing it to be wine, to eat
potatoes for pears, to thrust the hand into burning lights, etc. They
also imitated movements possible for them to see or to gain
knowledge of by means of hearing or in any other way. They
behaved like imitating automatons, who repeated movements linked
with unconscious impressions of sight or hearing or with other
sensory impressions. It was noted in the experiments of Heidenhain
that the subjects improved with repetition. The manifestations of my
patients, although not simulated, improved somewhat by practice.
Charcot, Richer, and their confrères have made similar observations
on hysterical and hypnotized patients, which they discuss under the
name of suggestion. Hammond26 suggested the term
suggignoskism, from a Greek word which means to agree with
another person's mind, as a proper descriptive designation for these
phenomena. In referring to persons said to be in one of the states of
hypnosis, he says that he does not believe that the terms hypnotism
and hypnosis are correct, as, according to his view, the hypnotic
state is not a condition of artificial somnambulism; the subject, he
believes, is in a condition where the mind is capable of being
affected by another person through words or other means of
suggesting anything. In the clinical lecture during which these
opinions were expressed he is reported to have performed on four
hypnotized young men experiments similar to those which were
exhibited by my insane patients. His subjects, however, were not
insane. A bottle was transformed by suggestion into a young lady;
sulphur was transmuted into cologne; one of the subjects was bent
into all sorts of shapes by a magnet; another was first turned into
Col. Ingersoll and then into an orthodox clergyman, etc. In reading
such reports, and in witnessing public exhibitions of the kind here
alluded to, one often cannot help believing that collusion and
simulation enter. Without doubt, this is sometimes the case,
particularly in public exhibitions for a price; but what has been
observed in the mentally afflicted, what has been shown again and
again by honest and capable investigators of hypnotism, prove,
however, not only the possibility, but the certainty, of the
genuineness of these phenomena in some cases.
26 Med. and Surg. Reporter, vol. xlv., Dec. 10, 1881.
Catalepsy and this automatism at command are sometimes

confused, or they may both be present in the same case; indeed,
they are probably merely gradations of the same condition, although
it is well to be able to differentiate them for the purposes of more
careful and accurate investigation. In automatism at command the
individual does what he is directed as long as he remains in this
peculiar mental condition. In experimenting upon him, his arms or
legs, his trunk or head, may be put in various positions, and if
commanded to retain them in these positions he will do so, or he will,
at command, put them in various positions, there to stay until a new
order is given. Imitation automatism occurs also in such cases;
patients will imitate what they see or hear. These cases differ only
from those of genuine catalepsy in that they do not seem to present
true waxen flexibility. The phenomena presented are those which
result from control over an easily-moulded will, rather than
phenomena due to the fact that the will is entirely in abeyance.
PATHOLOGY—Attempts to explain the nature of catalepsy leave one in

a very uncertain and irritable frame of mind. Thus, we are told very
lucidly that most authors are inclined to the opinion that the
cataleptic rigidity is only an increase of the normal tonus of the
voluntary muscles occurring occasionally in the attacks. What
appears to be present in all genuine cases of catalepsy is some
absence or abeyance of volition or some concentration and
circumscription of cerebral activity. The study of the phenomena of
catalepsy during hypnosis throws some light upon the nature of
catalepsy. Heidenhain's theory of hypnotism is that in the state of
hypnosis, whether with or without cataleptic manifestations, we have
inhibition of the activity of the ganglion-cells of the cerebral cortex.
Herein is the explanation of many cataleptic phenomena even in
complicated cases. In hysteria and in catalepsy the patient,
dominated by an idea or depressed in the volitional sphere by
emotional or exhausting causes, no longer uses to their full value the
inhibitory centres. When organic disease complicates catalepsy, it
probably acts to inhibit volition by sending out irritative impulses from
the seat of lesion.
DURATION.—Usually, attacks of catalepsy recur over a number of

years; but even when this is the case the seizures are not as
frequent, as a rule, as those of hystero-epileptic paroxysms.
Uncomplicated cases of catalepsy, or those cases which occur in the
course of hystero-epilepsy, usually preserve good general health.
Of the duration of attacks of catalepsy it need only be said that they

may last from a few seconds or minutes to hours, days, weeks, or
even months. The liability to the recurrence of cataleptic attacks may
last for years, and then disappear.
DIAGNOSIS.—In the first place, the functional nervous disorder

described as catalepsy must be separated from catalepsy which
occurs as a symptom in certain organic diseases. It is also
necessary to be able to determine that a patient is or is not a true
katatonic.
It must not be forgotten that genuine catalepsy is very rare. Mitchell

at a recent meeting of the Philadelphia Neurological Society said that
in his lifetime he had seen but two cases of genuine catalepsy—one
for but a few moments before the condition passed off. The other
was most extraordinary. Many years ago he saw a young lady from
the West, and was told not to mention a particular subject in her
presence or very serious results would ensue. He did mention this
subject, rather with the desire to see what the result would be. She
at once said, “You will see that I am about to die.” The breath began
to fail, and grow less and less. The heart beat less rapidly, and finally
he could not distinguish the radial pulse, but he could at all times
detect the cardiac pulsation with the ear. There was at last no visible
breathing, although a little was shown by the mirror. She passed into
a condition of true catalepsy, and to his great alarm remained in this
state a number of days, something short of a week. Throughout the
whole of this time she could not take food by the mouth. Things put
in the mouth remained there until she suddenly choked and threw
them out. She apparently swallowed very little. She had to be
nourished by rectal alimentation. She was so remarkably cataleptic
that if the pelvis were raised, so that the head and heels remained in
contact with the bed, she would retain this position of opisthotonos
for some time. He saw her remain supported on the hands and toes,
with feet separated some distance, with the face downward, for
upward of half an hour. She remained as rigid as though made of
metal. On one occasion while she was lying on her back he raised
the arm and disposed of the fingers in various ways. As long as he
watched the fingers they remained in the position in which they had
been placed. At the close of half an hour the hand began to descend
by an excessively slow movement, and finally it suddenly gave way
and fell. Not long after this she began to come out of the condition,
and quite rapidly passed into hysterical convulsions, out of which she
came apparently well. He was not inclined to repeat the experiment.
Catalepsy is to be diagnosticated from epilepsy. It is not likely that a

grave epileptic seizure of the ordinary type will be mistaken by an
observer of even slight experience for a cataleptic attack. It is some
of the aberrant or unusual types of epilepsy that are most closely
allied to or simulate catalepsy. Cataleptic or cataleptoid conditions
undoubtedly occur regularly or irregularly in the course of a case of
epilepsy, but I do believe that it is true, as some observers contend,
that between catalepsy and some types of true epilepsy no real
distinction can be made. Hazard,27 in commenting on a case
reported by Streets,28 holds that no difference can be made between
the attacks detailed and those forms of epilepsy described as petit
mal.
27 St. Louis Clin. Rec., iii. 1876, p. 125.
28 “Case of Natural Catalepsy,” by Thomas H. Streets. M.D., Passed Assistant

Surgeon U. S. N., in the American Journal of Medical Sciences for July, 1876.
The case was that of a sailor aged forty-two years, of previous good
health. The attacks to be described followed a boiler explosion, by
which he was projected with great force into the water, but from
which he received no contusion nor other appreciable injury. There
was no history of any nervous trouble in his family. It was the
patient's duty to heave the lead. The officer noticed that he was
neglecting his business, and spoke to him in consequence, but he
paid no attention to what was said to him. “He was in the attitude he
had assumed in the act of heaving the lead, the left foot planted in
advance, the body leaning slightly forward, the right arm extended,
and the line held in the left hand. The fingers were partially flexed,
and the sounding-line was paying out through them in this half-
closed condition. The eyes were not set and staring, as is the case in
epilepsy, but they were moving about in a kind of wandering gaze, as
in one lost in thought with the mind away off. The whole duration of
the trance was about five minutes.”
Dickson29 reports a very striking case, and in commenting on it holds

to the same views. The patient had apparently suffered from some
forms of mania with delusions. She was found at times sitting or
standing with her body and limbs as rigid as if in rigor mortis, and her
face blanched. These spells were preceded by maniacal excitement
and followed by violence. On being questioned about the attacks,
she said that chloroform had been given her. Numerous experiments
were performed with her. Her arms and hands were placed in
various positions, in all of which they remained; but it was necessary
to hold them for a few moments in order to allow the muscles to
become set. She was anæsthetic. After recovering she said that she
remembered being on the bed, but did not know how she came
there; also, that she had been pricked with a pin, and that her fit had
been spoken of as cataleptic. Her mind became more and more
affected after each attack, and she finally became more or less
imbecile. From the facts observed with reference to this case,
Dickson thinks that we may fairly conclude that the mental
disturbance in either epilepsy or catalepsy is identical, and results
from the same cause—viz. the anæmia and consequent malnutrition
of the cerebral lobes; while its termination, dementia, is likely to be
the same in either case; also, that catalepsy, instead of being a
special and distinct form of nervous disorder, is to be considered as
a specific form of epilepsy, and to be regarded as epilepsy, in the
same manner as le petit mal is considered epilepsy, and a result of
the same proximate cause; the difference in the muscular
manifestation bearing comparison with any other specific form of
epilepsy, and occurring in consequence of one or other particular
cerebral centre becoming more or less affected.
29 “On the Nature of the Condition known as Catalepsy.” by J. Thompson Dickson,
M.A., M.B. (Cantab., etc.), British Med. Journ., vol. ii., Dec. 25, 1869.
I do not believe that this ground is well taken. The conditions present
in petit mal are sometimes somewhat similar to, but not identical
with, those of genuine catalepsy. In the first place, the loss of
consciousness, although more complete and more absolute—or
rather, strictly speaking, more profound—than in genuine catalepsy,
is of much briefer duration. The vertigo or vertiginous phenomena
which always accompany genuine petit mal are rarely if ever present
in catalepsy. To say that the mental disturbance in catalepsy and in
epilepsy is identical is to admit an imperfect acquaintanceship with
both disorders. The mental state during the attack of either disorder
it is only possible to study by general inspection or by certain test-
experiments.
Tetanus is not likely, of course, to be mistaken for catalepsy, but

there is a possibility of such an occurrence. The differential diagnosis
already given between hystero-epilepsy and tetanus will, however,
furnish sufficient points of separation between catalepsy and
tetanus.
Catalepsy has been supposed to be apoplexy, or apoplexy

catalepsy. The former mistake is, of course, more likely to be made
than the latter. A careful study of a few points should, however, be
sufficient for the purposes of clear differentiation. The points of
distinction given when discussing the diagnosis of hysterical and
organic palsies of cerebral origin will here apply. In true apoplexy
certain peculiar changes in pulse, respiration, and temperature can
always be expected, and these differ from those noted in catalepsy.
The stertorous breathing, the one-sided helplessness, the usually
flushed face, the conjugate deviation of the eyes and head, the loss
of control over bowels and bladder, are among the phenomena
which can be looked for in most cases of apoplexy, and are not
present in catalepsy.
It is hardly probable that a cataleptic will often be supposed to be

drunk, or a man intoxicated to be a cataleptic; but cases are on
record in which doubts have arisen as to whether an individual was
dead drunk or in a cataleptic stupor. The labored breathing, the
fumes of alcohol, the absence of waxen flexibility, the possibility of
being half aroused by strong stimuli, will serve to make the diagnosis
from catalepsy. The stupor, the anæsthesia, the partial loss of
consciousness, the want of resistance shown by the individual
deeply intoxicated, are the reasons why occasionally this mistake
may be made.
Catalepsy is simulated not infrequently by hysterical patients.

Charcot and Richer30 give certain tests to which they put their
cataleptic subjects with the view of determining as to the reality or
simulation of the cataleptic state. They say that it is not exactly true
that if in a cataleptic subject the arm is extended horizontally it will
maintain its position during a time sufficiently long to preclude all
supposition of simulation. “At the end of from ten to fifteen minutes
the member begins to descend, and at the end of from twenty to
twenty-five minutes at the most it resumes the vertical position.”
These also are the limits of endurance to which a vigorous man
endeavoring to preserve the same position will attain. They have
therefore resorted to certain experimental tests. The extremity of the
extended limb is attached to a tambour which registers the smallest
oscillations of the member, while at the same time a pneumograph
applied to the chest gives the curve of respiratory movements. In the
case of the cataleptic the lever traces a straight and perfectly regular
line. In the case of the simulator the tracings at first resemble those
of the cataleptic, but in a few minutes the straight line changes into a
line sharply broken, characterized by instants of large oscillations
arranged in series. The pneumograph in the case of the cataleptic
shows that the respirations are frequent and superficial, the end of
the tracings resembling the beginning. In the case of the simulator, in
the beginning the respiration is regular and normal, but later there
may be observed irregularity in the rhythm and amplitude of the
respiratory movements—deep and rapid depressions, indicative of
the disturbance of respiration that accompanies the phenomena of
effort. “In short, the cataleptic gives no evidence of fatigue; the
muscles yield, but without effort, and without the concurrence of the
volition. The simulator, on the contrary, committed to this double test,
finds himself captured from two sides at the same moment.”
30 Journal of Nervous and Mental Diseases, vol. x., No. 1, January, 1883.
Chambers31 says that no malingerer could successfully feign the

peculiar wax-like yielding resistance of a cataleptic muscle. He
speaks of using an expedient like that of Mark's. Observing that
really cataleptic limbs finally, though slowly, yield to the force of
gravity and fall by their own weight, he attached a heavy body to the
extended hand of a suspected impostor, who by an effort of will bore
it up without moving. The intention of the experiment was explained,
and she confessed her fraud. This rough test, although apparently
different, is in reality similar to that of Charcot and Richer. In both
proof of willed effort is shown.
31 Reynolds's System of Medicine, vol. ii., No. 108.
It must not be forgotten that in catalepsy, as has been already noted
in hysteria, real and simulated phenomena may commingle in the
same case; also, that upon a slight foundation of genuine conditions
a large superstructure of simulated or half-simulated phenomena
may be reared.
PROGNOSIS.—The prognosis of catalepsy is on the whole favorable. It

must be admitted, however, that owing to the presence of neurotic or
neuropathic constitution a tendency to relapse is present. Hystero-
catalepsy tends to recover with about the same frequency as any of
the other forms of grave hysteria. Those cases which can be traced
to some special reflex or infectious cause, as worms, adherent
prepuce, fecal accumulations, scars, malaria, etc., give relatively a
more favorable prognosis. Cases complicated with phthisis,
marasmus, cancer, insanity, etc. are of course relatively unfavorable.
TREATMENT.—The treatment of the cataleptic seizure is not always

satisfactory, a remedy that will succeed in one case failing in
another. Niemeyer says that in case of a cataleptic fit he should not
hesitate to resort to affusion of cold water or to apply a strong
electrical current, and, unless the respiration and pulse should seem
too feeble, to give an emetic. The cold douche to the head or spine
will sometimes be efficacious. In conditions of great rigidity and
coldness of surface Handfield Jones recommends a warm bath, or,
still better, wet packing. Chambers quotes the account of a French
patient who without success was thrown naked into cold water to
surprise him, after having been puked, purged, blistered, leeched,
and bled. This treatment is not to be recommended unless in cases
of certain simulation, and even here it is of doubtful propriety and
utility. If electricity is used, it should be by one who thoroughly
understands the agent. A galvanic current of from fifteen to thirty
cells has been applied to the head with instantaneous success in
hystero-epileptic and hystero-cataleptic seizures. A strong, rapidly-
interrupted faradic current, or a galvanic current to the spine and
extremities, sometimes succeeds and sometimes fails. Rosenthal
reports that Calvi succeeded in relieving cataleptic stiffness in one
case by an injection of tartar emetic into the brachial vein—a
procedure, however, not to be recommended for general use.
Inhalations of a few drops of nitrate of amyl is a remedy that should
not be passed by without a trial; it is of great efficacy in the
hysteroidal varieties. Inhalation of ammonia may also be tried. A
hypodermic injection of three minims of a 1 per cent. solution of
nitroglycerin, as recommended for severe hystero-epileptic seizures,
would doubtless be equally efficient in catalepsy.
Music has been used to control hysterical, hystero-epileptic, and

cataleptic seizures. The French cases reported have all been of the
convulsive types without loss of consciousness and those varieties in
which the special sensibility sometimes persists, as in hystero-
catalepsy, lethargy, and somnambulism. Music has been used as
medicine from the times of Pythagoras to the present, although it can
hardly be claimed to have attained a position of much prominence as
a therapeutic agent.
In one case a vigorous application of fomentations of turpentine to

the abdomen was promptly efficacious in bringing a female patient
out of a cataleptic seizure.
Meigs, whose case of catalepsy produced by opium has been

reported under Etiology, suggests that purgative medicines, used
freely in the treatment of his case, might be advantageously resorted
to in any case of catalepsy.
Powerful tonics, such as quinine, iron, salts of zinc and silver, should
be used in connection with nutrients, such as cod-liver oil,
peptonized beef preparations, milk, and cream, to build up cataleptic
cases in the intervals between the attacks.
ECSTASY.
BY CHARLES K. MILLS, M.D.
DEFINITION.—Ecstasy is a derangement of the nervous system

characterized by an exalted visionary state, absence of volition,
insensibility to surroundings, a radiant expression, and immobility in
statuesque positions. The term ecstasy is derived from two Greek
words, ἐκ and στάσις, which means to be out of one's senses or to
be beside one's self. Commonly, ecstasy and catalepsy, or ecstasy
and hystero-epilepsy, or all three of these disorders, alternate,
coexist, or occur at intervals in the same individual. Occasionally,
however, the ecstatic seizure is the only disorder which attracts
attention. Usually, in ecstasy the concentration of mind and the
visionary appearance have reference to religious or spiritual objects.
SYNONYMS.—Trance is sometimes used as synonymous with ecstasy.

While, however, ecstasy is a trance-like condition, conditions of
trance occur which are not forms of ecstasy. Other synonyms are
Carus-extasis, Catochus, Catalepsia spuria.
HISTORY AND LITERATURE.—Accounts of cases of ecstasy abound in

both ancient and modern medical and religious literature. The
epidemics of the Middle Ages, the days of the New England
witchcraft, the revivals in England and America, have afforded many
striking illustrations. Not a few special cases of ecstasy have
become historical. Elizabeth of Hungary and Joan of Arc were both
cataleptics and ecstatics. Saint Gertrude, Saint Bridget, Saint
Theresa, Saint Catharine, and many other saintly individuals of
minor importance have owed their canonization and their fame to the
facility with which they could pass into states of ecstasy, catalepsy,
or hystero-epilepsy.
Gibbon1 has well described the occurrence of ecstasy in the monks

of the Oriental Church in the following passage: “The fakirs of India
and the monks of the Oriental Church were alike persuaded that in
total abstraction of the faculties of the mind and body the purer spirit
may ascend to the enjoyment and vision of the Deity. The opinions
and practices of the monasteries of Mount Athos will be best
represented in the words of an abbot who flourished in the eleventh
century. ‘When thou art alone in thy cell,’ says the ascetic teacher,
‘shut thy door and seat thyself in a corner; raise thy mind above all
things vain and transitory; recline thy beard and thy chin on thy
breast; turn thine eyes and thy thoughts toward the middle of thy
belly, the region of the navel; and search the place of the heart, the
seat of the soul. At first all will be dark and comfortless; but if you
persevere day and night you will feel an ineffable joy; and no sooner
has the soul discovered the place of the heart than it is involved in a
mystic and ethereal light.’ This light, the production of a distempered
fancy, the creature of an empty stomach and an empty brain, was
adored by the Quietists as the pure and perfect essence of God
himself; and as long as the folly was confined to Mount Athos the
simple solitaries were not inquisitive how the divine essence could
be a material substance, or how an immaterial substance could be
perceived by the eyes of the body. But in the reign of the younger
Andronicus the monasteries were visited by Barlaam, a Calabrian
monk, who was equally skilled in philosophy and theology, who
possessed the languages of the Greeks and Latins, and whose
versatile genius could maintain their opposite creeds according to
the interest of the moment. The indiscretion of an ascetic revealed to
the curious traveller the secrets of mental prayer, and Barlaam
embraced the opportunity of ridiculing the Quietists, who placed the
soul in the navel—of accusing the monks of Mount Athos of heresy
and blasphemy.”
1 Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, by Edward Gibbon, Esq., in 8 vols., vol. viii.
p. 64, London, 1838.
Some of Swedenborg's supernatural visions were, so far as can be
judged, simply accounts of attacks of ecstasy; and of like character
were the visions of John Engelbrecht as related by Arnold.2
2 Observations, etc., London, 1806.
In a very curious American book3 published in 1815 a history is given

of the wonderful performances of a woman named Rachel Baker,
who was undoubtedly in the habit of passing into conditions of
religious ecstasy, during which were present many of the
phenomena which occur in ecstatics, Catholic or Protestant, religious
or otherwise. When seventeen years old she witnessed the baptism
of a young lady, which impressed her strongly and caused her to
become much dejected and affected about her religious state. She
began to have evening reveries or night talks which soon attracted
attention. She united with the Presbyterian Church. These reveries
after a while expanded into evening exercises which began with
prayer, after which she exhorted and made a closing prayer. She
removed from Marcellus to Scipio, New York, in 1813, and shortly
afterward, in the same year, she went to New York City for medical
advice. While there she gave many opportunities to witness her
powers when in what her editors quaintly call her somnial
paroxysms. Her discourses were good illustrations of what is
sometimes termed trance-preaching.
3 Devotional Somnium; or, A Collection of Prayers and Exhortations Uttered by Miss
Rachel Baker, by Several Medical Gentlemen, New York, 1815.
One of the most interesting parts of this curious book is a

dissertation by Samuel L. Mitchill, M.D., on the function of somnium.
He says there are three states of animal existence—wakefulness,
sleep, and vision or dream. The definition of somnium, which he
quotes from Cicero, is a very fair one to be applied to some of the
conditions which we now speak of under such heads as lethargy,
trance, ecstasy, etc. “By somnium,” he says, “may be understood the
performance of certain mental and bodily actions, which are usually
voluntary, without the direction or government of the will or without
the recollection afterward that such volition existed.” He divides
somnium into symptomatic and idiopathic. The symptomatic
somnium occurs from indigestion, the nightmare, from affusions of
water into the chest, from a feverish state of the body, from debility
with fasting, from fresh and vivid occurrences, etc. The idiopathic
somnium is divided into somnium from abstraction, somnium with
partial or universal lunacy, with walking, with talking, with invention,
with mistaken impressions of sight and of hearing, with singing, with
ability to pray and preach or to address the Supreme Being and
human auditors in an instructive and eloquent manner, without any
recollection of having been so employed, and with utter
incompetency to perform such exercises of devotion and instruction
when awake. To the last of these affections he refers the case of
Rachel Baker, whose devotional somnium he describes.
A number of other curious cases are recorded in this book: that of

Job Cooper, a weaver who flourished in Pennsylvania about the year
1774; that of the Rev. Dr. Tennent, who came near having a funeral
in one of his states of trance, who has related his own views,
apprehensions, and observations while in a state of suspended
animation. He saw hosts of happy beings; he heard songs and
hallelujahs; he felt joy unutterable and full of glory: he was, in short,
in a state of ecstatic trance. Goldsmith's history of Cyrillo
Padovando, a noted sleep-walker, who was a very moral man while
awake, but when sleep-walking a first-class thief, robber, and
plunderer of the dead, is also given.
One of the most remarkable instances of ecstasy is that of the girl

Bernadette Soubirons, whose wonderful visions led to the
establishment of the now famous shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes in
the south of France. It is related of this young girl by her historian
Lasserre4 that when about to cross the Gave, a mountain-stream of
the Pyrenees, she suddenly saw in a niche of a rock a female figure
of incomparable splendor, which she described as a real woman with
an aureola about her head and her whole body of surprising
brightness. The child afterward described in detail the vision she had
seen. Later, on a number of occasions at the same spot, she saw the
same vision, described as appearing transfigured. The child believed
that she saw the Immaculate Virgin. The Virgin told her that she
wished a church to be built on the spot. The place has since become
a shrine for Catholics of all nations.
4 Our Lady of Lourdes, by Henri Lasserre, translated from the French, 7th ed., New
York, 1875.
Meredith Clymer5 has written an elaborate communication on

ecstasy. Ambrose Paré, quoted by Clymer, defines ecstasy as a
reverie with rapture of the mind, as if the soul was parted from the
body. Briquet describes it as a state of cerebral exaltation carried to
such a degree that the attention, concentrated on a single object,
produces the temporary abolishment of the other senses and of
voluntary movements.
5 “Notes on Ecstasy and other Dramatic Disorders of the Nervous System,” Journal of
Psychological Medicine, vol. iv., No. 4, October 1870.
ETIOLOGY.—Under the predisposing causes of ecstasy may be

comprised almost all of those described under hysteria. The
predisposition to the development of ecstasy will be governed in
great measure by peculiarities of religious education and of domestic
and social environment.
Extreme religious feeling is undoubtedly among the most frequent of

the exciting causes of ecstasy. The accidents and incidents of love
have also had a place. Sexual excitement is sometimes associated
with the production of ecstasy. “In pre-Christian times,” says
Chambers, “when, in default of revelation, men worshipped their
incarnate passions, we have from the pen of Sappho a description of
a purely erotic ecstasy which can never be produced again.” Fear or
fright has been known to throw a predisposed individual into an
attack of ecstasy. Severe threats have occasionally had the same
influence.
SYMPTOMATOLOGY.—In considering the symptomatology of ecstasy it

will only be necessary to call attention to the ecstatic attack. The
accompanying phenomena are those of hysteria, hystero-epilepsy,
etc., already fully described. I cannot do better than quote from
Lasserre the account of one of the ecstatic seizures of Bernadette
Soubirons. Although given in turgid language and from the religious
point of view, the description is a good one of the objective
phenomena of ecstasy:
“A few moments afterward you might have seen her brow light
up and become radiant. The blood, however, did not mantle her
visage; on the contrary, she grew slightly pale, as if Nature
somewhat succumbed in the presence of the apparition which
manifested itself to her. All her features assumed a lofty and still
more lofty expression, and entered, as it were, a superior
region, a country of glory, significant of sentiments and things
which are not found below. Her mouth, half open, was gasping
with admiration and seemed to aspire to heaven. Her eyes, fixed
and blissful, contemplated an invisible beauty, which no one
else perceived, but whose presence was felt by all, seen by all,
so to say, by reverberation on the countenance of the child. This
poor little peasant-girl, so ordinary in her habitual state, seemed
to have ceased to belong to this earth.
“It was the Angel of Innocence, leaving the world for a moment
behind and falling in adoration at the moment the eternal gates
are opened and the first view of paradise flashes on the sight.
“All those who have seen Bernadette in this state of ecstasy

speak of the sight as of something entirely unparalleled on
earth. The impression made upon them is as strong now, after
the lapse of ten years, as on the first day.
“What is also remarkable, although her attention was entirely

absorbed by the contemplation of the Virgin full of grace, she
was, to a certain degree, conscious of what was passing around
her.
“At a certain moment her taper went out; she stretched out her
hand that the person nearest to her might relight it.
“Some one having wished to touch the wild rose with a stick,
she eagerly made him a sign to desist, and an expression of
fear passed over her countenance. ‘I was afraid,’ she said
afterward with simplicity, ‘that he might have touched the Lady
and done her harm.’”
Side by side with this description by the devout Lasserre of the

appearance presented by Bernadette when in a state of ecstasy, I
will quote the often-recorded account which Saint Theresa has given
in her Memoirs of her subjective condition while in a similar state:
“There is a sort of sleep of the faculties of the soul,

understanding, memory, and will, during which one is, as it
were, unconscious of their working. A sort of voluptuousness is
experienced, akin to what might be felt by a dying person happy
to expire on the bosom of God. The mind takes no heed of what
is doing; it knows not whether one is speaking or is silent or
weeping; it is a sweet delusion, a celestial frenzy, in which one
is taught true wisdom in a way which fills us with inconceivable
joy. We feel as about to faint or as just fallen into a swoon; we
can hardly breathe; and bodily strength is so feeble that it
requires a great effort to raise even the hands. The eyes are
shut, or if they remain open they see nothing; we could not read
if we would, for, though we know that they are letters, we can
neither tell them apart nor put them together, for the mind does
not act. If any one in this state is spoken to, he does not hear;
he tries in vain to speak, but he is unable to form or utter a
single word. Though all external forces abandon you, those of
the soul increase, so as to enable you the better to possess the
glory you are enjoying.”
Occasionally striking illustrations of ecstasy are to be found among

hysterical and hystero-epileptic patients in whom religious faith has
no place. In these cases usually other special phases of grave
hysteria are present. In some of the descriptions given by Charcot
and Richer of hystero-epileptics in the stage of emotional attitudes or
statuesque positions the patients are, for a time at least, in an

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General Editor: Jaś Elsner

Visual Conversations is a series designed to foster a new model of comparative

The authors dedicate this book with gratitude to their students

1. Three Types of Invisibility: The Acropolis of Athens 7

2. What Lies Beneath: Carving on the Underside of

3. Concealment and Revelation: The Pola Casket and

4. The Archaeology of Passage: Reading Invisibility in

1.1. Athens, Acropolis, view from the Pnyx. 8

xii LIST OF ILLUSTR ATIONS

2.3. Coatlicue, Mexica/Aztec, c.1480–1510, Museo Nacional de

LIST OF ILLUSTR ATIONS xiii

xiv LIST OF ILLUSTR ATIONS

xvi List of Contributors

(hence, respectful of ) traditional, corpus-building scholarship, even as it aspires

Three Types of Invisibility

F ig . 1.1. Athens, Acropolis, view from the Pnyx.

THR EE T Y PES OF IN V ISIBILIT Y 9

F ig . 1.2. Rogier van der Weyden, The Vision of the Magi,

F ig . 1.3. Athens, sanctuary of Athena Nike,

THR EE T Y PES OF IN V ISIBILIT Y 11

The Kore Pit and the Parthenon

F ig . 1.4. Kore from the “Kore Pit” on the

THR EE T Y PES OF IN V ISIBILIT Y 13

THR EE T Y PES OF IN V ISIBILIT Y 15

THR EE T Y PES OF IN V ISIBILIT Y 17

meanwhile, is just 1.16 m (3 ft 4 in.) high—difficult to see at such distance even

THR EE T Y PES OF IN V ISIBILIT Y 19

F ig . 1.7. Athens, Acropolis, Parthenon, north

F ig . 1.8. Athens, Acropolis, Parthenon: angles for viewing frieze.

THR EE T Y PES OF IN V ISIBILIT Y 21

F ig . 1.9. Athens, Acropolis, Parthenon, east porch: exposed clamp.

THR EE T Y PES OF IN V ISIBILIT Y 23

to flee Athens to avoid charges of fiscal impropriety.42 Although the indictment

political setting in which it can arise. The conditions of iconographic visibility

THR EE T Y PES OF IN V ISIBILIT Y 25

We happen to have an exactly contemporary description of the Erechtheum

THR EE T Y PES OF IN V ISIBILIT Y 27

perspicacious and those who require hermeneuts. A similar distribution of sens-

At a meeting of the Philadelphia Neurological Society held February

Various experiments to show automatism at command were

In the nervous wards of the Philadelphia Hospital there is now an

The phenomena shown by both of these patients are those which

Catalepsy and this automatism at command are sometimes

PATHOLOGY—Attempts to explain the nature of catalepsy leave one in

DURATION.—Usually, attacks of catalepsy recur over a number of

Of the duration of attacks of catalepsy it need only be said that they

DIAGNOSIS.—In the first place, the functional nervous disorder

It must not be forgotten that genuine catalepsy is very rare. Mitchell

Catalepsy is to be diagnosticated from epilepsy. It is not likely that a

28 “Case of Natural Catalepsy,” by Thomas H. Streets. M.D., Passed Assistant

Dickson29 reports a very striking case, and in commenting on it holds

Tetanus is not likely, of course, to be mistaken for catalepsy, but

Catalepsy has been supposed to be apoplexy, or apoplexy

It is hardly probable that a cataleptic will often be supposed to be

Catalepsy is simulated not infrequently by hysterical patients.

Chambers31 says that no malingerer could successfully feign the

PROGNOSIS.—The prognosis of catalepsy is on the whole favorable. It

TREATMENT.—The treatment of the cataleptic seizure is not always

Music has been used to control hysterical, hystero-epileptic, and

In one case a vigorous application of fomentations of turpentine to

Meigs, whose case of catalepsy produced by opium has been

1. Three Types of Invisibility: The Acropolis of Athens 7

1.1. Athens, Acropolis, view from the Pnyx. 8