| Description |
Though images of Eros and Aphrodite are prolific, appearing in many material and literary sources, scenes of erotostasia, or the weighing of Eros by Aphrodite, are rare and have been historically overlooked in the study of Greek art. However, the four cataloged scenes of Aphrodite raising a balance with one hand, an eros figure perched in each weighing pan, are importantly related to scholarship surrounding weighing scenes and Aphrodite's realm in Greek myth, literature, and art. Exploring erotostasia reveals its connection to two major recurrent motifs in ancient art and text, kerostasia and psychostasia. Kerostasia and psychostasia are scenes that feature the symbolic weighing of heroic honor, represented by individual warriors or armies in total, presided over by Zeus or his messenger, Hermes. The kerostasia scene, or the weighing of fate, was first described by Homer in the Iliad and was later adapted into psychostasia by Aeschylus. The scene was incredibly popular, transmitted into art repeatedly by many individual vase-painters from the Archaic to Hellenistic Period. As in erotostasia, these scenes also feature a deity holding a balance with one hand, with two miniature figures being weighed. While scenes of male deities observing the results of weighing have been studied in order to gain insight into the famous epic and tragedian cycle, erotostasia has not been compared to these near-identical images. The implications of Aphrodite weighing erotes become clearer when we take kerostasia as the prevalent precursor in meaning, which must have been known to both audience and artist of erotostasia. The result of this comparison makes the similar positions of Aphrodite and Zeus, as judges and arbiters, incredibly significant. The extent to which Aphrodite and Zeus have each been described as supreme authorities over their respective realms can be determined in many textual and artistic sources. The relation of Zeus' and Aphrodite's placements in these scenes speaks to the tension between the heroic and erotic realm, as well as the tension between Zeus and Aphrodite themselves- described as early as the sixth century BCE by lyric poets. The meaning evinced by this comparison is a significant addition to the scholarship surrounding weighing, Aphrodite, and Eros. With this thesis I hope to open the topic up for further analysis and present erotostasia as an image with incredible depth and nuance. |
