The Anathemata
Middle-sea and Lear-sea (continued)
Six centuries
and the second Spring
and a new wonder under heaven:
man-limb stirs
in the god-stones
and the kouroia
are gay and stepping it
but stanced solemn.
And now is given a new stone indeed:
the Good Calf-herd
for Rhonbos his pastor bonusb
lifted up and adored
(and may we say of his moschophoros:
this pastoral Lord regit me?)1
David Jones notes
1 Cf. the superb early sixth-century-BC fragmentary marble figure of a man carrying a calf dedicated by a person called Rhonbos on the Acropolis. One is inevitably reminded of the centuries later, immeasurably inferior, well-known Graeco-Roman figure called the ‘Good Shepherd’, adaptations of which are familiar to Christians. The smile on a kouros is Greek, the stance Egyptian.
Cf. also the opening words of the Vulgate Psalm 22, ‘The Lord rules me‘, which is Ps 23 in the A.V., ‘The Lord is my Shepherd’.
additional notes
a kouroi: plural of kouros (boy); (koure is the plural of kore, girl).
b pastor bonus: good shepherd.
See here for the image and more detailed description of the calf-bearer (‘moschophoros’).
see also
‘man-limb stirs in the god-stones’ is an echo of ‘man-hands god-handled’ on page 59 (the Willendorf Venus).
comments
The calf bearer is dated to 560 BCE (roughly six centuries from the ‘one thousand two hundred years since the Dorian jarls’).