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On 3 June 1968, Italian archaeologists digging the ancient city of Paestum made an extraordinary discovery. They had unearthed a tomb fashioned from slabs of travertine, containing the bones of an individual who had been lain to rest c.480 BC, alongside a vessel for anointing oil and the remains of a possible lyre. The truly remarkable facet of this tomb, though, was its decoration. Paintings along the walls displayed a convivial Greek symposium getting under way, while the image on the ceiling was more singular still: a lone, athletic male frozen in mid-dive, as he plunged from a tower towards the tranquil waters below.
The exceptional nature of this composition has long seen it interpreted as a metaphor, most likely involving the transition of the deceased into the afterlife. Tonio Hölscher, a renowned art historian, believes otherwise. In this engaging read, Hölscher sets the tomb painting within a wider corpus of diving figures in ancient art and lays out the case for taking the tomb images at face value. For example, as the plummeting male is sprouting his first facial hair, any transition seems to revolve around that from youth to adulthood. When read this way, rather than presenting concealed messages, they reflect a zest for life in the Greek style.
REVIEW BY MATTHEW SYMONDS
The Diver of Paestum: Youth, Eros, and the Sea in Ancient Greece
Tonio Hölscher (trans. Robert Savage)
Polity, £20
ISBN 978-1509568130
