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by B. Holtzmann (Author)
The heroes - mortals whom the Greeks worshiped in order to perpetuate their strong personnality - took pride of place in Thasos: every year the city celebrated the feast, otherwise unknown, of Heroxenia. This explains the large number of heroic reliefs that have been discovered in Thasos since the mid-nineteenth century. This volume brings together over two hundred reliefs, unevenly divided between two themes: the rider, and more importantly, the banqueter, both of aristocratic origin. In Thasos, the evolution of these themes can be followed more closely than in any other city, over eight centuries. Until the Hellenistic period, these reliefs are votives: rare and ambitious, they are the work of very skilled sculptors. The famous banquet relief from Thasos at the Museum of Istanbul is one of the masterpieces of its kind, probably from the same artistic background as the painter Polygnotos of Thasos, famous for his mural compositions. From the end of the fourth century, the spread of heroisation, progressively extended to the common people, sees these reliefs move from votive to funerary, at the cost of changes to their morphology and composition. For the rider, the late success of the boar hunter is linked to the rise, in northern Greece and the Balkans, of the cult of Heron/s, a Thracian god who can be easily assimilated with the greek hero. As for the banquet, stripped of its accessories, it becomes no more than a family scene, produced by workshops of funerary art with limited skills.
