THE BUTTERFLY IX AXCIENT ART. 1261 



showed a sepiiK'linil altur on whicli a fire appeared to burn ; over tlie altar 

 fluttered a butterfly, and before it stood a woman pouring a libation. In 

 connection with this a monument found in Spain has great interest ; it 

 bears an inscription beginning 



"Ilaeredibus mando etiam cincre[m] ut . . . volitet mens cbrius papilio." 

 and doubtless means that his heirs were to make a lil)ati()n at his grave, 

 80 that 'Muy butterfly may fly away satiated." 



Roman engravers loved to depict philosophers in their meditations on 

 death and the life beyond by representing them with a skull or skeleton 

 before them and a butterfly hovering over it. In a scene on an engraved 

 stone, where, beneath a pig, two Erotes are quarreling over a butterfly, 

 CoUignon sees "'a very realistic symbol of the spiritual and material life." 



The buttei-fly as a type of the loving human soul pictures oftener the 

 sufferings than the pleasures of love. Biittiger thinks that the Greeks 

 may have fancied tlie many moths that gathered around the torches of Eros, 

 in festivities celebrated at night, to be souls of maidens in love, burning^ 

 themselves at the torch of the god of love. In the Villa Maffei two 

 Erotes are seen burning a buttei-fly over their crossed torches, while their 

 heads are turned away as in grief; this may represent the purification of 

 the soul, through sufixjring, in love. On a carnelian stone Eros is seea 

 with a hammer and a large nail crucifying a butterfly. In St. Petersburg, 

 '•on a sardonyx vase, which is engraved in relief, a bride is seen, while 

 three buttei-fly scenes show the kingdom of love ; in one, Eros pursues a 

 butterfly with his torch, in a second he is driving in a mussel shell drawn 

 by two butterflies, in the third he is shooting with his bow at a butterfly 

 that hovers above"' (Bottiger). The pleasures of love are sometimes de- 

 picted, as when Eros kisses a butterfly. Occasionally Eros is seen, with. 

 hands bound behind, suffering in his turn, and the butterfly is sometimes 

 present, endeavoring, Stephani thinks, to loosen the bands that confine her 

 master. The word i^v)(r], like the Latin anima, was used as a term of en- 

 dearment by lovers. Gems and rings given as love tokens often bore the 

 inscription : — 



yfrv)(^>l, KaXt), '^V)(_i], ^Irv^rj (roi) Beiva^. 

 Soul, beautiful soul, soul (of so and so). 



There are other stones corresponding to these, on which only a butterfly 

 and a person's name are engraved. 



The pleasures and sutt'erings of love are often portrayed by Psyche in 

 maiden form, sometimes with and sometimes without butterfly wings. 

 Collignon says that Psyche is only the last of a series of forms attributed 

 to the soul by Greek artists. In painted vases the different emotions of 

 the soul are expressed by little winged genii, flying by the side of the per- 

 son whose emotions their attitudes express. A terra-cotta bas-relief found 

 at Milo shows the soul of the gorgon taking the form of an etSwXoi' as it 



