Onatas
(Ὀνάτας) of Aegina, the son of Micon, was a distinguished statuary and painter, contemporary with Polygnotus, Ageladas, and Hegias. From the various notices of him it nmav be collected that he flourished down to about (1. 80, B. C. 460, that is, in the age immediately preceding that of Phidias. It is uncertain whether his father Micon was the great painter of that name.
The works of Onatas are frequently described by Pausanias, who is, however, the only ancient writer who mentions him, with the exception of a single epigram in the Greek anthology. Pausanias also says that, though he called himself an Aeginetan on his works, he was inferior to none of the artists from Daedalus and the Attic school (5.25.7. s. 13 : Τὸν δε Ὀνάταν τοῦτον ὅμως, καὶ τέχνης ἐς τὰ ἀγάλματα ὄντα Αἰγιναίας, οὐδενὸς ὕστερον θήσομεν τῶν ἀπὸ Δαιδάλου τε καὶ ἐργαστηρίου τοῦ Ἁττικοῦ). Pausanias mentions the following works of Onatas :--
1. A bronze statue of Heracles, on a bronze base, dedicated at Olympia by the Thasians. The statue was ten cubits high : in the right hand was a club, in the left a bow : and it bore the following inscription (Paus. l.c.) :--
Υἱὸς μέν με Μίκωνος Ὀνάτας ἐξετέλεσσεν, Αὐτὸς ἐν Αἰγίνη δώματα ϝαιετάων.
2. An Apollo at Pergamus, equally admired for its size and its art (8.42.4. s. 7). This statue was in all probability different from that of Apollo Boupais, attended by Eileithvia, on which we have an epigran by Antipater. (Ant. Pal. 9.238; Brunck, Anal. vol. ii. p. 14.)
3. A Hermes, carrying a ram under his wing, wearing a helmet on his head, and clad in a chiton and chlanmys. It was dedicated at Olympia by the people of Pleneus in Arcadia; and the inscription stated that it was made by Onatas the Aeginetan, in conjunction with Calliteles, whom Pausanias takes for a son or disciple of Onatas (5.27.5. s. 8).
4. A bronze statue of the Black Demeter with the horse's head, whose legend is related by Pausaniias (8.42). The seat of the legend was a cave in MIount Elaeus, near Phigaleia, which the Phigaleians had consecrated to the goddess, and had dedicated in it a wooden image, like a woman, except that it had the head and mane of a horse, and figures of dragons and other wild beasts were growing out about the head : it was clothed in a tuiic down to the feet; and bore on the right hand a dolphin, and on the left a dove. This wooden image having been burnt at some unknown period, it was not only not replaced, but the worship of the goddess was neglected; until the Phigaleians, warned by the failure of their crops, and instructed by a Pythian oracle, employed Onatas to make a bronze statue of the goddess; in the execution of which he was assisted somewhat by a picture or a wooden copy of the old image, but still more by dreams. (Paus. l.c.) This story is one of several indications of the thoroughly archaic style of the works of Onatas.
Passing from the statues of gods to those of men and heroes, we have
5. The bronze statues of the Grecian heroes casting lots to determine which of them should accept the challenge of Hector. (Hom. Il. 7.175-184.) The group was dedicated at Olympia by the Achaeans in common. It consisted originally of ten figures; but when Pausanias saw it, there were only nine, the statue of Ulysses having been carried to Rome by Nero. The chieftains, armed with spears and shields, stood together near the great temple, and opposite to them, on a separate base, stood Nestor, holding the helmet into which the lots had been thrown. The name of Agalneninon was inscribed on his statue, in letters from right to left. The other statues bore no names; but one, distinguished by a cock upon the shield, was taken by Pausanias for Idomeneus ; anrd on the inside of the shield of this statue was the following inscription :--
Πολλὰ μὲν ἄλλα σοφοῦ ποιήματα καὶ τόδʼ Ὀνάτα Ἔργον, ὅι Αἰγίνη γείνατο παῖο͂α Μίκων.
There is no authority for ascribing to Onatas more than this one statue in the group. (Paus 5.25.5. s. 8-10.)
6. The bronze chariot, with a figure of a man in it, which was dedicated at Olympia by Deinomenes, the son of Hieron, in memory of his father's victories. On each side of the chariot were ridinghorses, with figures of boys upon them; these were made by Calanis. (Paus. 6.12.1, 8.42.4. s. 8.) This work is one authority o date of Onatas, since Hieron died B. C. 467.
7. A group dedicated at Delphi by the Tarenttines, being the tithe of the booty taken by them in a war with the Peucetii. The statues, which were the work of Onatas and Calynthus (but the passage is here corrupt), represented horse and foot soldiers intermixed; Opis, the king of the Iapygians, and the ally of the Peucetians, was seen prostrate, as if slain in the battle, and standing over him were the hero Taras and the Lacedaemonian Phalanthus, near whom was a dolphin. (Paus. 10.13.5. s. 10.)
Onatas was a painter, as well as a statuary ; but only one of his works is mentioned : this one, however, forms another authority for his date, and proves the estimation in which he was held; for he was employed in conjunction with Polygnotus to decorate the temple in which this picture was painted. The temple was that of Athena Areia at Plataeae, and the picture, which was painted on one of the walls of the portico (pronaos), represented the expedition of the Argive chieftains against Thebes; Euryganeia, the mother of Eteocles and Polyneices (according to the tradition which Pausanias followed), was introduced into the picture, lamenting the mutual fratricide of her sons. (Paus. 9.4.1. s. 2, 5.5. s. 11) : it should be observed, however, that in the second passage the MSS. have Ὀνασιας, which Sylbnrg corrected into Ὀνάτας, on the authority of the first passage; see also Müller, Aeyisetica, p. 107 : but Bekker and Dindorf, on the contrary, correct the former passage by the latter, and read Ὀνασίας in both.)
The scattered information of Pausanias respecting Onatas has been critically gathered up by Müller and Thiersch. Rathgeber has managed to extend the subject over thirty columns of Ersch and Gruber's Encyclopiidie. [P.S]
a Pythagorean philosopher of Croton, from whose work, Περὶ δεοῦ καὶ δείου, some extracts are preserved by Stobaeus. (Ecl. Phys. 1.38, p. 92, &c., ed. Heeren.)
(Ὀνάτας). A Greek artist, the chief representative of the Aeginetan school of sculpture in bronze, about B.C. 460. Besides statues of the gods, such as an Apollo at Pergamon, admired for its size and execution (Pausan. viii. 42. 7), we hear of groups of his, rich in figures, drawn either from the heroic epoch—as, for example, the ten Greek heroes casting lots as to who should undertake the battle with Hector—or from contemporary history, such as the votive offering of the Tarentines, containing equestrian and pedestrian combatants, and consecrated at Delphi for their victory over the barbarian Peucetians. He also executed a group representing Hiero of Syracuse with the chariot in which he had been victorious at Olympia. His most remarkable work was the bronze figure of the black Demeter, in a cavern thirty stadia from Phigalea, in the southeast corner of Elis (Pausan. viii. 42, 1).
- son of Micon: Paus. 5.25.10, 13, Paus. 5.27.8, Paus. 6.12.1, Paus. 8.42.7, 9, 10, 12, Paus. 10.13.10