Julius Pollux
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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From the 4th century BC, the figurines acquire a decorative function. Thus, figurines represent theatrical characters, such as Julius Pollux recounts in his Onomasticon (2nd century CE): the slave, the peasant, the nurse, the fat woman, the satyr from the satyr play, etc. The features are readily caricatured and distorted. By the Hellenistic era, the figurines become grotesques: deformed beings with disproportionate heads, sagging breasts or prominent bellies, hunchbacks and bald men. Grotesques are a specialty of the city of Smyrna, even if produced everywhere in the Greek world, for instance, in Tarsus or Alexandria.
Lastly, the terracotta is often used to manufacture dolls and other children's toys. Thus, we find articulated figurines or small horses, easy to manipulate for small hands. Sometimes, the nature of a figurine is difficult to determine, such as the curious bell-idols from Boeotia, which appear at the end of the 8th century BC. They are equipped with a long neck and a disproportionate body, cylindrical and lathe-shaped. The arms are atrophied and the legs are mobile. Lastly, the head is pierced with a hole to hang them. It is uncertain if they were toys or votive offerings.
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