Ona'tas
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]
