Hi Curtis,

Although the article gives an example of Thanatos and Hypnos as adult
winged warriors, the pair are shown on this Roman copy of a Greek
sculpture as Ephebes:

http://www.skulpturhalle.ch/sammlung/highlights/2003/06/ildefonso.html

Thanatos is extinguishing the torch. This sculpture is believed to be of
the Augustan period, but a later Hadrianic copy is known where one is
given the head of Antinous.

The change from fearful adult depictions of the twins to softer, more
youthful depictions comes later when Thanatos is represented as being of
a peaceful death. The joyful side of death (rather alien to us today) is
also represented in the ritual marriage of departed females to Dionysos
in the Mysteries. That the coins representing this aspect are Provincial
and not Imperial issues from Rome is not surprising considering that the
Dionysian Mysteries (as the Bacchanalia) were restricted in Rome not
long after their introduction.

Also, to the Greeks, only one aspect of life was mortal (bios). The
other aspect (zoë) was infinite. It was this last aspect that figured
much in the Mysteries -- mind you, it also included something (perhaps)
of the loss of a personal identity as life as zoë was considered a sort
of energy that only became specific when embodied as bios. I find this
very similar to the Tibetan idea of "the clear light", where it is
taught that the individual perishes at death as he or she is also the
product of genetics and experience and we might thus understand how the
Dalai Lama can retain enough actual memories of previous incarnations to
recognize former belongings when he is discovered as a boy -- and thus
does not appear to have been born with total recall even after many
incarnations of intense training in Tibetan Buddhism -- in other words,
this "clear light" does not recall its former associated states
naturally. Jung's "Seven Sermons to the Dead" which he wrote when
younger (1916) in the name of the Gnostic Basilides (2nd cent. A.D.)
explains this quality of zoë as "the pleroma" He says: "... The pleroma
is both beginning and end of created beings. It pervadeth them as the
light of the sun everywhere pervadeth the air...Yet because we are are
parts of the pleroma, the pleroma is also in us. Even in the smallest
point is the pleroma endless, eternal, and entire."

Jung gave only a few copies of this to his friends and thought of it as
a "sin of his youth" he allowed its publication widely in _Memories,
Dreams and Reflections_ late in his life. It's curious thinking for his
pre-Wolgang Pauli period.

Cheers,

John



Curtis Clay at HJB, Ltd. wrote:
> The widespread ID of the Cupid with upside-down torch as representing Death
> is probably simply a modern mistake, prevalent since the eighteenth century.
>
> See this study by Francis Jarmen and Patricia Lawrence:
>
> http://www.forumancientcoins.com/ayiyoryitika/ProlegomenaEros/ProlegomenaEro
> s.html
>
> Curtis Clay