Read the article carefully and then write a report in which you specifically address what the thesis/point of the article is,

Reading the Chigi Vase

Jeffrey M. Hurwit

Hesperia, Vol. 71, No. 1. (Jan. – Mar., 2002), pp. 1-22.

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R E A D I N GH E S P E R I A 7 1 ( 2 0 0 2 ) Pages 1-22

THE C H I G I VASE

1.In completing this article, I have benefited greatly from the assistance and advice of many people, including Alfred Acres, Judith Barringer, Larissa Bon- fante, Anna Rastrelli (Museo archeo- logico, Florence), Rex Wallace, the

ABSTRACT

Long considered one of the technical masterpieces of Archaic Greek vase painting, the Protocorinthian Chigi vase (ca. 640 B.c.) has defied attempts at interpretation. Its imagery has most often been understood as a random as- sortment of exquisite but unrelated scenes-hunts, horsemanship, the Judg- ment of Paris, and a hoplite battle. It is argued here that there is in fact a logic behind the choice of scenes, and that the vase displays a pliable thematic unity, focusing upon the stages of maturation of the Corinthian male and the inter- penetration of the everyday, the exotic, the heroic, and the divine in the lives of mortals.

There was a time, not very long ago, when no one bothered thinking much about why particular subjects were painted on particular Greek vases, or why specific scenes are found together on the same vase.l T h e hard dis- tinction between myth and genre was the only distinction that mattered, and since a scene on a pot had to be one or the other, the choice was in- herently uncontroversial: myth was always appropriate because, well, the Greeks liked myth, and genre scenes were natural, too, because the Greeks had daily lives like everyone else. Consequently, the search for program- matic or thematic relationships between two or more scenes on a single vase was rarely undertaken: the iconography of Greek vase painting was virtually a random thing.

T h a t time has passed. We now recognize categories of imagery in which the distinction between the generic and the mythological, between the mortal and the heroic or divine, is not as strict. Consider certain scenes on Attic Late Geometric and Archaic vases, for example, where the every-

very helpful anonymous referees for facilitated by residence as a visiting Hesperia, and, above all, Anna Maria scholar at the American Academy in Moretti (Villa Giulia), who graciously Rome, by a University of Oregon Sum- allowed me to remove the Chigi vase mer Research Award, and by a University from its vitrine for study and photo- of Oregon Humanities Center Fellow- graphy. M y research was also greatly ship. I am very grateful to and for all.

2 J E F F R E Y M . H U R W I T

day life is given a heroic character through the depiction of Dipylon shields or battle chariot^,^ or where (on a few works by the Amasis Painter) Dionysos makes his epiphany among mortal men who are on routine hunt- ing expedition^.^

Over the last three decades, the choice of subject has also attracted intense attention, from a variety of perspectives. I n the 1970s, for example, John Boardman began to interpret Attic vases painted during the Peisis- tratid era as political, even subversive, documents. Exekias's famous scene of Ajax and Achilles amusing themselves with a board game when they should be out loolung for Trojans to kill4 is, in Boardman's view, really a thinly veiled allusion to lax behavior at the Battle of Pallene, ca. 546, when Athenians allegedly played dice as Peisistratos attacked and won his final tyranny (Hdt. 1.63). T h e presence of the Lakonian cult heroes Kastor and Polydeukes on the back of the same vase supposedly indicates Exekias's pro-Spartan sympathies as well: taken together, the scenes on the Vatican amphora comprise an antityrannical manifesto cloaked in myth. Problem- atic as Boardman's "current affairs" approach sometimes is (and important as it is to remember that a privately owned pot is not the same as a work of public propaganda), it has had more than its fair share of proponents, and it has helped clarify the ideological dimension-the political reflec- tions-of many Greek images.'

T h e syntagmatic relationship between scenes on many other nonpo- litical pots is also clearer now. We may not know why the Protoattic Nessos Painter chose to paint the myth of Herakles and Nessos on the body of his name-vase in New York (ca. 675-650) or Exekias, on his fragmentary krater from the north slope of the Acropolis (ca. 530), the combat over Patroklos's corpse. But the odd-looking lion attacking a deer on the neck panel of the Nessos amphora and the lion fights on the Exeluan krater surely function like Homeric similes: the heroes fight centaurs or each other the way lions maul deer or ~ a t t l e . ~ More broadly, recent structuralist, anthropological, semiotic, and narratological studies have firmly established not only that black- and red-figure vase painting is a "construct" encoding cultural themes and social attitudes, but also that Archaic and Classical vase painters could approach their task with specific programs and messages in mind, that there is often a correlation between subject and vase shape, and that the particular combination of scenes on a vase could have paradigmatic value (by pairing heroic and mortal behaviors, for i n ~ t a n c e ) . ~

All in all, the search for thematic unity on a vase is now an ortho- dox e n t e r p r i ~ e . ~ One Archaic vessel has been especially fortunate in the

2. See, e.g., Snodgrass 1980; Hunvit pp. 69-71. For a recent investigation of 1985b and 1993, esp. pp. 34-36; and the use of the Dioskouroi in Athens,see Sinos 1998. Shapiro 1999; and for an uncompro-

3. See von Bothmer 1985, pp. 46-47; mising attack on those who would find Stewart 1987, pp. 36-38. political content beneath Archaic imag-

4. Vatican 344; Beazley 1986, ery, see Neer 2001, esp. pp. 292-294. pls. 64-65. 6. New York Nessos amphora:

5. Major documents in the debate Hurwit 1985a, p. 174 and fig. 72. include Boardman 1972,1978a, 1984, Exekias's North Slope krater: Beazley 1989; Williams 1980, p. 144, n. 55; and 1986, pl. 73; Markoe 1989, esp. pp. 94- Cook 1987; see also Sparkes 1991a, 95, pl. 5:a-b.

7. T h e literature is now vast, but see, for example, the various essays in Berard 1989, Hoffmann 1977 and 1988, Lissarrague 1990, Scheibler 1987, Steiner 1993, and Shapiro 1997. Generally, also Stansbury-O'Donnell 1999, pp. 118-157.

8. This is not to say that the scenes on a pot are always thematically related; even for Bron and Lissarrague 1989, p. 21, "there is very often no direct link,

3

other than proximity, between the different images decorating a vase." And there are still a few scholars who insist that the search for iconographic coherence on a vase (or, for that matter, in the sculpture of a temple) is a waste of time, the anachronistic exercise of a modern, literate temperament that (conditioned by f ~ e d texts) seeks programmatic logic and thematic unity where the ancient mind (conditioned by a predominantly oral culture) did not. See Small 1999, p. 573, n. 24, who believes such attempts are doomed to failure "because [the problem of iconographic unity] is solely a mod- ern one." Cf. Ridgway 1999, pp. 82- 94, who believes that the sculptural programs of ancient temples did in- deed bear messages, but that they may not have been as logically or carefully constructed as the modern mind (long shaped by written texts and the "controlled messages of Christian art") would like or expect. See also Stansbury-O'Donnell1999, pp. 124-129, on problems of what

R E A D I N G T H E C H I G I V A S E

devotion it has attracted: the Franqois vase (ca. 570), by Kleitias and Ergotimos, which (despite disagreement over details and possible poetic inspiration) has emerged as an anthology of myths chosen to narrate the heroic pedigree, career, and death of Achilles, with a countercurrent of scenes relating to the broader theme of marriage-unhappy marriage, on the whole, but marriage nonetheless. W i t h the battle of pygmies and cranes on the foot to supply comic relief, the Franqois vase is perhaps the closest approximation to a "painted epic" in the 6th ~ e n t u r y . ~

I explore below the extent to which some organizing principle or prin- ciples may be at work on an even earlier masterpiece of the Greek vase painter's craft: a small polychrome pot whose pieces were found in 1881 during the excavation of a huge Etruscan tumulus accidentally discovered on the property of Prince Mario Chigi, atop Monte Aguzzo, above the village of Formello, about 3.5 krn north of Veii. T h e vessel is now on dis- play in the Villa Giulia.lo

T H E V A S E

T h e Chigi vase (Fig. 1)is perhaps the earliest-known example of a kind of wine jug conventionally known as an olpe-an ovoid or sagging pitcher with a flaring mouth and a vertical ribbed handle that is futed to the rim with a pronglike feature ending in circular disks (rotelles).ll I t is usually assigned either to the second phase of the Middle Protocorinthian period ( M P C 11) or to the Late Protocorinthian (LPC) period, but it is at any rate almost always given a date of around 650-640.12

he calls "paradigmatic extension." the vase similarly. Mingazinni (1976) 9. Stewart 1983; Schaus 1986; has attempted to revise radically Archaic

Carpenter 1986, pp. 1-11; Haslam pottery chronologies and dates the Chigi 1991; Isler-Kerenyi 1997. vase to ca. 570; his arguments have not

10. Villa Giulia 22679; Amyx 1988, been widely accepted. p. 32, no. 3. Salmon (1984, p. 106) notes that

11.The modern use of the word although Corinthian vases had found olpe, restricted to such ovoid wine jugs, their way to Etruria from the mid-8th does not correspond with ancient use, century on, high-quality Corinthian when "olpe" could indicate the small imports began to arrive in significant perfumed-oil flask we know as the numbers around 650 (his date for the aryballos; see Amyx 1988, pp. 488-489, Chigi vase). This is precisely the time 560-561; Sparkes 1991b, p. 63. The when Etruscan society experienced Etruscans loved the shape and "greater social stratification and faithfully copied it in vast numbers; centralisation of power. . . accompanied Amyx 1988, pp. 488,686. by the development of an increasingly

12. Benson (1986, pp. 105-106) elaborate and varied elite material places the beginning of the Chigi culture" (Arafat and Morgan 1994, Painter's career in the M P C I1 period p. 112). T h e importation of Corinthian (660-650 B.c.); Boardman (1998, p. 87) pottery appears to be a symptom of these dates the vase "late in M P C , near 650 phenomena. But, as Small (1994) argues or later"; Payne (1933, p. 23), Simon in the case of Attic painted vases, the (1981, p. SO), and Amyx (1988, p. 369) importation of foreign vases may tell us date it to LPC, ca. 640. Ducati (1927, less about the general course of Etruscan p. 70) dated the Chigi vase and the culture and fortunes than is often tomb to the beginning of the 6th thought. century; Karo (1899-1901, p. 8) dated

4 J E F F R E Y M . H U R W I T

R E A D I N G T H E C H I G I V A S E 5

Figure 1 (opposite). T h e Chigi vase. Rome, V i a Giulia 22679. Photos author

Figure 2. Chamber tomb from M o n t e Aguzzo. Museo archeologico, Florence. Photo author

The vase was deposited in a monumental tomb that, judging from its rough ashlar and quasi-polygonal masonry, was built before the end of the 7th century-perhaps even as early as 630.13 The tomb consisted of a 5-m-long corridorlike dromos, two narrow, corbel-vaulted side chambers (one ofwhich, 3.35 m long and 1.90 m wide, has been reconstructed in the courtyard of the Museo archeologico, Florence; Fig. 2), and a large main chamber (7.4 m long and 2.55 m wide) at the back. I t was in this main chamber that the pieces of the Chigi vase were found. The relatively close dating of the vase and tomb means that although the tomb might have remained in use for more than a single generation, the Chigi vase could have been made and painted at Corinth, exported to Etruria, and buried on Monte Aguzzo all within the course of a few decades, and perhaps a lot less. And that, together with the vase's exceptionally rich figured decora- tion, raises the possibility in turn that the Chigi vase (like, perhaps, the Fransois vase two generations later) was a commissioned piece, specifi- cally made for an Etruscan in the market for items that would, with their foreign cachet, display the owner's good taste, offer him paradigms of Greekness to emulate, or both.14This possibility admittedly remains small,

13. For the date of the Monte Aguzzo tomb, see fherstr6m 1934, pp. 17-18; de Agostino 1968, pp. 109, 111; SteingrBer 1981, p. 492; and A. De Sands, in Bartoloni et al. 1994, p. 35 (where it is suggested that "una datazione all'orientalizzante

media'-that is, a date even before (which was given special treatment 630-is possible for the tomb). when it was shipped to Etruria, with

14. For Greek vases and the Etrus- struts added to prevent its handles can market, see generally Rasmussen from breaking), see Cristofani 1991 (Corinthian pottery); and Ara- et al. 1981, p. 101; Isler-KerCnyi fat and Morgan 1994 and Small 1994 1997. (Attic pottery). For the Frangois vase

6 J E F F R E Y M . H U R W I T

but the likelihood that this unique vase arrived in Etruria as "saleable bal- Figure 3 (opposite). T h e MacMillan last" is minuscule. It was surely a special purchase.ls aryballos. H. ca. 6.5 cm. British

T h e tomb on Monte Aguzzo was apparently ransacked twice: first sometime in antiquity, and then in late 1880 or early 1881, when the in-

Museum 1889.4-18.1. Courtesy Trustees of the British Museum

habitants of Formello, who had been given the right to dig on Prince Chigi's properties, rediscovered and entered the tomb before Rodolfo Lanciani could be entrusted with its more systematic (but still poorly published) excavation.16 Some 500-600 impasto, high-quality bucchero, Italo-Geo- metric, and Corinthian potsherds were found in the same chamber as the pieces of the Chigi vase (about three-quarters of the vessel is preserved). T h e finds, though plentiful, were otherwise modest, with the exception of a bucchero vessel (datable to the last quarter of the 7th century) inscribed in five lines with two of the earliest-known Etruscan alphabets, some al- most incantationlike, nonsensical syllables (for example, azaruazaru- azaruas), and a dedicatory inscription that, though open to interpretation, seems to indicate that the vase belonged, or had at some point belonged, to someone named Atianai.17 If Atianai was the principal occupant of the main chamber of the tomb on Monte Aguzzo, we in all probability also know the name of the Etruscan owner of the Chigi vase.

Although incision is abundantly used for outlines and details, the vase is notable for a refined polychrome technique in black, reddish-purple, and various shades ofyellowish-brown that is usually thought to owe much to contemporary wall or panel painting.'* We are, in fact, told that a Corinthian (Ekphantos) invented the art of painting in color (though we are not told precisely when) and we hear of panel paintings produced as early as the 8th century.19 But there is nothing to indicate that such pro- duction was extensive in the 7th century, and it may be doubted whether painters were particularly specialized this early. T h e few scraps of pre- served 7th-century free painting, from the walls of theTemple of Poseidon at Isthmia (ca. 650) and the metopes of the Temple of Apollo at Thermon (ca. 630), might well have been the work of one of the few Corinthian

15. For the controversial theory that importation of Attic pottery is suf- Pallottino 1978, pl. 94; Agostiniani Greek painted vases had virtually no ficient. A similar variety of uses, and a 1982, p. 76, n. 127; Cristofani 1985, intrinsic or monetary value, see Vickers similar selectivity of production and p. 87 (who translates the dedicatory and Gill 1994. Its many critics include Small (1994), who points out that in

consumption, can be assumed for earlier Protocorinthian imports as well.

inscription as "I am [the vase] of Atianai. Achapri [?I dedicated [gave?]

later centuries Etruscan consumers 16. Ghirardini 1882, p. 292; Ward- me to Venel. Velthur made me."); purchased Attic painted vases for a Perluns 1961, p. 47. and Pandolfini and Prosdocimi 1990, variety of reasons-to sit as decorative 17. T h e vase itself belongs to pp. 24-26. We do not know what the objects on a shelf, to serve as storytelling Rasmussen's classification Id; see Ras- word achapri means. objets d h r t (like the Franqois vase) or as mussen 1979, p. 72. For the "Formello 18. Payne 1931, pp. 92-98; Robert- souvenirs (like Panathenaic amphoras), alphabet" and the dedicatory inscrip- son 1975, p. 53. and, above all, to be deposited expressly tion (mi atianaia achapri dice veneliSi/ 19. See Plin. HN35.16 (Ekphantos) in tombs. Small argues that although the velthur zinare), see Ghirardini 1882; and 35.55-56 (Boularchos's painting of Etruscans do not seem to have actually Buonamici 1932, pp. 107-108; von the "Battle of the Magnetes," dated by drunk from or dined using Attic painted Vacano 1965, pp. 76-77; Boitani, Pliny before the 18th Olympiad, or vases, no single explanation for the Cataldi, and Pasquinucci 1975, p. 229; 708 B.c.); see also Schaus 1988.

R E A D I N G T H E C H I G I V A S E 7

20. Cf. Hurwit 1985a, pp. 161-162. It is true that the small wooden pinakes from Pitsa differ from even the most colorful of Corinthian vases in tech- nique and style (red and blue predomi- nate), but since they date to the second half of the 6th century they cannot fairly be used to suggest great differ- ences between free painting and works like the Chigi vase a century earlier. For the general problem (though focusing on the 6th century), see Amyx 1983. It is also usehl to keep in mind that even such later vase painters as the Athenian Euthymides (ca. 510) could execute in- dependent panel paintings (such as his chocolate-brown warrior on a plaque from the Acropolis) with a different range of color from that seen on his pots; see Boardman 1975, p. 54, fig. 53.

21. Payne 1931, pp. 38-39 (Aiginetan, following Rumpf); Jeffery 1990, pp. 125, n. 3,264 (Syracusan). See also Lorber 1979, pp. 14-15, no. 13; Wachter 2001, p. 31.

craftsmen who primarily painted polychrome vases and who might have easily adjusted their techniques for different media upon commission; the Isthmia fragments bear decorative patterns and a horse's mane compa- rable to those found on Protocorinthian pots, and the Thermon metopes are even made of baked clayz0

The origin of the painter of the Chigi vase, if not the vase itself, is also at issue. The person who labeled a few figures on the back (see below, Fig. 8) did not write Greek like a Corinthian: he wrote like an Aiginetan, in the opinion of some, or a Syracusan, in the opinion of others.21 I t seems likely that either the writer was not the same man as the painter (a possi- bility we should not dismiss too hastily) or the painter was not a native of C ~ r i n t h . ~ ~ But in any case the warm, creamy, buff-colored fabric of the vase is recognizably Corinthian and its provenience is not in

Though the Chigi vase is far larger than an aryballos (the tiny per- fume flask that is the quintessential Protocorinthian product), it is still not very large (H. 26 cm) in comparison with other Greek vases and so de- manded the skills of a consummate miniaturist. This artist-properly known as the Chigi Painter–is generally credited with at least three other works as well: a fragmentary olpe from Aigina, an aryballos in Berlin, and the British Museum's MacMillan aryballos (where, in its lower friezes, less than a centimeter high, the artist worked on a nearly micro- scopic scale; Fig. 3).24 The Chigi Painter is also considered the central figure in a small group of polychrome vase painters working in the mid- dle of the 7th century (the Chigi G r o ~ p ) , ~ ~ and a recently published

22. See Amyx 1988, p. 602, where he points out the danger in assuming "that the writing on [a Corinthian] vase was in every case provided by the vase painter himself"; and Payne 1931, p. 39, where it is suggested that "the inscriptions on Protocorinthian vases show us foreign artists working at Corinth, in the Pro- tocorinthian style."

23. Some have doubted a Corinthian origin for the Chigi vase; for example, Rambo (1918, p. 13, n. 1) believes that the vase is Etruscan, giving as her reasons its use of landscape in the lowest zone, its findspot near Vulci [sic], and the sup- posedly "sub-Mycenaean" costume of the flute player in the battle scene. I assume that Payne (1931, p. 182, n. 1) is being ironic when he calls Rambo's conclusion "a real contribution."

In the opinion of Karo (1899-1901, p. 7), "der Thon ist warmgelb und nicht sehr fein, also von dem hellen, griin- lichen, feingeschlammten Thone der gewohnlichen protokorinthischen Vasen

verschieden." But even he considers it "ein Beispeil der hochsten Bliite des protokorinthischen Stils" (p. 8).

No works incontrovertibly by the painter of the Chigi vase have been dis- covered at Corinth itself, though frag- ments of an aryballos and alabastron related to his style have been found at Perachora (Amyx 1988, p. 32, C . l and C.2) and a fragmentary alabastron with a hoplite battle scene found at the so- called Potter's Quarter in western Corinth was attributed to the artist (the MacMillan Painter) by Dunbabin and Robertson 1953, p. 179; Amyx (1988, p. 38, no. 7) prefers an assign- ment to the broader "Chigi Group." For other sherds from the Potter's Quarter with affinities with the Chigi Group, see Corinth XV, iii, nos. 285,288,289, 304, and 341.

24. Amyx 1988, pp. 31-32,369-370. 25. The group also includes the

Boston Painter and the Sacrifice Painter; Amyx 1988, pp. 33-37.

J E F F R E Y M . H U R W I T

fragmentary oinochoe from Erythrai in Asia Minor, with similar scenes of warfare, hunting, and horsemanship, is likely to come from his circle if not from his own hand (Fig. 4).2h

T H E S C E N E S

T h e inside of the rim of the Chigi vase is decorated with hatching and white pinwheel rosettes, while fine lotus palmettes adorn the pronged handle and rotelles (Fig. 5). O n the exterior, between the neck and shoul- der (again covered with lotus palmette chains painted in white over a dark background) and the base (with two abstract zones, one with black rays that lead the eye upward, the other of reddish-purple horizontal stripes against a dark ground), there are four figured bands or friezes (I-IV).

I. In the lowest frieze (2.2 cm high), three nude short-haired hunters use a pack of long-tailed dogs to ambush long-eared hares (and, in one case, a vixen) from behind four or five bushes that have the fluidity of aquarium plants (Fig. 6).These are the only elements of landscape found in any zone. O n e kneeling hunter carries a lagobolon, or throwing stick, as he signals a companion carrying a brace of dead hares on his back to stay low behind a bush. There is no clear indication in the preserved fragments of the sort of trap or net found in other representations of hare hunting." Filling ornaments (hooks, crosses, pinwheel rosettes, S-spirals, zigzags,

Figure 4. Oinochoe from Erythrai, drawing. Scale 1:2. After Akurgal 1992, p. 84, fig. 1:a

26. E. Akurgal, cited in Cook and Blackman 1970-1971, p. 4 1 (attribu- tion to the Chigi Painter); Neeft 1991, p. 15 (E-1); Akurgal 1992 (attribution to the "Erythrai Painter"); Schnapp 1997, p. 478 (5 bis); Boardman 1998, p. 278.

27. See, e.g., Schnapp 1989, figs. 99-100. A few arching lines preserved below the front hooves of the chariot team in the zone above might belong to such a trap.

R E A D I N G T H E C H I G I V A S E 9

Figure 5. Chigi vase, rim and mouth. Photo author

Figure 6 . Chigi vase, detail. Photo author

and lozenges formed of opposing triangles) are lightly scattered in the spaces between the figures. The direction of the pursuit is mostly right to left.28

11. The next frieze (4.6 cm high) appears at first glance to be a collec- – – 28. For the hare hunt, see Anderson tion of four or five formally discrete elements, with more abstract orna-

1985, pp. 32-34, and Schnapp 1997, mentsS-spirals, lozenges, zigzags-tastefully strewn about. Fist, there is

pp. 180-181. a parade of long-haired horsemen, wearing tunics, riding bareback, using

I 0 J E F F R E Y M . H U R W I T

only reins and halters, and moving fairly stiffly from left to right (Fig. 1:a). Each rider also leads a riderless horse, and so these youths are prob- ably not jockeys themselves (like the racers on the MacMillan aryballos; Fig. 3)29but squires (hippostrophoi) leading mounts for absent companions or warriors (hippobateis), as we know them from other vases of the period and afterward, at Corinth and elsewhere.30 Perhaps, as some think, those missing warriors are to be found dismounted and fighting on foot in the zone above.31 Alternatively, the four squires could be holding the horses for other youths in the same zone (as we shall see) or for use in a team. For next comes a light four-horse chariot, driven by a lone youth but led by another (this time nude) youth on foot, who looks back upon his fellows over his shoulder (Fig. l:b).32 Although the 8-spiral hovering between the lead rider and the chariot has the character of a punctuation mark, the horsemen and chariot are probably part of the same procession.

T h e parade is brought to an abrupt halt by a static bicorporate sphinx- a monster with two bodies but a single face, who wears an elaborate floral crown (or else the ornament grows out of her head) and who, like a good Archaic figure, smiles a little smile (Fig. 6). Sphinxes are usually innocu- ous members of the Protocorinthian menagerie and take their place in frieze after frieze beside lions, panthers, boars, goats, and birds, singly or in pairs. They are never found in a Protocorinthian narrative context,33 and there is no hint that they could also be, in Greek art and imagination, destroyers of men and posers of existential questions. Even so, it is worth recalling the sphinx or sphinxes who carry off a fallen warrior from the battlefield on a roughly contemporary relief from the acropolis of Mycenae (sometimes thought to be Corinthian in ~ r i g i n ) . ~ T h e Chigi sphinx may not be as sinister a creature as those but, given the brutal scene to follow (in which a youth is savaged), it may nevertheless introduce intimations of mortality or (as I shall suggest) liminality. At all events, while creatures such as double-lions are known in Near Eastern and Mycenaean art," the double-sphinx seems to be a specifically Corinthian invention, and this example may be the first of her strange breed.

Next to the sphinx, a nearly symmetrical and self-contained lion hunt takes place (Fig. 7). Four youths (one nude but belted, the others wearing cuirasses) spear a magnificent beast that has caught a fallen comrade in its jaws-he is the only human casualty found on the vase. Purplish blood pours out of all (apparently mortal) wounds. Whether lions actually roamed

29. It is possible that they are nian hydria by the H u n t Painter, leading the horses to a starting line ca. 555). for others to race, and it is interesting 31. Cf. Greenhalgh 1973, pp. 85- that, according …