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Pyxis:—Herakles and Geryon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Cecil Smith
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Extract

The vase which is the subject of the present memoir is a pyxis or small round box of a light yellow clay with a smooth surface, decorated with designs in a blackish brown, which is here and there varied with a patch of purple laid upon the black, or with a detail occasionally incised. It was acquired by the British Museum in 1865, and forms one of a set of eighteen which were ‘guaranteed’ as having been found at Phaleron near Athens.

The lid is decorated with a circular frieze of animals, representing five lions or panthers; the most important representation, however, is that upon the body of the vase, which is encircled with a single frieze of figures, consisting of four lions, a bull (recognisable by the shape of its hoof and its horn), and a group which is obviously a rendering of the well-known myth of Herakles and Geryon—beside Geryon is a further group of three bulls.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 5 , November 1884 , pp. 176 - 184
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1884

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References

page 176 note 1 The remainder, except a pyxis similar to this, are of the so-called Phaleron type; if the provenance could be relied upon, the series would be of great importance to our knowledge of this class, but unfortunately, evidence on this point is rarely trustworthy.

page 177 note 1 Such repetitions would not appear strange to those accustomed to the early relief vases where the impression from one cylinder is repeated ad libitum.

page 177 note 2 See Furtwängler, , in Arch. Zeit., 1883, p. 153.Google Scholar

page 177 note 3 See Löschcke, , in Arch. Zeit. 1881, p. 34.Google Scholar

page 179 note 1 Mon. Ined. v. 25. Annali, 51, 42.

page 180 note 1 Arch. Zeit. 1883, p. 162.

page 180 note 2 Ausgrabungen, iv. xx. A.

page 181 note 1 Euphronios, p. 30.

page 181 note 2 Cf. the Cyprus statue Cesnola, , Cyprus, p. 156.Google Scholar

page 182 note 1 Heydemann, , in his description of this scene (Annali 1869, p. 247)Google Scholar, finds a difficulty in explaining the curved parallel lines beside the figure of Athene. They are not, as he conjectures, part of a circle, nor part of a badly drawn shield; but belong to the outline of the colossal eye which has formed the left hand boundary of this group.

page 183 note 1 The dog is surely a late introduction of Greek art into this myth. May it have come in perhaps through the medium of some scene like this, where one of the conventional lions might easily he mistaken for a dog?