An Illustration of Bacchylides

Extract

Plate V represents a small Attic bell-krater in the collection of Mr. Edward Armytage, who has kindly permitted its publication. The subject is novel: it appears to be the arrival in Attica of Theseus, and shews in detail a close correspondence with our main literary source, the seventeenth ode of Bacchylides. The two youths on the left are the two companions of Theseus, Peirithoos and Phorbas—δύο (F)οι φῶτε μόνους ὰμαρτεῖν λέγει (l.c. line 45). They are in travelling costume, booted and cloaked, wearing ephebic fillets and bearing pairs ofspears—ξεστοὺς δὲ δύ᾿ ἐν χέρεσς᾿ ἀκοντας (1. 49, though said of Theseus himself, not of his comrades).