Mississippi 1977.3.61a and b
Attic Black-Figure Neck-Amphora
Collection of The University Museums,
University of Mississippi Phase I Cultural Center (1977. 3.61 a-b)
Near the Antimenes Painter [Robinson]
530-520 B.C.
Height: 41.6 cm.
Diameter: 27.7 cm.
Height of lid: 8 cm. Side A: Herakles and
the Cretan Bull. Side B: Hermes, Dionysos and goddess.
Herakles' later labors carried him to the ends of the earth and
beyond it to the land of the dead. By about the middle of the 6th century B.C.
vase-painters were illustrating these exotic adventures, of which the capture of
the Cretan Bull was one. King Minos of Crete, preparing to sacrifice to
Poseidon, found he had no suitable victim. He prayed to the god, who sent a
beautiful bull from the sea — so beautiful that Minos thought it too fine
to sacrifice and kept it for himself. (Poseidon's revenge for this insult was to
make Minos' wife fall in love with the bull; their son was the man-bull, the
Minotaur.) Herakles' seventh labor was to capture and bring back this bull for
his cowardly master Eurystheus. Unlike other animals Herakles encountered, the
bull seems to have no supernational qualities or other unusually dangerous
abilities, and he captures it, in vase-painting at least, with relatively little
difficulty. Here he has roped it around the horns and front legs, and it
collapses at his feet. Hermes waits at left to guide the far-wandering hero back
to Argos. This is not the most dramatic or fantastic of Herakles' adventures,
but it was a favorite with black-figure painters; more than 140 examples are
known.
In the center of side B stands Dionysos, turning his head to look at
Hermes. At right stands a goddess holding on her shoulders two small children
drawn, as always in archaic art, as miniature adults. None of the figures is
named, but the two gods are recognizable because of the system of attributes
— clothing, objects, gestures — by which even foreigners and
illiterates could identify the personages depicted. Herakles' club, bow and
lionskin cloak, or any one or combination of them, is sufficient to identify
him. The same is true of Hermes' winged boots and herald's staff, or Dionysos'
wreath, grapevine and cup. The goddess is more difficult to identify, though her
general nature is clear: she is a
kourotrophos, a goddess of fertility (not necessarily a mother goddess as
such) who grants children to mankind, protects and nurtures them. The concept of
such a goddess was already ancient among the Greeks when this amphora was
painted, and it had become extremely complex and confused. In Athens and Attica
"Kourotrophos" was a cult title of several goddesses, from Ge the Earth-Mother
to virginal Artemis and Athena. Kourotrophos was also the name of a goddess or
goddesses worshiped independently in shrines of their own, and Kourotrophos was
honored by a preliminary sacrifice at major Athenian festivals. The goddess here
wears an ivy wreath like Dionysos', and it may be that she is his wife Ariadne
in the role of Kourotrophos, with their sons Staphylos and Oinopion. What it all
meant to the wealthy Etruscan who bought this amphora and took it to his grave
is impossible to guess.
Bibliography
Robinson 1956;
Brommer 1973, 195, A28. For Herakles
and the Bull in archaic art:
Schefold
1978, 103-105; for Kourotrophos:
Hadzisteliou-Price 1978.
Lucy Turnbull
