L. D. Caskey, J. D. Beazley, Attic Vase Paintings in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

procession, is filled with a floral design composed of four large palmettes and two lotus flowers.

On a fragmentary black-figured lekythos from the Acropolis, published by Langlotz, Akropolisvasen, no. 2298, Pl. 96, and dated by him early in the fifth century, the same subject is represented in greater detail (see fig. 9, Suppl. Pl. I).¹ A cow with a fillet hanging from its horns is being led to the sacrifice; the worshippers carry branches; there is a kanephoros with a three-handled basket on her head; the column with a fillet tied about it reappears, supporting in this case a rudimentary triglyph frieze. Within the temple thus indicated a worshipper stands before a striding figure of Athena. The close correspondence between the two scenes makes it certain that ours represents a sacrifice to the same divinity.² The picture, which looks like an archaic forerunner of the Parthenon frieze, may thus actually portray a group from the Panathenaic procession. A third picture much like ours is on a Boeotian lekanis in London (London B 80: J.H.S. i, pl. 7; Corpus, B.M. III He, pl. 7, 4: see A. D. Ure in J.H.S. 49, p. 167): here also the deity is Athena.

Painted in black letters running round the lip of the lekythos is the signature of the potter Gales: ΓΑΛΕΣ ΕΠΟΙΕΣΕΝ.³ This signature occurs in the same place on another lekythos, also found at Gela, which is almost an exact duplicate of ours as regards shape and subsidiary decoration.⁴ Its badly preserved picture — Anakreon with lyre accompanied by two youthful revellers — is by the same hand, as Beazley has observed, but less finely drawn. The stiff, angular bodies of the two youths show that the painter was not abreast of the athletic movement inaugurated at the close of the sixth century. He is more successful in his rendering of the long-robed Ionic poet. But it remained for the Boston lekythos to reveal his real power and individuality. Beazley places him in the neighbourhood of Euthymides, and notes that the kylix at Yale (Baur, The Stoddard Collection, no. 163, Pl. XV) shows very close resemblances to his style.⁵

The lekythos, which is to be dated not later than 510 B.C., is one of a very small group painted in the early red-figured style. As Beazley has remarked, V.A., p. 26, the bloom of the red-figured lekythos came later, in the ripe archaic period, when a more slender and graceful shape had been developed and the picture was limited to one or two figures. Apparently lekythoi continued for the most part to be decorated in black figure throughout the early archaic red-figured period. The exceptions include, besides the two Gales vases, the fine little lekythos in Girgenti with soldiers arming which stands close to them in style,⁶ and the Boston lekythos published below, no. 15 (Boston 95.42). All these resemble the black-figured examples in that numerous figures encircle the vase. A fifth early red-figured lekythos, in the British Museum, is of the same heavy proportions, but has only two figures — a young reveller and an old woman, Οἰνοφίλη, drawn in the manner of the Panaitios painter.⁷⁸

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Haspels 1936, I, p. 69; ARV, p. 30, no. 1 (Gales Painter); Richter 1946, p. 58, fig. 41; Chase 1950, p. 62, fig. 69; M. Pallottino, ArchCl 2 (1950), p. 165, pl. 49, 5; A. A. M. van der Heyden and H. H. Scullard, eds., 1959, Atlas of the Classical World, New York, Nelson, p. 61, fig. 119; EAA, III, p. 762, fig. 935 (E. Paribeni); Chase & Vermeule 1963, pp. 89, 95, 101, fig. 82; ARV2, pp. 35-36 (no. 1), 1621; H. Palmer, in C. W. Blegen, H. Palmer, and R. S. Young, Corinth 13: The North Cemetery, Princeton, NJ, American School of Classical Studies at Athens, p. 237; Follmann 1968, pp. 33 (as 13.95), 94, note 211; Samos, XI, p. 132, under no. 64 A/B (Freyer-Schauenburg 1974); Schelp 1975, pp. 40, 87, no. K 33; B. A. Sparkes, JHS 95 (1975), p. 131, pl. 15a; Boardman 1975, pp. 114, 131 (fig. 211), 210, 215, 221, 245; Burke & Pollitt 1975, p. 46, under no. 42 (J. Blanchard); Kurtz 1975, pp. 13, 79, 95, pl. 6, 1; E. G. Pemberton, AJA 80 (1976), p. 123; J. Zahle, JdI 94 (1979), p. 298, note 87; Schmaltz 1980, p. 14, note 53; Beazley Addenda 1, p. 76; I. S. Mark, Hesperia 53 (1984), p. 331; H. A. Shapiro, AJA 92 (1988), p. 378, note 31; Beazley Addenda 2, p. 158; J.-L. Durand, Senri Ethnological Studies 27 (1990), pp. 147, 156, pl. 3.

15. 95.42 LEKYTHOS Athletes and trainer FIGURES 10 and 11

Height, 0.202 m.; diameter, 0.086 m. Unbroken, but parts of the surface worn off. The mouth black within and without. The top of the mouth and the neck reserved. On the shoulder, below a tongue pattern, nine black-figured palmettes, pointing alternately up and down. A black stripe runs round the reserved edge of the foot. Relief contours throughout; the hair contours reserved. Red used for the fillet tied about the pillar, the wreath of the trainer, the letters in the field, a band below the reserved ground line of the picture. No inner markings in brown.