108. 33.56 VOLUTE-KRATER from Italy PLATES LVIII-LX
Height 0.68, without the handles 0.59.
Bull. MFA. 40 pp. 11-13 (Caskey). Warriors leaving home. On the neck: A, a youth (Theseus?) pursuing a woman: B, (women). About 450 B.C., by the Niobid Painter (Caskey in
Bull. MFA. 40 p. 13;
ARV. p. 419 no. 11).
Warriors leaving home. There are three groups. The first and chief, (
α), of seven or eight figures, occupies the front of the vase, with the area of the left handle; the second, (
β), of four figures, the back of the vase; the third, (
γ), of three figures, the area of the right handle.
（
α) A young warrior, bare-headed, holds his spear in his left hand and gives his right to a woman, who holds his helmet and a second spear. Between them, a woman holds phiale and oinochoe for the parting libation. On the left, a woman holds a wreath with the ends not yet joined. On the right, a fourth woman holds a piece of linen. These five figures, as will be seen from the general view of the vase, form the true decoration of the front of the vase; for the two or three remaining figures in the group, to left of them, are not seen when one looks at the vase exactly from the front. Stepping to the left, one sees that the woman holding the wreath stands by the chair of an old man who sits watching the scene, and that a fifth woman also watches, with her hand laid on the back of the chair. These three figures are thought of as in a porch, which is indicated by a single Doric column with part of the architrave above it. To left of them in the picture is an open door, with a glimpse of a woman in the house. This part of the vase is fragmentary, and it is not certain whether the house belongs to the first scene, as is rather more likely, or to the second.
The libation before departure is a favourite theme in vase-painting of the end of the sixth century and of the fifth: see Furtwängler in FR. i pp. 188 and 262, and Wrede in
AM. 41 pp. 260-2 and 313, with the earlier studies quoted by him on his p. 260 note 3. Wreaths are often held in such scenes: see Wrede ibid. pp. 262-4, Deubner in
ARW. 30 (1933) pp. 89-90, Johansen
Iliaden p. 64. A slighter picture of the same class as ours, on a pelike from the school of the Niobid Painter in the Palace of the Legion of Honor in San Francisco (
CV. pl. 18, 1, pl. 19, 1, and pl. 20, 1:
ARV. p. 425 no. 15) is deemed by H. R. W. Smith to represent 'the homecoming of a warrior rather than his departure, if one may stress the wreath held by the woman: he has done
ἄξια στεφάνον' (ibid. p. 38): but wreaths are in place at the departure as well as at the return. A good illustration of this is provided by a column-krater in the Hirsch collection (A, Pollak
Coll. Woodyat pl. 3, 52:
ARV. p. 391, Hephaistos Painter no. 13): a youth runs off, a pair of his spears in his left hand, his right hand raised in a gesture of farewell: on the right, Athena holds up a wreath; on the left, Nike holds out another. Wreaths are also held in arming-scenes, for example on a black-figured column-krater, from the Group of London B 76, in Berlin (
Berlin inv. 3763: Johansen
Iliaden fig. 16) and on the black-figured amphora by the Amasis Painter in New York (
New York 06.1021.69: Sambon
Coll. Canessa pl. 14 and p. 57).
（
β) (on the reverse of the vase): a young warrior, fully armed, holds his spear and shield and extends his right hand, with a phiale, towards a woman who holds an oinochoe; on each side of the pair is a woman with a wreath, not yet tied, in her hands.
（
γ) (at the right handle): a light-armed youth with two spears stands between a man in the prime of life and an old man, who holds a sprig.
We return to the first scene (
α) and look at it in detail.
The youth wears chitoniskos, leather corslet, strengthened with bronze scales in front, and sword, but no greaves; a wrap hangs over his left arm and shoulder. The hair is bobbed, with a thin fillet. The woman who holds his second spear and his helmet looks at him and takes his hand lightly. She wears a chiton, and over it, in lieu of himation, a peplos, with long overfall, overgirt, open at the right side, and leaving the left shoulder free; necklace, earring, stephane decorated with saltires and surmounted by leaves in front. The peplos is the same garment as Athena wears on the vase from which the painter takes his name, the calyx-krater in the Louvre (
Louvre G 341; FR. pl. 108, whence Pfuhl fig. 492
