women converse with each other, their backs turned to the scene. They form one of those 'side-groups' that are common on vases: like the Tyche and Heimarmene on a contemporary vase, the pointed amphoriskos in Berlin;1 or much earlier, the side-group in black-figure Judgements of Paris.2 Kleopatra (ΚΛΕΟΤΡΑ with two letters omitted, perhaps by a sort of haplography with Τ and Π), stands in almost the same attitude as Tyndareos on A. She wears chiton and himation, and her hair is done up into a ball behind. Phylonoe, ΦΥΛΟΝΟΕ, faces her, bending forward, with her right foot set on a rock and her chin resting on her left hand. A broad band or sling, decorated with a row of lotus-buds, passes round her head. She wears a chiton, with a long kolpos, overgirt. Kleopatra's chiton has the same kolpos, overgirt, but the lower part of it is concealed by the himation. Phylonoe is mentioned by Apollodorus (Apollod. 3.10.6) as a daughter of Leda; and the name was already restored by Newton on the black-figured amphora by the Edinburgh Painter in the British Museum, where Polydeukes and Castor are seen in company with Tyndareos and a woman whose name ends in ...ΟΕ.3 Several Kleopatras are known in Greek legend, the most famous being the wife of Meleager: but none of them were related to Tyndareos or Leda.4 The woman between Klytaimestra and Phylonoe should be a daughter of Leda and Tyndareos like them: should be, in fact, Timandra, who is named on Makron's Alexandros cup in Berlin.5 Her stance is like that of Kleopatra and Tyndareos, but has more swing, the right knee being more bent, and the left hip thrown out.
Helen and Klytaimestra appear together, both on their best behaviour, in the household scene on a red-figured pyxis, by a follower of Douris, in the British Museum;6 the third figure there is another Argive heroine, Iphigeneia; the fourth is labelled Kassandra, but the artist may perhaps have been thinking of Timandra.
The patterns on the altar — the maeander below the volutes, and the cyma above the base — are in brown lines. For the upper furnishings of the altar let us turn to the bell-krater with the same subject, by Polion, in Bonn,7 and a bell-krater in Oxford.8 There we see an insulating layer of cinders mixed with mortar — indicated by dots — , and above it a slab of fire-brick. In our vase we have the same members, but here it is the rectangular slab that is dotted, and not the layer below it. A somewhat similar slab appears on a fourth-century calyx-krater in Athens.9
In the figures, most of the contours are relief-lines, but there is not much relief-contour in the floral designs.
A list of vases having the same theme, Leda and the Egg, is given in EVP. pp. 39-42, with references to previous studies, the most important of which are by Kekule and Chapouthier.10 The Attic vases nos. 1-11 and 13 in my list, to which the Leipsic fragment
This text is part of:
1 Berlin inv. 30036: FR. pl. 170, 2: ARV.1 p. 738, foot, no. 1; ARV.2 p. 1173 no. 1.
2 e.g. Dev. pl. 15, 1.
3 London B 170: CV. e pl. 34, 2: ABV. p. 671, foot.
4 A Kleopatra and a Phylonoe are both among the companions of Nausicaa on a pyxis by Aison in Boston (Boston 04.18: Jh. 8 pl. 1, whence FR. iii p. 99: ARV.1 p. 800 no. 17; ARV.2 p. 1177 no. 48), and a Phylonoe is present at the departure of Polites on Aison's neck-amphora in Chantilly (Panofka Pourt. pll. 35-36: ARV.1 p. 798 no. 1; ARV.2 p. 1176 no. 25). The name of Kleopatra is given to a flute-girl on a stamnos by Polygnotos in Mississippi (AJA. 1956 pl. 15 figs. 68-69 and pl. 16 fig. 70: ARV.2 p. 1028 no. 15 bis); and to a companion of Aphrodite on a squat lekythos by the Meidias Painter in London (London E 697: FR. pl. 78, 2: ARV.1 p. 833 no. 10; ARV.2 p. 1324 no. 45). Long before all these vases, Kleopatra was the name of a Nereid on a Late Corinthian hydria in the Louvre (Louvre E 643: Annali 1864 pll. O-P: Payne NC. p. 166 and p. 328 no. 1446).
5 Berlin 2291: WV. A pl. 5, whence Hoppin ii p. 43: ARV.1 p. 301 no. 4; ARV.2 p. 459 no. 4.
6 London E 773: FR. pl. 57, 1: ARV.1 p. 537 no. 41; ARV.2 pp. 805-6 no. 89.
7 Bonn 78: CV. pl. 19, 1-2 and pl. 20, 1-2 and 4: ARV.1 p. 797 no. 4; ARV.2 p. 1171 no. 4.
8 JHS. 59 p. 21.
9 Athens 12255: Jb. 32 p. 51, whence, this detail, BCH. 66-67 p. 13, 2.
10 Kekule Ueber ein griechisches Vasengemälde im Akademischen Kunstmuseum zu Bonn (abbreviated U.) and Die Geburt der Helena aus dem Ei (abbreviated G.); Chapouthier in BCH. 1942-3 pp. 1-21. See also Metzger Les Représentations dans la céramique attique du IVe siècle pp. 28 and 277-9 and Moreau Das Trierer Kornmarktmosaik.
No. 13 in my list is in the collection of Prof. Domenico Mustilli at S. Agata de' Goti; it has now been republished by him in Annuario 24-26 pp. 125-7 and the obverse by Moreau Das Trierer Kornmartktmosaik pl. 19, 1. It goes with a bell-krater fragment in the Agora Museum, Athens, Agora P 12640, and another in the Ceramicus Museum (Anz. 1937 p. 194 fig. 13.3). All these are connected with the Semele Painter and, less closely, with the Suessula Painter. It is possible (naturally no more) that the small Ceramicus fragment is from a picture of Leda and the egg, and since it comes from the grave of the Spartans who fell in 403 B.C. a Spartan object would be appropriate. No. 11 in my list, the Oxford fragment, Oxford G 138.31 (CV. pl. 50, 31), represents a sacrifice, I now see, and not Tyndareos at the altar. A bell-krater fragment with an eagle, Athens, Agora, (Athens, Agora P 8891), is doubtless from a picture of Leda and the egg. A fragment of an Attic calyx-krater in Aegina has the altar, the egg, and to left of the altar the legs of Leda standing at it. The date is about 430-420. Fragments of a big red-figured vase from Analipsis near Vourvoura in Kynouria, at present in Athens (Orlandos To ergon 1955 p. 85), show the egg on the altar and Helen coming out of it; the eagle flying overhead; Leda starting away in alarm, in the same attitude as on the Xenotimos vase, and the Dioskouroi, each leading his horse, one on each side of the central group. The date is near the end of the fifth century, and the vase, as Mrs. Karouzou has seen, is non-Attic. In the Bari phlyax-vase (Kekule G. pl. 8; Bieber Denkmäler zum Theaterwesen pl. 80, 2; Bieber History of the Greek and Roman Theater p. 271 fig. 365; Cook Zeus iii p. 738; EVP. p. 41) the humble person on the right cannot be Zeus, or even Tyndareos, who was a king, and even in low comedy kings do not look like that: Robert's interpretation is to be preferred (Arch. Hermeneutik pp. 286-7): the man with the axe is Tyndareos, the other his slave. The servant carrying luggage on the Palermo stamnos (AZ. 1871 pl. 47 and pl. 46, 1, whence Kekule U. p. 16: EVP. pp. 39-42) seems out of place, since the Dioscuri are at home, and looks as if borrowed from a picture of another pair, Orestes and Pylades. This vase, by the way, is what is called the 'Casuccini lekane' by Miss Elia (NSc. 1937 p. 108) and Picard (RA. 1938, ii, p. 105). My no. 15, the pleasant bell-krater, from Frignano, in Naples, rightly assigned by Miss Elia to the Caivano Painter, deserves a word or two (NSc. 1937 p. 105, xv, and p. 108, whence RA. 1938, ii, p. 104; BSR, 20 pl. 16, b): (1) Helen bursts from the egg 'and already extends her arm to the world', as Picard well says (RA. 1938, ii p. 103); but he proceeds to align her with Mycenaean goddesses who raise their arms, which seems excessive; (2) Miss Elia finds fault with the attitude of Leda, but I have answered that in EVP. p. 41; (3) Miss Elia censures 'the uncouth gesture of Tyndareos, who takes hold of his beard and puts one finger in his mouth': I must defend the artist: the finger is not in the mouth but below it. For the gesture of stroking the beard compare Agathias in Anth. Pal. 11, 354, 11-12; Athens, Acr. 356 (Langlotz pl. 27), Athens, Acr. 378 (Langlotz pl. 30), Naples 2638 (Mon. 1 pl. 37), St. etr. 9 pl. 37.