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

110. 00.346 BELL-KRATER from Vico Equense (NE. of Sorrento） PLATE LXII

Height 0.377. Mon. 11 pl. 42, 1 (Eduard Schwartz), whence (A) Neapolis 2 p. 125, (A) VA. p. 174 fig. 107, (A) Pfuhl fig. 515, (A) Jacobsthal Aktaions Tod p. 10, whence Acta arch. 16 p. 142 (Breitenstein); A (after Mon., but redrawn in a deplorable style), Séchan p. 133; detail of A, VA. p. 174 fig. 107 a; the shape, Caskey G. p. 130 fig. 82. A, the Death of Actaeon. B, youth and women. About 440 B.C., by the Lykaon Painter (VA. p. 173 no. 5; Att. V. p. 399 no. 6; ARV. p. 691 no. 7). Graffito ΗΕ.

The chief studies of the vase are by Eduard Schwartz in Annali 1882 pp. 290-9 and Jacobsthal in Aktaions Tod (extract from Marburger Jahrbuch für Kunstwissenschaft 5) pp. 9 and 11-18. See also above, ii pp. 46-8.

This is a very different Death of Actaeon from the Pan Painter's (No. 94), in quality as well as in treatment. The drawing is somewhat listless: one cannot help feeling that the artist may have painted the subject, in the same terms, several times already. We have, in fact, on a fragment of a calyx-krater from Gela, in Oxford (Oxford 289: VA. p. 75; CV. pl. 25, 6), part of a replica by the same painter, but whether it is a little earlier than our picture or a little later one cannot say.

Hilly ground is indicated by white lines, with a plant. Actaeon (ΑΚΤΑΙΟΝ) half kneels, at bay, on the hill-side. Two of his hounds bite him and he turns to defend himself against a third, striking downward with his spears and holding out his left hand with the cloak wrapped round it to ward the creature off. This and the Oxford replica are the earliest pictures in which Actaeon is represented as partly transformed into a stag: not only has he antlers and animal ears, but his forehead, nose, and cheeks are covered with fur — rendered by brown stippling which is omitted in the old drawing and does not come out properly in the photograph. The face is in a near-profile three-quarter view. Figures in the same general attitude are not uncommon from the second half of the fifth century onwards: Jacobsthal gives a list (Akt. pp. 11-12): and later figures of Actaeon, on Italiote vases of the fourth century, are recognizably constructed on the same lines as ours. See also Lippold Ladas p. 21.

Actaeon's sword hangs from a baldric at his side. He wears boots, with fur flaps distinguished by a wash of brown. This is clear on the left leg; the drawing of the fore-shortened right leg is loose, but the brown fur flap can be seen between the knee and the profile foot. The right elbow, with part of the upper arm, is modern. The uppermost hound has his tail between his legs. The right-hand one wears a collar.

In earlier pictures Artemis either sets the hounds at Actaeon, or stands by motionless while they do their work. Here she stands by motionless, and a new figure in vase-painting, Lyssa (ΛΥΣΑ), personification of Madness or Rabies, runs forward urging the hounds on. Her lips are parted. She wears a chitoniskos; over it, a coat with long sleeves; over that a pelt, girt; high laced boots. The pelt is covered with an uneven brown wash. The sleeved coat has a black border and a pattern of voided squares. Above the crown of her head, as if growing from it, is the head of a small hound, with alert look and ears pricked up. This is a very unusual feature. Jacobsthal well says that 'hundreds of years before this, Lyssa would have been shown as a hound-headed woman. The classic age avoids the monstrous, or mitigates it. In the Hades of Polygnotos at Delphi, Actaeon, in human form, sits on a stag's pelt and holds a young stag in his hand; Callisto, the she-bear, only sits on a bearskin; and Eurynomos, once a bird-headed demon, rests on a vulture-skin — as Cecrops, once snake-footed, has a snake beside him in the West Pediment of the Parthenon.' The analogy would be exact, if Lyssa's hound-head were part of a stephane: but there is no indication of this, it seems to grow from the head itself. The lower part of the hair, with neck and shoulder, is modern: and it might perhaps be thought that what remains was part of a complete animal sitting on Lyssa's shoulder: but it is not likely: we are familiar with photographs of the successful novelist, beret on head, pipe in face, cat on shoulder: but I do not remember anything like it in antiquity.¹

The only parallels I can remember to this hound-head are on two black-figured vases: a cup in Naples, described above (ii p. 57), and a small handleless mastoid in the Museo Artistico Industriale in Rome, published by Mercklin in RM. 38-9 p. 82 (part, clearer, Mouseion 33-4 p. 115, above, left). The style of the mastoid recalls the neck-amphorae signed Nikosthenes. A chorus of eight naked youths, in Indian file, dance, accompanied by a flute-player. Each of the five foremost has on his head a second human head, small, beardless. The relation between the two heads is the same as in the Boston vase: there is no sign of attachment. The small head on these vases seems to be not so much a mask as a sort of token disguise; and so it may be in the figure of Lyssa on the Boston vase, where it may have been borrowed, without much excuse, from the stage.²³

The right knee and part of the chiton above it are modern.

Lyssa appears in the Herakles of Euripides, and appeared earlier in the Xantriai of Aeschylus (fr. 169 Nauck); whether also in Aeschylus' play about Actaeon, the Toxotides, we should be glad to know. In Virgil, Allecto maddens the hounds of Ascanius: 'hic subitam canibus rabiem Cocytia virgo obicit' (Aen. 7, 479). The form of the name on our vase, Lyssa for the Attic Lytta, is probably due to the influence of poetry.⁴ The single sigma for the double is common. The winged woman who stands beside Actaeon on a later vase, an Apulian Panathenaic amphora (of A.P. style) in Berlin (Berlin 3239: Gerhard Ap. Vb. pl. 6, whence El. pl. 103; Jacobsthal Akt. p. 12), is not inscribed, but may be Lyssa.

It is not clear to me why the painter has clothed Lyssa in a sleeved coat, the Persian kandys. It is worn by Amazons as part of their Oriental costume; and from the later part of the fifth century onwards it is not infrequently worn by ordinary women and by children. A sleeved garment like this would be useful to a kennel-maid; and Lyssa may be conceived of in that capacity.

Artemis (ΑΡΤΕΜΙΣ) stands still. Her bow is in her left hand at her side, and with her right hand she holds out her torch. On an Apulian volute-krater in the Jatta collection at Ruvo (AZ. 1844 pl. 15), while Erinys binds Theseus, Persephone holds out her torches towards the pair. In both cases the aim is perhaps not so much to give light as to produce heat, the heat of rage and madness: at least Lyssa-like figures in later art — Oistros and Apate as well as Erinys — are given torches with that intention.

The goddess wears a chiton, and over it a short mantle fastened on one shoulder somewhat like a chlamys. Her hair is confined in a broad band. The quiver is at the left shoulder. Part of the left hand is modern, and a little of the mantle.

The figure corresponding, on the other side of the picture, to Artemis is Zeus, looking on, leaning forward, his left foot planted on raised ground, a sceptre in his right hand, the thunderbolt in his left. The head is wreathed. A light wrap rests on the left shoulder and arm: the top of the sceptre, part of the bolt, the right shoulder, parts of the right hand and of breast and middle are missing. This is almost the only 'Death of Actaeon' in which Zeus is present:⁵ and his presence alludes, as Schwartz pointed out (Annali 1882 p. 297), to the early version of the story, in which the fate of Actaeon was due to his having dared to woo Semele, the favourite of Zeus (Apollod. 3.4.4, quoting an old poem: see ii p. 46).

The inscription is ΔΙΟΣ. The old practice of writing the names of persons in the genitive had not died out, and there are several examples of it in the Group of Polygnotos, to which the Lykaon Painter belongs: ΚΑΣΤΟΡΟΣ on the Oxford stamnos by Polygnotos (CV. pl. 29, 1-2 and pl. 30, 1-2: ARV. p. 677 no. 3), ΔΙΟΣ on his hydria in Brussels (CV. d pl. 9, 1: ARV. p. 681 no. 61), ΕΛΠΕΝΟΡΟΣ and ΗΡΜΟ on the Boston pelike by the Lykaon Painter himself (ii p. 88).

Above the name of Aktaion, near the upper border of the picture, is the word ΕΥΑΙΟΝ. It is not followed by a καλος, but the name occurs with καλος on several other vases (ARV.. p. 923). One of them, a pelike in London, is by the Lykaon Painter. Another, a white lekythos in Heidelberg, adds the patronymic ΑΙΣΧΥΛΟ: this is in all probability Euaion the son of the poet and himself a writer of tragedies (AJA. 1929 pp. 365-6): but it is not certain that the Lykaon Painter's Euaion is the same: the Heidelberg lekythos is somewhat earlier than his vases. The Lykaon Painter has left a portrait of his Euaion: on a bell-krater, from Sorrento, in Naples (Naples Stg. 281: A, phot. Sommer 10109: ARV. p. 691 no. 9), Euaion takes part in a symposion with his friends Euainetos, Kallias, and another: they are watching a young girl dancing the pyrrhic, and Euaion accompanies her on the flute.⁶

To compare the Oxford fragment (VA. p. 75; CV. pl. 25, 6): it is a free replica, and the differences are obvious. As for quality, the Actaeon is as good, the Artemis worse, the hound better.

Most of the representations of Actaeon are enumerated by Jacobsthal. A few additions may be made:

• 1. London, Mrs. Henry Winslow. Bf. lekythos of chimney type, with white ground. Actaeon, bearded, to right, looking round, his right arm raised, attacked by four hounds. On the left, a woman to right, raising her left arm. On the right, a woman running to right, looking round, her right arm extended, her left raised. Compare the lekythos, near the Emporion Painter, in Athens (Athens 488: Jacobsthal Akt. p. 3 fig. 4: see Haspels ABL. p. 266, top, no. 1).
• 2. Athens, North Slope, lekythos in Six's technique. Hesp. 7 pp. 193-4.
• 3. Boston 03.839, fragments of a rf. oinochoe (shape III), from Taranto, early Italiote. On one fragment, Actaeon (the head missing) in much the same attitude as on the nestoris by the Dolon Painter in London (London F 176: Panofka Cab. Pourt. pl. 21; Jacobsthal Akt. p. 14; Trendall Frühit. pl. 14, b with p. 38 no. 253), attacked by three hounds; flying cloak, baldric; to left of him, the lower middle part of a figure moving quickly to left: bare legs, short garment, to mid-thigh, with a diamond pattern and a fringe — Lyssa? The remains to the left of Actaeon's cloak may be from the wrist of this figure. The second fragment gives part of the right-hand figure, a bearded satyr with horns, or Pan, running to right, looking round, hands raised in alarm. On the right a stretch of the upright arrow-border. Pan occurs in the 'Death of Actaeon' on an Italiote bell-krater once in the Hope collection (Venuti Interpr. no. 74, whence Inghirami Mon. etr. 6 pl. M 5, 1; Millin 1 pl. 5, whence El. 2 pl. 100 and Jacobsthal Akt. p. 13 fig. 15).
• 4. Taranto 5163, Italiote rf. plate, from Canosa. CV. IV Dr pl. 7, 1.
• 5. Once Paris, Hirsch, hydria. Described in Coll. Hirsch no. 174 and called Italiote.

Jacobsthal has shown me a photograph of a small bronze plaque, of about 400 B.C., unknown where, with the Death of Actaeon in relief: Actaeon, attacked by two hounds, hastens to left, his left leg frontal, looking back with head in three-quarter view, his right hand behind his head, holding a lagobolon; on the right a tree. The figure somewhat recalls the fragment of a clay relief-vase from Gela (Jacobsthal Akt. p. 13 fig. 16; see also Jh. 29 pp. 137-8, Kenner), where the right foot seems to have been on the ground as well as the left.⁷

On the bf. alabastron Athens 12767 (Jacobsthal Akt. p. 3 fig. 5) see Haspels ABL. p. 183, and ARV. p. 492; on the Etruscan calyx-krater London F 480 (Jacobsthal p. 15), EVP. p. 136.

On the reverse of the vase, three hastily drawn figures: a youth in the middle, a woman running to him, another woman running away and looking back at him. The artist can hardly have meant these three to have any connexion with the main scene.

The faces on the obverse have relief-contour; so have, in Zeus, the nape, and part of the right thigh and of the right calf; in Actaeon, nape, horns, ears; in Artemis the right hand, the left forearm, parts of bow and quiver. The hound-head worn by Lyssa has relief-contour, except the ears and neck. The minor markings of the male figures are in brown lines, not all of which appear in the photograph. On the obverse, the cornea of the eye is brown; except in Artemis, it is contoured in relief and has a relief dot. The ground-lines, and the vetch-like plants, are in white; so are the inscriptions, the wreath of Zeus, the flame of his thunderbolt, and on the reverse the head-fillet of the youth and the head-cord of the woman on the left.

The bell-krater is one of the many that have a small ledge, decorated with egg-pattern, between mouth and body. The foot is somewhat unusual, in two degrees: the side of the upper degree is reserved, of the lower black. There is a jog on the topside of the foot, near the edge. The topside of the foot between jog and edge is reserved, but the corner is black.

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C. M. Dawson, 1944, Romano-Campanian Mythological Landscape Painting, New Haven, Yale University Press, p. 138; Metzger 1951, p. 31; Pickard-Cambridge 1953, p. 220, fig. 174; F. Willemsen, JdI 71 (1956), p. 39, fig. 2; Brommer 1960, p. 336, no. B 5; ARV2, p. 1045, no. 7; F. W. Hamdorf, 1964, Griechische Kultpersonifikationen der vorhellenistischen Zeit, Mainz am Rhein, P. von Zabern, p. 121, no. 493a; Hull 1964, p. 215, pl. 5; Webster 1967, pp. 145-146; P. Devambez, MonPiot 55 (1967), pp. 82-83, fig. 5; W. Schindler, Die Griechische Vase (Wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift der Universität Rostock 16, 1967), p. 515, note 87; Follmann 1968, p. 63; T. B. L. Webster, 1969, Everyday Life in Classical Athens, New York, Putnam, pp. 148-149, fig. 78; K. Schauenburg, JdI 84 (1969), p. 44; Para., p. 444, no. 7; Trendall & Webster 1971, pp. 5, 62 (pl. III. 1, 28), 65; Henle 1973, pp. 41-42, fig. 25; Isler & Seiterle 1973, pp. 28, 31 (C. Isler-Kerényi); B. A. Sparkes, JHS 93 (1973), p. 270; B. B. Shefton, RA 1973, p. 213, note 1; G. Hübner, AM 88 (1973), p. 73, note 45; Brommer 1973, p. 474, no. B 5; M. Robertson 1975, pp. 213, 383, 686, note 63; Brommer Festschrift, p. 211 (A. Krug); L. B. van der Meer, BABesch 52-53 (1977-1978), pp. 60, 100, fig. 7; Simon 1978, p. 132, illus.; Dover 1978, pp. 119 (note 22), 152, 221, no. R902; G. Siebert, 1978, Recherches sur les Ateliers de Bols à reliefs du Péloponnèse à l'époque Hellénistique, Paris, Diffusion de Boccard, p. 249, note 6; Kossatz-Deissmann 1978, pp. 147, 149, 153, 160; Schefold 1978, p. 291, note 155; D. A. Amyx, Arch News 8 (1979) (Tallahassee), p. 113, note 21; L. Kahil, 1979, in Greece and Italy in the Classical World (Acta of the XI International Congress of Classical Archaeology), pp. 83, 87, note 43, pl. 35b; Brommer 1979a, p. 133; Johnston 1979, pp. 39, 63, 74 (Type 10A, no. 10), 187; CVA, Würzburg, 2, p. 37, under no. H 5356 (F. Hölscher); Brize 1980, p. 114, note 167; Schefold 1981, pp. 141-143 (fig. 187), 146, 232, 368; LIMC, I, 1, pp. 462 (no. 81), 467-468, I, 2, pl. 357, illus. (L. Guimond); J.-M. Moret, RA 1982, p. 117, note 24; Beazley Addenda 1, p. 156; Trendall & Cambitoglou 1982, p. 477; D. McConathy, Best of Friends: The Dog and Art (Dog Museum of Am., 1982), p. 5, illus.; Simon 1983, p. 87; C. C. Schlam, ClAnt 3 (1984), pp. 86 (note 12), 91-92, 94; J. R. Guy, 1984, in Glimpses of Excellence: A Selection of Greek Vases and Bronzes from the Elie Borowski Collection, Toronto, Royal Ontario Museum, p. 22, under no. 17; LIMC, II, 1, p. 732, no. 1400 (L. Kahil and N. Icard); M. Davies, JHS 106 (1986), p. 183; B. von Freytag Gen. Löringhoff, 1986, Das Giebelrelief von Telamon . . . (RM, Ergänzungsheft 27), Mainz am Rhein, P. von Zabern, pp. 138, 287, no. E 2; Veder Greco, p. 34 (P. E. Arias); Padgett 1989, p. 89; Beazley Addenda 2, p. 320; Arafat 1990, pp. 56, 128-129, 140, 143-145 (fig. 7), 161, 169-170, 174, 201, no. 7.36; L. R. Lacy, JHS 110 (1990), p. 30, note 34.

Exhibited: Art Museum of South Texas, March 12 - May 2, 1976 (MFA Vases 1976, p. 22, fig. 26); Tokyo, The National Museum of Western Art, April 25-June 11, 1978 (Boston Museum Exhibition: Human Figures in Fine Arts, no. 8, 2 color illus.).