LATE CLASSICAL TO EARLY HELLENISTIC PERIOD, CIRCA 350-300 B.C.

The sheet bronze decoration applied onto the circular cover depicts the scene of seated Ganymede offering a cup to Zeus, who perches on a squre pillar beside the youth, in the form of an eagle. A draped female sits on the floor at the side reaching up to Ganymede as he turns his head to look down at her and puts his arm out in a motion of warning or resistance. Hebe, the daughter of Zeus and Hera, was the first cup-bearer of the gods. However, according to various ancient sources, either she was relieved of the posistion after her marriage to the hero Herakles, or, after Zeus's infatuation and abduction of the Trojan prince Ganymede, she was dismissed, and the Trojan prince was elevated to this favoured role. In the Aeneid, Virgil writes of Juno's anger at Ganymede taking her daughter's place, in her revenge, persuading Aeolus, the god of the wind, to produce a storm and drive Aeneas's ship off-course.

The scene of Ganymede attending to Zeus in the guise of an eagle is a common one in ancient art, from gems, vases and sculpture. The addition of the reclining female is less common. For a remarkably similar bronze mirror in the Fitzwilliam Museum (GR 106.1907) cf. A. Kossatz-Deissmann, "Ganymedes", Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae, IV, 1988, p. 162, no. 168a. For a similar scene of a Roman marble sarcophagus in the Vatican cf. LIMC op. cit., p. 161, no. 109 (Arachne no: 19519). Both of these references name the female as a nymph but in the context of the cup-bearer scene perhaps she could represent Hebe - imploring Ganymede for the return of her role.

For other examples of multiple figure relief decoration on mirrors see M. Comstock and C. Vermeule, Greek, Etruscan and Roman Bronzes in the Museum of Art Boston, Boston, 1971, pp. 250-258, nos 361-370.