ATTRIBUTED TO THE PERRONE-PHRIXOS GROUP, CIRCA 340 B.C.

In the Iliad, Homer explores the story of Achilles, the greatest of the Greek heroes. Early in the Trojan War, Achilles led a successful assault and was subsequently given the captive Briseis, wife of Mynes, son of the King of Lyrnessus, as a prize. Following an argument over Briseis with Agamemnon, the leader of the Achaeans, Achilles relented and gave her up. Feeling disrespected, he prays to his mother, the Nereid Thetis, for the restoration of his lost honor, who advises him not to rejoin the battle until she speaks with Zeus. When the Trojans began to burn the Achaean ships, Achilles refused to fight, but he sent his friend Patroklos into battle, dressed in his armour, to take his place. In the ensuing battle, Patroklos is killed by the Trojan prince Hektor, who stripped him of Achilles’ armour. Thetis later consoles her grieving son by vowing to get a new set for him forged by Hephaistos (see pp. 203-204 in T.H. Carpenter, Art and Myth in Ancient Greece).

On the interior of the patera presented here, two Nereids, one of whom must be Thetis, ride on sea creatures and bring the newly-fabricated armour to Achilles. One holds a cuirass while riding on a ketos that feeds on a fish. The other holds a shield while riding on a hippocamp. In the field there is a bream, a dolphin, an octopus and a small spotted fish around a central rosette framed by a band of wave pattern. The scene appears on Attic and South Italian vases beginning in the second half of the 5th century B.C., perhaps inspired by Aeschylus’ lost play, Nereids (Carpenter, op. cit., p. 204).

For the Perrone-Phrixos Group see A.D. Trendall and A. Cambitoglou, The Red-figured Vases of Apulia, vol. II, pp. 522-529 and I. McPhee and A.D. Trendall, Greek Red-figured Fish-plates, pp. 123-127.