A New Pontic Amphora

Abstract

The amphora here published (Plates XLIII–XLIV) was acquired for the Reading University collection on the London market in 1947. Nothing is known of its provenance. A detailed description with full illustrations will be given in the first Reading fascicule of the Corpus Vasorum, but so notable an addition to the Pontie series (to keep this convenient and generally used name for these vases which are now universally agreed to have been made in Etruria) calls for more comment than is desirable in a Corpus publication. The vase has a triple interest: it has unique pictures of scenes from the Troilus story, it affords new material for the study of the Pontic series, and it helps to connect Etruscan vase paintings with the wall paintings of Etruscan tombs. It thus provides a new item in a group of monuments which I have long believed to have been the source of a whole series of statements about the history of the Tarquin family which were dismissed by historians of the last century as obvious inventions, but which are in all probability the only statements about them which are in fact based on contemporary sources, that is to say, the archaeological material of which we can now speak with some assurance thanks to the work of Beazley and members of his school.To begin with the pictures on our vase. When I first saw it the gaily coloured pictures at once recalled the painting of Achilles lurking behind the fountain on the wall of the Tomba dei Tori at Tarquinia. The interpretation of the actual scene I owe to Beazley, who has described it with his usual pregnant brevity in Etruscan Vase Painting2 as ‘a unique representation, in a furious style, of Achilles carrying Troilos to the altar of Apollo’ (Plates XLIII, b and XLIV, a). This final scene of the Troilus tragedy appears comparatively seldom on vase paintings, and, where it does occur, never, as far as I am aware, depicts this precise moment. Generally Achilles has reached the altar and Troilus is either being killed or has been killed already.