Three Attic Lekythoi from Eretria

Abstract

The three lekythoi with black figures on a white ground, now published for the first time on Plates I., II., and III., were found in 1888 in the excavations carried on by the Greek Government on the site of the ancient Eretria. They are now in the Central Museum at Athens, and have been catalogued and briefly described by M. Staes in the Δελτίον ἀρχαιολογικόν for 1889 (pp. 99 and 139). The vases are of almost unique interest: two of them belonging to the cycle of the adventures of Odysseus, subjects from which have proved so curiously rare in vase-painting, while the third gives an episode in the story of Herakles and Atlas, of which the solitary monumental instance up to now had been the famous metope of Olympia (Friederichs-Wolters, 280). The beauty of the vases, the perfect state of their technique and of their preservation, no less than the interesting problems connected with mythography which they raise, have already won for them considerable celebrity; I therefore wish to record my special thanks to the Ephors of Antiquities in Athens for allowing me the publication of the vases—so graciously accorded to me during my studentship at the British School at Athens in 1891. Mr. Ernest Gardner, Director of our School, had the kindness to supervise the drawings which have been executed by M. Gilliéron. It had been my intention to make the publication of these lekythoi the occasion for a discussion of white-faced ware in connection with the whole subject of Greek painting proper, but I have unfortunately been prevented from collecting the necessary material in time for the present number of the Journal.