Vase Catalog Number: Harvard 1960.315

Decoration:

Both sides illustrate the same episode from the story of Jason. When Jason returned from Colchis with Medea, he found that King Pelias had caused the death of his father, Aison. Jason gave the Golden Fleece to Pelias, but plotted with Medea to kill him. Medea told Pelias' daughters, Antiope and Asteropeia, that she could rejuvenate their aged father. To demonstrate this she cut up a ram in a boiling cauldron and turned it into a lamb. The daughters, referred to collectively as the Peliades, were convinced: they cut up Pelias and put him in the pot, killing him. The two sides are nearly identical, depicting the boiling of the ram, but the dramatis personae differ.

Side A: The woman at left is probably Medea, for the short stick with a palmette-tip is either a wand or an ingredient she is about to add to the cauldron. She wears a chiton and a himation decorated with red and white dots. Like the other three women on the vase, she has long wavy tresses and a red fillet on her head, and like them most of her facial features have been lost with the added white that tinted her flesh parts. With her right hand she plucks up her himation in much the same way as many contemporary marble korai on the Acropolis. The daughter of Pelias on the other side of the cauldron stands with her back to the viewer. Her himation, decorated with red dots, is draped over both shoulders, instead of just one like Medea. She gestures excitedly at the sorceress' skill, though it is clear from the ram's horns that it has not yet been rejuvenated (in both scenes, the white of the ram's horns has largely disappeared). The cauldron, or lebes, is undoubtedly bronze and is supported by a separate three-legged stand; it is therefore not a "tripod" as that term is usually understood, for they are in one piece with the legs. The roaring fire is fed by a pile of irregular logs; added red is used for the flames. The vine trailing through the background is a common filling ornament on vases of this type and period and is without Dionysiac significance.

Side B: The composition is essentially the same, with the ram in the cauldron at center and two women on either side. The Peliad at left gestures with her left hand and the one at right reaches out to touch the ram. Red dots decorate the himations of both women, and the one at right is also ornamented with incised crosses. The himation of the Peliad at left covers her left shoulder; the one at right covers both shoulders and seems, somewhat illogically, to hang across the woman's chest as well. Again, both women have red fillets and white skin, the latter largely effaced. There is a vine in background.

On either side of the neck is a lotus and palmette chain, drawn in silhouette without incision. On either side of the shoulder, above the figures, is a band of black tongues. Below the groundline -- a single stripe -- is a band of lotus buds framed by paired stripes; the buds point upward, and there are dots in the lower interstices. Below this, above the foot, is a band of rays. Below the handles on either side is a symmetrical quatrefoil of palmettes linked by coiling tendrils, with a lotus flower on either side of the central junction and a third pendant below it. The fillet between body and neck is painted red, and there is a red stripe around the edge of the rim. The mouth is black inside and out, but reserved on top. The foot is black, as are the outsides of the handles.

Graffiti:

On the bottom of the foot are two chi's, joined: CHCh. See Johnston 1979, 105, Type 19B, 9.

Parallels:

No other black-figure vase has this subject represented on both sides, but in fact it appears more often on one-sided vases, such as oinochoai and lekythoi. Often the aged Pelias is present to witness the ram's rejuvenation; e.g. the hydria London B 328 (ABV, 363, 42), which also features a cauldron and stand of similar type. The wand held by Medea is an unusual feature, for she is more commonly differentiated from the Peliades present -- whether one or both -- by the vessel she holds, containing some secret ingredient to effect the ram's transformation; e.g. Louvre F 372, the subject of which, however, Beazley described simply as "Daughters of Pelias" (ABV, 531, 1). Confusion is avoided when Medea is on one side of the cauldron and both of the Peliades on the other, as on a neck-amphora formerly in the New York art market: Meyer 1980, pl. 1, 2.

The subject also is found on several red-figure vases of the first quarter of the 5th century; see Meyer 1980.

Collection History:

David M. Robinson Bequest.

Condition:

Broken and repaired. A few fragments are restored, three of them with the outlines of the figures repainted: the back of the ram's head on Side A, the lower face and left shoulder of the left-hand woman on Side B, and part of the drapery of the same woman. The surface is in generally good condition, but the added white of the women's flesh has largely worn away.

Shape Description:

Standard neck-amphora shape for the period, with tapering body, triple-reeded handles, echinus mouth, torus foot, and fillet between foot and body.

Sources Used:

D. M. Robinson AJA 60 (1956), 12-13, pl. 9, figs. 42-43.

Other Bibliography:

Meyer 1980, 18-20, pl. 2.

(Michael Padgett)