Vase Catalog Number: Yale 1913.134

Decoration:

Side A: a man pursues a woman toward the left. The beardless man, wearing a short chiton and chlamys and sandals laced up to mid-calf, runs left, with his right arm outstretched toward the woman. He wears a wreath with leaves, and a petasos hangs down behind his back. His chlamys is fastened at his right shoulder by a circular brooch with a dot at its center. He carries two spears horizontally in his left hand, the heads of which overlap the woman's body. The woman also runs left, but she looks back at her pursuer. She is barefoot and wears a long chiton and himation. Her hair is bound in a band, supplemented by a wreath, with an additional white ribbon around the hair gathered at the back. As jewelry she wears a plain disk earring and a necklace with a disk at its center. She holds the sleeve of her chiton out in front of her with her right hand; her left hand is hidden under her himation.

Side B: a woman stands facing right. She wears a long chiton, enveloped by a himation. She is barefoot, and her hair is bound with three narrow bands.

The Phiale Painter decorated numerous Nolan amphorae and lekythoi with pursuit scenes such as this. The Yale vase is unusual, although not unique, in showing the pursuit moving from right to left, rather than the reverse. Some of this painter's pursuit scenes are clearly mythological, but others, like the Yale vase, lack inscriptions or indisputable identifying attributes or costumes that would permit them to be associated securely with a specific myth. Beazley (ARV2, 1015) proposed that spear-carrying male figures dressed like the Yale man in travelling clothes might be Theseus, since two such figures are identified as Theseus by inscription (Worcester 1903.38 and Louvre G 423). Sourvinou-Inwood (1987 and 1987a), however, in her recent studies of pursuit scenes, concludes that while Theseus may have provided the mythological paradigm for the pursuing male in these scenes, the majority of the pursuers represented on vases are simply young ephebes of Athens.

Collection History: Stoddard Collection.

Condition:

A few minor chips; slightly misfired on side B.

Sources Used: C. Sourvinou-Inwood, "Menace and Pursuit: Differentiation and the Creation of Meaning," in C. Bérard, C. Bron, A. Pomari, eds., Images et société en Grèce ancienne (Lausanne 1987) 41-58; C. Sourvinou-Inwood," A series of erotic pursuits: images and meanings," JHS 107 (1987) 131-53; Oakley 1990.

Other Bibliography: Beazley 1918, 168-69; C. Isler-Kerenyi, "Chronologie und 'Synchronologie' der attischen Vasenmalerei," AntK Beiheft 9 (1973) 23-52

(Susan B. Matheson)