Tátrai Vilmos szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 92-93.(Budapest, 2000)

SZILÁGYI, JÁNOS GYÖRGY: "Les Adieux". A Column-krater of the Syracuse Painter

be anything other than a mythological scene.

33 This is clearly the source of the interpretation found in the Hungarian-language catalogue of the collection of the vase's former owner, Ferenc Pulszky:

34 "Briseis gives Ajax

35 the parting-cup in the presence of Agamemnon and Menelaus". The fact that this scene has no equivalent in literary tradition is completely irrelevant, not only because we are not in possession of the entire corpus of ancient literature, but also because the painters, almost never illustrators of texts, clearly drew also on oral tradition. Pulszky's reading might even be correct; there is nothing at any rate to disprove it, just as there is nothing to contradict any other interpretation based on the Greek heroic mythology known to us. The essential point is this: the two skeptron-holders elevate the scene, usually anonymous and relegated to the sphere of the family, giving it the gravity of a paradigm by heroizing the departing warrior.

36 This is intensified by the way in which neither of the two sidefigures is a simple passive "observer" of the action.

37 The one on the right raises his hand in a sorrowful gesture of parting, thereby underscoring the gesture of the lefthand figure, who, about to leave, turns his head back to look at the figures in the centre; the arm and the foot extending into the frame are not the result of careless drawing, but a means of composition used by other artists as well:

38 the theme of departure thus receives added emotional emphasis, heightened by the anxiety on the face of the man turning to leave and his companion opposite, the worried look he throws the hoplite they will not see one another again. The silence that in tragic performance followed the verbal expression of a great reversal is here rendered visible. The picture on the reverse of the krater conjures up something of the compensatory force of the satyr play that accompanied performance of a tragic trilogy. The three skyphos-holding figures, with their uncertain steps, stumbling, rather than dancing, are a party of revellers about to break up for the night. The symposion, if there was one, is over; the scene is now the street. The liberating power of the wine is also vanishing, but the komasts, it seems, despite some visible facial signs of ebriety, are not yet really 33 The solitary figure on the painter's Mannheim skyphos (48) is without doubt a "king" according to Beazley, just as the skeptron-holding figure decorating each side of a stamnos of the Villa Giulia Painter "suggests a royal personage and a heroic scene" (Richter, in op. cit. at n.3 above, 133 ad no. 101), and on another stamnos attributed to the circle of the Niobid Painter the woman facing the the central female figure "le porge lo scettro, la fa regina" (Isler-Kerényi, C., Stamnoi, Lugano 1977, 81). 34 Pulszky Ferenc műgyüjteményének jegyzéke, Pest 1868, 14. 35 Clearly a slip: Achilles must be intended. 36 Like the pictures on which the figures are given names taken from heroic mythology. In reality the heroization of soldiers fallen in battle was not the custom in contemporary Athens (Stupperich, R., Staatsbegräbnis und Privatgrabmal im klassischen Athen, Münster 1977, 192-193; Id., in The Archaeology of Athens and Attica under the Democracy [edd. Coulson, W.D.E. - Palagia, O., et alii], Oxford 1994, 99-100). 37 On some trends in their interpretation, see Isler-Kerényi, C, in Studi sulla Sicilia Occidentale in onorc di V. Tusa, Padova 1993. 96-99. 38 In the same way on the painter's vase in Los Angeles (2) (CVA /, 29,1), or among others, the farewell scene of a contemporary column-krater (Galerie G. Puhze, Kunst der Antike, Katal.5, Freiburg i. Br. 1984, no. 192, ill.). If it was not intentionally planned, but caused simply by "lack of space", the drawing could have extended into the frame, as on the obverse of the Syracuse Painter's column-kraters (3) and (5), or the works of other artists (e.g. the Flying Angel Painter's column-krater painted at the same time as the Budapest piece, Moore, M.B., Attic red-figured and white ground pottery [The Athenian Agora, vol. XXX], Princeton 1997, pi. 26, no. 173.)