This is the famous François Vase, a magnificent krater thrown by the potter Ergotimos and painted by Cleitias about 570 B.C. Found in an Etruscan cemetery by a fellow named François, it now stands in the Archeological Museum in Florence. In 1900 a museum guard went beserk and threw a stool at the glass case containing it, smashing it into 638 pieces. It has been restored twice, once in 1904 and again in 1974. Kraters are large two-handled basins for mixing wine and water. This type is called a volute krater, from the coiled shape of the handles. and this one is the oldest Athenian volute-krater ever found. Over two feet tall, it is also one of the largest and most elaborate, with over 200 figures. Perfecting their technique of painting with black glaze and scratching fine lines through it to expose the red clay underneath, early 6th century painters like Cleitias began composing complex scenes like these, from the life of Achilles and his father Peleus. The two scenes on the neck show ancient games and sports: a boar hunt, in which Peleus competed, and a chariot race, organized by Achilles as part of the funeral games in honor of his slain lover Patroclus.

THE CALYDONIAN BOAR HUNT



First, the boar hunt. The enormous boar (only his snout shows in this view, so see the detail below to see how huge he was) is the legendary boar of Calydonia. Because the king of that land, Oeneus, had failed to sacrifice to the virgin huntress Artemis, the goddess sent this monster to ravage his kingdom. "So huge was he," said Homer, "he had put many men on the sad fire for burning" (Iliad IX:546). To save his kingdom, Oeneus called on the bravest heroes of Greece to come and kill the boar. He offered as prize its tusks and hide. Among those who came were Theseus, Jason, Peleus, Nestor, and the fleet-footed virgin huntress Atalanta (a pretty obvious stand-in for Artemis herself). With her skin painted white, as ancient artists painted women, Atalanta stands out among the black-painted males. Beside her is Melanion (whose name means "black"), who later won her as a prize in a footrace -- the first man to beat her, but only by tossing on the track three golden apples, given him by Aphrodite, that Atalanta stooped to gather. She wears a revealing robe, while most of the men wear animal hides. Her presence caused an uproar, with two hunters from her own land refusing to hunt with a woman, and the king's two brothers predicting disaster. Their objections were overriden by the king's married son, Meleager, whom Artemis made fall in love with Atalanta. The result was a shambles.

Armed with javelins and boar-spears, battle-axes and bows and arrows, the horde of over-eager trophy-hunters, each hot to claim the great hide for himself, fell over each other in wild pursuit of the boar. To restore some order to the chase, Meleager organized them into a half-moon search party, not unlike the semi-circular band of figures we see marching round the krater's rim. Note, in the detail from it, the two javelin throwers in the middle: they use the same type of finger-thong used by Olympic javelin throwers to impart spin, accuracy and distance to their throws. Before them, bending on one knee, is a Scythian archer in his tall pointed Scythian cap. Before him strides Atalanta, here bearing a boar-spear instead of the bow and arrow which the poets say she used -- first to shoot two centaurs (fellow hunters who tried to rape her in the woods) and then to wound the boar, to save two other hunters (Peleus and Telamon) who, tripped up by a tree root, had fallen before the charging boar.



Others were not so lucky. Two hunters were killed by the boar, another hamstrung by it, a fourth (Nestor) driven up a tree. On the vase one hunter lies dead beneath the boar, while before it lies a dead dog labelled "Rouser" -- the lead hound who found and roused the boar. Back in the pack comes the deceased dog's partner, a long hound named "Chaser." According to the poets, javelins hurled by Jason, Theseus, and other heroes missed or merely grazed the boar. Peleus' javelin (shown here aimed at the boar's snout) missed the boar and killed his countryman Eurytion. More mayhem, not shown here, ensued. One hero swung his battle-axe straight at the charging boar, but not fast enough: in an instant he lay castrated and disembowelled. At last, blinded by an arrrow, the boar was killed by Meleager, who skinned it and in a lover's haze fondly awarded the prize hide to Atalanta. When his outraged uncles protested, in a lover's rage Meleager killed them both. And on it went, all to soothe the savage breast of Artemis.

THE CHARIOT RACE at TROY



On the lower band of the neck is painted the chariot race described by Homer in Book X of the Iliad. Organized by Achilles on the plain or shore before the walls of Troy, it was the first and most spectacular event in the funeral games for Patroclus, his fallen friend and charioteer. The other contests were in boxing, wrestling, running, and throwing the javelin; later editors added a fight in armor, tossing the discus or shot (a lump of pig-iron, which was also the winner's prize), and archery. The start of the chariot race, which was won by Diomedes (shown here second from the right), is described by Homer thus:

Then all held their whips high-lifted above their horses
then struck with the whip thongs and in words urged their horses onward
into speed. Rapidly they made their way over the flat land
and presently were far away from the ships. The dust lifting
clung beneath the horses' chests like cloud or a stormwhirl.
Their manes streamed along the blast of the wind, the chariots
rocking now would dip to the earth who fosters so many
and now again would spring up clear of the ground, and the drivers
stood in the chariots, with the spirit beating in each man
with the strain to win, and each was calling aloud upon his own
horses, and the horses flew through the dust of the land.
[Trans. Richmond Lattimore, lines 362-72]

Homer goes on to tell how Diomedes lost the lead when Apollo made him drop his whip; then how Athena gave it back to him, and broke the leader's chariot yoke until he crashed. How Antilochus lashed his horses recklessly to beat out Menelaus through a one-lane bottleneck -- a no-passing zone where torrential rains had washed away the outside lane. How the spectators argued over who was leading, and offered to bet a tripod or a cauldron on who was right. And how Diomedes won:

Dust flying splashed always the charioteer, and the chariot
that was overlaid with gold and tin still rolled hard after
the flying feet of the horses, and in their wake there was not much
trace from the running rims of the wheels left in the thin dust.
The horses came in running hard. Diomedes stopped them
in the middle of where the men were assembled, with the dense sweat starting
and dripping to the ground from neck and chest of his horses.
He himself vaulted down to the ground from his shining chariot
and leaned his whip against the yoke. Nor did strong Sthenelos
delay, but made haste to take up the prizes, and gave the woman
to his high-hearted companions to lead away and the tripod
with ears to carry, whle Diomedes set free the horses
[lines 502-513]

On the vase, beneath the horses right behind Diomedes' chariot, can be seen standing beside the track the prize tripod he will win. Below the next four-horse team [probably even in Homer's time, and certainly in the Achaean age, these chariots were two-horse war chariots] can be seen a lebes, a legless bronze cauldron. In the Iliad this was the third of the five prizes (the second prize being a mare pregnant with a mule, the fourth two talents of gold, the fifth an unfired two-handled jar). A greater discrepancy between vase and poem is in the names of the five contestants: In Homer only the winner's, Diomedes, is the same; on the vase, the competitors' names are, left to right: Odysseus (out of sight upon the urn, around the turn, and turning post), Hippothon (whose name is blurred), Damasippos, Diomedes, and Antomedon (the current leader, out of sight on the right). Did Cleitias the painter know a different version of the Iliad than the one we know?



In this scene from another vase, an Athenian deinos, also a bowl for mixing wine and water, from the same period (first half of the 6th c BC) comes another painter's image of the same two-horse chariot race at Troy. And what a wonderful image, of the spectators sitting and cheering in the stands! The inscription, written backwards, reads: "Sophilos painted me. Patroclus' Games." And, out of sight to the right in this view, "Achilles" is written, over the heads of fans cheering on the other side of the stands, whose seats run down the back side. The fans are thus seated on both sides of a central median strip running right down the middle of an oval racetrack! Such a strip was built in the hippodrome at Olympia, and perhaps at Athens also - though certainly not on the plains outside Troy. But to see one on an early sixth century vase, contemporary with the François vase, is extraordinary. Only a fragment of this pot survives; but what a fragment! (Image from The Hellenic Ministry of Culture).