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Baby Aigisthos and the Bronze Age

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 February 2013

Emily Vermeule
Affiliation:
Harvard University

Extract

Greek poets and painters of all archaic and classical stages actively used the Bronze Age as their major medium of expression. Their plots are made of legends they attribute to Bronze Age places, their characters are heroes, often royal, who contest those places and thrones, and fight at home and overseas for small quantities of metals, horses, cattle, women. The heroic figures of the classical imagination, especially in tragedy, are isolated and highlighted before general backgrounds of palaces, battlefields, sacred shrines, altars and groves, or tombs. The characters often take on aspects that seem to emanate from these settings – kingly, quarrelsome, acquisitive, enemies or puppets of the gods, exposed to and angry at death. The heroes often seem like dead divinities, sentient watchers inside the earth, contemplating contemporary life, like Amphiaraos watching from some breathing cave near Harma in Boiotia, while an image of them is projected on the stage to walk and talk through their remembered, familiar pathea.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s). Published online by Cambridge University Press 1987

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References

NOTES

Aellen, Peintre de Darius = Aellen, C., Cambitoglou, A., Chamay, J., Le peintre de Darius et son milieu (1986 catalogue of the Geneva exhibition)Google Scholar

Pearson, Sophocles = Pearson, A. C., The fragments of Sophocles (1917) Vol. I.Google Scholar

Schauenburg = Bohr, E., Martini, W., eds., Studien zur Mythologie und Vasenmalerei, Festschrift für Konrad Schauenburg (1986)Google Scholar

Schmidt, Basel = Schmidt, M., Trendall, A. D., Cambitoglou, A., Eine Gruppe Apulischer Grabvasen in Basel (Veröffentlichungen des Antikenmuseums Basel 3, 1976)Google Scholar

Schmidt, Dareiosmaler = Schmidt, M., Der Dareiosmaler und sein Umkreis (1960)Google Scholar

Trendall, RV Ap = Trendall, A. D., Red-figured vases of Apulia II (1982)Google Scholar

Trendall, RV ApSup. I = Trendall, A. D., Red-figured vases of Apulia, Supplement I, BICS Supplement 42 (1983)Google Scholar

1. This article reflects the Corbett Lecture delivered at Cambridge, May 12, 1987, adapted to do without illustrations. It is not an inherently sensible topic, but it had been suggested that I might examine the Greek literary view of the Bronze Age, a challenge worth responding to, and a chance to look at the connections between the heroic and classical periods from the reverse point of view to that taken in Mrs.Easterling, 's admirable article ‘Anachronism in Greek tragedy,’ JHS 105 (1985) 110CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2. This seems still to be true, in spite of so much new material since Vermeule, E., ‘Mythology in Mycenaean Art’, Classical Journal 53 (1958) 97108Google Scholar; exceptions might be made for the theme of the hero(es) killing the lion(s), or for siege scenes.

3. Ruijgh, C. J., ‘Le mycénien et Homère,’ F.I.E.C. Congress, Dublin August 1985Google Scholar; partly incorporated in Problèmes de philologie’, Minos 19 (1985) 115170Google Scholar; Horrocks, G. C., ‘The antiquity of the Greek epic tradition’, PCPS 206 (1980) 110Google Scholar; Hoekstra, A., Epic verse before Homer (1981)Google Scholar.

4. House of Adrastos, Paus. 2.23.2, near the sanctuary of Amphiaraos and the tomb of Eriphyle; the house of Kadmos in the marketplace of Thebes, Paus. 9.12.3; in the sanctuary of Demeter, 16.5, both Theban memories corroborated archaeologically; cf. Symeonoglou, S., The topography of Thebes (1985) 3949Google Scholar. Geometric additions to the Mycenaean megaron at Eleusis, Travlos, J., ‘Athens and Eleusis in the eighth and seventh centuries B.C.’, Annuario 61 (1983) 323–38 (in Greek)Google Scholar.

5. Anonymous bones named, Snodgrass, A., in Gnoli, G., Vernant, J-P., eds, La mort, les morts dans les sociétées anciennes (1982) 107–19Google Scholar.

6. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1987.53; Art for Boston (1987) 72–3Google Scholar colour plate. Cf. Trendall, A. D., RV Ap, 484Google Scholar; ‘The daughters of Anios’, Schauenburg, 165–68Google Scholar, a vase very close to this in style, and in the design on the reverse. There are similarities also with the new Medea vase at Princeton, Trendall, Record of the Art Museum, Princeton University 43, 1 (1984) 5ff.Google Scholar, and Schmidt, M. in Schauenburg 169–74Google Scholar, especially the Pan on the reverse. Other odd myths include the exposure of the children of Melanippe (Darius or Underworld Painter, Peintre de Darius 190), Leukon and Amphithea (ibid. 111), Skythes, Rhodope and the fatal letter (Basel 94-108), or Zehtos watching Amphion receive the musician's lyre from Hermes (Trendall, , RV ApSup I, 74Google Scholar, pl. XIII.4).

7. A grouping the painter found useful elsewhere, like the group of Hekabe and her handmaid on the Polymestor vase, Trendall, , RV Ap IIGoogle Scholar, pl. 174 (British Museum 1900.5-19.1).

8. The Pelopeia story is well sketched by A. C. Pearson in his synopsis of Sophocles' Thyestes in Sikyon (Sophocles, 185-7); and an elaborate and sensible study of alternatives, Séchan, L., Études sur la tragédie grecque dans ses rapports avec la céramique (1926) 199213Google Scholar, more convincing than Robert, C., Die griechische Heldensage I 298300Google Scholar. Critics have agreed with Séchan that the four vases illustrated there have only dubious value for the Thyestes story. Most reconstructions are based on Hyginus, Fab. 86, 87, 88, 243, 254; Apollodoros, Ep. 2.14, and dubious simplifications of Statius' Thebaid; cf. Roscher I.i, 78-83 (Stoll).

It is fortunate that so many of the protagonists in this drama have names beginning with A, since their careers are fully annotated and illustrated in LIMC, saving the need for further illustration here: Adrastos I.231–40 (Ingrid Krauskopf)Google Scholar; Aigisthos I.371–79 (Gais, R. M.)Google Scholar; Amphiaraos I.679713 (Krauskopf, )Google Scholar; Amphithea I.723Google Scholar (G. Berger-Doer); Archemoros II. 472–5 (Pulhorn, W.)Google Scholar; Areion III.477–79 (Krauskopf, )Google Scholar; Argeia II.587–90 (Berger-Doer, )Google Scholar.

9. Robertson, M., ‘Pelopeia and Thyestes’, A Warm Bath at Bedtime (1977) 65Google Scholar. Professor Margaret Alexiou informs me that MGr. uses ἐνδομοίχευδις for seduction within the family, but ancient usages of μοιχεύω seem to imply the seduction of a previously married woman and so could not apply to Pelopeia the virgin. Professor Albert Henrichs believes there was no word for incest ‘because there was nothing wrong with it’ from a male viewpoint, and it was not an issue at law. It was both a moral and an aesthetic issue for Sophokles, and the children of such unions were felt to be abnormal and tainted, but the words used about it are common religious ones, ἄθεος ἀσεβής (OT 1360, 1382), bringing ‘reproach’ socially (1494) rather than legal guilt.

10. Tyrtaeus fr. 12.8 West; μελίγηρυν Ἄδραστον, Plat., Phaedr. 269aGoogle Scholar.

11. The Darius Painter likes this sceptre and uses it for King Skythes (Basel pl. 23, 25), Leukon (Peintre de Darius 131), and the royal figure who may be Priam in the Rape of Helen painting (ibid. cover and col. pl. 22; 136-149), and Zeus in the Baltimore Painter's Judgement of Adonis (216). The surviving Bronze Age precedent is, of course, the Kourion sceptre, which may be an heirloom, often reproduced, as in V. Karageorghis, The ancient civilization of Cyprus pl. 89; McFadden, G., ‘A Late Cypriote III tomb from Cyprus’, AJA 58 (1954) 131CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Aristophanes, , Birds 508–10Google Scholar.

12. What shore? Wherever this scene appeared, in epic, it must have influenced the similar scene in Euripides', Elektra 776858Google Scholar. The ‘sacrifice turned against the sacrificer’ motif, summed up in Thyestes' name, is explored in Zeitlin, F., ‘The motif of the corrupted sacrifice in Aeschylus' Oresteia TAPA 96 (1965) 463508Google Scholar, though naturally the rich material that lies in the myth outside the text could not be treated, and grieving Thyestes, or Aigisthos as Erinys, are touched on only in passing (483).

13. Actually the ‘meaning’ of Aigisthos' name seems unknown; does it contain aigis? The goat Amalthea may appear first in Anacreon 305 Page. The Mycenaean a 3,-ki-compounded names, Chadwick, J., Docs, ed. 2, 536Google Scholar.

14. A Pan with a similar club, from the back, Schmidt, Dareiosmaler pl. 24; the one on the Princeton Medea vase (above n. 6) is also comparable.

15. Pickard-Cambridge, A. W., Dithyramb, Tragedy, and Comedy ed. 2 (1962) 104, 125Google Scholar on the Suda's explanation of the kind of tragedy Epigenes of Sikyon wrote; for the date and causes of Kleisthenes' anti-Adrastos campaign, Andrewes, A., The Greek Tyrants ed. 3 (1969) 5860Google Scholar.

16. The god, left centre, sits on a rock (invisible) with spotted rocks as groundlines under each foot, three-quarter pose, half-draped, thyrsos behind left thigh, turning back to a maenad who offers him a stiff upright wreath; there is a laurel bush between them, and a banded bucket downstage from the god. Right, a dreamy young satyr, with a leopard skin dangling on a cord looped over his left forearm, carries a thyrsos and a flaming torch wrapped with a fillet. The flames blow up to the right and seem certain to ignite the drapery of the righthand female in the upper picture, who floats there with a basket of cakes and a bulbous uprooted laurel bush. Upper left a satyr boy holds a tambourine. There are fillets scattered all through the picture, and a rolling alabaster alabastron; added white everywhere, on leaves, fillets, jewels, cakes, thyrsoi, instruments, without coherence. The laurel branches, banded buckets, cakes and wreaths are commonplaces in the reverses of the Darios Painter.

On Side A the swan of Apollo is seen again on the namepiece, the Dareios vase (among others Basel pl. 6a). The triton shell, as carried by Pan, is seen in isolation on the belt around the Andromeda picture (Basel pl. 13) and the Medea picture (pl. 16-17). A winged Fury holds his team of horses for Amphiaraos, on his departure (Peintre de Darius 112). The handwriting is as on the Nemea vase in Naples (n. 57) and the Medea vase in Princeton (n. 6).

17. Fraenkel, E., Aeschylus, Agamemnon, on 1606 (III. 760)Google Scholar calls attention to the epic colouring of τυτθόν and its rarity in tragedy; that Sophocles' only use should have been in the Eurypylos (fr. 210.51 Radt) may suggest memory of an epic passage. Thyestes' exile is confused; in Od. 4. 517-18 he seems to live in the country ‘at the far section of the agros’, a sympathetic figure of a wronged royal prince living on lands away from court. He must have been to Delphi to consult the oracle, in classical versions, and in Tzetzes, Chil. I. 456–65Google Scholar (Frazer, J. G., Apollod. Epit. Loeb ii. 169Google Scholar) he is driven to ‘Kytheria’, probably Bronze Age Kythera. There must have been at least three departures from Mycenae, after the incident of the golden lamb/ram, after the Thyestean banquet, and after the exposure of Aigisthos and the marriage of Atreus to Pelopeia; this must still be the second exile, broken only by contact with Pelopeia at Sikyon.

18. Pearson, , Sophocles 1Google Scholar, on the difficulties, under the Atreus, 91-4, and the Aletes, child of Aigisthos and Klytaimestra, 62-7.

19. fr. 140-1 Radt. Radt believes in three Thyestes tragedies (Hardt, FondationEntretiens 29 (1983) 217Google Scholar).

20. Od. 11.281-96 with 15.224-55.

21. Hauser, F., ‘Orpheus und Aigisthos’, JdI 29 (1914) 3032Google Scholar; Vermeule, E., ‘The Boston Oresteia krater’, AJA 70 (1966) 20CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Griffith, J. G., ‘Aegisthus citharista’, AJA 71 (1967) 176–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Davies, M., ‘Thoughts on the Oresteia before Aischylos’, BCH 93 (1969) 240–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schmidt, M., ‘Der Tod des Orpheus in Vasendarstellungen aus Schweizer Sammlungen’, AntK Sup. 9 (1973) 96–8Google Scholar and n. 16; Snyder, J., ‘Aegisthos and the Barbitos’, AJA 80 (1976) 289–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Simon, E., ‘Early classical vase-painting’, in Boulter, C., ed. Greek art, archaic into classical (1985) 6682Google Scholar, esp. 72-3, pl. 67-8 (Cahn krater, Basel); Prag, A. J. N. W., The Oresteia (1985) passim, esp. 93–4, 104–5Google Scholar. LIMC lists Aigisthos with the lyre in documents 7 (early mannerist hydria), 8 (Triptolemos P. stamnos, Cahn), 10 (Dokimasia P. krater, Boston), 13 (Berlin P. hydria, Boston) and there may be a fifth example at the Getty Museum. The contrast of the sword and the lyre may be very old, since it occurs with the blue monkeys in the Thera fresco; a partial view, Marinatos, N., Art and religion in Thera (1984)Google Scholar pl. 80, perhaps in a cult context.

22. On ὀπάων, Ruijgh, C. J., Minos 9 (1968) 131Google Scholar; Stagakis, G., Historia 16 (1967) 414–21Google Scholar; Greenhalgh, P., BICS 29 (1982) 8190Google Scholar; the Mycenaean term signifying military companion survives in Cyprus, Hdt 9.50, and reappears in a Theban context, Soph., Ant. 1108Google Scholar. Sir John Beazley once called attention to the probable true early form of the name Parthenopaios, Adrastos' brother, as Parthenopaos (Notes on Vases V’, AJA 54 (1950) 311–13Google Scholar); should it mean ‘young man on his first venture as military squire at war’?

23. The Delos dragon house was illustrated in the lecture; Plassart, A., Delos XI, Les sanctuaires et cultes de Mont Cynthe (1928) 232–55Google Scholar; the Samothrace imitation Mycenaean tomb with relieving triangle, Lehmann, P. W., ‘Samothrace’, Princeton Encyclopedia of classical sites (1976) 805Google Scholar, a Hellenistic evocation of the past for a Samothracian hero. Cf. also Johnson, F. P., ‘Dragon-houses of southern Euboia’, AJA 29 (1925) 398412CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Carpenter, J., Boyd, D., ‘The Dragon-Houses of southern Euboia’, Archaeology 29 (1976) 250–7Google Scholar.

24. The Antimachos passages are collected in Kinkel, EGF fr. 15-20 from Athenaeus 11.468A, from the fifth book of the Thebaid ( = fr. 19-22, 24, 27 Wyss).

25. Iliad 2.505-6, 4.370-410, 5.800-13, 6.222-3, 10.285-90, 14.114, 23.678-80, Odyssey 11.260-80, Hesiod, , Theog. 530, 940–4, 975–8Google Scholar, WD 161-3, Merkelbach, R. & West, M. L., Fragmenta Hesiodea (1967)Google Scholar fr. 14 (Tydeus), 25.34-8 (Amphiaraos), 192 (Argeia), 193 (Oidipous, Polyneikes), 203.2 (Amythaonids).

26. W. Burkert's ‘Babylonian thesis’ about the Seven Against Thebes is brilliant in many ways but cannot be entirely true: ‘Seven against Thebes: an oral tradition between Babylonian magic and Greek literature’, in Brillante, C., Cantilena, M., Pavese, C. O., eds., I poemi rapsodici non Omerici e la tradizione orale (1981) 2951Google Scholar. He offers a welcome demonstration of the old oral Thebaid behind the written one, with a surprising number of archaic forms. The ‘modernisms’ are a couple of neglected digammas, 36-8. The difficulty in connecting the epic to relatively late eastern texts, the epic of Erra ca. 685 B.C. or a magical text with seven assaulting and seven protecting deities, twins, and fire, is that it makes a Thebaid before the seventh century impossible, which cannot be true. It is also hard to imagine the inflation of small wooden or asphalt figurines in a late magical rite in Assyria into major fighting heroes with a genuine drive for cattle and land, elaborate families and intermarriages, recorded deaths, tombs, cenotaphs, and heroa in a war the whole Greek world felt to have preceded the war at Troy.

27. Vermeule, E., ‘Priam's Castle Blazing’, Troy and the Trojan War (1986) 7792Google Scholar; Horrocks, G. C., PCPS 206 (1980) 9Google Scholar, on structural rules in inherited formulae, ‘… since in all probability they have already disappeared from the Mycenaean prose language, since there are no plausible alternative lines of descent … we must conclude that dactylic poets did indeed have a role to play in the Bronze Age narrative tradition’.

28. Griffin, J., ‘The epic cycle and the uniqueness of Homer’, JHS 97 (1977) 3953CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29. Parsons, P. J., ZPE 26 (1977) 736Google Scholar; Haslam, M., GRBS 19 (1978) 2957Google Scholar; Robertson, M., ‘Notes on Polyneikes’, Schauenburg 4751Google Scholar.

30. Schol. Pind. Nem. hypothesis, Nem. 9.20, Paus. 10.25.7.

31. Paus. 1.30.4, 39.2, 43.1, 44.4, 2.11.1-2, 9.19.2.

32. Frazer, J. G., Pausanias' description of Greece (1898) III. 41Google Scholar, on Paus. 2.5.6.

33. Ruijgh (n. 3 above) 149-52.

34. Jeffery, L. H., ‘archaia grammata: some ancient Greek views’, Europa, Festschrift für Ernst Grumach (1967) 152n60Google Scholar, notes 28, 29, from Ampelius Lib.em. 8.5, and ‘Homeric writing’, in Wace, A., Stubbings, F., eds. A companion to Homer (1962) 547Google Scholar.

35. Herington, C. J., Poetry into drama (1985) 62Google Scholar.

36. JHS ArcRep. 19761977, 23Google Scholar; 1978-9, 13-14; Deltion 28, Chron. 95-103; older bibliography in Deshayes, J., ‘Les vases mycéniens de la Deiras’, BCH 47 (1952) 59Google Scholar.

37. JHS ArcRep 19821983, 26Google Scholar.

38. Simpson, R. Hope, A gazetteer and atlas of Mycenaean sites, BICS Sup. 16 (1965) 35–6Google Scholar; The Homeric Catalogue of Ships (1970) 67–8Google Scholar; Griffin, A., Sikyon (1982) 4Google Scholar; Charitonides, S., Deltion 21 (1966) B 124Google Scholar; Pharaklas, N., Σικυωνία (1971)Google Scholar; Vollgraff, W., Beyen, H. G., Argos et Sicyone (1947)Google Scholar; Skalet, C. H., Ancient Sicyon (1928)Google Scholar; the Aïdonia cemetery reported from Ta Nea 7 June 1980, in Arch. News. IX, 2/3, 1980, 38Google Scholar.

39. The names in Paus. 2.5.6, Strabo 8.6.25, implied in Iliad 2.575, Hdt. 7.94; Sikyon was also once Mekone where the first sacrifice took place, Hes. Theog. 536, Schol. Pi. N. 9.123, and Telchinia, like the Telchis in the king-list, a place where magical bronzework was made, cf. Strabo 14.653.4, Griffin (note 38) 92.

40. Chadwick, J., Docs. ed. 2. 156Google Scholar; Sergent, B., ‘Pylos et Corinthe’, Minos 17 (1983) 135Google Scholar; Strabo 13.1.10.

41. The constant intershifting of patterns between these Iliad episodes and those at Thebes, including the broken chariot, Amphion, Amphiaraos, or the grandson of Talaos and son of Mekisteus (2.565) Euryalos' pursuit and killing of Opheltios (6.20), may suggest a singer's familiarity with the other (older?) epic.

42. , Apollod. Epit. 11.6; he too had a guilty passion for his daughter.

43. Mellink, M. J., AJA 89 (1985) 558CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44. Karageorghis, V., BCH 104 (1980) 788Google Scholar fig. 76.

45. Paus. 9.5.16; Nonnos 32.186 (Pape).

46. Ruijgh, C. J., ‘Problèmes de philologie’, Minos 19 (1985) 114–16Google Scholar; Chadwick, J., Docs. ed. 2. 537Google Scholar, PY 317 = Ub 1318.7 (goatskin for sandals for Myrteus).

47. Sergent (n. 40) 18.

48. Vermeule, E., Karageorghis, V., Mycenaean pictorial vase-painting (1982) IX. 1Google Scholar, and Vermeule, E., ‘The Corinth chariot krater and some relatives’, in del Chiaro, M., ed., Corinthiaca, studies in honor of Darell A. Amyx (1986) 81–7Google Scholar.

49. Bass, G., AJA 91 (1987) 32Google Scholar. P. Easterling reminds us that Greek tragedy regularly permits tablets to the heroic age, both real and ‘of the mind’, without any feeling of anachronism, 7Anachronism in Greek tragedy’, JHS 105 (1985) 46Google Scholar.

50. Chadwick, J., Spyropoulos, T., The Thebes Tablets II, Minos Sup. IV (1975) 85112Google Scholar, esp. 86-8; cf. Minos 10 (1970) 115–37Google Scholar; Olivier, J.-P., AAA 4 (1971) 271Google Scholar.

51. Heurtley, W., BSA 26 (19231925) 3845Google Scholar; Paus. 9.32.1.

52. Lille papyrus (above n. 29) 218-21.

53. Is it possible that the famous verse, (1 Kinkel) refers to an Argolid with too much water and hydraulic arrangements like the dam at Tiryns; ‘thirsty’, in the sense that no other kind of earth could drink so much?

54. Winter, F., ‘The Celtic boar feast’, Archaeology 39 (1986) 4852Google Scholar.

55. Driessen, J., ‘Some military aspects of the Aegean in the late fifteenth and early fourteenth centuries B.C.’, BSA 79 (1984) 4956Google Scholar.

56. Schol. Pind. Nem. 9.30.

57. Simon, E., ‘Archemoros’, AA 1979, 3145Google Scholar; Bond, G., Hypsipyle (1963)Google Scholar.

58. The Painter of the Cambridge Hischylos cup (GR.14.1937) and the Apollodoros cup in Tarquinia (RC1123) illustrated in Prag, A. J. W., The Oresteia (1985)Google Scholar pl. 29, as Kadmos and the dragon (?). The Sotades Archemoros cup in London also shows a youth, not a baby, Burn, L., ‘Honey pots: three white-ground cups by the Sotades Painter’, AntK 28 (1985)Google Scholar pl. A,2.

59. Nagy, G., ‘Pindar's Olympian I and the aetiology of the Olympic games’, TAPA 116 (1986) 7188Google Scholar.

60. Malten, L., ‘Leichenspiel und Totenkult’, Rh 38/9 (1923/1924) 300 f.Google Scholar; Rohde, E., Psyche ed. 8 (1925) 116–24, 166–71Google Scholar; Roller, L., ‘Funeral games for historical persons’, Stadion 7 (1981) 118Google Scholar and Funeral games in Greek art’, AJA 85 (1981) 107–19CrossRefGoogle Scholar, with a note on their density in the northeast Peloponnesos, 114; Burkert, W., Greek religion (1985) 205–8Google Scholar.

61. Raubitschek, A., ‘Theseus at the Isthmos’, in del Chiaro, M., ed., Corinthiaca, studies in honor of Darrell A. Amyx (1986) 12Google Scholar.

62. Vermeule, E., Karageorghis, V., Mycenaean pictorial vase-painting (1982) V. 28–34, 36Google Scholar; IX.17, 18; XI.2, 19.1; Rystedt, E., ‘The footrace and other athletic contests in the Mycenaean world’, OpAth 16 (1986) 103–16Google Scholar.

63. Belger, C., ‘Erbauung und Zerstörung des mykenischen Plattenringes’, Jdl 10 (1895) 114–27Google Scholar, esp. 124-5; Chr. Tsountas, ‘Zu einigen mykenischen Streitfragen’, ibid. 143-51, esp. 151.

64. Note 31 above.

65. Robertson, M., ‘The Antimenes Painter: a scene from the Theban story’, lecture delivered in London, 1985Google Scholar, to honour Sir John Beazley, 14-17.

66. Vermeule (n. 62 above) XI.5, 6, 37, and see n. 76 below.

67. Ruijgh (n. 3 above) 149-52.

68. Smith, W. S., Interconnections in the ancient Near East (1965) 148–52Google Scholar, figs. 13-15.

69. Jaroš-Deckert, B., Grabung im Asasif 19631970Google Scholar, Das Grab des Jnj-jtj.f (1975) pls. 1, 3.

70. Heurtley, W., ‘The grave stelai’, BSA 25 (19211923) 126–46Google Scholar, fig. 30 (stelai 8, 9); Bittel, K., ‘Tonschale mit Ritzzeichnung von Boǧazkoy’, RevArch 1976, 914Google Scholar, figs. 2-3.

71. Note 42 above.

72. Eur. Supp. 990-1071; Hyg. fab. 242.

73. Paus. 9.8.3, 19.4 (Amphiaraos), 9.182 (Melanippos or Tydeus), 9.18.3 (children of Oidipous), 9.18.6 (Asphodikos), 9.19.2 (Epigonoi), 9.25.1 (Menoikios).

74. Spyropoulos, T., Deltion 1972, 309–12Google Scholar, pls. 251-6; 1973, 252-8; Symeonoglou, S., The topography of Thebes (1985) 305Google Scholar, site 254; cremation, 60.

75. Mellink, M. J., AJA 89 (1985) 558, 91 (1987) 13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

76. Symeonoglou (above n. 74) Site 3, 40, 230-1; Demakopoulou, K., Konsola, D., Archaeological Museum of Thebes (1981) 54–5Google Scholar.

77. Demakopoulou, Konsola, ibid. pls. 12-27.

78. Bittel (above n. 70); the later type, e.g., Lang, M., Palace of Nestor II (1969)Google Scholar pl. 123.

79. Demakopoulo, Konsola, op. cit. 49.

80. Warmest thanks to Florence Wolsky and Michael Padgett and Janice Sorkow of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, for help with scholarship and footnotes.