Panathenaic price amphora (London B 144)
The so-called Panathenaic price amphora in the British Museum in London (catalog no. B 144 ; inventory no. 1849.11-22.1) was excavated in Vulci in 1849 . She is assigned to the swing painter and is around 540-520 BC. Dated. It is said to be the oldest representation of a horse racing winner. For motivic reasons, however, the amphora should not be addressed as a price vessel, even if it formally takes up the design of Panathenaic price amphoras.
On the front view the goddess Athena is shown to the right. Your shield is decorated with a ten-pointed white star. She wears a peplos , above the tree-snakes aegis . Athena is accompanied by Hermes and a bearded man, possibly Zeus , but more likely the owner of the horse. A quiet riding scene is shown on the back. The horse with a beardless young man wearing a chiton rider strides to the right. In front of him is a bearded man in a long coat, who could be a herald. Starting from his head and sloping downwards, there is the inscription: ΔVNEIKETV: HIΠOΣ: NIKA (= Δυ (σ) νείκήτ (ο) υ ϊπ (π) ος νίκα; the horse of Dyneiketos has won ). The man's head is raised slightly, as if he were just pronouncing the words written in front of him. Behind the rider follows a naked youth. He wears a victory wreath in his left hand and a tripod on his head.
Due to the representation on the reverse, it was doubted that it was a Panathenaic price amphora. John D. Beazley interprets the victory tripod as a trophy from another competition. TBL Webster, on the other hand, suspects that the swing painter may have chosen this depiction from Homer's time in order to best represent the ideal of victory. Nonetheless, he also lists the amphora among the vessels that are not themselves to be considered a price.
literature
- Walter Woodburn Hyde : Olympic victor monuments and Greek athletic art (= Carnegie Institution of Washington. Publication. Vol. 268, ISSN 0099-4936 ). Carnegie Institution, Washington DC 1921, p. 280 .
- JD Beazley : Attic Black-figure Vase-painters. Clarendon Press, Oxford 1956, p. 307, no.59.
- JD Beazley: The Development of Attic Black-Figure (= Sather Classical Lectures. Vol. 24). Revised edition. University of California Press, Berkeley CA / Los Angeles CA / London 1986, ISBN 0-520-05593-4 online .
- Nigel James Nicholson : Aristocracy and Athletics in Archaic and Classical Greece. Cambridge University Press, Berkeley CA / Los Angeles CA / London 2005, ISBN 0-521-84522-X , pp. 104-106, online .
- TBL Webster : Potter and Patron in Classical Athens. Methuen, London 1972, ISBN 0-416-75630-1 , p. 64, online .