Yale 1913.143

Yale 1913.143 (Vase)

Poseidon and Theseus

ID:: aa_4402
Beazley Number:: 205653
Type:: Vase
Date:: ca. -470 — ca. -460
Period:: Early Classical
Context:: From Athens
Region:: Attica
Painter:: Name vase of the Painter of the Yale Oinochoe
Condition:: Losses along the breaks across Theseus's face and the midsections of both figures. Circle impressed on the right side of the vase from balancing it on a stand during firing. A prominent dot of black glaze on his left thumb may be accidental.
Dimensions:: H 0.411 m.; D mouth 0.18 m.; D body 0.258 m.; D foot 0.175 m.
Ware:: Attic Red Figure
Shape:: Oinochoe

Shape Description

Shape 5A oinochoe

Decoration Description

Poseidon and Theseus face each other and shake hands. Poseidon stands at left, facing right, clasping the hand of Theseus, who faces him. Poseidon wears a himation with a dotted black border. He is bearded and wears a fillet, and his long hair is tied at the back. Theseus stands at right facing left. He is barefoot and wears travelling clothes, consisting of a petasos and a short chlamys with a black border, held together at the shoulder with a round fibula. In his left hand he holds two spears, their butts resting on the ground in front of him.

Scenes of Poseidon greeting Theseus usually represent the encounter in which Minos, the king of Crete, challenged Theseus to prove his claim that Poseidon was his father by retrieving a ring from the sea. Theseus dove into the sea god's kingdom and with the help of dolphins reached his undersea palace. There he was greeted by Poseidon and his wife Amphitrite and given a wreath and a mantle as tokens to show Minos. Most such scenes, such as Paris, Cab. Md. 418, a calyx krater by the Syriskos Painter, allude explicitly to the myth, showing Amphitrite, Nereids, Poseidon's throne, or dolphins. These are missing from the Yale vase, suggesting that it refers to some other association of the hero and the god. Pollitt 1987 proposes that the inspiration for the scene may be historical rather than mythological and that the figures may be quasi-personifications. As Hdt. 7.189-192 tells us, Poseidon was viewed, along with Boreas, as having been responsible for the violent storm off Euboea that destroyed much of the Persian fleet in 480 B.C. This earned the seagod the epithet Soter and the grateful worship of the Athenians. Theseus, the embodiment of the Athenian state and heroic spectral warrior on the side of the Greeks at Marathon, here symbolizes, according to Pollitt, the new power of post-war democratic Athens. Theseus is supported on the vase by Poseidon, here the symbol of the maritime power of Athens, as Athens was by the source of this power, its fleet.