286 Br. Charles Waldstein [April 13, 



I cannot resist relating to you an instance illustrative of this result. 

 While studying the vases in the Louvre with the question of the 

 Influence of the Palaestra before me, I mentioned to one of the officers 

 who kindly assisted me in my work this result of my observation of 

 athletic vases. " Do you mean to say/' he inquired, " that, seeing the 

 athletic side of a vase, you can tell what class of mythological scene 

 will be on the other, or what class of mythological scene on the 

 one will have an athletic subject on the other ? " I answered that I 

 believed I could tell what scenes would pi-obably have such correla- 

 tives. " Let us see," he said. We proceeded to a room I had not yet 

 examined, and, passing a glass case by the window which contained 

 paterae and Ki^AiKe?, I noticed a kvXl^, a drinking cup with the shape of 

 a flattened bowl, so placed that the convex outside, ornamented by a 

 broad border with numerous figures, was uj)permost. The subjects 

 represented on this border were scenes from the contests of Theseus 

 and Herakles. " If there is any representation in the inside of this 

 vase," I said, " it is most probably an athletic scene or figure." The 

 case was unlocked, the vase taken out, and, when turned round, the 

 centre contained a round medallion of yellow ground within the black 

 patina of the vase, and, there being only room for one figure, it dis- 

 played a youthful athlete with halteres in his hand and a discus by 

 his side, evidently a victor in the pentathlon. 



So direct was the process by which the vase-painter transferred the 

 scenes he actually saw and studied in the palaestra, that we can trace 

 even in the details of the figures composing such a mythical scene 

 their athletic origin. 



The simplest and earliest form of an athletic scene is that shown 

 in this diagram, copied from an archaic black-figured vase. In the 

 centre we have the two combatants ; on the one side we see a nude 

 athlete in a peculiar attitude, with arms drawn up, recurring in almost 

 all representations of this kind, the odd man in the game, the Ephedros, 

 waiting his turn. On the other side there is an older bearded figure, 

 draped with a mantle, and with a long staff in one hand, the 

 Paidotribes or Agonothetes, the teacher or umpire. Now, in the 

 mythical scenes the vase-painter places his heroic or divine com- 

 batants in the same way in the centre, and on either side he places 

 divinities as judges, spectators, or protectors. The vase-painter 

 takes the Paidotribes, draped and with long staff, simply alters the 

 head of the bearded man to a female head, the staff to a spear, 

 and sometimes adds indications of the Gorgoneion on the breast, 

 and we have Athene. On the other side he retains the nude youth 

 only, placing in one of his uj)-drawn hands a short caducous, and 

 we have Hermes. To revert once more to sculpture, we find that 

 the central figure in the ^gina pediment, presiding, as it were, over 

 the contest for the body of the fallen Patroklos, is the same Paido- 



scene of mythology was modified to suit the character of the vase. See the 

 paper by the present writer, on " Pythagoras of Khegion," tic. Journal of tlio 

 Hellenic Society, vol. i. pp. 184-5 (footnote), ISSO. 



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