"Iliou Persis" [Ἰλίου Πέρσις] "The Sack Of Troy" - V

Priam's death.

Neoptolemus’ lance is about to pierce Priam. The old king is falling backwards onto an altar. He holds his right arm protectively in front of his face. Behind the altar two women: one turns to Neoptolemus with raised hands in supplication gesture, the other bends down to Priam putting a hand on his chest and raising the other plaintively. Near Neoptolemus, in front of his leg, a young girl rushes between him and Priam. She turns her face toward Neoptolemus raising her left arm as if she wanted to stop the Greek hero’s spear. On the left edge of the picture, a fragment shows the lower part of the body of man with a stick (probably a lance), wearing a long clad. The right edge of the scene shows a second long-robed man with a staff seated on a stock block. In front of him a standing woman raises a hand over her head in a mourning gesture.

The altar has a curved outline on the left side and, on the upper and lower part, exhibits a meander framed by white lines.

Priam wears a long chiton decorated with red dots and white incised swastikas; his long hair, arranged in loose strands over his shoulders, and his beard are white. Neptolemus is equipped with a shield decorated with a bull's head, a spear, a high crested helmet and greaves.

Women have white skin. They wear different peplos and have red ribbons in their long hair. The two men who frame the scene wear long chitons and cloaks. The volume of their bodies is rendered alternating black and red bands.

 

CAV / CAVI @ www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/record/77673849-EC5E-4D69-9B5A-04B90...

 

Attic black-figure neck amphora

H 26,4 cm; Dm. 17,2 cm; Lip Dm. 12.0 cm.

From Aegina

Ca. 550 BC

Berlin, Altes Museum, Inv. No. F 3996

 

Done