CHAPTER XIX.
And on the 4th side of the chest on the left Boreas is carrying off Orithyia, and he has serpents’ tails instead of feet. And there is the fight between Hercules and Geryon, who was three men in one. And there is Theseus with a lyre, and near him Ariadne with a garland. And Achilles and Memnon are fighting and their mothers are standing by. And there is Melanion, and Atalanta by him with a fawn. And Strife, looking most hateful, stands by the duel (after challenge) between Ajax and Hector. A very similar Strife has been depicted in the temple of Ephesian Artemis by the Samian Calliphon, who painted the battle at the ships of the Greeks. There are also on the chest figures of Castor and Pollux, one of them without a beard, and Helen between them. And Æthra, the daughter of Pittheus, in a dark dress is prostrate on the ground at the feet of Helen. And the inscription is an Hexameter line and one word more.
“Castor and Pollux ran off with Helen, and dragged Æthra from Athens.”
These are the very words. And Iphidamas the son of Agenor is lying on the ground, and Coon is fighting with Agamemnon over his dead body. And Fear with the head of a lion is on Agamemnon’s shield. And this is the inscription over the corpse of Iphidamas,
“This is Iphidamas, Coon bestrides him in the fight.”
And on Agamemnon’s shield,
“Here is what mortals call Fear, Agamemnon has got him.”
And Hermes is bringing to Paris, the son of Priam, the goddesses to the choice of beauty, and the inscription here is,
“Here is Hermes showing to Paris the dainty sight of Hera and Athene and Aphrodite in all their beauty.”
And Artemis—I know not why—has wings on her shoulders, and in her right hand she has a leopard, in her left a lion. And there is Ajax dragging Cassandra from the statue of Athene, and the inscription is,
“Locrian Ajax is dragging Cassandra from Athene.”
And there are the sons of Œdipus, Polynices has fallen on his knees, and Eteocles is pressing him hard. And behind Polynices stands a monster with teeth as sharp as a wild beast’s, and with crooked claws. And the inscription says that it is Doom, and that Polynices was carried off by Fate, and that Eteocles’ end was just. And there too is bearded Dionysus lying down in a cave, clad in a long garment, with a golden bowl in his hand: and there are clusters of vine round him, and apples, and pomegranates.
The topmost side of the chest, for there are five in all, has no inscription, but one can easily conjecture what the representations are. In a cave there is a woman sleeping with a man upon a bed, and we infer that they are Odysseus and Circe from the number of handmaids in front of the cave, and from their tasks. For the women are four in number, and they are engaged just as Homer has represented. And there is a Centaur, not with all his feet horses’ feet, for his forefeet are those of a man. And there are pair-horse chariots and women seated on the chariots: and the horses have gold wings, and a man is giving arms to one of the women. This is conjectured to refer to the death of Patroclus. For it is the Nereids on the chariots, and Thetis who is receiving arms from Hephæstus. For he who is giving the arms is lame, and behind is a servant with smith’s tongs. And the tradition about Chiron the Centaur is that, though he had left this world and been received into heaven, he returned to earth to comfort Achilles. And there are two maidens in a carriage drawn by mules, one is driving and the other has a veil on her head, they are thought to be Nausicaa, the daughter of Alcinous, and her attendant driving to the wash. And the man shooting at the Centaurs and killing some of them is manifestly Hercules, for this was one of his great feats.
Who it was that constructed this chest it is quite impossible to conjecture: the inscriptions on it might have been composed by anybody, but suspicion points to Eumelus the Corinthian, both on other grounds, and because of the Processional Hymn which he composed in reference to Delos.