Διὸς φῶς, for Dionysos[[2171]];
, “the son of Zeus,” for Herakles[[2172]]; ταῦρος φορβάς, “the grazing bull,” for the metamorphosed Zeus (a doubtful instance).[[2173]]
Besides the names of figures and objects, words and exclamations are sometimes represented as proceeding from the mouths of the figures themselves, in the same manner as on the labels affixed to the figures of saints in the Middle Ages. They vary in length and purport, but in some cases they appear to be extracts from poems or songs, or expressions familiar at the time, but now unintelligible or lost in the wreck of Hellenic literature. They are found on both B.F. and R.F. vases, but more commonly on the former, and generally read according to the direction of the figure, as if issuing from the mouth.
Thus a boy pouring wine out of an amphora cries,
, ἔ(γ)χει ἡδ[ὺν] οἶνον, “Pour in sweet wine”[[2174]]; over the first of three runners in a race appears νικᾷς, Πολυμένων, “Polymenon, you win”[[2175]]; again, Amphiaraos is exhorted to mount his chariot with the word ἀνάβα,[[2176]] or one personage says to another, χαἶρε or πῖνε καὶ σύ.[[2177]] Sometimes the words are evidently those of a song, as on a R.F. kylix at Athens, where a man lying on a couch sings an elegy of Theognis beginning ὦ παίδων κάλλιστε, “Fairest of boys!”[[2178]] Another sings
, which has been recognised as an inaccurate version of an Aeolic line, καὶ ποθήω καὶ μάομαι.[[2179]] On a red-figured vase in the British Museum (E 270) a man accompanied by a flute-player has an inscription proceeding from his open mouth, which runs,
