εὕδει γυναικῶν ἐν θρόνοισιν ἥμενος.
Surely a ‘marvellous troop of women’ fits the group which we see before us. In this particular the work is practically an illustration of the text. The distinction is at once made that the figures are not women nor Gorgons nor Harpies[[133]]. They are ἄπτεροι and μέλαιναι, and snore with unapproachable blasts. It should be noted that the figures in the painting are also black, as though in direct agreement with Aischylos[[134]]. They are further wingless, while the unpleasant details added are conceivable from the appearance of the ugly creatures. The number five is of course a mere accident. They lie here in an unconscious stupour till the ghost of Klytaimestra arouses them again. The Eumenides is, as is well known, the only extant Greek tragedy in which the chorus is not visible from the beginning of their part. In the Persai and Supplices of Aischylos and the Bakchai and Supplices of Euripides the chorus is, however, in the orchestra when the play opens.
There are still two other vase paintings to be considered in this connexion. They present minor variations from the one just discussed, but on the whole the three betray a common source. In fig. 6[[135]] one sees also the interior of the temple represented by three Ionic columns. Various dedicatory articles hang from the wall and ceiling. Further indications of the sanctuary are the two tripods, the laurel tree, and the omphalos. Orestes, characterized as usual by the drawn sword and flying chlamys, has fled to the latter and embraces it. His erect hair shows his fright. Apollo with bow and arrows hastens behind him and gestures with his right hand to drive back a Fury who is swooping down upon Orestes. She is but half in sight, and wears a short Doric peplos, and her flesh is black. The Pythia, with dishevelled gray hair and frightened mien, quits the sanctuary on the left. Her key, indistinctly drawn in Jahn’s publication, owing probably to the copyist’s ignorance of what the article really was, has just fallen from her hands. Artemis in her huntress-costume, carrying two spears, stands on tiptoe on the right of the omphalos and shades her eyes with her right hand as she peers at the disturbance. Two dogs are with her.
Fig. 6
The time of the Pythia’s exit from the temple, as in fig. 5, and the later moment when Apollo orders the Erinyes from the sanctuary, are well combined in this painting:—
ἔξω, κελεύω, τῶνδε δωμάτων τάχος
χωρεῖτ’, ἀπαλλάσσεσθε μαντικῶν μυχῶν,
μὴ καὶ λαβοῦσα πτηνὸν ἀργηστὴν ὄφιν,
χρυσηλάτου θώμιγγος ἐξορμώμενον,