An Athenian Lekythos

Extract

The Athenian lekythos here published has been recently acquired by the British Museum. It is interesting in two aspects. First, the design upon it illustrates the use to which such lekythi were put. We see a woman, apparently an ordinary mourner, carrying offerings for the dead. In her right hand is a funeral lekythos of just the same shape as the one on which the design itself occurs. In her left is a basket of fruits and a coloured sash to bind round the stelè on the tomb when she reaches it. Secondly, but more important, is the inscription beside her, Πάτροκλ(༵) χαῖρ༵. On first thought one would suppose that the vase-painter must have intended to represent one of the women who, according to the Iliad (xix. 301), mourned ostensibly for Patroclos but each having her own sorrows in her bosom,

with which may be compared the parallel passage later on in the same book (338)