Obverse, Poseidon fighting giant Reverse, Judgement of Paris
The gods of Mount Olympos had to overcome several threats before their primacy was established. One was a great conflict with the giants. Here Poseidon, the god of the sea, overcomes Polybotes with a boulder that is, in fact, a piece of the island of Kos that he has broken off. The Judgement of Paris involved a potential threat as well, because it began a chain of events that led to the Trojan War. The sea nymph Thetis was fated to bear a son who would be greater than his father; she was therefore married to the mortal Peleus to whom she bore Achilles.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Terracotta neck-amphora (jar)
Artist:Attributed to the Swing Painter
Period:Archaic
Date:ca. 540–530 BCE
Culture:Greek, Attic
Medium:Terracotta; black-figure
Dimensions:H. 14 3/4 in. (37.5 cm)
Classification:Vases
Credit Line:Gift of F. W. Rhinelander, 1898
Accession Number:98.8.11
Richter, Gisela M. A., Marjorie J. Milne, and The Metropolitan Museum of Art. 1922. Shapes of Greek Vases. New York.
McClees, Helen and Christine Alexander. 1933. The Daily Life of the Greeks and Romans: As Illustrated in the Classical Collections, 5th ed. pp. 53–54, fig. 67, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Richter, Gisela M. A. and Marjorie J. Milne. 1935. Shapes and Names of Athenian Vases. pp. 4–5, fig. 13, New York: Plantin Press.
McClees, Helen and Christine Alexander. 1941. The Daily Life of the Greeks and Romans: As Illustrated in the Classical Collections, 6th ed. pp. 53–54, fig. 67, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1953. Handbook of the Greek Collection. pp. 59, 200, pl. 40a, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Beazley, John D. 1956. Attic Black-figure Vase-painters. pp. 308, 693, no. 65, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Scherer, Margaret R. 1967. "Helen of Troy." Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 25(10): p. 368, fig. 3.
Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC). 1988. Vol. 4: Eros-Herakles. "Gigantes," pp. 226–27, no. 269a, pl. 136, Zürich: Artemis Verlag.
Maas, Martha and Jane McIntosh Snyder. 1989. Stringed Instruments of Ancient Greece. pp. 38–9, 52, fig. 16, New Haven: Yale University Press.
Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC). 1994. Vol. 7: Oidipous-Theseus. "Paridis Iudicium," p. 178, no. 13, pl. 107, Zürich: Artemis Verlag.
Moore, Mary B. 2013. "Herakles Takes Aim: A Rare Attic Black-Figured Neck-Amphora Attributed to the Princeton Painter." Metropolitan Museum Journal, 48: pp. 38, 41, fig. 5.
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The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than 30,000 works ranging in date from the Neolithic period to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312.