Rescuing Creusa on a Late Archaic, Black-Figure Amphora

This paper argues that a black-figure neck amphora dated to ca. 500 BCE (Basel BS 1921.331), which in previous publications was thought to repetitively portray Aeneas carrying Anchises from Troy on both sides, actually portrays Aeneas carrying Creusa on side B. Starting about 535 BCE depictions of Aeneas carrying an aged Anchises became popular and standardized on black-figure vases (Woodford and Loudon, 30). Neck amphorae mass-produced by the Leagros Group (525-500 BC) show the standard representation of the Aeneas-Anchises scene with only peripheral variation (e.g. Gettty 86.AE.82 with names inscribed; Leiden, XVI45 and XVI58; Louvre F256). Aeneas walks right, his face forward as he carries Anchises, a frail old man with a cane wearing a long himation, white-slip added to portray his beard and hair. On side A of Basel amphora BS 1921.331, painted by the Class of Cabinet des Medailles 218, a group of Attic vase painters active just after the Leagros Group, we see Aeneas and Anchises escaping from Troy in the standardized format: Aeneas carries Anchises, whose hair and beard are touched up with white-slip; Anchises holds a walking stick and wears a long himation. Although side B has been interpreted as a replication of the same scene (Beazley Archive 301670; Blome in Latacz, 403-404), close examination reveals that the painter of this particular vase went to great lengths to indicate that the figure on Aeneas’ back on side B is not Anchises. The figure looks back, white hair replaced by a veil, white beard nowhere to be seen; the person wears earrings that mimic the feminine figures flanking the central composition, and Anchises’ long himation has been exchanged for a floral-hemmed peplos familiar from Attic korai. In short, side B depicts Aeneas carrying a young woman, and the most accessible conclusion is that this woman is his wife. Aside from differences in the portrayal of the figure on Aeneas’ back on sides A and B of Basel BS 1921.331, the two sides share too many similar details to read them as distinct mythical themes. Side B is clearly a reenactment of side A: The painter has actively replaced Anchises with Creusa, traded the father for the wife, patriarch for matriarch. Still, other subtle details stand out as telling differences. On side B Aeneas walks right, the canonical direction. On side A he walks left, the wrong way; as if to upset the standard version and assert the innovative replacement as a correction. Further, on both sides the central scene occurs between women walking right; on side A this facilitates the impression that Aeneas is headed not away from, but back toward Troy as the other refugees walk in the opposite direction. For most of us, Creusa is the quintessential lost wife and mother whose fate is told by Virgil in the Aeneid. As such she has been retrospectively rescued many times in feminist studies of women in antiquity (DuPlessis; Skinner; Culham). According to Liveley (66) feminist re-appropriations of Creusa were first authorized by Ovid, who “launched the first feminist mission to rescue Creusa” at Heroides 7.84 when Dido indignantly refers to the fate of Iulus’ mother. The woman on Aeneas’ back peering out from the Basel amphora suggests that the impulse to rescue Creusa dates much farther back.