Theseus Lifting the Rock and a Cup Near the Pithos Painter

In the National Museum of Athens there is a cup—formerly part of the Empedocles collection—which Beazley has attributed to an artist near the Pithos Painter, an early red figure cup-painter of the coarser wing; its approximate date would be the last decade of the sixth century. In the interior (plate XIIa) it bears the representation of a youth removing a big circular rock from an altar-shaped supporting feature. The scene has been interpreted by Beazley as the punishment of Sisyphus. Zancani-Montuoro, although with some reservations, includes the cup in her catalogue of the representations of Sisyphus before the end of the archaic period. Her hesitation concerns the age of the stone-lifter: ‘La figura della kylix Empedocles e molto simile per atteggiamento’ (i.e. to the Louvre cup G 16 with Sisyphus painted by Epiktetos—to which, incidentally, she gives the wrong number G 20) ‘ma la mancanza di barba e le proporzioni efebiche (l'esilità degli arti in ispecie) possono far sospettare che il personaggio mitico sia stato franteso o il suo schema adattato ad una rappresentazione del genere.’