Pelike (jar): Mythical Easterner Fighting a Griffin

This pelike, a two-handled jar with a baggy body, depicts a fight between a figure on horseback and a mythical creature, a lion-headed griffin. The griffin’s paws (now largely lost) reach toward and possibly dig into the body of the rearing stallion that opposes it. A shield with star motif appears in the field below. The rider wears a floppy cap and the sleeved top and trousers with lively patterns that had become the standard costume of easterners, both mythical and real, by the time this vessel was made. The figure’s gender is uncertain. If the face and hands were originally covered in added white, as with the griffin, it would be an Amazon. In Greek myth, it is the Arimasps, another eastern people, who fight griffins guarding gold at the far edges of the known world. Vessels of this type appear to show both Amazons and Arimasps grappling with griffins; as both were easterners in the Greek mind, the distinction may not have mattered much. The fact that many of these vessels were found in the northern Black Sea region suggests that the imagery was consciously employed by Athenian potters to target the market in an area associated with these legendary peoples—and that the actual local inhabitants embraced these depictions. The back of the pelike shows two young men draped into copious cloaks. The vessel’s rim has been repaired and some of its decoration is lost.