Greek Vases
The Death of Polyxena.
This famous vase is usually attributed to the Timiades Painter. The context is the end of the Trojan War. Troy has fallen and all the Trojan heroes and many of the Greeks are dead. Before the survivors can return home, the ghost of Achilles demands a sacrifice, mirroring the sacrifice of Iphigeneia which enabled them to get a breeze for Troy ten tears before. Euripides uses the story for his tragedy Hecuba (Hekabe), where the beautiful youngest daughter of Priam dies so heroically, so modestly and wins admiration from her Greek murderers. But the Timiades painter has no time for romanticizing. Three warriors hold the girl horizontal - like a battering-ram. They are named as Amphilochos, Antiphates - and, ominously, Ajax, son of Oileus (fresh from his equally unpleasant role in the rape of Cassandra). From the left comes Neoptolemos, son of Achilles, whose privilege it is to carry out the sacrifice.