On this vase, the centaur Pholos prepares for a feast, an event whose smell attracts other centaurs and leads to a fierce conflict in which Herakles eventually drives off his assailants. This depiction of Pholos is unusual in that he does not have the expected human abdomen, but instead, his human legs are attached directly to his equine body, giving him the chest of a horse.
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Title:Terracotta lekythos (oil flask)
Artist:Attributed to the Class of Athens 581.1
Period:Archaic
Date:ca. 490 BCE
Culture:Greek, Attic
Medium:Terracotta; black-figure on white ground
Dimensions:H. 7 in. (17.8 cm.)
Classification:Vases
Credit Line:Rogers Fund, 1908
Accession Number:08.258.29
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1909. "The Department of Classical Art: The Accessions of 1908. IV. Vases." Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 4(6): pp. 101–2, fig. 1.
Baur, Paul Victor Christopher. 1912. Centaurs in Ancient Art: The Archaic Period. no. 270, p. 110, pl. II, Berlin: K. Curtius.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1917. Handbook of the Classical Collection. p. 70, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Blinkenberg, Christian Sorensen. 1919. "Hade's Munding." Danske Videnskabernes Selskab, Vol. 2. p. 12, fig. 4, Copenhagen: Andr. Fred. Horst & Son.
Luce, Stephen Bleecker. 1924. "Studies of the Exploits of Heracles on Vases." American Journal of Archaeology, 28(3): p. 303 n. 29.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1927. Handbook of the Classical Collection. p. 92, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Haspels, Caroline Henriette Emilie. 1936. Attic Black-Figured Lekythoi. no. 2, pp. 93, 223, Paris: E. de Boccard.
Montini, Italo. 1938. Il ritratto di Augusto. p. 92, Rome: C. Colombo.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1953. Handbook of the Greek Collection. p. 75 n. 84, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Bogen, Kathrin. 1969. Gesten in Begrussungsszenen auf attischen Vasen. p. 122, Bonn: Habelt.
Beazley, John D. 1971. Paralipomena: Additions to Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painters and to Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters [2nd edition]. p. 225, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Schiffler, Birgitt. 1976. Die Typologie des Kentauren in der antiken Kunst : vom 10. bis zum Ende d. 4. Jhs. v. Chr., Archäologische Studien zum christlichen Altertum und Mittelalter, 4. no. no. A/Ph 21, p. 263, Frankfurt: Peter Lang.
Brize, Philip. 1980. Die Geryoneis des Stesichoros und die frühe griechische Kunst. no. 17, p. 147, Würzburg: K. Triltsch.
Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC). 1997. Vol. 8: Thespiades-Zodiacus. "Kentauroi et Kentaurides," p. 708, no. 352, Zürich: Artemis Verlag.
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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.
