The oracle of Apollo at Delphi directed Kadmos to follow a cow that he would find and to establish a city where she lay down. That site became Thebes, in the region of Boeotia. The only available spring was guarded by a dragon born of Ares, the god of war. With the help of Athena, Kadmos killed the dragon—here depicted as a snake—and from its teeth a population of armed warriors sprang up. Kadmos advances with a hydria to fetch water and a stone and spears to kill the snake. The identity of the woman is unknown; she may be a personification of the city or possibly his future wife, Harmonia, the daughter of Aphrodite and Ares.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Terracotta bell-krater (bowl for mixing wine and water)
Artist:Attributed to the Cassel Painter
Period:Classical
Date:ca. 440–430 BCE
Culture:Greek, Attic
Medium:Terracotta; red-figure
Dimensions:H. 13 7/8 in. (35.3 cm) diameter of mouth 14 5/8 in. (37.1 cm)
Classification:Vases
Credit Line:Rogers Fund, 1922
Object Number:22.139.11
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1923. "Athenian Pottery: Recent Accessions." Bulletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 18(11): p. 256.
Richter, Gisela M. A. and Lindsley F. Hall. 1936. Red-Figured Athenian Vases in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. no. 132, pp. 166–67, pls. 131, 171, New Haven: Yale University Press.
Bandinelli, Ranuccio Bianchi. 1958. Enciclopedia dell'Arte Antica, Classica e Orientale, Vol. 4. p. 331, fig. 396, Rome: Instituto della Enciclopedia Italiana.
Beazley, John D. 1963[1942]. Attic Red-figure Vase-painters, Vols. 1 and 2, 2nd ed. pp. 1083, 1682, no. 5, Add. 1, pp. 1083–86, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC). 1988. Vol. 4: Eros-Herakles. "Harmonia," p. 413, no. 4, pl. 238, Zürich: Artemis Verlag.
Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae (LIMC). 1990. Vol. 5: Herakles-Kenchrias. "Hermes," p. 342, no. 673, pl. 254; "Kadmos I," p. 867, no. 17, Zürich: Artemis Verlag.
Shapiro, Harvey Alan. 1993. Personifications in Greek Art: The Representation of Abstract Concepts, 600-400 B.C.. pp. 99–101, 105, 240, fig. 44, Zürich: Akanthus.
Gill, David and Mr. Michael Vickers. 1995. "They were Expendable: Greek Vases in the Etruscan Tomb." Revue des études Anciennes, 97: p. 229 n. 42.
Neumann, Gunter. 1996. "Beitrage zum Kyprischen XVI." Kadmos: Zeitschrift für vor- und frühgrieschische Epigraphik, 35: pp. 39–48.
Padgett, J. Michael. 2017. The Berlin Painter and His World : Athenian Vase-Painting in the Early Fifth Century B.C. p. 247 n. 7, New Haven: Yale University Press.
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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.
