Terracotta amphora (jar)
Attributed to the Princeton Painter
Obverse, battle scene with quadriga (4-horse chariot)
Reverse, departing warriors
Battle scenes like the one on this amphora would have brought to mind Homeric passages such as this:
As inhuman fire sweeps on in fury through the deep angles
of a drywood mountain and sets ablaze the depth of
the timber and the blustering wind lashes the flame
along, so Achilleus swept everywhere with his spear
like something more than a mortal harrying them as
they died, and the black earth ran blood.
(Iliad, book 20, lines 490-94).
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