ATTRIBUTED TO THE PHANYLLIS PAINTER, CIRCA 510-500 B.C.

The lively scene depicts Herakles wrestling Triton. The hero, wearing his lionskin, grips the fish-bodied monster from behind. To the right stands a bearded man with a staff (perhaps Nereus) and to the left a draped woman (perhaps a Nereid or Amphitrite, Triton’s mother). The scene was popular among Attic black-figure painters towards the end of the 6th century despite being ignored by ancient authors. As K. Schefold observes (Gods and Heroes in Late Archaic Greek Art, p. 138), the interaction replaces Herakles’ fight with the aged Nereus, the only person who could tell the hero the way to the Hesperides. The Archaic period’s “obsession with athletic prowess that made so much of Herakles’ wresting the lion” preferred to see the “Triton’s strong young body locked in combat with Herakles” (op. cit.). For related compositions on black-figured vases, see nos. 4-9 in N. Icard-Gianolio, “Triton,” in LIMC, vol. VIII.