On one side, Herakles is at a symposium with Athena and Iolas in attendance. The hero reclines on a kline, nude but for a himation enveloping his waist and legs, and holds a phiale in his right hand. Athena wears a high crested helmet and her snaky aegis over a peplos, holding a spear in one hand and offering Herakles a flower in the other. Iolas stands to the left, a baldric over his shoulder. A table piled with meats and bread is in the foreground, while the hero’s sword, lion skin and club are in the field to the right. On the other side, two warriors drive a quadriga to the right, trampling a fallen Scythian archer. A fully armed warrior advances at the right, his spear raised, a tripod as his shield blazon.
As Boardman informs (op. cit., p. 817), there are very few textual sources for Herakles banqueting other than with Eurytos and Pholos. The popularity of symposium scenes with Herakles attended by Athena was relatively short lived, making its first appearance in black-figure about 550 B.C. and continuing only to the end of the century. Herakles’ early reputation for thirst and hunger may be a reason that he is singled out among heroes for feasting scenes, and the “use of the reclining figure on a kline to designate the mortal as hero (but not the hero as a god) may have contributed to the motif” (op. cit., p. 821). Perhaps the best-known version of this scene is the bilingual amphora by the Andokides Painter in Munich, pp. 306-309 in R. Wünsche, ed., Herakles-Herkules.