Cook, Arthur B.: Zeus: a study in ancient religion (Band 1): Zeus god of the bright sky (Cambridge, 1914)

202 The Solar Wheel in Greece

extreme right; Zeus enthroned and holding his eagle-sceptre, the
extreme left.

A Campanian amphora from Cumae, now at Berlin, has another
striking representation of the scene as its principal design (pi. xvi)1.
The figures composing it have been first drawn in accordance with
the usual technique of the vase-painter and subsequently coloured
in more or less natural tints—the result being a polychrome
decoration suggestive of fresco-work. Raised aloft in mid air is
Ixion. He is naked and bound, spread-eagle fashion, to the four
spokes of a double wheel. His bonds are so many serpents; and
two of them, twining about his legs and body, raise their heads to
bite him on the shoulders. The rims of his wheel, which are painted
a whitish yellow, a bright and a dark red, send forth red tongues of
flame; these, however, do not radiate light outwards, but heat
inwards, and so add to the anguish of the sufferer. Immediately
beneath him a winged Erinys rises from the ground with snaky
hair and uplifted torch. Ixion's wheel is turned by a couple of
winged female figures, who have been interpreted as Nephelai2.
Hephaistos, having completed his ghastly work, stands back to
survey it, cap on head and hammer in hand. He is balanced by a
second spectator, Hermes, who turns his back upon the scene but,
fascinated by it in spite of himself, glances upwards in the direction
of Ixion.

A wall-painting, which still adorns a dining-room in the house
of the Vettii at Pompeii, provides us with yet another type (fig. 147)3.
The artist, realising that the agony of Ixion must be suggested to
the mind rather than presented to the eye, has given us but a
glimpse of the hero fastened face downwards on a mighty eight-
spoked wheel. Behind him stands the grim figure of Hephaistos,
who lays his left hand on the wheel and with his right is about to
grasp a spoke and set it in motion. His anvil, hammer and pincers
are near him on the ground. At this supreme moment, when the
torture is on the point of commencing, Hermes the mandatory of

vases is Naples Santangelo 709 (id. i. 455), which has obverse a female head in a floral
device, reverse a horse attacked by griffins.

1 Furtwangler Vasensamml. Berlin ii. 840 f. no. 3023. The best reproduction is that
by A. Kluegmann in the Ann. d. Inst. 1873 xlv. 93—98 pi. I—K (badly copied in
Baumeister Denkm. i. 767 fig. 821 and Roscher Lex. Myth. ii. 769 f.).

2 Nephelai (Kluegmann after Helbig loc. cit., Furtwangler loc. cit., Baumeister loc. cit.,
Wagner in Roscher Lex. Myth. hi. 182), Erinyes (P. Weizsacker ib. ii. 771), Nikai
(Reinach op. cit. i. 330).

3 Herrmann Denkm. d. Malerei pi. 39 Text p. 49 ff. For other reproductions see
A. Sogliano in the Mon. d. Line. 1898 viii. 2968". pi. 9 and G. Patroni in Arte Italiana
decorativa e industriale ix. 24 pi. 13.