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

424

The Fleece of Zeus

as the skin of the sacrificed ram. Behind the youth are three
women holding torches and a plemochoe (a top-shaped vase used
for libations in the Eleusinian ritual1); before him are two others

Fig. 3°5-

with uncertain objects in their hands, a pot on a brazier and a
pitcher in a high receptacle. Another red-figured vase formerly
in the Hamilton collection (fig. 306)2 has a somewhat similar

Fig. 306

design. A nude youth, wearing a string of amulets, kneels upon
his right knee and seems about to catch a mouse in the presence
of two women. Monsieur S. Reinach3 has suggested that we have
here a fragmentary scene resembling that of the Lambert hydrta,
i.e. the purification of an ephebos before the Eleusinia by means of
the ' fleece of Zeus.' Since, however, the mouse figured among

1 C. Michel in Daremberg—Saglio Diet. Ant. iv. 509^ fig. 5708.

2 Tischbein Hamilton Vases ii. 42 ff. pi. 17, Inghirami Vas. Jitt. iv. 117 pi. 387,
Lenormant—de Witte El. mon. cer. ii. 353 ff. pi. 107 ( = my fig. 306).

3 Reinach Rip. Vases ii. 297, 2.