Evans, Arthur J.: The Palace of Minos: a comparative account of the successive stages of the early Cretan civilization as illustred by the discoveries at Knossos (Band 3): The great transitional age in the northern and eastern sections of the Palace (London, 1930)

184 YOUTH DRAGGING GOAT ON KNOSSIAN FRAGMENT

lasso the mighty beast by his hind leg. The bull is seen with his head
raised, bellowing with impotent rage :

cor, ore ravpos
rjpvyfv iXKO/ievos 'EXiKaviov dfupl avaxra
Kovpwv kkKovrav.1

It may be here observed that the Homeric picture cited in this passage

Single
bull

repeated,
not three
as sup-
posed.

Fig. 127. Vapheio Cup B (showing Lassoing of Bull).

of the dragged bull roaring as the young men drag him to the altar, receives a
fresh illustration in a variant form from the relief on a fragment of a steatite
' rhyton'2 found some time since North-West of the site of the Knossian
Palace. It is here a he-goat that, despite his struggles, is dragged by
a sturdy youth, probably to a similar destination. Beneath is seen a good
specimen of a Minoan helmet, with a curious curved crest and apparently
set with sections of boars' tusks (Fig. 128).

It is clear that on the Cup we must see not three separate animals, but
rather a single bull thrice repeated, and the olive-tree itself seems to be the
same. One scene is run into another, and, from obvious decorative con-
siderations, the whole becomes a continuous toreutic work. But on the
Palace walls the different episodes would have been enclosed in consecutive
panels, and the triple arrangement of the bastions underlying the two

1 Iliad xx. 403-5.

In the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.