DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9177#0219
XII
GREEK PAINTING
199
familiar with the story, perhaps originally told by Ibycus,
how Menelaus at the taking of Troy recovered Helen, and
would have slain her, had he not been overpowered by love for
her beauty. As told by Peleus in the Andromache of Euripides,
when he is quarrelling with Menelaus, the tale runs: " When
you took Troy, you did not slay the woman though she was your
captive; but when you saw her breast, you cast aside the
sword, and chose a kiss." Of this incident there are two
notable representations on our monuments.1 Earliest of the
two is a vase of the Museo Gregoriano (Fig. 54 a), on which we
see, on the right, Helen with disordered hair and dress running
towards a statue of Athena for sanctuary. As she flies, she
looks back at Menelaus, who pursues her in warlike guise,
evidently meaning to slay her. But the sword drops from his
hand; between him and Helen stands the stately figure of
Aphrodite, from whom a little Eros flies towards the injured
husband bearing a wreath. The four figures form a beautiful
and balanced composition ; the companion of Aphrodite, Peitho,
on the extreme left, might have been spared. It is an acute
suggestion of Loewy that, taking the vase as it stands, the cause
of the casting away of the sword by Menelaus is to be found
rather in the interference of Aphrodite, the embodied love, than
in any display of beauty by Helen, who is clad, as becomes her
1 Wiener Studien, 1912, p. 282. Loewy was not the first, however, to bring
vase and reliefs together.
Fig. 54 a. — Menelaus and Helen : Attic Vase.
GREEK PAINTING
199
familiar with the story, perhaps originally told by Ibycus,
how Menelaus at the taking of Troy recovered Helen, and
would have slain her, had he not been overpowered by love for
her beauty. As told by Peleus in the Andromache of Euripides,
when he is quarrelling with Menelaus, the tale runs: " When
you took Troy, you did not slay the woman though she was your
captive; but when you saw her breast, you cast aside the
sword, and chose a kiss." Of this incident there are two
notable representations on our monuments.1 Earliest of the
two is a vase of the Museo Gregoriano (Fig. 54 a), on which we
see, on the right, Helen with disordered hair and dress running
towards a statue of Athena for sanctuary. As she flies, she
looks back at Menelaus, who pursues her in warlike guise,
evidently meaning to slay her. But the sword drops from his
hand; between him and Helen stands the stately figure of
Aphrodite, from whom a little Eros flies towards the injured
husband bearing a wreath. The four figures form a beautiful
and balanced composition ; the companion of Aphrodite, Peitho,
on the extreme left, might have been spared. It is an acute
suggestion of Loewy that, taking the vase as it stands, the cause
of the casting away of the sword by Menelaus is to be found
rather in the interference of Aphrodite, the embodied love, than
in any display of beauty by Helen, who is clad, as becomes her
1 Wiener Studien, 1912, p. 282. Loewy was not the first, however, to bring
vase and reliefs together.
Fig. 54 a. — Menelaus and Helen : Attic Vase.