DOI chapter:
Division A: The Agora and adjacent buildings lying to the west and north of the Acropolis, from the city gate to the Prytaneion
DOI chapter:Section IX
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.61302#0330
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MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS
DIV. A
which they had been greatly pleased when they dwelt with
mortals. “But he bade them choose another part of the house ;
only, he said, he could not give them that chamber, for his daughter,
who was a maiden, chanced to live in it. And the next day the
maiden and all her attendants had vanished, and the images of
the Dioscuri were found in the chamber, with a table and silphion
upon it. So the story goes.” The silphion was of course simply
the token of the Laconian colony of Cyrene, the table the sign
FIG. 35.—LEKYTHOS I THEOXENIA (BRITISH MUSEUM).
of the sacred feast ; in fact, the Dioscuri substituted for the maiden
the whole apparatus of their cult. On a lekythos (fig. 35) found at
Camirus, and now in the British Museum,326 we have a representa-
tion—the only one known on vase-paintings—of the Theoxenia,
the divine feast of the Dioscuri. A couch is prepared with a
cushion at either end : it alone represents the feast about to
take place ; the spread table is not depicted. From the upper air
the twins descend on horseback. The design is executed in poly-
MYTHOLOGY AND MONUMENTS
DIV. A
which they had been greatly pleased when they dwelt with
mortals. “But he bade them choose another part of the house ;
only, he said, he could not give them that chamber, for his daughter,
who was a maiden, chanced to live in it. And the next day the
maiden and all her attendants had vanished, and the images of
the Dioscuri were found in the chamber, with a table and silphion
upon it. So the story goes.” The silphion was of course simply
the token of the Laconian colony of Cyrene, the table the sign
FIG. 35.—LEKYTHOS I THEOXENIA (BRITISH MUSEUM).
of the sacred feast ; in fact, the Dioscuri substituted for the maiden
the whole apparatus of their cult. On a lekythos (fig. 35) found at
Camirus, and now in the British Museum,326 we have a representa-
tion—the only one known on vase-paintings—of the Theoxenia,
the divine feast of the Dioscuri. A couch is prepared with a
cushion at either end : it alone represents the feast about to
take place ; the spread table is not depicted. From the upper air
the twins descend on horseback. The design is executed in poly-