Inktober 06: Thracian huntress courting the Amazon Penthesilea.

“The white-ground alabastron is signed by the Pasiades Painter, 525-500 BC. As noted, women’s pottery often featured Amazons, but this vase is highly unusual. On one side, a ponytailed Thracian woman steps forward, clad in high boots and a leopard skin, with a large snake coiled around one arm. A poorly preserved inscription appears to give her name as Theraichme, “Huntress”. She is gallantly presenting a rabbit to an Amazon on the other side of the vase, clearly labeled “Penthesilea.”



“So this scene is a startling reversal of a common male courtship theme, in which a suitor presents a rabbit as a love-token to his beloved. This unique scene is not known from any myth or literary text about Penthesilea. We can guess that the image is a provocative twist on the expected theme of rabbit love-gifts and hunting trophies as a courtship metaphor among homosexual men. The gesture also reminds us of Meleager presenting his lover Atalanta with the trophy of the Calydonian Boar Hunt. Possibly this painting illustrates a lost story about a Thracian woman and Penthesilea, who was a Thracian by birth.”



The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World by Adrienne Mayor.



... I probably wrote those Greek letters wrong. They were very hard to see.