A charming black-figured olpe in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford shows two warriors playing a game. Between them stands the goddess Athena, an alert figure looking sharply to the left while holding her shield to the right. She holds it rather tactlessly, for the shield entirely obscures the head of the right-hand warrior. Although Cassandra, clinging desperately to the statue of Athena, sometimes has her head obscured in a similar manner behind the goddess's shield, it seems more likely that the painter (...) here has simply misjudged the space available than that he has conflated two iconographical types.The Oxford olpe, though imperfectly planned and executed, is clearly an example of the subject which is best known through the beautiful amphora in the Vatican painted by Exekias. Exekias represented two warriors playing a game at least twice, and is generally believed to have been the first to paint this theme on a vase. (shrink)

This note discusses some of the images and ideas that led to the depiction of Eros with the attributes of Herakles, an iconographical type that was developed and elaborated in the Hellenistic and Roman periods.Eros was not, in fact, the first to appropriate for himself the attributes of Herakles. From an early period popular imagination realised that even the mighty Herakles would occasionally be placed in a situation that lesser creatures could take advantage of. Before the Hellenistic period Kerkopes, satyrs (...) and goat-legged Pans made use of whatever opportunities there were to steal Herakles' attributes; thereafter these subhuman thieves appear to have been replaced by a group of Erotes or a single Eros. (shrink)