Mixing bowl (calyx krater) with scenes from the fall of Troy

Used for mixing wine and water, kraters painted with narrative scenes may have inspired conversations at dinner parties. Encircling this example are episodes from the Ilioupersis (Sack of Troy), an event not de-scribed in Homer's Iliad or Odyssey but related by Virgil in the Aeneid and by other ancient writers. After a ten-year siege, the Greeks breached the walls of Troy with a wooden horse. These illustrations capture the most notorious of the resulting horrors-the rape of King Priam's daughter Kassandra by Ajax and the simultaneous murder of Priam and his grandson Astyanax (son of Hektor) by Neoptolemos (son of Achilles)-as well as the escape of Aeneas, the ancestor of the Romans. Although the action appears readable as a series of sequential episodes, these events were roughly concurrent, occurring over the course of one night. Their side-by-side placement on the vase evokes the pandemonium of war and the collapse of the city. The composition also alludes to aspects of the conflict both before and after this disastrous evening: Kassandra takes refuge at the Palladion, a statue of the goddess Athena that had been stolen by the Greeks prior to the sack; Neoptolemos batters Priam with his own grandson's body, thus eliminating both the past and the future of the city; and a nameless Greek fights an equally anonymous Trojan, perhaps representing the countless soldiers who challenged each other on the battlefield over ten years of war. The Trojans here evoke sympathy, while the Greeks are portrayed as brutal violators of the ancient codes of correct behavior. Such issues of common humanity and culture pervaded the thought and artistic production of war-ridden fifth-century Athens.