Céramique à figures noires

Vengeful violence!

Cthis perfectly legible vase bears witness to a mythological scene expressing the vengeance of Artemis, the Greek goddess of hunting. Indeed, it tells of a mythical episode in Homer's Iliad in which the ruthless Artemis decides to send a giant boar to ravage the lands of King Oeneas of Calydon, in Etolia (central Greece). By this act, she intended to punish him for having committed the imprudence to offend her by forgetting to address a sacrifice to her after the harvest. Méléagre, son of Œnée, then calls upon the greatest hunters of the country to hunt down this monstrous animal which destroys his country. The tracking of the boar is an adventure in which many Greek heroes take part. It is finally Atalanta who succeeds in wounding the animal, which succumbed under the effect of the fatal blow given by Meleager. This episode of the hunting of the boar of Calydon is a subject often treated in the history of art, on ceramic decorations from antiquity, but also in neoclassical painting and sculpture.