The Myth

In Book XXIII of The Iliad Homer tells the story of the funeral of Achilles' beloved companion, Patroklos, and the games that were held in his honour.

After the body of Patroklos had been burned on a great pyre and his white bones laid away in a golden jar, Achilles brought out prizes from the treasure in his ships and challenged the strong-greaved Achaians to compete for them in honour of his dead friend. Five men prepared swift horses to compete in a chariot race: Eumelos, Diomedes, Menelaos, Antilochos and Meriones.

The race was fast and close as the horses sped towards the turning post, a tree-stump far out on the level plain, but then the chariots of Eumelos and Diomedes began to draw ahead. The two ran almost neck and neck, and none can say who would have won had the gods not taken a hand.

Apollo dashed the whip from Diomedes' hands, but Athene returned it and smashed the yoke of Eumelos' chariot, hurling him to the ground. With Diomedes far out in front, the race was on for second. Young Antilochos, son of Nestor, drove recklessly on narrow ground, forcing Menelaos to give way to avoid a collision and so defeating him by the barest margin.

Diomedes claimed his prize, a great tripod and a woman slave skilled in handcrafts, but Menelaos challenged Antilochos' right to a second prize won so unfairly. Antilochos, recovered from the foolish excitement of the race, acknowledged his fault and offered to give his prize, a mare, to Menelaos.

This honesty softened Menelaos' anger so that he forgave Antilochos and allowed him to keep the horse, claiming the third prize of a cauldron for himself, while Meriones took the fourth prize of two golden talents.

Achilles set aside bronze armour as a consolation for Eumelos, but this left the fifth prize, a two-handled jar, unclaimed. In a gesture of touching honour and generosity, Achilles presented the jar to aged Nestor as a memorial of the burial of Patroklos, since the old man could no longer compete in the games himself. In reply Nestor called on the gods to give Achilles great happiness. The games continued with contests in boxing, wrestling and spear-throwing.

The Painting: François Vase

A large chunk of this frieze, on the neck of the vase, is missing. Originally it would have shown five chariots racing, but now only three are visible, along with a fourth driver and the heads of the leading team of horses.

The scene is usually identified with the chariot race at Patroklos' funeral games, and Diomedes is named as one of the charioteers, but Kleitias has represented the chariots being drawn by four-horse teams rather than the pairs described in The Iliad.

The painter has tried to capture the speed, closeness and excitement of the race. The charioteers lean forward, grasping their horses' reins, and Diomedes brandishes his whip. Their hair and their white robes sweep back to indicate speed, as do their horses' tails in an evokative detail emphasised in Homer:

As far from the wheel stands the horse who is straining
to pull his master with the chariot over the flat land;
the extreme hairs in the tail of the horse brush against the running
rim of the wheel, and he courses very close.... (The Iliad XXIII, 517-520, trans. Lattimore)

The four horses of each team are overlapped in an attempt to show depth of field, although their hind hooves are on the same ground line. Each team of horses overlaps the chariot in front, emphasising the closeness of the race, while the horses' effort is conveyed by their flattened ears and the muscles of their haunches. In each team, one pair stretches beyond the other, and the team at the rear includes a white horse whose legs are only just visible. In the spaces under the horses stand two of the prizes, a cauldron and an eared tripod.