Abstract

The British Museum possesses, and displays as a group, three elegant white-ground kylikes potted around the middle of the fifth century by Sotades, and painted by that skilled, inventive and intelligent miniaturist dubbed by Beazley ‘The Sotades Painter’. First impressions suggest, and further investigation confirms, that the three make up a coherent set, designed and executed according to a pre-conceived plan. This paper will have something to say about the nature of that plan, but most of it will necessarily be occupied with a prior, and fundamental, problem: for the dramatic and very individual scene illustrated on one of the cups has so far resisted all attempts at interpretation, and I have a new proposal to make. The acid test of that identification will be whether it turns out to form an appropriately complementary element to the other two scenes, and whether all three taken together make sense as a mid-fifth century cultural ensemble.