and woman to the right are probably the father and mother of Eurystheus.  The scene on the other side of the cylix is supposed to illustrate an incident of the Trojan War:  two warriors, starting out on an expedition, are met and stopped by the god Hermes.  In each design the workmanship, which was necessarily rapid, is marvelously precise and firm, and the attitudes are varied and telling.  Euphronius belonged to a generation which was making great progress in the knowledge of anatomy and in the ability to pose figures naturally and expressively.  It is interesting to note how close is the similarity in the method of treating drapery between the vases of this period and contemporary sculpture.

The cylix shown in Fig. 192 is somewhat later, dating from about 460.  The technique is here different from that just described, inasmuch as the design is painted in reddish brown upon a white ground.  The subject is the goddess Aphrodite, riding upon a goose.  The painter, some unnamed younger contemporary of Euphronius, has learned a freer manner of drawing.  He gives to the eye in profile its proper form, and to the drapery a simple and natural fall.  The subject does not call, like the last, for dramatic vigor, and the preeminent quality of the work is an exquisite purity and refinement of spirit.

If we turn now from the humble art of vase-decoration to painting in the higher sense of the term, the first eminent name to meet us is that of Polygnotus, who was born on the island of Thasos near the Thracian coast.  His artistic career, or at least the later part of it, fell in the “Transitional period” (480-450 B.C.), so that he was a contemporary of the great sculptor Myron.  He came to Athens at some unknown date after the Persian invasion of Greece (480 B.C.) and there executed a number of important paintings.  In fact, he is said to have received Athenian citizenship.  He worked also at Delphi and at other places, after the ordinary manner of artists.

Painting in this period, as practiced by Polygnotus and other great artists, was chiefly mural; the painting of easel pictures seems to have been of quite secondary consequence.  Thus the most famous works of Polygnotus adorned the inner faces of the walls of temples and stoas.  The subjects of these great mural paintings were chiefly mythological.  For example, the two compositions of Polygnotus at Delphi, of which we possess an extremely detailed account in the pages of Pausanias, depicted the sack of Troy and the descent of Odysseus into Hades.  But it is worth remarking, in view of the extreme rarity of historical subjects in Greek relief-sculpture, that in the Stoa Poicile (Painted Portico) of Athens, alongside of a Sack of Troy by Polygnotus and a Battle of Greeks and Amazons by his contemporary, Micon, there were two historical scenes, a Battle of Marathon and a Battle of OEnoe.  In fact, historical battle-pieces were not rare among the Greeks at any period.