3-047-528 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Attic Red-Figure Lekythos, 470-460 BC. Additional Info: They put down a stone and throw at it from a distance with balls or pebbles. The one who fails to overturn the stone carries the other, having his eyes blindfolded by the rider, until, if he does not go astray, he reaches the stone, which is called a dioros. Pollux Children in antiquity played ephedrismos, the game the ancient Greek writer Pollux describes above and which is pictured on this lekythos. Although this looks like a scene of children at play, the two figures represented here are actually a satyr, identified by his beard and the hint of a tail, and a short-haired woman called a maenad. Both satyrs and maenads were followers of Dionysos, the god of wine, vegetation, and the theater.