[21] But the most valuable contribution of art to the interpretation of the play is a vase-painting of Philoctetes wounded at the shrine of Chrysè. This incident, like the personality of Chrysè herself, is left indistinct by the allusions in the poet's text; and such indistinctness,—easily tolerated by ancient audiences in matters which lay ‘outside of the tragedy,’—tends to weaken a modern reader's grasp of the story. It is therefore interesting to know how the whole scene was conceived by a Greek artist nearly contemporary with Sophocles. The painting occurs on a round wine-jar (
στάμνος
), found at Caere in southern Etruria, and now in the Campana collection of the Louvre: the date to which it is assigned is about 400 B.C.
1
The place is the sacred precinct of Chrysè—‘the roofless sanctuary’ of which Sophocles speaks—in the island of the same name, near the eastern coast of Lemnos. Philoctetes, who has just been bitten in the foot by the snake, is lying on the ground, overcome by pain, and crying aloud, as the open mouth indicates. The laurel-wreath worn by him, as by all the other persons of the group, denotes that he had been sacrificing. A beardless youth who bends over the sufferer, as if about to raise him in his arms, is probably Palamedes; his chlamys is girt about his loins in the manner used by sacrificers. On the left, the image of Chrysè is seen behind her burning altar; the snake, ‘the lurking guardian’ of her shrine (v. 1327 f.),— which had crept forth as Philoctetes approached—is again seeking its hiding-place, while Agamemnon strikes at it with his sceptre. Next to him on the right is the beardless Achilles, with chlamys girt at the waist, and a piece of flesh, roasted for the sacrifice, on a spit (
ὀβελός
) in his hand: then the bearded Diomedes, wrapt in his himation: and, on the extreme right, a similar form, possibly Menelaus
2
. The attitudes express horror at the disaster
3
. If the followers of the Greek chiefs are imagined as gathered around this group, awe-struck spectators of the interrupted rite, nothing is wanting to a picture of the moment indicated by Sophocles, when the ‘ill-omened cries’ of Philoctetes ‘filled the camp,’ and at length prompted the cruel resolve to carry him across the narrow strait, and abandon him on the lonely shore of Lemnos. Introduction to Commentary on Sophocles: Philoctetes. Sir Richard C. Jebb. Cambridge. 1932.
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