Gaming Heroes : Ajax and Achilles on a Lekythos in Missouri

Abstract

"Toward the end of the sixth century B.C., a new scene became very popular in Attic vase painting. It showed two armed warriors playing a board game, and most scholars believe that it may have been the famous vase painter Exekias who first painted the scene, and that he painted it at least twice. His painting on an amphora now in the Vatican is well known to every student. Exekias has clearly labeled his figures; the bareheaded warrior to the left is Achilles, that to the right is Ajax. The subject of two warriors gaming was immediately picked up and repeated with variations for some fifty years until about 480 B.C. A particularly interesting example of one of the later renderings of the subject is in the collections of the Museum of Art and Archaeology of the University of Missouri-Columbia."--First paragraph.