Hunting the Eschata: An Imagined Persian Empire on the Lekythos of Xenophantos

by Hallie Malcolm Franks

Hesperia, Volume 78, Issue 4
Page(s): 455-480
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25622708
Year: 2009
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ABSTRACT:

The so-called lekythos of Xenophantos presents an image unparalleled in Greek vase painting. In a scene that belongs fully to neither the world of reality nor that of myth, Persians hunt griffins, among other prey. The author offers a new reading of the scene as a fictionalized account of Persian conquest, in which the borders of the empire have reached the edges of the earth, the eschata. Such a scenario has parallels in Herodotos's stories of the Persians' (inappropriate) territorial aspirations; in these accounts, as Persians seek to expand their power beyond its natural limits, they are met with failure and punishment.