Black-Figure Pelike: Two Visitors to the Sphinx (Oedipus Confronting the Theban Sphinx?) (obverse), Hermes Playing the Flute to two Satyrs (reverse)

The two images that appear on this pelike – a jar used to hold wine or oil – may be thematically related. The sphinx in the Oedipus legends was a proposer of riddles, and Hermes was renowned for his trickery. At the same time, the two images may be seen as illustrating the opposition between physical activity (dancing) and intellectual effort (answering the sphinx’s riddle). According to myth, the sphinx – a figure with a lion’s body and a human head – guarded the city of Thebes by asking all passersby the riddle of the three ages of man: What creature walks on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs in the evening? The sphinx devoured any who could not answer her fatal question, but Oedipus was able to solve it. Hermes for the most part plays a subordinate role in myth, as a messenger of the gods or a leader of souls to the afterworld. The Homeric Hymn to Hermes recounts the legend that on the day of his birth he invented the lyre, which is why this and other vases show him playing that instrument.