fifth century BCE

The Seal of Athenades

Books on ancient warfare often reproduce certain pieces of Greek art from the middle of the fifth century BCE, including a rhyton shaped like a screaming Persian, a series of vase paintings with Greeks striking down cowering barbarians, and another where a man naked except for a cloak and unarmed except for an erection charges at another wearing Scythian dress with the caption “I am Eurymedon / I stand bent over” (the Athenians and their allies won a famous victory over the Persians at the Eurymedon River in southern Anatolia, although spoilsports sometimes point out that Eurymedon seems to be the pursuer instead of the pursued). In the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, there is another Greek depiction of a foreigner which is usually left out, no doubt because the authors are not sure how to obtain the rights to reproduce it.

The oblong face of a signet ring depicting a man in tunic and trousers and hood sitting on a folding chair with a bow at his knee and examining an arrow.
The face of the signet ring of Athenades. In the State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Inv. No. Π.1854.26. Photo from Yuri Kalashnik, Greek Gold in the Hermitage Collection: Antique Jewellery from the Northern Black Sea Coast. (The State Hermitage Publishers: St. Petersburg, 2014) pp. 75, 76.
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