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Pausanias, in his
fifth book describing Elis, gives the following description for the
chest.
There is a chest made of cedar wood, with figures on it, some of ivory,
some of gold, others carved out of the wood. It was in this chest that
the tyrant of Corinth Kypselos, was hidden by his mother when the
Bacchidae were trying to find him after his birth. In gratitude for the
saving of Kypselos, his descendants, Kypselids as they are
called, dedicated the chest at Olympia. The Corinthians, at that
time, called chests kypselai, and the name Kypselos comes from
this word. Most of the figures on the chest they have inscriptions,
written in the ancient characters, but in a few cases the letters read
straight on and in others the form of the writing is what the Greeks
call bustrophedon, which is as follows: at the end of the line the
second line turns back, as the runners do when are running the double
race. Moreover the inscriptions on the chest are written in winding
characters and it is difficult to read them.
 At the bottom of the chest, Oenomaos is chasing
Pelops, who holds Hippodameia. Each of them has two horses, but Pelops
horses have wings.
Next is engraved the house of Amphiaraos, and an old woman carries the
baby Amphilochos.  In front
of the house stands Eriphyle with the necklace, and next to her are her
daughters Eurydice and Demonassa, and the boy Alkmaeon, who is naked.
Asios in his epic makes out Alkmena also to be a daughter of Amphiaraos
and Eriphyle.
The chariot of Amphiaraos is driven by Baton, who holds the reins in one
hand and a spear in the other. Amphiaraos has one foot on the chariot
and his sword is drawn. He looks towards Eriphyle with anger and with
difficulty refrains from striking her.
 After the
house of Amphiaraos come the games at the funeral of Pelias, with the
spectators looking at the competitors. Heracles is seated on a throne,
and behind him is a woman. There is no inscription saying who the woman
is, but she is playing on a Phrygian, not a Greek, flute.
 The chariots with pairs of horses are
driven by Pisos, son of Perieres, and Asterion, son of Cometas (Asterion
is said to have been one of the Argonauts), Polydeukes, Admetos and
Euphemos.
The poets mention that Euphemos was son of Poseidon and a
companion of Jason on his voyage to Colchis. He is the one who wins the
chariot race.
 The men who
are ready to box are Admetos and Mopsos, the son of Abykos. Between them
stands a man playing the flute, as in our days, it is customed to play
the flute, when the competitors are jumping in the pentathlum.
The wrestling match between Jason and Peleus is an even one.
Eurybotas is shown throwing the rings; he must be some famous
ring-thrower.
 Those engaged in a
running-race are Melanion, Neotheus and Phalareus; the fourth runner is
Argeios, and the fifth is Iphiclos. Iphiclos is the winner, and Acastos
is holding out the crown to him. He is probably the father of the
Protesilaos who joined in the war against Troy.
 Tripods too are set here, prizes of course for
the winners; and there are the daughters of Pelias, though the only one
with her name inscribed is Alcestis.
 Iolaos, who voluntarily helped
Heracles in his labours, is shown as a victor in the chariot race.
At this point the funeral games of Pelias come to an end, and Heracles,
with Athena standing beside him, is shooting at the hydra, the beast in the
river Amymone. Heracles can be easily recognized by his exploit and his
attitude, so his name is not inscribed by him.
There is also Phineos the Thracian, and the sons of Boreas are chasing
the harpies away from him.
In the second space of the chest and starting from the left,
there is a figure of a woman holding on her right arm a sleeping white
child and on her left a black child, who is also asleep. The children
have their feet turned in different ways. The inscriptions mention, as
one could infer without them, that the figures are Death
and Sleep, with Night their nurse.
A beautiful woman is punishing an ugly one, choking her with one hand
and with the other striking her with a staff. It is Justice
who punishes Injustice.
Two other women are pounding in mortars with pestles; they are supposed
to be expert in medicine, though there is no inscription for them.
The man who is followed by a woman, are made known by the hexameter
verses, which run thus:
Idas brings back, not against her
will,
Fair-ankled Marpessa, daughter of Evenos,
whom Apollo carried off.
A man wearing a tunic is holding in his right hand a cup, and in his
left a necklace and Alkmena is taking them. The scene represents the
Greek story how Zeus in the form of Amphitryon had intercourse with
Alkmena.
 In the next scene Menelaos, who wears a
breastplate and carries a sword, rushes to kill Helen, so it is clear
that Troy has been captured.
Medeia is seated upon a throne, while Jason stands on her right and
Aphrodite on her left. The inscription for them says:
Jason weds Medeia, as Aphrodite orders.
 There are also figures of Muses who
sing, with Apollo leading the song and the inscription reads:
This is Leto's son, prince Apollo, far-shooting;
Around him are the Muses, a graceful choir,
whom he is leading.
 Atlas, as the story has it, is
supporting heaven and earth upon his shoulders; he is also carrying the
apples of the Hesperides. A man holding a sword is coming towards Atlas.
This everybody can see is Heracles, though he is not mentioned specially
in the inscription, which reads:
Here is Atlas holding heaven,
but he will let go the apples.
There is also Ares wearing armour and leading Aphrodite. The inscription
by him is “Enyalios”.
 There is also a figure of Thetis as a maid;
Peleus is taking hold of her, and from the hand of Thetis a snake is
darting at Peleus.
The sisters of Medusa, with wings, are chasing Perseus, who is flying.
Only Perseus has his name inscribed on him.
On the third space of the chest are military scenes.
The greater number of the figures are on foot, though there are some
knights in two-horse chariots. About the soldiers one may infer that
they are advancing to battle, but that they will recognize and greet
each other.
Two different accounts of them are given by the guides. Some have said
that they are the Aetolians with Oxylus and the ancient Eleans, and that
they are meeting in remembrance of their original descent and as a sign
of their mutual good will. Others declare that the soldiers are meeting
in battle, and that they are Pylians and Arcadians about to fight by the
city Pheia and the river Iardanus.
But it cannot for a moment be admitted that the ancestor of Kypselos, a
Corinthian, having the chest made as a possession for himself, of his
own accord passed over all Corinthian story, and had carved on the chest
foreign events which were not famous.
 The
following interpretation suggested itself to me. Kypselos and his
ancestors came originally from Gonussa above Sikyon, and one of their
ancestors was Melas, the son of Antasus.
But, as I have already related in my account of Corinth, Aletes
refused to admit as settlers Melas and the host with him, being nervous
about an oracle which had been given him from Delphi; but at last Melas,
using every art of winning favours, and returning with entreaties every
time he was driven away, persuaded Aletes however reluctantly to receive
them. One might infer that this army is represented by the figures
wrought upon the chest.
 In the fourth space on the chest as you go
round from the left is Boreas, who has carried off Oreithyia; instead of
feet he has serpents' tails.
Then comes the combat between Heracles and Geryones, who is represented
as three men joined to one another.
There is Theseus holding a lyre, and by his side is Ariadne gripping a
crown.
 Achilles and Memnon are fighting; their mothers
stand by their side.
There is also Melanion by whom is Atalanta holding a young deer.
 Ajax is fighting a duel with Hector,
according to the challenge, and between the pair stands Strife in the
form of a most repulsive woman.
Another figure of Strife is in the sanctuary of Ephesian Artemis;
Calliphon of Samos included it in his picture of the battle at the ships
of the Greeks.
On the chest are also the Dioskuri, one of them a beardless youth, and
between them is Helen.
Aethra, the daughter of Pittheus, lies thrown to the ground under the
feet at Helen. She is clothed in black, and the inscription upon the
group is an hexameter line with the addition of a single word:
The sons of Tyndareus are carrying of Helen,
and are dragging Aethra From Athens.
Such is the way this line is constructed. Iphidamas, the son of Antenor,
is lying, and Coon is fighting for him against Agamemnon. On the shield
of Agamemnon is Fear, whose head is a lion's. The
inscription above the corpse of Iphidamas runs:
Iphidamas, and this
is Coon fighting for him.
The inscription on the shield of Agamemnon runs:
This is the Fear of
mortals:
he who holds him is
Agamemnon.
 There is also Hermes
bringing to Alexander the son of Priam the goddesses of whose beauty he
is to judge, the inscription on them being:
Here is Hermes, who is
showing to Alexander,
that he may arbitrate
Concerning their beauty,
Hera, Athena and Aphrodite.
On what account Artemis has wings on her shoulders I do not know; in her
right hand she grips a leopard, in her left a lion.
 Ajax too is represented dragging
Kassandra from the image of Athena, and by him is also an inscription:
Ajax of Locri is dragging Kassandra
from Athena.
Polyneikes, the son of Oedipos, has fallen on his knee, and Eteokles,
the other son of Oedipos, is rushing on him. Behind Polyneikes stands a
woman with teeth as cruel as those of a beast, and her fingernails are
bent like talons. An inscription by her calls her Doom, implying that
Polyneikes has been carried off by fate, and that Eteokles fully
deserved his end.
Dionysos is lying down in a cave, a bearded figure holding a golden cup,
and clad in a tunic reaching to the feet. Around him are vines,
apple-trees and pomegranate-trees.
 The highest
space (the spaces are five in number) shows no inscription, so that we
can only conjecture what the reliefs mean.
Well, there is a cave and in it a woman sleeping with a man upon a
couch. I was of opinion that they were Odysseus and Circe, basing my
view upon the number of the handmaidens in front of the cave and upon
what they are doing. For the women are four, and they are engaged on the
tasks which Homer mentions in his poetry.
There is a Centaur with only two of his legs those of a horse; his
forelegs are human.
Next come two-horse chariots with women standing in them. The horses
have golden wings, and a man is giving armour to one of the women. I
conjecture that this scene refers to the death of Patroklos; the women
in the chariots, I take it, are Nereids, and Thetis is receiving the
armour from Hephaestos.
And moreover, he who is giving the armour is not strong upon his feet,
and a slave follows him behind, holding a pair of fire-tongs. An account
also is given of the Centaur, that he is Chiron, freed by this time from
human affairs and held worthy to share the home of the gods, who has
come to assuage the grief of Achilles.
Two maidens in a mule-cart, one holding the reins and the other wearing
a veil upon her head, are thought to be Nausicaa, the daughter of
Alcinous, and her handmaiden, driving to the washing-pits.
 The man shooting at Centaurs, some of which he
has killed, is plainly Heracles, and the exploit is one of his.
As to the maker of the chest, I found it impossible to form any
conjecture. But the inscriptions upon it, though possibly composed by
some other poet, are, as I was on the whole inclined to hold, the work
of Eumelos of Corinth.
My main reason for this view is the processional hymn he wrote for
Delos. |
