it is one of the few scenes that include the god to whom the offering is being made
along with the sacrificers (Figure 26.8). Four males prepare to sacrifice a he-goat at an
altar in front of a temple in which the god Apollo, with a laurel branch, sits on a
throne observing them. The temple is indicated by two doric columns and an
architrave; a tripod on a doric column stands beside the altar. But before we look at
the details of the sacrifice, a word should be said about the way painters and sculptors
conceived of deities.
The conventions of archaic and classical Greek art were such that the human body,
mortal or immortal, was almost always depicted as an ideal form. Thus, for painters
and sculptors, context and attributes (clothing or accessories) were the only ways to
distinguish gods from mortals. When looking at the face of Athena or Artemis or
Apollo on a vase or a statue, one sees only an ideal face, but one sees the same ideal
face when looking at a representation, as here, of a priest or an athlete or a hetaira or
even a vase-painter. Lacking attributes or an inscription, it is often difficult to tell
whether a god or a mortal is intended by the figure. For painters and sculptors, beauty
or perfection of form was not unique to immortals and was certainly not a defining
characteristic.
On the Agrigento vase, all of the figures are wreathed with what appear to be laurel
wreaths, as they are in virtually all depictions of sacrifice. A youth to the right of the
altar holds a sacrificial tray with three upright sprigs (kanoun) with his left hand. This
tray is sometimes shown with three semi-circular handles, and from other depictions
Figure 26.7 Potters in their workshop and youths leading an animal to sacrifice
on a fragment of an Attic red-figure krater from the Acropolis. After Graef and Langlotz
1925–33: no. 739
410 T.H. Carpenter