Detail of a Hydria from Lefkandi (Skoubris tomb 51), with
confronting archers; around 1000 BCE.)
“… two limp archers take aim at each other on an imported Middle Protogeometric hydria, or water jar (imported from where is unknown)… The spineless, concave, crouching (?) men duel with tiny bows held in tiny arms, and there is no sense of tension or malice. Their symmetry is flaccid, and they suffer the indignity of not even occupying the front of the vase. All in all, they are not much. But they are the only painted human figures we have at the moment from the Greek mainland in the first 250 years of the Dark Age. They are intriguing only because they are so alone. perhaps they represent the last flickering of a dying Bronze Age pictorial tradition. They hardly constitute a Dark Age tradition all by themselves, nor do they signal a pictorial renaissance. They are isolated, stray events in an otherwise pictureless age. They are without influence and are therefore without consequence.” Jeff Hurwitt, The Art and Culture of Early Greece, p. 55.
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