How deeply the Etruscans understood the Greek identity is hard to know. However, there is evidence from painted tombs that Etruscan women participated in feasts in which Greek pots were used, which is different from Greek practice. We assume that Etruscans used them in the ways the Greeks used them, wine cups for drinking, hydria for serving water, and kraters (like the Euphronios vase) to mix wine and water together, likely on a special occasion, given their value. and thousands were placed in Etruscan tombs so we can safely assume that they were desired and valued by their buyers-although not much is known about how they were used. Thousands of Athenian pots were sold to the Etruscans from the 8th to the 3rd century B.C.E.

Indeed, it is unclear how long the pot remained in Greece but at some point, it traveled across the central Mediterranean Sea to Etruria (the land of the Etruscans, the central area of Italy, around Rome). Despite this, the Euphronios vase eventually left its homeland forever. The very material of the pot, the story it tells in its decoration, and the symposium for which it was made all reflect a deeply Hellenic identity. An Athenian would have known the dark prophecy of the death of Sarpedon, and no doubt such an image would have inspired drinkers to reflect on a range of topics, such as the inevitability of death, the imperfect power of the gods, the fate of great warriors, and the primacy of burial rituals.

Sarpedon was killed by Patroclus, who is then killed by Hector (prince of Troy), an event which leads to his death at the hands of the famous warrior Achilles (but not before Hector prophesizes Achilles’s death). On the vase we see a slain warrior on the Trojan side, Sarpedon carried off the battlefield by the gods of sleep and night, to be returned to his homeland for proper burial.

The pot has painted scenes on two sides, the most remarkable of which illustrates a moment from Homer’s Iliad, recounting an episode in the Trojan War between the Achaeans (Greeks) against the city of Troy (which was also largely Greek).

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