Exaiphnes Penthesilea: Figuring out Otherness in Exekias’s Amphora

Exaiphnes is the word employed by Socrates to designate the very instant when he declares to have just had a clever thought (Plato, Cratylus 399a). The present chapter borrows this Platonic expression regarding the exact moment when a significant understanding comes to mind and focuses on Exekias’s amphora depicting Achilles slaying Penthesileia with the aim of discussing how this representation captures the sudden emerging of otherness. Achilles’s massive black shape stands in a strong opposition to the whiteness of the falling Amazon’s skin, suggesting fragility, although this is a convention to denote women. On the other hand, Penthesileia’s garment allude to nature and the wild. The leopard’s skin is fastened at her waist, descending from her torso down to her thighs. The queen’s body communicates the impression of duality through oppositons between female features and wild animal attributes, the latter being further echoed in the indication of a hissing serpent emerging from her helmet. Such marks of untamedness are subdued by the Amazon’s fatal wound under the sharp point of Achilles’s spear, as indicated by the splashes of red ink, signalling blood. This is significant because Penthesileia is killed like a wild animal, in that she gets caught by surprise as she turns to defend herself but meets her death instead. Significantly, the opposite side of the vase depicts Dionysus and his son Oinopion performing a ritual, whilst both sides are connected by spirals, expanding the manifold faces of otherness. Our guiding question in this chapter will be twofold: firstly, ‘to what extent do these depictions contribute to the understanding of Heraclitus fragment 123, Φύσις κρύπτεσθαι φιλεῖ, nature loves to be self-concealing?’ And, furthermore, ‘how do these representations reflect on the semantics of ἀλήθεια, truth or authenticity?’