TERRACOTTA PLAQUE WITH TRAGIC SCENE, C. 20-10 BCE. PALAZZO MASSIMO ALLE TERME
This terracotta panel was found in the columbarium of P. Numitorius Hilareus along the via Salaria. It shows a play in progress against a backdrop of elaborate architecture. Two small figures at left are reacting like a chorus to the tragic events of a play by the late Republican author Accius based on the sack of Troy. Ulysses, the Latin form of Odysseus, stands at right, calling Astyanax, heir to the throne of Troy, to come to him. The boy, at centre left, is being held back by his mother Andromache. But his fate has been determined: either he will grow up to be a warrior who will devastate Achaia, or the Achaeans will kill him now. Ulysses throws him from the battlements of the burning city of Troy. The tragedy is that Ulysses chooses to commit a moral crime in the present to avoid a theoretical danger in the future.
A #polychrome #terracotta #relief in #palazzoMassimo alle Terme in #Rome from the late C1 BCE shows a scene from a now mostly lost #tragedy by #Accius, #Astyanax. We can see Hector's widow Andromache holding her son Astyanax back as Ulysses calls him, to throw him from the walls.