Amphora of Hermonax in Würzburg

Also, long hair was no longer in fashion at the time of the creation of the vase and referred back to the Late Archaic, heroic period of the Persian Wars.

On the one hand, it has been suggested that the young man is Achilles receiving from his mother Thetis the weapons made by Hephaestus during the Trojan War and that the image derives from a scene in book 19 of Homer's Iliad.

Generally, the only women who were depicted naked in Greek art were goddesses, mythological figures like Maenads or Nymphs, and prostitutes.

A second theory sees the young man, in Athenian custom at this age probably not yet married, simply as a Greek warrior, preparing for a campaign.

The reverse of the vase shows a man with a spear in the process of leaving, receiving a patera from a woman who fills it from a jug.