hare are larger than the males of the species.) “When a tunic with embroidered border reaching to the knee, going it springs,” says Xenophon of the hare. “No one has that I may slay wild beasts.”42 ever seen or will ever see a hare walking.”35 Hares possess excellent senses of sight, smell, and hearing; they If the hare-tamer of 77.AO.82 does represent Artemis, or a were the fastest of the wild animals of ancient Italy; and related female divinity, the emphasis is on her aspect as they can dodge and change direction quickly or dive into young virgin goddess of the hunt, a double-edged role: as streams if needed, as they are able swimmers.36 a fertility deity, she ensures the hunt and the well-being, safety, and reproduction of wild fauna, but as a hunter A successful chase would no doubt attest to the hunter’s herself, she is lethal.43 If the amber represents Potnia great fleetness of foot, command of the coursers, perhaps, Theron, the hares may underline her chthonic aspect.44 and success with the throwing stick. Catching a hare The Grächwilhydriahandle may exemplify this. The might also be the result of a good snare. The hares of fauna around the divinity represent her broad influence: 77.AO.82 are in a crouching pose, alert yet carried head she controls the earth dwellers, the lions; those who live downward and encircled in the arms of the smaller both above and below the earth, the hares and snakes; figure, emphasizing the power of the hunter. and the hunter in the sky, the raptor—whose prey can be all creatures of the underground, the earth, and the sky. The wide-open eyes of the hares may specifically allude to The hares and snakes reiterate the connection of the the ancient belief that the animal slept with its eyes open divinity with the realm below. and was thus always vigilant. Since the hare is also a burrower, a creature that moves between the earth and Hunting itself connects two realms, the outside, the wild, the subterranean realm, it had, like the snake, chthonic the nonlocal, and the unfamiliar with the inside, the associations. domestic, the local, and the familiar, as Mary Helms suggests.45 Hunters are often seen as shamans who Hares rarely accompany figures in the mastery pose. mediate between these two worlds and have the Lions are the most common subject, long-necked uncommon ability to participate in unknown worlds.46 waterfowl (especially waders) the second most common, and horses the third. There appears to be but one extant In Egypt, the hare was the sacred animal of Wenet, an example of a hare-grasping female divinity: the main anthropomorphic goddess who wore a standard on her subject of the handle of a Laconian mid-sixth-century head with a recumbent hare. According to Plutarch, the bronzehydriafound at Grächwil, Switzerland.37 The Egyptians esteemed the hare as a symbol of divine figure, called by some scholars Artemis and by others qualities, because of its swiftness and acute senses. The Potnia Theron, stands atop lions and bearded snakes and relation of the hare to Osiris, which has been variously holds a pair of live hares firmly in her hands, one head affirmed, is unexplained but may have to do with the upward and the other head downward. A raptor is animal’s burrowing. In Greece, the hare is linked with perched atop her crown. other female and male divinities as well. One of the earliest marble korai, a headless figure from Samos In some societies today, birds and hares are among the (Berlin, Staatliche Museen 1750), holds a young hare.47 first wild prey children learn to hunt, chase, or trap.38 Of Previously interpreted as an offerant to Aphrodite, it has course, hare hunting was not limited to the young in the now been associated with Hera. Another Samian statuette ancient world; Xenophon’s Cynegiticus, for instance, is of a kore holding a hare, a recent find, has also been especially concerned with chasing hares. As an animal of considered a votive gift to Hera.48 A marble kore the wild, the hare belonged to the deities of the hunt. consecrated in the Milesian sanctuary of Artemis Kithone/ Xenophon recommends that a hound be loosed on a hare Chitone holds a bird in her hand; Katerina Karakasi only after a vow has been registered to Apollo and interprets this kore as venerating Artemis not only as a Artemis the Hunter, and that hunters dedicate newborn fertility and vegetation goddess, but also as the goddess of hares to Artemis.39 Not only did Artemis watch over the 49 the hunt. newborn, as noted earlier; she also protected the unborn.40Callimachus, writing in the third century B.C. If the amber tamer is male, the hares may indicate a and drawing on a wealth of ancient tradition, claims that hunter-tamer, and Artemis’s brother may be called up. Artemis’s main pursuits are “the bow and the shooting of Dionysos, too, is associated with the hare: youths carry hares and the spacious dance and sport upon the dead hares in the company of the god; on two vases of the mountains.”41 Callimachus also refers to Artemis as Amasis Painter, women (maenads) bring live hares to Chitone, and his Artemis asks Zeus to “give me to gird me Dionysos; and on a vase by Lydos, a small satyr leans down to pet a hare in a scene with Dionysos and his 116 ORIENTALIZING GROUP