While it might not be the most thrilling fragment aesthetically (the surface is a bit worn and the painter not necessarily top tier), I love this black-figure survivor because it shows the very best of the frequently weird Greek mythological birth stories.
Zeus’ extramarital proclivities are well known, and his dalliance with Metis (a nymph and goddess of skill and crafts) might have been one of them (in other versions she was his first wife). But spooked by prophecies about Metis’ potentially powerful offspring he did the normal thing, transformed her into a fly, and swallowed her.
Unbeknownst to him, she was already pregnant with their first child, who gestated in his skull – kitted out in full battle dress – and began to clang her weapons around to give her father an ungodly headache. Hephaistos was summoned to perform an impromptu craniotomy with his axe, and the little goddess sprang out Zeus’ forehead, armed to the teeth and with grey eyes flashing.
This spectacle happened in the midst of assembled gods, and in complete illustrations (it was a popular theme in black-figure pottery) they gesticulate madly to one another – impressed by the little newcomer and perhaps not so very sympathetic to Zeus and his splitting headache…
