Let us finish this review of the mythological subjects with a kylix from the Museum in Vienna on which we see _The Contest over the Arms of Achilles_ (Figs. 16 and 17). It will give us an opportunity of studying dramatic themes in the hands of Douris, drawn from epic poetry, and adopted by the writers of tragedy. We know how, later, Sophocles in his _Ajax with the Scourge_, showed the fatal result of the unexpected quarrel arising between Ulysses and Ajax for the possession of the divine weapons, which Thetis had given to her son Achilles. This event was a favourite theme, and had been treated in ceramic painting from the sixth century onwards. In what work and what kind of production did Douris seek his inspiration? We shall always remain ignorant of this. We only wish to show by this example in how great a measure the Greek theatre influenced composition and even the style of painted vases. Several black-figured vases, some of which are in the Louvre, represent this _Contest_; the two heroes have come to blows and are falling upon each other fiercely, while Agamemnon and other Greeks exert themselves to separate them. This fundamental theme was not lost on Douris, for he made use of it on one of the reverses of his kylix (Fig. 16). But, following his fancy or other models of which we know nothing, he adds two other episodes: (1) on the other reverse, _The Voting of the Greek Chiefs_, who all bring their votes in the shape of pebbles, and place them on an altar in the presence of the goddess Athene, thus awarding the victory to Ulysses (Fig. 16); (2) in the interior, _Ulysses and Neoptolemos_, a painting forming, as it were, the heroic catastrophe of the drama, where the victor renounces the glorious weapons and restores them generously to the son of Achilles, so that he in turn may wear them and accomplish the ruin of the Trojans (Fig. 17). Here, again, Douris’ favourite manner of composition results in a trilogy. We have the three acts in a tragedy, dominated by the memory of Achilles and the epic of the Trojan war. The fact will at once be recalled that to the Greek theatre, as conceived by Æschylus and his immediate predecessors, a similar arrangement was not unknown. We find many such examples of about the time of the Persian wars, not only by Douris, but by his rivals as well.