The traditional tendency finds a refuge, if anywhere, in the figure scenes. In heraldic scenes of battle, in the horse-taming ‘runner with bent knee,’ in Satyr and Nymph running to meet each other, it asserts itself: but the living interest makes one forget the ornamental scheme. Lively drastic description is the strong point of the ‘Caeretan’ painter. His broadly treated scenes of hunting, fighting, and wrestling, the fine delineations [Illustration: PLATE XLII. Fig. 79. HERAKLES SLAYS BUSIRIS AND HIS FOLLOWERS: FROM A CÆRETAN HYDRIA. _From Furtwängler-Reichhold, Griechische Vasenmalerei._ Fig. 80. SPARTAN KYLIX.] [Illustration: PLATE XLIII. Fig. 81. HERAKLES BRINGS CERBERUS TO EURYSTHEUS: CÆRETAN HYDRIA.] of Satyr life, of the Heraklean legend, of Hermes and his theft of the kine, of the drunk and lame Hephaistos, of Europa carried by the bull over the sea, leave nothing to be desired in the way of original invention, healthy vigour, and naive vividness, and in their aversion to the typical and abstract they are diametrically opposed to Attic painting. The stocky, strong man Herakles with the curly hair who dispatches the inhospitable Pharaoh, Busiris, and his cowardly throng (Fig. 79), or who with the hound of hell frightens the Argive king into a wine jar (Fig. 81), are cabinet pictures of vigorous humour. The local colouring is also unmistakeable. The altar with volute profiles is an East Ionic architectural shape, the knowledge of the Egyptian and black races, of Egyptian priestly dress, of monkeys, can only have been obtained in Africa; the origin of the Busiris legend is only conceivable in the neighbourhood of the kingdom of the Pharaohs. Thus though the Caeretan vases found a local continuation in Etruria, because of this local colouring one cannot imagine them made by Ionian colonists in Caere.