On the vase-painting in fig. 42 from a cylix[533] in the Museo Gregoriano of the Vatican, we have a charming representation of the riddle-answering Oedipus, whose name is written _Oidipodes_, sitting meditating in front of the oracle. The Sphinx on her column is half monument, half personality; she is a very human monster, she has her lion-body, but she is a lovely attentive maiden. From her lips come the letters και τρι, which may mean _and three_ or _and three (-footed)_. In the field is a delicate decorative spray, which, occurring as it does on vases with a certain individuality of drawing, seems to be, as it were, the signature of a particular master[534]. [Illustration: FIG. 42.] The Sphinx in fig. 42 is all oracular, but occasionally, on vases of the same date, she appears in her other function as the ‘man-snatching Ker.’ She leaves her pedestal and carries off a Theban youth. The 5th century vase-painter with his determined euphemism, even when he depicts her carrying off her prey, makes her do it with a certain Attic gentleness, more like a death-Siren than a Harpy. Aeschylus[535] in the _Seven against Thebes_ describes her as the monster she is; the Sphinx on the shield of Parthenopaeus is a horrid bogey, the ‘reproach of the state,’ ‘eater of raw-flesh,’ with hungry jaws, bringing ill-luck to him who bears her on his ensign. [Illustration: FIG. 43.] In the curious vase-painting in fig. 43, a design from a late Lower Italy krater[536] in the museum at Naples, the Sphinx is wholly oracular, and this time she must answer the riddle, not ask it. The Sphinx is seated on a rocky mound, near which stands erect a snake. The snake is not, I think, without meaning; it is the oracular beast of the earth-oracle. The Silenus who has come to consult the oracle holds in his hand a bird. The scene would be hopelessly enigmatic but for one of the fables that are current under the name of Aesop[537], which precisely describes the situation. ‘A certain bad man made an agreement with some one to prove that the Delphic oracle was false, and when the appointed day came, he took a sparrow in his hand and covered it with his garment and came to the sanctuary, and standing in front of the oracle, asked whether the thing in his hand was alive or dead, and he meant if the oracle said it was dead, to show the sparrow alive, but if the oracle said it was alive, to strangle it first and then show it. But the god knew his wicked plan, and said to him, “Have done, for it depends on you whether what you hold is dead or living.” The story shows plainly that the divinity is not lightly to be tempted.’