It is curious and significant that the early vase-painter, in dealing with the story of the daughters of Pandareos, knows of three goddesses only. The design in fig. 82 is from the lid of a pyxis, of early black-figured style, in a private collection at Athens[774]. The vase-painter is concerned mainly with the story of the theft of the great golden dog of Crete. He makes the dog of supernatural size, with a splendid high-curled tail. Pandareos has stolen it, and the theft has been discovered by Hermes, who comes hurriedly up to seize the prize. Pandareos[775] is just making off in eager haste. His two daughters, quaintly enveloped in one cloak to show their close relationship, stand by. Behind Hermes, with his huge kerykeion, come in familiar procession the three ancient maidens—Aphrodite with a wreath, her hair arrayed in a quaint twisted pigtail; Hera with a ram-headed sceptre; Athene with a helmet nearly as big as herself. The goddesses have come a little proleptically; Pandareos is still there, the maidens are not yet ‘alone within their home,’ but the vase-painter wants to tell all he knows, and, not being inspired by Homer, he is faithful to the old three goddesses. Artemis is—nowhere[776]. But, owing to the influence of Homer and the civilization he represented, the figure of Artemis waxes more and more dominant, and this especially by contrast with the Kore of the lower stratum, Aphrodite. In the _Hippolytus_ of Euripides they are set face to face in their eternal enmity. The conflict is for the poet an issue of two moral ideals, but the human drama is played out against the shadowy background of an ancient racial theomachy, the passion of the South against the cold purity of the North. Belonging as she does to this later Northern stratum, the figure of Artemis lies properly outside our province, but to one of the ancient maiden trinity, to Athene, she lent much of her cold, clean strength. An epigram[777] to her honour in the _Anthology_ is worth noting, because it shows, clearly and beautifully, how the maidenhood of the worshipper mirrors itself in the worship of a maiden, whether of the South or of the North: ‘Maid of the Mere, Timaretè here brings, Before she weds, her cymbals, her dear ball To thee a Maid, her maiden offerings, Her snood, her maiden dolls, their clothes and all, Hold, Leto’s Child, above Timaretè Thine hand, and keep her virginal like thee.’ * * * * * It would be a lengthy though in some respects a profitable task to take each maiden form that the great matriarchal goddess assumed and examine it in turn, to enquire into the rise and development of each local Kore, of Dictynna, of Aphaia, of Callisto, of Hecate, of Bendis and the like. Instead it will be necessary to confine ourselves to the three great dominant Korai of the ‘Judgment,’ Hera, Athene and Aphrodite. ATHENE.