Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Amphidamas.
The gallery
Gathering of the Argonauts (Attic red-figure calyx-krater, Louvre G 341)
Attributed to the Niobid Painter, c. 460–450 BC
On the principal face of this Attic red-figure calyx-krater, the Niobid Painter arranges the heroes of the Argo across several registers in the moments before their voyage — the scene most often read as the gathering of the Argonauts around Heracles. Amphidamas of Arcadia, named in the Argonaut catalogue as a son of Aleus who sailed from Tegea (Apollonius, Argonautica 1.161–171), belongs to precisely this assembled company; he is not individuated but stands among the anonymous crewmen the painter ranges across the vessel. The krater, dated about 460–450 BC and now in the Louvre (G 341), is one of the masterworks of early Classical Athenian vase painting, exploiting the calyx form's broad field to stack figures on uneven ground-lines in a way that anticipates the lost monumental wall paintings of the period.
The Argonauts among the Bebryces (drawing after the Ficoroni Cista)
Unknown engraver (after the Etruscan bronze cista of Novios Plautios), Cista c. 340–330 BC; line drawing published 1876–1926 (Nordisk familjebok)
This nineteenth-century line drawing reproduces the engraved frieze that wraps the body of the Ficoroni Cista, a celebrated Etruscan bronze toiletry casket of about 340–330 BC, signed by Novios Plautios at Rome. The continuous scene depicts the Argonauts after landing in the country of the Bebryces, where Pollux bound and boxed their king Amycus — here Pollux is shown training at a punching bag at the centre while his shipmates rest and tend the Argo. As a member of the Argo's crew listed in the catalogues of Apollonius and Hyginus, the Arcadian Argonaut Amphidamas is among the heroes who make up this landing party. The drawing, published in the Swedish encyclopedia Nordisk familjebok, preserves the legible flow of the engraving, which is one of the finest surviving examples of Italic figural metalwork.