Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Iphiclus.
The gallery
The François Vase (Calydonian Boar Hunt frieze)
Kleitias (painter) and Ergotimos (potter), c. 570 BC
On the upper band of this celebrated Attic black-figure volute krater, the Athenian master Kleitias painted the Calydonian boar hunt as a densely labelled procession of named heroes converging on the great boar. Crucially for Iphiclus, the painter inscribed the names of his hunters beside their figures, and Iphiklos appears among the assembled Thestiad and Aetolian spearmen who ring the beast alongside Meleager, Peleus, Atalanta and Melanion. The vase is among the earliest and most authoritative visual records of the hunt's full cast, making it one of the few ancient images that explicitly identifies Iphiclus the son of Thestius by name. Found at Chiusi, it is now in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Florence.
The Calydonian Hunt (Laconian kylix, tondo)
Naucratis Painter (Hunt Painter), c. 555 BC
The circular interior (tondo) of this Laconian black-figure drinking cup compresses the Calydonian boar hunt into a tight ring of hunters driving their spears into the charging boar. The composition shows the band of Aetolian and Thestiad spearmen — the kinsmen and companions among whom Iphiclus, son of Thestius and uncle of Meleager, took the field — closing on the animal from both sides. In the Apollodoran tradition it was Iphiclus who first struck the boar, the very pretext that later set his brothers, the Thestiadae, against Meleager over the spoils. The cup, 12.5 cm high and 20 cm across, is held in the Louvre (E 670), Paris.
Sarcophagus with the Calydonian Hunt
Unknown (Roman workshop), Roman Imperial period (2nd–3rd century AD)
This Roman marble sarcophagus, carved in high relief from Proconnesian marble, unfolds the Calydonian boar hunt across its front face: Meleager and the goddess Artemis anchor a crowded throng of mounted and on-foot hunters spearing the boar. Roman funerary sculptors favoured the subject because it bundled an entire heroic company into one frieze, and the press of Aetolian spearmen around Meleager stands for the band of his kinsmen — including his maternal uncle Iphiclus and the other sons of Thestius — who hunted at his side. The relief is preserved in the Capitoline Museums (Palazzo dei Conservatori), Rome (inv. MC 917).
Meleager et Atalanta
After Giulio Romano; engraved by François Louis Lonsing, 1773 (after a Renaissance design)
This eighteenth-century engraving reproduces a design by the Renaissance master Giulio Romano, staging the Calydonian boar hunt as a vigorous tangle of bodies: Atalanta draws her bow at the far left while Meleager lunges with his spear, surrounded by the company of hunters who joined the Aetolian prince. Iphiclus, son of Thestius, belongs to that hunting party as Meleager's maternal uncle and fellow Calydonian — the kinsmen who throng behind the two protagonists in such scenes. The print transmits a classical theme through the lens of the Italian Renaissance and the French print culture of the 1770s.