Unchanged by any teller — how the centuries since have seen Pholus.
The gallery
Heracles at Pholus (Attic black-figured hydria)
Unknown (Attic vase-painter), c. 520–510 BC
This Attic black-figured hydria (a calpis-type water vessel, 24.5 cm high) depicts the hospitable reception that defines Pholus in myth: the centaur welcoming Heracles to his Arcadian cave on the hero's Erymanthian-boar quest. Pholus is rendered as a typical centaur with a man's torso joined to a horse's body, greeting his guest in the moment before the fateful opening of the communal centaur wine-jar. The scene crystallizes the friendship between host and hero that Apollodorus records (Bibliotheca 2.5.4) and which would end in Pholus's accidental death by one of Heracles' poisoned arrows. Now in the Louvre, Paris (accession MNE 940).
Heracles, Pholus and the Centaurs (black-figured skyphos)
The Pholoe Painter, c. 590–580 BC
A small Corinthian black-figured skyphos (drinking cup, 9.7 cm high) attributed to the artist conventionally named the Pholoe Painter after this very subject. It shows the climactic battle that erupts after the communal wine-jar is opened at Pholus's cave: Heracles drives off the wild centaurs who swarm at the scent of the wine, the episode in which an errant arrow accidentally wounds Chiron and ultimately costs the gentle Pholus his life. Found at Corinth, the vase places Pholus at the center of the centaur-war cycle so often depicted in archaic Greek art. Now in the Louvre, Paris (accession MNC 677 / L 63).