#playing into her birth being a literal bell toll of doom for demi-mankind. but also being born from an egg is straight up funny and silly.

[red-moon-at-night]

Etruscan or Faliscan Red Figure Stamnos, attributed to the Painter of the Oxford Ganymede, Classical Period, 400–350 B.C.

Descriptions below taken from MFA Boston:

Side A: Polydeukes is binding Amykos to a tree trunk in front of a fountain, which consists of a stream flowing from the center of a flower into a tub. A plant, a folded cloak, and an alabastron are represented on the ground below. Polydeukes braces himself with one knee against the tree to draw tight the bindings, which themselves consist of young saplings. Like Amykos, he is infibulated and wears leather boxing thongs.

Amykos, king of the savage Bebrykes of Bithynia compelled all strangers to box with him, otherwise denying them drink from the spring. Polydeukes, a skilled boxer, overcame him and punished his hubris by binding him. Except for the fountain, the composition of side A is very close to that on the bronze Ficoroni Cista in the Villa Giulia; the postures of the figures are nearly identical, and the cloak and alabastron are present at the base of the tree.

Side B: Hermes, Polydeukes, and a satyr old and fat enough to be called Silenos are shown in a scene possibly inspired by a satyr play. Hermes stands at the left, his right leg propped on the tendril of an adjacent palmette. He wears high-laced sandals and a winged helmet and carries his caduceus in his left hand. He looks back to the right at Polydeukes, who stands looking at the egg in his left hand that contains his sister Helen. In his other hand is a mattock, with which he will crack open the egg. Approaching from the right is Silenos, wearing shoes and carrying a situla in his right hand and a phiale in his left.

The subject of side B may be unique. Beazley listed two vases and eight mirrors representing either Hermes or Polydeukes delivering the egg of Helen to Leda or Tyndareos or both (EVP, pp. 115-116). Both the god and the hero are present on this vase, but Silenos is a poor substitute for either of the two recipients. Beazley suggested that Polydeukes has just discovered the egg while loosening the soil in the palestra with his mattock, a preparation for exercising on the hard ground (EVP, p. 60). The egg had been hidden there by Hermes, which explains his presence. Silenos comes up with a bucket of water to wash the egg (or perhaps hoping to boil it!). The presence of Silenos suggests the influence of satyric drama; compare the phlyax actor on an Apulian bell-krater, who cracks open Helen's egg with an axe (Bari 3899: RVAp. I, p. 148, no. 96; LIMC, IV, pl. 291,Helene 5) According to Horace, Polydeukes and his brother Kastor were also born from an egg (Sat,2,1,26). Evidence that this story was known early enough to be parodied by an Apulian vase-painter of the mid-fourth century may be provided by an unpublished Gnathian bell-krater recently in the New York art market, with an actor in female guise watching an egg on an altar give birth to an erect phallus.