The phalera was a decorative disc, used either to adorn the breastplate of a soldier, or harness of a horse. Phaleras were usually produced from gold, silver, bronze or glass. They were often impressively embellished, serving as a status symbol and mark of military achievement, like a medal.
In the Odyssey, Homer described Scylla as having twelve feet, six necks and many ferocious teeth with her loins girdled by the heads of baying dogs. She lived in the water opposite the whirlpool, Charybdis and from her lair in a cave she devoured whatever ventured within reach. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Books XIII–XIV, she was said to have been originally human in appearance but transformed out of jealousy by Circe into her fearful shape.
Unlike Scylla, Triton, a Greek deity of the sea, was born as a half-man, half-fish. The earliest source on Triton is to be found in Hesiod (Theogony, 930-933), who describes his genealogy: ‘And of Amphitrite and the loud-roaring Earth-Shaker [i.e. Poseidon] was born great wide-ruling Triton, and he owns the depths of the sea, living with his dear mother and the lord his father in their golden house, an awful god.’ Greek pottery depicting a half-human, half-fish being bearing an inscription of ‘Triton’ is popular by the 6th century BC. It has also been hypothesised that by this time ‘Triton’ has become a generic term for a merman. Tritons in groups or multitudes began to be depicted in Classical Greek art by around the 4th century BC.
A number of ancient authors, including Homer, named Triton as a possible father of Scylla, explaining their pairing in this fine example.
