Divinità a poppa: Zeus Soter protettore della navigazione su un’hydria capuana a Karlsruhe

On a Campanian red-figure hydria, purchased by the Badisches Landesmuseumin Karlsruhe since 1886 and there preserved with the inventory number B 2400, a ship’s stern concludes a ritual farewell scene between a young man and a woman. The meticulous representation of naval elements, such as hull, rudder, boarding ladder, helmsman’s seat, culminates in the characterization of the stylis, a typical piece of furniture in the stern of ancient ships, to which are tied sashes and upon which is fixed a tablet, with a painted two-words inscription: ΖΗΥΣΣΩΤΗΡ. The review of this interesting scene offers the starting point for some new considerations regarding the symbolic value of the voyage by sea and the evocation of Zeus with a soteric function, in the cultural-religious and historical-political context of the decades during which the workshop of Laghetto, Caivanoand ErreraPainters was operating in ancient Capua.