The interchange of typical compositions among vase-painters, by which one type frequently did duty for a variety of subjects, makes it very difficult to decide how far scenes of daily life were intended by the artist to convey a legendary significance; and this difficulty is increased by the fact that the painters were, practically at all periods, in the habit of adding mythological names at haphazard to their figures, with the object of imparting a supposititious interest to their design. This seems to have been especially the case in the period following the great compositions of Polygnotos and Mikon. Thus on a r.f. pyxis in the British Museum (E 769) we have a scene which is apparently no more than an ordinary group of women at toilet, but each of the figures has a familiar mythological name, Iphigeneia, Danae, Helene, Klytaimnestra, and Kassandra.

It was formerly the custom among archaeologists to interpret every scene, no matter how commonplace, as mythological or symbolic; in the natural reaction which has set in after this, I think perhaps we may occasionally overlook the full significance of some scenes which, apparently of ordinary daily life, really have had a deeper meaning to those who made them. Take for example such subjects as occur in the sculptured pediments of temples; a warrior setting out in his chariot, or the meeting of two warriors; these scenes, which are in their local surroundings full of significance, would convey nothing to us if we had not the independent evidence of literature or of locality which explains them.