[Illustration: FIG. 124. NIKE SACRIFICING BULL (BRITISH MUSEUM F 66).]
She appears in a chariot drawn by female Centaurs,[1064] or accompanied by Chrysos and Ploutos (see above),[1065] and she also conducts a victorious warrior in this manner.[1066] In other instances she pours a libation to a warrior,[1067] who is sometimes inscribed with a fanciful name[1068]; or, again, as anticipating his victory, she brings him his helmet.[1069] She is, however, more frequently seen in athletic scenes, crowning a victorious athlete,[1070] rider,[1071] or charioteer,[1072] or superintending the games in the palaestra,[1073] torch-races,[1074] or the taking of an oath by an athlete.[1075] In musical contests she performs the same functions, crowning or pouring libations to a successful performer.[1076] She crowns a successful potter in his workshop,[1077] and also a poet (?).[1078] A being of similar character, who may perhaps be recognised in the figure of a winged youth on some B.F. and early R.F. vases, is Agon, the personification of athletic contests.[1079]
On the later R.F. vases the figure of Nike is often duplicated, probably more to produce a balanced composition than for any other reason.[1080]
VII. The next class of personifications is that of abstract ethical ideas. Even on the earlier vases there are found a considerable number of these, such as Eris (Strife); but on the later, unlimited play is given to the tendency of the age (seen also in sculpture and painting) to invest every abstract idea with a personality, apart from any idea of deification or mythological import.
Among these, by far the most numerous examples are, of course, those relating to the passion of Love. We have already traced the development of the type and conception of Eros in vase-paintings, and in the same place we have had occasion to speak of the associated ideas which became personified as subsidiary conceptions to that of Love, such as Peitho (Persuasion), Pothos (Yearning), and Himeros (Charm), Phthonos (Envy or _Amor invidiosus_), and Talas (Unfortunate or Unrequited Love).[1081] Of a similar type are the feminine conceptions associated with Aphrodite-Eudaimonia (Happiness), Euthymia (Cheerfulness), and the like.[1082]
