This classic style, black figure krater, depicts the Trojan princess Polyxena going to the local well to fill her water jug. Achilles saw her once during the truce that took place for the burial of Hector and fell in love with her. It is said that she offered to marry him if he would agree to influence the Greeks to make peace with Troy.

  While Achilles was in the temple of Apollo negotiating his marriage to Polyxena, Paris shot a poisoned arrow at him, which, guided by Apollo, fatally wounding him in the heel. This was his only vulnerable spot; for Thetis (his mother), had dipped the baby Achilles in the river Styx and had made every part of him invulnerable except the heel by which she held him. So Polyxena never married the man she fell in love with.

After the fall of Troy, Polyxena was captured by the Greeks. Her fate was to be sacrificed on top of Achilles’ tomb, since it is said that the ghost of Achilles demanded it to be done.