The tenth of Hercules' twelve labors involved Geryon, a monster with three torsos and six arms. Geryon lived on an island off the coast of Spain. Hercules was to steal his cattle. His oxen were guarded by another monster and a two-headed dog. This was an enormous journey for Hercules, who had been east, but never west, near the Straits of Gibraltar. On his journey, he cleared the lands of monsters and criminals. At the Straits, Hercules set up two pillars to mark the limit of safe travel of the known world at that time. Hercules first killed the dog and the guardian monster, then set out after Geryon and killed him with his arrows. He drove the oxen back over land, destroying serpents and evil creatures wherever he went. On the reverse of the vase, we see the Goddess of Dawn, Eos, mourning over the body of her son, Memnon. Memnon was killed by Achilles during the Trojan War. The body lays on a pile of wood for a funeral pyre stripped of his armor, which is to left in the picture. Although the black figure style of vase painting originated in Corinth, it was the rise to power of the city-state of Athens and its subsequent export of pottery throughout the Mediterranean that brought the Athenian black figure vase painting style to the forefront in the 5th Century. The vases were first completed in the well-known yellow-orange color by mixing red ochre with the clay. The figures and scene were then painted on the vase in black in a silhouette format. The artist could then engrave or incise lines of clothing, faces, and other details on the black figures, allowing the ochre color to show through. Often times another color such as white or red, or sometimes purple, was added to a few objects on the vase. Unlike the earlier vase painting styles of Geometric and Corinthian, the black figure vase artists did not feel compelled to cover the entire vase with design. The spacing was more centered, with a primary scene on the body of the vase, and the neck and foot of the vase usually left blank, or lightly filled with vines or checkerboards, as if the vase were a canvas for the painting itself, and not an object on its own to be decorated.

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