Herakles with the Ceryneian Hind

Around 510 BC the people of Veii built a temple to their goddess Menerva at Portonaccio, and along the ridge of its roof, some 12 metres above the ground, they set a row of life-size painted clay figures on tall bases. There may have been 16 of them, arranged in groups of two or three, each telling a Greek myth.

Herakles belonged to one of these groups. One foot rests on a hind lying on its back with its legs bound, the golden-horned deer of Ceryneia that he had to capture as one of his labours, the tasks set him as penance for killing his wife and children in a fit of madness. The animal was sacred to Artemis, and her brother Apollo came striding across the roof to take it back. Hermes, the messenger god, seems to have stood nearby as peacemaker, and his head survives from the same roof. The excavators also found a fragment of a fourth figure, possibly Artemis herself.