In Euripides' Iphigeneia in Aulis the chorus at lines 1036–97 compares the wedding of Peleus and Thetis (1036–79) with the fate of Iphigeneia, brought to Aulis by the deceitful promise of marriage to Achilles in order to be sacrificed to Artemis (1080–97). Of the two scenes on the Portland vase (fig. 1), one has been persuasively identified as the wedding of Peleus and Thetis, with figures A, B, C and D representing respectively Peleus, Eros, Thetis and Poseidon or Zeus. The interpretation of the second scene, however, has proved more difficult. Here J. G. F. Hind has recently stressed the importance of the lowered wedding torch held by the central reclining female figure F. He suggests Dido for this figure with Aeneas as figure E and Venus or Juno as figure G, so that the whole vase becomes ‘an early imperial essay in adapting Hellenic legend to relate to Rome's past, and specially to Rome's Augustan present’. An alternative identification of figures E, F and G with Achilles, Iphigeneia and Artemis would give a simpler thematic unity to the vase's decoration and restore its character as a private object.