Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin, 2017

2009

This. And my first problem is, what to call it. I can't go on referring to it as NY 06.1021.167, ARV2 908.13, Para 430. It's a red-figure kylix, it lives in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, it is attributed to the Painter of Bologna, ca. 460 B.C.E., and it shows ... well, what does it show? Two young women, one holding the other by the wrist while apparently sketching some sort of argument with her free hand; one wears a sakkhos, the other has her hair caught up in a fillet. Jenifer Neils and John Oakley, in Coming of Age in Ancient Greece (from an exhibit at the Hood Museum) label it "A School Scene with Girls (?)"-Gisela Richter and Lindsley Hall (1936) saw "two women or girls...one apparently being pulled forward against her will. The unwilling one is carrying a writing tablet with a string through which a stylus is stuck, so a writing lesson may be the objective (though she seems rather big for this) or perhaps she has received a letter (Beazley's suggestion)." Now, when I first encountered this pot in the early1980s, it was displayed at the Met in a rather dusty upstairs cabinet among many others, only the tondo was visible, and there was as far as I can recall no particular label. It caught my eye as a rather striking picture of two young women, at least one of them interested in writing, who were, or were on the point of becoming, a couple-which happened to be on my mind at the time. What was supposed to be on my mind was a dissertation that was partly about the Hellenizing 20 th century poet H.D. and her relationships with women, and I thought, hm, what a nice cover illustration that might make. This is exactly the sort of "presentist" imaginative projection scholarship warns us to be embarrassed by, whether in poets like H.D or in our own selves. And yet, as Sandra Boehringer says, "L'identification est une forme de connaissance," identification is a way of knowing. Because a quarter century later, I mentioned the vase to Andrew Lear, who had just written a book called Images of Ancient Greek Pederasty: Boys Were Their Gods, and Andrew said oh, that's the one with the courting couples of women on the back. Oh really. So we went to see, and sure enough.

This paper examines in detail a hitherto little-known Athenian black-figure tripod pyxis of the mid-6th c. b.C. exhibited at the National Museum in Copenhagen (Inv. n. 4734.) All three legs of it feature multi-figured compositions, depicting gatherings of women and men of various ages. Of particular importance for the understanding of the iconography is the depiction of a woman uplifting her veil in the centre of the scene on one leg of the vase, a gesture with marital connotations. Through a detailed analysis of the scenes and their unusual features, it is argued that all three scenes may refer to a major family event, possibly the wedding feast, as well as to basic notions of social organization and their festive expressions in Archaic Athens.

AHL 34/35, 2011

Hesperia, 1993

YKINOS, the principal speaker in the Amores of pseudo-Lucian,I says that he made the 1L vessel on which he and his friends were sailing to Italy put in at Knidos, so that they might see the shrine of Aphrodite. As was appropriate in a town belonging to Aphrodite, laughter at the bawdiness and licentiousness of the products of the potter's craft they saw enlivened their tour of the town.2 To judge from this passage, Knidian potters were famous for their lewd ceramics. Such pottery aroused ribald laughter among the Lykinoses of the ancient world. Other people of a less knowing and sophisticated disposition would have invested such objects with a more serious purpose and significance: they would have seen powerful devices capable of protecting the inhabitants of the house in which they were hung from evil in general, from envy, and particularly from the baneful influence of the Evil Eye of Envy. In a drain to the east of the Odeion at Corinth Oscar Broneer unearthed a large quantity of Roman pottery, from which were mended several fine-ware vessels still unique among the Corinthian inventory.3 A plastic vase (C-27-37) from this deposit (P1. 85) is the subject of this 1 The dialogue is not the work of Lucian: vocabulary, style, and the avoidance of hiatus exclude that possibility; see Bloch 1907; RE XIII, 1927, s.v. Lukianos, col. 1730 (R. Helm). Its date of composition Bloch places, on no very substantial grounds, at the beginning of the 4th century after Christ. The description of Knidos, however, he believes derives in part from autopsy and in part from the Kawt 'I Irtopta of Ptolemaeus Chennus (late 1 st or early 2nd century after Christ), who in his turn got it from the epigrammatist of the 3rd century B.C., Posidippus (pp. 47-49). It is quite unclear whether the Posidippus who wrote the llMpL Kvt8ou (Clement of Alexandria, Protr. 4.53.5, 57.3 = FGrH F447) is the epigrammatist and, in consequence, when the work was written. So FGrH IIIb, p. 291; Lloyd-Jones and Parsons 1983, p. 347. 2 Amores 11: x6xXtp pepftvw ruv KvtBov o6x &yiEXaad1-j Xe5pave:UULXq &XoXaaEaq VEUX(" &q Es 'Ayppo8&rrj n6X&e. Jones (1984, pp. 177-180) would place the dialogue in the late 2nd or first half of the 3rd century, mainly because its preciosity of style resembles the younger Philostratus. The passage provides further evidence because it cannot have been composed before Knidos began to manufacture plastic vases, and it seems unlikely that it was composed very long after the disappearance of the vases, since the allusion to their bawdiness would then be largely meaningless. Knidos was manufacturing and exporting plastic vases in the last quarter of the 1st century after Christ to the first half of the 3rd century. Lucian himself (Lex. 7) refers to Knidian drinking cups as though they were something rather special, but we are unable to find other references to Knidian ware. Since the dialogue is based on ILucian and so is probably somewhat later than his fioruit, this confirms that the Amores must belong to the late 2nd or early 3rd century after Christ rather than the early 4th century as Bloch (1907) suggests. (KvsL&c xep6tLcx [Euboul. fr. 132 Hunter = Athen. I.28c] seems to refer only to the capacity of Knidian amphoras.) 3 Drain 1927-1 (east-west) connects to Drain 1927-2 (north-south). These are marked respectively r and 8 on Corinth X, pl. III. Permission to publish the two vases from Corinth was granted by the Corinth Excavations, American School of Classical Studies at Athens, which also provided the photographs. Both authors wish to thank in particular the Director of the Excavations, Charles K. Williams, II, for his interest and suggestions. Kathleen Warner Slane is also indebted to him for working facilities during 1990/1991 when part of this article was prepared. We should also like to record our gratitude for help afforded by Nancy Bookides, Assistant Director of the Excavations. The following have been kind enough to discuss the inscriptions and have offered guidance and suggestions: