Epigraphy of Art : Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings [1 ed.] 9781784914875, 9781784914868

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Epigraphy of Art Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings

edited by

Dimitrios Yatromanolakis

Epigraphy of Art Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings

edited by

Dimitrios Yatromanolakis

Archaeopress Archaeology

Archaeopress Publishing Ltd Gordon House 276 Banbury Road Oxford OX2 7ED

www.archaeopress.com

ISBN 978 1 78491 486 8 ISBN 978 1 78491 487 5 (e-Pdf)

© Archaeopress and the authors 2016 Cover: Athens, National Archaeological Museum 15499. Photograph courtesy the National Archaeological Museum, Athens © Hellenic Ministry of Culture/Archaeological Receipts Fund

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owners.

This book is available direct from Archaeopress or from our website www.archaeopress.com

To Gregory O. Hutchinson

Contents List of Figures����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ii Notes on Contributors��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� v Abbreviations�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� vii Preface: Art and Epigraphy: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions �������������������������������������������������������������������� xi Dimitrios Yatromanolakis

Inscriptions and Visual Representations on Attic Vases: Questions, Methodologies, Technical and Contextual Approaches Chapter One: Soundscapes (and Two Speaking Lyres)����������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 1 Dimitrios Yatromanolakis Chapter Two: Hipparchos kalos�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������43 Thomas Mannack Chapter Three: ‘So-and-so καλή’: A Reexamination����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������53 Guy Hedreen Chapter Four: Inscribed Mythical Names on Attic Vase-Paintings from 570 to 530 BC: A Contextual Approach����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������73 Burkhard Fehr Chapter Five: Meaningless, But Not Useless!: Nonsense Inscriptions on Athenian Little-Master Cups���������91 Pieter Heesen

Inscriptions on Apulian Vases Chapter Six: Inscriptions on Apulian Red-Figure Vases: A Survey���������������������������������������������������������������121 John H. Oakley Chapter Seven: Some Observations on Apulian Vase-Inscriptions with a Particular Focus on the Darius Painter�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������135 Thomas H. Carpenter

Visual Identities: Attic and Corinthian Vase-Inscriptions and the Significance of their Placement Chapter Eight: Instant Messaging: Dance, Text, and Visual Communication on Archaic Corinthian and Athenian Vases����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������145 Tyler Jo Smith Chapter Nine: Tracing Letters on the Eurymedon Vase: On the Importance of Placement of Vase-Inscriptions ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������165 Georg Simon Gerleigner Chapter Ten: Sophilos, Inscriptions, and the Funeral Games for Patroklos����������������������������������������������185 Mary Moore Index��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������203 i

List of Figures

Chapter One Figure 1. Schwerin, Staatliches Museum 708. Photograph courtesy and © Staatliches Museum Schwerin.��������������������������������������� 2 Figure 2. Schwerin, Staatliches Museum 708. Photograph courtesy and © Staatliches Museum Schwerin.��������������������������������������� 2 Figure 3a–e. Aegina, Aphaia Museum. Photograph courtesy and © the Ephorate of Antiquities of West Attica, Piraeus and Islands.6 Figure 4. Athens, National Archaeological Museum 2510. Photograph courtesy the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, © Hellenic Ministry of Culture/Archaeological Receipts Fund.���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 6 Figure 5. Liverpool, National Museums 56.19.19. Photograph courtesy and © National Museums, Liverpool.���������������������������������� 8 Figure 6. Liverpool, National Museums 56.19.19. Photograph courtesy and © National Museums, Liverpool.���������������������������������� 9 Figure 7. Liverpool, National Museums 56.19.19. Photograph courtesy and © National Museums, Liverpool.�������������������������������� 10 Figure 8. Liverpool, National Museums 56.19.19. Photograph courtesy and © National Museums, Liverpool.�������������������������������� 11 Figure 9. Leiden, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden PC 47. Photograph courtesy and © Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden.����������� 14 Figure 10. Leiden, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden PC 47. Photograph courtesy and © Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden.��������� 15 Figure 11. Leiden, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden PC 47. Photograph courtesy and © Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden.��������� 16 Figure 12. Leiden, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden PC 47. Photograph courtesy and © Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden.��������� 17 Figure 13. Leiden, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden PC 47. Photograph courtesy and © Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden.���������� 18 Figure 14. Leiden, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden PC 47. Photograph courtesy and © Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden.��������� 18 Figure 15. Leiden, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden PC 47. Photograph courtesy and © Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden.��������� 19 Figure 16. Leiden, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden PC 47. Photograph courtesy and © Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden.��������� 19 Figure 17. Eleusis, Αrchaeological Museum 465. Photograph courtesy and © the Ephorate of Antiquities of West Attica, Piraeus and Islands.�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 23 Figure 18. Athens, National Archaeological Museum, Acropolis Collection 1.611. Photograph courtesy the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, © Hellenic Ministry of Culture/Archaeological Receipts Fund.���������������������������������������������������� 31 Figure 19. Copenhagen, National Museum 13365. After D. Yatromanolakis, Sappho in the Making: The Early Reception, Cambridge, MA 2007, 116, fig. 10.���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 32 Figure 20. Munich, Antikensammlungen 2416. After D. Yatromanolakis, Sappho in the Making: The Early Reception, Cambridge, MA 2007, 74, fig. 3a.�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 33 Figure 21. Athens, National Archaeological Museum 1357. Photograph courtesy the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, © Hellenic Ministry of Culture/Archaeological Receipts Fund.���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 35 Figure 22. Αthens, National Archaeological Museum, Acropolis Collection 2.546. Photograph courtesy the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, © Hellenic Ministry of Culture/Archaeological Receipts Fund.���������������������������������������������������� 36 Figure 23a–b. Munich, Antikensammlungen 2646. Photograph courtesy Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek München.������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 38 Figure 24. Athens, National Archaeological Museum 1104. Photograph courtesy the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, © Hellenic Ministry of Culture/Archaeological Receipts Fund.���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 40 Figure 25. Athens, National Archaeological Museum 1104. Photograph courtesy the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, © Hellenic Ministry of Culture/Archaeological Receipts Fund.���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 41 Chapter Two Figure 1. Larissa, Archaeological Museum 78.44. Photograph courtesy and © the Archaeological Museum, Larissa.�������������������� 44 Figure 2a–b. Aberdeen, University 64347. Beazley drawing. Photograph courtesy the University of Aberdeen.���������������������������� 46 Figure 3. Once Munich, Preyss. Photograph Mary Beazley.����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 47 Figure 4. Würzburg, Universität, Martin von Wagner Museum L 310. After E. Langlotz, Griechische Vasen in Würzburg, Munich 1932, pl. 87. �������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 48 Figure 5. London, British Museum AN00277420_001 (E 37). Photograph courtesy the British Museum, © British Museum.�������� 50 Figure 6. Copenhagen, National Museum CHR.VIII.967. Photograph courtesy the National Museum, Copenhagen.���������������������� 51 Chapter Three Figure 1. Berlin, Antikensammlung 1966.20. Photograph courtesy Antikensammlung, Berlin. Image source: Art Resource, NY. Photographer: Johannes Laurentius (Berlin).���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 55 Figure 2. Munich, Antikensammlungen 2309. Photograph courtesy Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek München. Photographer: Renate Kühling.���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 57 Figure 3. Paris, Louvre G33. © RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY.������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 60 Figure 4. London, British Museum 1843.11-3.49 (B329). Photograph courtesy the British Museum, © British Museum.��������������� 61 Figure 5. London, British Museum 1836.2-24.169 (B330). Photograph courtesy the British Museum, © British Museum.������������� 62 Figure 6. Athens, National Archaeological Museum, Acropolis Collection 732. Photograph courtesy the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, © Hellenic Ministry of Culture/Archaeological Receipts Fund. Photographer: Eirini Miari. ����������������������������� 64 Figure 7. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art 1997.388, 56, and 493. © Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Image source: Art Resource, NY.��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 68 Figure 8. Athens, National Archaeological Museum, Acropolis Collection 569. Photograph courtesy the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, © Hellenic Ministry of Culture/Archaeological Receipts Fund. ������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 70 Figure 9. Munich, Antikensammlungen 2167. Photograph courtesy Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek München. Photographer: Christa Koppermann.������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 71

ii

Chapter Four Figure 1. Munich, Antikensammlungen 2243. After CVA Munich (11), pl. 5.1.���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 74 Figure 2. Munich, Antikensammlungen 1449. After CVA Munich (7), pl. 328.4. ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 76 Figure 3. Taranto, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 110339. After EAA III, 1130, fig. 1446.��������������������������������������������������������������������� 77 Figure 4. Munich, Antikensammlungen 7739. After H. A. G. Brijder, Siana Cups II, Amsterdam 1991, pl. 133b (no. 407). ��������������� 77 Figure 5. Taranto, Museo Archeologico Nazionale I.G. 4340. After H. A. G. Brijder, Siana Cups I, Amsterdam 1983, pl. 9b.�������������� 78 Figure 6. Private collection. After an exhibition catalogue of the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg, ed. W. Hornbostel; Kunst der Antike: Schätze aus norddeutschem Privatbesitz, Hamburg 1977, 252, fig. 233. ������������������������������������������������� 79 Figure 7. Berlin, Antikensammlung F 1698. After E. Gerhard, Etruskische und campanische Vasenbilder, Berlin 1843, pl. 22.������������ 80 Figure 8. Karlsruhe, Badisches Landesmuseum 67/90. After CVA Karlsruhe (3), pl. 24.3.��������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 82 Figure 9. Karlsruhe, Badisches Landesmuseum 65/45. After CVA Karlsruhe (3), pl. 18.1. �������������������������������������������������������������������� 85 Figure 10. Athens, Agora Museum A.P. 1044. After Hesperia 1937, 479, fig. 6.������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 86 Chapter Five Figure 1a-b. Cat. no. 43: Princeton (NJ), University Art Museum 2011-22, details of A and B. Photograph courtesy Princeton University Art Museum. Museum purchase, Carl Otto von Kienbusch Jr. Memorial Collection Fund. Photographer: Bruce M. White.���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 92 Figure 2a-b. Cat. no. 100: Manchester III H 45/40067, details of A and B. Photograph courtesy and © Manchester Museum, University of Manchester.������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 93 Figure 3a-b. Cat. no. 3: Paris, Louvre Cp 10256, details of A and B. Photographs RMN, © Musée du Louvre.���������������������������������� 95 Figure 4. Cat. no. 9: Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France Froehner 1593/Cab 207. © BnF-CNRS-Maison Archéologie & Ethnologie, René-Ginouvès. Photographer: Serge Oboukhoff.������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������ 96 Figure 5a-b. Cat. no. 17: Altenburg 238, details of A and B. © Lindenau-Museum. Photographer: Susanne Reim. Figure 6a-b. Cat. no. 18: Arezzo, private, details of A and B. Photographs 42871/1-2, © Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici della Toscana.���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 97 Figure 7. Cat. no. 36: Florence, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 151084. Photograph © Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Florence.�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 98 Figure 8a-b. Cat. no. 37: Bern, private, details of A and B. Photograph courtesy owner.��������������������������������������������������������������������� 99 Figure 9. Cat. no. 38: Paris, Louvre Cp 10271. Photograph RMN, © Musée du Louvre.������������������������������������������������������������������������� 99 Figure 10a-b. Cat. no. 66: Capua, Museo Campano 200, details of A and B. Photographs © Museo Campano di Capua.������������� 101 Figure 11a-b. Cat. no. 78: Paris, Louvre Cp 10257, details of A and B. Photographs RMN, © Musée du Louvre.���������������������������� 102 Figure 12a-b. Cat. no. 113: Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 81145, side A and side B. © Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Napoli e Pompei.�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 104 Figure 13a-b. Cat. no. 119: New York market. After catalogue NFA, Classical Auctions, 11 December 1991, lot 71.���������������������� 106 Figure 14. Cat. no. 276: Florence, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 98813, detail of A. Photograph © Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Florence.��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 112 Figure 15a-b. Cat. no. 20: Malibu (CA), J. Paul Getty Museum 96.AE.91, details of A and B. Photograph courtesy and © J. Paul Getty Museum. Gift of Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman.��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 115 Figure 16a-b. Cat. no. 21: Richmond (VA), Virginia Museum of Fine Arts 62.1.14, details of A and B. Photograph courtesy and © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond (VA). Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund. Photographer: Travis Fullerton. ������ 116 Figure 17a-b. Cat. no. 22: Würzburg, Universität, Martin von Wagner Museum L 407 (HA 606), details of A and B. © Martin von Wagner Museum der Universität Würzburg. Photographers: P. Neckermann (A) and E. Oehrlein (B).������������������������������������������� 117 Chapter Six Figure 1. Florence, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, ex Giuseppe Colombo Collection. © Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici della Toscana.�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 122 Figure 2. Atlanta (GA), Emory University, Michael C. Carlos Museum 2003.35.4. © Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University.�123 Figure 3. London, British Museum F 62. Photograph courtesy the British Museum, © British Museum.���������������������������������������� 124 Figure 4. London, British Museum F 67. Photograph courtesy the British Museum, © British Museum.���������������������������������������� 125 Figure 5. Liverpool, University, Garstang Museum of Archaeology. Photograph courtesy and © Garstang Museum of Archaeology.���126 Figure 6. Basel, Antikenmuseum und Sammlung Ludwig BS 484. Photograph courtesy Antikenmuseum Basel und Sammlung Ludwig. Photographer: Andreas F. Voegelin.���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 127 Figure. 7. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art 24.97.104. © Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Image source: ARTstor, IAP.�����128 Figure 8. Atlanta (GA), Emory University, Michael C. Carlos Museum 1994.1. © Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University.130 Figure 9. Malibu (CA), J. Paul Getty Museum 86.AE.680. Photograph courtesy and © J. Paul Getty Museum.��������������������������������� 131 Figure 10. Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 3253 (Inv. 81947). After FR II, pl. 88.��������������������������������������������������������������������� 132 Chapter Seven Figure 1. a) Boston (MA), Museum of Fine Arts 1989.100. b) Taranto, Museo Archeologico Nazionale inv. 194765. c) Boston (MA), Museum of Fine Arts 1987.53. a-c Photographs taken by T. H. Carpenter d) Tarentine stater. Photograph © Hirmer Archive.�� 136 Figure 2. a) Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 81947. Photograph taken by T. H. Carpenter. b) Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 81393. Photograph taken by T. H. Carpenter.��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 137 Figure 3. Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 81947. Photograph taken by T. H. Carpenter.������������������������������������������������������� 137 Figure 4. a) Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 81947. Photograph taken by T. H. Carpenter. b) Toledo (OH), Museum of Art, 1994.19. Photograph taken by T. H. Carpenter. ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 138 Figure 5. a) Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 81934. Photograph taken by T. H. Carpenter. b) Boston (MA), Museum of Fine Arts 1900.03.804. Photograph taken by T. H. Carpenter. ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 139 Figure 6. a–b) Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 81934. Photographs taken by T. H. Carpenter.��������������������������������������������� 140 Figure 7. a–c) Boston (MA), Museum of Fine Arts 1989.100. Photographs taken by T. H. Carpenter.������������������������������������������������ 140

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Chapter Eight Figure 1. Corinth, Archaeological Museum C-54-1. Drawing: D. Weiss, after Boardman EGVP, fig. 363.2. ��������������������������������������� 149 Figure 2. Paris, Louvre CA 3004. © RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY. ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 149 Figure 3. Detail of Figure 2. Drawing: D. Weiss, after LSAG, pl. 19, fig. 14b. ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 150 Figure 4. London, British Museum 1884.0804.9 (B 41). Photograph courtesy the British Museum, © British Museum.�������������� 152 Figure 5. Munich, Antikensammlungen 1431. Photograph courtesy Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek München. ��153 Figure 6. Stanford University, Cantor Arts Center 1961.66. Photograph courtesy Cantor Arts Center. ������������������������������������������� 155 Figure 7. Detail of Figure 6. Photograph courtesy Cantor Arts Center.�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 156 Figure 8. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art 1978.11.21. © Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Image source: Art Resource, NY.��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 158 Figure 9. Washington, DC, Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History 136380. Photograph courtesy National Museum of Natural History. ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 159 Figure 10. London, British Museum 1864.1007.205 (E 26). Photograph courtesy the British Museum, © British Museum.��������� 160 Figure 11a–b. London, British Museum 1836.0224.114 (E 37). Photograph courtesy the British Museum, © British Museum.��� 162 Chapter Nine Figure 1. Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg Inv. 1981.173. Photograph courtesy Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg.����166 Figure 2. Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg Inv. 1981.173. Photograph courtesy Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg.����167 Figure 3. Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg Inv. 1981.173. Photograph courtesy Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg.����169 Figure 4. Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg Inv. 1981.173. Photograph courtesy Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg.����171 Figure 5. Drawing: Philipp Kobusch. Reproduced with kind permission.�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������172 Figure 6. Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg Inv. 1981.173. Photograph courtesy Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg.����172 Figure 7. Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg Inv. 1981.173. Photograph courtesy Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg.����173 Figure 8. Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg Inv. 1981.173. Photograph courtesy Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg.����173 Figure 9. Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg Inv. 1981.173. Photograph courtesy Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg.����174 Figure 10. Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg Inv. 1981.173. Photograph courtesy Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg.��174 Figure 11. Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg Inv. 1981.173. Photograph courtesy Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg.��175 Figure 12. Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg Inv. 1981.173. Photograph courtesy Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg.��175 Figure 13. Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg Inv. 1981.173. Photograph courtesy Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg.��176 Figure 14. Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg Inv. 1981.173. Photograph courtesy Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg.��176 Figure 15. Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg Inv. 1981.173. Photograph courtesy Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe Hamburg.��177 Chapter Ten Figure 1. Athens, National Archaeological Museum 1002. Photograph courtesy the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, © Hellenic Ministry of Culture/Archaeological Receipts Fund. Photographer: Ioannis Patrikianos.��������������������������������������������������� 186 Figure 2. Athens, National Archaeological Museum 15499. Photograph courtesy the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, © Hellenic Ministry of Culture/Archaeological Receipts Fund. Photographer: Ioannis Patrikianos.����������������������������������������������� 188 Figure 3. Detail of Figure 2. Photograph courtesy the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, © Hellenic Ministry of Culture/ Archaeological Receipts Fund. Photographer: Ioannis Patrikianos.������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 188 Figure 4. Detail of Figure 2. Photograph courtesy the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, © Hellenic Ministry of Culture/ Archaeological Receipts Fund. Photographer: Ioannis Patrikianos.������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 189 Figure 5. Florence, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 4209. Photograph © Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Florence.�������������������� 190 Figure 6. Detail of Figure 5. Photograph © Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Florence.����������������������������������������������������������������������� 193 Figure 7. Drawing: Mary Moore.������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 193 Figure 8. London, British Museum 1971.1101.1. Photograph courtesy the British Museum, © British Museum.��������������������������� 197 Figure 9. Detail of Figure 8. Photograph courtesy the British Museum, © British Museum.������������������������������������������������������������� 198 Figure 10. Athens, National Archaeological Museum, Acropolis Collection 15165 (ex Acr. 587). Photograph courtesy the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, © Hellenic Ministry of Culture/Archaeological Receipts Fund. Photographer: Konstantinos Xenikakis.��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 199 Figure 11. Athens, National Archaeological Museum, Acropolis Collection 15165 (ex Acr. 587), fragment g. Photograph courtesy the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, © Hellenic Ministry of Culture/Archaeological Receipts Fund. Photographer: Konstantinos Xenikakis.�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 200

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Notes on Contributors

Thomas H. Carpenter is the Charles J. Ping Professor of Humanities and Distinguished Professor of Classics at Ohio University (USA) where he is also the director of the Ping Institute for the Teaching of the Humanities. He is the author of many books and articles on ancient Greek iconography including Dionysian Imagery in Archaic Greek Art: Its Development in Black-Figure Vase-Painting (1986), Dionysian Imagery in Fifth-Century Athens (1997), and Art and Myth in Ancient Greece (1991). Recently, in addition to his numerous articles on fourth-century BC Apulia, he co-edited with K. M. Lynch and E. G. D. Robinson The Italic People of Ancient Apulia: New Evidence from Pottery for Workshops, Markets, and Customs (2014). Burkhard Fehr is Professor Emeritus of Classical Archaeology at the University of Hamburg. His books include Orientalische und griechische Gelage (1971), Bewegungsweisen und Verhaltensideale: Physiognomische Deutungsmöglichkeiten der Bewegungsdarstellung an griechischen Statuen des 5. und 4. Jahrhunderts v. Chr. (1979), Die Tyrannentöter, oder, Kann man der Demokratie ein Denkmal setzen? (1984), and Becoming Good Democrats and Wives: Civic Education and Female Socialization on the Parthenon Frieze (2011). He has written extensively on sociopolitical aspects of ancient Greek and Roman art and architecture, as well as on the interrelations between ancient Greece and the oriental cultures. He has given lectures at universities in Germany, Great Britain, France, Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, and the USA. Since 1979 he has been a co-editor of the journal HEPHAISTOS (Kritische Zeitschrift zur Theorie und Praxis der Archäologie und angrenzender Wissenschaften). Currently he is working on a comparative study on the different functions and valuations of intoxication by wine or drugs in ancient Greece, the Near East, and the Eurasian steppe cultures. Georg Simon Gerleigner studied Classical Archaeology, Ancient Greek Philology, and Ancient History at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich, from where he graduated with a Magister Artium degree. In 2012, he received his PhD in Classics from the University of Cambridge (Girton College) with a dissertation titled Writing on Archaic Athenian Pottery: Studies on the Relationship between Images and Inscriptions on Greek Vases. Until September 2015, he was Lecturer in Classical Archaeology at the Christian Albrecht University of Kiel, where he co-founded the KielHamburg-Aarhus Network for the Study of Ancient Visual Culture (KHAN). Dr. Gerleigner is currently preparing the publication of his doctoral dissertation. Guy Hedreen is Professor of Art at Williams College (USA). He is author of three books, including Silens in Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painting: Myth and Performance (1992), Capturing Troy: The Narrative Functions of Landscape in Archaic and Early Classical Greek Art (2001), and The Image of the Artist in Archaic and Classical Greece: Art, Poetry, and Subjectivity (2015). He has also published numerous articles on ancient Greek art, literature, and culture. They range in subject from Dionysiac myth and ritual, choral poetry, the Trojan War, primitive life, and the cult of Achilleus, to the nature of visual narration, and modes of pictorial address. His awards and fellowships include the Rome Prize, a Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Gustave O. Arlt Award in the Humanities for his first book. Pieter Heesen holds a PhD in Classical Archaeology from the University of Amsterdam and works as an independent researcher of ancient Athenian black-figure pottery. He is the author of The J. L. Theodor Collection of Attic Black-Figure Vases (1996) and Athenian Little-Master Cups (2011). He has also contributed to a Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum volume on Attic black-figured drinking cups in the Allard Pierson Museum (CVA Amsterdam 2, 1996) and published articles on drinking-inscriptions on Attic little-master cups (2006), and on peculiarities of Attic little-master cups found in central Italy (2009). Presently his research centers on later generations of ‘Little-masters’, on animal band-cups, and on links with other shapes such as top-band stemlesses and (cup-)skyphoi. Thomas Mannack studied Classical Archaeology and Ancient History at Heidelberg, Oxford, and Kiel. He holds a PhD from the Christian Albrecht University of Kiel. Since 1986 he has been working at the Beazley Archive, University of Oxford, where he directs the Beazley Archive Pottery Database (BAPD). He is Reader in Classical Iconography and Senior Research Lecturer in Classical Archaeology at the University of Oxford. His books include The Late Mannerists in Athenian Vase-Painting (2001), Griechische Vasenmalerei: Eine Einführung (2002; second ed. 2012), and Haspels Addenda (2006). He has co-authored volumes of the Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum for the collections at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (2010), Winchester College (2001), and Harrow School (2005), as well as Greek Vases in the Frits Lugt Collection (2010). He is the Director of the Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum Project of the British Academy. v

Mary B. Moore was a Professor of Ancient Greek and Roman Art at Hunter College (USA) from 1971 to 2008. Her specialty is ancient Greek vase-painting, its style and iconography. She was Chairperson of the USA Committee for the Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum (1983-2007) and has written three fascicules, two for the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1975 in collaboration with D. von Bothmer, the second in 2003) and one for the J. Paul Getty Museum (1998). She published two volumes of Attic pottery excavated in the Athenian Agora, sponsored by the American School of Classical Studies, Athens: vol. 23 (1986), Attic Black-Figured Pottery in collaboration with M. Z. Philippides and vol. 30, Attic Red-Figured and White-Ground Pottery (1997). The research for each volume was supported by a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship (1979 and 1987). Her numerous articles and reviews of books on ancient Greek vases have appeared in many journals including the American Journal of Archaeology, the Metropolitan Museum Journal, Antike Kunst, and Gnomon. John H. Oakley is Chancellor Professor and Forrest D. Murden Jr. Professor at the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia (USA). A classical archaeologist with special interests in ancient Greek vase-painting and Roman sarcophagi, he has written numerous books and articles including The Phiale Painter (1990), The Achilles Painter (1997), Picturing Death in Classical Athens: The Evidence of the White Lekythoi (2004), and The Greek Vase: Art of the Storyteller (2013). He is the co-author of Debris from a Public Dining Place in the Athenian Agora (1992) and The Wedding in Ancient Athens (1993). He has held fellowships sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, among others, and has served for three years as the Andrew W. Mellon Professor at the American School of Classical Studies, Athens. John Oakley is both a member of Phi Beta Kappa and a Corresponding Member of the German Archaeological Institute. Tyler Jo Smith is Associate Professor of Classical Art and Archaeology and the Director of the Interdisciplinary Archaeology Program at the University of Virginia (USA). A specialist in iconography and performance, her current research focuses on religious rituals in Greek and Roman art. She is the author of Komast Dancers in Archaic Greek Art (2010), and co-editor with D. Plantzos of the Companion to Greek Art (2012). Dimitrios Yatromanolakis holds appointments at the Department of Classics, the Department of Anthropology, and the Humanities Center, The Johns Hopkins University (USA). He holds a D.Phil. from the University of Oxford. A former Junior Fellow at the Society of Fellows, Harvard University, he has been awarded numerous fellowships, including the Berlin Prize of the American Academy in Berlin. He is the author of Sappho in the Making: The Early Reception (2007), Greek Mythologies (2012), and co-author of Towards a Ritual Poetics (2003). He is the editor of An Archaeology of Representations: Ancient Greek Vase-Painting and Contemporary Methodologies (2009). Among other studies, he has written articles on ancient Greek vase-inscriptions and vase-paintings, Greek papyri, archaic and classical Greek performance culture, and classical reception studies. He is an External Member of the Institution Council of the Panteion University of Social and Political Sciences, Athens. He has taught at the University of Oxford, the University of Reading, and Harvard University.

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Abbreviations ABL ABV Add.2 Aellen 1994 ARV2 BAPD Beekes, EDG Boardman, ABFV Boardman, ARFV I Boardman, ARFV II Boardman, EGVP CA CAVI CB CEG Chantraine, DELG CIG CVA D-F DGE D-K Denoyelle/Iozzo EGF EGM Fehr, Gelage FGrH FR GL IG IG I3 Jan K-A Klein, Lieblingsinschriften

C. H. E. Haspels, Attic Black-Figured Lekythoi, Paris 1936. J. D. Beazley, Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painters, Oxford 1956. T. H. Carpenter, with T. Mannack and M. Mendonça, Beazley Addenda, second ed., Oxford 1989. C. Aellen, À la recherche de l’ordre cosmique: Forme et fonction des personnifications dans la céramique italiote, Kilchberg/Zurich 1994. J. D. Beazley, Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters, 3 vols., second ed., Oxford 1963. Beazley Archive Pottery Datase (accessible at https://www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/ pottery/). R.S. P. Beekes, Etymological Dictionary of Greek, 2 vols., Leiden 2010. J. Boardman, Athenian Black Figure Vases, London 1974 (corrected ed. 1991). J. Boardman, Athenian Red Figure Vases: The Archaic Period, London 1975. J. Boardman, Athenian Red Figure Vases: The Classical Period, London 1989. J. Boardman, Early Greek Vase Painting: 11th-6th Centuries BC, London 1998. J. U. Powell, Collectanea Alexandrina: Reliquiae Minores Poetarum Graecorum Aetatis Ptolemaicae, 323–146 A.C., Oxford 1925. H. R. Immerwahr, Corpus of Attic Vase Inscriptions, final version 2009 (http:// www.unc.edu/-hri/inscriptions/pdf). L. D. Caskey and J. D. Beazley, Attic Vase Paintings in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 3 vols., 1931–1963. P. A. Hansen, Carmina Epigraphica Graeca saeculorum VIII–V a.Chr.n., Berlin 1983 and Carmina Epigraphica Graeca saeculi IV a.Chr.n., Berlin 1989. P. Chantraine, Dictionnaire étymologique de la langue grecque: Histoire des mots, avec un Supplément sous la direction de A. Blanc, C. de Lamberterie et J.-L. Perpillou, Paris 1999. A. Boeckh et al., Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum, 4 vols. (vol. 1, 1828; vol. 2, 1843; vol. 3, 1853; vol. 4, 1856–1877), Berlin 1828–1877. Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum. M. Davies and P. J. Finglass, Stesichorus: The Poems, edited with introduction, translation, and commentary, Cambridge 2014. E. Schwyzer, Dialectorum Graecarum Exempla Epigraphica Potiora, Leipzig 1923. H. Diels and W. Kranz, Die Fragmente der Vorsokratiker, 3 vols., sixth ed., Berlin 1951–1952. M. Denoyelle and M. Iozzo, La céramique grecque d’Italie méridionale et de Sicile: Productions coloniales et apparentées du VIIIe au IIIe siècle av. J.-C., Paris 2009. M. Davies, Epicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, Göttingen 1988. R. L. Fowler, Early Greek Mythography, 2 vols., Oxford 2000-2013. B. Fehr, Orientalische und griechische Gelage, Bonn 1971. F. Jacoby et al., Die Fragmente der griechischen Historiker, Berlin 1923– (Leiden 1954– ). A. Furtwängler, K. Reichhold, et al., Griechische Vasenmalerei, 3 vols., Munich 1904–1932. B. Graef and E. Langlotz, Die antiken Vasen von der Akropolis zu Athen, 2 vols. of text, 2 vols. of plates, Berlin 1925–1933. Inscriptiones Graecae, Berlin 1873– . D. M. Lewis et al., Inscriptiones Atticae Euclidis anno anteriores, 3 fascicules, third ed., Berlin 1981–1998. K. von Jan, Musici Scriptores Graeci, Leipzig 1895 and Musici Scriptores Graeci: Supplementum, Leipzig 1899. R. Kassel and C. Austin, Poetae Comici Graeci, 8 vols., Berlin 1983– . W. Klein, Die griechischen Vasen mit Lieblingsinschriften, second ed., Leipzig 1898.

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Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings LGPN

P. M. Frazer, E. Matthews, et al. (eds.), A Lexicon of Greek Personal Names, vols. I, II, IIIA, IIIB, IV, VA, Oxford 1987–2010. LIMC J. Boardman et al. (eds), Lexicon Iconographicum Mythologiae Classicae , vols. 1–8, Zurich 1981–1997. Supplementum 1, Düsseldorf 2009. L-P E. Lobel and D. Page, Poetarum Lesbiorum Fragmenta, Oxford 1955 (corrected ed. 1963). LCS A. D. Trendall, The Red-Figured Vases of Lucania, Campania, and Sicily, Oxford 1967. LCS Suppl. 1 A. D. Trendall, The Red-Figured Vases of Lucania, Campania, and Sicily. First Supplement, BICS Supplement 26, London 1970. LCS Suppl. 2 A. D. Trendall, The Red-Figured Vases of Lucania, Campania, and Sicily. Second Supplement, BICS Supplement 31, London 1973. LCS Suppl. 3 A. D. Trendall, The Red-Figured Vases of Lucania, Campania, and Sicily. Third Supplement (consolidated), BICS Supplement 41, London 1983. LSAG L. H. Jeffery, The Local Scripts of Archaic Greece: A Study of the Origin of the Greek Alphabet and its Development from the Eighth to the Fifth Centuries B.C., revised edition with supplement by A. W. Johnston, Oxford 1990. LSJ H. G. Liddell, R. Scott and H. S. Jones, A Greek-English Lexicon, ninth ed. with a revised supplement, Oxford 1996. M H. Maehler, Pindari Carmina. Pars II: Fragmenta, Leipzig 1989. Mae H. Maehler, Bacchylides: Carmina cum Fragmentis, eleventh ed., Munich/Leipzig 2003. Moret 1979 J.-M. Moret, “Un ancêtre du phylactère: Le pilier inscrit des vases italiotes,” Revue Archéologique (1979), 3-34. M-W R. Merkelbach and M. L. West, Fragmenta Hesiodea, Oxford 1967. Para. J. D. Beazley, Paralipomena, Oxford 1971. PMG D. L. Page, Poetae Melici Graeci, Oxford 1962 (corrected reprint 1967). PMGF M. Davies, Poetarum Melicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, 1 vol. to date, Oxford 1991– . P.Oxy. B. F. Grenfell, A. S. Hunt, et al., The Oxyrhynchus Papyri, 79 vols. to date, London 1898– . RAC Reallexikon für Antike und Christentum, Stuttgart 1950– . Radt See TrGF. RE A. F. von Pauly and G. Wissowa, Real-Encyclopädie der classischen Altertumswissenschaft, Stuttgart 1894-1980. RLGT M. Alexiou, The Ritual Lament in Greek Tradition, second ed. revised by D. Yatromanolakis and P. Roilos, Lanham/Oxford 2002. RVAp A. D. Trendall and A. Cambitoglou, The Red-Figured Vases of Apulia, 2 vols., Oxford 1978-1982. RVAp Suppl. 1 A. D. Trendall and A. Cambitoglou, First Supplement to The Red-Figured Vases of Apulia, BICS Supplement 42, London 1983. RVAp Suppl. 2 A. D. Trendall and A. Cambitoglou, Second Supplement to The Red-Figured Vases of Apulia, BICS Supplement 60, London 1991 (published 1992). SEG Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum, Leiden 1923– . SH H. Lloyd-Jones and P. J. Parsons, Supplementum Hellenisticum, Berlin 1983. SIG W. Dittenberger, Sylloge Inscriptionum Graecarum, 4 vols., third ed. (vol. 1, 1915; vol. 2, 1917; vol. 3, 1920; vol. 4, 1921–1924), Leipzig 1915–1924. S-M B. Snell and H. Maehler, Pindari Carmina. Pars I: Epinicia, eighth ed., Leipzig 1987. Taplin, Pots and Plays O. Taplin, Pots and Plays: Interactions between Tragedy and Greek Vase-Painting of the Fourth Century B.C., Los Angeles, CA 2007. Todisco L. Todisco, La ceramica a figure rosse della Magna Grecia e della Sicilia, 3 vols., Rome 2012. TrGF B. Snell, R. Kannicht and S. Radt, Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta, 5 vols. (Vol. 1: Didascaliae Tragicae, Catalogi Tragicorum et Tragoediarum, Testimonia et Fragmenta Tragicorum Minorum, second ed. 1986 [B. Snell]. Vol. 2: Fragmenta Adespota, 1981 [R. Kannicht and B. Snell]. Vol. 3: Aeschylus, 1985 [S. Radt]. Vol. 4: Sophocles, second ed. 1999 [S. Radt]. Vol. 5: Euripides, 2 parts, 2004 [R. Kannicht]), Göttingen 1971–2004. V E.-M. Voigt, Sappho et Alcaeus: Fragmenta, Amsterdam 1971. viii

W2 Wehrli

M. L. West, Iambi et Elegi Graeci ante Alexandrum cantati. 2 vols., second revised ed., Oxford 1989–1992. F. Wehrli, Die Schule des Aristoteles: Texte und Kommentar, 10 vols., second ed., Basel 1967–1969.

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x

Preface

Art and Epigraphy: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions Dimitrios Yatromanolakis The reason the subtitle of this preface places emphasis on vase-inscriptions and does not include the dyad ‘vaseinscriptions and vase-paintings’ is that this book aims at foregrounding the urgency of establishing a thorough and epigraphically accurate database of ancient Greek vase-inscriptions as well as the scholarly desideratum of broad-ranging explorations of these inscriptions. The Attic vase-inscriptions, painted or incised on more than 8200 vessels (including fragments), have not yet been exhaustively collected, fully and consistently accurately transcribed, or comprehensively investigated in interdisciplinary syntheses—that is, investigated epigraphically, linguistically, and in light of the complex world of Attic and non-Attic iconography. Chapters 1, 3, and 5 of this book explore some of the numerous scholarly desiderata with regard to the Attic corpus of vase-inscriptions. Other chapters point to different avenues of inquiry that need to be pursued so that new generations of scholars may probe broader, complex issues about Attic and non-Attic visual discourses.

Inscriptions often constitute a significant element of the aesthetic and semantic whole of painted vases. In certain cases, a fusion of visual representation and verbal signification takes place, where the verbal sign not only supplements and defines but also lends intriguing complexity to the visual text. But unlike such self-deconstructing ‘inscribed’ modern images as René Magritte’s Ceci n’est pas une pipe,2 the kinds of associations and ideas—on Attic and non-Attic vasepaintings—about the depicted figures provided by words in the form of dipinti and graffiti are frequently of a more ‘definitional’ nature. The most ubiquitous and simple type of vase-inscription is the signature inscription. Many Attic black-figure and red-figure vases bear such inscriptions, in which the name of the painter or the potter or of the owner of the workshop in which they were produced appears, usually in the form [Exekias] epoiesen (‘[Exekias] made this’) or [Exekias] m’ egraphsen and [Exekias] m’ epoiesen (‘[Exekias] painted me,’ ‘[Exekias] made me’)—in the latter case, as if the vase were speaking to the viewer.3 Such instances of what we might term ‘vocality’ in vases occur in sympotic and other inscriptions: here ‘instructions’ to the viewer—‘greetings and drink well’ or ‘greetings and drink me’—are given, and, in specific cases, the idea of a more pronounced involvement of the viewer/ reader in the represented reality of the vase-painting, or in the actual situational context in which the vase is used, may be playfully exploited. The largest category is of course that of tag inscriptions in representational figure-scenes. These are captions—labels identifying figures, mythical scenes, athletic occasions, and even musical instruments.4 Kalos-inscriptions for ‘handsome’ men begin to appear on vases around 550 BC and fall out of fashion around 430–420 BC. Apart from the kalosinscriptions, kale-inscriptions appear, often lauding

Ancient Greek vase-paintings offer wide-ranging and almost unprecedented (for the ancient world) early perspectives on the often intricate interplay of images and texts. Attic and non-Attic vases preserve thousands of inscriptions—letters, words, and short texts—that, if studied systematically, can shed significant light on both the art of vase-painting and on diverse sociocultural phenomena in ancient Greece. Although Henry Immerwahr’s extensive but somewhat incomplete and sometimes problematic database is now available and constitutes a first, major step toward establishing epigraphically accurate texts, substantial—both more technical and contextual—epigraphic research is still required. Older CVA volumes and other archaeological publications that include transcriptions of vaseinscriptions—on which Immerwahr’s notes are based, in many cases—often present serious uncertainties or do not reproduce all the lettering painted on vases.1 At the same time, modern methodologies in the study of ancient Greek vase-painting have altered how most contemporary scholars approach text on images.

2  For a provocative approach to Magritte’s painting of a pipe, across which lettering provides the words ‘This is not a pipe,’ see M. Foucault, This Is Not a Pipe, trans. and ed. J. Harkness, Los Angeles, CA 1983. 3  Exekias sometimes signed as potter and painter at the same time: see black-figure neck-amphora Berlin, Antikensammlung 1720 (ABV 143.1, 686; Add.2 39; see also CEG no. 436). Parts of this paragraph reflect discussion in D. Yatromanolakis, Sappho in the Making: The Early Reception, Cambridge, MA 2007, 98–102. 4  For tag inscriptions, one may just point to the François vase (photographs in, among other publications, Boardman, ABFV, 42– 43, fig. 46), where some 130 inscriptions of names—even names of animals and objects such as the dogs in the Kalydonian boar hunt, a fountain house, and an altar—can be found.

1  Immerwahr’s Corpus of Attic Vase Inscriptions (CAVI) more often than not omits adequate epigraphic discussion and, as one would expect from a database based on brief notes collected over several decades, does not address issues related to the iconography of inscribed vases.

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Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings women. This type has so far received inadequate attention.5 One of the most important types of vaseinscriptions is the ‘voice inscriptions’ that are normally placed next to the mouths of depicted figures on vases to represent their speech, dialogues, or singing. Some scholars call this type of inscription ‘bubble inscriptions’ after the ‘speech bubbles’ used in modern comics and magazines, but it seems best to opt for a less culturally charged term. The inscriptional types mentioned here do not exhaust the large range of painted and especially incised inscriptions found on vases. Other major types are explored in several chapters of this book.

publications, including the final 2009 version of Henry Immerwahr’s Corpus of Attic Vase Inscriptions.9 The life of Aponia in scholarly discourse has been long, beginning before World War II.10 Aponia has been viewed as an important personification of an abstraction, ‘freedom from toil’—a personification that occurs only on this pyxis. The term ἀπονία occurs only later in classical Greek literature. Moreover, because—so the reasoning goes—a vase-painter could not have invented a personified abstraction for the first time or coined a new word,11 Aponia must be examined in the context of late fifth-century Athenian political history. It has therefore been maintained that during the later years of the Peloponnesian War (c. 420–410 BC, when the pyxis was produced),12 the new coinage ἀπονία (allegedly attested on the pyxis) and the appearance of the personification Aponia on this vase suggest that they should be associated with the apparently more pessimistic connotations that the term πόνος acquired at that period in terms of the adversities and hardships of a needlessly protracted war. Furthermore, it has been hypothesized that the personified abstraction Aponia (‘freedom from toil’) almost functions as the personification of Eirene (‘Peace’), and represents an anti-war sentiment that must have been predominant among Athenians after the disaster in Sicily in 413 BC. The vase-painter’s ‘message’ might have been ‘one popular again in America in the 1960’s: Make love not war.’ However, a careful examination of the inscription leads us to entirely different—and this time incontestable—conclusions.13 Instead of Aponia, the

Considerable problems often surface when transcribing and attempting to understand vase-inscriptions. Probably the most interesting case of an inaccurate transcription that led to the proposal of imaginative approaches to a significant topic in classical archaeology—pictorial personifications of cultural concepts in classical Athens—is that of the inscriptions painted on a red-figure pyxis dated to the last quarter of the fifth century (Manner of the Meidias Painter).6 Were it not for its seven inscriptions, the scene would have been identified as ‘women at their toilet.’ Here Aristotle’s reminder is apt: καθάπερ τὰ τῶν ἀρχαίων γραφέων, εἰ μή τις ἐπέγραψεν, οὐκ ἐγνωρίζετο τί ἐστιν ἕκαστον (‘... just as in the compositions of the early painters, if they were not inscribed, it was not feasible to comprehend what each figure represented’).7 One of the inscriptions crucially identifies Aphrodite. The other inscriptions ‘define’ Aphrodite’s companions: Paidia (personification of games and play); Eudaimonia (‘Happiness’); Hygieia (‘Health’); Peitho (‘Persuasion’); Euklea (‘Good Repute’).8 A sixth companion is identified with an inscription that has been persistently—and still is—read as Aponia (‘Leisure’) in a large number of

9  Attic Vase Inscriptions (AVI), updated by R. Wachter (see chapter 9, note 4), still provides the reading Α̣ ΠΟΝΙΑ. CAVI includes a special note discussing Aponia and its possible political meaning. 10  See, among other publications, B. E. Borg, ‘Eunomia or ‘Make Love Not War’? Median Personifications Reconsidered,’ in E. Stafford and J. Herrin (eds), Personifications in the Greek World: From Antiquity to Byzantium, Aldershot 2005, 193–210, esp. pages 193–194, 198, 203–204; R. Rosenzweig, Worshipping Aphrodite: Art and Cult in Classical Athens, Ann Arbor, MI 2004, 25; Borg 2002 (above, note 8), 189; E. Stafford, Worshipping Virtues: Personification and the Divine in Ancient Greece, London/Swansea 2000, 162 and 170. No references to Ferrari 1995 (above, note 6) occur in these publications, perhaps because it was published in a museum journal. Aponia also appears in S. Schmidt’s excellent book Rhetorische Bilder auf attischen Vasen: Visuelle Kommunikation im 5. Jahrhundert v. Chr., Berlin 2005, 147. 11  But cf., e.g., H. R. Immerwahr, Attic Script: A Survey, Oxford 1990, 10, no. 16, for a linguistically intriguing case; and G. M. A. Richter, ‘An Aryballos by Nearchos,’ American Journal of Archaeology 36 (1932), 274, J. D. Beazley, ‘Groups of Mid-Sixth-Century Black-Figure,’ Annual of the British School at Athens 32 (1931-1932), 21, and J. D. Beazley, ‘Some Inscriptions on Vases. III,’ American Journal of Archaeology 39 (1935), 485, 487. 12  The pyxis has, more specifically, been dated to c. 410–400 (see Smith 2011 [above, note 8], 168, no. VP 49) or perhaps 420–410 (G. M. A. Richter and L. Hall, Red-Figured Athenian Vases in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New Haven, CT 1936, 202–203, no. 161). 13  Ferrari 1995 (above, note 6). The quotation (from ‘message’ to ‘make love not war’) comes from A. Shapiro, ‘Ponos and Aponia,’ Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 25 (1984), 110. See also idem, ‘Aponia,’ in LIMC vol. II (1984), 465; idem, Personifications in Greek Art, Zurich 1993, 32–33; and idem, ‘Aponia,’ in LIMC Supplement 2009, 83; cf. D. Metzler, ‘Eunomia und Aphrodite: Zur Ikonologie einer attischen Vasengruppe,’ Hephaistos 2 (1980), 73–88, especially pages 74–75 and 82.

See chapter 3 in this volume. G. Ferrari, ‘The End of Aponia,’ Metropolitan Museum Journal 30 (1995), 17–18; Attic red-figure pyxis New York, Metropolitan Museum 09.221.40 (ARV2 1328.99; Add.2 364). 7  Topica 6.2.140a.21–22. Note that much later, Aelian (Historical Miscellany 10.10) offers a somewhat ironic view about the use of inscriptions on early paintings: Ὅτε ὑπήρχετο ἡ γραφικὴ τέχνη καὶ ἦν τρόπον τινὰ ἐν γάλαξι καὶ σπαργάνοις, οὕτως ἄρα ἀτέχνως εἴκαζον τὰ ζῷα, ὥστε ἐπιγράφειν αὐτοῖς τοὺς γραφέας· ‘τοῦτο βοῦς, ἐκεῖνο ἵππος, ἐκεῖνο δένδρον.’ 8  On such personifications in Meidian painting, see L. Burn, The Meidias Painter, Oxford 1987, 33. On Eudaimonia on this vase, see J. D. Beazley, ‘Some Inscriptions on Vases. V,’ American Journal of Archaeology 54 (1950), 320, and Smith 2011 (see below), 168. On personifications in ancient Greek art, see V. Papadaki-Angelidou, Aἱ Προσωποποιήσεις εἰς τὴν ἀρχαίαν ἑλληνικὴν τέχνην, Diss., Athens 1960; C. Aellen, À la recherche de l’ordre cosmique: Forme et fonction des personnifications dans la céramique italiote, Kilchberg/Zurich 1994; O. Tzachou-Alexandri, ‘Personifications of Democracy,’ in J. Ober and C. W. Hedrick (eds), Demokratia: A Conversation on Democracies, Ancient and Modern, Princeton, NJ 1996, 149–155; R. Osborne, ‘The Art of Personification on Athenian Red-Figure Pottery,’ Apollo 152 (2000), 9–14; B. E. Borg, Der Logos des Mythos: Allegorien und Personifikationen in der frühen griechischen Kunst, Munich 2002; W. Messerschmidt, Prosopopoiia: Personifikationen politischen Charakters in spätklassischer und hellenistischer Kunst, Cologne 2003; and A. C. Smith, Polis and Personification in Classical Athenian Art, Leiden 2011. 5  6 

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Preface Art and Epigraphy: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions inscription actually reads Eunomia (‘Good Order,’ ‘Good Governance’): there is no alpha and pi before the letters ΟMΙΑ. Epsilon, upsilon, and nu (ΕΥΝ) are clearly visible.14 Moreover, Eunomia is a well attested companion of Aphrodite in Attic vase-painting. The epigraphic autopsy of vase-inscriptions at different museums and archaeological collections worldwide—a demanding process that requires expertise in epigraphy and the area of ancient Greek vase-painting—is as essential as the autopsy of Greek papyri. It is also a process relying on international scholarly collaboration. The Aponia phantom—an almost unparalleled, ex nihilo invention of a new ancient personified abstraction—alerts us to the intricacies involved in the study of Attic and non-Attic vase-inscriptions15 and to the urgency of establishing a thoroughly researched and epigraphically accurate database.

to highlight the outstanding but not fully examined importance of the area of vase-inscriptions for current research in a number of fields, including art history, historical linguistics, and classics. Complementary methodological perspectives on diverse kinds of inscriptions and paintings are combined in this book to cover a broad temporal and thematic spectrum. The book begins and ends with material from the archaic period; different chapters focus almost exclusively on the classical period. I should like to express gratitude to those many archaeologists and museum curators who sent us photographs and facilitated our research on vase-inscriptions in diverse museums in Europe and beyond. A special debt is owed to my colleagues in the Department of Anthropology and the Humanities Center for their invaluable encouragement and help with this demanding book project. My work on Attic and non-Attic vase-painting and inscriptions has benefited over the years from the observations or help of many people, including Ada Cohen, Burkhard Fehr, Gloria Ferrari Pinney, Guy Hedreen, the late Henry Immerwahr, Ursula Kästner, Dimitrios Pandermalis, the late Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood, Cornelia WeberLehmann, and the late Martin L. West. Thanks are owed to Dr. David Davison and Archaeopress, Oxford, for their unstinting encouragement and superb work on the manuscript. The book is dedicated to Gregory O. Hutchinson, former tutor and mentor at Exeter College, University of Oxford.

________ This book project began in late 2011. Most chapters were completed in late 2013, and the remaining chapters in the spring and the fall of 2014. Minor final revisions were made in the spring of 2015. By bringing together an international group of experts in classical art and archaeology, this book investigates both epigraphic technicalities of Attic and non-Attic inscriptions, and aspects of their broader—iconographic and sociocultural—significance. Its ten chapters attempt

Ferrari 1995 (above, note 6), with new photograph that clearly shows the letters ΕΥΝ before OMIA. See also G. Ferrari, Figures of Speech: Men and Maidens in Ancient Greece, Chicago, IL 2002, 28, 46, 262. 15  Among other comparable cases, see R. Wachter, Non-Attic Greek Vase Inscriptions, Oxford 2001, 196 (ETR 3) and 280. An examination of CAVI and other archaeological publications shows that there are numerous cases where available readings of vase-inscriptions may lead to approaches—linguistic, epigraphic, iconographic, and sociocultural—that are not borne out of the evidence. 14 

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Inscriptions and Visual Representations on Attic Vases: Questions, Methodologies, Technical and Contextual Approaches

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Chapter One

Soundscapes (and Two Speaking Lyres)* Dimitrios Yatromanolakis

Despite the scholarly efforts of nineteenth- and earlytwentieth-century German scholars1 and, later, of John Beazley and other archaeologists and epigraphists, the Attic vase-inscriptions have not yet been exhaustively collected, fully and consistently accurately transcribed,2 or comprehensively investigated in interdisciplinary syntheses—that is, investigated epigraphically,3 linguistically, and in light of the

complex world of Attic and non-Attic iconography.4 After the publication of the fourth volume of Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum (iv, 1, 1856),5 which included incised and painted vase-inscriptions, it was mainly Paul Kretschmer’s Die griechischen Vaseninscriften ihrer Sprache nach untersucht (1894)6 that provided an original examination of specific aspects of vase-inscriptions published by that time. Since then, a vast number of new vase-inscriptions have been reported but not always published carefully;7 and for a number of them

* This chapter is based on research I have conducted on Attic and nonAttic vases and their inscriptions for a number of years—originally funded by the Milton Award, Harvard University. I gave my first lecture on the proposed methodological approach to soundscapes in 2001 (see my co-authored book Towards a Ritual Poetics, 2003 [below, note 20], 113) and later delivered other lectures on Attic ‘nonsense inscriptions,’ performance culture, and magical papyri at different universities. Book projects published between 2002 and 2012 and a forthcoming book deferred the publication of those 2000s lectures. This chapter was completed in December 2013, and minor revisions for this volume were made in March 2015. I should like to thank curators of museums and archaeological collections for granting me permissions to examine Attic vases from their collections: given the number of vase-inscriptions investigated for this chapter, the list would be relatively long (see below, note 196). I express my gratitude here to those museums that helped me significantly by providing photographs of vases and vase-inscriptions for this chapter and by granting permissions to publish them. Above all, my debt is to curators and photographers at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens and the Antikensammlung of the Staatliche Museen in Berlin: the unparalleled efficiency of Eleni Morati, Dr. Maria Chidiroglou, and Dr. Georgios Kavvadias has been important to this project; and the unstinting help of Dr. Ursula Kästner and Johannes Laurentius has been valuable. I also owe a special debt to Professor Dimitrios Pandermalis, director of the Acropolis Museum, and A. Kouveli of the Acropolis Museum; Dr. Calliope Papangeli of the Archaeological Museum in Eleusis; Sophia Michalopoulou of the Ephorate of Antiquities of West Attica, Piraeus and Islands; Dr. Chrissy Partheni of the National Museums, Liverpool; Emma Darbyshire of the Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge; Dr. Kornelia Röder of the Staatliches Museum Schwerin; Professor Cornelia WeberLehmann of the Kunstsammlungen, Ruhr-Universität Bochum; and Professor Ruurd Halbertsma of the Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden.   1 Prominent among them was Paul Kretschmer (Die griechischen Vaseninschriften ihrer Sprache nach untersucht, Gütersloh 1894); see also brief discussions in P. Hartwig, Die griechischen Meisterschalen der Blüthezeit des strengen rothfigurigen Stiles, Stuttgart/Berlin 1893, 255–258; R. Herzog, Die Umschrift der älteren griechischen Literatur in das ionische Alphabet, Basel 1912, 17–21; and P. Jacobsthal, Göttinger Vasen, nebst einer Abhandlung Συμποσιακά, Berlin 1912, 61–63. 2  A large number of Attic vase-inscriptions have not yet been fully transcribed. See, among others, the so-called nonsense inscriptions: e.g., Corpus of Attic Vase Inscriptions (= CAVI), entry for the red-figure cup Berlin, Antikensammlung 3240 (ARV2 405; Add.2 232; K. Peters, ‘Zu Attisch rotfigurigen Scherben in Berliner Privatbesitz,’ Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 73 [1958], 14, no. 3, fig. 2; CVA Berlin, Antiquarium 2, 25, pls. 71.1–7). 3  Parentheses ( ) are employed in this chapter (and in H. Immerwahr’s CAVI) as an epigraphic sign to denote miswritten letters. [ ] denotes

lost letters, { } letters added by mistake, and < > omitted letters. 4  Henry Immerwahr’s valuable book Attic Script: A Survey (Oxford 1990) has not taken into account numerous important vaseinscriptions. As a result, it often makes epigraphic and linguistic statements that need to be revisited and significantly reformulated (the same frequently applies to the transcriptions provided and somewhat inaccurately discussed in his on-line Corpus of Attic Vase Inscriptions; see below, note 7). See, for example, Immerwahr 1990 (above), 42: ‘[The Kyllenios Painter] is the only Tyrrhenian painter to use closed heta and koppa.’ However, koppa is also used by at least another ‘Tyrrhenian’ painter: see black-figure ‘Tyrrhenian’ neckamphora Liverpool, National Museums 56.19.19 (ABV 103.118; Para. 39; my Figures 5–8), attributed to the Prometheus Painter (koppa in ΛEYϘOΣ). Even if one considers only inscriptions on ‘Tyrrhenian’ vases, one identifies problems in the transcriptions provided in Immerwahr 1990. J. Kluiver (‘Early ‘Tyrrhenian’: Prometheus Painter, Timiades Painter, Goltyr Painter,’ BABesch [Bulletin Antieke Beschaving: Annual Papers on Mediterranean Archaeology] 70 [1995], 55–103) discusses a number of cases of inscriptions on a group of ‘Tyrrhenian’ vases (attributed to only three early painters of the group) where the transcriptions in Immerwahr 1990 are problematic. Among many other cases of inaccurate or incomplete transcriptions in the Corpus of Attic Vase Inscriptions, see black-figure amphora London, British Museum 1920.3-15.2 (S. Korti-Konti, Oἱ ‘θεαταὶ’ στὶς παραστάσεις ἄθλων καὶ ἀγώνων στὴν ἀρχαία ἑλληνικὴ τέχνη, Thessalonike 1979, fig. 7); and red-figure cup Malibu (CA), J. Paul Getty Museum 80.AE.31 (ARV2 1620.12bis; Add.2 155; M. Steinhart, Das Motiv des Auges in der griechischen Bildkunst, Mainz 1995, pl. 31.1). 5  Corpus Inscriptionum Graecarum, vols. 1–4, Berlin 1828–1877. 6  As is often the case with innovative studies, contemporary readers were not able to fully understand Kretschmer’s book: see A. C. Merriam in American Journal of Archaeology and of the History of the Fine Arts 9 (1894), 374: ‘The subject is naturally of much less importance because of the narrow compass of the material at our disposal, which is confined chiefly to proper names.’ For a learned assessment of Kretschmer’s book, see W. Schulze in Göttingische gelehrte Anzeigen 158 (1896), 228–256 (= Kleine Schriften, Göttingen 1934, 692–717). 7  In many letters the late Henry Immerwahr sent me kindly replying to my requests for full or accurate information about inscriptions on specific vases, he constantly stressed that the information included in his Corpus of Attic Vase Inscriptions (CAVI) must be vetted and often seriously questioned, given that archaeological publications of vases, including many CVA volumes, do not provide full accounts of all inscriptions on pottery or meticulously prepared diplomatic transcriptions. In the introductory note to his CAVI (final version January 2009), Immerwahr underlined that he was ‘aware of the fact that a real corpus should be based mainly on direct examination of

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Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings

Figure 1. Schwerin, Staatliches Museum 708. Photograph courtesy and © Staatliches Museum Schwerin.

Figure 2. Schwerin, Staatliches Museum 708. Photograph courtesy and © Staatliches Museum Schwerin.

2

Chapter One we still do not have diplomatic transcriptions. Among other work on vase-inscriptions by John Beazley (in ABV and ARV2), I want to single out here his series of highly technical articles on mainly Attic vase-inscriptions and vase-paintings8 that have more recently ceased having appeal to scholars, especially after the publication of general, non-technical overviews of inscriptions on pottery and after the sustained criticism that some of the premises of Beazley’s innovative research have been subjected to: like papyrological editiones principes, this series of articles by Beazley are often treasure houses of insight and scholarly warnings. For Attic vaseinscriptions, the work on archaic Greek local scripts by L. H. Jeffery,9 the phonological and morphological study of Attic inscriptions by L. Threatte,10 as well as the 1990 monograph on Attic script and the CAVI catalogue by H. R. Immerwahr provide epigraphists and archaeologists with significant material for further broader investigations. For non-Attic vase-inscriptions, F. Lorber’s work on Corinthian vase-inscriptions11 and the 2001 catalogue and linguistic study by R. Wachter discuss most, but not all, of them.12 However, despite

Soundscapes (and Two Speaking Lyres)

the availability of such databases and studies and of some earlier and more recent perceptive analyses, a great deal of further technical and interdisciplinary research is required so that wider contextual and methodological syntheses on Attic and non-Attic vaseinscriptions may be based on firmer ground. Understanding inscriptions on vases often does not involve special difficulties. I shall here refer to only a few such cases. The inscriptions on an Attic red-figure skyphos by the Pistoxenos Painter depicting a youth accompanied by an old slave Thracian woman with (what appear to be) tattoos on her inner forearm, help us identify both figures (Figure 1): ΗΕΡΑΚ[ΛΕΣ] and ΓΕΡΟ̣ΦΣΟ—‘Old face.’13 The ‘gap-toothed’14 old slave woman is given a telling name, and Herakles is shown en route to meet the musician Linos, who is depicted, along with Herakles’s half-brother Iphikles, on the obverse (Figure 2). An important Attic black-figure tripodpyxis by the Amasis Painter—found at the Sanctuary of Aphaia on Aegina and dated to c. 540 BC15—provides us with part of a song. Numerous inscriptions appear on its legs (Figure 3a-e). On one of the three legs (Figure 3a), a scene of Herakles’s fight with Kyknos (ΚΥΚṆỌΣ) is shown, while on another leg (Figure 3c) three men appear courting three youths—arranged in three pairs— between two onlookers. Along the right-hand margin of the leg with the representation of Herakles and Kyknos (Figure 3b) occurs the painted inscription Ἥλιος οἶδεν καὶ ἐγṑ μhόνος : αὔτōς παῖδα καλόν (‘The Sun and likewise I alone know a handsome boy’), perhaps part of a skolion.16 Note that, although this erotic song would, to some extent, fit the courtship scene on the other leg (Figure 3d), it has been placed instead along the margin of the leg with the mythological scene. Finally, the incised lettering on an underexplored red-figure pyxis of the late fifth century is even more striking (Figure 4): on the pyxis lid, three vulvae are depicted surrounding a winged, erect phallus, the glans of which is about

the documents, but in the case of pottery, scattered as it is over the globe, this is not attainable. The corpus is not complete, nor is it a finished product, and the information has to be used with caution.’ More often than not, archaeologists working on Attic vases take CAVI transcriptions (which are frequently not based on autopsy and are incomplete) for granted and view CAVI as the definitive and a reliable database of Attic vase-inscriptions. Around 2001–2004 Rudolf Wachter began a new project on the whole corpus of Attic vase-inscriptions, AVI (Attic Vase Inscriptions/Attische Vaseninschriften), and in 2010 Wachter integrated Immerwahr’s CAVI into his AVI, with a view to revising and expanding Immerwahr’s CAVI. At the time of writing, very few of the entries in AVI have been revised and new important vase-inscriptions have not yet been incorporated, since the autopsy of more than 8200 vases (including fragmentary vases with inscriptions) and specialized discussion of the epigraphic, linguistic, and iconographical issues related to those inscriptions are by no means easily achievable tasks. 8  J. D. Beazley, ‘Some Inscriptions on Vases,’ American Journal of Archaeology 31 (1927), 345–353; ‘Some Inscriptions on Vases. II,’ American Journal of Archaeology 33 (1929), 361–367; ‘Little-Master Cups,’ Journal of Hellenic Studies 52 (1932), 167–204; ‘Some Inscriptions on Vases. III,’ American Journal of Archaeology 39 (1935), 475–488; ‘Some Inscriptions on Vases. IV,’ American Journal of Archaeology 45 (1941), 593–602; ‘Two Inscriptions on Attic Vases,’ Classical Review 57 (1943), 102–103; ‘Hymn to Hermes,’ American Journal of Archaeology 52 (1948), 336–340; ‘Some Inscriptions on Vases. V,’ American Journal of Archaeology 54 (1950), 310–322; ‘Ten Inscribed Vases,’ Ἀρχαιολογικὴ Ἐφημερὶς ἐκδιδομένη ὑπὸ τῆς ἐν Ἀθήναις Ἀρχαιολογικῆς Ἑταιρείας 1953–1954, i, 200–206; ‘Some Inscriptions on Vases. VI,’ American Journal of Archaeology 58 (1954), 187–190; ‘Some Inscriptions on Vases. VII,’ American Journal of Archaeology 61 (1957), 5–8; ‘Some Inscriptions on Vases. VIII,’ American Journal of Archaeology 64 (1960): 219–225; ‘A Pair of Graffiti,’ Hesperia 33 (1964), 83. 9  See LSAG. 10  L. Threatte, The Grammar of Attic Inscriptions, vol. I: Phonology, Berlin 1980; The Grammar of Attic Inscriptions, vol. II: Morphology, Berlin 1996. 11  F. Lorber, Inschriften auf korinthischen Vasen: Archäologischepigraphische Untersuchungen zur korinthischen Vasenmalerei im 7. und 6. Jh. v. Chr., Berlin 1979. See also chapter 6 of D. A. Amyx, Corinthian Vase-Painting of the Archaic Period, Berkeley, CA 1988, 547–615. On the so-called throwaway names and semi-throwaway names on Corinthian and Chalcidian vases, see Wachter (below, note 12), 254–257, 272. 12  R. Wachter, Non-Attic Greek Vase Inscriptions, Oxford 2001. See, among other material, A. Johnston, ‘Another Two-and-A-Half Corinthian Dipinti,’ in P. Valavanis and E. Manakidou (eds), ΕΓΡΑΦΣΕΝ ΚΑΙ ΕΠΟΙΕΣΕΝ: Μελέτες Κεραμικῆς καὶ Εἰκονογραφίας πρὸς τιμὴν τοῦ

Μ. Τιβέριου, Thessalonike 2014, 119–123. 13  Schwerin, Staatliches Museum 708; ARV2 862.30; Add.2 298; my Figures 1–2; dated to c. 470–460 BC; Martin Robertson, The Art of Vase-Painting in Classical Athens, Cambridge 1992, 157, fig. 164, and discussion on his pages 157–158. The obverse of this skyphos depicts Linos and Iphikles (identified with inscriptions) and includes the name of the potter Pistoxenos (ΠΙΣΤ̣ΟΧΣΕΝΟΣ | ΕΠΟΙΕΣΕΝ). Οn Geropso, see Threatte 1996 (above, note 10), 263. 14  As Martin Robertson aptly describes her: Robertson 1992 (above, note 13), 158. 15  Aegina, Aphaia Museum; my Figure 3a-e. The pyxis has other inscriptions, too, on its three legs; see M. Ohly-Dumm, ‘Tripod-Pyxis from the Sanctuary of Aphaia on Aegina,’ in D. von Bothmer (ed.), The Amasis Painter and his World: Vase-Painting in Sixth-Century B.C. Athens, New York, NY/Malibu, CA 1985, 236–238; and Immerwahr 1990 (above, note 4), 36–37. On the leg showing Herakles and Kyknos, there are also other figures depicted. 16  ΕΛΙΟΣ (= Ἥλιος) with no Η before Ε. However, Η is added after the letter Μ in the word μόνος (ΜΗΟΝΟΣ). For a brief discussion and the translation quoted here, see Immerwahr 1990 (above, note 4), 36; cf. Ohly-Dumm 1985 (above, note 15), 237–238, where the meter of the song is tentatively identified. Note that the interpoint (:) before ΑΥΤΟΣ has three dots.

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3a

3b 4

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3c

3d 5

Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings

3e

Figure 3a–e. Aegina, Aphaia Museum. Photograph courtesy and © the Ephorate of Antiquities of West Attica, Piraeus and Islands.

Figure 4. Athens, National Archaeological Museum 2510. Photograph courtesy the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, © Hellenic Ministry of Culture/Archaeological Receipts Fund.

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to penetrate one of them.17 Below the testicles of the phallus a male name, ΦΙΛΩΝΙΔΗΣ, appears. Around the left-hand vulva, an inscription ‘defines’ it playfully: Η ΑΥΛHΤΡΙΣ ΑΝΕΜΩΝΗ (‘the aulos girl Anemone’).

name, Mοῦσις as male name has received a separate entry in the Oxford Lexicon of Greek Personal Names (LGPN). The man is bearded and wears greaves and a crested helmet.

Yet conundrums very frequently arise in regard both to transcribing inscriptions and to analyzing their iconographical and cultural contexts. This chapter will focus on specific groups of vases, with a view to first, spelling out some of the iconographical problems characterizing the study of vase-inscriptions; second, foregrounding the urgent need of epigraphic transcriptions of the so-called nonsense inscriptions as well as the scholarly desideratum of broad-ranging and thorough explorations of them; and third, highlighting that ancient Greek vase-inscriptions as a substantial epigraphic corpus may throw light on basic or intricate thought patterns of groups of people (including lower classes)—craftsmen and users—rarely reflected or represented in our historical and literary sources. The case studies discussed here were chosen18 with a view to showing that many ancient Greek vase-inscriptions require the systematic attention of new generations of researchers. They pose methodological questions that require wide-ranging investigations.

This vase, belonging to a group of smaller neckamphorae attributed to the Prometheus Painter,22 is one of the so-called ‘Tyrrhenian’ vases dated by most scholars to the second quarter of the sixth century (relative dating: c. 570–545 BC). The term ‘Tyrrhenian’ refers to a distinctive style in Attic black-figure vases and has been applied to the neck-amphorae and other types of vases carefully attributed (so far) to eight different painters, the earliest being the Prometheus Painter and the Timiades Painter. Although not among the most impressive of the Attic vase-painters of the archaic period,23 both these painters, if compared to the others of the ‘Tyrrhenian’ Group, display a relatively high quality in their craft. The Prometheus Painter and the Timiades Painter often depict warriors and mythological figures in combat, and sphinxes and cocks are among the creatures and animals frequently represented on different friezes of the Prometheus Painter’s vases.24 It is important to remember that ‘[a]bout 130 inscriptions appear on some 19 vases out of a total of some 37 by the Prometheus Painter,’ and that he is ‘the ‘Tyrrhenian’ painter whose vases show the greatest number of inscriptions as a whole, as well as the greatest number of inscriptions on individual

I. Speaking Lyres On the obverse of a black-figure neck-amphora attributed to the Prometheus Painter and dated to c. 560–550 BC19 a warrior is depicted with a lyre in each of his hands (Figure 5). Running to the right, he is flanked by two large cocks. On the reverse, two sphinxes face each other (Figure 6). On the obverse, a number of painted inscriptions provide significant contextualization cues.20 The cock on the left is named ΛΕYϘΟΣ (ΛΕΥΚΟΣ, with koppa instead of kappa), ‘White’; the cock on the right ΧΑΙΤΟΣ, ‘Crest’ (Figure 5). More important, the warrior (Figure 7) is called MΟΣΙΣ (= MOYΣΙΣ), while above each of the lyres he holds occurs the same inscription, once retrograde (lyre on the left) and once left to right (lyre on the right): ΛΥΡΑ ΕΙΜΙ, ‘Ι am a lyre’ (Figure 8). As Beazley observed, the male name Mοῦσις ‘must stand to μοῦσα as Moῖρις to μοῖρα, and Mόλπις, Νῖκις, Νύμφις to μολπή, νίκη, νύμφη.’21 After comparative lexicographic examination in light of Mουσίς as a frequently occurring female

Kluiver 1995 (above, note 4), 60; cf. J. Kluiver, The Tyrrhenian Group of Black-Figure Vases: From the Athenian Kerameikos to the Tombs of South Etruria, Amsterdam 2003, 149. Among other scholars, Kluiver 2003, 19, has shown that ‘[i]n every respect ‘Tyrrhenian’ pottery is a demonstrably Athenian product.’ 23  I agree with Kluiver 1995 (above, note 4), 55 that the O.L.L. Group or the hydriae of the Archippe Group should not be included in the group of ‘Tyrrhenian’ vases; see also D. von Bothmer, ‘The Painters of ‘Tyrrhenian’ Vases,’ American Journal of Archaeology 48 (1944), 162, and Kluiver 2003 (above, note 22), 17. 24  Warriors, Achilleus, and Herakles are common figures on vases attributed to the Prometheus Painter and other painters of the group. On the Prometheus Painter’s iconographic themes involving warriors and mythological figures fighting, see Kluiver 1995 (above, note 4), 61; on these themes also depicted on vases attributed to other painters of the group, see Kluiver 2005 (above, note 4), 69, 75; J. Kluiver, ‘The Five Later ‘Tyrrhenian’ Painters,’ BABesch (Bulletin Antieke Beschaving: Annual Papers on Mediterranean Archaeology) 71 (1996), 1–58, especially pp. 2, 10, 18, 22, 27; Kluiver 2003 (above, note 22), 86–97, 101–102; M. von Mehren, ‘The Trojan Cycle on Tyrrhenian Amphorae,’ in A. Rathje et al. (eds), Danish Studies in Classical Archaeology. Acta Hyperborea 9: Pots for the Living, Pots for the Dead, Copenhagen 2002, 33-58 (as one would expect from its publication date, Kluiver 2003 did not have access to this and another article by M. von Mehren, ‘Two Groups of Attic Amphorae as Export Ware for Etruria: The So-Called Tyrrhenian Group and Nikosthenic Amphorae,’ C. Scheffer (ed.), Acta Universitatis Stockhomiensis/Stockholm Studies in Classical Archaeology 12: Ceramics in Context. Proceedings of the Internordic Colloquium on Ancient Pottery, 1315 June 1997, Stockholm 2001, 127–137); R. F. Sutton, ‘Love-Making on Attic Black-Figure Pottery: Corpus with Some Conclusions,’ in S. Schmidt and J. H. Oakley (eds), Hermeneutik der Bilder: Beiträge zur Ikonographie und Interpretation griechischer Vasenmalerei, Munich 2009, 77–92, esp. p. 78. Cf. S. Mayer-Emmerling, Erzählende Darstellungen auf ‘tyrrhenischen’ Vasen, Frankfurt 1982; iconographic themes on ‘Tyrrhenian’ vases were also considered in the classic study by H. Thiersch, ‘Tyrrhenische’ Amphoren: Eine Studie zur Geschichte der altattischen Vasenmalerei, Leipzig 1899. 22 

Athens, National Archaeological Museum 2510; my Figure 4. A large number of Attic and non-Attic Greek vase-inscriptions present especially intricate iconographical and epigraphic problems. 19  Liverpool, National Museums 56.19.19; ABV 103.118, Para. 39; my Figures 5–8. 20  On contextualization cues, see D. Yatromanolakis and P. Roilos, Towards a Ritual Poetics, Athens 2003, chapter 2; and, with regard to Attic vase-painting and ancient Greek performance cultures, D. Yatromanolakis, Sappho in the Making: The Early Reception, Cambridge, MA 2007, 104 and chapter 3. 21  Βeazley 1927 (above, note 8), 345. See also Yatromanolakis (above, note 20), 112. 17  18 

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Figure 5. Liverpool, National Museums 56.19.19. Photograph courtesy and © National Museums, Liverpool.

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Figure 6. Liverpool, National Museums 56.19.19. Photograph courtesy and © National Museums, Liverpool.

9

Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings

Figure 7. Liverpool, National Museums 56.19.19. Photograph courtesy and © National Museums, Liverpool.

vases.’25 Among the approximately forty amphorae currently attributed to the Timiades Painter, nine have inscriptions.26 Warriors, often with crested helmets, also appear on vases attributed to other painters of the so-called ‘Tyrrhenian’ Group, including those by the Goltyr Painter and the Kyllenios Painter. On the obverse of a neck-amphora attributed to the Prometheus Painter a warrior runs to right between two cocks, like the Prometheus Painter’s neck-amphora examined here:27 he wears a helmet, holds a shield (with a plastic snake as shield device), and is further armed with sword and spear. On the main frieze of the obverse of another neck-amphora attributed to the same painter,28 Achilleus (ΑΧΙΛΕΟΣ, in the genitive,

retrograde) fights an unnamed adversary, tentatively identified as Memnon; the two warriors are flanked by two female onlookers (identified by some scholars as Eos and Thetis),29 flanked, in turn, by two cocks.30 On the reverse, on the corresponding frieze, two sphinxes are flanked by two cocks and two panthers. Like one of the two cocks on the neck-amphora considered here,31 On the numerous onlookers depicted on vases by the Prometheus Painter, see Kluiver 1995 (above, note 4), 62–63. On onlookers on the ‘Tyrrhenian’ amphora New York 59.11.25, see also M. StansburyO’Donnell, Vase-painting, Gender, and Social Identity in Archaic Athens, Cambridge 2006, 16–17. 30  The two cocks are, respectively, flanked by two panther protomes. Cocks and sphinxes, cocks and sirens, or chimaerae flanking central scenes are depicted ‘three times in the main friezes of larger amphorae, always on the reverse’; cocks, sphinxes, and panthers ‘are more often seen on both sides of smaller amphorae’ (Kluiver 1995 [above, note 4], 62; my emphases), like the amphora considered here. 31  Liverpool, National Museums 56.19.19; ABV 103.118, Para. 39. Although the cocks on other ‘Tyrrhenian’ vases can be as large as human figures and sometimes occupy more space than the latter, on the neck-amphora Liverpool, National Museums 56.19.19, the cocks are even larger. One might hypothesize that this is perhaps due to the fact that on the body of this amphora there is only one large frieze. But see the following discussion. 29 

Kluiver 1995 (above, note 4), 66 (= Kluiver 2003 [above, note 22], 46). Kluiver 1995 (above, note 4), 72 (= Kluiver 2003 [above, note 22], 52). Note that, as is the case with other similar groups of painters, future archaeological research may attribute more or fewer vases to each of the painters of the ‘Tyrrhenian’ Group. 27  New York, Metropolitan Museum 56.11.4; CVA New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 4 [USA 16], pl. 4. 28  New York, Metropolitan Museum 59.11.25; Para. 40; Add.2 28; CVA New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 4 [USA 16], pl. 3. 25  26 

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Figure 8. Liverpool, National Museums 56.19.19. Photograph courtesy and © National Museums, Liverpool.

a cock on a hydria attributed to the Prometheus Painter is named ΧΑΙΤΟΣ, ‘Crest’ (Figure 15); and on the same hydria another cock is named ΛΕΥΚΟΣ32 (this time not with koppa), ‘White’—favorite names of cocks, one might maintain, for the Prometheus Painter. On the contrary, on a black-figure cup dated to c. 550–540 BC, above a dog occurs the name ΛΕΥΚΙΟΣ;33 it is intriguing that, on the reverse of the same cup, one of the represented figures holds a lyre, which is labeled ΛΥΡΑ (‘lyre’).

Odysseus’)—identify themselves, indeed emphatically: ΛΥΡΑ ΕΙΜΙ—ΛΥΡΑ ΕΙΜΙ. Hermes identifies himself on a contemporary ‘Tyrrhenian’ neck-amphora attributed to the Kyllenios Painter: ΗΕΡΜΕΣ EIMI KϘΛΕΛΝΙΟΣ (sic), ‘Ι am Hermes of Kyllene’ (his Arcadian mountain).34 But the iconography of the Prometheus Painter’s neckamphora includes uncommon features. The bearded man who holds the two lyres wears greaves and a crested helmet, and belongs to the large group of warriors depicted on ‘Tyrrhenian’ vases. Moreover, this warrior runs to right, not unlike a warrior who runs away from his opponent on another ‘Tyrrhenian’ vase attributed to the Kyllenios Painter.35 In this context, it should be pointed out that, although komastic scenes

The lyre depicted on this black-figure cup did not need to be labeled ΛΥΡΑ. However, the situation is different in regard to the lyres held by the warrior in the neck-amphora examined here. The difference lies in the striking emphasis placed by the painter on the two lyres. Both lyres speak and—like Odysseus in a key scene in the Odyssey (9.19 εἴμ’ Ὀδυσεὺς …, ‘I am

34  Berlin, Antikensammlung F 1704; ABV 96.14, 683; Add.2 25; CVA Berlin, Antikenmuseum 5, 23–25, pls. 12.1–2, 14.1–2, 16.1–3. Beazley 1927 (above, note 8), 345, also cites the black-figure hydria Paris, Louvre E 869 (ABV 106.iv 2; Add.2 29; A.-N. Malagardis, ‘Lorsque me furent adjugées … les armes d’Achille,’ in J. Christiansen and T. Melander (eds), Proceedings of the 3rd Symposium on Ancient Greek and Related Pottery, Copenhagen, August 31–September 4, 1987, Copenhagen 1988, 395, fig. 3), where next to a siren is the inscription ‘I am a siren,’ ΣΙΡΕΝ (Ε)ΙΜΙ. 35  London, British Museum B 48 (1847.8–6.26); ABV 100.70; Add.2 27; O. Tzachou-Alexandri, Mind and Body: Athletic Contests in Ancient Greece, Athens 1989, 254, fig. 144.

Leiden, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden PC 47; ABV 104.126; Add.2 28; my Figures 9–16. Here I do not print the sublinear dots reported in Kluiver 1995 (above, note 4), 66, since some of those sublinear dots are unnecessary. 33  Munich, Antikensammlungen 2243; ABV 163.2 and 160.2; ARV2 1609; Add.2 47; K. Vierneisel and B. Kaeser (eds), Kunst der Schale, Kultur des Trinkens, Munich 1990, figs. 20.1. See also ΛΕΥΚΟΣ on black-figure hydria Paris, Cabinet des Médailles 253; ABV 104.127; Add.2 28; CVA Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale 1, 25–26, pls. 32.13, 33.1–2. See also below, note 48. 32 

11

Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings constitute one of their themes,36 musical imagery is not especially prominent on the ‘Tyrrhenian’ vases: for example, we see an aulos-player or a satyr playing the aulos in the work of the Castellani Painter.37

disproportionally large size of the cocks on this image is somewhat riddling. Beazley was right: the combination of military accoutrements and lyres and (one might add) the repetition of the inscription ‘I am a lyre—I am a lyre’ pose a riddle.

The two ‘speaking’ lyres on our neck-amphora are extraordinary among Attic black-figure and red-figure vase-paintings. They are not simply held but displayed by the warrior and—along with the ample lettering filling almost all the blank space of the image— constitute marked38 contextualization cues. The lyres’ voices—ΛΥΡΑ ΕΙΜΙ, ΛΥΡΑ ΕΙΜΙ—occupy a central part of the vase-painting and, through ‘antiphonal,’ as it were, repetition, invite the viewers to ‘hear’ them— and eventually to decodify the broader image. The ‘epigraphic’ identity of the lyres (on the upper part of the image) is visually even more prominent than that of the man (his name written between the two greaves of his legs; Figure 5). The bearded warrior does not hold a shield, as in other depictions of warriors on ‘Tyrrhenian’ and other Attic vases. Instead, he displays ΛΥΡΑΙ. Warriors holding and emphatically displaying lyres are not to be encountered easily on Attic vases. The juxtaposition of military accoutrements and lyres caused perplexity even to an (unparalleled) authority like John Beazley: ‘I don’t quite understand,’ he noted; he was not able to adduce parallels from other vase-paintings, Attic or non-Attic.39 Even the

An only slightly relevant image on ancient Greek vases I have been able to trace is that of a warrior on a blackfigure neck-amphora in Oxford.40 On the obverse of this amphora, two warriors fight over a fallen warrior. All wear helmets (with crests)41 and greaves. The shield device of the fallen man is a snake. One of the other warriors holds a shield on which a lyre (with a plektron) is depicted. But none of those men is named, and the lyre as shield device of one of the warriors is not a ‘speaking’ lyre. On another vase, a warrior’s shield has a centaur holding a lyre depicted on it.42 The warrior here does not hold or display a lyre. On some Attic vases of the late archaic period, the shield device of warriors is a musicmaking scorpion or crab playing auloi.43 In an earlier, Attic Geometric cup in Athens, ‘a man with a lyre and a spray in his hand kneels on a wooden erection between two men armed’ with shields and spears.44 However, this vase-painting again does not provide an illuminating parallel to our image. As Webster aptly suggests, ‘[i]n the Suitor-slaying (Od. XXII 330 f.) Phemios stood with the lyre in his hand and wondered whether he should go out of the hall to the altar of Zeus or whether he should go straight to Odysseus and clasp his knees; he decides to put down his lyre and go to Odysseus, and is then spared by Odysseus and Telemachos. The cup

36  E.g., neck-amphora Paris, Louvre E 864 (ABV 97.33, 683; Add.2 26; CVA Paris, Louvre 1, pl. 6.4.11), attributed to the Prometheus Painter. 37  Aulos-player: Paris, Louvre CP 10514 (attributed to the Castellani Painter; Kluiver 1996 [above, note 24], 8, no. 177); also, Paris, Louvre E 870 (attributed to the Guglielmi Painter; ABV 105.131; CVA Paris, Louvre 2, pl. 12.2.4–5). Satyr playing the aulos: Cologne, University 296 (attributed to the Castellani Painter; Kölner Jahrbuch 26 [1993], 231, figs. 11a-b). 38  My usage of the terms ‘marked’ and ‘unmarked’ here and throughout this chapter draws from their specialized meaning in modern linguistics. The notion of ‘markedness,’ as developed by the theorists of the Prague School, describes the status/quality of a linguistic form as less neutral (see E. L. Battistella, The Logic of Markedness, New York, NY 1996; E. Andrews, Markedness Theory: The Union of Asymmetry and Semiosis in Language, Durham, NC 1990; O. M. Tomić, Markedness in Synchrony and Diachrony, Berlin 1989). 39  Beazley 1927 (above, note 8), 345. The only parallel he could ‘point to’ came from a different type of objects: a rock-crystal scaraboid (Oxford, Ashmolean Museum 1892.1479; J. Boardman and M.-L. Vollenweider, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Catalogue of the Engraved Gems and Finger Rings: I. Greek and Etruscan, Oxford 1978, no. 65, pl. 12, and pp. 13 [‘From Asia Minor?’], 14 [‘Third quarter of the sixth century B.C.’]; J. Boardman, Greek Gems and Finger Rings: Early Bronze Age to Late Classical, expanded ed., London 2001, pl. 325). This scaraboid shows a naked youth with bent knees (the little space available necessitates this almost kneeling position, which is often reproduced on gems of this period; cf., among other examples, Boardman and Vollenweider 1978, no. 68, pl. 12, ‘a kneeling youth draws a bow’); the naked youth wears a helmet and holds a cock and an object that has been identified as an ‘abbreviated lyre’ (this ‘abbreviated lyre’ is so ‘squeezed’ on the gem that Adolf Furtwängler in his Die antiken Gemmen [Berlin 1900, pl. 6.38] did not recognize it). Boardman (Boardman and Vollenweider 1978, 14), refers to the ‘blob sound box’ of the ‘abbreviated lyre.’ Leaving aside problems of interpretation that the small gem presents, the differences between the image on this rock-crystal scaraboid and the iconography of the Liverpool amphora are significant. The two cocks flanking Mousis are very large and not offered to someone. Flanking cocks and various flanking animals (e.g., sphinxes) occur

on other vases by the Prometheus Painter. Moreover, it would not have been harder for the Prometheus Painter to depict Mousis holding a cock, instead of two stringed instruments. The two speaking lyres are emphatically displayed by him, and the inscriptions (see MΟΥΣΙΣ) provide marked contextualization cues. It is unlikely that the considerably sizeable cocks, occupying the largest part of the vase-painting, might represent love gifts offered by an erastes to an eromenos. Why speaking lyres and all the inscriptions, if one attempts to sketch such a scenario? Beazley 1927 (above, note 8), 345, refrained from proposing a far-fetched hypothesis on the basis of the image of the naked youth on the rock-crystal scaraboid, because the notion of courtship on the part of a warrior is not borne out from the iconography of the amphora. However, even if one wanted to entertain such a hypothesis, this would not affect my approach. 40  Oxford, Ashmolean Museum 1960.741; J. Boardman and F. Schweizer, ‘Clay Analyses of Archaic Greek Pottery,’ Annual of the British School at Athens 68 (1973), 276.24, 280–282, figs. 53–54. 41  Boardman and Schweizer 1973 (above, note 40), 281–282. 42  Basel, market, Münzen und Medaillen A.G.; K. Schefold and F. Jung, Die Sagen von den Argonauten, von Theben und Troia in der klassischen und hellenistischen Kunst, Munich 1989, 170, fig. 151; LIMC vol. III, pl. 186, s.v. Cheiron 8. 43  See, e.g., Rome, Villa Giulia L 2006.10 (formerly New York, Metropolitan Museum 1972.11.10; Add.2 396, 404, 405; J. Onians, Classical Art and the Cultures of Greece and Rome, New Haven, CT 1999, 12– 13; figs. 9a–b), dated to c. 520–510 BC (side B); Basel, Antikenmuseum und Sammlung Ludwig LU 36, dated to c. 500 BC (ARV2 351.6; Add.2 221; E. Berger and R. Lullies [eds], Antike Kunstwerke aus der Sammlung Ludwig, vol. 1, Basel 1979, 98, pl. 36). 44  Athens, National Archaeological Museum 784; T. B. L. Webster, ‘Homer and Attic Geometric Vases,’ Annual of the British School at Athens 50 (1955), 48.

12

Chapter One illustrates the other alternative, two heroes rescue a singer who has taken refuge on an altar.’45

Soundscapes (and Two Speaking Lyres)

XAITOΣ and ΛΕΥΚΟΣ on the Liverpool neck-amphora on the other hand, an intriguing difference emerges. On his Liverpool neck-amphora, the cocks have become so prominent that they occupy almost the largest part of the image. If cocks are to some extent associated—in specific images of the Prometheus Painter—with the broader concept of fighting, the male figure on the Liverpool amphora appears overwhelmed by the idea of war and fighting. Instead of holding shield and spear, Mousis displays speaking lyres.51 The large cock named XAITOΣ, ‘Crest,’ is juxtaposed with the crested helmet of the bearded man with the military accoutrements, just as the two speaking lyres he holds are juxtaposed with the two (almost nightmarishly) large cocks.

One might adduce here other analogous sets of images: e.g., warriors arming while youths play the auloi. But they would not contribute decisively to our understanding of the neck-amphora examined here. If we compare this neck-amphora with one of the most important vases by the same painter—which also happens to be one of his three vases46 with the most numerous inscriptions written on them—that is, the ‘Tyrrhenian’ black-figure hydria Leiden PC 47, we observe the following (Figures 9–16): on the shoulder of this hydria, we see large cocks (on the left) and a large cock with a hen (on the right) flanking a broader scene that involves fighting and killing; the Minotaur is slain by Theseus while Ariadne, Minos, and other named figures stand nearby.47 All the cocks and the hen are given names: two cocks (one on the left and one on the right) are called XAITOΣ, and the cock standing next to XAITOΣ on the left is named ΛΕΥΚΟΣ. XAITOΣ is also the name of a horse on the fragmentary black-figure kantharos Athens, National Archaeological Museum, Acropolis Collection 1.611, dated to the second quarter of the sixth century (Figure 18).48 As I have already suggested, XAITOΣ and ΛΕΥΚΟΣ must have been the favorite names of cocks for the Prometheus Painter. They reappear in his neckamphora under consideration; and they may be viewed as a kind of pictorial sphragis for this painter. In his work, unnamed cocks—represented as large in size as the human figures they flank—occur frequently. Cocks are depicted next to sphinxes and panthers, but also next to warriors and fighting heroes, as in the cases of the hydria Leiden PC 47 and of two neck-amphorae I referred to earlier;49 in one of the latter neck-amphorae Achilleus and another warrior are in combat. If we compare the Prometheus Painter’s ΧΑΙΤΟΣ and ΛΕΥΚΟΣ and his other cocks depicted in scenes with warriors and fighting heroes on the one hand,50 and his

On the tondo of a red-figure cup stylistically near the Tarquinia Painter dated to c. 460 BC, a long-haired warrior with helmet, greaves, and a spear is depicted running to the right and treading on his shield.52 The warrior is running away from a perilous (?) situation. He has been identified as Archilochos. Although I would not be inclined to endorse this identification,53 it would be helpful to draw into my discussion a fragment of Archilochos (fr. 5 W2): ἀσπίδι μὲν Σαΐων τις ἀγάλλεται, ἣν παρὰ θάμνῳ | ἔντος ἀμώμητον, κάλλιπον οὐκ ἐθέλων· | αὐτὸν δ’ ἐξεσάωσα. τί μοι μέλει ἀσπὶς ἐκείνη; | ἐρρέτω· ἐξαῦτις κτήσομαι οὐ κακίω (‘some Saian exults in my shield which I left—faultless weapon—beside a bush against my will. But I saved myself. What do I care about that shield? To hell with it! I’ll get one that’s just as good another time’).54 The image with the

T. B. L. Webster (above, note 44), 48. The other two are Louvre E 852 (ABV 96.13; Add.2 25; CVA Paris, Louvre 1, pls. 5.6.14, 7.5) and Cerveteri, Museo Nazionale Cerite (G. Hedreen, ‘‘I Let Go My Force Just Touching her Hair’: Male Sexuality in Athenian Vase-Paintings of Silens and Iambic Poetry,’ Classical Antiquity 25 [2006], 325, fig. 1a-b). 47  Leiden, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden PC 47; ABV 104.126; Add.2 28; my Figures 9–16. 48  ABV 82.1; Add.2 23; my Figure 18. See also ΛΕΥΚΟΣ in the context of the chariot of Herakles on black-figure hydria Paris, Cabinet des Médailles 253 (ABV 104.127; Add.2 28; CVA Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale 1, 25–26, pls. 32.13, 33.1–2), dated to c. 550–530 BC. Οne might suggest that ΧΑΙΤΟΣ and ΛΕΥΚΟΣ are names applied to horses (or other animals like cocks) in sixth-century vase-painting and invested with connotations of fighting or heroic enterprises. 49  New York, Metropolitan Museum 56.11.4 (CVA New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 4 [USA 16], pl. 4); and New York, Metropolitan Museum 59.11.25 (Para. 40; Add.2 28; CVA New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York 4 [USA 16], pl. 3). 50  For the cocks (and one hen) on the black-figure hydria Leiden, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden PC 47 attributed to the Prometheus Painter, Kluiver 1995 (above, note 4), 62, suggests that ‘perhaps the two pairs of birds on the shoulder of [Leiden PC 47] are a visual

metaphor: on the left two cocks stand with the tips of their beaks touching—Theseus fighting the Minotaur—and on the right a cock and hen walk away together—Theseus and Ariadne.’ Like earlier scholars, Kluiver associates cocks with fighting in the context of specific vase-paintings. 51  On a few amphorae attributed to the Prometheus Painter, youths or men hold wreaths in their raised hands, but there are no inscriptions (let alone semantically marked inscriptions like ‘Mousis’) near the wreaths or the male figures: Paris, Louvre E 854 (ABV 101.89; CVA Paris, Louvre 1, pl. 5.3.11); Paris, Louvre CP 10698 (ABV 96.20; Para. 37); Rome, Villa Giulia 74989 (K. Schauenburg, ‘Die einköpfige Hydra,’ in Στήλη: Tόμος εἰς μνήμην Νικολάου Κοντολέοντος, Athens 1980, pls. 31a–b, 32a). 52  Ηarrow School, Museum 54 (1864.54); CVA Harrow School, Museum [Great Britain 21], 23–24, pl. 27 (or perhaps stylistically near the Pistoxenos Painter; on the argument that the iconography of the cup’s tondo suggests ‘a rhipsaspis’ and that ‘Alcaeus … and Anacreon … are presumably other candidates,’ see CVA Harrow School, Museum, p. 24). 53  On this methodological approach, see Yatromanolakis 2007 (above, note 20), 65–67, 110–111, 273–275. 54  I here quote D. Gerber’s translation of Archilochos fr. 5 W2 and fr. 1 W2 (D. Gerber, Greek Iambic Poetry: From the Seventh to the Fifth Centuries

Does the ample lettering of this image reflect thought patterns associated with classes of ordinary craftsmen that are rarely represented ‘directly’ in our historical and literary sources? A definitive answer would be difficult, given the gaps of indeterminacy that our evidence involves. Yet it is worth pursuing this line of inquiry here a bit further.

45  46 

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Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings

Figure 9. Leiden, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden PC 47. Photograph courtesy and © Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden.

14

Chapter One

Soundscapes (and Two Speaking Lyres)

Figure 10. Leiden, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden PC 47. Photograph courtesy and © Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden.

15

Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings

Figure 11. Leiden, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden PC 47. Photograph courtesy and © Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden.

16

Chapter One

Soundscapes (and Two Speaking Lyres)

Figure 12. Leiden, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden PC 47. Photograph courtesy and © Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden.

17

Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings

Figure 13. Leiden, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden PC 47. Photograph courtesy and © Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden.

Figure 14. Leiden, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden PC 47. Photograph courtesy and © Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden.

18

Chapter One

Soundscapes (and Two Speaking Lyres)

Figure 15. Leiden, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden PC 47. Photograph courtesy and © Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden.

Figure 16. Leiden, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden PC 47. Photograph courtesy and © Rijksmuseum van Oudheden, Leiden.

19

Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings warrior and his speaking lyres on the Liverpool neckamphora does not reflect the (potentially) polyvalent ideas so cunningly formulated in this fragment. Unlike the warrior on the red-figure cup stylistically near the Tarquinia Painter who treads on a fallen shield, there is no shield on the image with Mousis. The discourse reflected in the Liverpool amphora is closer to that of another fragment of Archilochos (fr. 1 W2): εἰμὶ δ’ ἐγὼ θεράπων μὲν Ἐνυαλίοιο ἄνακτος | καὶ Μουσέων ἐρατὸν δῶρον ἐπιστάμενος (‘I am the servant of lord Enyalios and skilled in the lovely gift of the Muses’). However, on this neck-amphora, Mousis, who is depicted running (away from battle or from a perilous situation?), does not place equal emphasis on his military ‘identity’ and on song-making (ΜΟΥΣΙΣ—ΛΥΡΑΙ). He is visualized as a running ‘musician warrior’—a ‘betwixt and between’ type. In contrast to an epigram ascribed in later times to Aischylos55 in which ‘Aischylos’ (as it is claimed by late sources) placed exclusive emphasis on his identity as warrior, the lyres of Mousis voice a different idea. The whole image playfully conveys a feeling (expressed by ordinary craftsmen, outside the heroic world of archaic epic and lyric) that problematizes the familiar ideologies of the Iliadic warriors: the prevalent—in other ‘Tyrrhenian’ vases—heroic themes of fighting and war are of no interest for Mousis.

beginning of the second quarter of the sixth century; they continue appearing on vases in large numbers later in the sixth and early fifth centuries. No systematic or cross-disciplinary study of these inscriptions exists, and their complex history in the sixth and fifth centuries has not yet been investigated. But a widely endorsed classification of them does exist. In his book Attic Script, Henry Immerwahr categorized the so-called nonsense inscriptions as follows: (i) mock and near-sense inscriptions; (ii) meaningless inscriptions; (iii) imitation inscriptions or letters; and (iv) blots or dots.57 Building on earlier scholarly paradigms, he also maintained that ‘the usefulness of publishing the[se] inscriptions [including the nonsense inscriptions] may be questioned.’ ‘Nonsense inscriptions are of interest in connection with the question of literacy (I believe they were mostly written by literate painters), and also when they are used as trade marks in certain workshops.’58 As a result, in the final 2009 version of his Corpus of Attic Vase Inscriptions, he often included ‘nonsense’ inscriptions ‘in abbreviated form’59 or decided to include no transcriptions of them at all. Yet the situation is more complicated: the so-called nonsense inscriptions were of little or no interest to either epigraphists or archaeologists, hence they

II. Soundscapes

uncertain; I examine these in another study of early inscriptions and performance culture). It should be stressed that the dating of seventh- and early-sixth-century vases and inscriptions is relative and not always without problems. The Attic ‘nonsense’ inscriptions appear around the beginning of the second quarter of the sixth century. They are more numerous in the sixth century (on blackfigure pieces) than later. The concept of soundscape was introduced by R. Murray Schafer in his seminal book The Tuning of the World (New York, NY 1977). For anthropological approaches to soundscapes, see, among other studies, D. W. Samuels, L. Meintjes, A. M. Ochoa, and T. Porcello, ‘Soundscapes: Toward a Sounded Anthropology,’ Annual Review of Anthropology 39 (2010), 329–345 (with references to innovative ethnographic and ethnomusicological investigations). 57  H. R. Immerwahr, ‘A Projected Corpus of Attic Vase Inscriptions,’ in Acta of the Fifth International Congress of Greek and Latin Epigraphy, Cambridge 1967, Oxford 1971, 54, and Immerwahr 1990 (above, note 4), 44. 58  Immerwahr 1971 (above, note 57), 59–60. In the present chapter, the term ‘literate’ is used to refer to painters/craftsmen who were able to read and write ancient Greek and does not have broader connotations. Furthermore, when I refer to (e.g.) ‘Nearchos’ or ‘the vase-painter’ as the writer of the painted inscriptions on a vase, I am aware that it is theoretically possible that this identification may not always be certain. Yet, on the basis of a detailed technical study of handwriting in the case of the major workshop of Pamphaios, H. R. Immerwahr (‘The Signatures of Pamphaios,’ American Journal of Archaeology 88 [1984], 341–352) has convincingly shown that painted inscriptions, including a potter’s signatures, were written by the vase-painters. Other epigraphists working on Attic and non-Attic vase-inscriptions have often argued that the painted inscriptions (written on vases before firing) were put on by the painters. The (most often hardly demonstrable) possibility that the potter or another individual rather than the vase-painter painted the inscriptions on a vase does not affect the approach proposed in this chapter, especially since what matters is the reception of vase-inscriptions by archaic and classical Greek viewers on the basis of the contextualization cues the inscriptions provided. 59  This phrase comes from Immerwahr 1971 (above, note 57), 60, and was used by him in regard to his projected corpus of Attic vaseinscriptions.

1. Questions: Sound, Dissonance, and Auditory Landscape It is not easy to understand why vase-painters in archaic and classical Greece chose specific sounds, including dissonant ones, and placed them next to gods, human figures, animals, or mythological creatures, or sometimes on undecorated pottery. What did many of those sounds evoke? And how are those sounds related to the ancient Greek soundscapes of the sixth and fifth centuries? In its nature, this question is anthropological, and, if investigated systematically, it would have far-reaching implications for a crossdisciplinary approach to the concept of sound in late archaic and classical Athens. Aspects of the Attic soundscapes, as perceived or constructed in the potters’ quarters, may be reconstructed, I argue, from the hundreds of sixth- and fifth-century inscriptions on pottery that provide us with what we have customarily named ‘non-sense.’ We first see—and hear—a number of Attic ‘nonsense’ inscriptions56 approximately at the BC, Cambridge, MA 1999, 81–83, and 77, respectively). See also, among other authors, Aristophanes, Peace 335–336 …καὶ γελῶ | … ἐκφυγὼν τὴν ἀσπίδα, 438 τοῦτον τὸν ἄνδρα μὴ λαβεῖν ποτ’ ἀσπίδα, 775–776 Mοῦσα, σὺ μὲν πολέμους ἀπωσαμένη μετ’ ἐμοῦ τοῦ φίλου χόρευσον. Cf. Acharnians 58 σπονδὰς ποιῆσαι καὶ κρεμάσαι τὰς ἀσπίδας, 279 ἡ δ’ ἀσπὶς ἐν τῷ φεψάλῳ κρεμήσεται. 55  D. L. Page, Further Greek Epigraphs, revised by R. D. Dawe and J. Diggle, Cambridge 1981, 131–132 (for diverse reasons, the ascription of the epigram to Aischylos has rightly been doubted). 56  Very few may be traced before then (but the dating is often

20

Chapter One

Soundscapes (and Two Speaking Lyres)

were often either not reported in some CVA fascicules and relevant archaeological publications, or were considerably abbreviated or misreported.60 We still do not have (in many cases) full, accurate, or any transcriptions—a systematic corpus—of those hundreds of inscriptions, which may constitute nearly one third of all (so far reported) Attic vase-inscriptions. Creating such a corpus is both significant and overdue.61 If we explore systematically62 diverse configurations or lack of configurations in the so-called nonsense inscriptions, we may be able to approach aspects of the soundscapes of sixth- and fifth-century Athenian societies as perceived or constructed by Attic vase-painters.

pose the question whether the iconography of specific vase-paintings justifies the use of the concepts of ‘unmeaning’ and ‘senseless’ inscriptions. Finally, there are many cases where ‘nonsense’ inscriptions—painted before firing by the so-called literate or more literate vase-painters and groups—64 render diverse Athenian soundscapes, constructed or based on habitus. To be sure, the proposed methodological approach of soundscapes should be viewed only as referring to a part—to a large category—of the corpus of ‘nonsense’ inscriptions; it should not function as a kind of panacea and be applied to the majority or all of CAVI’s ‘nonsense’ inscriptions.

This area deserves large-scale epigraphic and arthistorical investigations—something that is beyond the scope of this chapter. Among numerous lines of inquiry, one should focus on the level of literacy displayed by each vase-painter or by specific groups, starting with the work of those identifiable vase-painters who are conspicuously more literate than others, e.g. Nearchos. However, I argue that what may be equally important is the scholarly nomenclature we will be using in the course of such cross-disciplinary investigations and the questions we will be posing in regard to the available corpus of the so-called nonsense inscriptions. For example, one may want to test whether Immerwahr’s first two categories (mock and near-sense inscriptions, and meaningless inscriptions) are flexible enough to accommodate the complexities displayed by the available evidence. Even a basic consideration of some 8200 entries included in CAVI alerts us to the fact that the wealth of material is such that we may want to carefully redefine those two categories and reexamine comparatively the material classified as ‘meaningless’ and ‘near-sense.’ If one ponders on the lack of consistency in the use of the term ‘mock inscriptions’ in CAVI, one may perhaps decide to dispense with this category63 or redefine it. In other cases, we may want to

2. Mock Inscriptions, Near-Sense, Meaningless Inscriptions: Sounds and Absence of Sense The idea that nonsense inscriptions mock, are mock, or near-sense is in itself a metaphor. One need not agree with Immerwahr’s conceptualization (or lack of conceptualization) of ‘mock’ or of why some of the nonsense inscriptions may be near-sense to appreciate his and earlier researchers’ convenient schema of nonsense. As is the case with many such scholarly metaphors, the metaphor of inscriptions being mock and nearsense may not fully capture different aspects of the representational nature of images with which such inscriptions are associated. The so-called nonsense inscriptions often do not denote or connote absence of sense, but instead are opposed to the absence of sense.65 In the context of the vast corpus of sense vase-inscriptions and in the conventional polarity ‘nonsense’ versus ‘sense inscriptions,’ it is the category these assumptions may hardly be substantiated and, to some extent, represent what Oxford papyrologist Peter J. Parsons used to call ‘the uncritical use or overuse of the critical’; the instances Immerwahr cites that could perhaps support these suspicions/assumptions are very few, may be approached from different epigraphic perspectives, and their apparent relevance is questionable; as he himself rightly admits, ‘the decisive factor’ would be ‘the difference in alphabet or ductus: absent these criteria the assumption of different hands remains speculative’ (2006, 141, n. 20). Regarding his abandoning his category ‘mock inscriptions,’ it is not entirely clear from his discussion why he decided to express this view. Yet the situation is significantly more complex, and the term ‘mock inscriptions’ should not necessarily be dispensed with but instead redefined carefully. The term ‘mock inscription’ is semantically charged, and, as a result, the category ‘mock inscriptions’ has considerably influenced recent analyses of the so-called comic effects of ‘mock inscriptions.’ 64  I am aware that in the past few decades, Beazley’s and other archaeologists’ identifications of vase-painters and groups of painters have been met with skepticism by different scholarly camps. Those scholars who have rigorously been trained in connoisseurship do not see such criticisms as conducive to an overthrow of Beazley’s masterful scholarly edifice. 65  From an entirely different perspective and methodological standpoint, Gilles Deleuze writes (The Logic of Sense, trans. M. Lester with C. Stivale, ed. C. V. Boundas, New York, NY 1990, 71 [in his ‘Eleventh Series of Nonsense,’ 66–73]): ‘nonsense … is opposed to the absence of sense rather than to the sense that it produces in excess.’ Moreover, note that ‘nonsense’ inscriptions might be viewed as ‘icons’—in the sense the term ‘icon’ has in a part of Pierce’s semiotic system (‘icon,’ ‘symbol,’ ‘index’)—depicted on icons (that is, on pictures).

Here, I do not refer to the group of ‘imitation inscriptions or letters’ or to ‘blots or dots.’ 61  CAVI, if expanded and significantly revised, would be the best place to start with. 62  In a number of specific cases, it seems that—after these inscriptions began being used by literate painters (see following discussion)— illiterate vase-painters found it convenient to continue this practice. Wide-ranging studies of the use of writing by many different identifiable vase-painters would be necessary for an exhaustive examination of diverse types of ‘nonsense’ inscriptions. 63  Although in the 2009 revised version of CAVI the term is used most frequently, in a 2006 article Immerwahr thought that ‘[t]he term ‘mock inscriptions’, used by me and others in the past, […] should be abandoned’ (‘Nonsense Inscriptions and Literacy,’ Kadmos 45 [2006], 136–172; quotation from page 146). This 2006 article was primarily intended as a general overview of the ‘literacy’ approach he also promoted in the past. Although useful, the article has the form of ‘notes’ kept during different decades and, unfortunately, does not present a systematic synthesis. As in other publications, Immerwahr places here unwarranted emphasis on the old ‘theories’ of (1) ‘copying’ on the part of vase-painters and (2) the possible involvement of two hands, perhaps one illiterate and one literate, in the writing of nonsense and sense inscriptions on vases, despite the fact that 60 

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Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings ‘nonsense’ that should be viewed as pictorially marked, while the category ‘sense’ as unmarked.66 Especially at the early stages of this Attic phenomenon in the second quarter of the sixth century (see following discussion), this markedness would inevitably give rise to an active engagement on the part of literate viewers.

possibly, exclamations like ὀοοααᾶ),71 and το-.72 One should here bring into discussion the lettering painted on a black-figure band cup dated to c. 550–530 BC that depicts horsemen hunting deer:73 the images on this cup are almost replete with τοτο nonsense inscriptions (according to entrenched terminology), but one wonders whether these inscriptions are actually opposed to the absence of sense (cf. Seven against Thebes 203–205 ἔδεισ’ ἀκού-|σασα τὸν ἁρματόκτυπον ὄτοβον ὄτοβον [repeated twice] | ὅτε τε σύριγγες ἔκλαγξαν74 ἑλίτροχοι).75 One should further refer to the τοτοτ- nonsense inscriptions on the Attic black-figure epinetron Eleusis, Αrchaeological Museum 465 (Figure 17), anachronistically labeled ‘solmization system’ in recent times:76 on this vase war and music are intermingled, and it is noteworthy that ὄτοβος refers both to the sounds heard in battle and to the sounds of musical instruments, including the aulos.77 Cases like ὄτοβος are not few—and include ὀλολυγών (‘croaking of the male frog’),78 ὀλολυγή (‘loud cry’),79 and ἰωή. I shall return to this point below.

In specific cases, one might want to replace the concept of nonsense and Immerwahr’s subcategories with the concepts of pictorial sounds or pictorial phonemes. Especially when the work of vase-painters is characterized by marked literacy, it is not likely that ‘nonsense inscriptions’ placed next to sense inscriptions in some of their vase-paintings—or ‘nonsense’ inscriptions filling the field of some other of those literate vasepainters’ images—have no ‘sense.’ To go a step further, I propose that vase-painters often experiment with combinations of sounds not for the sake of pictorial aesthetics67 but to render soundscapes closely related to the representational world of their images. 3. Writing Soundscapes: Consonance, Dissonance, Sound Textures

Some of the linguistic registers of Aristophanes contribute significantly to our understanding of Athenian soundscapes. Apart from the Persian ambassador Pseudartabas’s sphinxlike but exquisite announcement ἰαρταμαν ἐξαρξαν ἀπισσονα σατρα in Acharnians (100),80 we hear in Birds the quasiritualistic ναβαισατρεῦ spoken by the Triballian god (1615):81 although many attempts have been

What is sound for the Greeks of the archaic and classical periods? Is the opposition to the absence of sense associated at all with sounds, including dissonant ones? Are apparently incoherent sounds consequential? In this chapter, I have space to explore only some aspects of the last question. In the theatrical discourse of Aischylos, sounds are visible: in their first performance of song-and-dance in Seven against Thebes, we see and hear the Chorus exclaiming: κτύπον δέδορκα, ‘Ι see the loud sound’ (103).68 A sound is not simply audible but visible in Sophokles’s Philoktetes, too:69 an ἰωά—a word referring to a ‘loud sound,’ itself brimming with lexicalized sound—can be ‘seen from afar’ (216–217);70 a sound (κτύπος) becomes visible (201–202). This idea of visible sound may throw light on soundscapes on archaic and classical Attic vase-paintings.

71  Αischylos, Suppliants 825 (but see below, note 160; Denys Page, Aeschyli septem quae supersunt tragoedias, Oxford 1972, 123, prints †ό ό ό ά ά ά; cf. ὅ ὅ ὅ, ἅ ἅ ἅ in A. H. Sommerstein, Aeschylus, vol. 1, Cambridge, MA 2008, 394). ὀοοααᾶ is the text restored in H. Friis Johansen and E. W. Whittle, Aeschylus: The Suppliants, Copenhagen 1980, vol. 1, 111. ὀοοααᾶ, as printed in this chapter, is only one of the possible ways that the interjection may be understood. See also ὀᾶ in Aischylos, Persians 570 (below, note 100) and ὂ ὂ ὄ in Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazousai 1191 (below, note 160); the relevant context(s) define(s) the semantic nuances of each interjection. Also, note that interjections are sometimes transmitted differently (e.g., repeated twice or more times) in different manuscripts, and the apparatus criticus of editions in each case is essential (see below, notes 100 and 160). 72  Cf. Chantraine, DELG 834–835; Beekes, EDG 1122. 73  Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 81132; ABV 252.1; CVA Naples, Museo Nazionale 1, pl. 18.2–3. 74  On ἔκλαγξαν ἑλίτροχοι (205), see Hutchinson 1987 (above, note 69), 8 and 78–79 (Page 1972 [above, note 71], 52, prints κλάγξαν ἑλικότροχοι, but see his apparatus criticus). 75  See also Aischylos, Seven against Thebes 150–151 ἒ ἒ ἒ ἔ· | ὄτοβον. 76  Eleusis 465 (not 907, as listed in BAPD and in other archaeological publications); my Figure 17; see Yatromanolakis 2007 (above, note 20), 102, n. 164. 77  Auloi: Sophokles, Aias 1202 γλυκὺν αὐλῶν ὄτοβον. Βattle: Hesiod, Theogony 709 ὄτοβος δ’ ἄπλητος ὀρώρει. 78  On ὀλολυγών, see A. S. F. Gow, Theocritus, edited with a translation and commentary, second ed., Oxford 1952, vol. 2, 165. 79  See Chantraine, DELG 794 (s.v. ὀλολύζω); Beekes, EDG 1071. 80  See Nigel Wilson’s apparatus criticus (N. G. Wilson, Aristophanis Fabulae, vol. 1, Oxford 2007, 11). 81  See Wilson’s apparatus criticus (2007 [above, note 80], vol. 1, 421); Wilson 2007 prints νά, Βαισατρεῦ. Nan Dunbar (Aristophanes: Birds, edited with introduction and commentary, Oxford 1995, 121) prints να, Βαισατρευ. On the Triballians, see Dunbar 1995, 702, 715, 717 (on

Furthermore, the Greeks in the archaic and classical periods were not unaccustomed to associating ‘meaningless’ (for some modern societies) sounds with words that bear sense. Words like ὄτοβος, ‘loud sound,’ seem to have taken shape from sounds or units of sound like o (see, e.g., the interjections ὀᾶ and ὀτοτοτοῖ, and, See above, note 38. The (simplistic?) idea that ‘nonsense’ inscriptions are simply decorative is undermined not only by major aspects of the early history of this phenomenon (see following discussion), but also by the fact that many of them are very sloppily written (we find no neatly drawn letters), and, therefore, often no attempt at decorative ‘writing’ may be detected. 68  κτύπος has diverse connotations (‘rattle,’ ‘noise,’ etc.). 69  For parallels, see G. O. Hutchinson, Aeschylus: Septem contra Thebas, edited with introduction and commentary, Oxford 1985 (reprinted with corrections 1987), 63. 70  Used metaphorically for ‘heard from afar’; see also Philoktetes 189. 66  67 

22

Chapter One

Soundscapes (and Two Speaking Lyres) |νοπτερυγών.84 It is intriguing that only a few lines (1180– 1183) after voicing this word, the Chorus brings the play to a close by exclaiming repeatedly εὐοῖ, εὐαί, εὐαί, εὐαί, εὐαί (end of the play)—an exclamation (εὐοῖ) that occurs on a globular one-handled flask dated to the second quarter of the eighth century (according to some scholars, this is the earliest preserved Greek inscription).85

Aristophanes, not unlike Sophokles, also associates seemingly meaningless sounds with words that bear sense. In Philoktetes 746–754, Philoktetes juxtaposes the vocative παῖ (‘child,’ ‘boy’) with repeated expressive sounds: ἀπαππαπαῖ, παπᾶ παπᾶ παπᾶ παπαῖ (746); ἴθ’, ὦ παῖ. (750); οἶσθ’, ὦ παῖ; τί σοί; (753); οὐκ οἶδα. πῶς οὐκ οἶσθα; παππαπαππαπαῖ (754).86 Ιn Birds 57–60, Peisetairos juxtaposes the vocatives παῖ Figure 17. Eleusis, Αrchaeological Museum 465. Photograph courtesy and © the Ephorate of Antiquities of West Attica, Piraeus and Islands. παῖ (‘boy’) with ἐποποῖ ἐποποῖ (‘hoopoe’), while, in Birds 227– 229, Tereus playfully associates made to ‘decode’ the words of those figures,82 it has the ‘melodic’ sounds ἰὼ ἰὼ ἰτὼ ἰτὼ ἰτὼ ἰτώ with the remained unremarked that in both cases the sound imperative ἴτω.87 Given the theme of the play, sounds -σατρ- (cf. –αρτ-) is made use of.83 If we turn to other proliferate considerably in later parts of Birds: in 769– Aristophanic registers, we often find strings of (fully 784, the sounds τοτοτοτοτοτοτοτοτοτίγξ are performed comprehensible) sounds joined together, which, if uttered quite fast on stage, however, defy easy or total comprehension. In Ekklesiazousai we encounter one 84  A 172-letter word, if the text has been transmitted correctly (see of the most playful and masterly cases (1169–1175), Wilson’s apparatus criticus [above, note 80], 2007, vol. 2, 265). Οn a 172-letter word: λοπαδοτεμαχοσελαχογαλεο-|κραsuch πολυσύνθετοι λέξεις in Aristophanes, see E. S. Spyropoulos, L’ accumulation verbale chez Aristophane (Recherches sur le style d’Aristophane), νιολειψανοδριμυποτριμματοσιλφιοπαραλομελιτοκαταThessalonike 1974, 123–124 (with further bibliographical references) κεχυμενο-|κιχλεπικοσσυφοφατοπεριστερα-|λεκτρυονο and passim, and M. Silk, Aristophanes and the Definition of Comedy, Oxford πτοπιφαλλιδοκιγκλοπε-|λειολαγῳοσιραιοβαφητραγα2000, 126–136; cf. W. J. M. Starkie, The Acharnians of Aristophanes,

London 1909, l–lii, and J. Henderson, Aristophanes: Lysistrata, edited with introduction and commentary, Oxford 1987, 127, who quotes William Shakespeare’s ‘honorificabilitudinitatibus’ and Rabelais’s ‘antipericatametanaparbeugedamphicrationes.’ 85  On this inscription, see E. Peruzzi, ‘Cultura greca a Gabii nel secolo VIII,’ Parola del Passato 47 (1992), 459–468; A. M. Bietti Sestieri, The Iron Age Community of Osteria dell’ Osa: A Study of Socio-Political Development in Central Tyrrhenian Italy, Cambridge 1992, 184–185; SEG 43.646, SEG 47.1478, SEG 48.1266 and 2101; Yatromanolakis 2007 (above, note 20), 201, n. 155. 86  Another similar case in Euripides, Alkestis 226 παπαῖ < > ὦ παῖ Φέρητος (but see the apparatus criticus in J. Diggle, Euripidis Fabulae, vol. 1, Oxford 1987, 46). In Aristophanes, Acharnians 800, κοῒ κοΐ (κοῒ κοῒ κοΐ in 801) is juxtaposed with χοῖρε, χοῖρε. Cf. also Αristophanes, Peace 929 and 933. 87  See also discussion below. Lines 57–59 are here attributed to Peisetairos (and Euelpides) on the basis of Wilson’s edition (2007 [above, note 80], vol. 1, 349). On line 227, see the apparatus criticus of Dunbar 1995 (above, note 81), 70, and Wilson 2007 (above, note 80), vol. 1, 357.

Birds 1572), 728 (on 1628–1629), and 735–736 (on 1678–1679). 82  Dunbar 1995 (above, note 81), 724–725 (with references to earlier attempts); S. Colvin, Dialect in Aristophanes and the Politics of Language in Ancient Greek Literature, Oxford 1999, 288–290, among other discussions. Ηοwever, see ιαρτανα below, main text with note 93. It is intriguing that almost the same sound (ιαρτανα) occurs in a ritualized context in a much later period. 83  See the red-figure squat lekythos St. Petersburg, Hermitage St. 1790 (ARV2 1407.1; Para. 488; Boardman, ARFV II, fig. 340), where the name ‘Atramis’ appears above the head of a Persian. See also the vaseinscription σατρυβσ painted near a satyr on the fragmentary redfigure cup Würzburg, Universität, Martin von Wagner Museum 474 (ARV2 173.10, 1588; Add.2 184; Beazley 1954 [above, note 8], pls. 30–31; sometimes interpreted as ‘miswritten’ Σάτυρος; a retrograde reading Σβύρτας has also been suggested).

23

Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings and antiphonally juxtaposed with τιοτιοτιοτίγξ;88 in 260–262, Tereus emits the sounds τοροτοροτοροτοροτίξ | κικκαβαῦ κικκαβαῦ | τοροτοροτοροτορολιλιλίξ.89

discourse Plato’s Kratylos also includes references to sound symbolism and to specific ‘phonesthemes’ like gl- (tentatively approached as such in the dialogue):94 ‘First off, ‘r’ seems to me to be a tool for copying every sort of motion. […] [T]he letter ‘r’ seemed to the namegiver to be a beautiful tool for copying motion, at any rate he often uses it for this purpose. He first uses this letter to imitate motion in the names ‘rhein’ (‘flowing’) and ‘rhoê’ (‘flow’) themselves. […] He saw, I suppose, that the tongue was most agitated and least at rest in pronouncing this letter, and that’s probably why he used it in these names. He uses ‘i’, in turn, to imitate all the small things that can most easily penetrate everything.95 Hence, in ‘ienai’ (‘moving’) and ‘hiesthai’ (‘hastening’), he uses ‘i’ to do the imitating. Similarly, he uses ‘phi’, ‘psi’, ‘s’, and ‘z’ to do the imitating in such names as ‘psuchron’ (‘chilling’), ‘zeon’ (‘seething’), ‘seiesthai’ (‘shaking’), and ‘seismos’ (‘quaking’),96 because all these names are pronounced with an expulsion of breath (ὅτι πνευματώδη τὰ γράμματα). Indeed, whenever the name-giver wants to imitate some sort of blowing or hard breathing (phusôdes), he almost always seems to employ them. […] And because he observed that the tongue glides most of all in pronouncing ‘l’, he uses it to produce a resemblance in ‘olisthanein’ (‘glide’) itself, and in such names as ‘leia’ (‘smooth’), ‘liparon’ (‘sleek’), ‘kollôdes’ (‘viscous’), and the like.97 But when he wants to imitate something cloying, he uses names such as ‘glischron’ (‘gluey’), ‘gluku’ (‘sweet’), and ‘gloiôdes’ (‘clammy’), in which the gliding of the tongue is stopped by the power of the ‘g’. And because he saw that ‘n’ is sounded inwardly, he used it in ‘endon’ (‘within’) and ‘entos’ (‘inside’), in order to make the letters copy the things. […] He wanted ‘o’ to signify roundness, so he mixed lots of it into the name ‘goggulon’ (‘round’). In the same way, the rule-setter apparently used the other letters or elements (συλλαβάς) as likenesses in order to make a sign or name for each of the things that are, and then compounded all the remaining names out of these, imitating the things they name.’ It is not consequential here whether Sokrates’s inventive explanation of the gl- sound in terms of what modern linguists call phonosemantics is simply speculative (word initial gl- has been approached as a characteristic case of phonesthesia in many English words related to

This is not an ancient version of modern avant-garde poetic sound symbolism, or of sound schemata of European lettrism.90 Strings of expressive sounds and repeated interjections were often employed by fifth-century BC Greek playwrights. Many of those sounds produced what linguistic anthropologists call ideophones.91 Some Greeks were so sensitive to specific sounds that they attempted to make no use of σ (s).92 In later periods of Greek antiquity, long strings of syllables and letters were used in incantations. Among other examples, consider the following case of a third- or fourth-century AD lead tablet preserving an erotic spell meant to be performed by a woman for another woman she was attracted to: in the midst of comprehensible Greek sentences, we hear strings of riddling, ritualistic words like ιαρτανα ουουσιου, or ιαρτανα ουσιουσιου ιψοενπεχθαδει and αχαιφω θωθω αιη ιαη αι ια ηαι ηια ωθωθ ωφιαχα εμεν.93 Finally, in its multilayered 88  On the repetition of τιο, το, and on –τίγξ in different manuscripts, see Dunbar 1995 (above, note 81), 91, and Wilson 2007 (above, note 80), vol. 1, 384–385, on lines 770, 773, 775, 779, and 784. See also lines 738, 741, 743, 747, 752 (Dunbar 1995, 89–90, and Wilson 2007, vol. 1, 383). 89  On these sounds as preserved in the manuscripts, see Dunbar 1995 (above, note 81), 71, and Wilson 2007 (above, note 80), vol. 1, 358. 90  See, among other studies of European avant-garde movements that made use of sound schemata, S. C. Foster (ed.), Lettrisme: Into the Present, Iowa City, IA 1983; J.–P. Curtay, Letterism and Hypergraphics: The Unknown Avant-Garde, 1945–1985, Albuquerque, NM 1985; and T. Miller, ‘Lettrism and Situationism,’ in J. Bray et al. (eds), The Routledge Companion to Experimental Literature, London 2012, 101–114. 91  On ideophones and phonesthemes, see Yatromanolakis and Roilos 2003 (above, note 20), 97; J. B. Nuckolls, ‘The Case for Sound Symbolism,’ Annual Review of Anthropology 28 (1999), 225–252. 92  Aristoxenos fr. 87 Wehrli and Klearchos frs. 86 and 88 Wehrli, with reference to Pindar’s observation in fr. 70b.1–3 M (Athenaios 448d, 455b-c, and 467b). For asigmatism in ancient Greek poetry, see M. L. West, ‘The Asigmatic Atlas,’ Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 22 (1976), 41–42, and M. J. H. van der Weiden, The Dithyrambs of Pindar: Introduction, Text and Commentary, Amsterdam 1991, 64–65. 93  PSI 1.28 (Papiri greci e latini, vol. 1, Florence 1912, no. 28, pp. xii–xiii, 63–69 [third/fourth century AD?]; the tablet is housed in the Bibliotheca Medicea Laurenziana); Suppl. Mag. 1.42 (R. W. Daniel and F. Maltomini, Supplementum Magicum, vol. 1, Opladen 1990). See also, among numerous examples, PGM 32 (J. G. Milne, Archiv für Papyrusforschung und verwandte Gebiete 5 [1911], 393, Papyrus Hawara 312; K. Preisendanz, Papyri Graecae Magicae, second ed. A. Henrichs, vol. 2, Stuttgart 1974, 157–158); and PGM 13 (Preisendanz, vol. 2, 1974, 86–131, especially pages 94–95, where ααα· ηηη· ωωω [PGM 13.143–144], ιιι· ααα· ωωω [PGM 13.145], χι· χι· χι· χι· χι· χι· χι· τιπ· τιπ· τιπ· τιπ· τιπ· τιπ· τιπ [PMG 13.159] as well as καὶ ἐγέλασεν ὁ θεὸς ζ΄· ‘χα χα χα χα χα χα χα’ [PMG 13.163] are mentioned; on χα χα χα χα χα χα χα, cf. PGM 13, page 91). On χα χα χα in PGM 13, see Gow 1952 (above, note 78), 116, and S. Halliwell, Greek Laughter: A Study of Cultural Psychology from Homer to Early Christianity, Cambridge 2008, 8, n. 20 and 13, n. 32, but it is not entirely certain that χα, repeated seven times in PGM 13 (compare PGM 13, page 91), may be viewed as the standard vocalization of laughter in early Greek periods, e.g., the archaic period. The entry ἃ ἅ or ἇ ἇ in LSJ must be revised. For diverse sounds (including musical ones) used in an ancient mime that included Indian speakers, see I. C. Cunningham, Herodas: Mimiambi, cum appendice fragmentorum mimorum papyraceorum, Leipzig/Munich 2004, 42–47 (see his apparatus criticus on page 42, fr. 6; also, J. Rusten and I. C. Cunningham, Theophrastus: Characters; Herodas: Mimes; Sophron

and Other Mime Fragments, Cambridge, MA 2002, 357–358). 94  Plato, Kratylos 426c–427d. Translation C. D. C. Reeve, Plato: Cratylus, Indianapolis, IN 1999, 72–74. 95  On the letter/sound ‘i’, see also Kratylos 418b–c: ‘You know that our ancestors made great use of ‘i’ and ‘d’ (especially the women, who are the best preservers of the ancient language [καὶ οὐχ ἥκιστα αἱ γυναῖκες, αἵπερ μάλιστα τὴν ἀρχαίαν φωνὴν σῴζουσι]). But nowadays people change ‘i’ to ‘ê’ or ‘e’, which are supposed to sound more grandiose’ (translation Reeve 1999 [above, note 94], 60). Yet note that the original text is as follows (E. A. Duke et al., Platonis Opera, vol. 1, Oxford 1995, 240): νῦν δὲ ἀντὶ μὲν τοῦ ἰῶτα ἢ εἶ ἢ ἦτα μεταστρέφουσιν, ἀντὶ δὲ τοῦ δέλτα ζῆτα, ὡς δὴ μεγαλοπρεπέστερα ὄντα. 96  Duke et al. 1995 (above, note 95), 253, print σισμόν (Heindorf), instead of σεισμόν. 97  On ‘l’ and ‘r’, see also Kratylos 434b–435a.

24

Chapter One vision like glance, glare, gleam, glimmer, glint, glisten, and glow).98 What is important is that some Greeks in the classical period were not indifferent to imitative dimensions of sounds, including what they viewed as dissonant sounds.99

Soundscapes (and Two Speaking Lyres)

1190,102 1198, Clouds 707); βαβαὶ βαβαιάξ (Peace 248);103 δᾶ (Lysistrata 198); ἔα (Clouds 1259); ἒ ἔ (Wasps 315); εἶα ὤ, or ὢ εἶα ὢ εἶα, and ὢ εἶα εἶα εἶά (Peace 468, 463, 518, respectively); εἶἑν (Clouds 176 and 1075); εὐοῖ εὐοῖ, εὐαὶ εὐαί (Lysistrata 1294); ἢ ἤ (Clouds 105); ἤν (Knights 26); ἰαί (Lysistrata 1292, Ekklesiazousai 1180); ἰαυοῖ (Frogs 1029); ἰαῦ (Frogs 272); ἰὴ ἰή (Peace 455); ἰηῦ ἰηῦ ἰηῦ (Peace 195);104 ἰοὺ ἰού (Clouds 1171, Knights 1096); ὂ ὂ ὂ παπαπαπαῖ (Τhesmophoriazousai 1191);105 φῦ φῦ (Lysistrata 295 = 305); ὢ ὄπ (Birds 1395). Ιn Sophokles’s satyr play Ichneutai we find the extensive interjection ὗ ὗ ὗ, ψ ψ, ἆ ἆ (fr. 314.176 Radt), as well as ὀπποποῖ· ἆ (fr. 314.197 Radt)106 and ὕ̣ [ὗ] ὕ̣ ὗ̣ (fr. 314.131 Radt). Αnd in Euripides’s satyr play Cyclops ψύττ’ is intriguingly used.107

If we return to Aristophanes, we see that some parts of his plays are brimming with interjections and lexicalized sounds100 related to iconicity of sound. I shall refer to only a few cases. Knights begins with the interjections ἰατταταιάξ and ἰατταταῖ (line 1), as does Clouds with the interjections ἰοὺ ἰού (line 1), despite the fact that in Clouds 543 we hear that this comedy does not rely on characters yelling ἰοὺ ἰού.101 Other interjections include ἆ ἆ (Thesmophoriazousai 688; cf. Euripides Cyclops 157 ἆ ἆ ἆ); ἀλαλαί and ἀλαλαλαί (Birds 952 and 1763, respectively); αἰβοῖ and ἰαιβοῖ or αἰβοιβοῖ (Birds 1342, Wasps 1338, Peace 1066); ἀτταταῖ ἀτταταῖ (Αcharnians

All this shows that experimentation with the iconicity of language was a practice deeply embedded in the cultural fabric of Attica, especially in more colloquial discourse. The large number of verbs and nouns that were shaped on the basis of lexicalized sounds suggests that, in different periods, ancient Greeks frequently experimented with the meanings of diverse sounds. References to some such words will suffice: ἀάζω, ‘breathe with the mouth wide open’;108 αἰάζω, ‘cry αἰαῖ’;109 ἀλαλή (Doric ἀλαλά), ‘loud cry’;110 βαβάζω, ‘speak inarticulately, shout,’ βάβακοι, ‘grasshoppers’ or

See Nuckolls 1999 (above, note 91), 237, on the gl- phonestheme in English. 99  Later sources report that, in an early period for the history of ancient Greek music, Sakadas composed an auletic musical nomos that imitated the sounds of the battle between Apollo and the serpent at Delphoi (see M. L. West, Ancient Greek Music, Oxford 1992, 212–215, 217, 337)—an early form of European ‘program music.’ Note that there are numerous cases suggesting that in the archaic and classical periods, some Greeks were sensitive to dissonance and the imitative dimensions of sounds and music, especially, but not exclusively, during the period of the so-called New Music (a modern classificatory concept; see J. H. Hordern, The Fragments of Timotheus of Miletus, Oxford 2002, 2; on the ‘new music,’ cf., further, E. Csapo, ‘The Economics, Poetics, Politics, Metaphysics, and Ethics of the ‘New Music,’’ in D. Yatromanolakis [ed.], Music and Cultural Politics, vol. 1: Greek Antiquity, Cambridge, MA 2011, 65–131). For (later sources about) early innovations, including the sonic/musical experiments of Lysandros of Sikyon, see West 1992, 69–70, 213–215, 341–343. Among other examples, see Pratinas fr. 708 PMG. On novelty and ancient Greek song-making, see A. D’Angour, The Greeks and the New: Novelty in Ancient Greek Imagination and Experience, Cambridge 2011 (and idem, ‘The New Music: So What’s New?’ in S. Goldhill and R. Osborne [eds], Rethinking Revolutions through Ancient Greece, Cambridge 2006, 264–283). 100  See also a brief selection from the plays of Aischylos, Sophokles, and Euripides (and see above, note 71): Persians 569 (= 577), 652 (= 657) ἠέ; Persians 570 (= 574, 578, 582) ὀᾶ; Seven against Thebes 150 and 158 ἒ ἒ ἒ ἔ (on line 154 see Hutchinson 1987 [above, note 69], 70); Suppliants 826 ἰόφ (see Friis Johansen and Whittle 1980 [above, note 71], vol. 3, 176–177); Agamemnon 1072 (= 1076) ὀτοτοτοτοῖ πόποι δᾶ; Libation Bearers 869 ἒ ἒ ὀτοτοτοῖ; Eumenides 143 ἰοὺ ἰοὺ πόπαξ; Eumenides 841 (= 874) οἰοῖ δᾶ φεῦ; Prometheus Bound 567 ἆ δᾶ (and 566 ἆ ἆ ἓ ἕ); Sophokles, Aias 101 and Elektra 534 εἶἑν; Elektra 826 ἒ ἔ, αἰαῖ; Τrachiniai 219 εὐοῖ; Philoktetes 743 ἀτταταῖ; Οidipous Tyrannos 168 ὦ πόποι; Αntigone 1276 φεῦ φεῦ; Oidipοus at Κolonοs 224 ἰὼ ὢ ὤ; Sophokles fr. 631 Radt ἰαί; Euripides, Cyclops 153 παπαιάξ and 156–157 βαβαί and ἆ ἆ ἆ; Alkestis 226 παπαῖ; Μedea 277 αἰαῖ; Herakleidai 73, Hippolytos 856, and Ion 154, 170 ἔα ἔα; Hippolytos 1350 οἴμοι μοι; Αndromache 1197 and 1200 ὀττοτοτοτοῖ; Hekabe 1088–1089 αἰαῖ ἰώ; Phoinissai 1492 αἰαῖ, ἰώ μοι; Suppliants 828 ἰὼ ἰώ μοί μοι; Herakles 867 ἤν; Trojan Women 326 εὐὰν εὐοῖ; Ιphigeneia in Tauris 1304 and Helen 1180 ὠή; Orestes 1381 ὤμοι μοι; Bacchai 586 and 596 ἆ ἆ. See especially below, note 160. Οn the IndoEuropean context of οἴ (cf. oἴμοι), see J. Barđdal, V. Bjarnadóttir, S. Danesi, T. K. Dewey, T. Eythórsson, C. Fedriani, and T. Smitherman, ‘The Story of ‘Woe,’’ Journal of Indo-European Studies 41 (2013), 321–377. 101  ἰοὺ ἰού is not absent in the Clouds: see lines 1171, 1321, and (toward the end of the play) 1493, followed by οἴμοι in lines 1497 and 1504. ἰοὺ ἰού is also used (more frequently than in other plays of his) in Peace (110 [ἰοὺ ἰοὺ ἰού], 317 [ἰοὶ ἰοί], 345 [ἰοὶ ἰοί in Wilson’s edition], and 1191), Birds (194, 295, 305, 820, 889, and 1170 [repeated several times]), and Lysistrata (66, 295, 305, and 829). In Knights 1, Wilson 2007 (above, note 80) prints ἰατταταί. 98 

102  As in most cases considered here, see the relevant apparatus criticus for variant readings (Wilson 2007 [above, note 80], vol. 1, 57). Lexicalized sounds were transmitted in various forms in medieval times (for an early case, see Peace 195 [below, note 104]); a systematic study of this phenomenon is a scholarly desideratum. For Aischylos, Sophokles, and Euripides, I cite the critical editions by Denys Page (above, note 71; but see also Martin West’s major edition [Aeschyli Tragoediae, second ed., Stuttgart 1998]), Hugh Lloyd-Jones and Nigel Wilson (Sophoclis Fabulae, Oxford 1992), and James Diggle (above, note 86, vol. 1: 1987, vol. 2: 1981, vol. 3: 1994), respectively. 103  See also Alexis fr. 209 K-A οὐχὶ τῶν μετρίων, ἀλλὰ τῶν βαβαὶ βαβαί. See W. G. Arnott, Alexis. The Fragments: A Commentary, Cambridge 1996, 602 (fr. 209). In Aristophanes, Birds 1258 (εὐρὰξ πατάξ), πατάξ is not easy to interpret; see Dunbar 1995 (above, note 81), 630. 104  See M. L. West, ‘Ieu!’ Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 60 (1985), 10, and M. L. West, ‘IΗΥ ΜΑΛ’ ΑΥΘΙΣ,’ Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik 94 (1992), 230. 105  See also ἀππαπαῖ παπαιάξ in Aristophanes, Wasps 235; παπαιάξ in Lysistrata 924 and Euripides, Cyclops 153. 106  Fr. 314.197 Radt ὀπποποῖ· ἆ μιαρέ (note the repetition of –ια). 107  Cyclops 49. R. Seaford (Euripides: Cyclops, with introduction and commentary, Oxford 1984 [1988], 110), observes that ψύττ(α) is ‘the onomatopoeic -st-, common to many languages and still uttered by Greek shepherds. The -α is phonetic rather than etymological (Schwyzer in ZVS 58 (1931), 170): then as now the Greeks found it difficult to end a word with a consonant other than σ, ν, or ρ.’ 108  For the meanings of these verbs and nouns, see LSJ, whose definitions I briefly (N.B.: not fully) quote here; see also the relevant entries in Chantraine, DELG and Beekes, EDG. Given space limitations in this chapter, I refer only to LSJ, and not to other dictionaries or, especially, commentaries. A large-scale linguistic-anthropological approach would throw light on nuances and complexities of their usage in specific synchronic contexts. 109  Sophokles, Aias 904. 110  Already in Pindar fr. 70b.13 M μανίαι τ’ ἀλαλαί. See also Pindar fr. 78.1 M κλῦθ’ Ἀλαλά, Πολέμου θύγατερ, and, regarding ἀλαλάζω (among other ἀλαλαί-terms), Aischylos fr. 57.7 Radt ψαλμὸς δ’ ἀλαλάζει. See, further, I. Rutherford, Pindar’s Paeans: A Reading of the Fragments with a Survey of the Genre, Oxford 2001, 20, 43.

25

Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings ‘frogs’ in different local dialects,111 βαβάκτης, ‘reveler,’112 βάβαξ, ‘chatterer,’113 and βαβράζω, ‘chirp’;114 βαΰζω, ‘cry βαύ βαύ, snarl’;115 βόμβος, ‘booming, humming’116 and βόμβυξ, ‘deep-toned pipe’;117 βρυχάομαι, ‘roar, bellow’; γρυλίζω, ‘grunt’ [of swine];118 γρύζω, ‘say γρῦ, mutter’;119 εἴεω, ‘a battle-cry of young warriors’; ἐλελεῦ, ‘a cry of pain;’120 ἐλελύζω (= ὀλολύζω, see below);121 ἰυγμός122 and ἰύζω, ‘shout’;123 καγχάζω/καχάζω, ‘laugh aloud’;124 καχλάζω/κοχλάζω, ‘plash’ [sound of liquids];125 κλώζω (cf. κρώζω below);126 κοκκοάξ, ‘crow,’ κοκκοβάρη, ‘οwl,’ and κοκκυβόας, ‘cock’;127 κοκκύζω, ‘cry cuckoo’ 128 and ‘crow’; κορκορυγή, ‘rumbling noise’;129 κρώζω, ‘croak’ [especially of the κορώνη, ‘crow’];130 λαλαγέω, ‘babble, chirrup,’131 and λάλαξ, ‘croaker’ (for a type of frog or a bird); λαλάζω, ‘babble’;132 μορμύρω, ‘roar and boil’ [of water];133 μύζω, ‘make the sound μὺ μῦ’;134 οἴζω, ‘cry οἴ’; ὀλολύζω, ‘cry with a loud voice’;135 ὀτοβέω, ‘sound

loudly’;136 ὀτοτύζω, ‘cry ὀτοτοῖ, wail aloud’;137 παππάζω, ‘call someone father’;138 περικοκκάζω, ‘cry cuckoo all round’;139 πιππίζω, ‘cheep’;140 ποππύζω, ‘smack the lips, cluck’;141 πυππάζω, ‘cry πύππαξ’;142 πύππαξ, ‘bravo!’;143 τερετίζω, ‘warble, trill’;144 τιτίζω, ‘cry ti ti’ and τιττυβίζω, ‘chirrup’; τρίζω, ‘utter a shrill cry’;145 τρύζω, ‘make a low murmuring sound,’ ‘mutter’;146 τρυλίζω, ‘gurgle’;147 τρώζω, ‘whisper’; φεύζω, ‘cry φεῦ’;148 ὤζω, ‘cry ὤ.’149 Ι should stress that systematic research on cases of onomatopoeic ancient Greek nouns and verbs150 shows that they are more numerous than is normally assumed: more often than not, they focus exclusively on the act of speaking and producing sounds. Even the verb denoting the act of talking, or of chatting and chattering, λαλέω/λαλῶ,151 was shaped on the basis of the sound ‘lal.’ If we go back to the playful and colloquial registers of Aristophanes and other comic playwrights, we observe that they are significantly attracted to lexicalized sounds or coinages like στριβιλικίγξ (hapax legomenon in Αcharnians 1035), analyzed by the Scholiast as coming from στρίβος ( καὶ ὀξεῖα βοή, ‘a thin and piercing cry’) and λίκιγξ (ἡ ἐλαχίστη βοὴ τοῦ ὀρνέου, the ‘faintest cry of a bird’); βομβάξ and βομβαλοβομβάξ, ‘blah!’ and ‘blah blah blah!’ (Τhesmophoriazousai 45,

See LSJ s.v. βάβακοι (and Chantraine, DELG 154, s.v. βαβάζειν). Cf. λάλαξ, ‘a name of the green frog and of a bird.’ 112  Kratinos fr. 359.1 K-A χαῖρ’ ὦ χρυσόκερως βαβάκτα κήλων. 113  See Archilochos fr. 297 W2 κατ’ οἶκον ἐστρωφᾶτο μισητὸς βάβαξ (Οrion, who attributes the fragment to Archilochos [Etymologicum col. 37.4 Sturz], explains: βάβαξ· λάλος, φλύαρος). 114  Ananios fr. 5.6 W2 κἠχέται βαβράζωσιν. On Ananios, see Yatromanolakis 2007 (above, note 20), 219, n. 250. 115  Kratinos fr. 6 K-A; Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazousai 173, 895; cf. Aischylos, Agamemnon 449. See καταβαΰζω in Herakleitos 22 B97 D-K. See also LSJ s.vv. βῆ βῆ, βηβήν, and βήζει. 116  See Plato, Protagoras 316a, and cf. Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazousai 1176 τί τὸ βόμβο τοῦτο. 117  Aischylos fr. 57.2–3 Radt ὁ μὲν ἐν χερσὶν | βόμβυκας ἔχων, τόρνου κάματον. 118  Aristophanes, Acharnians 746. 119  See γρῦ in Aristophanes, Wealth 17 (ἀποκρινόμενος … οὐδὲ γρῦ); and LSJ s.v. See also LSJ s.vv. γρυλίζω, γρυλίων (= χοῖρος, ‘pig,’ according to Hesychios), and γρύλλη (= ὑῶν φωνή, according to Hesychios). 120  [Aischylos], Prometheus Bound 877; Aristophanes, Birds 364 (Dunbar 1995 [above, note 81], 276–277). See RLGT, 57 and 218, n. 10. Also, ἐλελίζω, ‘utter a wavering or warbling sound (ἐλελεῦ)’; Euripides, Phoinissai 1514 (see Diggle’s apparatus criticus [above, note 102], vol. 3, 165). 121  Already in Sappho fr. 44.31 V (see Voigt’s apparatus criticus). 122  Homer, Iliad 18.572; Aischylos, Libation Bearers 26. 123  Homer, Iliad 17.66; Pindar, Pythian 4.237 S-M; Aischylos, Persians 280. See Chantraine, DELG 473 (s.v. ἰύζω, and cf. Beekes, EDG 606). 124  Sophokles, Ichneutai fr. 314.357 Radt (]χαζε καὶ τέρπου φρένα, and see κά]χαζε Wilamowitz in Radt’s apparatus criticus, vol. 4, 298); cf. Aias 198 (see Lloyd-Jones and Wilson’s apparatus criticus, 1992 [above, note 102], 10); Aristophanes, Ekklesiazousai 849. 125  Pindar, Olympian 7.2 S-M; Aischylos, Seven against Thebes 760. 126  See Chantraine, DELG 545; Beekes, EDG 719–720. 127  κοκκυβόας in Sophokles fr. 791 Radt (and see Radt’s apparatus criticus for the reading κοκκο- provided in Eustathios). 128  Hesiod, Works and Days 486. Furthermore, see LSJ s.v. κόκκυξ, which, apart from ‘cuckoo,’ has the metaphorical meaning ‘stammerer’; it also refers to a ‘sea fish, piper, […] said to make a sound like cuckoo.’ Cf. κόκκυγος in Alkaios fr. 416 V. See also κίκιρρος, ‘cock’ (Hesychios) and κίκκα, ‘hen’ (Hesychios); and κωκώ, below note 151. 129  Aischylos, Seven against Thebes 345; Aristophanes, Peace 991. 130  Already in Hesiod, Works and Days 747; Aristophanes, Birds 2, 24, 710. 131  Pindar, Olympian 2.97 S-M. 132  Anakreon fr. 427.2 PMG. 133  Already in Homer, Iliad 5.599. 134  Aischylos, Eumenides 118; Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazousai 231. Cf. also LSJ s.v. μυχθίζω. 135  Already in Homer. On ὀλολυγή, see L. Deubner, Ololyge und Verwandtes, Berlin 1941 and, from a comparative perspective, F. Födermayr, ‘Zur Ololyge in Afrika,’ in Musik als Gestalt und Erlebnis: 111 

Festscrift W. Graf, Vienna 1970, 57–65. 136  Aischylos fr. 57.6 Radt. 137  Aischylos, Libation Bearers 327; Aristophanes, Peace 1011; Lysistrata 520. 138  Homer, Iliad 5.408. See also παππίζω in Aristophanes, Wasps 609; and Beekes, EDG 1150. 139  Aristophanes, Knights 697. 140  Aristophanes, Birds 306. 141  Aristophanes, Wealth 732. See further LSJ s.v. ποππύζω Ι (‘call to horses, etc.’) and IV (‘tootle [on a crude musical pipe]’); and Gow 1952 (above, note 78), 96 and 107. 142  Kratinos fr. 56 K-A. 143  Plato, Euthydemos 303a; Com. Adesp. fr. 417 K-A and see Kassel and Austin’s testimonia (vol. 8, 126). 144  Phrynichos Komikos fr. 14 K-A. 145  Homer, Odyssey 24.5 and 7. 146  Homer, Iliad 9.311. 147  See also ἐντρυλ(λ)ίζω in Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazousai 341. 148  Aischylos, Agamemnon 1308. See also Chantraine, DELG 1191 (s.v. φεῦ). 149  Αischylos, Eumenides 124. 150  E. Tichy, Onomatopoetische Verbalbildungen des Griechischen, Vienna 1983, is not especially helpful. I have not been able to have access to M. Bettini, Voci, Turin 2008. 151  Οn λαλῶ, see the incisive discussion in K. Dover, Aristophanes: Frogs, edited with introduction and commentary, Oxford 1993, 22; Arnott 1996 (above, note 103), 578 (on Alexis fr. 200.4 K-A), and J. Diggle, Theophrastus: Characters, edited with introduction, translation and commentary, Cambridge 2004, 266. Cf. Chantraine, DELG 615– 616; Beekes, EDG 827–828. See also λάλη (= λαλιά, ‘talk, chat’) and λαλοῦ, a ‘colloquial word for the penis of boy before puberty’ (LSJ, Anthologia Palatina 12.3 [Straton], and Chantraine, DELG 616; cf. κωκώ, a ‘colloquial name for the penis at puberty’ (LSJ, Anthologia Palatina 12.3 [Straton]; cj. κοκκώ). On λάλλαι, see Gow 1952 (above, note 78), 389. For the intriguing Corinthian vase-inscriptions ΛΑΛΑΣ, see hydria Fiesole, Coll. Costantini (Amyx 1988 [above, note 11], 579, no. 83); neck-amphora Malibu (CA), J. Paul Getty Museum 84.AE.29 (Amyx 1988, 579, no. 83bis); and column-krater Stockholm, Medelhavsmuseet 1958.12 (Amyx 1988, 579–580, no. 83ter).

26

Chapter One 48);152 ῥυππαπαῖ, ‘heave ho!’ (Frogs 1073);153 ἱππαπαῖ, a playful ‘adaptation of the rowers’ cry (ῥυππαπαῖ) for horses imagined as rowing warships’154 (Knights 602); σοῦ σοῦ … σοῦ, ‘shoo! shoo! shoo!’ (Wasps 209);155 πάξ, ‘exclamation to end a discussion, enough!’;156 or extra-intensified words like προπαλαιπαλαίπαλαι, ‘millenni-enni-ennia past’ (Knights 1157);157 or words teasingly representing stammer—like βρετέτετας, ‘immammage’158 [‘wooden image of a god’] (Knights 32). Note that repetition of specific sounds may alter their meaning: ὢ ὄπ, ‘o-op, op,’ in Birds 1395 and Frogs 180 distinctly suggests a movement different from ὢ ὄπ· ὄπ, ‘o-op, op, op,’ in Frogs 208.159

Soundscapes (and Two Speaking Lyres)

flapping, singing Lydian, buzzing, dying himself green as frog.’162 In other plays of the so-called Old Comedy,163 we listen to playful imitations of the sound of reed-pipes (μῦμῦ μῦμῦ μῦμῦ μῦμῦ μῦμῦ μῦμῦ, in Knights 10);164 we encounter pseudo-pigs grunting κοῒ κοῒ κοΐ (Acharnians 801, 803; κοῒ κοΐ 780, 800, 802),165 and it is intriguing that later Greeks who preserved these plays added in some manuscripts more κοΐ-s to some of these lines;166 we hear frogs singing βρεκεκεκὲξ κοὰξ κοάξ (Frogs 209),167 and birds repeating the sounds τριοτὸ τριοτὸ τοτοβρίξ (Βirds 242), τιὸ τιὸ τιὸ τιὸ τιὸ τιὸ τιὸ τιό (237), and (as we have already seen above) τοροτοροτοροτοροτίξ | κικκαβαῦ κικκαβαῦ | τοροτοροτοροτορολιλιλίξ (260– 262); we are even provided with a sound of farting, παππὰξ παππάξ and παπαπαππάξ (Clouds 390–391);168 we are told that dogs produce the sound αὖ αὖ (Wasps 903), οr alternatively βαύ βαύ (adespota iambica fr. 50 W2), the sheep βῆ βῆ (Kratinos fr. 45 K-A; Aristophanes fr. 648 K-A),169 the cuckoo or cock κόκκυ (Birds 505), and some birds φνεῖ (Αristophanes fr. 914 K-A).170 A shepherd’s exclamation is ψο (Sophokles fr. 521 Radt),171 and ψύττα

Moreover, an inventive grammar of sounds was developed in classical Greece,160 if not earlier. In Knights 522–523, we hear that one of the earliest comic playwrights, Magnes,161 ‘vocalized all kinds of sounds, strumming, J. Henderson’s rendering (Aristophanes, vol. 3, Cambridge, MA 2000, 463). I here do not quote LSJ. 153  Henderson’s rendering (Aristophanes, vol. 4, Cambridge, MA 2002, 173). LSJ: ‘yoho!’; see also Wasps 909. 154  Revised Supplement (1996) in LSJ. 155  This case is more complicated: see, briefly, D. M. MacDowell, Aristophanes: Wasps, edited with introduction and commentary, Oxford 1971, 159; Friis Johansen and Whittle on Aischylos Suppliants 836 (1980 [above, note 71], vol. 3, 182); M. Davies on Sophokles Trachiniai 645 (Sophocles: Trachiniae, with introduction and commentary, Oxford 1991, 172); and Dunbar 1995 (above, note 81), 630. 156  Diphilos fr. 96.2 K-A; Menander, Epitrepontes 987 Sandbach. See also κόγξ and βλόψ. 157  Henderson’s rendering (Aristophanes, vol. 1, Cambridge, MA 1998, 373). On intensification in ancient Greek, see H. Thesleff, Studies on Intensification in Early and Classical Greek, Helsinki 1954. 158  See Henderson’s rendering ‘immmage’ (1998 [above, note 157], vol. 1, 235). Note that κόκκυξ also has the metaphorical meaning ‘stammerer.’ See above, note 128. 159  Dunbar 1995 (above, note 81), 670–671. 160  For repetition of vowels in interjections, see ἆ ἆ ἆ in Euripides, Cyclops 157; ἆ ἆ ἆ ἆ in Sophokles, Philoktetes 732, 739, and in [Euripides], Rhesos 748–749; ἆ ἆ ἔα ἔα and ἆ ἆ ἓ ἕ [Aischylos], Prometheus Bound 114 and 566; αἰαῖ ἒ ἔ Euripides, Hippolytos 595; αἰαῖ αἰαῖ ἒ ἔ Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazousai 1042; ἒ ἒ ἒ ἔ Aischylos, Seven against Thebes 150, 158; ἒ ἔ, ἰώ Sophokles, Elektra 840, Trachiniai 1026; ἒ ἒ παπαῖ παπαῖ Αischylos, Agamemnon 1114; ἒ ἒ ὀτοτοτοῖ Libation Bearers 869; εὐαί, εὐαί, εὐαί, εὐαί Αristophanes, Ekklessiazousai 1183; ἢ ἤ Euripides, Herakles 906 and Aristophanes, Clouds 105; ἠὴ ἠή Aischylos, Persians 1075, 1076; ἰὴ ἰὴ ἰὼ ἰώ Persians 1004; ἰὴ ἰή Aischylos, Suppliants 115; ἰοὺ ἰοὺ ἰού Aristophanes, Peace 110; ἰοὺ ἰού, ὢ ὤ Αischylos, Agamemnon 1214; ἰὼ ὢ ὤ Sophokles, Oidipous at Kolonos 224; ὀᾶ Aischylos, Persians 570; perhaps ό ό ό ά ά ά Aischylos, Suppliants 825 (see Friis Johansen and Whittle 1980 [above, note 71], vol. 3, 174–175, who print ὀοοααᾶ in their vol. 1, 111); oἰοιοῖ Persians 966 and οἰοῖ οἰοῖ Aischylos, Suppliants 876; οἲ ἓ ἕ Prometheus Bound 602; ὂ ὂ ὂ παπαπαπαῖ Aristophanes, Τhesmophoriazousai 1191; ὀτοτοτοτοτοτοῖ Aischylos, Libation Bearers 159; τοτοτοῖ Sophokles, Trachiniai 1010; ὕ̣ [ὗ] ὕ̣ ὗ̣ Sophokles fr. 314.131 Radt; ὗ ὗ ὗ, ψ ψ, ἆ ἆ Sophokles fr. 314.176 Radt; φεῦ δᾶ φεῦ δᾶ Euripides, Phoinissai 1296; ὢ φεῦ φεῦ Aristophanes, Birds 1722–1724; ὢ ὤ Sophokles fr. 314.67 Radt (ὢ ὢ in Aischylos, Persians 985) and Oidipous at Kolonos 224; ὢ εἶα ὢ εἶα Peace 463 (ὢ εἶα εἶα εἶα Peace 518 and 519); ὢ ὄπ· ὄπ. ὢ ὄπ· ὄπ Frogs 208. Note that there are variant readings in the manuscripts of these playwrights (see apparatus criticus in each case). In the cases considered here, all Greek vowels are repeated more than twice in exclamations. 161  Magnes seems to have been active in Athens in the 480s and 470s. See Magnes testimonium 7 K-A (vol. 5, 627) and p. 628 in Kassel and Austin’s fifth volume of Poetae Comici Graeci (= ancient scholia on Aristophanes Knights 522). According to Aristotle Poetics 1448a.33– 34, Chionides and Magnes were the two earliest Athenian comic 152 

playwrights. 162  πάσας δ’ ὑμῖν φωνὰς ἱεὶς καὶ ψάλλων καὶ πτερυγίζων | καὶ λυδίζων καὶ ψηνίζων καὶ βαπτόμενος βατραχείοις’; translation by Henderson (1998 [above, note 157], vol. 1, 297). On plays by Magnes allegedly alluded to in these lines (according to the ancient scholia, whose approach to Knights 522–523 has been undermined in modern scholarship), see Yatromanolakis 2007 (above, note 20), 306. 163  For the problems regarding the terms ‘Old,’ ‘Middle,’ and ‘New’ comedy, see H.-G. Nesselrath, ‘Eupolis and the Periodization of Athenian Comedy,’ in D. Harvey and J. Wilkins (eds), The Rivals of Aristophanes: Studies in Athenian Old Comedy, London 2000, 233–246, K. Sidwell, ‘From Old to Middle to New? Aristotle’s Poetics and the History of Athenian Comedy,’ in Harvey and Wilkins 2000 (above, note 163), 247–258, and E. Csapo, ‘From Aristophanes to Menander? Genre Transformation in Greek Comedy,’ in M. Depew and D. Obbink (eds), Matrices of Genre: Authors, Canons, and Society, Cambridge, MA 2000, 115–133. 164  Μore specifically, line 9 jokingly refers to a nomos by Olympos (on Olympos, see West 1992 [above, note 99], 105, 163–164, 216). On the purported sound of auloi, see Acharnians 864, 866, Thesmophoriazousai 1176, and LSJ s.v. βόμβυξ (cf. σφηκισμός; Gow 1952 [above, note 78], 199, and West 1992 [above, note 99], 105). However, see also μῦ μῦ in Thesmophoriazousai 231. 165  Note that in line 800 κοῒ κοΐ (κοῒ κοῒ κοΐ in 801) is juxtaposed with χοῖρε, χοῖρε. See the verb κοΐζω (κοΐξετε, along with γρυλιξεῖτε) in Acharnians 746. 166  See Wilson’s apparatus criticus on line 780 (2007 [above, note 80], vol. 1, 39). On the repetition of τιο, το, and on -τίγξ in different manuscripts preserving Birds 770–784, see Dunbar 1995 (above, note 81), 91, and Wilson 2007 (above, note 80), vol. 1, 384–385, on lines 770, 773, 775, 779, and 784 (see also their apparatus criticus on lines 738, 741, 743, 747, 752; Dunbar 1995, 89–90, and Wilson 2007, vol. 1, 383). On the sounds in Birds 227 (ἐποποποῖ ποποποποῖ ποποῖ), see the apparatus criticus of Dunbar 1995, 70, and Wilson 2007, vol. 1, 357. On the sounds in Birds 260–262 as preserved in the manuscripts, see Dunbar 1995, 71, and Wilson 2007, vol. 1, 358. See also note 167. 167  See Kenneth Dover’s apparatus criticus (1993 [above, note 151], 130) on variant readings of βρεκεκεκέξ and κοάξ (lines 209, 214, 220, 223, 225, 226, 227); also Dover 1993, 131, and 132. 168  See variant readings in K. Dover, Aristophanes: Clouds, edited with introduction and commentary, Oxford 1968, 27. 169  See the testimonia printed by Kassel and Austin (vol. 4, 144) in Kratinos fr. 45. See also LSJ s.v. βᾶ II; Chantraine, DELG 154 (s.v. βᾶ 1); Beekes, EDG 189 (s.v. βᾶ 1); but cf. Hermippos fr. 18 K-A. 170  See testimonia in K-A, vol. 3.2, 412. 171  See Radt’s testimonia (TrGF, vol. 4: Sophocles, 403, where ἀρῦ [cf. ἄρρυ, ‘a cry of boatmen,’ LSJ] as ἐπίφθεγμα κωπηλατῶν is also

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Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings (Εuripides, Cyclops 49)172 and later ψίττα and σίττα express special emotions.173 Children seem to have been lulled to sleep with the sounds βαῦ and νύννιον;174 they seem to have used the sound βρῦ when they cried for drink (Clouds 1382) and μαμμᾶ when they wanted to ask for food (Clouds 1383);175 they would exclaim the word λολλώ for ‘anything ‘divinely nice.’’176 Ritual shouts sound like τήνελλα (Βirds 1764–1765);177 stringed instruments sound like θρεττανελο | θρεττανελο (Wealth 290 and 296),178 and even φλαττοθραττοφλαττοθρατ (Frogs 1286, 1288, 1290, 1293, 1295).

of other contexts of song-making, agones mousikoi, and performance of logoi. I shall here focus on symposia, given that many of the vases I shall discuss are sympotic. Soundscapes were transformed as symposia and agones mousikoi in religious festivals developed in sixth-century Athens. It is significant that in Attic vasepainting symposiasts appear c. 580 BC.180 I want to place special emphasis on soundscapes in this chapter, because, in contrast to central aspects of ancient Greek music, the complexities of the broader area of soundscapes in archaic and classical Greece have remained relatively neglected. As I have argued elsewhere, the ideologically fraught and different musical (not only song) cultures181 of Lesbos and of Anakreon’s East Greece became known to Athens in the last quarter of the sixth century:182 Athenians became earwitnesses183 to those soundscapes at symposia. For our understanding of the diversity of sixth-century Athenian performance culture in the context of symposia, it is important that, although no other archaic lyricists are identified with inscriptions in the entire corpus of Attic and non-Attic vasepainting,184 Anakreon and Sappho make their first appearance on Attic pottery during the same period (around 520–500 BC);185 their figures were associated in culturally complex manner in the early stages of their

As I show in detail elsewhere, in the sixth century, Athenians179 were exposed to a changing sonic environment. That heightened sonic configuration of cultural experience should be viewed, I suggest, in connection with the social diffusion of symposia and quoted). See also Aristophanes fr. 923 K-A (see testimonia in K-A, vol. 3.2, 414); cf. Aischylos fr. 82 Radt (testimonia in TrGF, vol. 3: Aeschylus, 205). 172  Seaford 1984 (above, note 107), 17–18, insightfully observes that ‘Aristotle tells us that tragedy had its origins in improvisation […], as well as that it developed ἐκ σατυρικοῦ. And so its seems very likely that satyric drama too had its origin in an improvisatory performance. We may therefore suggest that the Inachos and the Ichneutai were either early or, in keeping with the nature of the genre, conservative, and that the tragic structure of Cyclops represents a degeneration: frequent, agitated choral passages, the relics of an improvisatory performance preserved in the literary creation of an ever-dwindling feeling for tradition, were eventually eliminated by an inevitable process of assimilation to tragedy. Or perhaps they were merely attenuated to such exclamations by the satyrs as ἆ ἆ ἆ, ἰοὺ ἰού, and ὠή: these are frequent in the choral passages of Ichneutai and Inachos, and in Cyclops occur three times in choral passages (49, 51, 656) and twice isolated, extra metrum, and probably accompanied by dance-steps, in passages of spoken iambic (157, 464).’ 173  See also ψιττάζω, ‘call ψίττα’ (in later sources). On the sound, see Gow 1952 (above, note 78), 87, 96, 107, and 124. 174  M. Golden, ‘Baby Talk and Child Language in Ancient Greece,’ in F. de Martino and A. H. Sommerstein (eds), Lo spettacolo delle voci, Bari 1995, 22 and 24 (sources are late). 175  See Dover 1968 (above, note 168), 257. 176  LSJ s.v. λολλώ, and Golden 1995 (above, note 174), 23–24 (sources late); see, further, LSJ s.v. λῶλον and λωλώ. They would perhaps say ἄππα when they addressed their father (see πᾶ in Aischylos Suppliants 892 [apparatus criticus], 902; and good discussion in Friis Johansen and Whittle 1980 [above, note 71], vol. 3, 221). On ἄππα, see Golden 1995, 19. πάππα already in Homer Odyssey 6.57; also in Aristophanes (e.g., Peace 120); see Diggle 2004 (above, note 151), 275–276. They would employ ἄπφα when they addressed their sister/brother. On ἄπφα, see Golden 1995, 19, and Yatromanolakis 2007 (above, note 20), 168–171. μαμμία was used when they addressed their mother (Lysistrata 878, 879, 890); see also μᾶ in Aischylos Suppliants 890, 900 (cf. Gow 1952 [above, note 78], 290), μαῖα in Euripides Alkestis 393, and μάμμη in Pherekrates fr. 76.4 K-A, and Menander Samia 243. 177  τήνελλα also in [Archilochos] spuria fr. 324 W2 (and see Martin West’s testimonia in Iambi et Elegi Graeci, vol. 1, Oxford 1989, 104–106), and Acharnians 1227, 1228, 1230, 1231, 1233. See Dunbar 1995 (above, note 81), 769–770: ‘τήνελλα is said by Σ Av. 1764 to be ‘an imitation of some sound of pipe-playing’ (μίμησίς ἐστι φωνῆς κρούματα αὐλοῦ ποιᾶς), and in Σ Pi. Ol. 9.1–4 the Alexandrian scholar Eratosthenes, the probable source of this note, is cited for an unlikely historical explanation that τήνελλα was a vocal substitute for the playing of αὐλός or κιθάρα, provided before the chant by the chorus-leader when the instrumentalist was not present.’ 178  See also testimonia in Philoxenos of Kythera 819 PMG (κιθάρας ἦχον μιμούμενος ἐν τῷ συγγράμματι, τοῦτό φησι τὸ ῥῆμα ‘θρεττανελό’). 179  Note that vase-painters working in Athens were not necessarily all from Attica.

180  D. Yatromanolakis, ‘Symposia, Noses, Prosôpa: A Kylix in the Company of Banqueters on the Ground,’ in idem (ed.), An Archaeology of Representations: Ancient Greek Vase-Painting and Contemporary Methodologies, Athens 2009, 434, and, for the visual discourse of symposia on the ground that emerges c. 530 BC, pages 424–464. One of the earliest Attic scenes of a symposion is depicted on the blackfigure cup Samos, Vathy Museum K 1280 (KX Painter; c. 580 BC; ABV 26.27; Add.2 8; B. Kreuzer, Die attisch-schwarzfigurige Keramik aus dem Heraion von Samos, Bonn 1998, 169–172, pls. 37–39, no. 200, and color plate 1). The earliest scenes of symposia (c. 600 BC; last quarter of the seventh century) in ancient Greek vase-painting occur on Corinthian vases: Corinthian ring-vase with four kotyliskoi London, British Museum 73.8.20.387 (Fehr, Gelage, pl. 2a–b; Amyx 1988 [above, note 11], 460–461, 477, n. 123, 657, n. 91); Corinthian column-krater Paris, Louvre E 635 (the Eurytios krater; H. Payne, Necrocorinthia: A Study of Corinthian Art in the Archaic Period, Oxford 1931, pl. 27; Amyx 1988, 147, 313, pl. 57.1a–b). 181  ‘Musical culture’ is a concept that points to a broader spectrum of song-making and music-making, than the term ‘song culture’: D. Yatromanolakis, ‘Ancient Greek Popular Song,’ in F. Budelmann (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Greek Lyric, Cambridge 2009, 264. ‘Song’ is included in the concept of music, while instrumental music performed, for example, in the context of agones mousikoi is not included in the term ‘song’. On agones mousikoi as ‘genre-defining’ contexts of performance, see D. Yatromanolakis, ‘Alcaeus and Sappho,’ in F. Budelmann (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Greek Lyric, Cambridge 2009, 223. 182  For detailed investigation of visual, epigraphic, and other textual material, see Yatromanolakis 2007 (above, note 20), chapters 2 and 3. 183  The notion of earwitness goes back to Elias Canetti’s Der Ohrenzeuge (Munich 1974; Earwitness: Fifty Characters, trans. J. Neugroschel, London 1979) and has more recently been explored in historical and anthropological discussions of soundscapes in different periods. 184  Alkaios, who similarly represents the archaic musical cultures of Lesbos, appears next to Sappho on an Attic vase dated to c. 480–470 BC: Munich, Antikensammlungen 2416; ARV2 385.228, 1573, and 1649; Add.2 228; Yatromanolakis 2007 (above, note 20), 74–75, fig. 3a–b. Tentative identifications of other archaic poets on Attic vases have been proposed; but there are no inscriptions on those vases. 185  Yatromanolakis 2007 (above, note 20), 64 and n. 31 (different drafts of the D.Phil. thesis mentioned in n. 31 were circulated and read widely by US and UK scholars already before its completion).

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Chapter One reception.186 In their songs, both of them referred often to the pektis and the barbitos, as well as to Lydia and its distinctive lifestyle.187 Furthermore, it is significant that the earliest depictions of barbitos on Attic pottery are dated to about 530-520 BC (aulodes and auletes performing at agones mousikoi appear on Attic pottery around the third quarter of the sixth century). The barbitos, like the pektis, had culturally marked East Greek musical associations.188 Pindar imagined Terpandros, a legendary musician of Lesbos, inventing the barbitos at Lydian banquets inspired by the sound of the pektis, a many-stringed plucked instrument whose sound was described as ‘high-pitched.’189 I suggest that, especially in the second half of the sixth century, Athenians were exposed to sonic textures—at symposia, newly introduced agones mousikoi, and, if some of the information included in later sources about the origins of theater is to be trusted, theatrical performances—that constantly reconfigured their auditory horizons of expectations. This was a period pregnant with major consequences for the soundscapes of Athens in the first half of the fifth century, when musical innovations began taking shape in Greece190—that is, before the so-called New Music and its musical experimentations were introduced in the last decades of the fifth century—and when theater established itself as a performative medium. I propose that the sonic settings that had a major impact on Athenian soundscapes in the sixth century were sympotic: as observed above, symposiasts first appear on Attic vases around the end of the first quarter of the sixth century, c. 580 BC. I argue further that many of the Attic ‘nonsense’ inscriptions, which become frequent at the same period191—that is, at the beginning of the second quarter of the sixth century—reflect soundscapes of Athens. They reenact or ‘reconstruct’ diverse auditory environments: sympotic sounds, cheering, and singing; komoi; dialogues of imagined satyrs and choruses of Maenads; processions (pompai); sounds of animals like horses and birds; battles and disputes; foreigners; and sounds of diverse religious contexts. Many of those inscriptions lumped together under the generalizing rubric ‘nonsense inscriptions’ represent aspects of the Attic soundscape as perceived or playfully constructed in the potters’ quarters in the sixth century and later. ‘Nonsense’ inscriptions—which, as has been shown on the basis of comparative ancient Greek material, are

Soundscapes (and Two Speaking Lyres)

essentially an Attic phenomenon192—suggest that in sixth-century Athens and later, ‘there is no such thing as silence.’193 I shall here discuss some cases of such inscriptions, which we might name pictorial sounds. I shall focus both on sounds opposed to the absence of sense in the context of images and on sounds that, despite contrary current approaches, produced phrases intelligible to Greek earwitnesses. There is space here for an investigation of a few out of numerous comparable cases: a more broadranging investigation will be offered elsewhere. My aim is to underscore some pivotal aspects of the importance of these vase-inscriptions for our understanding of pictorial soundscapes. Discussion of specific instances of soundscapes is not possible without an attempt to explore aspects of their early history as well as to propose new groups with regard to those inscriptions we customarily term ‘nonsense’194 (one should be reluctant to schematically classify these inscriptions, because of the significant leakiness of boundaries among the ‘mock,’ ‘near-sense,’ and ‘meaningless’ inscriptions).195 First, an examination of some 1500 sixth- and fifthcentury Attic vases196 with so-called nonsense inscriptions, especially those vases dated to both the first and the second half of the sixth century, allow us to understand some aspects of the history of this complex phenomenon. One of these aspects is significant for our purposes here: although details about the dating of Attic vases of the second quarter of the sixth century197 are sometimes inadequate, it should be stressed that some of the very early vases with ‘nonsense’ inscriptions intriguingly combine sense and ‘nonsense.’ Early ‘nonsense’ inscriptions appear on Attic vases almost a decade after the earliest Attic representations of symposia (c. 580 BC); I suggest that it is important that vase-painters focused on symposia and ‘nonsense’ inscriptions during the very same period. The fact Immerwahr 1990 (above, note 4), 44: ‘a distinctly Attic phenomenon.’ This argument, which has been accepted by all experts working on vase-inscriptions, is not pivotal for the approach proposed here. 193  J. Cage, Silence: Lectures and Writings, Middletown, CT 1961, 51. 194  Regarding Immerwahr’s category of ‘blots or dots,’ it should be viewed as altogether distinct from his other types of ‘nonsense’ inscriptions—among other reasons, because blots and dots are not letters and, by definition, do not produce sense. 195  On the leakiness of boundaries of these groups, see below. 196  Full and detailed transcriptions of the inscriptions of the largest number of them will be published in a separate study. My research on Attic vase-inscriptions has been made possible and largely funded by the Milton Award, Harvard University. In more recent years, the American Academy in Berlin (Anna-Maria Kellen Fellowship), a Global Humanities Senior Research and Teaching Stay at the Dahlem Humanities Center of the Freie Universität Berlin, and the A. S. Onassis Foundation (USA) have contributed to this research project. 197  As I have already noted above, ‘nonsense’ inscriptions become frequent on Attic vases at the beginning of the second quarter of the sixth century; see above, note 56. 192 

Yatromanolakis 2007 (above, note 20), chapters 2 and 3. Anakreon frs. 373.3, 386 PMG (pektis); 472 PMG (barbitos); Sappho frs. 22.11, 156.1 V (paktis); 176 V (barbitos). The same applies to Alkaios: see Alkaios frs. 36.5 V (π]άκτιδι, if restored correctly) and 70.4 V. 188  Yatromanolakis 2007 (above, note 20), 124–125, 227–229, and chapter 3, passim. 189  ‘High-pitched’: Telestes fr. 810.4–5 PMG. 190  See R. W. Wallace, ‘An Early Fifth-Century Athenian Revolution in Aulos Music,’ Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 101 (2003), 73–92. 191  Emphasis is placed on ‘many’ here, since Immerwahr’s conceptualization of ‘nonsense inscriptions’ includes much heterogeneous material (see, for example, below, note 194). Immerwahr cogently shows that many Attic vase-painters were literate. See also above, note 56. 186  187 

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Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings that those early vases combine sense and ‘nonsense’ inscriptions casts some doubts upon the widely endorsed theory that ‘there is no doubt that in origin [these inscriptions, ‘a distinctly Attic phenomenon’] go back to a situation when it was difficult to write properly.’198 Searching for origins is a tricky area in the field of classical art and archaeology, but it is at least worth drawing attention to the following instances of Attic vases dated to the second quarter of the sixth century. At the same time, we should place emphasis on the broader dynamics of the ancient reception199 of pictorial sounds in these early Attic instances.

figure aryballos by Nearchos dated to 560-550 BC,204 we see again an arresting combination of numerous ancient Greek words and names with pictorial sounds. Let us focus here on some of them. On the handle plate of the aryballos, three satyrs are depicted masturbating. The satyr on the left is defined as Δοφιος | χαιρει205 (Δόφιος | χαίρει, ‘Dophios takes pleasure [in it]’—or, one might suggest,206 ‘Dophios’ | ‘he takes pleasure [in it],’ with χαίρει functioning as a comment on the act). The satyr in the middle is named Τερπεκελος,207 and the satyr on the right Φσολας. Behind the head and back of Φσολας οccurs the sound hαοι, which might be taken as an utterance of sigh indicating the pleasure he takes—or might be articulated as a kind of improvised exclamations ἁ! ω! ι! To the right of his legs and long tail we see more sounds: λει, βρε. Ι would argue that it is highly unlikely that literate viewers, having read an erotically charged name like Psolas (< ψωλή, ‘penis’), would have not taken hαοι, λει, and βρε as sounds suggesting the excitement the act of masturbation causes to the ithyphallic satyr. Among others, these two vases suggest that culturally marked horizons of expectations began being shaped—from the early stages of this phenomenon—when for example Nearchos included both sense inscriptions and pictorial sounds on elegant objects like the aforementioned aryballos. Nearchos was

On a black-figure hydria dated to the second quarter of the sixth century (570–560 BC),200 we see Herakles in battle with apparently the well-known lion. His name hεραλες is painted above his head on the body of the hydria and accompanied by other painted inscriptions: λεο̣νγ(.)εο̣ ν near the lion’s face; λε̣ιλι near the lion’s tail; ̣ (.)νιλι near a bird on the right, above the lion’s tail.201 On the shoulder of the hydria, two lions face each other. Painted inscriptions near the lions provide, among other sounds, the following: λεολεσ, λσ, χιλεσλχιχ, χοιχσλσ̣, and probably a man’s name (Karpos). The juxtaposition of the inscription hεραλες (Herakles) with pictorial sounds—some of which repeat syllables reminding of the Greek word for lion and certainly laying emphasis on the sounds λε-,202 λεο-, λει-, and λι-—is not without significance for the very early stages of this complex Attic phenomenon, especially because it makes impossible for us to argue that the painter was not able to write Greek.203 Furthermore, on a black-

(National Archaeological Museum, Acropolis Collection 1.1632), the word for lion appears on an Attic black-figure band cup (Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 61.1073; Para. 69 and 70.1; Add.2 47; CVA Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 2, 40, pls. 98.3–4), attributed to the Neandros Painter and dated to the third quarter of the sixth century: λhεον (sic) is the painted inscription that ‘defines’ a lion, which attacks a boar (also named: καπρο). On the same cup, animals that similarly attack, and are attacked by, other animals also have defining labels: παρδαλις; possibly [ελαφ]ος; and ταυρος (the full painted inscription here is ταυρος hυτος, ‘this is a bull’; the word ταῦρος also painted on Würzburg, Universität, Martin von Wagner Museum L 193 [CVA Würzburg, Martin von Wagner Museum 4, 17–18, pl. 9.14], and possibly Toledo [OH], Museum of Art 58.70 [Para. 75.1bis; Add.2 50; CVA Toledo, Museum of Art 1, 23–14, pls. 34.12, 35.1]). Note that hυς appears along with numerous other inscriptions on the Attic black-figure band cup Munich, Antikensammlungen 2243 (ABV 160.2 [Archikles, Potter], 163.2 [Glaukytes, Potter]; ARV2 1609 s.v. Solon; Para. 67–68; Add.2 47; CVA Munich, Antikensammlungen 11, pls. 2.7-9, 3, 4.1-2, 5.1-3, 6.13, Beilage 1.4; see chapter 4 in this volume, Figure 1), dated to c. 550–540 BC. Finally, the inscription ονος is written on a fragmentary Attic black-figure column-krater not included in CAVI (New York, Metropolitan Museum 1997.388, 56, and 493; dated to c. 560–550 BC; M. B. Moore, ‘Hephaistos Goes Home: An Attic Black-Figured ColumnKrater in the Metropolitan Museum,’ Metropolitan Museum Journal 45 (2010), 22, fig. 2; see chapter 3 in this volume, Figure 7). 204  New York, Metropolitan Museum 26.49; ABV 83.4, 682; Add.2 23; Hedreen 2006 (above, note 46), fig. 2; see G. M. A. Richter, ‘An Aryballos by Nearchos,’ American Journal of Archaeology 36 (1932), 274, Beazley 1931–1932 (above, note 203), 21, and Beazley 1935 (above, note 8), 485, 487. 205  Beazley 1931–1932, 21, rightly adduces Aristophanes Peace 290– 291 (… δεφόμενός ποτ’ ᾖδε τῆς μεσημβρίας, | ‘ὡς ἥδομαι καὶ χαίρομαι κεὐφραίνομαι’). 206  χαίρει is written behind the back and head of Dophios. His name is written in front of him. His mouth is open. 207  On this name, see Richter 1932, 274, Beazley 1931–1932, 21, and Beazley 1935, 487. Note that in the past, mainly German, Greek, and British scholars associated specific ‘nonsense’ inscriptions with the iconography of the vases on which they appear, and interpreted the inscriptions as war cries, shouts addressed to horses, etc.

Immerwahr 2006 (above, note 63), 137. For methodological approaches to the ancient reception of aesthetic cultures, see Yatromanolakis 2007 (above, note 20), chapters 1 and 2. 200  Black-figure hydria New York, Metropolitan Museum 74.51.1331; ABV 314 (New York CP 1968); K. Schauenburg, ‘Ein Psykter aus dem Umkreis des Andokidesmalers,’ Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 80 (1965), 103, fig. 26; see also Immerwahr 1971 (above, note 57), 58. 201  Two birds fly on the upper part of the scene. To the left of the scene occurs the painted inscription νει(.)χσ̣χι. 202  The repeated λε- (on the body of the hydria) and λεσ (on the shoulder) are also syllables related to the ending of the name of Herakles. 203  Even if one takes the extreme and unverifiable view that the painter ‘copied’ the name of Herakles from another vase, the question remains why he did not ‘copy’ other inscriptions, too. Important early instances of animals ‘labeled’ are: (a) the painted inscription γλαυχς on an Attic black-figure amphora attributed to Group E and dated to the mid-sixth century (Berlin, Antikensammlung F 1698; ABV 136.54, 674; Add.2 37; J. D. Beazley, ‘Groups of Mid-Sixth-Century Black-Figure,’ Annual of the British School at Athens 32 [1931-1932], 7; G. Hedreen, Capturing Troy: The Narrative Functions of Landscape in Archaic and Early Classical Greek Art, Ann Arbor, MI 2001, fig. 4)—an amphora that combines many sense inscriptions with so-called nonsense inscriptions; and (b) the painted inscription λhεον (thus spelled) on fragments of an Attic black-figure band cup dated to the third quarter of the sixth century (Athens, National Archaeological Museum, Acropolis Collection 1.1632; GL, vol. 1 [1925], no. 1632, pl. 84). See also the black-figure amphora at Cerveteri attributed to the Prometheus Painter and dated to c. 560-550 BC (above, note 46), where, among other named figures, occur hερακλες and ελαφος. In addition to the black-figure band cup in Athens mentioned above 198  199 

30

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Soundscapes (and Two Speaking Lyres)

Figure 18. Athens, National Archaeological Museum, Acropolis Collection 1.611. Photograph courtesy the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, © Hellenic Ministry of Culture/Archaeological Receipts Fund.

communicative (including ritualized) interaction. Since the early aryballos by Nearchos includes images of satyrs, let me repeat here only one instance of soundmaking in satyr plays: Sophokles’s Ichneutai, where we find the extensive interjection ὗ ὗ ὗ, ψ ψ, ἆ ἆ (fr. 314.176 Radt), as well as ὀπποποῖ· ἆ (fr. 314.197 Radt)210 and ὕ̣ [ὗ] ὕ̣ ὗ̣ (fr. 314.131 Radt).

a major painter and potter, and a literate one as we can see from some of his vases that were found in Athens (Figure 18).208 Moreover, as I showed above, Athenian dramatists employed—and sometimes coined—a great variety of lexicalized sounds or interjections: many of them consisted of repeated vowels or syllables and, especially in performances of Attic satyr plays and comedies, were conducive to emphatically playful mimesis of the voices of animals and other soundscapes. I suggest that many of the sixth- and fifth-century Attic vases—especially sympotic ones—with pictorial sounds activate improvised and not infrequently less polished mechanisms of soundscape-making that comic playwrights will later develop into playful forms of communication. We know from Aristophanes Clouds 543209 that the performance of lexicalized sounds like ἰοὺ ἰού in comic plays pleased and entertained audiences. Moreover, those soundscapes painted on Attic vases reflect not only pervasive onomatopoeic practices in archaic and classical Greece (see discussion above), but also lexicalized sounds used in incantations, or types of ideophones employed in diverse forms of

On the handle plate of the Nearchos aryballos, two of the three hairy and ithyphallic satyrs have their heads raised—in a position analogous to that of singers in Attic vase-painting;211 their mouths are open. As the phenomenon of pictorial sounds develops in Attic vase-painting from the mid-sixth century onwards, they begin, I argue, to be often associated with the iconographic practice of including lettering near— or spilling out of—the mouths of different figures, especially in the context of sympotic and komastic images. One of the earliest instances of such ‘voice inscriptions’ is the Liverpool black-figure neckamphora attributed to the Prometheus Painter and dated to c. 560–550 BC that I examined in the first section of this chapter, despite the fact that the speaking lyres are objects without mouths.212 A well-known early example—but of different nature, given that, this

208  See the important black-figure kantharos Athens, National Archaeological Museum, Acropolis Collection 1.611 (ABV 82.1; Add.2 23; my Figure 18) and the black-figure kantharos Athens, National Archaeological Museum, Acropolis Collection 1.612 (ABV 83.3; Add.2 23; GL, vol. 1 [1925], no. 612, pl. 36), both by Nearchos and dated to c. 560–550 BC. 209  See above, note 101.

Fr. 314.197 Radt ὀπποποῖ· ἆ μιαρέ (note the repetition of –ια). See Yatromanolakis 2007 (above, note 20), 73, 76, 91, 101–102, 117. 212  Liverpool, National Museums 56.19.19. 210  211 

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Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings

Figure 19. Copenhagen, National Museum 13365. After D. Yatromanolakis, Sappho in the Making: The Early Reception, Cambridge, MA 2007, 116, fig. 10.

time, the strings of letters come out of the mouths of figures—is a black-figure amphora by Exekias dated to c. 540–530 BC.213 On the obverse Aias and Achilleus play a board-game: τρια (τρία, ‘three’; retrograde)214 occurs to the left of the former’s mouth and is the word he is uttering to inform viewers about the dice result he scored, while τεσαρα (τέσσαρα, ‘four’) is placed near Achilleus’s mouth.215 More important, on a number of

Attic vases pictorial sounds like the lexicalized sounds in satyr plays, tragedies, and comedies I have already discussed are introduced. On a red-figure kalyx-krater attributed to the Kleophrades Painter and dated to c. 500 BC,216 ΙΟΟΟ spills out of the open mouth of an elaborately dressed komast217 on one of the sides of the vase (Figure 19), while on the other side, above the in Ancient Wineskins: The Evidence from Attic Vases,’ Hesperia 61 [1992], pls. 29–30). Cf. [κ]αὶ τρί on the red-figure cup Vatican, Museo Gregoriano Etrusco 16541 (ARV2 451.1, 1654; Add.2 242; Schefold and Jung 1989 [above, note 42], 64, fig. 44); and especially the Greek word for ‘four’ on the red-figure cup Aberdeen, University 64347 (+ fragment in Florence, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 1 B 29; ARV2 73.28; Add.2 168; see chapter 2, Figure 2a–b; dated to 510–500 BC), ἐγṑ̄ δὲ τέταρα on the black-figure cup Athens, Agora Museum P 30782 (J. M. Camp, The Athenian Agora, London 1986, 136, fig. 110; third quarter of the sixth century), and τέταρα φέρο̄ on the black-figure lekythos Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 95.15 (ABV 480; Add.2 121). 216  Copenhagen, National Museum 13365; ARV2 185.32; Add.2 187; Yatromanolakis 2007 (above, note 20), 116, fig. 10. 217  On the important set of Attic vases with representations of elaborately dressed komasts, see Yatromanolakis 2007 (above, note 20), 110–140.

213  Vatican, Museo Gregoriano Etrusco 344; ABV 145.13, 686; Add.2 40; CEG no. 437 (see also CEG no. 436); Yatromanolakis 2007 (above, note 20), 100, n. 151, for the various types of inscriptions this amphora features (Onetorides [a name that occurs, along with the adjective kalos, to the right of Aias’s back on this amphora] is Exekias’s favorite kalos-name; note that this name is also employed by other vasepainters, e.g. black-figure neck-amphora Rome, Villa Giulia [no number; ABV 693.8bis, 672.8, 673.2; Add.2 86], attributed to Three-line Group and dated to the last quarter of the sixth century). 214  On retrograde inscriptions placed to the left of figures to which they refer, see Yatromanolakis 2007 (above, note 20), 102. 215  τρία, ‘three,’ also comes out of the mouths of figures on the fragmentary red-figure psykter Malibu (CA), J. Paul Getty Museum 83.AE.285, dated to c. 510–500 BC (H. R. Immerwahr, ‘New Wine

32

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Soundscapes (and Two Speaking Lyres)

Figure 20. Munich, Antikensammlungen 2416. After D. Yatromanolakis, Sappho in the Making: The Early Reception, Cambridge, MA 2007, 74, fig. 3a.

a celebrity of melic compositions, Alkaios, is shown with head bent down and with his left hand plucking individual strings of his seven-stringed barbitos (Figure 20): out of his mouth comes a vocalise-like string of letters, in two sequences: ΟΟΟ and ΟΟ. On the obverse of a red-figure neck-amphora attributed to the

lyre and the partly preserved right arm of a reclining male figure is the inscription ]ΕΝΙΕΣ, possibly part of a song.218 On a kalathoid vase that should be attributed to the Dokimasia Painter and dated to c. 480–470 BC,219 See Yatromanolakis 2007 (above, note 20), 115. Munich, Antikensammlungen 2416; ARV2 385.228, 1573, and 1649; Add.2 228; Yatromanolakis 2007 (above, note 20), 74–75, fig. 3a–b. I agree with Martin Robertson’s reservations about the attribution 218  219 

of this vase to the Brygos Painter and with his attribution to the Dokimasia Painter (Robertson 1992 [above, note 13], 100 and 118).

33

Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings Providence Painter and dated to the second quarter of the fifth century,220 a seated bearded man plays the aulos while a boy vocalizes: the sounds ΟΟ are written near his mouth. Although these inscriptions have been identified as ‘music,’ inscriptions on equally important vases have been classified as ‘nonsense.’ Οn a red-figure kalyx-krater attributed to the Kleophrades Painter and dated to c. 500 BC,221 Hephaistos and Dionysos are accompanied by satyrs. Near one satyr occurs the inscription ΙΟΙ; to the right of his open mouth ΙΣΤΕ; on other parts of the image occur the sounds (Γ) ΕΙΟ(Γ)., ΩΕ, and EIΣ. According to a widely sanctioned scholarly paradigm, these inscriptions, even ΙΟΙ, IΣΤΕ, and ΩΕ, are nonsense. Leaving aside ΙΣΤΕ and ΩΕ, the ΙΟΙ should be compared with vocalizations like ΙΟΟΟ or OO: it represents sounds resembling interjections or exclamations that I have discussed in an earlier part of this chapter.222 ΙΣΤΕ may well represent a Greek word and ΩΕ a Greek interjection,223 but, because the other strings of letters are—so the reasoning goes— ‘nonsense,’ these words are ‘nonsense,’ too. However, this scholarly argument goes against the complex realities of pictorial soundscapes, in that even in the very early stages of this phenomenon, as I showed above, there are instances of sense inscriptions combined with pictorial sounds on the same vase-painting. Furthermore, if we consider another red-figure vase attributed to the same painter, the Kleophrades Painter, and dated to the late sixth century,224 we see that on the obverse, near Athena’s mouth, occurs the inscription ΧΑΙΡΕ, while on the reverse, near the mouth of a man who plays a lyre in the context of a komos, appears the pictorial sound ΝΟΤΠΟ.225 Finally, note that ΙΟΙ is also written on a black-figure neck-amphora226 that depicts a combat of two warriors over a fallen warrior: between the heads of the two fighting men is the inscription ΙΟΙ(.)ΙΙ, which, I suggest, represents their exclamations.

I have already examined the recurring use—in the context of Athenian performance culture—of expressive sounds227 like ἰὼ ὢ ὤ, ἰοὺ ἰού, ἰὴ ἰή, οἰοῖ, ὠή, ἤν, ἰαί, ἀλαλαλαί, ἰηῦ ἰηῦ ἰηῦ, ποποποποῖ ποποῖ, ὗ ὗ ὗ, ψ ψ, ἆ ἆ, παπᾶ παπᾶ παπᾶ παπαῖ, ὀοοααᾶ, ἒ ἒ ἒ ἔ, μῦμῦ μῦμῦ μῦμῦ μῦμῦ μῦμῦ μῦμῦ, ἆ ἆ ἆ, ἔα ἔα, and τοροτοροτοροτορολιλιλίξ or τοτοτοτοτοτοτοτοτοτίγξ.228 Emphasis has also been placed above on extraintensified words like προπαλαιπαλαίπαλαι, ‘millennienni-ennia past,’ and on words teasingly representing stammer like βρετέτετας, ‘immammage.’229 I argue here that analogous lexicalized sounds and (often playful) sound-making can be traced in a number of Attic vasepaintings. Α thorough investigation of hundreds of vases with pictorial sounds (some of them activating complex configurations) is beyond the space limitations of this chapter. Attention will be drawn to only some instances. On a red-figure cup dated to c. 500 BC, a bearded symposiast is represented reclining and caressing the mouth of a hare with his right hand (Figure 21).230 Out of the mouth of the man comes lettering. There is no lyre or aulos-case anywhere in the field:231 the half-naked man, instead, accompanies his singing with krotala, a percussion instrument that he holds in his left hand. The krotala seem to keep time for the first part of (what appears to be) a line of a song: Ο ΠΑΙΔΟΝ ΚΑΛΛΙΣΤΕ (ὦ παίδων κάλλιστε). The meter looks elegiac and the inscription has been thought of232 as coming from the Theognidea 1365–1366 (ὦ παίδων κάλλιστε καὶ ἱμεροέστατε πάντων,| στῆθ’ αὐτοῦ καί μου παῦρ’ ἐπάκουσον ἔπη).233 Krotala accompanying the recitation or singing of a poetic composition is not an iconographic schema we see often in Attic vase227  Emphatic repetition of names and words can be traced in a number of Attic vase-paintings. See, for example, the red-figure cup Aleria, Musée Archéologique 61.35 (Onesimos; early fifth century; ARV2 1615, 1645–1646.9bis; Add.2 215; J. Jehasse, Aleria grecque et romaine, Paris 1964, fig. 2), where ΛΟΔΑ ΛΟΔΑ is almost ritualistically reiterated on the obverse: ΛΟΔΑ is the name of a maenad who holds krotala and is erotically approached by a satyr on the obverse (ΛΟΔΑ is discussed by Beazley in ARV2 1615); note that on the reverse the depicted maenad sings; see also the name ΛΟΔΑ on the tondo of this cup. 228  See also above, note 160. 229  Regarding playfully coined sounds, including dissonant ones, that some Greeks in the classical period were attracted to, it should also be noted that, according to Photios (β 325), in Aristophanes βῶμαξ was used ὑποκοριστικῶς instead of the standard βωμός (Aristophanes fr. 801 K-A; cf. also βώμαξ, Photios β 327 in C. Theodoridis [ed.], Photii Patriarchae Lexicon. Vol. I: Α–Δ, Berlin 1982, 348). On the ending -άξ, see Dover 1968 (above, note 168), 151, and cf. C. W. Peppler, Comic Terminations in Aristophanes and the Comic Fragments. Part I, Baltimore, MD 1902, 42–44 and Peppler, ‘Comic Terminations in Aristophanes. Part V,’ American Journal of Philology 42 (1921), 158–159. 230  Athens, National Archaeological Museum 1357; my Figure 21. 231  On aulos-cases or lyres hanging in the field of vase-paintings, see Yatromanolakis 2007 (above, note 20), 108, 133 fig. 15, 276. 232  E. Csapo and M. C. Miller, ‘The ‘Kottabos-Toast’ and an Inscribed Red-Figured Cup,’ Hesperia 60 (1991), 382. 233  See also the inscription on the cup New York, Metropolitan Museum 41.162.126 (dated to the second quarter of the sixth century): κ̣α̣λίστε φαρθένον.

Brussels, Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire R 339; ARV2 638.48; Add.2 273; CVA Brussels, Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire 2, pl. 15.1A.1B.1C. 221  Cambridge, MA, Harvard University, Sackler Museum 1960.236; ARV2 185.31; Add.2 187; G. M. A. Richter, ‘The Kleophrades Painter,’ American Journal of Archaeology 40 (1936), 101–103, figs. 1–3. 222  Interjections do occur on Attic vases. For example, on a red-figure oinochoe attributed to the Terpaulos Painter and dated to the first quarter of the fifth century (Rome, Villa Giulia; ARV2 308.3; Para. 357; Beazley 1957 [above, note 8], 6), the inscription παπαί comes out of the mouth of a young warrior who attempts to save himself from a perilous situation. Note that there are other inscriptions, too, on this vase. For a thought-provoking case of an exclamation written on a Corinthian vase, see aryballos Dunedin, Otago Museum E 60.13 (Amyx 1988 [above, note 11], 569, no. 52; CVA New Zealand 1, 28, pl. 35.3–8; cf. LSJ s.v. ἴσσα). 223  See above, note 100, and ὠή in Sophokles fr. 269c.25 Radt and in Euripides, Cyclops 51. 224  Vatican, Museo Gregoriano Etrusco 16573; ARV2 182.3; Add.2 186; J. D. Beazley, Der Kleophrades-Maler, Berlin 1933, no. 2, p. 11, pl. 1. 225  See also the Copenhagen kalyx-krater attributed to the Kleophrades Painter, above, note 216. Especially relevant here is the discussion above, note 203. 226  London, Victoria and Albert Museum 2504.1910; side B; BAPD 9018010. 220 

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Chapter One

Soundscapes (and Two Speaking Lyres)

Figure 21. Athens, National Archaeological Museum 1357. Photograph courtesy the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, © Hellenic Ministry of Culture/Archaeological Receipts Fund.

lyre sings:235 NOE(N)(.)O(.)(.)(N)E.236 In this context, it is significant to observe that, although they should not be viewed as semantically static formulas, the sounds NO and NE (or sometimes ΛΟ and ΛΕ) are used often to describe the sound of dialogue/speech (even, sometimes, among animals) or singing. On a neglected fragmentary red-figure kyathos in Athens attributed to the Brygos Painter and dated to the first quarter of the fifth century, we see a youth playing a seven-stringed lyre and singing (Figure 22):237 OΛOΝΟΝΟ. Some of the lettering is faint, and the sounds would be possible to be read as ONONONO. In either case, the emphasis on the sound NO is perceptible.

painting. But inscriptions referring to handsome youths are ubiquitous during specific decades.234 Now, on the tondo of a red-figure cup attributed to the Foundry Painter and dated to c. 490–480 BC, a youth with a 234  I suggest that it would be worth considering whether, when painted next to the mouth of reclining symposiasts, ho pais kalos or kalos-inscriptions stand—metonymically or not—for songs referring to or addressing paides, that is, a pais kalos ‘genre,’ like the numerous compositions in the so-called second book of the Theognidea. I shall refer here to a few such cases: on a red-figure cup attributed to the Ashby Painter and dated to the first quarter of the fifth century, a bearded man plays the barbitos and sings in the company of two other symposiasts—one of them playing the aulos and the other singing: from the mouth of the singing barbitos-player comes the inscription ΗΟ ΠΑΙΣ ΚΑΛΟΣ (London, British Museum E 64; ARV2 455.9, 1654; Add.2 243; CVA London, British Museum 9, 22–24 pls. 12a–b, 13a–c). Here the singing man’s mouth is shown more open than that of singers who perform lines of identifiable poetic compositions (OΥ ΔΥΝΑΜ’ ΟΥ) as in Munich, Antikensammlungen 2646 (ARV2 437.128, 1653; Add.2 239; D. Buitron-Oliver, Douris: A Master-Painter of Athenian Red-Figure Vases, Mainz 1995, pl. 96, no. 173 interior). See also Paris, Louvre G 316 (ARV2 51.211, 339.61; Add.2 218; CVA Paris, Musée du Louvre 19, 16–17, pls. 32.5, 33.1–8; already suggested by Beazley to represent song: ΗΟ ΠΑΙΣ). Sometimes, even painters’ and potters’ signatures may be placed next to singing figures, thus bestowing kleos to the craftsmen and disseminating the importance of their work. In specific cases, the painters’ signatures are metrical.

According to a widely endorsed scholarly paradigm, these ‘nonsense inscriptions’ are ‘typical trade-marks’ of the Brygos Painter or the Foundry Painter or the 235  Toledo (OH), Museum of Art 64.126; Para. 370.12bis; Add.2 231; Yatromanolakis (above, note 20), 121, fig. 12. 236  There are also inscriptions on the obverse and reverse of the vase. 237  Αthens, National Archaeological Museum, Acropolis Collection 2.546; ARV2 383.197; my Figure 22.

35

Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings

Figure 22. Αthens, National Archaeological Museum, Acropolis Collection 2.546. Photograph courtesy the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, © Hellenic Ministry of Culture/Archaeological Receipts Fund.

Nikosthenes Painter, and have no other significance. It is true that a pictorial sound like ΝΟΝO or the extraintensified NENNENENENENENENNEṆ may function as a kind of sphragis on the part of a craftsman or a group of vase-painters. But the significant dimension of reception must be addressed here.238 I suggest we should focus systematically on all instances of strings of letters coming out of the mouths of figures on sixth- and early fifth-century Attic vase-paintings. The emphatic repetition of such images shaped semantically marked horizons of expectations: viewers became familiar with

this pictorial schema, which indicated ‘voice,’ ‘speech,’ ‘dialogue,’ ‘singing.’ Because of these well-established horizons of expectations, ΝΟΝΟ or ΝΕΝΕ were ‘decodified’ by Athenian viewers—even in instances where these inscriptions do not spill out of the mouths of figures—as soundscapes. More specifically, in one of his cups the Brygos Painter depicted a sympotic scene where from the mouth of a singing symposiast comes the retrograde inscription ΟΠΟΛΟ(Ν), probably part of a song.239 The same had been done by Euphronios around 510–500 BC: on a red-figure kalyx-krater Euphronios portrayed a reclining man singing; out of his mouth spills ΟΠΟΛΛΟΝ, ΣΕ Γ̣Ε ΚΑΙ ΜΑΚΑΙ (‘Ο Apollo, you and blessed…’).240 Οn the kyathos in Athens (Figure 22),241 the Brygos Painter depicted a singing youth, out of whose mouth comes the sound OΛOΝΟΝΟ or ONOΝΟΝΟ. More important, on the tondo of a red-figure cup that has been considered ‘Brygan’ and dated to c. 490 BC,242 we see a standing youth

My focus is on the Athenian understanding of these inscriptions, especially since many of the vases with pictorial sounds have been found in Greece. Moreover, since literate vase-painters wrote both sense and so-called nonsense inscriptions on the same vases, it seems far-fetched to argue that the latter were written for the Etruscans. We should bear in mind that some literate painters who used both sense and ‘nonsense’ on the same vases, also produced vase-paintings with only ‘nonsense.’ It is quite difficult to maintain or prove that it was any easier for literate painters to write ‘nonsense’ than sense inscriptions. Literate painters produced a vast number of vasepaintings with (even complicated) sense inscriptions, including formulaic ones like drinking and kalos-inscriptions, and many of those vases were exported to Etruria. It is then hard to believe that it would not have been easier for those painters to include, instead of ‘nonsense’ inscriptions, simple formulaic sense inscriptions like ΧΑΙΡΕ or ΚΑΛΟΣ. One would be able to go on and adduce a number of additional counter-arguments to the hypothesis that ‘nonsense’ inscriptions were written on vases exported to Etruria. For counterarguments, see Pappas 2012 (below, note 262), 75–76, n. 13, with references to further bibliography.

238 

239  Paris, Cabinet des Médailles 546A (+ other fragments); ARV2 372.26; Add.2 225; M. Wegner, Brygos Maler, Berlin 1973, pl. 36G. 240  Munich, Antikensammlungen 8935; ARV2 1619.3bis and 1705; Add.2 152; see Yatromanolakis 2007 (above, note 20), 101. 241  Αthens, National Archaeological Museum, Acropolis Collection 2.546; ARV2 383.197; my Figure 22. 242  Berlin, Antikensammlung 3240; ARV2 405; Add.2 232; K. Peters, ‘Zu Attisch rotfigurigen Scherben in Berliner Privatbesitz,’ Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 73 (1958), 14, no. 3, fig. 2; CVA Berlin,

36

Chapter One talking with a boy who faces him. The youth raises his left hand in a gesture that indicates conversation; the gesture of the right hand of the boy suggests the same. Because of the animated gesture of the hand of the youth, there is little space for a long inscription. Such a long painted inscription, which does not come out of their mouths, surrounds the two standing figures. No detailed diplomatic transcription of the lettering is available, and, as a result, only photographs may help us here. This ‘Brygan’ inscription includes long strings of letters that feature the sounds ΝΟΝΕ, which, I suggest, indicate ‘conversation’ in the context of the specific iconographic schema. Moreover, it is intriguing that, as the viewer reads these rows of letters, to the left of the head of the standing youth, that is, behind his back, occurs the string of letters ΝΟΕΟ—a sound that a literate Athenian, especially in a sympotic context, would playfully have understood as a form related to the Greek verb for ‘I perceive,’ ‘I understand,’ ‘I think.’243 It should be noted again that I have not examined the original cup and have no access to a full transcription of the pictorial sounds on the tondo. As I have already observed in this chapter, it is urgent that we begin preparing epigraphic transcriptions of the hundreds of inscriptions that have been classified as ‘nonsense.’

Soundscapes (and Two Speaking Lyres)

unsuccessful—results. In the process, they expanded or compressed specific versions of repeated pictorial sounds.246 The ambitions of the so-called illiterate painters might have been playful (though illiterate, they knew that they painted repeated sounds). At the same time, the repetition of the same shape of lines (letters like ΑΛΑΛΑ or ΠΕΟΣΠΕΟΣΠΕΟΣΠΕΟΣ) must have often been aesthetically pleasing to painters and customers, and thus the so-called illiterate painters247 might have also used repeated pictorial sounds/shapes of lines for aesthetic effect (to emphasize the anatomy of parts of the body of depicted figures; to highlight communicative interaction among figures; etc.). Even so, sounds painted on vases were constantly present; pleasing or dissonant, they reminded viewers that the craft/art of vase-painting often activated not only the interplay of text and visual representation, but also the dynamic interdiscursivity of sound and representation. One more vase will be discussed here with a view to illuminating some of those pictorial practices. On each side of a black-figure amphora dated to c. 550 BC,248 three satyrs are shown dancing along with two maenads. On the obverse, the central satyr, flanked by the two maenads, is depicted with frontal face: he looks at the viewer. In the available space between satyrs and maenads (both behind and in front of them)249 occur inscriptions, most of which include sounds such as ΝΕΟΝΟΝIỌΣ, ΝΕΟΝΕΟΝΥΣ, and ΝΕΟΝΕΟΝΕΠΟ. This amphora predates the Brygos Painter and other painters who employed such sounds. The raised hands and legs of the satyrs and the maenads and the many-figured composition of the image on each side of the amphora leave only specific areas available for pictorial sounds. It is as if the members of these dancing groups vocalize a tune antiphonally250 or in unison: the proliferation of sound on this amphora is suitable for a chorus of satyrs and maenads. The mouths of the figures are not open, but this is sometimes true even for images of performers from whose (almost closed) mouths songs emit (Figure 23a–b).251 In this context, one should further refer to the image of a chorus of six youths, along with a bearded man who sings or addresses the youths, on a red-figure column-krater dated to the first quarter of the fifth century.252 To the right of the open mouth of

Inscriptions that feature the sounds ΝΟ, ΝΟΝ, ΝΕ, etc., as well as analogous repeated sounds, are numerous and associated with more than one vase-painter. Their history is complex.244 In this context, it should be pointed out that, after the original stage of repeated use of the sounds ΝΕ, NO, or ΝΙ (in their diverse versions) on vases, they became, I suggest, popular among viewers and painters. As a result, painters widely experimented with the repetition of these and analogous clusters of sounds (e.g., ΑΛΑΛΑ, ΓΙΓΙΓΙΓΙ, ΠΙΠΙΠΙΠΙ, ΠΕΟΣΠΕΟΣΠΕΟΣΠΕΟΣ,245 ΛΙΛΙΑΙΑΙΑΙ, ΛΟΛΟΣΛΟΣ), which, as was the case with emphatically repeated lexicalized sounds and interjections in Athenian performance culture, entertained viewers at symposia and other domestic and public venues. Such repeated sounds became a vogue. Those painters who were not eager to write only ‘sense inscriptions’ included pictorial sounds, too, on vases. Those who had no means to become literate imitated the practice of painting repeated sounds, with varied—frequently

246  There is no space here to discuss in detail the practices of the Sappho Painter, the Gela Painter, and other archaic and early classical vase-painters. However, especially the case of the Sappho Painter is more complex than Immerwahr suggests (2006 [above, note 63], 151). 247  Note that there were also illiterate customers and users in Athens, and many of the vases with repeated pictorial sounds/shapes of lines might have been intended for them (as well as for other local Greek [e.g. Corinthian] and, as has been proposed, non-Greek markets). 248  Basel, Antikenmuseum BS 424; CVA Basel, Antikenmuseum und Sammlung Ludwig 1, 85–86, pl. 28.1–4. 249  On the reverse, above the central satyr’s head, too. 250  Cf. above, main text with note 88. 251  Munich, Antikensammlungen 2646; ARV2 437.128, 1653; Add.2 239; my Figure 23a–b. 252  Basel, Antikenmuseum BS 415; CVA Basel, Antikenmuseum und

Antiquarium 2, 25, pls. 71.1–7. The cup is ‘Brygan’; according to Beazley, it is nearer to the Foundry Painter than to the Brygos Painter. 243  For the diverse meanings of this verb (‘I perceive by the eyes,’ etc.), see LSJ s.v. νοέω. Among other cases in archaic melic and elegiac poetry (which was frequently performed in sympotic context) that focus on the ‘understanding’ or ‘lack of understanding’ of an idea or a situation on the part of the speaking ‘I’ or a social group, see Alkaios fr. 208a.1 V. 244  I examine the history of such inscriptions in ‘Tyrrhenian’ vases, Siana cups, and Little-Master cups in another study. 245  One wonders what Athenian viewers would have made out of this repeated pictorial sound, which might be understood as the Greek word πέος. Cf. σπέoς. See also ἀλαλαί/ἀλαλαλαί (above, main text after note 101) and ἀλαλά (above, main text with note 110).

37

Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings

Figure 23a–b. Munich, Antikensammlungen 2646. Photograph courtesy Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek München.

38

Chapter One

Soundscapes (and Two Speaking Lyres)

the bearded man occurs the pictorial sound ΦΕ(.)ΣΕΟ.253 Arranged in pairs of two, the six youths have their arms raised in a uniform position. Under the arms of the first pair occur the expressive sounds ΑΟΟΙ(Ο). In a culture like that of archaic and classical Greece that employed and coined such numerous interjections and combinations of lexicalized sounds in diverse contexts (symposia, ritual lamentation, ololygai, religious rituals), vase-painters constantly (re)activate—inventively or by imitating others in an unpolished manner—those deeply embedded practices.

not be confused with illiterate inscriptions, which are easily recognized as clumsy attempts at reproducing particular sense inscriptions’; and, to be sure, ‘another type of evidence to show that literate painters wrote nonsense inscriptions is the fact that many painters, most of whose vases bear sense inscriptions, also sometimes have vases with nonsense inscriptions only.’255 All in all, this large scholarly area is, to my mind, still underexplored and requires reexamination of the premises and assumptions that underlie our current understanding of Attic vase-inscriptions.

Before groups for Attic pictorial sounds are proposed, it is significant to underscore the vast quantity and variety of such inscriptions. A little less than one third of all so far reported Attic vase-inscriptions (CAVI has about 8200 entries) has been classified by Immerwahr as ‘nonsense.’ It is useful to remember that his terminology in this enormous catalogue is (understandably) not consistent, and inscriptions are sometimes classified hastily or with no methodological apparatus. More important, it is often unclear whether inscriptions on a specific vase are ‘imitation’ inscriptions. Transcriptions of ‘nonsense’ inscriptions are very frequently not provided. This poses obstacles to a full examination of different types of Attic vase-inscriptions. At the same time, there are inscriptions that are miswritten by illiterate painters (or sometimes ‘miscopied,’ according to Immerwahr’s and earlier scholars’ views). Given the quantity of what Immerwahr (following other scholars) has lumped together under the rubric ‘nonsense’ inscriptions, often without providing epigraphic transcriptions, it is sometimes difficult to make clear-cut distinctions. The research paradigm that his catalogue represents is deeply embedded in our academic thinking: the naturalized categories of ‘mock’ and ‘meaningless’/’unmeaning’ inscriptions, which represent different groups of ‘nonsense’ inscriptions— as opposed to ‘sense’ inscriptions—resist revisions, mainly because (so the reasoning goes) there are badly miswritten ‘nonsense’ inscriptions, too, in our corpus. Levels of literacy on the part of vase-painters have constantly been the focus of research regarding Attic vase-inscriptions, but attribution of vases to painters or groups has not always been without problems and circularity of arguments, especially when ‘nonsense’ inscriptions are used, without an examination of individual hands,254 to propose attributions. On a significantly more positive note, as Immerwahr has cogently shown, ‘nonsense’ inscriptions ‘appear sometimes on vases of high quality and hence should

Pictorial sounds—a considerable part of the so-called nonsense inscriptions that needs broad-ranging study—can be of diverse nature and may be viewed as belonging to different groups, despite the leakiness of boundaries among these groups: (1) They are allusive; that is, they allude to ideas (= Greek words) that often formed a part of the world of vase-painting and its (sympotic and other) contexts. Examples include inscriptions like εποιυεποιυεποιυεποιυ, which alludes to the ‘making of pottery’—an idea discussed by potters and painters (quite regularly, since this is how they earned their living!), and probably by customers or by participants at venues like symposia.256 Other examples include inscriptions that allude to greetings (drinking inscriptions common on sympotic vases) and kalos-inscriptions. (2) They can be sympotic soundscapes, more broadly, without any playful connotations. In this case, emphasis is placed on soundscape referentiality. (3) They can denote dissonance; that is, they produce dissonant sound. Dissonant soundscapes might have been viewed, especially in sympotic contexts, as (i) playful; (ii) allusive to disagreeable dialogue, lack of eloquence, noise, dispute, or bad singing; (iii) fitting for the iconography of a vase; or, in the case of funerary vases, as (iv) suggestive of cries of ritual lamentation. (4) They can be musical-performative and indicate visual performability of poetry. Sometimes they point to antiphonal or polyphonic singing, especially on many-figured images (with satyrs and maenads, choruses, etc.). (5) They can be repeated lexicalized sounds that, as Aristophanes later put it, amused viewers. These repeated lexicalized sounds are employed to denote different kinds of voices (including voices of

Sammlung Ludwig 3, 21–23, pls. 6.3–4, 7.3–5. 253  Ιf the transcription in CAVI is accurate, one might perhaps suggest that the first three letters, φε(.), represent φεῦ. 254  Note that tracing individual hands in the case of vase-inscriptions is not as ‘easy’ as in the case of papyri and medieval manuscripts. But we are familiar with the hands of a number of literate painters, and more work needs to be done in this promising technical area.

255  256 

39

Immerwahr 2006 (above, note 63), 137 and 139–140, respectively. See above, note 234.

Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings

Figure 24. Athens, National Archaeological Museum 1104. Photograph courtesy the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, © Hellenic Ministry of Culture/Archaeological Receipts Fund.

animals). They are also painted on cups with no figured decoration.

has been painted on an important plain lip cup259 in Athens.260 The cup is dated to c. 540 BC. On the obverse, a neatly written signature inscription reads as follows: ΕΧΣΕΚΙΑΣΕΠΟΙΕΣΕΝ, ‘Exekias made this’ (Figure 24). On the reverse, an equally well-spaced inscription provides the lettering ΕΝΕΟΙΝΟΙΟΙΕΝ (Figure 25). In his Attic Script, Immerwahr has argued that, on the reverse of the cup, the ‘large, firm lettering … mocks ‘wine,’ οἶνος.’261 Following Immerwahr and earlier scholars who categorized the inscription as ‘nonsense,’ a more recent interpretation submits that this is certainly a ‘nonsense inscription’ that mocks epoiesen inscriptions. ‘The fact that the inscriptions are placed in the same spot on two sides of a single vase invites readers to compare them. A patron who reads the potter’s signature on one side might well expect to find a painter’s signature, another potter’s signature, or even the patronymic on the other; he will be surprised that the writing yields only a garbled approximation of part of a signature.’262 As the argument continues: ‘The important point for this discussion is that the two sides of the vessel cohere via repeated placement and repeated sounds […]. In addition to the cohesive value of repetition, it [= repetition] also creates parody. The nonsense mimics the sense.’263 This analysis relies markedly on the

(6) They can function as allothroism;257 that is, they imitate the sound of foreign languages.258 (7) They can be exclamations and interjections. Each time we look at pictorial sounds, we should recall the extensive use of analogous interjections in Athenian performance culture that I examined in an earlier part of this chapter. (8) They can function as riddles; that is, whenever literate ancient Greek viewers attempted to ‘decodify’ what at first sight looks like a cluster of sounds, they were able to understand Greek phrases. Soundscape referentiality is an Attic phenomenon that requires further study. As a coda to this chapter, it would be useful to explore one instance of vaseinscriptions that have been classified as ‘nonsense’ (‘mock’ or ‘meaningless’) but that upon reexamination are revealed to be pictorial sounds that produce sense. An inscription that has been categorically classified as ‘nonsense’ has been discussed in detail in a relatively large number of books and articles. This inscription

259  ‘Group of the Athens Exekias,’ according to Beazley 1932 (above, note 8), 185. 260  Athens, National Archaeological Museum 1104; ABV 147.5; my Figures 24–25. 261  Immerwahr 1990 (above, note 4), 35. 262  A. Steiner, Reading Greek Vases, Cambridge 2007, 18. 263  Steiner 2007 (above, note 262), 18. Steiner 2007 discusses this vase extensively: see 52, 67, 74 (‘one inscription is the parody of the other’), 75 (‘[they] create parody when they are very like one another but with crucial differences. Imagine one person holding his cup up and reading ‘his’ side: if read aloud, the artist’s signature will sound coherent. His partner, reading the other inscription, will

I used the concept of allothroism in my original lectures (see above, introductory note). Susan Sherratt has also employed this concept independently (‘Visible Writing: Questions of Script and Identity in Early Iron Age Greece and Cyprus,’ Oxford Journal of Archaeology 22 [2003], 231). I am grateful to Martin West for drawing my attention to this article. 258  I do not believe that ‘nonsense’ inscriptions represent actual grammatical forms of a foreign ancient language. That was proposed by Karl Lehmann (see Immerwahr 1990 [above, note 4], 44, n. 28). 257 

40

Chapter One

Soundscapes (and Two Speaking Lyres)

Figure 25. Athens, National Archaeological Museum 1104. Photograph courtesy the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, © Hellenic Ministry of Culture/Archaeological Receipts Fund.

sounds, were soon able to understand Greek phrases. This kind of riddling was popular at symposia.266 And the inscription ΕΝΕΟΙΝΟΙΟΙΕΝ might be read in diverse ways. In our considering different versions, emphasis must be placed on the wider context of symposia, where poetic compositions provided a performative medium for the expression of competition (e.g., the practice of capping) and mistrust among fellow-symposiasts, and where improvised verse exchanges were characterized by what James Fernandez has perceptively defined as ‘aggressivity in commensality’ or ‘manipulation in mutuality.’267 Each literate symposiast would have been able to read the inscription on this important cup differently and playfully, especially in the competitive context of sympotic riddling. Recall that the cup was found in Greece. An initial attempt at reading the inscription produces the following phrase: ἐ νέ οἴνο ἰοίεν. As we have seen, letters and clusters of letters are omitted on a very large number of Attic vases, and Athenian viewers were familiar with this type of omission in vase-inscriptions. More important, haplography occurs in Attic vase-inscriptions. Among other examples, a fragmentary lip cup dated to the third quarter of the sixth century268—that is, contemporary with the Athens cup examined here269—provides the inscription Tλεσον εαρχο εποι[εσεν] (‘Tleson the son of Nearchos made it270’): the letters ON are omitted by haplography.271 Note that iota is also omitted in

concepts of ‘comic’ and ‘parodic.’ Even more recently, another interpretation has focused on the same Athens cup, which ‘features mixed sense and nonsense inscriptions.’ Its carefully-formulated reasoning goes as follows: ‘The drinker lifting this side [i.e., the obverse] to eye level as he prepares to imbibe calls out the name of the craftsman of this fine object. As he does so, his companions on facing klinai [i.e., couches] observe the inscription on the cup’s opposite side, which copies the arrangement on Side A and at first glance seems legible. A closer look, however, reveals,’ as the reasoning goes, a different situation:264 ‘[i]n a neat turn, multiple modes of sensory perception navigate the play between sense and nonsense.’ The ‘exchanges here between words and images result in a comic effect that turns on parody.’265 Although one should like to be reluctant to widely apply semantically marked terms like ‘comic’ to contexts like that of archaic and classical Greek vasepainting, there is an essential point to be made here: the inscription on the reverse, either outside or in the playful context of symposia, should not be viewed as ‘nonsense.’ Literate Athenian viewers who wished to ‘decodify’ what at first sight looks like a cluster of sound similar, but drunk’), 194 (‘parody’), 196 (‘on Exekias’ cup in Athens, the signature and its nonsense parody exist in a comically contrafactual relationship. Comic cause-and-effect are complete in the moment of the reading of the inscription’), and 259. As A. Pappas points out (‘More Than Meets the Eye: The Aesthetics of (Non)Sense in the Ancient Greek Symposium,’ in I. Sluiter and R. M. Rosen [eds], Aesthetic Value in Classical Antiquity, Leiden 2012, 76, n. 14), classical archaeologist Ann Steiner interprets the so-called nonsense inscriptions ‘as providing an egalitarian sympotic discourse brought on by an increasingly democratic ethos around 508 BCE.’ Emphasizing the paucity of scholarship on ‘nonsense’ inscriptions, Pappas 2012 further discusses possible political dimensions of such inscriptions. 264  Pappas 2012 (above, note 263), 83. 265  Pappas 2012 (above, note 263), 84.

On riddles at symposia, see Yatromanolakis 2007 (above, note 20), 300–312, and 2009 (above, note 180), 463–464. 267  Yatromanolakis 2009 (‘Ancient Greek Popular Song,’ above, note 181), 274–275 (where also references to Fernandez). 268  Bern, Private; Add.2 402; BAPD 10179. 269  Athens, National Archaeological Museum 1104; ABV 147.5. 270  On Tleson, son of Nearchos, see Immerwahr 1990 (above, note 4), 53. 271  See CAVI 2519. This is not the place to accumulate similar cases, 266 

41

Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings a number of vase-inscriptions.272 As an initial playful attempt to ‘decodify’ the cluster of letters on the reverse of the cup, ἐ νέ οἴνο ἰοίεν (ἐ νέ οἴνω ἰοίην)273—even if not entirely idiomatic—would have been understood by a symposiast as ‘over new wine, may I come.’ Alternatively, ἦ νέ οἶνο ἴοιεν (‘indeed, may new wines come’); or ἦ νέ οἴνω ἴοιεν (‘indeed, may young men274 come with wine’); or ἦ νέ οἴνω ἰοίην (‘indeed, may I come with new wine’); or ἤ,275 νέ οἶνο· ἰοίην (‘look, new wines! may I come!’); or similar syntactical constructions could ‘cap’ the initial, somewhat unsuccessful attempts. In the playful context of symposia, any new attempt—even if not wholly successful in regard to its Greek—would lead to further attempts and, more broadly, to entertainment and competition among fellow-symposiasts. Here, one might draw attention— among other sources—to a discussion of wordplay by Aristotle, which allows us to understand aspects of the sonic horizons of expectations that conditioned the reception of playful enunciations in classical Athenian contexts:276 ‘Changes of letter [as in a pun],’ Aristotle explains, ‘make the speaker mean not what he says but what the word plays on, like the remark of Theodorus [probably an actor]277 to Nikon the kitharode, Thrattei se. He pretends to say, ‘It disturbs you’ and deceives, for he means something different.’ Aristotle further points

out that Nikon the kitharode was a Thracian. What Theodorus possibly meant is Thratt’ ei,278 ‘You are a Thracian [woman],’ ‘not only an out-and-out barbarian, but effeminate,’ too, as a kitharode. Such wordplay and various types of riddles were performed at symposia, and the inscription on the reverse of the Athens cup is part of those sympotic contexts. Analogous would be any attempts to read the inscriptions on a later Attic redfigure chous, outside the context of symposia.279 A boy with a cart and another boy kneeling are shown. Above the scene are painted the inscriptions ΑΚΥΣΟ | ΑΚΥΣ̣|Ο. Athenian viewers were able to read this phonetically as ἄκουσο, ἄκουσο (‘listen! listen!’). But, because the inscription is riddling, they were similarly able to read it more playfully as ἄ! κῦσον, κῦσον (‘ah, give me a kiss, give me a kiss’), even if the iconography might possibly lend more support to the former reading. To return to the Athens cup,280 the inscription on its reverse should not be viewed as ‘nonsense.’ I have argued that it features riddling pictorial sounds that yield sense. Relatively literate vase-painters were more inventive and bolder in their versions of pictorial sounds, especially when the soundscapes they produced or manipulated provoked literate viewers and made them think of how those sounds might be read. Soundscapes on Attic vases require intensive scholarly attention.

but see also Beazley 1950 (above, note 8), 316 for another instance. 272  See, among other instances, Threatte 1996 (above, note 10), 340– 341; also, Athens, National Archaeological Museum, Acropolis Collection 2.1356 ([--- ανεθεκε ]ν Αθεναια; and 2.1354). 273  I am not sure how one might interpret Threatte’s attempt to read ἐν ἧ οἶνο ἵοιεν (with rough breathing; Threatte 1980 [above, note 10], 353). I am grateful to Martin West for his comments on Threatte’s reading. 274  E.g. Homer, Iliad 1.463. 275  Or the exclamation ἤ (ἤ, νέ οἶνο· ἰοίην, in this case with no ν omitted). For ἤ, see above, note 160. For ἤν, see above, note 100. 276  Rhetoric 3.11.6 (Kassel), 1412a32–1412b2: τὰ δὲ παρὰ γράμμα ποιεῖ οὐχ ὃ λέγει λέγειν, ἀλλὰ ὃ μεταστρέφει ὄνομα, οἷον τὸ Θεοδώρου εἰς Νίκωνα τὸν κιθαρῳδόν ‘θράττει σε·’ προσποιεῖται γὰρ λέγειν τὸ ‘θράττει σε’ καὶ ἐξαπατᾷ· ἄλλο γὰρ λέγει (R. Kassel, Aristotelis Ars Rhetorica, Berlin 1976, 175). I here quote G. A. Kennedy’s translation (Aristotle, On Rhetoric: A Theory of Civic Discourse, translated by G. A. Kennedy, Oxford 2007, 2007, 223–224), but Κennedy’s ‘Nikon the harpist’ has been replaced by ‘Nikon the kitharode.’ 277  According to Kennedy 2007 (above, note 276), 224, n. 129.

278  This is Cope’s ingenious interpretation (E. M. Cope, The Rhetoric of Aristotle, revised by J. E. Sandys, vol. 3, Cambridge 1877, 132–133); Cope removes the first σε from the text (‘the first σε after θράττει … has been introduced from the second … and spoils the pun’; for further argumentation, see his p. 133). Other readings have also been proposed. See, concisely, Kassel’s apparatus criticus (above, note 276, 175): ‘θράττει σε ω anon : hoc multifariam interpretantur, Θρᾷττ’ ᾖσε Meineke […], Θρᾷττης εἶ Cobet […], Θρᾷττ’ εἶ [σε] Cope, alii aliter.’ L. Cooper, ‘A Pun in the Rhetoric of Aristotle,’ American Journal of Philology 41 (1920), 48–56, proposes a verb *θράττω arguably meaning (according to Cooper) ‘to thrum’ a stringed instrument. Rudolf Kassel decided not to include such emendations in his apparatus criticus. See also W. D. Ross’s critical edition, Aristotelis Ars Rhetorica, Oxford 1959, 168; in his apparatus criticus, Ross reports: 1412a.35 ‘θράξει dubitanter scripsi: θράττει codd.’ and 1412b.1 ‘Θρᾷξ εἶ σύ dubitanter scripsi (cf. l. 2): θράττει σε codd.’ 279  Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 02.39; G. van Hoorn, Choes and Anthesteria, Leiden 1951, no. 381, fig. 292. 280  Athens, National Archaeological Museum 1104; ABV 147.5.

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Chapter Two

Hipparchos kalos* Thomas Mannack Around 550 BC, Athenian vase-painters began to add personal names with the epithet kalos to their scenes. Among the earliest is a member of Beazley’s Group E, who wrote Stesias kalos on the rim of a shield.1 About the same time, a painter inscribed the handle-zone of a Little-Master cup with the praise of the beauty of Stroibos.2 Neither Stesias nor Stroibos are known outside the vase-painters’ world.

the new state commissioned Antenor to make statues of the Tyrannicides Harmodios and Aristogeiton, which were placed in the agora celebrating them as liberators, and replaced these portraits in 477/476 BC almost immediately after they had been stolen by the Persians. Ostentatious displays of wealth and status at funerals and on the Athenian Acropolis appear to have been prohibited by luxury laws passed some time after Solon.6 After their final overthrow, the Peisistratids took refuge in Sigeium and then Susa, where they sided with the Persians.7 However, at least one family member, Hipparchos of Kollytos, the son of Charmos, remained in Athens and retained an eminent position; he was archon in 496/495 BC, but became the first man to be ostracized in 487 BC.8 Hipparchos, son of Peisistratos, and Hipparchos, son of Charmos, may not have been the only bearers of that name, and it is possible that boys who did not make it into the history books were christened Hipparchos when the name was fashionable and untainted.9

The two vases were made at a time of political upheaval. Strife between the aristocratic factions of Athens allowed the Athenian Peisistratos to make himself tyrant of the city. After two brief spells in power around 560 and 555 BC, which ended with his expulsion and exile, he made his final successful bid for sole rule in 546 BC and reigned until 528/527 BC. In spite of repeated ejections by his aristocratic rivals, Peisistratos appears to have been a benign and successful ruler who used his power to improve the city and further trade. He left three sons, Hippias and Hipparchos, born before 570 and around 565 BC respectively,3 and—perhaps—the much younger Hegesistratos, nicknamed Thessalos.4 The majority of sources agree that on his death, Peisistratos was succeeded by his older son, Hippias.5 Initially, Hippias and Hipparchos appear to have been well-liked, but in 514 BC, Hipparchos was killed in a botched attempt to assassinate his brother after Hippias had caused offence to two aristocrats, Harmodios and Aristogeiton, who paid with their lives. The death of his brother turned Hippias into an oppressive tyrant. He was deposed in 510 BC with Spartan help. In 508 BC, Kleisthenes introduced a new, more democratic constitution that allowed the assembly to send politicians suspected of striving for sole power into exile. While this may have been designed to appease jealous aristocrats, there is some evidence that there were anti-aristocratic feelings in Athens: in 508 BC,

In 1977, Greek archaeologists excavated an Athenian red-figure cup of type C in Larissa in Thessaly (Figure 1). The cup has been attributed to the Euergides Painter or a member of his workshop, and dated around 520-500 BC.10 The outside of the vase is painted black, and the inside is decorated with a naked youth with greaves; his large, round shield is emblazoned with a tripod. The artist painted the inscription Hipparchos [ka]los in added white 6  Cicero, De legibus 2.66. However, note that the evidence is late and should not be taken for granted. 7  Herodotos, Histories 5.65, 5.96; Thoukydides 6.59.3-4; M. F. Arnush, ‘The Career of Peisistratos Son of Hippias,’ Hesperia 64 (1995), 141. 8  Androtion of Athens in F. Jacoby, Die Fragmente der Griechischen Historiker (Berlin 1923- ), 324, F6; Aristotle, Constitution of the Athenians 22.3; Arnush 1995 (above, note 7), 135–162. E. Pottier, Vases antiques du Louvre, Paris 1897–1922, III, 888, connects the archon with the vaseinscriptions. 9  K. Wernicke, Die griechischen Vasen mit Lieblingsnamen: Eine archäologische Studie, Berlin 1890, 122–123. 10  Larissa, Archaeological Museum 78.44; A. Ingessiloglou, ‘Thessalia,’ Archaiologikon Deltion 34 (1979), 2.1, 222, pl. 81.2; G. Touchais, ‘Thessalie,’ Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique 108 (1984), 790, 792, fig. 100; A. Doulgeri-Ingessiloglou, ‘Fuilles dans le terrain de Mme Eugenie Mitsiou–recherche dans le passée de Larissa,’ in C. Chalkias (ed.), Πρακτικὰ τοῦ ῾ Ιστορικοῦ ᾿ Αρχαιολογικοῦ Συμποσίου: Παρελθὸν καὶ Μέλλον, Λάρισα, 26–28.4.1985, Athens 1985, 80–110, 110, fig. 24; Add.2 395; CAVI 4120; Ἀγῶνες καὶ ἀθλήματα στὴν ἀρχαία Θεσσαλία, ῾ Υπουργεῖο Πολιτισμοῦ, ᾿ Αρχαιολογικὸ Μουσεῖο Βόλου, Athens 2004, 134; H. Catling, ‘Archaeology in Greece,’ Archaeological Reports for 1987-88, 37 and front-cover. For ‘Hipparchos kalos,’ see D. M. Robinson and E. J. Fluck, A Study of Greek Love-Names, Baltimore, MD 1937, 117-119; Klein, Lieblingsinschriften, 61-63.

* I am most grateful to Professor Yatromanolakis for the opportunity to contribute to this volume, and greatly indebted to M. Stamatopoulou, S. Katakouta and S. Karavaritou for their generous help, support, and advice. 1  New York, Market, Royal Athena, J. Eisenberg, Art of the Ancient World, Royal Athena, sale catalogue, 12, January 2001, 65, no. 183; ABV 133.9, 674; T. B. L. Webster, Potter and Patron in Classical Athens, London 1972, 65. 2  London, British Museum B 401; ABV 171.3, 675.1. 3  J. K. Davies, Athenian Propertied Families 600-300 B.C., Oxford 1971, 446. 4  Thoukydides 6.55.1; Aristotle, Constitution of the Athenians 17.3; Davies 1971 (above, note 3), 446. 5  Thoukydides 1.20.2, 6.54.2, 6.55.1; Davies 1971 (above, note 3), 446.

43

Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings

Figure 1. Larissa, Archaeological Museum 78.44. Photograph courtesy and © the Archaeological Museum, Larissa.

clay-paint around the figure. Such kalos-inscriptions are still enigmatic, although Klein’s theory that they refer to pre-pubescent aristocratic youths lusted after by aristocrats during symposia has been widely accepted.11

However, some famous beaus, such as Onetorides and Leagros, were deemed kaloi for two to over three decades,12 and beautiful men appear on vases made specifically for the grave or for women, or on pots exported overseas, where they would have been unknown. Moreover, the vast majority of men praised by name remained entirely obscure, and some were fellow painters and potters. Unusually, the cup from Larissa appears to provide a link between a well-known historical character, the son or

11  Klein, Lieblingsinschriften; K. Wernicke, Die griechischen Vasen mit Lieblingsnamen, Berlin  1890; Robinson and Fluck 1937 (above, note 10). See also T. Panofka, ‘Die griechischen Eigennamen mit ΚΑΛΟΣ im Zusammenhang mit dem Bilderschmuck auf bemalten Gefäßen,’ Abhandlungen der Königlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Berlin (1849); N. W. Slater, ‘The Vase as Ventriloquist: Kalos-Inscriptions and the Culture of Fame,’ in E. A. Mackay (ed.), Signs of Orality: The Oral Tradition and its Influence in the Greek and Roman World, Leiden 1999, 143–161 (with references to earlier studies); K. J. Dover, Greek Homosexuality, second edition, London 1989; F. Lissarrague, ‘Publicity and Performance: Kalos Inscriptions in Attic Vase-Painting,’ in S. Goldhill and R. Osborne (eds), Performance Culture and Athenian Democracy, Cambridge 1999, 359–373; I. Scheibler, Brill’s New Pauly,

Amsterdam 2012, s.v. ‘Kalos inscriptions.’ 12  W. Technau, Exekias, Leipzig 1936, 8–11; A. Shapiro, ‘Leagros the Satyr,’ in C. Marconi (ed.), Greek Vases: Images and Contexts and Controversies, Leiden 2004, 1–11. See also E. Langlotz, Zur Zeitbestimmung der strengrotfigurigen Malerei und der gleichzeitigen Plastik, Leipzig 1920, 44; T. Mannack, ‘Beautiful Men on Vases for the Dead,’ in J. H. Oakley (ed.), Athenian Potters and Painters III, Oxford 2014, 244–254.

44

Chapter Two Hipparchos kalos relative of the Athenian tyrant Peisistratos, and Thessaly, the close ally of the Peisistratids.13

century skyphos from Gela showing the Tyrannicides.22 Peisistratos’s younger son also found favour with an unknown painter of a Paidikos-alabastron decorated with black palmettes in New York,23 and the anonymous painter of a black-figure hydria in Würzburg.24 A further connection with Paidikos is provided by a cup in Naples,25 the inside of which is decorated by Epiktetos, and the outside by an artist working in the manner of the Euergides Painter. Epiktetos wrote Hipparchos kalos around the warrior on the inside; the Euergidean artist wrote prosagoreuo next to the symposiast on the obverse and added Paidikos to the drinker on the reverse. Both artists were literate; Henry Immerwahr noted ‘that the inscriptions are characteristic of each separate painter.’26 Hipparchos may have been on Euphronios’s mind when he painted a kalyx-krater now housed in the Antikensammlung in Berlin:27 the trainer on the obverse is named Hippchos, perhaps originally intended for Hipparchos28 but changed just in time when the painter realized that he was about to use the name of a persona non grata.29 ‘Hippchos’ is combined with two inscriptions proclaiming Leagros kalos. If kalos-names are an indication of workshop-connections, it would be possible to link the Würzburg hydria with the only hydria attributed to the Chelis Painter, which shows some similarities in its pattern work.30

Why then is Hipparchos named on Athenian vases in general, and on a cup in Thessaly in particular? It is not impossible that friends and followers of the tyrants in Attica wanted to show their political allegiance at the occasion of symposia with their fellow aristocrats, but in that case, it would have made more sense to laud Hippias, who was the older and tyrant according to most sources. Plato, or an author purporting to be the pupil of Sokrates,14 relates that Hipparchos took no great interest in politics, introduced the recital of Homer’s entire epics to the Panathenaic festival, invited the lyric poets Anakreon and Simonides to Athens, and set up herms with wise sayings in Attica. The author may not be entirely reliable: he contradicts most sources in claiming that Hipparchos was the elder and tyrant at the time, and his version of unrequited love is rather fanciful. An inscribed marble base on the Athenian Acropolis is the only surviving dedication by Peisistratos’s younger son.15 Workshops The Euergides Painter decorated around 250 vases and is named after the potter Euergides, for whom he decorated, amongst others, cups now housed in Kurashiki16 and London.17 He also worked for the potter Chelis18 and collaborated with Epiktetos on a cup in the Louvre.19 A painter working in the manner of the Euergides Painter decorated an alabastron for the potter Paidikos.20 Like the cup from Thessaly, the cup in Kurashiki also praises the beauty of Hipparchos, and the painting on the inside of the Louvre cup, assigned to Epiktetos, shows a curiously individualized Sisyphos pushing a rock; the painter, probably Epiktetos himself, wrote Hipparchos kalo[s] around the figure. Hipparchos appears to have been a particular favourite of Epiktetos, who praised him by name on around 15 cups. He was open about his affection, since he combined his admiration of Hipparchos with his signature on at least four cups; a cup in Aberdeen (Figure 2) and Florence is signed epoiesen without the name.21 Beazley assigned the London cup to the potter Pamphaios. In total, Hipparchos is named on 21 vases made in the last quarter of the sixth century, and on a mid-fifth-

Distribution Several of the vases inscribed with Hipparchos’s name were found far away from Athens and used as grave offerings. Three cups and the hydria were excavated in Vulci,31 one cup attributed to Epiktetos was unearthed in Cerveteri,32 and another in Chiusi (Figure 3).33 A kylix decorated with a satyr attributed to Epiktetos found its way to Berezan in the east.34 It is highly unlikely that Hipparchos had any followers in these far-flung regions and even questionable whether he was known there Rome, Villa Giulia 50321; Bollettino d’Arte 7 (1927) 319, fig. 20. New York, Metropolitan Museum 21.80; ARV2 1584.15. 24  Würzburg, Martin von Wagner Museum L 310; ABV 667, 666.2, 714; E. Langlotz, Martin von Wagner-Museum, Griechische Vasen, Munich 1932, 57-58, pls. 87, 97.310. 25  Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 81328; ARV2 73.29, 97.2, 102.4, 103.3, 1584.6; see CAVI 5455. 26  CAVI 5455. For prosagoreuo, see Klein, Lieblingsinschriften, 63–65. 27  Berlin, Antikensammlung F 2180; CVA Berlin, Antikensammlung 11, 26-29, figs. 6-7, Beilage 6.1, pls. 19.1-2, 20.1-4, 21.1-5, 22.1-3, 75.1 28  Immerwahr, CAVI 2292, restores Hipp[ar]chos. Schöne-Denkinger, CVA Berlin 11, 26-29, figs. 6-7, suggests that Hippchos may be an abbreviated form of Hipparchos. See K. A. Neugebauer, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Führer durch das Antiquarium II, Vasen, Berlin 1932, 94. 29  F. Studniczka, ‘Antenor der Sohn des Eumares und die Geschichte der archaischen Malerei,’ Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 2 (1887), 165–166. 30  Munich, Antikensammlungen 2420; CVA Munich 5, 14-15, pls. 218.3, 220.1-2, 221.3, 226.3. 31  London, British Museum E 37; ARV2 1584.2. Paris, Louvre G 6; ARV2 1584.3. Aberdeen, University 64347; ARV2 73.28. 32  Rome, Villa Giulia 57684; ARV2 1584.4. 33  Munich, Preyss; ARV2 1584.7. 34  St. Petersburg, Hermitage 14611; ARV2 1584.9. 22  23 

Herodotos, Histories 5.63. [Plato], Hipparchos 228b-d; Der Neue Pauly V, 567, s.v. Hipparchos [B. Patzek]; RE VIII, 1663, s.v. Hipparchos 1 [J. Miller]. 15  IG I³ 1470. 16  Kurashiki, Ninagawa 33; ARV2 1625.52bis. 17  London, British Museum 1920.6-13.1; ARV2 88.1, 1625. 18  Paris, Louvre G 15; ARV2 91.51. 19  Paris, Louvre G 16; ARV2 1584.1, 47.155, 71.13; CVA Paris, Louvre 10, III.I.B.7, pl. (765) 11.2-3.6. 20  Paris, Louvre CA 487; ARV2 103.13. 21  New York, private; Add.2 395, 403. London, British Museum E 37; ARV2 72.17, 1584.2. Paris, Louvre G 6; ARV2 1584.3. Rome, Villa Giulia 57684; ARV2 1584.4. Aberdeen, University 64347 and Florence, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 1 B 29; ARV2 73.28. 13  14 

45

Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings

Figure 2a–b. Aberdeen, University 64347. Beazley drawing. Photograph courtesy the University of Aberdeen.

at all. Two kylikes have only the vague provenances ‘Greece’ and ‘Italy.’35

well underneath the Stoa of Attalos, filled in around 480 BC.38 Sadly, the well does not provide a precise date; its contents are dated between 525 and 480 BC. S. Roberts suggests the plausible date of 520-510 BC for the fragment praising Hipparchos, which would permit the vase to have been made during the lifetime of Peisistratos’s younger son. No vase naming Hippias

Only two vessels, both cups, were found in Athens. One was dedicated on the Acropolis36 and one37 found in a 35  Copenhagen, National Museum 967; ARV2 1584.9. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 95.34; ARV2 1584.10. 36  Athens, National Archaeological Museum, Acropolis Collection 2.62; ARV2 1584.5. 37  Athens, Agora Museum P 24131; ARV2 1584.12.

S. Roberts, ‘The Stoa Gutter Well: A Late Archaic Deposit in the Athenian Agora,’ Hesperia 55 (1986), 10, no. 2; cf. A. Shapiro, ‘Hippokrates Son of Anaxileos,’ Hesperia 49 (1980), 289–293.

38 

46

Chapter Two Hipparchos kalos

Figure 3. Once Munich, Preyss. Photograph Mary Beazley.

Other Inscriptions

‘kalos’ is known as yet, which makes political reasons for the inscription unlikely, as does the distribution of the vases praising Hipparchos, which is more or less the same as that of other kalos-names. The only somewhat unusual finding place is Thessaly, where only about 40 vases have hitherto been excavated and published. The kylix bears the only known kalos-inscription unearthed in Thessaly. Only two further published vases from Thessaly are inscribed: the famous dinos fragment signed by Sophilos, inscribed with the caption Patroklus atla, and the name of Achilleus;39 and a fragmentary kalyx-krater attributed to the painter of Munich 2335, who named several of his figures.40

Kalos-names are frequently combined with other inscriptions such as names and signatures, and it is possible (but not provable) that all kinds of writing on pottery served as a second, sophisticated layer of decoration. If so, kalos-names may not necessarily be connected with famous or lusted after individuals, but may have been picked more or less at random, making use of names connected with the workshop or coming to the painter’s mind when faced with the task of adding names. The level of literacy in ancient Athens was probably fairly low and numerous nonsense and mock inscriptions may perhaps be evidence for illiteracy in vase-painters’ workshops. It is therefore possible

39  Athens, National Archaeological Museum 15499; ABV 39.16, 681. This vase is investigated in chapter 10 of this volume. 40  Larissa, Archaeological Museum 86.101; Bulletin de Correspondance

Hellénique 114 (1990), 344, fig. 18; see CAVI 4121.

47

Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings

Figure 4. Würzburg, Universität, Martin von Wagner Museum L 310. After E. Langlotz, Griechische Vasen in Würzburg, Munich 1932, pl. 87.

(but again not provable) that painters had recourse to samples of writing, which they copied out when inscriptions were required, and it has been suggested that names often followed workshop lines. However, the presence of the handwriting of two individuals on one vase suggests that Epiktetos and his colleague were literate. It is noteworthy that three of the four painters using Hipparchos’s name appear to have worked in the same workshop.

a warrior on the inside, which has been assigned to Epiktetos. The painter of the Würzburg hydria from Vulci48 combined Hipparchos’s name, written next to an Amazon on the left, with other names. Dorotheos is written near the Amazon on the far right of the picture on the body, and the painter also added ho pais kalos above the scene (Figure 4). Dorotheos49 is named elsewhere: a painter of the Proto-Panaitian Group decorated a cup from Vulci with athletes running in full armour, runners, and wrestlers,50 and he praised Olympiodoros, Kephisophon and Dorotheos as kalos. He also added names to all the figures, Αsopokles, Euenor, [Α]ntimach[os], Kleiboulos, Phoinix, Euagoras, Timon, Kleon, Epichares, Ε[rato]sthenes, Kleisophos, Phormos, Batrachos, Antias, and Ambrosios. Most of these names are fairly common, but Asopokles is confined to the vase-painters’ world and occurs on cups assigned to the Proto-Panaitian Group and Makron.51 An artist

The acclaim of Hipparchos’s beauty is combined with the signatures of Epiktetos and Euergides on six cups in Aberdeen,41 Kurashiki,42 London,43 New York,44 Paris,45 and Rome,46 and perhaps with the signature of the potter Paidikos on the cup in Naples, which only gives the name Paidikos; note that epoiesen has been omitted.47 The kalos-inscription on the Naples cup is placed around 41  Aberdeen, University 64347; CVA Aberdeen, University, Marischal Collection 1, 17-18, pls. 26.3-4, 27.1-4. 42  Kurashiki, Ninagawa 33; ARV2 1625.52bis. 43  London, British Museum E 37; ARV2 1584.2. 44  New York, private; Add.2 395, 403. 45  Paris, Louvre G 6; ARV2 1584.3. 46  Rome, Villa Giulia 57684; ARV2 1584.4. 47  Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 81328; ARV2 1584.6.

48  Würzburg, Martin von Wagner Museum L 310; ABV 667, 666.2, 714; Langlotz 1932 (above, note 24), 57-58, pls. 87, 97.310; see CAVI 8074. 49  Klein, Lieblingsinschriften, 61. 50  Paris, Cabinet des Médailles 523; ARV2 1575, 1589, 1604; see CAVI 6156. 51  R. Cromey, ‘Some Names on a Cup by Makron, Etymology and

48

Chapter Two Hipparchos kalos working near the Scheurleer Painter and the Epeleios Painter52 also deemed Dorotheos ‘kalos,’ and Dorotheos is one of seven beautiful people on a curious oinochoe in Munich, the shoulder of which is only decorated with black palmettes and kalos-names on a white ground.53 Moreover, he is lauded as kalos on an undecorated black painted alabastron from Delphoi.54 Paseas used the name for one of two athletes on a plate in Boston;55 the second athlete is called Xenophon. These vases show that Dorotheos was kalos for the same period as Hipparchos.

wrote Hipparchos kalos next to a warrior arming on the cup from Thessaly. Epiktetos added the name to the pictures of a young hoplite59 and a warrior wearing eastern costume,60 Aias and Achilleus playing (Figure 2),61 komasts,62 a bearded symposiast (Figure 5) playing the lyre,63 a youth holding a cup ladling wine out of a column-krater with an oinochoe (Figure 3),64 and a satyr straddling a wineskin.65 However, a few combinations are somewhat odd. Hipparchos kalos is inscribed next to naked women, one riding a phallus bird and another using olisboi.66 While it is possible to assume a sympotic connection with these subjects, it is more difficult to make a flattering and aristocratic connection with Sisyphos.67 At least one scene, a sculptor carving a herm on the inside of a cup in Copenhagen (Figure 6), is apparently without any aristocratic connotations,68 but has been connected with Hipparchos’s policy of setting up herms in Athens and Attica.69 However, kalos-names are occasionally combined with images of workers. A painter, whose style is related to that of Epiktetos, wrote Thaliarchos kalos next to a weapon smith on the lid of a pyxis,70 perhaps the father of Euthydikos who dedicated a kore around 480 BC on the Athenian Acropolis. The obverse of the Foundry Painter’s name-vase71 lauds Diogenes, and the Antiphon Painter wrote the name of his favourite Lysis next to a satyr carving a stele.72

On the cup signed by the potter Euergides in Kurashiki, the praise of Hipparchos as beautiful is combined with that of a Tlempolemos. The name occurs on a stele erected around 430 BC in the Kerameikos,56 too late to be connected with the individual named on Euergides’s cup, and as the name of the potter (Tlempolemos potter) on three Little-Master cups.57 Finally, if one accepts the reading Hipp[ar]chos on Euphronios’s kalyxkrater I discussed above, Hipparchos is associated with Lykos, [H]egesias, Tra[ni]on, Hippomedon, Polyllos, Antiphon, and Leagros. Shapes Hipparchos’s name is inscribed on 17 cups—a shape connected with the symposion and indicating an aristocratic connection. However, it also occurs on an alabastron—a vase used almost exclusively by women and never shown in symposia of mortals—and on a black-figure hydria. Hydriai are apparently never depicted in representations of symposia and seem to have been made almost exclusively for women from the second half of the fifth century BC. Both shapes are unlikely to have been made with sympotic use in mind.

Chronology With very few exceptions, the vases bearing the praise of Hipparchos as kalos appear to have been made around 520 BC and are therefore likely to date in the lifetime of Peisistratos’s younger son. They were produced by painters and potters working in related workshops: the Euergides Painter, an artist working in his manner, Epiktetos, and Paidikos. The tondi of the majority of cups are framed with a simple reserved line. According to Beazley, the Washington and Boston cups73 are late works by Epiktetos and dated around 500 BC. The alabastron appears to have been made around 510-500 BC and its inscription has been connected with

Subjects It is generally thought that kalos-names do not refer to the figures they are combined with, but the ancient viewer probably connected the theme of the picture and the name written next to it. The assumption that kalos-inscriptions are associated with aristocratic ideals is supported by the overwhelming combination of such names with aristocratic themes such as warriors, athletes, and symposia, and the appearance of the vast majority on sympotic shapes such as kraters and drinking vessels.58 The Euergides Painter

Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 81328; ARV2 1584.6. New York, private; see CAVI 8171. 61  Aberdeen, University 64347; ARV2 73.28. 62  London, British Museum E 37; ARV2 1584.2. Once Munich, Preyss; ARV2 1584.7. Washington, National Museum of Natural History 136380; ARV2 1584.11. 63  Paris, Louvre G 6; ARV2 1584.3. 64  Munich, Preyss; ARV2 1584.7. 65  Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 95.34; ARV2 1584.10. 66  Athens, Agora Museum P 24131; ARV2 1584.12. Rome, Villa Giulia 57684; ARV2 1584.4. St. Petersburg, Hermitage 14611; ARV2 1584.9. 67  Paris, Louvre G 16; ARV2 1584.1. 68  Copenhagen, National Museum 967; ARV2 1584.8. 69  Langlotz 1920 (above, note 12), 96. 70  Paris, Petit Palais 382; ARV2 1610; IG I³ 758; G. Richter 1968, 99, no. 180, figs. 565-572. 71  Berlin, Antikensammlung F 2294; ARV2 1573. 72  Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 62.613; ARV2 1701.19bis, 1704. 73  Washington, National Museum of Natural History 136380; ARV2 1584.11. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 95.34; ARV2 1584.10. 59  60 

Louvre G 148,’ in J. D. Mikalson et al. (eds), Qui miscuit utile dulci: Festschrift Essays for P. L. MacKendrick, Wauconda, IL 1999, 110-111. 52  ARV2 1575.1, 2. 53  Munich, Antikensammlungen 2447A; CVA Munich 12, 41-42, Beilage 10.4, pls. 31.1-3, 32.1-4. 54  ARV2 1575.5. 55  Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 03.785; ARV2 163.1. 56  IG I³ 1163; SEG LII 60. 57  See, e.g., Berlin, Antikensammlung 3152; ABV 171.13, 178.2. 58  For the latest statistics, see Mannack 2014 (above, note 12).

49

Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings

Figure 5. London, British Museum AN00277420_001 (E 37). Photograph courtesy the British Museum, © British Museum.

the archon of 497/496 BC by G. Richter.74 The Würzburg hydria is even later; the style of the drapery with its decorative swallow tails and groups of tightly spaced folds alternating with plain sections is late archaic. Immerwahr suggests a late sixth century date, but the vase could have been made even later, perhaps around 490 BC.

depends on the context. Applied to men, it could denote beautiful to look at, good, excellent in nature and characteristics, competent, able, praiseworthy, and noble.75 On vases, the word was applied to a wide range of figures: from the very young to the old, and to gods, satyrs and particularly ugly satyrs.76 Conclusion

Kalos

In spite of almost one and a half centuries of study, kalosnames are still rather enigmatic and a single meaning of kalos remains elusive. The majority of inscribed vases

It is important to bear in mind that the epithet kalos does not have a single meaning and its interpretation 74  G. Richter and L. Hall, Red-Figured Athenian Vases in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New Haven, CT 1936, I, 11, no. 25.

75  76 

50

See LSJ s.v. καλός, and Wernicke 1890 (above, note 9), 118. Mannack 2014 (above, note 12).

Chapter Two Hipparchos kalos

Figure 6. Copenhagen, National Museum CHR.VIII.967. Photograph courtesy the National Museum, Copenhagen.

praise entirely unknown individuals, and many laud craftsmen. Hipparchos kalos appears to be one of the very few examples of praise of a known individual playing a prominent role in archaic Athens or holding high office, and the Larissa cup was found in Thessaly, a known ally of the Peisistratids. Kalos-names are usually interpreted as homoerotic praise of young Athenian aristocrats added to sympotic vases to make them more attractive to aristocratic buyers, who wanted to see the name of the current favourites on their drinking vessels, but it has long been seen that age did not matter. If the date of the vases lauding Hipparchos is correct, they would call a mature man in his forties kalos. While most of the inscriptions occur on sympotic shapes such as cups and kraters, some are inscribed on vases made for women,

and many on funerary vases, although none of those praising Hipparchos. Kalos-names are most frequently combined with themes with an aristocratic flair such as symposia, komoi, and fighting scenes, but Hipparchos’s name also appears next to a craftsman and is juxtaposed with the name of a beautiful artisan, Tlempolemos. The majority of containers with love-names were exported to Etruria, among them five lauding Hipparchos, where the individuals would probably be unknown, and where inscriptions were likely to have been valued as an additional, sophisticated layer of decoration. The best known examples, among them Exekias’s amphora with Aias and Achilleus playing a board game, bear numerous inscriptions: signatures, names, and kalos-inscriptions. Thus, painters must often have been faced with the 51

Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings need to add names. Little is known about many vasepainters’ literacy. Vases may provide evidence that a number of artisans could read and write, but it has also been speculated that potteries employed inscription writers or that the workshop had a stock of inscriptions that could be copied when required, offering one possible explanation why names often follow workshop connections. This would also mean that vase-painters could have used the names of deceased individuals.

other names related to their workshops, perhaps trade agents or landlords of the potteries. The Peisistratids may have had business connections with the pottery workshop, which brought Hipparchos’s name to the vase-painters’ minds when naming inscriptions were required. If kalos-names applied to living persons only, it is tempting to suggest that Epiktetos and the Euergides Painter praised Peisistratos’s son until his murder in 514 BC. When the family went into exile in 510 BC, Hipparchos, the son of Charmos, may have looked after the family’s business interests until he was ostracised. Dorotheos could have been connected with a neighboring pottery workshop, and it is not impossible that multiple names on a single vase are those of potters and painters whose signatures have not yet been discovered.

When faced with the task of writing names, vasepainters often chose names close at hand: those of colleagues, e.g. Smikros, Andokides and Mys, and Euphronios turned his fellow painter Smikros and the famous Leagros into women when naming female symposiasts on a psykter in St. Petersburg.77 It is therefore possible that craftsmen may have also chosen

77 

Mannack 2014 (above, note 12).

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Chapter Three

‘So-and-so καλή’: A Reexamination Guy Hedreen

In their for-the-time comprehensive study of the well-known inscriptional formula in Athenian vasepainting, ‘so-and-so kalos’ (‘so-and-so is beautiful’), David Robinson and Edward Fluck dismissed the female form of the inscription as essentially irrelevant to their study. ‘Since only thirty of the two hundred and twenty names which Klein counted are those of women, and these are always names of hetairai and coined to refer to the trade (as Pantoxena, Xenodoke, etc.), our studies in identification will be mostly confined to the names of males, these being the more significant historically .... [W]hen the inscriptions are in praise of a woman, she is always known to have been an hetaira.’1 Today, one cringes at the dismissal of an entire class of human beings as not ‘significant historically.’ Indeed, since Robinson and Fluck wrote, other scholars have attempted to write a social history of women engaged in prostitution, in part on the basis of ‘kale’inscriptions.2 In a sense, those efforts are attempts to apply a basic assumption of Robinson and Fluck to the neglected kale-inscriptions. For Robinson and Fluck, like many scholars still today, believed that the very great majority of kalos-inscriptions did not relate directly to the imagery alongside which they occur. Like graffiti executed on trees, buildings, or subway cars, the surfaces of vases were convenient places to pen a statement of praise. What really mattered to Robinson and Fluck were the possible correlations between the names in the inscriptions and contemporary men known from literary and inscriptional sources.3

are difficult to accommodate within their interpretive assumption that all kale-names refer to prostitutes. But there are also other fundamental assumptions underlying their project that seem to me untenable. Many of the methodological questions I raise are old questions. Kale-inscriptions as a whole were the object of a thoughtful examination undertaken fairly recently by Françoise Frontisi-Ducroux.4 One of the conclusions reached in her article, that kale-inscriptions function in several different ways—some seemingly exclusively extra-pictorially and others relating directly to pictorial representations—seems essentially correct. But the notion that kale-inscriptions refer as a rule to courtesans or prostitutes lives on to this day. And the extent to which the adjective kale, ‘beautiful,’ may refer to the quality of pictorial representation itself remains relatively under-appreciated. For those reasons, it seems worth attempting a modest revision of a complex subject. Tag-kale-Inscriptions There is one striking difference between kalos- and kale-inscriptions as enumerated by John D. Beazley in his lists of such writings in ABV 664-678, ARV2 15591616, and Para. 505-508. He considered most kaleinscriptions to be ‘tag-kale’ names, serving to identify a figure within the vase-painting. His lists indicate that he considered most kalos-inscriptions, on the other hand, to be independent of the figural decoration of the vase—to be independent at least in the narrow sense of identifying a particular figure. The question of whether inscriptions of praise can be understood to relate meaningfully to the figure(s) depicted on the vases is fundamentally different from the one addressed by Robinson and Fluck. Their project was predicated on the hypothesis that names praised in writing on vases

Today, the number of known Athenian vases on which occurs the word kale is well over double Klein’s number of thirty, to judge from the Corpus of Attic Vase Inscriptions (CAVI, accessible via the Beazley Archive Database [BAPD] at www.beazley.ox.ac.uk). Several examples appearing since the publication of Robinson and Fluck 1  D. M. Robinson and E. J. Fluck, A Study of the Greek Love-Names, Baltimore, MD 1937, 1–2, 10–11. 2  See for example I. Peschel, Die Hetäre bei Symposion und Komos in der attisch-rotfigurigen Vasenmalerei des 6.-4. Jahr-hunderts vor Christus, Frankfurt am Main 1987; C. Reinsberg, Ehe, Hetärentum und Knabenliebe im antiken Griechenland, second ed., Munich 1993. 3  A good, more recent review of the issues and the literature is N. W. Slater, ‘The Vase as Ventriloquist: Kalos-Inscriptions and the Culture of Fame,’ in E. A. Mackay (ed.), Signs of Orality: The Oral Tradition and its Influence in the Greek and Roman World, Leiden 1999, 143–161. On kalosinscriptions, see chapter 2 in the present volume.

F. Frontisi-Ducroux, ‘Kalé: le féminine facultatif,’ Mètis  13 (1998), 173–185. Compare also D. Braun and E. Hall (‘Gender, Role, and Performer in Athenian Theatre Iconography: A Masked Tragic Chorus with kalos and kale Captions from Olbia,’ Journal of Hellenic Studies 134 [2014], 1–11), who interpret the kale-inscriptions associated with (male) chorus members performing female roles on a fragmentary vase from Olbia: it is the performance itself that is kale (‘By labeling the figure KAΛE, the viewer is being invited to think about the effect of the dance being performed and the identity being projected, rather than the identity of the performer or his biological body beneath the feminine costume and mask’ [p. 7, their italics]).

4 

53

Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings corresponded, as a rule, to contemporary persons at Athens or elsewhere. The interpretations proposed by Beazley—for that is what the addition of the word ‘tag’ essentially is, an interpretation—concern the relationship between the names praised in writing and the figures represented pictorially on the vases. Whether the names also correspond to real persons outside of the represented world of vase-painting is, in part at least, irrelevant to the question of whether any given inscription of praise should be understood as identifying a particular figure within the picture.

Epilyke. In this image, Epilyke is publicly praised for her beauty, which is revealed for all the world to see. Given the importance of modesty in the ancient Athenian conception of the feminine ideal, it seems unlike that the figure represents a real contemporary Athenian citizen. For what is worth, I note that the name ‘Epilyke’ does not occur in the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names as actually used by any historical woman. One possibility is that the figure represents a woman for whom modesty might not have been a concern, and who might not show up in the historical record, namely, a prostitute. As noted earlier, Robinson and Fluck understood all kalenames in that way, in part at least because, they claim, all of the feminine personal names praised for beauty transparently signify prostitution, ‘coined to refer to the trade.’ The name ‘Epilyke,’ however, has no such transparently sluttish connotation. On the contrary, its closest homonym at Athens, outside of the potters’ quarter, is the name of politically well-connected men. The grandfather of Perikles’s daughter-in-law was named Epilykos, and a much earlier figure so-named was prominent in Athenian politics. One early figure named Epilykos is said to have refurbished the office of the polemarch (Aristotle, Constitution of the Athenians 3.5).8 From an American perspective, the modern equivalent of the name ‘Epilyke’ is not so much ‘Candy’ as ‘Clinton.’

Two points are easy to verify in a few vase-paintings of gods, goddesses, heroes, or heroines. The first is that the adjective kalos or kale was at least occasionally attached to personal names identifying figures in the paintings. In other words, the compound inscription— kalos/kale plus personal name—was intended to be read as a label attached to a particular painted figure. The second is that the names of at least some individuals praised in vase-inscriptions for beauty were not the names of real, historical persons, but those of mythical, legendary, or imaginary figures. A black-figure amphora attributed to the Leagros Group depicts a familiar legendary subject, the departure of Aineas and his father Anchises from Troy.5 The father is identified by an inscription, Ανχισι, Anchisi, the son is identified by a kalos-inscription, Αινεα καλος, Ainea[s] kalos. The two fugitives are protected by the goddess Aphrodite, who is identified by a kale-inscription, Α(φ)ροδιτε καλε, Aphrodite kale.6 It seems unlikely that anyone reading those kalos-or kale-inscriptions would understand them as references to contemporary Athenians, rather than labels identifying the depicted figures.

Within the potters’ quarter, the connotations of the root-name Epilyk- go further. The name ‘Epilykos’ occurs in two, and very likely three, artisans’ signatures on cups attributed to a potter-painter familiar from other signatures as Skythes, ‘the Scythian.’ Two of the signatures are unusual, because they include the adjective (or adverb) kalos: Epilykos egraphsen kalos (more on this below).9 It appears that the same potter-painter fashioned and decorated cups under two different signatures: he regularly signed with the slavishsounding ‘Skythes,’ and occasionally signed with the aristocratic ‘Epilykos.’ Skythes also habitually praised Epilykos for beauty on his cups.10 One suspects that

Epilyke Let us begin with a vase appearing long after the publication of Robinson and Fluck. A red-figure hydria in Berlin attributed to Euphronios or his manner (Figure 1) depicts two women, nude, bathing at a louterion.7 There are two inscriptions in the picture. One exclaims Epilyke kale. The writing of the personal name runs parallel to the back of the girl on the left, and the adjective runs outward from her abdomen. The wordplacement suggests that the inscription is a ‘tag’-kaleinscription—that the depicted figure is the beautiful

8  See J. K. Davies, Athenian Propertied Families: 600–300 B.C., Oxford 1971, 296–298; A. Shapiro, ‘Epilykos kalos,’ Hesperia 52 (1983), 305–310. 9  Paris, Louvre G 10; ARV2 83.3; BAPD 200665: Epilyko[s egraph]sen kalos, ‘Epilykos painted [this] well’ or ‘Epilykos the beautiful painted [this].’ Rome, Villa Giulia plus Toronto 923.13.11; ARV2 83.8; BAPD 200669: . . .]s kalos eg[raph]sen. An important, recently discovered cup assures us that those signatures are not erroneous attempts to write Epikykos kalos. This cup was found in the cave of a nymph in Boiotia; BAPD 9026229; A. Zampite and V. Vasilopoulou, ‘Κεραμεικὴ ἀρχαΐκῆς καὶ κλασσικῆς περιόδου ἀπὸ τὸ Λειβήθριο ἄντρο τοῦ ῾ Ελικώνα,’ in Ἐπετηρὶς τῆς Ἑταιρείας Βοιωτικῶν Μελετῶν, vol. 4A, Athens 2008, 453–455: ‘Epilyko[s] epo[iesen], ‘Epilykos made [it].’ The signature is clearly visible in the published photograph. I discuss the implications of the recently discovered signature at length in G. Hedreen, The Image of the Artist in Archaic and Classical Greece: Art, Poetry, and Subjectivity, Cambridge 2015, 254-263. 10  Aside from the two dozen vases attributed to Skythes, the kalosname Epilykos only occurs on a few other vases. Two were attributed by Beazley to the Pedieus Painter, which he considered to be so close in style to those of Skythes as to be perhaps the late work of the latter. Apart from those, there are just two other vases bearing

Malibu (CA), J. Paul Getty Museum 86.AE.82; BAPD 3891. See K. Schauenburg, ‘AINEAS KALOS,’ Gymnasium 76 (1969), 48–53 for other tag-kalos- and kale-names of deities. The importance of these inscriptions for establishing the fact that this sort of inscription was used to identify figures represented on vases is emphasized by J. Boardman, ‘Kaloi and Other Names on Euphronios’ Vases,’ in M. Cygielman et al. (eds), Euphronios: Atti del seminario internazionale di studi, Arezzo 27–28 Maggio 1990, Florence 1992, 47. 7  Berlin Antikensammlung 1966.20; Para. 508; BAPD 340207. For the attribution to Euphronios, see M. Ohly-Dumm ‘Euphroniosschale und Smikrosscherbe,’ Münchner Jahrbuch der Bildenden Kunst 25 (1974), 25, n. 55. 5  6 

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Chapter Three ‘So-and-so καλή’: A Reexamination

Figure 1. Berlin, Antikensammlung 1966.20. Photograph courtesy Antikensammlung, Berlin. Image source: Art Resource, NY. Photographer: Johannes Laurentius (Berlin).

Epilykos is not the name of a real vase-painter at all, but a fictitious pseudonym or nom du plume of Skythes, who habitually praised himself as Epilykos kalos.

That account of the genesis of the beautiful Epilyke is supported by the other inscription on the hydria in Berlin. The second inscription reads Smikros kalos. The writing of the name ‘Smikros’ begins at the upper chest of a girl named Helikopa, and runs diagonally down; the word kalos is written behind her back. It is plausible that ‘Smikros is good looking!’ is intended to be understood as words uttered by Helikopa. On this vase, which was painted by, or within the workshop, or in the manner of Euphronios, the name ‘Smikros’ most likely is meant to evoke the name of the artist who signed several contemporary, Euphronios-esque vase-paintings Smikros egraphsen. Helikopa is praising the good looks of the sort of person who painted her picture. But I believe it is possible to go much further: as I have argued elsewhere, there is a strong case to be made that Smikros is a fictitious vase-painter, potter, and perhaps even sculptor, invented by Euphronios, who was responsible for the painting of the vases signed Smikros egraphsen.11 In its shocking exposure of

From the occurrences and contexts of the name ‘Epilykos,’ what might one infer about the equivalent female moniker in the inscription, ‘Epilyke kale,’ on the hydria in Berlin (Figure 1)? The existence of a real courtesan or prostitute named Epilyke is impossible to rule out. The distribution and function of the obviously related name, Epilykos, however, better supports a hypothesis that Epilyke is the invention of the vasepainter. It is a transposition of gender of the name of Epilykos, an aristocratic Athenian name already appropriated by a potter-painter (Skythes) close in time and style to the hydria in Berlin.

the kalos-name of Epilykos: Paris, Louvre G 11, fragmentary cup, ARV2 180, manner of the Carpenter Painter (but potted by Skythes?), BAPD 201649; Philadelphia, University Museum 3499, cup, ARV2 134.10, wider circle of the Nikosthenes Painter, BAPD 201125: for the inscription, Eppilykos kalos (not in CAVI), see G. Ferrari and B. S. Ridgway (eds), Aspects of Ancient Greece, Allentown, PA 1979, 70.

G. Hedreen, ‘Smikros and Epilykos: Two Comic Inventions in Athenian Vase-Painting,’ in J. H. Oakley (ed.), Athenian Potters and

11 

55

Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings an almost-certainly-fictitious female member of an aristocratic Athenian family, whose name calls to mind a (fictitious?) vase-painter Epilykos, and in its ‘protofeminist’ expression of female desire for an imaginary ceramic artist, the vase-painting in Berlin is unlikely to have been read or viewed as a snapshot of daily life.

chances, however, that the painter not only mistakenly identified the victim as mythological nobody, but also mistakenly identified the supernumerary woman as Helen, and identified yet another supernumerary as Antiope? The vase-painting appears much more likely to be a humorous inversion of traditional mythology. Part of the humor consists in the impression that the mythological heroines Helen and Antiope seem to understand that they are the ones Theseus is supposed to be carrying off. Jiří Frel noted another reversal of expectation in the gesture of Korone: she grasps the wrist of Theseus in the manner in which a groom is typically shown leading away a bride in ancient Greek art, and she fingers Theseus’s hair with her other hand, almost as if she wants to be carried off.

Korone Let us take up the case of a kale-name that was in fact associated in antiquity with prostitution, and ask what precisely the association of the name means for our understanding of particular pictorial representations. The inscription Korone kale occurs on two Athenian vases. An early fifth-century white-ground lekythos depicts a female figure mounting a chariot, Apollo, and a fawn. It includes the inscription Koro(n)e kale philo, ‘I love beautiful Korone.’ The writing occurs in a zone under the picture, and therefore may be unrelated to the image (although it is curious that Apollo once loved a beautiful girl named Koronis).12 ‘Korone kale’ is also written on a beautiful plate in New York. The plate depicts an Amazon carrying a fallen comrade off of the battlefield. It includes the inscriptions Melo kale, Korone kale, and ho pais kalos. The number and placement of the feminine names suggests, but does not prove, that they identify the Amazons by name.13 Here, then, are two examples of ‘Korone kale,’ one of which appears to correspond to the principle that kale-inscriptions are ‘extra-pictorial’ in their reference, but the other does not.

In ancient literature, the name of Korone is associated not with the lovers of Theseus, but with prostitution. There are six entries for Korone in the volume of the Lexicon of Greek Personal Names for Attica, and three of them are late classical and Hellenistic literary references to prostitutes. One of the prostitutes to whom clever conversation is attributed in the Chreiai of the Hellenistic writer Machon, for example, is named Korone.15 The name is also used of a prostitute in fourthcentury comedy.16 It is even possible that the word korōnē, ‘crow,’ was already associated with prostitution within the seventh-century poetry of Archilochos.17 The reappearance of the name ‘Korone’ over several centuries, and in genres in which characters are often fictional, suggests that she was a legendary figure.

The most enlightening as well as entertaining occurrence of the name ‘Korone’ in Athenian vasepainting is part of an elaborate pictorial and epigraphical joke. On one side of a red-figure amphora in Munich attributed to Euthymides (Figure 2), Theseus carries off a girl identified by name as Korone.14 Running after the hero and his captive is Helen. On the reverse of the vase is a female figure named Antiope, also in hot pursuit. In ancient Greek mythology, both Helen and Antiope were themselves victims of rape or kidnapping at the hands of Theseus. Korone, on the other hand, is not attested in any other representation, literary or pictorial, as one of Theseus’s lovers. Interpretation of the writing on the vase is divided. Some scholars have suggested that the vase-painter simply made a mistake: meaning to identify the victim as Helen, he unintentionally labeled her as Korone (e.g., Beazley, ARV2 27.4). What are the

To return to the vase, the vase-painting by Euthymides (Figure 2) has been persuasively interpreted as an inversion or parody of traditional mythological narrative. Theseus is spurning his traditional lovers for a courtesan.18 Frel went further: he proposed that 15  Athenaios 583a = Machon line 435 in A. S. F. Gow, Machon: The Fragments, Cambridge 1965,  with p. 133. She is also named in the learned study, Peri hetairōn, or On Courtesans, of Antiphanes of Thrace (fourth-century BC, Athenaios 587b). 16  The name ‘Korone’ is included in a list of courtesans in Menander’s Kolax or Flatterer (Athenaios 587e). See also perhaps the even earlier Middle Comedy of Ephippos entitled Homoioi or Obeliaphorai, or LookAlikes or Spit-Bread Carriers, J. S. Rusten (ed.), The Birth of Comedy: Texts, Documents, and Art from Athenian Comic Competitions, 486–280, Baltimore, MD 2011, 485, no. 15. 17  Archilochos fr. 331 W2, quoted in Athenaios 594c-d: ‘[l]ike a fig tree on rocky ground that feeds many korōnas, ‘crows,’ good-natured Pasiphile [lit., loved by all] takes on strangers.’ The fragment is listed as dubious in M. L. West, Studies in Greek Elegy and Iambus, Berlin 1974, 139–140, partly because of its style and partly because Athenaios connects the reference to a fourth-century courtesan named Plangon. But see K. J. Dover, ‘The Poetry of Archilochos,’ in Archiloque, Geneva 1964, 185, n. 1: ‘I suspect that κορώνη must be added to Archilochos’s numerous terms for ‘prostitute.’’ The fragment is also treated as genuine by R. M. Rosen, ‘Hipponax, Boupalos, and the Conventions of psogos,’ Transactions of the American Philological Association 118 (1988), 29–41: 30. 18  For the interpretation, see A. Linfert, ‘Zwei Versuche über antiken Witz und Esprit,’ Rivista di archeologia  1 (1977), 19–26:  21–22; L. Giuliani, ‘Kleines ikonographisches Scherbenpuzzle: Zu einer frühen Euphronios-Schale in New York,’ in I. Wehgartner (ed.), Euphronios

Painters III, Oxford 2014, 49-62 and, in greater detail, Hedreen 2015 (see above, note 9), chapter 1. 12  Lyon 75; ABL 229.2; ABV 677.2; BAPD 305516. The reading is according to Haspels, ABL 229. 13  New York, Metropolitan Museum 1971.258.2; ABV 677.1; BAPD 306481, related in style perhaps to the work of Euphronios; see J. Frel, ‘La céramique et la splendeur des courtesans,’ RivArch 20 (1996), 48, n. 9. Beazley, ABV 677, considers it possible but not probable that the names refer to the Amazons. 14  Munich, Antikensammlungen 2309; ARV2 27.4; BAPD 200157.

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Chapter Three ‘So-and-so καλή’: A Reexamination

Figure 2. Munich, Antikensammlungen 2309. Photograph courtesy Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek München. Photographer: Renate Kühling.

57

Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings the vase-painter Euthymides was flattering a real, contemporary, local courtesan, by suggesting that the hero Theseus would have preferred her to either of his traditional loves. Frel’s argument rested in part on the occurrence of the kale-inscription on an early fifthcentury white-ground lekythos mentioned earlier: Koro(n)e kale philo, ‘I love beautiful Korone.’ If it is correct to assume that writing cannot be meaningfully understood in relation to the adjacent image of Apollo and female figure, and if a vase-painter would never write ‘I love the beautiful girl so-and-so’ unless the girl in question were a contemporary prostitute, then the kale-inscription provides some support for the belief that there was a courtesan at Athens around 500 BC who went by the name of Korone. But there is also indisputable evidence that the name occurred repeatedly within ancient literature, ranging from the early fourth century BC until well into the third, and perhaps even as early as Archilochos, as a kind of byword for a courtesan. Any individual occurrence of the name therefore does not necessarily correspond to a contemporary woman working in the sex trade. The pictorial and epigraphical inversion on the amphora (Figure 2) is understandable even if no one had ever heard of an actual courtesan named Korone.19

never have afforded her own pyramid. He supports the first assertion by claiming that Rhodopis, Thracian by birth, was enslaved to the very same Samian man who owned Aisopos the legendary fabulist and fellow slave. Rhodopis was thus a contemporary of Aisopos, not Mykerinos. Rhopodis, Herodotos continues, ended up in Egyptian Naukratis. There, her freedom was purchased by Charaxos of Mytilene, the brother of Sappho, in exchange for a great deal of money. Rhodopis became a wealthy courtesan, but not wealthy enough, Herodotos asserts, to underwrite a pyramid. To support the latter point, he notes that Rhodopis dedicated a tithe of her earnings in a highly original form of offering, a great number of iron roasting spits, at Delphoi. If that is all she could afford to offer at Delphoi, the logic seems to go, there is no way she possessed the capital to fund a pyramid. Herodotos ends his account with a postscript, according to which Charaxos was harshly criticized by Sappho in a poem for the business. There is no reason to doubt that there was such a dedication of spits at Delphoi. Even in his day, Herodotos claims, they were still visible, lying in a heap behind the altar of the Chians.20 It seems unwise, however, to take others features of Rhodopis’s story at face value. Although the tale may appear at first glance to be a digression, it proves to be intimately related to several larger themes developed by Herodotos in his narrative of the pyramids. One is his account of the daughter of Cheops (2.124-126). So great was the cost of his pyramid, the greatest of all Egyptian pyramids, that Cheops forced his own daughter into prostitution in order to raise funds for the monument. Carrying out her father’s will, the daughter desired nevertheless to leave a memorial herself. From each man who paid for her services she required in addition a stone. Out of the stones that she accumulated, Herodotos reports, was built the little pyramid that stands to this day in front of the great pyramid of Cheops. The story of Rhodopis serves, among other things, as a foil to the story of the pharaoh’s daughter. Enslavement, prostitution, and a desire to leave a memorial are shared by both women, but Rhodopis is able to free herself from enslavement, and to envision her own, original form of memorial. Implicit in the Rhodopis narrative is a freedom to act (narrow as it may be for women), available in Greek culture that is unavailable in Egyptian civilization. The importance of the similarities between the two stories is signaled by the manner in which Herodotos introduces the story of Rhodopis, with the reference to the belief of ‘some Greeks’ that she, like Cheops’ daughter, erected her own pyramid. Being familiar with a dedication of spits at Delphoi by a mysterious woman named Rhodopis, Herodotos would have every incentive to fill in the gaps of her story to make it parallel to a myth

Rhodopis About the inscription Rhodopis kale that occurs on two black-figure vases (see below), Robinson and Fluck (178) wrote, simply, ‘Rhodopis is the name of the hetaira loved by Charaxus, Sappho’s brother.’ She is among the best known courtesans in ancient Greek literature, because she is the subject of a fascinating digression in Herodotos. The historical account sometimes underwrites a belief that, in vase-painting, Rhodopis represents, or refers to, a real courtesan. But the pictures are not so easily accounted for. In his detailed account of ancient Egypt, Herodotos tells a rags-to-riches story of a Naukratite courtesan named Rhodopis (2.134-135). The digression is prompted by the claim that ‘some Greeks’ believe that the pyramid of Mykerinos was built by Rhodopis. Herodotos disputes that claim on two grounds: first, Rhodopis lived during the time of the Egyptian pharaoh Amasis, who reigned during the first half of the sixth century BC, whereas the pyramid dates to a much earlier time; second, she could und seine Zeit. Kolloquium in Berlin 19./20. April 1991, Berlin  1992, 118– 119; Frel 1996 (above, note 13), 38–39, with earlier bibliography. 19  Another argument advanced in favor of the idea that Korone, in contemporary vase-painting, refers to a particular, well-known, woman of the night is that she reappears in perhaps the most originally conceived representation of sex in Athenian vase-painting: Berlin, Antikensammlung 3251; ARV2 113.7; Thalia Painter; BAPD 200964. In Hedreen 2015 (above, note 9), 267-274, I argue that the representations on this cup are best understood as a humorous inversion of real social life, and therefore seem hardly reliable as evidence of the historical existence of Korone.

It is possible that a fragment of the dedicatory inscription, with a trace of the name ‘Rhodopis,’ survives; see LSAG 102, pl. 12.7.

20 

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Chapter Three ‘So-and-so καλή’: A Reexamination about Cheops’ daughter, including the identification of her source of income as prostitution.

any claim that this sort of inscription regularly refers to a contemporary historical courtesan.

Doubts about the historical correctness of Herodotos’s account were raised already in antiquity. Athenaios (13.596b-c) claims that Charaxos lavished money on a Naukratite girl named Doricha, and that Sappho attacked this girl in her poetry for taking her brother’s money. ‘Herodotos calls her Rhodopis, being ignorant that she is different from Doricha.’ Rhodopis is associated with a different story, the story of the dedication of spits at Delphoi, which, Athenaios claims, was recounted by the fifth-century comic poet Kratinos. Strabo (17.1.33) also suggests that Sappho never spoke of a woman named Rhodopis. Strabo implies that Rhodopis and Doricha are the same person, and Denys Page speculated that the courtesan had a professional nickname as well as a personal name.21 The facts remain, however, that Herodotos speaks only of Rhodopis, never of Doricha, that Sappho spoke only of Doricha according to Strabo and Athenaios, and that Athenaios believes that Doricha the Sapphic protagonist and Rhodopis the spitdedicator are two distinct people.

The name ‘Rhodopis’ surfaces in several vase-paintings. On the outside of a fragmentary, very late sixth-century cup, a woman plays the aulos at a symposion of men reclining on couches. Above her head is the inscription Ροδοπις [κα]λε, Rhodopis kale.24 On a slightly later cup (by Makron) with similar imagery, the inscription Ροδο[π]ις [κα]λε (or κ[α]λε?), Rhodopis kale occurs within the tondo.25 On the outside of this cup, six bearded men, reclining on couches, are entertained by six women. Four of the women have removed their clothes, and three of them have climbed onto the couches and under the mantles of the men. One of the girls holds the back of a man’s head, strokes his shoulder, and gazes into his eyes. These girls, who entertain the men with music, comfort them when they vomit, and fuck them, fit our image of the courtesan or hetaira.26 About the inscription Rhodopis kale on this cup, Marjorie Milne wrote, ‘[w]hether we take this kale inscription to refer to the half-legendary Naukratite beauty, or to some contemporary favorite, it is clear that at the time ... the name Rhodopis was hardly likely to imply respectability.’27 The fragmentary cup is compatible with that reading. But the later vase-painting by Makron does not entirely support this reading. For on Makron’s cup, one does not find the kale-inscription associated with the courtesans depicted on the outside of the cup. Instead, one finds it associated with the picture of a different kind of girl in the tondo. This figure is dancing to the music played on an aulos by a silen (who, intriguingly, carefully conceals his genitalia from the girl between his legs). The presence of the silen suggests that the scene unfolds within a mythical setting and that the girl is the mythological counterpart of the satyr—a nymph. To read the inscription, Rhodopis kale, as a reference to a courtesan, one must overlook the image of a nymph with which the writing is physically associated.

The remains of the poetry of Sappho, admittedly fragmentary, contain no trace of Rhodopis at all, and only one likely trace of Doricha. Fragment 15 L-P, not much more than a scrap of papyrus, includes the letters ]ριχα, with space before them for two others. The letters are commonly restored as Δω]ριχα. Doubts about whether Sappho even spoke negatively about Doricha are raised by an epigram of Poseidippos (in Athenaios 13.596e), which claims that an ode of Sappho will perpetuate the ‘blessed name’ of Charaxos’s lover Doricha forever. On the basis of a meticulous review of the literary tradition, Joel Lidov concluded that ‘‘Rhodopis’ is the signifier not of a particular historical personage but of sexual excess as a typical characteristic of power and wealth (although there may once have been a glamorous demimondaine who put the name in circulation).’22 Dimitrios Yatromanolakis reviewed more wide-ranging material, and persuasively defended the restoration of Δω]ριχα in Sappho fr. 15.23 Many of Lidov’s and Yatromanolakis’s arguments against taking the literary tradition at face value are valuable. For the understanding of kale-inscriptions on Athenian vases, the important point is that the literary tradition about Rhodopis hardly provides a firm foundation stone for

A slightly earlier vase almost certainly confirms the identification of a female figure named Rhodopis as a nymph. On a kalyx-krater attributed to Euphronios in Paris (Figure 3), one group of letters, identifying a female figure, ροδο[π]ι[ς], is difficult to restore in any other way than Rhodopis.28 Here, there can be no question of whether or not the inscription is to be read

21  D. L. Page, Sappho and Alcaeus: An Introduction to the Study of Ancient Lesbian Poetry, Oxford 1955, 49. 22  J. B. Lidov, ‘Sappho, Herodotus, and the Hetaira,’ Classical Philology 97 (2002), 223, 227. The recently published fragments of Sappho (D. Obbink ‘Two New Poems by Sappho,’ Zeitschrift für Papyrologie und Epigraphik  189 [2014],  32–49) establish beyond doubt that the name of Charaxos occurs within the poetry of Sappho itself, and not merely in later testimonia. The new fragments do not make any reference, direct or indirect, to Rhodopis, Doricha, or prostitution. 23  D. Yatromanolakis, Sappho in the Making: The Early Reception, Cambridge, MA 2007, 312–337.

Once Munich, Bareiss 64; Para. 336; manner of the Epeleios Painter; BAPD 352460. Immerwahr reports that the iota is missing. 25  New York, Metropolitican Museum 20.246; ARV2 467.118; BAPD 204800. 26  For a general description of the ancient Greek courtesan, see J. N. Davidson, Courtesans and Fishcakes: The Consuming Passions of Classical Athens, London 1997, 92–97. 27  M. J. Milne, ‘Three Names on a Corinthian Jar,’ American Journal of Archaeology 46 (1942), 221. 28  Paris, Louvre G 33; ARV2 14.4; BAPD 200066. See A. Pasquier et al., Euphronios: Peintre à Athènes au VIe siècle avant J.-C., Paris 1990, 109. 24 

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Figure 3. Paris, Louvre G33. © RMN-Grand Palais/Art Resource, NY.

in relation to the adjacent figure, for there is no trace of the word kale on the vase, and no question about pictorial context, for there are several (named) silens present. In this case, it is certain that the girl named Rhodopis represents a mythical follower of the god Dionysos, a nymph, and not an historical courtesan.

women are identified by painted labels: Iope, Kleo, and Rhodopis.29 The hydria belongs to a group of over seventy vases of the late sixth and early fifth centuries BC that depict women getting water from a fountain house. Inscriptions identify some of the women by name. The written names are sometimes part of kaleinscriptions, which nevertheless often seem to ‘tag’ or identify a figure within the picture. The representations of women at the fountain house have been extensively discussed in modern scholarly writing. With respect to the subject of this chapter, the important points are

Women at the Fountain House: Nymphs or Nymphomaniacs? The name ‘Rhodopis’ occurs in several black-figure representations, roughly contemporary with the krater attributed to Euphronios, depicting women fetching water at a fountain house. On a hydria in London (Figure 4), four women, wearing chitons, their long hair tied back, wreath the sculptural spouts of an architecturally magnificent fountain, as they wait for their hydriae to fill with water. Three of the four

London, British Museum 1843.11-3.49 (B 329); ABV 334.1; A. D. Painter; BAPD 301814. See also Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 86331 (RC 187), hydria (ABV 678; unattributed; BAPD 306485): five women fill hydriae. To one side of a girl, there is the inscription Mute kale (or something along those lines), and, to the other side, naichi, ‘yes!’ (i.e., ‘Mute is beautiful, yes indeed!’). Beside the next girl is the name Niko; beside the third, Kallo, and beside the fourth, Rhodopis.

29 

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Chapter Three ‘So-and-so καλή’: A Reexamination

Figure 4. London, British Museum 1843.11-3.49 (B329). Photograph courtesy the British Museum, © British Museum.

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Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings

Figure 5. London, British Museum 1836.2-24.169 (B330). Photograph courtesy the British Museum, © British Museum.

that the presence of the particular name ‘Rhodopis,’ as well as kale-inscriptions as a general type of writing, are the foundation of one particular line of interpretation of the fountain house scenes. Let us consider several additional examples, and then turn to the interpretive claims.

‘Hegesilla kale,’ and, above them, the inscription Ροδον, ‘Rhodon.’ The placement of the inscriptions above and alongside the girls waiting for their water invites the reader to connect this pair of inscriptions with this pair of girls. The absence of kale from the inscription ‘Rhodon’ suggests that this name too is a label identifying one of the figures, and the mixture of kale- and non-kaleinscriptions encourages one to take all the names in relation to the female figures one is looking at. Some of the names recur on other representations of women getting water from a fountain. On another hydria in London, one of the women is labeled Ροδον, ‘Rhodon,’ and one, Μνεσιλα, ‘Mnesilla.’ Nearby is the word ‘kale,’ and the entire identification may read ‘Mnesilla kale.’ There is also an inscription, Ανθυλε καλε, ‘Anthulle kale.’31 A similar vase-painting on a hydria in Würzburg contains the inscriptions Anthul[l]e kale, Anthul[l]a kale, Murtale kale, Hegesil[l]a, and, finally, Rhodon kale.32

On a lovely hydria in London (Figure 5), seven women are engaged in acquiring water from a small fountain house.30 One pair of girls waits for their hydriae to fill, two pairs of girls are headed home with containers full of water balanced on their heads, and one woman approaches carrying an empty hydria. The girls are nicely dressed in peploi with embroidered decoration and, in some cases, mantles over the peploi. They have long hair and wear headbands. They carry branches or flowers. Above the pair of girls waiting for their water is the inscription Καλ[λ]ιπ[π]εκαλε, ‘Kallippe kale.’ Alongside the pair, facing toward them, is Μ[ν]εσιλ[λ]ακαλε, ‘Mnesilla kale.’ Between the two pairs of girls walking home is the inscription Εγεσιλ[λ]ακαλε,

London, British Museum B 333; ABV 676, 677, 678; unattributed; BAPD 306483. 32  Würzburg 304; ABV 676, 678; BAPD 306484. On the distinction between Anthule and Anthulla, see M. J. Milne and D. v. Bothmer, ‘ΚΑΤΑΠΥΓΩΝ, ΚΑΤΑΠΥΓΑΙΝΑ,’ Hesperia 22 (1953), 215. 31 

London, British Museum 1836.2-24.169 (B 330); ABV 276.1; manner of the Antimenes Painter; BAPD 320163.

30 

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Chapter Three ‘So-and-so καλή’: A Reexamination As noted earlier, the interpretation of vase-paintings of women fetching water from a fountain house or other water source is the subject of a fascinatingly disparate body of modern scholarly writing. The interpretations fall into groups along two important questions: are the images reflections of contemporary practices, or are they essentially metaphorical? And do the images represent practices or values of the here and now of the vase-painters and their patrons, or some other time and place? One line of interpretation, based on analysis of clothing and adornment, identifies the women fetching water as Athenian citizen women, perhaps even aristocratic Athenian women, and not servants or slaves.33 In this respect, the images appear to contradict what little we know about how Athenians really lived, for literary testimonia suggest that, by the fifth century at the latest, Athenians sent slaves and servants to get water, not wives or daughters. Perhaps the representations of well-dressed and seemingly prosperous women at the fountain represent an earlier time in (imagined) Athenian prehistory, before the advent of slavery, as Gloria Ferrari has persuasively argued.34 Or perhaps the images operate in a metaphorical way, expressing essential qualities of Athenian women, such as the purity of girls on the point of marriage, as Manfrini-Aragno, Sabetai, and other scholars have suggested. For my purposes, the important point is that the writing on the vases has been understood to support this sort of metaphorical reading: ‘[t]he idea that is encoded in the scenes and also known from poetry is conceptually related to the pre-nuptial sphere by virtue of visual metaphor. The names of the girls are not ‘sociologically fixed’ and may belong to citizen women; what is more, they often refer euphemistically to flowers, thus poetically associating maidens with blossoming and beauty. This is accentuated in some cases by the inscription kale’ (Sabetai 105).

late Archaic period: ‘respectable, well-to-do women did not go out of doors a great deal, and certainly not to the fountain-house, which seems to have been a busy and rather unsavory place, unless, of course, religious occasion like the Hydrophoria was an acceptable exception.’35 But the most important arguments concern the names of the women and the presence of the adjective kale. Jiří Frel pointed to a graffito on a black-figure amphora in New York that reads Ανθυλε καταπυγαινα, Anthule katapugaina, ‘Anthulle is given to unnatural lust,’ in the circumlocution of LSJ.36 Frel offered no other external evidence to support his claim that the women named and depicted on the black-figure hydriae, such as Anthulle, were courtesans. He did not feel the need to do so: ‘if one of the names corresponds to that of a known hetaira, that [identification] should go for all [her] female associates.’ Jenifer Neils and Dyfri Williams called attention to one name occurring in the fountain-house scenes in particular, Rhodopis, a name associated, as seen already, with prostitution in Herodotos.37 Neils and Alan Shapiro demurred that no proper contemporary Athenian woman could be praised for her beauty in an inscription on a vase. ‘I take it as axiomatic that the women named in kaleinscriptions are all hetairai.’38 A variety of objections might be offered to that form of argumentation. First, the word katapugaina certainly might apply to a sex-worker, but it is not descriptive or laudatory; it is an insult, and, as such, it would function as an insult regardless of the occupation or social status of its target. Was every man called katapugon in graffiti a male prostitute? Second, the amphora with the graffito is closer to 550 in date than 500, which is the date of hydriae on which Anthule appears. If the two vase-inscriptions refer to the same woman, she lived a remarkably long life. Third, not every use of the word kale in a vase inscription signals prostitution. On an early classical red-figure alabastron, for example, a young woman sits on a stool in front of a wool-working basket, carefully holding a floral crown. A young man leaning on a stick offers her a fillet or scarf. Behind the woman is a little girl carrying an alabastron. In

A very different line of interpretation identifies the women fetching water at the fountain house as courtesans or prostitutes. The interpretation is based in part on an assumption that the imagery corresponds more or less to how Athenian women really lived in the

35  D. Williams, ‘Women on Athenian Vases: Problems of Interpretation,’ in A. Cameron and A. Kuhrt (eds), Images of Women in Antiquity, revised ed., Detroit, MI 1993, 103. 36  New York, Metropolitan Museum 41.162.32; ABV 676; BAPD 306477. The inscription is discussed in detail in Milne and Bothmer 1953 (above, note 32). For more up-to-date bibliography on occurrences of the word, see D. Bain, ‘Six Greek Verbs of Sexual Congress (βινῶ, κινῶ, πυγίζω, ληκῶ, οἴω, λαικάζω),’ Classical Quarterly 41 (1991), 67, n. 120. See also K. J. Dover, Greek Homosexuality, Cambridge, MA 1978, 113–114. 37  Williams 1993 (above, note 35), 102–105; J. Neils, ‘Others within the Other: An Intimate Look at Hetairai and Maenads,’ in B. Cohen (ed.),  Not the Classical Ideal: Athens and the Construction of the Other in Greek Art, Leiden 2000, 209. 38  A. Shapiro,  ‘Brief Encounters: Women and Men at the Fountain House,’ in B. Schmaltz and M. Söldner (eds), Griechische Keramik in kulturellen Kontext: Akten des Internationalen Vasen-Symposions in Kiel vom 24.-28.9.2001 veranstaltet durch das Archäologische Institut der Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Münster 2003, 96 (quote).

E. Manakidou, ‘Athenerinnen in schwarzfigurigen Brunnenhausszenen,’ HEPHAISTOS (Kritische Zeitschrift zur Theorie und Praxis der Archäologie und angrenzender Wissenschaften) 11 (1992), 52–91; I. Manfrini-Aragno, ‘Femmes à la fontaine: Réalité et imaginaire,’ in C. Bron and E. Kassapoglou (eds), L’Image en jeu: De l’antiquité à Paul Klee,  Yens-sur-Morges 1992, 127–148. This line of interpretation is nicely presented in a thorough, recent review by V. Sabetai, ‘The Poetics of Maidenhood: Visual Constructs of Womanhood in VasePainting,’ in S. Schmidt and J. H. Oakley (eds), Bildkonzepte in der Hermeneutik griechischer Vasenmalerei, Munich 2009, 103–114. 34  G. Ferrari, ‘Myth and Genre on Athenian Vases,’ Classical Antiquity 22 (2003), 37–54. The contradiction between what the imagery shows and what the literary sources say about how Athenians supplied themselves with water was first raised, it appears, in L. Hannestad ‘Slaves and the Fountain House Theme,’ in H. A. G. Brijder (ed.), Ancient Greek and Related Pottery: Proceedings of the International Vase Symposium in Amsterdam, 12–15 April 1984, Amsterdam 1984, 252–255. 33 

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Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings

Figure 6. Athens, National Archaeological Museum, Acropolis Collection 732. Photograph courtesy the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, © Hellenic Ministry of Culture/Archaeological Receipts Fund. Photographer: Eirini Miari.

front of the young man is written Timodemos kalos; above the basket, immediately before the woman, he nymphe kale, ‘the bride [literally, nymph] is beautiful.’ It is well known that the word nymphē was associated with girls on the cusp of or immediately following upon marriage. It is hard to see how the adjective kale in this inscription imports connotations of prostitution into the scene, which can be easily understood as a representation of a young bride and her husband.39 To take a second example, on a black-figure hydria of the same time period as the fountain-house scenes, a bride and groom stand in a chariot accompanied, it seems, by Hermes, Apollo, and a goddess. Adjacent to the head of the groom is written Lysip[p]ides kalos; a little further to the right, Rhodon kale, the very name that appears in the fountain-house scene described earlier. The pair of inscriptions, one masculine, one feminine, invites

one to relate them to the pair in the chariot, one man, one woman. To maintain the hypothesis that the kaleinscription refers to a prostitute, Frel was led to suggest that the image depicts the ‘marriage’ of Lysippides and his courtesan.40 But the most serious drawback to the arguments offered in favor of identifying the women in the fountain house scenes as hetairai is the lack of supporting prosopographical comparanda. Frel is to be credited for acknowledging that the name ‘Kallis’ identifies not only a woman in a fountain-house scene but also one of Dionysos’s nymphs on the name-vase of the Kallis Painter and on Oltos’s cup in Tarquinia (see below). ‘Let us recall,’ he writes, ‘that at this time maenads are still welcoming to satyrs, incarnations of male aggression; thereafter they repel them. It is at this time of benevolent maenads that the courtesans adopt

Paris, Cabinet des Médailles 508; ARV2 1610; BAPD 21648. For the interpretation, see F. Lissarrague, Greek Vases: The Athenians and their Images, trans. K. Allen, New York, NY 2001,  128–131; Ferrari 2003 (above, note 34), 15. The importance of the inscription was noted by Hannestad 1984 (above, note 34), 254.

39 

40  London, British Museum B 339; ABV 264.1; BAPD 302301. Frel 1996 (above, note 13),  40. The image and its inscriptions are read very differently by Hannestad 1984 (above, note 34), 254; Manfrini-Aragno 1992 (above, note 33), 135.

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Chapter Three ‘So-and-so καλή’: A Reexamination their names: Choro, Kallis, Helike, Rhodo, Rhodopis.’41 There are numerous difficulties with this explanation: first, the ‘maenads’ (who are, technically speaking, nymphs) are already represented as physically resisting silens within the work Oltos himself; second, the silens, generally speaking, are very far from representing, in any simple or homogeneous way, male aggression. Finally, Frel offers no independent evidence, apart from the vase-paintings themselves, that ‘courtesans’ ever adopted the names of ‘maenads.’42

as Kal[l]is, and Sime. The close proximity of the god suggests that Kallis and Sime, like Semele, are among his mythical associates. The presence of diminutive silens climbing the vines underneath the handles of this cup enhances the feeling that the figures are mythical and not historical. The name ‘Kallis’ identifies a nymph on a slightly later red-figure cup, in which the presence of Dionysos and a silen assures us of its mythical status.46 ‘Kallis’ is not unattested as a historical personal name, but early occurrences are extremely rare.47

Problems begin with the presumption that the women depicted and named in fountain-house scenes must correspond, in some way, to real, historical, contemporary Athenian women. Is that assumption well grounded? On an important fragmentary hydria from the Athenian Acropolis (Figure 6), there is a lionhead water spout.43 A platform for resting a hydria as it fills with water is covered by a roof supported by a Doric column. Within this architectural space, in front of the lion’s head, is the inscription Καλιροε, ‘Kal[l]i[r]rhoe.’ A girl places her hydria under the stream of water: alongside her back, conforming in orientation to the forward tilt of her head, is the inscription Ε(υ) ανθις, ‘Euanthis,’ ‘blossom-girl.’ A second woman approaches with an empty hydria resting sideways on her head; her name is Γλυκε, ‘Glyke,’ ‘Sweet.’ Behind her, a woman moves away from the fountain with a full hydria on her head: she is Ρο[δον] or Ρο[δε], ‘Rhodon, Rhode,’ ‘Rose.’ One other name is preserved: Καλις, ‘Kal[l]is.’ Those personal names have various associations: Gluke and Euan[th]e are among the legendary Athenian girls offered to the Minotaur on the famous cup signed by Archikles and Glaukytes.44 But the most extensive associations are between the names on the hydriae and the names of nymphs. Kallis is the name of a nymph on a remarkable black-figure cup roughly contemporary with, or slightly earlier than, the blackfigure hydriae with representations of women at the fountain house.45 The cup depicts the busts of Dionysos and his mother Semele on the obverse (both named), and on the reverse, the busts of Dionysos and three female figures, two of whom are identified in writing

The fragmentary hydria in Athens is important in part because of the name ‘Kallirrhoe’ inscribed along the wall of the fountain house. As we know thanks to Thoukydides (2.15.5), the fountain situated in the most ancient part of the city of Athens, which was known as the Enneakrounos following its renovation by the tyrants in the later sixth century, was, in earlier times, called Kallirrhoe. Kallirrhoe was not merely a toponym but also the name of the nymph who personified the spring.48 A black-figure hydria in London depicting women at a fountain house, like the fragmentary vase in Athens, includes a lion-head water spout in profile at the left end of the picture.49 Water flows from the mouth of the lion into a hydria resting on a block. A column supports a superstructure over the fountain. Between the lion head and the column is the inscription Καλ[λ]ιρ[ρο]ε κρενε, ‘the fountain of Kallirrhoe.’ On the hydria in London, the presence of the word krene indicates that the two-word inscription is a toponym. But the proper noun, Kallirrhoe, reminds us that the place is associated with a mythological figure, a nymph who inhabits and animates the spring. On the hydria in Athens, the absence of the word krene, and the presence of so many other sweet-sounding female names, conjures the presence of the nymph Kallirrhoe herself, to preside over the filling of vessels at her own spring.50 Tarquinia RC 6848; ARV2 60.66; signed by Oltos; BAPD 200502. It occurs in a dedication from the Athenian Acropolis (DAA no. 33, early fifth century). It also may occur in an intriguing, unfortunately fragmentary inscription on sherds of a small early classical red-figure vase from the Athenian Acropolis: Athens, National Archaeological Museum, Acropolis Collection 1367; ARV2 1612; BAPD 9017233. The inscription, a graffito, reads: Αθενα[ιαι] [h]υγιει[αι] [Κ]αλλις εποιεσ[ε] και ανεθ[εκεν], ‘For Athena Hygieia [K]allis made and dedicated [this].’ There are very few possible restorations of the inscription ]αλλις, and Kallis seems like the most probable. The name ‘Kallis,’ however, can be masculine or feminine (Kάλλις/Kαλλίς), and it is perhaps marginally more likely that the dedications were made by men rather than women. Whereas in the vase-inscriptions, it is clear that the name is feminine. 48  Kallirrhoe as the name of the spring: Statius, Thebais 12.629; as the daughter of Okeanos and Tethys, Hesiod, Theogony 351; as a playmate of Demeter, Homeric Hymn to Demeter 417. 49  London, British Museum 1868.6-10.3 (B 331); ABV 261.44; manner of the Lysippides Painter; BAPD 302273. 50  Several other vase-paintings are compatible with the idea that the women who visit fountain houses are nymphs, or are very like the nymphs who follow Dionysos: Rome, Torlonia (ARV2 30.2; signed ‘Hypsis’; BAPD 200171), depicts a lavish fountain house with two spouts, and two women filling hydriae. The fountain house is identified in writing as krene Dionusia, ‘fountain of Dionysos.’ One of the water spouts takes the form not of the familiar lion head, but 46  47 

Frel 1996 (above, note 13), 41. I have discussed the development of the iconography of nymphs, and the sexuality of silens, elsewhere: see G. Hedreen, ‘Silens, Nymphs, and Maenads,’ Journal of Hellenic Studies  114 (1994), 47–69; idem, ‘‘I Let Go My Force just Touching Her Hair’: Male Sexuality in Athenian Vase-Paintings of Silens and Iambic Poetry,’ Classical Antiquity 25 (2006), 277–325. 43  Athens, National Archaeological Museum, Acropolis Collection 732; ABV 677; BAPD 306479. 44  Munich, Antikensammlungen 2243; ABV 163.2; BAPD 310552. In addition, Anthul(l)a is the name of one of the twice-seven on the cup signed by Archikles and Glaukytes. Frel 1996 (above, note 13), 40, explains them away on the principle that ‘mythology may have real characters.’ 45  Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale Stg. 172; ABV 203.1; namevase of the Kallis Painter; BAPD 302609. On a fragment of another black-figure hydria, one woman is identified as Καλις, ‘Kallis’: Villa Giulia; ABV 667; BAPD 306478. 41  42 

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Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings On the hydria in London, in addition to the inscription identifying the fountain house, there are inscriptions identifying the women filling water jugs. Arising from the head of the woman leaning forward, waiting for her hydria to fill, is the name Σιμυλις, ‘Simylis.’ The name is repeated behind the second girl in the queue. The next two pairs of girls all have names: Eperate, Kuane, Euene, Choronike. All four are virtually unknown as historical personal names at Athens, and have transparent meanings associated with good qualities. The name Simylis is special. It recurs on an unusual black-figure Droop cup of around 550-540 BC. It is attributed to the same painter as the cup in Naples, the Kallis Painter, although it seems earlier in date. Like the cup in Naples, the Droop cup is distinctive for depicting busts of figures, rather than the figures in their entirety.51 All six of the figures on the Droop cup are identified by name. On the cup in Naples, the mythical status of the female figures is suggested by the presence of Dionysos, who is identified by name. There is reason to believe that the busts on the Droop cup also represent mythological figures.52 The name Simylis recalls the name Sime, which is the name of a mythical nymph accompanying Dionysos on the Naples cup.53 Sime, in turn, appears to be the female mythological equivalent of the very popular silen name, Simos. The application of this name to silens makes sense, because the flat or snub nose is a traditional feature of the iconography of those creatures. Simylis is the female equivalent of Σιμύλος, ‘Simylos’—which is the diminutive of Σῖμος, ‘flat-nose’—

or ‘little flat-nose.’ As a name, Simylis evokes the idea of a girl satyr. Imaginary Prosopography of Silens and Nymphs As noted earlier, Frel acknowledged the overlap between the names of nymphs in vase-paintings of Dionysos and his mythical followers, on the one hand, and the names of women Frel identified as courtesans, on the other. He suggested that the courtesans adopted the names because the maenads, as he called them, were so obliging in satisfying the physical needs of the silens. In addition to the difficulties already noted with several assumptions underlying this interpretation, there is one further problem that Frel does not address. Implicit in his account, it seems, is an assumption that the names of nymphs familiar from Athenian vase-painting circulated more broadly, outside of art. Otherwise, how could they have been familiar and attractive to historical courtesans and prostitutes? How many of those women, bearing names, the theory goes, derived from the names of nymphs, regularly read the inscriptions on Athenian vases? Surely Athenian vase-inscriptions could not have been the sole source of inspiration for an entire city’s nomenclature of the night. There is a very good argument to be made, however, that the names of silens and nymphs, familiar from vase-painting, were invented by Athenian vasepaintings. Among the earliest representations of silens and nymphs in Athenian art is the François vase of around 570 BC.54 The three silens and four nymphs in the return of Hephaistos are identified by two collective names, Σιλενοι, Silenoi, ‘Silens,’ and Νυφαι, Numphai, ‘Nymphs.’ Kleitias does not tell us what the silens and nymphs individually called each other in private. The François vase contains many individual personal names of gods and heroes, but very few collective names (exceptions: Horai, ‘Seasons,’ Moirai, ‘Fates’). In the picture above the return of Hephaistos, for example, each centaur is given an individual, personal name. Centaurs and silens are physically similar horse-human hybrids who go around in packs, yet they are treated very differently on the François vase with respect to prosopography.

of the head of a silen. London, British Museum 1843.11-3.17 (B 332; ABV 333,27; Priam Painter; BAPD 301805): a fountain house with two spouts, three women filling hydriae, and, drawn on a much larger scale, Dionysos and Hermes flanking the facility. Frankfurt, Museum für Vor- und Fruhgeschichte R 28.13 (Euthymides; BAPD 200136): a woman at a fountain house, two naked women at a lather, and a silen sneaking up and reaching for the pudenda of one of the bathers. Although representations of naked girls at the lather are typically interpreted as contemporary courtesans, the silen makes one think of nymphs. 51  Athens, National Archaeological Museum 17873; ABV 203.2; BAPD 302610. 52  Callipolitis-Feytmans, CVA Athens 3, 49–50, pl. 39, interpreted the opposite side of the cup as a representation of the anodos or epiphany from the earth of the goddess Aphrodite, here identified by an epithet, Kallitime, in the presence of Hermes. The anodos is suggested not merely by the depiction of the figure half in, half out of the ground but, more importantly, by the presence of symbols of the chthonic underground, snakes. 53  The name ‘Sime’ appears to identify a woman on a fragmentary funerary plaque attributed to Exekias: Berlin, Antikensammlung F 1814 + 1823; ABV 146.22-23; BAPD 350493. In this context, it seems unlikely that she represents a mythological figure, but it also seems unlikely that she represents a courtesan. The name Simylis also recalls the name, Simyle, of one of the women picking fruit in an orchard on a black-figure hydria in Munich, Antikensammlungen 1702A (142 Jahn; ABV 334.6; A. D. Painter; BAPD 301819). One other name in this vase-painting recall the names of the girls in the vase-paintings of fountain houses: Ροδε, ‘Rode.’ On this vase, see S. Pfisterer-Haas, ‘Frauen im Obstgarten: Zur Deutung eines Motivs im Zusammenhang mit Grab und Heiligtum,’ in B. Schmaltz and M. Söldner (eds), Griechische Keramik in kulturellen Kontext: Akten des Internationalen Vasen-Symposions in Kiel vom 24.-28.9.2001 veranstaltet durch das Archäologische Institut der Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel, Münster 2003, 93–95.

One reason why the centaurs may have personal names on the vase is that they are individually enumerated in epic poetry. The names of the centaurs on the François vase correspond closely to those of the centaurs in the roughly contemporary Hesiodic Shield of Herakles (185187).55 There is no evidence to suggest that silens or nymphs were individually named in early Greek poetry. 54  Florence 4209; ABV 76.1; signed by Kleitias and Ergotimos; BAPD 300000. 55  For the relationship between the names of the centaurs on the François vase and those in poetry, see R. Wachter, ‘The Inscriptions on the François Vase,’ Museum Helveticum 48 (1991), 104–105.

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Chapter Three ‘So-and-so καλή’: A Reexamination The earliest literary reference to silens, like the François vase, refers to them, and their counterparts, the mountain nymphs, by their collective names—numphai and Seilēnoi (Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite 256-263). The earliest occurrence of the related name saturoi, ‘satyrs,’ refers to them and the oureioi numphai, ‘mountain nymphs,’ by the generic group names (Hesiod fr. 10a.17–18 MW). Possibly the earliest known personal name of a silen is simply the singular form of the collective name, Silenos.56 In short, there is no evidence that silens or nymphs possessed individual personal names within early Greek poetry. This is not entirely an argument from silence, for there are references to silens and nymphs in early Greek poetry, and they occur in poetic traditions that regularly enumerated individual personal names. Within those texts, however, silens and nymphs are referred to by collective names. If there were a pre-sixth-century tradition of referring to those creatures by name, it is very likely that traces of it would have survived. So where did the names of silens and nymphs come from?

refer to some external authority, to some poetic or nonpoetic narrative, or to common practice of naming girls or boys, but are a product of writing as commentary on vase-painting.59 The idea that some of the names in vase-painting are the inventions of vase-painters, with no intentional reference to any real person or traditional character, is at odds with popular ways of thinking about prosopography. Consider Henry Immerwahr’s typology of Athenian vase-inscriptions.60 Group three is defined, broadly and simply, as ‘names of mythical figures.’ Presumably, that means silens and nymphs no less than Odysseus and Achilleus. All of those figures belong to the imaginary world of myth, as opposed to the real world of the here and now, which corresponds to Immerwahr’s fourth group of vase-inscriptions: ‘names of humans, historical or fictitious (among them many Athenian names).’ Lumping all mythical figures into one group, however, obscures an important distinction. Odysseus may be mythical in the sense that no living person can remember having seen him in person, or in the sense that one might doubt the documentary value of pictures depicting him encountering one-eye giants. But his name and story preexist and inform pictorial representations of him in Athenian vase-painting. His name is not an ad hoc invention of a particular vasepainter, formulated to fit a pictorial image. The names of silens and nymphs are different: to the extent that those creatures are individually known by name, it is thanks to the inventiveness of literate vase-painters, who created the nomenclature to enhance the understanding of the imagery. Immerwahr’s typology takes no notice of names that have no corresponding life outside of vase-painting. The absence of this distinction feeds an impression that the labels on vases are always referential in the sense that their function is to make connections between representations and persons (historical or mythical) outside of the pictures. It is not necessarily always the case that the names of female figures represented in vase-painting refer to particular women outside of the pictorial world, such as historical courtesans, or borrow from a nomenclature of historical women, including prostitutes. It is possible that the names were invented and circulated entirely

Around the time of the François vase, silens and nymphs begin to appear in vase-painting bearing personal, often colorful, names. Among the very early extant examples is a fragmentary krater in New York with an extraordinary representation of the return of Hephaistos (Figure 7).57 On the pieces are inscriptions identifying the nymph Philoposia, ‘love to drink,’ and the silens Molpaios, ‘the tuneful one,’ and Oukalegon, ‘I don’t care.’ The names on the fragmentary krater are perfectly suited to the narrative context: ‘love to drink,’ ‘the tuneful one,’ and ‘I don’t care’ (i.e., whether Hephaistos ever returns to Olympos). And they are unattested as historical personal names. Dating not much later than the fragmentary krater is an aryballos signed by Nearchos.58 The three pleasure-seeking silens are amusingly named Terpekelos, Dophios, Phsοlas— ‘shaft-pleaser,’ ‘wanker,’ and ‘hard-on.’ Those names correspond in meaning to the single-minded activities of the silens, and are, not surprisingly, otherwise unattested as personal names in ancient Greek. The evidence suggests that the practice of assigning individual personal names to silens and nymphs was an innovation within vase-painting. The names do not 56  Berlin, Antikensammlung inv. 3151; merrythought cup; ABV 79; BAPD 300748. For the depicted story, its sources, and its iconography, see M. C. Miller, ‘Midas,’ LIMC VIII (1997), 846–851. 57  New York, Metropolitan Museum 1997.388, 56, and 493; BAPD 46026; M. B. Moore, ‘Hephaistos Goes Home: An Attic Black-Figured Column-Krater in the Metropolitan Museum,’ Metropolitan Museum Journal 45 (2010), 21–54. The earliest known silen to bear a personal name other than the generic Silenos is a silen on a fragment in a private collection attributed to Sophilos bearing the personal name [S]tratos: BAPD 9029557. If the name were simply ‘Stratos,’ and not one of the many compound personal names ending in -stratos, then its connotations of band, body, or herd once again point to the silens as a collective. Compare Pindar, Pythian 2.46: a stratos of centaurs. 58  New York, Metropolitan Museum 26.49; aryballos; ABV 83.4; BAPD 300770.

Noting that the names of a few silens and nymphs on the ‘Chalkidean’ vases attributed to the Inscription Painter recur on Athenian vases, R. Wachter, Non-Attic Greek Vase Inscriptions, Oxford 2001, 173, 270–273, 285, suggested that at least some of those names were ‘in a way’ traditional, and not inventions of vase-painters. As he himself has noted, however, the Inscription Painter learned vasepainting at both Athens and Corinth, before relocating to Euboia or Southern Italy, at just the time when Athenian vase-painters were developing a nomenclature of silens and nymphs. The Inscription Painter may have learned the names at Athens before taking up vasepainting elsewhere. 60  H. R. Immerwahr, ‘A Projected Corpus of Attic Vase Inscriptions,’ in Acta of the Fifth International Congress of Greek and Latin Epigraphy, Cambridge 1967,  Oxford 1971, 53–60. On Immerwahr’s typology, see chapter 1 in the present volume. 59 

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Figure 7. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art 1997.388, 56, and 493. © Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Image source: Art Resource, NY.

within Athenian vase-painting, and were meaningful in relation to the imagery in which they occur.

at Delphoi. Rhodopis the courtesan lives more like Rhodopis the nymph than most Greek girls.

To return briefly to Rhodopis. As a nymph, Rhodopis was free from the expectations of sexual subservience experienced by real Greek women, whether citizens or slaves. In a way, the figure of Rhodopis in Herodotos has achieved a somewhat similar sort of freedom. She has managed to achieve independence from slavery, and amass enough money to make a nice dedication

Kale-inscriptions and the Beautiful Work of Art As noted at the beginning of this chapter, for Robinson and Fluck, kalos or kale, as predicate adjective of a proper name, refers to the quality of a person, not a picture. The young man or woman, named in the inscription, is beautiful and desirable, not the pictorial 68

Chapter Three ‘So-and-so καλή’: A Reexamination representation with which the writing is associated. Beazley read most kale-inscriptions differently, as labels identifying particular figures represented on the vases. But he still seems to have associated the adjective with a person rather than a representation. In other words, on the hydria in Berlin (Figure 1), the tag-kale-inscription, Epilyke kale, and the pictorial representation of the nude girl to which the words are attached, both point or refer to a woman (whether real or imaginary) outside of the vase-painting. From the point of view of the picture, so to speak, the adjective kale is referential, not selfreferential.

the viewer to look again and consider the meaning of the writing. Any viewer familiar with Athenian vasepainting was familiar with the convention of referring to particular persons, whether represented or not, as kalos or kale. But chickens? A similar ambiguity surrounds an early classical Athenian head-kantharos. The vase takes the form of the face of a woman on one side and a man of African ethnicity on the other. A graffito inscription above the female figure says Eronassa eimi kale panu, ‘I am Eronassa very beautiful.’ The personal name has exactly the sort of erotic connotations referred to by Robinson and Fluck. But consider the graffito on the other side of the vase, referring to the male figure: Timullos kalos hos to[de t]o prosopon. One scholar read hos as hōs, and translated the inscription as ‘I am Timyllos, as handsome as this face.’64 Reading the inscription in that way, the represented face is explicitly brought into play with the adjective kalos, ‘handsome’: ‘this face’ means the molded and painted representation. But it also seems possible to read the inscription as ‘Timyllos the handsome whose face this is.’ In that case too, the emphasis of the writing is not on a person in the world but on the face represented by the vase.

Not every kalos- or kale-inscription, however, refers to something other than the artisanal work itself. On a late-sixth-century black-figure amphora in, it seems, a Frankfurt private collection, there is a representation of the goddess Athena (white-skinned female figure wearing an un-feminine helmet) driving a chariot. Beside her is the tag-kale-inscription, Athenaa [ka]le. In front of the chariot is the inscription, kalos ho kados, ‘the pot is beautiful.’61 The latter inscription unambiguously refers to the beauty or quality of the potter’s work, and this prompts one to wonder about the reference of the former text. Certainly, kale is not shorthand, in this case, for prostitute. But is the (sole) claim that the goddess herself is beautiful? Of course the goddess is beautiful—that would seem to go without saying. But what about the image of the goddess? Is it beautiful as well? Is it possible to read the inscription in relation to the representation of the goddess? It is well known that ancient writers did not always distinguish between deity and image of deity when they wrote. Pliny or Pausanias, for example, often spoke simply of the god, or goddess, when context clearly indicates that he was referring to a statue.62 So here too perhaps, Athenaa kale means ‘(this image of) Athena is beautiful.’

On a lovely pyxis in Athens (Figure 8), several figures attend to a heavily draped, veiled female figure seated stiffly in a fine chair. She has been draped with fillets and is being offered a phiale. Immediately above the veiled head of the seated figure is the inscription he[r](a)skale. The picture is usually interpreted as a depiction of the dressing of a bride. Beazley (ARV2 1614) and Immerwahr (CAVI) took the name, reasonably, to be in the nominative, ‘Hēras,’ on the strength of two other occurrences of the inscription, Hēras kalē, in early classical vase-painting. On the pyxis, perhaps it is the name of the beautiful bride.65 The spelling also corresponds, however, to the genitive form of the name of the goddess Hera: ‘the beautiful [blank] of Hera.’ What the implied noun modified by kale might be is suggested by the image: the heavily draped seated female figure is depicted on a carefully painted raised base. The raised area reserved for the chair is ornamented with an egg-

On the shoulder of a red-figure lekythos in Oxford, there is a representation of a large rooster and a small hen. To the left of rooster is the inscription kalos, and closer to the hen, kale.63 One thing is certain: in this case, kale is not shorthand, in any literal way, for courtesan or whore (do roosters ever pay for sex?). One can imagine that the inscriptions point to, call to mind, a beautiful roosterand-hen couple in a farmyard somewhere or another. But can we not read the inscriptions as a comment on the drawing or painting? As a statement that the images of rooster and hen are beautiful? Indeed, given the ubiquity and, dare I say, triviality of the referents, one wonders if the inscriptions are not meant to cause

K. Sismanidis in J. Vokotopoulou (ed.), Macedonians: The Northern Greeks. October 1, 1996-March 31, 1997, Florida International Museum—St. Petersburg [USA], Athens 1996, 180, no. 196. The vase is Thessalonike 8 (BAPD 21386). It was published in K. Romiopoulou, ‘᾿Αττικὸς ἀμφιπρόσωπος κάνθαρος ἀπὸ τάφο τῆς ἀρχαίας ᾿ Ακάνθου,’ in ΑΜΗΤΟΣ: Τιμητικὸς Τόμος γιὰ τὸν Καθηγητὴ Μανόλη Ἀνδρόνικο, vol. 2, Thessalonike 1987, 723–727. 65  Athens, National Archaeological Museum, Acropolis Collection 569; ARV2 890.172; Penthesilea Painter; BAPD 211735. See S. R. Roberts, The Attic Pyxis, Chicago, IL 1978, 84–85. For the other occurrences of this kale-inscription, see London, British Museum E 299 (ARV2 650.1; Nikon Painter; BAPD 207565), and Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum 2150 (ARV2 922.10; Wedding Painter; BAPD 211222). The personal name, Ἡρᾶς, is attested nine times at Athens, including this vase, according to LGPN 2. It is moderately well attested in Thasos and Asia Minor. 64 

61  Frankfurt, private (once Lucerne, Market); BAPD 194. The reading is after CAVI, but the letters can be read for the most part in the image on BAPD. See also Beazley in CB vol. 3, 1, and J. Frel, ‘Kaloi et les autres,’ Eirene 33 (1997), 20. 62  See, e.g., R. L. Gordon, ‘The Real and the Imaginary: Production and Religion in the Graeco-Roman World,’ Art History 2 (1979), 7–8. 63  Oxford, Ashmolean Museum 1932.133; ARV2 1644; BAPD 275172.

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Figure 8. Athens, National Archaeological Museum, Acropolis Collection 569. Photograph courtesy the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, © Hellenic Ministry of Culture/Archaeological Receipts Fund.

and-dart pattern, as if it were stone. In the conventional language of vase-painting, the image represents a beautiful statue of the goddess Hera. It is a kale [eikon] Heras, a ‘beautiful [image] of Hera.’66

itself. In other cases, the word is used as an adverb. On a cup in Florence, Kachrylion epoesen kalōs, ‘Kachrylion potted this very well!’ On a fragment from the Athenian Acropolis, Priapos epoiesen kalōs, ‘Priapos made this very well.’68 Of particular interest is a signature that appears

The artistry behind the painting and potting of vases is sometimes praised on the vases themselves. Perhaps the most beautiful example is the two-part inscription that plays across the one side and the other of a ‘LittleMaster’ cup: kalon eimi poterion, and Euch[ei]ros epoiesen eme, ‘I am a beautiful cup ... Eucheiros made me!’67 Here, the word kalos, so familiar from inscriptions praising the beauty of particular men—men who, often, seem not to have any ‘presence’ within the vase or its decoration—refers specifically to the cup, the potting,

Kachrylion: Florence 91456, red-figure cup with coral-red ground; ARV2 108.27; BAPD 200931. The inscription was recently discussed by M. Iozzo, ‘La kylix fiorentina di Chachrylion ed Eros Protogonos Phanes,’Antike Kunst 55 (2012), 57–58. As can be seen in the excellent photograph in that essay, the word kalos is close enough to the verb epoesen that someone might have taken the word kalos as an adverb modifying the verb. Priapos: Athens, National Archaeological Museum, Acropolis Collection 833, black-glaze olpe fragment; ABV 170.2; BAPD 301083. Similar inscriptions employing the word εὖ encourage reading kalos as an adverb: e.g., Civitavecchia, lip cup fragment (ABV 83; BAPD 300773: Νέαρχος [ἐποίε̄σε]ν εὖ, [Νέαρχος ἐπ]οίε̄σε[ν εὖ], ‘Nearchos made it well’). Cf. Torlonia, lip cup (ABV 161.1; BAPD 310536); Boston 61.1073, band cup (Para. 69-70.1; Neandros; BAPD 350341); Paris, Louvre F 54, lip-cup (ABV 146.2; BAPD 310406). See also Basel, Herbert Cahn collection HC 695 and 696 (BAPD 45604 and 45603), two red-figure cup fragments that probably come from the same cup; J. R. Mertens, ‘The Amasis Painter: Artist and Tradition,’ in Papers on the Amasis Painter and his World, Malibu, CA  1987, 173, figs. 4a and b. On the latter fragment are the letters [Α]ΜΑΣΙΣ. M. Schulz, Skythes und Pedieus-Maler: Zwei attische Vasenmaler im Werkstattzusammenhang, Inaugural Dissertation, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München 2001, 157, S6, reads all of the letters on the former fragment [KA]ΛO[Σ] [AMAΣI]Σ EΠOIE[ΣEN]. 68 

For the pictorial conventions surrounding the representation of a statue, see, e.g., G. Hedreen, Capturing Troy: The Narrative Functions of Landscape in Archaic and Early Classical Greek Art, Ann Arbor, MI, 2001, 25–27. The word eikon, ‘image, likeness,’ is well attested in literature in the second half of the fifth century BC: see LSJ. As a seated goddess, heavily draped, is how Hera is often depicted in the art of the classical period: see the east frieze of the Parthenon, or Bologna 283 (ARV2 1151.1; BAPD 215253), where her identity is certain due to the subject matter (return of Hephaistos). 67  Rhodes, Archaeological Museum 10527; ABV 162.1; BAPD 310544. 66 

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Figure 9. Munich, Antikensammlungen 2167. Photograph courtesy Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek München. Photographer: Christa Koppermann.

goes back to the earliest of all kale-inscriptions. On a pair of lip cups, the figural decoration consists solely of a representation—on each exterior face of the cups— of a profile bust of a female figure and, below the bust, the inscription Καλιστ[αν]θε καλε or Καλιστανθε καλε, ‘Kallistanthe kale’ (Figure 9).71 The name Kallistanthe is unique to this pair of vases in Athenian prosopography. The name appears to be compounded from two names that crop up in slightly later black-figure vasepaintings of nymphs as well as women getting water from a fountain house: Kallis and Anthe, ‘blossom.’ On this painted cup, the words are a significant part of the decoration, not a subsidiary feature. On other lips cups of this type, the writing is sometimes the sole decorative feature. Here, the writing appears directly beneath the figural decoration, encouraging the representation to be understood in relation to the writing, and vice versa. There is no other figure within the painted decoration with whom the painted girl can interact; her only relationship is to the writing on the cup. This seemingly apples-to-oranges comparison, iconic figure and linguistic sign, is ameliorated by one feature of the figure, the limitation of the representation to the upper part of the figure’s body. Some other lip cups bear representations of entire figures, sometimes multiple figures engaged in narrative situations. In those vase-paintings, it is possible to imagine the figures as operating within a virtual world distinct from the

to praise the painting of a vase: on a cup in Paris attributed to Skythes is written Epiluko[s egraph]sen kalos, ‘Epilykos painted [this] well.’ A second, even more fragmentary cup, closely related stylistically to the one in Paris, appears to have possessed a similar signature: . . .]s kalos eg[raph]sen.69 Of the greatest interest is a band cup in Boston depicting animal combats between lions, panthers, bulls, and deer, flanked by sirens. The little friezes are packed with inscriptions. On one side, for example, Neandro[s] epo[ie]sen eu ge, pardalis hedi na[i]chi nai me, seren hodi ge naichi, ‘Neandros made (me) very well; this panther yes indeed; this siren yes indeed.’70 It is difficult to know exactly how to punctuate the inscriptions, but the sense is that the expression ‘Neandros made very well’ is to be taken with ‘this panther, etc.’ In other words, the qualitative language refers to the painted image. Some kale-inscriptions, such as the one on the pyxis from the Acropolis (Figure 8), are productively understood as referring to a representation rather than to a real person. This pictorial conception conceivably Perhaps significantly, the cup has been attributed to Skythes. 69  Paris, Louvre G 10 (ARV2 83.3; BAPD 200665); Rome, Villa Giulia plus Toronto 923.13.11 (ARV2 83.8; BAPD 200669). The two signatures together have encouraged one to read egraphsen, rather than epoiesen, on the cup in Paris, and restore Epilykos as the name of the artist on the cup in the Villa Giulia: Epilyko]s kalos eg[raph]sen. I discuss the interpretation of those signatures in Hedreen 2015 (above, note 9), 257-261. 70  Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 61.1073; Para. 69, 70.1; BAPD 350341. For the inscriptions, see CVA Boston 2, p. 40 and CAVI.

71  Munich, Antikensammlungen 2167 (ABV 677; BAPD 306480); Basel, Antikenmuseum Lu 18 (BAPD 5551).

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Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings material reality of the glaze that gives the figures their pictorial form. In the case of the isolated bust, it takes more intellectual effort to separate the figure as an idea from the painting itself. The form of the representation invites reflection on art and artistry. The inscription

appears to encourage this interpretation. The inscription is not simply identificatory—it is evaluative. It does not identify the figure as someone in the world outside the realm of art so much as claim that the painted figure to which the words are wedded is beautiful.72

Compare Frontisi-Ducroux 1998 (above, note 4), 174, and see above, note 4.

72 

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Chapter Four

Inscribed Mythical Names on Attic Vase-Paintings from 570 to 530 BC: A Contextual Approach Burkhard Fehr Introduction

be added that only a minority of these pictorial scenes display one or more IMNs.

To date, there seem to be no generally accepted answers to the question of whether, and to what extent the inscriptions on painted ancient Greek vases1 differ fundamentally from other classes of inscriptions. The entirety of vaseinscriptions is therefore subdivided customarily into a large number of subgroups, and each of these is analyzed separately. Thus one may search—for example, in analogy to the traditional approach of style research—for common features of inscriptions originating from a particular vasepainter.2 One can also investigate kalos-, nonsense-, or ‘bubble’-inscriptions, as well as inscriptions which can be attributed to vases of the same regional style and/or were produced within the same period.3 Usually, the primary aim of such efforts is a critical edition. It is relatively rare to select a clearly outlined problem and pose this as the starting point from which a hypothesis may be developed.

In the following I shall concern myself with two questions. Around 570 BC, a sudden cumulation of IMNs beside the main figures (and sometimes secondary figures as well) can be observed in Attic black-figure vase-paintings,5 a phenomenon occurring only occasionally before. Is there a connection between this and the striking standardization of the human figures and their interactions/groupings depicted on these vases, a process that begins at the same time?6 Secondly, mythical figures in Attic black-figure vasepaintings were quite frequently provided with IMNs even when the deities or heroes shown were already easily recognizable for almost anyone because of their attributes (e.g. Zeus’s thunderbolt, Herakles’s lion skin), their opponents in battle (e.g. the bull-headed Minotaur), or unusual combinations of standardized pictorial elements.7 Thus the ‘baptism,’ so to speak, of a painted figure cannot have been the only function of an IMN. Was the viewer able to recognize additional connotations from the IMNs, beyond the possibility of identifying the primary characters?

Here, I will be restricting myself to a subgroup of this type: to the inscribed mythical names (in the following: IMN or IMNs) on Attic black-figure vase-paintings produced between c. 570 and 530 BC,4 whereby it should 1  Collections of numerous vase-inscriptions: H. Immerwahr, Attic Script: A Survey, Oxford 1990; R. Wachter, Non-Attic Greek Vase Inscriptions, Oxford 2001. Electronic databases of vase-inscriptions: Corpus of Attic Vase Inscriptions (= CAVI: http://www.unc.edu/-hri/ inscriptions/pdf); Attic Vase Inscriptions, which will update CAVI (= AVI: http://pages.unibas.ch/avi/home.html). Overviews of vaseinscriptions in general: A. Snodgrass, ‘The Uses of Writing on Early Greek Painted Pottery,’ in N. K. Rutter and B. Sparkes (eds), Word and Image in Ancient Greece, Oxford 2000, 22-34; J. Boardman, ‘Reading Greek Vases?’ Oxford Journal of Archaeology 22 (2003), 109-114; R. Osborne and A. Pappas, ‘Writing on Archaic Greek Pottery,’ in Z. Newby and R. Leader-Newby (eds), Art and Inscriptions in the Ancient World, Cambridge 2006, 131-155; cf. the articles collected in Mètis 13 (1998), 5-189, and J. H. Oakley, ‘State of the Discipline: Greek Vasepainting,’ American Journal of Archaeology 113 (2009), 609-611. I am grateful to Lucinda Rennison for her translation of my German text. 2  See e.g. H. Mommsen, ‘Beobachtungen zu den Exekias-Signaturen,’ Mètis 13 (1998), 39-55. 3  For types of inscriptions, cf., among other introductions, the 2007 general overview in K. E. Clifford, Lingering Words (http://diginole.lib. fsu.edu/etd/3580). 4  On these vases, see Boardman, ABFV, 31-102; H. A. G. Brijder, Siana Cups I-III, 3 vols., Amsterdam 1983/1991/2000; J. Kluiver, ‘Early Tyrrhenian: Prometheus Painter, Timiades Painter, Goltyr Painter,’ BABesch [Bulletin Antieke Beschaving: Annual Papers on Mediterranean Archaeology] 70 (1995), 55-103; idem, The Tyrrhenian Group of BlackFigure Vases: From the Athenian Kerameikos to the Tombs of South Etruria, Amsterdam 2003; T. Mannack, Griechische Vasenmalerei: Eine Einführung, Darmstadt 2002, 104-113.

Regarding methodology: bearing in mind the current state of research, I can see little promise in an hermeneutic approach, i.e. explanation of the IMNs ‘from within themselves.’ Instead, I will attempt to reconstruct an iconographical, communicative, and sociopolitical context, to which the connection between IMNs and standardized figures can be attributed and which permits conclusions about the 5  The most prominent and earliest example for this process is the krater by Kleitias and Ergotimos (Florence, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 4209, ABV 76.1; see photographs in M. Iozzo et al. [eds], The François Vase: New Perspectives [Papers of the International Symposium, Villa Spelman, Florence 23-24 May, 2003], Kilchberg/Zurich 2013). On the inscriptions on this vase, see R. Wachter, ‘The Inscriptions on the François-Vase,’ Museum Helveticum 48 (1991), 86-113. 6  Animal friezes and ornament were dislodged from the key zones of vase decoration by these figurative pictorial scenes; see Boardman, ABFV, 31. 7  E.g. the ransom of Hektor (LIMC I, 148-149, nos. 645-647, 650 s.v. Achilleus; Fehr, Gelage, 57-59; L. Giuliani, Bild und Mythos: Geschichte der Bilderzählung in der griechischen Kunst, Munich 2003, 168-186). See also below, note 64.

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Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings

Figure 1. Munich, Antikensammlungen 2243. After CVA Munich (11), pl. 5.1.

function of these inscriptions as a medium at the same time. In this, it will prove impossible to avoid some digressionary explanation, although I shall restrict myself to whatever is strictly necessary. Furthermore, I am well aware of the problems inherent in the fact that my chosen approach can make use of traditional, tested methods only to a limited degree.

between these two media.10 Firstly, the usage and viewing of vases decorated with mythical scenes at symposia or festivals often went hand in hand with the reception of oral recitations of mythical events as presented in poetry. Secondly, the characterization of prominent deities in Attic and non-Attic vase-paintings is oriented on Homer’s panhellenic world of the gods, ignoring as a rule the specifics of local cult manifestations of these deities.

The extent to which my findings can be transferred to vases from non-Attic production centers and other periods is difficult to assess at present. However, I believe that a contextual starting point could lead to new insights or at least to more advanced hypotheses there, as well.

The assumption up for discussion here—that the IMNs in vase-paintings had an intermedia ‘bridging function’—is suggested already by specific individual observations. Thus, for example, on some Attic vases of the period examined here, we find long rows of figures, all representing the same figure type (Figure 1); each of these figures is nevertheless individualized by means of an IMN.11 This suggests a comparison of such

The Re-Definition of the Mythical Individual: The IMN as a ‘Bridge’ between the Media of ‘VasePainting’ and ‘Mythical Poetry’ Visually, IMNs are closely linked to the figures to which they belong, as they generally start from them or follow their contours.8 In this respect, they are components of the overall composition of the vase-painting. On the other hand, the letters of which they are composed are assigned to sounds spoken, that is, they are elements of a verbal code. In the following, I argue the hypothesis that, as a result of this ambivalence, the IMNs could function as a ‘bridge’ between the pictorial medium ‘vase-painting’ and the linguistic medium, ‘mythical poetry.’

investigated does not match the text assumed as its model in a number of essential points. The frequently made suggestion that there must have been a variation of this text that has not survived, on which the image is based, is regarded quite correctly as a rather unconvincing solution, a mere stopgap. In addition, in the period under investigation here there were apparently no generally accessible, written texts of poetic works with which an archaic vase-painter could have compared his designs of mythical scenes. In all probability, the mythical events to which the vase-paintings refer were stored in the memories of the vase-painters and of the viewers of their works as rather vague and simplified recollections of publicly recited poetic works (Giuliani 2003 [above, note 7], 289-290), or as the common substance of several poetic versions of one and the same story. 10  Cf. also the lyre which Athena—named as such by an IMN—carries in her hand on the cup by Glaukytes and Archikles (my Figure 1, Munich, Antikensammlungen 2243; ABV 163.2; see L. Rebillard, ‘La coupe d’Archiclès et Glaucytès: L’ècrit dans l’image,’ Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique 116 [1992], 512, fig. 5). This musical instrument is not one of the goddess’ customary attributes, nor does it display any objective reference to the struggle between Theseus and the Minotaur taking place beside her. It seems it was intended to signalize to the viewer that this same struggle would be sung about by the poets later (cf. also the singing Muses on the krater by Kleitias). 11  See e.g. Iozzo et al. 2013 (above, note 5), pls. 10-12, 16-18 (krater by Kleitias and Ergotimos), and Rebillard 1992 (above, note 10) on the cup by Glaukytes and Archikles (my Figure 1).

Two phenomena in particular suggest the existence of a (in most cases quietly assumed) relationship on a general level9 8  Cf. F. Lissarague, ‘Les belles lettres: Écriture et ornament sur une oinochoé de Charinos,’ Mètis 13 (1998), 123-133; Osborne and Pappas 2006 (above, note 1). 9  An unambiguous reference can be shown only rarely between a mythical scene on an ancient Greek vase and any poetic text handed down to us (one possible exception: the written names of the Muses on the krater by Kleitias, which were oriented apparently on a specific textual original, see Giuliani 2003 [above, note 7], 150-151). Frequent attempts have been made, certainly, but this ‘illustrative’ starting point has met with increasing skepticism recently, as in most cases the image

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Chapter Four Inscribed Mythical Names on Attic Vase-Paintings from 570 to 530 BC series of IMNs with the well-known, epic catalogues of names.12 In addition, in the image fields of a Corinthian monument presumably made in the first half of the sixth century, the no longer surviving chest of Kypselos, mythical personalities were depicted: in some of these image fields, their names could be learned from IMNs beside the figures; in others from written hexameter verses, in which the events represented were recounted in brief.13 Thus, as an IMN could take the place of poetry (and vice versa) here, it seems obvious to assume an affinity between the two.

or fallen, seated men and women, discus throwers, riders). In turn, they were combined to produce equally standardized schemata of interaction, e.g. couples of different gender or the same sex (Figure 2), duels between hoplites (Figure 5), hunting parties, fighting boxers or wrestlers, competing runners, groups of dancers and symposiasts (Figure 3). These standardized figures and schemata of interaction could, whether as individuals or as a group, exemplify comprehensive, positive as well as negative, patterns of behavior, both individual and collective, by means of their specific activities.17 Often, the action of a standardized figure on a vase-painting or the interaction of several figures of this kind cannot be related to any specific location or to a specific moment in time within a continual process. As the vase-painter was concerned first and foremost with that exemplifying function, the spatial-temporal aspect was secondary for him, provided that he paid it any attention at all.18

How should we imagine the function of the IMNs as a ‘bridge’ between media? It seems wise when elucidating this question to start out from the fact, mentioned at the beginning, that a cumulation of IMNs took place approximately simultaneously with the establishing of a standardized pictorial language14 on Attic black-figure vases (c. 570 BC). Between c. 570 and 530, Attic vase-painting—apart from traditional ornaments and animal friezes—was essentially based on a surveyable repertoire of elements, which were always reproduced in the same way: the figures’ gestures and postures/manners of movement15 (in ancient Greek: schemata); features to differentiate age and sex; clothing, hair style, weapons; attributes of important deities and heroes; cult objects, furniture, tools for work, musical instruments; domesticated and wild animal species; fabulous creatures of myth.

The polis of Athens and its subunit, the oikos,19 formed the referential framework for all these images. The public sphere of the polis is embodied by the omnipresent figures of the so-called onlookers (Figures 2–4), who—as witnesses, so to speak—observe an everyday or mythical occurrence depicted at the center

Positive patterns of behavior: e.g. energy, prudence, shame, friendship, the enjoyment of happiness, generosity/gratitude, regulated competition, ordered cooperation among equalranking participants; see Fehr 1996 and 2011 (above, notes 14 and 15, respectively), and idem, ‘What Has Dionysos to Do with the Symposion?’ Pallas 61 (2003), 23-37. Negative patterns of behavior, e.g. hybris or greed, appear only occasionally in the vase-paintings examined here and are then exemplified, as a rule, via the actions of mythical figures (Figure 7); see discussion below. Whether a standard figure exemplifies a positive or a negative pattern of behavior through his/her actions can be concluded only from the thematic context in each case. Thus, for example, in a battle scene (see generally S. Muth, Gewalt im Bild: Das Phänomen der medialen Gewalt im Athen des 6. und 5. Jahrhunderts v. Chr., Berlin 2008, 142-159) the standard figure of the hoplite taking long purposeful strides stands for the behavioral pattern ‘decisiveness and energy of the brave man’; if the same figure is being used, by contrast, to portray the sacrileges of the Locrian Aias (LIMC I, 339-340, nos. 16-33a, s.v. Aias II) or Neoptolemos (LIMC VII, 516-520, nos. 87, 115, 116, 135-138, s.v. Priamos), it points to ‘outrageous hybris.’ These two patterns of behavior are based on one and the same factual, ethically neutral foundation, i.e. quick and purposeful action (visualized by that particular standard figure); their extreme opposition merely results from the moral evaluation of the motive behind them in each separate case. 18  On these problems in general, see e.g. W. Raeck, ‘Zur Erzählweise archaischer und klassischer Mythenbilder,’ Jahrbuch des Deutschen Archäologischen Instituts 99 (1984), 1-25; M. D. Stansbury-O’Donnell, Pictorial Narrative in Ancient Greek Art, Cambridge 1999; idem, Looking at Greek Art, Cambridge 2011, 63-79; Giuliani 2003 (above, note 7); B. Fehr, ‘Bilderzählung und Handlungsmuster: Athena, Marsyas, der Aulos und die jungen Leute von Athen,’ Hefte des Archäologischen Seminars der Universität Bern 5 [= Komplexe Bilder, ed. M. Seifert] (2008), 129-150. 19  On the oikos in general, see U. Walter, An der Polis teilhaben: Bürgerstaat und Zugehörigkeit im archaischen Griechenland [Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, Einzelschriften 82], Mainz (1993), 45-88; M. Seifert, Dazugehören: Kinder in Kulten und Festen von Oikos und Phratrie. Bildanalysen zu attischen Sozialisationsstufen des 6. bis 4. Jahrhunderts v. Chr., Stuttgart 2011, 262-264 (with further references). 17 

Standardized human figures16 (Figures 2–5) were created through combinations of such elements (e.g. hoplites taking up arms, standing, striding, cowering, collapsing For the importance of long lists of names in epic poetry, cf. Iliad 2.484-493: before reciting the names of the numerous leaders commanding the ships of the Achaeans, the poet appeals to the Muses for help. 13  R. Splitter, Die ‘Kypseloslade’ in Olympia: Form, Funktion und Bildschmuck, Mainz 2000. 14  The following arguments provide merely a provisional outline, which cannot replace detailed analysis (for the methodological approach, see B. Fehr, ‘Kouroi e korai: Formule e tipi dell’arte arcaica come espressione di valori,’ in S. Settis [ed.], I Greci: Storia, cultura, arte e società, vol. 2: Una storia greca I: Formazione, Turin 1996, 785-789 and passim; cf. Boardman, ABFV, 198-200). Maybe this pictorial language is rooted in an old tradition, cf. N. Himmelmann-Wildschütz, Bemerkungen zur geometrischen Plastik, Berlin 1964, on ‘hieroglyphic’ elements in Greek Geometric art. 15  On this topic, see B. Fehr, Bewegungsweisen und Verhaltensideale: Physiognomische Deutungsmöglichkeiten der Bewegungsdarstellung an griechischen Statuen des 5. und 4. Jahrhunderts v. Chr., Bad Bramstedt 1979; idem, ‘Ponos and the Pleasure of Rest: Some Thoughts on Body Language in Ancient Greek Art and Life,’ in D. Yatromanolakis (ed.), An Archaeology of Representations: Ancient Greek Vase-Painting and Contemporary Methodologies, Athens 2009, 129-132; idem, Becoming Good Democrats and Wives: Civic Education and Female Socialization on the Parthenon Frieze (= HEPHAISTOS [Kritische Zeitschrift zur Theorie und Praxis der Archäologie und angrenzender Wissenschaften], Sonderband), Zurich/Berlin 2011, 9-12. 16  Here, the expression ‘standardized’ refers to the use of a specific scheme of representation for individual figures or interactions, which recurs in many images. There is a certain latitude for variation, but the scheme can always be recognized in each individual case. 12 

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Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings

Figure 2. Munich, Antikensammlungen 1449. After CVA Munich (7), pl. 328.4.

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Chapter Four Inscribed Mythical Names on Attic Vase-Paintings from 570 to 530 BC

Figure 3. Taranto, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 110339. After EAA III, 1130, fig. 1446.

Figure 4. Munich, Antikensammlungen 7739. After H. A. G. Brijder, Siana Cups II, Amsterdam 1991, pl. 133b (no. 407).

of the painting.20 The male onlookers represent Athenian citizens, the female ones the women of their oikoi. The male onlookers wear a long chiton and a himation, or they are naked except for a small cloak (chlamys) over their shoulders. As a rule they hold a lance, an attribute indicating that, in case of war, they will fight for their

polis in the phalanx. Their often very lively gestures indicate a noticeable emotional involvement. They form a kind of controlling social instance, competently evaluating what they are seeing. At the same time, their very presence underlines the importance of the action observed by them for the whole polis. The fact that we encounter them not only as framing figures but also standing alone or in groups, with no narrative context,21 shows that they were to be regarded as

B. Kaeser, ‘Zuschauerfiguren,’ in K. Vierneisel and B. Kaeser (eds), Kunst der Schale, Kultur des Trinkens (catalogue of an exhibition in the Staatliche Antikensammlung und Glyptothek Munich in 1990), Munich 1990. Cf. Fehr 1996 (above, note 14), 829-833; Fehr 2009 (above, note 15), 132-133.

20 

21 

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Fehr 1996 (above, note 14), 830, figs. 42-44.

Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings

Figure 5. Taranto, Museo Archeologico Nazionale I.G. 4340. After H. A. G. Brijder, Siana Cups I, Amsterdam 1983, pl. 9b.

crucial by the viewers of such images. If an event was represented without this kind of onlookers, the viewer of the vase-painting in question was clearly called upon to scrutinize the action depicted with the same intensity as these, as it were, as their representative.

impression of an ordered world holding on firmly to fixed rules of behavior as well as being oriented by religious and ethical values, although not free of conflict by any means. Within this series of vase-paintings there is a significant number of mythical scenes (Figures 1, 6, 7, 10). Some of them display no IMNs, but they are conceived in such a way25 that the ancient viewer could deduce the names of the protagonists without these aids to identification; the ancient viewer would also have been able to establish obvious references between the action depicted in the vase-painting and a mythical narrative. Nonetheless, as mentioned above, the painters also added—seemingly— superfluous IMNs to vase-paintings of this type in some cases. I shall return to this later. However, it is not rare either for the IMN to be the sole means enabling the viewer to recognize a specific mythical figure in a standardized figure in a vase-painting.26

Considered like this, the black-figure pictorial world of the period under investigation presents itself as a political iconography—22 a conclusion also confirmed by a vase-painting in which the inscribed names of a male and two female onlookers watching the struggle between the Attic hero Theseus and the Minotaur contain the political concepts of asty, nomos and dike.23 This iconography thematizes the perception of the public sphere by those who, in their entirety, form the public of the polis themselves.24 It conveys the Cf. Kreuzer’s (B. Kreuzer, ‘Zurück in die Zukunft? ‘Homerische’ Werte und ‘solonische’ Programmatik auf dem Klitiaskrater in Florenz,’ Jahreshefte des Österreichischen Archäologischen Instituts 74 [2005], 175-224; B. Kreuzer, ‘Myth as Case Study and the Hero as Exemplum,’ in Iozzo et al. 2013 [above, note 5], 106-117) and R. von den Hoff ’s political interpretations of the scenes painted on the krater by Kleitias and Ergotimos (‘Theseus, the François Vase, and Athens in the Sixth Century B.C.,’ in Iozzo et al. 2013 [above, note 5], 131-152). 23  Hydria Leiden, Rijksmuseum PC 47; ABV 104.126; CVA Leiden 1-2, pl. 4 (NL 98). See Kreuzer 2013 (above, note 22), 110-113; von den Hoff 2013 (above, note 22), 140-142. 24  Not least, its origin is likely to have been the politicization of the Athenian citizens and the emergence of a collective polis mentality as a consequence of the reforms made by Solon (see, for instance, M. Stahl, Aristokraten und Tyrannen im archaischen Athen, Stuttgart 1987, 190-200; Walter 1993 [above, note 19], 192-201). This process also continued during the middle third of the sixth century, the period in which the vases investigated here were created. It will scarcely have been hampered, indeed is far more likely to have been promoted by the tyranny of Peisistratos, who reigned during this same period. For he was not an authoritarian ruler (Herodotos 1.59: ‘Not having disturbed the existing magistrates nor changed the ancient laws he administered the state under that constitution of things which was already established, ordering it fairly and well;’ cf. Aristotle, 22 

As all these depictions of mythical figures were based on the repertoire of standardized figures and schemata of interaction described above, they could, likewise, exemplify patterns of behavior that referenced the polis and its system of values. Without doubt, this exemplification gained added weight from the fame and popularity of such heroes or deities. It is also noticeable that negatively-charged patterns of behavior such Constitution of the Athenians 16: ‘His administration was temperate … and more like constitutional government than tyranny’). By contrast, irrespective of his aristocratic origin, he represented the interests of the people, whereas he stripped the aristocracy of its power to a large extent (see O. Murray, Early Greece, Brighton 1980, 132-152). 25  See discussion above. 26  See generally Giuliani 2003 (above, note 7), 118-138.

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Chapter Four Inscribed Mythical Names on Attic Vase-Paintings from 570 to 530 BC

Figure 6. Private collection. After an exhibition catalogue of the Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe in Hamburg, ed. W. Hornbostel; Kunst der Antike: Schätze aus norddeutschem Privatbesitz, Hamburg 1977, 252, fig. 233.

as hybris (Figure 7), for example, were only visualized through mythical individuals and not anonymous figures.27 This may have been determined by the fact that, in their entirety, the vases under examination

here were intended to trigger the impression of an intact social order, so that the painted figures’ actions corresponding to the norm (Figures 6, 10) had to be presented as the rule, and behavior opposing the norm as an exception, and therefore only as the characteristic of a specific individual with a bad reputation. Only figures of mythology, traditionally used as paradigms, were available for this purpose.

27  E.g. Aias and Kassandra (Figure 7) as well as Neoptolemos and Priamos/Astyanax (see above, note 17); Eriphyle (LIMC I s.v. Amphiaraos, 694-695); ransom of Hektor (see above, note 7, and below, note 64).

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Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings

Figure 7. Berlin, Antikensammlung F 1698. After E. Gerhard, Etruskische und campanische Vasenbilder, Berlin 1843, pl. 22.

Now let us return to the question of the function of the IMN as a ‘bridge’ between the visual medium of vasepainting and the verbal medium of mythical poetry. One might assume that competition between the two media lay behind the vase-paintings’ reference— created by means of the IMNs—to famous heroes and deities.28 This would mean that the vase-painters had suggested to the viewer a comparison with the popular and much-admired works of the poets, so hoping to attract additional attention and esteem for their own products.

control and moral evaluation. Here, the traditions of the early Greek world of aristocracy were in the foreground. By contrast, the vases present the actions of such a mythical, prominent figure to us as an exemplary and commendable realization, or an outrageous defiance of the norms and values of the polis, which everyone had to use as a guideline for his own actions. The traditional poetic presentation of mythical figures as individuals acting in a self-referential way now comes up against a new construction of the hero as a socially integrated (or asocial) being.30

This assumption cannot be ruled out, by any means, but it seems likely that a different aspect of the intermedia ‘bridge’ represented by the IMNs was more important: by linking the IMNs to the patterns of behavior exemplified by the standardized figures, the mythical personalities sung about by the poets were defined in a new way.29 In verse, the behavior of a hero or a deity was recounted traditionally as an individual achievement of unique, spectacular deeds, which largely escaped social

Who was responsible for this new definition, and what was the intention behind it? In face of the importance of the messages of these images and their relevance to the whole of the polis, it seems unlikely that spontaneous ideas on the part of the Athenian vase-painters provide sufficient explanation. The reference point for the 30  Although a complete break with the poetic tradition does not come about: there, the hero was depicted as a complex, often dazzling and self-contradictory figure. The political iconography described here, on the other hand, takes up specific aspects relevant to the ethics of the polis from this traditional substance and presents them, with certain modifications, as praiseworthy or disreputable patterns of behavior.

Giuliani 2003 [above, note 7], 114. Cf. Kreuzer 2013 (above, note 22) and von den Hoff 2013 (above, note 22). 28  29 

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Chapter Four Inscribed Mythical Names on Attic Vase-Paintings from 570 to 530 BC following discussion of this problem will be an aspect not yet considered, i.e. that the IMNs were not only a ‘bridge’ between the two media but also functioned as a medium themselves.

already been implemented in the seventh century.35 Every healthy citizen had to join the phalanx, as long as he could afford the money for the equipment and weapons of a hoplite,36 the upper social class as well as a large part of the middle class. They all needed to go personally, as clients, to the workshops of the helmetand armor-smiths, as well as the shield-makers, for these defensive weapons could not be produced in series—they had to fit the body size and proportions of their future wearers.37 The smith who made the weapons, therefore, had to measure each individual customer. More even than on the battlefield, perhaps in this context the socially leveling impact of the phalanx became clear to all those who spent time in the workshop, observing this activity: those of high rank were measured in the same way as the common citizens. All of them stood face to face and rather close to the master craftsman, making it difficult for the members of the noble elite to maintain the emotional distance that corresponded to their status. Day after day, therefore, the weapon-smith could, like all the others present in his workshop, perceive his customers—regardless of their class differences—as ‘equals’ in regard to their

Validity and Reliability: The Medium ‘IMN’ as a Message Addressed to the Athenian Public Athenian Workshops as ‘Forums’ for the Citizens The question of the message inherent in the medium ‘IMN’31 can only be answered if it is elucidated in connection with the social and political context in which the carriers of these inscriptions, the painted vases, were produced and perceived. First of all, I would like to point to a phenomenon whose significance has been given insufficient appreciation to date. In Homer and Hesiod, the smithy is a muchfrequented place, but it is mainly the homeless poor who seek to warm themselves there when it is cold outside.32 By contrast, since the second half of the sixth century, in a large number of vase-paintings one sees citizens, marked as such by their himatia, who have come together in the smithy and other workshops, where they are communicating with craftsmen of various fields, including potters.33 From the fourth century onwards, we have written evidence that such places of work were public places where not only customers came together but also citizens who were passing their spare time there in conversation with other citizens—as we know Sokrates did in the cobbler Simon’s workshop, or at the corselet maker Pistias’s shop.34 They had become important ‘forums’ for the formation of public opinion, comparable to the chatrooms of electronic communication, apart from the fact that those participating in the latter usually remain anonymous and do not meet each other in person.

J. P. Franz, Krieger, Bauern, Bürger: Untersuchungen zu den Hopliten der archaischen und klassischen Zeit, Frankfurt 2002, and recently M. Wecowski, The Rise of the Greek Aristocratic Banquet, Oxford 2014, 330334 (for further bibliographic references). 36  In all probability, the evolution of the phalanx also advanced general economic development in a decisive way. The arming of tens of thousands of hoplites must have resulted not only in an enormous growth in the turnover of trade with metals and other raw materials (incl. wood and leather) but also in a huge increase in commissions for weapon makers (and probably also for the workshops that provided them with semi-manufactured goods). Parallel to this there was a rapid rise in the production of the goods necessary for a refined lifestyle. One clear indication of this, among other things, was the representation of symposia on klinai (see, for example, Fehr, Gelage, 26-38; P. Schmitt Pantel, La cité au banquet: Histoire des repas publics dans les cités grecques, Rome 1992, 17-31. Generally: O. Murray (ed.), Sympotica: A Symposium on the Symposion, ed. with addenda, Oxford 1994; P. Schmitt Pantel and F. Lissarrague, ‘Le banquet en Grèce,’ in Thesaurus Cultus et Rituum Antiquorum II [2004], 218-250; further references in B. Fehr, ‘Sociohistorical Approaches,’ in C. Marconi [ed.], The Oxford Handbook of Greek and Roman Art and Architecture, Oxford, forthcoming, 592-594), on vase-paintings after the turn of the seventh and sixth centuries BC, as well as the Corinthian aryballoi (J. D. Beazley, ‘Aryballoi,’ Papers of the British School at Rome 29 [1931-1932], 187-215; G. Schwarz, ‘Addenda zu Beazley’s ‘Aryballoi,’’ Jahreshefte des Österreichischen Archäologischen Instituts 54 [1983], 27-32) made to store perfumed oils and produced en masse at the same time. The fact that at that time people were turning increasingly to a life of pleasure, to the habrosyne, is evidenced additionally through literary sources (R. Bernhardt, Luxuskritik und Aufwandsbeschränkungen in der griechischen Welt [= Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, Einzelschriften 168]), Stuttgart 2003). This economic upswing is also likely to have benefited much of the middle class, who were thus placed in a position to afford the equipment of the hoplite as well as taking part in symposia on klinai. (Here, Attic drinking bowls in particular are informative: on their outsides symposia on klinai and hoplite battles are positioned opposite to one another [see e.g. Brijder 1983 (above, note 4), vol. 1, pl. 9, no. 8; 23, no. 114]; cf. also Corinthian vases with representations of symposia where all participants are reproduced in exactly the same way, with hoplite weaponry visible above the klinai; see Fehr, Gelage, 29; Schmitt-Pantel 1992 [above, this note], 18, 565, nos. 3, 4, 6). 37  P. C. Bol, Antike Bronzetechnik: Kunst und Handwerk antiker Erzbildner, Munich 1985, 49. 35 

Our sources leave too many questions open, meaning that we cannot explain this development and delineate it in precise detail. Nonetheless, I would like to point out one factor that could have played a part in it: the establishment of the heavily armed phalanx, which had 31  See the seminal book of McLuhan (M. McLuhan, Understanding Media: The Extension of Man, New York, NY 1964). 32  Homer, Odyssey 18.328; Hesiod, Works and Days 492-495. See F. Eckstein, Archaeologia Homerica. Die Denkmäler und das frühgriechische Epos/ Handwerk, Teil 1: Die Aussagen des frühgriechischen Epos, Göttingen 1974, 27-28; D. Metzler, ‘Eine attische Kleinmeisterschale mit Töpferszenen in Karlsruhe,’ Archäologischer Anzeiger (1969), 138-152, 150-151. 33  See generally J. Ziomecki, Les représentations d’artisans sur les vases antiques, Warsaw 1975. 34  Diogenes Laertius, Vitae philosophorum 2.13.122 (Sokrates and Simon); Xenophon, Memorabilia 3.10.9-15 (Sokrates and Pistias); Lysias, Orationes 24. 20; Isokrates, Orationes 7.15. See Metzler 1969 (above, note 32), 150-151; H. A. Thompson and R. E. Wycherley, The Agora of Athens (vol. 14): The Athenian Agora, Athens/Princeton, NJ 1972, 173-174.

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Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings

Figure 8. Karlsruhe, Badisches Landesmuseum 67/90. After CVA Karlsruhe (3), pl. 24.3.

status as citizens. This included his own person,38 provided that he himself was a citizen and fought for his city as a hoplite. All those waiting in the workshop or merely looking in from curiosity could pass the time with discussions about themes of general interest.

communication with a potter throwing just such a cup on a potter’s wheel.39 At least in Athens as from the middle third of the sixth century, considerably more citizens than before must have gathered in the workshops in which the painted vases were produced. For ceramic production increased greatly as from this time, and this applies above all to drinking cups decorated with painted images.40 The large number of these, as well as the fact that, due to their relatively low price,41 they must have been affordable for less prosperous citizens, suggests that they were not bought and used only by members of a social elite for their exclusive symposia.42 As in the case of the weaponmakers, therefore, it is likely that a considerable number of citizens of differing status would have gathered in Athenian pottery workshops.

What was it like in other workshops? On an Attic blackfigure drinking cup made c. 540 BC (Figure 8) one can see an onlooker, i.e. a citizen, who is gesticulating in In the first half of the sixth century, clues appear for the first time that economically successful craftsmen were not only proud of their skills, but also laid claim to social recognition. One piece of evidence of this, for example, is the dedication inscription by the doctor Sombrotidas (at that time a profession attributed to the artisanal sector) on a Sicilian Kouros made in c. 570 BC (G. M. A. Richter, Kouroi: Archaic Greek Youths, third ed., London 1970, no. 134), a type of statue that originally embodied the traditional values of the aristocratic elite (see e.g. W. Martini, Die archaische Plastik der Griechen, Darmstadt 1990, 69-77, 112-131; H. Kyrieleis, Der große Kuros von Samos. Mit Beiträgen von Hermann J. Kienast und Günter Neumann [= DAI, Samos 10], Bonn 1996; R. Neer, The Emergence of the Classical Style in Greek Sculpture, London 2010, 21-40; but cf. already V. Zinserling, Zum Bedeutungsgehalt des archaischen Kuros, Prag 1975). The same applies to the well-known inscription on the base of a Kouros, dated to soon after 600 BC, according to which a certain Euthykartides is said to have made and dedicated this monument (by which means he places himself in the same rank as dedicators of high social status), see Richter 1970 (above, this note), no. 16. One can interpret in a similar way the fact that vase potters and painters sometimes placed their signatures so that their name was in close proximity to an IMN attributed to a prominent hero, that is, to an aristocrat of the mythical era; see, for instance, the krater by Kleitias and Ergotimos (the so-called François vase, Florence, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 4209 [above, note 11, pl. 31]); and the famous fragmentary dinos by Sophilos representing the funeral games in honor of Patroklos—Athens, National Archaeological Museum 15499, investigated in chapter 10 in the present volume.

38 

There they would have had the opportunity to exchange opinions in a public place. Such conversations Metzler 1969 (above, note 32). Collected by Brijder 1983-2000 (above, note 4). On prices of painted vases (earliest epigraphical evidence: c. 500 BC), see I. Scheibler, Griechische Töpferkunst: Herstellung, Handel und Gebrauch der antiken Tongefäße, Munich 1983, 144-150; M. Vickers and D. Gill, Artful Crafts: Ancient Greek Silverware and Pottery, Oxford 1996, 85-86. 42  The customary, exclusive association in archaeology of these vessels to a vaguely defined ‘aristocratic elite’ signifies an inadmissible simplification, at least, of a very much more complex state of affairs: see D. Yatromanolakis, ‘Symposia, Noses, Prosôpa: A Kylix in the Company of Banqueters on the Ground,’ in D. Yatromanolakis (ed.), An Archaeology of Representations: Ancient Greek Vase-Painting and Contemporary Methodologies, Athens 2009, 414-424. 39  40  41 

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Chapter Four Inscribed Mythical Names on Attic Vase-Paintings from 570 to 530 BC ‘eye to eye’ could only have come about, however‚ if the citizens involved, as when buying their hoplite weaponry, regarded each other as ‘equals’ in principle. This was, as the vase-paintings show, at least the point of view of the vase-painters, which probably did not differ much from that of the visitors to their workshops (see below). The themes and the general message of these pictorial scenes, as already explained, refer to the polis in its entirety; it is impossible to discern in them any differentiation of the persons depicted with respect to rank and status.43 There, the central role that is attributed to the hoplite (Figures 4, 5), the embodiment of the equality of the citizens defending their polis, points in the same direction.44 The civilians on these vases (Figures 2–4)—i.e. the aforementioned figures of citizens (onlookers)—are also notable, if one disregards the traditional, status-neutral distinction between ‘young’ and ‘old,’ for the uniformity of their robes and poses as well as for the lance, the attribute they all have in common: they are shown as ‘equals,’ in particular when they appear as a group.45

would have merely looked over the vase-painter’s shoulder in respectful silence, like customers in a potter’s workshop of today, who are sometimes allowed to watch the master as he concentrates on his work. In all probability, each visitor—just like his pictorial pendant, the onlooker figure, in numerous thematic contexts48—kept a wary eye on the painter’s activity (Figure 8) and discussed his personal judgment with other citizens in the workshop. The painter himself could expect both praise and criticism. As citizens of Athens, the visitors to the workshop could lay claim to the authority of ‘public opinion’ by virtue of their knowledge of the ethical foundations to their polis. Although it cannot be strictly proven, of course, I consider it likely that their wishes and judgments—in particular their notion of the ‘equality of the citizens’ stimulated by the hoplite tactic49—influenced the pictorial ‘translation’ of these general norms and values to an essential degree. By contrast to the present day, there was no law to guarantee artistic freedom. And so it probably happened quite frequently that a painter made corrections to his designs, taking into account concrete suggestions or demands, probably voiced with some insistence. This means that the finished product was ‘authorized’ by a consensus of the citizens communicating in the public space of the workshop. Here, too, the difference to modern day conditions should be emphasized: as opposed to the participant on today’s market—to the consumer who (if at all) can only exercise an influence on offers of goods and services indirectly and in retrospect, i.e. through his demand behavior—, the Athenian citizen had already an opportunity for direct co-determination in the vase-painter’s workshop during the production of the images discussed here. The iconographic conventions that evolved in this process, therefore, are in a certain sense the result of cooperation between the citizens as a ‘public authority’ and the vase-painters. As a result of the citizens’ collaboration in the evolution and fixing of this pictorial language, one can regard the latter, with only a little exaggeration, as a collective ‘self-portrait’ of the polis community.

By contrast, therefore, to the subdivision in the Solonian timocracy valid at the time, and defining for political practice,46 the Athenian citizens are understood in these images, on an ideological level, as a homogeneous and coherent community of ‘equals.’ What they have in common is foregrounded; the economic and social differences between them are blanked out. When the vase-painters conceived an iconography—a kind of ideographic pictorial writing, so to speak— that visualized the norms of the polis by standardized figures and schemata of interaction, this was anything but their private matter. This was a complex of themes of serious public interest (the communicative gesture of the onlooker citizen on the cup in Karlsruhe seems to be indicative of this), indeed, it was a highly political issue.47 These pictorial scenes confronted the citizens of Athens present in the ‘chatroom’ of the workshop with no less than a portrait of their polity, i.e. of themselves. Under these circumstances one finds it hard to imagine that the Athenians, who recalled the efforts necessary to resolve their polis’ grave crisis in Solon’s era and regarded a rekindling of this crisis as a real danger,

When the vase-painters’ ideas and designs did not concur with his visitors’ ‘public opinion,’ they are likely to have met with forceful contradiction in the workshop, bearing in mind the politically explosive themes involved. And vice versa, the painter must have

43  The generally youthful equestrian figures frequently encountered here are usually attributed to the hoplites as companions and ‘knaves,’ and so from a social point of view, they are not set above them (see A. Alföldi, ‘Die Herrschaft der Reiterei in Griechenland und Rom nach dem Sturz der Könige,’ in M. Rohde-Liegle et al. [eds], Gestalt und Geschichte: Festschrift Karl Schefold zu seinem sechzigsten Geburtstag am 26. Januar 1965 [= 4. Beiheft zur Halbjahresschrift Antike Kunst], Bern 1967, 13-47, 13-33). 44  Many examples in Brijder 1983-2000 (above, note 4) 45  Fehr 1996 (above, note 14), 825-829. 46  See, for instance, Murray 1980 (above, note 24), 185-186; Walter 1993 (above, note 19), 199 with note 131; K.-W. Welwei, Die griechische Polis, second ed., Stuttgart 1998, 148; P. V. Stanley, The Economic Reforms of Solon, St. Katharinen 1999, 205-210. 47  Cf. the hydria in Leiden mentioned above (note 23).

A good overview in Kaeser 1990 (above, note 20). The fact that the Athenians in the archaic era perceived their polis as a community of principally ‘equal’ citizens was not only a consequence of the hoplite phalanx, perhaps, but also of the tyranny, which was the prevailing form of government in archaic Greece. The archaic tyrants had also made the citizens of their poleis, doubtless in accordance with the political will of the great majority, into ‘equals’ inasmuch as they had rigorously cut the power of the social elites, i.e. of the aristocracy. A well-known anecdote (Herodotos 5.92) indicates how such ‘equalization’ appeared from their point of view. 48  49 

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Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings allowed some significance to approval by that ‘public opinion,’ because he could, by pointing out its coresponsibility, have covered his back against complaints from third parties.

When, in this historical context, the medium of ‘public inscription’53 was used in the name of a generally recognized authority, i.e. of a polis or one of the lawmakers/officers commissioned by it, in the name of a deity or also (on grave monuments) of a highly-regarded citizen, then the mere fact of the generally accepted, permanent presence of this announcement in the midst of community life indicated that the authority in question regarded its content as binding for himself. This general frame of reference suggested to the reader a priori that the messages contained in the inscription in question stood objectively and once and for all, that they were unchangeable and irrevocable. Therefore, when political matters were concerned, the citizens of the polis could employ them to check the correctness of actions taken by the state or priests of high rank, and as a valid guideline for their own actions, in short: these messages could be relied upon. To underline this validity and reliability such inscriptions were often mounted in religious settings, i.e. on the walls of temples.54

Indeed, that was necessary. Those citizens who intended to buy such a painted vessel had to be sure that the pictorial decoration of the object was indeed capable of consensus in public opinion as described above. Its ‘authorization’ was important for him. For, as in other fields, he had to reckon with a vigilant social control by his fellow citizens. There was a danger that friends and acquaintances who were not in agreement with the view of the polis visualized on the piece just acquired would later express their doubts while viewing and using it. This was especially important as such sophisticatedly designed vessels, scarcely intended for trivial everyday pleasures, were used in public view at occasions characterized by ritualized forms of interaction and a distinct sacred component: at cult festivals in honor of the state gods; at celebrations of the oikos (in particular birth, marriage and burial), which were closely associated with a consolidation of the basic social order and the preservation of the community; and not least in the semi-public sphere of the symposion.50 Attentive and possibly critical perception by the public could also be expected if a buyer dedicated a painted vessel to a deity, for example to the city goddess of Athens,51 as a votive offering.

This perspective must have been deeply rooted in the mind of the Athenian public during the seventh and early sixth centuries BC, in particular due to the first written fixation of the polis’ laws by Draco and Solon. These laws had been made known by means of monumental55 public inscriptions (the kyrbeis or axones),56 and in this way they were marked as permanently valid also for those who were only partially or not at all literate. Their stipulations, referring to concrete facts and holding the threat of heavy sanctions, regulated social and economic life; they were regarded as a refuge of political stability. This order of law, conceived in a critical situation to ensure the survival of the polis and with considerable emotional involvement by the population, was—after its fixation—no longer tied to the nomological knowledge of a specific individual and thus to his ultimately arbitrary evaluation of concrete individual cases, as in past times. Instead, after coming into effect, it had absolute validity, i.e. it could not be revoked by anyone, not even by its originator.57

The Function of the IMN as a ‘Notarial Certification’ Under these framing conditions, how were the IMNs— beyond their primary message in each case, that is, the ‘baptism,’ so to speak, of a standard figure that carried meaning—perceived as a medium both inside and outside the workshop? Here, perhaps some general deliberations on the function and perception of writtenness as such at that time52—i.e. of the ‘message’ of the alphabetic code in itself, quite apart from the individual message of content it conveyed—may help us further. Until the beginning of the late archaic period, writing did not yet play a noteworthy part in the private sphere (except, perhaps, in the case of poets and intellectuals). Instead, the alphabetic code was encountered by the average Greek polis citizen mainly in the form of public inscriptions directed toward everyone: in settlements and holy places as well as on grave monuments.

Is it conceivable that the citizens of Athens transferred this perception of early sixth century monumental 53  See in general K.-J. Hölkeskamp, Schiedsrichter, Gesetzgeber und Gesetzgebung im archaischen Griechenland (= Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte, Einzelschriften 131), Stuttgart 1999, 273-280; J. Sickinger, Public Records and Archives in Classical Athens, Chapel Hill, NC 1999, 8-34; M. Gagarin, Writing Greek Law, Cambridge 2011. 54  Hölkeskamp 1999 (above, note 53), 278. 55  On the ‘monumentalization’ of public inscriptions, see Hölkeskamp 1999 (above, note 53), 278-279. 56  R. Stroud, The Axones and Kyrbeis of Drakon and Solon, Berkeley, CA 1979; H. G. Davis, ‘Axones and Kurbeis: A New Answer to an Old Problem,’ Historia: Zeitschrift für Alte Geschichte 60 (2011), 1-35. 57  Cf. the oath(s) taken by the Athenians in connection with their adoption of the reforms of Solon: Herodotos 1.29.1-2; Aristotle, Constitution of the Athenians 7.1-2; Plutarch, Solon, 25.1-2. See V. J. Rosivach, ‘The Oaths of the Athenians at the Ratification of Solon’s Reforms,’ Phoenix 64 (2010), 223-237.

On the oikos, see above, note 19. For studies on the symposion, see the references given above, note 36. 51  See GL. 52  Good introduction for the non-specialist: Murray 1980 (above, note 24), 91-99. Standard works: E. A. Havelock, The Literate Revolution in Greece and its Cultural Consequences, Princeton, NJ 1982; J. Goody, The Interface between the Written and the Oral, Cambridge 1987. 50 

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Chapter Four Inscribed Mythical Names on Attic Vase-Paintings from 570 to 530 BC

Figure 9. Karlsruhe, Badisches Landesmuseum 65/45. After CVA Karlsruhe (3), pl. 18.1.

inscriptions into stone had not only considerable ability in reading and writing,58 but also a well-founded knowledge of the function and impact of this medium. We can also presume the same of the vase-painters, who created the pictorial decoration on the wellknown Panathenaic amphorae (Figure 9) and provided them with inscriptions as well.59 On the main face of these vessels, alongside the image of the armed city goddess Athena, one could always read the official set phrase: ‘[One of] the prizes from Athens.’ It referred to the function of these amphorae as prizes for the victors of the Panathenaic competitions organized in honor of Athena. Therefore, we are concerned with inscriptions which, although not monumental, fulfil the three aforementioned criteria: they were intended for the public, they concerned all the citizens because they related to the biggest cult festival in the city of Athens, and their message was based on the authority of the polis and the city’s deity.

inscriptions to the IMNs that were produced at the same time? In face of the apparently obvious difference between the two classes of monuments, initially this does not seem very plausible. But one ought to bear in mind that a subdivision of the material legacy of classical antiquity into multiple classes of objects is only a product of modern thought and research. It may match the perspective on things during antiquity to some extent, but this is not necessarily true in each individual case. Whether a polis citizen during antiquity perceived an inscription in the way described above, in my opinion, was not dependent on its belonging to a specific class of monuments, its size or its material, but above all on the fact that it fulfilled three criteria: 1) it had to be aimed at the public and to be accessible to them; 2) it had to refer to important matters that concerned all the citizens, and 3) it had to have been approved by a generally recognized authority, as a rule the polis or a deity. Therefore, we should discuss whether this was the case with the IMNs.

LSAG, 62. On these vases, see M. Bentz, Panathenäische Preisamphoren: Eine athenische Vasengattung und ihre Funktion vom 6. – 4. Jahrhundert v. Chr. (= Antike Kunst, Beiheft 18), Basel 1998.

58  59 

Before doing so, however, allow me a brief digression: we can assume that craftsmen who chiseled public 85

Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings

Figure 10. Athens, Agora Museum A.P. 1044. After Hesperia 1937, 479, fig. 6.

Before the finished prize amphorae with their inscriptions were received by officials of the polis and filled with oil of Athenian origin, they would certainly have been checked with respect to their state-defined capacity and for adherence to regulations regarding form and decoration. As the victors in the competitions would have known all this without doubt, they would have been able to deduce from the inscribed phrase, beyond its primary message, the following implicit information: ‘The polis of Athens guarantees that this amphora conforms to the state regulations. You can depend upon it, therefore, that everything is in best order.’ This perception concurred with the general impression of ‘validity’ and ‘reliability’ conveyed to the citizens by the larger-scale state inscriptions.

on vessels that were destined for sale on the market (compare the image of Athens’ city goddess Athena on the Panathenaic amphora Figure 9 with the mythical scene Figure 10: both of them were painted by Exekias). In the following, I shall attempt to show that they, like the owners and users of their products, saw no fundamental difference between the Panathenaic inscriptions and IMNs with respect to their function as media, or at most a gradual (?) distinction.61 The ‘baptism,’ so to speak, of a standardized figure by writing the name of a prominent mythical individual beside it was preceded by a decision process coming about in two phases. First, a choice had to be made, oriented on the referential system of the polis, between several possibilities for (re)defining62 and judging the mythical character to be depicted. This was because the

Among the vase-painters who decorated Panathenaic amphorae and provided them with those official inscriptions there were also some (e.g. Lydos and Exekias)60 who created mythical scenes with IMNs

61  There is little point in making a sharp distinction between Panathenaic amphorae produced for state purposes and painted clay vessels made for the market, anyway, as the former were imitated in large numbers (without the official inscription) for free sale (on the so-called pseudo-Panathenaic amphorae, see generally Bentz 1998 [above, note 59], 19-22). 62  See discussion above.

M. Bentz 1998 (above, note 59), 123-127, no. 6.002 (close to Lydos), 6.007-6.009 (Lydos), 6.014-6.015 (Exekias).

60 

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Chapter Four Inscribed Mythical Names on Attic Vase-Paintings from 570 to 530 BC lives and deeds of heroes and deities were portrayed and evaluated very differently by the poets. That choice was important because these mythical personalities could be used as effective arguments in political debates.63 Only after this question had been settled was it possible to pick out from the iconographic repertoire a standardized figure associated with a suitable pattern of behavior. Due to its ethical and political implications, such a decision process was surely not always an easy matter; in some cases it may even have been influenced by fundamental controversies occurring in the city’s public sphere.64 Any citizens present in the workshop could take part in this process by bringing their authority to bear as representatives of public opinion during their conversations with the vase-painter, as described above—ultimately, this was the same authority that entitled them to make binding decisions for the community together with their fellow citizens in the assembly of the people.

most important function. Seen from the perspective of communication theory,65 two statements located on different levels were conveyed to the beholder by the linking of an IMN to a standardized figure. On the primary (object linguistic) level, roughly the following statement is communicated to the viewer: ‘The mythical personality whose name you read here embodies, in an exemplary way, an important pattern of behavior that is relevant to the polis; this pattern is illustrated by the painted figure connected with the inscribed name of that personality.’ On a second (metalinguistic) level—one level higher, as it were—a comment was made about this primary statement. This commenting statement was made possible by the fact that the painter employed a further medium, the inscription, alongside his customary pictorial means. Hereby, he was making use of the well-known fact that a medium, regardless of the respective primary message that it is employed for, a priori contains a comprehensive message of its own, indeed, that it is in a certain sense the message (McLuhan).66 The general message inherent in the medium of the ‘IMN’ consisted in the fact that on a metalinguistic level, in a similar way to the inscriptions on the Panathenaic amphorae, it assured the contemporary Athenian viewer of the ‘reliability’ and ‘validity’ of the primary statement conveyed in each single case.

Any Athenian citizen wishing to acquire a painted vase of this kind must have known that the ‘baptism,’ so to speak, of the standardized figures by attributing written mythical names to them, as well as the messages to be associated with these figures, had been ‘authorized’ in one form or another by their fellow citizens, who had been present in the workshop during the production of the vessel. And so to a certain extent, he could rely upon the fact that this ‘baptism’ accorded with the generally recognized norms and values of the polis community, which were binding for all citizens. It was ‘valid’ in a way comparable to a ‘law.’ And so he could hope that after his purchase, other citizens viewing the vessel in public would express no objections to its pictorial decoration.

It was to be expected that this effect did indeed come about, because the IMNs could also be numbered among the inscriptions fulfilling the abovementioned three criteria: they were a public phenomenon since, as described above, the vases on which they could be found were produced before the eyes of the public and were used on a variety of occasions in the public sphere; in their entirety, the images to which they referred ‘portrayed’ and ‘discussed’ the citizens’ social life, in particular the regulations and values applicable there, and thus they concerned a matter that was important to the whole polis community; and the IMNs were based on the authority of the polis since the citizens, who acted in the ‘forum’ of the workshop, so to speak, as representatives of the polis community, exercised a considerable influence on the vase-painters’ work. The metalinguistic message, assuring ‘validity’ and ‘reliability,’ with which the inscription medium ‘IMN’ commented on the primary message of the individual IMN, can be compared in its function with a written

This hope was effectively consolidated by the medium of the ‘IMN’—and this appears to me to have been its It is well known that mythical ancestors played an important role in the status competitions of archaic Greek aristocrats, which always had political implications. Numerous sources collected by W. Speyer, in RAC IX (1976), 1149-1182, s.v. Genealogie. 64  One such case might have been Achilleus. Due to the extreme ambivalence of his character in the Homeric epos (L. Giuliani, ‘Kriegers Tischsitten oder: die Grenzen der Menschlichkeit. Achill als Problemfigur,’ in K.-J. Hölkeskamp et al. [eds], Sinn (in) der Antike: Orientierungssystem, Leitbilder und Wertkonzepte im Altertum, Mainz 2003; R. von den Hoff, ‘‘Achill das Vieh’? Zur Problematisierung transgressiver Gewalt in klassischen Vasenbildern,’ in G. Fischer and S. Moraw [eds], Die andere Seite der Klassik: Gewalt im 5. und 4. Jahrhundert v. Chr., Stuttgart 2005, 225-246), he provided occasion for far-reaching divisions of opinion. On Attic vases of the period dealt with here, he is sometimes represented as a brave hoplite (Muth 2008 [above, note 17], 100-101, figs. 52-53), and sometimes (in the context of the ransom of Hektor) as a barbaric deprecator of the fundamental principles of human civilization (see Giuliani 2003 [above, note 64], though some of his arguments do not seem convincing to me). These sharply contrasting evaluations of the hero seem to appear about the same time or at least to overlap in time. Does this suggest a split in public opinion into two camps, both of which exercised an influence on the design of these vase images for a period of time? I intend to go into this in further detail in a different context. 63 

On the application of theories of signs/communication/interaction in Classical Archaeology, see L. A. Schneider, B. Fehr, K.-H. Meyer, ‘Zeichen–Kommunikation–Interaktion: Zur Bedeutung von Zeichen-, Kommunikations- und Interaktionstheorie für die Klassische Archäologie,’ HEPHAISTOS (Kritische Zeitschrift zur Theorie und Praxis der Archäologie und angrenzender Wissenschaften) 1 (1979), 7-41 (on metalanguage, see esp. pages 14-16); L. A. Schneider, ‘Zeichen, Spur, Gedächtnis: Der semiotische Blick und die Fachwissenschaft Archäologie,’ Zeitschrift für Semiotik 28 (2006), 7-52; cf. StansburyO’Donnell 2011 (above, note 18), 72-79. 66  See above, note 31. 65 

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Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings notarial certification of a document. In my view, it was for this reason that the painters wrote IMNs beside the figures on their vases even if the identification of these figures or the recognition of the mythical narrative represented would also have been possible without adding these inscriptions.

collective ‘portrait’—to a certain extent even with their ‘self-portrait,’ as they had played an important part in its production. It was in this setting, continually sought out by the public, that IMNs were used to ‘baptize’ standardized figures, serving to exemplify important patterns of behavior, with the names of mythical individuals. In the decision process that preceded this act, the citizens present as well as the vase-painter participated. This cannot always have been entirely easy, bearing in mind the significant role played by heroes and deities in public discussion and political debates.

Conclusions Around 570 BC, we see a sudden cumulation of inscribed mythical names (IMNs) attributed to figures painted on Attic black-figure vases. At roughly the same time as this phenomenon, a striking systemization of the pictorial language on such vases also came about. From this time onwards, the iconography was based essentially on a limited repertoire of standardized figures and schemata of interaction, which function as carriers of meaning. They exemplify comprehensive patterns of behavior, which relate to the social life of the Athenian citizens, the rules of behaviour that bound them, and the fundamental values of the polis.

In all probability, the ‘authorization’ of such a ‘baptism’ by the citizens, i.e. the approval of the insertion of a famous mythical figure into the polis’ world of norms, would also have been important to the buyer or future owner of the vase. For its usage and any viewing of its figurative decoration and inscriptions usually took place, like its production, in the public sphere, i.e. in the presence of his attentive and possibly critical fellow citizens. Disapproval of the depiction by his peers would have reflected on the owner of the vessel. However, an effective precaution was taken against such a verdict through the fact that the ‘authorization,’ which was an everyday phenomenon known throughout the city, was underlined once again by a general message inherent in the medium ‘IMN’ a priori. For the IMNs, in a similar way to the official statement written on Panathenaic prize amphorae, were probably acknowledged generally as public inscriptions relating to important matters concerning all citizens; they had been approved by a definitive authority, the citizens of the polis, and could thus be regarded as trustworthy. As a result of this reputation, the medium ‘IMN’ could demonstrate credibly, on a superior metalinguistic level, that a primary (object linguistic) statement according to which a mythical figure identified by an IMN on a vasepainting embodied a pattern of behavior important to the polis, could be accepted as ‘valid and reliable.’ This function of the IMNs may be compared to that of a written notarial certification.

The exemplifying function of a standardized figure was underlined by its ‘baptism’ using an IMN, whereby the famousness of the mythical figure in question, which had been created by the poets,67 was ‘borrowed’ by the vase-painters, so to speak. At the same time these IMNs formed a ‘bridge’ between the visual medium of vasepainting and the linguistic medium of mythical poetry. Above all, the function of such a ‘bridge’ consisted in the fact that it enabled a new definition of a mythical personality. In mythical poetry, the prominent individual often had evaded social control and had not felt tied to ethical rules. When such a mythical hero/ heroine or deity was linked, with the aid of his or her written name, to a standardized figure associated either with a positive or a negative pattern of behavior, his/her new frame of reference was the social system of the polis of Athens and its norms, and he/she was evaluated according to the valid criteria there. If we regard the IMN, by contrast, as a medium which, independent of its message in each single case, also constitutes a message of its own, then we need to take into account the fact that the workshops of craftsmen, and therefore of the vase-painters, were forums of discussion for the Athenians, exercising a considerable influence on public opinion. The citizens who were a constant presence there could follow and discuss in detail the making of the pictorial scenes provided with IMNs and the genesis of the iconographic conventions upon which they were based, and finally, as informal representatives of the polis community, they could ‘authorize’ them in agreement with the vase-painter. This was a matter of great public interest, as that same pictorial language confronted the citizens with their 67 

The sensitivity and emotional engagement with which public inscriptions were perceived in Athens probably lessened gradually as from the last third of the sixth century. The number of written public announcements increased continually, as did the private use of writing. Written texts thus became more and more of an omnipresent component of everyday life, and so were discerned with less awareness. This must also have had an effect on the reception of the IMNs as a medium. In addition, the standardized figures and schemata of interaction on Athenian vase-paintings were gradually abandoned from c. 530 BC.68 This means that from

See e.g. Homer, Iliad 9.189; Odyssey 1.337-338 and 8.73.

68 

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Fehr 1996 (above, note 14), 840-843.

Chapter Four Inscribed Mythical Names on Attic Vase-Paintings from 570 to 530 BC that point in time, the general structures, norms, and values of the polis community were no longer the central theme of Athenian vase images.69 Now, in the late archaic period, the main interest of the vasepainters lay with the individual’s ways and strategies of life: imitation of the traditional aristocratic lifestyle by social climbers, or the alternation between toilsome work and recreation, as well as techne as a promising method applicable in all situations, all belong in this

context,70 for instance. As can be seen on the vasepaintings of this period, notions like these could also be exemplified by mythical personalities. Nevertheless, the messages of the IMNs with which the vase-painters of the late archaic and classical periods provided their figures must have been different from those of the foregoing period, due to the changed historical context. However, the questions that arise in this context cannot be examined within the framework of this chapter.

69  P. Schmitt Pantel and A. Schnapp, ‘Image et société en Grèce ancienne: Les représentations de la chasse et du banquet,’ Revue Archéologique (1982), 57-74, 65-73.

70 

Schmitt Pantel and Schnapp 1982 (above, note 69); Fehr 2009 (above, note 15), 149-155.

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Meaningless, But Not Useless! Nonsense Inscriptions on Athenian Little-Master Cups* Pieter Heesen common.4 In most cases, if preserved, the meaningful inscriptions are copied on both sides of a cup, though a small number of cups have different types of inscriptions on one or both sides.5 Results of earlier studies show that, in the case of little-master cups, craftsmen who wrote meaningful inscriptions rarely used nonsense inscriptions.6 It has been thought that the use of meaningful inscriptions does not necessarily mean that the writer was literate, nor does the use of nonsense mean the opposite. Obviously, the level of literacy varies amongst the writers of inscriptions on little-master cups.

‘Whereas, in most sorts of vase, inscriptions are an inessential adjunct to the decoration, in the littlemaster cup, and especially in the lip-cup, they are an integral part of the total design.’1 As a result, inscriptions appear in large numbers and great variety on Athenian little-master cups, the most obvious space for an inscription being the empty handle-zone on lip-cups and unfigured band-cups. Comparable to inscriptions on other vase shapes, they are also found around and between figures in tondos, on multi-figured band-cups or, occasionally, on the lip of lip-cups, for example 43 (Figure 1a-b).2 Sometimes, the inscriptions on the lips of lip-cups are not written between the figures, but above and diagonally on either side of the figured scene, as if to emphasize the compactness of the scene, for example 71, 73, or 100 (Figure 2a-b).3 On band-cups, diagonal or vertical inscriptions may be used to separate figures, for example 37 and 38 (Figures 8 and 9). Three band-cups, 106, 118 and 271, have just a single, short inscription between the figures. Whereas inscriptions in figured scenes on all vase shapes tend to be short, the freestanding inscriptions in the handlezones of little-master cups usually are much longer, filling the space between the handles or handlepalmettes.

The potter-painter Hermogenes felt evidently comfortable about writing his signature, as he rarely made mistakes and readily switched from the basic epoiesen type to the speaking object variant. In addition, he wrote proper labels in the tondo of a lip-cup in Toulouse.7 Some degree of literacy can also be recognized in the inscriptions of the Tleson Painter, which is seen not only in his introduction of two new chaire formulas (the χαιρεσυ–inscriptions and the συ–τοι–inscriptions), but also in the variation in the placement of the patronymikon in the signatures of Tleson and Ergoteles.8 A painter could vary the formulas only if he understood them. In the extant work of the Tleson Painter, mistakes are rare and nonsense inscriptions unknown.

Amongst the meaningful (or sense) inscriptions, signatures and drinking inscriptions are the most

In the work of other potter-painters, the mistake of socalled ‘abbreviated writing’ (like ΕΥΧΕΡΣ or ΑΡΧΚΛΕΣ)

* I would like to thank Dimitrios Yatromanolakis for inviting me to write a chapter for this book, and Susanne Reim (Altenburg), Giuseppe Molinaro (Capua), Mario Iozzo (Florence), David Saunders (Malibu, CA), Bryan Sitch (Manchester), Cecile Colonna (Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France), Anne Coulié (Paris, Louvre), Michael Padgett (Princeton, NJ), Howell Perkins (Richmond, VA), and Jochen Griesbach (Würzburg) for providing me with photographs and for permission to publish them here. Thanks are also due to Ursula Kästner (Berlin), Kirsti Stöckmann (Frankfurt), and Anna Provenzali (Milan) for sending me photographs providing me a clearer picture of the inscriptions. Numbers printed in bold refer to the numbers of the catalogue included in this chapter. 1  J. D. Beazley, ‘Little-Master Cups,’ Journal of Hellenic Studies 52 (1932), 194. 2  Others are 9, 14, 64, 71, 73, 93, 100, 114, 153, 253, 261 and 281. Meaningful and imitation inscriptions are even rarer on the lip of lip-cups. For two examples of meaningful inscriptions, see P. Heesen, Athenian Little-Master Cups, Amsterdam 2011, note 993; examples of imitation on the lip: Tarquinia, Gravisca coll. 74/11799 a.o. and 79/10486 (B. Iacobazzi, Le ceramiche attiche a figure nere. Gravisca, Scavi nel Santuario Greco V, Bari 2004, 103-104, nos. 167-168). 3  Similarly, the inscriptions above and to the right of the central scene on a band-cup, 270.

4  Other meaningful inscriptions are much rarer, such as the καλον:ειμιποτεριον–inscriptions on two cups by Eucheiros, Madrid 1969.61.1 and Rhodes 10527 (Heesen 2011 [above, note 2], pl. 1a and c), or labelling inscriptions or a comment by a figure (both, for example, on a cup by Archikles and Glaukytes, Munich 2243; Heesen 2011 [above, note 2], pl. 34a-b). 5  For examples, see Heesen 2011 (above, note 2), 233-234, notes 13981399. 6  See Heesen 2011 (above, note 2), 234-236. It may also be true for other vase-shapes, as possibly suggested by the figures for the 526 inscribed vessels in the British Museum, London, compiled in Immerwahr’s CAVI, where only 4% have both meaningful and meaningless inscriptions (H. R. Immerwahr, ‘Nonsense Inscriptions and Literacy,’ Kadmos 45 [2006], 137, n. 4). For an exception, see for example 136 by Taleides. 7  Heesen 2011 (above, note 2), 104, figs. 61-62, and pl. 43c (interior of Toulouse 26177). 8  The lip-cup with epoiesen signature of Ergoteles, Berlin F 1758, has been decorated and inscribed by the Tleson Painter (Heesen 2011 [above, note 2], 210-211, fig. 118).

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Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings

Figure 1a-b. Cat. no. 43: Princeton (NJ), University Art Museum 2011-22, details of A and B. Photograph courtesy Princeton University Art Museum. Museum purchase, Carl Otto von Kienbusch Jr. Memorial Collection Fund. Photographer: Bruce M. White.

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Figure 2a-b. Cat. no. 100: Manchester III H 45/40067, details of A and B. Photograph courtesy and © Manchester Museum, University of Manchester.

seems to result from the writers pronouncing each letter aloud.9 The writer obviously had basic knowledge of the Greek letters, but may have lacked a full understanding of what he wrote. Although some degree of comprehension cannot be entirely ruled out,

repetition mistakes seem to indicate that standard formulas were merely copied. I have suggested elsewhere that the choice of a specific chaire formula is a workshop preference: once a particular formula had been adopted, it kept being repeated, that is, copied.10 The same would apply to the choice of other types of inscription, such as the rare meaningful inscriptions on two cups by Eucheiros (see above, note 4), the combination of a signature

9  R. Wachter, ‘Der Informationsgehalt von Schreibfehlern in griechischen und lateinischen Inschriften,’ Würzburger Jahrbücher fűr die Altertumswissenschaft 18 (1992), 25. The principle is that the omitted vowel reflects the (ending) sound of the letter-name of the preceding consonant; in the case of Euchers the O-sound is omitted after the rho. More on the phenomenon of abbreviated writing in H. R. Immerwahr, ‘Aspects of Literacy in the Athenian Ceramicus,’ Kadmos 46 (2007), 161-163. For examples on little-master cups, see Heesen 2011 (above, note 2), 19, n. 120.

10  P. Heesen, ‘Drinking Ιnscriptions on Attic Little-Master Cups: Does Size Matter? A Contribution to the AVI Project,’ Museum Helveticum 63 (2006), 59-61.

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Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings with a chaire-inscription by Phrynos, or the superlative kalos-inscriptions praising Hip(p)okritos on three cups by Glaukytes and the Painter of Louvre F 51.11 On the other hand, epoiesen signatures sometimes vary within the work of one potter, for example, on the cups by Exekias.12

described as nonsense, meaningless, imitation, pseudoor mock inscription, without discriminating between these terms and without photographic documentation, let alone a transcription. The situation has indeed hardly improved since H. R. Immerwahr, in 1990, noted that ‘unsigned Little Master cups are at present not well enough published for detailed study, but they too exhibit a great variety of writing styles, so that some attributions will eventually be possible.’14 So our first task is to catalogue the inscriptions and create some order in the rather mixed corpus. Inscriptions in the figured scenes, as well as the freestanding inscriptions will be listed in the catalogue, though the focus of this chapter will be the latter ones.15

Meaningless inscriptions, also frequent on this type of cup, consist of nonsense inscriptions and imitation inscriptions (the latter not using real letters, in my definition); one could argue that even rows of dots, which indicate the appearance of inscriptions, belong to this category. Did the painters use random letters in random order for nonsense inscriptions, or can we discern painters’ preferences and even formulas? There are well known examples of painters of other vase shapes who copy the same (or similar) nonsensical strings of letters on a number of their vases, for example, some of the later ‘Tyrrhenian’ painters, the Painter of Berlin 1686, or the Sappho Painter.13 In all these cases, the inscriptions are short strings of letters.

Ideally, we would like to consider the inscriptions on both sides. Therefore, the catalogue will be divided into three groups: those with (nearly) identical or clearly comparable inscriptions on both sides (Group A), those without such close resemblance between the inscriptions on either side (Group B), and, unfortunately, a large group that cannot be placed in the first two groups, because they are too fragmentary or information is missing (Group C).

But what about the much longer nonsense inscriptions in the handle-zones of little-master cups? When we look at the handle-zone inscriptions of the Princeton lip-cup in Figure 1, we notice two interesting features, worthy of further examination in the corpus of cups with nonsense inscriptions, especially those with freestanding inscriptions in the handle-zone: 1. 2.

Catalogue Group A: A.1: Nonsense inscriptions that seem to be inspired by meaningful inscriptions, such as signatures or drinking inscriptions, copied on both sides of the cup.

A short nonsensical string of letters is repeated to form a longer inscription. The longer inscription is copied on both sides.

1.

Writing (nearly) identical nonsense on both sides of a cup is in itself remarkable; it becomes all the more interesting, if the same nonsense is copied on other cups as well. In that case, it is likely that we are dealing with the preference of one painter (or perhaps workshop) for a formula, which can be copied over and over again.

2.

The large corpus of nonsense inscriptions on Athenian little-master cups has not been systematically examined yet. One of the reasons may be that their study has been hindered by limited resources. Many nonsense and imitation inscriptions on these cups have been neglected and have been poorly published, often only

Berkeley (CA) 8/358: lip-cup, probably same painter as 2-3 (AVI 2200; CVA 1, pl. XV.1c-d). Prov.: Boiotia. Lip A, B: Theseus fighting the Minotaur. Handle-zone A: εποιυεποιευποιυνσυεσυ. B: συεποιυεπο[ι]υεποιυσυ. Bologna 597: lip-cup, probably same painter as 1, 3 (AVI 2540; CVA 1, pl. 33.4). Lip A, B: siren.

14  H. R. Immerwahr, Attic Script: A Survey, Oxford 1990, 54. The freely accessible, searchable database Attic Vase Inscriptions (AVI), which incorporates Immerwahr’s own Corpus of Attic Vase Inscriptions (CAVI) and will be updated by R. Wachter, is a great help for researchers. Whenever available, the AVI-number will be mentioned in the catalogue, even when the AVI database offers no transcription; in some cases, my reading may deviate (slightly) from that in AVI. Occasionally, AVI uses the general term ‘nonsense inscription,’ where I would use the general term ‘meaningless,’ or rather a more specific term, for example ‘imitation inscription’ for Hannover 757, Havana 112, and Heidelberg S 25 (AVI nos. 3883, 3927, 3974). Such inscriptions will not be included in the catalogue here. 15  Although (multi-) figured band-cups with many short inscriptions may be considered a separate class (Immerwahr 1990 [above, note 14], 46), they are included in the catalogue, since they may also show preferences for specific letter combinations. Cups by the same painter and cups with similar inscriptions have been placed together, otherwise they are ordered alphabetically by location.

11  Heesen 2011 (above, note 2), 269, 271-273, nos. 95, 104, 111-112, 114. 12  Heesen 2011 (above, note 2), 273-274, nos. 118-122. 13  C. Jubier Galinier, ‘De l’usage des pseudo-inscriptions chez le Peintre de Sappho, du signe au sens,’ Mètis 13 (1998), 57-73; S. J. Schwarz, Greek Vases in the National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., Rome 1996, 17 (add to her list the painter’s name-vase: Berlin 1686); J. Kluiver, The Tyrrhenian Group of Black-Figure Vases: From the Athenian Kerameikos to the Tombs of South Etruria, Amsterdam 2003, 76 with note 379, 80, 84.

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Chapter Five Meaningless, But Not Useless

Figure 3a-b. Cat. no. 3: Paris, Louvre Cp 10256, details of A and B. Photographs RMN, © Musée du Louvre.

3.

4. 5.

Handle-zone A: επουεπουποιυποιυποιυ. B: εποιεποιιποιυυειυ. Paris, Louvre Cp 10256: lip-cup, probably same painter as 1-2 (AVI 6570; Figure 3a-b). Lip A: two opposing lions, looking round. Lip B: two opposing, grazing deer. Handle-zone A: εποιυειυνιυειυ. B: ]οιυεπ(.)ιυε(.)υν. Heidelberg S 35: lip-cup, fr., possibly same painter as 1-3 (AVI 3983; CVA 4, pl. 154.6). Lip A: bull. Handle-zone A: εποιεποισυποιυποιυ. Munich 2128: lip-cup, same painter as 6 (AVI 5212; CVA 10, pl. 35.1-5). Prov.: Vulci. No figured decoration. Handle-zone A: εποιεσυτενσυ. B: ε[ ] ποισυε[.

6.

7.

8.

95

London, market: band-cup, same painter 5 (AVI 4775; cat. Christie’s 31 October 1978, lot 382). No figured decoration. Handle-zone A: εποιυεσυενσυνς. B: non vidi. Berlin F 1765: lip-cup (AVI 2229; A. Furtwängler, Beschreibung der Vasensammlung im Antiquarium, Berlin 1885, 392). Prov.: Etruria. Lip A, B: winged female running to right. Handle-zone A: ] ιχιεσεποι(ε)σεκμε. B: (.)εποικλοτεσενκ(.). Corinth T 1477, P 718: band-cup (AVI 3318, 3319; Immerwahr 1990 [above, note 14], pl. 13.60-61). Prov.: Corinth. No figured decoration. Handle-zone A: εποιυεποιυεποιυεποιυη. B: εποιυχεποιυησυεποιυ.

Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings

Figure 4. Cat. no. 9: Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France Froehner 1593/Cab 207. © BnF-CNRS-Maison Archéologie & Ethnologie, René-Ginouvès. Photographer: Serge Oboukhoff.

9. 10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

Paris, Bibl. Nat. Froehner 1593/Cab 207: lip-cup, fr. (Figure 4). Lip: mantle-figure, on the right, diagonally: εποιυσενς. Rhodes 10575: band-cup, fr. (G. Jacopi, Clara Rhodos III. Scavi nelle Necropoli di Ialisso 19241928, Rome 1929, 175, fig. 168). Prov.: Ιalysos. No figured decoration. Handle-zone: εποι[.] ειυειχαν. Vatican 17810: lip-cup (AVI 6974; C. Albizzati, Vasi dipinti del Vaticano, Rome 1929, no. 323). No figured decoration. Handle-zone A: εποιεαοναονασεα. B: εποιεαναον[ ]εα. Würzburg L 418: lip-cup (AVI 8095; E. Langlotz, Griechische Vasen in Würzburg, Munich 1932, no. 418, pl. 117). Prov.: Vulci. Lip A, B: ivy. Handle-zone A: εμεσυποεκελυ(..)νεσε. B: ευκλεισ:ευποιεσκευε. Madison (WI) 1981.134: band-cup (AVI 2110; cat. Münzen und Medaillen Basel, 14-15 March 1975, no. 124). Handle-zone A, B: warriors dueling, to their left and right nonsense starting with χαι, in one case: χαιρ(κ)αιπε. Milan A.0.9.1836: lip-cup (AVI 5090a; G. G. Belloni, ‘Acquisti e Doni per il Civico Museo archeologico e per il Civico Gabinetto Numismatico,’ Notizie dal Chiostro del Monastero Maggiore di Milano 1-2 [1968], 124-126, fig. 1a-c). Lip A, B: horseman, diagonally to his left and above horse, on A: the inscriptions are in tiny letters and hard to read (.)υιυευι χαι ενχαι. B: χυ(π) (υ)υι χ[α]ι (κ)(λ)(ε)αι. Handle-zone A: χαικαιπιε[. B: χαιελιηλιν(.)(α)(χ)αι.

15. Saarbrucken, University 254 (K. Braun, Katalog der Antikensammlung des Instituts für Klassische Archäologie der Universität des Saarlandes, Möhnesee 1998, 9-10, no. 25, pl. 6). Interior: cock. Lip A, B: No figured decoration. Handle-zone A: χαι[ ](κ)(ν)(κ)πυ. B: lost. 16. Thessalonike 7745: lip-cup (J. Vokotopoulou et al., Sindos, Athens 1985, 63, no. 88). No figured decoration. Handle-zone A: χαιρετνοπες. B: χαιραριοτ(.)υς. A.2: Inscriptions with repeated letter combinations, copied on both sides of the cup. 17. Altenburg 238: band-cup (Figure 5a-b). Prov.: Nola. No figured decoration. Handle-zone A: σοναλ(.)αλτα(.)νασο(.)λταλτα. B: σοναλταλτα(.) αλταλταλταλτα. 18. Arezzo, private (Figure 6a-b). No figured decoration. Handle-zone A: λυσλυσ(λ)υσλυ[. B: similar, but harder to read. 19. Malibu (CA) 86.AE.164: lip-cup, fr. (AVI 5004; CVA 2, pl. 98.3). Handle-zone: λυσολυσλυσλυσλυ. 20. Malibu (CA) 96.AE.91: lip-cup (AVI 3359; my Figure 15a-b). Lip A, B: Herakles wrestling with the lion. Handle-zone A: λ(υ)λυσολυσολυσολυσολυ. B: λυλυο(.)υσ(.)(σ)υσλυσ(.)(.)υ(.). 21. Richmond (VA) 62.1.14: lip-cup (AVI 6297; my Figure 16a-b). Lip A, B: panther. Handle-zone A: λυσολυσολυσλυολυ. B: λυσαλυσο(.)υ(.)ο(.)υο(.)υ. 96

Chapter Five Meaningless, But Not Useless

Figure 5a-b. Cat. no. 17: Altenburg 238, details of A and B. © Lindenau-Museum. Photographer: Susanne Reim.

Figure 6a-b. Cat. no. 18: Arezzo, private, details of A and B. Photographs 42871/1-2, © Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici della Toscana.

97

Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings 22. Würzburg L 407 (HA 606): lip-cup (AVI 8091; my Figure 17a-b). Lip A: Polyphemos chasing Odysseus hanging under a ram. B: Polyphemos chasing Odysseus’s beardless companion hanging under a ram. Handlezone A: λυπυσολυσυσλυσλυσολυσυ. B: λυσλυσολυσολυσυ(σ)πλυ(.)(.). 23. Athens, Canellopoulos Museum 2496, lip-cup (A. Zarkadas, ‘Homeric Themes in the Canellopoulos Museum,’ in E. Walter-Karydi (ed.), Myths, Texts, Images: Homeric Epics and Ancient Greek Art. Proceedings of the 11th Symposium on the Odyssey, Ithaca, September 15-19, 2009, Ithaca 2010, 99100, figs. 2-4). Lip A, B: Odysseus or one of his companions hanging under the ram. Handlezone A, B: πυκαλυανκαλυακυς. 24. Basel, Antikenmuseum Z-331: lip-cup, probably same painter as 25-27 (AVI 2034; CVA 1, pl. 33.23). Lip A, B: ram. Handle-zone A: νιχνιχνι. B: νιχνιχ. 25. Once Centre Island, von Bothmer coll.: lipcup, fr., probably same painter as 24, 26-27 (unpublished). Lip: two opposing panthers. Handle-zone: ]ιχνιχνι(χ)ν. 26. Florence 71008: lip-cup, same painter as 27 and probably same painter as 24-25 (Heesen 2011 [above, note 2], no. 194, pl. 55a-b). Prov.: Pescia Romana. Lip A, B: female head in outline. Handle-zone A: νιχνιχνιχνν. B: νιχνιχνιχνι. 27. Florence 71009: lip-cup, same painter as 26 and probably same painter as 24-25 (AVI

28. 29.

30.

31.

32. 33. 34. 35.

3511; Heesen 2011 [above, note 2], no. 195, pl. 55c-d). Prov.: Pescia Romana. Lip A, B: female head in outline. Handle-zone A: νιχνιχνιχνι. B: νιχνιχνιννιχ. Munich M 1096: lip-cup (AVI 5387: CVA 10, pl. 29.1-4). Prov.: Vulci. Lip A, B: two runners. Handle-zone A: νιχνιχνιχ(χ). B: νιχνιχιχιχ. Munich, market: lip-cup (Gorny and Mosch, 12 December 2012, no. 383). Lip A, B: running winged female. Handle-zone A: νινιν(ι)νινινι. B: νινινινινιν. Naples Stg. 224: lip-cup (AVI 5496; CVA 1, pl. 14.1). Lip A, B: two nude youths, dancing or running. Handle-zone A: νινινινινινι (the nus reversed). B: said to be similar. Naples Stg. 234: lip-cup (AVI 5497; CVA 1, pl. 14.5). Lip A, B: seated man between nude youths. Handle-zone A, B: nonsense, according to AVI supposedly similar to Stg. 224 with reversed nus. Brussels R 385A: lip-cup (AVI 2949; CVA 1, pl. 2.8). Lip A, B: cock and hen. Handle-zone A: νεννενενενενενεννε. B: ννονεννενενενενενενε. Goettingen K 352: little-master cup, fr. (AVI 9045: CVA 3, pl. 67.5). Prov.: Italy. Handle-zone: νενενεν[ (retr.). Oxford G 952: little-master cup, fr. (unpublished). Prov. Naukratis. Handle-zone: νονο[. Edinburgh 1881.44.21: lip-cup (AVI 3404; CVA 1, pl. 12.4-5). Lip A, B: lion attacking bull. Handlezone A: γιγιγιγιγιγιγιγ. B: γιγιγιγιγιγιγιγι.

Figure 7. Cat. no. 36: Florence, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 151084. Photograph © Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Florence.

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Chapter Five Meaningless, But Not Useless

Figure 8a-b. Cat. no. 37: Bern, private, details of A and B. Photograph courtesy owner.

Figure 9. Cat. no. 38: Paris, Louvre Cp 10271. Photograph RMN, © Musée du Louvre.

36. Florence 151084: lip-cup, fr. (Figure 7). Prov.: Etruria. Lip A: running hare. B: lost. Handle-zone A: πιπιπιπιπιπιπιπιπ. B: ]πιπιπιπι[. 37. Bern, private coll.: band-cup, frr. (Figure 8ab). Handle-zone A, B: dog chasing hare (only the hare preserved on side B). On A, left of dog, diagonally: το[πολ], between dog and hare: τοπολ and right of hare τ[οπ]ολ. On B, right of hare: τοπ[ολ]. 38. Paris, Louvre Cp 10271: band-cup, fr. (Figure 9). Handle-zone: two opposing lions, on either side

and between them a vertical inscription: ποπο [π]οπο [ποπ]ο. 39. Philadelphia (PA) 4858 A and D: band-cup, frr. (AVI 6805; Immerwahr 1990 [above, note 14], 48, n. 46). Prov.: Orvieto. Handle-zone: horseman and runners, on either side of horseman a vertical inscription: οπο οπο. 40. London B 419: lip-cup, Archikles (AVI 4318: Heesen 2011 [above, note 2], no. 108, pl. 32.cd). Prov.: Vulci. Interior: horsemen. Lip A, B: no figured decoration. Handle-zone A: υσευσευσευσευς. B: ευσευσευσευε(.)(.)(.). 99

Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings 41. Orvieto Faina 2619: lip-cup (AVI 5823; M. R. Wojcik, Museo Claudio Faina di Orvieto. Ceramica attica a figure nere, Perugia 1989, 90-91, fig. 21.12). Prov.: Orvieto. Lip A, B: lost. Handle-zone A: σαπ[ ]παπαλπ[. B: παλπαλϝαλπαπα. 42. Oxford 1912.38: little-master cup, fr. (unpublished). Prov.: Naukratis. Handle-zone: λχλολχλ[. 43. Princeton (NJ) 2011-22: lip-cup, Compare Painter of Munich 1379 (AVI 4791a; ABV 303; my Figure 1a-b). Lip A: Herakles wrestling with the lion, Athena, and warrior Iolaos (?), between Athena and Herakles: (retr.) επ(.)οσυσ(ο), behind warrior, vertically: εοσ(.)οσιοσ(.). B: horseman between youths, on the left inscription starting with εον, and inscriptions above and in front of horse, both very hard to read. Handle-zone A: πεοσπεοσπεοσπεοσπ. B: πεοσπεοσπεοπεοσπ. 44. Thessalonike 7839: lip-cup. (Vokotopoulou et al. 1985, above, ad 16, 154, no. 244). Prov.: Sindos. Interior: Pegasos. Lip A, B: no figured decoration. Handle-zone A: νκπκπκποκποκποκποκ. B: νκπονοκνονοκνοκνκν.

49. London B 402: lip-cup, Sakonides (AVI 4303; Heesen 2011 [above, note 2], no. 179, pl. 52b). Prov.: Vulci. Lip A, B: female head in outline. Handle-zone A: (σ)ιχοσιχοσιχιχιχ. B: κγχ(σ) ιχυιχγοσιχ. 50. Vatican 34950: lip-cup, Sakonides (AVI 7028; Heesen 2011 [above, note 2], no. 178, pl. 52c-d). Prov.: Orvieto. Lip A, B: female head in outline. Handle-zone A: εγοσιχυολιοσιτυιοσενεν. B: χε[ ] ιτ[..]μοαλο(.)(.)υ(.)γεος. 51. London B 403: lip-cup, BMN Painter (AVI 4305; Heesen 2011 [above, note 2], no. 249, pl. 72ac). Prov.: Vulci. Lip A, B: Theseus killing the Minotaur. Handle-zone A: χπσειαπσοιν. B: χπσειαικνσ. 52. Rome, Villa Giulia 50472: band-cup, BMN Painter (AVI 7193; Heesen 2011 [above, note 2], no. 252). Prov.: Italy. Handle-zone A, B: two running youths, to their left and right, on A: χπσοιεν and seven unclear letters. B: τσοινι and (σ)ε(σ)ι(.) οεπ. 53. St. Petersburg B. 111: lip-cup, BMN Painter [P. Heesen] (AVI 7339; CVA 3, pls. 8-9 [Close to Sakonides, K. S. Gorbunova). Prov.: Berezan. Lip: Herakles wrestling with the lion. Handle-zone A: χπσαποπεακσαν. B: χπκσαενσοιεαν. 54. Taranto, sine inv. no.: lip-cup, probably BMN Painter [P. Heesen] (F. G. Lo Porto, ‘Taranto e ditorni-Ritrovamenti tombali di età arcaica,’ Notizie degli Scavi 13-14 (2002-2003), 483, 486, fig. 24.1). Prov.: Taranto. No figured decoration. Handle-zone A: χπκσοιπαεσν[. B: χπ(.)κσοιε(.) σον. 55. London, market: lip-cup, same painter as 56-57 (AVI 4790; Sotheby’s London, 5 July 1982, lot 307). Lip A, B: boxers. Handle-zone A: κν(.)οτνσοτ. B: (partly worn) κν(.)(.)(.)ο(.)(.). 56. London, market: lip-cup, same painter as 55, 57 (AVI 4791; Sotheby’s London, 5 July 1982, lot 310, not ill.). Lip A, B: winged female between mantled youths. Handle-zone A: (.)(.)(.)οτνσο(.). B: (.)(.)(.)τνσοτ. 57. London, market: lip-cup, same painter as 55-56 (AVI 4789; Sotheby’s London, 5 July 1982, lot 306, not ill. and idem, 17-18 July 1985, lot 562, not ill.). Lip A, B: seated sphinx. Handle-zone A: (.)(.)(.) σοτνσο(.). B: (.)(.)(.)σοτν. 58. Munich 2185: band-cup, same painter as 59 (AVI 5237; CVA 11, pl. 54.4-8). Prov.: Vulci. No figured decoration. Handle-zone A: υσγνιυσννιυχ. B: υσυγιυγυιυ: (three dots at end of inscription). 59. New York 41.162.72: band-cup, same painter as 58 (AVI 5672; CVA 2, pl. XVIII.29a-b). No figured decoration. Handle-zone A: υιγκυγιαι(γ)ιυ: (three dots at end of inscription). νι(γ)υγι(ν) ιοιγικ.

A.3: Inscriptions without strictly repeated letter combinations, but with similar strings of letters on both sides of the cup. 45. Disiecta membra: band-cup, frr., Sakonides (AVI 2958; Heesen 2011 [above, note 2], no. 175, fig. 69). Prov.: Chiusi. Handle-zone A, B: arming warrior, men, women, in between figures numerous inscriptions with tiny letters, with a predominance of the letter combination ‘ιτιοτι.’ 46. Vatican 17827: band-cup, Sakonides (AVI 6976; Heesen 2011 [above, note 2], no. 174, pl. 51a). Handle-zone A, B: arming warrior, men, women, in between figures numerous inscriptions with tiny letters: a.o. λυσοιτσ ευπσοσπσ λτεπσοσπ ] υτυ νι πλτ σιτστ στστοτσ σολτσοστ. B: στσ(.)σ σιοστεο ]ιτσοσ(π)ο σιο[]τιτσ λτσ. 47. Taranto 6221: band-cup, Sakonides and Kaulos (potter) (AVI 7604; Heesen 2011 [above, note 2], no. 191, pl. 54a-c). Prov.: Leporano. Handlezone A, B: winged female crowning seated man, surrounded by women, men and horsemen. Handle-zone A: in between figures numerous inscriptions with tiny letters: a.o. μαιες εχσει ετχ[]χι(ν)ι σιχο εριχσι ετχοσχο χσοσχο. B: similar. Below the handles, signatures of Kaulos and Sakonides. 48. Cambridge, University NA 220: band-cup, fr., probably Sakonides [P. Heesen] (museum. classics.cam.ac.uk/collections/sherds/na220). Prov.: Naukratis. Handle-zone: youth, to his left, above the palmette with black central leaf: πυιχιτε. 100

Chapter Five Meaningless, But Not Useless 60. Baltimore (MD) 48.41: band-cup (AVI 1937; A. Schnapp, La chasseur et la cite: Chasse et érotique dans la Grèce ancienne, Paris 1997, 305, no. 276, side A). Handle-zone A, B: boar hunt on horseback, between the figures on A: γσεσυ εσυλ ελρπ χεσασκ πεσλαδεν(.)ε εσλρ(.)σασ πασε χειπ(.) ειδεσ λενι. On B less inscriptions: χεσοσ πασλκδα χεδα(.)(.) χεσυσλα. 61. Basel, Cahn HC 843: band-cup, fr. (AVI 2070; B. Kreuzer, Frühe Zeichner 1500-500 v. Chr.: Aegyptische, griechische und etruskische Vasenfragmente der Sammlung H. A. Cahn, Basel, Freiburg 1992, no. 70). Handle-zone A, B: boar hunt on horseback, between figures, on A: ριτοστ ορισοσ(.) ναλιοσοσ ηοποσοσ ριστ. B: ριοσ ριτοστοσ χαιριε. 62. Berlin F 1768: lip-cup (AVI 2231; Furtwängler 1885, above, ad 7, 293, no. 1768). Prov.: Vulci. No figured decoration. Handle-zone A: εγκγνουεκνο. B: (.)νγκγκευγυο. 63. Berlin F 1790 (lost): band-cup (AVI 2243; Furtwängler 1885, above, ad 7, 299, no. 1790). Handle-zone A, B: warriors and horsemen, between the figures nonsense, mainly consisting of ενχο. 64. Boston, private: lip-cup (AVI 4787; Sotheby’s London, 31 May 1990, lot 364). Prov.: Italy. Lip A: Europa on bull, above figures: οευευ στ κουσ. B: opposing cocks, above and between them: καυσ οευευ κουσ. 65. Capua, Excavations 00446682: lip-cup (E. Thiermann, Capua-Grab und Gemeinschaft. Eine kontextuelle Analyse der Nekropole Fornaci (570400 v. Chr.), Diss. University of Amsterdam 2009, 307, pl. 32.5-9). Prov.: Capua. Lip A: horseman. B: centaur. Handle-zone A: λυισευσυχσυσυχσχ. B: συχευχσυχσχχο.

66. Capua, Museo Campano 200: band-cup (AVI 3086; my Figure 10a-b). Prov.: Capua. No figured decoration (AVI mentions a non-existing nude youth under each handle). Handle-zone A: λ(.) ιλιτυιτ(.)λ(ι)τιτνιτι. B: λιτυι(τ)ι(τ)(.)(.)τλ(ι)τ(.). 67. Cracow Czartoryski coll. 1080: band-cup (AVI 3329; CVA 1, pl. 5.2). No figured decoration. Handlezone A: νχνελπλνλκχνλν. B: νλνλχεχελπλχλν. 68. Frankfurt β 513: band-cup (D. Stutzinger, Griechen, Etrusker und Römer: Eine Kulturgeschichte der antiken Welt im Spiegel der Sammlungen des Archäologischen Museums Frankfurt, Regensburg 2012, 106, fig. 108). No figured decoration. Handle-zone A: λτλτλτλολολτλ. B: λτλ[ ]λιλσ[. 69. Hamburg, market: lip-cup. (AVI 3881; Galerie Neuendorf, Samlung Holger Termer, Katalog I, no. 25, Hamburg 1975[?]). Lip A, B: opposing sirens. Handle-zone A: σ(.)ν(.)(.)νκα(.)εν. B: σ(.) νσ(ι)νκ(.)(.)(κ)εν. 70. London, 1851,0507.4: band-cup (AVI 4673; CVA 2, pl. 15.7). Prov.: Corinth. No figured decoration. Handle-zone A: νολποχλοαποπο. B: νο(χ) ποχπο(ν)ποχπον. 71. London B 405: lip-cup (AVI 4307, 4752; CVA 2, pl. 14.1). Prov.: Corinth. Lip A, B: panther, diagonal inscription to its left and right, on A: σεχελγι σεχνλ. On B: σεγχελγι σεχνλ. Handle-zone A: ξεκ(.)εκεγγεγεκγ. B: similar, but worn. 72. London B 409: lip-cup (AVI 4308; CVA 2, pl. 12.3). Prov.: Vulci. Lip A, B: two seated women sharing one mantle. Handle-zone A: ενιχνιχοιχιχιτοιχσει. B: ενιχιχοιχιχι(μ)ειτ. 73. Munich 2148: lip-cup (AVI 5221; CVA 10, pl. 26.1-5). Prov.: Vulci. Lip A, B: Odysseus hanging under ram, above on A: ϙεσδεσπεσεσχεσ. On B:

Figure 10a-b. Cat. no. 66: Capua, Museo Campano 200, details of A and B. Photographs © Museo Campano di Capua.

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Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings

Figure 11a-b. Cat. no. 78: Paris, Louvre Cp 10257, details of A and B. Photographs RMN, © Musée du Louvre.

ϙεασδεσεσχεσπε. Handle-zone A: εϙεϙνσε[..] εσεσπεσ. B: χε[..]ασπεσεσεσ[ ..]δεσευχ. 74. Munich 2220: band-cup (AVI 5245; CVA 11, pls. 30.6, 31.1-4). Prov.: Vulci. Handle-zone A, B: amphora between boxers and mantled youths above amphora, on A: χαιρε, on B: χαι[. Vertically between figures nonsense, on A: all starting with χ, twice with χονιχ. On B, all starting with χ, twice with χν, and once starting and once ending with χονι. 75. Munich 9422: lip-cup, frr. (AVI 5382; CVA 10, pl. 25.6-10). Lip A, B: animal made up of lion, bull and goat. Handle-zone A: ενιυεπιυπιυπιυ[. B: ] υ[..]υχνιυιυινιυι. 76. New York 27.122.27: lip-cup (AVI 5647; CVA 2, pl. IX.11a-d). Prov.: Italy. Lip A, B: Chimaera. Handlezone A: ηηποιηηυηπ. B: ηυπο(η)υπυηι.

77. Newcastle 201: band-cup (unpublished). No figured decoration. Handle-zone A: λειλυλολυευ(λ)(.)υ(.)ευλοευευ(ι). B: ]ελ(.) ευιυευλειλυλε(.)λ(λ)(ε)υι. 78. Paris, Louvre Cp10257: lip-cup (AVI 6571; my Figure 11a-b). Lip A, B: swan. Handle-zone A: ευ:ευ(.)(π)υλ(.)ς. B: ε[.]ευιπγυ(π)(υ)υι. 79. Rome, Villa Giulia 79531 and 1020101: band-cup, frr. (AVI 7220, 7264; L. Hannestad, The Castellani Fragments in the Villa Giulia. Athenian Black Figure, Vol. I, Aarhus 1989, nos. 105 and 138). Prov.: Cerveteri. No figured decoration. Handle-zone A: ]πα(ι). B: ](π)αα(ι). 80. San Simeon, Hearst 5455: lip-cup (AVI 7459; E. E. Bell, The Attic Black Figure Vases at the Hearst Monument, San Simeon, Ann Arbor, MI 1977). Prov.: Capua. Lip A, B; sphinx. Handle-zone A: χοαοολολυο. B: χολολυολυολ. 102

Chapter Five Meaningless, But Not Useless Group B: Although often a similar choice of letters has been picked for side A and B, their order is quite different on either side.

90.

81. Amsterdam 8192: band-cup, frr., Phrynos Painter (AVI 147c; Heesen 2011 [above, note 2], no. 99, pl. 30a-b). Handle-zone A, B: Amazonomachy, on A with Herakles. Between the figures numerous inscriptions with tiny letters, some recognizable, others imitation. 82. Atlanta (GA) 2000.1.2: band-cup, Phrynos Painter (Heesen 2011 [above, note 2], no. 100, pl. 30cd). Handle-zone A: Herakles fighting Triton. B: Peleus, Thetis and Chiron. Between the figures numerous inscriptions with tiny letters, some recognizable, others imitation. 83. Ascona, market: lip-cup (AVI 4794; cat. Sotheby’s London, 13-14 December 1982, lot 249; Casa Serodine, May 1991). Lip A, head of Dionysos in outline. B: female head in outline. Handle-zone A: τχοτσχο(χ)οτχος. B: τεοτο(.)ι(χ)ος. 84. Berlin F 1773: lip-cup, Painter of the Boston Polyphemos (AVI 2235; ABV 198.1). Prov.: Etruria. Interior: courting scene, nonsense. Lip A, B: running winged female. Handle-zone A, B: nonsense. All inscriptions have tiny letters, some recognizable, others imitation. 85. Berlin F 1780: band-cup (AVI 2240; Furtwängler 1885, above, ad 7, 297, no. 1780). Prov.: Vulci. No figured decoration. Handle-zone A: χλεοιεσοισνον. B: αινεα(π)εσεν(ι)π. 86. Berlin F 1799: band-cup, Glaukytes and Painter of Louvre F 51 (AVI 2244; Heesen 2011 [above, note 2], no. 114, fig. 46d, pl. 36b-d). Prov.: Vulci. Interior: frontal chariot with three letters above the scene preserved: ](.)εν. In exergue: dog chasing hare, above them: χστπιεις. Handlezone A, B: Gigantomachy, in between figures nonsense, on A: ευοπιν οιτοττ νλτσχιτυιπι. On B: a.o. ππεπο(ι). Underneath handle: ] ιποκριτοσκαλιστο[. 87. Boston 92.2654: lip-cup (AVI 2615; CVA 2, pl. 95.12). Lip A, B: swan. Handle-zone A: εοεσδ(σ)εοδ(σ) εσε. B: αεσ(.)κ(.)π(.)εσεσ(.). 88. Cambridge G 66: lip-cup (AVI 3018; CVA 1, pl. 19.4). Prov.: Vulci. Handle-zone A, B: two fightingcocks, to their left and right, on A: χο(ν)ορεοσ χνονσνε B: χ(ν)(.)(ν)εο(ν) (ν)(ε)οε(ν)(.)(ν)ε(.).16 89. Christchurch CUC 34/55: lip-cup (AVI 3180; CVA 1, pl. 28.1-4). Prov.: Orvieto. Lip A: lion and bull.

91.

92.

93.

94.

95.

96.

97. 98.

Three other lip-cups have similarly placed inscriptions on either side of the figured scene in the handle-zone: Freiburg, market (Galerie Puhze, Kunst der Antike, Katalog 10, 1994, no. 180), and Munich 2139 and 2168 (CVA 10, pls. 27.5-6 and 27.1-3). However, these inscriptions do not consist of real letters.

16 

103

B: lion attacking bull. Handle-zone A: σ(.)πητ(γ) (π)υγο. B: σενσναχν(.) Corinth T 1520/173-4: band-cup (AVI 3321; C. W. Blegen, H. Palmer and R. S. Young, Corinth XIII: The North Cemetery, Princeton, NJ 1964, 192, pl. 27). Prov.: Corinth. No figured decoration. Handle-zone A: λ(ι)ιαλο(γ)υ(.)τλο(.). B: (.)(.) τιμιμιδε:(.)ι. Both inscriptions are hard to read. Edinburgh NM 1872.23.4: lip-cup (AVI 3402; CVA 1, pl. 12.6-7). Prov.: Italy. Lip A, B: female head in outline. Handle-zone A: νεενοεινοεσσε. B: κνειοεοσοεπνς. Florence, Vagnonville coll.: patch band-cup, frr. (AVI 3521; N. Malagardis, ‘Coupes à lucarne à figures noires: une création attique. Un étrange attelage au service d’Héraclès sur un coupe à lucarne de Sellada, Théra,’ in E. M. Moormann and V. V. Stissi [eds], Shapes and Images: Studies of Attic Black-Figure and Related Topics in Honour of Herman A. G. Brijder. BABesch [Bulletin Antieke Beschaving: Annual Papers on Mediterranean Archaeology] Suppl. 14 [2009], 102, figs. 6-7). Prov.: Chiusi. Handle-zone A-B: courting scene, between figures nonsense, on A: πσειν αειυπσιαχσνσπεσ αι(.)ε τασεστλε. B: ]υσ ]ενσνσ ] εσπ(.). Gordion Excavations 2304a,b: lip-cup, frr. (K. M. Lynch, ‘Gordion Cups and Other Attic BlackFigure Cups at Gordion in Phrygia,’ in T. H. Carpenter et al. (eds), The Consumers’ Choice: Uses of Greek Figure-Decorated Pottery, Boston 2015, 49, 52, fig. 7). Lip A: diagonally, left of lost figured decoration: ]ποιλχς. Lip B, diagonally, left of lost figured decoration: ]χσλ. Kurashiki, Ninagawa: band-cup, Oakeshott Painter (AVI 4106; Heesen 2011 [above, note 2], no. 231, fig. 87b). Handle-zone A, B: ithyphallic donkeys, encouraged by satyrs, charging a maenad, between the figures nonsense, hard to read, but recognizable on A: εσοπιεσυ, on B: πεσοσ(.). Oxford 1972.162: band-cup, Oakeshott Painter (Heesen 2011 [above, note 2], no. 230, fig. 87a, pl. 65c). Handle-zone A, B: animal attack scene, in between on A: ενγετ (retr.) ενε(.)(retr.), on B: ενε(.)ε (retr.). Samos K 6925: band-cup, frr., Oakeshott Painter (Heesen 2011 [above, note 2], no. 234, pl. 66d). Prov.: Samos. Handle-zone A: satyrs, maenads, in between figures: το εκεκες εκ ]σειστο[. B: running donkey. London, market: lip-cup (AVI 4796; Sotheby’s London, 10-11 December 1984, lot 49). Lip A, B: cock. Handle-zone A: κολισαουλα. B: νηολιασο. Los Angeles (CA), private: band-cup (Christie’s London, 7 November 2001, lot 316). No figured decoration. Handle-zone A: χαιχαχε(.)π(.)(ι)υ. B:

Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings χ[ ]λ(.)λπ (ε)(α)(ε)(α)(α)υ (the inscriptions are difficult to read). 99. Malibu (CA) 86.AE.163: lip-cup (AVI 5003; CVA 2, pl. 97). Lip A: runners and horseman. B: horseman and walking youth. Handle-zone A: ελονχ(ε)σχνχνελχν. B: πελονχννσλονσχνε(υ). 100. Manchester III H 45/40067: lip-cup (AVI 5060; my Figure 2a-b). Lip A, B: horseman. Diagonally to his left and right, on A: εαιοχειο χνοχαιν. B: (.)ιοιεχο(.)ε χινοιονιι. Handle-zone A: χνοχπλοτοχνοσοικ. B: χνσολιτειονλοτειοπε. 101. Munich 2136: lip-cup (AVI 5219; CVA 10, pl. 30.5-9). Prov.: Vulci. Interior: running Gorgo. Lip A, B: no figured decoration. Handle-zone A: ελκχατεσ:κπιεσελκν. B: ]εσ[ ]υε[. 102. Munich 2153: lip-cup (AVI 5226; CVA 10, pl. 30.14). Prov.: Vulci. Lip A, B: mantled youths. Handlezone A: απαπ(α)λπγπαη. B: νλ(ν)γ(α)εαλϝαπασ.

103. Munich 2154: lip-cup (AVI 5227; CVA 10, pl. 28.711). Prov.: Vulci. Lip A, B: nude female dancing between nude youths. Handle-zone A: ο(.)λυ(.) οχλ. B: (.)ο(χ)οχο(χ). 104. Munich 2166: lip-cup (AVI 5232; CVA 10, pls. 22.4, 7-8 and 23.3-4). Prov.: Vulci. Lip A, B: female head in outline. Handle-zone A: γτοτστσο. B: (.) τσογοοογ. 105. Munich 2172: lip-cup (AVI 5236; CVA 10, pls. 32.78, 33.1-4). Prov.: Vulci. Interior: siren, above and below its right wing, nonsense: εποιηεποι and ε(.)[ ]νε(.)ι(γ). Lip A, B: no figured decoration. Handle-zone A: ηιποτ(ε)λεκαλο(σ)(ε)ν. B: ηιποκιμενοσεαιοι. 106. Munich 2216: band-cup (AVI 5244; CVA 11, pl. 51.1-2). Prov.: Vulci. Handle-zone A, B: horsemen and runners, on B between horsemen in curved vertical line: ϝχϝχ.

Figure 12a-b. Cat. no. 113: Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 81145, side A and side B. © Soprintendenza Speciale per i Beni Archeologici di Napoli e Pompei.

104

Chapter Five Meaningless, But Not Useless 107. Munich 2240: band-cup (AVI 5248; CVA 11, pls. 55-57). Prov.: Vulci. Interior: Herakles, Deianeira and Nessos, around figures nonsense containing many omikrons. Handle-zone A, B: fighting warriors, chariots, in between nonsense inscriptions, apart from many omikrons and chis unreadable. 108. Munich 2241: band-cup (AVI 5249; CVA 11, pls. 22.9, 23.1-3). Handle-zone A: Peleus wrestling with Atalante, horsemen and mantle-figures. B: Herakles wrestling with the lion, horsemen, mantle-figures, in between nonsense inscriptions, often starting with a reversed epsilon, once with γε. 109. Munich 2242: band-cup, same painter as 109 (AVI 5250; CVA 11, pl. 25.1-6). Prov.: Vulci. Handlezone A, B: horsemen fighting with Amazons, in between nonsense inscriptions, often starting with reversed epsilon. 110. Paris, Louvre F 72: band-cup, same painter as 108 (AVI 6295; CVA 9, pl. 80.1-7). Prov.: Vulci. Handle-zone A, B, fighting warriors, horsemen, in between nonsense inscriptions, often starting with reversed epsilon. 111. Munich 9407: lip-cup (AVI 5370; CVA 10, pl. 2.15). Lip A, B: grazing deer, panther. Handle-zone A: ε(ν)λεπλυ(ν)(σ)γυ(.)χτ. B: ε(.)(ν)(.)τχ(ν)ο(τ)(.) ο(.)ιυγλοχ. 112. Naples 81132: band-cup, Manner Elbows Out (AVI 5442; ABV 252.1; CVA 1, pl. 18.2-3). Prov.: Vulci. Handle-zone A, B: stag hunt on horseback, vertically in between, on A: στοστου πετοτοσ τοτοσοσ ιδιοοτο. B: το(ο)το(τ)οτ ο(ϝ)σ(ϝ)ρου. 113. Naples 81145: lip-cup (AVI 5448; my Figure 12ab). Prov.: Etruria. Lip A, B: ram. Handle-zone A: υκολιυλμυ(.)(.)(π). B: υαλ(.)χλυ(.)γυγχ (readings CVA). 114. New York 03.24.31: lip-cup, Manner of Epitimos Painter (AVI 5533; Heesen 2011 [above, note 2], no. 243, pl. 70d-e). Prov.: Monteleone/Spoleto. Lip A: bearded man underneath sphinx, diagonally to their left and right: γυτυσσυρολυ(λ) ϝυσϝ(.)υ(.) υ(.). B: youth underneath sphinx, diagonally to their left and right: τοτσοτουτ λ(.)λσλσ(ϝ)λ(.). Handle-zone A: λ(.)υσυσϝυσυ(.)υχσυχ. B: υ(.)υ(.) […]συγχι(.). 115. Paris, Louvre F 90: lip-cup, Epitimos Painter (AVI 6306; Heesen 2011 [above, note 2], no. 241, pl. 69c-d). Prov.: Vulci. Lip A, B: squatting man and youth with cock. Handle-zone A: (.)εχ(.) (ο)ϝτϝχεχοϝχεχοχϝ (χ)ϝοεχε. B: ϙυεχευγκκ(ϙ) ϝχϝχεκχϝχεχ(ν)κχευα. 116. Karlsruhe 69/61: lip-cup, Epitimos Painter (AVI 4056, 4066; Heesen 2011[above, note 2], no. 239, pls. 69 a-b, 70a). Interior: Apollo with bow between lions, in between nonsense: πυρον

οπσϝα(ν)(σ) πυν υ. Lip A, B: runners. Handlezone A: χαιρεκαιπιεισ. B: χαιρεκ[.]πρι[. 117. New York 25.78.86: lip-cup (AVI 5639; CVA 2, pl. XII.15a-c). Lip A, B: grazing stag. Handle-zone A: πολϝαναονασεα(λ)α. B: ]ναν[. 118. New York, market: band-cup (AVI 7821: Andre Emmerich Gallery, Art of the Ancients, February 7-March 13, 1968, no. 11). Handle-zone A: animal frieze. B: winged horse and winged female, horseman, sirens, swan, between female and horseman: seven letters ending in ολο. 119. New York, market: lip-cup (Figure 13a-b). Lip A, B: Herakles and Penthesileia between mantlefigures. Handle-zone A: ππιοπτ[]ονυ(.)τυυ. B: πιτσοννπππτομοπομοπ (the letters on both sides are difficult to read). 120. New York, market: lip-cup (Sotheby’s New York, 17 December 1998, lot 80). Lip A, B: female head in outline. Handle-zone A: ειχιγιχεσγιχιυε. B: ιχιχιχιχνχ. 121. Paris, Bibl. Nat. 5007: lip-cup (AVI 6106; CVA 1, pl. 47.9-11). Lip A, B: grazing deer, panther. Handle-zone A: ιγγριρρευο(π)(π)γγογιιπποχπ(π) (π)ιογοχς. B: ιγρπϝρτγχοπ(.)(π)(π)ι(π)(π)(π) ιροϝπ(π)αοι(.)λ (gammas, lambdas and pis hard to distinguish). 122. Paris, Bibl. Nat. 5028: band-cup (AVI 6107; CVA 1, pl. 47.1 and 4). No figured decoration. Handlezone A: κσχογυοεοχοι B: σροοειοχεο. 123. Paris, Louvre Cp 10255: lip-cup (AVI 6569; photos in Beazley Archive). Lip A: opposing lions. B: grazing deer and stag. Handle-zone A: λιλιαιαιγιαι. B: α(.)λιοσγ[]α(σ)εοκο. 124. Paris, Louvre F 91: lip-cup (AVI 6307; CVA 9, pl. 86.6-8). Prov.: Corneto. Lip A, B: Herakles and lion, between youths. Handle-zone A: nonsense, mainly nus and pis. B: ]οϝοϝο(ν)υυονχπυ(ν). 125. Paris, Louvre F 92: lip-cup (AVI 6308; CVA 9, pl. 87.1-4). Prov.: Vulci. Lip A, B: hen and two cocks. Handle-zone A: πυιευ(.)ιοιετν. B: υλιελχενινοι. 126. Paris, Louvre F 98: lip-cup (AVI 6311; CVA 9, pl. 87.10-11). Prov.: Vulci. No figured decoration. Handle-zone A: αρυαενουεπουποεν. B: ναυεανουεσυενσυν. 127. Philadelphia (PA), market: lip-cup (AVI 5767; Hesperia Art Bulletin VII, no. 215). Lip A, B: sphinx. Handle-zone A: ]νσκνεα[. B: ]εινσ[. 128. Philadelphia (PA), market: lip-cup (Hesperia Art Bulletin, XLV/XLVI, no. A 14). Lip A, B: panther. Handle-zone A: π(.)οϝοοπγποπο(.). B: ππϝσ(.)(.)(.) (.)(.)(.)ο(.)ϝοπ. 129. Philadelphia, University L-64-182: lip-cup (AVI 6818; Immerwahr 1990 [above, note 14], 141, no. 960). Lip A, B: female head in outline. Handlezone A: ϝοϝοϝοϝοαο[. B: ι[ ] ϝχοϝοϝ. 130. Rhodes, Ano Achaia: lip-cup (AVI 6902b; A. A. Lemos, ‘Athenian Black-Figure: Rhodes 105

Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings

Figure 13a-b. Cat. no. 119: New York market. After catalogue NFA, Classical Auctions, 11 December 1991, lot 71.

of the British School of Athens 14 (1907-1908), 253, fig. 12.3). Prov.: Rhitsona. Lip A, B: horseman. Handle-zone A: (ρ)γσπσπιχσνσν. B: πγσπχο(σ)ς. 135. Vatican 17821: band-cup (AVI 6975; Albizzati 1929, above, ad 11, no. 324, pl. 31). Prov.: Vulci. Handle-zone A, B: fighting boars and bulls, in between on A: (.)ε(ν)εοε(ν)ε[ ]ε χα[ ]ρε(ν)εν(.). B: ]ιρε(ν)ε(ν)οε(.) χα[ ]ι(.)(.)πιπι(.) χα(.)ι(ν)(.)(.) ιεν. 136. Vatican 39546: lip-cup, Taleides Painter (AVI 7271; Heesen 2011 [above, note 2], no. 126, pl. 41c-d). Prov.: Vulci. Lip A, B: lion. Handle-zone A: ταλειδεσεποιεσεν. B: τγεγγιοδανειδλδνϝ. 137. Vatican 39547: lip-cup, Kalistanthe Painter (AVI 7270; F. Buranelli (ed.), La Raccolta Giacinto Guglielmi, La ceramica. Monumenti Musei e Gallerie Pontificie. Museo Gregoriano Etrusco, cat. 4,1, Rome 1997, 129-130, no. 44). Prov.: Vulci. Lip A, B: female head in outline. Handle-zone A: χχυ(χ) (χ)χυχχχεχοχχχοχ. B: similar, but harder to read, mostly chis, omikrons, and upsilons. 138. Vienna IV 151: lip-cup (M. M. Grewenig, Antike Welten. Meisterwerke griechischer Malerei aus dem

Revisited,’ in J. H. Oakley et al. (eds), Athenian Potters and Painters, Oxford 1997, 460-462, figs. 6-7). Prov.: Ano Achaia. Lip A, B: four pairs of a copulating man and woman. Handle-zone A: (.) σχαλστσυγνσ(.)γνσπσυ(.)ρσ. B: χλκχ[ ]υλχκγσυλ. 131. Rome, Villa Giulia 79877/79878: lip-cup, fr. (AVI 7246; L. Hannestad 1989, above, ad 79, no. 7). Prov.: Cerveteri. Lip A, B: seated sphinx. Handlezone A: ]νιεχε(.). B: ]αλ[. 132. Rome, Villa Giulia: lip-cup, frr. (AVI 7061; unpublished, photos Beazley Archive, BAPD 9017711 and 9017789; non vidi). Prov.: Cerveteri. Handle-zone (reading AVI), on A: long inscription ending in ]λχυχυ. B: εποχεχπσχυχ(ν). 133. Tarquinia, Gravisca coll. 72/10286: band-cup (Iacobazzi 2004 [above, note 2], 90-92, no. 133). Prov.: Gravisca. Handle-zone A; nine pairs of copulating man and woman, flute-player, in between many inscriptions in tiny letters, many epsilons and omikrons. B: parts of two copulating pairs and two inscriptions preserved. 134. Thebes R.49.264: lip-cup (AVI 6902; R. M. Burrows and P. N. Ure, ‘Excavations at Rhitsona,’ Annual 106

Chapter Five Meaningless, But Not Useless Kunsthistorischen Museum Wien, Speyer 1997, 64). Lip A, B: satyr molesting a deer. Handle-zone A: σεπεπχπλπυ. B: εσεπχσεπχσ.

148. Athens, Agora P 4238: lip-cup, fr. (AVI 307; Moore and Philippides 1986, above, ad 147, no. 1696, pl. 110). Prov.: Athens, Agora. Handle-zone: uncertain reading, απλκδ[. 149. Athens, Agora P 4670: lip-cup, fr. (AVI 316; Moore and Philippides 1986, above, ad 147, no. 1695, pl. 110). Prov.: Athens, Agora. Handle-zone: ]λκγελχ(νσ)σκκικλ. 150. Athens, Agora P 6069: lip-cup, fr. (AVI 359; Moore and Philippides 1986, above, ad 147, no. 1689, pl. 110). Prov.: Athens, Agora. Interior: arming warrior, woman assisting, behind warrior: εοχχ[, behind woman: εχ[. 151. Athens, Agora P 12533: band-cup, fr. (AVI 451; Moore and Philippides 1986 above, ad 147, no. 1705, pl. 111). Prov.: Athens, Agora. No figured decoration. Handle-zone: ](.)ετισφ(π)[. 152. Athens, National Archaeological Museum, Acropolis Collection 1569, lip-cup, fr. (AVI 1067; photo DAI Athens, Neg. Nr. 645). Prov.: Athens, Acropolis. Lip: opposing swans. Handle-zone: πσπ(.)υπυπ. 153. Athens, National Archaeological Museum, Acropolis Collection 1582, lip-cup, fr. (AVI 1070; B. Graef and E. Langlotz, Die antiken Vasen von der Akropolis zu Athen I, Berlin 1909, 169, pl. 82). Prov.: Athens, Acropolis. A: sacrificial procession (two rams, nude youth, kanephoros). Above head of front ram: χχχ, in front of it: χχχχχ, to right of woman: χχ[. 154. Athens, National Archaeological Museum, Acropolis Collection 1753: little-master cup, fr. (AVI 1094; Graef and Langlotz 1909, above, ad 153, pl. 86). Prov.: Athens, Acropolis. Handlezone (.)υνχλτυχνσ. 155. Athens, National Archaeological Museum, Acropolis Collection 1754: little-master cup, fr. (AVI 1095; Graef and Langlotz 1909, above, ad 153, 182, pl. 87). Prov.: Athens, Acropolis. Handle-zone: ]τεοσεμε (retr.). 156. Athens, National Archaeological Museum, Acropolis Collection 1755: little-master cup, fr. (AVI 1096; Graef and Langlotz 1909, above, ad 153, 182, pl. 87). Prov.: Athens, Acropolis. Handle-zone: ]τλτ[. 157. Athens, North Slope P 91: band-cup, fr. (AVI 1832; M. Z. Pease, ‘The Pottery from the North Slope of the Acropolis,’ Hesperia 4 (1935), 264-265, no. 91a-b, fig. 25). Prov.: Athens, Acropolis, North Slope. Handle-zone: chariot, to the left nonsense (not recognizable on photo). 158. Atlanta (GA) 2002.12.20: band-cup, fr. (unpublished). Handle-zone: mantle-figure and nude youth with stick, between them: ολ(.)α(σ). 159. Atlanta (GA) 2005.32.7: lip-cup, fr. (Heesen 2011 [above, note 2], 109, n. 650). Lip: helmeted male head in outline. Handle-zone: ]οσοχο[.

Group C: Inscriptions that cannot be placed in the above groups for lack of information or because they are too fragmentary. C.1: Fragments, cups of which side B is lost, and cups with interior nonsense only. 139. American private coll.: lip-cup, same painter as 140 (unpublished). Interior: deer wounded by spear, underneath: ευδδ. Lip A, B: no figured decoration. 140. Erlangen I 1272: lip-cup, same painter as 139 (AVI 3804a; CVA 2, pl. 32.1-2). Interior: scratching deer, above it: χιοδιε. Lip A, B: no figured decoration. 141. London B 601.15; band-cup, fr., close to 142 (AVI 4357; J. D. Beazley and H. G. G. Payne, ‘Attic BlackFigured Fragments from Naucratis,’ Journal of Hellenic Studies 49 (1929), 269, no. 53, pl. XV.30). Prov.: Naukratis. Handle-zone: warrior, chariot, corpse, in the field: εσι πυ κοπς. 142. Thasos 75.A.547: band-cup, fr., close to 141 (J.-J. Maffre, ‘Les coupes de Petits Maîtres à Thasos,’ in E. P. Manakidou and M. Tiverios (eds), Archaic Pottery of the Northern Aegean and its Periphery (700-480 BC), Proceedings of the Archaeological Meeting Thessalonike, 19-22 May 2011, Thessalonike 2012, 23-37, fig. 3h). Prov.: Thasos. Handle-zone: horseman and fighting warriors, between the figures: εστα εσιασν εσε[ and retr.: ασιν. 143. St. Petersburg B. 82.110: band-cup, fr., same painter as 144 (CVA 10, pl. 13.2). Prov.: Berezan. No figured decoration. Handle-zone: σοκ[. Petrakova’s attribution in the CVA to Sokles is rejected (see Heesen 2011 [above, note 2], 35, n. 229). 144. St. Petersburg B. 103: band-cup, fr., same painter as 143 (CVA 10, pl. 13.8). Prov.: Berezan. No figured decoration. Handle-zone: σοκπνδ(ε)[. 145. Aegina N.T. 50: lip-cup, frr. (AVI 79; M. B. Moore, ‘Aegina, Aphaia-Tempel VIII. The Attic BlackFigured Pottery,’ Archäologischer Anzeiger 1986, 76, fig. 13). Prov.: Aegina. Lip A, B: fighting-cock. Handle-zone A: ]χχ[. B: ]ισισιχσιχ[. 146. Amsterdam, market: lip-cup (unpublished; gallery Archea, April 2000). Lip A, B: opposing, crouching, masturbating youths. Handle-zone A: ]οσπ(νγ..)[. B: lost. 147. Athens, Agora P 1990: band-cup, fr. (AVI 270; M. B. Moore and M. Z. Philippides, Athenian Agora XXIII. Attic Black-Figured Pottery, Princeton, NJ 1986, no. 1706, pl. 111). Prov.: Athens, Agora. Handle-zone: ]οεμσοχα[. 107

Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings 160. Basel, Cahn HC 1417: lip-cup, fr. (unpublished). Lip: horseman. Handle-zone: nonsense (non vidi). 161. Basel, market: lip-cup (Jean-David Cahn AG, Tiere und Mischwesen, Katalog 11, December 1999, no. 39). Lip A, B: griffin-bird. Handle-zone A: ταλεχσααεχσα. B: lost. 162. Bayrakli KB 31: lip-cup, fr. (Y. Tuna-Nörling, Die attisch-schwarzfigurige Keramik und der attische Keramikexport nach Kleinasien. Istanbuler Forschungen 41 (1995), 15, no. 36, pl. 4). Prov.: Bayrakli. Lip: lion. Handle-zone: ]ιυσκ[. 163. Berlin, Schiller coll.: band-cup, frr. (AVI 2510; U. Gehrig, Antiken aus Berliner Privatbesitz, Berlin 1975, no. 69). Handle-zone: siren, on either side of it 6 letters forming a nonsense inscription, hard to read from photos: σ(.)σνσα π(.)ισλσ. 164. Bolligen, Blatter coll.: lip-cup, fr. (R. Blatter, ‘Menelaos und Helena?,’ Antike Welt 14.3 (1983), 57). Prov.: Cerveteri. Lip: Menelaos and Helen. Handle-zone: λινινιν. 165. Bremgarten, Gottet coll.: lip-cup, frr., Heidelberg Painter (H. A. G. Brijder, Siana Cups III, Amsterdam 2000, pl. 252c). No figured decoration. Handlezone: αντ[ ]λτλ[ ]τλτλιλ(.)λολ. 166. Bryn Mawr (PA) P. 867: band-cup, fr. (unpublished). No figured decoration. Handlezone, nonsense(?): ]χος. 167. Bucharest, sine inv. no.: band-cup, fr. (V. Zirra, ‘Ceramica arhaica si attica,’ in E. Condaruchi, Histria I, Bucharest 1954, 415, fig. 292). Prov.: Histria. Handle-zone: unidentified figure, to its right: νιοιο[. 168. Cambridge, University NA 216: lip-cup, fr. (museum.classics.cam.ac.uk/collections/ sherds/na216). Prov.: Naukratis. Interior: homosexual courting scene, in between figures: εα[ or εδ[. 169. Cambridge, University NA 219: band-cup, fr. (museum.classics.cam.ac.uk/collections/ sherds/na219). Prov.: Naukratis. No figured decoration. Handle-zone: ]χποχπο. 170. Catania: lip-cup, fr. (G. Rizza, ‘Stipe votive di una santuario di Demetra a Catania,’ Bollettino d’Arte 45 (1960), 251, fig. 7). Prov.: Catania. Lip: feline. Handle-zone: probably nonsense (difficult to read from photo). 171. Once Centre Island, von Bothmer coll.: band-cup, fr. (unpublished). Handle-zone: stag wounded by spear, hare underneath, above stag: ]ιπ, underneath stag: (χ)ο(χ). 172. Cerveteri 62665; band-cup, frr. (M. Rendeli, La necropoli del Ferrone. Archaeologica 18, Rome 1996, 86, no. FE 10.15, pl. XXXV). Prov.: Cerveteri. No figured decoration. Handle-zone: τλνσνλ(.)[…](.)ν. 173. Cerveteri: band-cup, frr. (P. Brocato, La necropoli etrusca della Riserva del Ferrone, Rome 2001,

159, no. 14, figs. 123 and 134). Prov.: Cerveteri. No figured decoration. Handle-zone A: ]γλα?[ (reading Brocato). 174. Copenhagen 5615: lip-cup, fr. (CVA 8, pl. 327.1). Prov.: Rhodes. Handle-zone: οαλποταλεποιελευευ:. 175. Corinth C 1966-35: little-master cup, fr. (AVI 3294; A. B. Brownlee, ‘Attic Black Figure from Corinth: II,’ Hesperia 58 (1989), 391, no. 133, pl. 70). Prov.: Corinth. Handle-zone: ]ι(ο)κπα. 176. Corinth C 1969-130: band-cup, fr. (AVI 3296; Brownlee 1989, above, ad 175, 391, no. 130, pl. 69). Prov.: Corinth. No figured decoration. Handle-zone: καπυ[. 177. Corinth C 1971-27: little-master cup, fr. (AVI 3298; Brownlee 1989, above, ad 175, 391, no. 132, pl. 70). Prov.: Corinth. Handle-zone: ]υειυιυ[. 178. Corinth C 1972-296: little-master cup, fr. (AVI 3302; Brownlee 1989, above, ad 175, 391, no. 134, pl. 70). Prov.: Corinth. Handle-zone: ]πυτι(σ)π[. 179. Corinth C 1973-421: band-cup, fr. (AVI 3303; Brownlee 1989, above, ad 175, 391, no. 131, pl. 69. Handle-zone: ]γυσ[. 180. Cyrene Sb. 409.13: band-cup, fr. (M. B. Moore, ‘Attic Black Figure and Black Glazed Pottery,’ in P. White (ed.), The Extramural Sanctuary of Demeter and Persephone at Cyrene, Libya. Final Reports III, Philadelphia 1987, 35, no. 211, pl. 37). Prov.: Cyrene. Handle-zone: winged female, to her left: ]ες, next to her head: εστ. 181. Dublin, University College 368: band-cup, fr. (A. W. Johnston, A Catalogue of Greek Vases in Public Collections in Ireland, Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy vol. 73, section C, no. 9, Dublin 1973, 440). Prov.: Rhodes. Handle-zone: said to contain nonsense (non vidi). 182. Edinburgh 1886.518.4: band-cup, fr. (AVI 3406; unpublished, photo in Beazley Archive). Handlezone: warriors, and vertical inscriptions, probably nonsense. 183. Florence 95031: little-master cup, fr. (unpublished). Prov.: Etruria. Handle-zone: ]οχν[. 184. Florence 95089: lip-cup, fr. (unpublished). Prov.: Etruria. No figured decoration preserved. Handle-zone: χιεσασπισ(.)μο. 185. Florence 95093-95: band-cup, frr. (unpublished). Prov.: Etruria. No figured decoration preserved. Diagonal nonsense. 186. Florence 95101: little-master cup, fr. (unpublished). Prov.: Etruria. Handle-zone: ]λοκον[. 187. Florence 95111: little-master cup, fr. (unpublished). Prov.: Etruria. Handle-zone: χσεσντσ[. 188. Florence 95112: band-cup, fr. (unpublished). Prov.: Etruria. Handle-zone: nonsense. 108

Chapter Five Meaningless, But Not Useless 189. Florence 95114: little-master cup, fr. (unpublished). Prov.: Etruria. Handle-zone: ]εκονκεν. 190. Florence 95116: little-master cup, fr. (unpublished). Prov.: Etruria. Handle-zone: nonsense. 191. Florence sine inv. no.: lip-cup, fr.(unpublished). Prov.: Etruria. Lip: female head in outline (only shoulders preserved). Handle-zone: ]λσο[. 192. Florence sine. inv. no.: lip-cup, fr. (unpublished). Prov.: Etruria. Lip: quadruped. Handle-zone: ](λ) χχαι. 193. Florence sine. inv. no.: band-cup, fr. (unpublished). Prov.: Etruria. Handle-zone: horseman and runners, to the left and right of horseman diagonal nonsense: εσχ(χ)(α)(σ) πσοι(.)(.). 194. Florence sine inv. no.: band-cup, fr. (unpublished). Prov.: Etruria. Handle-zone: ]χομχνονμχ. 195. Florence sine inv. no.: band-cup, fr. (AVI 3522; Beazley and Payne 1929, above, ad 141, 268, not ill.). Prov.: Etruria. Handle-zone: πσοικπς. 196. Frankfurt β 394: band-cup, fr (AVI 3745; CVA 2, pl. 57.4). Handle-zone: two men on kline, dancing youths, between figures numerous nonsense inscriptions, often beginning with epsilon, for example: ειοντ εσονιοσ. 197. Goettingen K 347: lip-cup, fr. (AVI 9044: CVA 3, pl. 66.5). Prov.: Italy. Lip: siren. Handle-zone: very unclear letters, mostly imitation, recognizable: λσ…λπ.[. 198. Goettingen K 351: little-master cup, fr. (AVI 9049: CVA 3, pl. 67.4). Prov.: Italy. Handle-zone: σοενεσο[ (retr.). 199. Goettingen K 353: little-master cup, fr. (AVI 9048; CVA 3, pl. 67.6). Prov.: Italy. Handle-zone: ηε(.) ηε(.)ηεηο (retr.). 200. Goettingen K 354: little-master cup, fr. (AVI 9052; CVA 3, pl. 67.7). Prov.: Italy. Handle-zone: ]γπγ. 201. Greifswald 218: band-cup, fr. (AVI 3848; A. Hundt and K. Peters, Greifswalder Antiken, Berlin 1961, no. 218, pl. 18). Handle-zone: horseman and runner, in between: πγο/[. 202. Heidelberg S 6d: band-cup, fr. (AVI 3972; CVA 4, pl. 155.7). Handle-zone: mantle-figure, horseman, in between: (ο)πχοχ ιυσιυσ λυσ. 203. Heidelberg S 7: band-cup, fr. (AVI 3973; CVA 4, pl. 155.2). Prov.: Thebes. Handle-zone: warrior, horsemen, in between faded nonsense inscriptions, difficult to read. 204. Heidelberg S 34: lip-cup, fr. (AVI 3982; CVA 4, pl. 154.7). Lip: Herakles and lion. Handle-zone: ](ι) υεπιυχσυ[. 205. Himera H 72.46: lip-cup, fr. (AVI 4007; C. A. Di Stefano et al., I vecchi scavi nelle necropoli di Himera, Campagne di Scavo 1966-1973. Himera II, Rome 1976, pl. XLIV.6). Prov.: Himera. Lip: feline and grazing

stag. Handle-zone: inscription, supposedly nonsense. 206. Himera: lip-cup, fr. (N. Allegro, ‘Himera 198488. Ricerche del Istituto di archeologia nell’ area della città,’ Kokalos 34-35 (1988-1989), 640, pl. 92, fig. 2). Prov.: Himera. Handle-zone: only palmette preserved and 2 letters of end of inscription: ]νς. 207. Houston (TX): band-cup (H. Hoffmann, Ten Centuries that Shaped the West: Greek and Roman Art in Texas Collections, Houston, TX 1970). Handlezone A: two fighting warriors between mantlefigures, on the left: αιοσκα (the alphas may be deltas), on the right γιελσν. B: mostly lost. 208. Izmir O.S. 50 (AVI 4025; J. Boardman, ‘Old Smyrna: The Attic Pottery,’ Annual of the British School at Athens 53-54 (1958-1959), 166, no. 50). Prov.: Old Smyrna. Handle-zone: palmette and start of inscription: κο[ (nonsense?). 209. Kavala, Athenaion: band-cup, fr. (G. Daux, ‘Chronique des Fouilles en 1961,’ Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique 86 (1962), 838, fig. 10). Prov.: Kavala. Handle-zone: maenad and satyr, in between: ]οπε. 210. Kavala, Parthenon: lip-cup, fr. (G. Bakalakis, ‘᾿Εκ τοῦ ἱεροῦ τῆς Παρθένου ἐν Νεαπόλει (Καβάλα),’ Archaiologike Ephemeris 1938, 143, no. 206, fig. 18.17). Prov.: Kavala. Lip: two nude, dancing youths. Handle-zone: ](.)(.)(.)(ν)ιχι. 211. Kavala, Parthenon: band-cup, fr. (Bakalakis 1938, above, ad 210, 150-151, no. 296, fig. 24.1). Prov.: Kavala. Handle-zone: maenad and satyr, in between: ια or ιδ (Bakalakis reads ιδα). 212. London 1888,0401.1059: little-master cup, fr. (unpublished). Prov.: Naukratis. Handle-zone: ]νσσ[ (retr.). 213. London 1914,0317.6/1965,0930.768: band-cup, fr. (AVI 4726; Beazley and Payne 1929, above, ad 141, pl. 16.9; both AVI and Beazley/Payne discuss first fragment only). Prov.: Naukratis. Handle-zone: Hephaistos riding a donkey which is molested by satyr, above satyr’s head: κλκ, on joining fragment, diagonally along satyr’s back: ειειο[. 214. London 1969,0901.1-2: lip-cup, frr. (unpublished). Lip: winged female running toward mantlefigure. Handle-zone, nonsense(?): ]ιυει. 215. London B 600.40: lip-cup, fr. (AVI 4343; Beazley and Payne 1929, above, ad 141, pl. 17.29). Prov.: Naukratis. Lip: horseman. Handle-zone: ]πσοεασε[. 216. London B 601.11: little-master cup, fr. (AVI 4353; E.A. Gardner, Naukratis II, London 1888, pl. 22.851). Prov.: Naukratis. Handle-zone: (κ) λονελο[. 217. Malibu (CA) 81.AE.201.1a-h: band-cup, frr. (unpublished). Handle-zone: four satyrs and four maenads dancing, in between supposed nonsense (non vidi). 109

Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings 218. Marseille, Excavations in area de la Bourse FN 16: little-master cup, fr. (V. Meirano, ‘Ceramiche d’importazione a Massalia in età tardo-arcaica. La documentazione di alcuni saggi nell’area della Borsa,’ Orrizonti II (2001), 181-182, fig. 16). Prov.: Marseille. Handle-zone: ]οινποι[. 219. Munich 2129: lip-cup, fr. (AVI 5213; CVA 10, pl. 36.1-4). Prov.: Vulci. No figured decoration. Handle-zone: νενγτνεκϝκεϝνοϝ. 220. Munich 9443: band-cup, frr. (AVI 5386; CVA 11, pl. 33.2-5). Handle-zone: satyr and animal attack scenes, in between nonsense and partly imitation inscriptions, recognizable on B: ρ(.) κ(λ)ϝ(.) ρογγ. 221. Naxos B 5534: little-master cup, fr. (M. H. Bikakis, Archaic and Classical Imported Pottery in the Museums of Paros and Naxos, Diss. University of Cincinnati 1985, 181, no. 258b, pl. 36). Prov.: Naxos. Handle-zone: ]χχας. 222. New York, market: lip-cup (Royal Athena Galleries, Art of the Ancient World XIII (2002), no. 73). Lip A, B: swan. Handle-zone A: hard to read nonsense, recognizable are letters 2-4: εοπ (an earlier reading τλεοννεαρχοσ in Galerie Puhze, Katalog 10 (1994) no. 179, is certainly incorrect). B: lost. 223. Oxford G 1055, lip-cup, fr. (unpublished). Prov.: Naukratis. Lip: fighting warriors, to there right vertically last two letters of a vertical inscription preserved: ]λτ(?). 224. Oxford 1912.37.21: band-cup, fr. (unpublished). Prov.: Naukratis. Handle-zone: boar hunt, between figures νπ and χ. 225. Oxford 1912.37d: lip-cup, fr. (unpublished). Prov.: Naukratis. Lip: mantle-figures. Handle-zone: ]οσπ[. 226. Oxford 1966.943: band-cup, fr. (Select Exhibition of Sir John and Lady Beazley’s Gifts 1912-1966, London 1967, no. 146, pl. 12). No figured decoration. Handle-zone: τλυλυλυιλευττλυτλυλυ. 227. Oxford 1966.1003: band-cup, fr., Glaukytes and Painter of Louvre F 51 (AVI 6016; Heesen 2011 [above, note 2], no. 115, fig. 46b). Prov.: Italy. Handle-zone: nonsense inscription: ](.)ιτ. Underneath handle signature: γλαυκυτεσεποιεσεν. 228. Paris, market: band-cup, fr. (Artcurial, 9 October 2012, part of lot 87). Handle-zone: warrior mounting chariot, above chariot unreadable inscription, behind warrior: λσο(σ)[. 229. Paris, Louvre CA 7436 and Cp 10270: band-cup, frr. Manner Centaur Painter (ABV 190.17; Heesen 2011 [above, note 2], no. 692). Handle-zone: horsemen, youths, in between ποχϝ[ and πο(ι)(.). 230. Paris, Louvre Cp 10270bis: band-cup, fr., Manner Centaur Painter (Heesen 2011 [above, note 2], no. 693). Handle-zone: horseman and youth, between them: ]οσ(α).

231. Rhodes, Marmaro sep. 19, no. 9: band-cup, frr. (L. Laurenzi, Clara Rhodos VIII, Rome 1936, 142143, figs. 123, 127-128). Prov.: Marmaro. Handlezone A, B: warriors leaving, on the right of one fragment (Laurenzi, fig. 127) three letters preserved: υοϝ[. 232. Rome, Antiquarium Communale: lip-cup, frr. (AVI 6939, 7820; E. Paribeni, ‘Ceramica d’importazione dall’area sacra di S. Omobono,’ Bollettino dei Musei Communali di Roma 77 (19591960), 117, no. 38, pl. 9). Prov.: Rome. Lip A, B: grazing stag. Handle-zone A: ευ(α)κ[.. B: ]ιν[. 233. Rome, Antiquarium Communale: little-master cup, fr. (E. Paribeni, ‘Ceramica d’importazione nell’area sacra di S. Omobono. 2o rapporto,’ Bollettino dei Musei Communali di Roma 81 (1968-1969), 12, no. 19, pl. VI). Prov.: Rome. Handle-zone: νοργ[. 234. Rome, Villa Giulia 79554: band-cup, fr. (AVI 7230; Hannestad 1989, above, ad 79, no. 114). Prov.: Cerveteri. Handle-zone, nude youth running to right, feline, in between: εολσι. 235. Rome, Villa Giulia 79631: band-cup, frr. (AVI 7237; Hannestad 1989, above, ad 79, no. 102). Prov.: Cerveteri. Handle-zone A, B: warriors fighting over corpse, in between on A: ]ς and ετε[. B: ]σεν οι[ and ε[. 236. Rome, Villa Giulia 79638: lip-cup, fr. (AVI 7238; Hannestad 1989, above, ad 79, no. 49). Prov.: Cerveteri. Handle-zone: ]ιοεγογ (Hannestad) or ]ιεσ(ο)λ (AVI). 237. Rome, Villa Giulia 79662: band-cup, fr. (AVI 7241; Hannestad 1989, above, ad 79, no. 72). Prov.: Cerveteri. Handle-zone A, B: horsemen and youths, in between: ου[ (.)(.)οος ]ιιχοσιχι ει[ σιχ τσ(.)σοχ. 238. Rome, Villa Giulia 79985: lip-cup, fr. (AVI 7250; Hannestad 1989, above, ad 79, no. 9). Prov.: Cerveteri. Lip: horse. Handle-zone: ]ονον. 239. Rome, Villa Giulia 80155/80192: band-cup, frr. AVI 7253; Hannestad 1989, above, ad 79, no. 173). Prov.: Cerveteri. Handle-zone: horseman, around the horse: εδειο πει οστο (according to text Hannestad, inscriptions on photo not legible). 240. Rome, Villa Giulia 102092: lip-cup, fr. (AVI 7260; Hannestad 1989, above, ad 79, no. 46). Prov.: Cerveteri. Handle-zone: λοτε[. 241. Samos K 6927: band-cup, fr. (AVI 7432; B. Kreuzer, Die attisch schwarzfigurige Keramik aus dem Heraion von Samos. Samos XXII, Mainz 1998, 183, no. 250, pl. 44). Prov.: Samos. Handle-zone: panthers attacking stag, above the animals: δεσδσευ τε[. 242. Serra di Puccia: little-master cup, fr. (A. Burgio, ‘Prospezione archeologia a Serra di Puccia,’ Sicilia Archeologica 69-70 (1989), 77, fig. 23.39). Prov.: Serra di Puccia. Handle-zone: ]ευμολ[. 243. St. Petersburg B. 68.196: band-cup, fr. (CVA 10, pl. 12.4-6). Prov.: Berezan. No figured decoration. Handle-zone: λιτνιχσοσ[. 110

Chapter Five Meaningless, But Not Useless 244. St. Petersburg B. 73.472: lip-cup, fr. (CVA 8, pl. 4.4-5). Prov.: Berezan. Lip: cock and hen. Handlezone: ]σλοοσιλοσλος. 245. St. Petersburg B. 74.117: little-master cup, fr. (CVA 10, pl. 30.6). Prov.: Berezan. Handle-zone: πυραιο(π). 246. St. Petersburg B. 85.111: little-master cup, fr. (CVA 10, pl. 13.12). Prov.: Berezan. Handle-zone: ναι[. 247. St. Petersburg B. 98: band-cup, fr. (CVA 10, pl. 13.5). Prov.: Berezan. No figured decoration. Handle-zone: illegible nonsense, with lower parts of letters lost. 248. St. Petersburg B. 102: band-cup, fr. (CVA 10, pl. 13.10). No figured decoration. Handle-zone: χενο. The cautious attribution by Petrakova in the CVA to Xenokles is not taken over (see Heesen 2011 [above, note 2], 41, n. 255). 249. St. Petersburg B. 347: band-cup, fr. (CVA 8, pl. 22.10). Prov.: Berezan. Handle-zone: pair of horsemen, to their left: ]ενεννευε. 250. St. Petersburg B. 349: band-cup, fr.(CVA 8, pl. 22.1). Prov.: Berezan. Handle-zone: youth and horseman, above horse: χαια[. 251. St. Petersburg B. 350: little-master cup, fr. (CVA 10, pl. 29.5). Prov.: Berezan. Handle-zone: χα(χ) δε[. 252. St. Petersburg B. 429: lip-cup, fr. (CVA 8, pl. 4.3). Prov.: Berezan. Lip: siren. Handle-zone: ](.) νλασανε. 253. St. Petersburg P. 1870.106: lip-cup, fr. (CVA 10, pl. 10.5). Prov.: Pantikipaion. Lip: maenad and satyr, diagonally in between: (ι)εδ(.)ε (retr.) 254. St. Petersburg B. 77.135: lip-cup, fr. (T. J. Smith, ‘Athenian Black-Figure Pottery from Berezan,’ in S. L. Solovyev (ed.), Borysthenes-Berezan. The Hermitage Collection II, St. Petersburg 2010, 189, no. 54, fig. 52). Prov.: Berezan. Handle-zone: νιενο[. 255. Sydney 56.15: band-cup, fr. (F. Gabrici, Cuma. Monumenti Antichi 22 [1913], 494, fig. 186g). Prov.: Cumae. Handle-zone: horseman, in between: νιος (behind horseman), νιοις (under horse), χ (near horse’s head). 256. Taranto: band-cup, fr. (A. Alessio et al., Catalogo del Museo Nazionale Archeologico di Taranto I,2. Il progetto del museo, Taranto 1990, 53, fig. 36.3.3). Prov.: Taranto. Handle-zone: nonsense. 257. Tarquinia, Gravisca coll.73/5172: lip-cup, fr. (Iacobazzi 2004 [above, note 2], 104, no. 169). Prov.: Gravisca. Lip: horseman. Handle-zone: ]οεσε[ (retr.). 258. Tarquinia, Gravisca coll. 79/14082: littlemaster cup, fr., found near 79/14254, 79/14256 (Iacobazzi 2004 [above, note 2], 154, no. 478). Prov.: Gravisca. Handle-zone: ]σπχυ(.)[. 259. Tarquinia, Gravisca coll. 79/14254, 79/14256: lipcup, frr., found near 79/14082 (Iacobazzi 2004

[above, note 2], 106, no. 185). Prov.: Gravisca. Handle-zone: ]πχυ(π). 260. Tarquinia, Gravisca coll. II 565: little-master cup, fr. (Iacobazzi 2004 [above, note 2], 154, no. 480). Prov.: Gravisca. Handle-zone: ιπια:τ[. 261. Tarquinia, Gravisca coll. II 646, II 1885: lip-cup, fr. (AVI 7621; Iacobazzi 2004 [above, note 2], 104, no. 171). Prov.: Gravisca. Lip: feline, above animal: χπ(α)[. 262. Tarquinia, Gravisca coll. II 1101, II 1102: lip-cup, frr. (Iacobazzi 2004 [above, note 2], 101-102, no. 158). Prov.: Gravisca. Lip A: nude youth. B: boar. Handle-zone A: lost. B: ]σσνοσλ[. 263. Tarquinia, Gravisca coll. II 8576bis: little-master cup, fr. (Iacobazzi 2004 [above, note 2], 153154, no. 476). Prov.: Gravisca. Handle-zone: ](κ) αυισυο[ (difficult to read). 264. Tarquinia, Gravisca coll. II 9952: little-master cup (Iacobazzi 2004 [above, note 2], 153, no. 470). Prov.: Gravisca. Handle-zone: vertically σοσο[. 265. Thasos 1009p/D 931: little-master cup, fr. (L. B. Ghali-Kahil, Etudes Thasiennes VII. La céramique grecque [Fouilles 1911-1956], Paris 1960, 79, no. 33, pl. 32). Prov.: Thasos. Handle-zone: κοεμε[. 266. Thasos 59.373: little-master cup, fr. (unpublished). Prov.: Thasos. Handle-zone: γογσσσ[. 267. Thasos 59.646: little-master cup, fr. (unpublished). Prov.: Thasos. Handle-zone: ]ιαιαι[. 268. Thasos 59.651: little-cup, fr. (unpublished). Prov.: Thasos. Handle-zone: ]αλτεπο(ν)[. 269. Thasos 59.2500, 2501, 2509: lip-cup, frr. (unpublished). Prov.: Thasos. Lip: unidentified figure. Handle-zone: αγα[ and ]ν[. 270. Thessalonike 4863: band-cup, fr. (publication by E. Kefalidou forthcoming). Handle-zone: lion attacking deer or goat between cocks and panthers, above lion: λυσοϝλυσ(.)(.)(.) and vertically to the right of the attack scene: ]λυσονυ. C.2: Cups apparently with nonsense inscriptions, of which the available information of one or both sides of the cup is insufficient: 271. Basel, market: band-cup (unpublished; photo Beazley Archive). Handle-zone A: opposing horsemen, mantle-figure and two runners, between horsemen, vertically, πο(ε). B: non vidi. 272. Capua, Museo dell’Antica Capua T 141.3: bandcup (W. Johannowski, Materiali di età arcaica della Campania. Monumenti antichi della Magna Grecia IV, Naples 1983, pl. 33a). Prov.: Capua. No figured decoration. Handle-zone A, B nonsense: Johannowski mentions ‘due serie di lettere senza alcun significato.’ 111

Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings

Figure 14. Cat. no. 276: Florence, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 98813, detail of A. Photograph © Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Florence.

273. Chianciano Terme coll. Terrosi 88: lip-cup (G. Paolucci, La collezione Terrosi nel Museo di Chianciano Terme, Chianciano Terme 1991, 36, no. 67). Prov.: Chiusi region. No figured decoration. Handle-zone A, traces of inscription: οιοσ[ ]πα. B: non vidi. 274. Dresden Skulpturensammlung Dr. 221: bandcup (skd-online-collection.skd.museum/de/ contents/showSearch?id=1378432). No figured decoration. Handle-zone A: ]επκπον(α)σ(α). B: non vidi. 275. Florence, A. Marseglia coll.: lip-cup (unpublished; Soprintendenza Archeologica per la Toscana, photo neg. no. h8525\27). Prov.: Italy. Lip A: female head in outline. Handle-zone A: 6 letters preserved of nonsense inscription (hard to read). Side B: non vidi. 276. Florence 98813: lip-cup (my Figure 14; M. G. Marzi Costagli, ‘Nuovi vasi attici del Museo Archeologico di Firenze,’ Bollettino d’Arte 66 (1981), 13-16, figs. 1-4). Prov.: Etruria. Lip A, B: dancing youths. Handle-zone A, B: irregular line of letters, some recognizable as omikrons, pis and epsilons. 277. Ghent University 8: lip-cup (D. Vanhove [ed.], L’Olympisme dans l’Antiquité, Lausanne 1993, 106, no. 49. Lip A, B: two running youths. Handlezone A: να(.)(τ)οναδ. B: non vidi. 278. Havana 112: band-cup (AVI 3297; R. Olmos, Catalogo de los Vasos Griegos del Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes de la Habana, Madrid 1993, 96, no. 27).

Handle-zone A, B: lion attacking ram, on either side of the figures a horizontal inscription, said to be nonsense. 279. Larnaca, Pierides: band-cup (AVI 4122; J.-J. Maffre, ‘Vases grecs de la collection Zénon Piéridès,’ Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique 95 [1971], 650-652, figs. 11-12). Prov.: Marion. Handle-zone A, B: horseman and runners between animals (on A, rams, on B ram and panther), between figures inscriptions with at least partly recognizable letters: chis, omikrons and pis. 280. London B 404: lip-cup, Stroibos Painter (AVI 4306; Heesen 2011 [above, note 2], no. 206, pl. 59b). Prov.: Vulci. Lip A, B: runner between mantled youths. Handle-zone A: χεο(ν)σ(ο)νολπυσαο(ο) λυν. B: non vidi. 281. London, market: lip-cup (Christie’s London, 3 July 1996, lot 44). Lip A: swan, diagonally to its left and right: νονονεον νυλυυλυ. B: lost. Handle-zone A: χεο(ν)σ(ο)νολπυσαο(ο)λυν. B: parts of inscription, non vidi. 282. Mendè Excavations: band-cup (A. Pariente, ‘Chronique des Fouilles en 1993,’ Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique 118 [1994], 760, fig. 68). Prov.: Mendè. Handle-zone A: running man and woman, surrounded by running satyrs, in between nonsense. B: non vidi. 283. Milan 11066: lip-cup (G. M. Facchini, ‘Cinque coppe dei ‘Kleinmeister’ a Milano,’ Notizie dal Chiostro del Monastero Maggiore di Milano 19-20 [1977], 63-65, pls. XLII-XLIII). Interior: cock and

.

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Chapter Five Meaningless, But Not Useless hen. Lip A, B: swan. Handle-zone A, B: nonsense, difficult to read from photo (‘iscrizione privo di senso’). 284. Orvieto 931: band-cup (M. Bizzarri, ‘La necropoli di Crocifisso del Tufo in Orvieto,’ Studi Etruschi 30 [1962], 35, fig. 18). Prov.: Orvieto. No figured decoration. Handle-zone A: χυνυτυχευν. B: non vidi. 285. Paris, market: lip-cup (Millon and Associés, 15 June 2007, lot 217). Lip A, B: swan. Handle-zone: nonsense? (‘micro-inscription illegible’). 286. Rome, Villa Giulia 64223: lip-cup (G. Riccioni and M. T. Falconi Amorelli, La tomba della Panatenaica di Vulci, Quaderni di Villa Giulia 3, Rome 1971, 36, no. 22). Prov.: Vulci. No figured decoration. Handle-zone A: 16 letters ending in χυχυ. B: 12 letters, non vidi. 287. Syracuse: band-cup (AVI 7528; unpublished, non vidi). Prov.: Sicily. No figured decoration. Handle-zone A: διεχνι. 288. Taranto 4955: band-cup. (F. G. Lo Porto, ‘Ceramica arcaica della Necropoli di Taranto,’ Annuario della Scuola archeologica di Atene n.s. 21-22 [19591960], 221, fig. 195f). Prov.: Taranto. No figured decoration. Handle-zone A, B: nonsense. 289. Thessalonike: band-cup (K. Sismanidis, Archaiologikon Deltion 40 [1985], pl. 96.1; BAPD 43983). Prov.: Thessalonike. No figured decoration. Handle-zone: possibly nonsense. 290. Tocra 1050: lip-cup (J. Boardman and J. Hayes, Excavations at Tocra 1963-1965. The Archaic Deposits I, London 1966, 102, pl. 77). Prov.: Tocra. Interior: lion. Lip A, B: no figured decoration. Handlezone: nonsense. 291. Würzburg L 410: lip-cup (AVI 8093; Langlotz 1932, above, ad 12, no. 410, pl. 113). Handle-zone A: nonsense, 12 letters. B: similar, 10 letters. 292. Zurich, market: lip-cup (Heide Volmoeller, 17 November 1983, no. 37). Interior: cock. Lip A, B: No figured decoration. Handle-zone A: nonsense: καιρεκοιπε (non vidi). 293. Whereabouts unknown: patch band-cup (Malagardis 2009, above, ad 92, 104, fig. 11). Handle-zone A: Herakles fighting Kyknos, behind Herakles a vertical inscription: χ:σλλϙϙιν (after drawing). B: Herakles fighting Acheloos.

come in all sorts of variations and are often detached from the figured scene(s). A number of nonsense inscriptions contain unpronounceable strings of letters in apparently random order, although often a similar choice of letters is discernable on both sides of the cup (Group B). A larger group of cups have nonsense inscriptions that either contain strictly repeated letter combinations or similar strings of letters on both sides of the cups (Group A.2 and A.3). Others have a nonsense inscription inspired by a meaningful inscription (Group A.1). Within the latter group, cups 1-3 are close in shape, style and lettering, and all three have similar palmettes. They are probably made by one potter-painter. Fragment 4 may also be connected, but there is not enough preserved for a definite attribution. A lip- and band-cup without figured decoration, 5-6, can be attributed to one painter based on the similar inscriptions, letterforms and palmettes. Of the cups with (strictly) repeated strings of letters, many have rather simple nonsense inscriptions consisting of two or three different letters, for example the cups with repeated νινι- or νιχνιχ-inscriptions. Only a few can be linked with some certainty: the two lip-cups with female head in outline (26-27) and a lipcup with ram (24) have so much in common (shape, handwriting, palmettes and style), that there seems to be little doubt that they are made by the same potterpainter. On the other hand, whereas the handwriting of all these simple inscriptions is rather similar, most of these cups have little figure work to compare, and the style is often rather poor, so that a definite attribution will be difficult to establish. It cannot be entirely ruled out that a single painter was responsible for the inscriptions on the cups of different painters within a workshop, although research has shown that on littlemaster cups the inscriptions are usually the work of the painter of the figure work.18 Two unfigured band-cups with similar strings of letters on both sides of the cups, 58-59, can be attributed to one potter-painter without any doubt. The shape of the bowl, the form of the palmettes, the similar letterforms, and the 3-dot ending of the inscription on one side of each cup, all confirm it.

Observations and Conclusions The provenances mentioned in the catalogue show that cups with nonsense inscriptions were meant for the domestic markets, as well as foreign markets, and they have been found in funerary, sanctuary and settlement contexts.17 As for the inscriptions themselves, they

As I have already mentioned, writing (nearly) identical nonsense on both sides of a cup is in itself remarkable; it becomes all the more interesting, if the same nonsense little-master cups. 18  For two exceptional signatures of Xenokles apparently written by an assistant, see Heesen 2011 (above, note 2), 43, figs. 22-23, and 77, n. 470 for various results from studies of the signatures by Pamphaios, Nikosthenes and Exekias.

17  Since it is beyond the scope of this chapter, I refer to Heesen 2011 (above, note 2), 233-238, 255-256, for an examination of the regional distribution, dating, and archaeological context of the inscribed

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Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings is copied on other cups as well. Clearly, painters did not necessarily copy the same or similar nonsense on (all of) their cups, for example 45-50 by Sakonides and 139-140 by one unnamed painter. On the other hand, there are painters who did, and the (nearly) identical inscriptions on more than one cup are supporting evidence for the attribution of cups, alongside handwriting, figure-style, palmettes, and shape. The longer and more elaborate a copied inscription, the more likely it becomes that we are dealing with the preference of one painter (or perhaps workshop) for a formula, which can be copied over and over again. Some inscriptions are so specific, that it seems only a matter of time till a new cup will be found with a repeated σοναλταλτα-, πεοσπεοσπεοσπ- or πυκαλυανκαλυακυς-inscription.

A second group of cups linked through a formulaic inscription consists of three lip-cups, 55-57, that showed up at one of the infamous auctions in London in the 1980s.22 Despite their different subjects, the style of the figure work is very similar, as are the palmettes and the shape of the cups. Combined with the similar inscriptions, the conclusion must be that these cups are produced by one potter-painter. This raises questions about the cups’ provenance: three cups by one potterpainter in the same sale is extraordinary, and one wonders whether they have been illegally dug up at the same place.23 Finally, we can identify a group of four cups with (nearly) identical inscriptions, which have not been linked to each other before, probably because the subjects of the figured scenes are not easy to compare and the handleornaments differ (19-22, Figures 15-17).24

Meanwhile, we have to do with the evidence at hand, and the catalogue offers, in my opinion, clear examples of formulaic nonsense inscriptions.

The Richmond and Würzburg lip-cups (21-22), however, have been linked before by Joan Haldenstein, noticing that the inscriptions on both cups are ‘very close’ and ‘seem to be by the same hand.’25 Nevertheless she adopts Beazley’s attribution of the Richmond cup (21) to Elbows Out and attributes the Würzburg cup (22) to the Phrynos Painter, suggesting that a separate hand (a specialist writer) could have been responsible for inscriptions in various workshops.26 This is, however, very unlikely, since research has shown quite clearly that on little-master cups the inscriptions are usually the work of the painter of the figure work; in various cases a clear development in the script is noticeable (from an inscription being carefully written with stiff letters to a looser script of more rounded letters) congruent with the painter’s career.27 Furthermore, other specific formulas are used by one potter-painter or one workshop only.

First of all, let us look at two lip-cups, 53-54, which are here linked for the first time through their inscriptions and are newly attributed to the BMN Painter.19 The inscriptions on all of his cups have rather rectangular lettering, are well centered in the handle-zone of the lip-cups, and all start with the particular letter strings chi-pi-sigma or chi-pi-kappa-sigma, with the exception of the two inscriptions on one side of band-cup 52.20 Apart from the inscriptions, the figures of Herakles on the St. Petersburg lip-cup (53) clearly show characteristics of the BMN Painter. The circular nipples with surrounding red rings are characteristics used by the BMN Painter and other painters. In addition, the BMN Painter’s human figures have relatively large eyes, and their neck incisions consist of either two lines which nearly meet or a single curving line (as on Herakles on 53 and the Minotaur of 51); his knee- and elbow-incisions usually consist of a sharp triangle or a short line, each with two additional lines. The lip-cup in Taranto (54) is unfigured and has—apart from the inscriptions—little to compare to the other work of the BMN Painter; however, its shape is close to that of the St. Petersburg cup.21

Beazley’s attribution of the Richmond cup (21) to Elbows Out was also taken over by D. von Bothmer, but still remains unexplained, and is not understood by

Only one of the cups (55) has been illustrated in the sales catalogue of 5 July 1982. All three are wrongly described as band-cups, and the sphinx (on 57) is called a ‘siren’ (likewise at its later sale in the catalogue of 17-18 July 1985). Fortunately, the Beazley Archive has snapshots of all three cups, although the flashlight partly obscures the inscriptions. 23  For pairs or small groups of cups by one (potter-)painter found in one place, see Heesen 2011 (above, note 2), 250 with notes 14771479. For the many illegally excavated antiquities turning up in the art market in the 1980s, see P. Watson and C. Todeschini, The Medici Conspiracy, New York, NY 2006. 24  A clear photo of fragment 19 is published in CVA Malibu 2, pl. 98.3. 25  J.T. Haldenstein, Little Master Cups: Studies in 6th Century Attic BlackFigure Vase-painting, Diss. University of Cincinnati 1982, 28 and 46. 26  J. D. Beazley, Paralipomena, Oxford 1971, 113.39bis; Haldenstein 1982 (above, note 25), 46. 27  For such a development in the inscriptions of Sokles, Archikles, Glaukytes, Exekias, Hermogenes, Sakonides and the Tleson Painter, see Heesen 2011 (above, note 2), 37, n. 235. 22 

These two cups illustrate the fact that, until recently, I have been guilty of neglect of nonsense inscriptions as well. Only after receiving photos of the Princeton cup (43; Figure 1a-b) and noticing the repetition in the inscriptions did I start to replace the simple statement ‘nonsense’ with a full transcription of the nonsense inscriptions in my database, so that the relevant data might be compared. That attempt coincided with the invitation to write this chapter, hence its subject. 20  A fragmented Siana cup attributed to the BMN Painter, Malibu 86.AE.156.1-2 (CVA 2, pl. 85) also bears nonsense inscriptions, one of which is similar to the ones on the lip-cups: κσεασ(π)πσο[.]ς. The other inscriptions are too fragmentary to compare. 21  Unfortunately, the available images of 54 do not show the palmettes clearly. Whereas lip-cup 53 has no palmettes (as the painter’s band-cups Berlin F 1797 and Rome, Villa Giulia 74981), lipcup 51 and band-cups Paris, Louvre F 80 and Rome, Villa Giulia 50472 and 79991 have distinctive palmettes with five to seven red-and-black leaves (see Heesen 2011 [above, note 2], 168, fig. 96a-b). 19 

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Chapter Five Meaningless, But Not Useless

Figure 15a-b. Cat. no. 20: Malibu (CA), J. Paul Getty Museum 96.AE.91, details of A and B. Photograph courtesy and © J. Paul Getty Museum. Gift of Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman.

the present author.28 Without noticing the similarity of the inscriptions of the Malibu cup (20) with the others, Haldenstein connects this cup with the Workshop of the Phrynos Painter.29

The three complete lip-cups (and the fragment) are clearly related to each other, not only by the similar inscriptions, but also by their sturdy shape and size. They share the feature of a wide dividing line well below the ridge, a trait seen on the Phrynos Painter’s lip-cups as well.30 As for the figure work or the handleornaments, there is little to compare. The palmettes with five large rounded leaves on 21 recall the only

D. von Bothmer, ‘Elbows Out,’ Revue Archéologique n.s. 1 (1969), 3-15. K. Hamma and M. True (eds), A Passion for Antiquities: Ancient Art from the Collection of Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman, Malibu, CA 1994, 79-81. 28  29 

30 

115

Heesen 2011 (above, note 2), 64.

Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings

Figure 16a-b. Cat. no. 21: Richmond (VA), Virginia Museum of Fine Arts 62.1.14, details of A and B. Photograph courtesy and © Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond (VA). Adolph D. and Wilkins C. Williams Fund. Photographer: Travis Fullerton.

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Chapter Five Meaningless, But Not Useless

Figure 17a-b. Cat. no. 22: Würzburg, Universität, Martin von Wagner Museum L 407 (HA 606), details of A and B. © Martin von Wagner Museum der Universität Würzburg. Photographers: P. Neckermann (A) and E. Oehrlein (B).

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Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings palmettes known from the Phrynos Painter, on bandcup Amsterdam 8192, but they are smaller and lack the spiral volutes.31 Overall, one can say that the style on these cups is less refined than on the cups by the Phrynos Painter. A workshop relationship with him seems not unlikely, though. The quotation from J. D. Beazley at the beginning of this chapter already implied that the inscriptions on Athenian little-master cups are useful as part of the design, whether they are meaningful or not. The study of the nonsense inscriptions here shows that painters sometimes used formulas when writing them.

31 

As a result, cups otherwise probably not linked with each other for lack of comparable figured decoration, can now be linked for the first time through (nearly) identical inscriptions. The inscriptions then become useful instruments to support attributions. I hope that this chapter will stimulate colleagues to publish all inscriptions, including meaningless ones, with clear photos or full transcriptions in their future publications, so that new finds (and fillings of gaps in the catalogue) may lead to new links. Clearly, this study has shown that meaningless is not useless!

Heesen 2011 (above, note 2), 68, fig. 39.

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Inscriptions on Apulian Vases

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Chapter Six

Inscriptions on Apulian Red-Figure Vases: A Survey* John H. Oakley Greek inscriptions are found on all five of the major Italic red-figure fabrics—Lucanian, Apulian, Campanian, Paestan, and Sicilian. Among these, Apulian features the most, and a little over 100 Apulian vases are known with inscriptions. To date, there has been no study devoted solely to this body of material, although A. D. Trendall and A. Cambitoglou give a useful, short, half page overview of them in The Red-figured Vases of Apulia,1 and C. Roscino includes the material in her recent overview of the inscriptions on all the Italiote red-figure fabrics.2 Because of the lack of a comprehensive study of the Apulian material, I present one here.

and two by Python.4 These are the only makers’ names known to date on Italiote red-figure. Kalos-inscriptions, another type popular on Attic vases, are not known to have been used on Apulian vases. There are a few, however, on early Lucanian vases. A hydria in Oxford by the Pisticci Painter with Eros pursuing a woman and an amphora in Munich by his colleague, the Amykos Painter, with two pairs of a youth and woman, were the only two examples known for some time.5 On the Oxford vase the kalos is between the heads of the two figures, while on the Munich amphora both kalos and kale are found between a woman and a youth on the right. As Trendall correctly notes, these inscriptions are ‘a direct legacy from Attic.’6 Just recently a third example has appeared in a collection of vases acquired by the Museo Archeologico Nazionale of Florence, the Giuseppe Colombo Collection. Kalos in large letters decorates the shield of a hoplitodromos on the left of a bell-krater by the Pisticci Painter (Figure 1), while his companion on the right side has the syllable ΒΑΡ in large letters on his shield. Most likely, as Mario Iozzo has posited, this is an abbreviation for a name, perhaps of the city for which he competes (Barion?), or for some other term.7 Konrad Schauenburg mentions a chous by the Apulian red-figure artist, the Felton Painter, that shows a warrior with a lambda on his shield, so this type of inscription also exists on Apulian vases.8 That so few early Lucanian vases and no Apulian have ancient kalos-inscriptions, despite these fabrics’ derivation from Attic, is logical because the heyday of the kalos-inscription on Attic vases (c. 560-475 BC) was long gone, and they were uncommon in 440-420 BC, the time period when the South Italian red-figure fabrics

To start, it is important to note that Apulian red-figure vases feature nowhere near the variety of types and number of inscriptions as on Attic vases. For example, there is a plethora of Attic potters and painters who have signed their works, but to date, there are no known names of Apulian potters or painters. The one quasi exception is the modern inscription incised on a volutekrater in Paris that reads Lasimos egrapse (ΛΑΣΙΜΟΣ ΕΓΡΑΨΕ), ‘Lasimos painted (it).’ It was recognized as a fake already back in 1742 by the antiquarian Anton Francesco Gori as, among other things, the psi does not have a proper fourth-century form.3 For names of vasepainters in South Italian red-figure, we have to look to Paestan pottery, on which only the craftsmen Asteas and his slightly later colleague, Python, each signed a number of vases; the count is now at twelve by Asteas

I am extremely grateful to Dimitrios Yatromanolakis for inviting me to contribute to this book, and to the following for their help: Thomas Carpenter, Andrew Frith, Jasper Gaunt, Kristine Gex, Laurent Gorgerat, Mario Iozzo, Ken Lapatin, Kathleen Lynch, Ilaria Perzia, Dan Potter, Rebecca Sinos, Anja Ulbrich, and Susan Walker. 1  RVAp lii-liii. 2  C. Roscino in Todisco II, 337-342. I am uncertain how she came up with the number of 150 for the Apulian red-figure vases. I know a little over 100 vases with inscriptions, many of which have multiple inscriptions. 3  Paris, Louvre K 66; Denoyelle/Iozzo 23-24, fig. 1; RVAp 913-914, no. 36, pl. 350 where Trendall and Cambitoglou note that the psi is not a fourth-century BC form; RVAp Suppl. II 324. See also now M. Denoyelle, ‘Le ‘vase de Lasimos’ et son inscription: exception, illusion, falsification?’ in B. Bourgeois and M. Denoyelle (eds), L’Europe du vase antique: Collectionneurs, savants, restaurateurs aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles, Paris/Rennes 2013, 271-275. In the same volume, see also M. E. Masci, ‘Le ‘vase de Lasimos’: de l’histoire à l’interrogation de l’oeuvre. Pour un parcours méthologique,’ 277-291; P. Poccetti, ‘La signature de Lasimos: falsifiée ou authentique?’ 293-303; and B. Bourgeois, ‘Le ‘vase de Lasimos’: étude scientifique de l’inscription,’ 305-315. *

4  A. D. Trendall, The Red-Figured Vases of Paestum, Rome 1987, 84-86 and 139-140. See most recently for the signature E. Simon, ‘The Paestan Painter Asteas,’ in C. Marconi (ed.), Greek Vases: Images, Contexts, and Controversies, Leiden 2004, 113-122. 5  LCS 9. Oxford, Ashmolean AN1879.169 (V 293) (LCS 18, no. 24; LCS Suppl. III 4) and Munich, Antikensammlungen 3275: LCS 49, no. 250, pl. 20.2. Anja Ulbrich kindly provided photographs of the inscription on the hydria in Oxford. 6  LCS 9. On kalos- and kale-inscriptions, see chapters 2 and 3 in the present volume. 7  M. Iozzo, Arte della Magna Grecia. La collezione Colombo nel Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Firenze, Florence 2009, 55-58; LCS Suppl. II 154, no. 42a; K. Schauenburg, Studien zur unteritalischen Vasenmalerei II, Kiel 2000, 67, n. 260. 8  Schauenburg 2000 (above, note 7), 67, n. 260, says the vase is on the market, but his reference to it appears to be incorrect.

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Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings

Figure 1. Florence, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, ex Giuseppe Colombo Collection. © Soprintendenza per i Beni Archeologici della Toscana.

began. The number of Attic vases signed by artists at this time is likewise far smaller than before 475 BC, so it should also not be a surprise that no Apulian artist’s name has yet to appear, since the earliest Apulian is based on Attic, despite the fact that the earliest artists’ inscriptions that we have are on much earlier Italic vases. There are, however, modern kalos-inscriptions on two Apulian vases, a pelike in Bonn by the Truro Painter9 and a column-krater in Berlin by the Dijon Painter.10

Having considered some types of inscriptions that are popular on Attic pottery but do not appear on Apulian red-figure vases, let us now turn to some that do, for several very early Apulian vases have inscriptions that reflect their Attic legacy. A neck-amphora in Lecce by the earliest important Apulian vase-painter, the Painter of the Berlin Dancing Girl, shows a warrior’s departure in a form highly reminiscent of those on Attic neckamphorae by artists of the Group of Polygnotos.11 Compare the scene on the amphora in Lecce with,

Bonn, Akademisches Kunstmuseum 1758; RVAp 115, no. 99; RVAp Suppl. II 24. 10  Berlin, Antikensammlung F 3289; RVAp 154, no. 161, pl. 48.6; RVAp

Suppl. II 30. The inscribed names of the figures are likewise modern. 11  Lecce, Museo Provinciale Sigismondo Castromediano 571; RVAp 7-8, no. 13; RVAp Suppl. II 3; Denoyelle/Iozzo 121, fig. 177.

9 

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Chapter Six Inscriptions on Apulian Red-Figure Vases: A Survey three of our earliest inscriptions on Apulian red-figure vases, signaling the use of inscriptions right from the beginning of the fabric. The Doric forms used on the last suggest, as Martine Denoyelle has pointed out, that this early artist was not an Athenian immigrant, but a local native.16 One type of inscription that occurs on several Lucanian and Apulian vases are an inscribed pillar, the type of monument associated primarily with athletic grounds and events, although sometimes also used to mark graves or sanctuaries.17 These inscribed pillars are shown on both the front and the back of vases; the Lucanian are written horizontally, the Apulian vertically in the kionedon technique. The most common term found on them is ΤΕΡΜΩΝ which has been interpreted as referring both to the end of an athletic contest as well as metaphorically to the end of life, the τέρμα βίου and τέρμα θανάτου of grave inscriptions.18 An Apulian bell-krater in London by the Graz Painter is a good example (Figure 3).19 Here, a youth leans against an inscribed pillar and plucks a small circular object (nut? piece of fruit? baked item?) from a bowl held by the woman seated on a rock across from him. Some other Apulian vases have pillars with other inscriptions. Bell-kraters in Madrid and Bonn by the Eton-Nika Painter,20 are inscribed Nika, almost certainly Nike, the goddess of victory, in the nominative singular. This once again refers to the palaistra, as does another by the same artist in London on which the pillar is inscribed ΗΕΡΑΚΛΕΣ (Figure 4).21 Herakles was the patron of the palaistra and a symbol of a victorious athlete. The pillar with his name stands between two youths; a pair of jumping weights hang above it. The inscription on another pillar shown on a bell-krater in Copenhagen by the Adolphseck Painter is apparently a meaningless set of letters,22 while yet another on a chous by the Ascoli Satriano Painter has a dedicatory inscription: ├ ΗΡΑΚΛΗΤΟΣ ΕΘΗΚΕ – ‘Herakleitos

Figure 2. Atlanta (GA), Emory University, Michael C. Carlos Museum 2003.35.4. © Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University.

for example, an Attic neck-amphora in the Vatican from the Group of Polygnotos which, thanks to the inscriptions on it, we know shows Hektor’s departure from Hekabe and Priamos.12 The Lecce amphora has three inscriptions, one for each figure. Once thought to be fakes, a recent study has convincingly shown that the two naming the warrior as Achilleus and the woman as Briseis, are ancient, but the one naming the other male as Agamemnon is not.13 These, the label for Tereus on a fragment by the same painter in Paris,14 and those for Phoibe and Aphrodite on a hydria fragment in Atlanta (Figure 2) also by this artist,15 are

Denoyelle 1997 (above, note 15), 402. A. Kossatz-Deissmann, ‚Ein Kelchkrater des Amykos-Malers,‘ in P. Linant de Bellefonds et al. (eds), Ἀγαθὸς δαίμων: Mythes et cultes. Études d’iconographie en l’honneur de Lilly Kahil, Bulletin de Correspondance Hellénique Suppl. 38 (2000), 273-274. 18  Moret 1979 is still the starting point for these inscriptions. To his lists add a Lucanian bell-krater, the namepiece of the Cutler Painter: Sotheby’s New York, 8 June 1994, lot 130. For the latest, see M. Söldner, ΒΙΟΣ ΕΥΔΑΙΜΩΝ: Zur Ikonographie des Menschen in der rotfigurigen Vasenmalerei Unteritaliens. Die Bilder aus Lukanien, Möhnesee 2007, 136, nos. 1053 and 1055 with earlier bibliography. 19  London, British Museum F 62; RVAp 161, no. 215, pl. 52,3; RVAp Suppl. II 31. 20  Madrid, Museo Arqueológico Nacional 11081 (L 325); RVAp 78, no. 84; Moret 1979, 13, no. 8. Bonn, Akademisches Kunstmuseum 79; RVAp 77, no. 83, pl. 27.1; RVAp Suppl. II 16; Moret 1979, 13, nos. 9 and 16, fig. 11. 21  London, British Museum F 67; RVAp 78, no. 85; Moret 1979, 13, no. 10 and 17, fig. 12. 22  Copenhagen, National Museum 333; RVAp 71, no. 50; RVAp Suppl. II 15; Moret 1979, 13, no. 11 and 19, fig. 15. 16  17 

Vatican City, Museo Gregoriano Etrusco 16570; ARV2 1036.1, 1679; Add.2 318. 13  F. Frisone, ‘Le tre iscrizioni sull’anfora protoitaliota da Rudiae (Lecce, Museo Castromediano, n° inv 571),’  in M. Denoyelle et al. (eds), La céramique Apulienne. Bilan et perspectives, Naples 2005, 207-210. 14  Paris, Cabinet des Médailles; RVAp 8, no. 16, pl. 3,2. 15  M. Denoyelle, ‘Attic or Non-Attic?: The Case of the Pisticci Painter,’ in J. H. Oakley et al. (eds), Athenian Potters and Painters: The Conference Proceedings, Oxford 1997, 402, fig. 10. 12 

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Figure 3. London, British Museum F 62. Photograph courtesy the British Museum, © British Museum.

dedicated (me)’.23 The aspirate Heta (├ ) is typical of the Doric dialect of the Greek speakers of Apulia. Lastly, on a skyphos from the Group of the Dresden Amphora the pillar is inscribed ├ΙΑΡΟΝ, the Doric for ἱερόν, a holy/ sacred place.24 In this instance the pillar appears in a non-athletic context.

23  24 

To these can be added pillars with the name of the figure seated or standing next to them. On a bell-krater by the Graz Painter Aphrodite sits on a cista by a pillar inscribed ΑΦΡΟΔΙΤΗ.25 [ΕΥ]ΤΥΧΙΑ, the personification of good luck or success, has her name written on a pillar by which she sits on another bell-krater by the same

Foggia, Museo Civico 129328; RVAp 720, no. 880. Once San Marino Market; RVAp Suppl. II 502, no. 164c.

Cleveland, Museum of Art 24.534; RVAp 71 and 161, no. 216; RVAp Suppl. II 31.

25 

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Chapter Six Inscriptions on Apulian Red-Figure Vases: A Survey

Figure 4. London, British Museum F 67. Photograph courtesy the British Museum, © British Museum.

craftsman,26 and Orestes is seated by a pillar inscribed with his name on a hydria in London.27

which Pelops and Oinomaos libate, taking their oath before their race.29 Two inscriptions address the viewer. ΧΑΙΡΕ, ‘greetings/hail’, is written on a large tablet suspended between youths on a bell-krater in Lecce,30 while a mirror inscribed ΦΙΛΙΣΤΑ, ‘most beloved/dear’, addresses the viewer on a dish in Taranto.31 Yet another,

There are a few other objects on Apulian red-figure vases with inscriptions on them. ΤΕΡΜΩΝ occurs on both a pillar and altar on a bell-krater from the Graz Group.28 ΔΙΟΣ, the genitive of Zeus, labels his altar on an amphora in London by the Varrese Painter, on

London British Museum F 331; RVAp 337-338, no. 5, pl. 109.2-4; RVAp Suppl. II 86. 30  Lecce, Museo Provinciale 635; RVAp 380, no. 160. See also the partially preserved inscription, E…NIKA, on a diptych above draped youths on a bell-krater in Bari from the Lagioia Group (RVAp 238, no. 91) and a skyphos from the Group of the Dresden Amphora with a tablet reading ΠΕΛΕΙΑΣ ΚΑΛΑ ΧΑΙΡΕΤΕ—‘Pelias greets you well’: Once San Marino Market: RVAp Suppl. II 502, no. 164c. 31  Taranto, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 4756; RVAp 528, no. 255. 29 

London, British Museum F 111; RVAp 303, no. 172; RVAp Suppl. II 69; LIMC IV (1988), 126, no. 5, pl. 67, s.v. Eutychia. London British Museum F 92; RVAp 260, no. 15. 28  Los Angeles (CA), Dechter 30; RVAp Suppl II 35, no. 217b; Christie’s New York, 15 December 1993, lot 129. On another bell-krater from this group just the altar is inscribed: RVAp Suppl. II 35, no. 217c. 26  27 

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Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings

Figure 5. Liverpool, University, Garstang Museum of Archaeology. Photograph courtesy and © Garstang Museum of Archaeology.

the namepiece of the Dion Group, has the name of the person to whom the vase is dedicated, Dion, in the dative (ΔΙΩΝΙ).32

the ear are the last three letters of the alphabet and the ΕΗΙΟΥΩ in a row down the center are all vowels in alphabetical order; only Alpha is missing. Also of interest is the apparent abbreviation for the hero Sthenelos’s name (ΣΘΕ) on the forehead of a seated phlyax on a bell-krater in Richmond,34 and the incised ΑΡΧ beneath the head of a bearded warrior wearing a Thracian-style helmet and having a kopis on the reverse of a bell-krater from the Chevron Group in Liverpool (Figure 5).35 This may very well be an abbreviation for

Moving on now to other types of inscriptions, two sets of letters decorating a woman’s kekryphalos on a chous in Taranto are intriguing,33 for they resemble the practice writings of schoolboys: the ΧΨΩ besides Sèvres, Musée de la Céramique 9; RVAp liii and 384, no. 192; CVA Sèvres 1 [France 13], pl. 33.2, 8, and 12. See also the unexplained inscription painted in a reserve area below one handle on a bellkrater connected in style with the Lucera Painter: Madrid, Museo Arqueológico Nacional 11049 (L 380); RVAp 579, no. 181. 33  Taranto, Ragusa coll. 168; RVAp 709, no. 732, pl. 263.3. 32 

Richmond (VA), Virginia Museum of Fine Arts 78.83; RVAp 68, no. 33; RVAp Suppl II 15. 35  Liverpool, University, Garstang Museum of Archaeology: RVAp 65334 

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Chapter Six Inscriptions on Apulian Red-Figure Vases: A Survey the name of Archidamos III, king of Sparta, who, after having been invited to help the Tarentines in their war with the Lucanians, died at the battle of Mandura in 338 BC. If the vase does refer to him, the vessel helps to confirm the stylistic chronology of late Apulian redfigure. Several other inscriptions are types normally found on vases of other fabrics, particularly Attic, but they are far fewer in number than on Attic.36 These include an interesting dedicatory inscription on an amphora of Panathenaic shape by the Hearst Painter.37 The owner of the vase, Κληνίας Δαμέα (Klenias, son of Dameas), has his name incised on the left handle (ΚΛΗΝΙΑΣ ΔΑΜΕΑ), while only the first three letters of his name appear on the other handle (ΚΛΗ), suggesting that the inscriber had started here but then moved to the other handle for some reason. A third inscription runs around the top of the foot. It appears to say Ἀριστόδαμος ἀνέθετο δίχα κέας (ΑΡΙΣΣΤΟΔΑΑΜΟΣ ΑΝΕΘΕΤΟ ΔΙΧΑ ΚΑΕΑΣ)— Aristodamos dedicated this having been split in two. The author misspelled the last word in anticipation of diplography with the A: diplography is characteristic of inscriptions on Apulian vases, and we witness it here twice with ΑΑ and ΣΣ in the dedicator’s name. Most interesting of the few dipinti on Apulian vases is the one under the foot of a pelike by the Painter of the Copenhagen Dancer.38 It is one of the so-called katapugon inscriptions, a type found on both figured and black gloss Attic vases.39 This Apulian version reads Βουκολ[ί]ων μέλεος Λίβυσσα κατάπυγος (ΒΟΥΚΟΛΩΝ ΜΕΛΕΟΣ ΛΙΒΥΣΣΑ ΚΑΤΑΠΥΓΟΣ): Boukolion is miserable [because of/ having been deceived by] the Libyan bitch. The other inscription on this foot may be a price, but this is not certain.40

Figure 6. Basel, Antikenmuseum und Sammlung Ludwig BS 484. Photograph courtesy Antikenmuseum Basel und Sammlung Ludwig. Photographer: Andreas F. Voegelin.

A very unusual pair of inscriptions, a dialogue, accompanies the figures of Hermes and a seated man who are rendered in a naiskos on a barrel amphora by the Virginia Exhibition Painter (Figure 6).41 The god grabs the wrist of the seated man who wags his right index finger at him, indicating his unwillingness to go, as is also indicated in the inscriptions accompanying them. Above Hermes is ΑΣΤΑΕΣ├ΑΙΔΑ (ἄστα ἐς hAΐδα)— Get up and go to Hades!—and above the man ΟΥΚΑΝ ├ΙΣΤΑΜΑΙ (οὐκ ἀνhίσταμαι)—No, I’m not coming. The second person singular form of the aorist active imperative, ἄστα, and the Doric genitive of Hades,

654, no. 47, pl. 241,3-4; see also liii, 453 and 604; RVAp Suppl. 199. 36  A. W. Johnston, Trademarks on Greek Vases, Warminster 1979, 238 and 251, nos. 1-3; idem, Trademarks on Greek Vases Addenda, Oxford 2006, 176. 37  Geneva, private; RVAp Suppl. II 6, no. 46a; A. Cambitoglou, C. Aellen, and J. Chamay, Le Peintre de Darius et son milieu: Vases grecs d’Italie méridionale, Geneva 1986, 37-42. 38  RVAp 510-511, no. 131 with a drawing of the inscriptions. Cart or cartwheels in red occur on a number of Apulian vases, but their meaning is uncertain: Johnston 2006 (above, note 36). Other Apulian vases with dipinti are: 1) Würzburg H 4204, pyxis from the White Sakkos–Kantharos Group; CVA Würzburg 4 [Germany 71], 27, fig. 1 and pl. 21.6-10. 2) Laguna Hill (California), private, lekanis lid, Painter of the Macinagussa Stand; RVAp Suppl II 316, no. 546. 3) Budapest, National Museum of Fine Arts 75.40A, olpe, Schlaepfer Painter; RVAp 245, no. 159. See also those listed in Johnston 2006 (above, note 36). 39  For this type of inscription, see M. J. Milne and D. von Bothmer, ‘ΚΑΤΑΠΥΓΩΝ, ΚΑΤΑΠΥΓΑΙΝΑ,’ Hesperia 22 (1953), 215-224; K. J. Dover, Greek Homosexuality, London 1978, 113-114 and 142-143; S. I. Rotroff and J. H. Oakley, Debris from a Public Dining Place in the Athenian Agora, Hesperia Suppl. 25, Princeton, NJ 1992, 27-28. Perhaps also to be understood as an invective is the dipinto on the base of an olpe by the Schlaepfer Painter reading ΓΑΚΕΙΡΟΙ ΑΝΔΡΦΥΚΤΑΙ and meaning something like ‘sweet men to be avoided’ or ‘sweet men avoiders,’ i.e. ‘lesbians’: RVAp 245, no. 159. I thank Rebecca Sinos for her help with this inscription. 40  A probable price inscription, ΔΓΙΙΙΙ, is found beneath the handle of

a pelike from the Group of Athens 1450 on loan in Würzburg: RVAp Suppl II 155, no. 157b, pl. 39.4. 41  Basel, Antikenmuseum und Sammlung Ludwig BS 484; RVAp Suppl. I 174-175, no. 86f; Suppl. II 325; M. Schmidt, ‘Hermes als Seelengeleiter auf einer apulischen Lutrophoros in Basel,’ Antike Kunst 27 (1984), 34-40. For the inscriptions, see W. Batschelet-Massini, ‘Zur Inschrift auf der spätapulischen Hermeslutrophoros in Basel: Die dorische Namensform für Hades,’ Antike Kunst 27 (1984), 41-46.

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Figure. 7. New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art 24.97.104. © Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Image source: ARTstor, IAP.

hAΐδα, appear here for the first time.42 As is also typical of the Doric dialect of the Greek speakers of Apulia, the aspirate Heta (├) can be used both at the start of the word as well as in the middle.43

it features inscriptions that flow out of the mouths of three actors, as they deliver their lines, two of which are metrical. They may possibly be actual ones from a lost play. On the right an old woman stands on stage with a dead goose and basket with a kid (or two?) in it. She gestures with her extended right arm and says: ΕΓΩΠΑΡ├ΕΞΩ (ἐγὼ παρhέξω)—’I shall hand …over’. The missing object could possibly be the goose and basket

The earliest occurrence of the letter written in this fashion is on the famous New York Goose vase (Figure 7), an Apulian red-figure kalyx-krater by the Tarporley Painter in New York.44 One of the earliest phlyax vases,

Taplin, Comic Angels and Other Approaches to Greek Drama through VasePaintings, Oxford 1993, 30-32 and 62; M. Schmidt, ‘Komische Arme Teufel und andere Gesellen auf der griechischen Komödienbühne,’ Antike Kunst 41 (1998), 25-28; C. W. Marchall, ‘A Gander at the Goose Play,’ Theater Journal 53 (2001), 53-71; Taplin, Pots and Plays, 1, 1314, fig. 5 and 270, ns. 55-56; R. Green, ‘Towards a Reconstruction of Performance Style,’ in P. Easterling and E. Hall (eds), Greek and Roman Actors: Aspects of an Ancient Profession, Cambridge 2002, 124-125, no. 29.

These and the following observations are those of BatscheletMassini 1984 (above, note 41). Todisco II, 338. 44  New York, Metropolitan Museum 24.97.104; RVAp 45-46, no. 7; RVAp Suppl II 11; and M. E. Mayo, The Art of South Italy: Vases from Magna Graecia, Richmond, VA 1982, 82-83, no. 13 with earlier bibliography; O. 42  43 

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Chapter Six Inscriptions on Apulian Red-Figure Vases: A Survey or the old man in the middle of the scene. He exclaims: ΚΑΤΕΔΗΣΑΝΩΤΩΧΕΙΡΕ (κατέδησ’ ἄνω τὼ χεῖρε)—‘he (or she) has bound my hands above me’. Meanwhile, he dances on his toes with his hands held high, apparently caught by a magic spell (κατάδεσις).45 The young man on the left with rod in his hand looks on authoritatively and responds ΝΟΡΑΡΕΤΤΕΒΛΟ (or -ΕΡΛΟ), apparently the mutterings of a foreigner (Thracian or Scythian) acting as a policeman of sorts.46 The connection of the label ΤΡΑΓΟΙΔΟΣ which appears near a boy with a mantle over his shoulders in the upper left of the scene to a comic mask hanging above the end of the label is not clear.47 Thus, we appear to have a scene from a play involving the catching of a thief with some of the actual lines from the play being spoken.

gods fill the upper register. Easy to recognize, they are from left to right Apollo, Athena, Eros, Aphrodite and Poseidon. The lower row of figures are all labeled and directly connected to the story of Melanippe. From left to right we have: ΚΡΗΘΕΥΣ (a youth, the half brother of Melanippe, crowning a horse that is best identified as the Hippo mentioned in the play who had found the baby twin sons of Melanippe and Poseidon abandoned and being suckled by a cow); ΑΙΟΛΟΣ (bearded king with scepter, son of Hellen); ΒΟΤΗΡ (white-haired man, herdsman, with the twins—Aiolos II and Boeotus); ├ΕΛΛΗΝ (aged man, grandfather of Melanippe); ΤΡΟΦΟΣ (nurse); and ΜΕΛΑΝΙΠΠΗ (a concerned woman). Two of the labels do not name the character specifically but identify what type of lower class character they are, namely a herdsman and nurse. This type of label is found on other Apulian red-figure vases: for example, two slaves are identified as ΔΜΩΙΑΙ (maid servants) on an amphora by the Darius Painter;52 the singular ΔΜΩΣ (servant) appears by a male on a volute-krater close to the Varrese Painter on which another male figure, a soldier, is labeled ΑΙΤΩΛΟΣ, an Aetolian;53 two youths are labeled ΦΡΥΓΕΣ, Phrygians, on an amphora by the Darius Painter with a scene of Herakles and Hesione;54 ΧΟΡΗΓΟΣ (leader of the semi-chorus or backers of the play) is found twice on the same vase, once for each of two figures, on the name piece of the Choregos Painter. There is also a figure on this vase labeled ΞΑΝΘΙΑΣ, the red-head, who must be a stock character;55 ΠΑΙΔΑΓΩΓΟΣ (tutor) is labeled as such once on a volute-krater by the Darius Painter;56 and ΤΡΟΦΕΥΣ (tutor) indicates the paidagogos on another volute-krater by this artist.57

By far the most popular type of inscription on Apulian red-figure vases are labels that identify the principal characters in a scene, particularly the heroes and the gods.48 As we have already noted, they occur already on some works of the first generation of painters (Figure 2), but then go out of style until the Iliupersis and Lycurgus Painters started using them again shortly before the middle of the fourth century.49 Normally the inscriptions are incised, but sometimes they are done with added white. Some are in Attic Greek, others in the local Tarantine Doric, and still other vases have a mix of the two dialects. Errors, such as misspellings, are rare.50 Richly inscribed vases with many figures and labels became particularly popular with the Darius Painter and his circle on large vases where there was space for elaborate mythological scenes. Many of these elaborate pictures can be associated with known dramatic plays. A good example is a volute-krater in Atlanta by the Underworld Painter (Figure 8), the Darius Painter’s chief successor. It appears to be connected with a play by Euripides, Melanippe the Wise.51 Five unlabeled

Personifications are another type of figure that are often labeled, allowing us to identify figures very often that we would not be able to identify, if it were not for the label. A variety of different types are found on the masterpiece of the Painter of Louvre MNB 1148 (Figure 9), a loutrophoros that features the myth of Leda and the Swan.58 To the right of the pair is ΥΠΝΟΣ (Hypnos: sleep) with winged boots and hat, apparently putting

J. D. Beazley, ‘The New York ‘Phlyax-Vase,’’ American Journal of Archaeology 56 (1952), 193-195, first made this connection. 46  A. Major et al. believe it to be an ancient form of Circassian, a Caucasian ancient language: ‘Making Sense of Nonsense Inscriptions Associated with Amazons and Scythians on Athenian Vases,’ Princeton/Stanford Working Papers in Classics, 14-15: http://www. princeton.edu/~pswpc/pdfs/mayor/071202.pdf. 47  See the nude youth labeled ΤΡΑΓΩΔΟΣ on a bell-krater from the Winterthur Group: Laguna Hills, private: RVAp Suppl I 122, no. 563d, pl. 22.5-6; RVAp Suppl. II 199. 48  Aellen 1994, 190. 49  I thank Tom Carpenter for this observation. 50  Taplin, Pots and Plays, 13 and 22. Kristine Gex kindly informed me that R. Wachter has come up with an ingenious explanation for the misspelling of Kassandra (ΚΑΣΣΑΧΙΔΡΑ) on a volute-krater by the De Schulthess Painter (Geneva, HR 44; RVAp Suppl. II 135, no. 77; Cambitoglou, Aellen and Chamay 1986 [above, note 37], 102). The writer copying a written source read the first vertical stroke of the N together with the cross stroke as a X and the second vertical stroke as a separate letter, an I, hence ΚΑΣΣΑΧΙΔΡΑ instead of ΚΑΣΣΑΝΔΡΑ. 51  Atlanta (GA), Carlos Museum 1994.1; RVAp Suppl II 162, no. 283d; Taplin, Pots and Plays, 193-196, no. 68; T. Morard, Horizontalité et verticalité: Le bandeau humain et le bandeau divin chez le Peintre de Darius, Mainz 2009, 181, no. 40, pl. 34. 45 

Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 1991.437; RVAp Suppl. II 148, no. 47b, pl. 36.1; Taplin, Pots and Plays, 241-243, no. 95 and 289, n. 61. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 1900.03.804; RVAp 472, no. 75; RVAp Suppl. II 113; Taplin, Pots and Plays, 232-234, no. 91 and 289, n. 35. 54  Once Malibu (CA), J. Paul Getty Museum 96.AE.29; RVAp Suppl II 7-8, no. 124, pl. I.3-4; M. True and K. Hamma (eds), A Passion for Antiquities: Ancient Art from the Collection of Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman, Malibu, CA 1994, 125-128, no. 56; Todisco II, 288, 339, 543, n. 5003, and 591, n. 55 and Todisco III, pl. 54.1. 55  Geneva, Musée d’Art et d’Histoire (on loan) ; Taplin Pots and Plays, 243-245, no. 96 and 289, n. 65. 56  Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale H 3255; RVAp 496, no. 42; RVAp Suppl. II 140; Taplin, Pots and Plays, 211-214, no. 79; Aellen 1994, 212, no. 86, pls. 106-107. 57  Berlin, Antikensammlung 1984.41; RVAp Suppl. II 147, no. 41b; Taplin, Pots and Plays, 215-217, no. 81. 58  Malibu (CA), J. Paul Getty Museum 86.AE.680; RVAp Supp II 180, no. 278-2, pl. 47.2; Taplin, Pots and Plays, 229-230, no. 89. 52  53 

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Figure 8. Atlanta (GA), Emory University, Michael C. Carlos Museum 1994.1. © Michael C. Carlos Museum, Emory University.

the couple to sleep with the help of his long wand. He is an example of a personification of a state-of-being.59 On the upper right ΕΝΙΑΥΤΟΣ, a personification of time (anniversary/year cycle)60 with a cornucopia stands by a seated female labeled ΕΛΕΥΣΙΣ, a personification of place, who holds a lit torch.61 Across from them on the other

side of a naiskos with Zeus, Eros and Aphrodite, stands the so-far unique figure of ΑΣΤΡΑΠΗ, a personification of a natural phenomenon, lightning. She holds a lit torch and lightning bolt. Another personification of this type is ΑΥΡΑ (breeze), who is represented as a head on the shoulder of a volute-krater.62 Personifications of abstract concepts, such as Dike (justice),63 Oistros

Θ[Α]ΝΑΤΟΣ, his brother, is found on a volute-krater by the Painter of the Berlin Dancing Girl: Taranto, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 140639, RVAp 435, no. 12a; Aellen 1994, 216, no. 108, pls. 134-135. 60  See also St. Petersburg, Hermitage inv. 586 = St. 350; RVAp 193, no. 6; RVAp Suppl. II 43 with ├ΩΡΑΙ (Seasons); and Karlsruhe, Badisches Landesmuseum B 1549-1550 by the Darius Painter with the inscription ΑΙΩΝ (epoch/age of life): RVAp 484 and 504, no. 82. 61  For another personification of Eleusis, the sanctuary in particular, see Princeton (NJ), University Art Museum 83.13: RVAp Suppl. I 74 and 78, no. 41a, pl. 12; RVAp Suppl. II 138; LIMC IV (1988) s.v. Herakleidai 726, no. 9, pl. 442, Herakleidai 9; LIMC VI (1992) s.v. Medeia 394, no. 68. Other personifications of place are 1) the Nile River: St. Petersburg, Hermitage inv. 586 = St. 350 (see above, note 60). 2) Nemea: Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale H 3255; RVAp 496, no. 42; RVAp Suppl. II 140; Taplin, Pots and Plays 211-214, no. 79; Aellen 1994, 212, no. 86, 59 

pls. 106-107. 3) Mt. Sipylos: Princeton (NJ), University Art Museum 1989.29; RVAp Suppl. II 149, no. 56b, pls. 36,2-3; Taplin, Pots and Plays 78-79, no. 17; Aellen 1994, 213, no. 92 pls. 114-115. 4) Sikyon: Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 1987.53; RVAp Suppl. II 151, no. 65c, pl. 37.4; Aellen 1994, 208, no. 48, pls. 60-61. 5) Hellas and Asia: Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 3253; RVAp 495, no. 38, pl. 176.1; RVAp Suppl. II 140; Aellen 1994 202, no. 4, pls. 5-7. 6) Selene: Once Berlin F 3245; RVAp 499, no. 56; RVAp Suppl. II 141; Todisco II, 206, 479, n. 1936, and 592, n. 99. 62  London, British Museum F 277; RVAp 190, 193, no. 5, and 647, pl. 60.4; LIMC III (1986), 52, no. 2, pl. 51, s.v. Aurai. 63  See Karlsruhe B 1549-1550 (see above, note 60); LIMC I (1981), 400, no. 1, pl. 310, s.v. Aion; and once Ruvo, Fenicia Collection; Aellen 1994, 202-203, no. 6, pl. 9.

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Chapter Six Inscriptions on Apulian Red-Figure Vases: A Survey (frenzy),64 Peitho (persuasion),65 Poine (vengeance),66 Homonoia (concord),67 Eirene (peace),68 Phthonos (jealousy),69 Apata (deceit/trickery),70 Lyssa (rage/fury),71 Eunomia (prosperity/plenty/abundance),72 Euphemia (good omen),73 Euthymia (pleasure/ joy/delight),74 Ananke (necessity),75 and Aion (time eternal)76 are also found on a number of the vases with complex scenes. An interesting pair of names is found on a volute-krater by the Underworld Painter showing the death of Kreousa.77 Here she is labeled as ΚΡΕΟΝΤΕΙΑ, daughter of Kreon, rather than with her name Kreousa, almost as if the painter did not know her name. This, and several other inscriptions on this vase are written in golden dilute on the white palace structure in the middle of the scene. Looking on from the lower right is a man in oriental dress labeled ΕΙΔΩΛΟΝ ΑΙΗΤΟΥ—the ghost of Aietes, father of Medeia. Ghosts are extremely rare figures in ancient Greek art. Five vases by the Darius Painter have a label giving a title to the picture and likely the name of the narrative or play that influenced the scene. This type of label was clearly a specialty of his. Two have an altar inscribed Munich, Antikensammlungen 3296; RVAp 533, no. 283, pl. 195; RVAp Suppl. II 142; LIMC VI (1992), 123-124, no. 17, pl. 54, s.v. Kreousa II, and 391, no. 29, pl. 197, s.v. Medea; LIMC VII (1994), 28-29, no. 1, pl. 21, s.v. Oistros; Taplin, Pots and Plays, 255-257, no. 102. 65  Ibid. and St. Petersburg, Hermitage inv. 586; RVAp 193, no. 6; RVAp Suppl. II 43. 66  Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 03.804; RVAp 472, no. 75; RVAp Suppl. II 113; J. M. Padgett et al., Vase-Painting in Italy: Red-Figure and Related Works, Boston, MA 1993, 99106, no. 38; and Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 1991.437; RVAp Suppl. II 148, no. 47b, pl. 36.1; Padgett et al. 1993 (above), 115-118, no. 42, color pl. 11. 67  Malibu (CA), J. Paul Getty Museum 87.AE.23; RVAp Suppl. II 151, no. 69a, pl. 38.2. 68  Geneva, Private; RVAp Suppl. II 105, no. 35c; A. Cambitoglou et al., Le don de la vigne: Vase antique du Baron Edmond de Rothschild, Neuchâtel 2006, passim, esp. 28. 69  Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 80854; RVAp 424, no. 54; RVAp Suppl. II 109 ; LIMC VIII (1997), 995, no. 26, pl. 659, s.v. Phthonos. 70  Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 822268 (H 3233) ; RVAp 500-501, no. 62; RVAp Suppl. II 141; Taplin, Pots and Plays 104-105, no. 29; Aellen 1994, 202, no. 5, pls. 8-9. 71  Crémone, Museo Civico; RVAp 263, no. 27a; RVAp Suppl. II 61; Aellen 1994, 203, no. 7, pls. 10-11. 72  Berlin, Antikensammlung F 3257; RVAp 169, no. 32; RVAp Suppl. II 37; Aellen 1994, 216-217, no. 114, pl. 144. 73  Berlin, Antikensammlung 1984.41 (see above, note 57); Aellen 1994, 216, no. 112, pls. 140-141. 74  Berlin, Antikensammlung F 3257 (see above, note 72). 75  Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 81666 (H 3222): RVAp 431 no. 82 pl. 160,2; RVAp Suppl. II 109; Aellen 1994, 202, no. 2 pls. 2-3. 76  Karlsruhe B 1549-1550 (see above, note 60). 77  Munich, Antikensammlungen 3296 (see above, note 64). 64 

Figure 9. Malibu (CA), J. Paul Getty Museum 86.AE.680. Photograph courtesy and © J. Paul Getty Museum.

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Epigraphy of Art: Ancient Greek Vase-Inscriptions and Vase-Paintings

Figure 10. Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale 3253 (Inv. 81947). After FR II, pl. 88.

ΚΡΕΟΥΣΑ, probably the mother of Ion at Delphoi;78 one altar is circular with Kreousa standing upon it, the other is rectangular and she stands before it.79 Ethnic identities are featured on two other labels. On the painter’s namepiece, a circular plinth with a man standing on it is inscribed ΠΕΡΣΑΙ, Persians,80 while a similar ethnic is found on a fragmentary lekythos now in Hamburg, ΙΒΗΡΕΣ (Iberians). The latter are the inhabitants of the region in the Caucus Mountains now in east Georgia.81 The last of the five vases is labeled ΠΑΤΡΟΚΛΟΥ ΤΑΦΟΣ, the grave of Patroklos. It is written on the base of his pyre by which Achilleus pours a libation.82 The painter also labeled the grave of Niobe’s husband with his name, ΑΜΦ[ΙΩΝ].83 One late Apulian bell-krater by the

Müller Painter has an incised inscription probably best interpreted as meaning ‘bridal procession,’ especially since that is the subject shown.84 A unique set of inscriptions connected with mathematical calculations is found on the Darius Painter’s name-giving vase (Figure 10).85 In the lower register the King’s treasurer is collecting and counting the tribute. In his left hand he holds an open diptych, his record book, on which is inscribed ΤΑΛ[Α]ΝΤΑ : Η, 100 talents. He performs calculations by putting pebbles next to seven letters, ΜΨΗΔΠΟ