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Choes of the Later Fifth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 September 2013

J. R. Green
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Extract

The following notes are an attempt to classify on the basis of shape some of the Attic red-figured choes of the later part of the fifth century B.C. and a few sundries of the early part of the fourth. The connection of these vases with the festival of the Anthesteria has given them a prominent place in the study of religion and of children's pastimes. Their scenes have been considered by several scholars, the foremost of whom are Frickenhaus, Deubner, van Hoorn, S. karouzou, and Metzger. Metzger, though taking a less extreme position than Rumpf who challenged the validity of much of the earlier work, has given a refreshingly sane view of several aspects of the iconography. Mrs. karouzou has confined herself in her published work to particular pieces and particular aspects of the festival.

Type
Research Article
Information
Annual of the British School at Athens , Volume 66 , November 1971 , pp. 189 - 228
Copyright
Copyright © The Council, British School at Athens 1971

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References

1 The basis of this article lies in part of a Ph.D. thesis submitted to the University of London in 1962. It is hoped that a survey of some other shapes of oinochoe will appear before very long. I am indebted to several institutions for providing me with the opportunities for research, in particular the Managing Committee of the British School at Athens through the School Studentship in 1958–9, the Central Research Fund of the University of London, the University of Otago, and the University of Sydney. Many people have at various stages given me help and advice and I hope the majority will forgive me if I mention only Mrs. Semni Karouzou, J. N. Coldstream, R. M. Cook, P. E. Corbett, G. R. Manton, C. M. Robertson, T. B. L. Webster, and not least Sir John Beazley and Miss Lucy Talcott. Photographs are included here by courtesy of the National Museum, Athens; the National Museum, Copenhagen; The British Museum; the University of Melbourne; the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford; the National Museum, Prague; and the University, Tübingen.

2 Leiden, 1951; Rumpf, A.. BJb (1961) 208–14Google Scholar; Metzger, H., Recherches sur l'imagerie athénienne (Paris, 1957).Google Scholar

3 For definition of the terms ‘large’ and ‘small’ choes used throughout this article, see Appendix.

4 On this question, see Smith, H. R. W., CVA San Francisco i. 48Google Scholar; van Hoorn 23–4 and 49, and Rumpf, op. cit. 213–14. Smith justifiably uses the age of the children depicted on these miniatures as an argument against their use at the festival: they are nearer eighteen months than three years. Again many of these choes seem too small for use at the festival even by children. However, one should not assume that choes were included in the graves of only those children who died before the age of three; see for instance one of the Syntagma tombs published by Charitonides, (AE 1958 (1961) 43–7, tomb LVIII)Google Scholar where a choes was found with the skeleton of a girl a little over 90 cm. long, or the grave of Eupheros in the Kerameikos published by DrSchlörb-Vierneisel, (AM lxxix (1964) 85–104)Google Scholar where there was a chous with a fifteen-year-old boy (his skeleton 1·35 m.).

Also relevant to the questions of the age of the children and of funerary purpose is MrsKarouzou, 's argument (AJA 1 (1946) 124)Google Scholar that the stele behind the boys on Athens 17286 (ibid. figs. 2–4; van Hoorn fig. 35) indicates that at least one of them did not live long after his first festival to enjoy it again. See also her discussion of the Pyrhaichme stele, xv (1957) 311–23 and pls. 6–7.

This use of choes is distinctly Athenian, as may be seen by comparison with the cemeteries of, for instance, Corinth, (Corinth xiii, 78 ff.)Google Scholar, Halai, (Hesperia xi (1942) 365–421)Google Scholar, Rhitsona (Ure, Sixth and Fifth), Olynthos, (Olynthus xi. 174 ff.)Google Scholar, and Rhodes (Clara Rhodos, passim); for Athens, the most useful series of this period is that published by Charitonides, in AE 1958 (1961) 1–152Google Scholar, although Mrs. Karouzou's remarks on the cemetery at the Royal Stables are also highly pertinent (BCH lxxi–lxxii (1947–8) 387–91). Paradoxically, jugs were not regularly included in adult burials at this period in Athens, although they were at other centres. The purpose of the chous in graves is a difficult question. The only reason why children should have them and not adults must be the association of children with the festival of the Anthesteria. The decoration on them is concerned almost exclusively with children and their pastimes. Dr. Theodora Hadzisteliou-Price has pointed out (BSA lxiv (1969) 97–8 and Ant. Kunst xii (1969) 54) the possibly analogous use of terracottas of squatting children found in children's graves at Olynthos, Rhodes, and elsewhere (cf. Olynthus vii, nos. 279–87, and xiv, nos. 273–5, 282, 360; Jacopi, Clara Rhodos iv, e.g. Tomb 64, fig. 164). As she shows, the terracottas are probably in some measure a representation of the deceased: it is possible that the choes have the same purpose, as Charitonides also suggested (op. cit. p. 47). One would not expect the iconography to coincide, because of the difference in the media, and because the vase-painter concentrates on a profile, the modeller on a frontal view. However, a frontal view of a squatting child occurs on several choes, although the head is always in profile: Athens 1672; 2544 (Heydemann pl. 12, 7); Athens, Agora P 16917 (van Hoorn fig. 293); Boston 02.40 (van Hoorn fig. 482); Harvard University, Fogg Museum 60.356 (van Hoorn fig. 479); Heidelberg K 14 (van Hoorn fig. 291); Leningrad St. 1541 (van Hoorn fig. 480). All date to the last quarter of the fifth century. From the very end of the century there are also choes which, perhaps significantly, are decorated not in red-figure but with applied relief: Athens 2150 (van Hoorn fig. 43), Agora P 11376, Bologna 372, Boston 03.863 (van Hoorn fig. 460; close to the last). These have been discussed recently by Zervoudaki, Io A., AM lxxxiii (1968) 33 nos. 62–5Google Scholar and pls. 4, 4–5, and 5, 1–2. It is important to note that they are small, not ‘big’ choes (as Hadzisteliou-Price).

5 As distinct from pick-marks.

6 Brown-Egg Painter, ARV 2 1351–3; Worst Painter, ARV 2 135–34; Fat Boy Group, ARV 2 1484 ff. It is worth noting that so many of these Shape II oinochoai have been found in Italy (particularly, of course, at Spina) and so very few in Greece. Beazley's comment on the barbarity of the Worst Painter's style is highly pertinent. Even if we assume that these vases are all Attic (and they appear to be), it is fair to assume, at the same time, that they were not produced with the local market in mind.

7 The fact that the chous is the main oinochoe shape in use in Athens in the fourth century is of great importance for the study of its iconography. It is a priori less likely that the painter of a chous will restrict his subject-matter to scenes connected with the Anthesteria, and therefore more dangerous to suppose such a connection without good evidence.

8 Bloesch, H., ‘Varianten’ in Gestalt und Geschichte, Festschrift Karl Schefold (Ant. Kunst Viertes Beiheft, Bern, 1967) 84–8.Google Scholar He shows, however, particularly with the group of four shape IV oinochoai by the Chicago Painter in Boston (ibid. 87–8), that the variation takes place within an over-all schema (as with vase-painting), and the essential problem, as always, lies in deciding what one will and what one will not admit.

9 But there is no danger of mistaking small for large in a photograph without scale.

10 Berlin Painter choes, ARV 2 210, 186–7; Niobid Painter choes, ARV 2 606–7, 83–7. I shall be discussing choes of this period more fully in a forthcoming article; cf. AA (1970) 484.

11 See also n. 12.

12 1921.869, upper wall and neck; van Hoorn no. 789; ARV 2 1249, 18. The chous in London decorated by Aison (E 524; van Hoorn no. 628, fig. 134; ARV 2 1175, 17) seems to show the influence of and is related in a general way to the Class of Athens 15308, but the treatment of the foot is different.

13 Two other members of the Group are *Once Rome, Tyszkiewicz (van Hoorn no. 884; ARV 2 1318, 3) and *Boston 10.190 (van Hoorn no. 385, fig. 85; ARV 2 1318, 2). I have no knowledge of the shape of the former and the fragments of the latter do not give enough for any certainty.

14 It must belong to the later years of the fifth century, and not the early part of the fourth (as CVA and van Hoorn).

15 Although the Persephone and Kraipale Painters may have initiated the idea of egg-and-dart (at least as far as choes are concerned), the Eretria Painter seems to have established the type. It is then continued by the Meidias Painter and used more widely after him. While the Eretria Painter's egg-and-dart (and indeed others of his ornaments) appear similar to that of the Erechtheion, his work is, of course, too early for him to have been influenced by it; one should perhaps think rather of the Ionic of the Propylaia or the Temple on the Ilissos, and see the similarity to the Erechtheion mouldings as a parallel development in the same artistic climate.

16 CVA iii, pl. 10; van Hoorn no. 302. This piece is probably late enough to be influenced by the Erechtheion.

17 The exceptions to this system of independent palmettes are the upper borders of the Oxford fragments by the Eretria Painter (see n. 12) where a lotus stands between in a reduced version of that on his epinetron, and on the fragments Agora P 14388 (van Hoorn no. 215, fig. 393) which could well be by the same hand.

18 Cf. Beazley, , Ant. Kunst x (1967) 143.Google Scholar

19 There are also the fragments Boston 13.171 (van Hoorn no. 388, fig. 128; ARV 2 1324, 41: manner of the Meidias Painter) and Leipzig T 3804 (van Hoorn no. 571, fig. 104), and the chous Cervetri (van Hoorn no. 461) on which I have no information. Tübingen E 120 (Watzinger pl. 32; van Hoorn no. 958) comprises fragments of the front part of the lip from lip to foot. It probably belongs in the same region as Boston 01.8085 (no. 6 in the series above), but there is not enough preserved for certainty.

20 ARV 2 1258.

21 A more likely source is the chevron used as a border for the lozenge-pattern on the stemless cups of the Marlay and Lid Painters (e.g. ARV 2 1279, 51 bis; 1282, 10 and 12) or the fragmentary skyphos formerly in the collection of Sir John Beazley, where it forms a border between the scene and the lozenge under the handles (Oxford 1966.709; ARV 2 1281; Cat. Beazley Gifts, no. 271, pl. 29).

22 Cf. Beazley, JHS lix (1939) 11.Google Scholar

23 Délos xxi, pl. 25, 60; ARV 2 1209, 54.

24 Another pair in the same technique and of a roughly similar date to the first two, but unrelated; Athens 18850 (ht. 0·078; diam. 0·062 m.; van Hoorn no. 262, fig. 347; the handle modern) and London E 552 (ht. 0·07; diam. 0·051 m.; van Hoorn no. 649, fig. 138). They are by the same hand.

25 CA 21 and its companion by the same painter in the same museum (N 3408, from Cyrenaica; van Hoorn no. 826; ARV 2 1335, 34—the other is from Attica) both have mouths which appear large in relation to the size of the body; to this degree, at least, they differ from the normal chous of the Chevron Workshop. For this pattern, see Beazley, , BABesch xiv (1939) 12–13.Google Scholar

26 As oddities one might compare the contemporary oinochoai of special shape by the Painter, Rayet (ARV 2 1357, 1–2).Google Scholar As Beazley noted, they are the only Attic red-figured examples. They appear to be by the same potter although the mouth, neck, and handle of the Maplewood piece are restored. This ‘Rayet’ shape also appears in late fifthcentury Corinthian: cf. Payne, NC 336, fig. 191, where two examples are quoted. They may, however, be miniature terracotta versions of a metal oinochoe such as that illustrated on Munich 2455, CVA ii, pl. 86, 9–10; ARV 2 558, 126, shape I oinochoe by the Pan Painter.

27 CVA, and Hesperia xxiv (1955) 314. The Oxford vase: Webster, MTS, AV 28. The Leningrad vase: Webster, Greek Theatre Production no. B 4; Trendall, Phlyax no. 6 (the latter with full bibliography).

28 See above, n. 3.

29 There are two choes from the Vlasto collection for which I have no measurements but which must be about the same size.

30 The fourth-century pieces have again been excluded, but it has been possible to include many fragments.

31 Van Hoorn lists in all 17 examples of this period from Eretria. Of course the actual numbers could well be higher: cf. items 3, 8, 9, 12a, and 12c.

32 Cf. Historia xix (1970) 515–27.