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The Krater, Kratos, and the Polis

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 September 2009

Joanna Luke
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Type
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Information
Greece & Rome , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , April 1994 , pp. 23 - 32
Copyright
Copyright © The Classical Association 1994

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References

Notes

1. Only in the non-Greek world could a krater be owned (such as the Vix krater: see pp. 25–6), or symposia attended, by a respectable woman.

2. E.g., Aeschylus, , Prometheus Bound 678Google Scholar.

3. Hdt. 6.84 demonstrates the due reward for adopting such uncivilized Scythian customs. The contrast between the divine and the human situation is iconographically illustrated on a black-figure dinos: CVA Würzburg I, Deutchsland 39, Ha 166a. Around the frieze winds a komos. The human part is focused upon a stationary krater. On the other side dance satyrs and maenads, holding not the cups of their human counterparts, but the vines and rhyta symbolic of pure wine. Diametrically opposite the krater, and at the centre of this second komos, sits Dionysus himself.

4. Homer, , Od. 9. 345–54Google Scholar. The Cyclops, who despises Zeus the saviour of guest friends (9. 275–6), perverts every other norm of xenia too, beginning with an enquiry as to the identity of his visitors before entertaining them (9. 252) – the civilized host only pursued such enquiries after feedinga his guests: Finley, M. I., The World of Odysseus(London, 1964), p. 139Google Scholar. His deviance culminates in the consumption of his guests, his gift to Odysseus being a promise to devour him last of all (9. 369–70).

5. Murray, O., ‘Sympotic History’, p. 4, in id., Sympotica. A Symposium on the Symposion(Oxford, 1990)Google Scholar.

6. Homer, , IL. 4. 258–60Google Scholar. Finley, , op. cit., p. 138Google Scholar.

7. Homer, , IL 22. 496–8Google Scholar.

8. It is ironic, then, that the isolated and powerless Eumaeus must use a simple ivy bowl in which to mix the wine for his apparently humble visitor, instead of the krater to which his birth and Odyssesus' actually entitle him: Homer, , Od. 16. 52Google Scholar.

9. Homer, , Od. 1. 109–10, 148Google Scholar: ‘αυτοισι’ refers to the ‘αὺτοί’ of line 108: the suitors instruct their own servants to prepare the krater.

10. See p. 24 for proximity of krater to throne.

11. Od. 1. 132–3Google Scholar.

12. Od. 2. 325–30Google Scholar.

13. Od. 22. 341Google Scholar.

14. Od. 11. 419Google Scholar.

15. For guest friendship as a ritual see Herman, G., Ritualised Friendship and the Greek City (Cambridge, 1990), p. 7Google Scholar.

16. Ibid., pp. 60–3.

17. Od. 4. 613–19Google Scholar.

18. The effectiveness of the continuous circulation of gifts as a bonding mechanism is a well documented anthropological phenomenon, the most famous example being that of the Kula Ring of the Trobriand Islanders: Mauss, M., The Gift. Form and Function of Exchange in Archaic Societies(London, 1970), p. 22Google Scholar.

19. Od. 15. 111–19Google Scholar.

20. The gift of a krater is recounted elsewhere in the Odyssey:Maron, priest of Apollo, presents Odysseus with a krater along with some strong wine (9. 203). It is this concoction which inebriates Polyphemus.

21. For instance, throughout the Attic MGII period, fine Attic kraters were exported to far-flung corners of the Mediterranean, from outer Iberia to the Levant: Coldstream, J. N., ‘Gift exchange in the eighth century B.C.’, in Hagg, R. (ed.), The Greek Renaissance of the Eighth Century B. C.: Tradition and Innovation. Proceedings of the Second International Symposium at the Swedish Institute in Athens, 1–5 June, 1981 (Stockholm, 1983), p. 203Google Scholar.

22. Seen. 17 andn. 19.

23. Coldstream (n 21), p. 205.

24. Ibid., p. 204.

25. Vickers, though committed to the ideal of a ‘gold and silver standard’ for later antiquity, suggests that a ‘ceramic aesthetic’ may have prevailed in the Geometric era: Vickers, M., ‘The Cultural Context of Ancient Ceramics: an Essay in Skeuomorphism’, in McGowan, P. E. and Notis, N. D. (eds.), Cross-Craft and Cross-Cultural Interactions in Ceramics. Ceramics in Civilisation Volume IV (Westerville, 1989), p. 59Google Scholar.

26. Morris, I., ‘Gift and Commodity in Ancient Greece’, Man 21 (1986), 8–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

27. Hdt. 1.25 and 1.51.

28. Theopompus in Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 12. 517d–e for EtruscansGoogle Scholar.

29. Herman, , op. cit., p. 2Google Scholar.

30. Works and Days 248–64. He calls them gift-devouring.

31. Snodgrass, A. M., Archaic Greece: the Age of Experiment (London, 1980), pp. 100 and 105Google Scholar.

32. Frs. 70. 3 and 368. 2.

33. Fr. 643.

34. Nem. 9.49.

35. Eubulus in Athenaeus, , Deipnosophistae 2. 36Google Scholar.

36. Lissarrague, F., ‘Around the Krater:an Aspect of Banquet Imagery’, in Murray, O. (ed.), Sympolica, p. 34Google Scholar, gives examples of this elliptical technique. Id., The Aesthetics of the Greek Banquet. Images of Wine and Ritual(Paris, 1990), p. 201Google Scholar for the centrality of the krater in the komos, the traditional conclusion to a successful symposion.

37. Od. 1. 330ff.

38. Murray, O., ‘The Greek Symposion in History', in Gabba, E. (ed.), Tria Corda: Scritti in onore di Amaldo Momigliano (Como, 1983), p. 263Google Scholar.

39. For hierarchies within Homeric banquets: Rathje, A., ‘The Adoption of the Homeric Banquet in Central Italy in the Orientalizing Period’, in Murray, O. (ed.), Sympotica, p. 283Google Scholar.

40. Dentzer, J.-M., ‘Aux origines de l'iconographie au banquet couché’, Revue Archéologique (1971. 2), 246–7, especially n. 2Google Scholar.

41. Schmitt, P. and Schnapp, A., ‘Image et societe en Grece ancienne: les representations de la chasse et du banquet’, Revue Archeobgique (1982. 2), 61Google Scholar; Schmitt-Pantel, P., ‘Sacrificial Meal and Symposion. Two Models of Civic Institutions in the Archaic City?’, in Murray, O. (ed.), Sympotka, p. 18Google Scholar.

42. On Olympus the gods also juxtapose lesser beings, in this case the lame and laughable (and inebriate) Hephaistos with an image of power – a krater: Homer, , IL. 1. 595–600Google Scholar.

43. Murray, O., ‘The Greek Symposion in History’, in Gabba, E. (ed.), Tria Corda, p. 266Google Scholar.

44. Schmitt, and Schnapp, , op. cit., 62Google Scholar.

45. Schmitt-Pantel, , op. cit., p. 17Google Scholar.

46. As such they cannot be classified as ‘civic activities’, since, although most leaders are still initially drawn from their ranks, the body of citizens is wider than the membership of these symposiastic groups. Cf. Schmitt, and Schnapp, , op. cit., 57Google Scholar, and Schmitt-Pantel, , op. cit, p. 17Google Scholar.

47. Herman, , op. cit., p. 132Google Scholar: ‘Proxeniawas a communal invention using as a model xenia.’

48. Camp, J. M., The Athenian Agora. Excavations in the Heart of Classical Athens (London, 1986), p. 95Google Scholar.

49. Aristotle, , Ath. Pol. 44. 1Google Scholar.

50. Thompson, H. A. and Wycherley, R. E., The Athenian Agora. Results of Excavations conducted by the American School ofClassical Studies at Athens. Volume XIV. The Agora of Athens. The History, Shape and Uses of an Ancient City Center (Princeton, 1972), p. 41Google Scholar.

51. Cooper, F. and Morris, S., ‘Dining in Round Buildings’, in Murray, O. (ed.), Sympotica, p. 76Google Scholar.

52. Talcott, L., ‘Vases and Kalos-names from an Agora Well’, Hesperia 5.3 (1936), 353–4Google Scholar.

53. Thompson, H. A., ‘The Tholos of Athens and its Predecessors’, Hesperia Supplement 4, p. 126Google Scholar: ‘a representative selection of the material is illustrated in fig. 94’ – kylix, oinochoe, olpe, bowl, askos, lamp; p. 133: ‘a representative group appears in fig. 98’ – kantharos, skyphos, askos, saltcellar, kotyle, cup; p. 134: ‘the great bulk of the pottery is plain black glaze ware: kantharoi, skyphoi, plates and saucers.’ The red-figured group of which the krater fragment forms a part is dated to the years 420–400 B.C. (p. 131), that is just the period of the oligarchic revolutions.

54. Camp, , op. cit., p. 105Google Scholar.

55. Aristotle, , Ath. Pol. 62. 2Google Scholar.

56. Xenophanes, fr. 1.4 for the importance of euphrosune;Solon, fr. 4, for its increasing incompatibilitywith the polis structure.

57. Camp, , op. cit, pp. 44–5, and p. 95Google Scholar.

58. Schmitt, and Schnapp, , op. cit., 71Google Scholar.

59. Pittacus of Mytilene had already sought to curb the influence of rival aristocrats through the imposition of double penalties for crimes committed when drunk: Aristotle, Politics II, 1274b18–21.

60. Thucydides, 8.54.4.

61. Thucydides, 6.27.3 and 6.60.1–2.

62. 6.60.2.

63. Andocides, , On the Mysteries 67Google Scholar refers to it as a pistis, a pledge. The same term is used by Thucydides to describe the alliance between the Samian and Athenian oligarchs in 411, and the consequent murder of Hyperbolus in their overthrow of the democracy. Herman, , op. cit, p. 50Google Scholar unravels the significance of the pistis in the cementation of ritualized guest friendships, fundamentally opposed to the good of the democracy, such as that presumably entered into by the oligarchs.

64. Thucydides, 8.54.4–5.

65. Aristophanes, , Ecclesiazusae 677–8Google Scholar.