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Boeotian Geometricising Vases

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Annie. D Ure
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Extract

In 1908 there was excavated at Rhitsona a particularly richly furnished single-interment grave that included among the 400 odd items of its furniture two comparatively insignificant black-figure vases, a little spout vase and a lekythos, the interest of which was not immediately recognised. Recent work on the black-figure pottery of Boeotia shows that these two vases belong to the same fabric as the famous lekane in the British Museum, B 80, which has been the subject of much controversy in the matter of its origin and date as well as of the interpretation of the scenes upon it.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 49 , Issue 2 , 1929 , pp. 160 - 171
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1929

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References

1 Grave 50, Nos. 28, 275, B.S.A. xiv. pp. 257 f.

2 C.V.A., Brit. Mus., fase. 2, Pl. 65, 4. For a bibliography of this vase see ibid., Group III. He, p. 3, and B.M. Cat. Votes, II. p. 76.

3 Mal. und Zeich., p. 207. More recently I have called attention to this series in Sixth-and Fifth-cent. Pottery from Rhitsona, p. 57. It is classified under the heading II. B.3 i. a. by P. N. Ure, Boeotian Pottery of the Geometric and Archaic Styles.

4 For photographs, permission to publish them, and for much, kindness besides I am greatly indebted to Geh. Boehlav, Miss Brants, Prof. L. Curtius, Mr. Heurtley, Mr. Karouzos, M. Mayence, Dr. Möbius, Miss Pappaspyridi, Mr. Rhomaios. and Prof. Zahn. 60

5 Sixth- and Fifth-century Pottery, pp. 21 f., 32.

6 The one important exception is the bird on the altar on lekane 1, discussed below.

6a But see also Note, p. 171.

7 The dating originally given for the grave—a little after 550 B.C. (B.S.A. xiv. p. 306 f.)—was unduly late; cp. Sixth-and Fifth-cent. Pottery, p. 12.

8 The four single figures on the Rhitsona spout vase (16) are capering rather than running, since they hold garlands and one possibly a kantharos. The runner who occurs in the midst of the animal frieze on 3 may or may not have been thought of as competing in a race.

9 Schneider, , Berichte sächs. Gesell. 1893, p. 64 f.Google Scholar, sees in the pyxis from Tanagra (11) the victory of a young aristocrat in a chariot race, his reception after his victory and the consequent merry-making; Laurent, , B.C.H., 1901, p. 153Google Scholar, a victory in a horse-race.

10 The second and the third men are separated by the group of sphinxes, etc. that decorate the region under the handle.

11 Athenian games are rather to be looked for in the very similar scenes on Tyrrhenian amphorae, e.g. Thiersch, Tyrrh. Amph. nos. 7, 19, 22, 37, 39, 42, 47, 53, 54, 68.

12 The only suggestion I have seen that the ceremony on the Brit. Mus. vase should be referred to a Boeotian festival is that of MissHarrison, , C.R., 1894, p. 271 n. 1Google Scholar.

13 Bacchylides, Frag. xi. (Jebb).

14 Strabo, 411.

15 By inference from Thucydides (I. 12) sixty years after the fall of Troy; see Frazer on Pausanias IX. 34. 1.

16 Bergk, Frag. ix.

17 Oxyrhynchus Papyri, iv. p. 55.

18 E.g. Farnell, , Cults of the Greek States, I., Pl. A, 24Google Scholar.

19 It has been maintained (Furtwängler, , Meisterwerke, p. 114Google Scholar) that a copy of the cult image at Coronea made by Agoracritus is to be seen in the Albani Athena with the wolf-skin cap. That may be so, but it is not necessary to assume that the eminent sculptor copied in detail the image which his own statue was to depose. In Thessaly, on the other hand, it is quite possible that the original conception of Itonia remained unmodified through the centuries.

20 IX. 34. 1.

21 411

22 Oxy. Pap. iv. p. 55 (τὰ πἀλαι).

23 A recent account of the epigraphical evidence for the Pamboeotia is that of Prof.Pappadakis, , Arch. Deltion, 1923, p. 228 fGoogle Scholar. Mr. Pappadakis tells me that in the trial excavations that he has made at Coronea and on the site of the Itonium he has so far found no remains of a date earlier than Hellenistic.

24 Pappadakis, ibid., p. 231.

25 Farnell, Cults, I. p. 315 f.

26 Bacchylides, Frag. xi.

27 B.C.H. iii. (1879), p. 460, line 23 (late third century).

28 E.g. Harrison and Verrall, Myth, and Mon., p. 457, Fig. 53; Benndorf. Gr. u. sic. Vasenb., 31. 2.

29 Ath. Mitt., 1898, p. 61, note 3.

30 E.g. Gerhard, Auserl. Vasenb., III. 185; A.J.A., 1907, pp. 429–432, Figs. 1,2,3. Cp. also Johansen, Vases Sicyoniens, Pl. XXII , 2 d, and p. 147.

31 Cp. Küster, Die Schlange in der gr. Kunst, p. 116.

32 Bursian, Geogr. I., p . 235, note 2, compares the Zeus-Hades of Coronea with Zeus Trophonios whose cave, inhabited by snakes, was the seat of the potent oracle at Lebadea.

33 A. B. Cook, Zeus, II., Appendix M, especially Figs. 944 and 945 and pp. 1149 f. The statue made for the temple at Coronea by Agoracritus was, of course, anthro-pomorphic, and so is the figure on a gem which has been taken by some to represent Itonia and Hades (Roscher, s.v. Itonia), but that does not affect the question. Meilichios also was portrayed sometimes in human form.

34 See Frazer on Paus. II. 11. 7, and the references there quoted. The claim of the crow who addresses Cadmus in Nonnus, Dionys. III. 97 f., to be ὄρνις Άθήνης may well be a piece of learned Boeotian local colour.

35 Paus. IV. 34. 4. The position of the crow in our picture, on the altar instead of in the hand of the goddess, is probably due to the influence of representations of the Troilus story, which our vase strongly resembles in point of composition, cp. Zahn, op. cit. There a raven sits on the fountain vainly warning Polyxena of impending danger (Schneider, Der troische Sagenkreis, pp. 114 f.).

35a The view that our vase depicts the Athena of Coronea and her crow was put forward long ago by Boehlau, Bonner Studien, p. 131, but his suggestion has received little notice, and I came upon it only after this paper was in proof.

36 Pausanias, IX. 34. 2.

37 Repainted; the wing much too large.

38 In connexion with the water-birds, both long-legged and short-legged, that are found in such abundance on some of these vases it should be remembered that ancient writers emphasise the importance of the river that flowed past the precinct of Itonia; cp. Alcaeus, quoted above; Strabo, 411; Callimachus, Lav. Pall. 63:

It would perhaps be rash to suggest that the bird is shorthand for the Kouralios even as the pillar is shorthand for the temple.