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Deme Legends on Attic Vases

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Cecil Smith
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Extract

The interchange of typical compositions among vase-painters, by which one type frequently did duty for a variety of subjects, makes it very difficult to decide how far scenes of daily life were intended by the artist to convey a legendary significance; and this difficulty is increased by the fact that the painters were, practically at all periods, in the habit of adding mythological names at haphazard to their figures, with the object of imparting a supposititious interest to their design. This seems to have been especially the case in the period following the great compositions of Polygnotos and Mikon. Thus on a r.f. pyxis in the British Museum (E 769) we have a scene which is apparently no more than an ordinary group of women at toilet, but each of the figures has a familiar mythological name, Iphigeneia, Danae, Helene, Klytaimnestra, and Kassandra.

It was formerly the custom among archaeologists to interpret every scene, no matter how commonplace, as mythological or symbolic; in the natural reaction which has set in after this, I think perhaps we may occasionally overlook the full significance of some scenes which, apparently of ordinary daily life, really have had a deeper meaning to those who made them. Take for example such subjects as occur in the sculptured pediments of temples; a warrior setting out in his chariot, or the meeting of two warriors; these scenes, which are in their local surroundings full of significance, would convey nothing to us if we had not the independent evidence of literature or of locality which explains them.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 13 , November 1893 , pp. 115 - 120
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1893

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References

1 Harrison, J. E., Myth. and Mon. p. 208Google Scholar and p. 216.

2 ἐν τῇ ἑστίᾳ must mean at his own shrine or hearth, and this would imply among his own family. The absence of an altar on our vase is not a fatal objection to the proposed interpretation. The sacrificial element is sufficiently indicated by the thigh; and for the rest, the artist has been content to adopt the type of a scene of leave-taking rather than that of a sacrifice. On the Diomos legend cf. Deneken, , de Theox. p. 27Google Scholar.

3 The pupils of the eyes in this vase are roughly indicated by a faintly incised line not quite circular within the stronger engraved outline of the eye itself; this peculiarity of technique is only noticeable on the later b.f. vases, and is probably due to the influence of the contemporary r.f. style.

4 See Athen. Mitth. iv. 288, where we find Akamas reverenced in common with Zeus and Hermes.

5 Baumeister, , Denkm. p. 1999Google Scholar: cf. Harrison, Myth, and Mon. p. cxliii.

6 Is this possibly a misreading of ΟΙΝΕΤΣ?

7 By the cleaning away of some of the restoration, other names have been recovered as follows: (sic / formerly read Niobe), (the Τ is clear), Arniope is a name unknown to Pape, but is a possible etymological form (cf. Chalkiope, the wife of Aigeus in Apoll, iii. 15, 6).