Yatromanolakis, Dimitrios. 2008. Sappho in the Making: The Early Reception. Hellenic Studies Series 28. Washington, DC: Center for Hellenic Studies. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:hul.ebook:CHS_YatromanolakisD.Sappho_in_the_Making.2008.
Chapter 2. Ethnographic Archives of Vraisemblance in Attic Ceramics
κλίνη, ἐάντε ἐκ πλαγίου αὐτὴν θεᾷ ἐάντε καταντικρὺ ἢ ὁπῃοῦν, μή τι διαφέρει αὐτὴ ἑαυτῆς, ἢ διαφέρει μὲν οὐδέν, φαίνεται δὲ ἀλλοία;
If you look at a bed from the side or from the front or from any angle, does the bed itself become different? Or does it appear different, without being different?
—Plato, Republic 598a
In Chapter One, I explored the complex dynamics of conducting historical fieldwork in ancient eras that have few, if any, similarities to modern European perspectives on socioreligious and ideological nexuses of semansis. Unavoidably, the scholarly discourses and the various types of methodological apparatus we employ can hardly capture the multilayered social fabric of different societies of ancient Greece as these are reflected in archaic, classical, Hellenistic, Roman, and medieval Greek sources. The act of scanning ancient ideologies through the linear perspective of an informant’s or an analyst’s language is in itself a precarious enterprise, and establishing even (regrettably) partial contact with a fraction of ancient actualities and cultural communicative systems confounds the consistencies or discontinuities often imposed by the bifurcation of contemporary scholarly approaches, i.e., historical, literary, and archaeological as opposed to theoretical and anthropological. Methodological problems arise when all, especially the earliest, available informants are not taken into account in investigations of the sources assumed to reflect something of the sociocultural milieu of an archaic poet, or of what I prefer to call the anthropology of the ancient sociocultural reception of a song-maker.
A Syntax of Image and Representation
The frequent relegation of pictorial representations and visual culture, that is, archaeological remains, to footnotes (or, at best, to mere descriptions) by literary and cultural historians may be due to a number of reasons. [1] For the purpose of this discussion, I shall single out an epistemological factor that lies behind some current methodologies, more or less explicitly or implicitly spelled out, in the fields of classics and classical archaeology. In the latter field, a tendency still exists among a number of its practitioners to consider pictorial images as something that can be described and analyzed more or less objectively. Premises of scientific methods have often been applied to the examination of images as if, in natural sciences, observation and experiments were immune to theoretical axioms or counterinduction. Even in sophisticated iconologic analyses, let alone in more technical iconographic studies, pictorial signs are more often than not construed as devices that assume the role of granting a fixed meaning to the whole image under investigation. In more interdisciplinary approaches, where literature and visual culture are more integrated, texts and images are still often considered tacitly as distinct sources of information that should be either investigated separately or employed to confirm the evidentiary validity of one another.
For a long time, vase-paintings were examined as material for the application of influential connoisseurial methods. Such investigations led to invaluable (even if sometimes questionable) [2] distinctions of pictorial “marks” eventually to be ascribed to specific named or anonymous ancient painters. They also contributed decisively to the current classification and understanding of a vast corpus of painted pots, their relative chronology, and diverse iconographic themes. At the same time, painted vases (as a means of ostensibly realistic depiction) were deemed somewhat contrary in nature to literary texts, which can be polysemic and complex. The structural opposition between “nature” and “culture,” a highly problematic distinction in its own right, [3] has steadily, perhaps unconsciously and certainly tacitly, been adopted in approaching the so-called scenes of reality, scenes of myth, and scenes of fantasy depicted, as the reasoning goes, on vases. I would hold that behind such approaches lies a conceptual paradigm according to which, as has been noted with regard to broader theoretical issues of iconology, “the image is the sign that pretends not to be a sign, masquerading as (or, for the believer, actually achieving) natural immediacy and presence. The word is its ‘other,’ the artificial, arbitrary production of human will that disrupts natural presence by introducing unnatural elements into the world—time, consciousness, history, and the alienating intervention of symbolic mediation.” [4]
The intrinsic value of such “empiricist” approaches to vase-paintings has been epigrammatically advocated by John Boadman: “Keat’s urn was an ‘unravish’d bride of quietness,’ but she was of stone; her sisters of clay have lost their innocence and found their voices.” [5] This vivid metaphor comes from an ironic critique of approaches that follow a different line of inquiry—approaches that see a cultural and “symbolic” [6] system functioning behind and in the images. The impetus for such an understanding of vase-paintings came principally from the work of Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood and Herbert Hoffmann. [7] Adopting scholarly tools from structural anthropology, Hoffmann attempted to demonstrate the inner, systemic coherence of the iconography of vases. Around the same time, Sourvinou-Inwood placed emphasis on the role of the viewer and put forward penetrating methods of analysis of vase-painting that have had a significant impact in the field. And with the “City of Images” exhibition and project organized by scholars in Paris and the University of Lausanne, a culturally contextual approach to images started to become prominent. [8]
One of the concerns of these methods was to reconstruct the conceptual and symbolic universe of vase-paintings by a shift of emphasis on the image rather than the painter as well as on the identification of specific semiotic schemata that point to specific associations, cultural ideologies, and contexts. Distinctions between scenes of real life and scenes of myth were significantly challenged and ceased to be part of the methodological program of many researchers. [9] What is interesting for my approach here is the new emphasis on contexts and social imaginary and on the significance of the interaction of pictorial signs in the study of images.
The crucial question in any attempt to decode ancient images remains the definition that we are inclined to give to, or that implicitly informs our use of, the concept of image. At the same time, in a dialogically complementary process, our reconstruction of the historical specificity of the function of ancient Greek painted pots will determine the way we decodify their images. In this chapter, I shall first focus on archaeological and theoretical issues closely related to my analyses of vase-paintings throughout this book.
My understanding of images depicting Sappho starts from the premise that pictures belong to the conceptual spectrum of representations. Being one of the possible modes of signification, a pictorial image, like a musical text or performance, is a “non-linguistic” system that shares, however, a number of key aspects of a linguistic system. The main difference lies in the lack of always easily identifiable semantic demarcations in a pictorial image of its minimal or compound “units”—granted that by “units” we denote elements always in interaction with, and hardly detachable from, one another. Attempting to trace diverse forms of this interaction in the context of and against cultural paradigms and modes of social imaginary is one of the main aims of this chapter.
Although epistemological distinctions can be made between a picture and an image, the former often associated with “a constructed concrete object or ensemble,” the latter with “the virtual, phenomenal appearance that [the former] provides for a beholder,” [10] in this chapter I use both words interchangeably. I shall also not enter into discussion of whether an oinochoe should be considered a “vase,” with the diverse artistic connotations this word has, or a “pot” produced by a craftsman. For this reason, I use the term “vase-paintings” in a conventional manner. My premise is that many of these pictures or images belonged to the realm of ancient Athenian popular culture that was, however, shared and endorsed by wealthy and prominent Athenians in their domestic and social milieus. Further, it seems certain that not all vases were of equal value—aesthetic or other, although it is hard to determine with accuracy the diverse ancient aesthetic currency of specific vases unless we refer to the all-inclusive category of types of vases viewed outside their varied or possible original contexts.
Acting as representations, pictorial images or vase-paintings can be approached as ethnographic informants only through the medium of linguistic signs, a medium of representation that, like pictorial images, constructs actualities and what is being looked at. Whereas language is linear, and despite the fact that as viewers or hasty observers we often scan a picture linearly in different directions, images do not directly or straightforwardly articulate a linear nexus of recognition patterns (or meaning). This further suggests that we do not expect, nor is it possible, to uncover the original intentions of the “informant” since we approach pictorial signs with the additional complications that a modern description through linguistic signs may entail. The task is complex but rewarding, especially because in archaic and classical vase-paintings there are a number of identifiable semantic “idioms,” conventions, and markers pointing to contextual considerations. If carefully explored, these can lead to more historically grounded analyses of socially constructed images.
Before embarking on a systematic investigation of the pictorial images of Sappho in the late archaic and classical periods, a crucial question arises again: How does an image circulate within social and cultural systems of communication? From a semiotic perspective, in contrast to analytic frameworks advanced or endorsed by the schools of the psychology of perception and the sociology of knowledge, Norman Bryson has incisively suggested that we need to think of an image neither, respectively, as a record of perceptions related to the mental fields of an artist and a viewer (the perceptualist approach), nor as a reflection of the milieu of a coherently and habitually constructed and naturalized reality shared by a visual community. [11] The problem with such kinds of understanding of a picture lies in the attempt either to analyze an image in isolation from the dynamic flow of its exterior, social world or to see it as a unidirectional reflection of the social construction of reality. [12] Rather, we should view an image in its dynamic interaction with other cultural discourses. If we approach a representation as a sign interacting with, responding to, refracting, and redrawing ancient realities, idealities, and patterns of thought, then pictures may be construed as discourses that gradually and subtly contribute to the articulation of those realities and idealities. This dynamic process operates, undoubtedly, on a different, considerably less “drastic” level than, say, changes in the social and political formation of a community. If the complexity of such changes can be sensed limpidly or passed unnoticed by the members of a community, the impact of images on the formation of cultural ideologies, even in a society as infused and galvanized in images as ancient Athens, is certainly less tangible and more diffuse or elusive. Yet the cultural dynamism of—an ever accumulating and ideologically freighted corpus of—images provides a conceptual window into the social constructions of the figure of Sappho in the earliest phase of its history, a few generations after the original performances of her songs in Mytilene.
It is true that vase-paintings have been traditionally construed as somewhat marginalized, inexpensive pictures drawn by craftsmen on pots in great, and thus culturally meaningless, quantities. However, apart from other widely accepted reconstructions of the superfluous value of painted pots in relation to “real” works of art in Greek antiquity (an idea that may have not been shared by ancient artisans and their customers), such an approach, I suggest, presupposes an understanding of vase-paintings similar or identical to a current, overly culturally determined view of popular pictures as only an insignificant part of the immense totality and multidimensional variability of images that people are exposed to in modern societies, in an era partly characterized by what has been termed “a pictorial turn.” [13] My premise is that, despite their number and variability, pictorial images in ancient Athenian society interacted differently with their viewers. Many of them, repeating iconographic schemata with minimal semantic differentiation, must have passed unnoticed or were construed as more or less identical to other paintings with which the viewers were familiar. [14] Nonetheless, others, especially those used in the leisured context of symposia or in domestic and public spaces related to daily and ritual aspects of Athenian life, must have often attracted some interest on the part of their spectators, who sometimes also happened to be their commissioning patrons or standard purchasers. Before I proceed to an exploration of late archaic and classical representations of Sappho, I shall pause to consider some aspects essential for my attempt to “describe” modes of signification in Attic vase-paintings.
The Social Life of Attic Vases
Ancient Greek painted pots were mostly functional: apart from vases employed as votive offerings in sanctuaries or buried in graves with the dead, painted pots were used as containers for diverse practical purposes in symposia, domestic contexts, [15] and related social milieus. In current discussions, the context of the aristocratic symposion has often been overemphasized. As a result, classicists and social and cultural historians take it for granted that almost all vases were intended for symposia. [16] Painted pots were produced in workshops specializing in elaborate pottery, more unrefined ware and tiles, and sometimes terracotta statuettes. Artisans (potters and painters) were men, but an image on a red-figure hydria found in a woman’s grave in Ruvo includes in the craftsmen’s company a woman working on a volute-krater. [17] Although the archaeological evidence about pottery workshops is scant and most of the available reconstructions are inevitably somewhat speculative, it seems that archaic workshops were often rather small, with working staff of three to ten people, and possibly fully operative on a seasonal basis. [18] The picture we have of the social and economic status of potters and painters in Athens or in Korinthos is vague, and related sources often contradict one another. [19] This observation does not suggest that we cannot reconstruct some basic aspects of the status of the Athenian potters and painters (a notable example is the widely accepted view that most of them were lower-class artisans, who, however, produced luxury pots for elite customers). Even so, the fact remains that any such reconstructions may perhaps not contribute considerably to an understanding of the actual cultural reception of painted pots and their images by customers and users in the classical period. The whole process of production and overall reception of vases must have been more complex than some current hypothetical accounts suggest, especially since available evidence is sometimes inconclusive. Furthermore, what is often underestimated in archaeological reconstructions of the social and economic status of potters and painters is that for ancient viewers there could have been little or no interdependence of the status of a potter (or the modest price of a pot) and the aesthetic value and effectiveness of a vase-painting. Varied local and class-related aesthetics, as well as possible changes of such aesthetic criteria through time (late sixth to late fifth centuries), render a number of attempts to correlate pottery production and its cultural value somewhat speculative. The whole picture is multilayered, involving such currently controversial aspects as pottery trade and the distribution, reception, and aesthetic value of ancient Greek pottery in Etruria and other areas. [20]
The intricate elusiveness of these and related issues should not be closely associated with the often alleged simplicity and straightforwardness of the images depicted on vases and their reputed (relatively) minor contribution to the elucidation of ancient complexities related to visual culture and social imaginary. Lack of information about historical and local archaeological contexts for each vase (such as uses of different vases, functions of individual shapes, excavation details) does not entail that Attic images on pots should not be taken as cultural “texts”—that is, images that circulated within and interacted with broader discursive elements of ancient Athenian society. These representations were not produced to provide historical information about Athenian life. Instead, in their sheer abundance they often reflect archaic and classical Athenian thought patterns rendered as visual configurations and aesthetic microcosms. They point more to ancient inflections of representing society—to specific, more or less clearly delineated, or broader, sometimes even vast, landscapes of cultural discourses and social fabric that interacted with one another and were often subject to modifications. My investigation in this chapter is archival. It looks at images not in terms of whether they were always meaningful to the buyers of the pots but from the vantage point of the images as ethnographic archives—socioaesthetic spaces inscribed with visually codified idealities, constructs, and especially metonymic sets of signification that are important in our attempt to explore ancient cultural informants about Sappho.
Visualizing Idealized Cognitive Models
The iconographic schemata and the broader representational system of Attic painted pots are characterized by marked conventionality and economy. Signification is pictorially articulated through almost codified (albeit dynamic) schemata, but this process of semantic codification involved polyvalent signs that achieved their specificity only in the context of syntagmatic association and culturally discursive inflections of representation. By syntagmatic association I refer to the process by which a basic semantic unit is placed next to or combined with another, thus creating “minimal syntagms”—that is, combinations of smaller semantic units such as woman, lyre, and book roll—and more “complex syntagms”—that is, the articulation of marked meanings through the combination of “minimal syntagms” and the concomitant manipulation of conventionalized but often flexible iconographic schemata. [21] An emphasis on syntagmatic association—on the syntax of images—should not overlook the significance of the paradigmatic axis of the signifying system of Attic vase-painting. [22] In the large repertoire of basic semantic units, certain pictorial details were, and could be, substituted for others, which modified, even slightly, the articulation of visual discourse. Such substitutions may (or may not) have been entirely haphazard on the part of the painter. However, since we are not interested in what a painter had in his mind but in how an image was read in the context of specific sociocultural discourses and how it contributed to the construction of such discourses, the exclusion of certain pictorial details from an iconographic schema, the elimination of semantically marked elements, and the formation of pictorial divergences within a schema might have been of some importance for the reception of an image by its contemporary ancient viewers, especially in an artistic medium as conventionalized as ancient Greek vase-painting. [23] Iconographic microconfigurations should be seen in the light of closely related pictorial and cultural macroconfigurations and vice versa.
In my exploration of ancient images as ethnographic archives, I attempt to reconstruct their historical and anthropological specificity by focusing on both micro- and macroconfigurations. Tracing discursive practices in pictorial archives may be the best way to define the “archaeology” of this project. [24] Although it is often impossible to capture most of—let alone all—the semantic (contextual, political, conceptual, and other) nexuses that ancient images could activate, it is necessary to decodify and remap all their pictorial elements—especially to view them in the light of patterns of recognition embedded in the culture that produced them. The difficulty of such an enterprise lies mainly in two aspects of the analytical process. First, “non-mythological” figural representations are sometimes marked by contextual polyvalence, since they draw on diverse “actualities.” Second, if we attempt to see in vase-paintings an illustration of everyday realities or ideologies corresponding to such realities, we run the risk of over-reading the images—of reading in them discourses that are alien to the discursive contexts of pictures.
Instead of approaching representations with a view either to locating in them complementary evidence about specific cultural ideologies reflected in literary texts or to validating a one-to-one representational relationship between texts and images, we should view them, I suggest, in terms of what Lakoff, in the context of cognitive linguistics, has defined as “idealized cognitive models.” Idealized cognitive models are categorical structures that help the members of a given society organize and understand their pragmatic and conceptual universe. They correspond to the diverse ways in which social groups make sense of the world around them and communicate their conceptualizations of reality/realities by constructing, employing, and sometimes redefining an infinitely large number of categories such as “neighbor,” “greeting,” “a lie,” “enemy,” “festival,” “politics,” or “womanhood.” Each idealized cognitive model is not static; it is a complex and dynamic nexus of “nodes and links,” associating it with, and dissociating it from, other idealized cognitive models. Among the structuring principles of an idealized cognitive model are metaphoric as well as metonymic mappings. [25] Involved in the formation of cognitive models, metonymy is also a fundamental process in the understanding of images by viewers. In the context of the often conventionalized and formulaic language of Attic vase-paintings, idealized cognitive models emerge, I argue, at the intersection of representational formalism and culturally conditioned artistic agency. To some extent, pictorial schemata presupposed cognitive models and metonymically reflected parts of them. Therefore, a cognitive model such as “non-Greek otherness” could be visually represented by a number of schemata in Athenian vase-painting. Alternatively, clusters of cognitive models were embedded in a single schema, which was repeated—often with marked modifications—over and over, became part of, and shaped late sixth- and fifth-century Athenian societies.
By attempting to trace pragmatic and conceptual categories through pictorial schemata in the context of this investigation of images representing Sappho, I shall be engaged not in reconstructing and extracting evidence about historicized ancient realities but in tracing the ways in which schemata contributed to the visual crystallization and even expansion of cognitive frames and mental spaces. [26] It is the almost rhetorical—due to the use of schemata—and aestheticized vraisemblance of such visually articulated frames and spaces that lies as a central question behind the more technical discussion of ancient images that follows.
Connotation and Denotation
Placing late archaic and classical Attic vase-paintings in the context of pictorial schemata is potentially of some significance for our inquiry. As we have seen, a pictorial schema points to cultural representational frames and conventions. However, being part of and in interaction with sociocultural contexts, an image produces a pictorial discourse that can involve a certain nuanced positioning (not always identifiable by an observer not sharing the perceptual filters of a specific ancient visual community). Even if considered a minimal semantic marker, a visual sign such as “a woman standing alone and playing a musical instrument” [27] may have had specific cultural connotations in the late archaic and classical Greece, depending on the identification of the status of this female figure by ancient viewers. To elucidate my point, I refer to a story related by Dostoevsky in his Diary of a Writer:
One Sunday night, already getting on to the small hours, I chanced to find myself walking alongside a band of six tipsy artisans for a dozen paces or so, and there and then I became convinced that all thoughts, all feelings, and even whole trains of reasoning could be expressed merely by using a certain noun, a noun, moreover, of utmost simplicity in itself [Dostoevsky has in mind here a certain widely used obscenity]. Here is what happened. First, one of these fellows voices this noun shrilly and emphatically by way of expressing his utterly disdainful denial of some point that had been in general contention just prior. A second fellow repeats this very same noun in response to the first fellow, but now in an altogether different tone and sense—to wit, in the sense that he fully doubted the veracity of the first fellow’s denial. A third fellow waxes indignant at the first one, sharply and heatedly sallying into the conversation and shouting at him that very same noun, but now in a pejorative, abusive sense. The second fellow, indignant at the third for being offensive, himself sallies back in and cuts the latter short to the effect: “What the hell do you think you’re doing, butting in like that?! Me and Fil’ka were having a nice quiet talk and just like that you come along and start cussing him out!” And in fact, this whole train of thought he conveyed by emitting just that very same time-honored word, that same extremely laconic designation of a certain item, and nothing more, save only that he also raised his hand and grabbed the second fellow by the shoulder. Thereupon, all of a sudden a fourth fellow, the youngest in the crowd, who had remained silent all this while, apparently having just struck upon the solution to the problem that had originally occasioned the dispute, in a tone of rapture, with one arm half-raised, shouts—What do you think: “Eureka!”? “I found it, I found it!”? No, nothing at all like “Eureka,” nothing like “I found it.” He merely repeats that very same unprintable noun, just that one single word, just that one word alone, but with rapture, with a squeal of ecstasy, and apparently somewhat excessively so, because the sixth fellow, a surly character and the oldest in the bunch, didn’t think it seemly and in a trice stops the young fellow’s rapture cold by turning on him and repeating in a gruff and expostulatory bass—yes, that very same noun whose usage is forbidden in the company of ladies, which, however, in this case clearly and precisely denoted: “What the hell are you shouting for, you’ll burst a blood vessel!” And so, without having uttered one other word, they repeated just this one, but obviously beloved, little word of theirs six times in a row, one after the other, and they understood one another perfectly. [28]
Not unlike this playful manipulation of the semantic potential of a linguistic sign exemplified in the conversation among the Russian symposiasts in Dostoevsky’s story, pictorial texts too—especially those used to decorate pots for ancient sympotic contexts or daily domestic use by women—can employ, to a different degree and through different means, marked connotations that need to be carefully deciphered by a modern viewer. This consideration does not entail that all pictorial connotations were perceived by all ancient Athenian viewers each time they may have had the leisure or curiosity to look at a representation on a vase. However, since pictorial connotations must have often been related to culturally generated and socially constructed modes of recognition, broadly shared by a community, Athenian viewers had access to such “codification” of seeing. Therefore, an attempt should be made to analyze each minimal semantic element and detail on a visual representation in their wider discursive contexts, despite the fact that a number of ancient connotations will inevitably be viewed only on the level of minimal denotation by the modern analyst.
[Sappho] in the Image
It is time to draw into my discussion the late archaic and classical vase-paintings depicting Sappho. Although they are chronologically closer to Sappho’s cultural milieu, the visual discourses of these vase-paintings have not been explored in older or current reconstructions and debates in the scholarship on Sappho; only fleeting references or brief descriptions of some of them have been occasionally made by classicists and literary historians. [29] Since hardly any textual sources exist for her reception in the period before the second or third quarter of the fifth century, I argue that these images throw significant light on the beginnings of the ancient attempts to contextualize Sappho—to locate her in different, distinctive situational frames that reflect successive stages in the earliest reception of her songs in the late sixth and fifth centuries. These successive stages were, I suggest, formative in fifth-century and later understandings of Sappho, although we cannot expect a linear, unidirectional development in the reception of her figure. Rather, Sappho’s earliest reception should be viewed as multileveled and multidirectional. These painted pots suggest ideas that should constitute an integral part of any investigation into the early performative and more broadly sociocultural reception of Sappho’s song-making.
The visual representations cover a period of some seventy years, from c. 510 to c. 440 BC. [30] It is significant that in about the same period, the late sixth century, images of Anakreon start appearing on vases, [31] while, as far as the available evidence permits us to see, no other archaic lyricists enjoyed any popularity among vase-painters. [32] During this period the figures and songs of Anakreon and Sappho will be culturally juxtaposed, and a complex sympotic association will be generated from this metonymic interaction. At least at this stage, their parallel receptions as song-makers whose compositions excited symposiasts converge to a considerable degree. In later periods the name of Anakreon and his erotic poetry will be persistently associated with Sappho’s. I shall return to this aspect of the reception of the two song-makers in the course of this chapter and in Chapter Three.
As for the vases inscribed with Anakreon’s name, two of them, a drinking-cup and a kalyx-krater, a vessel used for mixing wine and water, were among those certainly employed in symposia. The third one is a red-figure lekythos, often used as a one-handled small container for oil and perfumed toilet oil, as well as for household/table ware. [33] Only one of the vases depicting Sappho is a similarly symposiastic vessel—a kalyx-krater— while two others are hydriai, vessels for carrying water and, sometimes, other liquids. [34] The fourth vase with Sappho has a particular shape: it combines elements of a psykter (a kind of liquid- or wine-cooler) with features of a kalathos. I should here stress that it is not certain whether this kalathoid psykter is a kalathos proper or whether its function was related to the cooling of liquids. [35]
Three of the four vases inscribed with Sappho’s name are rather well-known, albeit underexplored, representations of the poet. [36] The fourth one is less known [37] but deserves full attention for the image of Sappho it provides. Along with these four vases, in recent archaeological publications three more vases have been proposed as depicting Sappho. [38] It is these three images, and the methodological reasoning behind their identification, that I shall focus on first.
Although her name is not inscribed on it, a fragment from a belly-amphora in Stuttgart, perhaps by the Andokides Painter, [39] has been interpre-ted as showing Sappho. Dated to about 525 BC, the fragment depicts a female figure playing a kithara. Iconographically similar is an image on a lekythos in Hamburg attributed to the Diosphos Painter and dated to about 500 BC. [40] However, here the female figure holding a kithara is flanked by two lions. [41] This vase is decorated in Six’s technique, a combination of incised lines on an all-black surface with white paint added for the depiction of flesh parts. Mainly because the Diosphos Painter and the Sappho Painter—that is, the painter of the earliest vase that certainly depicts Sappho—specialized in this technique and, as C. H. Emilie Haspels has shown, should be grouped together as “partners” working side by side, [42] the female singer holding a kithara on the Hamburg lekythos has been identified as Sappho. [43] A kylix in Paris attributed to the Hesiod Painter and dated to about 460 BC [44] depicts a female musician seated on a diphros. The setting must be domestic, as suggested by the diphros as well as the mirror and the wreath that hang in the background, in front of and behind the seated figure. Besides the phorminx the musician holds in her left hand, she has a second stringed instrument on her lap. This female figure might have been perceived as a professional musician, given the juxtaposition of the two instruments in her hands. And since the context is domestic, it has been suggested that this poet/musician represents Sappho. [45]
These three, as well as numerous other identifications, are not based on vase-inscriptions. If we search for a common methodological denominator in such tentative suggestions, it is the underlying notion that Sappho must have represented a model of the female singer/poet par excellence in late archaic and classical Attic vase-painting. [46] Especially in those images where a domestic setting eliminates the possibility that a woman “poet” with a stringed instrument represents a Muse, to a very large number of archaeologists it seems plausible to propose that she is Sappho. Even (often traditional) images that Sappho employed in her wedding songs have been associated with specific vase-paintings. For example, a white-ground cup by the Sotades Painter [47] showinga barefoot young woman standing on tiptoe to the right of a tree and reaching for its highest apple, has been viewed as a clear illustration of the following song by Sappho (fr. 105a V): [48]
οἶον τὸ γλυκύμαλον ἐρεύθεται ἄκρωι ἐπ᾽ ὔσδωι,
ἄκρον ἐπ᾽ ἀκροτάτωι, λελάθοντο δὲ μαλοδρόπηες·
οὐ μὰν ἐκλελάθοντ᾽, ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἐδύναντ᾽ ἐπίκεσθαι
ἄκρον ἐπ᾽ ἀκροτάτωι, λελάθοντο δὲ μαλοδρόπηες·
οὐ μὰν ἐκλελάθοντ᾽, ἀλλ᾽ οὐκ ἐδύναντ᾽ ἐπίκεσθαι
As the sweet-apple reddens on a quite high bough,
on the top of the highest bough; the apple-harvesters have forgotten it;
no, they have not quite forgotten it; but they could not reach so far.
Such an interpretation not only elides the afterlife associations of the imagery on the cup and all that we know about the excavation context—an Athenian tomb—in which this cup was found among other stemmed and stemless cups, phialai, and mastoi; [49] it also does not account for the name ΜΕΛΙΣ<Σ>Α inscribed next to the (mostly damaged) crouching female figure to the left of the tree, as well as the last three letters of the apple-gatherer’s name that are visible on the right-hand side of the image. [50]
This long-established scholarly paradigm is not confined to the case of Sappho. Other archaic poets have been identified in images of male figures holding stringed instruments in specific settings: it has been speculated that Arkhilokhos, too, is represented on vase-paintings, [51] although lack of vase-inscriptions cannot make such identifications compelling or even attractive. As regards Sappho, given her relative popularity in images on four painted pots with inscriptions attached to her figure, arguments have been advanced that her visual representations became “model images” [52] for the depiction of equally educated women practicing the art of music. Substantiation for this claim is sought from the widely accepted idea that Sappho must have been the only woman poet known in late archaic and classical Athens and thus possibly established as a paradigm of female musicianship. As I shall suggest later, such a conclusion is based on a slippery assumption: it presupposes that the figure of Sappho had acquired in mid-fifth century Athens a unidirectional, consistent identity—that of the paradigmatic woman poet. Instead, I argue that “Sappho,” especially in the Athens hydria examined in this chapter, was located within the popular schema of gatherings of female musicians or of private poetic competitions. In an attempt to contextualize her songs that, as I shall show in succeeding chapters, were frequently performed in symposia of the classical period, such an assimilation of Sappho into contemporary pictorial schemata was one of the possible ways to naturalize her figure. “Female gatherings” constituted an idealized cognitive model that in the case of Sappho’s poetry and image facilitated processes of visual and other discursive vraisemblance.
Performing with a Barbitos
The earliest and most minimalist representation of Sappho is dated to about 510–500 BC (Fig. 1). [53] Produced almost two generations after her time, this hydria in Six’s technique (formerly in Goluchow and now in Warsaw) has been attributed to the Sappho Painter, who actually got this name after the inscription ΦΣΑΦΟ placed next to the musical instrument that the female figure on this vase holds. The Sappho Painter, an artisan who, along with the Diosphos Painter, indulged in using Six’s technique, was not as fond of vase-inscriptions as other painters: “real inscriptions are rare” and “on most of his vases, the Sappho painter puts mere senseless combinations of letters.” [54] In this context, I argue that the inscription ΦΣΑΦΟ on the hydria in Warsaw indicates the intense excitement that Sappho’s songs had caused outside Lesbos by c. 510 BC. Her early sixth-century musical activities had reached even the quarters of vase-painters.
Sappho is depicted wearing chiton and himation and as having struck the strings of a seven-stringed barbitos. A barbitos was a distinctively shaped, long-armed, and low-pitched lyre; to strike the barbitos’ strings, musicians, professional or non-professional, used a plêktron, a small piece of ivory, bone, wood, or horn often attached by a cord to the instrument. Very often the barbitos is depicted as having seven strings, especially on vase-paintings between c. 500 and 475 BC, but barbitoi with five, six, and eight strings are also depicted. [55] As is the case with Sappho on this hydria, most representations of figures playing the barbitos show the instrumentalist’s left hand near the soundbox, fingertips touching the strings, while their right hand with the plêktron is frequently depicted as having just completed an outward stroke.
[Beazley Vase No. 510]
Figure 1. Hydria in Six’s technique: Sappho playing the barbitos. Attributed to the Sappho Painter, c. 510–500 BC. Warsaw, National Museum, inv. no. 142333. Photo, National Museum in Warsaw.
The choice of the specific instrument in the image is not haphazard. This type of bowl lyre was associated with Sappho’s cultural milieu. According to the cultural rhetoric of Pindar, the seventh-century Lesbian poet Terpandros was its inventor; both Sappho and Alkaios used the form barmos to refer to it in their songs. [56] In an evocative metaphor, Horace (Carmina 1.1.34) refers to Lesboum . . . barbiton, which stands for the lyric tradition of Lesbos that he wishes to inherit and explore in his poetry. [57] And in the Epistula ad Phaonem attributed to Ovid (Heroides 15.8), Sappho calls to mind the barbitos as an instrument that cannot give voice to her sadness. Further, we are told that Anakreon mentioned the barbitos somewhere in his songs, [58] and, according to the third-century BC historian Neanthes of Kyzikos, this instrument was the invention of Anakreon, as the sambykê was purportedly the invention of Ibykos. [59] In the earliest visual reception of Anakreon, as well as of Sappho and Alkaios, the three lyricists are portrayed holding the barbitos.
Since this instrument is depicted both on the “context-free” image on the Warsaw hydria and in other, considerably marked representations, I focus here on the performance contexts in which it appears. On vase-paintings, the barbitos is most closely associated with the world of the symposion and kômos—including the kômoi of the “elaborately dressed revelers” that I examine later in this chapter; with Dionysos and satyrs and with representations of Eros. [60] Revelry, love and desire, leisure, mirth, and intoxication were among the dominant cultural connotations of the instrument in the sixth and fifth centuries—the period during which it was widely used before its gradual disappearance from art in the late fifth and the first half of the fourth centuries BC. Apart from its frequent depiction on Attic vases, the popularity of the barbitos in the first half of the fifth century is suggested by the comedy Barbitistai (“Barbitos-Players”) by Magnes, who was active in Athens in the 480s and 470s. [61]
However, this popular musical instrument—which, according to Aristotle, was meant to provide pleasure and was thus, like the aulos, inappropriate in educational contexts— [62] was sometimes depicted in the hands of the Muses. More importantly, mainly in the second and third quarters of the fifth century, the barbitos was associated with women performing music in domestic settings. [63] These representations very often appear on red-figure hydriai, water containers that could easily accommodate paintings closely linked with the “domestic” world of women—as viewed by male pot-painters. [64]
On our late sixth-century hydria in Warsaw, the minimalist posture of Sappho pointing to her musicianship seems to have nothing in common with symposiastic and komastic images (often depicted on wine or symposion vessels) in which partygoers hold and play barbitoi. It would be tempting to associate this hydria with a female clientele rather than with the milieu of rowdy drinking parties. At the same time it should be observed that women playing the barbitos to accompany the activities of komasts are sometimes shown on red-figure vases of the first half of the fifth century, [65] and the schema of a komast with a barbitos in hand appears often on painted pots. [66] Further, I would draw attention to the fact that the Sappho Painter indulged in marked representations of female figures dancing and holding krotala. In all these cases the visual context defines the figures. Since scenes with small groups of women, let alone with a lone female figure, playing the barbitos are not popular on Attic black-figure vases, [67] I suggest that one of the best parallels to the image on the Warsaw hydria can be found on a red-figure oinochoe that depicts a woman with light brown hair playing an eight-stringed barbitos (Fig. 2). The vase, formerly in the Robinson Collection, Baltimore, and now housed in the Sackler Museum, Harvard University, can be dated to c. 490–480 BC. [68] This lone female musician wears chiton and a cloak thrown over her shoulders as well as an elegant headdress. [69] If this basic pictorial schema, painted as it is on an oinochoe, was viewed in a symposiastic context, its connotations were fittingly “recovered.”
[© President and Fellows of Harvard College]
Figure 2. Red-figure oinochoe: female figure with barbitos, c. 490–480 BC. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Art Museums, Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Bequest of David M. Robinson, inv. no. 1960.354. Photo, Imaging Department, © President and Fellows of Harvard College.
To be sure, understanding Sappho on the Warsaw hydria depended on the context in which the image was seen. In view of the parallel appearance of Anakreon, also performing with a barbitos, on symposiastic vases and the pronounced popularity of the barbitos in komastic, symposiastic, and Dionysiac scenes in the late archaic period, the Warsaw Sappho might perhaps be viewed as an indication that her songs had not been unknown in symposiastic contexts too. Certainly her compositions had caused a sensation in Athenian (female? male?) gatherings by c. 510–500 BC, as the inscription ΦΣΑΦΟ in view of the Sappho Painter’s regular use of nonsense inscriptions suggests. For all that, to find significantly marked representations of the poetess, we will need to turn now our attention to two intriguing vases painted in about 480–470 BC.
Two Singers—Together
A rather large red-figure kalathos-psykter in Munich dated to c. 480–470 BC identifies a standing female figure holding a barbitos as ΣΑΦΟ (“Sappho”). [70] The image on the vessel was long ago attributed to the Brygos Painter and considered a quite late piece of his, but Martin Robertson has cautiously preferred to see it as part of the work of the Dokimasia Painter, a pupil of the Brygos Painter. [71] This kalathos-psykter does not show “Sappho” as a lone barbitos-player (Fig. 3a). Another composer of songs from Lesbos is introduced into the scene: a standing bearded man named ΑΛΚΑΙΟΣ (“Alkaios”), who wears a flowing, transparent chiton, revealing his sex, a cloak, and a tainia. Having an elegant fillet around her head, “Sappho” is dressed in a similarly see-through chiton, but her himation covers the lower part of her body.
Turning to him, Sappho is looking at Alkaios, her face drawn in three-quarter view. “Sappho’s” three-quarter view means that her gaze is not directed at the viewer. Intriguingly, preliminary sketches can be detected on the vase-painting. [72] Each of the two musicians holds a barbitos and a plêktron. While at first sight it is not certain whether Sappho is about to start or has just finished playing her eight-stringed barbitos, Alkaios clearly performs with his seven-stringed barbitos: five small circles spill out of his mouth. His head is shown bent down and not thrown back—as singers often position their heads on Attic vase-paintings. Plucking individual strings with his left hand, he vocalizes: O O O O O. [73]
[Line drawing by Valerie Woelfel]
Figure 3a. Red-figure kalathoid vase: obverse, Sappho and Alkaios with barbitoi. C. 480–470 BC. Munich, Staatliche Antikensammlungen, inv. no. 2416. Photo, Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek München.
[Line drawing by Valerie Woelfel]
Figure 3b. Red-figure kalathoid vase: reverse, Dionysos and female figure. C. 480–470 BC. Munich, Staatliche Antikensammlungen, inv. no. 2416. Photo, Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek München.
A methodological observation should be made at this point. The vase should not, a priori, be taken as a sympotic vessel. Its quite idiosyncratic shape—a combination of marked features of a kalathos [74] and features of a psykter—does not clearly suggest that this was a wine-cooler. It is a cylindrical and spouted kalathoid vase, the function of which can be a matter of speculation. [75] Therefore, in analyzing the discursive contexts of its images, we should not associate them with a hypothetical sympotic function of the vase itself. If the images on the vase may possibly place Alkaios and Sappho in a sympotic context, this is not corroborated with certainty by the shape of the kalathoid vessel.
The reverse of the vase reveals a parallel iconographic configuration, with a male and a female figure standing opposite each other (Fig. 3b). This time they are Dionysos and a female devotée, both wreathed with ivy leaves and dressed in chiton and himation. Instead of barbitoi, Dionysos holds a kantharos in his right hand and vine branches in his left, while his female companion carries an oinochoe and a sprig. Both vessels are sympotic. The barbitoi of Alkaios and Sappho are juxtaposed, as it were, to the vases held by Dionysos and his devotée. The plêktra that the performers hold are similarly juxtaposed to the branches that Dionysos and his female companion carry. Further, the two song-makers wear a ribbon and an elegant fillet, respectively, while Dionysos and his devotée are both wreathed with ivy leaves. Two inscriptions accentuate the relative symmetry and parallelism of the two sides. Between the two poets with the long-armed instruments is a vertical inscription that reads ΔΑΜΑ[Σ] ΚΑΛΟΣ (“Damas is beautiful”). On the reverse, to the right of Dionysos’ mouth, lettering provides the word ΚΑΛΟΣ (“beautiful”), while to the left of the woman’s mouth, another ΚΑΛΟΣ (“beautiful”) appears, in retrograde. The two sides of a vase are often related with regard to the narrative they provide, and numerous cases exist where indirect associations between the images of the two sides are detectable. On this particular kalathoid vase, the symmetry of the figures on both sides is evident. Although Sappho’s hair is drawn similarly to that of Dionysos, as well as of his female companion on the reverse, the body language of Sappho is different from that of Dionysos’ female devotée: Dionysos’ head leans slightly forward while Alkaios’ head is bent down; Dionysos and his follower are fully dressed; Alkaios and Sappho’s garments are lighter and partly diaphanous. [76] Speculation (even impressionistic) can be offered about the juxtaposition of the image of “Alkaios and Sappho” to that of “Dionysos and his female companion.” For the sake of my methodological approach in this book, I refrain from indulging in such an enterprise. [77]
On the obverse side with the two poets from Lesbos, the image does not disclose what Alkaios is singing about, but the lowered position of his head has been viewed as an indication of “shame” on his part. [78] This vase-painting has thus been closely connected by a large number of scholars with a dialogic song between Sappho and Alkaios that Aristotle quotes in his Rhetoric (1367a.8–14 Kassel), a fragmentary poem attributed to Sappho. [79] Alkaios, Aristotle maintains, initiated the dialogue:
θέλω τί τ᾽ εἴπην, ἀλλά με κωλύει
αἴδως . . .
αἴδως . . .
I want to say something to you,
but shame prevents me. . . .
And, in response, we are told, Sappho sang: “but if you desired what is honorable or beautiful, . . . shame would not seize your eyes, but you would speak about what you claim [?].” [80] I shall return to this fragment attributed to Sappho in Chapter Four but for now I should point out that such dialogues between poets—belonging to the same era or even to chronologically distant periods—were often based on fabricated scenarios that amused the imagination of ancient performers, audiences, and writers.
Could Aristotle’s claim have originated in earlier stories, possibly circulated in symposia or related venues, about a purported antiphonal exchange between Sappho and Alkaios in this dialogic song? Or could a vase-painting showing Alkaios singing to Sappho, such as the one under consideration, have contributed to the dissemination of fictionalized interpretations of a dialogic song of Sappho?
I argue that images such as the one on the Munich vase could have, to some extent, sparked off—or provided the basic narrative element regarding a “Lesbian poets’ encounter” conducive to—fabricated stories eventually connected with specific songs by Sappho or Alkaios. Whether or not in the representation of Alkaios singing to Sappho the bent position of his head indicated “shame” on his part, can be only a matter of guesswork. [81] It is more likely, I believe, that the speakers of a dialogic song of Sappho were attributed historical names some time before Aristotle and that the vase-painting itself did not represent anything but “Alkaios and Sappho in performance.” In other words, if we gave this image a slightly more marked definition—“Alkaios singing to Sappho”—and added the adverbial perspective “bashfully,” we would reenact the ancient fictionalizing procedure of attributing specific “plots” to poems, although such an enterprise would this time be associated with an image. Instead, I suggest that what we actually see on the obverse of this vase is the thematically diverse and often contextually dissimilar songs by Sappho and Alkaios located in the same performative space. The two poets with their barbitoi perform without their companions outside marked religious or political settings in the same visual context, and all possible differences in their songs are elided. Unlike later receptions of Sappho, no marked indications appear on this vase-painting that differentiate her figure as a performer from that of archaic male lyricists.
In this regard, the only recent, brief discussion of the vase-paintings depicting Sappho has attempted to see in all four of them a common pattern in the construction of gender on the part of the painters. According to this interpretation, these images constitute “instances of the ‘muting’ of a female figure by male artists” and at least three of them [82] “presented what was considered by Athenian standards an ‘appropriate’ model of a woman poet—subdued, passive, and in fact at least momentarily silent.” [83] The idea behind such an approach is that Sappho, in contrast to Alkaios on the Munich kalathoid vase, is not depicted in a singing pose or in the act of singing. However attractive it perhaps appears, this view might not be easily borne out by the surviving images with Sappho. Given the rarity of representations of archaic poets or other celebrities on vase-paintings, the fact that Sappho—more than any other archaic lyricist—is depicted on four vases attests to the centrality of her performative voice and the popularity of her songs in the late archaic and classical periods. Should painters have wished to suppress or control Sappho’s female voice, there would have been significantly marked indications of such an effort. On the contrary, on the Warsaw hydria, not unlike the Bochum kalyx-krater that I shall examine next, Sappho is shown with a barbitos and a plêktron in her hands: the plêktron itself indicates imminent or actual performance. On the fourth vase, the Athens hydria, a scroll is held by the poetess before the eyes of the viewer: the scroll is not empty but contains a self-referential poem “by Sappho” juxtaposed to a distinctively marked epic formula. And on the Munich vase, Sappho is not “silent,” waiting and listening. [84] Instead, Sappho is shown as a performer: I argue that the fact that the fingertips of her left hand touch the strings of her barbitos and are positioned in the same way as Alkaios’ fingers [85] indicates that both musicians are not viewed from a different perspective in terms of their status. As for the manner in which she holds her barbitos (not in a straight position), there are a number of parallels of barbitos-players holding their lyres in a horizontal or even downward direction. [86] The five small circles that come from Alkaios’ mouth do not add something marked to his status as a performer. Arguing that Sappho is muted, especially when the great majority of barbitos-players and, more broadly, lyre-players and singers on vase-paintings do not have melodic sounds spilling out of their mouths, is implicitly based on the assumption that other known poets are depicted as singing: however, as we will see in this chapter, Anakreon, the only other archaic poet appearing on vases, is not. [87] Like Anakreon, Sappho is represented as a musician who is not vocalizing. I suggest that “Alkaios,” his head downcast, is the object of her gaze.
What we can infer from this image (not from the shape of the vase), but especially in connection with the Bochum kalyx-krater dated to the same decades, is that the figures of Sappho and Alkaios and their songs are now viewed in a more marked, symposiastic context. The Dionysiac imagery on the reverse of the vase supports this idea. [88] In addition, the barbitoi in the hands of the poets, in view also of the ΔΑΜΑ[Σ] ΚΑΛΟΣ and the two “affirmative” ΚΑΛΟΣ next to the mouth of Dionysos and of his female companion, may similarly point to such a discourse. The images on the Munich kalathoid vase but, more importantly, the Bochum kalyx-krater indicate that Sappho’s songs, for the first time in our record, were associated with the performative context of symposia. I argue that the Bochum kalyx-krater provides the only certain clues that we have about Sappho being performed in early fifth-century Athenian symposia. In contrast to the current scholarly paradigm that rather intuitively and anachronistically views Sappho in the context of symposia on the basis of very late literary sources, I further argue that these sources cannot substantiate the relevant claim. Against the background of the visual representation on the Bochum kalyx-krater, later informants, considered by scholars as evidence for the performance of Sappho in early symposia, need to be reexamined.
The Grammar of Late Performances
Indeed, Sappho’s poetry was represented in later antiquity as being sung in the context of dinner parties. Although these sources are very late, it has been thought that at least one of them reflects earlier practice. The sources that associate Sappho’s songs with a sympotic context date from the first to the third centuries AD. The earliest one is Ploutarkhos and it is to his Table-Talks (Symposiaka) that I shall now turn.
The symposiaka, as Ploutarkhos explains in the introduction to the second book of his Table-Talks, are general topics and discussion suitable for the symposion, in contrast to the sympotika, the more specific talk about different aspects of the symposion itself. [89] The fifth problêma, or question, of the first book of Ploutarkhos’ is of a more general character, a symposiakon proper: “why it is held that ‘Eros instructs a poet.’ ” [90] This talk, Ploutarkhos points out at the very beginning of the fifth “question,” started after the performance of some of Sappho’s poems:
Πῶς εἴρηται τὸ
… ῾ποιητὴν δ᾽ ἄρα
Ἔρως διδάσκει, κἂν ἄμουσος ᾖ τὸ πρίν,’
ἐζητεῖτο παρὰ Σοσσίῳ Σαπφικῶν τινων ᾀσθέντων . . .
… ῾ποιητὴν δ᾽ ἄρα
Ἔρως διδάσκει, κἂν ἄμουσος ᾖ τὸ πρίν,’
ἐζητεῖτο παρὰ Σοσσίῳ Σαπφικῶν τινων ᾀσθέντων . . .
At a dinner hosted by Sossius, after the singing of some of
Sappho’s compositions, the question arose as to why it is held
that “Eros then instructs [anyone to be] a poet, even if he was
unmusical before.” [91]
At that dinner, [92] the performance of Sappho’s songs seems to have been closely related to the topic of the ensuing talk, [93] and, in the context of Ploutarkhos’ semi-imaginary and elaborately structured λόγοι παρὰ πότον (“after-dinner talks over the wine”), a reference to those songs should be viewed as an apt way to introduce the question of the discussion. The suitability of the songs of Sappho as a prelude to an exploration of the idea that it is Eros that instructs a poet is prominent. This passage, along with the story from the Symposiaka that I shall examine next, suggest that for Ploutarkhos “the singing of Sappho’s lyrics at symposia” represents a standard thematic topos for Roman parties. The performance of the love poetry composed by Sappho and Anakreon reflects performative practices in symposia of his time. [94]
A further representation of the singing of Sappho’s poems in first or early second-century AD symposia is obtained from another problêma in the seventh book of the Symposiaka: “what kinds of entertainment are most appropriate at dinner.” [95] The dramatic setting is now a dinner party hosted in Khaironeia, [96] Ploutarkhos’ birthplace. The participants, we are told, included a Stoic sophist, Philippos of Prousa, Diogenianos of Pergamon, and, of course, Ploutarkhos himself. The Stoic sophist’s argument was that all other kinds of entertainment should be banished from dinner parties. Instead, he would introduce a form of entertainment that had been recently launched at Roman parties: recitations of Plato’s dramatic dialogues by slaves who learned by rote the most vivacious of such dialogues and performed them in a most “histrionic” manner. Philippos reacted strongly to the sophist’s preference and maintained that he was one of the first to become annoyed when such symposiastic performances of Platonic works were introduced in Rome. His reverence for Plato would not allow him to hear such recitations, since:
ὅτε καὶ Σαπφοῦς ἂν ᾀδομένης καὶ τῶν Ἀνακρέοντος ἐγώ μοι
δοκῶ καταθέσθαι τὸ ποτήριον αἰδούμενος.
δοκῶ καταθέσθαι τὸ ποτήριον αἰδούμενος.
Even when Sappho’s songs are performed, or Anakreon’s, it
seems to me proper to put down my cup, out of respect. [97]
We are not told at what symposia Philippos used to hear Sappho’s poems being sung—Roman or Greek. All the same, performances of lyric “classics,” among other poetic and dramatic forms, farces, and dances, are here thought of as a type of entertainment at dinner parties of Ploutarkhos’ era. [98]
For representations of Sappho at Roman symposia of the second century, we need to focus in some detail on a story related by Aulus Gellius in the nineteenth book of his Attic Nights. [99] In one of the numerous notes and stories that his twenty-book miscellany comprises, Gellius refers to a cena given by a talented and educated young man of equestrian rank from Asia on his birthday. Being well versed in music, the young host had invited his friends and teachers to a small estate near Rome. Antonius Julianus, Gellius’ teacher of rhetoric, was also there, and his role at the dinner was to be crucial. The whole dramatization of this lighthearted anecdote seems fictitious; its main aim is to draw parallels between Greek and Roman erotic poetry, mostly to the advantage of the equally refined and charming verses of the latter. When eating and drinking were over and conversation was about to commence, it was requested that young well-trained singers and musicians be brought in to perform: [100]
Ac posteaquam introducti pueri puellaeque sunt, iucundum in modum Ἀνακρεόντεια pleraque et Sapphica et poetarum quoque recentium ἐλεγεῖα quaedam erotica dulcia et venusta cecinerunt.
And when the boys and girls were presented, they sang in a delightful manner a number of Anakreontic and Sapphic songs, as well as some mellow and charming erotic elegiac verses of more recent poets.
The guests, including Gellius, were particularly elated by a poem by Anakreon, which is quoted by the miscellanist and happens to be not by Anakreon but from the Anacreontea, a shorter version of poem 4. [101] Greek words are employed for ἐλεγεῖα and Ἀνακρεόντεια, but not for Σαπφικά. [102] After becoming exasperated at the provocation and snobbishness of some Greek guests, who claimed that Latin love poets were inferior to “Anakreon and the other [Greek] poets of that kind,” [103] Antonius Julianus, as a good patriot (pro lingua patria tamquam pro aris et focis), melodiously intoned four early love epigrams, two by Valerius Aedituus and one each by Porcius Licinus and Quintus Catulus, all somewhat obscure poets. [104] An interesting aspect of the episode is that Gellius, as narrator, believes that, compared to the Latin poems that Julianus recited at that dinner, “nothing can be found in Greek or Latin that is more elegant, charming, polished, or concise,” [105] the songs of Anakreon and Sappho presumably included.
Further, it is also worth observing that elsewhere Gellius refers to specific “problems” from Ploutarkhos’ Table-Talks, [106] which, as we have seen, envisage the performance of Sappho in the context of dinner parties in his time. In the first story recounted by Ploutarkhos, the dinner at Sossius Senecio, [107] the conversation, as in Gellius’ narrative, was triggered by the singing of some Sapphic songs (Σαπφικά τινα). I wonder whether Sapphica may refer to songs in the tradition of Sappho—that is, Sapphic compositions inspired by the Musa Sapphica to which Latin poets refer. [108] The singing of Sapphic and Anakreontic songs by skillful pueri puellaeque in Gellius is a notable feature that has escaped the notice of scholars: intriguingly, at the dinner hosted by a young man talented in music, the singers he brought in were boys and girls. I suggest that the dramatization of this incident, from the perspective of the ancient reception of Sappho, reflects the manner in which some of “Anakreon’s and Sappho’s” songs could have been performed in second-century AD banquets; this performative mode seems to break with the tradition of archaic and classical male symposia and to conflate monodic and choral modes of singing. Behind the theme of the “performance of Sappho’s poems” occurring both in Ploutarkhos and in Aulus Gellius lie different first- and second-century traditions of the singing of Sappho’s compositions, which had become an integral part of symposiastic entertainment and were, in such late eras, accompanied by ever newly set and improvised music, even when that setting might have been considered by some audiences “traditional.”
A more complex and almost unexplored case of the performance of Sappho in symposia can be found in another Roman miscellanist, Aelian, who preferred, however, to write in Greek. While Gellius’ Attic Nights was published about 180 AD, Aelian’s Historical Miscellany (Poikilê Historia) was written some time in the first three decades or so of the third century. The story in which we are interested here is an excerpt preserved in Stobaios’ fifth-century anthology, in a section with passages related to “industriousness” (περὶ φιλοπονίας). The fragment is ascribed to Aelian (Stobaios 3.19.58 = Aelian fr. 190 Domingo-Forasté), and in the same section, almost immediately after this excerpt, there occurs another passage from Aelian (Stobaios 3.19.60), probably excerpted this time from the seventh book of his Historical Miscellany (7.7). [109] Since in the latter work Aelian refers to stories about Solon, [110] it is not unlikely that the former fragment in Stobaios (3.19.58), a snapshot from the life of Solon, also comes from the Historical Miscellany. [111] Whatever the case, Aelian fragment 190 D.-F. [112] relates the following incident:
Σόλων ὁ Ἀθηναῖος Ἐξηκεστίδου παρὰ πότον τοῦ ἀδελφιδοῦ αὐτοῦ μέλος τι Σαπφοῦς ᾄσαντος, ἥσθη τῷ μέλει καὶ προσέταξε τῷ μειρακίῳ διδάξαι αὐτόν. ἐρωτήσαντος δέ τινος διὰ ποίαν αἰτίαν τοῦτο ἐσπού-δασεν, ὁ δὲ ἔφη ‘ἵνα μαθὼν αὐτὸ ἀποθάνω.’
Solon of Athens, son of Exekestides, when his nephew sang a song by Sappho at a drinking party, was delighted with the song and asked the boy to teach it to him. When someone asked why he was so keen on this, [Solon] answered “So that I may learn it and then die.”
This brings us back to early sixth-century Athens. But does the story provide any indications about the performance of Sappho’s songs in symposia of the archaic period? Numerous scholars have assumed that the narrative reflects early practice or, more recently and at times rather impressionistically, that it can at least confirm indications provided by earlier sources. [113] The risks pursuant to such an inference can be numerous. Aelian is often not a reliable historical source, especially in cases when he mentions that Sokrates used to pose questions to people at Aristotle’s Lyceum (Historical Miscellany 9.29). However, from the perspective of a broader, contextual exploration of the ancient reception of Sappho, it is not enough to assume simply that Aelian fragment 190 D.-F. is anecdotal, albeit indicative, as so often believed, of the realities of the archaic performances of Sappho. As we have seen, there are representations of the singing of Sappho at Roman dinner parties during the late first and second centuries. We need to go beyond the unnecessary hypothesis that early and late representations suggest a linear continuity in the symposiastic performance of Sappho from early times to late antiquity.
I argue that such late sources—or as I would prefer to term them “informants”—if viewed within related sociocultural contexts, do not vouchsafe to disclose earlier cultural realities. If we search for informants that may throw some light on the story about Solon, we may come closer to the cultural practices involved in the construction of such anecdotes in later times. In this regard, Ammianus Marcellinus proves to be significant in providing comparative information about how basic plot structures could produce variations on specific themes. Writing in the fourth century, he recounts a similar story, but this time it is Sokrates and not Solon who becomes enchanted by a song of an archaic lyricist: [114]
Quidam detestantes ut venena doctrinas, Iuvenalem et Marium Maximum curatiore studio legunt, nulla volumina praeter haec in profundo otio contrectantes, quam ob causam non iudicioli est nostri. Cum multa et varia pro amplitudine gloriarum et generum lectitare deberent, audientes destinatum poenae Socraten coniectumque in carcerem rogasse quendam scite lyrici carmen Stesichori modulantem, ut doceretur id agere, dum liceret, interroganteque musico, quid ei poterit hoc prodesse morituro postridie, respondisse, ut aliquid sciens amplius e vita discedam.
Some of them hate learning like poison, but read Juvenal and Marius Maximus with diligent care, in their unlimited idleness going through no other books than these; and why this is so is not for a man like me to judge. Given the greatness of their fame and ancestry, they ought to study many and various works; they ought to be aware that Sokrates, condemned to death and thrown into prison, asked someone who was skillfully performing a song of the lyric poet Stesikhoros to teach him to do this while there was still time. And when the musician asked what good this could be to him, when he was to die next day, [Sokrates] answered “So that I may learn something more before I depart from life.”
In this section of book 28, Ammianus provides an account of the vices of Roman nobles around 370 AD. His reference to Sokrates may or may not conflate different versions of earlier stories. [115] However, what is worth pointing out is the basic narrative structure lying behind this story: “to learn something and die.” [116] Solon is substituted for Sokrates but more importantly “Stesichorus,” modified by “lyricus,” has taken the place of “Sappho.” As in the case of the skillful boys and girls in Gellius’ narrative, [117] the musician in Ammianus skillfully performs, even in prison, a song that could have been by any of a number of poets. Viewed within this context, the story about the singing of Sappho in Aelian represents, I argue, an instance of the interchangeability of a number of possible poets in the discursive context of “the performance of a lyric song.” The fragment of Aelian tells us more about the literary tastes and cultural practices of his time than about the performance of Sappho in the early sixth century BC.
To converse with fifth-century BC representations of “Sappho” in Athenian symposiastic contexts, we need to attempt to read the pictorial discourse of a kalyx-krater, a type of vessel that was certainly used at drinking-parties.
Yes, in the Company of a Young Woman
The case I shall focus on here is an image of Sappho painted on a red-figure kalyx-krater attributed to the Tithonos Painter and dated to about 480–470 BC. The vase is housed in the Kunstsammlungen of the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. [118] On the obverse, Sappho is depicted holding a seven-stringed barbitos in her left hand, with a plêktron in her right hand (Fig. 4a). The fingertips of her left hand touching the strings of her barbitos are shown straight and separate, the standard position of the left hand of barbitos-players on Attic vase-paintings. Sappho stands with her body facing right, while her head is turned backward toward her outstretched right hand. It has been assumed that Sappho is shown here alone, as in the case of the Warsaw hydria on which she is depicted as a single figure striking the strings of a seven-stringed barbitos. [119]
However, the picture on the Bochum kalyx-krater becomes more complete if we investigate the vase closely and in the context of broader idealized cognitive models in Attic visual discourses. If we look at the reverse of the kalyx-krater(Fig. 4b), another female figure appears in similar pose, walking in the opposite direction from Sappho. Her clothes cover her body thoroughly. It is as if the second female figure were a mirror image of Sappho, although there are differences in the representation of the figures.
[Line drawing by Valerie Woelfel]
Figure 4a. Red-figure kalyx–krater: obverse, Sappho with barbitos. Attributed to the Tithonos Painter, c. 480–470 BC. Bochum, Ruhr-Universität, Kunstsammlungen, inv. no. S 508. Photo, Ruhr-Universität Bochum.
That the images on the two sides of the kalyx–krater are related is an aspect I shall explore in the following section. Note that the painter chose to depict both women with their heads turned backward. While in the case of Sappho the position of her extended right arm and of her slightly outstretched right foot may account for the fact that her head is shown turned backward, the same is not true of the woman on the reverse. It is evident that some parallelism is achieved through the posture of the two female figures, although the fact that the second one is not represented as a barbitos-player invites closer inspection.
[Line drawing by Valerie Woelfel]
Figure 4b. Red-figure kalyx-krater: reverse, female figure. Attributed to the Tithonos Painter, c. 480–470 BC. Bochum, Ruhr-Universität, Kunstsammlungen, inv. no. S 508. Photo, Ruhr-Universität Bochum.
Upon rotating the vase and looking at—or comparing—both sides, the viewer realizes that the gaze of the two women will never interlock. While Sappho “looks” at the other female figure, that figure has her head turned in the opposite direction from Sappho, and vice versa. And as long as the two sides are perceived as a continuous “narrative,” [120] a snapshot placed in indefinite time—a sort of ritual time—the two figures will keep following one another, as in komastic scenes that I shall now explore.
The Tithonos Painter and Modes of Representation
I have already suggested that the image of Sappho becomes more complete and complex upon viewing both sides of the vase. It should be stressed that this connectedness between obverse and reverse occurs often in late archaic and early classical vases and is a standard mode of representation for some painters during this period. Among numerous cases, I shall first discuss two culturally intriguing ones.
On the obverse of a red-figure neck-amphora attributed to the Brygos Painter and dated to c. 480 BC, [121] we see a kitharôidos wearing a chiton and a chlamys while striking the strings of his kithara with his plêktron (Fig. 5a). His head thrown back, as would be expected for a singer, he seems to be performing alone. However, on the reverse we see a young man holding a stick in his left hand and leaning his lowered head on his right hand (Fig. 5b). Whatever this gesture may suggest (frustration, concentration, or something similar), the young man appears to be a listener, the audience of the kitharôidos in the context of an (agonistic?) performance. The position of the figures—one placed opposite the other, as it were—the young man’s face bent downward and looking in the direction of the kitharôidos’ face that is thrown backward—is significant in this mode of representation, despite the fact that the gaze of the two figures does not interlock: each of them is focused on his represented role.
A second example is a red-figure oinochoe in the manner of the Triptolemos Painter and dated to the second quarter of the fifth century. [122] To the right of the handle of the oinochoe a Greek, wearing only a mantle that covers his back, grasps his erect penis and runs toward an archer who appears on the other side. Between the two male figures there is a good deal of black space, and the connection between the two sides can be made upon turning the oinochoe, as well as through an inscription. The second man, clad in non-Greek attire, with a gôrytos hanging from his left arm, bends forward. He is facing the same direction, thus allowing the aroused man to approach him from behind, despite the distance between them. With his face turned to the viewer, the archer raises his hands on either side of his head, his whole posture suggesting submissiveness or consent. An inscription running from the head of the naked, lightly bearded man to the archer’s right foot helps us conceptualize the entire scene:
[Line drawing by Valerie Woelfel]
Figure 5a. Red-figure neck-amphora: obverse, kitharôidos. Attributed to the Brygos Painter, c. 480 BC. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, John Michael Rodocanachi Fund, inv. no. 26.61. Photo, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
[Line drawing by Valerie Woelfel]
Figure 5b. Red-figure neck-amphora: reverse, draped youth with stick. Attributed to the Brygos Painter, c. 480 BC. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, inv. no. 26.61. Photo, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
Εὐρυμέδων εἰμ[ὶ] κυβα̣[. .] ἕστεκα (“I am Eurymedon. I stand bent over”). [123] Both in the Hamburg oinochoe and in the Boston neck-amphora, the obverse side remains incomplete if the viewer does not look at the reverse. Even in cases where the association of the two sides is less palpable, their contiguity must have not left unaffected the horizons of expectations of ancient viewers, since a large number of scenes divided between the sides of certain types of vessels were part of their viewing experience.
More importantly, the Tithonos Painter himself aptly exploited in his work this kind of connectedness between the two sides of vases. All the vases attributed to him are red-figure neck-amphorae and lekythoi, except for a red-figure stamnos and two red-figure kalyx-kraters. [124] On one of the neck-amphorae that he decorated, the two sides show a youth offering a lyre and a youth apparently fleeing, respectively (Fig. 6). [125] Culturally the connection is palpable. On the reverse of a neck-amphora in Paris, the old Nestor holding a scepter in his left hand stands with his right hand outstretched, as if pointing to the other side—like Sappho on the Bochum kalyx-krater. On the obverse, a young male figure that has been identified as Nestor’s handsome son Antilokhos (his name not inscribed) stands carrying lance and shield. [126] Like Nestor, Antilokhos has his head turned left. Coming out from the mouth of the near-naked young man is the inscription καλος (retrograde). Note that, as in the case of the Bochum “Sappho,” the inscription ΝΕΣΤΟΡ placed to the left of Nestor’s mouth is also retrograde. On the two sides of another neck-amphora, a naked young athlete and his trainer, respectively, are depicted. [127] In the context of my overall argument, I should stress that such a visual division of a single thematic “episode” is characteristic of the Tithonos Painter. Among other examples in his work, two neck-amphorae are noteworthy. On one of them, [128] a kômos takes place: a near-naked youth with a barbitos strides forward on the obverse; on the reverse, a second youth posed in the same direction turns his head backward to look at the barbitos-player. Figures facing right but with their heads turned backward is a recurrent feature in the Tithonos Painter (witness again the Bochum “Sappho”).
[Beazley Vase No. 203173]
Figure 6. Red-figure neck-amphora: obverse, youth with lyre; reverse, youth. Attributed to the Tithonos Painter, c. 480–470 BC. Berlin, Staatliche Museen, Antikensammlung, inv. no. F 2328. Photo, Bildarchiv Preussischer Kulturbesitz / Art Resource, NY.
Note that the right hand of the youth on the reverse is slightly out-stretched toward the youth on the obverse. More significantly, the latter plays a barbitos, from the lower arm of which hangs an aulos bag. This visual sign, the aulos bag hanging from the musical instrument of a komast, will reappear on the Bochum “Sappho” painted by the same craftsman. [129] Further, on the reverse side of another neck-amphora, [130] Dionysos walks carrying a thyrsos in his right hand and a kantharos in his left. While his body is facing right, his head is turned backward—like the Bochum “Sappho.” On the obverse, a maenad strides forward holding a thyrsos in her left hand and an oinochoe in her outstretched right hand, as if offering wine to Dionysos. The thematic connectedness between the two sides is further accentuated through the (almost rhetorical) repetition of visual signs, and the female figure’s extended right hand invites the viewer to look at both sides and explore the connection. Because these were important modes of representation during the period I am interested in, ancient viewers must have been inclined to this way of viewing and understanding visual “micronarratives.”
One final point remains to be examined. If one attempts to see the Tithonos Painter in a broader contemporary context, the best possible comparandum is the Berlin Painter, one of the major red-figure pot-painters influenced by the Pioneers Phintias and Euthymides. There is no doubt that Beazley was right in defining the Tithonos Painter as a craftsman “related to the Berlin Painter.” [131] His figurework closely follows in the steps of the Berlin Painter, [132] whose favorite shapes of vases are amphorae (Types A and C, neck-amphorae, and Panathenaic-type amphorae) and kraters, among others. Such types of pots could accommodate the Berlin Painter’s characteristic single-figure decoration on each side. [133] The numerous pots attributed to him provide a rich background against which the Bochum “Sappho” should be examined since the scheme of single-figure decoration—that is, the depiction of only one figure on either side of a pot—has been skillfully exploited on this kalyx-krater too. I here pay special attention to a synchronic consideration of the Tithonos Painter, whose work was evidently influenced by the Berlin Painter.
Among the Berlin Painter’s mythological images, a bell-krater in Paris shows on one side Ganymedes, naked and blond-haired, with a hoop and a courting gift—a cock—in his hands. On the other side, gazing at Ganymedes, Zeus with his scepter held horizontally strides forward. [134] Similarly, Herakles holding out a kantharos appears on one side of an amphora Type A. Upon rotating the vase, the viewer sees on the other side Athena facing Herakles. The oinochoe she holds in her right hand, as if offering a drink to Herakles who stands just “across from” her, corroborates the connection between the two sides that the viewer makes. [135]
However, if we leave these mythological pictures aside, a large number of others attributed to the Berlin Painter exemplify the single-figure decoration on each side in a more unmarked manner. In the latter cases, the connection between the two sides is somewhat less palpable but equally intriguing: it is articulated “thematically” by drawing on diverse schemata. On an amphora Type C attributed to the Berlin Painter, a young kitharôidos clad in elegant attire and singing is juxtaposed with a “judge” or “music coach” who stands opposite and looks at him: this figure is a bearded man with a long forked staff in his left hand, his right hand outstretched toward the singer—in an interesting gesture of fingers. [136] On one of the neck-amphorae also attributed to the Berlin Painter, a blond-haired, winged Eros with a hoop and a cockerel is placed “opposite” a youth who leans with extended hands on his walking stick and observes Eros. [137] An almost identical scene occurs on a neck-amphora attributed to the Tithonos Painter; the main difference is that the winged Eros is black-haired and holds a bird, while the youth extends his arms toward Eros. [138] The Berlin Painter’s symposiastic and komastic scenes present similar snapshots: on one side, a near-naked old komast gazes at a near-naked youth with a barbitos who strides on the other side; [139] a single satyr playing a barbitos on one side turns his head backward to look at another satyr playing a barbitos on the other side. [140] A youth standing “across from” or “followed by” a man or another youth occurs time and again. [141] Further, in at least two vases attributed to the Berlin Painter, an aulos bag appears either in the hands of a lyre-player or hanging from the lower arm of a barbitos played by a woman [142] —the latter a striking parallel to the representation of Sappho and her barbitos on the Bochum kalyx-krater, as we will see in the course of this chapter.
To conclude, these and other cases clearly suggest that rotating and looking at both sides of a vase with such single-figure decoration was part of the viewing experience for contemporary Athenians. It is the anthropology of this viewing experience that we need to explore with regard to the Bochum vase. Seen in the context of other pots decorated by the Tithonos Painter and the Berlin Painter, the images on the Bochum kalyx-krater articulate a visual “text,” the syntax of which invites further examination.
The Rhetoric of Lettering
There is certainly more to the snapshot related by the vase; the story does not end here. The figure of Sappho is identified on the vase with a painted inscription. Her name is inscribed to the left of her head.
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. [143] But unlike such self-deconstructing “inscribed” modern images as René Magritte’s Ceci n’est pas une pipe, [144] the kinds of associations and ideas on Athenian vase-paintings about the depicted figures provided by words in the form of dipinti and graffiti are of a more “definitional” nature. In his attempt to illustrate a psychoanalytic comparison of dreams and language, Freud aptly commented on the use of inscriptions in ancient vase-paintings as signifying markers circumventing the indeterminacy inherent in pictorial discourse:
Before painting became acquainted with the laws of expression by which it is governed, it made attempts to get over this handicap. In ancient paintings small labels were hung from the mouths of the persons represented, containing in written characters the speeches which the artist despaired of representing pictorially. [145]
And Aristotle had already pointed to the ancillary semantic function of inscriptions in ancient pictorial discourse: 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”). [146]
The most ubiquitous and simple type of vase inscription is the signature inscription. [147] Hundreds of 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] egrapsen” and “[Exekias] epoiêsen,” or “[Sophilos] m’ egrapsen” and “[Sophilos] m’ epoiêsen”—in the latter case, as if the vase were speaking to the viewer. [148] Such instances of what I would term “vocality” in vases occur in sympotic [149] and other inscriptions: here “instructions” to the viewer—“greetings and drink well” or “greetings and drink me”—are given, [150] and 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, is 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. [151] Kalos and tag-kalos inscriptions, which start to appear on vases around 550 BC and decline in the third quarter of the fifth century (c. 430 BC), are also numerous. [152] While kalos-inscriptions are normally not attached to any depicted figure on the vase, the tag-kalos inscriptions have seemed to label the figures to which they are attached. However, the occurrence of floating kalos names in mythological scenes and elsewhere belies this idea. [153] Apart from the kalos-inscriptions, kale-inscriptions appear, a type that has received the least attention by scholars. [154]
Vase inscriptions do not always seem to make sense: “nonsense” inscriptions, common among sixth-century Athenian vase-inscriptions, often consist of strings of letters that are apparently incomprehensible or semi-incomprehensible [155] and may function as decorative signs of “literacy” on the part of the painter or the purchaser. “Mock” inscriptions, frequent on Little Master cups, may play upon words such as οἶνος and ἐποίε̄σεν. [156] Cases of vase inscriptions in the form of NENNENENENENENENNEṆ are also attested. [157] Yet one of the most interesting kinds of vase-inscriptions is the “bubble” inscription, that is, inscriptions reporting dialogues among depicted figures on the vase. [158] In an extensive example from a red-figure pelike in St. Petersburg, a youth, pointing to a khelidôn in the sky, states, “Look, a swallow,” while a boy exclaims, “There it is,” and a man confirms, “Yes, by Herakles, you are right.” As the painter has written beside the boy, this scene suggests that “Spring is here.” [159] In this group of inscriptions we should include poetic lines quoted or sung and recited by symposiasts or other figures on the vase. [160] Archaic and classical “lyric” songs are especially popular. On the tondo of a red-figure cup we see a young komast holding a barbitos and singing ΕΙΜΙΚΟ[ΜΑ]ΖΟΝΗΥΠΑΥ the last word of his song possibly being ΗΥΠΑΥ(ΛΟΥ) or something similar (“I go forward reveling in the accompaniment of the [reed pipe]”). [161] Or, on a fragmentary kalyx-krater by Euphronios, we hear a reclining symposiast named Ekphantides singing the retrograde inscription ΟΠΟΛΛΟΝ ΣΕΓ̣ΕΚΑΙΜΑΚΑΙ[ΡΑΝ] (possibly a glyconic or hipponactean verse meaning “O Apollo, you and blessed . . . ”), while an aulos-girl named Syko (Συκο) plays the double reed pipe. [162] Finally, we can even find possible “musical” inscriptions: the image on the Munich kalathoid vase, [163] with Alkaios standing next to Sappho, suggests that the five circles (OOO OO) coming out of his mouth represent a melodic line of his song, however minimalist or vocalise-like this string of sounds may now appear. [164] In a number of these cases we detect what I have elsewhere described as a pattern of visual performability of poetry. [165]
It is against this inscriptional and broader cultural background that we should examine the Bochum red-figure kalyx-krater. The inscription placed to the left of Sappho’s head is retrograde and provides her name: ΣΑΦΦΟ. The first letter is a three-bar sigma, then alpha, followed by two phis, and an inelegantly drawn omicron. After omicron, the surface of the vase is somewhat damaged because of breakage in this area. The omicron is followed by two traces of uncertain letters; after this, a delta or lambda, and then the right-hand stroke of another letter. It is not clear what the letters after omicron mean. The inscription is retrograde, running from right to left, according well with the general pattern of retrograde inscriptions being placed normally to the left of the person or object to whom they refer. [166] The same pattern applies to vocalists on Attic vases, in cases when part of their song is “quoted” as coming out of their mouths: if the vocalist faces to the left, the phrase of his/her song emerges retrograde. [167]
If we compare this vase to the other vases depicting Sappho, we observe that her name is spelled in various ways: ΦΣΑΦΟ on the hydria (in Six’s technique) in Warsaw, [168] ΣΑΦΟ on the red-figure kalathoid vase in Munich, [169] and ΣΑΠΠΩ̣Σ on the red-figure hydria in Athens. As for her name on papyrus and parchment fragments preserving her compositions and in the medieval manuscripts of indirect tradition quoting poems by Sappho, ΨΑΠΦΩ is normally preferred. Diverse spellings also occur on a coin from Mytilene (ΨΑΠΦΩ) and other coins from Eressos (ΣΑΠΦΩ and ΣΑΦΦΩ). [170] What is of importance for us is that on the hydria in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, we read ΣΑΠΠΩ̣Σ. The two pis are parallel to the two phis that we see on the Bochum vase. On the Athens hydria, instead of the geminate aspirate stop -πφ-, we find a “rendition of the sounds as a geminate stop without aspiration,” [171] but it is difficult to decide whether this is assimilation or some kind of graphic mistake. The point remains that the inscription on the Bochum kalyx-krater provides a form that can be closely compared to the inscription on the Athens hydria.
Contextualizing Schemata
I now focus on the reverse of the Bochum vase. As we have seen, upon rotating and looking at the vase, the image of Sappho becomes more complex. On the reverse, a second female figure appears in similar pose, clad in an enveloping mantle and walking in the opposite direction from the figure representing Sappho on the obverse. The two female figures display a number of differences, despite the fact that their posture is similar. At first sight it is as if the two sides repeat each other. However, repetition often invites the viewer to associate images in separate fields. On this vase, we do not have a case of redundancy that attempts to convey its point through the emphasis of exact repetition. [172] Instead, slight variation invites the viewer to compare the two sides of the vase, revealing that the two sets of images form two parts of a single text. The first element of the narrative is Sappho represented as carrying her barbitos—a case of syntagmatic metonymy—and slightly swaying her right foot, possibly in some kind of dance step; a symmetry between her outstretched right hand and her outstretched right foot is evident. [173] The color of her hair is different from that of the second female figure. As in other cases of single-figure decoration favored by the Tithonos Painter and the Berlin Painter, Sappho’s right hand and her gaze point to the reverse side of the kalyx-krater. The second element of the narrative (on the reverse) is the female figure wrapped in her clothes, a difference that may provide a contextualization cue in our attempt to understand the possible cultural recognition codes of this representation. [174] She is depicted walking and looking at the figure of Sappho on the obverse. As in the Hamburg oinochoe discussed above, their gaze does not interlock. In the oinochoe, the face of the Asiatic man was turned toward the viewer, while the aroused man, his left hand outstretched, looked in the direction of the man who was bent over. Here, the represented figures’ gaze will never meet.
Again, to the left of Sappho’s head her name is written. In all archaeological descriptions of the vase known to me, there is no discussion of a second painted inscription on the reverse. During an examination of the kalyx-krater in the Kunstsammlungen, Ruhr Universität Bochum, I was able to detect and read the inscription. This orthograde inscription runs from the front part of the sakkos of the woman to her left side. The first letter is eta, then we read epsilon, and after that, pi, alpha, iota, and sigma. The lettering is the same as that of the obverse, especially given the fact that this inscription is painted just under the rim, a typical challenge for the painter. ΗΕ ΠΑΙΣ is the “text” painted on the reverse (Fig. 7).
This “text” is a tag-inscription, one of the types of vase inscriptions discussed above. It would be perhaps possible to analyze it as a kale-inscription, if other considerations did not lead to different conclusions. Anonymous kalos-inscriptions can be found on hundreds of vases; the kalos-names, also frequent and praising the charms of a named individual (ΕΠΙΛΥΚΟΣ ΚΑΛΟΣ, etc.), constitute, in the words of Anthony Snodgrass, “direct communications to the user which may or may not relate to a primary visual communication.” [175] Kale-inscriptions (without name) are by far less numerous, [176] and their possible functions have not been discussed systematically or synthetically. [177] I shall here focus on instances where hε παις occurs alone.
[Line drawing by Valerie Woelfel]
Figure 7. Detail of reverse of Bochum inv. no. S 508 (Fig. 4b), showing inscription.
On the Boston red-figure lekythos 13.189, attributed to the Brygos Painter and dated to c. 480–470 BC, a woman working wool is depicted. She is seated on a klismos and pulls a strand of wool from the basket at her feet. [178] A mirror is hanging in the background, and “a small profile head is painted in outline on the disk, imitating an incised bronze mirror.” [179] Starting above the head, a near-horizontal inscription reads: hε παις. It has been persuasively suggested that women working wool on Athenian vases function as a metaphor that both constructs and reflects ancient Greek conceptions of ideal maidens and women and their ideal social behavior. [180] The inscription, standing alone, is not part of a visual plot despite the fact that it may be part of a social narrative commentary.
On a red-figure cup attributed to the Antiphon Painter and dated to c. 480–470 BC, a naked girl appears, frontal, looking left and holding an alabastron and boots. At her left is a stool with clothes. [181] To the girl’s upper left, hε παις is written. The context may be a preparation for bathing, but again the inscription does not seem to help contextualize the image further. A quite different case is a fragmentary cup in Florence that provides us with a partial image of a symposion: on side A, among naked women reclining, is a wineskin under the elbow of one of the figures, and hε παις is written on it. [182] hε παις here is not clearly defined by the very fragmentary context of the image; however, the overall symposiastic milieu of the representations on the vase point to a marked context. [183]
As in the case of the Boston lekythos mentioned above, another red-figure cup of around the same period (c. 470 BC) now in St. Petersburg [184] depicts on its interior a woman looking right and holding a mirror in her left hand. Behind her is a stool; around her, hε παις is written. The “function” of this image is possibly connected with the more marked image of a woman working wool, despite the fact that the unmarkedness of the St. Petersburg image is pronounced. [185] A similar reflection and cultural construction of women’s lives can be detected on a red-figure cup attributed to the Brygos Painter and dated to the first quarter of the fifth century BC. [186] On the interior of the cup, we see a woman again looking right and holding a water bucket over a well. Around the scene hε παις is written. On the bucket we read the inscription καλε, while on the rim of the well, we read hε παις.
From the cases discussed so far, it becomes clear that the Bochum vase presents us with a different and more complex “text.” [187] Its visual syntax is predicated by the two inscriptions, especially the hε παις inscription and the mode of representation of the second female figure. Represented discourses of music and gender further contribute to the construction of a visual metaphor that combines elements of artistic formalism, constructed “reality,” and marked perceptual positioning. On this kalyx-krater, the visual element that first demands our attention is the enveloping mantle of the female figure on the reverse, a feature that evokes scenes where youthful figures are wrapped in their mantles. The connotation of this visual sign has been interpreted as a figure of aidôs (conventionally translated as “modesty,” “shame,” or “honor”). The figure of aidôs is a very common metaphor in Attic vase paintings of the late archaic and classical periods. The enveloping mantle, which encases an individual, leaving only head and feet uncovered, time and again appears in courtship scenes, where a mantle-covered young woman or boy constitutes the object of desire for other figures. [188] On the Bochum kalyx–krater the second female figure is wrapped in her mantle, in contrast to numerous dressed young women who listen to other women playing music, dance, or read from scrolls in Attic vase-paintings. The difference between the figure of Sappho on the obverse and the second female figure on the reverse is visually significant. That the female figure on the reverse is wrapped in her mantle should be seen as an indication that, in conjunction with the other indications investigated here, specific associations must have been evoked. As we have seen, the Tithonos Painter drew heavily on the Berlin Painter’s figurework. The scheme of the single-figure decoration on each side of a vase allowed the Berlin Painter to depict a number of komastic scenes where a male youth with a barbitos stands “across from,” or is followed by, a man or another youth. The Tithonos Painter has exploited this scheme on the Bochum krater, but has introduced the figure of Sappho—for the Athenian society, a marked, East Greek composer of songs about girls and women—in association with a young woman wrapped in her mantle.
Further, something that has been identified as an aulos bag hangs from the lower arm of the musical instrument that Sappho holds. We have already seen that on a red-figure lekythos attributed to the Berlin Painter—the exquisite draughtsman who considerably influenced the Tithonos Painter—an aulos bag hangs from the barbitos that a young woman plays. [189] After an examination of almost all known images of aulos bags, I have come to the conclusion that among contemporary painters who indulged in depicting aulos bags, Douris is the best representative; his cups provide a number of cases where an aulos case appears in sympotic or komastic contexts. [190] In some of Douris’ depictions, the aulos bags are suspended near symposiasts and musicians or hang from the lower arm of barbitoi played by the represented figures. When no aulos-players are present, an aulos bag stands for them. Barbitoi and auloi (or aulos bags) are closely connected in such symposiastic and komastic scenes and become interchangeable.
The syntagmatic contiguity between an aulos bag and a barbitos in symposiastic images and contexts was an element with which Athenian viewers (and symposiasts!) were familiar. By means of marked metonymic associations, the specific representation of Sappho’s barbitos on the Bochum kalyx-krater points, I argue, to symposiastic and komastic contexts on Attic vases, where the aulos and the barbitos are most often depicted. Moreover, in the fifth century BC, harps were associated by comic poets with sensual, erotic songs, [191] and Sappho referred in her songs to the paktis (a type of small harp played by women), among other musical instruments. [192] Finally, the two images of the Bochum kalyx-krater evoke the iconographic schema of “pursuit” fused with the idealized cognitive model of two walking komasts, one following or gazing at the other. I emphasize the word “evoke” since the schema of “pursuit” has diverse and often more marked configurations. [193] Here, as in komastic images by the Tithonos Painter and the Berlin Painter, Sappho follows the other female figure who follows Sappho. If the pose of Sappho’s feet is viewed as suggesting dancing, this is another komastic discursive element in the representation. [194] Whatever meaning we attribute to the schemas exploited here, the inscription hε παις in the overall context I have delineated would trigger another image for the viewer. This time that idealized cognitive model is, I argue, the sociocultural phenomenon of pederasty. [195] In the light of all the cultural elements I have detected on the Bochum kalyx-krater, its most central aspect on a pictorial discursive level is the assimilation of Sappho into a “pederastic” paradigm. In the course of the ancient reception of Sappho, such assimilation was exploited in a variety of complex ways. [196] It is the combination of the elements exploited on the vase that would have set off such associations. Further, I adduce here an image from Plato’s Phaidros (241b) that provides a discursive modality familiar to classical symposiasts: φυγὰς δὴ γίγνεται ἐκ τούτων, καὶ ἀπεστερηκὼς ὑπ’ ἀνάγκης ὁ πρὶν ἐραστής, ὀστράκου μεταπεσόντος, ἵεται φυγῇ μεταβαλών· ὁ δὲ ἀναγκάζεται διώκειν ἀγανακτῶν καὶ ἐπιθεάζων (“and so he becomes a fugitive from all of this and, constrained to become a defaulter, the former lover changes direction, from pursuit to flight—as the ostrakon flips on to its other side—whereas the former erômenos is compelled to pursue him with anger and invoking the gods”). In the context of performances and reperformances of Sappho’s songs at fifth-century Athenian symposia—songs that spoke about intimacy and companionship among women, but which, especially when performed at male drinking parties with female slave companions and women musicians present, could be interpreted diversely—the appearance of this visual representation on wine-mixing vessels like the Bochum kalyx-krater is indicative of how the figure of Sappho began to be contextualized in the Athenian male imagination.
Such assimilation of Sappho and her songs into different pictorial and cultural schemata is fully displayed in the fourth vase depicting “Sappho.” Before I proceed to an investigation of this representation, I shall draw into my discussion material related to the almost contemporary Athenian visual reception of another poet, whose symposiastic love songs about youths and young women became associated with Sappho’s songs throughout antiquity. This association may have gradually developed when his and Sappho’s compositions were performed together in Athenian symposia.
Cultural Performance, Anakreon, and the “Elaborately Dressed Revelers”
In order to examine the pictorial figure of Sappho in an increasingly broader cultural context, I suggest turning to representations of other archaic melic poets on late archaic and classical vases. Except for a very tentative identification of Arkhilokhos on a white-ground pyxis attributed to the Hesiod Painter—“tentative” because the depicted man leaning on his staff in the company of Muses has alternatively been identified as Hesiod, [197] only images of Anakreon and Sappho enjoyed popularity in late archaic and classical vase painting. [198] Given that figures such as Ibykos and Simonides, as far as the evidence allows us to see, do not appear on vases, it is intriguing that Sappho becomes a celebrity, represented as an amalgam figure of the past who takes on features of the synchronic—each time—present and surrounded by an impending complex future.
In contrast to Sappho, Anakreon, a poet/composer from Ionia who traveled widely in his apparently long life—from Teos to Abdera in Thrace to Samos to Athens— [199] was a contemporary of the painters who depicted him on ceramics. Several scholars believe that the obscure melic poet Kydias (c. 500 BC) is also represented on two contemporary Attic vases, [200] but this is far from certain. [201] Concerning Anakreon, apart from three representations on Attic vases with his name inscribed, his figure has also been connected with a series of images often referred to as “Anakreontic.” As will become clear, only one painted pot as well as another with a similarly marked image is related to the so-called Anakreontic images. [202]
First, a note on terminology: “Anakreontic” is a tag that has implicitly been given to a specific series of vases by John Beazley. [203] These are some fifty vases that depict male figures dressed in chiton and elaborate himation, wearing turban-like headgear (often identified as mitra) [204] or cloth hats (sakkoi), boots, and, occasionally, earrings. The figures are bearded and often carry skiadeia (parasols) or barbitoi (long-armed bowl lyres). Since one of the three inscribed “portraits” of Anakreon bears images of men holding a parasol and a barbitos and dressed in the same manner, the whole series of vases was thought to depict Anakreon and his boon companions and to be associated with his stay in Athens, where he had been invited by Hipparkhos in the 520s. [205]
The term “Anakreontic” boon companions and its archaizing version “booners” have been gradually avoided in more recent scholarship—and rightly so. We may prefer to attach to these male figures a more unmarked tag: “elaborately dressed revelers.” [206] At the same time, the pictorial figure of Anakreon should be viewed in the context of the whole series of representations of elaborately dressed revelers, rather than vice versa.
As we have seen, the case of vase-paintings with Anakreon’s name inscribed on them is different from those with Sappho, since Anakreon was alive when the images were produced. The earliest image of Anakreon comes from a red-figure cup by Oltos of about 520–510 BC. [207] Another representation of Anakreon appears on a lekythos by the Gales Painter of about 500 BC. [208] A third case of Anakreon’s name inscribed on a vase is found in fragments of a red-figure kalyx-krater attributed to the Kleophrades Painter and dated to c. 500 BC. [209]
On one of the two sides of the Oltos cup, we see Anakreon in the company of two male figures standing before him (Fig. 8). The first male figure hastening toward Anakreon and closer to him is certainly a youth (one of Anakreon’s feet crosses with the youth’s right foot), while the figure walking behind the youth can be either another youth or a man (his shoulders and head are missing). Anakreon is bearded and wearing only a himation and a flower wreath. He holds a barbitos and a plêktron, the fingers of his left hand touching the strings, and walks forward toward the two male figures. The youth is also wreathed, with a cloak over his shoulders but, on the whole, his body is naked. To the right of the youth, his name is inscribed: ΝΥΦΕΣ (Ny[m]phes). [210] The second, fragmentary male figure is covered with a himation: no nakedness is depicted here. Behind Anakreon, on the left of the image, between the decoration pattern and his figure, is a retrograde inscription ΚΑΛΟΣ, floating in the blank space.
[Beazely Vase No. 200522]
Figure 8. Red-figure cup: obverse, Anakreon with barbitos, two male figures. Attributed to Oltos, c. 520–510 BC. London, British Museum, inv. no. E 18. © Copyright, Trustees of the British Museum
On the other side of the cup, in a diametrically opposite movement to that of the two male figures on the Anakreon side, two armed Amazons running away from Herakles and toward the decoration patterns that frame the image defend themselves in a battle with the hero, who, sword in hand, hastens toward the Amazon on the right. Finally, on the tondo of the cup, we see a naked woman tying her sandal. Around her figure runs an inscription “Memnon is pretty.”
This image of Anakreon, which was produced when he composed and performed new as well as older songs in Athens, fits well with the possible symposiastic use of the cup. Beautiful youths, wooing, wreaths, wine, and barbitoi were all essential elements in the composition of his songs, which in later periods began to be closely associated with the circulation of stories about his loves, homoerotic and heterosexual (he will be enamored of Sappho in the early third century BC).
Similar in compositional technique is the representation of Anakreon on the Gales Painter red-figure lekythos in Syracuse (Fig. 9). The surface of specific parts of the vase is damaged, but it is certain that Anakreon (his name inscribed) wears both a long chiton and himation and moves to right, barbitos in hand.
[Beazley Vase No. 200207]
Figure 9. Red-figure lekythos: Anakreon with barbitos, two male figures. Attributed to the Gales Painter, c. 500 BC. Syracuse, Museo Archeologico Regionale Paolo Orsi, inv. no. 26967. Photo, Museo Archeologico Regionale Paolo Orsi.
What he wears on his head is not clearly visible (possibly a fillet and a wreath, but the head is badly damaged). [211] Two youths surround him. The youth on the left, hastening toward him, holds a skyphos (a deep drinking-cup) different from the wide and shallow shaped drinking-cups, the kylikes. [212] No image seems to be drawn on the skyphos, which, in plain form, was one of the most common shapes of Athenian drinking cups for everyday use. Compared to Anakreon, the two youths are dressed sparingly: a cloak is thrown over the arm or the shoulders of the naked figures, respectively. The left-hand youth also holds a stick near his right knee, while the right-hand youth holds a similar wooden staff above his head (from the overall context no inference can be made about the possible signification of the pose of the right-hand youth). The figure of Anakreon resembles the “elaborately dressed revelers.” This representation lies between the one on the Oltos cup and the fragmentary picture of the Kleophrades Painter kalyx-krater, although, since Anakreon is dressed in both chiton and himation and playing a barbitos, the Syracuse lekythos is closer to the Copenhagen kalyx-krater.
On the latter vase (Fig. 10), [213] the scenes depicted are semantically marked and more intriguing. On one of its (very fragmentary) sides, we see a male figure reclining on a couch and holding a lyre. The figure is in singing position. On this side are also traces of a second male figure reclining near a female figure playing the reed pipes. Above the reclining figure a skyphos and basket are hung; to the right of the female musician is a kylix, possibly held by a third (reclining?) figure. Above the lyre and the partly preserved right arm of the first reclining male figure is the inscription ]ΕΝΙΕΣ, possibly part of a song. [214] On the kylix that the third (missing) figure may have been holding, we read AIΡE[ (starting from the left-hand side of the kylix). [215] The certainly symposiastic image on this side is aptly juxtaposed with a representation of a group of four strolling revelers, a kômos, on the other side. [216]
[Beazley Vase No. 201684]
Figure 10. Red-figure kalyx-krater fragments: obverse, symposion; reverse, kômos with Anakreon. Attributed to the Kleophrades Painter, c. 500 BC. Copenhagen, National Museum of Denmark, Department of Classical and Near Eastern Antiquities, inv. no. 13365. Photo, National Museum, Copenhagen.
Of the three, now partly visible, elaborately dressed komasts, [217] two are preserved enough so that we may be able to draw some conclusions. One of them wears long chiton and shoes. [218] The other, preserved on a detached fragment, wears elegant himation and chiton as well as turban-like headgear and has a long, bushy beard. Head thrown back, he sings IOOO, a string of letters coming out of his open mouth. While he vocalizes, he carries—debonair—a parasol over his shoulder. Another separate fragment of this side of the vase shows the hands and part of the chest of one of the revelers, who holds a barbitos in the left hand and a plêktron in the right. He, like the other figures, moves to the right and is similarly dressed. To the right of his breast we see the beginning of a word: only an A[ survives, and we cannot be certain as to whether this is the beginning of a name. Along the preserved arm [219] of his barbitos, a clearly written inscription provides more focus: ANAKΡE[ON].
In the context of all the elements employed in the visual rendition of these revelers, the name of the poet on the barbitos is significant. John Boardman has attempted to undermine its relevance to the scene by pointing out that it is uncommon for a figure to be named on appurtenances or objects s/he may be holding or is adjacent to; therefore, “[Anakreon’s] name could have been prompted more by the barbiton on which it appears” than by his representational identity as intended by the painter, since the barbitos was especially associated with Anakreon in antiquity. [220] However, there are a few other similar cases [221] and even if we do not wish to take them fully into account, the point remains that an ancient viewer must have made a visual association between the figure with the barbitos and the inscription “Anakreon.” The close contiguity of the instrument with the figure playing it clearly points to a direct association of the figure with the name, not only of the barbitos with that name. The depicted singer-barbitos-name should, therefore, be viewed as constituents of a pictorial syntagmatic series in which the last element (the name) refers to the first one in the series (the singer) through the metonymic mediation of the marked musical instrument. In other words, Boardman’s hypothesis has attempted to reconstruct the intentions of the painter, envisaging a highly attentive viewer who made over-subtle distinctions like the ones favored by Boardman. Since the cases of a figure’s name written on an object he is holding or is adjacent to were few (as far as we can judge), a viewer must have proceeded to a more direct, almost metonymic, identification of the figure. Even if one decided to focus tentatively on the painter of the inscription, what could have made him draw this association? We should certainly not assume a priori that the later attested association of Anakreon with this instrument [222] was so pronounced in the late sixth century and, therefore, that “the name of the poet occurs here, on the barbiton, as a reference to Anakreontic poetry in general and not as an identification of a specific individual.” [223] Even if one speculated that a marked, almost exclusive, connection between the instrument and the poet existed at the time, one could not help thinking that the barbitos was also associated strongly with Terpandros and Sappho, [224] and that numerous male and female [225] figures on vases, including Sappho, hold or play the barbitos. In view of these considerations, there could have been no clearcut equation of Anakreon’s songs “in general” and barbitos.
Unless there was another indication in the missing parts of the scene with the komasts, Anakreon and his strolling cronies appear to have been assimilated into the visual schema of “elaborately dressed revelers” that emerged on Attic vases in the 520s, a period that coincides with the final years of the tyranny of the Peisistratids in Athens. The popularity of this image will recede before the mid-fifth century, with the “archaizing” Mannerists, and elaborately dressed komasts will cease appearing in about 450 BC. [226] It is worth noting that similarly, but certainly not identically and as markedly, dressed male figures occurred earlier on vases. [227] As we have seen, the “elaborately dressed revelers” schema involves bearded male figures wearing the full-length chiton with himation, headdress (pleated turban or tied headcloth), boots or soft footwear, and occasionally earrings; they often carry parasols or a barbitos. [228] Sometimes female pipers are depicted along with the revelers. [229] The representation of these elaborately dressed figures is markedly different from the more traditional depiction of lightly clad or near-naked male figures of symposia and kômoi on vases (Fig. 11). The difference becomes intriguing if we compare the near-naked komasts on an Attic red-figure cup in Toledo, Ohio, and the elaborately dressed revelers on an Attic red-figure cup in Malibu. [230]
On the Toledo cup, the three male figures in the center are bearded and each has a cloak thrown over his shoulders covering only his back (Fig. 12). One of them is holding a wine container, and one is playing a barbitos. We see them strolling near naked and enjoying the intoxicating properties of wine. Let us focus on the third man, holding krotala and dancing on the right, before the naked boy holding a walking stick. The dancing position of his body and the elegance of his hand gestures are strikingly similar to the elaborately dressed, bearded man playing krotala and dancing on the Malibu cup (Fig. 13a). The difference lies in the emphasis on the elegance of the vestmental coding in the case of the men on the Malibu cup. At the same time, while the merrymaking komasts are accompanied, at least on the Toledo cup, by a naked young boy holding a walking stick, the elegantly dressed revelers are surrounded by similarly dressed, but not identically gesturing, young girls, who either hold parasols for them or play reed pipes to accentuate, it seems, the pomp of the men’s cultural performance.
[Beazley Vase No. 215149]
Figure 11. Red-figure stamnos: obverse, kômos, youths, one with barbitos. Attributed to the Kleophon Painter, c. 440–430 BC. Brussels, Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, inv. no. A 3091. Photo, Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, Brussels.
It is this emphasis on vestmental extravagance that has caused considerable perplexity and debate among scholars who have been discussing the series of vases showing elaborately dressed komasts since the early nineteenth century. If we can decodify some aspects of the vestmental signification of these images, we will be able to contextualize the Kleophrades Painter kalyx-krater with more accuracy.
[Toledo Musuem of Art, Object Number: 1964.126]
Figure 12. Red-figure cup: obverse, three komasts, one with barbitos, boy with stick, and aulos player. Attributed to the Foundry Painter, c. 490–480 BC. Toledo, OH Museum of Art, purchased with funds from the Libbey Endowment, Gift of Edward Drummond Libbey, inv. no. 64.126. Photo, Toledo Museum of Art.
[Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.]
Figure 13a and b. Red-figure cup: obverse (a: above), elaborately dressed revelers; reverse (b: below), elaborately dressed revelers. Attributed to the Briseis Painter, signed by Brygos as potter, c. 480–470 BC. Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum, Villa Collection, inv. no. 86.AE.293. Photo, The J. Paul Getty Museum.
The least we can infer from the inscription “Anakre[on]” on the Kleophrades Painter’s kalyx-krater is that Anakreon’s music has been assimilated into the visual schema “elaborately dressed revelers.” [231] This barbitos is performing “Anakreon:” it does not merely represent a “quintessentially sympotic” [232] or komastic barbitos. The close contiguity of the barbitos with the figure holding it leads, even momentarily and probably more firmly, to a direct visual association of the name with the figure and not only with the musical instrument. Certainly the association of the image with Anakreon was first indicated by the painter of the inscription. The examination of some further cultural elements will elucidate the patterns of signification embedded in the image.
In order to decodify the Kleophrades Painter image, two pivotal issues should be explored: Why was the name of Anakreon assimilated into the schema “elaborately dressed revelers”? And what did the series of vases depicting these revelers denote and connote?
The attempts to account for the emergence of this iconographic schema have been diverse. If one leaves aside the analysis by Françoise Frontisi-Ducrouxand François Lissarrague, [233] the common denominator in all approaches has been the identification of the revelers of this series of vases with specific Athenian realities and cultural phenomena current in late-sixth- and fifth-century Athens. Nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century scholars thought that the images on the vases represented rituals related to specific religious festivals. [234] In the mid-twentieth century this hypothesis was undermined by an equally early scholarly paradigm. It was suggested anew and more rigorously that the figure of Anakreon must be connected with the proliferation of these images; they all, to a certain degree, depicted Anakreon and his friends. Semne Karouzou had stressed the impact of Anakreon’s poetic image of Ionian elegance and luxury on Athenian circles of nobles. [235] The idea that the figure of the Ionian Anakreon lies behind the representation of the revelers on these vases has continued to flourish. [236] At the same time, two other historical approaches, some arguments of which partly overlap with those of the earlier studies, have been favored. The combination of elegant clothing (flowing chiton, himation, headgear) and appurtenances (barbitos and parasol) have been viewed as either Eastern or effeminate, [237] despite the fact that these two ancient cultural and conceptual categories are not mutually exclusive and thus very elusive in visual representations spanning sixty years. Further, these images have been placed within the context of lydopatheia, [238] a distinct form of Eastern elite lifestyle appropriated by Greek aristocrats, originally in East Greece, to promote their self-defining and differentiating ideologies. [239] According to these interpretations, in approaching these representations all eventually rests on how one outlines specific Athenian cultural actualities—on a pragmatic or a more ideological level.
It is admittedly hard to contextualize the “elaborately dressed revelers.” As regards the view that the figure of Anakreon lies behind the images, it is not inconceivable that either Anakreon’s early reputation or his arrival in Athens might have indeed titillated the imagination of Athenian society. [240] A more inclusive account would be that not only the image of Anakreon but also that of other East Greek poets like Alkaios or even the Westerner Ibykos, who settled on Samos, [241] are behind the turbaned and chitoned revelers. [242]
As for Anakreon, we do not know when exactly his songs reached Athens. If we can trust the basic nucleus of Pseudo-Plato’s story in Hipparkhos (228b–c) about Anakreon’s grand arrival in Athens after a prestigious invitation by the brother of the turannos Hippias, Hipparkhos, Anakreon must have taken up residence in Athens before the murder of Hipparkhos by Harmodios and Aristogeiton in 514 BC. [243] At the same time, dating Anakreon’s arrival in terms of the end of the rule of the tyrant Polykrates in Samos, in whose “court” Anakreon also lived, involves evidentiary gaps, and it is best to accept that neat reconstructions of his career can be endorsed only as a very general framework, within which Anakreon’s poetry was produced, and not as an absolute chronological sequence. If we are to trust the story about Hipparkhos’ fetching him to Athens, Anakreon’s songs must have been known in certain Athenian circles before the invitation was issued. His sojourn in a city incomparably smaller than modern Athens and, more importantly, his East Greek music might have given rise to some discussion in symposiastic and other musical and cultural milieus.
However, it is certain that we can only speculate about all this, especially about Anakreon’s earliest impact on Athenian noble circles. The music of Sappho as well as of Alkaios might have also reached the ancient city by that time and it is not unlikely that Athenians became familiar with their songs some time during the last two decades of the sixth century, since the earliest visual representation of Sappho is dated to c. 510–500 BC. In discussions of the series of vases under investigation, it is often assumed that upon his arrival in Athens, Anakreon brought with him the East Greek musical flair and the barbitos. A question that needs to be posed, but which can hardly be resolved, is what the musical and poetic scene in Athens before the time of his arrival was. Was Athens immune to East Greek musical traditions before Anakreon performed his songs in Athenian symposia and related contexts? When “Anakreon” started being performed in Athens, was the cultural or actual sound of the barbitos unknown to the Athenians?
The earliest images of barbitos on Attic vases are dated to about 530–520 BC, but both Anakreon and Sappho hold the same musical instrument in their earliest representations. [244] The barbitos had an East Greek origin: Pindar (fragment 125 M) would imagine Terpandros, the famous musician from Lesbos, inventing it at Lydian banquets inspired by the sound of the pêktis, a many-stringed plucked instrument described by the late-fifth/early fourth-century dithyrambic poet Telestes as “high-pitched.” [245] However, origins can often be blurred indicators of the date of the cultural dissemination of musical styles, instruments, or innovations. Almost a contemporary of Sappho, Alkman composed songs in Sparta with references to the allure of Lydian culture (fragment 1.67–68 PMG). And, earlier on, in the early seventh century, Terpandros, the legendary “inventor” of barbitos, moved from Lesbos to Sparta. The barbitos might well have reached Athens before Anakreon’s songs were performed there. Any argument put forward on this front may be circular, and it is better not to make much of the supposed grand musical appearance of Anakreon in Athens but, rather, to think in terms of East Greek poets entering the musical circles of Athens.
The “Eastern elements” approach deserves more attention. It focuses on East Greek vestment coding by pointing out that each of the dress elements of the revelers was of Eastern origin. In the non-Greek East the parasol, for instance, was an indication of social status, “fit to be held over the Great King himself, symbolizing the way he cast the shadow of his protection over his people.” [246] All the dress accessories of the revelers seem to have been worn by men in East Greece (and in Lydia and further eastward, as is evident from archaeological material), [247] and literary texts complement the archaeological record. Herodotos refers to the story of the Lydian Kroisos’ recommendation to the Persian Kyros that in order for the Lydians never to rebel or become a threat to Kyros, they should be made to wear “tunics (chitones) under their cloaks (himatia) and high soft boots on their feet, and asked to take up the kithara and the harp and teach their sons to be retailers.” [248] These were marks of luxury, as well as of departure from the male pursuit of warlike activities. [249] Therefore, according to De Vries, among several possibilities, “it might be that the figures are generally meant to be Athenians, but Athenians of a special set who were aping Eastern ways and dress.” [250] It is this possibility that has shaped more recent views about the appearance of new habits in komast life in Athens as a result of East Greek lydopatheia in this city. [251]
If one focuses exclusively on each dress element of the revelers as a mark of East Greek or Lydian vestment coding, one may risk obscuring or essentializing the larger picture. This process of atomization [252] of a visual text in terms of the (real or constructed) origins of individual appurtenances the depicted figures sport presupposes or confirms an understanding of images as portraying scenes of real life, or, alternatively, aspects of specific Athenian political-cultural actualities. The vase-painter, according to this long-sanctioned approach, [253] depicts a reality with which he is familiar. And he is careful, again according to complementary interpretations, in representing clearcut ideologies that subscribe to the social demands of aristocratic audiences. These interpretative views attribute a specific, usually schematic, role to ancient Greek visual culture and can, in some cases, distort both ancient Greek realities and the Athenian social imaginary.
For a start, if one attempts to account for the emergence of the “elaborately dressed revelers” in the 520s (the final years of the rule of the Peisistratids in Athens), by correlating them closely with specific political developments, this can readily produce overhistoricizing interpretations that transfer vase-paintings from the world of representation to the world of documents. Given the uncertainties related to the relative dating of specific pots with images attributed to specific painters, any discussion of the period during which the vase-paintings under consideration were first produced should allow some chronological elasticity. If our first, marked depictions of dressed revelers are given an only slightly later dating—500 instead of 520 BC—several possible interpretations that might account for the emergence of these images in the light of specific sociopolitical parameters allegedly lying behind the images can prove misleading. In other words, the earliest images could have been produced either during the rule of Hippias and his brother Hipparkhos, [254] who along with their father seem to have been open to things Ionian, [255] or during the years of the reforms of Kleisthenes, who, according to Herodotos, looked down on the Ionians. [256] Therefore, the cultural connotations of the images could be interpreted differently—as positive or ambivalent—on the basis of whether they reflect some “elitist” orientations of the Peisistratids and an emphatic appropriation of distinct forms of Eastern elite lifestyle by Athenian aristocrats, or alternative viewpoints. [257]
Such an approach to ancient Athenian images—one that presupposes an intense interest of vase-painters to represent a specific ideology of elitist social strata in positive terms— [258] lies behind a more recent understanding [259] of the “elaborately dressed revelers” as “archaeological evidence” for what has been called “the cult of habrosunê,” a specific elite, luxurious lifestyle taken over by (especially seventh- and sixth-century) Greek aristocrats from the East, particularly from Lydia. [260] According to this view, the relevant vase-paintings, falling “squarely on the side of the Panhellenic aristocracy” and “overlapping nicely with the period in which aristocratic luxury is celebrated in literary sources,” constitute, like the contemporary literary evidence, [261] positive representations of the archaic habrosunê, which had nothing to do with the effeminate associations attributed to it in fifth-century perceptions of Eastern luxury culture. [262] Whatever one may think of the reconstructions put forward about this archaic aristocratic lifestyle, [263] it is hard to imagine—especially since the contemporary evidence is so scant and can be subjected to different interpretations— [264] that habrosunê was an “almost uniformly positive” ideology in the societies of archaic Greece; therefore, the suggestion that a “radical reevaluation” or “dramatic shift in the valuation” of habrosunê took place between the sixth and fifth centuries [265] is schematic, if not exaggerated. [266] There is no way to support the assumption that Xenophanes of Kolophon’s negative understanding of Kolophonian luxuries (fragment 3. 1 W ἁβροσύνας ἀνωφελέας παρὰ Λυδῶν, “useless luxuries from the Lydians”) [267] represents a nonaristocratic, “middling” viewpoint allegedly related to the “genre” and performance occasions of archaic elegy. [268] This view rests on a hypothetical, superimposed ideological bifurcation that has been proposed for archaic Greek song culture. Should we assume that ambivalent valuations of, and responses to, habrosunê and habrotês had not been expressed on different levels ever since archaic aristocrats displayed their self-defining lifestyle, [269] which was imported from the East—a lifestyle that apparently is reflected in Xenophanes fragment 3.1 W and in Asios’ poetic description of a Samian celebration of the Heraia festival? [270]
The Persian wars and other sociopolitical developments in the fifth century accentuated earlier ambivalent or negative responses, but all this happened gradually, not in a radical manner. [271] Margaret Miller has argued that “a luxury culture was maintained among the élite even in classical Athens, as a direct continuation of that which had prevailed in the period of aristocratic hegemony before the Persian Wars” and that “far from learning to despise luxury through contact with Persia, wealthy Athenians embraced Persian luxury and incorporated into their own world some of its symbols and practices.” [272] Further, habrotês may have also been associated with more “indigenous” or long-assimilated and internalized forms of aristocratic differentiation.
This possibility is reflected in a passage from the “Archaeology” in the first book of Thoukydides’ Histories. Athenian vestment coding of wealthy men in the sixth century could be elaborate, and writing toward the end of the fifth century, Thoukydides reports that “only recently” had elderly wealthy men ceased wearing linen chitones and fastening their hair with golden grasshoppers. [273] It is intriguing that Thoukydides claims that this fashion spread from Athens to Ionia. [274] At the same time, these golden fastenings in the shape of grasshoppers [275] suggest a symbolism of autochthony since grasshoppers are γη-γενεῖς (“earth-born”). [276] In the context of Athenian “myths,” autochthony was, especially in the fifth century, ideologically fundamental for the promotion of the hegemonic discourses of Athens. [277] (Recall that the Athenian heroes of the glory days of the Persian wars were closely associated with the old Athenian luxury fashion [habrodiaiton] described by Thoukydides. [278] ) It is certain that we do not know exactly what kind of luxurious articles of clothing and appurtenances sixth-century Athenian aristocrats sported and especially how they thought about the origins of their self-defining dress. The possibility that some aristocratic vestmental accoutrements originating in the East had been assimilated into more “indigenous” (in the eyes of the Athenians) aristocratic clothing cannot be underestimated, especially when our reconstructions of archaic elitist lifestyle [habrosunê] as an overall cultural phenomenon in diverse poleis of archaic Greece can assume overgeneralized dimensions.
The “elaborately dressed revelers” should be seen in a wider context. The attire fashion displayed by the komasts is certainly more marked than anything else we see on other vase-paintings or on sculpture of the period. In some late sixth-century painted pots we see mitra-wearing, lightly clad bearded symposiasts reclining “outdoors” with other, ivy-wreathed companions or turbaned but naked and boisterous bearded revelers getting excessively drunk. [279] However, the combination of all the diverse accoutrements and articles of clothing of the elaborately dressed komasts points, I suggest, to their pictorially exaggerated “performance” of diverse cultural discourses about Eastern exoticism. Especially in the case of vase-painters, playful, inventive, and experimental as they often were with symposiastic and komastic images, [280] it would be simplistic and methodologically vulnerable to take pictures like the “elaborately dressed revelers” as documents of a specific reality or political-cultural ideology that corresponded to a specific Athenian reality.
First, this series of images with turbaned and chitoned bearded figures (accompanied sometimes by female figures—dancers, musicians, or parasol bearers) is, I argue, semantically not as homogeneous as it may at first appear. The Rhodes black-figure amphora that stands at the beginning of the whole series as a forerunner depicts two naked youths with a phorminx and a drinking horn, respectively, along with a turbaned man wearing a sleeveless chiton and boots.
[Digital image courtesy of the Getty’s Open Content Program.]
Figure 14. White-ground kyathos: bearded male figure with barbitos. Attributed to a contemporary of Psiax, c. 520–510 BC. Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum, Villa Collection, inv. no. 77.AE.102. Photo, The J. Paul Getty Museum.
This man, also holding a drinking horn, stands behind the muscular naked youth who occupies the center of the image. The man’s position cannot be compared to that of later elaborately dressed komasts who “perform” their stroll often holding barbitoi and parasols. [281] Some two decades later a white-ground kyathos shows a turbaned man wearing a short, tight chiton with short sleeves (no himation) and holding a barbitos (Fig. 14). [282] This musician is not in the company of other male figures but is framed by two large eyes; behind each eye a cock is looking in the opposite direction, toward the handle of the kyathos. The male figure might be viewed as a singer/poet and not necessarily as a reveler. An elegantly moving, turbaned dancer holding as accessories an elaborate barbitos and a kylix is depicted on a white-ground plate by Psiax (dated to c. 510 BC). [283] This “komast,” if we can call him so, dances to the music of a similarly stylish but motionless female piper (Fig. 15). These three black-figure pots, along with a red-figure kalpis with a dressed reclining symposiast and a lightly clad youth, [284] stand at the beginning of the series. The series of vases with the elaborately dressed komasts begins essentially in c. 500 BC, with an image on the Kleophrades Painter fragmentary kalyx-krater associating the strolling revelers with Anakreon. I shall focus here on certain cases and point to special semantic features rather than discussing the whole series. [285]
[Beazley Vase No. 320367]
Figure 15. Black-figure plate: bearded reveler with female piper. Attributed to Psiax, c. 510 BC. Basel, Antikenmuseum, inv. no. Ka421. Photo, Andreas F. Voegelin, courtesy of the Antikenmuseum Basel und Sammlung Ludwig.
In the fragmentary image of the Kleophrades Painter, the komast with the bushy beard carries a parasol over his shoulder, for the first time in the series. Significantly, apart from its appearance in the hands of the elaborately dressed revelers, the parasol was associated with women in late-sixth- and fifth-century vase-paintings. [286] Unless we speculate that it was an element of the dress of those Athenian aristocrats who, as the argument goes, had adopted an East Greek or Lydian luxurious lifestyle, the use of parasol probably belongs to the sphere of pictorial imagination and inventiveness. On a number of these vases, the emphatic combination, or sometimes sheer accumulation, of diverse vestment elements of Eastern origin points to an attempt at stressing the exotic rather than the “real.” In certain cases, as in a red-figure cup by the Briseis Painter and in a red-figure column-krater by the Pig Painter, [287] even krotala are added, an element that may have accentuated the construction of the marked “other,” since they were a primarily female instrument (Fig. 16). [288] Although it has been proposed that some of the komasts’ accoutrements might have been perceived synchronically as potentially or even primarily feminine, [289] it is mostly the invariable emphasis on the revelers’ long, bushy beards that foregrounds the contrast between elaborate daintiness and masculinity. It has been further argued that this contrast or ambivalence in the representation of the komasts constructs conceptual “realities,” an otherness, attainable in the context of the symposion and the kômos and the implicit (omni)“presence” of Dionysos in both. [290] Even if we assume that late archaic viewers did not perceive any gender ambivalence in the images, the symposiastic context of many of them accommodated the construction of imaginary “realities”—representations of Athenian cultural imaginings that should not be confused with actualities.
[Beazley Vase No. 206457]
Figure 16. Red-figure pelike: obverse (left), elaborately dressed reveler with barbitos, female figure with krotala; reverse (right), elaborately dressed revelers. Attributed to the Pig Painter, c. 475 BC. Rhodes, Archaeological Museum, inv. no. 13.129. Photo, Archaeological Museum of Rhodes.
Such pictorial constructs are evident in the exaggerated accumulation of appurtenances in a number of the vases in the series, a fact that has led modern scholars to detect in the komasts even elements of ritual transvestism. [291] As soon as the exaggerated and accumulative display of luxurious accoutrements and Eastern clothing is recognized, we do not need to resort to interpretations that see behind the images realities or specific elite ideologies corresponding to such realities. In other words, bearded komasts garbed so elaborately and sometimes dancing to the sound of barbitoi, auloi, or kithara represented, I suggest, Athenian imaginings of the inhabitants of diverse Eastern lands (East Greeks, Lydians, and Persians) conflated as a single representative visual schema. [292] Further, being in interaction with other related configurations, [293] this visual schema is part of a broader idealized cognitive model in the representation of Eastern exotics and neighbors in late archaic Athens. Significantly, these images convey a broad range of exotic and cultural inflections and promote a kind of Panhellenic music culture, centered on Athens. The experimentation of vase-painters in rendering “foreignness” by drawing from a common pool of material and by combining diverse ethnic elements in clothing and accoutrements is documented in other cases. [294] The painted pots under consideration do not attest to changes in the komastic life of the Athenians of the late archaic and early classical periods, nor do they portray the possible lydopatheia of archaic Greek elites in its apparent grandeur. Rather, I argue, they capture instances of Athenian popular conceptual filters through which Eastern exoticism is represented—striding forward, [295] dancing, [296] or simply swaying to the music of strings and krotala. Such an exaggerated version of Eastern exoticism in Attic vase-paintings could be contrasted or juxtaposed to a sixth-century and early-fifth-century Athenian aristocratic lifestyle, and accordingly perceived—in positive, humorous, negative, or ambivalent terms—by viewers of diverse political takes.
[Beazley Vase No. 204066]
Figure 17. Red-figure cup: tondo, elaborately dressed reveler with stick. Attributed to the Brygos Painter, c. 480–470 BC. Brussels, Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, inv. no. R332. Photo, Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire, Brussels.
However, were the diverse configurations of this visual schema conceived of or “read” in a one-dimensional manner by ancient Athenians in the span of some sixty years? Were all the revelers of this series—some in groups carrying parasols and krotala, others portrayed as lone dressed figures playing the barbitos—viewed in the light of a clearly defined and unified schema? Especially in more recent debate, the whole series has been considered as a fixed semantic unit allegedly interpreted in the late sixth and the first half of the fifth century in an always specific and consistent way. Could other semantic elements have been assimilated into the idealized cognitive model of “exotic, elaborately dressed Easterner”?
As we have seen, two images associate Anakreon with bearded figures dressed in flowing chiton and himation and playing the barbitos. On the Gales Painter red-figure lekythos in Syracuse, the head of the represented poet is damaged, but it seems that he was wearing a fillet and a wreath. [297] The fact that Anakreon is accompanied by two naked youths with only cloaks thrown over their shoulders does not disqualify this image from being considered in the context of “the elaborately dressed komasts.” Beardless young komasts, with or without himatia, are not infrequently juxtaposed with bearded “elaborately dressed revelers.” [298] Whether or not the Gales Painter lekythos is to be included in the gradually expanding “corpus” of images with elaborately dressed komasts, [299] it is certain that it is at least associated with this broader iconologic pattern. As such, it can be examined mainly within this visual framework.
At the same time, I should draw attention to the fact that other elaborately dressed komasts are shown alone holding or performing with a barbitos. [300] Since both in the Gales Painter lekythos and in the Kleophrades Painter kalyx-krater in Copenhagen, a dressed komast with a barbitos is associated with the name of Anakreon, it is tempting to argue that vase-paintings of this kind gradually initiated a close association of East Greek poets with the exaggerated fashion displayed by the “elaborately dressed komasts.”
[© President and Fellows of Harvard College]
Figure 18. Red-figure column krater: obverse, elaborately dressed reveler with barbitos. Attributed to the Pig Painter, c. 475 BC. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Art Museums, Arthur M. Sackler Museum, Bequest of David M. Robinson, inv. no. 1959.125. Photo, Imaging Department, © President and Fellows of Harvard College.
Such images marked, I suggest, the invention of the cultural schema of “the elaborately dressed East Greek poets” in the minds of the Athenians of the late archaic and early classical eras. At a later period, Aristophanes portrayed Anakreon as one of those earlier poets, like Alkaios and Ibykos, who composed juicy music and used to wear particular headdresses and to move in Ionian fashion. As the Aristophanic version of the poet Agathon explains in the Thesmophoriazousai (159–163), it is inappropriate for a poiêtês to look shaggy and boorish:
… σκέψαι δ’ ὅτι
Ἴβυκος ἐκεῖνος κἀνακρέων ὁ Τήιος
κἀλκαῖος, οἵπερ ἁρμονίαν ἐχύμισαν,
ἐμιτροφόρουν τε καὶ διεκλῶντ’ Ἰωνικῶς. [301]
Ἴβυκος ἐκεῖνος κἀνακρέων ὁ Τήιος
κἀλκαῖος, οἵπερ ἁρμονίαν ἐχύμισαν,
ἐμιτροφόρουν τε καὶ διεκλῶντ’ Ἰωνικῶς. [301]
… think that
the renowned Ibykos and Anakreon of Teos
and Alkaios—composers who put some flavor into music—
used to wear headgears and mince in Ionian style. [302]
Agathon himself in the Thesmophoriazousai (137–139, 250–262) is “appropriately” depicted as adopting stylish manners similar to those of the old poet Anakreon: his poetic accoutrements include a barbitos, a girded elaborate chiton, a himation and shoes, a hairnet (kekruphalos) and a headdress (mitra). [303] The audience of Aristophanes’ comedy did not need to be familiar with the elaborate garb of the Anakreon figures of the vase-paintings in order to understand the humorous effect of Agathon’s stylish clothing. [304] The image of East Greek poets as elaborately dressed komasts had been firmly established in the horizons of expectations of the late-fifth-century Athenians despite the fact that the older representations had been forgotten. The cultural type of the aesthete East Greek poet could be applied, I argue, to any aesthete contemporary composer, especially the “New Music” practitioners and followers. And as in depictions of lone dressed komasts playing the distinctive long-armed lyre the parasol is absent, so Agathon, an avant-garde musician, appears on the Athenian stage singing with his barbitos both the solo and the choral parts of an elaborate, refined composition.
Metonymic Webs of Signification
The assimilation of the figure of Anakreon into idealized cognitive models is parallel to the pictorial versions of the Athenian contextualization of the songs and the figure of Sappho. These versions indicate that Sappho was assimilated into different sociocultural discourses in the context of the performative transmission of her poetry. Given the hegemonizing male mentalities of Athenian society, Sappho’s songs—products of a woman poet which had excited the interest of symposiasts and other Athenians—must have given rise to a great variety of interpretations. The highly marked figure of that Eastern female poet was subjected to a variety of naturalizing processes of vraisemblance or mythopractical associations. The multilayeredness of such receptorial practices—at times habitually enacted, at other times originating from and performed by localized discursive agencies—contributed to the trafficability of the image of Sappho in terms of a polyvalent socioaesthetic coinage. The value of her figure and poetry was thus constructed and assessed according to the different symbolic capitals privileged in specific discursive contexts.
The performance of Sappho’s compositions in male symposia, and all that this entailed, was only one of the elements that shaped the early reception of her figure in Athens. I suggest that Anakreon and his songs, as well as their Athenian reception, further contributed to the broader discourses that informed the reception of Sappho. If we attempt to view her late-sixth- and early-fifth-century reception in a wider cultural context, at least one aspect of Anakreon’s poetry requires particular consideration.
In his songs, Anakreon often presented sketches of certain types of people, sometimes named, other times unnamed in the extant fragments, the most well-known being a song about Artemon (fragment 388 PMG):
πρὶν μὲν ἔχων βερβέριον, καλύμματ’ ἐσφηκωμένα,
καὶ ξυλίνους ἀστραγάλους ἐν ὠσὶ καὶ ψιλὸν περὶ
πλευρῆισι <–_˘–> βοός, 3
νήπλυτον εἴλυμα κακῆς ἀσπίδος, ἀρτοπώλισιν
κἀθελοπόρνοισιν ὁμιλέων ὁ πονηρὸς Ἀρτέμων,
κίβδηλον εὑρίσκων βίον, 6
πολλὰ μὲν ἐν δουρὶ τιθεὶς αὐχένα, πολλὰ δ’ ἐν τροχῶι,
πολλὰ δὲ νῶτον σκυτίνηι μάστιγι θωμιχθείς, κόμην
πώγωνά τ᾽ ἐκτετιλμένος∙ 9
νῦν δ’ ἐπιβαίνει σατινέων χρύσεα φορέων καθέρματα
†παῖς Κύκης† καὶ σκιαδίσκην ἐλεφαντίνην φορεῖ
καὶ σκιαδίσκην ἐλεφαντίνην φορεῖ
γυναιξὶν αὔτως <–˘–> 12
καὶ ξυλίνους ἀστραγάλους ἐν ὠσὶ καὶ ψιλὸν περὶ
πλευρῆισι <–_˘–> βοός, 3
νήπλυτον εἴλυμα κακῆς ἀσπίδος, ἀρτοπώλισιν
κἀθελοπόρνοισιν ὁμιλέων ὁ πονηρὸς Ἀρτέμων,
κίβδηλον εὑρίσκων βίον, 6
πολλὰ μὲν ἐν δουρὶ τιθεὶς αὐχένα, πολλὰ δ’ ἐν τροχῶι,
πολλὰ δὲ νῶτον σκυτίνηι μάστιγι θωμιχθείς, κόμην
πώγωνά τ᾽ ἐκτετιλμένος∙ 9
νῦν δ’ ἐπιβαίνει σατινέων χρύσεα φορέων καθέρματα
†παῖς Κύκης† καὶ σκιαδίσκην ἐλεφαντίνην φορεῖ
καὶ σκιαδίσκην ἐλεφαντίνην φορεῖ
γυναιξὶν αὔτως <–˘–> 12
In the old days he used to cover his hair with a wasped cap, [305]
and to wear wooden dice in his ears, and round his ribs
a hairless ox-hide—
the unwashed covering of a poor shield—
that rascal Artemon, mixing with bread-selling women and
willing whores, seeking a living of fraud;
his neck was often in the stocks, often on the wheel,
his back often flogged with a leather lash,
and the hair of his head and his beard plucked out.
But nowadays he, the child of Kyke [?], rides in (ladies’) carriages
wearing golden earrings and carries an ivory parasol
like women.
Artemon’s previous way of life, fraught with poverty and fraud, is juxtaposed to his current luxuries and riches: comfortable carriages, gold earrings, and parasols—a combination of signs displaying effeminacy. The contrast between the two lifestyles of Artemon is underscored by the way he is named in the respective sections of the song: ὁ πονηρὸς Ἀρτέμων in line 5 and “the child of Kyke,” a reference to the name of his mother, and not of his father, in line 11. [306] Anakreon’s songs about the nouveau riche Artemon became popular in fifth-century Athens, and the phrases ὁ περιφόρητος Ἀρτέμων (fr. 372.2 PMG) and ὁ πονηρὸς Ἀρτέμων seemed applicable to other cases. [307] Further, in fragment 387 PMG, a story about a perfumer or a lyre-maker seems to have been recounted in ambivalent or ironic manner, while in fragment 394b PMG one bald Alexis was depicted as going wooing “once again” (δηὐτε); in other songs, courtesans must have been similarly treated (fr. 347.11–18 PMG). [308]
Such songs provided Athenian symposiasts and other audiences with images of specific social types and stereotypes. [309] Viewed in this light, a short composition by Anakreon about a girl from Lesbos would have represented an insider’s East Greek perspective about “that island” (fr. 358 PMG). The song relates an intriguing episode in which the performing “I,” depicting himself as white-haired, is invited by Eros to sport with a girl, who will eventually reject him, because she gives her full attention elsewhere. I shall return to this song and its reception in the late fourth century in Chapters Three and Four. In the context of the present discussion, suffice it to observe that, despite the interpretive problems related to the final line of the fragment (πρὸς δ’ ἄλλην τινὰ χάσκει, “she gapes at another” [girl? a young man?]), it seems certain that such a song would contribute to the creation of certain stereotypes about “girls from Lesbos.” The emphatic position of ἐστὶν γὰρ ἀπ’ εὐκτίτου Λέσβου (“for she is from well-built Lesbos”) and the Lesbian lass’ preference to “gape at” other things suggest that she was represented in this song as a “distinctive” case. In a spirit perhaps comparable to the modern English ditty “we don’t like the girls from Birmingham, ’cause we know some things concerning th’m,” Anakreon’s composition was playfully conducive to the circulation of ideas about late-sixth-century young women from Lesbos. Be that as it may, what is of interest for us here is that the performance of a song like this in Athens [310] might have shaped some of the conceptual filters through which the images of Sappho painted on symposiastic vases were “contextualized” by contemporary viewers. The parallel singing of poems of Anakreon and Sappho in symposia and related venues had some impact on the way the visual representations of Sappho were understood, and these representations, in turn, reinforced the contemporary male perceptions of Sappho’s songs.
Recitals among Women
In the second half of the fifth century, changes in the themes that decorated Attic pottery are evident: of particular significance for my discussion here is that a heightened focus on representations of women by painters led to a marked increase of scenes with large or small groups of women in a domestic context. This emphasis on images of women in vase-painting was symptomatic of an overall contemporary social dynamic, especially hard to reconstruct in its multilayered texture—given the polyvalent character of visual representations, as well as the paucity and hegemonic male focus of literary sources. [311] As opposed to the sixth century BC, from about the mid-fifth century onward, women dominate the representations that commemorate the dead on Athenian funerary monuments and on white-ground lekythoi. [312] In this context of intense proliferation of vase-paintings depicting women adorning themselves or playing music with other women in domestic settings, a scene with four female figures—one reading from a scroll, another holding a lyre, and two standing around them—would have seemed common to contemporary ancient viewers.
Already in about 460 BC, representations of groups of women engaged in musical performance and in reading from scrolls in domestic interiors are favored by the Niobid Painter. Most often in depictions of such female gatherings, a seated woman playing an instrument or about to start her performance constitutes the central focus of the image; other women holding instruments, scrolls, or boxes stand around the seated figure, representing her audience or gazing at her. [313] On the obverse of an amphora attributed to the Niobid Painter and dated to about 460–450 BC, [314] a woman touching the strings of her barbitos is shown seated in right profile in the center of the composition, while another woman just holding reed pipes stands in front of her (Fig. 19). A chelys lyre is suspended over the seated figure. A third woman opening the lid of the chest that she carries on her left hand stands behind the klismos of the seated musician. A similar but slightly more marked representation of three women gathered to perform music appears on a hydria attributed to the Niobid Painter and dated to about the same decade (Fig. 20). [315] This time the chair of a frontally seated musician stands on a stepped bêma, a dais located in the center of an interior space, not far from an open door at the left of the whole composition. Near this door stands a woman who holds out an open book roll so that the seated woman on the bêma may be able to read from it. On the bêma, we see a chest with open lid, an indication, in this and other images, of imminent performance or recitation.
[© The Walters Art Museum. Photo made available by Creative Commons Licence]
Figure 19. Red-figure amphora: obverse, seated woman with barbitos, woman with reed pipes, woman with chest. Attributed to the Niobid Painter, c. 460–450 BC. Baltimore, MD, Walters Art Museum, inv. no. 48.2712. Photo, The Walters Art Museum.
[Beazley Vase No. 11020]
Figure 20. Red-figure hydria: three women, one seated with barbitos, one with scroll, one with lyre and chest. Attributed to the Niobid Painter, c. 460–450 BC. New York, Solow Art and Architecture Foundation. Photo courtesy of the Solow Art and Architecture Foundation.
[Photo made available by Creative Commons Licence]
Figure 21. Red-figure hydria: seated female figure with book roll, three female figures. In the manner of the Niobid Painter, c. 440 BC. London, British Museum, inv. no. E 190. Photo © Copyright, Trustees of the British Museum.
On the right of the seated instrumentalist stands a third woman holding a chelys lyre and another chest. Finally, on a hydria in the manner of the Niobid Painter and dated to about 440 BC (Fig. 21), [316] the woman seated in right profile does not play or tune a lyre; instead, she recites from a book roll she holds, in the company of three other female figures: one stands behind her while the other two women in front of her hold a chest and a flower, respectively.
Against these almost contemporary pictorial scenes, especially the last one, the fourth vase-painting depicting Sappho (identified by inscription) and dated to c. 440–430 BC presents a strikingly similar composition (Fig. 22): Sappho is seated on a klismos reading from a book roll; a woman stands behind her; two other female figures stand in front of “Sappho,” the first one holding a lyre. This red-figure hydria in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, is attributed to the Group of Polygnotos, vase-painters whose style is closely related to that of the Niobid Painter. [317]
[Beazley Vase No. 213777]
Figure 22. Red-figure hydria: Sappho, seated, with three female figures. Attributed to the Group of Polygnotos, c. 440–430 BC. Athens, National Archaeological Museum, inv. no. 1260. Photo, courtesy of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture / Archaeological Receipts Fund.
For the purpose of this discussion, it is noteworthy that, influenced by the Niobid Painter and his circle, the Polygnotans decorated a large number of hydriai with scenes of female gatherings [318] where musical performance is often but not always the pivotal element. At some of them, the seated woman in the center can hold a wreath or a box [319] instead of a chelys lyre, a barbitos, or an aulos; she can be juggling with balls or looking at a mirror. [320] The other women flanking the central figure carry elegant boxes, book rolls, lyres, auloi, or, in at least one case, [321] an aulos bag. Among the women, a winged Eros can also appear, occasionally holding a wreath and flying over the head of the seated figure (Fig. 23). [322] Even small ensembles of two seated women playing stringed instruments are depicted. [323] Sometimes a wreath hangs in the field above the central, seated musician (Fig. 24, center). [324]
[Photo made available by Creative Commons Licence]
Figure 23. Red-figure hydria: four women, one seated with lyre, others standing around her, Eros flying above. Attributed to the Group of Polygnotos, c. 440–430 BC. London, British Museum, inv. no. E 189. Photo © Copyright, Trustees of the British Museum.
The Athens hydria is part of a large corpus of images with groups of women performing and reading book rolls in a domestic interior. That behind this corpus of images lies an idealized cognitive model—a cultural category associated with female gatherings, poetry recitations, and musicianship—is beyond doubt. The problem is that, as often with Attic vase-paintings, the “social status” ideologies (respectable citizen women or educated hetairai?) that we distinguish with regard to these domestic scenes seem schematic.
Even recently, Jennifer Neils has argued that the three women on the hydria attributed to the Niobid Painter discussed at the beginning of this section are hetairai and that the whole setting must represent a brothel. [325] Because non-mythological vase-paintings have all too frequently been viewed as depictions of daily life, it has seemed impossible to accept that such domestic scenes might represent fifth-century “respectable” Athenian women, since, according to this argumentation, no literary sources attest to the existence of musical education for them. On the contrary, the reasoning goes, hetairai and women hired as musicians in symposia and related occasions were well versed in different aspects of mousikê. [326]
[Beazley Vase No. 213517]
Figure 24. Red-figure hydria: women, one seated with barbitos. Attributed to the Peleus Painter, c. 430 BC. Athens, National Archaeological Museum, inv. no. 17918. Photo courtesy of the Hellenic Ministry of Culture / Archaeological Receipts Fund.
This idea has been questioned by a number of scholars, [327] but its rearticulation by Neils suggests a still lasting impact. Nonetheless, there seems to be no reason to maintain that the female musicians in such domestic scenes are educated hetairai. [328] At the same time, I believe that these images do not highlight the “respectability” of the depicted female figures; rather, they explore the latter’s idealized musicianship, in the broadest sense. The “social status” (elite? generally respectable? “professional”?) of these women remains a historicizing and tantalizingly elusive question, which the images seem not to ponder.
Especially in this group of representations—if “group” is the proper word—the boundaries between mortal women and Muses are sometimes fluid. Similar scenes of musical gatherings with names of Muses inscribed next to the figures they identify can be found on diverse vases. On a hydria attributed to the Peleus Painter, a Polygnotan craftsman, three female figures engaged in musical performance are identified with inscriptions: Terpsikhore, Kalliope, and Thaleia. [329] Two more female figures are unnamed. Kalliope is seated on a klismos in the center of the composition and plays a barbitos, while Thaleia, holding a chelys lyre in her right hand, stands in front of her. Apart from the use of inscriptions, the main criterion for identifying Muses in this kind of all-female musical gathering is the appearance of pictorial signs like a rock (on which a Muse may be seated) and plants, indicating an outdoor setting. [330] It is noteworthy that even an outdoor setting can be mixed with a domestic setting on the very same image, as is the case of a kalyx-krater attributed to the Niobid Painter and dated to about 460 BC. [331] On the obverse of this vase a female figure holding reed pipes is shown seated on a rock on the right, while two more women on the left stand near a klismos and gaze at her; a chelys lyre hangs in the background, just above the head of the woman who sits on the rock. [332] The three women have been identified as Muses. [333] Although I would not hold that these female figures represent Muses, such a combination of outdoor and domestic elements suggests that the corpora of images that we attempt to categorize were conflated by the vase-painters.
It should be pointed out that the fact that female gatherings are sometimes strikingly similar to musical gatherings of the Muses does not mean that marked “divine” connotations are present in every image with female ensembles. [334] Rather than always viewing the gatherings of the Muses as the origins—“the models for the women we see portrayed playing instruments or reading from open scrolls” [335] —or, alternatively, the latter scenes as deliberately resembling those with the deities, we might prefer to think of a parallel and sometimes unmarked coexistence of such images, especially in the period under investigation (c. 440–420 BC). If we focus on the possible origins of a schema and attempt to see these origins as embedded connotations in all the images supposed to have been “modeled” on this schema, we run the risk of applying to these representations ideas that are often too generalized or impressionistic. In other words, each female mortal musician at such gatherings need not be metaphorically “associated” with a Muse.
More important, the Athens hydria with Sappho was modeled on the broader schema of all-female gatherings in domestic interiors. As we have seen, some of the women seated at the center of the composition hold or play a musical instrument, others have in their hands a small wreath or a chest, still others read a book roll; further versions can also be found. The widely adopted idea that many of the anonymous women musicians and those reading from a scroll in the numerous depictions and versions of this schema actually represented Sappho [336] is, I argue, schematic. If we speculate that these scenes depicted “Sappho and her students,” and since a very large number of such contemporary images have been preserved, at least a few more vase-paintings with Sappho’s name inscribed on them should have come to light. I prefer to investigate the Athens hydria in the context of the diverse modalities of the fifth-century Athenian contextualization of the figure of Sappho. Around the same period (late fifth or early fourth century), Ameipsias apparently composed a play entitled Sappho. [337] Earlier in the fifth century, vase-paintings provided Athenian symposiastic versions of how Sappho had been received. The Athens hydria locates the songs and the figure of Sappho in the domesticated space of gatherings of female musicians and of private poetic recitations and competitions. It is this pictorial or cultural schema that “defines” Sappho, and not vice versa. Instead of attempting to see in the specific representation of a “domestic Sappho” a conflation of too-generalized connotations—that is, Sappho entering the realm of the Muses and, through the depiction of wreaths hanging in the background, becoming a metaphor for wedding songs (on a hydria intended for a bride) and being associated with female education— [338] I propose to shift the focus to those visual elements that differentiate it from other versions of this popular schema.
On the Athens hydria, Sappho is seated in right profile and flanked by three female figures. [339] One standing behind her, on the left, is about to put a wreath on Sappho’s head; [340] lettering provides her name: ΝΙΚΟΠΟΛΙΣ. A woman standing on the right holds out a chelys lyre near Sappho and is named ΚΑΛΛΙΣ. Another woman (this time unidentified), at the far right of the composition, rests her right hand on Kallis’ shoulder. Two wreaths hang in the background. All dressed in chiton and himation, they look at each other, but not at the seated Sappho, whom they “frame.” Sappho’s gaze is directed toward the book roll she holds, which is at the center of the whole image.
The poet is identified by the inscription ΣΑΠΠΩ̣Σ (Fig. 25). The omega is difficult to read both because of breakage in the area and since it has faded considerably; it has been reported and confirmed by scholars who examined the vase in earlier decades. [341] The genitive ΣΑΠΠΩ̣Σ [342] appropriately defines the vase-painting: it is an εἰκών, an imaginary representation “of Sappho.” Placed near the book roll, it is as if ΣΑΠΠΩ̣Σ concurrently identifies the text written on it.
Nikopolis has been seen as a redender Name (“Victory-city”): [343] she is about to wreath Sappho, who reads from the book roll. Comparable “telling names” that could perhaps be considered here include the female names on a red-figure hydria attributed to another Polygnotan. [344] On this vase, a seated female piper is called Euphemia, a standing barbitos-player is given the name Kleodoxa, while the names Kleophonis, Kleodike, and Phanodike are attached to other women. [345] However, “Nikopolis” should be viewed, I suggest, in a wider context of images.
Nikopolis is the name of a woman depicted on the upper zone of another red-figure hydria attributed to the Polygnotan Group. [346] In this image, we have a markedly different scene: two female Pyrrhic dancers, a woman piper in front of them, and behind the piper, almost in the center of the composition, a seated woman watching them, called Nikopolis. Other women, some of them with lyres, a flying Eros holding a phorminx, and a youth leaning on his stick behind Nikopolis are also included in the scene. A wreath hangs in the field behind the woman piper and above Nikopolis’ head. [347]
[Beazley Vase No. 213777]
Figure 25. Detail of red-figure hydria (Athens, National Archaeological Museum, inv. no. 1260; Fig. 22 above): inscription.
It is worth observing that despite differences in the complexity of the two images, Nikopolis is the name both of the seated woman on the Polygnotan hydria in Florence and of the figure standing behind Sappho on the Athens hydria, again the work of an unidentified painter of the Group of Polygnotos. Similarly, one of the performers on the Florence vase is named Kleodoxa. Apart from the barbitos-player Kleodoxa in the all-female gathering I have already considered, “Kleodoxa” reappears in a symposiastic scene depicted on a red-figure stamnos by Polygnotos: she is a piper playing for the bubbly company of three reclining male figures. [348] Although these names have been considered “telling names” or “professional names,” [349] I argue that since the vases are contemporary (c. 440–430 BC) and related to a specific group of painters, they are names used almost formulaically for different images by the Polygnotans. Viewed in this context, “Nikopolis” on the Athens hydria does not need to be taken too literally in terms of the receptorial filters through which the whole image with Sappho is constructed. The name does not convey an unusually marked connotation to the representation: as is the case with other images of all-female gatherings, it must have pointed to a kind of “victory” in musical performance or poetic recitation.
The idea of wreathing a mousikê gunê can be detected in a few earlier vase-paintings dated to 470–450 BC; [350] the closest example is provided by a contemporary red-figure hydria attributed to a Polygnotan painter, with a female figure wreathing a woman musician in a domestic interior. [351] An Eros holding a wreath in his hands can also hover over the head of a seated instrumentalist tuning her chelys lyre. [352] At the same time, as we have seen, the fact that Sappho is reading a book roll is not as unusual as has been assumed. [353] On the hydria in the manner of the Niobid Painter, [354] the woman seated in the center reads the book roll she holds; as in the case of the Athens hydria with Sappho, she is flanked by three other female figures, one standing behind her and two in front of her. A significant difference is the text written on her book roll; it consists of sixteen lines of almost stoichêdon written dots, which yield no sense. And on a red-figure hydria, possibly in the manner of the Shuvalov Painter and dated to about 430 BC, one of the two women depicted is seated on a stool and reads from a book roll, on which only some imitation letters are written. [355] On all these vases the women are unidentified.
I argue that the markedness of the Athens hydria rests principally on “Sappho” (ΣΑΠΠΩ̣Σ) and the text on her book roll. “Kallis” and “Nikopolis” contribute to the specificity of the female space. As Sappho often did in her poetry, the painter has given the women names. Instead of performing a song,she is represented as reading from a book roll, despite the availability of a musical instrument.
[Beazley Vase No. 21377]
Figure 26. Detail of red-figure hydria (Athens, National Archaeological Museum, inv. no. 1260; Fig. 22 above): scroll.
The chelys lyre that Kallis holds out near the seated Sappho also appears in other related scenes of female gatherings. It is less marked than the barbitos, although on vase-paintings of the second half of the fifth century the barbitos is often depicted in the hands of a seated woman who plays music in the company of her friends in domestic settings.
What we see in this image is a poet gazing at a poem (Fig. 26). In contrast to other similar representations of women reading, Sappho’s book roll is inscribed with an actual verse. Attic vase-paintings with boys and youths holding book rolls with texts written on them go back to c. 500–490 BC. [356] Scenes with women reading begin appearing in about 460–450 BC. One of the earliest, on a white-ground lekythos attributed to the Painter of Athens 1826, depicts a seated woman reading from a book roll to another woman standing in front of her on the left. [357] The text on the scroll is a “nonsense” inscription, three lines with four letters each. As we have seen, in related, almost contemporary images, the book rolls that women hold contain imitation letters or dots. [358] It should be observed that it is only on the earlier vases that the scrolls that male figures hold are inscribed with comprehensible strings of words. [359] These are mostly poetic texts. One of them possibly represents the beginning of a melic song; [360] and another includes an initial address to Μοῖσα (“Muse” in the Aeolic dialect) as well as the phrase ἄρχομ’ ἀείδειν (“I begin to sing . . . ”). [361]
The text on the book roll that Sappho gazes at is written in twelve lines with four to two letters each, except for the final line:
ΘΕΟΙ
ΗΕΡΙ
ΩΝ
ΕΠΕ
ΩΝ (5)
AΡΧ
ΟΜ
ΑΙΑ
ΗΕΡΙ
ΩΝ
ΕΠΕ
ΩΝ (5)
AΡΧ
ΟΜ
ΑΙΑ
This provides the phrase θεοί, ἠερίων ἐπέων ἄρχομαι (“gods, with airy words I begin . . . ”). [362] After “I begin” and the alpha that follows in line 8, more letters appear that produce no comprehensible word(s): [363]
ỊṆ.
NṬ (10)
T.
N
NṬ (10)
T.
N
Apart from this main text, ΠΤΕΡΟΕΤẠ and EΠEA are written vertically on the two “margins”—or the rolled parts—of the scroll, on the left-hand and right-hand sides, respectively. Since the name of the seated figure operated as a sign of her culturally marked popularity as a song-maker (ΣΑΠΠΩ̣Σ) and, in contrast to images of other female readers (or even of Muses in the company of Apollo), [364] her book roll is inscribed with a “poetic line,” this central, unexplored aspect of the image needs closer investigation in terms of the fifth-century receptions of Sappho.
From the viewpoint of the modern reception of the text on the book roll, John Maxwell Edmonds maintained that it represents part of the introductory poem to the first book of an early, pre-Alexandrian edition of Sappho—a collection possibly arranged by Sappho herself. [365] Especially in his edition Sappho Revocata, the line was made available again, in the original and in translation, to a nonspecialist public. [366] Edmonds did not discuss the text in view of the ancient reception of Sappho, despite the fact that it would have been interesting if he had commented on the highly hypothetical reconstruction and translation of the inscription that he proposed (“the words I begin are words of air, but, for all that, good to hear,” that is, “beneficial”). Following Rudolf Herzog, Edmonds thought that ΘΕΟΙ was a dedicatory formula, like those occurring in stone inscriptions. [367] From this perspective, such a formula would indicate that this is the beginning of a book. Accordingly, πτερόε<ν>τα ἔπεα (“fledged words,” “winged words”) has been interpreted as a title written on the back of the book roll. [368] Despite the linguistic and textual remarks offered by Edmonds and Herzog, the line has not been included in critical editions of Sappho, and the whole idiosyncratic proposal has not found any defenders among scholars. The history of the modern aesthetic reception of this scroll inscription is rich, but this is not the place to explore it. [369] What is interesting for the present investigation is that certain views about the function of θεοί and of “winged words” have remained somewhat influential.
That πτερόε<ν>τα ἔπεα represents a title is no more than a guess. As the image stands, the epic formula ἔπεα πτερόεντα is “visually” inverted and juxtaposed, as it were, to the phrase ἠέρια ἔπη—as if to provide a gloss on “airy words.” Even if πτερόε<ν>τα ἔπεα were a title, I argue that its juxtaposition to ἠέρια ἔπη is culturally significant from the perspective of the ancient textual and visual representations of Sappho.
Similarly, θεοί has been accepted by several scholars as a dedicatory formula. [370] Given that the text on the book roll that Sappho holds can safely be considered an invention of the vase-painter or perhaps of another contemporary, there is no reason to expect an adherence to a metrical pattern. The painter, or whoever “composed/improvised” this line, [371] could have put θεοί together with ἠερίων ἐπέων ἄρχομαι as part of the same song, without thinking of the specific meter this would produce. [372] Sappho fragment 1 V begins with an address to a deity, and a number of her songs include similar invocations in their introductory lines. [373] More importantly, on a cup by Douris the poetic inscription on the book roll that the seated bearded man holds in the context of a school scene similarly starts with a vocative, which is not followed by a verbal form in the imperative or by a comparable phrase: Μοῖσά μοι ἀ<μ>φὶ Σκάμανδρον ἐύρ<ρ>οον ἄρχομαι ἀείδειν (“Muse, . . . I begin to sing of fair-flowing Skamandros”). [374] It seems likely that the vase-painter here fused two quotations, Μοῖσά μοι and ἀ<μ>φὶ Σκάμανδρον ἐύρ<ρ>οον ἄρχομαι ἀείδειν. [375] Similarly, θεοί on Sappho’s book roll may stand as the first word of the poem, an address to gods at the beginning of an improvised composition juxtaposed to the figure of Sappho.
Visualizing Song-Making
Even so, the most significant part of the line is the phrase ἠερίων ἐπέων. This is the only instance that ἠέριος (“early,” “at early morn”) or ἀέριος (“of the air,” “aerial,” “in the air”) [376] modifies the word ἔπος throughout ancient Greek literature. In all other cases of poetic lines written on the book rolls that male figures hold, the texts do not provide semantic difficulties. στησιχόρων ὕμνων ἄγοισαι or στησίχορον ὕμνον ἄγοισαι (“. . .bringing a chorus-establishing hymn”) on a red-figure cup by Onesimos is a lyric line. [377] Ἑρμῆ<ν> ἀείδω (“I sing of Hermes”) on a red-figure lekythos related to late Douris might perhaps be the beginning of the shorter Homeric Hymn to Hermes (18.1). [378] And we have already considered the line on the Douris cup.
What does ἠερίων ἐπέων ἄρχομαι mean? “I begin with air-like words”? “I begin with early words”—that is, words sung in the morning? More metaphorically, “I begin with lofty words”? Or perhaps, if one wishes to see a contrast between πτερόεντα ἔπεα and ἠέρια ἔπεα, “I begin with ἠέρια words” that are not epically πτερόεντα? Capturing the possible connotations is difficult, but it is important to pose the question: Why are the words of the poem that Sappho reads on the vase-painting ἠέρια and not πτερόεντα? The vase-painter has placed next to ἠέρια ἔπεα a formula with which he was familiar: ἔπεα πτερόεντα. [379] This might be an attempt to explain the occurrence and meaning of ἠέρια ἔπεα, or simply to juxtapose a familiar poetic phrase to the “less common”—metaphorical, literal, or even colloquial, but “poetically” formulated—ἠέρια ἔπεα that he chose for the line or that he had heard elsewhere. The meaning of ἠέρια ἔπεα was clear to him, but not entirely so to us. I suggest that since ἠέρια ἔπεα does not occur elsewhere in ancient Greek literature, it cannot be considered a “meaningless” choice on the part of the painter: it was either a phrase that he might have used almost colloquially, hastily, and playfully or a more “melic” expression that seemed fitting for the image of Sappho reading in the company of other women (“I begin with lofty words”), or part of a song he was familiar with.
Further, ἔπεα πτερόεντα is a marked formula traditionally associated with epic poetry and especially with the Homeric epics frequently performed in Athens by 440–430 BC. If the line ἠερίων ἐπέων ἄρχομαι was composed ad hoc by the painter, he certainly preferred not to employ this formula for the poem inscribed on the scroll. Although visually juxtaposed to πτερόε<ν>τα ἔπεα, it is ἠέρια ἔπεα that was written on the open sheet of the book roll: ἠερίων ἐπέων ἄρχομαι. This must have been viewed as a more suitable poem for “Sappho.” Recall that other images with women reading do not have poetic lines inscribed on the book rolls. [380] Even if we assumed that πτερόε<ν>τα ἔπεα on the “margins” of her scroll represented a title written on the back, that would be a similarly marked element for the representation of Sappho. Why should the title of the book roll that an East Greek woman poet reads on an Attic hydria be ἔπεα πτερόεντα, while the poem on the open sheet starts with the line ἠερίων ἐπέων ἄρχομαι? Given the occurrence of ΣΑΠΠΩ̣Σ on the vase and the inclusion of some female names that rendered apparent “specificity” to the image, the line ἠερίων ἐπέων ἄρχομαι would indicate some familiarity with the sort of songs that could aptly be juxtaposed to a representation of a female gathering in which Sappho is present.
Although the questions posed here resist definitive answers, it is certain that viewed as an ethnographic archival informant—in which visual and written signifiers interact and, in the absence of other signifiers that could have potentially been exploited, they provide contextualization cues—the text on the book roll in the context of the whole image on the Athens hydria represents a song markedly introduced with ἄρχομαι. It should be observed that compositions starting with a form of ἄρχομαι or with a verb prompting the beginning of the performance of a song circulated widely in the archaic and classical periods. First, poetic compositions like the Homeric Hymns (ἄρχομ’ ἀείδειν in 2.1, 11.1, 13.1, 16.1, 22.1, 26.1, 28.1) [381] or the Theogony were introduced with “let us begin our singing” or a comparable phrase. [382] At the same time, songs were performed in the classical period as skolia that started with the verb “I sing” (ἀείδω). [383] “Sappho”’s song might have been used by the painter as a kind of skolion, a generic hymn, or as a more marked song: “with airy words I begin [ . . . ].” The inclusion of the inscription is based on individual agency, which reflected collective notional modalities but had more to do with its choice by a craftsman or one of his colleagues/informants. Such a composition appearing on the book roll that Sappho holds would be a marker of the popularity of her figure but not of her being established as a poet whose songs had a fixed textuality—an issue I shall explore in Chapters Three and Four. [384]
In this context, I want to emphasize that all the elements of the representation on the Athens hydria are culturally generated and should be viewed in their dynamic interactions with each other: the inscription on the book roll is not an insignificant element, even if we assumed that it could have been chosen hastily by its composer. Might one perhaps detect in ἠέρια ἔπεα and πτερόεντα ἔπεα signs of a metonymic juxtaposition of epic discourse to an écriture féminine associated with an East Greek song-maker like Sappho—especially since the whole image reflects an idealized cognitive model of female gatherings? The issue raised here defies a conclusive solution; numerous evidentiary gaps exist that do not allow us to understand the cultural and female alterity reflected in this vase-painting.
Whatever the case, the image on the Athens red-figure hydria represents a different discursive modality from those exploited on the other vases with Sappho. As I have argued, the minimalist representation on the hydria decorated in Six’s technique might be decodified differently in diverse performative and cultural contexts. It can by no means be considered a clear indication that Sappho’s songs were performed in symposia. Similarly, the kalathoid vase with Alkaios and Sappho marks an instantiation of the interdiscursivity of different performance contexts—that of Alkaios’ political hetaireia and the performative-cultural modalities of Sappho’s song-making—that meet in a common visual space, only to a certain degree modified by the appearance of Dionysos and his female companion on the reverse side. Even if the association between the sympotic territory of Dionysos and the visual, potentially multivalent space occupied by Alkaios and Sappho is not certain, it might have been conducive to the gradual and fleeting expansion of the cognitive frames and mental spaces of ancient viewers. Such an association testifies to the performative resilience of Sappho’s songs—an issue that I explore systematically in Chapters Three and Four—but the exact function and context-specific cultural and indexical markers of the kalathoid vase that bears the representation of the two singers cannot be definitely determined.
On the contrary, I contend that the Bochum kalyx-krater offers a solid basis on which any argument about a sympotic appropriation of the song-making of Sappho can be built. The deictic contextual cues that the kalyx-krater provides are considerably reinforced by its marked and complex representations. What these pictorial associations eventually achieve is an activation of cultural vraisemblance contributing to the naturalization of the figure of Sappho in the symposiastic and komastic spaces of male self-defining and reflexive gatherings. The sociopolitical dimensions of this kind of vraisemblance are related to a mythopractical negotiation of what might constitute Lesbian female companionship in the male Athenian imaginary of the early classical period. Time stands still.
Footnotes
[ back ] 1. For example, in historical reconstructions of diverse aspects of ancient Greek religion, archaeological evidence is often not integrated into the examination of textual, historical evidence—a fact widely acknowledged by classical archaeologists and historians.
[ back ] 2. The Sotades Painter is a notable case: see Hoffmann’s insightful discussion (1997:147–148). Cf. Robertson 1992:186.
[ back ] 3. Derrida 1978a:278–293 (“Structure, Sign and Play in the Discourse of Human Sciences”).
[ back ] 4. Mitchell 1994:43.
[ back ] 5. In Common Knowledge 10.2 (2004):353.
[ back ] 6. Goodman 1976; Nelson Goodman explores the term “symbolic” in its broadest and most neutral sense.
[ back ] 7. Hoffmann 1977; later work in Hoffmann 1997; Sourvinou-Inwood 1979; earlier work collected in Sourvinou-Inwood 1991.
[ back ] 8. Bérard et al. 1989 (originally published in 1984) and Bérard et al. 1987. Bérard’s Anodoi (1974) also contributed to a more context-oriented study of ancient Greek visual imagery. This is not the place to discuss the methodological essays of scholars like Alain Schnapp and Christiane Bron, associated as they are with the “City of Images” project; see, e.g., Bérard 1983; Durand and Lissarrague 1980; Lissarrague and Schnapp 1981; Schmitt-Pantel and Thelamon 1983. It is interesting to compare Schnapp 1988 and Hoffmann 1988, articles that appeared in the same year and have almost identical titles, despite the different methodological approaches and style of research they reflect. The very thought-provoking work of Burkhardt Fehr should also be mentioned in this context.
[ back ] 9. See, among other studies, Bažant 1981 and Harvey 1988.
[ back ] 10. Mitchell 1994:4n5. For further significant distinctions, see Mitchell 1994:loc. cit., and Bryson 1983:131. On diverse concepts of images, see Mitchell 1986:7–46. For an incisive discussion of Nelson Goodman’s influential semiotic approach to images and texts as symbol systems, see Mitchell 1986:53–74.
[ back ] 11. For rigorous criticism of such influential approaches, see Bryson 1983:13–66.
[ back ] 12. Bryson 1983 and 1991. On questions of painting and iconology I find the following studies congenial: Baxandall 1985; Bryson 1983; Derrida 1978b; Foucault 1966; Fried 1980; Maquet 1986; and Mitchell 1986.
[ back ] 13. On the “pictorial turn,” see Mitchell 1994:11–34. Cf., from a different perspective, Debord 1994 [1967] and 1988.
[ back ] 14. Even those images that repeated verbatim certain iconographic schemata contributed to the shaping of ideas about reality and fantasy. By repeating over and over similar or identical images, vase-paintings gradually and subtly established ways of viewing and understanding actuality, reverie, spectatorship, myth, fantasy, and diverse social constructs.
[ back ] 15. The available archaeological record suggests that finds in houses are rarer; see Stissi 1999:96.
[ back ] 16. See Chapter One, pp. 17–19, and discussion in this chapter.
[ back ] 17. Milan, Torno collection, C 278 (formerly in the Caputi collection; hence “Caputi hydria” after its original collector), attributed to the Leningrad Painter (ARV 571.73 and 1659; Add. 261; Boardman 2001:147, fig. 178). The identification of the nature of the workshop (painters or metalworkers) on the Caputi hydria is problematic: see Green 1961; Kehrberg 1982; Thompson 1984:9–10; Venit 1988a. Rabinowitz 2002:152n15 adds further hypotheses. See the more cautious and interesting discussion of Douris’ name (ΔΟΡΙΣ) by Buitron-Oliver 1995:1.
[ back ] 18. Stissi 1999:86–88. On workshops in Athens, see Scheibler 1983:107–109 (1992:133–138); Arafat and Morgan 1989:321–323; Zachariadou, Kyriakou and Baziotopoulou 1992; Baziotopoulou-Valavani 1994; and Papadopoulos 1996:115–124.
[ back ] 19. Shapiro 1995a; Stissi 1999:88–89; Williams, D. 1995; Kilmer and Develin 2001.
[ back ] 20. A critical overview of the related problems and complications arising from the available archaeological evidence is provided by Stissi 1999. For the Etruscan reception, see de la Genière 1987, 1988, 1999; Spivey 1991; Arafat and Morgan 1994; Sparkes 1996:158–164 (overview of earlier studies); Lewis 1997 and 2002:8–9; and especially Shapiro 2000, Reusser 2002, Bentz and Reusser 2004. The issue of whether the thematics and iconographical configuration of Attic vase-paintings were intended for Etruscan buyers and viewers is highly intriguing (since many vases were deposited in Etruscan tombs and used in other, non-funerary contexts in Etruscan cities), but still controversial. Sian Lewis has also attempted to take into account the aspect of slaves as viewers of Attic vases (1998/1999). On workshops and distribution of Attic red-figure pottery, see also Osborne 2004.
[ back ] 21. On schemata, see Sourvinou-Inwood 1991:9–13 and 29–143; on “minimal syntagms,” see Bérard 1983.
[ back ] 22. For paradigmatic and syntagmatic axes of language, see Jakobson 1987:71.
[ back ] 23. Cf. Sourvinou-Inwood 1991:12–13.
[ back ] 24. See Foucault 1969.
[ back ] 25. Lakoff 1987:68–135, in the context of cognitive science and, especially, cognitive linguistics.
[ back ] 26. On mental spaces, see especially Fauconnier 1984; cf. also Lakoff 1987:281–282, whose work is partly based on Fauconnier 1984. On mental spaces, see further Fauconnier and Sweetser 1996 and Fauconnier 1997.
[ back ] 27. On such representations, see below.
[ back ] 28. Vološinov 1973:103–104 (also in Bryson 1983:82–83).
[ back ] 29. See Chapter One, pp. 17–19, with reference to Most 1995. Lardinois 2001 (and Lardinois 1989, 1994, 1996) does not examine the vases, because “the relevance of these representations for our reconstruction of the ‘real’ Sappho is probably very limited” (2001:81). Snyder 1997a provides a brief and very general discussion of the images, without substantiating her views. Philologists like Ferrari (2003:45) do not tackle the representations (“poco o per nulla ci illumina in proposito la documentazione iconografica”) or are not familiar with the complexities of ancient visual modes of representation.
[ back ] 30. Concerning the relative dating of vase-paintings, I would evoke Martin Robertson’s incisive view: “it worries me to say that a given work of art can be dated, on grounds of its style, to a given point in historical time. [ . . . ] it has become part of the way we think about the subject to say, for instance, that such and such a vase by Exekias is to be dated in the decade 540–530; but I retain a mental reservation that this is a metaphor rather than a factual truth” (Robertson 1987:14). Among others, Robertson has pointed to the problems in dating the work of later archaic Athenian vase-painters to specific decades (e.g., 520–510, 510–500, or 490–480 BC) and subsequently associating certain vase-paintings with very specific political changes (Robertson 1992:41–42).
[ back ] 31. This argument was first put forward in my D.Phil. thesis and in Yatromanolakis 2001a:160–161. The vases with Anakreon’s name inscribed include a red-figure cup by Oltos in London (British Museum E 18; ARV 62.86, 1600.20, 1700; Add. 165); a red-figure lekythos by the Gales Painter in Syracuse (Museo Arch. Regionale Paolo Orsi 26967; ARV 36.2, 1621; Add. 158); and fragments of a red-figure kalyx-krater by the Kleophrades Painter (Copenhagen, National Museum 13365; ARV 185.32; Add. 187).
[ back ] 32. The red-figure kalathos-psykter in Munich examined below (Antikensammlungen 2416; ARV 385.228, 1573, and 1649; Add. 228) also shows Alkaios next to Sappho.
[ back ] 33. The Attic white-ground lekythoi were larger vessels used at the grave and as offerings for the dead.
[ back ] 34. Cf., briefly, Boardman 1989:239 “The hydria is essentially for carriage and pouring (water) but the larger ones are probably mainly for display and the very small ones for any liquid.” For different uses of the hydria, see Richter and Milne 1935:11–12 and Kanowski 1984:39–42. Concerning the painters of the vases inscribed with Sappho’s or Anakreon’s name, although it has been remarked that a number of them—the Brygos Painter, Oltos, the Gales Painter, and the Kleophrades Painter—are closely associated with the red-figure Pioneers (Neer 2002:223n93: “the Brygos Painter began his career in the Euphronian shop; the Gales Painter is a Pioneer proper; Oltos is near Euphronios; and the Kleophrades Painter is a pupil of Euthymides”), hardly any firm conclusions can be drawn about these painters’ preferences in depicting Sappho and Anakreon. The attribution of at least one vase is not certain, and our reconstructions of the artistic debts of each of these painters may not lead us far. The Munich kalathos-psykter, attributed by Furtwängler to the Brygos Painter and viewed by Beazley as a very late work by that painter, has more recently been attributed to the Dokimasia Painter (see below). For the Brygos Painter, it has been observed that with this vase-painter “we seem for the first time to be out of direct contact with the Pioneers” (Robertson 1992:94).
[ back ] 35. Here and elsewhere the statements of Most (1995) and other classicists about vases clearly suggesting sympotic use (see Chapter One) become vulnerable to serious objections, since they are not based on a systematic study of the available sources. Detailed discussion follows in this chapter.
[ back ] 36. Hydria in Warsaw, National Museum 142333 (formerly Goluchow 32; ARV 300; Para. 246); red-figure kalathos-psykter in Munich (Antikensammlungen 2416; ARV 385.228, 1573, and 1649; Add. 228); red-figure hydria in Athens (National Archaeological Museum 1260; ARV 1060.145; Add. 323).
[ back ] 37. On this vase, see Yatromanolakis 2001a and 2005; red-figure kalyx-krater in Bochum (Ruhr-Universität, Kunstsammlungen Inv. S 508, formerly in Wuppertal [Kunisch 1971, no. 49]; Stähler 1984:122; not in Beazley). It is not listed in reference books on ancient Greek portraits (Richter 1965, Richter and Smith 1984), but Schefold 1997 has taken it into account and provided a brief and general report on the vase. The information provided in the Beazley Archive database is not accurate.
[ back ] 38. Many other vase-paintings with women musicians but with no inscriptions identifying them have been thought as portraying Sappho. On this scholarly paradigm, see below in this chapter. One further vase, a bell-krater (c. 420 BC) formerly in the Middleton collection and now lost, has been reported as showing Sappho seated on a stool before a winged Eros who is bringing her a wreath. On this vase, see Immerwahr 1964:27 and Yatromanolakis 2001a:161n15.
[ back ] 39. Landesmuseum 4.692; Schefold 1997:74 and 75, fig. 11.
[ back ] 40. Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe 1984.497; Hornbostel et al. 1977:298, no. 258; Hornbostel et al. 1980:112, no. 66.
[ back ] 41. Haspels (1936:97) pointed out that both the Diosphos Painter and the Sappho Painter were fond of depicting animals in connection with human and divine figures. Cf. Hornbostel et al. 1980:112.
[ back ] 42. Haspels 1936:94–130 and 225–241; cf. Beazley 1963:300–301.
[ back ] 43. Hornbostel et al. 1980:112.
[ back ] 44. Louvre CA 482; ARV 774.2 and 1669; Bélis 1992: 55, fig. 1; Kauffmann-Samara 1997:287, fig. 4.
[ back ] 45. Kauffmann-Samara 1997:286–290.
[ back ] 46. See further below, pp. 67–68, 152–153 n. 336; Chapter Three, p. 272 n. 428, 272–275.
[ back ] 47. London, British Museum D6; ARV 763.1 and 772; Hoffmann 1997:128–129, figs. 71–72, and 133, fig. 73.
[ back ] 48. Robinson 1924:107. Reflecting earlier archaeological hypotheses, Robinson’s list of vases depicting Sappho (Robinson 1924:102–107) is overly speculative.
[ back ] 49. Two of the other four cups have pictures evidently associated with themes of death and immortality (Hoffmann 1997:119–140; cf. Burn 1985 and Robertson 1992:186–188). For the imagery of this cup, see Hoffmann 1997:127–133. For the excavation context, see Burn 1985:100–102, Robertson 1992:185–186, and Hoffmann 1997:151 and 169–170.
[ back ] 50. For these vase-inscriptions, see Robertson 1992:188 and Hoffmann 1997:127.
[ back ] 51. See, more recently, Clay 2004:55–58.
[ back ] 52. Bernard 1985:48.
[ back ] 53. Dating: c. 510–500 (Richter 1965:71); c. 490 (Schefold 1997:74); “the date cannot be later than the last decade of the sixth century” (Beazley 1928:9); c. 500 (Haspels 1936:106).
[ back ] 54. Haspels 1936:96.
[ back ] 55. Cf. Maas and Snyder 1989:124. As far as stringed instruments are concerned, West 1992a (on the barbitos, see West 1992a:57–58) follows to a considerable degree Maas and Snyder 1989. Cf. Roberts 1974. For the standard techniques in playing the barbitos, cf. Maas and Snyder 1989:121–123 and Roberts 1980. On the barbitos and the occasions for its use, see Snyder 1972 and Maas and Snyder 1989:113–138. Cf. Paquette 1984:173–185. For the barbitos in the context of symposia on vases, see also Bessi 1997:145 and 150–151.
[ back ] 56. Pindar fr. 125 M; Sappho fr. 176 V (and see Voigt’s apparatus fontium for the identification of the barmos with the barbitos); Alkaios fr. 70.4 V.
[ back ] 57. Horace mentions the barbitos at the beginning of two other of his odes, Carmina 1.32.3–4 ( . . . age dic Latinum, / barbite, carmen) and 3.26.3–4 (nunc arma defunctumque bello / barbiton hic paries habebit).
[ back ] 58. Athenaios 4. 182f (= Anakreon fr. 472 PMG).
[ back ] 59. Athenaios 4. 175d–e (= Neathes FGrH 84 F 5).
[ back ] 60. For a discussion of vases depicting the barbitos in these contexts, cf. Maas and Snyder 1989:113–118. For the latest visual representations of the instrument in the late fifth century and (in Apulian and Etruscan art) in the first half of the fourth century, cf. Maas and Snyder 1989:127 and 170.
[ back ] 61. Magnes testimonium 7 K-A and p. 628 in Kassel and Austin’s fifth volume of Poetae Comici Graeci (= ancient scholia on Aristophanes Knights 522).
[ back ] 62. Aristotle Politics 1341a. 39–41 ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ πολλὰ τῶν ὀργάνων τῶν ἀρχαίων, οἷον πηκτίδες καὶ βάρβιτοι καὶ τὰ πρὸς ἡδονὴν συντείνοντα τοῖς ἀκούουσι τῶν χρωμένων [ . . . ].
[ back ] 63. I shall return to such representations in the course of this chapter.
[ back ] 64. Note that hydriai are often carried by women in fountain-house scenes depicted on hydriai. On these scenes, see Hannestad 1984, Manfrini-Aragno 1992, Manakidou 1992/1993, and Shapiro 2003.
[ back ] 65. See, for example, the images in Frontisi-Ducroux and Lissarrague 1990:225, and Boardman 1986:49 (no. 24) and 60 (fig. 23).
[ back ] 66. See, e.g., the obverse of a red-figure amphora, attributed to the Berlin Painter, in London, British Museum 266; ARV 198.21, 1633 (Paquette 1984:183, pl. B17); the reverse shows a youth with walking stick and holding out a cup.
[ back ] 67. For another type of lyre (not a barbitos), see a black-figure, white ground alabastron in Leiden, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden I.1956.8.1 (CVA Leiden, Rijksmuseum van Oudheden vol. 2: 68 and pl. 104.4–7) and attributed to the Sappho Painter, which shows a dancing woman with krotala followed by a woman playing a standard bowl lyre, a lyra.
[ back ] 68. Cambridge, Mass., Sackler Museum 1960.354. The vase-painting is unattributed. I hold that it should be related to the red-figure oinochoe Oxford, Ashmolean Museum 1927.66 (ARV 815.4 and 1583), attributed to the Painter of Philadelphia 2449, a follower of Makron, and dated to about 470 BC. The image on this oinochoe/mug shows a woman walking with a red flower in her left hand: the vase-inscription καλος hικετες provides a kalos-name (on Hiketes as a kalos-name, see Beazley 1963:vol. 2, 1583–1584).
[ back ] 69. Note that, like the Sappho on the hydria in Warsaw, the female figure on the oinochoe wears earrings; Sappho is also shown wearing a necklace.
[ back ] 70. Munich, Antikensammlungen 2416; ARV 385.228, 1573, and 1649; Add. 228. It was found in Agrigento, Sicily. The shape of the vase is kalathoid and has a spout at the bottom.
[ back ] 71. Robertson 1992:100 and 118. I agree with Robertson’s reservations and attribution.
[ back ] 72. Drawing faces in three-quarter view is avoided by the Brygos Painter; see Robertson 1992:100. For a discussion of preliminary sketches on early-fifth century Attic red-figure vase-paintings and on this particular kalathos-psykter, see Boss 1997 (especially 350 and fig. 14).
[ back ] 73. The five small circles come out of his mouth in two groups: OOO OO.
[ back ] 74. On kalathoi, see Williams 1961.
[ back ] 75. A few examples illustrate my point. First, a number of archaeological publications refer to it as a kalathos. For Schefold (1997:84) it is a “Mischgefäss (Kalathos).” Robertson (1990:100 and 118) calls it a cylindrical wine-cooler. Webster 1972:60 notes that “the shape is modelled on a woman’s workbasket.” Bell 1995:28 is critical of the identification of the vase as a wine vessel but provides further (wild) speculations. Simon (1981:113) describes it as a “kalathosförmiger krater.” According to Boardman (1975:135), it is a big kalathoid jar with a spout (but cf. Boardman 2001:250 and 253). In Beazley (1963:vol. 1, 385) it is listed as a kalathoid vase with spout. Bell’s article (1995) proposes a highly hypothetical scenario with regard to this vase: according to Bell, Pindar commissioned the vase to Brygos or someone near him, asked him “to add a spout at the base, because the krater would be used for honey and not for wine” (Bell 1995:25) and sent it along with his Isthmian 2 to Akragas.
[ back ] 76. This feature might perhaps render some kind of eroticized dimension to the representation of Alkaios. The transparency of the upper part of Sappho’s chiton could possibly reflect certain discursive idioms about her East Greek identity.
[ back ] 77. Literary critics would wish to draw analogies between the two sides of the vase and to read Sappho as being closely associated with a maenadic figure and Alkaios with Dionysos himself. In numerous cases of Attic vases, representations on the two sides are indirectly associated when the viewer looks at both sides. Here, I believe, the possible associations are related to the broader realm of the symposion and its god, Dionysos. As I have noted, the barbitos of the two poets are juxtaposed to the kantharos and oinochoe that Dionysos and his female companion hold. Suggesting that there is a kind of narrative between the two sides corresponds to arguing that while Dionysos’ female companion has her face directed toward him, Sappho turns her body away from Alkaios. Such an idea, based on a considerably marked adherence to the painter’s “intentionality,” would lead to further hypotheses, which cannot be easily substantiated if viewed in the context of other similarly symmetric representations on the two sides of Attic vases. The figure of Dionysos, as in other cases, is a metonymic reference to sympotic and komastic contexts and discourses. The image on the reverse potentially, but not certainly, places “Alkaios and Sappho” in the Dionysiac space of the symposion and kômos.
[ back ] 78. See, e.g., Picard 1948:338–344, Webster 1972:60, Schefold 1997:84.
[ back ] 79. Sappho fr. 137 V.
[ back ] 80. The last sentence in the ancient text is corrupt. It is noteworthy that in a letter of 25 July 1907 to his wife, Rainer Maria Rilke made the same connection between the Munich kalathoid vase and Sappho fr. 137 V: “Alcaeus was a poet, who on an antique vase stands before Sappho with head lowered and lyre in hand, and one knows that he has said to her: ‘Weaver of darkness, Sappho, you pure one with the honey-sweet smile, words throng to my lips, but shame holds me back’ ” (Rilke 1984:15, with E. Snow’s editorial note). Should one wish to hear how the conversation continued, one might look at Sappho an Alkaïos: Fragment, a seemingly fragmentary poem by Rilke, in which he picks up where “Sappho” leaves off: “And what anyway could you have said to me, / and what concern has my soul for you, / if your eyes lower themselves timidly / when the not-said comes near? Man, / look, the saying of these things has / transported us, and even into fame. / When I think: beneath you our sweet / maidenhood would wretchedly perish, / which we, I who know and those who / know along with me, guarded by the god, / bore untouched, so that Mytilene / like an apple orchard in the night / grew fragrant with the swelling of our breasts. / Yes, these breasts too, which you did not select / as one intent on twining wreaths of fruit, / you suitor with the drooping face. / Go, leave me, that to my lyre may come / what you keep back: everything stands poised. / This god is no assistance to a pair, / but when he surges through the one / . . . ” (Rilke 1984:14–15). Note that the German poem draws on the image of the Munich kalathoid vase, and the song that Rilke quotes in his letter is a conflation of (a version of) Alkaios fr. 384 V and Sappho fr. 137 V. For a discussion of Lawrence Alma Tadema’s Sappho and Alcaeus (Walters Art Museum, Baltimore) and Theophilos’ The poetess of Lesbos Sappho and the kitharodos Alkaios (Ἡ ποιήτρια τῆς Λέσβου Σαπφὼ καὶ ὁ κιθαρῳδὸς Ἀλκαῖος, Tériade Museum, Varia, Lesbos), cf. Yatromanolakis 2003b.
[ back ] 81. “Concentration” to his singing can be an alternative idea; cf. Snyder 1997a:116.
[ back ] 82. The Warsaw hydria, the Munich vase, and the Athens hydria, which is examined below in this chapter.
[ back ] 83. Snyder 1997a:114 and 115. Snyder confines herself to a general description of the vase-paintings, neglecting the reverse sides of the Munich kalathoid vase and the Bochum kalyx-krater, and draws parallels between the construction of gender in these four vases and “the conclusions drawn in a modern analysis of images of men and women in both art and advertising to the effect that ‘men act and women appear’ ” (1997a:114).
[ back ] 84. Snyder 1997a:114 and 116.
[ back ] 85. This is the standard position of the fingers of barbitos-players on the strings of their long-armed lyres in vase-paintings; for the representation of the fingers of the left hand of barbitos-players, cf. also Maas and Snyder 1989:122 “fingers straight and usually separated.”
[ back ] 86. See, for example, a red-figure pelike, dated to c. 490 BC, in Florence, Museo Archeologico Etrusco 76895; ARV 280.17 (Peschel 1987:pl. 145); cf. London, British Museum E266; ARV 198.21, 1633 (Paquette 1984:183, pl. B17); Hamburg, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe 1893.100; ARV 309.9, 1644 (Hoffmann and Hewicker 1961:22, nos. 66–67); Munich, Antikensammlungen 2311; ARV 197.9, 1633 (Dover 1989:R329).
[ back ] 87. Snyder 1997a:114 oddly thinks that Anakreon, like such mythical singers as Orpheus, is shown singing. The cases of lyre-players and singers depicted along with poetic lines or just sounds coming out of their mouths are remarkably few, compared to the vast number of opposite cases.
[ back ] 88. I do not agree with Webster’s hypothesis that because of its kalathoid shape, the vase was intended as a present by Damas (ΔΑΜΑ[Σ] ΚΑΛΟΣ) to a woman, since kalathoi were women’s work baskets (Webster 1972:60; note that Webster calls the vase a “wine-container” and attempts to associate the “poetic dialogue” between “Alkaios” and “Sappho” allegedly portrayed on it with a speculative scenario, according to which “in ordering this vase for his girl, Damas was surely making an apology for a too fervid approach as well as urging his suit”). According to Robertson 1992:100, this vase is double-walled, but I have not been able to verify this. It certainly has a spout at the bottom. For another general hypothesis that connects (without evidentiary substantiation) the image of the two poets (side A) with an agôn at a festival of Dionysos (side B), see Simon 1981:114. For discussion of a modern artistic attempt to imagine an ancient poetic contest between Sappho and Alkaios, cf. Yatromanolakis 2006a.
[ back ] 89. Symposiaka 629d.
[ back ] 90. Symposiaka 622c.
[ back ] 91. These lines from Euripides’ Stheneboia were particularly popular and widely quoted (starting with Aristophanes Wasps 1074 and Plato Symposion 196e) in antiquity; see the sources collected in Euripides fr. 663 TrGF (with Kannicht’s apparatus) and Teodorsson 1989/1996:vol. 1, 107.
[ back ] 92. For the meaning of παρὰ Σοσσίῳ, cf, e.g., Symposiaka 612e, 635e, and 645d. For Ploutarkhos’ Roman friend Sossius Senecio, see RE s.v. “Plutarchos,” cols. 688–689 (K. Ziegler) and “Sossius,” cols. 1180–1193; cf. the entry “Sosius Senecio, Quintus” in Oxford Classical Dictionary (third revised ed., Oxford 2003), 1427.
[ back ] 93. In other treatises, Ploutarkhos refers to a number of Sappho’s songs related to erôs: see, for example, Erôtikos 762f–763a; cf. Teodorsson 1989/1996:vol. 1, 108. Concerning the problêma discussed here by Ploutarkhos, it is worth observing that Sappho had composed a poem about a woman who did not share the roses of Pieria; see Sappho fr. 55 V and Yatromanolakis 2006b; cf. fr. adesp. 1001 PMG.
[ back ] 94. Even if one assumes that Ploutarkhos’ reference to a performance of songs of Sappho reflects an archaizing practice, this idea does not entail that, based on Ploutarkhos, one can take for granted that such a practice goes back to the archaic period or the fifth century BC (why not the fourth century?).
[ back ] 95. Symposiaka 711a–713f: eighth question.
[ back ] 96. See Symposiaka 710b περὶ ἀκροαμάτων ἐν Χαιρωνείᾳ λόγοι παρὰ πότον ἐγένοντο. The setting of the eighth question of book 7 is the same as that of the seventh question.
[ back ] 97. Note that ἂν ᾀδομένης is an emendation of the transmitted ἀναδεχομένης. In his critical edition, Hubert (1938:245) prints this emendation. Given the occurrence of Σαπφικῶν τινων ᾀσθέντων in Symposiaka 622c, ἂν ᾀδομένης is certainly the safest and best restoration of the problematic ἀναδεχομένης.
[ back ] 98. It is only a hypothesis that such references can attest to the performance of Sappho’s songs in archaic and classical symposia.
[ back ] 99. Attic Nights [Noctes Atticae] 19.9.
[ back ] 100. Attic Nights 19.9.4.
[ back ] 101. Anacreontea 4 is preserved in three versions; see West 1993a:IX and 3–4; cf. Rosenmeyer 1992:2n2.
[ back ] 102. For bilingualism (and biculturalism) in Gellius and other Roman writers, see Swain 2004.
[ back ] 103. Attic Nights 19.9.7.
[ back ] 104. In the same century, Apuleius refers, in the same order, to these three poets (apud nos vero Aedituus et Porcius et Catulus), but, unlike Gellius, he does not quote them (Apologia 9 Helm). In this passage of his Apologia, Apuleius also mentions Anakreon, Sappho, and other archaic lyricists (on Cius in Apologia 9, see Yatromanolakis 2001b:209n6), to defend his writing of amatorios versus. Concerning Sappho (mulier Lesbia), he draws attention to the wantonness of her songs.
[ back ] 105. Attic Nights 19.9.10.
[ back ] 106. Attic Nights 17.11.6 (. . . Plutarchus in libro Symposiacorum; cf. 17.11.1), 3.6.1 (. . . et Plutarchus in octavo Symposiacorum dicit; cf. 3.6.3), and 4.11.13 (. . . Plutarchus in Symposiacis dicit). Gellius also makes other references to Ploutarkhos and starts his first book with Ploutarkhos’ name; Plutarchus is the very first word of his Attic Nights.
[ back ] 107. Symposiaka 622c.
[ back ] 108. Cf. Chapter Three, p. 213 n. 217.
[ back ] 109. For the two versions of this passage, see Aelian Historical Miscellany 7.7a and 7.7b in Dilts’s edition (1974:88).
[ back ] 110. Historical Miscellany 5.7, 8.16. Note that one of these passages (Historical Miscellany 8.16) is about Solon, “the son of Exekestides,” in his old age. References to Solon’s legislation and political action include Historical Miscellany 3.17, 7.19, and 8.10.
[ back ] 111. Eight of the fragments of Aelian (frs. 1–8 Domingo-Forasté = frs. 1–8 Hercher) are attributed to the Historical Miscellany (see Domingo-Forasté 1994:18–20). These eight fragments, along with the fragment that concerns us here (fr. 190 Domingo-Forasté = 187 Hercher), have been included by Nigel Wilson in his Loeb edition of Aelian’s Historical Miscellany (Wilson 1997:492–497; cf. Wilson 1997:23, who argues that “if such ascriptions are correct, it would appear to follow that the original text extended beyond 14.48 [i.e., the end of the Historical Miscellany] or that in the process of epitomisation some chapters were completely omitted”). For the process of “epitomization” or “abbreviation,” see Wilson’s concise discussion (1997:13–14 and 18).
[ back ] 112. D.-F. will hereby refer to Domingo-Forasté’s 1994 edition. Aelian fr. 190 D.-F. was fr. 187 in Hercher’s older critical edition.
[ back ] 113. From Mure 1854:273, to Robinson 1924:23 and 104, to Schefold 1997:24 and 74; cf. Nagy 1996:219. These scholars do not take into account, nor do they explore, the synchronic contexts of the late archaic and fifth-century reception of Sappho. More recently, for Lidov 2002:228 this late source can be juxtaposed with early images (themselves undifferentiated and blurred in Lidov) to confirm the sympotic reception of Sappho’s songs in general and presumambly in all historical periods. By accumulating and putting the allegedly relevant “evidence” together, without attempting to investigate the cultural grammar of late sources, such approaches often construct “generalizing” and “diachronic” images of Sappho that contradict synchronic perspectives. Herington (1985:35–36) is more skeptical.
[ back ] 114. Ammianus Marcellinus 28.4.14–15 Seyfarth.
[ back ] 115. See Cicero On Old Age [Cato Maior de senectute] 26 (cf. Plato Euthydêmos 272c), Valerius Maximus Memorable Deeds and Sayings 8.7.ext.8, and cf. Valerius Maximus 8.7.ext.14.
[ back ] 116. See e.g. the story in Valerius Maximus’ Memorable Deeds and Sayings 8.7.ext.14.
[ back ] 117. Attic Nights 19.9.3 . . . scitissimos utriusque sexus.
[ back ] 118. Inv. S 508. I examined the vase with the permission of Dr. Cornelia Weber-Lehmann, Curator at the Kunstsammlungen. Dr. Weber-Lehmann informed me that the vase was donated to the Ruhr-Universität Bochum in 1972 from the private collection of Julius C. and Margot Funcke. For this collection, see Kunisch 1972 and 1980.
[ back ] 119. Snyder 1997a:109; similarly in Snyder 1998:166.
[ back ] 120. See Yatromanolakis 2001a. For the narrative connection of the different sides of vase-paintings, but mainly in mythological scenes, see Morgenthau 1886, Froning 1988, and Stansbury-O’Donnell 1999. Cf. Sourvinou-Inwood 1991:80–82.
[ back ] 121. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 26. 61; ARV 383.199; Add. 228; Panvini and Giudice 2003:314, G52. On reactions of spectators in musical scenes on vase-paintings, see Seebass 1991.
[ back ] 122. Hamburg, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe 1981.173; Schauenburg 1975:pl. 25.1–3.
[ back ] 123. On this oinochoe, see, among other discussions, Schauenburg 1975, Dover 1989:105, Davidson 1997:170–171, 180–182, Miller 1997:13, McNiven 2000:88–89. More recent analysis in Smith 1999 and, especially, Wannagat 2001 (with earlier bibliography).
[ back ] 124. Stamnos fragments: Munich, Antikensammlungen SL480; ARV 310.20. Apart from the Bochum kalyx–krater, the second kalyx–krater attributed to him is New York, Market, Sotheby’s (Sotheby-Parke-Bernet, New York, sale catalogue 12 June 2001:52, no. 59; information in the Beazley Archive Database [www.beazley.ox.ac.uk], no. 24504).
[ back ] 125. Berlin, Antikensammlung F 2328; ARV 309.3.
[ back ] 126. Paris, Louvre G 213; ARV 309.4; CVA Paris, Louvre 6, III.Ic. 31, pl. 40.1–2, 6, and 8.
[ back ] 127. Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale H 3182; ARV 309.5; Add. 213; Patrucco 1972:179, fig. 88 (side A).
[ back ] 128. Hamburg, Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe 1893.100; ARV 309.9, 1644; Hoffmann and Hewicker 1961: 22, nos. 66–67.
[ back ] 129. This painter seems to have been fond of depicting figures playing a stringed instrument: apart from the vases already mentioned, see the red-figure lekythos Hillsborough (California), W. R. Hearst Collection 17 (ARV 310.18 youth with chelys lyre), the red-figure lekythos Khania, Archaeological Museum 2 (ARV 310.1, 1644 draped man with kithara), and the red-figure fragment Adria, Museo Archeologico Nazionale B 622 (ARV 310.2 youth with lyre and Eros).
[ back ] 130. Florence, Museo Archeologico Etrusco 4011; ARV 309.8; CVA Firenze, Regio Museo Archeologico 2, III.I.32, pls. 25.3 and 28.2–3.
[ back ] 131. Beazley 1963:vol. 1, 309.
[ back ] 132. Robertson 1992:130.
[ back ] 133. This scheme of decoration is not confined to the Berlin Painter. The Kleophrades Painter and other contemporary painters used it, but the Berlin Painter was particularly attracted to this scheme, certainly more than others.
[ back ] 134. Paris, Louvre G175; ARV 206.124, 1633; Add. 193 (Dover 1989:R348).
[ back ] 135. Basel, Antikenmuseum und Sammlung Ludwig BS 456; ARV 1634.1 bis; Add. 190 (Kurtz 1989:pls. 46–47). Cf. the Panathenaic-type amphora Würzburg, Martin von Wagner Museum 500; ARV 197.8, 1633; Add. 190 (Kurtz 1989:pl. 40), and the pelike Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum 3726; ARV 205.113; Add. 193 (Kurtz 1983:51b–c).
[ back ] 136. New York, Metropolitan Museum 56.171.38; ARV 197.3, 1633; Add. 190 (Kurtz 1989:pl. 42). Beazley (1922:72–73) suggested that the bearded man might be an instructor who “seems to be beating time to music.”
[ back ] 137. Boulogne, Musée Communal 656; ARV 200.48 (Beazley 1974b:pl. 16).
[ back ] 138. London, British Museum E296; ARV 309.6, 1574; CVA London, British Museum 5, III.Ic.5, pl. 50.3a–b. For a similar, but elliptical, representation, see Shapiro 1992:66–67 and fig. 3.7.
[ back ] 139. Frankfurt, Museum für Vor- und Frühgeschichte B409; ARV 202.82; Add. 192; CVA Frankfurt am Main 2, 27, pls. 69.3–4, 71.3–4.
[ back ] 140. Munich, Antikensammlungen 2311; ARV 197.9, 1633; Add. 190 (Vierneisel and Kaeser 1990:338, 414, figs. 70.11, 74.7a–b).
[ back ] 141. E.g., London, British Museum E266; ARV 198.21, 1633; Add. 191 (CVA London, British Museum 3, III.Ic.5, pls. 8.3a–b, 12.1a–b) and Madrid, Museo Arqueológico Nacional 11200; ARV 204.112; Add. 193 (Kurtz 1983:pls. 19 and 51a). Cf. Munich, Antikensammlungen 2319; ARV 198.22, 1633; Add. 191 (CVA Munich, Museum Antiker Kleinkunst 5, 8, pl. 210.3–4).
[ back ] 142. Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale RC163; ARV 198.18; Add. 191 (LIMC III, pl. 908); and Copenhagen, Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek 2701; ARV 211.196; CVA Copenhagen, Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek 1, 57–58, pl. 37.1–4.
[ back ] 143. On word and image, among the most incisive discussions are Barthes 1977b, Alpers 1984:169–192, Butor 1969, Gombrich 1985, Pozzi 1981, Fisher 1986, Christin 1995.
[ back ] 144. For a provocative and penetrating exploration of Magritte’s painting of a pipe, across which lettering provides the words “This is not a pipe,” see Foucault 1983.
[ back ] 145. Freud 1965:347.
[ back ] 146. Topica 6.2.140a.21–22. Note that much later, Aelian (Historical Miscellany 10.10) will offer an ironic view about the use of inscriptions on early paintings.
[ back ] 147. On vase inscriptions, see Kretschmer 1894, Beazley 1932, Ferri 1938, Burzachechi 1962, Moret 1979, Cohen 1991, and the books by Immerwahr 1990 and Wachter 2001, where a large number of vase-inscriptions are collected and discussed. Cf. also Detienne 1988:537–538 and Bérard et al. 2000:184. For the interplay of image and text in early Greek art, see Hurwitt 1990; Kauffmann-Samara 1982; Lissarrague 1985, 1992a, and 1994; and, more recently and from a different perspective, Snodgrass 2000.
[ back ] 148. In the case of Exekias, Sophilos, and Nearkhos, there are vases on which they sign as potter and painter at the same time: Sophilos in Athens, National Archaeological Museum 15499 (ABV 39–40.16; according to Beazley); Nearkhos in Athens, Akropolis 611 (ABV 82.1); Exekias in Berlin, Staatliche Museen 1720 (ABV 143–144.1). For Exekias’ inscriptions, see Rebillard 1991. For a thought-provoking discussion of Sophilos’ inscriptions, see Kilmer and Develin 2001. For Douris’ literacy, see Guy 1987. On signature inscriptions, see also Williams 1995. For owners’ inscriptions, see Steinhart 2003.
[ back ] 149. For sympotic inscriptions, see Immerwahr 1990:48 and passim, and Vierneisel and Kaeser 1990:90–95 and passim. On a cup in Brussels (R260; ARV 97.10 and 103.4; here a standing youth is masturbating in front of a bell-krater and semen comes out of his penis while the exclamation “I greet” encircles him) and on another cup in the Louvre (G82; ARV 98.18 and 103.6; two youths holding a cup and a barbitos, respectively, in komastic mood), we see the verb προσαγορεύω inscribed; for other cases of προσαγορεύω, see Beazley 1963:97–104. On Munich 2307 (ARV 26.1, 1620), we read the playful comment—as if in a capping game—hος ουδεποτε Ευφρονιος (“as never Euphronios”), Euphronios here probably being the well-known painter.
[ back ] 150. For New York 10.210.18; ARV 54.7, a red-figure psykter, and its inscriptions πομε (“drink me,” according to Beazley) and perhaps χασκ̣ο̣ (“I open my mouth wide”), see Immerwahr 1990:61, no. 342; note that χασκ̣ο̣ is not certain (Immerwahr 1990:61, n. 16). For χαῖρε καὶ πρίου ἐμέ on Little Master cups, see Immerwahr 1990:48.
[ back ] 151. For tag inscriptions, one may just point to the François Vase, where 130 inscriptions of names, even names of animals and objects such as the dogs in the Calydonian boar hunt and a fountain house and an altar, can be found (see Wachter 1991). Another, though less remarkable case, is an amphora by Exekias in the Vatican (344; ABV 145.13, 672.3, 686), which combines diverse kinds of vase inscriptions: ΑΧΙΛΕΟΣ and ΑΙΑΝΤΟΣ (sc., eikôn) are its tag inscriptions, while a kalos inscription, Exekias’ signature as “potter,” and ‘bubble’ inscriptions also occur. For ton Athenethen athlon (“one of the prizes from Athens”) captions, see, recently, Hannah 2001. Even a lyra is labelled on a black-figure cup with numerous inscriptions (Munich, Antikensammlungen 2243; ABV 160.2 and 163.2).
[ back ] 152. For kalos-inscriptions, see, among other studies, Lissarrague 1999 and Slater 1999. Kilmer 1993a provides a most interesting discussion of tag-kalos inscriptions. See also Boardman 1992, Shapiro 1983a and 1987. Cf. Frel 1996. For numerous cases of kalos-inscriptions, see Immerwahr 1990 and Wachter 2001. Immerwahr calls the tag-kalos inscriptions “caption-kalos.”
[ back ] 153. See Kilmer 1993a.
[ back ] 154. Cf. p. 104 n. 176 below.
[ back ] 155. See Immerwahr 1990:43–44 and 54–55: “Not all of them are meaningless: …they can be classified as mock and near-sense inscriptions, meaningless inscriptions, imitation inscriptions or letters, and blots or dots” (44).
[ back ] 156. For examples, see Immerwahr 1990:35, 54. Cf. also Beazley 1932.
[ back ] 157. Brussels, Musées Royaux R 385A (black-figure lip cup dated to the third quarter of the sixth century); Baurain-Rebillard 1998 [2002]:fig. 4.
[ back ] 158. On a black-figure pelike in Rome, Vatican 413 (not in ABV; Albizzati 1925/1939:183, pl. 61.413), we see a trade scene between men on both sides: ο ζευ πατερ αιθε πλουσιος γεν<οιμαν?> (“o Zeus, would that I might get rich”) is written next to one of the figures and across the field on the obverse, while one of the male figures on the reverse exclaims: εδε μεν εδε πλεο<ν> παραβεβακεν (“it’s full; it’s already spilling over”). Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 1970. 233; ARV 444.241, a cup attributed to Douris, on which a sexual scene between a man and a woman is depicted, provides an erotic “bubble” inscription: “the girl is beautiful” is written on the cup, and the man who penetrates the woman says: “keep still” (hεχε hεσυχος). An inscription on the shoulder of a non-representational oinochoe in Munich (Antikensammlungen 2447; ABV 425, 666, 670, 671) reminds one of Platonic dialogic patterns: ΚΑΛΟΣ ΝΙΚΟΛΑ. ΔΟΡΟΘΕΟΣ ΚΑΛΟΣ “says” the first implied speaker; a second “speaker” replies: ΚΑΜΟΙ ΔΟΚΕΙ, ΝΑΙ; and the conversation continues: ΘΑΤΕΡΟΣ ΠΑΙΣ ΚΑΛΟΣ, ΜΕΜΝΟΝ ΚΑΜΟΙ ΚΑΛΟΣ ΦΙΛΟΣ (see Immerwahr 1990:75, no. 438, where he prints ΝΙΚΟΛΑ<Σ> instead of ΝΙΚΟΛΑ in the “first” phrase of the dialogue).
[ back ] 159. St. Petersburg, Hermitage 615; ARV 1594.48; Add. 389 (obverse).
[ back ] 160. For poetic inscriptions, see Hartwig 1893:255–258, Kretschmer 1894:90–93, Herzog 1912:17–21, Jacobsthal 1912:61–63, Herington 1985:195–198, Lissarrague 1990:123–135, and Csapo and Miller 1991. Cf. also Sifakis 1967, Ohly-Dumm 1985, Green and Handley 2001 (cf. Millis 2001). For poetic lines in book rolls often held by youths or women, see Beazley 1948 and Immerwahr 1964.
[ back ] 161. Erlangen, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität 454; ARV 339.49; Add. 218. For alternative supplements, cf. Lissarrague 1990:134 and Csapo and Miller 1991:381. On such “lyric” inscriptions, see Yatromanolakis 2001a:165–166.
[ back ] 162. Munich 8935; ARV 1619.3 bis and 1705; Add. 152. See Vermeule 1965 (Page, SLG fr. S317). Note that gamma after ΣΕ is uncertain (Τ seems to be possible; Page SLG fr. S317 does not dot this letter: ὤπολλον, σέ γε καὶ μάκαι[). Cf. Paris, Cabinet des Médailles 546 (ARV 372, 26; Add. 225), a fragmentary cup on which a symposiast sings the retrograde inscription ΟΠΟΛΟΝ (see Beazley 1953:74–76).
[ back ] 163. Cf. Copenhagen, National Museum 13365; ARV 185.32; Add. 187 (a fragmentary kalyx-krater), on which we read in front of the mouth of a komast ΙΟΟΟ (see Immerwahr 1965).
[ back ] 164. For the black-figure epinetron Eleusis, Archaeological Museum 907 (Haspels 1936:228.54, pl. 34; attributed to the Sappho Painter and dated to c. 500 BC), which has been seen as providing traces of an early system of solmization in Greek antiquity, that is, earlier than the one described by Aristeides Quintilianos (De musica 2.13–14 Winnington-Ingram), see Bélis 1984. I would be reluctant to accept that the sounds represented in the inscription necessarily reflect a solmization system. See, further, Margherita Albertoni’s discussion of the painted inscription ΝΕΤΕΝΑΡΕΝΕΤ̣ΕΝΕΤΟ on an Attic red-figure neck-amphora by Smikros (Σμικρος εγραφσεν), dated to the last quarter of the sixth century (Berlin, Antikensammlung 1966.19; Para. 323.3bis; Add. 154; Greifenhagen 1967:figs. 7–11)—an inscription interpreted by her as νήτην Ἄρει, νήτην ἕτω (“la nete per Ares, la nete emetta;” Albertoni 1977; cf. Greifenhagen 1967 for the repetition of νήτη). This string of letters appears near the ends of the reed pipes that a satyr plays, while, above his head, Τερπαυλος represents his name. More recently, see Polyxeni Adam Veleni’s articles on an inscription from Brasna, Thessalonike (Adam Veleni 1999 and 2002).
[ back ] 165. Yatromanolakis 2001a:165–166.
[ back ] 166. Cf. Cook 1987:50 and Hurwit 1990:185.
[ back ] 167. I would draw attention to Erlangen, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität 454; ARV 339.49; Add. 218, which is an exception to the consistency of this pattern, although in this red-figure cup (on the tondo), the inscription does come out of the mouth of the youth who walks forward holding a barbitos and a drinking-cup and has his head tilted up (incidentally marked as hο παις καλος with an inscription to his right, behind him), but it runs from his feet all the way to his open mouth.
[ back ] 168. The second phi in the name ΦΣΑΦΟ has been given an extra crossbar by mistake.
[ back ] 169. The ΣΑΦΟ on this vase has been explained as possibly representing ΣΑΦ<Φ>Ο (Threatte 1980:542).
[ back ] 170. See Wroth 1964:200 (Mytilene) and Head 1911:560 (Eressos) and 562 (Mytilene). Cf. the new epitaphs (I.Lipara) in SEG 51.1202–1372, especially SEG 51.1247 and 1248 (I.Lipara 273 and 274, stelai ‘antiquiores,’ c. fourth/third century BC), where Σαφφῶς (Epitaph of Saphpho) occurs.
[ back ] 171. Threatte 1980:542.
[ back ] 172. For repetition in Attic vase-painting, see Steiner 1993 and 1997.
[ back ] 173. The pose of Sappho is comparable to that of a youth with a barbitos on the reverse of a pelike attributed to the Berlin Painter (Madrid, Museo Arqueológico Nacional 11200; ARV 204.112; Add. 193 [Kurtz 1983:pls. 19 and 51a]). For the influence of the Berlin Painter on the Tithonos Painter, see above. Note that the female figure on the reverse of the Bochum kalyx-krater is walking. The position of Sappho’s right foot is very similar to the overall posture of male and female singers often displayed on Attic vases.
[ back ] 174. For contextualization cues with respect to archaic melic poetry, see Chapter Three and Yatromanolakis 2003a.
[ back ] 175. Snodgrass 2000:24. For discussions of the kalos-inscriptions, see n. 152 above.
[ back ] 176. Henry Immerwahr (pers. comm.) counts 44 examples under the heading hε παις καλε in his magisterial collection of vase inscriptions. He informs me that some of them may need to be vetted and eliminated, given that archaeological catalogues of vases do not always provide full descriptions of inscriptions.
[ back ] 177. On some kale-inscriptions in the context of courtesans, see Frel 1996; also Robinson and Fluck 1937 and Frontisi-Ducroux’s brief essay (1998 [2002]).
[ back ] 178. ARV 384, 214; Add. 228.
[ back ] 179. Truitt 1969:78. Photograph in Truitt 1969:82, fig. 10.
[ back ] 180. Ferrari 2002.
[ back ] 181. Paralipomena 361 (Cannes, private collection). Photograph in Apollo (London) July 1963:59, fig. 2.
[ back ] 182. Florence 10 B 106 (dated to the first quarter of the fifth century) and Heidelberg 55; ARV 326. 91; 1645. Image of the outside surface of Florence 10 B 106 in Beazley 1933:pl. Y 15 (discussion of the different parts of this fragmentary vase, on p. 17, plate 10, no. 106). Image of the interior of Florence 10 B 106 in Beazley 1961:fig. 26, 3.
[ back ] 183. On the interior of the cup, we see a middle-aged reveller being led by a naked girl. The inscription on the wineskin on side A is not mentioned by Beazley (see n. 182 above), but Henry Immerwahr drew my attention to it (per litt.).
[ back ] 184. St. Petersburg B 1535; ARV 626, 107; Para. 513. Image in Peredolskaya 1967:plate 124 (inscriptions plate 177, 14 and 16).
[ back ] 185. On side A, in center, a woman is looking right and playing with a ball; at her right, there is a column; on each side there is a youth holding a stick. On side B, we see a seated youth looking right and wearing a sakkos, a woman to right, holding a mirror, and a bearded man looking left.
[ back ] 186. Vienna, University 502; ARV 377.109. Image in Philippart 1933:158, fig. 3.
[ back ] 187. It should perhaps be pointed out that even if the inscription on the reverse was taken as a “conventional” he pais kale inscription, its juxtaposition with the image of Sappho on the obverse would have triggered off the associations explored here.
[ back ] 188. Ferrari 2002:72–82. “It is most frequent in scenes painted on the ‘backs’ of vases, normally column kraters, showing standing figures, generally three, of which at least one is often wrapped in the mantle” (p. 72). See also Keith DeVries’s similar observation (from his unpublished book draft Homosexuality and the Athenian Democracy, quoted in Rabinowitz 2002:158, n. 64).
[ back ] 189. Copenhagen, Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek 2701; ARV 211.196; CVA Copenhagen, Ny Carlsberg Glyptothek 1, 57–58, pl. 37.1–4. The aulos bag on the Bochum kalyx-krater does not have the details of other depictions, but aulos bags are almost identically drawn on a number of vases.
[ back ] 190. Some of them appear on the so-called “Anakreontic” vases: see Munich, Antikensammlungen 2647; ARV 438.132, 1653; Add. 239 (Buitron-Oliver 1995:pl. 99, no. 177), and Paris, Louvre G 286; ARV 443.229; Add. 240 (Buitron-Oliver 1995:pl. 93, no. 157). For aulos bags in symposiastic contexts on his cups, see Paris, Louvre G 127 (+Cp 11962); ARV 427.1, 1569; Add. 235 (Buitron-Oliver 1995:pl. 1, no. 1), Vatican, Museo Gregoriano Etrusco 16561; ARV 427.2; Add. 235 (Buitron-Oliver 1995:pl. 5, no. 8), Berlin, Antikensammlung F 3255; ARV 428.12 (Buitron-Oliver 1995: pl. 15, no. 24), Paris, Cabinet des Médailles 540; ARV 435.93 (Buitron-Oliver 1995: pl. 81, no. 139 interior), Munich, Antikensammlungen 2646; ARV 437.128, 1653; Add. 239 (Buitron-Oliver 1995:pl. 96, no. 173 interior), Athens, Agora Museum P 10271; ARV 442.213; Para. 375 (pl. 6, no. 10), and the kantharos Athens, National Archaeological Museum 205302; ARV 445.255 (Buitron-Oliver 1995:pl. 4, no. 7). An aulos bag can also hang from the arm of an aulos-player in komastic context or from the walking stick of a komast. See also Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale RC163; ARV 198.18; Add. 191 (LIMC III, pl. 908), a Panathenaic-type amphora attributed to the Berlin Painter, on the obverse side of which a winged Eros holds a lyre in his left hand and an aulos bag in his right hand.
[ back ] 191. Eupolis fr. 148 K-A, Platon Komikos fr. 71. 14 K-A. Here the references are to trigônon, one kind of harp. Harps are most often shown in the hands of women in Attic vase-paintings. According to Menaikhmos (c. 300 BC), Sappho was the inventor of the pêktis (in Athenaios 14. 635b: Μέναιχμος δ᾽ ἐν τοῖς περὶ τεχνιτῶν τὴν πηκτίδα, ἣν τὴν αὐτὴν εἶναι τῇ μαγάδιδι, Σαπφώ φησιν εὑρεῖν. On harps in art of the classical period, cf. Maas and Snyder 1989:147–155, 181–184; however, Maas and Snyder (1989:154) oddly remark that “there is no first inventor reported in the literature, as there is for many instruments (though a woman, Sappho, was proposed in Hellenistic times as the first player).”
[ back ] 192. Sappho frs. 22.11 V., 156.1 V. Cf. the supplemented π]άκτιδι in Alkaios fr. 36.5 V.
[ back ] 193. On various aspects of this schema, see especially Sourvinou-Inwood 1991:58–98. Note that Sourvinou-Inwood and, more recently, other scholars have focused on marked cases of mythological pursuit, but there are also “milder” instances of “pursuit,” where the “pursuing” figure does not assume an aggressive pose.
[ back ] 194. See the examination of the so-called “Anakreontic” vase-paintings below. I here do not suggest that “Sappho” is, simplistically, a komast.
[ back ] 195. On this phenomenon, see Dover 1989, Foucault 1984, Halperin 1990, De Vries 1997, Shapiro 2000b. On female homoeroticism, Dover 1989:171–184 is interesting but dated in terms of iconography (on which see Koch-Harnack 1989:143–158 and Kilmer 1993b:26–30; cf. Martos Montiel 1996:67–102, Petersen 1997:64–69, Rabinowitz 2002); see also Kroll 1925, Licht 1931:316–328, Hallett 1989 (an insightful study of Roman female homosexuality), Cantarella 1992:78–93, Halperin 2003:722–723, Brooten 1996.
[ back ] 196. See, among other sources, Maximos of Tyros (18. 9 Koniaris), where “practices” espoused by Sokrates and Sappho are compared in detail.
[ back ] 197. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 98.887; ARV 774.1; Add. 287 (Schefold 1997:111, figs. 40–41). There is no inscription to identify the male figure. Although Schefold 1997 supports such identifications, it is certain that they belong to the realm of hypothesis (see my examination above). In the case of this pyxis, both Schefold 1997:110 and Clay 2004:55–56 support tentative identifications.
[ back ] 198. Alkaios appears in conjunction with Sappho on one vase. (Some of) Alkaios’ and Anakreon’s songs are viewed by Aristophanes as kindred in terms of their music: “think of the well-known Ibykos, and Anakreon of Teos, and Alkaios, who all put some spice into music . . . ” (Thesmophoriazousai 161–162).
[ back ] 199. For Anakreon’s longevity, see [Loukianos] Makrobioi 26, but this information may be based on anecdotal traditions about Anakreon. Cf. also Schol. M Aiskhylos Prometheus Bound 128 (= fr. 412 PMG); note, however, that the relevant text has been emended by Weil (ἠρέσθη λίαν τοῖς μέλεσιν αὐτοῦ ὁ τραγικός instead of the transmitted ἠρέσθη [sc. ὁ Ἀνακρέων) λίαν τοῖς μέλεσι τοῦ τραγικοῦ. This would make Anakreon a fan of Aiskhylos’ choruses and music. But even if the transmitted text is correct, the information seems anecdotal. See also Valerius Maximus 9. 12 ext. 8, a reference to Anakreon’s longevity in the context of a story about Anakreon’s death by a grape pip stuck in his throat.
[ back ] 200. Among others, Webster 1971:53–54; Rosenmeyer 1992:22.
[ back ] 201. For Kydias (of Hermione?), see frs. 714–715 PMG. Almost nothing is known about this poet. Sokrates (in Plato Kharmidês 155d) who quotes Kydias fr. 714 PMG, calls him wisest in the matters of love (σοφώτατον . . . τὰ ἐρωτικά); the two lines that Sokrates quotes are from a love song speaking of a beautiful boy (…ἐπὶ καλοῦ λέγων παιδός) The two vases that allegedly depict this Kydias are Munich, Antikensammlungen 2614 and London, British Museum E 767 (for the vase-inscriptions on the red-figure psykter London E 767, see Immerwahr 1990:70).
[ back ] 202. The image on the Syracuse lekythos (see n. 208 below) is close to the “Anakreontic” vases. On these vases, see Papaspyridi-Karouzou 1942/1943 (with earlier references), Beazley 1954:55–61 (with earlier references), Brandenburg 1966:77–81, Kenner 1970:113–116, De Vries 1973, Snyder 1974, Shapiro 1981:138–140, Boardman 1986, Frontisi-Ducroux and Lissarrague 1990 (originally published in 1983), Price 1990, Miller 1992:97–100, Delavaud-Roux 1995, Zanker 1995:24–26, Miller 1999 (with earlier references), Neer 2002:19–23; cf. also Cohen 2001:244–247.
[ back ] 203. Beazley 1954:55–61. Beazley called the subject of the whole series “Anakreon and his boon companions” in the context of a “special komos” (Beazley 1954:57). Cf. Boardman (1975:219 and 222), who follows Beazley with a few adjustments (“transvestite men” 119 and 222, “Anakreon may have introduced this drag performance which remained fashionable for over fifty years” 219, “Anakreontic” 222); see also Boardman 1980:97–98 (“their dress must have seemed almost transvestite to Athenians”). Later, Boardman will modify his views (Boardman 1986).
[ back ] 204. This type of headgear has been identified as mitra by Brandenburg 1966; cf. Boardman 1986:50.
[ back ] 205. Beazley 1954. Beazley admits that the question whether the vases were intended to depict “more generally, revelers of the good old days” is not easy to settle (Beazley 1954:57; he takes the same qualification in Beazley 1974a:16: the images may “represent Anacreon and his boon-companions or old-fashioned revels in the times of the Peisistratids”). Semne Papaspyridi- Karouzou (1942–1943:251), as well as scholars earlier than her and Beazley, similarly thought that non-inscribed images of revelers of this specific type can represent Anakreon.
[ back ] 206. Only rarely do we see symposiasts, instead of komasts, depicted on these vases: Kassel, Hessisches Landesmuseum A Lg 57 (Boardman 1986:47–48, no. 4 and fig. 12). See also, below, the Kleophrades Painter kalyx-krater, Copenhagen, National Museum 13365; ARV 185.32; Add. 187.
[ back ] 207. London, British Museum E 18; ARV 62.86, 1600.20, 1700; Add. 165.
[ back ] 208. Syracuse, Museo Arch. Regionale Paolo Orsi 26967; ARV 36.2, 1621; Add. 158. The lekythos is signed by the potter Gales. Relative dating: c. 500 BC (Beazley 1954:61); c. 510–500 (Boardman 1986:69); c. 500–490 (Richter 1965:77); c. 490 (Schefold 1997:76).
[ back ] 209. Copenhagen, National Museum 13365; ARV 185.32; Add. 187.
[ back ] 210. Could the name be read as “Servant of the Nymphs”? Cf. Schefold 1997:76: “der von Nymphen Begeisterte.” Given the context, there can be no certainty in this hypothesis. On the Nymphs as employed in Anakreon’s songs, see Anakreon frs. 357. 1–4 (Dionysos plays together with Eros, the Nymphs, and Aphrodite) and 448 PMG (Samos, an island on which Anakreon lived for a while as a poet at the court of the tyrant Polykrates, is described as “city of the Nymphs”).
[ back ] 211. The original vase needs to be reexamined (cf. Beazley 1954:61), since, if the figure were bald (cf. Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum 86.AE.296, ARV 837.10, a red-figure cup by the Sabouroff Painter with a representation of bald male figures wearing fillet), that would be an additional semantic detail in the image of Anakreon. However, from the drawing included in Schefold, Anakreon seems to be wearing a fillet and a wreath.
[ back ] 212. See Kanowski (1984:139) for the apparent interchangeability of the names skyphos and kylix in inscriptions on vases.
[ back ] 213. Copenhagen, National Museum 13365; ARV 185.32; Add. 187.
[ back ] 214. Immerwahr (1965) discusses all the inscriptions of the vase and suggests that this specific one may be part of a poem of the Theognidea (1129 ἐμπίομαι· πενίης…). For a different explanation, see Beazley 1974a: 15.
[ back ] 215. Its right-hand side is missing: hence AIΡE[, which does not seem to represent khaire. On this inscription, see Immerwahr 1965:154, who considers the possibility of having khaire written here; cf. Beazley 1974a:15 (“probably for Χαιρε και πιει or the like, the chi perhaps thought of as on the other side of the cup”).
[ back ] 216. The fourth figure, that is, the last one on the far right is dancing: we see one of his feet kicked up behind (cf. Beazley 1954:57).
[ back ] 217. Of the fourth figure on the left, only one of his feet is preserved: see Beazley 1954:57, who discusses this side of the vase.
[ back ] 218. Next to this figure is another figure wearing a long chiton. Beazley (1954:57 and 1974:15), followed by Immerwahr (1965:152), believed that the sigma inscribed next to this male figure is the end of his name (. . . Σ), but this is far from certain, as there are other possibilities (a καλός inscription?).
[ back ] 219. The other arm of the instrument is missing.
[ back ] 220. Boardman 1986:69. Cf. Frontisi-Ducroux and Lissarrague 1990:215, who make the same hypothesis.
[ back ] 221. See Boardman 1986:68n48, where he refers to other cases of vase inscriptions on objects held by, or adjacent to, figures.
[ back ] 222. See Kritias fr. 1 D-K (= PMG 500); Athenaios 4.175d and 4.182f. Cf. Anthologia Palatina 7.24.6 [= ‘Simonides’ 3.6 G-P and ‘Simonides’ 66.6 in Page 1981:287–288] τὴν φιλόπαιδα χέλυν.
[ back ] 223. Frontisi-Ducroux and Lissarrague 1990:215. Boardman’s hypothesis (1986:69) is more flexibly formulated.
[ back ] 224. Pindar fr. 125 M. See above, p. 69.
[ back ] 225. Frontisi-Ducroux and Lissarrague (1990:225n83) oddly refer, for the sake of their argument, to only a few examples of female barbitos-players (and kithara-players), but the cases are not so few. To those they cite add the three out of four vases depicting “Sappho”; see the vase in Boardman 1986:49, no. 39; and cf. Landesmuseum 4.692 (Schefold 1997:74 and 75, fig. 11), Museum für Kunst und Gewerbe 1984.497 (Hornbostel et al. 1977:298, no. 258) and Cambridge, Mass., Sackler Museum 1960.354 (my Fig. 2 above). Cf. the contextually different representation on the Polyxena sarcophagus in Sevinç 1996.
[ back ] 226. Cf. Boardman 1986:65: “The series ends before the middle of the fifth century, and the late examples . . . may even be throwbacks to Archaic behavior rather than portrayals of the contemporary” (my emphasis). For this approach to vase-paintings, see below. Note that the dating is relative. Boardman’s list of forty-six vases is supplemented by Miller (1999:230n27), who adds four vases (partly based on Price 1990:159–161), as well as the mid-fifth century stamnos that she publishes (Miller 1999:223–232). Miller considers a few more possible cases (1999:230n27). Price (1990:159–162; cf. also her n82 on p. 161) had added six vases, one of them being the red-figure lekythos with “Anakreon” by the Gales Painter (Syracuse, Museo Arch. Regionale Paolo Orsi 26967; ARV 36.2, 1621; Add. 158).
[ back ] 227. Boardman 1986:51 and esp. 58; Price 1990:135 and 153–157 (but see the criticism of Delavaud-Roux 1995:248. 255).
[ back ] 228. A red-figure stamnos (Madrid, Museo Arqueológico Nacional 11009) depicts one of the revelers, a barbitos-player, along with a parasol on his back. Cf. red-figure neck-amphora Berlin F 2351 (see Greifenhagen 1976:no. 12, figs. 19–20), on which an elaborately dressed komast carries a barbitos in his right hand and holds a parasol is his left hand.
[ back ] 229. On a red-figure cup (side A, Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum 86.AE.293; Para. 372. 8 bis) by the Briseis Painter, a shorter girl is holding a parasol for a heavily bearded reveler playing krotala; cf. side B of the same cup, where a fragmentary (probably female) figure is holding a parasol next to a bearded reveler.
[ back ] 230. Toledo 64.126, Foundry Painter; Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum 86.AE.293, side A, Briseis Painter.
[ back ] 231. For the case of the Syracuse lekythos, see below.
[ back ] 232. Quotation from Miller 1999:236, describing Frontisi-Ducroux and Lissarrague’s (1990) view.
[ back ] 233. In their discussion, the polyvalent figure of Dionysos has been viewed as a decisive element of the apparent ambiguity and otherness of the revelers. See Frontisi-Ducroux and Lissarrague 1990:229 (“What the men of Athens, as they are represented on their drinking vessels, seem to be searching for in the practice of communal drinking . . . is the chance to become other, to become—just a little bit—woman, Eastern, or barbarian), and 1990:230 (“Dionysos . . . must lie behind the “Anakreontic” kômos, just as he is implicitly present in the kômos, the symposium, and every social and religious activity involving wine”).
[ back ] 234. For an overview of the history of interpretation of these vases, see Miller 1999:232–236.
[ back ] 235. Papaspyridi-Karouzou 1942/1943.
[ back ] 236. For example, Price 1990 has seen in these revelers the figure of the Ionian lyric poet—and not of Anakreon alone—becoming a standard subject of Athenian popular burlesque, an early phase (according to Price) of the genre of comedy before it was formally established in 487/6 BC.
[ back ] 237. Eastern: de Vries 1973 and Boardman 1986 (cf. Boardman 1976:283–284); effeminate: more recently, Miller 1999, who argues that the series depicts aspects of komastic or ritual tranvestism in antiquity.
[ back ] 238. Anakreon fr. 481 PMG is a one-word fragment that provides the word λυδοπαθεῖς, glossed by the textual sources for this fragment (Schol. M Aiskhylos Persians 42; cf. the singular form λυδο-παθής attributed to Anakreon by Athenaios 15.690b–c and Eustathios Iliad 18.291, vol. 4, 180 van der Valk) as ἡδυπαθεῖς (“living in luxurious style”). Given the diverse contexts in which this epithet could have been employed, there can be little certainty as to whether the word is a positively charged or pejorative term. Neer’s rendering “Lydia-mad” is somewhat sensational (Neer 2002:19).
[ back ] 239. More recently, Neer 2002:19–20 (with references to earlier bibliography).
[ back ] 240. In the second half of the fifth century, his reputation in Athens was strong: see Brown 1983:5; cf. Trypanis 1951, Aloni 2000, Ridgway 1998, and Wilson 2003:190–195 (based on an unconvincing reading of the Greek text of Kritias fr. 88, B1 D-K); also Labarbe 1982 on the ancient reception.
[ back ] 241. Ibykos was not from East Greece, but he lived at the court of Polykrates in Samos.
[ back ] 242. Cf. Price 1990 (above, n. 236).
[ back ] 243. Anakreon’s Athenian sojourn may be corroborated by other sources: Aristotle Constitution of the Athenians 18, Aelian Historical Miscellany 8.2. Plato Kharmidês 157e refers to Anakreon’s songs for the noble house of Kritias, the grandfather of the politician and poet Kritias of the second half of the fifth century. Schol. M on Aiskhylos Prometheus Bound 128 (see above, n. 199) refers to Anakreon falling in love with Kritias during his sojourn in Athens, but the information of the scholium seems anecdotal.
[ back ] 244. An exception is the Athens hydria examined below.
[ back ] 245. Telestes fr. 810. 4–5 PMG (= Athenaios 14. 626a). For the date of Telestes, see Marmor Parium Ep. 65 (Jacoby 1904:18), which records a victory of Telestes at Athens in 402/401 BC.
[ back ] 246. Boardman 1986:64. For an excellent study of the parasol in late archaic and classical Athens, see Miller 1992. Miller (1992:100) challenges Boardman’s conclusions that “its appearance in mainland Greece was at first in men’s hands only and in the context of the komos” (Boardman 1986: 65).
[ back ] 247. De Vries 1973 (see however below, n. 250) and Boardman 1986.
[ back ] 248. Herodotos 1.155 κέλευε δέ σφεας κιθῶνάς τε ὑποδύνειν τοῖσι εἵμασι καὶ κοθόρνους ὑποδέεσθαι, πρόειπε δ᾽ αὐτοῖσι κιθαρίζειν τε καὶ ψάλλειν καὶ καπηλεύειν παιδεύειν τοὺς παῖδας.
[ back ] 249. Kroisos continues: καὶ ταχέως σφέας, ὦ βασιλεῦ, γυναῖκας ἀντ᾽ ἀνδρῶν ὄψεαι γεγονότας, ὥστε οὐδὲν δεινοί τοι ἔσονται μὴ ἀποστέωσι. The line between men’s luxurious and elaborate dressing and women’s apparel (unless the latter consisted of the exclusively feminine peplos), was not always easy to draw. But apparently in East Greece wealthy men’s elaborate clothes were not regarded feminine, unless they were too foppish and extravagant or viewed from a culturally marked perspective.
[ back ] 250. De Vries 1973:39. De Vries considers the possibility that the revelers might represent Anakreon and his friends as well as that the figures, alternatively, “are by and large meant to be Lydians, who somehow came into the real or artistic vision of the Attic craftsmen.” For Boardman (1986:65) “the origin of every detail of their dress is found to be male” and “the origins of this special komast behavior must be sought . . . in an East Greek world heavily influenced by the behavior of their eastern neighbors,” the Lydians. In this article, he rejects the idea of private komastic or ritual transvestism (but see his earlier views in n. 203 above). Cf. De Vries 1973:33–34.
[ back ] 251. Cf. Boardman 1986:65 (“infiltration of East Greek habits into Athenian komast life”) and 70 (“Lydopathic license of late Archaic Athenian komasts”). This approach to the dressed komasts is repeated by Kurke 1992:97–98, and, more recently, Neer 2002.
[ back ] 252. For the atomization of ancient and modern commentaries on classical texts, see the interesting discussion in Most 1985:36–37.
[ back ] 253. This approach or similar versions of it (ancient Greek vase-paintings representing either reality or myth) have rightly been criticized by some scholars: e.g., Bažant 1981:13–22.
[ back ] 254. Hippias was turannos of Athens up to 511/510 BC. Hipparkhos, who was murdered a few years earlier, had brought (Aristotle Constitution of Athens 18.1) Anakreon, Simonides, and (Herodotos 7. 6) Lasos of Hermione to Athens.
[ back ] 255. On this aspect of the Peisistratids, cf. Shapiro 1981:138. On the Peisistratids and cultural life in Athens, see Shapiro 1989 and 1995b, Angiolillo 1997, and Slings 2000a.
[ back ] 256. We hear from Herodotos (5.69) that, to his mind, Kleisthenes had a low opinion of the Ionians, and that is why he decided that the Athenians should not have the same names of tribes as the Ionians and he made the necessary changes, when he won the support of the common people of Athens.
[ back ] 257. Oddly, Neer (2002:22) suggests that “it is noteworthy that the ‘Anakreontic’ vases were produced under the Peisistratids and the Kleisthenic democracy—precisely the time at which the luxury-loving elite was at its weakest politically. The pictures seem to be compensating for the failings of political reality.” Price (1990:172) interprets the elaborately dressed revelers as post-Peisistratid parody of the Peisistratid “sympathy towards the luxurious tastes and customs of Ionia.”
[ back ] 258. Although particularly attractive and—from a late-twentieth or early-twenty-first century post-Foucauldian perspective—inevitable, political readings of ancient visual representations can occasionally produce static or even essentializing narratives about the societies in which the images were produced.
[ back ] 259. This view follows closely the interpretations offered by De Vries 1973 and Boardman 1986.
[ back ] 260. Recently, Neer 2002:19–22. The expression “archaeological evidence” comes from Kurke 1992:97 and 98. Kurke 1992:97 (and 1999:200) believes that the vases with elaborately dressed komasts are “sometimes called Anakreontic because the figure of Anakreon is labeled on three of them” (my emphasis). In Kurke 1999:200–201, the so-called “cult of habrosunê” is held to be reflected in scenes of symposia with hetairai and explicit sex scenes (popular on Attic vases between c. 530–470), which, according to Kurke, are related with the ideology of the so-called “Anakreontic” vases (“in two cases, both elements of representation occur on the same vessels” 1999:200 and n66, referring to two lovemaking scenes [discussed and labeled as “Anakreontic” by Sutton 1981:98; cf. Sutton 1981:126 “ ‘Anacreontic’ orgy” and Sutton 1981:131 “ ‘Anacreontic’ symposium”], named so because male participants wear sakkos and/or earrings).
[ back ] 261. This tendency to view visual representations as “tangible” illustrations of reconstructed ideologies of archaic Greek poetic compositions (“vase painting shows us exactly what Λυδοπαθεῖς look like,” Kurke 1992:97) is mainly based on a desire to fill the vast gaps in our knowledge of archaic Greek societies by finding exact correspondences between textual and visual representations and thus producing convergent evidence for reconstructed realities and ideologies.
[ back ] 262. Neer 2002:22 (contrasting the “ideology” of a black-figure image by Kleisophos dated to c. 530 BC, in which mitra-wearing “aristocrats” are portrayed in parodic manner); second quotation in Kurke 1992: 97; cf. Kurke 1992:97–99.
[ back ] 263. Mazzarino 1947:191–246; Bowra 1970a and 1970b; Lombardo 1983. These scholars have collected and extensively analyzed the relevant sources and are closely followed by Kurke 1992.
[ back ] 264. The form habrosunê occurs in Sappho fr. 58.25 V (abrosuna) and in Xenophanes fr. 3.1 W; for further occurrences of habros and habrotês in archaic Greece, see Lombardo 1983. In its highly fragmentary context, ἀβροσύνα in Sappho fr. 58d. 3 (= former fr. 58. 25 V; see the discussion of Sappho frs. 58a, b, c, and d in Chapter Four, p. 360 n. 314) is safer to be construed in the more unmarked meaning “delicacy” or “daintiness,” and viewed as a kind of metapoetic phrase, comparable to that of Sappho fr. 16. 3–4 V ἔγω δὲ κῆν᾽ ὄττω τις ἔραται (note the occurrence of δέ in ἔγω δὲ φίλημμ᾽ ἀβροσύναν). West suggests that, given what little has survived, with ἀβροσύνα “Sappho does not mean ‘elegance’ or ‘luxury’ ” (West 2005: 7n9). Martin West further draws my attention to Theognidea 474 and Solon 24.4 W (pers. comm.). A marked, political meaning (“luxury”) is not borne out by the context. The following line (that is, Sappho fr. 58d. 4 τὸ λάμπρον †ἔρος ἀελίω? καὶ τὸ κάλον λέλογχε) is problematic (Page 1955:130n1: “I have no conception of the meaning” [of these two lines]). In view of the difficulties in interpreting the line (see, recently, West 2005:7–8), and even if we translated it (along with καί μοι of line 3) as either “and for me love has obtained the brightness and beauty of the sun” or “lust for the sun has won me brightness and beauty” (Nagy 1990:285), it would be misguided to see marked connotations in ἔγω δὲ φίλημμ᾽ ἀβροσύναν and to read it unconditionally as “a programmatic political statement” in the sense of “I align myself with an aristocratic elite that has strong ties with the East,” a declaration that is “[Sappho’s] way of endorsing a particular style of aristocratic luxury” (Kurke 1992:96 and 99). Although at first sight interesting, this assumption remains unsubstantiated. Therefore, Lombardo’s argument (Lombardo 1983:1088–1089) that—in view of Sappho’s use of habros-words—in archaic Greece habrosunê was also associated with the world of women, is not undermined by the existing evidence (cf. ἁβρὰ παρθένος in Hesiod fr. 339 M-W and, especially, Alkaios fr. 42.8 V). Even if we were certain about the “standard” meaning of the word habrosunê, it would be difficult to maintain, I believe, that in performances of Sappho’s songs original and subsequent archaic audiences could not make such complementary semantic associations.
[ back ] 265. Kurke 1992:92, 98.
[ back ] 266. If, according to this schema, the very few available archaic literary sources taken to be privileging an elitist ideology provide a positive valuation of habrosunê, what is the point of arguing so emphatically that habrosunê was a uniformly positive aristocratic lifestyle in archaic Greece? The sources are so scant that it is somewhat pointless, I maintain, to reconstruct such a “radical” shift.
[ back ] 267. Note that ἁβροσύνας is Schneider’s correction of the reading ἀφροσύνας preserved in codex A of Athenaios (the fragment of Xenophanes is a quotation in Athenaios 12.526a–b). The earliest occurrences of ἁβροσύνη are in the singular (Sappho fr. 58d.3 [= fr. 58.25 V], Euripides Orestes 349), while ἀφροσύνη is often employed in the plural.
[ back ] 268. Kurke 1992:96 and n18.
[ back ] 269. Sixth-century social developments toward isonomia and against the elitist display of luxury within the city-state such as Solon’s sumptuary laws (Kurke 1992:103) suggest this.
[ back ] 270. Asios fr. 13 Bernabé. We can only conjecturally date Asios of Samos to the sixth or the fifth century. Bernabé 1987:127 and Gerber 1999:427 tentatively date him to the sixth century. Bowra 1970b:125 argued that Asios did not write earlier than the fifth century.
[ back ] 271. In this light, it is significant to take into account the fact that the Marathonomakhai were associated in the late fifth century with the old luxury fashion described by Thoukydides 1.6.3; see below, n. 275.
[ back ] 272. Miller 1997:189; cf. Miller 1997:188–217.
[ back ] 273. Thoukydides 1.6.3. Gomme 1945:103 comments that “Thucydides in his youth will have known older men who remembered it” (cf. Hornblower 1991:26 “Th. implies that in the very recent past (Th.’s own lifetime?) Athenian men had changed from ‘Ionic’ to ‘Doric’” [dress]). In the Constitution of the Athenians Pseudo-Xenophon (2.8) believes that “the Greeks prefer to use their own dialect, way of life, and type of attire, but the Athenians use a mixture from all the Greeks and the barbarians” (καὶ οἱ μὲν Ἕλληνες ἰδίᾳ μᾶλλον καὶ φωνῇ καὶ διαίτῃ καὶ σχήματι χρῶνται, Ἀθηναῖοι δὲ κεκραμένῃ ἐξ ἁπάντων τῶν Ἑλλήνων καὶ βαρβάρων).
[ back ] 274. καὶ οἱ πρεσβύτεροι αὐτοῖς τῶν εὐδαιμόνων διὰ τὸ ἁβροδίαιτον οὐ πολὺς χρόνος ἐπειδὴ χιτῶνάς τε λινοῦς ἐπαύσαντο φοροῦντες καὶ χρυσῶν τεττίγων ἐνέρσει κρωβύλον ἀναδούμενοι τῶν ἐν τῇ κεφαλῇ τριχῶν· ἀφ᾽ οὗ καὶ Ἰώνων τοὺς πρεσβυτέρους κατὰ τὸ ξυγγενὲς ἐπὶ πολὺ αὕτη ἡ σκευὴ κατέσχεν. Based on earlier scholarly views, Gomme speculated that Thoukydides may be wrong on this last point. However, it is not hard to question the validity of Gomme’s idea by focusing on the broader Athenian ideological implications of Thoukydides’ claim (see also Geddes 1987:307n6).
[ back ] 275. Cf. Aristophanes Knights 1331 ὅδ᾽ ἐκεῖνος ὁρᾶν τεττιγοφόρας, ἀρχαίῳ σχήματι λαμπρός (referring to the Athens of the days of Marathon) and Clouds 984 ἀρχαῖά γε . . . καὶ τεττίγων ἀνάμεστα. Cf. Herakleides Pontikos fr. 55 Wehrli (ap. Athenaios 12. 512a–c) and Gomme 1945:101, who also quotes Loukianos Ship or Wishes 3 (Loukianos refers to Thoukydides’ passage) and Eustathios Iliad 13.689, vol. 3, 537 van der Valk (Gomme 1945:102 and 106, respectively), comments on the association of this Athenian luxury fashion described by Thoukydides and Aristophanes with the celebrated Marathonomakhai (see, e.g., Clouds 985–86 ἀλλ᾽ οὖν ταῦτ᾽ ἐστὶν ἐκεῖνα, | ἐξ ὧν ἄνδρας Μαραθωνομάχας ἡμὴ παίδευσις ἔθρεψεν, following line 984 quoted above).
[ back ] 276. Hornblower 1991:26. Asios fr. 13.5 Bernabé also refers to golden cricket brooches that the Samians wore. The date of Asios is not certain (see n. 270 above). Bernabé’s transposition of lines 4 and 5 is not necessary (cf. O’ Sullivan’s hypothesis [O’ Sullivan 1981] based on a 1817 proposal by A. F. Naeke). For the meaning of κορύμβη in Asios, see Gomme 1945:103–104 and Bowra 1970b.
[ back ] 277. The studies on Athenian autochthony are numerous: see Parker 1987 (with references to earlier discussions) and Rosivach 1987 (somewhat optimistic); cf. also Hornblower 1991:12–13.
[ back ] 278. For late fifth-century (424 onwards BC) sources, see n. 275 above.
[ back ] 279. Black-figure cup, Oxford 1974.344, dated to c. 520 BC (not known to Beazley): Boardman 1976 (among the three turbaned symposiasts one is beardless); comparable is an outdoors symposiastic scene on the frieze around the tondo of a cup dated to c. 520 BC (Essen A 169: Froning 1982:151–155; however, the symposiasts here do not wear mitra). Thanks to Alan Shapiro for drawing my attention to the latter vase. Boisterous revelers getting drunk: black-figure oinochoe signed by Kleisophos as painter and Xenokles as potter, Athens, National Archaeological Museum 1045, dated to c. 530 BC (ABV 186; Add. 51). For other related, contemporary vase-paintings, cf. Miller 1999:232n28.
[ back ] 280. See Mitchell 2004 (with earlier bibliography; especially on her page 4, notes 3 and 4). See also Lissarrague 1998 and Cohen and Shapiro 2002. Neer (2002:23) admits that “it is entirely unjustified to assume that vase-painters would have shared the views of their clients. Rather, it is one of the chief dramas of vase-painting that it should be a site of negotiation between elites and artisans.” On the serious problems involved in the often suggested relationship between craftsmen and elites, see Stissi 1999:88–89. Exclusive emphasis on the idea that almost all vases were intended for symposia—a concept that currently has a significant impact on classicists, who apply it to all vases—is misleading.
[ back ] 281. Rhodes, Archaeological Museum 12.200; ABV 115.3, dated to c. 540–530 BC; Boardman 1986:47, no. 1 and figs. 10a–b.
[ back ] 282. Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum 77.AE.102 and 78.AE.5, dated to c. 520–510 BC; Boardman 1986:47, no. 2 and figs. 11 and 1a–d.
[ back ] 283. Basel, Antikenmuseum, Käppeli 421; ABV 294.21; Boardman 1986:47, no. 3 and fig. 9.
[ back ] 284. Kassel, Hessisches Landesmuseum A Lg 57; Boardman 1986:47–48, no. 4 and fig. 12.
[ back ] 285. However, I should point out that pictorial variations of setting or combinations of diverse elements and human figures (women or youths) raise the possibility that different vases in the same “series” were understood and “contextualized” in a different manner by contemporary viewers during the sixty or so years that such images were produced. To give an example: a pair of white-ground lekythoi (Paris, Musée du Petit Palais 336 and 335; ARV 305.1–2; Miller 1999:238, figs. 18–19) dated to c. 500–480 BC, found in the same tomb, and painted by the same painter, show, respectively, an “elaborately dressed komast” and a woman dressed identically (cf. Miller 1999:240). The woman on the second lekythos holds a mirror not far from her face. The parallelism evident in their garb, already around 500–480 BC, must have been a prominent element for their “interpretation” by contemporary viewers.
[ back ] 286. Miller 1992 and 1997:193–198. Cf. above, n. 246.
[ back ] 287. See also nos. 11, 23, 34 in Boardman 1986:48–49.
[ back ] 288. Cf. Paquette 1984:205 and 209; Price 1990:144 and n32; Delavaud-Roux 1995:243. In visual representations, krotala are occasionally used by male figures like satyrs, naked and semi-naked komasts, and ephebes (cf. Delavaud-Roux 1995:243n22). Another name for krotala was krembala. Note also that in the late fourth century BC, Dikaiarkhos in his Life of Greece reported (fr. 60 Wehrli) that they were once extremely (ποτὲ καθ’ ὑπερβολήν) popular in women’s dances and songs.
[ back ] 289. In some cases, the sakkos, often worn by women, replaces the mitra. Boardman 1986:65 notes that “it is likely enough that the feminine aspect became or even sought after, especially once the sakkos was adopted.” From a literary point of view, Kurke sweepingly denies any synchronic feminine associations for the komasts (but see Miller’s iconographical counterargument [Miller 1999:235n38]). Frontisi-Ducroux and Lissarrague 1990 stress the ambivalence in the representation of the revelers in the light of a male symposiastic interplay between the self and other. Miller 1999 finds a number of female features in their dress and appurtenances.
[ back ] 290. See Frontisi-Ducroux and Lissarrague 1990.
[ back ] 291. For a critique of this view, see Neer 2002:222n84. See also n. 250 above.
[ back ] 292. For example, as an Eastern headgear reflecting a broader Anatolian koinê, the turban (“perhaps [the] single most striking feature” [of the elaborately dressed komasts], Boardman 1986:50), “is well attested from India to Lydia, and in the period that we are studying, it is best shown on the Achaemenid monuments showing subject peoples” (Boardman 1986:51). For the use of parasol in the ancient Near East and Persia, see Miller 1992:93–95. Miller 1991:63–65 (with bibliography on her pp. 73–74, n25) discusses the numerous problems in distinguishing foreigners (e.g. Scythians or Persians) in Attic painted pots of the late archaic and early classical periods. I should stress that individual garb and headgear styles linked with specific Western/Eastern Anatolian and Persian peoples are sometimes hard to distinguish in Attic vase-paintings. Apart from the fact that we cannot expect vase-painters to record faithfully the vestment elements of each people and to not experiment and blur the boundaries in the least, “from the second quarter to the end of the sixth century,” for example, in Attic vase-paintings “the Phrygians . . . are shown simply as if they were Greeks.” In the fifth century, especially its second half, Phrygians are shown garbed in “Persian-type dress or at least what the vase-painters imagined such dress to be” (De Vries 2000:348 and 349, respectively). That the Persians associated the turban-like headdress with the Lydians (as De Vries 2000:359 argues) does not entail that late archaic and early classical Greek vase-painters and viewers did so too, since such a type of headgear was also worn by, e.g., East Greeks. I do not agree with De Vries’s tentative identification of the drunken komasts in Athens National Archaeological Museum 1045 (see n. 279 above) with Lydians (De Vries 2000:360–363). This scholarly tendency to interpret Athenian vase-paintings as reflecting specific ancient (Athenian or foreign) realities is also evident in De Vries’s discussion of the early-fifth-century Apadana reliefs in Persepolis (De Vries 1973): the identification of the “Lydian” subject delegation (men wearing an Eastern headdress, chiton, and himation) is based on the observation that on the façade reliefs on the tombs of the Persian kings at Naqsh-i Rustam the subject peoples of the Persian empire are labeled with the name of their ethnic group, and in the representation of at least one of the labeled Lydians, wearing only a short chiton, a short cloak, but no headdress, the Lydian has a braid coming down behind his ear. Since on the Apadana relief with the long-robed male figures wearing an Eastern headdress, these unidentified men have a long braid coming down behind their ears, they should, as the reasoning goes, be identified with the labeled Lydians of the façade reliefs on the tomb of a Persian king (for photographs of the reliefs see De Vries 1973:35, fig. 3 and 36, fig. 1). Although this is an attractive identification, it remains tentative and does not result in a secure identification of the specific “ethnic origins” of the garb, headdress, and other appurtenances of the “elaborately dressed komasts.”
[ back ] 293. See n. 279 above, for cases of the mitra also worn by lightly clad symposiasts or naked komasts. For the construction of the internal and external other in ancient Greek art, see, more recently, Cohen 2000.
[ back ] 294. Regarding depictions of Amazons, see Shapiro 1983b:107 (and cf. 111) for the “conflation of two (or more) races which many Amazon vases share,” that is, Thracian and Scythian.
[ back ] 295. In a red-figure cup by the Brygos Painter (Brussels, Musées Royaux R332; ARV 380.169; see Fig. 17), a komast wearing a broad tied headcloth (not a turban-like headgear) strides forward. His walking stick is floating in the background, only a small step far from the reach of his left hand. His face is frontal, looking at the viewer, but the almost tipsy posture of his head would evoke humorous overtones.
[ back ] 296. In a red-figure cup by Oedipus Painter (German private collection: see Hornbostel and Stege 1986:111–114, no. 53; Miller 1999:233, fig. 12), dated to c. 470 BC, the elaborately dressed revelers indulge in perhaps the most lively dancing in the whole series. Cf. the Psiax white-ground plate above, and the Kleophrades Painter fragmentary kalyx-krater, on which, as Beazley (1954:57) rightly remarks, one of the revelers dances “kicking up one foot behind.”
[ back ] 297. See Beazley 1954:61, who reported that Anakreon wears a wreath, a fillet, and perhaps shoes, and that he once detected a sakkos on the poet’s head, despite the fact that he was not certain whether he would wish to defend this early observation of his, since the head was damaged. Cf. Schefold 1997:76.
[ back ] 298. For a collection of all the relevant painted pots, see Miller (1999: 237–239).
[ back ] 299. The only reason to exclude it is the lack of headgear. See, however, n. 298 above, and cf. Berlin F 2351, a red-figure neck-amphora (Greifenhagen 1976:figs. 19–22; Boardman 1986:49, no. 25) on which an “elaborately dressed komast” is depicted wearing only a (not broad) band that does not cover his hair, but is tied around his head. Cf. also Paris, Louvre G 220; ARV 280.11; Boardman 1986:54, figs.15a, a red-figure amphora with an apparently balding, elaborately garbed komast wearing a tied headcloth. As I have argued, the whole series, with all the additions proposed by Boardman (1986) and Miller (1999), is not fully homogeneous. See, for example, the Tampa red-figure stamnos published by Miller (1999:224, fig. 1, 226–227, figs. 6–7) and included in the series, or the Dresden red-figure pelike included in Boardman 1986:50, no. 43 and considered problematic by Miller 1999:237n44. Such interesting variations are evident in other vases of the series.
[ back ] 300. E.g., white-ground kyathos, Malibu, J. Paul Getty 77.AE.102 and 78.AE.5; Boardman 1986:36, fig. 1a–d. Red-figure lekythos, Boston, Museum of Fine Arts 13.199, ARV 588.73; Boardman 1975:fig. 334. Red-figure amphora, Paris, Louvre G 220; ARV 280.11; Boardman 1986:54, figs.15a–b (on the reverse we see an elaborately dressed komast with a parasol). See, further, red-figure column-krater Cambridge, MA, Sackler Museum 1959.125; ARV 566.3; see Fig. 18.
[ back ] 301. Alkaios, Ibykos, and Anakreon are listed together again in Schol. Pindar Isthmian 2.1b (iii 213 Drachmann), where reference is made to their common thematic attention to παιδικά.
[ back ] 302. For this interpretation of the verb διακλῶμαι, see Sommerstein 1994:169.
[ back ] 303. For the parallelism between Beazley’s “Anakreontic” vases and Aristophanes’ Agathon, see Snyder 1974. Cf. Webster 1972:55.
[ back ] 304. So, apparently, Snyder 1974:246.
[ back ] 305. Note that the meaning of some words and expressions in this fragment is uncertain. For the problems involved, see Brown’s concise discussion (1983:11–14).
[ back ] 306. Cf. Brown 1983:14–15.
[ back ] 307. In Anakreon fr. 372 PMG, quoted by Athenaios (12.533e–f) in the same context along with fr. 388 PMG, ὁ πονηρός Artemon is described as ὁ περιφόρητος Ἀρτέμων (“the notorious Artemon,” or literally, “the litter-borne Artemon”; for the epithet περιφόρητος, cf. Gentili 1958:10 and see Zenobios Ath. I 64 Miller, quoted in Diphilos fr. 35 K-A). In Aristophanes (Akharnians 850) the comic poet Kratinos is called ὁ περιπόνηρος Ἀρτέμων. Later, Diphilos will also exploit the expression ὁ περιφόρητος Ἀρτέμων in his Emporos (fr. 35 K-A). The phrase became proverbial: the sources are collected in Anakreon fr. 372 PMG and Anakreon fr. 8 Gentili (Gentili 1958:9).
[ back ] 308. Brown (1983:4) discusses fragments related to a possibly satiric portrayal of diverse types by Anakreon.
[ back ] 309. Compare also Anakreon fr. 426 PMG πάλαι ποτ’ ἦσαν ἄλκιμοι Μιλήσιοι (and see Aristophanes Wealth 1002 and 1075, Scholia on Aristophanes Wealth 1075, Timokreon fr. 733 PMG and Timokreon fr. 7 W, Aristotle fr. 557 Rose, Demon FGrH 327 F 16, and Page’s apparatus fontium in Anakreon fr. 426 PMG).
[ back ] 310. The song seems to have been popular: in the late fourth century it was especially discussed by the Peripatetic writer Khamaileon and, as he tells us, “by others.” Khamaileon, like others, was probably attracted to the idea that it was actually addressed to Sappho.
[ back ] 311. The analyses and reconstructions of this change in emphasis are numerous and almost no scholarly consensus exists on what social factors contributed to it: see n. 312 below and Lewis 2002:130–138. I agree with Osborne 1997 (who views the change in terms of “women’s newly important place in citizen ideology”; 1997:4) and Lewis 2002 (who examines issues related to market and provenance) that the issue is more complex than has often been assumed.
[ back ] 312. Osborne 1997 has associated this gradual change with Perikles’ citizenship law of 451/450 BC, according to which citizenship was limited to those persons whose father and mother were Athenian. For this law and changes in wedding imagery in Athens during the fifth century, see Sutton 1992:24. For the increase of the so-called gynaikonitis scenes on Attic vases of the later fifth century, see, more recently, Lewis 2002:130–171 (for diverse interpretations of this change, see Lewis 2002:130–132); for statistics (with references to shapes and provenances) of the very large number of vase-paintings depicting women alone in the fifth century, see Webster 1972:226–228 and 241–243.
[ back ] 313. For some of these images, see the discussion by Goulaki Voutira 1991 and Kauffmann-Samara 1997. Snyder 1998:167 provides a very brief account. For an archaeological examination of mousikai gunaikes on Attic vase-paintings, see Vazaki 2003.
[ back ] 314. Baltimore, Walters Art Gallery 48.2712.
[ back ] 315. New York, Solow Art and Architecture Foundation.
[ back ] 316. London, British Museum E 190; ARV 611.36; Add. 268.
[ back ] 317. Athens, National Archaeological Museum 1260; ARV 1060.145; Add. 323; Tzachou-Alexandri 1989: no. 201; Matheson 1995:174, pl. 149. For the influence of the Niobid Painter on Polygnotos and his Group, see Matheson 1995:3–37 and passim. The hydria was found in Vari, Attica.
[ back ] 318. I here focus on hydriai attributed to this Group. More generally, a considerable number of domestic scenes with female musical gatherings appear on hydriai. Other vase shapes that accommodate such scenes during the same period include amphorae, lekythoi, pyxides, pelikai, stamnoi, oinochoai, lebetes gamikoi, as well as certain types of kraters. On the correlation of subject and shape in the case of pelike, see Shapiro 1997. A scene painted on a bell-krater in the manner of the Kleophon Painter, a younger member of the Group of Polygnotos, is similar in its basic composition to the Athens hydria with Sappho: four women, one frontally seated, another standing on the left, and two more holding an open book roll and a chelys lyre, respectively, on the right (Nocera dei Pagani, Fienga no inventory number; my Fig. 33). Following a long tradition in identifying women musicians as “Sappho”—a scholarly methodology that I have questioned in this chapter—Metzler (1987:76) argues that the anonymous, frontally seated woman is Sappho.
[ back ] 319. E.g., London, British Museum E 188; ARV 1048.42; Add. 321; Miller 1997:fig. 135.
[ back ] 320. Playing with balls: red-figure hydria (not known to Matheson 1995) Avignon, Musée Calvet 106A (Cavalier 1996:185, fig. 71), attributed to the Christie Painter by M. Corso (in Cavalier 1996:182–186); holding a mirror: red-figure hydria Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Albertinum 213617 (ARV 1049.48), attributed to the Christie Painter.
[ back ] 321. Gotha, Schlossmuseum 53; ARV 1049.49; Add. 321; CVA Gotha, Schlossmuseum 2, 12, pl. 55.1–3.
[ back ] 322. London, British Museum E 189; ARV 1060.147; my Fig. 23. On the hydria Athens, Kerameikos 2698 (Pöhlmann 1976:pl. 2; my Fig. 32) Eros stands in front of a seated female musician and plays the aulos. This hydria, almost contemporary with the hydriai considered here, has not been attributed to a vase-painter.
[ back ] 323. London, British Museum 1921.7–10.2; ARV 1060.138; Add. 323; CVA London, British Museum 6, III.I.C.3, pl. 83. One woman plays the chelys lyre and the other the barbitos.
[ back ] 324. Athens, National Archaeological Museum 17918; Para. 443; my Fig. 24. Note that the connotations of wreaths hanging in the background depend each time on the broader context of the image. Cf. also below, n. 347. I should like to thank Dr. Giorgos Kavvadias of the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, for sending me a detailed description of the representation on the red-figure hydria, Athens, NAM 17918.
[ back ] 325. New York, Solow Art and Architecture Foundation. See Neils 2000:225.
[ back ] 326. Williams 1993 illustrates this approach.
[ back ] 327. See, among others, Götte 1957:48, Bérard 1989:91, Sourvinou-Inwood 1991:96n122, 137n143, Matheson 1995:288–289. Cf. Lissarrague 1992b:207.
[ back ] 328. Matheson 1995:289–290 adduces archaeological arguments against this idea and compares these scenes to similar depictions of female musicians in domestic interiors on white-ground funerary lekythoi.
[ back ] 329. Musée du Petit Palais 308; ARV 1040.22; Add. 319; Maas and Snyder 1989:136, fig. 16.
[ back ] 330. Some scholars believe that the superabundance of instruments carried by large female ensembles is a criterion for the identification of these women as Muses (see, e.g., Snyder 1998:169). However, on a red-figure cup dated to about 450 BC (Bologna, Museo Civico Archeologico PU 271; ARV 825.19; Add. 294; Castaldo 1993: fig. 103) a large ensemble of ten women musicians (five with chelys lyres, four with auloi, and one with barbitos) does not represent Muses. On Muses in musical scenes, cf. also Queyrel 1988.
[ back ] 331. London, British Museum E 461; ARV 601.20; Kauffmann-Samara 1997: 289, fig. 7; Vazaki 2003: 247, figs. 41–42 (sides A and B). For the problems in the analysis of the image on the obverse of this kalyx–krater, see Kauffmann-Samara 1997:290, where she also provides a discussion of all the other objects in the representation that suggest a domestic setting. For the identification of female figures in such scenes as Muses, see Queyrel 1992:659–660, 680.
[ back ] 332. On the reverse two women with musical instruments stand opposite each other: between them there is an open chest, which, as we have seen, is often associated with book rolls in musical scenes.
[ back ] 333. See Kauffmann-Samara 1997:290 for this identification that has been proposed by a number of scholars. Instead, Kauffmann-Samara suggests that perhaps only the seated woman represents a Muse who “teaches,” as it were, the standing mortal women.
[ back ] 334. This approach has been favored, among other scholars, by Webster 1972:242. For a criticism of this tendency, see Lewis 2002:157.
[ back ] 335. Lissarrague 1992b:206.
[ back ] 336. Such identifications with Sappho have been proposed in numerous archaeological publications. See, for example, Metzler 1987:76, Simon 1972:421–422, Kauffmann-Samara 1997:289. Bernard 1985:48 has suggested that the representations of Sappho functioned as model images for other depictions of women. Williams 1993:100 maintains that “there are some [sc., groups of women] in which the painter no doubt had the legendary poetess, Sappho, and her pupils in mind.” Simon 1972:421–422 believes that the lack of inscriptions does not go against the identification of Frauengemachbilder as Sappho in her “circle,” since the poetess was viewed in Athens as “eine mythische Gestalt wie Orpheus oder die Musen.” This idea further reflects unexamined assumptions favored in current scholarship with regard to the presence of Sappho in fifth-century Athens. The unattributed red-figure hydria Berlin, Antikensammlung F2391 (Queyrel 1992:plate 385) was misleadingly thought of as having an inscription Σαπφυ (the inscription needs to be reexamined). A red-figure squat lekythos attributed to the Meidias Painter and dated to c. 420–415 BC (Ruvo, Museo Jatta 1538; ARV 13–14.16; Add. 362; Burn 1987:plates 38a–c) depicts Thamyris seated and playing a Thracian kithara in the company of Apollo, perhaps Muses (?), and winged Erotes: one of the female figures is named Σαο, which has been wrongly taken to represent Sappho; note that Σαῶ, along with forty-nine other women, is a daughter of Nereus and Doris in Hesiod Theogony 240–264 (even Burn 1987:55–56, following earlier identifications, argues that she is Sappho). See also above and Chapter Three, pp. 272–275.
[ back ] 337. See, however, the discussion in Chapter Four, pp. 295–297.
[ back ] 338. The coexistence of these associations has often been assumed in connection with this image. It has further been speculated that the hydria “portrays Sappho in what may be a female homoerotic setting” (Halperin 2003:722).
[ back ] 339. I examined the vase and its inscriptions in the National Archaeological Museum, Athens, with the permission of the Director of the Museum, Dr. Nikolaos Kaltsas.
[ back ] 340. The wreath is hardly visible nowadays. I agree with Anna Vazaki (2003:176n1067) about the traces of the wreath on the vase.
[ back ] 341. Immerwahr 1964:26 (for further bibliography, see his n1 on p. 26).
[ back ] 342. For the ending of this genitive, see Threatte 1996:259–260.
[ back ] 343. Among others, Immerwahr 1964:26 and Vazaki 2003:176.
[ back ] 344. Braunschweig, Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum 219; ARV 1037.2; CVA Braunschweig, Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum 30–32, pls. 23.1–6 and 24.1–3.
[ back ] 345. Erotes (among them a winged youth named [῾Ί]μερος) appear among the female figures. Cf. Immerwahr 1990:111. On the vase-painting, cf. Shapiro 1993:114–115.
[ back ] 346. Florence, Museo Archeologico Etrusco 4014; ARV 1060.144; Add. 323; Liventhal 1985:44. fig. 4a and 45, figs. 4b–c. On this vase and other related representations, see, more recently, Scholz 2003 (with references to earlier discussions).
[ back ] 347. Wreaths hanging in the background are relatively common in scenes of all-female musical gatherings in domestic settings. Furthermore, it is intriguing that on the lid of a red-figure lekanis attributed to the Meidias Painter and dated to the last quarter of the fifth century BC one of the female figures present, along with the heroes Pandion and Antiokhos in what appears to be a garden sanctuary, is called “Nikepolis” or “Nikopolis”: Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale Stg. 311; ARV 1314.17; Add. 362; Burn 1987:pl. 10a–b. For a discussion of the vase-painting in the context of representations of paradise gardens, see Burn 1987:15–19. “Nikepolis” (or “Nikopolis”) holds a wreath in her left hand and approaches a thumiatêrion. On this lekanis lid and on the red-figure hydria under consideration, a number of female figures are named but the context is considerably different.
[ back ] 348. London, British Museum E 454; ARV 1028.14; Matheson 1995:56, pl. 42.
[ back ] 349. Webster 1972:71 and Liventhal 1985:42.
[ back ] 350. Cf. Vazaki 2003:175–176.
[ back ] 351. Athens, National Archaeological Museum 12883 (Peleus Painter); ARV 1040.21; see Vazaki 2003: 177 and 224, no. 94.
[ back ] 352. London, British Museum E 189 (Group of Polygnotos); ARV 1060.147; Goulaki Voutira 1991:88, fig. 17. On the hydria London, British Museum 1921.7–10.2 (Group of Polygnotos); ARV 1060.138; Add. 323; CVA London, British Museum 6, III.I.C.3, pl. 83, an Eros with a wreath seems to be flying toward the women musicians.
[ back ] 353. Matheson 1995: 287 finds the scene with Sappho reading unusual in the context of numerous similar compositions with a female figure seated in the center.
[ back ] 354. London, British Museum E 190; ARV 611.36; Add. 268; Beck 1975:pl. 69. 351.
[ back ] 355. London, British Museum E 209; ARV 1212.4; Add. 347; Beck 1975:pl. 69. 352. Cf. the earlier red-figure pelike Rome, Mus. Naz. Etrusco di Villa Giulia 50447; ARV 852.5 (in the manner of the Sabouroff Painter; Beck 1975:56.2).
[ back ] 356. On book rolls on vases, see Beazley 1948, Immerwahr 1964, Immerwahr 1973, and Pöhlmann 1976. Cf. also Immerwahr 1990:99.
[ back ] 357. Basel, Market, Münzen und Medaillen, A.G., 51 (14–15 March 1975), pl. 46, no. 169. The representation and the text on the book roll are discussed in Immerwahr 1973: 146–147 (pl. 33.3–4).
[ back ] 358. Cf. Immerwahr 1964:24–25 and 1973:144–145.
[ back ] 359. For these inscriptions, see Beazley 1948. A Nike can also read from a scroll (Immewahr 1964:35). For the book rolls that Muses carry, see Immerwahr 1964:28–33, 1973:145–146, and 1990:99n6; on these rolls, inscriptions that yield any sense are extremely rare.
[ back ] 360. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum G 138.3; ARV 326.93; Add. 216; Hogarth et al. 1905: pl. 6. 5.
[ back ] 361. Berlin, Antikensammlung F 2285; ARV 426, 431.48, 1653, and 1701; Add. 237; Buitron-Oliver 1995: pl. 58, no. 88. The inscription provides ἄρχομαι ἀεί{ν}δεν (no elision in ἄρχομαι).
[ back ] 362. Something like “my song” is understood here.
[ back ] 363. My reading of the letters in question differs slightly from that of Immewahr 1964:26. The last letters that he reads in lines 9 (after Ṇ) and 11 (after T) are very uncertain. On this scroll inscription, see Beazley 1928:9–10n2, and Immewahr 1964:26.
[ back ] 364. For a highly problematic case, see Beazley 1948:339.
[ back ] 365. Edmonds 1922 and Edmonds 1928a:180–181.
[ back ] 366. Edmonds 1928b:5–5a.
[ back ] 367. Herzog 1912:22–23. It should be observed, however, that the invocation Θεοί occurs incised twice along with kalos-names (like Τιμόξενος καλός and Χαρμίδης καλός) on the underside of a krater found, among other vases and household pots dated to the second quarter of the fifth century, in a well in the Athenian Agora (P 5164: Talcott 1936:350 and fig. 21). On the obverse of a red-figure neck-amphora attributed to the Painter of the Yale Lekythos and dated to the second quarter of the fifth century BC (London, British Museum E 291; ARV 662; Add. 277; Schefold and Jung 1989:27, fig. 12) the exclamation θεοι comes out from the mouth of elderly Phineus; it is interesting that on the same image Χαρμίδης καλός is written (cf. Talcott 1936:350; Kharmides is a popular kalos-name on Attic vases).
[ back ] 368. Among others, Turner 1977:14–15. Cf. Edmonds 1922:9 “I will only add that ‘Winged Words’ would be particularly suitable as the title of a collection whose prologue began with ‘Words of air’,” and Edmonds 1928b:4 (notes in Latin).
[ back ] 369. See, for example, the ingenious poetic reconstruction of the whole corpus of Sappho’s fragments by Odysseas Elytis (1984), in which he has adopted the line as part of a longer poem. In France, Mora (1966: 414) will include the line in her translation of Sappho.
[ back ] 370. See Campbell 1993:358 (fr. 938d), who does not print θεοί along with the rest of the line; Page prints the word as a “separate” semantic unit in fr. 938d PMG. Cf. also Immerwahr 1964:46, who believes that θεοί is extra metrum.
[ back ] 371. On improvisation, see Chapter Four.
[ back ] 372. The meter of the lyric line στησιχόρων ὕμνων ἄγοισαι or στησίχορον ὕμνον ἄγοισαι on the fragmentary cup Oxford, Ashmolean Museum G 138.3 (see n. 360 above) is not easy to understand. Cf. Beazley 1948:338 and Immerwahr 1964:19. For the vocative θεοί, see, for example, Pindar fr. 75.2 M, Thoukydides 2.74.2, and Euripides Helen 1447. See also above, n. 367.
[ back ] 373. See e.g. Sappho frs. 5 and 17 V.
[ back ] 374. Berlin, Antikensammlung F 2285 (see n. 361 above).
[ back ] 375. Cf. Immerwahr 1964:19.
[ back ] 376. Cf. LSJ, s.vv. ἀέριος and ἠέριος. In later periods, ἀέριος can have the meaning “vain, futile” (LSJ, s.v.). In Euripides Phoinissai 1534, it modifies σκότον, but the whole phrase is obelized in Diggle’s edition (it is not obelized in Mastronarde’s edition [1988:112]; see also Mastronarde 1994:577); cf. Euripides fr. 24b.3–4 TrGF and Kannicht’s apparatus criticus; and fragmentum adespotum 1023.16 PMG (= TrGF adespotum F 692.16). In the Hellenistic period, ἠέριος can mean “misty, dimly seen” (LSJ, s.v). A search I conducted in the electronic database Thesaurus Linguae Graecae confirmed these broader meanings.
[ back ] 377. Oxford, Ashmolean Museum G 138.3 (see n. 360 above)
[ back ] 378. Collection H. Seyrig; ARV 452, 677.7; Add. 242; Beazley 1948:pl. 34. According to Beazley 1948 and Immerwahr 1964:21, the two words certainly come from Homeric Hymn 18.1; cf. Beazley 1950:318–319. The book roll that a seated youth holds on the red-figure cup Washington, DC, National Museum of Natural History 136373 (ARV 781.4; Add. 288; Beazley 1948:pl. 36) provides the text ὡς δή μοι καὶ μᾶλ<λ>ον επεσ, which Beazley (1948:339) supplemented as follows: ὡς δή μοι καὶ μᾶλ<λ>ον ἐπέσ(συτο θυμὸς ἀγήνωρ). Beazley compared the preserved part of the text to Homer Iliad 9.398 ἔνθα δέ μοι μάλα πολλὸν ἐπέσσυτο θυμὸς ἀγήνωρ. However, this is a conjectural supplement. The content of the text on the book roll that a seated, bearded man (ΛΙΝΟΣ) holds on the red-figure cup Paris, Louvre G 457 (ARV 1254.80, 1562; Add. 355; Beazley 1948:pl. 35B) is uncertain.
[ back ] 379. The formula occurs very often in the Homeric epics; also, in Homeric Hymns and in [Hesiod] Shield 117, 326, and 445. For other epithets modifying ἔπεα in the Homeric epics, see Beck 1991:663. A ὕμνος can be πτερόεις in Pindar (Isthmian 5. 63 S-M καὶ πτερόεντα νέον σύμπεμψον ὕμνον). For the meaning of ἔπεα πτερόεντα, see Martin 1989:30–35.
[ back ] 380. Immerwahr 1964: has attempted to offer a too-generalizing interpretation for all the poetic inscriptions on book rolls: he has thus speculated that all the texts are epic.
[ back ] 381. A number of the Homeric Hymns start with ἀείδω or a similar form denoting “I (shall) sing.” Cf. [Stesikhoros] fr. 278 PMG and Simonides fr. eleg. 92 W (capped by Timokreon fr. 10 W).
[ back ] 382. Hesiod Theogony 1.
[ back ] 383. See carmen conviviale 885 PMG. For skolia, see Chapters Three, pp. 214–216, and Four, pp. 341–347.
[ back ] 384. On the Athens hydria, see further Chapter Three, p. 312.