INVOLVED SPECTATORSHIP IN ARCHAIC
GREEK ART
GUY HEDREEN
4.1 Chalkidean black-figure eye cup, c. 530–520 BCE. Ceramic, 10 27 cm. Munich: Staatliche
Antikensammlungen (589). Photo: reproduced courtesy of the Staatliche Antikensammlungen
.
und Glyptothek Munchen.
The most conspicuous feature of the ancient Greek type of cup known as the eye
cup (for example, plate 4.1) is that it is looking back at its beholder.1 It will not
blink or turn away, but is permanently attentive. The cup asks the viewer to
submit to it. What exactly the cup wants from the beholder, the precise form that
this submission takes in an encounter with it, is considered here.
The eye cup first appeared in Greek art in the late Archaic period, sometime
between 540 and 530 BCE. Between that time and the end of the Archaic period, in
480 BCE, the eye cup became extraordinarily popular in more than one production
centre. Some scholars have argued that there is little significant meaning to be
found in the eye scheme of decoration.2 However, while it is one thing to question
the significance of a decorative motif – for example, the meander pattern present
in Greek art from the Late Geometric to the Hellenistic periods3 – the eye scheme
is different, because it appears all of a sudden, fully developed, achieves great
popularity for a limited period of time; and is not in any event subsidiary
decoration but the main decoration of the cups. An earlier, widely held interpretation, that the eye decoration was apotropaic in intention, aimed at warding
ART HISTORY . ISSN 0141-6790 . VOL 30 NO 2 . APRIL 2007 pp 217-246
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off evil, at least had the merit of assuming that the motif had some specific
function or meaning. The difficulty with the apotropaic interpretation of the
cup’s eyes is that it attempts to account for a sophisticated pictorial conception in
terms of primitive superstitious belief in the absence of any positive evidence
connecting the two phenomena. A related visual motif in Greek art, the gorgoneion
(the frontal face of the legendary gorgon Medusa), is also accorded powerful
apotropaic force, both in ancient mythology and modern scholarship. Yet the
extraordinary popularity of the gorgoneion as a visual motif attests to its ineffectiveness as an apotropaic device in any literal sense, a point that even some
ancient writers recognized. In a recent article in this journal, Rainer Mack
proposed a new interpretation of the gorgoneion that contextualizes it within
ancient artistic practices of visual narration and pictorial convention, rather than
notions of primitive magical belief.4 I take an approach similar to Mack’s in this
study of eye cups. It is important to recognize, as several scholars have demonstrated, that the faces of eye cups, like the face of the gorgoneion, represent the
faces of particular mythological individuals or types of mythical characters (silens
[also known as satyrs], nymphs and perhaps Dionysos the god of wine). The eye cup
and the gorgoneion are characterized by similar manipulations of pictorial
conventions, including eye contact between the represented figure and the viewer
as well as the elimination of pictorial space within the image. The effect of those
manipulations, I argue, is to put the viewer into the position of being an interlocutor – a counterpart within the mythical world – of the gorgon, silen, or
nymph represented on the vase. Explaining precisely how the visual motifs
encourage that response is the principal aim of this essay.
It is also argued that this particular mode of pictorial engagement with a
viewer is not unique to ancient art. Richard Wollheim’s model of a spectator
within a representation, with whom the beholder of the work identifies, helps to
clarify how the interpretation advanced in this paper differs from the interpretation of Norbert Kunisch and others, which holds that the eye cup functioned
as a mask for the user of the vase. I also show that this mode of pictorial
engagement is not limited in ancient art to gorgoneia or eye cups, but also characterizes some representations of silens shown en face, with a frontal face.
Although my arguments are based primarily on the formal analysis of the
pictorial conceptions of eye cups and other works of ancient visual art, they can
be supported by consideration of the formal characteristics of some poetry
performed during symposia, which are the most likely context in which the vases
in question were originally experienced. The poetry employs literary conventions
(first-person narrative forms, the re-performance aloud over generations of
traditional poems in the symposium) that facilitated the temporary adoption of
fictional personae. Both poetry and vase-painting afforded symposiasts the
opportunity, provided them with an incentive, or induced them temporarily to
identify with fictional or mythical figures. Contextualizing eye cups, gorgoneia
and en face silens more broadly, I argue that there are affinities between the kind
of engaged spectatorship informing those works and certain structural features
of early Greek drama as examined by Friedrich Nietzsche. Nietzsche’s description
of the twofold experience of inhabiting a dramatic role or persona, on the one
hand, and being aware of oneself in the role, on the other, is not fundamentally
different from Wollheim’s model of engaging with a spectator in a picture: that
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is, a beholder taking on the point of view of a spectator located conceptually within
the virtual world of a picture yet spatially on the spot where the beholder is located.
Perhaps because of the schematic nature of the decoration of eye cups or the
gorgoneion as a visual motif, many scholars have tended to look to comparative
folklore rather than to the history of art for insights into the significance of those
visual artefacts. Nietzsche’s analysis reminds one that the visual motifs were
circulating at a time when the Greeks were developing particularly sophisticated
forms of mimetic poetry and drama, forms that had special interest in the
experience of both performers and audience. There is no inherent reason why the
pictorial forms of that time may not have been just as sophisticated.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF EYE CUPS
The cup now in Munich (plate 4.1) belongs to the so-called Chalkidean workshop
of Archaic Greek pottery. The decoration of cups from this production centre
always includes a pair of eyes on each exterior side. It usually includes a nose and
4.2a and 4.2b Chalkidean black-figure eye cup, c. 530–520 BCE. Ceramic, 13.7 27.6 cm. New York:
Metropolitan Museum of Art, Gift of F. W. Rhinelander, 1898 (98.8.25). Photos: all rights reserved,
The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
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ears as well. Occasionally, in place of the ears or nose, one encounters silens,
nymphs, vases, flowers, or sphinxes (plate 4.2).5 In Archaic Athenian vasepainting, there is a comparable series of cups bearing a pair of eyes, usually also a
nose, and occasionally ears.6 Possibly the earliest extant Athenian eye cup is the
one signed by the innovative potter Exekias and dated around 535 or 530 BCE (plate
4.3).7 In his study of Chalkidean vases, Andreas Rumpf argued that no extant
Chalkidean eye cup is likely to be earlier than the cup signed by Exekias. But he
pointed out that the eye cup appears with suddenness in Athenian vase-painting,
at a time when it was dominated by other shapes and schemes of decoration of
cups. He suggested that a Chalkidean eye cup earlier than any now known might
have been the source of inspiration for the Athenian series.8 It seems unlikely,
however, that the Athenian eye cup in its entirety derives from Chalkidean
models. The shape of most Athenian eye cups differs from Chalkidean cups in the
4.3 Athenian black-figure type A cup, c. 535–530 BCE, Exekias. Ceramic, 13.6 30.5 cm. Munich:
Antikensammlungen (2044). Photo: courtesy of the Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyp.
tothek Munchen.
bowl and foot; Exekias’s cup, for example, does not have a drum-shaped foot. Hans
Bloesch has demonstrated that the Athenian shape, known as type A, originated
within Athenian pottery workshops.9 The scheme of decoration employed on type
A cups also rarely includes ears, which are common on Chalkidean eye cups. The
two series of eye cups, Chalkidean and Athenian, might derive independently
from the so-called ‘eye bowls’ manufactured in East Greece from the late seventh
to the mid-sixth centuries.10 Alternatively, all three series may be independent
manifestations of a pictorial conception that is the chief subject here.
WHO’S AFRAID OF THE EYES ON A CUP?
The eyes staring out from the cup have often been understood to be apotropaic in
intention, a magical means of warding off ill effects or evil forces.11 The interpretation has been supported with reference to the modern Greek practice of
pinning a small blue glass eye to a person’s clothing – to ward off the ‘evil eye’, as
it is called – though evidence of continuity between the modern practice and
Archaic Greek culture is hard to come by. There are, however, numerous difficulties with any simple apotropaic interpretation of eye cups, as Didier Martens,
among others, has shown.12 Adherents of this theory cannot agree on what is
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being protected by the pair of eyes: do they protect the wine contained in the cups
from impurity, or the cups themselves from breakage during shipping? If the eyes
protect the users of the cups from harm, what kind of harm was envisioned? As
Norbert Kunisch put it, why should a drinker, in the midst of his companions, in
the relative safety and comfort of the symposium, feel a need for such protection?13 Is it conceivable that the function of such a sophisticated and popular
ceramic invention is nothing more than a desire to ward off the jealousy of
servants, as W. Hildburgh suggested?14 If the function of the eyes is essentially a
primitive one, why does the popularity of the motif occur only relatively late in
the history of Greek ceramics? And if the decorative scheme were magically
effective, then why did the fashion die out so quickly and completely around the
end of the Archaic period?15 Can a traditional magical practice lose its perceived
effectiveness overnight? If the intention of the decoration were magical, would
not one eye suffice? After all, the modern custom is to wear a single eye, not a
pair.16 Most significantly, the apotropaic interpretation does not explain the
decoration of the eye cup in its entirety. The earliest eye cups – East Greek,
Chalkidean and Athenian – almost invariably include a nose in addition to the
eyes; and the Chalkidean cups very often include ears as well. Eyes, ears and nose
together, arranged symmetrically on the exterior of the cup, make up a frontal
face. From time to time, the nose or ears were replaced by other motifs, but the
original conception of the eye cup in all three fabrics is that of a face, not just a
pair of eyes.17
THE GORGONEION
The strongest argument in favour of an apotropaic interpretation of the eye cup
has always been the argument that connects the face with the gorgoneion, the
disembodied frontal face of the
gorgon Medusa (for example, Munich
N. I. 8760, plate 4.4). The gorgoneion is
among the earliest known monsters
in Greek art. Over the course of
centuries, the image occurs, it seems,
in every context in which a circular
pictorial motif might be called for.18
In suggesting that the eyes of the eye
cup were apotropaic in origin, J.D.
Beazley argued that they were sometimes thought of as gorgon’s eyes.19
On several eye cups (as, for example,
that in plate 4.3) there are one or
more dots above the eyes, on the
forehead of the face, so to speak.
Beazley suggested that the dots
represent a kind of artificial beauty 4.4 Athenian black-figure plate, c. 560 BCE, Lydos.
mark or mole that mothers occasion- Ceramic, diameter 24 cm. Munich: Staatliche
ally depicted on the foreheads of their Antikensammlungen (N. I. 8760). Photo: courtesy
babies, in order to diminish the of the Staatliche Antikensammlungen und
.
beauty of the child and, in that way, Glyptothek Munchen.
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4.5a and 4.5b Athenian red-figure pelike, c. 470–450 BCE, Hermonax. Ceramic, height approx.
20 cm. Rome: Villa Giulia. Photos: courtesy of the Soprintendenza per i beni archeologici
dell’Etruria meridionale.
ward off envy, one root of the evil eye.20 Whether or not Beazley’s interpretation
of the dots is correct, the fact remains that they are very common in representations of the gorgoneion (as in plate 4.4). When the dots occur as part of the
imagery of eye cups, the decoration as a whole, including the round shape of the
bowl, resembles the gorgoneion.21 It is true that the dots are not restricted to
representations of the gorgoneion, occurring on occasion in vase-paintings of
silens or masks of Dionysos, but it is nevertheless hard to deny that the eye cup
and the gorgoneion share the qualities of disembodiedness and stark frontality, as
well as the occasional beauty mark.22 Most Athenian eye cups contain a representation of the gorgoneion in the centre of the bowl, which would have facilitated
the comparison of the eye scheme and the gorgoneion by the maker and user of the
cup. On a few eye cups, the gorgoneion is brought directly into close, formal
relation to the eyes on the exterior surfaces. On the outside of an eye cup in
Madrid, the gorgon herself occupies the space between the eyes.23 On an eye cup
in Cambridge the pupils of the eyes on the exterior are filled by gorgoneia.24 It
appears that the two visual motifs or decorative schemes, eye cup and gorgoneion,
were understood to be intrinsically related in some important way.
For the apotropaic interpretation of the eye cup, what has always been
important about the gorgoneion is its association with the myth of Medusa,
because the myth explicitly connects her gaze with a dangerous magic. The word
gorgoneion derives from the name ‘Gorgo’, a synonym for Medusa. She was the
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mortal member of a trio of gorgon sisters, grandchildren of the dark and
mysterious depths of the primeval sea Pontos. In the myth Perseus cut off and
carried away Medusa’s head; he gave the head to Athena, who affixed it to her
special defensive armour, the aegis, as a repellent device, for the head of Gorgo,
even after its separation from its body, had the very special effect of turning to
stone whosoever looked it in the eye.25 It is certain that the monster’s head
possessed this power, because Perseus used it to transform the Titan Atlas into a
mountain of stone in North Africa (Ovid, Met. 4.631–62);26 to turn to stone those
who interfered in his plan to marry Andromeda (Ovid, Met. 5.177–235); and to
petrify Polydektes for harassing his mother Danai. The use of the head to turn
Polydektes to stone is attested as early as Pindar (Pyth. 10.46–48, first half of the
fifth century BCE), who specifies that the power of the gorgon’s look was enough to
petrify the entire population of the island of Seriphos. The use of the head against
Polydektes is also attested in fifth-century vase-painting, as on an Early Classical
pelike by Hermonax (plate 4.5).27 But the power of the gorgon is already given
visible form in the earliest surviving representation of the beheading of Medusa
by Perseus. On a Cycladic relief pithos of around 670 BCE (plate 4.6) the danger
contained in the gorgon’s eyes is attested by the precaution taken by Perseus, who
averts his gaze and uses his sense of touch to guide his sword to her neck.28 The
averting of the gaze, which becomes a traditional feature of the iconography of
Perseus, indicates that Medusa already
possessed the power to kill with her
eyes when she became a subject of
narrative art.29
The relief pithos and other early
representations of the story of Perseus
and Medusa also show that the principal traits of the face of Medusa in art
are those of the disembodied gorgoneion.30 The round frontal face in art
that is the closest parallel for the eye
cup is inextricably bound up with a
traditional mythical narrative. Typical
features of gorgoneia – the big, toothy, 4.6 Cycladic relief pithos, c. 670 BCE. Ceramic,
fanged grin, the lolling tongue, squa- height 130 cm. Paris: Musée du Louvre (CA 795).
shed nose, spit-curled hair, central Photo: courtesy of the Réunion des musées
parting, and, above all, stark frontality nationaux/Art Resource, NY.
– characterize the face of the living,
breathing Medusa on the Corfu pediment of 590 BCE (plate 4.7), the gorgon at the
moment of her death on a mid-sixth-century vase by the Amasis Painter, and
many other representations of Medusa in Archaic narrative art.31 Even the relatively less monstrous conception of Medusa on the Early Classical hydria by the
Nausikaa Painter (plate 4.8) – sleeping imperturbably as Perseus creeps towards
her with his knife ready (he can look directly at her because her eyes are closed) –
retains the wide-open mouth, central parting, and frontality of the traditional
gorgoneion.32 The early monumental pedimental sculpture of the gorgon from the
temple of Artemis at Corfu (plate 4.7) suggests that the defeat of Medusa by
Perseus is part of the very conception of the monster, even when she is depicted
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4.7 Pedimental sculpture,
temple of Artemis, Corfu,
c. 590 BCE. Marble, height
279 cm. Corfu: Archaeological
museum. Photo: Hermann
Wagner, Deutsches arch.aologisches Instituts Athen,
neg. no. D-DAI-ATH-1975/885.
All rights reserved.
4.8 Athenian red-figure hydria,
c. 460–450 BCE, Nausikaa
Painter. Ceramic,
44.5 33 cm. Richmond:
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
(62.1.1), Arthur and Margaret
Glasgow Fund. Photo:
rVirginia Museum of
Fine Arts.
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alone: in the pedimental sculpture, the
gorgon is identified as Medusa (rather
than one of her immortal sisters)
through the inclusion in the composition of Pegasos and Chrysaor, and
they call attention to the beheading of
Medusa by Perseus, because they
emerged from the creature’s neck only
when her head was removed.33 The
identity of the head of the mythological figure Medusa and the isolated
gorgoneion is eloquently established on
a pelike by the Pan Painter (plate 4.9):
it shows Perseus holdingthe head of
Medusa, which he has just removed
from its body and which takes the
form, visually, of the gorgoneion. The
vase-painting leaves no room for doubt
that the ubiquitous artistic motif
known as the gorgoneion was created in
the course of a traditional heroic deed;
intrinsic to the visual motif is a
narrative significance.34
The vase-painting by the Pan
Painter also neatly illustrates the
problem with any simple apotropaic
interpretation of the gorgoneion.
Perseus turns his own head away from
the image, because to look directly at 4.9 Athenian red-figure pelike, c. 470–460 BCE,
the face would, he knows, turn him to Pan Painter. Ceramic, height approx. 20 cm.
stone, but he directs the face of Munich: Staatliche Antikensammlungen
Medusa directly at the viewer, so that (8725). Photo: courtesy of the Staatliche
it is impossible to consider the vase- Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek Munchen.
.
painting at all without doing the one
thing that the myth guarantees we
cannot do: look the gorgoneion directly in the eye. Françoise Frontisi-Ducroux has
argued that the visual artists regularly employed a special formal strategy, a
double apostrophe, in depicting the death of Medusa: Perseus averts his gaze from
the paralysing effect of the gorgon’s look, and the gaze of the gorgon is also
averted from anyone within the narrative plane of the image. The vital necessity
of avoiding the gaze of the gorgon is expressed in the visual representations not
only by Perseus’s action but also by making it impossible for any of the figures
within the visual narrative to catch the eye of the gorgon; they cannot look her in
the eye, because she is looking at us.35 The formal visual means of conveying the
impossibility of enduring eye contact with Medusa, however, undercuts the efficacy of the image, because the Medusa’s gaze is invariably endured by anyone who
encounters the work of art from outside the virtual world of the visual narrative.
As Mack nicely put it, the question is ‘why it made sense to articulate a monstrous
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power only in order to ‘‘defeat’’ it’.36 The artists could have turned the regard of
the gorgon so that the gorgon would avoid the gaze of both the protagonist in the
story and the beholder of the visual narrative. There would be no risk in viewing
an image of the gorgon, and no art-historical problem to solve.37
In attempting to explain the ineffectiveness of visual representations of the
gorgon’s frontal regard, some scholars have argued that the story itself, the
testimony to the potency of the image, is a secondary development. In Thalia
Howe’s account of the development of the imagery, the gorgoneion is, in origin, a
primitive mask – that accounts for its frontality – and it existed before any myth
about a dangerous gorgon.38 The notion that the mask of the gorgon preceded
the development of a mythology about the creature is a good example of the early
twentieth-century scholarly tendency to privilege ritual and discount the
importance of mythology as ‘ritual practice misunderstood’, as Jane Harrison
famously put it.39 It necessitates an account of the creation of the story in which
a misunderstanding on the part of the storytellers is central. For example, Howe
argued that ‘[a]lthough the gorgoneion, rather than the Gorgon, was the original
element in the myth, the Greeks, not realising that fact, soon after its appearance
reasoned that it must have belonged to a figure which had been decapitated.’40 As
noted earlier, however, art-historical research has revealed that the narrative is as
early as the disembodied image of the monster’s head. The belief that the
disembodied head of Medusa had a prior existence independent of any narrative
entanglement rests entirely on theoretical speculation about the nature of the
relationship between ritual and myth.
A more productive explanation of the failure of the gorgoneion to petrify the
beholder takes its point of departure from a type of vase-painting that first
appears in the fourth century BCE. Those vase-paintings depict Perseus and Athena
contemplating the reflection of the gorgon’s face in a pool of water or polished
shield in a quiet moment after the hero has accomplished the decapitation (for
example, plate 4.10).41 The vase-paintings advance a nuanced understanding
about the regard of the gorgon: it paralyses only those who look at it in a direct
and unmediated fashion. A similar conception informs Ovid’s account of the
beheading of Medusa (Met. 4.782–786), in which Perseus positions a polished
shield in such a way that he is able to guide his sword visually to its target and
accomplish a clean, effective beheading without looking directly at his prey. The
visual representations of Medusa and gorgoneia are similar to the reflections of
the gorgoneion in a pool or polished shield in so far as they are images of the
monstrous head, not the head itself.42
It is very likely, however, that the specular motif originated at the end of the
fifth century BCE, when it first appears in art, and not earlier. Jean-Pierre Vernant
argued that the use of reflection is a narrative development related to other
intellectual trends of the late fifth century, including the rise of perspectival
illusion in painting, theories of mimesis in philosophy, and developments in
optical science.43 Moreover, the widespread image in earlier Greek art of Perseus
looking away from Medusa as he kills her shows that Archaic artists had developed a means of conveying the story without resorting to the use of reflective
devices.44 It seems fair to assume that early Greek artists and viewers recognized
that they survived direct visual encounters with the frontal gorgoneion because
they were looking at representations of it, rather than at the actual head of the
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4.10 Apulian red-figure bell krater, c. 400–380 BCE, Tarporley Painter.
Ceramic, height 30.5 cm. Boston: Museum of Fine Arts (1970.237), gift of
Robert E. Hecht, Jr. Photo: rMuseum of Fine Arts, Boston.
monster. But one may doubt that they conceptualized the reason for their
survival in the analytical or formal manner in which, say, Aristotle attributes the
pleasure people take in contemplating accurate representations of things that are
painful to look at in themselves (for example, ugly animals, corpses) to universal
human impulses to make representations, enjoy them, and learn from them.45
How the frontal image of the gorgon’s fatal gaze was experienced before the
late fifth century has only been adequately accounted for by Rainer Mack. Mack
emphasizes that the fiction of the gorgon’s deadly visual power is embedded in an
overarching story in which the danger of the gorgon’s look is overcome by
Perseus. As vase-painters or pottery users took up the image of the gorgoneion, they
pierced the fiction of the unsustainability of its gaze, and in doing so, they
replicated the legendary victory of Perseus over the monster.46 Mack suggests that
the image of Medusa, even the gorgoneion, depicts not merely the petrifying power
of the monster’s gaze, but more specifically a power that was overcome by
Perseus. ‘The viewer, by this account, played the role of Perseus, and in the simple
act of viewing the image . . . re-enacted his heroic triumph over the monster . . .
The image is not illustrating an object in the legend (the severed head) but staging
an episode from the legend.’47 Mack’s thesis locates the effectiveness of the
frontal gorgoneion not in primitive magical belief but in the practice of visual
narration and the structure of the motif’s pictorial conception.
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W H O S E F A C E D E C O R AT E S T H E E Y E C U P ?
The eye cup has important affinities with the gorgoneion beyond the formal
characteristics already enumerated. Like the gorgoneion, which is the face of a
particular notorious individual, the face on many, if not all, eye cups is not
generic. And like the gorgoneion, the eye cup also invites the viewer to insert himor herself into a specific mythological context. Gloria Ferrari has emphasized that
there are at least two specific types of figures represented on Chalkidean eye cups.
On many cups (for example, the so-called Phineus cup, obverse, plate 4.11a) horse
ears indicate that the face is that of a silen. In other instances (Phineus cup,
reverse, plate 4.11b) human ears with earrings, often combined with a form of eye
lacking a pronounced tear duct, suggest a female face.48 The female faces are
usually identified as the faces of nymphs, companions of silens.49 Matthias
Steinhart demonstrated why the decorative programme of the Phineus cup in
particular suggests that the female counterpart to the frontal silen face on
Chalkidean eye cups is a nymph. One side of the exterior is decorated with two
eyes, a nose and a pair of silen ears, the other with a pair of eyes lacking
pronounced tear ducts, a nose and two human ears with earrings. Between each
handle and ear there is a pair of figures – one silen and one female figure in each
vignette – echoing the juxtaposition of the two different frontal faces on the cup.
That the female companions of the silens in the four vignettes are nymphs is
suggested by their intimacy with the silens – they are even engaged in sexual
intercourse on one side of the cup. In the Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (262–63), as
well as numerous later sources, the mythical sexual companions of silens are
always nymphs.50
4.11a and 4.11b Chalkidean black-figure eye cup, c. 525 BCE, the so-called Phineus cup. Ceramic,
.
12 39 cm. Wurzburg:
Martin-von-Wagner Museum der Universit.at (L 164). Photos: Courtesy of
the museum/K. Oehrlein.
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4.12 Athenian black-figure Chalkidizing eye cup, c. 520 BCE, signed by the potter Nikosthenes.
Ceramic, 9.5 35.9 cm. Houston: De Ménil Collection (70–50-DJ). Photo: courtesy The Menil
Collection, Houston.
Silen ears also occur on Athenian eye cups that imitate Chalkidean models in
shape and decoration, the so-called ‘Chalkidizing’ cups. The most important
example is a cup in Houston signed by the prolific Athenian potter Nikosthenes
(plate 4.12). In shape, the cup appears to have been modelled directly on an early
form of the Chalkidean cup with broad bowl and drum-shaped foot; its decoration, especially the line connecting the nose to the silen ears, is also very close to
the Chalkidean scheme of eye-cup decoration.51 There are also a few Athenian eye
cups with ears that are not Chalkidizing in shape.52 Other characteristics of
Athenian eye cups have been taken to indicate that the frontal face is that of a
silen, or that more than one type of figure is represented by the faces. FrontisiDucroux suggested that the snub nose represented on many Attic eye cups
resembles the characteristic squashed nose of a silen.53 For Jette Keck, in Athenian workshops, unlike Chalkidean ateliers, the handles of the eye cup may have
been envisioned as the ears of the painted face.54 The pointed profile of the
upturned handles of the cup might specifically suggest the pointy ears of the
silen. Kunisch has emphasized that, on Athenian eye cups, there is more than one
type of eye, the masculine as well as feminine eye, which suggests that the faces of
Athenian eye cups represent several specific types of faces, most notably silens
and nymphs, and not merely the human face in the abstract.55 A few Athenian
eye cups, such as the so-called Bomford cup (plate 4.13), bring the face of the eye
cup into close proximity to the frontal face of the silen.56
Two other figures have also been identified in the faces on eye cups. The most
plausible identification is that of Dionysos. Evelyn Bell and Gloria Ferrari
suggested that the eye cup may derive from, or occasionally represent, the frontal
face or mask of Dionysos.57 Ferrari suggested that the earrings adorning the ears
on some Chalkidean eye cups need not rule out the possibility that the human
ears were those of a male figure, such as Dionysos. And she noted that, on a
number of Attic eye cups, a frontal mask of Dionysos is depicted between the eyes,
sometimes with the mask of a silen on the reverse of the cup. Matthias Steinhart
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sian animal, the panther, which is always depicted in Greek art in frontal
aspect.58 In sum, the faces on most eye cups, Chalkidean or Athenian, appear not
to be generic but to represent the faces of specific types of creatures: many
Chalkidean, and some Athenian, eye cups represent the faces of silens; some
others most probably depict the faces of nymphs; and some possibly convey the
face of Dionysos or a panther. In general, the creatures all seem to belong to the
mythical circle of Dionysos.
The recognition that eye cups represent certain types of characters was an
important step because it encouraged the consideration of the cups in connection
with the practice of masking, rather than apotropaic magic. John Boardman
noted that the face of the eye cup acquires a general mask-like character specifically when the cup is used for drinking: ‘consider one raised to the lips of a
4.13 Athenian black-figure eye cup, c. 530–520 BCE, manner of the Lysippides Painter, the so-called
Bomford cup. Ceramic, 13.8 34 cm. Oxford: Ashmolean Museum (1974.344). Photo: courtesy of
the Ashmolean Museum.
drinker: the eyes cover his eyes, the handles his ears, the gaping underfoot his
mouth.’59 Kunisch developed this idea further. The face was not just a symbol of a
mask, it became a veritable mask when the cup was used for drinking: the eye cup
transformed the symposiast, for his fellow symposiasts watching him lift the bowl
to his face, into a silen, nymph, or some other Dionysiac figure.60
The interpretation of the eye cup as a mask that covers the face is attractive,
but it is not without difficulties. Frontisi-Ducroux objected to the idea that the
drinker offered a false face to his fellow drinkers.61 The conception of a mask as
something that conceals the identity of the figure wearing it is, she argues, a
modern idea. Judging from Ancient Greek literature, the mask was employed to
effect an identification of the wearer with some other figure, not to conceal the
wearer’s own identity.62 Kunisch believed that the drinker could never don the
mask of the god Dionysos, and thus discounted the possibility that any of the
faces on eye cups represented the face of the god.63 For Martens the interpretation of the eye cup as a mask cannot account for the meaning of the many eye
schemes that decorate other pottery shapes, such as neck amphoras or kraters.
Those shapes do not regularly cover the faces of drinkers, and yet they are
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frequently decorated with the same kind of decoration as eye cups. To treat the
eye scheme of decoration on amphoras and kraters as dependent for its inspiration on the eye cup merely begs the question of how it might have been understood on those vessels which cannot be used as masks.64 Those objections rightly
call into question an interpretation of the eye cup that limits its effect to only
those moments when the cup passes in front of the face of the drinker and
provides him visually with a new facial identity.
In the debate about the status of the eye cup as a mask, the full significance of
the frontality of the image – of the eye contact that the represented figure makes
with us – has been lost sight of. The gaze of the frontal face is so unremitting as to
endow the figure with a high degree of attentiveness. The unflinching gaze gives
the impression that the figure is actively looking for something or someone. The
possibility of identifying the faces on eye cups as specific types of figures
contributes significantly to determining what specifically the figures may be
hoping or expecting to see. For example, recognizing that the gorgoneion was
created by Perseus in an heroic confrontation with the monster Medusa suggests
that the gaze of the gorgoneion is directed at her destroyer. Medusa hoped to stop
him in his tracks with her petrifying gaze, but the round shape of the motif
implies that he has already succeeded in beheading her. Perseus caused her gaze
to be fixed forever, through rigor mortis, as it was the moment when she
encountered him. In other words, familiarity with the narrative context in which
the gorgoneion belongs helps the viewer to determine who the gorgoneion is looking
at. In the case of eye cups, silens, nymphs and Dionysos also derive from narrative
mythology.65 Silens and nymphs are the most frequent companions of the god
Dionysos, and they are collective identities – they are always open to broader
membership. On the François vase (Florence: Museo Archeologico Etrusco) of
around 570 BCE, the most informative extant painted vase on matters of
mythology, containing ten different visual narratives and over one hundred
personal names identifying the figures, the silens and nymphs are unusual in
having collective, not individual, labels.66 In Archaic Greek vase-painting, silens,
nymphs and Dionysos are most often seen in the company of each other, often in
the company of as many silens and nymphs as could be fitted into the available
space.67 A silen, nymph, or Dionysos, looking attentively at something, is most
likely gazing at another silen or nymph, or perhaps at the god.
The viewer is drawn into the scene by the direction in which the silen, nymph,
or god is looking. He or she, looking for a companion silen or nymph, makes eye
contact with us, the viewers of the vase. Consider again the case of the gorgoneion:
Medusa has just encountered her destroyer, because the myth assures us that the
head belonged to a body, and the round, disembodied form of the image implies
that it has been successfully removed. The hero is obviously not present within
the narrative plane of the image, where protagonists are almost invariably to be
found in Greek narrative art – there is no room for him there. The direction of the
monster’s attention suggests that Perseus is to be found where the viewers of the
image are located. Like the gorgoneion, the eye cup does not provide a pictorial
space within which the vigilant frontal face can find what it is looking for. The
space in which the face must look is the space of the viewer of the cup. This
pictorial structure implicitly encourages the viewers of the vase, I believe, to
adapt their response to the frontal face as if they were the persons or type of
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figure that a silen, nymph, Dionysos, or Medusa would expect to see in the space
before them.
T H E S P E C TAT O R I N T H E P I C T U R E
To understand how Archaic Greek vase-paintings specifically elicit such a
subjective experience cross-cultural and trans-historical comparisons may be
helpful. In his study of the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century group portraiture
of Holland, Alois Riegl observed that Dutch artists developed a means of engaging
a viewer’s imagination, not merely his or her powers of observation.68 They
directed the attention of some (or all) of the figures within a painting towards a
person (or persons) not depicted in the image but necessarily – due to the
directions of the figure’s (or figures’) gaze(s) – occupying the place taken by a
viewer of the painting. Riegl noted that a figure within such a painting usually
responds to the undepicted figure(s) in such a way that their character or the
nature of the encounter is discernible. Of Rembrandt’s Syndics: The Sampling Officials of the Amsterdam Drapers’ Guild of 1662 (plate 4.14) he wrote,
.
Burger-Thoré
was the first to describe the dramatic content. Above all, he correctly presumed
the presence of an unseen party in the space of the viewer, with whom the syndics are negotiating. The presiding officer is presenting the guild’s position – with which the party in
question presumably disagrees – in such a superior and cogent way that his colleagues, the
moment they hear his convincing argument, gaze triumphantly at their humbled opponent.
This interpretation is no doubt broadly correct, though Thoré, as a Frenchman, overly
dramatised the situation and invented an all too sharply polemical contrast between the
regents and the presumed party. To a dispassionate observer, the expressions of the figures and
the general mood of didactic attentiveness probably convey more a feeling of contentment and
assent than malicious satisfaction and schadenfreude.69
The figures in the painting respond to one or more persons occupying the
viewer’s position, not as if those persons were visitors to an art museum but as if
they had an interest in cloth or some other business with the guild.70
Riegl seemed to think that the location of the unseen protagonist(s) of that
sort of picture was more than an accident or coincidence, but he was not very
precise about its significance. He frequently spoke of the viewer of the painting
and the unseen protagonists as if they were interchangeable. Of Hals’s Banquet of
the Officers and Junior Officers of the Civic Guard of Saint George (1616, Haarlem: Franz
Hals Museum) Riegl contended: ‘[the] banqueting guardsmen . . . have a variety of
active and passive relationships with the viewer: that is to say, with the arriving
guests whom some of them have just spotted, but who are invisible to the
viewer.’71 The appearance of this kind of pictorial conception in the history of art
represented for Riegl an important step towards an art directed to the subjective
involvement of the spectator: ‘[t]he artists of Holland were the first to realize that
the viewing subject can take mental control over all the objects in a painting by
making them part of the viewing subject’s own consciousness.’72
Richard Wollheim refined the understanding of this sort of representation in
two important ways. First, paintings of any date, in principle, can ‘have a representational content in excess of what they represent. There is something which
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4.14 Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn, Syndics: The Sampling Officials of the Amsterdam Drapers’
Guild, 1662. Oil on canvas, 191 279 cm. Amsterdam: Rijksmuseum (inv. no. SK-C-6).
Photo: r Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.
cannot be seen in the painting: so the painting doesn’t represent that thing. But
the thing is given to us along with what the painting represents: so it is part of
the painting’s representational content.’73 Paintings that contain an unrepresented protagonist are not necessarily limited to seventeenth-century Europe.
Second, the implied location of the unseen protagonist(s), not merely in front of
the picture plane but more or less exactly where the spectator of the picture takes
up his or her position, is of particular significance. The purpose of incorporating
an unseen, internal spectator into the representational content of the painting is
to provide us, the external spectators, with a special means of perceiving the
content of the work of art. ‘[A]dopting the internal spectator as his protagonist,
[the external spectator] starts to imagine in that person’s perspective the person
or event that the painting represents . . . [he] identifies with the internal spectator,
and it is through this identification that he gains fresh access to the picture’s
content.’74 Paintings that successfully incorporate an internal spectator provide
enough information about the identity or personality of that figure that the
viewer or external spectator can adopt that character as a point of view.
Wollheim envisioned one objection to the concept of a spectator in the
picture that is especially relevant here: that the spectator in the picture is not
distinct from the spectator of the picture.75 In that regard, Wollheim clarified a
distinction between two types of pictures: those, on the one hand, that invite the
spectator to identify with a figure within the represented space; and paintings, on
the other, in which ‘we are expected to believe on the basis of what we see that a
represented figure enters our space’.76 The differentiation is especially important
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in the case of eye cups. When an eye cup was lifted to the face of the drinker, and
its painted face covered his actual face, one might plausibly say that the painted
figure on the cup entered the space of the drinker’s companions, and that it was
part of the intention of the potter and/or vase-painter that the cup create such an
impression when used for drinking.77 Equally, as I suggest here, when the eye cup
is not held up to the face of drinker, its painted face invites a different kind of
response, one that accords with Wollheim’s notion of a spectator in the picture.
When the cup is not being used as a mask, the painted frontally facing mythological figure does not enter the space of viewer; rather, the beholder is invited to
identify imaginatively with a figure within the mythical space of Dionysos and his
followers. As Wollheim emphasized, ‘[t]he impossible thing is for the spectator to
enter the represented space, given, that is, that he doesn’t belong there, or hasn’t
been put there by the artist.’78
In short, the pictorial conception described by Riegl and Wollheim is similar, I
believe, to the conception of the Archaic Greek visual image of the gorgoneion and
the eye cup. In those works of art, the figures within the painted decoration make
eye contact with a figure of a particular sort in front of them. The localization of
the unrepresented figure in the position that we occupy as spectators encourages
us to adopt the figure’s story or role as a point of view.79 This not only accounts
for the fact that the faces on many cups are those of specific figures, such as silens
or nymphs, but also suggests that the eye cup was designed to facilitate imaginative engagement whether or not it was lifted to the face of a drinker. The
traditional apotropaic interpretations of the eye cup and the gorgoneion are not
completely off the mark in seeing the images as particularly powerful. The source
of that power, however, is the insistent claim made on the viewer by the attentiveness of the figures. It relies on formal artistic choices rather than magic.80
T H E E N FA C E S I L E N
The hypothesis that the decoration of the eye cup often serves as an invitation to
adopt the persona of a silen is supported by the pictorial conception underlying
some vase-paintings of silens shown en face or with a frontal face, who make eye
contact with the viewer (for example, plate 4.15). The narrative significance of
the isolated gorgoneion is clarified in part by the many representations of the story
of Perseus and Medusa in which the face of the living monster is that of the
gorgoneion. Similarly, the invitation imaginatively to join the ranks of silens implicit in many eye cups is explicit in some vase-paintings of frontally faced silens.
Scholars have occasionally argued that the frontal face of the silen, like that
of the gorgon, was apotropaic in function. It will suffice to consider the most
explicit ancient literary assertion that the face of the silen had an apotropaic
effect, because the context of the statement playfully undercuts its very claim. In
the fifth-century BCE satyr play by Aischylos entitled Isthmiastai, the chorus of
silens abandons its allegiance to Dionysos and takes up athletics. In one fragment
of the play, the silens marvel at images of themselves, which they are probably
holding in their hands:
look and see whether this image could [possibly] be more [like] me, this likeness by the Skillful
One; it can do everything but talk! . . . I bring this offering to the god to ornament his house, my
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lovely votive picture. It would give my mother a bad time! If she could see it, she’d certainly run
shrieking off, thinking it was the son she brought up: so like me is this fellow.. . . [L]et each
fasten up the likeness of his handsome face, a truthful messenger, a voiceless herald to keep off
travellers; he’ll halt strangers on their way by his terrifying look.81
It is uncertain precisely what kind of images the silens are holding, but Ferrari
and other scholars have argued that the silens are most likely holding theatrical
satyr masks, which they intend to dedicate in the temple of Poseidon, in imitation
of the practice of dedicating dramatic masks in the Athenian temple of Dionysos
Eleuthereus.82 That practice is known from visual sources, Lysias (21.4), and a
fragment of Aristophanes: ‘ ‘‘can you tell me where the Dionysion is located?’’ ‘‘It is
there where the mormoluke^ia are suspended.’’ ’ The fragment of Aristophanes is
noteworthy because his choice of terminology for the masks, mormolukeia (bogeys,
hobgoblins), conveys the idea that the masks could inspire fear, but nothing in
the fragment suggests that they have such an effect in this context.83 Christopher
Faraone argued that one statement in particular of the silen-chorus in the Isthmiastai suggests that the masks they hold are meant to be understood as terror
masks: each one ‘will halt strangers on their way by his terrifying look
(j
o½bon blepon).’84 The passage as a whole, however, is not unambiguous about
the source of the terror that the images might inspire, for the silens have just said
that the images will frighten their own mother because, it seems, of the high
degree of likeness or verisimilitude: ‘if she could see it, she’d certainly run
4.15 Athenian bilingual amphora, c. 520 BCE, Psiax. Ceramic, approx. 70 38 cm. Madrid: Museo
arqueológico nacional (11008). Photo: courtesy of the Photo Archive, National Archaeology
Museum, Madrid.
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shrieking off, thinking it was the son she brought up: so like me is this fellow
˛
˛
; ;
on e’xeyrecen outoB
e’mjerŹB od’
e’stin).’85 Hugh Lloyd-Jones
(doko^
uB em e’I nai t
perceptively noted that the fear that the images might inspire in the satyrs’
mother or in passers-by could also be understandable if the art of portraiture
was thought of as unusual or new at the moment represented in the play.86 Given
the high frequency with which inventions or the foundation of institutions are
treated in satyr play, it seems possible that the silens are to be envisioned as
making the first-ever dedication of masks in a temple, or contemplating the firstever theatrical masks of silens.87 The playful emphasis on the verisimilitude of
the masks would have been greatly enhanced in the actual performance of the
play if the chorus members had been wearing masks identical to the ones that
they were holding. Finally, the tone of the passage – the self-consciousness of the
silens, as they look at the images of themselves and calmly and analytically
describe how frightening they will be to their mother or to strangers – undercuts
the idea that the images were really effective in that way.
The en face silen is often alternatively – and, it seems to me, more correctly –
understood as a means of conveying to the viewer the heightened emotional state
of the silens.88 Frontisi-Ducroux has eloquently explained how the visual motif
gets that idea across formally: the en face figure disengages from visual interaction
with the other figures in the image, and in that way suggests that his or her
attention is elsewhere.89 There are numerous early vase-paintings of silens and
Dionysos together in which one of the silens turns his face away from the god and
towards the viewer, as if to escape from subordination to the deity.90 On an
amphora in Madrid by Psiax (plate 4.15), Dionysos turns around to look at the
silen behind him, because the silen is no longer attending to the god, having
turned his attention towards the spectator.91 The lovely symmetry of the
composition, rooted in the central, transcendent figure of the god Dionysos, is
spoiled by the independent-minded silen, who disregards his master’s claim to his
attention, and perhaps invites some undepicted figure into an otherwise perfectly
balanced, closed composition.
Although it appears in many cases that the en face figure is disengaged from
the other figures within the representation, Frontisi-Ducroux acknowledged that
every frontal face also potentially contains an address to the viewer.92 She argued
that it seems very probable that the original viewers of the vase-paintings would,
in some cases, have seen someone very like themselves reflected in the en face
figure. The likelihood is greatest, she argued, in depictions of such en face figures
as warriors or symposiasts, in which the painted figure’s vocation or identity was
most similar to that of the original viewer, the symposiast examining the vase he
is using. A symposiast named Thoudemos is portrayed on a fragmentary krater by
Euphronios (plate 4.16), staring out over the top of his cup at a viewer who, the
vase-painter could safely have presumed, was also a symposiast similarly holding
a cup.93 Here the en face figure becomes a kind of mirror in which the spectator
sees a reflection of himself. Vase-paintings of the gorgon, eye cups, as well as some
later paintings in the Western tradition, suggest that some en face figures can
alternatively be understood to elicit an otherwise uncharacteristic role from the
spectator. Frontal figures of that sort do not reflect back to the viewer an identity
that he or she already possesses, but invite the viewer to identify temporarily with
characters who may be quite different in lifestyle or values.
˘
˛
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4.16 Fragmentary Athenian red-figure calyx krater, c. 515–510 BCE, Euphronios. Ceramic,
38.3 53 cm. Munich: Staatliche Antikensammlungen (inv. 8935). Photo courtesy of the
.
Staatliche Antikensammlungen und Glyptothek Munchen.
Some vase-paintings of silens possess a marked visual address to an undepicted silen whose position, as indicated by the depicted figures, is essentially
that of the viewer. One way to understand the address is as a means of putting
the user of the vase into the unseen silen’s shoes, so to speak, despite the
differences in ontological status and way of life. The depiction of three masturbating silens on the aryballos by Nearchos (plate 4.17), one of the very early
representations of a frontally faced silen, provides a good example. The image
is dominated by a silen who looks directly at the spectator.94 One amusing
possibility is that the en face silen has seen someone in the space occupied by the
viewer who has aroused him to his current state of excitement. In Aristophanes’s
Frogs (542–6) Dionysos envisions himself, in an inversion of expected roles,
watching his servant Xanthios embracing a slave girl, and imagines himself
roused to the point of auto-eroticism by the sight. The structure of Nearchos’s
vase-painting, however, encourages a different interpretation. To either side, a
silen identical to the en face silen is depicted in profile. The silens to right and
left face each other and are, in a sense, mirror images. The symmetry between
those two figures encourages the viewer to envision an identical unseen silen
facing the en face silen. The coincidence between the position of the unseen silen
conjured by the pictorial composition, on the one hand, and the position of the
viewer, on the other, encourages the viewer to imagine himself in the role of a
solipsistic silen.
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4.17 Athenian black-figure aryballos, c. 560 BCE, Nearchos. Ceramic, height
7.8 cm. New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, Purchase, The Cesnola
Collection, by exchange, 1926 (26.49). Photo: all rights reserved, The
Metropolitan Museum of Art.
S Y M P O T I C P O E T R Y A N D R O L E – P L AY I N G
The interpretation of eye cups advanced in this essay – that their frontal faces of
silens or nymphs are looking for other mythical creatures of their kind in the
space occupied by the viewer – is based primarily on a formal analysis of the
pictorial conception or structure that informs the decoration of the cups. Social
and historical considerations support this interpretation. Most of the vasepaintings considered here were designed, so far as one can tell, for use in the
symposium.95 A large body of Archaic Greek poetry also affords the participants
in symposia the possibility of temporarily adopting alternative identities. Those
poems consist of first-person narratives. In both ancient and modern scholarship,
the first-person form of poetic narrative has often been taken to reflect the poems’
function as autobiographical records of the lives of the poets. Two trends in
modern scholarship have modified that approach. Scholars have called into
question the status of the poetry as faithful autobiography.96 And scholars have
recognized that first-person poetic narratives were very often traditional poems,
sung by participants in symposia, sometimes for generations.97 Scholarly interest
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has broadened to include the question of how poetry functioned within the
symposium, in addition to the traditional question of how poetry related to the
lives of the poets; the former question is of particular relevance to the interpretation of vase-painting that circulated in the same context. The re-performance
of first-person poetic narratives aloud, before one’s fellow symposiasts, by persons
other than the poets, introduced anachronistic, fictional, and sometimes even
purely mythical, personae into the drinking group. When a symposiast sang a
traditional first-person narrative, he necessarily adopted the first-person pronoun
of the poem, and all the experiences recounted by that voice, as his own,98 as in
the well-known poem by Archilochos: ‘Some Saian exults in my shield which I left
– a faultless weapon – beside a bush against my will. But I saved myself. What do I
care about that shield? To hell with it! I’ll get one that’s just as good another
time.’99 Thanks to the forms of the verbs or pronouns and the participatory
nature of sympotic entertainment, the symposiast who sang such a song claimed
out loud, before his companions, to be someone that he perhaps was not, or to
have had an experience that in all likelihood was something that he had never
experienced. Vase-paintings intended for use in the symposium employ the
frontal face, in some cases, for the same reason: as a structural device to elicit the
adoption of a persona by the user or viewer of a vase.
Ewen Bowie has pointed out that a poem such as Archilochos fragment 1 – ‘I
am the servant of lord Enyalios and skilled in the lovely gift of the Muses’ – might
be sung with equal relevance by any of the poet’s companions, all of whom were
familiar with war and singing.100 Other Archaic poems demand a more radical
shift in the temporary identity of any symposiast performing them, thanks to the
content, as well as the first-person structure, of their narratives. The most striking
and unambiguous examples are first-person poetic narratives that have female
narrators: ‘I am a fine, prize-winning (kal
Z kai aeyliZ) horse, but I carry a man
who is utterly base, and this causes me the greatest pain. Often I was on the point
of breaking the bit, throwing (osamenZ) my bad rider, and running off.’ (Thgn.
257–60) The feminine forms of adjectives and participle assure us that the
narrator is female, yet the poem was almost certainly intended for presentation
in a symposium, the social preserve of men. It is true that flute girls and courtesans attended symposia, but there is no evidence to suggest that they participated in the central sympotic activity of singing poetry.101 Consider also the
fragment ‘me, wretched woman (eme deilan, feminine adjective), me, sharing in
all misery . . .’, composed by Alkaios according to Hephaisteion;102 or the fragment ‘I come up from the river bringing (jerousa, feminine participle) [the
washing] all bright’, attributed to Anakreon by Hephaisteion.103 Although the
fragmentary nature of the verses prevents one from ascertaining the theme or
genre of the original poems (erotic?), neither poem seems to begin with a diegetic
introduction to the effect that ‘I, a male voice, am going to quote the speech of a
woman’; rather, the poems appear to begin emphatically in the persona of a
woman – ‘me, wretched woman’.104 Bowie concluded that: ‘taken together the
songs are better seen as evidence for male symposiasts entertaining each other by
taking on – in song at least – a female role.’105 The invitation implicit in gorgoneia,
many eye cups, and some frontal images of silens on drinking vessels, to take on
the identity of Perseus, a silen, or a nymph, seems related to the role-playing built
into much of the poetry that served as the principal form of entertainment at the
˛
˛
˛
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symposia in which the vases were used. And the extraordinary transformations
inherent in such pictorially inspired metamorphoses – from a member of the
aristocracy in good standing to a scurrilous, half-breed silen or hippy nymph – is
parallelled by the diversity of first-person narrators in the poetry, which include
not only women but also sex maniacs and thieves.106
NIETZSCHE
Listening to a symposiast sing a traditional first-person narrative, no one mistook
the performer for the fictional character, least of all the performer himself. The
eye contact afforded by gorgoneia, eye cups and some visual representations of
figures en face facilitate the temporary augmentation of the identity of the viewer,
not its wholesale replacement. As the viewer takes up the point of view of Perseus,
a silen, or a nymph, he or she does not lose sight of his/her regular identity. That
point was developed in the earliest modern articulation of the form of spectatorship that is the subject of this paper, in Friedrich Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy
(1876).107 The Birth of Tragedy distinguishes between two different means by which
art relates to creator, audience, or viewer, a distinction between a medium oriented
towards the subjective involvement of the spectator, on the one hand, and a medium
that is concerned with making something objectively present, on the other:
[t]o see oneself transformed before one’s own eyes and to begin to act as if one had entered into
another body, another character. This process stands at the beginning of the origin of drama.
Here we have something different from the rhapsodist who does not become fused with his
images but, like a painter, sees them outside himself as objects of contemplation.108
For my purposes, The Birth of Tragedy is useful because it offers a nuanced account
of the subjectively involved experience that certain forms of early Greek poetry
afforded its audience as well as its performers. The account helps to clarify more
precisely the kind of imaginative engagement that, I believe, characterized the
experience of eye cups. As a sketch of the origins of tragedy – as an account of how
the genre came into being – Nietzsche’s book remains as problematic as it was
when it was first attacked by Wilamowitz in the late nineteenth century.109
Having lost sight of the importance of subjective involvement for the audience of theatre, Nietzsche argued, moderns have difficulty in accepting the
ancient belief that the chorus alone was the original form of Greek drama:
‘[a]ccustomed as we are to the function of our modern stage chorus, especially in
operas, we could not comprehend why the tragic chorus of the Greeks should be
older, more original and important than the ‘‘action’’ proper, as the voice of
tradition claimed unmistakably.’110 Nietzsche traced the primacy of the chorus to
a psychology of Dionysiac ritual:
the revelling throng, the votaries of Dionysus jubilate under the spell of such moods and
insights whose power transforms them before their own eyes till they imagine that they are
beholding themselves as the restored geniuses of nature, as satyrs. The later constitution of the
chorus in tragedy is the artistic imitation of this natural phenomenon.111 . . . In [Greek] theatres
the terraced structure of concentric arcs made it possible for everybody to overlook the whole
world of culture around him and to imagine, in absorbed contemplation, that he himself was a
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chorist. In the light of this insight we may call the chorus in its primitive form, in proto-tragedy,
the mirror image in which the Dionysian man contemplates himself. This phenomenon is best
made clear by imagining an actor who, being truly talented, sees the role he is supposed to play
quite palpably before his eyes.112
Especially striking is the degree of self-consciousness of the votary, audience
member and actor in the experience of drama or its ritual predecessor. The
votaries do not simply become – they are not just transformed into – satyrs, losing
any sense of who they were before. The ritual experience allows them to perceive
the transformation in themselves or, to follow the complex articulation in the
text, ‘transforms them before their own eyes till they imagine that they are
beholding themselves’ as satyrs. The self-awareness of the audience is also
expressed through Nietzsche’s use of the mirror as a metaphor: in absorbed
contemplation, an audience member can imagine that he is a chorus member,
but what is revealed, as if in a mirror, is himself as someone opened up to the
aesthetic experience. In this account, the measure of true talent in acting is when
the actor is able to see himself in his role palpably before his own eyes, not (one
may speculate) the ability to lose or forget oneself completely in one’s role. The
special quality of doubleness characterizing Nietzsche’s conception of the
aesthetic experience of early drama, of simultaneously experiencing transformation and being aware of the difference between self and other, is expressed in
an essay preceding The Birth of Tragedy: ‘so must the thrall to Dionysus be intoxicated, while simultaneously lurking behind himself as an observer.’113
Not surprisingly, perhaps, the origins of the eye cup have been associated with the
development of the mask in the early history of Athenian drama.114 As I have
argued, however, the link between eye cups and drama is deeper and more
complex than just a tangible object such as a mask. And the aesthetic effect of the
eye cup is not limited to those moments when it is lifted to the face and, like a
mask, replaces the visage of a drinker. The eye cup may translate into the medium
of ceramics some of the properties of dramatic masks, but it also, like the
gorgoneion, makes use of properties unique to pictorial art to evoke the presence of
an imaginary figure with whom the viewer is invited to identify. What links the
diverse cultural forms studied in this paper – eye cups, gorgoneia, some frontal
images of silens, much sympotic poetry, and perhaps even early drama or
Dionysiac choral performance – is something essentially structural. Although the
shared aesthetic conception manifests itself concretely in quite different ways in
the different media – through the use of first-person pronouns and verb forms in
poetry, the prominence of a chorus in drama, and the role of frontality and eye
contact in vase-painting – all the works of art considered here discourage the
singer, drinker and/or spectator from contemplating the work of art or poetry
from a cool distance, and embroil them fully in the fiction.
Notes
For useful comments on a draft of this paper, I wish to thank my colleagues in
the art department at Williams College, Massachusetts. The following special
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abbreviations are used in the notes: ABV: J.D. Beazley, Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painters,
Oxford, 1956; ARV2 : Beazley, Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters, 2nd edn, Oxford, 1963;
Para: Beazley, Paralipomena: Additions to Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painters and to Attic RedFigure Vase-Painters (Second Edition), Oxford, 1971; CVA: Corpus vasorum antiquorum;
LIMC: Lexicon iconographicum mythologiae classicae; RVAp: A.D. Trendall and Alexander Cambitoglou, The Red-Figured Vases of Apulia, Oxford, 1978–82. The Beazley
archive database may be found at http://www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/. Abbreviations of
ancient authors and texts are after Simon Hornblower and Anthony Spawford,
eds, The Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd edn, Oxford, 1999.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
242
Munich 589, Andreas Rumpf, Chalkidische Vasen,
Berlin, 1927, 36, no. 244, pl. 178.
See, for example, D.A. Jackson, East Greek Influence on Attic Vases, Society for the Promotion of
Hellenic Studies, supplementary paper, no. 13,
London, 1976, 68.
For the possibility of meaning, even in some
instances of the meander pattern, see Nikolaus
.
.
Himmelmann-Wildschutz,
Uber
einige gegenst.andliche Bedeutungsmöglichkeiten des fr.uhgriechischen Ornaments, AbhMainz, no. 7, Wiesbaden,
1968.
Rainer Mack, ‘Facing down Medusa (an
aetiology of the gaze)’, Art History, 25, 2002,
571–604.
New York 98.8.25, Rumpf, Chalkidische Vasen, 38,
no. 263, pl. 187. For the Chalkidean series
generally, see Rumpf, Chalkidische Vasen, 35–9,
125–6; Jette Keck, Studien zur Rezeption fremder
Einfl.usse in der chalkidischen Keramik, Archologische Studien, vol. 8, Frankfurt am Main,
1988, 64–79. For the location of the production
centre (Chalkis or Rhegion), see Marion True,
‘The murder of Rhesos on a Chalcidian neckamphora by the Inscription Painter’, in The Ages
of Homer: A Tribute to Emily Townsend Vermeule,
eds Jane B. Carter and Sarah P. Morris, Austin,
1995, 427, n. 8.
The Athenian eye cup was studied in detail by
Jeanne Aline Jordan, Attic Black-Figured Eye-Cups,
University Microfilms International, no.
8812638, Ann Arbor, 1988.
Munich 2044, type A cup, ABV 146, 21, Erika
Simon, Max Hirmer and Albert Hirmer, Die
griechischen Vasen, 2nd edn, Munich, 1981, pl.
XXIV, 73. On the position of the cup within the
series of Athenian eye cups, see Gloria Ferrari,
‘Eye-cup’, Revue archeologique, 1986, 12; Jordan,
Eye-cups, 7–9.
Rumpf, Chalkidische Vasen, 126. On the chronology of Chalkidean cups, see also Keck, Chalkidischen Keramik, 65.
Hansjörg Bloesch, Formen attischer Schalen von
Exekias bis zum Ende des strengen Stils, Bern, 1940,
2–4.
For example, London 1888.6–1.392, Matthias
Steinhart, Das Motiv des Auges in der Griechischen
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
Bildkunst, Mainz, 1995, pl. 20,3. For various
opinions on the relationships between, or
derivations of, the different series of eye cups,
see Rumpf, Chalkidische Vasen, 125; Jackson, East
Greek Influence, 64–5; Keck, Chalkidischen Keramik,
70, 72; Norbert Kunisch, Berlin 4, CVA Germany
33, Munich, 1971, 44; Steinhart, Motiv des Auges,
62; H.R.W. Smith, The Origin of Chalkidean Ware,
University of California publications in classical archaeology, vol. 1, Berkeley, 1932, 123;
Jordan, Eye-cups, 8–9; Didier Martens, Une esthétique de la transgression: Le vase grec de la fin de
l’époque géométrique au début de l’époque classique,
Mémoire de la classe des beaux-arts, collection
in-8o, 3e série, vol. 2, Brussels, 1992, 315–16;
Ferrari, ‘Eye-cup’, 13–14.
For references, see Norbert Kunisch, ‘Die Augen
des Augenschalen’, Antike Kunst, 33, 1990, 21, n.
9; Martens, Transgression, 332–5.
Martens, Transgression, 332–47. See also J.L.
Benson, ‘The central group of the Corfu pediment’, in Gestalt und Geschichte: Festschrift K.
Schefold, Antike Kunst Beiheft 4, Bern, 1967, 48–
50. See also Alexandre G. Mitchell, ‘Humour in
Greek vase-painting’, Revue archeologique, 2004,
7.
Kunisch, ‘Augen’, 20.
W.L. Hildburgh, ‘Apotropaism in Greek vasepaintings’, Folklore, 57–8, 1946-47, 158.
For the latest eye cups, see Dyfri Williams, ‘The
late archaic class of eye-cups’, in Proceedings of
the Third Symposium on Ancient Greek and Related
Pottery, eds Jette Christiansen and Torben
Melander, Copenhagen, 1988, 675–83.
See Ferrari, ‘Eye-cup’, 11.
On this point, see Anna Collinge, ‘A ‘‘Chalkidean’’ cup restored’, Arch.aologischer Anzeiger,
1984, 567; Keck, Chalkidischen Keramik, 70;
Steinhart, Motiv des Auges, 55.
Munich N. I. 8760, plate, Para 46, Lydos, LIMC, 4,
pl. 165 Gorgo, Gorgones 38. A survey of the
motif appears in Ingrid Krauskopf and StefanChristian Dahlinger, ‘Gorgo, Gorgones’, LIMC,
4, 1988, 285–330.
J.D. Beazley, The Development of Attic Black-Figure,
eds Dietrich von Bothmer and Mary B. Moore,
Berkeley, 1986, 62.
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20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
J.D. Beazley and Filippo Magi, La raccolta Benedetto Guglielmi nel museo gregoriano etrusco,
Vatican City, 1939, 58.
Beazley and Magi, La raccolta Benedetto
Guglielmo, 57.
Compare Martens, Transgression, 348–51.
Madrid inv. 1999/99/72, Paloma Cabrera Bonet,
ed., La colección várez fisa en el museo arqueológico
nacional, Madrid, 2003, 217–19, no.73. Compare
Naples 81146, Claude Bérard, et al., A City of
Images: Iconography and Society in Ancient Greece,
trans. Deborah Lyons, Princeton, 1989, 159, fig.
218; Munich 2027, ABV 205, LIMC, 4, pl. 166
Gorgo, Gorgones 41.
Cambridge GR 39.1864 (G 61), ABV 202,2,
Painter of Cambridge 61, CVA Cambridge 1, pl.
18,2a–b, LIMC, 4, pl. 166 Gorgo, Gorgones 43.
For the literary sources, see Dahlinger in
Krauskopf and Dahlinger, ‘Gorgo’, 285–7.
See also Polyidos in David A. Campbell, The New
School of Poetry and Anonymous Songs and Hymns,
vol. 5 of Greek Lyric, Cambridge, MA, 1993, no.
837.
Rome, Villa Giulia, ARV2 485,25. See also
Bologna 325, bell krater, ARV2 1069,2, Polydektes Painter, LIMC, 4, pl. 187 Gorgo, Gorgones
337.
Paris, Louvre CA 795, LIMC, 4, pl. 183 Gorgo,
Gorgones 290. See also Louvre CA 937. Bibliography may be found in Miriam Ervin Caskey,
‘Notes on relief pithoi of the Tenian-Boiotian
Group’, American Journal of Archaeology, 80, 1976,
28.
Françoise Frontisi-Ducroux, Du masque au
visage: Aspects de l’identité en grèce ancienne, Idées
et recherches, Paris, 1995, 69.
Compare Frontisi-Ducroux, Visage, 12, on the
lack of terminological distinction in the
literary sources.
Corfu pediment, LIMC, 4, 311 and pl. 182 Gorgo,
Gorgones 289; Amasis Painter: London B 471,
ABV 153,32, LIMC, 4, pl. 183 Gorgo, Gorgones
293.
Richmond, Virginia Museum 62.1.1, ARV2
1683,48bis, LIMC, 4, pl. 183 Gorgo, Gorgones
299.
Mack, ‘Medusa’, 581, 584–5, 585 n. 30. See also
Benson, ‘Corfu’, 51–5. On the narrative significance of attributes, see Nikolaus Himmelmann, ‘Narrative and figure in Archaic art’,
trans. H.A. Shapiro, in Reading Greek Art: Essays
by Nikolaus Himmelmann, ed. William Childs,
comp. Hugo Meyer, Princeton, 1998, 67–102. For
the traditional apotropaic interpretation of the
pedimental sculpture, see Janer Danforth
Belson, The Gorgoneion in Greek Architecture,
University Microfilms International no.
8202559, Ann Arbor, 1981, 192, 217.
Munich 8725, pelike, ARV2 554,85, Pan Painter,
Frontisi-Ducroux, Visage, Fig. 17.
Frontisi-Ducroux, Visage, 69–70.
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36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
Mack, ‘Medusa’, 578. The simple apotropaic
interpretation of the gorgoneion was undercut
already in some ancient literary sources: see
Frontisi-Ducroux, Visage, 11.
Vase-painters only occasionally depicted the
frontal face of the severed head of Medusa with
its eyes closed: for example, Berlin F 2377,
hydria, ARV2 582,16, Perseus Painter, CVA Berlin
9, pls 10 and 11,7.
Thalia Phillies Howe, ‘The origin and function
of the gorgon-head’, American Journal of Archaeology, 58, 1954, 215. Cf. J.H. Croon, ‘The mask of
the underworld daemon – some remarks on
the Perseus-Gorgon story’, Journal of Hellenic
Studies, 75, 1955, 11–13.
On the Harrison quotation, see H.S. Versnel,
Transition and Reversal in Myth and Ritual, vol. 2 of
Inconsistencies in Greek and Roman Religion,
Studies in Greek and Roman Religion, vol. 6, II,
Leiden, 1993, 25.
Howe, ‘Gorgon-head’, 215–16. Compare Jane E.
Harrison, Prolegomena to the Study of Greek Religion, 2nd edn, Cambridge, 1908, 187.
Boston 1970.237, bell krater, RVAp I 48,16,
Tarporley Painter, LIMC, 7, pl. 285 Perseus 69.
For other examples, see Linda Jones Roccos,
‘Perseus’, LIMC, 7, 1994, 336–37, nos. 66–72, and
Basel, H.C. Cahn 203, lekanis fragment, Alexander Cambitoglou and Jacques Chamay, Céramique de grande grèce: La collection de fragments
Herbert A. Cahn, Hellas et Roma, vol. 8, Zurich,
1997, 176–9.
Compare Frontisi-Ducroux, Visage, 71–2.
Jean-Pierre Vernant, ‘In the mirror of Medusa’,
in Mortals and Immortals: Collected Essays, ed.
Froma I. Zeitlin, Princeton, 1991, 147–9. See
also Edward Phinney Jr, ‘Perseus’ battle with
the gorgons’, Transactions of the American Philological Association, 102, 1971, 456–7.
See, for example, Timothy Gantz, Early Greek
Myth: A Guide to Literary and Artistic Sources,
Baltimore, 1993, 307; Roccos, ‘Perseus’, 345–6.
Aristotle, Poet. 4.1448 b 4–17.
Mack, ‘Medusa’, 588.
Mack, ‘Medusa’, 593.
.
Phineus cup, Wurzburg
L 164, Rumpf, Chalkidische Vasen, pls 43–4,1. Ferrari, ‘Eye-cup’, 14.
Lists of Chalkidean cups with ears may be
found in Rumpf, Chalkidische Vasen, 35–9; Keck,
Chalkidischen Keramik, 308 n. 283.
Rumpf, Chalkidische Vasen, 111; Kunisch, ‘Augen’,
24–5.
Steinhart, Motiv des Auges, 61–2. Compare New
York 98.8.25, plate 4.2; Berlin, V. I. 3282, CVA,
Berlin 4, pl. 178, and perhaps the Chalkidean
eye cup in Florence discussed by Collinge,
‘Cup’. For the sources on the relationship
between silens and nymphs, see Guy Hedreen,
Silens in Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painting: Myth and
Performance, Ann Arbor, 1992, 71–3; Hedreen,
‘Silens, nymphs, and maenads’, Journal of
Hellenic Studies, 114, 1994, 47–54.
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51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
244
Houston, De Ménil Foundation, 70-50-DJ, c.
530–525 BCE, Vincent Tosto, The Black-Figure
Pottery Signed NIKOSYENES EPOIESEN, Allard
Pierson series, vol. 11, Amsterdam, 1999, 144–5,
pl. 143, no. 156. Other Attic Chalkidizing cups
with silen ears: Munich 2018, ABV 204,9, Athenische Mitteilungen, 25, 1900, 57 fig. 17; Orvieto
580, ABV 204,10 (unpublished); Taranto, ABV
204,11 (unpublished); Munich 2019, ABV
204,12, Athenische Mitteilungen, 25, 1900, 56, figs
15–16; Tampa, Museum of Art 86.51, Para 93,
photo, Beazley Archive vase no. 350999;
Bochum inv. S 1079, Kunisch, ‘Augen’, pl. 5,1;
.
.
Wurzburg
H 5334, CVA Wurzburg
1, pl. 39;
Villa Giulia M. 626, Paolino Mingazzini, Vasi
della collezione Castellani, Rome, 1930, pl. 99, 5
and 11; Vatican 228, Carlo Albizzati, Vasi antichi
dipinti del Vaticano, Rome, 1925–32, pl. 17; New
York, private, Jordan, Eye-cups, 322, no. W167.
See also Steinhart, Motiv des Auges, 62, n. 565,
who mentions an unpublished example on the
Swiss market. On Chalkidizing cups generally,
see Jordan, Eye-cups, 317–31; Keck, Chalkidischen
Keramik, 75–6, 284–8; ABV 204–205.
Milwaukee N 17928/22266, Warren G. Moon
and Louise Berge, Greek Vase-Painting in Midwestern Collections, Chicago, 1979, 88–9, no. 52 (silen
ear); Munich, cup fragments, Jordan, Eye-cups,
31 C26, 34, and pl. 9,1: a human, not silen ear.
Frontisi-Ducroux, Visage, 101.
Keck, Chalkidischen Keramik, 70.
Kunisch, ‘Augen’, 25.
Oxford 1974.344, manner of the Lysippides
Painter, John Boardman, ‘A curious eye cup’,
Arch.aologischer Anzeiger, 1976, 281–90.
Evelyn Elizabeth Bell, ‘Two krokotos mask cups
at San Simeon’, California Studies in Classical
Antiquity, 10, 1977, 9; Ferrari, ‘Eye-cup’, 16–18.
Steinhart, Motiv des Auges, 55–60.
Boardman, ‘Eye cup’, 288.
Kunisch, ‘Augen’, 23–6.
Frontisi-Ducroux, Visage, 101.
Frontisi-Ducroux, Visage, 39–41. Compare
Helene P. Foley, ‘The masque of Dionysus’,
Transactions of the American Philological Association, 110, 1980, 128, with an eloquent summary
of the view of John Jones.
Kunisch, ‘Augen’, 25, with n. 36.
Martens, Transgression, 357. On the remarkable
transformations of the eye motif in Athenian
vase-painting, see François Lissarrague, The
Aesthetics of the Greek Banquet: Images of Wine and
Ritual (Un flot d’images), trans. Andrew SzegedyMaszak, Princeton, 1990, 141–3.
For a survey of the mythological contexts in
which one finds silens, nymphs, and Dionysos
together, see Hedreen, Silens, 13–103.
Florence 4209, volute krater, ABV 76,1, Kleitias
and Ergotimos, Mauro Cristofani, Maria Grazia
Marzi et al., Materiali per servire alla storia del
vaso François, Bollettino d’arte serie speciale,
vol. 1, Roma, 1980.
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
For surveys of ancient Greek visual representations of silens, nymphs and Dionysos, see
Carlo Gasparri and Alina Veneri, ‘Dionysos’,
LIMC, 3, 1986, 414–514; Ingrid Krauskopf, Erika
Simon and Barbara Simon, ‘Mainades’, LIMC, 8,
1997, 780–803; Monique Halm-Tisserant and
Gérard Siebert, ‘Nymphai’, LIMC, 8, 1997, 891–
902; Erika Simon, ‘Silenoi’, LIMC, 8, 1997, 1108–
33.
Alois Riegl, The Group Portraiture of Holland,
intro. Wolfgang Kemp, trans. Evelyn M. Kain
and David Britt, Texts and documents, Los
Angeles, 1999 (orig. 1902). A perceptive account
of the ethical significance of Riegl’s study,
which is what principally concerns me, may be
found in Margaret Olin, Forms of Representation
in Alois Riegl’s Theory of Art, University Park,
Penn., 1992, 155–69.
Riegl, Group Portraiture, 285. The painting is in
the Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam, inv. no. SK-C-6.
See now Benjamin Binstock, ‘Seeing representations; or, the hidden master in
Rembrandt’s Syndics’, Representations, 83:
Summer, 2003, 1–37, who has argued that the
unseen protagonist of the image is Rembrandt
himself. Thanks to Eva Grudin for calling my
attention to Binstock’s article.
Riegl, Group Portraiture, 322. The painting is inv.
no. os I-109.
Riegl, Group portraiture, 366. See also Riegl,
Group Portraiture, 271–2.
Richard Wollheim, Painting as an Art, The A. W.
Mellon lectures in the fine arts, 1984, Bollingen
series, vol. 35, Princeton, 1987, 101.
Wollheim, Painting, 129.
Wollheim, Painting, 183–5. This objection to
Wollheim’s concept was pressed by Robert
Hopkins, ‘The spectator in the picture’, in
Richard Wollheim on the Art of Painting: Art as
Representation and Expression, ed. Rob van
Gerwen, Cambridge, 2001, 221–9. See also
Michael Fried, Manet’s Modernism, or The Face of
Painting in the 1860s, Chicago, 1996, 344–5. For a
defence of Wollheim’s position against Fried’s,
see Renée van de Vall, ‘The staging of spectatorship’, in Richard Wollheim on the Art of
Painting, 184.
Wollheim, Painting, 185. The examples he gives
are highly illusionistic, trompe-l’oeil paintings.
As Wollheim, Painting, 365, n. 36, noted, works
of art that operate in this way are ‘theatrical’,
in the sense articulated by Michael Fried in his
well-known essay on minimalist art, ‘Art and
objecthood’, Artforum, 5: 10, June 1967, 12–23.
Wollheim, ‘A reply to contributors’, in Richard
Wollheim on the Art of Painting, 257–8. See also
Wollheim, Painting, 365, n. 35.
Mack, ‘Medusa’, 590–2, arrived at his compelling narrative model of the gorgoneion via a
different route, through consideration of the
late fifth- or early fourth-century development
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81
of the idea of catching the image of the gorgon
in a reflection.
Compare the analysis of H.E. Barnes, as quoted
in Belson, Gorgoneion, 1.
Aisch. Theoroi or Isthmiastai, 4–17, text and
translation after Lloyd-Jones in Agamemnon,
Libation-Bearers, Eumenides, Fragments, trans.
Herbert Weir Smith, appendix and addendum
Hugh Lloyd-Jones, vol. 2 of Aeschylus,
Cambridge, Mass., 1957, 550–3. For the text, see
also Edgar Lobel, ‘New classical fragments:
2162. Aeschylus, YeoroÌ Z IsymiastaÍ ?’ The
Oxyrhynchus Papyri, 18, 1941, 14–22.
Ferrari, ‘Eye-cup’, 19–20; J.R. Green, Theatre in
Ancient Greek Society, London, 1994, 45–6;
Gerhild Conrad, Der Silen: Wandlung einer Gestalt
des griechischen Satyrspiels, Bochumer altertumswissenschaftliches Colloquium, vol. 28,
Trier, 1997, 64–5; P.E. Easterling, ‘A show for
Dionysus’, in The Cambridge Companion to Greek
Tragedy, ed. P.E. Easterling, Cambridge, 1997, 49;
Pierre Voelke, Un théâtre de la marge: Aspects
figuratifs et configurationnels du drame satyrique
dans l’Athènes classique, Le rane: Studi, vol. 31,
Bari, 2001, 286–7. For further bibliography
concerning the identification of the objects
held by the satyrs, see Wessels and Krumeich in
Ralf Krumeich, Nikolaus Pechstein, and Bernd
Seidensticker, eds, Das griechische Satyrspiele, Text
und Forschung, vol. 72, Darmstadt, 1999, 142–4.
For the archaeological as well as literary
evidence for the practice of dedicating masks,
see J.R. Green, ‘Dedications of masks’, Revue
archeologique, 1982, 237–48. On the term
mormolukeion, used of theatre masks, and on
the significance of the fragment of Aristophanes for the understanding of the Isthmiastai, see Frontisi-Ducroux, Visage, 14.
Christopher A. Faraone, Talismans and Trojan
Horses, New York, 1992, 38.
On the implications of realism or verisimilitude in this passage, see Mary Stieber,
‘Aeschylus’ Theoroi and realism in Greek art’,
Transactions of the American Philological Association, 124, 1994, 85–119.
Smyth and Lloyd-Jones, Agamemnon, 543.
On inventions and discoveries in satyr-play, see
Richard Seaford, Euripides: Cyclops, Oxford, 1984,
36–7.
For example, see Adolf Greifenhagen, Eine
attische schwarzfigurige Vasengattung und die
Darstellung des Komos im VI. Jahrhundert, Königsberger kunstgeschichtliche Forschungen, vol.
2, Könisberg, 1929, 73; Yvonne Korshak, Frontal
Faces in Attic Vase Painting of the Archaic Period,
Chicago, 1987, 11.
Frontisi-Ducroux, Visage, 81–97.
See Hedreen, Silens, 76. To the vases listed there
.
add Wurzburg
L 250, amphora, ABV 136,48,
Group E, Ernst Langlotz, Griechische Vasen in
W.urzburg, Munich, 1932, pl. 71; Budapest
50.189, amphora, Para 61, Exekias, Dietrich von
˛˛
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
& ASSOCIATION OF ART HISTORIANS 2007
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
Bothmer, ‘An amphora by Exekias’, Bulletin du
Musée hongrois des beaux-arts, 31, 1968, 17–25.
Madrid 11008, bilingual amphora, ABV 294,24,
CVA Madrid 1, pls. 23,1b, 25 and 26,1.
Frontisi-Ducroux, Visage, 19–20, 88, 90. See also
Korshak, Frontal faces, 13.
Munich 8935 plus other fragments, fragmentary krater, ARV2 1619, 3 bis, Euphronios, Alain
Pasquier, et al., Euphronios: Peintre à Athènes au
VIe siècle avant J.-C., Paris, 1990, 89–95, no. 5. See
Frontisi-Ducroux, Visage, 88–9.
New York 26.49, ABV 84,4, Nearchos, LIMC, 7, pl.
435 Psoleas 2.
For the representational evidence, see Werner
Oenbrink, ‘Ein ‘‘Bild im Bild’’-Pha. nomen – Zur
.
Darstellung figurlich
dekorierter Vasen auf
bemalten attischen Tongef.aXen’, Hephaistos, 14,
1996, 81–134. For other evidence for sympotic
use of Athenian vases, see the survey in John
Boardman, The History of Greek Vases: Potters,
Painters and Pictures, London, 2001, 244–68.
See, for example, K.J. Dover, ‘The poetry of
Archilochos’, in Archiloque, Entretiens sur
l’antiquite classique, vol. 10, Vandoeuvres,
1964, 183–212; M.L. West, Studies in Greek Elegy
and Iambus, Untersuchungen zur antiken
Literatur und Geschichte, Berlin, 1974; Mary R.
Lefkowitz, ‘Fictions in literary biography: The
new poem and the Archilochus legend’,
Arethusa, 9, 1976, 181–9.
See John Herington, Poetry into Drama: Early
Tragedy and the Greek Poetic Tradition, Sather
classical lectures, vol. 49, Berkeley, 1985, 48–50,
207–10.
Compare Eva Stehle, Performance and Gender in
Ancient Greece: Nondramatic Poetry in its Setting,
Princeton, 1997, 213.
Archil. frag. 5, trans. after Douglas E. Gerber,
Greek Iambic Poetry: From the Seventh to the Fifth
Centuries BC, Cambridge, Mass., 1999. This very
poem is envisioned by Trygaios in Ar. Peace,
1265–1304, as the kind of traditional song that
a boy might sing at a wedding party.
Ewen Bowie, ‘Early Greek elegy, symposium
and public festival’, Journal of Hellenic Studies,
106, 1986, 14–15.
Bowie, ‘Elegy’, 16–17; Richard P. Martin, ‘Just
like a woman: Enigmas of the lyric voice’, in
Making Silence Speak: Women’s Voices in Greek
Literature and Society, eds André Lardinois and
Laura McClure, Princeton, 2001, 71.
Alkaios frag. 10B in David A. Campbell, Sappho,
Alcaeus, vol. 1 of Greek lyric, Cambridge, Mass.,
1982.
Anakreon frag. 385 in David A. Campbell,
Anacreon, Ancreontea, Choral Lyric from Olympus to
Alcman, vol. 2 of Greek Lyric, Cambridge, MA,
1988.
Martin, ‘Enigmas’, 72.
Bowie, ‘Elegy’, 17. See also Dover, ‘Archilochos’,
207; Anne Pippin Burnett, Three Archaic Poets:
Archilochus, Alcaeus, Sappho, Cambridge, Mass.,
245
I N V O L V E D S P E C TAT O R S H I P I N A R C H A I C G R E E K A R T
106
107
108
109
246
1983, 31. To the list of possible female firstperson narrators, add Simonides, frag. 22, as
interpreted by Dimitrios Yatromanolakis,
‘Simonides fr. eleg. 22W2 : To sing or to
mourn?’, Zeitschrift fu. r Papyrologie und Epigraphik, 120, 1998, 1–11.
The argument summarized in this section is
laid out in further detail in an essay entitled ‘‘‘I
let go my force just touching her hair’’: Male
sexuality in Athenian vase-paintings of silens
and Iambic poetry’, in Classical Antiquity, 25,
2006, 277–325.
The significance of Nietzsche’s analysis of
involved spectatorship was appreciated by Leo
Steinberg in his article on Picasso’s Demoiselles
D’Avignon (1907), ‘The philosophical brothel’,
October, 44, 1988, 7–74. Steinberg’s interpretation also takes Riegl’s Group portraiture as a
point of departure. For a recent appreciation of
his interpretation of the Demoiselles, see Lisa
Florman, ‘The difference experience makes in
‘‘The philosophical brothel’’’, Art Bulletin, 85,
2003, 769–83.
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy and the
Case of Wagner, trans. Walter Kaufmann, New
York, 1967, 64.
Some of the problems with The Birth of Tragedy
as an historical account of the origins of
tragedy are explored in M.S. Silk and J.P. Stern,
Nietzsche on Tragedy, Cambridge, 1981, 142–59.
For some aspects of the origins of Athenian
110
111
112
113
114
drama, see Hedreen, ‘Myths of ritual in Athenian vase-paintings of silens’, in The Origins of
Theatre in Ancient Greece and Beyond: From Ritual to
Drama, eds Margaret C. Miller and Eric Csapo,
Cambridge, 2007, 150–95.
Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, 65.
Compare the more general statement in
Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, 40: ‘the destruction of the principium individuationis becomes
an artistic phenomenon.’
Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy, 62–3.
From an essay of 1870 entitled ‘The Dionysian
Worldview’, text and trans. after James I.
Porter, The Invention of Dionysus: An Essay on The
Birth of Tragedy, Stanford, 2000, 53. Porter has
advanced a comprehensive reading of The Birth
of Tragedy along non-metaphysical lines: see
especially 13–14, 35, 40, 43, 49, 53 and 56. For a
different and highly original interpretation of
the eye cup, in which loss of self-consciousness
plays an important part, see Herbert Hoffmann, ‘‘‘Evil eyes’’–or–‘‘eyes of the world?’’ (a
short psycho-archaeological excursion into the
history of consciousness)’, Hephaistos, 21–2,
2003–2004, 225–36.
Ferrari, ‘Eye-cup’, 18–20. See also Bell, ‘Mask
cups’, 9–10, and Claude Bérard and Christiane
Bron, ‘Dionysos, le masque impossible’, in
Dionysos: Mito e mistero. Atti del convegno internazionale Comacchio 3–5 novembre 1989, ed. Fede
Berti, Ferrara, 1991, 313.
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