The so-called Kabirion ware, a group of local Boiotian black-figure ceramics of the late fifth and fourth centuries BC, has been famous since the penultimate decade of the nineteenth century. Since then, the intensive research on these vessels and sherds was based not on an outstanding aesthetic value but on their unique iconography. With few exceptions, the vase paintings show obviously comic scenes with grotesque personnel: figures with protruding bottoms and bellies, thin legs, and faces accentuated by thick lips and a receding bridge of the nose. These exaggerated features make the figures seem like caricatures. Therefore, from the beginning of research, the question was whom or what these images should represent. Who wanted to laugh about whom?

The known context of these vessels should make it easier to find answers. They were produced for use in the sanctuary of the Kabiroi near Thebes, where the great majority of the material was found. The vessels may have served either as equipment for festivities or as votives. Nevertheless, some of them found their way into Boiotian graves. These may have been souvenirs for participants in cultic events.

The sanctuary has produced only meager architectural traces of the ritual and the character of worship there. From the period contemporary with the Kabirion ware, only two circular buildings, thought to be intended for ritual dining, are extant. A rectangular building, which may have housed symposia, was erected at the turn of the fifth to the fourth century BC. However, the main archaeological evidence for festivities connected with heavy consumption of wine in the Kabirion is the large number of drinking vessels, mostly kantharoi, that were recovered.

The Kabirion ware belongs to these ceramics used for wine consumption. The name and origin of the very particular shape of these vessels is, however, debated; some scholars refer to them as skyphoi, while others label them as kantharoi. In favor of the latter are some rare predecessors of deep-bowled Boiotian kantharoi with small round handles from the late sixth and early fifth centuries BC,5 and, above all, the spurred vertical handles, typical for most fourth-century kantharoi in Boiotia and beyond.