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Kalligeneia and Hieros Arotos

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 December 2013

Bernard Ashmole
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Extract

An Attic cup of Siana shape, said to come from excavations in Rhodes, was presented to the British Museum in 1906 by Sir Henry Howorth (Pl. II). The lip is decorated with a wreath—interrupted above the handles—of alternate purple and black ivy-leaves set in two rows, one point-upwards, the other point-downwards, on a central horizontal stem. The reserved band on which the figures and handles are set comes immediately below the lip, save for a narrow black stripe; the rest of the bowl is black, but divided by a horizontal band of tongue-pattern; the tongues, pointing upwards, are alternately black and purple, except in two places where two blacks accidentally come together. Black underlies the purple and the white everywhere, except under the purple tongues, but the white, used only for women's flesh, has almost entirely disappeared. The interior is plain black. The date will be before 560 B.C.

Let us look at the two scenes which appear one on each side of the cup: they are roughly drawn, but vigorous and interesting: begin with that which, as I hope to show, comes first in time (Pl IIIa). On the left, a woman is seated to right on a stool: she is dressed in purple; her hair is loose and she holds her left hand to her head in an attitude of grief, with which the gesture of the open right hand well consorts. On the right of the scene, another woman stands to left beside a naming altar (Pl IIIe). Her dress is a black peplos. She wears a broad belt, the upper band of which consists of a repeating Ѕ pattern; her hair is gathered into a small knot on the nape of the neck, and in her hands she holds out by its handles a liknoh, from the front end of which three corn-stalks project. Within are shown other objects; the scale is so small and the drawing so poor that it is not possible to identify them all: some are probably fruits, the central one almost certainly a phallus.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Journal of Hellenic Studies , Volume 66 , November 1946 , pp. 8 - 10
Copyright
Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1946

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References

1 1906. 12–15. 1. Dimensions and summary description are given in CVA B.M. 2. III H. e. pl. 10. 6a, b: (a) ‘Priestess holding basket behind blazing altar, towards which five women dance: a nude youth pursues the hindermost; behind him a seated woman, (b) Man ploughing with two oxen; boy with bag spreading seed.’

2 An exceptional use, found also on another Siana cup from Rhodes in the British Museum CVA (l.c.) pl. 10, 2b: tongue-pattern is normally a junction pattern (see Beazley in BSA XIX 239Google Scholar).

3 Dr. Hansjôrg Bloesch, who examined the cup at my request, has kindly made the excellent photograph of the whole cup (Pl. IIa) the drawing of sections of lip and foot (fig. 1) and the following note on the shape and date:—

The round curve of the bowl recalls the shape of earlier komast-cups (cf. Athens 649, Greifenhagen pl. 2), and the handles are straight like those of komast-cups. Later Sianas (cf. CVA Cambridge 2 III H. pl. 29, 6) prefer slightly curved handles of a shape made popular by Ergotimos, and used by most of the potters of little-master cups. Seen from above the handles are stout, with a widely opened curve, not unlike the handles of Würzburg 451 (Langlotz, pi. 126; the later variety ibid., no. 452).

‘The foot is rather short and small: most Siana cups look less heavy because of their higher stem (cf. Würzburg 452, Langlotz, pl. 117); but only a few, late cups are so elegant in proportions as that in the possession of Prof. Tièche (griffin-bird group, Festschrift für E. Tièche, pl. 1).

‘This cup, and a cup with Heracles and Nessos, by the same potter and the same painter, now in the University of Birmingham, are among the earliest Sianas known: the shape suggests a date before rather than after the middle of the sixties of the sixth century.’

4 Branches are appropriate in many kinds of ritual: cf. Deubnerin AA (1936) 335. It is possible that the object here is not a branch but a whip of three thongs. The μόροττον, woven of bark, was used for a scourge at festivals of Demeter, probably the Thesmophoria (see Nilsson Gr. Feste 323, n. 3). On ritual flagellation see Toynbee in JRS XIX 78 ff.Google Scholar

5 It may be a summary indication of elaborate patterns, which are commonly associated with Demeter and Kore— one need only mention the skyphos by Makron in the British Museum (Beazley, ARV 301, 3Google Scholar) and the sculptured drapery from Lycosura (Guidi, , Annuario IV–V 97 ff.Google Scholar): but a simple pattern of circles is not uncommon, and it appears on the cloth covering the liknon, as well as on other garments, in the ceremonies of the volute-crater from Spina (Aurigemma, , Museo di Spina, 180 ff., pl. XCVIGoogle Scholar).

6 S. Karouzou in AM LXII pl. 53.

7 Beazley, , Attic black-figure 6 f., pl. IGoogle Scholar, 2.

8 Pauly-Wissowa XXV Halbband s.v. Liknites and Liknon: Harrison, in JHS XXIII 292 ff.Google Scholar, and XXIV 241 ff.

9 See Toynbee, in JRS XIX 73Google Scholar. If correct, this interpretation may illuminate another scene to which it ber is a strong general resemblance—the relief on the Acropolis of three women and a boy dancing to a man's playing of the flutes (Payne, , Archaic marble sculpture from the Acropolis, 49Google Scholar) The relief has sometimes been interpreted as Hermes and the Charites, but this does not explain the boy. Studniczka's identification as the Agraulides is nearer the mark. Agraulos, Pandrosos and Herse are fertility-goddesses and guardians of the boy Erichthonios, himself a deity of the soil; the relief would show their characteristic activity—a dance to promote fertility. If, on the other hand, the women are simply nymphs, the function of the boy is that of the boy on our cup. Hermes would be appropriate on either occasion, but there is nothing to distinguish the flute player as Hermes.

10 On this question see Farnell, , Cults III 89Google Scholar. The liknon is closely connected with marriage: Harrison, in JHS XXIII 315Google Scholar: cf. also Toynbee, JRS XIX 77Google Scholar. Its connexion with the Thesmophoria is newly shown by the lekythos published by Deubner in AA (1936) 335.

11 In order to produce this effect the painter has brought his band of black slip up over the incisions which outline the feet. The hooves of the oxen (also incised and covered with the black slip) sink less deeply, in ground not yet ploughed. The sower is lighter and can pick his way: his feet are not incised. One of the oxen is a bull: the sex of the other doubtful.

12 The painter is depicting not each seed, but the handfuls of grain, which cohere momentarily in the air before disintegrating.

13 See Pauly-Wissowa III Halbband s.v. arotoi hieroi. On the calendar-frieze of Hagios Eleutherios, Thesmophoria comes at the end of Pyanopsion, hieros arotos at the beginning of Maimakterion (Deubner Attische Feste 250, pls. 34–6). The oft-quoted remark by Plutarch (Con. Praec. XLII), is one of many by Greek writers which stress the analogy of human generation. Thus if the first scene shows Kalligeneia rather than the Thesmophoria generally, the second is still an appropriate pendant. On the Thesmophoria see Farnell, Cults III, 75–112Google Scholar, Pauly-Wissowa, 2nd ser., XI Halbband s.v. Thesmophoria: also, more recently, Homer Thompson in Hesperia V. 187 ff., Broneer id. XI, 250 ff., Deubner op. cit. 50 ff. Gjerstad (on the Skirophoria) in Archiv. f. Religionswisscnschqft XXVII 189 ff.Google Scholar, Nilsson, , Creek Popular Religion 23 ff.Google Scholar

14 A different interpretation of both scenes is possible. Instead of the annual performance of rites, the scenes may depict their original institution. If that is so, guesses can be made at the identity of those taking part: the ploughman will be Bouzyges (Robinson, D. M., in AJA XXXV 152 ff.Google Scholar): that of the others depends on whether the Eleusinian rites are intended, or, as seems more probable, the native Attic version of this widespread festival.