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The Cup in The First Idyll of Theocritus
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 December 2013
Extract
The cup which the goatherd in the first Idyll of Theocritus gives to Daphnis as a reward for his song has not attracted very much attention either from commentators or archaeologists. Legrand is content to regard the description as a phantasy composed of reminiscences of various works of art strung together at random. Theocritus, he thinks, not only had no actual cup in his mind, but was even at no pains to visualise the work he describes; hence many of the details mentioned are unintelligible when the work is regarded as a whole, and it is useless to try to reconstruct a cup from the description.
This is an extreme view. Brunn allows that the poet had some actual cup in his mind, but believes him to have transferred to it descriptions of other works of art, and to have confused the whole by the addition of decoration invented ‘nach seiner eigenen Phantasie.’ Stripped of these additions, the vessel was a bowl decorated on one side with the woman between her suitors, on the other with the boy in the vineyard, and in the interior with the fisherman.
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References
1 Étude sur T. p. 222.
2 Sitzungsber. bayer. Akad. 1879, ii. p. 4.
3 C.R. 1912, pp. 241 ff. An earlier discussion by Gaedechens I have not seen, but I gather that he also arranged all the scenes on the exterior.
4 E. A. Jones, The Gold and Silver of Windsor Gastle, Pl. LXVI.
5 A brief discussion will be found in his Textgesch. d. griech. Bukoliker, p. 227.
6 xi. 476 F. seqq.
7 Od. ix. 346. Athenaeus returns to this comment at xi. 481 E.
8 For this we must take Athenaeus's word. In his quotation of the passage it is not clear that the same vessel is meant by Callimachus, but this may have appeared from the context.
9 xi. 783 A.
10 
The commentators translate ‘for a catch’ which seems to me inferior both in point of Greek and in sense.
11 Ecl. iii. 38 f.
12 s.v. ἑλιχρυσος.
13 xix. 25.
14 A combination of ivy and vine could be paralleled from pottery : it occurs for example on the neck of an Etruscan stamnos in Munich, (911) but it is certainly very rare: vine leaves, grapes, and ivy leaves on same stem on an Etruscan mirror, Röm. Mitt, xxvii, p. 266Google Scholar.
15 Ath. xv. 679 F. For helichryse in garlands. cf. Ath. xv. 680 E sqq., Dioscorides iv. 57.
16 Met. vi. 128.
17 
is preserved in Et. Gud. s.v. 
with an absurd explanation.
18 Wilamowitz, (Textgesch. p. 226Google Scholar) rightly emphasises the point that there are no real variants in the tradition.
19 A discussion will be found in Meineke's note on the passage: see also Wilamowitz, Textgesch. p. 225Google Scholar.
20 This explanation is retained by Hiller in the Fritzsche-Hiller edition.
21 Similarly Edmonds ‘ivy freaked with a cassidony.’
22 Textgeschichte pp. 223 ff.
23 Creech translates the lines: Where Kids do seem to brouze, The Berryes crop, and wanton in the boughs. The key to this mysterious version probably lies in the ambiguity of the Latin word capreolus.
24 I omit here occasional variants of the pattern with disconnected leaves which may be found here and there—chiefly on vases of Ionian or Etruscan fabric.
25 E.g. Brit. Mus. B 364 (crater by Nikosthenes), Munich 1683 (b.-f. hydria), Vienna, Hofm. 288, 289, 291 (b.-f. amphorae) Kunst-u.-Ind. Mus. 279, Würzburg 180 (b.-f. cups).
26 E.g. Brit. Mus. B 413, Munich 2155, Vienna, Hofm. 307, Würzburg 181 (b.-f. cups; the first two by Hermogenes), Louvre F 9, Munich 1684, 1698 (b.-f. hydriae), Berlin 1698 (b.-f. amphora). There are many variants of this pattern ; for example, a form with symmetrically recurved leaf-stalks and with dots close to main stem appears on a class of b.-f. olpae: Brit. Mus. B 474, Louvre F 334, Vienna, Hofm, 299, and several in the Museo Civico, Bologna.
27 E.g. Munich 1745 (b.-f. oenochoe) Brit. Mus. B 379, 380 (Ionian or ‘Chalcidian’ cups). The pattern probably comes from Ionia as it occurs in very elaborate form on Caeretun hydriae: Louvre E 698, 699 cf. Endt, , Ion. Vasenmal. p. 4Google Scholar figs. 1–4, 6.
28 Good r.-f. examples: two cups by the Penthesilea Master (Munich 2683, 2689: Fw.-Rh. 6 and 55), the Berlin Master's large amphora (Berlin 2690: J.H.S. xxxi. Pll. XV. and XVI.), Louvre hydria G 49. The pattern also occurs in black on r.-f. vases : e.g. Vienna, Hofm. 482, 495 (r.-f. craters).
29 A variant of the pattern occurs on a silver alabastos from Thessaly, (Ath. Mitt. 1912Google Scholar, Pl. III.) and inlaid in silver on a bronze cup in the British Museum.
30 Nonnus's 
suggests that he may have understood Theocritus's 
in this sense, but the corruption makes inference uucertain. The fact that Suidas says 
not 
though in itself immaterial (since ivy flowers and fruit might easily be confused), shows that his comment is not a deduction from Theocritus. Moreover the last three words seem to be meant for an illustrative quotation from some other source. In the known pattern the dots probably represent fruit.
31 Bands of ivy and other floral patterns are, however, common on the inside edge of S. Italian cups and plates—especially of black Campanian ware—so that the pattern may conceivably occupy this position ou Theocritus's cup. This is Wilamowitz's, view (Textgesch. p. 227)Google Scholar: I cannot, however, assent to the statement that to place the wreath outside the cup is ‘eine willkürliche Entstellung.’
32 Or 
But the 
printed by Meineke and Ahrens is not open to the objection of Fritzsche as die ganze Darstellung störend.
33 Hartwig, Meisterschalen, Pl. V. (Chachrylion) and Fig. 8 (= B.M. E 108: later work). See ib. p. 58.
34 Now in the Berlin Antiquarium (Wiegand and Schrader, Priene, Fig. 296).
35 For metal vessels I may mention a bronze patera with Scylla (B.M. 882), another with a Triton (Bibl. Nat. 1428), a silver phiale with Eros on a sea-monster (B.M. uncatalogued), a silver cylix with a woman on a sea-monster (Jahrbuch ,xxv. p. 219) and the bronze phiale (B.M. 884) reproduced below (Pl. XVI.).
36 F 461. Another good example, Munich 3274. This breaking up of the circular frieze seems to be especially common on the lids of pyxides. See Reinach, , Repert. i. 52, 474, 476, 477, ii. 2 and 3Google Scholar. An example on the interior of an earlier cup is the Phineus cylix at Würzburg.
37 E.g. Brit. Mus. E 98, Munich 2696 and, still later Louvre G 641: all show a woman between two men.
38 E.g. the Louvre relief of a shepherd teasing his dog with a dead hare. As to such genre scenes on cups, I may mention the very remarkable plaster model for part of a cup found at Memphis which represents a woman milking a reindeer cow (Rubensohn, Hellenist. Silbergerät, T. xiv.).
39 Chalcedony intaglio from Trikka in Thessaly: Ashmolean 1892. 1494. Mr. D. G. Hogarth, to whom I am indebted for permission to publish the gem, dates it first century B.C. Cantharus, fox and bunch of grapes on coins of Alopeconnesus, fox eating bunch of grapes as episemon on the Crates cup in the Fitz william Museum, Cambridge (Hartwig, , Meisterseh. Fig. 14), foxes as episema on three craters (see J.H.S. xxx. p. 62)Google Scholar, fox caught in gin (Schreiber, , Atlas, lxxx. 3)Google Scholar. On gems, Herakles and fox (Furtwangler, , Ant. Gemm. vii. 54)Google Scholar, fox and stork (ib. xi. 7, lxii. 13), running fox (Burlington Club Cat. of Ancient Greek Art, 1904Google Scholar, Pl. CXII. O 95 B). My friend Mr. J. D. Beazley calls my attention to the fox on the Vatican Aesop cup (phot. Moscioni 8601). Grotesque figure with fox or dog in vineyard on a Cabeirion eotyle in Dresden. Vineyards are not very uncommon, especially on b.-f. vases.
40 The history of fishing scenes, so far as I have been able to trace it, is as follows. The earliest and commonest scene represents a man (or in the earliest examples a god) fishing from a rock with a rod: Elite Cér. iii. 14, 75 (b.-f. vases), Hartwig, , Meisterseh. T. v. and Fig. 8, Arch.-Epig. Miltheil. aus Oesterreich, 1879, T. iiiGoogle Scholar. (r.-f. vases), small silver vase with reliefs in the British Museum, Bulletin Arch, du Comité d. Travaux Hist, et Scient. 1893, Pl. X. (silver ladle from Cherchel), Wiegand, and Schrader, , Priene, Fig. 296 (bronze ladle), B.G.H. viii. Pl. IV. 138Google Scholar (leaden tessera). This type is reproduced in sculpture: British Museum, Ince Blundell, Naples, etc. Fishing scenes with nets are, so far as I know, late. A polychrome oenochoe from Cyrenaica in the Louvre has a drag-net scene (Daremberg and Saglio, Dict. Fig. 5933), net Scenes combined with rod-scenes occur on the Hellenistic phiale here reproduced, on a wall-panting (Schreiber, , Atlas, lxiv. 4Google Scholar) and Roman lamp (Brit. Mus. 527) and net-scenes alone on a relief (Schreiber, H. R. lxxix. A: cast-net) and a Roman lamp (Brit. Mus. 170: drag-net). The net with a handle, seen on the phiale reproduced, occurs again in the field of the silver ladle mentioned above. There are also several genre figures of fishermen in sculpture (Brunn-Bruckmann 164, Collignon, , Sc. Gr. ii. pp. 564 f.)Google Scholar. The drawing from which my illustration is taken (Cat. Bronzes, No. 884 = Fig. 25) has been kindly lent by the Trustees of the British Museum.
41 Fishermen are represented only in xxi.; but compare three epigrams by Leonidas, (Anth. Pal. vi. 4, vii. 295, 504)Google Scholar.
42 See Hekler, A., Jahrbuch, 1909, p. 32Google Scholar.
43 Walters, , Ancient Pottery, ii. 490Google Scholar.
41 de Villefosse, Héron in Mon. Piot. v. p. 199Google Scholar.
45 Winter and Pernice, Hild. Silberf. Pl. VI.
46 Mon. Piot. v. Pl. III. and IV.
47 Winter and Pernice, op. cit. Pl. I. and text.
48 Arch. Anz. 1897, p. 127.
49 Rubensolm, Hellenistisches Silbergerät Pl. I., shows a plaster model for the interior of repoussé metal cup with a small head of Athena surrounded by a broad lotus and palmette band, outside which is a small frieze of ducks.
50 So Virgil's are fagina (Eel. iii. 37).
51 I do not understand why Wilamowitz, (Textgesch. p. 227, cf. p. 228)Google Scholar translates 
‘zu beiden Seiten.’
52 The shield of Achilles is full of these extraartistic details (e.g. 11. xviii. 493, 
) and once only, when we are told that the earth grows black behind the plough, does the author recollect that he is exceeding the limits of strict description (548). The author of the Hesiodic Shield, though he repeats the phrase quoted above (274) and is generally ready to imagine sounds, yet tells us that the Muses are 
(206), and is on the whole cautious in describing motion. His sea is 
(209), his dolphins 
(211 cf. Moschus, , Eur. 47)Google Scholar, his fisherman 
(215), and Perseus 
(228). Similarly his women ‘appear to be alive’ (244) and his chariot race is ‘eternally unfinished’ (310).
53 Ll. 41, 42. 
54 I say nothing of 
in 1. 46 as the meaning of the adjective is uncertain.
55 No trace of gilding remains on the six bowls from Hildesheim but a polychrome effect is obtained by inlaying the pattern as in niello work.
56 This seems also to be the opinion of Wilamowitz, (Textgesch. p. 2272)Google Scholar.
57 Il. xviii. 497–508.
58 Ib. 561–572.
59 Hes., Scut. 291–300Google Scholar.
60 Ib. 207–215.
61 Of the three words common to the three descriptions 
alone is not used elsewhere by Theocritus 
xxvii. 9). The coincidence of words is suspicious but not conclusive.
62 Hiller, (ad 46Google Scholar) holds the resemblances to the Epic sufficient to prove that Theocritus had no extant work in his mind. I cannot assent to this view.
63 It is to be noted that I have found no parallel from Theocritus's times of a cup with three scenes disposed in the interior as they are disposed in Theocritus's cup. The arrangement does not, however, seem to me impossible or even improbable, and our knowledge of Alexandrian silver and metal work is extremely scanty, so that I am unwilling to base any conclusion on the abseuce of examples.