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This black-figure skyphos, ornamented with pleasing burlesque scenes, is now in a private collection in London. Although it came to light some time after the publication by Wolters and Bruns of Das Kabirenheiligtum bei Theben it has all the characteristics of a Kabirion vase. These vases have been securely classified by Wolters and Bruns and most of them are now to be seen in a recently opened gallery of the National Museum in Athens. The general form of the cup, the ear-shaped handles, the white ground and the black bands, the heavy frieze of grapes and the unmistakably anti-heroic style of the drawing, make it impossible to doubt that it comes from the workshop of the Kabiros Painter.
The subject-matter of Kabirion vases is often mysterious. With undoubted representations of Kabiros and of local gods and heroes, it includes many scenes of abandoned comedy which have defied modern solution. It has been suggested that many of the paintings may be related to sacred mysteries, and it is certainly true that they often allude to the cult of gods and heroes.
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- Copyright © The Society for the Promotion of Hellenic Studies 1964
References
1 My sincere thanks are due to Mr Ben Swannenburg, the owner of the cup, who has most kindly supplied these photographs, and to the Hon. Robert Erskine, who had restored it, through whose accurate memory it was easily identified, and through whom I approached Mr Swannenburg for the photographs. I should also like to record real gratitude for help and encouragement to Mr John Boardman and Mr Brian Shefton.
2 Berlin, 1940. And see now Hemberg, , Die Kabiren, Uppsala, 1950Google Scholar, on the gods.
3 To their list should be added Ars Antiqua (Luzern) iv (1962) pl. 49 139; and the group discussed by MrsUre, , JHS lxxi (1951) 194 ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4 ix 25.8.
5 Conjecturally identified as Cadmus. This cup is in Berlin (inv. 3284). On the theory that these scenes, this in particular, represent a dramatic enactment of myths which would be a cousin (once or twice removed perhaps) of Athenian comedy, cf. Breitholz, , Die dorische Farce im griechischen Mutterland (Stockholm, 1960).Google Scholar The gorgon vase has the strange ballet-like quality of other gorgon vases, cf. Pickard-Cambridge, , Dithyramb, Tragedy and Comedy (1962) 167Google Scholar, Webster's note.
6 The fragmentary figure in Heidelberg (K 45) was taken for a gorilla (McDermott, , The Ape in Antiquity, Michigan, 1938, no. 324)Google Scholar or even a domestic ape (Wolters-Bruns, 103 n. 4). Female gorillas were certainly the subject of sailors' stories at this time; cf. the lively adventures of Hanno, , GGM i 13 f.Google Scholar
7 This tree is not the vine itself which drapes the whole cup. If it were it might represent the miracu lous or at least timely assistance of Kabiros. There are a number of plants on the vases independent of these dominating vines, whose only function is to be revelled under. The vines are not usually rootless, but cf. K 7 and perhaps K 16.
8 Ar., Ranae 285–95. Scholia ad loc. identify Empousa with Onoskelis.
9 Although the religious significance of these cults is outside the scope of this note it should be observed that the ogress and the serpent are both in some sense chthonic, that the connection of Kabiros-Dionysos with the vegetation cycle is undoubted, that the origin of the Kabiroi is a part of their mystery but that like Erichthonios they are children of Hephaistos, and like Ploutos closely connected with Demeter.
10 Cf. Acusilaus and Pherecydes, cited by Strabo, X 3.21.
11 E.g. ix 25.6 f., 22.7, 
16.7.
12 x 3.21.
13 The scholiast on Apollonius (i 917) who bases his remarks on the later historian Mnaseas, confuses their sexes and generations. He says there were four. The Phoenicians counted eight.
14 Rudimentary distinctions of foliage are observed in these paintings. The rushes where the snake was lurking on the Berlin cup are excellent botanical drawings.
15 Wolters-Bruns M 18 (from the workshop not of the Kabiros Painter but of the Mystery Painter).