Detroit
50.193
Attic Black-Figure Panathenaic Amphora
The Asteios Group
ca. 375-370 B.C.
Lent by The Detroit Institute of Arts; gift of the Founders Society,
General Membership Fund (50.193).
Ex collections: Richard Norton and Charles Morley. From near
Benghazi, Libya.
The Vase: h. with lid 84.6 cm; h.
without lid 70.5 cm; d. of mouth 22.1 cm; max. d. of body 37.5 cm; d. of foot
16.2 cm. Complete; vase and lid broken and mended; white of Athena's flesh and
hem of her drapery retouched; incision of figures of runners appears to have
been emphasized in white paint. The lid does not seem to belong to the vase.
Flaring mouth; raised fillet at junction of neck and body; round handles; convex
foot with deep groove directly below upper edge. Decoration in black glaze on
orange ground. Mouth, handles, lower part of body, and foot glazed black; top of
mouth reserved; glazed within to base of neck. On the neck, a double
lotus-and-palmette frieze; above the figure scenes, long black enclosed tongues.
Pictures set in panels, framed by dilute glaze lines. The black-glazed lid is
surmounted by an acorn-shaped knob above a raised fillet; the edge and interior
of the lid are reserved.
Decoration:
Side A: Athena, wearing a high-crested Attic
helmet, a chiton, an ependytes, and the aegis, strides to left. In her raised
right hand, she holds a spear; on her left arm is a round shield, the device
(scarcely visible) a floral wreath surrounding a small quatrefoil. Doric columns
on either side of the goddess support figures of bearded men, each draped from
the waist down in a himation and holding a cornucopia or drinking-horn in the
left hand and a thyrsos in the right. Beside the column at left runs the
inscription
ΤΟΝ ΑΘΕΕΘΕΝ
ΑΘΛΟΝ ("a prize from the games at Athens") in stoichedon
form.
Side B: foot-race of four men moving to
right, with none of their feet touching the ground.
Added white: Side A: flesh of Athena, wave-pattern on the hem, and
dots concentrated near the waist of her
ependytes; device and dots on rim of her shield.
This vase is one of the three Panathenaic prize amphorae which
Beazley assigned to the Asteios Group (
ABV,
412). The other two members of the group are
Oxford 572, from Athens, inscribed with the archon's name
Asteios (
CVA, GB 14, Oxford 3, pl. 28,
4-7), and
Alexandria 18239, from
Cyrenaica, which bears the name of the archon Phrasikleides. No two of these
amphorae are by the same hand. The approximate date of manufacture of the vases,
ca. 375-370 B.C., is given by the archon inscriptions written beside the
right-hand columns on the amphorae in Oxford and Alexandria. Asteios was
eponymous archon in the year 373/372, Phrasikleides in the year 371/370.
Early in the fourth century, the Panathenaic prize amphorae began to
be inscribed with the name of the archon for the year, a practice perhaps
prescribed by law, which enables us to date the vases.
1 The year, however, is not that of the Panathenaic Games at which the
amphora was awarded but the one in which the oil it contained was collected. The
Panathenaic amphora in Detroit is unusual in that it does not bear an archon
inscription. We have other Panathenaics without the inscription, for example,
one in the British Museum signed by the potter Kittos (
ABV, 413, middle, and below, no. 1); they may have
been intended as competition samples or as souvenirs of the Panathenaic Games,
rather than as actual prizes.
Another innovation of the fourth century has to do with the figures
on top of the columns. Before that time, they were cocks, symbols of Athena's
fighting spirit. But early in the fourth century, at about the time of the
introduction of the archon inscriptions, the cocks disappear, and their place is
taken by small mythological or human figures, often reproducing a statue group.
The column symbols, as they are called, change from year to year and thus serve
as a clue to the dating of the vase. The symbols on the Panathenaic amphora in
Detroit are figures of men draped from the waist down in himatia; in the left
hand, they hold either a cornucopia or a large drinking-horn, in the right hand,
a thyrsos. This author has not been able to locate parallels to the figures,
whose identity remains a puzzle. They do not appear to be gods but rather
magistrates holding the attributes of divinities: the thyrsos of Dionysos and
the cornucopia, which might refer to Demeter or Ploutos, or the drinking-horn,
an attribute, like the thyrsos of Dionysos. The association may well be with the
Eleusinian Mysteries, which at the time were under the control of Athens. A
Panathenaic amphora in New York, belonging to the Kittos Group and dated by its
archon inscription 367/366, also bears symbols which refer to Eleusis (
Para., 177, below, no. 3). On top of the
Ionic columns, there are small figures of Triptolemos seated in a winged chariot
drawn by snakes. The name-piece of the Asteios Group,
Oxford 572, in contrast, has symbols which clearly refer
to Athens: figures of Nike holding an
aphlaston, the stern of the trireme. Since the symbols for any given year
are the same, it would be possible to date the Panathenaic amphora in Detroit
more closely if we could find another amphora from the same time with identical
symbols and an archon inscription.
The reverse of a Panathenaic amphora usually carries a representation
of the event for which the vase was awarded. On the Detroit amphora, the event
is the men's foot-race, the long-distance rather than the sprint to tell from
the long, easy stride of the runners. A similar representation appears on the
Panathenaic amphora in New York of the Kittos Group, referred to above. In both
pictures, the runners are shown in the old-fashioned scheme with the left leg
and left arm advanced. The vase-painters certainly understood correct
opposition, with diagonal arm-leg movement, for it appears on Panathenaic
amphorae of the fifth century. But the artists of the amphorae in Detroit and
New York have rejected the natural pose for one which goes back to black-figure
vases of the sixth century. The Asteios amphora in Oxford shows on its very
fragmentary reverse a scene of wrestlers with a trainer or judge and was thus a
prize for wrestling. The subject of side B of the Panathenaic in Alexandria is a
victor, in which event we cannot tell.
Of the three members of the Asteios Group, the Panathenaic amphora in
Detroit is by far the best preserved. It is also the most interesting and
provocative, because of the puzzling nature of the figures atop the columns and
the absence of an archon inscription. Additional study of this very fine vase
would yield a better understanding not only of the work itself but also of
Panathenaic amphorae of the fourth century, a subject which cries for further
exploration.
Bibliography
F. W. Robinson, "Recent
Acquisitions of Ancient and Medieval Art," Bulletin of The Detroit Institute of Arts, 31 (1951-2)
65;
ABV, 412, below, no. 3;
F. J. Cummings and C. H. Elam (eds.),
The Detroit Institute of Arts Illustrated
Handbook (Detroit 1971) 10 and 33.
Evelyn Bell, The University of California,
Berkeley
