Rev. do Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia, São Paulo, 5: 211-222, 1995. LITERACY AND SOCIAL STATUS OF ARCHAIC ATTIC VASE-PAINTERS* H. A. Shapiro** SHAPIRO, H.A. Literacy and social status of archaic attic vase-painters. Rev. do Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia, São Paulo, 5: 211-222, 1995. RESUMO: Recentemente, novas evidências levaram alguns estudiosos a ques­ tionar a visão tradicional que considera os ceramistas e pintores atenienses banausoi de baixo estatuto social cujas vidas raramente ou nunca cruzaram com as da aristo­ cracia (Keuls, 1989: 149-67). A evidência diz respeito principalmente à geração dos pioneiros das figuras vermelhas, que são excepcionais em seu forte senso de identidade e deliberada referência seja de um a outro deles, ou a seus patrões. O campo de encontro era o simpósio. Este trabalho enfoca um período anterior, os meados de séc. VI, e certas inscri­ ções em vasos que sugerem não somente um elevado grau de instrução de parte do pintor, mas também uma familiaridade com vários gêneros de poesia de simpósio ou de outro tipo. Essas incrições métricas, algumas em vasos modestos, sob outros aspectos, e não coletadas previamente, atestam o poder de difusão da “cultura da canção” da Grécia arcaica descrita por J. Herington (1985). Estes e outros exemplos implicam em que a estrutura social da Atenas do arcaico inicial, na esteira das reformas de Sólon, não era rigidamente estratificada; antes, artesãos conviviam livremente com os aristocratas, frequentemente unidos pelo gosto que compartilhavam pela poesia e pela canção. UNITERMOS: Vasos gregos - Atenas - Pintores de vasos áticos arcaicos - Escrita. The traditional view of Athenian potters and (Tiverios, 1976: 15-17) or Amasis, whose name vase-painters is of banausoi, artisans of low social suggests an Egyptian origin (Boardman, 1987; status, sometimes slaves, whose lives seldom if Isler, 1994), to cite just two prominent examples - ever intersected with those of the aristocrats who placing them outside the bounds of the Athenian purchased some of their finest wares (Scheibler, citizenry altogether. Yet there are at least as many 1983: 120-33; Sarian, 1993). Many workers in the with good Athenian names, even occasionally na­ Kerameikos, it is often pointed out, have names mes that occur in well-known families, though it that betray a foreign origin - Lydos, the Lydian is usually not possible to determine if there is an actual family connection. Thus, for example, the Andokides who was a well-known potter in the (*) This paper was delivered at the 10th Congress of the Fédé­ years around 530 (Beazley, 1986:69-72) could well ration Internationale des Associations d’Études Classiques be related to the Andokides who was tamias of in Québec on August 25, 1994. I thank H. Sarian for the Athena about 550 and ancestor of the great orator opportunity to publish it here. (**) University of Canterbury, New Zealand. of the late fifth century (cf. Shapiro, 1989: 72). It 211 SHAPIRO, H.A. Literacy and social status of archaic attic vase-painters. Rev. do Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia. São Paulo, 5: 211-222, 1995. was in Andokides’ workshop that the red-figure ship of painter and patron in a very different light. technique was probably invented (Cohen, 1978: A red-figure psykter of the late sixth century, now 105-239), so we may suppose that it was one of in the J. Paul Getty Museum (Figs. 1-2), depicts a the largest and most successful of its time. gathering of young athletes and other youths, mos­ It has often been suggested that the signature tly grouped into pairs with more or less explicitly on vases with epoiesen refers not to the potter but erotic overtones (Frel, 1983:).' Most are labelled, to the workshop owner (Robertson, 1972; Eisman, and many of the names are familiar from kalos- 1974). If this is correct, then in a few instances, as inscriptions on other vases of the period: Ambrosios with Andokides, Nikosthenes, and Pamphaios and Euthydikos; Hegerthos and Andriskos; Melas (Immerwahr, 1984), we might imagine that, in the and Antias. There is one great surprise: Leagros, social climate of post-Solonian Athens, owning a the reigning beauty of the day (to judge from his successful potter’s shop that exported extensively enormous popularity in vase-inscriptions) is wooed overseas had become a respectable occupation for by none other than the vase-painter Euphronios a man of good family. John Boardman has recently (Fig. 2). Is this to be taken at face value, or could it intimated that the black-figure master painter/potter be some kind of elaborate joke? The less than beau­ Exekias could even have belonged to the family of tiful Leagros (cf. Keuls, 1989: 162, who describes Solon, whose father’s name was Exekestides him as a “chinless wonder”) verges on a caricature, (Boardman, 1978: 24). and Martin Robertson has recently suggested that The very fact that aristocrats must from time the drawing on the vase is itself a kind of caricature, to time have bought or commissioned vases directly “a rude parody... of the Pioneers” (Robertson 1992: from the potters’ shops is a strong a priori argu­ 26). Previously the vase had been attributed to ment that there was at least some interaction, as is Smikros (Frel 1983: 150), a close, slightly younger the existence of a large number of kalos-inscrip- colleague of Euphronios, who gave the name Smi­ tions praising the beauty of the jeunesse doreé, kros to a participant in the symposium on one of many of them identifiable from other sources (Ro­ his most ambitious vases (Fig. 3; Beazley, 1963: binson and Fluck, 1932). In recent years, the basic 1619; Vermeule, 1965; Beazley, 1971: 322; Car­ assumption that the finest vases were made for penter, 1989: 152).2 Smikros in turn produced a aristocratic patrons has been challenged, particular­ self-portrait of sorts in an elaborate symposium ly by Michael Vickers and David Gill (Vickers and scene that comes close to the spirit of Euphronios’ Gill, 1994). They argue that the Athenian aristocra­ krater.3 Even if such elements are meant in jest - cy only dined off gold and silver plate, the black- the very notion that a Smikros would be invited to and red-figure vases being cheap imitations. There the poshest party in town, or that Euphronios would is much evidence that makes this thesis untenable court the most sought-after prize in the palestra - (Robertson, 1992: 4-5), including, I believe, the they cannot be strictly in-jokes among the painters. longer vase inscriptions that I shall be discussing The very fact that their patrons could also share in later in this paper. These were surely not copied the joke presupposes a certain degree of social inti­ from another medium, but were added directly by macy, even comraderie.4 the painter. But in any case, such evidence as the existence of kalos names does not allow us to speci­ fy the nature of the interaction between patron and painter. Was it strictly a business transaction, or (1) Malibu, J. Paul Getty Museum 82.AE.53; Figs. 1-2 here might there have been other forms of social inter­ reproduced from Frel 1983: 149. figs. 10.2 and 10.6. (2) Munich, Antikensammlungen 8935; Fig. 3 here from a course between the potters and painters and their photo courtesy of the Staatliche Antikensammlungen. clientèle? Do the kalos-inscriptions imply that these (3) Stamnos. Brussels A 717; Beazley 1963: 20, 1; Beazley handsome upper-class youths paraded themselves 1971: 322; Caipenter 1989: 154; CVA (Brussels 2) pll. 12-13. through the potters’ quarter and caught the eye of (4) The tendency of painters of the Pioneer Group to refer to the artisans there, or were these names simply dicta­ one another on their vases, usually in a lighthearted fashion, ted by the patron to an obliging painter (cf. Webster, is well attested. Cf. the amphora by Euthymides with the chal­ 1972: 21)? lenge wc; ouSettote Ed^povioc;: Munich 2307; Beazley 1963: 26,1; Linfert (1977); Engelmann (1987) and the hydria by A startling new piece of evidence, first publis­ Phintias with a hetaira toasting Euthymides: Munich 2421; hed a dozen years ago, seems to cast the relation­ Beazley (1963): 23-34,1. 212 SHAPIRO, H.A. Literacy and social status of archaic attic vase-painters. Rev do Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia, Sao Paulo, 5: 211-222, 1995. Fig.l - Red-figure psykter J.Paul Getty Museum, Malibu. 213 SHAPIRO, H.A. Literacy and social status of archaic attic vase-painters. Rev. do Museu de Arqueologio e Etnologio, Sao Paulo, 5: 211-222, 1995. Fig.2 - Detail of Fig.1: Euphronios and Leagros. But the Euphronios krater in Munich (Fig. 3) cords a good selection of the skolia (15.694C- has another unusual feature that may suggest a dif­ 696A), and ours follows a typical pattern for the ferent approach to the question, what knowledge opening line, the invocation of a divinity, or a group or experience did the vase-painters have of the of related divinities. One, for example, calls on world of the Athenian aristocracy. One of the sym- Demeter, mother of Ploutos, and Persephone posiasts, Ekphantides, spontaneously throws back (15.694C). Ours probably named Artemis in the his head and bursts into song, the words issuing second line and may well have referred to their from his mouth: mother Leto and their birth on Delos. One of the skolia quoted by Athenaeus was on this very v6ttoM ov, oe te kou paKai<pav> subject (Vermeule, 1965: 39). Invocations to Apollo O Apollo, you and blessed (Artemis) as son of Leto also occur twice at the beginning of The verse is in Hipponactean metre, one of se­ the Theognidea. veral Aeolic metres commonly used in the Attic Such verses were evidently composed and skolia, or drinking songs. Vermeule identified the sung only within the symposium setting. How, then, metre as glyconic (Vermeule, 1965: 38), while did Euphronios know them, unless he also had first­ Beazley had suggested completing the line with a hand experience of the kind of symposium he Phalaecian (Beazley, 1963: 1619). Athenaeus re­ depicts? 214 SHAPIRO, H.A. Literacy and social status of archaic attic vase-painters. Rev. do Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia, Sao Paulo, 5: 211-222, 1995. h. c ni u M n, e g n u ml m a s n e k nti A e h c atli a St s. o ni o r h p u E by r e at r k - x y al c e r u g d-fi e R - g.3 i F 215 SHAPIRO, H.A. Literacy and social status of archaic attic vase-painters. Rev. do Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia, Sao Paulo, 5: 211-222, 1995. Such examples of sympotic verse on Attic symposium itself and the courting of boys in the vases are, to be sure, rather rare, but sufficiently palestra. A third instance, again in black-figure but well-attested to be significant (Hurwit, 1990: 194- about contemporary with the Euphronios krater, is 96). The most remarkable to come to light in recent even more unexpected because the setting is defi­ years is on a small black-figure tripod-pyxis attribu­ nitely non-aristocratic. On a pelike in the Vatican, ted to the Amasis Painter and found in the German an oil seller fills a small jug from a large pelike excavations of the sanctuary of Aphaia on Aegina that sits on the floor beside him (Fig. 6).6 A custo­ in the early 1970’s (Figs. 4-5; M. Ohly-Dumm, mer or co-worker sits opposite him and seems to apwdBothmer, 1985: 236-38).5 Once again the me­ be playing with the dog. Such scenes of banausoi, tre is an Aeolic one, the Major Asclepiadean, that though not very numerous, do several times occur could be used for drinking songs: on pelikai, in part to illustrate the uses to which the shape was put (Shapiro forthcoming). Stret­ "HAiog oiSev Kai cyoj povog ching from one figure to the other is the opening auTwq TTaiSa xaAov line of an impromptu hymn: This is clearly a snippet of paederastic verse. ’O Zcu TTCíTcp a’í0£ nAoúaiog y£v<oípav> “The sun and likewise I alone know a handsome boy” is the translation of Henry Immerwahr, taking “O Zeus, would that I might become rich!” auTwg (with long o) adverbially (Immerwahr, 1990: The metre is again Aeolic and the invocation to 36). The lover wants to keep his beloved for him­ Zeus reminiscent of skolia like the one on Euphro­ self, away from the gaze of others. Only Helios sees nios’ krater, only the sentiment somewhat less lofty. everything on earth, a conventional idea in Greek In fact the diction recalls even more closely another poetry, expressed, for example, as Aeschylus’ type of skolion of which Athenaeus records two Choephoroi 985, where Orestes calls upon Helios, examples. One reads: o ttqvt’ettotttcucjv to witness the cloak in which £Í0£ Aúpa xaAa ycvoípav ¿A£(|)avTÍva, Agamemnon was ensnared and slain. Kaí p£ KaAoi TTa'iScc; c|)£poi£v Aiovúaiov The erotic poem on our vase has no relevance ég x°póv to the scene alongside which it is painted (the com­ bat of Herakles and Kyknos), but there is an appro­ “Would that I might become a lovely ivory lyre, priate scene elsewhere on the vase: three pairs of and that beautiful boys might take me to the chorus erastes and eromenos courting (Fig. 5). Part of one of Dionysos.” boy’s name is preserved, Aprophasistos, translated In the context of the oil merchant’s shop on by Martin Robertson as “nothing loth” (apud Both- the Vatican pelike, the verse turns the scene into a mer, 1985: 237). The Amasis Painter is elsewhere gentle parody of the symposium, in which two wor­ quite sparing with inscriptions, and the one on this king stiffs daydream of being leisured aristocrats. vase is most unusual for him (or any other painter, The painter’s sense of humor perhaps reflects a for that matter). That, as well as the unusual prove­ feeling of kinship or empathy with his fellows in nance, suggests a special commission, yet the ins­ the oil business, who must have had close ties to cription is, according to Immerwahr, compatible the pottery industry. The humor in fact extends to with the painter’s handwriting and so could not, the reverse of the pot (Fig. 7). In a different vignette, say, have been added by the purchaser (Immerwahr, which may be only loosely related to the first (the 1990: 37). If the hand is smaller and more cramped setting has moved outdoors), the oil merchant, who than the Amasis Painter’s usual, that is no doubt has perhaps been accused of shortchanging a custo­ in order to squeeze it into the limited space - the mer, exclaims: same reason the inscription has been displaced from qSq p£v q5q ttA£0<v>, Trap|3£|3aK£v the more crowded scene in which it properly belongs. In both examples considered thus far, Euphro- “It’s already full. It’s spilling over!” Although nios and the Amasis Painter demonstrate their fa­ the wording probably captures a typical speech pat­ miliarity with sympotic verse in settings that evoke tern of colloquial Attic Greek, at the same time it the social milieu of the Athenian aristocrat: the (6) Vatican 413; Albizzati 1925-39: pi. 61. Figs. 6 and 7 here (5) Figs. 4-5 reproduced from Bothmer 1985: 236-37. reproduced from photos courtesy of the Vatican Museums. 216 SHAPIRO, H.A. Literacy and social status of archaic attic vase-painters. Rev. do Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia, São Paulo, 5:211-222, 1995. Fig.4 - Black-figure tripod-pyxis by the Amasis Painter, Aegina. appears to be metrical, based on a succession of still knew enough about what went on at them to cretics, usually considered a Doric metre (West, render such scenes in sharply observed and sympa­ 1982: 54-55). The use of a Doric form with long thetic detail, complete with authentic fragments of alpha in the final word would be consistent with the kind of verse spontaneously composed on these this. Possibly the doricisms reflect the non-aristo- occasions. The notion that a “humble” painter could cratic status of the speakers. himself compose a snatch of verse, as on the If the preceding examples of what an Archaic Vatican pelike, is not so astonishing when we con­ vase-painter might write on his vases suggest any­ template the nature of the “song culture” of Archaic thing about the place these men occupied in Greece that John Herington has so compellingly Athenian society, it is perhaps that they had no fixed described (Herington, 1985). Indeed, as the second place, contrary to our usual notion of the rigid social speaker on the pelike illustrates, even conversa­ stratification of sixth-century Athens. Their profes­ tional speech tends to slip easily into metre in this sion brought them into contact with a broad cross- period. He may be the opposite of Moliere’s section of their fellow Athenians, and they moved bourgeois gentilhomme, who didn’t realize he was easily between aristocrats and other banausoi. If speaking prose. they did not actually attend the symposia of the The “song culture” encompasses many other wealthy (and they might have, on occasion), they aspects of life as well, some of them, unfortuna­ 217 SHAPIRO, H.A. Literacy and social status of archaic attic vase-painters. Rev. do Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia, Sao Paulo, 5: 211-222, 1995. Fig.5 - Black-figure tripod-pyxis by the Amasis Painter, Aegina. tely, not documented at all in the small corpus of How these painters of the period of the Persian surviving vase inscriptions. One instance that may Wars acquired their literary sophistication is ano­ seem unremarkable, almost predictable, but is no ther question. I have deliberately focussed on an less unique for that, appears on an as yet unpublis­ earlier period in this paper, in order to consider the hed black-figure loutrophoros of the mid-sixth cen­ role of the vase-painters in a society of very limited tury attributed to the painter Lydos.7 The vase itself literacy. And here I believe that their familiarity is a nuptial vessel, used to carry water for the bridal with several genres of occasional verse, their ability bath. Amid the figures in the wedding procession to transcribe it onto a vase and perhaps even to is written a bit of the wedding song: HYMEN AIE compose it spontaneously, must separate them from YMENAIE. This loutrophoros was found, along most of their fellow banausoi. with hundreds more like it (cf. Travlos, 1971: 361, Archaic Athens was, in the end, a very small 363, fig. 466) in the sanctuary of Nymphe at the town, and the familiar model of segregation by so­ foot of the Akropolis, probably all dedications of cial class would simply not have worked in practise. newly-wed couples. The inscription does not add While mixing with men of a higher class does not, anything new to the corpus of lyric poetry, as the of course, imply moving up to a higher class - sla­ others we have looked at could be said to do, but ves, after all, probably spent a lot of time in the in adding the sounds of the wedding to the visual complany of their masters - in the case of free- image (cf. Oakley and Sinos, 1994: 11), it uses the born potters and painters I believe the frequent con­ power of the written word to bring the scene to life. tact must have led to a greater degree of acceptance By the early fifth century, the “song culture” than was accorded most members of the urban was already on the wane. In vase-painting this is proletariat. We know that professional musicians evident in the prevalence of book rolls in school and poets, like Anakreon, were welcome guests at scenes, some of them carrying identifiable passages the Athenian symposium, because they provided of epic verse (Immerwahr, 1964). In the most the more refined entertainment (Pellizer, 1990; famous example, by Douris, the opening lines of Kurtz and Boardman, 1986). Although vase-pain­ an epic poem are inscribed on the open book roll.8 ters probably never enjoyed the same status as fine artists, might they not have been invited along as well, precisely in order that they might be better (7) Akropolis; Beazley 1970; 45. I thank M. Tiverios for able to render the symposium scenes that their pa­ showing me a photo of this vase. (8) Berlin 2285; Beazley 1963: 431,48. trons favored? 218 SHAPIRO, H.A. Literacy and social status of archaic attic vase-painters. Rev. do Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia, Sâo Paulo, 5: 211-222, 1995. Fig. 6 - Black.-fi.gure pelike, Vatican Museums. 219 SHAPIRO, H.A. Literacy and social status of archaic attic vase-painters. Rev. do Museu de Arqueologia e Etnologia, São Paulo, 5: 211-222, 1995. Fig. 7 - Black-figure pelike, Vatican Museums. 220