The Chigi Vase

The end of the 8^th century (ca. 700 BC) saw a change that has been called the “Orientalizing Revolution”: material prosperity led to population growth, which led to trading and colonization, which led to a new openness to influences from other cultures (especially those to the east of Greece), which led to borrowing and emulation in the arts.  The great pioneer in this revolution was not Athens, but Corinth, which became the center of pottery production.  The Corinthians used motifs borrowed from the Near East; they invented the black-figure technique, characterized by the use of dark figures against a light background.  The figures are painted in a slip (a mixture of refined clay and water) and details are incised, that is, carved into the clay with a very sharp instrument.  Red, yellow, and white paint are used for other details.  Shown here is a Protocorinthian olpe or wine jug, the Chigi vase.

There are three registers.  In the lowest we see men, dogs, and hares; in the middle register, a procession and a lion hunt on one side, and a myth, the Judgment of Paris, on the other; in the upper register, armed warriors, led by a pipes-player, meeting in battle.  The warriors are heavily armed footsoldiers (hoplites).  They wear crested helmets with cheek plates, bronze cuirasses (breastplates), and greaves (shin guards).  They carry spears and emblazoned shields. 

This vase is justly famous for its technical virtuosity.  But historians regard it as the earliest evidence for hoplite warfare.  “Each side forms a hoplite phalanx, pure and unadulterated; every article of hoplite equipment is plainly represented and nothing alien to it, and the tactics—hand-to-hand fighting with the spear—are purely hoplite. Of the ranks on the point of engaging each man holds his spear above his head, nearly horizontal but with a slight downward tilt, poised ready, not for a throw, but for a thrust at the exposed throat of an opponent” (H. L. Lorimer, “The Hoplite Phalanx,” The Annual of the British School at Athens, 42 (1947) 82-83).  Oswyn Murray once called it "the most successful portrayal of hoplite tactics which has survived" (Early Greece [1980] 125).

Alexander the Great Confronts Darius III at Issus

This is a tile mosaic of Alexander the Great in battle with Darius III of Persia. Alexander is able to defeat Darius' army and even attempts to capture Darius at the Battle of Issus. The Roman floor mosaic dates from approximately 100 B.C., but it is believed to be a Roman copy of a painting from the Hellenistic period in the third century B.C. It was discovered among the ruins at Pompeii.


The mosaic is made from millions of tiny colored mosaic tiles known as tesserae. Even though this mosaic is damaged, it is easy to make out the two figures. Off to the very left of the mosaic, you can see a portrait of Alexander on horseback participating in battle. Upon Alexander's breast plate is a depiction of Medusa. The tallest figure towards the center of the mosaic is Darius in his chariot wearing his helmet.

It is simply a scene from the middle of the heat of this feisty battle that includes all the details of the armor, the men, and the horses*. This is uncommon for a work of art for a private residence. The patron of this mosaic was probably someone of the upper class living in Pompeii.

*A.P. Art History teacher Dr. Michael Bieze said referring the to horse in the center, "That's the best horse's rear in art history."

The Abduction of Helen

This Attic red-figure skyphos (two-handled drinking cup) from Suessula in southern Italy is one of the earliest certain depictions of the abduction of Helen by Paris.  Its date is c. 480.  The vase is signed by Makron as painter and Hieron as potter.  Paris, preceded by Aeneas, grasps Helen by the wrist and leads her away.  Peitho, the goddess of persuasion, crowns Helen with the encouragement of Aphrodite.  The small winged figure between Paris and Helen is Eros.  All the figures are identified with inscriptions. 

A note on Eros.  On Greek vases Eros or Erotes (plural) can appear with, say, Atalanta, or at the Judgment of Paris, or, as here, with Paris and Helen—all stories in which he has a powerful impact as the personification of love.  At first he is depicted as a wingless boy.  Later, from about 500 BC, he is shown with wings (often as a tiny, adult-like figure, aka homunculus), as on Makron’s vase.  He becomes quite popular, especially on red-figure vases, where he pursues other figures (sometimes with a whip) or carries a hare, which is the token of love, or a torch.  It is not until the 4^th century that he is regularly shown with a bow and becomes the chubby kid that we recognize from the Roman tradition (in which he becomes Cupid or Amor).

Temple of Apollo at Corinth

This Doric temple was built around the middle of the sixth century BC at Corinth.  It is largely destroyed and only seven of its columns are now standing, but it is possible to restore its plan (see the drawing) with some certainty.  The columns are of limestone and they are monolithic (they were carved from a single block, then covered with marble stucco).  The temple is peristyle (with a colonnade surrounding the whole building).  And it is hexastyle (with 6 columns on the eastern and western faςades), with 15 columns per side, for a total of 38 columns in all.  Approaching it from the east, one entered the front porch or pronaos by passing two columns in antis, i.e., positioned between the antae (an anta was the broadened end of a wall).  From there one entered the main cella (the room where the cult statue was placed), which had two rows of four interior columns each to support the ceiling.  From the west side one entered the back porch or opisthodomos, again passing two columns in antis, and from there went into a second, smaller cella with four supporting columns.  Why two cellae?  This is a puzzle.  Dörpfeld, the first excavator, thought that he was looking at a double temple in which two different gods were worshipped.  But Pausanias, who wrote a Description of Greece in the second century AD, says that the structure was sacred to only one god—Apollo.

The temple shows some refinements that anticipate those found in later buildings such as the Parthenon.  First, the monolithic limestone columns (they were carved from a single block, then covered with marble stucco) have a slight cigar-like swelling known as entasis.  Second, the stylobate (the course of masonry on which the columns stand) is slightly curved.  Third, the corner columns are inclined inward—again, only slightly.  And again, the reason for all these refinements is to defeat optical illusions that result from the human eye’s misperception of perfectly straight lines.  For example, the human eye tends to perceive a straight columnar line as concave, so making that line slightly convex (entasis) corrects that false perception.

These refinements are all the more remarkable because they made the work of designer and mason much more complicated.  Heliodorus of Larisa, writing in the first century AD, explained: “The aim of the architect is to give his work a semblance of being well-proportioned and to devise means of protection against optical illusions so far as possible, with the objective, not of factual, but of apparent equality of measurements and proportion.”

“Tiberius Cup” from Boscoreale

This is a silver scyphus (a two-handled drinking cup), one of a pair discovered in a villa at Boscoreale (near Pompeii, and so also buried by Vesuvius in AD 79) and bearing historical reliefs from the Julio-Claudian age.  The two cups are thought to be small-scale copies of reliefs from some major monument that has not survived.  They each have two panels and it has been argued that together the four panels form a sequence.  Here we are looking at one panel on the cup known as the “Tiberius Cup.”  It shows the future emperor riding in a triumphal quadriga (four-horse chariot).  Dressed in a toga, he holds a laurel branch and a scepter with an eagle—Jupiter’s bird—at its tip.  Behind him, a slave is placing a victory wreath over his head.  It is tempting to imagine the slave whispering into Tiberius’ ear to remind him that he is only a mortal, not a god…  (This element of the triumphal procession has recently been challenged as fanciful by Mary Beard in her book The Roman Triumph (2007) 85-92.)  A later stage of the same event is shown on the other side of the cup.  There Tiberius is shown presiding over the sacrifice of a bull in front of the Temple of Jupiter on the Capitoline hill, where the triumphal parade ended.  The triumph to which this cup refers may be that one that Tiberius celebrated in 7 BC after his German campaigns, or else the one he celebrated in AD 12 after his subjection of Illyria.

Achilles & Ajax Playing a Game

Exekias was a famous potter and vase painter. Not only did he mold several vases, but he also painted them and even included inscriptions. This vase is a black-figure amphora by Exekias. An amphora

was typically used for storing and transporting oils and wine. You can tell that it's black-figure ware

because the background is a red/orange color, and the figures are black. This style was popular on vases during the Archaic period. The figures are the Trojan War heroes Achilles and Ajax.  They are playing a game, probably dice. This vase dates to around 540-530 B.C.

If you look closer at the figures, you'll notice that there are words near each of them. Exekias included these inscriptions almost to function as captions for the scene he depicted on the vase. He clearly labels Achilles on the left and Ajax on the right. Near each of their mouths, Exekias also included words that each character is saying. Achilles calls out tes[s]era which means "four," and Ajax calls out tria which means "three." They are each calling out the numbers on the dice.

Off to the left of the scene, Exekias proudly added  his signature, stating "Exekias made me." This was rarely if ever seen on vases before Exekias. On the right, he includes a kalos inscription, which dedicates his work to someone stating "... is beautiful."

This work is a breakthrough piece because it is one of the first paintings to include text functioning as a signature, captions, quotations, and dedications. 

Temple of Zeus at Olympia, Stymphalian Birds

Heracles’ 6th labor was to drive away the birds that lived in the thickly wooded shores of the Stymphalian Lake in northeastern Arcadia.  He made a lot of noise with a bronze noisemaker, and as the birds took flight, he shot them down with his arrows.  Or, in another version, he simply let them migrate to another spot.  The myth appears on Attic black-figure vases from the end of the sixth century, where Heracles is shown shooting the birds with his arrows, pelting them with his slingshot, or striking them with his club.

When the labors of Heracles were represented on one of the metopes of the Temple of Zeus at Olympia (c. 460 BC) a different, post-climactic “narrative moment” was chosen.  The birds have already been killed or driven away.  What we see is Heracles handing over several dead birds (which are missing from the metope) to Athena, who sits barefoot on a rock.  Why Athena?  She appears four times as his assistant on the metopes, and according to one tradition it was she who gave him the bronze noisemaker.  He has returned to her to show her that her bird-scarer did the trick.  A strong demand was placed upon the viewer of this metope, who had to infer all the actions leading up to the moment chosen for direct representation.  And this choice of narrative moment invited the viewer to contemplate consequences and emotional effects.  “His mood is calm, hers gentle,” says Pedley (Greek Art and Archaeology [2002] 217).  Her turning posture suggests that Heracles has surprised her from behind; she had been looking in the other direction, none too concerned for his welfare in this labor, one of his easiest.  The whole composition is notable for the demands it places upon the viewer.  Contrast the black-figure vase paintings, which depict the climactic moment: they are visually stunning, but they do not evoke the hero’s easy relationship with the goddess.

Pyramid of Cestius

It’s a tomb in the form of a pyramid, built around AD 15.  Why?  Because that’s what C. Cestius wanted.  And tombs offered lots of room for creativity: a tomb could take any form the builder wanted it to take.  The wealthy baker Eurysaces built a tomb in the shape of…well, nobody really knows what it was supposed to be.  More on Eurysaces’ tomb in a later post.  Others built tombs that looked likes houses or temples.  And Augustus chose to be buried in a huge tumulus—a burial mound covered with evergreen trees and a colossal bronze statue of himself.  But Cestius went for a pyramid.  There was a craze for all things Egyptian at the time—especially since Egypt was conquered by Octavian in 30 BC and then became the emperor’s personal province.  Had Cestius served in Egypt and seen firsthand pyramids large and small?  Perhaps.  The pyramid’s steep sides

recall the pyramid-tombs built for private individuals in Upper Egypt and in Nubia.  But what do we really know about Cestius?  Nothing, beyond the tomb’s inscription, which tells us that he had been a praetor, a tribunus plebis, and one of the epulones or ten state priests who organized public banquets in honor of Jupiter and other gods.  So he was a man of some distinction.  And it’s a fair guess that he wanted passers-by to notice his tomb.  He got his wish: they are still doing so today.

The tomb was located on the Via Ostiensis.  It was built of concrete faced with blocks of luna marble.  Inside was a barrel vault leading to a funerary chamber with wall paintings in the Third Style—which, curiously, bear no Egyptian motifs.  So much for the tomb of Cestius, which has been called “the most famous pyramid in Italy.”

Tondo Portrait of the Severan Family

In a previous post we looked at a dynastic portrait on a gem (the Gemma Claudia).  Here we have another dynastic portrait—not a relief carved in stone but a painting on wood (circular in shape, hence called a roundel or tondo).  The paint used was tempera, pigments mixed into egg yolk.  You may recall that some of the Fayum mummy portraits (see the previous post) were made with tempera on wood, although most were painted in encaustic.  And like the Fayum portraits, this tondo was made in Egypt.  What sets it apart is that its subject is the imperial family.  To date it is the only painted imperial portrait to have come down to us.  Unlike the Fayum portraits, its provenance is unknown.  We can only guess how it was displayed. 

Another contrast with the Julio-Claudian group portraits: this portrait is from a later age, that of the Severans.  The dynasty began with Septimius Severus (emperor from AD 193 to his death in 211), shown here with his wife Julia Domna and two sons Geta and Caracalla.  Geta is on the left, and his face has been erased in what was called a damnatio memoriae.  His brother Caracalla had Geta murdered and ordered that his memory be damned, that is, that all of his public images and inscriptions be destroyed.

We can see big changes in the iconography since the period of the Julio-Claudians.  You remember that the Gemma Claudia showed the imperial figures in profile.  Not so in the Severan tondo.  The figures are frontal, with larger-than-life eyes.  They wear the attributes of their elevated rank: scepters, diadems, fancy garments with gold borders.  Julia Domna wears a pearl necklace and pearl earrings.  We are far away from the iconography of the Julio-Claudians: the focus is on imperial majesty, not on the civic virtues that bring bounty to the empire.  Indeed, as Steven Tuck (A History of Roman Art [2015] 276) notes, “the elements of imperial portraiture that would become standard in the fourth century CE are already here at the beginning of the third.”

Gemma Claudia

This is a cameo—a relief carved out of stone with layers of different colors.  The stone used is sardonyx, an onyx that has parallel layers of sard.  The subject is a dynastic group portrait.  Portraits of family members had been shown in public during the Republic.  But from the time of Augustus dynastic groups appear regularly in the archaeological record—in statuary groups and on coins.  This cameo shows two couples facing each other.  Who are they?  Everyone agrees that the man on the left is Claudius—his facial features are distinctive.  We may suppose that the female figure behind him is his wife Agrippina the Younger.  As for the two to the right, there are various opinions.  One is that they are Germanicus (Claudius’ brother) and his wife Agrippina the Elder (the mother of Claudius’ wife Agrippina the Younger).  Another is that they are Tiberius and Livia (but they are son and daughter, not husband and wife).

The male portrait heads emerge out of cornucopiae, horns of plenty, which rest upon heaps of captured weapons.  Both Claudius and Germanicus wear the corona civica, the crown of oak leaves awarded to a Roman who had saved the life of a fellow Roman in battle (from the time of Augustus, this crown became part of the emperor’s iconography).  Between them, Jupiter’s eagle looks up at Claudius.  What does all this mean?  The empire is the fruit, as it were, of the military exploits of these men, the “saviors” of their fellow Romans and guarantors of their continuing prosperity.  And the eagle serves to confirm the emperor’s authority.

What about the women?  On the right, Agrippina the Elder wears a helmet encircled by a laurel wreath, the attribute of Dea Roma, the personification of the city of Rome.  Her daughter wears a crown in the form of a turreted wall, a veil, and a garland of ears of wheat: she may represent Oikoumene, the personification of the inhabited world.

There is room for different interpretations here, to be sure.  But the general import of this dynastic portrait is clear enough: through military action, and with the full approval of the gods, the imperial family maintains the welfare of Rome and the Roman world.  It should be compared with the other great gems that have come down to us from the Julio-Claudian period, the Gemma Augustea and the Grand Camée de France.  The Gemma Claudia is thought to have been a wedding gift to Claudius and Agrippina the Younger.