Reading the Chigi Vase
Jeffrey M. Hurwit
Hesperia, Vol. 71, No. 1. (Jan. - Mar., 2002), pp. 1-22.
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H E S P E R I A 71 ( 2 0 0 2 )
Pages 1-22
READING
THE C H I G I VASE
ABSTRACT
Long considered one of the technical masterpieces of Archaic Greek vase
painting, the Protocorinthian Chigi vase (ca. 640 B.c.) has defied attempts at
interpretation. Its imagery has most often been understood as a random assortment of exquisite but unrelated scenes-hunts, horsemanship, the Judgment of Paris, and a hoplite battle. It is argued here that there is in fact a logic
behind the choice of scenes, and that the vase displays a pliable thematic unity,
focusing upon the stages of maturation of the Corinthian male and the interpenetration of the everyday, the exotic, the heroic, and the divine in the lives
of mortals.
There was a time, not very long ago, when no one bothered thinking much
about why particular subjects were painted on particular Greek vases, or
why specific scenes are found together on the same vase.l The hard distinction between myth and genre was the only distinction that mattered,
and since a scene on a pot had to be one or the other, the choice was inherently uncontroversial: myth was always appropriate because, well, the
Greeks liked myth, and genre scenes were natural, too, because the Greeks
had daily lives like everyone else. Consequently, the search for programmatic or thematic relationships between two or more scenes on a single
vase was rarely undertaken: the iconography of Greek vase painting was
virtually a random thing.
That time has passed. We now recognize categories of imagery in
which the distinction between the generic and the mythological, between
the mortal and the heroic or divine, is not as strict. Consider certain scenes
on Attic Late Geometric and Archaic vases, for example, where the every1. In completing this article, I have
benefited greatly from the assistance and
advice of many people, including Alfred
Acres, Judith Barringer, Larissa Bonfante, Anna Rastrelli (Museo archeologico, Florence), Rex Wallace, the
very helpful anonymous referees for
Hesperia, and, above all, Anna Maria
Moretti (Villa Giulia), who graciously
allowed me to remove the Chigi vase
from its vitrine for study and photography. My research was also greatly
facilitated by residence as a visiting
scholar at the American Academy in
Rome, by a University of Oregon Summer Research Award, and by a University
of Oregon Humanities Center Fellowship. I am very grateful to and for all.
2
JEFFREY M. HURWIT
day life is given a heroic character through the depiction of Dipylon shields
or battle chariot^,^ or where (on a few works by the Amasis Painter)
Dionysos makes his epiphany among mortal men who are on routine hunting expedition^.^
Over the last three decades, the choice of subject has also attracted
intense attention, from a variety of perspectives. In the 1970s, for example,
John Boardman began to interpret Attic vases painted during the Peisistratid era as political, even subversive, documents. Exekias's famous scene
of Ajax and Achilles amusing themselves with a board game when they
should be out loolung for Trojans to kill4 is, in Boardman's view, really a
thinly veiled allusion to lax behavior at the Battle of Pallene, ca. 546, when
Athenians allegedly played dice as Peisistratos attacked and won his final
tyranny (Hdt. 1.63).The presence of the Lakonian cult heroes Kastor and
Polydeukes on the back of the same vase supposedly indicates Exekias's
pro-Spartan sympathies as well: taken together, the scenes on the Vatican
amphora comprise an antityrannical manifesto cloaked in myth. Problematic as Boardman's "current affairs" approach sometimes is (and important
as it is to remember that a privately owned pot is not the same as a work
of public propaganda), it has had more than its fair share of proponents,
and it has helped clarify the ideological dimension-the political reflections-of many Greek images.'
The syntagmatic relationship between scenes on many other nonpolitical pots is also clearer now. We may not know why the Protoattic Nessos
Painter chose to paint the myth of Herakles and Nessos on the body of his
name-vase in New York (ca. 675-650) or Exekias, on his fragmentary krater
from the north slope of the Acropolis (ca. 530), the combat over Patroklos's
corpse. But the odd-looking lion attacking a deer on the neck panel of the
Nessos amphora and the lion fights on the Exeluan krater surely function
like Homeric similes: the heroes fight centaurs or each other the way lions
maul deer or ~ a t t l eMore
. ~ broadly, recent structuralist, anthropological,
semiotic, and narratological studies have firmly established not only that
black- and red-figure vase painting is a "construct" encoding cultural themes
and social attitudes, but also that Archaic and Classical vase painters could
approach their task with specific programs and messages in mind, that
there is often a correlation between subject and vase shape, and that the
particular combination of scenes on a vase could have paradigmatic value
(by pairing heroic and mortal behaviors, for i n ~ t a n c e ) . ~
All in all, the search for thematic unity on a vase is now an orthodox enterpri~e.~
One Archaic vessel has been especially fortunate in the
2. See, e.g., Snodgrass 1980; Hunvit
1985b and 1993, esp. pp. 34-36; and
Sinos 1998.
3. See von Bothmer 1985, pp. 46-47;
Stewart 1987, pp. 36-38.
4. Vatican 344; Beazley 1986,
pls. 64-65.
5. Major documents in the debate
include Boardman 1972,1978a, 1984,
1989; Williams 1980, p. 144, n. 55; and
Cook 1987; see also Sparkes 1991a,
pp. 69-71. For a recent investigation of
the use of the Dioskouroi in Athens,see
Shapiro 1999; and for an uncompromising attack on those who would find
political content beneath Archaic imagery, see Neer 2001, esp. pp. 292-294.
6. New York Nessos amphora:
Hurwit 1985a, p. 174 and fig. 72.
Exekias's North Slope krater: Beazley
1986, pl. 73; Markoe 1989, esp. pp. 9495, pl. 5:a-b.
7. The literature is now vast, but see,
for example, the various essays in
Berard 1989, Hoffmann 1977 and
1988, Lissarrague 1990, Scheibler 1987,
Steiner 1993, and Shapiro 1997.
Generally, also Stansbury-O'Donnell
1999, pp. 118-157.
8. This is not to say that the scenes
on a pot are always thematically related;
even for Bron and Lissarrague 1989,
p. 21, "there is very often no direct link,
R E A D I N G T H E C H I G I VASE
3
devotion it has attracted: the Franqois vase (ca. 570), by Kleitias and
Ergotimos, which (despite disagreement over details and possible poetic
inspiration) has emerged as an anthology of myths chosen to narrate the
heroic pedigree, career, and death of Achilles, with a countercurrent of
scenes relating to the broader theme of marriage-unhappy marriage, on
the whole, but marriage nonetheless. With the battle of pygmies and cranes
on the foot to supply comic relief, the Franqois vase is perhaps the closest
approximation to a "painted epic" in the 6th ~ e n t u r y . ~
I explore below the extent to which some organizing principle or principles may be at work on an even earlier masterpiece of the Greek vase
painter's craft: a small polychrome pot whose pieces were found in 1881
during the excavation of a huge Etruscan tumulus accidentally discovered
on the property of Prince Mario Chigi, atop Monte Aguzzo, above the
village of Formello, about 3.5 krn north of Veii. The vessel is now on display in the Villa Giulia.lo
T H E VASE
The Chigi vase (Fig. 1)is perhaps the earliest-known example of a kind of
wine jug conventionally known as an olpe-an ovoid or sagging pitcher
with a flaring mouth and a vertical ribbed handle that is futed to the rim
with a pronglike feature ending in circular disks (rotelles).ll It is usually
assigned either to the second phase of the Middle Protocorinthian period
( M P C 11) or to the Late Protocorinthian (LPC) period, but it is at any
rate almost always given a date of around 650-640.12
other than proximity, between the
different images decorating a vase."
And there are still a few scholars who
insist that the search for iconographic
coherence on a vase (or, for that matter,
in the sculpture of a temple) is a waste
of time, the anachronistic exercise of a
modern, literate temperament that
(conditioned by f ~ e texts)
d
seeks
programmatic logic and thematic unity
where the ancient mind (conditioned
by a predominantly oral culture) did
not. See Small 1999, p. 573, n. 24,
who believes such attempts are doomed
to failure "because [the problem of
iconographic unity] is solely a modern one." Cf. Ridgway 1999, pp. 8294, who believes that the sculptural
programs of ancient temples did indeed bear messages, but that they
may not have been as logically or
carefully constructed as the modern
mind (long shaped by written texts
and the "controlled messages of
Christian art") would like or expect.
See also Stansbury-O'Donnell1999,
pp. 124-129, on problems of what
he calls "paradigmatic extension."
9. Stewart 1983; Schaus 1986;
Carpenter 1986, pp. 1-11; Haslam
1991; Isler-Kerenyi 1997.
10.Villa Giulia 22679; Amyx 1988,
p. 32, no. 3.
11.The modern use of the word
olpe, restricted to such ovoid wine jugs,
does not correspond with ancient use,
when "olpe" could indicate the small
perfumed-oil flask we know as the
aryballos; see Amyx 1988, pp. 488-489,
560-561; Sparkes 1991b, p. 63. The
Etruscans loved the shape and
faithfully copied it in vast numbers;
Amyx 1988, pp. 488,686.
12. Benson (1986, pp. 105-106)
places the beginning of the Chigi
Painter's career in the M P C I1 period
(660-650 B.c.); Boardman (1998, p. 87)
dates the vase "late in MPC, near 650
or later"; Payne (1933, p. 23), Simon
(1981, p. SO), and Amyx (1988, p. 369)
date it to LPC, ca. 640. Ducati (1927,
p. 70) dated the Chigi vase and the
tomb to the beginning of the 6th
century; Karo (1899-1901, p. 8) dated
the vase similarly. Mingazinni (1976)
has attempted to revise radically Archaic
pottery chronologies and dates the Chigi
vase to ca. 570; his arguments have not
been widely accepted.
Salmon (1984, p. 106) notes that
although Corinthian vases had found
their way to Etruria from the mid-8th
century on, high-quality Corinthian
imports began to arrive in significant
numbers around 650 (his date for the
Chigi vase). This is precisely the time
when Etruscan society experienced
"greater social stratification and
centralisation of power. . . accompanied
by the development of an increasingly
elaborate and varied elite material
culture" (Arafat and Morgan 1994,
p. 112).The importation of Corinthian
pottery appears to be a symptom of these
phenomena. But, as Small (1994) argues
in the case of Attic painted vases, the
importation of foreign vases may tell us
less about the general course of Etruscan
culture and fortunes than is often
thought.
4
JEFFREY M. H U R W I T
5
R E A D I N G T H E C H I G I VASE
Figure 1 (opposite). T h e Chigi vase.
Rome, V i a Giulia 22679.
Photos author
Figure 2. Chamber tomb from
Monte Aguzzo. Museo archeologico,
Florence. Photo author
The vase was deposited in a monumental tomb that, judging from its
rough ashlar and quasi-polygonal masonry, was built before the end of
the 7th century-perhaps even as early as 630.13The tomb consisted of a
5-m-long corridorlike dromos, two narrow, corbel-vaulted side chambers
(one ofwhich, 3.35 m long and 1.90 m wide, has been reconstructed in the
courtyard of the Museo archeologico, Florence; Fig. 2), and a large main
chamber (7.4 m long and 2.55 m wide) at the back. It was in this main
chamber that the pieces of the Chigi vase were found. The relatively close
dating of the vase and tomb means that although the tomb might have
remained in use for more than a single generation, the Chigi vase could
have been made and painted at Corinth, exported to Etruria, and buried
on Monte Aguzzo all within the course of a few decades, and perhaps a lot
less. And that, together with the vase's exceptionally rich figured decoration, raises the possibility in turn that the Chigi vase (like, perhaps, the
Fransois vase two generations later) was a commissioned piece, specifically made for an Etruscan in the market for items that would, with their
foreign cachet, display the owner's good taste, offer him paradigms of
Greekness to emulate, or both.14Thispossibility admittedly remains small,
13. For the date of the Monte
Aguzzo tomb, see fherstr6m 1934,
pp. 17-18; de Agostino 1968, pp. 109,
111; SteingrBer 1981, p. 492; and
A. De Sands, in Bartoloni et al. 1994,
p. 35 (where it is suggested that
"una datazione all'orientalizzante
media'-that is, a date even before
630-is possible for the tomb).
14. For Greek vases and the Etruscan market, see generally Rasmussen
1991 (Corinthian pottery); and Arafat and Morgan 1994 and Small 1994
(Attic pottery). For the Frangois vase
(which was given special treatment
when it was shipped to Etruria, with
struts added to prevent its handles
from breaking), see Cristofani
et al. 1981, p. 101; Isler-KerCnyi
1997.
6
JEFFREY M. HURWIT
but the likelihood that this unique vase arrived in Etruria as "saleable ballast" is minuscule. It was surely a special purchase.ls
The tomb on Monte Aguzzo was apparently ransacked twice: first
sometime in antiquity, and then in late 1880 or early 1881, when the inhabitants of Formello, who had been given the right to dig on Prince Chigi's
properties, rediscovered and entered the tomb before Rodolfo Lanciani
could be entrusted with its more systematic (but still poorly published)
excavation.16 Some 500-600 impasto, high-quality bucchero, Italo-Geometric, and Corinthian potsherds were found in the same chamber as the
pieces of the Chigi vase (about three-quarters of the vessel is preserved).
The finds, though plentiful, were otherwise modest, with the exception of
a bucchero vessel (datable to the last quarter of the 7th century) inscribed
in five lines with two of the earliest-known Etruscan alphabets, some almost incantationlike, nonsensical syllables (for example, azaruazaruazaruas), and a dedicatory inscription that, though open to interpretation,
seems to indicate that the vase belonged, or had at some point belonged,
to someone named Atianai.17If Atianai was the principal occupant of the
main chamber of the tomb on Monte Aguzzo, we in all probability also
know the name of the Etruscan owner of the Chigi vase.
Although incision is abundantly used for outlines and details, the vase
is notable for a refined polychrome technique in black, reddish-purple,
and various shades ofyellowish-brown that is usually thought to owe much
to contemporary wall or panel painting.'* We are, in fact, told that a
Corinthian (Ekphantos) invented the art of painting in color (though we
are not told precisely when) and we hear of panel paintings produced as
early as the 8th century.19 But there is nothing to indicate that such production was extensive in the 7th century, and it may be doubted whether
painters were particularly specialized this early. The few scraps of preserved 7th-century free painting, from the walls of theTemple of Poseidon
at Isthmia (ca. 650) and the metopes of the Temple of Apollo at Thermon
(ca. 630), might well have been the work of one of the few Corinthian
15. For the controversial theory that
Greek painted vases had virtually no
intrinsic or monetary value, see Vickers
and Gill 1994. Its many critics include
Small (1994), who points out that in
later centuries Etruscan consumers
purchased Attic painted vases for a
variety of reasons-to sit as decorative
objects on a shelf, to serve as storytelling
objets d h r t (like the Franqois vase) or as
souvenirs (like Panathenaic amphoras),
and, above all, to be deposited expressly
in tombs. Small argues that although the
Etruscans do not seem to have actually
drunk from or dined using Attic painted
vases, no single explanation for the
importation of Attic pottery is sufficient. A similar variety of uses, and a
similar selectivity of production and
consumption, can be assumed for
earlier Protocorinthian imports as well.
16. Ghirardini 1882, p. 292; WardPerluns 1961, p. 47.
17. The vase itself belongs to
Rasmussen's classification Id; see Rasmussen 1979, p. 72. For the "Formello
alphabet" and the dedicatory inscription (mi atianaia achapri dice veneliSi/
velthur zinare), see Ghirardini 1882;
Buonamici 1932, pp. 107-108; von
Vacano 1965, pp. 76-77; Boitani,
Cataldi, and Pasquinucci 1975, p. 229;
Figure 3 (opposite). The MacMillan
aryballos. H. ca. 6.5 cm. British
Museum 1889.4-18.1. Courtesy
Trustees of the British Museum
Pallottino 1978, pl. 94; Agostiniani
1982, p. 76, n. 127; Cristofani 1985,
p. 87 (who translates the dedicatory
inscription as "I am [the vase] of
dedicated [gave?]
Atianai. Achapri
me to Venel. Velthur made me.");
and Pandolfini and Prosdocimi 1990,
pp. 24-26. We do not know what the
word achapri means.
18. Payne 1931, pp. 92-98; Robertson 1975, p. 53.
19. See Plin. HN35.16 (Ekphantos)
and 35.55-56 (Boularchos's painting of
the "Battle of the Magnetes," dated by
Pliny before the 18th Olympiad, or
708 B.c.); see also Schaus 1988.
[?I
R E A D I N G T H E C H I G I VASE
7
craftsmen who primarily painted polychrome vases and who might have
easily adjusted their techniques for different media upon commission; the
Isthmia fragments bear decorative patterns and a horse's mane comparable to those found on Protocorinthian pots, and the Thermon metopes
are even made of baked clayz0
The origin of the painter of the Chigi vase, if not the vase itself, is also
at issue. The person who labeled a few figures on the back (see below, Fig.
8) did not write Greek like a Corinthian: he wrote like an Aiginetan, in
the opinion of some, or a Syracusan, in the opinion of others.21It seems
likely that either the writer was not the same man as the painter (a possibility we should not dismiss too hastily) or the painter was not a native of
C ~ r i n t h But
. ~ ~in any case the warm, creamy, buff-colored fabric of the
vase is recognizably Corinthian and its provenience is not in
Though the Chigi vase is far larger than an aryballos (the tiny perfume flask that is the quintessential Protocorinthian product), it is still not
very large (H. 26 cm) in comparison with other Greek vases and so demanded the skills of a consummate miniaturist. This artist-properly
known as the Chigi Painter--is generally credited with at least three other
works as well: a fragmentary olpe from Aigina, an aryballos in Berlin,
and the British Museum's MacMillan aryballos (where, in its lower friezes,
less than a centimeter high, the artist worked on a nearly microscopic scale; Fig. 3).24The Chigi Painter is also considered the central
figure in a small group of polychrome vase painters working in the middle of the 7th century (the Chigi G r o ~ p ) and
, ~ ~a recently published
20. Cf. Hurwit 1985a, pp. 161-162.
It is true that the small wooden pinakes
from Pitsa differ from even the most
colorful of Corinthian vases in technique and style (red and blue predominate), but since they date to the second
half of the 6th century they cannot
fairly be used to suggest great differences between free painting and works
like the Chigi vase a century earlier. For
the general problem (though focusing
on the 6th century), see Amyx 1983. It
is also usehl to keep in mind that even
such later vase painters as the Athenian
Euthymides (ca. 510) could execute independent panel paintings (such as his
chocolate-brown warrior on a plaque
from the Acropolis) with a different
range of color from that seen on his
pots; see Boardman 1975, p. 54, fig. 53.
21. Payne 1931, pp. 38-39
(Aiginetan, following Rumpf); Jeffery
1990, pp. 125, n. 3,264 (Syracusan).
See also Lorber 1979, pp. 14-15,
no. 13; Wachter 2001, p. 31.
22. See Amyx 1988, p. 602, where he
points out the danger in assuming "that
the writing on [a Corinthian] vase was in
every case provided by the vase painter
himself"; and Payne 1931, p. 39, where
it is suggested that "the inscriptions on
Protocorinthian vases show us foreign
artists working at Corinth, in the Protocorinthian style."
23. Some have doubted a Corinthian
origin for the Chigi vase; for example,
Rambo (1918, p. 13, n. 1) believes that
the vase is Etruscan, giving as her reasons
its use of landscape in the lowest zone,
its findspot near Vulci [sic], and the supposedly "sub-Mycenaean" costume of the
flute player in the battle scene. I assume
that Payne (1931, p. 182, n. 1) is being
ironic when he calls Rambo's conclusion
"a real contribution."
In the opinion of Karo (1899-1901,
p. 7), "der Thon ist warmgelb und nicht
sehr fein, also von dem hellen, griinlichen, feingeschlammtenThone der
gewohnlichen protokorinthischen Vasen
verschieden." But even he considers it
"ein Beispeil der hochsten Bliite des
protokorinthischen Stils" (p. 8).
No works incontrovertiblyby the
painter of the Chigi vase have been discovered at Corinth itself, though fragments of an aryballos and alabastron
related to his style have been found at
Perachora (Amyx 1988, p. 32, C.l and
C.2) and a fragmentary alabastron with
a hoplite battle scene found at the socalled Potter's Quarter in western
Corinth was attributed to the artist
(the MacMillan Painter) by Dunbabin
and Robertson 1953, p. 179; Amyx
(1988, p. 38, no. 7) prefers an assignment to the broader "Chigi Group." For
other sherds from the Potter's Quarter
with affinities with the Chigi Group,
see Corinth XV, iii, nos. 285,288,289,
304, and 341.
24. Amyx 1988, pp. 31-32,369-370.
25. The group also includes the
Boston Painter and the Sacrifice Painter;
Amyx 1988, pp. 33-37.
JEFFREY M. HURWIT
fragmentary oinochoe from Erythrai in Asia Minor, with similar scenes of
warfare, hunting, and horsemanship, is likely to come from his circle if not
from his own hand (Fig. 4).2h
Figure 4. Oinochoe from Erythrai,
drawing. Scale 1:2. After Akurgal 1992,
p. 84, fig. 1:a
T H E SCENES
The inside of the rim of the Chigi vase is decorated with hatching and
white pinwheel rosettes, while fine lotus palmettes adorn the pronged
handle and rotelles (Fig. 5). O n the exterior, between the neck and shoulder (again covered with lotus palmette chains painted in white over a dark
background) and the base (with two abstract zones, one with black rays
that lead the eye upward, the other of reddish-purple horizontal stripes
against a dark ground), there are four figured bands or friezes (I-IV).
I. In the lowest frieze (2.2 cm high), three nude short-haired hunters
use a pack of long-tailed dogs to ambush long-eared hares (and, in one
case, a vixen) from behind four or five bushes that have the fluidity of
aquarium plants (Fig. 6). These are the only elements of landscape found
in any zone. One kneeling hunter carries a lagobolon, or throwing stick, as
he signals a companion carrying a brace of dead hares on his back to stay
low behind a bush. There is no clear indication in the preserved fragments
of the sort of trap or net found in other representations of hare hunting."
Filling ornaments (hooks, crosses, pinwheel rosettes, S-spirals, zigzags,
26. E. Akurgal, cited in Cook and
Blackman 1970-1971, p. 41 (attribution to the Chigi Painter); Neeft 1991,
p. 15 (E-1); Akurgal 1992 (attribution
to the "Erythrai Painter"); Schnapp
1997, p. 478 (5 bis); Boardman 1998,
p. 278.
27. See, e.g., Schnapp 1989, figs.
99-100. A few arching lines preserved
below the front hooves of the chariot
team in the zone above might belong to
such a trap.
R E A D I N G T H E C H I G I VASE
9
Figure 5. Chigi vase, rim and mouth.
Photo author
Figure 6. Chigi vase, detail.
Photo author
28. For the hare hunt, see Anderson
1985,pp. 32-34, and Schnapp 1997,
pp. 180-181.
and lozenges formed of opposing triangles) are lightly scattered in the
spaces between the figures. The direction of the pursuit is mostly right to
left.28
11.The next frieze (4.6 cm high)
to be a collec- appears at first glance
tion of four or five formally discrete elements, with more abstract ornamentsS-spirals, lozenges, zigzags-tastefully strewn about. Fist, there is
a parade of long-haired horsemen, wearing tunics, riding bareback, using
I0
JEFFREY M. HURWIT
only reins and halters, and moving fairly stiffly from left to right (Fig. 1:a).
Each rider also leads a riderless horse, and so these youths are probably not jockeys themselves (like the racers on the MacMillan aryballos;
Fig. 3)29but squires (hippostrophoi)leading mounts for absent companions
or warriors (hippobateis), as we know them from other vases of the period
and afterward, at Corinth and elsewhere.30Perhaps, as some think, those
missing warriors are to be found dismounted and fighting on foot in the
zone above.31Alternatively, the four squires could be holding the horses
for other youths in the same zone (as we shall see) or for use in a team. For
next comes a light four-horse chariot, driven by a lone youth but led by
another (this time nude) youth on foot, who looks back upon his fellows
over his shoulder (Fig. l:b).32Although the 8-spiral hovering between the
lead rider and the chariot has the character of a punctuation mark, the
horsemen and chariot are probably part of the same procession.
The parade is brought to an abrupt halt by a static bicorporate sphinxa monster with two bodies but a single face, who wears an elaborate floral
crown (or else the ornament grows out of her head) and who, like a good
Archaic figure, smiles a little smile (Fig. 6). Sphinxes are usually innocuous members of the Protocorinthian menagerie and take their place in
frieze after frieze beside lions, panthers, boars, goats, and birds, singly or
in pairs. They are never found in a Protocorinthian narrative context,33
and there is no hint that they could also be, in Greek art and imagination,
destroyers of men and posers of existential questions. Even so, it is worth
recalling the sphinx or sphinxes who carry off a fallen warrior from the
battlefield on a roughly contemporary relief from the acropolis of Mycenae
(sometimes thought to be Corinthian in ~ r i g i n ) . ~ T hChigi
e sphinx may
not be as sinister a creature as those but, given the brutal scene to follow
(in which a youth is savaged), it may nevertheless introduce intimations of
mortality or (as I shall suggest) liminality. At all events, while creatures
such as double-lions are known in Near Eastern and Mycenaean art," the
double-sphinx seems to be a specifically Corinthian invention, and this
example may be the first of her strange breed.
Next to the sphinx, a nearly symmetrical and self-contained lion hunt
takes place (Fig. 7). Four youths (one nude but belted, the others wearing
cuirasses) spear a magnificent beast that has caught a fallen comrade in its
jaws-he is the only human casualty found on the vase. Purplish blood
pours out of all (apparently mortal) wounds. Whether lions actually roamed
29. It is possible that they are
leading the horses to a starting line
for others to race, and it is interesting
that, according to Pausanias (5.8.8),
horse racing was introduced to the
Olympic Games in the 33rd Olympiad, or 648 B.c.-close to the date of
the Chigi vase and MacMillan
aryballos.
30. Greenhalgh 1973, pp. 84-88,
96-146; Simon 1981, pl. 67 (Lako-
nian hydria by the Hunt Painter,
ca. 555).
31. Cf. Greenhalgh 1973, pp. 8586.
32. Five chariots race around the
second frieze of the Chigi Painter's
aryballos in Berlin ( A m y 1988, p. 32,
no. 2), and the chariot here may be
such a racer being led to the starting
line by the youth on foot.
33. Amjx 1988, p. 661.
34. Payne 1931, pp. 89-90;
Boardman 1978b, p. 39, fig. 35; Fuchs
and Floren 1987, pp. 192,205.
35. For an 8th-century plaque in
New York with a double-bodied winged
lion from Ziwiyeh in Iran, see Osborne
1996, fig. 42 (Metropolitan Museum
51.131.1). For a double-bodied lion on
a Mycenaean lentoid gem (Athens,
National Museum 2316), see Mylonas
1983, p. 192, fig. 148.
R E A D I N G T H E C H I G I VASE
II
Figure 7. Chigi vase, lion hunt.
Photo author
the 7th-century Peloponnese is impossible to say, given the present state
of evidence.36But it is also beside the point. For even if the Chigi Painter
had seen one in the wild (or in a cage) or had seen an imported lion skin,
the lion he painted and incised here, with its flamelike mane, is usually
thought to be based on Neo-Assyrian models: the Chigi Painter was a
rough contemporary of Assurbanipal(669-626 B.c.).~'
Horsemen participate directly in the lion attack depicted on the
oinochoe from Erythrai (Fig. 4), and so we may wonder whether the whole
passage on the Chigi vase from the horsemen and chariot to the lion hunt
is a Protocorinthian revision of imagery found in the palace reliefs of
Nineveh or Nimrud, where kings and their entourage, riding chariots and
horses, slaughter animals by the dozen. Seventh-century Corinthians like
the Chigi Painter might have seen such images on imported Assyrian
36. Lions are so common in
Minoan, Theran, and Mycenaean art,
and their representation is at times so
detailed, that Aegean artists and their
audiences are likely to have seen them
in the wild; see Morgan 1988, pp. 4445. Lion bones and teeth have actually
been found in Late Bronze Age
contexts at Kea, Kalapodi, and Tiryns
(see, e.g., Boessneck and von den
Driesch 1979 and 1981), though that
evidence is equivocal (the teeth may
have been imported as amulets). Herodotos (7.125-126) says that lions
were present in northern Greece as late
as 480 (when they attacked the camels
of Xerxes' invasion force). Though it is
sometimes wondered what kind of lions
these were (mountain lions?),there is
another story that at the end of the 5th
century the great pankratiast Poulydamas (an Olympic victor in the year
408) killed a lion with his bare hands in
emulation of Herakles. This beast was
said to have come from the region of
Mount Olympos, and that it was a
"real" lion is suggested by Lysippos's
later representation of the renowned
feat in relief on a statue base at Olympia (ca. 337); see Paus. 6.5.4-6; Moreno
1995, pp. 91-93. Nevertheless, by the
beginning of the 4th century, according
to Xenophon (Cyn. 11.1-4), one had to
leave ~ i e e c for-foreign
e
lands (such as
the mountains of Mysia) in order to
hunt lions. Cf. Arist. Hist. an. 579b7,
606b15; also Anderson 1985, pp. 4,
55-56. As far as Corinthian vase
painting is concerned, lions virtually
disappear from animal friezes around
575-550; Payne 1931, p. 67; Amyx
1988, pp. 664-665.
37. Payne 1931, pp. 67-69; Brown
1960, pp. 170-176; Amyx 1988, p. 663
(who, citing representations of female
lions with manes, doubts Corinthian
vase painters were directly familiar with
real ones).
I2
JEFFREY M. HURWIT
ivories, metalwork, or textiles.38T h e lion on the Chigi vase is the earliestknown example of the Assyrian type in Protocorinthian vase paintingthe normal Protocorinthian lion had previously been based on Hittite
models-which suggests a sudden exposure to strong Assyrian influence,
somehow precipitated by Assurbanipal's conquests and fostered, perhaps,
by the policies of Kypselos, who overthrew the aristocratic Bacchiads and
established a tyranny in Corinth around 657, toward the beginning of the
Chigi Painter's career.
Finally, below the handle, in a spot that would have been obscured by
the forearm of anyone actually pouring from the vase, is the only explicitly
mythological scene on the olpe (and, with the exception of the scene with
the frontal and non-narrative double-sphinx, the only one with female
figures): the Judgment of Paris (Fig. 8). This is the earliest extant representation of the myth, but the story was presumably familiar (to the Greeks,
anyway) from popular folktale as well as from the cyclic epic K y ~ r i aSet
.~~
between the lion hunt and the last rider of the procession, this scene, too,
is formally self-contained: to the left, a long-haired Paris (who here goes
by his usual Homeric alias, Alexandros), then the missing Hermes (identified by the tip of his kerykeion), who presents the divine beauty contestants Hera (who is all but lost), Athena (who is helmetless but labeled
Athanaia and who carries in her hand a floral ornament reminiscent of the
lotus palmette chains on the rim and neck of the vase),40and, last, Aphrodite
(in appearance she is nearly identical to Athena but Aphrod[ita] is inscribed vertically beside her). T h e discovery of the bucchero vessel with
the Etruscan abecedaria in the same tomb suggests that its occupant, whether
or not he was named Atianai, knew the myth, or knew Greek, could at
least have sounded out the labels.41
Now, this inconspicuously placed scene seems to announce the themes
of beauty, decision, and ultimately marriage (if we loosely regard the subse38. It is, of course, unlikely that a
Protocorinthian vase painter would
have visited Assyrian capitals himself.
See Frankfort 1970, figs. 211-214; also
Gunter 1986; Barnett 1956, pp. 232233, fig. 2. Anderson (1961, p. 15)
suggests that horseback riding becomes
more popular in the 7th century than it
had been before because of Near Eastern influences, and Payne (1931,
p. 71) even suggests that the type of
horse seen on the Chigi vase is indebted to Assyrian models.
39. The Judgment would also be
depicted seventy or eighty years later
on the elaborate Corinthian mythological encyclopedia known as the Chest
of Kypselos,
made of cedar, ivory, and
,.
gold, and copiously inscribed (Paus.
5.19.5). While a variety of Greek myths
and mythological figures invade
Etruscan art in the century after 650,
the Judgment of Paris had no impact
until around 550, when the myth
appears for the first time on the socalled Boccanera panels from Cerveteri
and the so-called Pontic amphora in
Munich by the Paris Painter; see Spivey
and Stoddart 1990, p. 100, fig. 51;
Brendel1978, pp. 153-157. For the
iconography of the Judgment in
general, see Clairmont 1951; and
LIMCVII, 1994, pp. 176-188, S.V.Paridis Iudicium (A. Kossatz-Deissmann).
40. In later vase painting Athena is
sometimes shown holding a branch or
flower in her hand; see, e.g., LIMC 11,
1984, pp. 960,1005,1011, nos. 31,
523b, 583,584, pls. 706,758, 761, S.V.
Athena (P. Demargne). O n the Chigi
vase the device may be an attempt to
feminize this most masculine of goddesses. At the same time, in many early
representations of the Judgment there
-
is little to differentiate the three contestants, either in appearance or attributes; see, e.g., LIMC 11, 1984, p. 958,
no. 10, pl. 703, S.V. Athena (P. Demargne); LIMC V, 1990, pp. 324-325,
no. 455b, pl. 238, S.V.Hermes (G. Siebert); LIMCVII, 1994, p. 178, nos. 9,
12,13, pl. 107, s.v. Paridis Iudicium
(A. Kossatz-Deissmann).
41. Cf. Boardman 2001, who suggests these labeled figures "are the only
fugues that might have puzzled the
Etruscan buyer" (p. 31).
One might note here the tradition
that the Greek alphabet was introduced
to Etruria by the Corinthian merchant
Demaratus, a Bacchiad refugee who
settled in Tarquinia after 657; see
Spivey and Stoddart 1990, p. 96. In
fact, the alphabet was probably introduced by Euboeans by 700 or so.
R E A D I N G T H E C H I G I VASE
I3
Figure 8. Chigi vase, Judgment of
Paris. Photo author
42. For sacred prostitution at
Corinth, see Salmon 1984, pp. 398400; and Wiiams 1986, p. 21, who
argues that the sexual activity itself
would have taken place in the city
below Acrocorinth (a difficult hike),
and that only the proceeds would have
been dedicated above.
43. On many later vases Paris
himself realizes the danger and
attempts to flee; see, e.g., Beazley 1986,
pls. 21.2 (C Painter), 35.3,35.5
(Lydos);also Gantz 1993,p. 569.
44. LIMCII, 1984,p. 47, no. 359,
S.V.Aphrodite (A. Delivorrias et al.) is
Corinth Museum 4039, a terracotta
statuette inpudica pose datable to the
mid-7th century. The goddess also
appears (with Pegasos) on an early-7thcentury plaque from Perachora; Williams 1986,p. 14.Aphrodite appears
later on the Chest of Kypselos not only
in its Judgment scene, but also in one
panel with Medea and Jason and in
another with Ares (Paus. 5.18.3,s).For
Aphrodite and early Corinth, see also
Blomberg 1996,pp. 82-84.
45. See Salmon 1984,p. 398;
Pindar, fr. 107 Bowra (Ath. Deipnosophistai 13.573~-574c).See also Kurke
1996.
quent union of Paris with Helen of Sparta as a marriage), which might at
first suggest that the Chigi vase was commissioned as a wedding present.
But there may be more to it than that. The contest, after all, ultimately led
to war, the subject of the zone above. This display of females and Paris's
imminent choice had disastrous consequences, sending the strong souls of
many heroes to Hades as surely as did the epic anger of Achilles.
O n the vase, however, judgment has not yet been rendered. Moreover,
the contest's winner was not just any goddess: she was Aphrodite, with
Apollo the most important deity of Corinth, the city's patron goddess and
protector. She was probably introduced to Corinth from the Near East by
the end of the 8th century-her analogue is the Phoenician Astarte-at
the time of the unification of the Corinthian polis by the aristocratic
Bacchiads (they may have promoted her as a unifying force in the
synoikismos). At any rate, when Aphrodite arrived she brought with her
the phenomenon (unique in Greece) of sacred prostitution, an activity centered in a poorly preserved temple of Aphrodite atop Acrocorinth as early
as the 7th century, around the time of the Chigi Painter.42It is possible,
then, that the depiction of the Judgment, which of course resulted in the
selection of Aphrodite, Paris's illicit relationship with Helen, and the Trojan War, operates on more than one level. First, it acts as a warning to the
(male) symposiast or banqueter to avoid such decisions himself: the female of the species (divine or mortal) is dangerous.43Second, it may reflect
the relatively recent selection and establishment of Aphrodite in the city
(the goddess may make her first appearance in Corinthian sculpture around
the same time as the creation of the Chigi vase).44The scene, with its
erotic overtones, furthermore hints not at marriage but at the sacred prostitution-and in the words of Pindar, the charms of "young women, hostesses to many, handmaidens of Peithon-for which lascivious Corinth was
so famous, and which, for Strabo,was even the principal source of Corinth's
proverbial wealth.45
14
JEFFREY M. HURWIT
111.The narrow third frieze (2.5 cm high) represents another hunting
scene, with badly faded white hounds chasing four white mountain goats,
three stags, and one hare over a dark background marked by an occasional
white pinwheel rosette (Figs. 6-7). The mostly clockwise chase echoes the
predominant direction of the hare hunt on the lowest frieze, but here (as
in most Protocorinthian hare hunts) the dogs
- are on their own: there are
no human figures lying in ambush or directing the dogs in their pursuit.46
IV. The battle scene of the fourth zone (5.2 cm high),
which is not
technically a frieze since it is interrupted by the handle, has always received most of the scholarly attention-given t o the vase (Fig. 9). T h e reason is that it is usually considered "the earliest unequivocal representation
ofwhat is known as 'hoplite warfare,"' thought to have been developed just
a generation or two earlier.47Its representation of hoplite warfare, however, is not so unequivocal. T h e Chigi warriors do not carry short swords
like standard hoplites and some of them (like Geometric warriors and
Homeric heroes) carry two spears-one for overhand thrusting, the other
a reserve or even a throwing spear. A soldier with two spears but no sword
is not the sort of hoplite Tyrtaios-the Chigi Painter's rough contemporary-had in mind when he advised: "let [our man] close hard and fight it
out with his opposing foeman, holding tight to the hilt of his sword, or to
his long spear."48
The Chigi warriors are certainly heavily armed foot-soldiers fighting
side by side in close array, with hoplon overlapping hoplon. But either hoplite
tactics, as the Chigi vase (and a few other Protocorinthian vases) depict
them, had not yet uniformly reached their "classic" stage of development
or the Chigi
- Painter did not intend an exact documentation of military
tactics; he may instead have used all those spears to create pleasantly intricate linear patterns, for example, or to give an impression of sheer numbers and the claustrophobia of battle, or even to elevate his warriors to
heroic rank (or all of the above).49His goal, after all, was to decorate a vase
and convey certain ideas with its imagery, not to produce a tactical training film.50
In any case, two armies, each aligned in two unequal ranks with perhaps a little more space between them than a classic hoplite phalanx ought
to have, meet just to the right of center (Fig. 9). I t is the instant when the
lines first collide (the othisrnos, or "push"), and no one has yet fallen or died.
46. Schnapp 1997, p. 180.
47. Osborne 1996, p. 164; also
Cartledge 1977, p. 19; and Murray
1980, pp. 125-126, who describes the
battle as "the most successful portrayal
of hoplite tactics which has survived."
Salmon (1977, p. 87) concedes that the
Chigi battle is an inaccurate representation of hoplite warfare but still "depicts
very effectively the essential nature of
hoplite tactics . . . [successfully] representing massed formation in a pleasing
manner." But perhaps our conception of hoplite warfare and the hoplite
reform in the 7th century is not as
accurate or complete as is often
thought; see, e.g., Krentz 1985. [See
also P. Krentz's article "Fighting by the
Rules: The Invention of the Hoplite
AgBn" in this issue of Hesperia. -Ed.]
See also Shanks 1999, pp. 107-119,
126-130. Generally, see Hanson 1991.
48. Tyrtaios 8.33-34 (trans. Lattimore). The next lines (35-38), inci-
dentally, indicate that light-armed
fighters could dart out from the ranks
ofthe hoplites to throw javelins and
even rocks at the enemy, and then
return to the protection of the hoplites'
shields.
49. Cf. Anderson 1991, pp. 18-20;
Salmon 1984, pp. 73-74; for Homeric
heroes with two throwing spears, see,
e.g., Patroklos at I/. 16.139-141.
50. Cf. Shanks 1999, p. 129.
R E A D I N G T H E C H I G I VASE
I5
Figure 9. Chigi vase, battle scene.
Photo author
The army on the left, in fact, has been caught off guard: its front rank sets
only four men against five while, at the far left (Fig. l:a), two soldiers are
still arming-spears of unequal length, fitted with throwing loops, lean
beside them-and cohorts carrying only one spear have to run to join the
fray. Like the army he painted, the Chigi Painter has seemingly nodded,
too, since there is one head too many for the nine shields of the second
rank and the four soldiers in the front rank have five pairs of legs (Fig. 9)."
But what the army on the left lacks in preparation and arithmetic it gains
in lyricism, as the self-absorbed, pompadoured auletesspatially isolated
and additionally set off by the dark color of his t u n i ~ s e t the
s rhythm for
the advance with his double-flute (strapped tightly around his head).52
51. This has been taken as evidence
that the Chigi Painter has compressed
and transferred to the small surface of
his vase a larger battle painting, with
many more figures, found on a wall or
panel, the numerical discrepancies
arising during the process of translation. O n the one hand, Robertson
(1975, p. 53) doubts that the meticulous Chigi Painter could have been so
clumsy, suggesting instead that the
Chigi Painter merely "felt he had not
spaced the legs quite right and that the
composition needed thickening in that
area." O n the other hand, Robertson
finds it difficult to believe that the vase
painter could have conceived of such a
battle "unaided" by the inspiration of a
wall painting; cf. Payne 1933, p. 14.
For Shanks (1999, p. 115), the problem apparently does not exist, since in
art as in reality the individual hoplite
had no identity apart from the massed
formation: the "body" of the phalanx is
all that matters and the loss of individuality makes the numbers irrelevant.
But the individuality of the hoplites
within the army attacking from the
right is clearly emphasized by their
different shield blazons, and on the
MacMillan aryballos, in any case, the
Chigi Painter surely nodded once again,
since he painted the fifth warrior from
the left, moving right, with his shield
blazon visible, when we should be
looking at its emblemless interior.
52. Another flute player appears on
a Protocorinthian aryballos from
Perachora; Amyx 1988, p. 25 (D.l).
The Spartans used flute players to help
keep their formations even and tight as
they attacked (Thuc. 5.70).
-
16
JEFFREY M. HURWIT
Another reason the battle scene has been the focus of most discussions of the Chigi vase is its suggestion of pictorial depth, with its layers of
overlapping shields simply but effectively indicating spatial recession (such
Classical works as the Nereid Monument, 250 years later, do not represent
depth any better).53The shields of the hoplites advancing from the rightthe only shields whose blazons we can see-bear the expected emblems of
power, prowess, and ferocity: birds of prey, bull's head, growling lion's head,
and a boar (Figs. l:c, 6). One shield is, however, unusual for its gorgoneion.
Within the imagined scene Medusa's frontal-faced, tongue- and tusk-baring scowl is, of course, intended to frighten the enemy away. In reality its
function was also apotropaic, meant to fend off evil spirits from those enjoying the wine poured from the olpe itself. It is worth noting that bronze
shields with gorgoneia are known from 7th-century Olympia and also from
Carchemish, where one was probably lost by a Greek mercenary fighting
in defense of the city against the Babylonians.j4
T H E READING
What, if anything, do these various friezes and scenes have to do with one
another? How should we read the imagery on this vase? Is this vase about
anything? The answer has most often been "no."
The usual way of looking at the Chigi vase has been as a random
assortment of exquisite but disconnected images. So, for example, John
Boardman has suggested that the Judgment of Paris was "presumably
painted somehow as an afterthought,"j5 and Tom Rasmussen has concluded that it is unlikely that anyone will be able to find "a connecting
thread running through all the major scenes. . . . Many Greek vases of all
periods show quite unrelated scenes at different levels or on opposite sides,
and there is no need to search for unity of theme at this early date even on
such a rigorously planned work."j6 For Rasmussen, then, the Chigi Painter
knew what he was going to paint on the vase before he sat down to the
task-how else could it be "rigorously plannedn?-but he had no point to
make. This view has been the scholarly consensus.
There have in the past been a few minority opinions; for example, I
argued once that the Chigi vase "for the most part displays the kinds of
activity a Corinthian youth of about 640 could be expected to engage in
and show off his arete."j7 The hunting, equestrian, and battle scenes, in
other words, display the skill, courage, and elitism of the ideal Corinthian
male, though this interpretation cannot quite accommodate the lion huntnot to mention the divine beauty contest-unless we posit the existence of
lions and divinities in the 7th-century Corinthia. Robin Osborne has more
recently agreed that "it seems unlikely that the combination of scenes here
is accidental," but he sees "no single way to 'read' these images" and drops
the subject after vaguely suggesting that "the themes of display, decision,
and pursuit that run through the figured decoration here suggestively open
up critical paths for any viewer."iu
If the vase has a single overarching theme, it is surely the agdn (competition, struggle, contest)-a concept that subsumes the hare and lion
hunts, the battle, the Judgment of Paris, and possibly the cavalcade, if the
53. Hurwit 1985a, pp. 160-161;
Robertson 1975, p. 431.
54. Boardman 1980, p. 51 and
fig. 20.
55. Boardman 1993, pp. 31-32.
56. Rasmussen 1991, p. 62.
57. Hurwit 1985a, p. 158.
58. Osborne 1996, p. 164.
R E A D I N G T H E C H I G I VASE
59. Stansbury-O'Donnell1999,
pp. 71-74, fig. 29, finds a similar
viewing axis on the Chigi Painter's
aryballos in Berlin, where a "nucleus" of
two groups of opposing warriors in the
main frieze is aligned with the lion's
head spout above, two racing chariots
in the zone below, and a confronting
lion and bull in the zone below that. In
fact, the alignment is not precise: the
space between the two chariots is just
to the left of the axis established by the
opposition of warriors in the zone
above, so that there is a slight deflection
from the purely vertical. This asymmetry is characteristic of the Chigi vase, as
we shall see below.
60. Vidal-Naquet 1986, pp. 118119.
61. Forrest 1968, ..
pp. 51-54. The
origins of the ag6gi are notoriously
murky. It is possible that the regimen
was instituted or more rigorously
codified in the aftermath of the battle
of Hysiae, which Sparta lost to Argos
in 669, but it could be much later, the
product of a lengthy evolution rather
than a single reform. See, for example,
Kennel1 1995, p. 146, who dates the
foundations of the ag6gi to the early
6th century.
62. For which see Vidal-Naquet
1986, pp. 117-122; Schnapp 1997,
pp. 123-144.
I7
horsemen and charioteer are to be considered potential racers. But the
idea of the agdn is too broad to be of much use: it is hard to think of many
Greek works of art that do not concern conflict or competition in some
way. Beyond this it is possible to read the imagery of the vase more tightly
along two dominant axes: 1)the vertical, up and across the stack of figured
zones; and 2) the horizontal, around the second zone (the main one).
That the imagery was not randomly selected and deployed-and that
the Chigi Painter engaged in some degree of advance planning-seems
likely from a number of considerations. The squires of the middle frieze,
again, might be holding horses for hoplites in the battle zone above (unlikely, but not impossible) and the inconspicuous position of the Judgment
of Paris on the back of the vase (Fig. 1:d) seems an appropriate choice for
a painter whose interest in mythological narrative was on the whole minimal. (Alternatively, it is possible to argue that the handle functions as a
pointer, leading the eye down to the scene, and thus emphasizing it. But
from the perspective of a reclining banqueter having his cup filled by a
slave or attendant pouring from the olpe, the scene would have been virtually unnoticeable.) As significant, perhaps, is the direct and surely not coincidental alignment of the grinning frontal faces of the double-sphinx and
the gorgoneion of the shield in the zone above (Fig. 6)-a short axis of
(female) apotropaism that would have been completely visible to the putative (male) symposiast. So, too, it may not be accidental that the flute player
sounding the notes of the attack in the battle scene is placed almost precisely above the boy gesturing to his companion to stay down in the hare
hunt two zones below (Fig. 1:b)-a short axis of signaling and signalers.j9
But there is also a longer vertical axis and it delineates a process of
maturation across the three principal zones: the boys hunting hares in the
lowest zone are, with their short hair and nudity, in fact mere boys (harehunting, relying upon trickery, is especially associated with adole~cents);~~
the horsemen, charioteer, and lion hunters (and even the figure of Paris) in
the second zone, with their long hair and tunics, are more p r ~ p e r l ~ y o u t h s ;
and the heavily armed foot soldiers of the top zone are presumably men
(the small auletes is short-haired, like the boys in the lowest zone, though
his coiffure is different). The vertical axis, in other words, marks a progression of the Corinthian male from boyhood, to youth, to full manhoodtransitions all made in the context of various agdnes, a Corinthianpaideia
loosely comparable to the three-stage agdg2 that marked the public education and military training of males at S ~ a r t aThere
. ~ ~ is, as far as I know, no
evidence for an analogous system at work in 7th-century Corinth (Bacchiad
or Kypselid) and it would be unwise to argue for such an institution on the
basis of a few vases. Nevertheless, the same progression appears on the
Chigi Painter's aryballos in London (Fig. 3) and, to a lesser degree, on the
Erythrai oinochoe (Fig. 4), where boys are missing from the hare hunt
below.
There can be no question of the role hunting played in the education,
initiations, and ethos of a hoplite society6*Indeed, the hunting engaged in
by the boys and youths in the lower zones on all three vases can be seen as
preparation for the warfare of the men above. The various notions that
hunting is a rehearsal for battle, that man is an animal who exists to be
hunted like any other animal, and that war is a subcategory of hunting (or
18
IEFFREY M. HURWIT
hunting a subcategory of war) are well documented later. "The exercise [of
hunting] itself is the best possible training for the needs of war," writes
Xenophon in the Cyropaedia (1.2.10), and for Aristotle "the art of war is
from one point of view a natural mode of acquisition. Hunting is a part of
that art; and hunting ought to be practiced both against wild beasts and
against men who, though intended by nature to be ruled by others, will not
submit, for that kind of war is by nature just" (Pol. 1256b, 20-26).63 The
vertical progression from hunt to battle on the Chigi vase (as well as on
the MacMillan aryballos and the oinochoe from Erythrai) seems to be an
early expression of this ingrained Greek attitude, and it may suggest the
sort of initiatory practices expected of youths in Archaic Corinth. From
this point of view, the Chigi vase is a programmatic piece, designed to
inform its buyer and audience-Greek symposiast or Etruscan banqueterofwhat makes a man a man.6J
This vertical axis, with its paradigm of Greek maleness, is gounded
in the generic 7th-century present: Corinthian boys really hunted hares
and Corinthian youths really rode horses and chariots and Corinthian men
really fought other men (even if a few of those shown fighting on the vase
wield two spears, like Homeric heroes). The horizontal axis, on the other
hand-that is, the course of the second zone-moves from concrete reality to fantasy and myth. Genre fades away when the parade of horsemen
and chariot-itself a heroizing vehicle, often used to dissolve the boundaries between mortals and heroes6'-reaches the double-bodied sphinx
(Fig. 6). In later myth and art, again, the (single) sphinx can be both a
dangerous and erotic interlocutor of youths, "posing them riddles of what
life and manhood may be when they are still too inexperienced to understand," combining "the clawed body of a man-eater with the wings of a
raptor and a face made for love," a female destroyer of males.66But she can
be a faithful guardian as well as a predator: in sculpture she is by the end of
the 7th century the marker of tombs, squatting atop grave stelai, protecting the dead as the "dog of Hades," as she is known in one funerary in~cription.~'
The Orientalizing creature on the Chigi vase may function as a similar kind of sign, a boundary marker signaling a new and different level of
being. For on the other side of her is the lion hunt and the only human
casualty on the vase (Fig. 7). Even if lion hunts did take place in the 7thcentury Peloponnese, they must still have been considered rare and exotic
occasions. This example is still more likely to be a reference to Eastern
hunts. It is surely quasi-heroic as well: these Corinthians are killing (and
63. See also Xen. Cyn. 1.18,12.1-8;
Antb. Pal. 14.17, quoted in Rihll 1993,
p. 84, from Burges 1876: "hunting is a
practice for war; and hunting teaches
one to catch a thing concealed; to wait
for those coming on; to pursue the
fleeing." Cf. Isoc. Panatb. 163, who
states that next to the universal human
war against savage beasts, the most
righteous and necessary war is the one
that the Greeks perpetually fight
against their natural enemies, the Persian barbarians. See also Lissarrague
1989, p. 43, who notes the fusing of the
usually "separate spheres" of the hunter
and hoplite on some vases; Rihll 1993,
pp. 83-84; Schnapp 1997, pp. 150-156.
64. It is possible that even the polysemous Judgment of Paris scene plays a
role in this outline of maturation, if
(instead of warning men about the danger of Woman or indicating civic pride
in the city goddess, Aphrodite) it refers
to the kind of choice men must make
when they take a bride and so embark
upon a new stage of life.
65. See Sinos 1998, pp. 75-78.
66. See Vermeule 1979, p. 171.
67. See Richter 1961, p. 6.
R E A D I N G T H E C H I G I VASE
68. Cf. Schnapp 1997, pp. 181,192,
who also notes the contrast between
the lion-hunting "heroes" of this zone
with the simple "jeunes hommes" of the
hare hunt.
69. The Iliad (24.28-30) sets the
location of the Judgment only in
"Paris's courtyard." The Kypria and
Euripidean tragedies set the scene
specifically on Mt. Ida; see Gantz 1993,
pp. 567-571.
I9
in one case dying) like the heroes of their own legends and epic similes as
well as like Assurbanipal and the other Great Kings ofNimrud or Nineveh.
It is as if these five youths have dismounted the four horses and chariot
held by the squires on the other side of the sphinx and have stepped across
or behind it into another ontological realm, one very far from that of
the hare-hunting boys in the zone be10w.~%n association between the
equestrians and the lion hunters seems to be confirmed not only by the
numbers-five hunters correspond to the four riderless horses and the
chariot-but also by the ~ r ~ t h roinochoe
(Fig. 4), where horsemen acai
tually participate in the hunt.
his hunt, probably to be thought of as taking place in some vaguely
imagined Eastern landscape or mountainside, is followed by the only scene
of pure myth on the vase, the Judgment of Paris (Fig. 8), managed by
Hermes, god of transitions. The Judgment scene is supposed to have occurred on Mt. Ida in the Troad, close to areas that still boasted lions in the
Classical period; for a Corinthian of the 7th century, this setting was, like
Aphrodite herself, sufficiently E a ~ t e r nThe
. ~ ~sphere of heroes and divinities and the sphere of the exotic East, in other words, have merged, and so
perhaps has the sphere of everyday life. As we progress around this middle
zone, we seem to proceed from reality to Orientalizing/heroic to divine
realms. But what appear to us as different levels of being may not have
seemed so to the Archaic temperament, just as in the supposedly documentary hoplite battle of the upper zone, the presence of two spears in the
hands of many warriors may be an attempt not so much to fill space or
activate the scene as to give that "reality" a heroic or epic tinge. Taken
together, these images may suggest, instinctively or by design, the interpenetration of the everyday, the heroic, and the divine in the lives of men.
This axis, perhaps, shows what makes a man a hero: leonine courage and
the company and favor of the gods. But it hints as well at the permeability
of the boundaries between the mortal and divine and, with thk ambiguous
doubleness of the double-sphinx, the mauling of the youth by the lion, and
the imminent, fateful decision of Paris, the dangers of such an existence.
We can only wonder whether the Etruscan owner of the Chigi vase
would have grasped its logic. But he might well have been struck by the
formal asymmetry of its imagery, seen in the inequality of the armies of
the battle frieze-their collision takes place just to the right of center
(Fig. 1:b)-or in the displacement of the heraldic sphinx from the center
of the vase, where we might have expected it, or even in the Judgment of
Paris, which is not set with perfect symmetry along the line of the handle
above but is shifted a little to the right (Fig. 1:d). This off-centeredness
encouraged the turning of the vase in one's hands, and that very action
would have encouraged a process of association and obliquely reinforced
the kinds of transitions articulated along the axes of the vase. Like Paris,
who has not yet made his choice, the viewer is offered options-different
courses to follow, one vertical, one horizontal-rather than a single, rigid,
controlling thematic structure. In this way, the unity or thematic armature
of the vase is pliable. And this may be what the Chigi Painter relied upon
from the start-the virtues of displacement, the intricacies of iconographic
association, and the dynamic pleasure of the tangent.
JEFFREY M. HURWIT
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