The literal meaning of the concept of the ancient symposium (syn-posis: ‘together drinking’) is an obvious way of starting this chapter. But the Greek understanding of what might or should happen at a symposium encompasses a good deal more than the convivial quenching of thirst. A typical image of the occasion indicates several characteristic features: not just the use of wine-cups (kylikes), but the playing of music, relaxation upon cushions and couches, heads adorned with ribbons, and overtly amorous behaviour (Fig. 19). Not evident, yet well attested elsewhere, is the custom of sharing diluted wine. As prescribed by various Greek authors, the proportion of wine mixed with water was variable; nonetheless, the principle of dilution remained culturally significant. Greek commentators tended to disapprove of societies where dilution was not customary, such as (reportedly) the Celts, the Scythians and the Macedonians. Libations of unmixed wine could be poured to the gods; mortals should exercise caution. Wine, categorically, was a pharmakon – at once cure and poison, blessing and curse. It came as a gift from Dionysos, ‘the god who causes stumbling’. ‘To a man spent with toil, wine renews his strength’ was an adage of Homer’s heroes (Il. 6.261), warriors whose personal risks upon the battlefield earned them the right to relax with cups kept filled. Yet Pindar, the poet par excellence of athletic success in the Greek world, proclaimed ariston men hydôr, ‘the best [of all things] is water’ (Ol. 1.1). Implicitly, then, the principle of combining wine with water assisted drinkers to abide by one of the maxims enshrined in the sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi, mêden agan – ‘zero too much’, or ‘nothing in excess’.

From this overture, we can identify several lines of inquiry about the symposium that are relevant here, i.e. relating to the elaboration of a particular vase created in Athens c.500 BC. Statistically it appears that about 5 per cent of Athenian vases produced during the period 525–475 BC directly represent aspects of communal drinking – a peak of such self-reflexive images. The Sarpedon krater shows us no drinkers upon couches: nevertheless, it is morphologically one type of kratêr – the mixing-vessel that was instrumentally central to the formal conduct of ‘sympotic’ business. It is reasonable to suppose that the decoration of a krater should possess a certain iconographic logic, or decorative suitability, for its original purpose. So what connects a scene of violent death with an occasion of mellow celebration? Are other figures on the vase in any way related to that social occasion? Was Euphronios commissioned to produce this mixing-bowl for a particular symposium? Did he, as an artist, have direct experience of such gatherings? (He might at least have recognized the echo of his own name in the Homeric epithet oinos euphrôn, ‘wine that gladdens the heart’: Il. 3.246.)

Fig. 19 Watercolour reproduction of a scene on a stamnos (short-necked jar) signed by ‘Smikros’. ‘Smikros’ is named as one of the symposiasts, and a flute-playing girl is named as Helike (‘Twister’). In front of the couches, on low tables, are flowers and dessert-sweetmeats (tragêmata). Brussels, Musée du Cinquantenaire A 717.

after Mon.Piot 9 (1902), pl. 2.

Fig. 20 Stamnos signed by ‘Smikros’, c.510 BC, probably from Cerveteri. In the centre of the scene is a large mixing-bowl or basin, mounted upon a stand, and at the foot of the stand are two oinochoai (wine-jugs). One figure is named Euarchos (‘Rules well’) – a young house steward? – the other (in retrograde) is named Euelthôn (‘Well-arrived’ or ‘Ready’). H 38.5 cm (15.2 in). Brussels, Musée du Cinquantenaire A 717.

Before we attempt to answer those questions, one important preliminary problem needs to be addressed. A glance at the reverse of our ‘typical symposium’ scene is enough to alert us to the issue (Fig. 20). This side of the vase seems to offer a ‘pendant’ to the image of banqueters, showing how they are supplied at their couches. A man and a youth, both wearing loincloths, converge at what looks like a sort of cauldron. Since they are hauling heavy two-handled jars (amphorae), it is assumed they are of servile status; both, however, appear to be in ‘the party spirit’, their heads adorned with leafy garlands. Presumably the vessel – set upon a stand because it has no base otherwise – is one in which wine will be combined with water. But what is this capacious container made of? Beyond the carinated edges of its shape, no surface decoration is indicated. The likelihood is strong that a metallic vessel is represented here.

Ideally, a symposium was furnished with a set of metal accoutrements. All sorts of literary sources testify to that ideal, including not only the descriptions of ceremonial drinking we find in Homer (e.g. Il. 11.624ff.), but also the numerous allusions to metallic objets d’art in works of later writers – for example, the historian Herodotus indicating the wealth of the Lydian king Croesus by telling us that he dedicated a number of enormous gold and silver kraters to the sanctuary of Delphi (Hdt. 1.50). Such metal objects rarely survive in the archaeological record, for they were always subject to predators. A clear hierarchy of value can however be stated: gold first, silver second, bronze third – and then pottery. It is hard to calibrate exactly by how much the worth of one medium exceeded another, especially since supplies of such commodities were subject to historical and regional variation. However, it is safe to say that the differences could be considerable; and fair also to suppose that no Athenian c.500 BC would have dreamed of paying a fortune for a terracotta pot, however elaborate its decoration.

Some scholars regard the evidence for the superior prestige of metal vessels in antiquity as a damnation of the modern connoisseurship of Greek vases. The phenomenon of an ancient pottery vessel fetching a million dollars betrays, they argue, a perverse fetish for the handiwork of humble craftsmen who were never held in much esteem by patrons of their time, let alone well rewarded for their efforts; efforts which were (so the argument proceeds) largely derivative from metalworkers, or from artists employed on grander projects (such as pictures for public spaces, including stage sets – all that the Greeks termed megalographia).

If so many of these terracotta vases ended up in Etruscan tombs, that happened because Etruscans wanted ‘simply to provide the appearance of a respectable funeral without the expense’. But this attitude can be misleading too. Painted pottery may not have been hugely expensive: nonetheless it was customarily reserved for special occasions – weddings, festivals, visits to the family tomb, formal symposia and suchlike. As finds from ancient deposits of household detritus tend to show, the pottery in everyday domestic use was mostly undecorated – not necessarily ‘coarse ware’, but rarely the sort of object that ‘the Pioneers’ and other vase-painters produced. Fragments of two ‘intentional red’ cups attributed to Euphronios have been recovered from a household well in the Agora; but in this deposit (comprising, it seems, items damaged during the Persian occupation of Athens in 480 BC) the other vessels were mostly of plain black-glaze, and that is typical.

Black-glaze vessels would of course have a surface sheen, similar to and perhaps imitative of metallic effect. Beyond reflecting the lavish lifestyle of a host, a service of drinking vessels actually made of metal had particular aesthetic appeal. The properties of ‘gleaming’ and ‘shining’ were celebrated in lyric poetry, associated with divine epiphany and (in the word aglaia) emblematic of human merriment. Figured decoration might also add to the lustrous finish. The gilded bronze relief-work on the famous krater from Derveni in ancient Macedonia shows what was possible in the classical period; closer in time to our vase is the equally famous Trésor de Vix, an enormous bronze krater found among the grave goods of a Celtic ‘princess’ in Burgundy (Fig. 21). With a capacity of over a thousand litres (280 gal.), this almost makes the large kraters painted by Euphronios look puny by comparison.

Grand in capacity it may have been: yet an object such as the Vix krater, or the colossal gold bowl dedicated at Delphi by Croesus, was of limited utility. Even when empty, the Vix krater weighs around 200 kilograms (approx. 441 lbs); when full, even the notoriously ‘binge-drinking’ Celts would need to gather in large numbers to do it justice. The Athenian symposium, by contrast, was more often than not a homely affair, held in the ‘men’s room’ (andrôn) of a private house. The term triklinion (better known to us as the Roman triclinium) literally entails just three couches (klinai), set along three walls of a more or less square room. In practice, more couches could be accommodated, allowing parties of up to a dozen or so guests. In these domestic circumstances, painted pottery had its place. It did not flaunt individual wealth – arguably an important consideration, given the egalitarian ethos of democratic Athens. It was attractive in a way comparable to nicely worked textiles: generically, decorated ceramics and fine-woven or embroidered stuff could both be classed as poikilia, things ‘intricately wrought’, ‘variously coloured’. And, however intricate, such painted pottery was within the economic means of an Athenian citizen. The attested original cost of a ‘standard’ red-figure drinking cup is a drachma, which was about an average day’s wage for a workman; assume that a larger vessel such as the Sarpedon krater fetched proportionately more, and an ancient price estimate for our ‘million-dollar vase’ might be five drachmas – something like £300, or $400, in today’s terms. It is conceivable, then, that vases could be commissioned ad hoc for one symposium or another. If so, their decoration could be tailored to the occasion, complete with ‘in-jokes’ and contemporary references. That the artists mixed socially with their patrons remains unlikely: but that does not rule out acquaintance – acquaintance with both principal symposiasts and the female hetairai or ‘companions’ employed to entertain them.

Fig. 21 ‘The Treasure of Vix’: bronze volute-krater, made c.520 BC. The workmanship is Greek, the source perhaps one of the Greek colonies in South Italy, and the vase probably connected to the wine trade between Greeks, Etruscans and Celts. H 1.64 m (5’ 4”). Châtillon-sur-Seine, Musée du Pays Châtillonnais.

What it means for Euphronios/‘Smikros’ to represent a handsome young man called ‘Smikros’ taking his place at a symposium couch is a question we shall address presently. What it means for an Athenian sympotic vessel to be found carefully conserved among ‘prized possessions’ in an Etruscan tomb is a rather different question, and a discussion we shall postpone (to Chapter 5). The theory that painted vases were used once for the occasion of a symposium at Athens, and subsequently transported across to Italy in some kind of ‘second-hand trade’, is not without difficulties. For now, we shall focus upon the local culture of the symposium, exploring not only aspects of the visual evidence but also certain implications of the pre-classical literary tradition.

Chronologically, the symposium as an institution in the Aegean region may be traced back to the Bronze Age; geographically, its origins lie in the Near East. A lingering echo of the ancient protocol of mixing wine with water, the process known as krasis in ancient Greek, may be caught as the word for ‘wine’ in modern Greek – krasi. For present purposes, what matters to us is that the mixing-bowl, as the most capacious vessel within a sympotic ‘service’, was something like a centrepiece of the occasion (even if, for logistical reasons, it may sometimes have been placed in an adjacent room, or courtyard). Several types of krater are distinguished in the Athenian repertoire: the ‘column-krater’ has handles formed of miniature columns; the ‘volute-krater’ elaborates those columns into scrolls; the ‘bell-krater’ looks like an inverted bell, its handles often reduced to lugs; while our ‘calyx-krater’ takes its name merely by virtue of botanical resemblance, with handles placed like sepals supporting the flared ‘petals’ of the krater’s bowl. Evidently, Euphronios and his fellow Pioneers – or their patrons, whether at Athens or Cerveteri – favoured this type. They also produced, for sophisticated drinkers, a complementary vase, shaped somewhat like an elongated mushroom, which we take to be an ancient cooling-device – hence the name given to it, psyktêr (see e.g Fig.12).1

What happened ‘around the krater’? Often cited as an evocation of sympotic decorum is a passage ascribed to Xenophanes, a long-lived itinerant poet-philosopher of the sixth century BC. Originally from Colophon in Ionia, Xenophanes was conceivably at Athens when he addressed the following instructive verses as if to a group of symposiasts:

‘The floor is freshly clean, so too the cups, and everyone’s hands. One attendant sets woven garlands upon our heads; another comes around with a bowl of fragrant perfume. The krater stands full of good cheer, with more wine to hand – wine which promises to keep us going, gentle in its jars, with a floral bouquet. Among us frankincense exudes its clear scent, and there is chilled water, sweet and pure. Golden loaves are laid out for us, and a splendid table laden with cheese and dense honey. The altar in the centre of the room is covered in flowers, the house resounds to hymns and gladness. Right-minded men should make the praise of God their priority, with reverent stories and decent words. Once they have poured libations, and prayed for the power to act in a just way – for that is surely what everyone wants – then there is no harm in drinking as much as enables one to get home without assistance (excepting those advanced in years). Honour above all that man who, after enjoying his wine, relates noble sentiments, as his memory serves, and who invokes the aim of excellence. He will not sing of battles involving Titans, or Giants, or Centaurs – such fantasy-tales of the old days – nor of civil strife: there is nothing to be learned from them. What is good is showing regard for the gods – always.’ (Xenophanes fr. 1 [Ath. 11.462c])

There is a strong sense here of the poet as ho potarchôn – ‘lord of the drinking’, or ‘master of ceremonies’ – and we must remember that these verses occupy a genre of ‘hortatory elegiac’, tending towards the puritanical. Not everyone might have agreed with the strictures about subject matter suitable for recitation. Surviving samples of Athenian drinking-songs (skolia) indicate that political allusions were not off-limits. Yet the stress Xenophanes lays upon euphêmoi mythoi, ‘reverent stories’, or ‘uplifting legends’, along with katharoi logoi, ‘pure words’, may eventually help us to understand why certain poetic topics were deemed suitable for the decoration of vessels used at a symposium. Reverence did not necessarily preclude violence. The poet’s injunction against ‘fictions of the past’ (plasmata tôn proterôn) seems severe, as a piece of literary advice; in any case, it evidently went unheeded by the painters. One of the most impressive vases ever produced at Athens, the black-figured column-krater we know as ‘the François Vase’ (see Fig. 30), invites its viewers into a dense weave of mythical narrative, including a detailed scene of fighting between Centaurs and Lapiths. As for the numerous occasions of combat between Herakles and some extraordinary opponent, Euphronios was only one of many artists who found such encounters thematically irresistible.

Many vases represent, of course, ‘the world of Dionysos’. This encompasses not only images of the god and his boisterous entourage – including satyrs, maenads and assorted animals – but also the representation of theatrical antics, drinking-games, sexual (mis)behaviour and so on. By contrast to the image of Apollo – regular, orderly, temperate – Dionysos was visually signalled by unpredictability, playfulness and frenzy. Merely a trail of foliage associated with Dionysiac garlands – ivy-leaves or vine – may suffice to evoke the licence associated with the god’s cult. On two kraters in the Louvre – both from Cerveteri – Euphronios illustrates his grasp of the requisite iconography, and injects it with characteristic vivacity. One vase (G 33) shows, as it were, the ‘mythic’ aspect: maenads in full fling, waving castanets and plant-staves (thyrsoi); satyrs capering among them with pipes, supplies of wine, and exuberant erections. The other (G 110) represents a scene of ‘actual’ festivity: the dance known as askoliasmos, a feature of the Rural Dionysia – rustic festivities staged during wintertime in villages throughout Attica. This dance involved hopping across a carpet of slippery wineskins: as a challenge, it perhaps reminded everybody of the importance of drinking while staying ‘upright’ (orthos).

Ancient practice was to harvest grapes rather late in the year, compared to a modern vintage. This produced a juice that fermented rapidly, with correspondingly higher levels of alcohol and sweetness. Xenophanes alludes to the potential shame of over-consumption (or under-dilution), and he is certainly not alone in that – even Anacreon, the lyric poet famed for his fondness of wine, deems drunkenness a form of hybris: over-indulgence, then, akin to ‘over-reaching’. By a nice verbal coincidence, Greeks were easily able to relate the drinking of wine ‘unmixed’ (akrãtos) with the state of being ‘without control’, or ‘powerless’ (akrasia). Epic lore was instructive, too. Homer refers to the rich dark wine from Maroneia (Od. 9.209) that Odysseus has stowed aboard his ship, which must be treated with particular respect, i.e. mixed with water at a ratio of 1:20. This is the wine he offers to the Cyclops Polyphemus – a monster beyond civilized custom. ‘In his foolishness’, Polyphemus does not moderate his intake – and the consequences are catastrophic. So there were nomoi sympotikoi, ‘rules for shared-drinking’. But sobriety was not the purpose of these rules – rather, a state of harmonious conviviality in which replenished wine-cups supplied a flow of ‘easy conversation’ (hêdea kôtillein), the raising of toasts (proposeis) and, eventually, a ‘revel’ (kômos) that might lead to dancing in the streets, or at least some graceful moves to music (see Fig. 16). Somewhere within this programme of merriment we can locate the game of kottabos. Apparently invented in Sicily, it may have been popularized at the Athenian symposium by the likes of Anacreon, during the second half of the sixth century; at any rate, it is visually well attested around Greece and Etruria by c.500 BC. Played ‘in honour of the Bromian god’ (i.e. Dionysos), its basic form consisted in projecting wine-dregs (latax, or latagê) towards a bowl, or some other target. A throw from the symposiast’s cup might be made with an exclamation of erotic interest; sometimes, it seems, the cup-contents were directed at the object of erotic interest. The game can hardly not have created a mess of the symposium-precincts, and we suppose it took place in the latter stages of the evening. The modicum of dexterity required is shown within a painted tomb from the western Greek colony of Poseidonia (Paestum): the symposiast makes his shot by a flick of the index finger curled into the handle of a kylix (Fig. 22).

Fig. 22 Detail from the ‘Tomb of the Diver’, c.500 BC. Paestum, National Archaeological Museum.

Fig. 23 Drawing of a psykter signed by Euphronios, from Cerveteri. H of vase 34 cm (13.4 in). St Petersburg, Hermitage B 1650.

after FR pl. 63.

Whether Euphronios ever played this game we cannot know. But he knew about it; and was evidently privy to other particulars of the symposium as it took place in the Athens of his day. On a psykter recovered from a tomb at Cerveteri (where it may once have accompanied a ‘matching’ krater), the painter ‘edits out’ the male symposiasts, and shows us four courtesans relaxed not upon couches but rather mattresses and cushions, apparently spread on the floor (Fig. 23). Their names are piquant: Smikra (‘Small’ – perhaps even ‘Babe’), Palaisto (‘Grappler’), Sekline (‘Bedworthy’ – or suchlike) and Agapa (i.e. Agape, ‘Love’: as Beazley noted, an unusual pre-Christian instance of the word). Sekline plays the pipes; each of the other three has two large cups to hand, presumably a sign of formidable drinking prowess. If Euphronios himself took the sobriquet of ‘Smikros’, that was easy enough to feminize as ‘Smikra’. In any case, he chooses Smikra as the one ‘speaking’ figure here, with a phrase (inscribed in retrograde) to accompany her kottabos gesture: tin tande latasso Leagre, literally ‘to you this one I throw, Leagros’.

The words evoke the sound of Doric – the dialect of Greek characteristic of the Peloponnese and Sicily. (Had the artist transcribed local Attic parlance, the phrase would be something like soi tênde latagô.) Since the four courtesans seem ‘decisively manly’ in shape (especially the broad-shouldered Palaisto), the suggestion has been made that a quartet of Spartan women is here caricatured. But their names are not markedly Spartan, nor indeed the verb-form (Spartans, as Aristophanes indicates, would have said lataddô). Perhaps Euphronios is only relaying customary usage for the game of kottabos, with players acknowledging its Sicilian origins by quoting in Doric mode. In any case, this piece of sympotic ‘banter’ invokes a name that we find inscribed frequently among the works of Euphronios, and by other painters too, and it is a name to conjure with in the scholarship: Leagros.

LEAGROS KALOS: ‘LEAGROS [IS] BEAUTIFUL’. This is how the name most often appears: not only on both sides of the Sarpedon krater, but on a total of over eighty surviving Attic vases (some of them black-figure). Perhaps the first thing to note about the address is that while it seems like a piece of graffiti, it is regularly painted on as part of the original decoration. Second, the name is sufficiently singular to be connected with an Athenian individual cited as one of the city’s commanders for an offensive campaign in Thrace in 465 BC. This Leagros may well have died in that campaign: if so, since the inscriptions celebrating his (presumably youthful) good looks begin to appear on vases c.520 BC, he would by then have been a veteran general.2

Apostrophizing personal beauty upon a vase intended for use at a symposium is usually related to the practice of paederasty. Paederasty used to be defined (in the original Oxford English Dictionary of 1933) as ‘unnatural connexion with a boy; sodomy’. That definition will not serve us here. In the past half-century, our understanding of the ideals and realities of paederastic systems at Athens, Sparta and elsewhere has deepened – while our attitudes towards homosexuality have (on the whole) broadened. The ancient literary attestation of paederasty at Athenian symposia has been known for a long time, notably in the form of works by two near-contemporaries at Athens c.400 BC, Xenophon and Plato – both works entitled The Symposium; the visual evidence, however, has been either suppressed or else treated rather coyly until recent times. A ‘landmark’ study of 1978, Kenneth Dover’s Greek Homosexuality, took a lead in discussing kalos-inscriptions on vases not only within the context of formal erotic behaviour in Athenian society, but also in comparing them with the sort of graffiti that might be scrawled on the walls of a gymnasium changing-room, or the entrance-tunnel to a stadium (as at Nemea). The upshot of such scrutiny is that the implications of the declaration ‘Leagros is beautiful’ are both more and less than they might seem.

The salutation can be anonymous: a figure may simply be labelled ho pais kalos, ‘the beautiful boy’. (Girls are also addressed, in which case the image of some hetaira unclothed, or a woman collecting water at a fountain, may be labelled kalê.) Undoubtedly, however, some kalos-tags were intended as compliments to particular Athenians of the time. Successful young athletes were obvious candidates for adulation, and the late sixth century was the period in which victory at the games – above all the Olympics, but other occasions too, including the Panathenaic festivals – began to signify virtual, if not actual, hero-status. So the names of certain historically attested athlete-heroes appear on Pioneer vases, alongside images of suitably admirable bodies – names such as Antias, Eualkides and Phyallos. Antias seems to have been a particular favourite with Euphronios, Phyallos with Euthymides: ‘portrait-features’ of both are hard to discern beyond the lineaments of the generically handsome – but of course the painters may only ever have seen such ‘stars’ at a distance, if at all.

As with celebrities of the modern age, some characters labelled on vases may have been notorious simply because they made exhibitions of themselves, or did whatever was necessary to get themselves talked about. Is this a case of the pseudo-intimacy typically associated with ‘celebrity culture’, or were some of these types invited to a symposium for the sake of importing glamour to the occasion? If so, might vase-painters be primed to add the names of ‘A-list’ guests at a particular gathering? Possibly: a speculative case for special commissions has been made, and it is plausible that a Euphronios or a Euthymides knew his clientele well enough to produce ‘bespoke’ vases for this or that symposium. From what we know of Athenian demographics, it seems unlikely that the potters and painters were ever part of the same social circles as their patrons. It is therefore rash to surmise (as certain scholars have) that Euphronios was himself involved in some kind of relationship with Leagros. It may be noted, however, that the Kerameikos area had a reputation for being a part of Athens where the courtesans – ‘marginalized’ women, many of them foreigners by origin – tended to reside, or work in brothels. So it is not beyond belief that Euphronios may have known those hetairai identified, if impudently, upon his vases. (Their clients, of course, may also have been his.)

We have briefly alluded (p. 73) to the political revolution that took place at Athens while Euphronios was at work in the Kerameikos. Given that the symposium is often typified as an essentially ‘aristocratic’ or ‘elite’ institution, readers might be wondering how it was affected by the democratic reforms associated with the name of Cleisthenes. For Plato, the notion of potters enjoying the formalities of the symposium was grotesque (Rep. 420e); that does not mean, however, that it was beyond their economic means. If they could afford dedications on the Acropolis, they could surely afford the occasional drinking-party too? Yet when we see Euphronios depict himself/‘Smikros’ as a handsome young symposiast (see Fig. 3), it is hard not to suppose that there is an element of fantasy here. The pose of reclining upon one’s left elbow while raising the right arm to command more wine, or call for a different tune, was traditionally part of royal imagery in the ancient world. Inlaid couches, cushions, decorated vessels, servants – and ‘crowns’, if only ribbons or leaves – these all give the symposium a pseudo-regal air. These are symbols of leisure and privilege – the stuff of dreams to a ‘banausic’ craftsman, however skilled and successful.

Fig. 24 Detail of the Sarpedon krater: Hermes, with painted inscriptions of LEAGROS KALOS (right to left) and EUPHRONIOS EGRAPHSEN (left to right). The lettering for HYPNOS (left to right) and THANATOS (right to left) creates similar symmetry, appearing almost to issue from their mouths.

SAEM.

Literary evidence indicates that the symposium at classical Athens was reserved for male citizens, and institutionally provided a place for peer-groups to ‘bond’ in various ways – officials of the polis, soldiers who fought alongside each other in a phalanx, athletes who trained together. Paederasty was part of the scene; but when assessing the imagery that accompanies kalos-inscriptions, we should bear in mind that by the end of the fifth century, an ideology had evolved that would equate physical beauty with moral and political virtue – the Socratic credo of kalokagathia, ‘beautiful goodness’. Xenophon’s Symposium describes how a party is organized by a group of Athenian citizens – all of them explicitly defined by Xenophon as kaloi kagathoi, inadequately translated as ‘gentlemen’ – to celebrate a victory at the Panathenaic Games (probably of 422 BC) by one Autolycus, whose father will be present at the gathering. The men, including Socrates, are all ensconced on their couches when the boy makes his appearance. ‘Not one of those who gazed at Autolycus’, the narrator observes, ‘failed to be stirred to his innermost by the boy’s beauty’. The commotion registered here is as much aesthetic as erotic.

In consideration of aesthetics, we may accept that any kalos-tag by an image may carry the sense that the image per se is pleasing to regard; so too the vase that carries the image. Moreover, while kalos usually entails beauty of form, it can also mean ‘admirable’ in other ways, or just ‘nice’, or ‘proper’. So where does this leave Leagros? One suggestion is that he was the proprietor of the workshop where Euphronios and others were employed. Leagros may be invoked several times upon a vase – e.g. the Geryon cup (see Fig. 8), and without apparent pertinence to any particular figure; his name may be written alongside images that are not always flattering (for example, by the figure of a man vomiting); and as we have noted, a scene of ‘Smikros’ making advances to a diminutive ‘Leagros’ appears to be an irreverent caricature (see Fig. 12). The best explanation for the frequent appearance of Leagros kalos on the vases painted by Euphronios and the Pioneers may then be that Leagros was a benevolent employer who could take a bit of mockery.

In any case, the position of his name upon ‘Side A’ of our krater is central and prominent (Fig. 24). By writing it in retrograde to one side of the head of Hermes, Euphronios can juxtapose his own name on the other side, as if to signal parity. The admirable qualities of Leagros thereby mirror and complement the artistry of Euphronios – and vice versa.

Here, as on many other vases, Euphronios exploits the decorative possibilities of inscriptions. His writing may not count as ‘calligraphy’, but it is neat and deft, and often arranged in such a way as to accentuate the tectonics of the vessel and the compositional logic of its imagery: see, for example, how the figures of Sleep and Death seem to ‘announce’ themselves; and how the angle of the name ‘Sarpedon’ forms a diagonal balance to the blood pouring from the wound below his clavicle. Nevertheless these inscriptions also convey important information; their presence is enough to force us to concede that the Sarpedon krater is an art-object in which images do not exist independently of words. ‘Text’ was always part of the krater’s appearance, and purpose. The letters on the vase conspicuously identify its predominant image as an epic casualty. It is worth repeating the point that, on the face of it, this seems peculiar. Who today would want a wine-container if its label featured graphic details of a dead soldier? ‘In life men marvelled when they saw him, and women found him lovely, and he is still beautiful when he falls in the front line.’ The seventh-century Spartan poet Tyrtaeus supplies one sentiment by way of understanding ancient aesthetics (Fr. 10.19–30W). Bravery on the battlefield was a defining element of the ‘good man’ (anêr agathos). Another archaic poet, Alcaeus, tells us that the space for a symposium should be brightly festooned with the accoutrements of combat – helmets, greaves, weapons and more (Fr. 140V). Both poets may have sung their songs at drinking-parties. Both, however, derive from the senior tradition of epic verse. It was Homer who described how Sarpedon acted bravely, and paid with his life – and Homeric epic, ultimately, will tell us why, at a symposium, the sight of the maimed Sarpedon counted as kalos, beautiful and admirable.

1 Whether the psykter was filled with ice and set within a krater full of wine, or the psykter filled with wine and set among ice or snow or chilled water in the krater, is debatable.

2 Leagros left a son called (after his own father) Glaukon: this may be the same Glaukon who is in turn hailed as kalos on a number of red-figure vases of c.470 BC, e.g. by the Providence Painter.