The Sarpedon krater has not survived because it is an artistic masterpiece, and nor has it survived because it makes a visual statement about ancient Greek heroic values. It has survived because some anonymous Etruscan – or certain members of an unknown Etruscan family – decided that it was appropriate to be placed in a tomb, hoping, presumably, that it would stay there for eternity.

The Etruscans have a reputation for being enigmatic. Without wishing to bolster that reputation, it may be admitted straightaway that we do not know why some inhabitant(s) of Etruscan Cerveteri took the decision to remove the Sarpedon krater from ‘circulation’ – or rather, to remove it from the society of the living, for deposit among the community of the dead. We do not know if the vase was acquired with that funerary destination in mind, nor whether Euphronios and Euxitheos had any inkling that their creation would be carried abroad, let alone consigned to a tomb. We do know, however, that at some point in antiquity the vessel was broken, and repaired using several inset bronze staples. Beeswax may also have been used to seal the joint: so, although cracked, the krater might still have served as a liquid container. It may have been placed in the grave of its first Etruscan owner, or else passed on to a subsequent generation. As noted (p. 28), the chronology of tombs at the site where the vase was allegedly found may indicate a delay of at least a century between acquisition and deposition. As also noted, we do not know exactly where in a tomb the vase was found. So what can be said about its Etruscan ‘reception’?

Cerveteri was demonstrably a city open to the wider Mediterranean, connected to the seaboard by its port-emporium, Pyrgi – a name signalling that the Greeks knew the site as Pyrgoi, ‘the towers’. Patient excavation of this site – which is about as close to the seashore as any site could be, before becoming underwater archaeology – reveals that it received plentiful quantities of Athenian pottery during the late sixth century, and was visited by Greek traders; but also that c.500 BC the city of Cerveteri (known to the Greeks as Agylla) may have been more closely aligned, politically and economically, to the Phoenicians – probably in the form of their (‘Punic’) colonists at Carthage, on the North African coast. Almost contemporary with the Sarpedon krater is a famous trio of inscribed gold plaques, recording a joint Etrusco–Punic dedication within a sanctuary that honoured the Etruscan goddess Uni (equivalent to the Greek Hera) and the Phoenician goddess Astarte. These tell us that the ruler or chief magistrate of Cerveteri was then one Thefarie Velianas. Velianas does not appear in any written history of the Greeks, or the Romans: for all we know, he may have been the leading protagonist of a political revolution at Cerveteri. The archaeology of the city’s main cemetery, nicknamed the ‘Banditaccia’, suggests some sort of radical change at the end of the sixth century BC: if not democracy as such, then a distinct ‘levelling out’ of family tombs, into quasi-‘egalitarian’ units.

What did not change was the Etruscan custom of creating a posthumous ‘home from home’. The Banditaccia cemetery is usually referred to as a ‘necropolis’, or ‘city of the dead’ – with ‘streets’ and ‘houses’ laid out in a fashion that is still quite comforting and familiar to the modern visitor. There are couches, chairs, even domestic appliances, still visible inside the tombs, carved in relief. Originally each grave was also furnished with an assemblage of free-standing ‘grave goods’ – ranging from weapons and weaving utensils to mirrors, jewellery and foodstuffs – and including, as elsewhere in Etruria, the vessels and accoutrements of ceremonial drinking.

Two questions confront us about this funerary custom. First, what was the thinking behind it? (After all, most of us today would not consider interring precious or useful objects with deceased relatives, however much we loved them – the relatives, that is.) Second, how special were these ‘grave goods’? To be more specific, regarding our vase: might Etruscans have acquired Greek painted pottery with a view to supplying their tombs?

Answers to those questions are potentially entwined. If the dominant ideology of Etruscan burial was based upon a reflexive motive – that is, a tomb essentially recreates or resembles a house – then there is no need to suppose that vases in tombs carry particular funerary significance. The occupants of the tomb will be surrounded by possessions they used and cherished while alive. Alternatively, if beliefs about an afterlife called for distinctive objects and certain iconographic choices, then we will be tempted to invest the archaeology of Etruscan ‘grave goods’ with ritual function and eschatological meaning. No handbook survives of Etruscan tenets regarding the ‘last things’ – death, possibly judgement, ‘the next life’ – but references in ancient texts, and the imagery of painted tombs at a number of Etruscan sites (especially Tarquinia, to the north of Cerveteri), suggest that a theological system most certainly existed. What an Etruscan may have seen in an image of the dead Sarpedon, therefore, is open to some speculation.

Without over-simplifying the problem, but for the sake of managing speculation, the line of argument we shall take here is that the Sarpedon krater came to Cerveteri as a mixing-bowl for wine and water – and that its Etruscan owners not only used the vessel for its proper purpose, but also shared, to some extent, the cultural package offered by its decoration. The claim is, then, that they practised a version of the symposium; they knew about the stories of Homer and the epic cycle, and were entertained by poetic performances; and while Greek was not their first language, the inscriptions upon the vase were more or less legible by them.

Fig. 33 Krater inscribed (in retrograde) Aristonothos epoi[e]sen (‘Aristonothos made [me]’), from Cerveteri, c.650 BC. On the side of the vessel shown here, the subject appears to be the blinding of the Cyclops Polyphemus, told as an adventure of Odysseus by Homer (Od. 9). The other side depicts a naval encounter. H 36 cm (14.2 in). Rome, Capitoline Museums.

One of the first Greek artefacts to be signed by its maker is a vase found at Cerveteri, ‘the Aristonothos krater’ of the mid-seventh century BC (Fig. 33). To judge by the alphabet he used, Aristonothos was Euboean by origin; and it is generally supposed that he made his way to Italy at a time when fellow Euboeans were establishing themselves in the Bay of Naples. It cannot be proven that Aristonothos settled at Cerveteri; but it is reasonable to suppose that his handiwork was comprehensible to the local clientele (whose own language, though radically different from Greek, was written using letters borrowed from Euboean script). That aristocratic Etruscans in the seventh century BC were attuned to the storylines of Greek mythology is highly likely; that they would use this krater for some symposium-style formal occasion equally credible. Although there are historical episodes of conflict, e.g. with the Ionian Greeks who had set up a colony in Corsica (see Herodotus 1.166–7), Cerveteri may nevertheless be characterized as a ‘primary contact zone’ between Greeks and Etruscans: a powerful Etruscan city whose powerful citizens were manifestly ‘Hellenized’.

The tombs of Cerveteri have yielded a great quantity of Greek vases: an impression of their quality may readily be gained by paying a visit to the Louvre, which acquired a substantial part of the spoils of exploration by Giampietro Campana in the Banditaccia cemetery during the 1840s. The museum’s collection includes, for example, ‘the Eurytios krater’ – a famed example of the archaic style of vase-painting at Corinth, showing Herakles at ease in the banqueting-quarters of King Eurytios (or Eurytos). Again we are obliged to suppose that the Etruscan patrons of such a vessel recognized the figures shown (and named) on the royal couches; knew also that a story attached to the scene (an archery contest for the hand of the king’s daughter, Iole, which led to deaths among the hosts); and, more generally, that they were able to relate to the ‘lifestyle’ evoked by the imagery of the vase – feasting, hunting, horse-ownership, and of course acquaintance with heroes such as Herakles (and we recall that a cult of Herakles at Cerveteri was in existence from at least the sixth century BC: see p. 38). Like the Sarpedon krater, the Eurytios krater is unusually large and ambitious in its decoration. But it is not an absolute ‘one-off’. Of all archaic Corinthian kraters with a known export-provenance, 40 per cent come from the same site – Cerveteri.

Fig. 34 Detail of the ‘Tomb of the Ship’ (Tomba della Nave), c.500 BC. Suspended on the wall are two kylikes; on the table are an amphora (right) and a hybrid of amphora and column-krater (left). Tarquinia, Museo Archeologico Nazionale.

Fig. 35 Drawing of a detail in the ‘Tomb of the Painted Vases’ (Tomba dei Vasi Dipinti – very deteriorated since its discovery in 1867), late sixth century BC. Tarquinia, Monterozzi necropolis.

A painting from a tomb at Tarquinia illustrates, conceivably, the typical ‘reception’ of Greek vases in Etruria. On the left-hand wall, a merchant ship is depicted, giving the tomb its name; then there is a display of several vases (Fig. 34). A scene of sympotic revelry on the central back wall may suggest a logistical sequence: the ship brings vases (and wine?) – so the lyre-player takes up his instrument, and the festivities begin. Another Tarquinian tomb of the period similarly juxtaposes painted vases with some sort of kômos (Fig. 35). We resort to the Greek word for such dancing partly because we do not know the Etruscan term for it, partly because Dionysiac rites were demonstrably interwoven with the Hellenization of Etruria, and partly because the artist who painted this tomb was probably of Greek origin.

The process of ‘reading’ the images of Etruscan tombs is always haunted by an interpretative dilemma. Do the paintings hold up a mirror to the actual ‘lifestyle’ of elite Etruscans – who were notorious, in Greek and Roman literature, for their love of luxury – or do they project some vision of an afterlife filled with feasts and celebrations? (An intermediate option is that we see in these tombs evocations of feasts held in honour of the dead.) So far as the imported Greek vases are concerned, the relevant observation to make here is that while these fragile objects survive primarily thanks to the Etruscan habit of storing them in tombs, the archaeology of Etruscan cities and sanctuaries indicates regular usage above ground too. During the 1990s, for example, a campaign of excavation in one area of the city of Cerveteri (the Vigna Parrocchiale site) investigated the debris that had accumulated in a large cistern by around 500 BC. Numerous small fragments of imported Corinthian and Athenian painted pottery, mostly drinking cups, were lodged in the layers of urban spoil. The usage (and breakage) may have happened in a setting broadly styled as ‘sacred’, not domestic – but, in any case, it was at a distance from the cemetery.

Exactly where and how the Etruscans conducted their ceremonial drinking remains archaeologically obscure. Literary references, along with many tomb-paintings, indicate that women joined their husbands on the couches – a major departure from Greek practice. (We may wonder if the hetairai shown drinking on Attic vases were perceived as such in Etruria.) It is likely that some sort of ‘funerary banquet’ was held in honour of the dead. Yet this concept no longer dominates our interpretation of paintings such as we find in, for example, the ‘Tomb of the Lionesses’ (Fig. 36). In the last century, it was possible for Massimo Pallottino, the patriarch of Etruscology as a modern academic discipline, to claim of the tomb’s central scene that it showed a ‘dance for the dead’: accordingly, ‘the large crater in the centre of the frieze obviously represents the cinerary urn’ with the ashes of the deceased, and ‘the black jar is probably the vessel containing the water for extinguishing the pyre’. Reasonable as this explanation seems in a funerary context, most Etruscan specialists today will prefer to see the vases shown here as serving their sympotic purpose: the krater for mixing wine and water, the oinochoe for distributing the mixture.

Fig. 36 Detail of the ‘Tomb of the Lionesses’ (Tomba delle Leonesse), late sixth century BC. Both krater and oinochoe look to be metallic. The wine-ladle (simpulum) hanging to the right of the krater would suggest that the vase contained wine, not ashes. Tarquinia, Monterozzi necropolis.

Figs 37 and 38 Detail of a kylix by Euphronios (signed on its foot), c.520 BC. Top: Thanatos and Hypnos – both wingless – lift the body of Sarpedon. The dejected-looking warrior leading them is labelled Akamas. Below: flanked by onlookers (one male, one female; each holding a flower), an armed youth moves to the music of the pipes (see p. 132). H 11.5 cm (4.5 in); d. 33 cm (13 in). Rome, Museo Nazionale di Villa Giulia.

SAEM.

The fact remains, of course, that the Sarpedon krater was placed in a tomb – and that it shows a hero being transported to his tomb. There is also the possibility, as noted (p. 29), that one tomb of the Greppe Sant’Angelo necropolis contained two vases depicting this heroic conveyance – both by Euphronios, albeit at different stages of his painting career. Even to non-expert eyes, ‘the Sarpedon kylix’ by Euphronios presents a less assured composition (Figs. 37 and 38): there may be ten years between the kylix and the krater. For development of subject and style, the two vases make a valuable pair. But how might they have become a pair? Did their Etruscan patron acquire the kylix first, and the krater some while later? If so, did the krater appeal because it showed the same subject, or because it was signed by the same painter?

Bald statistics have their place. Of vases by Euphronios with a provenance, 50 per cent come from Cerveteri. This could be by chance; or we may suspect a pattern of commerce and taste. To pose questions about taste courts the risk of assimilating the ancient ‘market’ for Athenian vases to something like the world of modern collectors. We are limited, too, in how far we can reconstruct any awareness of Etruscan ‘market demand’ among the Athenian potters and painters. Ever since the discovery of abundant Greek vases at Vulci (see p. 46), scholars have endeavoured to make sense of the non-Greek findspot, searching for signs of local preference in shape and style, and analysing traces left by the ‘middlemen’ – the maritime merchants who called at ports such as Pyrgi. The consensus is that during the sixth century BC there was some awareness, on the part of Greek producers of painted pottery, about what was favoured in Etruria. (A black-figure workshop associated with the name of Nikosthenes provides important evidence.) The archaeology of Mediterranean shipwrecks, however, suggests that cargoes were usually mixed, with merchants (as likely to have been Phoenician as Greek) picking up what was available wherever they called. Decades ago, the proposal was made that many Athenian vases came to Etruria by second-hand trade. Though impossible to prove, this theory has not been dislodged by academic scepticism. If accepted, it means that the Sarpedon krater would have been used, perhaps just once, at an Athenian symposium – then, having served its ceremonial purpose, was released, or sold on. (Self-evidently, the price it fetched from an Etruscan buyer made the journey worth undertaking: see p. 83.)

Historical instances of ‘acculturation’ among peer-groups across the Mediterranean tend to support the model favoured here, which allows an Etruscan owner of the Sarpedon krater to recognize its eponymous hero. But it seems to be stretching credibility to imagine that our Etruscan, however Hellenized, even knew who Leagros was, let alone whether he merited the salutation of kalos. So what if our Etruscan owner was illiterate, and without any knowledge of the Trojan saga? The scene then becomes one in which the body of a young man, violently killed, is collected by two angels of death. ‘Sleep’ and ‘Death’ as represented by Euphronios appear rather gentle of demeanour, when compared to the winged demons that feature in Etruscan iconography – the stern-faced female figure known as Vanth, or her male counterpart Tuchulcha, with his beaked nose, pointy ears and a head bristling with snakes. Yet in a basic way, no special cultural priming or paideia is required to give meaning to the Sarpedon image. A mortal body is being carried away by two supernatural beings. It is hard to think of any documented human society in which such an image would be totally incomprehensible.

Without a knowledge of written Greek, however, the identity of the two winged figures might be obscure. Euphronios appears to have been a pioneer in this particular respect: there was no established image for Hypnos and Thanatos in the archaic repertoire, and we sense that the artist himself was unsure how they should be represented. On his kylix (see Fig. 37) they are shown as if fully equipped warriors: Hypnos armed with a sword, and carrying the large circular shield of a hoplite, Thanatos managing to grip with one hand not only a spear, but also a hefty, old-fashioned sort of shield, perhaps approximating to the Mycenaean ‘figure-of-eight’ shape. Had Euphronios not added labels, any viewer might well have assumed these figures to be comrades of Sarpedon. We recall that the text of Homer as we know it (see p. 118) makes Apollo the deity who removes Sarpedon’s body from the battlefield; Hypnos and Thanatos take over subsequently, to escort the body to Lycia. Homer gives no indication of where they come from or what they look like; he merely notes that they are twins, and that they move fast. The figures devised by Euphronios are similar enough to be taken as twins (note however that hair and eyelashes are rendered contrastingly); and wings were sufficient to indicate speed.

In Hesiod’s poetic account of cosmology, usually dated to c.700 BC, Hypnos and Thanatos are among the several offspring of Night, and dwell somewhere near the entrance to Hades or the ‘Underworld’ – a geographical location not specified by either Homer or Hesiod, but profoundly dark.

‘Never does the bright sun shine upon them with his rays, not as he rises in the sky, nor as he makes his descent. Of the pair, one roams peacefully across the earth and the broad surface of the sea, and is soothing to mankind; as for the other, his heart is hard as iron, and his soul like bronze, void of pity. He will not release those he has seized; the very immortals detest him.’ (Theog. 758–66).

Again, that Sleep and Death are airborne is only implied by their mobility; otherwise there is little here by way of descriptive detail. Though Sleep can come sweetly, Death is not characterized as malevolent: he simply does what he must, and by definition he will be abhorrent ‘to the deathless ones’ (athanatoisi).

Fig. 39 Athenian red-figure kylix dating to 510–500 BC, from Vulci. One of the two female figures present carries the herald’s wand associated with Hermes. D. 42 cm (16.5 in). London, British Museum 1841.0301.22.

By Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.

Fig. 40 Drawing (reconstruction) of a red-figure calyx-krater attributed to the Eucharides Painter, 500–490 BC. Traces of the inscribed name ‘Sarpedon’ have been noted since the vase was cleaned and ‘de-restored’. The scene may be one of deposition, i.e. of Sarpedon’s body in Lycia. Paris, Louvre G 163.

After Mon. dell’Inst. 6 (1858), pl. 21.

It is always possible that an artist working in some more prominent medium had preceded Euphronios in devising an image for the obscure yet ubiquitous brothers. Certain statues are attested, but of undefined date. The celebrated cedarwood Chest of Kypselos, on view at Olympia since the early sixth century BC, and carved by a sculptor who apparently knew Hesiod’s verses, showed Sleep and Death as nurslings of Night: one asleep, the other showing resemblance of form, but dark in complexion (Paus. 5.18.1: interestingly, Pausanias says that he would have recognized them even without inscriptions). But this image of the abstractions as infants cannot have guided Euphronios. He may well then have been the first artist to show the mature Hypnos and Thanatos in action – and that counts as a considerable achievement. It is not very clear to us how the ‘personified’ Sleep and Death relate either to mythology or to religious practice in archaic Greece: perhaps it was never very clear. So, we are left with the evidence from Athenian vases: which indicates that the prototype created by Euphronios gave a lead to his contemporaries and successors.

A kylix attributed by Beazley to ‘the Nikosthenes Painter’ may be the earliest act of homage – indeed, Beazley thought that this painter, inclined to be careless, must here have studied from a superior draughtsman, while other scholars have wondered if Euphronios himself assisted here (Fig. 39). The scene of a senior warrior being lifted by winged and armed youths is not labelled, so we cannot be sure that Sarpedon is the intended hero. It could be Memnon (see p. 167). However, Sleep and Death are surely the figures doing the lifting.

Fig. 41 Red-figure calyx-krater from the Pezzino necropolis, Agrigento, c.500 BC. Placed (by Beazley) among the Pioneers (‘Pezzino Group’). On the reverse, a komos scene. H 43 cm (17 in). Agrigento, Museo Regionale C 1956.

Fig. 42 Black-figure amphora attributed to the Diosphos Painter, c.480 BC: Hypnos and Thanatos carry the body of Sarpedon (?), whose eidôlon (‘spirit-image’) is shown in a running pose. A similar piece is in Paris (Louvre F388). H. 18.4 cm (7.2 in). New York, Metropolitan Museum 56.171.25.

Metropolitan Museum.

Confirmation that Sleep and Death may be youthful comes on a calyx-krater in the Louvre, where one is clearly inscribed (Fig. 40). It seems, however, that their age was not determined; nor were their wings essential. What matters is their psychopompic role, as made evident by further elaborations of the motif. The draped body they are carrying on another calyx-krater (Fig. 41) may not be that of Sarpedon – an inviting case has been made that here we should rather see the transport of Patroclus, with an anguished Achilles present – but what is most fascinating in this scene is the minuscule figure shown armed and in a running posture. It is interpreted as the eidôlon of the deceased: his ‘phantom’, or ‘spirit-image’. How artists convey metaphysics is always fascinating; but of course we cannot know the intentions of this anonymous painter (who, again, is very close in style to Euphronios). What can be shown, however, is that the visual strategy of conjuring a supernatural concept – the close kinship of Sleep and Death, which would be famously evoked by Socrates (Plato Ap. 40d) – added to the funerary application, or suitability, of the Sleep and Death image. So, the image of an epic moment developed as part of the classical ‘iconography of death’.

The generally indifferent quality of Athenian black-figure vase-painting by the end of the sixth century has been noted (p. 68). But the output of mediocre artists can be a useful source for observing the development of visual clichés. Two small amphorae attributed to the same hand indicate the sort of routine reproduction we associate with clichés (one is shown in Fig. 42). Both are taken to show the transport of Sarpedon: on neither vase, however, do the inscriptions make any sense – which may reflect the painter’s haste, or cynicism (if he knew his work was going direct to a foreign market). In any case, we see how the motif derived from Euphronios is becoming schematized, and confirmation of its quintessential decorum and utility as a funerary image comes soon enough – within the iconography of a particular shape and style of Athenian vase produced in the fifth century BC, the ‘white-ground lekythos’.

Athenians were never buried like Etruscans, in tombs resembling homes. Periodically, authorities at Athens imposed legal restrictions upon funeral expenditure. But local mortuary customs never prohibited the deposition of certain objects with the deceased. Among those objects were oil-flasks, or lekythoi. Generically these vases were of various size and appearance, and indeed utility; their association with funerals came from the practice of embalming a corpse prior to cremation or interment, and also of offering oil and unguents to the dead – a sort of moisturizer for the soul. A quantity of such liquid was poured where burial took place; the vessel (which did not always contain as much as it might seem to) would then be left at the grave, or in a small trench nearby. Why the production of white-ground lekythoi belongs to a limited period at Athens, c.470–400 BC, is debatable: it may have something to do with the tension between private and public burial within the norms of Athenian democracy. What is clear, however, is that the imagery upon the lekythoi has a dedicated purpose: to assist in the process of bereavement, and give some graphic definition to the mysteries of mortality.

Fig. 43 Drawing of an Athenian white-ground lekythos, c.470–460 BC: Thanatos (bearded) and Hypnos bring a youth to the grave (decorated with garlands). The acclamation ‘KALOS’ runs vertically and horizontally. H of actual vase 26 cm (10.2 in). Athens, National Museum 17294.

after CVA Athens 2, pl. 20(4).

The technique of painting upon pottery covered with a chalky white or cream slip was not a fifth-century innovation (see p. 68). But it proved especially appropriate for funerary lekythoi, which did not need a durable finish. Figures drawn in outline, and elaborated with a coloured wash, appear somewhat spectral – an effect compounded by the tendency for the paintwork to flake off or fade over time. Some lekythoi show scenes of domestic activity, as if to say that ‘life goes on’; others depict family members, especially the females, in attendance at the grave (conventionally signalled by a carved pillar or stêlê); on others, meanwhile, painters attempt to choreograph ‘the spirit world’. This may include Charon, gloomy gondolier of the Underworld, as well as Hermes, in his ‘psychopompic’ role. But a significant function is reserved for the figures of Hypnos and Thanatos. Some sixteen of the known Attic white-ground lekythoi evidently feature the pair, with the seniority or more ‘serious’ status of Thanatos signalled by his beard. The brothers are not armed – their epic glory is over – but they sometimes gain an extra set of wings, attached to their heels or sandals. The wraith-corpses they carry do not seem like great burdens: of adults or children alike, the load looks light, to be set down by the grave tenderly (Figs. 43 and 44).

These vases may not count as ‘mass-produced’ – but there is a certain formulaic aspect to their imagery. And that, for the purposes of the present study, is good news. For it implies that the motif of Sleep and Death lifting a dead body – the motif created by Euphronios c.515–510 BC – has become ‘stock’ within the fifth-century iconographic repertoire. White-ground lekythoi may look small next to certain monuments contemporary with them, such as the Parthenon. But these vases join the Parthenon in stating what came to be regarded as the canons of classical form and style – thereafter a point of reference for artists throughout the Graeco-Roman world, and revived as such in the Renaissance. The basic composition – one prone horizontal figure, two vertical figures lifting it – was easily recognized, yet adaptable. Its precise cultural associations varied – but a basic significance endured, and that was cross-cultural. Human beings, uniquely among the world’s species, like to bury their dead. The Greeks may have been particularly obsessed with this idea (the story of Antigone, who risks her own life by seeking to perform last rites over the body of her shamed brother Polynikes, is indicative); however, concern for the formal deposition of a corpse is universal. The Sarpedon krater provided a motif germane to this concern – the bringing home, the laying to rest, of a fellow mortal. As such, its consolatory power was valid, and valued, for ages ever after.

Fig. 44 White-ground lekythos attributed to the Thanatos Painter, from a grave in the Ampelokipoi district of Athens, c.440–430 BC. That this represents a war casualty is suggested by the armour on the deceased, and a helmet placed (or carved) on his tomb. H 49 cm (19.3 in). London, British Museum D 58 (1876.0328.1).

By Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.