Corpus vasorum antiquorum: Athens--Benaki Museum i (Greece 9)

As Victoria Sabetai informs us in the Preface, the first CVA from the Benaki Museum in Athens presents large red-figure vases, mostly Attic, but also four Boeotian, four Corinthian and a rare Chalcidic kotyle (p. 74, pl. 74.4-8), the latter interestingly more reminiscent of South Italian, particularly in its floral ornaments, than of Attic. The remaining red-figure vases in the Benaki Museum will not be published in a CVA, but in instalments in the journal Μουσείο Μπενάκη (p. 9), which, fine publication though it is (see, for example, S.'s exemplary article in volume 4 [2004], pp. 15-38), is not where pottery specialists would naturally look. This inconsistent treatment is not ideal, especially since this CVA sets such an excellent precedent. The descriptions are clear, the discussions detailed, the scholarship meticulous. Many of the attributions are by S. The text is supported by plentiful profiles and six figure-drawings. About two-thirds of the vases are unpublished, and others have received only brief notices, so there is much that is new here. There are no outstanding vases, and none by painters of the highest quality. The few mythological scenes are mostly fairly mundane Dionysian pictures, but also Boreas and Oreithyia (pp. 21-3, pls.6-9), seen by S. as an 'erotic pursuit, an embodiment of the cultural idea of marriage as a dangerous rite of passage entailing unwillingness on the part of the female' (p. 23). While S. discusses other possible interpretations of this scene, her advocacy of a link to 'nuptial activity' (p. 23) extends to a kalpis showing the Apolline Triad (pp. 16-17, pl. 2) next to the omphalos. S. sees the kalpis as a wedding vase, and the scene as appropriate because of the 'emphasis on family ties' (p. 17). Nuptial themes figure prominently in this volume, over a dozen vases having a wedding context, giving an interesting overview of a significant domestic subject. These include several loutrophoroi and lebetes gamikoi. A further loutrophoros (pp. 33-4, pl. 24) shows Nike, who features in at least four of the wedding scenes (pis. 20.3, 31.3, 33.1-2, 33.3-5, and perhaps pl. 28). Another loutrophoros (pp. 36-8, pls. 29-30) shows a siren and sphinx, for the association of which with wedding vases S. gives parallels, concluding that they are 'mediating or overseeing the passage to altered states of being' (p. 38). At the least, they, like the Boreas and Oreithyia and Apolline scenes, if S.'s interpretation of them is correct, link mythological figures with mortal weddings. The Boeotian red-figure consists of three bell-kraters and a sessile kantharos of the second half of the fifth century and the early fourth (pls. 63-8). The latter depicts Apollo and, twice, Artemis, and is rightly linked by S. (pp. 66-7) to the cult of the Kabeirion, both for the scene and for the distinct shape. K.W. Arafat, "Review: CVA", The Classical Review 58 (2008), pp. 567-570.