Agora Object: P 1966
Inventory Number:   P 1966
Section Number:   Ζ 551
Title:   Bowl with Relief Decoration: Corinthian
Category:   Pottery
Description:   A small fragment from the side and a chip from the rim are missing. The bowl has an offset rim, flat, with two mouldings below: one wide, one narrow. Between two raised ridges under the main zone is a row of studs (in imitation of metal work). Beneath the vase, ca. 0.02m. from the outer edge, a low concave base.
At the head of the procession: Dionysos in a car drawn l. by two goats; a maenad carrying a thyrsos on her l. arm behind the goats to l. Ground level mounds below the wheel of the car. Dionysos is nude and riding backwards, with a thyrsos behind him in the car. Next, r., man walking l., his exomis caught in both elbows; he holds a large cluster of grapes. Behind him a club leaning against the trunk of a tree. Next, a pair of men with crooks (shepherds?); the man on the l. clad in a short chiton, the other in an exomis, holding on to the thyrsos at his l. Next, a woman in a chiton, holding an oinochoe in her r. and an indistinct object, possibly a phiale with offerings, in her l. To the r., a stele with pedimental top, a tree, and a thyrrsos. A nude boy standing l. loads a tray on the head of a small boy r. with raised arms. The base of the tree behind them appears between the two figures. Next, a bearded, nude man [not a draped maenad as in BM G96] standing beween trees. Next, a thyrsos, followed by a tree, with a nude man at the r. in back view reaching up among the branches with his r. arm. Behind him, a tripod, a thyrsos, a small Priapus-like figure on a base or altar, all separated by a thyros from the figure of a draped woman l. and a group of two women stooping over a basket(?). Both women carry bundles on their shoulders; objects resembling cloaks hang from the trees above their heads. A thyrsos divides this group from the next: a maenad l. with a thyrsos over her l. shoulder and a chaplet in her lowered r. hand (her drapery flutters behind her) and a boy moving r. with a wineskin on his back. Beyond a tree is a boy, facing, with two faggots or torches in his arms; a man walking r. with a basket(?) over his shoulder and a short staff in his r. hand, with which he appears to be shaking the branches of a tree to the r.; a nude man in three-quarter view with a cornucopia in his l. and an oinochoe(?) in his r. At the end of the frieze, separated from the car of Dionysos by two trees and a thyrsos, is a low mound, perhaps an altar (Courby suggests a hive).
Yellow clay; poor brown-black glaze inside and out.
Walters (1896), BM Vases, IV, p. 251 ff. and pl. XV, describes BM G 96, a bowl which must be from the same mold as P 1966; the vases are detail for detail the same except for infinitesimal diferences which might be accounted for by the dulling of the mold impression. He calls this type of vase a Megarian bowl and interprets the scene as a Dionysiac triumphal procession.
Courby (1922), Vases Grecs a Reliefs, p. 440 ff. describes the same scene as represented on two bowls, BM G96 and a similar vase in Eleusis, and calls it "scenes from rural life", believing that the figure in the car cannot by Dionysos, that the small statue is Priapus, and the attendant figures are bucolic, not satyrs and maenads. He also calls the vases cylindrical pyxides, and unites eight exmples to form a class related to no other class of Hellenistic relief ware save perhaps the "Homeric" bowls. He sets the date to a period later than 280 B.C., or the invasion of Delphi by the Gauls (two fragments of the same ware were found with relief bowls, apparently Hellenistic, in tombs at Delphi). The context in which P 1966 was found, however, seems to be pure Roman and the clay and glaze are far inferior to the usual Hellenistic output.
Cf. also Hesperia 11 (1942), p. 184, where only scene "δ" is not represented on this bowl.
Context:   Gravelly pocket beside great drain.
Notebook Page:   766, 791
Negatives:   Leica, 82-60-2, 82-60-3, 82-64-10, 82-64-11, 82-64-12, 82-64-13, 82-64-14, 82-64-15, 87-29-21, 85-503, 85-504
PD Number:   PD 3083-409, DA 10766
Dimensions:   Diam. 0.14; H. 0.08
Date:   13 May 1933
Section:   Ζ
Grid:   Ζ:37/ΙΣΤ
Deposit:   H 12:4
Lot:   Lot Ζ 102
Period:   Roman
Bibliography:   Agora XXXII, no. 1706, fig. 54, pl. 85.
Published Type:   Courby (1922), p. 440 ff.
    Hesperia 11 (1942), p. 184.
    Walters (1896), p. 251 ff. and pl. XV
References:   Publication: Agora XXXII
Publication: Hesperia 11 (1942)
Drawing: PD 3083-401; PD 3083-402; PD 3083-403; PD 3083-404; PD 3083-405; PD 3083-406; PD 3083-407; PD 3083-408; PD 3083-409; PD 3083-410; PD 3083-411; PD 3083-412; PD 3083-413; PD 3083-414; PD 3083-415; PD 3083-416; PD 3083-417; PD 3083-418; PD 3083-419 (DA 10766)
Images (13)
Deposit: H 12:4
Lot: Ζ 102
Notebook: Ζ-4
Notebook: Ζ-5
Notebook: Ζ-7
Notebook Page: Ζ-4-95 (pp. 767-768)
Notebook Page: Ζ-5-10 (pp. 791-792)
Notebook Page: Ζ-7-68 (pp. 1295-1296)
Cards and Envelopes (4)