HESPERIA 7I (2002) READI NG PagesI-22 THE CHIGI VASE AB STRACT Longconsidered one of the technicalmasterpieces of ArchaicGreek vase painting,the Protocorinthian Chigi vase (ca. 640 B.C.) hasdefied attempts at interpretation.Its imageryhas most often been understood as a randomas- sortmentof exquisitebut unrelated scenes hunts,horsemanship, theJudg- mentof Paris, and a hoplite battle. It is arguedhere that there is infact a logic behindthe choice of scenes, and that the vase displays apliable thematic unity, focusingupon the stages of maturationofthe Corinthian male and the inter- penetrationof theeveryday, the exotic, the heroic, and the divine in thelives of mortals. Therewas a time,not very long ago, when no onebothered thinking much aboutwhy particular subjects were painted on particularGreek vases, or whyspecific scenes are found together on the samevase.l The harddis- tinctionbetween myth and genre was the onlydistinction that mattered, andsince a sceneon a pot hadto be one or the other,the choicewas in- herentlyuncontroversial: myth was always appropriate because, well, the Greeksliked myth, and genre scenes were natural, too, because the Greeks haddaily lives like everyone else. Consequently, the searchfor program- maticor thematicrelationships between two or morescenes on a single vasewas rarely undertaken: the iconographyof Greekvase painting was virtuallya randomthing. That time has passed.We now recognizecategories of imageryin whichthe distinctionbetween the generic and the mythological,between themortal and the heroic or divine, is notas strict. Consider certain scenes onAttic Late Geometric and Archaic vases, for example, where the every- 1. In completingthis article,I have veryhelpfill anonymous referees for facilitatedby residenceas a visiting benefitedgreatly from the assistanceand Hesperia)and, above all, Anna Maria scholarat the AmericanAcademy in adviceof manypeople, including Alfred Moretti(Villa Giulia), who graciously Rome,by a Universityof OregonSum- Acres,Judith Barringer, Larissa Bon- allowedme to removethe Chigivase merResearch Award, and by a University fante,Anna Rastrelli (Museo archeo- fromits vitrinefor studyand photo- of OregonHumanities Center Fellow- logico,Florence), Rex Wallace, the graphy.My researchwas also greatly ship.I amvery grateful to andfor all. American School of Classical Studies at Athens is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve, and extend access to Hesperia ® www.jstor.org 2 JEFFREY M. HURWIT daylife is givena heroiccharacter through the depiction of Dipylonshields or battlechariots,2 or where(on a few worksby the AmasisPainter) Dionysosmakes his epiphany among mortal men who are on routine hunt- ing expeditions.3 Overthe lastthree decades, the choiceof subjecthas alsoattracted intenseattention, from a variety of perspectives.In the1970s, for example, JohnBoardman began to interpretAttic vases painted during the Peisis- tratidera as political, even subversive, documents. Exekias's famous scene of Ajaxand Achilles amusing themselves with a boardgame when they shouldbe out lookingfor Trojans to 114 iS, in Boardman'sview, redly a thinlyveiled allusion to laxbehavior at the Battle of Pallene,ca. 546, when Atheniansallegedly played dice as Peisistratosattacked and won his final tyranny(Hdt. 1.63). The presenceof theLakonian cult heroes Kastor and Polydeukeson the backof the samevase supposedly indicates Exekias's pro-Spartansympathies as well: taken together, the sceneson the Vatican amphoracomprise an antityrannical manifesto cloaked in myth.Problem- aticas Boardman's "current affairs" approach sometimes is (andimportant as it is to rememberthat a privatelyowned pot is not the sameas a work of publicpropaganda), it has had more than its fairshare of proponents, andit hashelped clarify the ideologicaldimension-the political reflec- tions-of manyGreek images.5 The syntagmaticrelationship between scenes on manyother nonpo- liticalpots is alsoclearer now. We may not know why the Protoattic Nessos Painterchose to paintthe myth of Heraklesand Nessos on thebody of his name-vasein NewYork(ca. 675-650) or Exekias, on his fragmentarykrater fromthe north slope ofthe Acropolis (ca. 530), the combat over Patroklos's corpse.But the odd-looking lion attacking a deeron theneck panel of the Nessosamphora and the lion fights on the Exekiankrater surely function likeHomeric similes: the heroes fight centaurs or each other the way lions mauldeer or cattle.6More broadly, recent structuralist, anthropological, semiotic,and narratological studies have firmly established not onlythat black-and red-figure vase painting is a"construct" encoding cultural themes andsocial attitudes, but also that Archaic and Classical vase painters could approachtheir task with specificprograms and messages in mind,that thereis oftena correlationbetween subject and vase shape, and that the particularcombination of sceneson a vasecould have paradigmatic value (bypairing heroic and mortal behaviors, for instance).7 All in all,the searchfor thematicunity on a vaseis now an ortho- doxenterprise.8 One Archaicvessel has been especially fortunate in the 2. See,e.g., Snodgrass1980; Hurwit pp.69-71. Fora recentinvestigation of 7. The literatureis nowvast, but see, 1985band 1993, esp. pp. 34-36; and the use of the Dioskouroiin Athens,see forexample, the variousessays in Sinos1998. Shapiro1999; and for an uncompro- Berard1989, Hoffmann 1977 and 3. Seevon Bothmer1985, pp. 46-47; misingattack on thosewho would find 1988,Lissarrague 1990, Scheibler 1987, Stewart1987, pp.36-38. politicalcontent beneath Archaic imag- Steiner1993, and Shapiro 1997. 4. Vatican344; Beazley 1986, ery,see Neer2001, esp. pp.292-294. Generally,also Stansbury-O'Donnell pls.64-65. 6. NewYorkNessosamphora: 1999,pp. 118-157. 5. Majordocuments in the debate Hurwit1985a, p. 174 andfig. 72. 8. This is not to saythat the scenes includeBoardman 1972, 1978a,1984, Exekias'sNorth Slope krater: Beazley on a pot arealways thematicallyrelated; 1989;Williams 1980, p. 144,n.55; and 1986,pl. 73;Markoe 1989, esp. pp. 94- evenfor Bron and Lissarrague 1989, Cook 1987;see alsoSparkes l991a, 95, pl.5:a-b. p.21,"thereis veryoften no directlink, READING THE CHIGI VASE 3 devotionit has attracted:the FranSoisvase (ca. 570), by Kleitiasand Ergotimos,which (despite disagreement over details and possible poetic inspiration)has emerged as an anthologyof mythschosen to narratethe heroicpedigree, career, and death of Achilles,with a countercurrentof scenesrelating to the broadertheme of marriage unhappymarriage, on thewhole, but marriage nonetheless.With the battle of pygmiesand cranes on thefoot to supplycomic relief, the FranSoisvase is perhapsthe closest approximationto a "paintedepic" in the 6th century.9 I explorebelow the extent to whichsome organizing principle or prin- ciplesmay be at workon an evenearlier masterpiece of the Greekvase painter'scraft: a smallpolychrome pot whosepieces were found in 1881 duringthe excavationof a hugeEtruscan tumulus accidentally discovered on the propertyof PrinceMario Chigi, atop Monte Aguzzo, above the villageof Formello,about 3.5 krnnorth of Veii.The vesselis nowon dis- playin the VillaGiulia.l° THE VASE The Chigivase (Fig. 1) is perhapsthe earliest-known example of a kindof winejug conventionallyknown as an olpe an ovoidor saggingpitcher witha flaringmouth and a verticalribbed handle that is fixedto the rim with a pronglikefeature ending in circulardisks (rotelles).l1 It is usually assignedeither to the secondphase of theMiddle Protocorinthian period (MPCII) or to the LateProtocorinthian (LPC) period, but it is at any ratealmost always given a dateof around650-640.12 otherthan proximity, between the he calls"paradigmatic extension." the vasesimilarly. Mingazinni (1976) differentimages decorating a vase." 9. Stewart1983; Schaus 1986; hasattempted to reviseradically Archaic And thereare still a few scholarswho Carpenter1986, pp. 1-11; Haslam potterychronologies and dates the Chigi insistthat the searchfor iconographic 1991;Isler-Kerenyi 1997. vaseto ca.570; his argumentshave not coherenceon a vase(or, for that matter, 10.Villa Giulia 22679; Amyx 1988, beenwidely accepted. in the sculptureof a temple)is a waste p.32, no. 3. Salmon(1984, p. 106) notesthat of time,the anachronisticexercise of a 11.The modernuse of theword althoughCorinthian vases had found modern,literate temperament that olpe,restricted to suchovoid wine jugs, theirway to Etruriafrom the mid-8th (conditionedby fixedtexts) seeks doesnot correspondwith ancientuse, centuryon, high-qualityCorinthian programmaticlogic and thematic unity when"olpe" could indicate the small lmports. began to arrlve. ln. slgnltlcant. ,* wherethe ancientmind (conditioned perfumed-oilflask we knowas the numbersaround 650 (hisdate for the by a predominantlyoral culture) did aryballos;see Amyx1988, pp. 488-489, Chigivase). This is preciselythe time not. See Small1999, p. 573, n. 24, 560-561;Sparkes l991b, p. 63.The whenEtruscan society experienced who believessuch attempts are doomed Etruscansloved the shapeand "greatersocial stratification and to failure"because [the problem of faithfullycopied it in vastnumbers; centralisationof power. accompanied iconographicunity] is solelya mod- Amyx1988, pp. 488, 686. by the developmentof an increasingly ernone." Cf. Ridgway1999, pp. 82- 12. Benson(1986, pp. 105-106) elaborateand varied elite material 94, who believesthat the sculptural placesthe beginningof the Chigi culture"(Arafat and Morgan 1994, programsof ancienttemples did in- Painter'scareer in the MPC II