Courtship Scenes in Attic Vase-Painting Author(s): H. A. Shapiro Source: American Journal of Archaeology, Vol. 85, No. 2 (Apr., 1981), pp. 133-143 Published by: Archaeological Institute of America Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/505033 Accessed: 15-04-2015 16:44 UTC REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article: http://www.jstor.org/stable/505033?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Archaeological Institute of America is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to American Journal of Archaeology. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 165.124.144.190 on Wed, 15 Apr 2015 16:44:07 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Courtship Scenes in Attic Vase-Painting H.A. SHAPIRO (Pls. 24-28) Abstract Attic "courtship scenes," as Beazley first termed Scenesof men courtingyouths on Attic black-and them,2 in trying to correlate their content with the red-figure vases of ca. 560-475, first collected by testimonia of Plato, Aristophanes and other writ- in are Beazley 1947, re-examinedwithin their histori- ers, even as Dover himself the cal and societalcontext. Their the though, recognizes, popularityduring bulk of the material is in time Peisistratidperiod is seen as a reflectionof aristo- literary separated from the bulk of the artistic cratic taste fosteredby the Tyrants, especiallyHip- by roughly ioo years.3 parchos.In particular,close ties betweenPeisistratid The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the Athens and Ionian Greece,exemplified by the pres- courtship as a genre scene, focussing in particular ence of the poet Anakreonat the court of Hippias, on a not relevant to Dover's in- the creationof a culturalmilieu in which the question directly suggest or treated earlier scholars. that erastes/eromenosrelationship and its depictionsin quiry by Assuming art might flourish. the love relationship of men and boys was a con- The gradual loss of interest in courtship scenes, spicuous feature of Athenian society throughout starting about 51o and most marked after 480, is the Archaic and Classical periods, what historical, as a reaction interpreted popular against upper-class social and political circumstances might account mores with Peisistratid associations, first under for its in a lim- the new Kleisthenicdemocracy, and especiallydur- depiction vase-painting during only ing the post-Persianmovement toward radical de- ited time period of a little less than a century, ca. mocracy. 560-475 B.C.? First, let us take a brief look at the iconography Sir Kenneth Dover's recent study of Greek of courtship scenes. In 1947, Beazley collected over Homosexuality has provided us with a modern and one hundred examples, and subsequently others judicious treatment of a subject long neglected in were added to his lists, principally by Schauenburg classical scholarship.' The core of the book is com- in I965.' Beazley recognized that the great major- posed of a thorough scrutiny of Aischines i and ity of courting scenes adhere, within rather narrow other written sources, principally of the fifth and limits, to one of several artistic schemata, and on fourth centuries, which relate to the role of homo- this basis he divided them into three main icono- sexual behavior in Greek society. Inevitably, a sec- graphic groups which he labelled alpha, beta and ond important source of information for Dover is gamma. Attic (and occasionally non-Attic) vase-painting of One of the finest of all courtship scenes, on an the sixth and first half of the fifth centuries, which amphora in Wiirzburg attributed to the Phrynos offers ample documentation of the homoerotic re- Painter (pl. 24, fig. i),5 includes all the essential lationship between men and boys practiced in Ath- features of group alpha. The pair stand opposite ens. He gleans some valuable information from the each other, the erastes, or lover, on the left, his be- * Brief versions of this paper were presented to the College des Sokles," AA 1965, 845-67. The same scholar makes further Art Association and at Columbia University in 1977. I am additions in AthMitt 90 (i975) 118, n. 118 and n. I9. Apart grateful to Christoph Clairmont for reading a draft and to from these lists, courtship scenes have seldom received interpre- Ewen Bowie for helpful comments. tative study. It is striking, for example, that T.B.L. Webster, 1 London 1978; hereafter cited as GH. References to illustra- Potter and Patron in ClassicalAthens (London 1972), who re- tions in this book are given not by plate or figure number (for lies heavily on the evidence of kalos inscriptions,and who cata- none are used), but by the numbers assigned in the List of logues and discusses virtually every type of genre scene in Attic Vases, pp. 206-25. vase-painting (including "men and women conversing," "men 2 J.D. Beazley, "Some Attic Vases in the Cyprus Museum," visiting women," "men kissing or embracing women,") omits ProcBritAc 33 (1947) 3-31. any referenceto courtship scenes. 3GH 7. 5 Wiirzburg 241; ABV 169,5; E. Langlotz, Griechische Vasen 4 K. Schauenburg, "Erastes und Eromenos auf einer Schale in Wiirzburg (Munich 1932) pls. 64-65. This content downloaded from 165.124.144.190 on Wed, 15 Apr 2015 16:44:07 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 134 H.A. SHAPIRO [AJA 85 loved, the eromenos on the right. The erastes stands Group gamma represents the culmination of the with knees bent and arms in what Beazley dubbed encounter, with man and youth intertwined. In the "up and down" position: with his left hand he similar scenes on either side of a mid-sixth century chucks the a kind of tactic boy's chin, diversionary amphora in London (pl. 25, figs. 4 and 5),1 an while the lowered hand zeroes in on its tar- right embracing couple in the center is surrounded by on an in get. Once, amphora by Lydos Nicosia,6 other pairs of lovers who are still at the alpha or the blocks the wooer's reach with a boy protective beta stage. For the erastes the sexual climax is but most often his defensive reaction gesture, only reached intercrurally, that is, by rubbing his penis is to the older man's raised left wrist.' Often grasp between the thighs of the boy. As several scholars in scenes of group alpha, including that on the have remarked,"2courtship scenes never become Nicosia amphora, the is composition completed by more than this, in contrast to the the addition of nude men on either side of explicit striking dancing common and scenes of het- the central to the sense of excite- relatively quite explicit pair, heighten erosexual intercourse on Attic a ment.8 vases, point to which I shall return later."3 Beazley's group beta depicts the giving of love The and of gifts, which may be held either by the erastes or chronology frequency courtship scenes, in about have been care- their recipient, depending upon the exact moment starting 560 B.C., worked out. with a few chosen in the encounter. In most cases the gift is a fully Using Beazley's lists, more recent Frel tabulated the fol- gamecock, though hares are second in popularity additions, Jifri and several other animals, including dogs, stags, lowing figures by quarter century: 12 representa- even panther cubs, occur as well. On the front and tions belonging to the second quarter of the sixth back of an amphora in Providence, for example century; 50 in the third quarter; 57 in the last quar- (pl. 24, figs. 2-3),' an overzealous wooer bestows ter, of which about half comprise a group of hastily a virtual bestiary of gifts on his young eromenos. mass-produced skyphoi designated by Beazley the The significance of the cock as the standard love CHC Group, because each has a courtship and a gift may go beyond its practical value-cock-fight- chariot scene; and only nine for the years after 500, ing was a favorite game among the adolescent boys mostly red-figure.'4The very latest fall in the dec- who received such gifts-to assume a deliberately ade of the 470s and include a fine cup by the Bry- erotic connotation. This is the apparent implica- gos Painter in Oxford (pl. 25, fig. 6)"1 and a frag- tion, for example, of a pyxis lid by the Eretria mentary pelike in Mykonos by the Triptolemos Painter in Worcester, Massachusetts, on which Painter.16 gamecocks are released from the hands of two Thus the floruit of courting scenes occupies the youthful Erotes.1o In addition, the cock's age-old years ca. 550-500, when Attic black-figure itself reputation as the exemplar of virile masculinity reached its acme and then went into decline, in among birds would bear a special relevance in the quality though not quantity. Some iconographic present context. differences between earlier and later courtship 6 Nicosia C440; ABV 109,28; Beazley (supra n. 2) pl. i. associations of cock-fighting see also Herbert Hoffmann, "Hah- 7 This is illustrated on the Wiirzburg amphora, pl.