The ‘lekythoi’ were the chief exported article, or at least the most favoured grave-offering of the customers abroad. But one cannot call it the favourite shape of Protocorinthian workmanship: it must not be forgotten that we have only an accidental selection of this ware, due to the discovery of two native sanctuaries (the Argive Heraion and the Temple of Aphrodite in Aegina), and many graves in the Argolid, Attica, and Boeotia, in the East (Thera, Rhodes, Asia Minor) and in the West (Sicily, Italy, Carthage). Wherever this ware came it exercised a stimulating influence, and in many places evoked local copies ([p. 52]); more than other districts the West was dominated by this Art. As the oldest Etruscan wall-paintings, those of the Grotta Campana at Veii and the Tomba dei Leoni at Caere, are quite under the influence of Sicyonian-Corinthian painting, so the class called into existence a multitude of imitations in Sicily and Italy, particularly at Kyme.
The extraordinarily wide currency of the ware denotes not merely its superiority, but also that of the trade-centre which exported it. This need not necessarily have been identical with the place of manufacture. Many signs, especially the occurrence of the vases in quantity in the Corinthian colony of Syracuse, point to the fact that the great trading city of Corinth took over the sale of the ware and gradually replaced it by its own products. The vases localized with certainty in Corinth by their alphabet give an immediate continuation of the Protocorinthian, and one
PLATE XX.
[Fig. 41]. ANIMAL FRIEZE FROM AN EARLY CORINTHIAN JUG.
[Fig. 42]. ANIMAL FRIEZE FROM A CORINTHIAN JUG.
can only ask whether this manufacture simply transferred its chief workshops to Corinth or whether Corinth in the closest imitation of late Protocorinthian ware developed a new style, which thanks to the commercial capacity of the Corinthians could drive the older competitor out of the field: its sphere of influence, as we saw, replaces the Protocorinthian, nay, encroaches still further on the Ionian region (Samos, Naukratis, Pontus).