FIG. 40. LUCANIAN KRATER.
The last variety of krater (Fig. [40]) is formed by a peculiar type of vase, apparently devised by the Iapygian aborigines of Southern Italy,[[582]] which has a wide mouth and sloping shoulder, and sometimes a high neck. Its peculiarity is that it has four handles, two upright and two horizontal, to the sides of which large discs are attached, whence its Italian name is vaso con maniche a rotelle, from the wheel or rosette patterns painted on the discs. This feature caused Panofka to give it the name of νεστορίς, with reference to the famous four-handled cup of Nestor (Il. xi. 632). It need hardly be pointed out that there can be little in common between this form and the drinking-cup used by the Homeric hero, in spite of the fact that the latter was too heavy for an ordinary man to lift. We need not suppose that Nestor’s cup (concerning which see below, p. [181]) was larger than an ordinary “loving-cup,” and the poet was probably guilty of a pardonable exaggeration. As a painted vase, this four-handled krater is peculiar to Lucania, and it is interesting to note that it sometimes appears depicted on Lucanian vases as used in daily life.[[583]]
FIG. 41. PSYKTER.
Closely related to the krater is the ψυκτήρ or ψυγεύς, a wine-cooler (from ψύχω, “cool”), which was used for cooling wine by means of snow or cold water.[[584]] The extant specimens are but few in number and vary in form. The British Museum possesses a very remarkable specimen in the form of a B.F. panel amphora (B 148),[[585]] with double walls and bottom, and a large spout on one side, through which the snow or cold water was introduced into the outer space; it was afterwards withdrawn through an aperture in the bottom.[[586]] Similar vases in the “Chalcidian” style are also known. After the beginning of the R.F. period a new type was introduced in the shape of a vessel with a short neck, the body of which bulges out towards its base, and is supported on a high stem; it generally has two small eared handles (Fig. [41]). Several R.F. examples are known, of which two are in the British Museum,[[587]] and three or four in the Louvre; the British Museum also possesses a late B.F. specimen (B 299). The designs are painted in a frieze round the vase.
The ἀκρατοφόρος, or vessel for holding unmixed wine, seems to have been another name for the ψυκτήρ; Pollux (vi. 90) says the difference was that it was supported on small knobs (lit. small knucklebones) instead of a stem.
FIG. 42. DEINOS OR LEBES.
Another name identified in antiquity with the ψυκτήρ is that of the δῖνος (sometimes spelled δεῖνος); but the identity was more probably one of usage than of form.[[588]] As to the latter, there is considerable discrepancy in the accounts of the grammarians[[589]]; one calls it a deep cup tapering down to a point; another, probably more correctly, since it was certainly not a drinking-vessel, a clay vessel for wine without a base, but rounded underneath. In virtue of this description the name has usually been applied to a class of vase, commoner in the earlier periods than the later, and more often found on Greek sites than on Italian, which has a rounded base without foot, and no handles (Fig. [42]). These vases are found as early as the seventh century in Greece, and were very common at Naukratis, appearing also in most of the B.F. fabrics. That they were used to contain the ashes of the dead is shown by the B.M. example already referred to (p. [146]), which belongs to the end of the R.F. period.[[590]] In Southern Italy this form of vase is generally placed on a separate high moulded stem, and has a cover with an ornamental knob. A variety with hemispherical cover nearly equal in size to the vase itself has been identified with the ἡμίτομος (“cut in half”), a form mentioned by Athenaeus.[[591]]
This type of vase has more usually been described by the name of λέβης, denoting a kettle or caldron; but though the form of the λέβης was practically the same (as we may gather from the fact of its always being placed on a tripod), the purpose for which it was used (i.e. for boiling water) and the fact that it was always of metal, suggest that it is not such an appropriate name as δῖνος for this form of painted vase. The λέβης is constantly mentioned in Homer, both as a cooking-vessel and as a washing-basin.[[592]] Herodotos[[593]] says that the Scythians used a λέβης for cooking flesh, which resembled the Lesbian krater, but was much larger. It was also the vessel in which the ram, and subsequently Pelias, were boiled by Medeia; and may be seen depicted in several B.F. representations of that story.[[594]] A golden lebes was placed at each angle of the temple of Zeus at Olympia.[[595]] It is also the name of the vessel used by the Boeotians in their ingenious contrivance at the siege of Delion.[[596]] To its use as a cinerary urn in the tragic poets we have already alluded.