2. Corinthian vases with incised scale-patterns or imbrications.
3. Corinthian vases with floral decoration, ground-ornaments, and figures not incised.
4. Similar vases, but with figures incised. [Classes 2 to 4 roughly cover the seventh century.]
5. Corinthian vases without ground-ornaments, and with large friezes of animals or human figures; incised details. 600–550 B.C.
1. Although the priority of the so-called Proto-Corinthian or Corinthian Geometrical pottery is certain, the term is, strictly speaking, applied to vases of different dates, which are only connected by form with the original fabrics.[[1015]] The distinction lies in the fact that the earlier vases have linear decoration without purple accessories or incised lines, both of which occur in the more developed examples as the result of the revolution effected by the Corinthian painters.[[1016]] They therefore fall into two main classes, of which the earlier includes the larger vases with purely Geometrical decoration of a simple type, doubtless reflecting the original local Geometrical pottery, and sometimes with zones of animals. The figures are merely in black silhouette. In the later class the vases are small, sometimes diminutive, but of developed style, with zones of animals of the later Corinthian type, and with purple accessories and incised lines. The earlier class date from the eighth to the seventh century B.C.; the later cannot be older than the sixth. For the dating of the earlier group some evidence may be derived from the results of excavations at Syracuse, founded from Corinth in 735 B.C. In its earliest cemeteries, as also at Megara Hyblaea, numerous Proto-Corinthian vases of the earlier class have been found.[[1017]] In Italy Proto-Corinthian wares were found in trench-tombs of about 750–650 B.C., and in the earlier chamber-tombs (see Chapter [XVIII].). The older class disappears by the end of the seventh century, when the typical Corinthian aryballos (see p. [197]) takes its place.
Besides Corinth and Syracuse, Proto-Corinthian vases have been found in considerable numbers at the Argive Heraion, at Thebes, and in the island of Aegina, and more rarely at Tiryns, Athens, Eleusis, Tanagra, Smyrna, and Hissarlik. Out of thirty in the Berlin Museum, eight certainly came from Corinth. Taking this into consideration, and also the Corinthian origin of Syracuse, it is evident that there is, apart from their style, a strong presumption in favour of their Corinthian origin.[[1018]] As long ago, however, as 1877 Helbig cast doubts on this and proposed to locate them at the rival commercial centre of Chalkis.[[1019]] He was followed by Dümmler, Klein, and others,[[1020]] but recently Aegina[[1021]] and Boeotia[[1022]] have also been suggested, the latter at least for the earlier class. Yet more recently the pendulum has swung in another direction, that of Argos,[[1023]] chiefly in view of the extensive finds at the Heraion (not yet published). Two specimens have recently been made known which bear inscriptions, but neither yields very definite evidence. One is a signed vase (with the name of Pyrrhos[[1024]]), in which the alphabet is mixed, but mainly Chalcidian in character; in the other[[1025]] the inscriptions are fragmentary, but though the letter Σ appears in Argive, not Corinthian, form, the Λ is not of the peculiar Argive
type, but
. The Pyrrhos inscription cannot be much later than 700 B.C., and thus ranks as the earliest known “signature.” Mr. Hoppin,[[1026]] arguing from the Heraion finds, regards the Proto-Corinthian fabrics as a direct offshoot of Mycenaean pottery, not as forming a link between the Geometrical and the Corinthian. The term, however, may be preserved, as implying priority in point of time, and it cannot be said as yet that the Corinthian theory is absolutely disproved.