FIG. 109. HYDRIA WITH OPAQUE PAINTING ON BLACK GROUND, FROM CURIUM
(BRITISH MUSEUM).

It is interesting to note that specimens of this ware are sometimes found on Greek sites, such as Athens, Myrina in Asia Minor, Melos, and Cyprus. At Curium in the latter island a fine hydria in this style, with figures on the shoulder (Fig. [109]), was found in 1895.[[1496]] Whether these were imported from Italy or made elsewhere is quite uncertain.[[1497]]

FIG. 110. PHIALE WITH LATIN INSCRIPTION: “THE CUP OF AEQUITIA”
(BRITISH MUSEUM).

Another interesting but much smaller class which belongs to the latter half of the third century is formed by a group of vases, mostly small phialae, which are distinguished by bearing painted Latin inscriptions.[[1498]] Some also have figures (Eros, a female head, etc.), which are treated in the same manner as the Gnatia vases. It is probable that Rome was the place of origin of this class, in spite of the fact that most of them were found in Etruria.[[1499]] But the Latin language at that time was more at home in Campania than anywhere else outside Rome. The inscriptions take the form: AECETIAI POCOLOM, Aequitiae poculum (B.M. F 604 = Fig. [110]); IVNONENES POCOLOM, Junonis poculum; and so on,—Saturn, Mercury, and other Roman deities being included in the list. Reasons have been given for dating this series in the First Punic War, 260–240 B.C.

Formerly it was universally supposed that the art of vase-painting was brought to an end in 186 B.C. by the action of the Roman Senate when they issued their edict against Bacchanalian ceremonies, which undoubtedly affected Southern Italy. But this was only a natural view to be taken by writers who associated the painted vases with the Eleusinian mysteries and similar ideas; on other grounds it is hardly tenable. Especially in regard to the general putting back of the chronology of the art, it is impossible to suppose that painted vases with mythological subjects were still made in the second century. The character of the mid-third-century vases just described is sufficient to indicate that they represent the last stage to which Greek painting could ever have reached.

§ 3. Figure-Vases and Vases with Reliefs

We propose to conclude this sketch of the history of Greek vase-painting with a few words on a principle which, while always present in Greek pottery, yet at all times lay in the background, until the latest stages of the art, when it entered on a phase of increased popularity. This is the principle of combining the ceramic with the plastic art—in other words, the manufacture of vases in the form of human or animal figures or heads.

It has already been noted, in discussing the primitive pottery of Troy (p. [257]), that the idea of associating the vase form and the human form is a very old one. At Troy it is of course seen in its most rudimentary stage, when correct modelling was a thing quite beyond the potter’s scope, and he could only roughly indicate features and limbs on the surface of the vase, which thus always remained a vase, and the figure idea never gained, as in later times, the predominance. In the Mycenaean period the advance in modelling was great, but only reached a high level in Crete. It is only since the discoveries at Knossos that we have been able to account for the astounding group of porcelain rhyta from the Enkomi tombs in Cyprus (see Plate [X]., fig. 4),[[1500]] which at first sight seem to have been made by a sixth-century artist, so admirable and lifelike are they. Although the rams’ heads bear the palm, the female heads are, for the period, a tour de force, so advanced in type that it would be pardonable to argue—apart from the circumstances of their discovery—that they must belong to a later stage of art.