Turning to the other limit of the subject, we find that nearly all the latest vases, belonging to the period of the Decadence, were manufactured in Southern Italy or Etruria. But nearly all bear so unmistakably the stamp of Greek influence, however degenerate and obscured, that we can only regard them as made by Greek artists settled in the colonies of Magna Graecia, or at any rate by native workers in direct imitation of the Greeks.
We may roughly define our historical limits as from 2500 B.C., the approximate age of the early pottery of Crete, Cyprus, and Hissarlik, down to 200 B.C., when the manufacture of painted vases came to an end under the growing dominion of Rome. It was formerly supposed that the senatorial edict of 186 B.C., forbidding the performance of Bacchanalian ceremonies in Italy, was the means of putting an end to this industry, but this is hardly borne out by facts; it rather died a natural death owing to the growing popularity of relief-work both in terracotta and in metal (see Chapters XI. and XXII.).
(2) Geographical.—Having defined our historical limits, it remains to consider the extent of Greek civilisation during that period, as attested by archaeological or other evidence. Besides the mainland of Greece and the islands of the Aegean Sea, the whole of Asia Minor may be regarded as in a measure Greek, although practically speaking only a strip of territory along the western coast became really Hellenised, and we shall not be concerned with pottery-finds in any other part of the country.[[48]] To the north-east, Greek colonisation penetrated as far as Kertch and other places in the Crimea, known to the ancients as Panticapaeum and the Bosphoros respectively. In the Eastern Mediterranean the island of Cyprus will demand a large share of our attention. Egypt, again, has yielded large numbers of vases, mostly from the two Greek settlements of Naukratis and Daphnae; and farther to the west along the north coast of Africa was the Greek colony of Kyrene, also a fruitful site for excavators.
The rest of the ground is covered by the island of Sicily and the peninsular portion of Italy from Bologna southwards. Greek vases have occasionally turned up in Spain, Gaul (i.e. France and North Italy), as at Marseilles (Massilia), where primitive Greek pottery has been found, and also in Sardinia; but the Western Mediterranean sites are chiefly confined to Southern Italy and Etruria. In fact, till recent years these regions were almost our only source of information on Greek pottery, as has already been pointed out.
Generally speaking, it may be said that all Greek vases have been found in tombs, but the circumstances under which they have been found differ according to locality. We propose in the succeeding section to say something of the nature of the ancient tombs, and the differences between those of Greece, Cyprus, Italy, and other sites.
Of finds on the sites of temples and sanctuaries it is not necessary to say much here; the explanation of such discoveries will receive some attention in Chapter IV., and the individual sites will also be noted in the next section of this chapter. It is a rare occurrence to find complete vases under these circumstances, as they generally owe their preservation to the fact that they have been broken in pieces and cast away as rubbish into holes and pits. The most notable instance is the remarkable series of fragments discovered on the Acropolis at Athens.
Greek tombs are not usually very remarkable in character,[[49]] being for the most part small and designed for single corpses; this may possibly account for the comparatively small size of the vases discovered on most Hellenic sites. In the earlier tombs at Athens and Corinth the pottery was found at a very great depth below the soil. The six shaft-graves in the circle at Mycenae are of great size, and contained large quantities of painted pottery; an exact reproduction of the sixth, found by M. Stamatakis in 1878, with its contents, is in the National Museum at Athens. Here also are reproductions of two typical fifth-century Greek tombs containing sepulchral lekythi,[[50]] and showing how the vases were arranged round the corpse.[[51]]
Rock-graves are seldom found in Greece, the normal form of tomb being a hole or trench dug in the earth, either filled in with earth or covered with tiles (as at Tanagra). The rock-grave is almost exclusively Asiatic, but some fine specimens were found at Kertch in the Crimea.[[52]] Some large ones have also been found in Rhodes,[[53]] but the most typical form of tomb there is a square chamber cut out of the hard clayey earth, approached by a square vertical shaft and a door. They generally contained single bodies, round which were ranged vases and terracotta figures. Sir A. Biliotti, in his diary of the excavations at Kameiros (1864), also records the finding of tombs cut in the clay in the form of longitudinal trenches, covered with flat stones forming a vaulted roof. Others were merely troughs cut in the surface of the rock and covered with stones and earth. In the shafts of the first type of tomb large jars or πίθοι were often found containing the bones of children (see page 152). Nearly all these tombs have yielded Greek vases of all dates. In the island of Karpathos[[54]] Mr. J. T. Bent found tombs containing early pottery, consisting of two or three chambers with stone benches round the sides.
FIG. 1. INTERIOR OF COFFIN FOUND AT ATHENS, SHOWING ARRANGEMENT OF VASES.