SCHEME OF ALPHABETS USED ON GREEK VASES
FIG. 173.
With the great impulse given to vase-painting at the beginning of the sixth century by the development of the art in Corinth, Chalkis, and Athens (especially in Corinth), the number of inscribed vases rapidly increases. Among the earliest examples are those remarkable painted pinakes found at Corinth (Vol. I. p. [316]), nearly all of which have dedicatory inscriptions, while in most cases the names are given of the deities, Poseidon and Amphitrite, to whom they were dedicated, and whose figures appear on them. They may be dated 600–550 B.C. The custom of inscribing names on works of art is illustrated by other products of this period, as we have already noted in the case of the chest of Kypselos; and they occur on the early bronze reliefs from Olympia,[[2110]] the Samothrace relief in the Louvre,[[2111]] the archaic reliefs at Delphi, and the newly found painted metopes at Thermon,[[2112]] as well as later on the paintings of Polygnotos.
On the Euphorbos pinax already mentioned[[2113]] appear the names of Menelaos (
), Hector (
), and Euphorbos (
