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This chapter reinterprets the origins of modern classical archaeology by examining the founding of the first archaeological institute, the Instituto di Corrispondenza Archeologica. Understanding the Instituto within its Italian contexts reveals the importance to this process of Magna Graecia its material culture and its scholars and simultaneously explains Magna Graecia's subsequent marginalization. The work and life of the institute's founder, the German Eduard Gerhard, are shown to be indebted to Neapolitan cultural institutions and antiquarianism, the richness of which is evinced through the scholarship of Andrea de Jorio. Analysis of the debate on the provenance of painted vases within the Instituto's community illuminates the emerging predilection of the new archaeological discipline for mainland Greece rather than Magna Graecia. The provincialization of South Italian scholarship accompanying this process of archaeological professionalization is explored through the relationship of the Calabrese scholar Vito Capialbi with the new archaeology promoted by the Instituto.

Drawing especially on the last two volumes of the Collection of Etruscan, Greek, and Roman Antiquities, this chapter offers a second close reading focusing on the intersection between the history of religion and the early history of art. These two volumes tell a story of stylistic development in Greek art, correlated with developments in Greek religion and society. This chapter argues that d’Hancarville anticipated the deep time of archaeology by relocating the origins of art and ritual close to the moment of human origins. This argument develops the implications for art history of the ethnographic approach examined in Chapter 4, examining d’Hancarville’s expansion of the historical timescale and his geographic expansion of the project from southern Italy to Magna Graecia. Though lacking a scientific method, d’Hancarville uses his broad knowledge of myth and religion to establish a long history for the ancient world that predates Homeric Greece.

The richest body of evidence for perceptions of the gods in Apulia consists of local figure decorated pottery made between about 430 and 300 BC. Though Greek in style, the vast majority of the pots on which the images appear have been found in Italic (non-Greek) tombs rather than in the tomb of Taranto, the one Greek city in Apulia. Most of the gods in these vase-paintings appear as peripheral figures, almost like spectators in a gallery. The one exception is Dionysos who is central to the scenes in which he appears. He is always shown as a beardless youth, often naked, a form that replaces the traditional bearded Dionysos on Athenian vases at about the same time it appears in Apulia. In this new form he is not the theatre god nor is he the god of wine; rather, he is a champion of the dead and a guarantor of personal afterlife.

This chapter examines several late archaic vase-paintings that are signed Smikros egraphsen or that include a characted labelled as Smikros. It argues that Smikros is not a real vase-painter but a fictitious creation of the great, late archaic Athenian vase-painter Euphronios, and that the anomalous features within vases allegedly painted by Smikros function as invitations to consider critically Smikros’ status as a symposiast and his identity as an artist. It draws parallels with the iambic poetry of Archilochos and Hipponax, who used fictional personae as first-person narrators, thus drawing critical attention to the persona of the author. Both Hipponax and (perhaps) Archilochos also engaged in mockery and one-upmanship towards sculptors construed as their rivals, and portrayed their own personas in an unfavourable light, mobilizing stereotypes about social class or social status. All these are paralleled in Euphronios’ ‘iambic’ portrayal of Smikros and of himself.

Turning from the form to the content of Collection of Etruscan, Greek, and Roman Antiquities, this chapter offers the concept of ‘ethnographic actualism’ to describe d’Hancarville’s strategy of deriving explanations of ancient vase paintings from contemporary Neapolitan customs and manners, including music, dance, and religion. The term ‘actualism’, drawn from the history of geology, also signals a set of disciplinary and formal analogies between the Antiquities and Campi Phlegraei. Beginning in the mid-eighteenth century, simultaneous work on the geology of Vesuvius and the archaeology of Herculaneum reinforced the affinities between antiquarianism and natural history, including ethnography. Although D’Hancarville changes his terms halfway through the book, he continues to pursue an explanation for the origins of art. Because this prehistory of art draws heavily upon environmental causes, ethnography, and other aspects of natural history, this chapter argues, it may be viewed productively as a natural history of art.

This chapter turns its attention to vase painting and finds evidence to support Aristotle's temporal distinction in general terms. The interplay of image and word had long been ubiquitous in the culture of ancient Greece. However, there are very few places where the two come close together as in the painted inscriptions on Greek vases: indeed, inasmuch as the inscription at times seem to be located with a view of filling gaps in the figure-scenes, the word can actually become a part of the image. This was a phenomenon that had a fairly rapid growth, then a pronounced peak, then a steady decline. The François Vase stands just at the point when the flood-gates were about to open on the inscribing of vase-scenes at Athens.

The Panathenaic festival held in honor of Athena in her eponymous city is usually presented synchronically with little discussion of how it developed over the many centuries of its existence (566 bc to 4th century ad). This paper, with a view to Attic vase-painting and the Parthenon frieze, examines the first century of this major festival diachronically and suggests the possibility that certain elements, that seem traditional like the apobates race and the presentation of a peplos, are in fact later additions prompted by the changing political dynamic of Athens. The festival was part of a civic ideology, in which performance and communication were fundamental concepts

The mythical Niobe was a boastful mother who was punished by Artemis and Apollo by the death of her children. This chapter attempts to contextualize a fragment from Aeschylus' fragmentary play and in so doing also informs our reading of several passages in extant tragedies, such as the Antigone and the Medea, where Niobe is also mentioned. It shows that the dual presence of death imagery and wedding imagery is evoked in these passages and explains the rationale behind the tradition of Niobe's eventual transformation into stone — an ever-weeping rock — as represented in several remarkable vase-paintings which are thought to have been directly inspired by Aeschylus' play.

Historians and archaeologists have long been interested in the Greek herm. However, several aspects of this topic can still be refined. The usual questions about these monuments bear on their origin, their signification, and their function. Many works have already addressed the question of the origin of the hermaic form, which seems rather clear today. But some uncertainties remain about the role, the signification and, in particular, about the function of herms: were they divine images, cult images of the god Hermes, or only boundary markers? By investigating iconographical evidence, this paper aims to shed new light on these questions.

After dealing with some theoretical issues involving the relation between art and text and a lekythos that appears to quote from the Hymn to Hermes, I examine some Attic vases that share themes with the Homeric Hymns, including the Exekias kylix of Dionysus and the dolphins and the name vase of the Persephone Painter, and analyse their visual strategies in relation to the hymnic narratives. I then focus on various depictions of Hermes and the stolen cattle, some of which have implications for the dating of the Hymn, before ending with the playful visual jokes on two cups attributed to the Brygos Painter that oblige the viewer to search for Apollo’s stolen cattle and the thief.

Attic, Apulian, Campanian, and Etruscan red-figure vase painting, and engraved bronze mirrors and cistae from Latium, attest the cultural milieu of fourth-century Italy and the ubiquity of its Dionysiac imagery. The ‘tragic fooleries’ (phlyakes) of Rhinthon of Tarentum and Blaisos of Capri, known as ‘Italian comedy’, may have featured in the Romans stage-games (ludi scaenici), for which contemporary evidence—from Fabius Pictor, quoted by Dionysius of Halicarnassus—becomes available in the late third century. Meanwhile, the defeat of Carthage in 241 and the establishment of relations with Ptolemaic Egypt made it possible to preserve poetry and performance on papyrus; the beginning of ‘Latin literature’, in the plays and poems of Livius Andronicus, was evidently influenced by the collection of texts in the Alexandrian library. But texts were not widely circulated. Naevius’ Bellum Punicum evidently existed only in the poet’s own prompt-copy, as was probably the norm.