Visual Language and Concepts of Cult on the "Lenaia Vases"

Author(s): Sarah Peirce

Source: Classical Antiquity, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Apr., 1998), pp. 59-95
Published by: University of California Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25011074
Accessed: 06-03-2018 15:44 UTC

REFERENCES
Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/25011074?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents
You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
http://about.jstor.org/terms

University of California Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend
access to Classical Antiquity

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 SARAH PEIRCE

Visual Language and Concepts of Cult

on the "Lenaia Vases"

INTRODUCTION
The group of some seventy Attic vases of fifth-century date known tradition
ally as the "Lenaia vases" is a famous one, the subject of dozens of articles and of
two monographs, by A. Frickenhaus in 1912 and by F. Frontisi-Ducroux in 1991.1
The "Lenaia vases" owe this fame to their potential value as evidence for fifth
century Dionysiac religion. The scenes on the vases show, with varying detail, a
cult-image attended by the ecstatic female followers of Dionysos conventionally
called bacchai or maenads (e.g. figs. 1, 2a).2 Any analysis of these vases must
address two key questions: first, what in the scenes derives from myth, what from
reality; and, second, what are the ritual acts performed by the bacchai? Much
twentieth-century scholarship on the vases resolves the first of these issues with
the hypothesis that the imagery is a visual record of a ritual as it was observed by

Parts of this paper were presented in 1996-1997 at the Center for Hellenic Studies, Johns Hopkins,
and Harvard. I thank the listeners for their comments. The study owes much to discussions with
Gloria Ferrari and Albert Henrichs, to whom I am most grateful.
Abbreviations
L: L numbers refer to the catalogue of "Lenaia vases" in Frontisi-Ducroux 1991.
V: V numbers refer to the catalogue of vases in Van Straten 1995.
1. Frickenhaus 1912 collected twenty-nine of the vases for his study; his lists and illustrations
are supplanted by those of Frontisi-Ducroux 1991. Frontisi-Ducroux 1991 chs. 1-3 summarizes the
history of scholarship on the vases; to her comprehensive bibliography add Halm-Tisserant 1991;
Hamilton 1992 134-38; Simon 1995; Benson et al. 1995; Carpenter 1997 79-82.
2. "Bacche" was the usual term for this figure in antiquity; see Villanueva Puig 1980. "Maenad"
is a relatively rare poetic synonym for "bacche"; the customary use by current scholars of "maenad"
instead of "bacche" to designate the female ecstatic worshipper has tended to reify a modern and
unhistorical redefinition of this ecstatic worshipper. I regard "maenad" and "bacche" as having been
used in antiquity to designate the same figure; I will use the term "bacche" throughout. Further on the
terminology below at n. 110.

? 1998 BY THE REGENTS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
60 CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY Volume 17/No. 1/April 1998

the vase-painter, and that this record has been embellished by the painter with
mythical elements. Proponents of this view often answer the second question by
identifying the ritual so pictured as an event of one of two Athenian festivals, the
Lenaia or the Anthesteria, and using the testimonia for these festivals as a guide
to what is taking place in the scenes. The choice between these two festivals
ultimately hinges on whether the scenes are seen to be concerned essentially with
wine or with maenads, mutually exclusive alternatives in much current theory
about Dionysos.3
In this paper I analyze a coherent subset of the "Lenaia vases," twenty-eight
red-figure stamnoi, listed in the Appendix. The obverse of these vases shows
the cult-image standing behind a table normally set with stamnoi or with food
or with the two together; at this table bacchai hold or set out stamnoi, or ladle
wine from them (e.g. figs. 2a, 3, 4a). The reverse of many of these vases shows
the bacchai dancing holding skyphoi (e.g. figs. 2b, 3b). These twenty-eight vases
have attracted most of the attention given to the "Lenaia vases" in the scholarly
literature; the decipherment of the iconography of the group is rightly seen as the
key to an understanding of the corpus as a whole. My analysis has the historical
objective of relating the scenes on these vases to other kinds of information about
Dionysiac religion. However, I do not propose that the historical content of the
vases consists of the record the scenes preserve of the way some actual event
looked while it was occurring. Instead, I understand the imagery as discussing in
a visual analogue to language a recurring event in the life of Dionysos and its en
actment in cult. I will show that the imagery describes the bacchai as worshipping
Dionysos with theoxenia, in which they celebrate a thysia, prepare a banquet and
symposion for the god, and finish with a komos. Further, I propose, the imagery
provides a social commentary on the performance of such normally masculine
rituals by women. In arguing that the imagery clearly identifies this sequence of
common actions I take issue with several views prominent in the literature on
these vases: that the ritual performed by the bacchai on these vases is of a sort
unknown to us-an otherwise undocumented wine ceremony, for example; or that
the imagery is cryptic, misleading, or without specific significance.4

3. The term "Lenaenvasen" originates in the study of Frickenhaus 1912, arguing that the vases
depict the Attic festival of the Lenaia. Frickenhaus was followed by Deubner, who saw the scenes as
showing maenadism, and countered by Nilsson, who proposed the scenes concern a wine ceremony
rather than maenads, and connected them with the Anthesteria. The debate is carried on by adherents
of these two views. On the theoretical issues involved, see below at nn. 41-43 and 109 and ff.;
on the dispute see Frontisi-Ducroux 1991 41-83, with bibliography. There is no consensus on the
subject. Much recent scholarship (e.g. Frontisi-Ducroux 1991, Hamilton 1992 134-38, both citing
precursors, and Carpenter 1997 79-82) abandons the assumptions behind the quest to identify the
scenes with a festival. I view the festival hypothesis as substituting dubious equations of imagery
and texts for a close analysis of the imagery, and as an obstacle to an understanding of the vases. The
title "Lenaia vases" is used here as a term of convenience.
4. For the scenes as showing a wine-ritual not attested elsewhere, below at n. 41. On cryptic
imagery, e.g. Frontisi-Ducroux 1991 83, proposing that the imagery does not inform the viewer

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
PEIRCE: Visual Language and Concepts of Cult 61

I. ICONOGRAPHICAL METHOD
I approach the interpretation of the scenes on the "Lenaia vases" by
on their conventions. The conventional nature of scenes on Attic vases has
been given considerable attention by scholars. This concern with con
characterizes a range of newer approaches to vase-painting analysis whi
common that they see the imagery on vases as analogous to language.5 A
reading of a vase starts from the assumption that the imagery conveys to
not the physical appearance of something seen by the painter, but rath
concepts.6 The imagery is accordingly taken as a formal system, a co
elements have conventional values.7 Reading the vase is a process of d
requiring of the reader familiarity with the senses that the various elemen
image conventionally convey. The ancient reader had this familiarity natur
modem reader acquires it by tracking imagery in as broad a range of oc
as possible and working out its functions in different contexts. This p
tracking imagery in other contexts is crucial to my identification of t
of the bacchai on the "Lenaia vases" as explicit renderings of familiar
My reading of the subgroup of the "Lenaia vases" that I discuss is c
with one aspect in particular of the iconography as a conventional sy
signification: the way that imagery creates meaning by visual allusio
terns of imagery familiar to the viewer.9 I see the mechanism of th
"Lenaia vases" as manipulation of the scene type. The repertory of A
painting is made up of a large number of scene-types, conventional com

whether or not the women drink the wine (apparently a revision of an earlier opinion
see below, n. 45). On inconsequential or false imagery: the argument between Deubner
and their followers (above, n. 3) hinges on which elements in the scenes should be dis
meaningless or misleading; on the scenes as "stock," "unspecific" Dionysiac imagery
1997 81.
5. This methodology is associated in particular with the scholars around J.-P. Vernant in Paris
and C. Berard in Lausanne; see for the various approaches of this Paris-Lausanne school Bkrard,
C. Bron, J.-L. Durand et al. 1989; on method also Lissarrague and Schnapp 1981; Berard 1983;
Bron, Viret Bernal, Berard et al. 1991. Generally on the approach, Beard 1991 12-35.
6. "L'imaginaire sociale" as termed by the Paris-Lausanne school; Lissarrague and Schnapp
1981 282; similarly, Ferrari nd a, Introduction, with reference to C. Robert's Volksvorstellung. This
idea of the reference of imagery undercuts the myth/reality distinction of the traditional view; on
the lack of such a distinction see e.g. Lissarrague and Schnapp 1981 285; Beard 1991 20-21;
Sourvinou-Inwood 1991 22 n. 28.
7. On codification of convention, explicitly, e.g. Bazant 1991; Beard 1991 17-18; Berard 1983
16; Sourvinou-Inwood 1991 12-13; Carpenter 1997 6-9.
8. Carpenter 1997 6-9 discusses methodology very similar to that which I outline here; in
his treatment of the "Lenaia vases," however, he identifies the sense of the conventions employed
differently than I do, leading to a very different reading of the scenes. The employment of conventions
of Attic vase-painting in the "Lenaia vases" makes impossible the theory of de la Geni6re 1987 that
the iconography of the vases is Etruscan rather than Attic. For this point see also Frontisi-Ducroux
1991 69-70.
9. On imagery signifying by reference to imagery rather than to "real life," see Berard in
Berard, Bron, Durand et al. 1989 25, 34; similarly Mackay 1996.

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 62 CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY Volume 17/No. 1/April 1998

repeated by different painters with a limited range of variation; examples are

the scene of Heraldes and the lion, of the departure of a warrior, of the sympo
sion.'0 The scene-type is constructed of repeated elements: composition, poses,
figures, dress and accoutrements. I view the assemblage of repeated elements
as creating a familiar visual pattern which identifies for the viewer a particular
scene-type.
The scene-types themselves convey cultural messages; the scene of the sym
posion, for example, can be understood as a visual discussion of the psychological
experience of partying and drunkenness, or of what defines the social 6lite that cel
ebrates symposia (to list just two possibilities).11 My contention is that the visual
pattern and the various messages it conventionally conveys-its discourses-are
present as generic expectation in the mind of the viewer who possesses a cul
tural faniuliarity with the repertory of scene-types. 12 Elements of the pattern-for
example, an individual symposiast or reveler from the sympotic repertory-are
visual cues which call up to such a viewer's mind both the complete pattern of the
scene-type and its conventional import.'3 In the "Lenaia vases" we will see an
unusual phenomenon, recombinations of elements derived from different scene
types. These recombinations produce novel scene-types, variations, seen only
on the "Lenaia vases," of normal visual patterns. The messages of the "Lenaia
vases," I will try to show, are thus created not just by the fulfillment of generic
expectation, but by its violation, by the incongruities of the novel recombinations
of elements.

II. THE SCENES ON THE "LENAIA VASES"

A. THE CORPUS
The term "Lenaia vase" is conventional, referring to a type of imagery; I do
not believe that the vases illustrate the Athenian festival of the Lenaia (or, indeed,
any festival) and the current universal scholarly practice of designating these vases
as "Lenaia vases" does not correspond to a universal opinion about their subject.
The scenes on the "Lenaia vases" represent an adaptation of the very common
scene type of Attic vase-painting of the Dionysiac thiasos of bacchai and satyrs
performing the dance of the komos, signifying the ecstasy induced by the god in

10. I think of these "scene-types" as analogous to the type-scene of epic, and my view of the
workings of the visual scene-type is informed by scholarly analyses of the epic type-scene; for
summary with bibliography, Edwards 1991 11-23.
11. On the distinction between what a scene is about, its discourse, and what it shows, G. Ferrari
nd a, Introduction; in different terms Batant 1981 13-22; Balant 1980 193-201, on the origins of the
realist reading which identifies the discourse with the thing shown.
12. For the idea of the "horizon of expectation" in genre theory, Todorov 1990; in reception
theory, Jauss 1982a; Jauss 1982b; in art, Gombrich 1960 60.
13. For excerpts and meaning, Ferrari nd a, ch. 1, citing Raab 1972 92-102 (regarding narrative).

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
PEIRCE: Visual Language and Concepts of Cult 63

his worshippers.'4 A "Lenaia vase" can be roughly defined as a scene of

in combination with one of two other features. The first is a distinctiv
the god composed of a mask, or two masks, hung on a column. The
a particular composition characteristic of scenes in which such a colu
is found, and readily recognizable even when the column-image is abse
are some complex issues of definition of the "Lenaia vases" which are b
scope of this paper;'6 the corpus I describe here is that commonly ac
scholars. There are seventy vases widely agreed to be "Lenaia vase
are about evenly divided between black-figure (thirty-two) and red-fig
eight). The black-figure vases, lekythoi and a few cups, date from 49
They come from the late black-figure lekythos workshops; the majo
some relation to the workshop of the Haimon Painter.'8 The red-figur
be divided in two groups. The first is not an artistic group but rather a m
of ten vases-one a cup, the rest large wine-serving vessels-ranging in
480 to the early fourth century. These vary in shape, in workshop sou
rendering of the mask-image and in the typology of their scenes.'9 T
group, the twenty-eight stamnoi that are the subject of this paper (Appen
like the black-figure "Lenaia vases," united by their workshop origins: twe
of the stamnoi are painted by the Villa Giulia Painter or by three othe
either of his group or related to it. This "Villa Giulia Painter tradition" of
stamnoi was adopted by workshops outside his group: seven stamnoi of
of twenty-eight are unrelated in workshop origin to the Villa Giulia P
unattributed.20

14. On the iconography of thiasos scenes, Edwards 1960; McNally 1978; Carpen
Carpenter 1997; Hedreen 1992; Hedreen 1994.
15. Twelve "Lenaia" stamnoi do not show the column-image but have iconog
otherwise only on "Lenaia" stamnoi.
16. The three chief issues open to debate are as follows: (1) whether all the vases,
red-figure, belong together and relate to one subject; (2) what the boundaries of this
in relation to other scene-types, e.g. the Dionysiac komos scene, or scenes with large
whether iconographic and stylistic variations in the group of twenty-eight stamnoi reflec
in subject and, specifically, how the twelve stamnoi (of the twenty-eight discussed here)
show the column-image are related in subject to the sixteen that do. See e.g. Frontisi-D
chs. 4, 6, on the relation of the stamnoi; Durand and Frontisi-Ducroux 1982 on the rel
black-figure vases to the stamnoi, and Hamilton 1992 on the corpus. I believe that the t
stamnoi listed below in the Appendix are a cohesive and exclusive group and relate to
the common opinion on the issue.
17. Frontisi-Ducroux 1991 233-53 lists 74 "Lenaia vases"; the roster of accepted
from scholar to scholar.
18. For a list, Frontisi-Ducroux 1991 L25-52, L54-56, L61, L70-73.
19. Catalogued and illustrated in Frontisi-Ducroux 1991 L53, L57-L60, L62, L63
L69. L59 and L60 are stamnoi with different iconography than the 28 discussed in this
20. The workshop relations of the stamnoi are shown in the Appendix. For the pr
the unity of this group of stamnoi, see above at n. 16. I will make the case in more detail b
that Append. nos. 27 and 28, showing a different kind of ritual, belong with the other
stamnoi.

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
64 CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY Volume 17/No. 1/April 1998

B. THE THIASOS
The first issue to be addressed is the important one of the identity of the
bacchai, the actors in the rituals on the "Lenaia vases." Whether these figures ar
to be regarded as "real" women in costume or as mythical maenads/bacchai is
an issue in contention. Evidence on this question is provided by the scene-typ
from which these "Lenaia" figures are imported, that of the Dionysiac komos.
The religious character of the bacche in the "Lenaia" corpus as a whole is
marked by various attributes native to the scene of the Dionysiac komos. She ma
have an ivy crown, a nebris or a pardalis, hair loose on the shoulders, the sleeve
of her chiton pulled down over her hands to form "wing-sleeves," a thyrsos, o
a torch; she may pipe or play krotala, the tympanon, or a lyre; she may dance,
sometimes with her head thrown back. A few of these figures hold or chase small
animals, signifying bacchic sparagmos.2"
This thiasos is the female component of the entourage that accompanie
Dionysos perennially wherever he roams throughout Greek and Roman art an
poetry, not just on Attic vases. The larger question bearing on our problem is
that of the identity of the "generic bacche" of this thiasos of art and poetry. I
we are correct about the reference imported into the "Lenaia vase" scenes wit
the "generic bacche," the identification of this figure will provide information
about the "Lenaia vase" bacche as well. Our choices for identification are two: th
historical bacche or the mythical bacche.
Historical thiasoi of bacchic women are attested by inscriptions from Asia
Minor and by testimonia especially in Plutarch and Pausanias for various Gree
cities, most conspicuously Delphi and cities in Boeotia; the evidence is Hellenisti
and Roman, but some of it bears on earlier periods.22 The evidence for femal
bacchic thiasoi in classical Athens is slight, its interpretation disputed.23 The
historical bacchai are understood by scholars to model their dress and ritual on
mythical bacchai/maenads.
There are two classes of such mythical bacchai: human women and sem
divine nymphs. The human worshippers belong to the "resistance myths," a
related group of stories recounting Dionysos' forcible conversion of Thebes,
Argos and Orchomenos to his worship, his proselytizing focused on the daughter
of Kadmos, of Proitos and of Minyas.24 Euripides' Bacchai, the only complete

21. L37; L53.

22. On this historical cult, Famell 1909 sources 297-300; Henrichs 1978; Bremmer 1984.
23. On the Athenian women who joined the Delphic Thyiades, Paus. 10.4.3; sources for th
Thyiades, Villanueva Puig 1986. A Bakcheion in Ar. Lys. 1-2: Henrichs 1982 144 and Henrich
1990 264, citing Henderson 1987 ad loc. Rites of the wife of the archon basileus and the gerarai:
[Dem.] 59.72-78 and Arist. Ath. Pol. 3.5; on this see Hamilton 1992 53-56. On Dionysiac sacrifices
by women in the Erchia cult calendar see below at n. 102.
24. For the myths, Dodds 1960 xxv-xxviii. On the daughters of Proitos of Argos and the wome
of Argos: [Apollodorus] 2.2.2, 3.5.2; on the Argos story as the result of the contamination of tw
Argive myths, one non-Dionysiac, West 1985 78-79 on M.-W. frs. 129-32; on the daughters o
Minyas, Ael. VH 3.42; Plut. Quest. Graec. 38 (Mor. 299E-F).

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
PEIRCE: Visual Language and Concepts of Cult 65

play extant based on a resistance myth, provides details of ritual thought t

connected with the behavior of bacchai of historical thiasoi. Among these
their punitively-inflicted madness, the ritual locus of the mountains, the
they adopt (that worn by the generic bacche on vases), their ecstatic singin
dancing, and the sparagmos (and, some scholars believe, omophagia) inflic
first on a herd of cattle and then on Pentheus.25 The second group of my
female Dionysiac worshippers, the nymphs, were the nurses of the infant Diony
after the death of Semele. These nurses are described in poetry beginning
Homer as Dionysos' entourage; a Homeric Hymn says that when Dionysos
grown, his former nurses the nymphs followed him through the forest, m
the environs resound with noise.26 Nymphs roam their native landscape of
places, especially mountain tops, singing and dancing. In the mountains t
inhabit caves, where they have sex with, among others, satyrs, and rear b
born from these unions.27
This classification of mythical followers does not include a category t
sometimes appears in current scholarship, that of the "mythical maenad"
does not belong to a particular myth such as one of the resistance myths. I subm
that such a category of being is a misconception. Bacchism or "maenadism"
religious behavior, like being a priestess. It is not a mythical property, and so d
not make a person mythical, any more than being a priestess does. The fig
of resistance myth, the Kadmeian, Minyad or Proitid women, or the madd
women of Thebes or Argos, are mythical because they belong to a my
family or to a city with a role in a myth, not because they act as maenads.
the maenads or bacchai whom historical bacchai imitate in their rituals cann
a perennially existing anonymous group of women who are mythical becaus
are maenads. Rather, they must be beings whose mythical identity is independe
of their religious behavior, like nymphs or the women of resistance myth
become maenads or bacchai when they worship Dionysos.
Are we to identify the bacche of the thiasos scene with (a) the baccha
the historical thiasoi, (b) the Theban and Kadmeian women or the women
other resistance myths, or (c) the bacchic nymph? The presence of satyr
the thiasos scene poses a problem for choices (a) and (b). It is unlikely
the thiasos scenes visually mirror the rites of historical bacchic thiasoi; am
other reasons for this conclusion is the fact that satyrs are manifestly unr

25. On sparagmos and omophagia as "maenadic" sacrifice, see below at n. 108ff.

26. Sometimes called his amphipoloi, peripoloi or propoloi; entourage of nurses: Hom
6.130-35; nymphs, nurses and noisy followers: Hymn. Hom. Bacch. (26) 3-10; divine nurses:
OC 680; nymphs and nurses: E. Cyc. 4; on the titles of this family of attendants, Strabo, 10.3
27. Hymn. Hom. Aphr. (5) 262-63; for satyrs as offspring of nymphs, also Hesiod M.-W. fr.
Xen. Symp. 5.7. On the relations of satyrs and nymphs, McNally 1978 passim; Carpenter 1986
Hedreen 1994 58-65.
28. Such scenes might refer to real life in terms of its mythical analogue, and thus inc
satyrs; but this would mean that reality was not being reflected visually. The only way to expl

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
66 CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY Volume 17/No. 1/April 1998

Satyrs also have no role in resistance myth, making it difficult to explain thei
female companions as women of resistance myth.29 Carpenter and Hedreen hav
proposed independently that the generic bacchai of Attic vase-painting represen
bacchic nymphs.30 This view accounts best for the close-often sexual-relation
between the bacchai and the satyrs in thiasos scenes, since nymphs and satyr
in mythology are companions and sexual partners. If this theory is accepted, w
can then understand the iconographic features of the bacchic nymph, those tha
characterize the generic bacche of the thiasos scene, as the conventional signs
designating the female bacchic worshipper.
That it is the attributes of the nymph that designate the bacchic worshippe
may be explained by the relation of bacchai and nymphs in cult. In their rites,
bacchai go to mountain haunts of nymphs, where, like nymphs, they sing and dance
in the company of Dionysos. Nymphs, then, would seem to be the mythical model
for the cultic bacche.3' Good evidence of this is provided by the best-attested
of the historical thiasoi of bacchai, the Thyiades of Delphi, who are assimilated
the nymphs who live in the Korykian cave on Parnassos.2 In the seventh century,
Alcman had identified Thyiades along with Lampades and Naiades as the name o
a variety of nymph (fr. 63 Page).
The attributes of the "Lenaia" bacchai, then, say that these figures ar
nymphs.33 We could conclude this from the fact of the origin of the "Lenaia
bacche in the scene of the bacchic thiasos alone, but there is additional confir
mation in the infant satyr of Appendix no. 19, fig. 4a, who reaches out to a bacche,
his mother: because it is nymphs who have sex with satyrs and thus bear bab

presence of satyrs in a scene understood as showing the appearance of real events is by recourse
to the realist view that the image of a satyr records visually a man dressed as a satyr; for this view se
Keuls 1984 288 and passim; also Seaford 1994 266-72.
29. Hedreen 1994 51.
30. Carpenter 1997 52-62; Hedreen 1994.
31. That nymphs and maenads are connected is a view with a long history; e.g. Rapp 1894-1897
2244-45. On the relation in myth of nymphs, divine nurses and maenads, see Henrichs 1987 100-10
and Henrichs 1978 140 n. 61 and 153. Hedreen 1994 does not (as Larson 1995 345 n. 12 seems
to misunderstand him as doing) distinguish the maenad as generic female bacchic worshipper fro
the nymph. Rather, he shows that the maenad as a figure of resistance myth and of cult defined as
corresponding to resistance myth must be distinguished from the generic female bacchic worshipper
who is, further, identified in art with the nymph. On bacchai and maenads see further below at n. 110
32. On the relation Rapp 1894-1897 2244. A familar poetic locus for Dionysos' nighttime
revels is Parnassos (E. Hypsipyle 1-3; Ar. Nub. 603-05; Soph. Ant. 1126-30; E. Ion 137-8; E
Ba. 306-307), inhabited by the nymphs of the Korykian cave; an allusion to the locus as Korykian
seems to serve as identifying marker of the god's thiasos (E. Ba. 559); his Parnassian thiasos
identified as bacchai, the Thyiades; once his companions in nighttime revelry on Parnassos ar
explicitly identified as Korykian nymphs and as ocaxX[8eq (Soph. Ant. 1128-29); his entourag
is called the Thyiades close enough in the same ode to the mention of the Korykian nymphs as
to make unavoidable an identification of the two (1150-51). However, as Larson 1995 344 notes
the Korykian nymphs are not "merely" mythical counterparts of the Thyiades. Against viewing th
Korykian nymphs as Dionysiac, Amandry 1984 400 n. 9. For sources for the Thyiades, Villanueva
Puig 1986.
33. For their nymph identity, Carpenter 1997 79-82.

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
PEIRCE: Visual Language and Concepts of Cult 67

satyrs, this baby incontrovertibly shows that his mother is a nymph.34 T

identity designates the bacchai of the "Lenaia vases" as ecstatic wors
Dionysos; it also makes the further statement that the action of the s
place in the Dionysiac biography. However, identifying the "Lenaia"
nymphs does not provide the grounds for determining that the viewer is
scene in which they appear as mythical and imaginary rather than as
a reference to the social world of the polis.35 Rather, this typology p
lack of conceptual opposition between a nymph and a human bacchic w
and between real and unreal frames of reference in a Dionysiac context. It
kinds of information given by the scenes, as we will see, that specify t
to human existence of the events pictured on the "Lenaia vases."

C. THE TWENTY-EIGHT STAMNOI

Half of the group of twenty-eight stamnoi have on side A a repeate
ment of cult paraphernalia (e.g. figs. 2a, 3).36 The mask-image, shown
its details very uniformly represented, stands behind a table. The table
faces the viewer. On the table are two stamnoi. In some scenes bread i
between the stamnoi; once the table holds bread and meat (fig. 3), on
and wreaths (fig. 2a) and once wreaths alone.37 On eight vases showing
with the table and stamnoi two bacchai flank the table. One standing ba
wine from a stamnos into a skyphos.38 The other bacche stands holding a s
or fluting, or sits fluting in a klismos (fig. 3).39 On ten vases the sce
B shows the bacchai dancing in a row, at least one holding a skyphos.4
Scholars have as a rule regarded as obscure in reference the action
bacchai of ladling wine from stamnoi on the obverse of the stam
forming a procession in which they carry skyphoi on the reverse. There i
agreement regarding this imagery on only one point, that the scene of th
shows a "maenadic" dance. It is the imagery of wine that is comb
this dance that is thought difficult to understand. Most scholars who
specifically on what the bacchai are engaged in with the stamnoi and
understand them to be performing a wine ceremony. Some read a specific
the imagery, seeing the bacchai on the obverse to be mixing and con
wine, and, on the reverse, since they carry skyphoi, to be distributin
in skyphoi to the Athenian male populace.4"

34. Noted by Beazley 1928 52; Carpenter 1997 81; and see also above, n. 27.
35. Pace Hedreen 1994 58 and Carpenter 1997 79-82.
36. Append. nos. 1-5, 8, 13, 16, 23, 24 and probably the fragmentary vases 6, 7, 9,
37. Bread or bread and wreaths on table: Append. nos. 1, 2, 5, 8; wreaths alone: App
38. Append. nos. 1-5, 8, 13, 16; probably also 6, 7, 9, 10.
39. Standing holding a skyphos: Append. nos. 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13; standing fluting: Ap
40. Bacchai dancing with skyphoi: Append. nos. 1-5, 8, 11-13, 19.
41. This hypothetical ritual is founded on a fragment of Phanodemos concerning the A
(FGrH 325 fr. 12; Ath. 11.465a; Hamilton 1992 T3 p. 7): 4ovo6n',uo; 8' rcp6; t is

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
68 CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY Volume 17/No. 1/April 1998

Whether the bacchai are also to be understood as drinking the wine in these
scenes is disputed. Several scholars have argued against a traditional view that th
bacchai on the vases do drink, concluding (apparently) that because they do not
raise the skyphoi to their lips, they are not shown as drinking.42 In the background
of this reading of the vases is a model of Dionysiac religion that makes drinkin
alien to maenads.43 This reading has to do, too, with the scholarly opinion that
women did not drink, this founded on ancient Greek cultural prohibitions again
drinking by women." The view that the bacchai are not drinking fits well with
the view that they perform a rite of distribution of wine: since they hold skyphoi
as they move along on side B, but they are not drinking from the skyphoi, the
must be taking the wine somewhere else.45
The processional scene of side B is in my view the key to the interpretation of
what the bacchai are doing with the wine vessels, and I will discuss this scene
first. Convention identifies the acts of these bacchai.46

epo6v Jacoby) (psat toi Ev Ai{ivct ALovvoou To yXF5xor ypepovx4o roC5 A0Tvatouv4 Ex -c
tIcov t4 0E4 XLpV&V0CL, etv' ocuroouq Tpc(pEepeC0OoL (at (or to] the holy place of Dionysos in
Limnai the Athenians, carrying the sweet wine from the pithoi, mix it for the god and then tak
it themselves). Nilsson, remaking the "Lenaia vase" imagery in light of this passage, used the scene
as a foundation on which to construct a rite wherein the gerarai, attendants on the wife of the archo
basileus, acting as priestesses during the Anthesteria, mixed wine in stamnoi on a table before th
image of the god, consecrated it, tasted it and distributed it to the Athenian populace for them
drink; see Nilsson 1967 587-89 with earlier bibliography; on the testimonia, Hamilton 1992 53-56
There is no ancient Greek parallel for such a ritual; its similarity to the Christian Eucharist shou
arouse suspicion. Nilsson is followed in his identification of a wine-ritual at the Anthesteria by
Burkert 1983 235 and Henrichs 1978 153-54. Frontisi-Ducroux 1991 speaks passim of a ritual
"distribution"; she thus may have been influenced by Nilsson's hypothesis of a wine-ritual involving
distribution by the women of wine to worshippers, although she does not say so explicitly.
42. Frontisi-Ducroux 1991 83 and 76, and below, n. 49; Henrichs 1978 153. Most scholars
assume there is drinking, often on the basis of the hypothetical rite constructed from Phanodemo
(above, n. 41); however, Berard and Bron 1990 42 and Shefton 1962 note that the imagery itself
shows the women drinking.
43. A model applied to the "Lenaia vases" by those scholars who believe the women on the
vases are maenads, e.g. Frontisi-Ducroux 1995 83. This model is common to various schools o
thought on bacchism; e.g. on wine and "maenadism" as belonging to separate spheres (not, however
with reference to the "Lenaia vase" problem) see e.g. Henrichs 1982 139, 151-52; for rejectio
of drinking maenads, 145. Some scholars believe a wine vs. maenadism distinction to be aligne
with different types of bacchism: an eastern and Aegean Dionysos associated with wine, fertility
satyrs, spring and the spring festival of the Anthesteria is opposed to a Boeotian Dionysos associated
with Thracian ecstatic cult, maenads, winter and winter festivals such as the Lenaia; on this s
e.g. Deubner 1932 111; Nilsson 1967 568-82; Simon 19853 272-89; Simon 1995 164. On th
implications of these dichotomies for the "Lenaia vases" see further below at n. 109 and ff.
44. On the exclusion of women from drinking, e.g. Henrichs 1982 140; Bremmer 1984 270.
45. Durand, Frontisi-Ducroux, Lissarrague 1989 124: the cups "are of course intended for the
men."
46. My understanding of the conventions I will discuss is based on several thousand Attic scene
of symposion, komos, thysia and of the Dionysiac thiasos. I have seen more of some painters th
others, but enough overall that I believe that more evidence would not alter the picture I give. I
is not possible to cite the evidence fully, since this would require listing hundreds of vases bearing o
each point; I have supplied numbers where I could do so precisely, and illustrations of commo
conventions in easily accessible general works.

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
PEIRCE: Visual Language and Concepts of Cult 69

First, the gesture of raising the cup to the lips is not the usual sign for
on Attic vases; indeed, this gesture may have less to do with the act o
than it does with other messages. Instead, drinking is ordinarily deno
gesture of holding a cup, most commonly in a particular way, with the bas
cup cradled in the drinker's palm. This sign of drinking is seen in the w
painters of scenes of symposion and komos on Attic vases, from the b
of red-figure on.47 Human drinkers hold in this fashion a kylix, a stem
or, very commonly, a skyphos.48 Of the thousands of illustrations of this
with various cups, only a few can be shown here, these from early r
cup-painters (fig. 9), late archaic cup-painters (fig. 8), and early classica
of large pots (figs. 5,6). That drinking is not exclusively or even primarily
by the gesture of raising the cup to the lips is clearly indicated by the rar
gesture in scenes of symposion and komos: if this were the normal sign of
one would have to conclude that the act of drinking is unusual in symp
on Attic vases, something inherently improbable.49 Thus, the possessi
"Lenaia" bacchai of skyphoi and the way that they hold them (figs. 2
state that the bacchai are drinking. There is no way the imagery could
statement other than the means it employs, by use of the standard ter
action in the conventional language of the vases.
Bacchai in the thiasos scenes on vases often carry wineskins, o
kantharoi and phialai to serve others wine or to pour libations, but th
normally carry cups: that is, they do not drink themselves.50 The "Lenaia"

47. I have found this sign in the work of all red-figure painters where there is enough
(or published) of their scenes of drinking to permit a judgment. For examples of the
e.g. Boardman 1975 figs. 11, 25, 32, 47, 178, 191, 225, 253, 290, 395, 320; Lissarrague 1
2, 9, 12, 18, 24, 41, 68, 69, 70, 78, 79, 99, 101; a female drinker in fig. 41 (cup, Madrid 11
58.53 [Oltos]) holding a skyphos in this fashion extends a kylix to her companion saying
au.
U.1
48. This is not the ordinary way Dionysos holds his drinking vessel, the kantharos, nor is i
the way humans hold the cup used for a game of kottabos or (as a rule) extended for a refill.
49. On the rarity of the motif Frontisi-Ducroux 1991 76, n. 30, noting the overlap of the c
raised to the lips with the frontal view of the drinker's face; for examples of the raised cup Boardm
1975 figs. 5 (profile), 25 (frontal), 129 (?) (profile), 284 (?) (profile), 305 (frontal). On the frontal fac
Korshak 1987 11-14 (on the relation of drinkers and satyrs) and 54-58. Unlike Frontisi-Ducroux
I do not regard the cup raised to the lips as the sign indicating the drinker is "en train de boir
the motif denotes not the biological act of drinking but something about the drinker or about t
experience of drunkenness; thus it is both unusual and associated with frontality.
50. Edwards 1960 83 on this point. The rf cups Louvre G 144, ARV2 462.43 and Basl
Antikenmuseum Ka 410, ARV2 463.53 (both Makron) are notable exceptions; these are the on
examples I know of among archaic cup painters. The Basle cup shows bacchai alone, four on eac
side. In the early classical and classical periods the motif seems to occur under the influence of t
"Lenaia vase" iconography, and so to be associated with all-female groups: I know of no mixed-
thiasos scene contemporary with the "Lenaia" stamnoi in which a bacche carries a skyphos or cup (a
opposed to a wineskin, oinochoe, phiale, kantharos or drinking hom). There are also a few red-figur
scenes showing a bacche holding a cup which combine the iconography of bacchism with that of
hetaira at the symposion; e.g. rf cup-skyphos, Naples RP 27669, ARV2 77.85 (Epiktetos), Keuls 19
fig. 139 (misunderstood); rf cup, Florence 73749, ARV2 355.39 (Colmar Painter); rf cup, Providen

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
70 CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY Volume 17/No. 1/April 1998

then, are iconographically exceptional because they drink. Are we to regard

these scenes as showing bacchai engaged in a "maenadic" dance, but a danc
distinguished from the usual in that the bacchai are also drinking?
The answer comes from the information provided by conventional visual
patterns. The scenes violate the visual conventions for the rendering of th
bacchic thiasos: this phenomenon is a visual alarm, alerting the viewer to the
exceptional character of this group of bacchai. First, the bacchism of the celebrants
is unusually restrained. This is a trend of the classical period: many early classic
bacchai are shown, as these bacchai are, without costume denoting wild behavior
that is, flowing hair, nebris or pardalis, snakes or wing-sleeves. However, as
a rule the early classical bacche has some bacchic marker, normally thyrsos,
kantharos, torch or ivy crown.5' By contrast, many of the "Lenaia" bacchai o
these procession scenes lack any bacchic accoutrements. Second, while there are
many early classical bacchai who wear, as these bacchai do, a chiton and himation
early classical bacchai also frequently wear a chiton without a himation. In th
procession scenes on all the "Lenaia" stamnoi the bacchai are dressed uniforml
in chiton and himation: not one wears a chiton alone. This marks a distinctio
not only from the early classical bacchai in general, but also from the baccha
in the Villa Giulia Painter's non-"Lenaia" scenes in particular, who are often cla
in filmy chitons.52 These features of the "Lenaia" bacchai, though they would not
make a single early classical bacche exceptional, become special markers when
they characterize all the bacchic figures in a scene.
The composition of the scene and the movement of the bacchai likewis
signal to the viewer that this procession is not to be read as a normal thiasos
scene. The "Lenaia" composition, first, violates in a visually striking way an
important convention of these normal bacchic scenes, the way bacchai are show
in groups.53 Three bacchai together without male companions appear quite rarely,
and more than three very rarely."4 The "Lenaia" groups of up to five bacchai

25.074, ARV2 480.338 (Makron); rf frag., Athens Acrop. 80, Graef and Langlotz 1925 pl. 70. O
hetairai see further below at n. 75 and ff.
51. See, e.g., Bdrard, Bron, Durand et al. 1989 figs. 199, 200 a-c.
52. E.g. rf calyx krater, Karlsruhe B 3, ARV2 613.2. His stamnos St. Petersburg 806, ARV2
620.32 (one of the 30 vases discussed below, n. 54) has two processional scenes very like those of hi
"Lenaia vases," but without depictions of cult paraphernalia. Some have regarded these as "Lenaia
scenes; but that one bacche wears a chiton without himation would appear to be an iconographicall
significant marker differentiating these from the "Lenaia" bacchai.
53. Early classical bacchai adopt rather quiet poses or fend off satyrs in six main types o
composition: (1) one or two bacchai; (2) Dionysos and a bacche, facing; (3) Dionysos and a pai
of bacchai, sometimes turming into a procession; (4) Dionysos, bacchai and satyrs in movemen
usually from left to right, with some figures in arrested motion; (5) a bacche and satyr pair, usually
a chase; (6) a mild version of the archaic bacche and satyr melee, a pairing, sometimes turning into a
procession, of satyrs and bacchai, in which sometimes the satyrs pursue the bacchai. It has thre
to five participants; the most common composition has two aggressive satyrs flanking a bacche.
54. For the early classical and classical periods I know of some 30 non-"Lenaia vases" showing
groups of three or more bacchai alone. Most of these are produced by painters of "Lenaia vases,"

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
PEIRCE: Visual Language and Concepts of Cult 71

by their odd visual effect, would have alerted the informed observer t
special significance in the scenes. Then, while the processional arrangem
known for the thiasos for this period, it is not the ordinary compositi
the "Lenaia vases" this procession appears very orderly because the bacc
shown in repetitive poses and striding along. Again, this stride has parallels a
individual early classical bacchai; but the combination of the pose with
alone and in a procession creates an exceptional scene.
It is in the context of these differentiating features taken together t
carrying of the skyphoi makes a pointed reference to a particular scen
The "Lenaia" procession is not a thiasos scene showing a maenadic dance
differs from convention only in the fact that the bacchai carry cups. Rat
procession of bacchai is a variant version of the scene of the human kom
revel through the streets of men and hetairai following the symposion,
repeated on innumerable Attic red-figure vases.55 The human sympotic
like the Dionysiac, is an improvisational dance performed by a band of re
The band's progress through the streets is denoted on vases by a proces
movement. A twirling action that opposes an individual reveler to the f
this procession indicates this reveler's drunkenness and exuberant danc
comparison of figs. 2b and 4b to figs. 5 and 6 shows clearly that the sc
processing bacchai is the standard early classical scene of komos ada
the substitution of bacchai for the processing males. Distinctive feature
"Lenaia" scenes are paralleled in these scenes of komos: the quiet forward
of the procession with opposed figures on the flanks; the restraint of th
and the uniformity of gait and pose creating repeated silhouettes and the
of a parade. Closely paralleled too is the gesture of holding the skyphos out b
the body and the effect this has on the compositional pattern.
The curious behavior of the bacchai, that of performing the komos
male drinking party, is given a setting and motivation by the action sh
the obverse of the "Lenaia" stamnoi, where the bacchai ladle wine into sk
from stamnoi set up on a table before the mask-image. It is universally
that these scenes on the obverse are meant to be understood together w
procession of bacchai with skyphoi on the reverse: the repeated figures
bacchai and the skyphoi establish the unity. So too does the klismos th
appears in the background of the procession scenes of side B (Append. no
2b; no. 12), a visual allusion to the tableau of side A, where a bacche ma
in a klismos alongside the table (Append. no. 15; no. 16 and fig. 3). The
of action on obverse and reverse will also prove to be a unity.

especially in the Group of the Villa Giulia Painter, and many of these are stamnoi. On 2
vases the bacchai are in a procession. This is combined on 5 vases of this group with the
motif of a bacche carrying a cup.
55. On the human komos scene, Lissarrague 1990 29-33; examples, figs. 2, 16, 17,
Boardman 1975 figs. 33.2, 47, 129.2, 312.

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
72 CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY Volume 17/No. 1/April 1998

The table of the side A scene fixes us in a specific context: it is the side-ta
which stands alongside a banqueter's couch. This table appears in two kinds o
red-figure symposion scenes. One, the more usual, is the scene of after-dinne
drinking, where the participants are either ordinary men and hetairai (e.g. fig
or gods or heroes, and the only food is desserts or snacks. The second is the ra
scene of the banquet-symposion, where there are one or two figures, normal
divine or heroic, who both feast and drink (e.g. fig. 9, a scene of the ransom
Hektor, the feaster Achilles).56 In the ordinary symposion scene the table is bare or
holds wreaths, rendered as leafy strands hanging over the table edge (fig. 8, visible
as spots of paint), cakes or cups. The table in the scene of banquet-symposio
typically shows rows or piles of bread, sometimes round, or strips of meat, o
both, sometimes along with wreaths like those of the ordinary symposion table
The pieces of meat in these scenes evoke the feasts of epic and the honorific
functions of the heroic diet, reflected in particular in the especially desirable cuts
of meat given at Homeric feasts as a portion of honor.58 Such a heroic side-table is
set up alongside Achilles' couch in fig. 9.
The table on the "Lenaia" stamnoi is depicted conventionally as the symposi
side-table; the wreaths laid out on it (Append. no. 2 and fig. 2b; no. 11), the m
common feature of such tables in the scene of symposion, classify the table
explicitly. The particular circumstances of the symposion being celebrated he
are specified by the food set out on the table, the large piles of round loave
of bread (Append. no. 1; no 2 and fig. 2b; nos. 5, 8) and the strips of m
(Append. 16, fig. 3). Achilles' table in fig. 9, with its piles of round loaves, str
of meat, and wreaths, closely parallels the "Lenaia" scenes with bread, or br
and wreaths, or bread and meat. The "Lenaia" scene, we can conclude, shows
a banquet-symposion set out for a deity or hero.
Obviously, in the "Lenaia" scene this banqueter, along with his banqu
couch, is missing; it is the image of Dionysos that occupies the position
the couch with banqueter. This composition with a cult-image and side-table
unparalleled outside of the "Lenaia vases." The composition itself suggests th
the image of Dionysos occupying the position of the reclining banqueter is
virtue of this position a banqueter at the feast. Jameson has recently examin
the inscriptional evidence beginning in the fifth century B.C. for the practice
theoxenia, as it is called by modems, that is, of offering a prepared meal to
god; different inscriptions attest the spreading of a couch for the divine gue

56. The banqueters are primarily Dionysos, Herakles, and Achilles. For Dionysos and Heraki
Carpenter 1986 111-17; for Dionysos, LIMCIII, nos. 362-81, 558-60, 578-82, 756-62, and Hedr
1992 19-22 and 44-46. For Herakles, Verbanck-Pie'rard 1992 91-104; Wolf 1993. For Achille
LIMC I, 147-49.
57. For bread or cake, Lissarrague 1990 fig. 11; for cups and wreaths, Boardman 1975 fi
253.1.
58. E.g. Hom. II. 7. 321-22; Od. 8. 475-83.

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
PEIRCE: Visual Language and Concepts of Cult 73

and the preparation of a table on which dishes and foods would be set ou
Jameson notes, the terminology applied by the Greeks to designate these
xenia and cognate terms, shows that the operative concept in these ritu
that of hospitality, of the entertainment of the god by human hosts; re
to the trapeza and to the spreading of couches to stand metonymically f
whole ritual reflects the conceptual importance of the offering as a formal m
We seem to have in our scenes a ritual of this type. That a feast in a san
setting is a visual sign for hosting a deity is confirmed by a particular
type in the repertory of representations of the Dioskouroi; in this scene, rare
distinctive, the Dioskouroi are shown in attendance at a meal set for them
trapeza, a couch behind.6" This interpretation of the "Lenaia" scenes as sig
theoxenia dovetails with the interpretation of the vases as a visual explor
the experience of the Dionysiac epiphany proposed by Frontisi-Ducroux,6
divine epiphany is integral to the human entertainment of a god.
Despite the fact that in this scene of theoxenia the bacchai are shown m
ladling wine, the iconography emphasizes the fact of their drinking. The
the dais, deipnon, or thoine-is in Greek social practice the normal prelu
the symposion, and so feast and symposion are conceptually inseparable,
collection of anecdotes that is Athenaeus' Deipnosophistai attests. Th
conceptual tie is evident in the sympotic elements of the banquet-symp
scene itself. In the ordinary symposion scene, a krater or dinos often sta
the sidelines, as may also a pais, who holds ladle or oinochoe and a s
(e.g. fig. 8); alternatively, the pais or a woman server may circulate amon
drinkers with an oinochoe to fill their cups.63 The banquet-symposion sce
can show a dinos or krater and a pais or female acting as server;64 the
differs from the symposion in its depiction of the meat meal that prece
drinking. An association with drinking thus is part of the import of the
banquet-symposion; the location of the "Lenaia" bacchai in a scene of ba
symposion attaches to them this association. More specifically, sympotic d
is evoked by the deployment in the "Lenaia" scene of an adapted form
image of the group scene of ladling. In the usual version of the scene a b

59. Jameson 1994 35-57; for the modern use of the term theoxenia, ibid. 36; Pfist
2256-58. On mythic and poetic theoxenia generally, Burnett 1970; Reece 1993 181-87. O
theoxenia for Dionysos, see further below at n. 95.
60. Jameson 1994 36-37; on the term trapeza ibid. 40; on couches ibid. 52.
61. "Dioskouroi," LIMC III (1986) 567-93, esp. 576-77, "Thdoxenies," and figs. 112
also no. 114, rf hydria, Plovdiv, ARV2 1187.36 (Kadmos Painter), Boardman 1989 fig.
Shapiro 1989 149-54; Lorenz 1992. I am grateful to Alan Shapiro for advice on the Diosko
62. Frontisi-Ducroux 1991 passim.
63. Pais on sidelines: rf cup, London E 68, ARV2 317.24 (Brygos Painter), Boardm
fig. 253. Woman server approaching with oinochoe: rf stamnos, Oxford 1965.127, ARV2
Lissarrague 1990 fig. 11. Pais or youth as server: rf cup, London E 49 and Villa Giulia, ARV
(Douris); rf column krater, Ferrara T 813, ARV2 548.36 (Painter of London E 489).
64. E.g. rf cup, Vienna 3710, ARV2 380.171 (Brygos Painter), Boardman 1975 fig. 248.

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
74 CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY Volume 17/No. I/ April 1998

komasts revels alongside a dinos, krater or psykter; one or two figures scoop win
from the vessel, often with an oinochoe or ladle.65 The "Lenaia" ladling-scene
adapts the usual version of the scene in two ways: the actors are sedate bacchai
instead of the usual komasts, and the action has been moved, exceptionally, int
the compositional focus of the scene of the banquet-symposion, thus emphasizin
the sympotic aspect of this feast. These sympotic elements in the "Lenaia" scen
of feasting the god tie this scene to the scene of komos on the reverse of the vases.
The "Lenaia" stamnoi, pairing the symposion of the bacchai on side A with their
komos on side B, mirror the normal sequence of events: after a feast, the feaster
drink at a symposion, then run through the streets celebrating a komos.
Two stamnoi of the group (Append. no. 27 and fig. 10; no. 28) have a
different representation. They show a thysia, the common ritual of Greek religion
in which a domestic animal was ceremonially slaughtered, parts were offered t
the gods in the altar fire, and the meat was eaten by the worshippers at a feast.66
On these two stamnoi, the cult-image is shown in profile, before it a table of
meat. Here the depiction of the meat in a pile, rather than in the hanging strips of
the banquet-symposion scene, shows that the context is butchery, not the ensuing
feast. On the right of the scene, behind the image and table, a bacche approache
holding the kanoun frequent in representations of thysia, and an oinochoe. A
bacche standing before the image offers a kantharos to the god, linking the ritual
action here to the scenes shown on Appendix nos. 14, 21, and 23, where the god
receives a kantharos. Though it may seem odd to call this scene thysia when no
one is slaughtering an animal and there is no altar, the absence of such imagery
is conventional for the scene of thysia on Attic vases. The vase-painting repertory

65. A ladle is used when wine is taken from a closed shape, an oinochoe or another method
when the vessel is an open shape. For a black-figure komastic ladling scene see the bf oinochoe
Athens 1045, ABV 186 (Keisophos), Lissarrague 1990 fig. 77. Also, e.g. rf cup frs., Florence I B 20
and University of Chicago, ARV2 59.58 (Oltos); rf cup, Brussels A 723, ARV2 317.15, Addenda
214 (Proto-Panaetian Group). The komastic surroundings of the scene of ladling from a krater surely
have something to do with the scene of komos in which a transport amphora or other wine container i
brought along, e.g. Wurzburg 507, ARV2 181.1 (Kleophrades Painter); Berlin 2309, ARV2 337.4
(412.1 I bis) (Dokimasia Painter). The scene of mixing wine in the krater can also be komastic, an
very close to the scene of dipping wine; e.g. rf hydria, Vatican G 71, ARV2 28.14 (Euthymides),
Boardman 1975 fig. 35.
66. It is common opinion that these belong with the other 26 stamnoi of the Group or tradition o
the Villa Giulia Painter. The Eupolis Painter is related to the Group and painted a standard "Lenaia
stamnos (Append. no. 22). The findings here support the idea of unity: the scene of a table before
a mask-image, flanked by bacchai, and the subject of a banquet celebrated by females (here i
preparation) before the cult-image are specific in reference, and occur only together and only in
circumscribed group of vases.
I use the term thysia here to designate the rite the word most often signifies in Greek, the
common ritual of alimentary animal sacrifice offered to the Olympian gods. Ritual killings in which
the victim is not cooked and eaten as a normal meal (e.g. human sacrifice, sparagmos and omophagia,
the deposition of pigs in crevasses in Demeter cult, or battlefield sphagia) are distinct in kind fro
this ordinary feast-sacrifice and are not relevant to the discussion which follows. On the term thysia
Casabona 1966 126-39. On thysia generally, Jameson 1988; Detienne and Vernant 1989.

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 PEIRCE: Visual Language and Concepts of Cult 75

of thysia does not designate the rite (normally) by the imagery of slaugh
of the offering of thighbones. Instead, thysia is signified by an animal, o
or cooking equipment for the preparation of meat, juxtaposed either with ima
denoting a sanctuary or with imagery denoting a festive celebration.67 Th
way it is designated here, by the juxtaposition of the butchered meat w
cult-image, the kanoun, which refers to sacrifice, and the oinochoe and ka
for the offering of wine to the god.
Our scene of thysia here is a fusion of two of the main scene-types of
on Attic vases.68 The table piled with meat is standard in the first of th
scene-types, the scene of butchery (fig. 11). The "Lenaia" scene also
the composition of the second scene-type, a very standardized classical sc
roasting splanchna over an altar fire (fig. 12). The bacche on the right is a spe
reference to the ".acolyte" of these scenes, a youth, usually placed to the
the altar, who holds an oinochoe and kanoun, assisting an officiant on the lef
bacche on the left evokes this officiant, who often pours a libation while pray
his prayer indicated by his extended open hand.
The "Lenaia" scene of thysia completes a logical chain of ritual actions
on the vases. First, thysia and feasting are a ritual unity. The essential
which this unity is founded is that slaughter for a festive meal of meat
a thysia.69 Thus, the representation of thysia in the ritual context shown
"Lenaia vases" implies the feast of meat which we see explicitly represe
Appendix no. 16, fig. 3 and to which allusion is made by the tableau
A of the vases. The scene of the cultic feast of meat of fig. 3 makes th
connection, implying a thysia.70 Further, as we have already seen, a feast incl
drinking, and drinking culminates in a komos. A clear expression of the u
thysia, feast, symrposion and komos is found in a fragment of the early fifth-c
Syracusan comic poet Epicharmos on the topos of the stages of drinking:

A. After the sacrifice (6umfoc), a feast (Oo(va) ... after the fea
drinking ...
B. Fine, in my humble opinion!

67. Van Straten 1995 collects virtually all scenes of thysia; see 186-92 on the "moment" in
thysia represented in art. Peirce 1993 219-66 passim on the meaning of the repertory, 251-58 on
killing.
68. For the repertory and a division into groups, Peirce 1993: (1) Scenes of procession; (2) Men
and boys preparing meat in sanctuaries, including butchery; (3) The classical scene at an altar; (4)
Late black-figure scenes of komos with allusions to thysia.
69. Wilamowitz-Moellendorff 1931 238 (on Homeric sacrifice); Meuli 1946/1975 215-216/938;
Nilsson 1967 145; Nagy 1979 56, 59, 127, 128; Nagy 1990 271-72.
70. For a possible parallel for the provision to the god of sacrificial meat as the menu of the
theoxenia, LSCG 177, regulations for the cult of Herakles Diamedonteios, from Hellenistic Kos,
with instructions for xenismos of Herakles. Meat from the sacrifices at weddings celebrated in the
sanctuary may (possibly) be given to Herakles on a table set up for his xenismos (98-101). See
on this inscription Jameson 1994 42-43 and on the problems of identification of the table, 43. See
also the meat provided for the Dioskouroi (implying thysia) in scenes of theoxenia (above, n. 61).

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
76 CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY Volume 17/No. 1/April 1998

A. Yes, but after drinking comes mockery, after mockery filthy insult,
after insult a law-suit, after the law-suit a verdict, after the verdict
shackles, the stocks and a fine.
Fr. 148 Kaibel, in Athenaeus 2.36; trans. Gulick

Like thysia, symposion and komos themselves, the scene-types of these rituals
redeployed on the "Lenaia vases" in their original context in Attic vase-painting
are a united whole. A large portion of the repertory of thysia can be interpreted as
a subset of the very much larger repertory of sympotic scenes on the vases. Thus,
for example, the celebrants of a thysia are sometimes shown as komasts, and, in
late black-figure, sacrificial imagery infiltrates the scene of komos." The close
conceptual relation of symposion and komos is likewise mirrored in the imagery
of Attic vases, in the mingling of the two kinds of action in one scene.72 The
"Lenaia vase" scenes, in combining these rituals iconographically, are adapting a
family of scene types already united in the tradition of Attic vase-painting, rather
than plucking various disparate elements from the tradition.73
The imagery of the "Lenaia vases," then, uses the conventional language of
Athenian vase-painting for sacrifice, feasting and drinking and for the bacchic
thiasos to say that at a feast for Dionysos bacchic nymphs perform a thysia, serve
the image of the god meat from the sacrifice along with bread and wine, join in
drinking themselves, and then celebrate a komos. The "Lenaia" scenes of thysia,
symposion and komos designate the action performed in each instance by the same
iconographical means: bacchai are inserted into adapted versions of these standard
scene-types, plugged into compositional slots normally occupied by other types
of figures.
However, while the imagery works by putting bacchai in given roles and thus
stating that they play these roles, the iconographic process is more complicated
than this. It is not in fact possible to use the conventional language of drinking and
sacrifice simply to label the actions of the bacchai: the insertion of bacchai into
these scenes implicates the bacchai in the messages created by the appearance of

71. A full demonstration of the iconographical relation of thysia and drinking is beyond the
scope of this paper. For some examples, Peirce 1993 passim, esp. 240-45 and 247-50.
72. The two scenes have the same participants-youths and men, hetairai and instrumentalists,
the pais-and many of the same actions. See also, e.g., the fusion of mixing/ladling (of the drinking
party proper) and komos, above, at n. 65.
73. Albert Henrichs has suggested to me (personal communication) that the possibility should
be considered that fig. 10 and Append. 27, 28 represent the practice of trapezomata, so-called,
the offering of parts of the animal laid raw on a table for the god, rather than parts intended to be
cooked for the human feast; on trapezomata see Jameson 1994 56, with bibliography; on the lack of
representation of the practice, 53. This interpretation would avoid the problems of an association
of bacchai with cooked meat, on which see below at n. 108 and if. However, this interpretation seems
to me unlikely: (1) the imagery draws recognizably on the conventions of the scene of thysia, and
on the conventions for butchery in thysia; (2) there is no iconography of trapezomata; (3) if there had
developed an iconography of trapezomata, this iconography would have to mark a visual distinction
from the conventional iconography of butchery to be distinguishable visually from butchery in thysia.

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
PEIRCE: Visual Language and Concepts of Cult 77

females in these scenes.74 It is the interaction of the image of the bacche

messages that creates the chief import of the scenes. This works differentl
scene of drinking and for that of thysia; I will consider each in turn.
In Athenian social life, the only women who attend male sym
hetairai. These hetairai are not astai, women of citizen class; they
social status.75 Their social status and their characteristic behavior of drin
having sex at symposia are conceptually linked: one implies the other.
drinking, sex or low status signify the hetaira iconographically. On vases,
is designated as a hetaira simply by being juxtaposed with the iconog
drinking, unless this designation is overridden by another marker.76 Thus
in a sympotic scene with men is visually classified as a hetaira by her
alone, even if she wears, as often, a modest chiton and himation.77 I
is shown without men specific signs of her status and pursuits are r
designate her identity: these are the cropped hair of the slave, signs of dri
signs, especially nudity, of a socially reprobated form of sexuality.78
of fig. 7 is a hetaira by definition, her sexuality and status indicated by he
and her possession of ladle and cup, signifying that she is serving hers
The bacchai of the "Lenaia vases," simply because they are females
in sympotic scenes and carrying cups, should be understood by t
as hetairai. However, the depiction makes countervailing statemen
explicitly that these are not hetairai. This is accomplished, in the scen
A, by adaptations of the symposion scene and of the scene of ladling i
the bacchai are inserted. In the Attic scene of symposion, the krater
are never set, as the stamnoi are here, on the side-tables. Moreover,
of ladling tends, as we have noted, to merge with the scene-type of komos
be compositionally separate from the symposion scene.79 The "Lenaia"
moving the ladling scene into the scene of symposion, place a strong an
conventional emphasis on the act of ladling. This emphasis frames fo
so to speak, several peculiar and meaningful elements of the "Lenaia
scene. The first is the cult-image, obviously not a normal element in
of symposion. This image, putting the sympotic activities of the bacc

74. See above at n. 12 and ff. for the discourses related by convention to different
and their role in the generic expectation that the viewer brings to a reading of a scene.
75. Compare the way that in Isaeus 3.14 and [Dem.] 59.24, 25, 28, 33 a woman's att
symposion was cited as evidence of her legal status (in Isaeus, illegitimacy, in [Dem.]
birth) because it meant she was a hetaira. On [Dem.] 59, Carey 1992; on hetairai, Kurk
76. The image, e.g., of a tippling housewife (rf skyphos, Malibu, Getty 85. AE.265;
1995 94, figs. 3, 4) would not be confused with that of a hetaira.
77. Lissarrague 1990 33-34; Dentzer 1982 123-24, with exceptions and objec
iconographical statement does not mean an aste could not for any reason be at a s
real life; rather, it is a function of the way vases communicate.
78. For images of hetairai in vase-painting, Keuls 1985 159-86; Peschel 1987; Reinsb
Kurke 1997 131-39.
79. See above at n. 65.

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
78 CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY Volume 17/No. 1/April 1998

the aegis of the god, says that their drinking is positive and socially sanctioned.80
Second, this is an odd sort of ladling scene: women alone can ladle in an excerpted
scene; but the group ladling scene is masculine and komastic. The focus on the
action of ladling created by counterconventionally transferring it to the center
of the scene of symposion is a way of stressing the femininity and decorum of
the proceedings.
In the context of the all-female symposion scene this decorum of the bacchai
makes a specific statement. Hetairai in unexcerpted scenes of symposion are
shown with men and/or are unequivocally sexual and badly behaved, reclining
like men.8" The "Lenaia" bacchai, though they are clearly marked as drinkers,
are obviously not reclining; indeed, there is no reference to reclining in these
scenes, but rather a persistent reference to dining and drinking seated conveyed
by the image of the klismos.82 Further, the bacchai are all very modestly dressed,
which in the absence of men from the scene visually cancels the classification
of them as hetairai. In fact, the modest dress of the bacchai, and their bearing,
by their contrast with the dress and behavior of the hetaira, designates the bacchai
as astai, a visual status statement that rules out a hetaira identification.83 There
is a more explicit marker of their aste status: the baby satyr on Append no. 19, fig.
4a. It has been noted that the imagery here of the baby reaching to his mother
is a visual allusion to a topos of the domestic scene of the Athenian oikos, the
child held by a maid who reaches out his arms to his mother.84 The mother of
the baby on this "Lenaia vase" is thus characterized as an aste. Curiously, this
infant simultaneously emphasizes his mother's identity as a nymph, since it is
nymphs who have sex with satyrs and thus bear baby satyrs.
The characterization of the bacchai as astai in the context of the scene
of drinking creates another message about them, this the most significant. A
symposiast-aste is a contradiction in terms: astai do not participate in symposia,
and sympotic drinking classifies a woman as a hetaira and disqualifies her
as a respectable woman. The imagery of the vases, in defining the bacchai
visually as "honored and modest female drinkers," and thus as symposiast-astai,

80. Frontisi-Ducroux 1991 81 for a related observation.

81. All-female groups of reclining symposiasts occur on vases; in these scenes the nudity of the
participants and the fact that they recline make a statement about their sexual and social classification
as hetairai (or as acting like hetairai). Two famous vases depicting such a supposed symposion of
hetairai: rf psykter, St. Petersburg 644 (St. 1670) ARV2 16.15; rf hydria, Munich 2421, ARV2 23.7;
see Ferrari nd b; Reinsberg 1989 112-14; on women symposiasts as men, Peschel 1987 42.
82. As hetairai are marked as such iconographically by reclining at the banquet, the seated
pose is the marker of the respectable female at a banquet; for seated female banqueters in votive
and funerary reliefs see Cooper and Morris 1991 80 and P1. 6 (Dentzer 1982 R 506) with a row
of reclining men and one of seated women; see also the all-female funerary banquet (or symposion
ton hosion?) on a late sixth-century sarcophagus from Gumusqay near Granicus, SevinS 1996. I
owe my knowledge of this sarcophagus, and the reference, to C. Brian Rose.
83. This is not to say that there were no circumstances under which a woman of citizen class
could descend to being a hetaira; rather, no hetaira would be represented as an aste on a vase.
84. Benson 1995 388.

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
PEIRCE: Visual Language and Concepts of Cult 79

makes statements that are analogous visual contradictions in terms. T

dissonance problematizes the image for the viewer, demanding a resolut
contradiction so that sense can be made of what is seen. There are two
this visual incongruence can be resolved. One is to eliminate from the
the element of honor and status attached to the drinking females, the
eliminate their identity as females. Both compositional pattern and the
on the modesty and decorum of the women visually encourage the viewer t
the second course, to assimilate the females to males. The procession
wrapped bacchai in the scene of komos on the "Lenaia vases" (figs. 2b, 4
evokes not the hetairai who run along with the largely male group o
(as, e.g. the hetaira is doing in fig. 6) but the quiet early classical pr
of uniformly depicted male komasts in himatia (fig. 5). The bacchai's s
procession works visually as a sexually-inverted reflection of this common
of the all-male komos. The iconography thus makes the important state
because the bacchai are honorable and decorous astai they are privilege
ritual context to act as men.
The perhaps odd conclusion that these bacchai have conferred
visually the status of men finds confirmation in the depiction of the bacch
"Lenaia" scene of thysia. In scenes of thysia on Attic vases, women are
in iconographic roles, appearing consistently only as kanephoros, the
the kanoun, or as priestess.85 They are not represented on vases as m
parties of worshippers in the scenes that show the preparation of what the
would understand as a banquet of meat; this contrasts with the represe
women in scenes of thysia on votive reliefs, where they are frequently
worshippers.86 The scene-type which the "Lenaia" thysia echoes, in p
concerns all-male commensal groups on celebratory occasions: no wom
for female divinities, such as Nike) are ever pictured in this scene.87 F
female groups performing thysia are almost unknown not just on va
archaic and classical art: an exception is a famous Apulian vase tha

85. On the use here of the term thysia, see above, n. 66. I consider a scene of feas
to be distinguished by imagery signifying offering of an animal victim or imagery o
the cooking of meat. Women are represented both differently and at a higher rate of
scenes of offering on vases where there is no reference to animals or meat. Scenes of t
women receive or lead processions: bf hydria, whereabouts unknown, formerly Roman
393.20; Van Straten 1995 nos. V 21, V 32, V 39, V 55; as kanephoros: V 9, V 17,
V 22, V 24, V 30, V 31, V 32, V 39, V 55, V 74, V 78.
86. Figures of women in the iconographic role of worshipper (that is, in the massed gr
escorts or follows the animal in the procession, in the group performing rites at the altar,
of butchery) appear in 9 out of the 215 "non-mythical" Attic scenes of thysia in the
Van Straten 1995. Of these 9, 3 (V 157, V 159,V 162) appear to me dubious as scenes of t
show bacchai sacrificing (V 56,V 394) for which see below, n. 88. The remaining ex
95, V 77,V 67,V 193. I am unsure how to classify the females in V 97 and V 133. Godd
without restrictions in scenes of thysia on vases. For votive reliefs, Van Straten 1995 2
87. The "altar-group" scene, Peirce 1993 230-34.

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
80 CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY Volume 17/No. 1/April 1998

scene is about a thysia performed by bacchai for Dionysos.88 The "Lenaia" thysi
like the "Lenaia" komos substituting females for males, is similarly a sexually
inverted reflection of the all-male vase-painting scene of thysia. Its statement that
the bacchai are sacrificing without men in preparation for a cult banquet of meat is
a statement of role-reversal: this says that the bacchai have formed a sacrificin
and commensal group of the sort formed normally not by women, but by men.

III. THE RELATION OF THE "LENAIA VASES" TO DIONYSIAC CULT

These statements made by the vases should indicate that a Dionysiac epiphan
celebrated by nymphs and bacchai with a feast and drinking can be found both
in myth and as an event of polis cult. I believe that both can be traced. As with all
discussions of bacchic matters we are limited for our knowledge of this practice to
allusive and fragmentary sources of different reference and purpose from a wi
range of times and places.
The general background is provided by a salient feature of Dionysiac myth
ogy, the proper theoxenia he obtains or fails to obtain on his visits to human
cities.89 The myth of Dionysos' visit to Thebes, the story told in the Bacchai
has been interpreted as turning on this issue of proper theoxenia.90 The frequen
representation on Attic vases of the Dionysiac symposion may reflect this them
of theoxenia in a different way, showing the kind of event that the god enjoys
He is often seen reclining as symposiast and banqueter, the side-table frequentl
displaying meat. On these occasions his thiasos is present, performing a k
mos.9' A more specific reference to the entertainment of the god is provided b
a black-figure scene showing a komos of nymphs and satyrs overseen by Dionys
enthroned on the left. 92 A symposion is in progress: one satyr dips into a dinos. To
the right is a human thysia; men are cutting up meat and putting it in a cauldron t
boil. Another kind of reference to the Dionysiac banquet- symposion is seen on
group of five black-figure vases showing nymphs seated before tables of meat
eating meat and bread and drinking wine.93 On one of these (fig. 13) the scen

88. Apulian rf volute krater, Naples MN 2411 (inv. 82922) V 149, late fifth-early fourth
For thysia by bacchai/bacchic nymphs, compare also the rf krater fr., Athens, Kerameikos 566
late fifth-early fourth c., V 142, and the rf pelike fr., Malibu, Getty 81.AE.62, V 394 (Pan Painte
(bacchic nymph and satyr in attendance at slaughter of a goat). For the sense as thysia of la
black-figure scenes with nymphs and animals Peirce 1993 247-50.
89. Burnett 1970 24, n. 8 on theoxenia and Dionysos in myth; Sourvinou-Inwood 1994 27
on resistance and reception of the god in Dionysiac myth; on cultic xenia for Dionysos below at
n. 95.
90. Burnett 1970.
91. Above, n. 56.
92. V 212; Peirce 1993 240 and fig. 12.
93. Bf hydria, Villa Giulia 50466, ABV 366.75 (Leagros Group); bf column-krater, Agrigento R
142, ABV 377.235 (Leagros Group); bf lekythos, Athens 12951, ABV 380.287 (Leagros Group);
bf neck-amphora, Munich 1564, ABV 395.3 (near the Painter of Munich 1519); Kuisnacht, private,
Paralipomena 247 (near the Sappho Painter); this group of vases is united by workshop connections.

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
PEIRCE: Visual Language and Concepts of Cult 81

is in a vineyard and the nymphs are crowned with ivy, establishing unequ
the bacchic context of the scenes. These are the only scenes that show
drinking as they do on the "Lenaia vases," as Nilsson observed.94 As impo
nowhere else but on these two groups of vases are bacchai represente
all-female cult group celebrating a banquet of meat.
Such a mythical scenario of a banquet-symposion with the thiasos may pro
the conceptual background for a Dionysiac theoxenia of cult. There exists
evidence for bacchic theoxenia which, though sketchy, may indicate th
common form of worship of the god.95 This evidence may also allow us to uni
a type of cult the salient features of the "Lenaia vase" iconography, that
epiphany of Dionysos and his entertainment as guest, thysia, feasting, dr
nymphs and bacchic women.
Festivals for Dionysos called theodaisia are attested in Lindos by an i
tion of the fifth or fourth century B.C. (SEG3 1035) where a bull is sacr
and in Libya according to a reference in Suda (s.v. Astydromia) celebrat
Dionysos and the nymphs.96 Nilsson considered the kind of festival charac
of Dionysos and believed the existence of such festivals manifested by the
name Theodaisia attested for Rhodes, Kos, Kalymnos and Kyrene.97 Paus
(6.26.2) describes a claim by the inhabitants of the island of Andros tha
flows spontaneously in a sanctuary of Dionysos at the heorte of the god t
cally. This phenomenon is also described by Pliny, but as a spring that tu
wine (NH 2.231; 26.16); Pliny calls this event theodaisia.98 Similar spr
wine appear native to the Aegean islands, one on Naxos, one flowing at
times" on Teos.99 We hear nothing about the festivals we must assume
setting for these events on Naxos and Teos, or about their celebrants, bu
similarity to the Andros wine-miracle may show that these too are theod
feasts for the god.
A feast for the god requires the god's presence, and wine and epiphan
show a pattern of connection in Dionysiac religion. Down through the his
Greek literature the Dionysiac presence is manifested in, among other phenom
the sprouting of grapevines and the worshippers' perception that the ground

94. Nilsson 1930 argued for a relation between Munich 1564 (above, n. 93) and the
vases."
95. This evidence was collected (not however with reference to the "Lenaia vases") by Nilsson
1906 177, 179-80, Nilsson 1967 589-90 and Pippidi 1975 138-41. On theodaisia for Dionysos
Jameson 1994 36 n. 5; for the entertainment of the god, above, nn. 89-90; Sourvinou-Inwood 1994
269-90 reconstructs a "ritual schema" of reception of Dionysos, including the entertainment of the
god, at the core of the Athenian Dionysia.
96. For these references, Nilsson 1906 279 n. 2 and Nilsson 1967 590 n. 2.
97. Nilsson 1967 590, n. 2.
98. Nilsson 1906 277 n. 3 and Nilsson 1967 589 n. 10.
99. Naxos: Steph. Byz. s.v. Naxos; Propert. 3.17.27; Ktesias in Photios Bibl. p. 46 a (Bekker);
Suda s.v. Naxia. Teos: Diodorus 3.66.

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
82 CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY Volume 17/No. 1/April 1998

with wine. " Pausanias brings up the Andros wine-miracle in the context o
another, more celebrated, in the account of which we see an explicit connectio
of wine and epiphany (6.26.1-2). He describes this event in the course of h
discussion of a festival called Thyia which took place in his day in Elis; th
was celebrated by the local female bacchic thiasos, the Sixteen Women. A
this festival empty cauldrons, sealed in a temple ovemight, filled up with win
by themselves. Pausanias remarks (6.26.1) that the Elians "assert that the god
attends their festival," clearly indicating a divine epiphany. 101
With the Sixteen Women we have found specific bacchic women attested by
historical sources in the same context with wine and a divine epiphany. We ar
also able to trace all-female bacchic groups celebrating thysiai and cult-banquets
this attested in evidence closer in time and place to the "Lenaia vases." The fourth
century cult calendar of the Attic deme of Erchia (LSCG 18, A 46-50, A 36-38
lists sacrifices celebrated by a priestess for Dionysos and for Semele.'02 The mea
is given "to the women," and the provision is added, "ouphora." Thus, the wome
must have eaten the meat in the sanctuary at a cult banquet: here, then, we have
feast of all-female Dionysiac worshippers. Detienne claims in a famous article
that Greek women were excluded from participation in thysia and from sharin
in sacrificial meat, a thesis that has been shown to be incorrect.103 Yet Detienn
persuasively demonstrates that it is very unusual to find all-female groups o
sacrificers and all-female feasts on sacrificial meat. Further, aside from the Erchia
thysiai, the few examples of such thysiai are, as Detienne shows, connected wit
the assumption of masculine roles, political, military or athletic.'04 The Erch
sacrifices may be, then, related to an assumption by the celebrants of some kind of
masculine role, and because of this unusual. The Erchia thysiai thus interpreted
light of Detienne's thesis provide a close parallel to the scenes on the "Lenaia
vases": we have seen that the imagery of the vases emphatically represents bot
the masculinity of the rites of the bacchai and the abrogation of the usual soci
rules, the creation ritually of an exceptional situation, allowing the performanc
of masculine roles by females.
A famous passage in Diodorus may fill in the cultic context of such thysiai b
bacchai.
xol tou; uE-v BoLtoou xclt -?oo o`CXXou' XE0vox xo'L E3pFxxocS oizo
,uvr40ovEvov-Ca; -ET) xocatc xnv Jv&xiv aYtp0l0evy XorrOcSaLOCL TO; tpL

100. Hymn. Hom. Bacch. (7) 35-40, wine flowing through the pirate's ship and grapes growing
on the sail; Ael. VH 3.42, grapevines on the looms of the Minyads; E. Ba. 142, 707, wine on/from the
ground. For wine-miracles, Merkelbach 1988 54-55.
101. The women of Elis are noted by Plutarch, Quaest. Graec. 36 (Mor. 299B), as invoking
Dionysos in the form of a bull; scholars usually relate this to the Sixteen Women and the Thyia;
on these Brown 1982 305-14; Mitsopoulos-Leon 1984; Bremmer 1984 282.
102. On this sacrifice, Henrichs 1990 262-64; Detienne 1989 132.
103. Detienne 1989; against this, Osborne 1993; see also Henrichs 1990 264.
104. On the masculinity of these cases, Detienne 1989 132-33.

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 PEIRCE: Visual Language and Concepts of Cult 83

rtrnpLbog 6UOaLa Atovuac, xal~ toV 0O6v Vo4tAELV xata tov xpovov
tOUTOV ZTOLELGOaL tq tpO rozq aVOpGrToLq EtLyWVEsLL; 8LO XaL nccpa
7toXXa,ocC tv EXXr)vL'.t&v nt6oXe(1v && tua Lv st-v P3acxyEz& ts yuvotLxiv
o'6po'LCEsO6L, xOcL Tai lTxpOtpotV VO6UL4ioV LVxl Oupaocpopesv xczt auvev
6OUGaLcE:LV eOuG4XCLR XCXt tLVaO)aLS tOv 6osv. t&*S 8e yuvoctxOcg
xCxt aua 4WCOC OUMa&CV TCj OC, I PCXXEU'eLV XOctl XclO6XOU t-v
nacpoucwaxv u,uvExv -oo ALov0vUaou, VLVOUVEVaX Cot& ixTopoupvcVX To
(XX(LOV 7,tope8PSUELV Tx OE:qo 4LcXLVot&M.
Diodorus 4.3.2-3 105

Though Diodorus' methodology makes it impossible to take this passage as a

faithful description of contemporary cult, it may still be possible to derive from
it cultural conceptions about Dionysiac cult; in these, we can see in Diodorus'
association of ecstatic female cult, thysia and the epiphany of Dionysos a very
complete parallel for the ritual we have found to be represented on the "Lenaia
vases."106 The other evidence for Dionysiac religion we have examined nowhere
unites all the elements found together on the "Lenaia vases." Yet the crucial
elements of these scenes-female bacchism, nymphs, divine epiphany, theoxenia,
thysia, cult banquets and wine-recur in these sources in various combinations.
There is a final question to be addressed: whether the picture presented here
of sacrificing, feasting and drinking bacchai is not simply the result of lumping
together as one kind of phenomenon various things that should be considered
distinct types of bacchism. Ecstatic female bacchism, "maenadism" as it is
generally called, is defined in similar ways by various current schools of thought
on Dionysos. The ecstatic rites of maenads are said to represent in ritual terms
cultural concepts of the feminine and the antithesis of ordinary reality and civic
life.107 According to these theories maenads practice as sacrifice (actually or in
imagination only) sparagmos and omophagia, the rituals thought to be represented
in the Bacchai when the Theban maenads tear apart cattle and then Pentheus.108 In

105. The Boeotians and other Greeks, and the Thracians, in memory of the campaign in India,
have established trieteric sacrifices to Dionysos, and believe that at that time the god reveals himself
to human beings. Consequently in many Greek cities every other year Bacchic bands of women
gather and it is allowed for the maidens to carry the thyrsus and to join in the frenzied revelry, crying
out "Euhai!" and honoring the god; while the matrons, forming in groups, offer sacrifices to the god
and perform bacchic rites and, in general, extol with hymns the presence of Dionysos, in this manner
acting the part of the maenads, who, as history records, were of old the companions of the god.
(trans. Oldfather, adapted)
106. On Diodorus' fusion of myth and history in this passage, Henrichs 1978 145, 147. On the
character of the thysia, see further at n. I1.
107. For "maenadism" as opposite to the social order of the polis, e.g. Vernant, 1983 324-25;
Seaford 1995 259-60. On this counter-polis ritual as a representation of cultural ideologies of the
female, Zeitlin 1982 133-38.
108. The presence of omophagia in these events is thought by some to be only hinted at; some
scholars deny that maenads practice omophagia in the play. Whether these practices occur in
maenadic cult in reality or imagination is irrelevant to the theoretical definition of the maenad.

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
84 CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY Volume 17/No. 1/April 1998

this view of the Dionysiac, feasting on meat and the symposion are inimical to
maenads, either because of the masculinity of the meat feast and of drinking, o
because feasting and the symposion model social categories of civic life, or fo
both reasons."'0 According to prevailing models of "maenadism," the feasting an
drinking bacchai of the "Lenaia vases" and of the testimonia would be classified
as "non-maenadic" by definition. Thus, much current theory would require us t
see in our evidence a "non-maenadic" form of ecstatic female bacchic cult. In fact,
some prominent theories of maenadism require that one postulate such a divisio
into "maenadic" and "non-maenadic" ecstatic female bacchism, at least in som
contexts; there has been scholarly attention devoted to establishing (explicitly o
implicitly) these distinctions.110
The evidence cited here, in particular the "Lenaia" scenes, the vases showing
banqueting nymphs, the testimony of Diodorus, and the rituals of the Sixtee
Women of Elis, do not support this theory of maenadism. This evidence suggest
rather that the theoretical separation of cooked meat and wine from the type o
cult generally referred to as maenadism can be purchased only at the price of
circular argument. That is, the construct of the dietarily anti-civic maenad can b
maintained only by declaring "non-maenadic" every instance of female bacchism
that has to do with feasting and wine, because it has to do with feasting and wine,
and by discounting the evidence for thysia or drinking in undeniably "maenadi
contexts.'1' This approach is well illustrated in the scholarly history of the "Lena
vases." The difficulties for accepted theories of Dionysos of the combination the
present of the iconography of "maenadism" and of wine have traditionally been
dealt with by denying either that the women are "maenads" or that the imager
of drinking has central significance for the subject of the depictions."2 Whil
a systematic discussion of the modern definition of the maenad is not possib
here, it can be said that the evidence presented here points to problems with some
current approaches.

109. See, e.g. Detienne 1975; Detienne 1979 68-94. On wine and "maenadism" above, n. 43.
110. For arguments supporting an understanding of "maenad" as distinct in meaning from
"bacche" in Euripides' Bacchai, Hedreen 1994 50-S1, 56 with n. 59, following Vernant 198
405. For the view that "ritual maenadism proper" is to be distinguished e.g. from the kind of ecstatic
women's cult practiced at a Baccheion that is mentioned in Ar. Lys. 1-2, Henrichs 1982 144, and,
generally, on the distinction of "maenadism" from "less restricted forms of Dionysiac worship" se
ibid. 147. See also Bremmer 1984 282 for a discrimination between thiasoi of "maenads proper
and thiasoi only "maenadic in origin." The difficulties of a distinction between the "maenadic" an
"non-maenadic" bacche should serve as a warning about the definition of the maenad that makes
such a distinction necessary.
Ill. Thus, for example, the Sixteen Women are only "maenadic in origin"; Bremmer 1984 282;
Henrichs 1978 148 maintains the separation of maenads and thysia in regard to the Diodorus passag
not by calling the maenads non-maenadic but by calling the thysia maenadic, that is, by proposin
that their thysia is an ameliorated form of sparagmos and omophagia.
112. Usually with the argument that the vases illustrate the "non-maenadic" wine festival of th
Anthesteria, or the "maenadic" festival of the Lenaia; on the debate, see above, nn. 3 and 43.

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
PEIRCE: Visual Language and Concepts of Cult 85

CONCLUSIONS
The conclusions of this study stem from and are dependent on a particular view
of the compositional method that created the scenes on the "Lenaia vases." I have
argued that the scenes are assembled from adapted and recombined conventional
Attic scene-types of thysia, feasting, symposion and komos, of the Dionysiac
thiasos, and of the aste in a domestic setting. It is the overlap of this iconography
with the "Lenaia" scenes that identifies these scenes as representations of thysia
and a cult banquet of meat and wine celebrated by bacchic nymphs who are astai.
The specificity of the rituals so identified in the iconography allows us to see
specific parallels between the "Lenaia" scenes and both cultic theoxenia for the
god and a normally male kind of banqueting by historical bacchic women.
The view of compositional method adopted in this paper also controls how
we will be able to relate such a ritual to real life. The demonstration that the
scenes are constructed out of conventional elements of pre-existing scene-types
makes impossible the empiricist view that images so circumstantial and detailed,
so real in feeling, must be grounded in direct sensory experience of the things
depicted. With the empiricist reading, we can also eliminate some ideas about the
message of the scenes often assumed for "scenes of reality" or "genre scenes" on
Attic vases: that the imagery is intended to constitute a record of the appearance
of an actual event, or to convey the piquant quality of a point in time randomly
observed. The subject of the scenes instead, I hope to have shown, is an intellectual
message about female bacchism, a message which can be read in the interaction
of the "linguistic" values attached to the visual conventions that compose the
scenes. The imagery both exploits and violates convention to state that although
the bacchai join in the drinking that accompanies the epiphany of Dionysos, this
does not involve them in the usual social opprobrium attached to females who
engage in symposia. Rather, these women are given license to act this way by
being temporarily endowed with the status of men, a status that allows them to
constitute an all-female sacrificing and commensal group. In this they are signally
honored.
This message seems highly relevant to actual bacchic cult. However, we lack
the cultural knowledge necessary to determine if the ancient viewer would have
understood the scenes as referring to a particular ritual, or to a class of rituals,
or to a story in which a Dionysiac ritual figures. In the end, we cannot say that
the "Lenaia" scenes represent either real life or myth, but only that they refer
to both. The vases do this in order to bind cult and myth together, to show that
the events of Dionysos' life occur in the polis with human participants.

Fordham University
PEIRCE@murray.fordham.edu

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
86 CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY Volume 17/No. 1/April 1998

APPENDIX

THE GROUP OF TWENTY-EIGHT STAMNOI

No. Museum and inventory "L" Scene on side A Scene on Side B

fig- no.; ARV2 no; Painter. No. (and under handles)
ure * = workshop relation to
no. Villa Giulia Painter.

l. Rome, Villa Giulia 983. L3 Image, table, 2 3 bacchai in proces

ARV2 621.33. Villa Giulia stamnoi. Bread. sion, one reversed,
Painter. Bacche stands on R with skyphos; one
460-450 B.C. holding skyphos; with thyrsos.
bacche stands on L
ladling into skyphos.

2. Boston 90.155. ARV2 L4 Image, table, 2 Klismos in back

fig. 621.34. Villa Giulia stamnoi. Bread and ground. 5 bacchai
2a, Painter. wreaths. Bacche in procession, 3
2b 460 B.C. stands on R ladling with skyphoi, one
into skyphos; bacche bacche reversed; one
stands on L holding bacche, reversed,
skyphos. with sun-shade; one
fluting.

3. London E 451. ARV2 L2 Image, table, 2 3 bacchai in pro

621.35. Villa Giulia stamnoi. Bacche cession, one with
Painter. stands on R ladling skyphos, one with
460-450 B.C. into skyphos; bacche thyrsos, one reversed.
stands on L holding
skyphos.

4. Wuirzburg 520. ARV2 L12 Image, table, 2 3 bacchai in pro

621.36. Villa Giulia stamnoi. Bacche cession, one with
Painter. stands on R ladling skyphos and thyrsos,
460-450 B.C. into skyphos; bacche one reversed, with
stands on L fluting. krotala.

5. Florence 4005 (1975). LI Image, table, 2 3 bacchai in proces

ARV2 621.37. Villa Giulia stamnoi. Bread. sion, one reversed
Painter. Bacche stands on R with sun-shade, one
460-450 B.C. ladling into skyphos; with skyphos.
bacche stands on
L holding skyphos.

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
PEIRCE: Visual Language and Concepts of Cult 87

6. Parma C55. (small L9 Preserved: part of Not preserved.

fragment) ARV2 621.37bi8. image, stamnos,
Villa Giulia Painter. bacche on L ladling.
460 B.C.

7. Florence 14B6. (small LIO Preserved: part of Not preserved.

fragment) ARV2 621.38. image.
Villa Giulia Painter.
460 B.C.

8. Paris G 408. ARV2 621.39. L5 Image, table, stamnoi. 5 bacchai in proces

Villa Giulia Painter. Bread. Bacche stands sion, 4 with skyphoi,
460 B.C. on R ladling into one of them reversed;
skyphos; bacche one reversed with
stands on L holding oinochoe.
skyphos.

9. Paris Cp 10762; Basle L6 Preserved: column- Preserved: 5 bacchai

Cahn HC 637 a-d. ARV2 image, 2 bacchai. in procession, at least
621.40 (part) (fragmentary) one with skyphos.

10. Paris Cp 10762; Basle, L7 Preserved: column- Not preserved.

Cahn HC 637 e. ARV2 image, part of stamnos.
621.40 (part) (fragmentary)
Villa Giulia Painter.
460 B.C.

11. Oxford 523. ARV2 621.41. L20 Variant setting: 3 bacchai in pro
Villa Giulia Painter. no column-image; cession, one with
460-450 B.C. only one stamnos. thyrsos and skyphos,
Wreaths. Bacche one reversed, with
stands on R fluting; 2 skyphos.
bacchai stand on
L, one ladling into
skyphos, one holding
skyphos.

12. Detroit 63.13. ARV2 L8 No scene with image, 5 bacchai in proces

621.42. Villa Giulia table and stamnoi. sion, 2 with skyphoi,
Painter. On one side, 3 one with sun-shade,
bacchai in procession, reversed, one with
one fluting, one krotala.
with skyphos, one
reversed. Klismos in
background.

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
88 CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY Volume 17/No. 1/April 1998

13. Milan A 224. Not inARV2. LII Image, table, 2 4 bacchai in proces
Villa Giulia Painter. stamnoi. Bacche sion, (5 including the
460-450 B.C. stands on R ladling bacche on side A);
into skyphos; bacche one flutes, one holds
stands on L holding thyrsos.
skyphos. Bacche
on far R belongs
to procession on
side B.

14. Chicago 1889.22. ARV2 L21 Variant setting: no 3 standing bacchai,

628.4. *Chicago Painter. column-image; no none with skyphos.
450 B.C. stamnoi on table, but One holds thyrsos, one
instead a kantharos holds drinking-horn.
and an apple. Two
bacchai stand on R,
one holding thyrsos,
one holding wreath,
which she puts
around stamnos held
by bacche standing
on L.

15. Paris G 409. ARV2 628.5. L18 Variant setting: no 3 standing women,
*Chicago Painter. column-image. Two none with skyphos.
450-440 B.C. bacchai on R, one
seated in klismos, one
standing, holding out
phiale; bacche stands
on L ladling into
phiale.

16. San Antonio 86.134.64. L13 Image, table, 2 3 bacchai in proces

fig. ARV2 628.6. *Chicago stamnoi. Bread, sion, one with kan
3 Painter. meat. Liknon in tharos, one reversed.
450 B.C. foreground. Bacche
seated on R in
klismos, fluting;
bacche standing
on L, ladling into
skyphos.

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
PEIRCE: Visual Language and Concepts of Cult 89

17. Naples 184 288. Not in L17 Variant setting: no 3 standing wo

ARV2. *Chicago Painter. column-image. 2 with phialai, o
Ca. 450-440 B.C. bacchai stand on with oinochoe.
R, one holding out
phiale; one bacche
stands on L, ladling
into another phiale.

18. Paris G 410. ARV2 633.8. L24 No scene with image,

*Methyse Painter. table, stamnoi.
450 B.C. Preliminary sketch
on one side: 3 bacchai
in procession, one
holding stamnos,
one holding thyrsos.

19. Warsaw 124465. ARV2 L66 Variant setting: 3 bac

fig. 1019.82. Phiale Painter. column of column- sion, o
4a, 450 B.C. image present, but with torch, one
4b. without mask or with skyphos, one
drapery; only one with skyphos
stamnos on table. oinochoe.
Ensemble viewed
from side, so that
column to R of,
not behind, table.
Bacche stands on
R, setting second
stamnos on table.
2 bacchai stand on L,
one holding lyre
and reaching out to
infant satyr held
by bacche on far L.

20. Naples 164332. ARV2 L22 No column-image, 3 st

1019.83. Phiale Painter. table. Bacche stands one w
440 B.C. on R fluting; bacche with drinking horn.
stands in center
holding stamnos;
bacche stands on
L holding lyre.

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
90 CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY Volume 17/No. 1/April 1998

21. N.Y. 21.88.3.ARV2 1072. L19 Variant setting: no 3 standing bacchai,

Kensington Class; recalls column-image, only all holding thyrsoi.
Barclay and Thompson one stamnos. Bacche
Painters. stands on R holding
450-440 B.C. kantharos; 2 bacchai
stand on L, one
ladling into phiale,
one holding phiale.

22. Adolphseck 40. ARV2 L23 No image, table. 2 standing men flank
1073.11. Eupolis Painter. Bacche stands on R, woman with fillet;
450 B.C. thyrsos behind her, no bacchic features.
holding out hands to
take stamnos extended
by standing bacche
in center; bacche
stands on L, thyrsos
behind her, holding
flutes.

23. Naples 2419. ARV2 L15 Image, table, 2 4 bacchai in proces

1151.2. Dinos Painter. stamnoi. Kantharos sion, 2 with thyrsoi,
420 B.C. and apples (?) on one with torch,
table. 2 bacchai one, reversed, with
on R dance, one tympanon.
holding torch, one
holding tympanon.
Bacche stands on L
ladling into stamnos.
Bacche on far left
dances.

24. Geneva HR 59. Unattri- L14 Image, table, 2 3 bacchai in proces

buted. stamnoi. Liknon in sion, one with kan
Ca. 460 B.C. foreground. Standing tharos, one reversed.
bacche on R, standing
bacche on L.

25. Sion, Musee du Valais. L16 Variant setting: no 3 bacchai in pro

Unattributed. image. Bacche stands cession, one with
Ca. 450 B.C. on R holding lyre; thyrsos, one reversed
bacche stands in
center behind table;
bacche stands on
L fluting.

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
PEIRCE: Visual Language and Concepts of Cult 91

26. Moscow, Pushkin Museum L20 Variant setting: no 3 bacchai in proces

M 1291, 1292. Unattri- image; table viewed sion, one reversed
buted. from short side; with thyrsos.
one stamnos only.
Bacche stands on
R fluting; bacche
stands on L holding
kantharos; bacche
on far L in nebris
dances.

27. London E 452. ARV2 L64 Variant setting: 3 standing bacchai,

fig. 1073.9. *Eupolis Painter. column-image and one with thyrsos,
10 Ca. 450 B.C. table viewed from one with wreath.
side, so that image is
to R of table and
seen in profile, rather
than behind table
and seen frontally.
No stamnoi. Ritual
differs: table not
set for feast, but
piled with butchered
meat. Bacche on
R stands or walks
holding kanoun and
oinochoe; bacche on
left holds kantharos
and thyrsos.

28. Paris G 407. ARV2 1073.1(0. L65 Same as no. 27. Two standing women
*Eupolis Painter. flanking standing
Ca. 450 B.C. man with knotted
stick; no bacchic
features.

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
92 CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY Volume 17/No. 1 /April 1998

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Amandry, P. 1984. L'Antre corycien II. BCH Suppl. 9. Paris.
Balant, J. 1980. "Classical Archaeology and French Nineteenth-Century Realists." Listy
Filologicke 103: 193-201.
1981. Studies on the Use and Decoration of Athenian Vases. Prague.
Beard, M. 1991. "Adopting an Approach II." In T. Rasmussen and N. Spivey, eds.,
Looking at Greek Vases: 12-35. Cambridge.
Beazley, J. D. 1928. Greek Vases in Poland. Oxford.
Benson, C. et al. 1995. In Reeder, ed.: 383-88.
Berard, C. 1983. "Iconographie-iconologie-iconologique." Etudes de lettres 4: 5-37.
, and C. Bron. 1990. "Le liknon, le 'masque' et le poteau: Images du rituel
dionysiaque." Melanges Pierre LUveque. Vol. 4: 29-44. Paris.
I C. Bron, J.-L. Durand et al. 1989. A City of Images. (Translation of La cite
des images. Lausanne, 1984.) Princeton.
Boardman, J. 1975. Athenian Red Figure Vases: The Archaic Period. London.
. 1989. Athenian Red Figure Vases: The Classical Period. London and New
York.
Bremmer, J. 1984. "Greek Maenadism Reconsidered." ZPE 55: 267-86.
Bron, C., F. Viret Bernal, C. Berard et al. 1991. "Heracles chez T.I.R.E.S.I.A.S.: Traite
ment informatique de reconnaissance des elements semiologiques pour l'identifi
cation des scenes." Hephaistos 10: 21-33.
Brown, C. 1982. "Dionysos and the Women of Elis: PMG 871." GRBS 23: 305-14.
Burkert, W. 1983. Homo Necans. (Translation of Homo Necans. Berlin and New York,
1972.) Berkeley.
Burnett, A.P. 1970. "Pentheus and Dionysos: Host and Guest." CP 65: 15-29.
Carey, C. 1992. Apollodorus: Against Neaira. Warminster.
Carpenter, T. 1986. Dionysian Imagery in Archaic Greek Art. Oxford.
. 1997. Dionysian Imagery in Fifth-Century Athens. New York.
Casabona, J. 1966. Recherches sur le vocabulaire des sacrifices en grec. Aix-en
Provence.
Cooper, F., and S. Morris. 1991. "Dining in Round Buildings." In 0. Murray, ed.,
Sympotica. A Symposium on the Symposion: 66-85. Oxford.
de la Geniere, J. 1987. "Vases des Ldneennes?" MEFRA 99.1: 43-61.
Dentzer, J.-M. 1982. Le motif du banquet couche dans le proche-orient et le monde grec.
Paris.
Detienne, M. 1975. "Les chemins de la deviance: Orphisme, Dionysisme, et Pythagor
isme." Orfismo in Magna Grecia (Atti del quattordicesimo convegno di studi sulla
Magna Grecia): 49-79. Taranto.
. 1979. Dionysos Slain. (Translation of Dionysos mis a' mort. Paris, 1977).
Baltimore.
. 1989. "The Violence of Wellborn Ladies: Women in the Thesmophoria." In
Detienne and Vernant: 129-47.
, and J.-P. Vernant, eds. 1989. The Cuisine of Sacrifice among the Greeks.
(Translation of La cuisine du sacrifice en pays grec. Paris, 1979.) Chicago.
Deubner, L. 1932. Attische Feste. Berlin.
Dodds, E. R. 1960. Euripides: Bacchae. Oxford.

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 PEIRCE: Visual Language and Concepts of Cult 93

Durand, J.-L., and F. Frontisi-Ducroux. 1982. "Idoles, figures, images: Autour d

Dionysos." RA: 83-107.
, F. Frontisi-Ducroux, and F. Lissarrague. 1989. "Wine: Human and Divine
In Berard, Bron, Durand et al.: 121-30.
Edwards, M. W. 1960. "Representation of Maenads on Archaic Red-Figure Vases." JHS
80: 78-87.
. 1991. The Iliad: A Commentary. Vol. 5. Cambridge.
Farnell, L. 1909. Cults of the Greek States. Vol. 5. Oxford.
Ferrari, G. nd a. Figures of Thought. Chicago (forthcoming).
nd b. "Meaningful Figures." (forthcoming).
Frickenhaus, A. 1912. Len&envasen. Wincklemannsprogramm 72: 1-40. Berlin.
Frontisi-Ducroux, F. 1991. Le dieu-masque: Une figure du Dionysos d'Athenes. Paris
and Rome.
Gombrich, E. 1960. Art and Illusion: A Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representa
tion. Princeton.
Graef, B., and E. Langlotz. 1925. Die antiken Vasen von derAkropolis zu Athen. I. Berlin.
Halm-Tisserant, M. 1991. "Autour du mannequin dionysiaque." Hephaistos 10: 63-88.
Hamilton, R. 1992. Choes and Anthesteria. Ann Arbor.
Hedreen, G. M. 1992. Silens in Attic Black-figure Vase-painting. Ann Arbor.
.1994. "Silens, Nymphs and Maenads." JHS 114: 47-69.
Henderson, J. 1987. Aristophanes' Lysistrata. Oxford.
Henrichs, A. 1978. "Greek Maenadism from Olympias to Messalina." HSCP 82: 121-60.
-- www.. 1982. "Changing Dionysiac Identities." In B.F. Mayer and E.P. Sanders, eds.,
Jewish and Christian Self Definition III: Self Definition in the Greco-Roman World:
137-60. London.
. 1987. "Myth Visualized: Dionysos and his Circle in Sixth-century Attic Vase
painting." In Papers on the Amasis Painter and His World: 92-124. Malibu.
. 1990. "Between Country and City: Cultic Dimensions of Dionysos in Athens
and Attica." In M. Griffith and D. J. Mastronarde, eds., Cabinet of the Muses:
Essays on Classical and Comparative Literature in Honor of Thomas G. Rosenmeyer:
255-77. Atlanta.
Jameson, M. H. 1988. "Sacrifice and Ritual: Greece." In M. Grant and R. Kitzinger, eds.,
Civilization of the Ancient Mediterranean: Greece and Rome: 959-80. New York.
. 1994. "Theoxenia." In R. Hagg, ed., Ancient Greek Cult Practice from the
Epigraphical Evidence: 35-57. Stockholm.
Jauss, H. R. 1982. Aesthetic Experience and Literary Hermeneutics. (Translation of
Asthetisiche Erfahrung und literarische Hermeneutik, I. Frankfurt am Main, 1982.)
Minneapolis.
. 1982. Toward an Aesthetic of Reception. (Translation of Kleine Apologie der
dsthetischen Erfahrung. Konstanz, 1972.) Minneapolis.
Keuls, E. C. 1984. "Male-Female Interaction in Fifth-century Dionysiac Ritual as Shown
in Attic Vase-Painting." ZPE 55: 287-97.
. 1985. The Reign of the Phallus. New York.
Korshak, Y. 1987. Frontal Faces in Attic Vase Painting of the Archaic Period. Chicago.
Kurke, L. 1997. "Inventing the Hetaira: Sex, Politics and Discursive Conflict in Archaic
Greece." ClAnt 16: 106-50.
Larson, J. 1995. "The Corycian Nymphs and the Bee Maidens of the Homeric Hymn
to Hermes." GRBS 36: 341-57.

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 94 CLASSICAL ANTIQUITY Volume 17/No. 1/AprilC1998

Lissarrague, F. 1995. "Women, Boxes, Containers: Some Signs and Metaphors." In

Reeder, ed.: 91-101.
. 1990. The Aesthetics of the Greek Banquet. (Translation of Un flot d'images.
Paris, 1987.) Princeton.
, and A. Schnapp. 1981. "Imagerie des Grecs ou Grece des imagiers?" Le temps
de la rdflexion 2: 275-97.
Lorenz, T. 1992. "Die Epiphanie der Dioskuren." In Kotinos. Festschrift E. Simon:
114-22. Mainz.
Mackay, A. 1996. "Time and Timelessness in the Traditions of Early Greek Oral Poetry
and Archaic Vase-Painting." In I. Worthington, ed., Voice into Text: Orality and
Literature in Ancient Greece. Mnemosyne suppl. 157: 43-58. Leiden.
McNally, S. 1978. "The Maenad in Early Greek Art." Arethusa 11: 101-36.
Merkelbach, R. 1988. Die Hirten des Dionysos. Stuttgart.
Meuli, K. 1946. "Griechische Opferbrauche." Phyllobolia (Festschrift Peter von der
Miuhll): 186-287. Basel (= Meuli, K. 1975. Gesammelte Schriften. Vol. 2: 907-1021.
Basel).
Mitsopoulos-Leon, V. 1984. "Zur Verehrung des Dionysos in Elis nochmals: AEIE
TATPE und die sechzehn heiligen Frauen." MDALAA 99: 275-90.
Nagy, G. 1979. The Best of the Achaeans. Baltimore.
. 1990. "Poetry and the Ideology of the Polis." In idem, Greek Mythology and
Poetics: 269-75. Ithaca.
Nilsson, M. 1906. Griechische Feste von religioser Bedeutung. Leipzig.
. 1930. "Eine Anthesterienvase in Mtinchen." SBMiinch 4: 3-14 (= Nilsson, M.
Opuscula Selecta. Vol. I: 414-28. Lund, 1951).
. 1967. Geschichte der griechischen Religion J3. Munich.
Osborne, R. 1993. "Women and Sacrifice in Classical Greece." CQ 43: 392-405.
Peirce, S. 1993. "Death, Revelry and Thysia." ClAnt 12: 219-66.
Peschel, I. 1987. Die Hetare bei Symposion und Komos. Frankfurt am Main.
Pfister, F. 1934. "Theoxenia." RE 5 A 2: 2256-58.
Pippidi, D. M. 1975. Scythica Minora. Bucharest and Amsterdam.
Raab, I. 1972. Zu den Darstellungen des Parisurteils in der griechischen Kunst. Frankfurt
am Main.
Rapp, A. 1894-1897. "Maenaden." In W.H. Roscher et al., Ausfiirhliche Lexikon der
griechischen und romischen Mythologie: ii. 2, 2244-45. Leipzig.
Reece, S. 1993. The Stranger's Welcome. Ann Arbor.
Reeder, E. D., ed. 1995. Pandora. Princeton.
Reinsberg, C. 1989. Ehe, Hetdrentum und Knabenliebe im antiken Griechenland. Mu
nich.
Seaford, R. 1994. Reciprocity and Ritual. Oxford.
Sevinq, N. 1996. "A New Sarcophagus of Polyxena from the Salvage Excavations at
Giimiisqay." Studia Troica 6: 260-62.
Shapiro, H. A. 1989. Art and Cult under the Tyrants in Athens. Mainz.
Shefton, B. 1962. "The Dinos Painter." In P. E. Arias, M. Hirmer, and B. Shefton, eds., A
History of Greek Vase Painting: 372-75. London.
Simon, E. 1985. Die Gotter der Griechen. Third ed. Munich.
. 1995. "Attic Red-Figure Stamnos." In H. A. Shapiro, C. A. Picon, and G. D.
Scott, eds., Greek Vases in the San Antonio Museum of Art: 162-64. San Antonio.
Sourvinou-Inwood, C. 1991. "Reading" Greek Culture. Oxford.

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 PEIRCE: Visual Language and Concepts of Cult 95

- 1994. "Something to Do with Athens: Trgedy and Ritual." In R. Osborne

S. Hornblower, eds., Ritual, Finance, Politics: 269-90. Oxford.
Todorov, T. 1978. Genres in Discourse. (Translation of Les genres du discours. Paris,
1978.) London and New York.
Van Straten, F. T. 1993. Hiera Kala. Images of Animal Sacrifice in Archaic and Class
Greece. Leiden.
Verbanck-Pi6rard, A. 1992. "Herakles at Feast in Attic Art: A Mythical or Cul
Iconography?" in R. HMgg, ed., The Iconography of Greek Cult in the Arch
and Classical Periods. Kernws Suppi. 1: 91-104. Athens.
Vernant, J.-P. 1983. Myth and 7hought among the Greeks (Translation of Mythe et
pensle chez les Grecs. Paris, 1971.) London and Boston.
1988. "The Masked Dionysus of Euripides' Bacchae." In J.-P. Vernant and P.
Vidal-Naquet, Myth and Tragedy in Ancient Greece: 381414. (Translation of My
et tragidie en Grce ancienne. II. Panrs, 1986.) New York.
Villanueva Puig, M.-Ch. 1980. "A propos du nom de 'Bacchante."' REA: 52-59.
1986. "A propos des thyiades de Delphos." In Icole fran9aise de Rome
L'association dionysiaque dans les socigtes anciennes: 31-51. Rome.
West, M. L. 1985. The Hesiodic Catalogue of Women. Oxford.
Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, U. von. 1931. Der Glaube der Hellenen. Vol. I. Berlin.
Wolf, S. R. 1993. Herakles beim Gelage. Cologne.
Zeitdin, F. 1982. "Cultic Models of the Female: Rites of Dionysos and Demeter." Areth
15: 129-87.

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
FIGURE 1 PEIRCE

.... ..L w w I | g 10 | W~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ... .

.... X r . ..1 l l | | l i |~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

. . ... . ES S ! E | | | | |~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~. ... . .

Figurel1: Black-figure lekythos.New York 75.2.21. The

Museum of Art, Gift of Samuel G. Ward, 1875. ABL 2
Painter. "Lenaia" bacchae at the column-image.

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 PEIRCE FIGURE 2

Figure 2a: Red-figure s

Boston 90.155. Anonymou
Courtesy, Museum of Fin
Boston. ARV2 621.34: V
Painter. Appendix no. 2.
"Lenaia": banquet-symp

. . i... . . .hiM

Figure 2b: Side B: "Lenaia":

komos.

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 FIGURES 3-4a PEIRCE

71l.

Figure 3: Red-figure stamnos. San Antonio 86.134.64.

Courtesy San Antonio Museum of Art. ARV2 628.6:
Chicago Painter. Appendix no. 16. Side A: "Lenaia":
banquet-symposion.

Figure 4a: Red-figure stamnos. Warsaw 142465. Museum

Norodowe W Warszawie. ARV2 1019.82: Phiale Painter.
Appendix no. 19. Side A: Lenaia" preparing banquet
symposion; nymph and baby satyr.

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
PEIRCE FIGURES 4b-5

Figure 4b: Red-fig

Museum Norodowe
Painter. Appendix

Figure 5: Red-figure
48.69. Courtesy, The
510.3: Painter of Syr

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
FIGURES 6-7 PEIRCE

Figure 6: Red-figure
Florence Painter. Sid

.: ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~ ~~ ~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~.... ... ..

Figure 7: Red-figure colum

Pennsylvania Museum. ARV
with ladle and skyphos

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
 PEIRCE FIGURES 8-9

. ... . . *.|I O M *

Figure 8: Red-figure cu
Rogers Fund, 1920. ARV2

.. .. .....~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Figure 9: Red-figure cup. Munich 2618. Staatliche Anti

Muinchen. ARV2 61.74: Oltos. Side A: Ransom of Hekto

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
FIGURES 1011 PEIRCE

.... .. ..

Figure 10: Red-figure stamnos

Museum. ARV2 1073.9: Eupolis
Side A: "Lenaia": thysia.
.... i _ . ................................................ . .~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~. . .... ..i.. .......... .

Figure 11: Black-figure krater. London B 362. The British

Museum. Unattributed. Thysia: butchered and roasting
meat at a herm.

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
PEIRCE FIGURE 12

Figure 12: Red-figure

on Merseyside (Port Su
splanchna at an altar.

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms
FIGURE 13 PEIRCE

Figure 13a: Black-figur

A: Bacchic nymphs drin

Figure 13b: Side B: th

This content downloaded from 142.150.190.39 on Tue, 06 Mar 2018 15:44:08 UTC
All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms