Thread by @DocCrom

Ancient Artefact of the Day: An Attic Black-Figure kantharos with a donkey head decoration, ca. 520-500 BC - a fantastic piece of Dionysiac vase-painting. #AAOTD

Image: British Museum (1876,0328.5)

The decoration on the vase is quite remarkable, with the donkey's head being particularly well-modelled. In addition there is also an ithyphallic satyr with his hand raised to his brow in a gesture that is known as άποσκοπενων.

Pliny the Elder (NH 35.138) tells us that this gesture - 'The Man Shading His Eyes' - is the gesture used by Antiphilus in his painting 'Satyr with Leopard's Skin', which may also be linked with dances described by Athenaeus (Learned Banqueters 14.629).

This vase also calls to my mind a certain spell from the Greek Magical Papyri: “Spell to make men who are drinking at a symposium appear to have donkey –snouts to outsiders, from afar” (PGM Xib. 1-5).

The design of the vase is such that, when tipping it back to drink, the donkey's head would appear much like a mask being worn by the reveller, marking a particularly astute fusion of two spheres of Dionysiac influence: theatre and wine.

For more on donkeys in Ancient Greece, see:

Griffith, Mark. “Horsepower and Donkeywork: Equids and the Ancient Greek Imagination.” Classical Philology, vol. 101, no. 3, 2006, pp. 185–246.

jstor.org/stable/10.1086…

#AAOTD