DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.4762#0006
INTRODUCTION.
This volume of the Catalogue contains a description of the vases of the latest
period ; that is to say, the period coincident with the fall of Athens after the
battle of Chaeronea and the rise of the Macedonian Empire. The extension of
Hellenic luxury and civilisation beyond the boundaries of Greece proper and
the Aegean Sea, not less than internal causes, brought about the deposition of
Athens from her high estate as the centre of Greek literary and artistic activity.
Literature found its way to the rising city of Alexandria, which became, in this
respect, a second Athens. Sculpture and painting found a home in Rhodes,
Pergamon.and other places on the coast of Asia Minor; and in the same way
'he humbler art of vase-painting was transferred yet farther afield, to strike
fresh root in the Greek colonies of Southern Italy.
At the same time it must not be supposed that the manufacture of painted
vases at Athens came to an abrupt termination about the year 350 B.C. The
series of Panathenaic amphorae (see vol. ii., B 602-612), which bear the names
of archons down to 313 B.C., shows that this was not the case. For this survival,
it may be that religious and ceremonial reasons afford an adequate explanation.
On the other hand, the skill displayed in some of these vases seems to indicate
considerable practice, extending to pottery of other kinds, though up to now
comparatively few vases have been found at Athens which can be attributed
to a later date than the middle of the fourth century B.C.
Among artists, again, whose signatures are to be found on vases, there
is the instance of Xenophantos, who explicitly calls himself an Athenian, and
from whose hand comes a remarkable vase found at Kertch, the ancient
Panticapaeum, and now at St. Petersburg. It would seem that he must have
been a resident in Panticapaeum, and not an artist living at Athens whose
works were exported thither.
From the end of the fifth century Panticapaeum was a place of considerable
importance, and was the chief source whence the Athenians obtained their
grain, as we learn from some of the private orations of Demosthenes, such as
the speech cotitra Pfiormionem. Hence we are not surprised that excavations
on this site have brought to light large quantities of vases of the style we meet
with in Athenian pottery of the period. Of these vases some appear to be of
local manufacture, like the imitations of the Athenian style in Southern Italy,
of which we shall presently speak ; while a considerable number, especially
VOL. IV. B
This volume of the Catalogue contains a description of the vases of the latest
period ; that is to say, the period coincident with the fall of Athens after the
battle of Chaeronea and the rise of the Macedonian Empire. The extension of
Hellenic luxury and civilisation beyond the boundaries of Greece proper and
the Aegean Sea, not less than internal causes, brought about the deposition of
Athens from her high estate as the centre of Greek literary and artistic activity.
Literature found its way to the rising city of Alexandria, which became, in this
respect, a second Athens. Sculpture and painting found a home in Rhodes,
Pergamon.and other places on the coast of Asia Minor; and in the same way
'he humbler art of vase-painting was transferred yet farther afield, to strike
fresh root in the Greek colonies of Southern Italy.
At the same time it must not be supposed that the manufacture of painted
vases at Athens came to an abrupt termination about the year 350 B.C. The
series of Panathenaic amphorae (see vol. ii., B 602-612), which bear the names
of archons down to 313 B.C., shows that this was not the case. For this survival,
it may be that religious and ceremonial reasons afford an adequate explanation.
On the other hand, the skill displayed in some of these vases seems to indicate
considerable practice, extending to pottery of other kinds, though up to now
comparatively few vases have been found at Athens which can be attributed
to a later date than the middle of the fourth century B.C.
Among artists, again, whose signatures are to be found on vases, there
is the instance of Xenophantos, who explicitly calls himself an Athenian, and
from whose hand comes a remarkable vase found at Kertch, the ancient
Panticapaeum, and now at St. Petersburg. It would seem that he must have
been a resident in Panticapaeum, and not an artist living at Athens whose
works were exported thither.
From the end of the fifth century Panticapaeum was a place of considerable
importance, and was the chief source whence the Athenians obtained their
grain, as we learn from some of the private orations of Demosthenes, such as
the speech cotitra Pfiormionem. Hence we are not surprised that excavations
on this site have brought to light large quantities of vases of the style we meet
with in Athenian pottery of the period. Of these vases some appear to be of
local manufacture, like the imitations of the Athenian style in Southern Italy,
of which we shall presently speak ; while a considerable number, especially
VOL. IV. B