In the British Museum sits this wonderful punch bowl, a dinos for mixing wine and water, painted about 580 BC, about a decade before the famous Francois Vase was painted by Kleitias. It was painted by Sophilos, using the same archaic black-figure technique of painting the figures in black like a silhouette, then scratching in the details so that when fired the clay would show the lines in red like the backgound. Only the men, however, whose skin is tanned by their outdoor life, are painted black. The women, whose work is indoors, and whose fair skin may be enhanced with rice- or talcum-powder, are painted white.

Sophilos is the same painter who did the large fragment showing the chariot race from the funeral games for Patroclus, with the fans cheering from the stands, that we showed in our post on "The Fabulous Francois Vase." As with that vase, Sophilos has here signed his work - the first Attic painter to do so. Can you find where he signed it? He signed it, in "backwards" or "mirror" writing, between the first two columns of Peleus' palace: "Sophilos egraphsen":"Sophilos drew (me)."

As in the later Francois Vase, a procession of gods arrives at the wedding of Peleus and the sea-goddess Thetis, the union of a mortal man and an iimmortal woman that led to the birth of the semi-divine hero Achilles. While the bride supposedly remains demurely inside the palace, the bridegroom himself stands outside the entrance to greet his guests with a cup of wine. First to arrive is Iris, the iridescent rainbow-girl and messenger of the gods, followed by three or four other goddesses: , then Leto and Chariklo (Chiron's wife), walking side by side. Next comes Dionysos holding a vine - the earliest known depiction of Dionysos on an Attic vase. Behind Dionysos is the youthful Hebe dressed in a white dress decorated with various animals: sphinxes, , , and horses.



The Centaur Chiron follows, holding his hunting bow and a tree branch hung with his kill - a deer and a pair of rabbits with spotted hides - to be barbecued for the wedding feast. Unlike other centaurs, as the most human and humane of the centaurs Chiron is shown as a complete man up front, right down to his feet, with only the rear-end of a horse stuck on behind. Or so says one lady who teaches Greek mythology. But I rather agree with Demetrios, in his following post, that this may be just how centaurs were depicted in 580 BC.

Behind Chiron walk the goddess Themis and her three daughters, the Nymphs. But Sophilos has become a bit lazy with their gowns, it seems. For under their shawls all three women are seen wearing the same white animal-print dress that Hebe wears. Not the sort of thing even shop girls would be caught wearing to a wedding today! The pattern on these dresses - bands filled with beasts, many of them mythical, echoes not only the other bands on this bowl, but those on generations of vases from the so-called "Geometric" and "Corintian" periods that preceded it. For below this band of gods on parade are three others, with old-time images of sacred animals: two sirens (full-breasted winged women) facing each other; three panthers, a ram, two lions, a stag, and a boar. And a wonderful abstract, geometric design of a stylized acanthas leaf.

In contrast, and for perhaps the first time, we see a band on a Greek vase that depicts anthropomorphic deities from that "all too human" Greek religion that Nietsche called "the only true theodicy" because their "gods justify human life by living it."



Other wedding guests on this Sophilos vase include Thetis' grand-parents - the long sea-serpent-tailed ocean god Oceanos and his wife Tethys, and Bilethna or Hilethna??? They are followed by Hephaestos, the gods' swarthy, bearded blacksmith, riding on his donkey. (Is he carryng a goose for the banquet?) He brings up the rear of the procession, its "tail end," for behind him we see part of the palace where Thetis and Peleus will reside - more visible around the front of the vase, where the Wedding Procession began. As in so many details of this scene, this rather comical finale was followed ten years later by Kleitias when he painted the same scene on the Francois Vase.



While poor Hephaestos and his ass bring up the rear, his faithless wife, the sex-goddess Aphrodite, travels in style in a chariot with her lover Ares. Her head is missing, but her name isn't. (Is the white horse female, or just white?) Beside their four horses are four of the nine Muses, including Calliope, the Muse of Music, who faces us to play on a three-reed Pan pipe.



Here Zeus and Hera ride by in another four-horse chariot, beside which are three unidentified goddesses.

In all, over 30 gods and goddesses are painted on this one band around the vase. No wonder many scholars, including Jan Bremer in his 1994 book, "Greek Religion," considered Sophilos' vase the key to the entire Greek pantheon!

From the British Museum comes this closer look, so you can admire Sophilos' drawing, especially of Chiron.