Contemporary polemics of literary/musical discourse are largely absent, as can be seen in depictions of Marsyas and other mythical musicians, where the vase-painters rather stress the prestigious nature of these great performances of the past, while generally avoiding allusions to their violent or problematic aspects. Thus, the thiasos of Dionysos is repeatedly envisaged as a cyclical chorus satyrs and maenads can act as personifications of dithyramb and other performative genres, thereby unfolding outright allegories of ritual practice scenes of dithyrambic victory celebrations focus on the joyful character of the occasion. A younger, clean-shaven, naked Herakles, simply bearing on his head the Nemean lion skin, sits peacefully in a luxuriant garden prefiguring the Elysian Fields, watching the golden apples which the Hesperides will bring him, symbolising immortality, being picked.Within the imagery of late-fifth-century painted pottery from Athens, a whole range of visual contexts can be made out, where dithyramb is referred to, if in a distinctively oblique manner. The hero no longer fights the snake guarding the tree with the golden apples or carries the world on his shoulders in place of Atlas. However, this episode is depicted in a totally new light. He is rarely depicted performing his labours, with the exception of his stay in the garden of the Hesperides.

In the figurative repertoire, Herakles holds a privileged position alongside Dionysos, but he is quite different from the hero of the classical era. The popularity of this shape is perhaps associated with local cult practices.

This accounts for the discovery of a number of Attic vases in Boeotia, notably in Tanagra.īased on these discoveries, the most popular type of vase in Boeotia was the chalice-shaped crater, which has a more slender form than in the previous century. Exports of Athenian ceramics to northern Greece, which began in the 5th century BC, continued throughout the following century.

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