144. 10.199 CUP from Orvieto PLATE LXXXI, 4
(Present diameter 0.23). The foot is missing, except a short stump. Hartwig pl. 63, 1, whence Perrot 10 p. 665 and Ebert Reallexikon der Vorgeschichte, xi pl. 54 (Günther). MFA. Bull. 9 p. 53 (Caskey); Cloché Les Classes, les métiers, le trafic pl. 37, 1; Stow pl. 1, below. I, donkey. About 480 B.C., by the Antiphon Painter (ARV.1 p. 231 no. 26; ARV.2 p. 337 no. 26); already assigned to the Antiphon Group in VA. p. 111 ('Lysis-Laches-Lykos Group', the earlier name for it), and Att. V. p. 235 no. 69. The foot is missing and much else, but enough remains to show that the outside of the cup was plain. Inside, a young she-ass walks with a load on her back. Over a saddle-cloth which has a criss-cross pattern and a fringe, is a wooden saddle, fastened by means of a saddle-girth and a thinner cord attached to the end of each 'arm' and passing under the belly; on the saddle is a striped holdall, doubled, and lashed to the animal's shoulders and round its hock. The roundish thing on top of the holdall, with leaf-shaped edge, is the flap covering the aperture through which the contents of such bags are stuffed. The donkey is bridled, and the reins are tied loosely on the shoulder, with the ends hanging. The ears are alert, the eye looks sidelong. The mane is cropped except on the forehead and the top of the head, and on the shoulder, where a small tuft is left for mounting. Two small teats are shown. The dark stripe on the shoulder, and the dark rings or bars on the legs, are seldom absent in red-figure pictures of donkeys. The bars on the legs were called μυκλαί or μύκλοι: see Pfeiffer's note (Callimachus i p. 433) on the poet's line “ἔστιν μοι Μάγνης ἐννεάμυκλος ὄνος.” It is to be feared, it seems, that Callimachus meant a donkey nine years old. If so, he probably changed the meaning of μύκλος for some perverse reason. I note, without pressing the point, that our donkey has nine bars on each of her forelegs. Donkeys in Greek art are usually called mules by the moderns, 'mule' being felt to be a more respectable word and thought than 'donkey'. There are of course mules: each animal must be scanned individually. The bars on the legs are not a perfect criterion, as they also occur in mules, and even in horses.1 For the subject of our cup, compare a black-figured skyphos in the Louvre, Louvre F 410, which has a donkey laden, and a small male creature (pygmy?) sitting on his neck. A donkey as sole subject appears on a gold ring in Boston2 and on coins of Mende. Relief-contours. Brown for the criss-cross on the saddle-cloth, for the hairs at the root of the ear and those just above the muzzle, and for vertical marks below the knee. Red for bridle, reins, cords, and the inscription in the field, ΝΙΚΟΣΤΡΑΤΟΣΚΑΛΟΣ. The inscription in the exergue, ΛΑΧΕΣΚΑΛΟΣ, is in brown. This is typical work of the Antiphon Painter, with its bold, free drawing, strong relief-lines, and thick maeander. The 'odd man' is south-east. The name of Laches occurs on many cups by the Antiphon Painter or of his school, the name of Nikostratos on five other vases by various painters.3 Hartwig noticed the curious fact that a Nikostratos and a Laches were strategoi together in 427 B.C., were in joint command of an Athenian force sent to help the Argives in 418, and both fell at Mantinea in 413. These are not our pair, but they may have been πατρικοὶ φίλοι: see iii p. 78 (Boston 95.25).
Anderson 1961, pl. 7; Para., p. 361, no. 26; E. B. Dusenbery, Hesperia 47 (1978), p. 224; J. H. Crouwel, 1981, Chariots and other means of land transport in Bronze Age Greece, Amsterdam, Allard Pierson Museum, p. 44, pl. 110; CVA, Chiusi, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, II, p. 10, under pl. 15, no. 3 (A. Rastrelli); Antidoron 1983, pp. 69 (note 20), 70 (note 40) (H. Hoffmann); M. True, 1983, in Greek Vases in the J. Paul Getty Museum, 1, p. 75.