Anna Cafissi

(ATHENS, VIII century BC.)

In 1871, fragments of an archaic vase in the geometric style dating to the 8th century BC were discovered during illegal excavations in the ancient cemetery of Dipylon, Athens. Once restored, the piece proved to be a beautiful oinochoe, a wine pitcher. Today, it is housed at the National Archaeological Museum of Athens.
Known as the Oinochoe of Dipylon, the object has small dimensions. Typically, such vases were 40-50 cm tall. This artifact is quite elegant, featuring horizontal black stripes. Around its neck, which ends with a trilobate beak, the artist painted a young stylized deer, either grazing or drinking.  

The most sensational data is the depiction, on the back of the pitcher, of a left-handed inscription traced with letters of the Archaic Greek alphabet. It’s the Ionic-Attic Light Blue alphabet, as theorized by the renowned epigraphist Adolf Kirchhoff, which scholars have dated back to the mid-VIII century BC, probably around 740. In this circumstance, I am following the chronology established by the prominent epigraphist Margherita Guarducci (La più antica epigrafe greca, “Rendiconti Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei”, 4, 1993).

Scholars are still debating whether the writing on the oinochoe predates the text inscribed on the “Nestor’s Cup” from Pithekussa (Ischia), as discussed in the DCC6? Magazine, n.1, 2019.

This epigraph from Athens is the oldest attested use of the Greek alphabet in Attica and the Western world, and is also the earliest written example of Greek poetic text.

In fact, the verses consist of a dactylic hexameter followed by another half-verse that is extremely difficult to reconstruct and read. It was certainly composed by a hand different from the previous one, probably by a pupil of the engraver, inexperienced in writing. In tracing the letters, such a mess was made that reading the last words becomes very problematic.

The text, translated, says:

Whoever of all these dancers now plays most delicately,

of him this (pot)

Over time, we imagine that the find and its inscription have been the subject of publications and studies; here, I will only mention Kirchhoff’s intervention (1881) and the cited essay by Guarducci (1993).

Some scholars have proposed that the oinochoe represented a significant prize, somehow equivalent to a modern championship title.

Others have suggested that the dancing competition depicted was related to a rite of passage from childhood to adulthood.

Others, thinking that the dancers on the verso were young athletes, have highlighted that the pitcher was not an amphora containing oil, as those offered to the victorious athletes of the Panathenaea festival, but a less precious amphora for wine, more suitable for a dance competition prize.

Other experts, on the other hand, have suggested a context related to wine and drinking, like the one represented by Aristophanes in the Acharnians (vv. 169 ff.), which I will mention shortly.

Furthermore, since we are meeting a prize represented by an oinochoe, many classicists have assumed that the contest being celebrated is related to the cult of Dionysus.

The desired option would be the identification of the socio-cultural and religious context in which to place the vivacious (in Greek ‘atalotata’) dance competition between the young people. Unfortunately, it is not easy to confirm this hypothesis because the event belongs to a time that historians call High and Middle-period Archaism, about which we know very little, apart from names and mythical stories of Attic history.

Consequently, we must pay attention to the fact that the dancer’s prize consisted of a beautiful oinochoe and wine. These were extremely valuable gifts with high symbolic value.

The comic poet Aristophanes, in his The Archanians (staged in 425 BC, during the Peloponnesian War), informed us that at his time in Athens, valuable aged wines were sold, divided into vintage, and of different quality and quantity.

I will reproduce a passage of The Archanians for our purpose (vv. 189 ss), which is a dialogue between the protagonist, Dikaiopolis, and a herald who presents him with three ampoules of wine.

The first contains five-year-old wine, which:

“smells of pitch and of the ships”

The second contains a ten-year-old wine, but:

“It smells strongly of the delegates, who go around the towns to ask the allies for their slowness”.

The third is a 30-year-old wine, and it is absolutely the best:

“By Bacchus! What a bouquet! It has the aroma of nectar and ambrosia”.

We should not marvel at the mention in these verses of different vintage wines: in fact, even in poetry and prose, there is no shortage of quotes concerning wines. For example, when Telemachus arrives at Nestor’s palace from Pylos to receive news about his father’s destiny, Homer narrates that they offered him high-quality wines, aged for 11 years. (Odyssey, III, 391).

It is clear that in a distant moment in Athens’ history, around 740 BC, a small and elegant pitcher filled with high-quality wine represented a valuable prize. So precious and meaningful that the young winner of the dance competition, at his death, was buried with the beautiful oinochoe.