Boys, Herms, and the Objectification of Desire on Athenian Sympotic Vases

DOI : 10.54563/eugesta.499

Abstract

In depicting scenes of youths in the company of a herm, the painters of Athenian sympotic pottery ostensibly portray a scene of daily life. Some, however, construct these scenes for viewing through an erotic lens, drawing on the fact that the two key iconographic elements of the stone herm, the bearded male head and the erect phallus, recall the iconography of the ἐραστής, the older male lover in traditional Greek pederasty. Representing herms in the company of young males thus allows the artists to play on the iconographic schemes of pederastic courtship while implicating the symposiast’s gaze, which becomes equated with the herm’s.

The fact that the erotic interplay in the scenes takes place between a living ἐρώμενος (the desirable boy) and inanimate ἐραστής (the herm) is also significant, for it consciously inverts another interplay of person and object: the adult male symposiast who views and handles the sympotic vase. In the latter relationship, the roles are reversed, for now the lover is alive, and the vase, with its painted youth, is the object of the erotic gaze. In light of this allusive power, the herm serves as one of a series of signs through which vase painters show an awareness of their own power to manipulate desire for the symposiasts who engage with their work.

Outline

Text

There is something faintly ludicrous, to our eyes, about the classical herm: a perfectly formed, virile head of a masculine figure in his prime, usually bearded, rests atop a square, slightly tapering shaft for a body, whose only other features are two square projections emerging where one would expect shoulders, and an erect, complete set of genital organs set at the appropriate height up the shaft1.

Anyone who has taught about the herm to a class of undergraduates will hear the ring of truth in William Furley’s assessment of the modern perception of the statue type2. What we usually go on to teach our students, however, is the serious importance of the herm for the ancient Greeks, whether as a cult statue of the god Hermes, or as reflected in the narrative of the mutilation of the herms in the course of the Peloponnesian War.

And yet from time to time in antiquity as well, the herm could become the butt of jokes or give rise to questions about its puzzling form. Consider, for example, the question addressed to a herm in the opening lines of the fragmentary ninth Iamb of Callimachus: “Hermes, bearded one, why is your hose/aimed at your whiskers, not at your toes?”. A summary of the poem preserved in the Diegeseis tells us the context of the question: The lover of a handsome youth named Philetadas directs it to a herm in a palaestra, wondering whether the statue too has been aroused by the youth’s beauty, to which the herm replies by insulting the lover3. While the poem dismisses the sexual explanation of the ithyphallic herm as quickly as it raises it, the poem plays on the capacity of the ancient Greeks to view the herm humorously through an eroticized lens4.

My focus in this paper is on another class of documents that depends upon the erotic potential of the herm: those scenes found in Athenian vase painting of the late archaic and classical periods, principally from the end of the sixth century BCE through the middle of the fifth, that portray the interactions between herms and the young Athenian males with whom the painters frequently populate their scenes. My interest is not so much in using the images to explain the reality of such interaction, but to understand them in light of the cultural context that shapes how the images might be viewed and helps explain why the images have been crafted in the way that they are. In this regard I take a different path from earlier scholars who look to vase painting as evidence about real herms and the practices surrounding them5. What I aim to demonstrate is that some, though by no means all, such scenes betray the artist’s interest in a humorous exploration of the theme of same-sex desire, an option that lies open to the painter because of the herm’s resemblance to an aroused adult male lover. The artist’s choice to paint such scenes in part responds to the perceived interests of the male symposiasts for whom the vases were principally created, but it also reflects the artist’s awareness of and interest in his own power to objectify desire itself.

Herms, From Reality to Representation

The origin of the herm statue is perhaps irrecoverable. Ancient sources of the fifth century and later relate that it was an Athenian invention, and no archaeological evidence has surfaced to contradict them6. An inscribed fragmentary herm found at Koropi in Attica corroborates the later written sources attesting that the Pisistratid Hipparchos set up numerous herms throughout the countryside to mark the midpoint between various Attic demes and the Athenian agora. These herms also bore wise maxims for passers-by to read, but the Koropi fragment is broken where one might expect to find one7. It is doubtful, however, that Hipparchos originated the practice of setting up herms, nor can he have invented its canonical stone form, for one stone herm fragment from Sounion can be dated on stylistic grounds to earlier in the sixth century BCE. Earlier antecedents in stone may have existed, nor can the possibility of early examples in wood be ruled out8.

Whatever their origins, however, herms begin to appear with some frequency in the archaeological record of Athens in the final two decades of the sixth century, and at about the same time begin to appear on Attic vases9. Literary evidence further supplements our understanding of the place that the herms rapidly assumed in the cultural landscape of Athens. Herms became a familiar sight as the Athenians stationed them throughout the polis: not only in the countryside, as was the case with the herms of Hipparchos, but also at the entrances of private homes and at the entrances of the two great civic spaces of Athens, the Agora and the Acropolis10. They were also a standard element in the gymnasium-palaestra complex, where young men and boys received their education and physical training11. As cult images of the god Hermes, they received the attention of pious worshippers, and as dedications set up by individual politicians and other leading figures, as well as by tribes and the city as a whole, they possessed political and honorific significance12. In addition, as scholars like Robin Osborne have shown, the herms were endowed with a more general socio-political significance for the Athenian citizen body as a whole, one clear sign of which was the public outcry at the mutilation of the city’s many stone herms in 415 BCE13.

Shortly after the appearance of the herms of Hipparchos, herms begin to appear in vase painting as well. It may be that the Pisistratid’s activities motivated the interest of the vase painters in herms, but one must be cautious since the choice of vase painting subjects was itself changing at the time14. A search of the Beazley Archive online database yields 205 Athenian vases that portray one or more herms, dating from the end of the sixth century through the fourth century BCE. The vast majority of them adorn the standard vessels used in the symposium: drinking cups, pitchers, wine mixing bowls, table amphoras, and similar shapes15. The context of the symposium, therefore, should hold some key to understanding the interest in portraying the herm, as we shall come to explore16.

In most instances, the scenes lack clear iconographic markers to pinpoint an intended setting, but when such evidence does appear, the range of settings mirrors that of the actual herms in Athens: the private home, the countryside, the palaestra, and the sanctuary17. A scene on a bell krater attributed to the Pourtales Painter, for instance, depicts a man, woman, and boy in the presence of a herm; columns and a window are also depicted to show that the scene is set indoors, probably within a house. More certain is the scene on a loutrophoros, which illustrates a wedding procession to a house with open door and a herm standing next to it18. Herms in the countryside can be identified when included in scenes of hunting, fishing, and other rural activities, and the detail of a rocky landscape can also mark the setting19. To indicate the palaestra, by contrast, vase painters can incorporate typical furnishings such as turning posts, athletic and school gear, and wash basins20. One other setting in which the herm occasionally appears is in an industrial setting, like a potter’s workshop or vineyard21.

The most common element in herm scenes, an altar, suggests a sacred setting, which can also be indicated by the presence of suspended votive tablets or animal skulls. What kind of sacred space is this, however? It seems unlikely that all such images were intended to denote shrines devoted exclusively to Hermes, and indeed in some scenes these cultic elements are combined with visual markers that show the sacred space to be but part of a larger setting22. The dominant role of men and boys in scenes with herms may suggest that most scenes would have been understood as taking place in the palaestra setting, at least in the fifth century, even when other visual markers are lacking23. Regardless of where the herm scene takes place, however, the activity represented is most often religious in nature, such as in scenes of procession and sacrifice. In other scenes, humble worshippers, either alone or in small groups, pour libations, play music, make offerings of grain, branches, or wreaths, or extend their hands in prayer or supplication to the god24.

At first glance, therefore, it is easy to suppose that when painters show youths in the company of herms, they are simply interested in illustrating the reality of daily life in Athens. A closer examination of the repertoire reveals, however, that at least some artists consciously construct these scenes to evoke the theme of same-sex desire, by drawing on the fact that the two key iconographic elements of the stone herm, the bearded male head and the erect phallus, recall the iconography of the ἐραστής, the older male lover, in scenes of Greek pederasty. This similarity has been noted in passing by scholars, but never closely examined. Andrew Lear, for instance, in his 2008 study of the iconography of ancient Greek pederasty in vase painting, does pause to muse on this potential assimilation: «Hermes, the god of the gymnasium, also seems at times to have a relationship to pederasty. Perhaps one should consider him as having not simply the head and genitals of a bearded man but more precisely the head and genitals of an erastes». Yet with the exception of a single vase painting, he leaves the implications of his comment unexplored25.

Like most scholars discussing ancient sexuality, I use the word pederasty as the Anglicized form of the ancient Greek παιδεραστία, which can be translated as the «desire for boys» and which constituted a socially constructed, normative form of same-sex relationship in ancient Greece between an older, often adult, male lover and a younger, usually teenage, ἐρώμενος or beloved. In addition to the literary sources that describe this relationship, numerous vase paintings illustrate it from the mid-sixth century on, thus preceding and then overlapping with the period when herms begin to be depicted26. In the context of vase painting, artistic license further strengthens the resemblance of the herm to the adult lover in two respects: first, the painter often represents the head of the herm as a living head, with solid black hair and beard and with facial features looking as much alive as those of the adult males around it; and second, the statue’s erect phallus usually points out into space, like that of a sexually aroused male in a scene of pederasty, whereas actual stone herms more probably featured phalluses carved in relief27.

The susceptibility of these painted herms to an identification with the adult Athenian male would have been enhanced by the general political symbolism of the herm statues themselves, by which, as Osborne expresses it, “...the face of the herm was the face of every Athenian”28. Indeed, the painters often foreground the visual similarity between the herm and the adult Athenian male by arranging them in symmetrical compositions to create a mirroring effect. A scene on a pelike by the Pig Painter shows this effect well (Fig. 1)29. Here a man clad in boots and ἱμάτιον (cloak) and playing a lyre stands face to face with a herm as an altar blazes between them. With the exception of the long locks that fall down the back and shoulders of the herm, the heads of both figures are nearly identical. The alignment of the two heads, despite the difference of ground level between man and herm, further intensifies the mirroring effect and allows the man and herm to exchange an equal gaze that Zanker, for one, describes as spellbound30. Likewise the drapery of the lyre player visually unifies his body into a single mass (apart from the telltale legs and arms), which echoes the mass of the herm shaft opposite him.

The visual identification of the herm and the adult male consequently opens up for the ancient viewer an identification of interests between the two, including an interest in pederasty. What can result is an erotic triangulation among the relationships of herm, adult male, and youth portrayed on a vase. The Madrid pelike, for example, realizes this potential by pairing the scene of man and herm on one side with a scene of pederastic pursuit on the other: identified by some scholars as the pursuit of Ganymede, the scene shows an adult male on the left reaching out toward a young boy with a hoop, moving away to the right, who looks back at the man and raises his right arm in a gesture of rejection. The lack of attributes and the apparent rejection of the lover’s advances make it more probable that the ancient viewer would read the scene as one of human rather than divine pursuit, I would argue, though the two are conceptually related31.

A pelike in Athens effects a different kind of triangulation32. On one side, an adult male stands before a herm and holds out a sprig in one hand, extending the other in a gesture of prayer or supplication. As on the Madrid pelike, the symmetrical arrangement of worshipper and herm creates a mirroring effect, especially in the facial features of both figures. The other side, however, replaces the adult male with a young lyre player, who stands before an altar and exchanges gaze with the herm opposite him (Fig. 2). Whereas on the Madrid vase it is the adult male who links the two sides, on the Athens vase it is the herm, which thus can be viewed as transferring the gaze of the adult male from one side toward the youth on the other in a kind of visual syllogism. As a sign of the subtle erotic triangulation that takes place, the lyre player, though clad in boots, wears only a ἱμάτιον draped over his shoulders, which falls open to expose his genitals to herm and viewer alike33.

Herm Scenes and the Iconography of Pederasty

The whisper of eroticism on the Athens pelike becomes more pronounced in scenes of young males who actively engage with herms. What often makes the erotic subtext more explicit is the artist’s choice to insert humor into the scene, a common-enough occurrence since the symposium was naturally conducive to humor and laughter. Halliwell calls this quality “sympotic elation”, which he argues aims at “a simulation of immortality: a simulation that, for the duration of the symposium, tacitly renders the participants god-like, suspended in the hoped-for perfection of the moment and able to float temporarily free of the downward drag of pessimism”34. How visual humor works in vase painting is the subject of thorough study by Alexander Mitchell, who finds that through different comic mechanisms such as surprise, visual puns, and parody, visual humor «subverts and reveals the stylistic conventions as well as the stock-themes of mythology and daily life»35. As I will show with some select examples, several painters create humor by subverting these iconographic conventions of pederasty when illustrating youths in the company of herms36.

I begin with the distinctive gesture of pederastic courtship, what Beazley rather dryly termed the «up and down» position of the arms of the lover, illustrated here on an amphora in Würzburg (Fig. 3). The gesture combines raising one hand toward the chin or head as a common gesture of entreaty or supplication, whereby a lover tries to persuade a beloved to yield to his advances, and lowering the other hand toward the erotic focus of the body of the beloved37. On the exterior of a cup in Geneva, by contrast, the gesture is explicitly parodied (Fig. 4); here it is a youth who appears to court the herm, while other youths, some already stripped for exercise, surround him in what is surely the space of the palaestra38. Given the competitive nature of courtship, in which several lovers often compete for the attention of a particularly beautiful boy, humor lies in creating a visual impression that the herm has his pick of boys (and indeed more boys appear on the other side of the cup), prompting one of them to initiate the courtship39.

The «up-and-down» gesture of courtship can often be abbreviated in pederastic scenes as one arm gesture or the other, so that I would also argue that scenes in which a youth only raises an outstretched hand to a herm or even touches the herm’s head or beard could likewise be viewed as a reversal of courtship40. Iconography is polyvalent, to be sure, and in such scenes there is always the potential to read the gesture as one of supplication of the god, just as women and men can be shown to do41. The polyvalence of the gesture, however, creates an ambiguity that leaves room for erotic humor, especially in the context of the symposium. So for example a column krater by the Pig Painter plays on this polyvalent gesture in the combination of scenes painted on its two sides42. In one, a youth faces a herm and raises his hand up before it while another youth, one hand firmly grasping a staff, looks on from the left side of the scene, behind the herm (Fig. 5). While the viewer might read the gesture as one of supplication, the scene on the opposite side of the krater suggests a different reading, for here an adult male makes the same gesture in courting a youth, who already holds in has hand an apple as a gift (Fig. 6)43.

Another way in which painters invite a humorous reading of these scenes is by shortening the herms in juxtaposition to the boys who reach out to them. The hierarchy of courtship is thus comically turned on its head, for as even a glance through the corpus of pederastic scenes shows, it is normally the older lover who stands taller, even when the pair are both young. The cup in Geneva discussed earlier is but one example, where the courting youth, even though bending forward, still stands taller than the herm; in the tondo of a cup in Berlin, a particularly short herm with an arguably caricatured phallus receives the attention of a youth, who bends forward over his walking stick to reach a hand out to the herm’s beard (Fig. 7)44. In such scenes the short stature of the herm thus often complicates the stance of the young male, forcing him to crouch or bend forward to reach out to the herm, and consequently replicates the crouched, suppliant position normally taken by the lover in scenes of courtship. Compromised is the upright, often disinterested stance of the beloved as he is conventionally portrayed; it is now only the herm, regardless of size, that stands completely upright45.

Another conventional scene of pederastic courtship in vase painting is the bestowal of gifts upon the beloved, as seen already in the Palermo krater discussed earlier (see Fig. 6)46. A very common gift, shown in a cup tondo by the Euaichme Painter (Fig. 8), was the rooster or gamecock, which boys would keep as pets and use to stage cockfights. Here the adult lover presents his gift while simultaneously moving one arm in the «down» gesture of courtship47. In this tondo, the erotic nature of the scene is further signaled by the artist’s painting of the words παὶς καλός, «the boy is beautiful», in the field above48.

Against this iconographic backdrop, scenes of boys presenting sacrificial victims or other offerings to herms can take on an additional meaning, as in a scene on a pelike by the Pan Painter (Fig. 9)49. We see here a boy offering a piglet to a herm with a gesture that seems to echo the «down» gesture seen in the Euaichme Painter’s tondo. Other scenes of offering may equally play upon the convention of courtship gifts, as when a proud youth presents a wreath to a smallish herm, who does not even stand as tall as the turning post of the gymnasium at left (Fig. 10)50. The humor in such scenes derives not only from the reversal of courtship gifts, but also from a visual pun or double entendre on the concept of χάρις (favor, gratitude) that the scenes effect. The Greek verb χαρίζεσθαι, in the religious context, means to «delight» a god with offerings, but in an erotic context it means to «gratify» the desires of a lover51. In scenes such as these, therefore, the two meanings may be simultaneously and incongruously juxtaposed, adding to the comic effect52.

A scene by the Pan Painter on a neck amphora in Laon, brings together several elements of courtship (Fig. 11)53. Here a youth addresses his attention to the herm on the right, raising his hand to the herm’s beard in the «up» gesture of courtship. The herm has already received offerings of two wreaths, one hanging from an arm stub, another from his erect phallus. The latter of course suggests that the youth has already performed the «down» gesture to place his wreath on what is normally the point of erotic fixation on the body of the beloved54. Meanwhile, the youth has his back turned to another herm, who stands bereft of gifts and is painted in mere outline form. The Pan Painter here seems to be playing on the idea of rivalry for the attention of the beloved, and one herm’s loss is clearly another herm’s gain. The same theme is also at work on the Pan Painter’s pelike in Berlin, discussed earlier, for while on one side the boy offers his piglet to one herm, on the other side two herms stand unattended, staring outward to engage the eyes of the symposiasts who are viewing the scene (Fig. 12)55.

The particular fascination of the lover with fondling the genitals of his beloved finds frequent representation in vase painting, as in a sympotic scene by the Hegesiboulos Painter (Fig. 13)56, and scenes of wreaths hanging from the phallus of a herm may also play on the reversal of this iconographic motif. More obvious, however, is the scene on a pelike painted by the Perseus Painter, in which a young boy casually reaches back to touch the phallus of a herm as he moves off to the right (Fig. 14)57. The fact that he is holding the distinctive κανοῦν (sacrificial reed basket) leads Rückert to suggest that perhaps the boy is just dropping grain from it onto or in front of the herm58. That the Perseus Painter intends a comical reading of the scene, however, finds support in his treatment of the other side of the vase, where a large bird uses the caricatured phallus of a different herm as a perch from which to give it a peck on the lips, while the herm stands powerless to shoo it away (Fig. 15). Mitchell, in discussing the humor of this scene, makes no mention of the other side of the pelike and thus misses an essential aspect of the humor. For him, the scene is humorous because the religious function of the statue is ignored in favor of presenting a caricature of its erection, which serves as the bird’s perch. The bird’s “kiss”, notes Mitchell, can in turn serve as a parody of the ordinary supplication of the statue by human worshippers. Viewed in conjunction with the boy’s touching of a herm’s phallus on the other side, however, the bird’s kiss becomes an erotic joke in which the herm stands in for a frustrated lover, who might desire physical attention from a handsome boy but must settle instead for something else59.

The comic potential of the immobile herm finds one further expression in a much-illustrated bell krater in Boston, the vase that led Beazley to give the Pan Painter his name (Fig. 16)60. In this scene, the motif of erotic pursuit is transported to the countryside where a young goatherd has captured the sexual interest of the goat-like god Pan, who now chases after him with an ardent erection. The backward glance of the goatherd may signal the eventual fulfillment of Pan’s desire; as Frontisi-Ducroux observes, “Visual exchange is more meaningful when it is obtained by a backward glance”61. The herm at the right, which of course represents Pan’s own father, Hermes, watches with interest and sports an even longer erect phallus: like father, like son. On one level, as Lear has observed, the scene parodies the amorous pursuit of mortals by gods, such as Zeus’ pursuit of Ganymede62. The immobility of the herm, however, adds another dimension to the scene because of the herm’s capacity to stand in for another, implied viewer of the scene, the adult male symposiast himself. The scene might thus communicate that the goatherd is as unattainable by the symposiast viewer as he is by the herm that stands watching from his fixed vantage point, erect, yet impotent to obtain him63.

The foregoing scenes, which feature the humorous subversion of pederastic iconography to highlight their erotic import, provide a basis for extending the erotic potential of the herm to other scenes as well: Any scene of a youth in the presence of a herm could potentially evoke the erotic milieu of pederasty in the eyes of the adult male symposiast for whom these images were painted, particularly when the subject is focused on a single youth before a herm. In the tondo of a fragmentary cup by the Tarquinia Painter, a youth crouches before a small herm, invoking the humorous reversals of stature and posture that have been described before (Fig. 17)64. In other scenes, however, the youth looks for all the world like a conventional beloved. In some scenes he stands enveloped in his cloak, a visual costume that evokes notions of αἰδώς (shame, self-respect) and σωφροσύνη (self-control, moderation), which in turn fuel the attractiveness of the youth in the eyes of his admirer (Fig. 18)65. In others, the youth stands fully stripped before a herm as before an eager admirer, as for example in the tondo of a cup by the Orleans Painter66.

A further indication of the interest of vase painters in the erotic potential of the herm is the choice to pair the herm with a figure of winged Eros himself. Portrayed as a youth, the god himself represents the quintessential beloved. Simultaneously, however, the painters often depict Eros in pursuit of young boys, representing their role as objects of Desire, and thus casting him in the role of a young lover67. When Eros appears alone before a herm, we find him engaging the herm in the same activities as the youths of earlier scenes. The erotic potential of such a combination finds its most explicit realization in the tondo scene of a cup in New York (Fig. 19)68. Eros here plays the obliging beloved and actually wraps one arm around the side of the herm while holding a wreath as an offering in his other hand. At the same time, however, he stands with his naked body turned outward to the viewer of the tondo, and the rendering of the eye adds to the ambiguity of whether his own gaze is focused solely on the herm or on the viewer looking into the cup as well. The herm itself gazes directly at Eros, and to the extent that his form evokes that of the aroused lover, his gaze redoubles the erotic gaze of the symposiast.

Herms, Eroticism, and the Sympotic Context

While the images discussed in the previous section do not exhaust the representations of herms in Athenian vase painting, they demonstrate that beginning soon after the introduction of the herm into the daily life of Athens, various painters consciously construct many scenes to play upon the potential of the herm to stand in for an actual lover. The question that still needs to be addressed, then, is why these artists choose to incorporate an erotically charged, and often humorous, engagement between boys and herms into their repertoire, despite the genuine respect and significance which the Athenians accorded their herms69? Why substitute the statue of Hermes for an adult lover in these scenes? Part of the answer must lie, as I have suggested before, in the interest of the symposiasts for whom the artists paint these vessels.

On a basic level the herm scenes simply refashion the real experience of herms, adapting them to the erotic interests of the sympotic context. We know from literary testimony that pederastic interest and expression were part and parcel of the atmosphere of the symposium70. We may add to that evidence the ample scenes in vase painting that illustrate or fantasize about the erotic potential of the sympotic setting. These include not only scenes of courtship and sexual advances in the symposium, whether aimed at fellow symposiasts, performers, or wine-pourers, but also scenes of symposiasts playing the game κότταβος (wherein players toss the lees from their cups at a target) and singing songs of love71. The preoccupation with desirable youth in the sympotic context, argues Halliwell, is in part a symptom of the desire to effect a space free from mortal cares72. Since the palaestra served as a gathering place for athletic youths and setting of homoerotic voyeurism and courtship, it too became a popular subject on sympotic vases. To quote François Lissarrague: “The athletes’ exercise is a spectacle, and the palaestra was a kind of theater for the gratification of the sense of sight. The vase paintings reproduce and idealize such visual display and merge this dimension of Greek taste with the symposion”73. Accordingly, the fact that herms were common elements in that same setting may have further inspired painters to adapt them for viewing in the symposium.

It is surely intentional, therefore, when painters couple scenes of herms with erotically-themed representations of the symposium elsewhere on the vase. The cup in New York featuring Eros and herm in the tondo, for instance, portrays on its exterior a series of youths reclining on the ground with drinking cups; one of the youths is making a throw from his cup in the game of κότταβος (Fig. 20). In addition to the erotic implication of this game, the exclusive symposium of youths is itself a fantasy for the adult men of the ordinary symposium, and as Kathryn Topper has argued, the fact that the figures recline on the ground is another element of the imagination, which invokes an ideal of primitive symposia74. An Attic red-figure cup from Spina offers another combination of herm scene and symposium. The tondo shows a young boy, fully wrapped in his ἱμάτιον, seated before a herm, while a set of athletic equipment hangs in the background between them; the exterior shows two men reclining on the ground at a symposium, their attention focused on a young boy, wrapped in ἱμάτιον, standing at left75. The parallelism between the gazes of the herm and the adult symposiasts in these scenes is undeniable.

What is more, on many vases the space of the symposium bleeds into the space of the herm, an effect that the vase painters accomplish by incorporating distinct visual cues into the herm scene. One such device is the krater, which as Lissarrague has noted, functions as a metonym for the whole space of the symposium76. A case in point is the tondo of an unfortunately fragmentary cup in Paris77. In what is preserved we see a small herm at left, immediately behind a tall and robust youth dressed in a ἱμάτιον and holding a lyre and plectrum in his hands. He faces right, and on the ground at his feet is stationed a large column krater bedecked with an ivy garland. Like the krater, the lyre too recalls the musical accompaniment of the symposium, and, to the extent that it is a frequent courtship gift in pederastic scenes, may signal an erotic aspect of the scene78.

While the krater has pride of place in signifying the symposium, drinking cups and wineskins also serve as important visual cues. Thus, on the exterior of a cup from the school of Makron, we find a parade of youths dancing around an altar and herm in what must be a scene of the κῶμος (revelry) that normally follows the symposium. Wearing only cloaks loosely draped around their arms and shoulders, three of the youths hold cups and wineskins while another two provide musical accompaniment with δίαυλος (double pipe) and lyre79. A final way in which painters could insert the world of the symposium into the space of the herm, especially on vases of the fourth century, is by putting the herm in the presence of the god Dionysos himself or, more commonly, his entourage of maenads and satyrs80.

The Symposiast’s Gaze

Painted primarily for the symposium, therefore, whether they visually acknowledge that context or not, the herm scenes can be tailored to the symposiasts’ interests, including the erotic. As Françoise Frontisi-Ducroux has written, “The banquet is placed under the patronage of Dionysos
and Eros. Surely this was the moment, if ever there was one, to eroticize one’s own gaze, and Attic painters displayed a great deal of ingenuity and talent in inspiring their clientele”
81. In this regard, the role of the gaze both within a herm scene and between the scene and the symposiast viewer takes on great significance, just as Frontisi-Ducroux has demonstrated in scenes illustrating flesh-and-blood erotic encounters of both the opposite-sex and same-sex varieties82.

If the herm, by virtue of its selective anatomy, can invoke the image of the lover and thus the adult male symposiast himself, then the gaze of the herm can also clearly double as the gaze of the symposiast, which becomes implicated in the erotic dynamics of the scene. The representation of the herm is especially suited to function as the exponent of the erotic gaze since, as Osborne has argued, the herm’s gaze is itself another salient characteristic of the actual statues, which confront their viewers to produce an effect analogous to that of Dionysos on the drinker or the spectator at the theater83.

In many of the herm scenes discussed so far, it is the gaze of the youths no less than their actions and postures that plays upon the conventional iconography of pederasty; a youth fixes his eyes upon the face of a herm, in much the same way that the gaze of the lover is fixed upon his beloved. The gaze of the herm, on the other hand, and that of the symposiast viewer by implication, can be ambivalent; it either reciprocates the desiring gaze, offering the symposiast viewer a fantasy of mutual affection, or else extends the comic reversal to recall the dispassionate gaze normally reserved for the young beloved, effecting a tension with the viewer’s own desire. The Pan Painter’s amphora in Laon, meanwhile, shows another combination of gazes, in which a youth’s gaze is directed at one herm only to leave the gaze of the herm behind him unanswered (see Fig. 11)84.

As in scenes of erotic encounters, the occasional inclusion of figures that face out toward the viewer, what Frontisi-Ducroux calls pictorial apostrophe, further engages the eroticized gaze of the symposiast85. Thus on the Perseus Painter’s pelike (see Fig. 14) and the Pan Painter’s pelike (see Fig. 9), the outward gaze of the herm meets that of the symposiast and draws him into identifying with the herm’s position as the comic recipient of a youth’s attention. The Pan Painter’s omission of his herm’s phallus, if intentional, only adds to the comic effect. The other side of his vase, moreover, shows two more herms that likewise face out to engage the viewer, and while they possess their erect phalluses, they have no boy to tease them (see Fig. 12)86.

The effect of the frontal herm intensifies when found in the painted tondo inside the cup, for whereas we are accustomed to think of it as the «bottom» of the cup, the Greeks, as Frontisi-Ducroux points out, regarded it as the πρόσωπον or «face»87. So in a fragmentary tondo scene by Douris, a herm faces out, flanked by two male figures on either side who face one another in profile88. We cannot be sure given the fragmentary nature of the scene, but if the flanking male figures represent a scene of courtship, then the outward gaze of the herm creates a second axis of sight that complements the erotic gaze moving from side to side in the tondo, drawing the symposiast in as a spectator of the males in the scene, or even as a rival.

The counterpart to the outward-facing herm is the youth who faces outward, or at least turns his body outward, thus presenting himself as a desired youth not only to the herm in the scene but to the external viewer as well. Thus, in the tondo of the cup by the Orleans Painter mentioned earlier, we find a young boy, stripped for exercise and standing next to a wash basin, his body almost completely viewed from the front, save for his head, which is turned to face the herm beside him. Similar, too, is the pose taken by the figure of Eros on the tondo of the cup in New York (see Fig. 19).

The artist can relate the gaze of the herm to the gaze of the symposiast in more complex ways as well. The cup from the school of Makron, for example, which I discussed above for its sympotic elements, features a herm that faces outward in the middle of a scene of boys engaged in a κῶμος. The outward gaze of the herm, I would argue, invites the symposiast to turn his erotic gaze to the reveling figures, who not coincidentally sport only loose cloaks that expose their bodies in various ways. This reading of the herm’s gaze finds confirmation in the tondo, which is filled by the image of a solitary boy who prepares to throw a javelin, his bare torso turned out to receive the viewer’s gaze.

The interplay of the gazes of herm and symposiast is perhaps most cleverly treated by the Telephos Painter on a cup in Berlin89. Both sides of the exterior of the cup feature herms and boys in the setting of the palaestra as indicated by the presence of athletic gear and writing equipment hanging in the background. In the center of one side (Side B), a naked boy bends over a large basin to wash himself, and he is framed between two onlooking figures (Fig. 21). To the right, an adult male in ἱμάτιον watches the boy head-on, his gaze reinforced by the rigid way he clutches his staff and holds his arm straight out toward the boy. From behind the boy, on the left side of the scene, the gaze of the herm with his erect phallus mirrors that of the man with his staff.

On the other side of the cup (Side A), we find the gaze reduplicated as well, but in a different configuration (Fig. 22). Here a naked boy bends over at the left side of the scene, engaged in unfolding (or folding) his cloak, as seemingly oblivious as the boy on the other side to the two sets of eyes fixed upon him. In the center stands a herm facing left toward the boy, and further right beyond a tree stands a cloaked youth leaning forward on his staff, likewise facing left.

The linchpin of the cup’s thematization of the gaze is the tondo, which now gives the symposiast viewer a private show of a naked boy, with no competing onlookers (Fig. 23). The view he is offered, however, is the same view as that of the herm on Side A: This boy, like the boy on the exterior, also is folding or unfolding his cloak, now frustrating the symposiast’s erotic gaze instead of the herm’s.

As the preceding examples make clear, many artists paint herm scenes in a way that appeals to the symposiast’s gaze and invites the viewer to contemplate or fantasize about the erotic nature of the scene through the eyes of the herm. To the extent that so many of the scenes also play upon the conventions of pederasty, the herm can offer a parody of the symposiast himself, who finds his own sexual interest comically subverted90. But in such instances, as Mitchell underscores, humor subverts norms only to reveal what the norms actually are, so that in the end, the symposiast can laugh and come out on top91.

Here a short digression is in order, for, in its function as a substitute for the symposiast and his erotic gaze, the herm is not alone. A more common avatar of the symposiast in vase painting is the silen or satyr, that creature in the entourage of Dionysus who can represent the symposiast as he finds himself transformed by the power of the god through wine. As Andrew Stewart writes, the satyr reflects a distorted world, a «universe viewed through an alcoholic haze», one that confounds categories and releases inhibitions92. In regard to sexual desire in particular, he is an ambivalent figure, becoming a lover devoid of all inhibition and yet in many cases remaining sexually frustrated93. Just as we have seen with the herm, moreover, so too the satyr’s gaze can become the means of implicating the gaze of the symposiast, for in many scenes he faces outward to meet it. «The visual appetite of the satyr predisposes him to play spectator. He often does this while facing outward, taking to task the individual who gazes at the image»94.

Needless to say, the carefree, cavorting satyr can stumble into many comic situations on Attic vases95. What, then, should we make of scenes that bring him into the company of the herm? While some scholars have speculated that they are drawn from the world of drama and represent specific scenes from satyr plays96, there is no evidence to confirm this view, and it would be perverse to assume that every vase painting featuring a satyr must derive from drama. The potential of the symposiast viewer to identify in some way with both figures offers another way of finding meaning in these scenes.

As Mitchell observes, most of the scenes are parodies, in which the satyrs imitate the ordinary activities of everyday life97. I would add that an intrinsic effect of the parody is to reinforce the potential identification between satyr and viewer. Consequently the viewer can find himself triangulated into the scene, alternately engaging with the satyr and the herm from the point of view of the other figure. Enhancing this effect is the same kind of mirrored composition that we have observed already in scenes of adult males before herms (see e.g. Fig. 1). So, on a pelike in Dresden, a satyr with ἱμάτιον and walking stick reaches his right hand out in supplication of the herm in front of him; in other scenes he presents offerings or makes libations before a herm98. In a scene on a bell krater in Goluchow attributed to the Lykaon Painter, moreover, the triangulation of the viewer’s gaze becomes more apparent, for while a satyr stands in profile gazing at a herm, the herm itself faces forward, staring out at the symposiast viewer99.

Despite the similarity between the satyrs and herms in these scenes, however, there are also points of contrast, so that the viewer’s response can be more complex, contemplating not only what he might hold in common with both but also whether he might identify more or less with one or the other in terms of interests, abilities, behavior, or moral character100. Thus, while satyrs in their «natural state» are often ithyphallic, those in most of the herm scenes either possess the normative genitalia befitting the iconography of Athenian males or else wear concealing clothing, presenting a clear contrast to the pronounced erections of the herms they face101. There is also a contrast between the active, mobile agency of the satyr and the passive, immobile stance of the herm. So on a mug in Copenhagen, a satyr cradles a small herm in his arms, and while the action intensifies their exchanged gaze, it also underscores the satyr’s control over the helpless herm. A base appears on the ground, but it remains unclear whether the satyr is about to set the herm up or is instead in the act of stealing it away; perhaps the artist deliberately wanted the context to remain ambiguous, leaving the meaning of the scene open to discussion among the symposiasts who would view it102.

There is no ambiguity, however, in the scene on a pelike in Lausanne, where a satyr swings an ax down upon the head of a fallen herm. Here, unusually, both the satyr and the herm have matching erections, and the phallic imagery is compounded by the presence on the other side of the pelike of a phallus-headed bird (the so-called phallus-bird) perched on a basin. From the perspective of the symposiast viewer, the foregrounding of the phallus on this vase suggests that the violent contrast between the satyr and the herm could be intended as a metaphor for the dynamic range of contrasting ideas associated with erotic desire: impulsive action and restraint, frenzy and powerlessness103.

While it might be tempting to argue that the subtext of erotic desire is implicit in all scenes with satyrs and herms, at least in those painted on sympotic vases, I do not want to push the claim too far. Indeed, in regard to pederastic desire specifically, I know of only one instance in which youths appear in the same scene with a herm and satyrs, thereby offering a potential erotic point of reference for the viewer’s contemplation of the scene104. The Geneva cup described earlier, featuring a youth courting a herm on the exterior (see Fig. 4), also bears a tondo painted with a solitary bald satyr in mid-stride who carries a pole with baskets at each end. If this figure is intended to present the symposiast looking into the cup with a comic reflection of himself, and perhaps his appetites, then what results is an interesting triangulation of the viewer with the satyr and the herm, which stand in a contrasting relationship to one another: the one on the move but alone, the other thronged by boys but fixed in place. Finally, it may not be coincidental that on several kraters with scenes of herms and satyrs on one side, youths appear on the other105. Even if the scenes with satyrs and herms do not necessarily implicate erotic desire, however, they are at least consistent with the idea that the herm, like the satyr, can function as a means of drawing the viewer into the scene, becoming an alternate persona of the symposiast.

The Objectification of Desire

To return to the scenes that are the main focus of this essay, I would like to argue in this last section that the artists’ interest in the erotic potential of the herm is more than just a clever response to the interests of their patrons. The scenes hold meaning for the painters as well, for through them the painters subtly and reflexively express their own power, by means of the objects they create, to manipulate desire within the context of the symposium. Specifically, when depicting scenes that insinuate erotic interplay between a person and an artifact – that is to say, between the living, desirable youth represented in the scene and the sculpted, inanimate herm that, like an actual lover, views him and appears to be aroused – the painters offer up a conscious and witty reversal of that interplay between person and artifact in which they themselves have a direct hand, namely between the adult symposiast and the sympotic vase he views and handles. In the latter relationship the roles are reversed: It is the lover who is alive, while the vase, with its painted figure of a desirable youth, is an object that generates desire. The image of the herm itself serves as a visual metonym of this relationship since it simultaneously can embody both a manufactured object and a living, desiring subject. As an image of a work of art, moreover, the herm also reflects back upon the beloved and objectifies him, reminding the viewer that the very thing that captures his erotic interest is the inanimate creation of an artist.

The Greek conceptualization of the erotic power of a manufactured object or work of art is a longstanding one, as Deborah Steiner has shown; she traces it back to Hesiod’s figure of Pandora, who, created by the gods, is the first of several «love-instigating artifacts» described in Greek literature. The efficacy of this association, she explains, resides in the fact that the Greeks considered a fine work of art to be a fitting metaphor for what is beautiful and desirable. Among other things it expresses the capacity of what is desired to be elusive, inaccessible, and not reciprocating; it also expresses the idealization of the beloved to which the lover can fall prey106. As for its mechanics, the Greeks also regarded desire as an active force that operated through the interrelated senses of sight and touch; it was a visual emanation from what is desired that makes physical contact with the viewer107.

Greek artists therefore possess a power to induce desire in those who engage with their work, and through their τέχνη, or facture, they can create tension between seeing a creation as a material object or as the desirable figure represented in it108. The implication of the senses of sight and touch, moreover, lends a special efficacy to the vase painter’s medium precisely because vases are intended to be both viewed and handled109. Certainly by the archaic period, Athenian potters and painters producing figured vases for the symposium are very aware that their handiwork, like music and poetry, can in general terms stimulate and actively shape the discourse among the participants of the symposium110. As proof that this self-consciousness extends to their power to manipulate a symposiast’s desire, Frontisi-Ducroux has demonstrated convincingly that with respect to their erotic scenes the painters frequently incorporate various objects symbolizing the symposiast’s visual engagement with the painter’s work. The repertoire includes such objects as mirrors, lamps, veils, revealing cloaks, and partially open doors, all of which function as self-referential symbols of the very act of viewing and its regulation111.

Of special significance, moreover, is what she calls «the autonomous phallus furnished with an eye». In her words, “Greek artists figured out how to create a specific figure that would express, by means of an image, the conjunction of the scopic impulse and the sexual impulse – of man, necessarily, for it is the masculine gaze that is sexualized and the male organ that is endowed with vision»112. As an example let us consider the scene illustrated on one side of a column krater by the Pan Painter (Fig. 24): A robust, naked woman strides right while holding with both hands, at a height just below her breasts, a long phallus that has all the bulk of a modern rolled carpet113. Not only its great size but also the presence of an eye on its head belies its otherwise naturalistic details, blurring the lines between real anatomy and fanciful object. In the woman’s hands, the phallus marks her as an object herself, to be viewed and desired by the masculine gaze of the symposiast viewer.

Like the autonomous phallus, the herm too is an object equipped with both phallus and sight, and I think we may rightly count it among the painter’s repertoire of objects with which he can mark the visual component of erotic desire. This similarity, I believe, explains the Pan Painter’s choice to decorate the other side of his column krater with a herm scene (Fig. 25): Despite some damage to the vase, we can still make out a cloaked young man who reaches out his right hand to touch the head of a herm while holding a staff in his left. Analogous to the phallus on the other side, the herm marks the youth as an object of desire subjected to the viewer’s erotic gaze. The importance of touch in both scenes further unites the imagery of the Pan Painter’s krater. Both the autonomous phallus and the herm, as exponents of the viewer’s desire, are being handled by the respective objects of that desire: The young man’s hand touches the beard of the herm, and the phallus is not only supported by the woman’s hands but is held against her naked body. Thus, the herm, like the autonomous phallus, references not just the visual but also the tactile aspect of sexual desire114.

In its capacity to function as a metonym that merges material artifact and the desiring subject, the herm can also be compared to another, more overt symbol of the vase painter’s power to arouse desire: the depiction of what scholars have dubbed the phallus-vase, a sympotic vase endowed with a phallus in the place of a handle, base, or spout. The image combines the sight of the vase with an implicit sense of touch, and it likewise collapses the distinction between the sympotic vase as an object and the desiring symposiast who responds to it. Most of the known examples of these exceptionally-endowed vessels appear within a reserved band, or predella, painted below the main scenes on the exterior of a red-figure vase. Thought to have been the invention of the Kleophrades Painter, this decorative scheme, which features a series of vessels and other objects painted in a contrasting solid black silhouette, enjoyed currency through the second quarter of the fifth century BCE115.

Whenever a phallus-vase appears among the objects within the predella, its symbolic value usually finds confirmation within the vase’s main scenes, which thematize the combination of erotic desire and sense experience within the setting of the symposium116. On a cup by the Triptolemos Painter, for example, the predella includes a rhyton with a stiff phallus on Side A (Fig. 26), as well as a skyphos-like cup with an erect phallus replacing a handle on Side B117. The main exterior scenes are filled with ten reclining symposiasts engaged in drinking and other sympotic activities; all of them are bearded adult males save for a single, youthful male playing music on Side A. His exceptional status draws the viewer’s attention, and the adjacent symposiast, who is playing κότταβος with his cup, signals an erotic aspect to the scene.

Through his music, moreover, the youth is clearly affecting the senses of his fellow symposiasts, as we see in the figure to the left, who throws his head back to sing in accompaniment. Just beyond the handle, moreover, the symposiast at the far right of Side B plays the κρόταλα (castanets) while turning his head toward the handle, suggesting that he is directing his gaze at the youthful musician on the other side, with whom he plays along118. This gaze from one side of the cup to the other echoes the mutual, face-to face engagement among other symposiasts, and the depiction of another symposiast who drinks from his cup while facing outward to the viewer brings home the theme of visual engagement. Finally, the artist implicates the sense of touch not only by representing every individual with something in his hands, but also, more subtly, by revealing the youth’s foot stretched suggestively alongside his singing companion, the only occurrence of this kind of overlapping on the cup119.

It is thus not coincidental, in my view, that the Triptolemos Painter pairs the iconographic program of the exterior with a tondo scene featuring a herm standing face to face with an adult male, who is bowed over under the burden of a full, elongated sack (Fig. 27)120. The correspondence between the erect phallus of the herm and the phallus-vases of the exterior suggests that the herm too functions as a marker of the erotic atmosphere of the symposium121. The proximity and similarity of the heads of the herm and the man results, moreover, in the kind of mirroring effect that we have seen on other vases, whereby the herm can become equated with the adult male and the symposiast himself. In fact this lateral axis of identification in the tondo parallels the outward axis created by the frontal symposiast on the exterior who stares out at the viewer. Like the phallus-vases of the exterior predella, therefore, the herm of the tondo collapses the distinction between person and object, bridges the representational world of the vase and the external reality, and symbolizes the erotic dimension of the painter’s craft within the space of the symposium.

The phallus-vases are not entirely the invention of the painters’ imagination; they have their real-world counterparts in the form of ceramic vases with plastically-rendered genitalia in the place of bases, handles, or spouts. The most familiar example may be the Bomford Cup, on which a pair of testicles and a phallus serve in place of the cup’s foot (Fig. 28)122. Such a substitution constitutes a visual pun, playing on the similarity between the Greek words πέος (phallus) and πούς (foot)123. Considered together with the pictorial program of the rest of the cup, however, the genitals assume greater significance; for by merging the visual and tactile qualities of the cup with those of sexual desire, they become part of an intricate expression of the capacity of sympotic vases to manipulate desire through the operation of sight and touch.

On the exterior, in addition to the tactile nature of the plastic genitalia, the theme of sight is foregrounded not only in the two large eyes, but also in the frontal face of the satyr that appears between them. Frontisi-Ducroux, describing the combined effect of these elements, states that “...the satyr’s scopic impulse appears to be emphasized, along with the tactile and sensual finality of the gaze: There is no doubt that the foot of the cup urges the drinker to voluptuous groping and touching”124. On the interior, the head of a gorgon likewise stares out at the viewer, while the rest of the decoration consists of a scene of symposiasts reclining under sweeping grape vines, drawing a visual connection between the real symposiasts using and viewing the cup and those portrayed within it. One vignette further alludes to desire and the senses in the symposium, for we see two adult symposiasts staring at a naked, young wine pourer standing between them (Fig. 29). The one on the right wields a sandal in one hand, which can be understood as an erotic allusion, once again tactile in nature, and one that ties in with the foot pun expressed by the potter125. Nor is it a coincidence that the same figure holds in his other hand a drinking cup, grabbing it by the foot, which in light of the substitution of genitals for a foot on the Bomford Cup itself, invites us to think of the gesture as another allusion to the tactile quality of sexual desire126.

The result of the complex imagery of the Bomford Cup is that the plastic genitals become conflated with the genitals of a desirable youth, like the wine pourer represented on the interior, made available to the view and touch of the symposiast. In this way the artist and potter together effect a self-referential object that acknowledges their power to manipulate the sexual desires of the symposiasts who engage with their creation. Like the painted images of phallus-vases, the Bomford Cup constitutes a symbolic shorthand for this erotic power; but instead of merging the object with the sexually aroused phallus of the symposiast, as the painted phallus-vases do, the Bomford Cup and the other ceramic vases like it merge the object with a source of erotic stimulus, the genitals of a desirable youth127.

The representation of the herm partakes of this same symbolic shorthand and thus offers painters yet another way to reference their power to manipulate desire. In this variation, the painters take the desiring symposiast, as in the painted phallus-vases, but instead of combining him with an object of their own creation, they use the production of their fellow sculptors as a comparable substitute in order to reflect upon this theme. The status of the herm as a manufactured object, analogous to the vase, is central to the erotic interplay of one last herm scene for our consideration, the tondo of the cup in Copenhagen painted by Epiktetos (Fig. 30)128. A wreathed boy, sitting on a stool and cradling in one arm a small herm that rests on the stool between the boy’s legs, applies a chisel to the front of the herm shaft. Scholarly attention has focused on the activity represented in the scene, and hence its setting, as well as the scene’s relation to late archaic politics and the herms of Hipparchos. On the former issue, most scholars see the boy as a young sculptor working on a herm in the workshop. Rückert, on the other hand, taking a cue from the boy’s wreath and seeing the implement at the right edge of the scene as a pick, suggests that he is a victorious athlete who is inscribing his name on the herm129. The latter issue arises not only from the early date of the cup, c. 515 BCE, giving us one of the earliest extant representations of a herm in vase painting, but also from the painted inscription above the scene, which reads Ἵππαρχος καλός («Hipparchos is beautiful»). As a result, many scholars have read the choice of subject as a response to the activities of the son of Peisistratos130.

The pairing of a naked youth and bearded herm, however, as well as the presence of a καλός inscription, suggests that we should also consider this scene from the perspective of the adult male symposiast and in relation to the theme of desire. What becomes apparent is the erotic interplay, entailing both sight and touch, that unfolds between the boy and the herm: Although their gazes do not meet, each figure stares intently at the other. The intensity of their fixed glances is matched, moreover, by the intimacy of their physical contact, for the herm rests directly between the boy’s knees and thighs, that eroticized part of the body which Solon, among others, celebrates in his poetry131. At the same time, the boy not only embraces the herm, supporting it from behind with one arm, but also works upon its body, his right hand placed in chiastic arrangement with the herm’s erect phallus. In fact, one might have to look twice to confirm that the boy is grasping a work tool and not the phallus itself.

What is more, whether we take the youth to be sculpting or inscribing the herm, the erotic interplay between the youth and the herm is tied to the process of manufacture, so that the youth can be regarded simultaneously as the creator or author of what he holds in his hands and as a source of desire, which the herm ostensibly demonstrates with its erect phallus132. Conversely, in the hands of Epiktetos’ youth, the herm is at once a manufactured object and a hypostasis of the symposiast who is incited to desire as he both views and handles the cup. In addition, the symbolic value of the herm has an important implication for the desirable youth: The motif of manufacture and the attention focused on the herm as an artistic product pulls us right back to the realization that the scene itself is an artistic product, and that the depicted youth is himself an integral part of an object, the painted vase created for the symposiast’s visual and tactile consumption.

While the other herm scenes discussed in this paper do not foreground so strongly the nature of the herm as a manufactured object, its artificial nature is always in evidence; in fact it is just as essential to the wit and humor of the scenes as is its resemblance to the symposiast. Like the painted and ceramic phallus-vases, the herm combines person and object in a way that permits it to symbolize the interaction of the symposiast with the artist’s work. The role of the gaze and, we can now add, touch – in the form of the gestures of supplication and offering that are transformed into gestures of courtship – signals the mechanics of desire that operate not only within the herm scenes but also between the scenes and the symposiasts who engage with them. In the imagery of such herm scenes, therefore, the painters find a way to give expression to the idea of desire as a response to objects and to acknowledge their own agency in effecting it.

Conclusion

Soon after canonical stone herms started springing up around Attica, Athenian vase painters took note of the statues and introduced them into their own artistic repertoire, where they remained for over a century and a half. At least some painters, moreover, could see something humorous in these divine images and so drew them into their witty constructions of erotic imagery for the decoration of sympotic vases. We may never know the real explanation for why the herm has the form it does, but to these vase painters, trained in a decades-long tradition of pederastic iconography, and to the patrons who were accustomed to that iconography, the resonance of the herm with the representation of an adult male lover was an obvious source of inspiration and amusement, just as it would be to Callimachus and his readers over two centuries later.

In the context of the symposium, where the erotic interest in beautiful boys found such variegated expression and where the spirit of Dionysos granted a license to the participants to range in their discourse, match wits, laugh at one other, even cast themselves in roles like that of the lusty satyr, which defied normative behavior, painters could use scenes of herms and boys to cater to the symposiasts’ desires, feed their fantasies, and even make light of the pederastic lover’s experience through visual parody. The symposiasts, for their part, could easily see themselves in these herms, and the herms could become the conduit through which they could insert themselves into the scenes and gaze at the beautiful boys around them.

As the representation of a work of art, however, the herm also holds meaning for the painters themselves, for it gives them a means to reflect upon their own artistic enterprise as it relates to the manipulation of desire. Endowed with visual and tactile qualities, the inanimate herm alludes to the power of the work of art to inspire desire through sight and touch, the very power that the painters deploy in the vases they produce for their patrons. When constructing a scene that plays upon the erotic dynamic between a boy and a herm, the painter is able to re-imagine the relationship between the objects he produces and the people who engage with them through a clever reversal of the terms; he has a way to depict a person, the beautiful boy, as inspiring desire in an object, the herm. Thus, while the herm reaches out to connect with the symposiast, whom it resembles and whose desire it may reflect, it also anchors that desire in its own materiality, an analog of the material object itself on which it appears. Ultimately, it exposes the young objects of desire who fill the space around the herm for what they really are, mere paint upon fired clay, a realization that probably made both the symposiast and the painter smile.

 

* * *

 

Fig. 1

Fig. 1

Pelike, Madrid, Museo Arqueológico Nacional, 11122, by the Pig Painter, 470-460 BCE (BA 206459).

Photo courtesy of Museo Arqueológico Nacional

 

 

Fig. 2

Fig. 2

Drawing of Side A of pelike, Athens, National Museum, 17170, in the manner of the Pig Painter, 470-460 BCE (BA 206483).

Illustrator: Glynnis Fawkes

 

 

Fig. 3

Fig. 3

Amphora, Würzburg Universität, Martin von Wagner Museum, L241, by the Phrynos Painter, 560-545 BCE (BA 301073). After Lear and Cantarella 2008, fig. 0.2.

Photo by P. Neckermann, Antikensammlung, Martin von Wagner Museum des Julius-Maximilian-Universität, Würzburg

 

 

Fig. 4

Fig. 4

Exterior of cup, Geneva, Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, I529, by the Painter of Berlin 2268, 510-500 BCE (BA 201410).

Photo : Jean Marc Yersin. ©Musée d’art et d’histoire, Ville de Genève, n° inv. I 0529

 

 

Fig. 5

Fig. 5

Side A of column krater, Palermo, Museo Archeologico Regionale, V790, by the Pig Painter, 460-450 BCE (BA 206438).

Photo courtesy of Archivio Fotografico del Museo Archeologico Regionale Antonino Salinas di Palermo

 

 

Fig. 6

Fig. 6

Side B of column krater, Palermo, Museo Archeologico Regionale, V790, by the Pig Painter, 460-450 BCE (BA 206438).

Photo courtesy of Archivio Fotografico del Museo Archeologico Regionale Antonino Salinas di Palermo

 

 

Fig. 7

Fig. 7

Cup tondo, Berlin, Antikensammlung F 2541, in the manner of the Penthesilea Painter, 460-450 BCE (BA 41549).

bpk Bildagentur / Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen, Berlin / Art Resource, NY

 

 

Fig. 8

Fig. 8

Cup tondo, Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, V517, by the Euaichme Painter, ca. 470 BCE (BA 209671). AN1896-1908 G.279.

Image© Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

 

 

Fig. 9

Fig. 9

Side A of pelike, Berlin, Antikensammlung, 1962.62, by the Pan Painter, 470-460 BCE (BA 275276).

bpk Bildagentur / Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen, Berlin / Johannes Laurentius / Art Resource, NY

 

 

Fig. 10

Fig. 10

Cup tondo, Copenhagen, National Museum, 6327, by the Dokimasia Painter, 480-470 BCE (BA 204498).

CC-BY-SA John Lee, The National Museum of Denmark

 

 

Fig. 11

Fig. 11

Neck amphora, Laon, Musée d’art et d’archéologie du Pays de Laon, 37.1023, by the Pan Painter, 470-460 BCE (BA 206308). After LIMC, “Hermès” n° 155.

By permission of the Musée d’art et d’archéologie du Pays de Laon

 

 

Fig. 12

Fig. 12

Side B of pelike, Berlin, Antikensammlung, 1962.62, by the Pan Painter, 470-460 BCE (BA 275276).

bpk Bildagentur / Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen, Berlin / Johannes Laurentius / Art Resource, NY

 

 

Fig. 13

Fig. 13

Cup, New York, Metropolitan Museum, 07.286.47, by the Hegesiboulos Painter, ca. 500 BCE (BA 201603). Rogers Fund, 1907, www.metmuseum.org

 

 

Fig. 14

Fig. 14

Side A of Pelike, Berlin, Antikensammlung, F 2172, by the Perseus Painter, 470-460 BCE (BA 206706).

bpk Bildagentur / Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen, Berlin / Johannes Laurentius / Art Resource, NY

 

 

Fig. 15

Fig. 15

Side B of Pelike, Berlin, Antikensammlung, F 2172, by the Perseus Painter, 470-460 BCE (BA 206706).

bpk Bildagentur / Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen, Berlin / Johannes Laurentius / Art Resource, NY

 

 

Fig. 16

Fig. 16

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 10.185 (BA 206276). Mixing bowl (bell krater) by the Pan Painter. Greek, Early Classical Period, about 470 BCE. Place of Manufacture: Greece, Attica, Athens. Ceramic. Red Figure. Height: 37 cm (14 9/16 in.); diameter: 42.5 cm (16 3/4 in.). Julia Bradford Huntington James Fund and Museum purchase with funds donated by contribution.

Photograph© 2017 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

 

 

Fig. 17

Fig. 17

Cup tondo, Paris, Musée du Louvre, CP11753, by the Tarquinia Painter, ca. 470 BCE (BA 211453).

©RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY

 

 

Fig. 18

Fig. 18

Cup tondo, Altenburg, Staatliches Lindenau-Museum, 229, by the Ancona Painter, ca. 480 BCE (BA 211551).

By permission of Staatliches Lindenau-Museum, Altenburg

 

 

Fig. 19

Fig. 19

Cup tondo, New York, Metropolitan Museum, 57.12.21, by the Painter of Würzburg 487, mid-5th c. BCE (BA 212175). Gift of Ernest Brummer, 1957, www.metmuseum.org

 

 

Fig. 20

Fig. 20

Exterior of cup, New York, Metropolitan Museum, 57.12.21, by the Painter of Würzburg 487, mid-5th c. BCE (BA 212175). Gift of Ernest Brummer, 1957, www.metmuseum.org

 

 

Fig. 21

Fig. 21

Side B of cup, Berlin, Antikensammlung, F 2308, by the Telephos Painter, ca. 470 BCE (BA 210125).

bpk Bildagentur / Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen,
Berlin / Art Resource, NY

 

 

Fig. 22

Fig. 22

Side A of cup, Berlin, Antikensammlung, F 2308, by the Telephos Painter, ca. 470 BCE (BA 210125).

bpk Bildagentur / Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen,
Berlin / Art Resource, NY

 

 

Fig. 23

Fig. 23

Cup tondo, Berlin, Antikensammlung, F 2308, by the Telephos Painter, ca. 470 BCE (BA 210125).

bpk Bildagentur / Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen,
Berlin / Art Resource, NY

 

 

Fig. 24

Fig. 24

Side A of column krater, Berlin, Antikensammlung, 3206, by the Pan Painter, ca. 470 BCE (BA 206285).

bpk Bildagentur / Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen, Berlin / Ingrid Geske / Art Resource, NY

 

 

Fig. 25

Fig. 25

Side B of column krater, Berlin, Antikensammlung, 3206, by the Pan Painter, ca. 470 BCE (BA 206285).

bpk Bildagentur / Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen, Berlin / Ingrid Geske / Art Resource, NY

 

 

Fig. 26

Fig. 26

Side A of cup, Berlin, Antikensammlung, F 2298, by the Triptolemos Painter, 480-470 BCE (BA 203844).

bpk Bildagentur / Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen, Berlin / Johannes Laurentius / Art Resource, NY

 

 

Fig. 27

Fig. 27

Cup tondo, Berlin, Antikensammlung, F 2298, by the Triptolemos Painter, 480-470 BCE (BA 203844).

bpk Bildagentur / Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen, Berlin / Johannes Laurentius / Art Resource, NY

 

 

Fig. 28

Fig. 28

Exterior of the Bomford Cup, Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, 1974.344, in the manner of the Lysippides Painter, ca. 520 BCE (BA 396). AN1974.344.

Image© Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

 

 

Fig. 29

Fig. 29

Detail of interior of the Bomford Cup, Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, 1974.344, in the manner of the Lysippides Painter, ca. 520 BCE (BA 396). AN1974.344, detail.

Image© Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

 

 

Fig. 30

Fig. 30

Cup tondo, Copenhagen, National Museum, ChrVIII967, by Epiktetos, 520-510 BCE (BA 200586).

CC-BY-SA Kit Weiss, The National Museum of Denmark

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Notes

1 Furley 1996, p. 13. Return to text

2 I delivered parts of this paper on two public occasions: at the Annual Meeting of the Classical Association of the Atlantic States on October 11, 2014, and in the panel «Sexuality in Ancient Art», organized by the Lambda Classical Caucus, at the Annual Meeting of the Society for Classical Studies on January 8, 2016. My work benefitted from the questions and comments I received on both occasions, including from Michael Broder, Kate Topper, and Eva Stehle. I also wish to thank the two anonymous reviewers and the editors of Eugesta for their helpful comments and corrections. The weaknesses that remain in what follows are my own. Return to text

3 The translation is by Nisetich 2001, p. 113. For the text of the Diegeseis see P. Mil. 1, 18, col. VIII, ll. 33-40. For commentary on the poem see also Acosta-Hughes 2002, ch. 6, esp. pp. 300-303. Return to text

4 Compare, on a similar theme, AP 12.143, discussed by Acosta-Hughes 2002, pp. 302-303. The reverse of this comic situation is to mistake men with erections for herms, which is the basis of the joke at Aristophanes, Lys. 1093-1094. The odd shape of the herm lent itself to other forms of humor as well; see the epigram AP 16.186, attributed to Xenokritos, which pokes fun at the herm’s lack of feet and arms. Return to text

5 The inclination to study the herms in vase painting in this way is longstanding. See e.g. Zanker 1965, p. 91. Rückert 1998, pp. 185-220, essentially uses the vases to document the ritual practice directed to the actual statues. Scholars of vase painting in general, however, have recognized for some time that even so-called scenes of daily life do not simply illustrate reality. To quote Françoise Frontisi-Ducroux 1996, p. 81, the images on the vases “inform us, above all, about the collective and social imaginary”. Compare the approach of Topper 2012, pp. 2-6, towards images of the symposium; also Parker 2015, pp. 23-31, on images of sexual activity. Return to text

6 Hdt. 2.51, Thuc. 6.27, Paus. 4.33. See Osborne 1985, pp. 47-48; Wrede 1986, pp. 5-8; Siebert 1990, p. 375; Rückert 1998, pp. 14-25, 42-54, 77. Return to text

7 On the herms of Hipparchos see Osborne 1985, pp. 48-51; Shapiro 1989, pp. 125-126; Rückert 1998, pp. 58-67; Quinn 2007, pp. 93-95. The principal ancient sources are [Pl.] Hipparch. 228b-229e; Harpokration s.v. Ἑρμαῖ; Souda s.v. Ἑρμαῖ; and Hesychius s.v. Ἱππάρχειος Ἑρμῆς. Return to text

8 Shapiro 1989, p. 127. Furley 1996, p. 17, comments that it would be consistent with their other religious activities to see the Pisistratids as canonizing traditional popular practices, not inventing something completely new. On the Sounion herm see Triande 1977; Rückert 1998, pp. 30, 55-57. Certain images of slender, crude herms in vase painting, such as that found on the name vase of the Pan Painter (see below, Fig. 16), may represent an early type of herm in the countryside: Wrede 1986, p. 3; Rückert 1998, pp. 39-41. See also Quinn 2007, p. 93 with n. 37. Return to text

9 Osborne 1985, p. 58; Rückert 1998, 67-68. On the subsequent spread of herms across Greece and the development of their form, see Wrede 1986; Siebert 1990, pp. 374-375; Rückert 1998, pp. 28-38. Return to text

10 On herms in the context of private homes, see Wrede 1986, p. 34; Furley 1996, pp. 16-17; Rückert 1998, pp. 176-184; Quinn 2007, p. 91. In the Agora and on the Acropolis: Wrede 1986, pp. 8-12; Furley 1996, pp. 13-16; Rückert 1998, pp. 78-111; Quinn 2007, pp. 91-92. Return to text

11 Wrede 1986, pp. 34-36; Siebert 1990, pp. 375-378; Rückert 1998, pp. 112-139; Miller 2000, pp. 283-284; Miller 2004, p. 184; Quinn 2007, p. 92. Return to text

12 On the fundamentally religious nature of the herm see Rückert 1998, passim. Furley 1996, pp. 21-28, argues that the herms especially embody the role of Hermes as a mediator between humans and gods. For the evidence of the dedication of herms in late archaic and classical Athens, see Rückert 1998, pp. 67-75, 97-102. Return to text

13 Osborne 1985, pp. 53-57, 65-67; Winkler 1990, pp. 35-36; Furley 1996, pp. 20-21; Rückert 1998, p. 95; Quinn 2007, pp. 82-93; Mitchell 2009, p. 304. Return to text

14 Zanker 1965, 92. Return to text

15 Of the 205 vases, 70 (34 %) are kraters, 63 (31 %) are drinking cups, 27 (13 %) are wine containers like the amphora and pelike, and 18 (9 %) are pouring vessels, yielding a total of 178, or 87 %, that are for use in the symposium. Another 22 (11 %) are lekythoi, perhaps intended for use in the palaestra, and the remaining five (2 %) are a hydria, lekanis, two loutrophoroi, and a fragment of an unidentified vessel. For ease of reference, citations of these vases in the pages that follow will be accompanied by their inventory number in the Beazley Archive online database (BA). Return to text

16 The possibility exists that some of the vases were used for other purposes as well, for instance in ritual contexts, perhaps even in rituals performed before herms, as Rückert 1998, p. 189, suggests; but the vessel shapes are not types exclusive to ritual use, and many of the other scenes on these same vases point to the sympotic context. Similarly, although it is true that much Athenian pottery was exported abroad and that many vases, including many painted with herms, were recovered from Etruscan tombs, we should still regard the ideal viewer for whom the painter paints as Athenian and, in the case of sympotic pottery in particular, the Athenian male. On this point see Lear and Cantarella 2008, pp. 38, 71; Mitchell 2009, p. 22; Topper 2012, pp. 11-12. Most recently, Sheramy Bundrick has argued that while foreign markets may have had some effect on the choices of shape and decoration of Attic pottery, in most instances the workshops produced imagery that was familiar at home: Bundrick 2015, especially pp. 309-310. Return to text

17 Siebert 1990, pp. 376-377. For a summary of the main types of herm scenes and their development over the course of the fifth and fourth centuries, see Zanker 1965, pp. 92-103; Osborne 1985, p. 64; Rückert 1998, pp. 219-220. Return to text

18 Krater: Munich, Antikensammlungen, 6026 (BA 218150); loutrophoros: Karlsruhe, Badisches Landesmuseum, 69.78, by the Naples Painter (BA 216155). Return to text

19 Hunting: see e.g. the calyx krater Paris, Musée Auguste Rodin, 966, name vase of the Painter of Rodin 966 (BA 218183). Riding: oinochoe by the Athena Painter, Rome, Musei Capitolini, 51 (BA 330777); lekythos, Palermo, Mormino Collection, 2588 (BA 18489). Fishing: pelike by the Pan Painter, Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, 3727 (BA 206331). Rocky landscape: bell krater, name vase of the Pan Painter, Boston, MFA, 10.185 (see Fig. 16); unattributed cup, Chianciano Terme, Museo Archeologico Civico (BA 9023261); neck amphora by the Charmides Painter, Dresden, Staatl. Kunstsammlungen, Albertinum, 319 (BA 207619). Some scenes feature a tree, which might suggest a reference to the countryside, but Rückert 1998, p. 187, rightly notes that it may also refer to a park-like setting within the city. I would also note that representations of the open space of the palaestra-gymnasium complex can include a tree (see for example Fig. 22). Return to text

20 Bérard and Durand 1989, pp. 33-34; Siebert 1990, p. 377; Rückert 1998, pp. 128, 189. Athletic equipment: cup in Geneva, Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, I529, by the Painter of Berlin 2268 (BA 201410). Turning post: cup, Copenhagen, National Museum, 6327, by the Dokimasia Painter (BA 204498, see Fig. 10). Louterion, athletic, and school equipment: cup, Berlin, Antikensammlung, F2308, by the Telephos Painter (BA 210125, see Fig. 21). Return to text

21 See, for instance, the skyphos by the Theseus Painter, Cambridge (Mass.), Harvard Univ., Arthur M. Sackler Mus., 1960.321 (BA 330707). For the herm as a protector or patron of the workshop, see Zanker 1965, p. 96; Rückert 1998, pp. 215-216. Return to text

22 Siebert 1990, p. 377; Furley 1996, p. 23, noting also the evidence of the actual findspots of herms. Zanker 1965, p. 98, speculates that scenes in which herms appear alone, prevalent in the second quarter of the 5th century, may represent cult in private houses – so too the representations of small children in the company of herms on a few miniature choes (p. 100). Rückert 1998, pp. 186-189, is more cautious. Return to text

23 Siebert 1990, p. 377, notes the prevalence of “la jeunesse éphébique” in scenes with herms. Rückert 1998, pp. 191-194, 219, sees this phenomenon as reflecting a special tie between the herm and the cult of Hermes Enagonios; by her reasoning a much larger percentage of the scenes with herms would have been regarded by the viewer as an allusion to the world of the palaestra. See also McPhee 2011, pp. 50-51. Women do appear occasionally in the scenes, especially in the fourth century: Rückert 1998, p. 205. There is also a small percentage of scenes, mostly of fourth century date, showing herms in the company of maenads and/or satyrs; in even fewer instances they appear in the company of gods (see below, n. 79). Return to text

24 As to what these individuals may want from the god, Siebert 1990, p. 377, suggests female fecundity, male virility, and love interests. Furley 1996, pp. 21, 27-28, argues that the rituals portrayed in scenes with herms are not directed to Hermes himself but rather to other gods, and that Hermes acts only as an intermediary in the transaction. Osborne 1985, p. 58, sees the herms in vase painting functioning more as a symbol of communication, a “visual peg on which the prayer motif can be hung”. Return to text

25 Lear and Cantarella 2008, p. 140. The scene he associates with this remark is found on the name vase of the Pan Painter, discussed below (see Fig. 16). In a similar vein, J. C. Quinn recognizes the sexual signification of actual stone herms and explores how this sculptural type and the sculptural type of the kouros both participate in the contested political discourse of late archaic and classical Athens; but she does not examine the representations of herms on vases and their erotic potential within the sympotic context: Quinn 2007, pp. 85-90, 102-103. Return to text

26 The bibliography on pederasty is extensive, but for an accessible summary of the textual evidence, see Lear and Cantarella 2008, pp. 1-23. The remainder of the book offers a thorough study of the vase iconography. Davidson 2007 attempts to revise the generally accepted understanding of ancient pederasty but has not convinced many scholars. For the chronology of scenes of pederastic courtship in Attic vase painting, which continue, albeit in dwindling number, into the 470s, see Shapiro 1981, pp. 133-143. Return to text

27 Compare, for example, the frequently illustrated Siphnian herm: LIMC, «Hermès» no. 12. On this issue see Quinn 2007, p. 90, n. 21. For separate, metal phalluses attached to stone herms see Siebert 1990, p. 374. The representation of the phallus in an unaroused state begins in the late 5th century and becomes commonplace in the Hellenistic period and later: Rückert 1998, pp. 29, 139. Return to text

28 Osborne 1985, p. 65. Return to text

29 Madrid, Museo Arqueológico Nacional, 11122, 470-460 BCE (BA 206459). Return to text

30 Zanker 1965, p. 94: “Wie gebannt tauchen der lyraspielende Adorant und der Hermengott die Augen ineinander, während das Altarfeuer hoch auflodert”. Other examples: pelike, Athens, National Museum, 17170, in the manner of the Pig Painter (BA 206483) discussed below; amphora, The Hague, Gemeente Museum, 2026, by the Tyskiewicz Painter (BA 203006); mug, St. Petersburg, State Hermitage Museum, 1898.42, by the Painter of the Leningrad Herm-Mug mug (BA 203212); krater fragment, Amsterdam, Allard Pierson Museum, 2477 (BA 14133). Return to text

31 Rückert 1998, p. 131, sees the scene as an allusion to the erotic aspect of palaestra. Return to text

32 National Museum, 17170, in the manner of the Pig Painter, 470-460 BCE (BA 206483). Return to text

33 On the gradual unwrapping of the body of the beloved youth as an iconographic theme, see Lear and Cantarella 2008, pp. 40-44. Return to text

34 Halliwell 2008, pp. 100-154 (quotation at p. 104). See also Mitchell 2009, pp. 16-18. Return to text

35 Mitchell 2004, pp. 3-32 (quotation at p. 4); see also Mitchell 2009, pp. 13, 29-34. Return to text

36 On the conventional aspects of the representation of courtship, see Dover 1989, especially pp. 91-100; Lear and Cantarella 2008, pp. 38-62. For a discussion of the reversal of norms in scenes of pederastic courtship, see Lear and Cantarella 2008, pp. 67-71. Mitchell 2009, p. 3, notes that certain individual painters (as identified by Beazley) tend to incorporate humor into their painting more so than others. So the personal temperament of the artist probably contributes to explaining the distribution of such scenes in vase painting. Return to text

37 Würzburg Universität, Martin von Wagner Museum, L241, by the Phrynos Painter, 560-545 BCE (BA 301073). On the gesture see Dover 1989, pp. 94-95; Lear and Cantarella 2008, pp. 27-31, 114-115. At times the down gesture also seems to express an attitude of imploring: Dover 1989, pp. 91-92. As Parker 2015, pp. 97-102, cautions, we should avoid treating the conventions in absolute terms and allow some flexibility in the interpretation, depending on the context. Return to text

38 Geneva, Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, I529, by the Painter of Berlin 2268, 510-500 BCE (BA 201410). Compare also the fragmentary tondo of a kylix, Paris, Musée du Louvre, CP11462, by the Brygos Painter (BA 204014): a solitary youth bends slightly toward a small-sized herm and performs the same up-and-down gesture. Return to text

39 On competition in pederasty, see Lear and Cantarella 2008, pp. 48-52. On p. 49, with n. 12, Lear discusses rare examples of youths competing for an older male. Compare also a black figure scene on an olpe, Paris, Musée du Louvre, N3378, attributed to the Dot-Ivy Group (BA 330141; see LIMC, «Hermès» no. 143 for an illustration). Here two boys stand facing two herms, the nearer of which faces out to the viewer while the farther faces the boys. The boy nearer the two herms holds his arms in a similar up-and-down gesture. Return to text

40 Lear and Cantarella 2008, pp. 54-55. Return to text

41 Rückert 1998, p. 208, interprets the scenes in this fashion and, noting that young males more commonly make this gesture, suggests that the scenes represent the worship of the cult of Hermes Enagonios in the palaestra. That the gesture could be accompanied by a prayer spoken to the god seems reasonable. Rückert 1998, 129, cites a cup by Douris showing youths with their arms held up in similar positions. Although no herm is represented, the words Ἑρμῆ («O Hermes») appear in the field, suggesting the beginning of their prayer to the god. On the gesture of supplication itself, see Neumann 1965, pp. 67-70. For examples of men and women supplicating herms, compare the scene on the column krater by the Boreas Painter, Bologna, Museo Civico Archeologico, 206 (BA 206078): Zanker 1965, p. 95, pl. 5b; Osborne 1985, pp. 54-57, pl. 2; Furley 1996, pp. 22-23. See also Rückert 1998, p. 209, on this scene and one of a child appearing before a child-like herm on a chous. Return to text

42 Museo Archeologico Regionale, V790, 460-450 BCE (BA 206438). Return to text

43 An unattributed Attic pelike excavated from a grave at Aiani in central Greece and now in the Aiani Museum (BA 9024124) may offer a comparable program. One side shows a boy with hand outstretched to the beard of a herm, while the other side represents a bearded male facing another figure, incompletely preserved. The record in the Beazley Archive describes this as a youth, thus possibly a scene of pederastic courtship. Cf. Karamitrou-Mentessidi 2008, p. 118, who identifies the second figure as a woman. I have not been able to examine the vase myself. For other scenes of youths reaching a hand out to herms, see the cup tondo, Berlin, Antikensammlung F2541, by the Penthesilea Painter (BA 41549; here Fig. 7); pelike, Paris, Cabinet des Medailles, 397, by the Geras Painter (BA 202583); pelike, Exeter, Royal Albert Memorial Museum, 24.1952.1, attributed to Aison (BA 215600); column krater, Berlin, Antikensammlung, 3206, by the Pan Painter (BA 206285; here Fig. 25); cup tondo, Heidelberg, Ruprecht-Karls-Universität, 146, by the Splanchnopt Painter or Painter of Brussels R330 (BA 211867). Return to text

44 Cup tondo, Berlin, Antikensammlung F2541, by the Penthesilea Painter, 460-450 BCE (BA 41549). Compare also the scenes on the vases cited in the previous note, with the exception of the pelike in Aiani and the krater in Berlin by the Pan Painter, discussed later. Return to text

45 See Dover 1989, p. 101, and Lear and Cantarella 2008, pp. 27, 66, 114, on the conventional stances of the lover and beloved. The crouching of the lover not only anticipates the posture for intercrural copulation but also suggests his subordination to and supplication of the beloved, thus compromising the normal upright bodily hexis of the adult Athenian male. On bodily hexis, see Stewart 1997, p. 11. Return to text

46 Lear and Cantarella 2008, pp. 32, 39-48. See also pp. 72-86 for a discussion of the significance of the gifts themselves. Return to text

47 Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, V517, ca. 470 BCE (BA 209671), on which see Dover 1989, p. 92 (vase R791); also Lear and Cantarella 2008, p. 45. On the significance of the gamecock as a gift see Barringer 2001, pp. 90-95. Return to text

48 As Lissarrague 1990, 33, notes, a καλός inscription «expresses verbally what an image shows visually: the aesthetic pleasure derived from looking at a body.» On καλός inscriptions in general, see Lear and Cantarella 2008, pp. 164-173. Return to text

49 Berlin, Antikensammlung, 1962.62, 470-460 BCE (BA 275276). The herm in this scene is missing his phallus; while the omission may be accidental, it is also possible that the Pan Painter intended it to add to the humor of the scene. Return to text

50 Cup tondo, Copenhagen, National Museum, 6327, by the Dokimasia Painter, 480-470 BCE (BA 204498). Compare also the boy hunter offering sprigs to a herm as an adult male hunter looks on, echoing the gaze of the herm, portrayed on a calyx krater in St. Petersburg, State Hermitage Museum, B4543 (BA 41008). Return to text

51 On the erotic sense of both the verb and the root noun in the context of pederasty, see Dover 1989, pp. 44-45; Davidson 2007, pp. 46-50; Parker 2015, p. 39. Fisher 2013, pp. 41-42, 55-62, cites numerous passages including Xen. Hier. 1.34, 7.6.; Arist. PA 68a37-b7; Plato Symp. 181c-182b, 218c-d; Phaedrus 231a-c, 233c-234c, 237b, 238e, 241a-d, and elsewhere. For religious ritual as an act of χάρις, see Kearns 2010, p. 89, and compare Plato, Euthyphro 14b; Laws 771d. On wreaths given to a lover by his beloved as a token of consent, see Lear and Cantarella 2008, p. 49. Return to text

52 For a darker, more sinister play on these two senses of χάρις, compare Clytemnestra’s words at Aesch. Ag. 895-902, discussed by Fisher 2013, pp. 48-50. Return to text

53 Musée Archeologique Municipal, 37.1023, 470-460 BCE (BA 206308). See also the scene of a boy with his hands in the up and down position while offering fruit to a herm on a lekythos, Oxford (Miss.), University of Mississippi, University Museums, by the Icarus Painter (BA 208344). Return to text

54 Mitchell 2009, p. 155, describes a Lucanian bell krater that adds a further comic twist to this kind of sexual innuendo: an ithyphallic, pot-bellied Hermes stands in place of a herm and has a wreath on his phallus, while a woman (and a satyr) are about to add more. Compare also the scene of a herm and altar on a neck amphora, Boston, MFA, 68.163, by the Nikon Painter (BA 275790). In addition to the wreath hanging from its phallus, the painter has added the inscription Γλαύκων καλός («Glaukon is beautiful») on the herm’s shaft. The other side of the amphora depicts a woman moving to her right with a pitcher and phiale in her hands, and it is likely that her destination (or point of departure?) is the altar and herm. Considered in isolation, however, the herm scene might suggest to the viewer an absent youth who has previously devoted his attention to the herm. Return to text

55 On competition in pederastic scenes, see the discussion of the Geneva cup above (see Fig. 4). The presence of three herms on the Berlin vase raises the possibility that the Pan Painter may also be alluding to the Eion herms, as has been argued for another fragmentary vase by the same painter in Paris; see Osborne 1985, pp. 58-64; Rückert 1998, pp. 199-200; Mitchell 2009, pp. 139-140. On the significance of the Eion herms themselves, see also Winkler 1990, pp. 35-36, Quinn 2007, pp. 84-85. These are not the only two vases to show multiple herms, however, and Rückert 1998, pp. 200-202, casts doubt on the association. Return to text

56 New York, MMA, 07.286.47, ca. 500 BCE (BA 201603). See also the tondo by the Brygos Painter, Oxford, 1967.304 (BA 204034). On the interest in the beloved’s genitals, see Dover 1989, pp. 95-96; Lear and Cantarella 2008, p. 114. Note also vases in the shape of genitalia, discussed further below. Return to text

57 Berlin, Antikensammlung, F2172, 470-460 BCE (BA 206706). Return to text

58 Rückert 1998, p. 204. Return to text

59 Mitchell 2004, pp. 9-10; Mitchell 2009, pp. 138-139. On kissing as a sign of reciprocity from the beloved see Lear and Cantarella 2008, pp. 59-62. Return to text

60 Boston, MFA, 10.185, 470-460 BCE (BA 206276). Return to text

61 Frontisi-Ducroux 1996, pp. 82-83 (quotation on p. 82). Return to text

62 Lear and Cantarella 2008, pp. 149-150. Return to text

63 Compare also the pelike by the Pan Painter in Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum, 3727 (BA 206331). On one side, a herm at left gazes at a passing boy who carries a pole on his shoulder with baskets at each end; on the other side, the same boy is shown with an adult fisherman, who has caught one fish on his line. Addressing the presence of the herm in the scene, Rückert 1998, pp. 214-215, writes only that it serves to mark the landscape and may also allude to the luck of a good catch or even to Hermes’ role in the invention of fishing. In my view the herm’s gaze marks the boy himself as the desired catch, and the caught fish on the other side may further allude to the beloved as prey, on which motif see Dover 1989, pp. 87-88; Schnapp 1989; Barringer 2001, pp. 70-124; Lear and Cantarella 2008, pp. 86-90. For the image of carrying game on a pole in courtship scenes, see Barringer 2001, pp. 79-82. Siebert 1990, p. 377, states that the fundamental immobility of the herm functions as a source of humor in many types of scene, and it can be seen in literature as well – it is the same humor that underpins AP 16.186, an epigram about a herm in the palaestra. Return to text

64 Paris, Musée du Louvre, CP11753, ca. 470 BCE (BA 211453). Return to text

65 Altenburg, Staatliches Lindenau-Museum, 229, by the Ancona Painter, ca. 480 BCE (BA 211551). Compare also cup tondo fragments in Rome, Mus. Naz. Etrusco di Villa Giulia, (BA 9026923); Bologna, Museo Civico Archeologico, 380 (BA 211934); and the tondo of a cup attributed to the workshop of the Penthesileia Painter and formerly on the market in Basel (not in BA; see LIMC, «Hermès» no. 149). Frontisi-Ducroux 1996, pp. 82, 90, sees the posture as a prelude to courtship and the undressing of the beloved. On αἰδώς and σωφροσύνη see also Ferrari 1990; Stewart 1997, pp. 80-82; Steiner 2001, pp. 206-207; Lear and Cantarella 2008, p. 40. For an example of a cloaked youth seated before a herm, see the tondo of a cup by the Painter of London D12, Faenza, Museo delle Ceramiche, 5 (BA 213052), discussed below. Return to text

66 Paris, Musée du Louvre, Cp 10994 (BA 210214; for an illustration see LIMC, «Hermès» no. 146). Return to text

67 On the representation of Eros in pederastic scenes on vases see Shapiro 1992, pp. 58-63; Lear and Cantarella 2008, pp. 150-163. The appearance of Eros is but one development that takes place in the iconography of pederasty during the fifth century, another being the gradual subsidence of overt images of courtship and pursuit; thus the changing iconography of herm scenes appears to follow suit. The reason for the change in pederastic imagery is a matter of debate; Stewart 1997, pp. 156, 171, argues that it is a response to the increased emphasis on σωφροσύνη and ἐγκράτεια (self-mastery) in the fifth century. See also Lear and Cantarella 2008, p. 175, with n. 4. Return to text

68 Metropolitan Museum, 57.12.21, by the Painter of Würzburg 487, mid-5th c. BCE (BA 212175). Return to text

69 Shapiro 1989, pp. 131-132, noting the humor in scenes with herms and satyrs (see below), comments on the seemingly irreverent treatment of the herm and situates it in the tradition of comic portrayals of Hermes. So too Mitchell 2009, p. 303, calls Hermes the «most mocked god» on Attic vases. Return to text

70 See Bremmer 1990, pp. 135-145; Halliwell 2008, p. 106, with n. 16; Topper 2012, pp. 54, 70-71; Corner 2014, pp. 200-201, 207. Return to text

71 For scenes of pederastic interaction in the space of the symposium, see Lissarrague 1990, pp. 32-33; Lear and Canterella 2008, pp. 57-59, 136-137. See also Stewart 1997, pp. 156-157, on the relationship between vase imagery and the homosocial discourse of the symposium, although he focuses his discussion on scenes of opposite-sex intercourse; Barringer 2001, pp. 119-123, discusses mythological pursuits in relation to the atmosphere of the symposium. On wine pourers see now Topper 2012, pp. 54-80, who argues that beautiful young servers in these scenes are a fantasy element harking back to an earlier age when noble youths attended the banqueters. On the erotic association of κότταβος: Lissarrague 1990, pp. 80-85; Csapo and Miller 1991, pp. 379-381; Topper 2012, p. 71. On love songs: Lissarrague 1990, pp. 132-133. Return to text

72 Halliwell 2008, p. 113. See also his discussion of the strong association between laughter and youth: Halliwell 2008, pp. 19-25. Return to text

73 Lissarrague 1990, p. 106; see also Steiner 2001, pp. 223-225. On the palaestra as a space of pederastic courtship see further Dover 1989, pp. 54-55; Rückert 1998, p. 131; Lear and Cantarella 2008, pp. 91-97; Fisher 2014, pp. 253-257. Return to text

74 Topper 2012, pp. 27-35. Return to text

75 Faenza, Museo delle Ceramiche, 5, by the Painter of London D12 (BA 213052); see Sassatelli 1993, n. 106, pp. 90-91, with illustrations. It is unclear whether the boys on the exterior (similar scenes appear on both sides) are intended to be wine pourers at the symposium, a position of erotic interest for the symposiasts, as noted before. Another possible signal of erotic interest is the representation of two sandals hanging in the background between the boy and the men; for their erotic significance see Boardman 1976, pp. 286-287; Kilmer 1993, pp. 104-124; Stewart 1997, p. 165; Coccagna 2009, pp. 124-126. The tondo scene, like the scenes of boys standing before herms discussed earlier, bears a striking resemblance to scenes of a desired youth seated before a male lover; compare e.g. Lear and Cantarella 2008, figs. 1.2 and 2.7. Return to text

76 Lissarrague 1990, p. 36. Return to text

77 Paris, Musée du Louvre, G245, by the Triptolemos Painter (BA 203878), on which see Lissarrague 1990, pp. 34-36, with fig. 22. Cf. a bell krater in Toronto, Royal Ontario Museum, 967.153, by the Pistoxenos Painter (BA 275393), which bears a scene of two men and a youth preparing for sacrifice before a herm and altar; one of the men carries a large calyx krater and an oinochoe. Return to text

78 Lissarrague 1990, pp. 134-139. The connection between lyre and symposium appears already in the Homeric Hymn to Hermes, on which see Halliwell 2008, p. 102. On lyres as courtship gifts see Lear and Cantarella 2008, pp. 39, 77-78. The positioning of the herm behind the youth such that its erect phallus extends close to the youth’s buttocks is also suggestive: compare the adult male who dances with one leg raised immediately behind a youth in a tondo by the Foundry painter, discussed by Lear and Cantarella 2008, p. 115, with fig. 3.7. Return to text

79 Pulsano, Collection Guarini, inv. 55 (BA 15474). On wineskins see Lissarrague 1990, pp. 72-74. Return to text

80 I count twenty-one herm scenes that feature a Dionysiac setting, or roughly ten percent of the herm scenes. Satyrs appear in the majority of these, and their possible significance in relation to the herms will be explored later in the paper. Dionysos himself appears on three kraters of fourth century date: a bell krater in Veroia, Veroia Museum, 508, by the Toya Painter (BA 7995); a calyx krater in Paris, Musée du Louvre, CA153, by the Painter of Athens 1375 (BA 218297); and a calyx krater in Naples, National Archaeological Museum, 82542, by the Telos Painter (BA 260066). A mid-fifth-century bell krater in Goluchow, Czartorysky Castle, 43, by the Lykaon Painter (BA 213561), features a herm on one side flanked by satyrs and a maenad, while the other side represents Dionysos in the company of more maenads and satyrs, one of whom plays music while another fills a large krater with wine from an amphora. Maenads alone appear in two more herms scenes of the fourth century, both on calyx kraters attributed to the LC Group: Athens, National Museum, 12909 (BA 218332); Athens, National Museum, 12477 (BA 218333). Finally, a Kerch pelike in Berlin, Antikensammlung, 4982.40 (BA 9021753) features a herm flanked by a maenad and the god Pan. Return to text

81 Frontisi-Ducroux 1996, p. 95. Return to text

82 Frontisi-Ducroux 1996, pp. 81-89. Return to text

83 Osborne 1985, pp. 52-53. See also Siebert 1990, p. 377, on the general emotional force of frontal herms within a cultic context. Return to text

84 For the unanswered gaze as a sign of the inequality of the relationship in erotic scenes, see Frontisi-Ducroux 1996, pp. 83-84. Compare also the unreciprocated gaze of the herm on the Pan Painter’s pelike in Vienna (above, n. 62). Return to text

85 On frontality in erotic scenes see Frontisi-Ducroux 1996, pp. 85-89. With regard to pederastic courtship scenes on vases, she explores the effect of frontality not only on adult symposiasts but also on young male symposiasts, as potential beloveds. Throughout my discussion of herm scenes, however, I have focused on the adult male viewer, both for the sake of economy of argument and also in the belief that the interests of the adult male would be more on the painter’s mind; but I want to acknowledge that a young male symposiast could also recognize and react to what it is portrayed. Return to text

86 Another frontal herm appears on the earlier black figure olpe attributed to the Dot-Ivy Group (above, n. 38). Return to text

87 Frontisi-Ducroux 1996, p. 86; see also Coccagna 2009, pp. 27-28. Return to text

88 Bonn, Akademisches Kunstmuseum, 464.34 (BA 205205), with additional fragments in Rome and Florence: see Buitron-Oliver 1995, p. 84, n. 203, with pl. 107. Although Buitron-Oliver describes the scene as a herm between two men, the heads of the flanking figures are incompletely preserved, so that it remains possible that this is a courtship scene between a man and a youth or between two youths. Return to text

89 Berlin, Antikensammlung, F2308, ca. 470 BCE (BA 210125). Return to text

90 Halliwell 2008, pp. 114-115, discussing a passage of Theognis, notes how the symposium creates a space in which a certain amount of ridicule of the symposiasts is to be expected. At p. 118 he further states that the symposium creates a kind of safe space “bracketed from the normal conditions of social life”. Return to text

91 Mitchell 2009, pp. 2, 12-20. The humor may also in part be intended to offer socio-political commentary, at least in the late archaic and early classical periods. J. C. Quinn has argued that the herm itself represents a politicized sculptural type that competes with the earlier kouros and participates in the contemporary debate between elitist/aristocratic and egalitarian/democratic ideals: Quinn 2007, pp. 100-105. To the extent that pederasty too is implicated in that debate (see e.g. Stewart 1997, pp. 63-85), then visual humor of this kind, which imagines the herm in an erotic milieu, may in some sense be satirical. Return to text

92 Stewart 1997, p. 189. Compare also Lissarrague 1990, pp. 13-14, who writes, «Their hybrid, bestial appearance is like an expression of that radically Other element buried deep within every civilized man, which drinking can bring to light, and which must be recognized and tested». Return to text

93 Stewart 1997, p. 191; Hedreen 2006, p. 279. Mitchell 2009, p. 193, discusses two vases on which satyrs specifically parody pederastic courtship; see also Lissarrague 2013, pp. 95, 206-207. Return to text

94 Frontisi-Ducroux 1996, p. 90; compare also her discussion on p. 87 of a scene in which a satyr approaches a sleeping maenad whose face is turned out to the viewer. For further discussion of the frontal representation of satyrs and its effect on the viewer, see also Hedreen 2006, pp. 287-291; Hedreen 2007, pp. 234-237. Return to text

95 For a survey of comic scenes with satyrs see Mitchell 2009, pp. 156-234. Return to text

96 Zanker 1965, pp. 101-102; see also Rückert 1998, p. 212. Return to text

97 Mitchell 2009, pp. 182-184. In accord with my overall thesis, however, I disagree with Mitchell’s later claim, at p. 304, that the humor directed at herms is generally confined to scenes with satyrs. Return to text

98 Dresden, Staatl. Kunstsammlungen, Albertinum, ZV2535, by the Alkimachos Painter, 470-460 BCE (BA 206005). For similar scenes, compare the satyr presenting a tray of offerings to a herm on an unattributed chous in Athens, National Museum, 1553, ca. 420 BCE (BA 16276); a maenad joins him in making offerings on a fourth-century calyx krater attributed to the LC Group, Athens, National Museum, 11703 (BA 218330). On a bell krater of the second half of the fifth century now in a private collection, a satyr with an oinochoe pours a libation at an altar before a herm (BA13720). Return to text

99 Czartorysky Castle, 43, 430-420 BCE (BA 213561); see Lissarrague 2013, p. 201, fig. 117. Return to text

100 On the capacity of the viewer to relate to the satyr, see Hedreen 2006, especially pp. 308-311, 317. On vase imagery more generally as it relates to the behavior of symposiasts, see Osborne 2007, especially pp. 50-51. Return to text

101 Lissarrague 2013, pp. 200-201. On an unattributed column krater in Geneva, Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, HR85, ca. 470 BCE (BA 43585), the satyr who stands face to face before a herm is distinctively dressed, wearing a πέτασος (broad-brimmed hat) on his head and an enveloping ἱμάτιον that reveals only the lowest part of a long χιτών (tunic) underneath: Lissarrague 2013, p. 200, fig. 170. As Lissarrague notes, there is an incongruity between the hat, which is usually associated with travel, and the rest of his dress, which is suited to an indoor setting. I wonder whether the clothing is meant to allude to the clothing of symposiasts in so-called Anakreontic scenes, on which see Neer 2002, pp. 19-23; Hedreen 2006, pp. 309-310. The hat might be a substitute for (or comic contrast with) the more common headdress and parasol found in such scenes; for the arrangement of ἱμάτιον and χιτών, compare the males on a neck amphora from Ruvo by the Providence Painter, Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, 81632 (BA 207400). If my hunch is correct, the satyr’s dress may have been intended as a further link between the image and the sympotic context of the viewer. Return to text

102 National Museum, 598, in the manner of the Tarquinia Painter, 480-470 BCE (BA 211521). Interpreted as setting up the herm: Rückert 1998, p. 212; Lissarrague 2013, p. 201 (cautiously). Interpreted as stealing: Mitchell 2009, p. 183. A similar scene appears on an unattributed oinochoe in St. Petersburg, State Hermitage Museum, P1873.132 (BA 19891). Here there is no eye contact between satyr and herm, but there is a parallelism effected by the fact that both the satyr and the herm he carries are facing right. Return to text

103 Musée Historique, 3250, by the Geras Painter, 470-460 BCE (BA 352524). On phallus-birds, see Kilmer 1993, pp. 193-197. Mitchell 2009, pp. 184, 304, reads the scene as a comic attack motivated by rivalry over phallus size. Return to text

104 Bell krater, Naples, Museo Archeologico Nazionale, 82542, by the Telos Painter, 4th century BCE (BA 260066). The scene also includes a youthful Dionysos and a maenad. Return to text

105 For instance, the bell krater by the Telos Painter (see previous note) features more youths on the other side. Other examples include a calyx krater, Syracuse, Museo Arch. Regionale Paolo Orsi, 22934, by the Pantoxena Painter, ca. 430 BCE (BA 213631); an unattributed bell krater in a private collection, from the second half of the 5th century BCE (BA13720); bell krater, Ferrara, Museo Nazionale di Spina, T141BVPA, by the Painter of Ferrara T141B, 4th century BCE (BA 218190); bell krater, London, British Museum, F71, attributed to the York Reverse Group, 4th century BCE (BA 218201); calyx krater, Athens, National Museum, 11703, attributed to the LC Group, 4th century BCE (BA 218330). Return to text

106 Steiner 2001, pp. 185-186, 249-250 (quotation at p. 186). Return to text

107 Frontisi-Ducroux 1996, p. 81, citing Plato, Phaedrus 251-255; Stewart 1997, p. 19; Stansbury-O’Donnell 2014, pp. 40-41, who also discusses the Phaedrus passage. Return to text

108 Stewart 1997, pp. 43-44. Return to text

109 Frontisi-Ducroux 1996, p. 98, n. 33; Stewart 1997, pp. 56-57. Return to text

110 Lissarrague 1990, pp. 47, 103. In scenes with herms, for instance, the bleeding-in of visual elements of the symposium, described earlier, is but one manifestation of this awareness. Return to text

111 Frontisi-Ducroux 1996, pp. 81, 89-95. Return to text

112 Frontisi-Ducroux 1996, pp. 93-94 (quotation at p. 93). Return to text

113 Berlin, Antikensammlung, 3206, ca. 470 BCE (BA 206285). Return to text

114 Kilmer 1993, pp. 192-193, with n. 2, tries unconvincingly to connect both the herm and the large phallus on this vase to the fertility rites of the Haloa festival. Cf. Frontisi-Ducroux 1996, p. 99, n. 77, who rightly criticizes the tendency to read the autonomous phallus as a real, ritual object. Return to text

115 Coccagna 2009, p. 142; Yatromanolakis 2009, p. 453. Return to text

116 Writing about the silhouette vases generally, Lissarrague 1990, pp. 89-90, states that they «are more than vases; they are signs. The vase, autonomous, shown for its own sake, is charged with significance. It evokes the pleasures of drinking from it, or playing with it, or simply looking at it». The phallus-vase, then, would specifically mark that pleasure as erotic. For a fuller discussion of all the relevant examples, see Coccagna 2009, pp. 142-161. Return to text

117 Berlin, Antikensammlung, F2298, 480-470 BCE (BA 203844). Return to text

118 On the vase painter’s ability to integrate the music of the symposium and relate it to visual desire, see Lissarrague 1990, pp. 124-135. Return to text

119 On the erotic connotations of the foot, see Levine 2005, esp. pp. 57-59, 66-68. Coccagna 2009, p. 144, makes another astute observation about this cup, that the image of the skyphos with a phallus for its handle on Side B lies directly below a symposiast who is himself holding another skyphos by its handle rather than by the foot, an uncommon detail that creates a playful resonance with the phallus-vase, one that turns upon the sense of touch. Space does not permit a discussion of the other vases depicting phallus-vases in the predella, on which see Coccagna 2009, pp. 147-154; but I will simply note that the main scenes of these vases likewise conjoin motifs of erotic desire and the engagement of the senses in the context of the symposium. Also relevant are the few examples of phallus-vases that appear in the hands of hetairai: see Coccagna 2009, pp. 138-141. Return to text

120 Berlin, Antikensammlung, F2298, 480-470 BCE (BA 203844). The significance of the sack is a matter of debate. Mitchell 2009, p. 197, noting similar representations in vase painting, sees it as a sack of grapes. For earlier interpretations see Zanker 1965, p. 97; Rückert 1998, p. 214. If Mitchell is right, then by alluding to the production of wine, the sack constitutes another metonymic link, much like a krater, to the scenes of symposium that decorate the exterior of the cup and, by extension, with any symposiast using the cup. Return to text

121 Coccagna 2009, p. 145, also argues for a meaningful connection between the herm of the tondo and the phallus-spouted vases of the exterior, but for her the herm references Hermes as a playful trickster, thereby «putting the drinker in mind of the verbal and tactile tricks to which the phallus spouted cup was subject». Her interpretation does not preclude seeing an erotic connection as well. Elsewhere she comments on the similarity between herms and phallus-vases in their focus on the male phallus and face, and she associates them both with Athenian public discourse about the male body; but she does not explore further what this suggests about how vase painters might use the herm, as I believe they did: Coccagna 2009, pp. 106-107, 141. Return to text

122 Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, 1974.344, attributed to the manner of the Lysippides Painter, ca. 520 BCE (BA 396), on which see Boardman 1976, pp. 281-290; Lissarrague 1990, p. 56; Levine 2005, pp. 57-58; Coccagna 2009, pp. 112-130; Yatromanolakis 2009, pp. 428-464. Return to text

123 Levine 2005, pp. 57-59; Coccagna 2009, pp. 46-49, 119-120; Yatromanolakis 2009, p. 462. Both Coccagna 2009, pp. 113-117, and Yatromanolakis 2009, pp. 458-459, also argue that when viewed head-on the genitals resemble a nose beneath the eyes of the exterior, the nose being another pun for the phallus. Return to text

124 Frontisi-Ducroux 1996, p. 93; see also Yatromanolakis 2009, pp. 454-459. On the motif of the frontal satyr and its engagement of the viewer, see Hedreen 2006, pp. 287-291; Hedreen 2007, pp. 234-237. Return to text

125 Boardman 1976, p. 286, regards the action rather as one of chastisement, but for the sexual interpretation see Coccagna 2009, pp. 124-126. Return to text

126 Yatromanolakis 2009, pp. 461-464, also observes this detail, associating it with the playful and riddling atmosphere of the symposium, but he underplays its erotic significance. Other examples of cups that substitute plastic genitalia for the cup’s foot are now housed in museums in Berlin, Paris, and Compiègne, and in a private collection in Ostwestfalen, on which see Coccagna 2009, pp. 131-140; Yatromanolakis 2009, pp. 451-452. These likewise feature illustrations of erotic encounters or desirable youths and blend tactile and visual elements. Several other ceramic phallus-vases, belonging to the St. Valentin class, feature phallus-shaped handles or spouts: Coccagna 2009, pp. 154-155. Compare also the breast-shaped cups called μαστοί, which similarly illustrate how potters and painters play upon the tactile nature of both breasts and cups: Coccagna 2014, pp. 399-411. Return to text

127 Coccagna 2009, pp. 136-138, observes that the cups in Compiègne and Ostwestfalen (see previous note) render the genitals more naturalistically, as they would hang on the body, recalling the ceramic tradition of plastic aryballoi in the shape of genitals, and thus potentially referencing the erotic atmosphere of youths in the gymnasium. The tactile nature of these two cups is intensified, she notes, because they could not stand on their own when filled with wine and thus had to be continuously held. So too in the case of vases with a phallus in place of a spout, Coccagna 2009, p. 159, argues that the pouring function of such a vase turns the phallus into a clever synecdoche for the desirable young οἰνοχόος (wine pourer) himself. Return to text

There are other representational strategies at the vase painter’s disposal to equate the desirable youth with an object. For example, the exterior of a cup in Paris, Musée du Louvre, G73, in the manner of the Scheuerleer Painter, features a nude boy bent over backward and supporting himself with his hands and feet (for an illustration see Kilmer 1993, R275 in the plates following p. 146). On his abdomen he balances a large skyphos, and immediately next to it appears his upright phallus, seemingly aroused. The effect upon the viewer is to combine the desire to reach for the cup with the desire to fondle the boy. Another strategy «to underline the ‘to-be-looked-at-ness’ that stamps them as objects of desire,» as Steiner 2001, pp. 226-227, writes, is to depict athletic youths in the manner of statues of athletes, thereby blurring the distinction between the living model and the work of art. I thank Leslie Kurke for bringing this aspect of Steiner’s work to my attention.

128 National Museum, ChrVIII967, 520-510 BCE (BA 200586). Return to text

129 Sculptor: see e.g. Blinkenberg and Friis Johansen 1924, p. 109, who identify the implement to the right as an adze; Zanker 1965, p. 92; Shapiro 1989, p. 126. Athletic victor: Rückert 1998, 217. Paleothodoros 2004, p. 132, and Haug 2011, pp. 18-19, take the boy as a sculptor who must be working in wood rather than stone, but this depends on the proper identification of the implement in the background and furthermore assumes a degree of realism (in treating the weight of the herm) that may not have concerned the painter. Return to text

130 In fact the inscription Ἵππαρχος καλός appears on a large number of Epiktetos’ cups, as well as on a few vases by painters working in related workshops: Paleothodoros 2004, pp. 22-23, 115-116, 133-134; Mannack 2016, p. 45. For a discussion of the relationship of this tondo to the herms of Hipparchos, with a summary of earlier scholarship, see Paleothodoros 2004, pp. 131-132; Mannack 2016, p. 49. Return to text

131 Fr. 25 West. See also Dover 1989, pp. 70, 195, 197; Parker 2015, pp. 36-38. Return to text

132 If the boy is understood to be adding an inscription, as Rückert argues, then the act could further allude to the adjacent καλός inscription, which, since it would have been vocalized, would also draw the sense of sound into the experience of desire. See Lissarrague 1990, pp. 33, 59-67, 132-133; Slater 1999, pp. 154-157. Return to text

Illustrations

  • Fig. 1

    Fig. 1

    Pelike, Madrid, Museo Arqueológico Nacional, 11122, by the Pig Painter, 470-460 BCE (BA 206459).

    Photo courtesy of Museo Arqueológico Nacional

  • Fig. 2

    Fig. 2

    Drawing of Side A of pelike, Athens, National Museum, 17170, in the manner of the Pig Painter, 470-460 BCE (BA 206483).

    Illustrator: Glynnis Fawkes

  • Fig. 3

    Fig. 3

    Amphora, Würzburg Universität, Martin von Wagner Museum, L241, by the Phrynos Painter, 560-545 BCE (BA 301073). After Lear and Cantarella 2008, fig. 0.2.

    Photo by P. Neckermann, Antikensammlung, Martin von Wagner Museum des Julius-Maximilian-Universität, Würzburg

  • Fig. 4

    Fig. 4

    Exterior of cup, Geneva, Musée d’Art et d’Histoire, I529, by the Painter of Berlin 2268, 510-500 BCE (BA 201410).

    Photo : Jean Marc Yersin. ©Musée d’art et d’histoire, Ville de Genève, n° inv. I 0529

  • Fig. 5

    Fig. 5

    Side A of column krater, Palermo, Museo Archeologico Regionale, V790, by the Pig Painter, 460-450 BCE (BA 206438).

    Photo courtesy of Archivio Fotografico del Museo Archeologico Regionale Antonino Salinas di Palermo

  • Fig. 6

    Fig. 6

    Side B of column krater, Palermo, Museo Archeologico Regionale, V790, by the Pig Painter, 460-450 BCE (BA 206438).

    Photo courtesy of Archivio Fotografico del Museo Archeologico Regionale Antonino Salinas di Palermo

  • Fig. 7

    Fig. 7

    Cup tondo, Berlin, Antikensammlung F 2541, in the manner of the Penthesilea Painter, 460-450 BCE (BA 41549).

    bpk Bildagentur / Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen, Berlin / Art Resource, NY

  • Fig. 8

    Fig. 8

    Cup tondo, Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, V517, by the Euaichme Painter, ca. 470 BCE (BA 209671). AN1896-1908 G.279.

    Image© Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

  • Fig. 9

    Fig. 9

    Side A of pelike, Berlin, Antikensammlung, 1962.62, by the Pan Painter, 470-460 BCE (BA 275276).

    bpk Bildagentur / Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen, Berlin / Johannes Laurentius / Art Resource, NY

  • Fig. 10

    Fig. 10

    Cup tondo, Copenhagen, National Museum, 6327, by the Dokimasia Painter, 480-470 BCE (BA 204498).

    CC-BY-SA John Lee, The National Museum of Denmark

  • Fig. 11

    Fig. 11

    Neck amphora, Laon, Musée d’art et d’archéologie du Pays de Laon, 37.1023, by the Pan Painter, 470-460 BCE (BA 206308). After LIMC, “Hermès” n° 155.

    By permission of the Musée d’art et d’archéologie du Pays de Laon

  • Fig. 12

    Fig. 12

    Side B of pelike, Berlin, Antikensammlung, 1962.62, by the Pan Painter, 470-460 BCE (BA 275276).

    bpk Bildagentur / Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen, Berlin / Johannes Laurentius / Art Resource, NY

  • Fig. 13

    Fig. 13

    Cup, New York, Metropolitan Museum, 07.286.47, by the Hegesiboulos Painter, ca. 500 BCE (BA 201603). Rogers Fund, 1907, www.metmuseum.org

  • Fig. 14

    Fig. 14

    Side A of Pelike, Berlin, Antikensammlung, F 2172, by the Perseus Painter, 470-460 BCE (BA 206706).

    bpk Bildagentur / Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen, Berlin / Johannes Laurentius / Art Resource, NY

  • Fig. 15

    Fig. 15

    Side B of Pelike, Berlin, Antikensammlung, F 2172, by the Perseus Painter, 470-460 BCE (BA 206706).

    bpk Bildagentur / Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen, Berlin / Johannes Laurentius / Art Resource, NY

  • Fig. 16

    Fig. 16

    Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 10.185 (BA 206276). Mixing bowl (bell krater) by the Pan Painter. Greek, Early Classical Period, about 470 BCE. Place of Manufacture: Greece, Attica, Athens. Ceramic. Red Figure. Height: 37 cm (14 9/16 in.); diameter: 42.5 cm (16 3/4 in.). Julia Bradford Huntington James Fund and Museum purchase with funds donated by contribution.

    Photograph© 2017 Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

  • Fig. 17

    Fig. 17

    Cup tondo, Paris, Musée du Louvre, CP11753, by the Tarquinia Painter, ca. 470 BCE (BA 211453).

    ©RMN-Grand Palais / Art Resource, NY

  • Fig. 18

    Fig. 18

    Cup tondo, Altenburg, Staatliches Lindenau-Museum, 229, by the Ancona Painter, ca. 480 BCE (BA 211551).

    By permission of Staatliches Lindenau-Museum, Altenburg

  • Fig. 19

    Fig. 19

    Cup tondo, New York, Metropolitan Museum, 57.12.21, by the Painter of Würzburg 487, mid-5th c. BCE (BA 212175). Gift of Ernest Brummer, 1957, www.metmuseum.org

  • Fig. 20

    Fig. 20

    Exterior of cup, New York, Metropolitan Museum, 57.12.21, by the Painter of Würzburg 487, mid-5th c. BCE (BA 212175). Gift of Ernest Brummer, 1957, www.metmuseum.org

  • Fig. 21

    Fig. 21

    Side B of cup, Berlin, Antikensammlung, F 2308, by the Telephos Painter, ca. 470 BCE (BA 210125).

    bpk Bildagentur / Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen,
    Berlin / Art Resource, NY

  • Fig. 22

    Fig. 22

    Side A of cup, Berlin, Antikensammlung, F 2308, by the Telephos Painter, ca. 470 BCE (BA 210125).

    bpk Bildagentur / Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen,
    Berlin / Art Resource, NY

  • Fig. 23

    Fig. 23

    Cup tondo, Berlin, Antikensammlung, F 2308, by the Telephos Painter, ca. 470 BCE (BA 210125).

    bpk Bildagentur / Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen,
    Berlin / Art Resource, NY

  • Fig. 24

    Fig. 24

    Side A of column krater, Berlin, Antikensammlung, 3206, by the Pan Painter, ca. 470 BCE (BA 206285).

    bpk Bildagentur / Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen, Berlin / Ingrid Geske / Art Resource, NY

  • Fig. 25

    Fig. 25

    Side B of column krater, Berlin, Antikensammlung, 3206, by the Pan Painter, ca. 470 BCE (BA 206285).

    bpk Bildagentur / Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen, Berlin / Ingrid Geske / Art Resource, NY

  • Fig. 26

    Fig. 26

    Side A of cup, Berlin, Antikensammlung, F 2298, by the Triptolemos Painter, 480-470 BCE (BA 203844).

    bpk Bildagentur / Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen, Berlin / Johannes Laurentius / Art Resource, NY

  • Fig. 27

    Fig. 27

    Cup tondo, Berlin, Antikensammlung, F 2298, by the Triptolemos Painter, 480-470 BCE (BA 203844).

    bpk Bildagentur / Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen, Berlin / Johannes Laurentius / Art Resource, NY

  • Fig. 28

    Fig. 28

    Exterior of the Bomford Cup, Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, 1974.344, in the manner of the Lysippides Painter, ca. 520 BCE (BA 396). AN1974.344.

    Image© Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

  • Fig. 29

    Fig. 29

    Detail of interior of the Bomford Cup, Oxford, Ashmolean Museum, 1974.344, in the manner of the Lysippides Painter, ca. 520 BCE (BA 396). AN1974.344, detail.

    Image© Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford

  • Fig. 30

    Fig. 30

    Cup tondo, Copenhagen, National Museum, ChrVIII967, by Epiktetos, 520-510 BCE (BA 200586).

    CC-BY-SA Kit Weiss, The National Museum of Denmark

References

Electronic reference

Jorge Bravo, « Boys, Herms, and the Objectification of Desire on Athenian Sympotic Vases », Eugesta [Online], 7 | 2017, Online since 01 janvier 2017, connection on 13 novembre 2024. URL : http://www.peren-revues.fr/eugesta/499

Author

Jorge Bravo

University of Maryland, College Park
jbravo@umd.edu

Copyright

CC-BY