I.-K.'s latest book extends her study of Dionysus to the fifth and fourth centuries b.c. As she explains in the Foreward (sic), the book is the culmination of decades of study and preliminary publications and takes its cue from her study Dionysos in Archaic Greece (2007), but the current study narrows the focus to Athens. An introduction followed by six chapters examine the full range of scenes in which the god appears in a variety of compositions and contexts moving chronologically from earliest to latest vase paintings. This study is not limited to Dionysus but includes scenes pertaining to Dionysus or his sphere but not including the god himself, such as paintings of satyrs, Dionysiac women – I.-K. avoids the terms ‘maenads’ and ‘bacchai’ – the komos, human drinkers, symposiasts, etc. As such, I wonder if such a broad sweep is too inclusive to provide meaningful diagnostics, and one should note that the study depends on the Beazley Pottery database (p. 11) which, while useful for rough statistics, is in no way precise or free of problems.
The text begins with general remarks about the appearance of Dionysiac subjects in Attic red-figure vase painting, including a discussion of shapes decorated with this theme (not surprisingly, cups are most numerous) and their use over time, a subject that recurs throughout the book, then surveying the vase paintings painter by painter, I.-K. offers explanations for the various types of scenes. I.-K. claims that viewers identified first and foremost with anonymous figures depicted on such vases, and already the introduction asserts that vase paintings depict a mental world, not a real one. A recurrent theme for I.-K. is the elision between satyrs and Athenian men in such vase paintings, which would explain the fact that satyrs more commonly appear on cups than do females because cups were used in the symposion, a male affair.
We learn that Dionysus and his entourage are the most common subject for late Attic black-figure pottery, and the most frequent shape for such imagery is the lekythos, examples of which were largely recovered from graves in Attica and not usually exported. Chapter 2 treats the appearance of Dionysus on bilinguals, though one misses a full discussion of possible thematic connections between the imagery on the two sides (elsewhere I.-K. says that there is a contrast between the two sides, pp. 38, 40, but says nothing about what this might signify or how one might read the contrast), and I.-K. traces the appearance of numerous images to the influence of contemporary drama.
One of the most interesting chapters in the book is Chapter 6, which treats ritual scenes, including the ‘Lenaia’ vases. Here, I.-K. makes the attractive proposal that the stamnoi with Lenaia scenes found in Etruria may have been used for Dionysiac cult there, the presence of which is attested by Etruscan graffiti on imported Attic vases of c. 470.
The text pivots around Chapter 7, which is a compelling read concerning the appearance of ‘Dionysos’ in the east pediment of the Parthenon, an identification that I.-K. asserts (‘most specialists agree’) with no discussion of this controversial issue (n.b. the same is true for her identification of the banqueter in fig. 7b as Dionysus; most scholars regard this figure as Herakles). According to I.-K., the new appearance of a youthful, unbearded Dionysus on the Parthenon had a decisive influence on depictions of Dionysus in Athens and elsewhere thereafter.
One of the drawbacks of this book is that I.-K.'s arguments are rarely spelled out or argued in detail – for example, why does Dionysus embody cosmic peace (p. 63)? – and we rarely learn of alternative explanations offered by other scholars. Some claims are puzzling, such as the statement that the pointed amphora shape derives from the Panathenaic amphora, which thus would explain the presence of athletes on the neck of the pointed amphora in Munich (p. 77). Of course, Panathenaic amphorae depict athletics, but the pointed amphora is not a Panathenaic amphora in spite of the morphological connection. And how do the disparate sizes of Dionysus and Ariadne in fig. 61 suit ‘the funerary function of the vessel?’ The meaning must often – far too often – be read between the lines. Only someone thoroughly familiar with Dionysus, the corpus of vase painting under discussion and its iconography will understand the elliptical allusions (e.g. p. 46, rhyton; pp. 48–9). This is borne out by the scarcity of illustrations and the indifferent quality of those present, which are often reproduced too small to read the details (and the placement of call out numbers for illustrations often occurs too late, causing the reader to flip back and forth between pages). In other words, this book is unsuitable for novices.
Not surprisingly, some interpretations are more convincing than others. For example, I.-K. has an entirely religious view of the symposion and makes no mention of its social function and importance (p. 3). Some claims are overstated, for example, that women were excluded from wine consumption (p. 4); one can easily point to hetairai on some vases, as well as participants in the Lenaia scene, who clearly imbibe wine. While I.-K. raises many questions, especially about satyrs, answers are rarely proposed.
Unfortunately, the writing is not always clear and can be rather plodding because the text is so heavily descriptive (and there are far too few illustrations to enliven these descriptions) and self-referential to I.-K.'s earlier work. One misses some bibliography that one would expect to see, for example, G. Ekroth on altars (pp. 76–7) (‘Blood on the Altars? On the Treatment of Blood at Greek Sacrifices and the Iconographical Evidence’, Antike Kunst 48 [2005], 9–29), and the translation results in some misspellings and oddities of language in translation, for example, ‘to the Olympus’. Finally, because conclusions are based solely on vase painting, one wonders about their validity, for example, ‘by 450 bc both the vase painters and their clientele find themselves involved in a growing religiosity … the decision to erect a large new temple on the Acropolis fits this atmosphere very well’ (p. 76). One wonders: if one widens the scope to sculpture and ‘minor arts’, does the picture change?
