Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 February 2012
The centerpiece of Oliver Taplin's recent monograph on Greek drama and South Italian vase-painting is an Apulian bell-krater of the early fourth century in a New York private collection (Plate IV). The vase belongs to the genre conventionally known as phlyax vases, though Taplin would reject that label, since it is the thesis of his book that many, if not most, of these vases reflect Athenian Old Comedy and not an indigenous Italic entertainment, the phlyax play.
1 Taplin, O., Comic angels (Oxford 1993)Google Scholar; henceforth referred to by the author's name alone. The vase is New York, Fleischman Collection F93; Taplin pl. 9.1. The vase's home in New York is not on the 17th floor (as Taplin p. 1), but the 34th.
2 Most fully stated at Taplin 41–47 and in ch. 9, The transplantation of Athenian comedy, 89–99. The standard workm on phlyax vases is Trendall, A.D., Phlyax Vases, 2nd ed., BICS Supp. xix (1967).Google Scholar For a recent discussion of the vases and of phlyax plays see Neiiendam, K., The art of acting in antiquity (Copenhagen 1992) 15–62.Google Scholar
3 Trendall, A.D. and Cambitoglou, A., The red-figured vases of Apulia [hereafter RVAP], Supp. ii, BICS Supp. lx (1991) 1–8Google Scholar, pl. 1, 1–4; Trendall, A.D., ‘Farce and tragedy in South Italian vase-painting,’ in Rasmussen, T. and Spivey, N., eds., Looking at Greek vases (Cambridge 1991) 164Google Scholar, fig. 67; idem, ‘A new early Apulian phlyax vase,’ BullClevelandMusArt 79.1 (1992) 1–15, figs. 7, 8, 11.
4 As Trendall (n. 3) pointed out, the vase is unique in combining a character in tragic costume and without mask (on South Italian vases inspired by Attic tragedy, the figures never wear masks) with comic actors. I cannot explain this either, but would only observe that on the famous Paestan fragment that parodies the Rape of Kassandra (Taplin p. 81 and pl. 17.17), the figure of Kassandra does not seem to wear a grotesque mask like Ajax and the priestess.
5 Trendall, RVAP 8.
6 Trendall (n. 3) had earlier dismissed this possibility, but Taplin argues that choremos in the sense of leader of the chorus would not have been a natural usage in Old Comedy. The word occurs only rarely with the meaning chorus-leader, and then in its Doric form (e.g. Lysistrata 1315). Cf., however, the title of a play by the poet of Middle Comedy Nikochares, 
Nesselrath, H.G., Die attische Mittlere Komödie (Berlin 1990) 203, n. 69.CrossRefGoogle Scholar It is not clear if this refers to Herakles in the role of a theatrical producer or chorus-leader.
7 Taplin 1–63.
8 Taplin 59.
9 The argument that ‘With his incestuous and murderous life-story he may represent tragedy as well as anyone’ (Taplin 62) seems to me weak. One can think of many better ‘representatives’ of tragedy, especially since Aigisthos plays a supporting role at best in all the tragedies known to us.
10 See Trendall, A.D., Red figure vases of South Italy and Sicily (London 1989) 262.Google Scholar
11 See Kossatz-Deissmann, A., Dramen des Aischylos auf westgriechischen Vasen (Mainz 1978) 1–102Google Scholar, pll. 16–18.
12 Some examples on South Italian vases: one of the Dioskouroi, on an Apulian bell-krater; RVAP pl. 32,3 (he has removed the pilos and holds it); Kadmos, on a Paestan lekanis; Trendall (n. 10) fig. 359. The pilos is the favorite headgear of that great traveller Odysseus, e.g. RVAP Supp. ii, pl. 35; Trendall (n. 10) figs. 9, 360, 376. The double spears are a frequent attribute of such travelling young heroes as Jason and Theseus.
13 The bodyguard are referred to as ‘spear-bearers’ (769), perhaps alluded to in the spears Aigisthos carries on our vase.
14 On the staging of this scene see Taplin, O., The stagecraft of Aeschylus (Oxford 1977) 346–48.Google Scholar
15 1453a39–9; cited and translated by Taplin p. 82.
16 Taplin 79–83.
17 This is best illustrated in his (and E. Csapo's) interpretation of an Apulian bell-krater in Würzburg showing the scene in the Thesmophoriazousai that parodies the Telephos of Euripides. See Taplin pl. 11.4 and pp. 1–40, with references to early discussions of the vase.
18 Apulian bell-krater, Berlin F 3045; Taplin 82, pl. 18.19.
19 Nesselrath (n. 6) 188–241. On parody of tragedy as a feature of early fourth century comedy see also Webster, T.B.L., Studies in later Greek comedy (Manchester 1953) 17–19.Google Scholar
20 Ibid 203 with n. 68; 204 with n. 83.
21 Ibid 236.
22 See Kossatz-Deissmann (n. 11) 89–117.
23 Ibid. 97, n. 546; Trendall, A.D., The Red-figured vases of Lucania, Campania, and Sicily (Oxford 1967) 650, pl. 63, 1.Google Scholar
24 Basel, Collection of Herbert Cahn 223; Taplin pl. 20.21.
25 For the suggestion of Meineke that the Orestes of Alexis did have a happy ending like the one referred to by Aristotle see Else, G.F., Aristotle's Poetics: the argument (Cambridge, Mass., 1957) 405, n. 145.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On the chronology of Alexis see Arnott, W.G., ‘The Suda on Alexis’, in Studi di filologia classica in honore di Giusto Monaco I (Palermo, n.d.) 327–38.Google Scholar
26 I wish to thank A.L. Boegehold for discussing my interpretation of this vase and making several valuable suggestions; the Editor and referees of the Journal, who do not accept all my arguments, for their advice; and Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman for the photograph reproduced here. After this paper was completed, further discussions of the New York krater appeared in the exhibition catalogue of the Fleischman Collection: A passion for antiquities: ancient art from the collection of Barbara and Lawrence Fleischman (Malibu 1994). Trendall, in his entry on the vase (p. 128), briefly anticipates the interpretation offered here, while Taplin (pp. 23–25) reiterates his earlier view. I am grateful to K. Hamma for sending me the relevant portions of the catalogue. I have not been able to consult the recent discussion of the vase by Schmidt, M., in Vitae mimus (Incontri del Dipartimento di Scienze dell' Antichità dell' Università di Pavia vi [1993] 37–38).Google Scholar
