Introduction
An Attic red-figure bell-krater dated to 440–430 bce and attributed to a painter in the Group of Polygnotos shows a scene from the Return of Hephaistos, complete with Dionysus and Hephaistos, as well as a satyr, possibly an actor in costume, standing on a dais of sorts (Figure 1). A photograph and description of the vase first appeared in A. B. Cook’s seminal 1914 study on ancient religion before it had been fully studied; it is from this publication that it is most frequently encountered by scholars.Footnote 1 When the vase was fully published in 1923, Eustace Mandeville Wetenhall Tillyard discussed not only the image on the vase, but also its faint inscription, which he had not identified earlier when he gave the photo to Cook: ΚΑΛΟΣ ΗΦΑΡΣΤΟΣ, which he corrected to ΚΑΛΟΣ ΗΦΑΙΣΤΟΣ.Footnote 2 Soon after Tillyard’s publication, the vase was sold on the art market (its current whereabouts are unknown) and is therefore no longer available for autopsy. The inscription is not visible in the published photographs, so its existence is largely unknown in subsequent discussions of the vase, as well as in lists of kalos names. In this brief article, I re-present this vase and its inscription. I suggest three potential avenues for interpreting the vase based on ways that such inscriptions have been interpreted elsewhere. Finally, I put the vase in its broader context in fifth-century bce Athens. My goal is not to offer a definitive analysis of either the iconography or the inscription on this vase; rather, I hope to make the vase more readily available as evidence to scholars working on a variety of topics, including kalos-inscriptions, the characterization of Hephaistos, modern definitions of classical Greek beauty, and the relationship between fifth-century bce Athens and Hephaistos as the progenitor of Athenian autochthony.
Figure 1. The Hope bell-krater, showing the Return of Hephaistos. Not visible is an inscription, identified by Tillyard, that reads ΚΑΛΟΣ ΗΦΑΡΣΤΟΣ.
Kalos-inscriptions
From about 550 bce until the third quarter of the fifth century bce, some vases were painted with inscriptions that included a name – usually, but not exclusively male-paired with the adjective kalos (or kalē), ‘beautiful’. These so-called kalos-inscriptions have confounded scholars for three centuries, and fundamental questions, including whose sentiments they communicated and to what end, remain unresolved.Footnote 3 The inscriptions primarily adorn vessels made in Attica, so the fact that many were apparently found in tombs in Etruria and South Italy compounds the problems of interpretation: the original meaning(s) and function(s) of the inscriptions were surely irrelevant in these new, secondary contexts, so what did they mean, if anything, to the Etruscans or, say, the residents of Sardinian Olbia? It is likely that no single answer will suffice to explain every kalos-inscription. Some aspects of the practice are nevertheless clear.
The number of people named in kalos-inscriptions is large, with some names exclusive to these contexts. Exact numbers are difficult to tally, but Manakidou, for example, said that about 300 different people are named in kalos-inscriptions, an estimate that comports with numbers provided by Lissarrague, who counted ninety different men called kalos on 141 black-figure vases and 208 different names on 851 red-figure vases.Footnote 4 The practice was largely a localized one: kalos-inscriptions are rare on vases made outside of Attica, with Wachter, for example, having listed just six non-Attic examples.Footnote 5 Kalos-inscriptions do appear in other media throughout the Greek world – examples include those from the tunnel leading to the stadium at Nemea, one among the many erotic inscriptions on the rocks above the gymnasium on Thera, and many along the rocky slope in Kalami Bay on Thasos – and so their limited appearance specifically on vases outside of Athens is notable.Footnote 6 The practice was common or, at least, notorious enough in Athens that Aristophanes made jokes about it in two of his plays.Footnote 7 Importantly (and sometimes overlooked), not all examples of kalos-inscriptions on vases include a name: formulae with the phrase ho pais kalos are much more numerous than those that include a name, and many inscriptions simply say kalos with no accompanying noun.Footnote 8
In general, many, if not most of those identified as kalos were ‘prominent and fashionable young men who were known by everyone in Athens’.Footnote 9 Pevnick has suggested that a few kalos-inscriptions could name famous horses.Footnote 10 For a brief window of time, vase-painters could call their fellow craftsmen kalos and insert themselves into the discursive world of their elite clientele.Footnote 11 Rarely, the inscriptions name gods and heroes. Lists of gods and goddesses called ‘beautiful’ on vases include Athena, Dionysus, Eros/Himeros, Hermes, Terpsichore, Thetis, Leto, Nike, and perhaps Aphrodite, while among the heroes so complimented we see Aeneas, Andromache (the Amazon), Ariadne, Hector, Hippolyte, Memnon, Nestor, Paris, Perseus, Phaon, and Theseus.Footnote 12 Regardless of context, the word kalos belongs nearly universally to the field of praise, but the interpretation of deities and other mythological figures named in kalos-inscriptions has been considered even more straightforward than those inscriptions that acclaim the beauty of historical individuals whom you may have encountered at a symposium. In the first place, with gods and heroes, we do not have to address questions related to age and status.Footnote 13 Nor do we have to wonder whether the figure is present in the scene (the so-called tag-kalos) because gods and heroes are usually identifiable by their attributes and so verifiably present or absent.Footnote 14 Finally, the justification for calling a god or hero kalos is not controversial, since mythological figures more unambiguously adhere to notions of beauty and power. This (re)introduction of Hephaistos into the list of mythological figures called kalos on vases expands the range of applications for kalos-inscriptions and encourages us to reconsider the ways that we discuss the characterization and importance of Hephaistos in fifth-century bce Athens.
The Hope bell-krater
Three male figures decorate one side of a red-figure bell-krater dated to c. 440–430 bce and attributed to a painter within the Group of Polygnotos.Footnote 15 At the viewer’s left, a bearded figure stands facing the other two figures. He wears a long chiton and a bordered himation, as well as a fillet or diadem over his short, dark hair. In one extended hand he holds a staff topped with an ornament. The central figure in the scene stands with his body facing forward but head turned toward the first figure, at the viewer’s left. He wears a short, bordered chiton that is fastened around his waist by a belt or ribbon tied in two places. He is bearded and wears a ribbon or fillet around his short, dark, curly hair. His left hand rests on his hip, while his right hand, which is slightly extended, holds an object added in white paint (not visible in photographs) that has been identified as a hammer or an axe.Footnote 16 The last figure, at the viewer’s right, appears to be dancing on a dais, with his body facing forward and his head turned toward the first two figures.Footnote 17 His left hand is on his hip and his right hand is extended straight out with his palm facing out. He is unclothed but for a tight apron or perizoma around his waist; an erect phallus protrudes from it. He, too, is bearded, and his balding pate reveals pointed ears. A tail is visible through his spread legs. On either side of the central figure is an inscription added in white paint, which is not visible in photographs but was identified by Tillyard: beginning to the left of the central figure and continuing on the right, it reads ΚΑΛΟΣ ΗΦΑΡΣΤΟΣ.
Based on their attributes, the figures on the vase have been identified, from left to right, as Dionysus, with his thyrsus; Hephaistos, with his short tunic and hammer; and a satyr or perhaps an actor dressed as a satyr. This combination of figures recalls the Return of Hephaistos, a popular theme in Attic vase-painting in the sixth and fifth centuries bce. The inscription which hovers around the figure of Hephaistos should be corrected from ΚΑΛΟΣ ΗΦΑΡΣΤΟΣ to ΚΑΛΟΣ ΗΦΑΙΣΤΟΣ, as Tillyard suggested, and strengthens the identification of the figures and scene.Footnote 18
The Return of Hephaistos
The myth of the Return of Hephaistos is most fully told in two late sources, Pausanias and Libanios.Footnote 19 The precursor to the story – Hephaistos’ expulsion from Olympos – appears in Homer, where two versions are presented. In Book 1 of the Iliad, Hephaistos says that he was thrown from Olympos by Zeus for assisting Hera, but later, Hephaistos tells Charis, his wife, that Thetis had rescued him when he was ejected by his own mother because he was disabled (χωλόν).Footnote 20 While, of course, Hephaistos must have returned from his initial expulsion, it is not recounted in the Homeric epics and there is no trace in the poems of bitterness in the relationship between Hephaistos and Hera, to whom he is loyal. The Archaic poet Alkaios may have composed a poem that detailed what happened next, but Libanios describes it in full: Hephaistos wanted revenge on his mother for her rejection of him and sent her a throne with invisible fetters; when she sat on the throne, she became stuck.Footnote 21 The gods determined that they must recall Hephaistos so that he would free Hera, but the smith god could not be persuaded to return. Ares attempted to bring Hephaistos back by force but was repelled by the smith god’s fire. Only Dionysus was able to coax Hephaistos back, a feat he accomplished by getting him drunk. In the end, Hera was freed, Hephaistos returned to Olympos, and Dionysus was formally admitted to the pantheon of Olympian gods.
Representations of the Return of Hephaistos were popular in vase-painting in both the Archaic and Classical periods.Footnote 22 In the Classical period, however, the scene appears almost exclusively on Attic vases.Footnote 23 It was particularly popular among the painters of the Group of Polygnotos, whose work is generally dated from 450 to 420 bce.Footnote 24 In the fifth century bce, it was also a theme for the stage in Athens: at least two satyr plays apparently had the Return as part of their plot, one of which, by Achaios, has been suggested as the possible source for the scene on the Hope bell-krater.Footnote 25 At least one other vase, a calyx krater attributed to the Altamura Painter and dated to 475–425 bce, may also show a scene from a satyr play involving the Return of Hephaistos.Footnote 26 In this three-figure scene, Hephaistos walks holding a wineskin, hammer and tongs; he is being pulled along by Dionysus, identifiable by his thyrsus and kantharos. The pair is preceded by a satyr, or an actor playing a satyr, wearing trunks with an appended phallus and playing a kithara. The themes of satyr plays, as of tragedies, were drawn from the world of myth. Satyr plays are sometimes characterized as a form of comic relief following the performance of three heavy tragedies; it is important to remember, however, that satyr plays are closer in form, content, and production to tragedies than comedies, at least in the fifth century bce, and their principal figures would ‘maintain their epic stature without any caricature or burlesque’.Footnote 27 Regardless of the relationship between a specific satyr play and these two vases, including the Hope bell-krater, the myth of the Return of Hephaistos, its depiction on the Hope bell-krater, and the kalos-inscription all centre the figure of Hephaistos, whose physical disability was a significant component of his characterization and identity, including as the impetus for the events of this mythological episode. Importantly, the myth of the Return is a story not of the god’s ejection, but of his reincorporation into the body politic of the Olympian gods.Footnote 28
Interpretive possibilities for the Hope bell-krater
According to current models of interpretation for kalos-inscriptions, there are at least three possible avenues for understanding the juxtaposition of iconography and inscription on the Hope bell-krater. It is important at this point, I think, to consider the merits of each possibility. First, kalos Hephaistos could be read together to refer to the god Hephaistos himself. This would mean that at least one person considered Hephaistos within the bounds of everything that kalos implied, including ‘bodily beauty’.Footnote 29 This possibility is discounted by Immerwahr, who preferred to read kalos with the figure of Dionysus and Hephaistos simply as a name-label; he believed that Hephaistos could not be called kalos, presumably because of his disability.Footnote 30
There is no reason, however, that Hephaistos could not be called kalos. It is true that some kalos-inscriptions could – in rare cases – be interpreted as sarcastic or insincere. At least two vases, for example, apparently ascribe kalos to a satyr, a mythological figure traditionally understood not to embody physical beauty, even to serve as a counterpoint to it.Footnote 31 In other instances, the use of the female adjectival form (kalē) alongside a male name – Euphiletos kalē or Pithon kale – may be read as derisive.Footnote 32 Most often, however, kalos has a positive connotation, and that connotation should be regarded as even stronger when referring to a god. Indeed, the association of kalos-inscriptions with gods and heroes with a diversity of bodies – male and female, young and old, disabled and nondisabled – encourages us to reconsider our traditionally narrow definitions of beauty in ancient Greece, at least in the ways that it applies to mythological figures. Any reading of a kalos-inscription as sarcastic, insincere, or derogatory should be explicit within the context of the scene or inscription, and such a reading is not supported on the Hope bell-krater.
A corollary of this first possible interpretation is that the kalos-inscription indeed refers to Hephaistos but is intended to be read as if spoken by the god Dionysus. Beazley suggested a similar reading of an inscription on a red-figure neck amphora attributed to the Oinokles Painter: the word kalos appears twice on the vase, once in retrograde, as if emanating from the mouth of the old man in front of whom it appears.Footnote 33 On our vase, the word kalos appears just to the right of Dionysus’ face; the second part of the inscription appears to the right of Hephaistos’ head. We could, therefore, consider whether Dionysus is paying this compliment to Hephaistos as part of his efforts to flatter the smith god into returning to Olympos.
A second possible interpretation again reads the inscription as a single unit, but in this case, kalos could refer to the artist’s skillful rendering of the figure of Hephaistos. This would require an adverbial reading of kalos, as has been suggested in other instances of the word on vases, such as on a cup by Epiktetos.Footnote 34 In these cases, καλός is read as καλῶς, although this more often happens when the word accompanies a verb referring to the actions of the painter (‘so-and-so painted well’), so its presence here without a verb makes this possibility less than satisfactory.Footnote 35
A final interpretive possibility for the kalos-inscription on the Hope bell-krater depends on the vase depicting a scene from a satyr play. If this scene is related to the staging of a satyr play, kalos could refer to the actor who played Hephaistos or, adverbially, to the quality of the actor’s performance.Footnote 36 Each scenario is otherwise attested. On a red-figure hydria dated to about 430 bce, for example, EΥΑΙΟΝ ΚΑΛΟΣ is inscribed above a scene that shows Thamyras and an elderly woman, perhaps his mother Agriope.Footnote 37 The scene has been interpreted as a representation of a theatrical performance of Sophocles’ Thamyras, and Euaion as the famous actor (and son of the playwright Aeschylus).Footnote 38 As has been suggested in this case, an actor (Euaion) is named and praised as kalos on a vase representing his performance in a staged tragedy. Similarly, each side of a red-figure pelike dated to around 470 bce is decorated with a maenad and an aulos player; above each maenad is inscribed kalos.Footnote 39 As with the Thamyras vase, this has been interpreted as a representation of a theatrical performance, and so the use of the masculine form of the adjective above female figures could be read as a reference to the male actors performing as female characters.Footnote 40 In both of these cases, however, the actor is either directly named, as with Euaion, or his physical presence implied, with the use of the male adjective above a female figure. With the Hope bell-krater, the figure both named and depicted is Hephaistos.
In a related interpretive possibility, the kalos on the Hope bell-krater could refer adverbially to the overall effect of the staged production, as opposed to the performance of any individual actor; such a scenario has been argued for a fragment of a red-figure krater found in Pontic Olbia.Footnote 41 Preserved on this fragment are four figures, including a male aulos player, two female dancers, and a youth; two dancers appear to be wearing masks. Kalos is painted above the aulos player and kalē above both dancers. Braund and Hall suggested that these inscriptions refer to the quality of the overall performance and were not intended to comment on the attributes or abilities of the individual performers; the inscriptions, they argued, ‘build a mood of pleasure set in music and dance’.Footnote 42 It is difficult, however, to assume a grammatically adverbial reading for all the inscriptions on this vase: while καλός can be read as καλῶς, the same cannot be said for καλή, rendering this suggestion unlikely and thus less likely to be applicable in the case of the Hope bell-krater.
Either iteration of this last interpretive possibility, that kalos is a reference to a specific actor who played Hephaistos or to a specific performance, is difficult to imagine. Because kalos-inscriptions were added to the surface of a vase before it was fired, we must question how one complimenting an actor might appear alongside a depiction of a scene in which he performed.
Weiss did not read vases that depict theatrical performances as ‘snapshots of actual productions’, but argued that they have something of a generic reach that allows ‘the viewer to “see theater” by interpreting them through [their] own cultural repertoire’.Footnote 43 Likewise, Lissarrague expressed skepticism that vases would have simply reproduced scenes from theatrical performances and suggested that ‘when an image deals specifically with the theater…it is more to commemorate a victory than to portray the play itself’.Footnote 44 Reading this vase and its inscription as specifically related to a singular performance is thus difficult to sustain.
Interpreting the Hope bell-krater
As should be clear, there are multiple ways that the scene on this vase and its accompanying text could be interpreted in light of how such inscriptions have been argued to function elsewhere. The simplest and most likely explanation, I believe, is that the inscription is intended to be read as a single unit, kalos Hephaistos, and is a straightforward kalos-inscription designating the god Hephaistos, who is pictured in the scene, kalos. Hephaistos is an Olympian god, so it should be uncontroversial that he should be called beautiful. In the Iliad and the Odyssey, Hephaistos is mentioned more often than many other gods.Footnote 45 Modern scholars often foreground (negative) aspects of his body and appearance, focusing especially on his physical disability: in the epic poems, he is indeed described as limping (ἔρρων, χωλός, χωλϵύων), weak (ἠπϵδανός), and ‘clubfooted’ (κυλλοποδίων). He himself says that both his mother and his wife (Aphrodite) rejected him because of his disability. At the same time, however, he is lord (ἄναξ) Hephaistos, a ‘renowned smith’ (κλυτοτέχνης) and resourceful (πολύφρονος). In the Odyssey he is married to Aphrodite, who has an adulterous affair with Ares, but in the Iliad, it is Charis who is his (apparently loyal) wife. In the Iliad, he has his own cult at Troy with a priest whose son, Idaios, the god rescued from certain death at the hands of Diomedes. Hephaistos made Agamemnon’s sceptre (which had once belonged to Zeus), as well as Menelaus’ krater, Zeus’ aegis, the houses of the gods, armour for Achilles and Diomedes, and the golden amphora that held Achilles’ bones, among other things. When he moves, his slender legs ‘move quickly’ beneath him. A common epithet for Hephaistos is ἀμφιγυήϵις, a word that has been variously translated but that is probably a reference to bidirectionality and his shifting, fluid powers.Footnote 46 Hephaistos fights ‘exulting in his great strength’ on the side of the Greeks in the theomachy.Footnote 47 When Hera is afraid for Achilles during his battle against the river Xanthos, she calls on Hephaistos to rescue the hero. Xanthos begs Hephaistos for mercy, saying that ‘not one of the gods could stand up against you’.Footnote 48
Hephaistos acts and creates in later sources, as well.Footnote 49 In several texts, he fights in the gigantomachy, even killing a giant named Mimas.Footnote 50 In the Homeric Hymn dedicated to him, Hephaistos is credited with teaching crafts to humans, as a result of which they no longer dwell in caves but now live peacefully in houses.Footnote 51 In Hesiod, Hephaistos creates Pandora.Footnote 52 Pindar attributes to Hephaistos and Athena the building of the third temple of Apollo at Delphi.Footnote 53 The god appears, also, in visual media.Footnote 54 Brommer identified more than 800 pictorial representations of the god, especially on vases; most prominent among scenes is the Return of Hephaistos, with more than 180 representations, but the god is also depicted in other contexts, such as the birth of Athena and the gigantomachy.Footnote 55 In Greek, Etruscan, and Roman art, he appears also on mirrors, coins, sarcophagi, relief sculpture, and other objects, as well as in wall painting and small- and large-scale sculpture, with other large-scale sculptures of him known from literary references.
Hephaistos was known and worshipped throughout the Greek world, but he seems to have been especially popular in fifth-century bce Athens, when the Hope bell-krater was made. Simon refers to Hephaistos as ‘one of the main deities of Athens’.Footnote 56 In addition to the many depictions of him on vases, and in addition to the plays touching on aspects of his mythology or in which he was a character that were staged in Athens, Hephaistos had an altar in the Temple of Athena Polias on the Acropolis, as well as a temple in the Athenian Agora that contained cult statues of both him and Athena.Footnote 57 Hephaistos was worshipped at festivals, including the Chalkeia and the Hephaisteia.Footnote 58 On the Ionic frieze of the Parthenon, Hephaistos has pride of place next to Athena. His prominence in the city is surely due to his role in the myth-history of Athens’ famed autochthony.Footnote 59 According to Apollodorus, Athena approached Hephaistos to commission armour.Footnote 60 Under the sway of Aphrodite, Hephaistos fell in love with Athena and attempted to rape her. Athena fled, but despite some difficulty due to his mobility impairment, Hephaistos was able to catch up with her. She warded him off still, and Hephaistos ejaculated onto her leg. With a tuft of wool, Athena wiped his semen off her leg and threw it on the ground; from this was born Erichthonios, whom Athena raised.Footnote 61 A later source offers a slightly different version of the story. According to Hyginus, Zeus offered Hephaistos any gift in exchange for freeing Hera from the bonds of her throne.Footnote 62 At Poseidon’s urging, Hephaistos requested to marry Athena. The request was granted, but when Hephaistos attempted to consummate the marriage, Athena defended her virginity and caused Hephaistos’ sperm to fall to the ground; from this spilled seed was born Erichthonios. Sources seem to agree that Erichthonios was a serpent or at least had a serpentine lower body in place of legs.Footnote 63 When Athena raised this son of Hephaistos, she did so secretly, keeping him in a chest or box, which she entrusted to the three daughters of Kekrops, Herse, Aglauros, and Pandrosos. Although Athena had warned the girls not to open the chest, all or some of the sisters peered inside; whatever they saw so shocked them that they threw themselves from the Acropolis. Erichthonios eventually became a king of Athens; during his reign, he set up the xoanon of Athena on the Acropolis and instituted the Panathenaia festival.Footnote 64
Although these literary sources that detail Hephaistos’ role in Athenian autochthony are late, this story dates back at least to the fifth century bce, based on its representation on vases. The exterior of an Attic red-figure cup attributed to the Codrus Painter and dated to around 440 bce, for example, depicts the episode.Footnote 65 In the scene, Ge rises from the earth and lifts up the infant Erichthonios to Athena. Kekrops, with his snaky body, is behind Ge, while behind Athena stands Hephaistos, who wears a wreath. Other figures fill out the scene, and inscriptions identify the figures on this side of the vase as Kekrops, Ge, Erichthonios, Athena, and Hephaistos; other figures labelled on the vase include Herse, Aglauros, Erectheus, Pandrosos, Aigeus, and Pallas. Here, we have a genealogy of Athens, with Ge and Hephaistos, the parents of its early king Erichthonios; Athena, the patron goddess of the city who raised Erichthonios; a series of early kings of the city; and the three daughters of Kekrops, whom Athena had entrusted with the care of Erichthonios. As early as the fifth century bce, then, Athenians recognized Hephaistos as the father of their famed early king and worshipped him in their city, carved him into prominent locations on their temples, depicted him on their vases, and watched episodes from his mythology on the stage. And at least one person, the painter of the Hope bell-krater, designated him kalos, fitting for a god so esteemed among the Athenians that he fathered.
Conclusion
As Neer has argued, an object may itself be a ‘political act – not the hypostasis or the signifier of a political act, but the thing itself’.Footnote 66 With its image and inscription, the Hope bell-krater fits well within the context of fifth-century bce Athens, at a time when Athens’ charter myths were evolving and Athenians were forging ‘a sense of their identity as a people’.Footnote 67 At least by the fifth century bce, though probably a little earlier, Athenians cast themselves as under the joint patronage of Athena and Hephaistos. As the Pythia in Aeschylus’ Eumenides says, the autochthonous Athenians were, quite literally, ‘the children of Hephaistos’.Footnote 68 He was present for the birth of his half-sister, Athena, the patron goddess of Athens, and sits next to her at the culmination of events depicted on the famed Parthenon frieze. He was the patron god of the city’s renowned craftspeople. Hephaistos was prominent in Athens’ myth-history, as well as in the physical and ritual landscape of the city. Within this larger context, the Hope bell-krater is just one of many political acts by which Athens embraced Hephaistos not just as a god, but as their god. This vase, then, contributes to a deeper understanding of Hephaistos, one that does not collapse his entire identity into his disability or attempt to erase it completely: rather, this vase proclaims that Hephaistos has returned and is beautiful.
Open access
