The image shows a cup known as mastos (from the Ancient Greek μαστός, meaning breast), so called for its bosom-like appearance. It is painted using the black-figure technique, which likely places its date in the sixth century BC. It has a great deal in common with other pots of its shape: the perpendicularly oriented handles, for ease of drinking while in a recumbent position, as well as ease of storage. Due to the mastos’ rounded base, it would have been impossible to place it on a flat plane; thus one handle was used for hanging the mastos, the other for drinking.1 Iconographic textbooks identify the figures on the cup as a satyr (a half equine, half man creature) and a maenad (a raving madwoman). The other motifs are identified as palmettes, a highly stylised pattern of palm leaves. What is, however, quite uncommon is the shape. Other mastoi on the Beazley Archive, an online database containing thousands of ancient Greek vases have a more conical ‘bullet bra’ form. Here this is replaced by a more verisimilar breast-like shape.2 The interior, as is the case with almost all drinking vessels, is lined with slip, to prevent liquid absorption. In terms its provenance, though information is quite sparse, we still have a general picture of the vase’s journey: after its creation in Athens, the vessel was shipped to Etruria (comprised of the modern regions of Tuscany, Umbria, and Lazio). This small bit of information brings with it a whole host of other inferences; as graves are the most abundant source of archaeological pots on the Italian peninsula, it is quite likely that the mastos was similarly sourced from such a context.3

What one cannot glean from purely iconographical analysis however, is the significance and intrigue that the vase carries as an object in its context of use. Rather than considering the vase as a sole visual reference (as traditional academia has done), one must ponder it as a union of both the physical and the visual. When one looks at this mastos, with no prior knowledge, simply with fresh eyes, one will invariably be struck by the breast-like shape; so let us examine the shape for a moment: What is the purpose of shaping a drinking vessel after the female breast? Indeed, how did this practice become so widespread? Out of the numerous conjectures about its purpose, the one presented by the ancient historian Robin Osborne is perhaps the most convincing. Osborne proposes that drinking cups shaped like breasts and phalluses posed a challenge to the sympotic reveller.4 The symposium served as a place where a man—and it always was a man—was put to the ultimate test: whether or not he could hold his own under the influence of alcohol. This challenge was extended to every part of the symposium: from playing music to having pretty entertainers (often prostitutes) all of these elements served to make the symposium more heady and difficult to retain control of oneself.5 Forcing the drinker to hold this footless cup, and to drink all of its contents, without setting it down, was yet another challenge to his virility.

Moving on from the physical shape of the mastos, one can examine what is represented on the cup. The combination of a maenad and a satyr is a type of image known as a ‘pursuit scene’, in which two or more figures are seen ‘in action’ on opposing sides of the vase. What results is an infinite scene of pursuit, in which both figures depicted are pursuer and pursued in the same instance.6 Given that the presence of the maenad and the satyr almost certainly connote an event related to Dionysus, one can begin to form an interesting picture of the meaning of this imagery. Dionysus often represents a quasi- sublime awe in the Greek world: he is the portal to an alternate, numinous world, where self-knowledge is questioned and redefined. The infinite progression of the scene, where definitive labels like ‘pursuer’ and ‘pursued’, ‘subject’ and ‘object’ are rendered void, is key to both accessing and understanding the transcendent realm that Dionysus presides over. In short, although this mastos is difficult to analyse in the objective, catalogue style, if one leaves the realm of scholarly taxonomies for a moment and tries to engage with the object, as a symposiast would have done— turning it around in the hands, examining it from different angles, or at least imagining to do so— it can indeed tell one a great deal.

Bibliography

Akmenkalns, Jessika. “The Symposium in Ancient Greek Society.” Classics Department, U. Colorado, Boulder. June 18, 2018. Accessed November 10, 2018. https://www.colorado.edu/classics/ 2018/06/18/symposium-ancient-greek-society.

Cohen, Beth. “Oddities of Very Early Red-figure and a New Fragment at the Getty” in Greek Vases in the J. Paul Getty Museum. Vol. 4. Malibu, CA: John Paul Getty Museum, 1989. Accessed October 20, 2018.
https://books.google.com/books? id=qt41AgAAQBAJ&lpg=PP1&pg=PA2#v=onepage&q&f=false

Osborne, Robin. “Intoxication and Sociality: The Symposium in the Ancient Greek World.” Past & Present 222, no. Supp. 9 (January 01, 2014): 34-60. doi:10.1093/pastj/gtt028.

Shipley, Lucy. Experiencing Etruscan Pots: Ceramics, Bodies and Images in Etruria. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2015. PDF.

Stansbury-O’Donnell, Mark D. “Structural Differentiation of Pursuit Scenes” in An Archaeology of Representations: Ancient Greek Vase-painting and Contemporary Methodologies. Edited by D. Yatromanolakis. Athens: Inst. Du Livre - A. Kardamitsa, 2009. Accessed November 10, 2018. https://www.academia.edu/10811828/The_Structural_Differentiation_of
_Pursuit_Scenes_in_D._Yatromanolakis_ed._An_Archaeology_of_
Representations_Ancient_Greek_Vase_Painting_and_Contemporary_
Methodologies_Athens_Institut_du_Livre_Kardamitsa_2009_342-373.