The Rover's Return: A Literary Quotation on a Pot in Corinth

Abstract

An extended graffito on a Hellenistic kantharos at Corinth seems to express a topos of greeting, quite likely in the form of a classic quotation from Euripides,just as we might quote Shakespeare today, whether or not we know the formal origin of the expression. The graffito forms another item of evidence for the currency of theater among many sections of Hellenistic society, not least in the context of the symposium. A recent observation by Jean Bousquet that a young stonemason practicing his letters at Delphi sometime near the beginning of the 3rd century B.C. used lines of Euripides as his text should prompt us to be alert for other examples outside literary sources.' After all, we are told, all the world's a stage. Another likely example indeed occurs on a kantharos from Corinth, already described by Oscar Broneer as "probably a quotation from a play."2 The vase is a kantharos of the so-called articulated type with ledged vertical handles (Fig. 1); it was found in a fill beneath the stairs of Shop I of the South Stoa.3 Its date is not as evident as one might have hoped. More recent research has suggested that G. R. Edwards's chronology for this material, proposed in Corinth VII, iii, was too high.4 The construction of the South Stoa is now placed at the end of the 4th century, and the deposit in which the vase was found represents a dumped fill dating from the Early Hellenistic period to 146 B.C. On stylistic grounds, the kantharos certainly dates to the 3rd century, but without a full profile it is difficult to say even whether it belongs to the earlier or later part, although our impression is that it should not be dated as early as the first quarter. As we shall see, the style of the script of the inscription would also suggest a date markedly after the beginning of the century. The script is a well-formed rounded capital, reminiscent of a typical formal hand of the earlier Ptolemaic period. The text gives eleven letters of the alphabet: the alpha is made with a narrow left-hand loop, which tends to reduce, as in some book scripts, to a simple diagonal; the delta is quite small, the epsilon rounded, with its horizontal slightly detached, and the sigma is also rounded; the clearer specimen of the two pi's shows neatly American School of Classical Studies at Athens is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve, and extend access to Hesperia www.jstor.org ® J. RICHARD GREEN AND ERIC W. HANDLEY Figure 1. Inscribed kantharos from Corinth, C-34-397. Sides A and B. ? ; :,:-: .::::: Courtesy Corinth Museum curved verticals; the rho and phi are tall, projecting slightly above and below the bilineal norm, and with flattened curved parts (the bow of the rho is tinyS); the omega is almost cursive, with a double flattish curve. For parallels from around the middle of the 3rd century, one can mention PLit. Lond. 73, a fragment of a copy of Euripides, Hippolytus, together with a comparable hand in a contemporary letter, PCair. Zen. 57578, not before 261 B.C.6 It is easy to quote good later examples, such as the well-known and well-illustrated Paris papyrus of Menander, Sikyonioi, assigned to the last third of the 3rd century B.C. (and most probably to near the end of it).7 On the other hand, projecting backward to a date as early as the end of the 4th century (the date of the earliest material in the deposit) for script of this style would be, palaeographically speaking, a leap into the dark. Indeed, it is a move one would much rather not make on the evidence of 5. The rho also needs some skill to 6. These two are respectively nos. 3a incise, not least in the medium of fired and 3b in Roberts 1955. clay: Touo-cL -6 Too p IoxOYpov, "Tough, this 7. PSorb. inv. 2272-3 + 72, from rho," cries Mnesilochos when playing the Ghoran. Blanchard and Bataille 1965; role of Palamedes writing on wood, Ar. Turner 1987, no. 40. Thesm. 781 (411 B.C.). 368