The Judgment of Animals in Classical Greece: Animal Sculpture and ...

theory has dominated scholarship. 526 As Conrad Stibbe has recently (2006) remarked,
Rumpf’s idea that the krater of the Spartans was a volute krater of the Vix type, has met
general acceptance “because the [zw|&dia] ‘figures’ of Herodotus would correspond to the
[appliqué relief] figures on the neck of the krater from Vix.” 527 Although dominant, this
is not the only interpretation of Herodotus’ zw|&dia. In 1961, Emil Kunze suggested that
they could be figures in the round. 528 In 1991, however, Werner Gauer cautioned that on
the basis of the information provided by Herodotus it is impossible to determine whether
the zw|&dia of his krater were produced in relief or in the round, or if the vessel was
identical to that found in the tomb from Vix. 529 Recently (2006), Stibbe revived the
theory of Herodotus’ zw|&dia being appliqué relief figures like those on the Vix krater by
pointing out that the phrase e1cwqen peri\ to_ xei=loj (“outside and around the rim,”) that
Herodotus uses to indicate the position of the zw|&dia supports their identification as relief
figures. If Herodotus was thinking of figures in the round, Stibbe asserts, he would have
instead said upon (a1nwqen) the rim. 530
Apart from the krater from Vix, additional evidence of bronze kraters with
appliqué relief decoration comes from two sixth-century examples found at the
526
Joffroy, Le Trésor de Vix 22: “Il serait téméraire de voir dans le cratére de Vix le présent des
Lacédémoniens à Crésus.”
527
Stibbe, “The Krater from Vix Again,” in Stibbe, Agalmata 314.
528
E. Kunze, “Kleinplastik aus Bronze,” in E. Kunze, et al., VII. Bericht über die Ausgrabungen in
Olympia (Berlin, 1961) 174, n. 68.
529
W. Gauer, Die Bronzegefässe von Olympia (Olympische Forschungen 20; Berlin and New York, 1991)
129.
530
C. M. Stibbe, “The Krater from Vix Again” in Stibbe, Agalmata 315, n. 43. Although not explicitly
stated by Stibbe, his contrast between the words e1cwqen and a1nwqen appears to be influenced by the
appearance of the latter in Athenaeus’ description of two gold Corinthian craters paraded in the grand
procession of Ptolemy II Philadelphus at Alexandria. Athenaeus, whose description is excerpted from the
work of third-century Kallixenos of Rhodes entitled About Alexandria, states that the craters had on their
upper part (a1nwqen) zw|~a seated in the round of beaten metal (kaqh&mena perifanh~ tetoreume/na),
and on the necks and bellies, carefully executed pro&stupa” (Deipn. 5.199e). E. E. Rice, The Grand
Procession of Ptolemy Philadelphus (Oxford, 1983) 140-15, translates these zw|~a as “figures,” and
pro&stupa as “figures in low relief.”
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