f - The American School of Classical Studies at Athens

356 MARIO IOZZO
larger diameters and a neater and more articulated shape (7-9); rims are now overhanging
and thickened, offering to the decorators the wide surfaces of the horizontal top and espec-
ially of the vertical side. The latter, in fact, from the end of the 7th century, will become
almost always decorated with various ridges and ornaments, while in the first half of the 6th
century B.C. (9, 16) two groups of ridges are found on the vertical side, separated by a central
space. This element will be virtually standard for bowl rims throughout the Classical pe-
riod. During the 6th century bowls, always wide in diameter, often have overhanging rims,
flattened on top and with the vertical side variously shaped; they normally carry applied lug
handles.
From the first decades of the 6th century, rims show that characteristic which will
belong to the 5th- and 4th-century type of basins: the underside of the rim is separated from
the bowl by a deep offset (10, 11). Slowly, rims begin to be thinner in the inner part and
broader in the outer one. Towards the end of the 6th century rims are like a veritable ap-
pendage, while the horizontal top and the vertical side are now very wide.
Parallel with the basin development, the bases also show a gradual transformation.
From a very simple inverted echinus they pass to a large base with carinated profile. Pro-
gressing from the most ancient types (66, 71) to those of the end of the 6th century B.C. (72,
73, 75), the lower, widened part becomes higher, while the upper part becomes gradually
more slanting (89, 90). Already at the beginning of the 6th century (64) this kind of base has
the characteristic ridges above the carination and at the point of attachment between base
and stand. Moreover, alternating red and dark bands are now frequently applied to ridges:
this will be a peculiarity of basins from the Severe period well into the 4th century B.C.
Variants of the same type of bases are 78, 79, 81-84 (inverted echinus with thickened edge
and offset) and 120-122 (inverted echinus on a tall square plinth). Stands in the 6th cen-
tury B.C. are cylindrical, hollow, slightly splaying at the bottom or with entasis (83), and
show a diameter smaller than that of the 8th- and 7th-century specimens. Groups of ridges
or bands of stamped and rouletted (more rarely painted) decorations run horizontally, often
at the juncture of the base and the bowl (65, 67-69, 80, 83-86, 93). Sometimes the joining
between stand and bowl is differently treated (109, 110, and probably 111, 112). Close to
the well-known basin from Isthmia are 87, 88, 114, and 115, which show us the 6th-century
type of Corinthian perirrhanterion with narrow openings, several groups of horizontal
ridges, and the very important variety with spirally fluted stand. 7 and 113 show the pos-
sible occurrence of basins with separately made bowl and stand.
As we have seen, the Corinthian basins of the 6th century B.C. have a very wide range of
varieties. All of them, nevertheless, can easily be collected under a single type: a large bowl
with a solid rim, set on a tall cylinder with a wide and steady circular base, all with a consis-
tent wall thickness and well-proportioned shape, more articulated and harmonious in com-
parison with the rigid basins of the earlier period.
Basins in the 5th and 4th centuries (30-62, 91-107, 116-119, 121, 122) are direct
derivations of their predecessors, but the wide variety seen before is now strongly reduced.
The most important characteristic of the Classical basins, in fact, is the uniformity of