Actors with Bird-Masks on Vases

Abstract

Plate XIV. B represents an unpublished vase of the British Museum, which originally formed part of the Burgon Collection: it appears to have been found in Italy in 1835. It is an oinochoè with black figures on a red panel, and may be assigned to a period between about 500 and 450 B.C.A representation upon an amphora published by Gerhard in his Trinkschalen, Pl. XXX. Figs. 1—3, so evidently relates to a similar subject, that it is here reproduced for comparison on the same plate (Fig. A). This picture shows us an auletes playing upon the double flutes in the presence of two grotesque-looking figures, apparently human, who are closely draped in long cloaks, himatia, and to whom his back is turned. That the heads of these two figures are intended to represent the heads of some sort of bird is evident from the beak-like conformation of the features, and by the purple crests which rise vertically from the crown. Gerhard, in publishing this vase, has for want of any better explanation described this scene as representing a parody or a mummery symbolical of a cock-fight. Viewed, however, in the light of the evidence afforded by the British Museum vase, this theory seems to me improbable: yet I am bound to say that I am unable to advance any explanation which seems entirely satisfactory.