The return of Hephaistos to Olympos, as a myth, concerns the establishment of a balance of power among the Olympian gods. Many visual representations of the myth in Archaic and Classical Greek art give visible form to the same theme, but they do so in a manner entirely distinct from the manner in which it is expressed in literary narratives of the tale. In this paper, I argue that vase-painters incorporated elements of Dionysiac processional ritual into representations of the return (...) of Hephaistos in order to articulate visually the principal theme of the myth. The vase-painters structured the myth along the lines of epiphanic processions in which Dionysos was escorted into the city of Athens. Like Dionysiac epiphanic processions, the procession of Hephaistos, Dionysos and the wine-god's followers is distinguished visually by drunkenness, ostentatious display of the phallus and obscene or insulting behaviour. To judge from the aetiological myths associated with them, the epiphanic processions symbolized the triumph of Dionysos over, and his belated acceptance by, those who denied his status as a god. By structuring the visual representations of the return of Hephaistos along the lines of such Dionysiac processions, artists conveyed visually the idea that the myth al so concerned the triumph of a god over those who rejected him, and his acceptance among the Olympians. It is not necessary to assume that the vase-painters relied on a detailed poetic account of the myth to create their representations of it, because they employed elements of religious spectacle, an inherently visual phenomenon, to convey the essence of the story. (shrink)

One of the most familiar traits of the part-horse, part-man creatures known as silens is their keen interest in women. In Athenian vase-painting, the female companions of the silens are characterized by a variety of attributes and items of dress, and exhibit mixed feelings toward the attentions of silens. The complexities of the imagery have resulted in disagreement in modern scholarship on several points, including the identity of these females, the significance of their attributes, and the explanation of a change (...) in their receptivity to the advances of the silens. One of the reasons for the lack of consensus in the scholarship is the fact that the imagery raises not one question but many: questions concerning iconographical method, mythology, ritual, and poetry. In what follows I have attempted to separate some of these entangled issues. I hope to show that the companions of the silens are nymphs and not maenads, and that a major change in the iconography of silens and nymphs, occurring in late sixth-century red-figure Attic vase-painting, reflects in some way developments in the Athenian dramatic genre of satyr-play. (shrink)