Abstract

Professor Webster's attempt to prove that south Italian vases of the middle of the fourth century can be used as evidence of Athenian theatrical arrangements of half or three-quarters of a century earlier leaves me unconvinced. It, is true that, as he says, ‘the plays’ which the vases illustrate ‘come from Athens'— at least, most of them probably did: but a number of scenes on the vases are not scenes presented in the plays at all, but are scenes suggested to the painter by descriptions in messengers’ speeches, or, quite possibly, by the story dramatized in the plays, but not by the Athenian poet's particular treatment of the story; the plays —and the stories made popular by them—had been the common property of the Greek world for more than half a century, and there is no reason why Italian producers should have gone back to the original production in Athens, still less why Italian painters should have done so, even if they knew what the original production was like