Performance and the Drinking Vessel: Looking for an Imagery of Dithyramb in the time of the ‘New Music’ (original) (raw)

Within the imagery of late-fifth-century painted pottery from Athens, a whole range of visual contexts can be made out, where dithyramb is referred to, if in a distinctively oblique manner. Thus, the thiasos of Dionysos is repeatedly envisaged as a cyclical chorus; satyrs and maenads can act as personifications of dithyramb and other performative genres, thereby unfolding outright allegories of ritual practice; scenes of dithyrambic victory celebrations focus on the joyful character of the occasion. Contemporary polemics of literary/musical discourse are largely absent, as can be seen in depictions of Marsyas and other mythical musicians, where the vase-painters rather stress the prestigious nature of these great performances of the past, while generally avoiding allusions to their violent or problematic aspects. Overall the imagery, far from providing straightforward depictions of contemporary performances, tends to use rituals and narratives distinctive of dithyramb as vehicles for playing out notions of collective festivity, an aspect of crucial interest within the sympotic viewing context of the vessels.