High Flying at Paestum

century, 675-650 B.C., is near enough to the date of our faience as established through grave groups to suggest that incision began simultaneously on pottery and faience. No scholar has ventured to localize this faience definitely, but Egypt, Phoenicia, and Greek lands, especially Rhodes, have been nominated. Today, when the number has increased without a single example appearing in Egypt or Phoenicia or any non-Greek land, the Rhodian center becomes the most plausible. Perhaps all the alabastra and pyxides and a few odd pieces were the product of a single Rhodian factory. Furthermore, three, that in Baltimore supposedly from Cyprus, one from Rhodes (4), and one from Sicily (7), may be by one hand since they have the same neck patterns and the same base patterns; whereas others have many more figures in a double row, these three have a single frieze of two animalsbulls, antelopes, or horses-separated by rosette trees set under the handles. The bulls have meaningless brown patches on their necks like horses' manes and their tails are more equine than bovine, as if the artist was an old hand with horses. The curious position of the horns would be understandable on bulls that twisted their necks to gore opposing animals, as on certain other alabastra and pyxides. Further, there seems to be a personal style that amounts to more than stiff-leggedness. Karageorghis and Peltenburg noticed a similarity between no. 8, from Cyprus, and no. I, from Rhodes (Louvre N III 2305), and suggested a single artist or workshop, to which I would now add a second. And can we recognize a third which produced the Sparta pyxides, quite distinctive, all of them?