Aryballos

Abstract

This little pot—two and a half inches high, something less across—is said to have been found in Athens (Pls. III, IV, and Figs. 1-2). It is an oil-pot of the shape now known as a round aryballos. Whether an Athenian would have called our vase an aryballos is doubtful: he would have called it a lekythos or lekythion, for an Attic vase of the same shape and period, found in an Athenian grave, bears the legend A sōpodōrou hē lēkythos, ‘the lekythos belongs to Asopodoros.“ But lekythos is a wide term, covering not only that slender vase (in its numerous varieties) to which we usually confine the word; but also the squat, stable version of the same; and the so-called protocorinthian aryballos of the seventh century; and perhaps, at a pinch, even the alabastron.