Errata: Apotropaism in Greek Vase-PaintingsSource: Folklore, Vol. 58, No. 1 (Mar., 1947), p. 225Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of Folklore Enterprises, Ltd.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1256702 .

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Apotropaism in Greek Vase-Paintings 225

should expect to find them had the primary intention been the protection of substances within the vases. The pairs of great eyes, and the presumably apotropaic subjects commonly accompanying them, on the exteriors of

kylikes, and the gorgon masks or other apotropaic devices within those same kylikes, are so nicely calculated to remove, and thereafter to ward

off, evil influences that I find it hard to believe that they did not have just that intention. Then, too, it is fair to presume that a pair of great eyes on the neck of a vase was situated there as a sort of filter to extract harmful influences from a liquid entering the vase; and that the zones of pro- tect ive creatures round the body were to prevent renewed contamination. When we observe that as one type of apotropaic subject-the therio-

morphic-went out of fashion it was replaced by such other types as I have segregated above, it seems reasonable to presume that the advisa-

bility of guarding the contents of a vessel from occult evil continued to be

recognized. And if that were indeed so, then we have in the persistence of

apotropaism in the vase-paintings testimony indicating that the painted vases were largely meant for utilitarian service, even though some of them in utilitarian shapes may, paralleling some of our own vases, have been made for merely ornamental use.s80

1so The first section of the above paper had already appeared, and the present section was actually in the press, when Dr. Otto Kurz brought to my notice a lecture, " Urspriinge der bildenden Kunst " (see Akademie der Wissenschaften in Wien : Almanach fiur das Jahr 1930, pp. 275-295 ; or offprint, pp. 1-2I), delivered by the late Dr. Emanuel L6wy, Emeritus Professor of Classical Archaeology in the University of Vienna, concerned mainly with the role of magic in Greek art. Prof. L6wy's approach to the subject of Greek vase-paintings is from a direction opposite to mine. Beginning with the proposition that decorative art originates in crude attempts to represent actual objects regarded as apotropaic upon, or in the immediate vicinity of, inanimate objects or living creatures thought to require protection, he turned to Greek art, and more particularly to its vase-paintings, as a specific example. He set forth reasons-a number of them coinciding with those I have advanced above, but in general terms instead of particularized-for thinking that motives essentially magical, apotropaic or conceived to be pleasing to supernatural beings, underlay all archaic Greek design. Although I believe some of his opinions to be quite sound, I am inclined to think that on the whole his views are too broad ; that the magical content he thought to detect in certain types of subjects was, if indeed perceived by the Greeks, accidental and not intentional. I have not learned of any more particularized publication of his on the subject, although I have been told that it was one of his major preoccupa- tions in the years just preceding his death early in the 'thirties.

ERRATA

Folk-Lore for December, 1946 Page 159, line 5, for cimatura read cimaruta.

Page I66, line 25, for (cf. p. 163 infra) read (cf. pp. 216 f. infra).

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