Black-Figure Dinos Rim Fragment: Ivy Leaves, Chariot Race, Warriors, Part of a Warship

This fragment comes from the rim of a large bowl, or dinos, used for mixing wine and water. The interior of the rim depicts a ship skimming the sea, with a warrior at the front prow. When the vessel was full, the ships would appear to float on a sea of wine—an allusion to Homer’s oft-repeated phrase, "the wine-dark sea."

The top of the fragment displayed here depicts a warrior riding into battle on a chariot. The inscription at right identifies him as Diomedes, one of the heroes of Homer’s Iliad; the inscription at left, running in retrograde behind his head, declares him to be kalos: "beautiful" or "noble." There appears to be a second chariot at left, and the fragmentary inscription beneath the horses’ legs, [---]iphos, may identify the figure behind Diomedes. We might imagine a ring of such chariots circling the top of the bowl; their course would mimic the movement of one’s arm as one stirred the mixture of water and wine. Through the careful placement of words and images on objects of use, epic poetry became part of the lived, daily experience of Archaic Greeks.