Athenian boys received their elementary education at three different places. They could learn to read, write, and do arithmetic at various private establishments. They learned to play the lyre and sing from a lyre master. And they were trained in gymnastics at a palaestra, a public or private exercise ground. On the inside of this cup, a boy trudges to school carrying a writing tablet, which consists of two wooden leaves coated on one side with wax and tied together. One could scratch into the wax surface with a sharp stylus and then smooth the wax to erase the marks. It has been suggested that the boys on the outside of the cup are playing school. On either side, two students approach a boy who is acting as teacher. Two of the boys have papyrus rolls on which various poetic works could be written.
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Artwork Details
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Title:Terracotta kylix (drinking cup)
Artist:Attributed to the Painter of Munich 2660
Period:Classical
Date:ca. 460 BCE
Culture:Greek, Attic
Medium:Terracotta; red-figure
Dimensions:H. 2 3/4 in. (7 cm); diameter 7 7/8 in. (20 cm)
Classification:Vases
Credit Line:Rogers Fund, 1917
Accession Number:17.230.10
Until 1917, collection of Henry Francis Hope Pelham-Clinton-Hope, 8th Duke of Newcastle-under-Lyne; acquired in 1917, purchased through Christie, Manson & Woods, London.
Christie's, London. 1917. Catalogue of the valuable library of books on architecture, costume, sculpture, antiquities, etc., formed by Thomas Hope, Esq., being a portion of the Hope Heirlooms removed from Deepdene, Dorking; the property of Lord Francis Pelham Clinton Hope. lot 92, p. 17.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1920. "Recent Accessions of the Classical Department." Bullletin of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 15(5): p. 108.
Beazley, John D. 1925. Attische Vasenmaler des rotfigurigen Stils. no. 17, p. 267, Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr.
Klein, Anita Elizabeth. 1932. Child Life in Greek Art. p. 29 ns. 348, 353, pl. 29a, New York: Columbia University Press.
McClees, Helen and Christine Alexander. 1933. The Daily Life of the Greeks and Romans: As Illustrated in the Classical Collections, 5th ed. pp. 50–51, fig. 63, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Richter, Gisela M. A. and Lindsley F. Hall. 1936. Red-Figured Athenian Vases in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. no. 105, pp. 136–37, pls. 106, 181, New Haven: Yale University Press.
McClees, Helen and Christine Alexander. 1941. The Daily Life of the Greeks and Romans: As Illustrated in the Classical Collections, 6th ed. pp. 50–51, fig. 63, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Richter, Gisela M. A. 1953. Handbook of the Greek Collection. p. 86, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Beazley, John D. 1963[1942]. Attic Red-figure Vase-painters, Vols. 1 and 2, 2nd ed. p. 784, no. 25, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Immerwahr, Henry R. 1964. "Book Rolls on Attic Vases." Classical, Medieval, and Renaissance Studies in Honor of Berthold Louis Ullman, 1, Charles Henderson Jr., ed. no. 6, p. 21, Rome: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura.
Beazley, John D. 1971. Paralipomena: Additions to Attic Black-Figure Vase-Painters and to Attic Red-Figure Vase-Painters [2nd edition]. p. 417, Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Beck, Frederick A. G. 1975. Album of Greek Education: The Greeks at School and at Play. p. 19, figs. 58–60, Sydney: Cheiron Press.
Rühfel, Hilde. 1984. Kinderleben im klassischen Athen: Bilder auf klassichen Vasen. Kulturgeschichte der Antiken Welt., 19. fig. 28, Mainz am Rhein: Verlag Philipp von Zabern.
Sparkes, Brian. 2015. "Some Early Attic Red-Figure Stemless Cups." On the Fascination of Objects: Greek and Etruscan Art in the Shefton Collection, John Boardman, Andrew Parkin, and Sally Waite, eds. pp. 88–9, 92, figs. 7.10, 7.11, Philadelphia: Oxbow Books.
Boudalis, Georgios. 2017. The Codex and Crafts in Late Antiquity. pp. 22–24, fig. 7, New York: Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material Culture.
Chamay, Jacques. 2023.
Linos ou l'éducation scolaire à Athènes: Première moitié du Ve siècle av. J.-C.. no. 41, pp. 35, 144–45, Genève: Éditions Slatkine.
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The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than 30,000 works ranging in date from the Neolithic period to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312.
