Attic Black-Figure Band Cup with Ploughing and Sowing Scenes

Around 700 BC the Boeotian poet Hesiod set down advice for farmers in his Works and Days. When you plough and sow, he says, have a slave follow a little way behind with a mattock, covering the seed and making trouble for the birds. Close to two centuries later a painter in Athens put the same kind of field work around the outside of this cup.

On one side a ploughman drives a pair of oxen, a bearded man bends over a mattock, and a sower with a basket on his arm walks beside a mule. On the other side a mule cart carries two amphorae, and a second ploughman follows a team of mules. Farm work like this is rare on Athenian vases, which far more often show gods, heroes and drinking parties. It is a band cup, named for the strip of figures running around the bowl, and it was made in the years around 530 to 520 BC. Red paint still marks the beards and the animals' necks, while the white once used for the jar lids has gone. Much of the foot is restored.