Corinthian Column-Krater with a Banquet and Horsemen

Four couples share the couches on this bowl. Each bearded man reclines beside a woman, all of them wearing headbands, the women half-draped in embroidered cloaks, two of them holding shallow drinking dishes. Above their heads hang lyres, a breastplate and two helmets. The vase does not say who the women are. At drinking parties in Athens the women who joined the men were companions or entertainers, never wives, and whether Corinth kept the same rule the pictures alone cannot settle.

Not everything on the scene is ancient. The Louvre's record lists the last two couples, the lyre on the right and a hanging ribbon among the parts repainted in modern times. On the other side four horsemen ride with spears and round shields, and below runs a band of lions, panthers, wild goats and deer. The krater was made in Corinth between about 590 and 575 BC and found at Cerveteri in Etruria, and it reached the Louvre with the Campana collection, which France bought in 1861.