Cup with Maenads and Satyrs

In the ten years between the Persian landing at Marathon in 490 BC and the sea battle of Salamis, Athens lived under the threat of a second Persian invasion. Its potters and painters kept working all the same, and their cups kept sailing west. This one, painted by Makron in those years, ended up well inland, at Falerii, the chief town of the Faliscans north of Rome.

On each side of the outside a maenad, one of the frenzied women who followed the wine god Dionysos, stands between two satyrs. The round picture inside is quieter and stranger. A man in a cloak, with a stick in his hand, holds out a cuttlefish, and the cup does not tell us why.

According to the 1925 publication of the finds, it was buried in the same tomb of the Colonnette cemetery as a wine cooler painted with Lapiths and centaurs.