Red-Figure Cup with a Banquet Scene

Inside this cup, at the bottom, a naked young man wearing a wreath dips a jug into a mixing bowl hung with ivy, ready to fill the cup in his other hand. A drinker would have found him as the wine went down. The Louvre calls him a komast, one of the revellers. On the outside the drinking party itself goes on. On one side a bearded man lies propped on an embroidered cushion, holding a deep cup and singing, between two young men, one of them playing the aulos, the double pipe, while the case for the pipes hangs in the background. On the other side another bearded man drinks with two companions, and a basket hangs on the wall.

Words painted in added red run beside the figures, the cheers Athenians often wrote on their cups. The cup was made in Athens around 490 to 480 BC and travelled to Italy, and a mark scratched under its foot is included in the Louvre's catalogue of Etruscan and Italic inscriptions. It came to the museum in 1861 with the collection of the Marquis Campana. One side is incomplete and has been filled in and partly repainted.