small white ground kylix | Apollo at Delphi

One of the many highlights at the wonderful Archaeological Museum of Delphi, is this breathtaking 5th-century BCE drinking cup - kylix - which represents the pinnacle of High Classical white-ground pottery. You'll find it in a display unit on its own in Room 8, a room dedicated to the sacred musical artifacts of the sanctuary, right next to the ancient inscribed stone fragments of the famous Delphic Hymns to Apollo.

It was discovered during the famous "Great Excavation" of Delphi launched at the end of the 19th century, led exclusively by the French School at Athens, who officially broke ground in 1892. The cup itself was unearthed inside the sacred precinct of the Sanctuary of Apollo at Delphi found inside a stone-lined grave believed to belong to an ancient priest of Apollo, used for holy libations rather than everyday symposia.

When it was excavated, it was broken into several pieces. Because white-ground pottery features a highly delicate, fragile clay slip applied after firing, it breaks very easily under the weight of shifting soil. The pieces of the kylix were, however, in remarkably pristine condition with very little surface erosion. Conservators at the museum painstakingly pieced the fragments back together, restoring the cup to the seemingly perfect, smooth condition you see today.

Although it is the work of an unsigned master, modern consensus attributes the painting to the circle or manner of the Pistoxenos Painter. Depending on which art historian you ask, you may also see it attributed directly to other titans such as the Berlin Painter or Onesimos.

The interior composition abandons complex mythological action, focusing instead on a single, distillation of divine presence that captures the essence of Apollo's spiritual authority.

Versatile, multi-faceted Apollo sits serenely on a low backless folding chair, moving with an introspectively graceful posture. He wears a flowing white chiton beneath a heavy, pleated red cloak wrapped around his waist. In his left hand he holds a magnificent seven-stringed kithara crafted by his step-brother Hermes from a tortoiseshell, while his right hand tilts a shallow ceramic bowl - phiale. Every subtle detail serves a profound religious and political purpose. On his head rests his signature laurel wreath, the ultimate ancient symbol of academic, athletic, and military victory, commemorating his triumph over the monstrous serpent Python at Delphi, and his connection to nearby Mount Helicon, home of the Muses.

The small black bird standing attentively in the top-left corner is the absolute key to the vessel's narrative. This is the sacred crow from the tragic myth of Coronis, Apollo’s mortal lover. Coronis had an affair with Ischys, not realising that she was pregnant with Apollo's child. A white crow witnessed her adultery, flew to Delphi to tell Apollo what he had seen. Enraged, Apollo turned the poor bird's feathers from pure white to pitch black as a permanent punishment. He shot Coronis with a silver arrow, before placing her body onto a huge funeral pyre. As the flames consumed her, Apollo felt a surge of remorse, rushed into the flames, cut open her womb, snatched the unborn child, and handed him over to the healer-centaur Chiron, who brought him up to become Asklepios, god of medicine and healing. The very first legendary "caesarean section" !

The dimensions of the original artifact are:

Height: 7.9 centimetres (0.079 m)

Diameter: 17.8 centimetres (0.178 m) (often rounded up to 18 cm in catalog literature) 

Apollo was an especially multi-faceted and versatile god. His spheres of influence included the sun and light, culture and civilisation, medicine, disease and healing, prophecy and oracles, music, dance, poetry, and archery. He was worshipped as a nurturer of youth - kourotrophos - and as a guardian of children into adulthood. At their coming of age, boys would cut their hair and dedicate it to him.

He was the son of Zeus and the mortal Leto, who gave birth to him and his twin sister Artemis on the Cycladic island of Delos, which Zeus arranged should emerge from the Aegean Sea for this special event. Two of his four children were Asklepios (with the nymph Coronis) and Orpheus (with the Muse Kalliope), Hyacinthus and Cyparissus were his male lovers, and he also fell in love with the Trojan princess, Cassandra. He supported the Trojans in the Trojan War, and guided Paris' fatal arrow that struck Achilles in the heel.

His many epithets include Phoebus, meaning bright or shining, and Pythios - Pythian. Apollo had killed the deadly Python that was ravaging the area of Delphi, then established his oracular sanctuary there. His priestess the Pythia would sit in the Delphic tripod in the innermost part of the temple, be filled with the spirit - pneuma - of the god, then deliver his oracle. When Apollo's half-brother Herakles once tried to steal the tripod, Zeus intervened, and Herakles was duly punished. The Pythian Games - one of the cycle of 4 PanHellenic Games in ancient Greece, along with Olympic, Nemean, and Isthmian - were held in his honour at Delphi, a glorious site in Boeotia.

One of Apollo's most common attributes in ancient Greek art is the lyre. It all started with a family tiff. Mischievous baby Hermes stole the sacred cattle of his half-brother Apollo who, understandably, was furious. To appease his older brother, Hermes quickly invented the very first lyre crafted from a tortoise shell, with 7 strings, and gave it to Apollo.

His other most common attribute is the laurel wreath, reminding us of his pursuit of the nymph Daphne and her subsequent metamorphosis into a laurel tree, which then evolved into one of the most enduring symbols of human achievement. A laurel wreath was not only worn by Apollo himself, but was the prize for victory at the Pythian Games (where poetry and music featured as much as did athletic competitions). Its journey continues via Roman generals and emperors, through early Christian saints and martyrs, to the early 14th century BCE when Petrarch was publicly crowned with a laurel wreath on the Capitoline Hill, reviving the practice of honoring poetic genius.

Daphne's transformation is beautifully described in Ovid's Metamorphoses, using the Latin 'laurus', which gives us a whole load of other significant connections with Apollo. The first Poet Laureate was John Dryden in 1668, the term 'Bachelor' as in a degree, originates from the mediaeval Latin 'baccalaureus' (laurel berry), the baccalaureat is an alterernative to A-levels, and the official title of someone who has won the Nobel Prize is 'Nobel Laureate'. The instruction not to 'rest on our laurels' implies that we should not, after an achievement, relapse into laziness or complacency!

Apollo was not just the god of music, but was the leader, protector, and conductor of the Nine Muses, goddesses of inspiration, whose main home was Mount Helicon, not so far from Delphi. Apollo led the Muses as they danced around Hippocrene, the sacred spring which Pegasus had created when he struck the ground with his hoof!

This pottery collection is produced in Greece in the workshop of the Lioulias family, with whom It's All Greek is privileged and proud to have been working since 2004. They also produce our lovely Minoan pottery and fresco pieces, and a small collection of bronzes.