Meaningful mingling: classicizing imagery and Islamicizing script in a Byzantine bowl

39. R. Bianchi Bandinelli, Hellenistic-Byzantine Miniatures of the Iliad (Ilias Ambrosiana) (Olten: U. Graf, 1955); and Kurt Weitzmann, "The Survival of Mythological Representations in Early Christian and Byzantine Art and Their Impact on Christian Iconography," Dumbarton Oaks Papers 14 (1960): 46-47.

40. Byzantine reception of antique statuary ranged from aesthetic wonder and scholarly appreciation to Christianized reinterpretation and fear of demonic powers thought to reside within pagan sculptures, but these varied reactions all attest to continued engagement with the art of antiquity. Sarah Bassett, The Urban Image of Late Antique Constantinople (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004); and James, "'Pray Not to Fall into Temptation,'" with earlier bibliography.

41. The blacked-out area in the illustration showing an augur (Fig. 9) is the result of compositing two side views of the bowl to produce a full view of the figure. Under normal conditions, the handle obscures this medallion. My iconographic analysis of the vessel is indebted to earlier studies, especially Cutler, "The Mythological Bowl," and Kalavrezou, "The Cup of San Marco." Where my interpretations differ, I note other scholars' alternative readings.

42. A. Pasini, Il tesoro di San Marco in Venezia (Venice: Ferdinando Ongania, 1886), 100-101. Cutler ("The Mythological Bowl," 252-54, fig. 15) endorses this identification and provides as a parallel a Roman gem with an augur similarly posed in profile, but with his divining rod extended forward. For a Roman representation of augural tools, including the lituus, see Susanne W. Rasmussen, Public Portents in Republican Rome (Rome: L'Erma di Bretschneider. 2003), 153. fig. 23.

43. Scholars prefer Roman or late antique comparanda for the motifs on the S. Marco bowl, but the tendrils flanking the augur recall the so-called framing palmettes in mid-fourth-century BCE red-figure Greek vessels from Paestum, suggesting an additional category of ancient models for the glass vessel (A. D. Trendall, The Red-Figured Vases of Paestum [London: British School at Rome, 1987], 16. type III.D, 65-66, figs. 2.18-21). This comparison complements Kalavrezou's observation that the pale-bodied figures against the dark glass on the S. Marco vessel evoke the aesthetic of ancient Greek red-figure vases (Kalavrezou, "The Cup of San Marco," 167-69).

44. Nicetas Choniates, Nicetae Choniatae Historia, ed. Jan Louis van Dieten (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1975), 339; O City of Byzantium: Annals of Niketas Choniates, trans. Harry J. Magoulias (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1984), 187; and Paul Magdalino, "Occult Sciences and Imperial Power in Byzantine History and Historiography," in Magdalino and Mavroudi, The Occult Sciences in Byzantium, 159-60.

45. Kalavrezou, "The Cup of San Marco," 169-70.

46. 1 thank Christopher Faraone for this suggestion.

47. Paul Marius Martin, "L'oracle aborigene de Mars a Tiora-Matiene: Essai de localisation et d'interpretation," in Actes du colloque Ethnohistoire et Archeologie (Tours: Imprimerie Speciale de l'Universite, 1984), 203-16; and Matthew Gonzales, "The Oracle and Cult of Ares in Asia Minor," Greek, Roman, and Byzantine Studies 45, no. 3 (2005): 261-83.