A red-figure pelike dated to the 4th century BCE from Magna Graecia.
One side of the pelike is decroated with a dancing maenad, a follower of the god of wine, Dionysus. In her left hand is a tympanum, a drum made from a frame with a skin stretched over it. In her right hand, she holds a decorated thyrsus, a staff constructed from a fennel stalk and pine cone, used by the maenads in Bacchic rituals. The staff is adorned with a flower and ribbon.
The other side depicts a winged Eros carring a flower wreath, and holding two arrows, which Eros used to strike love into gods and mortals. Eros is rendered as ambiguously gendered, a common convention for this style, particularly in scenes relating to Dionysus. A seated woman holds a dish with offerings or possibly seeds, and what appears to be a ladder. Other vases featuring Eros and ladders are associated with the festival of Adonis, where women would plant seeds on rooftops - ‘Gardens of Adonis’. The stylized window behind the woman may support this assessment.
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