When art-history students read about Greek vase-painting, it is often a struggle for them to learn the unusual names of vase shapes, of the artists who made them, and of the mythological figures and stories represented on the vessels. Indeed, many surveys of Greek art concentrate on issues of chronology, style, and typology, a necessity for a body of material that has little in the way of external documentation. What is often lost in this process is an appreciation for the cultural and social context that produced the vases, that these works of art are also artifacts that were part of the lives of the people who made them, owned them, and used them. A number of recent books have sought to inject a fresh perspective into the study of Greek art, placing the works in a contextual fabric that conveys their meaning. Judith Barringer’s study of the hunt in Greek art is an exemplary work that sheds new light on the social dimension of the art and some of its themes. It should be of interest not only to scholars of Greek art, but also to art historians more generally who include Greek art in the courses that they teach or who deal with issues of gender, sexuality, and social context.

Chapter 1 begins with an examination of the artistic context for the appearance of hunting scenes on Attic vases. Although vases from Athens were found throughout the Mediterranean, Barringer argues that their artistic language is Athenian, as verified by monumental art and written evidence from the city, and that this reflects the cultural and social values of the city. By looking at a wide range of vases, she is able to show that the imagery is governed by social and cultural concerns and is not a snapshot of everyday life. Based on her catalogue of such vases, she demonstrates that hunting imagery becomes limited to drinking cups, especially after 510 B.C.E., suggesting that the imagery must be understood within the context of the drinking party or symposium. The symposium was the preserve of the aristocratic elite in Athens, and the activities of the hunt, along with athletics and battle, were prerogatives of that same group. The juxtaposition of hunt scenes on drinking cups with either athletic scenes or battles creates the simile that, as Barringer terms it, the hunt is like a battle and the battle is like a hunt.

The hunt, though, was more than just an abstract concept. It was among the activities that young men participated in as they were initiated into the civic life of the city. Barringer’s descriptions of the festivals of Dionysos in archaic Athens are a judicious synthesis of a number of incomplete and fragmentary sources that demonstrates the ritualistic connections among warrior training, hunting, and athletics as elements of civic and social initiation. Ritual reinforces imagery as an expression of aristocratic control of the social agenda in Athens, even at a time (after 509/8 B.C.E.) when their political power was waning under the early democratic constitution. Barringer argues persuasively that hunting imagery played a role in an aristocratic social agenda.

In the second chapter, Barringer turns her attention to hunting imagery as a metaphor for pederastic courtship in Athens. Typical of the process of initiation was the relationship between an older lover (erastes) and a younger beloved (eromenos). Pictures of rabbits and cocks as love gifts signify the idea of the courtship as a hunt. Rather than looking at this relationship as one-sided, however, Barringer argues for its reciprocity. The older lover has the power derived from his social position and can be likened to the pursuer or hunter, while the younger beloved is the pursued quarry who, like most prey, is expected to resist capture. However, the dominant type of courtship scene depicts the two figures facing each other, which Barringer shows has the potential for reversing the role of hunter and hunted. The gaze of the beloved can so incite the older lover that he becomes the pursued, overwhelmed and captured by his own desire. Thus the imagery of the courtship based in the hunt is not one-sided but reflects a reciprocity between the two figures. Barringer ends the chapter with a cogent argument that the images are thus not snapshots of reality, as they are too frequently taken to be, but rather are cultural constructions reflecting the values and relationships of the society that seek to balance the power and status of both figures in aristocratic pederasty. This chapter is an illuminating and informative discussion of masculine, homoerotic, and social mores in ancient Athens, and how the imagery of the sympotic vessels encodes and expresses these values.

Barringer turns her attention to mythological examples of the hunt in her third chapter. She focuses on three hunters, Aktaion, Kallisto, and Atalanta, the latter two allowing her to explore gender definitions for women as they relate to the hunt. Common to all three stories is that each figure tries to keep hunting separate from sexuality (eros). This leads to transgressions that cross the line into hubris, bringing about the disaster that befalls the hunter. Barringer looks at the multiple written and visual narratives for these myths and explores the underlying principles behind them. Aktaion’s transgression against Artemis ranges from boastful touting of his superior skills to sexual pursuit, but in either case it violates the boundary between hunter and goddess; he becomes in turn the prey himself. The hunt becomes a symbol for the transgression of social gender boundaries in the myths of Kallisto and Atalanta. Both were followers of Artemis, who was the patron of young women as they neared the age of marriage, but Kallisto eschewed marriage and sought to maintain her virginity as a companion to Artemis. Seduced by Zeus, she was punished by Artemis, who transformed her into a bear, later to be hunted down by her son Arkas. Barringer discusses the link between the bear as a symbol for shedding maidenhood for motherhood and the cult of Artemis at Brauron, a key place in the transitions of Athenian girls. Atalanta, too, transgresses normal gender roles first by adopting distinctly masculine forms of behavior and later by having sex in a sanctuary. She is transformed into a lion due to an excess of female sexuality. It is particularly interesting that both the hunt and athletics are combined in the imagery of Atalanta, emphasizing the full extent of her role reversal. In all three cases, the self-control that would exemplify a successful hunter, and the ideal male citizen, are missing from the figures who then become hunted themselves. As Barringer summarizes, sex “cannot exist without the hunt” (171), epitomizing the asymmetry that existed in gender roles in Athenian society.

The last chapter looks at hunting scenes in a funerary context. While some of the vessels discussed earlier were found in a tomb or used for funerary rituals, Barringer here expands her focus to funerary sculpture of the later Classical period. Images of the deceased as a hunter begin to appear in the late fifth century on funeral stelai, a monument of elite patronage. The continuity of hunting imagery in the new medium of marble stelai demonstrates that the association of the hunt with warfare, sport, and homoerotic relationship as aristocratic virtues found a new outlet that could not be so easily co-opted by a broader public. This association of the elite with the hunt finds an even grander expression outside of Athens in Asia Minor and the Levant in the fourth century. Here the Attic visual tradition of the hunt merges with Near Eastern models of the hunt as a kingly pursuit. The hunt, warfare, and banquet are deployed on large stone sarcophagi whose purpose is to represent the heroic character of the ruler to the viewer. As Barringer points out, the use of Greek myths like the Centauromachy and Amazonomachy in a Near Eastern context is not likely to evoke the metaphor of Greek victory over Persians as it does on the Parthenon, but to serve as a model for heroic behavior. The mythological hero then mirrors the actions of the hunter in nonmythological scenes, so that the two are equivalent in status. Such a complex of imagery that straddled both sides of the Aegean was particularly appealing to those aristocrats seeking to establish and maintain dynastic rule and conquest during the fourth century, including finally Alexander the Great and his associates.

Barringer’s book is very well written and accessible for a general reader. Her discussion is supported by extensive references and a comprehensive bibliography that promote further reading. The volume is judiciously illustrated, and the broad variety of figures compensates for the modest if still legible size of many of the pictures. This is a book that could easily be a model for graduate students to emulate and should certainly help to provide a much richer picture of Greek visual culture for art historians.