This volume makes a welcome contribution to the study of Classical Athenian white lekythoi. These oil vessels, painted in polychrome on a white background, are known from more than two thousand examples produced from about 470 to 400 BCE. Used mainly as grave offerings in Athens and its territory, their function and funerary imagery link white lekythoi closely with Classical Athenian burial practice. In Picturing Death in Classical Athens, John Oakley’s concentration on the vases’ rich figural depictions fills a gap in the scholarship. Since white lekythoi first began to receive significant attention in the second half of the nineteenth century, much of the focus has been on categorization based on style, artist, or nonfigural decoration (e.g., A. Fairbanks, Athenian Lekythoi, 2 vols., New York: Macmillan Company, 1907 and 1914; and D.C. Kurtz, Athenian White Lekythoi: Patterns and Painters, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975). In recent decades, however, publications have turned their attention more fully to the vessels’ imagery. Building on previous work concerning individual artists and iconographic themes, Oakley offers a more comprehensive overview of all the iconographic variants found on white lekythoi. He organizes his material by the type of image, presenting several detailed examples in each category. In addition, he sets the vases in context: archaeological, ritual, chronological, and, above all, artistic; and he considers the influence of individual vase painters and other art on the iconography. Several additional features enhance the usefulness of the volume as a reference. Selected lists of vases in the subsets of each iconographic type, which are further broken down by vase painter, provide handy catalogs. The book is beautifully illustrated with several color plates as well as numerous black-and-white figures. Finally, the work includes a bibliography focused solely on white lekythoi, in addition to the more extensive references in the endnotes. Picturing Death in Classical Athens will have a long life as an essential resource for anyone interested in white lekythoi.

The introduction (chapter 1) opens with a history of scholarship. It continues by familiarizing readers with the type of vase under study through discussions of the shape, painting technique, and artists, whom Oakley places into three categories that coincide with various changes in the imagery (Early, Middle, and Late). Oakley also provides background for the meaning of these vessels and their scenes (a discussion he takes up in greater detail in chapter 6) by presenting the archaeological contexts of the vessels, primarily as grave goods, and an overview of Athenian funerary ritual.

The majority of the text after the introduction is given to an examination of typology. Oakley devotes a chapter to each of his four main categories of scenes (chapters 2–5): domestic scenes, prothesis (the laying out of the corpse), myth and mythological figures, and scenes at the grave. Throughout, his attention to chronology within each category enables him to trace the development of the iconography and the role of particular vase painters in that development. While his focus is on polychrome scenes, he also discusses earlier white lekythoi painted in outline as well as examples of black-figure and red-figure vases in his consideration of origins and parallels for the iconography.

Chapter 2, “Domestic Scenes,” examines the category most prevalent in Oakley’s Early period. The most common scenes show one or two women seated or standing, usually indoors. The depictions of women alone or in pairs are strikingly close to those produced at the same time in red-figure, and, like them, have been variously interpreted. However, Oakley asserts that the scenes of women at home do not succumb to one specific interpretive model since they display a range of activities, from reading to playing music to assembling a basket of grave gifts. In addition to such depictions of women, Oakley places other types of scenes in this category: an individual male who is most often a soldier or horseman; a woman and man together, primarily in images of departure and arming; two men also in departure scenes; and, in the latter decades of the fifth century BCE, groups of three or more figures. This is the most disparate of Oakley’s categories, but he groups these images together for two reasons, one based on technique and the other on content. First of all, the scenes showing a woman and those with a man both come out of the earlier outline tradition. Further, Oakley argues that all the scenes in this category “give the impression of a properly functioning household. Women enjoy a contented life at home, working and playing as they should, while men go off to war, as they are expected to” (75).

As domestic scenes begin to wane, the more explicitly funerary iconography of the three other types of images comes to the fore. Chapter 3 takes up the first of these, scenes of the prothesis, the first stage of Athenian funerary ritual in which the deceased is laid out. After briefly placing the white lekythos depictions in the well-established tradition of prothesis images going back to the eighth century BCE, Oakley reviews the portrayals of the ritual in white ground chronologically, at times comparing the details with other visual and literary evidence. The next category, presented in chapter 4, “Myth and Mythological Figures,” includes deities, most of whom are female, and various mythological scenes. But most prominent in this type, though still a small percentage of white lekythoi as a whole, are figures whom Oakley terms “conductors of the soul,” namely Charon the ferryman, Hypnos and Thanatos (Sleep and Death), and Hermes Chthonios, who leads the deceased to the afterlife. Oakley highlights how this last grouping focuses on the transition from this life to the afterlife.

Perhaps the most well-known white lekythos imagery appears in Oakley’s last category, “scenes at the grave” (chapter 5), which were produced during all phases but are most numerous in his Middle and Late periods. Oakley’s careful observation of the iconographic details reveals variations in a type that at first glance might appear to be rather static. Women are frequently shown bringing offerings and mourning at a grave, but men and children also appear. In addition, young men beside a grave may either play or hold a lyre. Warriors fight and horsemen ride near a grave. Finally, a few lekythoi depict Persians at a grave. In addition, Oakley examines in some detail the different types of funerary monuments and kinds of funerary offerings shown. In this chapter Oakley also discusses two long-standing debates, presenting useful summaries of the problems and solutions offered to date. The source of inspiration for the tombstone depictions is a question because stone funerary monuments went out of use in Athens from about 480–440 BCE. Although Oakley ultimately concludes that there is not sufficient evidence to come to a definitive answer, he suggests that many depictions were probably based on actual monuments of some kind, while others show a large degree of artistic embellishment. A second challenge is determining who among the figures, if any, is the deceased. Oakley demonstrates that no single interpretation is sustainable. While in some vases one figure can be most reasonably understood as the deceased, in others it is clear that all of the people are mourners, and many vases remain ambiguous.

A consequence of the typological approach taken in chapters 2–5 is that some of the interpretive threads are not developed in one single place but are located at several points in the text, where they are taken up in conjunction with individual vases. One such theme is the inclusion of components belonging to one type of scene in the imagery of another, a practice that Oakley notes in each category. Although various combinations are found, the conflation of elements from domestic scenes of women into scenes at the tomb is especially prevalent. Oakley suggests the result is that “the elements combine the home life of the deceased before death with his new home and life, the grave, thereby presenting the view with a ‘now and then’ scenario” (91).

The final chapter (chapter 6) turns from the focus on typology to interpreting the corpus as a whole. Oakley situates these vessels in fifth-century BCE Athens by considering different contexts in turn, namely historical, iconographic, social, cultural, and literary. The fifth century BCE, the height of power for democratic Athens, marks a fascinating yet puzzling period of change in Athenian funerary practice, and the appearance of white lekythoi is one of the new developments. In addition, sculpted funerary monuments fell out of use early in the century, presumably as a result of legislation, and when they returned later in the century, their imagery was strikingly different. It no longer emphasized the male aristocratic ideology prevalent in the previous period, and instead included images of women and family gatherings. Further, the fifth century BCE saw the development of annual state-run funerals for the Athenian war dead, a ceremony that embodied Athenian political ideology. This practice is often interpreted as in tension with private funerary ritual, in part because of the severely restricted private funerary display during the same time. White lekythoi, therefore, with their limited production from 470 to 400 BCE and their sepulchral function and depictions, constitute the primary expression of private Athenian funerary imagery for much of the fifth century BCE. Nevertheless, the nature of their relationship with other funerary developments and their meaning within the culture of democratic Athens remain topics of discussion.

Beginning with a historical context, Oakley hypothesizes that white lekythoi may have entered Athenian funerary ritual initially through use in the recently instituted public burial for the war dead, and were adopted from there into private use. He does not believe that they were first designed for this function, however; rather he points out “the fact that a fair number of early lekythoi were found far from Attica suggests that more probably it was a new product that quickly found a distinct market” (216). Oakley convincingly argues that white lekythoi were likely expensive grave goods, made with imported materials. Because of this, he suggests that the blow the Peloponnesian War gave to the Athenian economy and trade contributed to the end of white lekythos production, as did the reemergence of sculpted tombstones, which included large stone lekythoi. Turning to an iconographic context, Oakley notes that white lekythoi began in a milieu of changing funerary iconography in black-figure vase painting, including the first depiction of a visit to a tomb, the subject that came to dominate white lekythos scenes by mid-century. His observation that the iconography most shared between white lekythoi and sculpted funerary monuments, primarily the domestic scenes, did not co-exist chronologically adds a new element to the debate about the relationship between the two. Further, he connects the domestic scenes with social changes in the role of the family in the new democracy. For Oakley, the vases portray a family functioning as it should and so contributing properly to the city.

Because no ancient sources present a viewer’s response to white lekythos imagery, Oakley draws on anthropological theory to ascertain its meaning to viewers. His observation that the typological categories match the three stages of Arnold van Gennep’s rites of passage (The Rites of Passage, Monika B. Vizedom and Gabrielle L. Caffee, trans., London: Routledge & Paul, 1960) is thought-provoking, though his suggestion that the lekythoi therefore represent a change from the aristocratic concerns present in earlier sculpted tombstones to something “reflective of basic human concerns applicable to people of all classes, and thus democratic in nature” (226) raises questions about a potential tension, if vases with a more universally appealing iconography were affordable only to a minority. Oakley further draws an interesting connection between the iconographic emphasis on the visit to the tomb and new concepts of a more porous boundary between the living and the dead. Turning lastly to a literary context, he observes that the imagery on white lekythoi shares some themes with funerary lament and epigrams, expressing mourners’ reactions to death. Overall, Oakley presents a convincing picture whose key strength is the consideration of multiple influences that coincided to shape the imagery of white lekythoi.

Written for nonspecialist and specialist alike, Picturing Death effectively guides the reader into the multifaceted iconography of white lekythoi by closely exploring the details of specific vases while at the same time situating them both within a broader typological framework and within their fifth-century BCE context.