Note: Project Gutenberg also has an HTML version of this file which includes the original illustrations. See 61034-h.htm or 61034-h.zip: (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/61034/61034-h/61034-h.htm) or (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/61034/61034-h.zip) Images of the original pages are available through Internet Archive. See https://archive.org/details/dourispaintersof00pott DOURIS AND THE PAINTERS OF GREEK VASES [Illustration: Fig. 1. KANTHAROS AND KYLIX (Cup). By Douris. Brussels and Louvre Museums.] DOURIS AND THE PAINTERS OF GREEK VASES by EDMOND POTTIER Membre de L’Institut Translated by Bettina Kahnweiler With a Preface by Jane Ellen Harrison Hon.D.Litt.Durham, Hon.Ll.D.Aberdeen London John Murray, Albemarle Street, W. 1909 DEDICATED IN LOVE AND GRATITUDE TO AUGUST LEWIS PREFACE The translator of M. Pottier’s monograph on _Douris_ has kindly asked me to write, by way of preface, a few words on the relation of Greek vase-painting to Greek literature and to Greek mythology. I do this with the more pleasure because this relation has, I think, been somewhat seriously misunderstood, and M. Pottier’s delightful monograph which, thanks to Miss Kahnweiler, is now given to us in English form, should do much to clear away misconception and to set the matter before us in a light at once juster and more vivid. * * * * * First let us consider for a moment the relation between Greek art and Greek literature. In classical matters we are all of us, scholars and students alike, bred up in a tradition that is literary. Our earliest contact with the Greek mind is through Greek poets, historians, philosophers. This is well, for these remain--all said--the supreme revelation. But this priority of _literary_ contact begets, almost inevitably, a certain confusion of thought. Bred as we are in a literary tradition, we come later to be confronted with other utterances of the Greek mind, for example graphic art--vase-painting. This we naturally seek to relate to our earlier and purely literary conceptions. What has come to us second we instinctively make subordinate, ancillary. Greek art, and especially what we call a “minor art,” such as vase-painting, is the “hand-maid” of Greek poetry, or, to drop metaphor, the function of Greek art, is, we think, to illustrate Greek literature. Public and publisher alike demand nowadays that books on Greek literature, on Greek mythology, even editions of Greek plays, should be “illustrated” from Greek art.