the animal friezes: the last-named ornament generally takes the place of the rays round the bottom of the vase. With these decorative stripes the Rhodian style at the height of its production likes to cover the whole surface of its favourite jugs with ‘rotelle’ on the handles (Figs. 55 and 56), its necked amphorae, bowls and other vessels, and in this way arrives at a delicate and rich carpet-like effect: the equipoise between the animal silhouettes neatly placed on the white ground, coloured red and white, and the vigorous clear ornamentation, the showing of the ground through in delicate details where colour is purposely omitted, the well-distributed filling ornaments, into which sometimes small birds with an absence of pedantry are introduced, are all very satisfactory to the decorative sense: the distinction of the shoulder stripe by the heraldic element prevents the impression that the surface of the vase is too uniformly cut up. The accumulation of animal friezes, and the heraldic arrangement of Orientalizing animals round a vegetable combination of ornaments, are features which we have already found in Western art; but while these elements became prominent there at a time when the incised full silhouette was in exclusive possession of the field, when plant decoration took more abstract shapes, and filling patterns were reduced to the rosette, the culmination of the Rhodian animal-frieze vases falls in the pictorial period, when the plant decoration is naturalistic and filling ornamentation is abundant.