The only fabric in which the black-figured style completed its life and exhausted its possibilities, the only one which shows its living force through the archaic and classic periods, is the Attic. Even at the end of the 7th century it begins to vie with others. We already saw that Vurvá vases were exported to East Ionia; the Gorgon lebes of the Louvre comes from Italy. Etruria now becomes the chief place where Attic and indeed all black-figured vases are found. The fact that ware made to be exported to Etruria first gave us the knowledge of Greek vase-painting, led enquiries on false tracks for a long time in localizing the fabrics, and even to-day the word ‘vases’ reminds us of the decisive finds on Italian soil. The Attic manufactory is, as we saw, proved not only by the alphabet of their inscriptions but also by continuous finds in Attica itself. To be sure, the inequality of production in technique and style obtrudes itself on us here more than elsewhere, and makes us take fabric in a wider sense, as a complex of workshops, which turn out at the same time good and rubbishy ware, traditional and progressive painting, vases with light or dark-red clay. The Boeotian workshops, without doing them injustice, we may class with Attic workshops of the second class; in the 6th century, in so far as they do not go on turning out their old bird kylikes (p. 52), they are only provincial offshoots of Attic industrial art. The same is the case with Eretria. The inequality of Attic ware has yet other reasons. More than other fabrics the Attic adopted foreign influences. Athens’ central position between Corinth, Chalkis and the Cyclades, its relations to East Ionia, led to a penetration of old Attic art traditions with other elements and to the formation of a new style: the rise of trade and industry enticed alien painters to settle at Athens, since foreign fabrics had more and more to give in to Athenian superiority. Thus it is that Corinthian, Chalkidian, ‘Phineus,’ East Ionic, occasionally even Spartan fabrics [Illustration: PLATE XLVII. Fig. 86. WEDDING OF PELEUS: FRAGMENTS OF A CAULDRON BY SOPHILOS. Fig. 87. ATTIC TRIPOD-VASE.] are reflected in the Attic pottery. These reflections give a very varied air to Attic pottery, but on the other hand help to a dating of its separate phases. After a period of Corinthian influence follows one with a strong Chalkidian element, in the eye-kylikes the pattern of ‘Phineus’ ware is at work, while relations to East Ionic art run along side by side.