4. =Vases with floral decoration and figures with incised lines= (about 650–600 B.C.).—In this next stage, the date of which corresponds with the later trench-tombs and older chamber-tombs of Etruria (see Chapter XVIII.), there is a marked tendency of the vases to increase in size, and several new forms are either introduced for the first time or increase in popularity. Besides the ever-popular aryballos and alabastron, there are various forms of covered jars, the cylindrical pyxis, and the so-called _lekane_, a sort of tureen; also various drinking-cups, the kotyle, the so-called _kothon_, and the kylix, the last a new type. Its prototype is perhaps to be sought in the shallow four-handled bowls of the Boeotian Geometrical ware, and it is marked by its bent-over rim and low foot.[1042] The decoration loses all restraint, and the prevailing idea with the artist is the _horror vacui_ which impels him to fill up every vacant part of the surface, at the expense of utterly conventionalising his figures and ornaments and distorting their forms (cf. Plate XIX. figs. 1, 5, and XX. fig. 1). The vases contrast unfavourably with their Ionian contemporaries, in which, however profuse the ground-ornaments, the importance of the figures is never lost sight of, and they never fail to strike the eye. Incised lines and purple accessories are employed freely, and even the rosettes are always marked by cross-wise incisions. Incision as a method of ornamenting vases was of course always known from the earliest times, but it was not until now employed within and round painted designs. Hitherto the only alternatives were plain silhouettes (as in Geometrical vases) or half-opaque, half-outlined figures (as in Mycenaean and some early Ionian vases). The former, however, were too conventional, the latter too elaborate, and the new method of painting _plus_ engraving reconciled the two, being at once more realistic and more rapid. It is generally supposed that this method was a Corinthian invention (compare its use in the imbricated vases, p. 311), but it is not unknown in early Attic vases, and Böhlau attributes its origin to an early Ionian tendency to imitate metal ware.[1043] But this was an anomaly, and the Ionians never took to the incising method, preferring outline designs or inner lines of white paint (see p. 331). In any case the Corinthians were the first to adopt it and popularise it.