In order to deal with the various ornaments and patterns in detail, it may be found convenient to divide them under three heads—rectilinear, curvilinear, and vegetable or floral. Of the first class the most consistently popular is the typically Greek pattern known as the _maeander_, key, or fret pattern. It first appears with the Geometrical style, in which it plays an important part, often covering a large proportion of the surface of a vase, arranged in broad friezes. Three varieties are found—a simple battlement pattern (Fig. 139), and the slightly more elaborate forms, Fig. 140, and the pattern given in Vol. I. p. 283, Fig. 83. In the Boeotian Geometrical, Phaleron, and Proto-Corinthian fabrics it is seldom found, or only in a debased form, as [maeander] but one or two forms occur in the “Rhodian” and “Samian” fabrics of Ionia; one of these is given in Fig. 141, and another consists of squares of the same alternating with crosses or stars in panels. We meet with a most interesting development of the latter variety in the vases of the so-called Pontic class and on the Clazomenae sarcophagi, where an elaborate maeander pattern, usually in two rows, is interspersed with stars or rosettes (Fig. 142). It thus becomes almost a distinguishing characteristic of the later Ionian fabrics. [Illustration: FIG. 141. MAEANDER OR KEY-PATTERN (IONIC).] [Illustration: FIG. 142. MAEANDER AND STAR PATTERN (LATER IONIC).] In the Attic B.F. vases there is a return to simplicity. Here we find it for the most part in the form Fig. 140 above, and its usual position is below the designs on the red-bodied amphorae; but it is sometimes found on other vases, as above the panels on the bodies of hydriae or oinochoae. In the R.F. period its development is most important for determining the succession of the kylikes, on which it almost becomes a date-mark, so regular is its evolution. This has, however, been already dealt with in the chapter on the history of the style (Vol. I. p. 416). After the severe period it is of frequent appearance on all forms of vases, the kylix, amphora, krater, and pelike in particular; the usual arrangement is a group of three to five maeanders, either of the simple Fig. 140 type, or of a more complicated form (Fig. 143), divided by rectangular panels or squares composed of chequers, or of crosses (diagonal and vertical) with dots or strokes between the arms.[2020] A curious variety of the maeander is used by Duris; it consists of a double intersecting maeander interspersed with squares[2021] (Fig. 144). [Illustration: FIG. 143. MAEANDER (ATTIC, 5TH CENTURY).] The invariable place for this ornament is below the design on the large vases, and it is usually continued the whole way round (except on the earlier Nolan amphorae); it is also found on the R.F. and white lekythi along the top of the design. It is always painted in black on the clay ground.[2022] [Illustration: FIG. 144. MAEANDER (ATTIC, ABOUT 480 B.C.).]