On the so-called Pontic vases the buds are isolated, and placed alternately upright and pendent. In the Corinthian and early Attic fabrics the lotos-flower is found, combined in various ways with palmettes and tendrils, as a neck-ornament, or above a panel, or under the handles, and also as a centre in heraldic compositions (Fig. 161); but subsequently the buds resume their sway, and are found bordering the panels of black-bodied amphorae (as in Fig. 162), forming a lower border to the designs on the red-bodied, and also on the shoulder of lekythi. These motives linger on in the earlier R.F. amphorae and hydriae, and in the column-handled kraters; rows of buds of a degenerate elongated form, on the lip, neck, or shoulder, are continued well into the period of the South Italian fabrics. [Illustration: FIG. 160. LOTOS-FLOWERS AND BUDS (RHODIAN).] [Illustration: FIG. 161. PALMETTE- AND LOTOS-PATTERN] (EARLY B.F.). [Illustration: FIG. 162. LOTOS-BUDS (ATTIC B.F.).] [Illustration: FIG. 163. CHAIN OF PALMETTES AND LOTOS (EARLY B.F.).]] The palmette or honeysuckle ornament is not usually found as an independent ornament before the middle of the sixth century.[2044] Its development in this direction really belongs to the R.F. period. But in combination it is found, as we have seen, in Corinthian and Attic B.F. vases, and also in Chalcidian. Before the Athenian unification of styles it usually appears linked with lotos-flowers in a sort of double chain, each pattern being alternately upright and reversed, as in Fig. 163; in this form it is usually found on the neck, or as an upper border to the design. This type of ornament is favoured in the Proto-Attic, Corinthian, and Corintho-Attic vases, and the earlier panel-amphorae; the palmette is here regarded as the foliage of the lotos-flower, which at first always predominates. Subsequently the palmette gains the upper hand, as on the necks of the red amphorae (see Fig. 165), and the lotos-flower is gradually ousted altogether. It, however, returns occasionally on R.F. hydriae and amphorae.[2045] Another variety, which may be described as a metope-like treatment, compared with the frieze-like treatment above, consists of an interlacing arrangement filling the space of a square, with two palmettes and two lotos-flowers respectively opposed, or a symmetrical arrangement of palmettes and lotos-flowers, connected by tendrils, as in Fig. 164. This is found under the handle, or on the neck, or in the middle of a frieze of the Corinthian “heraldic” type.[2046] On the red-bodied B.F. amphorae the universal neck-ornament is a band of large palmettes vertically opposed, linked by a continuous chain passing between them and separated by elongated lotos-flowers (Fig. 165); this is also found on the Panathenaic vases and the earlier R.F. amphorae. Towards the end of the sixth century, however, there is a tendency to drop these composite ornaments, and attention is devoted to the palmette alone.