From the descriptions given of the various vessels, it will be seen that many of them were devoted to household use. Vases were also made as toys for children, as prizes to victorious athletes, for holding the viands and liquids placed beside the dead, and more recently for the ashes of the dead. Among the exceptional uses of pottery by the Greeks may be mentioned the giving of receipts on potsherds, the recording on fragments of pottery of votes for ostracizing (from _ostrakon_, a potsherd) a citizen, and for deciding the side to be taken by the entrants for the game called _ostrakinon_. This last was decided by “tossing up” a piece of pottery, and assigning a side to the player according to its falling with the red or black side uppermost. Vases were also made in honor of great men and authors, whose names are inscribed on them. All the vases now in museums, numbering, according to different estimates, from twenty to fifty thousand, were taken from the tombs of Greece, Southern Italy, and Etruria. It was the custom to place beside the dead the vessels necessary for the religious rites, the favorite vases and prizes of the deceased; and in this way they have been preserved to illustrate in our age the branch of Greek art to which they belong. No precise age can be ascribed to any one specimen. [Illustration: Fig. 181.--Kyathos] [Illustration: Fig. 182.--Kantharos.] The first glazed vases date probably from the ninth century before Christ, and from the beginning of the third century the art declined. It had probably reached its highest point four hundred years before our era. [Illustration: Fig. 183.--Kylix. Black on Red. Female Faces and Feet White. Naked Satyrs. (Trumbull-Prime Coll., N. Y. Metrop. Mus.)] The earliest vases were made by hand, and even after glazing was introduced that method was continued. It was also resorted to in making the gigantic _pithoi_, which were too large to be turned on the wheel. The finer vases were made on the wheel or moulded. After being moulded they were dried and painted. There were two methods of painting. By the first the figures were outlined and then filled in, leaving them black on a red or pale ground. The vase was then glazed and fired. By the second the figures were left untouched and of the color of the paste, by painting the ground black. A color slightly different from that of the body was employed for the finer lines of the figures. The vase was then glazed and fired as before. [Illustration: Fig. 184.--Early Greek Oinochoe, showing Phœnician Influences. About B.C. 700-500. (Trumbull-Prime Coll., N. Y. Metropolitan Museum.)]