Besides the rooms for the workmen and artists, and the court where the ovens were placed, a potter's workshop required storerooms where the finished vases were kept, and a room where the master received his customers and sold his pottery. The subjects of the paintings on the vases were always carefully chosen and were suited to the use to which the vase was to be put. The large vases had graver and more serious subjects, the kylix had more animated scenes. This cup was used at banquets and on festive occasions, and so the artists painted gay and merry scenes on it, and as they tried to attract buyers by the novelty of their designs, the kylix paintings show a great deal of originality. The subjects were taken from mythology, or showed battle scenes, or subjects connected with daily life. If all our other sources of knowledge of life in Athens were suddenly lost to us, the vases would still be a rich mine of information, as in one way or another they represent all the varied experiences of human life. In all their art the Greeks were chiefly interested in representing the human form. They themselves did not realize that in doing this they were taking a step onward in man's great adventure of learning how to live, but in all the many ways in which they represented man, they showed him going forth into the outside world of nature, conscious that he had {206} the power to make of it a world in which he felt at home. Part of the greatness of the Greeks came from the fact that they did this unconsciously. The craftsmen and vase-painters themselves were in no way regarded as the equals of the great sculptors. The Athenians regarded them as quite lowly workers, but they were artists nevertheless, proved so by the fact that though there was often copying of a general design, the artist never copied mechanically, but put into his work something that was his own. In all the great quantity of Greek vases in the world today no two have been found exactly alike, and so the craftsmen, though they were unconscious of how later ages would regard their work, knew the satisfaction that comes from creating beauty in any form, and they said of their work that "there is no sweeter solace in life for human ills than craftsmanship; for the mind, absorbed in its study, sails past all troubles and forgets them."[3] [1] A. E. Zimmern: _The Greek Commonwealth_. [2] Xenophon: _The Economist_. [3] Amphis: quoted by G. M. A. Richter in _The Craft of Athenian Pottery_. {207} CHAPTER XII A DAY WITH AN ATHENIAN I. THE ATHENIAN GENTLEMAN The day began early in Athens, and as soon as the sun was up everyone was stirring: the workman was off to his work, the schoolboy to school, and every booth and stall in the Agora was laden with articles to attract the buyers who were expected in the market.