Stefan Distler, Bauern und Banausen. Darstellungen des Handwerks und der Landwirtschaft in der griechischen Vasenmalerei, Wiesbaden (Reichert Verlag) 2022, 240 S., ISBN 978-3-95490-321-4 (geb.), € 110,–

Stefan D(istler)’s recent monograph on farmers and artisans in Greek vase paintings labours – if a pun may be excused – in a well-ploughed field. As he scrupulously points out in his introduction (18–21), scholarship on labour in vase paintings goes back to the 19^th century and has been served more recently by major monographs in several modern languages, including Himmelman’s book on slavery in Greek art (“Archäologisches zum Problem der griechischen Sklaverei”, Wiesbaden 1971), Ziomecki’s classic study of artisans (“Les representations d’artisans sur les vases attiques”, Wroclaw 1975), Vidale’s volume of 2002 (“L’idea di un lavoro lieve. Il lavoro artigianale nelle immagini della ceramica greca tra VI e IV secolo a.C.”, Padova), and Chatzidimitriou’s book of 2005 (Παραστάσεις εργαστηρίων και εμπορίου στην εικονογραφία των αρχαϊκών και κλασικών χρόνων (διδ. διατριβή), Athens). (We may add to that list – though it would be unfair to expect D. to have done so due to the timing of publication, Hasaki’s 2021 book “Potters at Work in Ancient Corinth. Industry, Religion, and the Penteskouphia Pinakes”, Princeton 2021 on the Penteskouphia pinakes.) D.’s book, though, should not be viewed as simply re-treading the same ground, for he has a specific rationale to justify (beyond the euphony of alliteration) the pairing of “Bauern” (farmers) and banausoi (artisans). First, the subject of agricultural labour has been largely left out of the aforementioned books on the iconography of labour, and its treatment here is therefore a welcome addition in itself. But more importantly, D. pairs artisans with farmers because in our literary sources the former come in for much derision, the latter for much praise – for example, the famous descriptions of work in Xenophon’s “Oeconomicus” where farming, we are told, provides training in everything befitting a free man (Xen. oik. 5.1; more broadly, 5.1–20), whereas the banausic arts (Xen. oik. 4.2–3) ruin the bodies of the workers by forcing them to sit indoors hunched over fires. Can these attitudes be paralleled in the iconographic record?

Even restricting his view to these two sectors, D. is forced to include or exclude certain subcategories. For instance, he excludes women textile workers from the category of banausoi, which may seem unwarranted when viewed from our modern understanding of artisans (Vidale, for instance, includes women textile workers in his book); but it makes sense from an emic perspective given the generally honourable nature of women’s textile work in ancient Greek writings (apart from at Sparta: Xen. Lac. Pol. 1.3–4). Since D. aims to contrast honourable and dishonourable work, this choice makes sense. D.’s view of work in the countryside is expansive, including e.g., fishermen and fish porters, which, if harder to justify in terms of the book’s overarching aim, comes at least as a welcome bonus contribution on a theme overlooked by previous scholarship on the iconography of work.

As the basis of his study, D. assembles a corpus of images, mostly from Attic vase painting but including many Penteskouphia pinakes and one Attic sepulchral relief. These are catalogued (216–238) and illustrated in a handsome set of 46 glossy plates at the end of the volume. This corpus forms the subject matter of the discussion in sections I (23–107, on scenes of artisanal labour) and II (108–183, on scenes of labour in the countryside). Section I encompasses the Penteskouphia pinakes (images of clay pits, firewood procurement, clay preparation, potting and kilns, the shipping of products), but chiefly Attic vases depicting potters, vase painters, metalworkers, carpenters, sculptors, and shoemakers. Section II turns to scenes on Attic vases of ploughing, planting, harvesting, as well as shepherds, donkey-drivers, swineherds, the harvesting and processing of grapes and olives, as well as ‘fish boys’ and ‘honey thieves’ (that is, collectors of honey surrounded by swarms of bees). To answer his central questions, D. pays close attention to the bodies of the figures, their postures, and their clothing.

A summary analysis is set out in the “Auswertung” (184–213). D. contrasts both the agricultural imagery and craft scenes with the ‘bourgeois ideal’, noting e.g., stooped postures among artisans which, though also found sometimes among scenes of athletes, D. interprets as negative traits. Nonetheless, D. insists that there is no overall negative portrayal of crafts, since painters often dwell on the skill of artisans, and many images are rather flattering. Agricultural scenes also build a stereotype beyond the bourgeois ideal, but of a different sort, with fewer negative posture traits. In sum (212–213), on D.’s view, painters engage with contemporary ideas (“zeitgenössische Vorstellungen”) of work but give them a positive spin to appeal to a wide range of buyers.

It is perhaps on the issue of these contemporary ideas that some doubts might be raised. The corpus of Attic vases studied by D. date mainly from ca. 530–450 BC. Yet strong class invective against artisans in the textual evidence is a fourth-century phenomenon: apart from a throwaway remark in Sophocles’ Ajax (1121), the noun banausos and the adjective banausikos are absent from popular genres of fifth-century Athenian literature (drama, oratory) and concentrated among the fourth-century writings of three elite men: Xenophon, Plato, and (especially) Aristotle. Strikingly, no mention of these terms can be found in the pamphlet of the Old Oligarch, whom most would date to the 420s, despite his rather rich vocabulary of class slurs. To be sure, elites had long prided themselves on a habitus based on leisure and money, but the specific animus against artisans is hard to identify until the fourth century, which raises the question of whether we can back-date the views of Xenophon, Plato, and Aristotle to the first half of the fifth century as representative of some long-standing elite prejudice, and interpret vase paintings of labour as being in some sense in dialogue with it.

Nevertheless, Stefan Distler’s meticulous analysis of the iconography constitutes a solid basis for further work, and an authoritative analysis for social and economic historians who wish to engage with the iconographic evidence for labour in ancient Greece.