The kothon

Re-reading, for the first time in years, through my copy of Courtesans and Fishcakes, the Consuming Passions of Classical Athens (James Davidson, 1997) I encountered a form of classical Greek pottery cup, the kothon, that I was familiar with.

I've had a large fragment of the Greek, black glazed, ribbed drinking cup on my fireplace mantel shelf for years but had not remembered the references in the Davidson book to the colour and form.

The ribbed cup is of Spartan origin and, according to Critias of Athens, is an appropriate cup to carry on military service. It is compact and easily transported in a kit bag, the black colour means that unclean water encountered cannot be easily seen, and, finally, the cup's ribbed body form retains impurities. Despite the written benefits of the kothon for drinking less than clean waters it retained notoriety as being the form of vessel for drinking deep and over indulging in wine promoting drunkenness. 

Roman shipping tesserae from Ostia

 

My new ship tessera, Stannard 10.1

About twenty years ago I encountered my first two ship tesserae from Ostia in CNG sale 53, lots 1434-5. Shortly after that I acquired an example and, much to my later regret, sold it on. I have now had the pleasure of acquiring a new example, listed in the auction catalogue as being ex Italo Vecchi collection (although it may just be ex Italo Vecchi Ltd Nummorum Auctiones 15 (1999) sale ).

Looking through Neville Stannard's 2015 paper in Numismatic Chronicle, where he shows all the examples that he is aware of, my new specimen, Stannard 10.1, looks to be from the same die as the specimen that I had before, Stannard 10.5.

My original tessera, Stannard 10.5

Not only that it appears to be one of the ship tesserae that was illustrated in Ladich's Cronaca Numismatica paper (from 2006, not 2008 as stated in the Stannard paper?).

Ladich's illustrations, note the second one down, "NPV" in error