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In the collection of the Metropolitan Museum in New York there is a famous vase with a musical scene whose meaning is still disputed. The vase, a red-figure bell krater (height: 28.7 cm), was painted between 430 and 420 b.c. by an artist named Polion.1 On the main side are four figures (pi. 1): three white-haired satyrs or silenoi2 and a youthful male aulete dressed in an elaborately decorated flowing garment. Numerous parallels in contemporary vase-painting make it clear that the aulete, dressed as he is in his professional performer's outfit, is himself an attribute marking a public cultic performance, either a scene of sacrifice or a "theatrical" performance of drama, dithyramb, or other choral song.3 Our satyrs, therefore, are not "real" satyrs: the scene is not mythological. Rather, they are a chorus of singers costumed as silenoi. Their hairy body-suits (mallotos chiton) of rough sheep's wool with a tail sewn on the back are well known from other vases: the tail marks them out as beings whose nature is part human, part beast.4
The three satyrs march or dance in procession from left to right: two stepping regularly and the third with his left leg raised high and bent at the knee, perhaps to evoke the sikinnis, the characteristic high-kicking dance of satyr-choruses.5 The chorus is singing; each singer accompanies his song on the kithara. The painter shows the act of singing in the usual way (chin slightly lifted, head thrown back, mouth open), a pose most strongly evident in the satyr on the far right.
A public performance by a satyr-chorus brings to mind the satyr-plays that closed the tragic trilogies performed in dramatic contests at the Athenian festivals of Dionysus.6 Polion wished, however, to assist the viewer in getting to grips with the meaning of the image. He added an inscription above the picture reading OAOI nANA©ENAIA, words that have caused modern scholars some consternation.7 Based on the orthography used in the period ca 430-410 (attested on the Polion painter's other vases, or those of his contemporary Aison), and the often very loose syntactic connections between words, the inscription most plausibly means "singers at the Panathenaic festival."8 The inscription excludes the satyr-play as a setting for the picture and contradicts the primary...