DAVID RIDGWAY

NESTOR’S CUP AND THE ETRUSCANS

In memory of Stuart Piggott

Summary.

Bronze cheese-graters have been found in three 9th-century

warriors’ graves at Lefkandi in Euboea. The presence of a similar item in a
socially elevated male (and military) context is attested in the Iliad (xi, 628–
643), when it is used in the preparation of a kykeon (mixture) in Nestor’s depas
(cup) that apparently revives a wounded hero. ‘Nestor’s cup, good to drink
from’ is mentioned in an inscription from a grave (c. 725–700) at Euboean
Pithekoussai on the Bay of Naples; and a number of bronze (occasionally
silver) graters occur in 7th-century Orientalizing princely graves along the
Tyrrhenian seaboard. Unlike that of the better-known 8th-century Euboean
‘pre-colonial’ skyphoi there, the distribution of 7th-century graters extends as
far north as the metal-bearing area of Tuscany. It is suggested that a particular
kind of ‘heroic’ drinking may have been introduced to the local Etruscan
‘princes’ by Euboeans negotiating for supplies of the Tuscan ores that are
known to have been used at Pithekoussai; the presence c.700–690 of a high-
ranking Etruscan xenos (guest) at nearby Cumae, recently postulated on
epigraphic grounds, may be significant in this respect.

The reports on recent excavations in the

Toumba cemetery at Lefkandi in Euboea
have provided summary details of three 9th-
century cremation burials accompanied by
weapons and by a simple device of bronze
that is reasonably identified as a cheese-
grater:

1

TOMB

79B

(niche):

S[ub]-P[roto-]

G[eometric] II (c.875–850); Popham and
Lemos 1995, 154 fig. 6 (the cremation of
‘a Euboean warrior-trader’

2

); Popham and

Lemos 1996, pls. 78, B2 and 146d. 16

6.5 cm.

PYRE 13: SPG II (c.875–850); Popham et

alii 1982, 229 no. 8, pl. 28 no. 8; Popham
and Lemos 1996, pl. 48 no. 8. Two large
non-joining fragments, each 6.5

5 cm.

PYRE 14: SPG IIIa (c.850–800); Popham
et alii 1989, 118 fig. 2 (‘a warrior who had
been cremated with his sword’); Popham
and Lemos 1996, pls. 87 no. 18 and 146c.
c.16

7 cm.

One early 9th-century association of a

grater with weapons could mean anything or
nothing, and two need be no more than a
coincidence. Now that there are three, how-
ever, it is legitimate to enquire if there is any

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325

particular use, custom or tradition that re-
quired the contents of the 9th-century war-
riors’ graves listed above to include this
humble utensil. In the Classical and later
periods, literature and archaeology combine to
suggest that, very much as we should expect,
the proper place for a cheese-grater is the
kitchen:

3

Cooking utensils are enumerated by Ana-
xippus in The Harp-singer thus: ‘Bring a
soup ladle, a dozen skewers, a meat hook,
mortar, small cheese scraper [sic: turok-
nestin], skillet, three bowls, a skinning
knife, four cleavers. First bring, won’t you,
you abomination in the eyes of the gods,
the small kettle and the things from the
soda shop. Late again, are you? Bring also
the axe and the rack of frying-pans.’

Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae iv, 169b–c

tr. C.B. Gulick (Loeb vol. 2, 1928, 267–69)

In earlier centuries, however, the presence

of graters in military and/or socially elevated
male contexts is by no means confined to SPG
Lefkandi. It is attested in Homer; and a
number of graters have long been known
along the Tyrrhenian seaboard of Italy, where
they are first encountered in the Orientalizing
‘princely’ and other rich tombs of the 7th
century. The following notes have been
compiled in the hope that these relatively
familiar instances may shed light not only on
the life-style of 9th-century Euboean warriors,
but also, and more particularly, on certain
wider issues that are of considerable current
interest. Throughout, I am assuming that the
function of the graters treated here corre-
sponds to that of the Homeric knestis (see
below) and of the later Greek turoknestis: and
that accordingly, when they occur in the
archaeological record, these intriguing arte-
facts denote the real (or conceivably sym-
bolic) activity of grating cheese.

THE CONTENTS OF NESTOR’S CUP

Cheese is grated on a bronze grater at a

crucial juncture in the grim and violent
narrative of Iliad xi. Amidst the general
Achaean rout, Nestor rescues the wounded
Machaon and takes him to his hut. They are
eventually joined there by Patroclus (who
will die before the day is out), and meanwhile
Nestor’s lovely companion Hecamede duti-
fully prepares what is clearly regarded by
those present as refreshment appropriate to
the circumstances:

She first moved up a table for them, a
beautiful polished table with feet of dark
blue enamel, and on it she placed a bronze
dish with an onion as accompaniment for
the drink, and fresh honey, and beside it
bread of sacred barley-meal. Next a most
beautiful cup, which the old man had
brought from home — it was studded with
rivets of gold, and there were four handles
to it: on each handle a pair of golden doves
was feeding, one on either side: and there
were two supports below. Another man
would strain to move it from the table
when it was full, but Nestor, the old man,
could lift it with ease. It was in this cup
that the woman, beautiful as the god-
desses, mixed them their drink out of
Pramnian wine, over which she grated
goat’s cheese on a bronze grater, and
sprinkled white barley: and when the toddy
was prepared, she told them to drink. Now
when both had drunk and quenched their
parching thirst, and were enjoying the
pleasure of their conversation . . .

Iliad xi, 628–643

tr. M. Hammond (Penguin Classics 1987,

209; emphasis added)

Nestor’s depas, as ‘the only cup accorded a

detailed description in Homer’ (Lorimer

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1950, 328), has attracted a good deal of
attention for a variety of reasons that need
not concern us here. Its typology and precise
function — mixing bowl and drinking cup?
krater and depas?

4

— are less important to

our present purposes than what it contained
by the time Hecamede had finished with it.
Attempts to convey in English translation
some idea of the recipe she uses have been
too many and too varied to inspire much
confidence. The most recent translation that I
have consulted (above) calls the end product
‘toddy’; the most recent commentary cites
‘frumenty or furmity’ (a` la mode de Caster-
bridge), ‘potage’, and ‘stimulating porridge’
(Hainsworth 1993, 293); and it would
probably not be difficult to extend this list
of more or less appetizing Hyperborean
regional beverages. The actual word that
Homer uses is kykeon, which need mean no
more than ‘mixture’:

any form of mixture of grain (alphi) and
liquid (water, wine, milk, honey, oil),
often seasoned with herbs (pennyroyal,
thyme, mint, etc.). It belongs to an
intermediate stage between that of eating
the grains (or offering them to the gods)
whole, and the introduction of fine milling
and baking (Richardson 1974, 344).

The same word is used by a number of later
writers, and often denotes a mixture with
medicinal properties (references and com-
ments: Richardson 1974, 344–48); it is
interesting to see that the medical aspects of
the Iliad passage cited above were empha-
sised by Plato.

5

Most notably, perhaps

(although not necessarily relevant here),
kykeon is the word used to denote the sacred
potion imbibed by the initiates at Eleusis
(Delatte 1955). In this connection, there have
been suggestions that the barley-meal com-
ponent was fermented; or, if afflicted by

fungal growth, that it might acquire psy-
choactive and/or hallucinogenic properties —
a possibility that has indeed been extended to
the Homeric passage above (Tsavella-Evjen
1983, 188; so too Hijmans 1992, 31).

It has been remarked that, after their fast,

the initiates at Eleusis might have needed
simply to be soothed, refreshed and sustained
for what lay ahead, and that this effect could
have been achieved by modern peppermint
tea (Richardson 1974, 345). Machaon’s
circumstances, on the other hand, surely call
for something stronger. He is a hero (who is
also a healer himself and therefore capable of
appreciating his own condition); a terrible
battle is raging, and he has been wounded in
it. His injury, caused by a three-barbed arrow
in the shoulder, is probably not in itself life-
threatening, but it is bound to be extremely
painful — and when he has been assisted to
Nestor’s hut, Hecamede can probably guess
(even if he cannot) that he must also steel
himself for a lecture; in the event, it was
Nestor’s longest. Like any good hostess, she
saw instantly that this was not an occasion
merely for light refreshment (or an aperitivo,
as Blanck 1987, 113): and we are surely
meant to infer that the mixture she prepared
instead had the desired effect. It is not clear
whether that effect was literally halluci-
nogenic, narcotic or otherwise psychoactive:
we are simply told that it was thirst-
quenching, and we are surely justified in
assuming that it was also analgesic. It may be
relevant to note that Machaon’s wound is not
even washed until the beginning of Iliad xiv
(1–8), when Nestor goes back to the battle-
field to see what has been going on while he
has been lecturing.

More than anything else, in fact, the

mixture that Hecamede prepared for Ma-
chaon seems to have the characteristics of an
effective pain-killer; and it seems most likely
that in terms of liquid volume its principal

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ingredient was Pramnian wine. ‘Pramnos’ is
not attested as a toponym, which is all the
stranger in view of the fact that its wine had a
certain reputation throughout antiquity. An
anthology of comments compiled c.200 AD
tells us that Pramnian wine is

neither sweet nor rich, but dry, hard, and
of extraordinary strength . . .

Pramnian wines, which contract the eye-
brows as well as the bowels . . .

[it is] called by some ‘medicated’ . . .

the vine which bears the Pramnian of
Icaros . . . is called by foreigner ‘sacred’,
but by the natives of Oenoe ‘Dionysias’ . . .

Didymus declares that Pramnian gets its
name from a vine called Pramnia; others
say that it is a special term for all dark
wine, while some assert that it may be
applied in general to all wine of good
keeping qualities, as if the word were
paramonion (‘enduring’); still others ex-
plain it as ‘assuaging the spirit’ (pray¨non-
ta), since drinkers of it are mild tempered.

Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae i, 30b–e

tr. C.B. Gulick (Loeb vol. 1, 1927, 133–35)

These and other ancient comments (Dalby
1996, 100f.; 254 note 51) leave us with the
impression of a drink that, although ulti-
mately derived from the grape (like brandy
and grappa), nevertheless has properties
quite unlike those of, say, the Lemnian that
the Achaean troops were able to purchase on
at least one occasion (Iliad vii, 472), or the
Thracian

vin ordinaire that was being

shipped in to them daily (Iliad ix, 72). The
taste was probably its worst feature: but this
could be mitigated by the addition of other
strongly flavoured elements. Grated goat’s
cheese clearly does not spring to the modern
mind for this purpose,

6

and neither for that

matter does ‘an onion as accompaniment’ (or
relish: Dalby 1996, 22–24): but both invari-
ably make their presence felt in one way or
another, and in ancient terms had the obvious
virtue of being at least as readily available
as, say, barley — cheese also keeps well, and
is easy to carry. Whether anyone, ancient or
modern, would find the taste of the resulting
mixture to be pleasant is a moot point: but if
this kykeon was ‘strong’ in the basic
alcoholic sense, one can imagine that the
effects might be perceived as on the whole
very pleasant. So much so, in fact, that some
might wish to indulge for purposes other
than the strictly medicinal. Nestor himself is
a case in point: he has not been wounded,
and he carries on drinking until the begin-
ning of Iliad xiv. But then, as Andrew
Sherratt has recently reminded us,

. . . the availability of psychoactive pro-
ducts is a constant temptation to ‘misuse’
— a term that implies less a medical
judgement than a social one, in the sense
of an unrestricted (and possibly habit-
forming) hedonism. Few cultures allow
this privilege to more than a fraction of
their members, whether this fraction is
defined by gender, status, wealth, or a
combination of all three (A. Sherratt 1995,
15).

We might recall, too, that on another

memorable Homeric occasion, precisely the
same mixture as that prepared in Nestor’s hut
was so welcome to some of Odysseus’
companions that Circe could use it as the
vehicle for the sinister pharmaka that enabled
her to change Eurylochos’ group into pigs
(Odyssey x, 229–243, esp. 234f). We are not
told that Circe used a grater: is this simply
the luck of the poetic draw, or would it have
been out of place for her to possess a utensil
associated in the audience’s mind with the
field of battle rather than the kitchen? In

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either case, it is worth remembering that, as
Susan Sherratt has pointed out, it is compara-
tively rare in Homer for wine to be mixed
with other substances, psychoactive or other-
wise: and that although men drink the results,
the mixtures are invariably concocted by
foreign or ‘strange’ women — Hecamede is a
Trojan captive, Circe (Hijmans 1992) is the
daughter of Helios.

7

I agree that this might

imply a connection between such potions and
a non-Greek cultural ethos — indeed, I think
it almost certainly does; but the combination
of exotic females and unusual (doctored?)
drinks is also one that young seafarers and
soldiers have been warned against by their
fathers since the beginning of time, and
surely were at the outgoing and cosmopolitan
centre that was 9th-century Lefkandi.

At this point, it seems reasonable to ask,

and to attempt to answer, the ‘chicken or egg’
question: which came first? On the restricted
front treated here, does the presence of
bronze cheese-graters among the grave goods
of 9th-century Euboean warriors at Lefkandi
mean that life is copying Homer, or that
Homer is copying life? I am aware both that
similar questions have been discussed else-
where (e.g. Whitley 1991, 34–39; Hurwit
1993), and that in recent years the idea of a
special relationship between Euboea and the
Homeric epics has gained a good deal of
ground:

[i]f there was anywhere where eastern
mythological poetry might have run up
against Greek in the generations before
Homer, it was Euboea — just where . . .
the old Greek heroic tradition was entering
a marvellous new creative phase between
the late tenth and the mid eighth century
(M.L. West 1988, 170f.; cf Winter 1995,
261f.).

It would be hard to find an historical

audience that fits more closely what we
can infer from the poems than the affluent,
seafaring Euboians . . . Homer’s tale of
international warfare waged on a plain
would have special meaning to men who
fought the first historical war in Greece,
on the Lelantine Plain . . . The Odyssey’s
theme of longing for home after dangerous
adventure in the far West would also have
special relevance to men who actually
travelled to the far West . . . (Powell 1991,
231; and see Powell 1993).

. . . la rotta di Ulisse pare proprio disegnare
la mappa archeologica dei siti di ritrova-
menti euboici sulla rotta dell’occidente
(Braccesi 1993, 15).

The Euboeans who settled on Ischia (and
soon afterwards founded Cumae on the
mainland) were the carriers of a powerful
virus — the Ionian (and now panhellenic)
epic tradition (Wiseman 1995, 35).

And so on. There is undoubtedly a certain
charm in the thought of real-life warriors (or
warrior-traders) at Lefkandi packing graters
into their kit bags after hearing a recitation of
Iliad xi: but, as in the better known case of
the Lefkandi horse-burials (Popham 1993,
22), this degree of deliberate imitation of
Homeric practice is not really convincing. It
is, I believe, much more likely that the bards
who recited the Homeric poems at home and
abroad made it their business to capture and
keep their audiences’ attention by means of
references to the material circumstances and
traditions of their own time.

8

In other words,

the version of the Homeric poems that has
come down to us will contain allusions that
could have been formulated at any time in the
Bronze and Early Iron Ages, as in the case of
iron and iron tools (E.S. Sherratt 1994, 78–
80; and note too the appearance at Iliad xviii,

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401 of a certain combination of bronze
personal ornaments that seems to have been
in use during the second half of the 8th
century at Pithekoussai: Ridgway 1994, 72).

On this reckoning, I submit that bronze

cheese-graters at Lefkandi make perfectly
good sense as part of a warrior’s personal
property. A grater could have been regarded
as essential both to the preparation of an
effective pain-killer and to the kind of serious
non-medicinal drinking that is not unknown
in military circles: if so, there would be two
reasons why mention of the key words in a
recitation would be likely to provoke an
appreciative audience reaction.

Athenaeus (above) locates the source of

Pramnian wine on the island of Icaros, mid-
way between Myconos and Samos; Pliny

(Nat. Hist. xiv, 6.54) associates it with
Smyrna. Either location would be well within
the geographical range covered by the
Euboean ‘warrior trader’ buried with a grater
in Tomb 79B in the Toumba cemetery at
Lefkandi, and by a good many of his
contemporaries (Popham 1994). This obser-
vation is not in itself affected by the
suggestion that the tomb in question might
in fact be the grave of an enterprising
easterner, Phoenician or Cypriot, whose
status in life at Lefkandi would have been
that of a ‘resident alien’ — perhaps (though I
think this highly unlikely) one of ‘the
progenitors of the later metics of the Greek
polis’ (Papadopoulos 1996, 159 with further
references). Did early Phoenicians and Cy-
priots grate cheese?

9

Whatever the answer to

Figure 1

Surviving fragments (above) with integrations (below) of the retrograde metrical inscription from Pithekoussai grave

168 (Buchner and Ridgway 1993, pl. 73; c. 725–700 BC): ‘Nestor’s cup was good to drink from, but anyone who

drinks from this cup will soon be struck with desire for fair-crowned Aphrodite’.

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this not entirely rhetorical question, it has
been acutely noted that the geographical
denomination of wines (such as Lemnian
and Thracian) could itself be a natural
consequence of increased portability (Dalby
1996, 95). How much Homeric kykeon was
consumed from the pendent semicircle sky-
phoi (drinking cups) associated with the
bronze graters in the other two SPG contexts
listed above? — and in the other Euboean
skyphoi like them that eventually found their
way to the West (d’Agostino 1990; more
recently Peserico 1995; von Hase 1995)?

Although we shall presumably never be

able to answer this question, it seems safe to
assume that at least some of the first Western
Greeks knew about Hecamede’s mixture.
Quite independently of the archaeological
considerations expounded here, the majority
of literary specialists seem to be in no doubt
that the famous metrical inscription (Figure
1) on the Rhodian Late Geometric kotyle
(drinking cup) from tomb 168 (c.725–700) at
Euboean Pithekoussai (Ischia) on the Bay of
Naples alludes to the Hecamede-Machaon
episode in Nestor’s hut.

10

In fact, the first

few words could hardly be more explicit:
Nestoros . . . eupoton poterion — ‘Nestor’s
cup, good to drink from.’ Or ‘that does you
good’? — or both? (Pithekoussan humour is
a serious business: Hansen 1976). And — as
luck would have it! — while this paper was
being written (Summer 1996), two bronze
graters were discovered in a 7th-century
domestic context during further excavation
of the Greek farmstead site at Punta Chiarito
on the southwest coast of Ischia, c.12 km as
the crow flies from the acropolis of Pithe-
koussai.

11

CAMPANIA, LATIUM, SOUTHERN ETRURIA AND

TUSCANY

Many graters have come to light in Italy

since a passage in Aristophanes prompted
compilation of the first list more than 60
years ago (Jacobsthal 1932). It is now known,
for example, that a particularly fine specimen
(1. 16 cm.; BM inv. GR 1975.8–4.20) was
acquired by Sir William Hamilton at Trebbia,
near Capua, from a tomb he caused to be
opened there in 1766. The handsome corredo
(Figure 2) of which it is part has survived in
the British Museum, and is well-supplied
with drinking equipment — notably a bowl,
wine-strainer and wine-ladle, all of bronze: it
also includes two iron swords, and is dated to
the decades 440–420 BC by an Attic red
figure bell-krater, attributed to the Lykaon
Painter and depicting four symposiasts (Jen-
kins and Sloan 1996, 141–43 no. 25a–i).
Other individual specimens from Italian sites
have attracted useful comments and further
lists of occurrences.

12

The chronological

range extends from Orientalizing to the 3rd
century; the geographical distribution even-
tually covers the Etrusco-Italic areas (Etruria
itself; Etruria padana; the Etruscan[ized]
centres in Campania; Picenum; Apulia) and
Sicily — where it was long ago remarked
that a handsome iron grater, 20

7 cm, from

a Middle Corinthian tomb at Syracuse was
‘the largest of the many held by the Museum’
(Orsi 1925, 186). A constant feature of these
graters is their uncompromisingly functional
appearance — ‘la parvenza di appartenere
ancora alla vita, quasi fosse pronto per l’uso,’
as a modern scholar has remarked (Zancani
Montuoro 1983, 5), in very much the same
words that D’Hancarville had used about the
Trebbia grater two centuries earlier (Jenkins
and Sloan 1996, 143). This engaging feature
inhibits the a priori attribution to specific
centres or centuries of unprovenanced speci-
mens like the following:

COPENHAGEN, National Museum (De-
partment of Near Eastern and Classical

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Antiquities): inv. ABa 465; ‘bought in
Italy 1846;’ cited by Blinkenberg 1931,
215 as a parallel for an example from
Lindos; noted by Jacobsthal 1932, 5
(‘1864’; 18

8.2 cm’); otherwise unpub-

lished. 22

7.5 cm (Figure 3).

VATICAN CITY, Gregorian Etruscan
Museum: inv. 11175; Buranelli 1992, 77
cat. no. 43 (first publication; but see
Robinson 1941, 191 note 18; and now
Popham and Lemos 1996, pl. 158c). 18

9.8 cm.

All told, I estimate that a complete Italian

Corpus Radularum Antiquarum would now

run to several dozen entries; it will not be
attempted here, and neither will any kind of
typology. I limit myself to the earliest Italian
examples that I have been able to locate in the
literature, all of bronze (with two exceptions)
and all in graves of the 7th century (within
which a closer estimate has been accepted or
attempted as appropriate). The following list,
arranged from South to North (Figure 4) has
no pretence at completeness:

Campania

1

PONTECAGNANO,

tomb

928:

c.675–650; d’Agostino 1977, 15 no. R68,

Figure 2

Grave-group with grater from Trebbia, Campania, acquired by Sir William Hamilton in 1766; now in London

(Jenkins and Sloan 1996, 142 no. 25a–i; c.440–420 BC). Photo courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum.

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53, 100 fig. 22, pl. 18e. Fragment;
dimensions not stated.

2

SAN MARZANO, tomb 164. Unpub-

lished; mentioned by Gastaldi 1979, 23.

3

CALES (Calvi), tomb 1: c.625/620;

Chiesa 1993, 35 no. 16, 68–69, pls. 4, 33.
Incomplete; 12.5

7 cm preserved (Fig-

ure 5, left).

Latium vetus

4

LAVINIUM (Pratica di Mare), tomb

under the ‘heroon of Aeneas:’ c.660; CLP
1976, 310 cat. no. 102/34 (P. Sommella),
pl. 79 no. 34. Incomplete; 8

5.4 cm

preserved.

5

CASTEL DI DECIMA, tomb 152:

c.690; CLP 1976, 273 cat. no. 84/31 (F.
Zevi). Fragment, not illustrated; 6.6

3.5 cm.

6

PRAENESTE,

Tomba

Bernardini:

c.675; Canciani and von Hase 1979, 42
no. 33, pl. 20 no. 3; Alimentazione 174 cat.
no. 68. Silver; 12.5

8.7 cm.

Southern Etruria

7

CAERE, Montetosto tumulus: unpub-

lished (not mentioned in Rizzo 1989);
listed by Cristofani 1980, 24 n. 48. Silver.

8

MAZZANO ROMANO, tomb 63:

Pasqui 1902, 595 fig. 1. 14.8

7.2 cm.

Tuscany

9

MARSILIANA D’ALBEGNA, Bandi-

tella cemetery, tomb 10: c.675–650 (Bag-
nasco Gianni 1996, 225); Minto 1921, 49,
pl. 37 no. 3. Trapezoidal; length 11 cm.

10–11

POGGIO

BUCO.

Tomb

B:

c.675–650; Matteucig 1951, 29 no. 66,
pl. 23 no. 3. Incomplete; dimensions not
stated.
Tomb V: c.650; Bartoloni 1972, 63 fig. 28
no. 21, 64 no. 21, pl. 31d. 11

7 cm

(Figure 5, right).

Figure 3

Grater ‘bought in Italy;’ now in Copenhagen. Photo

courtesy of the National Museum, Copenhagen.

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12

SOVANA: unpublished; listed by

Cristofani 1980, 24 note 48.

13

VETULONIA, Tomba

del

Duce,

‘fourth group:’ c.650 (Bagnasco Gianni
1996, 246); Camporeale 1967, 96 no. 54,

pl. 17e. Fragment; 4.2

3.5 cm preserved.

14–17

POPULONIA. Tomba dei Flabel-

li:

13

Minto 1931, 301f., 341f., pl. 10 nos.

2, 6, 8. Three incomplete: 11.5

5.5 cm;

11

5.5 cm; 9 7 cm.

Figure 4

Distribution map of graters in 7th-century graves in CAMPANIA (1, Pontecagnano; 2, San Marzano; 3, Cales),

LATIUM VETUS (4, Lavinium; 5, Castel di Decima; 6, Praeneste), SOUTHERN ETRURIA (7, Caere; 8, Mazzano

Romano) and TUSCANY (9, Marsiliana d’Albegna; 10–11, Poggio Buco; 12, Sovana; 13, Vetulonia; 14–17, Populonia)

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Tomb 30: De Agostino 1961, 88 no. 1.
12.5

6 cm.

Three features of this list call for comment.

Firstly, all the graters listed above come from
corredi that are ‘rich’, and in some cases
extremely so. Two of them, containing nos. 6
and 13, have indeed been cited on many
occasions as classic Orientalizing tombe
principesche (‘princely graves’) of the first
half of the 7th century; the context of no. 1 is
clearly in the same class, and so too are those
of nos. 7 and 14–16. Grater no. 2 comes from
an unpublished tomb that, we are told, is ‘una
delle sepolture ‘‘principesche’’ in localita`
‘‘Castello’’ di S. Marzano che ha restituito
il corredo maschile piu` ricco fra le tombe
dell’Orientalizzante’ (Gastaldi 1979, 23).
Cheese was thus grated in 7th-century
Tyrrhenian contexts at the highest level of
indigenous society, and this activity was
deemed to be worth recording in the graves
of men whose other grave goods regularly
included — for whatever reason (Frederiksen

1984, 71–74) — magnificent arms and
armour (e.g. nos. 6 and 14–16, and the
chariot-burial no. 9) and sophisticated uten-
sils of precious metal and imported pottery
for feasting and drinking. Secondly, in view
of the ‘Lefkandi connection,’ we might have
expected the distribution of bronze graters in
the 7th century to have rather more in
common than it does with that of the
Euboean ‘pre-colonial’ types of skyphos that
had begun to reach the West early in the 8th:
in the event, the latter are relatively plentiful
in Campania and Southern Etruria (e.g. at
Villanovan Veii: Ridgway 1988, whence
Figure 6), and conspicuous by their complete
absence from the area immediately to the
north, corresponding to modern Tuscany
(maps: Peserico 1995, 431 Abb. 9; 435
Abb. 13) — which provides just over half
(nos. 9–17) of the 17 graters collected here.

14

Thirdly, and without exception, the thirteen
centres involved were, and remained, ‘native’
rather than ‘Hellenized’.

The Orientalizing centres listed above

Figure 5

Left: bronze grater from tomb 1, Cales, Campania; Fig. 4, 3 (Chiesa 1993, pl. 4 no. 16; c.625/620 BC). Right: bronze

grater from tomb V, Poggio Buco, Tuscany; Fig. 4, 11 (Bartoloni 1972, 63 fig. 28 no. 21; c.650 BC).

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constitute a representative cross-section of
precisely the chronological, cultural and
social ambiente that, following the rapid
decline of Pithekoussai at the end of the 8th
century, was crucially affected by the role of
‘Euboean’ Campania (particularly Cumae) in
the transmission of new wares — and
sometimes their makers — to the emerging
indigenous e´lites of Latium and Etruria (e.g.
Rizzo 1989, 154, 161; Ridgway 1992, 140–
44). With the wares came the Greek alphabet,
and hence Etruscan literacy: an Etruscan
name is attested epigraphically, in Greek, at
Pithekoussai itself by c.700, and it has been
authoritatively argued that the well-known
Tataie and the notoriously enigmatic hisa-
menetinnuna (c.700–690) inscriptions at Cu-
mae represent two more early Etruscans
there, of which the latter — Hisa Tinnuna
— was, pace Frederiksen 1984, 119 and

Cassio 1993, using the Euboean version of
the Greek alphabet to write, or to have
something written, in his own language
(Colonna 1995). Five of the ten centres north
of Campania in the above list have yielded a
total of 24 Etruscan inscriptions that are
earlier than c.650; and three of them indeed
have graters in direct association with such
inscriptions.

15

As in contemporary Greece

(Powell 1991, 123–58), the majority of these
pieces of early writing are ‘short;’ a few are
longer, but need not detain us here; and one,
from the sumptuously appointed ‘Circolo
degli Avori’ at Marsiliana d’Albegna, vir-
tually contemporary with the context of
grater no. 9, is a well-known Etruscan model
alphabet inscribed round the edge of a
miniature ivory writing tablet. This remark-
able artefact was found with other writing
implements (styluses and erasers), and the

Figure 6

Euboean ‘pre-colonial’ skyphoi (drinking cups) from the Quattro Fontanili Villanovan cemetery at Veii, Southern

Etruria (Ridgway 1988, 491 fig. 1)

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alphabet it bears has long been regarded as a
later version of a Cumaean alphabet related
to that employed in the ‘Nestor cup’ inscrip-
tion from Pithekoussai.

16

As I have already hinted, it is not at all

easy, at first sight, to relate the geographical
distribution of the grater list above either to
the ‘pre-colonial’ phenomenon in general or
to the establishment, by 750 at the very latest,
of the first Western Greek base on the island
of Ischia — although the associations of the
San Marzano grater, no. 2 above, are said to
include a cup of Protocorinthian type that
‘per le caratteristiche dell’argilla potrebbe
essere pitecusana’ (d’Agostino 1979, 64).
Should we attribute the material diffusion of
graters on the Italian mainland to the
activities of craftsmen (many of Euboean
descent) from a now greatly diminished
Pithekoussai, eager to exploit the new
markets brought into being by the social
aspirations of the newly-rich indigenous
e´lites in Latium and Etruria? Maybe: these
highly skilled men were, after all, responsible
to a significant degree for the outward
appearance of much that we call Etruscan
Orientalizing. But it is hard to feel wholly
confident that it was acceptable for a foreign
craftsman to introduce a ‘prince’ to a new
kind of drink and the frankly improbable
equipment necessary for its preparation.

Accordingly, I suggest that the 7th-century

distribution of Greek-style cheese-graters
along the Tyrrhenian seaboard is most likely
to have been achieved on the basis of
previous experience of their purpose and of
their associations. Graters nos. 9–17 come
from centres in and around the mineral rich
zone of Tuscany that is traditionally sup-
posed to have attracted the Greeks to the
West in the first place (e.g. Dunbabin 1948,
7f.): and Populonia (nos. 14–17), the only
Etruscan ‘coastal’ centre that is actually on
the coast, is its principal port. We have

already seen that there are no ‘pre-colonial’
Euboean skyphoi in this area; nor, it must be
admitted, is there any conventional (i.e.
ceramic) evidence for contact between Tus-
cany and Euboean Pithekoussai in the second
half of the 8th century — a period to which,
as it happens, hardly any corredi at Populo-
nia can safely be attributed (Romualdi 1994,
171). But the finds from the Pithekoussan
‘suburban industrial complex’ in the Mazzola
area of Lacco Ameno d’Ischia (Ridgway
1992, 91–96) confirm that iron was worked at
the first Western Greek base from the mid-
8th century onwards: the successive floor
levels of this intriguing site have yielded
many pieces of bloom and iron slag. Tuscany
is the nearest source of iron ore (of which
these are the waste products); and analysis of
a regrettably undatable piece of actual iron
mineral from another of the component sites
of Pithekoussai has demonstrated unequivo-
cally that it was mined on Elba (opposite
Populonia: Buchner 1969, 97–98). It might
be that the nine graters from Tuscany listed
above were the first ones to find a place in
corredi: the drinking custom they represent
could have been imported to the local
‘princes’ towards the end of the 8th century.

A suitable scenario might easily involve

Euboean negotiators seeking to ensure a
steady supply of iron ore from the hills of
Tuscany to the Bay of Naples — very much
as their Roman successors did (see Diodorus
Siculus v, 13 on the merchants who com-
muted between Aithalia [Elba] and Dicearch-
ia [Puteoli=modern Pozzuoli]). Is there,
perhaps, a role here for the newly-identified
Hisa Tinnuna (above) and others like him?
He was an Etruscan who used his own
formula (mene=make [gift]) on his contribu-
tion to a corredo at Cumae c.700–690. His
use, especially in this solemn context, of his
own language could mean that he was not a
permanent

and

fully-integrated

resident,

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while the fact that he has not only a personal
name (Hisa) but also a family name (Tinnu-
na) — this is the oldest attested example in
Etruscan of the two-name formula — sug-
gests that he was recognized at Euboean
Cumae as a person of rank among his own
people. In Greek terms, he was certainly not
a mere metic: he seems rather to be an
honoured guest (xenos: Colonna 1995, 340.
Cf Frederiksen 1984, 119: ‘an Etruscan
presence in Cumae so early would be of
some importance’).

CONCLUSION

Bronze cheese-graters were used and

seemingly highly prized in 9th-century Lef-
kandi. Two centuries later, the same is true of
the no less affluent and well connected
societies of Early Orientalizing Campania,
Latium vetus, Southern Etruria and Tuscany.
There is nothing very surprising, or new,
about this situation. It has long been apparent
that some aspects of the archaeological
record of the Protogeometric heroon at
Lefkandi, including the geographical range
of contacts indicated by its more exotic
contents, recall the Italian ‘princely tombs’
discussed in the previous section. Have we,
then, arrived at the ultimate source of what
some would still call the ‘Hellenization of the
barbarians’? Perhaps: whatever its implica-
tion for the date of the Iliad in something like
its present form (Seaford 1994, 145), knowl-
edge, doubtless limited in scope and effect, of
Nestor’s Cup (and of the pleasant effects of
drinking from it) had reached the Bay of
Naples well before the end of the 8th century.

On a more mundane level, however, it

seems that the 9th-century cheese-graters
from Lefkandi have made it possible to
propose part of the answer — not necessarily
a large part, but more than we have had
before — to a question that is not asked as

often as it should be (but see below): what
were the first Western Greeks able to offer
the early Etruscans (who were not barbar-
ians) in exchange for access to the mineral
resources of Tuscany? My answer, ‘a drink,’
is hardly a novelty. Aegean kraters and
drinking vessels in ‘princely’ Cypriot tombs
are well known (Attic Middle Geometric at
Salamis,

Euboean

Late

Geometric

at

Amathus: Coldstream 1983; cf Luke 1994,
25); and the Cesnola krater from Kourion,
created c.750, has long been recognized as a
‘compendium’ for the Euboean potters at
Pithekoussai (with interesting consequences
for their colleagues in Etruria; see most
recently Coldstream 1994; and in general
Gisler 1995). As Murray (1994, 54) has
observed of the far-flung distribution of
Euboean skyphoi with pendent semicircles
and other motifs: ‘the function of the pottery
attests the diffusion of a social custom.’ I
have tried to show that the same has a good
chance of being true of cheese-graters in
Etruscan Orientalizing male tombs of the
highest social level — just as it is of the
better known and more obviously prestigious
metal and other vessels with which they are
associated there. We should not forget that
J.N. Coldstream, in reply to a question from
Paul Courbin (‘The kraters were gifts ex-
changed for what?’), proposed ‘possibly
access to metalliferous areas. This might
explain . . . the more surprising exports to the
far west . . .’ (Coldstream 1983, 207); or that
the only Euboean skyphos directly associated
with Western metallurgical activities is a fine
example of the type with pendent concentric
semicircles (similar to Figure 6, top) that
currently ‘has some sort of claim to be
regarded as the oldest known ‘‘pre-colonial’’
Greek vase in the West . . .’ (Sant’Imbenia,
Sardinia: Ridgway 1995, 80; 81 fig. 5).

Finally, it is not clear to me whether the

Etruscans could produce a vintage with the

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special characteristics of Homeric Pram-
nian:

17

but I am not sure that they would

have wanted to. In the social circumstances
that I envisage, the practical relevance of the
analgesic properties appropriate to the battle-
field will long ago (perhaps at Pithekoussai?)
have been overtaken by the significance of
heroic antecedents and pleasurable effects (cf
A. Sherratt 1995, 15, quoted above): for we
are approaching the world of the Etruscan
banquet, in which more than drinking is
involved (Rathje 1990 and 1994; Small
1994). Before we take our (reclining) places,
there is no need for us to cite more recent
historical uses of ‘firewater’ in the exploita-
tion of indigenous populations and their
natural resources by technologically (though
not always culturally) superior incomers. We
might with advantage think rather of the later
European Iron Age milieu of the Vix krater
(Wells 1980), and reflect that the specialized
equipment required for the preparation and
consumption of rare, precious and intoxicat-
ing liquids has a most appropriate role to play
when the universal obligations of gift-ex-
change come into force between different
cultures.

Acknowledgements

Nobody but myself should be blamed for any

mistakes of fact, judgement and taste in this paper.
That said, I gratefully acknowledge that I would not
have written it if my Edinburgh colleague Irene Lemos
had not drawn my attention to the Lefkandi graters and
wanted to know more about their Italian cousins. She,
Nicolas Coldstream, Annette Rathje, Francesca R. Serra
Ridgway, Gillian Shepherd and Andrew and Susan

Sherratt have most generously answered my appeals for
advice and information, and I thank them for saving me
from error and for encouraging me to proceed — as did
Giovanna Bagnasco Gianni and Alfonso Mele, of whom
the latter responded from the floor more kindly than I
deserved to the tentative notes on Euboean and Etruscan
cheese-grating that I incorporated in a paper to the
‘Orientale-Be´rard-Edinburgh’ Euboean conference in
Naples (November 1996). It is a pleasure to recall that
this paper was drafted in successive visits to Annette
Rathje’s incomparable Institute in Copenhagen, where
the good offices of Bodil Bundgaard Rasmussen
(National Museum) ensured that I was both aware of
and able to illustrate the grater shown here as Fig. 3.
Nearer home, Judith Swaddling (British Museum)
performed the same service in respect of the fine
corredo in her care that appears as Fig. 2; Gordon
Thomas (Department of Archaeology, University of
Edinburgh) drew the map, Fig. 4: my best thanks to
them all.

I dedicate these pages to the memory of Stuart

Piggott (1910–1996), Abercromby Professor Emeritus
of Prehistoric Archaeology in the University of
Edinburgh. I do so in deep and lasting gratitude for
his friendship, and for the unswerving support and trust
that he accorded my endeavours at Pithekoussai from
the day I joined his Department in 1968. In the crucial
years for archaeology between then and his retirement
in 1977, I count myself fortunate indeed to have had a
Head of Department who never tried to convince me
that the first Western Greeks’ first Western base was
‘inhabited not by human beings — stinking likeable
witless intelligent incalculable real awful people — but
by the pale phantoms of modern theory, who do not
live, but just cower in ecological niches, get caught in
catchment areas, and are entangled in redistributive
systems’ (Antiquity 59, 1985, 146).

University of Edinburgh

Department of Classics

David Hume Tower

George Square

Edinburgh EH8 9JX

NOTES

1

The chronological attributions given in the list that

follows are those of Popham and Lemos 1996; see p. vii
for the new subdivision of SPG III; and ch. 12, Tables 1
and 2, for the contents and dates of the individual tombs

and pyres. I am grateful to Dr Lemos for her advice on
these matters, for providing the dimensions of the
Lefkandi graters, and for confirming that the three
graters assigned on Table 1 to Tomb 79A are the result
of a misprint.
2

It has been suggested that ‘this well-appointed tomb

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339

could as easily be the grave of an easterner buried in
Greek lands:’ Papadopoulos 1996, 159. I am happy to
leave discussion of this apparently delicate matter to
others; see meanwhile Winter 1995.
3

Aristophanes, Wasps (presented in 422 BC) 938,

963; Birds (414 BC) 1579; Lysistrata (411 BC) 231, on
which see Jacobsthal 1932. Sparkes 1962, 132, 136 no.
56 is a homely Boeotian terracotta model of the early
5th century; Robinson 1941, 191–194 with pls. 48, 49
illustrates a number of fine specimens from Olynthus
s.v. ‘Household Furnishings’, dating ‘mostly from the
first half of the 4th century;’ Daremberg-Saglio IV, 2
s.v. radula is still informative. Etruscan kitchens and
their equipment: Blanck 1987 (graters: 113); Barbieri
1987; Buranelli 1992, 65–77.

An iron (sic) grater is reported from a rare pre-

Classical domestic context (but see note 11 below:
Pithekoussai): the latest level in a house at Malthi in
Messenia. Waldbaum 1978, 31 assigns it to the 11th
century (Late Submycenaean — Early Protogeometric);
Susan Sherratt, to whom I am indebted for my
knowledge of this piece, suggests that a date in the
‘10th century at the earliest’ is more probable.
4

‘Whereas the drinking cup of a prince is known as

aleison, depas or kupella, that of a swineherd is called
skyphos, and instead of the krater used by princes to
mix wine, the swineherd has a kissubion, a bowl of ivy-
wood:’ van Wees 1995, 150 with note 5 — where it is
observed that at Odyssey ix, 346 the Cyclops drinks
straight from a kissubion ‘(which is not to say it is
meant to be a drinking cup).’ On the wider significance
of krater-use: Luke 1994.
5

At Ion 538c, Socrates asks Ion whether a doctor or a

rhapsode is the best person to decide whether Homer’s
description of the Hecamede-Machaon episode is
reasonable or not; and Ion (a rhapsode) replies ‘a
doctor.’ I am grateful to my Edinburgh colleague Keith
Rutter for directing me to this passage.
6

‘Pilbrow was chuckling to himself.

‘‘Much better than the poor old Achaeans —’’ I

distinguished among the chuckles. We asked what it
was all about, and Pilbrow became lucid:

‘‘I was reading the Iliad — Book XI — again in bed

— Pramnian wine sprinkled with grated goat’s cheese
— Oh, can anyone imagine how horrible that must have
been?’’’ (C.P. Snow, The Masters [1951], chapter xii:
emphasis in original).
7

I am extremely grateful to Dr Sherratt for allowing

me to see the text of the unpublished lecture in which
she made this interesting point: ‘Pots and potions:
cultures of consumption in the Mediterranean Bronze
Age,’ read at Rewley House, Oxford in March 1995.

8

This statement represents a cautious attempt to build

on what seems to be the consensus that is emerging
from the extensive recent discussion of the point at
issue: ‘Only those elements of the tradition which, for
technical or contextual reasons, are most resistant to
restructuring preserve remnants of previous creation.
These act as fossilized traces of the successive contexts
which formed the epics as we know them, and which
can themselves be read in the archaeological record’
(E.S. Sherratt 1990, 821); ‘[The oral] tradition was not
static or merely custodial, but underwent episodes of
active generation, incorporating features of each period
while at the same time retaining elements from the
Bronze Age. Though the poems as we have them may
be the product of a particular poet in a particular time,
they owe their material to the entire period in which
they were under formation’ (Antonaccio 1995, 6); ‘Our
conclusion must be that the setting of the Homeric epics
has intimate links with the contemporary world of the
poet. On the other hand, there are a number of
components in the epics which originate in earlier
periods, such as traces of the Mycenaean dialect present
in Homeric formulas or the mentioning of Mycenaean
artefacts (such as Meriones’ boar’s tusk plated helmet
or Nestor’s dove cup)’ (Crielaard 1995, 274; emphasis
added).
9

Graters are not to be confused with strainers, like the

remarkable devices in Tomb 49 at Palaepaphos-Skales
(Karageorghis 1983, fig. 1xxxviii, nos. 9 and 197),
which could conceivably be used in the preparation or
serving (pouring) of the ‘deadly pottage’ healed by
Elisha at II Kings 4.38–41.

‘Asia Minor’ (‘6th-5th centuries BC’) is said to be

the provenance of a bronze grater incorporating a goat
in the Norbert Schimmel collection (Muscarella 1974,
no. 22 [H. Hoffmann]; ht. 7.7 cm.); it is cast in one piece
with a solid rectangular base, under which a separate
grating sheet is attached by rivets and folded edges. I
suppose that this would be rubbed on the cheese, using
the goat as a handle, rather than the reverse; cf
Jacobsthal 1932, 3 Abb. 2 (Camiros; 5th century) and
Beil 2 no. 2 (lion; Boston 10.163).
10

Buchner and Ridgway 1993, 212–223 with pls. 67–

75 and cxxvi–cxxx; and see 751–759 (O. Vox) for
bibliography of the 165 relevant items published 1955–
1991. On the Homeric connections see most recently
Powell 1991, 163–67 (‘Europe’s first literary allusion’);
S. West 1994, 9; Cassio 1994, 55; Murray 1994, 50 (in a
treatment of the inscription as offering ‘the earliest
evidence for a distinctively sympotic life-style:’ 51).
The vase that bears this famous inscription was
produced in the first phase of the Rhodian Late

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Geometric Bird-kotyle workshop defined by J.N. Cold-
stream (1968, 277), and is thus a direct predecessor of
the Rhodian Subgeometric bird bowls referred to in note
14 below; at Pithekoussai, it is associated with no fewer
than four kraters (and one wonders how much kykeon
was mixed in them).
11

I am most grateful to Giorgio Buchner for this

information, and to Costanza Gialanella for showing me
the Pithekoussai graters during a memorable visit to the
Naples

Superintendency’s

Pozzuoli

storerooms

in

November 1996. See Ridgway 1995, 83 for a brief
account of previous work at Punta Chiarito; to the
references there cited add now Gialanella 1996.
12

Bailo Modesti 1980, 16–17; Cristofani 1980, 24

note 48 — the main source for the Tyrrhenian list that
appears below; Zancani Montuoro 1983, 5–8 with notes
7–8 — a characteristically incisive discussion of the
Homeric connection; Bellelli 1993, 90–91 (Nocera; one
of the graters is included in the impressive display of
5th-century aristocratic banqueting equipment illu-
strated by De Caro 1994, 45).
13

It must be admitted that the archaeological context

of these three graters, nos. 9–11 in the 7th-century
section of Cristofani’s list (note 12 above), is less than
satisfactory: the grave-goods associated with the four
depositions in the Tomba dei Flabelli, a chamber tomb,
are somewhat confused. Minto (1931, 363) rightly noted
the copious (‘la maggior parte’) similarities with the
grave-goods from the Regolini Galassi tomb at Caere
(c.675–650: Bagnasco Gianni 1996, 79, 347). Although
the full range seems to extend to c.575–550, there seems
to be rather more than a sporting chance that the three
graters nos. 14–16 belong to one of the pre-600 burials
— like e.g. the bronze shield of Strøm’s Orientalizing
Group B1, two Protocorinthian ovoid aryballoi and
many other items (Strøm 1971, 195). See also note 14
below.
14

Marina Martelli has noted a precisely similar

distinction between the distribution on the Italian
mainland of Rhodian Kreis- und Wellenbandstil ary-
balloi and the slightly later Subgeometric bird bowls.
Only the latter reach the more northerly area of Etruria,
where their distribution is mainly confined to Vetulonia
and Populonia. It includes one example each in the
contexts of nos. 13 and 14–16: Martelli Cristofani 1978,
154, 156–57 nos. 15 and 19 with pl. 76 figs. 2, 3 and 7,
8; both are of ‘Group II,’ c.675–640, in the classifica-
tion of Coldstream 1968, 299–301.
15

Direct associations: Praeneste, Tomba Bernardini

(no. 6; Bagnasco Gianni 1996, 303–304 no. 294; on a
silver cup; may be early Latin); Marsiliana d’Albegna,
Banditella 10 (no. 9; Bagnasco Gianni 1996, 225 no.

219; on a bronze tripod-bowl); Vetulonia, Tomba del
Duce, group 4 (no. 13; Bagnasco Gianni 1996, 246–248
no. 235: [1] on a relief-decorated kyathos of buccheroid
impasto; [2] on a fragmentary open vessel of silver). For
other Etruscan inscriptions in the c.700–650 range from
centres in the grater list see Bagnasco Gianni 1996,
346–347: Caere (ten more contexts; eighteen more
inscriptions); Poggio Buco (one more context; one more
inscription); Marsiliana d’Albegna (one more context;
three more inscriptions, including the model alphabet to
which reference is made in note 16 below).
16

The main issues raised by the Marsiliana model

alphabet can be pursued via Bagnasco Gianni 1996, 227
no. 221; see too G. and L. Bonfante 1983, 23 with 36
note 108 (styluses), 45 with 97 note 10, 106–107 with
figs. 10a, 11; and Powell 1991, 155–56 no. 55; 183 (‘too
small in size to be a real writing tablet, must be a model,
an amulet that carried the owner’s literacy into the other
world’).
17

The modern Chianti region is in the heart of

ancient Etruria; and Luni, on the border between
Tuscany and Liguria, was famous in antiquity for both
wine and cheese (Pliny, Nat. Hist. xi, 97.241; xiv, 8.68;
Martial xiii, 30).

ABBREVIATIONS

AIONArchStAnt: Annali, Istituto Universitario Orien-
tale, Napoli: sezione di Archeologia e Storia Antica.
Alimentazione: L’alimentazione nel mondo antico: Gli
Etruschi (Rome 1987).

REFERENCES

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