Water and olive oil: An analysis of rural scenes in black and red figure attic vases and the construction of the Athenian empire

Abstract

This chapter proposes to establish a discussion on the following hypothesis. The images on the Attic pottery show a drastic reduction of the rural scenes by the end of the sixth and beginning of the fifth centuries. This decrease was the direct result of a flagrant shift made by the Athenians towards urban space (asty) to the detriment of rural space (khora) after the victory in the Greek-Persian war. © 2005 Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, New York.