Histoires d'os - Pigs

Pigs were extremely important to ancient Greek culture. The adults – and especially the young - could be eaten, usually after they had been sacrificed to a god. Their skin, hooves, and bones could also be put to all sorts of industrial uses. It was useful that pigs could eat many different foods, including scraps and foods that humans couldn’t eat. They could survive in a variety of environments, being fairly hardy and tough. All the same, as a domesticated animal, pigs were smaller, calmer, and generally more manageable than their bigger relative, the wild boar. The size and strength of wild boars made them dangerous, not to mention their long sharp tusks. Hunting wild boars was good for fun and skill honing, but pigs were an easier, more reliable resource. Pigs are also intelligent and sociable, something we see reflected in the friendly sniff between pig and piglet.

This vase is a pelike style vase, as indicated by the rounded body that leads straight up into its neck, without a pronounced shoulder. It has been decorated in a red figure style, with the red clay showing through and black slip added to create a dark background. It was made in Athens in around 470-460 BCE by a vase painter now known as ‘The Pig Painter’ after his work on this vase. The Pig Painter was an early member of a group of potters working in the artist Myson’s workshop developing the Mannerist style. These artists made their figures elegantly elongated and they liked to experiment with unusual scenes.

The vase shows an adult pig and a piglet sniffing one another in greeting. Above the adult pig stands a bearded bare-chested man carrying two bags supported on a horizontal staff. Above the piglet stands a second bearded man wearing a traveller’s cloak and a hat. The traveller has one hand raised. In it he holds a long slim staff, although it is a little hard to see that now. The two men’s heads are turned towards the pigs, watching them greet one another. The distinctive anatomy of the pigs’ legs has been captured as carefully as the humans’ more familiar form, as have the pigs’ curly tails. Beside the traveller’s head, the letters ‘ΕΔΩΟ’ have been scratched; these are thought to have been added later – perhaps over the top of an original word, but not necessarily.

The man with the two bags should be interpreted as a swineherd – the man who looks after the pigs (also known as swine). There is a good chance that this is a scene of Odysseus (the traveller) with Eumaeus the swineherd. In book 14 of the Odyssey, Odysseus returns to the island of Ithaca after twenty years away and finds that it is too dangerous to go straight into his palace. Instead he goes first to Eumaeus, who had kept the pigs for the palace for many years and knew Odysseus well. Although he had a smelly and low-status job, Eumaeus proved his good character through his loyalty to Odysseus, helping him to retake his home. In that sense, the scene of two men and two pigs can be a very homely, everyday one and have a heroic aspect, linked to the world of epic poetry.

The vase is housed in the Fitzwilliam Museum, one of the museums of the University of Cambridge (ref. GR9.1917; Beazley ref. 206456). The reverse side shows a young man and a mature man talking to one another. The scenes of the pigs, and of the two men talking, are framed at the top by a hanging lotus pattern. 

This animation was created as part of a project called Histoires d'os, or Bone Tales, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. Based at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland and led by Dr Barbara Carè, Histoires d'os researches the history of the astragalus bone.

In Pigs, we see the adult and young pigs sniffing each other in greeting – the movement that the original scene suggests. But the piglet is a lively thing, so we also see it rush off, running around the pot as the big pig and the humans look on in benevolent amusement.

The animation then focuses on the astragalus bone in the adult pig’s hind leg. Each side of that tiny bone has its own name. The close-up of the bone comes from a 3D scan of a real astragalus done by the dept of veterinary science faculty of veterinary medicine Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich.

The music in the animation is by Prof Conrad Steinmann of the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (SCB) in Switzerland. He is playing the aulos – a reeded double-pipe much enjoyed in antiquity. Professor Steinmann leads the Ensemble Melpomen, a musical group dedicated to the musical exploration of Ancient Greece.