The Taste of A Boeotian Pig

Already by Pindar's day the term ‘Boeotian pig’ was an old reproach, and indeed Boeotia was ‘a slow canton, as the nimble Attics would say, a glorious climate for eels, but a bad air for brains.’ My choice of title does not, however, stop there. Anyone brought up in Scotland or in the north of England will know the word ‘pig’ in another meaning than the usual, will know it as a pot, a jar, a crock, and the use of this meaning in the phrase ‘Pig and Whistle’ is perhaps more widely known. Porcelain also establishes a connexion between pigs and pottery.Boeotian pottery is the Cinderella of the local schools, offering few of the usual attractive groups and classes of work which distinguish most other centres, and much of the potting and painting done in Boeotia is indeed poor or mediocre. It has, however, an interest of its own which makes it worth looking at—the interest one can take in seeing first-rate work copied and adapted for local use and in noting the influence of more brilliant craftsmen on their less well-endowed neighbours. Part of the trouble with looking at Boeotia is that we see Greek pottery through the eyes of Athens; we have come to judge Greek work by the standard of Athens and to consider that a different approach means necessarily an incompetent attempt at mimicking Athenian work. In many cases this is so, for the influence of Attic work on the less original centres was widespread and rarely good. Occasionally a Boeotian artist produced work which rivals Attic, but this is uncommon, and it is more likely that such an artist was an immigrant Athenian. We may also run into the danger of regarding ‘Boeotian’ as having the same range in meaning as ‘Athenian’, whereas we are really dealing with different local centres, e.g. Thebes, Tanagra, Coroneia, Thespiai. Thus we must not expect a continuous tradition of development along a single line, and this makes dating hazardous. Boeotian artists did produce local work which is distinctive, and they used the basic techniques of black-figure and red-figure in ways and combinations different from their neighbours; they also had their own variations with added white and purple. For shapes too they preferred a slightly different range and their own local variations.