Bathycles and the Laconian vase-painters

Excavations at Sparta have cleared up many of the problems connected with the class of pottery now definitely recognised as Laconian, but the great number of the mythological scenes, found mainly on kylikes, form a group quite distinct in spirit and design from the other types of decoration used on Laconian ware, and it is still a question whether the vases with these scenes (nearly all of them found outside Greece) could really have come from the workshops which turned out the vases found in Spartan soil. There must be some distinct and powerful cause, lying outside the normal growth of local artistic tradition, to account for this new development, and this cause, as I will try to shew, seems to be the coming of Bathycles of Magnesia to build the great Throne of Apollo at Amyclae.