In antiquity, the single boot or sandal ( monocrepis/ monosandalos) is found in both imagery and literature in connection with the supplication, invocation, or commitment to a god. Byzantine paintings of military saints with one boot suggest this also 14. A ritual meaning is suggested by ancient pagan as well as Christian references: Thucydides’ story of the Plataeans wearing a single boot to escape has been interpreted as an indication that the single boot was a talisman against danger 13. The rope had no connection to the petasos 10.ġ8Given the similarly radical persecution by Dionysos of the two mythological kings who defied him, the single boot in the image of Pentheus on the Derveni krater and in the clay figure of Lycurgus must have the same significance. In his upraised left hand the Derveni hunter held a rope made of base metal added to the surface, where traces of it remain, as indicated in a detail (fig. 9) and in a drawing (fig. 10). The laces that bind the hat on the head are clearly indicated in both mosaic and bronze relief. A further example is the petasos of the hunter to the right in the fourth-century BC Gnosis Stag Hunt mosaic from Pella, which flies out in response to that hunter’s activity in much the same way as it does on the Derveni krater (fig. 8). With its characteristic wide flat brim and very small crown, the same hat can also be seen over the shoulder of the hunter on the stela. It is the well-known shape of a hunter’s hat, a petasos. The Derveni hunter’s round sun hat has been incorrectly identified as a weapon. The rope forms (.)ġ2With the addition of a sword on a baldric, his hunter’s accouterments are similar to those of the hunter on a fourth-century BC Thessalian grave stela (fig. 7). 10 There is no oblique line connecting the petasos to the rope in Pentheus’ left hand.Its color is the result of the almost 15 percent (14.88 percent) tin content of its bronze alloy. The krater is not “gilded,” as frequently described. The final use of the krater as a burial urn was, accordingly, an appropriate one.ĢAlmost a meter high, the krater was found more than forty-five years ago in one of five undisturbed cist tombs dated by Attic pottery to the last third of the fourth century BC, near the ancient Macedonian settlement of Lete, 12 kilometers northeast of Thessaloniki. The elaborate eschatological iconography of the Derveni krater, produced two centuries later, suggests its original purpose was for an initiation or some related Dionysian ritual. Cows encircling the neck of an Archaic krater, Rolley suggested, indicate its probable initial purpose as a sanctuary dedication 1. 1As Claude Rolley pointed out in his text on the Vix krater in La Tombe princière de Vix, the iconography of Greek bronze kraters varies notably from that of ceramic examples and is frequently suggestive of the original purpose of the vessel.
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