general pattern,—­a smooth, black glaze[*] covered with figures in the delicate red of the unglazed clay.  At first the figures had been in black and the background in red, but by about 500 B.C. the superiority of the black backgrounds had been fully realized and the process perfected.  For a long time Athens had a monopoly of this beautiful earthenware, but now in 360 B.C. there are creditable manufactories in other cities, and especially in the Greek towns of Southern Italy.  The Athenian industry is, however, still considerable; in fifty places up and down the city, but particularly in the busy quarter of the Ceramicus, the potters’ wheels are whirling, and the glazers are adding the elegant patterns.

[*]Sometimes this glaze tended to a rich olive green or deep brown.

84.  Athenian Pottery an Expression of the Greek Sense of Beauty.—­Athens is proud of her traditions of naval and military glory; of the commerce of the Peireus; of her free laws and constitution; of her sculptured temples, her poets, her rhetoricians and philosophers.  Almost equally well might she be proud of her vases.  They are not made—­let us bear clearly in mind—­by avowed artists, servants of the Muses and of the Beautiful; they are the regular commercial products of work-a-day craftsmen.  But what craftsmen!  In the first place, they have given to every vase and dish a marvelous individuality.  There seems to be absolutely no duplication of patterns.[*] Again, since these vases are made for Greeks, they must—­no matter how humble and commonplace their use—­be made beautiful—­elegantly shaped, well glazed, and well painted:  otherwise, no matter how cheap, they will never find a market.

[*]It is asserted that of the many thousands of extant Greek vases that crowd the shelves of modern museums, there are nowhere two patterns exactly alike.

The process of manufacture is simple, yet it needs a masterly touch.  After the potter has finished his work at the wheel and while the clay is still soft, the decorator makes his rough design with a blunt-pointed stylus.  A line of black glaze is painted around each figure.  Then the black background is freely filled in, and the details within the figure are added.  A surprisingly small number of deft lines are needed to bring out the whole picture.[*] Sometimes the glaze is thinned out to a pale brown, to help in the drawing of the interior contours.  When the design is completed, we have an amount of life and expression which with the best potters is little short of startling.  The subjects treated are infinite, as many as are the possible phases of Greek life.  Scenes in the home and on the farm; the boys and their masters at school; the warriors, the merchants, the priests sacrificing, the young gallants serenading a sweet-heart; all the tales, in short of poet-lore and mythology,—­time would fail to list one tenth of them.  Fairly we can assert that were all the books and formal inscriptions about the Athenians to be blotted out, these vase paintings almost photographs one might say, of Athenian daily life, would give us back a very wide knowledge of the habits of the men in the city of Athena.