‘There is no point trying to make the Greeks nice', one scholar has recently stated.1

A small Attic red-figure chous (wine jug) (Figure i8.i) supports that stance. It gives interesting access to the difficult and often disturbing subject of domestic violence in ancient Greek society - unsurprisingly, a long- neglected area of research.^{[754] [755]} The jug depicts a cross section of a building where a solid door demarcates the inside-outside/female-male space.

Who are the protagonists of the scene? The master of the oikos (‘house', ‘household', ‘family') for sure, and whom? His slave? His wife? His daughter? How do we feel when we view this image? Disturbed, challenged or

Figure 18.1 Attic red-figure chous, c. 450 bce, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

affronted? Amused? That may well have been the intention of the artist, for after all, the image is painted on a small wine jug, the kind of pot used in all­male drinking parties. We cannot be certain of the scenario, but I tend to think it depicts a drunken husband coming home from a lively party to find the door bolted; he takes out his frustration by raising a hullabaloo.^[756] The woman (whosever she is) approaches with palpable unease because she knows that when she unlocks the bolt the likelihood is that she will be on the receiving end of that walking stick too.

The image on the chous is provoking in many ways. If this is indeed a humorous image, then how can we justify it? It might be regarded as ‘a reversal of the modern comic cliche of the drunk sneaking home in fear of reprisals'.^[757] But how did the ancients justify it? Did they even attempt to do so? The image of the drunk at the door is an amusing but matter-of-fact representation of domestic violence. It hints at an aggressive strain within Greek society and suggests that men could be aggressive and that women might suffer as a consequence of that aggression. But is it evidence for what we can term ‘domestic abuse'?