Traditional views in the past have assumed that Apulian figure-decorated pottery was made primarily by and for the colonial Greeks in Taranto, but recent research has shown that the local Italic (non-Greek) people of Apulia provided principal markets. In this lecture, Thomas Carpenter will demonstrate how those local people adopted and modified Greek imagery of Dionysos, the god of wine and theater, for their own purposes and viewed him as a guide to the underworld and a blessed afterlife.

Carpenter is Charles J. Ping Professor of Humanities and Distinguished Professor of Classics Emeritus at Ohio University. Trained as a classical archaeologist and an expert in ancient Greek religion and iconography, he holds degrees from Johns Hopkins University, Harvard University, and Oxford University. Carpenter has published numerous books and articles, one of which, Art and Myth in Ancient Greece (1991), has been translated into six languages. His recent work has focused on the Italic people of the fourth century BCE, and he recently coedited the first book in English to focus on these people, The Italic People of Ancient Apulia: New Evidence from Pottery for Workshops, Markets, and Customs (2014).

The event will be held in English.