CIRCA 450 B.C.

Padgett (op. cit.) notes that the ithyphallic donkey – associated with Dionysos – indicates that the amphora shouldered by the animal contains wine. The scene therefore may have a mythological underpinning: the wine was the first ever produced by a mortal man, Icarius, a farmer from the Attic deme of Ikaria, to whom Dionysos revealed the art of winemaking. As Padgett observes (op. cit., p. 69), wine’s “power of bliss” is “manifest in the tumescence of the mule.” Icarius was later killed by his neighbors, hysterical and sick after their first taste of Dionysos’ gift, believing that they were poisoned by the farmer.