Magna Graecian Black-Glazed Skyphos

On any given day, any one of us might pick up a cup, glass, or mug and hold it in our hands, drink from it, and make it a momentary part of our lives. The same was no doubt true for this elegant drinking cup, called a skyphos, except that the last person to hold it before the modern age lived during the flowering of the Classical world. As we place it in our own fingers where theirs once rested, we are in direct touch—if only for a moment—with another life in a world only our imaginations can see.