This book introduces us into an extremely interesting world, South Italian pottery of classical times, in which one of the most frequently represented and meaningful motives was Dionysus and the Dionysiac realm.

Paloma Cabrera’s approach to the topic is mainly iconographic, but it is not limited to such perspective: her encompassing philosophy allows her to undertake a profound analysis of the religious aspects of the vases, and to compare them with the literary and philosophical dimensions of the ideas implied in these images.

She achieves a well-nuanced synthesis that reveals the extremely rich views of the users of these vases on life and death, on the afterlife and the hopes of an otherworldly happiness. Not only does she integrate the important contributions of recent bibliography on these issues, but she also advances original proposals that take further our knowledge of the South Italian Dionysiac imagery, and of the underlying ideology, manifested in images as well as in texts.

This book is the result of the project Cults, literature and iconography of Dionysus in the 5th and 4th centuries BC of the LOGOS Program of Research in Classical Studies 2019, promoted in collaboration with the SEEC (Spanish Society of Classical Studies).