In the Third Graeco-Roman Room is a long relief, numbered 2154 and entitled a Votive Relief. It is described in the catalogue (1904) as ‘Relief, perhaps votive, with Dionysos receiving a libation. The central group consists of Dionysos and a Maenad…. Behind the Maenad a large crater stands on the ground…. A moulding appears to have been tooled away above…. May be as early as the end of the fourth century. Athens: Elgin Collection. Height 2 feet 7 inches; length 5 feet 8 inches. Found among the ruins of the theatre of Herodes Atticus. Formerly in the possession of N. Logotheti. Stuart, ii, pp. 23, 45.…’Close to the ‘crater’ a hole about an inch in diameter has been carefully bored through the marble—so carefully that the presumption is that it is part of the original work, although it is suppressed in the old illustrations and is not mentioned in the descriptions. On looking behind the relief it at once appears that material at the two ends and the bottom has been cut away. The remnants of the parts which have been cut off suggest the two ends and bottom of a water trough or cistern. The hole mentioned above is situated an inch or so above what remains of the bottom, and thus conforms to the general tradition of stone water troughs such as several of granite which I have recently seen in Dartmoor farm-yards. From these evidences and the appropriate size it may not be doubted that the relief is the front of a water cistern.
The large crater on the small Asteroid (2867) Steins
