Designed to be drunk from a reclining position, the cylix was a wide, shallow drinking bowl that the participants brought to the symposium or which could be kept there. It varied in size and could hold from one half to two liters of wine. The inside of the bowl was particularly well suited for painting, and its flat, round surface (tondo) provided a field for work of more intricate design.
The decoration of the cylix usually comprised a band of figures around the outside rim and another composition on the tondo. These two parts often were juxtaposed, one commenting on the other: the outer decoration visible for all to see, the inside more private and revealed to the symposiast only when he had emptied the bowl of its wine. In the cup illustrated above, for example, a happy but drunken comus is depicted, the men dancing to the accompaniment of lyre and flute. On the tondo is depicted its antithetical counterpoint: a participant vomits from too much drink, his head tenderly held by a young hetaira, whose hair is garlanded for the symposium.
On the outside rim of another cylix, men negotiate with hetairai; on the tondo inside, a women virtuously offers sacrifice at an altar, the iconography representing the two manifestations of Aphrodite: harlot and hearth keeper.
