The Seba library treats Kantharos in 8 passages, across 6 authors (including Kerényi, Carl, Kerényi, Karl, Burkert, Walter).
The god holds the kantharos in his right hand. We know that on Spartan sepulchral steles this two-handled drinking vessel (the kantharos) was represented as an attribute of the heros.
Keréñyi establishes the kantharos as the definitive attribute of the Dionysiac herm-idol and its sepulchral function, anchoring the vessel firmly in the cult of the heroized dead.
, Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life, 1976thesis
Ancient portrayals show him holding in his hand the kantharos, a wine-jar with large handles, and occupying the place where one would expect to see Hades.
Keréñyi reads the kantharos as the iconographic marker of Dionysos’s identity with the chthonic realm, positioning the god — and his cup — structurally in the place of Hades.
, The Gods of the Greeks, 1951thesis
On a krater in Barletta he holds not only the thyrsos but also a kantharos in the manner of a Heros Dionysos.
Keréñyi demonstrates that the initiated youth’s acquisition of both thyrsos and kantharos signals his transformation into the Heros Dionysos, making the cup a token of completed Dionysiac initiation.
, Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life, 1976thesis
Idealizing vase paintings in the seventh and sixth centuries show Dionysos as an old, bearded man clothed in a long robe and holding his special wine cup, the kantharos, in his hand.
Burkert anchors the kantharos to the archaic, bearded Dionysos, marking its priority as the god’s signature attribute before his fifth-century iconographic rejuvenation.
, Greek Religion: Archaic and Classical, 1977supporting
The reliefs represent a man enthroned, sometimes alone, sometimes with a woman beside him, stretching out a kantharos to receive the offerings.
Rohde grounds the kantharos in Hero-feast relief iconography, where the extended cup defines the gestural grammar of chthonic worship and the communion between the living and the heroized dead.
, Psyche: The Cult of Souls and the Belief in Immortality among the Greeks, 1894supporting
Like the kantharos of the Dionysian cult, the chalice of the Catholic Mass is an inexhaustible vessel, whence the blood of r
Campbell extends the kantharos’s symbolic logic into comparative religion, proposing it as the structural archetype of the inexhaustible sacrificial vessel that persists in the Christian Eucharistic chalice.
, The Mythic Image, 1974supporting
ELDERKIN, GEORGE W. Kantharos: Studies in Dionysiac and Kindred Cult. Princeton, 1934.
Keréñyi’s bibliography cites Elderkin’s dedicated monograph as the foundational scholarly authority for the kantharos within Dionysiac and related cult contexts.
, Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life, 1976supporting
I venture to think can only be understood in the light of the Agathos Daimon — I mean the monuments variously and instructively known as ‘Sepulchral Tablets,’ ‘Funeral Banquets,’ and ‘Hero Feasts.’
Harrison contextualizes the class of Hero-feast monuments — within which the kantharos appears as the defining attribute — through the interpretive lens of the Agathos Daimon, linking vessel, daimon, and the heroized dead.
, Themis: A Study of the Social Origins of Greek Religion, 1912aside