0349ANCIENTDionysus_LycurgusCup

0349ANCIENTDionysus_LycurgusCup

British Museum site
Smithsonian article
Apollodorus Library 3.5.1

The Lycurgus Cup, early AD 4th Century, British Museum

Roman glassmakers infused the glass with a special combination of oxides to make the glass change colors when light shone from behind.

This remarkable artifact is intricately carved from glass that changes color (green to red) when light shines through it. Only a few of these glass "cage cups" are still in existence. The material's extraordinary delicacy makes its survival all the more astonishing.

The figure seems reminiscent of the Laocoon.

Ancient Roman Lycurgus Cup, a diatreta glass cage cup depicting the myth of King Lycurgus, in green and red light.

Lycurgus (like Pentheus) has resisted the arrival of Dionysiac cult; here he suffers the consequences of such impiety, encircled by vines that will seal his physical doom. The opposite side of this cup is carved with the figure of Dionysus with satyr and maenad.

Not in Ovid's Metamorphoses; but see Apollodorus for story.

OGCMA slides are designed by Roger T. Macfarlane for use in Classical Civilization 241 courses at Brigham Young University.
The present resource contains information assembled for The Oxford Guide to Classical Mythology in the Arts, 1400 – 1990’s, edited by J. Davidson Reid (Oxford 1994), and it is used with express permission from Oxford University Press.
Address concerns or inquiries to macfarlane@byu.edu.