Carpenter’s initial research question was as to the identity of the ephebe on Apulian red-figure vases and the meaning of the scenes in which he was depicted. Who is the ephebe in these indistinctive, yet generally Dionysian scenes of Apulian red-figure vases? Did these scenes hold a special significance for the Peucetians?
Carpenter believes that Dionysus was a chthonic deity of sorts to the Apulians. This would also mean that the Apulians had different beliefs about the underworld. A sympotic afterlife awaited followers of Dionysus. (This is distinct from the paradisiacal Elysian Fields, which were reserved for warriors.) His thesis fits with his title, Dionysus and the Blessed on Apulian Red-figure. The Blessed refers to the deceased who as followers of Dionysus in life, are rewarded with a convivial existence in death. His thesis also fits with the title of the book in…show more content… Although Attic and Apulian vase painters used the convention of nudity unrealistically, the Apulian use was more abstract. The Greek use was more closely connected to reality in some way. Furthermore, women ordinarily are not pictures alongside naked males on Attic vases, with a few exceptions. However, women and naked men on Apulian vases occurred often. He gives a column krater in Geneva, a bell krater in Bari and a bell krater in New York as examples. The men and women would not have belonged together in real life. This is another example of the Apulian abstract use of nudity.
Both Attic and Apulian vase painters depicted warriors in the nude (and heroes and athletes), but heroic nudity was later extended to non-warriors in the case of Apulian vases. Carpenter emphasizes that the Apulians used heroic nudity to depict individuals other than warriors. This piece of information is critical to identifying the naked young men pictured in these scenes not as warriors, but as departed followers of