greek-museums:Archaeological Museum of Marathon:Wine cups and a collection of four lopades (5th cent
greek-museums:Archaeological Museum of Marathon:Wine cups and a collection of four lopades (5th century B.C). Lopas usually is a cook pot, but this wider version of it also functioned for cooking and serving food. Judging from the elaborate designs these were used for serving and not cooking.These were found as offerings inside the tumulus of Marathon, the grave for the fallen Athenian soldiers in the battle of Marathon against the invading Persian forces. A lopas is associated with communal dining, you would expect to see a vessel like that in a massive banquet, each dish serving a small group of people, so that people could distribute and share food with ease. Perhaps this offering could allude to the communal dining of a regiment after a sacrifice, a little while before the battle. Or they could be tied to the funerary banquets offered to the deceased, and shared by relatives and friends.There are similar vessels to lopas today and to me it seems that you could use a vessel like that for serving stewed legumes, meat, salads, drier grain-based dishes, and perhaps also some types of sweet and savoury pastries, like placountas. -- source link