compositions with use of added colours (pink/reddish, blue, green, gold) and an emphasis on female mythological figures. Theatre and performing constituted yet one more source of inspiration. Delphi Archaeological Museum has some particularly good examples of this style, including a vase with Aphrodite and Eros. The base is round, cylindrical, and its handle vertical, with bands, covered with black colour. The female figure (Aphrodite) is depicted seated, wearing an himation. Next to her stands a male figure, naked and winged. Both figures wear wreaths made of leaves and their hair preserve traces of golden paint. The features of their faces are stylized. The vase has a white ground and maintains in several parts the traces of bluish, greenish and reddish paint. It dates to the 4th century BC. In the same room is kept a small lekythos with a plastic decoration, depicting a winged dancer. The figure wears a Persian head cover and an oriental dress, indicating that already in that period oriental dancers, possibly slaves, had become quite fashionable. The figure is also covered with a white colour. The total height of the vase is 18 centimeters and it dates to the 4th century BC. Hellenistic period The Hellenistic period, ushered in by the conquests of Alexander the Great, saw the virtual disappearance of black and red-figure pottery yet also the emergence of new styles such as West Slope Ware in the east, the Centuripe Ware in Sicily, and the Gnathia vases to the west. Outside of mainland Greece other regional Greek traditions developed, such as those in Magna Graecia with the various styles in South Italy, including Apulian, Lucanian, Paestan, Campanian, and Sicilian. Inscriptions Inscriptions on Greek pottery are of two kinds; the incised (the earliest of which are contemporary with the beginnings of the Greek alphabet in the 8th century BC), and the painted, which only begin to appear a century later. Both forms are relatively common on painted vases until the Hellenistic period when the practice of inscribing pots seems to die out. They are by far most frequently found on Attic pottery. A number of sub-classes of inscription can be distinguished. Potters and painters occasionally signed their works with epoiesen and egraphsen respectively. Trademarks are found from the start of the 6th century on Corinthian pieces; these may have belonged to an exporting merchant rather than the pottery workfield and this remains a matter of