Laudator Temporis Acti

Bijan Omrani, Caesar's Footprints. A Cultural Excursion to Ancient France: Journeys Through Roman Gaul (New York: Pegasus Books, 2017), p. 16:

By examining some of the archaeological finds of this age, it is possible to imagine how Gallic tribesmen might have reacted when they first set eyes on the luxury imports of the Greeks. For a vignette, let us set the date at 520 BC, at a Gallic settlement on the flat-topped hill of Mont Lassois by the upper reaches of the Seine in northeastern Burgundy. A number of boxes have been brought up the hill into the camp of wooden huts and palisades. The boxes contain together just one item, but being a heavy import, it is flat-packed for self-assembly. Fortunately, there are instructions — scratched-on Greek letters, indicating which part should be joined to which. As the tribesmen labour to join the pieces together — handles, stand, cover — the item takes shape. It is not easy work. The item is metal, refulgent hammered bronze, weighing over 200 kilograms, with individual components of as much as 60 kilograms. When finished, it stands at least as high as the tribesmen, at 1.6 metres (5 foot 4 inches). This is no simple bookshelf or bedstead, but a colossal 1,200-litre wine cauldron, or krater. It is the largest such item known from the ancient world, and is intricately and skilfully worked. Gorgons, menacing, with snakes in their hair and tongues sticking out through grimacing smiles, glare from the handles, as do rampant lions, their muscles taut and claws digging into the metalwork, while their tails echo in their curve the elegant whorls and scrolls chased into the rim and the volutes of the handles. In a band below the rim that runs the whole circumference of the krater, Greek soldiers, hoplites, march in an endless parade. They are naked save for great fan-crested helmets (whose plumage reaches down to their waist), greaves and round, dish-like shields strapped to their left arms. Some ride on chariots whose horses, ambling and stately, peer inquisitively at the new owners of the krater.

For Yanks like me, 1200 litres = 317 gallons.

Paul MacKendrick, Roman France (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1972), p. 14:

Marseille may have been the port of transshipment for the most impressive piece of Greek metalwork ever found in France, or anywhere else for that matter, the bronze crater (punchbowl) of Vix (Fig. 1.6). It was found in January 1953, the most striking of fifty-three objects in the wood-lined chamber of a tumulus (burial mound) 138 feet across, which was being excavated near Châtillon-sur-Seine. It stands over 5 feet tall, and weighs 436 pounds. Snake-haired Gorgons decorate the handles; between the handles runs a frieze of chariots, charioteers, and warriors wear­ing the armor fashionable in the Ripe Archaic period, the late sixth century B.C. The body of the vase was made in one piece, without soldering, beaten when cold, and polished. Each of the men and horses in the frieze differs slightly from every other, so that it is clear this is the loving hand-work of a craftsman of genius, and not made from molds. The bowl has a cover, weighing 30 pounds; in its center the statuette of a goddess, six inches high, wearing a belted, pleated robe and a Mona Lisa smile.

Some photographs from René Joffroy, "La tombe de Vix (Côte-d'Or)," Monuments et mémoires de la Fondation Eugène Piot 48.1 (1954) 1-68 (click on each photograph once or twice to enlarge):