From Ancient Drinking Vessel to Modern Olympic Trophy: The Semiotic Metamorphosis of the “Spyridon Louis/Ioannis Lambros” Cup

Christina Mitsopoulou

On March 30, 1896, the frontpage of the journal Hestia (Εστία) was graced with a facsimile drawing of a black-figured ancient drinking vase (skyphos), ornated on both sides by a scene of two nude runners and a draped referee (Anonymous 1896, p. 1). The caption read (Fig. 1):

ΤΟ ΔΩΡΟΝ ΤΟΥ ΜΑΡΑΘΩΝΟΔΡΟΜΟΥ = THE PRESENT FOR THE MARATHON RUNNER Ancient vase donated by Mr. I. P. Lambros

The vase, dated erroneously to the 4th century BC, was reportedly discovered in a tomb in Thebes. Based on its theme, it was considered to have belonged to a victorious runner from some ancient athletic competition.

The scene does not suffice to confirm this interpretation, nor is its provenance ascertained. The vase is an ancient object out of context, found during private excavations. It is attributed to the so-called Camel painter (a vase painter from Attica or Boeotia active during the second half of the 6th century BC) and dated to 540-520 BC (Kollia 2024). The vase was offered as an additional award to the winner of the marathon run, held on 29 March 1896 within the first modern Olympic Games. Spyridon Louis, who became a national hero, received numerous other presents that day. The most prominent was the Bréal Cup, offered by Michel Bréal, the philologist who conceived the idea of the modern marathon. The small fluted silver cup was created by an anonymous Parisian silversmith upon Bréal’s instructions. Instead of a decoration in ancient style, Bréal conceived a scene inspired by environmental features (Fig. 2): the marshland with reeds and waterbirds, a dragonfly and swallows, alluding to the landscape of Marathon, the battlefield where the Athenians defeated the Persians in 490 BC. According to Pausanias (Attica I, 32, 6-7), the Persians became trapped in the marshland, leading to their downfall. Bréal, the father of the discipline of Semantics, chose a natural element, decisive to the outcome of the most legendary battle of Athenian history.

The donor of the additional award, Ioannis Lambros, son of Pavlos Lambros, a merchant and coin collector identifying as a numismatist, was a prominent antiques dealer. He was also the brother of Spyridon Lambros, a member of the “think tank” for the Olympic Games in Greece, who taught medieval history at the University of Athens, had instructed the sons of King George I, and later became a politician (Karamanolakis et al 2023). In their youth, the four Lambros brothers had founded in 1865 the Philological Society Parnassos. It was in its premises that Pierre de Coubertin presented the project of the modern Olympic Games to the Athenian elite in October 1894.

In 1896, Spyridon Lambros acted as the spokesman of Bréal’s idea of the marathon run, a discipline that did not exist in antiquity.Bréal himself had hardly commented on his invention; only a few lines in a four-page letter addressed to de Coubertin on September 15, 1894 are known. They depict his idea of a race reminiscent of the historical event and express his intention to sponsor a cup for the winner: “As you go to Athens, you could try and see if a long distance run from Marathon to Pnyx could be organized. That would emphasize the character of Antiquity. […] I, personally, would claim the honour of offering ‘the Cup of Marathon’” (Coubertin et al 1896).

But to attract spectators to such a race in Athens, it was necessary to explain its historical background and present the “Parisian jewel,” the Bréal cup, to the broader public. Spyridon Lambros penned eight articles during the weeks preceding the big day, summarizing the important facts about the invention. The arrival of the marathon runner in the Panathenaic stadium went down in history as a moment of joy and national pride.

In the weeks leading to the event, Lambros became aware of the fame Bréal would be attached with in history. Therefore, the “French cup” was doubled by a “Greek cup” bearing the name “Lambros” as a tribute to Spyridon, who had handled the affair in Greece and stemmed national pride for the event. The donation was meant to commemorate his role in bringing the marathon run to life. An ancient drinking vase, kept as a funerary offering,was acquiring a new function as a modern Olympic trophy bearing the Lambros name (Mitsopoulou 2024).

The Lambros Cup’s traces were lost after 1896. In 1934 it was kept by the German classicist Werner Peek, a committed Nazi and founder of the Hitlerjugend in Greece. He probably escorted Joseph Goebbels during his official visit to Athens. Years later, Peek claimed to have smuggled the vase in Goebbels’s boots packed in a diplomatic bag. In 1986, he sold it with his collection of antiquities to the University of Münster. The once-prized Olympic trophy remained unnoticed until the 2010s, when archaeologist Georgios Kavvadias of the National Archaeological Museum in Athens identified the original vase from two drawings published in the newspapers and a commemorative album from 1896 (Kavvadias 2020). In 2019 the vase was repatriated to Greece, and a replica was sent to Münster. After a brief exhibition in Athens, it was moved to the Museum of the History of Ancient Olympic Games in Olympia (Fig. 3). In 2024 it was displayed in the Louvre, next to the Bréal Cup.

The Lambros Cup is linked to the archaeological artist Émile Gilliéron. The chromolithograph published in the commemorative album of the 1896 Olympic Games was unsigned (Fig. 4), but its style closely resembled that of Gilliéron. In 2018, this connection was confirmed: a modest ink sketch discovered in the artist’s archive (Fig. 5), proved that he was, indeed, the anonymous draughtsman of the first published illustration of the cup.

Gilliéron had known Lambros since the late 1870s, when both served as tutors at the Greek royal palace. In 1880, he accompanied Lambros on a research expedition to Mount Athos (Mitsopoulou 2025, 123-126). Their close relationship later led to Gilliéron being chosen as the Olympic artist for the 1896 Games. A few years earlier, in 1890, Gilliéron had worked for the Greek excavators at the Marathon tumulus, a discovery that triggered international enthusiasm and ultimately inspired Bréal’s concept of the marathon run. His brother Jules Gilliéron was a linguist in Paris and a former student-turned-colleague of Bréal at the École Pratique des Hautes Études. Finally, it was Lambros who campaigned in favor of the marathon run in Greece. Identifying Gilliéron as his collaborator during the elaboration of the idea of presenting a cup in his name provides a crucial missing link in the historical narrative.

The extensive journey and evolving semantic changes of this ancient drinking vase – first a funerary offering, then an Olympic trophy and nowadays a museum artefact –, qualify it as a true “Thing in Motion.”

References

Anonymous, “Το Δώρον του Μαραθωνοδρόμου. Αρχαίον αγγείον δωρηθέν υπό του κ. Ι. Π. Λάμπρου,” [The Present for the Marathon Runner. Ancient vase offered by Mr. I.P. Lambros] Hestia, 30 March 1896, p. 1.

Pierre de Coubertin, Spyridon P. Lambros, Nikolaos G. Politis, Timoleon J. Philemon, Charalambos Anninos, The Olympic Games: B.C. 776 – A.D. 1896, 2, Athens : C. Beck, 1896.

Βαγγέλης Καραμανωλάκης, Γεράσιμος Ζώρας, Κατερίνα Νικολάου, Αναστασία Παπαδία-Λάλα (eds.), Σπυρίδων Λάμπρος. Ο ιστορικός, το έργο και η εποχή του [Spyridon Lambros. The Historian, his Work, and his Time], Athens : Eurasia, 2023.

Giorgos Kavvadias, “Der verlorene Skyphos des Spyros Louis,” Boreas 43/44, 2020, p. 107–119.

Erofylli-Iris Kollia, “Skyphos à figures noires, dit de Spyros Louis, ou coupe Lambros,” in Christina Mitsopoulou et al., (eds.), L’olympisme: une invention moderne, un héritage antique, Paris : Louvre éditions/Hazan, 2024, p. 140–141.

Christina Mitsopoulou, “Promotion de la coupe Lambros pour le marathon de 1896,” in Christina Mitsopoulou et al. (eds.), L’olympisme: une invention moderne, un héritage antique  Paris : Louvre éditions/Hazan, 2024, p. 142–143.

Christina Mitsopoulou, “Spyridon Lambros and Émile Gilliéron: scientific mission to Mount Athos in 1880,” in Eleni Manakidou and Christina Mitsopoulou (eds.), Cast Museum A.U.Th. & Gilliéron Workshop. A Century of Creative Collaboration, Thessaloniki: University Studio Press, 2025, p. 123-126.

Pausanias/Pausaniou, Attiká, 5 volumes, edition by Nikólaos Papachatzḗs, Athens : Ekdotiki Athenon, 1974.

“Spyros Louis Bréal’s Cup”, Stavros Niarchos Foundation Cultural Center (SNFCC), https://www.snfcc.org/en/your-visit/discover/spyros-louis-cup/ (accessed on 13 January 2026).

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