A bronze hydria in pristine condition, decorated with a Siren on the vertical handle. The clay hydria was the standard vessel for carrying water in antiquity. However, the examples in bronze were used mainly as luxurious symposium vessels, and also as cinerary urns, votive offerings in sanctuaries or prizes at games (as known from vase-paintings depicting Nike bearing a hydria). From their use in sanctuaries derived another public use, that of the ballot box (kalpis). Extant bronze hydrias come mainly from graves and sanctuaries. They have a hammered body, to which the cast parts (handles, mouth and base) were fixed with bronze, silver or tin rivets. Small rivets of this kind are visible on the foliate ornament on the upper part of the handle ad the inverted palmette below the Siren. The decoration of the handle with a Siren is typical of the second half of the 5th c. BC and is associated with workshops in central Greece (Attica, Boeotia, Euboea) or the Peloponnese (Corinth). The frequent use of hydrias with similar decoration as cinerary urns is obviously related to the dualistic nature of the Sirens. In epic poetry these mythical creatures with the body of a bird and the head of a woman are pictured as daemons that bewitch and exterminate mortals (Odyssey XII, 153ff.). However, later poetic tradition presents Sirens as more ennobled, accompanying the dead in the Underworld with their mellifluous songs, and comforting the living (e.g. Euripides, Helen, 167).