Skyphos, Southern Italy, 400-375 BCE

A skyphos is a drinking cup with two handles. This one is decorated with an image of a young man holding a strigil. Part of the bathing and personal hygiene routine in ancient Rome involved cleaning the body with oil. Having rubbed the oil in, a strigil was used to scrape away any excess as well as any dead skin and dirt. Athletes scraped their skin with strigils to remove dirt, dust and oil from …