The Diver of Paestum: Youth, Eros, and the Sea in Ancient Greece

by Tonio Holscher, Robert Savage (Translator)

Since its discovery in 1968, the painting of a diver on a tomb in Paestum, originally the Greek colony of Poseidonia in southern Italy, has left viewers spellbound. It depicts a beautiful and enigmatic a young man dives headfirst into the water from a cliff or tower. The image is joined by others from the same tomb depicting a banquet of young people drinking wine, playing games and enjoying music. Understanding this painting is often seen as a key to unlocking some of the mysteries of ancient Greek culture – and therein lies the puzzle. What is the meaning of the diver? Is it, as many have argued, a metaphorical representation of the passage from life to a world beyond?

The eminent art historian Tonio Hölscher rejects this view, arguing that there is nothing symbolic or metaphorical about the the scenes celebrate the real lives of the Greek colonists of the early 5th century BC. The painting captures a young man’s spirited personality and pursuits during a life which may have been short, but was lived to the full. In a groundbreaking reversal of how the painting is typically interpreted, this book opens a window onto the world of Ancient Greece and its culture of athleticism, eroticism, love for nature and enjoyment of the sea. A joyful ode to youth, it is above all a unique portrait of the zest for life in Antiquity.

Genres: History

144 pages, Hardcover

Published November 25, 2025

Reviews

[History Today]

On 3 June 1968, as protesting students occupied the Sorbonne, and Robert Kennedy was preparing his speech to celebrate victory in the California presidential primary, a small team of archaeologists, led by Mario Napoli, were uncovering a remarkable tomb at Paestum. The tomb consisted of five frescoed slabs of travertine limestone, four walls and a ceiling – its dimensions in situ roughly 200 × 100 × 80 centimetres – dating to c.480 BC. Such elaborate tombs were common at Paestum and elsewhere in Magna Graecia, which encompassed the southern part of the Italian peninsula and Sicily. Paestum (or Poseidonia, to give the ancient city state its Greek name) had been founded in about 600 BC, south of Neapolis (Naples), overlooking the Gulf of Salerno, amid fertile plains that today are home to Mediterranean buffalo whose milk is used to produce mozzarella di bufala.

The long side panels of the Paestum tomb show a symposium, with older and younger male figures reclining on dining couches (klinai), variously in rapt debate or post-prandial merriment, such as playing an aulos (a twin-piped flute), or holding a lyre, while others are shown participating in kottabos, a game invented in Greek Sicily that involved flicking the last dregs of wine from a shallow drinking dish (kylix) at a target. (Plato noted his disapproval of the game when visiting Syracuse.) The end panels show other figures dancing or playing instruments, and a young man next to a table on which is a large vessel (krater), presumably serving the watered-down wine that is being abundantly consumed. However, it is the ceiling panel that gives the tomb its name. It depicts a young man, probably an adolescent of military training age (ephebos), identifiable by his lithe body and scarce facial hair, captured mid air, diving head first into a body of gently rippling water, having jumped from a tower to his right. The only other details in the otherwise minimalist composition are a couple of stylised trees and a painted black line framing the panel, with a delicate palmette in each corner.

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Philippa Joseph is a member of the History Today editorial advisory board.

[Geoff Garnett · Rating 4 out of 5]

An impulse buy as I have liked the picture since visiting Paestum decades ago. A lovely, short exploration of the meaning of the illustrations in the tomb of the diver. Explores the importance of athleticism and beauty for youth in real life and myth.