The youth who adorns this little vessel holds a strigil in his left hand. In the ancient gymnasium, athletes covered themselves with a thin coat of oil before competing, which kept the skin clean and smooth. Perhaps this charming lekythos originally contained olive oil from the region near Athens, and was used by an athlete. Today, it remains a charming token of that vanished age, whose preoccupation with a healthy body was not so very different from our own.