Hadrian and Athens: Conversing with an Ideal World. Through November 2018 at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens

Closing soon! Hadrian and Athens: Conversing with an Ideal World. Through November 2018 at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens.

Portrait Head of the Emperor Hadrian found in Athens 130-138 CE courtesy of the National Archaeological Museum in Athens
By promoting the integration of Greek intelligentsia with Roman tradition, Hadrian contributed decisively to forging a common cultural base that served as a fundamental element of western culture. Portraits of the Emperor Hadrian are on display centrally in an imaginary philosophical dialogue about Greek culture with emblematic figures of intellectuals such as Metrodorus, Antonius Polemon and Herodes Atticus. Portraits of Plato and Aristotle, standing as symbols of Greek philosophical thought, observe the imagined conversation, along with the Kosmetai, the officials who were responsible for the intellectual and physical education of the ephebes in the Athenian gymnasia of the imperial period.

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