Antiquities Exhibits

According to Greco-Roman myth, the mortal virgin Kallisto (also spelled Callisto), according to Hesiod the daughter of King Lycaon of Arcadia, spent her time in the Arcadian Mountains of Greece as a favorite hunting companion of Artemis, goddess of the hunt and childbirth. Like all of Artemis' nymph companions, Kallisto had vowed to remain chaste. The king of the Greek gods, Zeus, was attracted to Kallisto (when was Zeus never attracted to all of the voluptuous females cavorting around him?) and seduced her by disguising himself as Artemis, which resulted in the birth of a son, Arkas, who gave his name to the area of Greece known as Arcadia. Artemis, angered at Kallisto's betrayal, (or, according to another version, Zeus's wife Hera, enraged with jealousy) changed Kallisto into a bear. (Yes, it's another example of the rape victim being punished for male misbehavior!) Sixteen years later, her now almost grown son, Arcas, encountered the transformed Kallisto while huntin...

My husband and I have been watching the "Qin Empire Epic", a Chinese produced series, on Amazon Prime.  Although I can't always keep up with the subtitles (I can't read that fast from across the room!) I have found the history of the unification of China under Qin Shi Huangdi, initially called Yíng Zhèng, very interesting. Most references to China's first emperor that I had read, mostly information accompanying the three different Terracotta Warriors exhibits I have attended, seemed to emphasize the emperor's brutality, as portrayed in traditional Chinese historiography.  But, I discovered, like Roman propaganda vilifying the emperor Nero, perceptions of Yíng Zhèng's actions need to be considered in the political context of the fierce competition between warlords that dominated the tumultuous Warring States Period. Although I haven't seen any reference to burying Confucian scholars alive yet (we're on episode 78), I was researching some of the port...

When I posted the image of a lampholder depicted as Apollo in the archaic style which is part of the new exhibit, Tota Italia, a couple of days ago, another Facebook member asked me for an image of the complete statue.  The exhibit did not provide a full length image of it so I checked the website for the National Archaeological Museum in Naples and could not find it there either. I also checked Wikimedia Commons and didn't have any luck there. I found a small side view of the full statue just in a general image search then found a full length image of the Apollo of Piombino which is another archaic-style sculpture of Apollo that is said to be very similar to the one in the exhibit that was found in Pompeii in the House of C. Julius Polybius.  Found in 1832 at Piombino (Roman Populonia), in Etruria, Apollo of Piombino depicts either the god Apollo as a kouros or youth or it may be a worshipper bringing an offering.   The bronze is inlaid with copper for the boy's lip...

Tota Italia : At the Origins of a Nation is now open at The Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome. The presentation examines the process of Romanization beginning with exhibits from Pre-Roman Italy of the 4th century BCE then continues through the Julio-Claudian period to the ultimate unification of territories under the banner of Rome. More than thirty Italian museums have loaned objects to the exhibition to illustrate the diversity that made up the Empire and how the extraordinary differences were blended to form the cultural identity of the Italian people. Looking through images of some of the artifacts on exhibit, I was pleased to see once more the Parian marble table support depicting two griffins attacking a doe from the 4th century BCE that I had photographed years ago at the Getty Villa. Apparently, it is thought to have originated from a tomb in Foggia, originally part of the ancient Greek colony known as Argos Hippium in southern Italy. It is truly a magnificent piece! One of my ...

Depictions of athletes were popular on gems of the late 500s BCE and thereafter.  Not only Greek but Etruscan artisans produced these miniature works of art and the collection of these gems became popular among the Roman elite. As I've mentioned previously, both Julius Caesar and Pompey the Great collected them. One such artist, Epimenes, from the Cyclades, produced scenes of nude youths with meticulously defined musculature in complex twisted poses. His youths sported locks of hair radiating from the crown of the head with clusters of curls on the forehead. He adopted these features from innovations in sculpture and vase-painting at the time. "It is clear that some form of amateur athletics must have taken place simulta­neously with the real business at hand, which was, naturally enough from the bias of Republican Rome, training for war," observes classicist Donald White, University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. "Special ludi in­cluding spo...

Although originally the ancient Roman virtue of virtus was used to describe specifically martial courage, it eventually came to represent a host of qualities including valor, manliness, excellence, courage, character, and worth, perceived as masculine strengths.  Plato's Republic and Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics divided these cardinal virtues into prudentia (prudence), iustitia (justice), temperantia (temperance, self-control), and fortitudo (courage).  But as the goals and ideals of the empire changed, the meaning of the word also shifted. No longer did virtus mean that a person was a brave warrior but it could also mean that he was a good man, someone who did the right thing. Especially during the later Empire the Roman upper class no longer thought of themselves as unmanly if they did not serve in the military as long as they complied with the appropriate tradition of public conduct in their navigation of the cursus honorum. The term did not apply in the private sphere bu...

An aulos or tibia (Latin) was an ancient Greek wind instrument, depicted often in art and also attested by archaeology. Though aulos is often translated as "flute" or "double flute", it was usually a double-reeded instrument like the modern oboe, but with a larger mouthpiece, and its sound—described as "penetrating, insisting and exciting"was more akin to that of the bagpipes. Although used for martial music, the aulos is more frequently depicted in other social settings. It was the standard accompaniment of the passionate elegiac poetry. It also accompanied physical activities such as wrestling matches, the broad jump, the discus throw and to mark the rowing cadence on triremes, as well as sacrifices and dramas. Plato also associates it with the ecstatic cults of Dionysus and the Korybantes. Although aristocrats with sufficient leisure sometimes practiced aulos-playing as they did the lyre, after the later fifth century BCE the aulos became chiefly associ...