Antiquities Exhibits

Throughout my travels to various museums around the world I have often encountered red-figured fish plates. First developed in Athens, these beautifully detailed serving pieces became especially popular in South Italy and Sicily in the 400s BCE. I stumbled across this excellent video about them and learned that fish plates produced in Magna Graecia were usually more colorful with white accents and the fish are portrayed with their bellies facing inwards towards the small central depression that is thought to have contained dipping sauce like garum. Fish on plates produced in Athens are painted with their bellies facing outwards. I thought this is quite a peculiar style difference.  There also seems to be disagreement among scholars as to whether these plates were actually used in everyday life or produced for funerary purposes only, as almost all of the 1,000 examples that have been recovered came from ancient burials. Art historian Lucas Livingston points out that many of the reco...

Dolphins have a rich background in Greek and Roman mythology. Not only are they frequently the companions of Venus serving as symbols of romance and reminders of the  myth that Venus was born from the sea, but in the Homeric Hymns, they play a key role when Dionysus (Roman Bacchus) was kidnapped by pirates. The god of wine turned himself into a lion to punish the kidnappers and, terrified, they jumped overboard whereupon Dionysus turned them into dolphins.  The also describe instances where the god Apollo transformed into a dolphin to guide a ship into harbor.  nother myth tells that Apollo’s son, Eikadios, was shipwrecked and carried to shore by a dolphin. This is one of many myths about dolphins rescuing drowming men, or bringing bodies back to shore for burial. The Roman author Statius tells us in his 1st century CE work, "Achilleid" that the sea-nymph Thetis rode a chariot through the sea that was pulled by two dolphins. Philostratus’ ‘Imagines’ also describes a scene...

Empúries was an ancient city on the Mediterranean coast of Catalonia, Spain.  Meaning "trading place", the city was founded in 575 BCE by Greek colonists from Phocaea on a small island at the mouth of the river Fluvià. About 550 BCE the inhabitants moved to the mainland.  After the conquest of Phocaea by the Persian king Cyrus II in 530 BCE, the city's population increased considerably through the influx of refugees. Situated as it was on the coastal commercial route between Massalia (Marseille) and Tartessos in the far south of Hispania, the city developed into a large economic and commercial centre as well as being the largest Greek colony in the Iberian Peninsula.  During the Punic Wars, Empúries allied itself with Rome, and Publius Cornelius Scipio initiated the conquest of Hispania from this city in 218 BCE. After the conquest of Hispania by the Romans, Empúries remained an independent city-state until it sided with Pompey during the civil war between Pompey and Jul...