2
The Roman gods

Let’s start with what has been copied: the gods, for example! They’re almost the same as the Greek gods, just with different names. Zeus becomes Jupiter, Athena Minerva and Poseidon changes his name to Neptune… 

 

A short focus on three of them:

Venus of Arles,
late 1st century BC, marble, 76.4 inches (height), Louvre Museum, Paris. Photo: Marie-Lan Nguyen, CC BY 2.5

Venus

 
Distinctive Sign: Often naked, with a seashell or a dove
Profession : Goddess of love and beauty
Key fact: She has numerous extremely beautiful children, including Eneus, not always by her husband, because she and Mars are lovers.

Hermes,
Roman copy of a Greek original, marble, Capitoline Museums, Rome

Mercury

 
Distinctive Sign: A small round hat, wings on his ankles and a sceptre known as caduceous
Profession : God of travellers, merchants… and also robbers!
Key fact: While he was still a baby, he very craftily stole his half-brother Apollo’s flock

Colossal Statue of Mars,
Second century, Capitol Museum, Rome. Photo: Jean-Pol GRANDMONT, CC BY 3.0

Mars

 
Distinctive Sign: His armour, a sword, sometimes with a dog or a wild boar
Profession : God of war, violence and bloody crimes
Key fact: The Romans reserved special honour for him. He was never far from his friends Discord, Terror or Grief.

In a nutshell

The Romans revered almost the same gods as the Greeks, but with new names such as Venus, Mars or Mercury.

1
The antique Rome

This time we’re off to Rome, the heart of Ancient Roman civilisation, which began during the Greek Archaic period and continued well beyond the end of the Hellenistic period.

 

Like Greek civilisation, Ancient Rome is in some ways the birthplace of our Western civilisation today, and we’ll see straight away that although the Romans were the authors of many inventions, they also copied their Greek neighbours a great deal.

In a nutshell

The conquests of Ancient Rome were greatly inspired by Ancient Greek culture.

In summary, you have discovered:

  • Greek orders
  • An art without colors ?
  • Phidias and the Parthenon
  • The pottery
  • Bronze sculpture
  • Hellenistic art
  • Alexander the Great
To train

Why are the architectural elements of the Parthenon not completely straight?

You have to choose an answer

Inside the Parthenon, the following can probably be found …

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Black figure pottery is typical of …

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You have unlocked the next chapter in your course Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome.

CHAPTER 3

The Roman Debt to Greece

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7
Alexander the Great

The Hellenistic period began on a very specific date: 323 BC, which corresponds to the death of Alexander the Great, one of the most famous monarchs of the Antiquity period.

 

Lysippus, Portrait of Alexander the Great,
marble, Roman copy of the Greek original, 27 inches (height), Louvre Museum, Paris. Photo: OliBac, CC BY 2.0
In a nutshell

The Hellenistic period began with the death of the great monarch Alexander the Great, who extended his empire through numerous conquests.

6
Hellenistic art

All good things come to an end. The Classical period came to a close in 323 BC, giving way to the Hellenistic period, and that changed art! 

 

The following are the main characteristics in sculpture:

 

Laocoon Group
Second – First centuries BC, marble, 95 x 63 inches, Pio-Clementino Museum, Vatican
The Victory of Samothraces,
200 – 190 BC, marble, 96.5 inches (height), Louvre Museum, Paris
Vatican Apoxyomenos (Athlete)
320 BC, marble, Roman copy of a Greek original by Lysippus, Pio-Clementino Museum, Rome. Photo: Jean-Pol GRANDMONT, CC BY-SA 3.0
Great Altar of Pergamum,
197 – 159 BC, marble, Pergamum Museum, Berlin. Photo: Lestat, CC BY-SA 3.0

Look out, Hellenistic art is much more than sculpture and we should not forget fine arts such as mosaics, painting and architecture…  Hellenistic art is global.

Mosaic representing a sitting dog,
Second century BC, 128 x 128 inches, Antiquity Museum, Alexandria Library. Photo: © Musée des antiquités de la BA / M. Nafea
Larnax of Philippe II of Macedonia,
4th century BC, Vergina Museum, Greece. Photo: Sarah Murray, CC BY-SA 2.0
In a nutshell

Hellenistic art, which covers all forms, has a specific focus on the moving body.

5
Bronze sculpture

Up to now, we have only seen examples of marble sculptures, but from the classical period onwards, the most popular material was bronze! In that case, why have we found so few examples?

 

The reason for this is that bronze, unlike marble,  is a precious material that can be easily melted down for reuse in another form. Throughout the centuries, antique works have therefore been melted down and have disappeared forever.

Fortunately, these lost originals have sometimes been copied in stone and have been handed down to us in that form.

Charioteer of Delphi
478 – 474 BC, bronze, 71.6 inches (height), Museum of Archaeology, Delphi. Photo: David Monniaux, CC BY-SA 1.0
God of Cape Artemision,
around 460 BC, bronze, 82.3 inches (height), National Museum of Archaeology, Athens. Photo: Marsyas, CC BY-SA 3.0
The Ephebe of Marathon
330 – 325 BC, bronze, 51 inches (height), National Museum of Archaeology, Athens. Photo: Jebulo, CC0, 1.0
In a nutshell

Greek art contained a great number of bronze sculptures, which have been melted down, but of which stone copies remain.

4
The pottery
There’s much more to Greek art than just sculpture or architecture. There was also pottery.

Greek craftsmen were overflowing with imagination, both for their objects’ shapes (they were often used for banquets) or their varied decorations. The two major categories were:

Comparer
Hercules and Geryon, Attic Black Figure Amphora, 540 BC, ceramic, Staatliche Antikensammlungen, Munich

Black Figure Ceramics

 

The Motif is painted black on the clay, which is lighter-coloured.

The details are marked out using incisions or adding other colours.

It’s the type most commonly found between the 7th and 5th centuries BC.

The factory is located in Corinth.

Banquet scene, Attic Cup with Red Figures, 490 – 480 BC, ceramic, 9 inches diameter, Louvre Museum, Paris

Red figure Ceramics

 

It’s the opposite! The background is painted black, leaving figures that are “red”, with the colour of the clay.

The details are painted in black, for greater precision.

This was the most common type from 530 BC onwards.

The production centre was in Athens.

In a nutshell

Greek pottery may be painted in black on the clay, or the reverse may be done, leaving red figures on a black painted background.

3
Phidias and the Parthenon
Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Phidias showing the frieze of the Parthenon to his friends,
1868, oil on canvas, 28 x 43 inches, Birmingham Museums Trust

Let us return to the Parthenon: one name was very clearly linked to it, that of Phidias. The latter was one of the most famous sculptors of the 5th century BC and it was probably he who orchestrated the decoration of the Parthenon. 

 

In particular, we credit him with a gigantic sculpture of the goddess Athena, entirely covered in gold and ivory! It was supposed to be for decorations inside the Parthenon but has since disappeared.

Proposed Reconstruction of the West Pediment,
Acropolis Museum, Athens. Photo: Tilemahos Efthimiadis, CC BY-SA 2.0

What does remain, however, are the carved friezes and pediment, representing myths and a long procession of characters paying tribute to Athena.

Reconstruction of the Interior of the Parthenon,
engraving, around 1880. Photo: © MEPL / Bridgeman Images
Varvakeion Athena,
3rd century AD, marble, copy of the Athena Parthenos chryselephantine statue in the Athens Archaeological Museum. Photo: Marsyas, CC BY-SA 3.0
Peter Connolly, Northern Frieze of the Parthenon,
watercolour. Photo: © akg-images / Peter Connolly
In a nutshell

Phidias, the  famous 5th-century BC sculptor, probably designed the Parthenon’s decorations.

2
An art without colors ?

In Greek architecture, were all the columns in a temple pure white? False! The following extract from video game Assassin’s Creed is probably not far from the truth.

Reconstruction of the polychrome decoration of the Trojan archer on the western pediment of the Temple of Aphaea, Aegina,
between the end of the 6th century and beginning of the 5th century, BC, Bunte Götter Exhibition, Glyptothek, Munich. Photo: Marsyas, CC BY-SA 2.5

That’s right, everything was  painted in very bright colours. Over time, these faded. For a long while, therefore,  we believed that Greek art was white, like marble, the model that Western architects and sculptors followed for centuries.

 

What a shock, many centuries later, to discover bits of remaining paint!

In a nutshell

During the 19th century, it was discovered that Greek art was not white, but brightly coloured.

1
Greek orders

What is the Parthenon’s signature feature? Its columns! This feature can be seen in many monuments in Ancient Greece. Watch out, though, because all columns do not look the same. They follow “orders”, rules that Greek architects established to standardize not only building proportions, but also their decorations.

There were three orders in Greece:

 

Parthenon, Athens

Did you get all that? So which order do the Parthenon’s columns follow?

 

Doric, of course!

In a nutshell

The columns in Greek buildings comply with three orders: Doric, Ionic and Corinthian.