Map: National Archaelogical Museum
2 Mask of Agamemnon and Other Mycenaean Treasures
7 Kouros from Sounion, c. 600 B.C.
The Four Stages of Greek Sculpture
9 More Kouroi and Bases for Funerary Kouroi
17 Head from a Statue of a Philosopher
19 Statue of Aphrodite, Pan, and Eros
20 Statue of the Emperor Augustus
ΕΘΝΙΚΟ ΑΡΧΑΙΟΛΟΓΙΚΟ ΜΟΥΣΕΙΟ
The National Archaeological Museum is the top ancient Greek art collection anywhere in the world. Ancient Greece set the tone for all Western art that followed, and this museum lets you trace its evolution, with beautifully displayed and described exhibits from 7000 B.C. to A.D. 500. You’ll see the rise and fall of Greece’s civilizations: the Minoans, the Mycenaeans, those of Archaic Greece, the Classical Age, and Alexander the Great, and then the Romans. Watch Greek sculpture evolve, from prehistoric Barbie dolls, to stiff Egyptian-style, to the David-like balance of the Golden Age, to wet T-shirt, buckin’-bronco Hellenistic, and finally, to the influence of the Romans.
Cost: €10, €5 off-season.
Hours: April-Oct daily 8:00-20:00; Nov-March Mon 12:00-17:00, Tue-Sun 8:00-15:00.
Getting There: The museum is a mile north of the Plaka at 28 Oktovriou (a.k.a. Patission) #44. Your best bet is to take a taxi, which costs about €6 from the Plaka. By Metro, use the Omonia stop (as you exit, follow signs to 28 Oktovriou/28 October Street, and walk seven blocks to the museum—about 15 minutes) or the Victoria stop (about a 10-minute walk). You can also catch a bus to the Polytechneio stop: The #035 leaves from a stop on Athinas street, just north of Monastiraki, and drops you off around the corner from the museum. Bus #224 leaves from Vasilissis Sofias avenue (near Syntagma Square) and stops kitty-corner from the museum.
Information: Tel. 213-214-4800, www.namuseum.gr.
Tours: There are no audioguides, but live guides hang out in the lobby waiting to give you a €50, hour-long tour.
Download my free National Archaeological Museum audio tour.
Length of This Tour: Allow two hours for this tour; more if you want to dig deeper.
Baggage Check: Free and required, except for small purses.
Services: A museum shop, WCs, and an inviting café surround a shady and restful courtyard in the lower level (to access from the main entrance lobby, take the stairs down behind ticket desk); these are easiest to access at the beginning or end of your museum tour.
Photography: Photos are allowed, but no flash and no goofy poses in front of statues. The Greek museum board considers this disrespectful of the ancient culture and is very serious about it.
Starring: The gold Mask of Agamemnon, stately kouros and kore statues, the perfectly posed Artemision Bronze, the horse and jockey of Artemision, and the whole range of Greek art.
The collection is delightfully chronological. To sweep through Greek history, simply visit the numbered rooms in order. From the entrance lobby (Rooms 1-2), start with the rooms directly in front of you (Rooms 3-6), containing prehistoric and Mycenaean artifacts. Then circle clockwise around the building’s perimeter on the ground floor (Rooms 7-31) to see the evolution of classical Greek statuary. Keep track of your ticket—you’ll need to scan it again to enter some of the exhibits.
This self-guided tour zeroes in on a few choice pieces that give an overview of the collection. Note that my descriptions here are brief—for more detail, read the excellent posted English information in each room.
From the entrance lobby, go straight ahead into the large central hall (Room 4). This first area—Rooms 3-6—is dedicated to prehistory (7000-1050 B.C.), including the treasures of the Mycenaeans. Start in the small side room to the right, Room 6. In several of this room’s cases—including the one directly to the right as you enter—you’ll find stiff marble figures with large heads. Look closely into that first case, filled with...
Goddess, corpse, fertility figure, good-luck amulet, spirit guide, beloved ancestor, or Neolithic porn? No one knows for sure the purpose of these female figurines, which are older than the Egyptian pyramids. Although these statuettes were made only in the Cycladic Islands, well-traveled ones have been found all over Greece. The earliest Greeks may have worshipped a Great Mother earth goddess long before Zeus and company (variously called Gaia, Ge, and other names), but it’s not clear what connection she had, if any, with these statuettes. The ladies are always naked, usually with folded arms. The figures evolved over the years from flat-chested, to violin-shaped, to skinny. There is evidence that the eyes, lips, and ears were originally painted on.
Cycladic figures—prehistoric Barbies?
Mask of Agamemnon—a Mycenaean treasure.
National Archaeological Museum Map Key
2 Mask of Agamemnon and Other Mycenaean Treasures
7 Kouros from Sounion, c. 600 B.C.
9 More Kouroi and Bases for Funerary Kouroi
17 Head from a Statue of a Philosopher
Return to the long central hall (Room 4), divided into four sections. Here you’ll find the...
Room 4 displays artifacts found in the ruins of the ancient fortress-city of Mycenae, 80 miles west of Athens. You’ll see finely decorated swords, daggers, body armor, and jewelry, all found buried alongside bodies in Mycenaean graves. The objects’ intricately hammered detail and the elaborate funeral arrangements point to the sophistication of this early culture.
In a glass case in the middle of the second section is the so-called Mask of Agamemnon (c. 1550 B.C.). Made of beaten gold and showing a man’s bearded face, this famous mask was tied over the face of a dead man—note the tiny ear-holes for the string.
The Mycenaeans dominated southern Greece a thousand years before the Golden Age (1600-1200 B.C.). Their (real) history was lost in the misty era of Homer’s (fanciful) legends of the Trojan War. Then Mycenae was unearthed in the 19th century by the German businessman Heinrich Schliemann (the Indiana Johann of his era). Schliemann, fascinated by the works of Homer, had recently discovered the real-life ruins of Troy (in western Turkey), and he was convinced that Mycenae was the city of the Greeks who’d conquered Troy. That much, at least, may be historically true. Schliemann went on to declare this funeral mask to be that of the legendary King Agamemnon, which isn’t true, because the mask predates the fall of Troy (c. 1300 B.C.).
In the next section of Room 4, you’ll find...
A model of the Acropolis of Mycenae (left side) shows the dramatic hilltop citadel where many of these objects were unearthed. Also in Room 4 are frescoes from the royal palace, done in bright colors in the Minoan style. Clay tablets show the Mycenaean written language known as Linear B, whose syllabic script (in which marks stand for syllables) was cracked only in the 1950s.
At the back side of the display case in the center of this section is a painted, two-handled vase known as the House of the Warrior Krater (#1426)—Schliemann’s favorite find. A woman (far left) waves goodbye to a line of warriors heading off to war, with their fancy armor and duffle bags hanging from their spears. Although this provided the world with its first glimpse of a Mycenaean soldier, it’s a timeless scene with countless echoes across the generations.
In the center of the last section of Room 4 is a glass case displaying the...
These gold cups (c. 1600-1550 B.C.), found with other precious items in a Mycenaean tomb, are metalwork masterpieces. The intricate detail on #1 shows a charging bull sending a guy head over heels. On #2, you’ll see a bull and a cow making eyes at each other, while the hind leg of another bull gets tied up by one good-looking cowboy. These realistic, joyous scenes are the product of the two civilizations that made 15th-century B.C. Greece the wonder of Europe—the Mycenaeans and the Minoan culture of Crete.
Warrior Krater shows soldiers off to war.
Vapheio cup—beautiful bovine love.
Between roughly 1450 and 1150 B.C., the Minoan society collapsed, and Minoan artisans had to find work painting frescoes and making cups for the rising Mycenaean culture. Then, around 1100 B.C., the Mycenaeans disappeared from history’s radar screen. Whether from invasion, famine, internal strife, or natural disaster, these sudden disappearances plunged Greece into 500 years of Dark Ages (c. 1200-700 B.C.). Little survives from that chaotic time, so let’s pick up the thread of history as Greece began to recover a few centuries later.
Backtrack to the entrance lobby and begin circling clockwise around the perimeter of the building, starting in Room 7. After scanning your ticket again to enter this room, look for the tall vase on your right.
This monumental ocher-and-black vase (c, 750 B.C.), as tall as a person, is painted with a funeral scene. In the center, the deceased lies on a funeral bier, flanked by a line of mourners, who pull their hair in grief. It’s far from realistic. The triangular torsos, square arms, circular heads, and bands of geometric patterns epitomize the style of what’s known as the Geometric Period (9th-8th century B.C.). A few realistic notes pop through, such as the raw emotions of the mourners and some grazing antelope and ibex (on the neck of the vase).
The Dipylon vase depicts stick-figure mourners tearing out their hair in grief.
After four centuries of Dark Ages and war, the Greeks of the eighth century B.C. were finally settling down, establishing cities, and expanding abroad (as seen on the map behind the big vase), with colonies in western Turkey (Ionia), southern Italy (Magna Graecia), and Sicily. They were developing a written language and achieving the social stability that could afford to generate art. This vase is a baby step in that progression. Next, large-scale statues in stone were developed.
In Rooms 7-14 you’ll get a look at some of these giant statues, including the early Greek statues called...
Some of the earliest surviving examples of post-Mycenaean Greek art (c. 700-480 B.C.) are these life-size and larger-than-life statues of clothed young women (kore/korai) and naked young men (kouros/kouroi). Influenced by ancient statues of Egyptian pharaohs, the earliest of these are big and stiff, with triangular faces and arms at their sides. As you walk through the next few rooms, you’ll see the statues become more realistic and natural in their movements, with more personality than we see in these earlier rigid shells.
Facing the vase in the middle of Room 7 is a...
With hands at her sides, a skinny figure, a rectangular shape, and dressed in a full-length robe (called a chiton), this kore looks as much like a plank of wood as a woman. Her triangular lion-mane hairstyle resembles an Egyptian headdress. The writing down her left leg says she’s dedicated to Apollo. Stroll around. The Egyptian influence is clear.
In the next room (Room 8), your eyes go right to a very nice pair of knees that belong to a...
A typical kouros from the Archaic period (c. 700-480 B.C.), this young naked man has braided dreadlocks and a stable forward-facing pose, and is stepping forward slightly with his left leg. His fists are clenched at his sides, and his scarred face obscures an Archaic smile—a placid smile that suggests the inner secret of happiness. His anatomy is strongly geometrical and stylized, with almond-shaped eyes, oval pecs, an arched rib cage, cylindrical thighs, and a too-perfect symmetry. While less plank-like than earlier statues, he’s still much flatter than an actual person. The overdeveloped muscles (look at those quads!) and his narrow waist resemble those of an athletic teenager.
Left to right: female statue #1, kouros from Sounion, kore with flower, kouros stepping out.
Rather than strict realism, kouros statues capture a geometric ideal. The proportions of the body parts follow strict rules—for example, most later kouros statues are precisely seven “heads” tall. Although this kouros steps forward slightly, his hips remain even (think about it—the hips of a real person would shift forward on one side). The Greeks were obsessed with the human body—remember, these statues were of (idealized) humans, not gods. Standing naked and alone, these statues represented a microcosm of the rational order of nature.
Statues were painted in vivid, lifelike colors. Notice that the rough surface of the marble lacks the translucent sheen of Classical Age statues. (Archaic chisels were not yet strong or efficient enough to avoid shattering the crystalline marble.)
Kouros statues were everywhere, presented as gifts to a god at a sanctuary or to honor the dead in a cemetery. This one was dedicated to Poseidon at the entrance to the temple at Sounion. As a funeral figure, a kouros symbolized the deceased in his prime of youth and happiness, forever young.
Continue into the next room (Room 11). On the left, holding a flower, is a...
Where a male kouros was naked and either life-size or larger than life (emphasizing masculine power), a female kore was often slightly smaller than life and modestly clothed, capturing feminine grace (males were commonly naked in public, but women never were). This petite kore stands with feet together, wearing a pleated chiton belted at the waist. Her hair is braided and held in place with a diadem (a wreath-like headdress), and she wears a necklace. Her right hand tugs at her dress, indicating motion (a nice trick if the artist lacks the skill to actually show it), while her left hand holds a flower. Like most ancient statues, she was painted in lifelike colors, including her skin. Her dress was red—you can still see traces of the paint—adorned with flower designs and a band of swastikas down the front. (In ancient times—before German archaeologist Schliemann’s writings popularized it and Hitler appropriated it—the swastika was a harmless good-luck symbol representing the rays of the sun.) This kore, like all the statues in the room, has that distinct Archaic smile (or smirk, as the Greeks describe it).
The next room—a long hall labeled Room 13—has...
These statues, from the late Archaic period (around 500 B.C.), once decorated the tombs of hero athletes—perhaps famous Olympians. Notice that these young men are slightly more relaxed and realistic, with better-formed thighs and bent elbows. Some kouros statues stood on pedestals, like the two square marble bases located farther down Room 13 (left side). The indentations atop each base held a kouros statue that represented an idealized version of the deceased. On the first base, the carved relief shows wrestlers and other athletes. Perhaps this was an excuse for the artist to show off a new ability to depict the body in a twisting pose. Notice the cute dog-and-cat fight. The second base features a field hockey-like game, each scene reflecting the vigor of the deceased man in his prime.
During the Archaic period, Greece was prospering, growing, expanding, trading, and colonizing the Mediterranean. The smiles on the statues capture the bliss of a people settling down and living at peace. But in 480 B.C., Persia invaded, and those smiles soon vanished.
Pass through Room 14 and into Room 15, which is dominated by one of the jewels of the collection, the...
This statue was discovered amid a shipwreck off Cape Artemision (north of Athens) in 1928. The weapon was never found, so no one knows for sure if this is Zeus or Poseidon. The god steps forward, raises his arm, sights along his other arm at the distant target, and prepares (if it’s Zeus) to hurl his thunderbolt or (if Poseidon) his trident.
The god stands 6’10” and has a physique like mine. His hair is curly and tied at the back, and his now-hollow eyes once shone white with inset bone. He plants his left foot and pushes off with the right. Even though every limb moves in a different direction, the whole effect is one of balance. The statue’s dimensions are a study in Greek geometry. His head is one Greek foot high, and he’s six heads tall (or one Greek fathom). The whole figure has an “X” shape that would fit into a perfect circle, with his navel at the center and his fingertips touching the rim. Although the bronze statue—cast with the “lost wax” technique (explained on here)—is fully three-dimensional, it’s most impressive from the front. (Later Greek statues, from the Hellenistic era, seem fully alive from every angle, including the three-quarter view.)
This Zeus/Poseidon, from c. 460 B.C., is an example of the transition into the Classical style, as sculpture evolved beyond the so-called Severe style (480-460 B.C.). Historically, the Severe/Early Classical Period covers the time when Greece battled the Persians and emerged victorious—the era when ordinary men had also just shaken off tyrants and taken control of their own destiny through democracy. The Greeks were entering the dawn of the Golden Age. During this time of horrific war, the Greeks made art that was serious (no more Archaic smiles), unadorned, and expressed the noble strength and heroism of the individuals who had carried them through tough times. The statues are anatomically realistic, celebrating the human form.
With his movements frozen, as if Zeus/Poseidon were posing for a painting, we can examine the wonder of the physical body. He’s natural yet ideal, twisting yet balanced, moving while at rest. With his geometrical perfection and godlike air, the figure sums up all that is best about the art of the ancient world.
Next, we enter the Golden Age. Room 16 is filled with big, tall vases made of marble, labeled 11 Attic Funerary Monuments. M These grave markers take the shape of the ceramic urns used for the ashes of cremated bodies in ancient times. One of these vases (#4485) is particularly touching: A grieving family looks on as Hermes (with his winged sandals) leads a young woman to the underworld.
Continue through Room 16 and into Room 17. The WCs and café are out the door and downstairs, in the courtyard. From Room 17, turn right into Rooms 19 and 20 (then right again, then left). At the dead end is a small glass case containing the...
This marble statue, known as the Athena Varvakeion (c. A.D. 250), is considered the most faithful copy of the great Athena Parthenos (438 B.C.) by Pheidias. It’s essentially a one-twelfth-size replica of the 40-foot statue that once stood in the Parthenon. Although a miniature copy of the glorious original, it provides a good look at Greek art at its Golden Age pinnacle. Athena stands dressed in flowing robes, holding a small figure of Nike (goddess of victory) in her right hand and a shield in her left. Athena’s helmet sprouts plumes with winged horses and a sphinx. To give a sense of scale of the original, the tiny Nike in Athena’s hand was six feet tall in the Parthenon statue. Athena’s covered in snakes. She wears a snake belt and bracelet; coiled snakes decorate her breastplate and one is curled up inside her shield, representing the goddess’ connection to her half-snake son, who was born out of the earth and considered to be one of the ancestors of the Athenians. The snake-headed Medusa (whom Athena helped Perseus slay) adorns the center of her chest. (For more on the statue’s original location, see my Acropolis Tour, available 
as a chapter in this book and as a free audio tour.)
Backtrack to Room 17, turn right, and continue circling the museum clockwise into Room 18, which has....
The tombstones that fill this room, all from the fifth century B.C., are more good examples of Golden Age Greek art. With a mastery of the body, artists show poignant scenes of farewell, as loved ones bid a sad goodbye to the dead, who are seated. While the dead are often just shaking hands, there’s usually a personal meaning with each scene. For example, on the tombstone on the left wall, a woman who died in childbirth looks at her baby, held by a servant as it reaches for its dead mother. Other scenes include a beautiful young woman, who died in her prime, narcissistically gazing into a mirror. Servants are shown taking part in the sad event, as if considered part of the family. In the center of the room, a rich and powerful woman ponders which treasure from her jewel box to take with her into eternity. Though shallow reliefs, these works are effectively three-dimensional. There’s a timeless melancholy in the room, a sense that no matter who you are—or how powerful or affluent your family is—when you go, you go alone...and shrouds have no pockets.
Small-scale version of 40-foot Athena.
Funeral stele—a mother mourns her baby.
Pass into Room 21, a large central hall. We’ll take a temporary break from the chronological sequence to see statues dating from the second century B.C., when Greece was ruled by Rome. The hall is dominated by the...
In this bronze statue (c. 140 B.C.), the horse is in full stride, and the young jockey looks over his shoulder to see if anyone’s gaining on them. The statue was recovered in pieces from the seafloor off Cape Artemision. Missing were the reins the jockey once held in his left hand and the whip he used with his right to spur the horse to go even faster—maybe too fast, judging by the look on his face.
Greeks loved their horse races, and this statue may celebrate a victory at one of the Panhellenic Games. The jockey is dressed in a traditional short tunic, has inlaid eyes, and his features indicate that he was probably ethnically part Ethiopian.
The statue, like other ancient bronzes created by Greeks in Roman times, was made not by hammering sheets of metal, but with the classic “lost wax” technique. The artist would first make a rough version of the statue from clay, cover it with a layer of wax, and then cover that with another layer of clay to make a form-fitting mold. When heated in a furnace to harden the mold, the wax would melt—or be “lost”—leaving a narrow space between the clay model and the mold. The artist would then pour molten bronze into the space, let it cool, break the mold, and—voilà!—end up with a hollow bronze statue. This particular statue was cast in pieces, which were then welded together. After the cast was removed, the artist added a few surface details and polished it smooth. Notice the delightful detail on the rider’s spurs, which were lashed to his bare feet.
Stylistically, we’ve gone from stiff Archaic, to restrained Severe, to balanced Classical...to this wonderful example of the unbridled emotion of Hellenism.
The other statues in the room are second-century B.C. Roman copies of fifth-century B.C. Greek originals. The Romans were great warriors, engineers, and administrators, but they had an inferiority complex when it came to art and high culture. For high-class Romans, Greek culture was the ideal, which created a huge demand for Greek statues. As demand exceeded supply, making copies of Greek originals became a big industry, and the Romans excelled at it. In fact, throughout Europe today, when you see a “Greek” statue, it’s likely a Roman copy of a Greek original. Thanks to excellent copies like the ones in this room, we know what many (otherwise lost) Golden Age Greek masterpieces looked like.
Horse and jockey—unbridled emotion.
Realistic grave relief.
To return to our chronological tour (picking up back before the Romans arrived), head into Room 22, with pediment reliefs (Sack of Troy on the right, Greeks vs. Amazons on the left) that once decorated the Temple of Asklepios at Epidavros. Pass through a couple of rooms displaying funeral monuments with progressively higher relief and more monumental scale until you reach the long Room 28, where you’ll come face-to-face with a large...
The spirited horse steps lively and whinnies while an Ethiopian boy struggles with the bridle and tries to calm him with food. The realistic detail of the horse’s muscles and veins is astonishing, offset by the panther-skin blanket. The horse’s head pops out of the relief, becoming fully three-dimensional. The boy’s pose is slightly off-balance, anticipating the “unposed poses” of later Hellenism (this relief is from the late fourth century B.C.). We sense the emotions of both the overmatched boy and the nervous horse. We also see a balance between the horse and boy, with the two figures creating a natural scene together rather than standing alone.
Philosopher, a Hellenist individual.
Farther down Room 28 stands the impressive, slightly-larger-than-life-size...
Scholars can’t decide whether this statue (c. 340-330 B.C.) is reaching out to give someone an apple or demonstrating a split-finger fastball. He may be Perseus, holding up the head of Medusa, but he’s most likely the mythical Paris, awarding a golden apple to the winner of a beauty contest between goddesses (sparking jealousies that started the Trojan War).
The figure is caught in midstep as he reaches out, gazing intently at the person he’s giving the object to. Split this youth vertically down the middle to see the contrapposto (or “counter-poise”) stance of so many Classical statues. His left foot is stable, while the right moves slightly, causing his hips to shift. Meanwhile, his right arm is tense while the left hangs loose. These subtle, contrary motions are in perfect balance around the statue’s vertical axis.
In the Classical Age, statues reached their peak of natural realism and balanced grace. During the following Hellenistic Period, sculptors added to that realism, injecting motion and drama. Statues are fully three-dimensional (and Hellenistic statues even more so, as they have no “front”: You have to walk around them to see the whole picture). Their poses are less rigid than those in the Archaic period and less overtly heroic than those of the Severe. The beauty of the face, the perfection of the muscles, the balance of elegant grace and brute power—these represent the full ripeness of the art of this age.
Continue into the small Room 29. To the left of the following door, find a black bronze head in a glass case. Look into the wild and cynical inlaid eyes of this...
This philosopher was a Cynic, part of a movement of non-materialist nonconformists founded in the fourth century B.C. by Diogenes. The term “cynic” aptly describes these dislikable, arrogant guys with unkempt hair. The statue’s aged, bearded face captures the personality of a distinct individual and is considered a portrait likeness. From c. 240 B.C., it’s typical of the Hellenistic Period, the time after the Macedonian Alexander the Great conquered the rest of Greece and proceeded to spread Greek values across much of the Mediterranean and beyond. Hellenistic Greek society promoted a Me-Generation individualism, and artists celebrated everyday people like this. For the first time in history, we see human beings in all their gritty human glory: with wrinkles, male-pattern baldness, saggy boobs, and middle-age spread, all captured in less-than-noble poses.
The glass case to the left shows other parts of his body. The statue was likely shipped in pieces (like an Ikea self-assembly kit) for practical purposes.
This statue, like a number of the museum’s statues, was found by archaeologists on the seabed off the coast of Greece. Two separate shipwrecks in ancient times have yielded treasures now in this museum: At the wreck off Cape Artemision, Zeus/Poseidon and the bronze horse and jockey were found. Another wreck, off the tiny island of Antikythira (near the southern tip of the Peloponnesian Peninsula), is the source of this statue, as well as the bronze statue of a youth (the one that’s either Paris or Perseus).
Continue into the long Room 30 and head to the far end to find the...
Having been wounded in the thigh (note the hole), this soldier has fallen to one knee and reaches up to fend off the next blow. The style of his helmet indicates that he’s not a Greek, but a Gaul (from ancient France). The artist catches the exact moment when the tide of battle is about to turn. The face of this Fighting Gaul says he’s afraid he may become the Dying Gaul.
The statue (c. 100 B.C.) sums up many of the features of Hellenistic art: He’s frozen in motion, in a wild, unbalanced pose that dramatizes his inner thoughts. The diagonal pose runs up his left leg and out his head and outstretched arm. Rather than a noble, idealized god, this is an ordinary soldier caught in an extreme moment. His arms flail, his muscles strain, his eyes bulge, and he cries out in pain. This statue may have been paired with others, creating a theatrical mini-drama that heightened emotion. Hellenism shows us the thrill of victory, and—in this case—the agony of defeat.
Fighting Gaul with unbalanced pose.
Aphrodite, Pan, and Eros flirting.
To the right, on the other side of a doorway, is a...
In this playful marble ensemble (c. 100 B.C.) from the sacred island of Delos, Aphrodite is about to whack Pan with her sandal. Striking a classic contrapposto pose (with most of her weight on one foot), Aphrodite is more revealing than modest, her voluptuous body polished smooth. There’s a bit of whimsy here, as Aphrodite seems to be saying: “Don’t! Stop!”...but may instead be saying: “Don’t stop.” The actions of the (literally) horny Pan can also be interpreted in two ways: His left arm is forceful, but his right is gentle—holding her more like a dance partner. Eros, like an omnipresent Tinkerbell, comes to Aphrodite’s aid—or does he? He has the power to save her if she wants help, but with a hand on Pan’s horn and a wink, Eros seems to say: “OK, Pan, this is your chance. Come on, man, go for it.” Pan can’t believe his luck. This marble is finer than those used in earlier statues, and it has been polished to a sheen with an emery stone. As you walk around this delightful statue, enjoy the detail, from the pudgy baby feet and the remnants of red paint on the sandal to the way the figures all work together in a cohesive vignette.
Enter Room 31.
Emperor Augustus and the Romans conquered Greece, but they succumbed to Greek culture.
This statue of Augustus, founder of the Roman Empire and its first emperor (c. 12-10 B.C.), is the only known statue of him on horseback, although it is missing its lower half. He holds the (missing) reins in his left hand and raises his right hand in a gesture of blessing or of oration—an expression of the emperor’s power. Although Greece was conquered by the Romans (146 B.C.), Greek culture ultimately “conquered” the Romans, as the Grecophile Romans imported Greek statues to Italy to beautify their villas. They preserved Greece’s monuments and cranked out high-quality copies of Greek art. When the Roman Emperor Augustus began remaking the city of Rome, he used Greek-style Corinthian columns—a veneer of sophistication on buildings erected with no-nonsense, brick-and-concrete Roman-arch engineering. It’s largely thanks to the Romans and their respect for Greek culture that so much of this ancient art survives today.
