Limestone cippus of Olympianos

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Funerary monuments of this type were common on Cyprus from the Late Hellenistic through the Roman period. Each was engraved with a standard formula of farewell addressing directly the deceased in the vocative. Sometimes a comment is added, such as "no one is immortal." Here the inscription in Greek simply reads: "Good Olympianos, farewell." Above is a wreath decorated with pine cones and fruit that flank a plain circular disk on which a portrait of the deceased may have been painted.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The Museum's collection of Greek and Roman art comprises more than thirty thousand works ranging in date from the Neolithic period (ca. 4500 B.C.) to the time of the Roman emperor Constantine's conversion to Christianity in A.D. 312. It includes the art of many cultures and is among the most comprehensive in North America. The geographic regions represented are Greece and Italy, but not as delimited by modern political frontiers: Greek colonies were established around the Mediterranean basin and on the shores of the Black Sea, and Cyprus became increasingly Hellenized. For Roman art, the geographical limits coincide with the expansion of the Roman Empire. The department also exhibits the art of prehistoric Greece (Helladic, Cycladic, and Minoan) and pre-Roman art of Italic peoples, notably the Etruscans.

Metropolitan Museum of Art