Limestone footstool

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The relief shows a chimera, a mythical creature composed of a lion, a she-goat, and a snake. It was customary to represent the goat as a protome emerging from the lion's back. Here she faces in the same direction as the lion and has one foreleg raised. The chimera was shown in this manner on coins of the Greek city of Sikyon during the fifth century B.C, and it is interesting to note that, according to one ancient writer, the traditional founder of Golgoi was a man named Golgos from Sikyon.

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