Marble inscription fragment

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The inscription honors an athlete who had won various competitions and, possibly, provided services to other athletes as a trainer, thereby bringing glory on himself and his homeland. He appears to have been an outstanding pentathlete, who won one competition outright after only three events since he came first in all of them, namely, the long jump, the javelin, and the discus. The marble block is probably part of a statue base.

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