Marble bust of Herodotos

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Copy of a Greek bronze statue of the first half of the fourth century B.C. Herodotos (ca. 484–424 B.C.) of Halikarnassos achieved fame in his lifetime for his Histories, which chronicle the Greek wars with Persia in the first quarter of the fifth century B.C. and the years surrounding those momentous events. His most brilliant and original accomplishment was his conception of a narrative that interweaves local traditions in a span of more than seventy years and encompasses much of the world known to the ancient Greeks through fact and fiction. Cicero called him the father of history. This work is one of numerous extant Roman copies that stem from a Greek statue, probably of the first half of the fourth century B.C. Portraits of Herodotos also appear on Roman bronze coins from Halikarnassos.

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