Painted limestone funerary slab with a soldier standing at ease

Painted limestone funerary slab with a soldier standing at ease

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

A soldier wearing a long blue cloak stands alone, with a spear in his right hand and a tall ovoid shield at his left. Celtic groups from Europe migrated eastward in 279 B.C. and established independent kingdoms in Thrace and central Asia Minor. Known as Galatians, they were used extensively as mercenary soldiers. Inscriptions identifying at least three Galatian soldiers who must have served under the Ptolemies occur on loculus slabs in the rather simple tomb found in 1884.

Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Painted limestone funerary slab with a soldier standing at easePainted limestone funerary slab with a soldier standing at easePainted limestone funerary slab with a soldier standing at easePainted limestone funerary slab with a soldier standing at easePainted limestone funerary slab with a soldier standing at ease

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.