Marble stele (grave marker) of a youth and a little girl
An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art
Inscribed on the base: to dear Me[gakles], on his death, his father with his dear mother set [me] up as a monument This is the most complete grave monument of its type to have survived from the Archaic period. Fragments were acquired by The Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1911, 1921, 1936, 1938, and 1951. The fragment with the girl's head, here a plaster copy, was acquired in 1903 by the Berlin Museums; the fragment with the youth's right forearm, also a plaster cast here, is in the National Museum in Athens. The capital and crowning sphinx are casts of the originals, displayed in a case nearby. The youth on the shaft is shown as an athlete, with an aryballos (oil flask) suspended from his wrist. Athletics were an important part of every boy's education, and oil was used as a cleanser after exercise. He holds a pomegranate—a fruit associated with both fecundity and death in Greek myths—perhaps indicating that he had reached puberty before his death. The little girl, presumably a younger sister, holds a flower. This exceptionally lavish monument, which stands over thirteen feet high, must have been erected by one of the wealthiest aristocratic families. Some scholars have restored the name of the youth in the inscription as Megakles, a name associated with the powerful clan of the Alkmeonidai, who opposed the tyrant Peisistratos during most of the second half of the sixth century B.C. The tombs of aristocratic families were sometimes desecrated and destroyed as a result of that conflict, and this stele may well have been among them.
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.