Marble pillar with snake and wreath

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

This pillar may be either votive or sepulchral. The snake is both an attribute of the healing god Asklepios, suggesting this object may have been a thank offering on behalf of one cured of an illness, and a potent symbol of the underworld, alluding perhaps to a funereal function. The wreath, meanwhile, evokes victory in the broadest sense, as well as the realm of Dionysos, whose mythological rebirth makes his iconography particularly appropriate in a tomb context.

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