Front of a limestone block from the stepped base of a funerary monument

Phaidimos

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Inscribed: on the death of Chairedemos his father Amphichares set up this monument mourning a good son. Phaidimos made it. The epitaph consists of two lines of poetry in the special form (dactylic hexameter) that was used at this time to express grief over a death. It is followed by the name of the sculptor, Phaidimos, who is known from two other inscriptions found in Attica. These lines are inscribed to read alternately from right to left and left to right. The Phoenicians, from whom the Greeks derived the alphabet, wrote from right to left. The Greeks soon found that writing from left to right was more convenient, but, until the end of the sixth century B.C., lines of inscriptions were sometimes carved in alternating directions. This method of writing was called boustrophedon (ox-turning) because it turns at the end of each line, as the ox turns with the plow at the end of each furrow.

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