Terracotta beaker with painted inscription

Terracotta beaker with painted inscription

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

[Group label with 17.194.843 and 17.194.844] The white painted letters give cheery exhortations appropriate for a drinking party. One reads REPLE (fill it up again!), another MISCE (mix another drink!), and the third AVETE (cheers!). Beakers such as these were made principally at Trier; examples have been found at sites throughout the middle and lower Rhineland and also in Britain.


Greek and Roman Art

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Terracotta beaker with painted inscriptionTerracotta beaker with painted inscriptionTerracotta beaker with painted inscriptionTerracotta beaker with painted inscriptionTerracotta beaker with painted inscription

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.