Lead votive plaque

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The plaque contains a complex iconography of divine figures and symbols, probably to be associated with Thracian or Dacian beliefs of the Lower Danube region. Presiding over the whole scene is Sol Invictus (the invicible sun-god) in a quadriga (four-horse chariot). His cult originated in the Near East and gained increasing influence under imperial patronage during the third century A.D. The state worship of Sol was only supplanted by Constantine's adoption of Christianity in A.D. 312.

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