Fragmentary marble inscription

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Following the Greek victory over the Persians in 479 B.C., Athens formed a naval confederacy with other Greek cities around the Aegean Sea. Gradually, however, it became an empire exacting annual tribute for the benefit of Athens alone. This inscription is part of a tribute list recording payments to Athens by members of the confederacy. It lists the assessments of Paros, Naxos, Andros, Melos, Siphnos, Eretria, and Thera. The date is 425/424 B.C., and the amounts are high because Athens was combating Sparta in the Peloponnesian War.

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