Marble votive relief dedicated to a hero

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Inscribed to the physician A hero was a deceased person who exerted from his grave a power for good or evil and demanded appropriate honor. The cult was concentrated at the grave, which was marked off as a special precinct and known as a heroon. As with the Olympian gods, there were animal sacrifices and offering of food and libation. The principal cultic activity was a feast of the living in company with the dead hero and in his honor. Votive reliefs often show the hero, as here, reclining at such a meal and being approached by worshipers, shown in smaller scale.

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