Marble statuette of the goddess Hekate

Alkamenes

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Adaptation of a Greek statue of about 425 B.C. attributed to Alkamenes Hekate, the goddess of the moon and of sorcery, presided over crossroads. She was first represented as three women standing against a pillar in a statue erected in about 425 B.C. on the bastion of Athena Nike at the entrance to the Akropolis in Athens. It was one of the earliest statues deliberately made to imitate the stiff linear way of depicting clothes that had marked works of the sixth century B.C.

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