Terracotta hydria: kalpis (water jar)

Berlin Painter

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Ajax and Achilles gaming About 540 B.C. Exekias invented the representation of Achilles and Ajax passing the time during the siege of Troy by playing a board game. The original is preserved in the Vatican Museums. The subject remained popular into the fifth century B.C. The warriors are evenly matched. They hold their spears and shields as they play. The artist's concern seems less to characterize them than to dispose an interesting, symmetrical composition on the shoulder of the kalpis.

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