Terracotta plate

Epiktetos

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

Youth riding rooster Plates were favored by some of the major vase-painters, both black-figure and red-figure, during the last decades of the sixth century B.C. The tondo presented the same challenge as the interior of a cup. This young man astride a rooster touches the bird's neck with his right hand and, curiously, rests his toes on the framing circle. The meaning is not evident, but the reference undoubtedly has to do with the rooster as a love gift.

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