Marble sarcophagus lid with reclining couple

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The couple are shown as semidivine personifications of water and earth. Like Hellenistic and Roman images of river gods, the bare-chested man holds a long reed, and a lizard-like creature crouches beside him. The woman holds a garland and two sheaves of wheat, attributes of Tellus, goddess of the earth. At her feet is a furry-tailed mammal with a small Eros on its back. While the man’s head is carefully portrayed, his wife’s head has been left unfinished, suggesting that he predeceased her, and no one added her portrait after she died.

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