Gilt silver kylix

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

On the tondo is represented ‘dread-yelping’ Scylla, the Homeric sea monster who lived in a cave on a cliff along the Sicilian coast off the Straits of Messina. She is depicted in the characteristic way, with the upper body of a beautiful woman and three fierce dogs springing from her hips amidst her scaly extremities, one of which terminates in a ketos or sea dragon. Her dog’s heads snap at fish jumping around her and she brandishes the broken rudder of ship, which she has sent to the deep. Scylla is framed by a wave pattern and encircling the interior of the rim is a gilt laurel wreath.

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