Ancient Egyptian ring (gold and green jasper) with an image of the god Ptah. Artist unknown; ca. 664-322 BCE (Late Period). Now in the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore. Photo credit: Walters Art Museum.
The doric temple at Segesta, built c. 420 BCE by a Sicilian architect who was influenced by his Greek forefathers’ design styles, sits in the Trapani Province countryside. #experiencesicily #sicily #segesta #doric #temple #calatafimi #grecoantico #ancientgreek #sicilia #siciliabedda #italy #italia #sicilyvacation #sicilians_world #ig_sicily #igerssicilia #instasicilia #gf_italy #siculamenteDoc #sicily_tricolors #ig_visitsicily #Sicilia_PhotoGroup #smallgrouptours #traveltogether #authenticsicily #sicilytour #whatsicilyis #sicilytravel #viverelasicilia (at Tempio di Segesta) https://www.instagram.com/p/CLHHQX-lPgJ/?igshid=173by1r1ikwmv
The ancient site of Letoon, lies 4 km south of Xanthos and was the leading Lycian religious centre. The principal gods of ancient Lycia were Leto and her twin children Artemis and Apollo. It was also the assembly place for Lycian league. Archaeological finds date back to the 7th century BCE.
“Excavation of Persepolis (Iran): Tachara Palace (Palace of Darius), Central Facade of Southern Stairway: Detail View of Relief Picturing Persian Guards”
“Demeter stands holding a royal sceptre and sheaf of wheat. She wears a crown upon her head. Beside her stands Persephone holding an Eleusinian torch and pouring libations from a cup.” Persephone & Demeter Lekythos 450 - 425 BCE. Current location: Athens National Archaeological Museum.
“Ceres delights in peace: pray, you farmers,
Pray for endless peace and a peace-loving leader.
Honour the Goddess with wheat, and dancing salt grains,
And grains of incense offered on the ancient hearths,
And if there’s no incense, burn your resinous torches”
-Ovid, Fasti: Book 4, April 12, The Games of Ceres
Hermes kills the 100-eyed Argos by The Argos Painter 5th C. BCE.
Side A: Slaying Argos. Bearded Hermes grabs Argos, who has fallen on his left knee and is covered with numerous eyes, by the beard with his left hand and draws his sword against him with his right. Behind the cow mistakenly drawn as a bull. On the right Zeus is seated on a folding chair with animal claw feet, holding a scepter in his left hand.
Side B: Two youths and a man in cloaks, shod. The one on the left is holding a rabbit, the one in the middle a long staff, the bearded man is leaning on a gnarled stick. A diptych above the hare. Attributed to the Argos Painter.
“But now heaven’s master [Zeus] could no more endure Phoronis’ [Io’s] distress, and summoned his son [Hermes], whom the bright shining Pleias [Pleiad Maia] bore, and charged him to accomplish Argus’ death. Promptly he fastened on his ankle-wings, grasped in his fist the wand that charms to sleep, put on his magic cap, and thus arrayed Jove’s [Zeus’] son [Hermes] sprang from his father’s citadel [Mount Olympos] down to earth. There he removed his cap, laid by his wings; only his wand he kept. A herdsman now, he drove a flock of goats through the green byways, gathered as he went, and played his pipes of reed. The strange sweet skill charmed Juno’s [Hera’s] guardian. ‘My friend,’ he called, ‘whoever you are, well might you sit with me here on this rock, and see how cool the shade extends congenial for a shepherd’s seat.’
So Atlantiades [Hermes] joined him, and with many a tale he stayed the passing hours and on his reeds played soft refrains to lull the watching eyes. But Argus fought to keep at bay the charms of slumber and, though many of his eyes were closed in sleep, still many kept their guard. He asked too by what means this new design (for new it was), the pipe of reeds, was found. Then the God told this story [of Pan and his pursuit of the Nymphe Syrinx] …
The tale remained untold; for Cyllenius [Hermes] saw all Argus’ eyelids closed and every eye vanquished in sleep. He stopped and with his wand, his magic wand, soothed the tired resting eyes and sealed their slumber; quick then with his sword he struck off the nodding head and from the rock threw it all bloody, spattering the cliff with gore. Argus lay dead; so many eyes, so bright quenched, and all hundred shrouded in one night. Saturnia [Hera] retrieved those eyes to set in place among the feathers of her bird [the peacock] and filled his tail with starry jewels.”
Oedipus and the Sphinx, interior of an Attic red-figured kylix (cup or drinking vessel), c. 470 BCE. The Gregorian Etruscan Museum, the Vatican Museums, Rome.
“For whom have the Gods and divinities that share their altar and the thronging assembly of men ever admired so much as they honored Oidipous (Oedipus) then, when he removed that deadly, man-seizing plague (kêr) [i.e. the Sphinx] from our land.”
One of the dramatic threads in the account of Odysseus’s return to Ithaka is the gradual revelation of his identity. Here, Odysseus appears seated before a columned facade that represents his palace. Before him stand his son, Telemachos, and his wife,Penelope. As the old nurse,Eurykleia, washes Odysseus’s feet, she recognizes him from an old scar. Artistic depictions such as this are interesting not only for the illustrative detail that they provide but also for the subjects chosen.
