GREEK ART OF POETRY

Academic resources and critical essays are only two ways to explore Ancient Greek poetry. Since the classical age itself, visual artists have interpreted many poems through their art. Many paintings, line drawings and especially vases, pots and amphorae (jugs) depict scenes from such works as Homer's Odyssey and Hesiod's Theoginis. Students can learn from these visual interpretations just as they can learn from critical essays - which are often just a more traditional way of intepreting a poem or other literary work. We've compiled some visual works here. Classical Greek poems exist as much outside of books as they do inside them. People do not study them through writing. Many great Greek poems live in line, pigment and clay. No guide to the study of the classics would be complete without a look at this aspect of the discipline.

This Krater by the painter and potter Euphronious shows the dying Sarpedon, son of Zeus. As Hermes looks on the brothers Death and Sleep carry him from the scene of battle.

This hellenistic statue is attributed by Pliny to have been sculpted by Athanadoros, Hagesandros and Polydoros--all of whom are thought to have worked in the early first century A.D. It depicts the strangling of the Trojan Priest Lacoon and his two sons by a serpent sent by the gods. This is the consequence of the God's displeasure with Lacoon for trying to foretell the true contents of the Greek's Wooden Horse.

The above picture is of a dying warriour from the west pediment of the Temple of Aphaia at Aegina. Notice that he smiles, signifying that he belongs to the Archaic mode of sculpting. In contrast the lower statue from the east pediment of this same building shows the pain of dying and, consequently, belongs to a latter period.

This frieze comes from the north side of the Siphnian Treasury and depicts the theme of the gigantomachy. It shows, going from right to left, Apollo and Artemis folloing a running giant, behind them is Themis riding a chariot, yet behind her is Dionysos.

This bronze statue belongs to the Geometric Period, c. eight century B.C. The depiction is of a hero, probably Herakles, battling a centaur.

Titian's Bacchus and Ariadne, 1522-23.

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Apotheosis of Homer, 1827.

LINKS TO MORE ART

Greek Vase Catalog
Tufts University

Ancient Greeks Virtual Tour
British Museum

Mythology in
Western Art
University of Haifa

Greek Mythology Images
Princeton University

Greek Civilization and Culture: Image directory
University of Montana

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