Dolphin fresco, Knossos, Crete (about 1500 BC) Although people in Northern Europe were doing cave paintings tens of thousands of years earlier, the first paintings from Greece are not until [...]
Ancient Greek music: an enslaved woman plays a lyre Some people have been trying to figure out what ancient Greek music might have sounded like. But most of what we [...]
Ancient Greek musicians: A teacher shows a boy how to play pipes; a lyre hangs on the wall Who played music in ancient Greece? Both women and men played musical [...]
Greek art: A slave woman plays a kithara (Athens, ca. 480 BC) Greek art: order and chaos Artists in ancient Greece thought of art as a way of creating order [...]
Theater of Dionysos on the Acropolis below the Parthenon in Athens The earliest Greek theaters, probably as early as the Stone Age, were just grassy hillsides with a flat place [...]
Peristyle in the House of the Vettii (Pompeii, 79 AD) A peristyle is a courtyard with a covered walkway all the way around it, with columns holding up the ceiling [...]
The pediment is the triangular place under the roof of a Greek temple. Each temple has two pediments, one on the front and one on the back. They're always isosceles triangles. At [...]
A model of the gold and ivory statue of Athena inside the Parthenon Inside the Parthenon, the great sculptor Pheidias carved a huge statue of Athena made out of gold [...]
Parthenon frieze - seated goddesses What is on the Parthenon frieze? On the Parthenon's frieze, Pheidias carved a long procession of Athenians, with girls in the front, bringing a new [...]
Metope from the Parthenon On the metopes, just under the roof, Phidias carved the battle between Lapiths (men) and centaurs (the Centauromachy), Greeks against Amazons (Amazonomachy), the gods against the [...]
