The daily life of the Greeks and Romans as illustrated in the classical collectionsMetropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.)
History
The daily life of the Greeks and Romans as illustrated in the classical collections
Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, N.Y.)
Art, Greek; Art, Roman; Greece -- Social life and customs; Rome -- Social life and customs
Public worship in Greece and Italy consisted of prayers and hymns, and
of sacrifices offered both within the temples and shrines and in other
places, such as groves and springs, which were held to be sacred. The
temples were built and adorned with all possible care, and were the pride
of the community. An amphora (on the bottom of Case S in the Fourth Room)
decorated with a religious scene shows a common type of altar. It is
shaped rather like a pedestal with an architectural moulding and “horns”
on either side. A miniature terracotta shrine from Cyprus (on the right
side of the top shelf in Case 1), made for household use, gives us an
idea of the shape of the larger ones which held a statue at crossroads
and street corners. Incense, a frequent accompaniment of worship, was
burned in a covered vessel, often provided with a high stand, such as the
incense burner painted on a small oinochoë in Case G in the Fifth Room;
or a little altar was used for the purpose. An example from Cyprus, which
still shows traces of fire, stands on the top shelf of Case 1. A marble
lamp from a temple is in Case G in the Third Room. It was made to be set
in a support, probably a bronze tripod, and was filled with oil in which
a wick floated.
[Illustration: FIG. 1. PRAYING YOUTH (?)]
In prayer the worshipper looked upward and raised both hands. This
attitude is perhaps represented in a bronze statuette, probably a votive
offering, in Case D in the Fifth Room (fig. 1). A small wine-jug (Case 1,
middle shelf) is decorated with a scene no doubt very common in Athens;
before a statue of Athena raised on a low column stands a man saluting
the goddess by kissing his fingers and raising them toward her (fig. 2).
A bronze votive statuette in Case D in the Fourth Room is making the same
gesture.
[Illustration: FIG. 2. MAN SALUTING A STATUE OF ATHENA]
[Illustration: FIG. 3. MAN CARRYING A PIG TO BE SACRIFICED]
[Illustration: FIG. 4. VOTIVE TABLE]
[Illustration: FIG. 5. VOTIVE PLAQUE]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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