Art and Myth in Ancient Greece

by Carpenter, Thomas H.

• ISBN13: 9780500202364
• ISBN10: 0500202362
• Edition: 00
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1991-01-17
• Publisher: Thames & Hudson

Summary

Here is the first scholarly, comprehensive and succinct survey of the treatment of myth by the artists of ancient Greece. With its copious illustrations, it forms an indispensable and unrivaled reference work for everybody interested in art, drama, poetry, anthropology or religion. There is no surviving account in ancient Greek literature of of stories as important as the fall of Troy or Theseus and the Minotaur. It is to visual sources that we have to turn for much of our knowledge of the myths. Vase paintings, engraved gems and sculpture in bronze and and stone often pre-date reference to the myths in literature or offer alternative versions to the familiar accounts; always they throw light on the way the Greeks understood the stories of gods and heroes.

Table of Contents

Preface	6	(7)
Introduction	7	(6)
A Demonstration of Method: The Return of Hephaistos; Troilos and Achilles	13	(22)
Portraits of the Gods	35	(34)
The Ascendancy of the Olympians	69	(34)
Perseus; Bellerophon	103	(14)
Herakles	117	(43)
Theseus	160	(23)
Argonauts; Calydonian Boar Hunt	183	(12)
The Trojan War	195	(38)
The Aftermath of the War	233	(13)
Abbreviations	246	(1)
A selected list of further reading	247	(3)
List of illustrations	250	(3)
Index of mythological subjects	253	(3)
Index of common attributes	256