Six Objects from Ancient Greece: An Exhibit Guide

Clay, Bronze and Stone: Objects from Greek City-States

1Case 1: Bronze running girl (about 520–500 BCE). This small figure of a girl running in a short tunic was probably made in Sparta. Spartan girls ran races and exercised, while most girls in Athens stayed at home learning to run a household. Sparta was ruled by two kings and a council of elders, and its citizen men trained as soldiers for much of their lives. Spartans built few grand temples. The Athenian historian Thucydides wrote that if Sparta were ever deserted, people in later ages would doubt it had been so powerful, judging only from its ruins.

2Case 2: Ostraka (Athens, 480s–470s BCE). In Athens, adult male citizens could vote once a year to send one leader away for ten years. Each voter scratched a name on an ostrakon, a broken piece of pottery. Ancient writers say at least 6,000 votes had to be cast. In a well near the Acropolis, archaeologists found about 190 ostraka with the name of Themistocles, a general who was voted out in about 471 BCE. Experts found the names were scratched in only about 14 different handwritings.

3Case 3: Painted vase showing actors (Athens, about 400 BCE). Actors on this vase hold the masks they wore on stage. Athenians watched tragedies by writers such as Aeschylus and Euripides, and comedies by Aristophanes, at yearly festivals for the god Dionysus. Real masks were made of linen or wood.

4Case 4: Kleroterion (Athens, 300s BCE). This stone slab has rows of narrow slots. On the morning of a trial, citizens over 30 who wanted to serve as jurors pushed bronze name tickets into the slots. An official then dropped black and white balls down a tube beside them. A white ball meant one row served that day; a black ball sent a row home. Juries were large, often 201 or 501 citizens.

5Case 5: Antikythera mechanism (more than 2,000 years old). Divers found these corroded bronze pieces in a shipwreck near the Greek island of Antikythera in 1901. X-ray scans show at least 30 interlocking gears. Turning a handle moved pointers that showed the positions of the sun and moon and predicted eclipses.

6Case 6: Marble head of Aristotle. Aristotle (384–322 BCE) studied in Athens under the philosopher Plato and later taught the young Alexander the Great. He wrote about government, logic and how to live well, and he described hundreds of kinds of animals from careful observation. This head is a Roman copy of a lost Greek bronze, made centuries after his death.