Understanding Greek Equestrian Imagery in the Archaic Through Hellenistic Periods

Understanding Greek Equestrian Imagery in the Archaic Through Hellenistic Periods Public Deposited

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Creator

Phebus, Angelina Danielle
- Affiliation: College of Arts and Sciences, Department of Classics

Abstract

This study analyzes equestrian imagery from the Archaic through Hellenistic periods in Greece. I investigate why horse depictions were employed in the contexts of votive offerings, funerary sculpture, and architectural sculpture. I consider whether horses' renderings can be related to socio-political phenomena respective of their physical and historical context by looking at horses in terms of type, conformation, and scale. While athletic monuments, represented by the Delphi charioteer and the Artemision Horse and Jockey in this project, promote individualism of aristocratic victors through portrait-like depictions of competition horses, Classical reliefs are idealized. Prinias A, the Siphnian Treasury, the Parthenon frieze, and Classical Athenian funerary reliefs show the development of the composite type. The Horse and Groom Relief demonstrates the return to individualized depictions of horses on funerary monuments in the early Hellenistic period.

Date of publication