Athena or Athene, often given the epithet Pallas, is an ancient Greek goddess associated with wisdom, warfare, and handicraft who was later syncretized with the Roman goddess Minerva. Athena was regarded as the patron and protectress of various cities across Greece, particularly the city of Athens, from which she most likely received her name. The Parthenon on the Acropolis of Athens is dedicated to her. Her major symbols include owls, olive trees, snakes, and the Gorgoneion. In art, she is generally depicted wearing a helmet and holding a spear.
Minerva is the Roman goddess of wisdom, justice, law, victory, and the sponsor of arts, trade, and strategy. She is also a goddess of warfare, though with a focus on strategic warfare, rather than the violence of gods such as Mars. Beginning in the second century BC, the Romans equated her with the Greek goddess Athena. Minerva is one of the three Roman deities in the Capitoline Triad, along with Jupiter and Juno.
In Greek mythology, Narcissus was a hunter from Thespiae in Boeotia who was known for his beauty which was noticed by all. According to the best-known version of the story, by Ovid, Narcissus rejected all advances, eventually falling in love with a reflection in a pool of water, tragically not realizing its similarity, entranced by it. In some versions, he beat his breast purple in agony at being kept apart from this reflected love, and in his place sprouted a flower bearing his name.
Oscar Fingal O'Fflahertie Wills Wilde was an Irish poet and playwright. After writing in different forms throughout the 1880s, he became one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. He is best remembered for his epigrams and plays, his novel The Picture of Dorian Gray, and his criminal conviction for gross indecency for homosexual acts.
Phidias or Pheidias was an Ancient Greek sculptor, painter, and architect, active in the 5th century BC. His Statue of Zeus at Olympia was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Phidias also designed the statues of the goddess Athena on the Athenian Acropolis, namely the Athena Parthenos inside the Parthenon, and the Athena Promachos, a colossal bronze which stood between it and the Propylaea, a monumental gateway that served as the entrance to the Acropolis in Athens. Phidias was the son of Charmides of Athens. The ancients believed that his masters were Hegias and Ageladas.
In Greek mythology, Tiresias was a blind prophet of Apollo in Thebes, famous for clairvoyance and for being transformed into a woman for seven years. He was the son of the shepherd Everes and the nymph Chariclo. Tiresias participated fully in seven generations in Thebes, beginning as advisor to Cadmus, the founder of Thebes.
In Greek mythology, Daphnis was a legendary Sicilian cowherd who was said to be the inventor of pastoral poetry. According to Diodorus the Sicilian, Daphnis was born in the Heraean Mountains of central Sicily.
In classical mythology, Hylas was a youth who served Heracles as companion and servant. His abduction by water nymphs was a theme of ancient art, and has been an enduring subject for Western art in the classical tradition.
Aestheticism was an art movement in the late 19th century that valued the appearance of literature, music, fonts and the arts over their functions. According to Aestheticism, art should be produced to be beautiful, rather than to teach a lesson, create a parallel, or perform another didactic purpose, a sentiment best illustrated by the slogan "art for art's sake." Aestheticism flourished in the 1870s and 1880s, gaining prominence and the support of notable writers such as Walter Pater and Oscar Wilde.
Ernest Christopher Dowson was an English poet, novelist, and short-story writer who is often associated with the Decadent movement.
Lionel Pigot Johnson was an English poet, essayist, and critic.
The School of Athens is a fresco by the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael. It was painted between 1509 and 1511 as part of a commission by Pope Julius II to decorate the rooms now called the Stanze di Raffaello in the Apostolic Palace in Vatican City.
In Greek and Roman mythology, Corone is a young woman who attracted the attention of Poseidon, the god of the sea, and was saved by Athena, the goddess of wisdom. She was a princess and the daughter of Coronaeus. Her brief tale is recounted in the narrative poem Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Ovid. Several other myths surround the crow about its connection to Athena.
The Decadent movement was a late 19th-century artistic and literary movement, centered in Western Europe, that followed an aesthetic ideology of excess and artificiality.
In Greek mythology and ancient religion, Nike or Nice is the goddess who personifies victory in any field including art, music, war, and athletics. She is often portrayed in Greek art as "Winged Victory" in the motion of flight; however, she can also appear without wings as "Wingless Victory" when she is being portrayed as an attribute of another deity such as Athena.
In Greek mythology, Gaia, also spelled Gaea, is the personification of Earth. Gaia is the ancestral mother—sometimes parthenogenic—of all life. She is the mother of Uranus (Sky), from whose sexual union she bore the Titans, the Cyclopes, and the Giants, as well as of Pontus (Sea), from whose union she bore the primordial sea gods. Her equivalent in the Roman pantheon was Terra.
Pederasty or paederasty is a sexual relationship between an adult man and a boy. It was a socially acknowledged practice in Ancient Greece and Rome and elsewhere in the world, such as Pre-Meiji Japan.
Algernon Charles Swinburne was an English poet, playwright, novelist and critic. He wrote many plays - all tragedies - and collections of poetry such as Poems and Ballads, and contributed to the Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica.
The Sphinx is a 174-line poem by Oscar Wilde, written from the point of view of a young man who questions the Sphinx in lurid detail on the history of her sexual adventures, before finally renouncing her attractions and turning to his crucifix. It was written over a period of twenty years, stretching from Wilde's years as an Oxford student up to the poem's publication in an édition de luxe in 1894. The Sphinx drew on a wide range of sources, both ancient and modern, but particularly on various works of the French Decadent movement. Though at first coldly received by critics it is now generally recognized as Wilde's finest Decadent poem, and has been described as "unrivalled: a quintessential piece of fin-de-siècle art".
"The Harlot's House" (1885) is a 36-line poem in terza rima by Oscar Wilde. It touches on the issue of prostitution in a style which can be seen as either Aesthetic or Decadent. It is considered one of Wilde's finest poems, and has been set to music several times.
