The Acropolis of Athens is an ancient citadel located on a rocky outcrop above the city of Athens, Greece, and contains the remains of several ancient buildings of great architectural and historical significance, the most famous being the Parthenon. The word Acropolis is from the Greek words ἄκρον and πόλις. The term acropolis is generic and there are many other acropoleis in Greece. During ancient times the Acropolis of Athens was also more properly known as Cecropia, after the legendary serpent-man Cecrops, the supposed first Athenian king.
Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics also includes Greco-Roman philosophy, history, archaeology, anthropology, art, mythology and society as secondary subjects.
The Parthenon is a former temple on the Athenian Acropolis, Greece, that was dedicated to the goddess Athena during the fifth century BC. Its decorative sculptures are considered some of the high points of classical Greek art, an enduring symbol of Ancient Greece, democracy and Western civilization.
In Greek mythology, an Amazonomachy is a mythological battle between the ancient Greeks and the Amazons, a nation of all-female warriors. The subject of Amazonomachies was popular in ancient Greek art and Roman art.
The statue of Athena Parthenos was a monumental chryselephantine sculpture of the goddess Athena. Attributed to Phidias and dated to the mid-fifth century BCE, it was an offering from the city of Athens to Athena, its tutelary deity. The naos of the Parthenon on the acropolis of Athens was designed exclusively to accommodate it.
The Panathenaea was a multi-day ancient Greek festival held annually in Athens that would always conclude on 28 Hekatombaion, the first month of the Attic calendar. The main purpose of the festival was for Athenians and non-Athenians to celebrate the goddess Athena. Every four years, the festival was celebrated in a larger manner over a longer time period with increased festivities and was known as the Great Panathenaea. In the years that the festival occurred that were not considered the Great Panathenaea, the festival was known as the Lesser Panathenaea. The festival consisted of various competitions and ceremonies, culminating with a religious procession that ended in the Acropolis of Athens.
The sculpture of ancient Greece is the main surviving type of fine ancient Greek art as, with the exception of painted ancient Greek pottery, almost no ancient Greek painting survives. Modern scholarship identifies three major stages in monumental sculpture in bronze and stone: the Archaic, Classical (480–323) and Hellenistic. At all periods there were great numbers of Greek terracotta figurines and small sculptures in metal and other materials.
The Parthenon frieze is the high-relief Pentelic marble sculpture created to adorn the upper part of the Parthenon's naos.
The Athena Promachos was a colossal bronze statue of Athena sculpted by Pheidias, which stood between the Propylaea and the Parthenon on the Acropolis of Athens. Athena was the tutelary deity of Athens and the goddess of wisdom and warriors. Pheidias also sculpted two other figures of Athena on the Acropolis, the huge gold and ivory ("chryselephantine") cult image of Athena Parthenos in the Parthenon and the Lemnian Athena.
William Bell Dinsmoor Sr. was an American architectural historian of classical Greece and a Columbia University professor of art and archaeology.
Robin Grimsey Osborne, is an English historian of classical antiquity, who is particularly interested in Ancient Greece.
The Kanephoros was an honorific office given to unmarried young women in ancient Greece, which involved the privilege of leading the procession to sacrifice at festivals; the highest honour was to lead the pompe (πομπή) at the Panathenaic Festival. The role was given to a virgin selected from amongst the aristocratic or Eupatrid families of Athens whose purity and youth was thought essential to ensure a successful sacrifice. Her task was to carry a basket or kanoun (κανοῦν), which contained the offering of barley or first fruits, the sacrificial knife and fillets to decorate the bull, in procession through the city up to the altar on the acropolis.
Joan Breton Connelly is an American classical archaeologist and Professor of Classics and Art History at New York University. She is Director of the Yeronisos Island Excavations and Field School in Cyprus. Connelly was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1996. She received the Archaeological Institute of America Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award in 2007 and held the Lillian Vernon Chair for Teaching Excellence at New York University from 2002 to 2004. She is an Honorary Citizen of the Municipality of Peyia, Republic of Cyprus.
Robert Manuel Cook was a classical scholar and classical archaeologist from England with expertise in Greek painted vases. He was Laurence Professor of Classical Archaeology at the University of Cambridge, the author of several academic texts and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1974, having been made a Fellow of the German Archaeological Institute in 1953.
Stephen Victor Tracy is an American scholar of Classics specializing in ancient Greek Epigraphy. Inscriptions are one of the most important classes of primary evidence that comes down to us from antiquity. Tracy is best known for devising a method for recognizing the work of individual inscribers. It was long thought that the intractability of the medium made this impossible. But by treating the inscribed letters as a kind of handwriting he has been able to establish careers for many cutters, to join discrete fragments, to date inscriptions more accurately than in the past, and often thereby make it possible to reach a new understanding of historical events.
Geoffrey B. Waywell was British archaeologist who served as Professor of Classical Archaeology at King's College London, Director of the Institute of Classical Studies, University of London, and a specialist in Greek and Roman sculpture.
Lisa C. Nevett is a Professor of Classical Archaeology in the Department of Classical Studies at the University of Michigan, and Director of the Interdepartmental Program in Classical Art and Archaeology. Prior to joining Michigan she was a Lecturer in Classical Studies at The Open University, 1996-2003 and British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the Archaeology Department at Durham University, 1993-1996.
Olga Palagia is Professor of Classical Archaeology at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens and is a leading expert on ancient Greek sculpture. She is known in particular for her work on sculpture in ancient Athens and has edited a number of key handbooks on Greek sculpture.
Mary Ann Eaverly is Professor of Classics at the University of Florida known for her work on Archaic Greek sculpture.
Ellen Eva Perry is an American classicist who serves as the Monsignor Edward G. Murray Professor of the Arts and Humanities at the College of the Holy Cross. She served as the president of the Classical Association of New England (CANE) from 2014 until 2020.
