Traditional Europe

Head of Athena, found in Tel Naharon (northern Beth Shean), 2nd century AD Athena (the Roman Minerva) was the daughter of Zeus, king of the gods. She was the goddess of wisdom and the art of warfare, patroness of heroes, artists, and the arts. She is usually depicted helmet-clad and armed with a spear and shield. Of this statue, which originally rose to 2.5 meters, only the head has survived. Traces of paint indicate that it was originally brightly painted. The contrast between the smooth face and rough hair are typical of the style of the 2nd century CE.

"Death of Sappho" — Miguel Carbonell Selva, 1881. The story about the fatal leap of Sappho into the sea at a headland named Leukas, which means ‘White Rock’, is best known today from a version that we read in a collection of elegiac poems by Ovid about female heroes, the Heroides. This version is Heroides 15, which fictionalizes a plaintive letter written by a lovesick Sappho before she takes her fatal leap. Her letter is addressed to a beautiful young male lover named Phaon, whom she tearfully reproaches for having abandoned her and having voyaged off to parts West.

“In place of a true-type people, born of and grown on the soil, there is a new sort of nomad, cohering unstably in fluid masses, the parasitical city dweller, traditionless, utterly matter-of-fact, religionless, clever, unfruitful, deeply contemptuous of the countryman and especially that highest form of countryman, the country gentleman...” — Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West.

Pompeii new frescos have been uncovered in a new excavation at Pompeii, the ancient Roman city buried in an eruption from Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. The frescos depict Greek mythology: Paris kidnaps Helen which triggers the Trojan War Mythical Greek figures such as Helen of Troy are depicted on the high black walls of a large banqueting hall. The room's near-complete mosaic floor incorporates more than a million individual white tiles.

"Reveries" — Maxfield Parrish (1870-1966).