Since their discovery in nineteenth-century Russia, Greco-Scythian artefacts have been interpreted as masterpieces by Greek craftsmen working according to the tastes of the Scythian nomads and creating realistic depictions of their barbarian patrons. Drawing on a broad array of evidence from archaeology, art history and epigraphy to contextualize Greco-Scythian metalwork in ancient society, this volume confronts the deep confusion between ancient representation and historical reality in contemporary engagements with classical culture. It argues that the strikingly life-like figure scenes of Greco-Scythian art were integral to the strategies of a cosmopolitan elite who legitimated its economic dominance by asserting an intermediary cultural position between the steppe inland and the urban centres on the shores of the Black Sea. Investigating the reception of this 'Eurasian' self-image in tsarist Russia, Meyer unravels the complex relationship between ancient ideology and modern imperial visions, and its legacy in current conceptions of cultural interaction and identity. With a synthesis of material evidence never yet attempted, this volume breaks significant new ground in explaining the archaeology of Scythia and its ties to inner Asia and classical Greece, the intersection between modern museum display and visual knowledge, and the intellectual history of classics in Russia and the West.

How have two-dimensional images of ancient Greek vases shaped modern perceptions of these artefacts and of the classical past? This is the first scholarly volume devoted to the exploration of drawings, prints, and photographs of Greek vases in modernity. Case studies of the seventeenth to the twentieth century foreground ways that artists have depicted Greek vases in a range of styles and contexts within and beyond academia. Questions addressed include: how do these images translate three-dimensional ancient utilitarian objects with iconography central to the tradition of Western painting and decorative arts into two-dimensional graphic images carrying aesthetic and epistemic value? How does the embodied practice of drawing enable people to engage with Greek vases differently from museum viewers, and what insights does it offer on ancient producers and users? And how did the invention of photography impact the tradition of drawing Greek vases? The volume addresses art historians of the seventeenth to twentieth centuries, archaeologists and classical reception scholars.

A collection of essays dedicated to the memory of Eleni Hatzivassiliou (1977-2007). The range of subjects reflects her broad circle of friends. Many are her contemporaries, but many are very senior scholars; ages range from 25 to 80. It is truly remarkable that someone who had not yet reached her thirtieth birthday could have come to know so many scholars and win their admiration and affection. Contents: Editorial foreword (Donna Kurtz); Biography of Eleni Hatzivassiliou (Donna Kurtz); Tribute (John Boardman); Guide to readers; The origins of Greek myth (John Boardman); Homer and the Solymians (J.J. Coulton); Sappho's sensual world (Thomas Brisart); An early archaic sphinx from the Polis Cave, Ithaka (Stavros 59)(Catherine Morgan); The riddle of the sphinx: a Protocorinthian vase from Perachora and the sphinx in Corinthian art (Catherine Cooper); A Middle Corinthian puzzle from Isthmia (K.W. Arafat); Athens versus Attika: local variations in funerary practices during the late seventh and early sixth century BC (Alexandra-Fani Alexandridou); A chorus of women ololyzousai on an early Attic skyphos (Nassi Malagardis); Dead warriors and their wounds on Athenian black-figure vases (David Saunders); Towers, pillars or frames? (Elizabeth Moignard); Nikosthenes looking east? Phialai in Six's and polychrome Six's technique (Athena Tsingarida); Some fictile biographies from Naukratis (Alan Johnston) The painter of Rhodes 13472: observations on a vase-painter of the Leagros Group (Anna A. Lemos); Kalypso's conifers? (Elke Br); Attic, Boeotian or Euboean? An orphan skyphos from Rhitsona revisited (Victoria Sabetai); Bird-women on the Harpy Monument from Xanthos, Lycia: sirens or harpies? (Catherine M. Draycott); The asses' lot (Louise Calder); The mounds associated with the Battle of Marathon in 490BC and the dating of Greek pottery (Chia-Lin Hsu) A wild goose chase? Geese and goddesses in classical Greece (Alexandra Villing); Prometheus Bound and Unbound: between art and drama (Dyfri Williams); Comedies on South Italian vases (Thomas Mannack); The Derveni Krater (Michalis Tiverios); Private sentiments in public spaces: two votive groups from Epidauros (Olympia Bobou); Cretan nymphs: an Attic hypothesis (Milena Melfi); A banquet relief from Thasos (Konstantina Panousi); Sosilos' statue and nudity in public honorific portrait statues in the Hellenistic period (Stella Skaltsa); Ouaphres Horou, an Egyptian priest of Isis from Demetrias (Maria Stamatopoulou); Piecing it together: the fragmentary Hellenistic vermiculatum mosaic from Tel Dor (William Wootton); Designing the landscapes of the Villa of Livia at Prima Porta (Manta Zarmakoupi); The quality of virtand Jose Nicolsss de Azara in Rome, 1766-1798 (Alexandra Sulzer); 'Poor architecture of antiquity, what is it doing in such a climate as this?' Classical archaeology and its influence on nineteenth-century London monuments (Kate Nichols); Doing business: two unpublished letters from Athenasios Rhousopoulos to Arthur Evans in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (Yannis Galanakis); Early visitors to the site of the Perachoran Heraion (Thomas R. Patrick); Sappho (and Sophocles) at King's College London (Michael Trapp).