Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks

292 Daily Life of the Ancient Greeks
192 Athenians who died at the battle of Marathon, here shown as
the heroized dead.
Conclusions
Greek artists were constantly learning new artistic techniques
and addressing new problems. As a consequence, even in the
absence of an archaeological context that would enable us to date
a given artifact with chronological exactitude, we are often able
to situate it to within a single decade. Coupled with this inherent
innovativeness, however, was an inherent conservatism. For
instance, although the different orders of architecture underwent
refinement over the centuries, the temple remained the preferred
medium of architectural expression. Similarly, the human body
served throughout Greek antiquity as the focus for all sculptural
and pictorial endeavor.
The Greek world did not foster artistic movements in the modern
sense of the term. Nor did artists utilize their skills to make a personal
statement. At all periods of history their level of achievement
was remarkably uniform. They have bequeathed to us remarkably
few bad or even indifferent works of art. Even in their poorest productions,
it is generally the taste rather than the technical accomplishment
that is deficient. Clearly artists were intimately familiar
with one another’s work and saw themselves as participants in a
collective enterprise. Not the least distinctive feature about Greek
art is its broad and undeviating acceptance of society’s expectations
of what constitutes art.
MYTHOLOGY
On the side panel of any cereal box, consumers might be enlightened
about the differences between what the cereal maker calls
myth on the one hand and fact on the other, in regard to the perennially
fascinating subject of how to lose weight. Under the heading
of myth might be claims that carbohydrates are fattening, that one
does not need to exercise, and that one can eat as much diet food as
one wants. Myth, in the sense that it is applied here, is synonymous
with a fiction or falsehood that commands widespread assent but
has no basis in fact. Mythos, from which the word myth is derived,
however, carried no such negative connotation for the Greeks. Its
basic meaning was word, speech, or story. Even in the sense of a
story, mythos did not signify or imply a fiction. On the contrary, it