The ''Piraeus Apollo'' is an ancient Greek bronze sculpture in the archaic style from the 2nd or 1st century BC (or possibly an earlier work dating 4th or 3rd century BC), exhibited now at the Archaeological Museum of Piraeus,

Athens Athens ( ) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Greece, largest city of Greece. A significant coastal urban area in the Mediterranean, Athens is also the capital of the Attica (region), Attica region and is the southe ...

Overview

The sculpture was discovered in the ancient harbor of

Piraeus Piraeus ( ; ; , Ancient: , Katharevousa: ) is a port city within the Athens urban area ("Greater Athens"), in the Attica region of Greece. It is located southwest of Athens city centre along the east coast of the Saronic Gulf in the Ath ...

in July 1959, along with the

Piraeus Athena The Piraeus Athena is a Greek bronze statue dated to the fourth century BCE. Named for the city in which it was found, it currently resides in the Archaeological Museum of Piraeus. Description The statue is an over-life sized representation of A ...

and Piraeus Artemis. It was excavated by

John Papadimitriou John K. Papadimitriou (; – April 11, 1963) was a Greek archaeologist. Along with George E. Mylonas, George Mylonas, he excavated Grave Circle B, Mycenae, Grave Circle B, the oldest known monumentalized burials at the Bronze Age site of Myc ...

. The ''Piraeus Apollo'' was long thought to be a product of the

late archaic period In the classification of the archaeological cultures of North America, the Archaic period in North America, taken to last from around 8000 to 1000 BC in the sequence of North American pre-Columbian cultural stages, is a period defined by the '' ...

(530–480 BC), and would have been among the few bronzes from that time period to have survived. Newer research view it as a archaizing (mimicking the archaic tradition) sculpture of the

Hellenistic period In classical antiquity, the Hellenistic period covers the time in Greek history after Classical Greece, between the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC and the death of Cleopatra VII in 30 BC, which was followed by the ascendancy of the R ...

. This is due to its mixing of features from different time periods and its stance, which contrasts other archaic

kouroi Kouros (, , plural kouroi) is the modern term given to free-standing Ancient Greek sculptures that depict nude male youths. They first appear in the Archaic period in Greece and are prominent in Attica and Boeotia, with a less frequent presenc ...

, such as the

Kroisos Kouros The Kroisos Kouros () is a marble kouros from Anavyssos (Ανάβυσσος) in Attica which functioned as a grave marker for a fallen young warrior named Kroisos (). Overview The free-standing sculpture strides forward with the " archaic smile ...

, as pointed out by

Olga Palagia 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 ...

References

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External links

Piraeus Apollo (Sculpture)
Tufts University 6th-century BC Greek sculptures Archaic Greek sculptures Bronze sculptures in Greece Sculptures of Apollo Cult images Ancient Greek bronze statues of the classical period Ancient Athens Statues in Greece Sculptures of men in Greece Sculptures in Piraeus Archaeological Museum of Piraeus Archaeological discoveries in Attica 1959 archaeological discoveries Nude sculptures in Greece Nude sculptures of men

Overview

See also

References

Further reading

External links