Exploring ‘Meanings’ at the Acropolis Museum

Temporary Exhibition − ‘Meanings.’ Personifications and Allegories from Antiquity to Today.

The tendency to personify meanings, concepts, and natural elements is rooted deeply in several psychological and cultural factors. Humans have a natural inclination to attribute human-like characteristics to non-human entities. This tendency, anthropomorphism, stems from our social nature and the need to understand and interact with the world around us. According to psychologists, anthropomorphism helps humans navigate and make sense of their surroundings by applying familiar social schemas to non-human entities.

Mental imagery, metaphorical thinking, and emotional connections

The human mind frequently employs metaphors to comprehend abstract concepts by associating them with more tangible, concrete images. And personifying abstract concepts and natural elements can evoke emotional responses and facilitate emotional connections. By imbuing these entities with human-like characteristics, individuals may feel a stronger sense of familiarity and attachment, leading to deeper emotional engagement.

Eros

Cultural norms, traditions, and storytelling practices often influence personification. Many cultures have rich mythologies and folklore where abstract concepts and natural elements are personified as gods, spirits, or mythical beings. And it is these cultural narratives that shape how individuals perceive and interpret the world.

Two great examples: Representing Eros as a chubby baby with wings, a bow and arrow, and a naughty disposition makes you smirk and nod as you grasp the abstract concept of folly in its nature. In the same way, representing justice as a stern figure with a blindfold and scales unconsciously makes you believe in its fairness and impartiality.

Justice & Punishment

Punishment — Ixion may have been the son of Ares, the ancient Greek God of War, but several sources cite a different father each time. He married one of Deioneus’s (king of Phocis) daughters, Dia, and promised his father-in-law a valuable present. However, he never paid the bride-dowry, so Deioneus stole some of Ixion’s horses in retaliation. Ixion concealed his resentment and invited his father-in-law to a feast in Larissa. When Deioneus arrived, Ixion pushed him into a bed of burning coals and wood.

By killing his father-in-law, Ixion not only violated xenia but was reckoned the first man guilty of kin-slaying in Greek mythology. He lived shunned and an outlaw. This act alone would warrant Ixion a terrible punishment, but Zeus took pity on him, brought him to Olympus, and introduced him to the gods. Instead of being grateful, Ixion grew lustful for Hera, a further violation of guest-host relations! Zeus found out, made a cloud in the shape of Hera—known as Nephele (from the Greek word nephos meaning cloud)—and tricked Ixion into coupling with it. From the union of Ixion and the false-Hera cloud came Imbros (or Centaurus), who mated with the Magnesian mares on Mount Pelion, according to Pindar, engendering the race of Centaurs, also called Ixionidae from their descent.

Ixion was expelled from Olympus and blasted with a thunderbolt. Zeus ordered Hermes to bind Ixion to an ever-spinning fiery wheel and was sent twirling across the heavens for all eternity (but was later transferred to Tartarus).

Personified concepts from antiquity to today

Several of these personified concepts and meanings, with human or animal forms (zoomorphism) and allegorical stories, are all placed together for the first time in a temporary exhibition by the Acropolis Museum titled NoHMATA ‘Meanings.’ Personifications and Allegories from Antiquity to Today. Statues, votive reliefs and vases, coins, jewelry, icons, and paintings are united until April 14th to connect Antiquity with Byzantium, the Renaissance, and Modern Art.

Rivers, the Sea & the Ocean

The Elements of Nature

Fortune, Wealth, Virtue & Vice

Ploutos was originally seated on the left arm of Eirene/Irene (Goddess of Peace), whose figure is not preserved.

Love, Hope, Poetry

The Allegory of Time & Death

Chronos (Chronus/Khronos) is a personification of time in pre-Socratic philosophy and later literature. According to Plutarch, the Greeks believed that Cronus (Saturn) was an allegorical name for Chronos.

Saturn (Cronus/Cronos/Kronos) was the leader of the first generation of the Titans, the divine descendants of Gaia (Mother Earth) and Uranus (Father Sky). He overthrew his father and ruled with his older sister, Rhea, as the new king and queen of gods. Saturn soon found out that he was destined to be overcome by his children, just as he had overthrown his father. As a result, he devoured all his children (Demeter, Hestia, Hera, Hades, and Poseidon by Rhea) as soon as they were born to prevent the prophecy. When the sixth child, Zeus, was born, Rhea sought Gaia to devise a plan to save them and eventually get retribution on Saturn for his acts. Rhea secretly gave birth to Zeus in Crete and handed Saturn a swaddled stone instead, which he promptly swallowed. Rhea kept Zeus hidden in a cave on Mount Ida, Crete. Once he had grown up, Zeus used an emetic given to him by Gaia to force Saturn to disgorge the contents of his stomach—first the stone and then his two brothers and three sisters.

Visit the exhibition at the Acropolis Museum until April 14th, 2024. You can find a list of the participating museums, ephorates of antiquities, and collections from Austria, Greece, Italy, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the Vatican on the Acropolis Museum website. Information on items is either quoted from the museum’s object labels & credit panels and/or from Wikipedia. Images by Athina D. Pantazatou for Kicking Back the Pebbles.