Mourning Athena

Relief of Athena from the Acropolis
About 470 BCE. Height 48 cm. Acropolis Museum, Athens.

Athena wears a Corinthian helmet, the familiar peplos with long, girt overfall, and leans on her spear contemplating a pillar.
The background was blue.
The pillar has been interpreted as a finishing post (terma) in an exercise ground or the boundary stone (horos) of a sanctuary, but is perhaps a list os Athenian dead since her pose seems decidedly sorrowing, and this is the period in which annual state burials and funeral orations were inaugurated.

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Athena Shrine