Marble Relief Fragment with Scenes from the Trojan War in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, February 2011

Title: Marble relief fragment with scenes from the Trojan War

Period: Early Imperial, Julio-Claudian

Date: 1st half of 1st century CE

Culture: Roman

Medium: Marble, Palombino

Dimensions: 7 1/8 x 6 15/16 in., 1.1kg (18.1 x 17.6 cm)

Classification: Stone Sculpture

Credit Line: Fletcher Fund, 1924

Accession Number: 24.97.11


The tabulae iliacae are a series of tablets covered with minuscule relief scenes from the Trojan War, which were evidently inspired by illustrated manuscripts of Homer's epic poem The Iliad. This piece is signed on the back by a Greek artist named Theodoros, to whose workshop all of the surviving examples can be ascribed. He was probably active in Italy, and the tablets show that Homer was as popular with Romans as with Greeks, despite the fact that Virgil's Aeneid, designed to rival the Homeric poems and published by 19 B.C., quickly became the classic work of Latin epic.


Text from: www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/251473