Ancient Greece Votive Relief with Demeter and Kore (Eleusinian Mysteries) 425-400 BC marble Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
Ancient Greece Fragment of Votive Relief (inscribed) 390-375 BC marble Princeton University Art Museum |
Ancient Greece Hero Relief 4th-3rd century BC marble Harvard Art Museums |
Ancient Greece Grave Naiskos of Sime 320 BC marble Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
Ode to Loss
Ship-sinker, Dream-douser, Diverter of love,
Why can't we just persuade ourselves
that life with you is better off?
Most Buddhists would agree, in theory,
only you prepare us for a future
you're the bread and butter of.
Come, curl up in my memory
and feast upon the things I've known
that won't bear thinking of.
A cherished tree is downed? No tragedy:
the plot it darkened to a listless green
it makes, in absence, bright light of.
If you dispatch the cheating cad I love,
each Sorry for your loss would call him mine –
your name become a sedative.
So you console, confirm the having had.
The lasting ache of grief assures us
someone worthy had our love.
Devotedly you tend our spreadsheets,
keep us from base Fortune's clutches;
only you can fend her off,
kindly dumping hard-earned ballast
from the bounty of my life
I'd hoped to be the spender of.
Surely you acted on my behalf
in driving off those men whose lives
I'd have gladly been the love of.
Loss, you're just a stubborn crossing out
of something lovely we thought well,
but you thought better of.
– J. Allyn Rosser, from Mimi's Trapeze (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2014)
Greek Culture in South Italy Relief Fragment of Mounted Hunter and Companion (from a funerary building) 300-250 BC limestone Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
Ancient Greece Grave Naiskos with Enthroned Woman and attendant (formerly in Lansdowne House, and there cut down to fit over a door) 100 BC marble Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
Ancient Greece Relief of Apollo and Artemis 50 BC marble Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
Roman Empire Relief of Seated Poet with Masks of New Comedy 1st century BC - 1st century AD marble Princeton University Art Museum |
Roman Empire Relief with Satyr playing Pipes 80 BC - AD 125 marble Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
Roman Empire Funerary Relief with Portraits of Young Man and Elderly Woman (probably son and mother) AD 138-141 marble Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
Roman Empire Disc with Herm of Dionysus in Relief AD 50-75 marble Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
Roman Empire Funerary Altar of Cominia Tyche AD 90-100 marble Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
Roman Empire Relief with Masks of Young Maenad and Bearded Silenus (shepherd's crook and cymbals are Dionysiac cult objects) 1st century AD marble Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
Roman Empire Tomb Altar for Caltilius and Caltilia AD 100-125 marble Getty Museum, Los Angeles |