Ancient Greeks Science and Wisdom Exhibition
4th February 22
On the 2nd of February 2022, Classics students in Year 13 visited the Science Museum to see the Ancient Greeks: Science and Wisdom exhibition. Although small and quite simple, there were original visual sources including ‘kraters’ or drinking vessels showing the double flute aulos common in Greek Theatre and the Symposia.
We looked at Classical sculptures which represented Greek ideas about mathematical proportion and standards of physical beauty; the degraded marble statue of Hermes reminds us of the passage of time.
We could also hear the sound of the aulos, played for the first time since antiquity.
It was amazing to be able to see these objects physically there, rather than on paper.
Now we are working on Sappho, the female Greek poet, and the exhibition had the fragments of a frieze of the Nine Muses. Sappho was considered by Plato to be the ‘Tenth Muse’ due to her ‘supreme lyric gift’. I felt that, in a way, I was seeing her.
