Comparison and contrast - Essay Example

By analyzing these fragments and piecing them together, a modern civilization can extrapolate and theorize about long-term social changes that occurred throughout the rise and fall of empires. In Ancient Greece and Persia, in particular, one can trace the influence of individuality on those two empires’ vision of man’s place on earth. Individuality is a concept rooted in the fabric of Greek society, while it is the value of obedience to god-like authority that one sees most clearly in Persian society.

These differing social, moral, and philosophic factors are all perceptible in study of the artworks that have survived from these ancient peoples. Art is particularly useful for understanding the lives and beliefs of ancient peoples because, according to one scholar, art tells a person more about the reality of something than do the bare facts uncovered by empirical investigation (McBrien 132). Because social values strongly influence the individual perception of the world, artworks created by individuals in that context share a great knowledge about the cultural understandings of that social context.

Therefore, one of the most important ways of analyzing an ancient culture is to look at its art. One key aspect of any given culture is its view of the individual versus society. Some societies clearly favor an individual’s place in the world, while others clearly support the society over individuals. The bust of Pericles sits in the British Museum and is a slightly idealized version of the Athenian political leader. Although the bust as we see it today is a copy of an earlier work completed by Cresilas, it is faithful to the original and demonstrates the qualities given to the representation of Pericles by the sculptor.

Pericles was a famous leader of Athens during the time of the Peloponnesian War and the construction of the Parthenon. Despite the tendency of leaders to be immortalized through history, the history of Pericles is relatively accurate due to the quality of Athenian historians. In many ways, Pericles represents the golden age of Athens, and his bust reflects that history, without going over to extravagance. In the bust, Pericles peers off into the distance, wearing atop his head a mask of war, and keeping a thick beard.

The size of the bust is realistic with respect to its dimensions and how it models an actual human being’s size. These features make the bust look very realistic and human: treating Pericles very much as a man of achievement and virtue, rather than as a god. In contrast, the Persian statue of Darius I, who was treated as a god in his empire, is a depiction of a god and not a mere mortal. It is Egyptian in character, which was a civilization known for treating its rulers as divine beings. A hieroglyphic inscription on the statue states, “Darius—may he live forever!

The statue, formed as a true image of the perfect god, the Lord of the Two Lands” (Mysliwiec and Lorton 151). The statue lives up to this commencement: showing the figure as a towering being without attachment to the physical world. While the statue commands an instant attraction to what exactly it means, the purpose of the statue seems immediately clear: to give a sense of reverence and admiration to the leader of the Persian people. Darius clearly used the rhetoric of a godlike figure in order to