A Guide to the Exhibition Illustrating Greek and Roman Life

All the illustrations in this book can be enlarged by clicking on the illustration. This better shows the wealth of detail in these very old vase paintings, sculptures and other artifacts.
WITH A FRONTISPIECE AND TWO HUNDRED AND SIXTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY ORDER OF THE TRUSTEES.
1920.
LONDON: PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, DUKE STREET, STAMFORD STREET, S.E. 1, AND GREAT WINDMILL STREET, W. 1.
P. 121, l.17. For 339 read 339
Pp. 143, 144, 145. For 421-426 read 421 -426
P. 216 near foot. For 655 read 655
In this Exhibition an attempt has been made to bring together a number of miscellaneous antiquities which formed a part of the collections of the Department, in such a method as illustrates the purpose for which they were intended, rather than their artistic quality, their material, or their place in the evolution of craft or design.
Such a series falls naturally into groups, and it has been found convenient to treat these groups in accordance with a general scheme, the illustration of the public and private life of the Greeks and Romans.
The materials forming the basis of this scheme are, primarily, objects which already formed part of the Museum collections: for this reason it has not been possible always to preserve that proportion in the relation of the sections to the whole which would have been studied if the objects had been selected for acquisition with this purpose in view. Further, it is necessary to warn visitors that they must not expect to find the subject in any sense exhaustively treated here: the complete illustration of every detail of ancient life would be impossible for any museum as at present constituted. All that can here be done is to shape the available material into a system which may at least present a fairly intelligible, if limited, view of ancient life. Several new acquisitions, made since the appearance of the first edition of this Guide, have strengthened the exhibition in directions in which it was deficient, and it is hoped that this process will be continued. Meanwhile, some of the gaps have been filled by means of casts and reproductions of objects belonging to other categories in this Museum, or preserved elsewhere.