We are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art looking at a gigantic clay pot.

This is from Ancient Greece, long before the classical period.

The shape of this vase makes it a krater, and it was found at the Dipylon cemetery in Athens.

Normally when we think about ancient Greek vases, we think about containers for wine or liquids, but this ceramic pot had a very different purpose. This was made to mark a gravesite.

We often think of headstones to mark a gravesite, but the Greeks used ceramic vessels. Somebody was buried underneath it.

And, in fact, the bottom of this vase is open, and it’s possible that liquid was poured in the top as an offering for the deceased, or it’s possible it was just used to drain off rainwater.

But what makes this vase so important, so extraordinary, is its decoration.

It is covered, every inch of this, with decoration and that decoration is divided in two bands or registers.

This vase comes from an early period in Greek history, and the style that is associated with is geometric because the surface is covered with geometric motifs. You see diamonds and triangles and circles and meanders.

We also see broad areas of black paint and stripped areas that form the base.

And this pot has pictorial bands, which we call friezes, and in them, and this is a little bit unusual for the geometric period, we see human figures, and we see animals, and the pictures remind us that this is funerary.

The large central scene along the top register shows us a figure on a bier, a dead figure who’s being mourned, and the figures on either side of him, the female figures, have raised their arms in a gesture of grief.

And some art historians have interpreted the decorative lines on either side of the figures as a reference to tears.

And it’s also possible that the checkboard pattern that’s above the deceased figure represents his funerary shroud, but lifted so that we can see the body.

I love how the human forms are nearly as abstract as geometric motifs that fill the rest of the vase. The torsos are nearly perfect triangles, the heads which are shown in profile, are basically circles with eyes in the center.

And the legs are larger shapes, as are the legs of the table that the deceased figure is on, or the legs of the chair. When you walk up to this you might not even notice at first that you were looking at a narrative scene, that you were looking at human figures.

The band below shows a procession and its military in nature. We see chariots, we see horsemen, we see soldiers with shields and spears and swords. In fact, the bodies are reduced to the form of ancient Greek shields.

And the horses were given three horses at a time, and appropriately there are six legs in the front, and six legs in the back, but there is no sense at all the space the three horses would occupy.

Everything on the surface of this vase fills flat. There’s no pictorial depth, there’s no interest in illusion in that sense.

Not at all. And yet, in the scene of a funeral, with perhaps his wife and child beside him, and mourners around him, we still get a palpable sense of sadness, of death here.

The pot was decorated with a material that is called slip, very fine particles of clay, that are suspended in a liquid, and then painted onto the surface. The Greeks at this point didn’t use kilns that were hot enough to create the glassy surface that we take for granted in modern ceramics that we call glaze, and this kind of ceramic is known as slipware.

And this would have been turned on a wheel. Probably in sections, and then constructed from those sections. Producing a pot this size and of this quality is a major undertaking. This is clearly representing the wealth and the power of the family for whom it was made.

So from far away in the cemetery, your eyes might be drawn to this pot, and therefore to the man that this pot commemorates. 

Ancient Greek sculptures, bronze or marble, are frozen. But that doesn't mean that the ancient Greeks didn't want to convey movement.  

In this case, movement that you couldn't even see with the naked eye.

What we're looking at, is a sculpture by an artist whose name is Myron. We've lost his original, but we have a later Roman marble copy of the "Discus Thrower."

The original was in bronze from the fifth century BCE. About 450, 460.

And what we're looking at is one of many Roman copies. In fact, there's one next to the other in this museum, a testament to how popular these were among the Romans.  

The sculpture shows a man who is at that moment where his body is fully wound. Look at the way that his right leg is bearing the weight of his body. His left leg, the toes are bent under, dragging slightly, and he's about to throw that discus. This is a moment of tremendous tension, but it's also this moment stasis, of stillness, right before the action.

Athletes and art historians have debated whether this is even an actual pose that the discus thrower takes in the process.

It's so interesting, because when we think back about the history of the Greek figure, we think first of the Archaic Kouros, who is so stiff and so stylized. And then we have the tremendous breakthroughs of people like Polykleitos who developed an understanding of the body and showed in a contrapposto. But here we have something that's so dynamic, and so complex, I mean just look at the arc of the shoulders and the arms, and the way that they reverse the arc of the twist of the hips.

That is the overriding concern of Myron, the sculptor, to capture the aesthetic qualities here. The sense of balance and harmony, and the beauty in the proportions of the body.  

There is kind of anti-realism here, for all of its careful naturalism. There is no real strain within the body. It is absolutely at rest, and ideal, even in this extreme pose.

If you think about a figure from much later, but in a similar pose of movement, of athletic energy, like Bernini's "David."

Well, that's got all this torsion, absolutely.

That figure expresses all of the physical power in the face. He's clenching his teeth, right?

That's true. And his brow is really knit forward. But here, the face is absolutely serene. And it reminds me of the consistency with which the Greeks always maintain their nobility, even in battle, even in terrible situations with monsters. And here, even at this moment when he's about to release the discus.

Right, that nobility, that calm in the face, is a sign of a nobility of the human being.

Well, this is a sport, and the man is naked, which is what the Greeks did. But there was a real logic there. Why would you cover up the beauty of the body in sport, which is, of course, a celebration of what the human body can achieve? This is really a way to remind ourselves of the Greeks' concern with the potential of humanity, the potential of the mind, and the potential of the body.

Taking that extra step to become even more ideal, more heroic, more noble, than even the finest athlete.

It is a perfect form.