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A Life-Changing Experience

I am not really sure how, but I found myself at the bottom of the staircase. It was almost difficult to look up, since my high expectations were setting me up for disappointment. As I was climbing up the stairs, I could not quite tell if they were getting higher or if I was sinking into the ground. Each time, lifting my foot, I stumbled upward into the next step.

All of a sudden, I realized I was racing up the seemingly endless stairs. Finally, I reached the top. For some reason, as the crowd pushed me toward the door, anxiety crept in. After a moment, I looked up. Surrounded by that greatness I had only read about, I felt small, insignificant. Even though they were hundreds of people moving through the hall, I felt the addicting happiness of being alone in a magnificent place.

As soon as I regained consciousness, I let myself get lost in the European Sculpture Court. The first artifact that caught my attention was the head of Marsyas, whom I was intensely curious about, but whom I didn't know--yet.

I could not stop staring at him, but at the same time his gaze made me tremble, so I had to look away. At that time I did not understand his facial expression. Was it anger? Pain? Frustration? A few days later, when we learned his story in class, I was able to answer this question.

According to the myth, Marsyas had picked up from the ground a flute thrown away by the virgin goddess of wisdom and war, Athena. As Ovid wrote, she did not want it because her features were distorted while she played it.

“I [Athene] first enabled the long flute to produce notes through spaced holes in perforated boxwood. The sound pleased; but the limpid waters reflected my face, and I glimpsed puffed virgin cheeks. Art ...

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...esent with his painting: Aphrodite’s awakening, Aphrodite’s birth myth.

The most common version of this myth, told by Hesiod in his Theogony, describes the birth of Venus (her Roman name) after the castration of Uranus, god of the sky. When his genitals are thrown into the sea by Cronos, his youngest Titan son, Aphrodite arises out of the foamy waters.

"And so soon as he [Kronos] had cut off the members with flint and cast them from the land into the surging sea, they were swept away over the main a long time: and a white foam spread around them from the immortal flesh, and in it there grew a maiden. […] Her gods and men call Aphrodite, and Aphrogeneia (the foam-born) because she grew amid the foam." (Hesiod, Theogony 176).

Works Cited

www.theoi.com www.metmuseum.org M. Morford, R. Lenardon, M. Sham, Classical Mythology. Oxford University Press, 9th edition