People tend to get possessive with their things. These feelings are human, so it should come as no surprise that ancient people felt possessive about their stuff, too. One way we protect our things is to label them. Ancient Greeks were no different when it came to such practices, including two famous fifth-century B.C.E. Athenians: the artist Phidias and the politician Pericles, who exhibited the same tendency of ownership. In 1958, German archaeologists excavating near the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, Greece, discovered a small ceramic cup with ribbed walls covered in black, inside and out. Inscribed on the […]
