page 1 of 26

Plot on a Map
Athens.

During Athens’ democratic era, personifications, or representations of things, places, or abstractions by the human form, appeared at first on vase paintings and eventually on publicly displayed monuments such as free-standing statues, wall paintings, and low relief illustrations on stone stelai. Whereas few personifications in the Archaic period (before 480 BCE). were political in nature, the use of personifications and mythological figures in a politically allusive manner, in the early Classical period (ca. 480-450), paved the way for the explicit use of political personifications during the Peloponnesian War (431-404 BCE) and in the fourth century.

This article provides basic information about personifications of political ideas created in the era of the Athenian Democracy (508-322 BCE). The lists of examples of each personification include all known representations in contexts that might be called political, “of, belonging, or pertaining to the state or body of citizens, its government and policy, especially in civil and secular affairs” (OED 2.1074).

[ back to top ]

page 1 of 26