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Classical Greek art embodies simplicity, balance, and beauty

The Ancient Greeks were, in many respects, the original humanists and their cultural standards formed the basis of the later Renaissance.

Others were stolen in war, smashed by earthquakes, or in the case of bronze statues, melted during wars.

The ancient Greeks (mainly the Athenians) were a unique people.

These accomplishments astound us to this day.

They also believed in the balance of mind and body.

The customary classification of Greek painted vases is in five divisions: 1. The earliest style, heretofore described, known as Doric, etc., of which the type is the representation of animals and flowers, usually in friezes or bands on cream-colored or gray pottery (III. 46). 2. Vases of red lustrous pottery on which the figures are painted in black (III. 41). 3. Vases of the same pottery on which the backgrounds are black, the figures being in the red or yellow of the pottery. 4. Vases of the same general style with the last, decorated in florid style, with arabesque and other ornamentations, often introducing Eros (Cupid), and sometimes gilding. 5. Vases with white surfaces, painted with figures, sometimes in outline, sometimes in several colors.

The union of the two colors in pottery, black and red, fully satisfied the Greek lover of the beautiful, and these are the colors of much of the best Greek pottery, in no way relieved as to general effect by the slight use of dull maroon and white. Rare specimens have figures in white on black grounds, and some have polychrome decorations.

Greek art is characterized by the representation of living beings.

About 675 BC vase painters in Corinth began to decorate their wares with black figures in silhouette

Similar Oriental motifs appear on vases found in Laconia, Boeotia, Khalkis, Rhodes, and Sardis.

Greek mythology is the body of myths and legends belonging to the ancient Greeks concerning their gods and heroes, the nature of the world, and the origins and significance of their own cult and ritual practices. They were a part of religion in ancient Greece. Modern scholars refer to the myths and study them in an attempt to throw light on the religious and political institutions of Ancient Greece, its civilization, and to gain understanding of the nature of myth-making itself.[1]

Greek mythology is embodied explicitly in a large collection of narratives and implicitly in representational arts, such as vase-paintings and votive gifts. Greek myth explains the origins of the world and details the lives and adventures of a wide variety of gods, goddesses, heroes, heroines, and other mythological creatures. These accounts initially were disseminated in an oral-poetic tradition; today the Greek myths are known primarily from Greek literature.

Greek mythology has changed over time to accommodate the evolution of their culture, of which mythology, both overtly and in its unspoken assumptions, is an index of the changes. In Greek mythology's surviving literary forms, as found mostly at the end of the progressive changes, is inherently political, as Gilbert Cuthbertson has urged