Splitting Images: Communication in Classical Athens

Athens without its citizens, a silent city, would still have had the appearance of a democracy. Many of its laws were inscribed in stone; the visual environment communicated powerful ideological messages through depictions of the archetypal myths and narratives of the Athenian democracy. A sculpture of the tyrant-slayers, whose assassination of the tyrant Hippias' brother was popularly believed to have inaugurated the democracy, stood conspicuously in the market-place; public art portrayed valiant Athenian democrats defeating the tyrannical Persians who had failed, despite invading the city in 480 and 479 BC, to deprive it of its political liberty.