They trained. They fought. They conquered.
If there's one take-out from Ancient Greeks: Athletes, Warriors and Heroes, at the National Museum of Australia in Canberra, it's that the storied Mediterranean civilisation was a crucible of intense competition that privileged excellence above all else.
From a boat-shaped lamp cradling the demigod Herakles as a baby, to a marble gravestone commemorating an upper-class woman's wealth and generosity, many of the 170-plus artefacts on loan from the British Museum reveal just how ingrained the Ancient Greeks' appetite for glory was.
As the British Museum's Peter John Higgs, acting keeper of the Greek collections, notes in the exhibition catalogue: "For athletes, training sculpted the perfect body that would achieve victory in the sporting arena or on the battlefield. Education, philosophy, science and the visual arts shaped and sharpened the mind".
Born of Zeus and a mortal woman, the athlete Herakles - or Hercules, as the Romans would go on to call him - was revered for his immense strength and courage, and on the dainty silver lamp from the 1st century CE, the reclining tot can be seen calmly strangling a snake, illustrating an early chapter in the legend of his life.
Along with Achilles, another demigod, Herakles was a hero worthy of emulation, although, being part mortal, the pin-up also possessed some more 'relatable' traits. He was dim, had a short fuse and was something of a lush. Nevertheless, he was immensely popular, and his cult is reflected in a variety of votive and other objects on display.
Phila from Smyrna (now Izmir, in Turkey) must have had the gods on her side because she enjoyed a good life - so good, in fact, that she could afford to share her wealth. The wreaths decorating the top of her tombstone, which dates back to about 200-100 BCE, are special civic honours recognising her benefaction - the Ancient Greek equivalent of the honours system - while her gracious abode, fine clothing and diminutive attendants underscore her exalted stature.
So what was driving this culture of competition and aspiration to greatness?
"In the Ancient Greek world, life would have been chaotic, uncertain and frightening," National Museum of Australia curator Lily Withycombe explains.
"It was survival of the fittest and you had to be excellent at everything you did."
Given the average length of life in Ancient Greece is estimated to have been well below 50 years for both men and women, time was of the essence.
"But their sense of competition was quite different from ours, because of all that chaos and uncertainty and the fact that death could be just around the corner," Withycombe says.
"For them, it wasn't really down to individual merit. You could be the best athlete or the best playwright, but in order to really achieve excellence you had to have the gods smiling on you."
Images and figures of gods from the Greek pantheon pervaded the ancient world and can be seen depicted on pottery, sculpted in marble, set in jewellery and honoured in reliefs throughout the exhibition space.
"The Ancient Greeks also had a strong appreciation for the aesthetic, and a real connection with the human form as it relates to the divine form," Withycombe says.
"So when people are worshipping the gods, the gods look like athletes, and when you train as an athlete, you look like a god. It's all interconnected."
Those who were in it to win it, needed Nike, goddess of victory, on side.
"The exhibition opens with a marble statue of Nike, who was a popular subject for akroteria or decorative elements mounted on gables and roofs, positioned as if she were descending from Mount Olympus," Withycombe says.
Found at Halikarnassos (now Bodrum, in Turkey), the dynamically sculpted statue dates from about 100 BCE.
"She's missing her head, necks, arms and feet, but you can still see the billowing dress and fragments of her wings, and she embodies this notion that the gods give you victory."
Elsewhere, there are pint-sized Nikes made of terracotta, tiny figures of her in silver and gold jewellery - and, on a blue chalcedony sealstone from about 350-300 BCE, a detailed engraving of the winged goddess assembling a victory trophy from the spoils of war.
"She's quite a frightening goddess, being Zeus's charioteer in battle, so you want her on your side - but even more, you want to ensure she's not against you in any way," Withycombe says.
This speaks to the capricious nature of the gods, a temperament ascribed to them by mortals as a way of rationalising the vicissitudes of fortune and making sense of the unpredictability of their lives.
Nike's gender highlights the role of women in Ancient Greece. Could they take up arms?
"According to the literature, Spartan women had more freedom than Athenian women, in that they could train as warriors and soldiers," Withycombe says, adding that the two city-states were at each other's throats in the Peloponnesian War between 431-404 BCE, which Sparta eventually won.
"But a lot of these accounts are written by Athenians, so they might be trying to emphasise the Spartans' otherness, and to the Greek mind, women were meant to be within the oikos, or household."
That might be so, but what's the explanation for the popularity of the Amazons in Greek mythology? These fearsome female fighters can be seen in hand-to-hand combat with Greek soldiers on a marble frieze block from the tomb of King Mausolus, found at Halikarnassos and dating back to about 350 BCE.
"The Greeks had this great imaginative trope of the Amazonian warrior woman who cuts off her breast so she can be a better archer, lives without the company of men, rides horses and does all the things wild people beyond the frontiers of the known world are supposed to do," Withycombe explains.
The Amazons are no novelty act, however, but a serious force to be reckoned with.
"The sculptural relief from King Mausolus's tomb shows Amazons defeating Greeks, and Greeks defeating Amazons, so it's certainly not one-sided," she says.
Greek mythology also birthed the heroine Atalanta, regarded as the first female athlete.
Wearing a tunic, she can be seen engaged in a wrestling match with a naked Peleus, the gifted warrior and athlete whom she defeated, on a bronze casket handle dating from about 480-460 BCE.
"Like the Amazons, Atalanta is the antitype of the typical Greek woman. She's stronger and faster than men, and she's lived a life beyond the borders of civilisation," Withycombe says.
"It's the same with Athena, goddess of war and patron of the city of Athens. She's represented in full armour in a way that you'd never see an Athenian woman otherwise represented.
"But because she's so different, the Greeks have to conceptualise her birth in a dramatically different way - Zeus suffers from a terrible headache, has to have his head cut open, and out comes Athena."
Contrast these representations of bellicose females with a life-size Parian marble statue of a high-status woman in counterpoise from about 150-100 BCE.
"She's shrouded in a surplus of luxurious silk, linen and wool fabrics that are bunched around her hands to demonstrate how wealthy she is," Withycombe says.
The sinuous sculpture is significant in that it commemorates a real woman.
"During the Hellenistic period of 323-31BC, which occurs after the death of Alexander the Great, a portrait style develops that allows women to be represented as individuals rather than idealised types," she says.
Still, as a representation of a modest and virtuous woman - her head and hands are covered - the statue conforms to the prevailing ideal.
For Withycombe, one of the standout objects in the show is an astonishingly well-preserved amphora, or storage jar, made in Athens by the acclaimed vase painter and potter Exekias, who signed it, in about 540-530 BCE.
"The black-figure pottery shows the moment on the battlefield that the Greek warrior Achilles plunges his spear into the throat of Penthesileia, Queen of the Amazons, who's on her knees," she says.
"Yet at the moment of her death, they fall in love.
"Even though it's such a strange scene, I'm transfixed by the drama of it and amazed that Exekias can convey that moment of death and moment of love simultaneously."
Another winning object, which, like the Exekias vase, Withycombe requested specifically for the exhibition, is The Apotheosis of Homer, a supremely carved sculptural relief in marble probably made in Alexandria and dating back to about 220-200 BCE.
If nothing else, it's a handy guide to the Greek pantheon, with the likes of big-daddy Zeus, his aunt Mnemosyne, their daughters the nine Muses, and a lyre-playing Apollo in attendance.
On the bottom register, a number of personifications (Myth, History, Poetry and so on) are honouring Homer, the author and epic poet, while he is crowned with a laurel wreath by Oikoumene (Inhabited World) and Kronos (Time), reflecting his semi-divine status.
While these masterworks are undoubtedly fascinating, sometimes it's the more humble objects of material culture that manage to cut through the fog of millennia and provide a tantalising glimpse of what everyday life might have been like in Ancient Greece.
Dating from about 330-300 BCE, a small terracotta sculpture of two young women crouching to play knucklebones has about it the leisurely and informal air of a snapshot.
"Being bare-armed, the women are either in a household or somewhere private, and they're probably playing the game of chance known as Aphrodite's Throw," Withycombe says, pointing out that, as with many of the objects on display, the sculpture would once have been vibrantly painted.
"They're trying to work out their chances of getting married, whether theirs will be a happy marriage and what their husband will be like."
Given the traditional roles they were expected to adopt - Sparta notwithstanding - who could blame them?
A woman's many duties as manager of the household included fetching water on a daily basis using a hydria, or water jar. Several of these are on display, including one made in Athens about 510 BCE.
"With this hydria we see a perfect relationship between form and function, because decorated on it are all these women at the fountain house collecting water with hydriae on their heads," Withycombe says.
"They are talking with each other, and between them are running all these lines of letters, but they're nonsense words meant to indicate general chatter."
It brings to mind a modern-day cartoon with a speech bubble full of 'yadda yadda yadda'.
And in so doing, this simple but deftly painted water jar also functions as a time machine, instantly connecting observers with the mindset of the Ancient Greeks in a way that feels familiar and meaningful.
The exhibition is open until May. For more information visit nma.gov.au
Australian Associated Press
