Installation and Disk Swapping
Navigating the Perseus Environment
Gateway & Navigator
Paths
Search Tools
Primary Texts
Philological Tools
Art & Archaeology
Atlas
Historical Overview
Essays & Catalogs
Tools & References
The Perseus Project: Goals & Expectations
Contents of Platform Independent Perseus
Platform Independent Perseus Help Pages

Essays & Catalogs Help Topics

Essays & Catalogs Overview

Perseus includes a number of essays on Greek artists and art, the Athenian court system, biographies, music and regions of Greece. Some of the essays were commissioned by the Perseus Project and written by scholars with a particular area of expertise. Others were prepared independently of Perseus for publication in other sources. All the scholarly works have integral ties to the Perseus resources, such as text citations and links to object descriptions and photographs.

Each essay consists of two parts, a table of contents and a narrative section. Within the narrative, underlined words indicate a direct link to another part of Perseus. Read more about how to use direct and indirect links in Perseus in the Help chapter on Exploring the Perseus Environment. Advance or go back from page to page in the Essays by clicking the Go Forward and Go Back arrows on the Navigator.

Return to Top

Greek Vase Painters

The six vase painter essays share an identical interface. Links and buttons in "The Kleophrades Painter", written by Michael Padgett, are described below; the other essays behave similarly.

The Kleophrades Painter

To open this resource, click the Essays & Catalogs icon on the Gateway or choose Essays & Catalogs from the Links menu. Click the title of the essay to go to its table of contents. Like the Historical Overview, the essays and catalogs in Perseus are indexed by a table of contents; click a topic to go there.

To follow the example here, select Stylistic Characteristics from the Table of Contents for "The Kleophrades Painter". The essay topic appears in a new window. Note the two buttons in the upper right: Table of Contents and Hide Illustrations. Clicking Table of Contents returns you to the Table of Contents of the essay. The button Hide Illustrations toggles to Show Illustrations when you click it. This button either hides or shows the illustrations field at the bottom of the card. The illustrations are indicated in the text by ill. 7, ill. 8, etc., and correspond to the same illustration numbers in the field at the bottom. Note that the accession number and a short description of the picture are also given. To see the view of an illustration, click it. Note that the illustrations field will be empty if no illustrations are mentioned in the text.

The essays contain underlined, direct links within Perseus to specific vases and to the Sources Used. You can recognize vases because their references begin with the collection name, such as Boston, Munich, and so on. When you move the cursor over an underlined link, it becomes highlighted, turning red. By clicking on the highlighted reference you will copy it into the Lookup tool. If the reference is a canonical Perseus reference, Perseus will also open the database entry in a new window.

For example, try moving the cursor over "Harvard 1960.236", one of the underlined references on the page of the essay you have open. The reference turns red; click on it once, and the reference appears in the Lookup window. Then, Perseus automatically opens the Vase Catalog to display the full catalog entry for Harvard 1960.236. Back in the Kleophrades Painter essay, try clicking on the underlined reference to "ARV2" from the same page to go directly to the full bibliographic citation for that publication.

Read more about how to use direct and indirect links in Perseus in the Help chapter on Exploring the Perseus Environment.

Some topics in the essays take up more than one page; for instance, the Stylistic Characteristics section continues onto a total of 3 pages. Advance from page to page in the essay by clicking the Forward arrow on the Navigator.

Other Vase Painting essays in Perseus

Other vase painting essays in Platform Independent Perseus include "The Harrow Painter, with a note on the Geras Painter", written by Michael Padgett; "Douris", written by Diana Buitron-Oliver, "Phintias and Euthymides", written by Jenifer Neils, "The Achilles Painter", written by John Oakley, and "Polygnotos and His Group", written by Susan Matheson.

These essays work in the same way as "The Kleophrades Painter". They are indexed by a table of contents. Click illustrations in the field at the bottom to see them. Other links are also available to the Vase Catalog and the Sources Used.

Return to Top

The Caskey-Beazley Vase Catalog

From 1931 to 1963, L.D. Caskey and J.D. Beazley published catalogs describing Attic vase paintings in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. This work has remained a valuable reference for any study of Greek vase painting. All of the 175 vases described by Caskey and Beazley are in the Perseus Vase Catalog as well as available in the original catalog's format in Essays & Catalogs.

When you click Attic Vase Paintings in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, from the Essays & Catalogs Index, the Table of Contents appears. Select a vase from this list by scrolling down to locate the vase you want, then clicking once on the line describing it to go to its Caskey-Beazley entry.

Task: Go to the Caskey-Beazley description of the kylix with the Kneeling Silen. From the Table of Contents, click 6   KYLIX KNEELING SILEN. (PLATE III) to go to the description. Three ways of referencing this vase are displayed just above the scrolling text: the Caskey & Beazley Catalog number (No. 6), the Caskey & Beazley Volume and Page reference (Vol. i p. 6), and the museum accession number (Boston 10.212).

Note the two buttons in the upper right: Table of Contents and Hide Views. Clicking Table of Contents returns you to the Table of Contents of the catalog. The button Hide Views toggles to Show Views when you click it, and hides/shows the list of Views at the bottom. Click on a View to see it.

Click on underlined text to follow direct links to other Perseus resources. Try Louvre G 103. Read more about how to use direct and indirect links elsewhere in the Help.

Many catalog entries take up more than one page; for instance, the entry for the kylix with the kneeling silen continues onto a total of 2 pages. Advance from page to page by clicking the Go Forward arrow on the Navigator.

Return to Top

Sculptors

"One Hundred Greek Sculptors: Their Careers and Extant Works" is excerpted from Andrew S. Stewart's Greek Sculpture, an Exploration, Volume 1 (Yale University Press, 1990).

The Stewart Scupture essay is indexed by a Table of Contents. You can reach it by clicking One Hundred Greek Sculptors: Their Careers and Extant Works from the Essays & Catalogs Index. From the Table of Contents, click the topic 2. THE LITERARY SOURCES to follow the example below.

To return to the Table of Contents for the essay, click Table of Contents. Direct links, indicated by underlined references in the text, are to the Sculpture Catalog, Primary Texts and Sources Used. Click a link to follow it. Read more about how to use direct and indirect links elsewhere in the Help.

Advance or turn back from page to page using the Forward and Backward arrows on the Navigator.

Return to Top

History

The historical essay "Three Court Days" was written by Alan L. Boegehold. The essay is substantially a chapter (without the footnotes) in The Athenian Agora, Volume 28, The Lawcourts at Athens: Sites, Buildings, Equipment, Procedure, and Testimonia by Alan L. Boegehold with contributions by John McK. Camp II, Margaret Crosby, Mabel Lang, David R. Jordan and Rhys F. Townsend, (American School of Classical Studies at Athens, 1995).

The essay provides three accounts of the way a trial may have occurred on three separate occasions in a span of one hundred and forty years. The days fall within the periods 460 to 410 (roughly), 409-340, and 340 (roughly) to 322.

"Three Court Days" works in the same way as the vase painting essays in Perseus. From the Essays & Catalogs Index, click Three Court Days. In a new window, a Table of Contents appears. From the Table of Contents click a topic to go to the body of the essay. Within the body of the essay, each paragraph is contained by a separate window. Paragraph numbers for each of the six sections of the essay are displayed in a field above the text. For example, Paragraph 3.6 is the sixth paragraph within section 3. To page forward and backward among paragraphs, use the right and left arrows on the Navigator. Click the Table of Contents button in the upper right to it.

At certain points in the essay there are references to texts in Perseus. These references are indicated by an underline. To link directly to a text reference, click it. Read more about how to use direct and indirect links in Perseus elsewhere in the Help. XXX Some of the Greek words are transliterated in bold type; you can form links to the Perseus database from some (but not all) of them with the Lookup tool. XXX

Return to Top

Encyclopedia Essays

In addition to the above essays, links are provided to the longer articles in the Perseus Encyclopedia. These articles are comprised by the following topics:

  • Biographies of ancient authors in the Perseus database
  • Musical instruments of ancient Greece
  • Regions of Greece
Authors of these articles are listed in the Essays & Catalogs Index as well as on the Encyclopedia entries. See the Encyclopedia help for more information on the Encyclopedia.


Return to Top
Return to Perseus Help Topics Index