Images

Amphora with Heracles and the Lernaean Hydra (an ancient serpent-like water monster), circa 525 BC, from Etruria (Italy). (Photo taken at the "Monsters. Fantastic Creatures of Fear and Myth" exhibition, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, Rome)

Red-figure plate showing Bellerophon riding Pegasus and chasing the Chimera, by the Baltimore painter, second half of the 4th century BCE. (Photo taken at the "Monsters. Fantastic Creatures of Fear and Myth" exhibition, Palazzo Massimo alle...

Mosaic with a ketos (sea monster - Latinized as cetus) found at Caulonia (Monasterace) in the Casa del Drago, 3rd century BCE. (Photo taken at the "Monsters. Fantastic Creatures of Fear and Myth" exhibition, Palazzo Massimo alle Terme, Rome...

Detail of the Chiragan relief depicting Hercules killing the Lernaean Hydra, 2dn/3rd century CE.(MSR, Musée Saint-Raymond, Villa romaine de Chiragan, Musée des Antiques de Toulouse)

Funerary Proto-Attic Amphora with a depiction of the blinding of the cyclops Polyphemus by Odysseus and his companions, 670-660 BCE (Eleusis Museum, Greece).

Attic black-figure skyphos depicting Odysseus blinding the sleeping Cyclops Polyphemus, by the Theseus Painter, from Boeotia (Greece), 490-480 BCE. (Altes Museum, Berlin)

The blinding of Polyphemus, cast reconstruction of the sculpture group from the villa of Tiberius at Sperlonga (Italy) and dating from the 1st century CE.

A funerary statue of a siren, 370 BCE. The Greek mythical creatures holds the soundbox of a lyre made from a tortoise shell. (National Archaeoloogical Museum, Athens)

A red-figure bell-krater depicting the hero Achilles and the Amazon Penthesileia. 5th century BCE. (National Archaeological Museum of Spain)

Portrait of Pompey the Great, Augustean copy of a 70-60 BCE original (Venice National Archaeological Museum).