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#6691
Maggie May
Participant

Humanism is a system of beliefs which focuses on human potential and goodness rather than focusing on divine or supernatural matters. I think we can see this throughout many areas of Ancient Greece, but especially in the artistic shift towards representing the human body more accurately and portraying humans with increasing frequency, as well.
We see art from this time period begin to focus on distinctly human activities, like Exekias’ work Ajax and Achilles Playing a Game, which depicts the two playing a game together and highlights the human aspects of their demigod nature. This shift in focus is fascinating.
It is also fascinating to observe the shift away from very constrained, formal human form when portrayed in art to a more casual representation, such as standing with most of the weight on one leg or standing mostly nude. They also began to depict not only gods and godesses during this time, but also their followers. Unique to the time were depictions of older and younger people. It would follow that if the Greeks believed in the divinity of humankind, they would depict them this way- as they are- and more often.