Luxury and power: Persia to Greece

Luxury objects reveal how imperial opulence and democratic restraint shaped enduring perceptions across ancient Persia, Athens, and the Hellenistic world.

Luxurious objects are celebrated for their exoticism; rarity and style; but also disparaged as indulgent; extravagant and corrupt. The ancient origins of these attitudes emerged at the boundary between the imperial Persian and democratic Athenian Greek worlds. Luxury was at the center of the royal Persian court and behaviors of ostentatiou...