IMAGES OF THE PERSIANS IN THE ART OF ANCIENT GREECE: ISSUES OF DIFFERENTIATION AND TRANSFORMATION
Among the peoples the Greeks interacted with, the Persians played a very important role. There are some problems with differentiating of their images, as Greek art was extremely unprecise in the depicting of other peoples. Besides there are many common traits in the images of Persians and other Eastern peoples - primarily Scythians. There are some criteria which help to differentiate them: date of creation (the Scythians: mainly second half of the 6th century BC, the Persians - the 5th century B.C.), parts of clothing (knee-long chiton, different decorative pattern of pants etc.), weapons (sagaris, spear), features of appearance (the Scythians' pointed beard, bushy - Persians, etc.), plots (the Scythians - assistants, the Persians - opponents), semiotics. Images of the Persians displaced those of the Scythians that was associated with both their resemblance and the similarity of their connotations (East), as well as with the external and domestic political events (Greco-Persian war, the fight against medism). The transition from the images of the Scythians to those of the Persians was gradual. With time, the images of the Persians underwent a certain transformation: from the middle of the 5th century BC clothes and weapons of the Persians and the plots where they were represented become more diverse. During the Hellenistic period, the confrontation with the Persians was materialized in objects of bigger scale: mosaics and sculpture. Representations of the Persians were always syncretic: they combined the real (historical) and mythological that was characteristic for Greek culture in general. Images of battles between the Persians and the Greeks had some mythological connotation, Persian details were present in some mythological subjects, and some of them in turn conceptualized contemporary events for the Greeks.