Kora of Sicyon

Kora or Callirhoe (circa 650 B.C., Sicyon, ancient Greece) was the daughter of Butades of Sicyon. Butades and Kora are credited with the invention of modeling in relief. In Pliny the Elder's Natural History (A.D. 77) and other ancient sources, the story goes that Kora drew the profile of a man she loved on the wall with charcoal. Based upon this outline, her father modeled the face of the man in clay, thus creating the first relief.

The relief created from Kora's outline was preserved at the Nymphaeum in Corinth for almost 200 years, before it was destroyed by fire.

References

Sicyon

Sicyon (/ˈsɪʃiˌɒn, ˈsɪs-/; Greek: Σικυών; gen.: Σικυῶνος) was an ancient Greek city state situated in the northern Peloponnesus between Corinth and Achaea on the territory of the present-day regional unit of Corinthia. An ancient monarchy at the times of the Trojan War, the city was ruled by a number of tyrants during the Archaic and Classical period and became a democracy in the 3rd century BC. Sicyon was celebrated for its contributions to ancient Greek art, producing many famous painters and sculptors. In Hellenistic times it was also the home of Aratus of Sicyon, the leader of the Achaean League.

History

Sicyon was built on a low triangular plateau about two miles from the Corinthian Gulf. Between the city and its port lay a fertile plain with olive groves and orchards.

In Mycenean times Sicyon had been ruled by a line of twenty-six mythical kings and then seven priests of Apollo. The king-list given by Pausanias comprises twenty-four kings, beginning with the autochthonous Aegialeus. The penultimate king of the list, Agamemnon, compels the submission of Sicyon to Mycenae; after him comes the Dorian usurper Phalces. Pausanias shares his source with Castor of Rhodes, who used the king-list in compiling tables of history; the common source was convincingly identified by Felix Jacoby as a lost Sicyonica by the late 4th-century poet Menaechmus of Sicyon.

Sicyon (mythology)

In Greek mythology, Sicyon (/ˈsɪkiːoʊn/; Ancient Greek: Σικυών) is the eponym of the polis of the same name, which was said to have previously been known as Aegiale and, earlier, Mecone. His father is named variously as Marathon, Metion, Erechtheus or Pelops. Sicyon married Zeuxippe, the daughter of Lamedon, the previous king of the polis and region that would come to be named after him. They had a daughter Chthonophyle, who bore two sons: Polybus to Hermes and, later, Androdamas to Phlius, the son of Dionysus.Stephanus of Byzantium (s.v. Phlius) and the scholia to Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica 1.115, however, say that she bore Phlius to Dionysus.

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