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L TARUASHVILI ART OF ANCIENT GREECE: DICTIONARY SOME INTRODUCTORY NOTES pecific feature of up-to-date condition of knowledge about the art of ancient Greece is a considerable distance, if not to say a break, between, on the one hand, truly huge quantity of empirical data concerning monuments and, on the other hand, comparatively low grade of their interpretation (chronological and geographical localization, stylistic classification etc.). Meanwhile this distance, which is already in itself very high, has a tendency to grow, first of all due to achievements of archeology. Such a state of things, when understanding of material becomes progressively backward in comparison with its accumulation and primary description, has two main causes. One of them consists in that, for all its abundance, the material brought by archeological research is as a rule fragmentary while the data of literary sources are incomplete and far from being always clear and indisputable. The other one is probably connected with a general trend in contemporary mentality leading to the widespread loss of taste for more or less wide generalizations, whose place begins to take an interest in uniqueness of individual fact. Be that as it may, the available tools for art-historical interpretation of monuments as well as for making a general picture of Greek art history becomes less and less coordinated with a growing mass of empirical data. As a result, in last decades relative number of summarizing works on ancient Greek art, which appear all over the world, is essentially reduced. One can take it calmly as an inevitable side effect of scientific progress and so wait that in course of time the interest in Hellenic art as an art phenomenon will return by itself and that consequently there is no sense in stimulating it specially. But such an attitude, being once commonly accepted, will favour the sharpening of sociocultural problem, acute and inevitable as it is and consisting in that modern society loses touch with its cultural and civilizational roots, which as is well-known are plunged into the ground of Classical and first of all Hellenic antiquity. To limit themselves to reeditions and new versions of the old means to produce false appearance of solving the S problem. There is no doubt that a lot of works on ancient Greek art, which has been written in the past in different languages, preserve up till now much more than solely historiographical importance and deserve to be read just as before: from those works written by Russian authors I would like to note the book by B. Vipper «Iskusstvo Drevney Gretsii» («Art ofAncient Greece»). But the material in them exposed as well as approach to it corresponds not fully with demands of today, therefore it would be useful to complement them from time to time with books showing the same subject from the more contemporary positions. Meanwhile when the all-round elucidation must be applied to a material that still (or better to say — already?) is faraway from due regulatedness, such as material of ancient Greek art, to use in that case the genre of monograph predetermining one-dimensional orientation of facts and ideas exposition and at the same time fixing rigidly author's accents can, as it seems me, lay some restraint on freedom of reader in his choice and possible change of suitable for him points of view on matter and on author's interpretation of it. Proceeding from this reason I have found the form of dictionary a preferable one. Furthermore taking into consideration the aims posed by me I suppose that the advantage of this form consists in permitting author to give in his text especially big place for separate facts and objects and to produce their many-sided analysis and interpretation, which cannot be done in monograph without drawing away reader's attention from the main line of exposition. Meanwhile prompts of new approach to the material as a whole can lie hidden just in nuances, which the author of monograph must sometimes sacrifice to clearness of composition. Being the only author of this dictionary I, of course, couldn't provide it with qualities of standard- or referencebook for specialists in art of Classical antiquity. Having read their works I know pretty well that the extant of their professional erudition surpasses, as a rule, the modest stock of my knowledge. When nevertheless I ventured to begin