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This book examines representations of divine music to argue that visual arts could communicate the sound of divine music being depicted.
Combines multiple theoretical perspectives and diverse media to examine the relation between music and memory in ancient Greece and Rome.
This volume provides an ambitious synopsis of the complex, colourful world of textiles in ancient Mediterranean iconography. A wealth of information on ancient textiles is available from depictions such as sculpture, vase painting, figurines, reliefs and mosaics. Commonly represented in clothing, textiles are also present in furnishings and through the processes of textile production. The challenge for anyone analysing ancient iconography is determining how we interpret what we see. As preserved textiles rarely survive in comparable forms, we must consider the extent to which representations of textiles reflect reality, and critically evaluate the sources. Images are not simple replicas or photographs of reality. Instead, iconography draws on select elements from the surrounding world that were recognisable to the ancient audience, and reveal the perceptions, ideologies, and ideas of the society in which they were produced. Through examining the durable evidence, this anthology reveals the ephemeral world of textiles and their integral role in the daily life, cult and economy of the ancient Mediterranean.
The remains of ancient Mediterranean art and architecture that have survived over the centuries present the modern viewer with images of white, the color of the stone often used for sculpture. Antiquarian debates and recent scholarship, however, have challenged this aspect of ancient sculpture. There is now a consensus that sculpture produced in the ancient Mediterranean world, as well as art objects in other media, were, in fact, polychromatic. Color has consequently become one of the most important issues in the study of classical art. Jennifer Stager's landmark book makes a vital contribution to this discussion. Analyzing the dyes, pigments, stones, earth, and metals found in ancient art works, along with the language that writers in antiquity used to describe color, she examines the traces of color in a variety of media. Stager also discusses the significance of a reception history that has emphasized whiteness, revealing how ancient artistic practice and ancient philosophies of color significantly influenced one another.
This handsome volume presents an innovative look at the imagery of libations, the most commonly depicted ritual in ancient Greece, and how it engaged viewers in religious performance. In a libation, liquid--water, wine, milk, oil, or honey--was poured from a vessel such as a jug or a bowl onto the ground, an altar, or another surface. Libations were made on occasions like banquets, sacrifices, oath-taking, departures to war, and visitations to tombs, and their iconography provides essential insight into religious and social life in 5th-century BC Athens. Scenes depicting the ritual often involved beholders directly--a statue's gaze might establish the onlooker as a fellow participant, or painted vases could draw parallels between human practices and acts of gods or heroes. Beautifully illustrated with a broad range of examples, including the Caryatids at the Acropolis, the Parthenon Frieze, Attic red-figure pottery, and funerary sculpture, this important book demonstrates the power of Greek art to transcend the boundaries between visual representation and everyday experience.
This volume explores film and television sources in problematic conversation with classical antiquity, to better understand the nature of artistic reception and classical reception in particular. Drawing inspiration from well-theorized fields like adaptation studies, comparative literature, and film, the essays in this collection raise questions fundamental to the future of reception studies. The first section, ‘Beyond Fidelity’, deals with idiosyncratic adaptations of ancient sources; the second section, ‘Beyond Influence’, discusses modern works purporting to adapt ancient figures or themes that are less straightforwardly ancient than they may at first appear; while the last section, ‘Beyond Original’, uses films that lack even these murky connections to antiquity to challenge the notion that studying reception requires establishing historical connections between works. As questions of audience, interpretation, and subjectivity are central to most contemporary fields of study, this is a collection that is of interest to a wide variety of readers in the humanities.
This is the first book-length exploration of the ways art from the edges of the Roman Empire represented the future, examining visual representations of time and the role of artwork in Roman imperial systems. This book focuses on four kingdoms from across the empire: Cottius’s Alpine kingdom in the north, King Juba II’s Mauretania in the south-west, Herodian Judea in the east, and Kommagene to the north-east. Art from the imperial frontier is rarely considered through the lens of the aesthetics of time, and Roman provincial art and the monuments of allied rulers are typically interpreted as evidence of the interaction between Roman and local identities. In this interdisciplinary study, w...
Explores the literary and cultural significance of the unruly solo dancer in the ancient Greek world.
Poetics of the First Punic War investigates the literary afterlives of Rome’s first conflict with Carthage. From its original role in the Middle Republic as the narrative proving ground for epic’s development out of verse historiography, to its striking cultural reuse during the Augustan and Flavian periods, the First Punic War (264–241 BCE) holds an underappreciated place in the history of Latin literature. Because of the serendipitous meeting of historical content and poetic form in the third century BCE, a textualized First Punic War went on to shape the Latin language and its literary genres, the practices and politics of remembering war, popular visions of Rome as a cultural capit...
"An examination of the combined subjects of ancient Greek art and religion, dealing with festivals, performance, rites of passage, and the archaeology of death, to name a few examples, to explore the visual, material, and textual dimensions of ancient Greek religion"--