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Anthropology and Roman Culture
How did Roman family relationships differ from our own? What metaphors did the Romans use to express abstractions such as time? What can we learn from the cultural symbols of their religion and literature? In Anthropology and Roman Culture, Maurizio Bettini employs the methods of structural anthropology to examine a series of social, ethical, and religious issues characteristic of Roman culture in the classical period. Bettini begins by examining the system of kinship within the extended Roman family. He shows how the "stern" Roman father and "indulgent" Roman mother had their exact counterparts elsewhere in the family: the harsh "father's brother" (patruus) and the tolerant "mother's brothe...
The Ears of Hermes
Though in many respects similar to us moderns, the Greeks and Romans often conceived things differently than we do. The cultural inheritance we have received from them can therefore open our eyes to many “manners of life” we might otherwise overlook. The ancients told fascinating—but different—stories; they elaborated profound—but different—symbols. Above all, they confronted many of the problems we still face today—memory and forgetfulness; identity and its strategies; absolutist moralism and behavioral relativity—only in profoundly different ways, since their own cultural forms and resources were different. In The Ears of Hermes: Communication, Images, and Identity in the C...
The Portrait of the Lover
There are a surprising number of stories from antiquity about people who fall in love with statues or paintings, and about lovers who use such visual representations as substitutes for an absent beloved. In a charmingly conversational, witty meditation on this literary theme, Maurizio Bettini moves into a wide-ranging consideration of the relationship between self and image, the nature of love in the ancient world, the role of representation in culture, and more. Drawing on historical events and cultural practices as well as literary works, The Portrait of the Lover is a lucid excursion into the anthropology of the image. The majority of the stories and poems Bettini examines come from Greek...
Women and Weasels
If you told a woman her sex had a shared, long-lived history with weasels, she might deck you. But those familiar with mythology know better: that the connection between women and weasels is an ancient and favorable one, based in the Greek myth of a midwife who tricked the gods to ease Heracles’s birth—and was turned into a weasel by Hera as punishment. Following this story as it is retold over centuries in literature and art, Women and Weasels takes us on a journey through mythology and ancient belief, revising our understanding of myth, heroism, and the status of women and animals in Western culture. Maurizio Bettini recounts and analyzes a variety of key literary and visual moments th...
Antike Mythen
Dieser Band versammelt Beiträge von namhaften europäischen und amerikanischenAltertumswissenschaftlern und Religionswissenschaftlern, die einen repräsentativen Querschnitt der zeitgenössischen Erforschung des Mythos, seiner Erscheinungsformen und seiner Transformationen in unterschiedlichen Bereichen und Epochen darbieten.
Women and Weasels
If you told a woman her sex had a shared, long-lived history with weasels, she might deck you. But those familiar with mythology know better: that the connection between women and weasels is an ancient and favorable one, based in the Greek myth of a midwife who tricked the gods to ease Heracles’s birth—and was turned into a weasel by Hera as punishment. Following this story as it is retold over centuries in literature and art, Women and Weasels takes us on a journey through mythology and ancient belief, revising our understanding of myth, heroism, and the status of women and animals in Western culture. Maurizio Bettini recounts and analyzes a variety of key literary and visual moments th...
Healing Grief
Both our view of Seneca’s philosophical thought and our approach to the ancient consolatory genre have radically changed since the latest commentary on the Consolatio ad Marciam was written in 1981. The aim of this work is to offer a new book-length commentary on the earliest of Seneca’s extant writings, along with a revision of the Latin text and a reassessment of Seneca’s intellectual program, strategies, and context. A crucial document to penetrate Seneca’s discourse on the self in its embryonic stages, the Ad Marciam is here taken seriously as an engaging attempt to direct the persuasive power of literary models and rhetorical devices toward the fundamentally moral project of healing Marcia’s grief and correcting her cognitive distortions. Through close reading of the Latin text, this commentary shows that Seneca invariably adapts different traditions and voices – from Greek consolations to Plato’s dialogues, from the Roman discourse of gender and exemplarity to epic poetry – to a Stoic framework, so as to give his reader a lucid understanding of the limits of the self and the ineluctability of natural laws.
Classical Indiscretions
Rooted in the Classics but ranging over the whole of Western literary culture, this book addresses many of the major issues that face us at the turn of the millennium: What is our shared cultural currency? What use do we make of it? Why should anyone involve themselves with the Classics?
In Praise of Polytheism
What ancient polytheistic religions can teach us about building inclusive and equitable futures At the heart of this book is a simple comparison: monotheistic religions are exclusive, whereas ancient polytheistic religions are inclusive. In this thought-provoking book, Maurizio Bettini, one of today’s foremost classicists, uses the expansiveness of ancient polytheism to shine a bright light on a darker corner of our modern times. It can be easy to see ancient religions as inferior, less free, and remote from shared visions of an inclusive world. But, as Bettini deftly shows, many ancient practices tended to produce results aligned with contemporary progressive values, like pluralism and diversity. In Praise of Polytheism does not chastise the modern world or blame monotheism for our woes but rather shows in clear, sharp prose how much we can learn from ancient religions, underscoring the limitations of how we view the world and ourselves today.
