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This book explores the juxtapositions of image and text in a wide variety of ancient works of art.
The history of dining is a story that cannot be told without archaeology. Surviving texts describe the opulent banquets of Rome’s wealthy elite but give little attention to the simpler, more intimate social gatherings of domestic invitation dinners. The lower classes, in particular, are largely ignored by literary sources. We can, however, find the voices of the underprivileged by turning to the material detritus of ancient cultures that reflects their social history. Dining at the End of Antiquity brings together the material culture and literary traditions of Romans at the table to reimagine dining culture as an integral part of Roman social order. Through a careful analysis of the tools and equipment of dining, Nicholas Hudson uncovers significant changes to the way different classes came together to share food and wine between the fourth and sixth centuries. Reconstructing the practices of Roman dining culture, Hudson explores the depths of new social distances between the powerful and the dependent at the end of antiquity.
This book interprets films as visual texts and demonstrates the affinities between Greco-Roman literature and the cinema.
This volume, with origins in a panel at the 2018 Celtic Conference in Classics, presents creative new approaches to epigraphic material, in an attempt to 'shake up' how we deal with inscriptions. Broad themes include the embodied experience of epigraphy, the unique capacities of epigraphic language as a genre, the visuality of inscriptions and the interplay of inscriptions with literary texts. Although each chapter focuses on specific objects and epigraphic landscapes, ranging from Republican Rome to early modern Scotland, the emphasis here is on using these case studies not as an end in themselves, but as a means of exploring broader methodological and theoretical issues to do with how we u...
Combines a survey of world art with maps showing the associations and dissemination of culture across the globe.
In contrast to other histories of ancient art that typically privilege well-preserved works of ceramics or stone, Luxus offers an integrated contextual analysis of artifacts fashioned from a wide variety of luxury materials, which survive in far greater number than is typically supposed. These include gold and silver, semiprecious hard stones, and organic materials, such as ivory, fine woods, amber, pearl, coral, and textiles. Examining some of the finest surviving examples of ancient craftsmanship, renowned expert Kenneth Lapatin approaches objects in these diverse media from a variety of viewpoints, providing a valuable model for a more pluralistic approach to visual culture with the great...
"If churches belong to no one, what is their purpose? Mary K. Farag persuasively demonstrates that three interest groups cared about this question in late antiquity: law-makers, Christian leaders, and wealthy lay-persons. Most of the time, their answers co-existed, sitting side-by-side like tectonic plates. Yet the plates did not always sit still, and it is events on their colliding boundaries that account for familiar Christian controversies in novel ways. What Makes a Church Sacred? argues that scholarship misunderstands well-known religious figures by ignoring the legal issues they faced. In this seminal text, Farag nuances the scholarly conversations on sacred space, gift-giving, wealth, and poverty in the late antique Mediterranean world, making use not only of Latin and Greek sources, but also Coptic and Arabic evidence"--
"Examines the chronology of the Church's acquisition of wealth, and particularly of landed property, as well as the distribution of its income, in the period between the conversion of Constantine and the eighth century"-- Provided by publisher.
Direct Speech in Nonnus’ Dionysiaca is the first more extensive study of the use and functions of direct speech in Nonnus’ Dionysiaca (5th century AD). Its long soliloquies and scarcity of dialogues have often been pointed out as striking characteristics of Nonnus’ epic style, but nonetheless this fascinating subject received relatively little attention. Berenice Verhelst aims to reveal the poem’s constant interplay between the epic tradition and the late antique literary context with its clear rhetorical stamp. She focusses on the changed functions of direct speech and their implications for the presentation of the mythological story. Organized around six case studies, this book presents an in-depth analysis of a representative part of the vast corpus of the Dionysiaca’s 305 speeches. The digital appendix to this book (Database of Direct Speech in Greek Epic Poetry) can be consulted online at www.dsgep.ugent.be.
In 1830 a farmer plowing a field near the village of Berthouville in Normandy, France, discovered a trove of ancient Roman silver objects weighing some 55 pounds (25 kilograms). The Berthouville treasure, as the find came to be known, includes two statuettes representing the Gallo-Roman god Mercury and approximately sixty vessels—bowls, cups, pitchers, and plates, many of which bear votive inscriptions—along with dozens of smaller components and fragments. Dedicated to Mercury by various individuals, the treasure, including some of the finest ancient Roman silver to survive, fortunately escaped being melted down. It was acquired by the Cabinet des médailles et antiques of the Bibliothè...