THE GIFT OF IDENTITY: (RE)PRESENTING AUTOCHTHONY IN CLASSICAL ATHENS

Ramus ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 50 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 189-209
Author(s):  
Jacquelyn H. Clements
Keyword(s):  
Visual Representations ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Civic Identity ◽  
Vase Painting ◽  
The Gift

The Athenians of the fifth century BCE both created and were captivated by an unusual and memorable concept that provided citizens with an ancestry that was closely linked to the very earth they inhabited: autochthony. Although autochthony in classical Athens has been studied extensively, the methodology of viewing the myth as a representation of a ritual and performative act has not been widely considered. This paper reflects upon autochthony from the angle of its ceremonial (re)presentation, considering how iconography helped shape a concrete and specific understanding of Athenian civic identity, including familial ties with the gods and eponymous ancestors. By situating fifth-century visual representations in vase painting as the most effective conduit for what autochthony meant, we can better understand its power as a visual action that replicates a ritual gift.

scholarly journals Targeted Advertising for Women in Athenian Vase-Painting of the Fifth Century BCE

Arts ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 52
Author(s):  
Bennett
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Women's Work ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Vase Painting ◽  
Cultural Changes ◽  
Targeted Advertising ◽  
Delian League ◽  
City State ◽  
The City

This paper analyzes the trends in depictions of women in Athenian vase-painting during the 5th century BCE through an examination of approximately 88,000 vases in the Beazley Archive Pottery Database. It found a 15% increase in depictions of women during the 5th century BCE and a diversification in subject matter in which women appear. By considering these trends within the historical context of the hegemonic position of Athens in the Delian League and its wars, this paper proposes that the changes in representations and subject matter denote an expanded marketability of vases to female viewers. As targeted imagery, the images give perceptible recognition to an increased valuation of women’s work and lives at a time when their roles in Athenian society were essential for the continued success of the city-state. This paper suggests that these changes also point to the fact that a greater share of the market was influenced by women, either directly or indirectly, and successful artists carefully crafted targeted advertisements on their wares to attract that group. This paper provides new insights into the relationships between vases and their intended audiences within the context of the cultural changes occurring in Athens itself.

Representations of Children in Ancient Greece

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Olympia Bobou
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Fourth Century ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Roman Period ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
Vase Painting ◽  
Funerary Reliefs ◽  
The Relationship

Children’s representations appear early in the Greek visual material culture: first they appear in the large funerary vases of the geometric period, while in the archaic period they appear in funerary reliefs and vases. To the representations in vase painting, those in terracotta statuettes can be added in the fifth century, but it is in the fourth century bc that children become a noteworthy subject of representation, appearing both in small- and large-scale objects in different media. This chapter considers the relationship between changing imagery of children in ancient Greece and social and religious developments from the geometric period, through the Hellenistic period and into the Roman period in Greece.

Prometheus Vinctus on the Athenian Stage

1994 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-40 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Davidson
Keyword(s):  
Fifth Century ◽  
Vase Painting ◽  
Archaeological Remains ◽  
Vexed Question

We know very little for certain about the staging of plays in the Theatre of Dionysus at Athens in the fifth century B.C. The evidence of archaeological remains and contemporary vase painting is difficult to interpret with confidence, the reliability of ancient post-classical commentators is questionable, and the texts of the surviving plays, our chief source of evidence, often raise more problems than they solve. Among the plays which have occasioned most controversy in modern scholarship is the Prometheus Vinctus. What was the ‘rock’ to which the hero was bound? In what part of the theatre space was it positioned? How and where did the chorus of Oceanids make their entry? How was the ending of the play staged? Questions such as these continue to perplex students of the play who also have to face the vexed question of its date and indeed authorship.

Moving Images: Fifth-Century Victory Monuments and the Athlete's Allure

1998 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-150 ◽  
Author(s):  
Deborah Steiner
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Vase Painting ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
The Gaze ◽  
Moving Images ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Close Study ◽  
Sensual Pleasure ◽  
The City

This article treats representations of victors in the Greek athletic games in the artistic and poetic media of the early classical age, and argues that fifth-century sculptors, painters and poets similarly constructed the athlete as an object designed to arouse desire in audiences for their works. After reviewing the very scanty archaeological evidence for the original victory images, I seek to recover something of the response elicited by these monuments by looking to visualizations of athletes in contemporary vase-painting and literary sources, and most particularly in the epinician odes of Pindar. Poets and painters, I suggest, both place their subjects within an erotically-charged atmosphere which replicates that surrounding actual athletes in the city gymnasia and at the games, and encourage audiences to regard the youthful bodies on display as "spectacularized" objects, sources of both aesthetic and sensual pleasure. The makers of monumental images work within the same paradigm, also prompting the viewer to transfer the sentiments aroused by the real-world athlete and victor to his re-presentation in bronze. Through an examination of the conventions used for victor images, and a close study of the so-called Motya charioteer, I propose that the sculptor deploys techniques analogous to those of artist and poet to highlight the appeal of the athlete's body, and displays the victor in a mode calculated not only to mark him as the alluring target of the gaze, but even to cast him as a potential erômenos. The concluding section of the article investigates the impetus behind this mode of representation, and seeks to place the dynamic between the viewer and the viewed within the context of the early fifth-century polis.

LAME HEPHAISTOS

2016 ◽  
Vol 111 ◽  
pp. 163-181
Author(s):  
Maura Brennan
Keyword(s):  
Fifth Century ◽  
Sixth Century ◽  
Vase Painting ◽  
Painted Pottery

The Return of Hephaistos to Olympus was a popular scene in Attic vase-painting from the beginning of the sixth century through the end of the fifth century bce, and it is found occasionally on other forms of pottery as well. According to myth, Hephaistos was lame, and this disability is sometimes depicted on painted pottery, almost always in scenes of his Return. The most well-known example is the François Vase, which is often the only vase cited when discussing instances of Hephaistos's lameness on Athenian pottery. Although three other Attic vases are occasionally cited as showing the disability, one of which does not show his Return, but instead the Birth of Athena, there are actually quite a number more Attic vases that depict his lameness than have previously been recognised. In this paper I present seven new Attic examples that clearly display his lameness, and consider both the different ways in which his disability is rendered and how they relate to the various epithets associated with him For example, he is often associated with the epithet ‘clubfoot’, and while there was an established iconography of clubfoot Corinthian komasts, the god's disability is never rendered in this manner on Attic vases. Instead, he is depicted in ways more similar to other epithets associated with him. Most notably, four vases represent the disability in a fashion that seems to be connected with Hephaistos's most common Homeric epithet, ἀμφιγυήεις, or ‘with both feet crooked’.

SYRACUSAN IDENTITY BETWEEN TYRANNY AND DEMOCRACY

2012 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 73-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
MARK THATCHER
Keyword(s):  
Fifth Century ◽  
Civic Identity ◽  
Social Changes ◽  
Civil Strife ◽  
The City ◽  
Democratic Constitution

Abstract The city of Syracuse saw enormous social changes in the first half of the fifth century BCE, as the Deinomenid tyranny gave way to a more democratic constitution. In particular, the tyrants' extension of citizenship to some 10,000 former mercenaries was accompanied by shifting conceptions of Syracusan civic identity. The ideological program of Hieron, found in Pindar and on coinage, promoted a version of civic identity that focused on the city's Dorian ethnicity and unique topographical features (the island Ortygia and the spring Arethusa) as factors shared by all citizens. After the fall of the tyranny, however, this more inclusive conception of Syracusan identity was rejected by the ‘original’ citizens, who excluded the former mercenaries from office-holding. The resulting civil strife reveals a struggle, in the aftermath of tyranny, over the nature of Syracusan civic identity: what did it mean to be Syracusan and how would that status be defined?

Continuity or Rupture? Further Thoughts on the ‘Classical Revolution’ (2500+ Years after Salamis)

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 200-226
Author(s):  
Andrew Stewart
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Vase Painting ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
Panel Painting ◽  
Terminus Post Quem ◽  
Greek Sculpture

In the last half-dozen years, the early fifth-century BC ‘Classical Revolution’ in Greek sculpture and painting has become ‘hot’ again.1 Did it develop gradually, incrementally, and logically out of the Archaic, or emerge quite suddenly (if so, when?), or involve some combination of both? Since chronology drives the debate, as usual in the study of ancient material culture, to restate some basic principles seems appropriate. I. Absolute chronologies, independently derived, should always underpin and guide relative ones. II. In a relative/gradualist chronology, the ‘latest’ feature of an artifact determines its stylistic terminus post quem, and thus its place in the series.2 Nevertheless: III. Such relative dates cannot be turned simply or unproblematically into history.3 IV. Nothing new comes out of nothing (even Athena came from the head of Zeus). Yet: V. Supposed ‘predecessors’ to a revolution on a gradualist chronology often turn out to be hesitant reactions to it when more data emerge.4 In the present case, unfortunately, the Sicyonian, Argive, Aeginetan, and Athenian bronzes celebrated in the texts are all lost, together with all contemporary wall and panel painting; no absolute chronology exists for early fifth-century East Greek sculpture;5 and West Greek sculpture clearly trails that of the mainland. So by default, our spotlight must fall largely on the marble sculpture of Athens, Aegina, and the Cyclades, and on red-figure vase-painting.

scholarly journals From Gaia to the Pythia

2015 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
pp. 382-396
Author(s):  
Manuela Giordano
Keyword(s):  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Dominant Male ◽  
Male Voice ◽  
Feminine Voice ◽  
Prophetic Voice ◽  
The Gift ◽  
Public Speakers ◽  
Mother Earth

This paper explores the ambiguous connection between women and prophecy in ancient Greece. The issue of the genealogy of the prophetic seat of Delphi – the most authoritative oracle of ancient Greece – is first dealt with in relation to Aeschylus’ Eumenides (458 B. C. E.), where the gift of prophecy is said to have been first endowed to Gaia, Mother Earth, to be passed on from mother to daughter until it is given to Apollo, the god of prophecy. Starting from this testimony, the role of Gaia is used in the paper as a key to understanding the motherly symbols associated with prophecy. The paper further explores how the powerful prophetic voice and role of the Pythia is “normalized” in the context of fifth century Athens, where women were not allowed to be public speakers or agents and where the dominant male voice constructed any public feminine voice as inappropriate or deviant. In this respect, the paper points out how in the Athenian representation of the Pythia, the authoritative heir of Gaia is reduced to a reconciling woman acting as a devout supporter of men and their authority.

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