The Promise of Herculaneum

1952 ◽  
Vol 21 (63) ◽  
pp. 112-116
Author(s):  
H. A. B. White

Although the eruption of Vesuvius in A.D. 79 overwhelmed both Pompeii and Herculaneum, the importance of Herculaneum has today been eclipsed by the comparative ease of excavation and the size of Pompeii. Ten years ago it was estimated that for every one visitor to Herculaneum there were four to Pompeii. This was not always so: from 1709, when Prince d'Elbœuf, excavating an old well, accidentally struck a part of the theatre at Herculaneum, until 1781, when one of his successors, La Vega, was ordered to turn to Pompeii, Herculaneum was considered to be the more important find. Under Charles III of Naples, the engineers Alcubierre, Weber, and La Vega worked there.The importance of Pompeii, as compared with Herculaneum, in the eyes of archaeologists and scholars, is reflected in the literature on the subject: while there has been much detailed and recent research on Pompeii, Herculaneum has attracted the attention of few scholars.1 Now that most of the interesting districts of Pompeii have been uncovered, archaeologists with modern equipment may concentrate on Herculaneum.The early history of Herculaneum is obscure. Strabo sums up its first inhabitants in the sentence: ‘The Oscans used to possess both Herculaneum and her neighbour Pompeii, which lies on the river Sarno; next came the Etruscans and Pelasgians, and thereafter the Samnites; but these also were expelled from the places.’ Yet its inhabitants of later days were proud to trace back their origin to the Greek god Heracles, and there is no doubt that this town shows more evidence of Greek influence in its works of art than Pompeii.

Author(s):  
Susanne Wagini ◽  
Katrin Holzherr

Abstract The restorer Johann Michael von Hermann (1793–1855), famous in the early nineteenth century, has long fallen into oblivion. A recent discovery of his work associated with old master prints at the Staatliche Graphische Sammlung München has allowed a close study of his methods and skills as well as those of his pupil Ludwig Albert von Montmorillon (1794–1854), providing a fresh perspective on the early history of paper conservation. Von Hermann’s method of facsimile inserts was praised by his contemporaries, before Max Schweidler (1885–1953) described these methods in 1938. The present article provides biographical notes on both nineteenth century restorers, gives examples of prints treated by them and adds a chapter of conservation history crediting them with a place in the history of the discipline. In summary, this offers a surprising insight on how works of art used to be almost untraceably restored by this team of Munich-based restorers more than 150 years before Schweidler.


1860 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 39-69 ◽  
Author(s):  
I. W. Bosanquet
Keyword(s):  

The origin and duration of the empire of the Medes, which occupied 80 important a position in early Asiatic history, has been the subject of attention to many recent writers. The Lectures of Niebuhr on the Medes and Persians are probably familiar to us all. Dr. Leonard Schmitz, the translator of Niebuhr's works, has recently published his matured views on the same subject. Mr. Johannes Von Gumpach in 1852, Professor Brandis in 1853, and Jacob Kruger in 1856, have also expressed their views upon Median history and chronology; and within the last twelve months, the works of Marcus Von Niebuhr on Assyrian and Babylonian history, and the translation of Herodotus by the Rev. George Rawlinson, have appeared, embracing and commenting upon the early history of the Medes.


Author(s):  
Anthony Grafton

This chapter examines the centrality of early modern ecclesiastical history, written by Catholics as well as Protestants, in the refinement of research techniques and practices anticipatory of modern scholarship. To Christians of all varieties, getting the Church's early history right mattered. Eusebius's fourth-century history of the Church opened a royal road into the subject, but he made mistakes, and it was important to be able to ferret them out. Saint Augustine was recognized as a sure-footed guide to the truth about the Church's original and bedrock beliefs, but some of the Saint's writings were spurious, and it was important to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff. To distinguish true belief from false, teams of religious scholars gathered documents; the documents in turn were subjected to skeptical scrutiny and philological critique; and sources were compared and cited. The practices of humanistic scholarship, it turns out, came from within the Catholic Church itself as it examined its own past.


1970 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 86-89
Author(s):  
G. B. Lauf

Most of the current literature in the field of gyroscopic theory and in the use of gyroscopic instruments for the determination of azimuth begins the historical account of the subject with the work of Leon Foucault during the period 1850-1852. But little is known of the work in this field by others during the preceding half century. In this paper, the development of the gyroscope and gyro compass is traced back to a date earlier than 1813.


Archaeologia ◽  
1863 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 173-188
Author(s):  
Beriah Botfield

The early history of Ludlow has been so well detailed by Mr. Eyton in his Antiquities of Shropshire, and has been so elaborately illustrated by Mr. Wright in his volume specially devoted to the subject, that I need not enlarge on its general history in endeavouring to elucidate the recently discovered remains of the Priory of Austin Friars. I cannot, however, refrain from quoting the graphic description of Churchyarde, who, writing in the reign of Queen Elizabeth, thus describes Ludlow:—The Town doth stand most part upon an hill,Built well and fair, with streets both large and wide,The houses such where strangers lodge at will,As long as there the Council liste abide.Both fine and clean the streets are all throughout,With condits cleere and wholesome water springe,And who that list to walk the Town about,Shall find therein some rare and pleasant thinge;But chiefly here the ayre so sweet you have,As in no place you can no better crave.


1981 ◽  
Vol 76 ◽  
pp. 323-328
Author(s):  
Carlos Arturo Picón

A fruitful combination of excavation, fieldwork, and research has in recent years increased our knowledge of the Temple of Apollo Epikourios at Bassai. In particular, the sculptured frieze which encircled the interior of the cella has been the subject of numerous studies, the most recent being the monograph by C. Hofkes-Brukker and A. Mallwitz published in 1975. The investigations made at Bassai by N. Yalouris and F. A. Cooper have produced important new evidence. As a result of the excavations conducted by Yalouris since 1959, the early history of the sanctuary and of the structures preceding the classical (‘Iktinian’) temple are reasonably clear. Furthermore, Cooper has shown that the ‘Iktinian’ building, the fourth in a series of temples to Apollo on the site, was not designed to receive pedimental sculpture, and that some, if not all, of this temple's akroteria were floral. The traditional attributions of pedimental and akroterial statues must be discarded, along with the theory that the ‘Iktinian’ building was started as early as the middle of the fifth century B.C.Yet, despite this progress, and the fact that the temple is one of the best-preserved monuments from antiquity, many issues remain controversial. Scholars postulate several building phases for the Classical temple. The chronology of the sculptures is still debated, as is the order of the twenty-three frieze-slabs within the cella.


1954 ◽  
Vol 4 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 151-157
Author(s):  
H. C. Baldry

This article is a survey of familiar ground—those passages of the Poetics of Aristotle which throw light on the treatment of legend by the tragic poets. Although sweeping generalizations are often made on the use of the traditional stories in drama, our evidence on the subject is slight and inconclusive. We have little knowledge of the form in which most of the legends were known to the Attic playwrights, for the few we find in the Iliad and Odyssey appear there in very different versions from those they take on in the plays, and the fragmentary remains of epic and lyric poetry between Homer and the fifth century B.C. present us with a wide field for speculation, but few certain facts; while vase paintings and other works of art supplement only here and there the scanty information gained from literature.The comments of ancient writers on this aspect of tragedy are surprisingly few, and carry us little farther. The Poetics stands out as the one source from which we can draw any substantial account of the matter. Even Aristotle, of course, is not directly concerned with the history of drama, and deals with it only incidentally in isolated passages; and in considering these it must constantly be borne in mind that he is discussing tragedy as he knew it in the late fourth century, for the benefit of fourth-century readers. But even so, his statements are the main foundation on which our view of the dramatists' use of legend must be built.


2001 ◽  
Vol 52 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-102 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. H. C. FREND

As in every other branch of learning, the study of the early history of Christianity has undergone massive changes during the last century. This has been due not only to the vast accumulation of knowledge through new discoveries, but to new approaches to the subject, together with the rise of archaeology as a principal factor in providing fresh information. The study of the early Church has as a result moved steadily from dogma to history, from attempts to interpret divine revelation through the development of doctrinal orthodoxy down the ages, to research into the historical development of an earthly institution of great complexity and of great significance in the history of mankind over the past two thousand years.


At this meeting papers were given by Turver & Weekes and Sreekantan about the current status in the detection of ultra-high-energy y-rays in the energy range 10 11 —10 13 eV, by means of the atmospheric Cherenkov technique. There are two objectives of this short contribution. The first is to describe briefly the early history of the subject, and the second to outline the basic physics involved, which will reveal how the technique is essentially quite different from those used in the other energy bands in the y-ray spectrum.


Oscillations in the magnetization of a metal crystal were first observed by de Haas and van Alphen in bismuth 50 years ago, and over the years this effect has developed into a powerful tool in the study of the electronic structure of metals. The lecture describes in simple terms how this has come about, with some emphasis on the early history of the subject in which Rutherford was indirectly involved.


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