Local Mythologies in the Greek East

2005 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simon Price
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Greek Religion ◽  
Local Identities ◽  
Dionysius Of Halicarnassus ◽  
Look Back ◽  
Greek East ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Continuous Narrative

The Overall Issue of this Chapter is the articulation of local identities within the broader context of the Greek and Roman world. The development of mythologies, that is, a shared sense of the past, is one of the key ways that this was achieved in the ancient world. Other people and places have done things differently. For example, in the Middle Ages struggles over the possession of the relics of saints was part of the jostling for ecclesiastical and political prominence. This chapter will focus on the High Empire, though it will look back to the Classical and Hellenistic periods. It aims to show the importance of joining up studies of Classical Greek religion with those of later periods. It aims also to illustrate the virtues of being aware of material of different types: not only texts, but also coins, sculpture, and buildings. One theme is that the sculpture and the coins be seen as ‘memory theatres’ in which communities represented to themselves and others images of their past and hence their identities. First, some remarks on the definition of ‘mythology’. Here, the word simply refers to stories about the gods and heroes. The term ‘histories’ would have been equally good, because there was and is a perfectly good case for seeing these stories as actual events, taking place in specific places and at specific times. Upholders of that view naturally believed in the possibility of a continuous narrative, from stories about the gods and heroes down to the present. Such a position was of course debatable and debated, from the fifth century onwards. So Diodorus, writing his Universal History, noted that earlier historians had excluded mythology on the grounds that it contained self-contradictions and confusions (so on evidential, not ontological grounds). He himself, however, proposed to include the deeds of gods and heroes, such as Dionysus and Heracles, who were benefactors of the human race. Such inclusiveness, however, remained controversial: Dionysius of Halicarnassus commended Thucydides’ exclusion of the mythical from his narrative, while noting that local historians did not live up to Thucydidean standards.

In varietate concordia

Moreana ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 43 (Number 165) (1) ◽  
pp. 23-33
Author(s):  
Kevin Eastell
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Community Identity ◽  
Greek City ◽  
Political Unity ◽  
The Reformation ◽  
Hanseatic League ◽  
Economic Collaboration ◽  
Unity In Diversity ◽  
Founding Principle ◽  
Definition Of

Beginning with the complexities involved in the definition of the modern European Community identity, the author proceeds to examine the historical dimensions of the development of Europe as a continent. The Roman and Greek antecedents are recognised and the emergence of Constantinople as a pivotal consideration is discussed. By the early 16th century, what Europe meant is explained in more comprehensive terms than those that prevail today. The unity of Christendom under the papacy is identified as germane to the political unity of Europe as a continent. The Reformation unleashed a process of disintegration and division into national and religious states that has taken centuries to begin to heal. Recognising the failure of modern European structures to secure cohesion among its member countries, the article recognises an attempt to develop unity in diversity: based on the notion of economic collaboration berween trading cities. This notion was very much a feature of the Hanseatic League of the middle-ages, and indeed a founding principle of the Greek city confederacy. History remains a potent and pertinent dimension in our understanding of Europe as a continental concept.

Ildar Garipzanov, Caroline Goodson, and Henry Maguire, ed., Graphic Signs of Identity, Faith, and Power in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages. Cursor Mundi, 27, Turnhout: Brepols, 2017, xviii, 392 p., 141 ill.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 377-379
Author(s):  
Kriszta Kotsis
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Interdisciplinary Research ◽  
Late Antiquity ◽  
Visual Communication ◽  
Group Identity ◽  
Religious Affiliation ◽  
Late Antique ◽  
The Third ◽  
Cursor Mundi ◽  
Definition Of

Late antique and early medieval graphic signs have traditionally been studied by narrowly focused specialists leading to the fragmentation and decontextualization of this important body of material. Therefore, the volume aims “to deepen interdisciplinary research on graphic signs” (7) of the third through tenth centuries, with contributions from archaeologists, historians, art historians, a philologist, and a paleographer. Ildar Garipzanov’s introduction defines the central terms (sign, symbol, graphicacy), calls for supplanting the text-image binary with “the concept of the visual-written continuum” (15), and argues that graphicacy was central to visual communication in this period. He emphasizes the agency of graphic signs and notes that their study can amplify our understanding of the definition of personal and group identity, the articulation of power, authority, and religious affiliation, and communication with the supernatural sphere.

MARCEL PAGNOL'S THE BAKER'S WIFE, A CINEMATIC CHARIVARI IN POPULAR FRONT FRANCE

2005 ◽  
Vol 48 (2) ◽  
pp. 437-469 ◽  
Author(s):  
BRETT BOWLES
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Focal Point ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Popular Front ◽  
Partisan Politics ◽  
National Union ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Social ◽  
Definition Of

Taking an anthropological approach, this article interprets Pagnol's critically acknowledged classic as a reinvention of a carnivalesque ritual practised in France from the late middle ages through the late 1930s, when ethnographers observed its last vestiges. By linking La Femme du boulanger (The baker's wife, 1938) to contemporaneous debates over gender, national decadence, and the definition of French cultural identity, I argue that the film recycles the charivari's long-standing function as a tool of popular protest against social and political practices regarded as detrimental to the welfare of the nation. In the context of the Popular Front, Pagnol's charivari ridiculed divisive partisan politics pitting Left against Right, symbolically purged class conflict from the social body, and created a new form of folklore that served as a focal point for the communitarian ritual of movie-going among the urban working and middle classes. In so doing, the film promoted the ongoing shift in public support away from the Popular Front in favour of a conservative ‘National Union’ government under Prime Minister Edouard Daladier, who in 1938–9 assumed the role of France's newest political patriarch.

III. Language and Stage Action

1984 ◽  
Vol 16 ◽  
pp. 8-11
Keyword(s):  
Fifth Century ◽  
Second Century ◽  
Dio Chrysostom ◽  
Dionysius Of Halicarnassus

Although the career of Sophocles overlapped in its earlier years with that of Aeschylus and later on with that of Euripides, it is very hard to avoid over-simplifying the development of fifth-century tragedy into a progression from Aeschylus to Sophocles to Euripides. The same simplification is found amongst ancient critics, for whom Sophocles is ‘the middle one’ in ways which go beyond mere chronology. Thus Dio Chrysostom (first/early-second century A.D.) in his comparison of the three tragedians’ versions of the Philoctetes story says of Sophocles that ‘he seems to stand midway between the two others, since he has neither the ruggedness and simplicity of Aeschylus nor the precision and shrewdness and urbanity of Euripides, yet he produces a poetry that is august and majestic (σϵμνήν δέ τινα καί μϵγαλοπρϵπἢ ποίησιν), highly tragic and euphonious in its phrasing, so that there is the fullest pleasure coupled with sublimity and Stateliness (μϵτἁ ὕψους καί σϵμνότητος)’ Approximately a century earlier the critic Dionysius of Halicarnassus also found a ‘middle’ quality in Sophocles’ style: between the ‘austere’ (Pindar, Aeschylus, Thucydides, etc.) and the ‘smooth’ (Sappho, Euripides, Isocrates, etc.) he located the intermediate, ‘well-blended’ (ϵὔκρατος) mode of composition, including Sophocles as well as Homer, Demosthenes, Plato, and others. Of this intermediate style Dionysius says he is at a loss to decide ‘whether it is produced by excluding the extremes or by blending them’; but it is at any rate clear that it is defined principally by reference to what it is not.

Removing the Nationality Paradigm from Herodotus’ Histories

2018 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 306-323
Author(s):  
Salvatore Tufano
Keyword(s):  
Case Studies ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Test Cases ◽  
Persian Wars ◽  
Classical Definition ◽  
Mixed Language ◽  
Archaic Greece ◽  
The Common ◽  
Definition Of

Abstract The present paper suggests that the recurring appeal to kinship diplomacy undermines a fixed idea of ‘nation’ in Archaic Greece, especially in the first two decades of the fifth century BC. It aims to present a series of test cases in Herodotus that explain why contemporary patterns and theories on ancient ethnicity can hardly explain the totality of the historical spectrum. Blood ties could sometimes fortify ethnic relationships, as in the case of Aristagoras’ mission to Sparta (Hdt. 5.49.3), since the common Greekness could elicit the Spartan to help to the Ionians. In other times, the same blood ties were applied to divine genealogies, and they could also be used to show the feeble devotion of cities like Argos to the Greek cause (7.150.2: Xerxes expects the Argives to join the Persian cause, since they descend from Perses). Habits and traditions, often taken as indicia of national feeling, could be thought of as clues of ancient migrations (so the Trojans became Maxyes in Lybia: 4.191). Even language might not help in justifying ethnic relationships: for instance, the Greeks living in the Scythian Gelonus spoke a mixed language (4.108). These few case studies may shed a different light on the classical definition of Greekness (to hellenikon) in terms of blood, language, cults, and habits, all given by Herodotus (8.144). Far from being a valid label for all the Greeks of the fifth century, this statement owes much to a specific variety of the language of kinship diplomacy. The final section argues for the opportunity to avoid the later and misleading idea of nation when studying Herodotus and the age of the Persian Wars, which are instead characterized by various and contrasting strategies. Greek groups and ethne can be better described as networks of lightly defined communities.

scholarly journals The Institute of Guardianship in Muslim Family Law in the Early Middle Ages

2018 ◽  
pp. 29-36
Author(s):  
M. O. Dadashev
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Family Law ◽  
Financial Economic ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Rights Of The Child ◽  
The Status ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Right ◽  
Muslim Family

The article deals with the rights of the child and parents in the Muslim family law of the early Middle Ages and its formation in the 8th-10th centuries. The key rights of the child were determined and explained: the right to life, the right to naming, the right to nafaka-the right to financial support-the right to the awareness of his or her genealogy, the right to breastfeeding and the right to up-bringing (al-hidana). In addition, the article provides for the following classifications of the rights in question: basic, financial-economic, religious-ethical. Also, the author considers the issue of prohibition of adoption and gives the definition of an orphan (jatim) under Muslim family law, elucidates peculiarities of the status of orphans, the mechanism for protecting property rights of orphans, rights and duties of guardians with respect of orphans and their property, powers of the kadia (judge) regarding the issue of protecting the rights of orphans, types of guardianship. The reasons and procedure for deprivation of guardianship are also examined. In addition, the author considers parental property rights regarding children.

Legal change for child health: Report on a conference

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1977 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 251-253
Author(s):  
Henry M. Seidel
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Children And Youth ◽  
Frank Lloyd Wright ◽  
Conference Participant ◽  
Health Report ◽  
Points Of View ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship

"Physically and politically powerless, children have always gotten the short end of the stick. In earlier times, the surplus, especially females, were legally and deliberately killed; in the Middle Ages and until recently children were chattels; in Dickensian England they starved in workhouses or were exploited as beggars a la Oliver Twist...." Louise Raggio, Conference Participant The building Frank Lloyd Wright called Wingspread served as the setting for a discussion concerning the relationship of the health of the young to their legal needs and the role of the pediatrician in these regards. Men and women from medicine, the law, and social work shared their points of view, seeking a firm definition of advocacy for children, attempting to highlight some manageable priorities among the legal needs so that pediatricians might move to a partnership with others in the community which might facilitate access to a better life for all children and youth.

Justice in the paradigm of the Philosophy of Law: analytical review

2021 ◽  
pp. 7
Author(s):  
Vasily I. Zhukov
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Philosophy Of Law ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Theories Of Justice ◽  
Analytical Review ◽  
Ancient Times ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Epistemological Basis ◽  
The Middle Ages

The author analyzes the process of accumulation of knowledge in the field of philosophy and law in order to create an epistemological basis for the perception of justice in the paradigm of the Philosophy of Law. The analytical review is based on the analysis of philosophical, theological, historical and other theories developed from ancient times to the present. The author focuses on the works of ancient thinkers (first of all, Plato, his disciple Aristotle, their followers, Roman authors), the works of scientists who created original concepts and enriched jurisprudence in the Middle Ages, the new and the newest times. Special attention is paid to the interpretation of theories that brought science closer to the creation of a theory of justice in the context of the Philosophy of Law. The author also describes the theories of justice of law developed by the largest scientists of the XX century, J.ºRawls, H. Otfried, F. von Hayek, Ph. Selznick, etc. The article considers the contribution to the development of knowledge about justice in the paradigm of the Philosophy of Law made by the local legal scholars, Soviet scientists, the largest modern specialists in this field, including V.D. Zorkin, V.I. Khairullin, etc. Based on the results of the analytical review, the main conclusions are developed and the author's definition of justice in the format of the Philosophy of Law is given.

Garlic Burns

PEDIATRICS ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 91 (3) ◽  
pp. 658-659
Author(s):  
BEN-ZION GARTY
Keyword(s):  
Chest Pain ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Allium Sativum ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
The Body ◽  
Babylonian Talmud ◽  
The Middle Ages

Five things have been said about garlic: it assauges hunger, warms the body, brings joy, increases virility and destroys intestinal lice. There are those who say that it engenders love and dispels envy. —Babylonian Talmud: Baba Kama (first gate) page 82 Garlic (Liliaceae Allium sativum) has been used for centuries by many cultures as a remedy for a variety of illnesses. Herodotus spoke about the medical use of garlic in Egypt, 3000 years BC. Hippocrates, in the fifth century BC, used garlic to treat a variety of infections, including leprosy, intestinal disorders, and chest pain. In the Middle Ages garlic was used for protection against the plague.

Posthumous Orthodoxy

Melania ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine Shepardson
Keyword(s):  
Natural Extension ◽  
Fifth Century ◽  
Definition Of

Melania the Younger died more than a decade before the Council of Chalcedon (451 CE) and the ensuing bitter conflicts between Chalcedonian and miaphysite Christians. Nevertheless, the Greek Vita by Gerontius portrays her as actively involved in numerous religious and political controversies surrounding bishop Nestorius preceding her death. This chapter argues that the historicity of her alleged anti-Nestorian activities in the Vita must remain in doubt. The anti-Nestorian Melania of the Greek Vita appears to support Gerontius’s miaphysite condemnation of the politically dominant Chalcedonian Christians, providing him with a useful weapon in the pressing Christological battles he faced following her death. While the anti-Nestorian stance Gerontius attributed to Melania remained orthodox in Greek Christianity, his anti-Chalcedonian views, which he considered the natural extension of Melania’s, did not. Gerontius’s Vita Melania thus serves as a microcosm of the complex and highly politicized fifth-century disputes over the definition of Christian orthodoxy.

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