A Companion to Latin Literature2005360Edited by Stephen Harrison. A Companion to Latin Literature. Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing 2005. xviii+450 pp. £85, $99.95, ISBN: 0 631 23529 9 Blackwell Companions to the Ancient World

2005 ◽  
Vol 19 (7) ◽  
pp. 40-40
Author(s):  
Stuart James
Keyword(s):  
Ancient World ◽  
Latin Literature

Golden Statues in Greek and Latin Literature

1975 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-119 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. E. G. Whitehorne
Keyword(s):  
Ancient World ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Latin Literature ◽  
The Dead

Golden statues, either made of gold or gilded—the distinction is not always made clear —were exceptionally popular among many of the peoples of the ancient world and it is not difficult to see why. Easily worked, perennially bright and practically indestructible, gold surely had something of the divine about it. In Egypt for instance gold's qualities made it the flesh of the sungod; just like the sun itself, the hotter the fire, the purer and brighter the metal glowed. In Greece, too, gold had divine associations and by virtue of its indestructibility acquired a symbolical value far beyond its actual worth; practically anything that is worth having and keeping is ‘golden’ as far as Pindar is concerned. Even for such a hard-headed race as the Romans gold seems to have had an aura of magic about it, at least in early times. The clause in the Twelve Tables mentioned by Cicero, prohibiting the burial of any gold with the dead, except for their false teeth, surely springs as much from an instinct for the metal's mysterious properties as from any parsimonious desire to control funerary expenditure.

MEDEA: TRANSFORMATIONS OF A GREEK FIGURE IN LATIN LITERATURE

2013 ◽  
Vol 60 (1) ◽  
pp. 114-135 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gesine Manuwald
Keyword(s):  
Ancient World ◽  
Latin Literature ◽  
Greek Literature ◽  
Literary Genres

Latin writers in the ancient world are well known to have been familiar with earlier Greek writings, as well as with the first commentaries on those, and to have taken over literary genres as well as topics and motifs from Greece for their own works. But, as has been recognized in modern scholarship, this engagement with Greek material does not mean that Roman writers typically produced Latin copies of pieces by their Greek predecessors. In the terms of contemporary literary terminology, the connection between Latin and Greek literature is rather to be described as an intertextual relationship, which became increasingly complex, since later Latin authors were also influenced by their Roman predecessors.

The Curse of the Werewolf

2020 ◽  
pp. 18-59
Author(s):  
Daniel Ogden
Keyword(s):  
Ancient World ◽  
The Other ◽  
Latin Literature ◽  
The Witch ◽  
The One

This chapter traces the persistent association between werewolves on the one hand and witches and sorcerers on the other in the ancient world (and does same, in a brief way, for the earliest medieval werewolf tales). The Homeric Circe’s wolves should be understood as men transformed by the witch. Despite some modern claims, this was the position of the Odyssey itself, as well as the subsequent ancient tradition. Herodotus’ treatment of the Neuri not only asserts that they are sorcerers that turn themselves into wolves, but also implies that transformation into a wolf is a thing more generally characteristic of sorcerers. Like the Neuri, Virgil’s (Egyptian?) Moeris is projected as a sorcerer that specialises in turning himself into a wolf. Imperial Latin literature provides us with examples of individual witch-figures transforming into wolves, notably Tibullus’ bawd-witch and Propertius’ Acanthis, but, beyond this, there seems to have been a set of thematic associations between werewolfism and the terrible strix-witches. It may have been thought, in particular, that they had a propensity to transform themselves not only into child-stealing and child-maiming screech-owls or screech-owl-like creatures, but also into wolves. The notion that werewolfism could sometimes be effected by a divine curse, as in the Arcadian traditions and as in Aesop’s fable, was perhaps a variation or extension of the more typical and established idea that it could proceed from the cursing of a witch or a sorcerer.

Ethiopians

1970 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 339-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Y. Nadeau
Keyword(s):  
Far East ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Latin Literature ◽  
The Real ◽  
The Far East ◽  
The World

It was natural and inevitable that his two Aethiopias, in the eastern and western extremities of the world, should be identified with the countries of the two dark-skinned peoples in the Far East and the Far West of the Ancient World: India and Mauretania.There was the difficulty that the real Aethiopia was in Africa, neither in the Far East nor in the Far West. Serious writers on geography tried to reconcile Homer and the geographical facts.I wish to excerpt from Strabo three theories concerning Aethiopia and the Aethiopians which will then be used to elucidate passages in Latin literature.

A glimpse from the ancient world: What a gold necklace from Tillya-tepe reveals about opium in Afghanistan

Afghanistan ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-173
Author(s):  
Sara Peterson
Keyword(s):  
Opium Poppy ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Cultural Importance ◽  
Large Seed ◽  
Potent Drug ◽  
Material Evidence ◽  
Societal Role

Among the six excavated burials at Tillya-tepe, in northern Afghanistan, was one occupied by an elite woman wearing a substantial necklace consisting of large gold beads shaped as seed-heads. The scale and fine workmanship of this necklace suggest that it was one of her most important possessions. It can be demonstrated that these large seed-heads are representations of poppy capsules, whose significance lies in the fact that they are the source of the potent drug opium. This necklace is the most outstanding object within a group of items decorated with poppy imagery, all of which were discovered in female burials. The opium poppy has long been a culturally important plant, and the implication of this identification is investigated in several contexts. Firstly, the proliferation of poppy imagery in the female burials at Tillya-tepe is examined, and then there is a discussion of material evidence for opium among relevant peoples along the Eurasian steppes. The particular cultural importance of opium is reviewed, leading finally to a proposal for the societal role of these women.

Intertextual connections between Thomas More’s Utopia and Cicero’s De finibus bonorum et malorum

Moreana ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 51 (Number 195- (1-2) ◽  
pp. 63-84
Author(s):  
Ana Cláudia Romano Ribeiro
Keyword(s):  
Special Interest ◽  
Latin Literature ◽  
Specific Study ◽  
Intertextual Connections

In 1516, More wrote to Erasmus, putting him in charge of the publication of Utopia. In his study about the “sources, parallels and influences” of More’s libellus, Edward Surtz points out that “the most evident influences are classical” and in 1965, in the introduction of his edition of Utopia, he noted that in the composition of this fiction, Plato and Plutarch are as essential as Cicero and Seneca. He also noted that these philosophers are “the source for the tenets and arguments of the two schools discussed by the Utopians, the Epicurean and the Stoic” and that “Cicero’s De finibus is of special interest here, but detailed studies of Ciceronian and Senecan influences have still to be made.” (p.cliv, clxi). From 1965 until today we haven’t found a specific study on this problem in the bibliography about Utopia and classical Latin literature, that’s why in this paper we will examine some of the connections that link More’s libellus to De finibus.

A Pleasing Odour for Yahweh

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 7-24
Author(s):  
Anne Katrine De Hemmer Gudme
Keyword(s):  
Hebrew Bible ◽  
Sacred Space ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Hellenistic Period ◽  
The Sun ◽  
The West ◽  
Sense Of Smell ◽  
The Temple ◽  
Crucial Part

This article investigates the importance of smell in the sacrificial cults of the ancient Mediterranean, using the Yahweh temple on Mount Gerizim and the Hebrew Bible as a case-study. The material shows that smell was an important factor in delineating sacred space in the ancient world and that the sense of smell was a crucial part of the conceptualization of the meeting between the human and the divine.  In the Hebrew Bible, the temple cult is pervaded by smell. There is the sacred oil laced with spices and aromatics with which the sanctuary and the priests are anointed. There is the fragrant and luxurious incense, which is burnt every day in front of Yahweh and finally there are the sacrifices and offerings that are burnt on the altar as ‘gifts of fire’ and as ‘pleasing odors’ to Yahweh. The gifts that are given to Yahweh are explicitly described as pleasing to the deity’s sense of smell. On Mount Gerizim, which is close to present-day Nablus on the west bank, there once stood a temple dedicated to the god Yahweh, whom we also know from the Hebrew Bible. The temple was in use from the Persian to the Hellenistic period (ca. 450 – 110 BCE) and during this time thousands of animals (mostly goats, sheep, pigeons and cows) were slaughtered and burnt on the altar as gifts to Yahweh. The worshippers who came to the sanctuary – and we know some of them by name because they left inscriptions commemorating their visit to the temple – would have experienced an overwhelming combination of smells: the smell of spicy herbs baked by the sun that is carried by the wind, the smell of humans standing close together and the smell of animals, of dung and blood, and behind it all as a backdrop of scent the constant smell of the sacrificial smoke that rises to the sky.

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