scholarly journals From Grief to Superbia: the Myth of Niobe in Greek and Roman Funerary Art

2020 ◽  
Vol 56 ◽  
pp. 281-296
Author(s):  
Bar Leshem
Keyword(s):  
Visual Representations ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Funerary Art ◽  
Greek Myth ◽  
Literary Sources

The Greek myth of Niobe was known in the ancient world both by literary sources and visual representations. Both in Ancient Greece and in Ancient Rome, the myth was represented, alongside a variety forms of art, in funerary art, but in a different manner during each period of time. In Ancient Greece, the myth was represented on Apulian and South Italian vases, portraying the finale scene of the myth: Niobe’s petrification. In Ancient Rome, a shift is visible: the portrayal of the scene of the killing of Niobe’s children on sarcophagi reliefs. The aim of this paper is to follow the iconography of each culture and to understand the reason for the shift in representation, while comparing the two main media forms.

Cosmopolitan Classicism

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stefano Evangelista
Keyword(s):  
Oscar Wilde ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
French Language ◽  
Personal Freedom ◽  
Intellectual Engagement ◽  
Classical Reception ◽  
Modern France ◽  
Pierre Louys ◽  
Hellenistic Greece

Oscar Wilde associated ancient Greece and modern France as the homelands of artistic autonomy and personal freedom. France and the French language were crucial in his adoption of a cosmopolitan identity in which his close emotional and intellectual engagement with the ancient world also played a key role. His practices of classical reception therefore have roots in the French as well as English traditions. Wilde’s attitude towards ancient Greece initially shows the influence of French Parnassian poetry. As time goes on, however, he starts to engage with the new images of the ancient world promoted by Decadence and Symbolism, which sidelined the Greek classicism idealized by the Parnassians in favour of Hellenistic and Latin antiquity. Particularly important to Wilde were his exchanges with French Symbolist authors Marcel Schwob and Pierre Louÿs, whose writings on Hellenistic Greece are in dialogue with Wilde’s works, notably ‘The Critic as Artist’ and Salomé.

scholarly journals Coins in the Classroom – Teaching Group Work with Roman Coins

2020 ◽  
Vol 21 (42) ◽  
pp. 14-18
Author(s):  
Gwynaeth McIntyre ◽  
Charlotte Dunn ◽  
William P. Richardson
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Group Work ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Roman History ◽  
Classroom Teaching ◽  
Material Objects ◽  
Time And Space ◽  
Teaching Group ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Roman Coins

It can be challenging to bring material culture to life in the classroom when the cultures that produced those materials are separated from the students by time and space. Students learning about Roman history and culture often find it difficult to work with and critically analyse non-literary sources as they rarely have the opportunity to engage with the material objects themselves. Depending on the size of the class, or materials available, it may be impossible to introduce such sources for the ancient world into classroom teaching.

Spies in Ancient Greece

1998 ◽  
Vol 45 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. A. Richmond
Keyword(s):  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Strategic Plan ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Military Policy ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
Independent States ◽  
The Mediterranean

This paper is written to give some account of the part played by secret agents against foreign states. Only in the most incidental way will it mention secret agents who tried to detect internal dissent and conspiracy. Plato thought that all Greek states were in a permanent state of war, declared or undeclared. Even in modern times no two independent states have totally identical interests, and when negotiating about clashes of interests, in peacetime just as in war, any government will seek a position in which it can keep its own secrets and discern those of the opposing side. We know very little of Greek spying in time of peace. When diplomacy failed, Greek states could have recourse to war to attain their objectives. War requires some strategic plan of intended operations. In modern conditions many experts must have a hand in devising the plan, and it must be prepared well in advance. In the ancient world things were simpler. One wonders how many Carthaginians knew, or had to know, that Hannibal intended to march round the Mediterranean and attack Italy. Certainly he took the Romans by surprise. The execution of the plan is best entrusted so far as possible to a single commander, even in modern times. We know next to nothing about how military policy was determined in peacetime, but we have a little more information about conditions in times of war.

Soul of Classicality in Western Architectural Design

2014 ◽  
Vol 638-640 ◽  
pp. 2253-2256
Author(s):  
Cong Ru Liu ◽  
Ming Sen Lin ◽  
Qing Li
Keyword(s):  
Significant Role ◽  
Architectural Design ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Architecture Design ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
The Past ◽  
Renaissance Period

The classicality of the western architecture establishes its foundation at the beginning of the ancient Greece, is flourished in the ancient Rome and revitalized in the renaissance period, extends to the classicism and the classical revival, and finally is overthrown by the postmodernism. By going through development and prosperity in the past thousands of years, the classical spirit has always played a greatly significant role in the field of western architecture design.

scholarly journals Foreign Guests in Ancient Greece

2013 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 19-32
Author(s):  
Zora Žbontar
Keyword(s):  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Special Relationship ◽  
Mutual Aid ◽  
Greek Drama ◽  
Goods And Services ◽  
The People ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
Foreign Guest ◽  
Social Backgrounds

Xenía was a special relationship between a foreign guest and his host in Ancient Greece. The ritual of hosting a foreigner included an exchange of objects, feasting, and the establishment of friendship between people from different social backgrounds. This relationship implied trust, loyalty, friendship, and mutual aid between the people involved. Goods and services were also exchanged without any form of payment. There were no formal laws governing xenía – it was based entirely on a moral appeal. Mutual appreciation between the host and the guest was established during the ritual, but the host did retain a certain level of superiority over the guest. Xenía was one of the most important institutions in Ancient Greece. It had a lot of features and obligations similar to kinship and marriage. In literary sources the word xénos varies in meaning from “enemy stranger”, “friendly stranger”, “foreigner”, “guest”, “host” to “ritual friend”, and it is often hard to tell which usage is appropriate in a given passage. The paper describes the emphasis on hospitality towards foreigners. It presents an example of a depiction indicating xenía is presented, as well as several objects which were traded during the ritual. The paper also addresses the importance of hospitality in Greek drama in general, especially with examples of violations of the hospitality code.

Confronting the Ancient Greek Golden Age in Jules Dassin’s Phaedra (1962)

2018 ◽  
pp. 119-136
Author(s):  
Emma Scioli
Keyword(s):  
Visual Imagery ◽  
Golden Age ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Greek Myth ◽  
The World

In the second of three chapters examining Athens’ golden-age legacy, Scioli traces how Jules Dassin repeatedly draws attention to the origins of his 1962 melodrama Phaedra in Greek myth and tragedy through visual imagery, as a complement to his 1960 comedy Never on Sunday. Phaedra’s use of ancient Athenian art, and its suggestive modernization of elements from the ancient Athenian tragedyHippolytusand Racine’s 1677 adaptation Phèdre, force a confrontation with a particular modern formulation of the ancient Greek past. Dassin draws upon the golden age to characterize the world of ancient Greece that irrupts into the early 1960s setting of the film both visually and thematically. Rather than fostering nostalgia for a golden age that might prompt a desire for its return, Phaedra presents it as an intrusive presence from which its characters feel alienated, only to demonstrate that they are inextricably bound, in their modern dress, to repeat what the tragic past has prescribed for them. Such self-conscious appropriation of Athens’ literary-dramatic and artistic-material remains informs the tragic belatedness of Phaedra and reflects upon the American expatriate director’s sense of foreignness in the homeland of his lover and artistic muse, Greek actress and activist Melina Mercouri.

From the Classical World to the Medieval

2021 ◽  
pp. 13-25
Author(s):  
Clive Emsley
Keyword(s):  
Ancient Greece ◽  
The State ◽  
Ancient Rome ◽  
Medieval Period ◽  
Greek City ◽  
Weights And Measures ◽  
Classical World ◽  
City States ◽  
The Individual

This chapter examines the presence of the police and policing from the classical world to the medieval. The Greek city states had no significant bodies of people organized specifically to ensure survival and welfare, though militias could be brought together to defend the state and suppress popular disorder. Some officials were charged with checking weights and measures and grain supplies. However, there were no institutions to prevent assaults and thefts, or to detect and pursue offenders. Both Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome were similar. Offences that affected the individual rather than the state were usually left to victims, their kin, or passers-by, if they were prepared to get involved. Victims, any servants that they had, their kin, or passers-by did not have to fight, though they sometimes did; but they could act as witnesses when a suspect was accused or brought before a court. Sources for police and policing in the classical world are thin, and much has to be gleaned from between the lines. Meanwhile, the sources for the medieval period are better, and, while these show the similar kinds of divisions and institutions, there are gaps in the sources and little to explore for those looking for police institutions.

A Discussion of Josiah Ober’s The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece

2016 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 1142-1143
Author(s):  
Arlene W. Saxonhouse
Keyword(s):  
Political Science ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Theoretical Concepts ◽  
Classical Greece ◽  
Theoretical Account ◽  
Political Inquiry ◽  
Greek World

Ancient Greece has long exercised a powerful hold on the imagination of modern political science. But until fairly recently, this influence has largely been philosophical, related to the origins of many theoretical concepts—including the concept of politics itself—in the ancient world. In The Rise and Fall of Classical Greece, Josiah Ober offers a synoptic and ambitious social theoretical account of the ancient Greek world, the sources of its power, the causes of its decline, and the lessons that can be drawn from this story for contemporary social and political science. We have thus invited a range of political scientists to comment on Ober’s account of classical Greece and its relevance to contemporary political inquiry.

Ut musica poesis: Music and Poetry in France in the Late Sixteenth Century

1994 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 1-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard Mayer Brown
Keyword(s):  
Sixteenth Century ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Ancient Greece ◽  
World Order ◽  
Pierre De Ronsard ◽  
Ideal Form ◽  
Literary Sources ◽  
The World ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Crucial Part

By praising rulers, whose magnificence formed a crucial part of the world order, Pierre de Ronsard and his French colleagues in the second half of the sixteenth century often depicted the world not as it was but as it ought to be. This idea informs Margaret McGowan's book on ideal forms in the age of Ronsard, in which she explores the ways poets and painters extolled the virtues and the theatrical magnificence of perfect princes following the Horatian dictum ut pictura poesis: as is painting so is poetry. McGowan demonstrates the virtuosity of the painters and poets of the sixteenth century in shaping their hymns of praise from the subject matter and ideals of ancient Greece and Rome by following Horace's advice to regard paintings as mute poems and poems as speaking pictures. McGowan shows how artists and intellectuals pursued their goals by creating four kinds of ideal form: iconic forms, sacred images derived from classical literary sources offering princes some guarantee of immortality; triumphal forms that evoke the heroic imperial past; ideal forms of beauty to be found in contemplating the beloved; and dancing forms that mirror rituals of celebration. McGowan claims that such ideal forms were intended to enlighten the ruler himself as much as they celebrated his grandeur in the eyes of others.

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